Expectations vs first impressions

I am writing this story for all of you who plan on visiting India now or in the future, or just want to have some knowledge about it. My perspective might be a little too drastic for some of you but, if you are picky like me, then it is just what you need to know. You will find out how (or if) my impression changed during the trip in our future stories :).

First of all, you have to keep in mind that even if you read this or many other articles about India, you are never enough prepared for it. Don’t get scared though hahaha.

Now that I made that clear, let’s jump into it. Landing in the country of Bollywood was exciting. My first thought about it was “it’s going to be epic!”. Even if I had already much information about what to expect, I still imagined it like in the movies. You know, the colorful cities, women dressed in stunning sarees with a big nose-piercing and a red dot in the middle of the forehead. Joy, typical music, dance and so on. Well… once again a slap in the face reminding me that movies aren’t always reality. Or at least the reality I lived hahaha.

When I got out of the plane and I inhaled the Goan night air I was like “WOW, what is this?!”. The air was so humid, like if I would have been in an indoor pool. It was so hot and hard to breath. I instantly started sweating, the clothes were getting stuck to my body and I was hoping for a breath of fresh air. In the case that you are wondering, yeah… I remained with only hopes because that was just the beginning. The air outside of the airport was still so humid with a smell of masala, so it was not only in that area of the airport, how I was wishing. I had to adapt, so I did it.

Moving on to the cleanliness of the streets, the traffic and how people are. That’s quite more like an experience you have to live in order to believe it. To help you picture it easier I will describe it a little for you. If you are coming from a country with high levels of street cleanliness, with trash cans everywhere, marked crossing points, traffic lights at every corner, strict driving rules and where if you want to see animals you go to a farm, forget what you know!

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Now imagine a place full of people, where they cross the street where and when they want, no trash cans, few traffic lights from time to time, honking to signal the next move while driving, and the cherry on the cake: people, cars/motorbikes and cows using the same road. Oh, what a dream! You might think it’s not that such a big deal. Maybe, but being in a crowded place, surrounded by garbage and with a cow following you, it’s not pleasant at all.

In India cows are considered sacred, so they are free on the streets and protected. However, many of them just eat the trash from the side of the road which, by the way, smells so bad. Or if they see you with an open bag, or eating, prepare yourself for a run. They will follow you because probably your food tastes better than the one from the side of the road that has been at the sun for days and in pollution. As you can imagine, a country with 1.37 billion people (2020), with the tendency of not walking even for 200 meters, is very polluted. But I have to say that even if everything looks chaotic in the beginning, just give it a few days and you will end up going with the flow of it. We call it “an organized chaos” :D.

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The low cleanliness standards that I pointed out before don’t apply only on the streets, but also inside many restaurants in which we have been. Mainly in the less touristic ones, where there was so poor hygiene that eating was not even an option (for me). You have to be very careful, because even if the restaurant looks clean enough, the cooking ways might not be the best and you might end up with food poisoning. My advice would be to always look around when you enter a restaurant and, if you can, look in the kitchen. Don’t go only for the cheapest, ask people around for opinions or even check reviews online of the place.

The same applies when you are looking for a stay. We used most of the times Booking or Agoda for booking our stay. What we learned from it is to never trust completely the pictures of the hotels/guesthouses you see posted on the page. Why? Because almost every time we booked something that was low to middle price, it was not what we were expecting. Either the place was looking so old and dirty because of the bad maintenance or it was acceptable clean but with insects everywhere. Ironically, in all the stays that we had the bed was at least clean.

Of course, like everywhere in the world, there were also people who tried to benefit from us, looking insistent like we would be a monkey and the typical. Some people even asked us for a selfie with them and even tried to take it with us behind them, even if we already said "no" more than once. It sounds curious but being asked at least three or four times per week to take a selfie with them makes you feel really uncomfortable with the time. Another aspect of the people (in general, men) is that they stop on the road to pee and that they spit a lot. Therefore, in many public areas, there are signs saying “NO SPITTING”. Even in buses. Yes, in buses. But don't get it wrong, Indian people in general are kind and many times it happened that they stopped to offer us help.

However, many of the things that I expected to see in India, I saw. For example, most of the women wear the beautiful traditional saree and have a nose piercing. Women and men have either a red dot or a line on their forehead. It is really interesting to see that they keep the tradition.

Last, but not least, is credit card acceptance. I was already expecting that we would have some trouble, but had hopes it would not be the case. It was. But even if we had some struggles in the beginning and it was hard to find an ATM that was working and that accepted international cards, later it got easier. Almost all the restaurants and the supermarkets accept cards and there are plenty ATMs that work well, just depends on the area and the day.

To sum up, the cultural impact is hard. You don’t get prepared for India by reading some stories and watching some videos. There are many different things, from the kind of food to the way of dressing, behaving, cleaning and so on. I needed few weeks to get used to it, to understand it and to accept it. Well, that because we were not in a simple vacation, spending a lot of money on food and stay xD. We wanted to explore and live like locals and integrating was not easy, but was totally worth it.

P.S: Before India I was not a fan of strong curry/masala, now I completely avoid it.