Foreword
Posted in India | By tim |
Country of dreams, mystery and intrigue; country of romance and peaceful coexistence; country of chaos: India, the world’s largest democracy. Love it or hate it, you just can’t ignore India and you’ll never forget it. The conclusion to my diary reads:
In our long taxi-ride to the airport across rush hour Mumbai, I see an advert which simply says “Rule #1: There are no rules”. It’s a jeans advert, hand painted by Indians, but for me it succinctly captures, better than any other phrase, the real India I have experienced. There are certainly no rules to the road and the only good thing about rush hour in Bombay is that none of the crazed Indian drivers can reach top speed…
But the sun setting over the dusty streets of this huge mother city (set to become the second largest city in the world in the new millennium) is beautifully alluring despite the painfully memorable ghetto sights we are constantly bombarded with. Our own “paradise” back home, so far away, is regularly brought into sickening contrast. But there is no room in the traveller’s emotional toolbox for guilt at how differently we live. For one thing, the Indians enjoy their lives too much for any of that to matter. For another thing, Indian life throws so many beautiful and awe-inspiring sights at you in such a short space of time, that you can only wonder at how unlucky anyone who has never been there really is.
On the complications of visiting India, the Lonely Planet reads: “Even the most experienced of travellers will find themselves at the end of their temper at some point in India”. Sounds like a laugh? Liz and I thought so. But it also says “India is what you make of it and what you want it to be… it’s a total experience, an assault on the senses, a place you’ll never forget”. So, clutching our soon-to-be-dog-eared guidebooks, a copy of “Are you experienced?” – a novel about a couple splitting up disastrously in the middle of a trip remarkably similar to ours – and two rucksacks filled with other inconsequential items, we set off in search of ourselves and to experience a new sub-continent along the way…
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