This content has been re-posted from Heather’s site: My Life Distilled.

It’s 4:30 in the morning Delhi time. I’m sitting cross legged on the cool marble floor of the guest house bathroom listening to a honking horn and street dog symphony just outside my window while attempting to make good use of the limited wifi signal and get caught up on writing.  It has been four days and I still haven’t fully adapted to the 12 hour time difference here. Though frankly, I seem to need less sleep –  as though the energy of this vibrant city has somehow made its way into my veins.

Delhi is like nothing I could have ever imagined.

Photo courtesy of Heather Caro

I touched down at DEL around 8 pm Saturday night, rummy from the long flight and bleary eyed due to my protesting, overworked contact lenses.  Despite the haze and a stiff language barrier, I somehow managed to make my way through a gauntlet of finger printing, photos and signatures finally culminating in my very first passport stamp and a green light to enter the country.  After months of trepidation and nearly 24 hours of travel time, I had finally made it to India.

Just outside the airport I was met by Ashwani from Cross Cultural Solutions who instantly put me at ease with his gentle demeanor. He was well versed in wide eyed travelers and expertly guided me through the sea of brown eyes greeting passengers just outside the terminal, though he did chuckle softly when I tried to get in the wrong side of the car.  Finally with all the grace of a rabid animal we made our way through the unnerving Delhi traffic, which is every bit as chaotic as its reputation has afforded.  Drivers stare straight ahead and make decisions based purely on the sound of honking horns, which are incessant but necessary as a means of communication in an environment moving so fast it is impossible to see every danger. Like the rest of India, personal space is a luxury not often afforded and drivers travel in a fluid river of movement, with every space filled regardless of speed.  Seeing my white knuckles, Ashwani assured me there were “lanes”, though we both knew this was a sweet lie meant to ease my Western mind.

Delhi driving is a total free for all populated by packed cars, ancient bicycles, precarious rickshaws and endless taxis.  Motorcycles loaded up with entire families zip through traffic at death defying speeds  – especially considering passengers sit side saddle and seem to hold on by will alone.  One particularly shocking motorcycle held a family of four, including a baby, which gripped the gas tank like a tiny monkey clinging to its mothers fur.  To add to my health care provider neurosis, helmets are uncommon and only required for the driver – though even this regulation is not often followed or enforced. But as shocking as the transit system appears to outside eyes, I’ve learned the accident rate here is relatively low.  The noisy chaos works here because everyone moves to the same rhythm – and it was surprising to me just how easy it was to be lulled by this city’s stride.

Ashwani dropped me off safe and sound at the Guest House gate and I bid him good night as I traipsed in to meet the 12 strangers sharing this adventure into the unknown.  Soon I would discover Delhi is a city which toes the line between unfathomable grace and utter devastation.  It is a place mired in 7,000 years of ancient baggage and filled to the brim with tradition, dogma, color and sound.  But all this would wait – first on the agenda was sleep.

An Interview with Heather Before She Left The USA

Fellow participant Ashley Myers-Turner interviewed Heather before they departed for India.

When I first committed to the trip the thing that I was most nervous about was fundraising. I heard you raised money by planning an event. What did you do?

Photo courtesy of Heather Caro

I have a close friend whose son has cystic fibrosis and she does a lot of fundraising for the CF foundation. One of the things she taught me was that people want to help. They want to be able to support you. But its often easier if you can give them something tangible, like an event, or something where they’re getting a piece of this too, in order to get people to participate more.

So I decided to do a fundraising event. It was called “Fill your Bowl, Feed your Soul”. And I used this as a kind of educational platform too, to talk about why cancer is not like having an appendectomy. It doesn’t end once treatment is over. This is forever for us. And it’s really important to be able to acknowledge that, to heal emotionally, and be able to support the survivors in your life. So leading up to the event I talked a lot about the trip and why I was doing this trip.

My husband is an owner of a bike shop, so we had this large space and we had it lit with pretty christmas lights and we had a slide show of India going on in the background. We did a very large silent auction. And basically I tricked the guests into catering the event – we had a soup contest! I had people bring one crockpot full of soup, and then the person that won the most voting tickets won a bike.

Were you surprised by how much people got out of the event?

Oh my gosh, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe how many people showed up. The best part about it was that it felt just like this outpouring of community, and that people really came together. They were talking about not just cancer, but also travel, and risk, and putting yourself out there, and what that means, and why this is important. People really seemed to identify with the bigger message there.

We’ve decided to this as an annual event, so we’ll continue doing this fundraising, and half of it will go back to A Fresh Chapter and the other half will go to someone in the community that needs extra help, or maybe research dollars. But each year I plan to bring a real awareness to the bigger issues, which was something that means a lot to me – to give back. I’m so appreciative for where I”m at, and what I’ve been able to do. Not everybody has that community, so I think that when you can give you should.

Ashley and Heather outside our guest house

Did you have much fundraising experience before this?

I had ZERO fundraising experience. I had never done anything like that at all. And, luckily, I have some friends that are incredibly knowledgeable about it. But there’s always things that come up that you weren’t really excepting, especially for a brand new fundraiser. My friends really helped walk me through things, like you need this permit, and those things. You can’t really plan, and I know for next year it will be a heck of a lot easier. I can look forward and know what works and what doesn’t.

Also, I heard that this is the first time you’re going to be traveling outside the country!

It’s kind of crazy! Go big or go home, right? I think I tend to be a planner, and I like to try to itemize step one, step two. Part of this process for me is to step back. I read once that you don’t visit india, you experience it. I think one of the reasons this trip is so important to me is to really be able to have that experience. To be in the moment.

There’s something about India for me. I know they do these trips all over the place, but I really identified with the culture of India. I think it’s just the dichotomy between the most beautiful, elegant architecture and all these amazing sights and colors and sounds, and then the tragedy of it too. And I think I identify with that because, for me, that’s what the cancer experience has been. The most awful thing you can ever imagine, but also there’s so much beauty in it, too. I’ve been able to do things I’ve never been able to do. I’ve pushed myself farther than I could have ever imagined. And it’s kind of hard to reconcile that. That feeling of being grateful but also angry. So I think that India is kind of the personification of that. It’s almost like stepping back into the experience of what cancer has been for me and trying to kind of sort that out and figure out, see the world, and figure out my place in it really. Where I’m at now.

Ashley Myers-Turner is a photographer and journalist in Los Angeles, CA. When diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 2012 she combine her technical photography skills with her Masters degree in Dance/Movement Therapy resulting in a self-portrait series illustrating her physical and emotional experience of cancer. Ashley will be joining A Fresh Chapter on the 2016 India Odyssey.