A person came to India. A week later, she finally let the country in and fell in love with it. Apparently, she needed to come to Varanasi.
India had been on my wish list long before I started travelling, long before Eat, Pray, Love, and certainly long before meditation and Tantra entered my life.
Still, I kept leaving it for later, waiting for the moment when I would feel ready. In Varanasi, that moment arrived.
A cheerful Indian man sells you silk and cashmere, then offers to take you back to your hotel. You race through the streets on his motorbike at a speed these roads clearly weren’t made for. Cars, rickshaws, motorbikes, cows, dogs, people and mice fly past you. The steady rhythm of horns becomes a kind of mantra.
Sitting behind him, your only options are to smile, squeal with delight and trust, trust, trust.
The sounds are vivid. The colours, smells, clothes and flavours are vivid. It feels as if someone turned everything in this country up to full volume, just to make sure you feel it.
And I did. I felt a vibration run along my spine when someone placed blessed mala beads around my neck. I felt tears rising when I entered a Shiva temple.
I felt alive.
