I have never been as nervous to go anywhere as I was to go to Delhi. Something about it felt inconceivable: all of my inherited mythology about India’s crowds, culture, traffic collected together into one mega-city. I had a hard time picturing my own self inside of that much chaos; it seemed completely possible that I would disintegrate. Or have to pee somewhere there was no bathroom. 

The Delhi we found was lush and green, 8000% humidity and nearly 100 degrees and everywhere we went people said this is the most beautiful time of year, this is the most wonderful weather. We were lucky to be staying with an old friend of Sam’s, whose comfort in the city was contagious. Sam and I collapsed into Delhi like it was a warm bed: enough oxygen; the post-monsoon greenery exploding out of every corner; around the corner, a coffeeshop with wood paneling and acoustic music that seemed to have been transported straight from Brooklyn. We spent several days planning, sleeping, enjoying the lack of responsibility that only comes from living in someone else’s life. We met people: smart, interesting, vibrant people our age, all living far from home, all looking for something other than college-marriage-down payment-2.5 children, or looking for it in a different order, or — most importantly — with a generous, broad, loving understanding of what growing up and exploring and becoming part of new families can look like. (We are both already lucky to have this kind of diversity and support in our home communities, but it was comforting to encounter it on the other side of the world.) We ate food from the furthest reaches of India: north, south, east. We spent hours browsing through a fabric store, trying to imagine which patterns would still look beautiful on American soil in a few months (here, everything is color; it is astounding; it works). 

And so we learned (knew intuitively would be true before we got here, continue to learn today) that India will not give you what you are expecting. The most overwhelming place I could imagine was the source of some of my most languid and comforting days since starting this trip (this trip, she says, like a dummy, as though this whole long thing could possibly be construed as one trip). Fear was revealed, like it so very often is, to be a collection of stories I was telling myself. 

To get home from dinner one night, we stuffed ourselves into the back of a tuk-tuk that rocketed the wrong way down six lanes of traffic. Because of adrenaline or trust or diesel fumes or magic, I felt no fear. And instead of telling myself a story, I was inside of one as it happened.