More thoughts on India

The Lonely Planet books says that the poverty in India is "confronting" and the newspaper today talked about the paradoxes in India.    Well, the poverty is confronting and overwhelming to us westerners.  Along with the poverty come the paradoxes.   The Mercedes driving down the street next to a camel, or occasionally an elephant.  Always a tuc-tuc or bicycle.    Modern air conditioned tourist  buses next to the old, un-air conditioned  and packed buses the locals ride on.   A toll road that just stops and detours to an old bumpy road, then back to a pretty good road.     Locals walking across the traffic on the toll road to get to the bus stop.   On and on I could go about what we saw while riding in our air conditioned vehicle with our wonderful driver, Arjun.   

Right next to our hotel in Jaipur, a city with 3 million residents, were old little shops and down the street next totherailroad tracks were rows and rows of tiny slum houses.    People live in pretty awful conditions.   In some of the farm fields, we saw makeshift tents that were homes.

But, these poor people are always dressed pretty nicely and look clean.   The women especially wear beautiful saris and seem to take pride in their  appearance.   They wear their saris while working in the fields, carry piles of wheat or branches or grain on their heads, while often holding the hand of one of their  children.  You often see some riding onthe ack of a scooter holding a small child.  This is in the wild Indian traffic.   They always look serene!

I have tried to get pictures of the various modes of communication and I will add some of those pictures here.

Off to Hong Kong for a one day stop then to Sydney.