Coming Home

Some final thoughts as we are on the final leg of our journey.

Adventures are fun. But home is good, too. The Teenlet asserted earlier in this trip that he is the most Hobbit-like of the four of us. But I would say that I am very much like a Hobbit, for some of them went on adventures and returned home joyfully to their creature comforts. That is how I feel... glad I went, but done with adventures - until next time.

I said at the beginning of this blog that I expected to see beauty and tragedy interwoven so that they are almost indistinguishable.  That was true. We saw the depths of human poverty, but with a community that is always looking out for each other, and helping each other. We saw the most beautiful building in the world, built as a monument to despair and loss. We saw human dignity that was resilient to the hardest conditions, and the stagnancy that is caused by lack of hope. We saw the beauty of religious expression, and how religion can become the oppressor. We saw how a corrupt and completely hands off government leaves its people in chaos and poverty, but also how a government that drives too much turns its people into little more than slaves (thinking of some of the Mughal kings, there).

Woman, employed to sweep the palace.

Tent slum, along the railway in Gujurat

But I was also very surprised by India. I'm not really sure how to explain that, except to say that the pictures I've had in my mind my whole life were both right and wrong. There were times it was easy to forget that we were not in the United States, and times we felt very out of place. I did not like being the object of so many stares (especially from the men), and it was comforting to have my dad and brother right there with me. In southern Gujurat, I actually felt animosity towards me for being a western female. But I only felt threatened once (and that situation - the aggressive hawkers in Jaipur- was overwhelming for everyone in our party).

Note to self and anyone else foolish enough to try it: 57 hours of straight travel is a long time. Between the 14 hour train ride, 16 hours sitting in the Delhi airport, 15 hours from Delhi to Newark, 6 hours in the Newark airport, and 6 more hours from Newark to Seattle, we are done with all forms of transportation. The Teenlet proved himself, once again, to be a super traveler.