Thank You For Flying Indian Airlines

Today I travelled.

Traveling is a wondergul way to meet interesting people, people you would never meet in your everyday life. People you would never have a desire to meet in your everyday life. The woman sitting next to me on the plane did not stop talking. Ever. She is a dancer it turns out, in a classic religious style called Odessi. She is coming from Delhi for a dance festival in Bhubhaneswar. That is all I will tell you of her, no reason for you to hear 2 hours worth of life story from me.

This is how people in India travel, I have found out. People make friends on trains, planes, and busses. A very differnt style of travel from what I am used to in the US. There people tend to keep to themselves more often than not. Things are different here.

After arriving in Bhubhaneswar I was collected by Govinda and Utkal. We had lunch at a local restaraunt. Even the restarautns here serve Tali. Tali is what most people here eat every meal of every day of their entire lives. Rice, Dahl, and some other vegetable. The other vegetable is more often than not potato, especially this time of year. Here in Orissa their diets are not governed by taste, instead it is governed by the season. Some seasons Gobi (cauliflower) is the "other" vegetable. However during the spring and summer months, it is almost always potato. I will probably eat enouth potatoes in the next few months to turn even this irishman's stomach from them for a short while.

After lunch we stopped to do some shopping. I needed to pick up some essentials that would not be available in the village. Soap, shampoo, mosquito cream, mosquito coil, toilet paper, and water were the items on my list. With them safely in my possession we started for Juanga.

A few kilometers outside of Bhubhaneswar we hit traffic. I am talking Holland Tunnel traffic. Cars stretched before us for kilometers ahead. I settled in for what was going to be a long trip. The heat of the air mixed with the hot exhaust from the cars and busses surrounding us, making breathing unpleasant. I turned to Govinda and Utkal wondering if they had any idea as to how far the traffic stretched out in front of us, or how long we would be held captive in the belly of the monstrous snake composed of cars, busses, and motorbikes. their guess was as good as mine, so I sat in my seat quietly and remembered what someone once told me.

"Why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can lay down? Why lay down when you can sleep?"

So I tried to sleep. Did not succeed, but I tried.

After a few hours of traffic, and a few hours of dusty broken village roads, we arrived at my destination at last. The Michael A. Daube Charitable Trust and Hospital greeted me with it's dull fading yellow in the hot sunset. I was shown to my room, on the second floor above the main entrance of the hospital. The room I always stay in when I am here. I am finally to my home away from home.