And just like that, I am on the other side of the planet in a city I have never visited before, Dubai. \240A 20 hour layover on my way to Delhi warrants a hotel stay. \240I try to sleep, but my body is on the other side of the clock.

When I was born in 1963, Dubai was a fishing village, and in the part of the city where I am staying tonight, next to "the creek", men traded pearls. What Dubai didn't realize was that she was sleeping on oil, and once she woke up and noticed, she was able to become the fancy princess she is today. \240Dubai is an incredibly clean, modern city with the biggest and best of tall buildings, sports cars, shopping malls, gold, and indoor snow. \240She is kinda magic, and kinda over the top. She is her history, her present and her future all at once. \240She boasts her traditions while she welcomes everything shiny and new.

Then:

I just heard my first call to prayer, or Adhan. I pressed my ear against the hotel window. \240I teared up.

According to Wikipedia, "The root of the word Adhan is ʾadhina أَذِنَ meaning "to listen, to hear, be informed about". Another derivative of this word is ʾudhun (أُذُن), meaning "ear"."

To hear, to listen, to pause, to remember, to reconnect.

Adhan occurs five times a day; the first call each day in Dubai is at 5:36 am. Imagine if all of us took a few minutes five times a day to check in, to ask if our thoughts, words and deeds were still connected to a purpose beyond ego where compassion lives.

You can hear Yosef Islam (formally known as Cat Stevens) chant the call to prayer here.

Leaving the hotel in Dubai yesterday, a man in the elevator asked, "Which country?"

"America", I answered, surprised that I chose that spontaneously over "United States".

"Ohhhh", he said, bowing in Namaste. "Americans are tough. I am from India."

India. \240Am I tough enough for India? Or is it better to be soft and let her overwhelm me?

Riding in the back of a car in Delhi is overwhelming. Cars, buses, motorcycles, rickshaws, street dogs all weaving in and out of any available space. Lanes are only suggestions. \240Sidewalks are fair game in a pinch. At the very first red light, an old, bearded gentleman came up to the window. \240Tap,tap,tap with his fingers on the glass inches from my head. \240Yes, I see you. Yes, I have more than you. Yes, I don't know what to do. \240Yes, I am pretending you aren't there. Yes, I feel awful. \240Yes, I am overwhelmed.

Delhi smells like cigarettes.

We pass two weddings, music pumping, lights flashing.

We get to the hotel in Delhi late. There is a wedding in progress in the hotel. There is a security station at the hotel entrance. \240I scan my bags.

Just six hours earlier I was eating way too much food at a beautiful restaurant in Dubai, drinking complex Arabic coffee, alone, watching the groups of women in hijabs laugh together, and watching the Korean couple next to me take numerous selfies with their food. \240They were fashion magazine ready, coiffed perfectly. She ate a small bowl of marinated vegetables. \240He ate everything else, two trays full.

There are about a dozen of us on this tour of Buddha's life, from the U.S., the U.K., and Greece. \240We meet in the lobby of the hotel, and we head out into Delhi on a tour bus.

Our guide is Shantum Seth, a zen teacher in the lineage of Thich Nhat Hahn, who has been leading these tours for 30 years.

He takes us first to the site where Gandhi died, where he was shot at point blank range in his heart, which was also the heart of India.

The site is memorialized with a marker. We walk to the site slowly, in walking meditation. \240I notice the smell of the flowers in the garden; I notice the breeze. We each stand \240barefoot in front of the marker and bow. Then we talk.

Before we entered the Sikh temple we enjoyed a cup of chai from a street vendor. The vendor passed out single-use, unglazed earthenware cups and poured the chai from a metal pot. The cup absorbed the heat of the chai and was hot in my hand.

The earthenware cups fully degrade.

On so many levels, these chai cups are one of the most beautiful things I have encountered in India so far.

We fly to Varanasi, a little more than 700 kilometers from Delhi, at a curve in the Ganges River. After the Buddha attained enlightenment under the bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, he came here looking for five Hindu friends he had separated from after a disagreement about the path to Nirvana.

Varanasi, or Kashi as it was know then, is a Hindu city. Shiva is beloved here, and Shiva seems to love Varanasi right back.

On our way to the hotel, an elephant and rider appear on the road in front of us.

Animals (most often street dogs, cows, goats, pigs, monkeys, chipmunks, and parrots) appear everywhere India: on the street, on rooftops, in doorways, sleeping in trashpiles, chewing on plastic bags, standing in the middle of roads like obstacles in a video game, sitting regally in construction sites.

The bus pulls up to the Taj Hotel, which caters to English and American tourists, and seems to be a perfect place for Indian weddings. February is the Indian wedding month so we are just in time. \240Our first night at the hotel we try to crash a wedding by standing at the entranceway gate, where the couple's parents are greeting guests. \240The father of the groom is wearing a bright pink turban. \240His wife notices us (not that it is hard to notice four gigling and gasping white American women at an Indian wedding in India). \240She asks if her family can take a picture with us. \240They are warm and friendly and sweet, but we are not invited past the gate. However, the groom is on the way, the man in the bright pink turban tells us - beeming.

Oh yes, he is.

He arrives amid a parade of circular flashing lights on poles and bright white lanterns, carried by young men walking in two parallel rows. Between the two rows a band is playing, but it is nearly drowned out by the huge speakers on the back of a truck which are pumping out dance music - to which another group of young men are dancing. \240Then, finally Prince Charming arrives in his completely tricked out disco carriage. We are pulled out to dance with a few of the young men, who seem to love that we relented, but then they start to encircle us. Asha, one of the women on the tour who is Indian grabs our arms and pulls us out. "Come on," she yells above the Bollywood movie scene.

Indian men stare at us. \240They particularly like Megan, another woman on the tour who is in her twenties and has long red hair. \240But really, we all seem to be curiosities.

Inside the hotel, it is hard to remember that you are in India. \240The breakfast buffet includes everything an English or American tourist could want as well as Indian standards with the spices toned way too far down. \240However, I quickly become fond of the Chana made with small brown chickpeas and the sprouted mung beans, the tomato and cocoanut chutneys, and the watermelon juice. \240Otherwise, I am glad we will spend most of our time outside the privileged sterialization of the hotel, as lovely as it is. \240It's not why I am here.

(Pics and videos to come when I locate the bandwidth)

Trucks in India. \240Drivers customize the fronts. Each one is different.

It was probably the raw cucumber the hotel served at the end of dinner, but I'll never know for sure. It is the only thing Michelle, my pilgramage roommate, and I ate that no one else did. \240Well, except Asha, but she is Indian.

I wish it had been something more exotic-an amazing bit of \240street food- rather than a few slices of pale cucumber.

In the middle of the night I woke up with that feeling in my intestines and thought,"Oh no."

At 6:00 am Michelle asked me how I had slept. \240"Not too well. \240My intestines are not ok," I said.

"Mine either," she answered.

Diarrhea, fever and chills were our companions by mid-morning. \240I felt, frankly, worse than I can remember feeling since I had sciatica - when I'd wake up in the middle of the night and lay on the floor, pulling my knee toward my shoulder, trying to stretch out my hip with tears dripping down my cheeks.

But we are going to the Bodhi Tree today. \240I can't miss that.

As bad as I feel, Michelle is feeling worse. \240She does not want to get out of bed and stays put.

I get on the bus with the group. I am in that state I am in when I first wake up and my discerning mind hasn't taken it's place in the driver's seat yet. Everything is just whatever was happening. \240I have no opinions. \240I can not think, only respond.

I ask to use the restroom as soon as we are through the security check, and maneuver around orange robed monks and tan robed nuns to get a stall.

One of the most important things I packed for this trip was toilet paper.

Jackie, a tour helper, is waiting for me. \240"This way Madam."

The group is sitting near the Bohdi tree, but I don't have enough energy to sit. \240I lay down, my hands on my belly, close my eyes, and listen. \240A large group of Vietnamese monks, some as young as 7, chant nearby. The sun is hot and bright and so I cover my face with my dupatta. Two of the people from the tour read to us from Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path, White Clouds. \240

Spoken words and chanted words, the hot sun, a breeze, bells, incense.

I am so sick.

My grandparents come to mind and l get tears in my eyes. \240I don't know why I am thinking about them. Then I think about how much I want to hold my wife, Amber. \240I do know why I am thinking about her.

After an hour or so, Santhum signals for everyone to get up; there are a few other things to see. \240

But I can't. \240Jackie takes me back to the hotel early in an electric rickshaw. \240He signals for me to get in across from a woman and her very young son, and an older women I suspect is the grandmother. \240Our knees touch. \240

"Namaste," I say. \240

All three stare at me. \240"Hello," I say directly to the little boy, who sinks deeper into his mother's armpit.

They don't stop looking at me for the entire ride.

They are all beautiful and the mother has incredible eyes.

I can't wait to lay down.

When I get back to the room Michelle is under her comforter and she has put mine on top of that. \240She tells me she is freezing. She offers to return my comforter. \240I tell her absolutely not.

I put on a sweater, curl up on my bed, and pass out.

Hours later, the phone rings and the man on the other end tells me the doctor will be right up. \240I tell Michelle. \240

I let him in. \240He has red streaks in his jet black hair and is wearing regular street clothes. \240He has a shopping bag of items with him. I want to make small talk but I just can't put more that a three words together in a straight line.

He takes Michelle's vitals. Then he starts to put together a Nebulizer. \240He startsj to put together a Nebulizer. \240He starts to put together a Nebulizer...my decerning mind kicks on like an old water heater.

Isn't

That

For lung issues?

He puts the mask on Michelle and she is breathing mist, staring at me.

"Did someone call for you?", I manage to ask the doctor.

"Yes, you," he answers.

"No, we didn't," I say. \240"I think Dori did. \240She is next door. \240She has asthma."

He looks confused. \240I dial Dori's room.

Dori comes into the room a heartbeat later. \240Words between the doctor and Dori fly around the room like mosquitos looking for the right host.

The doctor removes the mask from Michelle and wipes the inside with a tissue from the room. \240He leaves with Dori and the Nebulizer.

But soon Shantum has called another doctor for us, and our vitals are taken. \240This doctor orders IV fluids; \240we are both dehydrated. \240Overnight the plastic bottles drip glucose and antibiotics into our hands. \240The first doctor returns and stays in our room all night, taking our vitals every few hours, and watching us sleep. \240I am way too out of it to care.

By morning I feel better but I am exhausted, and I remain exhausted for three more days. \240I have no appetite. \240I eat some white rice.

It takes two more days to get my energy back and three before I can think well, joke, laugh or stay awake on the bus.