The House That Poo Built

Poo is formed into a variety of shapes. It is used for heating and cooking. My personal favorite were the ones drying on the side of the homes with handprints in the middle of each. Sort of a personal 'touch'.

neatly piled cooking/heating fuel

slapped on the side of their house to dry

the manure is shaped around a stick to dry

Ganges

We flew to Kolkata (better known to us as Calcutta) to get on a river boat from 7 days.
These are the towns/cities we are visiting along the way: Bandel, Kalna, Matiari, Khushbagh, Baganager, Mushidabad, Mayapur, and Chandenagor.  This was definitely the smart way to end the trip because a large part of the group had reached the "stomach bug" tipping point and it seemed that we were always missing a few people at meals and shore excursions. Our rooms on board were large and had very nice bathrooms which was convenient for some of the Delhi Belly group.

 The River was a daily part of the villagers life with fishing, bathing, washing of clothes, dishes and water buffalo being very common sites.

The water didn't seem to have a lot of garbage floating in it. Trash seemed to be laying on the shores. Paula and I did not see any dead bodies but Heather saw one but didn't have her camera at the time. However, she was able to get a photo of cremation as it floated by. They seemed to be fighting erosion with sandbags, bamboo 'jacks', and rocks. 

I guess riverboats and their accompanying tourists seemed to be a novelty to the locals because they spent a lot of time waving and yelling 'tata' to us.

Indian Trip Adventures

Broken down bus- our 52 member group has been divided into 2- an orange group and a white group. We were on the orange bus. After a rest stop our fourth gear stopped working and unlike any American bus driver, ours actually opened up the transmition compartment and started working on it. After 3 more starts and fails, we finally pulled off the road and loaded all our luggage and passengers into the white bus. Unfortunately 52 people will not fit into a 45 passenger bus so some of us were sitting on stairs, on the floor, or standing.  We heard a couple of complaints in that they were sleeping, one, who was sitting in a seat, asked Paula to move off of her floor space so she could stretch her foot. I was sitting on a side ledge by the first seat - there was room for another person to sit on the other side's front seat but the people refused to put their bags up so that another person could sit down.  We had definitely walked into enemy territory. (After riding in the front for the next hour, I realized we had had the better driver of the two). Another bus was called into action right outside of Delhi so "us intruders" left.  Paula made good use of her time while she was on the floor - she fired up her India hotspot and pulled up her spreadsheet and emailed in her payroll time sheet. It really is a "workcation" for her. 

After we got onto the boat, Munish gave all the 'standing' people free massages at the ship's spa.  Seemed like a fair trade to me ......!

Air quality gave Paula a sinus infection and a couple of days later I followed suit. After yesterday's long travel day, we are finally on the small boat and in a beautiful room. I am taking the morning off to give my body a chance to heal while Paula is being the good tourist and going to the Kolkata tour. I will read her notes. http://pgalland.blogspot.com She is way better at including the history and fact stuff. 

Part 3 - Taj Mahal

Wow! Not sure what else I can say. Even being as hazy as it was in the morning it was still so impressive. And it got better as the sun burned off the haze. So massive and so much detail.

A family wanted to take a photo with some blonds. The grandma kept touching my face.

We were sitting on the same bench that Princess Diana sat.

Part 2 India 2016

We decided that we would grab the front seat for this leg of the trip. So we got some good photo opportunities.  The first part of the trip was 4 lane divided highway with just a few stray cows making the ride exciting. The second part was a two lane, bumpy ride going thru small towns. Lots of passing and lots of horns. As we were leaving Jaipur we managed to capture some of the common street scenes.

This tree outside the old city walls is filled with dead kites. Most of the trees have these toys, but it was hard to photograph them from a speeding bus. 

We will have to change our perception when we think of the kids that ride the "short bus" . I couldn't catch a full one with the uniformed children. Public School is free including uniforms, books and lunch and even including a salary of a rupee a day to attend. Private school is about a 100 dollars a month.

You are ENCOURAGED to honk your horn when passing. Driving is a very noisy business. The "Use Dipper at Night", below the BLOW HORN, means to use your dim lights. They also have a condom with the trade name of "Dipper".  TATA is the name of one of the car companies. You can buy a 4 door small family TATA car for $ 2000. Our guide said it was as powerful as 2 motorbikes.

Very colorful painted trucks. I am assuming all the items hanging off the front are good luck charms, which are definitely necessary. We have only seen one overturned truck, a dead dog, and one dead cow, which is amazing with all the cacophony of sounds, vehicles and people. I saw no road rage but the people are aggressive as well as defensive drivers. Strange combo but it works. There are lots of traffic circles and not many lights.   And all this while driving on the wrong side of the road.

Ranthambore National Park Drive

We climbed into a big open vehicle with 15 other people. It was very cold so we had many layers on. 

We spent the first hour and a half driving around and stopping to talk to the other guides and groups to see if any tigers had been spotted. Our guide told us quite a few times how rare it was to see a tiger.  Then miraculously (suspiciously) we started speeding to a spot where a bunch of other jeeps and vehicles were stopped. 

It was a large male who was stalking a deer. He totally ignored all the jeep maneuvering and people talking. 

We stopped for a photo op at the park's most photographed spots. Here is my version ....

We should have been packing but we decided to take a short spin around the resort complex on a camel cart. Not .... We ended up on a 45 minute ride thru town and traffic. Interesting and exciting with all the traffic and horns. Paula had a little girl hop on with us and pat her leg for money.

Last game ride was an extra long one with very little bang for the buck. We spotted a lot of spotted deer, monkeys, boars, and peacocks. The only new animal we saw was a blue buck. No tiger spotted but we did see a leopard??? (Thru binoculars we really did see it moving and turning its head but they could have had a robot up there for all we know) 

On our way to Agra

 You obviously can't get there from here. We had to put our bags out last night at 9pm and hoped that we remembered everything we needed to get dressed the exit day. ( we did ) The bags went by bus the slow way ( 7-10 hrs ) to Agra but we are taking a 3 hr train ride. The Indian rail system is the biggest government employer in the county. We will meet up with our bags and bus in ......for the rest of the ride. 

Agra

The Agra Fort visit on our first day was sort of a teaser for the Taj Mahal. This is where the Shaw lived who had the Taj Mahal tomb built for his wife. She died giving birth to her 14 th child. It was a very hazy afternoon so,we could barely see the tomb from across the fields and river.

The third son (who killed off his two older brothers) decided that it was bad form for his father to spend so much money on the Taj Mahal for his wife (but not his mother), that he imprisioned him in the fort till he died. This was his balcony that had a view (on a clear day) of the Tomb.