Why I’ll Always Return to India.

I’m back in this kaleidoscopic Hindustani universe.

Back in the chaos, in the living contradictions of our humanity. The traffic, the pollution, the dust, the symphonic truck horns, and the busses dressed for the set of Paris is Burning by mustached, hardened villagers.

There’s an element of serenity to these streets. The gem in the lotus, as the Buddhists so beautifully put it. A feeling that gnaws at you at every precipice of your comfort. An inkling that you should lean into it, that you should go deeper, push into the seeming insanity of what you are witnessing in each moment. It’s what this subcontinent has always done to and for people. I suspect it’s why the truly curious always return here despite the assault on their senses, the frustrations, and the unimaginable poverty.

There’s a spark here—an indistinguishable flame burning for aeons in this Vedic cradle.

India has startled and mesmerized travelers since the first wanderers crossed the Indus River sometime in pre-history. It’s the land of the Rishi’s, the Vedas, the opulent rajas, Ayurveda, and the terrifyingly sublimely alien Hindu pantheon.

Mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and medicine are all said to have been birthed within the archaic recesses of this land. Love it or despise it (and there always seem to be two very distinct camps), India has left an indelible mark on civilization and all those who have walked her streets.

But for such a profound cultural contribution, India remains a mystery.

So much of this country makes no sense to foreigners. The streets are beyond noisy, the drivers seem to have a fetish for NDEs, and any suggestion of an orderly line will be received with a genuine cocktail of confusion and curiosity. It’s polluted, overcrowded, and riddled with a caste system so despicable it will have you questioning our humanity. Within your first five minutes at an Indian-bound airport gate, the message will be clear: you ain’t in Kansas no more.

So why on earth would anyone want to come here?

The answer is surprisingly simple: India makes you feel alive.

To me, all of life is contained within this ancient continent. Life, death, abundance, the agony, and the ecstasy of the human experience. Unimaginable poverty and wealth beyond measure. This country is certainly no walk in the park, and even seasoned travelers here find themselves momentarily caught in a glitch of surreality at the absurdity of what is transpiring before them. But it makes you feel alive.

Years ago, I was at a beach near Pondicherry in southern India with an Indian friend. As I walked to the water, I was stunned by the foulest stench my nasal hairs had ever encountered, only to be informed that the five guys standing a few meters away from us weren’t enjoying a beach bonfire; they were cremating their friend.

To the Western mind, this is pure insanity, but to Anuj, it was rudimentary. He shrugged and laughed at my horror, lighting a cigarette and singing before running into the water.

To me, that’s India.

Even the ol' boy Gandhi allegedly mused that India was the only country on earth where a person could look left to avoid what is on the right, only to find the left was just as bad.

In other words, this country doesn't let you escape reality. It forces the reality of most of the world into your consciousness and leaves you with images and interactions that will be etched into your psyche. India doesn't let you escape the real technicolor of life out there like we have managed to do in the Western world with our carefully planned cities organized to protect and hide social-economic divisions. You see it all here: unfiltered life.

Sure, if you arrive to a driver holding your surname, tinted windows, and a 5-star hotel, you'll see whatever wonderfully quaint version of India you've concocted. Your own mystical Shangri-La.

More power to you, but it won't be India.

While I’m all for the luxuries in life, India has to be intimately experienced to feel its eternal rhythm. As Bourdain taught us, you need to be in the streets talking and eating with the locals to taste the magic and the madness.

I am too often baffled by well-intentioned responses to my travels in India and my deep and enduring affection for this complex continent: a definitive rejection is the most common response, even from seemingly well-educated, worldly, curious people (although, In my opinion, such responses are practically synonymous with ignorance).

Proponents of these opinions often cite the “smell,” “pollution,” and “poverty” as being the major reasons they have never, and will never visit its chaotic streets: Three very accurate descriptions of a holiday that won’t live up to their two-week pools-scape in Kuta.

Shame.

India’s healing tonic is not its aeonic connection with the pursuit of the true nature of reality, nor the wandering baba’s waiting to tap you on the shoulder eat-pray-love-style to divine your future and lay a path of prosperity and karmic healing at your feet.

It’s the sheer chaos of a colorfully surreal universe here that forces you to find calm within the mayhem. The reality of life here that never leaves you. That even among the garbage and the wretchedness, there’s light, joy, and smiling faces everywhere. Children laughing with homemade cricket bats as they bound, bow-legged in between the cows, the street vendors, and the emaciated bodies in the gutters. The reality that cuts straight through much of the vanilla superfluous bullshit of modern Western liberal democratic life.

India will infuriate you, but perhaps that's okay. Perhaps that momentary discomfort is what travel is actually about.

A month riding the local trains in this country, a month walking the streets with hungry street kids clinging to your ankles, a few days locked in convolutions in sweat-stained bathrooms after a few dodgy chai’s and masalas, a month seeing the magic and mystery of this ancient land, is enough of a humbling experience to knock some serious priorities and radical empathy into anyone. Enough of a perspective shift for any of us.

This is India's true "spiritual" power.

India ain’t perfect. But it's unlike anywhere else on earth.