The Lost Girls (30 page)

Since sitting still was turning out to be more of a challenge than I'd ever imagined, I was itching for my one constant: running. Being in motion always made it easier for me to clear my mind, the steady pace pounding my awareness out of my head and back into my body. Besides, the swamis had said that a strong body led to a strong mind. Though I felt guilty running
here because it probably fit less with hatha yoga's philosophy of easy stretching and more with what our training manual defined as “rajasic, or violent movements that increase adrenaline and stimulate the mind,” technically it wasn't an act of rebellion.

Eager to make use of my “free” hour, I threw on a T-shirt and long pants despite the 100 percent humidity to avoid offending the locals with my bare knees, and made my way toward the gates. A guard blocked my path and stared at me skeptically. “Madame, please show your pass.”

“I'm sorry, my pass?” I said, confused.

“You need pass from reception.” He gestured toward the brick building to his left, bobbing his head side to side. Not wanting to waste a second, I marched up the steps of the building to request written permission from the Indian woman behind the counter.

“Why do you need to leave?” she asked.

“Um, I'd like to go for a walk, please,” I said, fudging the truth a bit. I knew from running in South America and Africa that the locals did not see it as a ladylike activity—or maybe anything that purposefully burned calories wasn't a pastime of choice in places where so many suffered from food shortages.

“You better carry a big stick,” warned a female voice with a distinctly American accent. I spun around to see Chloe.

“A stick? But why?” I asked. She explained that rabid dogs were rampant in the villages and said she'd heard stories of them tearing into students when they went outside.

“She's right—and I wouldn't go by yourself if I were you,” said Marta, who'd walked in with her. Though Chloe and I had instantly shared our personal stories, much the way Shannon and I had on the Inca Trail, Marta's past had remained more of a mystery to me. So I was surprised to learn that this wasn't her first time at the ashram: she'd visited last fall. She'd been part
of a group of hundreds of students doing a walking meditation when a dog had sneaked up behind her, sunk its teeth into her calf, and darted away. Marta had had to hightail it to a local hospital for rabies shots.

“Oh, my God! Why did you come back?” I asked after she lifted the leg of her white pants to show me a jagged scar on her otherwise perfect leg.

“Because I believe I still have a lesson to learn. And that's why I'm here—to learn,” said Marta. Her and Chloe's friendship was one of opposites: Chloe was an ashram rebel who called bullshit whenever the swami said our egos threatened to sabotage our spiritual paths (“It's not my ego that's making me want to eat instead of meditate. It's those four hours of yoga I did yesterday!”). Marta, on the other hand, was the embodiment of a devotee, never missing class and spending our only day off sprawled in the grass studying the Bhagavad Gita.

I couldn't decide if Marta's return trip was brave or foolhardy. Still, her story reminded me to keep my mind open to absorbing the ashram's lessons (which I hoped included more than just “how to fight off rabid animals”).

“Thanks for the advice, but I think I'll take my chances—and a stick!” I said, foolhardy myself. Then I accepted the index-card-sized piece of paper from the Indian woman across the counter and hurried back to the exit.

The truth was, I'd grown accustomed to naysayers worldwide offering all kinds of reasons why I should skip my daily jog. I'd heard every excuse, from male predators to reckless drivers to rockfalls. I pegged their concern as coming more from fear than reality, just as I did my parents' warnings that I'd be a victim of a terrorist attack by straying so far beyond U.S. borders. If I believed them, almost every place in the world was too dangerous to walk around. But I'd found that one of my favorite ways to explore was on foot. I met more locals, came across unexpected
gardens, witnessed dozens of impromptu football games, and discovered other moments of daily life that I never would have had the opportunity to see had I quit jogging. I felt isolated from the rest of India inside those ashram gates. And so far, I'd never run into trouble.

After handing my pass to the guard, I flew down the stone steps dotted with heaps of moss and stopped at the bottom to select the sturdiest branch I could find on the forest floor. Leaving the ashram, I thought of the story I'd heard of Siddhartha and wondered what he must have felt when escaping from the royal palace to see how the rest of the world lived. With my iPod in one hand and a stick in the other, I was off.

It was a tropical wonderland, except that there were mountains and lakes instead of beaches and oceans. The dusty earth at the side of the road was speckled with sunlight and shadows from the palm trees that formed a ceiling overhead. The ashram was set on a hill across from a lake and a few miles away from the closest village. The road encircled the lake and led down the hill toward a dam, where small shacks clustered together. I glanced toward the shore. Women in red and yellow saris were scrubbing laundry and laying garments across the flat gray rocks to dry. The hot, moist air filled my lungs. It smelled like moss, cow dung, and burning leaves. I felt my cheeks flush from both my blood pumping and the strength of the sun.

I cruised down the hill and past a school. Children playing with a bouncy ball inside a gated yard stopped and screamed, “Hellooo!” I grinned and waved as my feet pounded the earth and propelled me forward. I crossed a bridge high above the dam and entered a forest on the other side that felt cool and clean. The path was littered with knee-high ferns. I kept moving forward on the dirt road until I came upon the hodgepodge of wooden shacks painted in shades of brown and peacock blue that I'd noticed during the ride to the ashram.

Open-air stores sold bananas and cola in glass bottles. Men raised axes to chop wood in front of their homes. Children in bare feet with dirt-smudged faces squealed and ran in circles when they saw me. Women carrying buckets of water on their heads stopped midstep to stare as I met their eyes and smiled, droplets of sweat periodically blinding me.

Completely caught up in exploring village life outside the ashram walls, I almost didn't see the dog running toward me from the roadside. His fur was matted with mud and his fangs were bared, frothy white saliva dripping from his jaws. All that blood running through my veins flooded with adrenaline, and my survival instinct took over.

“Stay back!” I shouted, my voice sounding a few octaves lower than normal and gravelly to my own ears. Oh, man. What had I gotten myself into?

I began waving the stick in front of me like some kind of machete, willing him to keep his distance and too scared to think about how ridiculous I must have appeared. Why did I ever think a measly stick would be any kind of defense against a rabid animal? My move could go down in some kind of Lonely Planet list called “The Stupidest Things to Do When Traveling.”

The dog hesitated momentarily before snapping at the stick with his teeth. I slammed the branch on the ground with all the strength I could summon. He cowered, but not for long.

I should have listened to Marta and stayed put. I'd probably have to go to the hospital for rabies shots. As much as I loved running, it was definitely not worth dying for. When the canine advanced upon me again, a man with skin like copper and a black mustache halted his motorbike, picked up a rock, and hurled it at the dog's head. The beast let out a howl as the rock struck his skull with a thud. Passersby had gathered across the street to watch how the scene would unfold, much more interested in the foreigner's debacle than in their chores. Pick
ing up another rock and winding up his arm, the man yelled something I couldn't understand with such force that the dog retreated slightly.

Visibly shaking, I backed away from the mutt, keeping my face toward the animal and the stick in front of me in case the beast made any sudden moves.

“Thank you for saving me!” I said to the man, who was still staring intently at the dog hovering by the roadside. As terrified as I was, it was a moment that filled me with hope. Like the Peruvian priest who had rescued us in the desert in Colca Canyon, it was one of many encounters that reminded me that the world is filled with guardian angels.

He offered a smile. “It's okay to go now,” he said, bobbing his head in that now-familiar weeble-wobble way. He was probably in his late twenties, and looked both curious as to why I'd ventured this far into the village and maybe even apologetic for the dog's attempts to attack. I gingerly moved forward just as the dog crouched low to the ground as if he might pounce, teeth once again bared. Even my savior looked unnerved.

“He knows you are different. I think maybe it better you go that way,” he said, pointing toward the direction from which I'd come. He didn't need to tell me twice. Thanking him once again, I walked backward down the road for a good quarter mile. Then I turned and sprinted with everything I had toward the ashram, praying that karma was on my side…but still gripping my stick the whole way back for protection.

 

A
manda and Jen sat next to me on my spartan twin bed inside the dorm. Their stuffed backpacks leaned against the wall beside us, an unwelcome reminder that they'd soon be gone, leaving me to navigate the ashram alone.

“Aww, guys, this is the best present ever!” I joked, clutching
the bag of contraband chocolate to my chest, practically on a sugar high from simply smelling the sweet stuff.

“We knew you couldn't survive a whole month without dessert,” Amanda said, squeezing my shoulders. I was quickly learning that sometimes it's life's little pleasures that can cheer you up the most—and the lack thereof can make each day feel practically torturous.

“You sure you want to stay here, Hol? You could come to Goa with us and just chill on the beach,” Jen offered. I wondered what it would be like to go almost a month without the two extensions of myself known as Jen and Amanda. It was the first time we'd be separated during the trip. And though I'd never thought about
not
staying at yoga school just because my friends would rather be at the beach, the fact that I felt so lost without them showed me just how close we'd become. We'd taken care of one another through food poisoning. We'd slept head to toe. We were the first people we talked to in the morning and the last before we fell asleep at night.

I'd told Jen and Amanda about the afternoon's dog incident, and I knew they were worried. But I also knew that, God willing, there'd be many more times to relax on the beach during the trip and that now was not that time for me. Rather, I needed to commit myself to staying and learning. Though to learning what exactly, I still wasn't sure.

“That sounds like heaven right now, but the ashram's Web site clearly states, ‘No refunds,'” I said, declining Jen's offer.

“That's probably because anybody in their right mind would ask for their money back,” Amanda joked.

I could see from Jen and Amanda's eyes that they were hesitant to leave me behind in this land of elephant-headed deities, swamis spewing lessons of karma, and rabid dogs. But I could also tell, from how they were already leaning toward the exit, that they were aching to break out of yoga camp. “Well, we'd
better get outta here before we catch whatever funky foreign bug is going around. Stay away from the sickies, Hol!” Jen teased.

It had turned out that the blonde I'd seen with the swollen, devilish red eyes in the dining hall didn't actually have pinkeye but a supervirus so contagious that almost a third of the students had already caught it. It was painful just to look at, so the infected hid behind sunglasses while everyone else avoided them like the plague. Our teachers didn't seem too surprised by the outbreak. In fact, they'd said that getting sick was normal: all this healthy living purged toxins in the process of purifying our bodies. The swamis said it was typical to feel bad while our bodies eliminated years of accumulated poisons before we felt better. Just to be safe, I'd already stocked up on rosewater eye drops from the on-site ayurvedic clinic, which were supposed to ward off infection but burned like hell.

“I'll be totally fine. What's three more weeks out of my entire life?” I said, my throat unexpectedly closing up. What was the matter with me? I alone had made the choice to come to yoga school. Wasn't
I
the one who'd wanted less partying and more exploration? Wasn't
I
the one who'd preferred learning to relaxation?

The chiming of the bells serendipitously filled the awkward silence. Vowing to toughen up, I quickly hugged Jen and Amanda good-bye. Then I solemnly walked away with the valid-sounding excuse that I didn't want to be marked late for afternoon lecture. The truth was, I just couldn't stand there and watch them walk away first.

GOA, INDIA
NOVEMBER

M
y legs were burning and my bladder nearly bursting by the time I'd sprinted through the streets of Trivandrum and bounded up the steps of the train station. Just knowing that I'd failed to procure a single piece of toilet tissue, napkin, or paper of any kind only amplified the fear that I might actually wet my pants before making it to a bathroom. Jen and I had used up our emergency stash of scratchy one-ply back at the ashram, and in our haste to say good-bye to Holly, we'd forgotten to replenish the coffers.

Pushing through the mob of Indian travelers clustered in groups on the platform, I found my way back to the hard wooden bench where I'd left Jen babysitting our packs minutes earlier. She was gone—and so were the bags. Scanning the length of the station (even at five feet four, I could still see over most heads here), I tried to stay calm. She had to be here somewhere. She wouldn't have gotten on the train to Goa without me—right?

Climbing onto the bench to get a better look (a move that drew serious stares from the people shuffling past), I heard the unmistakable ring of Jen's voice coming through a grate high
above my head, on the far side of the wall. Hopping down, I found the door marked
LADIES WAITING LOUNGE
and pushed my way through.

Within the claustrophobic, ammonia-scented room, a dozen Indian women and their children were chattering and making animated gestures at the spectacle taking place in the adjoining bathroom. Inside, a plump Indian lady spilling out of her blue sari was guiding—or rather strong-arming—a bewildered-looking white girl into a tiny bathroom stall. Jen protested as the woman shoved a hose-and-nozzle contraption into her right hand. The sprayer was similar to the kind attached to most kitchen sinks, but this one was built into the wall near a squat toilet and was clearly meant to wash something other than dishes.

“Amanda! You're back!” Jen looked visibly relieved as she spotted me. “Pass me the TP before I get a demonstration on how to use this thing.”

I was just confessing that I'd failed at my one and only shopping objective when the woman wrapped her hand around Jen's and squeezed the nozzle, forcing a stream of water out of the hose and against the tiled wall behind her. Jen jumped, and the spectators in the bathroom giggled at her reaction.

I might have laughed too, except that I had more urgent matters to attend to. Dashing into the stall next to Jen's, I slammed the door and assumed the all-too-familiar position: feet astride the basin, pants gripped firmly in hand (so as not to drag on the floor), legs locked in a seated position. Not the most relaxing way to go, but better now than in a rocking, cockroach-infested train car.

“So, I'm gathering that we don't have any toilet paper?” Jen called from her side of the wall. She paused and asked quietly, “Are you gonna use that sprayer thing?”

I considered the hose to my right and the alternative. I
picked up the sprayer and held it out in front of me. Was there any chance in hell this process could be sanitary? Did it matter at this point?

“I will if you will!” I called back, screwing my eyes shut as I shot myself with a stream of water. Oh! Huh. It was lukewarm. Kind of…refreshing, actually. I squeezed the sprayer a couple more times for good measure, then shook my lower half like a puppy drying off after running through a sprinkler.

When Jen and I met outside our respective stalls, we giggled like little kids who'd just learned to use the big-girl bathrooms. The seats of our thin cotton yoga pants were both soaked with water.

“This why you must wear sari,” said the woman, motioning to her electric blue outfit and then our backsides. “Make dry more fast.”

Jen thanked her for the advice. We snatched up our packs and bolted for the train just before it could chug out of the station without us.

 

W
e arrived in Goa on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, a holiday that seemed incongruous to me now. We were eight thousand miles and ten time zones away from home. Normally during the holiday season, I'd be at my aunt's place in Peekskill, New York, helping my family devour a twenty-pound bird and two dozen accompanying side dishes before passing out with the group in front of a football game or the perennial James Bond marathon on Spike TV. Now, as Jen and I bumped along in a rickshaw from the train station to the coast, it was the scent of sandalwood and eucalyptus, not roasting turkey and pumpkin pie, that wafted past our faces on salty gusts of air.

“Hey, did you know that Western hippies used Goa as a hideout back in the sixties?” asked Jen, glancing up from
Lonely
Planet: Southern India
. “To make enough cash to hang around, they sold off their guitars and jeans and stuff, which is how the big flea market in Anjuna got started. Could we check it out on Wednesday?”

“Hmm, let me consult my schedule,” I said, scrolling through an imaginary calendar. “I'm pretty busy…but wait. I just had some last-minute cancellations, so I'm totally free from right now till, oh, next June. Shall I pencil you in?”

Jen pretended to slug me with the guidebook.

“Hey, watch it. You washed that thing after the cockroach train, right?” I said, shifting around to avoid it. “No more squashed bug parts?”

“Of course. I scrubbed it down with bleach,” Jen said, grinning as she taunted me. “Here, why don't you get a closer look?”

As she wiggled the book dangerously close to my face, I felt relieved rather than grossed out. Finally, Jen and I were starting to act like the dorks we'd been in college. Back then, we could utterly amuse ourselves just by racing carts through the aisles of a twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart or by dressing up as a premelt-down Britney Spears (circa “Slave 4 U”) and acting out her latest music videos. I guess I'd taken it for granted that our crazy alter egos—Schmanders and Jen-Ba—would rear their heads on this trip, that just the act of leaving New York would reset the tenor of our whole friendship. We used to be silly and wacky. We'd always said that if we'd met as little kids in the sandbox instead of on the first day of college, we would have conquered the playground together. How odd, then, now that we'd decided to conquer the great big real world together, we'd been at odds over the very grown-up issue of
work.

Leaving the ashram, I was relieved not to be returning to pitches and e-mails. On some level, I'd always understood and even respected where Jen had been coming from about writing
on the road. What better time would there be to put our pencils down and experience the world with no distractions? But it wasn't until I'd missed the auditions with the girls at Pathfinder, and remembered the cut of disappointment when an adult let you down, that I really understood the lesson that Jen had been trying to teach me. Working constantly wasn't just driving a wedge between the two of us, it was keeping me from totally immersing myself in the places I was visiting and forging connections with the people I met. What if I returned home just to realize that while I'd been busy becoming a travel writer, I'd actually missed the point of traveling?

When I'd first told Jen I was taking time off from working, I'd imagined that it would be tough to break myself of the compulsion. But once I'd committed to powering down the laptop, going dark was far easier than I'd ever dreamed. It was only after we arrived at Shraddha that I realized my flaw in timing: just as I'd given myself permission to become a free spirit like Holly, I'd entered the one situation where total discipline was required. Now, on the road again, I found myself chomping at the bit, ready to live totally in the present without worrying about my past or my future.

 

A
ccording to the long line of pleasure seekers who'd visited before us, there's no better place to experience the non-spiritual side of India than Goa. While Goa is technically the name of the country's smallest state, most backpackers use the word to refer to the series of choose-your-own-adventure beach villages strung along the coastline. Each town has its own series of quirks and eccentricities, and offers a specific vice to match the vibe.

Judging by the scenery rolling outside the window of our rickshaw, Jen and I had just entered Summer of Love territory—
or the Indian approximation of it. Squat bamboo buildings lining the dusty streets were washed in psychedelic pastels; women hawked broomstick skirts, patchouli incense, and wooden prayer beads from behind rickety tables; tree-house cafés beckoned passersby with chalkboard advertisements for everything from garlic naan to falafel wraps to barbecue chicken pizza.

“Where are we meeting Sarah again?” Jen asked.

“Some place called Magdalena's Guesthouse,” I said, double-checking a note scribbled in the margin of my journal. “She said she'd get there right after lunch.”

Sarah, one of the few friends from home we'd end up connecting with on the road, was a savvy, outgoing journalism student I'd advised during my final months at the magazine. She and I had met during her internship and stayed in touch even after she'd returned to school and I'd made my ungraceful departure from the job. Then a couple months after her graduation—just as Jen, Holly, and I were launching the second leg of our trip—Sarah had e-mailed to say that she'd accepted a position as an HIV educator for an NGO in Mumbai. Would we, by any chance, be heading to India during our travels? Once we realized that our paths would overlap, Sarah and I had immediately scheduled a reunion in a location we were both dying to check out: Goa.

When the driver dumped Jen, me, and our dusty yoga mats by the front entrance of Magdalena's, I wasn't sure we'd come to the right place. The cluster of unpainted concrete buildings was guarded unconvincingly by a pack of malnourished dogs. Clotheslines strung across the yard were straining under the weight of still-sopping laundry.

Crunching up the gravel driveway, I was relieved to turn a corner and spot Sarah sitting on a porch, sipping a Kingfisher beer alongside a pair of scruffy-looking guys.

“Oh my gooooooiiiiid!!” Sarah was almost a blur as she
streaked across the yard and threw her arms around both of us. “You guys made it! I'm so glad that you're here!”

“Merry Turkey Day, lady!” I said, grinning at her enthusiasm. I'd yet to experience Sarah on any other channel besides high-octane, super-unleaded outgoing.

“So, you're gonna
love
our room,” she said, grabbing our daypacks and leading us back toward the porch where she'd been sitting. “I'm not really sure, but I think Norman Bates might have actually checked me into the room earlier.”

“Oh, jeez. That bad?” asked Jen.

“Well, we've got one exposed bulb, a few gross mattresses, and that's about it. Oh, and I'm not sure if the door actually locks. But if you hate it, we can totally find somewhere else to stay, no problem.”

“Don't take off yet,” said one of the guys, a lanky British backpacker in board shorts. He braced his tanned feet against the railing. “You won't find a better deal on the beach.”

“Yeah, you can't really argue with three quid a night,” added his buddy, a sandy-haired guy in a sweaty gray Quicksilver T-shirt. “Besides, you've got us right next door to look out for you, which I reckon sweetens the deal.”

Sarah shook her head and introduced us. “Amanda and Jen, this is Cliff and Stephen—our extremely modest new neighbors.”

Stephen, the guy in the gray shirt, held out a pair of beers as a welcome offering, and we ditched our bags in order to accept them. Within the first few sips, we learned that the guys were taking an extended vacation from their finance jobs in London. They both had a full six weeks off—with pay.

“Really? Why did you choose to stay
here
then?” I blurted without thinking.

Cliff didn't take offense and said that they preferred über-cheap hostels to pricey upscale accommodations. “How could
we bump into cool travelers like you girls if we're stuffed away in some swank hotel suite?”

If I'd had any doubt about whether I'd choose a four-star room over a dilapidated, potentially rodent-infested guesthouse, one look inside our bathroom settled the debate. We were just contemplating who'd brave the mildewed shower first when Stephen knocked to let us know that he and Cliff were headed to the beach. Any interest in joining? The three of us were sporting more than twenty-four hours' worth of travel grime, and, considering the alternative, a dunk in the surf seemed an ideal way to come clean.

Vagator Beach bore little resemblance to the ones we'd visited in Rio, sugary strips that doubled as catwalks for Brazil's most beautiful bodies. Here the scene was anything but showy. Stands of shaggy palms hemmed a fat, croissant-shaped slice of burnished sand. Arcs of colorful beach umbrellas shaded lounge chairs in front of thatch-roofed cafés. Waiters delivered slender glasses filled with mango lassis and rum punches to tourists. It was a pretty idyllic scene, except for one thing: smack in the middle of everything, a group of fat sun worshipers had beached their large brown bodies across a prime section of the sand, utterly indifferent to the people maneuvering around them.

“They're actually considered sacred here,” whispered Sarah as we tiptoed past. “No one would even think of trying to kick them off.”

It was the happiest, most satisfied-looking herd of cows I'd ever seen.

As soon as we edged around the holy mooers, women carrying baskets heavy with fruit and girls laden with fabrics, garlands, and jewelry pressed into us, chattering urgent sales pitches as they moved and jingled.

“Please, miss, you very beautiful, but more beautiful with
scarf! Or maybe you try bracelet? Or necklace? No have to buy now. Just try. Free to try.”

We didn't say anything, but my heart lurched. Many of these girls were even younger than the ones at Pathfinder. What was the right thing to do here? Step around them, treat them as if they were invisible—or hand over a few rupees and create an incentive for the girls to keep selling?