Chitor

Ted took this photograph (above) of a bike . . . Just a bike. He did the same with a bycicle riksha later on in the trip . . . and, although the picture seemed . . . benign enough as it were . . . It also had a definite aesthetic that I for one thought was rather nice.
This is us at the restaurant of the hotel we stayed at In Chitor. There's an interesting story about the rotund manger/owner of this place . . . that I'll get to later . . .
ChitorgarhBeautiful . . . just beautiful. Can you believe we walked pretty much throughout the entirety of this area? Yes, we logged about an estimated ten or so hiking/walking miles a day; sometimes less, sometimes (a lot) more. and this, on top of the 4-6 miles a day that I was running in the morning, made for a very intense time in India.


This was the tour guide that walked us through this particularly expansive fort.
India was chok full of stray dogs like this. They were true survivors. I couldn't tell you the number of grotesque injuries I saw on pooches like this one. And yet . . . they still managed to look pretty healthy and prolific as a whole all the same. I really wanted to take a little puppy back with me - although I knew it wasn't going to happen (not this time around anyway).
Here's Ted (above) traveling through the ruins of this very, very old fort.
(Above) This just made very little sense to me how elevated we were.
(Above) Ted looks up at one of various towers in Chitorgarh.
This is one of my very favorite photos that I took while in India. I took it while scaling the interior of a tower very similar to the one pictured above. I simply like the subject and composition; background, lighting, dark foreground, framing. It looks very foggy outside this window, but, believe it or not, that's CLOUD coverage - not fog. That's how elevated we were in this photo.
We were never ones to miss an opportunity to mingle and take pictures with the natives. The small kid in the middle bottom of the group (the one that has his compatriot's elbow resting on his noggen) started this all. He was the one that made his interest known by initially approaching me.

Last Day In Chitor

Aw man . . . This old man was so beautiful. He was so kind and warm. Both Ted and I had an extended conversation with him about who knows what . . . many things. and the fact that he spoke very little English and we spoke even less Hindi didn't ultimately deter the communication one bit.

This was the big ol fat, sleezy, slothish turd of a hotel manager/owner cat that worked at the hotel we stayed at a couple of nights while in Chitor. It was quite interesting though, for, in the course of my incessant, daily physical exercises, I ended up having to work out in the hotel room JUST after we had arrived there and gotten it. This was before the hotel staff had fully completed cleaning and arranging the room itself, however. So in walks Mr. Fatso Donut, and he sees me all sweaty, doing pugilistic maneuvers and throwing rapid fire strikes in the air. Quite taken aback (and momentarilly intimidated, I could tell) it came to pass that he ended up thinking that I was Ted's personal (and very dangerous) body guard. And Ted himself? probably some sort of very important diplomat or American movie star or other. Being that he seemed as smarmy and underhanded as he did, I didn't ultimately do anything to deter his mind from this cautionary perspective. I mostly stayed silent, mean-looking, and stoic the entire time I was in his presence.
This was one of the kids that was standing just in the periphery of the conversation Ted and I were having with the old man. Had to take his picture, of course.