Thank You, India

So it’s come to this…I’ve quoted Alanis Morrissette. I am in my (hopefully) last moments in India, as I am booked for a flight to Thailand to connect to a flight to London. That would be fine in dandy in a perfect world.

Not so, India. Seems they may not honour my flight due to misinformation I received from their office in Bombay. This jeopardizes my trip to London and to home. It’s the perfect and fitting end to my trip in India, a land devoid of common sense, a land where priests try to rip you off. Enough of this, though. I am glad for every experience I have had here – I am stronger than I knew I was, have developed an enormous appreciation for patience, and have had, mostly, a great time.

What am I grateful for?

The parodoxes of life, so visibily displayed in India. The beauty/the grotesque. The honest/the deceitful. The scent of jasmine/the smell of shit and human cremation. It really is a unique place – it’s the Stone Age meets the cell phone age.

What will I miss?
Adventure. The anemic whistles of the rickshaw drivers moments before they ram into your Achilles Tendon. Banana Lassies. The beautiful Tibetan people. The Himalayas. The beautiful beaches of Kovalam. Meeting my peers from all over the world. Cows – everywhere. Elephants & monkeys. Lessons in impermanence & non-attachment. Bye bye camera, watch, sunglasses…

What will I not miss?
Haggling. For everything – including the rickshaw going to the hospital with a 105 fever, malaria and pneumonia. The squalor. The begging and the pollution.

What do I most want right now?
To go home. To see my dog and cat. My family. My niece and nephew who will be almost a year bigger. My friends who should be the same size. So yeah – what a trip. I’ll send a follow up from London – let you know how the culture shock is going.

PS: all this is providing I can leave this stinking cesspool. See? Paradox.

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