Carbon dioxide. Jasmine. Hash. 

One after the other, this sequence of scents tickles my nose as I walked to get a rickshaw after class. The three are among the repertoire of smells that frequent my sinuses. And clog them up on the ride home. But its fine, I’m too giddy to start packing to care.

Tomorrow we leave for Mumbai for a 3 day academic trip that includes a visit to Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, and the high-courts in India’s financial capital. I’m about halfway packed, but I finally wrote some postcards so I’m telling myself that I’ve been productive this evening. I’m also telling myself not to forget my passport.  I did manage to remember it on a trip 24 hour dash to the Mumbai last Thursday and a weekend jaunt to the breathtaking Ajanta and Ellora caves. So there’s hope that I will place it in my overstuffed red backpack before I leave tomorrow for the train station. 

We are schedule to take the famed Deccan Queen to Pune at 7:15 am. This will be a welcome change from the 2 tier AC train I took a couple of days ago. On the four hour ride back from the I had a chance to go over the pamphlets from the conference on impact investing. In between reviewing the arguments for using philanthropic funds for for-profit business, I wandered over to edge of the train, opened the side door, and receive a smack of dusty air in my face. If I had allergies, my body would have shut down, but thankfully my only concern was falling onto the tracks. The train wallahs did show some concern about the situation: they needed to use the sink behind the door. Also, a food wallah intervened, eager to tell us he had tomato soup. 

The rushing scenery held some of the more simple sights in India: trees, grass, shacks. They were unobtrusively ordinary, their sight bringing on the feeling of seeing a familiar acquaintance. Even with the whoosh of the wind and the slamming of metal as the train glided towards our final destination, there was an silence to the experience. The same silence that echoed among the 1000 years old caves in Ellora, a lull that communicates that you should watch without thinking. Hindu and Buddhist alike, the message in the impressive temples was oddly the same: you are only a visitor, a passenger here to observe for a short period of time chasing a fleeting glimpse of eternity. Like the wallahs, for all the wrong reasons, I could not help but try and get involved. I crawled on Ellora and walk all over Ajanta, I climbed and clamored for attention. Neither of them seem to notice my acrobatics. That is until a guard came along and berated us for playing with the ancient temple’s sacred limbs.

So I should really get back to packing, most likely the most useful endeavor I will take on today.  

But before I walk the 10 feet to my room, here are some pictures to make up for my midnight ramblings:

British Architecture in Mumbai

Gateway of India

In front of the Gateway of India

Trainspotting

Birdseye of the Ajanta's Buddhist caves built from II B.C to VI A.D and discovered by John Smith 

Buddhist Shrine at Ajanta

Lounging about at Ellora, Ajanta's replacement built between the V and X centuries A.D.

Kailasa Temple, the largest monolithic structure in the world,  it is intricately carved with licentious imagery

The Mini-Taj, more formally known as Bibi Ka Maqbara