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Monday, May 19, 2008

You try writing a headline for this one

My father intimated that I might encounter a blogging void when you know who finally does you know what, and suggested I could do a series of posts on "bottled water and other extremely weird things we consider 'normal.'" It warrants a label, at the very least. I think that, not being normal myself, I might have trouble with the "we" part (e.g., "deciding a pet is the thing we need"). I suggested that blogging itself belonged on any list of such weird things. It's too much to say that the impulses behind a lot of blogging are lost on me, but they sure don't resonate with me.

In particular, I don't get the "my public diary" impulse that brings us those neverending holiday letters of narcissism. I'm unusually private in all sorts of ways (openness has always seemed to me, in the Terminator's wonderful phrase, tactically dangerous), so I probably couldn't sustain a public diary even if I felt the call for one. Most of the things you would find interesting, I don't want you to know. Most of the things I wouldn't mind sharing, I can't be bothered to relate. The real reason you'll never see me using blog nicknames is that there are no characters in this blog—certainly not as I see it, though people will show up from time to time in anecdotes or to introduce topics.

I have forgotten why I started this entry, but maybe it was for the irony of using all that to preface the announcement that last week I decided I should really plan at trip to India, like, for real, not the sort of two-months-if-I-ever-can sort of trip I've had in mind since at least 2000 (to go by the date of my earliest guidebook). If two months is fanciful, I figure three weeks may not be, especially if I time it according to my likely slow time here (August), rather than seasonal weather patterns there. I'm still at the concept stage, but thinking about itineraries, whether I could pull it off with just a day pack (it could happen, but 40l might be more sensible), and the most critical question of which cameras and films to bring (no digital—life's too short). Three weeks is a "tweener" length of time to plan. I think it's a safe assumption that days of travel between cities will be mostly shot for other purposes, so I want to minimize those. It's a great advantage to be going by myself with little more ambitious agenda than doing a lot of photography I like. This means I can skip the standard tourist destinations (a certain building comes to mind) and spend time poking around lesser-known, less celebrated places, even those "of little interest." I'm having a hard time there being anything of little interest.

Most likely I would arrive in Delhi and stay in central and east-central areas, maybe departing from Calcutta to make the internal travel more linear. The only certain destination will be Varanasi. It could be interesting to dip into Orissa near the end on such an itinerary, but more than four internal travel days starts to seem like a material part of the whole trip. All suggestions are welcome in comments or by email to donttrustsnakes@gmail.com.

Nothing like talk of an India trip to divide people up. It's either a dream, or unfathomable, with very little middle ground.

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posted at 10:57 PM

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