8 May 1999

Hi all,

Sorry for the long silence but I have tended to lapse into these pauses
recently. I spent 8 weeks in India shuttling between Delhi and Madras
mainly, with a few days in Rajasthan, B’bay and Mangalore. The stay in India was notquite what I planned it to be, but it was nice all the same to be back home.

Flew from Delhi on May 2 through Karachi and somehow managed to meet my group in a small town called Takestan about 150kms West of Tehran. Iran was very pleasant, in fact quite cold c mpared to the 43 degrees roast of Delhi.

Turkey was even colder and we had a beautiful drive along the Black Sea to the North. It was one of the most breathtakingly scenic routes on our entire trip. I got to drive the bus on the eight hour stretch so it was quite romantic to just drive into the misty mountains. Very peaceful.

Right now I am in Instanbul, in an alley right behind the Sultan Ahmet (Blue Mosque). It is a beautiful bright sunny day and I do not want to spend too much more of my time on a dinky computer when I can be outside. So this is just to say hello and that I am well. There is so much more to say about this entire trip. I wonder when I will collect all my thoughts together to share them with you.

As for my immediate plans, we leave Turkey tomorrow. One day in
Bulgaria, may be 3-4 days in Romania. Some of the group want to go through Ukraine and Poland but I can’t make it due to visas. I have a visa for Hungary and Schengen, so that might be my route, if not the entire group’s. I should be back in Denmark May 19 and the schedule on our return seems packed with activities ranging from a theatre production to painting the houses we will be moving into and of course preparing educational materials from this trip.

Promises to be hectic but fun. Does not sound like I am working, does it? Oh well. I am sure that will hit us soon enough in two months time when we are short of cash and need to hit the streets again with postcards. May be.

But for now life is peaceful and quiet. It is only now that the trip is
beginning to gel for me. And it is a nice feeling.

’til later,
Arvind