Population & Peace

I've been thinking about things I'd like to post about and one of the things that keeps coming back is to blog about some of my past travels. I journal as I travel and I love to go back through my memoires so I think this would be a nice way to share my experiences in a reflective manner and will be a good motivator to get old trip photos finally scanned in! What do you think? Think you can put up with more of my babbling? ;)

So at this point, I've only had a digital camera for about 4 years and have only visited 4 countries during that time. Before that though, I had visited 7 others so I've got lots of scanning to do!

Now don't worry, I'll still share tidbits about dancing, beading, teaching, parenting animals & a husband, and all of the oh so exciting things that accompany my life.

So what trip reflection to share first??? Such a difficult thing to choose!

I just went back to the first trip I had a digital camera on (2004) and here you go...my first travel post! The first trip I took with a fancy schmancy camera was to Switzerland and India with a dear dear friend of mine. This picture comes from the India portion of that trip. There was so much that happened on that trip that it will take many many posts to cover it all but here's a taste.

When I tell people about India, I tell them that there are three 'P's that can't be explained in words. Those are Pollution, Povery and Population. This picture obviously catches the population P.

One evening, my friend, her aunt and myself traveled to a mall of sorts for dinner and to meet some other family members. I had Pizza Hut (which, if I recall correctly, was the only true blue 'American' food I had on the trip!) in the food court and did lots and lots of people watching. When we first arrived, the mall was not near as crowded as the picture shows but I began to notice that hoards and hoards of people kept showing up! It wasn't long after that that a stage emerged and a new Bollywood singer named Shaan took the stage. Apparently he was quite the Indian hearthob at the time! By the time Shaan had taken the stage, the place was more full than anywhere I've even been I believe. When the show ended, the place cleared out like you could never imagine and we were back to being comfortable.

That's a taste of how India was though, packed. It runs on some sort of organized chaos that I don't know if I'll ever fully understand but I will always fully respect it. There's this amazing balance that just works there. I don't know how they do it, but they do. And I'm grateful to have experienced that balance.