Golden Words of Hitler:

For those of you who do not know (which is probably 99% of you) the phone system in India is very interesting.  Particularly in the costs of a plan and what that service gets you.  My cell phone I purchased the very very basic phone for 1,200RS ($26) and you pay as you go.  So every so often I pay about $6.50 and top up for 300 credit.  All INCOMING calls are FREE as long as I am in my state where I purchased my SIM card.  Once I leave my state the incoming and outgoing calls are 1.5 credit/min.  Any local text is 1 credit any long distance is 1.5.  Its pretty simple and very cheap.  Here's the Catch - OK its not a catch really, but definately a problem.  What ever company you buy your SIM card through will send you text messages AND will call you with pre-recorded messages advertising stuff.  Now thats all good when you are in your state cuz its no charge to you, once you leave then its 1.5 credit/min.  Before I sent a text message to Vodaphone saying DND (do not disturbe) I was getting about 15 texts a day and at least 9 phone calls that has some woman singing hindi songs or some advertisement.  Annoying anyone?

Now, I get maybe 1 text a day and one phone call a day.  It makes it hard when I don't recognize your phone number - do I pick up or not?

What I really wanted to share with you is some of the information that is being "shared" with me in these texts.  Now the official texts are sales pitches (so not gonna share those - besides most are in hindi), but sometimes someone gets a hold of your number and all of a sudden you are getting messages for someone else.
 I will be writing them EXACTLY how they come...

Starting with the most recent:

Welcome New Morning with a smile on your hart & good thoughts in your miend and U will have a wonderful day *gud morning

A man daily sent hs wife a rose. 1 day he died, stil hs wife rcvd rose. She askd florist, he said man paid advnc 4 her whol life Moral-if u luv sm1 luv 4evr.

Golden Words of Hitler:

When you are in light, everything will follow you.  But when you enter dark, even your own shadow will not follow u...! Gud DAY Friend

"If you cannot be a pencil to write anyone's HAPPINESS, TRY Atleast To Be a NICE Rubber To ERASE Everyone's SORROWS".  This is the essence of life.

Frend means 'F' free from formalities 'R' right to say anything 'E' either good or bad 'N' no sorry no thanx 'D' dear as like u.

Wish u nd ur family a very happy new year...i wud pray to god to bring a lot of happiness in ur life..enjoy 2010 dear..

I am star but my shine is you  I am sun but my light is YOU   I am water but my thriest is you  I am iron but my stronghness is you   I am time but mY WITCH IS YOU   I am body but my hart is you "I am hart but my bits are you"

Mother is five star   Father is four star  Sister is three star  Brother is two star  "BUT A FRIEND IS REALY STAR AND THAT IS YOU

plz dont wast your time life is short keep smileing thanku from my side

u see how special u r to me.  I came so far by ship to say gutnite to u n ve a sweet dream.  Sorry 4 long silence.  Love u 4ever

Because this post did not lend itself to photos ive included one anyway.  Most of these are my "girls" as in they are the ladies who are registered as MSc students who I am teaching - and they are teaching me.  From left of the photo the girl with the pink dupata is Jolie, next to her is the short spit fire Rhia then Supria (the girl with the glasses peeking over S...oh crap whats her name.....the tall one....eek) then there is the girl in the back who I don't even know at all (she is not a student) and then Divia who is in the striped vest and last is Nadia who is the Mongolian!  Nadia is a non traditional student (aka over 30 yrs) who worked on the Snow Leopard Trust in Mongolia.  She is way way cool.

2nd attempt at Rajaji National Park

So, Dr. Malik who is a good friend of Dr. Krausman (my PhD advisor) invited me to go into Rajaji NP.  This was the same park I had been to on my trip to Haridwar.  I thought this would be a great chance to again look at the park and hopefully see some elephants....I thought that since I was going with a professor from WII and that we were going to go into a part of the park where tourists do not go that For Sure I would see some elephants....

This was as close as I got to seeing elephants. :(

But I did get to see some other things....Nilgai

who are very cool because they use "toilets" - latrine sites - meaning they poop in the same place over and over and over.

Chetal

Though there are not tourists, there are people who live in the park.  These are herders and used to be nomadic people.  Now they stay all the time in the park which is causing great ecological impact because of their grazing practices and of course anything they harvest from the forest (like wood) to sell.   

I also got to see a male samba deer.  Last time I only got to see the females.  This buck was smart enough to put a tree between the vehicle and him and then walk directly back keeping the tree in between us.  Even as we inched forward he moved to the left.  Don't know how he did that without looking, but it was rather funny.    He peeked out at us several times from behind a tree and was trying to stay perfectly still as if we couldn't see him.  Funny thing is that his antlers were so wide that was all we could see on either side of the tree. 

Ive put more pictures up on the Picasa web site so click the links to the left if you want more of the NP.  Not too much in way of excitement though....no predators or "really" good bird shots. :(

Food photos

I just wanted to show you some of the food that i have been talking about. This is idly - the meal we have every friday morning. It is basically rice dough. You take it and dip it in some sort of chutney. Typically we have a mint or coconut chutney. The making is kinda neat...thats the next picture. its steamed rice balls.

When I say we have vegetables and dahl, well, this is basically the vegetable mix we get.  Typically it has Aloo (aka Potato) and something else.  I believe this mush is Aloo & eggplant (they have some neat green eggplant here - its yummy).

When I talk about dahl - remember that's just lentals well...this is dahl:

Typically you poor that over rice OR you dip your chapati in it.