There is something about being in transit that makes the brain cooperate. No Wi-Fi on a 6 AM train through the Konkan coast, nothing to do but stare at paddy fields and think. Half the ideas I have come from those in-between hours when I am technically going somewhere but functionally doing nothing.
Why write about travel at all
Not because the destinations are remarkable. Most of them are not. But travel is the only time I consistently slow down enough to notice things: the way light hits a building at 4 PM, how different cities sound at night, what people eat for breakfast when nobody is performing culture for tourists.
A short list of things I remember
Not places. Moments.
- The mass of pigeons lifting off the steps of Jama Masjid at dusk
- Drinking absurdly sweet chai from a clay cup on a platform in Varanasi at 5 AM
- A completely silent courtyard inside the Alhambra
- The Tokyo subway at rush hour, where millions of people somehow never touch each other