JANUARY 2, 2013

The sun is about to rise in Jodhpur. The amplified prayer coming from the mosque down the street woke me up. The incessant honking of tuk-tuks and motorbikes has already begun. Towering above our guesthouse posited on the side of a cliff is a colossal stone fort capping its crown. This blue city is possibly the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen.

I’m sitting on my hotel’s roof above everything. Before me stands so many mud brick buildings on top and beside each other that you could bounce an echo from an alleyway at the north end of the city to the south without it leaking east or west on account of how tightly they’re packed. If the hand of god shook this place it would shatter. I pray that it never does because it’s too holy and blue.

The moon is on my back still, and the re-born sun is in my eyes. I’ve been away from home long enough that it’s beginning to melt; and India—this strange world—has become what’s real. The mosques, the Hindu temples, the faces and languages I don’t know, I know. I know what the slumbering beggars are dreaming, and what the howling dogs are screaming, but to be honest I don’t any longer know what Americans are thinking, nor the challenges that face me upon my return to New Zealand. Yet, I’m excited about accomplishing what I can manage. But for now it’s just me and this city of blue.