"10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Listen can you hear the distance calling
Far away but will be with you soon"

Well, here I am. 2 a.m. and *finally* ready to go. Just this quick blog post and I'm off to bed for 4 hours..... I'm sure I've forgotten some annoyingly important things but they'll just have to wait. I'm out of time now. I've been quite nervous but now that everything is as ready as it can be, I feel a sense of calm and relief. It's nice.

Budget-travelling through India is going to be a challenge after all the comforts of my cushy little life here in Tokyo but challenges are totally what makes life liveable and exciting and goddamn I need a good dose of reality. Living in Tokyo can be a little like living in a dream world sometimes. It's so surreal in all its manifest consumerism and convenience. I heard that the average life-expectancy of a mobile phone here is 4 months (a lot of people have 2 phones - one for work, one personal). That's a pretty good indication of how out of control consumerism is here. Somewhere in the world there is a pile of unloved mobile phones as big as Fuji-san. Gads. Anyways.... I digress. I will miss my room, and my house, and my garden. Especially my comfy futon.

I guess I should introduce my travel buddy, Suzan since he will, no doubt, feature heavily in the weeks to come. His full name is Ryosuke Suzuki, and in the Japanese way, his friends take the first syllable of his (sur)name then add -san to it (or -chan, or -kun, or -chin) - and so, he becomes Su-san or Suzan.

He is a sweet, pure soul - an art teacher and photographer who embraces most things in his life with a fabulous sense of wonder and gusto and complete focus - to the point where he can be an utter space cadet about basic mundane stuff. I'm really looking forward to travelling with him because we'll no doubt make each other see things the other would probably never notice. He's usually a very calm man which will help keep me grounded when I have the urge to smack people in the face - we've been practising Japanese phrases for tense/tricky/difficult situations a bit so we don't have to use English in front of English speakers. That'll be fun.

Suzan and I arrive in Delhi at 5 p.m. local time this evening, to be greeted by Tenzin Sonam - my great friend Tenzin Choegyal's nephew. He's Tibetan so we will be greeted with a white silk scarf around our necks and a small prayer. Then we're off to Majnu-ka-tilla, the Tibetan camp in Delhi where I stayed 7 years ago. I'm curious to see how much India has changed. No doubt it's still a complete head-fuck. Hope so, anyway.

The itinerary so far looks something like this: Delhi - Rajastan - Agra - Khajuraho - Varanasi - Manali - Spiti Valley - Delhi. We have to try to do that in 3 weeks and I don't really think it's feasible but we'll see how we go. After India, Suzan returns to Tokyo and I'm off to Thailand where I'll be taking the train from Bangkok to Singapore over 3 nights, then spending 2 weeks in Bali where I intend to find a cool beach hut and just chill.

I'm taking my canon DSLR with my 2 fave lenses, and the holga and 6 rolls of B&W film and no doubt will come back with a motherload of images. Not sure how much posting I'll be doing - depends on internet access, but I hope it'll be pretty regular. I always get all verbose and poetic and shit when I travel.

Talk to you from India....

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