It's a place where everything happens all at once, loudly and with fervor.  There are so many "noises".  The noise of sound,  the noise of color, odor, culture, and interaction.   You're bathed in sensory overload.  You feel detached from reality.  You experience more in a single day than in a whole year at home.  You're strangely happy.  Life is happening for the first time. It's a place you can't go to just "see".  You are invited to participate and learn as you go along.   Everything there is terrible, everything there is wonderful, all at the same time and with great intensity. It's as I've been told many times by the Indians themselves, "This is India. In India anything is possible." You come home and try to explain what it is that you experienced.   There's nothing at home like India so you can't convey any real impression. So you give anecdotes. Those fail because the chaotic details you leave out are an essential part of what you experienced; the 109 degree heat, the smell of diesel exhaust mixed with jasmine, bold stares that break into betel stained smiles, the gauntlet of "Hello! hello! hello! What country?", the din of electric generators, the garish posters hung on timeless architecture, the packs of feral street dogs, the unsafe wiring, distorted music echoing through metal loudspeakers, the passing-off of torn rupees, the shrill, alien voice of the chai-wallahs, "chai-chai-chai-chai-chai-CHAI-CHAI I I", the late night music of unidentified street processions, the warm clean wind of rooftops, the morning acrobatics of monkeys outside your window, avoiding the unclean left hand, the "accha" head wag, the cleverness of autorickshaw wallahs, the power outages, the sindhur paste and red kum-kum powder, the guy on the bus who grabs your wrist to see what time it is without asking, the thick soles of bare feet, the cool feel of marble floors. And all the things that go unnoticed.