Dianne Sharma-Winter is a New Zealand whose passion is India, and she spends much of her time there. She lives there, organises tours, gives advice, promotes fair trade and Ethical Travel along the way – here she writes about what all that means…. Read more
Dianne Sharma-Winter runs Women Travel India and here she writes about voluteering in India:
Hot on the heels of a recent article I wrote about why India doesn’t need you to volunteer, I was lured into doing the very thing I advised against! For the next three months I have committed my time and energy to volunteering at Sambhali Women and Girl Empowerment Centre in Jodhpur, Rajasthan and am currently living with 15 rambunctious girls in a boarding house. Read more
Dianne Sharma-Winter reflects on a NZ icon. Before gourmet food stores, restaurants and magazines (and we have some great ones), there was the honesty box by the side of the road – and its still there! Read more
Dianne Sharma-Winter writes about her stay in Broome, Western Australia
I haven’t really had much of an exploration of town and around Broome since I arrived here. I have seen the iconic sunsets and the camel trains along Cable Beach, I have witnessed the high speed jaw snapping tail whipping woman eating crocodiles from a safe distance and generally pondered the seemingly infinity of red earth space between here and anywhere else.
Last year in India, I met a woman who worked and lived and loved the Kimberleys. “Broome is my shopping town,” she said when I remarked that a family member had moved there. “It’s only three hundred kilometers down the road.”
Only. Three hundred kilometers of red earth with nothing in between here and there. No petrol stops, no chai stalls, no clusters of villages. Just that wide brown land, an artists palette of gorgeous blues and reds and pink and orange with the odd kangaroo leaping across the road.
I have to admit that it unsettles me. That kind of land could just swallow you up! Read more
Dianne Sharma-Winter writes:
One of the many names for the river Ganga (or Ganges) translates to “Roaming around delighting in Apple Tree Island”
Anyone who has plotted the course of this river knows that this is exactly what the Ganga likes to do. Her riverbanks have changed many miles over the course of time and then there is the monsoon where she breaks her banks exuberantly.
Slow travel is a bit like that. I have had the luck to roam around delighting in India like a river, slow and languid at times and rushing with purpose and intent at others. Read more
