Delerious in Delhi,......

What a place!! After arriving back in Delhi at 4:30 am by train from Pathankot for our visa run, my first impression was "Is this a war zone?". So many bodies sprawled on the pavement in brown rags, littering the roadside and endless alleys of crumbling concrete, surrounded by crumbling buildings, dimly lit and sweltering in the early monsoon-morning darkness. A crush of monsoon heat and the racket of traffic and horns soon to eject them from sleep. What sort of sleep is that??

Spacious and shady room with a view

A crazy place. How anything works here is a profound mystery beyond my comprehension. I guess the reality is that mostly things don't work, but they somehow manage to tumble along in broken and halting steps that the locals just adapt to. Being here again made Anna and I realise that we are ready to leave - 18+ months is long enough. There is a grinding here unlike any other place i have so far witnessed. Patience is wearing thin - with dodging rickshaws, touts, hawkers, hagglers, the omnipresent aroma of shit and acrid urine and the inscessent, jarring assault of mindless noise. Indians appear to like lots of noise,......So we intend this to be our last Delhi visit. For now.

Man with possesions

Phar-ganj rickshaw joyrides

We both got our visas ok, Pakistani and Chinese. The contrast between the mega-rich Australian embassy with its air-con high-tech super-security wall to wall carpets and free net access whilst waiting and the Pakistani concrete bunker dogbox-with-grill couldn't have been greater. Paper work to cross imaginary mind-made borders sorted,....

Outside Pakistani embassy

What the,....

There are so many strange and often unintelligeble phenomena here. Psychadelic bus altars with rapid-flashing coloured lights that make offerings to whichever divinity in order to keep the bus safe - and then they drive like maniacs! One of my recent favourites was a story on page 3 of a major national newspaper, about a policeman recieving extra payments for "moustache maintenace"?? Guess they reckon he has a killer mo. Full story below for your bemusement,.......
Being in a place such as Delhi can bring up a wide variety of emotions and responses. I know that the way that it appears to me is not how it is - my impression is just one distorted and biased impression among millions. Change of mood, change of day and it can all appear differently. However, for us hyper-sensitive, spoon-fed westerners it can often be a bit too much - some people leave here swearing never to return. Imagine how it must be for those who live all their lives in these festering mega-cities, being bludgeoned daily by sensory overload?? I cannot comprehend.

While waiting in Delhi for visas to be processed Anna and i decided to go and find an english language movie - for some temporary air-con bliss and respite from the noise as much as anything else. The cinema was 'broken' we were informed after arriving, so we teamed up with a couple of teenage upper-caste Indian girls for a rickshaw ride to one nearby that might (?) be working. On the way we rattled past a huge roundabout, swarms of traffic swirling around it like bees, of which we were a part - in the middle space were half a dozen low-roofed shacks, if you could call them that - patchwork human shelters stitched together from industrial refuse and plastic bags, sagging and drooping in the monsoon mush. The home, dining room, backyard and social space of 30 or so people, kids, grandmas, moms and dads. Beds consisted of concrete pavers, borrowed from the nearby footpaths, covered in damp hesian sacks, to lift them up a few inches above the lead and diesel infused mud. Lovely open view of the passing traffic. Seeing things like this make me think that whatever i have complained about in my entire life was a bunch of hot-air and mind-made bullshit - what do i have to complain about? Nothing.


When it is awake, this city hums with a relentless intensity that nibbles away at the edge of ones senses, like an alarm clock that you want to turn off, but can't quite reach. There are the odd spacious and leafy-green places, most notably in the well laid out embassy area; but this is not for the masses.

All things are impermanent - fair enough, i'm in the process of trying to get that. But the crumbling nature of Delhi has some extra dimensions and special ingredients that lend a unique flavour. A recent article by a columnist in the Times of India bemoaned the fact that every year during the monsoon the roads in Delhi become a pulverised mass of potholes and poor drainage. Then they pointed out that there is a part of Delhi, built by the Brits, where the roads are fine and have weathered the monsoon deluge for many years without disintegrating. The difference apparently is simply the quality of asphalt. Endemic corruption, tendering process baksheesh and the "screw to the last rupee" bargaining mentality means that by the time contractors lay down the Government supplied asphalt, it is cut with about 40% mud and dirt. Tar spiced with a sprinkle of earth,....

Crap quality products seem to be multiplying and invading the world more and more - like little alien viruses. Yet it appears they really are the norm here - and no one bothers to bat an eyelid. I have seen simple welding jobs that look like they have been done by monkeys on LSD and multi-story reinforced concrete buildings beginning to crack and drop chunks below, literally within days of being completed, because the cement was cut with so much sand and aggregate it hardly bonds. Its a wierd thing. When one considers the vast interconnected network of people, time and natural resources it takes to create even a simple item - like an umbrella for example - that when it explodes in a chaotic twisted jumble within 5 minutes of purchase, due to poor materials and workmanship, my first thought is "Why even bother making such crap". It is such an incredible waste of peoples time, lives and the dwindling resources of this little blue planet. Strange. I know there are many complex economic and social causes that lead to this lack of care in creating things, particulary poverty and caste, but it still perplexes me. I guess what is even more bizzare is that we have collectively created a lop-sided economic system that actually measures this kind of 'throughput' as a positive, ignoring the social and environmental costs.


Ha. On a lighter note, I used to wonder what happened to the advertising posters that are strewn all over the spare bits of wall here in McLeod Ganj - who is it that mysteriously takes them down? A couple of days ago i saw a street cow tearing and eating the posters off the wall, moistened by the monsoon damp. Cellulose is cellulose i guess - with or without ink flavouring. Another humourous thing Anna and i discovered today. For the last few days Anna has had a slightly dodgy belly and a very itchy scalp. She had thus been diligently taking some homeopathic remedy for her belly - or so she thought. Turns out it was a homeopathic remedy for dandruff!! Wonder if that explains the itchy scalp!



There is only so much of Delhi one can take in a single dose, so Anna and i bailed to Rishakesh for a few days while the Chinese visa was waiting. Near the sources of the Ganges River; holy temples, Shiva statues, colourful devout pilgrims paying their respects and freaky sadhus abound.





There was a strong festival type atmosphere there and it was a welcome respite from Delhi. Forests and mountains and wildlife of sorts. We managed a few dips in the icy and swollen Ganga, and gathered a little Ganga sand for use in the wedding ceremony. We spent a bit of time there creating and visioning the wedding ceremony, based around Buddhist principles and ideals. It flowed very smoothly and we are both pretty happy with it. Now we just have to get to Lake Mansarovar!




There is so much written on the faces of the people here. I have been enjoying trying to take pictures of people in natural poses, unaware they are being photographed. Its a bit kind of sneaky i guess, but the looks and the expressions captured in an instant of light and pixelated zeros and ones conveys so much that words or posed photos cannot. The joy of grandparents doting, resignation, raw pain and intensity of beggars, street urchins half-heartedly trying for some rupees,....A selection of recent shots below.















So, a reflection of sorts, impressions appearing briefly in the dew-bubble of the mind. Not the real thing - but then, what is the 'real thing'?,.......