New Delhi, July 28 - It's the country's first brush with the works of late Cuban writer-painter Severo Sarduy. An exhibition of paintings, photographs and artefacts here documents his fascination with India and the orient. 'The East of Severo Sarduy' has come to Delhi for a month after travelling to international cities like Madrid, Paris, Tangier, Tetuan and Rabat.

Sarduy's photographs of Varanasi, Khajuraho, Agra, Kullu, the Ajanta caves and Mumbai are striking in their details of Indian life -- in alleys outside the historical sites and temples. A series of self-portraits find Sarduy dressed in local Indian clothes, complete with turbans.

When Sarduy visited Varanasi in 1971, he was struck by the 'strange people of the city wrapped up in colourful saris, dhotis and turbans'. He photographed the city, its temples and the historic river bank bustling with pilgrims, devotees, women, men, children and even guards with spears.

'It took me almost 48 hours to travel from Delhi to Varanasi,' he recalled later. Sarduy died of AIDS in 1993.

The exhibition, inaugurated Saturday at Instituto Cervantes here, has been organised by the embassy of Spain and the Spanish government.

Sarduy travelled across India on horses, cars and carts. His art is culled from India's diversity and his experimental novel 'Cobra', which ended with a small 'Indian Journal', is a personal recollection of his two journeys in the country during the seventies.

While he visited Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Varanasi, Agra, Mysore, Chennai, Bhubaneswar and smaller towns during his first visit, he explored the Buddhist lands of Himachal Pradesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim in the late 1970s during his second trip.

Sarduy's art was influenced by Indian textiles, ancient calligraphy and Buddhist sculptures as well as the art of the Himalayas, where he spent months practising Mahayana Buddhism. He also went to China to study Taoism.

His journeys in the Himalayas inspired him to write 'Maitreya', a book that starts in Tibet with a group of Buddhist monks who after the death and the last rites of their master escape to India.