INDIA

                We have arrived! India, the land of extreme contrasts;  where one's senses are on constant overload by the bizarre sights, sounds and smells. The magnificent temples of intricately carved stone surrounded by tiny shacks made of rusty tin, rotting wood scraps and old rags, the dilapidated auto-rickshaws vying for road space with the brand new BMW,  the elegantly dressed lady stepping over the legless beggar sleeping on the trash-covered sidewalk, the constantly changing smells-of spices coming from the street stalls, of raw sewage from a broken sewer pipe in the gutter, from fresh fruits in an open air shop window, from burning coal in the stoves of the many street food vendors, from a huge bouquet of flowers, from the human sweat of the multitudes, the sight of a cart full of brightly colored, neatly arranged vegetables with a dead, rotting rat underneath it.

The sounds; the sounds of foreign languages, of constant car, truck, bus, auto-rickshaw, and scooter horns, radios playing songs with strange sounding musical  instruments , cows mooing and roosters crowing right downtown.

The sense of personal space being equivalent to that in a VERY crowded elevator-carrying on a conversation while nearly rubbing noses.

And, yes, the traffic.  Foot traffic so heavy that it is impossible to identify where the sidewalk ends and the street begins.  We got caught up in bumper-to-bumper traffic, (mostly auto-rickshaws, huge trucks, buses and scooters), on a major 4-lane divided highway, and just barely moved for over an hour. As we came out of it and began moving again-we were in the slow lane (actually in the ditch), we were passed, first by a man on a horse at full gallop, then by a farm tractor towing a burlap bag full of hay the size of a small house, a camel pulling a wooden cart of scrap metal, and a water buffalo pulling a trailer load of hand-pressed, dried manure pancakes (cooking fuel).  Don't see stuff like this on I-95 very