Greetings from the Ganges

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Namaste!

I finally got my photos developed, printed, re-scanned, and posted. When I told the developer that I had Black and White film he looked at me as if I was from Mars (bobbing his head left and right, obviously). So this is the first set, with Delhi, new ones are coming from where I am now, in the bosom of mother Ganga, which flows down the Hymalaya and is incredibly strong, large and coooold. Except for the garbage, this is no Delhi. Oh, yes, and except for the Vikram, three wheeled collective taxis which fit 10-15 people at a time with their daring drivers and mechanics. The other day, I took one to go uphill for the third time to ask if my clothes were found by the laundry lady (apparently she lost part in the Ganga my underwear and a tshirt), and smoke started coming inside the cabin. Luckily, it was the morning cone of dhoop burning, as a propice to the day's business (it was not propice to my laundry). Today, going to town to develop my photos, the driver was quite upset as I was the only client, so once another vikram, full of people overtook it along the road with a quite elegant manoeuvre (that is, honking as crazy while passing on the other lane where on the opposite direction there were coming a truck, a cow, a beggar, three children playing, a chai stand, a policeman, and three orange priests doing a pooja in the small temple in the middle of the road), he snapped and started chasing the usurper. At the next stop he simply aimed and bumped on the other Vikram and accosted it to stare the other driver in the eye.....Shanti shanti!

For the rest, the password here is "peaceful". After a few days one integrates the cows bulls dogs monkeys (of two types!) and asses in the middle of the road (that is donkeys), together with the sadhus, sannyasis, the long cues of women and children at 7 o clock in the morning in front of the Ashrams' hospitals, the imaginative handicaps and mutilations of the beggars on the bdirges (after a few days they stopped asking me for money and they just say hello recognizing me as part of their view), chai stands, fruit juice stands, honking from cars trucks buses bycicles motorcycles vespas vikrams while the n-th sadhu sleeps laying down on the side of the road etc etc etc. I mean, you either integrate it or go nuts -- praise the chai stand and the occasional bath in the Gange (I mean, if you look the other side of the cataract of junk which is coming down hill directly into the Holy River).

Oooooom!

Small notes for the scientifically inclined. Delhi has a homicide rate of 2.9 per 100000 people (Calcutta 0.3). Washington DC has 29.1 (it was 80.3 in 1991).

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Photos

Cozy condo right on Gange banks!
....mother Ganga is screaming!!!

Riverside selling
.....looking for clients......

Crossing over
...ed ecco verso noi venir per nave...