Share & Voice Environments I Experiences when I lived in India

I had the great pleasure and fortune to live in India for 6 months with my partner Joel back in 2007.

I'm sharing with you some of the environments I experienced when I was there in pictures.  It seemed like there were many variations during our stay.


I'll start with a trip we took to Jim Corbett National Park which is in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains.  It was part of a team building trip with the group Joel was working with while we were there.

The picture to the right and the two below are views from the side of the stream where we spent most of our time when staying at the park and where most activities were held and about a 30 second walk from our cabin

In India there are stray dogs hanging out.  We could hear packs of them barking at each other occasionally at night.  There was a pack that hung round at one of the malls. At night they were given scraps from the butchers, or at least that was our theory.  They got very active at closing time.  They weren't really petable or people friendly.   This dog, however, was pretty calm and very pettable.  He was kinda full of flees but I took my chances and made it out without flea bits.







We got up for an early morning safari trip higher in the mountains in the park. It was REALLY COOL! Both Arthur Fonzarelli and in temperature when compared to Delhi where we were living while there.

We rode out in a caravan of a few Jeeps through the woods.







There were lots of interesting things to see. I have NEVER seen an ant hill so big! It was really hard to tell from the Jeep how high they were. I would not be shocked if they reached over 6 feet tall. They were HUGE! and pretty cool looking.

To the right and below are pictures of spider webs that were hanging between the trees.  

We stopped to look for tiger tracks...  

They tell us this was made just hours before we were there exploring.

We stopped at a stream up in the mountains.

It was beautiful and very pretty.

I enjoyed my time taking pictures of the cows running round.  I just LOVED them. 

Here is a picture of me taking a picture of a cow.  Very fitting. 

With all the cows that run loose in India I thought it was fascinating that I only heard one cow moo the entire time I was there. That was by a cow on this trip that was in a fence by our cabin.  Never a peep out of the free roaming cows. 

On our way back from the safari we were driving down a road in a town and turning the corner was a on his elephant.  We stopped and he "pulled up" behind our Jeep.  We took pictures with him and he had the elephant do tricks for us. The COOLEST part was watching him get ON the elephant.  He stood in front of the elephant who made a little chair with his trunk, the guy grabbed on and the elephant lifted and flipped the guy on his back. 

SO FUN! 

When we first arrived at our cabin, we were greeted by our roommate! 

Mr. Gecko.  He kinda freaked us out.

Of course, we also had one that got into our apartment in Delhi through the deck door in our computer room. 

We tried to be hospitable as he ran in and out of our vents before he got back to our computer room so we could shoosh him back out the door to freedom. 

Since he stayed for a while we thought he deserved a name and called him Art! :)  

He, he, he. 

Some other random fun things we saw on our trip to the park. 

Here our tour bus is at a tole booth waiting to cross city lines

I'm curious to know if they could reach the roof of the tole booth sitting on top of that truck. 

It wasn't unusual to see people and their sheep herds and  work animals crossing or traveling down the roads. 

This was on a pretty rural road. 

This was while driving down the highway. 

The picture below was from a different trip we took on our way to Jaipur -The Pink City. 

I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't show a picture of women in their traditional dress. In the cities like Delhi there is a greater mix of women wearing western clothing in with the women in their sarees. 

The very small out of the way towns you would see no western clothing but very traditional dress. 

This is one of the views outside our apartment in Gurgaon, a close suburb of New Delhi. It was usually pretty dry and this particular morning not very clear. 

During the monsoon rainy season it would rain very hard for periods of time. As you can see the streets couldn't keep up with draining the intense downfall.  The water was dirty both from the dirt on the streets and from the dirt in the air. 

City Centre, below,  is one of the malls I spent some some of my time shopping. Certainly some signs recognizable from the U.S. 

The big orange thing in the front that looks like the babies head on South Park is actually an orange juice stand. 

Below is an outdoor mall.  the bull walking towards me was great. He just kept walking slowly towards me as I kept taking pictures of him.  As he was about to run into me I stepped to the left as he brushed by.  CLEARLY knowing who owns the roads around here. 

My Dad grew up on a farm with cows and bulls.  When he saw this and freaked out a bit.  

This is not to say that they are all friendly all the time. One of Joel's co workers was head butted and chased home from work by a cranky bull for about 3-4 miles. Counting my blessings I never ran into one of them. 

I may be alone in this, but any mall that has a cow laying around welcoming me to the bank... THIS is service I can get along with!  

He was so curious as to what was going on in there. 

Clearly, the outside of a mall is not exactly familiar to us.  HOWEVER, you step inside a T.G.I. Fridays and you feel like you feel like your at home.  Until you open the menu and look at the prices of the pork ribs.  There were other menu changes as well. 

I also want to share 

This was the view we experienced when ever I went to Joel's work.  This building, shaped like a ship, stood across the street from Joel's offices.  It was fascinating to see... not only in the middle of the desert, but also the fun connection coming from Duluth.   It struck me every time I saw it. 

OK! Enough pictures without animals!  Let's get back to the good stuff. 

Sometimes when your trying to get from point A to point B you find yourself needing to sit in the road and wait for the cows to move out of the way. 

Sometimes they will just flop down in front of your car and make you wait or figure out how you will drive around them. 

This was probably my favorite part of my trip!

On the way to the Taj Mahal there were people with monkey's.  As you can see I completely ignored the words of advice I was given about not getting out of the car and not touching the animals. 

LOOK AT THAT FACE!

Joel had legitimate concern that I was going to send him off to the Taj alone and hang out with the Monkeys.  

OK, just Two more random fun things. 

See below, a pretty normal roll of toilet paper, new out of the plastic wrapped packaging... nothing special, pretty average, right??

Ahh, but don't let your eyes deceive you!

I found myself unrolling this fine, average roll of usefulness only to discover...  

YUP! you guessed it. A MATH problem written in the midst of the roll. NOT on the end, oh no, that would only be KIND OF weird. This was REALLY weird. 

The math was correct!  So, ya know, that was a relief. 

AND!

Because I don't want to be the ONLY person in this class without a toilet picture on their blog.  

This was a square toilet at a fancy, dancy mall near us. 

If you are bored you can learn a lot more fun things about Our trip to India by checking out our India blog. 

Even more animal pictures and the funny coincidence that the phone number to McDonald's at one of the malls ends in 666. 

Thanks for reading!   :)