eat pray love?

India. Wow. Where do I begin? I guess I should start by both reminding and explaining to you just how excited I was and blessed I felt to be getting off the boat in India. For one, the fact that this Spring 2012 voyage was going to India was a huge drawing point when I was considering the program in the first place. Then, when I received my passport from the travel company without my Indian visa, I was extremely disappointed. And, finally, when I got my visa in Ghana, I was all the more stoked about getting there. There was just so much emotion leading up to the moment when I arrived in India that stepping off the boat was a very powerful thing. Not to mention, my mind was wrought with expectation about India and what my experience there would be like.
I have never read the book or seen the movie Eat, Pray, Love. But, I have an image in my head of what India is supposed to be. I mostly imagine myself in Julia Roberts' body (thank you, Hollywood) running around India, doing all sorts of things I would never do otherwise, meeting all sorts of amazing people and ultimately discovering myself...and the meaning of life. At some point, I would go to an ashram and a yogi would tell me I have a beautiful aura and we would meditate and smoke crazy drugs (or maybe not, maybe just burn incense or something, it depends on the type of yogi that he is) for like three days and then I would know everything I need to know about the world and myself. I would go to the Taj Mahal with...ok, I have thought this out a little too much. But, you get my point, and you may even have the same image in your head.

Well, my experience was far from what I imagined it would be, in ways that were both good and bad. I am still processing how everything that I saw and the way in which I saw them impacted me. So begins the tale of “Sara Takes on India (in a bus that has “Tourist” written on it in big block letters).”