Unfulfilled Dreams

Do you have a dream? Somewhere or something that has captured your imagination most of your life, yet try as you might you have not yet been able to fulfill?

My dream is India - in all it's glory, noise, confusion, squalor and majesty!

I took University courses in my 30's in Indian history and Indian religions, drinking up every drop of information presented (although my senior brain has forgotten a lot of it now!) I watched every movie I could that was based in India, every documentary, read non-fiction books on India and fiction based in India.

But life, as always, always seemed to get in the way of me living my dream, be it marriage, children, career, health issues, family commitments, husband's bad knees ... whatever, something else always took precedent. That was OK, I simply told myself that there was plenty of time, I knew I would go someday. Then last year I turned 60 ... what? How did that happen? I'm suddenly a senior? Where did all those years go? I need to start living my dreams NOW! But, hubby needed a knee replacement, so again I waited.

Knees now good as new, and we're finally going to India next January!!

It's a funny thing about India. Say the word and you instantly get two reactions. People either screw up their noses and look at you in total disbelief that you'd even consider going to such a place, or they get a serene half smile on their lips and start going into raptures of how much they adore India and recount long tales of their own travels there.

Yes, India is a dichotomy. Totally unexplainable.


It's home to over 1.2 billion people of wildly varying religions, cultures and levels of wealth. Only 63 years since declaring its Independence from English rule, modern India is still defining itself, sometimes against the friction inside and outside of its borders.

But,I've found a fantastic website at www.indiamike.com which is helping me prepare (as much as one can) since it's aimed at travelers to India - it's frank and offers very down-to-earth honest advice. For example, one article for virgin India visitors (like me) makes no bones about what my first impressions will be like:

"Your welcome to India is not a friendly one. The first thing you notice is the people. I mean lots of people. People moving in all directions. You have to deal with the worst of India head-on, and it’s really raw. Be it the beggars, the touts, the poor children, or the local taxi drivers, you have to deal with all of them minutes after your arrival.

Whatever tricks and tips you have prepared yourself with are forgotten in a matter of minutes after facing this rude welcome. It’s like learning to swim by reading a book, and then jumping right into the pool. India teaches you new lessons only after you have failed the test." (http://www.indiamike.com/india-articles/8_the-india-confusion)

This is the kind of thing first time visitors need to read, but as my daughter said after her first visit to India last year, "Mum, you think you are prepared for it all, but it still hits you over the head like a 2 by 4!"

Has this dampened my enthusiasm at all? Not one little bit. I know that visiting India is more of an experience than a vacation, but I think that I might just have an itinerary planned which would give us a bit of both - more about that in my next post. Stay tuned!