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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