I am between the worlds.
One foot in the cool sand at the beach of Calangute, the other one already at home.
And so I'm back at the starting point. The circle has closed. A kind of homecoming. A long known insight: As soon as you return to a familiar place, no matter how negative your memory, you feel at home. To be on the road also means to leave behind the security of your home. To let oneself fall into the unknown. Cees Noteboom says it very aptly in his wonderful travel book Im Frühling der Tau: You have to choose between the horror of the lonely room at home and the masquerade of constant change of location.
Between Worlds
I decided for the second horror. It's not the choice between plague and cholera, it's the choice between two different types of restlessness. The lonely room at home, stuffed with the necessary ingredients of modern life, pretends access to the world, while in fact it's a pretence of false facts.
It is and remains a lonely room.
Which one - at least occasionally - has to escape.
Into the horror number two.
23 o'clock and tired
This feeling comes on this late evening at the huge airport in Mumbai. I feel tired and want to sleep, but there is no opportunity. Many hours have passed since the early morning. Since the goodbye with my friends in Calangute. The taxi ride to the airport. The seemingly endless waiting for departure in the midst of noisy families. And finally the flight with SpiceJet to Mumbai.
Here I am sitting on an uncomfortable seat, surrounded by other half and full sleeping or otherwise dozing passengers. They all have the same destination. To finally board and depart. There is a strange silence, only sometimes interrupted by the tinny voice of an announcement or the quiet snoring of an overtired fellow sufferer.
The problem is simple: there are several hours of waiting between the outward and onward flights, which can be spent drinking coffee, eating, walking, reading and being bored. But at some point you have drunk enough coffee, you have run down all the aisles and halls several times and you no longer feel like reading newspapers or novels.
You're just tired and want to sleep.
And again stupidity strikes
At least I managed to do something about boredom. But it could have come out badly.
Once again, it is about making the most stupid mistakes even as an experienced traveler (see Laos). In Mumbai, the domestic airport is located away from the international airport, so it is important to use the free bus provided. Not a problem in itself, unless you leave the airport building before departure despite a warning.
A large blackboard clearly states in numerous languages that there is no admission after leaving the building. In other words: once you are outside, there is no point in asking or pleading. The armed soldier at the entrance has absolutely (and rightly) no desire to make an exception for the fool.
So I have to find a taxi to take me to the International Airport. It's not that easy. It's late, it's dark, there are no taxis. I get a little nervous, until a young Indian speaks to me, apparently prepared for these cases, and offers me a ride for fifty. Perhaps I should have asked for the currency, because in the taxi, which turns out to be a run-down van, there are two rather dubious men, who do not charge fifty rupees but fifty dollars for the thirteen kilometres.
It's really been stupid, very stupid.
But for once my choleric temperament does me a good service in this not entirely harmless situation. The stupid trick makes me so angry that I ignore all caution and shout so loudly that they let me out in consternation. The TukTuk driver, finally taking me to my destination for a hundred rupees, is rewarded with a hefty tip.
Well, you never know what bad habits are good for.
Revue
Anyway, I'm tired and irritable and wait for the boarding call, which gives me the opportunity to review the past weeks. So for the last time the feeling of freedom, of relaxed calm, of not having to do anything before the world catches up with me again in a few hours.
The past days and nights float by, waving again briefly and disappear, dissolve, until eventually they will be only vague memories. Some will remain, pictures, experiences, moods, but they will change in the complex catacombs of memory, which has its own laws.
At some point, only ghostly landscapes will remain, green, brown, yellow, red, flying by in front of a virtual window, accompanied by a polyphonic concert of human voices, horns, bells, rattles, mooing, barking, braking noises, engines and again and again children's voices, loud, cheerful, quiet and sad.
And the nose will remember the scents, the sharp, delicate, sweet, sour aromas that make up the country, the scent of the fruit and vegetable markets, the stench of the canals and the excrements of countless creatures, the rotting food on the roadside, the odeur of the sea, the scent of banana pancake on my breakfast table.
Smell the roses passing by ...
P.S. Matching Song: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers - Looking Back
And here it goes on ... to Laos
