A few low-resolution photos from Rock's Palm pilot - a canny device that doesn't look like a camera and thus draws less attention

Riding the public bus from Pune to Ahmednagar in rural Maharashtra

Some fellow passengers enjoying the view from the bus. Note that nothing in the bus is in English. The native language of Maharashtra is Marati, closely related to Hindi, but different enough that native Hindi spakers struggle in the rural areas to be understood.

The rain clouds gather at a gas station somewhere between Pune and Mumbai. Gas (called petrol here) is drop-for-drop more expensive in India than in the US by about 50%. The sign in the distance has an HP on the top which stands for Hindustan Petroleum. Most other petrol stations carry similar names that employ some native form of the word 'India.' Petrol companies are all state-owned here in India, so gas prices are even greater political-fodder here than in the US. The central government recently increased gas prices about 10% across the board in order to better match international prices. In a somewhat empty gesture they asked the state governments to reduce their petrol taxes in order to minimize the effects of the price increase on the common man. To my knowledge, no state lowered their taxes.