Traveling the highways of south India

We have been traveling, traveling, traveling - traveling the highways of south India and seeing many wondrous sights, both old and new. We have met countless people, almost all of them friendly, warm, and happy to greet us.

We have eaten and eaten and eaten and it has all been delicious, even though we have eaten too much and have sometimes suffered the consequences.

What we have had very little of is internet access, and when we have had it we have not had much time to use it, nor have I had any time to sort through the steady stream of images that have poured through my lenses onto my sensor and into my compact flash cards.

Yesterday, as we traveled, I thought that, at the very next opportunity, I would post one image from the day and I decided to make it the very next one that I took, so that I could go straight to it with little loss of time. Then this little lorry came driving the other way and I shot it through the windshield glass.

One day, on a return trip to India, I must experience this method of travel.

We leave early tomorrow evening, which, factoring in the time required to get to the airport well ahead of schedule, really means mid-afternoon tomorrow.

Perhaps I will be able to crank out one more short post before we go; perhaps not.

But, after I get home, I will devote several days to making posts of my India snapshots, even though I will be right back in Wasilla, Alaska - but only for a very short time before I travel again.

The sun rises over the Bay of Bengal

It was still dark when nephew Vijay knocked came to get Melanie and me at the Chennai hotel where he had put us up for the night, and it remained dark as we walked about one mile to the beach.

Vijay was eager to show us a sunrise over The Bay of Bengal. As the dawn glow began to light up the eastern horizon, we could see a low band of clouds that was almost certain to the block the view of the rising sun, but we decided to hang out and watch anyway, to see what it would look when the sun did make it over the clouds.

A bird flew by.

Chennai fishermen paddle into the dawn to make their living.

A wave rolls past the fisherman.

We cannot yet see the sun, but it is reflected off the half-moon above.

The sun makes it over the clouds, over the fisherman.

Two men walk by with a dog.

This happened yesterday morning. Obviously, circumstance has prevented me from keeping anything close to a daily blog of our travels in India. I think circumstance will continue to do so for the remainder of the trip.

But I was just reading the Anchorage Daily News online and they ran a series of pictures taken in April, so I think it will be alright if I post most of my India material - including the wedding - after I return home.

And Vijay - thanks not for showing us the sunrise, but for everything that you did for us during our stay in Chennai.

You are a great host, nephew.

(As always, a click on a picture will reveal a larger copy of any image.)

Many gigabytes in India to blog about, but no time to blog it

We are on the go, here in Bangalore, Karnataka, India and I had imagined myself putting together quite a post tonight, but it is 12:03 AM and we must get up in 5 hours or so to be ready for the taxi cab that will take us to Mysore tomorrow morning and I haven't had much sleep, anyway, so I am just going to post this excuse for now, and hope I find some blogging time soon.

I have much to catch up on, from a rather fantastic wedding (mighty hot it was and boy, did I sweat!) and then today, which was a fun day. Here, in this self-portrait, you can see me, Buddy and Melanie as we walk through Lalbagh Botanical gardens, where we frolicked with monkeys.

Afterwards, we met up with the bride and groom and the bride's beautiful sister, Sujitha, also known as Barbie, and her still-pretty-new husband, Manoj, went out to eat at an Italian restaurant in downtown Bangalore and immediately after, went to another restaurant and ate again.

I will never really manage to get it all down, but I still hope to do a good summation, soon, so don't give up on me.

One year to the day after I drove Murthy and Vasanthi to the Arctic Circle, Melanie and I arrive in Bangalore; Soundarya - the bride-about-to-be with kittens

This is Soundarya Ravichandran and while I have wanted to return to India ever since I first came in August of 2007, she is the reason I came now. Tomorrow, she will become the bride of her soulmate, Anil Kumar, and Melanie and I will be there. 

I first met Sandy at the wedding of my niece, Khena, to her cousin, Vivek and there has been a strong bond between us ever since. I consider her a soul friend and I call her "Muse," because ever since I met her, whenever I am taking pictures, I try to imagine how the images might interpret my world to her.

In fact, there are many, many, many pictures in my portfolio now that I took specifically for her. She has actually seen only a very few of these images, as it would be too great of a task to either post or email, or even process them all, but I have them and she is the reason.

Not long after we met, I promised her that, if it were at all possible, I would come and take pictures at her wedding when it happened.

So here I am.

And here is she, with a kitten born to a feral cat at the house of Vivek's parents, who are hosting Melanie and me.

And here is Melanie and me, reflected off the window of the Seattle airport train that takes passengers from one one course to another.

Melanie, in the Mumbai airport.

A little girl in the Mumbai airport.

Forty-one hours passed from the time I drove away from my house to when we met Murthy and Vasanthi at the Bangalore airport. Murthy then summoned his favorite cab driver, Gulpi, and then brought us to the house, where Vasanthi made us coffee.

She makes it with milk and it is the best coffee that I have ever tasted. 

As we ate lunch, Sandy picked up my camera and turned the tables on me.

In India, it is polite to eat with your right hand, so I am exercising good manners here. Vasanthi is also a great cook. If she were to resettle in Anchorage and open her own restaurant, Wow!

Sadly for me, I love spicy food so much that I spent a few decades overdoing it and now the doctor has forbidden me to eat it, except a little bit every now and then. And when I overdo it it, I know it real soon.

But in India, the food is spicy. And so good.

One year ago, on May 8, I drove Murthy and Vasanthi up the Haul Road to the Arctic Circle and then on to Cold Foot. I had planned to take them on a whale watching cruise in Prince William Sound, but Murthy had read about some folks who had crossed the Arctic Circle on the Haul Road and then received a certificate attesting to the fact that they had done so.

He was convinced that the government had a little station there where they awarded everyone who came across with such a certificate and his highest goal was to go get one.

I knew that there would be no such station, but, along the way, I managed to find a place in Fairbanks that did issue such certificates to tour groups, and so I picked up a couple and at the circle awarded them myself.

Now Murthy has the certificates hanging on the wall for all who enter to see, along with the picture that I took of him and Vasanthi at the sign that marks the Arctic Circle.

The beautiful little girl is their granddaughter, Vaidehi, who lives with her parents in Chennai, on the coast.

Sandy and the two kittens. I will post more of the cat series on Grahamn Kracker's No Cats Allowed Kracker Cat Blog when I get the chance.

Vasanthi, Soundarya and Natarajan, their father and grandfather. 

Enroute to India

I had hoped to put up a good, illustrated, post today, but that was a silly notion. I have to leave now to meet Melanie so that we can board the first flight of several that will ultimately land us in Bangalore. The journey takes 40 hours and when that 40 hours is done, I will want to do nothing but find a place beneath a fan where I can sleep.

Then who knows how long it will be after that before I am able to go online and post from India.

But - I will go online and I will post from India.