Delhi, Agra and the Taj Mahal

Today we took a car from Delhi to Agra because we heard there was a mcdonalds there. And because we were there, we decided to see this other thing called the Taj Mahal.

When we sat down to plan this trip, we very nearly did not work this into the itinerary. We knew we wanted to see Goa and Kerala in the south, and the three hour flight from chennai to Delhi to spend two days there, a total of 8 hours of which would be spent in a car driving to and from Agra just didn't seem worth it.

Then again, we were worried that we wouldn't be taken seriously by anyone from back home if we went to India for 6 weeks and didn't get a picture of the two of us standing in front of the Taj Mahal. And since neither of us are particularly good with photoshop, we decided to make the trip.

False sarcasm above aside, it was a very exciting trip. Moriah and I went to a bazaar last evening, where if I may say so we did our haggling ancestors proud. I got a pair of shoes for ten dollars, talking the merchant down from 36. I had talked him down to 15 and he was nearly shouting at me, and actually grabbed my arm as I left the shop. He then ran out after me and offered me 10. He gave me a truly disgusted glare as I handed him the money and took the shoes. Moriah was equally successful, though did not have to resort to leaving the store. She got a nice pair of earrings for a buck fifty, down from five, and a bag for four, down from 15, and in both cases she paid exactly what she had decided before starting to barter. We celebrated with nice dinner at a place called united coffee house, which had a British imperial ambience. First time I've eaten at a restaurant with chandeliers while wearing shorts (I think).

The road to Agra was almost as good as going to the zoo; elephants, camels, and deer were abundant, though all except the deer were heading to work. The lazy deer were just hanging out eating in the fields. At a rest area we saw a monkey on a leash wearing makeup (sorry, no pictures, and its a good thing, because it was easily the creepiest thing I've seen in india).

We picked up our tour guide just outside of the gates of the taj, a nice man by the name of Aslam. He grew up in Agra, lived here his entire life, and had been a tour guide for the last year. He was relatively quiet until we walked through the main entrance, when he became a well of information about the monument, it's construction, the architects and countries involved, the perfect symmetry, and the workmen who were forced to live in Agra after its construction.

The Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal emporer Shahjahan as a memorial to his second, and favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the birth of her 14th child at the age of 39. On her deathbed, Mumtaz made three requests of her husband: that he not remarry, that he take care of their children, and that he build something for her that was so unique that it could not be found anywhere else in the world. Construction of the monument, initially named Mumtaz Mahal in her honor (much later shortened to Taj by the British) began in 1631, and took 22 years. The structure is a blend of Iranian, Turkish, and Arabic designs, which the emperor chose on purpose to meet the demand that the structure be unique. Black, green, and most of all white marble was used from a quary in Rajasthan, though it had to be moved by camels several hundred miles. One of the most impressive features of the structure is it's perfect symmetry, even more impressive when you consider how long ago it was built.

When it was finished, Emperor Shahjahan was very pleased by the beauty, and felt it was a perfect monument to the woman he loved. However, his advisors alerted him of a problem. All of the workers, whom he had "hired" (or captured) were now finished, and there was little work for them to do in Agra. They feared that if they simply let them go, they would return home to Iran, turkey, or the Arabian peninsula and build other Taj Mahals, thus breaking one of his late wife's last requests.

Most stories like this from the 17th century regarding "hired" labor didn't exactly work out so well for the workers, and if Aslam had told me Shahjahan had all of the workers "taken care of," I certainly would have believed him. A popular myth maintains that the Emperor made sure that the chief mason didnt work again by cutting his hand off, but our guide rejected this as pure fantasy (morbid fantasy).

The truth is still pretty interesting, however. Emperor Shahjahan had the workers begin to build another Taj Mahal across the river from the first, this time out of black marble. He was hoping that this would take another 22 years or so, thereby keeping the workers properly entertained until they could retire, thereby preventing him from having to make all 20000 of them sleep with the fishes. The foundation for this structure was started, but was put to a halt by Shahjahan's third son. This was a son of Mumtaz, and he was a bit peeved that he had two older brothers who were standing in the way of him becoming Emperor. He did the only logical thing, murdered his two brothers and imprisoned his father, and put an end to his silly monument construction hobby. He wasn't all bad, however, because he imprisoned the workers, kept them from returning to their homes to prevent them from making other monuments that would break his mother's death wish. Ok, so I guess he was all bad. On a side note, if I were Shahjahan, I would have hired fewer advisors to worry about which of my wife's last wishes I was in danger of possibly breaking, and a few more to warn me when my son was going to kill two of his brothers and imprison me.

The Taj Mahal is encircled by a large red sandstone gate that prevents you from seeing it as you walk onto the grounds. The beauty of the Taj Mahal has been the subject of many poets and writers over the years. Rudyard Kipling called it "The embodiment of all things pure." An Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore described it as "A teardrop on the face of eternity." I am no poet, and my description will not be able to do the experience of seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time justice. But the shock of seeing this glowing white building in the distance as you walk through the gate immediately stopped our breath. Though we were entirely surrounded by the noise of an immense crowd, in that moment there was powerful solitude. I've never had such an intense reaction to a building before. Sadly, as we approached and walked the grounds, this magical feeling disapated as the building became more firmly founded in my mind. I sincerely hope that one of two things happens: either I remember exactly how seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time felt, or I completely forget it, so that the next time I see it I will have just as powerful a reaction.

The rest of the tour was more typical of India. We were taken to a marble shop, which claims to be run by descendants of the actually artisans who built the Taj Mahal. They showed us how they made the beautiful marble inlay before trying to sell us enourmous marble tables the size of our living room. Aslam took us to a jewelry store which had an assortment of earings and necklaces made with the jewels found in the Taj Mahal, where we were also given the hard sell on rubies and sapphires. We then hopped back into the car to return to Delhi, bu not before stopping one last time to see the Taj Mahal in the distance. Its beauty remained bewitching, but I am grateful the guide did not take us that route the way there, and instead allowed us to see the Taj Mahal for the first time up close. Coming to Delhi for two days was by no means convenient, but you really cannot come to India without seeing the Taj Mahal.

Dave

Our home away from home

Tomorrow morning we leave Vellore and CMC, and begin the traveling portion of our trip. We will take an early morning car to Chennai to catch a flight to Delhi. Although we are excited to sightsee around India, we are sad to be leaving Vellore. The college campus has been a home away from home for us. From our room, to the desk staff in our building, to the people who work at the canteen, we have felt very much at home and relaxed here. I realized we haven't posted any pictures of our room, so here is one I got last week when it was actually clean :)

We will write again from Delhi. After Delhi we will go to Cochin, and then end our trip in Goa. It is hard to believe we only have 11 days left in India!

College Hill

The college campus is nestled among gorgeous hills, which provide lovely scenery despite their responsibility for radiating the sun's heat onto the town. This morning we woke up before dawn, met up with our friend Swetha and hiked up the closest of these hills, known as College Hill.

It was not a long hike, and we made it up right as the sun was breaking over the hills on the horizon. Because it had rained the night before, the fog/haze was just lifting off the ground as the sun rose. We could hear the Muslim call to prayer and music from local Hindu temples in the distance. The air was cool and smelled like the rain. Swetha and I sat on a rock overlooking Vellore while Dave explored the other side of the hill. It made for a lovely, peaceful start to the day.

The "Infant Stimulation" room

This week on psychiatry, we had an opportunity to observe in the infant simulation room and the autism room. These rooms are part of the child and adolescent psychiatry unit, and serve to both rehabilitate children with mental and physical handicaps as well as to train to parents to be better caretakers for these children. In the infant stimulation room, I was expecting to see mothers with their babies. I was quite surprised when several toddlers and some pre-adolescents entered with their parents. As it turns out, the class we were observing was for any child with the mental age of two or younger.

The therapist invited us to interact with the children and their mothers, introducing us to mother who she knew spoke English. The mother was there with her daughter Ashta, who had cerebral palsy. Ashta is 12, but is completely dependent on her mother as a full-time caretaker. The mother explained to us that when Ashta was born, she did not cry. This was their first indication that something was wrong. And following that, Ashta failed to reach a number of other milestones including speaking and walking. She was at CMC for therapy, which had already made a huge improvement in her quality of life. She was building up her muscles, becoming more patient with her parents, and becoming more tolerant of things that used to bug her.

Ashta was lying on the floor while we spoke with her mother, her very thin legs being strapped into braces in preparation for her therapy (she is working on standing). She watched us intently, but when her mother introduced us to her she smiled, rolled away from us, and covered her face. "She is shy," her mother said. Once the braces were strapped on, Ashta stood with the help of her mother and played with a shape-sorter box. Being 12 but with the mental capabilities of maybe an 8 month old, I figured that Ashta was pretty much vegetative- I couldn't imagine her having any sort of communication skills, intelligence, or personality. But I was beyond wrong! When standing, Ashta correctly placed each shape into its place in the sorter, and looked at her mother for approval each time she did it. And then she would look at me, wait for me to smile, and then would smile back. Her eyes are big and dark and had a lot to say. "Don't write me off," they seemed to be shouting. We spoke with the mother more, asking about Ashta's communication skills. Though she can't talk, she is able to communicate quite effectively with her family through a system of signs they have developed. "Is she a picky eater?" I asked. "No," replied her mother, "but she is a very picky dresser!" I was blown away by this. Apparently, Ashta will pick out her own outfits every day, and will very often fall in love with a few. She had a pair of black skinny jeans that she wanted to wear every day, and she would refuse to cooperate to be dressed unless she got to wear them. The mother got so sick of washing them every night that she sent her husband out to buy a few more identical pairs. But that didn't fool Ashta! She knew exactly which pair was her favorite and refused the others. This story did so much to humanize her for me. Because, honestly, what girl doesn't have a favorite pair of jeans?

We also learned that Ashta has two younger siblings, both of whom are healthy and are living with the father while Ashta is in treatment (side note: the family comes from a town 300 Km from Vellore, so Ashta and her mother are living at CMC for the 3 month duration of the therapy program while the rest of the family is at home). This was also something that struck me: though Ashta needs round-the-clock care, her parents still decided to have more children. This must take so much love and dedication from the parents. Plus, her siblings are BOYS! these might be the two most exhausted parents on the face of the Earth.

As we prepared to leave, Ashta looked at us and reached out her arm to shake our hands, something she might not have been able to do before her therapy started. "She might have been shy before," her mother said, "but from now on, she will remember you."

-Moriah

Cricket addendum

All week many people have mentioned that they saw me on television during the cricket match. Moriah found the clip on YouTube, where the entire match can be found. If you go to 3:35:40, youll see me talking to my friend Steve about the match. I probably said something incredibly insightful about cricket, and definitely didn't ask "what's the pitcher called again" for the fourth time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk_7tjGEceQ

Dave

Psychiatry Part Two: Inpatient Unit

A weeklong oral examination for the final year residents in psychiatry has made this week somewhat chaotic so far, but Moriah and I somehow managed to find our way to the grand rounds being held by the adult inpatient team. In the states this sort of meeting would likely be held in an auditorium or large conference room. Certainly we wouldn't dream of having clinical discussions regarding newly admitted patients in a courtyard ten feet away from the inpatient unit.

But that is exactly what we did today. We met in a large circle, very close to the path we've been using to walk to the pool, which cuts right through the inpatient wards, and discussed the patients that had been admitted of the weekend.

Neither of us could hear at all, as the residents and consultants spoke in very low voices, perhaps because they were no more than ten feet away from the patients they were talking about. The sounds of the motorcycles, birds, and giant fruit bats made this hushed tone impossible to understand.

After this discussion, we were introduced to a very nice clinical psychologist named Noel, and he served as our translator as we walked through the wards to see the patients. In another stark contrast to American psychiatric wards, in India there were no locked doors, very few security guards. Noel was actually a bit surprised to hear about all of the precautions we take. The patients who were judged to be a danger to themselves or others were kept in the acute care room, which was one room with 10 beds, and more nursing staff, but again, the door was open. The hospital depends a great deal on the family staying with the patient to keep them from leaving the hospital or worse.

Most of the inpatients were being treated for schizophrenia, and most of them were newly diagnosed. We saw a number of farmers who had attempted suicide, all of whom used pesticide, apparently a very common story in rural India. Last year the monsoon seasons were particularly poor, and many farmers had extremely poor crop yields, leading to a dramatic increase of farmers attempting/committing suicide.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that in order to be admitted to the unit, at least one member of the patient's family must agree to stay with them. This was also true of some other units in the hospital, and we were told this was to keep costs low. However, the concept was made into doctrine by the first chairman of psychiatry, Dr. Florence Nicols. And while for the poorer patients, they did require the manpower, Dr. Nicols made this a firm rule even for those patients with the means to pay someone to stay with them. She viewed it as a way to learn more about the family dynamics as well as allowing the staff to educate the family on the nature of the patient's illness and how it would be managed. I believe it has another very interesting effect, in that it may be less disruptive to the patient's life. In our system, a psychiatric admission is a traumatic experience itself, as the safety that comes with our hospitals comes at the expense of most personal freedoms like wearing your own clothes, having a cellphone or even having ready access to the outside world. This hospital really didn't feel like a hospital at all.

Because of this philosophy, the inpatient ward has a community or village feel. In fact, moriah and I had been walking through it for the last three weeks, thinking that we were walking by staff housing. Not once did we consider we were walking through an inpatient psychiatric unit.

In the afternoon i attended the psychiatry consultation clinic at the main hospital, where they saw patients who had been seen by other outpatient services, and were being referred to psychiatry. At this clinic I heard about the most heart wrenching story I can imagine. He patient was a thirty year old man who had presented to the GI clinic with some abdominal pain and diarrhea. Medical evaluation was not remarkable, and when they learned more about his personal history, they referred him to psychiatry. Only a few months before this he had an argument with his ten year old son, and pushed him down to the floor, and the boy hit his head and died. Not from the fall per se, but because the fall caused a bleed in a brain tumor that he had which had not been diagnosed.

David's birthday: Hundreds Heritage part II

David had the blessing/curse of celebrating his birthday in India. Blessing because, well, how often are you in India? But curse because things just don't always go your way! For example, we had tossed around the idea of going away this weekend, but that plan got nixed when we realized that Dave's birthday was also dose number 2 for Dave's rabies shots. So for Dave's birthday he got to go to the hospital and have a nice big shot in the arm. Because nothing says happy birthday like a rabies vaccination!

We spent the rest of the day by the pool that is just off the college campus. It is an absolute oasis in dry, dusty, surface-of-the-sun hot Vellore. We swam in clear blue water and drank chai poolside under the shade of the palm trees. What can I say? We have a tough life. We then went on a secret mission to find beer. We had heard about a liquor store somewhere near campus, so we went on a search for it. We finally found it, however, Dave's hopes for a cold beer were apparently a little high, and he was a given a lukewarm beer with no way to cool it. But beggars can't be choosers, and I am pretty sure that the beer was the high point of his day.

We ended the day with a trip back to Hundreds Heritage, the restaurant I had blogged about last week. Several friends hopped on the party bus with us and headed to the restaurant. I was really excited for this dinner, because this was my first opportunity to do something for Dave that would be a surprise. So once we got to the restaurant I excused myself from the table and tracked down the manager to try to arrange a birthday celebration at the end of dinner. This was where the "things don't always go your way" part comes in.

I asked the manager to bring Dave's dessert with candles, and I emphasized that I wanted it to be a surprise. Really, this should not have been that hard. So he said that he would bring me the candles, which I said was great before once again reminding him I wanted it to be a surprise. No sooner had I returned to the table and started chatting with everyone when the manager came to the table and handed me a pack of birthday candles saying "here are the surprise candles you wanted, Madame." Everyone burst into laughter as I melted into my seat, telling the manager to bring them back with dessert. I was so upset that my surprise was ruined! But being upset was short lived, soon over shadowed by the comedy of the situation. Because after that, the waiter tried to bring the candles out with Dave's main course. I could only imagine a candle in a bowl of curry! This continued throughout dinner until we finally ordered desert, which, of course, was the only time the candles were not brought to the table. The whole comedy of errors kept us quite amused, and it made the eventual blowing out of birthday candles even more special.

The night ended with 8 of us squeezing into a rickshaw designed for 4, in proper Indian fashion.

Though India did not give Dave a traditional birthday, I hope it was one that was special and one that he will not soon forget.

Psychiatry Part One

Today Moriah and I began our last week at CMC, with a posting at the department of psychiatry. The clinic has a large inpatient unit, with 120 beds,

which sounds small when you consider that it is the only inpatient unit serving the million or so people living in the vellore district, and the nearest psychiatric hospital is almost three hours away in chennai. Their outpatient department sees a little over 300 patients per day on average, and there are immense waiting lists for people to be evaluated by their clinic. The hospital as a whole has four units, two general adult patient, one child/adolescent, and a psychosocial rehabilitation unit.

As with every other unit we've experienced, the financial aspect has been very interesting. A consultation, which includes an initial one hour evaluation and weekly follow up appointments, is Rs 570, and most medications are under Rs 100 for a week. Just like the other services,the physicians can agree to offer treatment at half, quarter, or no cost depending on what they think the patient can afford. If the doctor overestimates the patients ability to pay, they can appeal to a social worker.

Most patients that are admitted stay for over one month, and in order to be admitted, at least one member of the patient's family has to agree to stay with them to provide meals, change linens, etc.

We will tour various units during the week, but started out in the psychosocial rehabilitation unit, designed for the care of those with chronic mental illness, most of whom have schizophrenia. Throughout all of our experiences here we have been surprised by the wide array of services provided that we would not typically associate with a hospital, and this unit was certainly no exception. This unit's work begins once the patient has been medically stabilized, when they continue to manage their psychiatric treatment and work on reintegrating the patient into the community, providing some vocational training, and educating family members about mental illness. The stigma of mental illness is very powerful here, and sadly some of these patients have been abandoned by their families. To deal with this, the hospital has a small ward where these patients can live long term, and they work by making paper bags and candles which are sold by the college campus.

We learned about some very interesting differences about schizophrenia in India. Surprisingly, those who are treated for schizophrenia in India have a better prognosis than patients in America. This is thought to be because of two important factors: larger, more supportive families, and lower societal/family expectations of achievement. This seems to contradict the earlier point about stronger stigma, but the family support was very evident when we sat in on the outpatient session in the afternoon.

Every single patient we saw was accompanied by their mother, father, husband or wife. Except of course, for the encounters where the patient themselves were not there, and their parent or spouse picked it up for them. This happened two or three times in 15 encounters. The doctor said this was a regular occurrence, and while certainly not ideal, it did increase patient compliance on medication. The other very striking difference was that the door remained open for the entire encounter, and just like the other clinics we've been to, the other patients congregated outside, well within earshot. Even in psychiatry much less emphasis is placed on patient privacy.

Tomorrow we will go to the inpatient unit, and the unit head has an academic interest in cultural differences in Indian mental illness.

Dave

Yanks in cricket heaven, Chennai Super Kings vs the Rajasthan Royals

Even though Moriah and I are in India, baseball rudely started the season at the beginning of April. Luckily we have been able to make due with baseballs older and distantly related cousin, cricket.

As we detailed in an earlier post, I played a bit with some of the locals, and it is pretty much always on tv. Today we joined a fellow British medical student, Steve, on a trip to see the Chennai Super Kings, which if you ask me is just about the most awesome name in all of sports (aside from the Yankees of course. Wait, are there Super Yankees?). To make it even better, they were playing the Rajasthan Royals, luckily not the Super Royals.

Cricket shares some things in common with baseball, but there are some important differences.
Field=pitch
Pitcher=bowler
Catcher= wicket keeper(also the only guy who gets gloves, though oddly enough they use baseball gloves during warm ups to protect their hands)
Batter=batter (likewise for bat)
Ball=ball
Out=wicket
Run=run
Outrageous drunken fans=outrageous sober fans(no alcohol allowed in the stadium, and no bars near it.)

And the fans really were outrageous. They cheered constantly, even counted down the seconds till the end of a time out. The men in the crowd were especially fond of the cheerleaders, who we learned were from Russia, flown in to provide cheering related services. And of course, "We Will Rock You" was blasted at full volume before the Super Kings came to bat.

A quick version of the rules
The bowler takes a running start, and throws the ball overhand towards the batter, and generally has the ball bounce a few feet in front of the batter in an attempt to hit the stump (three sticks behind the batter) to knock over the wicket (two small sticks placed on top of the stump). The batter tries to hit the ball, and unlike baseball, can hit it in any direction, even directly behind him. Also unlike baseball, he is under no obligation to run after he hits it, he can do so only if he thinks he can make it to the other wicket before the other team can knock it over with the ball.

You score runs by running between the wickets. If you hit the ball to the boundary on at least one bounce, you get 4 runs. If you hit it over the boundary on the fly (like a home run) you get 6.

In any version of cricket, the batter continues to bat until the opposing team makes a wicket, which can be done four ways: the bowler hits the stump and knocks over the wicket, the batted ball is caught in the air, or the batter is thrown out while running (the fielder has to knock the wicket over with the ball before any part of the batter crosses the line). You can also be called out if a ball that will hit the stumps hits your shin guards before hitting the bat.

There are three varieties of cricket played professionally, and differ by how long they last. The original version lasts up to five days! (played all day) and is probably thusly named because it is both a test of the players' stamina as well as the fans ability to pay attention to a game for 8 straight hours for five straight days. Each team gets two innings to bat, but in a sharp deviation from baseball, an inning isn't determined by how many wickets, rather all 11 players bat around. And as I said, they each get to keep batting until they make a wicket, in which case they have to go back to the bench and sit down, probably take a nap or do their laundry until it is time to start the next inning, which may be house or days away. So there is really no incentive to try to take the cover off the ball, because if you miss, its a long wait till your next chance. So you get a lot, and I mean a lot of defensive swings at the ball, occasionally they decide to run back and forth to score runs, and rarely they will hit it hard enough to reach a boundary. Unless the game is drawing to a close and they are behind. Then they get more aggressive and smack the ball around a bit.

In an attempt to bring the sport to those who are unable to watch/play a game for five full days, 50/50 cricket was invented, this lasting a mere 8 hours. In this version, each team gets to keep batting for only 50 "overs" or six balls (300 balls), or until all 11 men are out.

In another refinement, they invented 20/20, where each team gets only 120 balls. The game starts with a coin toss to determine which team bats first. One team bats through all their overs, then the other team tries to top the score to win. Teams will usually only go through 4-5 batters, and because of the limited overs, this version is much more aggressive, favoring teams that swing for the boundaries early.

Not having 5 days to do nothing but watch cricket, we saw a 20/20 match. The Royals won the toss, and elected to bat first, forcing the Kings, excuse me, SUPER Kings, to play the field first. Steve thought this was deliberate to make them spend their time in the field during the hottest part of the day, topping 102 F with near 100% humidity.

They Royals started out quickly, hitting lots of 4s and 6s, but after 10 overs they slowed, going through a couple of overs without scoring at all. Only three batters lost their wicket, but they put up a relatively disappointing score of 146 runs after their 20 overs. The SUPER Kings took the pitch in excellent shape.

But unlike the Royals, they were not aggressive early, and seemed to lack intensity both batting and running. They had hit only a few boundaries through 15 overs, and were settling for one run when two appeared possible. With only 5 overs left they were several runs off the pace, and it appeared their chances of winning were dim.

Then, as if a switch were flipped, they shed their defensive batting and running, and began to score. Still not many boundaries, but they squeezed two points out of one 4 balls in a row, and scored at least one on every ball.

They still looked like a long shot heading into the last over, down by 10 runs, needing almost 2 runs per ball. And instead of swinging for the fences, they patiently hit solidly, and stretched to get two. With one ball left, they were down by only one run, needing two to win, having clawed their way back from a deep hole.

I still don't really know what "deep backwood square leg" means, but apparently that is where the batter hit the final ball, with just enough juice to again squeeze two runs out for the win. The stadium erupted, and our first cricket match was a tension packed resounding success.

Cricket, at least 20/20, wins my approval. I won't be giving it up for baseball anytime soon, but it was a very exciting day and well worth the trip to chennai.

Dave

Amridhi Forrest

Vellore has been one of the hottest, driest, and oddly enough, most humid places we have ever been to. In an attempt to escape this we took a trip up into some nearby mountains to an area called Amridhi Forrest, where we heard it was a bit cooler, there were streams without piles of garbage, and a zoo.

It was a pretty neat zoo, with many Indian animals we likely won't get a chance to see in the wild, like the crocodile, cobra, and the deer that the sign proclaimed were the most beautiful deer in the world. The signs were actually one of the best parts of the zoo, full of misspellings, odd turns of phrase, and proclamations that jackals did good work. They also had a pigeon exhibit! I especially liked seeing the monkeys climbing around outside of the cages, as if laughing at the animals trapped inside.

We saw one of these beautiful deer outside of the zoo in a roadside food stand, and the owner let us pet it. No, neither of us were bitten by the deer.

Outside of the zoo there were also some monkeys playing on the rickshaw and motorcycles, our driver said they were giving the rickshaw a checkup. We took a short stroll along the stream running through the woods, very peaceful.

The way there and back the driver asked us to get out of the rickshaw in order to cross the river, and walk across, tossing assurances in broken English that the water was clean. Hopefully we can take is word for it.

Before we returned the our hostel, the driver asked if we would mind stopping by a temple so that he could bless his rickshaw. Willing to take any step to make a ride in a rickshaw safer, we eagerly agreed. The temple had a large statue of shiva the destroyer out front, the green face with the snakes. The driver first washed his rickshaw, and then had a friend bless it with some wax over a small lime, moved in a pattern in front of the auto. He then took us the rest of the way home.

Shiva, the destroyer