Rajastan: EXTREME HOSPITALITY

Fact: There is no Hindi translation for the word privacy

Initially, the thought of leaving behind the calm and accepting nature of the Tibetans in Mcleod to head south (the place we took to calling 'the Real India') was intimidating. Contrary to the peaceful Himalayas, the Real India is abrasive. As we learned in Delhi, the poverty is confronting, the smell suffocating and the humanity stifling.

The Real India is always burning and it smells as if you are standing next to a landfill that is being incinerated with some dead animals thrown in. The death smell. There are 12 million people in Delhi alone and they are all there all the time i think.

All this said, the kindness and hospitality I encountered in Rajastan (the western desert state of the Real India) was overwhelming, incredible and, honestly, a bit imposing. In short: extreme. We moved from one family to the next across Rajastan, the women giving me bracelets and bindis and the men promising Tom that he was, in fact, their own son. We are working on a new reality series: Extreme Hospitality.

A family-run guesthouse in Bundi became our temporary home, run by Chintu, Eddie, their parents and their boy servant: we called him the kid. The kid, in return for serving our every need, made two requests. The first request was for ten rupees. After much gesticulating and rambling(he spoke very rapidly in Hindi and seemed totally oblivious to our ignorance of the language) he managed to explain to us that he needed to buy a new kite. This seemed like a good excuse so Thomas obliged the kid. The next day he returned with ten kites (one rupee a piece) and counted them out for us (twice). His second request was that I photograph him. Of course I did.