very simple

Back from my around the world trip.  Real blogging to commence once I download and weed through the 1000+ photos that I took while away, and wade through the 15,000+ new headlines in my RSS reader.  Looks like I won’t be getting up from the computer any time soon.

(oh, and while I only actually went to two countries – India and Singapore, I say "around the world" because, apparently, the best route to fly to and from Singapore involves continually flying east – direct flights to Singapore fly over Europe and Asia, while direct flights home fly over Alaska). 

…well, sort of.

I’m trying out this new thing, which involves shipping my luggage to my destination prior to my trip.  I had read about it in a few places, and decided to give it a whirl this time around.  Not for the first part of my trip, mind you, but for the second part, which involves attending a 3-day long wedding.  Somehow, it seemed really illogical to drag an entire bag filled with fancy dresses and shiny shoes around southern India for a week and a half.  So I’m trying this out by shipping a bag full of that sort of thing (and hair products, and cosmetics, and all of the stuff that is entirely unnecessary for the part of the trip that involves sharing a hotel room with my brother for 9 days) directly to Singapore, where it should arrive several days before me.

Hopefully, everything will be fine.  Otherwise the bride will just have to contend with my wearing shorts and flip flops to her elaborately planned 3-day long traditional hindu wedding.  I’m sure she’ll understand. 

As I’ve mentioned before, my brother is the world traveler in the family.  Right now, after finishing up with the Peace Corps last month, he’s trekking through the Himalayas for a month, and then heading down to India for a while.

So that’s my brother’s life. 

A few months ago, one of my friends from Italy let me know that she was getting married, in a traditional Hindu wedding, in Singapore, and that I was invited.

So the gears started turning in my head, since Singapore and India are only a few hours apart from each other. 

The plan:

In January, I’m flying to Chennai, India, meeting up with my brother, traveling around the southern half of India (basically looping around the horn and ending up in Mumbai), and then flying to Singapore to go to a three-day-long wedding. 

It took me a few months of coordinating, but now the trip’s all booked, and I just have to get a visa for India and figure out what to wear (and how to, ideally, get my wedding clothes to Singapore without dragging them through seven different cities in India first).