you'd think i'd learn from past experience...

I leave for India in just over a month. I'll be excited in about 26 days. Until then I still have to get through work, the courseload for my Masters program, research papers, and finish next terms work projects this term. It's a bit much.

I finish that bit on December 7th and THEN I can be excited (and panicked) as I prepare for my month away in the 4 days I'll have at my leisure. I can manage all of that. What I've been thinking about is how to prevent the meltdown I'm anticipating on December 11th when I land in my 5th city in 2 days, sans sleep, sans destination, and facing the fantastic, full on assault that is India. It made me think of something I wrote in Peru last year:

Possible implications of travelling for 20 hours straight on a journey spanning 3 countries and 4 flights with the last connection allowing only 1 hour to land, clear customs and depart again:

• Your temperament will be clouded by absolute exhaustion as will your judgment promoting behaviour so rude and curt that it will be assumed you're American (not necessarily a good sign in International travel). You'll be too embarrassed to correct anyone.
• Your flight (the overnight one, of course) will be delayed 1.5 hours and you'll miss your final flight - the one with the nice driver at the end waiting to whisk you away to that place where the beds are.
• Although the clock tells the grim truth, you cling to the thought that you may make that final connection and undertake a coronary-inducing sprint through the airport obstacle course in a desperate effort to MAKE...THAT...FLIGHT (see point 1 re: clouded judgment)
• You'll forget your passport at one of the many checkpoints and have to frantically retrace your steps to find it. When you get there, you'll act as if it were their fault you left it behind.
• At the moment just prior to accepting that your passport is absolutely, positively NOT in your pack, your increasingly panicked digging will unleash your emergency stash of USDollars scattering crisp $20's and $10's at random. You'll have to scramble all over the floor to pick it up, no one offers to help because your behaviour up to that point has been appalling.
• You don't make the flight.

In my case, all of the above. However, once the confusion settles people will be very nice, you'll receive a complimentary breakfast, have a chance to really relish your first Peruvian purchase - a coffee, the radio will play a selection from your own personal collection of favourite songs ranging from Radiohead to Bryan Adams to Bon Jovi, and you'll already know that you'll like travelling in Peru before even leaving the airport.