(Half-Way) Around the World in Two Days

January 30- February 1
A rather large bribe (read: graduation present) enticed me to visit my family in New Hampshire just before the trip, something I usually only do about once a year, in part due to the thousand-mile trip (but mostly to save my own sanity). The temperature was in the negative degrees Fahrenheit, the snow piled to the point where my short little self could barely peep over it. It was in this condition that I was dropped off at a train station on my way to Newark, New Jersey.

I had never ridden on a train before, so needless to say I felt a bit like Harry Potter the first time on the Hogwarts Express. I had a vague feeling that there was something magical ahead, and certainly didn't want to retreat to my cupboard under the stairs, but couldn't help but feeling apprehension.

The ten-hour trip was a pleasurable experience. There's something extraordinary about watching the world go by through your own reflection, about cheering on the little birds who seem to be racing with the train, about watching the other people in the car and wondering who they are and where they are going. I've always loved to travel; I'm one of those odd people who enjoys riding in a Greyhound Bus half-way around the country. Everything about travel appeals to me: the hum of the engines, the feeling of moving through space and time, the other travelers. Contemporary astrophysics tells us that time passes more slowly in a moving object; while we travel on a bus, train, plane, or what have you, we are living in a different sort of time. The actual physical ramification of this may amount to only a fraction of a second difference, but the time experienced in travel is so much more vastly different. It is time between time, time outside of normal programming and experience, time in which the possibilities widen and it becomes easier to touch the experience of being a living creature, a human being hurtling through space. Finally, when you get too exhausted and want to free the world from the evil experience of long travel via some sort of revolution or bombing, it becomes a trial. You earn the right to be where you are going. Your consciousness becomes altered by the experience of it. Your destination is uplifted to a new realm; it becomes a paradise of sorts. You dream about it, fantasize about it. Expectation is pleasure. Waiting is joy.

It only took the first leg of the journey for me to begin to notice that I was being stalked by Dr. Fatigue. I arrived in Newark a bit out of my head, and wasn't especially comfortable as I was watched dragging my luggage through the station by quite a few grim-looking figures. It was night, and I caught a taxi in a dark road a short hop away from the station doors. He never turned on his meter.

I left behind thoughts of Newark's scary reputation as I spent the night in the airport and eventually boarded the plane to London. I was thrilled with the accents and cute little suits that the flight attendants wore, and spent some time fantasizing about moving to the UK (still thinking about that one). Despite my relative nonchalance during the trip, the moment the wheels of the plane moved off the tarmac, I had a sudden flash: That's it. I won't touch familiar ground for five months. There's something very powerful about the concept of ground, home soil, that took me by surprise at that moment.

A brief stop-over in London, followed by another long flight and another showing of Scott Pilgrim. I asked the Indian man that was sharing my seat to recommend one of the Bollywood movies offered. After looking at the list, he chose the only American movie on the screen, Wall Street 2. I lied and told him I've already seen it, and that I wanted to watch an Indian movie. An indecisive head movement is my only response. A while later, I choose the dinner of veg curry, not wanting to offend him by eating meat in such close proximity, and hoping I was eating it right.

London

Lights out. When I woke up, all I could see are clouds and the Himalayan Mountains, looming like a protective border. The Himalayas. There is no way to describe the power of seeing something with one's own eyes. It's powerful enough that we constantly travel the world just to see. 

After 36 hours of travel, I landed in Delhi and immediately wondered what the hell I was doing there. There must have been a conscious decision, I thought, but the memory part of my brain seemed to be malfunctioning at the moment. There is too much “now,” happening, too much immediacy. I wavered between confusion and child-like awe as I stepped through the main doors, taking a breath of Indian air, putting foot to Indian ground.

भारत में आपका स्वागत है. Welcome to India.