All my life I have wanted to go to India.

When I started to learn my own tastes, they were always the musk scented perfumes, the flowing floral print dresses, skirts with bells and tassels, and brightly coloured cotton shirts. I so well remember the joy of heading to a little shop in Cork city when I had any money and buying the leather sandals that smelt a certain way, made between my toes bleed, but they were a part of many summers for me.

Its taken me a lifetime to finally have a chance to go to India. This year I will be 52. When I was in my twenties, when most people were wandering through India, I was married to someone who ironically now embraces the spiritual lifestyle. But in those days, he was more concerned with saving money when travelling, than just throwing caution to the wind. So I missed out on India.

But now I find myself with such mixed emotions about the places I have just seen. I don’t know where to begin to try to explain what the experience has been for me. I have only been here a week and seen mainly airports, hotels and been stuck in traffic between appointments. But what I have seen in my downtime will stay with me for ever.

I flew into New Delhi last weekend, full of trepidation, anticipation and a long held excitement. Like all ‘western’ business travellers, I was headed for the company recommended 5 star western hotel. I am a good traveller on my own. I am not afraid to explore and I love nothing more than taking my camera and capturing these special places.

In Delhi I found the Lodhi gardens, an old Mosque in ruins, but this Sunday, surrounded by families, on picnic rugs, kicking balls and enjoying the green space. A simple pass time I think I’ve lost. My eyes felt like they had thirsted for these sights forever. I could not get my camera out fast enough, scared the scenery would change before I got a chance to capture all the life around me. Here and there young couples snuggled up close together, well as close as they could be in the open air and I’m guessing within the confines of their culture. A group of boys played an energetic game of soccer and flirted with my lens, and me, and offered to pose. As I approached the buildings, it struck me how ruined they were and how those around them really perhaps would not understand that in other parts of the world such monuments would be preserved and cared for, dusted, washed and admired for their history. But not in India! There still remained the glimpses of grandeur that this mosque once held. The surrounding gardens had the remnants of the colonial era with a circular rose garden. It was being profusely watered with a thick hose. Large black birds were revelling in the water. Water is scarce in India, and these birds were soaking up every possible drop. Fluttering wet wings, picking at the wet grass, calling to each other. What a magnificent sight it was.

Such joy all around me, yes, India was going to live up to my dreams.

I had hired a driver for the afternoon to take me around a few places I had found on the internet. Delhi, regardless of how adventurous I am, was not the place to be meandering on my own and I wanted to take advantage of my only ‘down’ day. Not for shopping, but rather to see a glimpse of life on a Sunday. As we passed through the diplomatic quarter, my host pointed out large opulent looking buildings surrounded by security fences, ‘Australian High Commission, French High Commission, American Embassy’, he informed me as we drove along wide tree-lined empty streets. ‘Army barracks’, Admirals house, Vice Air Marshall’. All the while I responded with a courteous ‘mmm’ and ‘oh I see’. He was obviously proud that he knew each building and wanted to share his knowledge.

‘What kinds of handicrafts do you seek?’ I  explain that I have given him the name of the place I want to go, no particular kind, just one recommended as ‘authentic’ by the guides I’d read. ‘I take you to a craft shop, lovely Indian handcrafts, antiques, you just look, if you like, you just look’ – and bang! My little fake idea of India begins to crack. I’ve travelled the tourist trail so often, I can usually spot a dodgy deal a mile off, but I’d let my guard down with this one. I let him take me, mainly so I wasn’t being the foreign bitch, ‘okay, but I want something authentic yeah, not some copy designer rubbish, I want to see real indian craft yeah? ‘Yes miss, real indian textile, antique, if you like you buy, if not, okay?

So we drive up some dirty back street, I bet the Vice Air Marshall has never been along this bit of his neighbourhood. I see dogs engorged with milk for long abandoned puppies and try to stop myself from opening my mouth.  He opens the door of a little shop and smiling to greet me is a woman with one of her front teeth missing. I am momentarily stunned, and simultaneously annoyed. She asks what I’m looking for and I can’t find the right words, so I just smile an insipid smile and look around and see the folded fabric, the usual stone and wood elephants and smile. ‘What are you looking for?’ she persists,  ‘nothing here’, I say and suddenly find my voice. I leave the shop and the driver is shocked to see me step outside so quickly. No good? ‘Please just take me where I have asked you? There is nothing here I want’.

I am such a white colonial bitch!

We start driving. ‘Chinese embassy’ and I ignore him. I’m sulking , but he doesn’t know. The traffic is unbelievably disorganised. Nobody sticks to a lane and rash decisions are made without angst. It is acceptable here to change direction on a pinhead and to go towards oncoming traffic. Everyone just moves around each other and gets on their way. They honk horns, but not in anger as we would do, but rather as a ‘hey right beside you buddy, don’t squash me’. They even have directions on the back of their little trucks that say ‘horn please!’ My mood changes as we manouver our way like ants. He finds the ‘Cottage Craft Emporium’ for me and beings to explain that there are seven floors.

‘Hmm, yes, that’s what I wanted’. We are talking again. I tell him I’ll be a while and feeling like some rich woman from a past era, leave my driver in the heat while I enter the cool, quiet Emporium.

The security guard on the door asks me to leave my bag. Why? it has my purse and camera, that’s all, do I have to leave it? He concedes and lets me keep my bag.

I am back in my childhood shop. The smell is the same. Its cool and quiet and such a relief. I meander the floors, gathering tickets as I go. I must take all tickets to the cashier when I’m finished and then go to another counter to gather my packages. I am in Indian heaven. This is that kid in a toyshop feel. I don’t remember that feeling as a kid? But this is Nirvana for me. Jewellery, leather bags, pottery, I feed my addictions. I see purses like the ones I used the have as a teenager, those brightly coloured cut leather useless little things that smell of exotic places, and fold in on themselves so that you can’t put much change in them. And as a teenager, all I ever had was change. I resist going down that sentimental journey and elect instead to venture further into the leather store and buy a semi grown up swede bag with flowers.

I also resist the woman trying to sell me bindis and little screw jewels for my hair? Seriously, do i look like a ten year old. She sulks when I say no. I am such a bitch in India, I have finally found my inner holiday bitch and learnt to say no and resist!

I laugh out loud at the ‘white metal’ furniture. It’s silver in colour (tin?) and is so ornamentally over the top and I would actually love it in my home, but i am never going to buy it. I take a photo to laugh at later.

I meet my driver on one of the floors and joke with him that he might have thought I was lost, I am spending so much time in this glorious place. He looks at me as he adjusts his pants, ‘I wait in car’ he says, and I realise he is leaving a toilet and not impressed that I am now happily shopping while he is waiting in the heat. Bad luck mister, I am punishing you for taking me to that shit shop earlier. I am spending my hard earned money in your country, giving it to some government approved shop where there are posters telling me not to try to bargin as I will only embarrass myself! My sort of shop! I am an idiot, I know, but I feel better about giving my money where I think it may make a difference. It won’t. India is so beyond being able to have my few dollars make any difference.

As the week progresses, I realise that my version of Delhi on Sunday, was just that, my version – my 15 year old self thought it was full of exotic smells and lovely musky potions. It is. But it also stinks of poo!

This smell was never more obvious than on my second and final shopping day yesterday. My work colleagues and I spent our last few hours together working our way around selected shops that we had found on a blog. A historic blog as it turned out, but we embraced each street, each u-turn into oncoming traffic, each attempt at finding the street we needed with that sick feeling when something rotten taps at your senses! Every time we emerged from the air conditioned car, those senses were assaulted. Our white, clean living, molly-coddled senses where having the times of their lives, showing us that they exist for a reason.

We wafted into clean, organised shops, designed for people like us. We browsed, we fondled fabric, we toyed with our purchases. We came out to the stinking hot streets. Sometimes they smelt of wet drain, a different kind of musky odour, but we smelt poo too many times. And while i can joke about our whiteness and our sensitivity, Mumbai has left me with a new sense I don’t think I will ever forget.

The bodies on the street, just lying in the dirt, or in a gutter, sleeping, or dead. The men without fingers begging at the car at traffic lights, the children banging on our closed windows begging us to buy shades for our car windows, and pleading with us that they are “just $2″, without understanding of our response. The women dragging a little boy by his burnt and scared arms and jerking his burnt face towards us. These are the sights and sounds I will never forget. ‘Don’t look!’ my companions said, ‘or you won’t be able to eat your dinner. There is no point in giving them money, it will never be enough’. Never enough. We saw the most in Mumbai, as we were not being hustled from hotel to offices and back. We worked in bright clean offices, often in dark and dirty buildings with elevators that had a man to push the buttons for us – we spoke with students who were keen to get to Australia to study and whose families were obviously richer than the majority. It felt wrong to be encouraging them to spend such money, but by gaining an education and qualifications I guess I can believe that the future generations may be able to make an impact. But it does seem so hopeless.

I was so glad to have my work friends on that trip with me.  The ‘boys’ convinced me that when I do get around to that book I plan to write, it should now be ” The places that have touched me”,  rather than my working title ‘The places I’ve been touched, stories of massage around the world’. But that’s another story.