India 2008

The time I had to get an idea of this amazing country was not enough and when I started getting used to the many contradictions this culture encloses I had to leave and go back to my home country. By the time I did this tour among Delhi, Jaipur, Agra and Varanasi, I was coming back from the Himalayan region, where everything was quite, peaceful, mystic and totally natural. The shock I had visiting with Delhi was nothing compared to what I was gonna see in the other cities, since being the capital and the headquarter of the political power everything is relatively in a better condition, more organized, more...similar to a western city. But what totally caught my attention at first sight was the strength of the cultural identity this people have. Any other place on earth, after decades of colonialism (in their case English) would have lost most of their habits, such as the food or the way of dressing...but not the Indians! Walking among them is just like walking in the middle of a storm of colors, smells and noises and by the time you get back to your room you'll have your head blowing up for the huge amount of inputs you received walking around. At the end of the day, beside being physically destroyed, I was above all mentally tested, trying to understand what I saw, trying to find an answer to all the questions I usually don't even ask to myself living in a country such as Italy. My traveling experiences brought close to many realities, I came in contact with lots of moving situations, but this was like way beyond everything I could expect. The beautiful was laying next to the awful, the bright next to the dark, the humble next to the majesty...and all this coexists like nowhere else in the world, making possible to this huge mass of people to live next to each other almost ignoring what is happening to the others, being everyone too busy trying to survive in the temple of life. And I didn't use the word temple by chance, but once you'll be deepen in the everyday life in India, you'll notice how religion is fundamental; all the religions delegate special settings for their holy places...not here in India! You can run into a tiny temple just in the middle of a crowded street (and if you've been to India you now what I mean by crowded), you'll be astonished by a cow crossing a highway and watching the drivers almost killing themselves just to avoid them because they are untouchables.
Too bad I didn't have so many chances to get in touch with the locals and get an explanations of all I was seeing happening around me. Every once in a while I tried to get closer to their reality, talking to people from the street,but once again...their cultural identity was sooo strong that the majority of the people didn't speak English even after being for soo long in contact with the English.
But I'll be back...and I'll do my best to have a clear picture of this fabulous world!!!