jonathan/ferguson

i just dropped emily at the airport and i can’t believe my sisters have now come and gone. we looked forward to this experience for nearly a year and it happened so quickly. were it not for the suitcases of jewelry, scarfs, wooden, stuffed, and stone elephants, spices, cashews, and khadi products i hauled up and down 5 flights of stairs, i may not have believed it really ever happened.

i estimate we covered nearly 8000 km by train, car, and plane in 3 weeks time. and throw in a couple thousand more for travel by auto, boat, camel, and foot in and around each place we stopped. we bulldozed through delhi on our way to rajasthan covering everything in a couple of days. and that includes hours - HOURS - of negotiating over every rupee. i am scarred from all the shopping.

we only picked up speed when the slowest express train ever finally rolled into jaisalmer. despite our rotating sickness we worked our way back to delhi in a week’s time. rested for a day (and by rested i mean checked myself into a hospital for an iv rehydrating, seriously), then caught the 6:15am train the next morning to see the taj. one more day back in delhi for last minute purchases, dinner at qba, and dessert at the imperial, and stefanie was off to charlotte via munich via chicago and emily and i were off to cochin via hyderabad.

it was in kerala that we recovered. and emily and i wished stefanie were there to enjoy it with us. everyone who tears through rajasthan on overnight trains in their first experience overseas deserves a week of recovery in ayurvedic kerala. it was literally paradise. from the backwaters to the beaches. miles of coconut and banana trees. fresh seafood and infinity pools. the leela.

we met beautiful people. took in the ocean on hidden beaches around kovalam. had our freshly caught fish, crab and prawns cooked in front of us. traveled to kanyakumari, the absolute southern tip of india where the arabian sea meets the bay of bengal meets the indian ocean. all breathtaking. and we tanned faster than either of us ever had before. while the east lathers up on whitening cream, the west continues to obsess over golden brown. a hilarious irony i think of all the time here.

there are so many stories. most happening faster than we could write them down. that’s the problem with india. the sensory overload is too much to capture. it happens too fast to record. the scene is always changing. even a court reporter would have trouble shorthanding a day on the move here. but we’ve captured what we could visually. and i’ll post that now.

so my place is empty. no suitcases. no people. no goods. i realize i bought nothing over the past 3 weeks. i’ve gone from busy to bored. we’ve been sharing every space. my single room apartment. our single hotel rooms. our autos and our taxis. our viruses. our experiences. now i’m sitting here in dead silence wondering what to do next. but i guess since emily and i stayed up all night, i need to catch at least 2 hours sleep before my friend from new york arrives. he’s here for the weekend. call me crazy! but i say, keep ‘em coming!