GETTING A GRIP ON THE WEATHER

In April, we had two mega storms. There is a joke going around the neighborhood. "What's the weather report today? Answer: Partly cloudy and 50 degrees, but call back in ten minutes and it will be different."  Yeah!

This hailstorm came on so strong and so fast and unexpected it was like an attack. Moth ball sized hailstones sounded like explosions on the roof and deck.

You can see them bouncing in the air. They bounced up onto the bench. From eight feet under a covered part of the deck, they hit my screen door. The roadway a fairy tale, pure white in less than 10 minutes.

The aftermath, a blanket of green leaves pounded off the trees.

My front sidewalk, even with  the partial shelter of the house, covered. My driveway and the street the same.

When it dried out enough, I swept just in front of my doorway and to the steps. I couldn't believe the pile of leaves I had to compost. The previous week, we had a torrential downpour of rain that lasted two days and half of another.

Now I'm dealing with oversized grass. I've plowed through it to get to my empty chicken coop. I hoped to find the hose buried in the grass so I can put water out for the wild birds. Their receptacles are empty.

I had to stomp a new path to the coop.

Several grass plants are taller than me and my fence. I've lived here for 38 years and I've never seen anything like it. The high country has seen 91 inches of rain this year,  a new record. And there are people who don't believe the climate is changing from the misadventure of humans and our polluting devices? We all have to adjust. It is folly to ignore it.
We can all do our little part by supporting harmless power initiatives and reducing our own use of carbon fuels whenever possible. It takes global action, all world populations to cooperate to blunt this robbery of the norm.
More on that subject later. I've gotta go pull some giant weeds.

INDIA-A LAST LOOK

Looking back at my travels, I've done close to 3,000 blogs and this effort was disjointed and irregular. I've missed events, lost or misplaced pictures  and today I'm laughing about it. I thought I'd blog pictures that I didn't fit into any narrative, like the Bengal tigers, snatched from the film we saw. Aren't they magnificent animals?


We learned a lot about the Hindu Gods. The great Mahatma Gandhi was  much admired,  But I never mentioned his seven dangers to Human Virtue:
Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience;  Knowledge without character; Business without ethics, Science without humanity; Religion without sacrifice and Politics without principle.
They resonate with me.

We learned a lot about weddings;  the groom rides a white horse, an elephant or a black horse. What about people who don't have a horse? This groom can afford to hire a horse and carriage and decorate it. But, I never found out how even poorer people get married?  Maybe next time.

And wouldn't you just once like to ride free and unfettered on top of a car or truck? As a farm girl growing up, I had that experience. And many times rode in the back of a pick-up. In California even your dog can't ride untied in the back of a pick-up.

OAT is such a great company to travel with because of the great off-itinerary items included in the experience.  Though my cricket  lesson was canceled, one of the employees posed with his cricket racket for me. A cricket serve and return is like a baseball pitch. You can't see it unless it is coming at you at 112 miles per hour. I missed the lesson, but enjoyed the match.

And I have to wonder, will I ever enter a bus with a crowd of people waiting to get on, and look for a vendor holding belly dancing beads or some other fascinating item you can buy nowhere else?

I'm an art nut and an artist. I took pictures of art everywhere.

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Art isn't only about paintings, prints, sculpture and fabric wall hangings. What about this doorway in the Palace Hotel?

And this carved door into Agra Marble Company.

Bronze carvings on the hip of a hippo at Chandela.

And a foot rest on the end of our bed at our last hotel. Some flights were early. Others were late in the night.  We got to enjoy a professional sari fitting. A yoga class designed to remove tensions and let go of all cares. I marked down every posture he taught us.  I learned to breathe out loud. Ahmmm. Ooohhh. Mmmmm.

The gift shop had an interesting assortment of things.

These shoes have tread miles of India. A country I'd recommend for its wonderful traditions; its diverse and colorful  people. People here are warm and giving; they speak 607,000 languages. It is hard for me to imagine. My nearby town of Stockton has 22 ethnicities, which means great food.

At the airport in Dehli I saw something I'd never seen before. A smoking lounge. Paid for by Camel cigarettes my guess.

Even a decorated camel is art.  Those of you who know me, know I have to get my art "fix". And, I did.
Alaviha. I'll let you guess which of the thousands of languages it is. It means, goodbye.

DHARMARAJIKA STUPA, GANGES AT SUNSET.

Long lines awaited our little group of 16 as we came to see a Buddhist ruin.

The Dharmarajika Stupa dominates the scene. Stupas were built to hold relics of Lord Buddha. King Ashoke The Great built it in the 3rd century B.C., one of seven. This is the only one to survive.


Inside the stupa, a green marble casket was found. Inside of it was a stone box. No one knows what the box held, but it is now in a Calcutta Museum. The casket was thrown in the River Ganges.


Layers of brick were laid over the old brick to enlarge the stupa. A set of stairs was built from four directions, meeting at the top so the guardians could climb up and enter the stupa.  The stair structure was torn down by order of King Banaras in 1794 A.D. to use as building materials.


In time, the same fate applied to the rest of the buildings on the site.

Today, a wide path around the stupa is used by the faithful to walk around clockwise, then counterclockwise. They still place flowers near or on the stupa. Signs encourage them not to place flowers, but they persist. Hugo and Kris made friends with a charming little boy on their walk around the stupa.


Archeologists dug up the ruins and discovered beautiful carvings on the faces of some of the brick work.

Buddha is carved in the circle on the right.

These little beauties survived in decent shape for over 2,000 years. Pretty amazing.

Before visiting the Stupa, we spent two  hours at Museum Sarnath where artifacts from the stupa site are housed, along with a photo section showing some of archeology  work and a history of Buddha. The beautiful and very special Buddha housed here has disappeared from my photo album. Due to human error. Human, that's me, I'm sad to say. Who can understand electronics? That's my excuse.

We packed into electric rickshaws and headed for the River Ganges to watch the ceremony at sunset. As you can see the streets are crowded.

The rickshaws are also limited in how close they can get to the river. Our guide, takes us through a short cut, that I mistakenly blogged as happening on yesterday's trip to the river.

The short cut was a crush. You could hardly take a picture for being jostled.

Street cooks were making dinner.

A be sure to miss event for such as we.

We again load into boats. This beautiful tourist boat sits high above the water, but it was not for us.

As the sun went down, we could see the fires on shore. I couldn't see my camera settings well enough to set it for flash. Flash can only reach about 20 feet or less, but it would have helped.

Our guide explains  the candles tradition. You send them off with a prayer for yourself, or a loved one who has died.

We silently make our prayer.

Then set them afloat in the sacred water.

A beautiful view from our boat.

As we get closer to shore, we can see the priests and people celebrating in what is their special ritual.

As we climb the stairs on our way out, we find other tourists like us taking pictures of the crowd. The priests, with the help of their apprentices, offer prayers, light the candles with flowers then ring great bells. Someone from our group once commented, "...its their religion, kind of a shame that this has become a tourist attraction."
But, as Ranvir told us, this goes on every day, every night. 365 days a year. It is a never-ending ritual, celebrating dying. With the hope to be reincarnated on a higher plain, a new life.