Puri

After a five hour bus ride from Kolkata, we arrived at the beaches of Puri which is pronounced "Pooree." On the beach there were people everywhere and guess what else...cows!

The morning was free time. So, we went down to the beach. A large crowd of about 50 Indians congragated around us all staring and taking pictures. It was as if we were either celebrities or aliens. I felt more like an alien. One by one they would sit down with us and take pictures, while shaking our hands. They were very friendly, perhaps too friendly. The rest of the group, especially the females, became frustrated as the men were constantly staring. The local Indian women wore their sarees and did not get in the water. So, exposing the entire leg was apparently way out of the ordinary.

I stayed on the beach. The large crowd went back to their normal lives except for a few. I wanted to find some english speaking Puri people. There were hardly any. In fact the majority of Indians I have met can not understand Englsh enough to communicate with in simple terms. Usually, it is only the highly educated who can hold a conversation in English. Two university students who spoke English sat with me along with about six others who wanted to ask questions through the students. One student was studying software engineering and the other was studying business. The software engineer told me that only 5 percent of India's population is computer literate. This was very suprising. Given India's population of 1.12 billion people this means that 56 million people are computer literate. Overall, Puri was a pretty poor area but not extreme. The people were very kind and seemed to enjoy their lives.

There will be much more to update you on and some fascinating photos to upload.