Traveling alone: Dec 22nd
There is always that apprehension about the decision to travel alone. I know I will have fleeting and wonderful encounters with strangers, or I’ll be contentedly on my own or I’ll be utterly lonely. I left LA alone this trip, knowing that I was meeting up with Ronni and Pinchas the day after I arrived. So here’s who I met along the way.
There was the carrot ginger soup guy who turned out to be from Goa (a beach resort town in India). Between insisting I eat the plates of food he kept bringing out, he did his best to convince me to visit his hometown.
I met an English businessman in the Gulf Lounge in Bahrain. He was sitting across from me for about an hour when I just had to get up and stretch—not an easy thing to do when you are one of the only women exposing more than her eyes. I found a moment when the place was relatively empty and hid behind a chair. Still, if you can’t touch your toes, I look flexible. Trust yoga to open a conversation! We talked about his passion to constantly travel and his wife’s (stop groaning) desire to stay put in England, and what life is like in Bahrain.
Certainly the highlight of the trip was meeting Janelle, a young Indian woman who runs the Gulf Air lounge in Bahrain. I saw her in the lounge hugging her staff members goodby, then we ended up sitting next to each other on the plane. Her son and daughter, 5 and 7, we’re next to us. She convinced her son to behave by telling him he’d have to sit in coach if he didn’t! By now, you’ve probably deduced that I’m flying business class, used all my miles just so that I can put my feet up and eat well, very well. Dinner on this flight was the best sampling of Arabic food I’ve ever had. As was the Indian food. I was too full to eat and the flight attendant was not happy. Janelle took the blame for distracting me. She is a Roman Catholic from Mumbai, married to a Bahai. She is taking her children to her family in India to celebrate Christmas. She told me about the current anti-government riots in Bahrain and the common practice of using tear gas on the crowds. The monarchy controls the press so except for a YouTube video, the word does not get out.
I arrived in Mumbai early evening, hugged Janelle and her children goodbye, invited them to LA, and found my driver. He was obviously buddies with my first cab driver last year in Burma. Their motto seems to be—honk instead of brake. I crashed (at the hotel, not in the car) and slept 10 hours (drugs) then went down for my first breakfast in India. I sat down next to an Indian couple from England. They were both retired British Air employees in Mumbai for a wedding. Turns out the woman studies kaballah and teaches kundalini yoga. By the time Ronni and Pinchas came down for breakfast we had exchanged info and extended invitations to visit each other. Pinchas teaches and writes about kaballah, so the conversation continued. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about my first two days in India…promise.
