Just these past month, to be exact at the end of April India 🇮🇳 overtook China 🇨🇳 place in having the largest population when they exceeded 1.4 billion and all the credit goes to the 650 million young people that are under 25! That is to be considered as a key element. And you are right we are not here to discuss that, it needed to be mentioned to get the context, you see I knew India is crowded, yet didn’t expect it to be so popular and to be asked more than once to be photographed, you see I’ve to quite a few places and nobody was interested in photographing me, so for a minute I thought I landed in a different planet, and I am the main attraction! 😳

Snap out of the shock

To be honest, at first, I didn’t react in a good way. I’m suspicious and will always look 👀 for retinal reasons, I just didn’t get it, there is nothing special about me (you know I’m special 😌😏) so why do strangers take a picture with me?

And to add to it, they get excited and start laughing as it gets to you, or at least it got me, I started wondering and in one case I said no, and the other asked why. Trying so hard to understand that it is a cultural thing, but maybe not sure, either way, I didn’t see it coming although I’ve already 6 days in India, and only when I got North did I face it.

Is this for real?

So, did I just imagine waking up on a train and two women asking me to take a picture with me?

Oh, didn’t I tell you about the train? Well after visiting the Taj Mahal I needed to keep going, first I had limited time while visiting India, and second, there was nothing to do but visit the Taj Mahal or the market and that was already done by noon! So I went to the train station and all of a sudden I felt like part of a scene in a movie to be exact part of “Lion” That one made me go emotional in such a way, feel bad about all the kids and how cruelty is our world 🌎, at the same moment a kid approach asking for money 💵 same age as the one in the movie and at this moment my mind was working hard to figure out what to do, my principle said “Not giving money” “I am not an ATM” but it’s a kid, Natalie, look at him, he’s hungry so at that moment I asked him if he would like me to buy him food? And he said yes I was pleased and relieved. It made me feel good about myself, I believe in being kind and treating people as you would like to be treated with that being said I must say that tracking attention or trying to solve problems bigger than me is beyond my will, life is simple at moments if I can help I will, if not let us move on.

Back to the train, after a one-hour delay, I finally made it, stepping in was the biggest shock of my life, never thought I would meet this amount of people this close while trying to understand how it was working, it was a sleeping train, but it doesn’t look like it… Eventually, someone helped me after I contacted my planner about this trip and he assured me everything would be fine, I am going to Varanasi, and it’s a long one, so sleeping is a must.

I slept well given the circumstances and when I woke up, people started addressing me, one dude approached and said his mom would like to take a picture with me, and after taking the photo they had a video call to his sister and showed me, as not sure how to put it, again with laughter and giggling, and then dude kept asking me lots of questions and I was like, then out of the blue the other lady that shared my cabin also wanted to have a picture of both of us, so I ended up thinking of my 15 second of fame, and how I would react to it.

So how come we are not talking about it? First time I faced it was at Agra at the market, followed by another one at the Agra fort, then the train and hearing other stories they mentioned it, told you I wasn’t that special, however it got me thinking is it because people in India are meeting people from different places and they look different from them or knowing they are tourists and before they ask for pictures will ask them, that could be the reason no?

Anyway you should go and explore it one of best thing we can do, to get to know people and our selves.