Goodbye, India.

Dear India,

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to:
-Get pissed on by Sampson the Rat
-Find my temple
-Eat delicious, copious food on the Camel Safari
-Experience the Mughal restaurant in Mumbai
-Down the saffron lassis in Jodhpur
-Serve as a target for that woman's puke on the bus
-Get attacked by that cow and it's curious tongue, in Rishikesh, while being lain on by Abi Sheik
-Come to a better understanding of my relationship with Josh
-Find a more assertive, self-rewarding relationship between myself and the world
-Read.
-Projectile spray shit all over the walls, toilet, and floor of the bathroom of our ashram in Rishikesh, unable to sit down in time because I was busy vomitting in the bucket full of used toilet paper (napkins)
-Fill myself up with chai
- Learn some tasty cooking
-Acquire a perspective from which to view the U.S., the bicycle trip, and my life in the PNW as so much more gifted, more beautiful, more valuable, than I had ever before managed to understand

Also , thank you for:
-not hurting me significantly, besides depriving me from cardiovascular exercise and bombarding me with copious amounts of refined carbohydrates, fried oil, bacteria, and parasites.
-remaining, despite my sometimes determined animosity, exactly who you are, and forcing me to come to terms with that-- and then throwing me the occasional mind-blowing bone-- the perfect sunset, the right rock to climb, the cool air in my temple, the view from Triund-- that would make all my doubts fall away, leaving me with something pristine, true, and beautiful, a gift I will never forget.
-the thali.  The concept of the thali, India, is one of your crowning culinary achievements-- at least on the cafeteria end of things.  All you can eat curry, dhal, sabji, rice, chapattis, less than a dollar, sometimes as little as 25 cents...  I ate lunch an hour ago and I am already slavering.  Well done. 
-the Dosa.  Look it up, cook it up.  Breakfast of champions.
-introducing me to yoga.  Aspects of yoga will play a part in my life from now on, I think.
-accepting the donation of my wallet.  I know you are into surprises-- I have been experiencing this aspect of your quirky nature ever since the first hour we hit Delhi-- but I must say, that whole wallet thing... I didn't even see it coming.  But you made it easy for me.  You just collected, all of a sudden, that night on the bus to Mumbai.  I suppose you think of it as a sort of tax-- rich-person tax, perhaps.  Well, India, spend it well.  I might not have.
-always changing the menu-- in restaurants, on the road, in the cities, the people, and the experiences, always shuffling things up, always dishing out something  new.  Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
-giving me a healthy respect for healthy food, and the places where it is available-- places which are very seldom found in India. 
-Teaching me not to take good health for granted.  This was not just through seeing all the unhealthy, bodily mangled people making their lives on the street, but also in myself...  This India trip may have been the least healthy 96 consecutive days in my life, as my weak, pampered immune system has had to do battle with bacteria, parasites, and multiple colds, all while running on poor nutrition and little exercise. 
-And, in the absence of more time, Everything Else.

Thanks India. 

I will miss you.

Love,
Chance