It is impossible to put India in a nutshell.

India is hectic. It is unapologetically bold, maybe even tactless.

To truly understand India, one has to get close. You can feel it the moment after you negotiate a price with the rickshaw-wallah. Once you hop in a vehicle, you see cars, buses, taxis, autorickshaws, cyclists, bikers, beggars and cows all battle for road position in war zones just inches wide. Yet within all this bedlam, you can hear the people talk to each other through their windows. You can hear them sharing stories, and helping one another. There is a constant energy in India, one that beats like music if you just allow yourself to hear it.

The senses can only take so much, and the initial flood of smells, sights, and sounds reduced me to an irritable tourist. I myself thought I was in the wrongest of places, but not before long I began to truly appreciate the colors, the tasty spices, the rituals, the energy of sound and people.