India (life)

I have a friend living in New Mexico. She and I have a history that holds some of my favorite memories. We have traveled by train across Canada, by camper/cafe through Alaska, and by Honda through Maine. When she lived in Seattle, I took every chance I could get to crash at her house and try to see if that city fit me.

When we are together, we: laugh until our sides hurt, have conversations with strangers, drink lots of hot drinks, and, somehow become a little bit closer than we already were. She and I have been planning on taking a big trip to celebrate our 30th year for quite some time. I believe that the plan came from a conversation about women reaching their physical peak at 30. We are now in the planning mode. We had been talking about going to Guatemala this summer. She has been to 40+ countries and somehow missed Central America (I think). I have been to a few less countries and am game for anything. But, then we realized that it is the rainy season in most of Central American in the summer. So, tonight, after talking with another friend who is going to be studying abroad for a year, I wondered if going to Sri Lanka might be a good option.

As fate would have it, my dear eggplant ( a.k.a. best travel partner) called tonight and wanted to check to make sure that this trip was going to really happen. I told her about Sri Lanka and she mentioned India. Then, she mentioned Laos, Thailand, and a few other Asian countries. I said yes to all of them. The one thing I asked her to do was to have real sit down conversations with me to help me prepared to be a good traveler. I have had some bad habits in the past (the most dangerous was when I told a man who believed the US government has a weather machine which lonesome trail we were camping on that night) and want to make sure that I do not have them anymore.

So, maybe I'll go to India this summer. Or Sri Lanka. Or Laos. I think I could get excited about any of these places.