Overland 3: Seeing Angels

Memories of traveling overland from Italy to India at age eighteen

Somebody saw an angel.

It was slightly blurry, but still.

We heard about it the next day during our break after the lunch rush. Lucy, John and I poured ourselves coffee then slid into one of the wood booths of the empty restaurant. Lucy whispered.

“Somebody said they saw angels in the hallway,” she said.

John, Lucy and I stayed at three different hotels. Theirs were occupied by the six hundred people who attended the meditation course. Mine was empty. Or nearly empty. When I went to use the bathroom down the hall, an enormous tiled room with multiple toilets, showers, bidets, tubs and no walls, I discovered a naked woman floating in a bath. It was a shocking sight. But someone at Lucy’s hotel sighted an angel! It was as if she’d just revealed her accommodations included a pool, free room service, and nightly chocolate mints on the pillows.

“I heard a scuffle and people shouting in the middle of the night,” Lucy said.

She cracked her hotel door and poked her head out to see what was going on. Other guests, groggy with sleep, did the same. The ruckus woke everyone on her floor.

“They were shouting about winged beings hovering in the hallways, shimmering…