By TRICIA: Tour de Force

Where we've been and where we're going... For all of you out there poring over your maps of India, wondering where in the world we are, I can tell you we've been nearly everywhere, and where we haven't yet been, that is where we are going. Sounds like a riddle, doesn't it?
...feels that way, too.

I have only one month to travel with Julio in South India. India is huge. This is not enough time to see the south, but both heaven and Vishnu know we are doing our best, hence the Tour de Force of southern India.

So far, we've been to Mumbai, Goa, Hampi, Bangalore, Mysore, and Cochi. Tomorrow night we'll take a bus to Madurai and arrive in the morning (it's a new kind of sleeper bus seat: it sits upright and then... it reclines flat! we haven't yet tried this kind of seat so in some ways it's rather exciting, but in other ways--almost every other way-- it's really not. THE TRAIN IS MUCH BETTER. We like the train: no bumps, quiet, very few disruptive stops, polite conductors, optional breakfast/coffee/tea, more reliable schedule... the list goes on and on.) After a day in Madurai, we travel to Pondicherry for few days. Then we have to get ourselves to Chennai for a super-long train ride back to Goa. A few days on the beach, on to Pune (Osho! Osho! Osho!) and then back to Mumbai to put me on the plane. It's insane. Everyone we meet agrees that our schedule is crazy, too quick, but we' re doing quite well if I do say so myself. Our rule (to be broken over the next two days) is that between overnight transport, we have to sleep in a stationary place for at least one night.

We create scenes wherever we go, but of course we did this at school, in western MA, in LA, everywhere we've been together so it's really only new to the Indians. While in Hampi, we went to the barber for an adventure in getting Julio's fade just right. Language was a problem so I had to finish it up. It actually looked pretty good for someone who's never done a fade before... So now, not only is Julio a foot taller than everyone else and much more animated (it's dangerous to eat across the table from him because of the combination of food on his fingers and his gesticulations) but now he's nearly bald. And though I'm Indian-sized and fit quite nicely in rickshaws, on sleeper trains and on busses, I am blonde and white. (Yes, Tonja, I am white and am having my long-due "other" experience.) We dance in the streets, we return hellos with even brighter hellos, take pictures with all the kids who want to see themselves on the digital screen, stare back at the men who stare at me, lecture rickshaw drivers on morality and fight them when they try to cheat us, we drink a lot of (caffeinated) coffee and continue to laugh at the world, at frustrations, ourselves and think about when we're old we'll have these memories.

In some ways, we're lazy tourists, not too interested in seeing the sights, content to sit at a chai stand hanging out with the people who sit there every day with each other. This is what we do: we sit in coffee shops, talk, listen and watch... this is what we have always done, now we're doing it in India, it's perfect. We're almost past the point (I think) where Julio sits across from me and says, "Hi Tricia Loomis, in India," and we sit in amazement of our circumstances.

Some people have asked what happened at 17:15 on the 15th, the end of my honeymoon with India. It was a chain of events, really, culminating in a rickshaw driver interaction. We were arriving in Mysore and just needed a few minutes to get ourselves together (calling the hotel, figuring out where we were on the map) and of course, the welcoming committee was waiting for us and wouldn't let us go without trying to give out all kinds of conflicting information and only about 2 inches of personal space. We had just gotten off a hot, sticky bus ride where there were a group of men, smelling of drink, who were making comments about me and staring. For once, I was so happy not to understand what was being said. Before that, we had a challenging and frustrating time at the train station in Bangalore and walked through an underground walkway with inches of brownish stinky water (I hope?) in some sections (thank heaven for my Keens). It added up to a lot. Thankfully, I have--since then--become more capable at handling train reservations, pushing in line, phone calls and the run-arounds so it's not all on Julio to work this stuff out. We had a pretty successful transportation reservation day two days ago, with both of us taking parts of it.

My hour's up, lovelies. Namaste.

"Into the Woods to Find the Giant..."
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