Rooted Wanderings

The big morning of our flight to India arrived on November 12. We hugged farewell to our lovely London hosts Vicky and Tim. Shouldering our big bags, we waddled toward the metro full of internal butterflies. Having never been to India or anywhere like it before, we had an even greater feeling of heading off into the unknown. We didn’t really know what to expect besides peoples’ recurrent variations on: “it’s crazy and overwhelming, but you’ll love it!” We chose to begin our 8 weeks in India in the city of Chennai because of two tenuous connections. First, Julia’s sister has a flute studio friend whose uncle Shritar and aunt Kavitha live in Chennai. They kindly offered to help us get settled. Second, Julia’s dad has a colleauge from India who has a good friend named Prasanthi living in Chennai. To our excitement, Prasanthi had a friend getting married who invited us to their reception, so that is the wedding we write about. Anyway, when we speak of these names in the blog, you wi...

After departing from Old Hall we had just under two weeks to fill before our flight to India. This period also contained an important milestone, with November 1 marking six months since we started traveling. As we reached the “halfway point” of our planned year, we were ready to take a good long rest in order to fully relax, de-stress, and find our center. Remembering how restorative our short stay at Bamford Quaker Community had been about a month before, we decided to return again for a longer stay. It was far out of the way from our path to London, but as we had already done so much zigzagging across the UK, we figured: what’s another 4 hour bus ride? Our time at Bamford gave us ample time for reading, reflection, and silent contemplation in Quaker worship. We also enjoyed conversations with our hosts and other visitors. It was a good time to look back, look ahead, and think about our journey. After our stay at Bamford, we next spent a few days in London before flying to In...