bad use of miles imo

i would regularly spend 33k miles to get a one way trip between USA & China (requires flexible dates and airports)

Oh well. They're just sitting around in my account.

I figure the most likely scenario is no upgrade available, and I get them back in my account on flight day.

Got some travel insurance today. Required by the tour provider, though I think I would've gotten some anyway, on a trip of this scope.

Filled out the tour operator's "good to go" form with the policy information, so I guess I'm good to go.

Phone tells me it's T -123 days.

Looked at the flight map from Newark to Delhi. Looks like across the North Atlantic, head SE over UK & Europe, Russia and some of the mid-Asian countries, then the corners of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Roughly 14 hours, though there's some variation historically, of course. Indeed, today's flight got cancelled. Let's hope I don't have that problem, though I did schedule a day early arrival to allow for stuff like that.

Then, I looked at my world atlas. Assuming this happens, there will be a slice of Earth (kind of from Varanasi, IN to Ipoh, Malaysia, o r 83E to 101E) which I haven't been to or over.

Looking at google maps, seems like that slice is a lot of Bangladesh, Myanmar, western China, and Siberia. Not too interesting to me.

Maybe someday I'll figure out a reason to go to/cross that space so I can truly say I've been around the world.

A couple from the Cities, who I met on the Brazil trip, was nearby, visiting her brother. Met with them for lunch.



Nice day in Castle Rock. Really good to see them again, heard about their travels, talked about mine. They gave me some good ideas for future adventures (Katmai, Galapagos, something else I'm not thinking of right now).

Just a nice afternoon, except for the traffic in-between.

so you hung out at casterly rock with the lannisters
where cersei and jaime suggested far away lands to explore

can't wait to read the book

Had to look up 'the lannisters'. Never watched GoT, but I'll assume that's another clever Red reference.

that was a reference
is it quantumly unpossible to call yourself clever?

That's why I did it for you. Don't want to ask the unpossible of the people in this thread.

I spent four months in India in 1992. Flew to Mumbai, then travelled through Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. You've already broken my two tips, which would be to go for more than a couple of weeks (get ready for culture shock), and go to the south rather than the north first (as, from what I heard, it's a little less crazy and intense). Proper third-world country. Although probably much has changed since then. It was an incredible experience. Karma is all.

Thanks for the insights, Charlie. I'll be on a tour, so I expect a lot of hustle from here to there and not a huge amount of time to take it in, but we'll see.

Let's hope for tigers.

The others on the tour are going to make a lot of noise at the merest hint of a tiger, which will scare the tigers off before you get the chance to see them. It's going to annoy you.

Arriving in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was then called, was post-apocalyptic. I got on the tube from Seven Sisters to Heathrow, and then Singapore Airlines, smoking section, as it then was, on a ticket bought from a travel agent in Earls Court. Stepping out of the airport, you're stepping over teenage girls with babes in arms sleeping in the gutter. Like literally stepping over them. The taxi from the airport to downtown goes through the Dharavi slum, the biggest slum in South-East Asia. A British legacy, of course. Seeing a slum IRL, albeit from a taxi window, is not like seeing one on TV. Corrugated iron shacks with people living in them as far as the eye can see. I felt like some White Prince, just by being from the West. There were signs along the side of the road, saying Please Keep Bombay Clean and Tidy. Then arriving at the metropolis, a good 80 or 90% of the buildings would here be condemned outright, on the spot; no roof, front hanging off, etc. I kept thinking, when are we going to get to downtown Bombay, and then then it dawned on me that I was already here. No welfare state. Six years old and no one to look after you? Too bad. They grow up fast that way. Like miniature adults.

The lack of respect people have for nature does disturb me. Got super-lucky in Africa; some of the treks it was just me & the guides. When there were people around, they mostly were quiet and watched.

One time I was in with a group of three middle-aged Asian folks. Driving around the bush, the guy gets a phone call and starts jabbering. WTF.

I am concerned over how I'll react to the crushing poverty. I get what you're saying about realizing how privileged I am. It's shocking how many Americans don't realize how good we have it compared to the world.

I had a similar experience with the super-rich. My friend's brother was head gardener to a Mr Weston, the third-richest man in Canada, who rented Fort Belvedere, where Edward VIII made his abdication speech, off the Royal Family. The budget for the upkeep of the grounds was a million pounds per year. and the Westons spent about five weeks a year there. That's rich, except adjacent was a polo ground owned by the Sultan of Brunei, with its own purpose-built village for the staff. I went to the brother's for a BBQ once, and walked around it all; all of it being deserted. I found that and the Dharavi slum experience similar and liberating. You are somewhere somewhat comfortable on the continuum between rich and poor, and it doesn't matter exactly where.

I didn't say anything remotely to that effect. Where would you get that idea?

What I meant was your describing your arrival at Mumbai. Stuff that I'm lucky enough not to have to deal with, or even see, very frequently.

Maybe bad phrasing. Lucky/fortunate instead of privileged? I appreciate and try to keep in mind it was a huge stroke of fortune to have been born into a society where it's possible to be be able to travel and see the world instead of working hard every day just to stay alive.

I don't mean to imply that you were saying anything about my personal experience.

Bad inference by me, then.

I've had it in the back of my mind to return one day, this time to Varanasi and the perfect symmetry of the Taj Mahal.

Both of those are on the tour I'm in. They sound interesting, but tigers #1.

Plus butter chicken and naan. I'm told they'll sell me a beer if I ask nice too.

The food is great. Eat with the right hand, though, because they don't believe in toilet paper and the left hand is used for other purposes.

I wasn't a drinker in those days, and India has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, but if you want a beer you'll find one.

Again, everything I'm saying is modulo a third of a century ago.

I read a lot. I even read all of Foucault's Pendulum and most of Harlot's Ghost, the latter on a two-day train journey from Trivandrum to Mumbai, going home. Don't remember a word of either of them, and don't remember much about the journey, except the slightly rancid smell of arriving at Mumbai in the morning, some Indians trying to con me out of my second-class bunk bed at the beginning, and that Fischer was playing Spassky in some sham rematch.

Ignore the trivia, just enjoy the moment.

Taoist.