I'm really...

...gonna miss this.

malaria

here's some from a quick story on malaria in Goa. the Goan medical system takes extensive steps to prevent the malaria parasite from proliferating amongst the population...like spraying standing water on construction sites with anti-larval chemicals and testing all construction workers daily for malaria. we got to ride along with a crew of doctors to a couple construction sites and then visited a hospital where advanced patients were being treated.

palolem beach

Goan fishermen, train window

Goa

The first three photos were taken at Patnam beach in Goa... same subject, relatively same situation, yet I cant pick... so holla back folks.

And we literally just (thirty seconds ago) realized that our flight leaves in less than 12 hours when we thought we had an whole extra day, so sorry for the sloppy post, but I've got a plane to catch. See you on the other side of the world.

street scene, varanasi, 2008

I don't know why the colors look wrong, but for whatever reason, when I crosspost to Tumblr, the colors look right. But at Tumblr you can't click to enlarge the photo. Gah. Can't someone invent a photoblogging system that works (and isn't owned by Yahoo)?

EDIT: added one more picture. if this were wild art, and we had room for the catchhead, I think I would call it "This situation is entirely unacceptable:"

one from bangalore

There's something I love about this image. I don't know what this guy's story is; I snapped it, started to walk away, then thought better of it and turned back. But the man was gone.
four more from this neighborhood on my personal blog.

the forty hour train ride...

... was well worth it, after arriving on the beach in Goa.

The first five are either on the train or out the orange tinted train window. I passed the time shooting out the window at the various stations or standing in between cars to get some fresh air and enjoy the view.

The last four are on the beautiful Palolem beach in south Goa. People are friendly and the beach is almost deserted save a couple of Australian toursits and some local fisherman. Oh... and anyone whos been to India knows that cows are literally everywhere; the beach is no exception.

ceci n'est pas une photo...

...it's actually 29 of them, strung together into a panorama. Especially since it's not a particularly good week for image manipulations, I want to make sure I point that out from the outset. I don't own a lens that gives me 270 degrees of coverage, so I use this technique out of necessity. Also 'cuz I think it's kinda cool.

This is a picture of the Kempegowda Tower, on the grounds of the Lalbagh Gardens in Bangalore. It's not a shrine or a temple; it's actually one of four guard towers erected in the 1500s by, well, the ancient chieftain Kempe Gowda himself. It was assumed that the towers would mark the boundaries of the town of Bengaluru.

Half a millennium later, you can still see the center of town in the distance (on the right side of the image), but the tower is definitely in town. Much of Bangalore extends out, from the 300+ acre complex known as Electronics City 10 miles south, to the new international airport 25 miles to the north. Beyond that, the work done in Bangalore crosses the world. I read a brief in the Indian Express this week: apparently Mindtree, the Bangalore-born IT company, is opening a branch in Monterrey. That's in Mexico. The facility won't be alone; Infosys, the mega-cap from Maharashtra, set up a software development center there last year.

Could Kempe Gowda have envisioned this, even in his wildest dreams?

I'm not sure if I'm gonna use this picture, but I'm definitely gonna use the metaphor.

—

Anyway, you may have noticed my posting falling off the past couple weeks. Sorry about that. I've been shooting and writing and taking notes, and now that I'm on the way out of the country — this was posted from London and written in the island kingdom of Bahrain — I'll have time to post some more of the stuff I shot. In fact, as long as we're on the topic of these panoramas, here are a couple more.

This one's the Taj from the north bank:


This next one was kind of a disappointment... I was only able to salvage a chunk, and not even all of it. But there's something I like about it:


(ps: yes, these images are — by their nature — an agglomeration of different moments from many different photos. and no, i'm not sure that I like this. My take in the end is that these are not photographs; sound off in the comments if you have any thoughts.)

four from benares

Journey to the mountains

Agra train station




Numbers two and three- at His Holiness the Dalai Lamas birthday celebration in McLeod Ganj.








Numbers three, four and five- Buddhist monks at the Temple compound where H.H. the Dalai Lama himself lives.



An old Baba passing out sweets at a temple in Vashisht (just outside of Manali).



Kullu River valley.



A Vashisht woman washes clothes at the hottest hot springs I've ever been in.