Travels with Tavish

Written Jan 29, 2017 On Monday night (Jan 23), I left for Aurangabad on the overnight train, the Devagiri Express. I traveled with two undergrad students, Vynatea and Saikrishna, in their final semester in the Energy department. They are going to be working on an energy audit of a spice factory—our destination in Aurangabad—while I work on developing a solar spice roaster. As usual, we took an auto (rickshaw) to the local train station, Kanjur Marg. We got some momos (dumplings) outside Kanjur Marg to eat on the train. We had to take the local train four stops to Thane, where we would catch the Devagiri Express to Aurangabad. The local train was relatively crowded, so we were standing up the whole time in close proximity to others. Generally the ride takes 15 minutes or so, but for some reason this night the train kept stopping in between stations for periods of time ranging between 2 and 15 minutes. In the US, there would be some sort of announcement on the train that says “we a...

This weekend was relatively quiet except for one rock climbing outing. I spent a lot of time reading, exercising, and a little time working on my project.  On Wednesday night last week as I was brushing my teeth, I noticed for the first time a small lizard in the bathroom. It was about three inches long and of a greenish yellow color. It was on the ceiling about 8 feet away from me. As I brushed, I saw it sneak up on a bug that was on the wall, covering the last six inches of its journey in the blink of an eye. It caught the bug and munched on it before crawling away across the ceiling. The bug seemed pretty dumb—I think it should have seen the lizard, because it was not exactly sneaking up on it as it crawled toward it. I did not see the lizard on Thursday. On Friday evening, I was standing at the urinal, the only one in the bathroom, when I heard a small “splat” sound behind me that caused me to jump. It was my friend the lizard, who had apparently...