Traveling with Mom
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” – Dr. Seuss
In the spring of 1999, Mom and I took a 5-week trip to Cambodia, Nepal, and India. This post and the others linked below cover that trip in more detail than I've ever posted online before. I've documented these memories mostly for Mom and myself, and also for anyone else who might enjoy following along.
A friend who has been to the Taj Mahal once asked me whether I had Photoshopped the other people out of that photo, since the area around the reflecting pool at the south entrance is usually quite crowded. The answer is no.
On our second day in Agra, we had our rikshaw driver Amin pick us up before 5:30AM, so that we could be at the Taj Mahal when it opened at 6:00. We were the first people through the entrance, and I had my tripod and camera ready and quickly set up for this photo before anyone else had passed us.
Five minutes later, this spot was crowded with visitors checking out the early morning view from in front of the reflecting pool. But for our photo, it looks like we had the Taj Mahal to ourselves. Careful planning paid off!
Table of Contents
How our trip came to be
At the time we took this trip, I had almost no experience in international travel. The only times I had ever left the United States were a day trip to Victoria, BC, a day trip to Calexico and Tijuana along the US/Mexico border, and one vacation of a few days in Cabo.
Mom, on the other hand, had traveled to India, Nepal, and Tibet in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and her travel stories fascinated me. She got lost walking around Kathmandu alone, and a man who seemed to be a drug dealer helped her find her hotel. When she bought him a drink to thank him for his help, he got handsy and she had to say "no touching above the elbows!" She rode in the back of an open truck across the Nepal-Tibet border in the Himalaya Mountains, crossing passes up to over 16,000 feet above sea level, and found she could handle the thin air better than travelers half her age who were stricken with dangerous altitude sickness. She had so many stories like these, and I loved hearing them.
I wanted to experience those kinds of adventures myself, to be a savvy world traveler like Mom. I told her that if she ever wanted to go back to India, I’d go with her. We discussed the concept a few times over the next few years, and then in 1998 we decided to visit Cambodia, Nepal, and India together in March of 1999.
I planned a detailed itinerary for our trip, bouncing ideas off Mom as it came together. I read travel books, reached out to experienced travelers online and in person, and eventually we had an plan that we were both excited about. We would visit some places Mom had been before, as well as some places we had heard about but neither one of us had ever seen.
I researched the visas we would need, and handled all of those details. Not very well, in some cases – our entry into Cambodia, for example, was delayed because I had misunderstood the form for obtaining our Cambodian visas and had swapped the start date and end date of our planned visit, so our visas expired on the day we arrived and we had to buy new ones. I had never planned a trip like this, and was learning as I went.
Mom and I see ourselves as sturdy non-complaining types, and our itinerary reflected that attitude: many low-budget hotels, and second-class tickets on the trains across Northern India. When I found experiences that sounded interesting – animal sacrifices at Dakshinkali, riding an elephant in the jungle – we would discuss how to add them to our itinerary. By January of 1999, we had a detailed day-by-day plan for five weeks of travel to places unlike anywhere I had ever been.
Sharing our travels with friends and family
People share their vacations all the time via social media now, but in 1999 there were no social media platforms, no international cellular service, and internet access wasn't yet widely available (especially outside big cities). We were using film cameras, so we didn't see our photos until long after they were taken.
Once we started on the trip, Mom and I took many pages of notes every day. Most days ended with both of us sitting on our beds writing in our journals. Then whenever we found access to the internet and had some free time, I would compose an email from my notes for our mailing list of family and friends. Sometimes we couldn't get internet access, so I would write up pages of notes by hand and fax them back home. I tried to provide vivid descriptions of our experiences and how we felt about them, because we couldn't attach photos.
Some of those descriptions of our feelings and reactions make me cringe now that I've been to many other countries and seen much more of the world. But I've left those embarrassing comments in, because it would feel weird to whitewash anything. I was what I was, and am what I am.
To get started on our journey across Southeast Asia, click here for the first email we sent, from Siem Reap, Cambodia.