if I were a guidebook

I would want to be this one: South-East Asia: The Graphic Guide. It's like what I want all my diaries to look like. It's got schematics. It's got some pointers but not enough. Hopefully enough.

Now, some thoughts on planning. I feel I've struck the delicate balance between planning ahead and leaving things to chance with India. I have to make a room reservation for the night of May 14, but besides that, I've got a rough idea of where I'll be and kind of when. I consume guidebooks at all meals and I'm printing out about eight billion helpful emails. Many are from kind folks in what would be most aptly called the Fear Network, as in your mom Fears for your safety and has contacted everyone she knows who has ever been to India and it's a surprisingly large number and includes your uncle. Also, from the P4th Network, Parrish 4th '04-05, where one day we realized the housing gods had mixed up the rooms so that the ratio of black:brown:white in each room was 1:1:1 (which was actually 2 too many people given the size of our bedrooms). Three cheers for all-girls halls--it was a two-semester pajama party and now I've got a friend in Delhi. And finally from the Catholic Mass-Attenders Network, which includes two people who are on the Indian subcontinent right now, one of whom is my reference on my visa application (thanks!).

Which brings me back to the planning ahead/chance balance. Yes, I've struck it, which means that with tickets and pseudo-itinerary in hand, I have yet to hold a visa, the thing that would actually get me into the country. But that's ok, because part of leaving things to chance means being just a little bit nervous because you left things to chance, and yes, it's your own darn fault you didn't apply yet and failed to purchase travel insurance on the ticket and now you get to chew on your nails until they return your passport with a stamp (or something) that says YES, MA'AM, YOU'RE GOING. You know what? This is good preparation for when you're stuck in a train station and the train won't leave and if you don't get to the ferry landing in an hour you're going to miss the ferry and then you'll have to spend a night in the seedy underbelly of a port town which everyone knows is unpleasant no matter where it is (see Elizabeth, Annapolis) and you are SO OK with that because you have gone with the flow so many times before now that there's no reason to think that one night in a grungy hostel full of grumpy travelers who also missed their ferry that you'll now have to hunt down would shake you because remember? Once you forgot to get a visa before you bought your $800 plane tickets and look, that worked out (here's hoping) just fine.