Flash River Safari was featured on CNN International’s weekly citizen journalism show “iReport for CNN” this past weekend. To view the segment CLICK HERE.  This five-minute segment features at interview recently shot at the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia with host Errol Barnett.

As I’m sure you’ve seen on practically every major news outlet for the past few days, Washington DC got hit with an historic, unseasonable blizzard. We normally get a few snow storms each year, each leaving maybe 1-4inches… which then melt two days later and life goes on in the Nation’s Capital. This year, however, we got slammed with nearly 2 FEET of snow!

I decided, after a few mugs of cider, it was time to venture out into the blizzard. We began by practically hiking our way down my side street (25th) and then we managed to catch a very slow Metro train to Chinatown. I was so impressed by the serenity imposed by the snow. Lots of people were leisurely walking through the foot of snow and ice across the main roads, stopping to take pictures or throw a nice powdery snow ball at their friends.

DC’s soundtrack consists of wailing police sirens, helicopters overhead, more painfully loud police sirens from passing motorcades, motorcycles and people shouting on the street… On blizzard-day, it was serene and calming. People were gentle, playful… it was truly an abnormally blissful experience.

If you were also in the city during the storm, let me know. I’d love to hear your stories and see your pictures.

J

Mark Twain on a river-boat

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain

By Craig Guillot (Packandexplore.com)

Dubbed a “modern-day Huck Finn,” Neal Moore spent six months canoeing the entire length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca, Minnesota to New Orleans. His mission was not only to document his canoe journey but also report on and participate in positive and uplifting stories of American communities along the way.

Paddling the entire length of the Mississippi was a major venture. What inspired you to do it?

There were a number of inspirations for this expedition:  Mark Twain, Dan Eldon and Eddy L. Harris.  I was looking for a unique adventure that would provide an ongoing opportunity to find and document positive American stories.  With Twain’s Huck Finn came the idea of absolute freedom; from Dan Eldon came the thinking of taking myself out of my comfort zone as well as life as safari; and from Eddy L. Harris came the realization that America’s River Road is absolutely doable.

I see you’ve got a lot of adventures under your belt but have you done anything of this magnitude?

Nothing whatsoever.  As a traveler you spend a great deal of time with your fellow expatriates, often in extremely exotic locales, hypothesizing the perfect trip.  But the realization of actually putting yourself out there was a new concept in my life that in the end, had to come from within.

The Mississippi River is quite narrow near its source but it can be a crowded busy waterway with strong currents as you get farther South. How did the paddling change as you made it further?

I’ve gotten into trouble describing the Mississippi River as a forgiving river.  But in the context of stages this is the correct way to describe it.  By the time you reach Minneapolis you’ve got 500 river miles under your belt and you’re not only ready for your first lock and dam – you’re actually looking forward to it.  By the time you reach St. Louis, now with 29 locks and dams behind you, you’re ready for a river unbridled.  From the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi on down, you’ve got a serious river with moods and debris and at times, some serious river traffic.  But until you get to Baton Rouge, its still by and large wild and at times you can go for a good portion of your day without seeing another living soul.

What’s the craziest thing that happened on the trip?

One of the most dangerous parts of the voyage came post Cairo, Illinois, when I camped out on a then rare sandbar in the middle of the Mississippi.  It had rained for the past five days and the current was both swift and strong.  By midnight the waves were lapping directly at my tent and so I pulled up stakes and moved to higher ground.  As it turned out, the water rose five feet that night and as such, the waves found me yet again by six am, which was when I was in essence evicted off the island.  My lantern hanging from a tree looked like a hurricane lamp blowing in the rain and wind and as I got into the canoe with everything I could grab, I was out there quite alone with my thoughts – in the dark, rolling with the waves, dodging logs that I could hardly see – questioning my own sanity.

What were people’s first impressions when they found out you were paddling the entire river?

This makes me think of the old cliché – there’s a fine line between genius and insanity.  Some folks would tip their hats to you, others would view you as a vagabond, while others still would flat out tell you that you were going to die.  I think the biggest commentary came down to the final stretch in what is referred to at “cancer alley” – the home stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.  It was here that tow pilots would either applaud, hooping and hollering into their loudspeakers, or else curse you out – calling you a scumbag that had no place on a river their family had worked for multiple generations.  In the end, I think you have to listen to your own voice – willing yourself to make it, to survive the hard times, and to see yourself through.

In terms of the people and stories you encountered, what would you say were some of the most memorable?

The most memorable encounters were the characters that you brush along such a sojourn – the ones that you’ll never again meet that you’ll think about for the rest of your life.  The fisherman in Versailles, Minnesota that literally tipped his hat to the trip; the boy at La Grange, Missouri that named my craft “The Andrea”; the traveling singer-songwriter in Oxford, Mississippi that sang just like Bob Dylan.

What kind of canoe did you paddle?

An Old Town “Charles River RX” – 16’ 3” Royalex canoe that was first designed in 1903.

Did you have any logistical support along the way? Any interruptions (weather, equipment problems, etc.)?

The only logistics were contacts in a handful of key towns where I had planned to tell a story.  But by and large the journey was about freedom and not having a deadline or a contact to steer you in their direction.  There is something wondrous about pulling your canoe into a quaint little town, either under their bridge or into their campsite, setting up your tent, and striking out on foot in search of the old town center.  When it came to the weather, by and large you have to just deal with it.  A system will move in and if you’re surrounded by wetland there is nowhere to step out.  You’re going to get wet but the rule is that at some point you’re going to dry out.  Which is where the importance of good equipment comes into play. The key piece of equipment besides your canoe is your tent.

In one of your videos you talk about “getting outside of your comfort zone.” Would you say that partly defines adventure?

I’d say this is the key ingredient – the other byline borrowed from Dan Eldon – “Safari as a Way of Life.”  Turn the TV off – and go out and explore.  It can be as simple as taking a different route home from work or as elaborate as spinning the globe in search of the next great journey.  But having lived and explored and traveled the world – what I learned from my Mississippi River trip was the fact that sometimes the greatest of all expeditions can take place directly in your own back yard.

WA, no, not the one with the White House, but the one with the white sandy beach, stunning landscapes, and amazing wildlife….beautiful Western Australia, I’ve loved every second of our time together in the past two weeks.

From your ocean…

To your land…

To everything that lived in between…

I  loved it all.

I’ll be back, my friend.

cappadocia region of anatolian turkeydogon country, mali (should’ve gone, but had to spend some extra days going back to bamako due to luggage situation–ugh, del-TAH)kyrgyz in xinjiang
kalahari, namibia
sossusvlei lake, namibia (lake???)karakorum highway (photo credit: wikipedia)karakorum highway!!tbilisi by nightscottish hebrides (photo credit: national geographic)

bridge on the drina (great book), bosnia & herzegovina (scanned by me)kyrgyzstan, osh areakruje, in albania (another interesting book about the albanian highlands and the kanun system: broken april)
from deviantart, sterennfrom googlesearch (i forget the direct link)ok… i know these last two aren’t real, but “dreaming” right? (first: midlands/dhara from sword of truth books or rather, new zealand if going by the tv rendition; second: pandora from that new huge cgi movie avatar… i wanted to find a picture of the huge spirit tree but i guess the movie is too recent to have loads of pictures readily available on the internet. this one looks like the lion king. my favorite part of that movie is that their world is so glowing! )

all photos from trekearth unless otherwise indicated (great procrastination site)

my restless wanderings
have faded
I’ve kicked off

my wanderlust

it’s nice to want to wear
the same coat
the lining is familiar
to my skin
the hem has been let out
the fabric is softer

my buttons stay buttoned
more often

I feel my heart
encased in this conch shell
beating
the waves have subsided
my rock still skips along
the top of the water

with a skip

in my step
crossing over stones
to solid ground

unearthing my
Plain Jane-ness

less paint on my palette
fewer strokes to get the picture
pastel watercolors trace
the outline
of the girl that was once
a girl

Raggedy Ann dreams

have
pirouetted into stuffed
throw pillows
where I lay my head

the child has put away her toys
the ones that were worn out

the ones she toyed with
too long

no longer do I look
for the Jack-in-the-Box thrill
or dare how high

I can swing

L. K. Thayer

Photo by VC Ferry

All Rights Reserved

© 2009

Next week at this time…

…I’ll be in St. Louis preparing, along with the rest of the team, for URBANA’09. The forecast calls for “winter” — which is to be expected since it is winter.  As of today, I’m ready for those temps in the teens that we’ll likely encounter on our walks home at night at least.

Wool socks. That was high on my list of things to add to my Florida wardrobe.

While the critical parts of preparation didn’t have anything to do with wool or down or fleece, those things will all contribute to my ability to endure. Those things and the Airbourne I purchased today. Okay, I bought the Target brand –  but the ingredients appear to be the same. Seemed like a good idea.

So, tonight I’m looking at the probable temps on weather.com for St. Louis and I’m laughing with confidence: BRING IT ON!!  We’ll see if I’m so cocky when I’m actually in the midst of the frozen midwestern U.S. rather than the “hardly ever frozen unless you’re talking about a beverage” central Florida.

Takamatsu, Japan, November 2009

My best friend, who doesn’t read this page much, spent too many minutes on the previous entry, and then said gravely, “For you to write this, you must have felt very passionately about this person.”

I responded with a subdued grunt. Best friend then said, “You don’t express yourself in so many words in real life. ”

I know, I know.

And I didn’t say anything, because best friends get to say the obvious and get away with it. Anyone else would have gotten a swear word or two. And I was just giving her time to absorb the magnitude and depth of my folly. I think she hadn’t realised.

 

Because if you persist in seeing the world with a lens that refuses to focus correctly, all you get are out of focus pictures.

(Canonet QL17 GIII, with Fuji Natura film)

I still have the ornaments from my first Christmas tree.  My mother had given them to me when I was first married.  I was six days old that first Christmas, not even aware of what was going on around me.  I just wanted to be warm and fed and leave those special little green surprises babies leave in their diapers. 

These ornaments were originally part of a set of twelve wax Santas, angels and snowmen.  Over the years some of them have lost sections or have been broken and never repaired.  So I treat them now as if they were crystal, able to disintegrate into a million pieces if they fell off the tree.  The usually get placed on the upper half of the tree.  They are a fragile piece of my story that I hope to pass on to my kids.

I wasn’t aware of Christmas decorations until kindergarten.  I loved the lights.  They were the big bulbs that were transformed into orbs of bright colored light when they were switched on.  One of my pleasures of the holidays in my adulthood,  is to drive around at night, looking at the Christmas lights on the houses.    I’m not a big fan of the inflatable lawn decorations or an over-the-top displays that some folks create at Christmas.  I prefer something more subtle.  Candles in the window, wreath on the door, and a real balsam tree. 

Growing up, we used to make the trip from Maine to Connecticut, to visit my grandparents for the holidays.  It was one of several trips we’d make throughout the year.  I loved those Christmases.  When we later moved back to Connecticut, our family would open gifts in the morning, then we’d make the hour-long trip to my grandparents for another session.  One of the most distinct scents that reminds me of those times is the scent of pine.  But not from the tree.  My grandmother had a small wooden cabin, that sat on the fireplace mantel, in the living room.  The roof could be lifted off, and inside was a place to burn an inscense plug.  I would always hover around the living room, hoping for the time my grandmother would light the inscense.  I thought it was so cool to watch the smoke rise up and out of the chimney, just like the real thing.

You may be wondering, “hey, Middle-Aged Head, what would you like Santa to bring you for Christmas?  You gotta list or somethin’?”

Sort of.

There’s a point in your life where those things aren’t as important as they once were.  I used to make these elaborate lists, to prove to myself that people paid attention to me and what was important to me. 

Ah, the days of my youth, when it was about the presents for me.  The story of the Christ Child hadn’t yet hit home.

When my kids asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I didn’t have an answer.  I couldn’t recall any music or movie that I had to own.  There wasn’t an article of clothing that had caught my eye.  The only thing I could think of was some Titleist golf balls.  I really didn’t want anything.

There is one thing I want that I’ll receive, and another thing I won’t.

The one thing I will receive is being able to attend Christmas Eve services at my church.  I always looked forward to Advent and Christmas.  There is wonderful music surrounding the season that I love to sing.  Unfortunately, the choral music I love has been abscent.  My work schedule prevents me from attending services and singing in choir on Sunday.  So I have to rely on my records and CD’s of the Christmas choral music I love.  This year, I will have my kids with me on Chirstmas Eve, and I am excited to be able to share this time with them.  They, on the otherhand, are not so excited.  It has been a long time since they’ve been to church (a long story for another time — remind me, won’t you).  I also think they are apprehensive about seeing people their own age they haven’t seen in a long time.  That’s understandable.  I am hoping that they will find a Christmas miracle of their own this year.

The gift I won’t receive is My Love.  At least not in the form I’d like.  Now that I’ve accepted the situation, it’s helped me to move on.  But I was able to spend two wonderful Christmases with her that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Since I’ve been prodded to provide a list, here goes nothing.  I am allowing myself to dream big.  These are in no particular order:

1. Trip to London.  I agree with Samuel Johnson, who said that to be tired of London is to be tired of life.  I have only scratched the surface of what that city can offer.  Free admission to museums, guided walking tours and pub crawls are a good place to start.  The idea of having real Cadbury’s chocolate, not the stuff you get in the States that is made by Hershey, brings a smile to my face.   I’d like to stay three weeks, preferrably in the fall.  But I’ll take January in a pinch.

2.  A golfing vacation in Scotland.  This could easily be my first choice.  I figure I can make a trip from London to spend a couple days in St. Andrews.  But I want to explore more of the country other than Fife.  The idea of bouncing around the country in a compact car with nothing more than my clubs and a suitcase sounds appealing.  I want to play the smaller, lesser known courses that Americans rarely play.

3. Two weeks in a cabin on a remote lake in Maine.  Just be.  Dive into some good reading, enjoy a lazy canoe trip or hike.  Cook my meals outside on an open fire.  I’d like to experience this in late September, just when the nights start getting nippy. I can crank up the woodstove and get toasty.  I’d take a canoe out to the middle of the water, and laying back to look at a night sky full of stars.

4.  A shopping spree in our local music store for all the CDs I want.  It’s pretty self-explanitory.

5.  To drive a high performance automobile at top speed.

6.  A home on the coast of Maine.  A cottage, actually, with a loft bedroom and windows overlooking the water.  I have the place in mind, but it’s already owned.  It sits up on a bluff overlooking Penobscot Bay, with pine woods on three sides.  Below is a pebble beach with a small boat.  There’s a fieldstone fireplace in the living room.  This is Number 3 option in a different coat, but the same idea.

Not bad, eh?  

Tomorrow’s my birthday!!!

Bangkok, Thailand, on a scorching hot 12pm afternoon, my second visit in seven months. I was stuck in a cab caught in the lunch-hour traffic jam yesterday, and the driver, perhaps for the reason that I was a farang, put on a CD of really horrible covers of English oldies by unknown singers. The moment I heard the lousy, low-budget intro to “Hot Stuff” (and once again I shall remind you that it is not the Donna Summer version – which I like), I had an urge to tell him that Thai radio/music would suit me just fine, that he didn’t have to try too hard to make me feel ‘comfortable’. But alas, the language barrier. So I decided to keep quiet and listen to my iPod.

I admit that I feel a lot of affection and affinity for Thailand. And it has nothing to do with cheap, low-quality bargains. Unlike most Singaporeans who typically take a weekend trip to Bangkok SOLELY for shopping/eating and return home after three days with overweight bags filled with new clothes, I left for Thailand this time with my check-in luggage at 11kg and came home with 14 (bought only a skirt and two shorts, quite an amazing feat for me I would say :p). The only shopping malls I visited were Paragon, always my number one love, and Central World where I had dinner with SML. But I digress. The past eight days have been a superb experience, simply because of the great company who took me around eating at non-touristy places and doing non-touristy activities – from fortune telling, to being a part of the Thai King’s 82nd birthday celebration, to spending five days in Hat Yai and Koh Lipe… and even loitering around a friend’s work environment.

And the people. Always the people who make me love Thailand so much. Random friendly strangers like hotel staff and retail assistants who try their best to make conversation in English, which definitely made me wish I could speak some ’survival Thai’ just to be able to communicate with them. But most of all the friends, who were initially introduced to me by just one person but now have become my own. I’ve been most intrigued by their laid-back, happy-go-lucky personalities and quirky sense of humour, and even though I felt slightly lost and left out when they inevitably broke into Thai conversation, I was happy to just sit and watch them being their ‘natural’ selves rather than having to speak English for my sake.

Four hours after getting off the plane, and I am happy to be home, somewhat. Because the fact that I always leave a part of myself in Thailand gives me more reason to visit again. More updates here if and when the mood strikes, but in the meantime there will most definitely be photos on Facebook.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

CNN.COM:  iReporter Neal Moore left the northern source of the Mississippi River in July and ended his trip in New Orleans in December, traversing the Mighty Mississippi the whole way by canoe. His mission was not only to document his canoe journey but also report on and participate in positive and uplifting stories of American communities along the way. To view the CNN.com expedition interview CLICK HERE.

if you were wondering where in the world i am… i am back in KL. i was supposed to fly straight back to singapore from krabi but i decided to change my itinerary slightly because my family was originally supposed to go on holiday together after my krabi trip but that didn’t happen (no tickets!). complicated, i know. the bottom line is: i am now in KL.

the wedding was great and so was the krabi trip. we decided to just go all the way and subject our tummies to roadside food. it was all fine until i had some ginger chicken thing at the hotel (!!!) this morning. no one else ate it (apparently ginger chicken isn’t breakfast food to all of them) so i’m the only one with my head between my knees. i was throwing up bags of undigested food for a couple of hours until they dragged me to get jabbed in my poor bum. i am feeling extremely pale, weak and floppy right now.

no, really.. i’m feeling very unwell. i shall let my cousin tuck me into bed soon…

in other news, i’ll be back in singapore on saturday. promise.

p/s: I HAVE SO MANY NICE PICTURES TO UPLOAD.

So I am getting desperately wanderlusty again and I keep looking up budget flights to go somewhere – anywhere and all this has to happen REALLY soon cos I am just getting positively edgy staying put for as long as I have (3 months!!! oh my god!) So yes, I am off to Chennai in 2 days’ time and I have a trip to Medan, Indonesia coming up in a month’s time. But I need more and this is just too few!

These are my options so far:

1. Sapa, Vietnam
2. Jogjakarta, Indonesia
3. Mysore, India
4. Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla (Spain!)
5. Flores Island, Indonesia

So I am happy to travel alone, but it would always be lovely to have some company. I want to go somewhere in the Jan or Feb period and again in March and i wanna do some long travels in June. So please raise your hand and say aye if you are keen on joining me on any of these trips!

My parents emigrated from India in the late 60’s to ensure greater opportunity for their children. Leaving behind their land, culture, and people, they gained an especial sensitivity towards raising my siblings and me with Indian values. As we reached school age they increasingly shared influence, however, with teachers and friends. Moreover, my parents’ intentions softened as they engaged in American life.

Indians commonly refer to Indian-Americans as “coconuts.” Brown-on-the-outside and white-on-the-inside. It isn’t derogatory–just a different mindset. Labels aside, I feel more connected to India than ever. Illustrating varying levels of connectedness over time calls for a montage!

Among the first instances in which brown and white fought for inside supremacy was my first sleepover birthday party. It featured local fave Homestyle Pizza and birthday cake. Home video of little kid antics was recorded on a cutting edge camera the size of a little kid. If I recall correctly, and I am pretty sure I don’t, marketing strategies shifted and Lou Ferrigno replaced Martin Scorsese as spokesman. Camera sales rocketed with the switch. Of course; everybody loved the Hulk. But who remembers the actor who played alter ego Bruce Banner? Google, that’s who. Instead, I Google Scorsese and learn that he turned out okay.

As the evening progressed, my friends tore open my new toys. Upset, I hid upstairs. Here’s why: 1) The brown inside me advocated dutifully regifting those toys to save family money. (My reasonably well-to-do professional parents successfully maintained the illusion of scarcity.) 2) The white inside me was with my friends, “Yea, let’s play!” (It was quite a war. I suggest picturing this as a tiny 8 year old brown me and a tiny 8 year old white me standing on the opposite shoulders of a full size 8 year old brown me, dressed in choice, fashionable hand-me-downs. They shoot each other frequent dirty looks. Lots of mudslinging.)

Regardless of inner conflict, the upshot was that they–my friends not the mini-me’s–understandably got scared and called their parents for rides home in the middle of the night. You might think that one boy saved me from a battle in the war by UNgifting a Nerf Unidentified Floppy Object (U.F.O.) and Go-Bots. But he didn’t. I had big plans for those particular toys. I wouldn’t have paid them forward. All options are on the table as I still seek distance. Drop a line if you know anything about hypnosis.

(The rainbow chip icing on the cake, if you will, is that I hadn’t yet discovered Carvel’s Fudgy the Whale ice cream cake. Ignorant of Fudgy, we tragically settled for a much, much lesser cake (hint: it had rainbow chips). Sadly, Fudgy, we were destined to meet later so that I can’t even call on you as a redeeming quality of that birthday party. Yes, Fudgy, of course I like you better than rainbow chips. No, Fudgy, I am no Marty McFly; I can’t rewrite history even if you do want the rainbow chip cake to gradually disappear from that home video.)

My first and last trips to India further the montage of my travel of the spectrum from a cocoa-ish to ivory-ish interior. Some of my first memories are as a 3 year old in India. I speculate that at that age I was about the same person I might have been had I been born in India. Pretty brown inside. But in eight subsequent trips, as I grew older and further away from early foundations, I saw India with increasingly Western eyes. This little coconut was progressing.

I took pictures which illustrated obvious differences between India and the West in my last trip here in 2004. This included: a beautiful ROYGBIV shop display of vibrant saris; heart-wrenching poverty stricken kids; the street-side art of making hot Jalebis (deep fried batter soaked in syrup); and my personal favorite, the Indian mini-van (family of 8 riding a two-person scooter-uh, yea, I think that’s another leg.). I told my mom that India was no longer me. I saw only differences. She tactfully ridiculed that suggestion.

Returning five years later, momma Goel’s wisdom shines. I feel a strong connection to the land of my heritage. I spend more time on this trip here than any other country for a reason. Reasons actually. Reconnecting with warm, loving extended family (almost all of which lives here). Learning fascinating Indian philosophy (which I may choose to study more extensively and formally when I return). Trying to gain a better understanding of rural India through work with NGO’s (have been privileged to see the great work of two, Lend-a-Hand India and ODAM). And exploring India’s rich spiritual side through its powerful places, meditation courses and yoga masters.

I offer two brief episodes from this trip to India, 2009-2010, as the last in the montage.

#1

I start with Ananya, the adorable four year old daughter of my cousin. (I can never remember if that makes her my second cousin or first, once removed. Because I’ll forget anyway, that potential Google search is going the way of Bruce Banner.) She recently moved here from the UK where she was born, returning with her Indian-born parents. She is a tiny living bridge between East and West.

Nonetheless, shifts between brown and white can occur more rapidly at a young age. More malleable insides. My cousin Prerna laments the rapid loss of her cute British accent and manners. Still, she is the politest girl in her pre-school class, her new Indian teacher informs Prerna.

Like a few days prior, we play the game where Ananya announces the word’s initial sound, “Gah-Gah-Gah.” This time instead of animals she wants me to guess the gift she has generously decided to give me before I leave for the airport. I am stumped. “God. He will make your mind more true,” she says precociously and matter of factly as she hands me a small figurine.

#2

It proves relevant that his terrible English is marginally worse than my weak Hindi. I barely realize it’s happening or that my actions could inspire such violent intent. He runs after me. Snarling, he unveils his red paan-stained (Betel leaf with areca nut and tobacco) teeth as he grabs a rock and raises it in pure fury. I note even in shock my good fortune that he doesn’t instead pick up the nearby glass bottle.

My body alight with fight-or-flight, I disgustedly throw the 30 rupees (~65 cents) in his face. Despite the gross insult, rage drains from the auto-rickshaw driver. He scrambles to recover the three notes. I withheld the 30 rupees on principle because of a destination mistake. Within minutes, however, I learn I am mere blocks from my phoophaji’s (respectful title for paternal uncle through marriage) home. We ultimately communicated just fine.

In my relationship with India, a new spectrum has emerged. It isn’t about brown insides or white insides. What a stupid framework. It is about polite little girls and rickshaw drivers trying to make ends meet. It is about gifts and insults. It is about God and violence. It is about true astonishment and remarkable embarrassment. No I can’t rewrite history. But I can view things through a new lens. This journey through India is my much-needed study in Truth and Misunderstanding. It’s a degree in Fudgy the Whale and Rainbow Chips.