INDIA
Trip of a lifetime and no chance to fossil.
I would say, "Sad but true,"
but it was a great trip regardless of the dearth of fossils.
India, like most places in the world, has a rich fossil record but the laws are strict so even if I had found a fossil, I was not legally allowed to take it out of the country.
So I worked with man-made fossils.
It seems like every building in India is made of bricks and there are stacks of them everywhere.
A brick collector could spend a lifetime here.
I didn't go to India with the goal of collecting bricks but when I spotted my quarry, I could not be deterred until I had collected a specimen:
The elusive "INDIA" brick.
It was a happy day.
The only other brick I became fixated on bringing home was one with Hindi script. I looked and looked and finally announced to Tom that I was giving up the search and don't you know, the very next morning I found one out back of our hotel.
It was in the tiny town of Pushkar in Rajasthan
that we came across a group of excellent rock shops.
Being in northwest India gives great access to minerals from that part of the world.
I didn't buy anything, mainly because I already had a suitcase full of bricks,
but I was sorely tempted.
I found my own mineral, a sweet chunk of mica, as I was walking along a gravel road.
The laws don't say anything
about taking fossils INTO India,
so I brought some goodies from Florida's Peace River
and handed them out across the breadth of the country.
The recipients seemed perplexed, perhaps because language barriers prevented me from explaining that it was a gift and no purchase was required, but they were always smiling as I walked away.
I wish I could have put a tiny GPS chip into each necklace to follow its journey on the other side of the planet.
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