Off at last on our Great Adventure. It is hard to imagine as we leave the snow-swept ruins of Detroit that in a matter of hours we will be in the 90- degree heat of tropical India, beating our rickshaw-wallah with a cane to urge him on ever faster.
As we wait for our ride to the airport the TV news keeps breaking in with reports of 19 inches of snow expected in Chicago (our first stop), and the thousands of travelers stranded at airports in the middle east as the Egypt crisis unfolds. If our timing is good, we'll get out of Chicago just ahead of the storm and out of Dubai ahead of the revolution.
Our journey begins with a 24-hour flight from Detroit , arriving in Trivandrum in India's southwest corner on Grounhog Day. If we see our shadow, we may have to do it again. It will be a challenge. For the next 60 days (that's 1440 continuous hours!) we will probably only very rarely leave each other's sight for more than a few minutes. Good thing we find each other so damned attractive!
The great unknown for me: what will I lose first? My passport? My $75 Tilley safari hat? My sense of humor? Linda? The only thing I can say with certain is that the travel gear inventory I come back with will be considerably different from the kit I left with.
We'll update the BLOG as the occasion arises--sometimes by Linda and sometimes by me, We'll try to maintain a spirit of enthusiasm, but we are going to ration the exclamation points to a total of 24; that's an average of three per week. They can be so damned annoying!
Below is our itinerary:
Here is the map of our Indian itinerary. We start out at tropical beaches near Kovalam (A); move north to the backwaters of Alleppy (B); jog east to the cool misty mountains of Munnar (C), back to Cochin (D); night train to Goa (E) for more tropical beaches and euro-junkies; flight to Udaipur (F); west to the Thar Desert town of Jaisalmer (G); east to Jaipur (H); over to Agra (I), where the guidebook says the Taj is worth a visist; east to Varanasi (J) in time for the Festival of Holi with a side trip to the Tiger Reserve at Bandhavgargh National Park and the pornographic temples of Khajuraho. Then the flight from Varanasi back to God's Own Country (Detroit). Sixty days, end to end.
