Unforgettable India

It's really true: I will never forget my trip to India and I would go back there over and over again. People say that either you love it or you hate it. I definitely loved it. India was my first trip to Asia and I had no clue about what to expect: once I arrived, I understood that reality really overcomes immagination. I spent the first days in New Delhi and the first couple of nights I could not even sleep thinking about what I saw during the day: an extremely overcrowded city with huge differences between poor areas and modern ones. People living on the street and performing there any kind of activities like brushing their teeths, shaving their beard, cooking etc...actually the street is their home. I remember finding myself in a huge slum under a bridge in a far area of the city, seeing dozens of kids just sitting among the garbage and waiting for the day to pass by...I guess. This is a scenery that I also saw in the countryside and in smaller villages: kids and people just sitting there, in the middle of the fields or slums, watching other people passing by and waiting for the day to end. I guess society has no room for them. Actually, in most of the cases society does not even know they exsist: indeed still today not all Indians are declared to the State and sometimes they don't even know their birth date. Seeing all this is extremely saddening and can really have an impact on your morale. Another thing to me hard to digest was the begging of kids at any corner of the streets. It's not just the fact that they are so many, abandoned to themselves in the middle of the road and obliged to beg; what really strucks is that most of them are mutilated: in most of the cases blind and/or without limbs. If you go to India, please DO NOT give these kids any money: I know it seems hard to just look at them and pass by but we, as travellers, have the duty to discourage the nasty interests behind all this. On the other side, you can give them soap, shampoo, pencils, candies and any other thing that might be really useful to them: they will give you back the sweetest smiles ever. In India you will also quickly get used to walk next to a cow, a pig, a monkey, or even an elephant: the funny thing is that at the beginning it seems quite strange to be sourrounded by cows and already after a couple of days they become a normal part of the environment :o) It's amazing how the human being can get used to anything, or almost. I never got used to the Belgian weather, for instance ;o) When you go to India, you have to take into account that you will most probably get sick at one point of your trip: over almost 3 weeks I was lucky enough to be sick only for a couple of days, but what a strange experience it was: not only I was sick with my belly, the classic "delhi belly", but I also forgot how to speak English for a reason that I still can't figure out and I kept on speaking ONLY Italian to people that clearly could not understand a word of it. Thanks God my amnesia didn't last for long. Generally speaking, you need to pay attention to what you eat (avoid street food, especially meat and raw vegetables that could have been washed with dirty water) and what you drink (avoid ice cubes and water from the tap. Actually, even when you brush your teeths try to use bottled water). The germs and bacterias that you find in India are mostly unknown to western bodies and getting sick during your trip is not fun, at all.
Reading news from India nowadays, especially regarding women, I almost cannot believe it is the same country that I visited in 2010. I found Indian people to be extremely kind, welcoming and friendly and I never felt threatened during my stay there. The worse harassment I got was being asked to take pictures with them, men and women, so sooooo many pictures...I guess I was a sort of tourist attraction to them :o)
When I went to India, I was lucky enough to be there during the Holi Festival, one of the biggest events in India. If you are flexible with your dates, I advise you to go there during Holi: it's during high season, it's warm in India and amazingly fun!
As my time in India was limited, I decided to move around with a driver and avoid trains and local transport . In this way, I could see lots of things within limited time. I arranged everything from New Delhi: there are many specialized agencies over there but unfortunately I cannot recall the name of the one I used. I just know that everything run smoothly, with the driver being extremely nice and speaking very good English. Hiring a driver is something that I would recommend to girls traveling alone with not so much time on their hands. This way of traveling may sound posh and kind of less adventurous to some of you. The thing is that I believe it's better to be safe than sorry, and India for solo traveller girls may be tedious.

My itinerary was as follows:

New Delhi - Agra - Jaipur - Pushkar - Udaipur - Ranakpur - Jodhpur - Bikaner - Mandawa

Before going to India, I took the following shots:

• Hepatitis A
• Typhus
• Tetanus
• Cholera

I already had Polio and Hepatitis B.

I decided not to take anything against Malaria, the side effects were way too many.