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Jālgaon, India
21° 0' N 75° 33' E
Nov 08, 2006 14:30
Distance 366km

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Other entries in Jālgaon

re-charge

Text written in: English

yeah daytime train travel is SO the way to go! serious mental recharging happened on this trip.

scenery - specatcular. imagine western slope colorado or monumnet valley but with every spare inch of land turned into farmland. guess this is what happens when your peeps outnumber your resources - every square inch has to be farmed.

we passed this massive lava field - in the US this would be a national monumet and a geological mystery. here, people have put up shacks on top of the lava rock and rice paddies in what few valleys there are between the rocks (the only places where dirt has actually built up). screw a monument these people just need a place to eek out a living.

also saw grape vines - a cool thing to find in this barren landscape - and had just read about a freshly-starting wine industry in this area...mmmmm....wine.....gooooood. but was also hasseled by no less than 6 raisin touts on the train in less than an houras we passed through the area (peds was sleeping so I got the full brunt of it). ugh..... touts.... baaaaad.

passed the most derelict shanty towns outside mumbai. these are the worst we've seen - but realized - as far as comparing india to the rest of the world - poor is poor. you can't really have more (or less) of nothing. corrugated metal and ripped plastic walls are the building material of choice here as everywhere.

and rickshaw drivers are homeless here too - they work SO hard during the day and sleep on their rickshaws at night. every night. I've realized in some ways I've gotten so desensitized to seeing shanty towns & poverty...but in all fairness, you HAVE to or every day would be gut wrenching - it's that pervaisive. still, not sure how I feel about this... 

and also realizing what makes india different is just how much poverty there is. how many shanty towns there are. and that the NGO presense in this country is so diluted compared to places like cambodia. so many people here really do have nothing and really are desperate. it's intense. glad I'm volunteering soon....even if it will only be minimum impact...