Back to Delhi

7/1/11

In the search for my bed for the night on the 19hour train to delhi i find a choice travelling companion, a polish phd student in india looking for sanskrit manuscripts. straight talking, smart and savy. we have a sleeper bay to ourselves but it quickly fills with a group of men playing some form of trumps on a table cloth held across their legs. a group of korean tourists dressed in tourist turbans and fake beards snake down the isle as the delhi express creeps in one direction for 20 minutes before creeping back again.

8/1/11

Vast and colourful and tragic and vibrantly alive. the railway tracks are playgrounds, kitchens, bathrooms. back and back the breeze-block and corrugated iron shacks sprawl out from the tracks, two or three stories tall. fires, washing, carpenters, barbers, a community of great magnitude built from rubbish and performed to commuters daily.

it is dry and cold as we creep through the outskirts of delhi, the part i am to familiarise myself with over the next few months, so far away from the brahmins of pushkar and the hoteliers of jaisalmer. so far away from the whiteman's travel size knowledge of what india is and needs.