Before I knew it the 27 hour train ride from New Dehli in the North to Karnataka in the South was over and the other guys in my compartment told me “This is Ankola station!” Hurridly I jumped off, said a quick but ceremonial goodbye to my new Radjhani Express Train (great service on this train – I splurged on a $50 dollar sleeper ticket with AC and full catering round the clock) compartment family who followed me out onto the platform and with a light step emerged out of the station: I had entered a new world. The dry, polluted chaos of Dehli had been replaced by bright and deep green rolling forested hills with sheets of mist blowing through the air. No town, no rickshaws, no one but one man in a dhoti (a single sheet wrapped towel-like around the waist – the traditional lower body dress of South India) making milk tea on a gas stove who said the town of Ankola is another 5 KM away.


I walked along the small windy road smelling the air, expanding my grateful lungs, feeling an awakening of new life, new vigor, clarity and peace. I asked a man by the roadside with several enormous jackfruits laid out at his feet (watermelon-sized green fruits covered in spikes and filled with starchy pulp) which way it is to the town and he smiled and pointed. His wife sitting on the grass behind him smiled too. Along the road some other man talking to his friend outside a shop greeted me, helped me hail down a small bus heading in the right direction and told me that over 500 computer engineers from this rural district are working in the US – jackfruit and Computer Science in the coastal jungle.