Of buses

I'd forgotten about bus travel in this country - they don't charge one quarter of the price and allow 14 hours of travel time for nothing.

Indian roads have improved unbelievably but better roads do not quieter drivers make. The trucks and other buses and other vehicles with horns didn't simply poof or shush- they moved onto the highways a-beeping too. And we fended off ALL of them last night - our driver sort of sat on his horn and that's how we made our way north.

His horn-leaning energy was fuled by chai, which we stopped for every few hours. Chai on Indian roads comes from 24 hour, florescent lit, invariably turquoise, dabbas - Indian chai and cheap eats places frequented by bus drivers with midieval bathrooms. Wherever and whenever we pulled over to one, no matter if it was the 9pm chai stop or the 4 am one, out we emerged. Whole bus disembarks, another 15-20 for the whole bus to re-embark, head-count, locate the straggler and we're off again.

No one paid the least attention to me. Not even a "madam from which country". They were in family pods, I was in my personal space bubble - so it was. Maybe Maharashtrians and Bengalis are more/chatty curious?

Anyway - all worth it to arrive here this morning and find the air cean, the fumes minimal and escapable and temp near perfect. In a valley and, all around, snow capped peaks.

For real, this was worth it. Now need to get my bearings.

Love from Vashisht (backpacker hangout) across a small river from Manali

Final gossip

For those following, Brad and Angelina announced they'd adopt an Indian baby.

Of course.
About time.
I was going to wonder what on earth was un-lovable and un-adoptable about Indian babies if they hadn't.

C - cut, no more gossip

Bobble heads and oranges

What they were selling through the bus windows last night, at the intersections way, way outside of Delhi:

A tray of bobble head dogs, various sizes.
A plastic kashilnikov
Oranges.
Salty snacks in baggies.
Puris

C (reporting bus-side but with non-matching photo)

The last week

It's flurried newness and movement for the first 2 weeks but now (8th hotel room), entering the last, I'm very ready to head home.

And see R.

And unpack in one place.

And have more than a pair of pants to choose from each morning. Wear my engagement ring and jewelry generally beyond a sports watch.

And stop washing my underwear each night. And hiding rupees in all my pockets.

Other than that though, full steam onwards and Manali is - once again - stunning this morning.

But I bet New York is too.

Love

C

Oddest wi-fi

From within the Jet Airways ticket office - on one of the high stools facing out. The only place I could find in the entire Jaipur Airport with a safe plug and, after much discussion with a large part of the airport's staff, managed wi-fo too. But now my much delayed flight is boarding...

So, I'm off (I think)

Again

C

Rajasthan in crafts

Yesterday a whirlwind of Rajasthani crafts - traveling out of Jaipur to the messy city of Sanganer.

Sanganer back story: Mogul ruler Raja Man Singh brought the Kagzis - a paper-making community that traces routes back to Turkey via China (!) - and planted them by the (then) clear waters of the River Saraswati to be his in-house paper producers. His go-to's for the sheaves.

Paper's still a-making there, though of a quality the great Mogul poets and calligraphers would have swooned for I don't know. Regardless of how many lumpy pieces of paper pressed with rose petals (I've always hated), each papermaker still claims generational links to those early guys. And then, because it's Rajasthan and crafts are the thing, the also standard spill-over Rajasthani crafts of blockprinting and pottery are also represented.

GOD is it painful to upload photos....

C

Finally, photos

Have a little window of wi-fi and battery - rare combo - and so a few photos to add some visuals to this dry stuff.

C (now leaving)

Eric Newby

Eric Newby, I understand, died today.

Almost missed in the Times of India - a spec of a photo and this:
"He struck out for Afghanistan armed with British resoluteness, a pair of new boots and an exquisite taste for the absurd."

His best known book - to which the quote refers - is A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Justifably famous and so self-effacingly modest that Newby shines as much as the incredible journey.

Then there's Slowely Down the Ganges - possibly even more wonderful and warm as Newby's accompanied by his wife Wanda and so we get two keen perspectives on India.

I never met Mr. Newby but did spend a night in the Eric and Wanda Newby room at Fairlawn in Calcutta. Just a little brass plaque on the door and some black and white photos of Newby on the staircase. (Sadly, he didn't appear in my dreams that night, perched on the bed's end to relate a tale.)

I've got lots of Newby quotes sribbled about - will find and get some up as a sliver of a memorial.

What a really wonderful man and writer - can't communicate anything more eloquent than to recommend all of his books.

C

Himalayas, perhaps

Tomorrow
(hopefully)

Stay tuned.

C - leaving this desert and heading for the hills

Solo travel is to diving

Me at almost high noon, Jantar Mantar, Old City, Jaipur

Sometimes, this happened the other day on the drive from Pondicherry to Chennai Airport for instance, I will take a step out and above myself and then get a little scared.
Not that the perspective reveals a perceivable threat.
It's just that all of a sudden I'll realize
I'm alone
in India
and I'll be emotionally winded.
Like when you're learning to dive (as still am) and you suddenly realize there's some 30+ ft separating you and the atmosphere that you know (and require).
But then it passes. And I return to my happy self, in an Ambassador car, overtaking buses that are overtaking trucks and we're all overtaking the rickshaws, whipping by rice paddies and copses of strange wispy pines, and I'm on my way to Rajasthan,
or wherever.
And I go back to being in me and the moment.
That's all.
(I toodled around Jaipur today, went to the marvelous Anokhi Museum of Blockprinting in a restored haveli and now I'll have some food overlooking the Mughal's pink city...)
Love to all everywhere.
C

Jaipur, airport

Reached the outskirts of the pink city a few minutes ago - long haul up here from Pondicherry but nice that things are dry again, pillowcase not clammy, pores take a break.

Got behind on hotels as I got on top of the airline bookings and now have to sort out a hotel for tonight and tomorrow. And one that wants me at 6:45 in the morning. And one on a street a rickshaw might know/I can pronounce.

Good news is, I'm here and - since shops can't possibly open for a few hours still - I have some sleep coming.

C in Rajasthan

Air deccan - opinion revised

Okay, I'm on a roll now - India's domestic airlines are fascinating me having, depended on them with this too fast trip. And they present a refreshing context from which to examine our own, flailing, carriers.

But that's for another post (another you may skip) - here, an ode to Air Deccan.

In a previous post I'd called Air Deccan "meek" based wholly on their up-thrust hand logo and tag line, "Simplifly".
I take those snide-isms back - I get it now.
Air Deccan is the people's airline, so their earnestness makes perfect sense.
As I roughly understand it:
Kingfisher Airlines is the high roller, a tiny bit flashy but knows how and where to get things done.
Indigo (haven't flown them yet but they have a very *wallpaper font/logo thing going) is the techster
Spice (also haven't flown but they're all color and zoom) is the hipster
Jet is for the arrived - the established but not rooted, the page 6-ers and the foreigners who had their entire trips booked from overseas.
Indian Airlines is for the stalwarts, the traditionalists, the old hands and the foreigners with travel agents unaware that there was another option.

And Air Deccan, bless its populist soul, is the civic minded ascetic, and the super cheap, book-as-we-go, foreigners.

Air Deccan's mission (crudely paraphrased here) is for every last Indian to emerge from his/her village, field, maligned territory and - by Air Deccans' extraordinarily low fares and thorough + far-reaching destination list (5 in the remote 7 sister states) - step aboard an Air Deccan aircraft and experience for themselves the fruits of these modern times.

Their mission actually talks about such goals.
They give you a free additional ticket if your flight is delayed.
I may be imagining but the folks on my flight seemed less hoggy with the bathroom, more polite to the hostesses (I felt guilt for taking extra toilet paper) - as if each inspired to keep in brusque step with this exemplary new thing.

Indian security is its own issues, Air Deccan's ground-staff not most charming, and we were just slightly delayed, but there was a clarity to their mode and, for the first time in some while, I didn't feel resented by the carrier paid to carry me.

C - chatty in Jaipur as I wait to hear from a hotel

Aspirational India

Sign (outskirts of Chennai):

Computer Education
Typerwriting, Tailoring
Personality Development

(Soup-to-nuts for the aspirational.)

C - still waiting on a hotel...

Thank yous

While stomache stays the course, rupees hold and no nation-wide strikes are declared, I wanted to say my thank yous.

(mostly not in order)

Ruslan, for emails that give me a secret smile and make me work hard and fast so I can hurry home (also his love, support, rings on my finger...)
KEEN all-terrain sandals - screwy-sporty to look at but doing job of 2 lesser pairs of shoes
Glue stick + moleskin lined 8-1/4" notebook - together allowing me to be a whirling sticky thing that collects and clips...
Bottled water - iodine tablets handy and plastic bottles evil, but stomach sacred and time short.
Underwear that dry over night.
Ceiling fans that do the drying
Timex ironman - watch, alarm, constant on my arm
Single serving, Rs. 1, shampoo packets sold at every Indian tiny shop
Bananas + papayas + pineapples = safe (peelable) fruit and always in season far as I can tell
Mom + Dad for linking me to Mother India, Dad for continuing his own affair with India, and Linds for still being here
William Dalrymple - for inspiring much much better writing
NYTimes.com - so I can keep a toe in it
Canon D70 - for being forgiving
Secret Platinum something solid - doubles as on-the-road perfume
LP India - hefty, oft-berated but when you need to know when the bus goes, invaluable
My great-great-great ___ for steering our genes into english-speaking waters. Navigating India in Japanese would be a bitch.

And to everyone who's still reading - especially to you.

Love and thankful C
(still in Pondicherry)

Pigeons, for Cin + Henry

Neither as prevalent nor as loud as its crows, pigeons are neverthless everywhere in India.

Taking this photo in Bombay the other morning, two guys who'd just purchased food for the pigeons stepped over when they saw me:

Pigeon lover1: Madame, are you not having pigeons in your country?
Me: Oh yes we have them. We just don't often feed them and most people speak badly of them.
Pigeon lover2: But madam why? They're so cute.

ahem.

So here's to pigeons Cin - and a piece that puts them in a properly romantic sort of light.

Up on the roof the men discuss the different breeds of racing pigeon:
the golays that fly low over the roofs, but in a perfectly straight line,
the fast and high-flying kabuli-kabooter,
or the slow but beautiful, fan-tailed nisarays...
- from William Dalrymple's City of Djinns (referring to an earlier book, Twilight in Delhi)

C
(Cin - hoping you pass on your love for them to your little H)

Monsoon Rains

Lonely Planet's got it gloriously wrong on Pondicherry.
NOW is monsoon, not in the summertime with the rest of India.
Pondicherry is IN a monsoon, as is the rest of the southeast as the monsoon completes its full circle of the sub-continent (coming first to land on the beaches of Kerala in late May).

Doesn't really matter or effect plans so much. Just means everything's never-quite-dry and the gutters more fragrant.

Either way, plans have pushed up a little and am off to Delhi this afternoon, then onto Jaipur tomorrow morning.

C – damply

Malabar to Coromandel

Reached - though walking spaced.

Traded in a Portuguese town for France's sole claim to India: the lovely but diminutive, Pondicherry.

Ambassador taxi + Kingfisher Air (more on them soon) + ambassador taxi + 4 hr bus + rickshaw and...

The tricky part of course was at the very end. In spirit of had-good-luck-till-now, optimistically directed rickshaw to L'Oriental. I gather I appeared dishevelled, (arriving by rickshaw is never a good start) and unlikely as a paying guest even with reservation, so - declaring themselves full - the front desk of L'Oriental gently directed me to a cement block (by the beach!) that's 1/4 of their price.

No matter. Sleaze for the night and, having secured valuables and brushed my hair, have found an even lovelier one that will have me and booked it for tomorrow eve and the next...the Villa Helena.

More once I've slept and absorbed east coast locale.

C

Little airlines of India

Like bunnies.

When I was in Pune (1998 - 2001), Jet Airways was the new kid on an airline block that had eaten or run out its previous upstart arrivals. A true competitor to the behemoth that is/was Air India/Indian Airlines (domestic + international arms of the same beast), Jet challenged Air India's years of market dominance that had rendered Indian airtravel neither sexy nor fiscally feasibile.

You took the train.

Then along comes JetAir with foreign trained management and a yellow rose for every female customer and flash new planes and India's a-flutter. Suddenly, flying's an option.

I imagined all the desk clerks, asleep for decades in the Air India main office in Nariman Point - a cavernous two-story affair with desks sort of wherever - dusting themselves off as they came to.

Now, Jet Air's as legit as they come, the choice of all - but the little upstarts are nipping.

I took a tiny, 5 plane, upstart to get here - GoAir (handsome website but professionalism begins/end with the site's design) and now have my choice of 5 or so, that I can book myself, on-line and with no huge financial slap for being a foreigner.

Favorites based on name/logo:
Kingfisher Air - owned, run and using the very same logo as the popular beer of the same name. Their matching motto: "Fly the good times." I fly them tomorrow to Chennai.
And the meeker Air Deccan whose motto "Simplify", and logo of upstretched hands, seems to represent a wholistic spa or aid group.

Stay tuned for which gets to booking Chennai - Delhi.

C - still in Cochin but wrapping up

Color, India

Checked in for my Chennai flight on Kingfisher. Eating cashews and drinking milk coffee and wondering what journey musak took to get here, and why.

Smart red jackets with brass buttons - sort of bell-hoppy - on all related to Kingfisher, lots of helping and handling of your luggage. No beer served on board, though the question got a smile.

And I'm off. Unscripted from Chennai airport to Pondicherry, by bus so must sort that out on arrival. Hope to check in this eve from the lovely Hotel de L'Orient. (or maybe not)

C

Smart jackets (no beer)

Checked in for my Chennai flight on Kingfisher. Eating cashews and drinking milk coffee and wondering what journey musak took to get here, and why.

Smart red jackets with brass buttons - sort of bell-hoppy - on all related to Kingfisher, lots of helping and handling of your luggage. No beer served on board, though the question got a smile.

And I'm off. Unscripted from Chennai airport to Pondicherry, by bus so must sort that out on arrival. Hope to check in this eve from the lovely Hotel de L'Orient. (or maybe not)

C

Fantasy

I've been in a different cafe for each post (especially speedy and tidy one at Fort Cochin's Post Office yesterday, currently generic airport chain).

Which means a different computer and logging in fresh to post each time.

Fantasy: I go to type fromacafe.blo...
and it autfills.

C – dreamin'

India's hat trick

(photo has nothing to do with this post btw, placeholder till the more relevant is downloaded and up)

Today is Ramazan (or Ramazan Eid) - the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan and fasting.

The field that was yesterday full of boys at cricket, abutting India's oldest church where Vasco de Gama was briefly buried, is this morning full of Fort Cochin's Muslims. They've been pouring in by rickshaw, car and foot, bits of carpet and seating cloths beneath their arms, kids in holiday best, to attend the celebration. The ladies walk to the field's far end and sit on the side closest to the church, blocked from the men's view by a plastic sheeting, the men take their seats before of the main platform.

It's an Indian hat-trick then:
Diwali began on Saturday, we're in the midst of it now.
Eid today.
Many of the shops I needed to visit in Mattancherry closed yesterday, their absent owners with names like Jose George taking the Christian day of rest.
And, for all I know, India's some 7 million Buddhists are up to something of their own.

Yes it's the land of a million languages, but it's the everyday overlapping of religions that's really stunning (when peaceable that is).

C (trying to get to Pondicherry today but buses booked with holiday makers of every persuasion)

Cochin and the Malabar Coast

Arrived last night.

(what shopping looks like here)

Fort Cochin (the tourist-ish area by the Chinese Fishing nets where every residence advertises homestay rooms, internet consisting of the single, family's computer, a cafe of a table), is looking fine this Sunday morning. Just so slightly more hospitable than Bombay.

Notes last night, in from the airport:
By Cochin airport's environs, you've started to believe in India's eventual neat-ification
Nothing here is seething as in Bombay, here there's a stillness - whereas in Bombay even rags have lives.
I might smell cardamon.
Crossing the bridge onto Fort Cochin, we passed a mahout aboard his elephant.
I did better for myself with this arrival and am met by a man with my name on a placard who leads me to a fine white Ambassador, its interiors sheathed in starched white cotton.

(None of which is to say that I do not like Bombay btw, it's just more of an exhausting and dirty challenge to love and I will continue cleaning it off my face for the next few days. )

C - off to the shops of Mattancherry

Happy Diwali

So begins, with many deafening bangs, the Festival of Lights.

This post would have gotten up sooner, and with more photos, had not others in this land of 1 billion wired-well-wishers also been on-line.

The internet was near-standstill.

Guess it's working now...AT THE AIRPORT. Yes indeed, our own terminals (JetBlue excepted) could learn a little wi-fi from Mumbai's domestic terminal.

I'm off to Cochin and 2 nights at this pretty hotel in Fort Cochin.

Love to all, divali firecrackers in all your chappals.

C

Jolie reprt

There was the much bigger news in India today. The waiters at Leopold's wanted to discuss the TATA take-over of Corus, which made them beamingly proud to be Indian as they gathered around my front page.

But there was also this...

From Diwali lights welcome Jolie, Pitt to Jodhpur in today's Times of India

Reporting that the Brad + Jolie crew are leaving Pune for 5 days holiday in Jodhpur, the writer prods the young pilot-to-be of the departing celebs:
"So what is flying a Hollywood personality like?"
He replies:
"I starched and ironed my uniform..the aircraft was thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, the seat covers changed and the cabin decked up with rose bouquets and plates of cookies and pastries - which, of course, were left untouched."

And though Brangelina's security team failed to get Pune airport's main entrance closed off, they:
"Nevertheless went around and picked on whoever appeared suspicious..."

Fresh gossip, one time only this is happening as special Diwali treat.

C

Addendum to this. In today's Times, and article on the frustrations of foreign filmakers in India. From it:
"It takes four days to get equipment cleared from the customs. If the foreign crew is informed about this and organises itself accordingly, lot of heartburn will be avoided..."

Bombay's fine

I landed in Bombay mid-day. Swirl, sweat, sharpen my reflexes to include all directions and now am installed in Colaba (south Bombay): at Bentley's Hotel and this internet cafe. With linolium partitions, still air and fellows like ashu_guddu1 it seeking a partner in matrimony (on-line) beside me, it's all coming back to me.

I'd worried from Dad's reports - from the world's actually - that India might have changed beyond recognition. That, improbably, the route in from Chattrapathi Shivaji International Airport - generally as good a re-immersion into India as one can hope for - might somehow have been rendered tidy and India's fullsome chaos contained and spirited elsewhere. This happened in Bangkok, arriving into Beijing. The world's cities (except New York City by way of Queens), are quite good at air-brushing your first impression.

No worries. Though the route's tidier, sprung with more billboards and congested with more cars with window-up-AC; still there are amidst it all bullocks, goats, rickshaws and papaya vendor carts.
Many fewer squatters on the route's edges, and ragged-wrapped hovels, but still the ladies squatted to sweep dust with twigs, a road-workers baby suspended in a bit of cloth from a tree branch, a garland for everything and everyone.
Marigolds and firecrackers and door-to-door chappal vendors and the immaculate ladies in saris and their male counterpart: the pressed gentlemen on black bikes in snow white lungis and well-creased topis.

Signs of ahead-moving from my taxi window appeared good vs. deadening - the portal-sponsored potted palms on the medians, a road with lines and lanes, though my driver used only hand signals.

The boys who sell books through car windows were touting:
Freakenomics
Blink ("by the author of Tipping Point, madam")
Inheritance of Loss,
The World is Flat
Something by (on?) Musharraf
How Opal Mehta got Kissed...

And it's hot as Bombay's so freakishly good at being seeringly hot. Heat-haze so thick you can't make out one end of the Queen's Causway from the other. Watch sweat trickle down the neck of my sidarjhi driver (I've chosen - some sweltering cheapness - to save @ Rs. 200 and not take an AC cab).

Tomorrow and saturday morning in Bombay then Cochin by Saturday eve.

Let the sourcing, and looking, begin.

Love

C (bombay-wallah-ish)

A sense of place

I can't transmit that India smell, or link-in a streaming soundtrack from amidst the stalls at Crawford Market. But, with last-year's photos, I'll try for one sense.

Fresh ones to follow. I'm toting all manner of camera-to-internet-cafe-computer-linking options, one's just got to work...

Bombay then

It doesn't seem possible, or even very timely, for a freshly engaged one - but in a few hours I'm off to India. The trip was planned pre-proposal, the trip goes on.

3 weeks of mother India - by road, rail and air - sourcing for Circa Trade (the new site should be live any minute).

In wishlist form, I'll hit the shopping highlights: Bombay-Bangalore-Cochin-Pondicherry-Ahmedabad (Gujarat's a maybe)-Delhi-Jaipur, more Rajasthan. If there's time and spirit after all that, I'll stop the sourcing and head north to Himachal Pradesh for exploring.

The blog, of course, will follow. I go with laptop, 2 cameras, batteries and adaptors and drives.

I go with a less-tempting/blingy ring on my ring finger as the actual one gets resized.

I go with R's love and understanding that this is a part of my odd make-up. Maybe not a favorite part that would take me so far for so long, but a part nevertheless. (He gets me that way.)

So - from the road then; and fromacafe becomes, again, a travel log.

Love to all

C