"The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more than your head. There's nowhere else in the world where that's quite true." - Gregory David Roberts

This is not traveling. I'm on holiday. Goa is a holiday- it is a release from whatever it is you need to free yourself from. A release from the travels of India: a beautiful coastline full of sunbeds and palm trees, a release from the rumblings in your stomach: menus full of western, eastern and even Indian cuisine, a release from that pain in your neck or gut in your abdominal: massages and yoga to the rescue!!

I'm not going to lie - it feels like I'm cheating. If feels a little too easy in Goa. Of course I went to the Mexican restaurant 2X, I've been craving it since LA. It also means a 40 Rupee samosa when you can find it (not many tourists want street food) knowing you can get them on the train for 5 rupees each (and for 2X as much grease!). I also won't be lying when I say I love it here. Mango juice in pop glasses, live music almost every night, fireworks, cows wandering the beaches, bamboo huts and fresh seafood daily. Who wouldn't want to stay longer, I ask myself as my 6 month visa runs out next week. After talking to a few people about my experiences in the north, I fear I might have frightened them away from the subcontinent forever. This is a grave mistake!!

My 2 month stint in Nepal, separating and soothing my 2 different experiences in India, gave me the break I needed to feel my way through India, instead of think my way. "Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you let yourself win." And so I did. Or maybe I was now without expectations. Being the country most heavily looked forward to has it's burdens and maybe I was looking for the wrong things. By far the most rewarding and challenging country, it has stolen a special place in my heart. Not that I haven't been reserving a spot for it. Anticipating this wondrous and spicy land for years, it was difficult at first. I was trying hard to create that magic that, of course, only arrives after hope is abandoned.

And so I sit here, sipping my espresso, sighing that sigh only a tourist village can provide knowing that the "real" India is a 5 minutes walk where tomorrow I will catch 2 buses to Anjuna for the Wed market. A 2 hr journey, I know, I took it from the train station yesterday in a moment where I thanked at least 8 ppl for their kindness before collapsing off the bus. You see, I fainted on the bus yesterday night. Packed in like sardines, standing, there was no need to hold on to the bars because there was no room to fall. Or so I thought. Sweating a waterfall I'd never sweat in my life, I thought it was strange even if we were that packed, it wasn't that warm. The last thing I remember before the man asked, "My friend?! My dear Friend?! Are you OK Madam??" was me telling him, "I'm very sorry sir, I think I'm going to faint" and then falling to his knees. With more compassion than I've ever felt from a group of people; a group of people that 20 minutes before were so concerned with their standing room (kicking, shoving, shouting and scratching) had turned their concern to a stranger. I was offered a bottle of water, a woman to hold my bags, a man to guard my backpack--taken off my shoulders by another man, an elderly woman to offer me her entire frame to lean upon and a man, when noticing the younger man taking advantage of my closed eyes and trying to feel for my sides, shoved so violently the molester from the moving bus and offered me his seat. This is the India I've fallen in love with. This is the India I was hoping for.

I'm reading a memoir of a man who escaped an Australian prison and fled to Bombay (Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts). In a passage I read yesterday, a group of mafia dons were describing suffering and how it is impossible to know happiness without it. They are each others equals and opposites. It made me think, in the last 5 years, I've gone from suffering the most I have in my short life....to being the happiest. This makes me excited for the future and all of the unimaginable possibilities it possesses. It also elates me that it is in India, where I feel I have begun to perfect my skills for enjoying the simple beauty of the present.

Enough now! See what this place has done to me?! Off to Thailand now to see what other adventures life wants to throw at me...well food really. I'm all about the food.

Happy 2009, wishing you all
Love and Laughter;
Health and Happiness