Author: mwilson
-
Old Delhi
Hank Kreuzman organized an afternoon trip by several of us to Old Delhi. We first toured the Red Fort (see above), which was the primary palace of the Mughal emperors until 1857 and a British and Indian administrative center since. It is a fascinating place, especially considering its long and complex history. The capitol city…
-
Wastewater management in Wooster Nagar
It is not the most exciting topic, but one close to the lives of rural Indians. The new town of Wooster Nagar had the rare opportunity to devise a water management plan from scratch as they built the infrastructure of their village. Finding and managing fresh water for drinking, cooking and other household uses is…
-
Living stone
This morning we visited a series of stone temples along the coast at Mahabalipuram with a world-class expert on temple architecture and Hindu history. While others will write about the cultural and artistic things we learned, I can’t, of course, resist talking about the wonderful rock itself. These ancient structures are made of the local…
-
Flight over India
As the Kingfisher jet pushed its way up through the humid, gray air of Delhi, we watched the colorful streets of the city fade and the vast north Indian plain open below us. The flight south to Chennai was a chance to see India from yet another perspective. The mark of humanity on the land…
-
Mughal Stonework
The highlight of visiting the abandoned Mughal capitol Fatehpur Sikri near Delhi was the chance to look closely at the extraordinary stonework produced by 16th century artisans. The city is built entirely of a red sandstone (well, technically a coarse siltstone, a name my students would insist upon) of two varieties. The first is a…
-
Beggars in Delhi
The baby was pressed up against the window glass of the car with his tiny brown face flattened against the surface maybe three inches from my eyes on the other side. He was wearing only a torn strip of a shirt at the top of his chest. On his bare torso below were tightly wrapped…
-
Geological Holy Land
Our trip to Devprayag, where the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda Rivers combine to produce the Ganges, began in Haridwar on the bank of the Ganges. This was the day that I could see India through the disciplinary eyes of a geologist. The rocks and landscapes we saw on our northward journey transcended the extraordinary human culture…