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!