AC 17: Adventure Re:call Rammed by a cow in India… allegedly

Welcome to the first Adventure Re:Call episode. As a walking worst case scenario, I've been robbed, had broken bones, been broken up with, been broke financially, lost passports and paperwork, had rare tropical diseases... You name it, and I've probably got a story. And yet, I still insist that the benefits of following your call to adventure outweigh the risks, no matter what. I would still do it all again the same way.The only thing that no one can ever take from you are the memories and experiences you collect in your life. 

I'm walking down a narrow road leading to the beach. And even if India seems really far away from home, you probably know this kind of road. Small beaches tend to have them like in Mexico and Costa Rica and Thailand. A road like this is the only way to get to the beach, densely packed on both sides with shops selling tourist trinkets, you'd have tour agencies, pizza places, and breakfast cafes where foreigners eat banana pancakes and drink smoothies at all hours of the day.

The only difference to those other places is that in India, even these small streets are absolutely packed with people and tuk tuks, and bikes, and motorcycles, and taxis, and cows. India is always electric. There is so much energy everywhere. And yet on this day, I'm limping, head down, feeling super sorry for myself, and I'm all alone.

I'm traveling through southern India for six weeks with a group of fellow travel bloggers who have all gone off to Hampi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The last great Hindu kingdom with ruins, temples set within a stunning River Valley in the state to the east of Goa called Karnataka. This is one of the most important and fascinating set of ruins in India and a major pilgrimage center for followers of the Hindu religion. 

I have been on my own sort of pilgrimage this past week, staying behind due to what I have self diagnosed as a torn ACL. I'm wincing and limping and crying my way from a local beach clinic in the back of a motorbike shop to an MRI session at a hospital 25 minutes away by local bus. Nothing is torn. I'm given anti-inflammatory meds and told to rest for the week. But I don't mind that I'm not off to Hampi. Unlike many fellow tourists, I didn't come to India on a spiritual mission. I didn't come to connect with my inner child or do yoga in an ashram with a guru somewhere. I'm too sarcastic and self hating at this point in my life to even believe in any of these things.

I'm in India for reasons that are entirely ego-driven. I'm a backpacker, a nomad. I go wherever I please and write about it on my travel blog. I help other people break free and travel the world,  sure. But I really just want them to think I'm legit. India was the next notch on my belt and somewhere that no one can deny is ‘legit’. This is a real travel destination. It proves I'm a real traveler, a real backpacker, a real adventurer. I'm not even sure I know what that means. But deep down, I have something to prove. And man, India proves to be hard, and it gets real.

From the minute I arrive. I think I'm going to die.

By the time I make it to India, I've been on the road for over two years straight. Although I'm selling my nomadic lifestyle to readers on my travel blog, I am imprisoned on the inside. I'm traveling full time in an unhappy relationship. I've gained a lot of weight from unhealthy eating. I've stopped working out. I'm always exhausted from lugging a 50 pound backpack from city to city and then walking miles every day exploring new places. I'm arriving to the state of Kerala in a very complicated place of emotional reckoning, and lonely but full of life. And brave but afraid. I'm completely free, but utterly trapped.

I walk out of the airport, and a feeling of fear hits me like glass in my veins. We haven't even gotten in the caveat. But there are just so many people waiting at arrivals, it's like a celebrity has landed. I'm struck immediately that I have entered a place that is entirely its own thing. There are no remnants of Malaysia where I've just come from or Southeast Asia at all. There's nothing remotely American or Americanized and site. Everything is purely Indian, from the red dirt to the landscape to the skin tone of 1000s of people around me to the number of different bright colors worn by all the women in the crowd, the sights, the sounds, the unidentifiable smells, and movements and body language that I've never seen. My brain cannot process it. 

The friends who pick us up push us toward the taxi area, which works surprisingly well considering what feels like total chaos to me. And then we start speeding down these wide four lane highways. The lanes, I quickly realize are only suggestions. We zig, we zag, we move around slow trucks carrying hundreds of people in the back. Now the number of people standing in the back of a truck doesn't throw me off at all. That's actually how I got to school myself when I taught fourth and fifth grade in Guatemala. What makes my blood run cold is the way we swerve around to pass those trucks. We go full speed into oncoming lanes of traffic. Sometimes a cow will be laying in the middle of the road and we swerve all the way into the furthest lane of oncoming traffic just to avoid it. The four of us had been excitedly chattering and catching up at first. But we are all now silently staring forward just watching the car jerk and slim and speed toward our hotel in Fort Kochi. It is as though the driver knows that we're protected by some kind of magic. I know that we are not and that we are going to die. If I thought from the beginning that I was going to die in India, I wasn't too far off. And those cows, the ones sleeping peacefully in the middle of the road. They were going to play a lot more of a roll than I could have imagined.

India is a place of extremes. It is both the poorest place I've ever been but also the richest. I feel a constant total disregard for human life on the one hand and on the other a joy of humanity expressed through food and dance and excitement and energy. You can see rickshaws in some places with people pulling people and then turn the corner and see Bollywood film crews with massive cameras on cranes and a mobile video village with monitors and headsets for the director and other crew. It is a world of contrasts.

Adventure after adventure ensues. Most of them are unplanned. I remember getting off a train in the middle of the night in a town I have never seen because the train itself is so full. I feel like if everyone takes a deep breath and puffs their chest at once, at least the first two rows of people near as the doors would actually be pushed out of the train onto the tracks below. The train is so packed. I don't feel safe and I get off in the middle of the night. One day, and elephants saunters unaccompanied onto a beach where we and 1000s of others have flocked to watch the sunset. No one reacts but us, everything feels confusing and thrilling and intense. Tickets get canceled. We're always getting lost or haggling over prices with someone about something. Somehow everyday feels a little bit menacing, at least to me. And then finally we get to a sleepy Palolem. it's really a familiar sort of place, a small beach town. It's offseason and only fellow backpackers like me are there from around the world. And I'm ready to be around my people. something familiar. I need to decompress. My knee had completely immobilized me. 

And when they all go off to Hampi, I'm incredibly lonely. I begin to wallow in despair and self pity. I feel so far from anywhere I consider home. I'm so tired, and I'm craving sympathy. But I'm too proud to say it outright. After a week of those doctor's visits and being bedridden, they asked me to join them for dinner the night they returned, and I do so slowly. I walk more slowly than even necessary. I hobble a grimace for a pain that's not as bad as what I'm actually making it seem like I want someone to say, Oh, you're so strong. I want someone to say they are impressed that I can even get it together to walk it all. I want someone to say wow, I wouldn't be able to do what you're doing. I'm acting so hard and keeping both my hands open to accept my me and my Oscar. 

But no one says these things. And so there I am hobbling up that single narrow road to eat dinner in a pizza place that had been our favorite the week before. That's when it happens. I know something's happening from the look on someone's face ahead of me. Oh no, her panic stricken face says in the exact moment that I register her panic. I also register a Whoosh up into the air and then I slammed down onto the concrete.

India's most sacred animal has thrust its head and horns into the back of my thighs, lifting me three feet into the air and tossing me to the side of the street. Instinctively I rollover, fully expecting to be trampled. Instead, the cow casually saunters away, tail flicking calmly back and forth as if nothing has happened at all. For the cow. The decision was simple. He had been sparring with another cow behind me. And in his attempt to get away there was no clear path on this narrow road. There's people and bikes and taxis and took trucks and motorcycles and me limping on the side of the road. And the easiest thing to move that cow, those horns, that metaphorical and literal kick in the ass. I don't know what then. But this is the moment that actually changes the course of my life.

But at that point, my brain still has no idea what's happened but my body is terrified and I start letting out these short primal screams. More like a car alarm that a yell just over and over again for like two minutes I just yell. Ah, ah, ah, ah. 

If I had wanted sympathy before, I sure was getting it now. The cow had flicked me into a jewelry shop. The woman working in the shop sees it happen from her folding chair near the front of the store. Now everyone working in all the tour shops and on the street is inside the store trying to help it's dusk. The lights in the store feel really bright like they're all shining on me. She offers me a seat in the second folding chair behind the curtain that separates the store from the storage area. The pain is so sharp and so acute in my pelvis that I'm certain I've shattered it or at least broken it. I can't sit down. Instead, I lean on plastic bags of T shirts and necklaces piled over on a table waiting to be hung up in the store. Someone I don't know who gets me a car that will take me to a hospital just like that. I'm supposed to be eating mediocre pizza at sunset listening to stories about the trip to Hampi but instead I'm in a car bouncing down a bumpy road to the closest hospital. 

The first hospital is completely dark. The sun has set and I see a shadow of what looks like a colonial mansion. But it looks so desolate, as though it could get swallowed up by the tropical forest encroaching on all sides of it. The running ignition is the only sound in the darkness. Then we Hawk slowly, a soft glow of interior light appears and nuns start filling in the shadows of the windows and then they open the main door The driver who's now responsible for me, talks to the nuns at this Catholic hospital. There is no doctor on site tonight. They're closed. Are there no patients there? I wonder why is it so dark? And how far is it to the next hospital? I moan and groan. I see he wants to get rid of me. He didn't ask to be on this mission tonight.

The second hospital isn't far and we arrive A few minutes later. The lights are on. This is definitely a working hospital. But the entrance driveway is up a short Hill and I'm dropped off at the bottom of it. A wheelchair and someone to push it stands at the top of the incline, and I'm forced to hobble up to it. By the time I make it, I collapse into the chair exhaustion outweighs the pain. This is a local hospital and dozens of patients have collectively put their own injuries and illnesses aside to gawk at me as I'm wheeled through the room. I keep my eye focused on the way the fluorescent lights bounce off the slick tile as I move. I'm in a semi private room. I stand and lean my elbows on a bench I can only describe as an ironing board. My back is bent, my butt is out. I'm so uncomfortable, but I can't fidget. If I move, I realize there's a plastic bucket slung onto the narrow end of this bench and inside it is a pink liquid. And that liquid is a mixture of blood and water with used bandages inside. I'm afraid if I even move, I'll knock it to the ground. So I look around the room to take my mind off this and I see a metal table with surgical instruments up against the wall. And a long trail of thick black ants is marching alongside the table down onto the floor and out the door. Every cell in my body constricts a masked doctor enters. 

I know he's speaking to me, but I cannot understand a word. Up until this point, I've leaned quite heavily on lip reading during my time in India. Although English is spoken here, the dialects have been really difficult to understand. And I need to confirm what I hear with the words as they're shaped by people's mouths. But he's wearing a mask. I can't read his lips. And now I'm forced to decode his head Bibles as the sole source of communication. See, the Indian Head Bible is a type of body language I've never seen before. But it's ubiquitous in India. A simple up and down for yes and side to side for no are replaced by dozens of different head Bibles that communicate different messages but the speed and direction with which they move their heads. So I can't read the doctor's lips. I'm frustrated that I don't understand the Bible. I can't drown out the noise of the bucket with the bloody water and the trail of ants and I lose it tears streamed down my cheeks. I'm not actively crying or sobbing. My body is crying. My brain is frozen. Suddenly, the doctor takes my hand, swaps it with alcohol and shoves a needle right into the vein below my middle finger knuckle. It's a catheter for an IV but nothing is ever hooked up to it. I didn't know what was coming. I am completely helpless.

I freeze.

I let fate take over. They clean my open wounds. I have a lot of scrapes and cuts on my elbows and knees like if you fell running on gravel or concrete as a kid. I figure out there's no x ray machine here. They tell me they're taking me to a larger Hospital in a bigger city. I don't know where I am loaded into an ambulance. My empty catheter sticking out of my left hand. There's an auto mechanic shirt and an air freshener hanging from a dusty defibrillator. I am so glad I'm not having a heart attack. 

After about an hour in the dark back of a dusty ambulance, we arrived at the third hospital. Here, everything is just right. I can tell from the minute we arrived. We pull into a real emergency receiving area. I don't have to walk anywhere. I am met with sympathetic staff who wheel me through clean, empty hallways into a room all my own. The bed is more comfortable than a single hotel I've stayed in since arriving in India. 

I'm cared for by a team of six people. Three doctors and three nurses. I am offered British biscuits and tea as they wheel a portable X ray machine to me in bed and slip it under my back and pelvis for a series of scans. Three hours later. They tell me nothing is broken. It may be a muscle contusion or a tear. I just have to wait for the swelling to go down to know for sure. Although I'm reluctant to leave such comfortable care. They tell me I'm free to go in a special SUV taxi that is waiting to take me back to palolem. Again, I'm given muscle relaxers, anti inflammatory medicine, ice packs, and a bill for $9.50 total. On my way out, I become fixated on a poster of a white woman in her 60s, clearly a foreigner who's undergoing rehabilitation after knee surgery. She's smiling, and a distinguished looking doctor and well room staff are all surrounding her looking determined but friendly. This is a hospital for people from around the world and most likely the United States who fly here for their elective surgeries or treatments they can't afford back home. At this moment, so far from home, this comforts me. 

I look down and leave through the discharge report, and it reads in scratchy doctor cursive. “Jessica was allegedly rammed by a buffalo.”

A buffalo? 

No, wait, I never said buffalo. I said cow! It was a cow! Why are they saying buffalo? 

That would have been even more terrifying. 

And then I realize the cow is sacred here. 

It wouldn't have been a cow. Not on record. Not even on a medical record. 

It's the first little bit of laughter I feel inside since this whole drama began. somehow get into this SUV and sit down. I don't grimace or make a sound. I'm done. overacting my pain for now. Well, no one here might believe a cow did it. I don't need them to feel sorry for me. The pain is real. Something about it not being my fault at all seems to really help me. The driver moves at a pace I'm actually comfortable with. Not for my sake though. He has to look out on these dark poorly lit roads for well, cows. 

The next several days I'm lying in bed recovering for now my second and more serious set of injuries and palolem. I fall back into what is now a habit in India watching Bollywood films, Indian chat shows and one very interesting guru who seems to be on TV a lot. I don't notice until the third day home from the hospital that my legs have actually swollen together down to the knee. That's how much pain my pelvis and back have been in the whole time. dark purple bruises radiate out from white stripes in the back of my thighs where the cows horns had made impact.

Two weeks later, I have a flight to Tucson, Arizona. But before I leave Goa, Kerala southern India for what I am certain is the last time, I take a careful, slow walk to the water to see the fishermen working the Chinese fishing nets. These are an incredible sight if you're ever in Kochi. Nets that are 20 meters across are raised and lowered into the water on a cantilever that weighs one ton in total. six men each bear the weight of 200 pounds or more as they lift these massive nets up and down into the water sometimes 300 times per day. I feel like this should be meaningful for me, poignant or something. I try to take it all in for the last time, the ancient tradition of it. The men in these traditional robes, the sounds of them lifting and working. I tried to take in India, the sights, the smells, the people, but I just can't soak it up. I can’t enjoy it. I want to leave India like I've never wanted to leave a place before. 

It doesn't cross my mind to stop from Arizona. I'll end up doing another house in a remote beach town in Mexico called ishka lock for an American family. Then I'll move on to another beach town called nosara in Costa Rica do the same thing. And from there, I'll fly on to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and travel all of South America. In total, I'll travel another two years after being rammed by that cow.

So imagine you're surrounded on all sides by a brick wall. 10 feet high bricks and bricks on bricks. It's so hard to imagine getting out. I don't even have treatments that I have to undergo starting certainly out of this mental prison right? Up until this point in my life falls out of the wall, you look through, and you see that there's this entire beautiful world, outside of your prison. In order to live in that world. You have to mentally crumble enough bricks to liberate yourself from the prison of anger and ego trying to prove everyone who ever said anything about you wrong. So in Tucson, the first brick fell out of the wall. without health insurance, I couldn't afford a doctor's visit. So someone recommended I get acupuncture. Acupuncture, please, that's a little ‘woowoo’. 

But pain is a major motivator. The car I'm driving there is low to the ground and I have to crouch to slide in. I wince and moan in pain of course, because even though there's no one watching, I still desperately need that kind of sympathy. So I hobble into the physical therapy session sweaty, sarcastic, ready to poke holes in this whole poking needle nonsense.

Well, I feel good when I leave. In the car, I feel blissful, like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction after he does all that heroin. I jumped out of the car, walked into the house to the garage, and I throw the keys on the kitchen island. And then I stopped dead in my tracks. I haven't moved so freely in months, since before the cow, since before India, since I hurt my knee and Thailand. All this from one single acupuncture session. Come on.

A few months later, I'm in Mexico. And in addition to getting acupuncture, I start doing rooftop sunrise yoga. The house and house sitting sits on a strip of dirt road dotted with large homes owned by mostly foreigners. On one side, it's a mangrove Marsh as far as the eye can see. On the other side, the world's second largest Barrier Reef, the ocean waves break about 500 feet out to shore. The reef is right in my backyard. There's this sense of solitude that allows me to let go of my preconceived notions of yoga, and I just breathe in and out and move my body in ways I've never done before. Gently, I started to believe my body when it feels good, when it feels bad when it's sore when it's tired. As I start to believe my body, I start to believe my mind to what I think now bears weight in my decision making. I trust myself. And just like that, another brick and another crumble out of my mental prison. 

Up until now, I had been running away... away from pain, away from rules, away from negative people in my life trying to crush my wild spirit. People told me I was wrong for being hopeful. They just didn't know how the real world worked. I have been constantly battling the clashing sounds of my own inner voice and the external voices trying to keep me small. Brick after brick crumbled. I didn't learn the lessons right away. And I still have pain in my hip and back, which I affectionately refer to as my cow. But it was all worth it. Today I have a beautiful family and an actual home. I make clear decisions and allow myself to actually follow my dreams. It's kind of all working out. 

The cow unleashed something I don't think I could have found otherwise. kindness to myself, yes. But understanding that there's a world where I can act from kindness, surround myself with kindness and expect it in return. I didn't see it until that first brick crumbled and the brick wouldn't have crumbled. If the cow handler rammed me, you know, you could take a big risk and get rammed by a metaphorical buffalo. But how do you know that's not exactly what you need to get you on the right path? And that's why if you hear the whisper, follow that call to adventure. Maybe do it before the universe actually kicks you in the ass. 

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About Adventure Calls 

Thanks so much for listening to the first ever adventure recall. Adventure Calls is produced, edited and written by me, Jess Drucker. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, then head over to to iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts and rate and review the show. Every single rating helps so much for me to reach and inspire more people. 

If you're feeling really inspired and want to start thinking about how you can actually make your move abroad, pick up a copy of my book on Amazon, How To Move Abroad And Why It's The Best Thing You'll Do is essentially a masterclass in book form. Taking my 15 years experience living abroad and distilling that into 300 pages, you'll get step by step tips on how to move abroad in 90 days, how to get your paperwork together, how to get a visa, advice on how to blend in like a spy, how to learn any language in the world and more, head to amazon.com and pick up your copy of How To Move Abroad And Why It's The Best Thing You'll Do, today.