I’ve been pondering recently and if I think about it, it was solo travel that changed my life.

Back in 1998 I met three people who had a travel company specialising in Africa and they wanted to start another specialising in India.  They had a policy, if you haven’t seen it, you can’t sell it and so I was despatched out to India on my own, for six weeks. At that time I could barely find India on a map.

Incredibly they also chose South India, not the normal Golden Triangle program in the north and so, one fine day in November 1998, I landed in Chennai. I had no idea what I was doing, well, visiting sites and checking out hotels yes, but beyond that, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. However, I was diligent, taking copious notes and I can’t tell you how many rolls of film I wasted photographing hotel toilets! Why I thought that was an essential part of the job I will never know. 

I travelled through Tamil Nadu; gazed upon towering temples resplendent with with a profusion of gaily painted gods, I was mesmerised, yet totally baffled. Who were they all? How would I ever learn them all? Did I need to? And the people, the welcome, the smiles, the delight in wanting to share anything from their lunch to a chai to their favourite part of the temple, their joy that a foreigner was visiting and their inquisitiveness, how was I, a young woman traveling alone? Something unheard of in conservative South India. I was enchanted.

I travelled on through Kerala. The first thing I noticed was that my Tamilian driver could no longer understand the language or read the road signs, it was not only a different language but a different script.

Kerala was more gentle, more ensconced in natural beauty, gone were the profusion of towering temples in favour of nature reserves, tea plantations, spice gardens, palm trees and paddy fields and of course the backwaters. At that time there were just 12 house boats, literally converted rice barges, all hand punted and we moored in the middle of the lake over night, listening to songs coming from the local villages.

Alcohol couldn’t officially be served on those days, so Kingfisher beer arrived in a tea pot with cups. 

Again, it was the people who made this part of the journey extraordinary. And yet, I was only being shown big, impersonal hotels. I began to realise what I was looking for, and they weren’t it.

I started to ask around and a couple of names kept being mentioned. I put my foot down, I wanted to meet these people. It turns out, they were the pioneers of homestays. So common now, but 25 years ago, they were virtually unheard of. I visited, was enchanted and actually launched an entire itinerary around these homestays, houseboats and the then pioneering tree houses. Called Hilltops and Hideaways, we got it featured on the BBC Holiday program and yet, it’s an itinerary that even today, most people don’t consider, instead continuing to promoting the mainstream destinations despite them having fallen prey to mainstream destinations.

But that’s not what changed my life.

India is huge! We had to expand to new areas, I had to have seen it to sell it, I spent a lot of time on the road. No one could take time out of work to travel that amount of time with me and it got to a stage when I didn’t want anyone to. I fell in love with having the freedom and the flexibility to do as I pleased, within the confines of  my schedule of course.

A few years later, I moved to India, having been asked to manage a lodge in a tiger reserve. It should have been for 6 months, I stayed in India for 13 years, and spent at least 4-5 months a year on the road, exploring. I was hooked, fascinated, enchanted, frustrated and saddened often times too, but the one thing that you can say about India with absolute certainty is that she will make you feel. There is no avoiding it, and she will drag you through several emotions a day.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realised the effect that all this has had on my life. I’d written a book about my time spent in the jungles, Escape to India, and was being interviewed by a radio station. They wouldn’t give me the questions in advance, wanting spontaneity.  The last question was, “Didn’t you ever marry?” And my gut, instant response was, “No, my job and my life in India has been nothing short of extraordinary, and I never met anyone it was worth compromising on that for.”

Maybe I never met the right guy, maybe being a long time solo traveller made me selfish, but my life has definitely been extraordinary. Oh, there’s been tough parts, I’ve been threatened and had to go into hiding and stitched up on a long con by my Indian accountant and had to leave the country. But life has never been dull. I had no idea, when I answered the  advert in the back of Lady Magazine, that it really would change my life forever.

However, what I’ve now also realised is that I do want to share these experiences, oh not with a man, no, but with a group of likeminded travellers, people who want to discover this land that has been my life, passion, career and often times home, for the past 25 years. 

If you’d like to join me on a journey across South India, then click on this link to find out more: Journey Across The South. 

Or, click on this link if you’d like to discover Rajasthan just that little bit differently: Discovering Rajasthan.

Or, contact me on Philippa@indianexperiences.com

Or can arrange a time to chat via:

https://calendly.com/indianexperiences/30min