The quiet medieval hilltop village of Volpaia provided an excellent base for our week-long trip to Tuscany, sitting approximately half way between Florence and Siena in the heart of Italy’s world-famous Chianti region:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
Hinduism is a wonderful religion, full of character and colour………but unless you’re born and bred into that culture, to the uninitiated, it is also pretty hard to grasp. There are literally thousands of Gods worshipped by Hindus…..you name it and their will be a God for it. The downside of this is that even the smallest of villages is likely to have half a dozen shrines and temples (not to mention each and every house, workplace, public building and dashboard in virtually every form of transport in the country……..regardless of whether you are a practicing Hindu or not it seemed to me). As you can see from the shots below, Ramathra is no exception:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
A few more shots from Ramathra depicting the villagers hard at work in the fields bringing in the millet harvest. I vividly remember this day……it was hot and humid and out in the fields there was no shade. Not the sort of day for hard physical labour……..but then I’m a slightly overweight, unfit, pampered westerner who doesn’t have a village full of hungry mouths to feed:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
In my last post, I mentioned that we visited two villages on our trip to India. Here are a few images from the second village – Ramathra in rural Rajasthan:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
India is a country of 1.2 billion people, and over 800 million of these live in rural villages like Kachpura. This is one of two villages that we visited on our trip (Ramathra in Rajasthan being the other one) and in many respects these provided the most fascinating experiences and special memories……..because this is the real India:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
Another post where there isn’t really anything to add to the title:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
I love the expression on the little kids face and the fact that mum was in the background just keeping an eye on things:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
I think the title says it all:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
Most of the kids in India were happy to smile for the camera:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
This young girl (and her mates) decorated Lizzy’s hand with local henna:
© Mark Simms Photography (2015)
