Bombay's a crowd. A crowd of people, a crowd of traffic, a hot, humid crowd. It's early morning, and I'm with Karin at the airport, waiting for the plane that's going to take us south to Trivandrum at 10:30. Trivandrum, Kerala, is where the course is going to take place. In all of India, Kerala's the state with the apparently by far most well-functioning healthcare, home to the esteemed Trivandrum Medical College, with which the Karolinska Institute has a program worked out.
Now, Karin and I are here bright and early to see a somewhat nervous Lena off to her earlier flight. We've had a water-and-crackers breakfast, and now we're just.. well, lounging around. Good time to reflect on things, mayhap.

Karin's about to fall asleep, and I'm still tired. We arrived, five of us (out of the about 30 medical students and nurses scheduled to be here), at a hotel by midnight, and with so much to think about, falling asleep, tired as I were, probably took me an hour at least. Think I'm lucky if, during the last 50 or so hours, I've spent more than four of them sleeping. But you're tired in another way at times like this: you stay alert, and excited, ready to suck everything in. It takes for you to sit down and do nothing, I think, like this - for it to become apparent how nice some sleep would be.

One point one billion Indians are sharing this country. 16 million reside in this city alone. You get a feeling of this when you arrive, and while driving through town. Every vehicle is crowded, and people are everywhere, walking along the freeways, sleeping on the sidewalk, or just hanging around. It's not a country for privacy, and it's hard to move around without rubbing against others. To Scandinavians like us, used to a lot of room and extensive personal zones of privacy, it can probably be a little daunting - it's the same thing when we travel across the Atlantic and face African Americans along with constant handshakes, talk in your face and arms around your back - but I think it's an experience more people could use. In Sweden, society has grown so anti-physical-contact that you're basically assumed to apologize every time you accidentally brush against someone, as if your skin against theirs were source to contraction of untold lethal diseases. I think more naturally occuring mosh pits like these would surely do us good.

So, I'm tired, and there's no space. But Indian women are beautiful, with their long, black hair, their sarees, their painted nails and their white teeth, and Bombay is a city to disappear in, to pass unnoticed through, or to mingle with. To hide in at times when no one else in the world knows just where on the planet you're staying. How could I not keep my eyes open, I wonder.
Still, deep down, eventually, it'll be interesting to see how Kerala and Trivandrum compare to this. It will be good to get a more permanent base set up, to shower, and stretch out. And, finally, to get some sleep.