"Where Are the Fischer's???": Village Life near the Kabini River...

Village children in a courtyard.

Be Thankful for your water tap...

Buckets on a motorbike...you'd be astonished at what can be (and is) carried on a motorbike!

The kids were amazed to see this and had LOTS of questions about the plow!

Kind of a Minnesota/Wisconsin feel, don't you think?

Carrying water... Raju tells me that it's "easy, madame" afterall, they have a little flat circle balanced on their heads to rest whatever they are transporting on! Of course. Easy. Nothing to it. Easy-Peasy.

We hadn't taken a trip out of Bangalore for a while, so when our friends, the Vanderpool's suggested one last trip before they move back to the U.S., it was a no-brainer. We decided upon a weekend trip to the Cicada Resort at the Kabini River/Nagerhole National Forest which happens to have the largest concentration of wild Tigers in India...a nice antidote to the heat and bad air of a Bangalore summer!

The rural villages dotting Southern India have been some of my favorite places to travel through, often reminding me strangely of the agricultural landscape of the midwest, USA (palm trees, excepted, of course). I love riding along, watching, lulled by the countryside and the appearance of bright slashes of colorful fabric...clothing on a line, women carrying water at the roadside. All of those things exist in Bangalore, but the frenetic pace, the constant construction, the volume of beings, and the sheer loudness makes it harder to concentrate, more difficult to really take notice or to appreciate.

I'll post photographs of our family, friends, resort and jungle safari's tomorrow... Here's more of the villages we drove through on our way home:

This is my favorite picture! These women are pumping water from the well and the beautiful elder told our driver (in Kannada) that she was happy we wanted her photograph.