Piera Gelardi, co-founder and creative director of fashion and lifestyle website Refinery29, brought an eye for color and style to her travels through Rajasthan, India’s most kaleidoscopic region.
India was my color-junkie dream come true:
Red saris…
…golden marigold petal displays…
…and then blue, which seemed to follow me throughout my trip.
Of course, there’s Jodhpur, the Blue City, which was one of my favorite places to wander. Everywhere we went, we’d see blue buildings strung with colorful laundry.
We flew into Mumbai on our way to Rajasthan, and I had a memorable blue moment there, too. At the Haji Ali Mosque, I noticed this family sheepishly smiling and staring at me and my friends. I waved back. They asked if they could take our picture, and afterwards I asked to take a photo of them and their daughter. She had the most gorgeous cobalt blue dress, which matched a cobalt barrel nearby.
I think that Rajasthan is the style capital of the world. I loved the way people mixed prints.
They took great pride in their appearance, too.
One guy had a big cool mustache to go along with his larger-than-life personality.
All over, you’d see women wearing jewel-colored saris and silver bangles while doing roadwork.
The train is an essential part of the India experience, but driving in Rajasthan is incredible, too.
There were these long stretches of dry earth punctuated by little moments…
…the pop of a fluorescent turban…
…a goatherd and his flock…
…or a wildly customized bus stuffed to twice its height with cargo.
On New Years Day, we went on a hike to this incredible monkey temple. It was all locals there celebrating the New Year, and we went into the temple and got blessed. The monkey temple was covered with monkeys crawling all over it.
Everywhere I turned there was something that captured my imagination.
Photos by Piera Gelardi. This appeared in the June/July 2015 issue.