User:Vincent Granouillac
I was born in La Garenne-Colombes, near Paris in 1971. As a child, my favourite animal is already the elephant, symbol of luck in the Hindu-Buddhist world, then during my high school years our history/geography teacher watches the film "Gandhi" as part of our courses on decolonization. This film upset me as I was just a teenager who knew nothing about the Indian world. It was the trigger for my interest in the peoples and cultures of this part of Asia. One year later, I leave for a school year in Iraq accompanying my mother and brother, my father on a professional mission, I begin to take a serious interest in photography and ethnography, observing and noting scrupulously the things of daily life. Back in France, marked by the East, my interest in this part of the world will only grow and I take the big step by "landing" alone and without landmarks in Delhi on December 3rd 1992. After more than seven months in India and Nepal, by mimicry, I had almost become an Indian. I then undertook a series of trips on the five continents over a period of ten years, living on seasonal jobs and working for a Zig-Zag travel association, which will allow me to discover the Tuaregs of Mauritania. Afterwards, I resumed my studies in Montpellier, which led to a Master's degree in Human Sciences, Territories and Societies in 2007.
In the summer of that same year, as I was walking through the Western Himalayas to the source of the Ganges, I met Rambir, a young Hindu peasant who baptized me Bhola. A diminutive of Bhola Nath, the Mad Lord in Sanskrit, one of the 108 manifestations of the god Shiva, where he loses his mind following the disappearance in the fire of his beloved, Sati (see Mahabharata). My travelling companion could not have found a better way because I hadn't already lost my mind a little since my discovery of India 15 years earlier, hence my sweet madness. Our meeting, led me later on to pick up the radishes with him in Baghpat, his childhood town 38 km north of Delhi and to be in a way the guest of honour of his wedding. I had left for my field work in anthropology, to study the ascetics who want to leave this land and I found myself very close to it with the Indian peasants. Who knew that four years later, it was with the Tamang peasants of the Pahar, hills of Nepal between the Indo-Gangetic plain and the Himalayas, that I would share a slice of life.
Since then my passion for Asia and its civilizations has grown even more and I like to photograph and write about this continent full of excitement and serenity at the same time. A great paradox, but it is the whole point of a life rich in the discovery of others and oneself, with always the place for the eternal question: "Who am I?" The one that leaves us without an answer and prevents us from sinking into certainties.
I have long opted, most often, for travel by train, hitchhiking, walking and cycling, so after assiduous practice of the latter in Ile de France and Languedoc, I decided to maintain it despite my installation in 2014 in a steep region, that of the central Pyrenean foothills.
The year 2016 was a break from my oriental peregrinations and for three months I cycled about 3,800 km in France and Great Britain. Why this destination in the United Kingdom? Because my bike is from London, he had to go back to his roots, but above all out of love for a pretty English girl and the British pop music of my youth. This journey gave birth to my first book released on February 9, 2018 under the title Pyrénées-Highlands, Le Tour de la Grande-Bretagne à vélo pliant.
After more than 25 years of travel notes, waiting like old grimoires for their hours of glory in a drawer at home, I have finally managed to self-publish a first travel story and I intend to publish more. On the other hand, since 1994, I have been presenting my travels in the form of slideshows and conferences in various places in France, in addition to welcoming family, friends and travellers from all over the world to my home.