Monday, January 28, 2008

FIVE DAYS TO GO !!!!


I am ready.  I think I am ready.  The collapsible bucket is arriving on the 30th.  It had to be ordered, as none of the camping stores had one.  I still have to put together a first aid kit, but that shouldn’t take me long.  This afternoon I am going to have a haircut.  I am not going to shave it exactly, but it will be short.  My husband would have preferred me to wait till the end of the week.

“It is better to see you walk around with bouffant hair instead of a toilet brush.”  He actually said that. 

You see, he knows how short I am going to have it cut, because I’ve done it before.  But I couldn’t leave it to the end of the week, because other than Monday, the only other days my hairdresser works are Friday and Saturday.  And Friday I can’t and Saturday I am leaving.  So that only leaves today. 

By the way, I am not cutting my hair very short because I want to look like a wandering Sadhu when I am in India, no.  But it will be more practical to wash and go.

And this is where I am going.  I will fly to Trivandrum in South Kerala.  From there, I will drive to Amritapuri, Amma’s Ashram on the Arabian Sea and on February 7th, the whole Ashram group will set off by bus for the seven week North India Tour as follows:

Kannur and Talassery  (North Kerala) ; Bangalore and Mangalore (Karnataka);  Hyderabad (Andra Pradesh); and on to the state of Maharashtra with stops in Washim, Vidarbha, an area that has been deeply affected by farmers’ suicides, Pune, then Mumbai before leaving Maharashtra and on to Ahmedabad  (Gujarat - Gandhi was from Gujarat) before continuing on to Jaipur the capital of Rajasthan.

Our arrival in Jaipur on March 7th, will coincide with the start of the Global Peace Initiative Of Women, a global interfaith summit where Amma is due to speak on the opening day.  Women leaders from all faiths and from all over the world will convene in the beautiful ancient city of Jaipur, for a summit on peace that will be attended by women from all races and nationalities.  For more information on that, please go to: www.gpiw.org

After Jaipur come Faridabad and Delhi (Haryana) before going east to Kolkata/Calcutta (West Bengal).  My friend Nova will join me in Calcutta and spend a few days there with me at the end of the tour before I fly back home to New York.  By then it will be March 24th, and while I will go back home, Amma will continue on to the Andaman Islands, and I believe Singapore and Australia.

But I do have to get there first and that is still a few days ahead.

Till then,

Esmeralda Williamson-Noble 

Ps.  I would like to post an itinerary map, but I am not sure how to do it yet.

       For more on Amma, please go to www.amma.org.

And for more on Nova's company (since many of you have asked me), please visit 

www.ihml.com



 

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Ten Days To Departure!!!!!!!!!!


  Wow, I cannot believe it!  I am all set to go.  I have been granted a six-month multiple entry tourist visa to India, I have almost all the items on my wish list and my flight is booked!

I will fly out in ten days time, on February 2nd, JFK to Trivandrum, Kerala, via Dubai, flying back March 24th from Calcutta.

And here again, I must thank my husband for his help and patience in finding the best flight for me; with a quick one stop in Dubai, this is virtually a direct flight with a total travel time of seventeen hours and forty-five minutes.   Believe me, compared with other flights that between stops and layovers come to a total travel time of over thirty hours, this is a breeze. 

  I haven’t packed yet though.  I don’t normally until the night before.  But I am gathering everything in my eldest son’s room (he is away at college.)  I have a top of the line Thermarest mattress that my friend Nancy bought me, she was going to give me hers but in the end she just bought me a new one.  I got myself a cute little Thermarest pillow (for my head is not used to lying on rocks as yogis can) that can be folded to half its size.  Oh, and I am really pleased with the neck pillow I got; it is not an inflatable one but it is really plush.  I hope I’ll be able to fit it into my backpack together with my tiffin box, power bars, TP*, first aid kit, collapsible bucket, clothes line and pegs, flashlight, vitamins, Delhi Belly remedy, water bottle, a change of clothes and Bruno.

  Yes, I am taking Bruno.  My son Andrew gave Bruno to me the Christmas before last.  When I unwrapped the box and I saw Bruno in it, I… I… I burst into tears.  Bruno had been Andrew’s friend since he was one year old.  This amazing, perfectly sized brown teddy bear had been my son’s faithful and loyal companion of a lifetime.  Together they had visited museums, foreign places and hospitals and always shared the same pillow at night.  But as he prepared to go to university, Andrew felt that the moment had come to pass the torch and bequeathed Bruno to me!  Maybe because Bruno is a writer, like me.

Anyway, the other night I lay in bed with Bruno next to me, when I swear he told me that he too wanted to come to India.  I was shocked and I told my husband immediately:

“Bruno wants to come India.”

“I don’t think so,” my husband said.  “He might get lost,” he added, concerned.

But now that he had put the idea out, Bruno kept going on and on about it all night.  In fact, I hardly got any sleep listening to him.

“I’ll keep you company,” he said. 

“On those nights, when your top of the line Thermarest one-inch-thick mattress and pillow won’t stop you from feeling sore and miserable, and when all you want is your husband to hold you or your children to be little again, you can hug me.  On those long ten, fifteen or twenty hour hot and sweaty bus rides when you have forgotten why you came, I will remind you.  And when you cry because you are tired, sad or hungry and desperate for something other than a Luna bar to replace the rice and curry that you don’t like, well, as Andrew can tell you, I’ll be there to comfort you - even fast with you.

And of course, we can write together about the sheer adventure of it all.”

 

By morning I had decided that I wanted Bruno to go to India with me as much as he wanted to come.  And so I called Andrew at college and asked if it was ok with him, and when he told me to go for it, I told my husband that Andrew had given his permission.

“Make sure you look after him.  It would be a tragedy if he got lost in the line of duty,” he said, sitting Bruno up in bed between us.

I then called Florentina at college, she had no problem about my taking Bruno and when Robert came home from school, I told him that Andrew had said it was ok.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“I hope you don’t lose him and you should wash him when you come back.”

 

D’you know, I don’t think its my imagination, I haven’t seen that look on Bruno’s face since he was gallivanting around Europe with Andrew many years ago.  Or when he was writing his memoirs**.

 

Detailed itinerary will follow in the next posting, I’ll need one of the children to help me post another picture.

 

Namaste,

Esmeralda

 

*    TP = toilet paper

** “Bruno & The Search For William”

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Thinking a Lot
















Thank you so much for the encouraging calls and emails I have received since going live with my travelogue. And boy, do I need the encouragement! I haven’t even left yet and I am already wondering about the whole thing.

Mark’s posting, with his references to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, had me chuckling at the oddest moments. Yet the thought of saying au revoir to my family, albeit for no more than six to eight weeks, is causing me a certain amount of anxiety. My two older children are at college and will hardly notice that I am gone.  For who can tell where an email comes from?

But what about my husband and Robert, my youngest? I know that they will miss me. But will they also get used to doing things without me? And when I return, (yes Mark, I will return) will we have to get used to one another again?

After all, I will come back after having spent weeks eating vegetarian food, sharing the floor and communal bathrooms with other like minded pilgrims. I will have meditated near rivers and in open fields in the presence of my Guru, who is the embodiment of love. Where I am going, there will be no room for camouflage. Exposed to myself, I will have the chance to find out who I am, and that is who I want to be. As well as a wife and a mother.

And here is where I want to say Thank you to my husband and my children, not only for supporting me in this “project,” but also for actively helping me with the preparations.

As for the cat, well, she is doing her usual thing: finding herself on the wrong side of the door on a regular basis, asking for food and sleeping on my bed. When I’m gone, there will be one less person for her to trick into thinking that she has not been fed yet. So, maybe she will miss me.

Tomorrow I am going to the Indian Consulate in Manhattan to apply for my visa. Hugh – my husband – downloaded the forms online and helped me fill them out. Once I have the visa, I can book my flight as soon as the dates for the North Indian Tour are announced. I can’t wait! And I have butterflies in my stomach.

Ok, here is my updated wish list :

Air tickets for my husband and three children to join me in Calcutta at the end of the tour. Richard, I’m still hoping for you to come through here.

Digital camera and memory card

Therm-a-rest inflatable mattress – Nancy is giving me hers. Thank you Nancy!

Mosquito net

A literary agent who will find a publisher for my book

Collapsible bucket

A set of spiral notebooks

Oh, I love the pens that Virgin gives out on their flights and since I will not bring my laptop with me, I would like a few of those pens to write with.

A bedroll sack – It will be strapped on the bus’s roof top together with the luggage Mary from my office is coming up with it, thank you Mary.

A good backpack to carry some of the items on this list – Mary again.

An asana - something to sit on outdoors – Cheers Bob, will you be needing it back?

Dust mask - for road travel

Earplugs - to block out others’ snoring when sharing a floor with fellow travelers

Flashlight-to avoid tripping over them on my way to the bathroom – Nancy, thank you for shedding some light.

Mosquito repellent – self-explanatory

Eye mask I have already

And to start with I have three white Panjaby sets to wear

Oh yes, an inflatable neck pillow would be really nice – Jamie thank you!

Map of India…..

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Land of the Rishis

Up and Running

Hello there!

     I am going to be fifty this year and as some of you know, I am writing a book called: WIFE, MOTHER & SEEKER. 

     I have done a lot in the wife and mother departments and now I am off to India to work on the seeker’s side of things.  I will leave soon, I don’t know the exact date yet, but it will be sometime in February.

    I cannot tell you now how all this has come about.  You’ll have to read my book for that.

    But I would like to share with you my excitement, apprehensions, hopes, joys and fears as I prepare for this journey.  And when departure day comes, I will temporarily leave my husband, three children and Zoe the cat behind.  I pray that when I return, both the cat and I will have shed a few pounds and for myself I also hope that I…well... we'll see. 

    Anyway, by the time D-Day arrives, I will have to have put together a few items; some of them more run of the mill traveling variety, while others are more eclectic.

    I have put together a wish list and would be grateful for anything that anyone may wish to contribute.  But before I even begin, I must pause here to thank the person who is making this journey financially possible.   Her name is Nova Alexander and her company IHML is providing me with a ticket to India and back to New York -  as well as covering the cost of six to eight weeks by bus, from the Malabar Coast on the southernmost tip of India where I land, to New Delhi in the North and finally on to Calcutta in the East on the Bay of Bengal.  And because she does not do things by half, (SHE IS NOT CHEAP, she wears Missoni, Chanel, Armani… you get the picture) she is also setting me up with a cell phone in India and malaria tablets. 

 

Thank you Nova!!!  SuperNova!!!

 

So, here is the list (subject to change):

 

Air tickets for my husband and three children to join me in Calcutta at the end of the tour, sorry ZoĆ« but you can’t come.  Virgin Airways, my older son explained it to my younger son like this: “You see Robert, for Richard Branson to fly us to Calcutta it would be like me buying you a gumball.  Or for a stranger in the street.” 

 

Digital camera and memory card

Therm-a-rest inflatable mattress

Mosquito net

A literary agent who will find a publisher for my book

Collapsible bucket

A set of spiral notebooks

Oh, I love the pens that Virgin gives out on their flights and since I will not bring my laptop with me, I would like a few of those pens to write with.

A bedroll sack – It will be strapped on the bus’s roof top together with the luggage

A good backpack to carry some of the items on this list

An asana - something to sit on outdoors

Dust mask - for road travel 

Earplugs - to block out others’ snoring when sharing a floor with fellow travelers

Flashlight - to avoid tripping over them on my way to the bathroom Mosquito repellent – self-explanatory

Eye mask I have already

And to start with I have three white Panjaby sets to wear

Oh yes, an inflatable neck pillow would be really nice and of course a map of India…..

 

Ah, Delhi Belly – any suggestions as to the best product to help in case I get it? Or shall I look at it as a way of getting rid of those pounds I mentioned earlier? 

 

Baci e Abbracci

Esmeralda