Psychological problems i faced on the world tour

15^th January 2007, Monday

Psychological problems I faced so far on my journey

Today I must sincerely discuss and disclose all the problems I faced so far on my arduous and wonderful world tour and my struggle for existence.  This is not a struggle just to live but to exist as a person who can dream of great things and who can also withstand great difficulties of all kinds to achieve what he wants.  Good news is I won the struggle and I so I am able to discuss it  so that those who want to get on the big journey would take a bit of care and avoid such difficulties.  But it's very loooooooooong.

You know that this is not a sponsored tour and the planning, logistics, funds, communications, paper work, permits, insurances, transfers, shipments, repairs and arrangements have to be done by me or by supporters at home.  Once you are out of country, there is little your base can do for you except to keep you funded if you need more or to give you courage by communicating with you continuously which again is going to be expensive.  Sometimes you may not be able to get any help from anybody even if they want to do.  So it is solely YOU who have to do everything.  Everything means really a lot, including telling the rules of customs to the customs officers of various countries.  I am not joking if I hadn’t written about my Iran customs story, I will write it some time. They levied hefty import duty as they did not know how to process the carnet.  I had to go to the customs commissioner explaining what it is with the help of a translator.  Still it took me one week to process it.  Not only Iran, at many other places.  Some of them do not know where to put a stamp and you have to tell them.  So you must know it before-hand or you won't take your bike out of the country.

So you having to do everything causes a lot of stress.  And every day you need to do a lot of things apart from riding.  Day begins with finding breakfast. In North American motels however large they are, you don’t find anything to eat and you won’t find anybody to ask where you can find something too.  When you do find something to eat, it will be digested by the time you finish packing all the stuff on the bike (my bike is a mini Wall Mart. I have everything I need which I mostly will never need), check the bike for fitness, get dressed(this is tiring too as I used to wear a couple layers of thermal wear, one cotton layer, a fleece sweater and then my heavily padded motorcycle gear, fleece gloves inside leather gloves and I still used to shiver in that cold (being fat free is not always good), look into the maps, note down major points and points of interest.  Then you finally kick start the bike (I have the button start but just for biker feeling I used to kick the button and start the bike J) and start the day with a smile feeling nice to be on the road again. 

If you had to take a motorway, your antenna is always up and scanning for dangers. Because you look like a tiny rat in a death race, trying to escape in between 6 lanes of huge cats (cars) and roaring lions (mega trucks) zipping at high speeds tossing you all around.  Don’t expect to stick to the road shoulder like a good boy riding slow all the time. You need to keep up the pace or some cat or lion will Bum-p into you. You need to keep changing lanes all the time and keep reading all those road signs and exit points to find your destination.  The mere push you experience from a speeding truck itself is unnerving and will make you shiver like a malaria patient.  And imagine riding such heavily loaded, unbalanced and wobbling, tiny street bike changing lanes at 110kmph between those monsters.  I am now well experienced and know what kind of vehicle is coming beside me just by noticing how hard it’s pushing me sideways.  And the thought of a puncture at this stage is spine chilling. It can make you and your bike into a MASALA DOSA (the bike cannot be crushed totally, so it remains like masala in the middle while you become a very fine dosa, must be tasty!).  This acute alertness is very very stressful.  Add just 10-12 hours of this every day. 

Now you thought that’s enough! And want to get into the comfort of some hostel.  But it’s not enough.  Unless you planned to stop here and you know the exact location of a hostel, it’s very difficult to find it.  If you miss one exit, you may have to ride 50kms to come back to the same place again.  And if you are looking for a place without reservation, then give or take 50km before your find one with vacancy.  And in many countries where the hotels are not on ground floors, you have to untie and carry your all luggage just to find no vacancy.  Or by the time you come down you wont find a thing on except the bike (if you are lucky).

Finally you find a place and get into it.  U unpack and carry all your baggage, up all those stairs to your room (nobody will ever lift even a small pouch for you).  You need to lock the bike properly and cover it so that it is not taken away while you sleep.  Sometimes you don’t get parking and you may have to park it on the road side which will give you jerks all night.   In Cairo, Egypt, during night, I put my bike inside the lobby of the building where my hotel was. Wheels and steering locked. But by morning it was on the road.  I couldn’t imagine how they lifted that heavy bike and put it there.  Lucky they didn’t put it on a truck and it happens quite frequently.  According to the place you are traveling, the time you reach a safe place could be anywhere from evening to midnight.  You can’t really come on exact time as many things rule the road and you could be riding at 50 degrees heat or freezing   -15 degrees cold or it may snow or thundering rain.

By now all the muscles in your body will be aching and after a refreshing shower you feel damn hungry as you had only light meals during day (eat heavy food during day and you will be drowsing on the bike).  Now again you may have to walk miles to find food. Not what you like, but just any kind of food.  Sometimes you may not find any at all.  You may have to eat whatever kind of reserve snacks you are carrying (you should carry some, but you won’t feel like eating it anyway).  You sleep like a log and soon it’s another day.  Believe me you will not even remember to check your mails forget updating your blog.

BUT IT IS FUN.  To ride, to go to a new place, enjoy the new surroundings, new people, new food, everything is fun and you will be happy.  But not if you have to do this every day, 24/7 all through the year (unless you are an Iron Butt like me).  Not when you can’t stop where ever you want to stop because your budget will take you only halfway then.  You can’t eat what you want, not because of funds but availability.  You may be liking pizzas and burgers and meat but try eating all that for a month.  I have been eating that for 9 months now and I am not very particular about food. I just wanted a south Indian thali J If you are a food lover and don’t adjust to this, then you will return in less than 3 months.

I am not complaining or regretting at all.  I am just showing you how it would be to ride around the world.  And I tell you that in spite of all this I AM REALLY ENJOYING MY RIDE AND I CAN RIDE ONE MORE TIME TOO !!! So no regrets at all.

But the tour is taking its toll on a different plane, the psychological side. 

First and foremost problem is loneliness. 

Though you are always surrounded by people, you still feel lonely.  You are an alien.  Many may speak to you, but until you cross all the countries in middle east and Europe and reach UK, you don’t know what they are saying and you can’t talk back.  Nobody speaks English like we do in any part of India. You will become ‘goonga’ and will become an expert at sign language (you can become a news reader for the deaf).  You will not be talking to anyone until you reach UK.  I being a happy man always surrounded by friends and family was too lonely until I reached UK.  Few people I met in the other countries kept me sane with their hospitality.  The first Telugu man I met was the Ambassador of India to Jordan.

Loneliness as a problem cannot be explained, only can be experienced.  Actually I trained myself well expecting this, that’s how I am surviving.  I went into Himalayas trekking alone at the off season times.  There I felt for the first time what loneliness is.  Once I was trekking from Gangotri to Gomukh alone, the temple and even the post office at Gangotri were closed for winter.  It is a 19km trek to 14000 feet altitude which would take a whole day to cover half the distance. After a long arduous journey at the high altitude, it started snowing.  I thought of only one thing, I wish somebody knew that I am walking here.  For there was no telephone and nobody knows my exact place or route.  I did keep a note in my pocket with all my details for anybody who finds me, in case if I die.  But the problem is no body will find you in the depths of thousands of feet if you slip.  At that moment you will experience what loneliness is.  We cannot avoid it; we have to cope with it.  Nevertheless it will have an effect on your mind all the time.  

Another unexpected reason for my loneliness was my acquired hearing deficiency.  Yes. When I went around India on my 1969 Royal Enfield, I did not know that I have to use ear plugs.  We, in India get scared to silence ourselves from the traffic, expecting the horn of the truck coming behind.  But that is wrong.  The high pitched roar of my bike made me lose some frequencies and noticing it, I started using ear plugs after half the journey.  But in this journey what I have learnt is that you cannot get complete silence even if you plug your ears and wear a heavily padded helmet too, because of bone conduction.  The bones around your ear also conduct sound.  When I am traveling at 110kmph speed continuously, the wind hitting my helmet at that speed makes a hell of a noise and some of that is absorbed by the bones around my ears and I get a constant “SSSSShhhhhhhhh” sound in my mind.  Imagine this sound continuously for 10hours or more every day for a year.  Actually it will make you mad but for the protective skills of our brain.  Brain cuts off the frequencies that are causing disturbance.  So you no more concentrate or hear those sounds though they are always present. Good for the moment but after a while you lose those frequencies permanently. Occupational hazard.

What happens when you lose some frequencies? You cannot comprehend even if you can hear the words or voices of people whose frequencies fall into this particular lost frequencies.  So sometimes even if the other is asking you a serious question you will hear only “ abba dabba jabba” and to cover it up you find yourself smiling and saying ‘oh yes’. And you keep asking everybody again and again.  Finally to avoid such difficulty or embarrassment, you avoid talking to people altogether.  You keep to yourself even in a group which increases your loneliness further. Tho abtak Goonga aur Behra bangaya dekhna hei aur kya kya banoonga.

The second and major problem was Depression.

So I was coping well with the stress of the ride and loneliness too.  But then I had to face the situation of riding through Europe in 5 days from Greece to UK. I must say this was the only time when I did not enjoyed riding during my journey so far.  Even freezing cold gave me a kind of winning achievement but this always kept my heart in my mouth and my mind in my knees.  I was so disturbed thinking my ride will end in France, I could not eat or sleep or remain calm while riding, nor was I able to think anything too.  These five days of continuous mental and physical torture pushed me into a deep depression (I had some personal reasons also to complicate this L).  This depression, untreated, continued until now giving me severe bouts from time to time.  With strong will I used to get out of it but soon something or someone triggers it without my knowledge and I am down again. 

This made me so dull that except riding with great will, I didn’t feel like doing anything else.  No reading, no writing not even eating well.  You don’t feel like doing any damn thing.  Getting up and going out for sightseeing in a place as beautiful as Quebec is also not at all interesting. Usually on a world tour like this where you are seeing something new every day, you lose interest even in the best of the places or things and you don’t want to go out of your room.  That’s ok and should be expected. You just need to relax, sit indoors for a few days and it will be alright.  But this feeling coupled with depression and loneliness produced a disastrous concoction and gave rise to a new problem.

The third problem was overindulgence in Alcohol.

I was never a regular drinker but I used to drink in parties and with friends.  Drinking was never a problem to me.  Actually I did not drink until I reached Aqaba, Jordan though I went to some of the most happening places in Turkey. Aqaba is one of my enigmatic places right from when I saw the movie Lawrence of Arabia.  So when I finally reached that place, I was in high spirits and to add to that I used to go underwater diving.  After having a great day on the red sea, we all used to have a beer and sing and dance. It’s irresistible and there is no need for me to hold back too.  So there I first started drinking beer again.  And when you go to a place like Olu Deniz, in Turkey, even if you never had a pint of beer also would like to jump into the cask.  I was visiting the most beautiful places on earth filled with tourists and attractive cafes and pubs and bars and music, it’s hard to sit tight. But it was absolutely under control and was just enjoying until I came to UK with that depression.  When I finally crossed the English Channel with great relief, I just wanted to forget everything and sleep for a few days.  So I had a few beers every afternoon and every night.  Depression and drinking are too good friends who will never leave you so easily.

But after 5 days doing nothing, I immediately became alert and knowing that I will slip more deeply into this, I regained myself and started my ride again.  Wherever I go, I either had a friend and we had a great party or I was alone and so I wanted a drink (so it was not parties that made me drink).  And I was not drinking just a beer but a lot of them.  And knowing I’m drinking a lot, I at least stopped taking hot drinks and wine or it would have been worse.  Kuch to akal baaki he tab bhi. 

And one fine day I will wake up and shake my head off my depression and drinking.  Knowing it is not good for me or my project and tried to come out of that depression.  Everything was fine for a few days.  I left UK and reached Toronto, Canada in great spirits (not the liquid one). After running around for two days in taxi to various offices in Toronto, I could not finish the customs inspection and I could not release my bike. Next day was Saturday and they don’t work on weekends and you don’t know when it will be released.  My airline agent will charge me $150 a day for keeping the bike there and you don’t know how much you may have to pay him. Shit shit shit…my depression says ‘forget it yaar me hun na come lets have a BEER!!!’ Again the subdued depression awakens like a gene with all laughs and invites its friend the BEER. 

Finally the bike is released and I shake my head like our rock stars round n round and get rid of the depression and go around Canada and see the beauty of the fall.  Then after a few days due to unexpected excess expenditure at the customs, my finances are dangerously down and there was a delay expected from my sources so I need to sit at some cheap place and wait for it.  ‘Shit shit shit come lets have a BEER!!! There is nothing to do for you so you can just take a walk around the beautiful place and all the cafes and pubs pulling you like magnets. You sit and have a couple of beers, go home and sleep.  Don’t think and don’t do anything else’, my depression says, fearing I would send it out again. 

One more major reason for my drinking to continue even when the funds are low is because it’s so cheap here.  For us we can get a couple of good meals for the cost of a beer. Here you can get couple of dozen beers for the cost of a meal.  So it would not seem sinful to you to drink a couple of them even if you are tight.  All those days I was not really myself.  I was much closed, not willing to do much, not wanting to talk or meet anyone at all.

But finally I said this is not the way to see the world.

I put a break and a strong one.  I remained put for a while in Niagara, not going out except for a walk or to buy something to eat.  The depression and drinking continued but I had a lot of time introspecting.  The good habit I developed during all my life is; I can correct myself without any outside help.  I am good at reasoning without bias and finding the cause and solution for anything.  I know how to control my mind too. But still your mind wanders a bit now and then and you need to regain the control all the time.  And also it is a situation where it is only you who can correct it.  I felt so lonely but not interested in meeting anyone. Now and then kept writing mails and read a lot of books but did not do anything noteworthy. 

I always hated to part with good friends.  But now I reached a verdict that I must part with both my friends however painful it may be; the Depression and Drinking.  ‘Cause both of them are coordinating with each other and cooperating to see that if one is left the other will come back soon.  If I don’t lose them, I know I will lose myself, and my loved ones, permanently. So after a great lonely struggle, I WON THE WAR and killed both of them J. 

When I say killed them, I mean I killed them.  Yes, however strong they may be but not stronger than me.  I am a warrior and can kill such unwanted enemies and I believe my victory is long lasting.  This I can say with confidence generated from my experience.  Before this Operation Beer Boose, I fought another war, Operation Vijay in India against smoking.  I used to be a chain smoker (ab poochna mat aur kitni aadaten hein…ye aakhri samjho :p).  For two decades I smoked at the rate of 20-30 cigarettes a day.  I quit smoking many times with all kinds of promises and commitments but they lasted only for a few hours or a day maximum.  I was never without a cigarette. I developed chronic bronchitis and when the doctors said “choose between cigarettes or life”, I gladly chose the cigarette due to the difficulty of quitting it. 

But I had to change my choice.  When I was preparing for the world tour and on my lonely trek in Himalayas, I started at a good pace at that high altitude.  Anybody would be exhausted very quickly because of reduced oxygen levels.  After taking a few quick steps uphill, I was soon panting for air like a dog on my four legs (legs and hands).  After taking a few puffs from my inhaler and resting I said, this is not good.  I am going to face such cold and many more tiring and extremely hard situations around the world and if I am so weak I may not complete the journey at all.  Then I said Beta ya tu world tour pe jaye ga ya to cigarette jayega dono milke nahi jasakte.  Mei  ne socha Hum kisi se kam nahi.  Use kyon jaane dunga?  To usko chod ke me chala aaya J.   It’s been more than two years since I touched a cigarette.  I don’t run away from it.  I allow all my friends to smoke in front of me and I think in my mind, Jo jeeta wohi sikandar J.  So that proves I am stronger than any of my habits or emotions.  I refused to surrender to anything except GOD.  And so I am really back and much much stronger than ever. 

I thank all of you for giving me continuous support during all these months of my untold misery.  But now you are entitled for some entertainment and I will release my new stories like our bollywood films (in plenty).  Thank you one and all.

Bharadwaj Dayala