India - Pune

The city of Pune is located on the western side of India about midway between the north and the south of India. It's about two hours drive east of Mumbai (Bombay). There are three seasons here - winter (October-March), summer (April-June), and the rainy season (July-September). We're here during the transition from the rainy season to winter. The weather is nice right now - highs in the 80's with occasional showers. Winter gets a little cooler - highs in the 60's or 70's. Summer is very hot - highs around 110-115. The rainy season brings a lot of rain off the Indian ocean so this area is very green and wet. It has rained at least a little every day that we've been here.

Pune seems to be a more modern city than the areas we visited last weekend between Delhi and Agra. In those areas we saw a lot of primitive housing, primitive transportation, and poverty. Here there is definitly still a lot of poverty, but it's not everywhere like we saw up north. It's not as common to see animals roaming the streets - modern vehicles, motorized rickshaws and motor bikes are more common. Pune is a big city with lots and lots of people everywhere and plenty of big business.

I wanted to talk a little about construction of these modern office buildings here - it's very different than in the U.S. There is not much heavy equipment used here - most everything is done with manual labor. For example, you've all seen the pictures of women carrying big jugs of water on their head. It's a very common sight in India. So the construction companies, rather than use concrete trucks and concrete pumps, hire these women to carry concrete up into the buildings. There is a never-ending stream of women going up into the buildings with a jug on their head. At the bottom someone is mixing concrete and filling their jugs. Then the women walk up into the building and the men dump the concrete into the forms to make the building. Most women here dress in beautifully colored sarees and the construction site is no different. Somehow they manage to keep their dress clean and beautiful even in the filth of the construction site. Also, all of the scaffolding and ladders are made from bamboo poles lashed together with twine. When the buildings are finished, they look as good and as sturdy as any American high rise built with modern tools and heavy equipment. I'll try to get some construction pictures to post later.