India Part 1 - Wedding Invites and Meeting Family

See...I took this picture of the Taj Majal!

It's been about two weeks since I've been back from my travels to India. Suffice it to say, it was an once-in-a-lifetime experience for me that I will never forget. Actually I can't forget because I have pictures, outfits and a bunch of bangles to prove that I was there.

Now I started writing this post a day ago, but realized that one post will not encompass what I wanted to convey about this trip. So I’ve decided to make this a serial. There is so much I want to convey aside from describing places, people, and events, I want to talk about travel in general and other insights.  

This all started with an invite to a wedding. A's boss and founder of the start-up he works for decided to get married in India (He's Indian). A has known about this since the summer of last year but as far as he was concerned, his boss would be away from work. Or so he thought. His boss, let's call him P, specifically requested that A attend the wedding. A wasn't sure if he could go, but hell...how do you say no to going to India? At first he thought he'd go alone. Then he asked me if I'd accompany him. Apparently I couldn't say no to India either, after some deliberation I said yes. While I was trying to make up my mind, his son also agreed to go to India.

This set into motion various events that was not completely related to travel, because I hadn't been formally introduced to his kids at this point. I’m still a mystery to his daughter. His ex-wife just recently discovered my existence because of a silly, somewhat childish circumstance that required A to reveal to her that he was dating and that he was dating me for some time. He had meant to have a meaningful talk to her about it, but the timing was never right. And for the record, the circumstance that prompted all of this wasn’t truly horrible or even eye-opening, just something that looked like a scene from a bad tv sitcom from the 70's.

Anyway, so I had to meet his son, see if we all go along before A was comfortable taking the both of us. We met for dinner over bowls of Pho and rice plates as we discussed our plan to see if this was doable. By the end of the evening, we all agreed that this could all work.

We only had about a month and a half to prep for this trip, during the holiday season. Any enthusiasm I had for the Christmas and New Year holiday was tempered by the need to get my passport renewed, to get my immunization shots in order and researching the shit out of what to expect when traveling to India.

While most of it was helpful, the research made me quite fearful of the trip. Don't drink the water. Don't give money to beggars, it's a crime syndicate. India will overwhelm you and steal your money and your dignity. There were heeded warnings for woman traveling to India alone. Unfortunately, it basically said that men will stare at you in a not friendly way, so try not to stand out too much, lest men will think you’re a whore. As you can imagine, I wasn't sure how to take this all in, but it was making me anxious. So much so, that by the time I boarded the plane at SFO, I felt physically sick.  It didn’t help that hours before we literally boarded that plane, A met my mother and I met his ex-wife in person. 

Maybe the 20-ish hours on the plane did something to my brain, because all that anxiety disappeared, replaced by a sudden familiarity once when we landed at New Delhi. A commented that it didn't feel like he was in India, until we stepped out of the airport terminal and became inundated with airport pick-up traffic. It was crowded, noisy, full of people, the air was humid and thick with pollution. To me it felt like I've experience this before. Because it felt just like when I traveled to the Philippines, some years ago. Now I know that India isn't anything like the Philippines, yet throughout the trip I couldn't help but compare the two countries. But somehow, just that past experience made me more at ease being in India than any of the travel research I did in the states.

Our adventure was just beginning...

From Urbanite to Road Warrior

It's been about 5 months since I've moved and I was anticipating hating the change.  

I lived in an urban, often "hoodish" neighborhoods in Oakland, for the past 10 years, with the exception of when I was living with M where we lived in a  house situated in a quiet suburban neighborhood surrounded by freeways.  In all my time in Oakland, I was a public transit commuter, via BART or bus, usually accompanied by a walk and work was never more than 20-30 minutes away from home. When I moved to my first apartment since my separation, I was blessed with amenities close by on foot.  Eventually, my walking radius expanded to half a mile, then 2 miles, and it became part of my weekend routine. After moving from that house in the suburbs, I ended up in an apartment a block from a BART station. There my walking world expanded to 3 to 6 miles, eventually adding walking to work as part of my routine.  I prided on how I knew those neighborhoods so intimately.

So I was a bit surprised that my transition to living in a commute town wasn't more tumultuous.  Oh for 2 weeks, I was commuting from here to Oakland for work, and that commute entailed driving on I-80, which can be brutal.  But my current commute to Walnut Creek feels as routine as those 6 mile walks I would do twice a week at my last place.  I've added more miles to my car in the last 5 months, than in the last 7 years.  In Oakland I dreaded driving around town, unless I absolutely needed to; Now I'm completely depended on my car just to get groceries.  I drive everywhere, though I do walk downtown for the farmer's market on Saturdays on occasion.  I've even explored places beyond my home, and loved it.  I've come to appreciated the beauty of my daily commute, passing refineries, marshes, bridges, green hills and waterways.

Gone is the constant reminder that there are people around me, and that there are people always angling for parking.  The white noise of cars on freeways or trains breaking into the station or buses beeping is also absent.  Missing are conversations being yelled at across the street, and the constant boom from the base coming from crap audio systems.  Correction, good audio systems but muffled through their heavily modified frames of a car.  I hear crickets.  I hear my next door neighbors, or children playing on the streets.  There are dogs barking outside.  Actually there were dogs in the urban setting; I guess that never changes.  I sometimes hear gun shots, but it's like a lingering aftertaste here, not in your face reminder that I live in a scary neighborhood.  I guess the most egregious thing I have to deal with is cars using the hill I live on as a ramp to speed up to 80mph.  

I posit that the Central Valley girl in me, the one I thought I replaced with the hip urbanite sophisticated woman, never left me.  Because this town reminds me of my hometown, except it's by the water, and it's as suburban as it gets here in the Bay Area.  Initially, I was a bit afraid to let go of that urbanite persona.  But I had to let it go, this is not Oakland.

Don't get me wrong.  I miss Oakland.  I  miss living closer to my friends who live in SF and I miss living so close to A.  I miss the action sometimes, the hustle and bustle, the grittiness, the fuck you attitude that came with being San Francisco's pot smoking craft beer drinking flunky cousin.  

I don't miss how Oakland is changing into a haven for rich hipsters who can't afford Silicon Valley and San Francisco.  Nor do I miss what is becoming a bland representation of the Oakland I once knew.  Maybe that's what I'm missing, the Oakland that is still in my head, the one I fell in love with, the one with all the interesting people in it, who are now gone or struggling to hang on.