danielbaylis.ca

Dear Family and Friends,

My head is a mishmash of thoughts and experiences and half-baked ideas. So rather than a cohesive narrative of a specific experience that happened during my week, I offer up a series of snapshots into where my body and my mind meandered over the past seven days.

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I’ve spent the past five days bopping down the coast of Goa. And I’ve somehow miraculously returned to the yoga retreat in one piece. Considering the many things that could have gone awry – mechanical difficulties, motorbike wipeouts, slamming into the backside of a cow – I feel quite lucky.

Perhaps I have good karma.

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I was chatting with my father yesterday about the fortuitousness of my travels/life. He said, “It’s not karma. It’s Baylis.”

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As mentioned, I’ve returned to YogaGypsys. And after five days of absence, the place feels a bit different. The place is fully functioning, and there are actually guests here, and this changes the dynamic – the space no longer belongs to five employees and a white foreigner. Also, two of my favorite staff members have had to leave to address family issues. It feels weird with them gone.

It’s funny. When I arrived here I had to realign my expectations of what this experience would be. I initially wanted regular yoga practice and opportunity for possible meaningful dialogue around spirituality and life in India. Instead I was handed a paintbrush and communicated with the non-English speaking staff through a continual game of goofy charades. And I grew to love it.

Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone?

*

On my little five-day motorbike adventure, I met a man named Om. We talked about many things, such as work and travel and life. He told me that Goa wasn’t the real India, that it’s too westernized. If I wanted to see the real India, I should wander through the small towns in the south or go to Rishikech in the north or hike in the Himalayas.

Now I have to put “India” back on my list of nations I hope to visit.

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While zipping down a highway the other day, I almost hit a scorpion on my motorbike. Seriously.

It was scurrying across the road like it owned the pavement. I didn’t want to swerve and endanger my own life. But I managed to steer with precision, and I missed it by approximately two inches. I did this mainly because I envisioned its savage stinger puncturing a hole in my tire, and my motorbike bursting into a mushroom cloud of flames. I don’t know anyone who has ever run over a scorpion with a motorbike, so until I receive conclusive negating evidence, as far as I’m concerned, this could happen.

I can’t wait to return home and start incorporating this exotic nugget into the anecdotes that I share with friends and acquaintances – “So, yeah, this one time I was motorbiking through Goa and I almost hit a scorpion. Whatevs.”

Each time that I tell the story, the scorpion will augment in dimension and ferociousness.

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For my final two nights I rented a hut on the beach in a town just north of Palolem. I’d tell you which town, but then it wouldn’t be my secret getaway location. Duh.

Anyway, I paid 800 rupees for my hut. That’s about $16 USD. Some people might think I could have negotiated for a better deal. Maybe I could have got it for $12 or even $10. But I’m tired of bartering. I want to give you my money. I want your life to have more options, the kind of options that money provides.

The foreigners who quibble over the ‘best bargain’ are the ones who irk me the most.

I cannot preach the importance of equity among humans and then lowball in my negotiations. Because the truth is, even if I don’t deem myself rich compared to my western counterparts, I’m incredibly rich when I see the larger global context.

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Last night I was sitting under a palm tree in a restaurant that faced out towards the Arabian Sea. I was sipping on a King Fisher beer and eating a curried chicken kebab concoction. The waiter, from Nepal, was quite chatty. He pulled out his mobile phone and shared photos of his friends and family back home. It was almost too much attention. But then he made my evening when, in his broken English, he randomly said, “You have nice beard, sir. You look like Osama Bin Laden.”

To be honest, I’m not aware of appropriate social protocol to follow when one is compared to Osama Bin Laden. So I simply smiled and said, “Thank you.”

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I think sometimes about how I justify my fortune. There are a six or seven billion people out there who have “less” than I do. And I’m not speaking solely of money in the bank. I’m talking about opportunity for self-determinism. I’m talking about access to education and health care. I’m talking about the ability to get a $15 000 loan to go travel the world for a year. Sure, I am in debt. But I’m an incredibly rich man.

I’m not occupying Wall Street. I’m occupying my life.

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Holy shit. I only have two months left on this yearlong voyage.

What will become of all this? What will become of me? Why do I care?

*

With love from Goa,

xoxo

Daniel

PS: Did I say I almost hit a “scorpion” on my motorbike? I’m sorry, I meant “tiger.” Yes, I almost ran over a ten-foot tiger. It was breathing fire and had knives where its claws should have been. Luckily, I have good reflexes.

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