“ONCE you have felt the Indian dust, you will never be free of it.” – Rumer Godden
Pic: Mariellen Ward.
IF India gets under your skin, you’re done for. Indians may have a hard time believing this, but many a foreigner from a wealthy nation, like Canada, goes to India, falls in love with the place and never wants to leave.
That’s what happened to me. At the end of my first trip to India – six deeply immersed months, living in Delhi with my new Indian boyfriend, traveling from Kanyakumari to Dharamsala and studying yoga in several ashrams – I didn’t want to leave so badly, I felt sick. I was so nauseous that when my boyfriend, Ajay, was driving me to the airport, I thought I was going to have to ask him to pull over.
I don’t remember the long plane rides back to Toronto. I cried the whole way. And when I got my first whiff of Toronto air, which smelt like a parking garage, I missed the intoxicating mixture of scents in Delhi so much, I started crying again.
Pic: Mariellen Ward.
What is it about India? Much of it is crowded, polluted, poverty stricken; it gets so hot you worry your brain will melt; you can never get the right advice, directions or change; you have to watch every thing you put in your mouth, even making sure it’s closed tight in the shower; the train is late, the car breaks down, the driver doesn’t listen; your white clothes come back from the laundry grey; you see the same shawl for half the price, half an hour later; the thin, naked child turning somersaults at the corner breaks your heart; and the sight of an old woman carrying a basket of bricks on her head in the heat of the day fills you with stifled anguish.
And yet … When you wake up in the morning and India’s yellow sunshine is streaming through the window and you can hear the vegetable seller calling his wares in Hindi. When you sit in meditation by Ganga at sunrise and feel the vibration up your spine, fine-tuned by eons of rishis sitting in the same spot. When you dive into the streets and bazaars and let uncensored life swirl around you in every colour, shade and gradation known to man. When you allow the humanity of an open hand to touch your heart. When you experience the famous “hospitality of the east,” captured by the phrase Atithi Devo Bhava (Guest is God). In other words, when you allow India in, she may never leave.
Pic: Mariellen Ward.
And you may not want to leave, either. But leave I did, on a hot night in June 2005, after six months of traveling in India and blogging about my trip for family and friends. That of course is the trip that changed my life. I’ve been back to India five times since then, and my casual blog has turned into a full-time profession as a travel writer, blogger and editor.
And not a day goes by when I do not feel the dust of India within me, calling me back.
What about you? Have you been changed by travel in India? Or by travel elsewhere? Have you ever “fallen in love” with a place?
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Mariellen Ward is a Canadian freelance writer and travel blogger, well-known on the Internet for her love of “all things India.” Mariellen has traveled for more than a year altogether in India and publishes an India-inspired travel blog Breathedreamgo. She writes about India, meaningful travel and yoga for newspapers, magazines and many online sites and recently published her first book, Song of India: Tales of Travel and Transformation.
