By Tara Kelly

By Talia Adry

Staff Writers

Our first exposure to India was through thick, gray windows as we were whisked away on an eight-hour train ride from Delhi to Dehradun. Platforms zipped by with clusters of people, goats, monkeys, cows and rubbish – transitioning from open fields to small villages. Next, a perilous, god-fearing, terrifying bus ride to Mussoorie, a sleepy town in the foothills of the Himalayas, where the air is freezing and stray dogs roam aimlessly.

The Himalayas have an almost mystical feeling to them – we were awoken at dawn the first morning to the sounds of chanting on the wind. We had breakfast prepared for us each morning – fresh mango juice, coffee, omelets and papayas brightly displayed. We spent our time in Mussoorie in a village school seeing how children make paper, meeting Indian authors such as Ruskin Bond and Sudhir Thapliyal and celebrating the New Year. Mussoorie made us feel genuinely welcomed – at home in an environment with which we had no familiarity. At a house party on New Year’s Eve, we looked out over the landscape and saw each tiny light flickering on the horizon as a good omen for the many things to come. Being in Mussoorie was our first glimpse of India, our first love.

By the time we got to camping on the Ganges, we barely had time to assess the beauty in Rishikesh – glittering baubles and bright clothing danced in front of us when we shopped. On the back of a motorcycle at dusk, the roads and the river flew by. We felt the cool water rush over us while whitewater rafting and felt the majesty of the mountains – only this time the hills looked down on us. The sound of the river rushing onward lulled us to sleep in our camping tents.

We saw poverty – it was as if it were waiting to surprise us as we walked down the streets. Five-year-old girls held infants in front of tents and shacks. Disfigured men crouched in corners and rattled tin cups for coins. It would be too much to take, but then suddenly, we would be invited to a pristine palace resort for lunch, where guests practiced yoga and peacocks strutted freely. India’s more obvious contrasts are between its wealthy and its poor. It was impossible not to notice what we carried on us – what we could have given a poor beggar on the street.

Delhi is a whirlwind. It takes you down twisting small alleys stuffed with street vendors and markets selling everything a person could think of – tiny trinkets to shoes and spices. There is so much to look at that we barely knew where to start – colors and scents and people carrying packages of goods on their heads. Go out of the bazaars and you see what looks like suburban America with its long stretches of highway and apartment complexes, only to find forts and monuments that are hundreds of years old.

Khajuraho brought us into the villages and the lives of its people. The best way to experience India is by moving – and we constantly were. We found ourselves one afternoon pedaling bicycles over dirt and gravel roads. There is freedom in the countryside – alongside mustard fields and farms, there are small streams where people are bathing. When the sunsets and light fills the crevices in between the temples, there is an inexplicable beauty that is breathtaking. Later, in Agra, we put our shoe covers on and watched the same light hit the white marble stairs of the Taj Mahal.

We were admittedly ill prepared for visiting a third-world country, and were struck by how everyone we saw was just struggling to live – one-man barber shops, teenagers selling pens or towels on the highway, elderly men warding off cows with sticks as they pushed vegetable carts, Sikh devotees working in a massive kitchen to feed 25,000 people a day, or 10-year-old boys charging a hundred rupees for henna art (but before nine o’ clock, because they have to go to school in the morning). Mostly, we were struck by India’s ever-changing settings and faces, all of which are indelibly etched into our memories.

In Delhi there’s a sign that reads, “In the land of India, one drop of love is like an ocean in the desert.”  Traveling the countryside over the past weeks, we all lost our hearts to India – and it is clear that we will never fully recover.