Driving from Belgaum to Monastery

The flight from Mumbai to Belgaum was fine; nothing particularly different from how small flights in the US work. However, the Belgaum airport was incredible - a tiny runway in a field with a tiny building.

Airport.  All of it.  No security, but there was a (single) baggage carousel.  

Some monks met us at the Belgaum airport to drive us to the monastery. The drive was entirely on paved roads, at many point on multi-lane highways. However, much of it was in a particular Indian style - one lane on each side, shared by many motorcycles, buses, trucks, and the occasionally ox-pulled cart. Everyone quickly passes slower traffic by driving in the "oncoming traffic" lane, so it feels like a constant game of chicken. Very exciting.

Possibly the "Public Works" - other government buildings similarly looked like palaces.

The drive included many fields, some industrial areas, and a few larger towns (like Hubli). The larger towns were interesting - an amalgam of street vendors, small shops, Western-style shopping malls, cows, pigs, dogs, and chickens. I have a number of pictures, and some videos of driving through smaller residential areas.

They drive on the "British" side of the road, so this is a picture taken as we are driving towards oncoming traffic to pass this bus.

We could tell when we neared the Tibetan settlement - the fields starting having prayer flags on the fences, and our monk driver told us. The Tibetan area seems much less impoverished than what we had driven through previously. I'm not sure if this is really do to more resources, or just do to cultural differences.