Two Weeks in India

“The traveler, if he comes from a place of comfort, travels, in part, to be stood on his head; to lose track of tenses, or at least to be back to essentials, free of the details of home. ‘Teach me,’ as Thomas Merton wrote in his journal, ‘to give to a country names and words and terms.'”
-Pico Iyer

Goodbye, Seattle. Tomorrow morning at 4:30 a.m. I’m headed for Mumbai, via L.A. and Tokyo, where I’ll embark on my first overseas independent adventure in quite some time. About 45 hours from now, I’ll be in India.

My plans are open-ended, but I know I’ll visit Hyderabad and Calcutta in addition to Mumbai, and hopefully get over to Dhaka, Bangladesh at some point too.

Like a lot of places I go to, it takes a while to get there. My 11 hour flight to Tokyo leaves me with an overnight stay in Narita City, and then another 10 hour flight the next day (Tokyo-Nagasaki-Mumbai on All Nippon).

On the way back, I’ll detour to Hong Kong to start up my second Round-the-World trip. This trip will take me to a lot of destinations in South America and North Africa, but I don’t want to think about that yet.

Right now I want to think about the process of travel, something I have learned to enjoy very much. Tomorrow morning, after taking a United flight down to L.A., I’ll pick up Singapore Airlines flight #11 to Japan. I’ve already looked at their 30 movie listings for the month, and nothing interests me… so I’ll be reading, writing, and just enjoying the flight over.

And before long, I’ll start thinking about India. See you there.

###

Tags: international travel