The last three months we have been doing a lot of field work here in India. First there was the socio-economic survey on Jatropha farmers in Allahabad. Later two MSc students came here from Belgium for their Master Thesis project which I am guiding. We went back to Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh) for field measurements. And did the same in Devaprayag and Srinagar (Uttrakand), Bawal (Haryanna) and tried to do the same, but failed, in Pantnagar (Uttrakand).

One of the parameters to be measured was the soil infiltration rate. This was done by a local made double ring infiltrometer:

In the clay soils of Allahabad, one measurement took about 4 hours to stabilize. Time enough to read some more about India. As you can see I took: ‘In spite of the gods – the strange rise of modern India’ by Edward Luce. On the cover William Dalrymple states “without question the best book yet written on the New India”. This is most probably true. I can really recommend this non-fiction book to anyone who wants to understand the strange rise of modern India a bit better. It requires almost no foreknowledge on India. Being here spices up some of the anecdotes narrated, but an own India experience is not necessary to like this book.

(but yeah, so far…)

My stay in India is coming to an end. Today it was Mahatma Ghandi’s birthday, a national holiday of non-violence, but tomorrow is my last day at my New Delhi office. Monday we leave for a two weeks tour in Kerala (South West India) and at the end of the month I will re-join my colleagues in Leuven, Belgium.

As I will be working on the data gathered here in India, and still have some anecdotes from the field I want to share, I hope I can boost my frequency of blogging after my return…