Living in the Sprawl

On my second day in  Ahmedabad, I found something very unsettling. While we were driving to Manav Sadhna, the buildings in the distance were a two-dimensional background to an extremely colorful and dense city. Even though we couldn't have been more than ten miles away, the dust-tinted towers seemed well beyond our reach. Seeing this, I immediately began to try and pinpoint the cause to my hallucinations. Was it a result of being jet-lagged, spiritually/emotionally overcome, or was I just about to pass out? I leaned back in my seat and continued the ride. 20 minutes passed before my eyes began to wonder once again. The streets around me looked even more foreign than they were naturally made to be. "Where am I?", a question that I acknowledged in my first blog post that seems to encapsulate this moment perfectly as well. If in that moment I was given a map of India, I would have no idea where to point to in order to find myself. If I was stranded, I would have no idea how to get back to my hotel. There is so much that I can learn about the city that I am in, so much time that must be spent in order to learn these streets, time that I don't have. I can't articulate how lost I feel when I look outside the bus window at the overwhelming Ahmedabad. But the foreign lands in the distance seem to beckon me to explore, and I do want to, but it's too impractical. Mountains beyond mountains. There are so many missed opportunities that fly by my head every minute, but it seems easier to eat everything in small bites. 

--Jonathan