CheeseWeb: Incredible India

Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Incredible India Apr 28, 2011 10:09 am Parliament Building in Bangalore and the city's never ending construction work It's been over two weeks now, since we returned from India, and I'm still processing the experience. There are so many posts I want to write about our time there, but describing this amazing country in words seems an impossible task. The country's new tourism slogan is Incredible India. I've seen it in travel magazine ads and on TV for the past couple of years. It wasn't until I visited that I truly got it. These days we tend to define incredible as something we really like; That cake was incredible. But actually, I think India's tourism slogan is closer to the original definition of incredible – so extraordinary as to seem impossible. Because India does seem impossible; the contrasts are truly hard to believe. The smells – One moment you are holding your nose from the overwhelming odour of sewer; the next you are inhaling the scent of the flowering trees overhead. Flowering trees in Bangalore The colours – You walk along a street clouded by pollution and dust, feeling hot and dishevelled, and suddenly a pair of women in brilliantly coloured, immaculately clean saris walk by, utterly unfazed by the dirt and chaos around them. Tranquility in the city - Bangalore The sounds – There is constant noise: horns honking, chanting from the temples, bells ringing, birds singing, planes landing. And yet, even in a city as chaotic as Bangalore, there are pockets of silence and tranquillity. Traffic in Bangalore - ordered chaos The tastes – spicy, sweet, tangy, bitter, refreshing – sometimes all in one meal. Masala Dosa - our favourite south Indian snack The construction – It’s everywhere: new modern buildings, roads torn up, a new metro system going in. But the construction techniques are ancient, mostly done by hand and hard hard work. Modern architecture with traditional scaffolding And through it all, you can never escape the contrast of wealth and poverty. In India, it's not hidden away, or swept under the rug, as in many western countries. It assaults you wherever you look. I can understand why outsiders desperately want to solve India's problems. But I can also see why the only possible solutions must be internal. Microsoft office in Bangalore and construction workers in a truck You can't control India. You can't make her adhere to your schedule or cooperate with your plans. You can't discover her; she reveals herself to you in her own good time – sometimes long after you have left. You love her or you hate her – sometimes both at the same time. But never are you ambivalent. She is incredible – hard to believe, difficult to understand and next to impossible to describe in mere words. Over the coming days I promise, I will have some factual destination posts on India – Bangalore, Goa, Kerala and Lepakshi. Please stay tuned while I continue to process my thoughts (and my photos). Incredible India is a post from: Expat Life in Belgium, Travel and Photography | CheeseWeb All content copyright Alison Cornford-Matheson and CheeseWeb Related posts: India Was: India Dreaming | A Photo Story India – A story of Obsession and Fear  follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend  Copyright © 2011 CheeseWeb, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website http://cheeseweb.eu  unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences | view email in browser