The early flight from Almaty to Delhi was accompanied by an angel’s voice singing Punjabi songs directly into my ear. It was the beginning of what was to be a sensory overflow experience in general. Very soon after arriving I wanted to leave Delhi for some place more quiet. I decided to move north to Haridwar, a very holy place to Hindus, where I hoped to find a bit more space and less people.

Because I took another bus than the one previously booked I had to pay an additional CHF 3.- which made the total cost of the 5-hour trip CHF 9.-. I was surprised by the bus company’s customer care, only around 10 mins after the first bus broke down another arrived to take all the passengers to the holy city.

I experienced Haridwar as culturally rich, Hindus pray next to the Ganges river every evening and thus it seems to be the hotspot for Hindus across the country. Open minded as I am I decided to take the gondola up to a famous temple and later found myself tightly packed amongst believers. Like a spotlight in a tunnel my pale face was easily noticed by the pujari, the Hindu priest. Wrongly thinking that I was an easy, money-throwing target he eagerly got hold of me, praised me and my family, marked me with an orange spot on my forehead and made me touch an altar. After his holy actions he wanted me to pay him. I decided that 10 rupees (~15 Rappen) was an appropriate amount of money, but judging by the wobbly he threw the pujari strongly disagreed. I didn’t care.

My next adventure was tiger spotting in the Jim Corbett national park. I stayed in a lovely resort where I finally found my peace and quiet, right on time to recover from a cold I had caught from the aircon. Luckily, it wasn’t severe enough to stop me from tiger spotting. The first session in the early morning had to be cancelled due to heavy rains, but in the afternoon we set out to see some wildlife. Jim Corbett national park is a huge area filled with lots of wildlife and stretches over more than a thousand square kilometers.

After we boarded the Jeep we drove through rivers and sandy roads in search of the big cat. There were lots of very beautiful different animals such as jackals, red spotted deer, monkeys and a wide variety of birds. A great memory of the first safari is seeing an elephant lit by the warm evening sun enjoying his evening snack in the high grasses. The following day elephants were again on our radars – in fact, we were on theirs. Approaching a road going through a forest we already heard the loud and agitated trumpeting of a bull elephant. Cautiously proceeding, we spotted the impressive mammal about 15m away ramboing through the forest angrily looking at us. Having no cage or glass between you and the elephant suddenly makes you much more nervous. When the elephant came onto the road it started chasing the Jeep behind us which had to reverse quickly to avoid an unbalanced collision. Fortunately, everyone came out of it unhurt.

My next days were accompanied by Jenny and Danny, my sister and cousin respectively. I was incredibly happy to have some family around, since I experienced India as a very exhausting country to travel around. I was always on watch not to be pickpocketed or ripped off, the latter being close to impossible to avoid as a white tourist.

There were many, many more wonderful memories created during the remaining weeks in India which rounded off my 3 lovely months of traveling. Once again it has been a blast. Meanwhile I have returned to our close to perfect little country and started my new job. I’m looking forward to meeting some of you again and thanks a lot for reading!