Stutzfamily.com>Travel Pictures

India

Current stop: Rajasthani Roads

Previous: Deeg

Next: Around Jaipur

Oh, the places we went...

Driving through the back roads of Rajasthan was always an adventure. We felt transported back in time, watching daily life pass in back roads Rajasthani towns. We kept thinking about how lucky we were to have been born into our circumstances, and how different things would be had we 'popped out' in a different part of the world.
Where we had to take (or give) baths in the street Or where earning a living was based on the amount of wood you could carry home on your head. Imagine finding daily firewood - in a scrub desert.	We might have been born in a place where daily water - even in town - has to be brought in to our houses for use. Where making a living consists of selling trinkets by the side of the road (those bangles typically are sold at about 20 for one dollar).


We might have been born in a place where cows and cow dung are true measures of wealth. Flattened and shaped by hand, the dried feces serve as building material and clean burning cooking and heating fuel. This is (perhaps) one of the lost-in-history reasons behind the sacredness of the cow in this part of the world, and one of the reasons that dogs are frequently seen guarding the drying cowpies.

	The roadside scenes were just as fantastic - from Rajasthani public transport (left) to the camel carts still in use everywhere, and the never ending brickyards and kilns that have stripped the landscapes of most burnable vegetation while providing jobs as well as building material for the entire region.

But every home was someone's castle, and a new appreciation of our own blessings did not detract from seeing the order and beauty in their simpler lives.

Previous: Deeg

Next: Around Jaipur

To the winter break 2007-08 main page
To the main India page

To the Stutz's Welcome Page