We are home. Since 1 a.m. Monday. I’m sliding past jet lag, and battling “Delhi belly” (interestingly, I had no trouble until I got home to America’s ever-so-safe food and water supply).

I can provide you with a simple travel diary of 18 days in India — places visited, train schedules, a day at Parliament when members of the the ruling party rushed the well (speaker’s podium) and nearly led a brawl over a move to increase funds to a university they opposed. Oh, and there is my all-time favorite Indian meal, which I found myself eating in some form at every restaurant and home: dal (cooked black or yellow lentils delightfully spiced; a staple of the Indian table) and nan (bread). I like the combination at Indian restaurants in the U.S. but nothing, no way, can match the Indians’ preparation: utterly simple, yet complex enough in its spices to taste slightly different every time.

I’ll save some of that. Better today, as an introduction, I give you the eyes of Kotwara.

Two boys, dressed for their U. of U. guests:

A mother waits for medical attention from volunteers:

School children welcome their visitors with song:

Tyler wows the kids with digital:

Kotwara sits some 250 miles southeast of New Delhi, approachable either by astoundingly terrible Indian roads or by Northern Railway, which was our choice. Even then, after an all-night train ride from Delhi to Shajahanpur (named for the 17th-century mogul Shajahan, who built the Taj Mahal), it’s a two-hour bus ride to Kotwara.

The village sits among vast fields of sugar cane and wheat. The final approach is along a road bordered by dense forest, populated with small herds of spotted deer. The bus then rattles through the gate to the home of filmmaker, artist, and Sufi poet Muzaffar Ali,and his gifted wife, Meera, a fashion and textile designer and keen business woman.

Magnificent Muzaffar:

Lovely Meera:

Kotwara, a Muslim village, is Muzaffar’s ancestral home. His father, a prince, once reigned over the place. The government of India eventually came along, sliced up the land and left the Ali family 16 acres. On that land stands the Ali’s lovely home, lush gardens filled with rose bushes, cosmos and lavender, and towering mango trees. The village is 50 yards away.

In rural Mexico, Muzaffar would be known as the patron. In Kotwara, he employs dozens of villagers on his property and oversees an ongoing effort to educate their children at a small but sturdy stucco school, built over eight years time by University of Utah students as a service project over their school breaks.

We spent four days in Kotwara, and the stop couldn’t have been timed better. Our 21 students had been on a shopping frenzy, bartering with merchants in New Delhi’s colorful open air markets. It was grand, picking through silk scarves and jewel-toned saris, running our hands through stacks of Kashmiri pashminas and sampling masalas and mo mos from food booths. But a point comes when the noise, the infinite traffic jams, the bad air, the kitsch hawkers swarming the tourist havens take their toll. We needed a break. Most importantly, we needed to stop the take-take and start giving something to others.

That day came when the U. students walked into the village with scissors, water colors and paintbrushes, books describing flags of the world and the solar system, and even a lesson that included simulated snow. They taught wide-eyed children simple lessons. They led them in games of hokey-pokey and musical chairs (to the sounds of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on an iPod with a speaker attached).

When education major Tracy Healey offered the grand finale — making polyethelyne “snow” with water mixed in a bucket — the kids went wild. They squealed, they stampeded. One kid even ate a mouthful.

Two days later Dr. Tom Byrne, a family practice physician from Nashua, New Hampshire, led the distribution of $2500 worth of vitamins to the children. Tom’s daughter, Elizabeth, is a U. of U. freshman. The two of them have made trips together on medical missions to Nicaragua. When Liz mentioned the trip to Tom, he signed on right away.

Dr. Tom Byrne, left, with Ted Wilson waiting in New Delhi for the train to Shajahanpur:

While discussing types of aid we might deliver, Tom suggested vitamins would make the greatest difference over a year in the children’s lives. The villagers’ diet consists mostly of rice, nan and lentils. Sorely lacking in protein, especially, the kids have in common stunted growth and chronic malnutrition. So each child took a 365-day supply home, with instructions in Hindi from Meera, our translator.

We had our worries. First, would the vitamins even make it home? Would the parents, busy scratching out a life each day and maybe suspicious of these Americans’ motives, even follow through with the regimen? Would the vitamins end up on the black market, fetching precious income for families subsisting a few rupees a day?

Ted, who has led seven trips to this region and oversaw the construction of the school with his former wife, Kathy, put the anxieties to rest.

“We do what we can,” he said. “We hope for the best.”

Ted and I leave tomorrow for 18 days in India. I’ve never been there. I’m thrilled.

Tonight I’m finishing up packing little Ziploc bags with travel-sized toiletries to carry on the plane. Bleepin’ TSA! Bleepin’ would-be terrorists!

We’re flying to New Delhi by way of Los Angeles and Kuala Lampur. With two layovers in both cities totaling 16 hours, our flying time on arrival at Indira Ghandi International will be something like 39 hours. Oh. Ted just muttered from his place beside me on the living room couch: “Could be even longer.”

What’s the old adage? That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger? All I know is we leave Salt Lake City on Thursday afternoon and arrive in New Delhi late Saturday night.

Good thing we’re going as leaders for 22 University of Utah students as part of the school’s International Travel Center. I’m counting on seeing the country in large part through their youthful perspectives. We’ll add three more students to our ranks once we get there. They are working as university interns in India this semester.

Here is a brief itinerary: Delhi, four days. Then to Agra (home of the Taj Mahal), two days. Then to Kotwara, 200 miles southeast of New Delhi, five days. We’ll visit a nature preserve on that leg of the trip. Then Varanasi, holy city of the Ganges, three days. Then back to New Delhi for two days.

Yes, the typical tourist stuff awaits us. The Taj, the Red Fort, a camel ride. But more. In Kotwara, the students will work with a village of young children who attend a school earlier groups of U. of U. students built over several years time. We’ll spend a day touring a slum and with the help of Winnie Singh, a longtime friend of Ted’s who is well-connected with various social and political reform movements in India, we may take a trip into New Delhi’s sex trade district. Winnie has also been active in recent years with HIV-AIDS education and prevention in the country; I’m anxious to pick her brain and perhaps accompany her in some of her work if time permits.

I’m hoping to visit a New Delhi newsroom and chat with journalists. Indians love their newspapers. There are dozens of them in New Delhi alone. I’m very excited about it.

But again, much of this personal agenda in flux. I’m going with the flow, people, believe me, and my first job will be to assist with the students.

We have met with the students three times in the past few months. Much of the pre-trip discussion has focused on handling the predictable culture shock when a group of middle and upper-middle class college kids (several blonds in the bunch!) meet crushing poverty; an exploding population; strange food; that first visit to an Indian commode; streetwise survivors of polio, leprosy and serious birth defects; and plenty of dirt.

And yet, we are all expecting a grand adventure and to return home as changed beings. How could we not be?

I am leaving my laptop at home, but will try to file some posts from the bigger cities. Photos, too.

Namaste! Back March 26!

This blogging business can get downright obsessive. I’m liking it much more than my last job as a newspaper columnist — even though I have only a fly speck-sized readership on this electronic medium. But oh, the freedom!

As committed readers know, I took off for a few days last week. It’s been tough to get back in the groove with my posts. Especially when I have such outrageously adorable distractions as this guy:

Say hello to Owen, 9-month-old son of Joey and Shellie, Ted’s youngest son and daughter-in-law. That would make Owen my stepgrandson. I’ve had the good fortune of baby sitting this little munchkin a couple of times in the last week. So now you know where my energies and “down time” have been focused.

Not on the blog, that’s for sure!

Owen in a content moment:

Emphasis on the word “content” because Ted shot this photo last week. It was a few days before Owen hit his “I want only my mommy” stage. Last night, he cried for nearly 2 1/2 hours while his mom took her one day of the week to teach piano lessons. We didn’t take any photos. His face was red as my lovely homegrown tomatoes, and why would you want to see that?

Even with me reaching back 18 years to my own mental inventory of gifted mother tricks, I could not console this little creature. His dad showed up, and he got a little happier. Then his mom showed up. She walked through the door and Owen squealed with joy. In an instant, Shellie had reset his planet on its axis.

Shellie apologized profusely for leaving us with a sobbing baby. Not to worry, I told her, it’s only a stage. It means this child feels secure and well-loved. Isn’t that what every baby in the world deserves?

The real reason we went to Santa Barbara, Solvang, Ojai, Santa Clarita, and Long Beach last week was for the BICYCLING!

Here is one of the best blogs with photos I’ve found yet on all the Amgen Tour of California action. The saddest news to come out of the race is that two of my favorite racers, Utah’s Dave Zabriskie (riding for CSC) and Big George Hincapie (still riding for Discovery Channel) got hurt. Zabriskie was DQ’d with a concussion after crashing on a mountain road landing during the first stage. Hincapie broke his arm but managed to ride hurt through most of Stage 6. He’ll be recovering for six to eight weeks.

And naturally, Levi Leipheimer was a total stud. I always take pride in the fact that I am no star sniffer. I have no inclination, ever, to hover around the streets of Park City for the annual Sundance Film Festival snooping for stars or wannabes. Yet put me within a few hundred years of these lean and lightning fast pro cyclists and I go all liquid.

Case in point: We’re driving on Interstate 5 late Saturday afternoon. The road is jammed. And what are the chances we would drive right up behind a little Mazda sedan with four Trek racing bikes perched on top and the Discovery Channel logo plastered all over the car with the number 1 on the rear window?

“Is that him?” “Is that Levi?” we’re pretty much shrieking from inside our sensible rented mini van while trying to catch up to the car. Ted is the first to see the man’s shaved head and svelte profile and confirms it: “THAT’S LEIPHEIMER IN THE FRONT SEAT!”

He manages to zip up to the right side of the Mazda. We suddenly go all ape like a bunch of teenage girls watching the Beetles enter Shea Stadium 40 years ago. Except we have two men in the car, too. They were just as bad as any squealing female, believe me.

And that was my brush with fame.

I have been to California approximately 317 times in my lifetime (give or take a dozen trips). My friends and relatives live up and down the state — from Sacramento to San Francisco to Orange County to San Diego. And also some creepy little inland desert towns you don’t even want to know about (Cue the “Deliverance” banjos now).

So why is it whenever I visit CA., as Ted and I did for the last five days, I morph into a complete rube when I get there?

I’m telling you, it’s like this dream place where I expect Glinda the Good Witch of the North to come floating along in a giant Ivory Soap bubble.

First, there is the growing season. And the green. Every shade of green: Kelly, chartreuse, pine, Granny Smith, olive. Green all the time. Did I mention flowers? Everything is in bloom. The impatiens and begonias I grow in Utah look like salesman’s samples of the technicolor giants that flourish in California gardens. Even the freeway medians are wildly blooming. I can’t keep from gawking and gasping at the sights.

Here I am, standing in a field in Solvang, California. It’s nothing spectacular. But it’s green. And the sky is blue. I love it.

Next, I must mention the liquor scene. Walking into any Ralph’s, Von’s or Albertson’s supermarket, I immediately submit to the magnetic force of the wine department, pulling me in its direction. My eyes swell to seven times their normal size. I grab whomever I’m with by the sleeve, insisting he or she follow me over to the massive display of Napa or Russian River wines. Oh, and those Santa Barbara pinots? Wow. Look over here, Ted! Just like “Sideways!”

Of course, this is all due to my Utah upbringing and the fact that I’ve survived my adult years as a victim of the Utah liquor store phenomenon. When I visit any state with sane liquor laws I shift into instant hayseed mode. It’s unbelievable one can walk into a store, grab a chilled bottle of white on the way to a dinner party and be through the whole experience in under 11 minutes.

Guess what else? In California, you can even buy a corkscrew or a couple of limes in the liquor store! And cold beer, too. How exotic.

So nice to make a purchase without feeling like I’m standing in line for bread and potatoes under the old Soviet Union market system.

So, the trip was great, especially for this hick.

As I mentioned late last week, the real reason we went to CA. was for the final stages of the Amgen Tour of California bicycle race. Ted is the executive director of The Tour of Utah race. We traveled with several of his erstwhile staff members — volunteer directors, fundraisers and sponsorship directors, as well as a couple of members of the Utah Sports Commission.

Here are two of those travel companions: Michael Spencer, left, with Karen Kaull Weiss. Michael is a former U.S. Olympic moguls skier and attorney specializing in professional sports issues. Karen is Ted’s right hand in the Tour of Utah and an event planner by profession. Both are great fun.

Besides shooting bad photos, all I had to do for five days was wander around, gawk at wine displays, and look at gorgeous hard bodies on racing bikes. Then it was home again, where I am happy to be. It’s snowing like hell right now, it’s lovely, and it’s home.

A blue-sky day in the city. Ted and I decided to celebrate on two wheels. We hopped on his Suzuki SV 650 and went for a scoot. Did I mention it was 50 degrees at 3 p.m.? A regular scorcher, I tell you.

This is a fun, fast bike. It isn’t built for touring, so speaking as the one who rides on back, a short day ride is about all my butt can take.

We had a couple of items on our agenda. The first was to drop a donation at the home of Suljo and Sabira Talovic, the parents of Suljeman Talovic. For several days now, news stories have listed a growing number of funds for the families of the victims of the Trolley Square shootings. But unless I missed something, I haven’t seen anything formally established for the family of the shooter.

The Talovics want to take their son’s body back to Bosnia next week for burial. We wanted to do our small part to help them do so. We rode to their home in northwest Salt Lake City, where a woman was walking away from the yard after leaving a bag of groceries. Ted asked if she was with the family. She told us no, that her daughters attend school with the Talovics’ younger children. She also said the family has left the house and is staying elsewhere for now.

Ted walked up the porch steps with our envelope and tucked it away among a heap of other donations. A mylar balloon with a giant red heart and the words “I Love You” was tied to a basket of groceries and bobbed in the wind. There were perhaps a half-dozen floral bouquets. There was a boxed set of white Corelle dishes. And a Costco-sized bottle of liquid laundry detergent.

Salt Lake City hasn’t forgotten about this family, also hurt and shattered. We were grateful to see that. This is a sign of Big Utah. The place I know to be generous in times that really test us. The place I love.

We rode off and decided to take in a late afternoon movie. We saw “Pan’s Labrynth.” We may be the last people on Earth to have seen it. If I’m wrong about that, and you haven’t seen it, go. It’s stellar.

Depending on whom you believe, the Wasatch Mountains got anywhere from five inches to 17 inches new snow in the past 24 hours.

Believe me, I checked. Newspaper, TV weather, web sites for both Alta (is there anywhere else) and our favorite pimp for the ski industry, Ski Utah.

In this case, I’m no stickler for accuracy or even THE TRUTH. I trust my own eyes. And I walked out to the driveway early this a.m., cast a glance to the east and saw a perfect blanket of white.

I am so outta here.

I’m going skiing for the first time in a month.

I’ll take my camera.

Don’t you wish you were me?

Don’t go changin’!

xoxo,
Mayor of Mullentown

The Utah air, that is. It’s clean. I can’t see it, smell it, or — best of all — taste it anymore.

Twenty-one days of smog, red-alert, and no-burn days: BE GONE!

The snow has been falling for four hours. The storm ranks about a 2 on the 1 to 10 scale for winter drama, but that’s OK. It’s falling steadily and we’ll take what we can get.

Just got back from a run. Roads, sidewalks are like glass. That forced me to plod along slowly. I don’t know how long I was gone; didn’t care. When I was much younger, I used to keep track of time on the road. Now I just listen to my tunes and breathe. Time slips by fast enough anyway; why count it when you’re flying down the pavement on your own power?

Tunes on today’s running list:

Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach: “In the Darkest Place,” “Toledo,” “This House is Empty Now,” “God Give Me Strength”

The soundtrack of “Garden State”

Nirvana: “Heart-Shaped Box”

The Decemberists: “Sixteen Military Wives,” “Red Right Ankle”

It’s one of those mornings when news rules. I love those mornings. I’m heading to the Salt Lake County Council chambers in 20 minutes for a news conference with county Mayor Peter Corroon. He’s going to explain his decision for saying “no” to public funding for the Salt Lake Real stadium in Sandy.

Right now, I’m in Cooroon’s corner. We’ll see what plays out as the day moves along.

And I just heard on ABC radio network news that dynamo racehorse Barbaro was put down this morning. The victim of a shattered right leg last year, the Kentucky Derby winner had developed laminitis, a painful infection of his left leg. Vets treated that problem, but an infection crept into the horse’s right leg — the one that was originally broken. It got to be too much. The pain became unbearable.

I heard one of Barbaro’s vets interviewed a few hours ago on National Public Radio. He had a tone of resignation in his voice — as if the decision had been made, but why not hold on a little longer? The vet talked about this horse’s will to fight, and to live.

He said he’s seen it before in other thoroughbreds. They want to run. They seem to know it isn’t their role to stand inside a posh stable, living slower, operating in recovery mode. The vet said Barbaro had every inch of will he needed to live.

The fight is over. Sad. But amazing.

The following is a guest entry by Ted Wilson, mountaineer:

My former student and now friend, Christy Karras of The Salt Lake Tribune , wrote an interesting story today about mountaineers and death. She wrote about the coming weekend’s production by the SB Dance Company of “This Mortal Coil.” The show features the life and times of Al Burgess, a Salt Lake City climber who has earned a world-class reputation for his high mountain climbs and exploits. I know Burgess. He is an engaging man who climbs the climb and minimizes the talk, just as Karras tries to get to the essence of climbing.

Karras says in her article, “When mountain climbers get together they always talk about the same thing. They talk about death.”

And now the SB Dance Company will apply the art of dance to the mission of climbing a mountain. It seems mountain climbing has finally permeated the culture deeply enough to have traditional art mediums like dance join the burden of explaining why human beings rope up, suffer incredible hardships of cold and harshness, put themselves in grave danger of dying, just to summit a worthless piece of real estate. As the great French climber Lionel Terray said, “Conquistadores of the Useless.” (Terray climbed huge mountains around the world, but he died on a a short rock climb in south central France.)

George Leigh Mallory, whose body was found on Mt. Everest seven years ago by Salt Lake climber Conrad Anker, said prior to his fatal expedition to Everest in 1924, “I climb Everest because it is there.” And that pithy, even prosaic, comment has been the best explanation of the human desire to climb ever since. Perhaps art, now, can move the explanation needle further up the gauge.

But my lifetime of climbing and my opportunity to rub shoulders with the greats of climbing — the Burgesses, the Ankers, the Unsoelds, the Whittakers, has taught me death is about the last thing that enters the mind of the alpinist. Mind you, I was never a climber like the greats, but I listened when in their presence.

Climbers love life beyond normal. They love life so much that the process of endangering themselves makes them feel really alive. My old climbing club had a standard saying when leaving a secure ledge to head out onto the rock where the chances of falling could overwhelm. It was, “Out of the womb and onto the shooting gallery.”

The expression captured the essence of your butt hanging out over a couple thousand feet of space where a fall would result in injury or death. Somehow, you gathered courage, finished the lead to the next secure ledge and, as Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing in life quite so satisfying as being shot at without result.”

But “death?” Only in the full essence of denial does the mountaineer think about death and its horrible, grim, and decisive conclusion. No, we skirt around it as climbers. As our friends get killed, and sometimes they do, we carefully analyze why and say to ourselves we would never make that kind of mistake. When climbing we think no more of death than a skydiver, a car racer, or a soldier does. Sure, it is back there in the recesses of the mind, in the core of the brain, but it does not come to the surface because if it did, we would simply quit in the middle of the very thing we choose to do in celebrating life.

If you go to a climber’s party, death is not the issue of the evening. Climbers are more intent on the women in the room or the beer they are drinking. Denial goes a long way.

So dancers and artists, you are welcome to replace the rather dull and boring literature of mountaineering (there are a few exceptions) with a new interpretation of the foolishness of climbing. But don’t look to death as the explanation. Look more to why we want to live.

Blogmaster’s note: Ted Wilson has climbed mountains around the world since 1958. He has pioneered routes throughout Utah’s Wasatch Range, the Tetons, and in Europe. No, he hasn’t climbed Everest, but he endures me, his wife, daily.

In this 1964 photo in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Ted Wilson is third from the left in the back row. Climbing phenom and outdoor apparel guru Royal Robbins is next to Ted, wearing the white beret. His wife and business partner, Liz Robbins, sits in front of him. Photo credit: Dick Wallin.