What's the deal with the Ganga

We went to see the Bay of Bengal. We passed some beautiful boats.

Look at them boats.

 Beaoootiful.

 Boooats.

We hung some flags

Ever seen flags like that? Didn't think so.

These kids helped

Future Kinship of Rivers rockstars.

Chris posing by them flags.

Yes, flags, yes.

This was the view from our hotel room! We were just about on the edge of the Sundarbans.

Date palm

Mango

On my barely working knee, I climbed up to the unfinished floors on the roof

This was the view.

 Goats, by the way, are just plain weird animals. There's a reason Satan is related to them, I swear.

A lil alter by the beach. I went swimming instead of taking photos, so there's no photos of us by this beach.

And while we were hanging flags on the beach a bunch of them got soaked, incidentally. We hung them up to dry. Check out our room. Straight up festooned.

We went further into the islands to find some entirely empty beaches. Beaches like these are entirely untouched except for the local people who have been fishing on them for thousands of years, and folks like us who come out to see these beaches that have been entirely untouched except for the local people who have been fishing on them for thousands of years and folks like us.

It was really beautiful out here

 Water came trickling from the mainland to mix with the wide, wide surf rolling up the beaches, forming these beautiful patterns of light in the sand.

Here's a woman setting her nets for the day. These pictures were taken around quarter to six in the morning.

 Here's what the nets look like once the tide's come in a little. The crosscurrent pushes the fish into the net.

The wind turbines in the background don't spin anymore, and stand instead like eerie giants in the dawn.

This dog stood outside one of the empty shacks, keeping always within about 25 feet of it. His back left leg looked hurt.

Catching bait fish, I think. The fellow in the blue is our driver.

Somehow the only picture that came out of this guy, our driver, is taken in probably the only moment he wasn't wearing his big goofy smile. He looked like he was about as old as I was when I just started driving, but oh boy could he whip that truck through traffic. Wasted no time on that accelerator. Turned out he was around 27.

Rudra, Linda's boyfriend, taking a beautiful shot of a beautiful landscape. Rudra here was the man. He knew everything about absolutely everything in India, was super cool and devilishly handsome. Hang on to that guy, Linda, he's a real dude.

I don't know what this was for.

This is where that dog lived.

Poor guy.

Just watched us the whole time.

Rudra found a picturesque old man to photograph next to the crashing waves. The picturesque old man obliged.

The sides of this hut were made from mustard oil canisters, pressed flat. Think of that next time you're throwing aluminum cans in the trash.

This bicycle cart was a thing of beauty.

For indoor and outdoor tourists.

This was beautiful too. We headed out to the mangrove swamps.

There were crabs in the mangrove swamps. Lil red crabs.

 The path was slippery, slippery, slippery.

These beaches were entirely untouched except for the park rangers who told us we had to leave after 20 minutes.

The tide was coming in fast.

We got back, and bought coconuts. Then the goats snuck up on us.

The River Ganga in the background! My photo blocked suddenly by this overloaded bicycle cart.

The River Ganga! It's huge out here, and muddy.

We went back to Kolkata, to see the people coming to worship, collect water, and wash themselves in the River Ganga

They had these boats

This woman's collecting mud.

Collecting water. If you spill Ganga water in your house, you're not supposed to step in it.

Some unscrupulous soul was using this big magnet to drag for coins that people threw into the Ganga in tribute.

An incense offering.

Lots of traffic as the sun went down

The next day, there was a taxi strike, which made it extremely hard to get around. Bengal is the most progressive part of India, and workers don't hesitate to get together and let everyone know what they want. The taxis had these beautiful hand-lettered license plates.

Ping wanted to go to Chinatown. We hired a little auto-taxi, (not included in the strike) who said he'd take us there, even though it was off our route. He wasn't entirely trustworthy. He took us to the wrong Chinatown. He dropped us off in a really dingy industrial neighborhood where there were a couple Chinese restaurants instead. We were really confused, so Ping went into one of the restaurants to find out what was going on, and if we could maybe find some lunch.

We ended up in an extremely dingy, entirely empty restaurant with nothing that looked like Chinese food on the menu. Finally the owner came over, a large, sweaty man with a grumpy expression. Ping asked him a few questions in Chinese, and within seconds, this grumpy sweaty old guy transformed into a big laughing Buddha. He said his mom would cook us the best Chinese meal we'd ever had! With a smile like that, we knew it was going to be good. This was the first authentic Chinese meal that Rudra had ever tasted. He'd shown us all around Kolkata, and we were glad to show him something new too.

Here's the owner's family! From left to right, we've got Ping, Rudra, a miscellaneous friend, the owner's wife (in back), the owner's sister, the owner (back), the owner's mother, who cooked our food, and me!

Next we bought tea. Good thing we left when we did or Ping would have bought out the whole shop.

Finally, we stopped by Linda's dad's house. Albert Ashok is an amazing self-taught professional artist. I wish we could have stayed all night looking at his work. His skill with anatomical drawing and figures, (especially horses and bulls) is masterful. He's published over 100 books on drawing. Here's a couple of the paintings in his studio.

I bought a wonderful drawing of a woman on horseback from him. It's unbelievable. There's nothing else I'll need to take back from India.It's a shame it's all wrapped up right now, otherwise I'd be taking it out to look at it over and over again.

Alright, by for now! Next I'll tell you about Hydrabad. We've got a big reading with some India poets tonight,, so it should be exciting!