However... you only told your employer three weeks before leaving!!
Thankfully, I think that my boss also had a restless soul when he was young, so he had no problem enabling my travel addiction and offering to hire me back on a consultative basis upon my return (which is a huge relief, since my initial plan was to part-time job hunt for the rest of the summer, which I don't have to worry about now).
Off to Udaipur on tonight's overnight express train. Will have installment #2 of the TR up within a few days.