What is unique about rural India?

India makes it possible to follow your heart across it !
Unplanned, intuitively and independently. The more rural and remote the safer and kinder it gets. I haven't run into trouble even on nighttime walks down dark paths between villages. A potential friend always showed up when I felt lost or alone.

On the other hand, cities and even touristic towns and villages, although safe, tend to cater and follow western ways. Naturally, traditional values gradually erode and in turn wealth seems to replace wisdom as the goal in life.
The following pages and program are based on my personal experience. Your's will likely be uniquely wonderful.

Experience what?

Why?

Rural India is an open, real-world retreat. Villages and towns live off the land and within nature, where the everyday life is based on values of tolerance for diversity (Muslim and Hindu people live side by side) and compassion for even ignorant foreigners (such was myself there). People are kind and keenly welcomed me into their homes, lives and hearts with unconditional giving. All of this done with a sense of ease, of a daily practice.
In such an unfamiliar and isolated environment, yet safe and supportive, I found myself gradually lowering my guards and relaxing into the village state of mind. Less and less relevant became doubts such as: Is this place safe? Can I trust that person? Why is this person so nice to me? What will it cost me? Why do they talk hindi and laugh in my presence? Is this politically correct? Am I wasting my time here? Do I have a plan for tomorrow?

With time, I was able to realize my own preconditioned mind. Fostered since childhood to be locked in the vicious loop: craving, expectation, stress, anger, revenge, dissatisfaction, boredom feeding back the craving, expectation... and so on forever.

This logic seemed like the default and the only possible choice before having the chance to live submerged in this totally alternative reality. Village after village, town after town: the food, clothing, faces changed but the peoples' mindset was always the same. Do the right thing for the sake of that alone.

Where?

Before I left for India I was asking for some tips from friends who had already traveled there. A friend of a friend gave me a valuable advise: "There's no need for you to ask where to go to, everyone finds his own way through India". As this one proved right time and again, I eventually gave away my Lonely Planet guide book and went on quite freely, accepting invitations from locals I met along the way, often on trains, buses or just on main street.

How?

Traveling in the traditional Indian way. Yoga, Mediation, Hindu and Buddhist traditions all request to pass on knowledge without expecting a reward. My India is a not-for-profit program, it is my personal quest. The nature of traveling India is very much the same. Rural India provides lifetime benefits that can hardly be understood by one prior to experiencing. Physical comfort may be a notch below western modern life style, however, that will be well compensated by social comfort. Indian often say 'guest is god'. They treat a foreigner like they treat their gods: make you feel at home.