hummingbird

So I know I said I'd do an entry with some of the things that really stood out to me over this past 2 months of classes, and I'm sure if I could think straight it would be a wonderful entry, but really my mind is already one thousand nine hundred and nineteen kilometers North floating down the Ganges, navigating train stations at dawn, and climbing the Himalaya. Having this condensed semester of classes has been amazing, but 5 hrs of class a day plus field trips on the weekends for eight weeks gets rough no matter how interesting the subject matter is. My notes for class this past week look like some cross between the chore list of an obsessive compulsive ("FIND purell, call airlines to confirm ALL flights, listen to more Peruvian music when I get home...") , an abstract art installation, and the journal of an over excited 22 year old having cliched but oh-so-inspired realizations about life and living ("I will not sit down, close my eyes, and renounce life to attain enlightenment. I will dance to it, love to it, laugh to it, sometimes travel backwards but always with both eyes wide open."). Oh and uhh a few lecture notes in there too...somewhere.

Right, to the point of this post. North India is known for a lot of things, but respect toward women/safety of solo travelers is not really one of them. So I want to put up my itinerary on here, and then make a promise to do a quick update at LEAST once per week to let everyone know I'm still truckin. It might sound dumb but otherwise no one would know if I went missing or something like that until 3 and a half weeks from now, and this seems like a good way to have a lot of people accounting for me. I also got a cell phone, so if you get a call at some ungodly hour from a weird number, please pick up! My phone number is 919591139725.
My rough itinerary looks like this:

Oct 15th train Mysore to Banglore
Oct 16 Fly to Varanasi (via Delhi)
Oct 16-22 Varanasi (eee!!!)
Leave Varanasi Oct 22 at night, take night train to delhi.
Oct 23 & 24th Delhi
Oct 24th night train to Pathankot, bus Oct 25th to Dharamsala/Mcleod Ganj
Oct 26-Nov. 1st Mcleod Ganj
Leave Nov. 1st on bus and then night train to Delhi
Nov 2-3 Delhi
Nov 3 fly Delhi to Kochi, taxi to Amritapuri in Kerala
Nov 3-7 Amritapuri (Ammachi's ashram)
Nov 7 taxi to bus station in Kochi, overnight bus to Mysore arrive Nov 8th.

I have a HUGE smile on my face as I'm typing this and my heart is seriously pumping a mile a minute. I am going to see people being burned, and dead bodies floating down the ganges, and people completing spiritual pilgrimages they have been waiting their whole lives to make, and Tibetans living in exile, and caves and ashrams tucked in the Himalaya, and boats floating lazily down the backwaters of Kerala, and the place where Ammachi was born, and...whatever there is in Delhi!!!!! WITH MY OWN EYES, STARTING TOMORROW!!!!!!!! I am so blessed.

Love to you all and please picture me returning from this month safe, happy, and whole.