This Time Last Year
For all of last year,
I carried a month-by-month planner, and between January 1st and July 20th of
2012, on each small square representing each day of each month, I wrote the
location of where Scott and I were. While traveling, the most time we spent in
any one place was about five days. Usually though, we slept in a town
for no more than three nights. Last night, I pulled out this planner to play “Guess
where we were this time last year” with Scott. He guessed Gokarna in India,
which was almost right. When I said he was close, he knew immediately where we
had been February 16 last year – Tenali, the hometown of our
friend Vijay, who taught at Sherubtse in Bhutan (and perhaps still does) with
Scott.
Scott and I first went through Tenali, a small town of India’s southeastern state Andhra Pradesh, in mid-January 2012 and spent three nights with Vijay and his family. After Tenali we continued our path of circumnavigating the country and headed south to Chennai, then Madurai, Kodai Kanal, around the southern tip of the country at Kanyakumari, and then followed the western coast north. After a week in Kerala, we toured Bangalore and Hampi before enjoying a few days of respite at the beaches of Gokarna. It was the calmest part of India we had found at that point and we wanted to soak it all in before heading to Mumbai. We already had a train ticket booked for the big city. But on the morning before we were scheduled to leave Gokarna, we got a phone call. It was Vijay and he had news – he was getting married.
Our options were to either follow our original plan of heading to Mumbai or change our plans completely and cross the southern part of India to return to Tenali one month after we had left for Vijay’s wedding. After much hemming and hawing, talking with travel agents, and lots of time on train and bus websites, we decided on the latter. We left Om Beach in Gokarna on February 14 and took an overnight bus to Tenali, spent two nights and one wedding day there, and then a full day and night of traveling on February 17 to get to Mumbai.
When I asked Scott to guess where we were February 16 last year, the correct answer is Tenali, India for Vijay’s wedding. And here we are on that day:
Scott and I first went through Tenali, a small town of India’s southeastern state Andhra Pradesh, in mid-January 2012 and spent three nights with Vijay and his family. After Tenali we continued our path of circumnavigating the country and headed south to Chennai, then Madurai, Kodai Kanal, around the southern tip of the country at Kanyakumari, and then followed the western coast north. After a week in Kerala, we toured Bangalore and Hampi before enjoying a few days of respite at the beaches of Gokarna. It was the calmest part of India we had found at that point and we wanted to soak it all in before heading to Mumbai. We already had a train ticket booked for the big city. But on the morning before we were scheduled to leave Gokarna, we got a phone call. It was Vijay and he had news – he was getting married.
Our options were to either follow our original plan of heading to Mumbai or change our plans completely and cross the southern part of India to return to Tenali one month after we had left for Vijay’s wedding. After much hemming and hawing, talking with travel agents, and lots of time on train and bus websites, we decided on the latter. We left Om Beach in Gokarna on February 14 and took an overnight bus to Tenali, spent two nights and one wedding day there, and then a full day and night of traveling on February 17 to get to Mumbai.
When I asked Scott to guess where we were February 16 last year, the correct answer is Tenali, India for Vijay’s wedding. And here we are on that day:
posted by Siapiau | 10:01 PM
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