"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." - The Beatles

(Part two of two, which is less a travelogue than a stream of consciousness kind of summation of a lot of lingering travelling thoughts and emotions, yet still delivered in an amusing, anectodal sort of way)

Man, is it hard to write a blog in Bali. And during a 15 hour layover in the Changi Singapore Airport. And in the half an hour frantic scramble at Narita airport (which is slowly sinking and has flights that depart for Detroit 15 minutes apart in adjascent gates. Talk about confusing!) between the 7 hour flight from Singapore to Tokyo and the 11 and a half hour flight from Tokyo to Detroit. And when you get back to Washington, DC after travelling for 48 hours. And in the ensuing collage of a week that involves reunions with friends, family and a return to a life that seems a lot like the one you remembered and were dreaming of returning to while waiting for the train in Varanasi that was four hours late, but in actuality is very different. And even after that.

I remembered reading in my travel health literature (which was voluminous) before I left, that people sometimes experience reverse culture shock upon returning home. So, not the shock of seeing a poor child begging in the streets of Delhi or the sight of a Burmese girl with traditional painting on her face that is both decoration and sunscreen or even observing the brilliantly planned and executed subway system of Singapore, but the shock of seeing your own home, your own culture with new eyes. You see, I've changed (in ways that I think aren't necessarily perceptable to even those closest to me) because of this experience. I feel a love and kinship with a whole different part of humanity that I went 26 years of my life without knowing. I distinctly remember looking at the map of our route over the Middle East as we headed towards India (way back on June 23rd) and thinking that this place on a map would soon become a face, a smell and a landscape that held a distinct memory for me. No longer would I be able to think that Delhi and New Delhi were synonymous terms that could be used interchangeably, because I understood just how much the New meant to the people of India (particuarly the "former" outcastes). How could I possibly teach the book Shabanu, set in the desert of Rajastan, to my 6th graders without thinking of Harish and my motorcylce ride through the streets of Jaipur in the setting sun? How could I feel uncomfortable in a new setting or meeting new people after travelling in Northern India on my own and gaining a confidence that can only come by feeling completely alone and totally alive? Yet, in many ways, I do feel uncomfortable in my own setting, in my own culture. I think this reverse culture shock thing is real and it has the feel of an emotional sort of hangover. (It makes me think about how a woman might feel dealing with post partem depression. Everything that has been new and challenging and exciting is now over, and you are faced with a sort of re-examination of yourself that is difficult. And I'm sure there's some actual biological emotional issues going on there as well, but that's what it makes me think of) I want to be able to look at every person I see with the open mind and welcoming heart that I so graciously applied to the people I met on my trip. It was easy (well, not always, but certainly most of the time) to be open, to be totally myself, because I had nothing to lose. I felt that by giving myself completely to the people around me, I would learn more than if I held back, remained careful. And I think it worked. By exposing myself and being willing to have people take me with them into their world, their culture and even their homes, I was getting more in return than I ever could have hoped for. I try to think about how exactly I would have responded if I had been walking down a street in DC and a young boy (particuarly of a different race and at night) had come up to me and asked me to follow him down barely lit streets to his home. Would my reaction have been different? I think assuredly so. And why? What was it about me that had so dramatically changed that I felt like this was a good idea now when a few months earlier, I would have laughed at the notion. What was different? Me or the place that I was in? Honestly, I don't know. I think that all of my experiences in India and Southeast Asia have given me a sense of clarity about the world around me that I never had before. How the world is much more about me and you, family and friends, life and death than MTV, CNN or sound bytes. The experience has also left me much more confused about why I don't give the people around me the same benefit of the doubt that an entire group of people in a different country got so readily. I'm quite sure that I can't sustain the feeling of excitement and newness that travelling brings on in my daily life, but can't I treat people the same way as I did when I was there? I hope that I can and I hope that I can bring a part of my experience, my new self into the lives of the people that I interact with because I think that when I give of myself the most, allow myself to be the most vulnerable, that that is the point at which I come closest to fulfilling my quest for enlightenment. So while I spent much of my time visiting Hindu temples in India, the Gurudwara in Amritsar, the place of Siddhartha's enlightenment in Bodh Gaya and first sermon in Sarnath and seeing mosques from New Delhi to Lombok, I feel that the truest place to sense spirituality is within your own self (I also read Karen Armstrong's religious history called "Buddha" which may be influencing my thinking at present. Incidentally, if you ever want to know something about religion or religious history, just find Karen Armstrong's book on the subject and read it. She is my hero.) Your relationship with God/Vishnu/Allah/Guru Nanak/Krishna/Nirvana must ultimately be your own. It's not in a field in India any more than it is on a wave in Bali, but in a place that you must discover within. The outward journey that I took to view far off lands and meet different people may have taken me around the world, but it is the depth at which I travelled inwardly that gives me pause. I feel as though I've been given an opportunity to peer deeper into myself than I ever could have had I remained at home becuase it forced me to examine my motivation for life. I really hope that I can be the inspired traveller, able to tackle challenges, greet strangers, absorb culture and enrich lives in a single bound, but I realize that I'm not there yet. Until then, I'm going to keep giving as much as I can because it's infintely more fulfilling than taking, and I need all the love that I can get...