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I bet those mountains look fantastic behind all that fog . . .

About two weeks ago, I arrived in K

olkata. For many travelers, Kolkata is the first port of call on arrival in India, just like Bombay was for me nearly three months ago. Kolkata earns its reputation for rampant overt poverty, but that doesn't distinguish it from other Indian cities. Newly arrived foreigners can't hide the fish-out-of-water expression on their faces. While I find the presence of children on the streets shocking, I've built a wall around my natural reaction to seeing deformed, grotesquely handicapped people on the sidewalks, or kids lathering and washing themselves at the street water-pump, and most disappointingly, mothers carrying babies tugging at my shirt growling out "baba" (friend) for rupees. For the latter, long ago I decided it was wrong to give money in those situations, as I'm as likely to incentivize them to have another baby to increase the shock factor, which they're well aware of. Stories abound in many cities of "begging syndicates" which transport the destitute to a tourist location for the day, then return them to their street after taking the bulk of the day's reap.
For all this, elusive New India is still out there, just primarily in the suburbs, (residences, offices and all) save for cultural islands in the dense urban areas.

Kolkata's been hot, so after some requisite sightseeing, I boarded a train for Darjeeling.
Darjeeling is a foggy mountain town in the same state, West Bengal, as Kolkata. It's a hill station - one of 50-100 high altitude townships throughout India chartered under the British Raj as a cooler refuge for British servicemen from the energy-draining heat of the lowlands. Walking into this town, it's like stepping out of India completely. For starters, the bulk of locals are of Nepali descent (actually Ghurka), with smatterings of Tibetan. Prices are much lower for all manner of food, lodging, and clothing, and yet the residents enjoy a standard of living far above the Indian average I perceive in the cities. Deservedly there are a lot of foreigners soaking in Darjeeling and environs, and more Americans than I've encountered elsewhere in India altogether (this means I met at least three there).

One thoughtful British traveling companion convinced me to visit the nearby mountainous but tiny state of Sikkim with him. Like the Darjeeling area, Sikkim is also completely distinct from the rest of India. It's composed mostly of, well, Sikkimese who have more east asiatic look, but also Nepali, and Bhutanese. Seeing so much greenery around me, I joined a trek here in the foothills of the Himalayas. In two days of hiking, I had justified every piece of warm weather clothing and outdoor equipment I had been lugging around with me all this time, including a sleeping bag, an inflatable mat, two sweaters, a (fantastic) North Face jacket from a good friend back home, a water filter, and . . . socks. (Elsewhere, you just don't need socks when you're gallivanting around such a warm country in sandals). All in all, I spent most of two weeks in the mountains trekking, sightseeing, or just plain hanging out. I didn't leave loaded with tea leaves - I actually don't like pure Darjeeling tea for being either too bitter or too bland. It's better mixed with other flavors and spices which I leave to the good folks at Unilever (Lipton) in Sri Lanka and Twinings and Bigelow in London to accomplish.

One thing I learned about the residents of the mountain areas, they like to go on strike a lot. Often this is couched in a protest for autonomy from India or to create a new Indian state. But my read was that they just like to collectively bring the entire local economy to a halt, going so far as to stage a hundred-plus person sit-in in the middle of the only street traversing town, deranging everyone's travel plans and overall costing a lot of people a lot of money. Depending on how you do the accounting, the strikes have cost me anywhere from $100-200 US for the alternative plans I had to come up with. (In retrospect, I think I understand now why the residents enjoy such a high standard of living amid otherwise low prices . . . ) I encountered strikes in Sikkim, Darjeeling, and Silguri, an important waystation to reach Darjeeling.

My time in India is coming to a close. I'm back in Kolkata, and tonight I'm flying for Shanghai, followed by Beijing a week and a half later. Time is getting on, and I have to go to the airport soon, so I will sign off. To my resident and foreigner friends who I met while traveling in the country who follow the blog, our discussions and shared experiences have made my time here thoroughly meaningful, and I know I will be keeping in touch with you going forward. I will hope always that we can make our paths cross again. Cover photo: These are advanced level engineering book. In the US you'd find them at a technical bookstore in a university town like Palo Alto or Cambridge, MA. You would be hard pressed to find them to this technical depth in your local Borders / Barnes & Noble. Yet I took this photo in a small bookstore in Siliguri, a small stopover town on the way from Calcutta to Darjeeling. I could have taken this photo throughout many parts of India, so I'm only doing homage to West Bengal's (the Bengali's)literary culture by highlighting the books here. The books may or may not be counterfeit, but only as facsimiles, not errors of ommission or commission.

Tamil Nadu

Outside India, Kanyakumari is rightly known for its beautiful sunsets. (Within India, Hindus come from all over the country to worship at a famous temple here, and Tamils celebrate the memory of a famed ancient poet immortalized in a colossus-like statue emerging from the water). For its location on India’s southern tip, the town probably should be equally renowned for its sunrises over the water. Of course, being the generally nocturnal person that I am, I couldn't be bothered to catch the sunrise, but the sunset was out of this world. Having made my way around this land's end, I'm now making my way up India's east coast.

North of Kanyakumari, Pondicherry was India’s only formerly French colony. So let’s do some math here: During the Raj, Britain controlled some 1.3 million square miles of India. With Pondicherry, the French managed to squeeze out a little less than 200 subcontinental square miles. I think it’s clear who won that particular game. What was the deciding factor? My theory: Cuisine. Have you ever tried British food? They’ve needed all the spices they could get from the East, and so were keen to get an early advantage in colonization. Meanwhile, the French were only too happy to continue farming their fertile home landscape to achieve their vaunted regional tastes. Like I said, it’s a theory, but I’ve found that much of the French psyche can be traced through their stomach.

Pondicherry is one of just a few cities in India that is laid out like a grid. The French quarter of the city has a very European feel to it, and is quite pretty and inviting. Historically, under French rule the Tamils were not even allowed into this neighborhood! Elements of French culture are only sporadically manifested: For example on the one hand, social welfare offices and other government bureaus proliferate throughout. However, French speakers, whether ethnically Tamil or otherwise, are mildly prevalent even in this quarter. At least the continental food in the trendy, posh restaurants is fantastic and authentic. While I’ve been sticking to vegetarian food for health reasons since leaving Bangalore, I made an exception in Pondicherry when I noticed my drool on the menu listing for coq au vin.

A stone’s throw from Pondicherry is the small utopian venture called Auroville. Auroville’s history dating from its founding in1968 is tied to a famous local ashram that is still very active today. The founders wanted to create a settlement that was independent of any nation’s sovereignty. Today, Auroville is a pioneer in alternative energy technologies including solar water heating, photovoltaic system deployments, water filtration, and wind power for electric and mechanical applications. The specialized cooperatives engaged in manufacturing these systems, which together contribute an important part of Auroville’s small export economy, count both small villages and urban homeowners throughout India as their customers. A busy greybeard engineer I talked to leads one of the cooperatives, drawing from thirty years of experience developing wind and water systems. The original intent of these systems was to sustain the settlement before they became a source of commercial gain for the community. He arrived in town when he was twenty.

Auroville’s technical prowess has a funny way of mixing with the village’s spiritual identity – for example, in water filtration, the final processing step (after a series of conventional steps such as reverse osmosis, UV and ozone treatment) resembles, as best as I could ascertain, a spiritual pep-talk for the water. No complaints here – the water was delicious.

The Auroville excursion also marked my first rental of a geared motorcycle (i.e. not scooter). A new local acquaintance in Kanyakumari showed me how to ride his brand spankin’ new Hero Honda bike (with Yamaha-style paint schemes and all). It’s a lot like driving a manual car – clutch, neutral, gears one through five . . . but no reverse =) . As I was riding back to central Pondicherry from rural Auroville, I wound up in the middle of rush hour Indian traffic (this kind of traffic is truly its own phenomenon). And so with my dilettante motoring skills I had to dodge oxcarts, rickshaws, cargo lorries, family-bearing scooters, and most importantly, buses whose rash drivers must in fact be closet philosophers; having clearly pondered the Hindu sense of fatalism to its extreme, they have absolutely no fear of death. During one close encounter with a few tons of mobile steel, it occurred to me that my trusty laminated medical insurance card, while eminently useful both logistically and financially when unfortunate circumstances befall (a comfort which in turn enables me to rent motorcycles in the first place), doesn't actually repel these hulking vehicles from merging into the modest square meter of road that I occupy.

Further north still on the way to Chennai, I reached Mahabalipuram, a town with temples and carvings in excess of one millennium old. The carving skills remain with the inhabitants today, many of whom make a living selling small statues of gods made of green granite and marble. My favorite: Ganesh, the god with the elephant’s head, kicking back and tapping away on his laptop.

Now I’m in Chennai, formerly Madras. The city is far from tourism-focused, and from a budget-traveling point of view, costly to get around, so after visiting the century-old markets of Georgetown and hitting some of the widest beaches in the world, I’ve decided to hunker down to do errands in preparation for the upcoming leg of the trip (in two weeks!) to Shanghai via Hong Kong. The highlight of my stay here was actually an evening spent with the local family of a friend living in California, particularly the impromptu course in cooking and Hinduism they gave me!

Tomorrow I’m headed to West Bengal starting in Kolkata. Looking forward to lots of fish – shortly after it will be time to justify all of the warm clothes I’ve been carrying around with a visit to Darjeeling!

Tying up Kerala

Kovalam's beachfront boardwalk.

Since the backwater trip, I’ve now seen the beach towns of Varkala and Kovalam. Varkala is mostly a backpacker and long-term stay hangout. Kovalam is more of a (small) package tourist resort with mostly older folks from Britain.

Earlier in Cochin, I had taken an Ayurvedic massage – I came out of it feeling quite pummeled. Not knowing whether I had a sufficiently authentic experience, I was naturally left with no choice but to take a second Ayurvedic treatment! This time I took it in Varkala, and the provider came highly recommended. Well, the second massage beat the pants off the first, what with the masseur walking on the back and all. Also, in this case there were often two masseurs working synchronously on either side of me.

In Kovalam, I was gratified to discover actual, intact surf boards! As far as I can tell, these are the only surf boards, rented out by the only surf instructors, in all of India. (With any luck I can prove myself wrong in coastal Madras). The waves in Kovalam are ideal for learning - for example, it's hard not to catch a whitewater wave. As of yesterday I've graduated from long boards to midsize boards. And I even managed to get up on a short board! I'm really working on catching the open face of a wave instead of whitewater now. Among other things, it requires my weight to be centered further back on the board. If I didn't have the itinerary clock ticking, I would stay in Kovalam for a week to continue practicing, since it's cheap living here. ($4 a night plus $3 x 3 meals on average.

Now I’m making my way to Kanyakumari by bus. This town is located at the southernmost tip of the country, where three seas – the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal, meet by convention at one point. Shortly after, the formerly French colony of Pondicherry is begging to be visited.

Maybe if I disable this ship's propulsion, we can maroon ourselves here for a long time . . .

I'm writing from the Keralan backwaters. The waters are a network of navigable freshwater canals, running up and down the Kerala coast just a few miles inland from the ocean. The guidebook Lonely Planet calls a houseboat trip along the canals “one of the top 10 things to do before you die”. Looking out over the palm trees lining the banks, after having sipped coconut juice (and looking forward to a coconut-coke-rum I’ve dreamt up) I find it hard to disagree.

I’ve rented a two bedroom houseboat on behalf of myself and two British I befriended since arriving in the state. The vessel includes a kitchen with chef, captain, and engineer. For our funds, we’re served excellent local style meals plus tea, coffee, and water as we like throughout the day. It’s been outfit as an eco-friendly boat, boasting twice the fuel efficiency of its competitors, with all on board amenities plus sewage treatment to boot. In other words, guilt-free, pleasant-as-hell travel.

(…)

It is night now – I’ve just come from seeing one of those sights that make me wish I had a $1000 camera. I’m on the upper balcony deck with the Brits sipping our coconut-coke-rum under a near full moon. Mist is climbing over the water, and looking down the canal, the rows of palms that line it seem to point the way forward, towards an unforeseeable but desirable destination.

Earlier in the evening as our boat was docked, we walked along rice-paddy fields. I saw simple but effective irrigation pump stations in action, maintaining the water level for optimal growing conditions. Like many Keralites (Malayali), the locals were very friendly and warm, and after having spent the better part of a week in the state, I’ve learned to respond to their overtures with genuine affection and not distrust. At this time two kids treated me to an impromptu tour of the rice-reaping and threshing operations. Of all things they could ask in return, they wanted pens – simple, functioning, ballpoint pens. It’s not that they don’t have access to cheap pens of decent quality – those are readily available in most markets today. Instead, in recent decades the Malayali government began putting an extraordinary stress on education and literacy, but the young people often lacked quality pens with which to practice their language,
Malayalam. (If you had 56 letters in your alphabet, you’d need to practice them a lot too). With the tourism through the backwaters, the kids along the banks years ago learned to ask for pens of foreign (quality) origin from the travelers, who were only too happy to oblige. In recent years, locals now have relatively easy access to these kinds of amenities. But the cultural valuation of pens stuck, and so the kids continue to ask for them, still perceiving a stronger sense of quality (or maybe just style?) with foreign-made pens. I was only too happy returning to my boat to forage through my luggage for the ballpoints I was never using, continuing a tradition nearly two-decades old.

For their trouble, the Malayali boast a 97% literacy rate, which pretty well smokes the competition in every other Indian state. If I ever felt a sense of despair for peoples’ livelihoods driving past the most wretched slums of Mumbai, then here instead I see unabashed aspiration and sustainability. It’s refreshing for someone who needed to see it.

Tomorrow morning the captain will drop me at a highway that crosses the canals, where I will catch a bus to Varkala beach. More upcoming destinations that are likely before next post are Trivandrum and Kovalam.

First distilled ruminations . . .

I wanted to post some lingering thoughts I've been able to distill through recent conversations with folks back home.
First, on Bangalore, since I've recently closed up shop there, and catering to the engineers among you - The city's got a lot in common with Silicon Valley, venture capitalists and all. However as an economy they still rely on innovation, direction, and income from places like the valley. The startups I've encountered are engineering services oriented, not making IP from scratch. It's true that I've read that new technology / web app startups of the type that proliferate Silicon Valley exist in some quantity in Bangalore, but the engineers that I meet and articles I read in the everyday reflect the former (services) variety much more, so I have to believe that it's the more important sector. The eagle-eyed among you may imagine there's a selection bias in the locales of the city that I've seen. This is possible, but I think it unlikely.
Then regarding social observations: I find it educational to see what life is really like on the ground, since all I ever really knew about India is through the lens and pen of media (both Western and . . . Bollywood), and through friends who are originally from the subcontinent, but who can only realistically represent a small fraction of the population, speaking either of economic or demographic backgrounds.
I've come to realize is that India is not one country in the sense that the US is one country. It's better compared to Europe for the sense of disunity in place between people from different states of the country. It would be hard to blame anyone for this - If folks in Oregon and Nevada spoke and wrote in a completely unrecognizable language to us in California, we'd have a hard time relating to neighboring states as well. (Except given India's geography, it would be more accurate to use states like New York and Pennsylvania to highlight the contrast of culture vs. distance in comparing the US and India; the density of Indian states resembles more New England than the spread out West Coast.)
As a general travel update, I've visited my first palace! It was in Mysore, and it was . . . big. I'm afraid I don't have much to add on that. Whatever you can imagine when you hear the word "palace", is probably not far off. At least rely on your vivid imaginations until I can post photos.

Back to Backpacking

I've just concluded my (first) stay in Bangalore. The city's ubiquitous technical industry and cosmopolitan attitude have hit close enough to home that it's not hard to imagine returning in the future. Feeling comfortable with the number of inroads I made into the engineering community, I decided it was time to move further south.
I'm in Mysore now, three hours southwest of Bangalore by bus, which means I covered all of 70 miles. This is about the number of miles between San Francisco and Morgan Hill, a drive which normally takes as many minutes to complete. Distances mean a lot more in India than in the States. Naturally, urban distances are doubly more difficult to traverse. In traffic-clogged Bangalore, even if you have twenty minutes to make it to a meeting just 2 miles away, God help you.
As I write I'm in a budget hotel near Mysore's palace, on the Internet through my phone's crawling data connection. I watch as the mosquitoes in the room stealthily grow fatter at my expense. It's time to invest in a mosquito net, as soon as I can find one. In the meantime, I'm applying liberal amounts of the dwindling supply of bug repellent.
After so much time spent in cities, I'm trying hard to see the more remote palaces and temples. It's a challenge for someone who would much rather visit the local museum of industrial history. I'll scratch a few must-see religious sites off my to-do list before heading to Kerala for a week of surf lessons followed by lazy houseboat rides down the network of backwater 'highways'.