Fish 'n' Chips & Sauerkraut

The last three month I have been travelling all around europe and also have spend a month in India. I have now, the pleasure of developing all the analoge pictures I took the last month. I have travelled from Germany all the way to Athens through twelve countries, various in eastern Europe and also like Italy, Austria and Croatia and all the way to the Bosporus in Istanbul.

Many places have made me wonder about how this world connects, I asked myself often, how people can be so different but so alike in various parts of one continent. In India I expected to explore many spiritual things,  understand another part of the world and sometimes I understood very well and often I had problems to not think with my western european mind and had difficulties approving and acknowledging what I saw. Visually, especially India had many aspects that I loved, and architectual I enjoyed visiting the past by seeing the socialist impact in eastern europe or the small alleys and river-roads of Venice. Serbia, with the war inflected past of the Kosovo conflicts impressed me with unexpected beauty and Istanbul absolutely blew me away.

The pictures above, I took quickly, and shows are few women in Haridwar, in Uttarkhand in North India. Haridwar is a rather small indian city that is located directly at the edge of the Himalaya. Pilgrims venture to wash in the Ganga river, which is here cleaner and has a strong tide as it just comes out of the mountains. Many ashrams and temples are plastered along the river and in Haridwar the community comes together in the evening hours to wash sin free and send baskets of flowers with candles down the stream of the water to wish for good luck and health. Many boys spend time in the evening looking for the money others throw into the river to worship their gods. I love the  photo of the hindu women listening to the gurus speech, because the women appears so strong and her dress and beauty combines femininity, tradition and believe. The image next to that, shows a Guru that is helping to find the right words to a hindu who is about to let his basket into the river, this is a way of getting good money as you pay the guru for his prayers. Below are images I have taken on a simple Analogue 35mm Camera, I brought one with me, but unfortunately on my first day in Dehli I dropped it in the hectic stream of poepleso that i bought a new Kodak analouge for 500 Rupees. That one broke too just after two weeks, so I got another one for another 500 Rupees ( around 9 Euros).
I do love those images, obviously not all of the 15films  I developed were great, but mostly I am very happy with the outcome.