This is in the "Adventure" category because it's the first time I'd ridden on a train in India! Well, supposedly I'd been on one before, but it was too long ago for me to remember. It was nice. Fun, comfortable, and reasonably affordable. I just loved standing in the doorway and watching the platforms whizz by.
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I love this picture because it is of the "juice-waala." I enjoyed fresh juice every day that I could. I wish we had that here!
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Is this great, or what! I love this sign because it is in Amritsar, Punjab, which, by the standards of any large Indian city, is relatively small. However, it has one of the highest percentages of people who have gone abroad, so it's funny when I step into the town of Amritsar and see this sign which clearly most people there can relate to! Long live the NRI, I guess...
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My Dad and I are in Punjab here, not far from Amritsar, where we stopped at "Pingalwara" which is a center for disabled and mentally challenged children. We stopped to see the facilities and this was one of my experiences on my trip which left me with a warm feeling. It wasn't depressing or under-funded as I expected. Instead, it was full of love and the facility and the caretakers blew me away. What can I say? I was truly awed at the wonderful work they are doing to better the lives of children who would otherwise be homeless...or worse.
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This is another shot of Pingalwara and perhaps in the distance you can see the tall buildings that look like University Buildings. Those are part of this new complex they just built to house the hundreds of children who live on the premises. There must have been 8 or 9 such buildings, and again, I just don't have the words to describe the love that we saw there.
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this is a "Tempo"!! HA! What is this?! It's also called a "phhund" or yellow-jacket. I guess it sort of looks like that but it also looks like some combination of a police jeep that carries inmates and an auto-rikshaw. I don't know why, but it looked hilarious to me. Maybe next time I'll get to ride in one of them (hopefully not as an inmate!)
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Adventure #47: At the train station dashing to catch our train! The train was leaving at 4:00, and we got to the platform at 3:57 thanks to the coolie who carried our stuff on his head, just like in the movies. See the green suitcase and the blue one in front of my dad's balding head? Yup, that was our guy who was pushing through crowds ahead of us. What a living, eh?
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A shot from the platform. Who are those people? They look like refugees? Not sure, but a New Delhi platform sure provides some interesting characters from all walks of life.
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This is a scene from Vadodra on Christmas Day. How funny is this - an Indian Santa! Standing next to an inflatable copyright-infinged Donald Duck! What is Donald doing there? And the indian Santa is emaciated...how fitting?
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In Vadodra, my cousin and I went out on the town on Christmas day and saw these families thronging the malls. It felt like a million people and I couldn't get enough of the excitement. Especially given that none of them, from what I could tell were exactly celebrating Christ's birth (they're not Christian!)
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OK, exciting moment extraordinaire: Getting to eat Panni Puri in India. It's not that I'd been craving them and needed to have them, it's just that they're everywhere on the roadside but I couldn't eat them because they might make me sick because of the water.
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So when my cousin told me about this sterile place, I made it my goal to go because so far the roadside foods had been the forbidden fruit, always beckoning to me from their good-smelling stands being served up by toothless dingy cart owners. Ah, at last.
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This is Jaipur - they really do have these elephants all dressed up! They look so beautiful and majestic. Elephants almost make me cry. Perhaps I was an elephant in a past life or something because we share a special affinity. Can't you tell how she's smiling for me? :D
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This is Jaipur as well - the funny thing here was that I wanted to take a photo of the food sellers on the ground selling fresh vegetables. I casually asked the little boy if that would be OK and he smartly replied with "OK, but it'll cost you"! UF! His gall! So we retorted that really, he should be paying us since we were the ones with the camera. That's why everyone's smiling in the picture. That clever little 11 year old...
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Here, we were at this beautiful arts fair and I was...well, I don't really know what I was doing! Molding metal, I guess? It is such an old toolmaking form that I'm sad to say that it's foreign to my Western machines-rule-the-world mind. Still, it was fun!
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Still at the festival dancing. Look at the guy with sunglasses!
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This is my cousin who works at Safe Blood in New Delhi. I went to his office and learned about Safe Blood and all the wonderful things they arae doing to increase blood donations and to help underpriviledged nurses get education in some of the best hospitals in India. This was another organization which left me with warm-fuzzies while I was in India.
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Look at all that fruit!! I am cheesing away because I can smell the ripe oranges from so many feet away and I can't wait to dig into it. And the 1st world actually thinks they have a leg up on the 3rd world...let's just say Americans don't know anything about good fruit till they've been to a place like India!
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