A tragic story from my travels in India 🇮🇳

If you grow up in the western hemisphere, then you are probably detached from mortality. We are not supposed to see it or think about it. Due to religious beliefs and cultural differences, many cultures are far more open and understanding of death.

I grew up in the United Kingdom. A highly developed, wealthy and prosperous nation where you are highly unlikely to ever see a dead body. And up until my trip to India in 2017, I hadn’t seen or witnessed death. In tragic circumstances, this was about to change during my travels to India in 2017.

I spent 5 weeks backpacking around Northern India in June/July 2017. It was my first experience outside of the west. I had travelled to Egypt, but I went with family, stayed in an all-inclusive hotel and never saw the real country.

During those five weeks, I saw a lot, experienced a lot and learned a lot. It was probably the most enlightening travel I have done. Nothing would be more enlightening than the experience I had on July 3rd, 2017.

I was staying in Z Hostel in Udaipur. Udaipur is a great city in India. It was made famous because of the James Bond movie Octupussy that was predominately filmed in this city. The locals are insanely proud of this fact and will often play the film to tourists in the restaurants at night-time.

The hostel, as pictured above, is a classic backpacker hostel in India. Raw, rickety and fun. It was run by a bunch of young local lads. The lad who checked me in was called Sam. He joked when he saw my name and said “wow, we share the same name”, I’m not sure whether this was his real name. It likely wasn’t, it was more likely his chosen English name.

The hostel was teaming with young backpackers from around the world. And on the morning of July 3rd, 2017 Sam rounded us all up and said, “let’s hire two minibuses and take ourselves to a lake nearby”, He said it would be an epic day out. We all chomped at the bit. It would be a great way to get to know everyone in the hostel and have an adventure.

The locals did this weekly. They would hire as many minibuses as possible and drive the backpackers to a large lake near Udaipur.

The two minibuses came, and we hit the road. There was great energy, and everyone was getting along like a house on fire. It was a tremendous vibe.

We arrived at a lake that was around twenty minutes outside Udaipur, and it was pretty beautiful. With India being India, there was a tone of trash and clutter around the lake. But the surrounding mountains and scenery were pretty decent. I have always said it’s not where you are but who you’re with that makes a travel experience.

We all jumped in the lake and swam around. The lake was massive, calm and murky. You could not really see anything. I wouldn’t say it was polluted, but it certainly wasn’t a glacial lake in Queenstown, New Zealand either. It was refreshing, pleasant and perfect for a little swim. Nothing more.

The man who organised the trip was Sam. He was an aspiring musician and was travelling around his home country of India whilst working in hostels along the way to support himself. He reminded me of a bohemian hippy westerner. He would play the guitar and used to play and sing every night in the hostel.

He was extremely liberal-minded in a country where most things are very conservative. He had aspirations of being a musician. Admirable ambition in a country where successfully pursuing an artistic endeavour is like climbing Mount Everest, 4 times in a row.

I chatted to him about Oasis. Oasis is a band I grew up listening to (Sorry, I prefer Blur). He played Wonderwall on his guitar the night before, so I asked him what he thought of Oasis. He passionately responded with “I f****** love Oasis”.

Everything seemed sweet. It was the perfect day out. We were all just hanging out, having fun and talking about life. It was an adventurous backpacker day trip with some super cool people from all around the world.

Suddenly it would turn into a day that I would never forget, and for the wrong reasons.

As we were all swimming and hanging out in the lake, Sam began to bob his head up and down and maniacally clap his hands. I didn’t quite know what was going on. He kept doing this repeatedly for about 15 seconds. During those 15 seconds, I was dumbfounded.

What was he doing? It was quite a scene.

It never came to mind that he was calling for help. He told us he was a strong swimmer, and the water was perfectly calm with no currents. Why was he doing this?

And then he went under. You are probably thinking “why weren’t you panicking?” and to tell you the truth. I am not sure to this day. We all thought he was playing games with us, and he would pop out of the water and scare one of us. We thought it was a prank.

After about 60 seconds, it dawned on me that something crazy is happening. And we started to quietly panic.

We obviously decided to take action and find out what was going on. But none of us quite believed that we had seen someone potentially drown. There were around 40 of us, 20 backpackers and 20 locals. And every single one of us thought the same thing ‘what the hell is happening’.

There weren’t many strong swimmers in the group of backpackers and most of the locals couldn’t swim. I consider myself a relatively strong swimmer, and there were no currents, so I was happy to swim around to see if I could find him. My Canadian friend Sonia was also trying, as were about 4 other backpackers. The other 15 backpackers and 15 Indian locals stood on the grass beside the lake watching on in horror.

We could not find him.

5 minutes became 10 minutes, and then 10 minutes became 15 minutes.

He was not anywhere to be seen. There were no currents in the lake, and I could not understand what just happened. None of us could fathom where he was. I must have swum around the area for a good twenty minute.

Nothing… The guy has just drowned in front of us.

Then I heard a loud scream from the grass. I already knew what this meant.

I turned around…

He had been found, and one of the backpackers was carrying him to shore. He was motionless, and his glasses were gone. It did not look like the same guy. His eyes were closed, and his body limp. Just 20 minutes before I had seen this guy so full of youthful joy and life. And now this…

The backpacker found him by standing on him by chance. He had somehow drifted away from the spot we lost him. I do not know how this happened.

We managed to take his body to the grass, and an American girl performed CPR on him. She was distraught. But she never gave up. We were in the middle of India. There is no air ambulance here. There was very little that we could do.

This is a stark fact of developing countries like India, the healthcare system is crap. There are no ambulances or emergency services to provide quick assistance. You have to get to the hospital yourself. And if you are unconscious, you are going to have to rely on locals to get you urgent medical assistance. Otherwise, you are toast.

But we were in the middle of nowhere, and we were hapless. Sam needed urgent medical care, but even with the best healthcare in the world, it would have been too late.

The Indian locals decided to put him on the back of their motorbike and drive to the nearest hospital. It is quite a sight watching the motorbike drive off into the distance with a young man motionless, and somehow clinging on to the back of the driver. If I remember correctly, they tied his arms around the driver’s neck to stop him from falling off.

The sight of distressed Indians rushing to the hospital whilst this body just slumps on the drivers back was pretty awful. I am not sure how he managed to stay on the bike. Eventually, the bike disappeared into the distance, and I think to myself… Am I f****** dreaming?

The group decided to go back to the hotel. The atmosphere went from a memorable buzz to the most depressing, painful sorrow in 30 minutes. It is difficult to put into words just how shocked the group was. I barely knew most of these guys, and I had met most of these guys two hours ago.

Deep down a voice in my head began to ask myself questions. One of the questions was “Why didn’t I see something was wrong when he started clapping his hands and going under?” I had just trodden water and did nothing. I was not alone, four other guys did the same. I quickly shut that voice up. The reality was that Sam was a joyful person. He had a dry sense of humour, and he also talked a lot about swimming. I believed that Sam was a strong swimmer, and so did the other guys. We all thought he was clowning around, but he was not.

He was clapping his hands whilst bobbing his hands up and down because he was asking for help and he was trying not to drown. As I write this 3 and a half years on, my guess is that he could not swim. Sam was trying to walk around the lake but eventually got to a spot that dropped off and meant he could no longer stand up. Tragically I believe he was trying to fit in with the fellow travellers and act as he could swim.

But because he talked so confidently about swimming, and because of his great sense of humour, nobody was able to see what was happening.

I was probably about 2.5 meters from him as he went under. I could have swum to him in 5 seconds. But we just did not realise what was going on. Even the Indian locals that knew him thought he was joking around. It was a tragic misunderstanding.

We only spent about 5 minutes at the lake after the incident trying to gather our thoughts before we decided to head back on the minibus.

The bus journey back to the hotel was surreal. The twenty young backpackers never uttered a single word. The group were traumatised. I cannot even describe how I felt. What the **** had I just witnessed? I just saw a dude drown and die in front of me. And literally, just a few moments earlier, I was talking to the guy about Oasis. A band we shared a mutual love and respect for. This touched me because we both came from truly different backgrounds, yet we shared a love of brilliant artistic creativity.

But it did not matter. Because Sam’s life had just ended with the blink of an eye. And I did not even know why or how it happened. I was gobsmacked.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from this whole event was how irrelevant we are. As we approached Udaipur, we started to see life again. The noise, commotion and vibrancy of an Indian city were slapped in our faces like a wet fish. We had just witnessed something tragic, and a great guy had just drowned, but nobody outside our group cared. Life was still the same.

It was a polite reminder that we are all irrelevant.

The pollution was the same.

The energy was the same.

The motorbikes and tuk-tuks were the same.

But we were not the same.

Life around us just continued as nothing had happened. This was our tragedy, and no matter how relevant we all think we are. The world will continue like it always did, with or without us.

His death had not been confirmed yet. And some of the fellow backpackers were still clinging on to this fact and hoping he would somehow be okay. It was just a smokescreen to keep themselves from the sickness and horror of what they had just witnessed. Who can blame them really?

I knew he was dead. He was under the water surface for 15 minutes. You don’t need to be a qualified doctor to realise his lungs were flooded. If you’re underwater for more than 3 minutes, you are lucky to breathe air again.

One hour later, we were all back in the hostel trying to break down what had just happened. The hostel owner had confirmed the news he sadly passed away. The women were emotional, and the men looked like they had seen a dead body (pun intended). I was shocked at the whole incident, but I had accepted his death when I couldn’t find his body after 10 minutes.

Where did we go from here? There wasn’t a thing we could do. Some of the backpackers called their family. I just mourned around the people. The event shocked me, but it never mentally damaged me.

Sure, it was a terrible thing to witness. But I quickly accepted that it was life. I think everyone reacts differently to seeing tragic stuff. On this occasion, I was relatively unphased.

The group of backpackers became united and like a family for the next 5 days. I will share a picture at the bottom of this article of the group of backpackers. There were a great bunch of people. To get over what we had just seen we decided to come together as a family.

But eventually, we all had to move on.

About a week after the incident we all went our different ways. I became good friends with a Canadian girl named Sonia, who asked me if I wanted to venture to Varanasi. The other guys were all heading to Mumbai. I followed my gut and went with the Canadian girl to Varanasi.

We were all sad to go separate ways, but we also accepted that the mourning period was over, and it was time to continue our lives. One of the most bittersweet truths of travel is that you meet some great people, but they usually become just memories and not friends. You get used to saying goodbye.

I would travel with Sonia for the next week before saying goodbye at New Delhi airport. She was going back to Canada to her career and her future as a phycologist. I was beginning my travels and legendary adventures. My next stop was Singapore.

I remember being all alone at New Delhi international departure, it was the first time that I had been alone since the incident. My 5-week adventure in India was over, and it was life-changing. I had a 12-hour wait at the airport before my morning flight to Singapore, and a lot of time to think about my life-changing adventure and experiences in India.

I remember thinking to myself “there is a lesson from this mate…. Just follow your gut feeling and do whatever the **** you want with your life. Life is precious, this dude never got to live his life. Whereas you have the chance to see the world. You have all the opportunity he never had. Do your thing.”

India was an incredible adventure, but I will always remember this trip for this tragic incident. And I will remember it as the adventure that taught me that life is precious and that our mortality is never too far away.