Twenty years ago, this last Christmas, I left North America for the very first time, at age 24. I had traded in my "traveler in spirit" passport for a real one. As a caucasian American raised in the heart of the Ozarks, a trip to India might seem a bit bold for my first venture away from my home country; however, it was the natural choice. I had just married a man from India the summer before, and we were making our first trip together there to meet his family, most of whom I had never met or even "seen" outside of pictures (imagine, if you will, the time before Skype and Facebook), and to attend the wedding of his sister in the tea hills of south India.
I had always been extremely self-conscious of my non-existent international travel experience. I would boast that I had been to nearly all 50 states, owing to the road trips my parents would take us on every summer. Thanks to the modest salaries of a private college professor and a stay-at-home mom turned administrative assistant, we hit the road, as opposed to flying the friendly skies. I would even brag of my parents' annual National Geographic and Utne Reader subscriptions to showcase my understanding of the greater world. Most of my friends in college had been either international students or the children of missionaries, so I always found myself in utter conflict with my hum-drum identity as a white kid from southwest Missouri. I would bask in the stories of elsewhere and the foods of abroad. I would listen to a mishmosh of Creole, west African, and Belgian French dialects mixed with English and bewail my mono-lingual existence. I would host "foreign" film and food nights at my parents' house in the same town, perhaps to prove my worthiness, while hopefully easing the sense of rootlessness my friends must have felt so far from their families, which to them meant home. The night I met Nalin the summer after graduating from college, through a mutual friend who had grown up in Kenya, I must have been apologizing for my lack of travel experience, when he said to me (in essence): "But Heidi, it's not where you've gone, it's where your mind has gone." And there we sat at the end of a table at the long-gone-now McSalty's Pizza Pub near what's no longer called SMSU, two counterparts: one from India on his first trip away from home at age 24, and one from midwest America, yet to spread her wings beyond the continent for two more years, when she, too, would be 24. We became the best of friends.
I recount all of this to give a bit of context to the person I was before setting out for India the winter of 1995/1996. Nalin went ahead of me, given my end-of-term grad school and teaching schedule. And when I met him in the airport after my journey, the cold I had been suffering had left me in a bit of a haze, which the pollution and fog of a New Delhi winter did little to mitigate. Nonetheless, nothing could have prepared me for the incredible sensory experience of that night traveling from New Delhi at one in the morning to Nalin's family's home three hours north towards the foothills of the Himalayas. I have written of that stretch on Highway 1 in the past — the oldest stretch of highway in India. And on that night, traveling with Nalin and his brothers, stopping at tea dhabas along the way, I couldn't keep my face from the window, as tired as I was. First of all, leaving New Delhi at this time in the night/early morning, I marveled at the lights, colors, activity at the food stalls. I hesitate to mention all of this, knowing that I will sound like the typical Orientalist American I never wanted to be, but I was amazed by the colors everywhere — painted trucks, painted stalls, painted temples. Even in the intense night mist, it was a sight to behold. I have pictures from that night, drinking tea with my new brothers along the way, with my permed longish brown hair and young, if tired, twenty-four-year-old face.
The trip was extraordinary and yes, as travel often is, life-changing. I got to do a little of everything in that three-week period: laugh until all hours of the night with my new family; eat amazing food — my favorite being palak paneer, fish fry, and pakoras — prepared by my mother-in-law, with whom I communicated more in smiles and gestures than anything else, owing to our language differences (she understanding me much more than I understood any Hindi); drink a much-desired beer (after days of sweet chai served in the front rooms of countless friends and family) with childhood friends of Nalin's that I'm proud to call my friends today; dance at a ladies' sangeet for my sister-in-law; visit temples and churches alike; travel by train to Bangalore and get scolded for eating too many samosas; stay in a Catholic convent with cold-water showers and a curfew; witness elephants in a forest preserve on a trip up to the mountains in the south; warm up by fireplace in an old colonial guest house in the tea hills; attend a gorgeous wedding, with bull cart, brass band, and all; and even manage to avoid all water/food-borne illnesses until my last domestic flight where I ate the "non-veg" offering and got horribly ill in our layover in London. I learned what everyone learns who travels, if even a bit (and to quote, albeit tritely, from my daughter's favorite show, "Daniel Tiger"): "in some ways we are different, but in so many ways, we are the same." (If you can sing this quote, you must be the parent of a toddler.)
Trident Hotel, Gurgaon
Last year over Christmas, one year shy of this twentieth anniversary, Nalin and I took our three children to India (two of whom had been before). We've been often in between, but it was the first time since our original trip together that we went as a "complete" family. Many things have changed, some good, some not. Nalin's mother has since passed away, so going "home" feels quite different these days if still filled with so much energy and activity with a younger generation of cousins. The pollution in Delhi, after having the "air" of improvement during our intermediate trips, seems just as bad as it did twenty years ago. We have reconnected with friends from Nalin's youth with whom we share exciting and beautiful bonds, as well as staying connected to family and friends who we travel to see as often as possible in new homes and new cities (and some whom we knew elsewhere who now live in India), and our children find themselves easily shifting between cultures, as though those cultures (however different and same) are inherently part of them. It is a thing of beauty. I love to frequent the same shops and collectives I found years ago (Anokhi, The Shop, Dilli Haat, Khan Market, Santushti, etc.), as well as discovering new places to haunt and linger (Lightroom Bookstore in Bangalore, as well as our private tour of the factory in Gurgaon where eka is lovingly made, stand out from this last adventure). I no longer feel the need to find a KFC after days on end of sabjis, dal, and rice. And yet, although I hesitate to admit it, the presence of Starbucks in every major city has been a welcome sight since the days of Nescafe twenty years ago.
Waiting for a 3 am flight home
This very week, one year ago — just as twenty years ago going back to our first grad-school apartment in the Ozark hills of Fayetteville, Arkansas — we returned home from our travels. We took down our Christmas tree and settled back in to the rhythms of school and work. And yet part of us remained and continues to remain there. Every time a holiday or birthday rolls around, we get on Skype, or Facebook, or a phone call (and never nearly enough) and ask what food is being made, what changes are happening, what we will all do when we see each other again. At least we know we have another twenty years of travel (and hopefully beyond!) to keep us ever mobile, ever global, and ever part of an existence much larger than our own. I'm so proud to be a traveler... and though not as prolific or as diverse as some, it's not just in my mind any longer.