My travel plan are this:

-Going to France for some times with my parents! As it is from now… I dont know what will happened, The visa is not here and I am loosing time with my family very sad face!

-Going to India to carry on my project on Tibetan woman.    As from now, Tickets are brought, luggage is done. Just need my Passport! Cant wait!

So here we are! I just need to be patient which if some people know me a little would say that I am not… I decided in the last few days of waiting to start this again. Using the photos of my day to illustrate my travels. So for the next 2 weeks before the date I arrive in Delhi. I ll show some of the shoots that I have taken the last trip. And share some of the stories I can recall.

The first story today is the one of my arrival in Delhi. I was welcomed by a friend of a friend which now is a dear friend and his family: The Singhal Family.

I arrived at the Delhi’s airport and to be honest they look all the same! The sun was burning already, it was hot. I had to wait for Animesh so I found some shade…

Ani picked me up and then I was looking through the car window like a kid looking at the sweetshop window… People everywhere, sound that I never heard before, the cars were like talking to each other, like they had some kind of dialect that I didn’t know about…

I was silent. It was the first time I met Ani and I was a bit uncomfortable… So I took some photos of what I saw but I was submerged by so much new…

And there, I got to the street I was going to live on for a little… It looked like a suburb of any kind of city. A ‘cul-de-sac of any Britian or France. I quickly understood that I was in a rich part of Delhi. Ani is a successful man in business and is a ‘grand homme’.

When I arrived at the house, I was thrown in the deep end, I was welcomed to a wedding! Ani and his wife were invited at a weding and They asked if I could come to it. I was then welcomed.  This kind of institution is priceless. It was fantastic!

I had to be changed first, as I was traveling light I didnt have the usual kind of clothes I would of ware… So I was asked if I wanted to weir the tradition Sari. It was fantastic I never felt so feminine than that night…

On the way to the ceremony, my face was on the car window… I couldnt stop wondering about the new language, trying to decrypt it with the movement of the car…

Constantly being reminded of were I was…

When I got to the wedding I saw colors, I saw happy people, I saw a fabulous ceremony… I danced, I ate, I talked. I tried to understand the accent. I was a little lost but with the help of Ani and Neha, I was comfortable.

As the only foreigner to the wedding, I was constantly invited to the dance floor, not really knowing the moves… Later I got to know some of them but the western moves weren’t the one I needed that night!

That night, I probably got to try food that I NEVER tried before. I mean come on the indian food of the UK is not the food I ate there. It has something else and on my next trip I hope to try to learn at least one dish!

After all of those events, We came home. I was tired from the trip and I just couldn’t stop believe that I had arrived… Mist was in the streets, the air was fun of different smells. It was fresh but not cold. Just nice enough to make me fell good…

The next few days I got to know a little more the family…

After this the food from the hotel never look the same…

So today I decided to show you some of the outtakes during the workshop, learning about Tibetan life. During the workshop I had to work for a NGO, the Tibetan Woman Centre in Dehradun. In a later post I will be putting a multimedia piece I am currently working on at the moment (It has been proved to be a raver difficult process and I am still working on it!!) about the Centre and a woman who I have met in the Centre, Nyima and her 2 daughters.

But today I am showing 2 pieces I have done in 2 different parts of Dehradun’s district. One was in a monastery, the other in a nunnery. It was a fantastic experience to meet monks and nuns; I tried to communicate with them as well as I possibly could; using gestures and eye contact. I never met such peaceful soul in my entire life. I have to admit that this feeling of peace overwhelmed me and now that I can reflect about it, I can see my photographs are calm because of it. I was observing them more then photographing I missed so many moments…

But I do not regret having those memories and experience to myself. It contains the fuel that helps me going forward back to them…

Here is the first slideshow: It is about the Mindrolling Monastery, Clement Town:

The next slideshow was made in a Nunnery above Dehradun:

For myself, I think it works. I had great fun doing it, getting on every single transport known to man! Bump my head on the roof of mini buses, I am a little tall for the average person here… I was getting on those buses as many times as I had to get to my NGO “The Tibetan Woman Centre” and then to see my friend Nyime which was a worker there. They are the best way to travel in India. I love them! Getting in the middle of the busiest roundabout in Dehradun I could find to get sound… Getting stared at because I am a woman and I am somewhere I shouldn’t be or just because they never seen somebody standing there just taking photographs of the same place over and over… Once a gentlemen asked me if I wanted to make some photos inside his shop because he saw me standing in front of it for about 10 minutes “No thank you Sir but I think I am okay now…” Trying to escape the NumeroUno shop, I have seen enough WesternShop in my life time! And I haven’t finished! I know I am not the best critic of my own work but I though it was okay… I think there is space for improvement but for a start It is good enough!!

So this morning at around 5.30, I went with her to the temple and I prayed… For my family, my friends, Nyima and her girls, for Chemi in from of me that was showing me the way (2 times around the ground of the temple and 5 times around the temple itself, good exercise for sure!!) and then for all the women that I will never meet but that I think of at all time…

Here is a picture of Chemi this morning in the dark, reciting her mantras…

So, A bit of entertainment !!!

2 Nights ago I went to a club in Delhi: The Qba. It is a very charming place and I have listen there to a very, VERY good music group. A change from the typical music that you can hear here. The DJ was DJ MoCity from Reggae Rajahs.

http://www.reggaerajahs.com/

Awesome music from Irak. They are based in New Delhi. If you are in the area, go and see them. They are going to Cafe Oz GK-1 on the 17th of Feb 201, from 9pm onwards. It is free entry. I recommend any body to get there, prunto!!!

I meet on the 7 th of february, Madame Namgyal Lhamo Taklha. She is the writer of “Women of Tibet”. It is that compilation of woman living in Tibet pre-chinese. The book is a very good read and I recommend it.

Namgyal Lhamo Taklha is a writer. She now lives at Songtsen Library, Dehradun. She is in the process to write a new book on the Tibetan culture and costume; which I can’t wait to read because there is so much for me to know and learn… She was very kind to me and after telling her about my project, she thought that I would be able to find more help in Dharamsala (where I am going to next) and gave me direction.  She has lived in the States and decided few years back to come back to India to her community to write in the calm of the Library in Dehradun.

I should of done that before I got here, but i am a little slow, and as Jamie and Barbara keep telling me, always the last… Everybody is waiting for me, constantly!!

In the last 2 weeks I have been in India and I am staying here for the next 13 days. I am trying to make a project happen! For those who dont know it. It is on Tibetan Woman and human rights abuses back in the country of Tibet. For this I have thought that I needed help for the start and I think It was right! I decided to participate to a workshop here in India, Momenta Workshops: I recommend them to anybody that wants to learn, Jamie and Barbara and the all of the organisation are awesome! (here a bit of american for you!) It happens that there are big political problems. Tibetan communities around the country are shutting themselves to the foreigners to protect themselves. I am not looking to look at revelling their money situation or anything like that, I am just looking to report a problem that is happening right now on the woman of Tibet…

So at the workshop we were assigned to a NGO where you could create piece of work to help the NGO but also to teach you how to work with NGO’s. It help me understand what I could and couldnt do. The problem with my NGO is that everything happen at the same time: the Karmapa affair that is still going on, slowed my down conserabily in my project. The director of the NGO was actually asking me not to come there as often. Trying to get me out of there, trying so hard to get me to change my project or to make me give up… Well it didnt help that I am 100% sure that I have to make the work! At this moment in time, I dont know where the work should go, I dont know if it has a place in the contemporary world, but I am sure that it will find its place.

So as I am moving through only a little part of India I am working my heart out for the project trying to make the connection I need to, to make it happened.

Here are some of the pictures that I am proud of at the moment. They are little glimpses of the india. Some are from the raw India some other are from the project I have tried to work on with the NGO. I am at the moment teaching myself multi-media, with the help of Barbara. I have put a little piece together and here it is! Hope you like it. Please let me know what you think!