🇮🇳 India — The Festival of Colors & First Saris
My Experience in India
India stole my heart. This was the destination where I truly understood what “Culture With Lina” means — not watching from the sidelines, but stepping right in. I danced through Holi until I was every color of the rainbow. I wore my first sari at a real Indian wedding and was welcomed like family. I ate where the queues were longest, woke before dawn for the Taj Mahal, and watched a whole city glow with lamps at Diwali.
India is loud, warm, overwhelming in the very best way — and impossible to forget. And Coco? She made her India debut here, complete with her own little festival bow.
Explore India
Festivals, monuments, food and unforgettable events — dive deeper.
Planning your own Indian adventure
India is the destination people ask me about most, and my answer is always the same: go, but go gently. Give yourself more days than you think you need, because everything here is bigger — the colors, the flavors, the generosity of strangers who wave you over for chai. Start with the Golden Triangle of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur if it is your first visit, add a festival if the dates line up, and balance the intensity of the cities with somewhere slow like the Kerala backwaters. Below are all my India stories so far, organized to help you plan your own route through them.
Festivals & celebrations
- The Holi Festival Experience — India’s festival of colors: what to wear, where to celebrate, and how to join in respectfully.
- Diwali in India — a traveler’s guide to the festival of lights, when whole cities glow with oil lamps.
- Inside an Indian Wedding — color, ritual and pure joy, plus the story of my very first sari.
Monuments & places
- The Taj Mahal — India’s monument to love, and why sunrise is worth the four a.m. alarm.
- Varanasi — sunrise on the Ganges and the oldest show on earth, from the ghats to the evening aarti.
- Jaipur, the Pink City — palaces, bazaars and the best doorways in India.
- Kerala Backwaters — the slowest, greenest day in India, drifting past the palms by houseboat.
Food
- A Taste of India: Street Food You Cannot Miss — pani puri, jalebi and the stalls worth queuing for.
Wondering what a trip like this might cost? Run your numbers through my free Travel Budget Calculator for a realistic estimate of flights, food and hotels. And if there is a part of India you would love me to cover next, tell me through the contact page.
Where I have actually been Destinations from the filmed series. Each one gets its own page, and the cities with a full illustrated guide are marked. Go deeper Illustrated, chapter-by-chapter guides to the cities in this series. Instant PDF download. A Jaipur travel guide in 37 illustrated pages. The Pink City decoded, the gem scam explained so it cannot work on you, the full Rajasthani wedding sequence, and…Explore India, city by city
India destination guides
Jaipur — The Pink City | Culture & Travel Guide
