“you can’t smell the streets of India on facebook…”

A few weeks ago, I had a business trip to India and by chance, Marie (my 17 year old step daughter) had a week off from school, so I took her to India with me.

Each year, since she was 8 years old, I take her (just the two of us) to a new country (ideally) outside europe to help her experience the world.

Over the past 9-10 years, (not including all the family vacations) together, Marie and I have done south beach in Miami, walked all over London, journeyed like Indiana Jones through Petra in Jordan, swum in the dead sea, rode horses through the pyramids of Egypt, experienced the jewish cemetary in Prague, enjoyed the buzz and skyline of Hong Kong, the great food in Singapore, the lush greenary of Malaysia, the forbidden city in Beijing, walked for hours on the great wall in China…

This year by chance our adventure took us to another wonder of the world…the Taj Mahal.

Our trip to India started in Bangalore where I worked for a few days at naseba’s office.
While I worked, Marie journeyed and went site seeing around Bangalore – but our trip really began on the 4^th day when we flew from Bangalore to New Delhi.

Luckily, the client I had a meeting with in Delhi suggested we stay at the Imperial Hotel because it was near his office … we discovered the Imperial Hotel is one of the top hotels in the world (kick ass hotel)

After a great meeting with one of our biggest clients in India, officially – Marie and Scott’s wild adventure began…

My client organized a guide to take us around Delhi … and the first stop the guide took us was to a temple where they feed 40,000+ people every day.

We got a complete tour of the facilities and even visited the kitchen where the meals are prepared … Marie sat with some young women and made bread, cooked the bread and stirred one of the large pots of curry.
No hair net and there was no where in the make shift kitchen for her to wash her hands …
What an adventure.


After the tour, we went into the area where thousands of people throughout the day sit on the floor and eat.

Although we didnt eat, we sat for a few minutes and spoke with some of the people.

The guide was great to us because this temple and canteen where the 40,000+ people eat every day is not a tourist attraction, but he wanted Marie to experience it.

That afternoon, we toured all over Delhi and saw many of the touristic sites … but Marie kept talking and thinking about her experience in the kitchen of the temple.

She said something which became our theme for the rest of the trip:
“you can’t smell the streets of India on facebook…”

The next day our guide picked us up at 5am and we drove 5-6 hours to Agra (the site of Taj Mahal)

The crazy, hectic drive quickly woke us up.

Marie and I both sat in the back of a big SUV without speaking; we just stared out the window at the villages, the other cars and all the crazy-ness along the road …

We saw several horse drawn carriages….

4 people on the same small mototcycle traveling ridiculously fast…

We had to stop for 10+ minutes while cattle and other animals walked across the street (completely) on their own. I did not see anyone leading them.

Crazy, but a brilliant experience.

The 5+ hour drive went by quickly … and we arrived to the Taj Mahal before lunch.

I have been lucky enough to visit many of the most famous sites in the world … and I have wanted to visit the Taj Mahal ever since we opened an office in India in 2005.

I love India and have traveled all over the country, but I must admit, the long drive from Delhi to Agra often dissuaded me from going to visit the Taj Mahal.

But the drive goes by quickly – and is surely one of the highlights of the adventure.

After several hours of walking around and visiting all the sites in Agra, including the red fort …

The final adventure of the trip began: the 6 hour drive back to Dehli.

The drive back was even more adventurous than the drive to Agra because I had the driver stop in a few of the villages so Marie could experience first hand “the real world.”

Together, Marie and I walked around parts of these villages, even after it got dark.
Of course, everyone was friendly to us.

My favourite photo of the trip was taken in front of a small shed on the side of the road – a man was cutting a young boys hair.

Surely, I paid the man cutting hair more money to take a photo with him than he charges to cut hair – but it was well worth it.

I try to use these trips with Marie to get her thinking about the world.

Don’t waste your life just dreaming about what you are going to do tomorrow….

Make your dreams happen.