Similar to many other recent, freshly bestowed, humanities’ Ph.D.’s, I didn’t’ have a full-time job. Fortunately, I am an adjunct at DeKalb College. Because my wife Mary teaches English at DeKalb Technical College which is right next door, we both know, and are known, by several of the DeKalb College faculty and administrators.

One winter day while using the copier, Carol Dana, a full-time English faculty member asks me: “Would you like to go to India?” “Sure! But what are you talking about?” Carol continued, “DeKalb College received a Fulbright-Hays grant. This US grant pays for academics who are non-specialists in South Asian studies to travel and learn about India. It is an almost six-week seminar which leaves in June. Best yet, all our expenses are covered by the grant!” After talking with Mary, we both agree that I shouldn’t pass up the opportunity.

There are a dozen of us. Lucky us! This Fulbright-Hays grant allows us to travel, to listen to Indian academics, to experience cultural events in India. In addition, Carl Griffin, an English professor, and I are going to extend our trip for two weeks to travel to Nepal and other previously unvisited locations in India. Woohoo!!

The seminar’s plan is simple. After several days of adjusting in Delhi and site-seeing in the Golden Triangle (Agra, Jaipur, and Delhi), we travel to the central Hyderabad for several days of informal meetings and tours. We then take an overnight train from Hyderabad to Madras (Chennai) for two-and-a half weeks of the actual seminar. Upon the seminar’s completion, we once again take an overnight train to Bangalore before returning to Madras. After working on our own individual projects for two days, we fly to Bombay (Mumbai) for our final days as a whole group.

As I mentioned, Carl Griffin and I extend our travels. After bidding the others goodbye, we visit other noteworthy cities. We fly to Kathmandu (Nepal), fly back to India and visit Varanasi, Calcutta (Kolkata), Khajuraho, and then Delhi in order to return to Atlanta. An exhausting but exhilarating trip!

Like everybody else, I’m excited! My hopes abound. I want to learn about religions in India. I have been classically trained as a Christian theologian with no serious and sustained comparative religion training. While I have no illusions about becoming an expert during these weeks of South Asian traveling, I know that I’ll become more familiar with South Asian religions than before! With what will I become familiar? That is one of many questions!

An important footnote. I’m writing about this experience 35 years later (late 2025 and early 2026). I better have a good memory! Not really! Besides keeping a journal, posting frequent letters, and writing a 50 page single-space document “Passages in India” which combined personal experiences and seminar insights, I have enough written material to recover many aspects of the seminar and trip. In addition, upon my return I proceeded to keep the academic side of the trip alive by doing post-doctoral work in South Asian studies as well as teaching Reinhardt courses on South Asia. The seminar was quite a stimulant!

In the following bogs, I’ll include some photos. Unfortunately, I lost many of my original photos. No iphone in 1990! No easy, online backup storage! As a visual aid, I’ve supplemented the blogs with photos of brochures and with a handful of photos from my later trips. Hopefully, those photos will help bring the blogs alive.