So, um, change of plans...

Josh and I are going to India.

My view: great decisions are often made impulsively.  You can never recapture a moment, or a day, or a month, of your life.  You never feel the same one moment as you do another.  When you feel like doing something, that feeling is something to take advantage of as you are experiencing it.  When you have an idea that you think is a good one, you had better go through with it.  You can never know in any empirical sense that a decision is the right decision, or the correct decision-- all we can do is believe that a decision is a good one, perhaps the best available to us at that moment... but even that 'best available' talk is murky water.  There is no one right way to live-- there are many good ways to live.

One can’t live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.  Joseph Conrad said that.  I would like to believe that there is more to life than trying to be as safe as possible at all times.  I believe that certain precautions are in order, but safety must be balanced with experiences of value.  To live richly is not always the exact same path as to live safely.  I strive to live richly.  I strive to learn as much as I can, and to experience as much as I can, and to grow...  I am not the poker player who rigorously calculates the odds, counts the cards, seeps the blood of stress from every anxious pore, puts in modestly when probability strikes, but far more often, folds quickly and quietly and hordes and hopes and waits for another chance...  What is the point of fighting so hard to win if it means you don't even enjoy the process?  When I play, I throw my weight around-- I bet high, I bluff, I have a good time, and at the end, sometimes I win, and sometimes I lose, and it doesn't matter, either way.

I am not thinking of this moment as the end of a bike trip.  I am thinking of this as the continuation of my year off from school, my year to explore, to learn as I want to learn, to live independently, and to experience life from an angle I have never experienced it before.  This sudden change of plans is not an act of rebellion, or a confused attempt to prove myself, or some misplaced expression of individuality.  The bike trip was not too tame-- perhaps in many ways it was too wild.  The bike trip meant hours on the saddle with cars flying by feet away.  No matter how good I am at biking, or how careful most people are at driving, it meant a lot of danger.  It meant trespassing many nights, an activity I have a bad record with and don't enjoy.  The bike trip also meant staying away from home until summer, and having only the summer to spend time with family and friends, to work, and to pursue the more leisurely activities that I am forced to miss out on, whether I am biking or trekking India.  It meant new experiences, sure, but it meant new experiences within the framework of an American culture that is very homogenized-- I have not felt that I have been among people with significantly different ways of life than those I have been in contact with back home.

I know India probably sounds pretty arbitrary.  I look at India as the first of many countries/areas in the world that I would like to visit.  This little kick of bicycle adventuring has helped me see that travel is important to me; attempting to understanding other people, putting other people on my personal map, adding them to my world-consciousness, is important to me.  I want to travel to a lot of different parts of the world.  Right now, I am limited.  I don't have a whole lot of money, or time, right now, but I want to get outside of the United States and experience something new.  I have come to believe that travel is a lot more accessible than I thought.  And I think it is worth it. The life I have been living for the last month has been much more vibrant, more intense, more rich, than anything I have experienced before.  Yet, I think, it was only a taste of what is possible.  There is a lot of newness out there, a lot to see, and marvel at, and be changed by.  I could stay in the United States, and add to my understanding of America and Americans-- or I could leave, and travel to someplace drastically different, and construct more of a world vision-- a more wholistic understanding of this globalized, interconnected, yet completely stratified planet.

Why India, in particular:  Everyone I have spoken to who has gone to India has told me that India is a seething mass of life to every extreme.  It is all forms of life, living interconnectedly, peacefully, yet in a frenetic, dirty, wild and earthy environment.  One person described the feeling of stepping into the streets the first time as being akin to having buckets of ice thrown repeatedly at one's face.  It sounds like another world-- like a way of living that couldn't possibly exist on my planet.  Yet, just around on the other side of the globe, there it is.  And it has been there my whole life.  All, what, 1.2 billion, whatever the number is, living out their lives in this environment and me, here in America, ‘living the dream,' receiving 'education,' blind, ignorant.  The book Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, first put India on my map, showed me Mumbai as a city of intense beauty and love and life, and I was enthralled.  That book was poetic, and it wasn't fiction.  Since I have come to the realization that the world is within my reach right now-- that my money is sufficient, and my fear unnecessary and prohibitive--I have wanted to see and experience that which I have only read about.  I think that this is possible.  I think that this is what I should do.

So…  Josh and I go to India.  This is why Josh sold his bike.  Mine is on the market as well, but it is overpriced, because I got a little excited when Josh’s went so quickly and decided to ask for $120 more than I paid for it.   We will see how well that works out for me.

We have appointments tomorrow to turn in the paperwork necessary to get visas.  Once we have those in our possession, we will buy tickets.  We hope to leave sometime in early December.  We hope to stay in India for several months.

All of those big paragraphs above are excerpted from an email I wrote to my mother yesterday explaining why I am doing this.  She thought I should put them up on the blog, so here they are.

If anyone has any thoughts about the projected trip to India, please comment.  We are open for advice, criticism, and ideas for what to do and see in India.  We are planning on flying into Delhi, traveling around northern India for a while, then going down to Mumbai.  Anybody know anyone in India?

Excitement!  We are doing it.  Abrupt?  Certainly.  Premature?  In relation to what?  Spur of the moment?  Impulsive?  Definitely.  But why not?  Really?  Why not act impulsively now and then?  Must we always wait, hold ourselves back, police and regulate our interests and desires?  Does every decision need to be run past the committee, and the subcommittee, and then sent to the director for approval? 

No, I think not. 

Sometimes, you just have to go to India.

-Chance