As you can see on the left, I am working on a new website. The design is almost finished. I expect the site to officially launch within the next week or so. If you want, you can check it out by clicking on the image on the left.

Once the site is up and running, this blog will be closed permanently. Instead I will use the blog function integrated in my new website. Hope to see you all there!

From Rajasthan with Love

Today I am posting a couple of more shots than usual. All are from Rajasthan, west India.

 

In the Holy City of Amritsar

In the far north-west of India, on the fertile plains of the Punjab, stands the holy city of Amritsar with its magnificent Golden Temple of the Sikh faith.  Enjoy!

A few Portraits

India has some amazing faces and traditional dresses. Enjoy!

In Goa

Since work has kept me quite busy, this will be just a quick post with some images from my recent trip to Goa, a Portuguese ex-colony on the Arabian sea about 500km south of Bombay.

Cricket and Kushti – Sports in India

Essentially sport in India is all about cricket. There is probably not a single park in the whole of India which isn’t flocked in droves by boys and men to play the game every afternoon or on the weekend. Particularly Bombay has a rich heritage in cricket, with several national players having started their careers in one of the countless parks and playgrounds.

Outside of the national obsession with cricket there is really no other discipline which attracts the crowds on a comparable scale. Sure, people in Bengal  and the north-eastern States play football with great passion.  But this is  nothing compared to the popularity of cricket.

One of the almost forgotten traditional Indian sports is Kushiti, an ancient form of mud wrestling. Fortunately I discovered one of the rare place where this sport is still practiced today. The photos in the gallery below were all taken at a small temple in central Bombay. Attached to the temple is a gloomy hall with a mud basin for wrestling and a gym for weight lifting. Enjoy.

How I Met the Godfather

In India even the visit to an ordinary flower market can turn into a memorable experience.

Last Saturday I was destined to go to Dharavi, an area of Bombay where many scenes of Danny Boyle’s movie Slum Dog Millionaire are set and which is regularly referred to as Asia’s largest slum. (To be honest, it didn’t look too much different from my neighborhood in Delhi). On the way to Dharavi , the train stopped at a place called Dardar where I got off to have a look around before continuing to Dharavi.

Dardar is a suburb of Bombay, the main street of which turns into an enormous whole sale flower market. Every morning, trucks bring tons and tons of marigold flowers to Dardar, which are widely used to make necklaces for Hindu idols and honorary guests. The marigolds are sold to smaller traders who will re-sell them to consumers in markets all over Bombay. In between the wholesalers, smaller traders try their luck by offering roses, tulips and virtually any other kind of flower you can imagine to the market’s visitors. Sometimes these smaller traders are a whole family of refugees from rural India, who have not more than a bunch of roses to offer, hoping to feed their children from the proceeds.

The market was, as markets usually are in India, hugely overcrowded, colourful and chaotic. While I was happily shooting away, very much enjoying the lively atmosphere around me, a Hindu priest came in front of my lens.

When we started talking, he told me that he had come  to buy flowers for his temple. He then invited me for tea and to meet a friend of his. So I followed him into a dim dark alley behind the main market road. There, seated on a plastic chair, was a huge Indian man, dressed in pure white clothes, wearing sparkling gold jewelery around his neck and wrists. His face was covered by a pair of enormous sunglasses which only underscored his shady looks. Sitting to his feet and patiently awaiting his attention were two stray dogs which he fed from time to time. To his side, a secretary tried to keep the books using a plastic box as a makeshift desk.

My priest friend introduced the white godfather as the boss of the market. While we drank tea the “godfather” asked me to take his photo. After I had duly complied with his request, I was relieved and continued strolling the flower market, taking the photos you find in the attached gallery.

In Bombay

This gallery contains 4 photos.

I have safely arrived in Bombay and made my home in Colaba, in the far south of the city, right …

Continue reading →

Off to India

This gallery contains 2 photos.

On December 28, 2011 I will return to India, more than six years after my first visit in 2004/2005. I …

Continue reading →