Premium Deal Alert: 9 April 2025

If your first thought of India involves elbowing through the streets of Delhi, dodging honking rickshaws you're not alone. 

See, I'm a soft soul. The type that memorizes Mary Oliver poems and the thought of being ambushed with neon powder in a sea of people during Holi makes my eyes twitch. 

But that doesn't mean I want to skip India completely. On the contrary! It's complexity of cultures, language, ever-changing landscapes have captured my imagination, just as it done for countless travellers before me. 

Just give me a gentler India, one where I can trade the city smog for the morning's crisp air on a tea plantation.

Let me lose myself in a mountain top village where time moves slowly and the only sounds are children playing on the streets and prayer flags fluttering in the wind.