Somewhere Over Kabul

It's odd, flying over one of the most miserable places in the world. Below me reigned the Taliban. Below me, somewhere, lives Osama bin Laden. Yet I'm 1:08 from a massive, if imperfect, democratic institution. Such an odd world, this one. I'm completely exhausted, which is good because I might be able to slide back into something resembling a normal sleep schedule. No regrets at all about barely sleeping last night (13th) and a good call, I think, sleeping rather sparingly on my flights today. I think I may be homesick already. I probably wouldn't be if I had done this whole leaving process a little more (a lot more) professionally. I think there as just a lot less certainty about leaving this time. Not about whether or not I was going to leave, but abotu what I would come back to. There are great, and potentially life-changing, things afoot for some of the people closest to me. I know which way I want these things to turn out, but there's no guarantee of that. So all you can do in that situatino is resign yourself to uncertainty and move on, keep them in your prayers. Or you can run it over and over and over in your mind until you're literally sick with worry and morbid fantasy. Moi, j'ai choisi le deuxieme. So there's that. Then there's this little thing I 've mentioned once or twice: I'm goign to f***ing India! I see the sun rising on the subcontinent, light raising on this great mass of humanity. I can picture it, but only in great detail: sculpted, elaborate doorways, high, rolling tea estates, colorful animals, the stately and imposing imperial buildings of New Delhi... yet when I mentally zoom out, everything gets blurry. Nothing seems right and clean and known. A behemoth of a standalone entity, almost completely unknown. Humans fear the unknown. We do that. I heard one of the "Band of Brothers" say that courage is knowing your fears, knowing the obstacles you face, but doing the right thing anyway. Food for thought... They show our route in the air on the tv screens around the cabin. We took this huge detour around Kashmir. It's one thing to read about this stuff, another thing entirely to feel the effects of it. The stewardesses on KLM Royal Dutch Air are, to a woman, beautiful. Very nice and helpful as well. Talk about friendly skies. 30 minutes to Delhi. We're in Indian airspace. Phew. Of course now turbulence is starting and it's hard to write. Welcome to India: nothing is too ironic. Extremely nice woman next to me from the UK. Her family is from Jammu and Kashmir. She's unphased by the conflict. More courageous than I. But I guess you do what you have to for family, right? Starting our descent. Local time is, I think, 9:40, but I honestly don't know what I'm talking about. It's 1 in the afternoon to my body. I typed this entry from things I had jotten down in my notebook. Thus the present tense from the plane. :)