Shillong

This is a Khasi sport that the whole city of Shillong bets on. People pick numbers and put money on them ...
Men shoot arrows at a bamboo target for five minutes.
... The arrows are gathered ...

The arrows are carefully counted and sorted. The digits of the final number determine the winners.

Cherapunjee (in Meghalaya)

Our cottage in Cherapunjee.
This is the most impressively grimy picture of a place I've slept so far.
Our French friend Cyril looking quite fatherly.
Bangladesh.
This is a living root bridge. Khasi people made these bridges by winding and stretching roots across rivers for decades.
Cherapunjee holds the record for the place with the highest rainfall in the world.
Double-decker root bridge.

Kali Puja/Diwali in Guwahati, Assam

Kali statues abandoned by the river.
When we came back an hour later the statues were destroyed. In a forensic files kind of way, the following are some of the disturbing images from the crimescene.

Fractured limbs.
Broken tongues.
Decapitations.

Faces bashed in.

Throwing Kali into the river.
Dancing and music on the Brahmaputra River.

Purple people party.

When the purple party passed someone smeared me with purple chalk and pulled me into the crowd.

India so far ...

Right now I'm in that wiggly little part of India near Bangladesh and Bhutan and China and Burma. This is my favorite part of India so far, and I have a whole bunch of pictures on the way. But first I thought I'd map out the itinerary and list some of the places I've been so far in case you want to go to some of these places. The places are marked in white (see above). Here they are in order:

Delhi

Agra

Bharatpur

Jaipur

Balaji

Pushkar

Bikaner

Kolayat

Jaisalmer

Jodhpur

Mt. Abu

Bhuj (and surrounding villages)

Than

Ahmedabad

Jamnagar

Junagadh

Diu

Ahmedabad (again)

Jaipur (again)

Delhi (again)
(now we're on an airplane from Delhi to Guwahati, Assam)
Guwahati

Shillong

Cherapunjee

Bomdila

Tawang

Dirang (and villages)

Guwahati (again)

Shillong (again)

more to come ...

Diu Island

Dui is a small island that used to be a Portuguese colony. There's not much to say about Diu that can't be communicated by these pictures. Dave and I swam in the ocean and went to church and everything smelled like fish. It was great. I highly recommend it.



This is the church mass on All Saints Day.
These are shrines for men who were lost at sea.
Boys in India really like watching WWE.

Girnar Hill (outside Junagadh)

Girnar hill is ten thousand steps to the top. I left my shoes at the top and somebody stole them. Then I walked a few thousand steps down the mountain like a barefoot Hindu pilgrim. Then I found them. Somebody just left them on the stairs.