In the end it is geography that
draws me in and starts me off again, pulling me forward from
that yearning place in my belly where longing comes from. The
people, food, and culture all have their own appeal, and some
of them haunt me, but nothing has the pull of geography.
We are bearing northeast. The
morning light is long, we are flying away from the sun. The
shadows are pure blue. The bare rock is surprising colours:
pale yellow, blue green, ochre.
Below the airplane arid mountains
fold up like crumpled paper. Dry river beds stretch lighter
sand out into barren alluvial fans, and only in the deeper valleys
are there trees, scattered villages of small square homes, some
few rivers.
I was tired of India and travel,
and just plain tired from getting up at three a.m. and catching
a taxi to the distinctly Indian low-tech Indira Gandhi Airport,
drinking vending machine masala chai and waiting for a delayed
flight.
The plane lifted up, but over
Delhi and the flat lands the air was thick with smog: greasy
grey-yellow below, clean blue above the plane. Then, on the
distant edge of the horizon, a line of mountains: the Himalayas.
I was longing for home and I
still am but after seeing the land fold and crumple below me
I’m longing for mountains, longing for another journey.
