Traditions in India

Diwali is a festival similar to our Christmas, where families meet up, eat together and exchange gifts. Diwali is also known as the "festival of lights": an ancient Hindu festival, celebrated in autumn every year. As part of the celebration, the Indians have fireworks in the streets like we have New Year’s Eve.  Diwali spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair. The festival preparations extend over a 5 day period, but the main festival night of Diwali coincides with the darkest, new moon night of the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. We were lucky enough to experience the main festival night of Diwali; a dance of colors illuminated the starry night sky in their wake while the momentary sonic booms - only comparable to the sounds stemming from Georg’s bathroom (should have stayed away from the curry) – deafened our hearing. 

Camels

We also experienced other traditional Indian ways of life, like camel riding in Pushkar. Camels have always been a way to transport wares and people. Today, they are also used to entertain tourists with a  “traditional” Indian safari trip into the desert.  

Pushkar 

India has a very diverse culture and is a large nation with many different people. Everyone has their own beliefs and traditions: despite of this, the festival of lights unites the Indian people, which was fantastic to experience. Walking down the streets of Pushkar, we saw a town much different from Delhi, which is one of the biggest cities in India. There, we saw both the slums and the privileged areas and not many tourists. Many people took pictures of us like they had never seen a white person before. When we arrived in Pushkar we saw many white tourists, like ourselves, so we saw Pushkar as the tourist city in India. What we didn’t think would happen in Pushkar was people still taking pictures like we were aliens. Pushkar is a very westernized city, there are tourists everywhere and the restaurants have Italian food. The shops selling clothes have a lot of t-shirts and dresses like we dress in in Denmark, and you find a souvenir shop at every corner.

The India we see is a changing country, that used to be ruled by its traditions and now is trying to fit in to globalization. 

Cilja, Karoline, Ronja og Kira