The poet was to travel with a group of friends, including Dhiren, who had mentioned the plan to Agni Sen. Letters flew back and forth, tickets on trains and berths on ships and steamers were booked, passports were requisitioned, and at the end of much complicated planning, Gayatri’s father, emptied and triumphant, announced the trip to his daughter and to his family. He would take Gayatri to the Borobudur, to Angkor Wat, to the temples of Bali. He would show her there was a shared cultural universe in Asia which had not been swallowed up by colonization. The crossing to Java and Bali began on July 12, 1927, on a ship from Madras which would sail to Singapore.
