Smell

From the moment the plane landed in New Delhi an aroma of diesel fuel filled the aircraft cabin. To the rural farmlands of Punjab where dung fires, used for cooking, fumigate the countryside with a smell of smoky musky wet grass.

Professionally hand crafted dung patties. 

Taste

So far everything we’ve had to eat in India has been delicious. But there is one underlying theme in everything we’ve had so far. Heat. Everything in India is spicy, even our McMahraja chicken burgers from McDonalds were enough to put beads of sweat on our foreheads. There is a baseline level of heat cooked into every dish that is on par with what North American’s would label hot – suicide. The home cooked meals are a slightly different story. Most meals are vegetarian composed of fresh potatoes, peas and carrots in a delicious stew served with roti. Before coming to India I was told to stay away from dairy, I didn’t listen and am drinking a glass of unpasteurized buffalo milk as I write.

Roti and Dhae with Mutter Gujjer

Hearing

The roads of India are LOUD… all the time. Standard driving rules and courtesies, like using blinkers, are replaced with excessive and drawn out horn blasts. Indians honk when they overtake, approach an intersection, a driveway, exit a driveway, see a dog near the side of the road, the list goes on, in fact it is rare to go longer than 30 seconds without using the horn for something.

Touch

When people think of India they imagine hot and humid weather, however the weather is more deceptive than one realizes. Temperatures regularly reach single digits at night time. Canadians reading this may scoff at our claim to misery. However, with no indoor heating and insulation the cold is ever present; the constant fog keeping the warmth of the sun at bay. Taking showers with a bucket with lukewarm water is a luxury.

Sunset over the Johal Farm. 

Sight

Sensory overload. India is a country of over 1.3 billion people, so it comes as no surprise that there are people everywhere. Driving or walking down the street you are bombarded by a frenzy of activity. People cooking and selling food by the road side, someone leading a donkey burdened with burlap sacks, children chasing one another through the streets, a small roadside fire burning garbage. All in the span of 10 meters. Looking around, it is impossible to take in all of the activity going on. The slower pace of life in rural India starkly contrasts this. The visual chaos is replaced with vast expanses of wheat and sugar cane fields, the hordes of people with the odd farmer harvesting crop or a tractor turning a field.

Local farmer in Meerpur, Jalandhar, Punjab.

By: Daniel and Kanwar