I decided that I was going to bring Cherise back some kind of black pearl jewellery as a gift from India. Hyderabad is something of a world center in pearl commerce: around 90% of the world’s pearls pass through Hyderabad at some point. You might find this odd for a city that’s nowhere near the ocean, and you’d be correct. It’s pretty damn weird. From what I understand, it has little to do with geography and more to do with historically cheap pearl processing labour. That’s right. Hundreds of years ago, pearl processing was outsourced to India.

This photo was probably the first good ‘people shot’ I got while I was in India. I took it at Golconda Fort, a fairly popular domestic tourist attraction for Indians, with not quite so many foreigners present. We had been cruising around the place, and this young woman took a quick interest in my camera. She was separated from her group, so I asked if I could get her picture. She didn’t quite understand me, so I gestured with my camera and asked if it was ok. She hesitated, looked back at her group who weren’t paying much attention to her, and then smiled… and bobbed her head. I paused for a second. What the hell does that mean? And that was my first cultural gap experience in photography.

As my first time outside a first world country, India had its trials for me. This was my first noble task.

After 30 hours of weary travelling (14 hour flight from LA to Hong Kong, 4 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, 8 hour stop in KL which was not explored due to not wanting to further contribute to my general ickiness with 95 degree weather, and finally a 4 hour flight to Hyderabad), I needed a shower, 1 am in the morning or no. So, my first real introduction to transitioning into developing nation mentality was in the bathroom.

India has a swarm of these bright yellow rickshaw taxis all over the country, each seemingly with its own unique decoration and character. And by character, I refer to how often the vehicle stalls, which isn’t really a big issue… to start it up again, the driver reaches down and yanks a large lever up as hard as possible, and that brings some pep back to the engine. For a few minutes.

These vehicles are often highly personalized with ornaments and such, so you’d think you’d be able to get an idea of the driver’s personality by looking at the stickers covering the wind shield, usually bright and glittery stickers of various deities. However, as Kalyan pointed out, the used-vehicle market in India is so huge that you really learn nothing from the decoration; the driver probably just bought it like that. You just have tons of rickshaw cabs denoting various religious affiliations that may or may not belong to the driver, each with their bright yellows dampened just a bit by the grime that builds up from all those diesel fumes. And that’s just the looks. The ride is something else.