There are many ways to travel in India. You can skirt around the edges of it, staying in 5 star palace hotels and using hand sterilising lotion every 30 minutes. You can get down dirty into the midst of cars, cows, dirt, dust and smoke. You can keep your eyes open watchful for every danger. Or you can close them and breath in the potential of deep inner change. Opening yourself to India is confronting, fear- provoking, sensuous and risky. It is an affair with life itself at its rawest best!

People either love her or hate her. Many that I have met that have been jilted by her confrontation, get back to their shores and yearn to try again. They know there is something deeper there. There is more to it than the blaring horns, the betel nut spitting pedestrians, and the glaring stares at a foreigner with blue eyes and blond hair. To experience India, you have to drop your guard. You have to feel the Indian breeze run through your hair, experience a fresh filter coffee roadside with the locals, and drift within at a sunrise meditation with the sound of temple bells in the background.

You need to feel that unpredictable swell of people. At times it will leave you furious. You will swear never to go back to this bloody place. But India, once tasted in it’s true sense will leave you transformed. How much depends on you. She is the giant washing machine that will expose all emotions, wounds and fears, but in that swirling cycle, she will ultimately leave you freer, clearer and truer to yourself.

As I venture back to the safe confines of my quiet cul de sac in Melbourne, I give thanks for India, deep, wild, and still.

In Health and Wellness

Ranjit