There’s some­thing absurd about this trip to India. The offi­cial rea­son for my trip—to speak at the India Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing Conference—doesn’t seem like rea­son enough to spend 2 hours at an air­port, 11 hours in an air­plane, 3 more hours in South Korea, 9 more hours on a plane, 5 hours wait­ing in Mum­bai, then 4 hours dri­ving to Pune. Let alone repeat­ing this jour­ney five days later.

Yet all of the intan­gi­ble rea­sons for going far out­weigh the incon­ve­nience of all of this lost time and sleep. On my Korean Air flight and here in Incheon, I’m sur­rounded by what I find to be a beau­ti­ful, play­ful, excit­ing lan­guage. I over­heard engi­neers talk­ing about the parts they’ll over­see the ship­ping of, old grand­moth­ers return­ing home to Seoul, and lit­tle babies mak­ing the jour­ney to and from Asia and the west coast. There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­cul­ture of fre­quent Asian trav­el­ers, par­tic­u­larly those who take the cheaper flights offered by Korean Air, and see­ing it throb and pulse is well worth the lost sleep.

In about 12 hours, I’ll be on the other side of planet Earth, dri­ving to the cen­ter of the Indian IT indus­try with a man named Mr. Mahesh, all so I can speak to a room of Indian researchers about some bits I flipped last year.