There is something I don’t believe and I don’t like to perpetuate is stereotypes and clichés. Because travels are specialists in removing them from your daily life, I prefer to avoid them when possible, but there are times when it’s inevitable.

Something happens with certain places where the experiences of many ends being similar and stories are repeated among travelers.

* Get you a coffee cause this post will be long and deep

India was always my dreamed destination.

It was the destination I dreamed with the most but at the same time the most feared one.

All references I had about India were from travelers with very similar travel styles and taste to mine, and their tips and information made me think that my trip to that country would be a horrific and traumatic experience.

I have to be very honest with you: I arrived in India expecting the worst.

To add to the equation, in addition to my fears, the arrival city was Calcutta, which at first impression is not necessarily the most beautiful and friendly city in the country.

Solo traveling to India was on my agenda since I was a kid.

When I was 18 I thought about dedicating myself to being a Yoga teacher, I practiced daily for two hours, I was meditating and studying everything that had a relationship with India or Yoga. I even studied Sanskrit and knew exactly which cities I wanted to visit in India and on which dates to go, so I wouldn’t miss any important festival or event.

Over the years, that dream was getting more and more to the bottom of my traveler’s dreams case, so that travel plan was also forgotten.

The day I had my passport with the Indian visa sticker I felt chills all over my body, despite the humid 36ºC that day in Bangkok, Thailand.

It meant that I was finally going to fulfill my greatest dream, but also it was meaning that I would have to face what was my greatest traveler challenge until then.

The beginning of my trip to India

The welcoming was like a hurricane in my whole being.
I was in the taxi taking me to the Couchsurfer’s house that would receive me and gave me every possible detail so that I could get home safely. The most important thing was to wait until it was daylight to get out of the airport and only take the official taxis from the airport.

Once seated in that old yellow car began the adventure. Fortunately, it was 5 in the morning and there were few people in the street, but I felt that in any second we could die.

That was my first 30 minutes in India, which I felt were one of the longest and most intense of my life … but at the same time the funniest!

Traveling to India in summer was the worst and the best decision.

India is the country where everything is exacerbated and seems to be more: heat, humidity, noise, people, smells, colors and … EVERYTHING seems to be more intense than in any other country.

Living with 50ºC every day was difficult for one who is used to feeling rarely and maximum 38ºC in the home country.

It took me 3 weeks to physically acclimatize myself to the heat, but above all, it took me three weeks to acclimatize myself emotionally to realize that I wanted to keep traveling that country so enigmatic for me.

As I arrived without any plan and only with a one-way ticket, I decided to make an organic trip, with no routes or defined plans and just flow.

I knew it would be the only way to do this and enjoy the country that for many means a very complicated travel experience.

Traveling in the summer was a good idea at the end because there were fewer people moving and traveling, so it was very easy for me to manage that spontaneous trip. For example, I could go to the train station and buy a ticket for the next day without having to wait hours or days to get one.

Of course getting that train ticket was easy for me because I always traveled in Sleeper Class, which is one of the cheapest.

Traveling by train was my favorite part of the day, making friends, watching the countryside and taking pictures for hours … even going to the toilette (on-floor) was an adventure.

 

Although the recommendation for women is to travel in the upper seat I always did in the bottom, near the window.

That decision came after the first time I bought un Upper seat and I woke up at night and looked to my right to the next seat, separated by a grid I almost reached the floor in a second: I had a very close face of a man staring at me (no one knows for how long!), after that scene I decided to always travel in the Lower bank.

At night my small backpack was my pillow (while my bigger was under my seat) and I was covering it with a scarf to make it more comfortable.

I was covered in dirt, sweaty and exhausted when arriving at the destination because that class doesn’t have glasses in the windows, so at the end of the day everything is a mixture, but a mixture full of life, an energy that made me feel completely alive.

That’s India…pure energy, intense, simple, captivating.

As many people say, India you “either love it or hate it”.

… And I fell deeply in love

 

 

 

 How traveling can change your life

How many days do you have the opportunity to just sit and watch the sunset?

How many times can you decide to disconnect your cell phone and not make a call for days?

I am very clear that there are different travel styles and I consider that there is none better than another, but the possibility of traveling as an experience of transformation and connection with himself is my favorite way of traveling.

Perhaps the most valuable experience a trip can offer you is the opportunity to experience the world as you are.
Traveling usually makes radical changes in your daily routine that make it easier to experience changes in the way you think, face and see life.

When I left for India I was in a moment of great uncertainty in my life. I knew I needed to make a change urgently, but I didn’t really know what that change meant.

Yes, you’re probably going to say that this story is not new, and in the Eat, Pray, Love style…. and maybe it is, but it’s my story anyway. Here’s where the cliché comes in when I have to tell you that a trip to India changed my way of seeing and living my life and that after that trip everything would be different.

 

For many years I had been trying to lead a “normal” life for the parameters of many people, except my own.

I was immersed in jobs that I hated just to make money and be able to pay the trips that were becoming more and more distant because being immersed in the routine plus boredom makes me very consumerist and my savings were getting smaller and smaller and bills higher.

Instead of saving I went shopping for things I didn’t need to fill the tremendous emptiness I felt inside. It was then when I realized the worst: In the middle of the routine and trying to make a life that made others happy I had lost myself.
When I arrived in India, I was in the midst of a crisis that had been going on for years, in which I struggled every day to reconnect with myself and trying to know what I really wanted to do.

Being in India I decided that I was going to do whatever was necessary to find myself again, that the time to leave the country would be when I was clear about what I wanted to do with my life in the next few years.

It was the first time I was letting myself go that way in life, on the road, for my choices, and by my feelings.

 

I left with a list of books on my laptop about psychology, coaching and even the Law of Attraction searching for inspiration and above all, looking for answers.

The question that would mark the following months was this:
If you could do with your life whatever you wanted, regardless of time, age, money … What would you do?

When I wanted to answer this question that sounds so simple I was frozen and speechless.

But that answer didn’t come until months later…I didn’t have the clarity to answer it because and then realized something very sad happened, I had simply lost the connection with my goals and my dreams, that when I was younger they were many.

To be honest, the first day in India was terrible to me.

I was suffering from the heat, with the noise, with the people that crossed my path, with the food that I had disappointingly found not as spicy as I thought, each visit to the city was a giant effort and again, the heat.

I felt the air I breathed burning my nose, even at night.
I thought I couldn’t withstand so much heat, but we have a tremendous ability as humans, it’s the ability to adapt.

 

It was there when I remembered that for years I was trying to attend a meditation retreat, those that you do in isolation and in complete silence.

I had never done it because there was always an excuse, but now I had none!
I actually had all the time in the world to do all the things I had always avoided for lack of time.

I enrolled in Bodhgaya because the center was supposed to have air conditioning, but my stay turned to be 10 days of non-stop sweat, which I took as part of the challenge.

You can read more details of that story in this article.

I didn’t know that simply retiring for 10 days, in complete silence would be the biggest catalyst for change that I would live until today (after a car accident that almost took my life).

Just being in touch with yourself 24 hours is an experience that terrified me and I even thought I could go crazy doing this. But it was the best gift I could give myself at that moment.

During those ten days, the magic that I had hoped happened: I recovered the connection with my soul, my dreams, and my passions. Little by little, ideas came to me with a certainty that I never felt before and suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted to do (and also what I did not).

After this retreat, which has been one of the hardest experiences of my life, my trip to India was different. I began to enjoy every moment and to play with things that I didn’t like.

After a few weeks, the heat no longer felt so terrible and I could go out into the city without suffering so much. At the same time, I had a certainty that I had to extend that trip as much as possible, it was necessary and I had to find the way to enjoy it.

Suddenly the noise and the people seemed more friendly and I listened to songs in my head with the noise of the horns of the taxis, buses, and tuctucs.

The trip I thought would last 15 days became a 4-month trip. The four most intense months but most remembered of my trips, because after these four months my life would change completely.

Watch out:
Your life after a trip like this will no longer be the same as before

These experiences that often only happen traveling are those that often change our lives.

They change the way you see and feel the world because traveling you live day-to-day in a different way than usual.

Suddenly it doesn’t matter what others say about you because your truth becomes so clear that you will not listen to others criticism or praise, you stand on your feet, you are already able to hold yourself.

Possibly many relationships will no longer have the same space in your life because you will change a lot and also you will be able to see clearly if they really are a contribution to your life.

The main change that occurred in my life was to be clear that I would only give my time and energy to the things that have soul and heart.

I changed so much that from being an unhappy Physical Therapist I started to give my days to my greatest passion that is to travel and express myself through art, something that always existed but I never allowed to develop freely only because of fear. Fear of failing, fear of being wrong, fear that my family will not accept me, fear of showing myself as I am …. basically fear of suffering.

Today I want to share my experience to motivate others to leave their comfort zone, because if I can motivate even one person to lose the fear of dare to fulfill their dreams, it’s enough and although it’s something so simple in words, it’s not the same to read it as to live it.

 

What keeps us from being genuinely happy is fear.

When you are outside your comfort zone you are exposed to the world as you are, you have to react intuitively and believe in yourself, in what you think and what you feel, because it’s the only thing that can keep you safe.

When you leave the established parameters you begin to act without questioning what others will think or what they expect from you, you can begin to flow and live life without being so afraid of suffering. As Buddhists say, “pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

Knowing that things you don’t like will always happen and you can live happily despite them turns life lighter.

The freedom to live life as a gift, knowing that it can end in any minute has allowed me to face conflicts in a better way. A problem for me today means an opportunity and a challenge to solve it in the most intelligent way I can.

It was in India that I started to write my stories on this blog.

India taught me that we are all important and have the same intention in life: to be happy.

It was in India that I discovered that no one was going to make me happy, that happiness is only inside me and all I can do is share that happiness with others.

It was India that taught me that no one can harm me if I don’t allow it, that I am a strong woman and that doesn’t mean being more or better than another.

India taught me that I can make my dreams come true.

Today I live my life more honestly and I’m immensely happy, that’s why India will always be for me the country that saved my life and will have a very special place in my traveling heart.

Have you traveled before in India? Have you had a big change experience during your travels?

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