After months of travelling in Egypt followed by India, Anya and I flew from Mumbai to Adelaide.
Arriving at Adelaide International Airport early on a Sunday morning, we caught the bus into the city centre and then got on a train from Adelaide central station to Seaford, a suburb on the coast 35 kilometres south of the city.
The trip took an hour – it stopped at every station on the way.
The train was new, high tech. The entire rail system had been recently rebuilt and electrified. In the inner city areas, the old English stations, constructed at the same time as the Raj were constructing similar railway stations all over India, had been renovated or entirely rebuilt.
Inside the train, everything was so clean, so modern. The seats were covered in modern fabric. Most of them were empty. There were only a few people in our carriage probably recovering from a long night of drinking (and marihuana or meth).
I found myself was wrestling with culture shock…..but this was my country wasn’t it? Leastways the country I’d been born in and where I’d spent most of childhood and youth….yet I found myself in a place which now seemed like a foreign land…………..