The following slide show is a result of a two month journey that I took in late October through December of 1998. I had received a sabbatical from work, and combined with my vacation time, it afforded me about 10 weeks of free time to travel and recover from my travels.
The theme of my journey was in large part a spiritual one - I wanted to go to the geographical sources in India from which the traditions and teachers that had influenced me in my spritiual process had taken root. I wasn't so much interested in meeting teachers, though I did have several occasions to sit and meet with Indian based teachers. In addition to the spiritual aspect of my trip, I wanted to immerse myself in the culture of India, visit as many sites as humanly possible, and take up the challenge of dealing with the rigors of perhaps the most disorganized and chaotic country on the planet.
My travels goals and plans were to spend several days in an area beginning in Northern India, arriving in Delhi, and using it as a hub to do single and multi-day trips to various cities and regions nearby, which included Varanasi, Agra, Udaipur, Rishikesh and the Garwal Himalayan region. From there I used Bombay as a hub, and then onto Southern India, visiting areas on both coasts.While travelling in India, I brought along a cheap notebook computer, and wrote a "Virtual Travelogue" that I shared with many people around the world, posting at the ever growing number of internet cafes in India.
Photographic Information
I brought along my Pentax PZ-70 35mm SLR camera with a 35-80mm lens for regular and wide angle shots and a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens. The only filter used was a polarizing filter, and because of weight limitation, I did not carry a tripod - in hindsight, a mini-tripod would have been useful at times.
The film of choice was mostly Fuji Sensia 100 ASA - I had heard good things about it from some professional travel photographers, and I had good results. If I had to do it again, I would have brought much 200 ASA film, as India is very hazy, polluted and full of shadowy areas, more conducive to a more sensitve film. I shot over 900 slides in my journey, but missed thousands of other opportunities for interesting shots.
Slide Showing Particulars and Viewing Tips
The following slideshow is a 'webified' version of a 2 carousel slide show that I showed to friends and family last year. It consists of around 250 slides in all, at a size of 400 pixels. Each slide is duplicated at a size of 700 pixels for a more in-depth view, for a total of 500 slides or so. There are about 125 pages in the following show, consisting of two 400 pixel shots with descriptions of what you are viewing. Each picture is linked to its 700 pixel enlarged duplicate, so please click on any image for a larger view on the following pages.
You may click on the Back or Next buttons and links at the top and bottom of each page to navigate through the show a page at a time, or click on any text link in the yellow side-bar to go directly to the slides for that city or area. The enlarged pictures pages have navigational buttons to bring you back to the previous page or to go to the next page of 400 pixel shots.
Interspersed in the text description of each slide is a link to my travelogue pages, giving a more in-depth and real-time explanation of the area you are viewing.
Scanning 500 slides takes up a lot of disk space, over 50 megs total. I used a HP Photosmart S20 scanner, which I highly recommend for non-professional level scanning. I scanned each slide for a high or medium level jpg format, which is a nice balance between clarity and size of the file.
To improve the viewing of photos on a computer monitor, Steve Hoffman's www.sphoto.com page has some helpful hints.
Now that I've blabbed enough, enjoy the show. Click on Next or the next icon below to begin, which starts with a few slides of Switzerland.
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