I'm not a little girl anymore. I may be young, but my little girl days have officially past. I just returned from a married friend's baby shower, for oldness' sake. I'm young, but not little... despite what my older brother says. As a young person, I'm working on fulfilling the things that I dreamt about when I was little. The most important of those things has got to be going to India.
I don't know why, but when I was eleven years old I was struck by this bizarre and uncanny connection with India, a land I knew (and still know) practically nothing about. The same way some of my friends got enraptured in Greek Mythology, I was enthralled by stories of Hindu folklore. I'm not sure what attracted me more, the brilliance of the legends: a blue child with the universe in his mouth, a he-she creator-destroyer, a terrifying skull adorned goddess, a chariot riding sun god, and my favorite elephant headed Ganesh... or the sheer beauty of the culture as I perceived it: orchestrated chaos, colors of unmatched intensity, spices and sweets like heaven, cows, elephants, saris, bindis, and a general exoticness like I had never been introduced to before. Something about the place struck me like true love and I've been saying that it's my No. 1 dream travel destination ever since.
Now, I consider myself a well-traveled young person. I've been spoiled rotten in the travel department, especially with european countries. Actually, I can't honestly count how many times I've been overseas. I'm only half way boasting about that, the other half of me feels pretty ashamed because I didn't pay for any of those plane tickets and I would hate to sound like I took any of them for granted. I didn't. But by now I've got all the big european underground rail systems down and I know my way around international airports better than I do shopping malls. I'm familiar enough with Western countries and cultures that I easily recall the giddy excitement and smell in difference in the air when getting off the plane in Heathrow, Munich, or Charles de Gaulle and can hear the sound of rolling luggage into train and ferry stations to maneuver amongst any of the countries in between. Nothing about that scares me or even feels all too foreign anymore.
INDIA is a whole 'nother thing. I finally, finally am going to go. If I've ever had a calling in life, it's been to India. And by god, I'm going to answer it. I'm not going in hopes to find myself... that kind of stuff is bologna if you ask me. But I am going because I think there's something there for me, and I have a feeling it's a big kick in the pants.
This is my first entirely self purchased plane ticket, my first developing country, my first time seeing toilet paper and mosquito nets on packing recommendations for hotel stays, my first time thinking about malaria... I have no idea what to expect here. I've only heard about the inescapable smell of India that hits like a smack in the face once deboarding the plane, or Dehli Belly, or skinny Rikshaw drivers, and skilled but captivating begging children, and unapologetic staring... and dressing conservatively in beastly hot weather out of custom rather than choice, and shoddy electricity and limited running water... This truly is an entirely different world, and it is no longer a pretty daydream- it's a dose of reality.
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