Most of the pages about my trip to India cover more ground than this does. But this goes into more depth about "just" one "small" encounter. One that is a major memory for me of the trip. It has made me better informed about "rural life", in general, not just India. About "the (supposedly) good old days, the 'simple' life."

One day while most of the travelers walked through a remote part of the Satpura National Park, from our old "home" to our new "home", the people who made our lovely experience possible were busy moving our camp. Three of us had to eschew walking, and we traveled with the tents and supplies.

(This text needs further work, but I "needed" (wanted!) to get the page started, get the photos in the right place.) For reasons I will try to expand upon, we were left to relax near where the new camp was being set up at "A" in the aerial below. We were left to relax at a small, very basic, outpost ("B") of the Delhi government, at the edge of a small community ("C"). Over several hours, it was possible to watch a bit of their lives.

In this, I use the word "village", but it doesn't really seem right. It was a cluster of a few families eking out lives with little accumulated infrastructure or wealth.

A slight rise... line of yellow dashes... hid the village (inside circle of dots, "C") from our camp (at "A").

Those who walked in probably didn't realize the village was there. It was very remote. The squiggle in the upper left of the overview is the bed of a stream, not a road. I would be very surprised if these people do not live an isolated existence. A life with few frills.

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The villagers were building... by hand... a large earthen dam along the line I've marked "D". There was a slope running from high ground at the top of the line "D" down to the small stream at the bottom of "D". You can tell were it is from the trees. Just guessing, but maybe the dam was to deflect the stream from the villager's fields, in the rainy season? As I say... this is just a first attempt to explain why I've created the images.

Or maybe, it is the beginning of something which will eventually cross the stream, create a small reservoir? Elsewhere in the district a cluster of them seem to have been built in recent years. (The Bing and Google aerial photos seem to have been taken at different times.) Part of the park's wildlife management program, improving the habitat, by creating places where there will be water in the dry season? The villagers aren't stupid... they didn't build their homes in the path of rainy season floods... the dam can't be for protecting their homes.

Is the village slated for re-location? (Villages are being moved out of the park... the villagers being paid for the intrusion into their lives. People I heard talk about it felt the villagers were being given a good deal. I hope so. When someone has so little, it seems presumptuous to think you can know what their traditional home is worth. Consider the Chinese villages driven from their homes... and the resting place of their ancestors... by the very dubious Three Gorges Dam project. The damn dam? Or am I talking rubbish? Maybe the village isn't all that old. Maybe the people who live there would be glad to go. Maybe the obvious poverty of city life is better than the deceptive poverty of rural life

The village was fascinating. The people were very shy of us, but not unwelcoming. Even when they were in groups and we were wandering singly. I'll try to get back here, explain the other fascinations, in due course.

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If you find yourself wanting to use a photo on this site, please see my page about using web-published material which is copyright TK Boyd. If you want to contact me, here's my eddress, or you can use the contact form. (Email best, as the contact form is often abused, and I don't read all messages arriving that way.) Corrections to bad information on the pages very welcome... don't be shy!

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