Tag Archives: travelogue 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.
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.
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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