4 takeaways from a trip to complex, scenic, colorful India

Before traveling to India, I realized what I knew about the country pretty much boiled down to this: the Taj Mahal. Elephants. Garlic naan.

All the more reason to travel 13½ time zones, mingle amid one-sixth of the world’s population and learn about a belief system, art, religions, languages and traditions built on Eastern thought.

The payoffs in our travels to cities and rural areas were tremendous, though this is a journey perhaps not for everyone.

A lot of areas of India’s cities looked like this: dirt sidewalks; rambling shops in broken-down structures selling mysterious items; rickety buildings; families living in open-air dwellings (or just in the open air); bustling or dead-stop, lane-free roads; litter strewn in most gutters. Add women wearing the brightest palette of saris; men convening in front of storefronts, perhaps doing business, perhaps just chatting, occasionally

getting haircuts from a makeshift outdoor barber. Life courses on a human scale here, available to travelers to either see or experience. Interactions with people shift from “why?” to “wow!” Beyond friendliness and outright curiosity, Indians we met – even in the bleakest of conditions – were open to interaction.

India is a complex country full of contradictions and complications a western tourist can’t begin to understand in a trip. But after nearly three weeks in the north of India, and a few more weeks to think about it at home, here are some takeaways.

See the Taj Mahal but don’t miss its ancestor

If you are going to northern India, the fabled Taj Mahal in Agra is probably at the top of your bucket list. An average of 77,000 people daily visit the tomb, considered one of the world’s seven modern wonders.

And it is probably wise to come sooner rather than later: The buzz among tour guides onsite is that within a couple years, due to security concerns and wear and tear, visitors won’t be allowed up onto the broad marble platform that circles the outside perimeter of the Taj, nor to enter the tomb itself.

Millions of words praising the exquisite structure exist; here are just a few more about what surprised/delighted me:

The tomb and its manicured setting are, indeed, visually breathtaking, but what I hadn’t quite expected were the serenity and grace of a place that millions of photos don’t quite convey. There is not just shock and recognition of entering the gates and being walloped with an “aha” OMG moment, but a peaceful grandeur makes you want to linger a bit, at a distance, drinking it in.

Inside the circular, small internal tomb, the marble and the vaulted ceiling cause visitor voices to merge into not a roar but a steady, collective murmur. It’s a stirring, unique sound, almost like the chanted – and enchanting – echoes of millions over time who have come here.

Equally significant and satisfying as the Taj, I would suggest, is that any time spent in Delhi should include visiting Humayun’s Tomb.

This structure and immaculate grounds are no secret, but not as well known to westerners. A serene compound in crowded Delhi, it predates the Taj Mahal by 66 years and inspired the design of the latter.

Humayun’s Tomb was built by his widow in 1565 to celebrate the dead Mogul emperor (his fall from a height the result, according to many reports, of stumbling around in the dark in an opium fog). In this period, marble was not in use. Instead, red sandstone dominates, and the dome and exterior here are dominated by ochre, with cream-colored stones as framing devices. Also, in the interior, exquisite stone trellis works let light and air enter.

As with the Taj, Humayun’s Tomb sits in a wonderful park setting with a number of smaller, interesting tombs flanking it … if you have a free lunch hour, take a picnic.

You’ll never forget a rickshaw ride through Chandni Chowk. The old-fashioned and occasionally culturally questionable thought of a young man pedaling passengers on a rickshaw ride sounds more like the Far East of the past than South Asia of the present, but this slow-speed passage through the tight warrens of old Delhi, choked with small businesses, gives claustrophobia a good name.

Being maneuvered through the press of humanity going in and out of small businesses – close-up looks at the hundreds of book stalls and then the wedding-sari vendors quarters are astonishing – conveys an immediate sense of what living in close quarters with 1.25 billion people in a single country can feel like.

Take in the wildlife

Absolutely plan to go on a tiger hunt: While the animals usually associated with India are elephants and cows – more about them below – tigers in the wild were a big lure on our trip.

At the end of 2016, an ever-changing population estimate – poaching casts its dark shadow – found 3,890 tigers loose in the world. The Indian government is aggressively expanding protection efforts – the country spends an estimated $30 million a year on the effort – and 70 percent of the world’s tigers are found here, mostly in 49 reserves dotting the countryside.

About 110 miles southeast of Jaipur sits Ranthambore National Park, a 243-square mile savannah with several fresh water sources and many species of hoofed animals that are the tiger’s preferred meal. It’s an easily accessed destination.

Modern tiger hunts are about shooting photos, not animals. Early mornings and midafternoons at Ranthambore see a restricted number of open-air vehicles shuttling tourists into the park to jounce along five dusty trail routes, each stretching a few miles.

The three- to four-hour treks are mostly leisurely. Three separate trips included sightings of an elusive panther, dozing crocodiles and grub-eating sloth bears; water birds, wild boar, entertaining monkeys and various kinds of deer everywhere. But in an instant, and you never knew when, this could be punctuated by a spike of adrenalin with the hoarse shout from a guide: “Tiger!”

Our party hit the jackpot on one excursion: three adult tigers seen, including a female. They were captivating, powerfully built and colorfully designed, with the briefest glint of a yellow-eyed stare. Even seen from a distance through binoculars, they sent an instinctive shudder along my spine.

But the pursuit of our prey was also a thrill. Once a tiger was spotted, the vehicles would swarm like bees, jockeying for the best photo opportunities. Tigers here are accustomed to the cars and ignore them, padding purposefully along while we careened after.

Against the scenic backdrop of old Indian fortresses nearby and 19th century stone gates, the exhilarating experience was a real, amped and far less safe upgrade on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.

And good luck NOT seeing other animals in town: The most startling part of seeing animals in India is that you see them not just in the wild, but often as close as the nearest road median.

Driving from Delhi’s international airport to our hotel late on a Sunday night, I gleefully spotted a dressed-to-the-nines, complete with flowery plume, “wedding pony” that was being trotted on a leash behind two teens on a motorcycle, slowly weaving around and through 5 to 10 mph traffic.

A couple mornings later, the wildlife was a bit more exotic, with mangy monkeys, several wild pigs and a few deer milling around companionably near a random bus stop in central Delhi (population about 21.2 million).

On the outskirts of Jaipur’s Pink City, an elephant trudged along a paved highway into town, carrying its mahout – minder – and a huge stack of grain on its flanks. Later, at the Amber Fort in the hills above town, a parade of about 30 pachyderms, painted in a riotous palette of pastels, carried trusting tourists (perhaps too trusting … we saw a spill with the passengers knocked to the ground and no likely insurance agents nearby for filing a claim).

Camels drawing work carts were a surprise, spotted by the dozens in both towns and the arid countryside. In the country, wild peacocks – the national bird of India – provided wake-up calls outside your window, piercing shrieks at dawn.

And, yes, sacred to Hindus, there were the cows, seen almost everywhere in the major towns (except Delhi, where they are moved to the suburbs), lying placidly in front of busy shop fronts, wandering obliviously through the most crowded intersections, nosing through rubbish-filled gutters. After the initial interest in spotting our first in-town bovines, a member of our tour party joked about hoping for a street scene photo without a cow. Hindus of even modest economic success achieve status for being able to afford a “family” cow, and while many of these are tethered for milking, cows past their prime roam around at random.

Next to cows, stray dogs and pigs seem to prosper in India. Certainly, dogs flourish: estimates run to more than 30 million strays in India. Perhaps that’s why, in my 18 days on the ground, I saw only a single feral cat.

Be a wedding crasher

Spy on any wedding: Whenever, wherever you stumble across a wedding procession, or a wedding party, take a moment to gawk. Even by the riotous standards of hot colors on display in India, the excess on display – Indian weddings, most of which are arranged, rather than love matches, and often last six days and take the participants decades to pay off – is hugely rewarding.

Prepare for an unsettling image

The first swastika I saw was on an election poster in Delhi. It had a number of black crosses framing mug shots of a dozen or so jolly and jowly local alderman up for re-election.

Intellectually, I knew that this symbol of Nazi menace – adopted by a party member vote in Germany in the early 1920s – is predated by several thousand years of use in India. The image has long existed as a symbol of good fortune, the word “swastika” deriving from the ancient Sanskrit of “su,” meaning “well,” and “asti,” meaning “being.”

Still, the jarring sensation never quite went away as one encountered them everywhere: etched into bumpers of trucks lumbering along highways; a small one carved into a paving stone at an ancient structure flanking the Taj Mahal; a massive one painted onto the steps fronting a temple on the Ganges River.

During that first sighting in Delhi, the election poster invited, in English, everyone to “join the Swastikus party.”

Thanks, but seen through my western eyes, I’ll pass.