moments in time

There are some days on the road where it feels like not a whole lot is happening. And then all of a sudden BAM. Ten thousand experiences in one fell swoop.

With absolutely no way of sharing them without boring you to tears.

Nobody wants to read a ten page long explanation of the journey from Pokhara, Nepal to Delhi, India to Colombo, Sri Lanka. It's boring...trains, buses, jeeps, more buses, airplanes.
Seriously.

Who cares?


And yet, the last four days have been so jam-packed with experiences...maybe you will care.

There's a lot of sights and smells and assaults on the senses that happen on a 48+ hour journey. The colours of the people all around you: dressed in everything from jeans and t-shirts to saris and lungis and hijabs, their skins gleaming chocolaty brown, golden yellow and charcoal black. The smells that waft in through an open window: sewage and piles of burning garbage, fields of flowers and wafts of incense drifting from road-side temples.
The sensations that clog your pores: sweat glistening on every face, dirt clinging to your skin and clothes, sea-salt spray kissing your cheeks, sun beaming down on your arm as it hangs out the side of a train.
The sounds that assault your ears: horns honking in warning, children laughing as they dance naked in the monsoon rains, soundtracks from popular movies blasting from shops and car stereos, cries of the hawkers selling their wares in every place imaginable (buses, trains, streets, rooftops...).

And the thoughts that accompany those experiences: why does everyone keep staring at me? how am i supposed to feel about the slumlife and absolute poverty that dots the landscape? why do even the poorest of the poor, with no running water, still have cell phones? what do you say to the guy who lost his father and two nieces in the tsunami, and whose brother was killed fighting the Tamil Tigers?

How do I ever begin to understand all these things I'm witnessing...and how do I even begin to share them with YOU?