I’m drinking rum and cokes with my girlfriend Hillary, and our new Couchsurfing friends, G and Kit. We’ve been staying with them in Goa for a few weeks now. During that time they’ve introduced us to some of their friends, and in the evenings we sit around smoking grass, listening to music, and swapping stories.

The patio is filled with sarcasm, laughter, and playful banter.

Where am I? I ask myself as I walk. “I’m in India.” I almost answer aloud, as if that was even an answer, as if that had been what I meant.

Monkeys dance from one tree top to another. Wild peacocks shuffle through tall grasses, barely noticed from the road. Chickens peck at the ground, narrowly dodging the heavy hooves of the cows that move with a slow assurance, as slowly and surely as the sun moves across the sky. It’s hot and I wipe the beads of sweat pooling on my forehead with the back of my hand, the part of me that’s the least dirty.