I am 26. Every day, the same outfit: track shoes and a long a-line tan cotton skirt that reaches to my ankles “Your tent dress,” my boyfriend B. calls it with distaste. “Modest dress in India,” advised the Lonely Planet guidebook. I’m a girl who follows rules; a girl who likes to remain silent and fade into the background.

Except for the glasses: fire engine red frames that I picked out a year ago in a Cohen’s Optical on the corner of Amsterdam and 72nd in New York. My hand moved over the glass counter, hovered over them; moved on to the tortoiseshell, came back. “Go for it,” said B. I slid them on, looked at myself: so conspicuous. But they did something for me—no way around it. They brought something out.

We are on the train to Udaipur, described in the Lonely Planet guidebook as “the Venice of the East.” An eight-hour trip—at 10 a.m. it’s already so hot that our clothes stick to us; our legs to the wooden seats. There are slats against the windows, but harsh white light pushes through, and we must narrow our eyes against it. Dust filters through the air, mixing with the smells from the people standing in the aisle, swaying with the train’s motion; a braid of sweat and concentrated urine that rises into the air, a fetid offering to the heavens.

Facing me, B., his hairy legs splayed out. Long shorts; madras shirt; round Lennon sunglasses; brown hair cut short on the top of his head. Thin as a sapling—B. has Crohn’s, an intestinal disease that blocks nutrient absorption, which is why the doctor didn’t want him to come on this trip. But B. insisted—it was his idea, in fact.

He’s always had audacious ideas and gone through with them. In the three years I’ve known him, he’s posed nude for the art class at college; read a chapter of his novel to a room of one hundred people; danced at a party with Susan Sarandon. Once he wants a thing, nothing can stop him. Me, I’m the opposite. A cold glance can stop me. A question answered in the wrong tone of voice.

We are sitting with a group of Aussies. Two hard wood seats face each other, the six of us sprawled across them, three on each side. Across from me, there’s Brian in khaki shorts and a billabong tee shirt, tan legs covered with curlicues of dark hair. Beside him his blond girlfriend Lisa in a red halter top. On my side, chunky Dale at the very end; between us, his freckled girlfriend Barbara. The Aussie girls haven’t followed the advice of the guidebook—there’s a lot of skin—and we are getting a lot of looks from the Indians standing in the aisle.

We’re not really with the Aussies–we saw them from a distance in the train station in Jaipur. But the man in the station who sold us the tickets, caste-minded as Indians are, put us together. The caste system has been abolished in India, but it’s still very much alive—we’ve already met many Brahmins…they always tell you.

I look at B., cheeks red in the heat, listless. He doesn’t suffer long trips well, which surprises me. I never suspected it, that day back on the corner of Amsterdam and 107th, when he announced his intention that we travel the world. We’d been living together since college, in a rickety rent-controlled walk up. The place was a wreck, but I loved it. When B. said that one word, “world,” I stepped off the curb, stunned.

And followed. I am a girl who knows what it is to be lonely; to spend hours in the library because you don’t know how to talk to people. To lose the people you love most—my father left us, the three of us—me, brother, mother–when I was fifteen, and we were never the same. And so when I met B., so impossible and yet so perfect—those thin arms; those audacious ideas—I decided to hold on.

The train slows, pulls to a stop. Brian, at the end, peers through the slats. “Ooh,” he says. “Crowded out there.” In the aisle, there’s shifting; more people are getting on. They push in, thin Indian men and women in faded, torn shorts and bright saris, eyes red from dust or exhaustion or smoke, I don’t know which.  From down the aisle, the smell of excrement wafts toward us. A crowd of flies arrives; Dale swipes at one.  “Christ,” he says. “Fuck.”
“Close the loo door,” Barbara groans.  “You’d think they’d get it,” Brian fumes. “Shit, flies, food, dystentery. You’d think they’d make the connection.” “Christ,” B. joins in, voice taut with anxiety. He’s had dysentery once already, and it almost killed him. Three days writhing on his cot in the little corrugated tin room we had rented while I sat beside him holding a bucket.

“Are you going to be alright?,” I had asked, wide-eyed. He shook his head grimly. “I’ll get better,” he said.  He did, a few days later, once we got the antibiotics. But ever since, he’s been scared of the food. For dinner, now, we go to the luxury hotels—the Taj, the Hyatt. In the last few weeks I’ve eaten more bland Chinese food than ever before.

“The germs are everywhere,” he tells the Aussies. “You have to go to the big hotels; eat Chinese.”  Barbara wrinkles her nose. “Isn’t that expensive?” “Better than getting sick,” says B.  But she shakes her head. “You just end up paying tourist price in those places,” she says. “You get ripped off.”  Dale shakes his head. “Get ripped off anyway,” he says. “Bloody Indians are always playing games, giving you the wrong price,” he says. “How much is that?” He mimics an Indian, shaking his head from side to side. “For you, sir…” he parrots in an Indian accent. The others laugh—their faces red in the heat. They’ve had it with all this—with India—heat and dust and crowds and bargaining. Even B.—he laughs with them now, face angry.

I don’t. I look at the crowd in the aisle—the dark faces, the sagging, colorful saris, then at my shoes.

There’s been a surprise on this trip. It was B’s grand idea to travel the world, to come to places I never thought I’d see —Kenya, Mumbai. His idea, but I am the one who loves it. It’s me, the silent girl in the tent dress with the red glasses, who drinks it all in. I can’t get enough of it—the chaos at the train stations, the frantic choreography of survival. Oddly, all this pandemonium brings me a kind of peace.

The cab from the airport to the city of Mumbai, for instance. We had been up all night, waiting for a connecting flight and wandering a closed, shuttered Abu Dhabi airport, eyes blinking in the endless fluorescence. We arrived exhausted, and once into a cab, Bram leaned back with his eyes closed. But I leaned forward, eyes on the glass, unable not to look at the carnival outside. Half a man on a skateboard, his hands reaching up to the window, a man with no arms (I shrank back: how was I to give him the money?) a little girl who flirted with us, running her small hand seductively along the window glass and twisting away with the sweet, faraway look of someone who has lost her mind.

Something in the constant, frantic motion that fills me up–the little boys calling “pen, pen!” The street touts: “Kashmir, madam, sir? Hotel? Bus ticket? Map?” The blazing mornings—I never knew the world was so big and sad and different. I want to be in it, always. I want it to never stop.

Not B—when I look over, he’s leaning forward, his face, next to Brian’s, telling the story of our day in Jaipur. Jaipur was a city of bicycles; metal spokes spinning in the hot white sun; parked in endless rows under the neem trees. Bicycles everywhere, carrying every conceivable kind of burden. Bicycles with tall wood frames attached to them to hang inflatable toys from; with cages of chickens piled on top. Bicycle rickshaws carried whole Indian families, the fat women resplendent in their saris, the calf muscles of the bicycle rickshaw wallahs straining to move them all even an inch. Around noon we came upon an impromptu religious procession, wild with color. It was led by a lumbering elephant, face painted with in a lacy white design. We stood halfway down a sloping road in a gathering crowd, struck by the wonder of it—the colors, the ancientness, the impossibility of it. Until a young Indian man sidled up beside us. “What’s the matter,” he said sarcastically. “Haven’t you ever seen an elephant before?”

“Just like them!” Lisa explodes when B. is finished.  “So bloody cheeky,” Dale agrees, sitting back. There’s head-shaking all around. I look away.  B. doesn’t talk about the argument the two of us had about this in our hotel room afterward.  “They’re just looking at us. They’re interested.  “I’m sick of it,” he said doggedly. I want them to mind their own business.”  “We’re in their country, sweetheart,” I said archly.  “So fucking what.”  “Why don’t you let it in?” I’d said, voice rising. “Why is it always about you and how you think things should be? Why don’t you just…open to it?”

“I’m not like you,” he’d said, and then it was said, and couldn’t be taken back—a truth we both already knew.

I don’t want it to be this way. I don’t want to be alone again. B. and I are moving through the world side by side, passing through a receiving line of touts and wallahs and spray-painted cows, he in his John Lennon glasses and I in my red ones, and I want us to be together when we do it. Lately it’s been more and more clear that we don’t see this world the same way.

The crowd has thickened around our train berth. We must have taken yet more passengers on—they press around us now, a dark, watchful shadow that listens as we complain.  “I hate the way they stare,” says Lisa.  “Soooo sick of it,” says B., nodding. I don’t say anything. There’s a steady pressure against my right hip from the side facing the aisle that I’m trying to ignore.  “Take a picture, it lasts longer,” says Lisa, loudly. The six of us laugh, halfheartedly. No reaction from the crowd.

“Seriously, folks,” Brian’s voice rises. “Find something to do with yourselves.” “Solitaire,” says B, being funny.
“Scrabble” Lisa says.

We laugh again but there’s only more staring. The pressure against my hip increases. I look over—one man has insinuated a buttock cheek onto the edge of the wood bench and is pushing inward. I try to hold my ground.

But the pushing continues, and eventually Barbara, on the other side of me, feels it.  “Bloody hell!” she says, pushing back.  Now Dale feels it too. He leans against Barbara, adding his weight. The three of us lean to the right, pushing against the crowd. The crowd, liking the game, pushes back, so that Barbara and I, pressured on each side, start to rise from the wood benches and hover in mid-air.

“Our seats,” says Barbara. “We paid for these.”  “Buy a ticket, mate” Brian calls out. “At the station.” He waves his ticket stub in the air above our heads.  This turns out to be a bad move—an arm from the crowd reaches out to snatch it, and Brian pulls his arm back just in time.

“Fucking monkeys!” he almost screams. A mocking falsetto comes from somewhere behind us. “Monquees!”  I am ashamed of myself. This is their country, where they work in the hot sun and walk for water and have one or two sets of clothes, and can’t afford second class train tickets. Here we are, a group of white chunky kids sprawling on the only seats while they stand.  I’m ashamed of myself, but I keep pushing back, because after all, I don’t want to be the one standing. The poverty problem—we encounter it all the time, here. We see the ends of our own empathy, and not wanting to see it, we get self-righteous instead.

The battle is heating up on other side of our train berth. Across from me, B., Brian and Lisa are now also leaning to the side, resisting the pressure of the crowd. The Indians push back silently, looks of sly pleasure on their faces. B. and Brian are angriest.  “They never mind their own fucking business,” says B. “Hassle. Always hassle.”

That’s when I see it–a young man perched above us on the luggage rack, looking down sneakily.  “B,” I say in a worried voice. “I think. Your pack.”

The Lonely Planet guidebook has advised us to lock our backpacks in India, so the two zippers that meet on B’s pack are joined together with a tiny metal padlock. There is a bit of space between the zippers, though, and it’s possible to push them apart, worm a finger in to the space, and pull out whatever’s there. That’s what the young man has done who is perched on the luggage rack—I recognize B.’s boxers, dark green with red dots—sticking out the top.

B. springs up in one motion. He puts one sneaker on the wood bench and hoists himself up to face the grinning young Indian man.  “What the fuck are you doing?” he says. The Indian man grins lazily. For a minute, I think B is going to hit him, but he restrains himself.  “What were you going to do with a pair of boxers?” B. says sarcastically. “Wear them on your head?”  “He’s got your knickers?” Barbara says in disbelief. “Christ they’ll steal anything,” says Lisa.

B. pulls his backpack from the luggage rack, closes the zippers, then shoves it onto the rack over my head, sits back down. His face is red. He coughs vehemently into his palm.  “Fucking wankers!” says Brian. “Get it together, mate,” says Lisa.

Then it happens. There’s a sound from the back end of the car. The crowd parts. I feel a wind on my face and cry out; put a hand to my face. “My glasses!” I cry out.

And B. is off before I can stop him. The thief flits down the aisle and people move to let him through. Bram follows right behind, and they move for him, curious to see what will happen: a tourist chasing an Indian over a pair of red glasses is a good show.  But when I push out into the crowd, I encounter a wall of bodies. People have already come together again. I push and push, but I can’t get through. I stand on the bench to try to see him—there’s a head moving down the aisle, through the crowd, and I call to him. I wait for him to stop, turn in my direction, but he doesn’t.

I keep calling but he doesn’t look back at me. Suddenly the movement stops—a white arms flashes out from the sea of heads and punches someone one. There’s a roar of rage from the crowd—they surround him. Everyone is punching at once.  I call his name again, over and over.

I sit back down, stare at the wood bench where he was sitting. Where is he? I have called him, willed him back to me. I don’t need the glasses—I need him. So why doesn’t he come back?

Then I know. I see how different we are. I am a stayer, a lingerer; B. is a mover. He will come back, but he will go again. He will always move forward, ahead of me. He will always be going. I will always be reaching for someone I can’t quite grasp.

By the time he appears, red-faced, panting, I’ve begun to adjust to this new knowledge. He’s smiling, flush with triumph. I look up in wonder—here he is. The world I thought I’d lost suddenly careens back into place. “Here,” he says. He thrusts the red glasses into my hand.

“What happened?” I say. “Who screamed?” He tosses his head.  “I punched the guy.”  “Jesus! Why did you do that?”  “I punched him and then they were all on me.” He grins at Dale. “Bam, bam, bam, bam.” He mimics the Indian crowd, punching him.

“Why did you do that,” I say.  He smiles at Brian and Dale. He’s not going to answer me.
“Luckily they’re not very strong.”
I don’t put the glasses back on; I hold them in my hand. We are all quiet now.

It’s as if this drama has calmed us all. The Indians don’t look at us anymore; they talk among themselves. For the next half hour, B. does an instant replay for the Aussies— grabbing the glasses, punching, covering his head from the blows. Lisa and Barbara look at him admiringly. He laughs with pleasure. I am silent.

After 20 minutes or so, a Sikh makes his way down the aisle, bright orange turban flashing, beard neatly combed. The crowd parts to let him through. When he gets to me, he bends over, peers down at me. “What happened?” he says. “Stole your specs, did he?” I look up at him and nod like an injured child.

He stands. “Well,” he says, “you’ve got them back now. “ “Yes.”  He stands up, hands behind his back, and regards me for a moment, then continues down the aisle, satisfied.

That night in our room at the Grace Hotel, B. and I argue.  “Why did you call my name so many times?” he says angrily. “It was embarrassing.”

“I thought they were killing you,” I say emotionally. “I thought you were going to die.”

“I can take care of myself,” he says testily. Stung, I turn my face away. I think of this trip—how scared I as at first, and then so how happy. And now—a kind of dread. The loneliness is so familiar.

This isn’t the last train trip we take in India. There is the train to Jhansi where we watch, at dusk, a family peeling sugar cane in an open doorway. There is the train to Varanasi, where B. slumps in his seat, hooked to a SONY walkman, while I discuss, with the Indian man sitting across from me, the price of eggs in every Indian city I’ve been to. We do this with the pleasure of children—he has a piece of paper and small pencil he uses to write down the names of cities and the prices. When the train stops, we both lean out the window with our tin coins and buy clay cups of chai from the vendors who stand on the tracks, reaching their arms up to us. When we have finished our tea, we fling the cups against the tracks and they break with an enchanting kssshhhh sound.

It’s in the north, in Ladakh, that B. breaks the news. How he can’t take it anymore—he needs to rest. He’s not going to Nepal and Tibet with me as we agreed.
“But you promised,” I say. He shrugs.

For the next two days I’m outside of myself. I look at things—a smiling Ladakhi man with skin like leather, a small house against a green mountainside with a white- blossomed apricot tree in bloom–but don’t see. It’s all blurred together, as if my lenses don’t work. I try to convince myself that I’m ready to end this, to go back home with him.

By the time we get to Kashmir, I know. The knowledge makes me want to shriek.

When we return to Delhi, it’s decided. B. buys a plane ticket to Bangkok—he’ll head to the beach for a few weeks, then he’s heading home. I buy a bus ticket to Kathmandu.

The day of departure, he takes me to the bus station. I can’t stop crying. “I don’t want this,” I sob. “I never wanted this.” B. gently slides my glasses off my face and kisses each eye. “Maybe it’s better,” he says. He’s already thinking of Thailand. We turn away in opposite directions.

In the next two months, I’ll climb the steps to the great stupa at Svyambunath with a group of chatty Nepali boys, the monkeys scattering above us. I’ll sit and drink hot tea with backpackers in places with names like Third Eye Restaurant, and Yak Café, but I won’t make any real friends, and I’ll be lonely. Very lonely. I’ll travel to Pokhara and stay there for a week, more and more miserable. I’ll get an abcess in my upper thigh. An embarrassed doctor will treat me—embarrassed by my femaleness, and the fact that I’m alone.

Finally, I’ll walk across the border to Tibet, bargain with a Tibetan bus driver for a seat on his bus to Lhasa. I’ll arrive at the great monastery of Sakye, the red-robed monks astonished at our arrival; move on to Shigatse, passing through its gates with green- maned snow lions. One day I’ll meet an Englishwoman with short dark hair named Miranda. We’ll travel together for 2 months—Gyantse, Lhasa, Samye. We’ll hear about a remote lake in the mountains called Nam Tso Chu where Buddhist hermits used to live. We’ll decide to go.

It will be a three-day journey and we’ll almost give up, but then we’ll get there. For three days we’ll camp in the caves, alone with the wind and the shimmering blue lake and the remote, snowy ridges that soar above us. We’ll spend days just dwelling in silence, wandering the grasses near the lake, running our hands over mani stones carved by hermits and piled up to make low walls.

One day I’ll go down to the lake. I’ll stand and look at my reflection. My face will be dirty from camping and my greasy hair will be covered by a bandana. I’ll smile at myself. How goofy I look; how happy.

Like a person who has accomplished something she didn’t know was possible; who lost in love but kept on going, didn’t let it stop her.

A person who owns a pair of red glasses, and they fit her well.