End of 2 Months in India

Today is the end of my two month stay in India. I enjoyed my time here and really settled down into normal life. I took my last day to take some pictures of my frequent every day sights and activities starting with where I stay.

Sterling Residency aka “Sterling Guesht Housh” as spoken by all the India taxi drivers. The building was three stories high with 14 rooms. The people that works there are great. On my next return I will take some portraits photos of these guys to display here. There “the guard” who hangs out 8 hours a day at the gate. He must have the most boring job in the world but hey it could be worse.

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I like going to this local market. The kid who works there doesn’t seem to like his job or else he just has a default unhappy look.
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The market is usually busy. It is locally owned and sells grains, some chips, eggs, junk food, beverages and a whole bunch else of indian stuff I don’t know about. 🙂
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These are some local kids. The big one looks like the boss. Kids all run around barefoot here. The area is so dusty that you can just see the dust on every kids cloths, faces and skin.
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We (Chad, Dan, me) take a riskshaw ride in the morning to the office. Every morning there is a different guy whom we pull aside from the street. We always go through the same ritual was asking how much and then haggling our way down the to same price: 30 rupees. On days where the drivers are persistent it just means a longer ride…

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This old guy is homeless and beggaing for money. The lines and hardship of the years show so plainly on his face and cloths. It’s really sad to see people living in such poverty here. No one really seems to see or pay attention to them.

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Ahh, the Sapient Office….enough said.

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It took me a month to get it right but the guys at Coffee Day have learned to make a black iced coffee. The coffee is pretty average and you can’t really get a black coffee. These drinks I get are all essentially cafe americano with water and ice… In either case, it’s good and the guys are really nice to remember my order.

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The coffee guys below: on the right is the store manager. The dude with the crazy eyes is the one who has to make everything and do all the hard work.

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Deepak and Chad are both leads on my project. These guy work really hard and are really great to hang out with as well.
At the end of the day, I said farewell to Deepak and Chad and left for the airport.

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The Delhi airport is a mess and there is stupid paperwork for no reason. I almost didn’t make it into the station but things worked out and I got home ok.

Haggling with Gujarati Women

One our tour of Delhi, we passed by a Gujarati market. Ashley was really interested in their cloths and jewelery. The gujarati colors seem to tend towards dark orange and yellows. The women there haggled hard and ash and I were put to the test. After each purchase Rampal would evaluate our buying price and tell us whether we got ripped off or not. LOL, it was fun.

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Ashley’s First Day: Taj Mahal

Ashley arrived in Delhi late Friday night. I was so excited to see her after such a long time. The weather was hot and I was tired from a long hard week. The rush of being with Ash in India for the next 9 days really kept me pumped as the Cab driver pulled into Gandhi International Airport. There are always so many people lined up waiting for visitors. The majority of people waiting there are private taxi drivers. Next time I go back I will be more prepared and get a picture of this very overwehlming sight.

The next day after Ashley’s arrival was a drive to Agora to see The Taj Mahal. It was really impressive as I imagined. Even the picture I took don’t look real. The day was really hot as everyday at this time of season. Rampal our driver took us there.

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The entrance way to the Taj Mahal was a tourist trap of young kids claiming to be “the best guides and photographers you can ever find for a wonderful tour of the Taj Mahal”. one such guy latched onto us by the name os “Sunny” and he persisted to walk with us all the way to the Taj Mahal, giving us a rapid fire download of his knowledge. We finally got away from him and started the self guided relaxing non evasive tour.

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This picture is simply unreal. I love how the gate frames the tomb so nicely. The Taj Mahal gate creates a visual illusion in such a way that as you walk closer to the Taj Mahal the Taj seems to step back and as you get further it seems to come closer. The day was crowded and you can see the long line of colorful clothing you see everywhere in India.
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Monkies, Snakes, Tombs and Temples

Ok, so it’s a pretty high falutin title but it’s ture though not in the sense of Indiana Jones. These are a few pictures from my first two weeks in India.

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Saw these sad monkies near the India Gate in Delhi. The owner would beat them to make them dance and do tricks. He kept a horrible thick rope around their necks so that they wouldn’t run away. The often times tried to fight back biting him but it looked like he was pretty used to the complaints. So these Monkies are angry but they should be.

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The same area of the monkies had a so called snake charmer with a medium sized black cobra. It’s venum pouches were taken away so it’s fangs were pretty useless. The snake rose and was more pissed at the owner than wanting to dance. It was still cool. The guy insisted on placing the angry snake around my neck.

Humayan tomb was a really nice looking tomb. It was the inspiration for the Taj Mahal but used red marble instead of white.
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The scale of the tomb was huge as well, looming perhaps 7-8 stories high and a whole city block long.

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The entrance to the inner tomb is inscribed with arabic. The inside of the tomb boused the king, his two queens, and various cousins and close servants and even dogs.

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The next sight was a bit hard on the heart. The big and very old muslim temple was lined with beggars, young and old. There were people that just could not move. They were so sad and all reached out their hands to people who passed in such sorrow, despair and weary that it was tough to watch. There was a little girl about the age of 6 or 7 who cared a naked baby about the age of 1. They were both dirty and kept pulling at our cloths for money. When we got on the rickshaw to leave, the girl and another one similar to her age ran after us. The sight of such a little girl so desperate, running barefoot with a big baby as big as her torso is still an image I’ll never forget.

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We next visited the old are of Delhi. You will see some picture in the previous post.

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The streets were literally packed tire to tire of rickshawas, bicycles and motorcycles, not to mention people, dogs, cows and the occasional three wheeller car, the tuk tuk.

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Food was all over the place, espcially in dark and dingy cornors. Delhi belly anyone?

The below pciture is the outside of the Channey Cwok area at dusk. I really like the atmosphere in this picture.
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