Small Worlds

     While preparing for this, our second trip, to Sikkim, I found myself often saying that this next trip can only happen because the world has gotten smaller.  It feels like the journey to Gangtok is a small price to pay -- only a day and a half of travel -- to be able to experience a wholly different part of the world, which makes the world feel smaller and closer to my daily reality. When we took our first trip up the mountain road to Sikkim, I would have said (in fact I did say!) that we were traveling to the edge of a foreign world. But I feel differently now.

Sunset in London.

      Today Grace and I arrived in Delhi and I/we encountered a different kind of small world.  There is an onslaught of new stimuli and interactions that make me/us want to retreat. We are currently at the Radisson Blu hotel, in the lap of luxury, hiding out and in effect creating the very small world of our quiet room and the Room-Service waiter. We are hiding from the unfamiliar interactions with people especially all of the porters and drivers who want money from us, from the barrier that comes from our hugely different English accents (I ask everyone to repeat everything at first), from a deep lack of familiarity -- where can we get a bottle of water? there is no such thing as a gas station with a mini-mart here.
     I know that, because we were once interactive in this milieu, our need for this current version of a small world will diminish. Still I find it interesting that the same phrase can describe what I see as opposite ends of the interactivity spectrum.  Tomorrow we will have the chance to test that the trip to Sikkim is truly a shortened smaller-world distance.

View from the Radisson Window, Del