Bundi / Monkey Town

Hey folks! I’m writing from the comfort of Bundi. It is another relatively small town with little to see or do, which makes it a great place to lay low for a few days. I am staying in the penthouse suite at the Lake View guesthouse – a ridiculously fancy room which has been a welcome relief from the room I stayed in last night – a budget option where the sink drained to the floor and the water did not run. Still, it had a comfy bed and a relatively quiet night. Speaking of, the first class train car was little more than a normal car divided into compartments – same windows, same cushions, and sadly no meal. Still, it got us here in one piece. I was only hoping for a little luxury, which in India – relative quiet and solitude counts.

The plan for the next few days is to lay low in Bundi and plan the next few weeks. I am hoping to meet Grant here, who had been interested in some of the same spots I’ve been considering. Also, I’ve decided to stay for a few weeks at an ashram to jump start my yoga practice and possible attain oneness with the universe. Left on the sightseeing list are Varanasi for the Ganges madness, Kujoraho for the sexy temples, Darjeeling for the ‘toy train,’ and the north of India for mountains, the Golden Temple of the Seiks, and the ashram.

Bundi has been a good crash pad, not a whole lot going on other than a small grotty lake and an abandoned palace. But there is good food (we took a cooking class!), and plenty of rooftop cafes from which I have enjoyed the 80 degree sun and breeze. Here are some photos of Bundi - the town and dilapidated splendor of the palace. Thanks for reading!

Tiger Town, India

February 20, 2011
I’m writing from Sawai Madhopur, just outside of Ranthambore National Park. After Jodhpur I continued east to Ajmer and the small Brahmin town of Pushkar, a longtime ex-pat haven with little to do but sit around and take in the hippies and German tourists. I had something like the flu for a few days there and did more sleeping than anything else, and was not terribly attracted to the city – it is a ‘holy’ city, where devotees take a dip along the ghats and pray in one of dozens of temples. It is also, like perhaps many holy places, overrun by opportunists taking payments to pray for a families happiness, or giving a good luck flower to put in the lake, only to ask for a significant charge for the right to do so. There was far more begging, and far more signs in English than I’ve seen anywhere else in India, including Delhi. It was a fine place to be laid up as I was more interested in waiting out the time than I was in wandering around. I did enjoy a few walks outside of the town, but mostly I just slept and felt lousy. I did have a small insect run-in (Cliff bar, ant colony), and a malaria scare (head cold, one mosquito) but otherwise the stay was fairly uneventful. Pushkar is a bus ride away from the nearest train station in Ajmer, and on the 19th I hopped the train to Jaipur, where I ate lunch at the Pearl Palace – the hotel I had stayed in before – before taking a thoroughly enjoyable train ride into Sawai Madhopur and Ranthambore.

The sun was setting as the train drove south and I had a front row seat – I took a number of photos of that, one or two of which turned out. I had noticed that Radiohead had released their newest album on a Times review, so I listened to ‘In Rainbows’ on the train. The last trainride Radiohead I listened to was a duet of Thom Yorke and Bjork from ‘Dancer in the Dark,’ which I heard on a train into Salzburg in 2001. ’15 Count’ knocked me out – and I felt like I was going where I ought to be going at just the right time. It was a welcome feeling after the flu in Pushkar.

Almost immediately after arriving at the Tiger Resort Hotel in Sawai Madhopur, I met Chris and Christine, with whom I hoped to share a tiger safari the following morning. I was excited to see them and catch up – we shared dinner and early this morning (6AM) we set off to go tiger spotting.

The ‘safari’ was relatively uneventful – as in, no tigers. We heard warning calls from deer, but did not see anything hunting. We did see some lovely wildlife including spotted deer, wild boar, peacocks, and lots of magpies and monkeys. The vegetation was fun to see as well – and the landscape of the park was stunning. Unfortunately we were not allowed out of the jeep at any point, so photos were limited to quick stops and jerky snaps on the extremely bumpy road. I tried to capture the rock formations around the 10th century fort in the center of the park, along with some of the ‘walking trees’ – so named for their dropped roots. It was disappointing to not see a tiger – I considered it my one shot at seeing a tiger in the wild, but the trip was worth it to me.

The hotel in which I am staying – the Tiger Resort Hotel, is swanky; it reminds me of the resort in Tunsia a bit, and it is a comfortable spot for a night or two – even though it is well beyond what I’ve been paying (25$ rather than 4 or 5 per night). There are many other tiger seekers here, and I found a train buddy for the trip to Bundi tomorrow (in addition to Chris and Christine – who are also going there!). I will be riding first class with Jessica, a woman from Holland. It will be my first train journey in first class, and I am looking forward to it. Apparently we get a lunch! Here are some photos – after the photos, I rant for a while about the desperate international situation. Enjoy the photos!

And, finally, I would be remiss and not entirely myself if I did not shoot my mouth off a bit regarding the latest round of events in the Arab world. Egypt was all over the news for weeks (though much moreso on National press than the Pioneer Press or Strib), and seems to be on a track to secular self-governance, provided the military lessens its grip on the economy. I read a great deal about Egypt, both because of my interest in social revolution and because I had just been there and know people in country still. A bit of news that struck me, posted in Al Jazeera English online magazine (which I HIGHLY recommend), was that CNN did a poll of US citizens to gauge awareness and opinion regarding the events in Egypt. Opinion was predictably divided along party lines, with more ‘conservatives’ voicing concerns about the uprising and more ‘liberals’ supporting the overthrow of our ally Mubarak. What struck me was that Egyptians were paying attention to how much we paid attention. This shouldn’t have been a surprise – we have been funding Mubarak and the Egyptian military since they recognized Israel in 1979. IMHO, this might be behind some of the concerns (voiced by Beck et al) that Cairo 2011 is just another Tehran 1979 – where populist sentiment quickly turned vehemently anti-American and anti-western (and not without cause, Mossadegh). Cairo has not turned anti-western; indeed everyone from Suleman to the Muslim Brotherhood has acknowledged that maintaining peace with Israel is important to Egypt’s future. But I digress – Egypt noted how much (or little) their revolution registered on our Neilsons – and the rest of the Arab countries will be no different. I can’t begin to understand the complexity behind the US’s official position (we support (FINALLY) the dissidents in Iran but call on Bahraini officials to create reform? Why so slow to let go of Mubarak?), and I have not agreed with much of it lately. I can however, pay attention and start conversations about it. I assumed travelers would be finger on the pulse concerning global politics but most of them are so unplugged that they are just catching up on Egypt. There are currently significant uprisings (often accompanied by repression) in almost ALL arab countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq and Iran) – my limited knowledge of history cannot turn over a more wide-spread series of major changes other than the 1989 fall of the USSR, or the concurrent revolutions in the US and France in the late 1700s. Somewhat ironically, Morocco was the first country in the world to officially recognize the US in 1789. Perhaps, in our way, we can return the favor. Thanks for reading!

Jodhpur

February 15, 2011
I am in the surprisingly colorful city of Jodhpur, the Brahmin city of Rajasthan. Much of the old city is painted with indigo, so it is, like Chefchaouen, swimming pool blue – indigo also serves as a natural insecticide (and is much more pleasant that the insecticide used in building materials near Bikaner; cow dung and urine mixed with plaster). The city is lovely, and the old city relatively calm with narrow streets and consequently fewer cars. It still has the flavor of India (a mix of exhaust, urine, burning garbage and burning dung patties used to heat peanuts and such on the street), but it felt more like Jaisalmer than Jaipur (which is a good thing). It, like every other city in Rajasthan, has a fort on a massive rocky crag which houses an impressive palace with monuments, stories and battle scars.

A few bits – the orange hand prints are from the widows of the maharaja who died in 1847 or so, they made their hand marks on their way to the funeral pyre – yikes! The monument in the wall with the wreath is from a guy who volunteered to be sacrificed to appease the gods – the fort took a hermits home and he cursed them with a water shortage. The guy volunteered to be buried alive in the foundation of the fort and is still there. Dead I assume.

The city of Jodhpur itself is pretty big, 800,000 I think, but the old city is windy narrow streets and lots of colors. I tried taking lots of photos of doorways and the like to give a sense of it all. The blue is beautiful, rich, and there is something almost supernatural in the way it is indiscriminately applied to all kinds of surfaces. Sorry for the non-sequitor here but it thunder-stormed here yesterday! A full our rain storm complete with thunder and lightning! It both alleviated and intensified my longing for Minnesota. I was chatting with Grant from Missouri who agree about missing weather (any weather really) – and it was so great to have something dramatic to compete with the honking horns and shouting vendors. What a great thing – a thunderstorm. I was sleeping on a rooftop mattress waiting for a bed when it rained, so I was dry but somewhat in the middle of things. It was a fabulous experience.

Here are some photos of Jodhpur, an attempt to capture some color:

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As everywhere else in India (and most everywhere else it seems), it is really hard to capture the combination of smells, honks, smiles and friendly or begging people following me around. I guess I can say that it is as insane as it sounds, sometimes much more so, and that so far as I’ve seen it gets to almost everyone. At the same time it is a way to live like Seward or NE Mpls is a way to live. I am adjusting to being here, having a much easier time bumping into people (this is the single biggest advantage of the Lonely Planet), and when Mom suggested traveling in Italy a week later (giving me another week in India) I was excited at the prospect. I would not have anticipated that two weeks ago. Thanks for reading!

Photos!

Good old sight-seeing (without sights)

Hello all, greetings from Jaiselmer, another town on the India Pakistan border. I have a few sights to catch up on since the last post. I’m afraid the photos will have to continue to go uncommented as blogspot insists on being html, or not, I have no idea, but the point is I have limited use of the tricks afforded by the program. Actually, at the moment I cannot upload images at all, so that will have to wait a bit. Anwyay, getting to it:

There are two sights unique (so far as I know) in the eastern world. The first is a camel farm, where camels are bred, raised, and generally kept for farmers or sold at action or to the army. The second is the rat temple. Which is a temple full of rats. First, the camel farm.

It is outside of Bikaner, with a center and outlying fields. The center focused on the research, breeding and birthing grounds. They serve and sell camel milk, ice cream, lassis (like a milk shake) and other camel related things. The studs were kept in one smelly area (they are in a high season and rutting, which gives a pungent order, like goats I think but much stronger). There are four kinds of camels, and they are researching the different qualities of mixes. We saw a maternity area of sorts where babies (after a 13 month gestation) age 1-3 days spent time with the females. The camels can walk around about 6 hours after they are born, and weigh an astounding 40kg at birth. We actually saw a birth taking place, men pulling the calf out of the mother and placing it in front of her, removing the sac from the calf, and helping it take its first breath. It was inspiring and beautiful - even suspenceful, the calf didn’t breathe for about a minute – the workers went about hitting its head and slapping its back legs until it was breathing, fast and short, in the sand. The mother, massive, finally stood and walked a step or two forward and nuzzled the calf before settling in the sand with it in front of her. Other calves bleating for mothers, the men standing back and watching the mother’s first moments with the calf. I have to say, that of all the young things in the world which enjoy ugly immunity for a period of time, the camel is ugly from day one. I could enjoy spending time with them, they are majestic creatures, capable efficient machines, but they are not attractive.

After the camel farm we headed to the rat temple, a drive outside of town. My rat-anxiety wasn’t enough to keep me awake, and I woke up at the temple feeling even good about going. I had been anxious at the prospect of wandering around a temple full of rats in my socks or barefoot (no shoes allowed, as always). The man gave us a history, what I’ll call the mythology of the place. So 14th century, Karni Mata, an incarnation of the god Durga, asked Yama, god of the dead, to bring the son of a storyteller back to life (selflessly I’m sure…). Yama said no deal, as the gods of the dead tend to do, so Karni Mata reincarnated all of the dead at rats, essentially taking the souls away from Yama. Worshipers believe that the rats are incarnated family or friends and bring sweets and milk to feed them. The temple is not ‘full,’ but there were a lot of rats around. The story of the place is that the rats no only no not leave, but that they also have never bitten anyone, and that the town has enjoyed immunity from the bubonic plague, and further that if someone suffers from the plague, they will be healed if they travel to the rat temple. The white rat (a white rat) is good luck, and an entrepreneur hoping to start would need to see a white rat to be given the go ahead on his plans. Married couples travel there to have their wedding blessed (we saw two couples, in full dress at the temple). Also, a rat crossing your feet is good luck, of course. (I would use similar language and consideration talking about the Jesus story, personally – I think it can be easy to turn one’s nose up at this story, so that helped me with perspective.) I made some short videos of the temple because the squeamish feeling (which was almost gone even in the ten minutes we were there) comes from the movement I think, and there was a lot of that).

Up next comes Jaiselmer, a city within and around a giant fort. It is calm in the fort, relatively quiet, and feels much less harried than the cities I’d been in (like Bikaner but a real city – Bikaner is also 800,00 people). I met up with Molly of the camel tour, and we wandered around the city for a while today having a gander at this and that. The absolute highlight for me were the Jain temples. (grammar question: highlight was jain temples? Highlight were jain temples? Highlights were jain temple? Anyway) These contained hundreds of intricately carved sandstone statues, 6,666 buddha statues (666?) and had incredible light and shadow. It reminded me of the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, carved by the knights templar, but much more impressive. I’ll post a few images of that at the end here, I’m thinking of going back even to see them again.

Today some internet time in the morning, Molly and I were thinking about renting a motorcycle, though I am sure we would either get lost or die on the road, so we are still considering. In health news the body is feeling better! That is a relief! And I’m consequently feeling much better about being here in general. I’m glad to finally post some sightseeing rather than navel gazing, though both in their time I guess. Hopefully photos will follow shortly. Thanks for reading!

(Watch out, they spit!)

They don't actually. But they DO walk left left right right, giving Corinne the victory in the "I'm pretty sure..." conversation. For once. *cough*

We are of course talking about Camels, dromedaries if they are two humped (I think? C?). Two days ago I set off on a wild camel safari for an overnight with an American couple (Chris and Christine) and a Brit (Molly). The four of us were well attended to by 6 Indian guide types - one for each of our camels, a cook and a translator.

The trip was arranged through The Camel Man (www.camelman.com), who is related somehow with Bikaner royalty. Bikaner is on the eastern side of Rajasthan, a main tourist thoroughfare on the east of India. It is somewhat off that thoroughfare and I chose it for that reason. It has proven to be a good find, a place where I could both see some things and relax. I joined the other three for the safari, but even before that I enjoyed their company a great deal.

So camels. We took a jeep about 15 minutes from town to a small village, where our camels awaited, each owned by the family of our camel guides - mine was a young male (camel and guide). Here he is:

We set off, comfy on our steeds, which are alarmingly high in the air (Chris nearly broke his ankle when his camel abruptly stood up with one of Chris's feet in a stirrup). But before long we were on the scrub, the living desert, enjoying the birds, antelope, and farting camels of the desert. We trekked for about 3 hours, lunched, then another 2 hours to the camp, and by the end I was grateful to be on my own two feet. I had at one point hoped to spend two weeks on camel, and I think I would have died of ass soreness.

The camp was two concrete buildings with tents around. We hung out near a German contingent, had tea, drank lots of water, and enjoyed dinner cooked onsite. Later musicians (an Indian accordion player and a tabor player along with a handclapper) played for us for about two hours. The singer's voice was harsh and full of desert sand - the moon went down early and the stars were stunning; it was a moment that transcended the relentless India I'd experienced so far.

The next day was somewhat normal, riding camels through the India desert normal, and while our conversations were somewhat 'thinned' by some illness and generally feeling kind of tired, it was overall a very enjoyable excursion. Back at Vijay's guesthouse, we played a game - THE game - of Pass the Pigs. Anyone going on a road trip is well advised to bring this with them. We all part ways and I expect/hope to meet up with everyone again, Molly in Jaiselmer, and the couple for a tiger safari in Ranthamborh a bit later. Each new friendly face and conversation brings me a bit closer to home here in India. Here are some photos of the trip:

The picture with the tongue like thing is the male camel saying - hey baby, check me out. It is by far the grossest sounding, grossest looking mating thing of any kind I've ever seen outside of Collegeville. I'd like to see Isabella Rosellini do that one. On the health front, the gut still has anger. I saw another doc this morning who continued me on the same antibiotic, antiparasitic path. After apologizing to him for asking a lot of questions and doubting what he was telling me, he told me that 50% of feeling better is believing that all will be well. Almost immediately I did feel better. I am keeping close tabs on everything and am starting to feel a little more comfortable around the food. While the India struggle continues and will, I have turned a major corner (as discussed below here). And when it gets dicey, I lay in bed and listen to Bon Iver or Neko Case and think of home. I am traveling with all of you, thanks for that, and thanks for reading!

Planes, trains and photos I didn't take (Avye!)

1130PM Feb 4, 2011

I have arrived in Bikaner, a smallish town in the state of Rajasthan on the western border of India. But let me start a few days ago:

I confess that I wrote most of the previous post in a mood deserving of the comfort and support I received – reading your notes and emails and comments warmed me from that place a great deal. Now, of course, possessing the emotional attention span of a small dog, I think ‘what was all the fuss about?’ Indeed. In my memory it is hard for me to comfortably juxtapose the honest desire to be finished traveling with the present knowledge that the feeling would pass – that I would be feeling better in a matter of time. Being something of the moody, sentimental type, I should know this from experience. I have feelings.

The ‘place’ was just that, and it was supplemented with vigor by being somewhat sick to my lower tummy (which was remedied with some good old antibiotics of the fluoroquinolone variety (hint if you know you’re going to take them anyway, reading the laundry list of side effects will not help)). Sorry for the double parenthesis. My taking them improved my GI and my mood dramatically, and yes this morning, three days or so after writing the previous post, I felt optimistic again and ready for the next planned leg of my journey.

After a relaxed breakfast at the rooftop restaurant I had relied upon heavily and selfishly to nurse myself, I chatted with an eastern European fellow who later stopped his cab and offered me fare to the bus station. Because I was walking, interestingly enough, and it felt good damnit. He had an uncanny resemblance to Nick Pawlowski, and the combined likeness and kindness spirited me onto my train for the 7 hour journey from Jaipur west to Bikaner.

Trains in India have kind of a bad rap – the famous images are of dramatically overcrowded trains, insane platforms, and a sea of humanity that sometimes might be easier to swim through, as the tidal force can out foot-pound gravity. And that is generally true. However, today I have the added advantage of being able to book absurdly cheap tickets online (700 km, 3 dollars – imagine how far 3 dollars gets you), which grant me a seat. The trains are an Indian experience, and one that I have been enthralled by and sick of by turns. It gives me and the other riders a chance to surreptitiously check each other out, as well as sit on laps, crawl over people, and generally violate every rule of personal space I have learned. I often sat with my headphones in listening to music (favoring the soothing sounds of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Iron & Wine and Bon Iver lately), along with some of the podcasts you fine folks recommended. This time a Rabout broke my heart – it was called ‘Lost and Found,’ recommended to me by Corinne (for the heartstring factor) and yes, the last story will make you cry – regardless of how many times the guy next to you pokes your shoulder to ask or tell you something hidden deep inside a Hindi accent.

The trains also show the countryside – in all its glory and decrepitude. Inevitably there are shanty towns, slums, what have you that make rural Salvador look comfortable by comparison. This time, we also passed over or through the salt lake, which smelled like satan’s own sulfur farts (it is a salt lake thing, I remember the same in western Egypt). Beyond the lake were dozens, literally miles worth, of salt processing houses with varying stages of salt fit for your table (giant bulldozed piles, sifted piles, and 50 lb bags). It reminded me of the movie Gandhi, of his famous salt march, and of how important salt is to our survival. There was something vital about that salt – it was not tamed in a little shaker, but massed out in tons, and everywhere.

The sun set on the train ride, my second from a train, with similar effect. The sun does not shimmer on the horizon, more like a slow red dim, creating the scenes of countryside you might recognize from films or photos – isolated figures cut against the haze with animals and fields in the background, groups of men in a circle, not yet illuminated by the fire, trees and boundless power lines silhouetted against a hazy, graying sky. It is beautiful and awe-inspiring.

After 6 hours of music, half conversations and a dozen stops, a girl who had been napping with her mom woke up, and proceeded to systematically harass the guy across from me like someone who knew her work. Eventually I caught her eye and we exchanged faces for a while. I attempted my one magic trick, where a coin seems to pass hands but is dropped into the same one. She was impressed, and for another ten minutes we pretended to pass coins and bills through our mouths, noses and ears – or into thin air (by dropping it by mistake). We provided entertainment (sorely lacking) for the folks around us and ourselves. It was the most fun I’d had (and the silliest I’d been) since arriving and it felt great. Sadly she and her mother were off at the next stop. Thinking about it even now makes me smile.

Shortly thereafter I stood and noticed a small group of young folks playing Uno – Uno! - and speaking English. I stood by and watched as the game finished and was happily invited to the next one. Introductions lead to a surprising array of homelands (Eretria (thoughts of you Pete), Iran, Iraq, and Bangladesh). They were friends studying pharmacology at the Uni in New Delhi, and quickly welcomed me. I passed the final leg of the trip with lots of good natured jokes about nationality (when the guy from Iraq disagreed with the woman from Iran, I was told to just play ‘last time it took eight years’ and I suggested it might be best if I stayed out of it, being from the US – and so on). I regretted to hear that they were continuing on to Jaiselmer, another 8 hours, and I gave some serious thought to joining them for their company. But a comfortable bed, food, and the hope of seeing them again in Delhi (along with the fact that someone was waiting for me at the platform) lead me off the train. Even without going, it was proof of one of my sustaining hopes – there are plenty of wonderful people out there waiting for me, provided I stop getting room service.

That brings me to Bikaner, where I practically fought my way onto the platform (people were struggling to get seats for the overnight journey) to meet my ride to where I am staying. He was an incredibly welcome sight to me – I hadn’t realized the stress involved in getting from the train to the hostels. I am comfortably here now with the crickets and barking dogs, and will post this in the morning. Then it’s camel time. Thanks for reading!

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and scared.”

Thanks for that Rumi – true enough, but the news is none too welcome. He ends up suggesting that we let the beauty we love be what we do, which is more uplifting (and more frequently quoted). Monday morning I woke up (admittedly a bit empty and scared), attended to my creature comforts with push-ups , a hot shower and a bowl of banana porridge with tea at the restaurant upstairs, and sat down to figure out what the fuck I’m doing here. Here’s how it went:

I chatted with a guy making a slow course up the stairs on my way to breakfast – I told him I was struggling a bit and he asked why I didn’t do what made me happy, and said that some people didn’t want to be happy, and that China would make me even less happy than India – why not go to SE Asia he sd. I found it difficult to not take his comments, particularly about wanting to be unhappy, as a challenge (which is of course backwards – ‘Oh yeah?!? I’m happy! Really, I am!’). I think he was right – China would be difficult in the same way India has been difficult, and frankly I have not been very good at enjoying myself when traveling alone. I don't often justified spending even a little money or time on myself to make things easier (I try to walk rather than taxi, I try to buy cheaper, ‘local’ food, I try to not find refuge in music or the internet, all to travel 'better.' And when I do take a cab, listen to music on the train or in my room, eat western food, I feel like I am cheating – not traveling well.

Corinne suggested that I allow that sometimes I will pay 'too much' (in India this means 3 dollars rather than 1 – not going to break me), and to be good to myself, to relax sometimes, and I resisted that too! I can DO this, I thought, I can travel well. I can suffer diarrhea or being hungry or walking when I am sore or hot or tired or all of those at once. I can do this – I can do anything for a few hours, or a few days, or two months. I don’t need creature comforts. I’m surrounded by people with an astonishing lack of comforts, I can handle that for a few hours, days …. I’m pushing, rather than relaxing into traveling – pushing against as a form of being, resisting as being. I ‘am’ to the degree I can successfully travel (work? be in relationship?), all of which are beyond my fundamental control. I cannot force success, it will either grace my efforts or not. This one-step-at-a-time guy challenged me in his calm know-it-all-voice to do what makes me happy, which so far has not been an explicit part of traveling successfully. Confusingly. Why wouldn't I do what makes me happy? Why is that intention with traveling?

‘Don’t open the door to the study and read.’

Internet at this place costs 100 rupees per day (which I scoffed at for some reason, it’s 2 whole dollars), so I held off in an effort to not distract myself while I wrote this. On the train the guy next to me asked why I read, and I told him – realizing it was true as I said it – that reading for me was kind of like taking a nap, a brain nap, that when I read something good the world becomes quiet, literally, and I am entirely engaged in the story or article. I’ve been reading the food issue of the New Yorker and have been consumed (haha) by the stories of different foods. I thoroughly enjoy reading (and Arrested Development, and music), but the world I leave is the same one I return to when I stop. The other day I told myself to take it easy, yet after I ate I found myself looking for an excuse to wander around town – I need to buy a water, or I can sit in a café somewhere to think, or walk around the old fort, it’s supposed to be lovely and it costs money to stay here after all (again, a whole 6 dollars per day). I’ve felt this a lot while traveling, in part it was a similar restlessness that carried me over here. It can be the same kind of distraction for me (and I embrace it for a reason – it has been very painful for me when I run out of distractions and have been forced to confront something head on, even if it was necessary). Even writing all this out is a kind of distraction.

‘There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’

I’ve been looking into ashrams, or spiritual centers, around India and there are plenty; similarly I'm looking at desert tours, the two week excursions being the most attractive at the moment. I resisted going to them straight away, for some reason I felt this pressing need to see the sights of India (which of course involved looking them up as I didn’t have the first clue about what they were beyond the Taj Mahal). After seeing exactly one sight (the Qutb Minar) and taking exactly one train, that pressing need diminished. One-step guy told me I didn’t want to be happy, Corinne said they are all just buildings (and I add that most of them aren’t even standing anymore) and if they don't make me happy to find something that does and for god’s sake it’s ok to just sit around for a little while. Ashrams and the like are attractive because they seem to handle the world on your behalf – room, food, schedule, that sounds lovely. And I’m starting to think of them as taxi rides for the soul – not necessary but certainly pretty damn helpful. Apparently even the Gandhi wanted a guru to follow, he just never found one.

Tony Liuzzi’s parting suggestion to me, seasoned travel that he is, was something his grandfather told him – whatever decision you make will be the right one. Figuring out what makes me happy has been a surprise, difficult, I’ve not done it before, or not well (even after the encouragement of Corinne and family and you and me and everyone we know). It has been tricky to discern it behind the noise of what I desire, or what I’m afraid of, or the culture I’m from. Part of me knew that this is what was coming, or that this is what would be good for me. I remember getting excited about the struggle, something akin to my 40 days. I’m still not entirely sure about what I’m doing, or where I’m going, but I have to say, starting to focus on being happy, I feel better about getting there.

Thanks for reading!

(Thanks to Anna Shoe for the Rumi in my travel book!)