The weddings

 There is nothing more special than being able to experience a country from within, living with its people, following their traditions, living the everyday life. It was in this, my third time in India, even more than in any of my two previous trips, that I have been able to experience India from the intimacy of an Indian home. Destiny had it that we were lucky to cross our paths with Manish, who together with his whole family and friends pretty much adopted us and made us part of their family during the month that we spent together with them. 

And here goes the third.......

 It's the third time in my life that arrive in India and the second by bicycle. 13 years ago, I was arriving for the first time and at 22 years old, I was barely a kid carrying a backpack with little experience in comparison to the present. I already knew back then, during the first few days and after having gone through the first big shock that one experiences in a first visit to India, that I would come back over and over in the course of my life. Today, 13 years later, I still have the same feeling I got in that first trip, that of carrying India very deep inside me. As years pass by and I get older, I feel that India keeps growing inside me and with me with every trip. India is a planet in itself and it is quite true the fact that either you love it or you hate, because no matter where you are in India, you may like it or not, but one thing is sure, you can't be indifferent to it. I certainly love it with devotion, it's like a magnet that doesn't allow me to detach from it. Now, that in this third opportunity we've had the enormous fortune of experiencing India from the inside, through a local family that has pretty much adopted us during our stay, and later with the visit of my own mother, to whom I haven't hesitated in showing her the corners of the country where few tourists make it, I have nothing but confirmed once again that very same original feeling from the first trip: I will never stop coming back to India.

Rural life and hard work

Leaving the Himalayas for the lowlands of the Terai was the beginning of the immersion in the Nepalese rural life. Away from the hordes of tourists that come and go to the high Himalayas, Pokhara, Kathmandu and the eastern Terai, you have this small country pretty much for yourself. Traveling through simple villages of friendly and modest people, not obsessed with the money that supposedly all foreigners have was a true relief.