Tuesday, April 24, 2012

A travel journal you say? Surely you kid yourself.

I just watched the last bit of the UK fade underneath the rain clouds that followed me for most of my time here. Not that it was ever too much to deal with (it just made some of the photos look a bit more dreary than they actually were). I'm now sitting in my very own aisle off the left side of the plane en route to New Delhi. All of my worldly goods have either been sold, thrown away, donated, mailed to KY or mailed (at GREAT expense) ahead of me to Sydney. I'm listening to the "Bollywood Hits" station on the plane to try and gear up. I can't help but think maybe I should listen to the "Western Hits" to hold on to that last little bit of my known world before disappearing into a culture I've only minimally experienced. One baby sits about 9 rows ahead of me but seems mildly tempered. 

I don't regret the decision to mail my laptop ahead of me in exchange for the iPad I'm writing on now but damn it I will miss a real keyboard. I should have really invested in a roll up one. Maybe I'll be able to find one in India? (Even while typing that it feels naive to even hope.) 

I have actually written a bit about my trip so far in NYC and the UK. It sits safely (if royal mail does it's job well) in my laptop which I won't have access to until I arrive in Sydney so don't be confused when this goes out of order randomly. To highlight some thoughts though:

* While I love visiting NYC and appreciate all it has to offer, I wouldn't really go out of my way to live there. I would if all signs pointed to it but as I get older I see less and less chance that the road signs will all magically turn their arrows towards the big apple. London, however I love and adore. It's everything I want NYC to be. Cultural, beautiful, exciting, clean and alive. I would eat bull testicles every day to live in London. Sadly unless the exchange rate improves I don't see that happening either. (I'd make a much stronger personal campaign to make it so in comparison to NYC.)

* I have been so lucky with this trip and can only hope my travel karma continues to hold. Through the kindness, friendship and generosity of my friends, airline workers, buskers, strangers and friends of my friends I have eaten for cheap or free, seen areas of the UK, learned about customs and history, danced, explored and traveled well out of what would be possible on my own. Nearly everyday I keep questioning if I'm making a smart choice in this trip. Is a 2 month backpacking stint the "adult thing to do" or am I throwing away everything I worked for thus far? Am I uncomfortable with the idea of stability and thus decide to throw away any hint of it when I see it appear in my life . DC was amazing to me and I will always see it as a home. Why would i leave the first place I've ever attached that label to? The way things have thus far continually fallen into place gives me the confidence that this is clearly the right thing. "Surely the universe is unfolding as it should." Stability is a bit of a myth and illusion. That sounds a bit scary but I actually find it quite liberating. Behave responsibly sure but don't be afraid to make big crazy choices, it's usually when you take a leap of faith that you land somewhere awesome. (But fuck me if that leap isn't scary.)

* I think the reflection time I'm getting is going to be great for me. I have been surrounded by amazing friends for the past 3 weeks or so and have loved traveling with all of them. To suddenly be alone is intimidating but in the couple of hours I've already done it I've found a lot of time to think and it's already yielding some fruit. I'll try and flesh out some of my thoughts here but I can't count on my success. 

Side note: I just got my airline dinner and it smells amazing. Maybe being a vegetarian for a while isn't going to be that bad. 

Well I've just laid eyes on India for the first time from the plane. Not exactly what I expected the aerial view to be (but I guess I had little expectation of something so specific anyway). At first I thought I was looking at giant mountain ranges which I guess in effect I am but then as I looked out over it it was clear this used to be covered in water. The huge shadow casting mountains used to be thousands of shores of thousands of rivers and lakes. And around all of that? Nothing as far as I could see. It looks like a pretty intimidating countryside. My auto correct first had "looks" and "looms” and I guess that's actually probably more accurate. (Sidenote: I guess this is actually how most mountains sorta "work". That used to be water and it all carved out the valleys as it dried up or ran elsewhere. I guess I've just never seen a better example of it before.)

Whenever I fly I'm always glued to the window seat as long as I can see land. It's everything in me to pull myself away to write this and I keep straining my neck back to get a new peak. Even as many times as I've flown in my life I am still filled with childlike wonder every time. On the outside I'm trying to look out the window casually as if I'm possibly thinking about something really deep or maybe settling in to nap on the window port but my inner monologue is something like this 

"Holy shit we're about to take off. I love airplanes. Oh my god look at that other airplane over there! Where'd it come from? Or is it going somewhere? Oh god oh god oh god. The baggage truck is headed over to the other terminal. Hope all those bags are...oh god we're taking off! Whoooooo! Squeeeeee! Let's see how much of this city I can see before cloud coverage takes over! Ahhhhhhh! How do we do this?!?!?! Look at that! And that! I wonder if I can see people coming out of that store if I look hard enough. *pantwheezepant*"

So back to India.  There's very little cloud coverage but definitely a haze over the country. I'll hope that that's light fluffy semitransparent nimbus clouds but I'll assume it to be smog. Still no real signs of much civilization sans the long straight lines of trains cutting through the countryside.  I just spotted my first little cluster of buildings and finally a still surviving river...which took a while to identify as it is basically the same color as the ground surrounding it. More building clusters are popping up and we're 434 miles away according to my in flight tracking screen. Hooray for palindromes!

Time to fill out my arrival card. Next time I write I'll be back underneath the clouds...of whatever they are.