Following on the heels of Josh’s call for new mass transit infrastructure, planning, and investments in Indian cities, we’re happy to introduce the following photographs from American travelers in India. They show urbanites navigating crowded Delhi streets, families embarking on hours-long cross-country train rides, and modern transportation engines idling in traffic alongside ox-drawn carts. We hope that they capture the excitement and pleasure of traveling through India, where foreigners are always in the minority and, for about four dollars, you can take an overnight train from a booming metropolis to a sleepy rural town. We also hope that they honestly depict some of the challenges that, as Josh has mentioned, are facing India’s growing cities: worsening air quality, crippling traffic congestion, and unconstrained urban sprawl. With cities like Delhi and Mumbai now increasingly investing in new transportation infrastructure (and one terrific new metro in Delhi’s case), the choices planners make today will greatly determine how the world looks in the decades to come.
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About the Photography
I traveled through India on my way back to the US after a long stay in Thailand and Nepal. Added as an afterthought to my larger trip, visiting India turned out to be the most exciting component of my eight months of travel. As you might guess, I met many lovely people and encountered unthinkable quantities of surprising and delicious food. I’m already planning my next trip!
-Aaron Reuben (photos 1-3)
We spent May-July of 2009 traveling and volunteering together in South Asia before starting graduate school. Our trip, mostly undertaken by train and bus, included a month in Nepal and another 1.5 months in India, during which we visited more than twenty cities including Kathmandu, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Ariel now studies at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine and Josh studies at the University of Colorado Denver in the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems.
-Ariel Fagen and Joshua Sperling (photos 4-6)
In December 2010 I traveled for two weeks with a group of friends in India. We visited Jaipur, Delhi, Agra, Mumbai, and many places along the roads in between. The food, sights, smells and people were amazing, and I cherish my visit. I am now finishing my second year of medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York.
-Deborah Shwartz (photos 7-9)