February 18th, 2011:

India, Travel, Photography, Photographer, Los Angeles

Way back in the day, in the shadows of the Himalayas, I was traveling alone when I met a girl – she too, was traveling alone… I could say the rest was history, but in the quick moments of those first days together we saw a spark in each other that ignited into a fire.  We both had a passion for the world and travel, so much to the point that we each had set off alone to explore our planet, ignoring the naysayers and pursuing what interested us.

For those of you newer readers, this blog’s title “Mom Says I’m Running Away”  says it all when I decided to sell my house and car in late 2005 to explore the world – I then met the girl who was just as intent on seeing everything there is to see.

Nothing changed during the 9,000 miles that separated us during the early part of our relationship, or during the challenges that such a relationship presented.  We flew back and forth across oceans and continents to see each other, we traveled throughout South America and Asia, we lived in Singapore, filed for green cards, and finally in late 2009 we settled here in California.  Our lives were here, there and everywhere, then all the sudden we had a home together.  Yet even while setting up our new home we started thinking about the next adventure, and since we had not taken our honeymoon, the next trip together was to be our newlywed getaway.

We pored over books and had conversations about all the places we wanted to see, and finally decided the next big outing would be to India – Felicia started the 1-foot-high coin-saving Mason jar and I added the sticker map of India, and voila! We had a savings account.

She and I started talking timelines and decided it would be almost impossible to appreciate this diverse country in less than a few months. And since we are wedding photographers in California, it will have to be in the winter.  So currently, our goal is to head back on the road for a winter, with just our wits and our rucksacks in late 2012.

For now, we just have to keep saving our pennies to fill the jar – and perhaps it would help if I stopped pilfering quarters from the jar to pay the meters when we’re at photoshoots (just don’t tell my wife…).