Rural India

Our favorite areas of India, as with most countries we have visited, have been away from the big cities out in the rural villages. We made friends with an auto-rickshaw driver in Varanasi and he took us an hour out of town to visit his family’s village. Sanjay Singh told us to be prepared to see very poor people in his village of Mahadepur. It’s true that they don’t have many material possessions, but the people seem happier and healthier than those we have met in the cities.



The village is neat and clean and very orderly divided into three castes. Each caste has their own well and own temple.






Everyone works in agriculture with the higher caste owning the land and providing the leadership for the community, the middle caste working as merchants and artisans, and the lower caste working as laborers.



Cows are the most important farm animals and are raised for their milk and manure. The women mix fresh cow manure with straw and make it into patties to dry for fuel. Once the patties are dry, they are stacked into decorative piles and covered with straw.





As everywhere else in India, the faces of rural India are beautiful.











And village life seems quieter and more peaceful than city life.






We spent all day yesterday flying south and are now in Kochin. There is a strike against a price increase in gasoline and no cars, buses, ferries, or auto rickshaws are running so we spent the day walking. It was almost as quiet as the countryside! Tomorrow we leave to stay on a lake in Kerala. It's very, very hot and humid here. Quite a change from northern India!