Photo Gallery – Puri
The decision to head south for 12 hours on another train for a few days was a tricky one. We have just over a month left on the continent before returning back to UK for a few weeks and then on to South America. We are going to be in Nepal for the most part, so the question was, should be make our way north from Kolkata, and perhaps hang in Darjeeling, the tea making, trekking capital of the north east for some more mountain chill time, or south, the wrong direction to Puri, and get a chance to swim in the Bay of Bengal. Given that nearly half of that next month is going be trekking in Nepal, and the fact that the only thing close to the sea we have had since leaving South East Asia was the pool in Jaisalmer a few weeks ago, it seemed worth checking out Puri. It wasn’t exactly a beach resort, I’ll say that, but it did go some way to showing us the completely different atmosphere coastal and southern towns have to the rest of the nation. We filled the week with motor biking and swimming at a few different places, each trip in the monsoonal weather a new experience of what there is out here. It’s so great to be on the bike with Anna. One trip to a huge coastal lake had us leaving really early, so that we could experience the dolphins that are only found here, and whilst they were good, it was the ride that made the day so incredible. Winding roads where people walk with their families from one village to the next, stopping for dosa’s and soft drinks, where we were the only foreigners for miles away, and just changing that bike’s gears, compared to some of the bangers we have had in the last 9 months – an absolute dream. On the way back, the sun was setting as we cruised along the lake, stopping every 5 minutes to take photos, or talk to the locals, most of whom spoke no English, and were just pleased to meet us with wide smiles. There were groups of men in coloured dress, singing in a local dialect as they took in the sunset over the lake, just like us. There were women standing on a dike between the lakes, perhaps fishing, perhaps just living, they certainly looked in no hurry, and when I started taking pictures, they seemed more amused by the situation than I was. Conscious that we had another hour and half to ride, Anna gave me a little push along, but it was too late. The sunset was incredible but short, and soon enough we found ourselves riding in the dark when the only problem with the bike made itself known to us. The headlight was hardly enough to light the road in front. So the journey back was painstakingly slow, requiring intense concentration on the road ahead. And to make matters more interesting there were hundreds of people on the streets the whole way back. Sometimes getting to a standstill while people pushed across the road, it was an intense ride of mainly first and second gear that seemed to take forever. But we felt strangely part of India that night, and although absolutely exhausted when we got back to Puri, totally content to have experienced this tropical rural part of India in the same way that a lot of the local people do – on the back of an old Honda.
The holy man in the photos was a Sharman at the sun temple. Apparently both me and Anna will live to 96 and have three children. Incredibly photogenic, he was only to pleased to pass on his knowledge at that temple, to two foreigners who contently sat and watched him practice yoga while the sunset.
Posted 7 months ago at 3:50 pm. 1 comment
Photo Gallery – Kolkatta
So the bridge I talked about in Kolkata that we visited just a couple of weeks ago, as mentioned is the heaviest trafficked bridge in the world. This time I wanted to show Anna also, so we walked over it in sweltering heat with the thousands of other commuters making their daily wander. As we reached one end, I casually glanced over the edge and saw the spectacle of the market that stretched into the horizon in front of me. Traders yelling at each other selling bright yellow and orange necklaces for the Diwali festival – the biggest of its kind in India, due to start in just a week or so – line the floor creating a carpet of colour that looked like a buzzing bees nest from above. We didn’t need to move, except that we wanted more toast, and I needed a shave. Further on, for 20p i got one, the skilful young barber propping me on a wooden stool for 15 minutes while he carefully attended the few hairs I have. As a test to his ability to keep that blade as still as required to do the job right, I whipped out the 24mm lens and attempted a HDR. That’s when you take 3 photos in quick succession each of differing exposures and then put them together afterwards on the computer to get a much better tonal dynamic range. Wow, I am enforcing the photography geek on you today. Unless the subject remains perfectly still, its impossible to get the shot right, but as you can see, he had no problems. The second last couple of shots amazed me also. Walk the business district street of Kolkata, a city with more than 10million people, and in between the suits and ties, somewhere on the gutter you will see a mother washing her baby boy. I saw a man completely covered in black soot. He was obviously homeless, and sitting out the front of large bank, where the security were happy to leave him. It was only when I sat next to him to eat my lunch and people started taking photos of us that the security got a bit nervous and shooed us away. Time to go to Nepal.
Posted 7 months ago at 3:47 pm. Add a comment
Photo Gallery – Varanasi
Varanasi is everything India can throw at you in one city. Its big, colourful, dirty, beautiful, ugly and full of things that will amaze, shock, impress, enlighten, disgust, scare, tempt, and calm you all at once. With so many emotions smacking you in the face in the form of so many people, activities, and things, its no wonder, that our week here left us, well, pretty exhausted. But we also left feeling like we understood the India culture a whole lot more – kind of a very steep learning curve that can only be experienced of the banks of that holy river – the Ganges. In the space of a day I swam twice in it, boated up and down, and saw one lucky body float in it – a blessing that is said to be one of the greatest in the Hindu culture. Here, to be burnt on the banks or have your body dropped into the river is a great privelige, one for which every Shiva fearing Indian aspires to. Its so easy, and yet so hard to walk from the one end of the ghats to the other in a morning, and then cut into the winding cow infested lanes – so cow infested that you need to kick the heffa – (and you do) to get passed. All the senses explode to the point of confusion and hysteria, as you try to work out what to do next: Sample the fresh curd with sugar in terracotta bowls, try the incredible range of teas, that that guy over there is frantically trying to get your attention with, take a look at the golden temple, an age old relic, where pilgrims from all over the country come to pray to, or just mind out for the cow dung, that is more common on the ground than the pebble stones that make the lanes themselves. Varanasi is definetly one of my favourite places I have visited, and I hope that shows in the photos, but any more than a week for a foreigner, and you better be careful – your senses might just overload!
Posted 7 months ago at 3:39 pm. Add a comment
Photo Gallery – Mathura
I read about the sad story of the widows of Mathura in the guidebook and was really shocked at their story. In India, women whose husbands die before them have absolutely no status in society. To their children and in-laws they are considered in most situations as a mere financial burden, and so the seek refuge in this town, where they shave their heads, and dress in dirty white sari’s, spending the rest of their days singing songs of prayer to Krishna (It is in this town where he was born), and begging on the streets for enough rupees to feed themselves. When I got there, I simply couldn’t bring my camera out to take photos. It just didn’t feel right. What I did was capture a city where religion reins supreme – (although after 2 months, I’m starting to see that religion reigns supreme in most parts of the country). It was here that I did manage to find the most incredible of slums. Set either side of a set of railway tracks, here I didn’t feel pity, or that I was photographing a zoo. Here I saw a great many people – mainly young children – simply happy to be surviving. Their joy when I wandered down those tracks into, I had no idea what, was contagious, and soon enough, despite my initial fear, had me interacting and playing with everyone. They loved being in front of the camera, as if they wanted to share their lives with anyone who would look, and it was so easy to capture this spirit that I kept of walking. At one point I filled up the data card on my camera and sat down at a shop to change it. By this stage, I had perhaps 20 laughing children, almost crawling over me, but I knew I needed to change this card, if I wanted to take more photos. I bought a cold drink, to perhaps slow the situation down, and as I drank the children’s hands covered me in attempts to see the little screen, in the hope of seeing themselves, preserved forever in that black camera. The woman shop owner, picked up a stick, and with the slightest glint of a smile in her eyes rushed at the children, yelling in rapid Hindi as she waved it around. The group scattered, and everyone laughed – especially me. I found space to change the card, drank my soft drink, and continued to walk down those railway tracks.
Posted 7 months ago at 3:34 pm. Add a comment
Photo Gallery – Taj Mahal
My take on the Taj Mahal was sceptical at first. I hate walking into a tourist destination where there are more canon or Nikon signs than there are local people. At the crack of dawn, or slightly before we hauled ourselves out of bed and lined up to get to the front door when India beuracracy waved its colourful flag. I had a nail clipper in my bag. Anyone would think i was at Heathrow airport. I ran back to the locker storage, where Anna had finally made it to the front of the line, so I gave her the clippers and thanked her again for being part of the cause to make beautiful pictures and sprinted back to the front gate, where the line was now three times as long. The was about to creep its head as I set up the tripod from possibly the most obvious of locations. Three hours later, I we were bored and hungary. The structure truly in impressive, but my earlier keenness to stay in from sunrise to sunset (One ticket, one entry) was wavering, so we left to go get some lunch. Some handywords with the guards suggesting I had been out to get ‘medicine’ for 10 minutes only, saw me back in and wandering around, this time insistant to stay till the sunset. After taking some more pictures I sat and started reading my book when some more Indian ‘whats the point’ beauracracy, hit me in the face. ‘No reading or sitting on chairs for longer than 5 minutes in the Taj Mahal grounds’. What? These are the results of the day, she truly is stunning.
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago at 6:41 pm. 2 comments
