What a trip !

Just came across this book and have been devouring it. While most travel writing is about the good stuff this one is about travels gone wrong. Just what is it that makes a bad journey? Sometimes it is just bad planning or bizarre incidents. Some of the writers in the book went to a place expecting something bad to happen. Others were caught off guard.

Traveling in India is always considered to be a luxury. Three journeys we always talk about - your hometown, your honeymoon and a summer getaway you enjoyed. Travelling on work we never consider as travel. It is not fun. In fact for most of us travel is always full of tension. Delayed transport, bad toilets/hotels and of course rude service. This is compounded by the fact that we are bad travelers. Always complaining. Wanting the best service for the least money. Wanting a vehicle even if the walk to the beach is short. Wanting ghar ka khana a thousand miles away from home.

In fact, do Indians really know how to judge a good trip from a bad one?

Every time I travel on a shoot, many of my team members often look at the trip like a chore. They are never interested in the journey or the experience. The only time they enjoy is when they go out for shopping at the local bazaar. The rest of the time its grumble grumble grumble.

I remember the trek to Chandratal six years back. It was tough and we were not prepared for the climb. The crew started all cheerful since the the dhaba we stayed at the night before was not exactly five star - with truck drivers snoring and farting away to moonless night. Anything would be better than that.

The trek itself took us seven hours, twice as long as we were told. But that was because we were not used to the climb. Soon everyone was groaning. One crew member gave up and decided to turn back.

But when we reached the lake in the afternoon, the view took my breath away. The rest of the crew was still in a sore mood. They wanted to return before dark. It almost seemed like they were not interested in the place. Granted the climb was tough, but the sight of the lake should have made anyone forget all that. But not this crew.

Maybe it was not their problem. There might be something in the way I respond to travel. Last year we were traveling in the Sundarbans and the boat ran into a storm. It started to rain and for a couple of hours we could not land because the winds were too strong. All this while I was enjoying the rain, my colleague was sitting in a corner chewing his nails. Later in the night when we were discussing the boat ride he confessed that he had been scared. Me on the other hand with no idea of how to swim never thought of that possibility.

The worst trip for me was a road journey from Bombay to Delhi. It was Diwali time and I could not get any reservations by train or air. 15 years back this road was still a two lane one all through the Bombay-Baroda-Ahmedabad-Udaipur-Jaipur-Delhi stretch. When I got off the last bus, I could no longer feel my back with all the shaking and bumping. Outside ISBT I did not even bargain the auto fare. Just wanted to get home and curl into my bed.

What is the worst trip you can remember?

Images from lazy afternoons

Where The Migrants Live

In the centre of migrant country on the way back from Muzzafarpur to Patna last evening we stopped at the Ganga Setu. Its official name is the Mahatma Gandhi Setu and this used to be the longest bridge in the world some when (remember the question in your school quiz days). Twenty five years on it is on its way out. The driver told us that for almost a year one side of the bridge has not been functional.

This meant the traffic has to alternate and often the wait is long. As we sat waiting on the bridge we felt a gentle sway each time a truck passed us. This is not the vibration one feels standing on a flyover. The concrete bridge was swaying and had been doing so for many years. Elsewhere mobs were kidnapping train engines and burning down railway property in protest against the attacks on Biharis in Maharashtra.

The wait on the bridge took an hour. It was the right place to discuss and analyze why Bihar was in the shape that it was. Politicians, middlemen, upper castes, lower caste, Maoists, you, me - everyone was blamed. When we finally crossed the bridge we were tired. Happily we rushed towards our dinner, the discussion a distant memory.

At the simplest level migration depends on both lack of opportunities back home and also availability of jobs at the destination city. Ten years ago we would argue about rural to urban migration and often experts would point out that if people found jobs near their home they would not need to migrate. When you migrate are exploited since you may not have the skills for new jobs and you live in abysmal conditions hoping to send enough for your family back home.

In practical terms this means that if I were to get a job where I am paid a 100 rupees everyday near my home, I would not travel to Delhi or Mumbai for a job that pays me 200 rupees a day. Only recently because of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act we have seen some reduction in migration. A popular case this year was that of Bihari farm labour that was refusing to travel to Punjab because they were getting jobs back home.

But this is only a small number. A vast majority still travel out for jobs. In this sense, in the last ten years Bihar has become the Village for our Cities. And at the first opportunity people will land up in Mumbai.

Whatever Raj Thackeray says...

Word Tree

At Ellis Island when you enter the building, behind the luggage exhibit is a tree. A language tree.

This tree has many words (and their root language) on its "branches" that have now become part of American English. Words like "ranch" and "hunky-dory" that Amrikans use everyday.

It was fun walking around it imagining what would a tree like this be in India? Just last week while travelling through Karnataka, I realised that many of the words were similar to Malayalam. maybe we would need a forest of trees or an Octopus or something to look at how we are related through language.

Of course Raj Thackeray and Karunanidhi would insists that Marathi and Tamil trees be separated from the rest...

Enter earthling...

.... this is Cloud Gate

Enter

otherwise

we shall stretch you

bend your cities

Enter

and

see the world

from the inside out

Ellis Island

Ellis Island rather than the Statue of Liberty should be the symbol for Amrika. Since the country prides itself as a nation built by immigrants this should be its temple. (The official version is that the Native Americans were just hanging around doing nothing - it is the whites, blacks and coloured people who built this nation).

Ellis Island is a small piece of land just off Manhattan which witnessed the largest influx of immigrants into the US of Amrika. It had the largest immigration office in the world in the first half of the 20^th century. Today almost a third of the people living in the States have a relative who landed here, got his papers checked and walked into the country. However one visit to the place makes us realized that even a hundred years back coming into the country was a tough job.

A trip to the Island also involves an optional trip to the Lady with the Torchlight but I decided to give that a miss. A group of women from the Pakistan agreed with me when they were told that no one was allowed to climb up the statue due to security restrictions. What is the point of getting off to look at the statue if you have a better view from the ferry?

At Ellis Island the huge building has been restored into a museum. As you enter you see a display of luggage and household stuff that immigrants brought on ships. When the passengers entered they had to deposit their luggage for checks. Some of the stuff was held back and some the immigrants lost them in transit.

It is interesting how a country in need of labour accepts or rejects immigrants. First the people were checked for common diseases. Around the beginning of the 20^th century mostly this was stuff like influenza, polio, eye infections etc. According to the museum statistics the doctors had about 10 seconds to examine a person!

On the first floor of the building there were a series of rooms where people were brought in for examination. Here each immigrant had to show valid papers to prove that they had a job in Amrika. How they got hold of such papers while living in remote areas in their native countries before courier service and internet, I have no clue. Finally, all of them had to have 25 dollars with them which was equal to one week’s salary. There were other tests done to prove their skills and intelligence. In one case they were asked to draw a perfect diamonds !

Also most of them when they landed, they did not know a word of English. The sick or infected were put on quarantine for several days. Since first and second class passengers were examined on the ships itself, it is the poor who had to stay longer on Ellis Island. Many of them lost their valuables or were separated from their family leaving them traumatized.

As one such immigrant interviewed many years later put it :

“ By the time we came to New York… somehow the experience on Ellis island had aged us. We didn’t want to sing anymore. We were all grown up.”

The next time you pass through New York take the ferry to Ellis Island. This is the story how immigrants poor and unskilled all over the world suffer even today.

United Waste of America

One of the first things you notice - Paper. Its everywhere.

Not just the in your toilets. When you go to a supermarket there are these huge brown bags. Ditto for stores. Bags of all sizes. Paper.

Then there are the restaurants. You order anything and a stack full of tissue paper would be put in front of you. If you want to pack it, they put in more in the brown paper bag that they give you.

And if you offer to return some of the paper they refuse to take it. If you insist they just throw it in the bin.

In the case of toilet paper after trying out various options like the daily newspaper and the Sears Catalogue they finally settled for reams of paper specially created for this purpose. Since the Amrikans do not use water at all it can create some funny situations.

In 1973 a television program host announced (as a joke) that there was a toilet paper shortage in America. The next day people rushed out to the supermarket and bought as many rolls as possible to stock up. By noon the next day every store in America was out of stock and it took three weeks for the country to recover from this crisis.

The next time the terrorists can just spread this rumour on the internet. It will keep the Amrikans distracted for a week.

Cellphone economics...

... in another world make you wonder what are people thinking when they throw their money at something

In the US most cell phone users are on some wierd outdated scheme which died out in India two years back. Remember the time when you were given a fixed number of minutes for a certain amount. However you could make unlimited calls in the non peak hours. Most of the people in the US are still using that system.

This means that most of them want to get off the phone even if you are calling them because receiving a call also means your minutes are being knocked off. How outdated is that idea ? Why should the cell phone make money off two people at the same time? We told them to stop doing that about five years back. Maybe that is what capitalism is about...

The other thing is the Voice Mail culture. If you are not available then you let the person who called to leave a message. Now to retrieve this message you have to dial a number. Again your minutes are docked when you dial and listen to the message. What is amazing is that no one seems to mind. You dial and leave a message. Your friend dials back and now you are busy so he leaves a message. This could keep happening three or four times a day. Imagine the amount of money the cell phone companies make out of this ! They don't even have to worry about your talk time - they are already making a profit.

And does all this mean that the signals are better? No chance. I've often noticed that in markets where the profits are high per user (Bombay, Delhi) very often there is a signal problem in the middle of the city. One can understand call drops in remote areas but in the city it almost seems like a conspiracy. Waiting at the San Fransisco airport for my luggage, I could see grown up men running around to get better reception while women leaned over to the windows in the hope that the signals would travel to them.

I needed to make a call so I borrowed a cell phone but could not connect through. The owner of the phone suggested that we go up to the first floor. I looked at him. He was actually suggesting that we take all our luggage up the stairs because the signal was better?

So off we went. Both of us pulling our suitcases (two each) till we reached a large hall on the next floor. I made the call and thanked the man. He shrugged. As we walked down back one floor (since the taxis were on that floor), he said - Welcome of America !

The airport list

The rains are here and I get that feeling again.... so here goes another list.

Have been documenting a series of remarkable projects throughout the country for the last three months which involved a lot of different kinds of transport and being treated to many stoppages at airports. Which meant delays. Which led me to thinking. And this post.


1. The smallest airport in India has to be Dibrugarh. Among the the ones where large planes land. The arrival and waiting lounge were twice the size of my drawing room and the entire structure was still covered with the age old tin roof. As we waited for our furniture...no luggage... another plane landed and a 100 more passengers walked in. Soon the place was looking like the men's loo during a film interval.

2. Rajahmundry threw up a surprise. Our flight had a high proportion of big built foreigners who did not look like tourists. When our plane landed we saw another group walking towards a helicopter. The two groups stopped and conferred in the middle of the tarmac. No officials rushed in to separate them. It seemed like they were discussing a golf putt on a summer afternoon.

3. The messiest one has to be Delhi. A new passenger would simply give up after a point with so many twists, turns and surprises. When will the "up gradation" end and we get "world class" facilities? Of course with Delhi becoming the busiest airport in the country life will only get interesting.











4. The golf cart award goes to Hyderabad. With these cute looking things transporting you around, I temporarily forgot the long drive to the city.

5. The longest line was at Kolkata. It actually went down a floor along an escalator. Thankfully it was not moving. The escalator. Not the line.

6. The silliest staff award went to Kingfisher. I know they have taken over Deccan but what is the point of having the same airline staff as Kingfisher? You get into the plane imagining that maybe you have been upgraded to Kingfisher although your ticket says Deccan. Half way through the flight you realise that they were only there to smile. There is no other service. Everytime they pass you they smile. They looked lost flying a low end airline.

7. Experience a Banana Republic. Go to Srinagar. Here the staff does not guarantee that you will get to the car parking alive. Most people run with their luggage to the cars and drive out of the complex as if it can explode any time. The security staff checks you millions of times and still they are suspicious. So they ask you to identify your luggage one last time. First I took it seriously but then when they asked us to put the luggage in the cart that would take it to the plane, I realised this was their way of saving money on extra staff.

At land's end

Drove all the way to the edge of Saurastra
to Dwarka
the town itself was a little disappointing
but the wind turbines alone the route took my breath away

from a distance
they look small and pretty
moving in a lazy way
but up close they are clumsy and large
and remind you of how dinosaurs must have been

in this part of the country they generate electricity
for most of the villages and industrial units nearby
the locals were talking about how
in about five years the capacity could double
the advantage was it was sustainable
throughout the year due to the winds on this coast

in fact large parts of the west coast
which do not encounter cyclones
can use wind energy
to light up towns and villages near the sea

India is already the fourth largest in terms of capacity
behind the US, Germany and Spain
and we have been growing quietly at about 30 percent in recent years

Maybe here is where Prakash Karat should take Manmohan Singh on a trip
to spell out the options for nuclear fuel !

Shopping for groceries...

... on Dal Lake.

For most of us Kashmir is synonymous with Dal where all the shikaras wait to take the tourists across to the houseboats. But behind the houseboats there is another world. Houses sitting along the river, an entire colony of people who depend on the water for everything including buying their daily groceries.


Each morning around 5 one can see many shikaras going back and forth carrying different kinds of items. Their destination is a clearing in the lake where most of the transactions are done.As we sat watching the men negotiate one could see them all kinds of things on this floating - including gas cylinders.




With the sun yet to break out and mountains all around them this must be one of the most fun locations to buy things. I am sure no one raises their voices or breaks into a fight.

If you get to Srinagar try this ride. Be early. The negotiations are over by 7 in the morning and everyone goes home.

Boys in the Maidan

after myself many trips and false alarms
i found myself in the Maidan in Kolkata on a Sunday

the young ones
displaying their skills
someone shouting instructions from a corner
the make-shift goals
often becoming a point of dispute every time the ball beat the goalkeeper

what was telling was that
the entire nation was glued to IPL
and here were these boys
working themselves up over a sport
that is fast getting marginalised

one kid practiced furiously with the ball
hitting it against a tree
every once in a while it would
bounce onto the road
or roll into a ditch
no one explained to him that he needed to find
a flatter surface

his enthusiasm reminded me of the skateboarders i met in Bastille.

Another year, another river

Last year I had traveled extensively on the Ganga
and this year I find myself floating on the other great one - Brahmaputra...


For me this has always been a river full of mystery
somewhere to the corner
on the edge
one heard stories of its fury every year when in school

Unlike the Ganga

this is a fast river even midway in its course

it is deep and carries a lot of silt (second only to the Yangtze I was told)

Today we went to visit one of the island villages
a unique features where temporary and permanent islands dot the wide river
these house almost 25 lakh people (2.5 million for the well travelled)
most of the houses here
are on stilts since almost all the islands get submerged
during the flood season

These communities are cut off from the mainland
and mostly survive on their own
it is strange that although they are about a couple of hours
from "modernity"
their houses lack even the most basic of things
that we find in villages today

While returning
it struck me that like most indigenous groups
who live in isolated groups
cut off for most of the year
how much of modern technology and living habits is good for them?
most of the time intervention is done
without giving a thought

how much is just good enough

Long Dark Tea Time for the Soul

Imagine I land up in Dibrugarh and ended up asking for coffee. I could have shot myself as soon as I tasted the Nescafe. Here I am in the middle of tea country and all I could think of was coffee??????????

Anyway, I recvovered and quickly went on a chai tour. Since this is not a touristy place most of the joints are dhabas or street stalls. However having lived with the beverage for over a 100 years they surely know the right mix of ingredients. The milk was just right and no spices.

In Delhi, most of the time the tea you get has too much milk and a huge dose of cardamoms. The only version I like is when they put lots of adrak. Here in Dibrugarh whenever I asked for masala chai, I got a firm no. If you want the real thing, they seemed to say, have it our way.

Of course for most people here the real thing is the bitter liquer version - lal cha. They keep having it all day long from small glasses. Aparently helps us cool the body. Whatever. Anything as long as it is chai.

Enjoying local cuisine

Spent the day in Fort Kochi while returning from Kerala wandering the streets looking for such knick knacks as enamel mugs. A wanted to try out some local cuisine (in this case meen moily) for lunch.

It took us seven restaurants and a 45 minute walk around Fort Kochi on which I kept insisting that there is no point in looking for Kerala food. Finally we climbed four flights up to a roof top place which served the fish Kerala Style.

I am not a great fan of local food in touristy places in India since they rarely serve it and even if they do - it is in a bastardized form. The best way to taste local cuisine is at someone's home or with a traditional cook.

I remember traveling to Udipi where we had a full meal (on a banana leaf) in a temple kitchen with the ingredients being made in front of us. Another time when I stayed in Mizoram, we just had home cooked food for an entire month. Its a different matter that by the end I had had enough pork for a lifetime!

But otherwise when traveling in India, popular destinations (Pushkar, Manali, Goa) have very few options for cheap authentic local cuisine. Most restaurants serve Italian, Israeli and Chinese dishes. In fact Indian Chinese is the most popular cuisine on offer. This is in contrast with places like Paris or Istanbul where local food is a big thing on your list of things to do.

In India places which serve local stuff are either tucked away in some crowded market (Karim's) or very expensive/inaccessible (Chokhi Dhani, Vishala). Most touristy places are happier serving foreigners with their own food.

But I am not complaining too much since I get to eat hummus once in a while.

Where the head is held high...

... and it is still legal to speak on your mobile while driving a car.

In fact Kolkata does not seem like a city like Delhi, Bangalore or Mumbai. It almost looks like it has taken a different trajectory. I have been coming here on and off in the last five years and things are now looking different. It looked cleaner and quieter this time (or is it that my ears are used to the noise in Delhi?) and there is a Barista in town.

When did it happen that this city got left out of the debate of the best cities in India. It is still one of the cheapest to live in, you will always have good neighbours wherever you stay and people still have time. Whenever I go there I end up walking around the city. Somehow the streets invite you, with age old houses lined up and in between them a abandoned haveli. Unlike other cities in India, Kolkata still has to catch up the high rise fever. A little away from Park Street and you can see that most buildings are only three stories high.

Most of the people you meet look well traveled (Bengalis are the most enterprising tourists finding the remotest of places to go to). This is in contrast to Mumbai where most of the folks either travel for work or not at all. In that sense, Kolkatans are curious and interested in you. What do you do? Where are you from? What fish do you get there(!) In Mumbai, they are the centre of the world - everything interesting is happening only in that city.

However with the coming of developers and IT companies - times they are a changing. Many of the older buildings in the town area were being replaced by newer higher ones. Already my driver was complaining that the city was becoming an "urban jungle". Really ? This from a resident of a city that was the largest and most urbanized city of the country just forty years ago. And now they are worried that this will become a jungle of concrete. Again.

I think the British did them a favour by shifting the capital. They still have a lot of building to do before they catch up with Mumbai or Delhi.

early mornings in lonavla

the streets are empty, an occasional auto breaking the silence...

a group of men
appear out of nowhere

running in unison

and then i get to

see this abandoned car

my hands work

i jump all around

to get as many images

but the spider

who has made it her home
ran away

on the road again

am in Lonavla for a workshop

my first reaction was that this was joke for a hill station
when i landed it was as hot as a February evening in Delhi

the auto ride to the hotel was uninspiring after having spent
so many months in the mountains last year

however the mornings turned out to be a pleasant surprise
the early morning mist
walking through empty streets
with the soft winter sun
the past couple of days has been fun (photos later !!!)

PS The name Lonavla refers to the various caves that are near this place

The lake behind the dam

a few days back
i had a chance to go on a boat ride
at the lake formed by the tehri dam

for the past four years
i had been crisscrossing the area
watching the lake fill up
drowning the abandoned town of Tehri
this trip had an eerie feeling
like visiting a place after a great flood

at the centre of the lake
now it is almost one and half kilometers deep !
(near the dam the markers show 800 metres)
as the boat chugged along
i looked down into the waters
searching for the clock tower
that stood out for so many years
as the dam filled up

in Robert Edric's Gathering the Water
set in the mid 19th century
the protagonist is sent to a
rural area in England
to oversee the filling up of a dam
and ensure that the population is evacuated

i almost felt like
i had been sent by
someone to file a report on the dam
after the land has been filled by the lake

so why am i writing about
the tehri
on this blog?

well most of the project
has been aimed at providing electricity and water to
the NCR (Delhi and cities nearby)

true that New Tehri
is well planned
and the displaced people have been compensated
but recent news about the dam is disturbing
it has been filling up too fast
the policeman was pointing out that
they will have to move out their chowki further up
next summer

as of now they have no clue how high
the waters will rise
i just hope it doesn't
become a situation when they will have to release waters
during the monsoon
and flood cities downstream
like it happened with Surat last year

at that time there were normal rains in the city
but dams upstream overflowed
when the waters were released one third of the city
drowned

the Tehri dam
is supposed to hold enough water to flood
upto Delhi
and remember it is on an earthquake prone zone

as my ride came to an end i was left with the feeling that
each time we build a large project
it is time for us to pause and think of alternatives

fast....

Trek to Hamta Glacier

beyond Rohtang
the land is sparse
barren
the road
long and winding
broken only
by the wind
that keeps whistling once in a while


the landscape
is such a contrast
just an hour back we were
climbing up from Manali
it was full of trees

base camp consisted of tents at chhatru
where we huddled in anticipation of the trek ahead


the trek along chandra river
into the hamta valley
up towards the glacier
when you are far away staring at the thing
it looks close
when the ascent starts you realize what
you have talked yourself into


of course like proper gora sahibs
you have porters to carry your stuff
still you struggle up the hill
while they skip along
slowing down only when you lose your way

















the sky is always moody
threatening to rain
sometimes letting the sun come out
we reach the camp at the foot of the glacier
time for some for chai, biscuits
and quickly we jump into our sleeping bags
who cares we have to trek the whole way back tomorrow?