I'm delighted to report that I have survived my second trip to India. Sure, I got the requisite bout of dysentery--on the very day I was supposed to deliver my paper at the conference I was attenting--and suffered the entire time from what I call TIC (Typical India Crud) from the incessent pollution...but, thankfully, I returned with my health more or less intact.
As usual with these kinds of trips, I went bonkers photographing just about everything I saw. But this time, for a change, I also shot a considerable amount of video on my camera. The resulting ten minute montage I put together gives a sense of what I experienced, but to fully appreciate the indescribable mayhem that is South Asia, you really have to go there for youself.
You never fully get what you expect from India. I spent hours on the Ganges watching the bodies burn and participating every chance I got in the ancient ganga aarti cermonies in Rishikesh, Haridwar, and Varanasi. I hung out with the sadhus and woke up at a miserably early time to do yoga and meditation with some very serious--and some seriously freaky--people from all over the world. And I discovered, much to my amazement, that I probably didn't need to travel to the other side of the world to discover higher truths about life and death. I already knew everything important I needed to know before I ever left home.
So, no, I really didn't need to go back to India after all. But I'm glad I did anyway. Sometimes you need a complete and total change of scenery to remind you of what you already know.
Enjoy the movie!
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