the last leg

I'm not really sure things ended up this way. I'd like to say I don't have any excuses, but I do. I'll try to explain.

It might have been simply that Nizam's Kebabs kebabs weren't as filling as I'd hoped. Or that my wool shawl, which I was once so endered to, was no match for a January night rolling through the Rajasthani desert in a drafty train. It could have been the 5 a.m. stop in Jaipur, or any one of the fifteen extra passengers who found their way into our carriage built for eight. Maybe the Punjabi trying out all the ring options on his cell phone, or the twelve-year-old with the bony shoulders. We were weary, that's all.

So, stumbling through Delhi last Thursday, killing time between trains, the Connaught Place McDonald's caught us off guard, repulsed us, tempted us, and ultimately overpowered us. Inside, we munched fries and wondered if the New Jersey flavor engineers who designed their taste really use beef derivatives. I'm continually amazed at how polluted I feel after certain fast food, even though it's so damn tempting when I'm hungry. The soft serve ice cream did a little to cleanse my mouth, but it was a good thing we landed in Rishikesh that night--a holy and therefore vegetarian town where we could eat fresh food for a few days to wrap up the trip.

Today Mussoorie greeted us with scattered, dripping remains of last week's snowstorms, then with a rain and hail shower. But I managed to tape together my phone line that monkeys had torn apart, so I could call home. And a Nepali selling fire wood stopped shortly before I would have resorted to breaking up my furniture to feed into my wood stove. Shanti.