Ramblings from Rajasthan

I could spend a day sitting on a street corner in rural Rajasthan, never move from the same spot, and would be endlessly entertained for hours. Life here seems to tumble right out through every open doorway, shop front or alleyway and mix in an endlessly fascinating jumble of laughing faces, bright sarees, bleating goats, empty stares, horn blasts and snuffling pigs. All too often we're bumping through broken down streets on our way to another destination, and from the backseat of the 4x4 jeep I'm torn between wanting to ask to be dropped off for a few minutes to simply look at it all, and being slightly terrified of actually finding myself alone doing just that.

I can't begin to capture it all, but here's a random collection of some of the sights I've found interesting, amusing, and disturbing - often all at the same time, which seems to be India in it's essence.

Traveling by train through cities and towns in the early morning will guarantee you a view of more naked Indian men's bottoms than you could possibly imagine. (Though understandably this is probably not something most people would spend any time imagining, or attempting to visualize.) Slum housing made of brick, wood, plastic tarps and rubble extend out from the railway tracks like small, seemingly well-organized towns, and beyond the garbage heap before you hit the track, hundreds of men can be seen squatting for their morning constitutional.

While I naively thought that horns may be exclusive to big cities, it appears I was wrong. Even seated on top of a camel you can get honked at by motorcycles and cars that are determined to get past you. I think the only form of wheeled transport that doesn't have a horn is a bicycle rickshaw, and as far as I'm concerned, they're the ones that really need it. A friend and I were on a bicycle rickshaw the other night and while dodging a car on his right our driver simultaneously shoved a pedestrian out of the way on the left. At the time it seemed sort of rude, but lacking even one of those dinkie bicycle horns, what choice did he have?

Shops are often set up on tiny patches of sidewalk or by the edge of a dusty road. There's no need for a sign advertising the type of business, as a barbershop chair smack in the middle of a sidewalk, or a sewing machine set up on a ramshackle pile of bricks quickly communicates the service for sale. Today a man approached me at a median with what looked like a Q-tip tucked into his cap and offered his services as an ear cleaner. Having done the job myself yesterday, I politely declined his services. Veggies are sold from tarps spread out on the edge of a rubbish heap, with piglets snuffling nearby and small children digging for bottles to recycle.

As I may have mentioned, cows are absolutely everywhere. And by default, their 'business' is everywhere too. What's really interesting is what's done with the cow patties, beyond trying to dodge them as you walk down the street. Cow patties are dried and used as fuel, and litter roof tops and front yards as they dry in the sun. They also use the cow patties in the construction of homes, as mixing cow dung and local clay and coating the outside of buildings with the mixture is a natural fly repellent. So I've become somewhat obsessed with capturing the many sides of cow patties in rural India - clearly my photography obsession with livestalk extends just a bit too far.

Traffic snarls in the smallest of villages. A herd of goats or water buffalo being led down the road by a tiny boy or sari-clad woman struggle for space amongst camels pulling wagons, motorcycles, taxis and transport trucks so heavily loaded with produce that they resemble a Tim Horton's muffin with an abundant muffin-top.

Women work manual labour by the roadside, digging ditches while their toddlers wander nearby, playing with a stick and pebble. Tiny girls with matted hair navigate busy street corners, with near-naked younger siblings perched on their thin hips. In larger towns and cities garbage seems to be everywhere, covering the sides of roads and what looks like garbage dumps are right in the middle of towns. Often you'll see a small boy squatting going the bathroom amongst the refuse, while pigs are sniffling around a metre away, looking for lunch. It's all heartbreaking.

There's nothing private about bathing in small-towns, as young men just wash by the roadside pump. Clad only in underwear the same colour as their skin, shower-time is often a jarring sight as we drive through town. As three young men quickly wash off from a shared bucket of water, nearby twenty or thirty people go about business as usual, herding goats across the street, with men often sitting by a small chai shop, gossiping, or gambling while beautiful women with heavy anklets and brightly-coloured sarees walk past with large jugs or bundles of branches balanced on their heads.

I find it disturbing that even in the middle of India, my marketing brain doesn't quite shut off. I've become fascinated by the local equivalent of billboards - which in small towns translates to a painted ad adorning the sides of homes and buildings. Companies that don't have much money pay the home owner a small fee to advertise their products locally. What's fascinating is every third ad is for underwear, or 'innerwear' as its called here. The ads are accompanied by a rudimentary painting of briefs and undershirts. It baffled me at first - drawing a pair of briefs doesn't really provide enough detail to differentiate your product. But apparently some of the brands are quite small and local, so the paintings help communicate what the product is. (I've just reread this paragraph and it is disturbingly 'worky'. I can't seem to stop myself!)

Young men seem to be engaged in one of two activities - playing a game of cricket in a dusty pitch or waving and leering at western female tourists who happen to wander past. They resemble tiny pimps from the early 80s with high wasted flares, skin-tight t-shirts that show off their scrawny frames and leave nothing to the imagination, and frequently sport tiny moustaches - and you know my opinion of moustaches. As long as you're not walking on your own, they're fairly easy to dismiss, but occasionally you come across a group with a particularly feral look in their eyes that just says 'I spotted you about a block ago, and now I'm undressing you with my eyes as you walk past me'. I horrified my Group Leader one day by asking how much he dreads it when he gets his list of tourists and realizes that he's going to be escorting a half dozen young women through India. He was extremely polite about the whole thing and wouldn't admit that it sucks. I finally convinced him to teach me some insults to throw back at the super creepy ones, but I was drinking at the time and promptly forgot my new vocabulary.

Wandering through small villages, school-chilren run alongside you screaming 'one photo, one photo'. Being responsible tourists and not wanting to encourage payment for photos, our group tried to politely ignore them at first. But it turns out they just want their photos taken so they can then see themselves on the digital screen. You're quickly mobbed and 'one photo' turns into 'ten photos' as they all attempt to pose for a glamour shot. As we drive through small towns kids will pour out of doorways waving and giggling. At a roadside stop for chai one morning our arrival in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere quickly brought a crowd of about 20 young school boys, who stood and watched us drink our tea with apparent fascination. Touring the Taj Majal brought frequent requests to pose with Indian families for photographs. All in all, its just completely crazy. You travel thinking you want to capture the perfect photo of small kids, but after photographing 20 of them and trying to keep their fingers off all the fun buttons on your camera, you've just had enough. And it turns out we're minor celebrities ourselves simply due to the colour of our skin and the funny way we speak, and pose for numerous photos that will end up in some stranger's photo album. My protests of bad hair days get lost in translation somehow, so I shudder to think of all the photos taken that I wasn't able to delete!

I looked at a map the other day and realized I've only managed to see a tiny corner of Rajasthan, which is depressing, but sort of great at the same time. It turns out India's huge, go figure. This is fantastic really, as I'm already looking for an excuse to come back!