My dream''Travel'' - Means to Explore the World

Traveling can be exhilarating and exhausting, inspiring and intimidating all at once. But with every personal connection the world gets smaller and more navigable. All it takes is one compelling tale about India, and going there suddenly seems easy.

One of the most interesting results of travelling to me was that India appears on both the list of top dream solo destinations and on the list of places where women are nervous to travel alone. This concurs with my feelings about India, that it is a challenging destination, being an Indian I have not travelled my own country.  But one that most adventurous travellers want to tackle, at least once in their lives. People who have travellers’ souls seem to instinctively understand that travel in India is magical; that it will be life-changing; and they will never see the world or themselves in quite the same way again.

And of course, Mumbai is not just all about five-star hotels, famous landmarks and saintly heroes. It is in fact a city of “foot-path poets,” Everywhere Mumbai swirls with people on the go. The dhobi wallahs (laundry men) of Dhobi Ghat, have become a tourist attraction for the way they laboriously wash and dry laundry in open pens — an urban concession to the traditional method of washing clothes in the river and beating them on rocks. Only the dhobi wallahs of Mumbai are all men, whereas laundry as a chore is traditionally done by women.

But everywhere you go in Mumbai you will see people in various stages of industry, from the prosaic and traditional Bombay wallahs to the ultra-modern Mumbaikers. And the Mumbai Local tour gives you a taste of the spectrum of life in Mumbai. I promise myself that I will keep a journal every day when I travel. I do it on the first couple of days and then lose myself in the throes of travel. And then the photographs get downloaded and a lost memory surfaces. 

Although India can be a difficult place to travel and there will be moments when being the center of attention is overwhelming, it is an experience I would redo again in a heartbeat. I hope you can mitigate the feeling of having eyes inappropriately on you and transform uncomfortable situations into positive ones.Furthermore, keep in mind that this issue of staying safe while visiting India is part of a larger issue at hand – what it means to simply be a woman in India. The threats facing female travellers are things that Indian women have been dealing with their entire life, and will still be dealing with for long after we leave.

Ultimately, there is no secret to staying safe in India. It is a continual process of being wise and keenly listening to your instincts – just as you would anywhere else in the world. Indians love to welcome foreigners into their country, so trust your gut in accepting their hospitality and learn from their kindness.India is a complicated and chaotic country, and yet it is also a place of inconceivable beauty and warmth.

“We live in a society where most people are too afraid to take that leap into the unknown, and for us especially like the Mumbaikars represents all the infinite possibility that is born by stepping outside of the normal. That doesn’t mean people have to drop everything and go live in a tent in the winter woods. “But if we can get them thinking about their own freedom and whether they’re truly happy in the life they’ve made and if we can crack open the door to an alternative possibility, another choice—then we’ve done our job. And if we can stoke them up with some incredible riding and breathtaking visuals, even better. The end result warped into a movie that’s weird and out-there and a total off-the-wall gamble in a sea of ski porn, but I hope Mumbaikar delivers on all levels.”