Street art walking tour

My favorite mural of the day

The same festival that took me out to the dry port to see the murals painted on shipping containers also picks one neighborhood a year to get painted with murals by artists that are both Indian and from other countries. When one of the teachers at a school organized a walking tour of the street art in Shahpurjaat (site of the 2014 ST+ART festival) and Lodhi Colony (site of the 2016 ST+ART festival) I couldn't resist putting on good walking shoes and joining in.

The fun thing about art is you never
know what will speak to you

Shahpurjaat is a bit of a windy neighborhood, where you can turn a corner and be surprised at what lays before you....or as was often the case for me, turn around from taking one picture and be surprised at what else laid behind me. A couple of my favorites there included the giant slingshot boy, the black and white huddled person, a piece from the Bollywood Art Project (which I was informed anyone who watched Bollywood would recognize...that isn't me!), as well as a woman protecting herself with her voodoo pins.

Hard to not love some more trees!

In Lodhi Colony the wall spaces were more spacious, and it was evident when you were approaching a mural. I was most drawn to a colorful geometric depiction of birds, but also stunned at the detail in a two story mural of one of the street food vendors that feeds hundreds of people each day in the neighborhood (the fact that we actually got to tell the artist how much we appreciated it as he was taking pictures of his work that he had just finished the day before just made it that much more special). A geometric Gandhi was immediately recognizable. An astronaut on top of a meteor a bit confusing. A piece done by a traditional India artist who had never before worked beyond a canvas was all the more charming for his realizing he'd have to incorporate some typical street art methods (using stencils to add birds to the grown out tusks of his elephant).

There was a lot of variety in the murals.
This one is of a dead Dahlia

The timing might have been difficult with a 4 am departure the next morning for Minicourse, but I'm glad I took the opportunity to see some more of the street art that has come out of this festival.

Our guide was Himanshu of 1100 walks in Delhi. 

A week with the kids

View from close to camp

I've spent the last week out of Delhi in the foothills of the Himalayas with 19 students (and thankfully two other teachers) on our annual Minicourse trip. This year I headed to a region called Sattal or 7 lakes (although I think we only saw 3 maybe 4 of the seven lakes). It is a pretty spot, and our camp up on the side of a hill had a spectacular view down on the lakes. One that might have been more appreciated if we hadn't had to climb back up that hill almost every day....

Rock climbing was just one of the activities

So what does a week out with students entail? Thankfully not a lot of thought on my process. Our trips are all run by local companies. This one was a combination of outdoor activity - rock climbing, kayaking, river crossing, flying fox, hiking, camping out, bird watching and jumaring (a process of hauling oneself up a rope with the help of a special device) - and service - we dug some holes for a fence and painted a wall at a local school, interacted with some of the village families and hosted the children for an evening of entertainment.

We are very proud of the hole we dug...you would be too if
you saw the tools we had to use.

I spent a lot of time braiding hair (I think the last day I did approximately 20 braids on 11 of the 13 girls who were on the trip), took at least one nap every day, and all in all relaxed....well as much as you can with 19 high school students around the entire time. I feel lucky this year that I ended up with a group that were pretty chill, caused no problems and had very little for me to deal with beyond a couple cuts and scrapes.

No wonder it took me an hour and a half.