Walking is just not the same...

I really love walking. I prefer walking to everything else. It is relaxing and calming me down after work or school. And before leaving to work or school, it is waking me up. I think it is pretty stressful to take public transportation or to taking the car. I don't like waiting for the bus, wondering if it ever show up and then being smashed into a corner of a crowded bus. I also don't like driving in traffic and then looking for parking spots for hours while worrying to be late.

I know that when I leave the house at a certain time, I will need exactly 45 minutes to get to the hospital no matter what. The reason for walking is to see the people of Delhi on the streets, I want to see how they work, how they interact and how they live. Getting from place to the other by ricksha, car or bus makes me miss out on so many things.

Another reason for walking is to become more comfortable with my surrounding. When I am not in a tourist area, people stare tremendously. Especially, in lower economic background neighborhoods, people stare me down. And I have to admit that I get a little scared. But I don't want to be scared, I want to experience Indian culture and not only be comfortable in tourist areas. I also want to be able to feel fine by myself among Indians. By walking, I thought I would have all that. I would get a nice walk to work and get to know the Indian culture as well as become more comfortable being around that culture by myself.

But instead of all the positive attributes that I expected, I have had mostly negative experiences. I know it is really hot and I think I can take the heat pretty well but I don't think I can deal with all the smog and dust. I think my lungs have already turned black. I am coughing constantly and every time I blow my nose there is literally black stuff... I don't think I should have that. The other thing is that I being stared at. I expected that but whenever I reach the less "good" neighborhoods, there are a lot of homeless people on the streets walking and sometimes they walk really close to me and I have change sidewalks. There is really enough space so there is no need to walk so close behind me but people do anyway. I wish I would not feel this way but I do. There was another instance where one little boy came running to me, laughing really hard, touched my arm and run back to his friends. I know that it is not something that they see every day (a white girl) but I have to admit I am scared because I never know how people will react to me. The last thing that makes me not enjoy my walk are the tons of cars. Everybody, literally EVERYBODY, is honking. And they also drive dangerously close to you and I always think they will run me over. It is in particular difficult to cross streets and I have to do that constantly.

Walking today in the morning, I really started questioning if I really want to continue walking. Is it worth it? At this point, I am rather stressed walking instead of enjoying it...