Ron's Thoughts

We had a somewhat auspicious start to our journey-- with a women next to AM on the plane who felt the best way to cough was to hold her arms above her head and cough open mouthed to optimize viral spread, we then arrived at 2am to find we were without a hotel room.  After settling in AM developed a cold about 3 days.  While I, like most travellers thought I would get away without developing traveller's diarrhea, managed to contract a intestingal illness about the same time.  Not the horrible "anal urination" as some call it, but about 48hrs of intestinal cramping -- perhaps the 2 tabs of pepto a day kept it from being worse. 

That all said this has been a great experience thus far.  Neither illness was so severe that we havent been able to get out and about and after a few days we have settled into a good routine.  We have learned after a few days what everybody in India already knows-- it is much to hot to do much outdoors between noon and 3.  Thus a good time to nap, email, eat-- anything indoors.

My impressions of India are that it is a very diverse place full of opposite ends of many spectrums which co-exist in odd ways; cows on the beach, women who sweep sticks and leaves but leave behind trash and dung, high speed internet but no sanitation, and then there is the traffic patterns which defy explanation-- red lights are at times optional, at high speed larger objects (buses) get the right of way, and people paint PLEASE HORN on the back of there vehicles-- the horns are so numerous that it cant be possible to distinguish which horn is for who.  I would love to take all of the macho teens who stroll across philly streets and have them try to cross the streets of Mumbai like any of the old ladies in sari's can do; I am sure they would be a little less cocky.

India is also a beautiful place, incredible coast and the rock carvings at Elora and Ajanta are as impressive as anything I have seen -- Elora has over thirty 'caves' carved into the mountain.  The main temple is 150m deep and similarly high-- with dozens of rooms statues and a fabulous temple in the middle-- all carved from the same rock-- a true monolith, hard to describe but amaizing.  Also amazing is thta unlike any place in the west you can walk around all of it, touch it eat lunch in it . . .

Finally Indians seem incredibly industrious.  Everbody here seems to be doing something, trying to sell something, clean something, sell something.   I can see why it woul dbe a great place to outsource work as nobody young to old seems lazy -- this is a bit of a hassel as those without jobs become touts and try to sell us something in an occaisionally aggressive manner -- but at least they are trying to make ends meet.

All for now-- sorry just a jumble of thoughts but wnated to get them down while pseudo fresh in my head.  More descriptions of things later.