I’m in Bhuj, this desert town I mythologized about as being full of Turbaned Rabari village people and camels wandering the streets. They are there but not of course in the numbers one fantasises about, and they are specks faraway in the dusty landscape. A landscape that has been promoted heavily by the govt as being the next best place to build giant industrial parks, taking away valuable grazing land from the traditional nomadic herdsmen. That means one must explore further

I wish I was a writer and the need to write a real need. I think this blog is more a diary that I am unlikely to otherwise write in knowing that one has an audience. ‘Sharing the journey” sounds a bit hammy but I guess that is what this is. So do follow me without getting poo laden sandals, without having to be congenial and smiling all day long, without wine and blue cheese. It was Christmas yesterday and the deformed silicon santa masks were still for sale on the bridge, it

I must sit down and discipline myself to write before I don’t. The calling street vendor selling edible pods of dahl and tamarind water that explode in ones mouth beckons…. I’m inclined to wander the lanes and alleyways of this Dhal Ni Pol old city area and have inspiring chance encounters with ancient monuments and architecture, which is how I had a magic moment imagining myself as a muslim woman spending all day kneeling on the cool marble of the Jamatkhana mosque. A truly

I knew I was in India when I saw a young girl of about eight (probably 15) at a chaotic major intersection performing circus like gymnastics – pulling herself along the ground through a tiny loop of rope while her young brother collected rupees from the waiting cars, when a white robed Jain man carefully carries three dead rats in a lime green kitchen pan to place them somewhere respectful. Everything is sacred to the Jains including mosquitoes. I land in a refined, restored

Hey all of you out there who might have the time to accompany me on my next journey – I’m off to a small town outside Ahmedabad, Gujurat, India to find and collaborate with the disappearing wood block carvers of Pethapur. So once again I will be squatting on dusty wood shavings and drinking chai with craftsmen whose descendants have been woodblock carvers for centuries. The imagery concept is different this time – it is more global and I’m not going to be responding to India