In India

The war continues
Ah well...here it is, I'm just three days from returning. Some of you may have read about the indian government blocking blogs....in order to .....(what else?)...combat terrorism.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/17/report_indian_gov_bl.html

As you can imagine this is not something that the government can just throw a switch on.
I thought this was localized for a while, but for the last week access to the site has been incredibly slow. So I don't think it's totally blocked, but it's certainly going through alot more hops now. Probably being scanned by half a million government employees.
Trying to post pictures now utterly times out.

So I have pictures of the rest of the monuments in Agra ( which are nice), and the Taj ( which lives up to the hype....it's sparkling white, hold out for the pics). But it will have to wait till I get to a better computer.

What did we learn?
For the next two days I'm basically packing and traveling. So now might be a good time to sum up. Six months in India... what have we learned?

• Not everyone here speaks english ...and pantomime is about 100x more helpful than trying to learn the local language. At this point I think I might pass kindergarten ( my vocabulaty includes some numbers, some colors, some directions, and ways to express like and dislike of things).
• Visit India in the winter! The summer is brutaly hot , the monsoon is brutally wet. Their 'chilly' winters are about 75-80 degeress. It's sunny most every day. in the winter
• Cows are not really worshiped ....they're just kind of tolerated. Like stray dogs or cats in the street...they just wander around. Polytheism still confuses the hell out of me.
• Traffic laws are good! Next time you're in a taxi, just imagine everyone riving like that...simultanously....pure madness. Lanes are good too.
• Vegetarian food is not that bad. The food, even at the cheap places is really good. Your not going to get some spaghettios stuff out here. The water...well, that's another deal. Most food is stewed to death, and frankly you want it that way. I eat raw red onions now like it's nothing. But seriously...chill with the lentils. Lentils and rice for lunch....lentils for dinner....daal fry as a snack...c'mon..

Meta-lesson: Wrting blogs and having your frinds, family and co-workers read them is a wierd experience in and of itself....memory is quite a fleeting thing. Not to say there's been any want for things to write about ( actually there's a stack of unused material).

Anyway....I think I'd like to travel more after this.

After this I imagine most stuff will seem pretty tame.

The Taj pictures are coming, but by that time
I'll be back!
And we'll go have dinner (with meat!)....
And drinks they don't measure....
....and I'll tell you all about it.