One detail I forgot to mention about our expedition to the elephants, which begs to be recorded: as the trainers and elephants left their bathing area, they passed by a shrine to Ganesha, the elephant god of Hinduism. Each elephant, even the youngest, stops before the shrine and bows to the god before proceeding home to the elephant training camp where they live.

This morning, we hired a small motorboat and driver and spent a couple of hours boating around the backwaters. We putted along slowly, and B, K, and I sat on the roof of the boat most of the time, so we had a good view of the area and the goings-on on and along the waterways. We passed by countless small vignettes of life on these waters: a small boy getting soaped up and scrubbed by his dad; women doing their daily washing and drawing water; the one fancy resort on a nearby channel, featuring chefs with high white hats and a huge swimming pool; a boat captain piloting a large houseboat back to its berth, with his son on his lap helping to steer....and so on.

I almost forgot to mention the big news from yesterday: we inadvertently became famous local environmental activists (for a day at least). Here is how it happened: As we walked onto a main street in downtown Alleppey yesterday afternoon, we soon noticed that by ones, twos, and small groups, people were lining up to form a blocks-long line along the main canal that runs through north Alleppey. Many people smiled at us, holding out their hands and making space for us to join them. The purpose of their action wasn't completely clear from the explanations we could get--just that it was about forming as long a human chain as possible for 5 minutes, and there was an obvious spirit of solidarity and good cheer. As the line grew longer and longer, the surrounding streets grew emptier and emptier, and more and more hands reached out to us, I felt increasingly churlish about just walking by. Eventually, I said to B and K: "Everyone in town seems to be in on this: let's join in. What could be the harm in it?" So we did, taking the hands nearest us. Within a few minutes, someone called out to get the attention of a roving photographer, who quickly came over to snap our photo, then continued on down the endless line.

Last night, we'd soon forgotten the incident, but this morning at the breakfast table, our waiter excitedly brought over the morning paper, which is in Malayam (completely unreadable to us; it has its own script). And there we were in the paper, prominently featured in a color photo. We asked our waiter for his understanding of yesterday's event. He explained that it was a demonstration of support for cleaning up the increasingly polluted backwaters. We were relieved to know that we'd been supporting a cause we could fully believe in.

We're now in the town of Alleppey, in central Kerala state, about 40 km from Fort Kochi, which we left early yesterday morning. We had spent our last day in Fort Kochi boating on the nearby backwaters for which this part of Kerala is famous. The backwaters are an extensive area of interconnected lagoons, channels, and lakes, and lushly vegetated islands and shorelines. Boating for a few hours, as we did, is a relaxing way to appreciate this lovely tropical setting. From our houseboat, we watched fishermen using rakes and nets to harvest mussels from the sandy bottom, and later we had a chance to eat a dish of freshly-caught mussels purchased fresh from one of the fishermen. We also got an impromptu tour of a household's ayurvedic garden, and learned how that particular family was able to grow many vegetables and fruits for their own use as well as many of the common medicinal herbs used for ayurvedic treatment (Ayurveda being the traditional medical system of India). Our young guide explained that it's common for families living in the backwaters region to cultivate needed herbs and food crops in this way.

We left Fort Kochi by hired taxi yesterday morning. Our first stop was memorable: we helped to bathe two baby elephants from the Elephant Training Center run by the local forestry service. Each morning and evening, the elephants are brought by their trainers to the holy (and beautiful) Periyar River to bathe themselves and receive a good scrubbing. Tourists are welcome to help during the morning session, under the watchful eyes of the trainers (even a baby elephant is much bigger than I). K and I waded out through the shallow water to where the two baby elephants were already relaxing on their sides, as the trainers showed us and other volunteers how to use cut coconut husks as brushes to scrub the elephants' thick hides. The trainers explained that the elephants experience their scrubbing as a nice massage, and the beatific, relaxed expressions on the elephants' faces seemed to confirm that this is a pleasurable activity for them, though they were being scrubbed by rank amateurs. I loved spending time with the calm, gentle creatures, scrubbing their sides, foreheads, and legs, and just running my hands across their thick skin.

The trainers and elephants obviously make up a skilled and experienced partnership. The elephants readily respond to the trainers' commands. And when it was time to leave the river, the one mature elephant of the party (who towered over all of us) nonchalantly lifted up one foreleg; the trainer lithely jumped onto the lifted leg and then smoothly up to the elephant's back.

After the elephant bathing, our taxi driver drove us though the heavy traffic and densely settled outskirts of the larger city of Ernakulum and then through increasingly greener country to Alleppey, where we checked in at a rustic resort where we'll remain through Tuesday morning. We're staying in adjoining thatched cottages on the shore of one of the main canals that run through Alleppey. Here, we're surrounded by palm trees and the songs of birds, which continue into the late evening and begin again early in the morning. Heavenly!

We deliberately left our calendar mainly unfilled for the three days we're here, to give ourselves some down time. And indeed, I spent much of yesterday evening and this morning relaxing in a comfortable rattan chair on our second-floor balcony, watching an endless parade of boats pass by--including every size of boat from small canoes to large houseboats. Taking a trip on a houseboat through the backwaters has become a popular option for Western tourists, and most houseboats, even the largest which are the size of small ferryboats, seem to be carrying just one Western couple. But a few of the houseboats--especially today, Sunday, which is India's day off--are carrying groups of Indians out for a daytrip. These travelers are more social and usually wave to us as they pass by, so we've been enjoying waving back to them and calling out "hi!" and "hello!" (actions guaranteed to thoroughly wind up the youngest members of the boating parties).

Tomorrow, we plan to do some boating ourselves, but haven't yet decided whether to hire a small boat just for ourselves, or to travel on the small government ferries that we frequently see plying the backwater channels. I'll report back...

It's two-thirty on a warm Thursday afternoon at an internet cafe on Princess Street, in the center of Fort Kochi. B and K have gone off to find themselves some lunch, but I'm not hungry, and needed to reconfirm some upcoming hotel reservations.

We were just dropped off here by R, a local autorickshaw driver. We 've developed a taste for catching rides in these small, low-cost vehicles, which zip deftly through the crowded streets and alleys of Indian cities. The three of us can just barely squeeze into the passenger bench inside an autorickshaw; it's a good thing we're friends.

We had met R last night when we caught a ride home with him after a performance of traditional Kathakali dance, and he'd given us his card. We liked his affable disposition, so we called him once we decided to spend today visiting some of the sights we couldn't easily walk to. We visited a variety of sights, including the old Jewish quarter of the nearby trading town of Mattencherry (B reports that nearly all the Jewish residents of that quarter emigrated when the new state of Israel was created), the centuries-old dockside go-downs (warehouses) where spices and ayurvedic medicines are stored before being shipped overseas, a temple to Shiva where I had an enjoyable conversation in my "baby Hindi" with a worshipper who was delighted to be able to speak directly with a Western visitor (I understood less of her enthusiastic commentary than she probably thinks I did, but I really did understand part of it!), and the Dutch Palace, constructed by the Portuguese in 1568 for the Maharaja of Kochi. In the palace, I especially liked the murals depicting scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata--I'm starting to be able to tell Krishna from Shiva from Brahma from Vishnu from Paravati from Durga...

A reality that's always present when traveling as Westerners in India is the gulf between our experiences and those of most local residents. Some residents, such as the wonderful husband and wife team who run Beena Homestay (where we're staying), are relatively prosperous, with a lovely home and a daughter earning a PhD in Mumbai. But most are much closer to the edge, including our likable driver R. Scoring the opportunity to take us touring today was probably a major stroke of good luck for him: in the end, we paid him 600 rupees (about 13 USD), and he likely also received small commissions from a spice store and an essential oils store where K and I made a few purchases. It's typical for a driver to steer passengers to stores where he can make a commission; R was much less pushy about doing that steering then most are, and we appreciated that--especially given how much a little bit of extra money likely means to him.

Yesterday, we dropped down from the heights of the Nilgiri Hills via a wild but very skillfully driven taxi ride down a steeply winding road (none of the dozens of wild monkeys dashing back and forth across the road were hurt in the process, whew!), and then a train to Fort Kochi (part of the larger town of Kochi) on the coast of Kerala state. We've just now stopped by an internet cafe after a morning of strolling through town.

As soon as we began our descent from the Nilgiris, I felt a little wave of nostalgia for that beautiful, green hill country. But here in Fort Kochi, we're staying at a wonderful homestay, or guesthouse, in a family's traditional Kerala house. As soon as we arrived, after a hectic day of travel, and were warmly greeted by Beena, the proprietress, we could tell that we'd landed in a quiet, restorative oasis. It's so clean, so graciously friendly, and none of the plumbing leaks! (Our observation so far in India: where there is plumbing, there is water dripping.) We're all capable of being very barebones travelers when needed, but this little bit of extra comfort is very welcome. And hence it's been easy to leave aside nostalgia for the mountains in favor of appreciation for Kerala's green and tropical coast and its welcoming residents.

We'll stay at the Beena Homestay for four days, and are already enjoying the included home-cooked Keralan breakfasts and dinners, eaten at a big dining table with our fellow guests. Two guests from Victoria, Canada, left last night to catch an overnight train to Rajasthan ("See you in Pike Street Market!," we called out as they departed). The other guests are British, so naturally, despite the blue sky, warm weather, and birdsong outside the windows, our breakfast conversation soon turned to winter weather in Yorkshire vs. Seattle. Given the warm sea breezes and blue sky we're enjoying now, it's otherwise hard to remember that it's still cold and grey back home.

Arriving at a new location, one of the first things to do is choose among the many options for activities we could do in the time we're here. Possibilities in this area include helping to bathe elephants (!! I accord this a high priority), taking a boat trip in the nearby backwaters, viewing some traditional dance and/or martial arts performances, and taking a ferry to a beautiful sand beach on a nearby island. Were we as efficient as we'd likely be at home, we might manage to tick off all these possible objectives. But the tropics have a way of inducing calm and settling the mind, and my guess is that we'll choose just two or three. There's nothing like a few palm trees and the scent of jasmine (K and I are both wearing jasmine necklaces, bought from a flower vendor's stall earlier this morning) to boost one's ability to just Be Here Now.

Two stories:

A owns the sweet shop where B and I stopped for cold drinks after a long walk in the hills today. He lived and worked for many years in the UK, but he recently brought his family home to Coonoor to be closer to his extended family. This, we're learning, is a common reason to return to India; another shop owner just down the street made the same decision. Now A is wrestling with regrets. He reports that in India, it's difficult to deal with corruption--not major corruption so much as the slow bleeding away of one's money in response to small requests from political parties and others. And he hates the way that it's so easy to make small bribes to get around the rules. He appreciates Prime Minister Singh, who has a reputation for steadfast integrity, but wishes that other government officials would follow the Prime Minister's lead. Rapid inflation of prices of fuel and other necessary items is also making it hard to stay ahead of the game, he says. He asked about possible opportunities for Indians to work in the US. We passed along what little information we know, suggesting that the best places to consider first might be locations where large Indian communities already exist, such as our own Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond area and Silicon Valley in California. A loves this idea. But he doesn't know anyone in those communities, and we can't think of any leads for him.

The steep mountain slopes around Coonoor--including the slope right below our hotel balcony--are covered with tea plantations. The emerald tea plants, kept lush by reliable rainfall, make this as verdant an area as I've seen anywhere. The tea leaves are harvested by teams of women, who work long hours each day except Sunday, their hands quickly, constantly moving from tea plants to harvest bags and back again. Men don't ever seem to do this work, though sometimes we see a man supervising a team of women--rather extraneously, given that the women seem to be masters of their work and never seem to linger. Their work looks physically demanding, we observe. And do they then have to go home to cook and clean? We hope that others in their extended families do those homemaking tasks. Sometimes as we explore the landscape, we pass within a few feet of some of the tea harvesters. They cast covert, shy glances at us. I soon got into the habit of greeting them, though that's not the usual thing to do here. "Hello, Madame!," I wave. Without fail, faces break into broad, sweet grins, and hands wave back enthusiastically. How satisfying for all of us!

Tomorrow morning, we leave cool, sunny Coonoor to descent back to lower elevations (we've been at nearly 6000 feet here). We're ready for further adventure, but a bit reluctant to leave the beauty and relative calm of this place. We'll head by shared taxi to the big city of Coimbatore, which we've seen far below us from some of the viewpoints we've visited, and then will take a train to Kochi, on the coast of the state of Kerala. There, we've reserved a stay in a homestay: a guesthouse run by a family. We're looking forward to learning about Kerala, which is a very popular destination for tourists from around the world.

It's Sunday afternoon, and we're now in the (relatively) quiet town of Coonoor, high in the Nilgiri Hills in India's state of Karnataka. We've been here for three days, relaxing in the cool, sunny climate and admiring the beautiful emerald hills covered by tea plantations and forestland.

We arrived here by bus from Mysore, and then by the little "toy train" that for many decades has carried people from the plains up to the hill stations that originated during the time of the British Raj (Coonoor is one of those hill stations). On the way, we saw a few wild elephants! As our bus labored up the steep, twisty road, a little boy in a seat in front of us clung to the window and happily yelled out his excitement each time we rounded a bend and saw a new animal, completely beside himself. I think he's bound to grow up to be a forest ranger.

We're staying at a hotel in the upper part of Coonoor at nearly 6000 feet, where we're enjoying daytime temperatures that would be normal on a Seattle summer day, and crisp, cool nights. K and I are sharing a room with a little balcony overlooking a slope covered with tea plants. We awake to the sound of birds calling--a welcome contrast to the street sounds of busy Mysore. Our balcony is screened to protect against the "monkey menace," and we soon learned why: the local monkeys troop regularly across the ledge that runs along the front of our balcony. Two days ago, they came by as I was sitting quietly on the balcony. Two, apparently startled to find themselves just a couple of feet from a human, fell off the ledge to the vegetation below. The others either screwed up their courage and scampered across the ledge as fast as they could, or quickly scrambled up a drainpipe to the floor above.

Today, K, B, and I walked from town along a winding lane that took us up onto the slopes, through a friendly Christian village (many South Indians are Christian and there are several churches in and around Coonoor), and then up into the higher tea plantations that cover most of the slopes above town. Once we crossed the top of the ridge above us, we looked out across emerald green valleys filled with tea plantations and just a few small clusters of buildings. It's the loneliest country we've yet seen in India. We then followed a footpath running through eucalyptus forest just below a ridgeline, eventually passing a small, rustic shrine to Shiva that seems to be used by wayfarers now and then, perhaps including the Toda people who are the original inhabitants of these hills. We could tell that the shrine was Shiva's because it contained three small metal tridents, which are his symbol.

I need to wrap up this entry now to go back to the hotel (I'm at an Internet cafe) to say goodbye to two American friends of K's who joined us for the weekend, and are about to return to Chennai, where they're working on public health research projects. I'll try to post more news tomorrow. I'm behind right now because I've been recovering from a bout of "Delhi Belly"--perhaps an inevitable downside of traveling independently in India.

It's Monday afternoon, and I'm in a cool, breezy internet cafe in Mysore, in South India, writing this note after traveling here yesterday via a flight from New Delhi to Bangalore and then a train trip to Mysore. Squeezing through the crowds in the busy, crowded complex Bangalore train station was a challenge, but we found our train and enjoyed a spectacular ride through South India's countryside to the relatively more sedate Mysore train station.

The previous day, we'd spent the morning of our last day in New Delhi visiting the Jama Masjid, Delhi's largest mosque. It's a spectacular building with high domes and soaring towers built by one of the Mughal emperors. As women, on entering the mosque, K and I were asked to don robes over our street clothes. We were already doing our best to dress modestly, according to custom in India. I was wearing a salwar kameez,a traditional outfit consisting of a long tunic over long fitted pants, with a dupatta scarf draped around my neck and torso. After donning our robes, K and I also pulled our scarves up to cover our heads, just to be sure we were being thoroughly respectful.

After exploring the main courtyard and arcades, B and I elected to climb the tallest tower of the mosque, while K rested in the shade of an arcade below us. A friendly young guide led B and me up a steep, narrow, winding staircase to the top of the tower--now and then we had to tightly squeeze by other visitors who were descending--and then explained the views we were seeing at the top, which were spectacular. I took photos, and our guide took some of us. As we descended, we could see two young men laying out carpets in rows in the open courtyard below us. These were for the comfort of worshipers already beginning to arrive for the early afternoon prayer service scheduled for about half an hour after we left. Our guide had explained that the courtyard typically holds about 50,000 people during the regular Friday evening prayers.

On leaving the the Jama Masjid, we decided to take an autorickshaw to Raj Ghat, site of the cremation of Mahatma Gandhi, and now a beloved national memorial. An autorickshaw is a tiny 3-wheeled vehicle with a motorcycle engine, small seat for the driver and larger rear bench seat for passengers, fitted with a simple fabric roof for shade. Zillions of them buzz constantly around in Delhi's streets (Mysore's, too), whipping in and out among cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, even a couple of bullock carts we noticed yesterday. Riding in one is exhilarating and, we decided, a not-to-be-missed part of traveling in India. Though it's not something one would want to tell one's mother about.

At Raj Ghat, we saw that the cremation site is surrounded by a courtyard and carefully tended gardens. A constant stream of visitors arrived as we watched, mostly Indian families coming to pay their respects, mostly dressed especially nicely, and usually stopping to take pictures of each other in front of the simple granite slab at the heart of the memorial. In one of our guidebooks, this site is called the heart of India, and we could see why.

We spent much of today exploring the maharajah's palace and grounds, the geographical centerpiece of Mysore. The palace is lighted up each Sunday evening for an hour, and we'd been able to watch that ceremony last night from our hotel's rooftop restaurant. It was like watching a huge, shimmering, fairytale palace suddenly appear against the night sky in front of us. With a bright half-moon above us and the palace in front of us, we felt transported into an especially magical scene in the Arabian Nights...though below us, we could hear the constant tooting of car and truck horns that, we are learning, constitutes the auditory background of an Indian city.

Wandering through the enormous palace and grounds, and a major temple complex on the grounds that predates the palace, took us much of today. Versailles is the only building I've ever seen that approaches this palace for sheer, extraordinary size and magnificence. Artistically speaking, I think this palace is more lovely.

We've also been enjoying just watching and interacting with the people of South India today. Men, women, and children are strikingly attractive. Many women dress in extraordinarily beautiful saris and salwar kameezes, and often have flowers into into their hair as they go about their business. I could sit all day and just watch them pass by along the streets of Mysore.

People here are a bit smaller than Delhites on average, and they took a particular interest in K and me since we're both especially tall. Now and then, I noticed people doing covert double-takes, and each of us was asked at times to pose for photos with families. I was asked to pose with a group of local women who were visiting the palace with their families. We did not share a language (I've been learning Hindi, but it's little used here). But after we'd stood together for a photo, arms around each other's shoulders, an older woman in the group turned and lifted her palm to me. I placed my palm against hers, and we gazed, smiling, into each other's eyes for a long moment.

Later, over cold drinks in a tiny street stall, B--who really knows his India history (and thereby saves K and me the trouble of toting a history book along with us)--noted the unfairness of the system in which the maharajahs taxed the people in order to build their extraordinary palaces. They provided few or no services in return, and in fact probably made their subjects much poorer than they'd otherwise be, he said. Reflecting on that fact, and on what we'd seen today, we observed that nowadays, the tables have been turned. The wealth of the maharajahs now draws visitors like us, providing income for the descendants of the maharajahs' former subjects. I remembered Martin Luther King's comment, "the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice." Or at least, sometimes it seems to.

I'm in New Delhi now, using a hotel computer to write this entry. Here are some impressions from my travels so far, in chronological order:

While boarding our flight from Seattle, we noticed a young man who had been pulled aside by security agents for questioning. He remained cordial and smiling as he answered their questions, though it must have been a tense situation for him. A few minutes later, he took a next to me, and we talked a bit during our flight. He knows just a bit of English, and I can say only four things in Arabic, but such sparse conversations are often the ones that stay longest in my memory. My seatmate is from Libya, and is a dentistry student at the university in Tripoli (he laughed when I said that his work will help many people, but children won't like him). He'd been in the States visiting his brother, who is studying computer science in Portland, Oregon. He liked Portland very much, and now thinks he would like to study there himself. Perhaps we'll cross paths again in the airport someday.

We landed in Frankfurt and spent an enjoyable layover day in the nearby town of Mainz, which we easily reached via train right from the airport. We took a self-guided walking tour around the beautiful town, visiting the Dom, a church with beautiful Chagall windows, and the Gutenberg Museum, where I had a chance to see a demonstration of a working Gutenberg printing press. Watching the simple steps of the process to create a new print page brought to life how much more easily documents could be printed by the press than could be written by hand. Stopping for lunch and coffee at a coffee shop, we noticed that all tables were taken by customers, none of whom were using a laptop or iPhone. Instead, they were enjoying the excellent food and coffee and their conversations with their friends. Quite a contrast from a typical Starbucks in the US, and a bit of food for thought about how we spend our days in the US!

Later, walking along the bank of the Rhine River, I noticed two Viking cruise ships tied up at the riverbank. My friends J and K have booked a river cruise for next summer, and may very well find themselves on one of those ships. Sometimes it seems like an especially small world!

The next day, we boarded our flight from Frankfurt to New Delhi. My seatmate L, a graduate of India's prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, is now a graduate student at a Canadian university, where he's just finishing his masters in engineering and about to proceed to work towards his PhD. He's working in the general area of fuel cell development, adapting nano techniques to help solve a key obstacle to development of truly affordable fuel cells. Our conversation--about his work, the state of his field in general, India, and other topics--was wide-ranging. His broad knowledge and articulateness impressed me; I can't think I've ever met a student at his level and age who was as articulate, thoughtful, and knowledgeable.

At the New Delhi airport, we were picked up and taken to our hotel by pre-arranged cab. I'd been learning Hindi via Rosetta Stone, and now I was getting the first chance to practice speaking with actual people, including the cab driver. He's learning English, little by little, from his customers, and was delighted to help me with my Hindi as he drove us to our hotel. I was delighted and encouraged that he actually could understand my fumbling sentences.

Yesterday was a busy day spent changing money--an essential step--and exploring the walkable area near our hotel. We also took the new Delhi metro out to Chandni Chowk, the best-known of Delhi's many bazaars, and the enormous Red Fort, built by a Mughal emperor. The crowds we encountered while walking the streets and taking the Metro made navigation and progress difficult, but each of our steps brought to life new aspects of ordinary life in India--tiny stalls selling everything you can think of and some you can't; people carrying everything you can think of and more besides; bicycle- and auto-rickshaws, cars, and buses weaving intricately around each other; our first encounter with India's street cows (you just walk around them, they don't seem to mind); and every kind of person from beggar to businessman with cellphone on ear, all shoulder to shoulder in the narrow streets. All together, they made an intense, living tapestry. Later, walking home after a simple supper at a rooftop restaurant, I noticed a rickshaw driver rolled up in a blanket and stretched out on the shaft of his rickshaw for a night's sleep--not a position in which I'd be able to be comfortable, but his ability to adapt to the constraints of his circumstances is something to remember.

I will wrap this post up now in case others need to use this shared computer. When I next get a chance to sit at a computer, I'll tell you about the events of today, including a visit to Delhi's largest mosque, Raj Ghat where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated (now a simple shrine), and a highly exhilarating ride through Delhi's packed streets in an autorickshaw.

In my experience, each of the great religions offers us particular insights that we may not encounter elsewhere. As I pack for my journey to India, I hope for new insights from encountering Hinduism and its vast panoply of deities at closer range. Could it be that these deities represent the myriad ways that the divine appears in the human world?

I wonder in particular about Vishnu, the creator, and Shiva, the destroyer, who seem such a striking pair of opposites. What especially interests me is that Shiva seems to be worshiped at least as much as other Hindu deities. The same goes for his consort Kali, the goddess of death, typically depicted grinning and dripping with the blood of her victims. Why worship gods of destruction along with the creator god?

Perhaps Shiva and Kali hold such exalted positions because they personify an essential aspect of the natural order: the way that so often, something must be destroyed in order for something new to arise. The obvious example is that leaves that drop to the ground in autumn become the mulch needed for the new growth of spring.

Shiva and Kali have come to mind in these past two days since the tragic shooting in Tucson. Like everyone, I'm appalled by the deaths and injuries, Having sat frightened at bedsides, I am feeling for the families and friends now praying that the injured will recover. Having lost people I loved, I am feeling for the families and friends who have lost their dear ones.

And I'm also beginning to feel hope, reading the many comments by people speaking of the possibility that this shocking incident could have the effect of drawing us together as Americans. In the end, having been reminded of the essential humanity we all share and the fragility of our lives, we can hope that we now may turn towards saner, gentler political discourse. Perhaps ultimately, something new and better will arise from the destruction of the past weekend, which might not have arisen otherwise.

In Rudyard Kipling's book, "Kim," India's ancient Grand Trunk Road is portrayed as a "broad , smiling river of life....There were new people and new sights at every stride--castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his experience..." The boy Kim's fellow travelers on that road ranged from an imperious aristocratic lady to a Tibetan monk on pilgrimage. I've long loved Kipling's vivid, loving depiction of the myriad people of India traveling along that highway.

And after months spent planning an itinerary and making train and hotel reservations, two friends and I leave for India on Tuesday, and will soon set our own feet on parts of that road! I've remained calm for most of that planning time, but now I'm getting excited, and truth be told, a little nervous.

I'll travel with my friends for 6+ weeks, then they'll return to Seattle and I'll strike out on my own for two more weeks of travel followed by a 3-month volunteer stint teaching English in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala. I'll then spend 2 weeks visiting my brother P and sister-in-law C in Kyoto, Japan, before flying home in early July.

My travel companions K and B are long-time hiking buddies. We've spent many Saturdays together with other friends on the mountain trails of Washington State, and have taken several camping/hiking trips to the Desert Southwest together. We share many interests and know how to travel companionably and efficiently.

Nevertheless, we found it challenging work to pare down the astonishing variety of wonderful places to visit in India into a workable number for a 6-week trip. Here's where we'll go on THIS trip (we're already talking about future trips). We'll travel mainly by India Railways trains, with a few short segments by bus or car, and one flight. I've included links to short videos and other online references so you can get the flavor of some of the places we'll visit, if you'd like.

After a couple of days to adjust to the time change and sightsee in New Delhi, we'll head for Mysore, a city with a famous palace, gardens, and temples in South India. From there, we'll head up to Coonoor, one of the old hill stations of the former British Raj. Coonoor is set in the beautiful Nilgiri Hills of southwest India, a lush area of tea plantations, wildlife parks, and hiking areas. The Lonely Planet guidebook notes that the balconies of the hotel where we'll stay in Coonoor are screened against the "monkey menace." I'll report back on that.

We'll drop down from the Nilgiris to the coast of lush, tropical Kerala state, spending four nights in Kochi and three in Alleppey. We'll then travel up the coast through the coastal state of Goa (just one night there) to Mumbai, the largest city in India, where we'll spend two nights and a day before heading inland to Aurangabad.

From Aurangabad, we'll visit the famous caves of Ellora and Ajanta, then will travel to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and Emperor Akbar's ruined city of Fatehpur Sikri. We'll continue on to Bharatpur bird sanctuary and then to Ranthambore National Park, where we've booked jeep safaris to explore for tigers and other wildlife.

From Ranthambore, we'll head westward into the desert state of Rajasthan, visiting Bundi, and then Jodhpur, before continuing to Jaisalmer (not by the fancy train in this video) to visit its famous fort and take an overnight camel safari into the Thar desert. From Jaisalmer, we'll take a train north into the Punjab to visit Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple, the holiest site for Sikhs.

From Amritsar, we'll return to New Delhi. B and K will fly home, and I'll head east by train to visit Varanasi, the holiest city of Hinduism, and nearby Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first sermon after attaining enlightnment. From there, I'll travel a little further eastward to visit Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree.

After leaving Bodh Gaya, I'll travel by train westward and northward to Kalka, where I'll catch the "toy train" up to the hill station of Shimla, former seat of the Indian government during the time of the Raj. From Shimla, I'll travel by local bus through Mandi and Rewalser to the town of Dharamsala and nearby McLeod Ganj, best known as the home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. There, I'll remain for three months as a volunteer helping out with the work of Lha, a Tibetan-run service organization.

After all that travel in India, and two weeks visiting and exploring Kyoto, I should be ready to head home for a rest.

I presented my personal greatest threat to the world, as far as I know, on an otherwise quiet August afternoon in 1998. On that day, I knocked out the entire electrical and computing system of the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden.

I hadn't meant to, of course. I was at the university to co-teach a week-long class. My colleague D and I had been issued a US-made laptop designed to be powered by the US electrical system. We had been briefly instructed on how to set up a the chain of devices--adapter, converter, and so on--that needed to be connected in a precise order in order for the laptop to run on Swedish electricity.

You probably see where this is going. Hurrying to prepare for a class session, I must have set up the chain of devices in the wrong order. The instant I plugged the laptop into an electrical outlet, there was a loud bang, smoke poured from the outlet, and the lights went out. I hastily pulled out the plug , but the damage had been done. Moments later, hurrying footsteps and shouting could be heard in the corridors outside our classroom as people raced to fix the various problems I'd created, and the extent of the damage began to dawn on me.

Happily, the university's systems were brought back up within an hour (which felt like a particularly long hour to me). No data was lost, and the laptop, once back in the States, was restored to functionality. D was remarkably forbearing, considering that it was her session of our class that had been disrupted. The computer system administrator stopped by soon afterward to reassure me that no real harm had been done. In fact, he explained, the episode actually had been a good thing. The university system was out-of-date and still relied on fuses. He had been trying to convince the university administrators of the system's vulnerability and the need to modernize it, and saw what I had done as the perfect way to demonstrate its weaknesses. Or so he said. Such is the cheerful geniality of the Swedes I met, and I am very grateful for his kindness.

Today, I find myself with a new array of electricity-requiring devices that are bringing my Swedish experience back to mind. I travel to India next week and will remain in that country until mid-June. On this trip, I'll bring an iPod, a digital camera, and a Steripen for treating water, along with the rechargeable batteries and chargers they'll need. I'll also bring a plug adapter for Indian electrical outlets and a small surge protector. As you might imagine, I've carefully read and re-read all the documentation that came with each device. I've practiced setting them up, over and over, and have carefully checked each device to ensure that it is dual-voltage (they all are). I'm feeling quite confident that I've done this homework right, and that I have the equipment I need and know how to use it. But I'll still be holding my breath when I first plug into an Indian outlet.

My grandfather, a history professor, focused much of his research on the Church's (murderous) treatment of heretics during the Middle Ages. His findings prompted a wariness towards organized religion that remains strong in my family. I was raised as a third-generation Unitarian, but have thought of myself as Buddhist for a few years now.

Despite all this, I love Jesus. He greatly inspires me. Partly it's the sheer compassion he showed in so many Biblical stories. Partly, it's the mystery of the healings he performed--could they really have happened? Partly, it's the wise, pithy teachings that lodge in the mind, gently provoking for years: e.g., "The Kingdom of Heaven is all around you, but men do not see it." Partly it's how he always, always included the outsiders looked down on by polite society--routinely turning down invitations from the town elite to bunk with the tax collector, asking the Samaritan woman at the well for a drink of water, healing the Syrophonecian woman's sick daughter, and so on. Partly it's how he seemed to be struggling to overcome his own resistance to his destiny--those 40 days in the wilderness, for example--as though he could foresee the eventual fate of someone who so bravely went against society's grain.

Last night, Rodney Smith, the guiding teacher of the Seattle Insight Meditation Society, put it perfectly, encouraging us at Christmastime to "celebrate what consciousness can become."

And indeed I will. Merry Christmas!

A winter storm just finished having its way with us, after bringing days of snow and cold that left streets icy and slippery. I'm cautious about driving in such conditions, so for the most part I didn't.

But this morning, after a warm front finally swept in and left the streets newly bare of snow, I headed up to St. Edwards Park for a much-needed walk in the woods. Few other walkers were on the trail, but I had plenty of company: a wren rustling through the forest litter; chickadees calling from the Indian plum trees along the lakeshore; a Douglas squirrel leaping with impossible grace from the trunk of a fir tree to an alder branch.

This regular walking loop leads down through tall cedars and firs to the lake, then along the lakeshore and back up. The last leg of the route winds up out of the cedar/fir forest into a grove of tall alders. As I entered the grove and breathed in the sweet, earthy alder scent--especially impactful because there had been very little to smell in the chilly forest below---my heart leapt with happiness.

With that happiness came a memory from when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. As a biology student, I needed to walk or ski about a mile back and forth each day from the main campus to a smaller cluster of buildings where lab classes were typically held. During the long, dark winter months, when temperatures were far, far below freezing, we students hustled back and forth, swaddled in layers of wool and down, with only our squinted eyes and frosted eyelashes visible.

In that season of intense cold and dark, the odors of earth and vegetation were completely absent. But by early spring, after the sun had slowly inched higher into the sky, there eventually came a day when the sunlight falling on aspen trunks along the trail had strengthened enough to cause sap to liquify and flow again. On that day each year, the first smell of that sap after the odorless winter made me instantly, headily, utterly drunk with the happiness of being alive.

Some Zen teachers use the term "skinbag" to refer to our bodies, their intention being to encourage us to drop our attachment to our bodies and our other transitory worldly preoccupations. I take their point, but I also celebrate the way that our bodies' senses connect us to so much: to our emotions, each other, the knowledge of our aliveness, the natural world that surrounds and sustains us. The first aspect of Buddhism's Eightfold Path is Wise View--the understanding that we are so inextricably connected to everyone and everything else that any sense that we are separate selves is an illusion to be seen through. Surely our skinbags can help us experience the truth of the connection that lies beneath the illusion.

A few days ago, CNN reported the firing of an animal shelter employee who had mistakenly euthanized Target, a dog who saved U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan from a suicide bomber. The employee was accused of not following procedures correctly. The name of that employee was not mentioned in the news report because--not unexpectedly--many threats had been made against them.

It is easy to assume that with diligence, a human being can avoid making errors. What naturally follows from that assumption is the belief that any error a person makes must represent a moral failure on his or her part. When someone makes an error that has grave consequences, as in this case, we can be especially harsh in our judgments of their action.

However, cognitive scientists have learned that this assumption is not accurate. Human beings cannot completely avoid making errors, because the mind by virtual of the way it operates is error-prone. Research done during the last few decades has revealed the kinds of errors most commonly made, the circumstances that can make errors more likely (e.g., a procedure that's confusing in some way for a person trying to follow it), even the differences between errors commonly made by experts vs. novices.

Professor James Reason's taxonomy of human errors, which I encountered in grad school, drove home these points for me, because it was so easy to see that I commonly make many of the errors described in his detailed taxonomy. Take, for example, the category of unintentional actions, which includes actions that don't proceed as planned. This category includes two main types of errors: slips and lapses. You make a slip when you pour cereal into your breakfast bowl, then absent-mindedly pour coffee onto the cereal instead of milk. I certainly do this now and then. You make a lapse when you set your briefcase or backpack by the door so you won't forget it, but then leave without it (I made this error last week).

Professor Reason includes a wide variety of other types of errors in his taxonomy, which is laid out in his book, "Human Error."

I don't know any of the details about what went wrong in the animal shelter, nor should I. I don't think that the fact that we necessarily make errors absolves us of all responsibility for our actions, because we know from experience that we can make fewer errors by being more careful. But it seems to me that Professor Reason's taxonomy should suggest to us that cutting each other slack, especially when all the facts aren't available to us, is a wise approach.

Earlier this week, I found myself in my cubicle at work, tussling with a brown string tied around my left wrist. This string is my protection cord, which my dharma buddy C had tied around my wrist just a few weeks ago during the Seattle Insight Meditation Society's annual refuge vows ceremony. During that ceremony, the sangha members gather together, chant in Pali the commitment to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the "truth of what is"), and the Sangha (the community of Buddhists), then tie protection cords around each others' wrists. The cords serve to remind us of the vows we made until, impermanent as all things, they finally wear off our wrists and must be discarded.

This year, C remembered my story about the first time I took refuge vows with the sangha a few years ago. It happened that I had sat in an area surrounded by couples, so when the time came to tie refuge cords around each others' wrists, everyone around me turned away from me and towards their partners, leaving me feeling more than a little forlorn as they happily tied cords around each others' wrists and I was left to my own devices. This year, C kindly made sure to be sitting next to me, ready to tie on my cord--and such gratitude I feel for her compassionate act!

So why, then, was I trying so hard to wriggle this very special cord--sign of a friend's caring suppport as well as my spiritual commitment--off my wrist? The problem was that I'd followed a whim, asking C to tie my cord around my left wrist--my "hand of power" as I had joked, because I'm left-handed. But now I was looking ahead to a weekend receiving teachings from Younge Khachab Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher. I realized that a refuge cord on my left wrist would likely look disrespectful to someone from a part of the world where the left hand is reserved for toilet activities and a protection cord would without question be tied around the right wrist.

So I tugged, wriggled, and fussed for a few more minutes, and to my delight was able to get the cord off my left wrist and onto my right. Now I was nearly presentable enough to be in the same room with Rinpoche. Only one thing was still lacking: I felt a strong call to polish up my Tibetan etiquette. In two previous weekends with Rinpoche, I'd seen his experienced students perform prostrations when entering and exiting the teaching hall. I hadn't known how to do those prostrations, and had settled for a Japanese-style pressing of my palms in front of my heart, hoping that I wasn't being terribly disrespectful. This time, I wanted to be better prepared to avoid a cross-cultural gaffe. So this morning, I googled for instructions for properly honoring Tibetan lamas, and found some detailed, step-by-step guidance. I practiced bowing to my laptop until I felt that I had memorized the steps. Now I was ready!

Earlier this evening, I took a seat in the meditation hall, and waited with the other students for Rinpoche to enter the room, feeling far more confident than last time. When he did, we all rose and began to bow in near-unison. Perhaps I wasn't the only one who had been googling etiquette rules. But our formality proved to be over-the-top for Rinpoche. With an eloquent wave of his hand and a gently humorous expression, he indicated that we should just sit down and make ourselves comfortable. To press his point home, he sat himself down, picked up a meditation cushion, and balanced it on his head, grinning, as we settled ourselves.

And thus was an ancient teaching conveyed to us, one that must have been passed down century after century by one great lama after another, perhaps starting with Padmasambhava himself: Don't get your knickers in a knot about unimportant things.

As Nicholas Kristof commented in his blog, On the Ground: We are all Haitians today.

My dear Dharma buddy C just mentioned this blog, having forgotten how to find it. Her email note made me blush, given how long it's been since I've written a word here. This post is for you, C, so you have something new to read. And if you (or Emma) start a blog, I will proudly link to it.

By way of a New Year's greeting, C had sent this beautiful thought a few days ago:

"My teacher Nyogen Roshi is fond of quoting his teacher, Maezumi Roshi, who said something like, 'It is impossible not to do your best. You just don’t think it’s your best.'” - Karen Maezen Miller, The Laundry Line

That generous thought came back to me a few days ago as I watched the 2001 Bollywood movie, "Asoka." I had known only a little about Emperor Asoka, who reigned during the third century BCE, and the movie inspired me to learn more.

Historical accounts differ and may be as much or more legend as fact. But they generally agree that Asoka's early reign was brutal. Some sources say that he dispatched a brother or two to gain his throne. Like an Indian version of Genghis Khan, he seems to have been ruthless in his quest to expand his empire to encompass the whole of the Indian subcontinent. He nearly succeeded in achieving his aim--but then he chose to attack the nearby principality of Kalinga (the present-day Indian state of Orissa).

His invasion of Kalinga proved to be especially bloody, leading to 100,000 casualties, by one estimate. On the day after the battle, the story goes, Asoka walked alone among the piled corpses and wailing survivors, slowly taking in the extent of the death and destruction he had wrought. The legend is that he cried out, "What have I done?," and renounced violence forever on that blood-soaked battlefield.

Emperor Asoka devoted the rest of his life to promoting the welfare of his subjects, and proselytizing Buddhism, at the time a minority religion in his homeland. He declared Buddhism to be the state religion. His missionaries, who included some of his own children, and those who followed after them, spread Buddhism as far as Rome and Egypt to the west, eastward to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, and northward into the Himalayas and eventually into China and Japan.

In the following centuries, at the same time that Buddhism was growing deep roots in China and Japan, where it would become Zen; in Southeast Asia, where it would become the Theravada "Forest Monastery" tradition; and in the Himalayas, where Tibetan Buddhism would be the eventual result, Buddhism slowly died out in India, the birthplace and home of the Buddha himself.

Asoka's worldly empire did not outlast him for long, but his spiritual legacy is priceless. It is not a stretch to think that had it not been for Emperor Asoka's determined efforts, Buddhism would not have survived. His Holiness the Dalai Lama might be an illiterate peasant in a remote Tibetan village. We would know nothing of the sound of one hand clapping or mountains walking, and I would be doing something else on Tuesday evenings besides attending the weekly sitting of the Seattle Insight Meditation Society.

It's heartening to think that even if we start out life with our worst imaginable foot forward, even if we live for years as the most bloodstained tyrant of our age, or if in some other way our sheer badness strains imagination, good may be the eventual outcome of our life, through twists and turns of fate we never could imagine. It's a liberating idea indeed that if we just keep on doing our best--and Maezumi Roshi would say that's all we can do, anyway--our story, like Asoka's, will eventually end far better than it began.

In this election season, I'm been succumbing to partisan fever despite my best intentions. An antidote is the following quotation from a wise Indian sage.

When you know beyond all doubting
that the same life flows through all that is
and that you are that life,
you will love all naturally and spontaneously.
But when you look at anything as separate from you
you cannot love it for you are afraid of it--
alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation.
It is a vicious circle.
Only self-realization can break it.
Go for it, resolutely.

Nisargadatta

Early this morning, reaching to turn on the kitchen faucet to draw water for tea, I discovered a little spider scrabbling around in the bottom of the sink. She was trapped by its steep metal sides, with no possibility of escape other than the dicey proposition of the garbage disposal.

Ironically, she must have worked hard to get herself into this unfortunate position: first climbing the three flights of stairs to my little top-floor condo--an Everest for someone her size--and then finding her way indoors and into my kitchen sink. It would have been so much easier to have gone anywhere else!

Now, from her vantage point, circumstances must have seemed truly bleak. Perhaps she was regretting the diligent effort she had expended to get herself into this awful spot. Fortunately, I was more or less equipped to help. I rummaged in the recycle bin until I found a jar and a piece of cardboard. I set the jar over her, slid the cardboard under her, and then put her, jar and all, up on the counter.

She still wasn't home free, quite yet, because I was still in my pajamas, unready to go out in public, even if just for a moment on my balcony. So she had to wait a few minutes until I showered and dressed--in that time, surely, thinking that her world had gone from very bad to even worse. Finally--perhaps at the moment she had truly given herself up for lost--I took her to the edge of the balcony, and shook the jar until she floated out and down into the shrubbery below. How wonderful those familiar bushes must have seemed to her in that moment! Perhaps she vowed never to leave them again.

A little later, bicycling off to work, I thought about how our present situation might feel much like hers. It's easy to feel that though we've worked and worked all our lives, things only seem to have become more challenging. Problems and dangers seem to be crowding us on all sides. The prices of everything we need are rising; so much of the world is caught up in war or calamity; the country's finances are in miserable shape; less and less help is available for the most vulnerable among us; and worst of all is the specter of climate change, looming above all else.

It strikes me, though, that very likely we are no more able than the spider to see or even imagine the big picture. Perhaps we are, metaphorically, still in the sink, or maybe we're in the jar. Though it may seem that we're coming to the end of the line with no hope of escape, it's worth remembering that it must have seemed so to the spider this morning, only moments before she found herself back in the rhododendron patch, safe and sound.

I said in a previous post that it's a world of wonders, and here's a small example.

Over Memorial Day weekend, family and friends gathered for an evening barbecue in the Port Angeles backyard of my brother E and wife L. We sat at a long picnic table under the spreading branches of their lilac tree, which was headily in bloom. Ah!--I love the scent of lilacs on a spring evening. But midway through our dinner, family friend L was reminded that she's strongly allergic to lilacs. Her face had begun to swell, her eyes to water, and her nose to run.

As of last fall, I've been taking classes in reflexology. If you know about this alternative health practice at all, you probably think of it as a sort of foot rub. But I've learned that it's way of applying pressure systematically to specific points on the feet, hands, and/or ears--much as an acupuncturist applies needles to acupuncture points--in order to treat ailments.

In a recent class, I'd learned some of the major reflexology points on the ears. I explained to L that one of those points, Allergy Point, is at the top of the rim of each ear, and that applying pressure to it is a way to address allergic reactions. I volunteered to do that, and she accepted. So I stood behind her, and used my thumbs and index fingers to firmly but gently compress Allergy Point on both ears. After about eight to 10 minutes, T, across the table from L, exclaimed, "It's working!" She could see that L's eyes had cleared and her color had changed. Others looked and agreed. After perhaps 15 minutes, I released L's ears--by then, her symptoms were gone and she was feeling fine again.

The speed of L's response surprised even me, though I've already seen many instances of reflexology's effectiveness. I trained for many years in Western biological science, and nothing I learned then can explain what happened in E and L's backyard. While there are various theories about how reflexology works, the mechanism just isn't known at this point. Its efficacy seems clear to me, though, and I'm enjoying the mystery of it.