And in the Third Month Comes Return

Sunday April 27, 2008 2:48 p.m.
Delhi National/Domestic Airport

OK, the always frazzling final Delhi work stretch is completed: we are now cooling our heels at the airport waiting for our flight down to Mumbai, where our return on Northwest Airlines departs tomorrow night back to the states via A’dam (Amsterdam).

Since we returned from Afghanistan it has been more than 40-42 degrees centigrade in Delhi, or way above 100F—brutal. I wilt in this kind of weather—I do not know how people live in heat like this for months at a time. I suppose it’s partly the heat, partly the final wave of non-doing that is just beginning to settle upon me after pretty much 60 straight days of major doing (not counting a couple days here and there in sick bay). But I feel spent—utterly drained of energy, totally ready to come home. Or already be home, really, but first there’s 50+ hours of travel to endure, including the upcoming 24 hour Mumbai window. After all this travel, I guess another couple days shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll just keep holding the vision of strolling barefoot in the fresh growing grass back at Tree Toad Farm.

Upon arriving home, the next wave of the trip unfolds: the months of reviewing and editing footage to develop some finished video pieces from the journey. The idea is to integrate a lot of this work into the new Dharma Boutique web shop/adventure site that I am working on for a summertime launch—so it will be a busy season once I get home. A little time to decompress sounds good first, though.

Sara’s heard about some kind of evening reception on May 1st in New York, something regarding Afghanistan and photo-journalism—given our most recent adventures there, it would seem like a room we should perhaps be in. Though pulling that off barely 48 hours after we land seems a tad harsh to me. But we’ll see. The journey continues…

Sara has a post on her blog about Shira the Lion Cub of Mazar-e-Sharif—if you’re up for a good cry and some sweet photos, you can find them both there. Once I get to a semi-fast web connection, I’ll also try to throw some photos up here on some of the posts where I’ve been frustrated in uploading photos. But for now, there’s more cute puppy photos than you can throw a stick for right here:
http://www.sarakarl.blogspot.com/

But, now that our flight to Mumbai has been delayed by some unknown measure of time, I think I’ll first just lie down on the tile floor and pass out for a couple days.