On the sixth floor of the Hotel Nakshatra

We will be in Guwahati for about a week and we are staying on the sixth floor. Ray always takes the elevator (it has a nice view...all glass toward the outside of the building) but I try to take the stairs. There is not much chance to exercise since we do a lot of sitting and riding in a car through heavy traffic. There is a book about Saskatchewan that says, "You don't know cold unless you live in Saskatchewan." I would say, "You don't know heavy maniacal traffic unless you have experienced it in India!" I have driven on the autobahn in Germany and I've driven in Jamaica and in Paris...but I don't think that I even want to try driving in India. I took three motorcycle rides from two different riders and the scary part is not when they are going fast but when they are just crawling along at a low speed trying to avoid potholes, puddles, cyclists, carts, "Tuk-tuks," pedestrians, and animals. Out on the better road where there is more space and one can go faster, it feels a lot safer.

The first picture is of Bethel English School. To get to it we walked on a grass bridge! (Bamboo is a grass.) Next is the road through a former leper colony. Here Shelby and Laura did a lesson with the kids and did a hands on activity. I noticed a playpen for a toddler just as we were leaving. Everywhere around Bagdogra you can see acres of tea plantations. We bounced over a railway track and crawling over the rough road was a truck full of bananas and sugar cane. The next pictures is a gathering in the basement. The night before we met with them and we merely sat on the carpet with everyone else. However the next day they found some chairs and brought them in and they made their guests sit on chairs. That is the same everywhere in India. Guests are treated like royalty. They will invite you to their home, serve you a meal and will wait for you to leave before they will eat.

The next couple of pictures are of the Marina Hotel that we stayed at in Bagdogra. They were working on an addition to the hotel and a worker splashed water on the brick in preparation for adding the cement finish over the brick.
We took a Spice Jet from Bagdogra to Gwahati. I threw in a couple of pictures of the clouds and the reflection off the water below.
As we passed over a bridge over a large body of water we saw the sun going down. And at the school we stayed at for two nights there was a couple of large flying bugs that sounded like they had diesel engines. They were two inches across.
The students at Little Flower School lined up for school assembly before going to their classes.
The next picture is of the house parents at an orphanage and school also called Little Flower School but this one is in Chakihali.
Back at the other Little Flower School we met with the teachers.
Lunch was rice, curried vegetables, mustard leaf greens, curried chicken and tea.
View from the back of a motorcycle.
We visited with Jugul, a teacher at Little Flower School, and his wife and daughter.
Everywhere we go we are gifted with a "gamosa" which literally means "body towel" but that is not necessarily what it is used for. The last picture is of a typical classroom of a poorer school.