Rajasthan

Like a dream.
But every day I open my eyes to a different reality, asking myself how did I get there…?
Of course there is an easy answer to be found. One of these days I stepped on a plane to take me far away all across the ocean, so when I stepped out of it again, I was welcomed by a different world around me. It’s a sensible answer but somehow little satisfying.
Really it’s a winding road of decisions, each as individual as the other, that got me here. Here and now.
Making a decision is just the beginning of things. Then one is driving into a strong current that will carry you to places one has never dreamt of before.
I might have dreamt before of going to Rajasthan. But it was rather like dreaming of it as a name, or as a shapeless place, painted with colors of my imagination.
Now, there is a pile of experiences and impressions behind that dream, all connected together to form this whole puzzle of memories that take a certain shape.
Experiences go beyond the places you see. The privilege of exploring different places around his planet is just the frame of experience, that will be engrained in your memory, whereas it’s the unexpected and the people you meet that will paint the colors of the painting.
Rajasthan is a beautiful frame of a place to visit, with all its history, palaces, temples, colors….and hospitality.
In a crowded train, that’s where my journey began.
When I got out of it, sitting for 22 hours on my backpack in a crowded train compartment, I was tired after that sleepless train time, I was exhausted and I was happy where I was.
Welcome to Jaipur.
I loved this rose city, with its beautiful buildings, little markets, tea stalls and beautiful Rajhastani clothes…I had a great time exploring.
In Agra, my next stop and the city of Taj Mahal, the fun part of exploring wasn’t as fun any more.
It was overshadowed by the vibe of the place.
It was sad to observe the large impact of tourism on a city, on a culture. The flow of tourists that this poor city and its inhabitants have to put up with is certainly overwhelming, even for me…..still I was a part of it, so I felt bad.
It turned into a hassle to move around, always trying to show a different image of a white person than just money and superficiality. In the end I had some great times and I met a nice family who wanted to adopt me as their new daughter in law, which, looking back on it now, was hilarious.
And the Taj Mahal is a magnificent monument, the symbol of love.

My next train ride was the beginning of an unique experience….I had the chance to be part of Indias most important of all traditions……an Indian wedding!! On the train I got to know an Indian family, who, after I accepted their kind and genuine invitation to join them for the celebration of their cousins wedding, got more excited about me coming than I was. For them, now I was one of their family members, they even called me daughter!
Whose cousin was getting married….well that, I never found out. I could not unravel the mystery of Indian family relations.
Indian tradition has a very different understanding of love than the society in western countries.
It was an arranged wedding, it’s both of the families that are in search of a suitable partner for their kids, and the role of the dowry is not to be neglected. The bride and the groom haven’t met each other before making the commitment of spending the rest of their lifes together. It’s a commitment, as divorce is just not accepted.
The ceremony takes 3 days, and as I mentioned before, every, even over 7 corners related family member comes to attend it.
Everything is paid for by the brides family, and by everything, I mean everything. Often the cost of an average marriage climbs over the payable limit of the families budget so they have to take out loans….
Crazy?
Its how you look at it.

For me, this idea of love def goes against many of my beliefs, and the anxiety that I could read in the young brides face, didn’t help me to convince me in a different way…Still I respect choices and cultures. So I respect this one.
Seen from the other side, for most of the Indians that I got to know at the wedding, the simple fact that a young girl would travel on her own in a different culture without any husband or male companion, was hard to believe.
I tried my best, and used the softest words, to explain why I was not married and why I would choose to travel….but in the end I would still look into confused, interrogative, brown Indian eyes…

I loved being at the wedding, and during these 3 days, I really felt like a part of this kindhearted family, that made me discover every little part of their traditions and rituals.
They dressed me up in a Saree, the traditional Indian dress, most women, especially when they are married, still wear.
For me, the fun part was just being in the middle of it, having the chance of observing everything around me, meeting all these family members, understanding more of Indian culture, and certainly, and this I do not deny, eating all this delicious Indian food.
It was a feast, and yes, I had a stomach ache the next day, but it was worth it.
I took some memorable experiences with me, and made friends for lifetime…

My next steps took me to Pushkar and Jodhpur. Two other magnificent cities. I loved Jodhpur, the blue city, where I hung out for a few days after heading back to Mumbai.

I had an amazing time in Rajasthan, even though the last 2 days on my journey there, I got really sick and spend a whole night in a shoddy Indian bathroom……but that as well, I told myself, is just a part of the Indian experience.
I hope that one day, my path will lead me back to Rajasthan, with maybe a backpack full of better Hindi knowledge, to understand even more of this rich culture….

A taste of rural India

No matter where we go, what’s left to us is putting one foot in front of the other.
Leaving behind us the steady trail.
Often our steps’ direction is already predictable, able to be foreseen.
We always seem to follow up on something, call it a purpose, something we are pursuing with eager feet.
Stepping out of that circle, always brings a new dimension of possibilities with it.
Here in India, I never know where one of my many steps I take a day step is gonna lead me.
And sometime, suddenly there is a new door just opening in front of you with a new spectrum of ways you can go.

One of these steps took me to Ganeshpuri, a little village in northern Maharashtra.

It should be my first taste of rural India. Having spent some time in Mumbai, I welcomed that experience, one, that should open my eyes to a new understanding of the meaning of rural Indian life.
I came to Ganeshpuri to volunteer with an NGO, the Saha Astiva foundation.
They just recently set up a project for sustainable development in rural areas within India, mainly working together with tribal people.

The indigenous tribe in this particular area, the project was located in is called Adevasi.
There are nowadays, like in many other countries, very few of the traditional tribes remaining.
During the British occupation, most of the Adevasi people were used as workforce for building the railway tracks.
Today, most of them have to face a life in poverty, and the lack of options leads especially many young males into alcoholism.
For a living, Adevasi people often take on tough scheduled jobs in one of the many factories that are located in the vast urban outskirts of Mumbai, or, like most of the women and children, they work in the brick mills.

The project being located around brick mills, I had the chance to experience this rigid and extremely challenging manufacturing.
Hardest physical labor combined with a 10- 12 hour day, 7 days a week, that’s the daily grind.
Everything is done by hand.
A brick is sold for 1 rupee.
And what else is there to do if there are just so many mouths to be fed…
Other employment is hard to get, as there is lack of even basic education, a high illiteracy rate.
Getting to know these peoples’ life, and becoming a part of it, left behind a very strong impression.

What does it mean to be a human, and how can we attribute a value to someone’s life…?...
Yet again I discovered a warmhearted spirit, and a generosity that really touched me.


The idea of the project I have been working at , was creating more options in working together with the people and developing new methods for sustainable settlements for a future, that is valuable both for the people and for the planet.
Hereby, the focus lay on organic farming.
Teaching sustainable farming methods to Adevasi people, raising the awareness on conscious foods and health.

The concept is to develop a network of organic farmers, first, simply to spread the idea of it, to inspire people to grow organic food as well as to consume it, then to make organic food production profitable for farmers, on small and large production scales.
So a first step has been taken by creating the network MOFCA, Mumbai organic farmers association, that will soon run a weekly farmers market in Mumbai.

The project was all just in the beginning of evolvement, leaving much space for ideas from us volunteers.
When I came to volunteer, it has been running for about 9 months, so the main focus still lay in experimenting with crops and setting up a permaculture based farming.
I helped where help was needed, setting up a compost system, planting trees, growing….

I had a great time, working on the land, living out in rural India, being able to experience authentic Indian culture, and as well the natural beauty of the landscape.
Living was very basic, in a little strawhouse, with no plumbing nor electricity.
After a while my body clock just worked like the sun, and the amounts of sunrises and sunsets I have seen during these two weeks is hard to beat.

I learned a lot through the experience at Saha Astiva. Volunteering for an international NGO also offers a lot of networking experience. And this, especially in a foreign country and a new culture, is a very enriching experience, meeting local people with beautiful projects in how to make a change, and obviously connecting to other NGO working in similar areas.
I found it very inspiring.

And the great opportunity to be off the tourist track, to get involved, meet great people with lots of enthusiasm…

Rural India ?
Nothing is hidden, there is everything is in front of your face.
The lack of waste management, the lack of any care facility, the lack of options, the inequality ….

Personally I really liked that experience, as too often as a traveler I feel just like moving on the surface on things.
Its good to get involved and its always great to be surrounded by people who work hard for their ideals…

Maximum city

Welcome to India.
Welcome to Mumbai.
There are 16 million people living in this megacity, and 60 % of them live in shantytowns or slums.
Of course these numbers do not represent a lot, and personally I do not like numbers either, but it might help you to understand the dimension of this fast growing city, and it might help you to fathom some of my personal experiences during my brief visit.
Mumbai is overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.
It certainly has its own flow, and that flow def involves some insanity. It took me some time to get used to it.
That flow for sure involves crowds, wherever you are and whenever you step outside, there is never nothing going on.
It’s a hard time, trying to avoid crowds , and when you catch one of the suburban trains in Mumbai on a normal weekday, you can call yourself lucky to find air to breathe. I would have never believed that so many people can fit on one train.
The crowding doesn’t step away from the traffic either. Having grown up in the countryside, I was def introduced to new dimension of just masses of people moving in any possible way of transportation every day.
On the street, there is everything that moves to be found. Cars, rickshaws, taxis, bicycles, people, dogs, cows, donkeys….
Most astonishing however that it all seems to work out. I mean, no one keeps to traffic rules, but somehow there seems to be an invisible law that keeps the total chaos away. Being used to drive in European traffic, it would have certainly been suicidal for myself to try and drive around Mumbai.
“Its an adventure crossing the streets of Mumbai”, a local man was shouting to me, amused by the sight of my debutant attempts of crossing one of them.
If you seek the calm, keep away from Mumbai. The beeping and honking and shouting never stops, as its the drivers’ method of communication. The city seems to bathe in constant noise.
My first encounter with Mumbai’s traffic was my adventurous taxi ride from the airport to Bandra, one of Mumbai’s suburbs, where I should meet my lovely couchsurf hosts Lauren and Micheal, two journalists from Australia, that took about 2 hours for about 8 kilometers.
Adventurous? Yes, even a taxi ride can be an experience, but don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed myself very much by staring out of the window, absorbing the craziness on the streets.
Lauren and Micheal were about to finish one of their articles, about the slum dwellers, an international NGO ,based in Mumbai, aiming to improve peoples’ life in the slums.

Dharavi slum is one of the biggest slums in Asia, and a huge part of Mumbai, all in all there are about 1 million people living in it. We choose that spot to take photographs for their article and interviewing some people doing businesses in Dharavi.
I want to add here, that I felt very uncomfortable during our visit in Dharavi, not because of what I saw, but of the feeling of being an intruder in the inhabitants’ life. I felt a bit voyeuristic.
I would have liked to show my veritable interest in peoples’ life, but my very little Marathi skills ( Marathi is the language that is spoken in Maharashtra, the district Mumbai is situated in ) gave me a hard time trying to do so.
Regarding this, the generosity we encountered is even more amazing.
People in the slums were generally very friendly and welcoming, willing to show us their way of living.
One boy showed us the factory he works in and we even got invited for pastry into a bakery, situated in the cellar of a building.
They were people who had not much to live of but willing to share everything they have. These experiences def gave me something to think about. It’s a kindness, we should take example of.
Of course in this density of living, there are as well many environmental problems involved. There is much pollution and by walking through some alleyways, one can def smell the sewage.
The rivers that flow through Dharavi serve as a dump.

Dharavi though, is not the only impression of Mumbai though.
It’s a city of extremes.
Poverty and abundance are existing just side by side.
The controversity of having and not having is ever apparent. You see families living in tents just in front of some fashionable condo blocks. This picture is very authentic for Mumbai, and I found this a very sad one, making me think a lot about justice, because I actually want to believe in justice, but that’s another subject.
The good thing though is that there are a lot of good people doing good things, so there is hope, for sure.

Another thing I want to write some words about is the gender situation, because I am daily confronted with it and personally I find it very hard to tolerate.
The gap between men and women in the Indian society is apparent.
Sometimes I have the feeling that I am not treated seriously, as if as anyway I would not have something important or interesting to say.
For me, I find it very difficult to judge how I should behave, being confronted with, in my view ,sexism. As then I fall into the conflict of westerners traveling to developing countries and the difficulty of finding a balance between tolerance and setting the limit for my personal dignity as a woman.
I appreciate my freedom, and I have a hard time negotiating with it.
But for me, obviously, that’s only a short termed problem, as long as I am not wanting to stay in India, but for the Indian women, it’s a daily fact, and that’s another fact, giving me a lot to think about.
Nevertheless, I do not want to spread negative feelings about India, as in fact, I am liking it a lot.
But I just want to give you an impression of life in India, and the thoughts and experiences I personally encountered, and that still follow me around.
I am daily amazed by the craziness, in a good way, and I find Indian people generally very warm- hearted, friendly, kind and very curious people.
Of course I get stared at, a lot, wherever I go, and the worst when I am walking around on my own, but most of the time, people are just curious, and when you actually speak to them, they show a lot of interest and respect. For sure I have to be nasty sometimes, especially to men, if they loose that respect, or to beggars when they follow you around and keep touching you asking me for money, but till now, a strong pronounced “no” has always been accepted.
Just as I mentioned the begging, well that’s another problem that I am daily confronted with.
As a foreigner I am just the perfect target. Sometimes my heart just softens and I give people a few rupees or I take them to one of the many many food stalls and buy them some food, what they take gratefully.

So I hope that I could give you a little impression about Mumbai, the maximum city, and I will try to write soon about India more.

Maximum city, by the way is a great book about Mumbai, written by Suketu Mehta.