Let's start at the very beginning

But which beginning, I wonder?

Do I go into the day, almost 8 years ago, now, that a teensy metaphorical lightbulb appeared over my head, and I realized that, no, it's really not that difficult to just fly to another country and travel around, and that in fact tons of people do it all the time?

Do I fast forward to my adventures in Bollywood?

Or maybe I should just go for a more "in medias res" approach and stick to the concrete fact of buying my ticket?

Suffice it to say this: Thursday afternoon, about 10 minutes prior to the below post, I ordered my ticket to India.

I'll be flying into Mumbai on January 9, 2008. Leaving JFK circa 6pm, with a plane change in Zurich (yay, new countries I've only visited for an hour or so!), and finally arriving in Mumbai at around 10:30 pm the following day, January 10. By the time I leave the airport, it will likely be the 11th.

In the intervening two months, I will be seeing as much of the country as is possible considering my preferred leisurely pace (soooo not one of those "if it's Tuesday, this must be Prague" sorts of people!). The cliche goes that India is an assault on the senses. I don't know about that, but I plan to enlist all of mine. I want to not only see, but smell, taste, touch, and hear everything around me.

When I was a teenager, my family went on a long road trip up the East Coast. We brought along a book called Eat Your Way Across the U.S.A. We had biscuits and sweet tea in Alabama, barbecue at roadside stands in the Carolinas, Pennsylvania Dutch chicken pot pie, lobster rolls a stone's throw from the docks of Mystic, Connecticut. We spent precious little time on I-95 (the major interstate in those parts, complete with McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts right there at the rest stop so you don't even have to bother going into a town).

While this isn't necessarily meant to be a culinary tour of India, that's the same basic approach I'm taking to this trip. I want to experience everything, not half-assedly drive by with a quick stop at the Taj Mahal, a camel and/or elephant ride, and some watered down Chicken Vindaloo, bitching all the while about how nasty the toilets are, or the chances I'll get Delhi Belly.