26 May 2006
Delhi, India
It has been seven years since I was last in India. It has been difficult to imagine my return, as India never quite becomes a familiar place. I left a rainy, cold Amsterdfam yesterday morning, and arrived in Delhi around midnight. It was 95 degrees (34C), and the night was calm and the air quite still. I opened the windows in my taxi, and the heat forces one's body to relax completely.
India is, above all, a complete sensory experience. The scents are so vivid you taste them; the sights so overwhelming that your head spins; the culture so different that wearing your white skin becomes an inescapable ornament.
As it was night during my arrival, my olfactory senses became my eyes. The first scent heavy in the night air was that of white jasmine. The perfume so intense and the night so black, one can only imagine passing through an utter forest of jasmine. The flower grows wild throughout India and Nepal, and when it is in bloom, it dominates the senses. But speeding through the night, the smells change quickly. Dust and diesel smoke. Yeast. The unmistakable scent of water buffalo. Bay rum. Rotting vegetables and dank earth of monsoon. I am back in India.
Delhi, India
It has been seven years since I was last in India. It has been difficult to imagine my return, as India never quite becomes a familiar place. I left a rainy, cold Amsterdfam yesterday morning, and arrived in Delhi around midnight. It was 95 degrees (34C), and the night was calm and the air quite still. I opened the windows in my taxi, and the heat forces one's body to relax completely.
India is, above all, a complete sensory experience. The scents are so vivid you taste them; the sights so overwhelming that your head spins; the culture so different that wearing your white skin becomes an inescapable ornament.
As it was night during my arrival, my olfactory senses became my eyes. The first scent heavy in the night air was that of white jasmine. The perfume so intense and the night so black, one can only imagine passing through an utter forest of jasmine. The flower grows wild throughout India and Nepal, and when it is in bloom, it dominates the senses. But speeding through the night, the smells change quickly. Dust and diesel smoke. Yeast. The unmistakable scent of water buffalo. Bay rum. Rotting vegetables and dank earth of monsoon. I am back in India.
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