Dilli Chalo
Taking off from the Dublin airport.
So, it's the end of something epic.
All of a sudden, the lovely cobblestone streets, the gentle British summer sun, the cool and fragrant breeze, the "thank you"s and "sorry"s – all seem to be disappearing from the front of my senses. My body preps itself for dealing with the brashness, the pollution, the loud horns and louder voices as I sit on the EK516 in the Dubai airport.
After a bout of Jack Harlow and The Beatles, AP Dhillon and Shubh mark their return on my playlist. My nostrils give way for the smell of aamchur after conveniently forgetting the sweet smell of hot chocolate of Oxford. My sense of touch and hygiene are somwehat back, as I pull back my socks on the ground which I could've scaled barefoot without much thought.
All this and more at the Dubai airport, even before my flight takes off.
The two weeks I've spent taking a rather unusual trip to the UK and Ireland is supposed to "transform" me in some profound way, but I'm yet to see any effects. My trip back home should give away any such symptoms of newfound amazingness.
But I'll be real – I dunno why but I feel different. Different in a way I interpret what my senses have already been capturing from the world around. I feel a stronger sense of the time passing by and it feels like I've also grown a little older (this one definitely true!). This trip has helped me conduct myself as the adult as I should now be.
But that's all about me: from now on, at least in the next few posts to follow, I'll try reporting my observations about trains, people, footpaths, music and whatever else caught my attention during my travel time. I'll also talk about how my workation experiment went, and the learnings that came out of it, and what do I really think about remote work (yay, we have a sequel coming in!). I might go into some nerdy trivia-sharing or break into the shayar mode that tries looking everything like it's out of a movie scene (and fails miserably).
All in all, I have a lot to share with y'all, and I can't wait to churn out a few posts for a newsletter that might seem dead to some by now (this is just the start; trust me). As my flight prepares for takeoff, I prepare for what lies ahead of me in India, and will use this space to cherish what I left behind in the British Isles*.1
For now... Dilli Chalo!
Cheers,
Samyak
Ireland doesn't like being called part of the British Isles, but given the confusing nomenclature, I find this to be the only good way to describe UK and Ireland as a single unit. Source: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-republic-of-ireland-part-of-S0ajxrrdRxuWsUr_6jaKwQ↩