February 3, 2024

Three for One Days

The past few days have been a blur of meetings, tours, and long hot Uber rides from one office to another. Wednesday began early and became Thursday a little too soon. Thursday began the same and ended with us all packing up and climbing onto a sleeper bus hoping for the best. With a stomach full of spicy Thai food and plenty of essential oils to put myself to sleep, I was ready for a full nights rest. There was a bit of a learning curve to the sleeper bus bed bunk situation. Sliding around on curves and falling out of the bunk were par for the course. I used my newly-learned engineering skills to build a pillow wall and turned on “homesickness, pt. 1” from Ethiopiques, vol 21. The combination put me right to sleep till a bathroom stop about 10 minutes later. Half asleep and walking out of the bus, I expected to see the familiar brightly-lit American gas station parking lot. I stepped off the bus and giggled to myself remembering I’m still in India. I had the same moment while my roommate and I packed up our room for this weekends trip to Hampi. Looking around our room thinking about how we will be packing up to leave for good in a few weeks. The past few days we’ve been constantly talking about how little time we have to attempt to tackle our grand challenges. We also have so little time left to explore and experience India. The rest stop greeted us with 24-hour Manchurian gobi and large woven benches that looked perfect for a nap. The moon was bright in the sky and illuminated the stream of fabulously-decorated trucks and musical horns passing us on the highway. Tucked back into the bunk, I fell back asleep and woke up to enormous boulders and the sun rising over rice fields. It was clear we had crossed to the other side of the Mississippi River. I contained my excitement for as long as I could before sharing the good news to the rest of the sleeping GCIL bus. Some contained their excitement better than others. The day that followed was a sleepy boat tour and rushing through the temple before the busy festival began. Then a long journey to our Zostel with quickly improvised road-widening techniques. We all quickly settled into the Zostel for much needed rest, food, and naps with some pups. We ended the long few days with a sunset hike, dance party, and even volunteering to have another early morning for a sunrise hike.

By Nantahala