Goodbye India!

After two months of travelling, I arrived back in Kolkata to collect my excess baggage and meet some of my friends who are working here. I returned at 6am on the train and before long, I was bouncing through the city in a taxi, listening to helium-filled women singing Hindi music. It was good to be back. That night, I went for a meal with the other volunteers. I have never seen so many Irish people in one Indian restaurant. There were a bunch of secondary school students visiting the projects and various other people, most of whom I didn't know. I didn't mind as I hadn't met any Irish people during my eight weeks of travelling. Perhaps I was hanging out in the wrong places. Or perhaps Irish people are afraid of India. I don't know. My advice to anyone considering a trip to India is: go. Go and see how one billion people live in relative harmony together. Travel by train, see the countryside and leave the flying to the busy people. Visit the Taj Mahal but don't stay in Agra for too long. Take a walk along Marine Drive in Mumbai as the sun sets over the Arabian Sea. Find a beach hut in Goa and do as little as possible for a week. Give your bones a good rattling on a jeep safari through the Wayanad Wildlife District in Kerala. Take a scooter through the Western Ghats around Munnar and see what a real tea plantation look like. Darjeeling may be famous for its tea but the plants themselves aren't much to look at. In Munnar, they're as green as Irish grass. Munnar was probably my favourite place in India. The food was fantastic, the beds could be slept on and the mountains scared the small children out of me. But there were times when I said to myself, "what am I doing here?" There were moments when I thought I was never going to get home. But they passed and I stuck with it. For me, that's quite an achievement. Most of the time, I lead a very quiet, boring life. Sometimes, I like it that way. Other times, I just want to do something that makes me go "wow!" I'm glad I did it because India is very rewarding. Apart from the heat. I'm a cold-weather individual. I'm happiest on the side of a mountain with the rain falling sideways and the wind turning my face inside-out. This must have been my first winter where I was able to go swimming in the sea in the middle of January and not succumb to hypothermia. I'm sure it'll still be like winter when I get home but I'll adapt. Nothing that can't be sorted out by a nice cup of tea. I would like to come back to India but I've no idea when that will happen. It's not a question of expense as India is dirt cheap to live in. It is merely a question of time. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you don't like it, tough. I had my fun and that's all that matters.