Timeless memories in an ancient place, feeling welcome. A pilgrimage back in time, my time.

Apologies ((I just realised that images here are not protected from being downloaded. That’s a little unfortunate and is the reason why I am not sharing my favourite images of the temple and sights on Charmundi Hill. I need to ponder if I am ok with giving these visual memories away without a meaningful price. I used to offer some of my images on Society6 for print on demand, but that wasn’t really worth it either. The occasional pennies..))

Anyway here we go 

the MEMORY of ascending Charmundi hill. 

I lied, we didn’t climb it, we took our rented scooters and at sunrise made our way from Gokulam, driving through Mysore city and up Charmundi Hill. Back then India was another world to me. It took me a long time to acclimatise and settle into the experience. The sounds, the incense sticks…

… the views, the people. I am so glad that I got to experience the magic of this place. Magic in part because it is so different to everything I had experienced up to that point. Magic because being a foreigner with no comprehension of where I had just landed made me feel so alien and made everything feel alien and also was absolutely wonderful. Since then I have read literature set in India, got a sense of India’s history, got to fall in love with it’s Art forms.. India is a place that I am sure I could visit and never leave and never run out of new things to learn. What a rich place. 

There was no Google maps then. No internet in my palm. Internet was available at Internet Cafes with painfully slow dial-up connections. (I am sure faster internet could be found but I wasn’t in need to finding it then.) Travel was so much more reliant on the hand drawn maps by others who came before, maps would be photocopied and handed on to the next person until the photo copies got blurry and became hard to decipher. I miss that type of travel. I also miss the old style Lonely Planet books, but I digress. I am great at this, at digressing. It’s always been my superpower.

There REALLY were cows walking in traffic on the streets. Cows without someone herding them, just cows flaneuring down any street that took their fancy. I am sure those cows knew where they were going and where they belonged but to the foreign eye, to my eye, this was an incredile experience.

The hill, Charmundi hill, the colours, the temple, the pilgrims who would be so open to taking a photo together, in fact it was often the pilgrims requesting to take a photo, pulling me among them to make sure I would be on their pilrgimage snapshot. 

What did we all think we’d do with these images we took of strangers? Them of me? Me of them? We couldn’t communicate a lot, the pilgrims in this memory didn’t speak much English, if any. Yes, that is true. Not everyone in India had the opportunity to gain English fluency. I am ignorant, but if people barely complete schooling then those people probably have more important things to learn than English. I am NOT suggesting Indian’s don’t complete schooling, most Indians I met are absolutely dilligent in getting their kids educated. But it isn’t available to everyone. Wealth disparity existed and exists. Education is a gift that isn’t in everyone’s reach equally. I am gettng lost in details. 

Those pilgrims made my day and I feel a little glimmer of happiness every time I recall our communicatig with gestures and smiles. I felt welcome in India in general, and very much that morning on Charmundi Hill. 

What a blessing to have had the opportunity to experience so many months in India, relatively unburdened by financial worries. I never had much, I have hardly ever in my life been debt free, but somehow life was doable on little. And I had enough for my little to set me free. 

Charmundi Hill, the first time I saw a Lotus for sale.

The first time I came camera Lens-to-nose with a free roaming monkey. Charmundi Hill, I have just NO idea of the significance and meaning of anything but just being there and in the moment felt great. And I took some of my all time favourite photographs up there, as the fog of the morning lifted. I wish I could experience all of this again.

Perhaps a first time memory can not be repeated. But Charmundi Hill should be revisited in my life time. Perhaps I can somehow manage to do it. 

What do you learn from my meandering thoughts? Maybe not so much. But perhaps it is a nudge to recall a memory of yours? A memory of a journey to somewhere so new and unexpected, a place or time you didn’t understand but that holds its own meaning in your heart? A meaning that isn’t easy, if even at all possible, to convey but that lights a little glimmer of joy whenever you recall it?

People: Take photographs!

Take photographs of your journey through life; and let others take photos of you. Time doesn’t return. Memories are your only access to time travel and they are nudged awake by stumbling on an image, that we brough along for the ride, from times past. Take care of your images.

I apologise for witholding the images that I love the most.

I need to find a place on the internet where I can share them without giving them away. Perhaps a printed photo journal would be a good place for this? Perhaps this is a great idea. Of course it would be yet another one of those occasions where someone pulls a string to your wallet. I bet we are all getting tired of everything coming at a cost when nothing we do seems to be rewarded with the money we need to buy access to what brings joy.. It’s a cycle. Let’s break it somehow. Let’s break it. 

And lets visit India once more. 

This thought somehow alerts me to that one day every journey will be a journey of last visits. There are not infinite opportunities to repeat, experience again, improve or fail again. This somehow terrifies me.

Perhaps this is a very well fitting thought to arise as I think about India. A country that seems to handle impermanence and eternity…

I know we all look so awkward, but I swear they were as keen as I to share this memory together. – I am SO glad that I had my first digital camera! Nikon D70, I will forever love that camera! Everything went DOWNHILL when I started worrying about image quality and camera specs. It literally drained the joy from everything. Go make memories, take photos with whatever you have. Nobody cares if the image is perfectly exposed. NOBODY wants to pay money just to see an image 5% ‘better’. Be in the moment instead. Keep hold of your money and travel. You can never get back that time. Live it while you have it.

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I would like to try something in the near future; I would like to try if you are willing to become a paid subscriber. I would like to dedicate more time to writing and creating and I literally can’t do it without about $1000 a month. This would get me kickstarted. I have never been the type of person to make much money, and always been the type of person to make a few memories here and there..

Help me create. Your philanthropy would change my life. I know that I will need to figure out how to explain why this should be of interest to you.

I will also create a series of monthly notebook journals that will feature images from along the treasure trove of memories and places and space for you to add your own. You will be able use these as journals or just as paper to keep your shopping lists. Each notebook journal will have 12-28 pages, and may serve the purpose of a monthly calendar. Let’s see. This is a project in development.

Please follow along and cheer, cheer loudly.

And remember to make memories not perfect images. (by me, Birgit)