In my altered state of malaria-induced fogginess, New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport presented itself as an oblong-shaped mass of concrete and steel, a visually skewed version of the modern airport we had walked through only days earlier. Stepping from the car to the curb, the world spiraled and collapsed around me. I felt nausea wash over me like a monsoon […]
» Read moreI was not prepared for you, India. I had expected to tolerate you, coexist, to survive you. Armed with countless stories of poverty, heat, struggles, illness and attitudes that run counter to western ideals, I had braced myself for the storms of your cities, villages and people. I was prepared to battle you as a visitor, to wrestle with your […]
» Read moreCrimson sarees trimmed with sparkling gold thread. Chartreuse turbans perched on men with time-lined faces and enormous bushy moustaches. Peacock blue skies and fiery sunsets over caramel coloured sand dunes. Craggy peaks of snow-covered Himalayan mountains. Forts that look like golden sandcastles perched on sandy hills.
» Read moreOur bed was a simple platform with a mattress on it raised slightly above the cooling sand. Our nightlight was a billion stars above against a coal blue/grey sky that from time to time was illuminated by shooting stars racing toward the horizon. Our room was the Thar Desert in western Rajasthan at the Damodra Desert Camp, just miles from […]
» Read moreThis was a day of immense and unrelenting surprises. The drive from Udaipur to Ranakpur and on to Jodhpur was a constant string of stunning roadside vistas, of chance meetings with strangers wanting to share a moment and have a photo taken with us. Of animals along the way, and of children yearning for human contact with two people who […]
» Read moreThe man pedals his rickety, one-speed bicycle along the treacherous road near Pushkar, a stunning figure in billowing white clothes contrasting with the rock, sand and scrub brush of Rajasthan. A bulbous brass vessel strapped to either side of his bike, he makes his way from the farmlands outside of Pushkar to the markets of the city to collect and […]
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