Camel Safari Man

Jaisalmer
Originally uploaded by Bangla, Biryanis and Badminton.

The Kindness of Strangers

A few months before I left to come to Bangladesh, I read a book called “The Kindness of Strangers”. It’s a book of short stories about travellers all over the world who had reached a difficult point in their travels, e.g. getting lost, running out of money, etc, and a stranger had come to their rescue.

I’d like to acknowledge how very poignant this concept is for me here, and while travelling around India recently, I was once again reminded of how much the kindness of strangers contributes to my life. Not only this, but so much of my life depends on trusting strangers, which is something that I didn’t actually think I did. But I do. I have to.

A few recent examples are:

 CNG drivers, who always take me where I want to go, and if they don’t know, they ask another stranger for help and they tell him;
 Ruchi – my new friend from Udaipur, India. She was our cooking teacher for 6 hours. She took Nin and I into her home and treated us like we were part of the family. She also gave me flowers and a card for my birthday – she’d only known me for 36 hours;
 Anyone on the street giving directions;
 Almost all Bangladeshis, who will go out of their way to help a struggling Bideshi – there are SO many examples of this, one in particular being a time when I left a shopping bag in a cab. As I got out, two other passengers got in. 20 minutes went by and I still hadn’t realised that my bag was lost. I was waiting in a bus station when my taxi driver suddenly reappeared and handed me my bag with all my beloved purchases that I had bought for my house. That is one example of many, many Bangladeshi strangers who have been so kind to me.
 Bus drivers – I trust all of them with my life, but especially one driver in India who I trusted enough to let him drive Nin and I home for 70kms in the dark with no headlights – I almost didn’t trust him, but he drove like a champion and we got back safe and sound;
 Camel safari man – in Jaisalmer, Nin and I went on a “non-touristic” (meaning, very few other tourists around), half-day camel safari. We trusted our guide enough to take the two of us out into the wilderness, visit some villages (to meet some more kind strangers), feed us, entertain us and then drive us back to the hotel in the pitch-black darkness, very late at night. At one stage, on the way home, he stopped the car, turned off the lights and got out. There was not another soul around, as far as I knew. I was worried. I thought, “What’s he doing?”. He told us we could have a look at the stars while he went to the toilet. And that’s exactly what he did. But he could have done anything. We were under his complete control.
 Man at the post office in Delhi who saw that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I was trying to send a parcel home. He guided me in the right direction, talked me through all the red tape, calico packing and wax seals and went happily on his way.