xoxo
lien
Monday, January 14, 2008
Udaipur is Pretty
Some photos of the City Palace in Udaipur. It's lovely here. Everything is so ornate and old school, maharaja style. I went photo crazy in the palace and took pictures of everything. But here are just a few.
xoxo
lien
xoxo
lien
Friday, December 21, 2007
Happiness
I’m loving Diu more and more everyday. It’s really calm and peaceful here. Everyday we make small adventures in and around the island. My choice mode of transport is bicycle, but sometimes for the farther out places, or just when we’re feeling tired or lazy, we take motorbikes. My favorite beach is 9 km away. Five kilometers past that is a fishing village and shipyard. Twenty kilometers in the opposite direction, across the bridge toward the mainland of Gujarat is a bird sanctuary and dam near to a small fisher village called Simbor.
We found Simbor by following an amazingly accurately hand-drawn map done by a nice Australian man who’s been living in Diu for three years. The way to Simbor is beautifully idyllic. Fields of cotton crops and coconut trees flank the main road. There’s not much along the way except for a few small towns. But it’s going through places like these that I feel like I’m in the real India. Here, people are just people living their simple lives completely unaffected or unconcerned about the IT boom in Bangalore or about wearing name clothing brands that seem to have flooded the cities in recent years. Kids run around outside playing games, women do laundry along the riverbank, babas (Hindu holy men) sit at chai stalls, water buffalo and goats roam free.
I sat on the back of Bill’s bike with the makeshift map in my hand. It felt like we were on a treasure hunt or something. After we got to Simbor we walked about a kilometer along the beach to the edge of a small fisher village. There was hardly anyone out there, except for a handful of local kids who became curious of us, and in turn our curiousity. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the top of this dam watching birds and hanging out with these local kids.
We stopped for coconuts on the way back and were affectionately attacked by hordes of screaming children in one of the small towns.
A couple days later we biked out to Vanakbara, a fishing village on the other side of the island. There’s a huge shipyard out there. I almost immediately lost my friends upon arriving. Fishing boats, colored flags, nets, fishermen and all the bustling energy that accompanies ports dominated the beach. The fishermen were all really nice and a lot of them invited me onto their boats and asked me to take their photos. I met one crew that was leaving that day for an 11-day fishing cruise.
The life of a fisherman is so mystical to me. It seems like such a hard life, but a satisfying life. I can only imagine what kinds of stories they have and all the adventures they’ve experienced at sea. I saw crewmen as young as 12 years old on some of the boats. The guys that invited me into their boat were 19 and 24. The fishermen all looked so happy. They laughed while making nets, and laughed while cooking and called me over to take pictures of whatever they were doing or just to show me something about their boat.
All the boats have such charm and character. They’re painted bright, happy colors and have charms made of chilies and limes hung on the bow, and they all have religious shrines decorated with swastika (the symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism for impermanance) and Om symbols, and flower garlands. All the fishermen I met have the Om symbol tattooed on one hand, and a swastika on the other. One thing I’ve noticed in India, is that people here, whether it’s the lassi man at his food stall where I eat everyday, or these fisherman, or bus drivers, don’t ever forget to pray. They keep their God(s) and their piety close at all times.
There are a bunch of us that are staying around for the holidays so we’re planning on doing a Secret Santa gift exchange with each other, and one of the restaurants in town is having a big Christmas feast, and the giant cathedral in town is will have midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I still can’t believe it’s almost Christmas. Time sort of disappeared three months ago.
Diu Town
Simbor
Vanakbara Fishing Village
We found Simbor by following an amazingly accurately hand-drawn map done by a nice Australian man who’s been living in Diu for three years. The way to Simbor is beautifully idyllic. Fields of cotton crops and coconut trees flank the main road. There’s not much along the way except for a few small towns. But it’s going through places like these that I feel like I’m in the real India. Here, people are just people living their simple lives completely unaffected or unconcerned about the IT boom in Bangalore or about wearing name clothing brands that seem to have flooded the cities in recent years. Kids run around outside playing games, women do laundry along the riverbank, babas (Hindu holy men) sit at chai stalls, water buffalo and goats roam free.
I sat on the back of Bill’s bike with the makeshift map in my hand. It felt like we were on a treasure hunt or something. After we got to Simbor we walked about a kilometer along the beach to the edge of a small fisher village. There was hardly anyone out there, except for a handful of local kids who became curious of us, and in turn our curiousity. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the top of this dam watching birds and hanging out with these local kids.
We stopped for coconuts on the way back and were affectionately attacked by hordes of screaming children in one of the small towns.
A couple days later we biked out to Vanakbara, a fishing village on the other side of the island. There’s a huge shipyard out there. I almost immediately lost my friends upon arriving. Fishing boats, colored flags, nets, fishermen and all the bustling energy that accompanies ports dominated the beach. The fishermen were all really nice and a lot of them invited me onto their boats and asked me to take their photos. I met one crew that was leaving that day for an 11-day fishing cruise.
The life of a fisherman is so mystical to me. It seems like such a hard life, but a satisfying life. I can only imagine what kinds of stories they have and all the adventures they’ve experienced at sea. I saw crewmen as young as 12 years old on some of the boats. The guys that invited me into their boat were 19 and 24. The fishermen all looked so happy. They laughed while making nets, and laughed while cooking and called me over to take pictures of whatever they were doing or just to show me something about their boat.
All the boats have such charm and character. They’re painted bright, happy colors and have charms made of chilies and limes hung on the bow, and they all have religious shrines decorated with swastika (the symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism for impermanance) and Om symbols, and flower garlands. All the fishermen I met have the Om symbol tattooed on one hand, and a swastika on the other. One thing I’ve noticed in India, is that people here, whether it’s the lassi man at his food stall where I eat everyday, or these fisherman, or bus drivers, don’t ever forget to pray. They keep their God(s) and their piety close at all times.
There are a bunch of us that are staying around for the holidays so we’re planning on doing a Secret Santa gift exchange with each other, and one of the restaurants in town is having a big Christmas feast, and the giant cathedral in town is will have midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I still can’t believe it’s almost Christmas. Time sort of disappeared three months ago.
Diu Town
Simbor
Vanakbara Fishing Village
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