1st blog post

Hey everyone

This is the blog I will use to post news and pictures of India. I'm fantastically excited to go. I leave in ten days--Febuary 10th. Can't come quickly enough. I've got all my gear and I've got my blog set up, and I'm ready to go.

I'll be flying from LA to Bangkok to Calcutta, and travelling there to Varanasai (previously Benares or Benaras), a holy city along the banks of the Ganges river. I'll be staying with a homestay there for ten weeks. Then we will travel to Dharamsala, where the Tibetan Government in Exile lives (the Dalai Lama). I'll have another homestay there, with a buddhist family. From there, we'll hike up to the source of the Ganges, in the Himalayas. After my program ends, I've given myself three weeks to travel around--I plan on going to Southern India (especially Kerela) and Bombay and wherever else I decide to go.

As I said in the blog description, my program will have an online board which will be updated more regularly. It can be found on the Where There Be Dragons webpage at www.WhereThereBeDragons.com Click on "Yak Yak" at the bottom.

Feel free to email me while I'm in India, at my normal address: jed.bickman@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog to get in touch with me.

Peace
Jed