Half way

I am sorry for the slow posts but not a ton has happened and I have not had a ton of time to write my thoughts. Hopefully this is a long post that will make up for it. As you well know India, is nuts. It is always just a laugh a minute. Things are great here. At this point there is only a week to go in my trip so that is very nice. It has been a long time since I have been home and I can’t wait to get back to America and see everyone.
We have left Bhilai and we are no in Jamshedpur for a couple of days. It only took 10 hours on the train but it went smoothly. During the night I opened the door and to watch the as the world goes by and it is a pretty crazy site. It is really just darkness where you can make out only a few things. Just thinking that if something happened and you slipped you would be in the middle of nowhere in India (which is really deep nowhere) and have no idea what to do or even where to go. So that was a little scary and I did not open the door again, but we made it so there were no problems. The trains are very nice now and you can relax and enjoy yourself. The best part is that they have electrical outlets in them so you can use all of your electrical gear.
Some people have asked about the cows, before I arrived, I thought it was a lot of talk about cows in the street and things like that. Let me tell you, it is 100% true. There are cows everywhere. It is nuts. Two days ago I saw one cross a busy intersection at about 9:30 pm and yesterday at about 10 am there was one in lying down in the middle of a pretty busy street. I saw one in a steel mill, on the side of the road, in the woods everywhere and one at the train station (picture below). It is crazy how common they are. These cows do not belong to anyone so I do not see this problem being solved anytime soon. They just walk down the street like people.

The traffic here is unreal. They do not merge, they just blend. In Bhilai there is a train crossing right by the hotel where we stayed. There were at least 6 lanes of traffic where there normally would be just 2 (picture below). On any given street you will see any combination of bikes (push and motor), rickshaws (pedal and motor) carts, cars, trucks and cows that everyone is going everywhere. They are always on their horn. It is unreal. They love to use it even when it is not necessary or useful. The only time they use the horn properly is when they are passing someone. Also everyone is going somewhere with something. They just make it work (picture below).





The service here is unreal. They have so many people working but so few that do anything, or even know what to do. When you ask for something it usually takes forever and you have to ask several times. No one seems to know what is going on. Also the waiters just look at you and when you tell them something it seems like they are just zoned out. Now I know how parents feel when they are talking to teenagers. The other big thing is that the people serving have very limited knowledge about things and the people being waited on have a vast knowledge on things. The other day I heard a man ask for an egg-white omelet. Do you think the chef has any idea what that is? The man had to explain it to him several times and I do not know if it was made correctly. Everyone just needs to understand who they are working with and go from there. If it is too hard to explain, then you probably should not order it.
We also went to the Bhilai zoo. The zoo was run down but cool. They did take care of the what few animals that were there. Not the best cages but they were clean. It cost us 5rp each to go it. The three people that went paid less than $.50 (total for all 3 of us) to go in and see the animals. We got to see both a white tiger and a Bengal tiger which was awesome. You forget how big and powerful they are. They are truly an impressive animal. I hope we can save them. The other cool animal that we saw was the Himalayan black bear. They are great. Just like most other bears, they sleep a lot, have a good time and eat a lot. They were just trying to stay out of the sun. I had never seen one before and it was good to see. The white “V” on their chest was very neat.

So now we are in Jamshedpur for the weekend and then it is back to Kolkata. I am sure there will be some stories from Jamshedpur. When we arrived (1:30 am) there were at least 1000 people sleeping in the train station. I do not know if they did not have a house or if they were waiting for their train but it is pretty crazy to see so many people sleeping with such bright lights on. More adventures to come.