Dirt

The backpacker’s experience of India is a dirty one. You have to get over it. Dirty hotels, dirty taxis, streets, door handles, dogs, dirty pillows on trains, don’t even think about looking for bedbugs, no good will come of it and you’ll only ruin a night’s sleep. In the beginning you try to stay clean, not use that cup because it has a “speck” on it, always wash your hands before you eat, after you touch money, before you wipe the dust out of your eye, but it is a futile battle. You have to give up. Dirt is so much a part of your life here that either by choice or through gradual submission you’ll start to forget about it. One way or the other you are going to be living in dirt. You will come to embrace it. You won’t make it one day if you don’t.