Incredible India

Dear Family and Friends,

Incredible India! This is the motto Tourism India has chosen to entice visitors to this amazing country. More than one billion people toil and roil in this, the second most populous, and seventh largest in geographic area, country in the world.

India is a country of considerable beauty ranging from the snow capped Himalayan Mountains to western deserts, to beautiful beaches, to forest lands and to the dazzling green paddies of rice in the south. It has 5,000 years of recorded, often glorious, history and it is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. As well, India has a generally working democracy forged from a culturally, linguistically and genetically diverse population.

Incredible it is for sure. But also in ways not intended by Tourism India. It is simply not possible to ignore the incredible squalor. Arriving in India is an assault on the senses more stupefying than anywhere else I have been. For the third time I have now come to visit, and each arrival takes my breath away, nothing seems to prepare one for the chaos one confronts, not even previous visits.

Me & My Rickshaw, Delhi

Bali Ha'i

Lorraine with Hindu God, Bali

Dear Family and Friends,

Bali Ha'i. South Pacific. That exotic and romantic story, play, and movie of interracial love popularized an unattainable place of innocence and happiness, the island of Bali Ha'i somewhere in the South Pacific. In the movie the song Bali Ha'i, as sung by Bloody Mary, was a haunting, enticing call of enchantment, but it was also a tantalizing call to anyone who had travel thoughts. As did I, in 1958, when the movie was released.

Bali Ha'i May Call You,
any Night, Any Day,
in Your Heart, You'll Hear It Call You:
"Come Away...Come Away."