Being a New Yorker is built-in preparation for long-distance travel. Anywhere I go, on a normal city day, I go dressed as a pack mule. I might have a yoga mat, diagonal across my back. I will have a purse full of regular purse things, all of which are extremely heavy. Maybe I will have an attaché case (read: canvas bag) for my laptop computer, and an additional canvas bag, just in case. I will have packed my lunch, because New York City is expensive. I will have packed a change of shoes, because New York City is huge. I will have packed toiletries, because Brooklyn is far and I’d hate to go all the way home to come back again, just for a fresh twirl of mascara.

So my back is strong. Suitcase schmootcase. Fanny pack schmanny pack. One trip to India and I realize I have long been neglecting an additional surface area for goods: the top of my head. One trip to India and I realize that life in the city prepares you to be unfazed by anything, anywhere.

A common misconception of Other Countries is that they will be “dirty.” OK, if by “dirty” you mean there is actual dirt on the streets, then you might be correct. After a week in India the bottoms of my feet were brown and hardened, ready to walk on coals, maybe. But let’s get one thing straight here: I will not wear sandals in New York. Not if I can help it, not if I have a lot of walking to do. In India the filth was recognizable as organic matter; sand, dust, soil. In New York, I come home with black feet. Black. I would send a swab in for analysis but frankly, I don’t care to know. Chemical detritus, oozing from a methadone clinic, tar, coffee leaked from the bottom of a breakfast cart. Melted plastic bags, from a bodega. Cigarette ash. The shoe leather of all those who have gone before. Gangrene, necrosis.

A common misconception about India is that it will smell. It will smell like an apartment building in Queens, it will smell like all the worst moods of cumin. It will smell like shoes taken off and left outside and like poverty, like the heavy pollution of a country dragging itself into the future. Well. Let me tell you about the smells in India. First: I was spared cumin by way of being far South, as the full seed is preferred to the pulverized in traditional Southern dishes. Any unfamiliar scents on the street were quickly masked by the abundance of fresh jasmine flowers, sold in garlands on the street and strung through the braids of women’s hair. I smelled dosas and samosas and God knows it is impossible to smell a cucumber but for the sake of artistry I will suggest that I did. I also smelled sewer. I also smelled urine. The only difference here was the unexpected; in New York I know which acrid corners to avoid on my regular paths. We will not discuss this now, but men, like dogs, are creatures of habit.

So a city is a city, mass quantities of humans gathered in patience and consternation to live together. I’m not talking about globalization or Americanization or the surprising number of fried chicken restaurants I stumbled across in Chennai. I’m saying that no matter where the city is, if you already live in one, you’re all set.