Monthly Archives: April 2013

We were out one night in Varanasi trying to get to a festival and there were people as far as the eye could see. It was nuts.

Not the best idea but we really wanted to “bathe” in the Ganges – once in a lifetime chance. The floor of the river is spongy and slimy (not surprising) so I was kind of balancing on a rock at one point. Lennon was going out a bit too far- I turned around to pull him in when Emerson swam up to me. I slipped off the rock and accidentally swallowed a bit of water. How disgusting is that?! No worries, I thought, since my body surely had built up immunities while traveling. That was not the case. I got sick! Not just sick, but ‘oh my good golly I feel horrificly nasty sick.’ Thank goodness we had some antibiotics (thank you Dr. Munoz!!!!!) After two days of trying to work through what I thought was the flu- I took those and started feeling better immediately. Our boat rower said they call the Ganges (gan- jees) – Gonga (gong-uh) – so my on going joke is that nothing can slow me down- not even THE GONGA!!!!!!!!

The swastika symbol still freaks me out when I see it, but it is actually an ancient Buddhist and Hindu symbol for peace and/or harmony. Nazis reversed it then adopted it as their symbol. We saw it everywhere in India and it always made me uneasy.