There are lots of signs of the New India - in the cities especially, cars increasingly appearing - in Delhi they are starting to dominate, and malls are going up over the suburbs of the capital as well as in the bigger towns like Jaipur. Everywhere, and particularly in the countryside, swathes of multi-lane highway are under construction. The affluent middle classes are in evidence - mobile phones and digital cameras in abundance. You know things are changing when you start getting asked to take photos by local Indian tourists...
Out in rural Rajasthan the signs are less abundant - apart from the highway building - and the best thing about cycling anywhere is you get right into the heart of a place. People still wear traditional clothes (very bright - see first photo), animals have at least as much a share of the road as vehicles, but above all, the deep, dead weight of poverty is everywhere. Vast swathes of the day are dedicated to things we do at the flick of a switch - collecting firewood, pumping water, and the deep joy of starting your day following the cows picking up the dung with bare hands (a nice way to start the day before school, Martha and Ellen please note - just have to be careful not to get it on your uniform...) to fashion into building sized arrangements of dung cake. Funnily enough, although it's still a very patriarchal society, I didn't happen to notice any men or boys doing this attractive job, and out in the fields and on construction sites women if anything seemed to get the toughest physical jobs e.g. carrying bowls of cement or piles of paving slabs on their heads.
Once the car/mall/highway revolution is complete, India will have changed forever and within a generation it's hard to see that there will be much room for cycle rickshaws, camel carts or the endless tiny stores and street food that line every major road. Homogeonised westerness looms? But if the poverty disappears with it, why wouldn't anyone grab with both hands - it's the road we've come after all.
Out in rural Rajasthan the signs are less abundant - apart from the highway building - and the best thing about cycling anywhere is you get right into the heart of a place. People still wear traditional clothes (very bright - see first photo), animals have at least as much a share of the road as vehicles, but above all, the deep, dead weight of poverty is everywhere. Vast swathes of the day are dedicated to things we do at the flick of a switch - collecting firewood, pumping water, and the deep joy of starting your day following the cows picking up the dung with bare hands (a nice way to start the day before school, Martha and Ellen please note - just have to be careful not to get it on your uniform...) to fashion into building sized arrangements of dung cake. Funnily enough, although it's still a very patriarchal society, I didn't happen to notice any men or boys doing this attractive job, and out in the fields and on construction sites women if anything seemed to get the toughest physical jobs e.g. carrying bowls of cement or piles of paving slabs on their heads.
Once the car/mall/highway revolution is complete, India will have changed forever and within a generation it's hard to see that there will be much room for cycle rickshaws, camel carts or the endless tiny stores and street food that line every major road. Homogeonised westerness looms? But if the poverty disappears with it, why wouldn't anyone grab with both hands - it's the road we've come after all.
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