The travel section reporters couldn’t be away for so long, so they handed the opportunity over to the newspaper, and the leadership decided to send a reporter from the most overworked general assignment department, as a reward through the hands of the Indian government. As for the flattering article to be submitted upon return, any journalist could handle it. This plum assignment eventually fell to me. Although I’d like to say it was because I was the most hardworking and popular in the department, the truth is, I just had good luck and drew the slip of paper that said “Indian A-San.”
Unlike regular tourism, this time the available routes were limited to visiting one or two attractions each. The Indian tourism department wanted us journalists to write in-depth about the places we visited, rather than just skimming the surface. I chose Mahabalipuram. For someone who had never been to India, many places were attractive, but the ruins emerging from the receding seawater tipped the scale for my choice. I knew that terms like “mystery” and “puzzle” used in the reports were merely to make the news more appealing, but my incurable fascination with mysteries was enough to sway me.
On February 23, along with other journalists, I boarded a flight to New Delhi from Shanghai Pudong International Airport. In New Delhi, we would transfer according to our chosen travel routes. My companion was Wang Yan, a travel editor in her thirties from the Yangtze Evening News, whom I had never met before. She wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, spending most of the flight asleep.
