How to quit your job and travel around the world

The Kyber Pass is out there...somewhere.


Well, I am back. And I feel good about it, although it's really bittersweet. Jet lag probably had something to do with it, but yesterday I paced in circles around my apartment in that wired-but-tired mode for hours, touching everything I own. I immediatly attacked a huge pile of books I had left and boxed them up to giveaway. It was like I couldn't relax until I had thrown away at least half of eveything in my apartment. I feel less manic today. It's shocking to me that you can just slip back into routine so quickly: wearing shorts, drinking coffee, listening to CCR on the radio and contemplating a walk to the park. Well, maybe not so routine - last night I went out for Indian food. I guess it helped me with the culture shock.

I have to tell you about the flight ... as many of you may have guessed they sell many pharmeceuticals in Asia that we don't here (or at least you need a scrip for). So in the spirit of taking a 17-hour plane home, I wandered into a Bangkok pharmacy and asked for a mild sedative for the plane. They handed me a box of Hydroxizine 25 mg and didn't really indicate dosage. It looked promising - well, it said "tranquilizer/anti-histamine" on the box and that's all I needed to know. Anyway, I boarded my flight wihtout a problem Thursday morning in BKK, had two red wines and popped my pill. After about 4 hours I started to wake up so I took another one and I don't know if it the red wine or the hydrox but I had the most vivid "trip" that the plane had landed in the Khyber Pass - complete with temples and rocky formations and women in saris. In fact it was so real, that I sat up and demanded out loud to fellow passengers why we had landed in the Khyber Pass - anyway the imaginary plane I was on continued to fly through the narrow pass for what seemed like hours. It was not altogether unpleasant I have to say.

Well, stay tuned for the next installment of How to quit traveling and find a job ... I will still be updating my blog with some writing/essays I was working on while traveling. And who else is going to listen to me complain about sticker shock?

Sunset over Mumbai with Haji Ali mosque in the background.



Ghandi's room at his Mumbai house.



Chowpatty beach, Mumbai.



At the stage entrance in Film City Bollywood.



Juliette and Catherine outside our final guest house in Colaba in Mumbai.

Boo hoo hoo

I am in the Mumbai airport and will fly to Bangkok tonight before arriving home Thursday morning. Since I will see so many people soon I will sum up the past few days:

Mumbai rocks. It's totally LA - India style and we were this close to becoming Bollywood stars. They recruited us as extras (foreigners can make a nice little sum doing this) and we went to Film City - but alas the main star pulled a no show, so after hurrying up to wait, we didn't film after all. So close. But we celebrated with our new "extra" friends and hit some Mumbai nightlife in Colaba afterwards and rocked the house down at the nightclubS. Ok, namaste! see you soon!