Oh just for silence
On so many of my journeys, the best part of it is just the silence. Running through areas of this planet that hardly any one has travelled, looking at the scenery, enjoying the silence and letting ones mind wonder. Every now and then the silence is punctuated with sounds of nature that are just part of it. I think this is what every one ultimately looks for, just a little quiet spot that you can reflect relax dream and enjoy what’s around you.
India, 930 people per square kilometre on average, is it possible to find silence?
I had this preconceived idea of India, large tracts of open space, Quiet temples spiritual meditation everywhere on the plains and in the mountain. People, peacefully going about their lives. I have been dropped into something quite different, a bit of a nightmare.
Temples with massive amplification systems that blare out badly recorded songs from 4:30 in the morning to 8, in some villages there might even be competing temples with people reading verse, out of sync, and so loud that it distorts. You can be camping in a field that you think is the middle of nowhere, then suddenly as the sun begins to set from a little shrine 1km away the music will start to blare out and continue for 2 hours, to whom, and why I have yet to find out.
Then there are the tractors. Every single tractor, some already 60 years old and struggle to even move, but still they have these massive beat boxes that play at full volume day and night as they drive up and down the farm lands, or up and down the little village roads taking sand, produce bricks and whatever they are taking where ever, like an eternal stream of ants they drive day and night, up and down. They never stop, nor does the music.
To add to this there is the rest of the daily traffic, motor cycles with car hooters, cars with truck hooters and trucks with train hooters and they know how to hoot, day and night. So you can imagine no matter where you are, day or night there is someone trying to outdo someone else.
Then to top it all there will be an all night wedding, these are in venues that are randomly build anywhere and I mean anywhere. The venue is normally a massive warehouse with a false facade which is build to make it look live a film set, this is where it all happens. Each wedding becomes this staged show, with rigging, draping and a sound system big enough for a rock band.
How a long for a quiet corner.
