My vision for this guide is to take the scary prospect of traveling to India alone for the first time and break it down into manageable steps – tangible tips that will help you feel less daunted.
I am all too aware that bad things happen in India, and that just because I was never groped does not mean that it doesn’t happen every day, to local and foreign women alike, but I am also aware of the intense warmth and beauty of the country.
I’m not much of a “returner” when it comes to travel, but I felt a strange sense of unfinished business with India. I missed the chaos, the chai, the challenge – and I knew what I had to do. I had to go back.
As far as I have found, a love for India isn’t wrapped up in any one city or any one experience. Instead, it’s a thousand little things that have slowly folded into each other, into one overwhelming love for this fascinating country.
Now I can say there was that time in Dharamsala, when a people cut off from their country and their families marched for two hours in protest, demanding action, dreaming of home.
It was to this view I returned on Sunday afternoon. With the Tibetans’ chants still ringing in my ears (What we want? We want freedom!), I sat down on the ledge, opened up my sketchbook, and turned to the valley below me for inspiration.
Last week I realized what exactly these last four weeks have been for me – a kind of do-it-yourself writing retreat. I didn’t need to wait for an official fellowship; all it took was me carving out the time to come to Goa and get to work.
What if – there were those two words again, the harbingers of regret. Because as much as I love my home here in Goa, I also knew that three months from now, I didn’t want to be asking myself – what if I’d gone with them to Dharamsala?
And usually it’s right then – as my face is turned to the sun and my arms and legs are moving in great big circles through the Arabian Sea – that it hits me, every day: This is my life.
“Let’s take you home,” Hannah said, and I swear to you, I could’ve cried. And after an hour of unpacking and setting out knick-knacks, I did cry, just a little, and they were all tears of big, huge, inexpressible joy.