271. TRAVELS IN INDIA. New Delhi. Old Delhi is another proposition altogether.

220. TRAVELS IN INDIA. New Delhi. 

213. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Mumbai.

212. TRAVELS IN INDIA. New Delhi. The “backside” of Connaught Place.

173. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Marine Drive, Mumbai. One of the great bayside boardwalks, seen here in grey monsoon season.

139. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Kamathipura, Mumbai. A mundane scene, but it contains a lot of India. Cows and carters, which you see everywhere, but take a look at the narrow workshop in the background. All over India you will see people working in these tiny spaces. Welders, shoemakers, carpenters, machinists, tailors–you name it. Kamathipura has hundreds of them, making for a lot of noise and activity. Kama is also a famous red light district, and the ladies often set up right next to the workshops. Of course Indians are completely unfazed by this rather odd juxtaposition.

122. TRAVELS IN INDIA. New Delhi. The semi wild dogs that roam the streets of India are an endless source of amusement for me. I’m not sure what it says about the Indian personality that they think nothing of having untamed dogs live among them, but it is another reason why the country is uniquely beautiful. There is something about the Indian conception of freedom that we could learn from. When left alone to organize themselves, dogs are enormously funny. My favorite move from Indian dogs is when they suddenly drop to the ground, curl up and go to sleep on a street choked with humans, cows, buses, cars, horses, etc. The best part is that people just step around them, as if to say “how perfectly natural for a dog to take a nap on a sidewalk crowded with a thousand people.” There is now a “modernization” movement to eradicate the dogs, which for me would be a huge loss.

121. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Mumbai. A market street in Kamathipura. The industriousness of Indians is astonishing, everywhere in the country I observed their physical courage and toughness. One local told me that “the majority of Indian people are over-exercised and underfed”. Watching how they move and work and look makes me wonder if we in the West couldn’t use more of both.

120. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Goa. The flora in Goa puts one in mind of British Empire authors in the day who spoke of the “riotous vegetation” of colonial jungles. Life explodes in every direction in such places, with insects and reptiles prominently featured, not to mention malarial mosquitos which come out at night and attack your ankles (which explains travelers with trouser cuffs tucked into socks). There were days in Goa that I thought I could feel my skin literally crawling with unseen bacteria, but that was probably just my mind playing tricks from being damp and wet twenty four hours a day. Having spent time in Asian rainforests makes one better understand the madness of Apocalypse Now, and it doesn’t take much to imagine the hell American soldiers went through in Vietnam. A landscape painter I once knew told me that she could distinguish thirty different shades of green with one glance at a scene like this.

119. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Nizamuddin, New Delhi. As I write this in New York, it is 132 degrees in the Indian state of Rajesthan. That is the all time record in a country that is no stranger to heat. It was 112 degrees when this photo was taken (in Humayun’s Tomb), but the next day it dropped to 100 and I never thought I would say that one hundred degrees was a relief. On the other hand, 95 degrees with humidity on Manhattan pavement is worse, so sue me. You find Indian dogs sleeping in the oddest of places, and one wants to avoid stepping on them because one nip and its off for painful rabies shots. This is complicated further at night because many parts of India don’t care to waste electricity on street lights.

118. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Mumbai. Taken from the Westin Hotel lounge, which is worth the trek for the elevated view of the city. I once endured an hour of Mumbai traffic to get there only to have my driver announce with great pride the West End hotel, which is an entirely different proposition in an entirely different part of town. My sunglasses then mysteriously disappeared from the taxi, so I let the driver have it. The ashamed look on his face made me feel like a complete ass. Three weeks later I went back for another view, and as I got out of the cab a street vendor ran up and held out my sunglasses, saying “sir, last time you dropped them as you left the taxi so I kept them for you.” He would not accept a penny for this gesture. Fully and completely an ass.

117. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Kamathipura, Mumbai. The monsoon season sees short, intense downpours every hour or so. People on the streets know it will end in minutes so they take shelter where they can, huddling together under an awning or a tree. It makes for interesting social collisions. The astonishing humidity of Mumbai brings some odd sensations, climbing into damp bed sheets being one of the least enjoyable. It is not unusual to have ankle-deep torrents running down the street, which makes riding a scooter with 8 inch wheels very interesting–and by interesting I mean dangerous.

116. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Goa. So you are riding a scooter along the coast, and you turn a corner to find a building being eaten by the jungle.

111. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Kamathipura, Mumbai. A rainstorm and a red sky at rush hour.

110. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Goa.

67. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Null Bazaar, Mumbai.

63. TRAVELS IN INDIA. The backroads of Goa.

62. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Mumbai. The wonderful texture of urban India.

61. TRAVELS IN INDIA. New Delhi. A scene of tone and texture more than subject. A country of tone and texture.

60. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Null Bazaar, Mumbai.