Picturesque but lots of flies.

This is the ear cleaner man that Fred described in one of his e-mails. We were excited when we finally got a picture of one. We had only heard about it.

This is a fruit called lichti. It gets a lot more red and looks similar to a strawberry, but it is nothing like a strawberry. It has a tough outer skin which you peel away. The inside is pure almost transparent white with a plum like texture. It has a pit also. It's sort of nice but will take some getting used to. Right now my favorite fruit is the mango. Fred doesn't like mangos so I get to gorge myself on them and never have to share.

They not only sit up on their work tables to cut meat but to make bread also. This has got to be the hottest work. These men are sitting by huge frying pans and also an open brick oven which is like a well. I'm not sure how deep it is. Probably not more than four or five feet deep and about six feet in circumference. They reach down into the oven well and hang the flat bread on the side walls. I'm not sure how the bread hangs there. I want to investigate this further.

This man is meticulously trimming pan. It's a leaf they chew. Sometimes it's dried and chewed but when they chew it green they put another sauce on it. It's a drug like chewing tobacco.

We took a trip to Old Delhi where the Muslims are more predominate. This is where you can buy meat but it's mostly goat. It's hard to see the flies and feel the heat of the day. I guess if you cooked it you wouldn't get sick.

Make these pictures big so that you can get the full effect of this fruit and vegetable market. You can't believe how dirty it is here. I especially like the cow trying to get into the bag and the little boy. They both have a style of their own.

These cloth salesmen carry these heavy loads of cloth all day long. It's amazing. The other day Fred and I watched a woman who had been cleaning up our park hoist a huge bag of trash up onto a concreted railing, tie it up securely and then to our surprise hoisted it up onto her head. The bag was actually bigger than she was. She left so fast that I didn't have time to grab the camera.

This is how they gas up the cars. They lift the hood and pump it in here. We never would have figured it out.

Working the Steers at Agra

This is the New Delhi Kid between two hard working steers at the Taj Mahal. One steer slobbered on me while I was posing for the picture. As soon as I got the idea fifty other people wanted to get down off the raised platform we were on and catch themselves in a lively photo shot. These animals were large, powerful and afraid of nothing. They never flinched or balked at the sight of anything in their path. This is me in front of the Taj Mahal believe it or not. Fred Ripley!

We were assigned to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and to chaperone two missionaries who had almost completed their missions. These are some scenes at the railroad station. The piles of blankets and sheets were really dirty. The picture doesn't tell the whole story. The sheets and pillow cases might be washed after being used but the blankets are folded and put back on the trains for the next passengers. I hope we never have to take a sleeper train.

Our steward on the train going down was so classy in his uniform.

The train we went to Agra in was quite fast, air conditioned, not very high tech, with a bathroom that had a squatter for a toilet. It is tricky to use a squatter on a rickety train that bounces and lurches. But somehow we did it. We made it to Agra in just two hours.

This lawyer and his family sat facing us. We had a table between us. We must have been right in the middle of our car because no one else had a table. We were also served a dinner on this train. Our train coming home served some snacks that we had to pay for and it stopped at every train stop. It took us almost six hours to get home.

More monkey business.