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It’s 9:45 pm at Indira Gandhi airport in Delhi, and after 24 hours of traveling, I feel about as fresh as the old potato chip bag blowing languidly down the tarmac. At this point I’m convinced that the powers that be at [Redacted] Airlines take sadistic pleasure in making my trip as arduous as possible, ensuring that it is replete with unexplained delays, sudden cancellations, and a complete absence of helpful employees. So with resentment towards corporate airlines festering inside of me, and the smell of travel festering outside of me, I head down the jet bridge and promptly realize one thing: I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. I have not one rupee to my name, and little understanding of how to acquire any. My Hindi vocabulary includes only “namaste” and “aloo tikki”. My American phone, out of service and unable to connect to wifi, is a useless brick, and my only “international” experiences have been a few trips to Canada. According to my professor, I am supposed to meet a travel agent with a yellow sign. But where? At my gate? At the baggage claim? Outside the airport doors? For all I know, he could be waiting at the food court Domino’s. I gather that my best bet is to make my way towards the exit and hope I find the right person eventually. In the Delhi airport, instead of the throngs of travellers that crowd airports stateside, only a handful of people walk briskly down the terminal. The floors are surprisingly clean, standing in stark contrast to the grittiness of my layover in Newark, the “Armpit of America”. Walking past DEL’s glimmering luxury stores selling perfume, I almost forget that I’m even in an airport. That is, until I remember that I still have no idea where to go, and the panic sets in. After forty minutes of anxious waiting, I realize that it's time to solicit strangers. “Excuse me, are you looking for Erin Brind’Amour?” I ask a nearby man, my mother’s warnings and scenes from Liam Neeson’s Taken flickering through my mind. He doesn’t understand English, but he motions to another man, who listens and asks another group of men, who, miraculously, seem to know what I’m talking about. I learn that they happen to be friends with Shantanu, who works where I will be living in India. They offer to text Shantanu, who can contact my travel agent, and this small act of kindness fills me with a huge relief; I may not die in the Delhi airport after all. While we wait, we make small talk, and I learn that the men are outdoor instructors, getting ready to lead a backpacking trip across the Himalayas. I discover that one of them recently visited Olympic, Washington, the same place I had been working that summer. We had even both gone on the same hike, the steep ascent of Dirtyface Ridge. Although I say goodbye to these kind strangers when I meet the travel agent, who has been standing outside the airport doors this whole time, my interaction with them stays in my mind. That night, looking at the palm trees out the window of my hostel, I laugh to myself at the absurdity of it all. The electrical outlets are in funny shapes, the bed is too small for my American legs, and I don’t understand the bucket in the bathroom. And yet, I find that India- or at least the tiny sliver of it that I’ve seen - is a lot closer to home in many ways. I think about talking to the instructors, and how slim the odds are that in a country of 1.2 billion people, the desperation of needing help would lead me to the exact right person, and that the people I met along the way would have so much in common with me. In the sometimes confusing, sometimes scary world that is traveling abroad, the comforts home cannot be understated. Talking to the men at the airport about familiar concepts like backpacking and Mount Baker, I felt a sense of kinship with the group and even India itself. Perhaps we’re not so different after all.