The Grace of India

The last night we spend on the houseboat, my foot reaches a level of pain just a notch above unbearable. It is so painful I feel scared. I don't even mind the intense pain -- at least, not so very much -- but I mind the possibility of having seriously damaged my foot. I haven't exactly been following doctor's orders. And I'm a dancer, not just as a hobby but as one of the primary ways by which I define myself. Why had I been risking my ability to dance by traipsing through India with a broken bone?

Miserable with pain and regret, I huddle on the boat’s cushioned bench. Barely able to lift my head, I do not eat more than a few bites of supper. I have no more medicine except the last few pills I am determined to save for the 12 hour flight (including a layover in Hong Kong) back to Seoul. After seeing my condition, Katie decides we should skip going to the elephant temple in Alleppey and head directly back to Cochi the following morning.

But the thing is that no matter how poorly I'm feeling, the go-go-go of my personality is still stronger. The next morning in the car, as we speed our way through Alleppey, I feel a tiny diamond of energy left in my body. I want to spend it.

"You know what? I think I can manage a trip to the elephant temple," I tell Katie.

"Can you pass me the breakfast bag?" she responds. "I think I might throw up."

The supper which I'd felt too sick to eat the night before had apparently given Katie the south Indian variation of the dreaded Delhi belly.

I extract our breakfast, pass the bag, and wish her luck. I am disappointed to not have seen any of India's famous elephants during our time here, but even I am finally ready to admit defeat in this matter. They are the only thing on our India "wish list" that we did not get to see.

About 10 minutes later, while watching traffic zip past us out the car window, I think my eyes might be playing tricks on me. Clouds sweep the ground in the morning, so I can't see altogether clearly, but believe I can discern a large, grey shape moving through the white mist.

"Katie! Look!" I cry, excitement temporarily canceling the pain in my foot.

"Do you want to see better?" the driver asks with a kind smile. He pulls the car off to the side of the road and rolls down the window to give me the best view.

There, walking down the road through the dream-like mist of morning, is a large elephant and its mahout. The elephant's sinuous trunk swings gracefully from side to side as it lumbers forward. It passes so closely to the car that if I reach out my hand, I would be able to touch it.

I feel this elephant sighting, fulfillment of our final desire in India, is a special blessing, a sort of farewell gift.



Thank you, India.

The Backwaters of Kerala

For two days, Katie and I drift along the backwaters of Kerala in our own private houseboat, which has been converted from a former trading boat. The boat is small but pretty. It has wicker chairs and faded cushioned benches on the front deck, wood panels carved into reliefs of wide-winged birds and bosomy women, a bedroom with tall windows that open onto the water and a mosquito net into which I manage to completely entwine myself both nights while I'm sleeping.


Woven rattan covers the boat's roof and walls. There is also an upper deck which the boat's captain tells me several times is "very beautiful, very beautiful. But so sad you cannot see it. Your leg." After the third time of his mentioning the beautiful upper deck I cannot see, I wait until his attention is focused on the river and then crawl on my knees up the ladder and onto the top deck. It is very much like the lower deck but without the shade, so I crawl back down again.


{if not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost}

We also have a personal chef on board the boat. Just in case you read it too quickly the first time around – our own personal chef – such luxury! The chef prepares us three meals a day plus a snack. All the food is local. There are flat, disc-shaped fish caught from the river; fluffs of white rice harvested from nearby fields; various sweet-spiced curries; sun-yellow pineapple that drips down our chins when we bite into it; eggs offered before us in various incarnations; hot, handmade potato chips sprinkled with tiny green curry leaves. There is more food than I can remember, more than we can eat. Eating is pretty much our only activity on the houseboat -- unless napping also counts as an activity -- and this is some of the best food Katie and I have been served the entire trip, so we do our best to consume everything put on the table before us, though this admirable goal of gluttony proves impossible to meet meal after meal.


We pass by a number of houseboats in the main canals, but in the smaller ones, we are alone, the boat slowly putt-puttering down the waterways. At one point, the canal becomes clogged with glossy green lily pads. Our captain deadens the engine, pulls out a long oar, and poles his way through the thick vegetation.


We don't see very many people or many other boats until we get approach the towns, but sometimes a long, narrow canoe silently passes by and sometimes women in earth-toned sarees walk single-file down paths by the rivers. They smile at us as our boat passes by them.


Every once in a while, a church appears on the riverside. It surprises me to learn that the apostle Thomas came to Palyar in southern India, where he built the country's first church ages ago . (I can't recall the actual date but remember it struck me as having occurred a really, really long time ago in what can also be referred to as "the days of yore" if you're looking to plot it on a historical timeline.)


At one point as our boat languidly moves down the river, I notice two women on opposite sides of the river bank. They are both hanging laundry on their opposite sides of the canal and talking to each other across the blue divide. I wonder if their lives are always this way, a friendship separated by water, or if sometimes they take a boat or a swim to visit in person.


Children cup their hands around their mouths and call out “Halloooo!” as our boat passes. "Hello!" I call out in return, laughing and waving both my hands. The backwaters are beautiful, lovely, and lonely. The sunshine, an intense, pure blaze of white, brightens the sky and falls in streaks across the uncovered parts of the unvarnished boat deck. Kerala is a place which I dreamed of visiting years before I arrive. Nothing happens while I'm here. Nothing is supposed to happen. I simply am. This life is better than the movies, better even than books. It is. I am.

Wherein I Die and Go to Varkala

I sneeze and grin at Katie. India is fun! Especially when I get to ride in a wheelchair! And even more especially when I'm on opiates!

Katie uses the airport wheelchair to push me through Delhi's Indira airport. We are now on the last leg of our trip. *ahem* It's time to visit the backwaters of Southern India. But first, we need to take a plane to get there. Katie worries that I will be forced into a cramped seat on the plane or that the airline attendants will not help us.

"Look more pathetic," she commands just before we arrive at the airline counter.

"I have a broken foot and a head cold," I say. "I don't know how much more pathetic I can get."

"You still seem happy."

I rearrange my expression, trying to assume the wide-eyed pathos of little poor children in Victorian lithographs.

It is a cramped ride, as it turns out, and begins with a harrowing start as the tiny airplane we need to board does not connect to a gate. Instead, passengers must walk out on the tarmac and climb aboard the plane via a steep flight of moveable steps. Usually, this is my favourite way to board a plane. Walking down the runway to board an airplane, wind teasing your hair and sun warming your skin, has a slightly glamorous feel to it. But not when you're in a wheelchair.

Four men grab different corners of the wheelchair and carry me up the steps. One of the men is not as strong as the others. I can tell by the way the wheelchair, and I, keep slipping precariously forward and to the left. I make it into the plane, though, and we arrive in Cochi, and then go to our hotel in Varkala, without incident.

Our hotel is not the nicest place I've ever stayed. The bedroom is small and dirty. I shower by sitting on a plastic bucket and splashing icy water against my skin while a cockroach happily skitters around me on the bathroom floor. But there is one truly stunning thing about the hotel: the view. I spend most of my daylight hours not inside the hotel room but lying on the wooden planks of a hutch beside the river. Between a strenuous schedule of napping and eating and getting massaged, I write in my diary:

I've died and gone to Varkala for surely, this place must be heaven. . . . I close my eyes and all I can hear are birds calling, the rustle of their wings as they rise in the air, the low rumble of frog song, the occasional plish as a fish jumps through the water, and the steady ticka-ticka-ticka of the cook's knife as he prepares dinner. Sometimes there's also the sound of a rattan-covered houseboat's tinny motor or the quiet pull of a long oar through the waters as a lone boatman passes by on his canoe.

If, in Varanassi, I felt as though I'd lept into living pages from National Geographic, in Kerala, I feel I'm moving through a series of picture postcards.

Camping in the Thar Desert: Things That Go Grrr in the Night

"You squish it."

"No, you squish it."

"No, you squish it," Katie and I alternately tell each other, engaging in the age-old argument that so often occurs between two females when a bug makes an unwanted appearance between them. We take turns using our shoes to flip back the behemoth of a beetle that resolutely runs across the sand toward us. Despite our repeated rebuffs, the bug steadfastly comes forward like a long-lost lover running across the sands to reunite with the object of its affection. But we have no love for the bug.

"I can't squish it," I reason. "I only have a flip flop for defense."

Katie hands me her tennis shoe.

Katie is not exactly what you would call a bug person. "I don't like anything with little feet," she solemnly declares, and, when in a particularly candid mood, will even admit this includes small babies. Me, I enjoy the occasional bug, but I have very discriminating taste: lady bugs, dragonflies, butterflies, bumble bees, june bugs, japanese beetles, and sometimes ants (because of their nests) are all on my list of acceptable bugs. These bugs are all pretty (well, except the ants. sorry ants! you have a great personality!) and what's more, most of them play hard to get. If you want a ladybug, you must catch it. It never forces itself on anyone. It's a lady.

On the other hand, my personal bad bug list includes anything with a million tiny feet that it uses to run at me with the sole intent and purpose, so far as I can tell, of touching me. The bug that is now before us only has eight feet but he uses all of them to skitter toward us as though he were prepping to run the 100-yard dash. This causes me to unhesitatingly classify him as a bad bug, a very bad bug, indeed.

The Australian girl who sits across the campfire smugly remarks to her companion, "We have giant bugs in Australia. They [she nods condescendingly towards Katie and me] could never handle it there."

Her companion bobs his head in a sort of awkward acquiescence and smiles at us apologetically.

"Also, in Thailand. They could never handle Thailand," the Aussie girl loudly declares. "They eat bugs in Thailand," she finishes in a decadent confusion of pronoun references.

I glare at the girl. Resisting the urge to offer her the bug as a late-night snack, I use Katie's shoe to squish it (the bug, not the Aussie). Let me add that I immediately regret it. As much as I dislike giant bugs, it just doesn't seem right to kill something on the basis of its appearance. I would have rather scooped it into an empty cup and carried it far away. But moving requires a vast deal of effort and energy now that I'm wearing a heavy leg cast and the bug had seemed quite determined to touch me. Squishing appears to be the only option.

After the dark deed is committed, both Katie and I stare at the sand dimple where the inert bug lies.

About three minutes later, the giant bug resurrects, Lazarus-like, pops out of the sand and resumes its fast-paced creepy crawling towards us.

Ewww, Katie explains to me.

I hop a modest distance from the campfire in order to do "personal business" -- you know, the type of thing that inhabitants of first-world countries fondly associate with toilet paper and a porcelain bowl. Modesty prompts me to go farther from the campfire than I comfortably should have gone.

I crouch and assume an awkward tripod-like position, my cast sprawled before me in the sand, when I hear a low growl behind me. My torch is in my pocket; the air is blindingly dark. I freeze for the length of five heartbeats. The animal, still unseen, growls again. It is closer than before. The growl may have come from a stray dog -- there are several near the campfire -- or one of the many camels wandering the area, but I'm going to hold firm that my original assessment of the situation was correct: there was a monster out in that dessert growling at me. And as it turns out, I can run with a broken leg, in a clumsy, stumbling sort of way, while hitching up my pants. I've always been good at multi-tasking.

Later, leaning back onto the now-icy grains of sands, I shiver and watch the sky. Stars blaze above me. There are thousands of them silently shimmering in the vast, indigo sky, the same stars that have shone down on the desert for millions of years.

Nothing in the universe stands still. The ancient stars are not riveted in heaven, but move like clockwork in the sky. They can save a man lost in the miles and miles of emptiness, if only he knows how to read them.

The night and the stars, delicate transience of the life which whirls so quickly beneath them, make me think of a poem. Then again, nearly everything makes me think of a poem. (Except for when I'm in the dentist's chair. Then I desperately try to think of poems to block out the buzz of the advancing drill, but all that ever runs through my head at that time are the words to the American Pledge of Allegiance.)

Here is the poem that sung itself inside me, a memory unlocked from the times I'd read it before:

The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune.

~Eleanor Farjeon

Camel Trekking for the Broken Legged

"He keeps looking at me," I complain somewhat unreasonably to the camel driver.

"Camel is not looking at you. He is looking for other camel," the driver says.

"I am not a camel," I carefully explain to the camel.

The camel continues staring at me. He blinks his long-lashed eyes and snorts in derision.



At a prompt from the driver, who clicks his tongue and tugs the lead rope, my camel faces forward once more and continues walking into the sun. I gently rock back and forth in the saddle as we trek the golden, glowing crests of sand dunes. The dunes seem to stretch into infinity, though in actuality, they only stretch into the border of Pakistan. I am in the Thar Desert, located over 40 km from Jaisalmer, India. But how did I get here?



"Bed rest one week!" the doctor sternly tells me two days prior. "BED REST ONE WEEK," he writes in all caps on top of my hospital papers and X-ray chart. "And move your toes often," he adds seemingly as an afterthought.

I wriggle my toes furiously as I wobble onto the warm sands of the Thar Desert. Two days have now passed since I broke my foot, two days in which my activity has slowed but never stopped. My friend Katie is jaunting through a more distant stretch of the desert on a fast and bumpy 90 minute camel ride. This is what I would have liked to have done, to have spent a couple hours or even a full day on a camel. My own, slow 30-minute walk near the camp, though, is enough to make me happy. I feel it is a fair compromise between how I want to spend my time and how the doctors want me to spend my time.

As we slowly trek up and down the long sand dunes, the camel driver tells me funny rhymes. He claims they are old Indian aphorisms.

No hurry, no worry. No chicken, no curry.

No work, no wife. No chai, no life.

No woman don't cry.

The camels are restless as we ride them. It's mating season and the drive to find a mate is very high. To prevent one especially romantic camel from wandering off last night, the driver had bound three of its legs together with rope. But true love always finds a way. By morning, the camel was gone.

{my other means of desert transportation}

During my time in the desert, I smile and I laugh. I chatter happily to anyone who will listen. But it is not easy for me. None of it is easy for me. Not bouncing over rough and sometimes unpaved roads in an open jeep to get to the desert, not hopping one-legged through sand, not mounting the camel, who nearly throws me off in the unexpected pitching first backward and then forward as it unfolds its long, skinny legs to stand, not riding the camel while carefully holding out my injured leg so that the hard cast does not bounce against the camel's back and spook it. But I do it, all of it, even the hardest bits. I even truly enjoy it.

Anything, now, seems possible.

{clouds the colour of fire in the Thar Desert}

Touring Jaisalmer Without a Leg to Stand On

Jaisalmer is a city that seems to lie on the edge of magic, a place where any minute you might slip from reality and into a fairy tale. D, Katie, and I are at an elevated plateau overlooking the city center. Before us stretch miles of amber-hued buildings all built from the same golden sandstone. Though the windows, balconies, and doorways all boast unique detailing, the city still has an undeniable uniformity to it. All the buildings have the appearance of belonging together, with homes and shops that continue to be built in much the same way as they have been built for the past several hundred years. It is impossible for me to discern the difference between those structures that are several centuries old and those constructed only a decade past.

As we get in the car, I ask about the intricately detailed tapestries and bedspread in the hotel. Does D happen to know where we can buy anything like that? I have already fallen madly in love with the bedspread in our room.

As a matter of fact, D knows where we can buy items exactly like that. Well, almost exactly – every piece is unique but made by the same people. D drives us to a shop near the center of town. The shop owner smiles at us. He helps me settle on a bench and offers us a tray with three little cups of chai on it.

"Where are you from?" he asks.

"We're American," I say, "but we live in Korea."

"Ah, is that North Korea or South Korea?" he asks.

The shop keeper then opens up a photo album of the women who fashion and sew his textiles. He points out that the women pictured, some of them bending over long pieces of fabric with a needle, others touching their loom as though they were about to play music on it, belong to a cooperative comprised of Indian and Pakistani women who live in poor villages in the nearby desert. Now that’s he’s gained our interest – point to him for gaining my empathy before the bargaining even begins – he starts to bring out the goods.

Shopping in a traditional Indian store is probably the closest I’ll ever come to feeling like royalty. The sides of the store are stacked from floor to ceiling with neatly folded textiles, which the owner and his son bring out and unfurl before us with a certain regal flourish. What interests me? They are willing to lay their entire store before me. It is a surprisingly effective selling technique. I ask about bedspreads, so the owner pulls out a pile.



The owner takes out one beautiful quilt after another, but I softly refuse the items presented to me. They are all lovely, but none of them are necessary.

"Wait," Katie says, as a coverlet sewn of dreamy blue and green patches is laid upon the floor. "Put that one in a pile for me."

"Would you like to see tablecloths?" the shopkeeper asks.

"No, thanks. We don't own tables," I reply. "Do you have a pink quilt?"

He lays an orange quilt before me, and then a yellow one. I shake my head. Then he pulls out a red quilt. It sparkles from every angle. This is the lure the catches me.

"I want to see more like that!" I exclaim.

"Oh this? The silk patches have been cut from antique wedding saris. It’s a quilt for newlyweds."

{my wedding quilt}

"I could get married," I defensively mumble under my breath. The shop owner brings out a heap of wedding quilts and unfurls them before me.

Glittering things are very much necessary, I decide, but financial restraint prompts me to settle on just one. The owner spreads out a hand-sewn quilt consisting of pink, red, and teal patches. It has sparkly golden elephants, birds outlined in glittering sequins, and delicately-beaded lotus flowers embroidered on it.

Details on my quilt:





It is now the shiniest thing I own. And I own a lot of shiny things.

"May I show you some table cloths?" the shop owner asks Katie.

"No, we don't have tables," Katie responds. "We live in very small apartments, just one room."

Katie buries herself in a stack of decorative patchwork tapestries. I ask to see pashminas.

"Here, let me show you some table cloths," the shopkeeper tells me, pulling down a small pile of them.

"No," I say. "We still haven't got tables since the last time you asked."

With great reluctance, the shopkeeper puts back the table cloths and brings out a pile of soft pashminas, hand-woven and with tasseled ends, for my perusal. I choose one that's a rich royal blue and embroidered with hundreds of starry gold flowers and vines. The shop owner tells me that a woman spent over a month weaving and embroidering it.

Temptations of the shop are many. By the time we leave, Katie and I have amassed far more than we meant to buy but still not as much as we'd like to buy.

"Where next?" D asks. "It will be sunset in less than an hour."

Katie and I both shrug. Our research on Jaisalmer was minimal and what's more, we're not sure which places, exactly, I can physically manage on one leg and a walker.

We get into the car and D drives us to the outside of a famous mansion. Peering through the entrance, it seems long and labyrinthine. Not ideal for my current state. We keep driving.


{Patwa Ki Haveli Mansion}

We turn down one road and up another, just beyond the city proper, and park outside a lake. Gadi Sagar was built in 1367 to act as the main water supply for the entire city. It is surrounded on all sides by cenotaphs and shrines, domes and ghats, all fashioned from the achingly beautiful gold sandstone.

{Gadi Sagar}



We see about a dozen boats on Gadi Sagar, most of them floating empty along the edge of the lake.

"Let's rent a paddle boat," I quip.

"Alright, come on, then," says D.

D and Katie lead the way onto the floating, shifting docks and I hobble-hop behind them. We climb into a three-seater paddle boat that bobbles in the water each time one of us enters it. It is bright green and made of plastic. It reminds me of an oversized bathtub toy.



When the sun sinks into the horizon, the entire area lights up gold, "[nature's] hardest hue to hold."








Not bad for my first day of bed rest. Not bad at all.

Hospital Tour of India

“Ow-ow-ow-ow-AAYYEEEEEE!” I eloquently explain to the doctor, who simultaneously asks me where it hurts and pushes down on the puffiest bits of my injured foot. He is to be the first of three doctors I will see that night in Jaisalmer, each exam beginning with that same painful introduction.

It was not exactly an easy feat to get me to the hospital in the first place. Oh, the hotel is in possession of a car that can drive me there without problem. It is more a matter of overcoming my fortitude of denial. With my usual combination of stubbornness and optimism, I insist that the lump on my foot is no more than the sign of a bad sprain.

Upon our arrival at the Shahi Palace Hotel, I almost immediately crawl to the rooftop. It has, one of the hotel employees informs me, both a restaurant and a great view. The view is, indeed, magnificent. In the light of the dying sun, the Golden Fort seems to glow from deep within the ancient stone. Long stone benches, covered in an assortment of mustard yellow and ochre red cushions, jut over the sides of the Shahi’s roof. I prop my foot on a bolster and stretch out across one of the benches. I order a large mug of steamy masala chai. Someone drapes a blanket over me.

{rooftop of the Shahi Palace Hotel}

One of the hotel workers offers me a tube of ointment, which I gently and optimistically daub on my foot.

“I think the swelling’s going down,” I lie to both Katie and myself.

Katie looks dubiously at my super-sized foot but amicably nods in agreement.

{"Good luck storming the castle!"}

Jaisalmer is a sleepy town at the edge of the Thar Desert. I feel at peace for the first time in India while basking in the remnants of the sun. From my bird's eye vantage point, I can see the edge of town. Passing on the street are just a couple of motorbikes, a few ambling cows, a young goatherd boy and his charges. There is the faintly melodic sound of tiny bells as the herd passes beneath the hotel. Later that night the silence will be broken by revelers at the Titanic Hotel, which is across the street, as a group of men sings a passionate version of the chorus to "My Heart Will Go On." After the last notes of their song die down, Jaisalmer will return to quietness once more.

It isn’t until I crawl back down from the roof to my hotel room that the hotel owner sees me. He first encourages, then kindly tricks me, into going to the hospital. Our dialogue goes something like this:

D: Oh, that looks bad, very bad. You need to see a doctor.

Me: No, not so bad. (hides wincing) Just need a good night’s sleep and I’ll be ready for our camel trek tomorrow.

D: I don’t think you can ride a camel like that.

M: I’m getting better. The swelling’s gone down.

D looks to Katie for affirmation. She shakes her head slightly in the negative.

D: If you come to the hospital, they can give you drugs for your foot. You’ll enjoy your camel trek more if the swelling goes down.

M: Well, that makes sense. Okay. Let me just crawl to a taxi or something.

And that’s how to successfully lure me into a hospital.

{inexplicably but genuinely happy in the red wheelchair -- before drugs or cast!}

The second doctor I visit takes an x-ray which verifies the worst: I am dead. Okay, maybe I don't get the absolute worst diagnosis following an accident, but possibly the second worst: my foot is broken.

"You know what I miss?" I ask Katie and then answer without waiting for her to reply. "I miss the time when rats were our biggest problem."

I continue on to visit a succession of doctors, each one established at a seemingly dirtier hospital than the last. Now, I'm a messy person, a very messy person. The state in which I kept my bedroom during my teenage years still gives my mother nightmares. "I was looking through a pile of papers on your desk, and in the middle of them was a koosh ball!" she'll still exclaim at times, a shock which has not lessened with the years. "You filed a ball in a pile of papers!" My messiness is very possibly my worst trait. But even by my low standards for tidiness, I am shocked by the hospitals' stratum of filth. At the final hospital I visit, I unwillingly heave myself onto an examining table that is covered by a thin green pad. The pad has dried blood, mucus, and other unidentifiable (to me, at least) bodily fluids spattering it. It is a veritable Pollock of pestilence.

One of the doctors comes at me with a long needle filled with some sort of clear fluid. He holds it, the sharp tip pointing heavenward, while walking quickly towards me. I have not seen him, or anyone, unwrap this needle. I am motionless, trapped on the examination table, unable to run away. But my voice still works.

"NO! NEEDLES!!!" I enthusiastically shout.

Katie folds into herself from embarrassment.

But I am glad to have shouted, whatever social mores I have broken. When I return home from my Indian trip, I read on the Internet (paraphrased), "While larger Indian cities boast some of the finest medical facilities in the world, the opposite is true of hospitals found in smaller towns. . . . It is not uncommon for the same needles to be cleaned with water and used for multiple patients."

After my outburst, the doctors quietly take the needle away. I ask if I can wash my foot, since I have just ridden the train two nights in a row without any means of bathing, but they only let me dab at it with a moistened cotton ball.

"Washing it is bad for your health," one of them says.

"That philosophy explains the state of their hospital," I wryly think to myself.

One of the doctors brings out a big plastic bucket filled with something wet and faintly white, a liquid which looks like watered-down milk. He bandages my leg, nearly up to my knee, by winding multiple strips of cotton and plaster of Paris around it. It soon dries in the air, forming a hard white shell. Only the toes, knee, and upper thigh are free.

After this, we visit a pharmacy of sorts, where I will be handed a fistful of opiates. The opiates pose some danger to me, not from risk of addiction but because, coupled with my fast-flowing adrenaline, they act as a wonder drug. I feel good, really good. There's still a pain in my foot, but it just doesn't seem that important.

At the end of the hospital tour, I am driven back to the Shahi Palace Hotel. I climb into the soft, clean bed and begin to rest as per the doctor's orders. I sleep all the way until about noon the next day. After waking and downing a few opiates, I declare to Katie that I feel fine. I want to go out. I want to ride camels.

{beautiful bed for resting at the Shahi Palace Hotel}

"No! Bed rest!" Katie declares, with as much sternness as her gentle nature can muster. She then distracts me by ordering room service. I eat tandoori chicken, deliciously savory from herbs and smoke, and swallow a tall, lumpy glass of lassi. When lunch is finished, I nestle back into my pillows and read several stories from the Mark Twain book I'd brought with me to India. I am so good, a model patient. Then Katie leaves the room to set out laundry and buy more bottled water.

I only have one functioning leg, but a few minutes after she leaves, I blithely use it to spring out the bedroom door like a deranged version of Tigger. I chance to see the hotel owner in the hallway.

"So. . ." I beam at him, radiant with the success of my bedrest escape. "What's there to do in Jaisalmer?"