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Stepping out of the Goa airport was a mass overload of the senses, suddenly overstimulated by the hundreds of people yelling out names names, honking cars, drivers huddled around the doors holding signs of names of people they were there to pick up, and the frantic touristists trying to read and listen to them all at once. I immediately questioned my decision to come to the other side of the world completely by myself, and wondered if I should walk back in the airport and turn around. After 24 hours of being on planes, though, I think I would have stayed even if the place were on fire. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but my first impression of India came with a lingering apprehension. If I thought the airport was bad, though, I had no idea what the taxi drive would be like. I instantly started to doze off after an eternity of travelling. This bliss didn’t last, however, because as soon as we pulled onto the highway (if you could call it that), I was wide awake. I clutched the door next to me to brace myself for every car nearly about to hit us. As we flew around the sharpest corners I’d ever seen, going faster than seemingly possible, we entered an intricate dance of cars winding around each other, passing on the wrong side of the road, and somehow all managing to squeeze by without an inch to spare. When I arrived at the yoga school where I’d be staying, I wondered how I would ever make it to the end of this month. For the first week my guard stayed up. I felt like I could mostly trust my yoga teachers and the other students, and I began to start feeling the serenity I had been envisioning for this trip. When the first Sunday off came around, though, it was time to venture out again. I went into town with some girls from my class. The ride there was as unnerving as the first, if not more since we weren’t even in a car but a tiny, metal tuk-tuk this time. Squeezed into the back of this box that could just barely be called a vehicle, we decided to take advantage of the cheap prices in India and get massages. The massage was pretty good, and for the 13 US dollars I paid for it you could say it was incredible. I thought this until I went to actually pay, and the woman who ran the tiny massage shak was flummoxed by my credit card. This resulted in her swiping it 4 times, thinking nothing was going through. I saw all four charges come up on my banking app, though, and was exasperated as my 13 dollar massage quadrupled in price. The woman could not refund me because her card machine wouldn’t update until the next day, and we all stood around a bit dumbfounded on what to do. I knew I should have been more careful here. And just like that my money was gone. Or so I thought. The woman had taken my number to let me know if the payments came through, and I left certain I’d be scammed either way. Never did I think she would actually reach out, and it was too far to come back again. A few days later, though, I received a message. The apologies I thought were feigned earlier turned out to be sincere. This woman who didn’t know me at all was offering to drive all the way to my yoga school to refund me in cash! Even more to my surprise, she actually showed up the next day and gave me back all of the extra money. What struck me most was the way she held my hand to thank me for being so patient, and gave me the most sincere look of kindness I have ever received. Here I was thinking that, just because she was from this country that confounded me, that I was surely being scammed. Instead, I realized I met an incredibly kind and selfless soul, and that, really, most of the people here were just the same.