What I will miss...

As we leave India, I have been asked many times what I will miss.  That is a hard question to comprehensively answer and I'm sure this won't be complete.  Here are some of the top items, though, in no specific order after the beginning:

• First and foremost, I will miss my new friends and colleagues. Really, this is the same thing I missed most from the United States too, along with my family.  Lucky for me, I began this adventure in the era of Skype, Facebook, Blogs, and ubiquitous email, so relationships were more easily maintained than even five years ago.
• Fresh fruits and vegetables every single day.  You've never tasted fruits or vegetables until you've had them right off the plant. Special mention: Mangoes.
• Discovering and trying fruits I've never seen or heard of previously. Special mention: Jack Fruit.
• The music.
• The birds.
• The monkeys.
• The flowers.
• The weather.
• The geckos.
• The diversity.
• Fantastic and inexpensive spas.
• Wearing open toed sandals, every day.
• Higly quality, reasonably priced domestic airlines.
• The beautiful fabrics. Seeing the elaborate designed clothing on people along side the road is like watching art in motion.
• Ready and inexpensive access to the beach.
• Traveling easily to culturally different places.
• Seeing the origin of things. For example, I never knew what a tea plant looked like or that a cocoa bean comes from a soft ball size pod.
• Seeing something new and unusual all the time.
• And much more...

Some people have asked me what I won't miss.  Since I won't miss it, I decided it's not worth writing about. :-)  Ok, ok, I admit... the traffic.