My Daughter's Beck and Call To India: Easy

So now I'm going too. To India. Bought my ticket, destination Ladakh, way up there on the Tibetan plateau. Can't wait. It won't be hard, as long as I survive the altitude. If I don't, put me out for the vultures on a hilltop, or whatever is easy....please don't drag me "home" - please just let me drift away in the Himalaya, according to local custom, and according to my life-long dream. I have loved my life beyond measure, my children and their mates, and parents and sister, and nieces and nephews, and cousins, and friends and all into eternity..... I have experienced moments of exhilaration beyond measure- it's almost unfair to those who struggle in this lifetime without joy, how much happiness my children have brought me. But thank you, my children, from the bottom of my heart. Let's hope for many more years for all of us.

So now I have purchased a ticket to India, way out of my budget, but within my crazy reach. My daughter kept encouraging me to join her - then an old practically anonymous college-time friend from 45 years ago gave me the push I needed....saying can't be sure how much time we have left...then Tim Russert died and that day I bought the ticket..just a moment in time in cyberspace, not quite sure how it all happened... My goal is to go to Leh in Ladakh with my 22 year old daughter who is presently feeling comfortable in Dehra Dun, and to not succumb to high altitude sickness nor, well , God forbid, cerebral edema. I've wanted to go to Northern India and/or Tibet, since I was a kid reading my grandparents' old National Geographics, and saw those beautiful Tibetan faces. I used to dream and sing words like "Shey" and "Ringdom" before I ever even knew there really were such places.

I feel my old 60's exhilarating fearlessness coming back to me in my 60's. The same feeling I used to have when I hitch-hiked across country a dozen times, invincible, or slept under bridges in Paris, or lived in a lean-to on the beach in Mexico. How great is that? It was great then and it's great now. I'm ready for anything. I'm not easily fooled anymore, which is good for India, but I remember the joys of illusion. And would welcome those joys again any old time. Going to give it a go. The Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, here I come.