With all the trips I take, I feel like I should probably be better at calculating time zone differences in my head, but that is absolutely not the case. I’m constantly relying on World Clock, and handmade time tables to make coordinating things a little easier.
One country that made things extra difficult was India, which is not aligned with most of the world in terms of minutes, and sits 30 minutes ahead/behind its neighboring time zones.
A handful of countries have at least partially rejected the standardization of time that ramped up in the 19th century, and interestingly, most of them are in South or Central Asia. Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and India, of course.
But go even further back, and India didn’t have any set time zone. Each region or area had its own time zone. A reminder that how we interact with time is very much influenced by our cultural background.