In June, I decided to buy a ticket to India. I spent two weeks scrambling for visas and shots and all that, and then went. I was there for three months and traveled around the country pretty extensively. It was (as I’m sure you can guess) increadably amazing. I miss it a lot. Sometimes, when I fall asleep, I start wishing I was laying on a damp thin foam mattress in some two-dollar hotel somewhere, or hearing the constant sounding horns from the road as I fly along at breakneck speeds on some bumpy bus in the middle of the night. Or that I’m sleeping under the stars on a rooftop, ducking my head down when I get up so that everyone in the village doesn’t wonder who the heck this white girl is and what she’s doing there. Or I’m wrapped up in a dirty shawl in my second-class sleeper berth, listening to the rhythm of the tracks and waking occassionally to the robotic drone of “chai coffee chai coffee”.
Anyway, here is my weblog for the trip. I’m thinking of trying to write some travel articles based on my experiences, so if anything stands out, I’d love to know.
Hehehe…I dropped my camera in the Ganges in Varanasi. I’ve got a bunch of bad digital camera pics and a couple rolls of film I can’t afford to develop yet. I’ll let you all know if I get any of these online.
Wow. Three months. I was there 9 years ago (for about one month, only). Fascinating place. Gotta dig out that travelogue I wrote about it…
And if anyone’s interested, a small collection of photos are online. I’m in the process of digitizing my slides, but it’s a loooong and sloooow project.
Wow. I’ve just read the whole blog, and it was really cool. I’m afraid my brain is fried from reading student papers at the moment, so I don’t have any insights about which bits might be publishable, but thanks for sharing
Heh! It took me a minute to figure out what those ‘waterballs’ were! Slurp!!
A really interesting read. You should’ve posted that you were coming to Bombay - there’s 3 of us here (or very nearby) who would have happily shown you around a bit. Anyways…
LIke I’ve posted on several earlier occasions, the name change hasn’t been 100% pervasive. Those who always called the city Bombay - like me - continue to do so, those who called it Bumbai continue to do so, and those who called it Mumbai also continue to do so.
Newspapers named Bombay so-and-so are still called Bombay so-and-so. The last time I booked an international flight into India (maybe 3 years ago), the ticket had Bombay printed on it (maybe that’s changed by now though - those bought from here do have Mumbai printed).
Whatever issues I had with the name change process have been forgotten over the years - I’ll call the city Mumbai when I have to, which is more or less never
