I was afraid of being overwhelmed by the poverty in India, but found myself able to simply accept it. I have never before felt so apart, so voyeuristic. How could I be anything else in a country where I could never blend in and become part of the masses? It is the difference between the empathic and the sympathetic, acceptance and the illusion of control. I hired drivers on different parts of the journey and met up with friends most evenings. As a blonde female, walking alone through the streets, carrying two cameras, I

often became the center of attention. I had to adjust the vision of my photography to reflect the intrusion of my presence that became a part of the tableau. Each time I walked alone there were men around me watching, waiting to see what I would do. I was very aware of their attention, of them being too close, feeling they were intentionally intruding into my space, testing my limits. Though I felt in no way threatened, it was a constant awareness.

I was awestruck on a daily basis by the beauty, the color, the joy in life, and the aesthetic. I saw pictures everywhere. There were themes to the days. Days of small disasters like my sunglasses falling from the neck of my T-shirt into the Turkish Toilet. Just before they hit the white porcelain, I wondered if I would dare to pick them up out of the urinal. I looked down and in that instant I heard them hit the porcelain and saw them shoot down the hole. End of options. One night, a cockroach as big as a mouse was scuttling noisily along the floorboards of my room. The stone cutters that I photographed the day before asked if I had been there previously. They didn't recognize me because I had changed clothes. There was the riptide of the Arabian Sea that I refused to believe. I am still emptying the sand from my pockets.

Who would think that figuring out how to turn off a light in a hotel room could become a minor miracle? One night I couldn’t find the switch and called the front office. They sent two men over to help me. One took off his shoes, climbed up on a shelf and pushed back some ceiling tiles. He unscrewed the light bulb and carried it away. As soon as they left, I began laughing until it hurt so much that I couldn’t stand up. Welcome to the third world.

The cautionary words of my friend helped me frame many replies:

When Mani, my driver told me that his wife didn’t understand him and that he needed 50,000 rupees because his house was missing some walls I was able to tell him, “these things take time,” without missing a beat.

When Rajagopal took me to the Cauvery River and as we looked out at a mass of men and women bathing in the river he told me, “I don’t date Indian girls anymore because my girlfriend cheated on me.” I looked around, palms up in a gesture of supplication and told him, “I don’t know what to tell you.” How subtle these men can be, I may never know.

I love the strangeness of the place, the Indian phraseology, the circular logic of Indian signs:

Hindustani Lubricants
Children's’ Trust Hospital (Can trust ever be repaired or repaid?)
King A Mong Cements
Central Poultry Training Institute
Provisional Air Flights
Only stop shop for delicious desires
Go slow, accident-prone zone
Kingfisher - a thrilling chill
Vigilance and anti corruption bureau
Wheels aligned by Mamrare, Wheel Master
Oceanic Shrimping Limited
Life is too wonderful to be spent worrying (a billboard in Chennai)
Dress shirts to stir the devil in you.

I often was perplexed by the wit and disdain of fellow travelers:

“Dead men are not known for paddling snake boats.”

A woman dressed in virginal white, from pith helmet to sneakers, dewy with perspiration, told me, “Don’t talk to THEM if you can help it.” Us and them, the eternal struggle that is man’s alone.

Intolerance. I found myself intolerant of intolerance. Intolerant of fellow travelers who are disrespectful of a culture or people merely because they don't understand it. Intolerant of people who travel to a country they seemingly hold in great disdain merely so they can say that they have been there.

I love to wander, to see what is around the next turn in the road. I often have a difficult time sleeping in new places because of the excitement and wonderment of the discoveries that lie ahead. My first night in Mumbai (Bombay) was one of those typically sleepless nights. The sensory stimulations that are India were chasing each other through my thoughts: the hot and humid haze of pollution that hangs about in the air like a broth that a cook has distilled to the very essence of its ingredients. The smell of hot asphalt and the pockets of smell of human and animal excrement are a constant assault on the senses until you become reconciled to them.

Arriving in Bombay feels like being dropped into another world. The honking of the cars is unending. Throngs of people push against each other and surround the airport. There are beggars wherever there is the hope of finding a tourist. Some reach out to touch you, others hold their stomachs or beseech you with their gaze as they hold their outstretched palms to you. Children will call you mama and ask for money. Cardboard homes line the road from the airport into the city. Once, I was helped into the airport with my bags by two men who insisted they had a shortcut through the crowds. I watched as they began to disappear into the throng of people and only upon my firm insistence did they enter the terminal.

After sunset I walked from my room at the Taj Majal Hotel of Mumbai to the Gateway to India, a grand old colonialist archway looking out on the Arabian Sea. It is a long-ago territorial claim by the British, a symbol of their sovereignty. This was my first ever view of the Arabian Sea. Where was Scherazade? I learned to cross streets very cautiously. While auto rickshaws make noise the bicycle rickshaws travel in stealthy silence. I looked down while walking in the taxi lane across the street from the Taj Majal Hotel and saw a young child of perhaps two or three asleep on the pavement. He was wearing only a dirty yellow long-sleeved shirt and using a concrete parking barrier as his pillow. Each day I reminded myself there, but for an accident of birth, there, but for the grace of the gods, go I.

I found myself constantly confronted with the deficiency of my knowledge of the complexities of the culture and politics of India. Each day I was reminded that my impressions were fueled principally by Western media and many volumes of colonial literature. Why for example was I unaware that the Indian Government had changed the Anglicized names of many of its cities back to Indian names? How could I not know that Bombay was now known as Mumbai? It often caused me to wonder on a daily basis if they would ever exorcise a colonial power that was so tightly woven into the fabric of their society. For all the temples that were desecrated, for all the rulers who were murderously overthrown and all of the thousands of years of culture they attempted to eviscerate, there are still many colonialist footprints that have become a part of India.

Very quickly I learned to abandon my western logic. Why ask why? At the Taj Majal Hotel of Mumbai you may not order a double Johnny Walker however, you may order a double Indian Scotch. Imported goods of any sort are prohibitively expensive and equally rare. Please imagine my chagrin when I realized I had neglected to bring my swimsuit. The only ones that I found were in "resort" hotels and I soon abandoned any hope of finding something acceptable.

It is no exaggeration to say that India is a sea of humanity, a mass of people. It seemed that everywhere that I went there were throngs of people pressing against me. There is no such thing as privacy. Anywhere you may go seeking solitude, there is another person. Life is a contact sport. If you enjoy the hubbub of humanity, of being a part of the pushing and jostling, of being visually assaulted by the brilliance of the color palette, of being subsumed within an ancient culture, you will find a place in your heart for India and her people.

From Mumbai I ventured south to Kochi (Cochin), a small seaside town in the state of Kerala. Kerala is a state that is known for its high literacy rate and its matriarchal society. It was a pleasant experience to leave the crowds behind and to wander about in a smaller town. I hired a driver named Mani and explored some of the surrounding neighborhoods. At the time, I wrote of them as "slums of contentment" but later I came to realize that I was still viewing things within the limitations of my own prejudices. The streets I wandered, the neighborhoods I explored were impoverished only by my own view of them.

The Taj Malabar Hotel in Kochi is where I had the best auyverdic massage of my life. It was the first ever symmetrical massage that I have experienced. I arrived at the pool and sat down at the welcome desk staffed by two women. They asked "your good name please," filled out some paperwork and showed me into the dimly lit massage room. One wall had a wooden shelf full of brown bottles of many different kinds of auyervedic oils. In the center of the room was a long, flat wooden table that was a beautiful dark brown. The patina was no doubt from years of massages given and received here. I disrobed and lay on the table. Two women worked in complete tandem massaging my body, generously using their oils for over an hour.

Each time I travel I am impressed by how similar we all are. A smile is universal and I have discovered that women everywhere share the same concerns. We are all mothers, daughters, sisters, girlfriends and wives. We all share the common concerns and bonds these responsibilities bring. We talked and laughed as they massaged my body and somehow kept me from slip-sliding off the wooden table. From the soles of my feet to the top of my scalp, they erased every care I had brought in with me. From the massage table they led me to a shower room where I was provided with handmade sandalwood soap. I showered and watched as the red oil-tinted water swirled down the drain. I left a generous tip and my unending gratitude. I remember writing in their guest book words of the most superlative praise. At every opportunity I got another massage. Nothing ever measured up to the auyervedic Nirvana I found in Kochi.

I awoke one night in my hotel in Kochi to hear what I feared was the scuttling of a mouse along the baseboards of the room. I could hear him gnawing on something. I was certain he was eating the Edam cheese I had brought with me from Amsterdam. What else would a mouse want? All things considered, there are some conflicts I would prefer to avoid, and confronting a mouse in a hotel room while standing in my bare feet is one of them. I decided I would just let the mouse go on and scuttle his way out of my room. The strategy would have worked but for the fact that he kept traveling the baseboards along the wall my bed was against. Finally, after a number of round trips, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned on the lights to assess the damage. My beautiful wax encased round of Edam cheese was untouched but the plate of cookies that was covered in saran wrap had been nibbled on. Very small holes were torn through the saran wrap and tiny bites had been taken from the cookies. I didn’t know there were such diminutive mice. Perplexed, I walked into the bathroom and found the culprit, a cockroach as large as a mouse was lying on his back with his legs flailing in the air. Unwilling to squash such a large and potentially messy creature in the middle of the night, I left him to his own devices. I am not sure if it was the saran wrap he ate, or spending the night on his back, but come morning all that remained of the cockroach was the lifeless shell of his body.

There is a sensual languor to the rhythms of life in the South of India. In the South, men wear the longi, a loincloth that is simple piece of homespun cloth tied around their waist. This cloth is of varying lengths, from upper thigh to ankle length. I often saw men walking down the road tying and untying, wrapping and unwrapping their longis. A cloth of floor length was often gathered up and wrapped around the waist so it would balloon out and cover the lower torso and upper thighs. The continual fiddling with the longi seemed to me a sort of a meditation, an autoerotic male display.

The women of the South are wrapped in sinuous layers of cloth, most time exposing their beautiful midriff. Softly rounded bellies, bejeweled toes, bangles on the arms, pierced ears and noses, entranced me with their sensuality.

I try to be very respectful of my host country’s customs. Indian dress is very modest by Western standards. Women do not show their legs. At a minimum, shirts should have sleeves and not be low-cut. In the areas that are Muslim it is preferred that women completely cover their legs and arms. The men's stores were my favorite place to shop for appropriate shirts. They have very fine cottons and I learned to keep one of these large and comfortable shirts with me to wear as an additional cover-up.

As a western woman, I am used to traveling alone. This is certainly not the norm in India. Most of the time I felt I was viewed as a curiosity, like a monkey let loose in the zoo. Only once, in a Muslim enclave outside of Kumarakom, did I feel unwelcome. It was my sense, from the angry glances I received from men in the market place, that I should not be there alone.

If it's Tuesday it must be Trivandrum. The road to Trivandrum from Kochi winds along the Malabar Coast that is known around the world for its pepper and other spices. The hills seem to be carpeted in an impressionist's green with the tea and spices that are cultivated in this region. Many shops sell the fragrant spices that are treasured around the world. Steps cut into the red earth of the hillsides have been worn down by generations of farmers.

As I headed to Trivandrum, I was on my way to visit the last-ever Elephant Festival, which I thought was going to be a parade of elephants. Seeing elephants had become fairly commonplace by now. They seemed to be everywhere. Often they had chains around their necks and were led around like big dogs. I saw people bathing their elephants in ditches along the side of the road, elephants eating bananas in front of teashops.

I am still not over the "elephant parade." I was instantly pulled into the drama of the brightly decorated caparisoned elephants. For hours the elephants stand in place while musicians blow horns and beat on drums. There is a sameness that makes you begin to wonder what you are missing in this groove that seems to skip back to its beginning after just a few phrases. The sultry heat along with the auditory repetition was a classic example of aversion therapy. It still gives me chills to remember it. And I am still grateful to the elephant handler who smacked me with his stick. While photographing the elephants, I did not realize I was so close that one of them was ready to step on me. Even if he had spoken English, I probably wouldn't have heard his warning.

Elephants have very intelligent eyes and seem to take in all that goes on around them. I am certain that one particular elephant had a strong dislike for me. I could tell by the way that he squinted his eyes when he looked at me. I made sure to keep my distance from him. At the end of the event, as the elephants paraded out, two of the handlers riding on top fell off their elephants and had to be carried away. It is still puzzling to me: who were these men who seemed to fall so easily off these great lumbering beasts? Why would they be astride such an animal if their position was so precarious?

Sometimes I had the feeling of never quite knowing where I was. Could I ever have envisioned a place where people chip away at boulders all day to make gravel for roads? How could I classify this place where I was on a temporary visa, this place called India? In conversations with my driver Ramesh and other local people I kept hearing about "the black people." I just didn't get it. Yes, there were differences in complexion, but I didn't see whoever it was they were talking about. I kept at it; kept trying to understand and then one day we were stopped in a insane throng of people and government officials at a border crossing. There were snaking lines of men, lines held in place by flimsy wooden barriers. They were standing patiently as if they were waiting in a line for a ride at an amusement park. All of these men were dressed in black pants and long sleeved black shirts. These were "the black people."

Ramesh was one of my windows to India. As he drove me around the country, he and his wife were expecting their first child. I had been enticed to India by a friend who was born and raised in Bombay. She has spent the second part of her life in Houston. Who better to show me the India that would be unavailable to an outsider? Very quickly, though, I found that my view of India while traveling with her would be limited to her own experience within the culture. She came from a wealthy Sikh family could not understand my desire to wander to streets and the markets, to meet people, to explore. Somewhat reluctantly, she assisted me in engaging a driver from a reputable company. She warned him that I wander off and away we went.

I always sat in the front seat with him so I could see everything that was going on. He quickly became attuned to my eye. We were constantly pulling off the road so I could photograph. Often, he would anticipate my desires. We went on detours I couldn't find on the maps. It sometimes felt as though he had managed to become my eyes. He took me to places that brought me to tears of joy with their sublime beauty.

Mad, mad, Madurai is a bustling city packed with pilgrims, bullock carts and rickshaw wallahs. The term "wallah" means “it is your trade.” I for instance am a photographer-wallah. The South of India is full of ancient temples and Madurai was to be my first sighting of them. I had arrived in Madurai late the previous evening at the Taj Garden Retreat, perched in the hills above Madurai. The red tiled veranda looks over the city and the terraced hotel gardens. It is a wonderful place to have a fresh lime soda (soda water, fresh lime juice and sugar syrup if desired) or a more spirited libation.

I was unprepared for the sights and sounds of the morning. The Pongal Festival was in progress and the exotic sounds of the music drifted up to my hotel. Ramesh picked me up in the morning and we left my perch above the city. As we drove down into the city, we were engulfed in a throng of carts, rickshaws, buses and people. We all seemed to share a common destination: the Shree Meenakshi Temple. I had glimpses of the brightly-colored temple as we wound our way through the streets. Krishna blue, green, yellow and a rainbow of colors decorated this living place of worship. Once again, I found myself drawn into a vortex of color. As I got out of the car Ramesh asked me to leave my shoes there. I knew that I couldn't wear my shoes into the temple, but I was stubbornly determined to keep them on as long as possible. There was no way I would consider walking the streets in my bare feet. Ever-patient Ramesh took me to the shoe kiosk outside the temple where I left my shoes. We agreed to meet at the gate and I wandered into another world.

My first impressions were competing with each other. The visual and the tactile: the slippery feel of the black grimy temple stones on my feet, the incense burning in the dark recesses and the invisible insects that kept biting my bare feet. There were brightly painted deities, temples rising endlessly into the sky and temple monkeys that made their home high above human habitation among the painted temple deities. There were black people everywhere. Temple elephants were blessing the pilgrims with the tip of their trunk in exchange for a few rupees. Time stood still as I explored something I could not have conceived in my wildest imaginings. I was pleasantly agog, a stranger in a strange land.

It was at this temple where so many people asked to have their photograph taken with me. My temple guide Krishnan told me that it was good luck and that the pictures would be framed and put in their living rooms. Was I finally famous?

When I left, some hours later, Ramesh met me at the gate. We walked to the shoe kiosk and when I didn't have the correct coinage in rupees, to his horror I overpaid. From that time on, whenever we stopped at a vendor he would insist upon paying or I would have to assure him that I had the correct change. I found myself in a dilemma at the kiosk. What to do with these grimy feet and my clean shoes? I ended up walking back to the car in bare feet and from then on my shoes stayed in the car.

Driving through the country is not what you would expect. Everywhere you go there are people. In the more rural areas most of them are walking. Many have bullock carts. Cars often travel at night without their headlights on. They are constantly honking to warn people and animals of their presence. Cows, dogs and other livestock lie about on the side of the road. Often they are in the roadway but amazingly escape any harm. Once, while driving, our car became engulfed in gasoline fumes. Ramesh knew exactly what the problem was. We pulled off the side of the road and he got out a new seal. While I alternately looked under the car at the leaking gasoline and the impending convergence of young men from the surrounding fields, he replaced the seal. Before we could be surrounded by a mass of curious onlookers, we were back on our way.

Rajgopal, my guide at the Srirangam Temple in Trichy, spoke excellent English he says he learned from television and tourists. He offered to carry my backpack and in so doing transgressed the boundaries of propriety. There are many layers of what is acceptable. Jobs are very rigidly defined by caste tradition. I learned this very quickly when Ramesh very tactfully but firmly returned the bag I had asked him to carry. I soon came to realize that when someone was willing to transgress their boundaries for you it was inevitable they would ask you to transgress yours. Rajgopal took me to see the erotic art at the temple. At the banks of the Cauvery River, the Ganges of the South, he told me his sad lament about the "untrustworthiness" of Indian girls and, upon parting, gave me his "card." I was left with the impression that he may be the one who is unchaste.

After Srirangam I felt "temple weary." We headed on towards Tanjore, with a reluctant detour to the Darasuram temple. All along the roads in the South women had piles of rice grass laying in the path of the cars. I was shocked when we ran over it the first time. Ramesh explained that this is how the rice is separated from its hull.

To me, Darasuram is the most beautiful temple of all. It is mostly denuded of its brightly colored painting, but that only serves to accentuate the delicate and intricate carvings on the black basalt stone. The craftsmanship reminded me of Egyptian carvings I had seen from the tombs of the pharaohs. The diffuse sunlight filtering through the columns was an epiphany of time arrested. The day I was there was the celebration of the virgin. Beautifully dressed young girls were celebrating with an outing to the temple.

On our drive to Pondicherry I remember the Coca-Cola stand that looked as if it were many cardboard boxes pasted together, the whole of the building emblazoned over and over again with the red and white Coca-Cola logo. They had no Coca-Cola, apparently because of some disagreement Coca-Cola and the Indian government had over the secrecy of the ingredients in their recipe. Pepsi is now sold at the Coca-Cola shops.

Bathrooms were always a novelty. Toilets were to be found in hotels and restaurants in the city and many tourist spots. Turkish toilets (squatty potties), a hole in the ground with two footrests, were fairly common in homes, airports and other public venues. In smaller towns and further off the beaten path a bathroom could be a gate that closes while you have privacy to pee in the gutter. As a certain shoe company is so fond of saying, "just do it."

On our drive to Pondicherry we ran into some of the worst infestations of mosquitoes I have ever experienced. At dusk we stopped for a coconut milk and when we got back in the car the mosquitoes swarmed all around us. I kept smashing clouds of them against the windshield with a rag. They were biting me through my shirt, leaving blood stains as I squashed them. We drove very fast and opened the windows to clear them out. This seemed to help, but every time that we stopped we were inundated and had to perform the whole operation again. I was grateful I had taken the proscribed malaria pills.

Pondicherry has a French history. To me it seemed like a town that had lost part of its soul. Perhaps that is because the name is so romantic. How could mortar and bricks in the unforgiving Indian sun be anything close to my expectations of cobbled streets full of quaint old buildings? I stayed at the Ananda Inn. I arrived in the evening when the night life seemed to be entering a full-tilt drunken revelry. I was advised it would not be safe to leave the hotel until morning due to carousing that surrounded the hotel. I felt I was in the middle of a drunken tilt-a-whirl contest. I loved the carnival-like sounds of the people, the sounds of the horns--the beeps, toots, squeaks, and honks of the conveyances.

The hotel had two restaurants, a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian. With an hour wait at the non-vegetarian restaurant, I chose to have my meal at the vegetarian one. The food in the South of India is wonderfully aromatic with the spices they cultivate. In the South they have many types of bread made from rice. I loved the spiciness of the food. It wasn't long into the trip before I began to notice that my body had a strongly pungent smell. I first became aware of it when I entered my hotel room and smelled the scent of another person. I gradually realized the foreign smell was not someone who had just left my room, but myself. The spices were coming out my pores.

I love the South Indian coffee. It was the closest thing to espresso I could find. It is strongly brewed, then heated with milk and sugar. It is always served in a metal cup and has a very rich taste, as though the sugar has almost caramelized. A friend and I who kept running into each other had a standing joke. Every time we would have coffee together, they would remove my large coffee cup and replace it with a smaller version of his cup. It was a constant amusement for both of us to try to surreptitiously engage the wait staff in making sure that the other person got the smaller cup.

The cuisine there is as involved as any in the world. The tastes are very specific. Since there is a minimal use of fat, especially animal fats, foods eaten there seems to metabolize more efficiently. There were days when I felt I couldn't eat enough. Climbing into rock forts and wandering through temples could be the dieter's dream vacation.

On the road to the Ashram in Pondicherry I noticed many effigies suspended on poles outside houses under construction. To me they appeared quite ominous but I was assured they were only there to bring good luck to the new home. Still, I am not sure.

My favorite thing in Pondi was the Sri Aurobindo Handmade Paper Factory. The factory is owned by the Ashram and open to the public. There are many buildings in this factory. They grind up rags and other material to reshape into large colorful sheets of paper. I was surprised at how wet the process is. Each building houses a different part of the process. There is a sorting room, a grinding room, and a room to press out the paper. There are drying rooms and clotheslines outdoors where the paper is hung to dry. Colorful sheets of paper wave in the breeze until they are dry enough to be stacked in the warehouse. The clang clang of the presses and the grinding of the extruders and mixers underlies the sounds of workers talking and has a soothing rhythm. At the gift shop you can buy hand made stationery with pressed leaves, appointment books with rainbow swirled paper and many other unimaginable things for just a few dollars.

Mahabalipuram. I dare you to say it fast three times. I still don't think that I can pronounce it correctly. How many times did I try? Another coastal town that is home to smaller-scale stone temples that are just a few stories tall. Stone carving is a living art in this town. Be sure to visit the Mayan Handicrafts store. These stone cutters use chisels they make on site in their own furnace. They make carvings that will fit in the palm of your hand to sculptures larger than life. They will ship all over the world. If you look closely on the roads outside of Mahabalipuram you may notice people in the marshes harvesting salt.

I hate to say goodbye. To me, it means that I may not pass this way again. A journey is a lifetime and I will never forget my travels with Ramesh at the wheel. I remember my sense of the absurd when we had first begun our travels together. We were on one of those roads through the country and I told him that I wanted to stop at the next bathroom we passed. "Bathroom, bathroom?", he said quizzically. I remember wondering what in the world I had done to take off completely alone in a strange land where I was unable to communicate such a simple thing. How was I going to explain this? Somehow, we figured it out. Just like the time I was trying to find out about where all the bulls were. Cows were very commonplace but I never saw any bulls. I couldn't help but wonder where they were. Ramesh didn't understand the word "bull." Finally, I explained that I wanted to know about the "man cows" and we were once more on common ground.

There were times when communication between us seemed effortless and others when it was exhausting. Until this trip, I thought I had a good ear for language, but so often I found myself feeling completely tongue-tied and deaf to the nuances of sound. How frustrating it was to travel on to the next village and find that the words for please and thank you were no longer the same.

I still do not know how to adequately thank Ramesh for being one of my windows to India. As an eternal outsider, these were the only views possible to me. Quickly we had established an evening ritual of discussing our plans for the next day. I would thank him for the day and we would shake hands before parting. This was of course a transgression of boundaries on my part. If there was a doorman at the hotel they wanted to be my intermediary. It seemed absurd to me that we should not speak after we had spent all day together. I don't know how many days it took to realize that while I slept in comfort in an air-conditioned room, Ramesh was sleeping in the car. I will always remember the kindness in his smiling face as we parted at Madras and I flew on to Bangalore. Thank you Ramesh for sharing a part of your India with me. Until we meet again I will remember your many kindnesses and wish you and your family well.

Bangalore, the fifth largest city in India. "One of the seven most high-tech cities of the world with direct nonstop flights to and from San Jose, California," my Brahmin driver Prakash proudly told me. In some ways, I felt I hadn't left my hometown of Austin, Texas. As I sat in the lobby of the Taj West End Hotel it looked as though at least half of us were from the states. I even ran into a couple of high-tech entrepreneurs from Austin in a local store.

Bangalore is a very westernized city, with India pushing up against its outskirts. Visit Deepam Silks and Sarees from some of the most beautiful scarves and ties to be found. Navrathan Jewelers has so much beautiful gold jewelry I found it completely overwhelming. There is such a tremendous selection to view that it is impossible to spend a brief amount of time there. Driving just outside of the city you will see bears wearing muzzles being led along on leashes. Tribes of monkeys run across the roads and play in the dappled shade of the trees. Cobra mounds are everywhere to be seen.

One morning I was wandering about and heard live music being played. I headed towards it and found a car festooned in garlands of flowers. I supposed that it was a wedding. I found someone who spoke enough English to understand me and they took me to the brother of the groom. In his perfect English he told me that he lived in San Jose California and invited me to stay and photograph the wedding along with the other five photographers who were jostling for position in front of the wedding dais.

A Hindu wedding ceremony is very colorful and full of symbolism. The bride sits on the dais with oil lamps burning and many offerings of food, spices and other precious things. She is surrounded by a curtain of tinsel and garlands made of yellow marigolds. The groom's feet are anointed by the priests. There are many family members up on the dais as a part of the wedding party: women, children and finally the bride and groom. Towards the end of the ceremony the bride and groom stand side by side. The priest takes the small finger of each and delicately joins them together with a piece of straw. The coattail of the groom and the shawl of the bride's dress are also tied together. These gestures symbolize the lifelong union of this man and woman. Anyone who has a camera is invited to join in the photo opportunity. It is appreciated that all of these people are recording the wedding couple's big day even though there is a constant friendly competition to get the best camera position in front of the newlyweds.

Arranged marriages are the norm in India and this was the first time the bride and groom had met. Once again, so called Western sensibilities must be abandoned. In the well-ordered social hierarchy of India this system seems to work, for the most part. My friend from Bombay did not have an arranged marriage because her parents wisely recognized that with her strong will, she would rebel against it completely. However, all of her other brothers and sisters did have arranged marriages and are quite content.

India is a sensory experience. I replay the vision of sensual beauty she seductively reveals. I don’t know if I have a greater tolerance, understanding, or wisdom. Can there ever be too much? As I unwound the threads of my trip, as I repacked my clothes and journeyed back home through the airports that had been my passageway to India, I remembered the last weeks as though no time had passed. The contents of my suitcase are a reminder of weeks spent exploring a new place. Retracing the steps of my journey and heading back home, I was reminded of how exciting it is to see something for the very first time.

My stay in Bangalore was the final stop in my travels in India. As I boarded the plane from Bangalore to Bombay and prepared for my journey home I made a mental list of the things I would not miss upon leaving India. I could think of only three things: being called "madam" by the cacophony of shop keepers wanting to show me their wares, being touched by a beggar, and being the center of attention.

I wouldn't presume to tell you where to go or what to see in India. There is an adventure around every corner. She is full of beautiful beaches, temples, people and life. She is the enigma of what we condescendingly call a third-world country. She is an ancient culture steeped in tradition.