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Auroville! That’s where I wanted to go. Already the name sounded magical. I had heard about it from friends who had travelled through Asia. Auroville, a community of world citizens who lived and worked together in a UNESCO sponsored project in Southern India somewhere near Pondicherry. That sounded just like something I was looking for.

My life in Lugano, Switzerland was nice. Predictable, a little boring perhaps, but nice. I lived in a spacious flat – my mother’s home where I had moved shortly after my father’s premature passing. I had a decent job, friends, played in a fairly successful local band and unlimited mountains to climb. Hiking was one of my favourite hobbies and I had been on all peaks visible from my house.

Nonetheless, some inner voice was constantly nagging me to leave, to go far away, to explore new horizons. Three years earlier, in 1980, I had been on a three-month trip through South-East Asia and this experience must have had a deep impact.

So, when I heard of Auroville, I started making plans. My mother was obviously all but enthused to hear about my idea. Her image of India could be summarized in a few words: Hippies, Drugs, Addiction, Death by Overdose. Even though I had no history of drug abuse and could have only marginally considered myself a hippy, she was firmly convinced that I would eventually die a drug-induced death if I went to India. However, somehow I did manage to convince her otherwise, so she finally gave in and even started helping me gather information about Auroville. We found out that the project maintained a liaison office in Geneva and promptly went there to talk to a representative, but to our disappointment the office had moved and we could not get the new address (Mind you, there was no internet in those days and investigating locations was a lot harder).

However, this setback did not keep me from preparing for the long journey. I had originally planned to travel overland through Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, but my mother didn’t want to hear about it, so I promised that I would fly to India. Not from Switzerland, though, that was too expensive in those days. Athens in Greece was at that time a well-known hotspot for discounted air tickets and therefore became my first destination.

Coincidentally, a friend of the family had come from Germany to visit us in Lugano on his way to Venice in Italy. My mother offered to drive us all there, so both of them would go sightseeing and I could start my journey to Athens and onward to India from there.

Then, on a sunny late September afternoon, the crucial moment had come. We parted company after a long and tearful goodbye on Saint Marcus square – I was on my own!

I think, never in my life had I experienced a stranger feeling than in that very moment. My whole being was painfully torn between the anticipation and excitement to embark on this journey on one hand, on the other, I sensed profound loneliness and sadness that I wouldn’t see my loved ones for a long time. It took a lot of cigarettes to calm my raw nerves but after a while I managed to focus on the tasks ahead.

First stop was Santa Lucia railway station. There was indeed a ‘direct’ train going from Venice to Athens that evening. The journey to the Greek capital was going to take more than 24 hours but since time was not an issue, I bought a ticket without any seat reservation. I didn’t think it would be necessary and only cost an unwarranted amount of money.

I passed the remaining hours in Venice sightseeing and returned to the station well before departure time. The train was already there – and already packed with passengers. Walking through the aisles of the coaches I could not find a single free seat. “Good start”, I said to myself as I occupied an emergency seat in the aisle. “If I had to sit here for the whole trip, I would be ready for a physiotherapist”, I thought. But there was nothing to do, also the other emergency seats in the aisle became occupied, indeed, some people sat on the floor in the aisles when the train finally left the station. I was on my way!

Sometime well after midnight the train arrived in Belgrade, the capital of former Yugoslavia. There was a huge muddle as passengers got on and off, the good thing was that I managed to find a free seat. Shortly after I had got comfortable, a young man entered the compartment and occupied the remaining free seat next to mine. He introduced himself as Robert, an exchange student from California who studied Russian at a university in Moscow. He said that he was on his way to Athens as he wanted to spend his remaining time in Europe on a sightseeing tour across Greece. We bought some beers from an ambulant vendor and spend the evening drinking and talking about our travel plans while the train rolled southward.

The next day seemed endless. The train was crawling through the Yugoslavian countryside and stopped so frequently – even in the middle of nowhere – that people got off and picnicked by the trackside. My new friend and I spend the day exchanging life stories, reading and napping. After an uneventful day night fell, and we went to sleep.

A train conductor woke us up at about four o’clock in the morning telling us that we had arrived in Skopje and that our coach would stop here. He said that all passengers to Athens had to move into another coach. We followed his lead and ended up in an overloaded coach with all seats occupied. As we were dead tired, we stretched out on our sleeping bags in the aisle, even at the risk of being trampled on by people walking by.

The last days of September in Switzerland and Northern Italy had been pleasantly cool but Greece was still scorching hot. There was no air conditioning on the train and so I woke up early, bathed in sweat. Although all windows were wide open, the airflow created by the train’s movement was all but refreshing because of its slow speed. There was no sitting space in the compartments whatsoever, so we opened one of the exit doors and sat down on the steps leading outside. Here the airflow was somewhat breezier, and it was fun to watch the passing landscape from the rectangle of the open door. The day passed at snail pace and we arrived in the Greek capital sometime in the late afternoon.

One or two stations before the terminal in Athens some young people had boarded the train passing out promotional flyers of backpacker lodges located around the city. My American friend and I decided to take a room together, so we checked into one of the hotels near the city centre.

The guesthouse was very basic with bunk beds and noisy ceiling fans which hardly managed to cool the rooms – but it was cheap and conveniently located. We crashed on our beds and practically immediately fell asleep.

The next morning I asked at reception for a city map and directions to the Indian embassy. I knew that I needed a visa for India and wanted to get the application done as quickly as possible since I didn’t know how long it would take to get it processed. At the embassy I learned that the visa procedure would take more than one month. This was quite unexpected because I had had no intention of staying in Athens for more than a week, let alone a month. Frustrated I returned to the hotel and told my friend about the annoying news.

While we were sitting in the hotel lobby and I was still grumpily complaining about the sluggishness of the Indian embassy, some other travellers joined the conversation. From them I heard that there was a workaround by flying from Greece to Kathmandu. Nepal issued visas on arrival and it was quick and easy to get a permit from the Indian embassy there. They claimed that the procedure took a day or even less.

Now, this was indeed good news and this prospect lifted my spirit significantly. It was Nepal then. Kathmandu sounded exciting and there could easily be some hiking adventure on the horizon as well. The more I thought about it, the more I started liking the idea. The next day I headed straight for a travel agency and inquired about flights to Nepal. Most of them were above my budget ceiling but one sounded appealing – at least the price. It was only about 300 dollars to Kathmandu one-way. The massive drawback was the flight time. It was three hours to Kairo, four hours stopover, then a six-hour flight to Karachi in Pakistan with an equally long stopover, another four-hour flight to Delhi with a 12-hour overnight stop there and an onward connection to Kathmandu, all in all a journey of close to two days. “I can do that,” I said to myself when I bought the ticket. Another problem, though, was the departure date. The flight left two weeks later.

“Well”, I thought, “I could use that time to see a bit of Greece with my American friend and might as well rent a bike to go on a tour on some island.”

Said and done. The following two weeks were filled with adventure and excitement. We did go to Paros, a small Aegean island, rented bikes in my name – Robert didn’t have a license – and even managed to almost destroy them on some mountain roads to the point that my friend had to pay a mechanic to get them fixed. But it was all sheer and simple fun.

Two days before my departure for the orient I returned to the lodge in Athens to get last things organized. I bought water purification tablets and even a snake bite kit to be ready for anything that might occur. As my flight left late in the evening I decided to depart in style and invited my roommates to dinner in a nearby restaurant. The food was fatty Greek goodness with lots of seafood and fried vegetables, wine and beers. A great party that I will never forget – for a terrible reason!

The first symptoms that something wasn’t right I sensed on the flight to Kairo. I started getting strange stomach cramps and on arrival at Kairo airport I immediately had to rush to the bathroom.

From that moment on my condition was getting worse with every passing hour. At first it was just the cramps but later I also felt nauseous and got sick every time I went to the bathroom. The hours passed and I had to board the next flight to Karachi. I spent almost the entire flight in the bathroom on board not able to return to my seat.

Once in Karachi I crashed into a chair in the transit lounge too weak and dehydrated to move. Fortunately, a passenger of my row on the plane spotted me and bought some water. My stomach, though, was too upset and even if I was grateful for the water my body could not hold it and after every sip I had to rush to the bathroom. To make matters worse, I had to ask the guard personnel for the key to the toilet every time I had to go, probably for security reasons. The six hours in Karachi were a nightmare and I was somehow glad to board the next flight to Delhi. The plane arrived there in the evening and my 12-hour personal hell in the airport transit lounge began.

 

The transit area was partly under reconstruction, uncomfortable moulded plastic chairs were the only furniture to sit on. It was hot – I can’t recall whether it was the fever that I had developed or the air condition that wasn’t working properly. I was a physical wreck, still suffering from stomach cramps and fits of nausea. Moreover, dehydration, the lack of sleep and the fever made me delirious. I spread my sleeping bag on the floor in a corner of the lounge and fell into a shallow, disturbed sleep.

Sometime after midnight someone touched my shoulder, and I woke up. A young lady looked at me with deep concern written all over her face. She touched my forehead and noted the fever. She introduced herself as being a doctor from Hamburg on her way from Kathmandu back to Germany. I told her my symptoms and she diagnosed me with severe food poisoning. Fortunately, she still had some medicine left to stop the stomach cramps and bought a bottle of coca-cola, instructing me to sip it slowly to stop the nausea. She said it was certainly not a scientific method but better than nothing under the circumstances and the drink also contained a lot of sugar that might help me regain some energy. To my dismay, though, my guardian angel had to leave some hours later and I was alone again. With the stomach cramps receding, I once again fell into a shallow doze.

 

In the early morning hours an employee of the Nepali Airlines appeared with a passenger list for the flight that was supposed to take me to Kathmandu – but my name was not on that list. I slumped back into the chair I had been sitting on wishing the world to end right here and now. I could neither summon the physical nor mental strength to complain. But my luck appeared in the form of a group of French mountaineers whose names were not on the passenger list, either. They launched into a furious discussion with the airline employee to the result that everyone including myself was admitted to board the flight. All overbooked passengers were accommodated in business and first-class. I managed to secure a seat in business class and dragged myself onto the plane. During the flight I made the acquaintance of a Dutch businessman who sat next to me. As I told him the sad story of my torturous trip to Nepal, he became very concerned and offered to take me along with him once we had arrived in the mountain kingdom – and that he did.

He helped me get through immigration and customs, took me to the city in a taxi and checked me into the hotel he stayed at. When we had settled in, he immediately asked the receptionist to call a doctor for me. The practitioner prescribed antibiotics and other medicine and ordered me to drink lots of tea. As soon as he was gone, I fell into a deep dreamless sleep of exhaustion from which I awoke only late the next morning. I felt well-rested and invigorated – and only at this moment I fully realized: I was finally in Asia!