As they say, “If you can travel in India, then you can travel anywhere.”
Traveling in India, particularly Hyderabad is like a roller coaster of emotions of both ups and downs. It’s a giant mix of good and bad, happy and evil. It’s both challenging and inspiring. And everything is thrown at you in the face at the same time.
Because of this, I began to develop a Love-Hate relationship with Hyderabad. One moment, I loved it, and the next, I hated it. At times I felt enlightened and inspired, and other times were filled with anxiety and exhaustion.
I have dreamt of India since I was very young. A world of genies and elephants and dancing princesses, a place where imagination manifests in reality. When I first stepped onto Indian soil, I tried to match the colours and chaos all around me to the pictures in my head, but I quickly learned that India is unimaginable. The colours, the noise, the smells and the sheer number of people… my expectations were quickly blown out of the water, because it is endlessly unpredictable. I learned to take it as it is, embracing each experience as my own and without judgement, as there is really no yardstick to hold India against.
For me, the most amazing part about traveling India was being 100% immersed in the culture – more so than any other country that I have visited.
My eyes were wide open everywhere I went and my jaw was on the ground. My brain was trying to process everything that I was seeing. Everything was shockingly new.
Hyderabad was infinitely varied, vibrant, charismatic, enlightening, frustrating, defeating, and clamoring. It offers both the most incredible experiences and the toughest challenges you will ever face while travelling, and it can be completely exhausting.
By the end of my 45 day internship there, I came to a point where my emotions had no real grounding in the context of my experiences.
I became accepting of the fact that in a day I could swing from elation to tears, from contentment and peace to frustration and despair, simply because of the intensity of every day there. Never have I learned so much from a place, and never have I felt simultaneously so immersed and yet alienated whilst travelling.
I became accepting of the fact that in a day I could swing from elation to tears, from contentment and peace to frustration and despair, simply because of the intensity of every day there. Never have I learned so much from a place, and never have I felt simultaneously so immersed and yet alienated whilst travelling.
You cannot simply be in Hyderabad, the place consumes you, envelopes you and buries itself deep in your heart, becoming part of you like it’s tattooed into your skin. If you fight it you will lose. But if you succumb, letting yourself be carried on the waves, you will find a country like no other; a place that is bigger than the sum of it’s geographical parts, a place that changes you from the inside out. And I know that it will pull me back again and again.
To say that India is an experience for all five senses is an understatement. But that's what makes it so memorable.
