Blogs from India, Asia - page 1975

Hi, all, I am writing this from the most amazing cyber cafe. It is gorgeous, air conditioned and very high tech. I haven't seen anything like it in India -- and it's right near my hotel here in Chennai, so I am very happy. I am now a proud member of Reliance Web World and I can surf to my heart's content in any Web World branch in India. I think this place will be a quiet, cool "safe haven," away from the hustle, bustle, noise and dirt of Chennai. The washrooms are clean and they have a great little cafe that delivers snacks and masala chai right to your computer station. Thanks for all your emails and comments on my blog. I really appreciate it. I am so glad I decided to do this travel ... read more

Well, here are some of the pictures from my travels in India so far, eventually I'll add more of them and write up specific entries, but I just wanted to get a few online to begin with. Many of my friends and family have been asking for pictures, and I sent out a few that a friend I was travelling with had sent me, since they were already on the computer, but as it takes a while to upload them here, (and I dislike spending time on the computer) the entries may be few and far between - we'll see. As a basic introduction, I came to India in the beginning of November and went to Rajpur, just outside Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal, where the first few pictures of the mountains are from. While I was there, ... read more

Hi All! They shipped us off to a small Rotary Club in a small town about two hours outside of Pondy today. The roads were miserable and we seemed to have many near misses...I'm tired of coming within inches of having head-on collisions...sometimes I'm numb and sometimes I scream....mostly I just don't watch the road anymore...except when Mike or Ryan whisper "holy !" I keep telling them to stop that cuz I just don't want to know...if it is our time, it is our time. However, we also have a great and gifted driver (who has now been with us every day for almost five weeks)...we've been traveling around the country in a van. He has become a friend and we bring him in to eat with us and ask for beds for him to sleep ... read more

After the elephant ride (read earlier blog first), we headed to a recycled paper factory. It was so impressive. They take the scraps from trimming cotton t-shirts, underwear, etc. and turn them into beautiful paper products. We toured the plant and saw the whole process (some by machine, but mostly manual, as most things are in India due to the huge number of workers and expense of machinery). The final products are fabulous...as beautiful as our most expensive wrapping papers, note cards, book marks, etc (afterall, they import to us), except they were so inexpensive...I always want to buy more of things like this, but my suitcases are already bulging at the seams...I think that I'm going to have to buy a new suitcase in order to get everything home. (At every rotary meeting and most ... read more

I dropped by Eden Gardens this morning, Calcutta's famous cricket ground, but was unable to get in. It looks more like a football stadium from the outside, and can apparently hold more than 90,000 fans. I than had an argument at the Post Office when trying to post a postcard, as the man at the Enquiries desk was trying to tell me that it was too big for the Rs 8 postage and should be Rs 15. I told him that I had already sent many postcards of exactly the same size for Rs 8 and they had arrived safely, but he was adamant. The GPO supposedly hides the site of the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta, though I couldn't see anything indicating that. I followed this up with some bureaucratic nonsense at the rail reservation ... read more