How Three Trips Gave Me the Final Push

India, Zanatepec, and Scotland: the places that helped my life finally fall into place.

Zenaido Torres

2023 was a year of transition for me. After the pandemic, changes, farewells, and unanswered questions kept piling up until they led me to one I had been avoiding for quite some time:

What did I want to do with the rest of my life?

Not because I disliked the life I had. Quite the opposite. I enjoyed my job, felt grateful for everything I had accomplished, and continued to find challenges that motivated me. But something no longer fit. It felt as though my life had frozen in place, and if I didn't do something different, the next ten years would simply look like the last ten.

Deep down, I still believed life could be more than what I was imagining at that moment.

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For Easter, I split my vacation into two separate trips. It wasn't common for an executive to take that many consecutive days off, but there I was, breaking yet another small rule. After a layover in New York, the warmth of New Delhi welcomed me as night fell.

I was grateful that I had barely slept during the flight. Part of the reason was an Indian man returning home just outside Jaipur who became my seatmate for much of the fourteen-hour journey. Between movies, short naps, and long conversations, he told me about his family, his work as an accountant in Florida, and the places he would recommend to someone who wanted to experience India the way locals do, not tourists.

Those have always been my favorite kinds of recommendations.

I traveled through the famous Golden Triangle: New Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra. Then I continued to Varanasi, probably the place that left the deepest impression on me, before finishing in Mumbai.

India was a country of contrasts, extraordinary culture, and relentless heat. At times it felt unimaginably far from Mexico... and at the very same time, strangely close to Zanatepec.

There were moments when I felt as if I were walking through the streets of Juchitán. Some temples reminded me of the religious syncretism found throughout the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where Indigenous traditions and Catholicism have coexisted for generations. The way people interacted, the lack of personal space, the apparent chaos that somehow worked, their warmth, and of course the food, all started creating connections in my mind that I couldn't quite explain yet.

I'd always loved Indian food, and now I finally had the chance to enjoy it in its own country. I should admit, though, that I only ate in restaurants. Normally I'll eat almost anywhere, but I had convinced myself that getting food poisoning would ruin the entire trip. I packed enough medication to open a small pharmacy.

I never needed any of it.

The funny part was that the same man I had met on the flight to India ended up on my return flight as well.

Out of more than a billion people, we somehow shared both the beginning and the end of the journey.

I had no idea then, but many of those images would come back to me months later.

Back in Mexico City, work quickly took over again. Projects, meetings, and daily operations filled my calendar. I genuinely loved what I did.

Still, that question refused to go away.

Could I really picture myself doing exactly the same thing for the next ten years?

While I was trying to answer it, two different courses entered my life.

The first came through the executive leadership program I had been selected for at work.

The second appeared one evening while I was browsing online: a novel-writing workshop taught by acclaimed Mexican author Liliana Blum.

I'd taken writing workshops before, but hers gave me something my brain desperately needed:

Structure.

Yes... I need structure in order to be creative.

The first story I truly wanted to write was the one that would eventually become Curry, Mezcal & Scotland. But the workshop led me somewhere else first. Before I was ready to tell that story, I needed to learn how to write one.

That's how Thursdays at Dawn, my first published novel, came to life.

Without realizing it, I had to write that story before I was ready to tell the other one.

Not long afterward came another push.

Even though I still had plenty of doubts, I negotiated my departure from the company and decided to spend a week working remotely from Zanatepec, Oaxaca. Casa Edita was almost finished. It was time to furnish it, plant trees, and slowly turn it into the place I had imagined for so many years.

I'd always said I wanted the house to be so full of plants it would look as if God had spit green all over it...

And somehow, we pulled it off.

Well... my mom did.

She poured her heart and soul into making it happen.

My visit happened to coincide with the town's annual festivities.

The streets full of visitors, the music, the food, the traditions, and the heat unexpectedly brought India back to me.

Several evenings I had dinner at my aunt's tlayuda stand across from my grandmother's house, with its three plastic tables, and suddenly I found myself thinking about those roadside food stalls outside Jaipur. The traditional Isthmus dresses reminded me of saris. The heat was different...

and yet, somehow, it wasn't.

That was another connection.

A few weeks later, I flew to Scotland.

As part of my departure agreement, I decided to use all the vacation time I had left. Once I returned, I would officially hand over my responsibilities after my replacement had been found.

Scotland welcomed me with a certain melancholy.

I walked through Edinburgh carrying questions I still couldn't answer.

They all revolved around the same thing.

What was I going to do with my life now?

Then I missed my Outlander tour.

Today I laugh about it, but at the time it was one of those tiny accidents that quietly change everything.

Instead of trying to salvage my original plans, I did something completely unplanned.

I boarded the first bus to Glasgow.

The next day I joined a multi-day tour through the Highlands. By one of those coincidences that sound made up, another traveler from India ended up in the group.

Somewhere between the landscapes, the conversations, and the laughter, my mind started connecting things that had previously lived in separate places.

Mexico City.

India.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Scotland.

At some point I realized there was a story hidden among them.

I still didn't know how I was going to write it.

In fact, the first novel I finished was Thursdays at Dawn.

But the seed of Curry, Mezcal & Scotland was already there.

It simply needed time.

More importantly, though, I hadn't just discovered a novel.

I'd discovered the path I wanted to follow.

When I came home and looked through the photos from that trip, I noticed something I hadn't expected.