India 1

India 1 - Vijayawada and the ILBS

As you might expect, our trip to India was equally long as our trip to Thailand, and in fact was a bit longer (~36 hours). We flew into Mumbai, then to Hyderabad and finally a "hop flight" to Vijayawada. Just as in our trip to Thailand, by the time we actually hit Vijayawada, we were BEAT! We had a pleasant hotel on the river Krishna, and the entire ILBS meeting was held at this hotel. We had plenty of good Indian food and Claudia got to make a few jaunts into the surrounding area while Steve was learning BORING things about branchiopod crustaceans!

Here is a shot of many of the ILBS participants, including La-orsri Sanoamuang (from Thailand), Steve and Claudia (all on the left), two Thai students, a Mexican student, and Aloisio Ferreira from Brazil (all on the right). The remainder are various students and hosts from India.

This is a picture of 3 of the major organizers of the ILBS. Chalam (Dr. Simhachalam) is on the left (a current colleague of Steve's) and Prasad (Prof. Durga Prasad) is on the far right. (Apparently, the Indians prefer to be called by their last name, or a shortened version thereof.) Prasad turned out to be the Provost of his University, and was one of the main organizing forces behind the ILBS.

Here is a shot from the top of the Undavalli Caves. Steve is standing behind and behind them both (in the picture) are Brian Timms (with the blue hat) and Chalam. Later on, we got our first experience of having a random Indian wanting to take pictures with us! In this case, it was a family with a little baby wanting to get their baby's picture with "weterners" (apparently, not an uncommon thing in India)!

One of our first excursions in the Vijayawada area was to an ancient Hindu site called the Undavalli Caves. There is supposed to be a long tunnel through the mountain that opens into this area, but no one has found it (many say it doesn't exist!). They were carved in ~4th century and have a number of Hindu statues carved out of stone.

As we were staying in the hotel for the conference, the River Krishna kept getting higher and higher! This is a shot near the end of our stay in which the river finally overtopped its banks and was flooding into the hotel grounds (the fence was the edge of the property with the river bank just beyond there. Just a couple of days before, we had a BIG dinner celebration in that formerly grassy area that is now covered with water in this shot!

This is a picture on the Prakasam Barrage, which is a large bridge/water flow system of the River Krishna outside of Vijayawada. As you can see from the picture, the River Krishna was REALLY flowing at this time of year (end of the monsoon season) and the water was churning up a storm under this bridge!

While Steve was busy at the conference, Claudia and a guide went down to the coast of the Indian Ocean. The day was kind of dreary, but she got to see some interesting fishing going on and these cool fishing boats!

One of the interesting sites Claudia witnessed was the bartering for the "catch of the day." Here are some eels (as well as other fish) that the men are bartering over.

During most of our time in India, the Hindus were celebrating the God Ganesh (the elephant-headed God of prosperity). Each town had numerous Ganesh idols that were painted in many colors and at some point, the boys and men would take the Ganesh to the local water body (river, pond, lake, etc.) and submerge him. During this period, they would often cover their bodies with various colored powder. This is a group that Claudia saw on her excursion that had covered themselves with a purple-red powder.