Execuctive Summary: India

Okay, a quick rundown. We spent about three weeks in India, and in retrospect, we pretty much followed the inevitable tourist route: Delhi, then Varanasi (Benares), Agra for the Taj Mahal, then west to Rajastan where, as the NYT puts it somewhat archly, the “post-backpack foreign set” (link) likes to dispsort itself in former palaces (thanks, Kathleen); we wound up with three days at what you might call the film set for Octopussy (link)—raja-like prices, but still a lot less than you would pay for comparable pretension in other countries. We also took the optional side trip down to see the X-rated temple carvings at Khajuraho (what must the Christian missionaries have thought of them). Oh, and the drop-dead wonderful Buddhist stupa outside Bhopal.

At Benares, with my open-toed sandles, I stepped smack into somebody’s winter fuel supply. At Jaipur, we crashed a local wedding party where the groom arrived on horseback. At any number of places, we snubbed the hotel’s duty astrologer. Having received countless airport security patdowns, I figured I could skip the Vedic massage. Oh, and at Agra, I ran into a cousin I hadn’t seen for 37 years (she’d been trekking in the Himalayas).

We brought back a few textiles from a women’s co-op, and the remnants of a nasty little respiratory infection. Would I do it again? Well, the sassy answer is that I have already done it again—this was my second trip to India. But yes, I’d do it again, though next time, I might try something a bit off the tourist highway—Gujarat maybe, or the tea plantations in the northeast. Hm, it’s a good thought. It's an almost unimaginably rich and varied country, of which I have only scratched the surface. So, again, but maybe not tonight.

Update: for all of Underbelly's India coverage, link here.