When Sona first brought up the idea of an all inclusive resort holiday in the Dominican Republic for our baby moon, I thought she was making one of those American jokes she sometimes makes. The ones where it’s funny because it’s true, not because it’s actually funny. So, I laugh. I quickly come around to the idea of the all-inclusive because the alternative to going to the all inclusive is to not go anywhere and sit at home.
Maybe Baby? In Response to That Ticking Clock
I should have known when I hit 30 that it would start. In fact, given that my own mother handed me that scary New York magazine cover story about freezing your eggs—you know, just in case — I should have expected it a lot sooner.
Still, considering the place that Navdeep and I are in at this moment in time, the floaty, fleeting nature of both our careers, trying to establish ourselves as writers and get published, and even just trying to figure out which coast to live on, I was hardly ready for it.
No, I’m not pregnant. But it seems like everyone around me has babies on the brain. Navdeep may not have noticed it, but while we were traveling in India, meeting new relatives, the question came up a lot. We’ve been married for about a year-and-a-half now, and by Indian standards, that’s plenty of alone time. People just didn’t seem to grasp what we’re waiting for.
Sometimes I wonder, too. After all, the proverbial clock is ticking away. And you always hear people say that there will never be a right time. But there is a such thing as a very wrong time, isn’t there?
Video: The Karni Mata “Rat” Temple in Deshnoke, Rajasthan
Check out the video of our visit to the Karni Mata “Rat” Temple, home to 20,000 rats in Deshnoke, near Bikaner, Rajasthan in India. The rats are believed to be incarnations of tribesmen of the aesthetic Karni Mata (an incarnation…
Photo Friday: New Delhi Airport!
When I lived in Dubai as a child, we’d visit India once a year and dreaded coming through the airport. When we got off the plane this time, I was mentally prepared to fight my way through huge crowds, of people with cardboard signs up, and chaos all over the place. I was relieved to see everything inside was rather calm. There weren’t any aggressive taxi drivers forcing us to haggle with their already high prices, or elbows being thrown in our faces just to get to baggage claim. There was even a sign for a pre-paid taxi stand.
India Travelogue: Batta Trouble in the Alleys of New Delhi’s Patel Nagar
After sleeping most of the day away, we decided to explore West Patel Nagar a bit. We made a pit stop at an internet cafe via cycle rickshaw. This turned out to be not such a great idea because landmarks whizzed by us. The only thing I remembered was a bar. Sona remembered Sharma Sweets. The internet connection wasn’t the greatest, but it was fast enough for us to check email. We wanted to go for a quick exploration around the area so we wrapped up our email-checking and randomly decided which direction to go in.
We walked by some very tempting food and juice stalls, but we didn’t wind up getting anything. The first couple stalls we went to selling juice had pomegranate juice which I am always down for, but only had mango shake (not juice as Sona would have liked). And then it started getting dark. Our stroll until that point had been for perhaps an hour or so. My big plan was to enjoy my anar juice on the walk back to Munna Mamaji’s flat and let Sona frown at the juice-wala for not having mango juice. This did not happen. My alternative plans of eating ice cream, having an ice-cold Limca and eating gol guppe also did not happen.
Navdeep: Our Kahani 2007
Sona and I started “talking” on the internet with no intention of getting married or even pursuing a long-distance relationship. She put up her ad on indiandating.com out of curiosity. I put mine up to spite an ex-girlfriend who wanted to “see what her options were.” I never got very many responses though. It may have had something to do with the eye-catching log line I used: Hairy Indian Male Seeks Financially Independent, Attractive Woman. Ugliness and caste no bar. Neither of us had actually paid for an account so we hid our email address in the free messages and then started writing each other rambling, long winded letters. Because we weren’t looking for anything, we let our guards down a bit and just let things happen. It started with letters, late night phone calls and ended with three weddings, an engagement, a pre-engagement, two receptions (one in california, one in New Jersey!) , and plenty of bhangra . . .
Sona: Our Kahani 2007
When Navdeep says we’re part of the Tech Generation, he’s not kidding. We not only blog as a couple, we even met online. A little more than three years ago, I was a reporter at People magazine, toiling away on the frontlines of celeb culture (and pursuing my masters in screenwriting and South Asian studies). Navdeep had just returned from two years teaching English in China and was pursuing his MFA creative writing in Fresno.
Oyy, Rickshaaaa! That Time Navdeep’s Parents Visited Him in China
When I taught English in the small border town of Dandong, between China and North Korea, I was also a rickshaw-vallah. This is a photo someone took of me with two completely random people I have never seen before. They were not good tippers.
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!
Our First Active Volcano: Popocatépetl, AKA El Popo, in Puebla, Mexico
Our last few days in Puebla, we read about Popocatépetl, one of Mexico’s most active volcanoes, and decided it would be romantic to go for a little stroll there. Instead of spending 600 pesos on a shared van, or triple that for a private cab, we take a local bus up there for a couple pesos. With the money we’re saving, we have big plans to buy a piece of bread and share it like street children in a Disney film.
Sona’s Take: Deciding to Go
Just a little over three years ago, I was chained to my desk at People magazine, working sixty-plus hour weeks. Yeah, I got to interview celebs and blah blah blah, but to me it was all just a day job. I was too wimpy to quit to pursue my real dream, filmmaking. And then I met Navdeep. A hardcore traveler who’d lived in China and backpacked overland through Tibet into India. An adventurer who scoffed at the idea of staying in one of the fancy pant palaces converted into hotels in Rajasthan (as my sister and I did on our trip there). He thought nothing of sleeping alone in a tent in the middle of God-knows-where in Mongolia. I didn’t know it then, but his free spirit (and indie travel bug) were about to rub off on me, big time. Now, at 30, I’m a fulltime freelance writer with all the instability that implies. Journalism, unfinished novels, screenplays gathering dust in a pile on my bookshelf.
I’m not sure exactly when the idea of a three-month long honeymoon jaunt in India started to percolate between us, but for the longest time I didn’t take it seriously. We both had strong roots in the country, but for me, a trip to India simply meant being shuffled from one relative’s house to the next in Delhi. Besides, who really quits their dayjob to pursue something as amorphous and unstable as writing fulltime—let alone pursuing the fantasy of filmmaking? Even with the clips from those glossy magazines everyone picks up at the newsstand, the decision was impractical at best. Besides, shouldn’t we be thinking about serious married-people things like health insurance and 401Ks?
But the idea just wouldn’t die.
