This is the final blog post

Mom requested I put up this photo again, so people don't have to scroll down to prior entries to see it.

(May 15th, 2009)

Well, we've come to the end. All the pictures are posted, all the events summarized, and tomorrow morning is my last anti-malarial pill. I want to remember every minute of India, though of course that's not going to happen because my memory can be terrible and awfully selective. I guess at some point I'll just have to go back; there certainly is a lot more to see. I wasn't even finished with the top 3rd of the country.

When I was growing up, my life goal was to get published. Then I got published. So I said, "I'm going to go meet the Dalai Lama." And I went and met the Dalai Lama. Now people are asking me, "What's next?" I'd like to be a rabbi; it's a suitably crazy and far-fetched idea that doesn't seem like it suits my lifestyle, but I don't think putting my budding writing career on hold for six years of rabbinical school is really the best thing to do right now. On the other hand, for this goal, I don't feel a need to rush. "I'd like, possibly, to have rabbinic ordination before I die. Maybe. If I get around to it. Not for any particular reason; it's just something I want to do." Check back on that in 20 years.

Back to the present: India has opened up a world of travel for me. Before India I was reluctant to travel, having been burned multiple times by getting sick while abroad, and I was positively terrified of going to India when the moment came to leave the apartment. In the end, my stomach was fine on my own food, and good enough on Indian food, and my health didn't hold me back from anything I wanted to do while I was there. I definitely want to travel more, and the more exotic the better.

Where to next? I've wanted to go to Tibet for awhile, which is partially why I went to India (to meet the Tibetan exile community), but China keeps closing the country to foreigners, or at least saying it's open and then denying most foreigners visas to travel to Tibet. Plus you actually have to go all the way to Beijing to apply for the visa, and wait for it to be approved. But hey, I got published and I met the Dalai Lama. Nothing's impossible. Just at the moment, not probable. There are plenty of other places to go that are similarly insane but involve less Chinese bureaucracy. Oh, and I have to make some money to pay for the trip. Did I leave that out? That sounds crucial.

My answer is that I have no idea where I want to go next, but the question isn't pressing. For the moment, I just have India, and that's enough.

Photos from Delhi

I met with my editor for the Darcys and the Bingleys series yesterday and she feels I can write off my India trip as "research." I think it's worth trying, at least the plane ticket and the cost of the tour. It was actually a research trip, in that I visited particular sites because of scenes I had written or intend to write. Whether I can pull it off remains to be seen.

At the end of my trip I returned to Delhi, and saw the Red Fort (another Mughal Red Fort built around the same time as the others), Gandhi's cremation site (he has no grave), India Gate, and some government buildings like Parliament and the President's house that I couldn't go in because they were active. That was the end of my tour, though I could have tacked things on, but I was running low on cash and it was 113 degrees or so by noon, so next time I'm in Delhi, I'll have more to see.

Up next: Conclusion of my India blog.

Red Fort at Delhi

New Delhi

General Photography from the Road