Monday, June 1

Residual India.

After three months, we are finally ‘settling in’ to traveling life. We talked for many months about spending a year abroad, without really thinking about what that would actually mean. The romanticism and anticipation of adventure overshadowed the emotional, psychological, and physical stress of our daily lives as nomads – and only now are we beginning to understand how our expectations have been fulfilled and disappointed, how our bodies have been strained, and how to endure and handle the constant barrage of tests we face.

In another ‘careening down the mountainside’ type of event, our lunatic bus driver sped through 5km of unfinished road that was littered with piles of materials and potholes. After being tossed around for about thirty minutes in the middle of the night, the bus finally dipped into one fateful crater. The back wheels were under our seats – and as they crested the far edge of the hole, everything on the bus was launched over a foot in the air. Dan cracked his head on the overhead bin, a sleeping child plummeted to the floor, and the unassuming camera bag came crashing down into the aisle. Through the roar of the engine and the moaning and creaking of the beaten bus, I felt silence as I turned to Dan. He bent down and picked up the bag in slow motion. As it rested on his lap, he turned to me and said, “I don’t even want to look.”

Sure enough, the lens had snapped – virtually in half. Torrential emotions shook both of us through the remainder of the ride, and when we arrived in an unknown city at 3:30am in the middle of a pre-monsoonal downpour, the driver shrugged his shoulders at our fate and yelled at us to get off the bus. Adding insult to injury, our bags had been tossed in a puddle and as we bent to pick them up, the bus tore away – blasting thick, black exhaust in our faces.

Dan ended up sending the lens and camera body to a Canon repair center outside of Delhi, India. It took almost a week to communicate with an assistant manager there regarding our circumstances – the need for the repair to be expedited quickly and for the equipment to be shipped on to Nepal. The fix was estimated and completed within a few days – at which time we were told that they wouldn’t accept a credit card as payment and that we’d have to wire/transfer money directly into the company’s account. For five days, we scoured the city for an international money transfer service or bank that would make this transaction. We were online and on the phone with our banks in the U.S. – all of which declined to make the transaction (quoting too significant a risk). This coincided, of course, with the bank holiday here from Friday afternoon to Sunday, the change over from WaMu to Chase (online banking and banking in general were disrupted for three days), and Memorial Day weekend.

Ten days into our 30-day Nepali visa, we had yet to leave Kathmandu city limits. India, it seemed, was haunting us. We finally convinced the assistant manager to ship the equipment without confirmed payment – but with at least the payment details of Dan’s credit card. The time on our visa dwindled and the monsoon season loomed, but with six days to wait for the camera and tracking number in hand, we gratefully headed out to see if we could find some of these so-called mountains.

A great sense of relief and optimism washed through both of us as our bus maneuvered above the pollution-riddled cloud of the Kathmandu valley. I realized, with a faint sense of amazement, that it was the first time I had felt ‘relief’ in almost three months. Though the camera is still not physically in Dan’s hands, the opportunity for us to put India behind us is near.

The three weeks we’ve been dealing with this camera situation have ranged from intensely aggravated to mildly irritated to supremely discouraged – sprinkled with the humor of disbelief and the faith that we won’t be handling such relentless challenges for the entire year. The Nepali people have generally been welcoming and helpful. And in retrospect, the time we’ve been ‘stuck’ in Kathmandu negotiating this elusive transaction has provided us an occasion to decompress. Certainly, we knew we’d encounter difficult times in the course of our travels, but India – overall – was a harsh, taxing place. This is not to say we didn’t see things of remarkable beauty and experience moments of tremendous humility. However, I am just beginning to process it all and it will likely take some time.

In the meantime, we are set to receive the camera tomorrow. We’ll then go to Pokhara, from where we embark on a seven day trek through the Himalaya. Dan’s ankle is feeling pretty strong. Our bellies have had only minor complications. And we are finally feeling rested and ready to take on the next thing. Of course – we hope whatever it is will wait a few weeks!

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