Richard's Travel Blog

Myung and I have been mostly going to places I went to about a year ago. For pictures of Cochi, Kathikali, other sights in Kerala, look back on my blogs for last January. We’re in Hampi, Karnataka now and Badami tomorrow, so look back on last December for pictures from there. Of course you can search those words too

I remembered this picture in the Kathikali theater in Cochi of Narissiman eating the heart out of his father. It’s supposed to be about killing your ego, but I can’t explain it any more. I do know it kind of gripped me, so I’m passing it along. I like the look on this Krishna too. At least I think that’s Krishna.

One place we went to in Kerala that I didn’t go to last year was Varkala. It’s a regular Indian beach resort town, probably less obnoxious than most of Goa’s beaches. There are a couple basic pictures everybody takes.

We kicked back there for a while, not doing much but eating good food and walking around. I met a friend of my friend, Frank’s, at Frank’s place last year and looked him up. He has a guesthouse there and is doing great now that his plae is listed No. 1 in Lonely Planet. He has a lovely daughter too. I didn’t meet his wife, but I’m sure she’s lovely too. We also went to a concert. Prem Joshua is the biggest name in a genre known as Goa trance music. You hear his stuff constantly, especially at the chill out bars. “Chill out” is code for dope den. It was pretty good. I was wondering where old Deadheads go. Omygod, we’re getting a little long of tooth anymore.

I’ve got a picture of a 19th century traditional Kerala building in Thiruvanandapuram (Trivandrum), the state capital. It houses a museum in the town park now.

We also went to Goa. It’s still okay, but this is now the third time I’ve been there. I don’t think I need to go again. Whew. I hadn’t been here during the peak tourist season though. Here’s a picture of Baga Beach near Calangute. You can be sure we weren’t among the package tourists who find themselves here.

Again, I hope you are all having a happy holiday season. Christmas is hardly noticeable here, but I’m having a happy holiday season nonetheless. Myung has allowed me to keep a couple more pictures of her. I’ll close with one of those. One day she’ll not make me delete one which shows her eyes. Talk to later. Be well.

 

Happy Holidays

Myung and I have been taking much the same route I took almost a year ago, though a little in reverse. We went to Mamallapuram, Pondicherry/Auroville, Kanchipuram (where I didn’t go before), Trichy and Madurai before going to Kerala where we are now. For many pictures from these places, you can go back to last January’s blog entries. I’ll insert a few here. This is the shore temple in Mammalapuram.

Mammalapuram is on the must see list of places in Tamil Nadu, so it’s nice to see there are some normal locals there.

I didn’t post pictures of Trichy last time, so here are a few. It’s the Dravidian temple scene again.

Kanchipuram has Dravidian temples like in Trichy and Madurai. (Again, look at photos from last January if you are interested.) The only picture I uploaded to this blog site is of the “thousand pillared hall” which has only 96 pillars. They are all different, which is often the case with these places.

Here is a similar picture, though this one is of a similar hall in Madurai.

Okay, enough with the travelogue. On a personal note, Myung and I are getting along quite well. I’m having a wonderful time with her. We feel like “doing” these places in about the same way. That is, we are comfortable in about the same standard of room, we like to eat at about the same standard of  eateries, we can handle the public transportation approximately equally, and we seem to basically feel fine wherever we are without needing to stay all that busy. For me it’s been nice to share my experience with someone. It’s almost always been mine alone, with maybe a few people reading this blog. And, of course, there is the personal attachment and goodies which seems to be getting better all the time. It’s been a month and a half now and really doesn’t feel like it’s going to come to an end. We talk about that, and I think we are on about the same page.

That brings us to our plans. She has a few months at least before she needs to return to Korea or China to tend to her business concerns. Her Indian visa expires on January 11, and she wants to go to Nepal for a couple of weeks then go to Thailand and Laos. My passport expires March 17 and I cannot enter Thailand or Laos with such a short time remaining on it. So, I’m going to return to the US probably on January 10, just before she heads up to Nepal. I figure it will take about 6 weeks at the most to get a new passport. While I’m waiting on that, I’ll take care of taxes and my business and other stuff. Then, so far, the plan is for me to meet up with her wherever she is, maybe Thailand. This is a little scary for both of us.  While we are apart, we may redefine what seems now to be arguably sane, but we are both looking forward to it. It’s only been a month and a half, so we’re just bumbling forward and hoping for a stroke of luck.

We’re in Kerala until tonight, and taking the night train to Goa. We’ll lounge there for about 4 days. With only three and a half weeks left, we’re having to actually budget our time and have an itinerary if we are to see the things she wants to see. I’ve seen most of it, but I don’t mind because, as I said, it’s nice to be able to share the experience.

I’ll close with a picture of the back of an ambulance in Pondicherry. When you look at this, bear in mind that this is India and I would be shocked, SHOCKED, if an Indian ambulance company would ever stall the negotiating on ambulance fare in order to get another deal going.

Few foreign tourists visit Orissa. The few that do go to the coastal area near the capital, Bhubaneswar. The main haunts are Puri and Konark. Some people take trips to Chilka lake about 50 km away, to nearby villages to see handicrafts, or to tribal areas. Myung and I first went to Bhubaneswar, then based ourselves in Puri. We hung out here for about a week, doing not much, going to Konark, to a nearby crafts village and to Chilka.

Bhubaneswar is one of those places where you see some Indian pilgims and tourists, but few foreigners, therefore, it’s nice and friendly. The man thing a foreigner does is to walk around town and look at temples, which is what we did. The most popular deity here is Jaganath, who is easily the cutest little god I’ve seen, with his black face and red, ear to ear smile. I don’t have a picture, but you could search it. You’d never know that even without hands he slays demons by the millions and is the source of the word “juggernaut”. He is revered as a protector by millions in Orissa. Here are some temple photographs, as if you haven’t seen enough. They are cleaning one of them up nicely, doing the whole thing with toothbrushes.

This one is of a more ancient temple from around the 9th century, as I recall.

In the south, meals are frequently served on banana leaves. These disposable plates then become animal food. Nice system.

Many tribal people live in Orissa. Not surprisingly, then, Orissa is one of the poorest states. There is constant conflict between Hindu caste members and the “scheduled class”, as they are called. I was just reading in today’s paper about a demonstation by tribals up in Guhawati which resulted in a backlash by the dominant non-tribals which left five to twenty dead (Some will probably stay missing.) and hundreds injured yesterday. Maybe some of the parades we saw up there were demostations. I never quite know what is going on with those. All this stuff is going on around me and I find out later what it was. The day after we left Kolkata, there were riots right in the area we were staying.  In that case, some poor farmers successfully resisted a government plan to dislocate them and build a factory. The communist government of West Bengal sent some cadres out to kill a bunch of them and knock the snot out of hundreds more. The result of that has been a major national controversy. A curfew was imposed and the army was brought in to restore peace. The Gurkhas acted up again in Darjeeling the other day with a pitched gun battle witht the army. In Bhubaneswar this parade was going on. I’m pretty sure it was just a peaceful cultural display, but you never know. At least there hasn’t been any bad news in the last several days since I took these pictures.

Here are some more locals who were walking along in different groups.

Near Bhubaneswar are some rock cut caves. They aren’t much compared to Ellora and Ajanta, or even Elephanta Island in Mumbai, but some of them are a lot older, dating back to the first century BC.

Here in Puri is the main Jaganath temple. It like almost all the others in this area is closed to non-Hindus. I did wander in to the the temple above where they were doing the restoration, but was summarily booted out. The temples here aren’t that photogenic from the outside. The beach here isn’t anything special, so there are no pictures of that either. The brackish Chilka lake is most noted for having had deposited in it some dolphins during a severe cyclone in 1999. They still live there and we went to see them and walk around on one of the islands. I was unable to capture any of the dolphins “on film”, but here are some pics from that ride.

They raise oysters there. Here is a guy shucking them for pearls. He was asking 85 cents for a pearl, which I think is a rip. They are 50 cents sometimes elsewhere. See them in the plastic cup?

Near here is Konark, with it’s World Heritage Site temple complex. Jaded as I am, I want to say it’s a  poor man’s Khajuraho, with it’s most interesting sculpture being erotic. Generally it’s not as graphic or well preserved as Khajuraho, but I thought this one of three lepers making love was interesting. The human-snake mitif reoccurs a lot. The rest of the detail is better than most of what has been largely eroded away over the centuries.

Here are a couple more. Myung even consented to a few with her in them.

   Yesterday we went to Raghurajpur, near here, which is known for it’s crafts. I bought some stuff there and in Pipili which I’m sending to the US and should get there is a month or so. Here is a picture of some boys working on palm leaf art and some shots around town and on the way back to where the road is where you can catch the bus.

So that about brings you up to speed. Tonight Myung and I are taking the overnight train to Chennai and will contunue on by bus to Mamallapuram. You can go back to my previous entry about that for pictures and my impressions at that time. Just type it into the search box. Let’s see, that would have been last January or maybe early February, if you want to do it that way.

I hope you Americans are having a good holiday season. Talk to you later.

When I wrote last time, I had a little secret. I met a very nice Korean woman in Pelling, Sikkim, and had been traveling with her for about a week. Neither one of us wanted to go public at that point, so I kept it under my hat. Now we’re okay with it. She’s very camera shy and rarely lets me take a picture of her, but here’s one of her behind her sunglasses and hat. Her name is Myung.

After doing the last few days together in West Sikkim, we swung through Kolkata to get my glasses and went to the northeast states of Assam and Meghalaya. Again, these are different places than anywhere else in India. I’ll never get over how diverse India is. Just when you think you’ve seen it all…, as they say. They are fairly isolated, situated to the northeast and east of Bangladesh and connected to the rest of India by a narrow strip of territory in northeast Bengal. there are seven northeast states, of which three can be visited by foreigners without time-consuming and expensive permits. Assam and Meghalaya are two of them. Tripura is the third. Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur are next to the Chinese border, have sometimes active rebellions, and sometimes hostile tribal people, so access is controlled. We thought about going there, but decided not to go through the hassle. We were going to go to Tripura, but to get there from Meghalaya would entail an overnight 10 hour bus ride just to the first leg of the 20 hour trip. also, there was a severe cyclone just next door in Bangladesh which killed thousands. At the time, we didn’t know how bad it was going to be and we would have had to take this ride right into the teeth of it. The weather was foul enough where we were. So we only went to Meghalaya and Assam.

   Guhawati, the capital of Assam is nice enough. It’s a work-a-day city, not too big or dirty. There’s a village about 30 km from there, Sualkuchi, which is known for it’s golden colored silk. We went out there on our way back through and looked at “factory” there and bought a piece to make into a camisse for Myung.

   Up the main road from Guwahati is Kazinanga, a nature preserve with about 1700 one-horned rhinos, along with some tigers, elephants, boar, bison and other big mammals. UNlike looking for tigers in Ranthembore, there are plenty of rhinos to be seen. You can go out on an elephant and wade out where they wallow and/or go by jeep within several hundred meters. We did both. The elephant “safari” was well worth it. The guy in the back with the gun is in case one of those nearly blind rhinos gets perturbed and charges. Fortunately, they’ve never had to shoot one. The gunshot unpreturbs them.

Here’s a baby.

   After thaty we went to the 800+ sq. km Majuli Island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River. It was very peaceful out there. It’s gotr a paragraph in Lonely Planet, but it won’t be jaded any time soon. Below are pictures of a ferry like ours passing the other way, just a pretty picture of the water, and a couple of pictures of a nice looking woman on the ferry and her kid.Â

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Here is a lane in the village where we stayed, our guesthouse and a couple of idols set up for a puja going on there. That’s Paravati, wife of Siva, with the body of a cow. This explains a lot about India and Indian women, I think. Just kidding. The other one with the blue tongue and the nassty disposition is Gurga. She smotes countless evil beings and eats their hearts out.

The capital of Meghalaya is Shillong. It’s a small city by Indian standards and has kind of small town feel to it. Here is the State High Court building. How can you not like a place with a pink High Court building? Those stiffs with the starched shirts out front were probably prominent figures, even though their demeanors appeared quite informal.

The northeast states are, as Lonely Planet says, “the road less traveled”. There are few tourists here and no tourist ghettos. It’s so nice to not have to be part of the tourist scene. That really gets awful sometimes. Here, you can just wander around and mind your own business. About the nicest thing we did in Shillong is go to this nice park and wander around with all the nice couples.

Here’s another one of Myung, sitting on the grassy bank of the lake.

And finally, here is a picture of a waterfall we saw while on a bus tour of the area south of Shillong. That area is the rainiest place on Earth, with aver 650 inches of precipitation a year. And with the cyclone coming in to the southwest, it was quite rainy. There are other pictures, but none too good. Also, I just didn’t bother to get out and photograph vistas you couldn’t see through the weather.

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   We’re going to Babuneswar then Puri, Orissa, tomorrow. I don’t know much about Orissa. They say the coast is like Goa about 20 years ago. Orissa is famous for the arts and temples. I’ll let you know what I find out, of course. I wish I could write everything and show you all the pictures. Until then, be well, all of you.

    

   Hi again. I’m in Guwahati, the capital of Assam. It’s Diwali, but so far there aren’t any fireworks or firecrackers. It’s not going to be anything like Jaipur last year. Anyway, I’m just killing some time here before getting some dinner. Here are some more pictures from Sikkim.

   I’ve got some of working people. Here’s cutting wheat and it lying in rows ready for bundling.

This is how most farmers plow. Many, however, have to do it without animals.

When the guys get home, these women with have the fire and some tea and dinner going.

   Sikkim was actually a little empire in the 17th-18th centuries, though Tibet and China would have disputed this at the time. There is a place where three leading lamas got together and forged the agreement leqding to the unifying of their areas of influence. It’s in a lovely jungle setting now. You walk around and stuff like this is buried in the trees. It reminds one a little of Anghor Wat.

    The last two pics I’ve uploaded are of the Rumthang monastery where it is hoped locally that the Karmapa, the head of the Kargyu sect of Tibetan buddhism who I got a blessing from last year in Dharamsala, will come one day. It’s a long political story why he is not here. It is quite large, anyway. I think the only larger one is in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. That one is the second largest in the world, after the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet.

And here are some older novices and young monks playing cricket out behind the place.

   I just laid around today after getting here from Kolkata yesterday. I thought this semi-big city might be fun on Diwali. So far, I think it’s going to be pokey. There is a nice museum here and some nice views of the Brahmaputra River, but generally this isn’t much of a place. Tomorrow I think I’ll get out of here. There is a place famous for it’s golded silk. I may go there. And I’ll definitely go to one of the nature parks which has something like 1700 one-horned rhinos. I’m always up for seeing some wild animal in it’s natural setting. There are other picturesque areas around. I’d like to go to Tawang and some tribal areas, but I haven’t decided whether to go through the hassle, expense and two week wait to get the necessary permits. If I don’t do that, I’ll probably head out of here to somewhere in a couple of weeks.

   In the meantime, be well, all of you.

It’s been, what, almost a month since I wrote? Well, I didn’t have much choice. Blogging requires broadband. There is broadband in Gangtok, the capital, but electricity and connection are so spotty it was impossible to upload more than about four pictures during the whole four days I was there. Now I’m in Kolkata again after having picked up the new glasses I ordered last time I was here. This afternoon I’m headed back up to Assam which is the principle state among the northeast states. If I can write from there, I will, but after my experience in Sikkim, I have doubts.

I’ll let pictures do the talking again. In short, though, I went to Gangtok first and up north on a tour of Yumthang, then the area around Ravangla, then to Pelling and around, then to Namchi before returning to Kolkata. All these places are pretty close, as the crow flies. Roads are generally poor and the main way around is by jeep like this one I took from Geysing to Pelling. My crowd is out; this is the new crowd piling on.

Sikkim is in the north of India, wedged in between Nepal and Bhutan, so it’s Himalayan. The mountain range containing the third highest peak in the world, Kangchendzonga, is visible from throughout the south and west of the state. This is the view of part of that range from one of my guesthouse rooms.

Gangtok is not too photogenic, so I’ll skip posting pictures of there. The best thing I did was book a tour with three other tourists to an area about 120 km north of there, Yumthang. It’s up next to the Tibetan border, so you have to go with a tour and have a permit again, like in Ladakh. It’s just gorgeous.

Here is one of the two guesthouses we stayed in and the view from out front. It’s pretty foggy, I know.

There were sights along the way. One thing is that there are SO many waterfalls. You go to Yosemite and there are maybe six good ones. Here are dozens.

It has taken a long time to upload these, and I need to check out of my guesthouse in 45 minutes. So movin’ right along, near Ravangla is a small village called Ralong. there is a small monastery there where they are famous for creating butter and wax sculpture, meant to melt to demonstrate impermanence. Here s the place and a couple of pictures of monks making the figures and decorations.

I’m a little under the gun here, time wise. I’m not going to get this done right now, so I’m going to post what I have and hope to get back to it before leaving town.

As always, be well, all of you.

   Hi all. I decided to head back to northeast India rather than accompany Beatrice to the beach in Gujarat and on to Mumbai during her last week and a half in India. So here I am in Kolkata again after visiting a magnificant Jain temple 90 km north of Udaipur and taking the 1800+km, 40 hour train from Jodhpur to Kolkata.

   Udaipur is still a nice place to go. There are pictures on my blog entry about Udaipur last October when I was there before. It’s picturesque and the weather is relatively mild compared to the deserty regions of Rajastan. Here is the requisite shot of Lal ghat and the palace, one from down near the palace back toward where the first was taken, followed by another one at water level taken from one of the several nice restaurants which are nice to go to with someone you like.

That didn’t quite catch the ambience, but take my word for it, it is nice.

   I forgot to look up just how many pillars are in the 15th century Jain temple in Ranakpur, but it numbers in the many hundreds. No two of them are the same. I’m told one os not straight because they didn’t want to build a human thing as perfect as the gods. the game is to try to find the off-center one. I didn’t find it. It’s a forest.

I like any kind of Jain place. The restaurants, the guesthouses, the stores, the temples. They are all about cleanliness and purity. Cleanliness is something you really appreciate after about 10 minutes in India. Too bad they are less than one percent of the population.

   The bus ride to Jodhpur and the long ride to Kolkata were uneventful. I read a whole book, Barbara Kingsolver’s “Pigs in Heaven”. She’s a hoot. It was nice to read something full out American, with native slang and humor throughout. The foreigners reading this are probably asking, what’s a “hoot”? It doesn’t translate. See what I mean?

   My plan is to go up to Sikkim, that thumb of India in between Nepal and Bhutan, before the weather there gets too cold. I could have gone straight through Darjeeling in northern West Bengal (Kolkata is in the southern part of that state), but I need to replace a pair of glasses I lost on the train a week or so ago. Going around without an extra pair worries me. If I lose my spare pair, I’ll have to go around like Mr. Cool in my dark glasses all the time. This isn’t East Oakland and doing that at night is simply not done. Freakazoid in my attire around here would make me look even wierder than I am. My cover would be blown completely.

   I hope to leave Kolkata tomorrow, that’s if I can find a frame. The optician sent a man in a taxi to bring some more for me to look at. If I like it, I’m out of here if I can get a ticket. I need permits to go around in Sikkim, but I’ll get them in Darjeeling or the nearest broad guage railhead near Siliguri. Maybe I’ll bag Darjeeling for now and see it on my way back in 15 days or so when my glasses will arrive back in Kolkata from France. Travel, travel, travel. It’s what I do. Fortunately, a night in the train costs about the same as a guesthouse stay. I’m getting good at sleeping in trains. Rock me baby in the bosom of Abraham, kind of.

   Did Abraham have a bosom? That changes everything.

   I have a few pictures of me because Beatrice was with me to take them. Here I am getting knocked out by a kid in Khuri.

Here I am crashed out on the bed they made for us out on that camel camping “safari” into the desert.

And here’s proof I am indeed still a good eater.

   I’m just hanging out in Kolkatta. I took a few pictures of typical street scenes. Here is a laundry. I prefer these to the laundry services in the guesthouses, as they scrub the clothes on the sidewalk or slap them on rocks rather than just put them through a ridiculous India washing machine.

Here is the tea stall next to the laundry.  

Here is typical fine sidewalk dining next to the tea stall. 

In most of India you no longer see people powered rickshaws. Calcutta is quite poor and they are still a common mode of public transportation.

    That’s about it for now. I may be able to write from Sikkim if they have broadband.

   Be well, all of you.

Beatrice and I just came to Jaipur from Jaisalmer this morning and are waiting for a connection to Sawai Madhopur. That is the city nearest Ranthambore National Park where I went to see tigers last October. You can click on last October’s blog entry to see pictures. She hasn’t been there, and it’s kind of on the way to Udaipur then Diu, Gujarat. So that’s the plan. We should get in there about 7:30 tonight.

Jaisalmer is a pretty nice place, though it’s too bad that it has some of the worst tourist hassle in India. I’m pretty used to it, but they got on even my nerves eventually. There is, of course, a fort there. Unlike most of the Rajastani forts, it’s in full use as a tourist hotel, restaurant and shopping area.Â

 

As you can probably see, there is more new construction than remains of the old fort. At least they use sandsstone in the construction so it doesn’t look bad. Much of the construction down n the town is also of sandstone, so there exists a certain desert character that most people would find appealing. WE stayed in a guesthouse outside the fort because they have severe water management problems inside which are causing problems. We ate in there, but Lonely Planet doesn’t evevn talk about the attractions inside because they have done nothing to rectify the problems, even though the money has been collected. I think maybe the money has disappeared, as it is wont to do in India. Who knows? Anyway, it’s nice, different in that it’s in use, and unfortunate about the tourist hassle.

We didn’t do much in Jaisalmer, mostly walking around and having dinner in the fort, hanging out in a restaurant we liked called Little Italy which has good Italian food and espresso drinks, and lazing around in our rooms. It was hot, so the air conditioned bliss of Little Italy was nice. One day wewenttoa coupleof sites outside of Jaisalmer. One place wasan oasis with funeral cenotaphs around it. I think these sites are SO modern India. Note eternal, the old and the new of the oasis, the cenotaphs with wind generators all around.

We went on a little overnight camel safari from Khuri, a village 45 km from Jaisalmer. This is basically like going out to the backyard to sleep under the stars with your mom making you a nice campfire dinner. Beatrice and I opted to ride camels the 5 km or so out to where we slept. The adult and a young friend took us, made up a nice bed on the sand and cooked for us.

Here area few photos of the sites. First is me and my camel. From up there, it’s a downward angle to photograph the women walking along with their water pots on their heads.

Believe it or not, camels aren’t that hard to drive. At least these weren’t.

We went by a village where the water well is 300 meters deep. Here, we are giving the critters a drink.

Dunes? You want dunes?

How about a sunset?

It was somewhat cloudy, which made it be not too hot. Still, we went out in the late afternoon and came back in the morning. Midday would be a little intense out there.

So that’s the news for now from Lake Wobegon. I’ll probably write again before long. Here’s a last picture of a couple of kids. They are so cute sometimes, before hardship and sun bludgeon their faces and bodies. Be well, all of you. And count your blessings.

Hi again, y’all. I got to Manali in good shape and met up with Beatrice a couple of days later. It was supposed to be only one day later, but she had one of the worst bus ride stories I’ve ever heard. I may blog about that another time, but for now I’ll try to catch up on things. I’ve got a bunch of pics I’ve been uploading for some time, and it’s about time to send them.

The one above is of the river through Manali. Old Manali, where we stayed this time, is mostly up along the side to the right of this pucture. Vashisht, where I stayed last month, looks down on this area from way up and to the right, about a kilometer as the crow flies or 5-6 km by road.

Beatrice and I didn’t do much while we were in Manali. We looked around. She dealt with the police about her bus adventure. She shopped for clothes. I had some cute pictures of her looking at material, but I found out that if I rotate them on this computers viewing program, they get deleted from my memory card. Anyway, that’s about all we did except hang out and mosey around.

Here are some more pictures of Vashisht. The first is just a view of the skyline, such as it is, from the Rainbow Cafe I spent so much time in last month.

These two were taken during some kind of Hundu festival we happened to blunder into.

If you want to see more pictures of that area, you can go to my entries last month.

Beatrice and my relationship is not without some bumps, but I think we are getting along pretty well right now. We decided to continue travelling together. After several days in Manali, we went first to Shimla via bus, then to Jodhpur via two trains over a two day period to Jodhpur in Rajastan. The train from Shimla, down out of the mountains, was a narrow guage “toy train”. It was kind of cute.

So, we are in Jodhpur, the “blue city”. Here is a photo of the fort, which dominates the city, taken from our guesthouse, and one of the city taken from up at the fort.

As in many cities in many parts of India, there is an old town with narrow, “quaint” lanes. Some are wide enough for one small car at a time. Maybe a couple of rickshaws can pass. Sometimes only pedestrians can go. Here are some pictures of some sites. The first is just a random photo of Beatrice.

We are back in the land of elephants and camels.

Here is the view down the street where that animal was.

That day, we were walking along looking for things to look at. We’re both not much for trying to follow the guide book. We happened into one of the nicer, more interesting temples we’d seen. This one had obviously recently painted pictures representing Hindu beliefs regarding chakras. Most of the symbolism is way over my head. I can see that releasing ones kundalini energies is no child’s play.

I don’t know what prying the stork’s mouth apart is about.

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This has got to hurt.

   Seriously, the people in there were quite devout. There was a guy singing so joyusly I couldn’t bring myself to possibly interrupt his abandon. Here are a few shots I felt okay to take. The guy is the tall one in front with the white shirt. Note all the wall paintings.

   The next thing was we happened to actually find the main market on the other side of the fort. Markets are a big deal in most of the developing world, sometimes worthy of somewhat monumental architecture. Here is the gate to the main market at the base of the fort and the clock tower which serves as the centerpiece reference point for the city.

   Here’s Beatrice in the market.

 

Let’s see, I’ve got some other stuff. Here’s something you don’t see every day, a cow and a dog as good friends. This cow is scratching the dog under his chin and the dog is totally eating it up, blissed out with it’s eyes closed.

In the old section of town, many ornate facaes either from or reminiscent of the moghul period can be seen.

Yet another festival was under way.

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Notice how colorful the dress in in Rajastan. Even the female road crews are dressed brightly.

Here’s one of the detail of the sandstone carving of the fort’s facades.

We also went to a garden with some old funerary monuments. Again, go to my Rajastaan pictures from last October for many, many pictures of these monuments. Here are a couple of pictures of the monkeys there. I think the little one is very, very young. It was so cute snuggling and sucking away.

Finally, we went to look at what is billed as one of the finest hotels in the world. Here is the outside. Most of the inside is off limits to nonguests. I assure you, we will not be staying here anytime soon. I’d like to, just because it was built in the 20’s and 30’s and the inside is a moghul/art deco fusion. There was a video, which is how we know.Â

So, this entry has been all pictures and little dialogue. Maybe the next one will be more chatty. Oh, maybe I’ll wax eloquent. Yeah, right. We’re going out  into the desert of western Rajastaan on the overnight train tonight. We’ll be a few days in and around Jaisalmer. I’ll probably write from there, or shortly after.

Be well, all of you.

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I’ve rather enjoyed my 6 days here in Kolkata. I’d like it better than Mumbai if Mumbai wasn’t more international with western things to do. I’ve always thought Bengalis tended to be pretty nice, and my experience here, as brief as it’s been, bears that out. Other little things that I notice are that the traffic isn’t predatory toward pedestrians, there is less “Come into my shop”, and the rickshaw guys or whatever take “no” for an answer. There are more beggars, though. No, I didn’t go see any “City of God”. (Did you ever read that?) I’ve seen enough already. Yes, I did go to Mother Theresa’s Home for the Sick and Dying Destitute.

That was a really touching experience. I sort of expected, at least hoped, that it would be a good place. It seemed to be fine. Inside, there are two big rooms. One is for woman and one is for men. I’d say their capacity is about 50-60. it was totally clean and they had several people running around giving bedside care. The sisters seemed to be the ones providing skilled care. The beds were clean and not ancient. The patients all had on clean, or were clean until maybe 15 minutes ago, blue pajamas. They had some decent looking supplies. Best was all over the place were Biblical quotes and quotes from the pope and Mother Theresa encouraging right right attitude, right effort and a right mind to do the job with compassion. Obviously it has better funding than almost anything like it in India, but I’m glad they are getting it done. Maybe they could expand. Maybe they should. But then again, there are dozens of her homes like this all over the world. No pictures of the inside, for obvious reasons. Everything is pretty out there to see.

I sort of followed my usual pattern for visiting big cities. I got near the tourist ghetto. It didn’t look like I needed to be in it, which is good. I was close enough that I could walk 10 minutes to get my favorite western breakfast of meusli with fruit and curd. Then I made increasing distant ventures away from that nest, using Lonely Planet for ideas.  Here are a couple of street scenes. They could be anywhere is a big city in India.

Here’s the Howrah Bridge, which is the main way over the Houghly River. There are many ferries and a toll bridge farther down the river.

Public transportation is good. There are buses, a subway cslled the metro, intracity and intercity trains to the suburbs, and a trolley system. I am told they will be discontinuing the trolleys, though, because they get in the way of the ever increasing street traffic. Sound familiar? Most of the streetcars are pretty moth eaten, but here is a nice one.

Mostly I walked and took the metro. There are signs in there that say “no photography”, but sometimes my eyes glaze over at the blizzard of signs, even if they are in English. I took a couple of pictures and was detained by the police who made me show them all of the 180 pictures I have on this memory card and delete the train ones. Originally they wanted me to delete all my pictures, but I pleaded tourist stupidity. I really should have known because they have had several terrorist attacks on trains. I was going to say how excellent the metro system is. It is excellent, amazingly clean for India, fast, efficient and cheap, costing a dime to 15 cents to go the length of itwhich is maybe 10-15 km. But when i was taking it back from today’s wanderings, the undercarriage of the car behind me caught of fire. There was smoke all over the place in there and prople booked it outta there like they did at Candlestick when Loma Prieta hit just before that World Series game in 1989. I stuck around because it looked like we’d all be able to breathe for quite a while. In fact, it never got too bad. In fact, after about 10 minutes of guys working underneath, we departed again. I love India. That’d be news in America, and there would be all kinds of baloney about getting rolling again. I think people fear death, pain and disfigurement more than they need to.

There are some nice sites and areas in Kolkata. A big green called the Maidan flanks the east side of the river for about 3 km. There are many soccer and cricket fields, just green area, gardens and shrines. At the top is a big athletic stadium. Sheep and goats handle the lawnmowing. Y’know what? The ponies in the road in this picture make me realize that there are almost no homeless cows in the downtown area. That’s rare. They must round them up.

The nicest architectural thing here is the Victoria Memorial. Here are some pics.

Today I walked and walked before riding back on the metro. There were many buildings from the 19th century Victorian era when the Brits were riding high there. I went into a nice one called the Marble Palace, built by one of the raj toadies a hundred and something years ago. His decendents still live there and it has been closed to the public, sort of. For some backsheesh you can get the guards to give you a tour of the parts the family doesn’t use. Most of that old Indian royalty has fallen on hard times since Indira Gandhi cut off their stipend. My guess is that some money goes to the family and some to the guards, and that they just want top limit the crowds. The are all kinds of fine artwork inside, including a couple Reubens’. No photos allowed.  There are a lot of tribal people in West Bengal and the other eastern states. At least a couple of them were having some kind of a rally today and were all decked out and marching to their music.

That’s about it for me here in Kolkata. Beatrice and I decided to hook up again in Manali. She got back in one piece, more or less I gather, from her six additional weeks of trekking. I’m leaving by train tomorrow morning, should arrive in Delhi around noon on the day after tomorrow, and hope to get an overnight bus to Manali that night. I’ll write about that sometime, baby. Maybe we’ll lounge around Manali for a while, then go to Rajastan and/or Diu, a beach resorty area in Gujarat.

Be well, all of you.