I spent 3 months in India over December 2011 to February 2012, travelling for a month with Annie and then on my own for 2 months. It was a time of change, I had recently handed over my job of the last 6 years to a company to run so I was in a sense free, and looking to cleanse my mind before moving on to new fields.

On this particular morning, I was passing through Jaipur on my way to Udaipur from Bikaner. I had been in India long enough to be used to the basic strange things that happens every day. The constant stares, the smells, the routines, the daily way of life. It was all fascinating but I no longer felt the need to stare around me and dwell on people or activities. I had arrived at 4am and was getting a bus at 11am, so I needed somewhere to stay for a few hours. Not easy in a small town where everything shuts down at night. Experience taught me that hostels and hotels always have night staff on so if I could just convince someone to let me in at least I would have somewhere to go, instead of the side the street. And thats what I did…I went to a hostel close to the city centre and a guy sleepily answered the door. He had little english, but I don’t think he cared about my story…he let me in with a jaded nod of his head. He was wearing a ratty woollen hat, standard Indian fare at night. I guess I looked harmless enough because he didn’t really care about me after that, he pointed to a staircase and went back to his disturbed slumber. Happy to be indoors, even if it was still a cold Indian morning, I went on an adventure to see if I could find a bed to lie on for a few hours. You don’t tend to sleep well on buses in India, so I could have used a few hours shut eye. All doors were locked upstairs so I went down to the basement. There was one room and a toilet, in which some Indian lad was doing the usual morning Indian routine of expelling everything possible from every part of his body to start the day. I left him undisturbed and peered into the only other room, a dark one full of beds with slumbering Indians. Nothing. I ended up sitting in a stairwell on a cold stone floor for 2 hours reading and nodding at anyone who passed me by, which consisted of one guy.

At about 630am the morning staff turned up and I was able to leave my bags and go for a walk around Jaipur, a famous Indian city. It’s a strange but beautiful thing to get up early in India and witness a city shake off the night and pull itself together, expectorating the day before and breathing deeply through its many streets and alleys, pulling life back into itself ready for the onslaught of another Indian day. A real pleasure was that there was no one to bother me…a rare, rare thing in India. I walked thought a shuttered city, greeted only by chai vendors setting up for the day. Without the hustle and bustle, the dirty city appeared to me in a new light, a land without people in a land full of nothing but people. The city ascends to the castle, and I got there after getting lost a few times. Now people were starting to awaken, it must have been round 8am. I overlooked the city, took some photos, relaxed in that lasting morning phase of semi-consciousness.

Having done my tourist duty, I descended into the city, through a maze of back streets where mothers were washing their young ones in the streets, men were starting to go about their daily business…even other tourists were showing by travelling in the opposite direction to me. Shutters were clattering up to greet the day. Dust and dirt were being cleared from shop fronts. At this point in my walk I was enjoying something that I always feel alone in enjoying…a place with promise. A place that usually exists in the dead of night or very early morning has a busy past and busy future but which, for a brief moment, is asleep and has time to itself.

It was in this state that I happened upon a scene that I remember quite vividly, probably as it is a rare occasion for most humans to experience, not least a lad from Ireland. There to my right on a street corner was an Indian washing an elephant, preparing it for it’s days duties. I stopped in my tracks. Just as a city awakened, just as a cities people so get themselves together to face another day, so too was this elephant being prepared for his day. And it seemed to me like he was relishing every moment. I stopped and moved to the side of the street to take it in properly (standing in the middle of an Indian street from this time on just means people giving out to you and jostling around you). The Indian had a hose and a big bucket, which the elephant was enjoying sticking his trunk into and moving around, only to get a light slap from his cleaner. He was covered in scattered markings, diamonds, circles, squares possibly for some sort of display purposes. I knew at this stage that Indians really did have a huge respect for elephants, they were sacred animals. So wherever he was off to on this day, he was probably going to be stared at in reverence. Other Indians passing by paid no attention, I was rapt. The sun was beginning to heat up, the clatter of carat was everywhere…the smell of chai was filtering through. I couldn’t wait for my first of the day. I noticed 2 schoolgirls also watching the elephant, more for something to do on their way to school than outright amazement. Together we all watched for about 15 minutes. I shot some video. The hose rose and fell, water splashed everywhere. The elephant was reprimanded constantly for messing with the buckets. Eventually the hose was turned off, and the cleaner shouted something at the elephant. it rolled its truck out straight to the ground. The cleaner put one foot on its trunk, close to the ground and reached up to grab its ears, fully facing the elephant. With both hands clasping each of the elephants ears, he proceeded to step up the trunk onto the elephants head, the elephant erasing his head throughout in what seemed to be an understanding of how this works. I couldn’t have asked for a better end to the routine. Cleaner and elephant trotted off down the road, cleaner now and naturally clearing a path as they went. The girls continued on their way to school in the opposite direction, oversized bags wobbling from side to side on their backs as they went. I ended up having a chai close by and then going and grabbing my rucksack to go to the next city, Udaipur.

I have though about that day a lot since, a time and place that is hard to replicate especially in mere words. There was something perfect about it; the coolness of the morning, the previous nights travel, a certain tiredness of mind where everything has a hazy tinge to it, a relaxed space in a country of constant activity. I was out on my own, with a past and future and feeling that this was a big, big world and I was a small but vital part of it. To see something from nature, something so basic in the world of people, of constructed and concrete reality was something really special. The past, the world without people clashed with the current way, in India, of people and industry and struggle and daily existence. It’s a strong, strong memory that, as I write, brings tears behind my eyes, tears of gratitude for having experienced it at all, like a secret memory that I can tell people about, but that deep down is mine, the secret of how it actually felt in the moment is locked away for my private viewing whenever and wherever I want. Descriptions can only go so far and thats fine. I’m so glad I had that moment. It makes the world easier to deal with.