The Post Who Walks

US Diaries: Coming to America

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 04:38:00 +0000

It's been a couple of months, and last week I was in a focus group discussion to understand the pros, cons, and feedback of the whole moving to the US experience.

Some pretty useful stuff.

I'm going to share this with you - it's always good to have that one single cheat sheet, a to-do list to deal with the vast confusion of paperwork, bureaucracy, requirements, and paperwork.

Did I mention the paperwork?

This is for the specific scenario of moving from India to the US for a long-term, employment-based stay; I'm assuming you already have a job offer and an approved visa.

So, what do you need to live in the US?

The passport, with visa. It's what gets you past the door, for starters. It's a good idea to get 2 scans done - one of the entire passport, and one of the 1st, last and visa pages.
Form I-94. It's going to be needed in a lot of places initially, to show you arrived legally. Just go to the DHS site, put your name, DoB and passport number, and take a print. Valid for a month, then you print again. You can't save a PDF for later. It takes a couple of days to appear in the system after arrival, though can be faster.
SSN, or Social Security Number. This is your identity in the US; it also records / links with your credit rating (more on that later, it's also vitally important). You're going to need this in most official / government stuff. Fix an appointment at the local Social Security office, and show up with the paperwork needed. Do this as early as possible - in fact, as soon you get your I-94.
Bank Account. Some banks may let you open an account before you have an SSN, depending on visa class and where you work. Not many. You need the account to set up your check payments, get a credit card (which is needed most places for payments). That credit card? Also ties into your credit score, depending on usage; don't spend more than 30% of your limit, pay all bills, keep few cards and don't roll over / transfer credit.
Housing. Once you have a checkbook and an SSN, you have the basic minimum needed to look for a place to rent. Since you don't have any credit history (Ha! there it is!) at this point, you'll probably need to pay a hefty security deposit; in the US, no history is assumed to be bad history. Craigslist is a good place to look around for apartments. Since your biggest constraint is transport - and everyone in US is used to driving - look for apartments that have a nearby (walkable) grocery market or frequent buses to one.
Phone. Again, no credit history (remember?), so you probably don't qualify for most installment plans. Buy a phone outright, whatever you can afford. Get a data plan, because you'll need google maps a lot to get around.
Electricity / Utilities: Congratulations, you now have a house! Getting a utilities account usually means heading down to the local utilities office and signing up with your new address, so they can start billing you. The renter will also want you to provide proof of this within a few days.
Renter Insurance: seems to be a new thing, but some apartment complexes require the tenant to get renter insurance and may help you with it. Can be bought online or on the phone, if you have a credit card.
Internet / Cable: Again, can be done over the phone; find out who the local supplier is, call them, sign up, and they take your credit card number and send you a modem / router / set top box with instructions. Needs to be set up and activated online, or you can ask the local rep to do it for you if you have some money to burn.
Furniture: furnished apartments are rare and expensive. Cheaper to buy it yourself. Again, it's back to Craigslist, or IKEA. Buy the absolute minimum, and keep looking out for garage sales / clearances.
Medical Insurance: Your employer should be covering you and dependents. If anyone isn't covered, get covered ASAP; the US is the most expensive place in the world to fall sick and be hospitalized without insurance. There are insurance exchanges where you can get basic coverage for lower rates, but you'll need to research. Go over the employer benefits in detail, check for exactly what's covered and what isn't. When you need treatment, if possible, before any procedure, confirm that the procedure, the doctor, the staff, and the hospital is covered; for any extensive hospitalization, it's quite possible to hit a combination where one of these is not covered, and you get a massive bill. Medical, Vision, Dental, and Mental may be all separate. Also watch out for the 2nd month; the 1st month, your benefits are being set up, so they may not be deducted for the 1st month salary. The 2nd will charge you retroactively; have money kept aside!
Taxes: Your employer will give you a bunch of documents; W2, W4, W9. Hang onto them. Taxes have to be filed before April 15, and you do it yourself; legal help can be costly. The first year, you can't file online, have to print and submit physical copies. Taxes will be around 30-40%, and both the state and the center tax you. Get an ITIN (income Tax Identification Number) or SSN for everyone you're claiming as a deduction when filing.
Public Transport: Google Maps on your phone is your best friend, will tell you exactly when and where to catch what to get to wherever you want. Find out if where you live has some kind of common pre-loaded swipe card (eg. Clipper) for buses / trains, much more convenient than fumbling with change. Consider a bicycle if the weather's decent.
Driving License: An Indian license may or may not be allowed after the first few weeks, depending on the mood of the cop who pulled you over; usually, not after the 1st month of arrival. You can apply for a US license with your I-94, Passport, and $40; you have to get your eyes checked, give biometrics, and do a written test, all in one shot at the Dept of Motor Vehicles, but the lines are long and appointments take a long time to get. Very likely you'll also have to do a driving test, which is by appointment only; that can take weeks. Use that time to learn; passing the written gives you a permit that lets you practice IF there's someone with a valid license with you in the car. Time to call up all your friends with licenses! You also need to be insured (with car insurance) before the driving test. A DL is also a standard ID, used in applying for cards / loans / buying liquor and some medicines; even if you're not driving, get an ID card at the DMV (same process and documentation but no tests needed).
Car Rental: you can rent (most expensive) on a monthly / weekly / hourly basis. You can lease for a 1 or 2 year period (cheaper, but you're locked in for the duration). Both of these are possible without a credit history, but they also require extremely expensive insurance, since anyone leasing / renting to you wants to be fully covered. Buying a car lets you get away with a minimal insurance payment, when...
Buying a car: Remember, you have zero credit history (you getting an idea of how critical this is?), which also means no dealer is going to give you the time of the day or bank, a loan. You can get financing, though; look up credit unions and get a pre-certification. It's a bit more expensive than bank loans, but a lot more possible.
401K and HSA accounts: This is still your money, tax-free, but you will not be able to access it except under specific circumstances. Find out what these are, and take full advantage of employer matching to 401K contributions even if you have to eat grass for a week. It's free money!
Shopping: Never buy full price retail. Everything comes on sale sooner or later, and the discounts are worth it. Don't wait for special day sales either like Black Friday, the slow-moving (meaning low-quality) stock has the biggest discounts. Search for discount codes online before buying. Eating out is expensive, cooking at home remarkably cheap; when you're out exploring the city, carry your lunch.
Kids and Schools: Preschools and daycares (under 5 yrs) are private and expensive, and usually unaffordable on a single salary. They also come with a long waitlist period, so pick some options and get on the waitlist as early as possible. Public schools zone according to where you live, so if you have kids in that age range, look for schools when choosing a place to live.
EAD: Employment Authorization. i.e. a Work Permit. Not for you, but some visa categories allow the spouse or dependent to work; costs about $300-400, takes a few months, but is usually a good idea. If nothing else, stops the dependents from getting bored or going berserk with the credit card.
Missing home? Look for the famous neighborhood Indian Store. It's like an explosion of FMCG; almost anything and everything you could want that's South Asian will be here in some form.

And as an add-on, some stuff to think about before you leave from India:

Medicines: enough for the 1st 2 months until your paperwork is in place and benefits kick in; no need to carry a mini pharmacy in your bag like you've been told.
NRE/NRO account: You can't operate a local bank account in India as an NRI, need to convert to NRE. This will let you keep paying recurring payments like PPFs and LICs, or accept refunds / payments / etc.
IDP (International Driving Permit): Not needed unless your Driving License is not in English.
Leave behind a bunch of signed blank cheques for an operational account with funds in a safe place, accessed by a trusted person; may need to make some emergency payments if there's any problems with the NRE account setup.

So that's it - I've covered only a few basics, any suggestions / advice welcome. All the best!

Retail Therapy

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 08:27:00 +0000

It's been a while, and not because I haven't been travelling; I've been travelling a little too much. On the other side of the planet now, new continent, new life, and simply put, no posts because too much has happened - is happening - to put into a post.
So, let me put it into many posts. Many, many posts.

In no discernible order.

Tonight, it's all about Shopping In America.

I'm standing in a Walmart on Black Friday. There were a dozen police cars parked outside, cops standing by to take down riots before they happen - more likely because of Ferguson, not 50% off, but they're there. Inside, the checkout line stretches all the way back to the back of the store, and that's quite a bit for a Walmart. Every 4th person is struggling to balance a giant, no-brand TV; that's been the flavor of the season, with Samsung especially going on a berserker marketing blitz that literally saw 2 Samsung ads for every one of any other company. Everyone's here in groups; 1 line holder, and 2-3 others zipping around bringing stuff back for the cart. It's a level of crazy consumerism, but it's nowhere near the crazy I was promised happens. Everyone's kind of... sober.
It's a scam, you know. The marketers know people expect deals, and save for them. They know the public's going to be in the stores on that Black Friday, money in hand, ready to buy, and boy, do they serve them up deals. Just not the deals they were looking for.
The good stuff isn't going to go at half off, or even a third. The cheap shit, the clearance sections, the overstocks and the to-be replaced is what's on the block; A year down the road it's gonna fail, and it's back in line for the season's next big thing. I generally hang onto TVs for 5 years, and I'm an anachronism. And a marketer's nightmare.
It's cold enough outside for fog breath, and the parking lot is full. A sea of cars, pickups, and station wagons, often with an excitable gaggle of people trying to tie a giant tv / mattress / unidentified box to the roof with ropes.
The Walgreen's down the road is deserted.

One of the things that kind of creeps up on you is how the retail space is full of old people. Really old people, like 60+. Why are they here? Why aren't the young people working? Is it a lower-wage thing they have to take because they can't do the more physically demanding jobs that pay more?

Retail is bizarre. There's so much stuff - rows and rows of minute variations of the same product, stacked up to warehouse ceiling heights. Back home if I wanted cornflakes, I'd have to choose between 5 boxes in the medical store across the road, one of which was too oversweetened and one had an obviously past-expiry-date look. Here, I drive 5 miles to browse through a thousand choices.

A Costco or Walmart on weekends is freakishly like being back home... all the Indians are out and ready to stock up.

Ikea. This probably can fill an entire post on its own. It's an experience unlike anything I've seen before. You get in, and you walk, walk, walk through worlds of ideal rooms and stacks and stacks of identically minimalist, slightly uncomfortable furniture, until exhausted, you finally reach the sign that says 'exit, lower level'. But that's the end. Exit is actually the same distance away on the lower level through all the things you can put on/in that furniture. It's like escaping from the Death Star by the time it's over.
They had some fantastic food, though.
The used section is a must-see before you go; Some actual good deals there, if you're not very... picky.
Then comes the assembly. It's the most fun I've had in months. Giant Lego. The stuff is extraordinarily designed - everything to fit together just so, and in no other configurations; no leftover screws, tabs, etc, and if there are, you did something wrong.

Everyone's got a loyalty program. Half of which are credit cards.

But, there's always a pattern, a system that can be cracked - and things get much easier once you do 2 things.
1. Know exactly what you're going to buy. Browsing is a black hole, it'll suck you in and spit you out impoverished and overburdened. Make the list, check it twice, proceed to step 2.
2. Know exactly where to get it. Everyone's got a focus area, either in what they sell or in how they sell it. Go to the wrong place, and you'll still find what you're looking for - it's impossible not to find things to buy - but it'll either be in the economy pack fit for a family of a dozen, or genetically modified, or hand-laundered by house elves in phoenix tears or something.

This applies to online as well.

Ok, time to sleep. More later.

Pondicherry, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 11:19:00 +0000

The last year has been a particularly dry spell as far as travelling goes - Life's changed pretty significantly, and probably will be for a long time yet.

But hey, just because you can't travel like before doesn't mean you don't travel at all. Right?

An early morning flight, most of which is spent strolling up and down the aisle with K in her sling to put her to sleep, brings us to Chennai airport at 9:30.

Travel Tip: Babies: If travelling with a baby, a sling is critical - no issues with space, check-in, metal detectors, leaves both hands free, and doesn't screw your back. Feed baby during takeoff and landing to keep inner-ear airways clear (no popping, discomfort) but if she's asleep, let her sleep. Our doc also recommended Atarax as a pre-flight dose, but we didn't see any difference (1 flight with and one without). Also carry a carry-cot - it's excellent for stowing the baby in at restaurants to stop her from plopping off the chairs or crawling around. If she's teething, carry soup sticks.

Some people have all the fun on holidays... at our expense

At the airport, we wait for the taxi to take us to Pondicherry. We decided to be smart, researched, and booked in advance from Auroville Transports (No, I'm not giving a link) - who didn't show up, despite a confirmation on email. After several extremely irate calls (each and every single one of which ended with the assurance that the cab was 5 minutes away) the bugger showed up an hour and a half late. So if you're booking, avoid them - they're much cheaper than regular cabs, but you get what you pay for. Or call them 2 hours early.

Travel Tip: Cabs are the best option, going straight from airport to wherever you're staying in Pondi, and you can catch them from the airport itself - costs around Rs. 3700 (in 2013) for a mid/small AC car. Or you can book in advance.

The Eastern Coast Road is more picturesque but also prone to more traffic, while the bypass is faster. Excellent road - around 3 hours later, we roll up to an elegant colonial-style hotel called Le Dupleix, which used to be the official residence of the (much) former Governer of the French Colonies in India, Joseph Francoise Dupleix.

Le Dupleix

The hotel is excellent - old furniture, French styling with nice large verandahs, wood-paneled rooms with a deep-chilling AC, brass four-posters and colonial-era collapsible crib, free wifi and very pleasant, competent, and friendly staff. Yes, I highly recommend it.

Le Four-Poster

Le Art of Conversation

Le view

Le door

Le pleasant touches

What is French styling? Lots of whitewash, wrought-iron, stone-flagged and tree-shaded central courtyards, plants, elaborate gateposts with bouganvillaea draped elaborately over them, and wood. And mirrors. Lots and lots of big mirrors. The French definitely did looove to see themselves.

Pondi's basically in 2 parts - the French Quarter, which has relatively cleaner roads, boutique shops, hotels, restaurants, all French-style architecture villas and some tourist attractions... and the rest - the Tamil 'quarter' - is regular India, with traffic, noise, shops and crowds. The two are worlds apart, divided by a broad road and canal... but don't expect to be in France by staying here, it's still very much India with a little continental twist.

Really, really hot.

It's hot as Hades to begin with, and there's a lot of construction / renovation / repair going on, so much scaffolding, building material and rubble lies around, and the crowd is very clearly not European. It is, however, quiet, quite clean - almost pristine - and the preference for greys / whites / yellows makes for some very picturesque and photogenic cityscapes. It's a bit like Government Goa, actually - mostly Panjim / Miramar - with France replacing Portugal in the details.

Sooooo cleeeeeean... like canvas... must... spit... paan...

Abbey Rue

Ridiculously photogenic yellow building

Random Temples

Travel Tip: Autos are everywhere and can take you anywhere inside Pondicherry for Rs. 50, flat rate, no negotiation, no meter - but you can walk from one end of the city to the other in under 30 minutes easily. For trips outside, negotiate a rate (coming and going), and they'll wait for you and bring you back. Auroville is 700, beaches around half that.

During the day - we were in the off-season, the summer - it's a killing heat. Not a leaf stirs, and humidity drowns you. The town feels drugged by the heat, somnolent - the best you can do is sleep, or at least carry enough to read. Old white fans gently rumble away in the verandahs, somehow with a lot more character and soporific effects than the invisibly, inaudible ACs.

Carry a good book. Or five.

Travel Tip: Off-Season Pondi: Good rates, plenty of room to negotiate, plenty of vacancies, no crowds, but expect to find several places shut for the summer, especially restaurants and boutiques, and the ones that are open may have the best chef on holiday.

Once the evening comes on, we head out for a walk along the Pondicherry Promenade.

A couple of things jump out immediately. There's a very large expat population here - not just French, but all miscellaneous Europeans - that live and work here, and roam gently (and wobbling a bit) around on cycles dressed in loose, flappy, pastel shades, generally looking extremely peaceful. The Tamils on the other hand, come across as much more energetic and excitable, and almost universally in white. The tourists, of course, are like tourists anywhere - extremely colorful, but just a little bit wrong for the weather.

The promenade is decent - it's basically a pleasant walk along the sea, with lots of locals and tourists alike out to chill / chat / check each other out, with the usual balloon-sellers, chanawallas, etc roaming around. No sand on this beach - it's a rocky shoreline with a traffic-free road, that's it. You can walk it in 15 minutes. Reminded me a bit of Bandstand, or the Panjim riverside. A couple of statues, a memorial, some government buildings. One end is the old jetty, sticking out into the ocean; if you've seen Life of Pi, you'll recognize it, though precious few other glimpses of Ang Lee's Pondicherry are visible... you have to really time your shots.

Ang Lee ne di Ung li.

This is not Goa, or Paris, and this is not Chennai either, but it is a bit like Chennai's Alibagh equivalent. The weekend beach getaway. Every metro city has one, I guess... a seaside and a hillstation, each. Goa and Matheran. Digha and Darjeeling. Etc.

Travel Tip: Babies: A lot of meditation places / ashrams in Pondicherry are off-limits to children under three years.

The bulk of our entertainment time is basically restaurant-hopping; The Governor's Lounge (loved the courtyard breakfasts); Baker Street (brilliant quiche and giant sandwiches); Carte Blanche (absolutely amazing ambiance and fish); Mama Shanthe's (too hot, power cut, mosquitoes); Villa Shanti (very elegant, sophisticated, minimalist whitewashed world but excellent food); Auroville Cafeteria (substantial quantity and decent quality); missed out several we wanted, discovered others...

Baker Street Breakfast

More cool, minimalist whiteness at Villa Shanti

The Governor's Lounge

All in all, I'd say the Carte Blanche stood out over the rest, with its tree lights, leaf-strewn verandah, dim, soft lounge-y music, warm lighting, bookshelf and display pieces in the portico, helpful and intelligent servers who gave the right recommendations and then left you alone to enjoy yourself. Definitely worth a visit.

Carte Blanche

Beaches: It's no Goa. It's not Kovalam either. It's not even Juhu or Aksa, actually. East coast beaches means no sunsets, only sunrises; We saw Auro beach, which had some fishing boats but not much else; no shacks, no restaurants, nothing. Peaceful, but fairly narrow, and given the seclusion and quietness, a bit crowded. Surprising.

Auroville - It's an interesting place, but remember, it's a proper functioning place on its own, not a tourist destination. It's good if you read up about the concept and philosophy behind it, and maybe some of the history, before you visit; lots of long walks in the sun, and much of it will be a bit incomprehensible if you walk in with no idea of what it's about. To really experience the place, of course, you have to live there for a while. For the casual visitor, it may come across as a bit standoffish.

I can't help but get a slight sense of shades of The Beach from here - a kind of idealism, an earnest, flower-child vibe. Should be interesting to see how it copes up with the world in future.

Travel Tip: Auroville: For the casual visitor, especially if you like shopping around for artsy, natural stuff, the visit to Auroville's visitor center boutiques and shop will be well worth the cost of the visit; they have a far better range, prices, and variety than most of the Auroville or similar shops in the main market. If you are planning to shop, don't until you've finished this visit.

Demon heads on fancy gateposts. Old villas gently crumbling away. Shiny clean streets, street names with the French 'Rue' appended to continental and subcontinental names alike. Dozing dogs. Lots of statues. An air of general politeness.

A Bilingual Stop

The Continent meets the Sub-Continent

Cops in Kepis

An inefficient scarecrow

Crumbling memories

Travel Tip: Power: There are power cuts, frequent and often, long ones; be prepared. Odomos, hand fan, etc. Keep phones charged and room chilled when you have power, for soon you may not. Carry a torch.

Overall - it's a nice place to chill, but you tend to get bored after a while unless you're actually there only to recover and do literally nothing.

Chirpy-chirpy chill.

And some of the random stuff...

A poster proclaiming 'Chicken Punch'. Nothing else. Some new martial-art move?

The most important thing that legitimizes any event - birth, marriage, achievement - is the vinyl poster. It's everywhere, for everything.

If you're not on vinyl, you're just in denial.

The founder was a big ER fan, it seems.

And finally, for all those who came to Chennai wanting tea, nimbu-pani, beer, or water...

Bangkok Revisited: Nightlife

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:18:00 +0000

Nightlife

Which brings us, inevitably, to the first and foremost reason why most people go to Thailand. It's everywhere once the sun goes down (notionally; it's everywhere and all the time, but emerges into its own in the dark) and the city lights its neon lamps, opens its bottles, and takes off its clothes in the humid, sweaty nights.

Sex. It finances most of Thailand's tourism economy, bulldozes aside its pre-Vietnam-war social traditions and lifestyle, and eats alive, chews up, and spits out vast swathes of the country's youth over and over again. Across massage parlors, bars, karaoke, soaplands, dance bars, and yes, streets and localities as well, you'll find are suddenly populated with women and kathoeys, of every imaginable type.

Photography is discouraged - and in any case, showing off an expensive smartphone or camera when you're drunk, outnumbered, and in the middle of a red-light district is just asking for trouble, so sorry, no pics except this. If you're upset, Google Images (safesearch off) awaits.

Don't miss the halo.

Your journey begins as soon as you step out of the hotel and into a cab; all cabs have a little bundle of highly x-rated catalogues in the driverside car pocket, which he will produce with a flourish and wave at you, and find out the extent of your adventurousness (Sex show? Massage? Sucky-fucky?)

Resist the temptation to agree, because the best cab commissions come from the (usually illegal or in-trouble) brothels; know where you want to go and insist on it repeatedly. We got taken to a dark house down the back alley of a deserted street and had our doors opened by 2 guys while 3 more stood at the entrance; the only indication we had of where we were was a single female silhouette swaying inside the door. Took a lot of convincing to leave and head for somewhere a little more, ah, healthy.

Which, as it turn out, is Nana Plaza. A collection of bars, strip joints, and more, arrayed in a multi-storey square surrounded by restaurants and shops. It's a little seedy, a little grimy, a little low-end; the floors are cracked cement, the curtains on the doors are frayed, and the blast-chiller whammy roaring out of the industrial-strength ACs can't completely overpower the dark, faintly organic scent of sweat, skin, and desperate dreams.

Nights In White Satin plays in a dark, cool club, threadbare purple curtains, peeling plaster, and black light glowing off the shiny black-and-white lingerie of a pair of tall dancers doing a simulated lesbian session on a tatty couch on the center. The tall ones always get the star billing; shorties get the background dancing; and the terminally plump serve the drinks around the edges. And everyone has bad teeth, meth mouths - ya ba keeps them going through the nights and takes away the reality of the life, while the reason they're in it pulls them forward like a locomotive; but any dream will always look brighter and brighter if the world grows dark, until it dazzles and blinds you, and you blink, look away, and eyes streaming, can't bear to look back it anymore.

The Soi Cowboy is a more upscale spot; there's where the girls are taller and better looking, the ambience is more sparkly and clean, drinks are more expensive and clientele more obviously affluent and non-thai. Here's where you'll get the transparent ceilings that are the dance floors of a three-level club, the sparkly and more well-kept and imaginative costumes, and the bouncers are bigger, but less obviously crazy. The Baccara and Suzy Wong's is worth dropping by for.

Tip for the newcomers - eye contact means tips. N finds this out the hard way when he stares a little too hard and too long, and suddenly there's a small, blank-faced-stoned, dead-eyed girl with a shark smile sliding into his lap as he freezes in terror. Mutely, terrified, he looks at us for help. In perfect understanding, both of us congratulate him and zip out of the door in a blink. He catches us thirty seconds later, a hundred baht lighter, sweating, shaking, and cursing us while we stagger around laughing fit to burst.

Watch the customers. The thai men have a very meh look on their faces; the Euros tend to be relaxed, comfortable, sometimes boisterous but usually sporting and polite... they'll be mostly backpackers - but the Indians, man. It's... sickening. They have this avid, hungry, disbelieving look on their faces, like this is some manna from heaven, a meat feast suddenly bestowed on them as the result of some cosmic oversight and that can be snatched away at any time. They're also the same people who'll be sitting in the Patpong bars watching the dancers with the same expression, while the wives roam around doing the shopping outside, somehow completely ignoring the greeters, the signs, the music, and the girls surrounding them.

Yet there's also some endearing little things, small things, heartbreaking in the sheer incongruity of ancient ways of life forging a coexistence with the new realities. The way the girls pray briefly before the tiny, ubiquitous shrine in every establishment before each dance; how each bottle of alcohol is blessed before being served; how the hostesses will glower like dragons but scrupulously pass the tips along.

It's amazing how the Thai have come to terms with being the center of the world's sex tourism industry - but there's also an undercurrent of anger. It's there in the speed the cabs drive, the hard bargains and sky-high prices, and the constant, deadening high that everyone's on... it's a society that at some deep level resents what history's made them, but also one that makes the best of the situation and flourishes in it.

But you always wonder what would have been, if things had gone a little differently a long time ago...

Bangkok, Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:32:00 +0000

This time, there were 2 thousand assorted sales & marketing personnel from dozens of countries, bodies being herded into conferences and meetings while the spirit wandered wild and free in the streets... and once you add that most were drinking their entire year's quota in these 4 days, it was literally and S&M summit.

Since we literally did only these four things - eat&drink, attend conferences, shop, and - er, warmed our eyes - I'm not going to be doing much talk about how awesome Bangkok is as a tourist destination.

One of the things that'll also strike you is how people look. Thais tend to be small, not particularly thin or fat, just a little... childlike. The whites are either expansive, ragged, and rangy, or beefy, red-faced, and sweaty. Indian, though, are almost always portly. And for some reason, slightly oily.

The Whirlwind One-Day Tour: Temples and TukTuks.

Since the first day is always kept free to allow for delays and staggered arrivals, I was lucky enough to arrive in the morning and had the day free, so did a little round of the city. There's going to be enough time for the other stuff later; right now, let's do the de rigeur Wats, temples, palaces and get it out of our system.

Immediately, find an innovative new system in place between business owners hungry for footfalls and tuktuk operators.

Tell the tuktuk guy where you want to go, and he will take you for a fixed (bargained) fee - but if you also agree to go to 2 more places, that he chooses, he'll discount the trip down to half, and collect the difference as fuel vouchers from the shops. Works out pretty cheap, so we give it a try. The two he picked were a jewellery factory / souvenir shop, and a suitmaker / tailor / souvenir shop.
In fact, there are very few places in Bangkok that aren't souvenir shops, including the taxis, the brothels, and the government buildings.

The jewellery place was ok - we'd seen warning signs plastered all over the airport warning us not to listen to anyone offering to sell jewellery. Not that we were likely candidates - 2 guys with cameras and completely bemused expressions, confronted with rows and rows of shelves of garnets, opals, jade, ad colored glass. A tiny dominatrix-channeling Thai guide gave us the once-over, sighed in resignation, and bustled us through the shopfloor in seconds and straight to the gift shop filled with badly-made wooden elephants and plastic horrors. There were some nice vintage cars parked outside, though, so got some decent shots.

Jade statues, vintage cars, tiny asian people... this is just waiting for an Indy cameo

The second place - the tailor - actually made sense because we were much more likely to wear clothes than jewellery, and this was immediately grasped by the five large, mustachioed, thuggish-looking middle eastern gentlemen who appeared to run the establishment. We were treated to a dazzling array of fabrics, cuts, styles, garments, and pictures of garments, all of which we steadfastly refused and they grew increasingly irritated, finally reaching the point of 'This one?' (glare). 'No? This one?' (glare). 'You know English?' (disgusted glare) and so on. We were finally shoved in disgust to the gift shop. Bought a fridge magnet just to avoid getting killed for kidneys and moved on, to -

A Random Temple

All I could think was 'Someone needs to climb up and polish that daily...'

Pillared Temple

A giant Standing Buddha

Some very nice pillar decorations

Chinatown - Every city has one

Decorated Palaces

Assorted statues of Thai lions looking surprised

The Leaning Spires of Bangkok

The Golden Mount

Bang a gong

Weird Alien Tree

Bunches of Prayer Flags stuck into the ground as a pair of giant puffy pink balls

Guardian Doors: Demonic life-size warrior paintings guard the portals

Somehow he looks like a reject from Pirates Of The Caribbean: Stranger Tides more and more

An angrezon ke zamaanein ke statue

Have no clue what this is, but it shows assorted cops laughing a lot, so scares me horribly

One highlight which you should see - did a visit to the Giant Golden Reclining Buddha in the Wat Pho who's two stories high lying on his side, and several train coaches long. The hall is huge, and a ceiling that size unfortunately has to be held up with pillars, so you can't see any place where the Buddha is fully visible except for near the head or feet... but the really interesting thing was behind the statue. As you go round, you're supposed to drop alms into a hundred and eight little bronze pots lined up along the back, indicating the 108 auspicious characters of the Buddha; the hall is filled with a continuous white-noise metallic susurrus of the world's only copper waterfall.

Buddha

The 108 bronze jars of donations

And so ended a day of touristy stuff. With lots of photos taken.

Insert clever caption here. Prizes offered.

Shopping: malls and markets

Ah, the shopping. People make sustainable business models centered around Bangkok shopping, they dream about it, they talk about it, and when they're here, they do very little else... but somehow, this time, I found it very monochrome.

Bangkok seems to be going through the throes of an Angry Birds retail orgasm. They're literally everywhere - on iPad covers, bags, USB drives, speakers, keychains, t-shirts, cakes, stripper tattoos, you name it, it's there. Makes you feel like you're living inside a phone.

Second, the blatant assumption that everyone is a tourist and all tourists want touristy things... so I didn't get a sense of what Bangkok or Thailand's about, but instead, got tons of miscellaneous knick-knacks from everywhere, mostly cheap-looking and crappy.

That said -

Everyone goes to MBK. It's right there in the middle, it's famous, and it's full of overpriced crap because it's right there and in the middle. It's crowded, the merchants are arrogant, and it's iPad/iPod Central. Don't bother going here, it's a waste of time.

Pantip Plaza is pretty good for all those hard-to-find computer accessories and components you'd been looking for back home; but make sure you know exactly what you want before walking in, or you'll be confused as shit and waste days going around in circles. It's Lamington Road in a mall.

Patpong is another stretch of street shops - obviously for tourists, but there's some interesting stuff here, and you can bargain; so in a relatively small space, you'll get clothes, knockoff watches, assorted ironmongery ;) and decorative stuff - it's classic Thailand touristy shopping, and like MBK, sooner or later everyone ends up here. Nice place to quickly pick up the last-minute gifts.

Some interesting experiences you get as well - the stalls are in the middle of what used to be a broad road, lined on both sides by pubs & dance bars (is there a difference? Not here, at least) so if you look remotely tired, thirsty, or bored (or, for that matter, male) you will be often literally grabbed by the bar's 'greeters' aggressively pushing you towards the door with 'You want Beer! You want Girls!' and sure enough, right at the door, there they both are - the girls in thongs dancing on the center stage, the chilled beer dripping condensation along the bar.

The center stalls tend to be run mostly by little old ladies and children, all of them quick as a whip, with a razor tongue and even sharper fiscal sense. They can judge a potential buyer / non-buyer, what he wants, and what he's prepared to pay, within the first three seconds of eye contact. The rest is just politeness or entertainment; and if they don't like you, trust me, you'll be rudely dismissed without a backward glance. Amuse them, though, and you could get something interesting to take back at a discount, and an infectious, beaming, ear-to-ear grin that switches on and off like a camera flash, gone in an instant but you walk away feeling warm for a while.

N moves from watch stall to watch stall in a hypnotized daze, fingers flittering over Cartiers, Ferregamos, Patek Phillippes, Tags, all for the cost of a low-end Fastrack. Eyes follow him wherever he goes - this is a good mark. He needs to be physically hauled away from more than one place...

A tries to bargain for a pair of shorts and gets told 'You will not get for BABY in that much' as the twelve-year-old shopkeeper walks away in disgust...

J bumps into a stall and is horrified when a brown, wrinkled, hard-as-iron hand emerges from under the sheets draping the table and gives him two stinging slaps across the leg, followed by a vociferously-abusing thai grandmother emerging from underneath...

The Conference.

Deep drowsiness thanks to a superchilled AC, roaming around till the wee hours, copious alcohol and minimal sleep. The actual event consisted of a lot of indoctrination - observe any corporate-trainer-organized ritual, and try and identify what are the features taken directly from the military - the loud thumping music, the group exercises and shouts, the constant reiteration of a slogan and a catchphrase...

Not pictured: bone-chilling AC

The Welcome Committee

But the around-the-city spots where they organized the outings were pretty ok - while mostly created to introduce Thai culture to foreigners, the trip through a village mockup was pretty interesting.

In strange waters

Did a little visit to a traditional thai village display

All dressed and costumed up for us

With pretty lighting

Rigid poses that mix welcome and obliviousness

Including the puppetmaster

drawing his incredibly detailed colorful creations

to put up in a game of shadows

morbid displays

traditional dances with frozen smiles

more dramatic dances

even more dramatic dances

ok now you're just kidding me, giant parrot lady

a river cruise

While we're on the subject of river cruises - ever tried getting a cruise organized for a gang for two thousand people, most of whom would rather be somewhere else or actually are? It's a complete comedy of errors. People show up for the wrong boat, at the wrong time, in the wrong jetty, and are very aggrieved when they find the boat has left - sometimes deeply hurt - and this translates into a riot on some boats, on verge of sinking with the overload, while others are ghost ships with half-a-dozen people being wined and dined by a dozen waiters, a band, and a live thai singer who has memorized by-heart a recent Bollywood number and will goddamn sing it whatever you might say -

Sorry. So as you've guessed, I was on one of the empty boats, so it was a fairly peaceful ride, with us taking over the mike and singing old sad heartbroken hindi songs as we floated incongruously through Asia's Sin City, the heart of the capital of negotiable affection.

Continues in Bangkok Revisited: Nightlife

Another year, another band... Metallica 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:14:00 +0000

Midnight.

Hordes of blank-eyed, lurching, shuffling black-clad zombies churn the field into a swamp, thick red mud oozing up around the feet. That's how I'll recognize them the next day at the airport - that caked layer of loam - the tshirts are off, but that clay - and the stiff, awkward walk, and the slowly-returning-to-reality stare, doesn't wash off so easily.

Welcome to Metallica's Bangalore.

The previous day, it was a sea of black - not just the concert, but the city. Metallica, Sepultra, Pantera, Maiden, Slayer, right down to corporate brands and Angry Birds - you can wear any design you want, as long as it's on black.

(Henry Ford smiles in the grave, momentarily discomfiting his graveworms.)

Humanity's herd instinct never ceases to amaze - a gigantic flock of lost sheep desperately searching for a shepherd, any shepherd, and it doesn't matter if he's from the dark and calling you in. We follow and obey, blind and deaf, uncaring and unheeding - all we want is the freedom from that insistent little voice in our heads that asks what you want to do, and all the responsibility it implies... easier to care for what they care, do what they do. Ironic, isn't it?

Smoke roils through the crowd, thick, glowing white in the glare, redolent with the sweetsour tang of weed, mixed with the tamer and lighter, blue-tinged streams of tobacco, clove & cardamom, and menthol, contrasting against the warm earthy brown smell of humanity, sharp green of crushed grass and drifting grey rain-is-coming scent of the clouds on the wind.

Camera LCDs hover over the heads of the twenty-five thousand, high tech stars in dark galaxy swaying in obeisance to the glaring suns of the stage floodlights. Beyond them, shockingly white and surreal against the orange-glared dark clouds, a flight of herons wheels silently through the sky, starkly pristine, a ghost squadron that vanishes almost as soon as you see them.

The bass reaches through the mass of humanity, through clothes and flesh, through ear and mind, and settles straight at the bone. Your skeleton resonates, ribs rattling and joints humming to the drums... this is what you don't get at home however expensive and powerful your music system might be, the way the music can take your body and strum it, the deepest connect you can have not just with the player, but with every one person in that mass of humanity around you.

It's not as loud as it could have been, though. After Iron Maiden 2007, silence, for a week after, had a tinny, subconscious whine.

Sweat and hysteria, the crush of the crowd - warm breath on your face and neck, hair tickling the skin, the press of bodies... an audience is an organism, and you never feel it as much as at times like these. Some briefly rise above, climbing barricades, the shoulders of friends and random strangers, crowdsurfing, silhouettes against the blinding white. Sudden cool breezes, and brief little patters of rain never felt, never tasted so damned good.

After six hours of standing still, straight, craning upwards, neck, shoulders, spine, knees ankles and toes fuse into one continuous solid cramped pillar of pain. You don't feel it while the music washes through you, but once it's over, that first step, that joint-cracking, bone-creaking movement to bend a knee, loosen shoulder, flex backbone is a sweet, stumbling agony, and you can barely stagger forward through the churned slush of the grounds, like an undead swarm emerging from a epic cataclysm.

It's all worth it. Worth the safety lecture from a paranoid manager who spoke to us like retarded preschoolers, driving us batshit; worth the entire album-and-a-half from Biffy Clyro who made the maximum use they could from the hours-long wait, knowing they'll never get an opportunity like this again.

Leaving the grounds, the crowd's remarkably well-behaved; the Bangalore Police rolls along the road in a gypsy and loudhailer, asking us 'Dear friends' to please walk the footpath, and obediently, we do. Even during the concert, there are very few people crushed or passing out, nobody ODing on either substance or hysteria, and a few half-hearted attempts to start a mosh pit peter out fairly quickly.

Hm, interesting train of thought - the nature of the crowd depends not just on the music, but everything they believe the music stands for. Iron Maiden was clearly wilder, louder, more extreme... this was almost mellow in comparison, though I refuse to believe the crowd was significantly different.

And now, all too soon, it's time to go home.

Living with the Raj

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:42:00 +0000

What I loved about living in the century-old, British Raj-era houses.

Space. The ceilings are twenty, thirty feet high, the bathrooms are big enough to literally swing a cat around 360 degrees, the vast expanse of floor - I literally learned to ride a bicycle indoors - the average Raj house is bigger than the average Mumbai jogging park. Barked shins don't exist, can't happen.
A museum sense of history. They're filled with these awesome little clues about a bygone era and what life was like - the strips of metal on the ceiling from where the fans hang, stretching across the room, with a little wheel-and-pulley arrangement. That was the original support for the punkha - the sheet that would manually swing from end to end on it's castors, pulled by a rope leading out through holes and pipes in the ceiling (scars of which are still visible under the plaster) out into the servants' passageways, where one guy would stand patiently fanning all day.

The cast-ron fire escapes attached to the back, ensuring a safe and rapid exit when the main (wooden) staircase went up in flames.

The giant arches and carved pillars visible under plaster, now replaced by smaller windows and walls. Thick pegs in the bathroom walls where giant geysers and cast-iron cisterns once hung... and sometimes, still hang, creaking and groaning ominously.

The furniture. Like the house, it's older than you, your parents, and likely your grandparents, and built so solidly it can withstand almost anything you throw at it. And perfectly built - not one warp, not one crack, not one sticking drawer or stuck door.

Wooden windows covered in a quarter-inch-think layer of white paint, blurring the outlines, softening the angles... wire mesh to keep out bugs, with little wooden doors to give access to the latches, and thick iron bars to keep out anything else. The windows and doors themselves, over an inch thick, armed with massive, elongated bolts, built for the possibility of insurrection.

Every room with multiple doors - infinite permutations in wandering around. None of this one-room, one-door concept.
Vast empty expanses of wall, sometimes filled with giant posters of mountains and nature. At one time, there would have been trophies there.

The walls so thick - over a foot and a half, easy - that you have proper windowsills. Perfect insulation, too - between a complete block of all the day's heat, fans on poles and excellent cross-ventilation, you don't need an AC - not that they'll work anyway, given the giant room size.
Blue, green and yellow light trickling in though the ventilators in the somnolent afternoons, with the occasional sparrow rustling in their nests ensconced in them.

Talking of sparrows, there's an entire ecosystem built into these houses - the clouds of bugs that emerge in the evenings around the lamps, battalions of geckos emerging from the wall plaster to feast on them, raucous cacophony of sparrows and mynahs in the morning, pigeons and parrots in the afternoon, crows in the evening and then the silent whisper of owls and bats in the evening, broken by wailing cats and distant dogs. Fish ponds with frogs croaking in the lawns.

Ah, the lawns - ponds and rockeries, flower beds and herb gardens, an entire miniature irrigation system, fruit trees, shade trees, bushes and fences, manicured lawns... garden furniture and swings... massive verandahs and sweeping driveways.

Did you know the doors are color-coded? Green for the servants' entrances, black for outsiders, and white for inhabitants?
Giant pantries attached to the kitchen, with a ingrained smell of dust, paint, wood, cardboard, varnish and metal.
In every room, the heavy tick of ancient clocks...

Time hasn't moved in here for decades. It's a place that belongs to a different time, a different era, a different way of life with a different notion of what life's all about.

Keralafornia Four: Kumarakom

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Sun, 15 May 2011 12:11:00 +0000

No Kerala holiday is ever complete without the houseboat experience, and this time we had the extraordinary excellent opportunity of experiencing a houseboat in style - a giant 2-storeyed one all to ourselves, where ourselves is 30-odd twentysomethings and lots and lots of daru.

the upper deck

and lots of daru

The lungi is likely to become a favorite; practical, seriously airy and comfortable, as long as certain people restrain themselves from trying to yank it off.

a rare moment of peace and breeze circulation

On the way, we stopped off at a lakeside traditional eatery for a giant dose of fresh-from-the-lake lunch - fish, shrimp, rice and curry, assorted veggies, served on banana leaves, and (of course) coconut.

fish, food

Lake Vedambanad is huge, I mean, seriously gigantic. You can't see from one end to another. The lakes and backwaters were, before the roads got laid down, the veins of Kerala, carrying the lifeblood of trade and commerce from one end to the other in giant cargo boats laden with spices, coconuts, grain and more... the same boats that converted into the ultimate luxury experience now.

The giant lake's on the right. This is just an access path.

And no, it's not a GPS error this time

The afternoon went in a pleasant haze of alcohol, slowly digesting lunch, watching the water slide past in silence while music played in the background, feeling the breeze play softly on your face... punctuated by brief visits to the volcanic beef chilli fry plate, the single most devastating snack item I've ever tasted. It'll take the skin off the roof of your mouth, steam out of your ears, slide lava down your tongue, and trust me you do not want to know what it does the next morning... but man, does it taste sublime and make beer heavenly. Have a mouthful of this, and the next pint of beer comes with it's own angelic choir.

not pictured: fire extinguisher (but mandatory)

add harps and music from the celestial spheres here

a day not wasted is a day wasted

Dusk falls quietly over the lake, and the sky slides imperceptibly from breathless, blinding blue into soft gold and indigo, setting the lake on fire with a billion broken setting suns; as we grow closer to the shore, the silently whispering wind changes to the ultrasonic, distant, hungry while of clouds of mosquitoes coming out for their dinner; we slowly haul ourselves back from the daydreams we were lost in...

...and it's time to go home.

Keralafornia Three: Kochi

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Sat, 14 May 2011 12:08:00 +0000

Kochi is a few hours on from Guruvayur and Thrissur, the commercial hub of Kerala, and having a fairly popular airport, probably the most likely place you'll be starting your Kerala trip from. We'd landed here 2 days ago and headed down to Thrissur; Now we're back, and again, Kochi is a stopover before the next leg.

But even as stopovers go, there's plenty to see and do; most obvious first being the iconic Chinese fishing nets at Fort Kochi. This is an image that's been splashed across all the tourism posters, along with the ubiquitous houseboat and coconut tree, and here at sunset, gives some awesome shots.

an awesome shot

the brightness of boats

a satyajit ray moment for some reason

For some reason, Fort Kochi seems to be terribly fond of Bob Marley. Maybe it's the trickle-down from Goa, maybe just the generic ambiance, but... there you go.

There's also tons of stalls all over the place selling freshly-caught seafood, which you can take across to the restaurants and have them grill it up for you while you have your beers. Seafood + Tourists = Lots of Lazy Cats.

lazy cats

fresh seafood

nice foto

Another place you can check out while you're here is the Kashi Art Cafe, which had some truly mind-blowing food - don't leave without at least one visit. We had the banana cream pie and it was worth coming to Kochi for.

tip of the Chinese fishing nets

Fort Kochi turns very Goa in the evenings, and a little bit of the Himalayan, too, despite the mosquitoes and the humid heat - dim lights, Konkani music, cobblestones and the water...

Keralafornia Two: Guruvayoor

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Fri, 13 May 2011 12:08:00 +0000

Gurvayoor is also a small temple town, famous for the Guruvayur Temple and the Punnathur Kotta elephant sanctuary 3 km outside the town. Since we've never, in the long years that you've known us, been particularly religious - (actually, not particularly elephantine either, but ignore that for now) - this post will primarily be a photoessay on a plethora of picturesque pachyderms.

Happy Elephant

Elephant decorating it's head with grass

Elephant scratching its head with stick in deep thought

Tiny little unreadable notice that says, effectively, "If you stand here reading this too long you will be violently attacked, trampled, and gored by the four-ton monster five feet in front of you."

The trouble with being an elephant is there's precious little to hide behind when the paparazzi come around

No, you're right. That's not a leg.

Bathing elephant

Elephant hamming for the camera

Elephant dusting self with leaves

The Guruvayur temple itself is fairly so-so - it's a pilgrimage place, not a tourist attraction, so isn't very tourist-friendly; the rules for enetering are fairly draconian so you can;t do a casual visit, but try the banana-leaf thali in the MTR outside.

This photo is added here out of pure spite because the shopkeeper got extremely irritated with us and started yelling to not take photos and bugger off if we weren't buying.

Keralafornia One: Thrissur

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Thu, 12 May 2011 12:05:00 +0000

Thrissur is a small town towards the center of Kerala which is like most other small towns all over India - a central bus station that forms the core of the town, surrounded by expanding ripples of markets, hotels, and residences in a maze of twisting, narrow streets, all circling and bunching around key parks, temples, and offices, filled with pedestrians, cycles, two-wheelers, cars, and assorted animals churning in the buzzed brownian motion of daily life under the summer sun and dust.

Today, that changes.

Today is Thrissur Pooram, the Festival of the Elephants. Today, dozens of elephants, dressed and decorated up to the nines in the gold and colored finery of nettipattam (decorative golden headdresses), beautifully crafted kolam, decorative bells and ornaments, will march through the town. They come from all around, from elephant farms, neighborhoods, other temples, etc, and parade to the Vadakkunathan Temple in the center of the town to complete in what can only be described as a highly stylized, noisy, and symbolic Yo Momma contest. With Elephants.

What happens is, there's a face-off of two lines of elephants in front of the temple; the mahouts climb up, and start a display of umbrellas. You start small and low-key (by Thrissur Pooram standards, which means something that could land spacecraft during a snowstorm) and do a symbolic, dancing presentation. The the other side takes it's turn, makes it's move. Back to you. Each display has a meaning, a backstory, some significance, but you need a local guide and a lot of reading up about the cultural background of Kerala to understand what's happening.

Sounds very civilized and interesting, doesn't it? Wait. Did I mention that the two lines of elephants are backed up by a double row of hysterical giant drums and a spectator crowd of at least a few hundred thousand? And they're all hysterically happy and hysterically drunk on coconut tadi (and I mean hysterically, falling-down-but-somehow-staggering-upright, bloodshot-eyes drunk)? The kind of drunk that happens when you abstain from all drink, evil activity, and evil thought for the better path of a month and today, at the culmination, all brakes are off and all the pent-up drunk erupts out.

The crowd's rowdy, not particularly evil-intentioned; but what you need to watch out for are individuals inside the crowd, because today, you're on your own. So if you're new to the place, stay in a compact group and stick to each other.

We made our way almost till within fifty feet of the elephant lines, where the girls and some of the guys stayed back and me and one other fellow guest (btw, we were in Kerala for a wedding) made it almost to the front, accompanied with a lot of happy camaraderie, hugs, and Malayali questions and suggestions, while we got progressively more light-headed in the haze of sweat and alcohol fumes that had replaced the atmosphere; the nearest you can imagine it is like a peak-hour Mumbai local where someone's kept a case of arak under every seat.

Some time later, one group of elephants won, everyone cheered lustily (ok, even more lustily than before) and started to scatter through the streets. There's a kind of relaxedness in small towns in the evenings you'll never find in cities; you do have at least four more hours a day of leisure in small towns, with no traffic, where you can sit and chat and sip coffee and giant-coconut water.

But it's not over yet; this was the official pooram, but there's another side to it that emerges at night. The same crowd, even more tanked up now, congregates at around 1 am around the Swaraj Maidan for the fireworks display. My advice is - as early as you can, maybe like in the day, get your car a reasonable distance from the area and park it. Hang onto that parking spot for dear life, because you're not going to get one anywhere close later.

The fireworks are in the middle of the park, which is cordoned off and heavily guarded. Around the park there are illuminated, decorated pagodas with an elephant inside (as you'll see in the coming few posts, elephants are kind of Kerala's thing) and an even more humongous and smashed crowd. When the fireworks start going off, you can be miles away and still appreciate them; but if you haven't felt them up close and personal, right outside the park, you've not had the full Thrissur Pooram experience.

First of all, they're not fireworks, they're demolition explosives. In the north, fireworks are supposed to be pretty and colorful, bright, glittery and genteel, where people can dress up in nice clothes and eat nice food and watch the colors and sparkles and go away and play cards afterwards.

In Kerala, they go for volume.

All you'll see of the fireworks is a flaming wall far away between the trees and fences; but the sound, man, the sound will reach out from the park, through the dark and the multitude, bypassing your ears and your brain and settle straight into the bone. Every rib, every joint will rattle in it's socket, your insides will be kneaded and mashed, and your skin will prickle in the heat that comes in percussive, no, concussive waves - there are no individual explosions, there's just a continuous wall, of something beyond sound, a boneshaker roar that lasts at it's peak over several minutes continuously and leaves you with PTSD and an inability to hear properly for a week (and not at all this night). It'll squeeze your guts, rattle your ribs, and blow your mind.

Motivation 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 09:43:00 +0000

So, here we are. Back again.

And now, it's looking good. The holiday list in one hand long weekends highlighted, a brand new DSLR in the other, a little extra cash, and some interesting potential possibilities opening up.

And behind me, a shadow. Of Time, slowly but surely, running on.

Let's get cracking.

Soorti Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:47:00 +0000

A very, very brief trip to Surat on Saturday. Some first impressions -

Change is a difficult thing to find.

A unique Surat speciality - ice paan. Which is regular paan filled with crushed ice. Have it on a hot afternoon and your whole head fills with this ice-cold liquid feeling, flavoured icy water trickling down your throat. Brain freeze. Numb gums. Chill tongue. Then as the water melts away, the paan flavor emerges... awesome.

Sosyo. A slightly spicy-flavored fizzy drink, and the only way you will be able to digest all the food you eat, because Surat, like the rest of Gujrat, is all about

Food. Everywhere. Anywhere. Anytime. All the time. Food stalls, line the streets, fill the malls, tempting treats, eat them all. I can't even begin the describe the sheer variety of Surat-specific snacks. Which also why you will find

Picnic Roads. Roads are meant, in the classic sense, to travel along, usually in a vehicle. In the Indian context, they can be places to set up business, do your business, eat, pray, live. In Surat, they're also picnic spots. Dividers become tables, railings become backrests, the baskets and tiffins are opened, and awash in the illumination of a thousand malls 'n stalls, the Surat citizens have a gala time sitting, eating, chatting, girlwatching, flirting, drinking, socializing, and connecting. It's a permanent food festival.

Traffic Rules. While the above is happening, what happens to regular traffic, you ask? The answer is not easy do describe without getting into quantum physics. Like purely theoretical particles, Surat cars and several quadrillion bikes can somehow occupy two places at the same time, pass through each other, affect each other's speed and position randomly, as they transport themselves and their passengers through the crowd in a chaotic Brownian Motion of zips, scrapes, near-misses, music and horns. Right of way is determined by speed, size, nerve, and horn volume, traffic lights are amusing entertainment at best, and helmets, seatbelts, and carrying capacity are the gentle suggestions made by snowflakes in hell.

And lastly, add the world-famous Garba. Being the last day of Navratri, Gujratis from Surat to Syracuse will be out on the street dressed to kill, a thousand floodlights blaze in every field, park, and society parking lot, and a million variations of Phalguni Pathak float in the evening air. It's awesome. The entire city is out, and unlike the Cal Pujos, it's not limited to specific localities with travelling in-between; the festival is literally everywhere.

NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 06:19:00 +0000

Don’t stay in NYC; it’s expensive, unnecessary. The suburbs are far better, connected via subways and trains. You need to make an early start, but it’s just once a day; we make every minute count, heading, shivering in the chill at dawn from Linden, to Penn St., New York. NYC can be really explored only on foot. If you’re in a cab, bus, any vehicle, you’re disconnected, don’t get the feel of the city.

You think you’re ready for it, having seen it in a hundred TV episodes and a thousand films, but trust me; nothing prepares you for that first step out of the subway’s humid, crowded cacophony into the vastness of the Greatest City On Earth, where buildings rear up ruler-straight, man-made cliffs, geometry on steroids.

A quick breakfast, a brisk ten-minute walk, and we’re at the Empire State Building, exactly in time to catch it opening to the public, but too early for the crowds. We spend almost an hour at there, watching the sunrise over the megapolis, hearing the rising humming, buzzing susurration of the city waking up 80 stories below.

By the time we’re down, it’s warm, sunny, and beautiful. We walk down to the Museum of Modern Art, another quintessentially NY event; it’s definitely a must-see, summing up all of NY’s modernity, avant-gardism, and also it’s quirkiness, the ability to make bare functionality into art.

Lunch, and we spend the afternoon in Central Park, strolling, watching people. Skaters in a open rink, dancing on wheels, whirling around in bizarre costumes; dancers, a family of singers under a bridge, filling the dim space with ethereally beautiful music; street musicians; live statues that suddenly, startlingly, come to life to acknowledge you with thanks if you drop a tip for them; a guy blowing giant soap bubbles, to the delight of an admiring crowd of kids on rollerblades; horse-drawn carriages, joggers, cops, picnickers… it’s an awesome experience, if you sit back, relax, and soak it in.

Tip: don’t try to visit everything, you’ll end up missing all of it. Get into a place, spend time, absorb it’s essence.

Over the next few days, we visit Ground Zero, the nadir of ‘disaster tourism’, which turned out to be a disappointment; just a giant hole in the ground, surrounded by security and scaffolding. We also did one of the must-do’s of a NY visit, the Statue of Liberty, but via the Staten Island Ferry going past it, saving half a day, instead of the tourist boats, and an evening in Times Square. They say that if you stand here long enough, eventually you will meet everyone in the world; looking at the size and diversity of the crowd there, you know this is true.

The golden Bull in the financial district was a conveyor belt of tourists posing and taking snaps; Chinatown was slightly shady, very interesting, and in character, world apart from the other streets we’d been on, with English taking a very poor second place to Chinese text on all the signs and shop boards, and where every face on the street, and every conversation overheard as we passed, was Asian; Little Italy, a little further northwards, was filled with interesting little boutiques and shops with fascinating window displays (I remember a twenty-foot high wall of beautifully polished sewing machines in one) with nice shopping, lots of small exotic dogs, and awesome bakeries, which are a must-try; Magnolia is one where the line stretches around the block and you have a good chance of finding yourself waiting in line next Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, who are huge fans of this place. During lunch, we saw Sex and the City’s Mr. Big on the sidewalk catch a cab – can’t get more classic NY than that!

The East Village is the counterculture hub, with goths, psychics, music and comic stores filled with fascinating memorabilia, roadside cafes and pubs in profusion – another new world to explore.

And, of course, no New York Experience will ever be complete without a taste of the famous subways; At least once, try to buy a ticket and find they appropriate train to get from one place to another. In Penn St. station, amongst the labyrinthine corridors, platforms, levels and sublevels, and searingly bright lights, the chatter and hum of millions of footsteps, public announcements, cellphones and conversations mixes with the deep subterranean rumble and clatter of the trains whooshing through the dark tunnels, and everything is a hurried, humid, deafening and blinding kaleidoscope of confusion until you finally step out into the crisp, chill air, glowing with the self-satisfaction that comes with having come that one step closer to becoming a native New Yorker.

If you have time, don’t forget to visit the Meatpacking District, Greenwich, the Upper East Side, and Soho; all familiar places from Hollywood and TV, not to be missed in real life either.

NYC is supposed to be fast and rude, but by America’s standards, not India’s; growing up in the midst of crowds and the constant fight for space and free time, we felt right at home. We saw it as it is – brisk, efficient, and so incredibly diverse, you could be lost here a lifetime and still never see it all.

Two very important pieces of advice for new visitors to New York, from a local – one, walk fast; two, take all the pictures you want, but don’t block people. These are two critical things tourists forget, becoming irritants to the city that has things to do, places to go, and all too little time. Besides, who wants to look like, as the locals say for the overawed tourists, that they stepped right off the boat?

Stroll around, wear walking shoes and carry an umbrella, use the subways, eat mustard-laden hot dogs at roadside food carts, talk to the people. And most of all, don’t be afraid, and explore. The city is a microcosm of Earth - everyone is here.

And there’s everything to discover.

Niagara

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:18:00 +0000

It’s early morning. Streamers of mist slide over the car, rippling past in the wet air as we race down Route 476. The landscape’s shrouded in fog, dim, eerily silent, and empty save the occasional car whipping past, driver in his private four-wheeled warm cocoon, and rarely, a behemoth eighteen-wheeler lumbering past like Star Wars’ opening scene.

Then, gradually, the sun’s warmth pierces through, the mist dissipates, and as we move North, the glorious autumn colors begin to emerge. Lush greenery gives way to brilliant yellows, vivid browns, and fiery reds; entire tracts of forest flame, blazing color in the sunshine. We’re driving up to one of the planet’s great natural spectacles, the largest waterfall in the world – Niagara Falls.

Reach early evening, just in time to catch the last Maid of the Mist tour boat. These boats take you into the basin beneath the falls, in the center of the falls’ horseshoe curve; there, you’re surrounded on 3 sides by a wall of water so gigantic, it defies description. At four million cubic feet a minute, the experience ceases to be something to see or feel; you become a part of it, a tiny particle in an awesome display of elementalism. The foaming spray blinds, drenches, deafens, and drowns you, the closest you’ll get to breathing water. It’s not the flying rain of monsoon storms. It’s heavier, more mineral; smells, tastes, feels different. Snow-white, chilling cold under cloudy autumn skies, the falls tower up almost two hundred feet… and everything you worried about for so long, work, money, everything, suddenly feels… insignificant. All you can do is just be, exist in the face of grandeur.

We walk later through caves on the American side, along wooden walkways constructed around the base – the only way to get close enough to actually touch the falls. Luckily, there’s enough sun to let us dry off before evening, when the October wind carries a sharp bite.

At night, a light display is switched on; as glowing reds, and soft, powdery whites play across them, the falls transform into something unearthly, alternating between heaven and hell. It’s a surreal vision, and never to be missed; and if you can, get a Canadian visa, because the US might have the falls, but it’s the Canadians that get to enjoy the best view.

Apart from the Falls, there’s not much to do in Niagara, so we head back next morning. It’s a day’s drive to New York, a brilliant experience. The Amish countryside, as you pass through Pennsylvania and Delaware, is vast, flat, and spread open for hundreds of miles, all directions. Lightning flickers on the horizon; being autumn, it’s Halloween season, and all the towns and houses we pass are putting up decorations. Pumpkins everywhere – on the roadside, in the markets, lit up as lanterns, in bread, cakes, even ice-cream and tea. After some irresistible stops at farm diaries for natural, fresh icecream (mmm!) and lunch, it’s late evening by the time we reach our New Jersey hotel.

From A to B, to the sea

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:18:00 +0000

Mathematically, the shortest and most efficient distance between A and B is a straight line.

Leisure-wise, the longer, quirkier, and more circuitous the line, especially if it happens to go through some interesting places, is the most fun. Like this round-trip... starting and ending at the same place, the Gateway of India... but going in a large, crazy circle around Mumbai Harbour. In a brand-new, state-of-the-art, racing-grade French sailboat.

Some photos follow.

It begins with the Gateway

And it's riotous carnival atmosphere

From where the intrepid sailors step forth.

Every class of technology coexists from this -

to this...

to this. (Mukesbhai ni navi navdi it is)

Our ride - the Storm Rider, a 25-foot Beneteau sailboat

we outboard out of the crazy floating traffic jam

and it's time to race the wind!

easily outpacing our competition,

we glide, whisper-silent, over the arabian sea

relaxing in the sun

under the able guidance of Abhishek, our captain

sky-watching

and taking control of the boat.

we also learnt a bit about how modern sailing happens by watching R almost get whacked into the sea with the boom.

Ropes - the most critical part of the boat

then, as the evening wore on,

the sun dipped,

and the sky softened into evening colors

it was time to head home

back to the shore...

winding up with a Kasab's-eye-view of Mumbai.

The End.

Dry Hampi

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:16:00 +0000

The Amazing Vibrabus

It's evening, and we're standing in a little group at the side of the road, waiting for our bus and co-passengers, trying to have a conversation. Since it's the Western Express Highway in rush hour, we aren't succeeding - so we stand around and smile at each other through the horns, engines, smoke, and shrieking agents trying to fill seats. One asked me very aggressively if I was going to Goa. Maybe I had a 'going-to-goa' kind of face... he looked so desperately furious I almost went, had R not called me exactly then asking how to get to the meeting point. No agent scorned has a wrath more terrible than an R denied directions, which is how the trip happened at all...

Ah, here comes our bus... it's a gigantic (ever notice how buses look so monstrous inside the city?) black-gold VRL with snarling radiator and antennae-like mirrors, like something out of Starship Troopers bearing down on us... step inside, whoa, it's an icebox! Huddle into seats and thank VRL and God for blankets. We stop, idling at a signal, and the bus' true USP emerges - it's vibrating like something out of a demented honeymoon suite on a caffeine-amphetamine cocktail. Teeth chatter, body trembles, vision blurs, and speech stutters.

And here we go - I was wondering when this person would show up. Ever notice, on any bus ride, there's always be one person who will have some kind of violent physical aversion to his seat, and will stand in the aisle as long as he can? He blocks the passage! He lurches! He stuffs bags into the overhead compartment! He drops stuff from the bag! He picks them up, and, whoops, now drops the bag itself! He cannot keep his balance! What does he do?! Aha! He wedges passenger A's shoulder into the crack of his ass, put's one hand on Passenger B's head, and one foot on Passenger C's crotch! He is stable! He drinks water! He spills water! He searches for towel! He... anyway, let's go on.

R sets a record - 2 hours straight on the phone. And the kid in the seat next to us starts vomiting.

At the food court on the highway, we get screamed at by our bus driver - "Jaa apne aadmi ko bula! Ina time khaane ko kya lagta!" Suitably chastened, we troop meekly to our seats, and the bus driver tortures us hideoulsy for the next 2 hours with the mandatory awful trip-movie. Ever noticed there's a whole class of movies that appear to have been made for the sole purpose of inflicting hideous pain upon trapped bus passengers, locked into a chilly, reverberating iron shell roaring along at 90 kmph, where certain death by leaping, screaming in horror, from the window is only marginally less attractive an option as staying inside and watching 'Do Knot Disturbb'.

The morning introduces us to Hospet and a bright yellow-and-chrome minibus almost as old as the ruins of Hampi itself. Many a bone-shaking, tooth-rattling and soul-vibrating mile later, we are in Hampi.

Hampi... is a strange place. There are no buildings - just rocks, hillocks, scrub, and shanties. And, sprawled through it all, rearing up in the middle of nowhere - deserted, silent ruins, all around. It's... more than a little surreal.

Hampi was the capital of the ancient Vijaynagara Empire from 1336 to 1565, and was a large, sprawled-out city, with markets, palaces, forts, temples, the whole hog. Today, it's a deserted, silent ghost town, with a small village nestling in it's center around the main Virupaksha temple complex which has the only habitation. Venture out beyond that, and you will find yourself walking through a silent stone necropolis, bereft of any life apart from the some signs of repair work by the ASI, or the occasional overawed tourist group.

Our 'hotel' is a virulent pink color on the inside, with blue doors and red sheets on the bed. The overall effect is very, almost disturbingly, womb-like... and it's not helped by the sight of a mosquito net hanging off the ceiling like a giant used condom.

An interesting menu.

Recycling ancient structures

Start walking around. Past the bazaar, which has cheerfully colonized the ancient marketplace pillars and used them as support in their own shops, there's a brief rise and a gigantic Nandi. This is supposed to be the largest monolithic bull sculpture in the world. The titanic taurean Must be 15-20 feet high, carved in a reclining posture, complete in great detail and anatomical correctness. ;)

A giant load of bull

Further on, cresting the rise of the hill, we come face-to-face with a scene straight out of Tomb Raider: In the middle of overgrown jungle, a series of buildings rears out, a lost city among the palms.

The ancient market road

All we need is Lara Croft

Support for the sky

Carved history

Royal dog

Standing in Ruins

Soft lightplay

ancient grinding-wheel surface

Cool shades

Changing perspectives

Entertainment center

Dream sequence

Lunch is followed up with crisp, fresh jalebis from the market, and then a tour of the main Virupaksha temple. Here we see the makara-yadi - the seven-in-one animal guardian of the city, India's second-largest gopuram (temple gate), an ancient pin-hole camera that projects the image of the gate onto the opposite wall in an underground room, best seen at 6 am and pm daily when the light is perfect.

The Makara-Yadi -

elephant's trunk, crocodile mouth, peacock's plumage, rabbit ears, horse's body, lion-claws, and the all-seeing eyes of a Narasimha

Gopuram - 1

Gopuram - 2

An ancient pinhole camera projection

The main hall is still used to perform marriages for the village couples; imagine getting married under the thousand-year-old frescoes, feeling the history of a millennium around you. The adjoining chamber inside the actual temple, however, is closed, and is opened only for visiting royalty once a year.

reserved for royalty

There's also an underground chamber, which has two gods - Hari and Hara - Vishnu and Shiva - which again occurs in only one other place in India, Varanasi. This makes Hampi a major pilgrimage spot as well.

The underground temple

At the gate there's a three-headed Nandi - the Trikaladhyananandi - the only one of it's kind, representative of Bramha, Vishnu, Shiva - the past, present and future - which used to be worshipped inside the temple until it got damaged.

the trikaladhyananandi

Also in the temple courtyard is Lakshmi, the friendly local temple elephant. Feed her bananas you can buy outside, or give her cash; food goes into the ever-smiling mouth, cash goes to the handler sitting next to her looking bored out of his skull, and the trunk comes up and gives you a quick pat on the head as a 'blessing'. Only for cash, though. Bananas earn you elephantine goodwill, but that's it.

May you return with bananas next time

As we step out of the temple, I walk into a pair of bulls fighting, and get stepped on. Those things are heavy! I limp around for the next half-hour.

Behind the temple, there's a tableland filled with pillars, pagodas, and skeletal stone structures standing silent in the whispering wind, through which the last rays of the setting sun fall on the hordes of monkeys playing. The city had been been lost for three hundred years before being rediscovered by a british hunting party during the Raj; for those three centuries, these simian citizens were the sole inhabitants, lords and masters of the stone. I think of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book - the monkey kingdom - and the effect is simultaneously saddening and a little eerie. A sense of greatness and mystery - not defiled, but passed beyond such trivial concerns. We can today see only a fraction of a fraction of what it must have been like... and it still inspires awe.

the plateau of memories

pagoda

sunset of an empire

last sliver of sun

absorbing the atmosphere

stone skeletons

There's another connection to monkeys one that I don't find out until afterwards, and the serendipity of this above observation is hammered home - Hampi is identified with the mythological Kishkindha, the Vanara kingdom identified in the Ramayana. The original monkey kingdom. So I guess the primate population really was the original owner...

mother-son monkey

exasperated-with-tourists monkey

monkey see monkey doo

grumpy Hampi monkey

Another kind of inhabitant makes their presence felt extremely strongly at this point - hordes of mosquitoes, fed up with months of monkey-blood, descend on us like an Alfred Hitchcock special effect, crazed with the thirst for human blood! But fear not! For I am armed with bthe mighty Odomos! I am invincible!

Asif loses his camera during the day; a carload of Bongs arrives, the essential component of any tourist spot; and R meets some people she knows, again. This is getting freaky.

Early next morning, a small group of us decide to trek up Matanga hill. It's a clear, chill dawn, the air pure and clean with a slight trace of mist. A minor wrong turn delays us, and we miss the actual moment of sunrise, but the view that early morning from the hilltop is awesome; a complete panorama of all the places we spent yesterday exploring.

Hampi wakes up in the pre-dawn chill

In the distance, the mist is still rising from the valleys, while the low hills blaze with sunshine; flat black and white bars of sky, mist, mountain, cloud, and valley. We sit for a while, accompanied by an elderly European gent, the sun shining off his bald pate like a spotlight.

sunrise!

the first sun touches the temple

view from the top of Matanga

the view-watchers

exit

Then breakfast, followed by the largest glass of coffee I have ever had, including the Latte Grande from Kosta Koffee.

Later in the day, head for another temple complex - the Vittala temple. Walking along the banks of the Tungabhadra, we are accosted by a Voice. There's no-one around for at least a hundred feet - yet it rings out, loud, clear, and reverberating back and forth between the hills - "Hello sir! Where you going? Boat coming! Please waiting!" It turns out to be coming from a boatman in a coracle in the middle of the river, apparently blessed with iron lungs and a dolby surround-sound voicebox.

A disgruntled deity

the King's Balance, where he weighed himself in jewels to give to charity

Good incentive to diet?

delicate carvings

Vittala temple has one of Hampi's most-photographed landmarks - the stone chariot, in the middle of the main courtyard. Huge crowds of tourists. They are all getting group-photographed; the cameraman has to stand forty feet away to get them all in the frame. Wouldn't be surprised to find the group visible on Google Earth.

the stone car

huge crowds

But away from the chariot, the crowds thin, and we find the peaceful side of the temple - ancient, twisted, gnarly trees, straight out of Running With The Demon's haunted foliage, and places where you can sit on the cool stone in the shade and watch the circus of humanity dance around you, laughing, chattering, posing, pointing, photographing. And if you sit there for a while, not doing any of these things, you feel a sense of peace, connect with the place.

serenity

demon tree

You can see in your mind's eye what it was like during the abandoned years, what it must have been like at the zenith of it's existence. And then the past than the present run together, and the true age, the timelessness, of the stone is felt. Savor that feeling when it happens, because everything else you see can be found on Wikipedia and Flickr. That feeling is the reason why you travelled here.

sunlight

the musical pillars -

9 identical pillars, each of which would produce the sound of a different instrument when tapped.

Lunch is at MangoTree restaurant, the restaurant for the Aam Junta. A series of concentric terraces around a central (you guessed it!) mango tree. Full on crowd, harried waiters, massive rush, but excellent food. The trick is to order what is easiest to deliver - usually the main thali, or the day's special. You know it's good, it's there, and it will be served fast.

the Blair Witch tree

local color

Royal Indian hunting-dog

G.I. Joe

Take an alarmingly lurching boat across the Tungabhadra to Anegudi. Saw an interesting huge ceremonial chariot, but the rest of the trip was a let-down; just a lot of getting your bones rattled in autos. Maybe we just didn't know the right places to go to.

ceremonial chariot

Last day. The Elephant Stables, a row of huge doorways in front of a parade-ground, and the royal zenana - The Lotus Palace - glowing a soft, organic pink in the sunshine, looking almost alive. (and I'm wondering why the two are in the same compound? Wouldn't the ladies object to effectively sharing quarters with a bunch of elephants? Or vice versa?)

Both are in a far better condition than the Queen's quarters across the river. I guess some things don't change - when you're into cars and women, the first priority is to relocate the wife out of the way.

elephant stables

an idea of the height of the door.

still didn't stop R from accidentally cracking her head on the edge

friendly locals

the Paan-Supari market

the temple of a thousand Rama's -

a three-tier graphic novel of the Ramayana, in stone

black marble pillars

Acoustic Elephant -

makes a ringing noise when tapped

bathing tank

Return of Terror

Finally, packed up and ready, heading for Hospet. This time we're gunning all-out, roaring down the highways in a cataclysmic cacophony, roaring engines, rattling windows, lurching roads, cursing driver, hysterical horn, whistling wind, shrieking passengers... this bus is a shock to sanity. Every half-hour, we stop for 5 minutes for the driver to head into the bushes; apparently something he ate earlier didn't agree with him.

the medieval minibus

We make it just in time, with seconds to spare before the Volvo leaves for Mumbai. Ahhh, the Volvo... air-conditioned, air-cushioned, silent, stable, cool and comfy... after the terror of the rattletrap, feels like, as the ad goes, Heaven.

Then they turn up the volume and switch on Mission Istanbul.

Nasik: Pandavleni Caves

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:18:00 +0000

This was a quick stopover on the return trip to Mumbai - the caves are around 8 km outside Nasik, on the Nasik-Mumbai highway.

Parked in a clearing, then started walking up the steps to the hillock. In the early morning, the weather was bracingly chill, and the steps aren't steep enough to be painful - but still good enough to make you take a rest stop or two on the way.

About two thousand years old, Pandavleni Caves are quite similar to a lot of other Buddhist caves found around Maharashtra - with the stark difference of having, in spite of a Hanuman temple (or at least, a mural), absolutely NO monkeys.

Monkeys are an inescapable fact of any Maharashtrian tourist spot, even those located on islands like Elephanta... you have a choice of the red-faced macaques (who are noisy, boisterous, aggressive, greedy, and aren't above grabbing anything that looks like food or scaring you into dropping it with hoots, screeches, screams and the occasional stinging slap) and the calmer, more elegant black-faced langurs.

Maybe we were too early, or this was off season, or something... because this place looks like prime monkey habitat, so it was quite surprising to find none.

The place is peaceful, quiet, cool, and not very crowded; the caves themselves, around 30, aren't as grand or well-preserved as Elephanta or Ajanta but still pretty interesting.

The high point was walking into a darkened cavern and hearing the haunting tone of a bansuri floating out of the main altar. It was being played by a tall, bearded man - he didn't look like a priest, but more like a musician who enjoyed the atmosphere - and the acoustics. The sound filled the cavern, end to end, and pure, smooth, and perfect.

That sound gave the caves their character for us, fixed it in memory.

Every time I hear a bansuri played again, I'm going to remember a silent, dark space, cool rock on all sides, illuminated by a brilliant white square of light from the entrance at the far end, and, half-hidden in the shadows all around, calm stone faces watching impassively, as they always have for centuries...

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from The Post Who Walks

Nasik Trip: The Sula Vineyards

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:17:00 +0000

This blog post is going to be unique for you because you're going to be seeing via a new tech I'm testing out - blog updates via mail, brought to you courtesy Posterous. (www.walkthetalk.posterous.com)

That's why the format I've used so far is changing - making for shorter and more digestible posts. (General public heaves a sigh of relief and there is much cheering below the balcony)

Anyway, coming back; or rather, going - to Sula is dead easy for us lucky Bombayites. Get onto the national highway, and it's a straight 3-hour drive to Nasik (and 15 mins from there to Sula). You can actually plan a day trip and be back by evening if you like.

Sula's a short distance out of the idyllic small town of Nasik, which is home to beautiful, quiet vineyards, nicely crisp-n-cold weather thanks to the Western Ghats, and horrendous traffic jams involving trucks and other... creatures that look like they stepped out Terminator Salvation because this is also one of the heavy-machinery and automobile OEM hubs.

But the early mornings are worth an overnight stay, and there's enough decent hotels in Nasik (or you can try Sula's Beyond which is horrendously expensive, at least by my standards.)

The vineyards themselves are at after a winding drive through narrow, field-surrounded roads, until you drive into an elegant two-story bungalow-type place in the middle of a sea of green. The ambiance is lovely; there's a long verandah-style balcony stretching along the front looking out over the rows of vines, and behind the bungalow is an ampitheatre-like place, nice landscaping with pillars sticking up supporting the sky.

But avoid the weekends. A lot of ambiance disappears when you're surrounded by screaming children, irate mothers, which means the dads are getting pleasantly (then unpleasantly) sloshed and getting into the loud, expansive mode where the effectiveness and eloquency of an opinion is directly proportional to the volume in which it is expressed, and even (I kid you not!) disapproving grandparents and assorted aunts and uncles.

Harshad from Sula takes us around the place, showing how the wine is made from the grapes to the bottle; it's a walk through the vineyards, the crushing machinery, (dozens of clinically shining aluminum tubes is contorted shapes coming out of a machine that looked like a well-mannered cement mixer) the fermenting tanks (a giant, dark, cavernous hangar filled with rows of twenty-foot steel tanks and redolent with aroma and ketones, and since the fermenting had to happen at 11 to 13 degrees, nicely chilly as well) followed up by a brief lecture on how the various wines are made... and finally up to the tasting session, where we move across a 6-wine spectrum at the bar.

There's a more elaborate and advanced version every thursday where we match wine to food, but... that's for next time. There's also a whole bunch of souvenirs - Sula tshirts, Sula juta bags, Sula wine racks, and, of course Sula... wines! In bottles, minibottles, gift packs, the works.

Afterwards, we head over to one of the on-premise restaurants; they have a Kareems' and a Little Italy (we tried the latter and it rocked - the desserts were to die for) and I tell you, there's nothing like settling down in a beautiful, peaceful, dim restaurant in the gradual chill of the descending dust, with some good wine and beyond-good woodfired pizza.

As the Dalai Lama says - "The purpose of our lives is to be happy."

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from The Post Who Walks

Buck Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:36:00 +0000

In 2008, I made 45 entries in this blog. In 2009, that number dropped to 3, the worst ever. (2005 had only 2 but that's because the blog started in August.)

2010 needs to be better. Much better.

The Ajanta Road Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:59:00 +0000

Ajanta – Ellora Caves. You all know about them from your Class V history book. You’ve seen them mentioned in a lot of Incredible India ads, Lonely Planet guidebooks, so many places. They’re a World Heritage site, famous for their Jain, Buddhist and Hindu paintings and sculptures. This long weekend, we went a step further, and decided to pay a visit.

7:30 am, we piled into our car, topped up the tank and headed out. The drive is long – close to 7 hours – but the roads are sheer poetry. On the trip, we encountered sudden thundershowers, loud restaurant managers in even louder shirts, I got mistaken for a dhaba waiter, and we lost our map, but the drive through the Sahyadris was like being in an Indian Switzerland – gentle, rolling grass-scapes and hills, clear traffic, music and good conversation, and plenty of relaxed photo-ops. I am in love with the Maharashtra highways.

Serene, smooth, and silent roads

Dhaba Breakfasts

Windmill farms - looks like something out of War of the Worlds

Aurangabad is the nearest major town, and that’s where we stayed; a little worried, since we hadn’t made any bookings, but a brief search gave us some pretty decent hotels. Even on a long weekend, it’s easy to find vacancies.
Tip: Avoid the hotels that appear in guidebooks in this scenario, they're guaranteed full. Others are equally good - if you don't mind roughing it a bit. After seeing scaffolding in the lobby, (Hotel 1), bedbugs in the mattresses (Hotels 2 & 3), supercilious, arrogant receptionists (Hotel 4), a 60% discount, but still out of budget (5-star hotel 5), no lift (hotels 6 & 7), and no AC (hotel 8), we still got a decent deal at the Bagga International on Airport Road, which has decent rooms, good prices, and a kickass restaurant.

Aurangabad has some interesting places to visit – there are caves, the Aurangabad and Daulatabad forts, lots of historical gates (in fact, it’s known as the ‘City of Gates’), and a Mughal-era water-wheel called the ‘Panchakki’. The high point, though, is the Bibi-ka-Maqbara, better known as India’s Fake Taj Mahal. It’s the mausoleum of Aurangzeb’s wife Rabia-ud-Durrani, modeled after his father Shah Jahan’s gift to architecture. Different, and yet eerily similar, it has a unique charm, and deserves a visit.

The Bibi ka Maqbara in Aurangabad - India's Fake Taj Mahal

In fact, while you’re in the city, check out two things for certain – a traditional dish called Quaalia Naan (non-veg) – a little hard to find, but worth it – the true taste of Aurangabad. The second is a handicraft called Himroo, seen in shawls, stoles, and even bedcovers.

Ajanta Caves are 120 km, a 3-hour drive from Aurangabad. Everything – parking, food, supplies – is taken care of on arrival (which loosely translates into Attack Of The Touts, Tickets, and Toilet Charges); and a shuttle bus takes you the last 4 km to the caves themselves. Tickets for entry, parking, shuttle bus, cameras, guides... keep plenty of small notes handy.

A quick description of what's around us - around equal numbers of Europeans and Bongs, which make up around 90% of the group, the rest representing all other India. Rock-cut steps lined with the slightly shy, well-behaved Langurs, who will pose prettily for photos instead of their boisterous, aggressive and noisy Macaque cousins. Bright sunshine interspersed with sudden, cooling showers, in which C, fast as lightning, grabs the only umbrella to protect what his newlywed better half calls 'his first wife' - his prized Nikon D90 - while she, and the rest of us, glare at him after scuttling to a doorway.

The Caves were made over six centuries, between 200 BC to 400 AD; later abandoned and lost to history for a thousand years in the mountain jungles, they were discovered accidentally by a British explorer (interestingly enough, named John Smith) in 1819. They’re beautiful, laid out in a horseshoe shape around a small, precipitous valley.

Ajanta Caves

There are three types of art which you’ll see here – Buddhist architecture, in the arches, pillars, and stupas; sculpture, in the rock carvings, statues and decorations; and the most famous, the wall-paintings and murals. Even after two thousand years, the colors blaze out in vivid reds, oranges, browns and yellows – clear, vivid and brilliant in the darkness. The detailing is extraordinary, but most of all, it’s the stories they tell that will remain in your memory. Every mural is a Jataka fable, incidents in images scattered over the wall speaking to you across millenia.

But the flow of tourists is taking it's tool; the combined moisture from people's breathing makes the inside of each cave a sauna, and you'll know it as soon as you step in. Slowly and implacably, this is destroying the paintings; paint peels, fades. It won't be around too long; see it while you can.

Decorated Pillar

Baby's day out

A row of murals

Deep, vivd reds, yellows, and browns - the all-natural colors used by the monks two thousand years ago

Entrance

There are guides in each cave; it’s worth hiring one or two just to see these stories, which otherwise might not be distinguishable.

The first cave has the Padam Pani Buddha, the most famous image to come out of Ajanta; you’ll recognize it instantly as soon as you see it. Caves 19 and 26 have superb, detailed sculptures including a giant reclining Buddha; Caves 16 and 17 have some of the best paintings after Cave 1. You can buy a guidebook to the caves outside for a small sum; read up about each cave before going in to explore. You can’t use a flash, so carry a good camera… but don’t get so absorbed in taking snaps that you forget the experience itself.

20-foot Buddhas, Cave 19

Nokia's the biggest manufacturer of cameras now, btw

Buddha statue, Cave 2

Wall Frieze, Cave 26

The caves alone can easily be covered in a few hours, if you go slow and take your time; and going slow is a good idea. It’s going to be a long ride back. Get immersed in the feel of the place. Slow down. Drink in the atmosphere. Watch the squirrels play on the cliff-face, the elegant, slender silver-furred langurs in the trees.

Outside the last cave

Mandatory Group Snap

There’s an MTDC restaurant outside the caves that’s pretty ok for food, if you aren’t too hung up on ambience; which our neighbouring table people unfortunately were. They asked for 3 varieties of soft drinks, rejecting each for being too warm / dirty / flat. They wanted AC. They wanted a cleaner table. They wanted bigger plates, then cleaner ones. They wanted cutlery. Extra glasses. More menu cards. Then a discussion on each dish in the menu. Finally, after great debate amongst themselves, they settled on chicken, demanding to know how each chicken dish was made, boneless options, and finally if it was available. This is a restaurant that survives on fast throughput; the waiter, fried beyond endurance, tells them all chicken got finished in the time they took to order. They sat morosely for a while, deep sadness writ large on their face, then settled for egg. We had ordered, eaten, and paid the bill in the time it took for them to finish ordering.

Then, time to head home.

Ellora Caves are about an hour out of Aurangabad, but don’t try to do both Ajanta & Ellora in a day, it’ll be too hectic and you won’t be able to enjoy either. Ellora’s bigger and more spread out than Ajanta, so it’ll take longer to explore (though faster to reach). The high point is a Kailash Temple, best of all Ellora excavations, an entire temple cut out of a single rock over one hundred years. It’s breathtaking. Unfortunately, between bad weather and too much time spent at Ajanta, we didn't have enough time left for Ellora; so that's kept for trip 2.

As we drive off, the stormlight in the sky darkens into thunderclouds, and our homeward journey is punctuated with showers that turn the countryside into a dim, green and quiet fairyland, while the smell of wet earth rises out of the ground like the scent of Life itself.

Stormlight

It's like a dream - and the dream symbolism manifests into a slightly surreal experience when almost the entire chinese zodiac parades past the car at regular intervals, monkey, dog, pig, ox, rooster... and some Indian additions like an elephant, a pair of camels, and finally a whole tree on the back of a tractor.

The perfect weather to sit in a dhaba’s verandah with some hot chai, watch the rain and look back at a holiday well-spent.

The Perfect Ending

The man, the machine, the truck driver.

Getting there
By Road: Aurangabad is reachable via Mumbai-Pune-Ahmednagar; you can either drive or take an overnight bus.
By Train to Aurangabad station, around which most of the hotels are found;
By Air: you can fly in to Aurangabad airport, 10 km outside the city.

Once settled in, you can hire taxis to Ajanta (120 km) or Ellora (30 km); the road to Ellora also passes through Daulatabad and Khuldabad, with their own attractions and places to see. There are also buses, share-taxis and jeeps.
Ajanta is closed Mondays, and Ellora Tuesdays, so plan accordingly.

Epilogue: It wasn't over yet. The last - and easiest - part of the trip, the drive home to Mumbai on the Expressway, was interrupted with a cloudburst that reduced visibility to ten feet. Ever driven at 80 kmph in pitch darkness, on black asphalt, with the only visual input a row of oil drums painted with reflector stripes, in a six-foot-wide channel for over an hour? It's like being in a videogame, orange-red flashes zipping past, everything else invisible... your body goes slack, frozen in place, while the eyes and the hands and feet on the wheel and pedals talk to each other in a language that bypasses the rest of your conscious mind. Fugue State. You feel yourself waking up, as if out of some deep sleep, when it ends.

Package Tours are the best thing to have happened to tourism

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:51:00 +0000

"Yes," I hear you say. "Ashish has finally slipped off some godforsaken mountain in the middle of nowhere and landed on his head."

But think about it. Dozens and dozens of overweight, overfed, overpampered aunties. Travel is the new status symbol, so they must have it. whether they like it or not. Enter the freindly neighborhood tour guide, who puts them in an air-conditioned seat in coaches / flights / hotels / ferries, shows all the locations they need to click for their albums, and sends them off home.
Leaving all the rest of the places for the rest of us to explore, climb, dive into, enjoy. They even carry their own food, so local cuisine stays unspoiled. They don't move anywhere outside cellphone network, electric supply, air-conditioning, and motorable roads. So the wilderness remains wild.

It was a zero-sum game, but we've put them in a share of the pie that has mile-high, iron walls. They stay in, we have our fun outside.

Koh Samui: One of the most beautiful tropical islands in South-East Asia.

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:12:00 +0000

The experience starts before you even arrive, climbing into a rainbow-hued turboprop that flies you into what looks like a tropical resort, with thatched roofs, open golf-carts… no, wait, that’s Samui Airport!

The ride to the resort on the island’s opposite end is a killer four-wheel drive truck, zipping through the island at ninety in just a few minutes. The first evening, we’re just relaxing at Thong Krut beach, strolling, watching the sun go down into a maze of tiny islands off the coast.

The only practical – and flexible - way to get around is by yourself, so we hire a bike the next day. Awesome range. Small gearless mopeds are about 200 baht; you can also, if you like, hire cruisers, dirt bikes, racing superbikes, and Harleys.

Samui’s a beach paradise, with all the action along the coastlines – the restaurants, shops, clubs, watersports, and places to see, all line the beaches. Chaweng and Lamai are the established beaches, the heart of all the activity; others get less crowded the further you go, cleaner, quieter.

We decide to leave beaches for later, and start with the interior; there’s a series of waterfalls, trekking trails, and Namuang Sanctuary. Here’s where we meet and go for a ride on Nuona, a beautiful twenty-year-old Thai… elephant. ☺

Next is a two-hour walk up to the top of Namuang waterfall, and our local guide shows us a secluded, calm pool where you can leap off an overhanging rock down twenty-five feet into the water, swim under the waterfall, and into a small cave.

There’s also a series of cable-rides where you can get into a harness, clip yourself onto a series of cables between the tall trees, and go sliding through the air, sometimes hanging upside-down – if you have the guts to, that is.

Next is a full-day trip to Anthong Marine Park, reachable only by boat. It’s a collection of islands, dozens, carved by the wind and the sea into fantastic shapes – huge vertical standing rocks hundreds of feet tall, sphinxes, monkeys… you can do this by ferry, but I strongly recommend the (slightly) more expensive speedboat option; it’s far more enjoyable, and you get to see a lot more, not counting the speedboat experience itself. I’d sat right up front, sipping a Singha as the boat reached top speed across the azure ocean; it’s like sitting on the roof of a racing bus. Amazing speed, the wind in your hair and the sun on your face, while waves skim past at 90 kmph a few feet away…

At Anthong, we make four major stops. The first - snorkeling around a coral reef at Koh Wao Lai. My first time; the mouthpiece takes a lot of getting used to before you’re ready to actually relax and enjoy the sun-dappled world below, filled with little quicksilver flashes as the local fauna comes up to investigate this strange new shape splashing about in their ‘sky’. I get a little distance away from the rest of the crowd, the water’s clearer, more to see.

Second stop is the Green Lagoon at Koh Mae Koh, an inland lake, gleaming emerald against the surrounding sapphire seas. The walk up to the lagoon – and a lookout point above it – is from a series of wooden walkways and ladders. The lookout itself is just a small platform, but the view is to die for – a birds’ eye view of the archipelago, a panorama of green islands dreaming in the sun, spread all around.

Then – lunch. At a small fishing village at Paluay, we enjoy a traditional fisherman’s lunch – giant freshly-caught shrimp, rice, vegetables and fresh fruit.

And finally, after we’ve rested, there’s a long halt at Koh Lak, where they bring out a couple of kayaks. Some of us go rowing around the island to explore more marine caves, and others laze around on a pristine white-sand beach or play in the surf.

It ends, finally, with the long ripping ride back along the island’s northern beaches, glowing in the setting sun. I might have been roasted like tandoori chicken, but it’s been one of the best days so far.

I’ve kept a day for roaming around the island. We take a look at the Aquarium & Zoo, (where I got to touch a Giant Manta Ray as it swam past) and a touristy, but still fun, bird and tiger show.

We also drop in at a few temples, including the Wat Khunaram which has the several hundred-year-old mummified body of a Buddhist Monk on display;

the Grandfather-Grandmother rocks (rock formations that bear a remarkable resemblance to human genitalia and could have been celebrated as a tourist attraction only in Thailand).

Another interesting discovery in Chaweng is a shooting gallery, where I try out a .45 automatic and turn out to be a surprisingly good shot.

We wrap up with a look around Lamai’s nightlife, through the karaoke bars, a rocking Irish pub, and other general revelry.

Towards the end of the holiday, we move to Lamai, and spend a while just bumming around on the beaches. The evenings is when Lamai’s real character comes out; hundreds of multi-colored lamps, lanterns and lights illuminate the sands, deckchairs get replaced by tables and open-air displays of the days’ catch on ice, and you can sit with a drink and watch dozens of ‘good-luck lanterns’, rice-paper balloons with a lamp suspended inside, rising into the night sky. The effect is magical; it’s as though the land, having so much beauty, has decided to give some away to heavens, and is sending little colored stars sailing up to add to the night sky.

Under these stars, bare feet in soft, cool sand, to the faint music – the ubiquitous beach anthem, Bob Marley – and the ever-present soft crashing of the waves, I raise a toast to a small experience of paradise.

To the first of many such more.

Ladakh Trip: It's not over yet.

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:08:00 +0000

Hah - abhi khatam nahin hua.
I'm not back in regular life yet. I'm in a limbo, in the Delhi-Bombay train bound for home; but Routine hasn't yet started to force me back into the groove.

What am I taking back from this trip?

A sense of discpline, a tolerance for extremes?

Trekking to 16,300 feet on burning lungs, deadwood legs, and making it?

Playing a diesel drum by a campfire, singing in the firelit warmth?
The sight of the galaxy sprawled across the sky?
The silence of the monasteries?
The people we met?
That sense of being cut off from everything that tied you to your old life?
How people changed on this trip?
How I changed?

These are things I am going to remember for a long time. There are a few incidents in life, a few experiences, that can alter the course you had been on. Destiny shapers. I don't know where this trip's experience will take me - but I definitely know one thing, that change something it will. I know I'm not the same person who came here. I know I'm moving on a slightly different life-path now.

remember.

And the recap -

Day 1: From Mumbai to Delhi - Train trip
Day 2: Delhi - A short rest
Day 3: From Delhi to Manali. Bus trip, hitchhiking, getting there
Day 4: The Journey Begins - Manali to Sarchu.
Day 5: Getting to Leh: Second part of an epic drive
Day 6: Leh: Acclimatization and exploration
Day 7: Khardung la, Nubra, Diskit, Alchi
Day 8: Panamik and the return
Day 9: Chang La and Pangong Tso
Day 10: Pathar Sahib, Basgo, Likir, Ulley Topko
Day 11: Lamayuru Monastery and the Shanti Stupa
Day 12: Rafting the Indus: adventures and misadventures
Day 13: The Stok-La Trek begins
Day 14: Rumbak
Day 15: Stok La Pass
Day 16: Changma Party
Day 17: Return to Stok, leaving Leh

Ki Ki Soso Larghyalo.
Keep us safe on this journey...

Ladakh Trip: Day Seventeen. Return to Stok.

noreply@blogger.com (Mycotoxin) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:07:00 +0000

A long, leisurely walk back to Stok, where As and M, who have taken the last six days to freak out in shopping, setting contacts, and exploring the city.

We return to Ladakh Serai, where after a week, I finally have a full, regular, long hot shower. Emerge feeling extraordinarily evolved, glowing with cleanliness from within - it's like I've taken my soul through a car wash and a five-star spa.

A session in the afternoon with Godfather beer. Everyone knocked flat.

Evening, take St to Leh Market, where she makes up for the deprivations of the last week in a titanic explosion of retail therapy.
Ns decides to head to Dharamshala instead of staying with us; he's taking an overnight return Tavera cab to Manali, who will do the 48-hour trip in a screaming, terrifying, 14. We wish him the best and pray for his soul.

I pack by candlelight, dumping inessentials, guesstimating weight, etc, and sleep, to be woken up at 4 am for my flight. Luggage limit is 20 kg. My luggage weighs 19.8. Am I good or what?
The departure lounge has only foreigners.

The flight leaves on time - no bad-weather cancellations, which would have meant I get to see Kashmir with the rest of the group who's going on till there - until the engines roar, I get pushed back into my seat, and the holiday is finally over.

The last look back... icy peaks below. I feel... yes, sad that it's over finally... yet also, in some strange way, elated. This trip had been on my list of things to do for years. It's happened. And no way is this over. This has just been the beginning... and a list is unscrolling in my head, a list of names that ring with more cold, forbidding wastes, monasteries, peaks, valleys, walks, cold wind and warm fires...
The next 20 expeditions, from Kashmir to the Seven Sisters, are already being planned.

;)