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There's something ludicrous, of course, about taking a guidebook
along on such an adventure - like carrying your daily Planner with you on an acid
trip (with notes reminding you to put your pants on before you walk downtown). One
of the charms of India is that it incinerates your agenda - leaving in its place
like some sort of vestigial organ of efficiency, a handful of illegible hieroglyphics
scrawled on the backs of tattered airmail envelopes. In India, as in life, there's
no way of predicting where your teachers will show up. You may think you're going
to a yoga institute to perfect your practice of Downward-Facing Dog Pose - only
to find yourself trekking up a Himalayan trail, ice tipped peaks slicing the sky
around you, tracing the sacred Ganges to her source in a glacier the shape of a
cow's head. You may plan for months to be in Varanasi for Shivaratri, the holiest
"Night of Shiva" - only to find yourself on that mystical evening, stalled in a
broken-down train in the sweltering plains where (shivering with fever, with amoebas
throwing their high school prom in your gastrointestinal tract) you find yourself
staring into the face of Shiva in person. This kind of derailment is part of the
magic of India, where plans often need to be discarded like excess luggage. ("What
was I thinking?" you wonder, looking, bemusedly, at your laptop computer, your three
extra sets of yoga leotards, your breadloaf-sized tub of spirulina). As many travelers
learn the hard way, the things that you don't let go freely may well be snatched
from you.
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