2500 years back, India housed one of the world's oldest universities of learning – Nalanda University – and the country was regarded as a premier destination in the world for achieving wisdom, learning and change. Centuries passed by and India continued to touch the lives of several world famous personalities such as Erwin Schrodinger, Max Mueller, George Harrison and Mark Twain. Each of these individuals experienced India in a manner that left them inspired for life with a path that never even existed before.
Ironically, when the world's majority came to realize the transformative power of India and started visiting the country in numbers, a gradual dilution began to happen. Till today, India continues to remain a unique destination in the world that provides just the right environment for transformation. However, not many travel organizers are looking beyond the forts, temples and cursory spiritual, cultural and volunteering experiences. The result – only a handful of the seven million tourists visiting India get to experience the real journeys that transcend beyond the beauty of Taj Mahal, a cursory volunteering project in an orphanage or a stay at an Ashram. The irony is that none of these travelers ever realize that there exists a layer of experience without which a journey to India is barely complete.
This irony of India travel became the subject of a five month long research conducted by IFT, which firmly believed that India has much more to offer than what the majority knows. The research identified six layers of experiences that a traveler may undergo in India and the 6th layer, the layer of transformation, was experienced by just one out of 100 travelers. Clearly, traveling to India has been a memorable and intriguing experience for tourists, but 99% of them never had the opportunity to acquire those experiences that could inspire them to live a life of purpose and impact.
This landmark change only happens when you experience that unexplored layer of India travel - the layer that is dotted with a number of moments of self-discovery, situations that challenge your perceived limits and experiences that can leave you inspired and empowered for life.
We aspire to unhide this very layer for the world to experience. To discover what our research showed, and what that unexplored layer is, keep scrolling down.
We asked nearly 600 non-business tourists to categorize their travel experience in India across six layers (see below), with each successive layer signifying a whole new level of impact to a traveler's life. The research showed how severely under tapped is the level of impact travelers accrue from a visit to India, with the focus typically limited to the more obvious benefits. What the world seems to have skipped in their itineraries is the depth of experiences that transcend beyond the notions of enjoyment and intrigue and that can truly bring an instrumental change in one's life.
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