“I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from. We got tons of history lying about the place, big old castles, and they just get in the way. We’re driving — ‘Oh, a @#$% castle! Have to drive around it…’ Disney came over and built Euro Disney, and they built the Disney castle there, and it was, ‘You better make it a bit bigger, they’ve actually got them here… And they’re not made of plastic!’ We got tons of them, because you think we all live in castles, and we do all live in castles! We all got a castle each. We’re up to here with castles! We just long for a bungalow or something.” — Eddie Izzard

On the shore of Loch Gur

“Have a nice time, people said to me at my send-off at South Station. It was not precisely what I had hoped for. I craved a little risk, some danger, an untoward event, a vivid discomfort…” — Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express

Since I have developed a habit of traveling in the last few years, people often have asked me, “So, where’s your next trip going to be?” In the course of my answer I used to say that I would go to Europe when I got old — better to get the dangerous countries out of the way while I was young and agile.

Continue reading "Travels With Valentine" »

Posted by Joe at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nizam-ud-din's shrine, Delhi.

Since I was unemployed, I was mercifully spared inquiry into my salary. His name was Basha. He asked me where I went to school -- Florida, I replied.

"India is very poor country, we are having no education. Only two states are education giving, books giving, teaching giving. Kerala and Chennai, in Tamil Nadu are educaton giving. Many states, but others no, only Tamil Nadu, Kerala."

I nodded in agreement. I'm not sure if he was strictly accurate -- that no other states provided education -- but those two southern states had a reputation for being well educated.

Continue reading "Delhi, The Sikhs, and the Tibetans" »

Posted by Joe at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In the fourteenth century, two Telugu princes founded the city of Vijaynagar on the shores of the Tungabhadra river, near the modern village of Hampi in what is now central Karnataka. The city grew, and by the early sixteenth century it was the capital of one of the most powerful empires in the subcontinent.

After a bumpy rickshaw ride from Hospet, the closest railway station, I had to agree with the Telugu princes: if there was an empire to be founded, this was an idyllic place to do so.

Continue reading "Hampi" »

Posted by Joe at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hari studies the Genetics lesson of the day.

As we walked up the stairs to his parents’ second story flat, Hari turned to me and said, “You know what to say, right?”

“Uh, namasté?”

“Namasté, Auntie.”

This made sense; Hari had just instructed me when he and his father had picked me up at the train station that I should call his father “uncle”. This was the rule in India; everyone called their real aunts and uncles by the Hindi (or Telugu or whatever) words for those relations, and so the English words were used for all other elders. To me, it seemed like a little bit of a betrayal to my real relatives in the United States, but I got used to it in time, particularly after I figured out that older people, who usually have the most photogenic faces, were more likely to let me take their picture if I greeted them with “Namasté, Auntie” or “Namasté, Uncle”.

Continue reading "Hyderabad" »

Posted by Joe at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bull walking down the street, Madurai.

From Kodaikanal I went to Madurai. I left one of my favorite pairs of pants in the United States, and after learning it was possible to get a tailor to make a pair of pants to your description, I was eager to get them recreated in India. I asked them to make me the pants, with a gusseted crotch (a “joint”, the Tamil tailors called it) pockets on the sides, velcro fly and a drawstring waist. They offered to make the pants, as well as a shirt that I wanted for my father, for thirty dollars. I walked away to the next place selling fabric, only to discover that it was a cartel: they worked for the same man, had the same fabric, and the tailor from the first store, a diminuative man who had just taken my measurements, patiently and quietly followed me. But my action had the intended effect; they brought the price down to 1100 rupees, twenty-two dollars. I agreed, and picked it up the next day, and by and large they had done a good job. The price was a bit high, but they spoke good English and now I could take the pants to any tailor and say, “Here, copy this!”, which is more straightforward than trying to describe what you want.

Continue reading "Madurai to Ooty" »

Posted by Joe at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Busses passing each other on the way to Munnar

The bus ride from the plains of Kerala up to Munnar took my breath away: partly from awe at the view out the window, and partly from fear that the bus would drive off of the precipice that followed the right hand side of the road. Munnar in a town in the Western Ghats, the mountains that follow the southwestern coast of India, and is home to some of the highest tea growing estates in the world.

The road leading up to Munnar, like all of the roads in the Ghats that I have seen, was narrower than most American driveways and full of potholes. When it was necessary for two of the battered Kerala State Road Transportation busses to pass each other, their diesel engines would drop to a gutteral growl. The downhill bus would pull halfway off of the road and halt, and the uphill bus would slowly nuzzle past, less than a foot away. In some cases, there was no room on the shoulder for the downhill bus, so it would have to slowly, slowly back up, with the uphill bus following, until it could make way. Out the window the trunks of palm trees, less than a foot thick, rocketed up a hundred feet from the valley floor, exploding into a green burst of leafy fronds. Far below them short shrubby trees grew like oversized broccoli.

Continue reading "Munnar" »

Posted by Joe at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Snake charmer in Fort Cochin, India.

The weather in Fort Cochin is Floridian, and the geography mimics the Bay Area. The air is warm and muggy, and the waters are clogged with water hyacinths. On the Eastern bay, analogous to Oakland, is Ernakulam, which is industrial and has large boat loading apparatus that look like the Imperial Walkers from Star Wars; Fort Cochin is a San Franciscan peninsula to the west, which was settled first and has most of the tourist attractions.

I found a place to stay in Ernakulam, and took the boat across to Fort Cochin. The boat ride across cost five cents, for a ride in a long wooden boat that holds about forty people, with an inboard diesel engine. Upon arrival, I went first to Addy’s Restaurant, which was about a two mile walk from the pier; it got high marks from the guidebook — something that Addy himself was obviously proud of, since he had xeroxed out the guidebook entry, blown it up several times, and posted it on the door. I walked in, and found that I was the only customer. The owner, Addy, and his friend, Brian, were the only other two people there.

Continue reading "Fort Cochin" »

Posted by Joe at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)