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Published: November 27th 2006
Indian Schoolgirls
Every time I tried to take pictures of schoolgirls, they would initially pose and then turn their heads or cover their mouths and giggle. I almost got both of these face on!You may have seen India's recent tourist campaign on television or in magazines -- Incredible !ndia. Indeed it is. We've only had just a taste of this diverse country -- the northern cities of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur -- but we will have memories to last a lifetime. We'll give you a bit of commentary and our impressions, but mainly, we'd like to let our photos tell the story of the past two weeks.
We started by touring both Old Delhi and New Delhi. Delhi's population is 14 million people and there are 5 million cars. Five million cars and who knows how many motorbikes that beep their horns nonstop from 6:00 a.m. till after midnight. Our guide told us it is easy to drive in Delhi. Why? Because there are no rules!
After Delhi, we drove. While touring India, you don't fly from site to site -- you drive, and the roads and traffic are so bad that a 125 km trip takes 5 hours. We had a great driver for 6 days -- Kulvir -- and were in the car for over 20 hours total. We drove through many miles of countryside, especially in the state of Rajasthan and
Taj Mahal
Griffin took this picture at about 8:30 in the morning after the fog had lifted. saw camel carts, cow dung huts, tuk tuks built to hold 4 people with 16-20 people in them, villagers taking their morning showers at the common water pump, uniformed children walking or bicycling to and from school, and dozens of women in their beautifully colored saris working in the fields and walking along the roads with huge loads carried on their heads. These images and those in the villages of cows, water buffaloes, camels, goats, pigs and masses of people will never leave us.
In Agra we visited the famous Taj Mahal built by the 5th Mughal King, Shah Jahan. We weren't disappointed by this magnificent mausoleum -- the pictures we'll post here can hardly do it justice. In Jaipur we visited an observatory built in the 18th century that still works today and took an elephant ride up to the Amber Palace, the former capital of the Rajput kingdom and a popular location for movies set in India. If Indochina was the "temple tour," then India was the "fort tour." We visited many forts or palaces that were built by the ruling shahs (kings) and the local maharajas in the states.
Our favorite stop in India was the Ranthambhore
Camel Herd
After I took this photo along the road, the camel herder wanted me to pay him for the picture. National Park. This park is home to 26 bengal tigers -- not one of which showed his or her face to us on the two tiger safaris we took! No worries though; we saw lots of deer and birds and were kept entertained by dozens of monkeys. And the jeep rides were akin to those crazy, bumpy rides at Disney World. It was so peaceful in Ranthambhore, even in the village, and we needed that break after the chaos of the Indian cities we had been in.
We leave India with very mixed emotions. The sites, the smells, the culture, the sheer number of people -- it's pretty overwhelming. Ted and I weren't bothered by being gawked at by the people we saw along the way, but it wasn't easy for Griffin -- not surprising as he is only 14. We were all bothered by the poverty, the begging and the non-stop hawking. And yet we were awed by the beauty of the sites and the faces of the people, especially the children who smiled, waved at us and took every opportunity to say "Hello!"
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Carla Denton Fay
non-member comment
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family! What an amazing adventure. Thanks for sharing your pictures and narrative.