Uttar Pradesh

It's grim, really grim. If I was royal I would likely say Ghastly. Perhaps just before the rainy season isn't the best time to visit this place, with high humidity and temperatures and dry dusty earth. The small fields, each barely 15 to 20m per side, are empty, and the brown earth stretches to the horizon. The landscape is textured by the small grass mounds which mark the boundary of each field, and the occasional cluster of trees which have survived the purges of population growth. Dotted about this landscape are also the single story concrete houses, mostly painted white. With the fields empty there isn't much to do and outside each house there is a bed and on this bed the men sit, or lie. In the towns the main industry seems to be tractor retail, but the effect is almost comic. Without the cooperatives, and merging of land which has occurred elsewhere the tractors do most of their work in tight circles, visible long after they have finished. Other farmers still are still in the fields with their oxes or cows, which have a tighter turning circle. I arrive in the city of Gorakpur, it's not much better...