Brihadisvara Temple at night

Post-card perfect!
My friend told me that this holy sculpture is rumored to grow in size every year.

Lots of people visit the temple at night when the weather is much cooler.

Vijayanagara fort

Vijayanagara fort is a popular tourist destination in Thanjavur. This is the front of the art gallery.

The courtyard of the art gallery.

An exhibit hall in the art gallery. This hall featured lots of beautiful sculptures of Goddess Parvathi.

The bell tower.

Top floor of the bell tower.

Corridor leading to the bell tower.

The fort also has a palace of the Maratha king Serfoji II, an armoury and the Saraswathi Majal Library. The library had lots of books on palm leaf and in various Indian languages as well as French, English, Dutch, etc.

Eating Out

Thali is an Indian meal served (it seems like) during lunch. It consists of a starter soup...

Papad...

... and a round tray that contains smaller dishes containing rice, dhal, veggies, chapati, yogurt, chutney and salad. Needless to say, it was finger licking good.

Some things I've never encountered before. For example, de-alcoholized wine.

At this restaurant around the corner called Vasanta Bhavan, they have two rooms: one with AC and one without. The rooms serve the same food yet the menus in the AC room indicate "AC" and the menus in the non-AC room does not. Maybe not that odd but interesting.

Mo' Thanjavur

Some shots from around my neighborhood. We have the best of everything. The Best Neuro Center...
...and The Best Medical Center (chemist/pharmacy)

Lots of stray dogs.

An ironing shop and a snack shop.

A 24 hour blood bank

Night life in Thanjavur

People eat dinner very late here in India. We usually leave the house to go out to dinner around 8:30pm.

There are a ton of temptations along the way to our pre-determined restaurant. There's a ton of sweets shops, for instance. My favorite, as always, is gulab jamun. Kulfi's ok too sometimes.

And all the wonderful smells arising in the warm dark night from the street vendors. The aloo parathas always smell lovely.

We usually end up at the nearest restaurant, Flamingo, at the Hotel Sangum. They usually have live music.

Even before deciding on the main course, I tend to gravitate towards the desserts for my "sweet tung" &...

... "thrust."

Karambayam Primary Health Center

In India, the government's healthcare system is structured to accomodate their big population. At the lowest level of the structure, there are small clinics where basic healthcare needs like labor & delivery are handled by a nurse. If the patient needs a higher level of care, this patient needs to travel to a primary health center where there is supposed to be a doctor. And the system continues up this way.
This morning, we visited a primary health center in Karambayam village.

We ran into a nurse who was heading out with her vaccine box. Vaccines are provided free to all children by the government.

Waiting to see the doctor.

Waiting to see the pharmacist.

A procedure room for labor and delivery, etc.Waiting to receive shots.

I learned that it is hard to attract doctors to these rural areas. There is a shortage of doctors anyway so while the healthcare system may be set-up well structurally, it is difficult to implement this system.

Just before coming to India, I was attending a talk that discussed the difficulty of attracting doctors to rural health clinics serving the poor in the U.S. and thought back to my experience at the hospital in Navajo Nation. I have often heard of the phrase "developing country in the U.S." and it rings true, the more I see, experience, and learn. As Americans, we can all relate to these difficulties of developing countries since they happen also in our own backyards.

Microfinancing Center

This is a microfinancing center in Karambayam (ran by a sister subsidiary of our organization, IFMR). People from this village come here to get small loans.

It's a small kiosk with the bare essentials. There is the board that posts different loan products. And a flasher (please leave a comment if you know what that black machine that flashes messages is called) that shows the gold prices so that people know they are being given a fair price.

Here is a scale for measuring the gold or jewelry.

The healthcare kiosk that IFMR is launching is modeled after these microfinancing kiosks with many twists and adaptations.

Brihadisvara Temple

Brihadisvara Temple is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The temple was begun during the Chola Empire period in 1002 A.D.

My awe at walking through this ancient temple was intensified by the scorching hot weather, creating an experience close to hallucination. We had to leave our shoes by the temple entrance and the stones felt sizzling hot.

As we were leaving the temple, I offered some bananas to the elephant and it gave me a blessing on the head. Don't worry, mom. This is the closest I've been to any large and/or wild animals. (Of course, farm animals don't count.)

Karambayam village

After a day spent in the Big Smoke of Thanjavur, today headed out to the field. It took about 3 hours of frantic driving to get there. Driving here is a fascinating experience in its frequent brush with death as all traffic ignore all possible rules all the time. Drivers weave in and out, honk every few seconds and nearly run over passengers around every bend. First stop in Karambayam was the library, a modest building near the village entrance.
Let me take a step back and explain what we were doing in Karambayam. I am working as an intern for ICTPH, an Indian not-for-profit research center that aims to improve the health of the poor through innovative healthcare delivery and technology. Sugha Vazhvu is a project that aims to increase healthcare access for the rural communities through creating rural health "kiosks" staffed by local women that work as nurse-practitioners. Currently, we are at the stage of the project where we are surveing the healthcare needs of these rural communities. Karambayam is one of two villages that we are surveing.
We met with a GFK rep who is conducting parts of our surveys. By the way, yes, we did ask why the library did not contain any books and we were told that the books were ordered & that they are in transit.

We hired a car and a loud speaker actor (? for lack of better terms) to go around the village to round up the folks.

While the loud speaker car was making its rounds, we pulled out supplied from our car to set up.

We had one set-up with 2 nurses and a male aid in one corner of the village.

I preferred the outdoor set-up as it was much cooler with the breeze. Here is our nurse checking a few simple labs of the folks.

I kept wondering where the children were because I only saw adults in line at our little booths. Before the end of the day, I located them having recess at the school.

Thanjavur

Egmore Railway Station, Chennai. One of the biggest railway stations I've ever seen but apparently this is not the biggest one in the city. (There's a theme emerging here of "wow this is the best food/biggest ( ) I've ever seen" - apparently I need to get out & see more.)

Thanjavur Express

Thanjavur station

Meeting with the nurses & aids at the Thanjavur house

Our lovely garden

Revisiting dosa

Since our office in Chennai does not have a cafeteria, we frequent a corner eatery. Some of my colleagues were saying they've had better elsewhere although I thought it was one of the best dosas I've ever eaten. But so far, I've been impressed with every single morsel of food that had been placed before me...

Chennai, India

Dear friends and family. Thank you for all your emails of concern. I have now arrived safely and I am having a great time so far in Chennai. It was a beautiful and warm night when I landed in Chennai.

Chennai is a lot of thing. Huge, dazzling, crowded, exciting, smoggy... After a full day of exploring, it was really awesome to kick back and relax at an awesome bar, St Geroge @ Taj. I've never seen a fire show in the bar so I had to take a picture.

I'm certain that mom will give me an earful about this but I've been taking this exciting mode of transportation around town.

A shot of my work, IFMR.

Spencer's mall. A bustling place with tiny shops sandwiched in every possible nook and cranny.

Late night vegetarian restaurant.