The Basic Itinerary:

Everything regarding my upcoming trip to India is beginning to fall nicely into place and it's finally starting to feel official: I’m leaving next month!!! As of this week, my flights are being booked for November 16~ I can’t wait!!! My basic itinerary is this: I’ll fly into Cochin in the state of Kerala (the southwest tip of India) for 3 months at the Vijnana Kala Vedi Cultural Center in Aranmula where I'll study traditional Indian crafts—theater, Indian cooking, and music (I’m hoping I’ll be able to study sitar!)—and yoga.

After my stay on India’s southern tip, I’ll fly to New Delhi to link up with the study tour led by Pacific Village Institute that I’ll be traveling with from mid-February to mid-May. With that group, I’ll be visiting Varanasi—the holiest city in Hinduism, as it’s located on the source of the Ganges; Agra to see the Taj Mahal; Spiti for its ancient Buddhist monasteries; Ladakh to do a one-month homestay with a Tibetan family in the Himalayan city of Leh; Daramsala to spend 2 weeks in the Dalai Lama’s monastery (supposedly within those 2 weeks, our group will have a private audience with His Holiness!!!); and a few other cities, mostly in the north and northeastern regions or India. I’ll also be doing a few days of trekking and camping in the Himalayas! And then return from India to Indiana... Hmm. That'll be a bit of a letdown- just joking, Mom!

The World is like a book; those who don't travel read only a page.

~Saint Augustine

More About Melissa: A Life-Long Love of WORLD CULTURES!

Hello! Hola! Konnichiwa! Bonjour! Tashi delek! Ni hao! Namaste! Salaam!

If you couldn’t tell from my multilingual greetings, I am fascinated with world cultures and foreign languages. My 6 year-old self’s proclamation that “I want to be an anthropologist when I grow up” was met with no shortage of raised eyebrows from skeptical adults. Since then, I have continued with a life of passionate fascination with world cultures. It all started with Ancient Egypt and expanded from there (I tried to teach myself Egyptian heiroglyphics as a first grader...). I just graduated from a rural public high school in Chesterton, Indiana and am taking a gap year (A WHAT? This phenomenon, while I've discovered is virtually unheard of in the Midwest, is popular in other parts of the country and world: basically, taking a year off between high school and college, most often for travel) to travel beyond the Land of Cornfields before attending Indiana University next fall to study International Studies or Cultural Anthropology.

I saw this year as an ideal opportunity to travel and explore different cultures, and what better place to do that than in the Land of Diversity that is India? Many of my greatest memories and learning experiences have been the product of travel, and I’ve been fortunate to have done a homestay in Japan and a study tour in China. I have loved growing up in a community located in the midst of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and 3 blocks away from Lake Michigan—I adore the great outdoors—but now I am eager to see more of the world.

Check out my web postings periodically to see what I’m up to in India. Just to let you know in advance, I have no idea how regularly I’ll have access to the internet while traveling, but I’ll try to update you on my travels as often as I can. I hope you enjoy, and maybe learn something about a different part of the world while your at it!

After all, the world is bigger than a cornfield!!!