I`m sitting on a tatami mat in my brother`s house in Kyoto, after arriving here late yesterday. And what a feeling I`m having of having gone, like Alice, through a looking glass.

I left Mcleodganj on Wednesday evening by autorickshaw, though that hadn`t been my plan. Nearly a month before, I`d reserved a seat on the state government`s Volvo bus that runs from Mcleodganj to New Delhi every night. A variety of other public and private buses go to Delhi every night, but the Volvo bus is widely seen as the most comfortable, and I`d decided to splurge on it. Wednesday evening, my friend A, with whom I`d been staying after my meditation retreat, insisted on accompanying me to the bus stand. Not only that, but she insisted on telephoning her young Tibetan friend, T, to ask her to help with my luggage. No need to trouble yourself or T, I protested; I`ve carried my pack by myself for more than 5 months. But A was hearing none of it, and now I`m glad that she resisted my pleas.

An interesting aspect of travel in India is that while things usually work quite smoothly, once in a while something breaks down completely. At such times, as A knows better than I--she`s English but has been living in Macleodganj for years--non-native speakers are at a big disadvantage. A, T, and I arrived early at the bus stand. There, we found no buses, and no one to tell us why they weren`t there or where to find them. The bus stand had been gated off, perhaps because Wednesday was the anniversary of the Buddha`s enlightenment, and there had been ceremonies earlier that day in the Main Temple. Someone thought that the buses might be picking up passengers at the Church of St John in the Wilderness, not far outside of town. So A, T, and I trekked down to the church, asking other people along the way whether they knew anything about where to find them. People had various ideas but no firm facts. No one had seen the Volvo bus, but a few people assured us that it would come soon. At the church, there was no sign of my bus, and I began to feel a bit worried.

Before long, growing bands of confused Westerners and other travelers, including us, were wandering along the road out of town, still trying to find the vanished buses. A wisely asked T to go up to the next small settlement, and ask around there. About 20 minutes passed, and A`s mobile phone rang. T had managed to find out that the buses weren`t coming up to Mcleodganj that evening, but instead would leave from the bus stand in lower Dharamsala. T then managed to find us an autorickshaw. We piled in, and hurtled down the road towards the lower Dharamasala bus stand, about 12 kilometers away.

On arrival, T discovered that the Volvo bus had been cancelled, and she raced up to the ticket window, pushed her way through the crowd that had gathered there, and got me a ticket on one of the other buses leaving that evening. You`re my new best friend,I told her. We made sure that my pack got into the luggage compartment of my new bus, I paid the autorickshaw driver to take A and T back up to Macleodganj, and I took my seat on my new bus.

The trip to Delhi was without incident, and more comfortable than I`d expected. In the morning, three other travelers and I split the fare for a taxi to take us to the Paharganj district downtown. Once there, we split the cost of a simple guestroom for the day so that we`d have a place to relax and shower, arranged a taxi ride to the airport for that evening, and headed out for some last shopping.

On arrival at the airport, the sense of passing through a cultural looking glass kicked in. Delhi`s international airport is new, attractively designed, and efficient. Soon I had passed through security and was on an Asiana jet, headed eastward into the night. Flight attendants began to bring me cold drinks, and a video panel offered me a wide choice of entertainment options, along with the latest world news from CNN. I went into overwhelm and promptly fell asleep. By the time I woke up for breakfast, Korea`s green outlying islands were passing under the wing of the plane, and we smoothly glided into Incheon airport.

Of all the world`s airports that I`ve passed through so far, Incheon most celebrates consumer culture. The autorickshaw ride suddenly felt like part of a distant, vanished past as I walked past shop after shop of high-status, designer goods being sold by impeccably groomed young salespeople. At one point, I passed a small group of Tibetan monks who had been on my plane. Now they were inspecting a top-of-the-line briefcase, holding it up at various angles, their faces expressing gentle humor and a hint of perplexity as they appeared to be wondering how on earth one might us it.

A few more minutes passed, and I was walking onto another plane bound for Osaka. Two hours later, we had glided into that airport, and I had piled into a shuttle van, bound for my brother`s house in Kyoto. Two members of the reservation staff had consulted with the van driver to be sure that he`d know exactly where to take me, and how to call my brother if needed. A tourist office representative had made sure to give me a beautiful tourist guide to Kyoto and had wished me a pleasant stay. The van cruised smoothly along an expressway--no cows, no motorcycles carrying entire gracefully-balanced families, no cyclerickshaws gamely pulling huge piles of cargo, just a few other late-model vehicles.

Now I`m borrowing my brother`s laptop while he and my sister-in-law C make a quick run for fresh vegetables for tomorrow. So far, we`ve had two walks through this beautiful city, admiring the two rivers that flow through town, the green mountains that surround the city, the famous Philosopher`s Path along a crystal-clear stream, and a beautiful Shinto temple and its extensive gardens. I`ve learned how to take the bus and have had wonderful snacks and meals. Kyoto is as lovely as I`d imagined, and it`s easily the cleanest city I`ve visited.

I can tell that I will love the 2 weeks I will spend in this beautiful princess of a city. But I don`t want to leave you thinking that Mother India suffers in contrast. True, her streets are dusty and noisy, and traveling through her lands can sometimes challenge travelers from elsewhere. But there`s a part of her that will always live in me. I was reminded of that during my last, sweat-drenched day in Delhi, drinking the chai offered by a Punjabi tea merchant whose face reveals his passion for his products, the young shoe-shiner who did his good-natured best to beguile the beautiful young Norwegian who accompanied me, and the Kashmiri bazaar owners who got the better of me during a bargaining session but made the experience a pleasure. Not all that`s beautiful in this world is orderly.