Extra Baggage. Or lack thereof.

Packing for India was really strange. I’m terrible with packing for clothes, but I’m generally really good with remembering useful knickknacks. So as weird as it was to purposefully not bring clothes, I really enjoyed making lists of the items I would need to stay clean, anti-bacterial, comfortable, and healthy. I brought enough tampons to last me four months, three pairs of sunglasses that I had acquired throughout the year for free at various non-profit events and saved just so I could lose them in India, a gift box from kate that contained “Something pretty, something American and something good no matter where you are in the world” (a beautiful bracelet, a packet of peanut butter, and some squared of good quality chocolate), extra batteries, adapters, a laundry bag, hats, notebooks and highlighters, and a handful of other things that would certainly come in handy throughout the month. I still had so much room in my suitcase that I decided to transfer items I’d normally carry-on to the suitcase just because it could lighten my overhead load. I never use more than one or two things from my carryon during the flight anyways- why not let them take up the free space in my luggage?

HAH.

 

My first flight to San Francisco from LAX was delayed almost three hours, giving me 30 minutes between the time when it’s wheels landed on the runway at SFO and my second flight’s wheels pulled away from the gate at the SFO international terminal to take off for Hong Kong. By the time I got off the plane in San Francisco, my next flight to Hong Kong was boarding. I knew I could make it to the gate on time, but my baggage?

When I was forced to ditch my bag at the carousel in SFO and run clear across the airport for my connecting flight and board a plane to Hong Kong, I knew India was trying to tell me something. I was headed to China with nothing besides the clothes on my back, some light reading for the plane, and a handful of pills kept in a ziplock bag. In some weird, calming, ‘this would happen to me,’ and therefore ‘It’s cool, I got this!’ kind of way, I managed to fight total panic with a strange elated form of DGAF for the 13 hours of my flight. Planes in general have long evoked some of my most animated panic attacks, so I had three pills Xanex on me and a small handful of benadryl in my bag ready to ingest if needed. I ended up not talking them, and passed out due to sheer mental exhaustion. It was as if India was trying to shake me from the get-go, to remind me that I have very little control over the way things work over here and my luggage wouldn’t change that. Lightening up and smiling is really the only and best way to deal.

So here I am. In India. No bag, no shit, no worries.