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ast year I spent Chinese New Year and Valentine'€™s Day confined to a hospital bed due to nasty dengue fever, caught during a presunrise hike near Borobudur Temple. The funny thing was, while lying in pain all I could think about was traveling again. During my corporate years I traveled frequently and I sorely missed it.

Not long after being discharged I boarded a train to Pekalongan for a hotel opening, and every month since I'€™ve wandered about somewhere. Sometimes for work, mostly for pleasure. Many first-time trips, too, like to India, where I spent Christmas and rang in 2016.

First off, while everyone says they are dying to see the Taj Mahal, not many are keen to actually visit India. Safety, hygiene and personal comfort are the top three excuses. A friend earnestly asked if it was feasible to stay in some airport hotel, pop in to the Taj, and fly out the same day. I answered that this wasn'€™t some Taj in Vegas, this was the real Taj Mahal in Agra.

But, as luck would have it, I eventually found an eager travel mate. For safety reasons we booked a private tour, busting our piggybanks in the process. A local driver, a local guide and two giggly Indonesian girls then set off on a 10-day road trip that started in Old Delhi and spanned into Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

India was everything we had braced ourselves for, and more. I'€™m very visual, so what I noticed as soon as landing at Indira Gandhi International Airport was the colors. On the saris that women wore underneath sweaters, on turbans donned proudly by men, even on toilet walls. Outside the airport, colors were soon rivaled fervently by horns '€” blaring unapologetically from every vehicle running past a decent dinner time at a volume and frequency that would make brash New York cabbies blush.

Yet, beyond the welcome bursting colors and unwelcome blaring horns lay a country rich in diverse heritage. The first two stops on the so-called Golden Triangle tourist sites of India, Delhi and Agra, were filled with gorgeous structures of red sandstone and white marble displaying Islamic architecture'€™s love for symmetry and geometry. Yep, a surprise for many tourists; India is not all about om and Hindu deities.

The Delhi sultanate, whose towering Qutb Minar compound stands to this day as one of Delhi'€™s most-visited spots, ruled India for 320 years before being replaced in 1526 by yet another group of Islamic monarchs, the Mughal dynasty, for 330 years.

The Mughals built grander structures and swathed building facades with semiprecious stone inlays. Shah Jahan'€™s love tribute the Taj Mahal is the renowned jewel in the architectural crown, where I arrived in a sari to properly pay homage that morning. Later, however, I came to adore more the walled city of Fatehpur Sikri where Shah Jahan'€™s grandfather, Akbar I, respectfully mixed Islamic symmetry with Hindu altars to honor his wife Jodha Bai, who remained Hindu. The state of Uttar Pradesh, where Agra is located, is still home to many Indian Muslims today.

The pink city of Jaipur, which closes the Golden Triangle, is where the Rajput dynasty started wowing us with its elaborate, mostly hilltop, edifices. Being Hindu, engraved altars and adorned effigies were abundant. As touristy as it was to ride an elephant up to the Amber Fort, it was a fitting preparation to take in the grandness of the vast complex later. My friend and I were touring the third floor when a young guard shyly motioned us to the quiet rooftop, allowing us to have an unfettered bird'€™s-eye view of the walled city.

As we traipsed further down across Rajasthan state into Chittorgarh and Udaipur, the weather got slightly warmer and we heard namaste as a greeting more often. We were the only foreigners that day in the Rajput'€™s early capital Chittorgarh Fort, so our experience also got, let'€™s say, more colorful.

The Rajput'€™s last capital, the city of manmade lakes, Udaipur, was where all the colors seemed to rightly enmesh for me. The architecture was laid out more gracefully, traffic flowed more easily and sellers peddled their wares less forcefully. There was something rather languid about the city that was subtly enchanting. The Rajputs reportedly took four centuries to gradually embellish their hilltop, multistory, marble palace to perfection, and the resulting splendor was visible even as I was squeezed by the throng of visitors inundating its low-ceilinged, spiraled, almost hazardous passages that day.

Beauty, yes. Chaos and noise, granted. Poverty, everywhere. From the outright slums on the way to tourist destinations, including to our hilltop heritage hotel that had been an Udaipur royal retreat, to the random man lying motionless with limbs jutting out onto a busy street off Agra Fort, unclear whether dead or alive. Indian friends, rightfully, muttered that I was lucky to have visited in wintertime and escaped the funny scents of summer. Yet India is a dustily gilded mélange I personally would love to revisit '€” the supposedly breathtaking Kashmir is on the list '€” though I now fathom why it may be an acquired taste to others.

Paradox, aplenty. Incredible, in many different senses, India indeed.