Exploring Northern India

If you had told me even a few years ago that I would be gallivanting around northern India - and enjoying it - I would have thought you were bat shit crazy.

Two reasons for this conclusion: 1) I have never had any real desire to visit India; and 2) I would be highly skeptical of a random person telling me my future...

But this was one of those times in life when an opportunity presented itself and the obvious reaction was YOLO!

India is so far removed from the myriad comforts I am accustomed to and take for granted in the comparably consumer-mad, narcissistic, hedonistic, endless pursuit of “happiness” of the West.

Could a trip to India help to alleviate my existential anxiety? Would I come back a changed woman after bathing in the sacred Ganges river? Would this trip become a defining moment in the story of my life? Perhaps I might ‘find myself’ in India as many Westerners claim?

Well, India provided me with none of these things. The only thing I found out about myself is that I have a surprisingly resilient immune system and bowels of steel to match.

Bonus fun fact: Anyone claiming to have found themselves in India is a wanker.

However, the whole experience was incredible in every conceivable sense of the word: Equal parts overwhelming, heartbreaking, hilarious, beautiful, distressing, inexplicably random, and of course, with the omnipresent waft of obscure odours.

It is a photographer’s delight everywhere you look - with bright, bold pops of colour demanding to be noticed amidst an otherwise dusty and oftentimes dismal outlook.