Day Twenty-Seven: Getting ready for India

Al and I booked our honeymoon for India in the spring so we have spent this week trying to get prepared. Al filled out paperwork that looked like an application for MENSA to get her Indian travel visa, and I got a gold star from our nurse practitioner for getting almost every vaccine available in the last year. Unfortunately the nurse said this trip is not sketchy enough to require the Japanese Encephalitis vaccination…challenge accepted!  

We are stocked up on malaria pills (the kind that cause hair loss not night terrors) and antibiotics to ward off travelers diarrhea. We got headlamps, binoculars, hand sanitizers, power converters, travel locks, and tons of travel guides for Christmas (thanks Danna, Chris, and Blanche). We are trying to learn enough Hindi to get by, and enough about Indian history to get as much out of the trip as possible. We are reading about customs and culture, and Allison is even teaching herself to eat with her right hand. Well she is trying to eat with her right hand and swearing a lot.

I recently read that only about 30% of Americans have their passport, and that number has spiked since passports became required to travel to Canada and Mexico.

I personally could not imagine my life without travel. I have been so lucky to be exposed to travel from a young age, and to get to travel for work a lot. My family could never really afford to go on vacations, but I remember the year I turned 13 the only thing I wanted was get out of Illinois. I convinced my parents to send me to Arizona for the summer to hang out with my favorite Aunt and cousins. From there I worked my magic and got my Aunt to take me with her to a conference in San Fran, and got my cousin to take me to Mexico. This was the first time I had really traveled, and the experience was amazing. The next summer I detasseled corn to be able to spend a month in the Bahamas studying marine biology, and in high school I signed up to go on missions with my church to get out of Illinois. Since then I have been to 9 other countries.

I totally understand why most Americans don’t travel. Traveling is expensive (although it doesn’t have to be).  In Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris gives examples where living abroad is actually less expensive that living in the US. However, his examples are pretty extreme and don’t really work for the typical family with kids, jobs, and 2 weeks of vacation per year. There are a lot of websites to help find the best fares for air travel. I personally use a mix of Kayak and Orbitz but will usually buy direct from the airline. I also use trip advisor and hotels.com to find the best lodging options. Committing to travel for most people does mean making sacrifices in other parts in daily life, and for some people that isn’t an option. For Al and I travel is so important that we are willing to cut back in some areas of our lives to make sure that we can experience the world together.

Traveling can also be confusing and overwhelming. From the minute you step on the plane and start hearing directions for fastening your seatbelt in multiple languages it can be easy to get shaken.

Customs forms are usually terribly designed, and pretty stressful to fill out. I always worry about being detained because I checked the wrong box or because I didn’t claim my:  “Someone who loves me went to Shanghai and all I got was a stupid shirt” souvenir. On our flight home from Costa Rica our seat mate asked us if he needed to claim the fried chicken he was bringing to his family in NY as livestock. I kind of wonder if George W.  himself drafted the US Customs form.

I think the best way to make international travel fun is to admit defeat early and lower your expectations. Things are going to take longer than you expect, not understanding the language is going to be confusing…the sooner you accept it, the sooner you can get over it and start enjoying the new culture you have plopped yourself in the middle of.

For us eating is always the most stressful part of travel. A lady can only eat so many luna bars before going completely nuts, but figuring out how to order meals that are truly vegan can be challenging.  For our India trip we decided to book a vegan tour to just eliminate the stress of figuring out what to eat.

Travel can be stressful and challenging, but it can also be life changing. I have such an appreciation and empathy for other cultures because I have experienced them first hand. I recently got all riled up reading the hateful comments that “good Christian families” were writing on Lowes facebook page offering praise to the big box for pulling advertising from the new TLC show “All American Muslims” (here are some of the more obnoxious comments.) I can’t help but think that if everyone traveled and experience other cultures maybe as a society we would be just a little bit more open minded. If more people made the effort to be experience a little bit of discomfort to broaden their horizons maybe we would treat each other with more love and compassion.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
Maya Angelou

I have only seen a small sliver of the world, but it has changed my life. I love seeing how people in other cultures live and work, and how similar but different it is to my own life. I dream about traveling everywhere, I have a bucket list of things I want to do before I die (or turn 30) and about 90% of that list consists of airport codes. Right now my goal is to figure out how to work in a round the world trip without losing my job…I will let y’all know how that goes!