India - Changing Perspectives

Travel changes you
With every new sight, With every new height
With the sun shine and the dim moon light
It changes you..!!

India, in itself is a wonderful place to be, the more you explore, the more you fall in love with it. Every new place that you explore changes your perspective and changes you, as a person.

From all my trips across the country, I am sharing the ones that changed me completely and taught me how beautiful this life is and how to be thankful for it.

To start with, let me share a memory that I have cherished the most.

Chamundi Temple, Chamundi Hills, Mysuru, Karnataka

Situated in Chamundi Hills, this temple in itself brings you closer to yourself. The serene landscape and the calm winds soothe your soul.
The mystic winds take you to a whole new world. Some old broken swings in a park, children flying kites, a monk with nothing to lose and content with life, the hill tops covered with ice shining like diamonds are some of the sights that made my trip special and I penned my emotions in the following lines:

The clouds afloat, the heavenly hills
The serenity of the diamond rings
The wind chimes running me through
The beauty of the wind so true
All aboard they welcome me
A drenching for my eyes to see
The monk who stands with bare feet
Has not a stem, is yet complete
The kids who linger to their kites
Are taking imaginary flights
The broken swings fill the grass
The strangled old rustic brass
The dew that falls off the leaves
Quenches the thirst of the grieves
The rarity of the views I see
Serenity I find within me
And then the wind that flows again
Mystic in a way so plain
The sound in my ears that falls
Reminds me of it all and all

Goa, Maharashtra

Of all the destinations in India, this place is present on every teenager's to do list. Goa is the perfect place to party, get drunk, have fun, forget yourself and reinvent. On one side are the beaches, clubs, shacks and casinos where you can find reasons to stretch your pocket a little more and have some more fun and on the other side are churches where you can confess for the extra fun you had (pun intended). Along with all the fun that I had in Goa, there were moments of self discovery.

• I was always afraid of water, never had the courage to learn swimming. The same fear gripped me when I first stepped on the beach sand. The sound of the waves which till now was fascinating, turned into noise and my feet stopped moving, the sand felt like cement. With little courage did I step forward and shook hands with the waves. Slowly in the next four days, I realized we were best friends and there was nothing to be afraid of.

• Goa itself is the other name for party and when you visit Goa, booze always comes with a by default mark. For me, it was the opposite. When my friends were busy having fun with their bottles, I realized how being sober can actually give you more time to have fun, to enjoy what nature has created and to ponder upon your very existence. I made a promise to myself in Goa and I'm glad keeping it.

Banneghatta Zoo and National Park, Bangaluru, Karnataka

As a kid, I loved seeing animals in cages and visiting the zoo was one important task. Looking at the animals and birds brought in from different parts of the world was very interesting and seemed educational. Little did I know that visiting a zoo in my early twenties and seeing the fear and helplessness on those faces would make me realize how cages are cruel and lives inside them worse than hell.

• The cages kept in the park are great to capture an image, but once you look at them and realize on how they were once being used to transport the creatures that belong to open forests, the crying voices and subliming will powers take over and haunt you.
• The constant struggle of the animals with the cage bars to let themselves out and then understand it doesn't help showed me the power of freedom. Freedom, which we take for granted. 

I have traveled to various other places and with every place visited, is an interesting story and a whole new lesson that I took. A trip is never complete without self realization. The sole purpose of travel is to learn and be a better person. Wanderlust and Fernweh might seem two very fancy words, but for us travelers, they mean our life and I have faith that you all agree.

I read the following lines once and then was never able to forget,

'We are here for more than our careers, we are here for magic' and this magic is none other than travel.