Tiz the Wedding Season

The moment we were waiting for, through endless hours of street side dusty wandering and wide-eyed observations of a land we were entirely unprepared to be hurled into with our sweat-saturated-half-empty backpacks and well seasoned(with dirt) Chaco sandals...which we still swear by after a not exaggerated few hundred miles of pavement-mountian-rock-beach-trail pounding. 

So we made it to Ujjain, THE place of the wedding.  After breaking down over a bowl of corn flakes..due to a hungry belly combined with a treacherous night of sick-stomach-gurgling and late night shivers on the train [of course], we reached our destination flawlessly.  Where to our delight, all that entailed for our finding a place to rest, was simply saying our names.  Pleasant.

So soon enough wedding festivities were happening before we knew it.  A celebration and a gathering of families.  While Corey dined with guests of honor, I sparkled with the reflections of a princess-bride-to-be as she glowed in a remarkably exuberant display of shiny jingling saris-bangles-rings-necklaces-henna intricacies-flowers-with a dash of sleepy-ecstatic-cuteness that all brides (yes, have been there quite recently) go through during their pre-ceremony preparations.  

 

The Indian Wedding.  We unveiled the bride for all to see her elegance.  Festivity filled the air with an appropriate combination of exotic Indian instruments.  Our 101 introductory course to the "Hare Krishna" movement I suppose you could say.  The two of us, as foreign as can be, simply took our places in the crowd of energetic Indians (whoohoo so many women!) of whom many were family on Aditya's side as we proudly represented the Engelharts for all who couldn't quite make it to and through the dusty street-men filled-curry smelling-horn honking and end up in central India.

Smoke billowed from a fire surrounded by fruits and leaves. All guests threw bits of rice at the bride and groom as they giggled their way around the fire, tied together indefinitely.  Music made all that gathered "round the fire" bobble their heads and flutter their saris...and for a moment we were all joined as a family.

We were sad to leave the festivities early that afternoon but we had a "plane to catch" as they say, but as we say.....

"we had an overnight (yes, still extremely cold) train, a day of Delhi dust-wandering with our packs, a tuk-tuk, an underground train, a 7 hr flight to Bangkok, a sky-train, a bit of backpack wandering in Thailand's capital, a sky-train back, a flight to Shainghai, a flight to Chicago, a flight to Traverse City and a family to pick us up"  ..............to.....catch..........

or to condense that jumble

Approximately 60-HOURS of travel with no bed nor shower to pamper ourselves with.


So as we end that "honeymoon" with a M&C style bang, I'll have you know we made it home safe and sound..just in time for the jingle of Santy Clause's bells and the extremely-needed-embraces of both sides of our immediate families.


 It truly has never felt better to be home again. 

Presently, I sit typing on the dawn of a new journey....in three hours, Corey starts school in his Masters in Business Administration program...and I continue taking odd jobs until my employment options are solidified.  

The Journey for us Wayfaring Souls doesn't end here.  I open invitations for you to follow us through our endeavors and discoveries of a new kind of life...that is stability.  Since it is altogether exotic and quite mysterious for me ....feel free to humorize yourself with whichever observations we choose to make on this new American-community-culture.  You just might learn something about the "absurdities of human nature."    

Journey on.  Never stop HUGE dreaming through your own pair of "orange-colored-glasses"

Yours truly,

Meg