Discovering ...

I decided to post my trip only because the site was extremely useful and almost indispensable for organising my journey. In fact the only certainties when we set off were the ticket and the indispensable Lonely, which we didn't actually take as gospel but which I have to say was very useful for accommodation, food, prices and distances, unlike the Routard which in my opinion isn't very practical. We had been thinking about this trip for a few years, we tried to gather as much material as possible, but it was of little use: hearing the experience of some other traveller would have been great, and instead nothing. We did everything ourselves, but I won't deny that at London airport I was so terrified that I almost hoped the plane wouldn't take off.

My fears were then strengthened by meeting on the plane a girl who claimed to have set off on an adventure just like us, but in fact that wasn't quite the case: she worked with an Indian in Europe who had given her a thousand tips and had even booked her a car, whereas we had none of that: the adventure for us began right at the landing in Bangalore. But luckily we had been far-sighted: we had booked a few days in advance from Italy, one of the many hotels the Lonely suggested; now we just had to hope the guy remembered. At the airport, what a mirage: the prepaid taxi booth, wow! We said where we needed to go, paid 200 rupees, they gave us our receipt and we went out. Outside the airport there were loads of people, illegal taxi drivers and others, people waiting for someone who was due to arrive, etc...

In short, a really fine mess; luckily our taxi driver came straight over; I don't know how he worked out that he had to take exactly us, but it didn't matter, what mattered was that he had picked us up from there and dropped us right outside our hotel, where to my great surprise I discovered that the guy remembered my phone call in his very broken English. From then on, for the first week it was quite a shock; our first thought, as soon as we got out of the taxi, was: what on earth have we come here for? And now what? I had moments of huge despair, I tried to find any kind of solution, I even got to thinking about holiday resorts!!!!! India had defeated me, I thought! And instead no: at the first opportunity it welcomed me as only this country knows how.

We met children at the market who gave us eye-popping smiles just because we had given them a banana, or again the laughter of an elderly farmer when he thought he had tricked me out of 10 rupees for a basket of fruit worth perhaps half that, but we would have given him 30 rupees just to enjoy a few more minutes of that wonderful laughter. I remember it as if it were today, so much longing.. It was thanks to all the wonderful people of the Bangalore city market that Peppe and I managed to get our Sicilian colour back and, little by little, the enthusiasm that had brought us there. Bangalore, apart from the wonderful city market, offers nothing at all but traffic and chaos.

In fact the big cities in India were unliveable for us; we are two untidy and inconsistent people, but Indian disorder is exponential in the cities, and this, mixed with a good dose of poverty, equals a deadly mix from an emotional point of view that perhaps I wasn't able to handle, especially in the first days. Even now I still can't say it was an easy trip; crossing the road was always an experience, you never understood when, where or how; finding your way was a challenge and you had to rely completely on the rickshaws hoping they had understood where we wanted to go, otherwise you had to start all over again, pull out the map and try to work out where you were!! Then again, a sense of adventure is crucial when travelling, you have plenty of time, the important thing is always to have a roof over your head for the night.

Having been there was wonderful, but I believe going back will be much better; we learned a thousand things and next year it will all be much simpler