To India with Mom

Asia, family travel, why we travel — By Bob Riel on May 14, 2008 at 4:13 pm

It’s one thing to take your mother on vacation, it’s quite another to take her to India – for her 75th birthday and her first trip to anyplace in Asia. But that’s just what Jeff Greenwald did. He wrote a charming article about the experience for the Los Angeles Times.

Bringing my mother to India had seemed an inspired idea. I’d wanted to give her something spectacular for her 75th birthday: an eight-day tour around northern India’s signature sites — Delhi, the palaces of Rajasthan, the Taj Mahal — and of the country that had so profoundly altered my own worldview.

My misgivings were equally broad. Not only was this my mother’s first trip to Asia, but she and I had also never traveled together. And although she had been to Israel and Europe, including Russia, India was something else entirely.

Because India, truly, is like nowhere else on Earth. It is not a destination you visit like Paris or Beijing or Barcelona. It’s a place you must surrender to, dissolve into. No matter where one touches down, first contact with it is overwhelming.

How did Mom do in India?

Our last evening in Delhi, as I rode with my mother to the airport, I asked what she’d liked most and least about India. Topping the list was the Taj and Udaipur. For the low points, her answer surprised me.

“I didn’t like taking my shoes off,” she said, “and walking barefoot on those dirty temple floors.”

But India transforms everyone it touches. The axiom was reaffirmed two months after our trip, when I asked my mother how the journey had affected her.

“It’s not for everyone,” she said. “You have to be ready, physically and emotionally, because it impacts every sense. Sight, sound, smell, taste — even the sense of touch, because you have to take off your shoes, and be in contact with the ground.”

“What about the culture?”

“It was like being in another world — but I loved it. I felt very comfortable. And I realized that no matter where I go, what clothing people wear or what traditions they practice, we’re all human beings. We all want the same things: to enjoy our lives, live in peace and be allowed to practice what we believe in.

“There’s no doubt that India changed me. It wasn’t a vacation,” she said with a laugh. “It was an experience.”