If I were male...

Yesterday I arrived back in Delhi as my final destination in India. I am down to the final days of my journey and I leave India tomorrow night. It doesn't even feel like I could possibly be leaving yet, and at the same time there is part of me that is thrilled with the idea of taking a bath and sleeping in clean sheets.

My final moments in Delhi have been spent doing a little bit of shopping and I also have run into a couple of friends I made during my time in Varanasi. One is sharing a hotel room with me. When you are travelling alone, you are really never travelling alone. But this morning, while travelling to the LDS church in New Delhi, I had a moment of, "I wish I were a guy." As a female traveller, there are just certain boundaries I have to maintain that the male traveller doesn't even have to think about. For example, this morning as I was negotiating my auto rickshaw, a vegetable truck pulled up and a couple of guys in the front seat smiled and motioned to me to come and sit in the truck with them. They were offering me a ride. It looked pretty fun to go on an adventure in the vegetable truck, and it seemed like a genuine offer, but there is a chance the situation could turn bad and being all alone I knew it was best to decline the offer. I was, however, highly entertained as we pulled away in the rickshaw they drove up parralel to us on the road and there was a relay exchange of tomotoes while driving through the traffic. My driver aquired a couple of free vegetables for the day that way.

The other incident where I was wishing I was a male was only moments later when my auto rickshaw driver offered me the chance to drive the rickshaw. The traffic wasn't so bad and I really was tempted to do it. But that meant moving to the front seat sitting right next to the driver. Miraculously, during my entire travelling in India I have avoided being groped in any way like so many of the female travellers (probably due to my strict adherence to an India dress code) but I wasn't willing to risk it in my final hours in Delhi. Sadly, I had to turn down the opportunity to become a rickshaw driver and keep a more appropriate distance from my driver.

One final "I wish I were male" moment was when I was in Varanasi and I saw urinals on the side of the street with a giant sign that said "Public Convenience." I think if I were a guy I could have gotten away with taking a photograph of that sign. However, as I female, I felt a bit awkward. Mostly, I wanted it as proof that a couple of men in India actually use urinals an not just buildings or trains or whatever is close by. Plus, I am highly amused that it is not called a toilet or urinal, but rather "public convenience" because that really is what it is. There is nothing more private about it other than an open structure built conveniently for the purpose of peeing.