Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

“India, I got to know it a bit. I travelled there three times. She is repulsing and attracting. She is a mystery. A wave of magic carries this country. The Ganesh statues in the street, the beggars who harass you, the rickshaw drivers who rip you off, the slums at the bottom of big buildings, the children who smile at you and touch you like if you were a star.

I got to know this country in her purest form in the villages, with the softness of their inhabitants full of a breathtaking kindness, and in her ugliest form in the economic capital where everything is only about contrasts. This country is the mirror of the Human being, there is the worse as well as the best.”

Fanny M., 12/09/2011, Travel in August 2001 (Rajasthan), volunteering in 2008 (Pune), internship for 4 months in 2010 (Mumbai)

“India is a bit the archetype of the place where you arrive looking for something and you leave with nothing, or with something else. I went there to see my cousin (and, well, a few birds too, I might as well be honest) and I left with the feeling of having only skimmed over a world definitively out of reach.

India, at least her cities, for me a big feeling of arbitrary with her anarchic constructions, here design super trendy, there crumbling buildings that have not even been finished… And people everywhere, head nodding as if to tell you that you are a bit lost, whereas no, I am just looking for the bus to – check LP – Daramsala, with H inside but I never remember where, or to Udaipur if really you can assure me that it is snowing there.

Winter in Uttarakhand, it is winter.

I will have to come back some day during the monsoon, for the Lesser florican:

The Himalayan monal:

And to see this too:

Because I love the rain. »

 Guillaume P., 12/09/2011, Voyage en février 2007 (Delhi, Dharmasala, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan)

Have I already told you about bed sheets??

How surprised I got the first time I went to buy bed sheets in India: I discovered that fitted sheets do not exist here… But then?? But how??

How do we do without fitted sheets? Well, like everyone else, you tuck your normal sheet under the mattress. It gets untucked all the time but it works.

Someone who must have been annoyed of hearing me grumbling about this suggested me to have bed sheets made. Ah the brilliant idea!! At once I bought a sheet and run to the tailor - to whom I explained (at length) the concept of bed sheets.

Three days later I picked up my fitted sheets, super happy!! Except that, when reaching home, I unfolded them and even if I am not physician, I could clearly see that with an opening of only one meter diameter, I was not going to put the double mattress inside.

Just to be sure, I nevertheless tried. But I did not even succeed in putting one side inside!!

So I called the tailor. Who told me something like “but you are sure? You have to pull, it’s elastic.” The tailor, who had never heard of fitted sheets in his live, was making fun of me!!

But he ended up increasing the rubber band. And that worked!!

Though I did not do it again and now sleep in with normal sheets. That is called “adapting”!!

One day, I will tell you about the mattresses…