The strange, the bad, and the interesting

So I walked over to the mall next door last week, and found this on display:

If it is the first, doesn't that automatically make it the largest?

That's right, it's the world's first and largest butter Krishna.  If I know India at all, there's a bureaucrat in a dusty office somewhere that certifies such a claim, but only after 20 forms are filled out.  In general the marketing here seems so transparent and silly compared to home, but I think that owes largely to the cultural differences. The television and print advertisements all seem kind of ridiculous, with the guys in them all striving to pass off this super macho BS.  I've spoken to the locals here that have gone to the USA, and they mention feeling the same way there, so I guess it's not just me.

The monsoon rains have abated considerably, which is a welcome change, but the humidity is still just as oppressive as ever.  There are days that the 30' walk from my apartment door to the elevator is all it takes to start sweating.  Occasionally there's a nice breeze, but the relief it brings is largely dependent on the direction it's coming from, as a wind out of the south brings the smell of this:

Don't bother bringing your fishing pole

That's a nice canal a few blocks from our place, full of fetid water, effluent, and trash. I typically refer to it as the "river of discontent" or simply "shit river." It's a nice landmark for directions, as in "yeah it's about a 5 minute walk past shit river, then you turn left." I was on a bridge at the time I took this, and luckily the wind was at my back.  The smell is really almost something you can see.  This is a real problem for India.  There are just too many people to deal with all the sewage, combined with a general lack of trustworthy governmental officials, or willpower to deal with it.  This particular canal got within about 8" of flowing over those banks when the monsoon rains were really going a couple weeks ago.  Thinking about it coming over the top is just too awful to contemplate, particularly if you want to have an appetite any time soon.  It's even more difficult to understand given what looks like such criminally misplaced priorities in this country.  They recently announced an initiative here to ensure all the citizens of India have access to digital infrastructure in the next 4 years.  This is the sort of thing that makes me just want to shake people.  The newspaper reported recently that 48% of the citizens of this country still just poop on the ground outside, largely due to proper infrastructure for them to do otherwise.  Makes perfect sense to give everyone internet access though.

On a happier note, we took some time this weekend to go to Sanjay Gandhi national park.

We can actually see the hills in this park from our apartment, when the skies are reasonably clear.  It's really quite something to be in the middle of this sprawling city one moment, and then in what is basically a jungle.  There's a surprising amount of wildlife in the park, including 35 leopards, which just blows my mind.  Top level predators living that close to so many people leads to the sort of problems that don't take a lot of imagination to deduce, such as the type of encounter shown here, which makes me giggle more than it probably should.  If you know me at all I often feel like we kind of get what we deserve for the impact we have on wildlife.

We also ran across these guys:

They're fun to look at for a while, but it turns out they're kind of dicks.  There's a concession stand at where we parked, which seems to exist solely to sell unsuspecting park visitors tasty treats for these jerks to steal.  One of the guys with me had a bag of potato chips about 30 seconds before one of these sneaked up from behind to snatch it right out of his hands.

At any rate, we stopped here to visit Kanheri Caves.  This was really a fascinating place to visit, and I'd likely go back.  It's not often you live 30 minutes from a World Heritage site.  I won't attempt to explain these as the link above does a much better job, but these were basically caves carved out of solid basalt that served as Buddhist monasteries and living quarters from 2400 years ago.  They're really nicely preserved, although there's another site nearby that I hope to visit that is supposed to be even better. You could walk right into most of the rooms, and see where people lived and prayed.  It really was something to see just how clever the people who created these were.  As you can see below, being carved into the hillside would mean that during the monsoon rains, there'd be water pouring into the cave. Instead they cleverly carved rain gutters above the overhang, routing them down the side of the cave, even around corners and into cisterns so they'd have water to use.  These cisterns were at least five or six feet deep, and every one of them was full of water.  The gutters still work centuries later.  You can see one of those below as well.

The first cave that you come to

The front of the largest temple

Inside of the temple pictured above.  The square holes about halfway up the walls were where rafters were installed to create a second floor.

The rainwater collection system, and cistern

Anyone speak Sanskrit?

Stairs carved into the rock

This one was about 30 feet tall

At one point I was able to climb to the top of this rock formation.  It was an overcast day, but there was a really great breeze blowing.  It was nice to be up there and just feel that wind, not hear any horns, and smell the fresh air.  It was like being home again, for just a moment.  I was thankful it was cloudy, as the dark color of the rocks would probably radiate some serious heat if the sun was shining.

That's probably as far from other people as I've been in months

I'll leave you with the latest traffic ridiculousness.  You often see this here, but I finally managed to get a shot of it:

Wife riding side saddle? Check...

Child riding in front of the driver? Check...

Nobody wearing helmets?  Check...

At least he wasn't on a cell phone, although that's probably only because nobody had called him, as that seems to be a generally accepted practice here. 

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer.  I miss you all!