I recently returned from India, but I found myself faced with a question that continued to accompany me after my return: Can we really say that we knew a country because we visited it once?

During the trip, I moved between Kerala, New Delhi, and Agra, and at each stop I saw a different India. In Kerala, nature, greenery, and water were present everywhere, then came Delhi with its fast pace, crowds, and many details, and in Agra, the Taj Mahal was present in a way that almost overshadowed everything around it. Three stations within the same country, but each one has its own personality, scene, and rhythm.

This made me think about our judgments as travellers. We visit a city for a few days, pass through its airport, stay in a hotel, interact with a limited number of people, then come back and say: “The country is beautiful” or “I did not like the country.” But was what we saw actually the country, or a very small part of it?

Even the experience itself may differ from one person to another. The timing of the trip, the city we chose, the weather, who we met, and even a simple situation that happened one day; These are all things that can affect the image we return with.
India made this idea clearer to me, but it applies to most countries. Egypt cannot be reduced to Cairo, nor China to Beijing, nor Italy to Rome. Sometimes we just need to move away from the most famous city to discover another side of the country that we did not know.

Maybe that's why I like to return to some countries more than once. The first visit introduces us to the place, but subsequent visits make us see it more calmly, away from the list of landmarks we must catch up with.

Therefore, after this trip, I became more careful in saying: “I know this country.”

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say: “I visited part of it...and I still have a lot to see.”