Here is me after being made up by some Indian friends. The dot on my head is a bindi, and for some reason it is unbelievably attractive to Indian men. People couldn't stop talking about how good it looked, and I was told that if I could just dye my hair darker I would almost look Indian. I'll take that as a compliment.
One of the things I have noticed a lot here is that people will often avoid cutting down trees by building around them. I've seen dozens of trees going through a house, but this is the only example I've seen of a road being built around a tree. It seems a little dangerous to me considering how crazy the driving here is already, but no one here seemed to think a thing about it.
I think the construction here has probably not changed for the last hundred years or more. You never see any modern equipment, it is just wooden scaffolding, pulleys, and people climbing all over the place with no safety precautions. Here is a woman carrying a bowl of rocks to the workers. I don't envy the worker women, but I do have to be impressed with the strength of their necks!
This is the type of place most of the construction workers will live. It is rather shocking to see so much of this type of poverty living in the midst of everything else, but Indians are proud of the fact that their poorest live next door to their richest. The saddest thing to see is the small children living in these conditions...
On a happier note, I went with the Director of Global Operations for our company to the store where our COO buys all of his rugs. This rug is handmade of silk by a family in Kashmir. It took about 5 years to make it, and I was told in the US it would sell for over $100,000. It is sold here for the bargain price of $20,000. The picture doesn't even begin to capture how gorgeous it was, and the colors looked completely different from every angle. It felt amazing too, I was able to walk on it in my bare feet. Someday I'll win the lottery and come back and buy it.
I went to a temple with my friend Rohit and his wife. This is the outside. All of the detail is hand carved, and it was amazing. There are temples all over the place here, but this is one of the biggest I've seen.
This picture was taken just inside the temple. This is as far as I was allowed to take pictures, but I did go through the whole thing. I got a red dot on my head, and then got blessed by a priest who gave me a banana (probably to pay me back for the one I gave to the elephant at the other temple I visited a few weeks ago.) Afterwards another monk gave me some sort of orange sweet slimy stuff that is supposed to be a good treat to eat after getting your karma cleansed. I don't know how clean my karma got, but I did enjoy the treat.
We were at the temple right as the sun was setting, so on the way out I got this picture as the lights came on and the sky was turning pink. This is the same tower in the picture above. It was a very peaceful and beautiful place.
At long last, here is the elephant I fed! This was at a different temple, the night before a holiday. Notice he has on a big gold necklace. I have noticed that when it comes to Hindu gods bling is very important. This was the only picture I took of the elephant, because the flash did seem to startle him a bit. I didn't really want to be on CNN with another story about a elephants gone wild...
Now for the story so many of you have been waiting for... the DRUNK WILD MONKEYS!!!! When I went to visit my friend Ravi, he pointed out that his neighbor had a little side business going by putting pots at the top of his coconut tree. I don't understand the physics of it, but somehow it collects some sort of sap that ferments and creates a liquor. He climbs the tree to collect it every day... So while I was there a couple monkeys made their way up the tree. The man and his family stood under the tree throwing coconuts up at the monkeys to get them out of the tree, but they just threw things back at them. Soon, the man decided to climb the tree to try to scare the monkeys away. This just made the monkeys jump to the next tree where they found the pot the man was trying to protect. After a few dips in the pot, the monkeys were jumping around even more and starting to yell and go crazy. At this point, we were all standing on the roof of Ravi's house watching... But then the monkeys jumped on to the tree right next to the house, and everyone frantically ran inside. Apparently they were close to jumping onto the roof with us, and drunk wild monkeys are not something you really want to mess with. Thus endeth the story of the drunk wild monkeys... but lest you think I am making this up, here is the photographic evidence...
This is how the man climbs the tree. Honestly, this just impressed the hell out of me. He obviously had no harness or anything... Just a strap and his bare feet.
Here is one monkey drinking from the pot. You can tell he is enjoying it I think....
Here is another monkey making his way over to find out what all the fuss is about... They really are cute aren't they? It would be fun to live where you could at any moment happen to see a monkey out the window... The only place that could happen in the US is at Michael Jackson's house or a zoo... not that there is much difference...
So I hope this handful of pictures was worth the wait. It is so hard to really capture this country in pictures, it is more about sounds and smells and experiences...
