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Kalyan, India. Sunday, July 2nd. 10:00 AM.

Eight Weeks.

Today marks eight weeks of shooting. Nearly all of it traveling. Starting in Jackson on the Science Education project we call SEPA. Memphis on BBK. Pittsburgh on SEPA. Los Angeles on SEPA and Habitat. Ecuador and the Dominican Republic on Habitat. The Mississippi Delta on BBK. And then Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania, and now India on Habitat.

When we get home we’ll have a week break and will start shooting again on SEPA, doing projects in Maryland, Washington and San Juan, Puerto Rica which will take us through September 1st. Not to mention we have to EDIT all this stuff.

We have been in India for over a week now. For the last five days in this relatively small city about 1.5 hours north of Mumbai. It has rained constantly since we have been here.

That little cloud on the West Coast of India is what is killing us. It is a monsoon and it is not moving. Stuck there.

There are virtually no Caucasians here. No tourists at all. So going out on the street is somewhat strange. Everyone stares at us. And not many people speak English, although it is one of two National Languages here in India (Hindi being the other). Back in Mumbai at the Marriott, virtually everyone on the staff spoke excellent English. Not here.

A finished Habitat home in Kalyan.

Our small hotel is the best in the city. The rooms are clean and have private baths. The electricity goes off often, but they have a backup generator which takes a few minutes to start up. The hot water seldom works, but other than that, we like it here – we are just stir-crazy to work.

The hotel has no internet. But internet-cafés abound. The connections are slow and they are all packed – mostly with kids playing online games. And they are very small – a little larger than, say, my dining room table. But I found one that is air-conditioned. It is a twenty-five cent tut-tut ride from my hotel. The owner is now accustomed to me and gives me the preferred booth which is slightly faster in speed.

The hotel has a restaurant on the second floor. We take all our meals there. The wait-staff there has taken a liking to us, and they wait on us hand and foot. Our headwaiter personally takes care us. He has been great about having the chef prepare me a special diet for my illness.

Me with the hotel restuarant wait-staff. Notice my Kyrgyzstan house slippers.

While in Kyrgyzstan, I came down with a typical summer cold. It progressed through flu-like symptoms and I am left with little more than chest congestion from that. But on Wednesday of this week, I came down with severe stomach cramps which when they hit, I would be totally debilitated. Susan and Sam feared the worst. I only worried about food poisoning, and my memory of a severe bout with such in Singapore a few years ago left me very worried. After 24 hours of this, I was ready to brave the local hospital but as we were about to set out for Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, the hotel owner arranged for a bedside visit in my hotel room by an Indian physician. So for two days now, I have been on the mend, taking unknown medications, but I am feeling better.

On Thursday night, we cut lose our India crew which consisted of a gaffer, a camera assistant and a local producer. We were paying for their hotels and meals and their day rates, and of course, we were not shooting anything. At the same time, Steve Little from Costa Rica who has been with us in nearly every country as our official Habitat International sidekick, decided to return home to Central America. This project for Habitat would just have not been possible without his presence. He seemed to come up with a solution for every problem we have encountered along the way -- except maybe for the rain :)

We had a good send-off dinner for Steve.

Lejo is quite fond of Susan. A very affable guy, he is an assistant to Rahjesh. Susan and I took a long walk yesterday. We found a dress shop with a tailor and ordered some custom-made Indian dresses called a Salwar Kameez. Cost including custom tailoring and fabric – about $15 USD each.

This morning I got up at about 4:45 am and looked at the sky and it seemed like it was clearing, although it was hard to tell. Funny thing about this city, from 2am until 5am, the streets are totally deserted and silent. Sort of like Escape from New York. Eerie. Anyway, I got excited and called the team and woke up everyone only to discover that Rajesh, our translator and guide had returned to Mumbai to go to church. We attempted to contact him to get him to return, and by the time we got him on the phone, the sky had turned gray again.

The view out our hotel window. Notice all the Tut-Tuts and the water in the streets is from overflowing sewers. We are hopeful it will clear later today again and we can shoot something. Interesting note about the traffic: There are no traffic signals, stop lights, or stop signs. All intersections are sort of free-flowing. It was a bit scary at first, but after awhile, you get used to it.

Not having any other direction, we plan on leaving Kalyan on tomorrow morning and traveling to Mahad -- 3-4 hour drive -- where there is a Habitat work site. (A famous Bollywood actress, tv anchor, columnist named Pooja Bedi will be on the site working on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and has agreed to participate in our tv project).

After that, we are not sure. The Habitat team in the US is working on possible destinations in The Philippines or to Bangkok, Thailand. We don’t have Visas to those countries, so it might be that we will return to the US within a few days. Where the first item on my agenda will be for someone to cook me a big, fat cheeseburger with homemade fries – or a filet-mignon would do quite well also.

The rain has stopped so we are going to venture out and try to get a glimpse of this city where we have been holed up for the past 8 days. Oops. I blinked and it is raining again. I'll leave you with this parting shot. I am quite certain this guy feels more at home than me.

Monday 9:00 AM July 3rd.

Sam woke up yesterday and when he entered the small lobby of the hotel I asked if he wanted breakfast. In a totally deadpan face, he only said, "Pizza". After an hour of him talking about pizza, LiJo volunteered (as though he had been under a rock for a week) that there was a mall about an hour away with a Pizza Hut. So off we went in search of Pizza.

I guess Sam's expression sort of says it all. We stayed and caught a fresh CinemaScope print of Superman Returns and came back last night. I have never spent the afternoon at the mall and had such a great time.

As I have mentioned before, in all the countries we have visited, we tend to see the impoverished side of things more than the upside. It is the nature of where Habitat does their important work. Going to the mall yesterday showed me a totally different, affluent, upscale side of India that we have not seen, but certainly is there. Evidenced by the number of highly educated Indians we have in the US workforce and universities. But to us, like everywhere on visits for the first time, India is a land of contrasts. You only have to take one look at this photo below to get the point. An entire family, living under a sheet of plastic, on the side of the road. A picture does say a thousand words sometimes.

We are about to leave Kalyan and head to Mahad. It may be a few days before I can post again. Jim, Susan and Sam.