Train Delhi -> Agra, along a similar thread

I keep thinking- it's so barren here. But there *are* trees lining the road, and some grass. Why don't I see them unless I look really hard?

I don't know if it's jetlag, all the reading I did on this country in school and otherwise, or experiences of past travels, but I feel at home here in India. Relaxed, relatively. Very little feels novel. This will change, I think, as the country and its noise and smells and trash, begging children and heavily milked tea intensify and magnify and become unrelenting. When I truly realize there are *so* many people here. More intense than what I felt in Paris, even, when I was hit hard with waves of humanity, and more consistently than Sumatra (despite their other similarities).

It's so difficult to imagine one human life, much less thousands, millions, billions- all crowded into this country caring, dealing, hating, saving each other. The same proportion of good to bad as in the USA, or anywhere, but with more desperation and physical discomfort (on the whole). I don't know- it feels stupid and shallow to try to define anything now, with so little knowledge of this place. The danger of thinking you've seen it all before is your arrogance keeps you from seeing it at all.