It’s a very strange feeling being back in India as a traveler again, but this time as a couple. It’s difficult not to think about our own spirituality when religion is everywhere, from impromptu Sufi music being sung in the park, or masjids, gompas, mandirs, and gurdwaras rooted in history that resonate deeply.
Our Gear: India 2006
We’re in the final stretch for our India adventure and while we’re super excited, there’s also a lot to think about. We’ve got most of it sorted out, and the rest . . welll, we’ll wing it. Cameras, video camera, tripods, backpacks, things to put in those backpacks, camera and video bags, memory cards, laptops, software, web-design stuff. And of course, books! There’s loads to think about. Check it all out here.
Travelogue India: It’s Almost that Time!
Sona’s list of places she’d like to see in three months, in addition to seeing her family and my family, is getting more erratic and more in lala land. And her reasons for wanting to go to places is getting more amusing. Last night, she decided she wanted to go to Dareeling because it had tea plantations and a toy train, but wanted to skip Calcutta. The spot directly before reaching this hill station is Amritsar, all the way in the North, a good 80 hour train journey. And then there’s the slight transportation issue of getting to Darjeeling directly from Amristar! Then from Darjeeling, we’re shooting off like a bullet to a houseboat in Kashmir. My hair is standing on end just thinking about it.
I’m looking forward to the trip, but there are loads of things to think about. The first and foremost is certainly where we go, and the second is how we end up traveling. I’m a true believer in the spirit of independent travel, where the mere act of being in a place does not constitute having been there. To truly experience a place involves chilling out and taking walks that can’t be included in any itinerary. But I also realize that we do have to make some form of an itinerary, or we’ll really frighten all of our family. “We’re off then. We don’t know where exactly, but we’re going to catch a train somewhere.” That would instill a lot of confidence in my qualifications as a husband!
But putting that aside, there’s also the hectic-ness of wrapping up classes and making sure there aren’t any loose ends while we’re on the road. Little things give me the biggest headaches. Each thing would take probably five minutes or so to get sorted but when there’s a billion of them to do, eating potato chips and watching Dr. Phil sound like an easier alternative. I do need to sort out things like paying my credit cards, sorting out school loans and recurring bills, deciding on some kind of a route to take, and stopping Sona from packing everything in sight.
Three months does sound like a long time but when tackling something as gigantic as India, you don’t even scratch the surface with three months. Especially with Sona’s erratic list of places she’d like to see: Kashmir all the way in the North, Kerala and Kunyakumari on the Southern tip of India, Punjab and Delhi are givens but within the three months, there are tonnes of family to meet. And we can’t just pop in for tea and be on our way. We have to go visit everyone. Even though Sona has quite a massive family, they’re all in Delhi. I have no idea how big Delhi is, but it doesn’t seem like it would take more than an hour or two to shuttle between the different areas. Punjab, on the other hand, is going to take a bit of time. My family is scattered all over Punjab. We also have a farm in U.P. and a chacha (my dad’s brother) who lives in Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal. So no, we can’t pop in for lunch and be on our way!
Navdeep’s Take: Deciding to Go
Much like asking Sona to marry me when I didn’t have a job, or any remote interest in the possiblity of attaining one – I was in the middle of an MFA in creative writing program while living with my parents in Fresno (and she still said yes!)- the decision to drop everything and go backpacking through India wasn’t a difficult one. When I asked Sona to get married, all I knew was that it felt right. And that is how I feel about this adventure, despite Sona’s tendencies to overcomplicate everything, from simple recipes, to packing, I knew it would be an adventure that I couldn’t pass up. Sona has great work ethic, which is not a good trait in a traveler. So, when she suggested the act of vagabonding for a couple of months before settling back into reality, I knew I couldn’t pass up my one opportunity to infect her with the travel bug.
We had the whole world at our disposal, but we ultimately decided on India because, well, it’s India. There is no country in the world quite like it and we both think we can speak the North Indian languages of Hindi and Punjabi, relatively well (numbers higher than 10 are a bit tricky though).It is a land of contradictions with its breathtaking beauty, vast areas of ugliness in the sheer level of visible pollution, majestic architecture, squalid tin-roofed make-shift neighborhoods, perilous roads, home to some of the world’s most exciting and dangerous places.
For Sona, it is also about embracing a country that she has never properly explored as an insider. She’s always been on the outside with sheltered 2 week family trips involving lots of shopping, and being shuttled from one relative’s house to the next. The first time I went on my own was when I was 20, as a reward for myself for failing all of my classes at community college. Yes, community college. That trip really made me focus on my studies, perhaps not exactly for the right reasons: I wanted to be done, so I could go travel some more!
The second I graduated with my Bachelors degree, I went gallavanting off to China, and ended up living there for 2 years. I eventually made it back to the United States, but not before backpacking from China into India via Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Tibet, and Nepal. I took the scenic route.
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