India: planning our return!

After spending 6 incredible weeks in India we are very sad to be leaving this amazing country. We have both agreed that this is a country we will have to come back to (again and again) as a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to unlock all of India’s mysteries. I think to describe India we could say it was everything we had ever dreamed of and more. Before arriving we had had many warnings on what traveling as two girls in India could mean and to be extra vigilant about everything. And although we were extremely careful at all times (more so than other countries we’ve travelled) we were lucky enough we didn’t have one bad experience in India.

I guess in someways going to India for me was a bit like walking into a fairytale, I had read about it in a lot of books but it takes being there to see with your own two eyes all the million things that makes India so intricate. This notion of fairytale starts just when you walk down the street and get all your senses activated with all the smells coming from the street food vendors, your sight with all the women walking around with their incredibly colourful shares and your hearing with all the hustles and bustles from the many rickshaw drivers, temple worshipers etc. I say fairytale but that might seem a little naive as it wasn’t all positive…When you dig a little deeper and get a better understanding of for example India’s very much alive caste system, it can be quite shocking and disheartening or you see the little kids begging on the streets relentlessly following tourists…

I think what makes India so special is its people. We leave India with so many Indian friends, who so genuinely welcomed us into their families and were so generous (sometimes even too generous), it makes India incredibly hard to leave. Most indians have very close families as very often there are three generations living in the one house, so it seems in someway when you are there you get to become part of it! Something we also liked was the way people were so honest with us with all our sometime nosy questions on for example arranged marriages, living with your in laws, the caste system…and from it we got many answers that has given us a lot of food for thought.

An also big highlight for us was all the delicious food and especially chai (spicy and sweet milk tea) India has. Although we didn’t eat meat for 6 weeks, we hardly noticed as all the food we had was so delicious with the many spices creating incredible flavoursome dishes. Some of our favorite dishes included masala dosas, a southern Indian breakfast dish which looks like a pancake and is filled with vegetables and potato and spices (mhhhh!) or thali which is big plate with many little bowls filled with different curries, pickles, chapati and rice. But I think the main killer to our waistlines was without a doubt our addiction to indian chai which is sold at the corner of every street and is so sweet it is probably the root cause of diabetes in India, but as you see them boil the milk with the tea, the spices and sugar it is hard to pass one with out getting one, which gets served in little shot glasses!

So all in all India, we will be back!