India Is Calling Me Back ...
no longer a distant whisper, but a command.
Hi, I’m Sabine, founder of Hedwig Travel. I craft meaningful journeys that move with your pace and connect you deeply to the world around you. My approach blends thoughtful curation with authentic cultural immersion. You can explore more about what I do here.
Firstly, I would like to acknowledge that for the last few weeks I’ve been sharing a carefully curated list of accommodations around the world that I hope to stay in one day. I’ve organised them by continent, and although I still have two continents to go, I was struck by a wave of creative energy today while sipping a chai in my favourite local café and felt the urge to share about my travels around India.
I have learnt never to go against that creative impulse. I like to honour it. So here is this piece that arrived like striking lightning. Next week, I’ll return to my planned articles.
Exactly nine years ago, I was landing in Mumbai with a six-month visa, a tight budget, and the light expectation that India would transform me, and that I would most definitely love it there.
It had been my dream since I was sixteen. There’s even proof. It’s written in my high school graduation yearbook: “Lifelong dream of mine is to travel around India.”
Well, there I was.
And I wasn’t liking it.
I wasn’t comfortable. Everything felt like an arduous mission. Men wouldn’t stop harassing us (if you’ve travelled to India alone or only with other women, you know I’m not exaggerating). Nothing went the way I planned, and I wasn’t enjoying the experience. It simply wasn’t flowing.
As someone who had been told from a very young age to always persevere, leaving India earlier than planned wasn’t even an option in my mind.
Thankfully, I was travelling with a very good friend who had quite a different upbringing. “Hey,” she said, “if we’re not liking it, we can always leave. No need to suffer. We could fly to Bali and have a great time.”
Instead, we made a slightly more mature decision: we would visit a neighbouring country, Nepal.We had been told it was one of the best times of the year for hiking, and honestly, we needed a break. We made a pact: if we had the energy after a month in Nepal, we would return to India and see if things felt smoother then.
I’m not going to dive deeply into that month in Nepal and what it still means to me - that’s a whole article in itself- but after our time hiking in the Himalayas, we felt alive. We were invincible.So we went back to India. This time, up North.
By then we had already visited quite a few places: Mumbai, New Delhi, Jaipur, Udaipur, Pushkar … and even spent some time on the beaches of South Goa.
But now we were running high on mountain energy. And we were craving more.
The rough plan was this: the Uttarakhand region, where we would spend a month staying at a local (and please, don’t imagine anything fancy) ashram; Himachal Pradesh, in the Western Himalayas near Tibet; and finally Ladakh, close to the Chinese border.
Ladakh has rapidly captured the attention of thousands of travelers in recent years, appearing more and more in travel magazines and websites. But back then, it was an extremely isolated part of the country. It took us two full days on local buses to get there. The rewards were immense, and to this day, I still say it’s the region of India I loved the most.
Returning to India for the second time, after our self-imposed journey of hiking and finding our centers in Nepal, felt powerful, to say the least. This time, we stayed for a few months.
We landed in Rishikesh, where we did yoga three times a day, sipped a few rounds of chai, ate thalis, yogurt with fruit, and far too many garlic naans. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who has ever - ever - gotten fatter in India.
Our days were slow and appallingly hot. When we weren’t yoga-ing, we would read, nap, or walk to a hidden corner of the Ganges where we could swim without men shouting at us; once, they even threw small rocks at us!
There was a phrase our yoga teacher repeated every day. I still say it to myself on my hardest days before getting out of bed: “An open chest and a smile on your face.”
That month, I connected deeply with myself. I had the time, the stillness, the right environment and supportive company. I could, very gently, begin feeling the effects of “Mother” India: a return to self.
We then headed up north on the most traumatic bus ride I have ever experienced. It was a seventeen-hour ride, maybe even longer, at nighttime, winding through mountains and small towns. My friend and I were the only Westerners. Just before the trip, I had fallen sick in my stomach. Was it something I ate, or too many garlic naans? I guess we’ll never know. The thing is, I was very sick. I had to use the toilet every half hour, so the bus had to stop at every possible spot where I could get off. Sometimes that was just the side of the road. After the fifth stop, everyone else on the bus knew what was going on. This has probably been the most humbling experience of my life.
We finally reached Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetan refugees. We had booked a ten-day silent introduction to Buddhism retreat at Tushita Centre. If you are ever called to do this kind of work, I couldn’t recommend this magical place more.
I won’t go into too much detail, but those ten days were confronting. Being silent for ten days means the inevitable: you have to sit with yourself. And your angels. And your demons.
That time at Tushita healed me. Not gently, not softly, but effectively. I was starting to realise that my time in India was never going to feel comfortable or smooth. It was the kind of journey that would push me to my limits, but I would rise again more authentically myself.
Travel has always helped me return to my center when the world and life gets too loud, a pause to reflect and regroup. You can do this in many places. Some are inviting, cozy, and friendly. Nepal, Sri Lanka, or Bali have been that for me: a beautiful cocoon that holds me while I transform.
India was not a cocoon. Most of the time, it felt like a spikey bed. A path full of obstacles. A road with no signs. A room with no light.
It took me months to understand, barely, how it really works there. I often say India is not a country, but a universe itself. That is why so many people visit dozens of times, hoping to scratch the surface of a culture with so much depth and history.
So after nine years, she is calling me again. I remember my younger self crying desperately at the airport, about to fly off to Sri Lanka after five months in the ancient earth of India. The teachings had been relentless, the reflections deep, and my heart was bruised but full. I like to think, very romantically, that this journey was the beginning of the second volume of my life’s book.
And now that I can feel so profoundly that my third volume is rapidly taking shape, Mother India is demanding that I return to her womb. I now carry nine years of life beneath my wings. I’m ready.
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