More India

These photos are from my visit to the Indian state of Orissa. I stayed in the lovely capital city of Bhubaneswar, a planned city filled with hundreds (formerly thousands) of temples, big and small. There are wide boulevards, large parks, and murals adorning walls, bridges, and more. It's lovely.
Here, I visited sweetpotato projects and numerous project partners. I had to give an impromptu presentation to a group of about 50 youths from poor farming communities displaced by large steel industries. I also got a chance to visit many temples, including the large and famous Konark temple located about 1.5 hours from Bhubaneswar, near the coast and Bay of Bengal.

We drove out of Bhubaneswar and into the countryside, past harvest rice paddies and innumerable temples, old and new.






When we arrived at the site, the locals were very suspicious, and rightly so. They are very poor farmers, who have already been displaced by large steel companies. When they saw us arrive in shiny cars, they thought we had come to take away their land, once again. When they found out that we were there to see how the sweetpotato plants we'd provided were faring, they then were more concerned about getting more planting material from us.
The land is poor, and work very backbreaking. Our hope is that our planting material will yield better results (quality and quantity) than the local varieties, and that over time people will be willing to adopt to darker fleshed varieties, which are more nutritious. It's a long-term process and investment.

At a local youth training center, I was asked to give an impromptu talk. The deal was sealed when the power went out, so they could not continue their normal computer and other training. So I did my best to talk about how computers could open a much broader world to them, and to take advantage of every training and learning opportunity given them. I also tried to convey the idea that they had more talents than they might realize; eagerness, curiousity, maybe the ability to tell stories, fix things, come up with new ideas. That sort of thing. I'm not sure it was my most shining moment; it felt far more like a "lost in translation" sort of occasion. And in the end the kids seemed most interested in having their picture taken with me, which was fun, too.

These are views of just some of the hundreds of temples of Bhubaneswar. The larger ones have pools or lakes. The green pool pictured below is said to hold water from all of the sacred rivers of India.

These men had caught fish from one of the temple pools and were waiting to have them weighed and sold.

Three on a bike, a common sight. Sometimes you'll see a family of four or five piled onto a motorbike.

 

These photos are from the magnificent Konark temple. It was built to resemble an enormous chariot, with 12 wheels and pulled by 7 horses. The sculptures adorning the temple are remarkable - including numerous series' of Kama Sutra poses. There are also dancers, and elephants, and various gods, including snake goddesses. It's a fantastic place, and very popular even though we tried to arrive relatively early in the morning.

After the Konark temple, we drove a kilometer or so to the coast, where I got to put my feet in the Bay of Bengal. The beach was empty save for my footprints and those of my colleague and host, Sreekanth.