When Eaman and I saw each other at the end of our 10-day meditation retreat, we were so eager to tell each other everything. We had been separated (by gender) and had taken a vow of silence, so, to finally be able to spill the beans was a pretty big deal. I let him tell me everything first and then I told him all about life on the other side of the center. And truly, we could not have had more different experiences. Seeing as how they were so different, we thought it made more sense to each tell you about our own experiences. But first, a little background. I’m going to go ahead and assume the questions people will ask us about the course because they’re probably the same questions we had about it ourselves.

I couldn’t really take pictures and didn’t even have my camera, but this photo of the pagoda at our center, called Dhamma Sota, will give you an idea.

What is Vipassana?

Vipassana is a meditation technique with roots in Buddhism that dates back about 2500 years. The goal of this technique is “to see things as they really are.” It involves inspecting the connection between the mind and the body to remove mental impurities with the goal of attaining happiness, a.k.a. liberation. Contrary to what a lot of people think, it’s not about focusing on an image or word or sound to relax; it involves a lot more work that has you zeroing in on the subtle sensations throughout your body. For a more detailed explanation, check out Dhamma’s description.

Why did you do it?
We wanted the Asian chapter of our travels to be less about hiking or socializing with hostel friends and more about focusing on ourselves, both as a couple and as individuals. We looked into both meditation and yoga retreats, but in the end the meditation seemed more challenging and different from anything we had ever done. Plus, the yoga retreats we found were expensive, and we had a hard time navigating among the hundreds of retreats out there.

How did you hear about it?
The other reason we knew we wanted to do a meditation course was because we had a solid recommendation from someone we trust. Pratt (from Hawaii fame), who also happens to be a yoga teacher, has done two Vipassana courses through Dhamma and spoke so highly of it, and since she’s one of our life role models, we said, If she did it, we should do it.

Is it religious?
Despite roots in Buddhism — Vipassana was reportedly founded by Gautama Buddha — Vipassana is non-sectarian.

Why India?
Vipassana flourished in Myanmar thanks to S.N. Goenka, but India is where it all started! Also, we thought the meditation would be a nice reprieve from crazy India. (And it was.)

What was the daily schedule?
Extremely well-planned out in our opinion. Even though we woke up at 4 a.m. and were meditating nearly 10 hours a day, it wasn’t exhausting.

4 a.m. Wake-up bell
4:30 – 6:30 a.m. Group meditation
6:30 – 7 a.m. Breakfast
7 – 8 a.m. Rest/shower
8 – 9 a.m. Group meditation
9 – 11 a.m. Meditation in hall, personal quarters or cell, according to teacher’s instruction
11 – 11:30 a.m. Lunch
11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. Rest
1 – 2:30 p.m. Meditation in hall, personal personal quarters or cell, according to teacher’s instruction
2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Group meditation
3:30 – 5 p.m. Meditation in hall, personal quarters or cell, according to teacher’s instruction
5 – 5:30 p.m. Snack/tea break
5:30 – 6 p.m. Rest
6 – 7 p.m. Group meditation
7:15 – 8:15 Watch a video discourse by S.N. Goenka (there was an English version in another room)
8:30 – 9 p.m. Group meditation
9:30 p.m. Lights out

What’s with the silence?
It’s called “Noble Silence” and involves zero talking, body language and even eye contact. The only talking you’d do is to a teacher or assistant teacher if you have any questions or concerns. It makes sense considering this is a very personal journey and talking would likely have you comparing your experience to everyone else’s. (But some other student did make it a point to verbalize how bad it was for me to crack my knuckles. Forget the noises of all the bodily functions in the room; Archana’s knuckles are the problem!)

Did they let you take breaks?
I went into it thinking they’d be really strict, but so many people stepped out to go to the bathroom, stretch their legs or get water. The idea is: Don’t go for too long but do what you need to do.

How painful was it?
Very. Of course it gets better as you go, but at times I found the pain excruciating. Eaman fared better in terms of sitting for long hours. More on that below. Props to the old ladies and men who sat like rock stars.

Two meals a day. Yikes. How was the food?
Delicious! Sure, it was a little repetitive, but it was healthy vegetarian Indian food and exactly what we needed to clean out our systems after a year of junk eating. You may be surprised to hear that we were rarely hungry. (That tea break was a more substantial meal than I expected.) Plus, food was served buffet-style, so you could technically take as much as you want. That said, it’s not super comfortable to sit meditating with a full stomach.

What was the setting? Peaceful or prison-like?
The center was located about one hour outside New Delhi near the town of Gurgaon and very removed from most signs of life. We were separated by gender — though I would see Eaman in the meditation hall and during the evening discourse — and the rooms were clean, comfortable, with a fan and electricity most of the time. (No hot water though.) The actual grounds were like a forest meets botanical garden meets zoo, thanks to some peacocks, monkeys, frogs, weird birds and crazy insects that reside there. Watching them was a great way to unwind after those long meditation sittings. The less peaceful part was the barbed wire atop the brick wall that separated us from the rest of the world and the shards of glass in between the first layer of wire and the top of the brick. Not so zen.

Were there any Indian locals there?
Actually, it was mostly Indian locals. There were only about a dozen foreigners, representing Japan, Russia, Italy, Israel and the Netherlands among other places, within the 125-person mix.

How much does it cost?
It’s a donation-based program with the philosophy that a prior student’s donation makes your stay possible.

What did you get out of it?
That answer is a bit complicated. See below.

In His Words.
Two vegetarian meals a day and waking up at 4 a.m. The old me would say that’s a no-go. But I wanted to look past that and do something good (a.k.a. challenging) for myself. As far as the silence, not talking was easy for the first six or seven days, but after that, my mind was like someone with ADD changing the channels on a satellite TV every second. (It’s a good thing silence is broken on the morning of the 10th day and we had a day to re-acclimate because I was dying to get my thoughts out!) But the physical element of sitting nine+ hours a day was definitely physically grueling, especially with my prior knee problems and a dislocated shoulder.

The teacher had said that midway through the course, some issues — metaphysically called sankaras — may bubble up when we meditate and on day six it happened to me. These were issues that were always in the back of my mind but ones I had never addressed directly. So just as he had warned us, day six was the toughest for me. I was angry and sad and consumed and I couldn’t focus. But each day after, it got easier. I had a lot of conversations with myself and also took notes from what the technique teaches you — that your negative emotions hurt you, not anyone else. Over the next few days, I resolved my issues, and it’s worth mentioning that I still feel at peace now.

You learn a lot about patience during Vipassana. During meditation, I felt people staring at me, even though we’re told not to look at anyone else. I got frustrated and annoyed, wondering why all these eyes were on me. After Noble Silence ended, I talked to a lot of the guys and realized they were just really curious about me, my background and what brought me to Vipassana. In fact, I thought I did an average job at the whole thing, but the guy who had sat behind me later said to me that I was the iron man. “You inspired me to sit still,” he said. That was a shocker. It showed me that I need to exercise patience so negative emotions don’t take over me. It made me realize that physical pain and frustration, along with all these sankaras, are really just in your mind and can be controlled. You realize the negativity has no home, and it leaves your system.

I’m the kind of person who’s laid back 99 percent of the time and can explode like a volcano — courtesy of a cheating taxi driver or pushy salesperson — one percent of the time. It can be easy to lose my balance and patience. Since leaving the center, I’ve already noticed a change. During lunch at a kebab shop in Delhi after meditation, we were served under-cooked chicken. I normally would’ve blown up — remember that bout of salmonella in Cusco, Peru? Yeah, I didn’t want that again — but I was calm, explained what happened and didn’t get angry. And when I sat back down, Archana and I both talked about how different my reaction was. We thought, Whoa, that’s a change.

But the whole experience wasn’t just about learning patience. I learned about adaptability, having been taken out of my comfort zone and being thrown into a setting that’s totally different from anything I’m used to. After day one, you accept that this is how it is and you can either have positive energy and make the most of it or anxiously wait for each day to pass. If your mind is strong, you can adapt to anything. That’s a good lesson for anything in life.

It also made me realize religion is more about you and less about rituals and ceremonies, as the technique emphasizes personal experience as opposed to blindly following dogma or theories. Going forward, I want to do everything in my life because it has meaning for me, not because I’m supposed to do it.

It’s only been a week and I’m sure I need to give it some time and continue to practice, so my goal is to meditate at least one hour a day and keep improving myself. I’ll let you know how it goes!

In Her Words.
I began the course as World’s Most Typical Vipassana Student. Day two was hard and day six was even harder, just like the teacher had said. Thoughts in my head were ricocheting like a pinball machine, just like the teacher had said. When he said to feel sensations, I thought, “What sensations?” just like the teacher had said would happen. It was all very typical. Then, I ended the course as World’s Worst Vipassana Student. When you start the course, you take five precepts and one of them is not to engage in killing. I killed some bugs in my room. Maybe that’s where it all went downhill.

I went into this experience, thinking, “Oh, this sounds different. I’ll try it.” I’m not sure that’s the right attitude to have with something like this. I now know that the more you put into it and the more seriously you take it, the more benefits you reap. The whole time I felt like an observer — perhaps that’s the journalist in me — and I never completely wove myself into the fabric of the course.

I was sad to be away from Eaman, which I know sounds clingy, but can you imagine, after one year of 24/7 together, we all of a sudden were separated and, to top it off, in this intimidating situation? I was also really nervous about sitting all day. Eaman had taken to meditation rather quickly in Laos, but I had not. And I was picked on consistently by one of the assistant teachers. (“Don’t braid your hair in the dining hall.” “Don’t touch me [when I tapped her shoulder]. You’re not supposed to touch me.” “Don’t move your seat without telling me.” Or my favorite: “Don’t take someone else’s meditation cushion. That’s very bad.” OK, mine had disappeared, lady, and I don’t love being spoken to like I’m a five-year-old.) I seriously felt like everything I was doing was wrong, and coupled with the fact that I wasn’t having much success with my focusing, I began to feel sullen, antsy and frustrated. By the end of day 7, I was completely and utterly checked out. It was like, You want me to concentrate? I’ll show you concentration! During group meditations, I’d go through old dance routines in my head or think about what recipes I want to learn from my mom when I go home. When we were allowed to meditate in our cells if we wanted, I’d go just so I could sit in there with my eyes open and lay on the ground or do yoga stretches. Like I said, Worst Vipassana Student Ever.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t hate it and I certainly don’t regret it because 1. the worst experiences are the ones I learn the most from and 2. I still walked away with some positive elements. I did have good meditation days, days when I could really focus on my breathing and practice all that was being taught to us. I had a few days when I could sit still and meditate for a full hour without changing position, which taught me a great deal about discipline. I grew to like the silence; it gave me a chance to evaluate this past year and also think about any latent issues that I had been bottling up. I loved the food, and being a creature of habit, I loved the routine and totally relished waking up early and falling asleep by 9:30 p.m. It felt good.

I also really loved the evening discourses. S.N. Goenka is a powerful speaker, and there was so much I took from these sessions. I learned about how we always remember the negative and rarely the positive, how meaningless rituals can be without any sincerity behind them, how personal experience should always be the deciding factor in whether you prescribe to something — meditation techniques or otherwise. He says that we shouldn’t learn from the videos because it’s just intellectual and that we should instead learn from our own experience, but even so, the discourses were wonderful food for thought.

I beat myself up about the meditation course quite a bit towards the end of the 10 days and immediately after. I kept grilling myself, “Why don’t you feel like these other people who’ve come out of the course with tears of joy?” “Why didn’t you make that same connection?” Everyone had told me this would be a huge, life-changing experience and I really didn’t feel like that. I know, that’s exactly how not to think, since the entire point of Noble Silence is to avoid comparison chatter.

And then I got real.

I participated in something so physically and mentally challenging, something that so few people even know about and I didn’t even leave early. I still had a lot of positive takeaways and am now armed with a skill that’ll always be in my back pocket. I’d hesitate to call Vipassana a life-changing experience because it can set up such high expectations, but I think everyone takes out of it what he/she chooses and you can still end up with useful building blocks. Remember, it’s not for everyone (not sure it was for me) but still a good experience. As I’ve learned many times this year, something that takes you out of your element, something that can make you want to cry, something that scares the crap out of you is always good for the mind, body and soul.

It might’ve been a little more poetic to end our trip together in some terrible hostel after a crazy bus ride and getting cheated by rickshaw drivers. But we closed it out in beautiful Delhi homes, eating at exclusive social clubs and being treated to massages.

We actually didn’t do a lick of sightseeing in Delhi. (Our time there was focused more on the meditation course. Plus, why sight-see when, unlike so many places we’ve traveled to, we had friends through which we could experience the city?) But what we failed to learn about Delhi, we made up for with some valuable lessons and new role models in the world of hospitality. Let me share some background:

Scenario #1. We were hosted by our lovely friends Kavita and Shantanu; she’s from the U.S. and he’s from Delhi, but they only recently came to India from D.C. after he got transferred to Delhi for work. They were gracious enough to let us stay with them — in our own luxurious room — for a couple of days before our meditation sitting, which was a treat in and of itself. Then they had to go and up themselves by feeding us with awesome food, letting us use their driver to get around town, and hiring a beautician come to the house to give us facials and massages. And they let us stay in their home once again after meditation, even though they were out of town. Above and beyond much?

Dinner at the beautiful Lodi, The Garden Restaurant.

K and S’s cook used to work as a barista at Indian chain Cafe Coffee Day. He made us the most amazing frothy coffee…whenever we wanted.

Scenario #2. Our friend Anand had us over to his family’s gorgeous home in the city, where we ate one of the best meals we had in all of India. That’s because their cooks use a lot of ingredients sourced from Anand’s family’s own farm. We loved catching up with our friend and meeting his hilarious cousin who performed some crazy good raps for us, but I must say, that fresh paneer was the highlight. (Sorry, Anand.)

Scenario #3. We even got to see my childhood friend, Neha! She’s now a married mom with a busy wedding planning business in India’s capital, but we managed to squeeze in a double-date with her and her husband at a members-only social club, where we caught up on where our lives have gone since high school and dined fried cheese balls. (Just because it’s members-only doesn’t mean we can’t eat fried cheese.)

So why is this relevant to anyone except the people mentioned in the post?

Well, like Sergio in Buenos Aires who helped us find an apartment, or Priscilla who made us feel incredibly at home in her  apartment, or Mike and Maylin who sheltered us, fed us and spoiled us silly in Panama, or Craig, Pratt and the rest of our Oahu ohana who took us under their wings (especially Brett, who, just five minutes after meeting us, let us stay for a week in a vacant room in his house when we were homeless), or Fareesa in Hong Kong who sacrificed so much — her time, her bedroom, etc. — to make us comfortable, these people showed us the true meaning of hospitality.

Eaman and I both come from cultures where hospitality plays a significant role, so I’m not saying we’ve been chilly or unwelcoming to any of our guests, but I do think we had a thing or two to learn when it came to really making someone feel at home. Printing out a map, writing down restaurant recommendations or stocking the pantry with just a few extra goodies can do wonders for your guest’s excitement and make them feel more included and less intrusive. It certainly did for us. We were just so in awe of our friends, their generosity and their good hearts that so many times, Eaman and I would just look at each other with bugged-out eyes and jaws dropped, wondering how these sweet people came into our lives. It’s definitely a pay-it-forward kind of thing, so we can’t wait to have people over to the home of wherever we live next so we can practice everything that these people have taught us.

Yes, that’s an invite!

*Contrary to my rather exaggerated headline, we did learn stuff about Delhi, thanks to a drive around town with Kavita and Shantanu. That said, we still never visited Humayun’s Tomb even though it was a five-minute walk from their home. Whoops.

Through good times and bad, we’ve learned a few things about traveling on the cheap in India and would hate to withhold the juice.

1. Thou shalt not lose thy patience. India has required more patience than any other country. From pushy salespeople to conniving rickshaw drivers to complete lacks of efficiency and organization in some respects, we were constantly tested. Fortunately, India has also turned out to be one of the more rewarding journeys for this very reason.

2. Though shalt bargain for everything. It’s not just about bazaars and taxi rides, we bargained especially hard for hotels, which wasn’t as common of a practice in SE Asia.

3. Thou shalt get a mobile. My uncle hooked us up with an Indian phone in Bangalore and at first, I hesitated adding another item to my backpack, but this phone has been a lifesaver — whether it’s to call taxi drivers we’ve hired or to book hotels, who generally didn’t respond to emails.

3. Thou shalt wear closed-toe shoes. India can be dirty. Protect yourself.

4. Thou shalt travel by train at least once. We didn’t mind the buses, but trains are much more comfortable. We booked all of our tickets through the very easy-to-use site Cleartrip.com for a small 20-rupee service charge. Keep in mind that trains do sell out ridiculously quickly, but we heard if you’re the first 10 or so people on the waitlist, you’ll get a ticket. To be safe, we bought available tickets only. And regarding train classes, people scared us into wanting only AC first or second class. For long journeys this is probably a good idea. But for short trips, we preferred the cheaper AC chair car. On two of our three rides, chair car was the only option and it was more than comfortable. We had AC second class seats for the quick three-hour trip from Agra to Delhi but would’ve much preferred chair car. Something about being in sleeping compartments — even if they fold into chairs — felt claustrophobic. (Lonely Planet has a very good breakdown of the differences between train classes.)

5. Thou shalt hire a driver. We hired a rickshaw driver in Jaipur and had a driver on call in Agra, and it was amazing to know we had someone waiting for us. It’s cheap and saves a lot of headache.

8. Thou shalt see at least one Bollywood movie in a theater. It’s fun, silly, colorful entertainment. And you can leave after intermission if you can’t handle the full three hours.

9. Thou shalt not eat street food. I know some people do it, but even my relatives in India don’t eat much street food. That said, you can always trust a deep-fried snack.

10. Thou shalt drink the coffee. It’s the best, especially in South India. Seriously.

OK maybe a few words.

- Agra is a dump. DUMP. See the Taj and get out of there as soon as you can. Except we did meet a cute baby in our hotel. That part was great.

Without further ado…

I think Nawalgarh is the embodiment of what people envision when they think of India. Bright, retina-searing colors, men in turbans, desert landscapes, camels trotting on the road, samosas fried before your eyes — you get the picture.

It’s a small city in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, 3.5 hours by bus from Jaipur. Since we had five whole days in Rajasthan, after two busy days in Jaipur, the more rural pace of Nawalgarh sounded inviting. Surprisingly, the bus was a piece of cake. No, it wasn’t luxurious and yes, my allergies flared up thanks to the swirling dust entering the bus, but people were friendly, they told us when our stop came, and the bus didn’t make any pit-stops. Much better than buses in SE Asia.

Nawalgarh is unlike anywhere we’ve ever been. Traveling here is like traveling back in time, even more so than Myanmar. The culture is splayed out onto the streets, whether it’s tailors working on the road, mothers dressed in glittering saris walking hand-in-hand with their children or strolling by an antique building only to realize it’s one of the many ornately painted havelis for which the city is famous.

And compared to other towns in the Shekhawati region, like Mandawa and Jhunjhunu, Nawalgarh apparently has the best accommodation options.

We stayed at Shekawati Guesthouse. On the surface, everything was great. Our mud cottage set in the family’s farm was charming, the bathroom was the cleanest we’ve ever seen in India, the wife cooked delicious organic meals, we managed to bargain the price down to a cool 1400 rupees including two meals, and we even had WiFi!

On our first night, we told her a little about ourselves — how we were a couple, how I was from South India, how Eaman was from Iran, etc.

Wife, to Eaman: “So you’re Muslim then?”

In India, people have asked Eaman this question a lot, but it almost always has been followed by a proclamation about how humanity is all one, and we should never harp on differences.

Eaman: “Yeah, I’m Muslim.”

Wife: “So how are the Muslims in Iran? Are they as backward as they are here?”

Oh boy.

She went on to insult the Nawalgarh Muslim community, telling us about how they don’t send their kids to school and how they don’t pray five times a day. She went on to tell Eaman that Islam is “hard.”

Wait, it gets better.

She then started on South Indians. She told me about how rude locals were to her when she traveled through Tamil Nadu and how none of them spoke (or wanted to speak) Hindi or English. (Heaven forbid!) I made sure to tell her how rude some people have been to us in the North.

She also told me about how it was just idli, dosa, vada — traditional South Indian dishes — in the South. She moaned about how all she wanted was a chapatthi (North Indian-style bread that’s actually found down South, too!) I take offense to that for a few reasons. First, you’re in the South so that’s what you’re going to get. Second, unless you were in the ghetto, you can find North Indian options everywhere.

I got a zinger the night before we left, too.

“I had a couple from Chennai and I had a girl from Hyderbad stay here, and they were very nice. And you are very nice. But usually, I don’t like South Indians. They’re not very nice.”

Yeah. Moving on. Don’t let the story fool you; Nawalgarh is definitely worth visiting. It’s such a real slice of Indian life that you can’t find in the usual tourist areas. Maybe just don’t stay at our guesthouse.

Haveli museum. The word ‘haveli’ actually comes from the Persian world. ‘Hava’ translates to weather, referring to an open, airy house that allows the elements to come through.

Perhaps the best decision we made while traveling was to hire a driver for the day in Jaipur. I had thought Jaipur would be a beautiful, colorful city to get lost in, but Rajasthan’s capital is not the kind of place you walk around. It’s dusty, congested and the city itself is not all that pretty. Hiring a driver for the day is cheap — we paid 550 rupees for a rickshaw — and an excellent way to see the highlights. And though we’re not the “highlights” kind of travelers, we loved this method because it meant seeing a lot of one place without India’s characteristic hassling and touts.

With our driver Yusuf. Yes, he took us to his friends’ shops, but we made it clear that we also wanted to see stores we chose ourselves. As it turns out, his stores were better anyway. We loved him because when we’d be in one of his selected shops and ask him if he got a commission, he said, “Ya, of course!” Loved the honesty.

5. The Monkey Temple. Our travels through Asia have given me a particular fondness for elephants, camels and monkeys, and atop this Surya temple in the city lay a gang of macaques who hold court over the city. The temple is so-so, but watching the monkeys is worth the hike up the mountain, and the views at sunset are particularly good. But keep in mind that the monkeys can get vicious, as the temple lady told me.

We had agreed on 150 rupees, and yet there we were, finally at our accommodation, Shoreline Beach Resort, in Kannur, Kerala, arguing with the rickshaw driver, who now demanded 200 rupees.

He had gotten majorly lost along the way, and we had a feeling he’d up the price.

Once we arrived, he wouldn’t take 150. He started ranting in Malyalam and said something about 170. So we said, “Fine, we’ll give you 170″ just to get him off our backs. Then, the driver all of a sudden wanted 200 for all the gas he spent trying to find the place. It wasn’t our fault he got lost. If he didn’t know the way, he shouldn’t have taken us.

Eaman staunchly refused. The driver threatened to call the police. He kept yelling in Malyalam. Then he got all up in Eaman’s face. He probably would’ve spit in our faces if he didn’t want our money so badly.

The fight became a shouting match — with the driver doing all the shouting — so finally, we paid 180, only because Hamza himself gave us the 20-rupee difference.

And this was our welcome to India’s most laid-back state.

We unfortunately let this scuffle get to us. There was a whole day of feeling blase and a morning of badgering the hotel owner to fix the broken but promised WiFi — something that normally wouldn’t have bothered us. But after cooling down and smelling the sweet coconut air of Kerala, we opened our eyes to what was in front of us: a beautiful (and cheap) beach resort where we were the only guests, with a beautiful ocean view, a deserted beach to stroll down and freshly cooked meals brought to us on our balcony every day. What the hell was wrong with us, worrying about a stupid fight? It was an important reminder not to sweat the small stuff.

During our four days, we did little worth mentioning as far as acitivites go, but for us, nothing was everything. It was an opportunity to see a different side of India, one where crossing the street isn’t a game of Frogger or toilet smells don’t pervade the air. It was also a wonderful way to charge up before heading north to complete our busy Jaipur-Agra-Delhi itinerary, commonly known as the Golden Triangle route.

So what did we really do? Well, we watched ridiculous sunsets and played in the warm ocean water. We saw a theyyam ritual at a local temple and watched fisherman catch a day’s bounty. Oh, and did I mention the sunsets?

We loved the colors, smells and people of Mysore’s Devaraja market so much that we wanted to dedicate a whole post to the photos. If only you could smell those sandalwood incense…

India is a country of contrasts. The rich, the poor. The schooled, the uneducated. The glamour, the squalor. And as we found out in Mysore, India is also the place of emotional dichotomy, a place where you can experience the lowest lows followed by the highest highs. Mysore gave us our first taste of this. And we learned that what goes down almost inevitably comes back up.

At times it felt like fights with auto rickshaw drivers dominated our time in Mysore. “The palace is closed for lunch!” said one driver, who hoped to rangle us for his own tour of the city. (Note: The Palace doesn’t close for lunch.) And there was the guy who knowingly took us to the wrong entrance for the Palace. And the other guy who agreed to our price, then demanded a higher price for no apparent reason. And somehow, taxi rides, something that should occupy maybe 10% of our day, seemed to occupy a much larger chunk of the day. It left us tired, frustrated and completely wary of any taxi driver. Even the nice ones. Sorry, nice rickshaw driver!

But just as you’re beginning to question why you chose to travel there in the first place, India has a way of turning the tables. That’s when the highs kicked in.

For starters, Mysore Palace, the city’s crown tourist jewel, is really beautiful. There’s not much interior proof I can show you because cameras are forbidden inside, but I did sneak a few pictures on my phone. When the security guards caught me, they scolded me, threatened to take my phone for two days and hung a 500-rupee fine over my head. But traveling through India as an Indian has its advantages. I busted out my Kannada, and, so impressed that a child of their country who was born and raised in the U.S. could speak their mother tongue, they let me go. They did want a tip, but Eaman and I just walked away.

A gloomy day.

The pictures from this market visit were so beautiful that I’ll include the full set in the next post dedicated just to the market and its people.

The kids asked us questions about America, played with my pen, we talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up and they invited us to their home for the following day’s Ganesha pooja. (We were so bummed to be leaving the next day.) We’ve come across a lot of little kids in our travels, but we both agreed that this was the most memorable experience. I’ll never forget waving goodbye to them and then seeing them run down the busy main road to catch up to us and say goodbye again. And just like that, we completely forgot about whatever it was that had gotten us down. We left Mysore with huge smiles on our faces.

After Bangalore, Eaman and I, along with my mom, aunt, uncle and cousin piled into a car to drop us off in Mysore. But before we parted ways, my family took us to a very special place in the temple town of Nanjangud.

It’s big and cavernous and dimly lit, making the whole experience just a little more intense. You may have seen Hindu temples around India or other countries, but forget everything you know about them. This temple is about as real as it gets. Even I was a little culture-shocked. There were people rolling around the floor (in sacrifice), naked babies laid in front of idols and people prostrating so fervently. I truly had never seen anything like it. It felt like we had traveled back in time.

But for someone who’s new, the priests certainly took a liking to Eaman. At one idol, without any forseeable rhyme or reason, a priest placed an elaborate garland on him. No, he wasn’t told that this foreigner was here from America. Or that this foreigner could use a blessing or two for his future travels. Out of nowhere, Eaman got the garland. My uncle told us that they come to this temple every year and not once has he ever gotten a garland. I don’t really prescribe to any one religion and I know this could be chalked up to pure coincidence, but I still think it was pretty amazing.

Among the many things I’ve learned in this year is that there is meaning — sometimes clear, often vague — behind every action. It was only fitting to have such an empowering experience at a place with so much personal history. And it was the perfect way to close one chapter — seeing India with my mom by our side — and start another, as we began new adventures through India on our own.