Incredible & Unforgettable India

fter staying in India for eight days, there is one thing I know for certain, and that is I will be going home a different person.

How can I put into words everything that I have seen, felt, sensed, smelled and experienced in India for the past 7 days? Incredible cannot even begin to describe India. Everything is so foreign and yet familiar at the same time. As our tour bus went around New Delhi, Agra and Bangalore, there would be snatches of images here and there that would remind me of home. But it is obviously foreign, and obviously so India.

It was while waiting to check-in for our flight that would take us from Kuala Lumpur (our stopover from Manila) to New Delhi that I realized how it feels to be a foreigner. The passengers milling around the waiting area were 98% Indians. You can only count with one hand the number of Caucasians and Asians around.

As I looked around and caught a lot of them looking at me and Lily, my co-journalist from the Philippines, I thought: “So this is how the foreigners visiting Philippines feels when the locals are looking at them.” I wondered then how many times I've done that to foreigners in the Philippines and not really thinking about how they feel. 

It felt strange. It was unnerving at first, catching them sneaking in looks at us because we looked different. Some were even openly staring. It was uncomfortable sitting beside and opposite the Indians at the waiting terminal as they all chattered on in Hindi. We always will fear what we don’t know or understand. All I know about India are Taj Mahal, Bollywood and the movie “3 Idiots” that was such a hit back in the Philippines. I’ve had friends tell me on Facebook before I left to bring back Aamir Khan with me.

But even more than the excitement of being a tourist and traveller for the first time is the people you experience along the way. You just don’t meet them. Even if the contact may be brief, you walk away bringing something of them in you. And that is an experience.

India is the first country I visited outside the Philippines. Anyone reading my blog knows how much I’ve been wanting to travel abroad, and India is the fulfillment of my wanderlust dreams.

I am blessed ever so much that this trip is sponsored by India’s External Affairs Ministry, which works like our Department of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines.

The 20 journalists from ASEAN countries who were here in India under the ASEAN-India Media Exchange Program were accorded the red carpet treatment from day one. We were booked in lavish accommodations at 5-star, super deluxe and premium ITC Hotels Luxury Collection in New Delhi and later in Bangalore from Feb. 11 to 18. We rode around in roomy, comfortable tour buses. We toured in the top destinations in Delhi and Bangalore. We met and had an audience with India’s high-ranking officials and ASEAN dignitaries. Don’t even get me started on the food.  

Simply said, we were shown the best of India and also saw the bad side of it. A lot of my impressions and misconceptions of India and Indians were shot down within the 8 days I stayed here. 

In the next couple of hours as I prepare to fly out from India within 7 hours (Bangalore to Kuala Lumpur then to Manila), I will write and blog about my 8 days in India. But please know that they will be the words of a first-time traveller, of someone who jumped over the fence to the other side for the first time. So whatever comparison I make, it will only be between the Philippines and India.

India is indeed incredible. But more than that, for me, it is unforgettable.