Lucinda is partying in the U.S. and has not keep up on the blog.

Yesterday I hiked up to an old fort on the top of a mountain. There are lots of forts and temples on the mountain tops near Pune. Lucinda and Hannah are usually not very interested in making the hike. You know what they say, while the cats awhile, the mice will play.

A visitor from the U.S. made the hike last week. He gave me detailed instructions on how to get there and even plotted the path on Google earth for me. I just asked my driver to take me there. He didn’t know at first, but he asked around and got us there without any problems.

We drove through very rural towns and farms to get there. These were places without electricity and paved roads. Since it is the rainy season, they had the bullocks plowing the rice paddies. They were also transplanting rice by hand while standing knee deep in water. If there was a level spot no bigger than a bedroom, they cultivated it.

We passed a funeral procession. Everyone was on foot behind a group on men caring the body. The body was draped in fancy material and covered with flowers. Just a short distance past them we crossed a bridge where the funeral pyre was waiting next to the river. I guess wouldn’t mind being cremated; I would just as soon be burned on a fire made of wood and not dried cow dung.

The guy from the U.S. told me that I would have no trouble finding the path. Luckily, I arrived right after a busload of college kids. There were so many paths going in ever direction, I would have certainly got lost. I just followed the kids up the hill. They knew, however, that I was not part of the group. Was it my age, my height, my white skin, my Indiana Jones hat? No! It was because I was the only one wearing hiking boots. You wouldn’t believe the footwear going up the mountain. Most of the boys were wearing tennis shoes - which works. Lots of the girls were wearing sandals. I just can’t even fathom hiking up the mountain, over boulders and through mud, in sandals. As I was going down the mountain, a couple of very old men were climbing up the mountain with large packages on their heads in bare feet! Also, one the way down, a girl passed wearing dress sandals with heels and wearing a fancy saree.

The path followed a muddy stream bed up the mountain. It was slippery. It was steep. It was narrow. At the steepest part, right before the fort, there was a broken down guard rail with tiny steps carved in the rocks. Luckily, by the time I reached the guard rail, fog completely engulfed the path so that the sheer drop off next to the path was invisible. (The drop off was visible on the way down.) Rain covered all the rocks making them quit slippery.

I was one tired puppy by the time I reached the top. The group of college kids hadn’t been seen for a long time. You know, I just can’t stand being at the end of the line. The fort was fascinating. It looked just like an Indian Jones moving. The grass covered broken walls would come in and out of view as the banks of fog rolled by. There were cisterns full of water. I didn’t know, nor could I figure out, what were most of the ruins as the signs were in Hindi. But that just let my imagination run wild. I did walk through a troop of monkeys while on the top. Are monkey dangerous?

The trip down was uneventful but slippery. My driver was waiting for me at the bottom. I was soaked from sweat and rain. I took off my shoes and fell asleep in the car. Before falling asleep, however, we passed the smoldering embers of the funeral pyre.

Sorry, no pictures, Lucinda has the camera.