India 2

India 2 - Areas near Vijayawada

Part of the ILBS was a series of field trips. One was on the earlier page (Undavalli Caves) and we had a couple more. These are photos associated with those trips.

Although India was not nearly as colorful as Thailand, there were still a number of buildings, such as the one above, that were quite colorful! The other thing that was quite clear about India was the sheer mass of human beings in the cities, as you can see a glimpse of down the street on the right. The traditional dress of Indian women is the Sari, which is a HUGE piece of very colorful cloth wrapped around the body, which you can see in the women in this shot.

This is a shot out the window of the bus we were on of a small town. Lots of open air markets are all over India, as you can see here. Also, there are a lot of buildings, like the one on the right, that have all kinds of posters (or remnants of posters) plastered all over them.

The trucks in India are commonly brightly painted, as you see here. They also tend to have all sorts of statuettes of various Hindu Gods all along the dashboard of these trucks (there are thousands upon thousands of Hindu Gods of various sorts, so there are LOTS of statuettes to choose from!)

One of our trips was to a huge lake/marsh area. This is a shot of a long, low-lying boat that we used to tour through the reed-lined waterways in this area.

This is a picture of a Hindu temple that Claudia took on one of her jaunts. We don't have many shots of the Hindu temples because most didn't allow pictures to be taken. They are much less ornate than the Thai Buddhist temples, often being white in color and with many fewer sculptures and other architecture. However, due to the numerous Gods, they have lots more smaller representations (often in smaller rooms) of the various Hindu deities.

This is a good shot of a women in a sari. Behind her is one of the main forms of transportation in India: the auto-rickshaw. This is a 3-wheeled sooped-up motorcycle with a little plastic awning over the passenger side. You can see these EVERYWHERE and with pretty much ANYTHING you can imagine inside them!

The Hindus revere the cow, and there were many spots in which our cars/buses had to stop because a cow or water buffalo was in the middle of the street. Here is a group of goats that stopped Claudia's car as she was making her way to her destination.

Near the end of the ILBS, the organizers had several groups come in to show us native dances. This is a group of women in native dress and makeup, and one man (center with green face makeup). They played traditional music and showed us the native dances of ancient India. It was cool!