After four hours in a poorly ventilated bus and a shaky boat trip, I've come to the docks of Kanyakumari, as far south as you can get on mainland India.
I sit here, and I watch all the water around me. Here, the Indian Ocean meets the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. It is said that from here you can tell which is which by looking at the colour of the water. The Bay, closest, is a Mediterranean turquoise, the Arabian Sea is a more shallow green, and then the Ocean, of course, deep blue.
There's a serious breeze here, too. I can lean into the wind from where I sit, and I inhale deeply, trying to cleanse my lungs and sinuses from all the exhausts of Indian traffic.

I stand, and behind me, all of the Indian subcontinent stretches out, rolling north all the way to the Himalayas, 3000 kilometers away. In front of me, there is nothing but sea for a long, long way. And somewhere out there, hovering and solidifying over the Arabian Sea, is the monsoon. It's coming this way. In a week or so, they say, it'll be raining here. Right now, though, the sky is blue, and it stretches so far, so wide, in all directions.
I won't be here in a week. The course is over now, and we're all on our own, free to do what we want. This, I think, is a good place to start from. I turn to leave, and all of India lies before me.
Now I can never go home.