Hasta la VISA.

Be advised, getting an Indian visa is a bit more complicated than they make it seem on the website. Visas are no longer processed in the Indian Embassy. They've contracted a private company to do all the processing, and this company (Travisa India Outsourcing) is awful. I was unable to walk into the Travisa Center in DC to do a same-day visa because I am a Colorado resident. Residents of Colorado may only use the Travisa Center in San Francisco. So, since I'm in DC, I had to do my visa by mail. Your passport is apparently not sufficient identification for an Indian visa... They also require a copy of your birth certificate, a copy of your drivers license with your official address OR a utility bill, two passport photos, reasons for going to India, address in India, the names and birthplaces of your parents, and a list of every country you've travelled to in the past 10 years. (They must've dug up my parents' countless criminal charges when they ran the background checks, and discovered my secret past as an international spy, because, without getting too much into detail, I had a heck of a time getting my visa.) So, I ended up having to push my flight to London back a few days. I can't leave the country HASTA LA VISA comes through!!

A delay in Virginia has not been all bad! While San Francisco held my passport hostage, I got to see my good buddies from past lives; hang with the fam; go to a posh horse show; contract Lyme disease; and figure out how to haul 5 leather jackets, a fuzzy purse, a football jersey, and two Jonas Brother's Waterbottles to Nepal for Kaji's family. Best of all, I packed my backpack for five months of traveling from funky new york city, to classy tennis tournaments in London, to a fancy wedding in Kathmandu, to elephant rides in the jungle, to monsoons in crowded cities, to volunteer in the desert, to yoga in a cloudy forest, to a 3 week trek in the highest mountains in the world!

Tomorrow afternoon I'll finally get back on the road, slightly delayed but still very excited.