The version of the road that predates the modern motorways was a destination in itself. The American version of it was the main street highway (the famous Route 66, for example), the one that actually entered the town centre with diners and barbershops lining the way. The road and the community were part of the same unit. And when things got competitive, the business got creative - shoe-shaped buildings for a cobbler or a hotdog stand with a hotdog roof. The Kerala version of this was the murukkan kadas, with banana bunches of various colours hanging from the beams of those shops, toddy shops with painted palm trees, and fishmongers with aluminium vessels heaped with fish. Different method, but same logic to capture the eye before the car passes.

In the US, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was the death knell of this. The engineering principle of controlled access fundamentally changed the relationship between the roads and the people who lived along them. The physical infrastructure did not disappear overnight, but grew quieter and quieter and then died a slow death. What replaced them were standardised rest stops at interchanges, where a cluster of big brands appeared rather than off-brand mom-and-pop establishments.

Kerala is in the middle of that same transformation. NH 66, which runs the length of the state, has been undergoing aggressive expansion for years, growing from its old 2-lane self into a modern access-controlled highway. Drive it nowadays, and you can see the character changing steadily - high concrete retaining walls and service roads pushed away from the main carriageway with entire stretches of former roadside frontage swallowed by the acquisition.

The Kerala road that I knew just a decade ago was an experience in sensory overload. The narrowness had you constantly aware of what lay on the side. The thattukadas with their wood smoke and the smell of fresh ulli-vada or pazhampori frying in coconut oil, plastic chairs right on the edge of the gravel, the small temples, mosques and churches with their offering boxes at touching distance. Filled with loud information that told you something about the place you were in every 100 metres.

The new highway walls all this out; the barriers are no longer just metaphorical. They are metres high, separating life from the road. The roadside stall that once caught your eye and beckoned for that cup of chaya now sits behind a service road, hidden under the logic of the controlled access.

The economic consequences of what’s happening right now in Kerala closely mirror what American small towns experienced in the 60s. The business model that relied on the driver's ability to stop on the kerb is gone. The new NH 66 is no longer that kind of road. Commerce doesn’t disappear; instead, it will concentrate into plazas and standardised establishments, replacing the many smaller ones.

That’s the romantic in me. But the hard fact is that the new highway cuts travel time between Trivandrum and Kochi to 2.5 hours, down from 6 hours during peak traffic. And it will be substantially safer - and our roads badly need that. Progress here isn’t rhetorical; it actually saves human lives. The West (and a lot of the rest of India) made that trade-off a long time ago, and it was worth it. The math on lives and hours recovered makes it hard not to. I’ll take that, but what I’ll also keep is the vivid reminiscence of once driving that living road.

And perhaps, as I travel these new highways, I should remind myself to take a slow detour occasionally to let the journey offer up an unscripted moment or two, just as it used to.

Very early on in my career, I had to run a layoff. I had only about 5 years of experience as an IC and had barely settled into a management role. Suddenly, I was standing before ten people, about to deliver news that would upend their lives.I made the rookie mistake of addressing everyone as a group. No one-on-one conversations before that; just a big room, a speech and an invitation for people to come talk to me individually after. I scripted my words, rehearsed deliberately and delivered them with shaking hands but without stumbling. And then I sat alone in an office cabin, dreading what was going to come next.

The conversations that followed were nothing like what I had expected. There was neither any anger nor confrontation. It was a relief, but I couldn’t understand what had happened until much later, when I learned that a project manager who had also been laid off had spoken to the group after I left. She told the group that the company had done this in good faith, acted as kindly as possible, and done more than most other companies would in a similar situation. And she had mentioned something I had done for her months earlier.

She had been pregnant and exhausted during a high-pressure sprint, worried she'd fall behind. I told her to take a few days off and that I’d handle things. It just felt obvious at the time.

But she remembered, and in that room, her memory of that moment shifted the atmosphere. She had brought the authenticity to my speech that I so obviously lacked. I was lucky.

That was the first time I realised how even a small act of care can travel, and how it matters that people feel seen, not just herded around.

The actual challenge in leadership is not the decision itself, but solving for the distance it creates.

The trap of abstraction

As engineers, we love abstraction. When you start climbing the ladder and managing other engineers, and further down the line, other managers, abstraction is the familiar tool we reach for. You need it because, lets be real, you can’t expect to hold the weight of 200 individual realities while making high-impact decisions.

It is all in good faith, after all this is a shorthand that lets you function. But it comes with a cost that compounds quietly and you need to be mindful of that. People get reduced to headcounts and teams become nodes in an org chart. You start pulling your hair trying to curve-fit performance reviews.

Just as brain fatigue causes words to lose meaning with repetition, extended reliance on abstraction makes you forget what those concepts actually represent. A 10% reduction stops registering as colleagues with whom you weathered challenges. A product pivot ceases to feel like a decisive moment that uproots someone's well-established team or their work identity.

Abstraction doesn’t make you a bad leader, it makes you an efficient one. Efficiency applied without thought and at the wrong moments is its own kind of cruelty. And that’s where the real damage begins.

When leaders default to scripts

A leadership failure event that is seldom discussed is the scripted conversation that is a direct outcome of that abstraction. The same scripted conversation that I resorted to.

Picture this: you are deep into a restructuring exercise; you have had numerous back-to-back difficult conversations, you carry the weight of information you cannot share, and you aren’t sure about your personal situation either. Add the constant pressure to stay consistent and avoid saying the wrong thing. You inevitably craft a script, perhaps unwritten, a groove that you have eased yourself into. Same opening, same structure, it feels polished and sterile, clinical even.

What it signals to the real human being across the table, however, is that they are a variable interchangeable with the next person waiting to enter. It stops being a conversation with a person with a name, a home loan, a child starting school, a spouse who just switched jobs - reduced to a rehearsed performance.

The cost of this doesn’t appear on the dashboards. It quietly trickles downstream as trust is withdrawn and psychological safety erodes. This is where empathy becomes essential.

Empathy and being present

Empathy is not about being warm or sending a heart emoji at the end of a Slack chat. It is about genuinely trying to think and understand where the other person is right now, what they’re likely carrying with them. Different individuals experience the very same event in different ways. A reorg announcement lands differently for a 20-something who joined a few months ago and is building credibility than it does for a 45-year-old who turned down a job because they believed in the direction. Understand that this is your problem to solve and not theirs. Empathy is only useful if it shows up in the room.

The discipline that I’ve built over the years - imperfectly and inconsistently - is to pause and ask that question - What might this person be feeling now, knowing what you know about them? As against what you want them to feel or what they should feel. It takes a few moments, but it changes everything about how you show up.

At my level, the challenge is finding those 30 seconds to pause when you have ten such back-to-back calendar invites, two of them already emotionally charged, the awareness that you’re already running 15 minutes late and that person has been waiting for a week to find your time. When you feel the pressure to just push through, what matters is not accepting it as the norm, but designing against that schedule.

Why is that important? One thing I’ve noticed over the years is how much people remember how a conversation felt more than what was actually said. Did it feel like you were ticking some boxes or did it feel like a proper talk? Did you avoid peeking at your watch 5 times? All of those send a signal. When you rush, what the person hears is: this conversation is a task I need to complete. When you slow down, what they hear is: you are the reason I’m here.

Allow for silences, however awkward it may feel. When someone is searching for words to process tough news, or even when they are being recognised, resist the urge to fill in the gap. Let it breathe and understand that silence is respect. That’s how you make presence matter.

I also want to call out something that I hear internalised in leadership culture. There's an idea that rigour and kindness are conflicting. Being kind does not mean cushioning hard truths or lowering standards. That simply is conflict avoidance masquerading as kindness.The real kindness that should show up in your leadership is in the how of delivery, not in its absence. It is the difference between delivering the same message in a way that gives someone clarity about what needs to change, rather than leaving them curled up and defeated.

I think about this especially with performance conversations - and to be self-critical - I’ve mishandled many of them in my career. Learning from those mistakes, the feedback that I have seen land well (and I include feedback that I’ve been on the receiving end too) always had the same qualities: authentic, honest, specific and delivered by someone who clearly gives a damn about you.

The hardest conversations.

And then come the hardest moments, letting someone go. They are genuinely the most awful conversation you can have. For the people losing their jobs, the loss of income, identity, routine, and often a community they built over the years. That is the primary reality of the event and should never be obscured by whatever the person delivering is feeling.

There is the emotional burden on the manager. I’m not calling it out to equate the two - there is no equivalence here - but not acknowledging it leads to worse outcomes. If you walk into a meeting in denial of that burden, it manifests as avoidance and a hollow performance of composure. Another signal that diminishes your presence, adding to the burden for the more important person in that room.

There is nothing worse than acting out prepared empathy. Always open with the objective reality of the situation. Resist padding it with fluff that obscures that reality. The message should come from you, and not an HR script read with a warm tone. That is how you protect the dignity of a person whose life is being upended.

Dignity is about providing clarity. “Your role is being eliminated” is better than 10 minutes of beating around the bush. It is about being honest. “I don’t know about that yet, but I’ll find out” is better than a promise you can’t keep. It is also about recognition of their contributions, thoughtfully delivered without patronisation.

People remember these conversations, both the ones that left them wounded and the ones that improbably left them with their sense of self intact. The difference is almost never the decision; it is about how the person on the other end showed up.

The smaller moments and the ripple effects.

Empathy in leadership is often considered meaningful only when big, pivotal events occur. Those moments are, of course, important, but I’ve found that empathy is often missing in smaller, quieter moments. A cancelled yearly hike, or a shifting of priorities that shelved a project can look more manageable on its own than a layoff. From the inside, they can feel like a loss of progress or purpose. They rarely get the care or attention that they deserve.

There’s also the positive side, which I think people take even less care of. Promotions or recognition feel easy to give, so it's easy to assume that they always land well. But what feels like a reward can land surprisingly in opposite ways. What you think is validation can feel like relief or even unexpected pressure to the one receiving it.

There is something else worth saying. You are almost never talking to just one person. Every conversation you have with a direct report is also a signal to everyone else in the organisation. People watch how their colleagues are treated. They draw conclusions about what this company values, whether leadership actually means what it says and whether it is safe to be vulnerable, take risks or tell someone above them an uncomfortable truth.

Culture is not built in town halls, values workshops or leadership off-sites. While they do matter, they are not where culture lives. Culture lives in the difficult moments. Whether the manager who missed their targets last quarter was spoken about with respect or contempt in rooms they could not enter. Whether the engineer who raised an uncomfortable concern was heard or quietly sidelined. How the person let go in a restructure was treated on their way out.

The engineers you are not speaking to right now are learning from the conversations you are having. They are asking, "Is this a place where I will be treated as a person when things get hard?"

Balancing scale and humanity

This is not an argument against processes and systems. The goal is not to replace process with intuition; it is about understanding standardisation where it serves people and where it fails them.

I want to be honest about something this essay might suggest implicitly: I’ll be delusional if I say I can have genuinely personal, fully present conversations with all 150 people in my organisation. That’s a mathematical impossibility.

What the job necessitates at this level is something different. I can design systems that carry the values I talked about into rooms where I’m not present. I can explicitly set expectations with my directors about how their teams should be treated and ask hard questions when those expectations aren’t met. I must model the behaviour I want to see in the conversations I do participate in and let it propagate.

All in all, at scale, it is about building a chain in which the people below you recognise, through the lens of their manager’s behaviour, something of your values. That’s easy to say but hard to build. It needs patience and perseverance - and a lot of time spent designing it. Start with hiring well, then coach deliberately and have frank, uncomfortable discussions about whether their teams feel treated as humans or as resources. Use standardisation and governance to reduce variance stemming from individual managers’ biases and moods.

Standardisation though cannot signal that the person sitting across from you is processing a recent diagnosis or is on the verge of quitting. That cannot be in a framework. Your managers need to know when they encounter them, they are not just allowed, but expected to throw the framework away. The skill is knowing when you are talking to a role in an org chart and when you are talking to a human being. The answer, if you are paying attention, is almost always the second one.

Things that actually help

Protect your schedule around your conversations - and importantly, hold that line. If you have a calendar event for a product review right after one for a layoff conversation, it signals a lot more than a scheduling error. The conversation you just had deserves 10 minutes of processing. The next conversation deserves your presence, not the weight of the previous one.

Coach your managers on how, and not just the what. Most engineering managers reached there on the back of their technical judgement and not on their emotional skills. Ask them whether they felt present, and tell them what you would do differently. Encourage them to learn what empathy really means.

Push back on the clinical when you sense it's going awry. You will feel pressure - legitimately from HR or your management to keep difficult conversations tight and legally sanitised. Advocate hard for the humane version of it, even when the clinical is more convenient, when you realise that it does damage to the trust and culture that took you years to build.

After significant decisions, ask: how will this land for the person it lands on hardest? Not collectively, but for the specific person that has the most to lose. It is easy to design a policy that is fair in the abstract and genuinely painful for someone in particular. You will not always be able to change the decision. But you can often change the delivery, timing, support offered and follow-up. That is not nothing.

Reflect on the chain, not just the conversation. After hard stretches, the question worth asking is not only did I show up well in my conversations? Also ask did my directors? Did theirs? If the answer is uncertain, that is useful data. The humanity you invest in your own interactions is only as durable as what you build into the layer below you.

Closing

I have been leading engineering teams for long enough to have collected a fair number of regrets. Almost none of them are about decisions I got wrong, a bad technical bet, a hire that didn't work out. Those sting for a while and then fade.

The ones that stay are moments when I was not present. The ones when I was efficient and not human.

Leadership will not be remembered for your roadmap decisions or your OKR scores. The people who work for you will remember how they felt when things were hard. Whether you were willing to sit in the discomfort of someone else's difficult moment without rushing through it.

No matter how many people you lead it always comes down to the person in front of you right now.

Scale it down to one person and one conversation. That's the job.

In the center of the table lay a bottle of Old Monk, inviting yet ignored with discipline.

It had to wait.

A few days earlier, Sherin had refactored our billing script. Our system ran on a daily subscription model, which meant every single day we had to charge our entire user base. Miss a run, and we lost money. No graceful degradation. Just unrecoverable loss of our only real revenue stream. Simple as that.

The previous version had started choking on scale. Some days it simply didn’t finish. This new one was faster, smarter - and just unstable enough to require adult supervision. It had to be run manually on production. Every night.

And the masterstroke - only Sherin, Nandu and I had access to do that. All of us now together, with no fourth person to call.

The estate was stunning - lush, quiet, and completely disconnected from the world. No mobile signal. No internet. Just an old landline and an estate manager who seemed deeply unconcerned about distributed systems or revenue pipelines.

As the night settled in, we mentioned we'd need to step out to town later.

"Why?", he asked. "Need network", we said. "At night?", he snapped back.

He then told us about the elephant. A rogue tusker was known to have a liking of that stretch of road after dark. Just days earlier, it had trampled a motorcyle rider.

These are moments in life when you expect a bunch of grown adults to collectively reconsider their choices.

This was not one of those moments.

Sony with some quick mental math exclaimed - "We are going to lose 4 lakhs! It's only a 30 minute drive, what could go wrong?". History is full of bad decision that beging exactly like that.

I briefly considered pointing out, strictly speaking, only one of us neeeded to go. Possibly Sherin. Possibly alone. But decided that was not a hill worth dying on. Teamwork, after all.

Three production critical engineers. One car. Zero signal. Known elephant on route.

Strong design.

We left close to midnight. The drive to town was uneventful, which felt like the universe was quitely setting us up. Sherin got to work immediately, staring at logs streaming down his terminal. The script, sensing the gravity of the situation, decided it was a good night to take its own sweet time.

Minutes passed. Time stretched. No one dared to say it out loud, but each minute was eating into the courage we had borrowed earlier. Then finally, the terminal flashed four letters of relief - DONE.

We packed up, got into the car and began our return journey, back through the same road - now darker, quieter and more "elephant-aware."

About halfway through, we heard it. A loud thump.

The car slowed. Silence.

We all looked at each other, collectively hoping that it was the elephant politely tapping the car instead of flipping it.

It wasn't.

Flat tyre.

The Baleno we were driving had clearly seen things. It did miraculously have a spare tyre. What it did not have was any equipment to actually use it.

So now we had:

• A critical system succesfully run
• A forest road with a rumoured killer elephant
• Three people who could fix production
• Zero people who could fix a tyre

We stepped out, because sitting inside felt worse. We walked around with our phones, trying to catch signal, while also staying close enough to the car to sprint back if something large and angry appeared. Why we believed the car would save us is best left unanswered.

The moonlight didn't help. The landscape was scattered with large black rocks, each one shaped exactly like the backside of an elephant. Every few minutes someone would freeze and whisper, "There!" - triggering a bout of collective panic - before we all agreed it was, once again, geology.

We briefly discussed walking back. Five kilometers in the dark through desolate elephant territory? That idea was archived rather quickly.

Then - another thump.

Headlights.

A van appeared, swaying slightly as it negotiated the potholes, like a being who had made peace with both the road and life. It stopped beside us.

A man stepped out. Pristine white shirt, immaculate mundu, strong notes of cheap brandy and absolute confidence.

“ഇതെന്താ കുട്ടികളെ പറ്റിയെ?” - What’s wrong, boys?

We explained. He listened, nodded and handed us the tools. I crouched down, ready to demonstrate a level of mechanical expertise I did not possess, when he gently yet firmly, took the spanner from my hand.

“ഇതൊക്കെ നിന്നെ കൊണ്ട് പറ്റുവോ?” - You think you'll really be able to do this?

Before we could defend our collective engineering degrees, he got to work. In what felt like seconds, but was probably a few minutes, the tyre was changed. Efficient. Precise. Without drama.

He stood up, brushed his hands, and said we were good to go.

We hesitated. The elephant?

"Follow the van!", he ordered. We did.

Elephants didn't manifest and the shadows didn't move. Just the steady reassurance of his tail lights cutting through the darkness, leading us all the way back to the estate gate.

He waved once and disappeared into the night.

I don’t know if angels exist. But if they do, one of them drives a van, wears a white mundu, and smells faintly of brandy.

The estate manager greeted us with a look that suggested mild disappointment at the lack of tragedy. “Ah,” he said. “You made it.”

The Old Monk was still on the table. It had never tasted better.

We didn’t talk much about the script after that. But sometime soon after, we set up a cron job. And monitoring.

It is all but ironical that what kickstarted this transformation of Goa from a little known Portuguese colony, was a bunch of hippies escaping the realities of 'western materialism'. It all started with this small group of pioneers who travelled from North America and Europe and eventually settled down on the south of Anjuna beach. They lived a life of subsistence by all means, depending on the generosity of the local fisher folk. The hippies have left a long time ago, but the remnants of their culture and their influence is still felt all across Goa. Anjuna is now dotted with shops selling expensive trinkets and crowded by the hordes of charter tourists from everywhere in the world. But standing on those shores, shutting out all the noise and clutter, it is still not hard to imagine what attracted the spirit seekers to this land.

The overland hippie trail

A truly astonishing fact that I learnt a few years ago, was the existence of an overland hippie trail that existed between Europe and Goa in the '70s and '80s. People used to drive their VW Kombi minivans from as far as London all the way to Goa, passing through Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally crossing the Wagah border to India. Some would then fork off to Kathmandu, some to Goa and some even south to my neck of the woods in Trivandrum (specifically Kovalam). As you can guess, this route became more and more infeasible as the years passed and political instability gained root all along the trail. But try they did, despite it all; the last of those reported trips happened as recently as 1998.

A hippie van from the 90s in Goa, India

Why Goa?

So what attracted these folks from thousands of miles away to an unpretentious strip on the Indian coast? The answer to that starts a few hundred years back in Goa's history. During the early 16th century, Portuguese invaders wrestled control of this portion of land from the erstwhile native rulers. They soon established Goa as the primary base for their lucrative spice trade bolstered by their holdings in the orient. This made Goa one of the oldest European colonies in India (from 1510AD), and also the last one to be liberated (1961 AD). The 450 years of Portuguese rule had undoubtedly created a unique flavour of a blended native Indian & European culture in Goa. The relics of the erstwhile Portuguese empire are still relatively well preserved, which collectively are now also a UNESCO world heritage site. These comprises of churches, convents and cemeteries; the most prominent ones include the Church of our Lady of the Rosary, the Goa Cathedral and the Basilica of Bom Jesus among others. Built in the 16th & 17th centuries these structures are well preserved examples of late Gothic and Baroque architecture. They are concentrated in the old Goa area, some 10km away from the current capital of Panaji and well worth a visit.

So when the new wave of disgruntled westerners arrived in India, Goa presented them with least barriers. It was way more welcoming with their liberal leanings in most things. Goa was also well relatively well connected to Bombay (now Mumbai), the true gateway to India of those times. Add to that mix a bunch beautiful beaches, a laid back life, the lax policing (on virtue of it being a Union Territory at that time with no local state government) and dirt cheap prices - the hippies had found their piece of paradise.

One amongst the pioneers credited with popularising Goa as a hippie hotspot was Yertward Mazamanian, an Armenian American from Boston, USA. Popularly called Eight Finger Eddie, he setup his base first in Colva in South Goa before moving north to Anjuna. A soup kitchen and flea market that he set up there ultimately became the focal point of the hippie trail and eventually cemented Goa as the hippie capital of the world. Eddie spent the rest of his life in Goa and passed away in 2010 aged 85. That flea market he started (or revived as some people contest) still exists in Anjuna and is open every Wednesday - it might be different now, but it still has its charm (and some old hippies as well).

A genre of its own

Some people say it's not like it used to be, and it's not. But I like it here now. I like the  parties. And I like the music. It's good to dance to.
- Eight Finger Eddie in 1991.

One major contribution that still lasts beyond those shores is the music genre of Goa Trance. Developed by the same hippies in the 80s, Goa Trance is a sub-genre of electronic music influenced by elements techno, trance and Indian classical music. It began as an underground movement with music being written and played catering to the notorious everything-goes hippie beach parties. The first platform for this style of music where these wild raves in places like Anjuna, Arambol and the aptly named Disco Valley . Picture this - DJs setting up shop on foldable metal tables; speakers set up on the sand blaring their music; people dancing sporting fluorescent paint; smoke screens of weed everywhere; sadhoos roaming around; graffiti featuring aliens, mushrooms, Hindu & spiritual imagery alike - all basking in the glory of the moonlight. Surreal! That must have been some party indeed.

By the 90s the genre went a lot more mainstream with the scene opening up in Europe, Israel and even Japan. It enjoyed some good success during the mid-90s and eventually influenced other genres of trance, the most significant amongst them being psychedelic trance.

The Remnants

So what remains of that Goa now? The hippies seem to have migrated north to Arambol they say, though I couldn't find a trace. Parts of Anjuna still has a bit of the vibe, but you can see it transforming into a noisy outpost like how Baga and Calangute have become. The parties seem to be like rigidly organised corporate affairs. The music and the beaches now have the air of urban high pitched cacophony played in countless shacks on the sand. The once idlyic villages have been taken over by casinos and resorts, big and small.

If that's not your cup of tea, the good news is that Goa still has other things to offer. There are places where you can rusticate even now. Wade off from the beaten path and you can find that the beaches in the south are still relatively untouched - Utorda, Varca, Cola & Palolem are all possibilities where you can carve out a quiet spot on your own. Go inland from the shore and there are small charming villages surrounded by the green of paddy. Walk the streets of Panaji, enjoy its old alleys and sip coffee in a small café. Enjoy the amazing Goa cuisine and have a taste of Xacuti, Vindaloo and Balchão. Get a sense of history in the well preserved Old Goa heritage area. Or trek up the seldom visited ancient fort of Cabo de Rama or the more mainstream Chapora and treat yourself to stunning vistas of the ocean around.

So yes, let your next trip to Goa not be just about the shacks and the clubs. Look around, soak in the history and breathe the peace. Goa still has some magic left in it.

The Ferry, Picton & Nelson

The ferry from Wellington to Picton in itself is an experience worth it. The journey was pleasant and relaxed with a picturesque view of the Cook Strait to entertain us, with plenty of photo-ops along the way. Three hours later we hit the shores of the South Island in the tiny town of Picton. Our second rental car, a Toyota Previa, was waiting for us right outside the terminal. We couldn't spend too much time in Picton since our accommodation for the night was in the lovely port side city of Nelson, a couple of hours drive away.

We stayed at a beautiful colonial 19th century cottage just outside the main town. We had just enough time for dinner and as usual food did not disappoint as we munched away at the Styx Kitchen right alongside the Nelson harbour. Nelson has quite a pretty town center with a beautiful boulevard and quaint streets with boutique shops all along. A morning stroll was the perfect way to start our first full day in the South Island.

Wine, a lake surprise and some strange pancakes

Target for the day was Punakaiki and the first stop on the way was a small family owned Te Mania vineyard. After some wine tasting and a conversation about cricket to an Italian lady at the shop; they kindly let us explore the grape wines that produce their wines. The Nelson area is a boutique wine producing region, supposed to be one of the finest in Oceania and is definitely worth a trip for wine lovers. Plenty of vineyards dot the landscape for you to drop in.

As we proceeded, a roadside signboard prompted us to take an unplanned serendipitous detour to the Nelson lakes campsite. The Rotoroa lake was lovely and felt almost exclusive to us, with few people around. After a generous intake of the lovely scenery and some conversations with local cyclists (who were on a month long trail across New Zealand) we were back on the road again.

Punakaiki was a small village right on the edge of the Paparoa national park. We stayed in a charming forest lodge, the Te Nikau retreat. A short trek down the lodge and you are presented with a small and picturesque beach. Unsurpringly it was almost deserted and with a view worthy of a postcard. Time just drops still with no distractions except for the soothing sound of sea kissing the shore. On the way back we took the Truman track, a short 2km trek within a subtropical forest amidst native bushes and trees.

Punakaiki is famous for a natural rock formation called the Pancake rocks, which of course looks like a stack of pancakes rising from the sea. There's a lovely restaurant (probably the only one in the area) eponymously named the Pancake Rocks Cafe right next to these rocks and that's where we had our dinner. We were treated to a earthy music session while enjoying our food. We were even invited to have a go of our own; but with none of the group having singing skills the smart thing was to politely decline.

A country house and a glacier

Next stop - Franz Josef. We stayed at a charming country house surrounded by lush green farms. A lovely elderly couple were our hosts; they, their cute dogs and sheeps were the highlight of the stay. The owner was also into the dying art of handcrafted jade carvings and it was interesting listening to him about his craft.

A slightly hurried trip into the town later, our next adventure was a helicopter ride to the top of the Franz Josef glacier. It was my first time in a chopper and that added to the general excitement of soaring into the skies with pristine clear glaciers below us. Playing around on the ice on the roof of New Zealand was one more surreal experience to the list.

Tekapo, Mt.Cook and the Milky Way

The beautiful picturesque country roads continued as we drove down to Tekapo. A small settlement on the side of a serene turquoise lake, Tekapo is another NZ spot with scenery to die for. This time the stay was special too. We were glamping (something like a fancy tent) on the shores of the lake. It didn't feel as remote or as cozy as we thought it would be; but the views and short walks around made up for it. A big attractions in Tekapo is the Mt.John observatory which has a lovely cafe on the top of a hill which provides a grand eagle-eye view of the plains and lakes below. Another lovely spot for postcard views is the Church of the Good Shepherd; an old school stone building with the lake in its background.

We drove further up to the small settlement of the Aoraki village, which is in the foothills of Mt.Cook the highest mountain in New Zealand. The village also features a museum dedicated to Sir Edmund Hillary, with the mountain said to be his favourite. A bronze statue of him with a stoic look towards the mountain that glistens in gold with the morning light is a sight to behold.

But the real treat of it all was the night sky. Being part of a UNESCO dark sky reserve with zero light pollution, for the first time in our lives we got to see how the milky way looks like. And for once it struck me the aptness of naming our galaxy that very name. No camera could capture that sight; and if for nothing else; our trip was worth those few hours under the stars.

A pilot for 20 minutes and meeting an old friend

Next stop was Wanaka, a small town near a lake. The place has one unique artefact; a lonely little tree on the edge of the lake which is apparently New Zealand's most instagrammed frame. One visit there and we could see why - the number of photographers trying to get that special click was more interesting than the tree itself.

But even more of serendepituous incident was meeting one of my ex-colleagues from my time in Germany after a gap of almost 10 years. It was almost unbelievable that after all these years we would randomly (and unplanned) meet thousands of miles away from both our homes.

Another unforgettable moment was a chance to fly an airplane for a few minutes. Wanaka has a small airport and there's a company that offers a chance to let you fly a plane along with a certified instructor for around 20 minutes. Unplanned it was, and grateful that we stumbled on this as well. What's more, even got a certificate attesting to my 0.3 hrs of flying time to boot!

Queenstown, Milford Sound & Glenorchy

The last leg of our trip and we had finally reached Queenstown; the tourism capital of NZ. We had 3 days to spend here and there are plenty of things to do around there for much more than that. Our stay was in an airbnb again; this time a small apartment with vistas to kill for.

Queenstown city itself has a few things to offer, and an easy must-do is just relaxing on the long lakeside shore. Equip yourself with a burger from the small shop called the Ferg burger in the town center and you are all set. There is also a super fun unique adrenaline pumping downhill luge ride which I highly recommend.

The highlight though was a drive to Milford Sound; an ocean sound 4hrs away; once described by Rudyard Kipling as the eighth wonder of the world. Remote even by NZ standards, the journey to get there itself is an experience with certified great scenery as always. We took a short cruise to explore the area and also try our luck to see some fauna. Well, lady luck was smiling that day and we got to see a lot of unique wildlife including some rare penguins. Even the cruise operators were surprised at how lucky we were to get to see more than what they advertised.

Once back; the next day we headed towards Arrowtown a historical mining community with well preserved old structures. Our initial plan was to relax in our rooms considering this was our last day before heading back to Auckland and then home. As an after thought though, we decided to hop to Glenorchy which was just about an hour away. What a wonderful decision that was! That place was simply spellbinding - with sunrays peeking from under the clouds and illuminating patches of land with glorious colors; a thin blanket of fog kissing the lake; an old pier and boathouse; a small little village with a couple of quaint cafes - this was out of the world. A fitting end to our tryst with a truly magical country!

Route

Introduction

New Zealand was always a dream destination for me and been in my bucket list for quite some time. So when a plan came up for it; it was an easy decision to say yes. The travelling party consisted of; apart from Sruthy and I; our friends Aravind, Manju, Rahul & Kalyani. We all flew in from different parts of the world and joined together in Auckland to embark on this amazing road trip.

What follows are our experiences during the fortnight that we spent exploring New Zealand.

An automatic dilemma

We started our journey from a quaint little hostel in a quiet little neighbourhood of Auckland very close to Mt. Eden. This small mountain had given us some spectacular vistas of the sunset skyline of the city that night. We even managed to get our first glimpse of the ‘everything closes early’ phenomenon of New Zealand. First, our car pretty much got stuck up there because the gates leading out of the park were already closed by the time we were moving out. Fortunately, some local guys made the same mistake and led us through a secret (probably illegal) exit.

Having narrowly escaped that drama; our next target was to feed ourselves for dinner. Now this was more complicated than we would have ever thought. First of all, I was having trouble getting into terms with the automatic car; not having driven one in ages. Muscle memory was making my left leg search for the non-existent clutch and hitting the brakes instead. My reputation as a driver was getting some serious damage; but let’s just say the car ebbed and flowed till we managed to find an open restaurant. The restaurant was not going to be open for very long though; but by some twist of fate; our superhero Rahul had somehow randomly met the restaurant’s owner on the street a few hours before. That much was enough for him to consider us as his friends and to hold the kitchen open just for us. First taste of that amazing Kiwi hospitality and awesomeness! It was funny to watch him be so defensive when we ordered some curry. “This will not be quite what you expect”. But then it turned out really good and he was almost in disbelief when we complimented him on that.

The bay and a crazy park

Next day morning and it was time to start our epic 3,500 km drive through the nooks and corners of the Kiwi country. The ‘burden’ of driving fell on Aravind and Manju, while I sat in the back sulking about my shattered dreams of cruising around the countryside; still not confident about my skills on an automatic. After a stop at a small coffee roastery and at a McDonalds in a town curiously named   Bombay  , we hit the impressive coastline of the   Firth of Thames  . The road wound along slow, hugging the pristine azure sea and presenting a few quaint little towns on the way.

A few kilometres up and near the town of Coromandel, we decided to check out   The Waterworks  , advertised as New Zealand’s quirkiest theme park. Located on the 309 road, it sure lived up to its name with a ton of water based quirky contraptions guaranteed to give you a few smiles. There is also a short zip-line adventure to give you a slight adrenaline rush. We eventually spent a couple of hours there and proceeded along to Hahei. The 309 road to Hahei in itself is a bit of a tourist attraction mostly because it is a narrow gravel road amidst a thick forest and tall Kauri trees. This deserted road also gave me an opportunity to finally hone my driving skills and by end of the stretch – viola I’m back!

Trek to a cove

An hour later we had arrived at Hahei and our plan was to do a trek to the famous Cathedral Cove. After a bit of a struggle to find parking, we managed to park in one of the nearby houses by paying the guy a few dollars. The trek was down a cliff and was a bit more tiring than we had anticipated. But 40 minutes of hard work later; the reward was just amazing. An isolated beach awaited us with out of the world scenery. In fact, there were two mini-beaches side by side connected by a short rocky tunnel. The inside of the tunnel has a glorious dome-like rock ceiling from which the place probably gets its name. A great place to chill on the sand and take a dip in the cold sea. And of course, not to forget the great frames for some nice photos. The walk back was more of an effort since alas there was no reward awaiting us back in the car.

With that done we had an hour more drive to get to Te Aroha our stop for the night. On the way while stopping for fuel at Tairua; we met this wonderful lady who spend a good half an hour chatting with us generally on life and her love for nature. She had quite amazing perspectives on life; making us ponder about the glory of a life so close to nature. What better place for that thought lingering in our minds, as we slowly drove forward with the scenery of the pristine countryside advancing outside our windows, while the summer sun took leave of us for now.

A dive from the skies

After a good night's sleep at a fantastic AirBNB in Te Aroha, we started the day with our first chance at NZ famed adventure sports scene. We were going sky diving! The adrenaline rush started a bit early though; since we had to do a 170 km ride within 2 hours to the sky diving centre early in the morning to reach on time. In the end though, Aravind took care of that easily and we managed to keep our appointment just about.

Having done all that however; sadly the dive was delayed because of some maintenance issues with the airplane that was supposed to take us up. The guys at the Taupo Tandem Skydive centre were quite awesome though and kept us entertained (and a bit scared) while we waited. Aravind and Manju got to go first and were all thrilled and fired up after they were done. The rest of the four were lucky enough to go together in the same plane. Assured that my tandem partner, Richard had been doing this for more than a decade, I gathered up some strength to atleast act brave and took my seat on the plane. Sruthy seemed to need no such encouragement as she seemed to have fallen head over heals for her jump mate (even though he secretly told me that he could   take care  of her if I just say so).

The plane ride up was the ultimate build up to what was coming. The ground zoomed out farther and farther away; as I was left wondering how high 15000 feet was anyway. Having to put on an oxygen mask while in the plane, due to the thin air at altitude, just added a bit more spice into the whole drama. Finally the bell rang and it was time for the jump. We were the last to jump out and while at the window I could just about catch a glimpse of my friends, small blimps free falling. I had always thought this would be the time that vertigo kicks in and this would be the moment that I'll hesitate; but in reality there was no time for any of it. I just got a quick and firm push from behind and lo we were flying!

That minute of free fall was just magical. You can no longer be scared anymore because you know deep in your mind that you have absolutely no control of what's happening, you just resign to that fate and simply enjoy the ride. The cold air gusting on to your face; the attempts to orient yourself; the beauty of the Earth swirling below and that pure raw rush! And then all of a sudden; you feel the pull of the parachute. Everything slows down. The next half of the journey couldn't have had a better contrast to what happened earlier. We flew like birds, swooping left and right at our whim, as the spectacular scenery below slowly grew in size and pinched you back into reality.

Everyone had their own stories to tell once safely back on the ground. But the best was Kalyani quipping nonchalantly that all she was thinking was about breakfast getting late while doing all those stunts up there. Proof of a true (brave) foodie!

Some craters and a desert road

Taupo was a very quaint little town on the side of a gorgeous lake. We had thought of it only as a stopover for our skydiving, but in the end we were a little bit disappointed that we didn't spend a bit more time out there. Within the limited time we did manage to visit a few places around though.

First up was the public thermal pools where you could take a bath in the natural geysers. It was a bit crowded, so didn't really get a chance to do that, but the park surrounding it was great to take a stroll in the evening. Walking across from the park you would reach Huka falls. The falls are not very high but the sheer volume of water flowing through it (apparently can fill an olympic pool in 11 seconds!) and the spectacle of the raw power of water hitting the rocks makes it worth a visit.

Another attraction nearby is the oddly named Craters of the moon. Despite the cheesy name, the place does have an out of the world scenery and would be an apt background for a Hollywood apocalypse flick. The region is still an active geothermal area and you can walk close to where nature's doing some cooking with rocks and mud. It was something we've never seen before and well worth the 45 minute hike.

We continued down south towards Wellington, halting for breakfast at a lovely small town cafe. The drive down cuts through the UNESCO heritage site of the Tongariro national park. That section is also called the Desert Road because of its desert like appearance. Desolate and remote, but also exceedingly beautiful with large plains of bushes laying a golden carpet on either side of the road. This was also where a few scenes of the Lord of the Rings was shot.

The Capital

So after the calm and quiet of the desert, the slow but steady rise in traffic made it clear that the city of Wellington was nearing. The long drive meant that we reached the city a bit late in the evening and we checked in to a hotel very close to the famous quays of Wellington. We met a childhood friend of Manju's, Nandini and we were lucky to have the company of a local guiding us through the city.

After dinner at a nice little joint called Havana we headed up Mt. Victoria to have a grand view of the night sky of Wellington. As the chilly wind blew and with a 360° view of city below us, this was the perfect place to chit-chat about the nitty-gritties of life in the different countries that each of us called home. An hour later bidding adieu to our wonderful host, we retired to our hotel, the last night up in the north.

The next day we had our ferry to the famed South Island, more on those adventures in the next part!

The Route

Yemandan (യമണ്ടൻ)  
adj.   unusually huge and/or powerful

The name came from, believe it or not, a German warship called SMS Emden. The ship, named after the town of Emden in Germany, played a major role for the German navy during World War I. It operated in the seas around South & South East Asia. During its voyages in the Bay of Bengal and and later in the Arabian sea (close to the coast of Kerala) it sank many European military and merchant ships.

^[1]

One of the stated aims of these actions was to reduce the prestige of the British in the eyes of the native population. The most notorious amongst those efforts was the bombardment of Madras. The ship illuminated the night sky by destroying oil tanks along the Madras port resulting in huge explosions. The SMS Emden soon became the symbol of destruction and fear in the south of India.

The word Yamandan, a corruption of the ship's name, thus came into the local folklore as a superlative for something huge and powerful.

OC (ഓസ്സി/ഓസ്സ്)  
verb. to get something for free at someone's else expense.

During the days of the East India Company there was a provision for sending out official letters and parcels without paying postage. These letters were stamped with On Company Service  abbreviated as OCS. Apparently a lot of the company servants started misusing this facility and started sending personal items with OCS marked. OCS ended up shortened to OC in colloquial lingo and eventually came to be used for anything instead of just letters.

The term is also used in Tamil in the same sense. So it probably came to Malayalam via Tamil as this newspaper article suggests.

KD (കേഡി)  
noun. a thug or trouble maker

This one is very straight forward. KD is the abbreviation for 'Known Depredator', a term used historically in the Indian Penal Code for a petty criminal who conducts his crimes regularly. Most police stations (varies with state) even now are required to keep an updated list of KDs with them.

This word is shared with all South Indian languages and is possibly even more commonly used in Kannada & Tamil.

Knappan (ക്ണാപ്പൻ)  
noun. a good for nothing guy

Now this is very close to heart :).

Sir Arthur Rowland Knapp was a British officer of the Indian Civil Services who served as the collector of the Malabar district of the Madras presidency      ^[2]    . His inexperience and lack of understanding the nuances of the local culture led to a lot of his administrative reforms being ineffective and unpopular.

Even after being long gone from Malabar, Sir Knapp's name became synonymous with incompetence; eventually being assimilated into Malayalam as Knappan. In reality Sir Knapp had a very eminent career following his reign in Malabar. He later became the secretary of the board of revenue in Madras and also served as a member of the legislative council there.

To be honest, I haven't been able to confirm this story beyond anecdotes in a few blogs here and there. But the fact is that Sir Knapp did indeed serve as collector of Malabar and the story does seem entirely plausible. Beyond that it seems to be very hard to confirm the rest of the story.

Klaver(ക്ലാവര്‍) & Aaddyen(ആഡ്യൻ)  
noun. card suits spades (♣) & hearts (♥)

One of the most popular card games in Kerala is the ultimate timekiller known as 28. This game has its origins in the Netherlands, specifically a group of card games called the Jass family. It possibly arrived in Kerala in the 18th century via the dutch traders of Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka) or through North Indian settlers in South Africa.

I have always wondered why locally the card suits are called something wildly different from their English names. The answer is simple - these cards and games reached Kerala before the British and are variants of their Dutch names - Klaver is dutch for clubs and Harten is dutch for hearts!

Tail Ender

These words are recent entrants into the Malayalam vocabulary. There are a lot more loan words that have come in to the language historically and most of them are now an integral part of the language. This article wouldn't be complete without acknowledging some of them.

The full list is on Wikipedia.

1. Source: Wikipedia      ↩︎
2. Source : Conservative Politics in National and Imperial Crisis by Prof: Stuart Ball     . Google Books preview      ↩︎

Migration wasn't that hard and all the heavy lifting can be done by an easy to use WP plugin. But it wasn't smooth sailing all the way through though; there were some wrinkles to iron out.

  Replicating the permalink structure

The permalink structure that I have used over the years has a /archives  prefix to the post slug like http://rusty.in/archives/hello-ghost  . This was surprisingly not a configurable option in Ghost via the admin interface. I had to pull my hair trying to figure this one out since I didn't want my old links to end up dead. I considered doing 301 redirects but that was too much of a mess. As a last resort I thought I'll fork the project and build it custom. Going through the code I realised that Ghost already had this in the code; just that there was no UI exposed to configure it. So all I had to do was to update a value in the sqlite db and viola problem solved. The update query is below:

update settings set value = "/archives/:slug/" where key = "permalinks";

This shouldn't have been this hard to figure out!

  Migrating Disqus

I was already using Disqus with Wordpress so I thought this wasn't going to be hard. But it was. None of old comments were showing up despite the correct embed code I had used. After a bit of digging around I found that Ghost always appends a trailing   /  to the permalinks of a post, my old installation didn't have that   /  and Disqus couldn't map the page properly to the comments. There was no helper method available in the Ghost templating system that could remove the slash.

Now the politically correct way to fix this would have been to upload a mapping file to Disqus and re-map all the urls. But laziness trumps correctness, so instead of doing that a simple dirty JS hack did the trick - just trim the last char in JS.

....
var disqus_config = function () {
    this.page.url = "{{url absolute="true"}}".slice(0,-1);
};
....

  HTML & Design

It's been a very long time since I did any sort of serious HTML stuff. Now this was a fun challenge. The site design in based on Yahoo's Pure CSS framework and conveniently they had a ready-to-cook blog layout template which was easy to hack. It also handled responsiveness to an extent, but making it work properly and look decent on   all  most devices stretched the limits of my CSS skills. But happy to have dived into this and not use a readymade theme. I learned a new trick or two and it turned out not that bad.

  Nostalgia

Before I first moved on to Wordpress back in 2005, the blog was running on a static site generator[^n] called Cyberian Blog. I had meant to migrate those old posts to the new WP installation but never got around to doing that (for 11 years!). I was determined to do this now, and unfortunately I had lost those backups. But this wonderful thing - Internet Archive's Way Back Machine - had me covered. I did lose a few of those posts; but got most of it back on the blog. It was an awesome nostalgia trip reading those notes again despite the sometimes embarrassing posts by 18 year old me. They are all here now, dating back to   February 1, 2001

So that's that. Cheers to another new beginning and broken resolutions to write more!

Vishnu      ↩︎

Sunil      ↩︎

The CSS

The trick behind the blur is setting the font color to transparent and adding a text-shadow with offset set to zero. The original text becomes invisible and only the text-shadow in itself is visible. The last parameter in the text-shadow attribute is the shadow spread, which can be manipulated to modify the amount of blur that we need. We exploit this trick in the javascript code below.

The transition parameters are added so that the animation is smoothened out. CSS3.info has a good article on how transitions work.

The Javascript

The setInterval function basically calls a function that we pass (first parameter), at fixed time intervals (second parameter). So in the script above, the code snippet executes every 200 milliseconds.

A very crude random decision maker; decides whether to blur or not. This gives a nice effect that retains the sharp image for longer and prevents from flickering the text too much. Once a decision is made to blur a random shadow-spread value in the range of 1 to 10 is generated and passed on with the necessary prefixes as a CSS attribute to the DOM element that we need to get to flicker.

That’s pretty much it! You can view the   completed demo here  and the source here.

    Photo by Diego Jimenez / Unsplash

  –    L’Auberge Espagnole (2002)

The seemingly random chaos of the roads, streets and corners of this city all falls into place now. After 2 years I have finally deciphered the order in the chaos. I understand its pulse. I don’t feel a stranger anymore. Yes, Kochi too is now my home. And I’m loving it.

Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

Sometime in 2002. I was attending the centralized allotment process for admission into an engineering college. For those who are unfamiliar with the process – people are called in order of the rank they get in an entrance test and they choose which college they want to study in. People with the higher rank therefore have more choice and usually have higher chances of getting into the college they want. I was chatting to this girl who had a rank just above me and she wanted to get into college X. We could see the live updates of the seats remaining in all colleges right in front of us. With 5 people to go; there were still 2 seats left for her preferred college. She was quite hopeful. But just as her turn came in; the board suddenly showed 0. She was quite disappointed and had to settle with some other college; lets say college Y. I came to know later that there was actually still 1 seat left when she had gone in for the allotment. What had happened was a clerical error and eventually I got allotted that seat. She could have gone ahead and given a complaint and this would have probably been sorted out in her favour; because I myself didn’t have an objection. But she and her parents waved it off and said they didn’t want the hassles. We became friends and after a few years I was still in touch with her. She studied for 4 years in college Y, she met a guy there, she fell in love with him, she got married to him recently and is now expecting a child – all because of a clerical error by a government employee. You might say it was all meant to be; it was fate yada yada – but isn’t it just so damn interesting that someone totally external to her world has affected her destiny and the destiny of generations to come?

Now what would have happened if the girl went and complained? That brings back to the discussion I had with my friend. How would that have changed my life? Would I have the same friends that I have? Would I have taken the same career path as what I have? Would we two have ever met? Questions and more questions. Life is an incredible collage of choices and coincidences.

There is this short story ‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury written in the 1950s which discusses this theme in-depth. The protagonist goes on a time travel adventure to hunt Dinosaurs. The catch is that the Dino can be killed only at the moment when their natural death would have occurred anyway and you are not allowed to veer off from a precise predefined pathway. But the guy steps out of the path momentarily squashing a bug, whose effects change a lot of things in the future that he goes back to. It is a really good read and I would suggest you have a look at this whether or not you have are fanatical about the Chaos theory. You can read it online here.

Consider this – The 5 minutes you took reading this blog post; if you had spent those 5 minutes doing something else (probably more interesting) what would have changed in your life? You never know.. That’s the beauty of the butterfly effect!

But that sounds so counter intuitive, doesn’t it? Our brains have been trained over the years to believe that choice is always a good thing. It needn’t be. Choice has a dark side too. Think about it. Having to choose something over something else adds an additional responsibility on you. You suddenly think about stuff like ‘Did I choose right? What if what I chose ends up bad? What if I haven’t explored all possibilities?’. It just adds so much more pressure. Don’t take me wrong. I’m not here to say that we shouldn’t have options to select from. But too much of it usually ends up bad.

So eventually, I started looking around on the Internet on the topic; and happily found out that I wasn’t the only with this thought. Relief – I am not that weird as I thought I was. There are people way smarter than me who feel the same. I found this very interesting book by Barry Schwartz titled   The Paradox of Choice  . Do read it, it is very well researched and explains the concept quite beautifully. The book is available on a lot of places on the web (:grin); but I’ll make your life easier – Flipkart or Amazon.

PS: I do have a copy of the book with me; so if you know me in person; you know you just need to ask for it :)

If you are in a hurry read the headings and skip to the tldr;   below  .

  The Approach & Acclimatization  

The popular approach to Leh is via the Manali-Rohtang-Leh highway, but since that journey would take 2 days and we had just 6 days in total at our disposal, we decided to book a flight from Delhi to Leh. Apart from having to wake up at 3:00 AM to catch the flight at 5:00 AM, there weren’t much difficulties considering that we were flying into highly sensitive territory. The flight was an enjoyable experience. There aren’t many views from outside an aeroplane window as spectacular as the ones you get when you fly over the highest mountain range in the world – the snow covered Himalayas.

The Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport in Leh is a small one with basic but functional facilities. It is also one of the world’s highest civilian airports at an altitude of 3,256 metres above mean sea level. We took a pre-paid taxi into Leh city (5 kms away) and checked in to a guesthouse close to the main bazaar. The Ti-Sei is a family run guesthouse with modest facilities but with a cheap price tag (Rs 250 per head per night). The only problem I could find is the lack of proper quilts for such cold weather. My fellow travellers disagree though; so I would be hesitant to recommend the place to you especially during winter.

Since we jumped from an altitude of 200m to 3250m in just an hour, we ran the risk of catching altitude sickness and it was recommended that we take complete rest for 24 hours to acclimatize to the thin oxygen content in the air. So that’s what we did. We spend the entire first day in the guesthouse playing cards. Only Sanjay and I knew how to play; so the added pleasure in teaching Sony, Lishoy and Gautham the joys of ’28’. Should be useful in the future too.

  In and around Leh

 It was still risky to attempt higher altitudes in the beginning of the trip, so the recommendation was to travel around the vicinity of Leh. We first went to an old Buddhist monastery at Hemis some 40 km away from Leh. We were treated to our first views of the strangely beautiful landscape of Ladakh. The monastery was more or less uninteresting to me (having been to countless ones on my last trip to Sikkim) but there is a small museum in the compound which has a lot of artifacts and photographs chronicling early life in Ladakh.

Next stop was the school featured as Rancho’s school in ‘3 Idiots’. This one was rebuilt after the Leh floods of 2010; with the help of contributions from the star of the film – Aamir Khan. Nothing much to do there except click a few photos. Next was the Thiksey monastery; one of the most photogenic of all the ones in Ladakh. More clicks followed and we had lunch at the monastery canteen. Food was good; but order time was way above our irritation level threshold.

We then moved on to Shey palace, the erstwhile summer capital of Ladakh. It’s constructed on a small hill on the side of the highway. Most of the palace is in ruins and what’s left of it is a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India. The vista from the top is once again spectacular. Following that we went up the Shanti Stupa, a monument close to Leh town, constructed by the Japanese. Another top (   double entendre  , yea!) spot for landscape gazing. We then walked down the 500 odd steps back to where our car was stopped. And with that we retired back to our guesthouse.

  Pangong Tso

 The next day we decided to scale higher and go to the famous Pangong Tso (Tso means lake). The route passes through some very treacherous terrain and our first stop was Chang-La; supposedly the third highest motorable pass in the world. The air was super thin over here and we were advised not to stay for more than 20 minutes. The place has a small cafeteria and an Indian Army outpost (which serves free tea). 20 minutes itself felt a bit too much due to the chilly winds and we packed up from there quite quickly. The road descended down the mountains into a valley and they were in impeccable condition. It’s almost magical to imagine how those roads even came to existence in such inhospitable terrain. Kudos to BRO and their army of engineers and workers who made this happen.

The deserted barren landscape up until the lake is impossible to describe in words. It was something unlike anything I have seen before. The streams that trickle along the silent valleys; the deserted roads that alternate between winding up and down mountains and then proceeding straight as an arrow on the plains; the huge tracts of white sand as fine as talc; the occasional yak grazing on the little patches of grass around; alien flowers and vividly colored mosses trying its best to thrive amongst the thawing ice – the sight is just surreal.

Pangong Tso is a huge lake spanning 700 km2. Only about 40% of the lake is in India; you almost feel tempted to swim across to China. The lake is mostly unpolluted (our driver Dorjey says that there’s a Rs 1000 fine for even a tiny bit of plastic left on the shores) and provides an ideal hunting ground for us camera addicts. The area is uninhabited except for a few small villages further up the tourist point. There are a few shops that provide basic lunch (read Maggi noodles). I hear that during peak season there are a few places where you can stay and enjoy the morning freshness by the lake. Being just a few kilometres from the Chinese border there is an inconspicuous but strong army presence in the area – which has a medical aid post and a helipad; though I doubt if civilians have access to that.

We returned back to Leh the same day; it was a rather tiring trip with 10 hours spent in the car; but totally worth it!

  Nubra Valley  

 Another big hit amongst Leh backpackers, the Nubra valley is just across the mountains from Leh. But since those mountains are the mighty Himalayas; the route is through one of the toughest roads in the world. First stop was off course; the highest motorable road (contentious) in the world – the Khardung-La. The Khardung pass is located at an altitude of 5359 metres above sea level. And is is the theme with all high altitude outposts; there’s a small military camp here and also a cafeteria (which claims to be the highest in the world). It was quite chilly outside with the local army guys estimating the temperature to be -5 degrees. We had some hot noodles and tea from the cafe there and rushed back down. The roads aren’t very good at this point – but the fact that there’s a road up here in itself amazing – so no complaints.

Down into the valley; we stopped at the first hamlet on the way – the village of Khardung – for our lunch. There’s just one small restaurant open there – but the food was amazing. We resumed our journey towards the town of Disket. The scenery en-route was even better than the Pangong trip. We stopped near the town of Khalsar; along the side of the river Shyok. Being winter the river wasn’t thundering down; and we could easily access the river bed – with towering mountains flanking us on both sides. Just then; like a scene in a Hollywood thriller; an army helicopter raised itself from far away in the valley and flew past us. What a spectacle that was!

We reached Disket early in the evening; but unfortunately couldn’t find a decent place to stay there (all open hotels were booked). We decided to try our luck in Hundar a further 10 kms away. We checked into the Snow Leopard; which was a beautiful little guesthouse overlooking snow capped mountains. We spent the night there; listening to stories from our driver who was a very colourful character; over a light round of drinks.

We checked out early in the morning itself and went straight to the sand dunes of Hundar. It’s a real strange concoction. Sand dunes are the last things you would associate with the Himalayas – but there they were; sand dunes sprawling acres into the valley. You could walk up to the sand dunes by foot or approach them on unique double humped Bactrian camels. We did both. Riding on a camel is a curious experience; and a bit scary especially when you feel like the camels are starting to run! We spent a few hours ‘chilling’ up on the sand dunes and started our return journey back to Leh by around noon.

It had snowed the night before on the mountains; and the roads weren’t in their best conditions – complicated by the fact that we didn’t have snow chains. A few kilometers before the Khardung La pass; we had to stop to allow a huge contingent of army trucks (possibly transporting supplies to Siachen basecamp which is just 100 kms away). While we were stopped; Nanda, Gautham and I decided to walk up and see if we could reach Khardung La on foot. I stopped short by about a few hundred meters away (not knowing that at the time) and waited for the car to reach me. Going up a few more metres just as the army camps became visible there was a second block. But this time the block wasn’t for the Army – unbelievably, I got a glimpse of a Formula 1 car in the background! The Red Bull Racing team had decided to do a promotional drive on the highest motorable pass in the world at that exact moment. Talk about serendipity! We took a few photos up there with the cars and had to leave fast (the temperature was near -10 degs and there wasn’t much parking available). We had food at another small army canteen down in South Pullu and reached back Leh before night fall.

  Magnetic Hill, Zanskar Sangam and Goodbye

Sunday was the last day of our trip and being quite tired from all the travelling we decided not to go far that day. By afternoon we left on National Highway 1 for Zanskar Sangam – the confluence of the Zanskar and the Indus rivers. Nothing much to say about this place – the beautiful scenery is default for any place in Ladakh. On the way though; there is a small stretch of road aptly titled ‘Magnetic Hill’. Due to an optical illusion there, it feels as if a vehicle goes uphill when left to itself without any engine power. It fools the best of us for sure! Tough to make your brain believe that it’s an illusion and not some strange magnetic forces at work. On the way back, we also stopped at the ‘Hall of Fame’; a small army museum with exhibits showing life of the army at high altitudes. It’s just amazing how people cope up with the extreme harsh climate of the whole place.

 With that we concluded all our tryst with Ladakh. Next day morning we boarded from Leh airport; back to Delhi. The security measures at the airport was the tightest I have ever experienced (understandably owing to its location in J&K state) – my bag was checked thrice; and I had to pass atleast 5 levels of security checks before boarding the plane. Treated with another grand view up above the Himalayas; we finally landed back in Delhi.

  Tips

• The sun is quite harsh in Ladakh. Do carry sunscreen creams (> SPF 50) and good sunglasses with UV protection. Don’t get burned.
• A lot of places (Pangong, Nubra etc) require Inner Line Permits (ILP) for Indian citizens and Protected Area Permits (PAP) for non-Indians. This can be arranged by most travel agencies and would require a government issued ID card (driving license/PAN card/voter’s ID/passport).
• Biking is a good option rather than car if you are interested in riding and you are a skilled driver. There are plenty of places that rent out bikes in Leh. But don’t do this in October though; it gets quite chilly. No one rents out cars for self-drive though.
• If travelling by flight; acclimatization against altitude sickness is a must. Drink lots of water and rest for atleast 24 hours before attempting higher altitudes.
• October is not the greatest month to visit Ladakh; but we were quite lucky to be blessed with good weather. Being off season; things were quite cheap. A lot of shops and restaurants close by end of September and the number of tourists are low. That however also adds a different dimension to Leh; it’s like you have the mountains to yourselves. The peak season is July-August.
• Roaming is available (in entire J&K state) only for post-paid customers from a few states in North India; so if your SIM is not from these states your mobile will not work. There are telephone booths and internet cafes in Leh though. I found a net booth; even in the remote Diskit town. Only Aircel, Airtel and BSNL has connectivity in Leh as far as I know.
• During off season try to stay close to the main market in Leh; as most other shops would be closed. There are no autorikshaws in Leh.
• There are 6 ATM counters in Leh market – 2 of J&K Bank, 2 of SBI and one each of Punjab National Bank and HDFC. I didn’t see even one shop that accepted debit and credit cards. If you are travelling out of Leh, make sure you have money with you. No ATMs outside Leh.
• Good restaurants – Dreamland (Fort road), Gesmo German Bakery (Fort Road) and Happy World (Tukcha road)
• Good places to stay – Santhi Guesthouse (near Santhi Stupa), Hotel YakTail (Fort Road) and Hotel Tso-kar (Fort Road). We spent the last day in Hotel Tso-kar and it was pretty clean with room service and cheap rates (Don’t know about season rates though).
• Other places to visit – Tso-Moriri Lake (200 km), Lamayuru (110 km), Alchi (40 km), Panamik hot springs (140 km), Sonamarg (400 km)

  The Route

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  Mumbai

My first ever visit to the grand old city of India. Though I spent just a weekend over there, I was mightily impressed. The whole enormity of the city just takes you by storm – espcially for a small town guy like me. I need to go back and explore more. But that one weekend I was there; had the fun of my life.

  Vagamon, Kerala

A rather unknown destination tucked in hills of central Kerala; Vagamon is a land of rolling meadows, pine forests and tea estates. It’s natural beauty makes it worth a visit. But more than the destination itself; it’s the journey that’s even better. The silent quiet hilly roads and the scenary surrounding it makes it one of the drives in Kerala. There are plenty of routes to reach Vagamon, but the most scenic drive (from Kochi) is via Thodupuzha, Muttom, Kanjar and then into Vagamon. The route is easy to miss though, there are not many boards showing directions. If you are unsure; the alternate route (in fact the more mainstream route) is via Erattupetta – but you are going to miss out the best parts of the drive then.

At Vagamon, I had stayed at a friend’s house which was part of an old tea estate. The views from there are exceptional. You can go and visit the meadows and get inspired by the vast majestic emptiness in the mountains all around you.

  Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu  

Once the star amongst South Indian hillstations Kodai has lost its old charm by become way too touristy. It’s now basically a small city struggling to expand on a hill. Despite that, if you know the right places (or you have someone who knows the right places – in our case we had our Thomas) Kodai still has a few things to offer you. For instance, we had gone to this awesome orchard just a few kilometers from the city center and surrounded by peace and quiet. Nobody to disturb us for a long while. Unless you are willing to go off the beaten track like we did; I wouldn’t really recommend a visit to Kodai.

  Ooty, Tamil Nadu

Just like Kodaikanal, Ooty too has dropped down from its glory days of being amongst the best hill stations in South India. The present city is a shadow of itself – I still have photos of visits to this place as a young kid; and the place has lost all its inherent beauty. The purpose of this trip for us though; was to meet up with my gang of buddies and catch up on the old times. If you stay at a decent hotel far from the city and not plan too many excursions and relax all the way; Ooty might still do the trick.

  Mussorie and Dhanaulti, Uttarakhand

It was a quickly planned excursion during my short stay in Gurgaon in the beginning of this year. Mussorie is a typical British hill station; with its quaint buildings and streets. It offers a good view of the city of Dehra Dun at night. But apart from this there isn’t much to do here.

We met a guide in the city and he offered to take us to some off beat places further up the hills and we set off to Dhanaulti. En route to our pleasant surprise it was snowing there. Had a lot of fun playing around the snowed out landscape. The snow gave a peculiar look to the entire vista and it felt so displaced from the rest of the India we had just left behind.

Definitely worth a one time visit; if you are in and around Delhi. It’s just a 6-7 hour drive and if you have a weekend to spare; do give it a try.

  Muzhappilangand Beach, Kerala

India’s only drive in beach. The only problem is getting your car up there. The road up from Kozhikode up to the beach is in a rather dilapidated condition, the 80 km stretch took us nearly 4 hours to complete.

If you survive that though, the beach is pretty awesome. Just the fact that you can drive into the waters makes it an amazing experience. The beach in itself is pretty clean and not very touristy. The views around are brilliant.

Muzhapilangad is on the Kannur highway from Kozhikode and is around 80 km from Kozhikode and 12 km from Kannur.

  Ramakkalmedu, Kerala

Ramakkalmedu is a not so well-known hill station located in Idukki district. The views from here are amazing as usual. You can see the expanse of Tamil Nadu as you look out from the hills. The green and blue contrasts leaves a lot of options for amazing photographs. There are also unmarked trekking paths you could try if you are interested.

Ramakkalmedu is around 40km from Kumily/Thekkady on the Munnar route.

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