Dudhwa Guesthouse

One of the few advantages of recuperating from surgery is that you have lots of time of your hands, and a somewhat legitimate justification, faff around on your website (essentially, this is what I'm doing instead of going to the gym). I'm using the forced convalescence to continue to get caught up on the mountain of pictures/stories from too many trips (I feel like I'm Neil Young working my way through the Archives), in this case last spring's trip to India. On our unsuccessful trip to Dudhwa, at least on the tiger front (we were a smashing success on the introducing students to cricket front), we stayed at the Dudhwa Guesthouse. Since we couldn't ride elephants, and we never found tigers, I figured that the students would have whined, but instead they had a great time. They goofed and enjoyed the serenity (a nice break after the relative madness of New Delhi; only a couple of them had been to Mumbai, so New Delhi seemed chaotic without the Mumbai comparison - especially if you go to university in Vermont), and played so many bizarre card games which apparently only exist within the confines of Champlain College. I actually have very happy memories of our time in Dudhwa, tigers or no tigers.

The view of the high walls that surrounded the guesthouse. My initial thought was that maybe, for some reason, it wasn't a safe village, but then we found out that sometimes the tigers go for a walkabout, and you can see them inside the compound.

Our first meal, after a very long bus ride. Actually, the food was fantastic, whipped up repeatedly throughout the day by the small staff.

Yes, the future of America: Ines and Alex on the swing-set. There was a massive slide as well and I have some great video of Sally and Hattie pulling off spectacular butt-plants, but I've never figured out how to download video on the site (so the videos happily exist on Facebook).

The scene of many odd card games, most meals, and late night gab sessions.