India

China Town, Singapore.

Probably the largest contruction project I've ever seen. I counted over 90 cranes, and that soccer field in the foreground is actually floating. Singapore is the most modern, clean and efficient place I have ever seen. F-1 racing was setting up a race track through the city while I was there. I wish I had know about it before so I could have planned to be there for it.

My plane to India.

After the scariest landing I've ever had in a plane, I was greeted at the gate by heavily armed soldiers wearing sars masks and handing out these forms. After I made my way though the infared swine flu screening, the immigration agent didn't think it was my picture in my passport. When I finaly made my way out out of the airport, I was greeted by a giant mob and even more armed soldiers looking like they were ready for an attack. I was creeped out enough when I was swarmed by rickshaw and taxi drivers desperatly trying to take me to my hotel. I finally made it to the train but took the wrong one and got off in some station who knows where. People were sleeping in the dirty rundown station. Trains had stopped running for the night, I was stranded. I walked out of the station onto a dirt street with no lights. I had no idea where I was or where to start walking. After several minutes of calming myself down and trying think of the best thing to do I found this guy and his rickshaw around a corner.

I gave him the address for my hotel but he didn't know where it was. He took me anyway and he drove me around for the next half hour stopping and asking people if they knew where it was. We drove though dirty streets lined with crumbling sidwalks and decrepid buildings and people wandering or sleeping anywhere out of the rain. I was too tired to actully comprehend what I was seeing. I hadn't slept in two days, we found the hotel and despite the jackhammer out in the street under my window, I slept pretty well.

This is what I saw from my window in the morning.

My brain finally started to process what had happen the night before as I was getting ready to leave my room. I was scared to open the door even though my room wasn't any place I wanted to stay in for too long. I walked out of my hotel onto the street. The light of day showed what I had seen the night before, filth and crumbling buildings along cracked and broken streets full of smoking busses and trucks and motorcycles and rickshaws. The air was heavey and hot and smelled like nothing i've smelt before. I smelled it when I first stepped off the plane, and I've been smelling it ever since. A little girl no older than five ran to me begging for money and then another girl followed. A police officer yelled something at the girls and they ran off. I jumped in another rickshaw and went to the train station to take a train to central Chennai. On the train i started to feel dizzy and all of a sudden i was realizing what was happening around me. I was traveling through miles of slums. people on the train looked tired and sad, and stared at me. Its very hard to explain what i was feeling. many emotions came though me and i started to feel sick and scared. i was completely alone. I was overwhelmed by everything i could see and smell and feel. A mother and her three children boarded the train. the mother beat a pan with some sticks and the children did tricks and flips and danced to the noise. they looked miserable and hungry. i had to look away and i had the urge to cry and i felt nausous. When they had finished, one of the children, a girl, was poking my leg with one hand and holding out the other. I had my face burried in my arm holding onto the overhead railing with my eyes closed to keep from breaking down. I could have bought them all a huge meal and new cloths and would have cost me less than $20 but i just froze and tried to ignore and hide from it and i still feel horrible that i couldn't even aknowldge her. once i got off the train i just wandered in complete awe and disbelief. I walked down narrow streets piled with rotting vegtables and garbage and cows and goats and open store fronts crowed with ragged people buying and selling anything you could think of. We've all seen pictures of places like this, in school or in magazines or on tv. But you can't understand a fraction of the reality behind that until you are there in the middle of it, witnessing it with all your senses. Its very hard to comprehend even then.

Goats. Later that day walking over a bridge near the central train station. There were also people wandering around along the black, stinking river. They say spending one day in any major city in India is equivolent to smoking 10 to 20 cigarrettes, and thats just air polution.

For the rest of my first day in India, I hung out with this guy. His name is Vela. He drove me around in his rickshaw to all the sights in Chennai. He didn't speak much english but we chatted and drove around eating fresh peanuts and seeing the city. After dark, Vela took me to a bar to drink Indian beer and hang out with the locals before I had to board my overnight train out of Chennai. Chennai beach. The second longest beach in the world. Probably the second dirtiest beach as well. The beach was lined with fishing boats and fishing gear and people bathing in the disgusting looking water. The first thing i saw walking out on the beach was a man urinating right in from of me. i'd seen someone do it earlier and i've seen it countless times since. its totaly acceptable to go when you got to go here apparently.

Cultured

Overnight train to Trivandrum. I left Chennai feeling much better.

The Indian Coffe House in Trivandrum. The whole restaurant is a spiral going all the way up to the top.

You can buy these flower things to put on your car or on your goat or whatever, kind of like leis. They make them right there on the street and it smells so nice when you walk by.

Indian food.

A common sight.

Sitting on the roof of a slow moving ferry watching the sun go down over rice fields in the back waters of Kerala. Spent the day soaking in the sun and floating by people living their lives along the banks of the canals.

Climbing the mountains of southern India.

Munnar, home of the highest tea plantations in the world. "God's own country"

Old bike.

Looking down on Munnar.

A truck loaded with tea.

Far away from the dirty muddy streets and bustling cities and towns of India.

I walked up though the tea fields through mist and clouds at 1524m above sea level to have them break just as the sun was setting. It was incedible, this picture just doesn't even come close.

Riding an elephant.

Being a white redheaded american walking around among people of middle eastern descent, i get quite a few different reactions. some people stare, sometimes quite anrgily, some people will walk up to me and say hi and shake my hand. People have pulled out their camera phones and blatently put them in my face to take a picture. People will yell at me sometimes from across the street, but i don't know what they are yelling at me. Children will just stare and stare like they've never seen anything like it before. But most people just ingore me and go about their buisness. Sometimes young people will gather around me asking me questions and wanting to have their picture tacken with me, like in this picture. It's like I'm some kind of movie star here.

A wild elephant.

In a little hill top village.

More tea plantations.

Looking east from top station.

So i've been in India for a week. I feel like i'm learning things at an incredible rate. After the shock of the first day, i've started to notice the more subtle beautiful things here. Most people are actully very happy. Religion is hugely important here, there are temples or shines everywhere. And most people are very nice and helpfull, even though 90 percent of the time they are trying to get my money somehow. Everything is dirt cheap though. India can be a very hard place to be though, between trying to travel and finding my way around and seeing some horrible and sad things, I can feel it wearing me down.

Costs of day to day thing in USD:
city train fare - 8 cents
70 mile bus fare - $1.50
meal in a nice restaurant - $12
meal in a basic resturant - $1
1 litre of bottled water - 30 cents
16 hour train ride - $8
hotel room - $4 to $10