India

Cows everywhere. Sunset in the mountains.

A bull temple.

Tea time overlooking Ooty - a small mountain town bustling with business as the local market hub.


A typical stand. But the design on the ground in front is supposed to keep bugs away. By the way, the STD sign is not selling what we might think it is, but simply a kind of phone card.


T. Nagar was like the flea market part of town in Chennai. This was the busiest, most crowded experience we had in our whole trip in India.


This is a temple elephant. If you giver her 10 rupees, she blesses your forehead.

We just couldn't get enough of the temple roofs' decorations. They are all a little fantastical and a little sexy.
A market within the walls of an ancient temple.

Instead of smoking/non-smoking - diners in India are segregated according to their dietary restrictions. Vegetarian is further divided into veg. and pure veg. - pure vegetarians do not eat eggs, but they will have dairy products like butter and milk.


Varkala beach. This is where we spent New Year's Eve. It was a quiet little town on the west coast of India. There were tons of hippies from all over the world, ayurvedic massages, and yoga classes.
Rachel taking a rest on a window sill in an old palace in Kochin. Kochin was the hottest, muggiest town we visited - hence the need for the rest with a cool breeze.


Old fashioned fishing nets - still used today. The whole contraption gets dropped into the water and sits there for about 30 minutes, and then they scoop out whatever goodies collected there.

Botanical gardens near the tea plantations. These monkeys were all over the park. I guess local Indians look at monkeys like we look at squirrels - they really didn't pay them any attention. However, we were mesmorized by their silly antics.



Tea plantation.
Tea being pushed down a grinding shoot.


Kids who insisted on having their picture taken with the foreigners. After the 50th time this happened we learned to be less friendly.

Students on a class field trip.


Getting new pants hemmed.

"Tribal" children, in mountains near Mudumalai.


Bamboo forest we hiked through.


Wild elephant! Seen from a bus.


One of many botanical gardens we visited, this one in Bangalore.


Auto rickshaw driver, reading. Indians love to read.


Dubai. We had a stop over, so we took a half-day tour and visited some of the sights, mostly built around various indoor and outdoor malls.

India - food

While our three week winter trip to southern India was awesome in many ways, food was always foremost in our minds, whether our bellies were happily full, angry at the ever-present hot peppers, or eager for more.


Order a "meals" and this is what you get. Nicer places on metal, most places on banana leaf. Spoons for children and foreigners; civilized people use the fingers of their right hand.

Falafel-like thing we bought mostly on trains.

Masala Dosa. A crispt pancake-like treat made of lentil and rice flour and yogurt, filled with potatoes and veggies, sauces for dipping. You can eat them for breakfast or dinner.

Snack mixes. Mostly fried lentil-flour noodle-like things.


Various fried street snacks.


Ghee roast, which is really just a tall buttery dosa. You break pieces of the buttery, crisp pancake and dip into various coconut sauces - breakfast or dinner.


Street cart of various beans, yuca, corn - evening street food. They fill a newspaper cone according to the amount of money you want to spend and then you just tip it into your mouth.

Puri, a fried puff of dough. Very light and airy and usually a breakfast item.

Pongal, a rice-mush flavored with a lot of peppercorn - eaten for breakfast mostly. It can be served sweet as well.

A bewildering variety of bananas. The trick with bananas seems to be (and isn't it the case with most produce?) that the smallest ones taste the best.

Indian train station

It's been a while. We've been traveling in India. We took too many pictures, so it'll take some time to pick. For now, watch this movie of the train station in Coimbatore.