Geetanjali, a neighborhood and a fellow author, had been fast to reply, and agreed to satisfy me for dinner the following night time. “I hope they suppose we aren’t going to drool down our chins,” I recall Geetanjali saying at that first assembly, as we tucked our checked bibs again in for our second course – a heavenly tumble of tandoori veg – amid the restaurant’s unusual Flintstone-eseque stonework decor.
Geetanjali stuffed me in on her life as a roving reporter throughout the Indian subcontinent and her blended emotions in regards to the Couchsurfing website. She’d hosted a number of Western couchsurfers at her dwelling in a residential colony in southeast Delhi, together with a Norwegian tattoo artist who stayed for an evening earlier than disappearing seeking a “Tibetan physician”, by no means to be seen once more, and lots of fresh-faced Europeans who mangled her title: Getty, Geetanja, G. “I imply how laborious is it, Gee-tan-ja-li?” she requested, genuinely baffled. I keep in mind laughing loads. It was to be the start of a decades-long friendship.
A novel web site known as Fb
Three years later, I used to be again in Delhi to analysis a journey e book challenge. By now, Geetanjali and I have been agency buddies, in contact weekly through a novel web site known as Fb, and each 18 months or so after we serendipitously discovered ourselves on the identical continent. I’d observe Geetanjali’s treks into enticing-sounding areas reminiscent of Mirzapur, within the fertile plains of Uttar Pradesh, and the Himalayas, and he or she adopted me, just about, into the depths of the Grand Canyon with cheerfully jealous postings (“Sally, I might be there with you in a heartbeat!”).
We shared a ardour for giant skies, grand pure landscapes and attending to know the locals anyplace our travels took us. Regardless of our very totally different backgrounds, we got here to really feel like globetrotting sisters. In 2011, throughout a six-month journey to India, we set off on a sequence of off-the-beaten observe adventures. Geetanjali’s kids, who’re as of late grown up and finding out at universities in Europe, have been small, and I keep in mind she would name dwelling anxiously from visitor homes as we headed off on adventures into Haryana, the agricultural state north of Delhi, and the northern Indian hill states.