Voyage Notes:
⚓ Port: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
🧭 Passage: Chennai to Washington, D.C.
⏳ Duration: 42 hours
☁️ Conditions: Sunny, temperate
📜 Log Entry:
There is something my sister once said about how time does not exist in airports. I confess I have not been able to stop thinking about it, especially on our most recent journey to America.
We have flown to the US before, and it has always meant long journeys, usually between 20 and 24 hours door to door. This time, though, the expanding war in the Middle East created the need for safer, more creative transatlantic routing. What that translated to in practice was a 42-hour journey, including a 19-hour layover in Addis Ababa.
Time felt suspended in motion.
It feels oxymoronic to describe something as frozen in motion, but I think that is exactly what layovers are. They exist in the in-between, in the not here and not there. You are not where you were, but you are also not where you are going just yet. They feel like little pockets of preserved unreality.
Since the start of this year, I have been speaking more regularly with a close mentor of mine, Valerie. We have talked about the happenings of the last seven years and focused on reflection and personal growth. I suppose, in conjunction with that, I have also found myself thinking often this year about discomfort and the courage to do uncomfortable things — be it flying for 42 hours, having difficult conversations with people I love, or doing the kind of personal housekeeping that is easy to postpone but impossible to avoid forever.
This trip to the US had more of that waiting for me — more work on myself that I was not looking forward to, but knew I needed to do. While I do not think anyone can ever truly feel ready to take a good, hard look in the mirror, accept ugly truths, and try to change, I now know the transformative power of setting something in motion and then pausing to steady yourself. I know the reassuring peace of catching your breath for a thousand seconds before ripping off the plaster and doing the hard thing. I know the quiet power of existing in the purgatory of transit, suspended between departure and arrival, while still preserving the momentum of having .started something wonderful.
That, I think, is what time spent in transit actually is: the brief moment when your eyes are closed and you brace yourself for impact, just before the rubber hits the runway.
🏷️ Logged:
April 14-15 2026
The Big Smokey Apple 