I've been pretty dumb lately.

Generally, I'm not verbally verbose anyway, but intense experiences, new adventures, particularly emotive moments, awe-inspiring visions, these things have a certain power. They cause immediate sensory overload and it takes me quite a bit of time to process everything and recuperate. I need to seep. In the meantime, I'm often dumbstruck. It was not unusual for me to be quiet in India.
My personal muteness was in direct contrast to everything else around me. Bright sari colors draped across women's bodies. Rickshaws, trucks, and cars sped and swerved through every centimeter of street. Dogs, cows, and pigs rooted along sidewalks. Vendors called from every corner, pleading for your attention and business. Dust drifted and blew, haze settled across each vista. Horns honked constantly, politely notifying everyone and everything to move or be struck. Hungry children tapped on windows and pulled on shirttails, motioning a request for food or money with their hands at their mouths. Lights shone. Hues soaked. Sounds resonated. There were peaceful moments a plenty, too. Below the beauty of the Taj Mahal with wide eyes. Among the ruins behind Fatehpur Sikri. On the rocking bunk of a sleeper train crossing the Indian plains.

People, history, culture, art, life, religion, etc. These things are really big and small and old and new and ungeneralizable. Nothing I write will capture what India is if that's what you're hoping to read. Nor can one ever attain that understanding over a visit of less than two weeks, however well planned and executed those weeks are (THANKS BRIAN, for the gazillionth time...the future Mr. Rani Mukherjee did an amazing job as trip coach/team leader), nor do I think you would want to try. So we'll take this slowly, piecemeal style.

Additionally, in the week since I've been back I've either been teaching or totally zonked out in my apartment. Maybe it's exhaustion, maybe it's pneumonia finally catching up to me, maybe it's that nine days with Team India was not enough.
Needless to say, it's been kind of strange. A week has gone by and as immediate as the adventure still feels, the distinct oppositeness of everything I've recently experienced also makes it all seem very far away or perhaps just a figment of my overzealous imagination.



So we'll start things off simply with the general agenda of the leg of the trip I was present for, into which, hopefully, I will delve as time goes on. You have to frame a house first, anyway. Please feel free to ask questions or share comments, as usual. And corrections are welcome, Team members. It was a bit of a whirlwind.

December 28th: Arrive 5:30pm at Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, India. Holiday greetings, fine rooftop dinner, sleep in Hotel Relax.

December 29th: Morning train ride to Agra. Brunch. Agra Fort. Taj Mahal. Rooftop Dinner.

December 30th: Explore Fahetepur Sikri and other parts of Agra town. Train ride back to Delhi in the evening.

December 31st: Red Fort. Jama Masjid Mosque. Humayun's Tomb. Dehlihad Market. Catch the evening train to be ridden overnight across the Gangetic plains to Durgapur.

January 1st: Conclusion of train ride. Three hour taxi from train station in Durgapur to Brian's current home, the village of Katna in Murshidabad, West Bengal. Stop by Jagriti Public School. Meet teachers and see the beautiful, small campus. Settle in to our great accommodations for the evening. Head into nearby town to lunch at Brian's regular afternoon eating establishment, purchase sweets for the teachers at school, and buy vegetables to make dinner at Brian's apartment. Stop back at school. Eat sweets. Play cricket till sunset. Walk home. Music. Dinner. Music. I obviously enjoyed this part of the trip in a special way. I'm not even at the delving stage yet.

January 2nd: Visit the students, see the schoolyard in action. Barber in town. “Computer” with Class 4 back at school. Lunch. Walk into Village Katna. Train to Kolkata. Settle into Brian's former flat.

January 3rd: Visit Victoria Memorial and the cultural/arts neighborhood. Visit the young people at Loreto School, where Brian worked in 2005, in the evening. Explore New Market. Enjoy another dinner on another rooftop. Go to Hindi movie “Welcome”.

January 4th: Kali Temple. Dakshewar and Belur Math. Boat ride on the Ganges to Belur. Ramakrishna. Late lunch at the Mitras'.

January 5th: Easy morning. One more visit to Loreto after lunch. Catch overnight train back to Delhi.

January 6th: Back in Delhi. Lunch at the Golden Cafe in the neighborhood of Hotel Relax. Taxi to airport. Farewell.

Just before departing from Okinawa I was finally able to get ahold of an old friend who had been in Europe for the past month. We had a great dinner at the airport before my flight to Tokyo. She's a really wonderful young woman, stuck between three cultures, which makes life that much more confusing. It was great to mull over the complications and simple bits of life with her again. Sometimes good conversation and a smile can lighten the emotional loads life doles out, even if it doesn't particularly make it easier.

Between the evening of Saturday December 22nd and the morning of Friday, December 28th (and most of January 7th during a layover), I spent my time exploring the Greater Tokyo Area, the largest metropolitan area in the world with a population exceeding 35 million people. Days were filled with the buzzing, looping mazes of the train and subway system shooting my friends and I from one borough to the next, each with its own personality, temples, restaurants, and shopping destinations. Daylight glittered on hoards of my-sized people moving from this place to the next amid shiny tall buildings and old cedar tori. Evenings were ablaze with thousands of tiny colored lights illuminating the holiday season. The first two nights were spent at Ayumu's family home in Chiba, the second at Atsumi's family home in Saitama, and the final two were spent in the country home (chickens, rabbits, and all) of Rika, just outside of Narita in Tako. Christmas Eve was highlighted with a German choir caroling in the ritzy Roppongi Hills neighborhood and Christmas Day concluded with a home-cooked meal including a full chicken and fixings in addition to roll-it-yourself-sushi and a phone call from home. The whole experience was an impressive mixture of family (lots of mothers, fathers, and grandmothers), friends (new and old), and the electrically throbbing heart of Japan, the Eastern cultural hub, steel, concrete, neon, and koi pond, Tokyo.



More Tokyo photos here!

On the morning of Friday, December 28th, I departed for India, where I remained until the night of January 6th. I need to wait a few more days to decompress, to let the events and images and everything wash through me a bit more, to miss the warm, red dirt of Katna under my fingernails, the constant honking of Agra's rickshaw horns, the towering architectural beauty of the Mughal Empire, the pleading faces of children begging for money, the energy of young, brightly uniformed students, and the company of my travel companions before I can say much of anything. But it will come soon. Many pictures, too.