This is a story of transcendence, the culminating point in my India pilgrimage. I had sought active goddess worship and structured my travels according to themes of beginnings, manifestation, and transcendence. I had begun in the northeast, with the spiritual source of the sacred Ganges River, and later discovered youthful, dynamic goddess experiences in the far south. The center of my travels focused on the central plains, in Delhi and Varanasi, and the matured, manifesting Mother goddess. The trailing part of my journey happened in the east, in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and I saw it as an echo of the Crone goddess archetype: the wise woman guarding and guiding endings and transitions.

The Ganges flows into the Bay of Bengal, and onward to the ocean, wide and slow after its journey across northern India -- Sagardwip, eighty miles south of Kolkata, is a designated location for the transition of this sacred river. My travels felt incomplete without making an effort to reach this place and find some closure to the complex, intense experiences of my travels and spiritual experiences. The determination became a growing internal drive, a singular purpose wrapped in utter confidence in possibility and protection. My choices and actions may not have been wise or practical, but this is the truth of what happened on that short, powerful journey.