Trouncing into a dream…

Fair warning: this is a rather large post, very photo-heavy. There’s 50-something images ahead. You may want to just load up the page and come back when its done.

When you’re bouncing around like this, its hard not to feel as if the rabbit hole never ends.

Above, this was the view out my window this morning as I pulled the curtain, waking up to Guwahati, India.

In all its glory.

If you haven’t noticed, I – who has perpetually been a black & white shooter…

…have been shooting a surprising amount of color images in these days.

People have asked me again, “How do you edit you photos!?” My reply, “If its in color, I don’t.”

Strangely enough, the world really just is that beautiful. I sometimes think people don’t realize it.

Why do you need someone else to show you that?

To some degree, beauty can be found in anything.

Not going to lie, as much as I love candid photography, there is something about an image with eye-contact.

Is there beauty in a line of worshipers, awaiting their turn to worship in one of the region’s holiest sites?

They wait and wait.

Inside, animal sacrifice is still practiced. Usually a goat…

…insert the *ding* sound there.

All people doing their best in the world. That’s all that can be expected of anyone anywhere in the world.

I loved the shadow of his face on his chest. Even his shadow has personality.

So, the class visited a tea auction.

Which was a little less white-knuckle than you’d expect at an auction. It was more like super-fancy eBay with huge stakes. Buyers ranged from Twinings and Fortnum&Mason to the suppliers of Lipton and Red Diamond.

SIDE NOTE: Not to divulge any inside info here, but if you knew how much tea ACTUALLY costs per kilo, it might actually disturb you to pay even $1.50/cup at your local coffee shop.

As I said, people are just people doing their best to get buy. Even if everyone else is afraid to get by you due to your beast of burden of choice. 🙂

We made our way from Guwahati to Dogbagdra (or Bagdogdra or Drogbadgra or something like that).

We took a drive to the airport and a plane, but this option doesn’t look all THAT uncomfortable!

Besides it being cement.

Or maybe like this. The Fantastic Windblown Four.

.

.

.

.

.

We landed. And headed to Darjeeling. Some of the roughest roads I’ve experienced so far. Ethiopia was pretty bad last year, but that was because the roads were largely unpaved. This time, the roads were paved.

Mostly.

This became normal:

But, with every breakdown or gouged tire due to serious pothole, it allows time to walk around.

Meet Janis… whether it was because her iPhone 4 was the only camera she brought (which did shockingly well, by the way) or the fact that work goes on whether or not we’re getting cell phone tower signal from Bangladesh, this photo captures reality.

She is one of the primary reasons this trip is actually happening in the first place. She is a wizard of logistics and really has made things happen.

Also, meet Kathleen…

…her first time out of the country and she’s 150 miles from Mount Everest. Not bad, kid.

Then, there’s Kathy…

…one of the professors on the trip.

And then meet these kids…

How many times am I remembered daily here, happiness is not a function of the “toys” you have or the side of the glass you’re on or the passport in your pocket.

Or how you build a water tower. This is just bizarre to me…

Your responsibility as a human being is to love life however it comes down the pike.

By the way, you’re witnessing these photos in order… for the most part. I say that, because now you’ve gone through the day with me. Remember waking up this morning and seeing the cityscape outside my window?

Now, come with me as we descended into a dream.

Pardon me… ascended.

There’s just no preparing you for this. I could not have been prepared and I was there, I knew where on the map we were going. Just take a look. Look up Darjeeling, India, in an atlas.

As we climbed, the atmosphere became cooler and thinner.

The layers of clothing, more.

The circles up and up Jacob’s ladder…

…the people began to take on a different look.

Climbing higher and higher.

The sea-level brain becomes clouded. And the earth becomes as it should be.

It drinks up the road. Preserving it and hiding it as if it something that maybe – just maybe – we should not be seeing at all.

Besides the periodic car meeting us, barreling down the mountain, it would seem as if there might be no road ahead. As if there might just be the edge of the earth. A precipice we would disappear forever.

(At times, one wrong turn and that could be a reality!)

What sort of people live in this place? What sort of land is this? Beasts and dragons poking out of their smouldering caves… is this an earth? Is this some sort of 8000-foot-above-sea-level-induced delirium.

What India is this?

This, my friend, is real…

…of everything that I’ve seen on many continents. This draws awe out of me like the last breath before sleep.

My friends, if ever I have not edited a photo, that moment is now. These photos are raw, straight from the camera. Nothing touched.

What world is this? Nothing could have prepared me.

…I’ve never seen this place in anything before. And, if I did see it in NatGeo or Smithsonian or anything else, they failed to actually show the place.

But so will I.

If the Himalayas are the roof of the world, Darjeeling is like the moss that grows on the most unlikely place in the gutters that catch the rain off the roof of the world. In a place nothing in its right mind would grow there. But it just doesn’t know it should, so it does anyway.

There’s just nothing real about it. And I’ve never seen it captured.

Shortly after nightfall, we broke down again. This time more serious, having to leave a car behind and load into one.

So we stood in a cloud on the side of the road in the eves of the roof of the earth. What better place could we be broken down?

You’re not going to want to miss tomorrow. Stay tuned…
-Noah D.