On one of the market excursions one of the group fell prey to a tourist scam, in this case, the "poo on the shoe" ploy. She was approached by a young man with a bucket who pointed to her left shoe. When she glanced down at it, she saw it was covered with a wet blob of cow dung, and this young entrepreneur offered to clean her shoe for a small consideration. Obviously he had heard of the school of business known as "create a need and fill it." As a result of this encounter, we were all watching our feet.
In the evening some of the group went to a tabla concert, while the rest of us went to the 4th of July celebration at the American Embassy. There were fireworks, a band and even a Ferris Wheel. But to fully appreciate the ride you must first picture the following: imagine a hamster inside a ball shaped cage which being rolled by a running hamster. Then imagine this: struts extend out from the ball and now looks more like a wheel. Enlarge this to human scale and replace the hamster with three strong young men who stride crossbar to crossbar making the Ferris Wheel turn faster and faster as they shift their weight in unison again and again. The result is a "three-boy" powered Ferris Wheel. and true performance art. With the grace and style of an arial act, they dismount one at a time, swinging from struts to seat to seat and then to the ground. It was cutting edge performance art and not one of us had a camera or you would see some pictures here. It could only happen in India. OSHA would never permit it in the USA.
On the morning of the 5th we presented ourselves once again to India.
Cleaned up and rested, we met in the lobby. We looked terrific at 7:30
a.m.
and then we went out in the heat. Remember the saying, "Only mad dogs
and
Englishmen go out in the noon day sun."
This is what we looked like
four hours and four
temples later. It had been an amazing two days and we'd only just
begun.