It's On

Today we begin our journey toward and ultimately into the Himalayas....and none too soon. The heat for sure is on but the excitement of the trip is on even more. The only other time I visited India was in 1994-5. Over the following three or four years, a day literally did not pass without some thought or memory of India passing in my mind. I'm not sure why I feel so at home here. Sure....it costs a fraction of what it costs to live in the West but so do many other developing countries. Now that I'm back, I see that there is something in the way the people interact, the way they make their lives that inspires me. At first, I likened life here to the fabled times of New York City; times of the Bowrey Boys and fast talking hustlers in Times Square. Now, I think it goes deeper in the human experience and farther back in time. Being here is more like being in a Charles Dickens novel. For the vast majority of the populace, life is hard. There are over a billion people here and the cities are full of characters and hustlers and saintly older folks who have seen more weird things than a CIA agent but can still stay circumspect and chuckle at misfortune that would send most Americans to the liquor cabinet or worse.

Today we take the train to Haridwar, one of the holiest places in Hinduism. There, the sacred river Ganges emerges from the mountains to begin its long flow over the plains to the Bay of Bengal. We'll follow the river north and west to the "Cow's Mouth", the glacier that is its source high in the Himalaya. I'm sure the way will be populated by folk who'll be sure to teach us a thing or two about what it is to be human.