Things I Will Do Upon My U.S. Return

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-- Read glossy, aspirational magazines. My lone copy of 'Modern Bride' is not filling this void.

-- Eat gummy candy. Jelly beans, orange slices, gummy worms and gummy bears, Starbursts -- all these things are lacking here.

-- Devour cheap, tasty wine. Ain't no such thing in India. Typical glasses of wine at decent restaurants run about $10.

-- Take more road-trips. My long, slow road trip experiences here have made me pine for the relatively easy, uneventful experience of driving from, say, San Francisco to Santa Monica (a typical 7-hour trip that, in this region at least, would take about 20 hours).

-- Read the Sunday paper ... on Sunday. India is 9 hours ahead of New York and Washington., D.C., and 12 hours ahead of California -- which means that, when I wake up Sunday a.m., I'm greeted with America's Saturday evening news. And you know how crazy that makes me.

-- Enjoy the quiet. I've never been so thankful for the few quiet moments I can find (pre-7 a.m. at home, evening on the balcony in Rishikesh). From car horns to diesel motors to window unit ACs to my overhead fan (one speed: fast!) to screaming kids (who are not necessarily expected to be quiet), the noise here is just about unbearable at times.

-- Breathe fresh air. You know when you're up on a peak at Sequoia or Yosemite or Mt. Diablo, and way off in the distance, you see a bank of smog, and you think, 'Oh, how awful, such smog!' -- you know that feeling, right? Now, imagine you're at, say, San Francisco Civic Center, and to the south, a few blocks away, instead of blue sky, you see only a dirty haze and dust behind the federal building. That's what my evening commute looks like most days. Lovely, huh?

-- Eat fish. It's summer, Delhi's not near any major sources of fish and refrigeration isn't dependable -- which means, no fish curry, no fried fish, no baked fish. I've had four meals with fish since I got here, v. at least 2 per week in California.

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