Caitlin Has...

I'm travelsick (think homesick, but travel instead). It's frustrating being home and knowing my next adventure won't be for months and months.

Don't get me wrong. I do not regret my decision to come home (except when the temp reaches 98 with a heat index of 112). It was the right decision to make. I know that. But coming home didn't lessen my need to travel, or even temporarily sate it. If anything, it made it much, much worse.

See, now that I have actually, officially Gone Somewhere Else (meaning not the Deep South) my thirst for 'other' has deepened. I like the idea of staying in some place where nobody speaks English. Or speak it only contemptuously, gesticulating with disdain at the nearest pub/restaurant/loo (ha, see Amy, I speak British!) before walking away, muttering in their own language about the rudeness of stoopid Americans.

Basically what it boils down to, if I may be introspective for a moment, is that I like the idea of not being surrounded by surburbia. This is a frequent lament from me. I despise suburbia, yet I can't seem to escape it. Even in Alaska, the area I stayed in is basically the suburb of Anchorage. (And if you really want to be picky, given its size, pretty much all of Anchorage could be classified as a suburb, attached to nothing.) I want different. I do not want white washed walls, cookie cutter houses, perfectly straight streets laid out in a grid. I want painted walls, thatched roofs, streets that curl into themselves and go nowhere, streets that are little more than ox-cart paths worn down over centuries. I could even take a big city, as long as my accent was the foreign one (and no, that doesn't mean Chicago).

Which means I need to plan my next adventure. Even if it doesn't come to fruition (listen to my vocab in this blog; you'd think I read or somethin) for many, long, frustrating months, the planning really does make the time go by just a little bit faster. Bearing that in mind, I've been looking at the possibility of going to India next fall.

Why India, you ask?

Well, dear one, I'll tell you.

I have always been in love with India, ever since I was a little girl. It's the color usage, you see. Indians are not afraid of color. No white washed walls for them, thank you! I was recently flipping through a book on architecture in Islamic countries (my, doesn't that make me sound pretentious) and stumbled across a picture of a shrine to one of the Hindu gods or goddesses (which is fascinating in and of itself, coming out a book on Islamic architecture).

Go here

Do you see? I dare you to find a color that ISN'T in there! Can't do it, can you?

Anyway, I have always loved color and therefore I have always loved any culture that uses it to its fullest, glorious potential. And Indians use color the most. They even have a festival just for color! I mean, seriously, how cool is that?

So I've been thinking, and plotting, and recently mentioned/invited a good friend (the only one that reads this anymore) who enthusiastically said, "OF COURSE I'LL COME!" before going on to expressly forbid me to attempt to book any of our destinations or details (she came with me to Alaska, and if you read this blog, you know how well that turned out).
But it's impossible to look into a trip to India without viewing a few details, and one of those has been transportation. I don't want to just visit one city in India and come home, though that would be better than nothing. I love road trips in any form, almost as much as color, and I have always wanted to take a train, so, I thought to myself, why not combine the two? Why not take a train journey through India? Like The Darjeeling Limited, only pleasant.
Which is when I found this website. It is ever so helpful!

And, upon looking into the site, I found my dream trip:
London to India, Overland
Oh, the bliss! Because, really, who doesn't want to travel by train through the Middle East? They only occasionally have blips in their train schedules now because of bombings. Of course, I wouldn't go within the next couple weeks. Best to wait and see who officially won the Iranian 'election' (really, why even have an election if you're just going to claim victory anyway?) before boarding a train ultimately destined to be bombed in Pakistan anyway. Of course, this trip would take almost a month to complete, one way. Not exactly time effective. But it is now definitely in my RTW fantasy trip that I'm planning in my head should I ever win the lottery or marry extremely, extremely rich (though really, if I marry rich, I'm going on this tour for my honeymoon).

But I also found a far more reasonable, if much, much shorter, journey that I would also like to do.
London to Istanbul, Overland
Have you read The Historian? Yes? Then you know why I would love to go through all that beautiful eastern European countryside. It's only three days if you just go straight there. But if you added a day or so along a few of the stops, you have a very nice little trip, none of which need take place 30000 feet in the air! Which of course, in my book is one whopping bonus. And if you did it offseason, in the early spring or fall, I bet it would be even cheaper, far less crowded, and even more beautiful! And less hot, of course, though I think only Turkey could compete with the Texas heat (or is it the other way around?).

This is as far as my stumblings have taken me. I need to still look at a lot of things, not the least of which is how much it would cost to do a trip of that magnitude. I still hafta get back and forth across the Atlantic, something I sincerely do not look forward to, but will undertake with all the Valium-inspired confidence I can muster.

I guess what this really means is that I've made up my mind to go somewhere, anywhere, next year, and have decided that starting to plan it now will make all the heat of Texas, trying on of bridesmaid dresses (did I tell you I'm a bridesmaid?), and Christmas season go that much faster.

Well, no, it won't be any faster, I'm not THAT much of an optimist.

But, hey, at least I'll be going somewhere. Right?