getting there

Were we in Asia yet?

It was before six AM in the Taipei airport, and everything was shiny. Stone floors, steel accents, windows, all polished to a high sheen, reflecting the greenish-white of the fluorescent lights, as if to put lie to the idea that Asia is a dirty, dingy place. It was gaudy and grating to eyes weary from thirteen hours of half-sleep in the bone-dry air of our flight from America.

We started an ocean away, in Los Angeles, at the Hacienda Hotel, a short drive from the airport. I had arrived the night before, February 8th, because my mom thought there might be snow and didn't want me chasing the group all around India trying to catch up. But there was no snow, and the rest of the group arrived, one by one, on February 9th.

The China and Himalaya semesters met up at the Hacienda that day, too, but soon we self-segregated into our respective groups. We went for a walk, figuring we'd have plenty of time to sit soon enough. We stopped at a supermarket and joked about a Dragons Los Angeles course, where it would be culturally-inappropriate for girls to wear any pants that went below the knees.

The hotel was hardly peaceful -- six lanes of traffic roaring by -- but as we sat in the courtyard of the hotel, warm and comfortable, I began to wonder, wouldn't it be better to just forget about this whole India thing and hang out in California for the next three months?

This is what India meant: resolving to deny that very real part of me that enjoys being warm and comfortable, that can't imagine life without hot showers, that likes to sleep late, sit on the couch, watch TV, go nowhere and do nothing.

Apart from the books I read and the gear I bought and packed, my main preparation for the three months I would spend in India was to sleep late and take lots of hot showers -- rest up and be comfortable while I still could. But a desire for rest can never be sated. You cannot store up sleep to counteract months of future fatigue. Past comfort is no comfort when you're uncomfortable.

The flight from Los Angeles took off at 11 PM and followed a curious route that curved over southern Alaska and far eastern Russia before turning south over Japan to Taiwan. But the route was irrelevant, since it was dark from the moment we boarded to the moment we disembarked. It was the longest night of my life. Somewhere over the Bering Sea we crossed the Date Line, and suddenly it was February 11th without it having ever seemed to be February 10th. I pondered the mysteries of time zones but found it easier to imagine I was a time traveler, miraculously two days into the future.

I was disoriented. And I wasn't alone in that feeling.

We settled in the coldest corner of the Taipei airport, us and the Himalaya group (they were also beginning their program in Calcutta) plus one of their instructors. We were finally in Asia -- but were we? The view across the vast tarmac was some low-slung buildings and scrubby trees under a gray sky -- nothing to suggest we were not in some typically ugly place in America. At times the airport filled with throngs of Taiwanese faces as planes arrived or departed, but mostly it was empty, cavernous, cold, and so very, very shiny. Shops sold Adidas, Nike, and iPods; the food court featured an Au Bon Pain, and a little further down, I believe there was a Starbucks. I got some fairly authentic-looking noodle soup.

Claire, Lily, and a couple of the Himalayans raced wheelchairs down the concourse to pass the time.

After eight hours in Taipei and a three-hour flight, we were in Bangkok's airport, a giant glass tube with a ceiling partly of fabric sails, filled with Caucasian tourists wearing tank tops and sunburns. I decided to forego the Burger King in favor of some pad thai. We had a six-hour layover in Bangkok but no comfortable place to wait. We settled on the cold stone floor and I tried to sleep, without much success.

About halfway into the flight from Bangkok to Calcutta, I awoke in a confused state of panic and profound unease. Perhaps it was partly because of the curried beans I had eaten on board, or the fact I had been cooped up in airplane and airports for nearly forty hours. But it was also because the moment I had dreaded for weeks was almost upon me: the moment I would step off the plane in India. When I would finally leave the climate-controlled cuccoon of Western technology for all of the dirt and disorder and discomfort of the developing world.

Why was I doing this? Why go to India when what I wanted, what I wanted, to do was stay at home?

One of the reasons I signed up to go to India was to experience the world as it truly is -- to understand and to see for myself how the majority of the human race lives, what they believe, think, and want. If, as Buddhists believe, suffering exists and the cause of suffering is clinging to an illusion that obscures the true nature of Reality, then how much greater of an illusion must we be living under if we refuse even to acknowledge the existence of that suffering and create for ourselves a microcosm of false peace, a still spot in the ocean while the rest of the turbulent world rages. In India, I hoped to more closely approach Truth.

We got off the plane and the air was cooler than I had expected. After passing through customs we met our leaders, Christina, Slade, and Bantu, and piled into taxis that looked like relics of the British Empire. Through a dense fog we sped into town, our drive honking as we approached each intersection, as if to announce his intent to violate applicable traffic laws. In the dark, the few trees by the side of the road were enough to suggest the jungle that this city once was.

We were in Asia.