The layover

From Udaipur, it was going to take us two days by train and bus through Gujarat to get to Mumbai. We decided to just book a cheap flight and enjoy the extra time in Mumbai rather than suffer through more transport headaches. Our flight was cheap because it involved a layover in Delhi. Our first leg was late in landing and we were worried about missing our connection; the flight attendant smiled and told us not to worry, she was sure our connecting flight would most certainly be late in departing.

Arriving in Delhi, we found ourselves in a crowd, staring disbelieving at the giant television screens in the terminal. Benazir Bhutto had just been assassinated, and we had never experienced an airport so eerily quiet. It had happened only 30 minutes prior to our landing, and the details were still scarce and contradictory. People stood with jaws open, hands on foreheads, whispering to companions or fumbling with cell phones. I saw one middle-aged man close to tears.

Most of our group was still in Rajasthan, close to the Pakistan border, preparing for the train the next morning (India put its border states on high alert, canceling cross-border traffic, and though everyone in our group eventually made it to Mumbai, at the time we wondered if they would be stranded). We spent our time wondering what was going to happen here on the subcontinent over the next few days, months, years.

I'm not sure what I can compare the experience to; but its unsettling to see something like this up close when you feel like an outsider.