Slowed down by an extreme heat, blurred by a heavy dust and drenched in colors during the Holi festival, the Polaroid camera was facing its biggest challenge so far…

Located in a crumbling building, the New Delhi post office was a ramshackle of small offices. I managed to buy some stamps and stuck them on the Polaroid pictures, thanks to an old toothbrush floating in a random kind of liquid glue…

Getting them franked was another challenge! All the post office officers, including the manager and supervisor in chief, had to approve it. After many questions and hesitations, the Polaroid pictures were finally stamped and franked (in a messy way though)! Alleluia!

Well, we have the answer with the latest Mo’ trends, directly sourced from the country of the most famous moustaches, India!

Pick up your style!

After the Holi Festival in Kolkata, we took a night train to Varanasi/Benares, the holy city of India.

It is India in all its splendor and all its misery, India you will love and India you will hate…The city is on the banks of the Ganges, the famous river which is said to wash away all your sins.

At sunrise, it is a beautiful spot, with all the Hindu pilgrims praying and washing themselves on the bathing ghats. At dusk also, hundreds of flower candles are floating down the Ganga River in a procession of colorful and spiritual lights…

But Varanasi can also be overwhelming, as a heart beating too fast… The Hindu rituals of cremation are taking place on the burning ghats, and it is not a sight for faint-hearted.

Varanasi is one of the few places in the world where this experience of life and death is sure to absorb you…

Rapes, assaults and dowry-related murders, wife-burning, child prostitution, slavery, female infanticide and sex-selective abortions, unequal access to education, maternal mortality rates among the highest in the world in rural areas…While women are guaranteed equality under the constitution in India, legal protection has little effect in the face of prevailing patriarchal traditions.

I faced that bitter reality on an over-crowded night-train. I was sharing my bed with a 35-year-old Indian woman who told me her heart-breaking story. She was going to the hospital in Delhi for an hysterectomy after a 7th miscarriage. The tears were running out of her eyes and the sobs were flying out of her throat… Of course she talked about how she’ll never going to be able to have a baby but she seemed to be even more concerned about the dishonor she was inflicting on her husband, shameful about her failure as a wife and daughter-in-law. As many other women in India, she was convinced that the primary duty of a married young woman is to bear sons.

Sometimes it’s hard not to think it’s a war against women in India. It’s a fight to the death, and mostly it’s the women dying.

I met these lovely ladies in a park in Jaidur. They were chit-chatting, baby sitting their grandchildren and…smoking the chillum*.

They noticed me from the distance and when I came closer to ask them if I could take their photograph, they didn’t answer but offered me a smoke instead, showing the small conical pipe with a very nonchalant attitude. I pulled back and they started giggling like schoolgirls over my astonished look and my ignorant Gora’s face.

I took a couple of photos and handed them a 50 rupees banknote as a special thank you for their time. And they giggled again for no reason. Don’t ask me what substance was in the chillum, but I bet it wasn’t just tabacco.

*A chillum is a pipe traditionally made of a cow’s horn which is used by sadhus (wandering Hindu monks), Rastafarians and by many recreational drug users to smoke cannabis, opium and so on…

After Agra and its breathtaking Taj Mahal, we headed to Rajasthan, and spent a couple of days in Pushkar, in the Ajmer district. Pushkar is one of the five sacred pilgrimage sites for devout Hindus and one of the oldest cities of India.

We were wandering at sunset on the shore of Pushkar Lake when we made a mesmerizing encounter – admist the perfume of jasmine and rose flowers – and the smell of cow’s shit, let’s be honest, it’s India afterall – two gypsy women dressed in their in their colourful attire were dancing in the fading light, flying to the rhythm of the Gypsy percussion.

The gypsies are the lowest level in the Hindu caste system, they have no choice but to live without permanent homes, often sleeping beneath the stars and are seen as squatters and hustlers by some Indians. Once hired to entertain kings and maharajahs, the Gypsy women are skilled dancers. Today, they subsist as semi-nomadic street performers, reduced to struggling to preserve their culture, traveling from fairs to festivals, hoping to be paid to perform or offering henna tattoos to tourists.

Whatever the difficulties of live might be, these women keep dancing, adorned in their numerous bracelets and anklets, their head hold high and smiling with pride.

They are the princesses of Pushkar. They are the queens of the desert.

Of course, we had seen it hundreds of time before on TV.

Of course, we knew that there was ‘this’ famous reflection picture.

But still we found the Taj Mahal surpassing all this hype and truly living up to its legend.

It was much more impressive, much more beautiful than we can ever imagine. A striking beauty!

Magical. Almost mystic.

At first sight, the Khajuraro temples have a ‘classic’ Indo-Aryan architecture.

But if you come closer and look at the sculptures and carvings, well, it is a completely different story!

The Khajuraro temples are the Kama Sutra in stone… All the positions imaginable, included the most acrobatic ones and all partners, two, three, four and even some four-legged ones…

The Chandela dynasty who built the temples had clearly two obsessions: women and sex.
With such temples, my passion for archeology is sure to be less boring!

Also called the Festival of Colors, Holi is probably India most exuberant festival. It’s a spring festival celebrated by people throwing bright colours at each other, everything from a handful of coloured powder on someone’s face to buckets of coloured-dyed water.

The riot of colour broke out during our first day in India. Quite a shock…If you happen to be around, a tip: wear old clothes and get ready to duck!