Passage to India: Will this trip have been worth it?

Everyone asks me if I'm excited to go to India. India is huge so I'm not sure what they are picturing when they ask me that, but I have a pretty good idea. The wretched refuse of the teeming shores, sweltering heat, and all that. But I'm not going to that India, I'm going to sparsely populated, cool Ladakh, and am I excited? Well at the moment, no, excited isn't the word. Scared to death is more like it. Scared of dying. Filled with doubt! One of my friends is strong enough to go out on a limb and say forcefully "You're not going to die on this trip!" I love when someone goes all out like that, and I take it to heart appreciatively, and get strength from it. But, really, who knows?

My children are very supportive. Someone said recently that my family uses India like summer camp, but that's an exaggeration. My original family, that is, mother father and sister, never did share my fascination for the far-flung teeming shores. Why wouldn't I want to spend a few weeks in Paris? Or a quiet time at home? Fair enough. I'd like both of those things too. I take their words to heart, and it adds to my anxiety. Why am I so different from my own flesh and blood?

Well this trip is inexpensive and thrilling. Imagine flying in a puddle-jumper through the high passes of the Himalaya! Imagine being at the furthest reaches of mankind, and seeing ancient artistic, intellectual and spiritual endeavors preserved in remote monasteries. How could people living a life so isolated and difficult have produced art and documents and philosophies and medicines and means of survival so intricately beautiful that we can't begin to imagine, in our present world, the patience and presence of mind such people had, and some still have? I'll be looking for vestiges of the past, and of pure unadulterated cultural survival.

I don't have that special skill-set for survival, whatever it is or was. Even sitting here with all that electricity and the local grocery store, drugstore, and art-supply store provide, I can't lose five pounds or get my bag packed or make a checklist of what I still need to do, let alone subsist through winter and build a gilded statue of Buddha larger than life size. Could I devise a theology, a cosmology, could I weave a cloth, forge a bracelet or brew a beer? Not a chance. Not without the internet!

So I'm scared. Have I painted myself into a corner? Is this really what I want? In the long run, would the money have been better spent on a face-lift, a new roof for my house, or a great dog? In the lonely aging years of recollecting to come, if there are any, I think the venture off into the unknown will be for the better. But only time will tell.