Under your skin

So the journey is at an end, we are back in Delhi and we leave tomorrow. I have a 14 hour plus direct flight to Newark NJ with connection to Chicago then North Carolina and Janette is off to Sydney, Australia via Singapore.

India… what can I say… it is all the wonder in the travel guides and the stereo typical imitations by Peter Sellers and much, much more. India has more of everything, from poverty to wealth, from simple village life to bustling metropolis, from Holy rivers and temples to the excesses of Bollywood. From pious ascetics detached from the world to those connected to the world via cell phones in tucked away places that still use the Ox and Buffalo to plow the fields. India is a living, breathing dichotomy of old and new, of fast and slow, of spiritual and material. Yet when you step onto those sandy paths, those paths that for millennium the holy and supernatural alike have traveled, when you take that trek off the tourist routes, you slowly start to feel, albeit only an iota of the rich history and the divine nature of this place that comes in an underlying feeling, a lure, that fascinates you even when all the sites and smells around you are foreign to the western mind set. If you are prepared to look closely, to remove the outer layers of what they call here the “Maya” (that which is not) you can start to realize, the true India. You will start to see the real India etched into the faces of the faithful who are hurrying to greet the deity or make an offering… you can see it incised in relief carvings on a temple facade… and no I wasn’t smoking anything in Hrishikesh, but you can even see it in the eyes of the children that gather round you. The divine nature is all around you, yet skillfully hidden in the Maya (pun intended) for those not ready to receive it.

India will get under your skin in one way or another if you allow it, both as frustration because nothing is straightforward or easy here, or as a spiritual and uplifting personal experience… it is up to you. For me it was both... but it was the later that will keep me coming back, if only in my mind to give sustenance to my soul.

This ends the “Breeze from India” blog, thanks for joining me on my little sojourn I trust you found your trip interesting and now when you look at the images here and at www.pearlphotography.biz you will see more than just snapshots of a foreign exotic place... I hope if you look closely you may find like I did the mystique of Mother India.

Namaste (I honor the divine in you)

Comments welcomed below