When I arrived at the Goa airport and had untangled my frame pack from its checked-luggage web I walked out the arrivals door to find a row of printed names; a teenager wearing sunglasses waggled a handwritten sign with "LINDA" on it and I knew I'd found my driver to Galgibag. We went through the "teach Lydia how to say my Indian name" call and response game: "My name is Jagsh." "Jagsh?" "Jagush." "Ja...Jagush?" "Jogdesh." "Jog Desh?" "Jagdish." "Jagdish?" "Yes. Very good!"

While he went to get the car a guy under an awning started chatting me up. "Which country?...You're very white...I hope you enjoy my Goa!" Somehow I'd suffered brain damage on the flight and didn't remember this was all a pretense - I answered his questions, smiled politely - but as soon as we saw Jagdish, Chatty Guy lunged for my bag. I was quicker and got it onto my back, and then grabbed my two carry-ons, but he was still following me towards the car and I couldn't block him from both sides and he managed to snatch my pack as I swung it off my shoulder to get it into the trunk. "Thanks," I said disgustedly, and handed him a twenty rupee bill out of my pocket for his second of service. "Madam," he said flatly, "A dollar. Give me a dollar," meaning a hundred rupees, and I said, "Thank you," again and shut the door. "Madam! A dollar!" It had been nice to be in the airport. Airports, restaurants, and, to a certain extent, hotels were where you were safe from mendicants.

On our way back to Panaji, three days later, Jagdish told me that he was driving slowly so we'd have more time to chat. I wanted to tell him that this was a sweet sentiment but that we weren't actually friends, that I was paying him to drive me somewhere, but the catch was that he was driving me somewhere, and it was just us in that car, and so I laughed and said that's nice. That was common in India, for me at least: no matter how much you want to be in control of your own fate, you're aren't, someone else is driving (and someone else is ALWAYS driving because you sure as hell aren't) or someone else only speaks enough of your language for you to learn half of the information you would like to know about a situation, or worse yet, they have no useful information so they offer you useless or incorrect or harmful information.

I spent five weeks out of the country in 2011. Two of those were in Japan, where it was cold and serenely self-serviced and approximately one person approached me my entire time there (shout out to Hiro!). The other three were in India, where it was grimy and pungent and the word "no" wasn't used by any of the 82 people who came up to me. There was nothing close to Japan's perfectly ordered calm there, but I can't say the latter was better than the former; the best way to explain it is that the experience broke me down a little and opened me up and filled me with turmeric and confusion and parathas and frustration. There is no disengagement there, no way to float through the country unscathed, which I appreciated as a person who sometimes tends to float through things unscathed.

And oh, my God, It made me realize that I have it good, and when I say good I mean fantastic, and I knew that was coming but I didn't realize how strongly it would hit me. Walking down streets where the trash isn't on fire or being eaten by a wounded dog, having casual conversations where my well-being doesn't depend on the other person's knowledge or morality, making eye contact with men and not feeling degraded by their gaze, going through day to day tasks efficiently and without bleeding money and sanity: these are actions I generally take for granted here in New York. I know saying "This place is chaotic and disturbing and you should totally go there!" is a hard sell but I'm hoping the photographs and the good parts - the food, the landscape, the adventures - at least somewhat support my argument.

The morning of Vishal's wedding he somehow convinces his soon-to-be-father-in-law that it's okay that the car festooned with flowers is late, it doesn't matter, he just needs to get there, and so the spare car he has reserved, which is a charmless Chevy Geo-type thing, arrives to our hotel in Pune and it's Vishal and the driver and me and Jon and a guy Ellora works with named Bobby that I met once in an Irish bar on the Upper East Side.

Vishal is in the front seat, annoyed because we're late and slightly panicked because he is wearing the wrong churidar and the correct ones, which should have been handed off to him during one of the 82 ceremonies of the prior days along with the rest of his suit, are - of course - in the flower car. His jewel-encrusted rental wedding saber is propped up in front of my knees in the back seat; at the end of the handle a not-quite-rusty bolt holds the handpiece on.


Jon and I, in our neurotic Western CONTROL ALL THE THINGS wisdom, are simultaneously trying to help him remember anything he could have forgotten and keep him relaxed. We joke and swear; Jon is asked to hand over the remaining peanuts Vishal has stashed in his turban so he can get a few last bits of sustenance before the fasting starts but he does't know it's open and as he passes them he accidentally empties the package into my sari. This is funny, too.

I predict how big and decorated the elephant will be - the one he'll be riding to the ceremony instead of the customary white mare - that I've been teasing Vishal about for half a year. "For the last time, there is no elephant!" When we finally see the horse and I tell him it's the smallest elephant I've ever seen and he just about loses it I feel shamelessly triumphant - so much for being helpful. We get out and Vishal dashes to the flower car to change before anyone can see his incorrect pants. I walk over to the boy holding the horse's reins and ask its name and he says, shyly, "Lovely Thing."

Later Jon and I compare notes on how different everything was than how we had been told and what we'd assumed. Some things - the style of his traditional suits, how many outfits I needed, how we would get around the city to the various venues - had been frustratingly opaque, but we realized that this was because our hosts didn't know, either. Even as we watched the ceremony, Indian friends we sat with were confused at times by various rituals, and I knew and met Indian girls who - like me - had to purchase saris for this wedding, or who didn't know how to fold them. This isn't to say no one knew what the hell was going on, but it sort of is. India is like that.

Vishal and Ellora are from two different subcultures, Gujarati and Oriya, and what with the mashup of traditions and the fact that they'd spent their adult lives in the United States they said later that even they didn't know what to expect half the time: come out of the house, go back into the house, now the other comes out of the house, wear this, say this, do this, all of it accompanied by a constant stream of Sanskrit, which is not exactly a popular living language, from one or both of the priests. Meanwhile, everyone else chats and drinks soda and goes to get food. As the day goes on distant relatives and friends who missed the morning's baraat show up, approach the couple, call their names to get a picture, and then go off to the buffet, and this isn't considered rude at all.

At the important part, though, the part where their hands are bound by strings of jasmine on top of a coconut and then they walk around the fire lit with ghee, we're all there, throwing rice and flowers, and the third time around when we all yell at Ellora to duck because she's walking in front of him and blocking our aim, I get Vishal straight between the eyes with a marigold and I am absolutely sure this is good luck.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled India travelogue to bring you a picture of my dad and a giant stuffed octopus my mom made for a display window for the local arts council.

Carry on.

New York, NY*
Tokyo, Japan*
Yudanaka, Japan
Kyoto, Japan*
Koyasan, Japan
Nara, Japan
Middletown, CT
Needham, MA
Boston, MA
Great Barrington, MA
New Delhi, India
Jaipur, India
Jodhpur, India
Mumbai, India*
Pune, India
Galgibag, India
Panaji, India

In 2011 I really started to Travel, to learn about foreign cultures by experiencing them and talk to people whose lives are wildly different from my own and see places I'd only ever read about and then throw up in their hotel bathrooms. It's also the year that I lost the family I'd been operating as a part of since 2005. The little prince, with his wee perfect walnut-sized brain, only registered this change as "less space and fewer things to watch out the window" when we moved into the studio last May but it was harder for me and I was only too happy to spend the last three weeks of the year out of the country.

In 2012 I want to take Juju somewhere nice and warm when the winter gets unbearable in a month or so, and then in the spring or early summer I hope I can slip away to Tennessee, and then maybe towards the end of the year when vacation and comp days can be lumped with holidays I'd like to go to New Zealand and take wide angle shots of green mountains and close-ups of puffy sheep. And in between I will be very, very glad to live in New York.