On my first day in India, I hid.

Arriving 4 hours earlier and taking in my first breath of India & New Delhi, I was filled with a supreme confidence in myself (another name for this specific, and presumptuous, brand of self-certainty, is “Hubris.”). For the past year i had lived briefly in 9 other countries, learning, sometimes the hard way, how to navigate the surprises and nuances of long-term travelling. Among other things, I had endured a hazy three-day homeless spell in Thailand’s Koh Tao, crippling tonsillitis in Bali, and 4 days biking through the mountains of rural Laos with a foot so infected and so swollen that even the bacteria itself felt guilty. Murphy ain’t got shit on me, I thought, to which New Delhi replied, in choruses of chaos, “challenge accepted.”

I stepped outside of my hostel and was immediately bombarded with an attack on the senses: rickshaws and bikes zoomed past me horns blaring, beggars tugged relentlessly at my bag and clothes, locals returned friendly smiles and invitations to interact with scowls and stone-faces. The atmosphere and pace of life was frantic, disorienting, and unforgiving, and the poverty on display was unlike anything I had seen in any other country. I slunk back to my hostel demoralised and defeated, feeling the opposite of how I felt after stepping off the plane only a handful of hours earlier. Slipping in to the safety of my bottom bunk, it occurred to me that India, rightly so, did not give a single fuck about how much experience i thought I had. And actually, that became the beauty of it. In its refusal to compromise an ounce of it’s culture to pander to the over 10 million tourists who visit each year, India has become a country that is challenging but ultimately extremely rewarding to visit. After leaving Delhi for Jaipur (and promising to return after catching my breath) the veil began to lift and I started to see India for the immensely exciting country that it is. It’s chaos started to feel organised, and its unpredictability freeing. Everything begun to explode with vibrancy and flavour, from the food to the movies (yes, go and watch a Bollywood movie. There will not be subtitles. It will not matter.) to the clothes to the people, above all, who —outside of that first day in Delhi of course —came to show me great warmth.

I can’t wait to go back. Here is a small snapshot of my all-too-short time in India.