For junior Swati Sankar, trips home may take a bit more time than most.

With extended family located throughout India, Sankar and her family had reason to visit India over the summer, along the way learning many new things, talking to many new people and overall learning from new experiences.

lhsimage.com asks about her extraordinary trip.

Q: Why did your family originally go to visit India?
A: “We have family there and we haven’t been there in a long time. I went first when I was 5 and we haven’t been as a family since 2003 and my brother just graduated college, so we really wanted to go. And, we wanted to go sightseeing, which we have never done in India, so, that’s pretty much why we went.”

Q: What was your favorite experience while being there?
A: “It’s going to sound weird, but definitely the hotels. We stayed in the best hotels while we were sightseeing because it’s really hard to find a mediocre hotel in India. They are either really bad, or really good. And, we saw the Taj Mahal, and we just sightsaw through all of north India and had a great time.”

Q: What experiences did you bring back? How did they affect your life here?
A: “I’ve been in the southern part of India for all my life, but I have never gone to northern India and it was amazing because of the poverty, but a different kind of poverty than there was in southern India. The little kids were so talented and they would come to the hotel, who would hire them, and they would dance for us and sing to us and they would act like magicians and it was interesting because I had never seen that before. It’s something you never see in America and it made me think.”

Q: What was your overall take away from the trip?
A: “I guess it would be a sadness. There are a lot of beautiful historic sites in India that are not maintained. Some are, and some just aren’t, you know, they let everyone in and they mess up the place. Like the Taj Mahal is very dirty, and that’s really sad because it’s a very important and beautiful monument.”

Q: Who the most influential person for you while you were in India?
A: “Definitely my Great Grandmother, who is like 90 years old, who is still alive and well. She is probably the smartest person I know. She walks very slow, and you know, she may be senile, but she is still extremely smart. She was a math major, and she can still do hard math in her head, too. She makes me all these outfits too, skirts, dresses, and she is definitely one of the most influential people in my life.”