Raffles, rickshaws, revelations: Three years, three weekends in March.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

This weekend two years ago, I was in Manchester.

I wasn’t necessarily dying to visit – it was cold and in my “backyard,” as I was living in London at the time and keen to explore more distant corners of Europe – but as the inaugural Travel Bloggers Unite conference was being held there, I made the trek anyway.

On the Saturday night of the conference, we met in the bar of a Manchester hotel for drinks. When we arrived, I was asked if I’d like to enter a raffle drawing for three different trips – and doing so involved nothing more than dropping your card in three different hats.

I didn’t think much of it, for I’ll be honest with you: I am no winner. I’ve lost songwriting competitions and essay contests, battles for Homecoming Queen and Student Body President, and – please understand how much it pains me to make this confession in public – even the Virginia’s Junior Miss pageant.

(If it helps my credibility at all, that was the first and last pageant I ever entered, promise.)

And so I milled about the Manchester hotel that night with about a hundred or so others, talking traveling and blogging, as travel bloggers love to do, until the time came to announce the raffle winners.

The first drawing was for two free nights in a 5-star hotel in London. With my mom due to visit in a few weeks, this was actually what I most hoped to win – and was most disappointed over when my name wasn’t drawn, as I would’ve loved to treat her to bit of luxury during her stay.

The second drawing was for a month-long volunteering opportunity on a bear orphanage in Romania. Maybe it was because I’ve never had any real desire to go to Romania, or maybe because the plight of orphaned bears has never weighed too heavily on my heart (sorry, bears), but I didn’t shed many tears over not winning this one.

The only thing I knew about the third drawing was that it had something to do with India. From across the room, I could see the card being pulled out of the hat – and in the 2.3 seconds between it being drawn and the winner’s name being announced, my brain had time to register that there was a photo on the right-hand side on the card.

My card has a photo on the right-hand side of it, I thought, my heart beginning to race ever so slightly faster.

As it turned out, the card that was drawn had a photo on the right-hand side of it because it was indeed my card. There are two things I remember quite clearly about the moment my name was read out: how red my face flushed, to suddenly find myself (normally a wallflower in such situations) thrust into the center of the room; and how my heart raced even faster when I found out what exactly it was I had won.

I had won no ordinary trip, but a place for myself and a friend on an adventure called the Rickshaw Run. A trip to Thailand the previous year left me with memories of a few tuk tuk rides, but now I would be driving the very same [highly unreliable] vehicle 2,000 miles across India. What’s more, I would be blogging about it for the company behind the run, The Adventurists.

“What are you doing in September?” asked a representative from The Adventurists named Dan, and when I thought about how my masters course was due to finish that very month, not to mention my work contract, it all seemed a little too uncanny to be true.

I didn’t know then how much I would love driving a rickshaw, I didn’t know then that I would stay on in India an extra three months and fall hopelessly in love with the country.

All I knew, or had a sense of, was that a random weekend in Manchester had somehow just changed my life.

* * *

This weekend one year ago, I was leaving London for India a second time – not directly, I should say, but soon enough.

I’d returned to the UK after Christmas, with every intention of getting a two-year work visa. “London is my base,” I would say to others with confidence. But within hours of being back, welcomed by grey skies and a bitter chill in the air, something didn’t feel right – and I knew it was more than just jet lag.

“Be prepared,” my friend Nambi had told me, “returning to England after India is like going from color television back to black-and-white.”

Originally from southern India but having called England and now Northern Ireland home for the last fifteen years, if there is anyone who understands such a transition, it’s Nambi. I kept his words in mind as I picked up my life in London right where I’d left off, but felt little joy as I was doing so.

While I’d been away running with rickshaws and sipping chai in the sleeper class, London had changed – or maybe it was I who had.

Just over 24 hours after landing at Heathrow, I knew what I had to do. I had to go back. I’m not much of a “returner” when it comes to travel, preferring the thrills of discovering a new destination rather than those of re-visiting somewhere I’ve been before, but I felt a strange sense of unfinished business with India.

I missed the chaos, the chai, the challenge – but most of all the chai, the spiraling scents of cardamom and ginger, and the chai wallas who prepare it, pouring the steaming milky mixture through a sieve into tiny paper or glass cups.

“Oh, dear, the India bug,” my friend Citlalli said to me when I told her. “Babe, if you don’t get it out of your system now it is going to bug you for ages.”

She herself had lived in India for four years, and it was Citlalli who I’d asked to join me on the Rickshaw Run, who had been there with me all 2,000 miles we covered and in the moment we crossed the finish line in Jaisalmer. She was someone I could trust.

When The Adventurists heard I was heading back to India, they asked if I’d be interested in working with them. This time, it wasn’t to drive a rickshaw myself but to document everyone else crazy enough to do so – floating around the start and finish lines, interviewing teams and taking photos, and writing up blogs and updating their social media accounts.

With that, a nebulous decision to live in India began to take on shape – I now had places to be and a job to do. I was grateful for the sense of purpose, the fact that when people asked, “But what are you going to do in India?” I had an answer to give them.

And indeed, some of my best memories from these last seven months in India (and a month in Indonesia, where I covered the Indo Rickshaw Run in October) have happened because of the Rickshaw Run: driving into the Thar Desert at sunset; watching the sun rise over Medan, Sumatra, after a finish party that had yet to finish; and ringing in 2013 with a turban on my head, fireworks in the sky, and 210 new friends dancing by my side.

“If you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?” one of the teams on the September Rickshaw Run asked me. I thought about it for a few seconds until I realized – with a huge amount of gratitude – that I was already doing it. I was living in India and getting paid to hang out with awesome people.

“You have the dream job,” countless Runners said to me on all three runs I covered, and usually, caught up in the chaos of the job, I just smiled and nodded. But when I had time, I would tell them the story about that weekend in Manchester, and about how all the steps I’d taken since could be traced back to a single raffle.

It was a story I still couldn’t believe myself.

 * * *

This weekend this year – for the third year in a row – change is afoot. Even as I write this, I’m on a plane to Kuala Lumpur and from there to Singapore, leaving India forever.

Melodramatic much? I think so – but while I know I will be back (yes, I’m growing into more of a returner than I originally pictured myself to be), I also know that when I do return, I will not be the same. Nor will India be the same for me.

When I left London last year for India, I didn’t know why I was going. I didn’t know what awaited me there, or what I would find – all I had was an inexpressible certainty that I needed to go back, simple as that.

As if the similarity in dates between my departure from London and my departure from India were not uncanny enough, there are still more parallels to be found.

Last year, I left London for a six-week trip around Spain and Morocco, before I needed to be home in mid-May for my sister’s college graduation. This year, I am leaving India for a six-week trip around Southeast Asia and Japan, before I need to be home in mid-May for my brother’s college graduation. See what I mean about uncanny?

We all have different names for it – kismet, serendipity, providence, fate – but I love to think that this is exactly the way things were meant to be.

There are many stones I am leaving unturned in India. I never visited Kolkata or Rishikesh or the Lakshadweep Islands; I never picked tea on a tea plantation or dodged camel spit at the Pushkar Camel Fair. I never did get to Kashmir (but I did get north of Delhi).

And yet the greatest stone I have turned in India is that of my vocation as a writer; I truly feel that I’ve turned a corner here, that I have covered some ground. This last weekend in March, I am leaving India with a soul full of gratitude, for the lessons I’ve learned and the challenges I’ve faced.

Because I want to be honest with you – lest my spate of posts gushing about Goa lead you to think otherwise, India has not been easy. But the beauty of India – a beauty I could talk about all day (and nearly have) – is that the lows are always met by highs, and that feelings of frustration and failure are always overshadowed by moments of incredible inspiration.

I had something of a revelation last fall, and the revelation went like this: that perhaps I didn’t come back to India for India; that perhaps I came back for me, or for who India allowed me to be.

Even still, India – as she is prone to do – gave me a multitude of gifts:

India gave me the gift of simplicity, the chance to lead a simple life and eat simple meals and feel some of the hustle and hurry of London slip away.

India gave me the gift of time, the chance to do what I love and be the writer I aspire to be without having to work another job to support myself.

And India gave me the gift of clarity, the chance to live the questions now (a la Rilke) and live out the confusions until they become clear (a la Anaïs Nin).

* * *

In December of 2011, as my first four months in India were ending, I knew there was one thing I needed to do before I left: I had to drive a rickshaw one last time. With just hours to go before my flight, I begged a rickshaw walla in Delhi to let me behind the wheel of his rickshaw for a few minutes.

As you can no doubt imagine, he was wary of this pale blond foreign woman and her strange request. While he let me sit up front with him, he himself drove for a while, until we came to a stoplight and he slowly let go of the handlebars. When the light turned green, I revved the clutch, my thumb instinctively found the horn, and I plunged into Delhi rush hour traffic.

After a few moments, I caught the driver’s face in the mirror. He was beaming. He looked over at me and said, “You are very complete driver.” It was my turn to beam and puff up with pride. Then he asked if I wanted to keep driving with him and stay on for his next customer. I told him that as much I wanted to, I had a flight to catch.

“Why you leaving?” he asked, and quite frankly, I didn’t have an answer for him. None of the answers I had – that I was going home for Christmas, that I was moving back to London – felt good enough.

But if I were to find him again this year, take his rickshaw for yet another one last spin and have him ask why I’m leaving, this time I’d have an answer for him.

“Why you leaving?” he might ask, and it’s this I would say: I’m leaving because I have to work to do. I’m leaving because I have a book to write, sketches to draw, and a brother I can’t wait to see graduate (not to mention a sister I can’t wait to see get hitched in June!). I’m leaving because I have a story to tell.

And for this, I have only India to thank – India in all her cardamom-infused, incense-swirling glory – for not just helping me find my story, but finally, truly believe in it.

India, my friend – Dhanyavad. Nandri. Thank you.