These select shots are taken from four different cities, Amritsar, Udaipur, Jaipur, and Agra. I'm sure for most of you town names mean nothing. Agra may ring a bell since it is home to the Taj Mahal. Images of the Taj are everywhere and yet it will still take your breath away.
Amritsar is the site of General Dyer's massacre of a thousand plus non-violent activists during India's fight for independence. These visits represent the past three weekends for me. Every trip provided it's own special experiences.
The most moving was without a doubt the Janmashtami celebration. There were some hard times too. Everything from the slavish labor (I watched a man with one arm carry loads of bricks and concrete on his head and dump them into a trailor towering over him, on a Sunday, when the rest of India is shut down, and at 7:30am. His homies were barefoot, he wore some ragged flops) to the "touts". The bus ride between Jaipur and Agra was particularly grueling for me.
Below are a couple of pics from Udaipur and Jaipur respectively.
The ceremony at Wagha in which the Pakistani and Indian flags are lowered in unison generated hope for a cosmopolitan like myself, even amidst some of the most disgusting nationalism one could ever witness.
