DAARI: travel through the everyday life of India
We are Teun de Bok and Robert-Jan Baken. Together we form DAARI, a small Dutch travel organisation. In close collaboration with
local charitable, social organisations (NGOs) we organise special tours
through India. It all started in the first half of the 1990s, when we
were doing our fieldwork for a long term research on land and
housing problems in Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Both
places are not generally regarded as prime tourist locations. Yet,
after having explored both cities and regions in the context of our
research we thought there were many interesting things to see and to
experience.
We were convinced, for example, that a walk through the whole sale
section of the old town of Vijayawada with its labyrinth of winding
lanes, along local temples and numerous colourful outlets would be an
engaging experience to any foreign visitor. Now according to the
average inhabitant of Vijayawada, there's nothing great to see in the
old town - except for the famous Kanaka Durga temple. And, indeed,
there is no mention of this place in any tourist handbook. The nice
things of the old town are those taken for granted by
locals: the traditional, rather 'clumsy' and congested environment; the
sense of old and firmly rooted Brahmin and trader communities,
resulting in a special atmosphere. The old town constitutes a different
world. For foreigners it is quite exotic. Moreover, it is a great place
to buy all kinds of 'everyday' South Indian odds and ends. If you knew
where to go, you could make a most interesting and varied walk
including
visits to the flower market, the ghats and the temple - both
overlooking the mighty River Krishna - and a great number of
whole sale shops. On the way you could have a sip of the best badam
milk in town, a puff of an instantaneously produced cigar at the
tobacco merchant's outlet and a tasty Andhra meal in a hidden
traditional restaurant. When we finally organised our first tour, we
did all these things. It was a great success. We stayed in Vijayawada
for a week or so. This stay became the heart of our tour.
We did not only walk, we cycled too, through the newer parts of town,
around hills with dense settlements, through an urbanised village with
a potter settlement, along irrigation canals and lively popular
neighbourhoods full of buffaloes. We also visited the nearby
village of Kutchipuddi, the place where Kutchipuddi (classical) dance
originated. Nowadays it harbours a famous dance academy which invites
all its visitors to see students practising their dance, showing their
talents. There is no make up, no grand stage and no routine performance
for tourists. Although we had seen much more glittering and more
perfect dance performances, it was at Kutchipuddi that for the first
time we were deeply moved by Indian classical dance.
On the other side of the river, Mangalagiri is known for its hand loom
industry. There are thousands of hand loom weavers. We saw
them at work, weaving, preparing their warps in the lanes, dyeing their
yarn etc. Again, for local people, there is hardly anything interesting
about weaving, but for those (like us) who've never seen how fabric is
actually produced, a visit to the weavers of Mangalagiri can be
fascinating.
Kondapalli, near Vijayawada, harbours a settlement of artisans
who make colourful wooden statues. A bit further away, near the old
trading town of Machalipatnam, there are hundreds of families engaged
in traditional block printing, using natural dyes in an intricate
process of printing, boiling and rinsing. Both places are worth
a visit.
Visakhapatnam is mainly known for its port and industry. Yet, it is an
amazingly green and spacious town structured around a conglomerate of
erstwhile villages. In addition to an old core, with winding lanes
connecting various caste-wise settlements, it offers deserted, sandy
beaches, a graceful temple on top of a green hill (Symhachalam) and the
natural beauty of the forested hills and mountains in its hinterland
that is mainly inhabited by native tribes.
Visiting such places while staying in typical local hotels and eating
delicious local food in popular local restaurants can be a great
experience. In fact, this has been acknowledged by all our
participants. Yet without the input of local social organisations,
visiting these places would only be half as interesting and fun. In
Vijayawada, a local street children project, SKCV, plays an important
role in our activities. In fact, ex-street children (young men) act as
our hosts, guides and translators. Not only do they show us their
project, but they guide us during our walk through the old town, during
our cycle tour along the hills and irrigation canals and during our
visits to local slums and the weavers' settlement of Mangalagiri. They
give us cooking lessons, take us on a boat trip on the River Krishna
and show us their world.
In the nearby village of Srikakulam (Krishna District) we stay for one
or two nights in the compound of a NGO working in the villages (Arthik
Samata Mandal). The accommodation it offers is very basic,
but after having spent most of our time in cities and towns,
the quietness and simplicity of village life is overwhelming. The same
goes for a stay at BCT, a similar organisation, based in Haripuram,
near Visakhapatnam. Not only does such a stay offer us a taste of
village life, an introduction to its projects by its social workers
gives us a little more in depth idea of the problems and positive sides
of living in a (rather poor) rural environment as well.
In the green mountains on the border with Orissa we visit an
organisation working through and with disadvantaged tribal groups
(AASSAV). Through this organisation we see a glimpse of what it means
to live in these rather secluded en neglected parts of India. What is
particularly nice about being hosted by organisations such as those
mentioned above is that they show us glimpses of everyday life
(including its harsher sides) of large groups of people in India,
without resorting to gloom and hopelessness. After all, these
organisations actually do something to improve the living conditions of
the people in their work area: they have founded schools, night
shelters, hospitals; they have planted trees and experimented with
various income generation activities.
There is no intricate philosophy behind our kind of tourism.
It is build upon the assumption that people who travel with us want to
get to know India, its people and the things they do in their daily
lives. So, we travel in trains and auto rickshaws and stay in typical
Indian middle class hotels or in villages (in the compounds of NGOs).
We eat local food and we meet a great variety of people. These are not
only interesting things to do, but they are fun, nice and/or pleasant
too. We don't want to isolate ourselves from the Indian world around us
by travelling in a rather luxurious cocoon in which everything is
nicely adjusted to our ways of doing things. That would only make us
feel uncomfortable. It would make the rather strange world surrounding
us, in which poverty is visible on every street corner, seemingly
impenetrable and threatening. By travelling the way we do we want to
bridge the unavoidable gap between our world and 'theirs' as much as
possible. By paying explicit attention to poverty related problems
(through our visits to NGOs), poverty is no longer an omnipresent,
amorphous and rather intimidating phenomenon that appears in the form
of slums, beggars and other kinds of destitute looking people. It
becomes more tangible and concrete. A slum is not just a big black
hole. It harbours various shops, workshops and numerous simple houses
and huts. Its inhabitants are engaged in all kinds of day-to-day
activities. Although they may have lots of urgent problems, they are
people like ourselves, with their joys, anxieties and care for their
parents and children too.
As mentioned above, during our tours there is a stress on 'ordinary'
things, on daily life, with all its beautiful, exotic and harsher
facets. At the same time we do pay attention to phenomena which are
commonly regarded as tourist attractions. In fact, during our tours we
try to come up with an attractive mix of elements, including visits to
famous temples and stays at beaches. Our tours are not meant to be
study trips. They are primarily designed as special holidays with
moments generating a typical holiday feeling, moments causing a feeling
of being part of a new strange world, and moments of extraordinary
encounters with people working for the benefit of poor or otherwise
disadvantaged people. They are also designed to include sufficient
moments of rest. We want avoid packed programmes that leave no time to
really be in certain places or time to be lazy and let experiences sink
in.
travel programme
We organise our own DAARI tours, for (small) groups, as well
as tailor made tours, both for groups, couples and individuals. All our
tours can be completely or partly tuned to the specific demands of our
participants. While the heart of our tours lies in Andhra Pradesh, with
time we have expanded our sphere of action. At present, we also visit
(parts) of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, West Bengal and Gujarat.
