First I want to remind everyone that I put some of my more interesting pictures on facebook, but normally I put every single picture on my flickr page at flickr.com/mike-nappo.
Okay so...India. I have to say I haven't ever been to a place with such incredible poverty. I thought I saw bad living conditions and poor people in rural China. While the people in China are very poor, it really is nothing compared to the total poverty of a large part of the Indian population. Living in Chennai is really unusual experience. The class and wealth of the population seems to change on every block. While there is a general trend that the richer people (Indians and foreigners included) live on the southern end of the city around us, there are some pockets of poverty nearby. While the people in the city do live in some bad conditions, it really is much worse in the areas of the city reserved for the "fisherman". The fisherman and their families live in what essentially looks like abandoned land. Pretty much they live in huts made of sticks and woven banana leaves with dirt floors. I have noticed that at least some of the huts have electricity, when we are driving to work at night you can see light escaping around the poorly fitted doors and walls. Generally the people are pretty helpful here, but most often they are helpful because they would like to take advantage of you. It is sometimes difficult to get an honest answer from anyone with anything to gain by helping you. The most notorious rip-offs are the autorickshaw drivers. They will never run the meter, even when you ask them they will insist that it is broken and they don't carry change. Even if you manage to negotiate a "fair" rate before getting in, if you don't have exact change on arrival don't expect them to do you any favors.
Generally speaking, as far as India goes there are much better and much worse places to be. I think the most amazing thing to me is, the Indian people are so willing to live in their own trash. There is a small government housing/welfare complex down the street from our house that always smells like trash. During lunch time you can see the people are cooking, then throwing everything out on the ground not 5 or 6 ft from where they were cooking. I'm not sure if it is the heat or what but they just don't seem to care about living in a clean place. Even the river that runs near our house has just tons of trash floating on it, I can't imagine what is on the bottom. All of that being said, there are some really wonderful (and well cared for) things to see here. The Taj Mahal or the temples at Mahabalipuram, where we were yesterday. At Mahabalipuram there are several temples made from granite, the two most impressive being the Shore Temple, made from individual pieces of granite carved and transported to the site and the Draupadi and Arjuna rathas, which is an entire temple complex carved from a single huge, huge piece of granite.
I start back on shift on Saturday with no more long offs until the end of the month so this will probably be the end of my site seeing in India for awhile. I am still hopeful that I will be able to make it to the Taj Mahal before I leave India. If I do I will be sure to post pictures.
