India October - November 2004
With Dave Gallo and Bill McDonald
With Self-Realization Monks in Bodhgaya
How it Began
This trip actually
began about 50 years before I ever left for India. I had been planning mentally
and emotionally on traveling to India for almost 5 decades but every time I had
made plans something would prevent it from taking place. The last such time I
had actually put down a thousand dollar deposit for a group trip in the summer
of 2001. The tour date was for January 2002; however, the events of 9/11/01
forced the travel group to cancel plans and it left my plans and dreams
abandoned once again.
It was at this time that I met on the
internet Vietnam veteran, Dave Gallo, who own travel organization (The Peace
Patrol) was putting together another return trip back to Vietnam for veterans. I
had the time open and the money already set aside so I decided to go back and do
a little healing from that war experience.
Fast forward to 2004 and a trip
that I had been planning for a group of veterans to go back and see all of
Vietnam. I had coordinated it with Dave who was putting it altogether for the
group. Well, things happened and the group ended up just being 3 other people
and I could not go. Thus my trip to Nam was cancelled but it left open time and
money for what turned out to be my journey to India.
I need someone to travel with so who
better than my friend Dave. He was willing to go off to India with no travel
agenda and no firm plans - just an open 42 day space on the calendar in October
and November. That decision to go became for both of us a lifetime experience
that we will be sorting out for the next years. There was just too much input at
all levels - emotionally, physically and spiritually to digest fully. It was the
hardest and challenging adventure of my entire life. It really was the best and
the worse of times and experiences. I even got ill and lost 25 pounds over the
six weeks we were gone.
The following are stories from our
diaries and from the notes we took along the way. Dave took all of the wonderful
photos and tracked our route on several road maps - which in India is not such
an easy task.
Stories & Travel Log
Photos
Click on the above links for the story of the journey through photos and the written words on where we went and more importantly what we experienced. (This is under construction and I will be adding photos and stories over the next several weeks.)
