At the heart of most Indian villages is a large tree, the protection from the heat under these, often massive, trees is extraordinary. This is said to be due to trees' transpiration systems
For Hindus cattle are central to human life
and are treated as equally important
as people
Uttar Pradesh (or U.P.
as it is known in India, a nation in love with acronyms) is the most populous Indian state with some 200 million people in an area the size of the UK. By Indian standards it is relatively poor and relatively rural. This page has pictures of one village and a near neighbour. There are some 97,000 villages in the state, this one is picked out because it was being visited by a team from TLM Hospital which I was visiting. To a westerner it appeared profoundly remote, its inhabitants rarely saw outsiders, and even more rarely travelled further than they could walk from home.
The typical Indian long horned cow, with its typical indian thinness: ribs and haunches show in this picture
Herded into a photography by their elders, the grins of these boys show their unease at seeing a foreigner and a camera for the first time; and their uncertainty about what will happen next
This is a man bringing straw from the fields - unremarkable? But in many parts of India not a common sight, as traditionally only women do the carrying
Released from their elders command, the boys scatter to a distance they find comfortable
On her veranda a woman and a boy.
A bed is tipped up...
...that bed is made of bamboo and rope, exactly like simple beds in Vietnam thousands of miles away
The boy's bundle is an infant, shown by its tiny right foot
We asked this young man what he was dreaming about: city life, marriage? A concrete floor for his house, he replied
Lanes radiate out into the dry countryside beyond the trees
This bird is standing in for the thousands, nay millions, of birds that enliven the air everywhere in town and country in India
A woman and a girl are sifting grain set against a background of bamboo
A composite 180 degree shot of a neighbouring village with no sheltering trees, and the heat, in the coolest month of the year, still seems palpable in a photograph
At this time of year, January, there is still some water near the surface, however, much of the year...
...requires water to be brought up from great depths - I have seen open water pits 30 metres deep
Cattle tolerant
of the dry conditions. Temperatures in this area of the Ganges valley in northern India average 36 degrees in the summer, with places such as these villages seeing mean maximums well above 40 degrees - and there is no electricity!
Path at the edge of the village
Marching to the fields
Moving cattle between fields
The main road into the village
A woman guardian of her buffalo
The next page
introduces the team of paramedics from the Leprosy Mission (TLM) Hospital in Naini who were visiting these villages, and who offered me the opportunity of accompanying them.
The last page had images of the Huế Imperial City
A page on a comparable sized village on the Faroes
A page on a comparable sized village in Vietnam
