Unforgettable India, a different guidebook
by Serena Puosi
No country fascinates and frightens me like India. I’ve dreamed about visiting it for years, about remaining dazzled by the colors, see its culture and its architectural masterpieces, smell its spices, be touched by suffering and contradictions, and learn from my reactions. I want to visit it so much that I planned my trip a few years ago in 2009. Everything was ready, but I was afraid of being unable to handle it emotionally, and I didn’t show up at the airport.
In Jaisalmer
Last year I followed Serena’s trip remotely, and I started reading her posts once she got back home; I was enchanted looking at her shots, and then here it is her first book.
Unforgettable India can be read in one breath or step by step, observing the pace of the trip, the different landscapes, and the author’s emotions, who made me travel with her. The book was picked for me for this second option.
I fantasized along the Silk Road in Mandawa; I felt anxiety and disgust trying to visit as quickly as possible – and not putting my feet on the ground – the mice temple near Bikaner. I got lulled at sunset by the prayers spread from the speakers of Jaisalmer, and the colorful women saris enchanted me in Khuri to the desert of Thar.
In Mandawa
In Jaisalmer
Then Serena finally leads me where I’ve always dreamed of being, in Rajasthan. I have dwelt at length on the cobalt blue of Jodhpur, which in my mind has always been India, dancing tirelessly together with purple and red. In Ranakpur, I discovered the Jain religion. Still, I also started to feel that same fear that stopped me years ago … a tension that dissolved on the banks of Lake Pichola in Udaipur, where traditions, rituals, and spirituality mingle and fascinate those who stop to observe. In Pushkar, I felt uncomfortable among Westerners visiting, and in Jaipur, I dreamed with my eyes wide open, breathing a sigh of relief having come up here.
In Ranakpur
Arrived in Agra, I was over the moon! The Taj Mahal, its poetry, the love, the legend … feelings that prevented me from seeing the surrounding ugliness. In Agra, I was standing on my little happy cloud. I suddenly fall from these heights upon arrival in Varanasi, where anxiety and sadness have taken over, preventing me from fully enjoying Delhi, the last stage of Serena’s journey.
I turned off my kindle to turn it back soon after and re-read the book, all in one breath.
The charm of this land goes beyond common sense: the urgent need to put pen to paper a cauldron of emotions is not subsiding with the passing days. So we just have to get carried away by this current and catch here and there suggestions to offer to others, whether modern hippie going on a pilgrimage, lovers of the exotic or simple travelers open to the unknown.
Serena Puosi
If you read Italian, you can purchase Unforgettable India by clicking here: Indimenticabile India. Have a nice trip.
On the author
Serena Puosi was born in 1985 in Viareggio. She has always traveled and wrote. Over the few months spent in Lisbon for the Erasmus project, her faithful journal became a blog, which now keeps me company post after post, trip after trip.
Following her great passions, she works as a social media manager, copywriter, and blogger for Tuscany.
To get to know her better, in addition to reading her first book and her blog Mercoledì tutta la settimana, I suggest you read the sentence with which she introduces herself in the magical world of social networks: “eternally poised between laziness and hyperactivity, saudade and claustrophobia, prudence and adrenaline.” This is Serena.
