The almighty India is a very special place for me in many different ways. The diversity of the country, the inspiration it gives me for food and travelling, the chaotic cities and the spiritual aspect all hit you hard as a traveller. The country as a whole can be very testing of ones patience but as your time spent in India progresses you start to love the place with even more gratitude and start to realise of actually how lucky the western world is. The caste system is something i really struggled with to get my head around first. There is still a huge gap within India but in a weird way you start to understand it whilst spending more and more time there. 

The photo above was my first trip to India in 2011 and it was to partake in a crazy race with a tuk tuk. It was a charity fundraising event with 74 teams involved. I cant really remember the total monies raised but i believe it was around 60k euros. The money was raised for a charity called ‘The Frank Water Projects’. They oversee the purification of water for the remote areas of India so they have access to clean drinkable water. The process is called reverse osmosis and it was truly magical to have helped in some way for this process to continue happening.

The trip started in the easterly city of Shillong and finished in the desert of Jaisalmer. It wasn’t really about winning the race said the organiser at the start, it was more about surviving!! But 4000 kms and 15 days later we had completed the challenge unscathed. We took our time though stopping off in some incredible places like bodh gaya, the Taj Mahal, and surviving the bandits from the state of Bihar. We actually took a couple of days off from our 12 hour, 30mph rickety days and chilled out in the city of Pushkar. 

One of the highlights of the trip was actually after the race had finished and we had given back our tuk tuk. We set off to the state of Punjab and to the city of Amritsar to see the changing of the guards and the closure of the border between Pakistan and India. This is where i met some fellow travellers who had informed me that the Dalai Lama was cutting short his world tour to return to his home of Macleod Ganj. This was because a 22 year old Taiwanese Monk had committed suicide in protest to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The Dalai Lama was going to be in his residence for the next 3 days giving readings!! So we hopped on a night bus, headed north to the himalayas in search of one of the most inspirational individuals on this planet. As we arrived there was a procession of monks walking around the temple in a clockwise direction each holding a candle. We did a little asking around for information of what was happening for the next 3 days and what we had to do to enter the temple. The following day we were presented with a time table for the readings from the Dalai Lama. We rented our headphones for 60 rupees and entered the temple with just a pen and paper. The Dalai Lama spoke in Cantonese (i think) which was then translated to a dialect of Taiwanese and then after translated into English, hence the reason for the headphones. It was a very surreal time spending 3 days, being 4 metres away from the Dalai Lama in his home. I had to pinch myself a few times to think, am i really here!!!   The almighty India. We started the journey over the other side of Bangladesh!!