PRACTICAL ABSTRACTION: INDIA PT I.

India Part I.

By David Lombroso

October 2019

Whenever anyone asks why I went back to India just five months after returning home from my first trip I tell them two things, one practical, one abstract. The practical: that I was invited to an old friend’s wedding in Mumbai at the end of December. The abstract: that there was still this lingering feeling that had stayed with me since my last days in India the previous May, that even after two months on the subcontinent there was still so much more to learn and explore. 

What was intended to be a three month trip eventually grew to four, taking me from Mumbai to Goa, then back to Mumbai for the wedding before continuing by train down the west coast to the sleepy beach town of Gokarna and the bustling port city of Mangalore. I cut inland from there, determined to make it to the east coast by bus and train alone, a kind of little road trip that took me through the old hill stations of Madikeri and Ooty and the cities of Mysore and Bangalore, before finally making my way to Pondicherry, the old french colonial town that would mark the end of my coast to coast route across South India.