Week 46

23 June

This unique plant in the Delhi Airport caught my eye, so I forgot to pay attention to what I did with our boarding passes after clearing security. I must have dropped them while taking the picture—Stephen’s pass was turned in promptly, but it took a while longer for me to get mine.

24 June

We hike a very steep road up into McLeod Ganj (said McCloud Gaunj) when we want to shop or use the Internet or Wi-Fi. We’re still learning where things are. The concrete roads sometimes have quite a dropoff to the side.

25 June

This picture does not fairly portray our bus experience from Dharamsala to McLeod Ganj (it makes the ride look much too ordinary and pleasant). We were packed in like sardines, dripping salty sweat from our faces, and holding tightly onto a bar so as not to sway into our closest neighbors on the curves.

26 June

This lovely Buddhist Tibetan monk, Geshe Yonten, decided to bring several children from his impoverished area in northwestern India to a monastery in Manali to be educated. The documentary we viewed on the white sheet, Journey from Zanskar, portrays the courage of the parents in sending their children away for 10 to 15 years with no hopes of seeing them in that time (some children were as young as four); the treacherous journey over mountain passes (first by foot and then by bus); and the eagerness of the children to progress beyond their parents’ illiteracy.

27 June

Here I am with my laptop in Café Budan to take advantage of wi-fi capabilities. The price was choco-chip cookies (more like hardened biscuits with chunks of chocolate) and bottled water.

28 June

This teamwork really needs to be seen to be understood. Two men were moving sand from the middle of the road to improve the passage. The worker with his back to us wielded a shovel that had a rope tied to the base of the handle. The other worker grasped the other end of the rope, and with a swinging motion in tandem, they would scoop up the sand and toss it onto another part of the pile. They worked rhythmically and quickly.

29 June

One of the main reasons we are in India is to visit panchayatana temples (see 19 January). Here we are at the Surya temple in Osian, Rajasthan (on a hot, dry day). The central temple is surrounded by four smaller shrines, two if which are visible in this picture. Intriguing features of the temples are the presence of running water nearby (in earlier centuries), the temple being built on a raised platform, the movement of ascension to the central shrine, and in another nearby temple, bright-colored threads and ribbons tied to a fence as petitions for bearing children or receiving some other blessing.