"Get out of the way, the Americans are coming" as the five new white SUVs honked their way across northeast India on its newest highway toward Varanasi. The most adept drivers navigated our way through every form of transportation used for centuries. One couldn't help but be embarassed, if we weren't too scared of hitting someone to complain.
At the midpoint of the day, we stopped to see how trillions of bricks are made. In million-brick batches, they are formed, and dried, and fired in smokestack kilns that belch out dark black smoke into the Indian air. And one by one, they pass through the hands of India's future.
Varanasi (or Benares) is one of the world's oldest continually-inhabited cities. Mark Twain wrote in 1897 " Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together"
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