Words by Kate Hennessy/Images by James Brunker
[See PDF for published version with James' wonderful photographs. Mine below are just snapshots.]
We’ve radically changed travel plans to come to the Virgen de la Candelaria festival in Puno, Peru, but on arrival I’m felled by altitude sickness. Puno doesn’t look or feel very high but at 3,830 metres above sea level it’s higher than both La Paz, Bolivia (at 3,640 metres) and Machu Picchu (2,430 metres).
You might be lucky enough to have felt it yourself. A connection with a place that’s both instant and profound. Maybe it’s the light, the culture, or the architecture. Whatever it is, you fit. For fashion designer Frances Carrington, this place was Dehli when she arrived in 1995. Denied her dream to do aid work in Africa, Frances was assigned a place by Australian Volunteers Abroad in India instead.
“I’d visited a friend in South Africa and I really wanted to return to work somewhere in Africa, anywhere! Arriving in Dehli was a real shock. The pollution was extreme and there were so many people. I didn’t know how to respond to the beggars, especially children or mothers with babies. I was wondering what I’d done, signing up to stay here for two years.”
