I was already in college in Texas the first time I remember trying cilantro. I’m fairly certain it was in a pico de gallo cup that accompanied my bean and cheese burrito from Taco Cabana (shout out to TC!) Not familiar with Taco Cabana? Bless your heart. It’s only the best fast food Mexican restaurant chain in all the Lone Star State. If someone told me they went to Texas just to get a Taco Cabana fix, I’d be nodding in both understanding and jealousy.

Anyway, the thing that stands out about my first experiences with cilantro was how much I didn’t like it. It tasted like I had just chewed on the corner of a Ziploc baggie. This continued to happen every time I ate it. A gross, synthetic, plastic flavor would completely overpower the rest of the food, and it seemed to be unavoidable, being in almost every meal I was ever served in Texas. What the heck was with all this dang cilantro?!

Well, friends, like the frog that is unknowingly and incrementally boiled to death, so too was my hatred for cilantro. As in, it began to disappear, only to be systematically replaced by an intense desire to constantly eat cilantro. Weird, huh?

Over the course of one year, I went from not ever tasting cilantro to hating cilantro to then craving cilantro. I began to put it on anything and everything. Even going so far as to heating up rice or beans JUST so I would have a vessel with which to enjoy my cilantro. I had a problem for which no support group existed.

Fast-forward 20 years to today. I still love cilantro like a 5th child (I have 4 real kids) but some new friends have also joined my hate/love crew. Let me introduce the newcomers, jack fruit and papaya. They don’t speak the same love language as cilantro, but their beginnings in my life are similar in that I also hated the flavors of both these beautiful tropical fruits before developing a true love for them.

I first tasted papaya in high school when my dad was stationed in Hawai’i. We had a prolific papaya tree next to the house and the papaya looked like it would be delicious. The flesh is a rich and velvety pinkish /orange salmon color and I WANTED to eat it. When I did, however, the flavor did not match the expectation. It wasn’t as sweet as I thought it would be, actually being quite mild tasting. The worst part of it all was the smell. As soon as you slice it open, you can’t help but smell what I would describe as a hint o’ butt crack. Let’s make the diSTINKtion that I don’t mean a butthole, but really just a butt crack. It’s a bit stinky. “That’s gross, Chosun!” you might be thinking. To which I would reply, yeah, it IS gross. Thus, the nickname I came up with- poopaya.

I first tasted jack fruit when we lived in Minnesota. There was an Asian market (called The Asian Market) we would frequent to stock up on our beloved Korean ingredients. They sold a lot of random and seasonal items near the cash register, one of which happened to be fresh jack fruit during the summer. We bought half of one and made a huge space for it in the refrigerator, just as you would for a defrosting Thanksgiving turkey. Everyone was giddy with excitement to try it, but just like its stinky little buddy, poopaya, jack fruit has a malodorous presence.

If jack fruit was a wine, then I would tell you it has piquant, floral notes of Juicy Fruit gum, and a full-bodied aroma of butt crack. It was immediate and obvious that I never wanted to eat this disgusting combo of Juicy Fruit/butt ever again. Not to mention, it made my lips, tongue, and throat itch like crazy. No, no. I would never ingest that Devil’s food for a second time, I silently told myself. This thought was underscored with each opening of the refrigerator, as I was nearly knocked unconscious by the fetid odor expelling from this garbage can people call jack fruit. To be true, my feelings of hatred were stronger with jack fruit than with papaya, but like a wasp sting and a spider bite, they both super sucked.

So what happened, you might be asking? What changed to make me start LIKING this produce? Friends, my answer is, I don’t know. I really don’t. All I can say is that my life in India has been made a bit sweeter with the addition of these stinky, yet delicious fruits filling both my fridge and my stomach. Have you tried these tropical delights? I love to hear your thoughts!

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I know I watched those cartoons from start to finish, religiously, every single Saturday, but now as a 40 something year old I can only recall a few of them. One that stands out the most is the Smurfs. Did any of you watch them? I loved the Smurfs!

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Smurfs are little blue creatures that live in the forest. They often have names that mimic the role they play; Handy Smurf was the carpenter, Lazy Smurf was the narcoleptic, Papa Smurf was the patriarch, and so on and so on. They were constantly outsmarting their nemesis, Gargamel, and his evil cat, Azriel, who were always hatching wicked ideas to catch the Smurfs. Now, compared to the digital animation of today, Smurfs would be considered the Commodore 64 of cartoons, but in the 80s, they were cutting edge!

One of the most iconic parts of the Smurfs is their use of the word “smurfy”. This word is a chameleon and has a trillion meanings, some of which include but are not limited to: awesome, bad, tired, rude, delicious, absolutely, etc. “That was real smurfy of you!” is a statement that could mean any number of things, and without context, you would be blind to its interpretation.

No other word has that kind of flexibility, nay, that kind of POWER, but 7 months ago, I was exposed to a gesture that certainly does. Let me introduce you to the Indian head jiggle. This movement is used indiscriminately and with hearty abundance by Indians everywhere. What does it mean, one might ask. To which I would reply, anything, everything, and, who knows?

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I often feel the same way as Andre the Giant felt every time Vizzini theatrically exclaimed “Inconceivable!” Do I think this head wiggle means what they think it means? In that, the jiggler may mean it one way, but the jigglee (me) may understand it completely different.

Take for instance the time I was in immigration with my youngest son. We were coming back to India from Sri Lanka, and my husband and 3 other kids had gone through first and were waiting on our bags. My youngest has an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) card but whoever was on typewriter duty that day, spelled his middle name wrong. Even with precise, notarized, triplication of forms and duplication of website data entry, once everything got passed to the guy at the Indian Embassy that day, it all went to Hell in a handbasket. He typed an unnecessary “D” to the end of my son’s middle name, laminated the page, patted himself on the back for another job well done, and drove to his cataract-removal surgery.

We have since had to explain this mistake to multiple airline and immigration agents who catch the discrepancy between his OCI and his passport. So, I knew exactly what was happening while we waited patiently behind the glass partition, and I was prepared to explain.

After a minute, the agent quietly asked his coworker to come look at the two documents. They commiserated in hushed whispers, some computer buttons were pressed, the mouse was clicked a few times, and finally an exasperated sigh was let out by the agent. “Sir, is there a problem?” I asked. He replied with an Indian head jiggle. “There is?!” I worriedly exclaimed. A smaller, tighter jiggle was given in return. “Is that a yes?!” I asked, in a higher pitch. Finally, his coworker leaning over to help, says a simple, “No, Madam.” Well, why didn’t you just say that in the first place, I thought! Only guess what? He did. Clearly and emphatically.

The Indian head jiggle could throw even the most papered and well-bred bloodhound off the scent with its confusing, open-ended reply. The head jiggle is the Rubik’s Cube of gestures, with endless possibilities, combinations, and meanings! A potential real-life situation could be as follows: “Do you have laddu?” you might ask a bakery worker. Head jiggle. “Uhhh, you do, ma’am?” Head jiggle. “Wait, you do not?” Head jiggle. “Ama?” (This means “yes”). Head jiggle. Wait, “Ilai?” (This means no). “Laddu irukkah?” (Do you have laddu?) Head jiggle.

Listen friends. You may never know if that bakery has any delicious, sweet laddu. You may never know if the milk man is going to return to your home. You may never know if your luggage is overweight at the airport. These things, and many more, will become life’s greatest mysteries until you unlock the Rosetta Stone of the Indian head jiggle. Part of the wild and beautiful culture here in India, is that even though there are over 1,000 languages spoken, this simple gesture transcends them all.

Basically, the Indian head jiggle means whatever you want it to mean. My husband calls it the Swiss Army Knife of communication here. Once you understand how it’s being used in any given situation, you realize you’ve unlocked the next level of the game! You finally understand a little more and can be understood a little more. Congratulations! Some helpful, beginner translations of the head jiggle are as follows:

• Yes.

• No.

• Okay.

• I don’t understand you.

• I totally understand you.

• No way.

• That’s great!

• That’s dumb.

• Oh, really?

• No, thanks.

• Yes, please.

• You’re an idiot!

• You’re a genius!

• I literally didn’t even hear what you said.

• I’m pretending to care what you said.

I’ve come to notice that even I will jiggle my head as I reply to questions or ask my own. My husband does it, too. Have we begun to take on physical mimicking movements along our path of assimilation? Even if locals cannot understand my words, I hope that my slight head jiggle will give comfort to them that maybe communication is actually happening, even subconsciously. If this is the case, and I think it is, it would be absolutely smurfy.

(Below is a quick tutorial of the jiggle. I squint and furrow my brow for some reason, but you don’t need to. Make your head jiggle, your own!)

My birthday takes place in the summer, so I never got to experience the joys that came with a school-time birthday. Not a complaint, just a statement of fact. Homemade funfetti cupcakes, kids all singing to you, and maybe some special treatment from the teacher. It all looked like fun to me! One of those extra special things the teacher often gifted the birthday kid (along with a super dope new pencil!) was to be the line leader. Now, if this wasn’t the upper echelons of school yard society, then I don’t know what was.

The line leader got VIP access to THE best parts of the playground. You know they’re getting on one of the three swings that doesn’t have a huge mud puddle underneath. The line leader got to legally boss other kids around. “Hey Daniel, I said line up from tallest to shortest. Stand behind Tabitha!” And the line leader frequently got to hold some visible token of power to ensure they stood out from the non-birthday peasants they ruled over for the day. In one grade, the teacher gave a whistle on a nylon string. In another grade, the teacher handed the line leader chalkboard erasers. The line leader would hold that whistle or set of erasers like a queen would hold her jewel encrusted scepter; with both reverence and also supreme domination.

Lines were necessary. Lines were control. Lines were the ultimate organizer in a space of chaos. When you grow up understanding the line and the important role it plays in everyday life, things feel comfortable. Want to get a ticket at the movies? Sure! Enough for everyone. Just stand in line. Want to check out at the grocery store? Sure! Let me get in the shortest line since I’m in a rush. Want to go through TSA? Well, want isn’t the word I would use, but hey, we all need to do it, so just stand in line. You’ll get through!

There is a certainty with a line. You see all the people ahead. You try to forecast how quickly folks are moving and about how long it will take until your turn. Likewise, you turn to look over your shoulder at all the people behind you, doing the exact same thing. Lines work because we believe they work, but what happens when there isn’t a line? More so, what happens when the idea of a line doesn’t even exist? Enter: India.

Now, we’ve been in India for about 7 months and one thing that still gets my goat is the lack of line etiquette. I think it varies from place to place, but here in Tamil Nadu, there is basically no such thing as a line. If you are waiting on something patiently and believe you are the first person at the counter, then you are naive! You will soon find yourself to be at spot 8 or 9, with a confused look on your face and high blood pressure.

(Please note, there will be no pictures accompanying this post. Much like the Chupa Cabra, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster, my Google Photos account has no high resolution photos proving the existence of lines in India.)

My first experience with this was on a previous trip to India in 2020. In the airport, men are commonly given a separate line from women in the security areas, so I placed my backpack on the security belt, along with luxury handbags and high-end carry-ons that the women behind me brought. I stood with my stepmom in law (who is Indian) and my two young daughters as we slowly shuffled into the semblance of a line. There we were, a cute little group, next to be called into the tiny curtain shielded stage where a female officer would check us for contraband.

The female officer opened the curtain with the flair of Boy George at a Halloween party, and waved us toward her with her security wand. As we approached, a woman from nowhere cut across diagonally and practically galloped ahead of us. What was this? What was this madness? And at an AIRPORT?! My cheeks were roasting with anger, and I just let instinct kick in. “Hey!” I yelled. No reaction, and she was getting closer to the curtained stage! “HEY!” I shouted again, only this time I punctuated every letter with a loud and echoing clap of my hands. Everyone turned to look at me, including and most importantly, the woman who was actively cutting. “You! Get to the back of the line!” I pointed at her when I said “you” and gestured the “get outta here” backward thumb hook when I said “back”. Anyone could have understood what I was saying at that moment. She sheepishly head wiggled and brought her palms up facing me as if to say, “What’s going on? What are you talking about?” Oh, but she knew. She KNEW. One more clap and I yelled, “You! GO!”

Unbelievably, it actually worked. She walked not to the back of the line, but sort of meandered line-adjacent a few ladies behind us, and we got to take our rightfully waited upon turn. Granted, the airport security line in a foreign country was probably not the best place to accomplish this feat, but that’s the hand I was dealt, folks.

Afterward, my stepmom in law, Carol, spoke up. “Wow, Chosun! I didn’t know you had it in you to do something like that. Even I wasn’t going to say anything.” Carol was born and lived in India until her 20s. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 35+ years, though, so she has hearty experiences from living in both cultures. There are things she puts up with in India that would really bother her in the States, and vice versa. Carol was going to let that slide? Was I being a jerk? We then had a conversation about lines (or lack thereof) in India. I had no idea this was a thing, as that had been my first experience with it.

Well, fast-forward to now, and I have had a ton of experiences with it. Each time it happens, I say something. I let the person, or people, know they are cutting in front of someone. I get the same reaction each time. It’s kind of like a “yeah, I know you were here first, but, like, I don’t want to wait. Duh.” It’s very shameless, and I am not here for it.

I’ll wear the sarees and kurtas. I’ll eat the sambar and dosa. I’ll use my horribly accented basic Tamil. I’ll do just about anything and everything to assimilate to this beautiful and vibrant culture we’ve immersed ourselves in. However, I refuse, I REFUSE, to accept this as normal and okay.

The airplane tickets are numbered, Ma’am. You don’t need to cut my kids. The hotel already has all of our bookings, Sir. You don’t need to cut me. The bathroom stalls are all full, Ma’am. No one is going anywhere. The luggage will come around on the carousel again, Sir. You don’t need to knock me out of the way for your suitcase.

Those all just happened two weeks ago, on our return trip from the states, for winter break. Every single one. I spoke up on every single one. I’d just gotten done pushing away the world’s largest suitcase from the very spot I was previously standing, and telling the man who heaved it off the conveyor belt and into my actual body, “Sir, I’m just going to push your luggage over here and away from where I was standing, so I may also collect my bags!” He was quite unbothered. I was fuming.

My oldest daughter, 14, gently placed her hand on my shoulder after the luggage incident and said, “Mama, try not to let this bother you. Just accept it.” Such wisdom. My husband Ravi then said, “Yeah, babe, don’t even stand over there. Don’t even deal with all the people. Just wait until the crowd thins out.” Such wisdom. My oldest son, 16, was on the other side of the carousel, and he called to me, “I’ll get them Mama. Don’t worry about it!” Such wisdom.

Was my stubbornness on subjective rude behavior ironically turning me into the very person and exact quality I was raging against? I asked some Indian friends about it the following week. Was cutting in line rude here? Profoundly and overwhelmingly, the answer was yes! YES! It’s rude as crap. People do it because they think their time is more important, or they are more important than you, and it’s been sort of baked into the culture. Every man for himself! It’s just inconsideration, plain and simple. People in India are largely non-confrontational, so “poor behavior” goes unchecked on a large scale. Or, when you do say something (like me) it just gets ignored because people don’t want to engage. It’s too confrontational.

Until the concept and acceptance of a line becomes a mainstream part of culture here, I guess I will continue to speak up for myself, continue to be ignored, and continue to fight the petty fight. Wish me luck.

For your entertainment, this is a real-life conversation between Ravi and his Tamilian dad about how to say, “Excuse me, can I pass you,” when trying to go past people blocking your path: OPEN SCENE

Ravi: “Baba, what do I say to people in Tamil when I am trying to walk past them?”

Baba: Perplexed by this never-before-asked-question. “I guess you would say, ‘Ungala thaandi pogatuma?’, which literally means ‘Can I jump over you?’, but no one says that.”

Ravi: “So, then, what do you say?”

Baba: “You don’t say anything. You just push them.” Deadpan face. #TRUTH

Ravi: ???

Baba: <goes back to reading newspaper>

CLOSE SCENE

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One of my favorite daily rituals in the states was my evening shower. Clean, bleached, soft, white towel? Check. Snuggly warm pajamas? Check. My indulgent shampoo, soap, and conditioner? Check, check, and check. That nocturnal practice, to me, signified the invisible shift from “duty calls” to “off the clock” and I looked forward to it each and every night.

Muscle memory kicks in as soon as I step inside that steamy cocoon of balmy mist and dunk my head into the warm waterfall of liquid relaxation. I would move through the process like a ballerina stretching through foot positions. It’s the same format each and every time: wash hands, wash hair, wash body, wash face, wash feet, condition, and DONE. A few times each year I seem to do something out of order for whatever silly reason and my entire shower is thrown off. Did I actually just wash my hair AFTER washing my face? The travesty!

One of my favorite parts of the shower, aside from the cleansing ritual itself, was singing. I would often opt for the bluesy, jazz toned songs, and admire how eerily similar my voice was to Adele’s. (You’d have to be there to truly appreciate it.) When my a cappella cantata was done, I would stand beneath the beautiful pressure of that Moen shower head, turn the water from hot to cool, then cold. I’d take a good gurgle of chilled water, swish it around my mouth, spit it out and turn off the water. Finito!

Do you have a shower process? I thought I was the only one who had to adhere to a strict regimen or suffer the mental consequences of going out of order, but I think there’s a lot of us.

Coming to India has greatly changed my showering schedule. It still signifies the same shift from work to rest, but the physical steps are abbreviated and just kind of crappified to be honest. Clean, soft, bleached white towel? No, but just a clean towel works. Snuggly warm pajamas? No, not really warm, but I place a hot water bottle under the covers at my feet. Snuggly? I guess they can be snuggly since I curl into the fetal position to retain as much body heat as quickly as I can. Indulgent shampoo, soap, and conditioner? Uhhh, nope. That’s a big nope. The hair cleanser of choice here, or at least the easiest one to get, would be Head and Shoulders brand shampoo and conditioner in one. I loathe shampoo+conditioners. Always have, always will. But, I have quickly become accustomed to my loyal all-in-one bottled shower buddy. As far as soap is concerned, I have 2 main choices: neem oil bar soap, or Pears brand glycerin soap. They are both pleasant enough, but I had become very fond of the Method and SheaMoisture brand coconut milk soaps (at Target, of course).

The hot water for our shower upstairs is brought up by a pump we had installed the first week we moved to the house. Initially we took bucket baths, and they are very dissatisfying. Ravi and I had been told that the bucket baths were actually romantic and a pleasant experience. What a whopper. They are far from romantic unless you think it’s precious to cower around a Home Depot style 5-gallon bucket like Gollum as your shivering and goosebumps prevent a lather from forming on your skin. You scoop the hot water from the bucket with a large measuring cup and as soon as you douse yourself, the water somehow pulls a degree from your internal body temperature, and you become more cold even quicker.

Ravi had lived a few years in Panama for the Peace Corps, and he recalled taking cold river water bucket baths outside, and he didn’t mind them in the least. To his recollection, those were perfectly fine. 20 years later, in India, even with hot, running water and the convenience and privacy of our own bathroom, after two nights of it he was a broken man. No complaints here.

We have small hot water tanks in each bathroom and a much smaller on-demand tank in the kitchen. These are electric, and you have to switch the heater on about 20 minutes before you want to shower and remember to turn it off when you finish. The tanks hold roughly 5 gallons (ca. 19 liters) of water, which gives us about a 4-minute warm shower. It isn’t record-breaking by any means, but after a day of walking dusty streets filled with diesel plumes, litter, and all kinds of poop, those 4–5 minutes are sheer 5-star luxury.

As far as my shower singing solos go, they can wait until we are stateside and no longer worry about the water-borne bad guys that are so commonplace here. That end-of-shower cold water gurgle hasn’t been on the docket since we arrived here, either, lest I accidentally swallow some unfiltered H2O and find out my typhoid vaccine sucks. #notworthit.

I hope I have given some perspective on a normal habit we all share and how I modify it to fit our current experience. So next time you are in the shower, please belt out a little Sinatra, some Nat King Cole, or whatever raspy soul-filled voice you love best. Take a nice mouthful of that clean water, or heck, brush your teeth in it. Do it knowing that you are living the dream of a 40-something year-old woman who is on the other side of the world, frantically washing her hair with Head and Shoulders shampoo+conditioner. This woman’s lips are pursed shut lest she swallow a rogue cholera-laden water drop. This woman, in case you didn’t catch it, is me, and at the moment, I am jealous of you.

As some of you may know, we were recently traveling in Sri Lanka while the kids were on a school break. We rented a big passenger van to clock our kilometers in roomy comfort, and man oh man, mucho kilometers we did clock. I guess all that wear and tear on the van finally caught up to us and while we were passing someone, they honked. It was unusual, since typically only the passing vehicle honks as they haul butt past the slower driver. Ravi turned his head to the car and saw a man gesturing toward the wheel of our van. He asked our driver to pull over and they both got out to investigate. Hopefully it was not a booby trap set by the spider. Aha! A front hubcap was loose and dangerously close to wobbling off into the Sri Lankan roadside jungle abyss.

Honking. Depending on the context and where you live, this can be recognized as a four-letter word, or simply seen as helpful advice. If someone cuts you off, a quick beep is the auditory version of giving the middle finger. Proceed with caution! At the same time, a passerby may honk to draw your attention to something wrong with your vehicle. That van in Sri Lanka still has all four hubcaps. Thank you, kind sir!

Honking in Hawai’i was rare, and I’d imagine more from tourists than locals. I can’t remember honking, myself, in the four years we lived there. But, if I did, then I’m certain the shame I felt in doing so has forced me to push the memory to the dark recesses of my brain with all the other undignified acts I’ve committed.

On the other side of the honking spectrum, however, was Seattle/Tacoma. We shipped our minivan via barge from Honolulu to the Port of Tacoma. We picked it up and pulled away from the main road to merge onto the freeway in our new home state. I had a huge grin on my face, my hands were at 10 and 2, and we were just brimming with hope and excitement and optimism for the start of our new journey. Before the merge was even halfway complete, my happiness was quickly abbreviated by a menacing, honking Camaro. Not just any honk though, it was an everlasting gobstopper of a honk whereby I thought the driver had simply stroked out and was sure to be seen face down on the steering wheel.

I glanced over as he wildly raced past me and, nope, his head was upright, alert, and trained right on mine. He gunned his accelerator and waved his free arm and middle finger in the air by which to say “the speed limit is 90 when I’m on the road, grandma!” I remember feeling nervous and scared since it had been so long since I’d heard a horn honk, let alone at me and with such hatred. This experience underscored both my commitment to not honking unless danger was involved and also my disdain for the stereotypical Camaro driver. (No offense to the 1 or 2 decent ones out there.)

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Now that we are in India, my theories on honking have evolved yet again. Honking is a universal language spoken by every vehicle on the road here. Motorbikes, autos, cars, buses, lorries. They all honk, all the time, for every reason you could possibly conjure. The rules of honking are as follows: HONK if you are turning, passing, driving, driving slow, thinking about turning, see a cow, see a person, see a horse, see a horse being led by a man on a motorbike, etc… Actually, I guess the only rule of honking is that there is no rule. The lawlessness surrounding honking etiquette here is contagious, so much so that you begin to realize the practicality surrounding the practice.

I stood at the top of our road, on a random Tuesday afternoon. This is light traffic, and normal honking for the amount of vehicles on the road.

How many billboards or bumper stickers have you seen with the general phrase of “Watch out for motorcycles”? The hard part is that you are only using one of your 5 senses (or 6 if you’re Bruce Willis) to assist your driving awareness. Imagine how adding the sense of sound could augment your driving abilities, telling it 2 times the amount of data it usually gets. The roads, and the vehicles on them, become twice as safe as they would be without the honking.

Now, I’m not suggesting that simply the addition of honking makes roads safe. It does not. According to the Indian government’s road safety statistics, India ranks 1st in road accident deaths out of 199 countries. That is a horrible thing to rank #1 at. They are followed by China (the only other country with a billion people), and then by the United States. What I am saying, though, is that being able to both see and HEAR the traffic and vehicles around you would probably improve the safety of the roads.

In the age of silent hybrid and electric cars, I’m imagining that a few beeps of “here I am!” will help out in a lot of situations. I’m not sure how many times I found myself on the street in my neighborhood in Hawai’i, driving my ultra-quiet hybrid minivan, stuck behind a kid (or a 40-year-old man) on an electric skateboard running slaloms in front of me. What a pickle. He cannot hear me behind him, so he is going about his leisurely activity of pretending to be Bode Miller, unaware of my presence. But, unless I make myself known, I will have to wait until he either passes my driveway or happens to turn around for an unrelated reason and sees me behind him. What did I do? Each and every time, I drove noiselessly behind until I got to my driveway. The bike rider, skateboarder, or hover boarder ended up being none the wiser. I never wanted to disrupt the calm energy and honk-free culture of the islands.

Now that I’ve been witness to the honking lifestyle of eastern living and the fringe benefits that come along with it, I think I’ll be better prepared to respond to certain driving situations back in the states. I know there are other unruly Camaro drivers in my future, as no one is safe from them. But the next time one inevitably honks at me, I might just honk back. MIGHT.

It’s already October and I know what we’re missing not being in the States. Fall and holiday decor deals are bringing droves of people to the stores and Halloween inventory probably started cropping up 2 months ago. Heck, there might even be a hint o’ Christmas on some shelves already. Now, I love me some Bergamot/Cedar scented tapered candles marked down 30% as much as the next person but what I do not love are the crowds that come along with those deals.

Crowds can bring out the worst in people sometimes. There is something in our brain that equates crowds to implied scarcity. Implied scarcity screams at us that there isn’t going to be enough for everyone, true or not. That thought and the sight of adorable woven rattan woodland creatures on the Clearance shelves at Target used to be enough to send me into a FOMO frenzy AT ONE POINT IN TIME. (Hence my hefty fall mantle display of squirrels and possums). I’d like to say that maturity and personal growth has changed my shopping behavior and how I look at “stuff” and maybe it has. That theory cannot be put to the test, though, until we go back to the States, and I am once again put face to face and toe to toe with the Achilles heel of my life, Target.

While there is no Trader Joe’s, Lowe’s or Starbucks in Kodaikanal, there is one place here that keeps the crowds coming rain or shine, no matter the month or season, and that’s the Sunday market. How can I properly describe the Sunday market, you might be wondering? How does one describe a slurry of loud noises, strange smells, and ornate colors? The answer is that I can’t, but I’ll do my best to try.

The Sunday market here is set on an uphill (or downhill, depending on which end of the road you enter) narrow street. Vendors set up their area, staking claim by laying down a tarp or blanket and arrange their products in varying and attractive ways. Some choose baskets or crates to corral their wares and display them at different levels but many others keep it simple and just heap them in piles next to one another.

Freshly scrubbed, striking orange carrots might lay aside deep purple onions that are placed adjacent to bright green hot peppers. The arrangements are gorgeous and do the trick of drawing both your attention and your rupees to the local farmer presenting their eye-catching produce. The fruits and vegetables are not the only source of vibrancy at the market, as the women who patronize this weekly display are also wearing their radiant Sunday-best saris and kurtas. It is truly a sight to be seen.

Cows and motorbikes, and sometimes even cars, jockey for position through the seemingly ever-narrowing channel one must navigate to enter or exit this weekly event. Like scooping dry sand in a bucket, people seem to fill every available inch of space created by anyone else moving around them. It is a graphic, chaotically woven tapestry, deeply sensory and curiously precise in its choreography. How anyone stays standing on their own two feet, let alone actually buying food, is as much of a mystery as Dark Matter, yet every Sunday it happens thousands of times here.

Diesel is the fuel of choice in this region and fumes from the occasional lorry hang in the air until they are replaced with the fragrance of freshly picked jasmine flowers. Continue walking and that perfumed scent is replaced by the fishmongers’ daily catch. Another few yards, and you’ll be struck by the aroma of ripe guava. Their waxy green skin juxtaposed against their blushy pink flesh, piled high and just waiting for you to fill your dining table fruit bowl to almost overflowing with them.

We are a large family, and our cook makes 2 fresh meals each day, 6 days each week, but we can easily fulfill a week’s worth of fruit and vegetable needs for roughly $8. That is not a typo. For less than one hour of minimum wage work in the United States, we can buy bundles of fresh curry leaves, bunches of cilantro, kilos of green beans and onions, hill bananas, coconuts, guava, sour sop, and so much more. The only thing we worry about is our shoulder joint holding out while we make the kilometer walk home, but we never ever fret over the expense.

Obviously there are other things we purchase at local shops that we can’t get at the Sunday market or can get at better prices, but the satisfaction we receive from the fresh, local, family-owned shopping there is priceless.

This past Sunday was part of a 3-day weekend, and the crowds were at maximum capacity. In fact, it was the most crowded I’ve seen so far. People yelling, cows sauntering, motorbikes beeping. It is an assault on the senses when you experience it for the first few times, but I think I’ve come to a realization. The stress that came along with parking, seeing empty shelves and out-of-stock signs, and waiting in checkout lanes in the United States simply does not exist at the Sunday market. If a vendor runs out of potatoes then there are a dozen more areas to choose from. There is no fear-factor that riles the crowd up and switches everyone into fight or flight mode. The crowds are there but the frenzy is not. I don’t know what this intangible “thing” is that keeps us fairly calm in the mele of this massive consumer crowd, but if Target finds it and candles it, I’ll be the first in line to purchase! Probably just online though.

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We were given the advice to try a better, warmer, calmer beach about 4 more hours up the coast on the east called Pasikuda. Lall agreed it would be a much better fit for us, and so we left on the next adventure. The kids admittedly were becoming a little road weary since each location seemed to be 4–5 hours away from the next. They were good sports, though, and the scenery was nothing to complain about.

On this leg of the trip, our youngest daughter saw a huge spider in the passenger seat above Ravi’s head. She eventually squeaked words of warning out, and as Ravi flipped down the sun visor, a huntsman spider darted around it. That thing was buttered lightening. No way in heck was Ravi going to catch it. The whole car was screaming and freaking out. The entire car except for our driver Lall, who was calm as could be. He didn’t even turn his head, he simply used his peripheral vision to see the giant arachnid and knocked it down, right onto Ravi’s lap. Ravi swooshed it off and sedately went about his non-spider business of looking out the window. How he could be so nonchalant while the world was crashing down around us, I will never know. The kids and I spent the rest of the drive silently reciting Hail Marys and making promises to God with our feet up off the van floor.

If you have never seen a huntsman spider (or a cane spider in Hawai’i) then you are a blessed soul who will never feel the effects of Mercury in retrograde. For those who have seen this vile creature in person, we know its image will survive in perpetuity in the catalog of our nightmares. Seared into our brains like a flaming hot iron brands a cow’s hide. They get much larger, but the one we saw was the size of the inside of a roll of duct tape and according to a rumor I just made up, it can read your mind. I am certain this spider will turn up in our lives again.

Though not fast enough, we pulled up to the Amethyst Resort in Pasikuda Beach and were immediately each greeted with a fragrant, chilled washcloth and cold glass of fresh sour sop nectar. Where was the paparazzi, because we were gosh dang superstars at that moment. Our accommodations were pleasant and spacious, and the beachfront hotel was charming and luxurious at the same time. A pretty wooden footbridge takes you across a crocodile filled river that separates the living quarters from the dining quarters. We crossed it multiple times each day and always saw a crocodile.

The Indian Ocean here was gorgeous. Turquoise waters that were calm and soothing and the perfect temperature. Warm enough to where you never had to “work” your way into it, and cool enough to where you could stay in pleasantly for a long time. This was dreamy, and I wished we had just come here and skipped the whole Arugam Bay fiasco altogether, but you live and you learn. Ravi and I soaked up the sun, bobbed in the warm clean water, and relaxed while we watched the kids simply enjoying playing together. It really was heavenly.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and we knew we had 8 hours of travelling ahead of us to make it back to Colombo in 2 days for our return flight home. Kandy was a cool place in the center of the country, surrounded by tea plantations and bursting with history. It was mid-point on our return, so we figured we should head there for the next night and maybe hit up some culture if we could.

Numbers are deceiving. We saw that the distance to Kandy from Pasikuda was 200 kilometers. No problem, except that a lot of roads in Sri Lanka are not freeways, they are simply roads. 2 lane, shoulderless roads highly traversed by pedestrians, bicyclists, and tuk tuks. That means the average speed that you can move is about negative 20 miles an hour. The process is daunting and slow. Passing slower vehicles (people, cows, or horses) is common in India and also common in Sri Lanka. The trick is to tailgate really hard, honk your horn, and swerve wildly in front of oncoming traffic, narrowly avoiding collision. Wash, rinse, repeat. Do this at a top speed of 35 mph and you, too, can have yourself an authentic Sri Lankan or Indian driving experience in the comfort of your own country.

There is an incredible 2,500-year-old Buddhist temple built into mountain caves along the way called Dambulla. Pictures do not do it justice. Who even thinks to build a temple into a mountain? In today’s world people can barely wrap their mind around converting their guest room into a theater room, yet 2,500 years ago someone was like, “Hey, Imma turn that mountain into a temple!”

The carvings are mostly of Buddha, but there are a couple of other deities thrown in for good balance. You are expected to dress modestly for this temple visit, so a few of us rented sarongs from the temple to wrap around our uncovered legs. We each received a Buddhist prayer and a white thread tied around our wrist as a symbol of peace, good health, and community. I am not Buddhist, but I loved the ceremony and meaning behind this gesture and will wait to see how long it stays on my wrist. Sri Lanka is 70% Buddhist, so you can definitely see the influence of this practice throughout the country and its people.

We left in awe of this sacred place with a rekindled appreciation of what humans are capable of creating. With an idea, a purpose, rudimentary tools, and mineral paints came the formation of this amazing UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been drawing pilgrims for over 22 centuries to its gilded interiors. All of us were grateful to have seen it in person. After descending the ancient steps and allowing the heaviness of our visit to dissipate, we all loaded back into the van to continue our trip to Kandy.

Fox Kandy by Fox (I know this name is comical) was the 5-star hotel we booked and after a grueling, scary journey, seemingly to the very peak of a ridiculously steep mountain we made it. An interesting thing about Sri Lanka is that it’s been colonized by a number of countries (Dutch, British, and Portuguese) that have each left a bit of their DNA in the present day Sri Lanka. You can see it in the city and hotel names, you see it in the architecture and furnishings, and you see it in the food. Fox Kandy struck me as British Colonial in their behavior and presentation upon arrival. We were greeted with sweetened, hot Jasmine tea to sip on while our bags were loaded onto a hand trolley and brought to our rooms. Dinner was buffet style, and once again, we loaded up on all the foods and flavor profiles we were missing since moving to India.

Breakfast was also a wonderful buffet, and the kids and Ravi enjoyed the infinity pool while I enjoyed the shaded chaise lounge nearby. After a restful start to the day, we headed back down the other side of Kandy and towards Negombo where we would spend our final night in Sri Lanka. It is a coastal city and closer to the airport than Colombo.

Dambulla Cave Temple had been the perfect culturally and historically enriching experience to bookend our Sri Lankan trip. We felt fulfilled and ready to return to India. Our drive from Kandy to Negombo was uneventful and after checking in to our final hotel, the kids played in the pool while Ravi and I shared a Sri Lankan beer and talked about our experiences of the week.

Funny enough, a lot of our vacations are like this. We plan for culture and history or some great experience to share with our kids. Then we spend all this time preparing and all this money, when sometimes the most fun and rewarding thing for them is a buffet-style meal and a pool. Yet, I am still excited to visit the next country, even though I know that spider is waiting for us.

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I’m not sure how detailed I should make this, but I’ll do my best not to be too long-winded. We landed at the airport in Colombo and were immediately struck by how different Sri Lanka was from India. These countries are separated by no more than 35 miles (ca. 56 kilometers) of Indian Ocean, but they are incredibly different. The airport was quiet, clean, and orderly, and we swiftly obtained our visas-on-arrival and breezed through customs. We walked outside and felt a familiar tropical breeze. It was so calm. It felt very safe. We were going to have fun.

Our car service driver was waiting for us with a sign. We opted to rent a van with a driver for the week, using AMA Lanka as the company. I would highly recommend them for any Sri Lankan travel. Lall, or Mr. Lall as the kids would call him, drove us to the Hilton Colombo Residences for the night where we relaxed in a 3-bedroom suite with views of the city and the ocean. This is a 5-star hotel, and our massive, hardwood floored suite cost barely more than the price of a room at the Holiday Inn Express. They swept the bottom of our van for bombs upon each return to the parking lot, which was interesting. Apparently, our research and memories fell short of recalling the 2019 Easter hotel bombings, but this Hilton was a hotel that would not be taking any chances.

We ventured into the city for dinner and landed at a restaurant called Arabian Knights, which should have clued us in to something. After a 2-hour wait and some poorly preforming chicken shawarmas, it was time to throw in the towel and get some rest.

For breakfast, our hotel had a wonderful buffet (we wished we’d just eaten there the night before) and the kids went around to each station, tasting the offerings of the morning. The choices and hospitality seemed endless. There was even a “kid-friendly” entertainment room attached to the dining area, where a magician was doing their best to compete for attention against the donut and cookie decorating station set up along the back wall. I did not envy that magician. The kids would have been completely happy to stay here for the entire vacation, but we had an itinerary, so we passed by the metal detectors one last time and headed off to Udawalawe for our safari.

Guys, I’ve never been to any other Southeast Asian country to compare Sri Lanka to, but from movies, documentaries, and old pictures I’ve seen, going to Sri Lanka is like stepping back in time to the 1950s in Asia. It’s completely, overtly enchanting. The numerous shops are small and tidy and reminded me of the flashback scenes in The Karate Kid 2, in Okinawa. The freeways are in impeccable condition and totally surrounded by untouched nature. You could look out the window and easily pretend you were in a scene from Jurassic Park, only instead of velociraptors waiting in the bushes, there were large monitors slowly crossing the road. Wildlife was all around us, all the time. Something we saw frequently were peacocks. Peacocks all over the place. They were on the sides of the freeways, regally perched in trees, and atop mountainside boulders. These things were everywhere.

We see or hear occasional peacocks on the mountainside here in Kodaikanal, and there are wild peacocks in Hawai’i, in the Texas Hill Country, and Florida. Peacocks themselves are not unusual visitors to lots of places, but the sheer volume of them in Sri Lanka needs to be appreciated.

Our safari was incredible. It got to the point where we had seen so many wild elephants walk past us that we began to only be excited about the OTHER animals we also saw. How crazy is that?! Dozens of elephants, peacocks, monitors, various tropical birds, mongoose, a stork (they’re huge and crazy looking!), different types of monkeys, crocodiles, water buffalo, sambar deer, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some. It was truly a wonderful experience that our whole family thoroughly enjoyed.

With half of our checklist completed, it was time to head to the beach for our epic surfing experience. Goodbye Udawalawe and hello Arugam Bay!

Arugam Bay, as we found out upon researching, is one of the top surfing destinations in the world. Ravi and 50% of the kids were excited to surf again, and we were eager to see this incredible point break of seemingly endless waves that we’d just read about. The original hotel we wanted to book didn’t have free cancellation, and we were gun shy to lock ourselves in to 3 nights without it, so we went with another highly rated beachfront hotel. It looked a little crappy in the pictures, and it was less expensive than the other one we wanted, but the traveler reviews were outstanding, so we reserved it. After 5 hours on the road, we finally drove up to The Sandy Beach Hotel and knew immediately we had made a mistake.

Sand crunched beneath the van tires as Lall parked in the tiny lot, in between a palm tree and a tuk tuk (the auto-rickshaw of Sri Lanka). We walked the narrow cement path that cut between small cottages until we got to ours. Nope. Don’t like it. Ravi unlocked the door, which opened immediately into the bed. Nope. He quickly turned and asked, “Do you want to go? Should we go somewhere else instead?” I did not want to be a brat, so I chirpily replied, “Let’s look at the whole space first.” Nope. This beachside cottage was a school for ants. Literally and figuratively. It was tiny and unkempt. I hated it in my bones, and imagined this feeling was what changed Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. My skin felt hot with disappointment, but it was dinner time and I didn’t want to be the wet blanket that smothered anyone’s campfire. The kids seemed unfazed by our scroungy accommodations, so I put on my best “Mom” smile, and we walked down the sandy beach lane to enjoy some wood fired pizza.

We walked back to the beach after dinner to discuss our plans. As the kids gave pets and scratches to a couple of the stray dogs that were close by, Ravi and I decided this would be our first and last night on this end of Arugam Bay. The Sandy Beach Hotel was full of bugs AND full of lies. Our conclusion was that those glowing reviews were created under false pretenses, and we fell victim to them.

Sometimes you cannot help but fall into tourist traps while you’re, you know, a tourist. Ravi would describe our experience in Arugam Bay as just that. A huge tourist trap. Strangely, though it was off season when we went, there were a multitude of tourists, mainly Russian and Eastern European, and it totally threw Ravi and me off. The surf lineup at Whiskey Point (the best surf break) was very crowded and peddlers all carrying the same “handmade” shark tooth and seashell jewelry flocked to us like hungry seagulls to an unguarded sandwich. This was not the peaceful beach trip we had planned so off we headed 30 minutes away to the more desolate side of the bay.

Talk about a 180. The Riva Del Sole was a unique, boutique venue consisting of 6 or so individual A-frame cabins. Each faced the same direction, toward a central courtyard on the property, but was staggered to give every unit some privacy. The ocean was a pleasant 3 or so minute walk away, and we were often accompanied by up to 10 stray dogs. Sri Lanka is similar to India in this respect: they both have a stray dog issue. The water here was wild and rough and though everyone played in it no one wanted to surf anymore. It happens. Since we were so far removed from civilization in our new location we opted to eat at their small outdoor, covered restaurant for our meals over the next 2 nights. This quickly added up and in the end we paid more there than we did at the 5-star Hilton. So many lessons learned on this trip!

Please stay tuned for Part 3 of 3 of our Sri Lanka trip!

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I used to live in Delaware. <Turns away in shame>. Just saying that actually gives Delaware too much attention. It’s a state.

“It’s the FIRST state!” locals would emphatically exclaim. My Air Force family moved there right after my high school graduation in Hawai’i, and it was a real boner killer. With deep golden skin and sun-bleached hair, we stood out amongst the welcoming crowd of vitamin D deficient faces.

As our pasty new comrades tried to grasp at any straws to convince us that this wasn’t the absolute worst place in the United States to be sent after just spending 3 years in paradise, they offered a silver lining.

“It’s really fast to travel outside of Delaware!”

They should put that on the license plates. “Delaware! It’s easy to escape!” Now, you know a place sucks pretty bad when the best comment you can hitch to it is that it’s really simple to leave, but there we were. Delaware movie theaters were slow to show The Blair Witch Project, so a hop, skip, and a jump later got us to Maryland where we watched the impetus to my proceeding decade of nightmares. Thanks, Delaware.

Now, I am in no way comparing Delaware to India, but I am suggesting that your proximate living location can open travel doors you would have never considered. Would I have wanted to go to Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania? No, not really. Not in a vacuum, at least. But since we were close, it made it possible and convenient to try those states out, and I’m glad I did.

Living in Southern India gives us a great launchpad for traveling around Southeast Asia; Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka are all within a few inches from us on the map and as Liz Lemon would say, “I want to go to there.”

The kids recently had a 9-day break from school, and the original plan was to explore our neighboring coastal state to the south, Kerala. Our Kerala backwaters plan took a sharp nosedive off a cliff though when a Nipah virus outbreak there happened. Not wanting to die and such had us turn our attention to places outside of India for our little vacation, and we ended up choosing the closest one; Sri Lanka.

I had not thought much about Sri Lanka prior to this trip, but a quick check on the U.S. State Department Travel Advisory website showed it at a Level 2- Exercise Increased Caution. Uh oh. We replaced the word “Sri Lanka” with the word “India” and it turns out India is ALSO a Level 2. Hmmmm. Since it seemed we had unknowingly already been living life on the edge, we decided to continue to throw caution to the wind and jetted off on a 55-minute flight, via Sri Lankan Air, to a new and exciting country!

There is a lot of rich history and culture in Sri Lanka, along with breathtaking places and UNESCO heritage sites. A trip with kids requires a bit of compromise by everyone, so this would be an educational trip but also a relaxing one. We decided that we would focus on our 2 main desires: a safari, and beach time. Anything else we got to do would be considered icing on the cake.

Sri Lanka is going through a hard transition right now. There is a petrol shortage along with outrageous inflation (almost 50%) of basic goods and services. They are recently recovering from a civil war and the pandemic and government corruption has handicapped any real progress. We were aware and sensitive to these problems but also knew that every dollar we spent, every hotel we booked, and every kilometer we drove would help Sri Lanka recover, and boy did Sri Lanka gain recovery that week!

Please read my next two posts to hear about our whirlwind week of discovery!

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Now I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the concept of fresh, home milk delivery, and I’d bet some of you even get it or have at one point. It’s funny to believe that this practice was commonplace not too many decades ago, in the Leave It To Beaver era, but was already long gone by The Brady Bunch era. Like a boomerang, trends seem to come back with a fervor in the United States if you wait long enough, but milk delivery in India never even left.

I guess if you get your groceries delivered to your house, then you could consider that milk delivery, but I’m talking fresh milk. Milk still warm from the cow that produced it. This is a treat we enjoy frequently throughout the day in our coffee, tea, and cereal. If you’re thinking of beautiful, glass bottles, aligned neatly in adorable wooden crates, stacked with care inside a cute white van, delivered by a gentleman in a tidy crisp outfit, then let me just reset your compass. Think less glass and more plastic, less wooden crate and more 20 liter petrol containers, less van and more motorbike. Do you have a different picture now? Perfect.

Our first milk man would come up the road on his motorbike with the same confidence Clint Eastwood would ride his noble steed into every dusty town he was about to save. Really the only difference between the two was instead of weather-worn leather saddlebags carrying a “Wanted” poster and some hard tack, our savior (of hot caffeinated beverages) had his iron stallion flanked with large plastic containers of 6% milk fat delight. Or so we thought.

Over the course of a month or so, Ravi and I started to notice that our once creamy and easily frothed beverages began to have more of a skim milk quality to them. What was happening? Maybe cows here go through metabolic stages that affect the cream content? Possibly it’s a seasonal issue? Or, as our driver, Charles, casually suggested, perhaps the milk is getting watered down.

Enter facepalm, shock, and denial. We were and still are very naive to the nuanced things that regularly happen in this community and are typically accepted. Was our milk man really watering down the milk? Was 2+2 ever going to equal 4 again? Ravi and I took our last watery sips of tea and decided right then and there that we wouldn’t stand for any further dilution of our ritualistic drinks. Pandora’s Box had been opened, and we weren’t going to pretend we didn’t see all those dark souls fleeing from it.

We immediately started buying milk from one of the small, local stores in town called Spencer’s. The milk comes in half-liter sized plastic pouches and has the viscosity of stove top pudding just as it begins to form a wake from the stirring spoon. Rich and totally deserving of mixing with our daily drinks. While we were excited to have our milk back to normal, there was a gentle longing for the convenience and simplicity of that morning delivery.

Thankfully, one week ago we began to have our milk delivered again, seemingly by a snow leopard, since I have yet to see or hear our elusive delivery person. The only evidence that they have been to the house is their signature calling card: a plastic water bottle of some sort (definitely not ours though) filled to the top with warm milk, waiting to be boiled on the stove. A thick layer of lightly-golden hued cream beneath the cap reassures us that the day’s tea and coffee will be rich and satisfying and totally worthy of Ron Burgundy’s walk of shame.

It’s also a helpful reminder to recycle because sometimes life’s greatest perks can come in someone else’s water bottle.

Year after year I would scour each page’s inventory and dream of receiving any one of these coveted toys. One of the big ticket items I drooled over was an excavate-your-own gemstones kit. There is something so fun about going in search of buried treasure. As adults, we do a more “sophisticated” version of this in various ways: we pan for gold, we hit the “Clearance” rack at Nordstrom, we fish and hunt, and we forage.

Ravi and I are Level 1 foragers right now. Safe and basic. We aren’t collecting ancestral medicinal herbs for salves or plucking exotic mushrooms from mossy trees for pilaf, we are simply picking passion fruits from vines or finding them on the ground. But guess what? It’s still super fun! Passion fruit in Hawai’i is called lilikoi, and it grows like a weed everywhere it can catch a footing. Passion fruit in Tamil is called cher palam, and it looks and tastes different from the variety most commonly found in Hawai’i.

The Ganga campus here in Kodaikanal is perfect for nature walks. The foliage is thick and lush, and the smell of eucalyptus perfumes the air you breathe. Indigo colored morning glories blanket the trees and shrubs in their path like an evening fog rolls down a mountainside. Nothing goes untouched by this invasive and gorgeous plant so naturally every vine I saw looked like the morning glory, and I didn’t pay special or close attention to any details.

One day Ravi saw a dull, purple orb on the ground next to a pile of fallen tree branches. “Look! I think it’s a lilikoi!” he said as he snatched it off the forest floor like a kid finding a $5 bill on the street. I was very skeptical. It was smaller and a completely different color from the yellow and orange ones I was used to seeing in the islands, but it was one of my most favorite fruits, so we took it home and opened it up. He was right.

At 43 years old I felt the same excitement as I did at 10. Now each walk we take, and we take 3-4 walks each day, has become a scavenger hunt for these delicious little purple gems. Some days we come home with only 1 or 2 and other times it’s 4 or 5. The birds knock them down, the maintenance crew cuts them down, and the monkeys throw them down. Regardless of how we find them and how they got there, the same thrill accompanies the bounty of the hunt.

Growing up can come with a lot of benefits such as independence from your parents, an impressive resume, and boobs (allegedly) but it also comes with its downsides. No more running at full speed for no reason without your copper knee band snugly in place. No more demolishing of ice cream sundaes without wicked reflux and a feeling of regret. And, no more bunny hops in the driveway without busted handlebars and a trip to Urgent Care. Like water pouring through an open hand, our childlike qualities slip away with age, and no amount of adult skateboarding lessons will bring them back, but a foraged passion fruit certainly comes close.

This is a short, cinematic film Ravi made of me walking our regular path. He is trying his hand at cinematography and documentary film-making while we’re here. Please forgive my WBF (walking bitch face) as my director (Ravi) gave poor performance instruction (none).

What I do know for certain is that in India NOW, there is no riding on the backs of lumbering elephants down dusty, quiet roads. There are no pet monkeys scampering up your mango trees to grab the ripe ones down for you, and there are no tigers waiting for you to come out of your thatched huts, unguarded and unaware of their deadly presence. While these things may have happened at one point in time or may still happen in a certain region or two, it is not the norm anymore. Instead of ox-drawn carts or human powered rickshaws being a common mode of transport, what you will find all over India are auto rickshaws. AKA “autos.”

An auto rickshaw is the offspring of a motorbike and a cardboard box, only not as safe. Autos are found in abundance in most places across the country and are easily recognizable by their signature yellow or blue colors and their ability to weave through traffic like a water drop flows down a window. These auto drivers move like professional yet graceless ballroom dancers, seemingly understanding the next movements of their petrol powered comrades before they even make them.

From the passenger’s view point on a hot and sticky plastic covered bench in the back, it seems like complete chaos. Every auto for himself. But I’d imagine from above, the traffic patterns of these autos appear as undulating azure and golden ribbons, silkily and effortlessly gliding along one another, coming close together yet never touching. Perspective is funny like that. The view from above is smooth and orchestrated, while the view from within is bumpy and full of sheer terror.

We’d taken autos on many trips and errands while in Chennai, but the one I will never forget was the last one I took. Carol, Ravi’s stepmom, and I went to a small shopping mall called Spencer’s. If you can’t help thinking of the gag-gift store, you are not alone. Carol was flying back to the Bay Area in less than a week, and we were there to get pashminas and jewelry as gifts for her friends back in the states. We’d been to Spencer’s before, and knew there would be plenty of autos to choose from once our shopping was done. But just to be sure, we asked the auto driver who dropped us off to wait. He emphatically stated he would, yet when we walked out an hour later, this guy was nowhere to be seen. Not a problem, there were at least a half dozen autos right out front.

Speaking in perfect Tamil, Carol asked the first gentleman we saw if he would take us back to Teynampet, a busy commercial district 10 minutes away, where Paatti lives. He shook his head and gave her an excuse. “He says he is on his break and won’t be done for a long time.” She then pointed to the auto in front of his, “He said that this guy will take us there.”

Oh no, not this guy. It took less than a nanosecond to know that the proxy being recommended was on a permanent break. This guy was definitely dreaming of Morocco and definitely didn’t want to be driving autos in 100 degree heat out front of Spencer’s. You know what else this guy didn’t want to do? Take Carol and me to Teynampet.

He begrudgingly argued a price (we offered 100 Indian rupees, he wanted 300) and we settled in the middle. 200 rupees would give us the crappiest auto ride available by the most ‘over-it’ driver in Chennai. He showed us he was the one in control by taking a full 60 seconds just to slide his bare and calloused feet into his weathered brown sandals.

We get it, Sir. You’re irritated. The oppressive, humid heat of the Agni Natchathiram was like taking a peaceful bee’s hive and violently shaking it up. The temperature was putting everyone on edge and turning every day tasks into feats of mental fortitude.

Not only was this man vexed, but he was also a poor navigator. Carol and I openly critiqued his nonsensical route choice, while I also decided that I would grapple him into submission in case his circuitous driving plan had a more sinister goal. He finally pulled over and motioned for us to get out. It turns out that he was not a diabolical plotter, just super irritated, as initially thought.

But wait, this wasn’t our requested destination. We were still a few blocks away. He ushered for us to get out. I leaned forward, pulling my sweaty back from the seat like cling wrap from a slice of cheese. “No, Chosun! This isn’t right,” Carol stated. “He agreed to take us to Teynampet, but now he says the traffic is too bad.”

Carol and the driver calmly argued for a few seconds more. He again gestured for us to get out of the windowless, glorified boxcar, and pointed to the side of a cluster of storefronts. “He is telling me that’s a shortcut we can take,” Carol says with exasperation in her voice.

I looked closer, and the entrance to a 10-foot tall, white plastic sheathed construction alley appeared into view. “What!” I cried out, laughing to Carol. “He wants us to take the rape alley as a shortcut?”

Carol and I walked closer to the entrance to assess the safety of this option. The pathway was about 3 feet wide and totally enclosed 10 feet high on both sides, only open on top. It jogged straight for the first 30 feet or so and then made a sharp turn to the left where I knew all the dead bodies would be found. “No way, Carol. We can’t go in there,” I said.

“I know,” she worriedly replied.

“Should we just get another auto for the last couple blocks?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she says.

As Carol and I commiserated on our unfortunate predicament, our irritated driver began to shout out to us. “He’s telling us to go in,” Carol says.

“No.Way.In.Hell.” I reply. While Carol and I continue to mull over our options, our driver decides to take matters into his own hands. No, he doesn’t offer to simply drive us to our previously agreed upon destination, but instead, parks his auto on the pedestrian walkway and comes marching towards us.

“What is the problem!? Why aren’t you going in!?” he asks in Tamil, waving his hands around to underscore his exasperation.

“It isn’t safe for us,” Carol tells him. If he had rolled his eyes any harder, that man would have fallen over.

“Come on! I’ll go with you then!” It would have been seen as chivalrous if he wasn’t so dang condescending about it. But Carol and I were sweating like a cold glass of water on a hot day, and we wanted this outing to be done. So, we followed him into the white, roofless, tunnel-of-the-unknown.

About 1 minute into the exit-less chute, we began to see both couples and singles walking calmly by. So, with no visible murders or murderers in our sights, we told the driver he could go back. I gave him 50 more rupees, for which he was grateful, and for which I hope will encourage him to do good deeds for his future female passengers.

After another minute of race-paced speed walking, Carol and I exited the frightening corridor onto the sidewalk of a very busy intersection. Well, crap! We were not even close to where we needed to be, and I instantly imagined Jedi-Knighting that 50 rupees back into my pocket.

Carol and I couldn’t help but laugh about how this outing unfolded as we hailed yet another auto. Our proceeding gentleman driver ferried us to our final 3 shops and then quickly back to the safety of Paatti’s compound. We thanked him for his professionalism and gifted him with coloring books we’d purchased from a young street-side peddler. He had many grandchildren at home who would love these books, and thanked us back by placing his right hand over his heart and slightly jiggling his head.

This was a gesture I had become quickly accustomed to since arriving in India, and had even found myself doing back, instinctively. With our hands over our hearts and smiles on everyone’s faces, I couldn’t help but feel gratitude for this adventure, and gratitude for all the people I will meet along the way. Even the irritated ones.

Watch this video that my daughter shot and enjoy the ride!

For those of you who don’t enjoy potty talk, maybe skip this article, but (or should I say “butt”) everyone else please follow along on an evolutionary journey with me.

Like I’ve stated before, change is hard and sometimes we drag our feet even when we know something needs to be different. Other times we are simply naive to the fact that something needs to be different. It is like the age-old quote from Ten Things I Hate About You. “There’s a difference between like and love. I like my Sketchers but I love my Prada backpack,” says Bianca Stratford. Her movie bestie, Chastity Church replies, “But I love my Sketchers.” Very matter of factly Bianca retorts, “That’s because you don’t have a Prada backpack.” And just like that, the world made sense.

We, and a lot of other Americans, had previously been doing the derriere equivalent of wiping mud off our hands with dry paper towels. Pure madness. Only when potty training our kids did Ravi and I realize the folly of our ways. Even if we happened to run out of diaper wipes for our babies we would still dampen whatever medium we replaced them with and clean booties appeared. Oh, duh, the addition of water gets you cleaner. This was our homes’ introduction to wet-wipes. Pure logic.

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Ravi’s first friends, and colleagues, in Hawai’i were Dr. Matt and Dr. Chris. Chris waxed poetic about his awesome new Toto brand commode. It was a Japanese toilet designed for the ultimate in cleanliness, comfort, and relaxation. We were still avid wet-wipe users at this point, ignorant to anything better, but our curiosity was piqued. One Amazon click and 3 days later we had 3 boxes of bidets, one for each toilet in our small home. Ravi excitedly installed them, worked out the hypotenuses of the proper angles, adjusted the force of the water, and voila! If someone told me nothing special happened that day, I’d have called them a gosh dang liar because six lives were changed forever. Matt’s wisdom filled words echoed in our ears, “Dude, a bidet will change your lives.” He was right. Fast forward to now.

Bathrooms in other places are intimidating. Bathrooms in planes? I don’t want to use them. Bathrooms in school? Our kids don’t want to use them. Bathrooms in India? No one wants to use them. I’m surprised I haven’t gotten a lifetime’s worth of constipation and UTI’s simply from “holding it” here. However, there is one crazy thing that Indian bathrooms have that I had not seen before, and that is a hose next to the toilet. If you are picturing a garden hose, then you would be correct except that they are typically metal. At the end of the hose, instead of an adorable gentle nozzle, perfectly suited for your delicate bits and pieces you are met with an aggressive metal sprayer capable of kicking out a psi that would make a fireman blush. It will blast off residue (residoo) that you never knew existed, making the epidermis of your crack tremble in fear. It makes our cute bidets back home feel like showers did in that Seinfeld episode where everyone had to add water pressure regulators. Sub par and totally unsuitable for the job at hand.

When we come back to the states, I think we might need to look at Toto’s line of high-powered toilets because right now in India we have a Prada backpack. Shout out to Matt for his life-changing advice.

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Chennai was hot and humid. We’d arrived in the heart of the Agni Nakshatram which translates to “days of the fire star” but I’m pretty sure a more honest translation would be “inside the mouth of a dehydrated human.” It feels exactly the way I described it. This is a 2 week period in May that happens to be the hottest part of the whole year. It can be an auspicious time for certain things and a bad idea for others. One of the bad things, you might ask? Traveling. Traveling long journeys. Uhhhhhhhh, but I’ll bet traveling long journeys with kids and a dog makes it okay, right?

We are no strangers to hot, sticky, humid days and we made the decision to come in May for a very specific reason. That reason starts with a mang and ends with a go. You could poll 1,000 people with the question “What is your favorite time of year?” Answers would vary of course but I’d bet you get a bunch of the same. The top runners would probably be Christmas time, spring when the bulbs come up, fall when the leaves turn colors, and so on and so forth. If you polled the Kumar Family on this same question you would likely get one answer, MANGO SEASON.

In the weeks leading up to our trip we discussed mango season ad naseum. Every day someone would toss out a mango related anecdote or fun fact. We discussed the different varieties we’d have access to and told stories of our favorite mangos thus far. This was serious, mangos are serious, and no amount of oppressive volcanic dragonian heat was going to prevent us from experiencing Tamil Nadu’s mango season to its fullest.

However, we landed at 2am, and got to Paatti’s house around 4:30am, so mangos would have to wait a couple of hours. After showering and getting comfortable we all headed upstairs and outside to the rooftop terrace of the cement, 3-story home. We’d all come on a family trip to India at the beginning of 2020 where we’d created the beautiful early morning tradition of having rooftop south Indian filter coffee. This coffee is made by using a strong coffee decoction, milk, and sugar. You froth it by pouring it from one glass to another. This is called pulling, and it magically transforms your coffee or tea from a flat and basic drink into a rich, creamy, and exotic beverage. This delicious drink can be enjoyed at any time by anyone anywhere, but is best served on grandmothers’ rooftop terraces in India with the haunting melodies of the Asian koel as your soundtrack. Enjoy.

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With iron knots in our stomachs and lumps in our throats, we all said our silent goodbyes to a place that we loved and people we cared about. Ravi’s mom Shelley was the matriarchal chauffeur of our large, rented van, and we drove mostly in silence to the Seattle Airport. The 4-hour commute was peaceful and pleasant. We drove by dozens of vineyards and orchards until the arid rolling hills of southeastern Washington slowly morphed into the lush and craggled mountains of the Pacific northwest.

Shelley gave us all a beautiful goodbye, and we headed into the airport doors like superheroes walking into a shrinking vortex. Although we knew what was on the other side we certainly didn’t know what it held for us.

People parted the walkways in front of us like Moses parted the Red Sea. We were a circus act making our way to the ticket counter. A large, metal dolly held 7 suitcases and a huge dog kennel, while 6 human Kumars with backpacks stuffed like Christmas stockings threatened to take out anyone within a 3-foot radius. Add Blue to the mix, and we had “TRAINWRECK” written all over us.

After more than 2 hours at the ticket counter we were once again wondering if Blue would be flying with us or if we’d be trapped in the airport for years like Tom Hanks’s character in Terminal. Would we eventually be given political asylum? Would they finally just let us fly out of time and sheer pity? Would we ha..? My thoughts were interrupted by the clerk at the counter handing us our boarding passes and pet travel instructions. Great, we were all allowed to go. I took a proof-of-life picture of Blue before we parted ways. He was alive and well in Seattle but this was a 28-hour trip, and we would not see him during the short layover in Doha. We’d have to wait until we landed in Chennai before we were reassured he was okay.

Oftentimes, making big changes forces you to put your trust in people, systems, and the unknown. We trusted the airlines and their employees that Blue would arrive with us in Chennai safely. We trusted that moving to India was best for our family, although it was painful. Furthermore, we trusted the flight attendant that butter chicken and naan was the superior in-flight meal selection over vegetable biryani. Every decision we make comes with a bit of trust, even it is just trust in ourselves.

We settled in to our seats like eggs in a carton, plugged in our headphones, and finally exhaled. Ravi and I looked at each other the way I’d imagine Olympians do after their event. Exhausted, excited, proud. I’m sure we could read each other’s minds. “Did we just do that? Did we really just do all of that? Are we really doing this?” We would be in another time zone, on another continent, and in what would feel like another world when we reached our final destination. We were ready.

One week and one showing later, we had a great offer and a lifeline. The buyers wanted turn-key and we would do our best. As I looked through our home I tried to untangle myself from attachments to our things. We’d brought a few nice pieces from Hawai’i that I loved but did I love them enough to pay to store them?

In 2015, I read Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. We knew in 2 years we would be moving from Rochester, MN to O’ahu when Ravi finished residency, and we knew we couldn’t possibly take 7 years and 3500sqft of furniture and life with us. That book spoke to me. For those remaining 2 years in Minnesota, I was able to reduce all of our “essential” belongings down to 2 wooden 8’x8’ crates. Most of that was heirloom furniture we would be returning to my parents who were living in the islands at the time. It was a time-consuming and emotionally exhausting process, but I remembered the freedom I felt as I watched the moving truck pull away.

I used that experience as my guidepost on what to store and what to leave. This was also the guidance we gave our kids when instructing them on their packing. We made sure they knew they could keep anything they wanted but that this would also be an opportunity to go through their personal inventory and “trim the fat” so to speak. “You will be one year older and one year bigger when you see these things again,” I told them. It’s tough to make projections on an unknown future, but the kids were amazing throughout the process. Having your kids (if they are old enough) participate and make their own decisions in this process is something I would highly recommend.

My oldest son wanted to let go of almost everything. I left 2 empty boxes in his room and he filled up just half of one. He was born for a life of less. My oldest daughter kept sentimental items and also decided that one week was more than enough time for her to begin and finish a new sewing project. I mean, you can’t go to India without matching clothes for you and your dog, can you? My youngest daughter thought this was an exercise in futility as she would be keeping everything she had ever seen or looked at or owned since the beginning of time. She is a hoarder. I packed for her since I knew she wanted to keep it all, and she was heavily grieving giving our three kitty boys away. My youngest son simply needed a little help fitting his things into the boxes. His room was always neat and orderly, and he was resolute in the both the items he kept and the ones he gave away.

With the kids’ items out of the way it was time to work on Ravi’s and my personal things. Have you guys ever looked at a space and thought to yourself, “Psh, this will only take me about an hour to pack/sort/organize.”? I had that thought with every single room, and guess what? I WAS NEVER CORRECT. Not one dang thing took only an hour. According to my calculations, the pantry alone was going to take roughly one billion years, and we had just under a week before we were wheels up. Why was this so hard? We were leaving 90% of everything with the house after all.

The furniture and big ticket items are never the time-consuming part of packing. It’s all the sundries, all the details, all the knick-knacks, and all the junk drawer stuff that steals your time and energy. Dang it, that sucks. Ravi’s mom (shout out to Shelley) came the week before to set up the garage sale and help with odds and ends for which we were so grateful. But once Ravi suggested hiring movers, I felt lightheaded with relief and happiness. We needed professional help but the thought had not crossed my mind since we weren’t bringing large items. This is why sometimes two minds are better than one.

We diligently went through each area and physically put things into 4 categories: keep, giveaway, pack, and bring. The “keep” items would stay with the house and become part of the decor for future renters enjoying a Pacific Northwest Wine Country getaway. The “giveaway” items went to friends, neighbors, Craigslist, and a local donation center. The “pack” items would be brought to the garage for the movers to store in a Washington state warehouse. And, the “bring” items would come overseas with us in either our checked bag or backpack. Finally, actual, visible, real progress was happening. The movers came Tuesday and Wednesday, May 17 and 18. FedEx delivered the kids’ OCI cards shortly after the movers left. We would be leaving the 21st.

With the movers and all of our personal belongings gone and kids’ OCI cards in hand, we were able to catch our breath and take stock of what needed to happen next. The day before the movers came, we were at an orthopedic surgeon’s office for a follow-up visit regarding our oldest daughter’s finger. She’d broken it the month before during an unfortunate fist-bump with Ravi whilst playing a competitive game of family beach volleyball. Good news; her finger was healing fine, and she could take the splint off. Even better news; we got a phone call from our realtor before the surgeon came in and, unbelievably, the duplexes-fiasco was over. The developers were releasing our escrow funds, and we would be unshackled from this mold-infested, acid-reflux inducing investment forever. We drove home from the doctor’s office, not in a black Hybrid Chrysler Pacifica, but on cloud nine. This week was rounding out from being one of the most stressful to one of the best ones ever.

With the house packed, a finger healed, Duplex-Gate over, and our home under contract, there were only a few more things left to do before we jetted off in economy class style around the world. We sold Ravi’s main truck in 10 minutes on Vroom.com (highly recommend), but a tractor, Ravi’s diesel farm truck, and our minivan were not sold. Additionally, we had still not gotten the green light from Qatar Airlines for Blue to fly, and my OCI card was still MIA.

Now, we knew the vehicles would be fine without us there to sell them. One of the gentlemen who laid the cement pad for our hot tub also happened to be a licensed farm and heavy equipment broker. For a 10% fee he would happily be in charge of that responsibility. My OCI card would likely take months longer to process, and I had a 5-year Indian travel visa with a few more years until it expired that I could rely on in the meantime. Blue was an issue though. We had been working for months on all the documentation and necessary paperwork for him to travel with us. He’d recently gotten the green light from India, but Qatar Air was giving us the runaround.

We were sweating bullets. T’was the night before our flight and all through the house, our bags were packed, goodbyes to our wonderful friends given, and a rented 12-passenger van waited in our driveway for the 4-hour drive to Seattle Airport in the morning. We fell asleep still not knowing if Blue would get permission to fly with us the following day. One thing was for sure; we were not leaving this country without him.

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To be fair, we had done an incredible amount of work to this point, regardless of how it felt. We’d completed the daunting application process for all four of our kids for the IB boarding school they would be attending, Kodaikanal International School (KIS). This 120+ years old school is located in the 7,000ft elevation hill station of Kodaikanal, a beautiful sky island in Tamil Nadu, the southern Indian state of my husband’s heritage. My husband’s grandfather, the son of two American missionaries in India, had attended the same school in the 1930’s and 40’s, as did my husband’s youngest brother, in the early 2000’s.

We’d also found a place to live. Thanks to helpful friends we’d made along the way, we were put into contact with a family who would be moving from Kodaikanal back to Singapore at the same time that we would be coming. They’d been renting a private residence that happened to be on the school’s lower grade campus called Ganga. It was perfect for us and the location was unbeatable. For those of you who like to hear numbers, the rent runs about $825 a month for this 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom, old stone bungalow.

Our boarder collie, Blue, was also coming with us. There was a tremendous amount of paperwork that needed to be filled out for his international travel. The country of India wanted a handful of things and Qatar Airlines also wanted a handful of things. We had to get special letters written in certain formats, certain vaccinations done in specific ways, a certain size kennel with specific water/food attachments and doors with locking latches. Nothing we did was without frustration and if I’d had a genie in a bottle I definitely would have used a wish to get that crap done fast. We paid a “pet liaison” about $300 to help us expedite the process and I would highly recommend it to anyone traveling internationally with pets in the cargo space.

Ravi had received his OCI card a few months before our trip. This stands for Overseas Citizen of India, and it is a perpetual visa for people of Indian origin (and those lucky enough to be married to them). The kids’ and my applications were submitted but still pending at this point. Getting an OCI card is like living the movie, Groundhog’s Day. There is so much redundancy and duplication that you begin to marvel at the inefficiency of it. Like, you know someone really put their all into making that process so repetitive and time consuming. Bravo, Sir. Bravo.

Throughout the end of April and well into May, Ravi and I had also been dealing with a real estate investment that was going downhill faster than The Man in Black being pushed by Princess Buttercup. A few months after moving to Walla Walla, we put down payments on new construction duplexes in town. They looked great on paper and after our failures on the lot in Hawai’i we were happy to invest in more of a “sure thing.” Now, I’ve only written 3 posts, but I think you guys already know what happens to Ravi and me when we make idealistic investment plans. It ended up becoming a crash and burn situation and there was nothing but a dry tinder landscape on our horizon. More on that later.

Ravi had also given his 6-month notice at work. Wait, I’m sorry. Did I write that correctly? A SIX-MONTH NOTICE? Yes, Ravi was obligated to give notice long enough for 2 seasons to change. I was sweating my butt off in pretty-short-for-a-mom shorts when he gave it and freezing my butt off in a North Face down jacket when it ended. That’s long enough for a mature rabbit to have 6 litters of babies. At 12 babies per litter, that’s a crap load of baby bunnies. Heck, in 6 months even multiple duplexes could be built from scratch! Not the ones we were desperately trying to buy, obviously, but you know, other people’s and whatnot.

Ravi began to take contract neurosurgical work in Florida to keep the mortgage paid and “food on our family.” He was also trying his hand at food blogging and started his site, PaattisKitchen. The closer we got to the end of the road, the more desperate he felt to escape.

I know that I’ve organized each of these things into neat, individual paragraphs, but they were all happening simultaneously. I don’t know if I could truly represent the crushing weight of preparing for a change this big. Like rapidly converging rivers, this point in our lives was a maelstrom of chaos with a raging whirlpool in its center, pulling us towards its event horizon where we would surely drown. We were swimming against the current and losing. The successes I wrote about above were eclipsed by the objectives that remained to be achieved. Ravi was still working, the kids still in school, the house still not ready, the cars and tractors still not sold, OCI cards still not received, and Blue’s travel permission still pending. We had 2 weeks to get on that plane, all our loose ends to be neatly tied in a square knot, and we didn’t know how it was going to happen, just that it NEEDED to.

Life is funny. In our case, this thing we wanted so badly in order to relax and reset our lives was actually creating much more tumult in it. If any of you have ever cleaned a garage, this was the point where the 20 half-empty paint cans, your old bag of returns to Target, the kids’ bucket of sand from last year’s beach trip, your broken snorkel gear, and all the seasonal clothing totes are out on the driveway. It looks like a disaster, and you want to quit. Just leave it out there and let crap blow away or get stolen while you relax on the couch eating pizza. But instead, you slowly begin to bring your items back into the safety of that unpainted drywall room. You use your practical wall storage for the paint cans and totes. You throw away the useless snorkel gear and put the Target bag in the garage-of-the-car, AKA, the trunk. You’re done, and you feel GREAT. It always looks worse before it gets better. We were there, and that’s when we got a phone call…

To be continued…

Picking up on that cliff hanger I left last post- we knew that wherever we went had to be both inexpensive and also filled with adventure worthy of a 180 degree change.

Not many first world countries met both criteria. Chilling at Mom and Dad’s house would be free but lacking adventure, no matter what Mom says about the Walmart parking lot. Living in Singapore or Europe would be filled with adventure but very expensive. We were gonna need to go third world for this trip.

My husband lived in Panama for the Peace Corps for about two and a half years, but that was it and neither of us ever lived anywhere outside of the United States since having kids. But, like the rising sun burns away the morning fog, it became clear to us where we needed to go- INDIA.

For our close friends and family, the destination made sense. My husband is half Indian; our children (regardless of how they look) are 1/4. Part of their DNA, part of their heritage, and part of their cultural identity are all moored in the country of Rudyard Kipling’s romantic writings.

Now that we’d made the decision on WHERE to go, we needed to figure out HOW to get there. Like a goldfish in a 100 gallon tank, our life had expanded exponentially to fill a massive home, 5 car garage, and acreage. We had stuff, y’all. Trucks, tractors, garden and animal supplies, furniture, food, crafts, and everything else that comes along with the life of six busy and creative people. Our beautiful, spacious, and luxurious home was enabling hoarding to happen in a slow and insidious way. It was our drug dealer and we needed to kick the habit cold turkey. We needed to sell that house.

If Hawai’i had taught me anything it was that you never get to know what happens next. I thought island life was our final destination and that we had time to do all the things we wanted to get done. My approach in Walla Walla was the opposite: you don’t know what tomorrow brings so just do it all and it get all today. This all or nothing mantra ran unbridled during our short time in Washington and as we took visual inventory of all of our things we knew, it was finally time to pay the piper.

We listed the house for one month and after a couple of low-ball offers we took it off the market and began preparations for vacation renting. Plan B’s are never ideal but they’re fine and we needed to move forward. This is now the end of March 2023 and we had tickets for India departing May 21. Needless to say, the last couple of months were a bit of a blur. To catapult our purge, we had an unsuccessful garage sale, donated van loads of items, gave things to friends and neighbors, and relegated ourselves to each bringing just a single checked suitcase and a backpack on our trip. We had a plan and all we needed to do was check things off, one by one. Easier said than done, my friends.

The tough part of vacation-rental prep is the fact that you have to buy MORE stuff. Apparently the luxury rental market doesn’t want twin beds, they want kings. They don’t want a backyard sprinkler, they want a hot tub. They don’t care about your mason jars of various sizes for drinking glasses, they want uniformity. Huge beds, tons of bedding, hundreds of towels in all sizes, a hot tub, and dishes, glassware and Adirondak chairs… Our home looked like an Amazon distribution center. I had to keep track of all the new things coming in for the rental and all the old things going out from our life. Instead of progress, it felt like we were drowning in stuff. All this hard work and preparation felt like a net neutral process where we were treading rough waters and would never make it to the safety of the shore. Time was running out. It was now May 7 and we could feel our skin burning from the crosshairs squarely aimed at us all.

To be continued…

We have four kids aged 10, 12, 14, and 16. Two boys and two girls. Can you picture it? Cute married couple, two boys and two girls, and a family dog. Throw in an apple pie and a white picket fence, and it just doesn't get much more Americana than that. So there we were, living the American dream. My husband went to medical school and then to residency for seven years, training to be a neurosurgeon. Those 11 years had ups and downs, but we knew the struggles and stresses were temporary, and we dreamed hard about what life after residency would hold for us. It was the juiciest carrot at the end of a very long and dark tunnel.

We moved to Hawai’i after he finished and began building our new and better world. Like stacking Legos, we added each piece of our fun new life with excitement and happily anticipated what each additional piece would look like and feel like stacked on top of the others. We bought a couple of acres on O’ahu on the border of Kailua and Waimanalo. It was our paradise. We had a beautiful breeze and an ocean view you could stare at for hours, and that was our plan. Build a small home for our family, raise chickens and bees, surf and hike, and live happily ever after. That is not how the story ends, though. 

We struggled through the pandemic like most people. My husband especially had a longing for a change and a different path in mind. His body and mind felt trapped in our beautiful island paradise.  We sold our two acres of hope, which were bogged down in yellow tape and restrictions and decided to take a huge leap of faith and move to Walla Walla, Washington. There was not a scientific approach to this move. We didn't even know Walla Walla was a real place that existed outside Dr. Seuss' stories, but it was a place that was close to Hawai’i geographically, and it also had no income tax. Check and check.  They were looking for a neurosurgeon, and we were looking for a change. Our family moved there and instantly began to build the dream we struggled to build in Hawai’i. We bought a huge, beautiful home on 10 acres of land (sight unseen, aside from a virtual tour!) and began to farm it, raise animals, and grow fruit trees; trying hard to do all the things we wanted to do in Hawai’i but just weren’t able to.

About a year and a half into our two years there, we recognized that as wonderful as our life in Walla Walla was, it just wasn't “fixing” the cracks we felt.  What to do?  Have you ever faced-off with something major in your life that made you feel unhappy?  A consuming career path or toxic job?  A large and regretful purchase- maybe a home, car, or boat?  A relationship that doesn’t fulfill you?  Micro-bladed eyebrows with too high of an arch?  This list could fill the Cloud, but you get my point.  Some people choose to stick with the thing that is making them unhappy because the alternative can be difficult, daunting, stressful, or overwhelming.  All the scary things that come with the possibility of making a big life change. It's made worse when you have a large family that depends on you.   

Some people take the “rip off the bandaid” approach when they decide to make a huge life change, but as extreme as our decision was, we actually moved strategically through the process.  We decided that the first order of business would be to lighten our load at home.  This meant getting rid of the menagerie of animals we had quickly accumulated, because just like Noah’s Ark, we had ALL the animals at this point.  My husband collected animals like a 3-year-old collects shells on a beach.  Alpacas, chickens of every kind, multiple types of ducks, roosters, a dairy cow, a steer, and bees. 

The way I saw it was that each type of animal represented a unique type of stress.  One person might have looked into our yard and noticed a team of Indian Runner ducks busily bathing and preening themselves in the water, but all I saw was “patient requests.”  Another person may have recognized a flock of Brahma chickens scratching around for bugs, but what I saw was “not enough work/life balance.”  The stress of taking care of our farm animals was siphoning away the joy of having them in the first place.  It was a hard decision to find new homes for everyone but once we did, BAM!! Instant relief.  Like lifting a weighted blanket from our bodies, we felt light and free.  We recognized that we were using hobbies to distract us from stress, when really what we wanted and would benefit from was a more simple life. 

Now that our bustling farm inventory was whittled down to just the family dog and 3 kitty boys, we began to think about my husband taking a sabbatical. In truth, he probably needed one immediately after residency but, like a wet fish in buttered hands, time quickly slipped by.  If step one of our plan to change everything was to simplify our home-life responsibilities then step two would definitely be to give my husband a much-needed break.  Easy in theory but where would we go and what would we do?

To be continued…

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Join to hear about and follow my family’s move from the United States to India.

We are a pretty normal family of 6 that decided to take a year off from the grind and do something extraordinary. It was scary and difficult but here we are. Are you longing for adventure, excitement, and maybe a bit of ringworm? You’ve heard the phrase, “if I could do it, then so could you.” Well guess what, it’s true in this case. Follow along with me while I tell you why we did it, how we did it, and what daily life here looks like, so you can have a blueprint for doing it too. Or, if you prefer to just live a little vicariously (and without the ringworm) then follow along for some humor and candid cultural observations from an American family living in India.

I will be posting at least once each week, maybe more if this cream works quickly, or if something interesting or funny happens.

Isn’t this gorgeous? I was standing there in real life and I still can’t believe how incredible this is. Please subscribe and and join our adventure.