Obama!

Our guide picks us up at our hotel and begins the slow, measured, deliberate walk that we've become accustomed to.  We fall in single fall and ignore the beeping, combustion-engined banshees blowing by, incredibly close.  (Ed. Note: Sorry for the incredible number of times I'm using the word "incredible").  We stroll down to a museum which the guide informs us is closed because of a visit by the President of the United States and because it's Republic Day in India, both well-established facts that should not have caught anyone by surprise.  We see a temple and then learn that everything is closed because of these events.  We are steered toward a shop then a visit to another shop that is owned by a member of the guide's family.  We wonder why the tour wasn't adjusted slightly to account for this stuff.

We are boondoggled.  Kind of the main goal at this point is not to get killed, injured, sick, or lost.  India is kicking my ass.  Everything seems to be fraying and coming apart at the seams.

It's a lovely day and I'm sitting in the usual quiet interior courtyard of the hotel, in the sun.  I am not dead, hurt, infected, or vanished.  Yesterday we had greedily consumed the bottled water in our room's minibar so when we got back to the hotel I asked the front desk to replenish the supply, for which they charged me extra to deliver to the room.  I have long since quit trying to explain the irrationality of such actions, a pile driving daily occurrence.  

It is a good day.

When I was in college I was a prolific letter writer.  I wrote most people under the table.  My nickname was The Howitzer because I just kept blasting away.  Eventually, I meant a friend of Massachusetts Dave who bested me in volume - I couldn't keep up because he really wasn't that  interesting to communicate with.  I called him my Vietnam.  I got bogged down in a intractable conflict - I couldn't envision a way out so I simply gave up.

I would say that India is my Vietnam except that I want to go to Vietnam, too.

I took a couple of trips with Little Westside Jonny - one to pre-war Syria and one way, way back in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador - that pushed me past my comfort level.  I have to put India in that category.  A great, frustrating, intense, amazing wonder of a trip.  I'll not be the same but getting the dross burned off has caused me some pain.

It is a good day.