By: Jeff Elkin
Today, we get to wake up at 4AM to get on the train and look at roughly 1 hour of city, 4 1/2 hours of farm/factory towns, and 30 minutes of uninterrupted forest. After that, we got to drive up the winding steep roads up to Mussoorie. I wasn’t expecting to have so much down time, but it left me plenty of time to reflect on the trip so far.
Thinking back on what I’ve seen, I noticed that even with everything new that I’ve learned and experienced, I still have no real understanding of India. So many things remain a mystery to me. Yet, I don’t feel frustrated by that; instead, I want to understand and just experience more and more. For example, much of the way these people act and the things they do may seem primitive to some of us, but I think their mindset is far more advanced. In a conversation with Praveen, I learned that people do not struggle with depression and anxiety issues in the same way that they do in the United States.The problems they have here seem very real and life altering compared to some of the ones we have.
Just that idea of how I will never fully understand this place makes me want to continue learning and experiencing the depth of the culture and traditions here. The foreignness of this experience is simply enough to make me want to explore more.
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