"Travel is as familiar as the experience of the body, the wind, the earth, and this is why at all times and in all places it is a source of reference, a ground of symbols and metaphors, a resource of signification. The anthropologist and historian of religions Mircea Eliade laments the absence of genuine ritual...

Initiation ceremony -- it conjures images of torchlight processions, Masonic robes, fratboys with paddle bruises, Navy SEALs hoisting logs. Initiation ceremonies mark a transition from one place to another, and it's often more of a psychological step than a physical one. While settling into what I'll call "India mode" over the past two weeks, I've...