paige.yelvington.com

Saturday, January 31, 2009

5:30-8:00 p.m.

Morris Museum of Art
1 Tenth Street
Augusta, GA 30901

Join the members of the Teen Advisory Council for a fun night of improv
and art activities in celebration of the Young Masters high school art
exhibition.

Refreshments will be for sale.

Members, free; nonmembers $2 for students $5 for adults.

I think we're going to catch the very tail end of the monsoon. Shouldn't be bad. Monsoon doesn't necessarily mean storm -- in a lot of that region it's just a long season with a lot of daily rains. Some people say the monsoon is the best time to visit the beaches, not to swim, but because they're beautiful, the skies are beautiful, and the sand isn't all cluttered up with fat European tourists.

The worst of it has been way upcountry, in northern India near the border. There's been a lot of flooding this year and people have been driven from their homes.

Our plan so far is to fly to Mumbai (Bombay), arriving at 10 pm on the 13th of September (Saturday). I'm a little bit worried that I don't have a hotel lined up yet, and it's the tail end of the festival of Ganesh (the elephant god of success and moving obstacles). But I'll get something booked soon. May have to pay more than I want. I'll see if I can push that expense onto Ifra, since it's part of the travel to the conference.

We'll stay one night in a Mumbai hotel, then go to the train station to pick up our tickets, then spend the day sightseeing in the downtown area. Late that night we'll board the Konkan Railway "express" train to Goa. Express means it only has like 20 stops!

We'll sleep in an air-conditioned car, in bunk beds. We arrive at Karmala station around 11:30 the next day. Tickets are only $35 each.

We'll spend the nights of the 15th and 16th of September at the Marriott resort complex on the beach in Goa, very upscale, at the expense of Ifra India and the Indian newspaper publishers. I give a speech, probably about an hour.

After that we might move to a cheaper hotel down the coast and explore the Goa area some more. It's the original Portuguese colony, established by Vasco de Gama. Food and architecture are very different from the rest of the country. I expect to see a lot of the black-and-white tile plazas with the Portuguese wave motif, like in Macau. India didn't actually drive the Portuguese out until 1961. It's a mix of Muslim, Christian (most families were forcibly converted) and Hindu, on the coast of the Arabian Sea.

After Goa, we'll likely take another overnight train up the coast on the Konkan line, then veering northeast and all the way to Agra, which is near Delhi and is the location of the Taj Mahal. It's probably going to be something like an 18-hour train ride, so we'll need to take books!

After Goa, it's only two hours to Delhi, which is the major north central city.

Toward the end of the trip we'll need to head back west to Mumbai. We might visit Pune, which is probably two hours east of Mumbai, because one of my students from my Kuala Lumpur workshop lives and works there and has offered to show us around.

Then we'll go to Mumbai for a couple of days -- probably a "reality tour" of the Mumbai slums, and a visit to Elephanta Island to see the ancient Hindu rock carvings that the British didn't carry off to London.

We still do not have our train tickets. You can't buy them online until 7 days before the trip. I am going to see if my Ifra India hosts can get it done for me.

Paige and I have both been to the doctor for our immunization regime: Live anti-Typhoid pills (four doses across eight days), a Hepatitis shot, a Tetanus shot, and a big bottle of Doxycycline to take while we're in India as an anti-Malaria preventative.

I'm not at all happy about the Malaria thing, because Doxycycline is an antibiotic and that can upset your gastrointestinal tract, and because Doxy can make you extremely sensitive to sunlight. PAIGE CAN NOT SUNBATHE ON THE BEACH. Get that, Paige? NO SUNBATHING ON THE BEACH.

But my friend Indian-American friend Rocky Agrawal, who worked for me back in Minneapolis, tells me that all of the other anti-Malaria preventatives have much worse side effects, up to and including hallucinations. That would not be good at all.

We're going to try to travel light. I have to take nice clothes for the conference, but after that I may just dress like the locals. The big problem is going to be Paige, who seems to think she's bringing a trunk full of Pop-Tarts and junk food.

I love Indian food, and it's really good for you, and very safe so long as you don't eat anything that has not been thoroughly cooked. That means NO salads, NO raw vegetables, NO lettuce. And you don't drink anything but bottled water. "Delhi belly" is not something you want!

I'm not taking a laptop. I have my tiny Nokia and its tiny keyboard, and I'll try to blog/email any time I can find an Internet cafe or a wi-fi connection.

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