Incredible India

In March we had our University mid-semester break.  The time between semesters in January wasn't much of a break since we had to stay and do professional development courses.  So I was happy to finally have some time off to travel after 6 months of being in Saudi Arabia.  My British friend Janine and I debated for a long time where we wanted to go.  It's a difficult decision when you are so close to so many interesting places but you only have one week.  We thought of Egypt, Dubai, then Oman, but really we were both feeling kind of tired of Arabia and the desert.  I drew a circle around Riyadh and checked flights to everywhere possible (Afghanistan not really being on the possible list) and found that Mumbai, India turned out to be the cheapest flight.  Janine, being into yoga and meditation and having already lived in India, was worried she would go and not want to leave.  This didn't really matter anyway because after we got back she sneaked out of the country and went back to her yoga ashram in New Zealand.  So we booked our flight and then had a few weeks of paperwork to get the visa for India.  I was a little worried about combining Indian bureaucracy with Saudi inefficiency.  It was also more difficult to get without having a proper residence visa for Saudi Arabia since we only have temporary work visas.  We got our passports back the day before the flight and we were off.

When we arrived we then had to find the Saudi consulate and immediately apply for a new work visa to get back into Saudi Arabia.  Things went surprisingly smoothly and we had our new visas the next day.  We spent some time wandering around Mumbai just being happy not to have to wear black or cover our heads.  We could talk to any men we wanted to and saw churches from various religions again.  Janine was excited to be able to drink alcohol again (legally) but I don't miss certain consumables the way some foreigners do.  I did, however, order something otherwise illegal just because I could.

We spent a lot of time shopping for fun Indian clothes.

We went out to Elephantine Island to see some old caves and tombs.

  But really we just wanted to get out of the city and see some nature.  After a short stop in Panjim (and a double feature at the movie theater - another forbidden pleasure) we spent the rest of the trip on the beach in Goa.  Janine did convince me to try out an Ayurveda doctor (Indian medicine).  In the waiting room there was a baby chick wandering around and he told us the story of seeing the chick dropped from an eagle's mouth into his backyard.  He decided it was fate and is now raising it.  As I was having my consultation the chick came and tiptoed over my bare feet to explore this new person.

 After lots of hard poking and prodding he told me many amazing things about my body.  They weren't amazing because I learned anything new about myself, but that he could tell all these things just from poking me really hard.  It opened my eyes to see that healing the body can happen in many different ways - and the way our Western doctors are so quick to prescribe chemicals instead of seeing medicine as a holistic process.  The rest of the time was spent getting massages, drinking fruit lassis, and lounging on the beach.  We were also counting down the days before we had to go back, but those few days were well worth it!