I don’t remember making the decision, but one day I found myself clutching a plane ticket to India — as if swept along by unseen forces — the will of which were stronger than my own. I’m not the only one to have experienced this; others have told me of a similar impulse that led them to India.

Perhaps ‘we choose’ India out of an innate desire to reconnect with something bigger. A key component of Eastern religions is ‘surrendering’ and allowing things to be as they are. We aren’t taught this in the West; instead we learn the importance of struggle, improvement and achievement. The American dream isn’t about accepting your lot; it’s about working your way up and transforming your life.

This dream seems less important in India where the spiritual plain takes precedence over the material. So a visit to the country can be an antidote to our ordinary lives: an interactive therapy where we’re thrown into an alien reality and must surrender to survive.

That said, life in India isn’t a constant stream of blissed out experiences. The country is a physical and mental test containing heat, dust, flies and squalor. The poverty is excruciating and most are hustling to survive. In Delhi I met a man who begged me to buy some tiger balm. I told him I didn’t want any and he replied: “That is a pity. I thought you might be my first sale of the day.” I think he was being honest, which meant he had been pushing through the streets all day without selling a thing. I wondered how he would motivate himself to get up on an empty stomach the next morning to do it all over again.

That man was further evidence of a growing realisation I was having in India: there is a price to pay for living in the moment, surrendering and trusting in God. And that price is a lack of organisation, infrastructure or help for the millions of people who are astonishingly poor.

This dearth of planning and foresight extends to the Indian mindset. One morning I met an Indian labourer who hadn’t had any work in weeks so was down to his last few rupees. Two weeks later I ran into him again, only this time he was beaming. He had found two weeks of work and earned enough to live for the next week — so he was now relaxing and no longer seeking work. “What are you going to do next week?” I asked. “You’ll have no money again.” In response he shrugged as if I understood nothing at all.

That man may have been able to relax into the moment but he was constantly on the verge of destitution. Meanwhile, in the West we cannot relax into the moment because we have one eye on the future to maintain a reasonable quality of life.

Some have told me that since visiting India they pitch their attitude somewhere between these extremes. Their busy lifestyle persists, but from time to time they take a breath and remind themselves life is happening and they are alive. Perhaps this slight shift in perspective is the reason they recommend India to others — and why people will continue to be drawn to the country in the future.