19/jan rice fields (life?)
Trains are experts in creating nostalgic moments. That’s true. But also traveling with zac. There’s always a good and easy atmosphere. We can be the whole trip without saying a word. Reading, looking through the window, sleeping… and is not always easy to find this state with people. Freedom. And I use it to look through the window. You always see new things, that makes you think about this country, its traditions, culture, poverty, but richness, and potential, of both land and people. 1.2 bilion people. China, 1.4 bilion. And India is much smaller than china.
So, through the window, I saw many different kinds of landscape. Leaving kolkata, from howrath station, You can see the slums, and pour areas occupying the ‘lost’ areas of the railways. Then little towns, and then just villages. After that, huge extensions of rice fields. Some of them dry, some of them wet, and with the greenest green! They get 2 harvest (collita) a year. And these rice fields, are full of colors. Each color is a person, leaning over the rice, for hours, with their barefoot feet inside the water, under the sun, now not very strong, since is winter time (25 degrees), but that before the monsoon (june to september) temperatures can reach 40 or even 45 degrees. People worship the rice here, since is the base of milions of people daily alimentation (feeding?). You can also see caws and buffalos working. In 5 hours looking through the window I’ve seen only one tractor, full of mud. I would guess that these fields were part of a huge jungle before (there are a couple of national parks around the area). You can see a palm once in a while, that gives a little bit of verticality to these very horitzontal landscape, divided milions of times by low walls, 30 to 40 cm, that encloses the water. I guess that the process hasn’t really changes in the last 500 years or maybe 1000. I even saw people pushing the water towards their field with their hands, or with buckets. Every 3 or 4 km, maybe more, a village, where the workers, but not the owner, work. Then can leave and keep a part of the harvest, of course very small. They use to be tribal people. This village use to have 5 to 10 house, made with clay for the walls, and dry palms for the roof. They have little lakes manmade (basses), where they clean their clothes, and take the water for cooking, drinking… everything. And is not a very clean water. Naked children with a string in their bellies, playing with the most basic kites (estels) , goats, caws… with a lot of activity. Or at least that’s my feeling.
Here I feel again that I’m traveling, in space, but also in time. So many things have absolutely changed in europe, most of them in a better way, and very few here.
But they keep on smiling and saying goodbye to the train. I wonder if everytime they see the train, they see it as a lost train, as a lost chance of living in a different situation, or just as a group of unlucky people that has to travel everyday in order to reach their job? Or maybe just as a machine, a noisy piece of metal, that is moving so fast, as the seasons pass, and the leaves fall down. Who knows!
Once in Balasore, our first destination after 5 hours, 240 km, we took a rickshaw (with motor, like the thai tuk tuks), and then a bus to baripada, the entrance door to the simlipal national park. A reserve with tigers, elephants, bears, zebras… leaving free.
And that bus, that cost RS22, 60 km, a couple of hours, was extremelly full of people. I had never seen nothing like that before. They were allowing people and more people to get it, and it was impossible to move once inside. I was sitting (I was lucky) by the corridor, and I think that I touch with my head, shoulders, back and arms the asses and genitals of everyone. The distances (accepted) between people it’s forced to be different here. There is too many people everywhere here.
In baripada, restaurant and bars are called hotels, and we were looking for a guest house or hotel. (a real one!) After finding a nice and cheap one, less than 2 euro, with private bathroom, not hot water, but mosquite net, we decided to look for a place to eat, dinner time. On our way, we met an english teacher, Sailesh Dash, english teacher, that invited us to be special guests in his english institute the day after.
25/1/05
So, through the window, I saw many different kinds of landscape. Leaving kolkata, from howrath station, You can see the slums, and pour areas occupying the ‘lost’ areas of the railways. Then little towns, and then just villages. After that, huge extensions of rice fields. Some of them dry, some of them wet, and with the greenest green! They get 2 harvest (collita) a year. And these rice fields, are full of colors. Each color is a person, leaning over the rice, for hours, with their barefoot feet inside the water, under the sun, now not very strong, since is winter time (25 degrees), but that before the monsoon (june to september) temperatures can reach 40 or even 45 degrees. People worship the rice here, since is the base of milions of people daily alimentation (feeding?). You can also see caws and buffalos working. In 5 hours looking through the window I’ve seen only one tractor, full of mud. I would guess that these fields were part of a huge jungle before (there are a couple of national parks around the area). You can see a palm once in a while, that gives a little bit of verticality to these very horitzontal landscape, divided milions of times by low walls, 30 to 40 cm, that encloses the water. I guess that the process hasn’t really changes in the last 500 years or maybe 1000. I even saw people pushing the water towards their field with their hands, or with buckets. Every 3 or 4 km, maybe more, a village, where the workers, but not the owner, work. Then can leave and keep a part of the harvest, of course very small. They use to be tribal people. This village use to have 5 to 10 house, made with clay for the walls, and dry palms for the roof. They have little lakes manmade (basses), where they clean their clothes, and take the water for cooking, drinking… everything. And is not a very clean water. Naked children with a string in their bellies, playing with the most basic kites (estels) , goats, caws… with a lot of activity. Or at least that’s my feeling.
Here I feel again that I’m traveling, in space, but also in time. So many things have absolutely changed in europe, most of them in a better way, and very few here.
But they keep on smiling and saying goodbye to the train. I wonder if everytime they see the train, they see it as a lost train, as a lost chance of living in a different situation, or just as a group of unlucky people that has to travel everyday in order to reach their job? Or maybe just as a machine, a noisy piece of metal, that is moving so fast, as the seasons pass, and the leaves fall down. Who knows!
Once in Balasore, our first destination after 5 hours, 240 km, we took a rickshaw (with motor, like the thai tuk tuks), and then a bus to baripada, the entrance door to the simlipal national park. A reserve with tigers, elephants, bears, zebras… leaving free.
And that bus, that cost RS22, 60 km, a couple of hours, was extremelly full of people. I had never seen nothing like that before. They were allowing people and more people to get it, and it was impossible to move once inside. I was sitting (I was lucky) by the corridor, and I think that I touch with my head, shoulders, back and arms the asses and genitals of everyone. The distances (accepted) between people it’s forced to be different here. There is too many people everywhere here.
In baripada, restaurant and bars are called hotels, and we were looking for a guest house or hotel. (a real one!) After finding a nice and cheap one, less than 2 euro, with private bathroom, not hot water, but mosquite net, we decided to look for a place to eat, dinner time. On our way, we met an english teacher, Sailesh Dash, english teacher, that invited us to be special guests in his english institute the day after.
25/1/05
posted by Unknown at 15:10
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