 Mon, Jan 17, 2005 |
 Mon, Jan 17, 2005 |
 Mon, Jan 17, 2005 |
| A bit of the old In-Out, In-Out at O'Hare airport as we left Chicago. | Flying out of Chicago, looking south towards downtown. | Sunset in the clouds. |
 Mon, Jan 17, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
| We flew Alitalia, so things were in Italian and English. | Malpensa airport in Milan had a refreshingly different design and lots of attractive, fashionable people everywhere. | I didn't get a photo of it, but the girls who work at this airport wear really cute blue outfits. These are nice flip-boards and stylish payphones. |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
| Roadway, Malpensa airport. | This may have been our airplane, the fleet all have these graphics. | Map showing part of our route over the middle east. |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Feb 1, 2005 |
| And here we are over India, circling back for a landing in Delhi some 22 hours after leaving Chicago! | The Delhi airport had a series of tourism posters that were cute, I liked this one especially. What a great stereotype (fortunately true). | No photos of the journey from the airport, a wild primer in Indian traffic. This was the first of many chilly hotel rooms with high ceilings we called "home" during the trip. Hotel Alka Annexe, Connought Place, New Delhi. |
 Sun, Feb 6, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
| Some of the "room swag" from Hotel Alka Annexe, showing some of the great design of their identity. | View from the bed(s) towards the door and bathroom. | The window here looks out in to the hallway, we had no outside light, hence no sense of natural time in this room. I couldn't sleep after about 3:30 AM because of jetlag and a racing mind. |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
 Tue, Jan 18, 2005 |
| The tub/shower in our room. At least we had a "western-style" toilet. The first day we had cold showers because we didn't realize the hot water had its own wall switch that needed to be on to work (red one in next photo). | A typical set of wall switches in the bathroom. Naturally the main light for the room is on the wall outside. I got shocked with electricity a few times when first trying to plug in my power adaptor/battery charger. | Telephone and (no longer working) little radio console between the two beds, Hotel Alka Annexe. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| First daytime walk in India, Connought Circus, New Delhi. Unfortunately I didn't get to check out the Rubber Stamp printing place, or much else in this neighborhood, for lack of free time in daylight hours. | Telephone boxes. I liked the stencils and colors. | Oriental Arts & Ammunition, just next door to our Hotel. Very interesting mix of businesses there and great signs to be found everywhere. Mostly classic and hand-painted, not much computer-output signage (yet). |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| The same 4-stroke Chetak scooter Bajaj sells in the US market now, Indian version. They ride 'em hard and for many years there. | Bajaj autorickshaws fueled by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in Delhi. By law, to curtail pollution, all taxis in Delhi were converted to CNG and it seems to have worked well. | The buses in Delhi are also CNG-powered, hence the Clean Fuel message. Buses are woefully overcrowded, as are most vehicles in a country with such great population density. I've never seen cars, trucks, rickshaws or bikes hold so many people! |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Statue of Gandhi leading people marching to the sea in protest of British tyrrany, Delhi. | 90% of the scooters had vinyl "cowl covers" to protect the paint from passengers' feet, and most had spare tires with advertising messages on them (apparently given away free at stoplights). Most Indian scooters have a footrest for sidesaddle passengers. | Jesus, the trucks (and rickshaws in many cases) there put ours to shame in terms of personalization, colors, hand-painted messages, national pride and overall style. I want to go back just to take photos of the various trucks. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Hand-painted sign on the roadside advertising some kind of scooter service, probably repair. Since about half the vehicles on the road are two-wheelers, there are almost as many businesses dealing with scooters as we have car-related! | Abhi, who works with us from India, took us around Delhi and just about everywhere else on this trip. We owe it all to him! The first stop was the ruins of Qutb-Minar, an ancient Mooselman fortification outside of Delhi. | Sign describing the Alai-Dapwaza story. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Main tower, Qutb-Minar. Beautiful reddish stone and modulating colors. | Detail of stonework on the tower. They're doing some repairs and the tower is now closed off to the public because people kept committing suicide by jumping off! Creepy. | Door with stonework. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Archway and ceiling detail. | Exterior walls still fairly intact. | These walls aren't fairing so well, but they make gorgeous ruins. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| More of same. | Vanessa and I pose in front of "Grisly Suicide Tower." | Beautiful ornate carving is a big theme in Indian historical sites. Lots of hours spent getting to know the old hammer and chisel! |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Abhi and Vanessa pose in front of the tower and ruins, Qutb-Minar. | This is the story of the "magical" iron pillar that has never rusted. You aren't allowed to wrap your arms around it anymore for good luck, damn beaurocrats and their rules. | Iron pillar with archway ruins. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| First of many shots of repetitous doorway elements, another favorite motif in Indian architecture. | Ceiling detail, Qutb-Minar. | It's nice that they have some green areas in Delhi; Indian cities need all the help they can get with air pollution, thanks in large part to 40 years of two-stroke engines, nasty diesel trucks and heavy industry. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Another part of the grounds at Qutb-Minar. | More repeating doorway arches, this time all in a line horizontally. | Typical scene brough to you by Chota Pepsi/Pepsi Paanch, a little bottle of Pepsi costing 5 rupees (roughly 12 cents by current conversion). Soda is still in glass bottles here, which is a refreshing change after all our our wasteful plastic BS. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| An example of humans/vehicles being put through their paces, a gentleman pedals an overloaded cycle through nightmarish traffic. He's probably taking this plastic to be recycled somewhere. | Since there are so many scooters and motorbikes on the road and helmets are fairly compulsory, there were lots of guys who just "set up shop" on the roadside selling helmets for cheap. Lots of improvisatory businesses and ingenuity there. | These were little signs on median guardrails. One warns people not to let water collect in old tires (mosquito-breeding), one is about killing cockroaches and the hands are for a life insurance company. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Another truck in Delhi. They often had teams of workers hitching rides in the back, sometimes dozens of men in a truck and I saw 4 or 5 men squeezed into the cab(!) repeatedly while driving on the highways. | One of my favorite things about vehicles there is all the hand-painted number plates (and hand-painted everything!). They must not have strict codes about conforming to some predetermined format. I love it. | This battered old autorickshaw had used its rear portion as advertising real estate. Note the lack of lights in the rear, a favorite option for nighttime maneuvers. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| Upper-middle class apartments, Delhi. | Solo rider on LML NV in interesting putty color. | Here are some guys riding in the back of a truck, probably to or from a worksite. |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
 Wed, Jan 19, 2005 |
| CNG autorickshaw with popular "flap o' vinyl" door system. The ones in Delhi are fairly uniform and largely unadorned, but in other cities they're very creative with the decorations. | Paras store, Delhi. Reminded me a bit of Poland. | This was on the tail end of a city bus, maybe the driver's name (saw a lot of that on vehicles, which is always charming). |