Travel is a paradoxical activity.  The more places you visit, the more conscious you become of the variety of this world, and thus the less well-traveled you feel yourself to be.  At least, that’s how it has been for me.  This is how the thought process goes:  sure, I’ve been to Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina – but what about Bolivia???  Anyway, regardless of such quibbles, there was one undeniable gap in my world travels:  the largest continent of all, Asia.  Although I had nibbled at the edges of Asia with brief visits to Japan and the Russian Far East, I had never explored the heartland:  China, or Korea, or Thailand, or Cambodia, or... India.

In all of Asia, India was the place that drew me most, that stirred up a kaleidoscopic swirl of images, expectations, cultural preconceptions, and spiritual aspirations.  The haunt of tigers and elephants, the birthplace of Buddha, the home of Hinduism and of a society that mingles the modern and the medieval, India has always struck me as one of the most fascinating and bewildering places on earth. Plus, I love the food!  So when I was offered a position as naturalist on a voyage around the subcontinent from Bombay to Calcutta, I accepted immediately.

First, of course, I had to get there.  It’s a long way to India – and I’m not being metaphorical here.  Sure, India is far in terms of culture, and religion, and the fundamental conception of what life is for.  That’s well and good; but first the traveler must come to terms with a more mundane measure: miles around the planet. 

It is truly amazing that we can fly halfway around the world in a single day. But when that flyer is you – curled into your seat after 20 hours in the air, as stiff and deformed as a piece of dry leather – the miracle is not readily apparent.  And so, I learned yet again:  the world is not small.  Although airplanes allow us to move around it quickly, the Earth remains the same stubborn size that defeated the imaginations of our not-so distant ancestors.