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Caption: @shelleydark INDIA in love with
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Caption: We arrive in India.
It's love at first sight.
Caption: 2am first morning I’m awake thinking about my first few hours yesterday in Mumbai. Trying to distil and capture in my head that amazing first impression so that I can keep it forever. Wondering why we fall in love with some places and not with others…. I’m in love with this place, I know that already. Even as we landed, and I saw slum housing pushing up against the high fence of the airport with its wide open mown spaces, confronting me with the contrast between the riches of international travel with the reality of life here. On our way from the airport, even as we drove past ramshackle shanties where people busily went about their day’s business, past tall unfinished buildings like open mouths with no architectural plan, to the fading crumbling mildewed grandeur of glorious old buildings, to the centre of Mumbai. The people chatting to each other as they sit on the dusty footpath. The crush of humanity everywhere. The busy-ness. The tooting of horns as cars career from lane to lane in the mess of traffic.
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Caption: there is something about
crumbling fading grandeur...
Caption: A beggar at traffic lights tapping with the stump of his arm on our window to get attention. The sudden appearance of a huge open park stretching away in the centre of Mumbai where men in turbans are playing cricket in whites, then swallowed up again by the throbbing city full of cars, trucks, taxis, red buses, a man looking vacantly out of a bus until he catches my eye, a crazy youth on a motorbike and flapping shirt zipping in and out and around the traffic at a crazy speed. A woman in a pink sari moving in the breeze, sitting sedately on a new pink scooter with pink fingernails, driving perilously close to the gutter. The security at our hotel swarming with staff, where an impressive doorman in an amazing white uniform welcomes us, directing us graciously to place our belongings in red velvet trays with silver trim before they go through an xray machine.
The opulence of the hotel foyer with a central flower arrangement taller than 2 men, pyramids of pink roses everywhere, a table of white flowers: an abundance of tulips and chrysanthemums in an extraordinary display. ....
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Caption: One of our
colourful
guides
Hemali
Caption: The welcome by a refined and elegant girl at the front desk who puts her finger into a real-rose-rimmed bowl of red powder, to mark my husband’s and my forehead and then places around our necks the heady fragrance of garlands of tuberose. The coolness of the grey and white marshmallow marble floor of the bathroom in our hotel room – slabs over a metre square. The view out of window of the Gateway of India, throngs of people, pigeons flying up in the air, yellow police barricades, the dirty ocean. So many boats. The light. And then out in the street again, picking our way along dusty uneven footpaths strewn with goods for sale, sleeping dogs and bicycles being repaired. Trying to make an ATM work – it allows me on my second attempt to take half the amount I wanted. Enjoying a cold beer in the coolness of an arched corridor near the hotel pool, intimate tables hidden between the huge columns, fans on the patterned ceiling slowly whirling. The animated exaggerated almost Bollywood performance of the Cultural Director who takes us on a historical tour of the hotel, smiling, laughing, allowing the cadence of his voice to hypnotise me as I
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Caption: A very meta photo - my husband photographing me photographing
the Gate of India, pigeons and boats
from the Taj Palace window. watch his brown fingers swooping to illustrate a point, his white teeth, inviting the largish crowd of guests to “Come closer”. Later, picking our way through a menu, trying to find something to eat which will not upset our stomachs. I am intoxicated and exhilarated by what I have seen today. I’m in love.
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Caption: fans whirl slowly above shaded verandahs
Taj Mahal Palace Mumbai
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Caption: A soft drink vendor Mumbai Dock. Small, lean, hard and wiry, like a walnut. I ask for the photo, he agrees then afterwards asks for money; our guide says we have none (true). She has told us earlier to leave money to her. As we leave the dock later, he sees us, follows doggedly, and back at our car, she pays him.
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Caption: Before dawn we visit Sassoon Dock where all the fishing boats are unloaded. Nothing can prepare you. Smelling of fish and urine, wet underfoot, pushing, shoving, yelling, haggling. Women with huge plastic dishes of fish on their heads, men pushing long wooden carts into our legs. There is no railing. I am nearly elbowed off the edge. I smell like a fish.
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Caption: A water carrier at the Gate of India. He doesn't want his photo taken, but then again he does. There is a nobility about him as he pushes the tanker along with a co-worker. He is about to unload the water on to a boat below.
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Caption: At the flower markets
our guide ties a
fragrant bracelet
of real flowers
around our wrists
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Caption: A pale sun rising over the Arabian Sea, between two rows of water carts which supply hundreds of boats each day.
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Caption: Giant dried cow pats provide cooking fuel in country areas, artfully arranged everywhere to dry, on roofs, fences, on the ground. The smoke of cooking fires fills the air.
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Caption: I see her at the other end of a cave. She looks down shyly for the photo, and asks me to show the photo to her husband.
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Caption: Lined up at a toll booth. He is driving a truck inches from my window. I indicate the camera. This is his response.
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Caption: when an elephant's makeup
is better than your own
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Caption: a quiet moment
washing clothes and bathing
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Caption: a soigné Sikh
a squeak of orange
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Caption: The wedding industry is huge with guest lists of 1000 not uncommon and days of celebrations. The groom rides up on a beautifully decorated horse.
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Caption: Udaipur - the Fateh Prakash Palace is almost beyond description. A labyrinth of turrets, domes, arches, cloisters, narrow secret passages, steep stairs.
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Caption: in the main street of Jaipur on a chilly morning - a millisecond later they break into huge smiles and wave at me.
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Caption: the massive fort at Agra
across the river from the
Taj Mahal. It's made
from red sandstone
and one wing from
marble left over
from the
Taj Mahal
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Caption: an age-old means of transport
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Caption: Purdah meant that the maharana's wives could not be seen in public. They could look out through this coloured glass.
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Caption: a land of contrasts - colour, hordes of people and a cacophony of noise, then quiet, elegant, empty open spaces. Inside the red fort, Agra.
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Caption: The maharana's mirrored bedroom inside the Fateh Pratesh Palace - one candle could light it . I wonder if I would stay sane.
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Caption: Ganesh, the god of new beginnings, is my favourite - Shiva cuts off his own son's head (not intentionally) and quickly replaces it with a passing elephant's head to appease his wife. Ganesh often rides a mouse who can sometimes be holding Ganesh's sweets.
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Caption: We went inside the mausoleum before any other tourists. Our guide whistled softly and it echoed purely inside the dome for 16 seconds. Goosebumps.
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Caption: The colours. The eyes. It's not hard to imagine him as a soldier in Shah Jahan's army. I'd prefer him on my side.
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Caption: She went with him wherever he went, even on military campaigns. She died at the birth of their 14th child, aged 39, after 19 years of marriage. He never married again.
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Caption: like something out of a story book
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Caption: The other face of India
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Caption: The Lake Palace, Udaipur
no hotel room has ever changed my life, but some have made me surprisingly happy - anon
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Caption: a modest load in comparison to many
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Caption: The orange umbrellas signify the presence of a Brahmin. As the male relative of a cremated person, first you have your head shaved by barbers located on the ghats, then the cremation. You must pray with a Brahmin high priest, and only after that may you cast the ashes of your relative into the waters of Mother Ganges
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Caption: elegance
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Caption: Dhobis (men only) washing sheets in the Ganges. There are horizontal rocks propped up in the water, they beat the linen on the rock, swinging it over their heads, an arc of spray following. It's chilly and they must be freezing.
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Caption: a sahdu or holy man - they renounce worldly goods and live by begging - pretenders do it to earn money from having their photo taken. It's hard to tell the difference.
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Caption: Varanasi is one of the oldest constantly inhabited cities on earth. We are high in an ashram - the theatre of the Ganges plays out below - cremations, ritual cleansing, bathing, yoga, clothes washing, myriads of row boats, tourists, the smoke of fires.
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Caption: the ruins of Qutub at Delhi - a complex of structures built by the Islamic slave dynasty in the 13th century, beginning with its first sultan, who was known as the stumbling sultan. In 1210 he died accidentally while he was playing a game of polo on horseback: his horse fell and he was impaled on the pommel of his saddle
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Caption: an untouched photo of a hot pink sun rising above the River Ganges at Varanasi.
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Caption: An egg man on his distribution run - there are many street vendors selling boiled eggs
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Caption: he has not renounced mobile phones
or fancy watches
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Caption: This temple to mother India, the only one, was dedicated by Gandhi in 1936. A massive marble relief map of India, made from 670 marble tiles carved to shape, covers the entire floor.
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Caption: many hands make light work
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Caption: Our guide Sushil, Renaissance man, loveable, affable yet irascible, forward-thinking yet anchored in the old ways, adventurer, actor, spiritualist, as full of contrasts as India itself
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Caption: a potato vendor with a wild hairdo
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Caption: It is not uncommon for a vehicle to travel the wrong way on a three lane divided highway. My view out of the front window of our bus - we are on the wrong side.
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Caption: a green-grocer
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Caption: The memorial to Mahatma Ghandi in Delhi, on the site of his funeral pyre, is as modest as the man himself. Ordinary citizens flock here to worship a hero.
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Caption: What to do when the rickshaw
business is slow – smoke a little,
sleep a little.
You hardly see a soul
smoking in India –
it's illegal in public places
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Caption: I realise why meditation was born
on the sub-continent
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Caption: A Nepalese stop-off. The magnificence of Sagarmatha, mother of all oceans. Everest. An impossibly blue day.
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Caption: peppercorns and turmeric
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Caption: she worries that we may touch the priest who is about to come out - it's forbidden
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Caption: The eyes of Buddha look a little unfriendly to me, but I love the happy flags.
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Caption: temple offerings
if I were a god I'd like cornflowers
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Caption: it is not uncommon for babies to have their eyes rimmed with kohl, thought to ward off the evil eye.
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Caption: she has seen much
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Caption: a cute temple of modest proportions
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Caption: Namaste, old man. He shows his respect for me by putting his hands together. I do the same to him. There is a gentleness in him.
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Caption: checking his texts
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Caption: It has seen better days this flivver
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Caption: pigment colours
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Caption: The capable hands of an old man who was born deaf, and because of his circumstance has never learned to speak. He is employed in the curio shop I visit in the Kings Road, Kathmandu. He is wrapping my purchase in handmade lokta paper made from the fibrous bark of daphne.
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Caption: a sahdu - colourful religious men who have renounced worldly possessions and live from the generosity of others.
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Caption: Cremations, Bagmati River, Kathmandu: a solemn Hindu ritual, not sad. It would be bad form to show grief, as this is the rhythm of life, a chance at moksha, escaping the cycle of death and rebirth. Photography from this distance is not considered disrespectful. A small quantity of expensive fragrant sandalwood is added to the pyre if the family can afford it.
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Caption: part of me is still in India