Walking the ghats of Varanasi is different. The mix of spirituality and raw commercialism is something I only have experienced in Rome before. Some people are extremely friendly, others just want your money and some are plain rude. So it is exciting to photograph people there. I got many smiles, but also some angry faces. The women below was a real sweetheart. She was sitting on a wall in the sunset just relaxing. I smiled at her and pointed at my camera. She smiled back and gave me that little Indian head-shake that means "okay". I took some pictures of her with my 80-200 at f2.8. I then sat down next to her and showed her the resulting pictures at the back of the camera. To my surprise she blushed. I think she realised that she was still beautiful...

Amritsar is the home of the Sikhism´s holiest shrine, the breathtaking Golden Temple. Me and Anna-Karin found out about this place watching the BBC TV documentary series "The story of India". The gold plated temple sits in the middle of a its holy pool. The whole area has a fantastic friendly vibe. People smiled at us all the time and some even came up to hug us. Just amazing...

Next to the tempel area there is a huge community dining hall. Everybody seems to be welcome to sit down at the floor with thousands of pilgrim and have a free meal. An old lady to care of us and showed us what to do. The food tasted great. Afterwards we volunteered to do some washing up and where invited to look at the kitchen. There we saw hundreds of volunteers preparing the food.

 

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Some weeks ago I decided to go to Chandni Chowk again for a new photo adventure. Chandni Chowk is a old market that seems choked with congestion. I especially like the whole sale spice market. Big sacks with spices line the streets. The air is filled with dust from the spices so it gets hard to breath and eyes get filled with tears. The energy is fantastic. Mostly people are friendly and happy to be photographed.

 

Today we arranged a give away of clothes at work. Children that live under a bridge in a slum 100 meters away from the office were invited. When I came down to the yard about 50 childtren and their mothers were waiting. I got kind of chocked.  They were very dirty.  A cloud of flies surrounded them and the youngest kids had swollen stomachs from hunger. Some of the kids had infected eyes or swollen scars. The mothers looked tired. I tried my smile on them but no one smiled back. 

It got a bit chaotic when the clothes were shared but I think they all got something to bring to their home under the bridge. I was so taken by the moment that I managed to mess up the settings on my camera to start with. Loads of pictures got blurry because I tried to shoot at 1/15. Thankfully I relaxed after a while and got my head together to set the camera properly.  Here are some pictures that came out well.

Ann Cathrin and Christian asked me to photograph their wedding some months ago. After some planning I was able to attend. I am very glad I did. It was a fantastic wedding. The ceremony in the church was beautiful. The party afterwards was the full of positive energy. I think all guest will remeber this wedding with a smile.

Boys selling vegetables on a three lane highway in Delhi.

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Walking the streets of Jaipur I noticed all the beautiful people around me. Very colour full personalities.

11 km outside Jaipur is Amber Fort. Most people are driven by jeeps up the steep hills. Our driver knew the area so he drove us the gate. There we found a very good guide. He spent some hot hours showing us the Fort. Its huge and has a rather "dirty" history. The moguls kept all there wives looked up in the yard. One in each room. Every night, the mogul used the rooms back doors when he visited his wives, that way the other wives would not know who he visited and fights between the wives were avoided. The wall painting below is from one of the wives rooms. I counted nine rooms. The mogul was a hard working man...

Some weeks ago me and Anna-Karin visited Jaipur, or the Pink City as its also called. A beautiful place in the semi-dessert lands of Rajasthan. It was my first visit to the country side of India. At first I got a bit over loaded by all the impressions. Camels in the streets, crazy traffic, hagglers everywhere, beggars tugging your arm and not a single bar to hide in and lick you wounds. Well, they say "what doesn't kill you, will make you stronger". After a while I got used to it all and could start to take pictures.

 The street market is huge and like a maze. Narrow streets with whole sale boths dealing mostly in garments.  Close to the palace hagglers found us. Very persitant ones. If your to nice to the the will never leave you alone. We walked the streets and the narrow alleys for two days. Fantastic place. Strangely enough the town is totally empty during night and looks like a garbage dump.

Puppies sold out side in 40 degrees of heat. I wounder if they all survived ...

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