Quotes & Sayings About Travel To India

Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom. — Tahir Shah

The Empress Sabina had long ago formed her own theory about the nonsense in travel books. No traveler, having gone to the expense and trouble of venturing where most civilized people were too sensible to go, was going to come home and admit that it had been a waste of time. Instead, he had to pronounce his destination to be full of strange wonders, like the elk with no knees that could be caught by sabotaging the tree against which it leaned when it slept (Julius Caesar) or the men from India who could wrap themselves in their own ears (reported by the elder Pliny, who seemed to have written down everything he was ever told), or the blue-skinned Britons (Julius Caesar again).
Strangely, no traveler had ever brought one of these creatures home for inspection. Doubtless they were impossible to capture, or died on the journey, or the blue came off in the wash. — Ruth Downie

Foras Road has a sordid reputation ( ... ) Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution. — Tahir Shah

Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue can also convey a sense of place. Even so, I insist, the traveler invents the place. Feeling compelled to comment on my travel books, people say to me, "I went there"
China, India, the Pacific, Albania
"and it wasn't like that." I say, "Because I am not you. — Paul Theroux

As a romantic ideal, turbulent, impoverished India could still weave its spell, and the key to it all - the colours, the moods, the scents, the subtle, mysterious light, the poetry, the heightened expectations, the kind of beauty that made your heart miss a beat - well, that remained the monsoon. — Alexander Frater

Faxian and Xuanzang might have been the first Chinese to travel to India, but sometimes it felt like I was the first. — Hong Mei

When I go to Bali, when I come to India and travel and see different cultures. I make sure I'm involved in the world out there, creatively, culturally. — Donna Karan

In the spring of 1968, The Beatles and I were invited by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to travel to Riskikesh, India. Riskikesh has been an important spiritual place to many millions of people over the years. It is situated where the Ganges River flows out of the Himalayas, and to be in that atmosphere was something incredibly special. — Mike Love

Everywhere we walked we got plenty of attention due to the camera and sound men. The locals love to get on camera. [ ... ] I'd seen footage of Gandhi surrounded like this and always thought it was because he was very popular, but now I wonder if it was just because he had a camera crew with him. — Karl Pilkington

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. — Charles Bukowski

The only pool of young people lies in Saudi Arabia, some of the Middle-East countries, and few African countries. But they are not prepared as Indians are ... we travel well; we are accepted globally very well, and that makes India truly a place to source world's workforce. — Sunil Mittal

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years. — Herman Hesse

I was the last person to get high-speed Internet, I was the last person to get an iPod, the last person to get an iPhone ... I travel to India for one month out of the year and I don't have a phone there, so I can go without, which is beautiful, too. — Lindsey McKeon

If you travel by Indian Airlines, you don't have to visit villages in India," the boy said again in disgust. "It still reminds one of the 1940s. Everything is the same, including their mentality. — Jeet Gian

I enjoy every opportunity and live every moment. And that is why I have no regrets. It's when you are not scared of losing that you win everything. Very often I take cabs to travel during the course of the day because I enjoy talking to cabbies from different parts of India. — Shailender Singh

The ancient paused for a moment, as if his strength were failing. Yet I sensed that there was more to tell. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered:
'The Gond kingdoms have fallen, their people live dispersed in poverty: the teak trees and the jungles have been cleared ... but the importance of the Gonds must not be forgotten! — Tahir Shah

Bhutan all but bases its identity upon its loneliness, and its refusal to b assimilated into India, or Tibet, or Nepal. Vietnam, at present, is a pretty girl with her face pressed up against the window of the dance hall, waiting to be invited in; Iceland is the mystic poet in the corner, with her mind on other things. Argentina longs to be part of the world it left and, in its absence, re-creates the place it feels should be its home; Paraguay simply slams the door and puts up a Do Not Disturb sign. Loneliness and solitude, remoteness and seclusion, are many worlds apart. — Pico Iyer

There are still many places I haven't seen that I'd like to travel to. I've never seen the Pyramids, and I'd love to explore the culture in North India. I think walking in the Andes would also be awesome. — Bjorn Ulvaeus

In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough. — Tahir Shah

It is also possible, I believe, if one lives in India long enough, to come across a globe-trotter who is modest and teachable, but we have been out here only twenty-two years, and I am going home without having seen one. — Sara Jeannette Duncan

For years and years, even during the time of my first visit in 1962, it has been said that Calcutta was dying, that its port was silting up, its antiquated industry declining, but Calcutta hadn't died. It hadn't done much, but it had gone on; and it had begun to appear that the prophecy has been excessive. Now it occurred to me that perhaps this was what happened when cities died. They don't die with a bang; they didn't die only when they were abandoned. Perhaps, they died like this: when everybody was suffering, when transport was so hard that working people gave up jobs they needed because the fear the suffering of the travel; When no one had clean water or air; No one could go walking. Perhaps city died when they lost amenities that cities provided, the visual excitement, the heightened sense of human possibility, and became simply places where there were too many people, and people suffered. — V.S. Naipaul

Back at the guest house I tried to acclimatise. A travel-worn adventurer had once told me that leaning with one's head dangling over the end of a bed was the best way to achieve this. It was while I was in this position, the blood rushing to my temples, that the door swung open. — Tahir Shah

Waking up in India is like waking up to life itself. — Reymond Page

India will reveal to you the places in your heart that must be purified. — Erin Reese

The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it. — Tahir Shah

Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else. — Tahir Shah

India offers exciting business opportunities owing to the growth in corporate travel and a significant middle-class population waiting to explore the world. To begin with, Travelex is setting up eight city centre branches in metros and other major cities including tourist destinations. — Lloyd Dorfman

When the Bond films started, people didn't travel quite as much as they do now; a lot of people had never been outside of their own country, and certainly sitting in the cinema and seeing these exotic locations - I mean, that movie did great things for India, for tourism. They were very wise to allow us to film there. — John Glen

Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat. — Tahir Shah

In any case, he had long felt that Gandhi could provide some clues for him. Gandhi was not a Christian, but he lived in a community that endeavored to live by the teachings set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. Bonhoeffer wanted Christians to live that way. So he would travel to India to see it practiced by non-Christians. — Eric Metaxas

I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it. — Tahir Shah

My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Be as intellectual as you like about it, but India is brilliantly mad. And if you want to love it, you have to hate it first. — Simon Dring

In 2011, the NASSCOM team introduced me to Aloke Bajpai, who, like others on his young team, cut his teeth working for Western technology companies but returned to India on a bet that he could start something - he just didn't know what. The result was Ixigo, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris. Ixigo is today the biggest travel search platform in India, with millions of users. To build it, Bajpai leveraged the supernova, using free open-source software, Skype, and cloud-based office tools such as Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook. They "enabled us to grow so much faster with no money," he told me. It — Thomas L. Friedman

Looking a dead insect in the sack of basmati that had come all the way from Dehra Dun, he almost wept with sorrow and marvel at its journey, which was tenderness for his own journey. In India almost nobody would be able to afford this rice, and you had to travel around the world to be able to eat such things where they were cheap enough that you could gobble them down without being rich; and when you got home to the place where they grew, you couldn't afford them anymore. — Kiran Desai