Taking a Break, Nomad-style

I had been traveling for eighteen months non-stop. Hard. Turkey, Morocco, Mongolia, Rajasthan; multiple destinations within Nepal. My annual efforts to find a more permanent Nepali visa situation had led only to disappointment. The best option was (literally) indentured servitude to a fancy boarding school in Pokhara which has the cash to hire workers but demands doe-eyed, naïve volunteers to pay for the privilege instead. No thanks.

Instead of beating my head further against that familiar wall, I decided to use the resources I had–excellent Chinese and Indian Visas. I decided to work my way back to the USA for a holiday visit, first by way of India (3 months), then China (2 months).

This travelogue collects the Indian segments of that journey.

I had no real plan before my arrival, other than to start in the Himalaya, where I could live on the cheap and avoid the worst of the monsoon rains and summer heat. This is how it all came to pass:

• Ladakh and Kashmir by Royal Enfield–a classic motorcycle route on some of the world’s highest roads. This would be a motorized repeat of my bicycle tour from three years prior.
• An extended work-stay in Manali. I needed time to work through the huge to-do list that had accumulated around The Transglobalist.
• A visit to Varanasi, India’s oldest and holiest city. I had been told that Banaras is India in its most distilled form. Love it or hate it, this is apparently the place to experience India most overtly and directly. I still have too much of the country to discover to opine on the accuracy of that view, but I can say Varanasi is in-your-face and chaotic. Place me firmly in the “love it” category.

And so it goes with India in general; it’s not for everyone. But for those that can open their minds and hearts to a different way of being and seeing, its riches are boundless.

Om shanti,
—jim
October 4th, 2016