India always was a mystery and a destination dreamed for me for many different reasons.
India was meaning the mystery.
India was for me the destination longed and been afraid simultaneously.
India would mark a difference between before and after being in there.
India is undoubtedly a symbol of cultural diversity. Every area of the country has its own particular culture, or different food and certainly a different language. With Hindi as official language, which speaks only 20% of the population approximately, in India there is more than 26 official recognized languages, plus many dialects that coexist in the different regions of the country!
India for me is the country of thousand colors, saris, turbans, food, everywhere you can see a parade of colors! One day, someone in Varanasi said to me that married men does not like to look at their wife dressed in white or black and that’s a reason because they dress of with vivid colors, maybe it is a reason, for me it is a delight at sight to sit down to people watch (one of my favorite hobbies) in India.
Diversity is without doubts one of the words that defines India. The religion and spirituality is an important part of the country. With more than 10 religions with many followers around the country, this with the presence of many spiritual movements and gurus they do of India a very special and unique country. In small towns you can find that all the restaurants only sell vegetarian food because it is not possible to sell neither meat nor alcohol to 4 km around a temple (obvious exceptions exist where they sell over prized beer to desperate tourists who cannot be a few days without alcohol)
India also is the country of thousand smells and flavors. I must admit that I was waiting for my experience in this sense to be much more intense than how it really was. I believe that the stereotypes play very well in opposition to the reality of this country and I was expecting things to be much more hard and difficult than they actually are.
I sadly listened too many opinions and specially prejudices before travelling to this country. Some of them were forming a part of my own pre-formed idea of India and they went on rapidly in the oblivion, as I realized that almost all of them were prejudices on behalf of whom they were trying to persuade me of not travelling there: ” they all are stinking “, ” you cannot walk in public transport being a woman “, ” men try to touch you all the time “, ” men shout you in the street “, ” they all want to touch your skin or your hair being white skin “, etc.
Maybe to be a South American and grown in Chile gave me some credit, and the truth I neither saw nor experienced anything shoking being in India. One of the most popular topics on about India is on his poverty and with certain quota of happiness I saw that the poor people in India at least look happier than in South America, the lack of food is minor and the living conditions are similar. There’s certainly more persons in street situation or with very basic housings, but it is a statistical thing: India is one of the most populated countries of the planet.
It seems to be that for many people, the life of others is more interesting than their own, a ndit is not rare to see them very concentrated in others mobiles or conversations without dissimulation. Maybe it is only that do they do not hide anything and the whole rest of the world do the same but they try to not be discovered on it. Indians are curious, they are interested in knowing of you, who you are, what you do, why you are not married if you are in your 30’s, etc. A girl who is employed at the place where I was staying for a few days saw me and followed me, looked out of my windows and later it entered to my piece and sat down to looking, she kept looking for several minutes and after half an hour like that I realized she was staring at my laptop. Until another lady entered and they spoke, the dilemma was that she was thinking it was a television!
For the same reason many ask you to extract photos with you, with the grandmother, with the girlfriend, etc. Still, I don’t know the reason of it, but I have several theories in the matter. So if you can’t against them….join them! And after agreeing to be part of many photos I started asking for photos in exchange and it happends that now I have a complete album with photos with random people as a souvenir from India.
The great difference between western and oriental is the genuineness, I feel that they act as they are (or they act less) on the other hand we show off to be something that we are not, with all our social procedure (not saying India don’t have social rules…they do have A LOT, and specially morality rules, in India they win us). We care about even about what we look, and on the other hand they spit in the street, stare at whom they want to, listen to conversations of others without any concern, while in west we do the same thing but without it being so obvious.
They have a strong sense of responsibility for their families, which does that it is very common that they live all together, still after married. To remain with the parents is a part of the game, as well as to take care of them in their elderly. Because of that (and many other reason), to many indians it is very difficult to move to another country or city or to travel abroad in long time.
The fact of living together, maybe does that their personal square meter is much smaller that in the western countries, the concept of personal bubble is almost non-existent. You can people from same sex walking taken by the hand while they go shopping, (without any homosexual connotation) among friends they touch each other a lot very much (funny that impressed me being Southamerican, where we touch each other A LOT too), and it is not rare men see having long talks taken by their hands while they speak about the life.
India continues being a fascinating country for me, authentic people, working hard for being every day better and in general respectful of others. It is a country that surprised me positively and to which I will happily return to go again throught his infinite and beautiful places. ( Definitively I’ll go back there with more money and this way to travel in trains with air conditioning or to fly between cities, to sleep in hotels with some star and to eat in better places)
Have you ever been to India? How was your experience?
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