Family portrait

Old village Khajuraho.

What to make of this place? It's actually pretty fierce, and experience in tolerance at points...and today verged often upon tetchy moments, came close to a fugh off at a couple of points. And I learned that here you have to ask before you buy as a chaat seller doubled the price on me and, despite telling him it's twenty ended up at forty...a lesson learned. Otherwise a day of being hounded by folk, sellers of everything from kashmiri produce, rickshaws, pashminas, reproduction art; it's felt endless. And stories, variations on a theme. In fairness it's pretty touristic here, coached berthed while like around the temples...and typical traveller fare on offer at ridiculous prices. But there's also the usual delights on offer...it's India after all, so just take a walk beyond the touts and...

It's a dusty place this, reminded of ponsavar in Laos, that feeling of incremental infrastructure creeping up on the town but, always, behind the tide...a place to wander either side of the early afternoon heat, wander in alleys (although you're sure to get tagged and followed it seems all takes ending with a request for a hundred rupees and surprise when you say no...) stumble upon temples and, through it all a coating of dust. But I do quite like it here, it's a memory of sorts...a good choice for these last days...

And catching up on the blip news, the problems and possibilities, it strikes me that it is a community, a place which matters. Sometimes I suppose we take such things and places for granted; become used to them, lose sight of what it was that brought us here, cast our trails of images and thought, found others, friends, to communicate with. But I, for one, would miss it: despite my lethargy at comments and, lately, replies also. I'd miss the humour and the kindness; that feeling of stumbling over a photo which brightens your day, or the occasional one which you carry in your mind. It's a place which can make us think, which offers us possibilities of wonder each visit. A place of myriad small kindnesses...as I muttered, a community. I fear that even if we were to migrate en masse to another place we'd lose something...it's a special place is blipworld...