For many Westerners, India is a magical, mystical country.
Our romance with it may have started with travel novels set in colonial times. For others, it developed from watching movies filmed in India, featuring fairy-tale landscapes, architectural masterpieces and epic story lines, like those found in Gandhi or Slumdog Millionaire.
North American culture is a like a desert mirage that has been staged to deceive the thirsty, composed of sugar coated plastic facades, childish fantasies, and marketing-hyped trinkets made in China, compared to the infinite depths of India. Reaching across thousands of years, current and past influential Indian artists, architects, poets, philosophers, musicians, writers, physicians, healers, and spiritual leaders, have left us their legacies to study, learn and inspire the human spirit. Even those no longer with us in body, seem very much alive and present, because their impact on the world is kept alive through ancient monuments, academic research, celebrations, festivals and still practiced religions. All which seem as relevant today as when they were created.
The richness of India is mirrored in its spectrum of colors, found in the beauty of India's textiles and the variety of its ecosystems. It is also reflected by the celebration of her aromas and her flavours that delight our tongue and nostrils. The complexity, subtlety, novelty and uniqueness of her herbs and spices is explored in Indian cuisine. She raises the culinary arts to the level of the sacred and divine, by incorporating the daily rituals of life, such as the morning bath, the afternoon tea and bedtime prayers with food and drinks, as monks find sustenance through observing daily prayers.
India is a culture so foreign to our own that we secretly fear going into culture shock upon arrival, or suffering a dark night of the soul, by shaking fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the universe. It doesn't help that India is the presumed rite of passage for solo travelers. In order to evolve and grow, say the elders, one must past its test.
The longer we put off going to India, the greater our fears become. The idea of visiting India becomes an insurmountable challenge that overwhelms the strength of our desire to explore it . "Will I get sick, in trouble, or completely lost in the excess and magnitude of this country and its 1.3 billion people and their stories?" As our fears grow, so do our excuses. "Will I get out alive and ever be the same again?" whispers the Dorothy from Kansas inside our heads, concerned with keeping us safe and able to return home.
Yes. And no.
LETSDOINDIA! busts 5 myths about traveling in India. We created this short video to overcome your fears and reawaken your dreams of being mesmerized by its mysteries and rewarded with the spiritual and earthly wisdom that beckons you.
Let's do India...together.