Tom Hits The Road

One year ago this week, the invitation in the picture arrived in the mail. It began: "Our dearest and most auspicious friends..." and proceeded to invite the wife and me to join a college friend of mine and his relatively new second wife, along with a party of their "dearest and most auspicious friends", for eight days in India, in celebration of our friend's 50th birthday. At their expense. We knew that our friend's second wife was wealthy. We thought maybe sixty, seventy million dollars. But after we got the invitation we googled her and discovered that no, it isn't sixty or seventy million dollars, it's five billion.

Yes. She has five billion dollars.

And here's the switch. She was raised going to the local public school, her father drove an old sensible Volvo, she got her Phd in history, is a university professor, writes serious scholarly books, donates hundreds of millions of dollars to various environmental and educational charities, and has an irresistable, uninhibited laugh. All of which is to say that, believe it or not, my friend didn't marry her for the money.

And she is taking me and one hundred of her closest friends on a chartered jet from London to Rajasthan for a week. And you, dear readers, are coming along for the ride, because where there are upscale hotels there is internet. I've got my typhoid shots, my malaria pills, my sunscreen and my Lonely Planet guidebook, and I leave Wednesday morning.

More news from London.

P.S. The wife, unfortunately, is on that job in Louisiana, so I'm doing this one alone.

P.P. S. Because I'm using frequent flyer miles to get to London, and staying with a friend there, the whole thing will end up costing me a little bit less than staying home.

P.P.P.S. What did I do to deserve this?

P.P.P.P.S. Or, perhaps more to the point, what's the catch?