Local Color, on the Road

Driving six hours from Delhi to Dehra Dun, we counted miles of walnut plantations, sugar cane, rice, mustard, and tea fields along the way, each with a scarecrow or Hindu shrine, each separated by stands of eucalyptus or low brick walls. Often sharing the roads with us were brahma bulls and cows, oxen and waterbuffalo – their dung carefully shaped and dried in huge mounds roadside, to be used for heating fuel. Sheep, goats and shepherds took turns with gangs of uniformed school children slowing traffic. Huge trucks took whatever lane they wanted as they went around oxcarts, bicycles, and pedestrians without slowing down. Billboards abounded and most homes in even the smallest villages had sold out one wall for advertising cement, or for retirement comunities in the holy city of Haridwar. We travelled on India’s Republic Day, so there were special handcart displays of vegetables, lined up in the orange, white, and green stripes of the Indian flag. Signs for malls to be constructed soon showed the promise (or threat) of western influence. Schools everywhere, for technology, business administration, medical, dental, show how young India intends to become a superpower in the future. Men sleeping on woven bed frames in the open air, others smoking hookahs – show old India, waiting. Another hour driving 4,000 winding feet up into the mountains, and we were in Mussoorie which – after eighteen months here – now feels like home.