Goodbye India

The last couple of days of our trip were spent back in Delhi, where we had to catch our plan back to America. We paid a visit to the pleasant National Museum, which among other things had some of the Marwar kingdom art that had inspired the idea of a trip to India in the first place. We also visited the nearby Gandhi memorial, the house where he was assassinated that has been turned into a museum. There are footsteps retracing his last steps until the spot where he was actually shot by a Hindu fanatic. This area of the city was quite a contrast from the older sections we had spent time in: wide, well-paved streets, real sidewalks, the sounds of birds and rustling trees, and a complete lack of people harrassing us. It was close to the government buildings, with many high fences and armed guards.

A month in India turned out to be about right. The country is too overwhelming to go for much less than that, and especially after getting sick we were too exhausted to stay any longer. We've gone back and forth over whether we would like to come back to India. Now that we've had the comfort and leisure of a few days in America, I think we might be willing to go back again someday. Especially if we ever had a friend to stay with or came to volunteer. We found it really difficult to get to know anyone or make sense of the place as tourists, and traveling between cities is too exhausting to do every two or three days. At any rate, we've at least come to understand India better than we did before, which was one of our biggest goals all along.