Life and death in Trivandrum market

Impressions of India: 9

I’m currently travelling for 3 months in India, through Goa, Kerala and Rajasthan, with a pretty hot and hectic schedule of boutique hotel reviews. The galleries below are my online photojournalist diary of scenes caught, people met and things found along the way. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did and am still.

Please do take a moment to log and your reactions and comments? Given the slow upload speed, each post takes around 3 hours straight to get online (not counting image-selection and -editing time), and knowing that lots of you are reading and enjoying it will add great fuel to my fire.

Lots of words in the last post, so I'm going to balance things out by using very few in this one. 

Lots of poignant expressions caught my eye, 

as did lots of dead fish.

The shot of these goats is not that strong but I couldn't resist putting it in because of the one that comes after. One minute you're alive and cute, 

the next you're beheaded and stripped of your skin.

This lovely market trader stood out thanks to her expressive face and orange sari, 

and these met my eye with a calm dignity,

I used to find lots of picturesque sleepers when travelling in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam too, people just conked out, unselfconsciously, in the heat. 

And this man below, Sadik, was maybe the 7th or 8th rickshaw driver I tried after my visit to the market. All the others were scowling (perhaps it was the relentless heat and dust and smog of the big city?) and had no English at all, and I needed someone who could help me in my mission to find that precious mobile broadband stick.

Sadik had both a fair smattering of English and a fabulous smile, though sadly we failed in our mission as the broadband office was closed that day. I'd lost track of the fact that it was a Sunday.

Posts still to come:

The seductive sea-sunsets of Kovalam

Varkala's grin-inspiring temple festival

A train, 2 planes and a sleeper bus, from Varkala in Kerala to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan

One musical, 1 contemporary, 1 suddenly-abandonned, and 2 Stone Age-style villages in the Thar Desert

Magical Jaisalmer Fort