Preparations

In less than 2 weeks, Staci and I will be off to India for nearly a month and feverish preparations are in full swing!

By this I mean that Staci has spent nearly a month practicing various packing modalities, weighing luggage combinations and calculating the various fashion permutations permitted by tops, blouses and scarves in 3 basic color families (An excercise that seems to involve a solid grasp of Game theory, calculus and kindly Dr. Feynman's K-matrix guide to energy quanta) For my part, I'm carefully anchoring down the north end of the sofa; watching South Park and Phineas & Ferb reruns just in case useful travel tips should turn up. The day before we leave I'll wedge anything that looks useful into my duffel and hope for the best. (While this doesn't usually play out well, the results aren't really much different when I do prepare so I figure I'm a number of cartoons ahead of the game.) At any rate, Staci is prepared and that makes all the difference.

I should probably explain our unique dynamic.

While I'm a veritable compendium of esoteric wisdom; able to discuss quantum entanglement, predynastic Egyptian pit burial practices of the Gerzean and Amratian periods as well as any number of areas of knowledge (as long as they serve no useful purpose in real life) I am, apparently, completely devoid of anything approaching common sense. I'll probably die standing out in a field with a flock of turkeys, gazing up in gape-mouthed wonder at the sky as my lungs fill up with rain. Staci will not be surprised by this and will probably give me "the look" as I lay in my coffin looking just like myself.

Staci, however, has that kind of black belt female logic always at work which still manages to amaze me. She's somehow able to connect cause with effect before consequences. (I'm like a dog watching a human use a can opener... How the hell does she do that?)

Fortunately, she's done the heavy lifting for this trip, meaning we have our innoculations, medications, preparations, recommendations and anything else rhyming with "ations" that may prove useful. It's a good thing as this trip is a bit more involved than most of the ones we've done.

We're going to the usual big sights in Delhi and Agra as well as camping in the tiger preserve at Ranthambore, camel trekking, seeing the temple carvings at Khajuraho, travelling to the annual camel fair in Pushkar and floating around the backwaters of Kerala on a houseboat. This provides me all manner of opportunities to help Staci maintain her childlike sense of wonder with my continuing inability to "see that coming." (Flashbacks to follow...)

Should be interesting.