Like a warm blanket.

Arriving in Darjeeling, the fog is so thick that holding your hand out a moving jeep or train window feels the sensation of raindrops. Despite the 27 degree drop in temperature from Bodh Gaya, I feel like I'm wrapped in a warm blanket.

The day we left Varanasi, the sky was grey and the air cool. It smelled damp - unexpectedly, since it's months until the monsoon season. Catching a morning train to the neighboring town of Sarnath, where Buddah gave his first sermon, I realize how eager I am for quieter places. Varanasi (as described by others) really is the best and worst of India mixed into one. Undoubtedly, it is the most intense place I have ever been. Nowhere does life and death visibly thrive next to each other in this way. Nowhere else can touts be so notoriously pushy. (Well, that's not true - they've been just as pushy elsewhere. But, after sitting quietly in one of Hinduism's holiest places, they seem to be all the more obnoxious.) From Varanasi's tourist and Hindu pilgrim crowd to Sarnath's streets and monasteries, there is a definite change of pace. With Buddhist pilgrims from all over Asia, monks take the place of sadhus, the sound of evening pujas replaced with the chanting of Buddha's first sermon - hundreds of pilgrims joining. The grey skies waited just long enough for most people to be out of the streets before they let out enough rain to flood them within minutes. Standing on the covered balcony of the restaurant I am in, I didn't realize how much I'd missed the rain.

Waiting is.

It feels incredibly good to be sitting still inside a guest house today, the sounds of the city pouring in through the open windows but not encroaching completely in this space. Tucked in the alleys of Varanasi's Old City, I've been listening to the everyday haggling of the market, preparations for Holi, motorbikes precariously slipping between humans and cows, cell phones with Bollywood hits at ridiculous volumes, and mothers screaming after their kids, glad to be here but also glad to be set apart for a moment.

Traveling can be exhausting, and it's good to remember that there is no hurry. As Michael, the Man from Mars in Heinlien's Stranger in a Strange Land would say, "waiting grokks fullness". I've been sitting here, shifting between reading, writing, and thinking, considering with all seriousness the word "grok".

"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as colour means to a blind man."

Being in India has been a constant assault on all my senses and sensibilities, and it's not a matter of understanding, coming to terms with, learning, or making sense of everything. So instead, I'm trying to figure out if I grok it. It feels like I don't - like I said a few days ago, I am constantly finding myself dizzy. But then I have moments where I'm so immersed in my surroundings that I must grok it - it's just that the English language (or maybe language in general) is insufficient. Like Jon and I keep finding ourselves saying to each other, there are no words. And since we think it language, it comes as no surprise to me that I find myself thinking that I am at a complete loss.

We rely to much on language, I think. Not just in communicating with one another, but in communicating with ourselves. If we give ourselves a chance, I'll bet we will realize that we grok each other a lot more than we think we do. After all, we're all human.

It feels good to know that, somehow.

Aliveness.

We've been moving at an extraordinary rate. After exploring Hampi, we traveled by train to Kanyakumari, the southern tip of India where three seas meet. Four days in Tamil Nadu hardly gives southern India any justice, and I can't even pretend to think that I saw anything at all.

The temples we visited were cities in their own rights - Sri Ranganathaswamy in Trichy, Sri Meenakshi in Madurai - were alive. Perhaps that's what makes India's architectural wonders and temples so beautiful - not necessarily their esthetics (although they were incredibly beautiful), but their liveliness. As keeps happening to us (inevitably because so much is happening everywhere) we were in the right place at the right time. At Sri Ranganathaswamy, a festival brought thousands of pilgrims to the temple at sunset to join in a procession around the city, each day a different deity being carried (and not an easy feat, requiring 12-16 men laboring hard) with music, prayers, and the temple elephant. As we joined the crowds, all trying to catch a glimpse of Hanuman outside of the temple, I was reminded again of how integrated religion is in everyday life. Temple festivals don't just recognize important days on a calendar. Everyone I ask has a different answer as to what all the noise and colour and parading is good for - from community and spirituality to politics and brainwashing - and without a doubt, every answer is true in some regard. But they all point fingers at the same thing - this (to me) insane aliveness.

One day I'll think of a better word.