4 newspaper articles, 100 chais and 1000 photos later...

I'd like to tell you I'm the kind of traveler who adapted to India with ease. The kind of traveler who revelled in all the wonder of the excitement parried and ducked through all the hyper-sensual mayhem that India throws at you every day.

I'm not. My trip so far has been a series of experiences that range from breathlessly beautiful to the sour and cringe-worthy. Moments of pure, innocent affection and connection with complete strangers or new friends, to frantic and stressful frustration exchanged with touts, or hustlers  who call themselves your best friend after exchanging a couple of lines with you, to the awkward and aggravating custom of cue jumping...

Last week we were welcomed with open arms into a family living in a small village in the middle of Maharashtra, Terela.

The Nagri family are a happy and humble farming family with giant hearts. On arriving, we didn't realise the impact of our presence until the 20th invitation for chai at a villager's place or at street wallah's stalls becoming our daily ritual. For a lot of the people we met, we were the only foreigners they'd ever seen. Crazy.

We divided our time between running on the dirt track behind the house in the mornings, helping the family through the daily routine, more chai and snacks with the villagers in their homes, and visiting Patoda, the closest town about 6kms away that supplied us with chicken, ice cream, a stiff drink and bottled water.

Having experienced so much that baffled and surprised us and simply loving living it, I think about the circumstances in which we met Ashok Nagri. It was on our second day of our trip in Mumbai - and all we did was be friendly and on a good feeling, nurture the new friendship. What it turned into was being able to visit his village and his family and share memories with them, moments that will be written in our 'personal legends'. We were able to be there for his son's 7th birthday, celebrate our engagement with their family, and on the same night there was a freak March storm - something that we were told never happens and was even less likely to happen now in the drought-stricken state... Ashok who is superstitious as they come, will tell you that bringing us to the village, brought the rains to the village.

Leaving the village was hard. We had let the Nagri family and Terela into our hearts. And hugging promises of visiting again we were so grateful to have them as part of our lives.

We observed some tourists at The Ajanta Caves the following week... shipped from their hotel by tour bus to the cave for sight-seeing, collected and swept back into their hotels without even touching the ground with their feet. We were still reflecting on the wonderfully intense week we'd had in the village. 

India is not the type country you can observe like an an exhibition or an aquarium. You have to participate, get dirty, soak it up, make real connections, experience lessons and take the good with the bad.

I can't call myself the model Indian traveler. 

But I would call myself a test and learn kind of traveler. 

The kind who's traveling India to open my mind. 

The kind who gets too emotional about some of the nuances of Indian-foreigner communication. 

The kind who still wants to wade and dive into this diverse, complicated and beautiful country... 

The kind who's willing to love India.