Category Archives: India
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. Three months is really not very much time to be on a trip like this, but it will be a nice way to get vagabonding into Sona’s bloodstream. 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!
I think we’ll end up carving out regions that we’d like to see, rather than specific places so that the trip won’t be so controlled with no margin for fun. Unless that’s also scheduled!
The one thing I am actually worried about though is this website. Time is very quickly running out, and the website sounds like a fun idea, but being on the road and having to update things using dreamweaver, editing photos, and videos while in India, also doesn’t sound fun. So hopefully, something magical will fix all of these problems in one swoop.
Many people might not want to take a year off to go backpacking and stay in hostels of varying degrees of comfort, but people like the idea of traveling. I’m excited at the prospect of travelling again, but it is taking me some time to realize it will be a very different experience. I can’t haggle down a room to 40 rupees because the bathroom is outside in a field. Or randomly decide to hop on a train because the ticket was cheap, or I liked the sound of the name “Chittangong.” When I’d get bored with the conversation or the person I was traveling with, I’d hop onto a different train or bus. I’m pretty sure Sona would not be pleased if I did that this time around! We’ve gone on short travels together. Never anything close to three months, so it’ll be an adventure seeing how we travel together as a couple, handle being grumpy on the road, manage our money, and how the different places we see and the people we meet change us.
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Travelogue India: The Countdown Begins, So Much to Do and Only Three Weeks to Go!
When we booked our tickets, way back in June, this trip seemed ages away. And now, there’s less than a month left. It seems surreal to think that in three short weeks my life as I know it will end—at least for a short while. Right now, to me, the daily grind is pitching stories and interviewing the random celebrity, pretending to work on my writing, endless loads of laundry, the occasional episode of House Hunters on HGTV and making often-elaborate meals for my husband, who’s been working his ass off teaching endless English classes to make up for our time off.
In the meantime, we’ve also been doing the things that make this trip seem a bit more real. Tickets. Check. Camera. Check. Backpacks. They’ll be here any second now. And we finally ordered the sleeping bag, too. But really, it’s the slow build of this website, Navdeep painstakingly learning Dreamweaver and Flash, me dictating design and writing content, that’s making it seem real. Slowly but surely, we’re getting closer. And as we add pages, we mark off another day—or four—on the calendar. And now it’s almost time to flip the page.
For three months, it’ll be just be me and Navdeep, on the road, a different city every week, lots of new tastes, people, places to explore and absorb. It’s exhilarating, but at the moment, it still seems unreal. And though I’m really excited, it’s also kind of scary.
I keep second-guessing other goals. What if this is the right time to get that script out, as studios stockpile under the threat of a long, grueling writers’ strike? What if I should have taken that job opportunity in New York a little more seriously? What about the fact that I’m going to miss several birthdays, or a big reason to celebrate that we’ve all been waiting for? I’m stepping out of my life, but it will go charging full speed ahead without me. Britney will lose custody. Lindsay will end up in prison. (Hey, these things are breaking news when you’re in the celeb content trade.) But it’s also that Meena will move to L.A., my cousin Arun will start college (oh my God!) and my brother will get a new (fulltime, with benefits!) job. Those are the things I’ll really be missing.
But there’s something more to the fear. It’s that my world will never really be the same after this. Travel changes people—Navdeep is a vivid, shining example of that. And sure, I’ve been on a plane loads of times, seen lots of exotic countries. But I’ve never really traveled. I’ve lived a very sheltered life. And I’m sort of excited to see who this new incarnation of me is going to be. But I’m also a bit sad to be leaving the old one behind.
She was hardly perfect, but we had some good times.
And it’s also the first time Navdeep and I will really travel together besides our 10-day Puebla honeymoon. We obviously have very different styles—he’s a hardcore backpacker, while I prefer all-inclusive, if possible. Do we meet in the middle? We’re sure to have cranky moments—after all, I’m only allowed to carry two pairs of flip-flops! We’ll truly be tested by this adventure—bugs and all. But no matter what, this journey is sure to bond us together even more.
Travelogue India: Deciding to Go (Navdeep)
Deciding to Go: Sona and Navdeep Backpack Around the World!
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.
Travel has always been a part of my life and my parents have always made it a point to learn about local customs and cultures, while remaining true to their own identities. Growing up, we would go on adventures big and small: weekend camping trips, long summer holidays, and because of my dad’s work as a landscape architect, we lived all over the world. Sona and I don’t want to be fifty and remembering our one long honeymoon adventure. We want to have countless adventures!
I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site that Sona isn’t on friendly terms with bugs. Here is an example of what happened yesterday:
So we’re in bed and I’m in a deep sleep while Sona has the lamp on and is reading when apparently a moth flies in, attracted to the light. The book flies up into and lands on the floor with a loud slap. I still don’t stir, until Sona ever so gently clasps my t-shirt and shakes me vigorously.
“There’s a flying thing. Get rid of it,” I make out in between her screaming.
“What?” I say, opening my eyes.
“Get rid of it!”
“Get rid of what stupidass, there’s nothing here. Just turn the light off and it’ll go away.”
She decides my logic has a huge flaw and the only rational thing to do is to drag the blanket I was covered in out to the living room. Then switch the hallway light on to attract the moth back so I can kill it. And for her to lie awake on the sofa in the living-room (which only sleeps one).
To put it mildly, we are different travelers. And I am dreading having to deal with creepy-crawlies. Or rather dealing with Sona dealing with creepy-crawlies in India. But I am quite curious to see what Sona’s solution to moths being in our vicinity will be. Or crickets, mosquitos, ants, fireflies, wasps, and cockroaches. Maybe I’ll roast them and put them on a stick for her.
Travelogue India: Deciding to Go (Sona)
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. As we fell into the typical Gen-X/Y (which are we, anyway?) angst of low-paying permalance gigs without benefits (Navdeep as an adjunct English instructor and photographer, myself as a freelance writer), we asked ourselves why we couldn’t just drop everything and jet off for three months? What, really, were we leaving behind? As I went from one freelance gig to another, Navdeep brought up the idea again. Why not? He could take a semester off, lining up work for the spring in advance, and we could pitch travel stories along wave. After all, what’s the point of being a freelance writer if you can’t be—well, free?
Soon enough, we were researching itineraries and contemplating equipment. Backpacks. Travel guides. The tickets were booked. Navdeep had his camera, and he saw this trip as just the right opportunity for me to finally pick up mine. I’d long written screenplays, but was always too scared to just go ahead and shoot something. So we thought we’d start small, shooting short pieces on the road for our website, which would keep us sharp, writing-wise. Here on IshqInABackpack.com, you see the results of our labors.
We’re still in the midst of gearing up, and with the trip now just a month away, the tickets are booked, the website is launched, and we’re set to shoot (and eat) our way through India. After 30 years of waiting, my big adventure is finally about to begin. And though he may be my opposite in many ways, I’m glad I’ll get to share it with Navdeep. He’s sure to lead me into corners of this world that I’d never see otherwise. And I can’t wait to get started.
Neither of us are strangers to travel, but we are very different travelers. Navdeep can brush aside a cockroach from his food and continue eating. Sona flies into hysterics at any creepy-crawlies (real or imagined) within a ten mile radius. 
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