Day 1, or maybe 2

C. Shivaji International Airport, Bombay, India

I've already lost track of time, and hopping across time zones only further complicates my bearings. Seventeen hours in two planes, four hours of sleep, three meals, five new friends, and six cups of coffee later, I sit beside an empty café in the airport terminal surrounded by sleepers, talkers, watchers, wanderers, each at a resting point in their respective journeys across the world. It is 2:57 a.m. Indian time, but the solitude I found myself in two hours earlier is quickly transforming as travelers spawn on the scene like holograms passing through a dream. Part of me says I should feel tired, but my conflicted circadian rhythm is no match for my curious self. There is too much to think about for my body to give in to pleas for sleep. Too many new sights and sounds to feed my brain. Too many fresh, and not so fresh smells to keep my senses occupied.

As we landed in Mumbai, I was immediately overcome by the same rush of uncontrolled, euphoric energy I experienced three years earlier when we touched ground in India. I felt at ease, at home, natural. Suddenly surrounded by other brown faces at every turn, the hypersensitive self-consciousness I had become accustomed to suddenly vanished with the chai in my cup. There was something comforting in not standing out, in effortless assimilation. I had feared that the drastic change from cleanliness and order to the third world environment would leave me clinging on to the past and in frozen intolerance to full, open immersion. Instead, I felt a peculiar sensation. As I exited the plane, a little girl rushed past me and grabbed her father’s hand. She gazed up and told him, “I like the smell.” I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. Her words were so contrary to the first impressions of most tourists, but I found myself mirroring the same youthful exuberance as her father smiled down at her and said, “Welcome to India.”

I went through Immigration and Customs and sent my bag through to Delhi. As I left the building to catch a bus to the Domestic airport, the hot Indian air flushed through me like a vertical plummet on a roller coaster. My hair flew back in the wind and I was Shahrukh Khan on set for a Bollywood action thriller. My new confidence matched the new persona.

Up till now I had refused to change the time on my watch from EST, as a sort of last physical attachment to Phase 1 of my life. It now reads 3:17 a.m., and as the time ticks away, the airport is becoming more active. More personalities to observe. More faces to blend in with.

Seventh cup. I want these initial feelings to persist for as long as possible, and the caffeine sustains my energy through my fading alertness.

48 hours without technology. Embarrassingly, that is probably the longest I've been disconnected in years. The separation gives me a greater sense of freedom. It breeds my new spirit of independence.

In six hours I will be in Delhi. A day and a half later, on a bus to Dharamsala. My heart pounds at the thought that the real journey is yet to begin. Namaste.