India - part I

After a week in Beijing, associated with activities surrounding the formal signing ceremony recognizing the establishment of my organization's new center in China (the first intern'l science research organization granted official status in China), I headed to India for two weeks.. There were multiple purposes to this trip - site visits, work with colleagues and partners, and assessing the communications needs, capacities, and comparative advantages there. Of course, I also wanted to work in some sight-seeing.
It was a fascinating first visit to India for me. Delhi is quite overwhelming, even compared to places like Cairo, or poor parts of Latin America. The sheer numbers of people, and the scale of poverty and filth are quite something. Yet, there is beauty and grace. And of course, an amazing history combined with the enormous potential of a country filled with talent and energy. Oh, and there are elephants, too.

Here are photos from the Red Fort, in old Delhi. It is filled with amazing stone work and detail.

I spent the night in Agra, so that I could visit the Taj Mahal shortly after day break. The lighting was beautiful, indeed, and the views completely up to expectations.

The ubiquitos cows. These were walking past my hotel in a fairly tony neighborhood.

This photo is from a site visit with colleagues to see the potato harvest, including varieties developed at our center to be more heat and drought resistant.

Driving back to Delhi from a site visit. We passed numerous pilgrims carrying these decorated buckets. They are filled with water from a sacred river, and the pilgrims will carry them many kilometers home.

Elephants on the road. My colleagues laughed at my amazement and excitement. Though one of them noted that his daughter had asked, upon their arrival in India, why there was a zoo along the side of the road. Along with elephants you see monkeys, cows, and other stray animals.

These photos are form Hyderabad - the old center of the city. Though less than 20 percent of the population of India is muslim, the proportion living in Hyderabad is much higher. Note the sweetpotatoes for sale at the market. We have several projects on sweetpotato, focused on encouraging a switch from white-fleshed to orange-fleshed varieties, which are rich in betacarotene and could help address widespread vitamin-A deficiency.

I was housed at one of our sister organizations, Int'l Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, which has a campus and miles and miles of experimental fields, ponds, and more.

These are chickpeas drying in the sun.

There are birds everywhere at ICRISAT