The first time I visited India was 1979. I was a young single woman, excited and fearless, traveling solo and as cheaply as possible to discover the world. What I discovered instead was a passion for travel that would one day become my life’s work.

Which is why I’ve returned more than two decades later. I’m leading a group of clients. I am again a single woman in India. My 20-year marriage has just ended and this time I travel with a broken heart.

I am staying at the luxurious Rambaugh Palace Hotel, once the hunting lodge of the Maharaja. Marble floors are polished by handsome houseboys who snap to attention with a pass. Peacocks strut and preen on the grounds. Gardeners manicure the endless green lawns with oversized scissors.  But I miss the India of my youth. Teeming, noisy, chaotic, crumbling.

I walk down the long driveway, where the mustachioed, uniformed security guard politely wishes me, “Good morning.” Outside the fancy iron gate, it’s a different world. It’s the chaotic India I remember and I am a roadside attraction: a white woman alone.

School-age boys on bicycles sneak glances at me until I smile and say, “Namaste.” Older teens, fueled with testosterone and peer pressure make crude comments which I pretend not to understand.

A middle-aged man crosses from the opposite street corner, dodging buses, rickshaw, bicycles, cars and cows. His focus is intense. He’s headed straight for me. He wears the typical cotton kurta, a long-sleeved tunic over a length of fabric wrapped between his legs like a diaper. Once white, it’s now dirty, tattered and threadbare.

“I am just a poor bicycle rickshaw driver,” he says sheepishly. “What is your name?”

“My name is Marilyn,” I say with some apprehension. “I am from America.”

“My name is Ashook.”

Ashook is not a handsome man. Aside from missing teeth and prematurely gray hair, his face and neck are a blotchy mosaic of dark brown and milky-white skin, caused by a loss of pigment like Michael Jackson’s skin disease. His English is poor and my Hindi is non-existent. I learn that he is 43 and has two children.

“I have an honor to speak to you,” he says haltingly. I realize he is taking a courageous step to approach me so directly. He tells me that he would be honored to drive me around in his rickshaw.

I ask if I can take his photograph. I hope he’s not offended. Evidently not, as he stands proud and upright, beaming for the camera. It occurs to me that he’s never been photographed, at least by a tourist. I show him his photo on my digital screen but wish I had a Polaroid to give him.

The next day, my group and I are on the highway to Agra, passing village women harvesting wheat with a sickle, attired in brilliant emerald, fuchsia and scarlet saris and jangling bangle bracelets. They smile broadly an wave as we drive by.

For my clients, the Taj Mahal will be the highlight of their India journey. As we alight from our “Official Tour Bus,” dozens of young boys hustle every conceivable souvenir: postcards, books, carved marble replicas, inlaid boxes – even Taj Mahal snow globes. I shoo away a particularly aggressive boy.

“My name is Rajee,” he says, undeterred. “Lady, buy only from me when you come out. I will wait for you.”

Inside the Taj, it’s breathtaking and tranquil. The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan was inconsolable at the death of his wife after giving birth to their fourteenth child. He spent the next 20 years supervising construction of this magnificent monument to her memory. It is a tribute to one man’s passionate love for his wife. I am mesmerized.

The beauty and symbolism is heartrending. I struggle to hold back tears in front of my group. How much love can a man have for his wife? Will any man ever love me again?

Rajee waits for me outside with a big, toothy, friendly grin. I can’t help myself. I buy more snow globes from this young boy than I could ever possibly give away, and pay way too much. Rajee is very, very happy. When I take his photo, his smile is so infectious that he makes me smile, too.

This is what I love about travel. The simple joy of connecting with local people. Maybe Ashook and Rajee will remember the American lady who took their picture — or maybe not.

But my favorite souvenir will always be a smile.

Originally published in Sonoma Woman magazine.