Pokhara at night, the portrait of a changing city.
Hi, hello, still here guys! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted here. Social media and I have been having a strange relationship lately. Algorithms, fighting to feel seen, thinking about how to make a photo look good on a tiny screen, as opposed to just taking a good photo, it isn’t always so conducive to putting any mental energy into it. I’ve been trying to think of more tangible ways to feel like I have a use and an impact on my world. Perhaps that’s a bit self serving, but a feeling of connection and a sense of meaning is important for all human beings. It’s part of the reason an ideal size for a community is 60 people. We live in a community of millions now, and so our actions feel useless. My on and off volatile love affair with social media will continue, because I love sharing my little part of the world with a few people who care, I just have to do my usual “What is the meaning of all this” post every few months or so.
Anyway time for a little update.
It’s been almost two months since I flew here, I explored the ghats of Varanasi, made monkey friends, watched bodies burning in the sacred funerals along the Ganges. I watched Yoga gods strut around Rishikesh with their shirts off, I spent nights on buses and made friends with some Tibetan monks in Dharamshala. I went to the second most polluted city in the world to photograph a growing project called Saving Children In Poverty, or SCIPinc. I was here six years ago, and it grew from a small crumbly building in the slums, to a thriving community. I flew from the sweltering 44 degree polluted heat into the crisp mountain air of Leh, Ladakh. With a view of the Himalayas I shuffled around town getting used to the altitude. For the most part I’m acclimatised, I can run up a flight of stairs again. The air is dry and my lips are cracked and every time I blow my nose there’s blood in it. It’s so beautiful here, so thankfully the climate makes life a bit more difficult, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to leave.
Well that’s life so far. I still have so many stories to share, lets see when I manage to do it…
Rishikesh at night, as we wandered home by the river and pet some cows and smiled at Babas
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A moment from my diary: An Indian family lives below us. Sneha, the 11 year old knocks on our door every day. She's soft spoken so we turn the fan off to hear her speak. I'm sweating within seconds but I like chatting to her. She tells us of her famous grandfather, he was a respected artist, her grandmother is Japanese, we tell ghost stories about the dark history beneath this crumbling city, secret staircases and hidden rooms filled with skulls. She tells us how her old house had a basement that would fill up with snakes in the monsoon. They finally put a cage over the entrance when a king cobra managed to sneak into their house. She tells me all the cows I see in the street are owned by people, but there's no room in this city to store a cow, so they just roam the streets and come home when they're hungry. Chaim tells her the street dogs have been here since before people. 20,000 years. Their bloodlines haven't been mixed by breeding. Sneha says they're strong dogs because they had to learn to get by on their own. She tells us of a haunted castle deep in a forest on the other side of the river. Her grandfather told her if it, and his grandfather told him. Hundreds of years ago a thousand people died their and they still don't know why. It's been taken off google maps because its cursed. After we tell our stories of haunted houses and dark secrets i start to notice every time I walk outside to put my shoes on there is a strange shell sitting on it. I think maybe this building is haunted by an 11 year old Brahman girl called Sneha.
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What is it about a mountain that makes me so instantly happy. Every time I walk out of my guesthouse I look up the road to see if I can see the mountain peaking over the rooftops, when the clouds are clear and I get that momentary view of the snow capped massif my heart soars.
I am a mountain person who comes from a flat country.
The daily laundry service down by the ghats of Varanasi
I want to watch the sunset over the city so chaim takes me to Muna guesthouse. It only costs $1 a night to live here but as soon as I walk in I can tell why. This is where the lost souls and broken people go, the hotel California of guesthouses. There's a hole in the floor to the left of the pile of dusty bikes that haven't been ridden in years. There's a quiet heaviness to this place and yet it screams the stories of the ghouls and vampires who have passed through over the decades. We climb the four staircases to the roof. A monkey is sitting there, he seems to know we have cameras and poses for us. We wander to the other side of the balcony, to a little nook over looking the river. The monkey follows us, he's spotted the bag of food we grabbed at the market and he's blocked our entrance. Chaim passes him a green bean as payment, but the monkey wants the whole bag. His energy shifts so quickly, the food ignites him and he's in attack mode. Chaim manages to get past the gatekeeper just in time, but my escape is blocked by the monkey who's staring at me angrily, like he knows how easy it is for me to forage for food. He bares his teeth, my heart beats faster, he can sense my fear, and he knows he's winning the battle of dominance. I see a piece of cloth fluttering in the window, I grab it and start waving my arms furiously, yelling and stepping towards him. I've seen monkeys fight to the death, I know he has nothing to lose, but I try and remind him I'm bigger than he is. He hesitates and growls before he finally concedes and jumps up onto the roof, I run past him and don't stop until I'm back on the street below. Heart beating wildly. Chaim tells me I'm in good company, an old prime minister of India almost got murdered by a monkey once. He tried to push him off a balcony. We laugh as we walk home, but I make sure I don't make eye contact with any of the monkeys on the roof above us. The monkeys who visit our window are so sweet, I forgot it took some time to cultivate those friendships. (Note: This is actually a different monkey from a previous day, the other monkey wasn’t as good at posing) Edit: mum was not impressed with this story.
This is an ancient city, they knew how to build a city in a hot country. The alleyways are dark and cool. Monkeys visit my window and chaim tells me he's been cultivating these friendships. He laughs and tells me he hasn't really talked to anyone in a few months, but I like it. Not just one or two, eventually we have three monkeys vying for his attention.
Cows meander in the street below, the people touch them as they pass. They're holy animals. Dogs sleep on door steps, they're filthy but you can tell the people like them. We have to side step cow poo every few steps, but the streets are cleaner than I expected for a bustling Indian city. The shop keepers are always sweeping and throwing water on the ground to keep they're steps clean. The tiredness burns my eyes, I have to turn around, I can't bare to get the centre of all the activity, the burning ghats, on my first day. I need energy.
I sleep for 11 hours and life feels a bit more manageable. The city knew I was coming and it rained in the night to cool the place down. It makes missing the cow poo more difficult, but it's much nicer to roam about. People smile and ask for a photo, a baba demands a donation, a woman feeds a cow and the rain starts again. We retire back to our room overlooking the broken city and watch the monkeys. A new family wanders in, they climb the temples and leap through the air. Chain tells me 11am and 5pm are prime monkey times.
Magical lands
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Sunrise, sunrise, sunrise. Getting ready to head to India for more mountain sunrises. Any tips on Himachal Pradesh welcome please! instagram: louisetakesphotos website: www.louisecoghill.com.au
Sunrise in the mountains. As the air froze around me and my lungs burnt from the cold.
All I wanted to do was try to live the life that was inside me, trying to get out - Hermann Hesse