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River boatman. Varanasi. India.

River boatman.  Varanasi, India. 1997.  

Hill Tribe, Northern Thailand.

Mother and child. Hill Tribe.   Northern Thailand.   1995

Man smoking.

Chinese man smoking.  Ipoh, Malaysia c. 1995.  

Child by river. Varanasi, India.

By the river in Varanasi, India, 1997.   

Child. Varanasi, India.

I was walking the streets of Varanasi. Perhaps it was unwise as it was very poor and I was starkly different.  I always felt safe mainly though.  This is India in 1997. 

Wana Tribe, Indonesia.

The Wana ate a cassava / tapioca like root, which to my palate was bitter with an unpleasant tang. The women spent a lot of time preparing it.  Men would supplement with hunting game.

A favourite food was the maleo egg, considered a delicacy for honoured guests! I subsequently found out the maleo bird is an endangered species, and its young can fly almost as soon as it hatches. The maleo also tries to lay false holes for its eggs, which is not a great trick if you have humans watching you.

The wiki on the maleo.  

Maleo egg. Note the huge yolk.

Cigarette Smoking. Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The Wana Tribe were (are) a semi-nomadic people in the Sulawesi jungle.  In 1998, visitors were still very rare.   Clove cigarettes were the staple smoke, but any foreign cigarettes were a highly tradable good.

According to this wiki, the Wana started some crops in 2000 (although there was evidence of this already in 1998 when I visited) and before were fully nomadic.

This article (written May 2017) quotes: "“In the old days we were entirely nomadic, but now we settle in an area for around three to four years. We burn and clear a patch of land and grow our crops. When the soil is depleted, we pack up our plank houses and move on so it can regenerate. As forest dwellers, we have the deepest respect for the earth. We take only what we need,” "

I travelled there in 1998, lugging a couple of cameras and mainly black and white film (Ilford Delta and HP5 mainly).