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Published: March 13th 2011
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Hey guys, I know it's been a while since I've written. Sorry about that. I took a short two week vacation from my trip (to go home and pay taxes) at the end of February, and it's taking me a while to get back into the writing mood. Since I'm slow to come up with a few of my own ideas, I thought I'd used Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as inspiration and just share a short story and a lot of pictures from today.
At the moment I'm in the city of Ahmedabad / Ahmadabad / Ahmdavad (just depends on who you ask). I came in on an overnight train (a story for another time), so I was a bit tired and just figured I'd make it a lazy day of visiting a few small museums. Well, on my way walking between two of the museums, I came to a fork in the road. The main road branched right, and I knew how to follow it to get where I was going. But I was pretty sure the small road that branched to the left would get me there faster on foot. So I decided to take the
road that is not taken, and withing 50 feet I was mobbed by maybe 10 groups of kids, adults, families, friends, etc. that all wanted me to take pictures of them. I got dragged into houses to take pictures of wives and into backyards to photograph goats. All in all, a shortcut that I thought would take 5 minutes turned into a 90 minute tour and photo shoot of maybe a 1000ft stretch of road, and I'm pretty sure I shook hands with at least half the people in the neighborhood. Now, what I find funniest about all of the accompanying pictures is that I didn't ask to take a single one of them! Everyone of these pictures was asked for.
So, needless to say, India has gotten the second leg of my trip to an amazing start. It's not as overwhelming as I was expecting, but it is definitely providing a lot of surprises - like how many people are excited to see a white foreigner. I was definitely not expecting that! Oh, and I've also been surprised by the mischief that animals here can get up to. I expected to see cows wandering the streets (which I
have seen), but it's the goats that have really caught me off guard. I've seen them sleeping / grazing all over the roads and on traffic islands, and this has been in the middle of big towns. Tonight I even saw a small goat sleeping on a motorcycle (see my last photo), and I never could have even imagined that before coming here. Oh, and I saw two elephants painted up like hippies at Woodstock walking down the street in the middle of rush hour traffic. I think I've decided that India's the place to come when you want to expand your definition of what's "possible / imaginable."
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The $ynchronizer
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Photos of people! Now, THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!! The GSW game this Wednesday against Dallas is going to be televised in India. Check it out if you find the time. http://www.nba.com/warriors/tickets/gsw_bollywood_night.html