First Day

If you stay in one place for too long they start taking pictures of you. It was concerning and disorienting. I realized I want to do the same, but my inclination is to do it with much more discretion. Like this photo I took at the Gateway, for example.

This is how I want to document the trip—through the people. Whenever I see a particularly beautiful person I want to just stop them and say, “You are beautiful and different from me but we are both people so we’re still the same. May I please take your photograph to remember how it feels to be surrounded by beauty I am not used to?” But I don’t.

I saw a man slap another man twice across the face. No one seemed to think anything of it, except the man getting slapped, of course. And there I was wondering how that can be okay or even tolerable, in any culture.

The streets and outsides of buildings are all so dirty, it makes things seem old and broken. People and animals sleep in the streets, and the men lying on the road seem to have the same pair of brown pants on, no shirt. Dogs with broken legs sleep under cars while horns are beeping nonstop and everything is moving, moving, moving. But they sleep as peacefully as my dogs do at home in the comfort of their dog beds or the couch, in silence. It just shows how we adapt to our situations. This life is normal to them, people and animals alike. And here I am, some puny, sweaty white girl looking terrified of the world.

I’m working on it.

I feel very overwhelmed and very exhausted. Running on roughly six hours of sleep and being thrown into the hurricane that is Mumbai has led to some anxiety. I found myself humming this little tune several times while we were out walking around. I don’t know what it is or where I heard it, if I heard it at all, but I catch myself humming it sometimes when I’m so overwhelmed and need to kind of fall into myself. An attempt at calming myself down, I suppose. But it is odd, I know that much, and at least no one could possibly have heard me given how loud it is here. Noise, all the time.

There is no way I will be afraid of crossing streets or even highways back home ever again. It seems that traffic in India is a complete free for all, for the automobiles and pedestrians alike. The idea of jaywalking seems slightly hilarious to me now. It is madness to my Americanized mind and I have to wonder how many people get hit every year or even day. Last night as we went flying down the highway in a cramped little taxi with the driver opening the door randomly to spit, Lee spotted a light up ahead that had just changed to red. He leaned over and said, “Oh, I wonder what red lights mean here.” We went hurdling through the intersection without so much as our driver letting his foot off the gas, you can forget about stopping, and Lee said, “Nothing, apparently. They’re just for decoration.”

I am grateful to be here and I’m trying to just soak it all in because I can’t think too much about it or I will start to cry with how much of an overload this is. The idea of traveling and doing this for a month is daunting. In a good way, maybe.

This hotel has a workout room, so I got to run and now I’m feeling better. Felt good to sweat with a purpose.

Which reminds me, the climate and stress combined have taken a toll on my skin. Lovely.

Lee tried a drink made out of sugar cane?

Also, forgot to mention that Lee is my uncle and fellow travel partner for this trip.

We ate Japanese tonight, because we're in India so obviously that's what we're supposed to do. We took this ultra-cheesy photo when we got back. So look Mom, we're alive and well.

P.S. It's nearly 10:30pm here, I don't know how to change the time on these posts. I can't even work a computer but I'm in India.