99 Thursday Sep 9

Thursday Sep 9 Day 99

I have not posted a blog entry for almost a week. The early part of the week had really bad weather with moderate to heavy rains. Yesterday the rain was light and I headed out for the internet cafe only discover that the server was down. I shall try again this morning. A trip to the internet cafe involves a 40 minute, 1.5 mile hike, so I was very disappointed yesterday even though I did get an additional shot of training in.

I woke up at 4 and spent the next hour and a half figuring out how to video tape sunsets. Last evening I found the best spot and needed to practice the steps needed to get the equipment there and set up. One of the objectives is to get each day’s sunset from exactly the same location in case I want to merge several of them together during editing. I am also going to take still pictures of the sunsets. So I went out today and marked the safety walls lining the outside of the road with a mark for the placement of the legs of my tripods. This way I will return to the same specific location. These “safety walls” are about 18 inches high made out of stone and about 18 inches thick. Each is about 6 feet long with a space between them of 18 inches. These walls marking the outside of the road have been in use here for close to 200 years.

While setting up my cameras (three of them with three tripods) I stepped into something soft on the pavement. I uttered that wonderful expression of disgust “shit” only to look down and realize that is exactly what I had stepped into. This was not horse or cow dung but human excrement. Someone had a call of nature and squatted down by the wall and taken a “dump”. I see these very commonly along the paved roads and usually next to the “safety” walls. India has a long way to go when it comes to sanitation. The interesting thing is that the men pee on the inside of the road near the gutters but not to take a “dump”. Perhaps they are concerned about fecal matter being washed into the drains and pouring down the hillside. Interesting!!

The rain has cleared the atmosphere and the valley below is clear. For the family, I can see beyond the Swallicks when frequently these mountains are not even visible let alone the rivers beyond.

This blog is liable to become a weather report but there is no forecast. It has rained lightly today and there are clouds obscuring the mountains to the west, so NO sunset this evening.