Seven years ago tonight, I was sitting around a fire in the middle of the Sahara listening to music, under a bowl full of stars, so far away from everything.

Getting on that plane seems so close now and have to start really mentally preparing myself for the other side. Today, I realized I don’t even have the correct adaptor plug and that I didn’t know adaptors come in alphabet letters? Amateur.

For all my years of traveling, sometimes I just feel rusty about it all. The wrong bag, the wrong shoes, the wrong pants, the wrong book to read – but then, I am at the airport, the plane roars down the runway, I remember how you stand in line sometimes and sometimes how you just have to push like hell or be knocked over, remember that coffee that tastes like mud still has caffeine in it and please, for all that is holy, let me have remembered most of all not to drink the water (even though I always do & clearly have lived to tell about it – thank you modern medicine). It all comes back.

I am ready. Let’s do this.

Countdown to India: thirteen days