India Today

Welcome to India

Good morning again, this time from Delhi, India. Awoke to a dense fog out my window, obscuring any possible view of the hotel surroundings, the only hint being the far-off sound of plaintive horns and a single voice singing a chant. Later the fog cleared and we drove around Dellhi, or I should say a driver drove us, past the old British Parliament and government buildings and the India Gate. Wide boulevards laid out by the Brits, with some help from Daniel Burnham of Chicago fame apparently, lined with parks and high-rise apartment and office buildings.  In the same block,  blue tarp shanties lean on wrought-iron fences near construction sites where workers try to stay as close to the work site as possible in order to get at the jobs. In the streets people sell everything from cell-phone chargers to rags for wiping down your car. A woman in a red sari, wielding a pick-axe forcefully to break up the earth and rocks in a ditch. A bearded man pedaling a tricycle with a load of dry earth mounded in the back, like an engine-less pick-up truck with a necessarily miniscule load being all he could manage to haul by the fruit of his own labors. People moving everywhere under their own steam, and toiling to bring others along with them. Beggars at the car windows, tapping ever more forcefully to be sure you don't mean to open up and offer a hand-out. Urban legend has it that beggars have been found holding large sums of cash but have no idea how to obtain goods or access to a better life with it, they have been left so far beyond the edges of society. We have no idea what it means to toil at our work as do so many of the people I saw just today on the streets of Delhi. We have no idea. . .

Driver

The brand-new Indira Ghandi Int'l Airport

   

Steering on the right here!

Government building with gov't cars - the "Ambassador" model

Me, Crissan and Bob at the President's House gate

A monkey helping to guard the gate!

The President's House seen through the grillework of the gate - with the avenue of red clay being swept by a twig broom.

India Gate

an awkward load

and a heavy one

Kids playing, like everywhere

Dwellings near our hotel - note satellite dish and power hook-ups

"Namaste"  -- greeted at the hotel (!)

Tour of the "Intramuros," or Old City

Our Excellent Tour Guide and moi

One of the gates of the old walled city

Part of the armory inside the fort

The church of San Augustin --

and its notably unique combination of saints and Chinese dragons!

Like altar boys all over the known world, just waiting for the wedding mass to end and free up the rest of his Saturday

Fauna

Friendly bar rats...

No pix of carabao yet, coming soon.

Getting Around in the Philippines

Uh-oh, we're stuck!

The neighbors in the Barangay ("barrio) lend a hand. . .

Let's try this end . . .

Jubilation - we're out of the ditch!!!

The Laguna is wide but only 3' deep or so.

This is a "jeepney." Each one is decorated with unique and artful adornments. More to come . . .

more forms of doming along for the ride.

Hang on tight!

picking up the trash

Tiny ponies pull the carriages

Abundant Flora

whiskery plants hanging from baskets and branches

Rice in the fields

A Jade Flower in the loveliest aqua color
hanging from vines overhead in the patio

Crissan with a blossom like a heavy pom-pom,
weighing down the branches on this tree

a strange whiskered black flower

Orchids. . .

a "handkerchief" plant - the droopy pink petals
on the left harden and green into the leaves you see on the right 

more orchids around the house 

Mulling Over First Impressions

It's Sunday morning, bright and early, and I think my biological clock may be trying to reassert itself, since I awoke waaaay too early this morning, so here I am.

We went for a drive to see some of the local areas, and provided some entertainment when the back wheels of our car went off the pavement when we tried to turn around on a narrow dead-end road running to the edge of the Laguna, the large inland bay between Manila and Los Banos, on the other side. Of course there was a muddy ditch right next to the pavement so the wheels just spun and spun, but, neighborhood to the rescue, lots of laughter and cheering when they lifted the car and the wheels got some traction, and we went on our merry way.

The landscape here, whether urban or rural, is a busy and often chaotic jumble of tropical growth and buildings of a very organic nature, with the ubiquitous cinder block, cement and corrugated sheet metal pieces seeming to grow and extend one from another much as the ferns attach themselves to tree branches. Little store-fronts extend from homes and other buildings, cheek-by-jowl with the road's edge and the vegetation behind,  so that everything depends on everything else in a beautiful and complex hodge-podge. It presents a paradox, where it seems that pulling out one small piece of corrugated could cause a whole city block to tumble down like a Jenga game, and at the same time all that concrete gives a sense of solid and immutable form. To further overstimulate the senses, every street is full of motion as people walk by often in groups of five or six at a time, or rush along in the little motorcylces with sidecars or the "jeepneys" that form the basis of public transportation. And in the old city, many many little carriages drawn by ponies so tiny it seems impossible they could pull the weight of all their passengers. Not to mention cars, trucks and huge tour buses everywhere as well. Streets are lined with mounds of fresh fruit or packaged snacks, candy bars, or bags of snails that people munch, or trays of fermented duck eggs, a delicacy here that I have not yet dared to try.

A tour of old Manila, or sadly what is left of it, the area within the old Spanish fort of Santiago (did you know that means Saint James? I didn't!) called Intramuros, informed us that General MacArthur bombed the ancient part of the city at the very end of WWII despite, according to the guide, being told it was unnecessary to dislodge the Japanese in this way. Sadly it wiped out almost all of Manila's early historical structures, going back to its origins as a small Muslim settlement some 4000 years ago. We have no idea what ancient history is, in the US of A!

I've arrived in Paradise

Good morning, world! I have awakened feeling rested and refreshed after my arrival in Manila yesterday. I am so blessed, to have such good friends and such good fortune to make this trip.  I made it out of town before the winter storm, my flights went smoothly, Ambien works miracles so I got a good 7-hour stretch of sleep on my 15-hour flight, and my friend was waiting for me at the Manila airport when I arrived.

The Philippines, at least the tiny part of it I have seen between Manila and Los Banos, is a profusion of green. Every plant and tree seems to host a whole array of more green and living things, ferns and orchids on trunks and branches of wide-reaching trees, lizards that make sounds like bird-calls, spiders with golden streaks in orb webs suspended in air, vines, and blossoms of every imaginable color and form. Not least surprising were the zinnias, impatiens, and marigolds revered by the gardeners for their exotic appearance -- much to my friend’s dismay, they keep re-appearing in her gardens because the gardeners find them so unusual!

We took a quick drive through IRRI yesterday, the International Rice Research Institute, where my hosts live and work. Its mission is “to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and ensure environmental sustainability through collaborative research, partnerships, and the strengthening of national agricultural research and extension systems,” quoting directly from the IRRI website. Right now it's pouring rain, and it's been rather cool here, according to the locals it's actually "cold" - very unusual that it's not sweltering hot, though it is QUITE humid even without the rain.

Many exotic fruits to eat, such as star apples, jack fruit, tamarind, of course mango, pomelo, and things with unknown names and strange sweet flavors.

The University of the Philippines is nearby, and we went by the vet school there too, past the Carabou Dairy department and a little residential area named "Dairyville" of all things! Carabou are the large gentle oxen used mainly for rice planting as well as dairy here.

Manila skyline in the haze

orchids

A little jet-lagged but happy to be here!

My esteemed host

Beautiful flowers everywhere

A view toward Laguna, with fish farms fenced off int the water