Passage to India

I'm researching my trip to India, and I have to say...it is one big mothereffing country. And it's not a big mothereffing country like, say Australia, which is mostly empty in the middle except for a big rock in the middle of the Outback. It is a big mothereffing country packed full of people and shit to see. The more I research, the more paralyzed I feel about making a decision as to where I want to go and precisely what I want to see because the more I realize there is to see. I actually was much more certain about what I wanted to see before I knew what the fuck was over there other than the Taj Mahal.

I have become more aware lately, in a negative sense, of my need to be in control and be perfect all the time. I went out last night to celebrate passing my big test recently, and I drank two glasses of beer and one shot, and I got a tiny bit silly because of my ridiculously low tolerance. I felt a little bit ashamed this morning, wondering if I said or did anything stupid, and then I thought to myself, "What the fuck is your problem, [Known Associate]? People drink all the time in much greater quantities. They get trashed and act stupid, and then everybody takes some Advil and has a good laugh." I mean, for real. Why do I assume that everyone is parsing my every slightly inebriated action or judging me for enjoying myself? I don't expect everyone else to be perfect all the time. Putting aside my expectations of myself, I don't think I should assume that anyone else expects me to be perfect. So, I think I need to put the focus more on having fun and less on apologizing for, like, living.

Back to India. My desire to craft the perfect vacation, an outgrowth of my desire to be perfect all the time, has stymied my ability to actually plan the damn trip. If there is any country in which I should embrace the idea of going with the flow, it is India. India frustrates all travelers, even the ones it delights. It is also, as mentioned, a big mothereffing country packed full of shit to see, so I need to wrap my mind around the idea right now that I'm not going to see everything in one trip or probably one lifetime. (Thank goodness India is also a big fan of the idea that you have multiple lifetimes.)

I've already decided to let southern India wait for a second trip in the future, but I'd love to do something that involves Mumbai onto Goa and then maybe ending up down in Sri Lanka. But I still have to grapple with the question of northern India, and that is more than enough for one trip. Obviously, I have to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, since that is the entire motivation for going on the trip in the first place. Most northern Indian trips -- in fact, all the ones I've seen -- start in Delhi, so that's also not negotiable, even though I don't really care that much about seeing Delhi. The other prong (aside from Delhi and Agra) in India's tourist-luring Golden Triangle is the Pink City of Jaipur, which sounds pretty and features the opportunity to buy a lot of cool Rajasthani crafts. It's hard for me to resist good shopping locales. I'd also like to go to Varanasi, a very holy city for Hindus on the Ganges. But I'm tempted by the idea of going on a tiger safari, and I would like to either start or, more likely, finish the trip with two days in Kathmandu. I can't do all of this, so I have to make some choices and accept that the trip is going to be fun no matter what.

Okay, I think the truth is that it would be cool as shit to see a tiger in the wild, but I have seen tigers at Busch Gardens and I would rather see a Hindu holy city that is thousands of years old and of tremendous religious significance. See? That was easy.