The Inevitable

I figured it would happen sometime, given how much I travel, and I’ve been lucky thus far. I just crossed my fingers and hoped to avoid it as long as possible, and that it wouldn’t be too bad or inconvenient. At long last, it happened.

Last night on the train from Delhi to Pathankot, I was robbed.

No worries, I’m fine, as I was actually asleep at the time, but it was traumatic all the same to wake up and find my purse gone. I must have looked like a shell-shocked little lost child, because that’s certainly what I felt like, and people were staring at me funny. (Not that this last bit is anything out of the ordinary…) Fortunately, my purse hadn’t gone far, but some of its contents will of course never be recovered. However, I was very lucky, as all the important stuff was on my person at the time, and I like to think that the thieves were disappointed to find that, after all the effort of stealthily taking my heavy bag, the only things worth taking were about $80 cash, a small pouch of hair and makeup stuff that I rarely use (random, much?), a five-year old beat-up ipod on its last legs with duct-taped earbuds, and a camera.

Really, the camera is the most upsetting thing, and only partly because I’ve only had it since January and it is probably my most prized possession on this trip (minus my passport, of course). No, cameras can eventually be replaced. What upsets me most is that all my memory cards were in the case, and therefore, I am completely without any pictures from the last 3+ months. Do you have any idea how frustrating this is?? Because I’m sure they don’t care about the photos at all and couldn’t care less whether I have them or not.

Lesson: When in transit, take your memory cards out of your camera/case and carry them in a moneybelt or wherever you keep the real stuff.

I am currently in Dharamsala (well, really, McLeod Ganj, but everyone calls it Dharamsala, which is the name of the town down the hill), the “temporary” (for the last 40+ years) home of the Dalai Lama, so I am trying to go all Tibetan Buddhist and see this as a lesson in the problems of attachment to the material world. I’ll let you know how that works out…

More updates to come on the last week or two.