Preparations, Preparations, Preparations !

Realizing that we knew precious little about South India, we determined early on that we would need to get busy doing some homework in the months leading up to our departure. Fortunately, that effort seems to have paid off handsomely, and we have profited especially from a host of recently available materials - books, magazine articles, video travel series, guidebooks, feature films.

Perhaps the most useful has been Micheal Wood's six part BBC video series INDIA and its accompanying book. Lee has watched parts of the series at least three times; Heidi is working her way through it as well, episode by episode, a second time, as we both try to grasp some understanding of the subcontinent's vast historical panorama.

As Pankaj Mishra ("Games India Isn't Ready to Play") wrote recently in THE NEW YORK TIMES this past Sunday, "India not only lives, as the cliché goes, in several centuries at once; it is also a land of multiple narratives, which continuously and often painfully overlap." That is readily evident whenever one attempts to gain a grasp on the nation's history and its complex cultural makeup.

William Dalrymple's NINE LIVES: IN SEARCH OF THE SACRED IN MODERN INDIA is another of Lee's favorite recent reads. The personality profiles Dalymple provides open up avenues for understanding some of the more extreme examples of contemporary Indian religious life. Our tour itinerary takes us to a good many religious sites representing a wide range of these religious practices and beliefs, places very likely to illuminate many of the insights Dalrymple presents.

We have located and devoured two especially useful guidebooks as well. Both the DK Eyewitness and National Geographic Traveler guides have given us detailed overviews of most of the places we will be visiting and likely will be especially valuable reference sources when we begin to pull together our own personal observations and need to recall just exactly what the names (and spellings) were of sites traversed.

Amitava Kumar's NOBODY DOES THE RIGHT THING and INDIA: A TRAVELER'S LITERARY COMPANION will undoubtedly prove interesting reads while we're "on the road" -- although Lee has dipped into both already...

Our guide recommended Pavan Varma's BEING INDIAN (which we both read prior to our first visit in 2008) and Nandan Nilekami's IMAGINING INDIA: THE IDEA OF A RENEWED NATION. These have given us some sense of the contemporary state of affairs and some notion of future prospects as well.

Lee has also watched several Bollywood films. He especially enjoyed the movie version of OUTSOURCED which has been picked up as a new television series this season on NBC - we've been watching that as well.

We hope all this prep work will enable us to get as much out of this upcoming experience as is possible. We're already certain we've learned alot, if only in the abstract, about what both of us have come to regard as one fascinating culture!