Hanson To Sell Homestead. Mueller's Report Will Disappoint. Canadian Comic Misses Bill. Trump Has Dimwits Confused.

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Mueller's next direction? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Canadian comedian misses "Ole"Bill. I edited. (See 3 below.)

And:

Tim Fitton and Judicial Watch respond. (See 3a below.)
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Just another day of progressives avoiding unpleasantness. (See 4 below.)
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Republicans never fight.  They are too Patrician.  This is what I actually love about Trump.  He is a  less attractive version of John Wayne.  He is willing to go out and slug with the best.  He refuses to back down and that is what has been lacking among conservative politicians.  Even if they were willing to fight they did not know how to message.  Trump is killing the Demwits with sound bites that are clear, ie. "Jobs not Mobs" etc.

The Republicans may not retain The House but it will not be because Trump did not try, did not give it his all. His stump speeches are terrible but they are funny at the same time and effective. He is a master at phrasing and attacking. Insulting, for sure but after what Demwits have been allowed to do for decades, who cares. It is red meat time and Trump is giving back what Demwits did to Kavanaugh , Bork, Thomas and a host of other competent decent candidates, thinking they could escape. Trump is holding their feet to the fire and one can only hope conservatives will learn something from him.
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Chapter 9. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) The Diversity Of Illegal Immigration

by Victor Davis Hanson

I live on a farm beside a rural avenue in central California, the fifth generation to reside in the same house. And after years of thefts, home break-ins, and dangerous encounters, I have concluded that it is no longer safe to live where I was born. I stay for a while longer because I am sixty-five years old and either too old to move or too worried about selling the final family parcel of what was homesteaded in the 1870s.

Rural Fresno County used to be one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the United States. I grew up with first-, second-, and third-generation farmers—agrarians of Armenian, German, Greek, Mexican, Japanese, Portuguese, Punjabi, and Scandinavian descent.

Race and ethnicity were richly diverse; yet assimilation was the collective shared goal—made easier because immigration was almost entirely a legal and measured enterprise. No one much carried for the superficial appearance of his neighbors. My own Swedish-American family has intermarried with those of Mexican heritage. My neighbor’s grandchildren are part white, Japanese, and Mexican. The creed growing up was that tribal affiliation was incidental, not essential, to character.

Family farming was never an easy enterprise. But an us/them mentality prevailed that united diverse farmers against both human and nature’s challenges. Yet most of those rural families now have all moved away or passed on. Their farms are leased to corporate enterprises and their homes rented to mostly immigrants from Mexico—many of them undocumented. Globalized agribusiness and unchecked illegal immigration, in different ways, combined to change central California and has made living in rural areas no longer safe.

Almost every old farmstead in my vicinity is no longer just a home for a single farm family. They are often now surrounded by trailers and lean-tos, in turn sub-rented out to dozens of others—violations of zoning laws and building codes of the sort that would earn me a stiff fine, but which are of little interest to local authorities. Of three neighboring farmsteads down the road, one is now a storage area for dozens of used porta potties and wrecked cars. Another is an illegal dumping ground. The third has been raided on various occasions by authorities in order to stop drug dealing, gang activity, and prostitution.

Our rural environs are often home to hard-working immigrants, but also to various Mexican gangs, drug dealers, and parolees. I hesitate to offer too many details because in the past I have incurred the anger of dangerous neighbors who got wind of filtered down stories of their criminality. It is enough said that sirens, SWAT teams, and ICE raids are not uncommon. 

A month ago a gang member shot up a neighbor’s house. He was arrested, released, and rearrested in a single night after trying twice to break into the home. The armed homeowner stopped his entry. I know of no nearby resident who is not armed. I cannot remember anything remotely similar occurring before 1980. In the 1970s we had no keys to our doors, and houses were permanently unlocked.

Some of those with criminal records and gang affiliations were born in the United States. Perhaps America often does not seem as much a promised land to the second generation as it did to their parents, who arrived destitute from impoverished Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Central America. Arriving from one of the poorest regions in the world to one of the wealthiest and most culturally different— without the competitive requisites of English, legality, and a high-school diploma—in an era when the salad bowl is preferable to the melting pot, can easily result in the frequent chaos described below.

I object most to the environmental damage in our rural areas. By that I mean the tossing of household waste or even toxic chemicals onto farmland. Staged cock- and dog-fighting is also not uncommon. I have found a few carcasses ripped to shreds, some with ropes around the dead dogs’ neck. 

Picking up tossed junk in my orchard is a routine experience. The perpetrators often leave plastic bags of their bulk mail (with incriminating addresses!) among soiled diapers and wet garbage. Local authorities have enough to do without hunting down dumpers to cite them for their antigreen habits.

Every once in a while amateur and illegal collectors, who freelance for immigrant households that do not pay for “supposedly” mandated county garbage pick-ups, will come in at night with panel trucks and trailers. They dump literally tons of garbage such as mattresses, sofas, TVs, appliances, tires, junk mail, and car seats on alleyways and in vineyards.

Not long ago someone jettisoned in our vineyard hundreds of used florescent light bulbs, about 100 paint cans, and fifty-gallon drums of used oil and chemicals. Needles and drug paraphernalia are not uncommon. I’ve seen about five stripped-down cars abandoned on our property after being stolen. Last summer a huge semi-truck was left on our alleyway, picked cleaned down to the chassis.

I used to ride a bicycle in our environs. I quit for a variety of reasons.

If one is bit by unlicensed and unvaccinated roaming dogs— and there are many out here— and if their masters do not speak English or do not have legal status, then a nightmare follows of trying to get authorities to find the dogs and impound them before the owners or the dogs disappear. It is up to the bitten whether the decision to play the odds and not get painful, and sometimes dangerous, rabies shots is prudent or suicidal. As a doctor put it to me when I was bitten: “Rabid dogs are almost unheard of in the United States, but I have no idea of what is true of Mexico. Your call.”

Less dramatically, I got tired of watching local canteen trucks drive out on our rural roads, pull their drainage plugs, and dump cooking waste or toss leftovers on the road.

Sometimes there is more comedy than melodrama out in rural Fresno County. About two months I noticed that a number of my roadside cypress trees seemed ailing. I tried gopher bait, given what I thought were strange burrows near the trunks. 

Then one evening I heard voices near the trees. Two immigrants, neither speaking English, were digging with hand-held hoes for what they said were hongos. They produced a large clear plastic bag that instead seemed full, of all things, harvested truffles—which I had never seen or heard of in the area.

I couldn’t figure out whether the forest humus ground up from fallen Sierra trees I had purchased, or the roots of the cypresses themselves, had spawned truffles— or whether they were even truffles or perhaps some sort of strange looking subterranean tree growths or mushrooms. In broken Spanish, I politely asked that they not periodically dig up my tree cypress-tree roots but could sell their already collected hongos in their bags at the local swap meet as they said they had intended. We left amicably enough.

On lots of occasions, drivers (almost always on Sunday afternoons) have veered off the road, torn out vines or trees, left their wrecked vehicles, and run away. Authorities belatedly arrive and explain there is no valid registration, insurance, or known licensed driver to be found—but that the damage in the thousands of dollars cannot be mitigated by selling the abandoned car, which must be impounded.  

Identity theft is a problem. The IRS has reported over one million cases of likely illegal immigrants using false or multiple identities. Once I went online and discovered my checking account was suddenly in arrears by several thousand dollars. When I pulled up the cancelled checks, I saw perfect replicas of my own, with the proper bank and router numbers in the lower left corner of the checks—but at top with the name and address of a different person and with the reverse of the check stamped with his ID at a local Spanish-language market. The bank said I could call police investigators or simply file a claim that it would quickly cover. And it did. I have not written a local check to any person or business since.

Hot pursuit by local authorities that blast into private driveways is scary. On one occasion the sheriffs and police lost their fleeing target (who later turned out to be a felon with arrest warrants) and gave up the chase. An hour later in the dead of night I heard the accomplice near our patio. He had apparently jumped out the passenger door of the car and hid under our pecan tree. I held him at gunpoint until the flummoxed authorities returned. 

When my daughter was thirteen, she and I were broadsided in our pickup by a driver who ran a stop sign. I called the local police. We were bruised but not hurt; the truck dented but drivable. She waited behind the pickup as I chased the driver who had fled on foot from his overturned car. I caught him just when the police arrived.

Rural Central California is sort of ground zero for illegal immigration and its auxiliary effects. From experience, I can attest that the vast majority of illegal aliens are fine people, hard-working, and whose first and second offenses of entering and residing illegally in the United States were not followed by third and fourth acts of criminality.

Certainly after twenty-one years of teaching Latin, Greek, and humanities to immigrants at CSU Fresno, both legal and illegal, I believed that the melting pot can still work and most Hispanic arrivals integrate, assimilate, and intermarry with increasingly frequency despite the often-shrill protestations of campus identity politics advocates.

But the numbers of illegal immigrants have become so large—ranging from an estimated 11–20 million now residing in the United States—that both pessimism and optimism are now warranted. If only ten percent have criminal records or inordinately break laws, then the good news is that many millions more are likely working and crime free. The bad news is that somewhere between one and two million have entered our country illegally and repaid that generosity with criminality or ID theft or fraud.

Our local town has erected a sort of clannish statue of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, the mother snake goddess to whom thousands were sacrificed, with the ill-fitting caption Viva La Raza (literally, “long live the race”). But I think most of our town’s overwhelming Mexican-American and Mexican population are about as indifferent to it as my Swedish ancestors’ children in the nearby town of Kingsburg are oblivious to various Swedish totems (although none of them are emblazoned with Viva ett ras!).

The tragedy of illegal immigration is that it did not have to be this way. Legal, measured, meritocratic, and diverse immigration leads to rapid assimilation and Americanization and enriches the country culturally and economically.

Its antithesis—illegal, mass, non-meritocratic, and non-diverse immigration—hinders the melting pot. It fuels tribalism, while incurring vast costs in social services to ensure some sort of parity for those from impoverished southern Mexico and Central America. The wages of our citizen working poor and their access to needed social services are not helped by thousands of new arrivals without legality and English.

Yet illegal immigration in such numbers certainly empowers a host of special interests. So it continues. Employers prefer cheap labor and often worry little about the social consequences of their workers once they age, have families, or become ill or injured.

Ethnic activists seem energized when their constituents assimilate slowly and require collective representation.

The Democratic Party has learned that the blue-ing of California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico is a paradigm of how to flip Arizona and Texas.

The Mexican government counts on billions in annual remittances from mostly illegal immigrants in the United States who serve as a safety valve for Mexico City to defer needed social and economic change. (In the first eleven months of 2017 Mexicans living abroad sent home $26.1 billion, most of it from north of the border.) The expatriate community in the United States seems to grow fonder of Mexico the farther it is distant.

A final note. Most who write of the positives of open borders and the supposed nativism and xenophobia of those who worry about illegal immigration choose not to experience firsthand the concrete consequences of their own advocacies. By that I mean that despite virtue-signaling, their children rarely attend impacted public schools. They do not socialize or live next to illegal immigrants. And to the degree that they interact with the undocumented, it is mostly as employers to landscapers, housekeepers, nannies, servers, and cooks who magically disappear after work.

In contrast, many of those who are worried most about illegal immigration are often now second- and third-generation Mexican Americans whose schools, neighborhoods, and social services are increasingly in crisis due to the sheer number of those who have arrived without legality, a high school diploma, and English but in sore need of government help.

Much of what we read about illegal immigration seems to have little to do with the reality of those most directly influenced by it.

It’s no coincidence that Fresno County native Victor Davis Hanson is descended from a long line of raisin farmers: California raisin growers produce 100% of the US raisin crop within a sixty-mile radius of the city of Fresno (“raisin” comes from the Latin racemes, which translates to “cluster of grapes or berries”). As far as top cash crops are concerned, almonds and raisins rule supreme in Fresno County.

In post-Civil War California, Armenians descended from the founders of vineyards in Persia migrated to the San Joaquin Valley. Legend has it that California’s first raisin crop occurred by happenstance, not agricultural planning—a heat wave struck before harvest, killing grapes on the vine before farmers couple pluck them. As proof that times change and so too does culture: in today’s society, raisins are synonymous with bran and bread. The Greeks used raisin crops to decorate temples; Hannibal fed them to his troops; Romans used them as a barter currency (legend has it two jars of raisins could be traded for one slave), a cure for mushroom-poisoning, and a payment for taxes. Good luck selling that to the IRS.

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2) Pundits spent months trying to figure out Robert Mueller’s end game.

They believed Mueller was working towards delivering a death blow to Donald Trump’s Presidency.

And now word is leaking out as to what Mueller has planned—and no one can believe what it is.

Robert Mueller Preparing The Left To Be Disappointed

So-called “journalists” and left-wing cable news networks thought Mueller had spent months silently building an airtight case against Donald Trump.

They believed Mueller would prove that Trump worked with the Russians to rig the 2016 election.

In addition, Mueller would show how Trump intended to obstruct the investigation into this conspiracy by firing former FBI Director James Comey.

But neither outcome looks to be the case.

Politico spoke to defense lawyers working with clients on the Russian probe and 15 former government officials with experience on special counsel investigations.

They reported that Mueller would not be issuing a report that would take down Trump’s Presidency.

In fact, they said Mueller’s report may never be made public.

Politico exclusively reports:

THAT’S THE WORD POLITICO GOT FROM DEFENSE LAWYERS WORKING ON THE RUSSIA PROBE AND MORE THAN 15 FORMER GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WITH INVESTIGATION EXPERIENCE SPANNING WATERGATE TO THE 2016 ELECTION CASE. THE PUBLIC, THEY SAY, SHOULDN’T EXPECT A COMPREHENSIVE AND PRESIDENCY-WRECKING ACCOUNT OF KREMLIN MEDDLING AND ALLEGED OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE BY TRUMP — NOT TO MENTION AN EXPLANATION OF THE MYRIAD SUBPLOTS THAT HAVE BEDEVILED LAWMAKERS, JOURNALISTS AND AMATEUR MUELLER SLEUTHS.

PERHAPS MOST UNSATISFYING: MUELLER’S FINDINGS MAY NEVER EVEN SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.

“THAT’S JUST THE WAY THIS WORKS,” SAID JOHN Q. BARRETT, A FORMER ASSOCIATE COUNSEL WHO WORKED UNDER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL LAWRENCE WALSH DURING THE REAGAN-ERA INVESTIGATION INTO SECRET U.S. ARMS SALES TO IRAN. “MUELLER IS A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATOR. HE’S NOT GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT, AND HE’S NOT A HISTORIAN.”

2a) Mueller’s Next Steps

Pundits believe Mueller began the prep work by leaking word that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was pressuring him to wrap up the probe by the end of the year.

When Mueller finishes his work, he will submit a report to Rosenstein.

It’s up to Rosenstein to decide how much – if any – is made public.

Pundits expect Mueller will issue a report that takes Trump to task for hiring characters like Paul Manafort.

But they expect his report will fall far short of proving collusion.

If the Democrats win control of Congress, they will certainly subpoena the report.

Even if Mueller ultimately finds Trump innocent of collusion and obstruction of justice, Democrats will want to release the parts of the report that are embarrassing for Trump.

But Mueller wrapping up his probe by year’s end is good news for Trump.

Mueller’s indictments against Russians for election meddling and hacking the DNC made it clear no Americans were involved in either crime.

The fake news media’s two year Russia obsession is about to come to a close.

So Mueller is sending out signals to the Democrats in order to let them down easy.

We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this ongoing story.

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3)From a Canadian TV show, where a black comedian said he misses Bill Clinton....

"Yep, that's right - I miss Bill Clinton!"

He was the closest thing we ever got to having a real black man as President.

He plays the saxophone.

He smoked weed.

He had his way with ugly white women.

Even now? Look at him .... his wife works, and he doesn't!

And, he gets a check from the government every month.

Chrysler Corporation is adding a new car to its line to honor Bill Clinton. The Dodge Drafter will be built in Canada.

When asked what he thought about foreign affairs, Clinton replied, "I don't know, I never had one.

The Clinton revised judicial oath:

"I solemnly swear to tell the truth as I know it, the whole truth as I believe it to be, and nothing but what I think you need to know."

3a)

Young Angry Men & Gangbangers March Towards U.S. Yelling “Vamos Para Allá Trump!” Besides gang members and mobs of young angry men, the Central American caravan making its way into the United States also consists of Africans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Indians. Judicial Watch is covering the crisis from the Guatemalan-Honduran border this week and observed that the popular mainstream media narrative of desperate migrants—many of them women and children—seeking a better life is hardly accurate. Guatemalan intelligence officials confirmed that the caravan that originated in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula includes a multitude of Special Interest Aliens (SIA) from the countries listed above as well as other criminal elements and gang members. There are also large groups of men, some with criminal histories, aggressively demanding that the U.S. take them in. During a visit to the Guatemalan town of Chiquimula, about 35 miles from the Honduran border, Judicial Watch encountered a rowdy group of about 600 men, ages 17 to about 40, marching north on a narrow two-lane highway. Among them was a 40-year-old Honduran man who previously lived in the United States for decades and got deported. His English was quite good, and he said his kids and girlfriend live in the U.S. Another man in his 30s contradicted media reports that caravan participants are fleeing violence and fear for their life. “We’re not scared,” he said waving his index finger as others around him nodded in agreement. “We’re going to the United States to get jobs.” Others chanted “vamos para allá Trump!” (We’re coming Trump) as they clenched their fists in the air. “We need money and food,” said a 29-year-old man who made the trek with his 21-year-old brother. All of the migrants interviewed by Judicial Watch repeated the same rehearsed line when asked who organized the caravan, insisting it was a spontaneous event even though there were clearly organizers shouting instructions in Spanish and putting select persons in front of cameras for interviews. A few claimed they heard about it on local news in Honduras. All of them said the caravan was not about politics but rather poverty. “I just want to get back to the U.S.,” said a 32-year-old man who admitted he has been deported from the U.S. twice. “We are all just looking for work.” The group radiated a sense of empowerment. One marcher, who appeared to be in his late teens, yelled “you go live in Honduras and see what it’s like!” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a conservative, said in a local newspaper report that leftist interests seeking to destabilize the country are manipulating migrants.  Women and children are being used without regard to the risks to their lives, Hernández said. “The irregular mobilization was organized for political reasons to negatively affect the governance and image of Honduras and to destabilize the peace of neighboring countries,” the president said, adding that many have returned to the country after realizing they’ve been fooled. Guatemala is overwhelmed with the sudden onslaught and immigration officials confirmed 1,700 migrants have been returned to Honduras on buses. The first wave of migrants totaled about 4,000, according to Guatemalan government sources, followed by a second, less organized group of about 2,000. The impoverished Central American nation needs help, including logistical, communications and civil affairs support to stop the human caravans. “There are only so many resources we can dedicate to this,” said Guatemalan Secretary of Strategic Intelligence Mario Duarte. Guatemalans are getting robbed and crimes are being committed by the people in the caravans, Duarte said.

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4)

WATCH: Things Get Heated When Journalist Asks If Alyssa Milano Will Disavow Linda Sarsour

By  Amanda Prestigiacomo

Verified account

Things got heated at Politicon on Sunday when actress and #MeToo darling Alyssa Milano was confronted by freelance journalist Laura Loomer about her support for controversial Women's March leader and Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour.

"My question is for you, Alyssa Milano. You are friends with Linda Sarsour, and both of you ladies have positioned yourselves as speakers and representatives of the #MeToo movement," started Loomer.

The journalist was quickly swarmed by women manning the Politicon event, two of whom physically grabbed the mic from Loomer.

"Let me ask my question," insisted Loomer.

"I want to ask you right now to disavow Linda Sarsour because she is a supporter of Sharia law. And under Sharia law, women are oppressed, women are forced to wear a hijab," she said. "My question is, will you please disavow her because she is advocating for Sharia law?"

Milano, unsurprisingly, elected not to disavow Sarsour.

"She's not" advocating for Sharia law, replied the actress. "She’s not. But thank you so much for your question."

As Loomer was being physically removed from the venue, she brought up past tweets from Sarsour which expressly advocate for Sharia law.

As recently as April of 2016, for example, the "feminist" tweeted that "Sharia Law is misunderstood."

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5)Chapter 9 – Ranthambore, Chittaurgarth, and the Train

The train rolled along all night from Jaipur to Ranthambore.  We had an early breakfast on board, and then got into open-topped trucks for the trip to the National Park.  Ranthambore is a game reserve famous for its large number of tigers, as well as hyenas, wild boar, spotted deer, sambar deer (lunch for the tigers) long-tailed monkeys, and a wide variety of birds including the national bird, the peacock.

We drove through the park for about three hours.  The terrain is hilly, with a lovely lake with old buildings around it.  There are heavily forested areas, and clearings.  We saw lots of birds, deer, monkeys, boar, peacocks, but nary a tiger.  We did see tracks, but I think the guy from the fabric store came out with a block and made them to make us think there were actually tigers around. Tony and family were clearly on vacation.  Not grrrreat.

Disappointed, we went back to the train to continue to the town of Chittaurgarh.  This is another town with an ancient fort, and this is one of the largest.  The road leading up to the fort zigs and zags steeply, and there are seven gates, all designed to deter oncoming marauders and give the people inside the fort the chance to throw large rocks or hot oil down on them.  It was built by Sisodiya rulers of this Mewar area.  They spent most of their time resisting the Moguls.  In Jaipur, by comparison, the rulers maintained friendly relations with the Moguls and avoided battles.

The legend is that a beautiful woman in the 13^th century, Rani Padmini, so attracted Sultan Allauddin Khilji (a Mogul) that, having once seen her reflection in water, he was determined to acquire her for his harem.  A battle ensued, and within days, it became apparent that the fort could not hold out against the siege of the Moguls.  The Sisodias rode out to make their last stand, while the women in the fort, including Padmini, self-immolated in a vast funeral pyre.  When he entered the city, Allauddin Khilji was so angry that he destroyed as much of it as he could.  The Sisodias recovered it 20 years later, and it remained the capital of this area for 200 years.

The fort covers 700 acres and is spread over a hill seven miles long.  We saw the ruins of Padmini’s palace and the pool where Khilji is believed to have seen her reflection.  Our guide told us that they celebrated victories here – despite the fact that this location was not the site of a victory.  Sort of a home-and-away situation.  You are happy for the victories away and overlook the losses at home.

Our local guide, Mr. Sukhwal, invited us to his home inside the fort for tea and refreshments.  His home, now an 8-room B&B, is a traditional southern Rajasthani residence, built around a central courtyard.  We had tea on his roof overlooking the temples and palaces within the fort walls.  He also had a lovely wife and 3 cute kids.  The baby, 6 months old, does not yet have a name.  They are waiting for the Hindu astrologer or priest to tell them what would be a good name.

Dinner was on the train.  They provide a menu on the table, but it is only to tell you the twelve or so courses that they will be bringing you.  It begins with a “continental” selection of soup, salads, meat and potatoes, and then moves into Indian selections of fish, veggies, chicken, and several types of breads.  Then there is dessert, with some sort of Indian delicacy and ice cream.  Then you waddle back to your cabin and collapse in a food coma.

We have two gentlemen who take care of our every need on this train:  Laksma and Rajendra.  They each wear a brown Nehru-style jacket, fully buttoned at all times, and a turban with a long streamer down the back.  They do laundry, clean the cabin, turn down the beds, and constantly ask if there is anything they can do for us.  They greet us in the morning, escort us to the dining car, escort us off the train to the vehicle for the day, and are right there when we return to escort us back to the train. 

The head man on the train, Mr. Bohra, walks through the dining cars each evening to be sure everything is fine and that everyone is happy.  He is always wearing a well-tailored suit with a tie.  He looks like a guy who should be running a casino in Las Vegas.  Or like Joe Pesci.  Maybe both.  He’s a short guy, but demands respect.  One of those “I snap my fingers and you do it” kind of guys.

The train is about 25 cars long.  Two cars are dining/bar.  There are six, I think, for the staff, although Laksma and Rajendra sleep on the floor in our car so that, should we need anything, they will be available.  There is a kitchen car, and some other mechanical cars.  The rest are called Saloons, with each Saloon containing 3 cabins like ours.  Laksma told us that they redecorate the train every year.  Maybe with new fabrics, but there are definitely areas that need a paint touch-up.  It does have wi-fi, most of the time, and excellent A/C.  All-in-all, quite nice.

In 1981, the idea was hatched to recreate the grandeur of train travel in India.  Fourteen vintage rail cars which had belonged to maharajas and viceroys of India were rounded up from warehouses and storage all over the country.  Of course, the plush interiors, crystal chandeliers, silver, and other accoutrements were all gone, but the cars were intact, and some still had their wood panels.  They were refurbished to as close to original as possible, and The Palace on Wheels was born in 1982.

This old train had to be retired in 1991 due to age and the change in rail gauge in India.  This new one has been in service since about that time, and has won several awards for luxury travel.

After dinner, we went back out to attend  the celebrations of the two festivals going on at the same time.  Along the way, we encountered a celebration in the street, with loud music blaring from speakers on a truck, and young people dancing in the street and throwing colored powder into the air.  We stopped and got out to take photos.  One of the young ladies motioned to me to come join the girls dancing, so I did.  We bopped and grooved for a while, and they covered me with pink and purple powder.  One of the men in our group also joined in the fun, while the rest clicked away with their cameras.

We stopped next beside a river where a large group of happy celebrants was getting ready to toss a female effigy into the river.  There was a lot of noise and excitement as she was slowly moved from her perch beside the river onto a small barge and out into the middle of the river.  Then she was unceremoniously turned over and dumped into the water.

Once that was completed, we moved on to a large athletic field where a whole market had been set up with food trucks, vendors of all types, and the evil demon effigies that would soon be burned as large numbers of firecrackers were set off.  There was a live depiction of the battle between the main characters in this Hindu story, with the bad guy having to be slain three times before he was dead.  Once this depiction was over, we left, despite having been treated like VIPs and allowed on the field while everyone else had to watch from behind barricades.  Mattheiu said the fireworks would be very loud, and the entire town was there to watch, and I really wanted to get away from the crowd before it started to disperse, so we left early and got back to the safety of our little cabin.  Little did we know that, in another city in India that same night, revelers at the same type of celebration would be hit by a train and 50 killed. 

I’ll cut this short so that you can look at the photos and not stay up all night.

https://www.mmemery.com/Ranthambore-and-Chittaurgarh

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