We’ve returned back to the USA, but the emotions and impressions still linger.  I am sharing G’s last thoughts about the trip, because they reflect my own.

We arrived in Delhi after a thirty two hour trip, during the festival of lights, Diwali.  The owners of our guesthouse, Devna and Atul, immediately invited us to celebrate this wonderful holiday with their family.  The next evening in Jaipur, the director of an Artists Residence, whom we had never met, invited us to her home for dinner.  At our hotel in Pushkar, they managed to find me a real birthday cake and two bottles of beer, even though eggs and alcohol are forbidden in that “holy” city.  When we arrived in Udaipur, a city where we have visited many times, we were welcomed by our hotel owner/friend as long lost friends, with garlands of marigolds.  We ran out of evenings to accept all the dinner invitations from various friends.

This is the India I love-the people so open,welcoming and gracious.  There is nowhere that I have been like it.  And then there are the events-“The Greatest Show on Earth”. Diwali is the Festival of Lights and buildings are ablaze with lights, fireworks are exploding, and everyone is wearing their finest clothes, in this country of dazzling colors.  The Camel Fair in Pushkar, an annual extravaganza of camels, horses, and colorful tribesmen, was the impetus for this journey.  A few days later in Udaipur  it was Muharram, a major Muslim holiday commemorating the death of Hussein Ibn Ali, grandson of Mohammed; and celebrated with a procession of giant floats, late into the night. Then came the Full Moon Festival,Kartik Purnima.  In Palitana we sweated our way up thirty six hundred steps, a solid two and one half hours, to the great Jain temples-the pilgrims do it ninety-nine times in fifty days. We saw Asiatic lions in Sasan Gir National Park, were invited to a Maharajah’s palace in Wankaner, and crossed the caravan routes of Rabari nomads in Kutch.  In Goa it was the festival of St. Francis Xavier and in Kerala there was an arts Biennale, and the incredible Theyyam spirit rituals in local villages.  In India, the hits just keep on coming.

This was my seventh time here, and the country has become a part of me,- and in some small way I am a part of it.  The outrageous colors,the amazing history and culture, the fabulous food and above all the wonderful people I have met, have made this trip my best since my six month journey of discovery in 1976.  On the US Customs form we fill out upon return there is the question”Have you been in close proximity to livestock?”  In India that happens every day on every street.  But I still answer “no”, to avoid being quarantined.  If one of the questions was “Have you been in close proximity with the wonders of life?”, my answer would be an unequivocal “YES”.  For in India, truly, anything is possible.

NAMASTE