Driving in India is not for the faint-hearted. I was only a terrified passenger, trying to keep my eyes on the deep-red earth, the colorful village women, etc., and not on the pi-dogs who prefer to lie in the road, the monkeys who try to cross in front of cars, the truckloads of goats (men clinging on outside) we passed, not to mention the humans who, thanks to near-constant horn-blasts, scurry out of the way. Several times I held my breath as we cleared a bus or clung to the road-edge with inches to spare; once I closed my eyes as we overtook a cement-truck around a blind curve. [All in reverse, as it were: driving is on the left, a legacy of the Raj,] Most of the roads around Bangalore are very good---better than in RI (faint praise); as the area became really rural, the roads crumbled at the edges, washed out in patches, and acquired deep potholes.
We sped through many tiny villages: chaotic and ugly, as randomly scattered concrete boxes, some covered with ads or graffiti, have replaced indigenous architecture (the old, rounded thatched roofs, which must have given villages the look of a conclave of haystacks, are rare now). I never saw a village woman with an ounce of fat on her. Men were thin or stocky, pencil-legged, or supporting a belly, but the women were willowy. Occasionally a Muslim woman in black hijab, a crow alighting in a flock of parrots.
The landscape is not lovely, but impressive: from the flat terrain rise a few massive, upthrust, red cliffs--as if a bit of Arizona had been air-dropped in. Boulders litter their feet, though elsewhere the rust-red soil seems to have been sifted, rock-free. Wood is fuel, and can be eaten by ants, so the few fences are upright slices of granite, formerly, at least, cheap. There's the odd tree, and startling magenta bougainvillea can light up a village corner, but much is dryland scrub, crops, and agave- or yucca-like plants with silvery sword-leaves. Arizona, again..
We sped through many tiny villages: chaotic and ugly, as randomly scattered concrete boxes, some covered with ads or graffiti, have replaced indigenous architecture (the old, rounded thatched roofs, which must have given villages the look of a conclave of haystacks, are rare now). I never saw a village woman with an ounce of fat on her. Men were thin or stocky, pencil-legged, or supporting a belly, but the women were willowy. Occasionally a Muslim woman in black hijab, a crow alighting in a flock of parrots.
The landscape is not lovely, but impressive: from the flat terrain rise a few massive, upthrust, red cliffs--as if a bit of Arizona had been air-dropped in. Boulders litter their feet, though elsewhere the rust-red soil seems to have been sifted, rock-free. Wood is fuel, and can be eaten by ants, so the few fences are upright slices of granite, formerly, at least, cheap. There's the odd tree, and startling magenta bougainvillea can light up a village corner, but much is dryland scrub, crops, and agave- or yucca-like plants with silvery sword-leaves. Arizona, again..
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