Archive for the 'Travel' Category

Forgotten victims Of great games

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on March 14, 2010
in Afghanistan, Books and Travel
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Also see here and here

They would have called themselves Katis, but the Muslims surrounding them had for centuries called them Kafirs -- infidels -- and their land, thus came to be known as Kafiristan. C.M. Naim in Outlook:

My Heartrendingly Tragic Story By Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah Khan ‘Azar’. Edited By Alberto M. Cacopardo and Ruth Laila Schmidt. Oslo: Novus Press, 2006

One day in 1897, near the village Brumotul not far from Chitral, then a semi-independent Muslim state high in the Himalayas, a bunch of boys went walking. They were not Chitralis, but refugees from another place that lay west of the newly demarcated Durand Line. They were not Muslims, either. The boys would have described themselves as Katis, but the Muslims surrounding them had for centuries used “Kafir” to describe the boys’ ancestors, and “Kafiristan” for their original land. The British had retained that nomenclature for the portion of that land they now controlled, while the Afghan Amir, Abdur Rahman, whose invasion had made the boys refugees, had named his portion “Nuristan” (“The Land of Light”).

The boys stopped on a bridge to watch two “Sahibs” fishing in the stream below, not having seen their likes before. One of the sportsmen came over to them and said something in Khowar, one of the several languages spoken among the Kafirs. One Kati boy understood what was said; he asked his friends to find earthworms for the Sahib. Later, he and another boy carried the day’s catch to the Sahibs’ camp. The man who spoke to the boys was an army doctor named Capt; the Kati boy who understood him was named Azar. Something about the boy struck Harris as exceptional. He sent for him the following day and almost obsessively insisted that Azar—barely ten or eleven at the time—should join his service. Azar offered excuses, his mother cried, but his father, Kashmir, the leader of the clan, gave his permission. Azar became Harris’s servant—first for 18 months at Chitral, and then for two years at Peshawar. Meanwhile, Kashmir was killed by some relatives when he was on his way to Kabul—after converting to Islam—to meet the Amir and seek from him his previous high status. More:

See Kafiristan in Wikipedia:

Prof. Georg Morgenstierne travelled extensively throughout South Asia, but the most unique were his visits to the inaccessible areas of The Hindu Kush Mountains. Read his account here.

Ahmedabad: An old city’s new approach

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on February 21, 2010
in India and Travel
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From The Wall Street Journal:

Ahmedabad: It’s easy to love a city where residents make sure to feed the birds. More than 120 bird feeders, known as chabutara, are scattered throughout the oldest neighborhoods of Ahmedabad, founded in 1411. Why do these creatures get so much attention? “They are innocent souls,” replies my guide.

The care and feeding of tourists is a more recent phenomenon. Long overshadowed by Rajasthan, its palace-filled and perpetually self-promoting neighbor, India’s western state of Gujarat has been slow to market the attractions of its biggest city, whose population exceeds five million. But it’s a surprisingly satisfying destination, including some outstanding museums, memorable walking tours (held both day and night) and delectably nuanced vegetarian cuisine.

With an eye to the city’s 600th anniversary next year, a growing number of entrepreneurs, social activists and public officials are gunning for a United Nations designation as a World Heritage City by revitalizing the older section, east of the Sabarmati River. (West of the river is a city of high-rises and malls, noted for its pharmaceutical and chemical industries and educational institutions.) More:

Birding in Nagaland

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on February 18, 2010
in India, Travel and Wildlife
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View of the Barail Range, southern Nāgāland

Bikram Grewal at kolkatabirds.com; images: Ramki Sreenivasan, Sumit Sen and Bano Haralu:

Brown-capped Laughingthrush

We settled on walking further along the road where the sun had broken through, and soon I had the first of my several lifers – the Grey Sibia. We spread along the route but soon the sight of Shashank doing a sort of Michael Jackson break-dance had us soon scampering to his side. The object of his elation soon revealed itself to be an Orange-bellied Flowerpecker, an unrecorded bird for this location but none-the-less a lifer for all of us. The walk produced Chestnut-bellied Rock Thrush, Maroon Oriole, several Orange-flanked Bush Robins (sometimes called Himalayan Red-flanked Bush Robin or Red-flanked Bluetail), Ashy Drongos, Blue-fronted Redstarts, Grey Bushchats and Grey-hooded Warblers. All along the Great Barbet kept up its raucous song and the both the Hill and the Rufous-throated Partridges were heard intermittently. A pair of Mountain Hawk Eagles patrolled the skies.

Hunger struck and we decided to return to the cars for an eagerly awaited breakfast. A pair of Assam Laughingthrushes soon exposed themselves. We were pleased to see these recently split species and now understood the reason for their divorce from the Red-headed (or Chestnut-headed). Our excitement soon turned to exultation as we neared the cars, for a bunch of the very local Striped Laughingthrushes gave us exemplary views. To cap it all Sumit sighted a Crested Finchbill perched precariously atop a tall conifer. Had I known then that it would be the first of several hundred we would see, I might have been a little less ecstatic. A flock of Black-throated (Red-headed) Tits suddenly appeared to vanish soon after, as did a large flock of Grey-sided Laughingthrushes. Red-faced Liocichla were seen frequently and warblers were represented by the Ashy-throated. Little Buntings were exceedingly regular and incidentally were the only member of the ilk that we saw on the entire trip. More:

More about Nagaland here at kolkatabirds.com

Myanmar’s colonial treasures threatened

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on February 14, 2010
in Burma, Heritage and Travel
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From the Wall Street Journal:

Yangon: The colonial buildings of this once-grand city are scattered about like tombstones in a neglected cemetery—unnoticed, and often unwanted, relics of a lost era.

Yangon is home to one of the largest collections of undisturbed colonial architecture in the world, with some neighborhoods left almost exactly as they were when the country gained independence from Britain some 60 years ago. But the buildings, already crumbling after years of neglect under a repressive military regime, face an increasingly uncertain future.

A government decision to move Myanmar’s capital from Yangon to a remote redoubt named Naypyitaw in 2005 has left several of the most important buildings almost totally abandoned, accelerating their deterioration. Meantime, resurgent investment from China and other Asian neighbors is triggering interest in development—including the possibility of building shopping malls and apartment blocks where old structures now stand. More:

A different side of Goa

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on February 3, 2010
in India and Travel
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Upscale and untouched, a new breed of villas emerge for travelers seeking seclusion. Jemima Sissons in the Wall Street Journal:

Casa Colvale

As the speedboat turns the corner on India’s moss-green river Chapora and shoots past muddy water buffalo basking in the midday heat on the banks, Casa Colvale emerges majestically into sight. We could be forgiven for thinking that Doctor No or Odd Job are about to pop out of the chic cream and glass villa flanking the hill, and we have to remind ourselves that we aren’t on a secret James Bond mission.

Englishman James Foster, the warm, convivial property manager, greets us with a fresh lime soda as the boat glides smoothly to the pier. “Watch out for the crocodiles,” he chirps, only half-joking, as he helps us off the boat.

We have come to Goa seeking solitude and comfort. If we have gone looking for discreet luxury in India, it doesn’t come better than this.

Casa Colvale was built by clothing magnate Sheila Dhody, who used to come to Goa with her children during the holidays to escape the oppressive heat of New Delhi. “It is a simple love story,” Mrs. Dhody says. “When we were shown this place by the agent there were no footpaths and we had to hack our way through the thick undergrowth. Then, suddenly before my eyes, was the most incredible view I had ever seen in my life.”More:

Kashmir — the ultimate skiing destination

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on February 1, 2010
in India and Travel
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Tom Robbins in The Observer:

Then suddenly we pop out, back into the sunlight on an open slope which Nick calls Snow Leopard Couloir because of the animal’s tracks he’s seen in the snow there. (We never manage to spot one, but we do encounter its more common relative, the Himalayan Leopard – two of them skinned on the walls of the Highlands Park, one alive, seen by some of our group in the lights of a taxi at night.)

The snow in the couloir is a delight, turned sugary because it has sat untouched on the hill for so long, and we whoop as we ski down it, stopping occasionally to take photos, before we eventually reach a snow-covered road in a forgotten side valley. It’s a military track off-limits to the public, used by soldiers heading for their border look-out posts. As we take off our skis to begin the hour-long walk back to town, there’s a distant rumbling and a khaki truck lumbers around the corner, the three soldiers in the cab looking bemused at the skiers standing in the road before them. It’s as if a wormhole has opened up between the frivolous slopes of Courchevel and this troubled corner of Asia, which Bill Clinton once dubbed “the most dangerous place in the world”. More:

Nepal’s rhinos and tigers and bears

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on January 13, 2010
in India, Nepal, Travel and Wildlife
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From the Wall Street Journal:

Nepal is known for its Himalayan mountain trekking and India for its historic sites and teeming cities. But both countries offer inexpensive safaris in several national parks that, considering how chaotic life in Nepal and India can be in other respects, are surprisingly professional and well organized, though their ideas of protecting visitors may not be yours.

I didn’t think I was in Africa, where vast herds of many species surround you. But from the back of a Nepalese elephant I saw two crocodiles, a peacock, lots of deer and, most importantly, two rhinos. In the world of safaris, viewing a one-horned Indian rhinoceros is a real accomplishment. There are only about 2,500 left in the world, almost all of them in Chitwan and Kaziranga National Park in northeast India.

The rhinos seemingly had no fear of elephants; they let us get right next to them. The tourists climb a special mounting platform and sit on the elephant’s back, protected by wooden rails. The ride took us through beautiful forests, lakes and, appropriately, plains of 10-foot-high elephant grass. All-inclusive, the South African safari I took two years ago cost more than $500 a night, but in Nepal, there was no way I could have spent $500 in a week. More:

Bhutan to get its first railway link

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on December 31, 2009
in Bhutan and Travel
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From The Times:

The reclusive Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is to have its first railway after its newly crowned monarch finalised a plan with India to build an 11-mile (18km) link between the two countries.

The railway, funded by India, will be Bhutan’s boldest step yet into the modern world. Lost in time like the mythical Shangri-La, the Buddhist kingdom had no roads or telephones until 1960 and no television until 1999. The track will offer one of the most breathtaking rail journeys in the world across the foot of the Himalayas. More:

The unbearable likeness of travelling

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on December 26, 2009
in Travel
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Salil Tripathi in Mint-Lounge:

There are times when I have got up in a strange hotel room in the early hours of dawn, before the Bach melody in my cellphone wakes me up. The light is beginning to emerge at the rim where the sky meets land, and the night loosens its hold over the city.

I get up and draw the curtains, but the cityscape does not boast of a familiar landmark. A sign advertising Coca-Cola keeps blinking, as if mocking me.

When I arrived the previous night, at the airport, the money changers had closed for the day, so the currency notes I’m carrying in my wallet can’t tell me where I am. The mini-bar in my room does not offer much help: It has Heineken and Carlsberg beer; chocolate bars of Toblerone and Kit Kat, and the nuts, Planters. The newspaper they will leave outside my room in the morning will be the International Herald Tribune. If I turn on the television set, there are strange programmes in a language I don’t understand; the only networks in English are Discovery, showing me the mating ritual of rhinos, CNN going on about an American football match, and the BBC World Service needling my conscience with another disaster somewhere. More:

The many menus of Mumbai

Published
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on December 21, 2009
in Food, India and Travel
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From the Wall Street Journal:

The New Martin Hotel Eating House here is off limits to many Hindus because it serves beef. It’s off limits to many Muslims because it serves pork. Yet at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon, the sidewalk is still crowded with people waiting to get a table for lunch.

Any trip to India should include some of its great restaurants. For visitors, it’s a chance to sample a wide variety of regional cuisines that, though often little known abroad, have a place on any gourmet’s map of the world.

New Martin Hotel (the hotel part is long gone), for example, offers the distinctive and delicious food of Goa, the Indian coastal state that was once a Portuguese colony. Outside of New York and London, finding a restaurant serving Goan cuisine can be a challenge. Bengali, Gujarati, Malvani and a couple of dozen others, all are easily found in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital formerly known as Bombay. More:

High tensions

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on December 8, 2009
in China, Conflict, India, Tibet and Travel
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Tawang Monastery. Photo: Arunachal Pradesh Tourism

Tawang Monastery. Photo: Arunachal Pradesh Tourism

Peter Savodnik travels to Arunachal Pradesh, India’s Himalayan state whose contested border marks the front lines of the increasingly combative rivalry between India and China. In the National:

Tawang sits about 3,000 metres above sea level and is enveloped by sharply etched mountains and crystalline skies. The centre of the village comprises a narrow artery riddled with two- and three-storey hotels offering “fooding and lodging”, souvenir stands, barber shops – the Fancy Hair Cut Salon, with room for just one stool, is a big draw – and 4×4s that ferry tourists from Tawang to Jang and Bomdilla, also in Arunachal Pradesh, and Tezpur and Guwahati, in Assam. The tourists who come to Tawang are mostly young, newly moneyed Indians, according to Bijoy Baruah, a tour guide from Guwahati-based Jungle Travels India, but they also include older people, many with backpacks and ponytails, from Scandinavia, Germany and the United States. Buddhist monks in red robes from the Tawang Monastery, the largest in India and the second-largest in Asia, are ubiquitous. Old men sit in front of rug shops and miniature cafes cupping honey-ginger tea. A eight-metre gate painted aqua blue, orange, green and yellow frames the frenetic, honking crush of cars and people.

Usually, Tawang hovers just above the cloud line, and the only thing that mars the horizon are Army helicopters shuttling troops and materiel to and from the bases that dot the mountains just south of the border with China. Since 1962, when China briefly invaded northern India, Delhi has maintained a sizeable military presence in these parts. The Indian Defence Ministry’s official history of the 1962 war, which was completed 30 years later, states that Indian forces suffered 2,616 casualties against some 700 on the Chinese side. (The exact numbers are difficult to tabulate because many soldiers went missing or died from the cold.) More importantly, the war revealed that India was helpless to defend itself, particularly in the mountains. Chinese troops had gained valuable, cold-weather experience fighting in Korea in the early 1950s and, more recently, in Tibet. (Tibetan guides, familiar with the intricate mountain passes, gave Chinese soldiers critical help during the 1962 conflict.) India, meanwhile, maintained a small and ineffective Army that, much like today, was focused on Pakistan at the expense of its border with China. More:


In the hills of Sri Lanka, Kandy is ready for tourists

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on December 7, 2009
in Sri Lanka and Travel
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Robert Schroeder in the Wall Street Journal:

The temple, the city’s star architectural attraction, takes its name from the relic it houses: a tooth of the Buddha, kept in a stupa-shaped gold casket. Crowds of Sri Lankan devotees jostle past, carrying offerings of jasmine, lilies or lotus flowers. The tooth is also the focus of Kandy’s famed perahera, or procession, held for 10 days in the month of Esala (which runs from July into August). The perahera features Kandyan dancing and drumming, and this year drew about 500,000 people on its final day — more than in previous years.

The dates of next year’s Esala Perahera haven’t been set. But there is ample opportunity to hear Kandyan drumming and watch local dance — Kandyan dancers and drummers are some of Sri Lanka’s emblematic symbols — at any time. At the Kandyan Art Association and Cultural Center, a quick walk from the tooth temple on the lake’s northeast shore, the sound of a conch shell welcomes visitors to a show. Bare-chested men emerge in blue- and red-fringed white sarongs, with diamond-shaped headgear, beating geta bera with their hands. Women dancers pay graceful tribute to guardian deities and to their gurus. Before the evening is over, the dancers will enact the taming of a cobra and move like peacocks. More:

The holy city of Amritsar

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on November 18, 2009
in Culture, India, Religion and Travel
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James Lamont in the Financial Times:

GoldenTempleAmritsar was the first place to which Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, travelled after convalescing from heart surgery earlier this year. The dignified Singh, India’s first Sikh prime minister, went from New Delhi to Amritsar, a dusty city in north-west India, to give thanks for his life. Amritsar is to the Sikh what Jerusalem is to the Christian and Jew, Mecca to the Muslim and Varanasi to the Hindu. The Golden Temple, or Darbar Sahib, is the holiest Sikh shrine.

So it was that early one morning, dressed in white kurta, black tunic and characteristic light blue turban, Singh and his wife Gursharan walked slowly along the marbled quadrangle surrounding the Golden Temple. They entered the ornate, jewelled sanctum and listened to plaintive hymns for half an hour. It was possibly the most transported moment that Singh, or “lion” in Punjabi, had enjoyed since his deep anaesthesia under the charge of 11 doctors.

The Golden Temple sits in the middle of a sacred lake, or sarowar, reached along a canopied causeway. To wander around its edges surrounded by devotees – many of whom are pulling their clothes off for a divine dip – is to enter a slow time of gentle reverence. More:

A year after Mumbai’s 9/11: Rebuilding the Taj Hotel

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on November 16, 2009
in India, Terrorism and Travel
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The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai

The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai

From The Economic Times:

When the 34-member restoration team led by Indian Hotels V-P Sumit Guha set about its task, the obstacles came in many sizes and shapes, even in the form of dry fruits.

In what is left of Wasabi, the once-iconic sushi joint, workers found a bag full of bullets and almonds. The area had to be vacated and NSG was called in. It was the last elusive bag that the terrorists, who devastated India’s commercial capital on November 26, 2008, had left behind.

Guha says the total workforce involved in executing this dream is 1,000. The quest to achieve and even surpass the past glory of the 3,00,000 sq ft area hasn’t lacked either intensity or eye for detail, with the vice-chairman of Indian Hotels, Krishna Kumar, personally going through every little detail, from fabric to fittings.

The focus was threefold, themed suites to bring the hotel’s ballroom back in a classic avatar and make food and beverage the central hubs of the hotel. This made the hotel management sweep through the world’s best hotels with similar positioning, from Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel to Singapore’s Raffles, among scores of others to get an understanding of what the focus areas are. More:

[Image: The Taj Mahal Hotel website]

The surface is just the start

Published
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on November 9, 2009
in The Maldives and Travel
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Tim Ecott goes to the Maldives. From The National:

Iru_FushiFrom the window of my seaplane, a bright red Maldivian Air Taxi, there is an endless expanse of rich blue sky and Indian Ocean. The air and the sea seem to join on the horizon, a dreamscape of bright colour where air and water are impossible to separate. Below me the water flashes sapphire, and I focus on the occasional patches of white sand that reveal the presence of the tiny atolls that have made the Maldives famous as the one of the world’s most spectacular island getaways.

I am heading for the relatively new resort of Iru Fushi, recently taken over for management by the Hilton group after being built by Maldivian magnate Ahmed Siyam Mohammed. The island lies at the southern tip of the Miladhunmadulu Atoll, better known as Noonu Atoll, a chain of small islands about 160km from the capital Male. Like all Maldivian resorts it boasts white sands, clear blue water and a shoreline fringed with waving palms. But I am here to investigate the beauty beneath the waves: the dive sites of the surrounding reefs and the marine life that inhabits them. More:

The Andhra Bhawan Canteen of Delhi

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on November 9, 2009
in Food, India and Travel
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andhra_bhawan

Missanabeem at The India Tube. Photograph by Hitesh Malaviya:

The first rule of the Andhra Bhawan is be fast. Order fast. Eat fast. Leave fast.

The second rule is: no sharing. Get your own thali, no poking in your friend’s tray. Not that hungry? Bad call. You should be very, very hungry when you step in the canteen.

The third rule: no menu options. Actually, there is an option: vegetarian thali (100 Rs) or non-vegetarian (70 Rs extra). No offense to the vegetarian crowd, but if you don’t get the mutton (everyday in the menu of the day), well, you’re missing out. More:

From Pakistan to Paris, by VW Beetle

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on November 9, 2009
in Pakistan and Travel
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A French doctor is embarking on the 6,000-mile trip to promote a better image of Pakistan. From the Guardian:

The 'Foxy Shahzadi', or Beetle Princess, is the most distinctive car from Lahore to Lyons. Photograph: Tanveer Shahzad/Dawn newspaper

The 'Foxy Shahzadi', or Beetle Princess, is the most distinctive car from Lahore to Lyons. Photograph: Tanveer Shahzad/Dawn newspaper

Now the “Foxy Shahzadi”, or Beetle Princess, is the most distinctive car from Lahore to Lyons. The body is covered in a psychedelic array of flowers, waterfalls and the faces of famous Pakistanis. The idea behind the 6,000-mile trip is to promote the “soft side” of Pakistan. “We want to show the world it’s not just about terrorism,” says Loos.

Travelling by Foxy, as Beetles are affectionately known in Pakistan, Loos is paying homage to a local motoring cult. Dozens of well-maintained Beetles ply the streets. (Mine, in a cool grey, is Betsy, a proud 1967 model.) More:

Travelling through time

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on November 8, 2009
in India and Travel
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The Golden Chariot

The Golden Chariot

Richard Woods in the Sunday Times:

The Golden Chariot, by contrast, is a new, luxurious train that will take you into the heart of the Darkness in the comfort of excellent cuisine and clean cotton sheets.

The journey begins in Bangalore, boom city of the southern state of Karnataka. At 8pm on a sultry night we arrived at the Yeshwantpur station to find an endless blue train with air conditioning (windows without glass), a separate compartment for disabled people (next to the one for luggage) and about 1,000 tattered travellers packed to the ceilings. That’s a traditional Indian train best left to backpackers and the brave. The Golden Chariot chugged into view soon after. Though it stretches to 18 carriages, it takes only 88 passengers, accommodated in twin-berth cabins, each with its own television, desk and compact shower and loo. It’s not the Orient-Express, but there’s a bar carriage and two dining cars where the chef conjures up superb Indian meals and slightly less convincing western fare in a kitchen a good deal smaller than Gordon Ramsay’s ego.

To linger over a cocktail or savour a four-course meal as a foreign landscape rolls by is redolent of the days when travel meant trunks with brass hasps and ladies with parasols. It has allure, a city of grand palaces and cool gardens. More:

For $40, a ‘terror tour’ of Mumbai

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on November 5, 2009
in India, Terrorism and Travel
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From the Indian Express:

mumbai_mapComplete with car and commentary for Rs 1,800, the tour trails the route the 10 terrorists took on the night of 26/11 last year, starting from their landing at Badhwar Park and then to Café Leopold, Taj Mahal Hotel, Nariman House, the Trident-Oberoi Hotel, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Cama & Albless Hospital to Girgaum Chowpatty.

“Jo bikta hai, hum wohi dikhate hain,” said Saurabh, a guide at the Gateway of India. “We offer what sells,” a simple business principle that explains why they ask tourists if they’d like to see these spots, though they’re not mentioned on the itinerary leaflet. More

Dr A.Q. Khan and Timbuktu

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on November 4, 2009
in Pakistan and Travel
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Dr A Q Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program, is writing a four-part series on Timbuktu in The News, Pakistan. Dr Khan is rumoured to own the Hendrina Khan Hotel in Timbuktu, Mali, which is named after his wife.

Below, from the first instalment in the News:

While we were studying geography at school, I came across two names that always fascinated me, and it almost became an obsession with me to see them one day. The two places of my dreams were Timbuktu in Mali (Africa) and Lhasa in Tibet (China). Timbuktu, we learnt, was a city in the middle of nowhere and Lhasa was on top of the world. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit both places and I would like to share some of the thrill of the experiences of visiting Timbuktu. More:

From India, a homespun brand of hospitality

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on October 18, 2009
in India and Travel
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Ranging from three-story private villas to no-frill rooms, nearly 300 homeowners in New Delhi have opened their homes to guests. Amy Yee in the New York Times:

mapIf this guest room in Vasant Vihar, the diplomatic neighborhood of New Delhi, felt like someone’s home, that’s because it was. The marble-floored room was in one corner of a three-bedroom apartment that belonged to Dipmala Bindra, a baker and homemaker in her 50s. Furnished with a private bathroom and fresh towels, it was part of a novel hotel experiment taking place in India.

There is a major shortage of hotel beds in India; the entire country has only about 130,000 rooms in branded hotels – some 10,000 less than in Las Vegas, according to HVS, a global hospitality consultancy group. And with thousands of visitors expected to converge on greater Delhi for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the hotel shortage may become especially severe.

So in 2006, India’s tourism ministry began allowing homeowners like Mrs. Bindra to register their homes as bed-and-breakfasts. More:

The Abode of the Righteous

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on October 12, 2009
in India and Travel
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Aditya Dev Sood at 3quarksdaily:

bihar_buddhaAs we walk off the tarmac, the moon shines full and bright, lending the dark clouds of night a blue-black shimmer, a haunting presence. I hope this is an auspicious welcome to Bihar, the heart of that other India, which is not shining with the glow of liberalization and globalization of the past two decades. I’m here to set up fieldwork for a healthcare initiative in several rural districts of the state.

I get into the white Ambassador that has been assigned to me. The driver heats his engine for a bit, before coaxing it fully to life. kaun hotal chalaile? who hotel I get-go ya, he asks me, as we turn out of the airport parking lot. The language seems sweet, pleasing to my ears and easily disarms the gruff and combative khadi-boli attitude that I bring with me from Delhi. As we pull up to the ITDC hotel, my driver gestures to me to be careful in opening my door, lest I disturb the several women in their finery, who are even now getting out of a Maruti van and making their entrance into the hotel. The moment is striking for the sublime attunement that many Biharis seem to exhibit, towards one another’s consocial wellbeing. It is as if they have all known one another in generations past, which, in fact is true, given the long and continuous record of civilization in this region.

The word Bihar derives from vihara, monastery, truncated from brahmavihara, literally ‘an abode for the righteous, the benevolent, the kind.’ Bihar was the first monastic state, of which the Buddhist polities of Tibet, Sri Lanka and Thailand are contemporary, perhaps vestigial, examples. The region was once crosscut by a network of vihara-s, which provided religious, educational, health, and other social services to the laity around them. They served as an essential social and institutional infrastructure for the region’s ancient empires, the least of their functions having been the provision of hospitality for pilgrims, traders and visitors on official business to any local region. More:

The bhopas of Rajasthan

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on October 7, 2009
in Culture, India and Travel
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The ability of Rajasthani bhopas to recall and recite poems thousands of lines long captivates the author William Dalrymple. From the National:

The landscape, as we neared Pabusar, was a white, sun-leached expanse of dry desert plains, spiky acacia bushes and wind-blown camel thorn. The emptiness was broken only by the odd cowherd in a yellow turban, patiently leading his beasts through the dust, and by a long, slow convoy of nomads in camel carts, pursued by a rearguard of barking dogs.

Once, as we turned off the main Jaipur-Bikaner highway, we passed a group of Rabari women, in saris of bright primary colours, resting in the narrow shade of a single, gnarled desert tree; abandoned road-building equipment lay scattered all around them. A little later, we saw a group of three Jain nuns in white robes, with masks over their faces, pushing a fourth in a white wheelchair through the open desert as the heatwaves shimmered and slurred around them. Though it was winter, it was still very hot, and a hot, dry wind blew in from the scrub, and through the open car window, furring our mouths and setting our teeth on edge, and gritting the seats of the car. More:

Eating fish in Mumbai

Published
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on October 5, 2009
in Food, India and Travel
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From the New York Times:

Surmai fry at HIghway Gomantak, Mumbai

Surmai fry at HIghway Gomantak, Mumbai

Any true Mumbaiker knows not to eat seafood during monsoon season, from June to September. The choppy, churning waters stir up mud and grime, making it hard to find a fresh catch. And the government enforces a seasonal ban to keep the fish population sustainable.

Now that the rains have receded, the city is breaking its collective seafood fast. There are the no-brainer choices you’re likely to find in guidebooks, like the king crab at Trishna or the Goan fish curry at Mahesh Lunch Home. But if you are looking for something off the tourist-beaten path, better to head for a few lesser-known places that serve authentic coastal seafood.

A good spot to start is Highway Gomantak (44/2179, Gandhi Nagar, Bandra East; 91-22-2640-9692; www.highwaygomantak.com), a Goan specialist that’s been around for two decades. There are no napkins, air-conditioning or English spoken, but there is a focus on food. (As at all the other places below, pointing is a perfectly reasonable strategy: most of your fellow diners will be locals, and they’ll know the drill.) More:

Diu, Goa for modern-day hippies

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on October 3, 2009
in India and Travel
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From the Times:

In backpack-speak, Diu, an island off the north coast of India, is “Goa 30 years ago”.

It’s only 8km across and was once colonised by the Portuguese. From a writer’s point of view, it also has the advantage of having so far eluded those Westerners whose life’s aim is to be the first to unfurl a towel on any stretch of virgin sand.

Eight days after I e-mailed the Diu tourist board, I got this reply: “The island of Diu is off the coast of Saurashtra, Gujarat. There has been no commercial exploitation or environmental degradation here and with a pleasant climate year round, it offers a fully laid-back atmosphere.”

We were in London in October, so a fully laid-back atmosphere somewhere very far away sounded fine to us. More:

Also read: Why hip hippies still choose India

20 fabulous boutique hotels in India

Published
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on September 27, 2009
in India and Travel
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The publisher of the Special Places to Stay guidebooks selects 20 extraordinary hideaways in India. From the Observor:

The Manor, New Delhi

The Manor, New Delhi

Casa Susegad, Goa

Casa Susegad, Goa

The Manor, Friends Colony West, Delhi
Shanti Home, Janakpuri, Delhi
Tikli Bottom, Gairatpur Bas, Haryana
Panchavatti, Corjuem Island, Goa
Casa Susegad, Loutolim, Goa

Click here for the full list:

Home truths on abroad

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on September 19, 2009
in Books and Travel
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William Dalrymple on travel writing in The Guardian:

Last November, for example, I managed to track down a celebrated tantric at a cremation ground near Birbhum in West Bengal. Tapan Goswami was a feeder of skulls. Twenty years ago he had been interviewed by an American professor of comparative religion, who went on to write a scholarly essay on Tapan’s practice of spirit-summoning and spell-casting, using the cured skulls of dead virgins and restless suicides. It sounded rich material, albeit of a rather sinister nature, so I spent the best part of a day touring the various cremation grounds of Birbhum before finally finding Tapan sitting outside his small Kali temple on the edge of the town, preparing a sacrifice for the goddess.

The light was beginning to fade; a funeral pyre was still smoking eerily in front of the temple. Tapan and I talked of tantra, and he confirmed that in his youth, when the professor had interviewed him, he had indeed been an enthusiastic skull-feeder. Yes, he said, all that had been written about him was true, and yes, he did occasionally still cure skulls, and summon their dead owners, so as to use their power. But sadly, he said, he could not talk to me about the details. Why was that? I asked. Because, he said, his two sons were now successful ophthalmologists in New Jersey. They had firmly forbidden him from giving any more interviews about what he did, in case rumours of the family dabbling in black magic damaged their profitable East Coast practice. Now he thought he might even give away his skulls, and go and join them in the States.

Living in India over the past few years, I have seen the country change at a rate that was impossible to imagine when I first moved there in the late 80s. On returning to Delhi after nearly a decade away, I took a lease on a farmhouse five kilometres from the boom town of Gurgaon, on the south western edge of Delhi. From the end of the road you could just see in the distance the rings of new housing estates springing up, full of call centres, software companies and fancy apartment blocks, all rapidly rising on land that only two years earlier had been virgin farmland. More:

[William Dalrymple's Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India is published by Bloomsbury next month]

The Republic of Thamel

Published
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on August 30, 2009
in Nepal and Travel
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thamel

Sudeep Chakravarti from Kathmandu, Nepal, in Hindustan Times:

It’s so Thamel. “When I Miss Pattaya, you come running Rangeela.” The comment appears to be about a transvestite beauty contest held annually at a fleshpot in Thailand. It is followed by a Kurosawa growl. I’m in Itta, a dimly lit, monsoon-musty, handkerchief-sized Japanese eatery.

The transvestite, in soap-opera sari, coiffed, face painted, is primly seated. Her companion, a young Japanese man in a neat beard and scruffy Ché T-shirt, is angry. Then ‘Rangeela’ flounces through the bead curtain and down the dank stairway. The man takes a huge pull of Everest beer, and notices that I have noticed.

“Fugyu,” he insists. To save him face, I turn back to take a bowl of miso soup from a tray that recently held superb tempura. The menu again catches my eye. It has a compelling message bordered by photos of a yellow rose, and a basket containing a towel and soap: “What is life when wanting love? Night without a morning! Love’s the cloudless summer sun, Nature gat sick adorning.”

Outside, two local bands, Anuprastha at Kathmandu Pub & Café, and an unnamed one at Namaste Café & Bar, are competing cover to cover – The Doors to The Doors, Rolling Stones to Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam to Pearl Jam – and decibel to decibel, in a frenetic meld of “Come on baby light my faiyah can’t get no satisfaction brown shoo-gur garble screech garble yeah.” More:

[Image: cc: shinyai]

Dylan’s Toasted and Roasted Coffee House

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on August 28, 2009
in India and Travel
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Laurel Tuohy at the Indian Tube:

cookieI heard about Dylan’s long before I ever got to Manali.

As a friend waited to board his bus for the famed mountain town, he called out in lieu of goodbye: “When you get to Manali, find me at Dylan’s.” “What’s that?” I yelled back. “It’s the coffeeshop that everyone goes to,” came the reply from his retreating bus. I didn’t make it to Dylan’s on my first day in Manali but on my second I met two sweet Israeli girls. They had specifically planned to be in Manali on that day so that they could break a religious fast with a very special food – Dylan’s tomato soup.

When I overheard a group of tourists raving about the warm chocolate chip cookies at the coffeehouse I knew I had to go there – pronto.
Dylan’s Toasted and Roasted Coffeehouse serves up much more than lovely lattes and comforting cappuccinos. It is owner Raj ‘Dylan’ Nalwa’s opinion that “a place can have good coffee but no spirit,” so he tries to imbue his shops – he has another in Arambol, Goa – with lots of good vibes. The waiters are always smiling, customers can sit and chat as long as they want and can watch movies in the back room.

A bit of a coffee philosopher, Nalwa said, “the environment that you create is the spirit that you create. It’s the coffee but it’s not just the coffee; it’s your relationship with people that matters.” More:

http://www.dylanscoffee.com/

And they didn’t return

Published
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on August 23, 2009
in India and Travel
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India’s Kullu valley, also known as the valley of the gods, is a favourite with backpackers and trekkers. But over the last few years several foreign tourists have mysteriously disappeared or have been found dead. From the Indian Express:

trekkullu

On July 21 this year, Amichai Steinmetz checked out of the guesthouse in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, where he had been staying. Amichai, who holds both US and Israeli passports, and his Israeli friend were to go trekking from Khirganga, a hamlet in Parvati valley of Kullu, to the forests of Bunbuni. According to Amichai’s friend, they separated soon after they began, agreeing to reach Bunbuni from different routes, and planned to meet again in Khirganga the same evening. Amichai never returned. His friend says he didn’t meet him at Bunbuni either.

On Monday, August 17, a US Embassy team arrived from New Delhi to meet K.K. Indoria, Superintendent of Police, Kullu. The team, which included an officer of the diplomatic security service of the US Department of State, had come to inquire about the Amichai case.

Twenty-four-year-old Amichai is the 19th foreign tourist to have gone missing in Kullu (mostly from Parvati valley) since 1992. That’s an unsettling statistic for a tourist haven that is called the ‘Valley of Gods’, whose valleys and ridges offer a favourite setting for trekkers and tourists. Apart from the list of missing foreigners, official government records say 57 foreigners have died in the region between 1998 and 2009. Most of these deaths are attributed to accidents or drug overdose. But there have been murders too. Like that of Martin Young, a British national who died in a murderous assault in 2000. Similarly, Alessandra Verdi’s death in 2001 was described as murder. The Italian tourist’s body was recovered from the Parvati river bank. More:

[Image: Fabrice/Travellerspoint]