The cover shows the daughter of a temple priest in Rajasthan.

This is a book of photographs from the last four months of 2008 when I was traveling in India with friends I made during my stay in Turkey.

Ki (to the right), is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas where Lily Rosenberg and I stayed for a night. In this book there is a shot I took by moonlight of one of the ornaments you can see sticking up from the roof of the top building.

– Brian Thomas

This blank page is here to keep the two page spreads as they appear in the book. This blank page lies opposite the title page below. When the shaded center of the book is on the right it "points" forwards to to its adjoining page. When the darkened center is on the left as it is belowm it "points" back to this page.

Outside the wedding tent for a Hindu marraige in the foothills of the Himalayas, the men dance to a tune played by the village band.


© Brian Thomas, 2009

At a Hindu wedding the groom must not show his face until the wedding is complete.

This is the view looking in from the front entrance of the wedding tent before the arrival of the bride and groom.


A village wedding

“This is India“ is a phrase tourists are likely to hear if they complain that their room in a guesthouse has no sheets, towels, hot water or toilet paper. It is usually said with the emphasis on the this. For example, “Hey, this is India.“

My first day in India was a stinkingly hot and humid day in Delhi. I panicked when a leper poked his fingerless hand into my face and growled, “Money!” The beggar chased me down the street. I escaped by slipping into the first store front that had a guard opening the door for patrons. It turned out to be a McDonald’s fast food joint. On my second day in India I was embarrassed that I had had my first meal in India at McDonald’s, so I ordered vegetable curry from room service for lunch and dinner. I never left my room that second day in Delhi. This book is about how I learned to love India.

Before Lily arrived from Canada, Emily tried to show me the real India at a village wedding. The veiled groom had been confined to an upper room (see photo on facing page). The men who were dancing outside the tent have danced him into the big red tent. Turn the page to see the wedding.

At the center of the wedding ceremony is an ancient fire sacrifice ritual. Here the groom is pouring ghee, clarified butter, into the flames.

These buckets are used each night to clean the temple courtyard.

Amritsar – the Golden Temple

As the Golden Temple of the Sikhs is where Emily first fell in love with India, we thought it might help spur my reluctant heart, as well. The temple is open 24/7. Its mess hall serves free food to tens of thousands daily and thousands sleep each night, as Emily and I did, on the temple grounds. It was my first pilgrimage site. There was a spirit of delight in the air. My wallet getting stolen didn’t even ruin my day. It was only money. When only Emily got sick it just gave me an illusion of immunity. (That delusion dissolved two weeks later when I found myself hugging a toilet in Delhi all day.)

Guru Nanak founded the Sikh religion in India in the 15th century. After nine successive gurus, the tenth guru passed his spiritual authority and that of his predecessors into their sacred book. The Sikhs believe that in some mysterious way the enlightened spirits of all their gurus live on in the sacred book they wrote. The book is brought into the inner temple every morning and taken back out again at night. Turn the page to glimpse this ceremony.

Emily is showing a Sikh family the photo she has just taken of them.