Its a fantastic place to 'grow up' from whining western spoiled kid into mature adult, to get some grip on how real world is, unfair, cruel, harsh, but also amazingly beautiful.
The quickest and by far best way to do this is backpacking all around, taking slow public transport, sleeping cheap, eating cheap where locals eat etc. I've spent like 500$ per month there in 2010. Yes there may be unpleasant bowel issues but after weeks you will come back a slightly better human being, and memories and experiences will be part of your personality. Best parts are usually random interactions with anybody out there, asking for directions and ending up eating dinner with their family, haggling with rickshaws, seeing how untouchable caste lives, feeling the intense heat of burning bodies in front of me on Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi... I could go on and on for very long time.
I've done in my previous life 2x 3 months backpacking like that, just big fat lonely planet book and deciding what to do and where to go next on the spot. Everybody from west we met was doing exactly this, just time varied between few weeks to few years. Felt like being in completely different universe, friends and family back home just distant dream of a dream. Both times it also felt as spending few decades there. And oh boy did it change me for the better, even I could see it.
The quickest and by far best way to do this is backpacking all around, taking slow public transport, sleeping cheap, eating cheap where locals eat etc. I've spent like 500$ per month there in 2010. Yes there may be unpleasant bowel issues but after weeks you will come back a slightly better human being, and memories and experiences will be part of your personality. Best parts are usually random interactions with anybody out there, asking for directions and ending up eating dinner with their family, haggling with rickshaws, seeing how untouchable caste lives, feeling the intense heat of burning bodies in front of me on Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi... I could go on and on for very long time.
I've done in my previous life 2x 3 months backpacking like that, just big fat lonely planet book and deciding what to do and where to go next on the spot. Everybody from west we met was doing exactly this, just time varied between few weeks to few years. Felt like being in completely different universe, friends and family back home just distant dream of a dream. Both times it also felt as spending few decades there. And oh boy did it change me for the better, even I could see it.