Layover in the Shanghai Airport. Cool architecture on the shell, boring architecture on anything you actually interact with.
Same deal.
For those of you new to depth-perception: the person walking into her head is actually several meters behind her.
Never too far from grungy white dudes or their traditional forms of nourishment.
Traffic is nuts anywhere in Asia. This doesn't really convey that. Should have taken a video.
Those yellow and green vehicles are called, I think, tuktuks -- three-wheeled motorized taxis. There are non-motorized versions piloted by people I do not envy.
Not conveyed here: velocity at which they were travelling.
Conveyed here: something the Motorcycle Safety Foundation would not recommend under any circumstances. This is relatively, comparatively inoffensive.
Whee!!!
Stoplights are to be filed behind thick posts.
Zeeeeeebuuuuuuuu!
I think I was trying to take a picture out of something that zoomed just out of view. Oh well, get excited by trees! And a man with a turban (or the Indian equivalent of one...)!!
Can't win 'em all ('em being the photos).
Authentic culture or Disney?
There be Tibetan refugees here.
Here, too.
View from the hotel in McLeod-Ganj.
Another. Ho hum.
ANOTHER.
Black water tanks are placed on roofs in order to reduce energy costs associated with heating.
She always looks like that (with snow-capped Himalayan mountains behind her head).
A view from some spot on the road I traverse everyday.
Pretend the shadow is receding and that I didn't unintentionally take a forboding picture.
On the trail around the Dalai Lama's temple.
OM
'Round them Himalayas.
MANI
PADME
HUM
View of some of the living establishments. Obviously.
Elephants are adept carriers of fire. Zoology Fact.
Walked through a shroud of flags and was startled when this dude/lady snorted at me.
MmmmmuuuuurrrrRRR (Chinese Onomatopoeia for "Moo." Chinese Fact. Consult your most proximal Chinese person.)
A thing? I suspect so.
They go to great heights to hang their prayer flags.
Turn the cylinder, ring the bell.
As seen on Rage Against the Machine's titular album.
He was also known for smiling. Really, not trying to make light of what he did. They're friendly folks but don't mistake it for simplicity.
White folks.
Anutter view of McLeod-Ganj.
Anutter.
Yaaaaaaak yak yak yak yak (I don't think they make that sound. This one just grunted.)
Heyyyy sailor.
View on the way to dine with some Tibetan nuns.
Momos are essentially Tibetan versions of dumplings. They are hella persecuted.
Errant herd.
View of Dharamkot, a city north of McLeod-Ganj. About a 15 minute schlep.
Charming.
Monkeys are ubiquitous.
I'm on board for everything except for that STD part.
Dharamkot again.
Same.
Hey bro.
Perhaps I'm just starved for animal contact.
And again.
Walkway. Whitney.
Abode.
Abutt.
Views of things.
Marigolds? A surprising garden about shoulder-level on the path we were on.
View from the marigolds.
We stopped at a pizzaria (surprising to me, too). It's no view from Dominoes...
Then a cat came along.
Then a dog came along. Well, more cow than dog.
Another view from where we ate. Pizza was great, too.
Dawwwww.
Sorry, I'm a sucker for animals.
"Better get that hand back to work if you know what's good for you."
I can haz chezpiza? (No.)
Doppelganged! (These cats had beautiful eyes, which I unfortunately did not capture.)
Himalayan weasel. Apparently too good to dine with us.
More Dharamkot.
Yawn.
We briefly adopted a puppy that a Tibetan nun requested that we take in.
Gave him the name "Tashi," which is a Tibetan name and apparently means "Lucky."
Other names included: "Tashi Dalek, Devourer of Worlds," "Baby Bite & Piss TM"
Trying to get up on the bed. For a thing that didn't exist but two days prior to us having him, he cried something fierce to be let up.
Bein' all adorable and stuff.
A little dirty after playing on the roof. Unfortunately the cost of keeping him was pretty steep but we found him a nice Indian family. I'll miss him, though.
Decided to go see the waterfall near McLeod-Ganj. People do their laundry in the river (creek?) it creates.
Some people evidently live out here. Supposedly there are leopards around here...
I suspect the work of a glacier.
Picnicin.
Some shrine I was too far from.
Trash everywhere on the way, just like the rest of India I've seen.
If you don't look at the trash it's beautiful though.
Mmm wait until I'm finished tossing my shit everywhere.
A smaller waterfall created by a busted water pipe.
Pristine.
The waterfall! In a bit of a drought, so it's not as big as we're told it normally is.
I looked down after taking the previous photo and found this underfoot. Ugh.
It's pretty high up. I couldn't move far enough away from it to get a shot of it all.
10 feet to the right of the waterfall. Yes, they have Coke and Lays.
Oh, hey. I'm just chillin here.
Didn't realize that dude taking a picture was in this.
Valley from the waterfall.
Playing on shale.
More of the valley.
Pipe that burst and was spraying like crazy.
Construction crew.
Best pizza in town!
Probably deathly cold.
I yearned to pet a himalayan weasel.
Tea. I suck at photos.
Shooter from the grassy knoll or egg sandwich?
Vegetable and curry soup. Fills ya up.
Waterfalllll
Waterfall again
Another waterfall of sorts
Think I tried to get a picture of that bird...
Milk tea complete with milk film.
What Tashi would've looked like all growed up.
It snowed!
Our beautiful view 1
Our beautiful view 2
Our WC
Lhamo Kyab, the refugee I tutored.
One of the main streets.
Not too busy.
Settin up shop.
Kangra valley.
Our Austrailian friend, Derek. Honestly, I was happier than what this picture conveyed. Just took forever to take it and my smile waned.
Monk Tashi with whom we had tea every evening.
She's crushing so hard.
Mutton momos are serious business.
Thenthuk!
A yeti or a Lhamo's Croissant cookie?
On our bus to Amritsar we got in two accidents. In this particular one, we slid into an army transport that turned out to be filled with school children. If other people hadn't shown up and intervened, our driver would have had the shit beat out of him by the army guy.
Random shot?
I was trying to get the veiw in front of him, but instead got the traditional Sikh turban.
Bicycyle rickshaw
Horse (buggy not seen)
Plowing through some folks in a tuktuk.
Jimmy's Chicken Shop
Tasted better than it looked (a chapati and some rice pudding)
Gate to the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Golden Temple in tilt-o-vision...
Gate.
Sikh martyr of some sort (this is the least gory picture in the place)
Golden temple and surrounding area.
Marble everything around the golden temple and you're required to be barefoot.
Performing Sikhs.
Folks standing around a guard (who is carrying a spear)
You can kind of see the spears better here = (
Some building around the Golden Temple.
Ceiling of my room at the Golden Temple.
View of a street around the Golden Temple. It looks like every other street.
Tree in the park around the Golden Temple. I think those dangly bits are roots being dropped.
Some tower for a guru.
Fortunately the law doesn't agree.
Noted.
Golden temple again!
So much ornate stuff.
Walkway around the Golden Temple.
Another shot around the Golden Temple.
No clue what the flags signify (still around the Golden Temple)
Main gate of the Golden Temple.
Tom Sawyer and the Golden Temple.
At night...
No tripod, sorry.
In line to get in to the Golden Temple. Pictures are not allowed inside.
Same tower from the other side.
I have no idea what this was but it was fairly interesting.
View from underneath.
Guess I really liked that tower...
A real marching band!
View on the other side of the tracks.
Supposed to be a shot of Amritsar University, which has some really rad architecture.
India Gate!
India Gate even closer.
Every time I tried to take a picture of the farmland something zoomed in the way.
Yep.
Just chillin.
Guards at the border with Pakistan.
People on their way to see the border ceremony.
Guards and one in traditional hat, white pants, and mustache.
The guards must've been six-and-a-half feet tall, minimum. All of them.
Kid running and saluting the guards.
Gate with Pakistan! There's an elaborate ceremony every evening when they close the border gate. Each side yells at eachother and cheers for their guards.
Eh.
Women run up and down, carrying the Indian flag before the actual ceremony starts.
Everyone in our side of the stands.
Nothing hammers home the difference between India and Pakistan better than girls on the India side without headscarves, dancing in the street.
My neckbeard and I chilled with this Taiwanese dude, Michael.
Their stands filled up and were divided -- one side for women, the other side for men. Mostly i wanted a shot of the Pakistani flag.
Sometimes our side went crazy.
The guards came out one by one and showed off their kicking skills (not kidding).
They're marching behind those hands and kicking up a storm.
Gonna tell Pakistan how it is.
So will these dudes.
Stilllll goin.
The flags are lowered simultaneously and across one another. It's fairly cordial.
On the train to Delhi, the city where child labor is in plain sight. This was a kid, maybe 9 years old, who came on and sang a song, then begged for money.
The train shook a lot, but he's begging again here.
We went to the Taj Mahal on our last day but I accidentally switched my dead batteries with themselves, so only was able to get off this single shot. Got their bright and early in the morning just after it rained, so everything was fairly beautiful.
Got back and tested the correct batteries.
Tashi, as seen earlier in my album.
View while we hiked to the top of a nearby mountain.
Our intrepid guide.
I was a mess by this point in the trip.
This dog followed us from the McLeod all the way up and then all the way back down again.
Very pretty.
Another view.
Someone made a show man along the way.
Figured out that the dog liked to fetch snowballs.
Yum snow.
It was pretty awful at catching but cute nonetheless.
Stopped at a chai stand pretty far up. Eating some biscuits.
The guy who ran the stand said this dog is sort of a local tour guide.
View from the stand.
This is how a lot of stores hold chips.
Lays are everywhere.
Picture of the stand.
The dude who ran it.
Shiva's trident!
Decorations at a small hindu shrine.
We gotta go all the way up.
After we crested a ridge and stopped for a rest.
Derek decided to come with us on the hike. He does yoga for like 4 hours every day and thus took the hike, which took about 6 or 7 hours, much better than we did.
Blinking, not meditating.
Our motley crew.
Tash laughs quite a bit.
Rhododendrons? Can't recall.
They grow all up and down the mountain though. Monkeys seem to like them.
On the way back down, a place where goats were occasionally kept.
Found out the dog liked sticks.
We went to Agra to go see the Taj, and this is the beautiful view at like 6:30 in the morning.
Part of the entrance.
The Taj Mahal!
Rather beautiful.
Honestly I was in a good mood, mostly just wiped from all of the travelling and hubub it took to get here.
She's better at smiling.
See?
Taj again.
Just walkin.
View of the other gates.
Found a bat in the Taj.
Couldn't get a decent photo.
One of the other gates around it.
View from the back of the Taj.
Vaguely see some stuff back there.
Sky was so crisp.
Just taking it all in. Really, it's huge in ways the images don't really capture.
Another gate.
GATE.
Some interesting birds that were roosting.
They were sweeping off rainwater with straw brooms. I don't envy them.
View from the Taj, looking out to the southern gate.
Phallic much?
Side view.
View from the garden surrounding the Taj. The only clean bit of nature I saw the entire time I was in India.
Crooked.
Reflecting pool.
Apparently one of Whitney's legs is shorter than the other.
We were there!.
More proof it's not a photoshop job.
Wild parakeets!
Again.
View from elsewhere.
Rhododendrons again, I think.
We were exhausted and starving -- I think that's why a lot of these photos are kind of off.
There are two things I love about camels:
1.) They're really gross creatures.
2.) They don't give a damn what you think.
