India

India, a great love, a great torment. With me a book, The Twelve Questions, accompanies me and introduces me to this land, this world so far from everything I had seen before. What can I say, so far I have not denied myself anything, travelling from Africa to North and South America, Asia, Europe, Australia, but my curious eyes and my indelible memories here have felt so far from everything seen before...... India is a universe unto itself on our earth; how I loved it for everything I look for in a journey far from home, diversity, traditions, history, nature, culture....and the cities, the buildings, the frescoes out of a thousand and one nights.

In cities like Udaipur you can lose yourself in the maze of streets, looking up at the majestic white walls of the Lake Palace and the city palaces; Agra is a waking dream....Taj Mahal...and you think of India, Taj Mahal and you are at the foot of something unique, it takes your breath away and you remain enchanted gazing at its minarets, its domes, its reflection in the water.... and you no longer want to leave that spot. New Delhi, this is not a city….it is a universe within the universe India. A chaotic, enormous city, interesting at its heart, Delhi, with the imposing Red Fort, its mosques, the government buildings and its immense parks. India, how I hated it....... I thought I had seen a lot up to then, but in fact I had not yet seen anything.

Some realities are indescribable, the abandonment of people along the roads is hallucinatory and the lump in your throat for all that misery around you never leaves you. It is a country running at two different speeds; great hopes for the future, growth and progress for many, or rather, perhaps few compared to all the others. They talk of 700 million people below the poverty line and the heaviest thing while travelling around India…..is that you see every single one of these people…..you sense their presence, you perceive their suffering. I wondered for fifteen days about women, children, men, living on the edge of the road, in the middle of the most congested traffic and the fumes of the cars.

Under a scorching sun, well, okay….they shade themselves under a cloth recovered here and there, at night sleeping under the stars isn't so bad…… but sooner or later the monsoons will come, for 4 months it will do nothing but rain…..and then? What will they do? At times the filth all around you is downright disarming, you're forced to walk on it, to trample it, to smell it all the way to the bottom….no place excluded, try walking in the bazaar of Agra, 4 minutes on foot from the Taj Mahal…. The cuisine then is still a vivid memory today. The local foods are the children of a millennial tradition and the specialities, from region to region, from city to city, change radically. The constant, though, is the fire they give off and leave inside you, super-spiced and hot foods beyond belief…..

Delicious flavours but eyes in tears and a burning tongue, for someone like me who isn't used to it ( but I wonder who is….) a real torture!! India, a hospitable country, kind and courteous people. The evenings at the home of my friends Chirag and Anay among my fondest memories, with the whole family in full, from the grandparents….to the latest arrivals. I have seen India, now will I really have seen everything? I believe and hope not. How many places still to explore and how many people to meet. It was a powerful, important, unique and unrepeatable experience…. after every journey, the suitcase is always fuller…..but there's still plenty of room…..