I have been tagged...

Confused Rambler shared his biggest quirks with the world (or the few odd people who read his blog) and has tagged me to do the same. I have no clue why I am doing this, but here goes...

1. I love stationery !! I can spend hours in the store browsing through all sorts of writing material - notebooks, paper, envelopes, diaries, pens, pencils...ya especially pencils :)
2. I make a detailed agenda during vacations which of course we never follow. But even the act of making an agenda is so fulfilling
3. I dont like the feeling of weightlessness that comes with amusement park rides, planes etc.
4. I DETEST bass sounds because it makes me restless and uncomfortable. I have a theory that the bass frequencies resonate with my heart and might cause it to explode. My theory has been rubbished and I have been ridiculed by my friends. But when has the world recognized greatness?
5. I dont answer my cell phone. It is for me to contact others, not others to reach me at will. Needless to say,
I never check my voicemail. Can someone tell me how to disable it?
6. I get cranky when hungry. So Abi ensures I am well-fed at all times

I think this should do for now. For my part, I am tagging Ink, quirky quill, meravablog and T to share their biggest quirks...

Japan Trip Pics

The 50 book challenge !

At the beginning of the year, I had set myself a target of reading 50 books this year, primarily to force myself back into the reading habit. Have read 33 to date and am slightly lagging behind my target vs. time elapsed !

Posting a wishlist of books I want to read before end of this year so that I dont get tempted to read trash and meet my target.

1. Undercover Economist (Tim Harford) - Currently reading. It is great economic reasoning in a very easy to read manner. It uses real world examples to explain economic theories. Unlike Freakonomics, the book explains key economic concepts starting with the value of scarcity and marignal cost vs. average cost.

2. End of Oil (Paul Roberts) - Just bought it in Bangkok a week ago. It is about the energy crisis, how real it is and what the implications are. I am not a very environment conscious person, hopefully the book can make me a bit more aware

3. Confessions of an economic hitman (John Perkins) - Highly recommended by Shrenik. The book is about the life of an economic hitman - highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.

4. India 60 (Edited by Ira Pandey) - Collection of essays as India matures into a 60 year old nation. Currently reading. Quite ordinary. But since I have invested time in it and the stress of finishing 50 books, might as well finish it.

5. Maximum City (Suketu Mehta) - Have heard my husband rave about book forever now. Intend to find out for myself what is so great about it.

6. Tao of Physics (Fritjof Capra) - Tried reading, gave up. Worth another shot. The book draws parallels between eastern mysticism and western physics. Quite involved, I dont even understand it sometimes.

Do let me know if you have recommendations for good books that I can read !

Book Review: The Algebra of Infinite Justice (Arundhati Roy)

‘The algebra of infinite justice’ is a collection of essays written by Arundhati Roy covering a range of issues – Nuclear weapons, nationalism, big dams, globalization, corporatization, America’s war against terror. Her opinions and essays are strongly leftist. I agree with some (America’s war against terror), strongly disagree on most (nuclear weapons, Narmada Andolan, Indian democracy) and dont even understand the rest (I dont know what the essay ‘the ladies have feelings so...’ was about).

Despite my disagreement with most of her opinions (I wont call them arguments, because they dont qualify as that) the book was an interesting read, mostly because her writing is very passionate and evokes a response from the reader - my response was mostly anger at her naivete and violent disagreement with her opinions. Though it did open my eyes to the perspective of a minority groups of freaks (she calls herself that...I didnt) on issues of global and local relevance.

That said, there is a lot that I dont like about the book

1. Her essays sound like emotional outbursts rather than a coherent, rational argument. Sample this – “The nuclear bomb (in the context of India’s nuclear tests) are the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, most outright evil thing...” with no explanation or context whatsoever. OR “India’s nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people”
2. Some of her essays also take a very patronizing tone like the reader is not capable of understanding governments’ hidden agenda, unlike her. For example - “Has anyone bothered to tell them (the un educated millions in India) that nuclear war has nothing to do with pride? Has anyone bothered explaining to them about Thermal blasts, radioactive fallout and nuclear winter?Are there even words in their language to describe it? Do they not matter at all? Should we treat them like cretins?”
3. It also doesnt help that she asks tons of rhetoric questions. I distinctly remember one page in the book which had only questions, which completely threw me off. In parts, It seemed like an exam question paper rather than an essay.
4. Though she has effectively raised issues (some non-issues), voiced dissent, asked questions and criticized the system, there is no attempt to suggest solutons for the same. Being an intellectual (she considers herself one), is the reader allowed to expect it of her?

To find faults, criticize, point fingers and rubbish the system are all easy to do. To understand the issue, its practical implications and identify possible solutions calls for a much more mature writer (and thinker) !

Overall, the book is an OK read for someone who hasnt read Arundhati Roy's political writing before, just to decide whether you agree with her or not. I most certainly dont!

Rating - * *

This is not going to be pleasant reading...

Not so long ago, I discovered that one of my wisdom teeth was looking black and had a pretty gaping hole (I had warned that it wasn’t going to be pleasant). After the initial shock, I decided a visit to the dentist was in order. Very optimistically, I expected him to do some general cleaning and say that my teeth are in perfect condition. I was also willing to pay him tons of money (alright whatever little that I have) to get this desired outcome.

I went to this clinic near my home for lack of knowledge of any better options. I sat in the waiting room flipping through some magazines and thinking about the time when I used to be scared of dentists. The idea of having unknown, sharp instruments in my mouth and a grim looking doc scared the hell out of me. But after a 4-year long orthodontic treatment with a great orthodontist, I began warming up to the idea of dentists not being bad people really.

Soon enough I was called in by a dark, skinny, Indian girl called Sheila. The dentist (I couldn’t catch his name, let’s call him Dr) came in briskly and said
Dr: What do you want me to do today?
Me: I am not sure (It is not for us ordinary people to tell doctors what to do. It’s for you to know!!) I think there is an issue with my wisdom tooth
Dr: What is the issue?
Me: It is black (Really, this conversation was bringing back all my fears about dentists)
Dr: Ok. Do you want to save it?
Me: Can you?
Dr: I am not sure
All of this conversation happened without even a glance at the tooth in question. There was now a huge pause with me not knowing if I made the right decision coming here and the Dr wondering if there might be some merit to examining the tooth after all.

Sheila tied a small white napkin around my neck in the way that you do for kids before their meal. She made me wear dark glasses apparently to shield my eyes from the bright light above. But I felt more scared then ever with the world around me in gloomy sepia colours. We all resigned to the fact there was nothing left to do now but examine my teeth. Dr and Sheila had a conversation about my teeth like I wasn’t present.
Dr: I see what she means. It is black
Sheila: Yes
Dr: I can fill the hole and save the tooth. But she will have to come back in 6 months get it extracted
Sheila: Ok
Dr: (mumbling) The wisdom tooth is at a difficult angle. All of them actually
Sheila: What
Dr: Nothing, keeping myself busy. Bring me the pliers (it could have been a different instrument name, but that’s how it sounded)

Stunned silence. Finally,
Sheila: The straight ones?
Dr: No that is different. Bring them all. I will teach you later (Oh my god, Sheila was a trainee and a pretty bad one at that!!)
Dr: (to me) What do you want to do now?
Me: Extract the tooth (removing my cool sunglasses)
Dr: All 4?
Me: Just 1 thank you
Dr: Which one?
Me: The blackest of the lot
Dr: Good
Dr: (to Sheila) Get the local anesthetic

Sheila got a small vial of something. I prayed hard for it to really be the anesthetic. I cringed at the sight of an injection.
Dr: (to me) Well, now that you have come here, you need to get dental work done. I am ok to do it without the anesthetic also
Me: Can you please tell me what you intend to do before poking my teeth with dangerous looking instruments? (I wanted to cry but I was putting a brave front)
Dr: (frustrated) Come on now, you have had braces before. I am sure you have got tooth extractions done. (Sheila nodded) I can’t really explain everything

Halfway through the process of extracting the tooth, Dr wanted the light to be adjusted because he couldn’t see clearly. Sheila tried unsuccessfully for a while to adjust the light. Then with a sigh, she realized she wasn’t going to be able to do it. Her face had an I-have-a-brilliant-idea expression and she began twisting and turning my face till she got the angle that she wanted for the tooth to be well-lit. Now, I was not only wearing a baby napkin and random sunglasses but my face was also twisted in an angle that I didn’t know was humanly possible. She looked triumphant. I didn’t have the heart on energy to tell her that she was an idiot! Dr probably felt my contribution to this process was not enough, so he made me hold a couple of instruments.

The tooth finally same off and Dr asked Sheila to get some surgical mask (it is a tar coloured gel which needs to be applied on the affected area). Sheila got a red tube. Dr shook his head and said surgical mask. She got a blue coloured one now and he shook his head ever more vigorously. Finally, they both went to a drawer full of medical creams/gels/lotions and he made her name everyone of them. The only one she didn’t know was the surgical mask. I wanted to be reassured that everything would be fine.
Me: There isn’t going to be a lot of blood, right?
Dr: Come now, we are all educated people (Sheila nodded). If there is a tooth extraction there is going to be blood and pain. This is surgery, not a minor cleaning.

I nodded, clutched my painkillers and ran out.

Book Review: King of Bollywood SRK (Anupama Chopra)

Its so blah ! I dont even know why I read it...

Avoid !

A day at Desaru beach, Malaysia

Last weekend, we went to Desaru – a beach in Johor state, Malaysia. We being Varun, Tara, Vishy, Abi and I. We had planned to stay overnight, but somehow all hotels in this fairly unknown beach were booked. Optimistically, we decided to leave from home at 7am in the morning and try to find a room in Desaru since we refused to believe that all rooms could be taken.

Abi and I had slept late the previous night. So when the alarm rang at 6am, there was no chance that I would get up. Abi being an early-bird made himself busy finding books to read during the trip, getting our passports ready and packing some clothes in a small little bag and eating breakfast. Periodically he would call out to me to get up. To get him off my back, I asked him to check if others had woken up, fully confident that everyone would have slept in. Apparently not, because 5 mins later he shouted for me to wake up with an edge in his voice indicating rising temper. I quickly began getting ready for the trip and putting a few clothes of mine in the bag. Soon I realized that I was putting in a lot of stuff in the bag but it just didn’t seem to get full. On closer inspection, I realized that Abi kept removing clothes as I added them in since he felt we didn’t need as many for a short weekend trip. We were in the middle of a heated argument when Tara called to say that they were on way to pick us up. So we just quickly filled the bag with whatever we could find and rushed down.

Abi appointed himself as navigator of the trip and prided himself on his sense of direction and brilliance in geography. To his credit, he had written down detailed directions (like "Take a left immediately after KFC and keep going straight") on a sheet of paper to ensure we wouldn’t get lost. Vishy had just finished reading Harry Potter the previous night and like a true Harry Potter fan he had a few unresolved questions in his mind. He wanted to discuss these unresolved issues with me since I had also read it. As we began to discuss it, Varun and Abi got irritated since they planned to read the book and we were breaking the suspense for them. Once Varun turned around to shut us up and the car swerved dangerously. Fearing our lives, we agreed not to discuss it anymore. Suddenly, I heard someone whispering to me. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was Vishy trying to be very secretive about the Harry Potter discussion. In a car with 5 people, whispering is bound to draw more attention than a normal conversation. Anyway, we only stopped the discussion when Vishy had asked all his questions, didn’t get satisfactory answers on some and decided to read the book again.

We were travelling on a narrow road and there were a few really slow-moving trucks in front of us. Varun got fairly frustrated with the slow pace at which we were crawling and overtook the trucks even though there was traffic coming at us from the other side. Tara, who was sleeping so far got fairly worked up at this and said “I will complain to Papa if you don’t drive carefully”. Varun (and all of us) were taken aback at Tara’s frenzy given that she seemed peacefully asleep just minutes ago. In any case, the outburst worked like a charm and Varun became the safest driver on the face of earth ever.

We reached Desaru without further incident and decided to hit the beach before trying to find a room. In any case the beach looked fairly empty, so we would get rooms easily. The weather was brilliant – cloudy with a gentle breeze. The water was a dull blue and the sky was a dirty gray. Vishy jumped into the water wearing track pants with 6 pockets (this becomes important later on). We had just reached the beach when high tide was beginning. We sat down at the edge of the water for about an hour with successive wave drenching us more than the previous. It had begun to drizzle now and soon we were the only people left on the beach. When the rain became heavier, we got up to leave. Vishy couldn’t get up since every pocket was filled with atleast a kilo of sand. Clutching his pockets, he ran into the privacy of the sea water to get rid of the sand while we had a good laugh.

As always, immediately after coming out of the seawater, we began to feel tired and dirty and needed a shower. The boys went to find a room, but couldn’t since Desaru was celebrating "family day" that weekend with 2000 families from all over Malaysia participating in the celebrations. I must say that these 2000 families were doing a very good job of hiding themselves since we couldn’t spot anyone for miles. We reconciled to the fact that it would have to be a day trip and we would have to find alternate arrangements to shower and change. After a long and painful search, we found a public loo where we paid 50 cents to shower and had the option to buy a soap and shampoo as well. The washroom's lights were turned off, but as soon as we paid up, miraculously the lights turned on. It might have been better to keep it dark since the light served to magnify the dirt and grime in the washroom. I entered to see small cubicles with built-in cement tubs containing stale water. There was no shower, not even a bucket or a mug. Just a rubber pipe connected to a tap. I was most upset. There seemed no way out of this. Just as I was reconciling myself to this reality, I heard voices from the other side of the cubicles. I walked around to the other side to find a row of showers. I had started rejoicing when noticed that none of them had a door. Flimsy curtains covered roughly half the entrance. After a hugely disgusting experience, we managed to freshen up. As I was coming out of the washroom, a strange Indian man walked in and my shock was mirrored on his face also. He gathered his wits sooner than I could and asked in a shaky voice "Ladeej toilet?” I nodded and he quickly ran out. There were 2 people at the entrance of the loo, but since this man hadn’t paid up for their special services (shower, shampoo, soap et al) they chose not to enlighten him that the men's washroom was on the other side.

We managed to find food quite easily and had a long lunch. It was now about 3pm in the afternoon and the rain finally stopped. So we decided to lie down on the beach and read for a while before leaving for Singapore. Abi read all of one word before he fell asleep. Vishy didn’t attempt to read at all, just lied still. Varun and Tara fought a losing battle with sleep and succumbed to it after a few minutes. I diligently read the depressing book I had got. Vishy periodically woke up from sleep to announce "I can’t sleep straight. I need to spread myself out, but Abi is taking up all the space". I felt like a school teacher trying to tell him that he had to make do with the space he had. After an hour we decided it was time to leave.

On our way back, Tara decided her cold had subsided enough for her to drive us back to Singapore. We reached Johor without any incident. We stopped at a petrol pump in Johor to fill the tank and suddenly felt like we didn’t want to go through the Woodlands checkpoint, we wanted to go to Tuas. Abi tried to rationalise it by saying immigration was quicker at Tuas. We asked the way to Tuas and drove in search of it for half an hour. At one point, we thought that we found the right way and Abi was quick to take credit for it. After a short celebration, we found ourselves driving down the same road that we had previously, heading towards Woodlands. Abi had failed at his job as a navigator and tried to salvage some pride by convincing us that both checkpoints were equally efficient and we should just head to Woodlands.

Vishy had just bought a new phone with a powerful camera, so he whiled away time by clicking pictures of himself. His eyes were closed in all pictures and he ruefully muttered "I wish I was photogenic". Abi quickly jumped up and said "I know how Filipinos manage to look good in pictures and I can teach you". Abi's technique was a 3-step process. (1) Tilt your head towards the camera as if you are going to get into it (2) Smile showing all (or as many as possible) your teeth (3) Slightly open the mouth to indicate extra happiness. This apparently also serves to open the eyes wider and make you look cheerful. One thing must be said about Vishy, he is a diligent student. He practised it a few times and then mastered the art. He strongly believes in this technique and is willing to teach anyone/everyone who is interested. He also has a pre-post photo to show that it works. In the spirit of being honest, I also tried the technique to find out what all the fuss is about. I have a couple of horrendous looking photos to show for my efforts. Hence it does not work for all. If you are still interested, Vishy is most certainly willing to teach.

We reached Singapore at 8:30pm, ate a quick dinner and crashed ! These day trips are really tiring..what say T?

Bihar Travelogue (Ekma - Varanasi - Chennai)

Ekma – Varanasi
I bought a ticket to Varanasi at the station. Wise from my previous experience, I got into a general (unreserved) compartment. There was absolutely no place to sit. So much so that some people tied their dhotis (spare ones, not the ones that they were wore) to rods in the compartment and grills on the window and made hammocks where they rested peacefully. The train stopped at every small station and was so slow that I felt like I could run along the train and keep up with it’s speed. The only empty space I found in the compartment was the overhead luggage carrier above the seats. I climbed up and waited for someone to leave so I could pounce on their seat. This was a foolish hope since everyone was well-aware that once they got up, they would never get to sit again. Hence everyone stuck to their seats like fevicol ka mazboot jod.

Reached Varanasi at 3pm. Incidentally it is the oldest living city in the world. Nana had spoken to his friend in Varanasi (who was a teacher at the Sanskrit University) to help me with accomodation and getting around the city. I took an auto and went to the Sanskrit University. I asked around for Mishraji, but no one knew him. I spent an hour unsuccessfully trying to find him and missed the view of sunset over the Ganga in the bargain. So I made my way to Dashashwamedh Ghat and got a room in a small hotel where I would be put up for 2 nights. Varanasi has a 7km long sweep of 100 bathing ghats which form the western bank of the river Ganga. Most ghats are used for bathing, but some are also used for cremating bodies. Dashashwamedh ghat is among the most sacred of them and it is believed that pilgrims who bathe here will have their wishes fulfilled. I freshened up and went to the ghat where the evening aarti was being conducted. After the aarti I sat by the banks of the river just admiring the majestic river, pious ghat and ardent pilgrims. There were people offering the pilgrims a boat ride in the ganga at night. I didn’t want to risk going for a ride at night on a rickety boat, so I made my way back to the hotel.

When I reached the hotel, it would have been around 9pm, but people were already fast asleep on the roads. I saw that the gates to my hotel were shut and locked with a heavy-looking chain and lock. I jumped over rows of people sleeping in front of the gate and woke up the watchman. He asked for my name, room no, identity and purpose of visit. After having answered his question, I was still subject to his curious gaze for a whole minute as if he was contemplating whether or not to let me in. Who would have expected such watertight security in a budget hotel like mine. Anyway, after some more cross-questioning he decided I was harmless and let me in. When I turned on the lights in my room, I saw that all sorts of creatures had made themselves comfortable while I was away - 2 lizards, 3 cockroaches and a few mosquitoes. I tried shooing them away but it didn’t seem to work, so I covered myself head to toe with a blanket, hoping that they would ignore me and continue to do their thing.

Next morning, I got up before sunrise and went to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. It is one of the most famous temples in Varanasi and is dedicated to Lord Shiva. Built during the reign of Akbar, it was partly destroyed when Aurangazeb built the Gyanvapi mosque at the same location. Today, the temple and mosque co-exist but this area has the potential to become an ayodhya-like issue. Hence there is a huge amount of security around this area. I reached the temple at 5am. They had just finished the maha-arti at 4am and opened the temple to public for darshan. I found a Panda, or rather the Panda found me. Panda is a temple official who can take you around the temple and explain its history, significance etc. As I walked around the temple, I definitely felt like it was a special place. My mind was calm, also because there were very few people in the temple at the time. At the end of my tour around the temple, the Panda asked me for thousand rupees as his fees for showing me around. I was completely taken aback. Then began a long process of negotiating with him. We finally agreed at 200 rupes since I convinced him I was a student and couldn’t afford to pay any more. The whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth. I came out of the temple to hear chanting at the river banks. This was the last day of my trip and I spent it sitting by the riverside.

Varanasi – Chennai
I had a return ticket to Chennai from Patna. Since there was no direct train from Varanasi to Patna, I took a train through Mulgalsarari and was on my way back home. This has definitely been one of my more interesting and fulfilling trips.

Bihar Travelogue (Hajipur - Ekma - Sitalpur)

Hajipur – Ekma
I didn’t have a ticket for this leg of the journey. So I went about looking for the ticket office. Got a ticket on an express train (Barauni-Varanasi Express). I waited at the platform for my train and had some 3 hours to kill. Quite suddenly, I felt weak and realized that I was running a fever. I sat in the shade and drank fluids hoping that I wouldn’t fall seriously ill. I remembered everyone advising me against going on the trip for fear of falling ill and suddenly felt stupid at not having listened to them and being more careful. After what seemed like eternity, my train arrived. I got into a reserved compartment which looked less empty than the others. I am a big believer in sleep and water being a cure for almost everything. So I found an empty seat and immediately dozed off. In sometime, I was rudely shaken awake by the ticket checker. Turned out, I had a ticket that only allowed me to travel in the unreserved compartment and I had gotten into a reserved, sleeper coach. I paid a fine of 200 rupees to continued rest of the journey. I was extremely embarassed at breaking the law but I couldn’t pause to understand this hierarchy in ticketing system in my delirious state. I dozed off again and remember being oddly comforted by the fact that rules do exist (and are enforced) in Bihar unlike what is given to believe commonly. Reached Ekma station at 3pm and my fever had subsided.

Ekma - Sitalpur
My maternal grandfather’s younger brother (called nana henceforth) had come to receive me at the station. He didn’t know which train I was coming by, just what time my train would arrive. After a bit of a search I located him. Since I was meeting him after a long time, he took me to a mithai ka dukaan to buy sweets. I ate some random sweet that was supposedly rasagulla. From Ekma, my village (Sitalpur) is a further 6-8 kms and the most common mode of transport is a tuktuk. Tuktuk in Bihar (unlike Bangkok) is a horsecart. I started moving towards the tuktuk stand but turned out my nana had got a cycle and had planned to take me to the village on his cycle. I was a bit skeptical about this, but it didn’t seem right to argue. So I balanced myself on the cycle carrier with a suitcase in one hand and a bag in the other. After what seemed like ages of delicate balancing act on a rough terrain under a scorching sun, I asked him to stop the cycle. I couldn’t take it anymore, my butt hurt like it had never before. My nana seemed sympathetic and after a short while asked if we could proceed. I hoped we were halfway to the village and asked him to confirm my hopes. Apparently, we had just cycled around the Ekma station and to prove his point, he pointed to the station building. I was most disappointed and tried to think of a way to get out of riding on a cycle. There was none so I resigned to fate and sat back on the cycle. On the way to Sitalpur, this incident happened atleast 5 times – me requesting to stop the cycle and my butt numb with pain, nana giving an update on our location and patiently waiting till I got back to senses, me getting back on the cycle hoping for the pain to end. Eventually, we did reach the village in one piece at 4:30pm when it was still quite hot.

The house was crowded with lots of people whom I hadnt met before. Again, no electricity. I thought it was a routine power cut but apparently electricity is available only during election times. Hence people hope for frequent elections. I freshened up and went on a small walk to the village temple. Everyone seemed to know each other and asked nana about who I was. He introduced me to some old friends. I visited a few relatives’ houses after sunset. They were drinking chai in the light of lanterns. As we were talking, I saw something move in the bushes. It seemed like a dog. But my nana informed that it was more likley to be a jackal, since there are a lot of them around the village and they move about during the night. That night I slept on the roof with some 15 other people since the house was stuffy. I fell asleep while trying to identify different constellations on this cloudless, still night.

Next morning, I went to the village market to buy vegetables and lazed around during the day after that. In the evening, a few children were playing cricket. I joined them and was made to keep wickets. It started getting dark and the children decided to go home but I hadnt got a chance to bat yet. When I asked them, they made excuses about how their mom would scold them if they didn’t return immediately and hence couldn’t wait for me to bat. In a matter of minutes, I was the only one left standing by the stumps, bat and ball having been claimed by their owners. So I went to the village and made a few STD calls from the lone phone in the village.

Sitalpur - Ekma
I had to catch a train to Varanasi from Ekma at 9am next morning. I somehow managed to convey to nana that I couldn’t possibly ride on the bicycle again. So we waited for the Trekker to come and pick us up. But the trekker was delayed and nana panicked that I might miss my train. He asked his son to get the bicycle since there wasn’t any other option. I was really scared and fervently prayed for the trekker to just appear. Seconds and then minutes passed with nana worrying about missing the train and me worrying about more immediate matters. I opened my eyes hoping to see the Treker, but saw the dreaded cycle instead. There really was no option now, my God had let me down. I climbed on to the cycle and immediately memories of the previous experience came rushing back. I could have cried. We reached the end of the road when suddenly the trekker miraculuously appeared. I quickly got off the cycle and hugged the trekker with a feeling of relief and happiness. I took nana’s blessings and was on my way to Ekma in a comfortable trekker.

Bihar Travelogue (Chatra - Gaya - Patna - Hajipur)

Chatra – Gaya - Patna
From Chatra, I planned to go to my maternal village, passing through Gaya and Patna en route. I had planned to take a bus from Chatra to Gaya and then a train from Gaya to Patna (distance of 90 km). At 5pm, I boarded a bus from Chatra to Gaya. There is a stretch of land just outside Chatra (on way to Gaya) which is a naxal area, hence unsafe to travel after dark. I had been advised by Dadi that in case the bus was looted I should just hand over all my belongings to them and I would be safe. It was on this route that choti dadi’s bus was looted. The naxals just stop the bus and everyone hands over whatever little they happen to be carrying on them. It is usually peaceful as long as you listen to them. Anyway, nothing of the sort happened with me.

Naxalites are radical, often revolutionary communists born out of a sino-soviet split in the late 60s. Their name comes from Naxalburi, a village in West Bengal, where they led their first revolution. Ideologically they believe in Mao and his peasant revolution. Today, they are still very active, with a strong-hold in Bihar-Jharkhand.

I personally feel that Naxalism is pure and simple terrorism which disguises itself with terms “class struggle” and “social justice”. Prime minister Manmohan Sigh has called out Naxalism as the single biggest threat in India, but nothing has been done about it.

I had an uneventful journey and reached Gaya at 9pm. There was a significant difference in the faciltities available for comfortable travelling in Ranchi and Gaya. Gaya is an important pilgramage place for Buddhists and 15-20,000 foreign tourists (mostly from other asian countries) visit this place in a year. I found a small restaurant near the railway station and ate leisurely. My train to Patna was scheduled at 2:30am. I had quite some time to kill before my train arrived. I made my way to the waiting room at the station. The waiting room was more than full and people seemed quite at home – some having their dinner, some spread blankets on the floor and were peacefully asleep and a few others made themselves comfortable on the chairs in the waiting room. I was reading my book and probably dozed off when suddenly there was a commotion. Apparently, one man hit another man in his sleep and it had become a full-blown fight with everyone in the waiting room taking one side or the other. I decided to take a walk for a while to avoid becoming a part of the fight. I found a tea-stall and had chai in the kulhad – one of Laloo’s PR activities during his stint as the railway minister. The only other people on the platform were a group of army men. I heard an announcement on the speaker that my train – Ranchi patna Express – was delayed by 30 mins. So I half-heartedly went back to the waiting room. Complete peace in the room as if the fight had never happened. My train finally arrived only at 5am in the morning. I stood at one end of the platform since my compartment was S9. When the train arrived, I realized I was at the wrong end because I was standing in front of S1. I quickly ran to the other end and found that there was no S9 in the train. I ran back the length of the train looking into each compartment expecting to see S9. By the time I reached S6, it was time for the train to leave. So I quickly got into it and hoped no one would catch me. Even though it was an exresss train it stopped at every small station. It took the train and me 5 hours to cover the 90 km journey.

Patna - Hajipur
Patna station is huge. As soon as I got out of the train, I saw a huge statue of Hanuman towering over the station. Patna city is on one side of the river Ganga and my mom’s village is on the other side. The river is about 4-5km wide here. To go to Ekma, I had to cross the river, but most trains don’t cross the river here since there are only a couple of railbridges built across the river. So I took a shared auto with 6-8 people and went to Hajipur (10-15km from Patna) from where I could get a train to Ekma. As we passed through the streets of Patna, I noticed banners of IIT/IAS coaching classes plastered everywhere. I even saw one stuck on a girl’s back but apparently her friends were playing a prank on her. Soon our auto started climbing an incline and houses along the road became fewer. I realized we were approaching the Ganga. Here we crossed the Mahatma Gandhi Setu, which is the longest roadbridge in India (4km). The sight of the Ganga was stunning. Since it was summer, the river was not full. Still it looked every bit the mighty river that it is. A strong wind was blowing and it was easily a few degrees cooler over the river than on land. As soon as we crossed the bridge, we reached Hajipur station.

Bihar Travelogue (Chatra-Tatra)

Chatra – Tatra
Chatra is in the northern part of Jharkhand and gained district status in 1991. Inhabitants are largely dependent on agriculture for subsistence. We have an ancestral house in Chatra called Lakshmi Nivas. This has been rented out now since no one stays in Chatra – ground floor to a Khadi Bhandar store and goldsmith, 1st floor to a doctor’s family. I asked around to find out where Lakshmi Nivas was. No one knew. But the city had only one main road. So I walked along the road. Some people on the way knew Khadi Bhandar and pointed me in the right direction. It was pretty dark now. Street lights on one side of the road were lit. I guessed that there was a power cut in one phase hence the lights on the other side were not on. I walked in the direction of the house thinking that Choti dadi would be so happy to meet me. She was in the village (Tatra) for Ram Navami celebrations (she travels from Calcutta to Tatra every year for this) and had come to Chatra for a day because she was told that she would be getting a phone call from Chennai and Tatra didn’t have telephones. She had no idea that I was on my way to meet and surprise her. Obviously she was thrilled to see me. There was a power cut in the house so we ate in the dark and slept early.

Next day, we went to meet some distant relatives early in the morning. Post-that, I had plans of roaming around the place. But the heat was oppressive during the day due to strong "loo". No one leaves their houses from 10am-4pm due to the heat. The heat also made me lethargic. I spent the day talking to Choti Dadi and reading the book I was carrying (Amitav Ghosh – Shadowlines). It was a fairly involved book and the heat made it impossible for my brain to comprehend most of it. So I gave up on it and slept.

At 4pm, when it was a little cooler, we got ready to leave for Tatra in a Trekker. A trekker is a shared Jeep that travels short distances - like from district to nearby villages. We settled ourselves in a Trekker that was about to leave. We got good seats and were fairly comfortable when it was announced that another Trekker was leaving for Tatra. Commotion all around as people scrambled to get good seats in the new Trekker. I guess its because most trekkers are filled more than capacity and the hour long journey can be fairly painful if you get bad seats. A tribal woman sat next to choti dadi and she was constantly cribbing about something. I was quite pained but none of it seemed to bother choti dadi. I wonder how she manages to travel in these conditions every year.

Tatra is about 18-20 kms from Chatra. Half the journey was on a state highway and the remaining on kuccha roads with fields on both sides. We reached Tatra at 5:30pm in the evening. Tatra village is a collection of 15-20 houses and a couple of temples. On one side of the village are the houses. Then there is the kuccha road that we were now walking on and a mountain stream on the other side. Across the banks of the river are the temples. In one of my previous trips to the village, I had jumped into the stream eager to try out my newly acquired swimming skills. I came out of the water with rashes all over the body and a high fever. Apparently, the water from the stream was used only to wash the cows and buffloes. This trip, water in the stream was barely a trickle given that it was peak summer season.

All families in the village are Dubeys. We passed a small colony of tribals who live just beyond the village boundaries. Ours is the first house in the row of houses that is Tatra. The house is in a state of disrepair and some distant relatives now live in our ancestral house. The house has a small kitchen and 2 rooms. The walls are made of mud to keep it cool in the summer heat. Outside the house, there is a courtyard with a shelter for a cow and a bullock on one side and a well on the other side. In the middle of the courtyard, there is a cot. In short, it was every bit like the village houses that I had seen in movies.

We all slept in the courtyard under the stars that night. Next morning, I drew water from the well and bathed. After an early breakfast, we went around the village meeting people. Most people were thrilled that I had come all this way to the village and asked me to keep coming regularly. We also went to our ancestral temple in the village for pooja. The priest told me that all the villages on the other side of the stream were naxal-infested, thankfully Tatra was safe (so far). As I walked back through the village, I noticed one small shop selling consumer products (there were no P&G products). Next to it was a post-office and at the end of the road there was an STD booth. It was my only connection to the outside world since there was no cell phone connectivity in the village. It was now 10am and the heat was unimaginable. Choti dadi suggested that we go back home till evening. Even farmers came back home at 11am and didn’t leave till the heat subsided in the evening. At night I slept on the roof. For as far as my eye could see, there were no lights. I laid back on my cot and spent a long time staring at the stars before I finally fell asleep. The next day I left for Chatra in a Trekker at 7am.

Bihar Travelogue (Chennai-Ranchi-Chatra)

Abi had gone on a trip to Bihar (& Jharkhand) in Apr 2005 - after we graduated from B-school and before he started work. Through my next few posts, I will share his experience as he traveled to his homeland. I prefer writing in first person, but this trip and its memories are not really mine.
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It was a hot, lazy summer day in Chennai. I sat on the couch and looked up at the rotating ceiling fan and its complete inability to alleviate the heat of the day. I continued to look at the fan in disgust (inertia had taken its toll) and actually felt like it was slowing down because I could count the blades of the fan. Suddenly the TV went off and then I realized there was a power cut. While cursing the heat and incompetence of the electricity board, I remembered my village in Bihar. It gets really hot during summers with temperatures reaching 45 degrees and our house in the village doesn’t have electricity because no one really stays there. It had been long since I visited my village. Before long, I had made up my mind to visit my village in Bihar. I shared my brilliant idea with my parents and sister. While they were happy, they were also quite concerned about the heat and my safety while traveling alone. But my excitement soon won them over.

I began planning my trip. The first thing to do was decide on which places to visit. Most certainly on the list were maternal & paternal villages and Varanasi (since it is a holy city and I had never been there before). This is what the final plan looked like.

Travel Dates: 20 Apr – 3 May 05

Travel route & mode of transport
Chennai - Ranchi (Train)
Ranchi – Chatra (Bus)
Chatra – Tatra (Paternal village) (Trekker)
Tatra – Chatra (Trekker)
Chatra – Gaya (Bus)
Gaya – Patna (Train)
Patna – Hajipur (Shared Auto)
Hajipur – Ekma (Train)
Ekma – Sitalpur (Maternal village) (Cycle)
Sitalpur – Ekma (Cycle)
Ekma – Varanasi (Train)
Varanasi – Mugalsarai (auto)
Mugalsarai – Patna (Train)
Patna – Chennai (Train)

It is a little difficult to show this long route on a map, but you can use this interactive map to find the places.
http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/india-political-map.htm

Chennai – Ranchi
My first destination was Ranchi. I took the Bokaro-Alleppey Express from Chennai on 20th April. My parents and sister had come to see me off. I had been advised not to stand out from the crowd to avoid getting robbed. So I dressed down in my oldest clothes, carried a nondescript bag and left my camera at home. My mom fussed over me for a while in an attempt to convince herself that I would come back ok from the trip. Soon the train sounded its bewitching whistle to suggest that it was ready to start its 38-hour journey to Ranchi. There was a sudden activity with family & friends (who had come to see off others like me) leaving the train in a rush. I enthusiastically waved good-bye and felt a sudden thrill. It was a trip to my village after a long time (the last time I went was 7 yrs ago) and it was a long train-journey. I love train journeys because it offers splendid views of the countryside, an opportunity to meet interesting people, an excuse to get down at stations to binge on food, time to introspect and above all a train is large and comfortable unlike other modes of transport.

After my initial excitement had subsided, I looked around to identify the seasoned travelers on this route from rookies like me. There is a lot to be gained by befriending the regulars on trains. They know the train and journey like they would know their family members – good places to eat, where to buy water from, which are the stations the train halts for longer, when will the next station be arriving, is the train expected to be late and so on. An old man with thinning hair and paan stains on his teeth was looking at me curiously. In the true spirit of a train journey we started talking immediately. Like a proud parent, he said, “this train is never late”. I discovered he was going upto Ranchi as well. I asked him about Chatra. He didn’t know the place but asked others around. Soon I was sharing my travel plans with about 10-12 people who seemed sufficiently impressed at my plans and offered various pieces of useful advice – Loo chal rahi hai so its very hot, smell an onion if the heat makes you feel faint, avoid opening your wallet in front of others etc.

Soon people dozed off to sleep and the train got silent and dark. I realized the train was following the same route as Chennai-Calcutta and stared out at the familiar landscape as the train rocked me to sleep. Woke up to a rainy day next morning. This region is green (more so in the rain) and hilly with lots of tunnels in the Orissa-Jharkhand border. The train entered the Chota Nagpur plateau and I realized Ranchi was close now. After another comfortable night in the train, I reached Ranchi at 10am on 22nd morning.

Ranchi - Chatra
Ranchi station is just like any other big junction – noisy, crowded, busy. I have been to Ranchi a few times as a kid and I remember it being beautiful. I didn’t have time to stop this time since I had to reach Chatra before dark because there were no streetlights along this 150km route and it was unsafe after dark. Hence there were no buses from Ranchi to Chatra after evening. I got an auto from Ranchi station to the big busstand in Ranchi. For lunch, I ate the best Puri Bhaji at a restaurant near the bus stop. The heat was unbelievable now. During the month of May, intense hot winds called Loo sweep across northern plains of India creating a heat wave and temperatures consistently soar over 40 degrees. I covered my head with a towel since I hadn’t got a cap. I checked to make sure I was carrying onions since I hold advice given by fellow travelers in high esteem.

Finally, it was time for my bus to leave. I handed my suitcase to the conductor who loaded it on top of the bus. I looked up to see if it was securely tied and saw that other than pieces of luggage, the bus also carried vegetables and a goat, which grazed on these vegetables. The conductor assured me that since its safe even for a goat to travel on top so my suitcase was most certainly safe. During the conversation, I also learnt from him that goat was being carried to Chatra to be sacrificed. This apparently is a weekly affair with goat(s) being sacrificed every Tuesday. He didn’t seem to know the reason for the sacrifice and benefits expected from it. I wonder if anyone did. I got into the bus and heard the pathetic bleating of a few more goats. Were they all in line to be sacrificed also?

I settled myself in a window seat. A boy, probably in his late teens, sat next to me. In a few minutes, I heard thud-thud noises like rocks being dropped on top of the bus and thought robbers were attacking us. The local boy sitting next to me informed that since this is the last bus for the day, people who couldn’t get tickets were settling themselves on top of the bus between the vegetables, goat and all. The bus began to move when a man with a dog entered. Huge chaos in the bus. Someone said “kutta katega” and few others screamed. The man and his dog were fairly oblivious to these protests and the dog was seated by a window since it had a valid ticket.

Finally everyone – tribals, students, a newly wed couple, man with dog and I – settled down and the bus made its way towards Chatra. I was tired but the heat made it impossible to sleep. We were crossing a railway line when suddenly the bus stopped in the middle of the railway crossing. Some people looked at each other knowingly, said “puncture” and got down to push the bus towards a mechanic’s shop near the railway line. While waiting for the tyre to be replaced, I spoke to a few locals. The bus was now near Lohar Dagga, which is a coal mining area. Relevant piece of trivia – Jharkhand has the 3rd highest coal reserves in the country. A couple of people in a cycle spotted our bus and made their way towards the bus. With amazing efficiency, they threw the cycle on top of the bus and got onto it as well. Almost immediately, one of them wanted to know why the bus wasn’t moving. Probably he felt that the bus had been waiting for him!

We traveled for another hour before a 2nd tyre burst. This time it was fixed faster. Probably because it was getting dark and we needed to get to Chatra before sundown. People around me didn’t seem perturbed by the punctures or the stop in journey. I assumed it is quite normal for these incidents to happen. We finally reached Chatra at 6pm and the bus emptied at record speed – man, woman, child, dog, goats and vegetables included.

Book Review - IOU (Noreena Hertz)

“IOU – The debt threat and why we must defuse it” by Noreena Hertz is about the Third world debt crisis – why it began, how it has evolved, what is the threat, how do we manage this threat. She does a great job of making a complex subject extremely simple and understandable.

After the first few chapters, I felt so enlightened that I began to question whether it was at all a complex subject. Quick googling confirmed that none of the articles or discussions on this topic come even remotely close to being as logical, understandable and comprehensive as this book.

The writer proves that the cause of high third world debt is a series of geopolitically motivated, commercially motivated or plain bad decisions. The consequences of these decisions have been terrible for the developing nations. She highlights that some of the poorer countries are so indebted that they pay more on debt servicing than on health care and education. With examples and reasoning, she argues that there is a high threat that some of these countries might default on payment and the impact will be felt across the world and not just within developing countries. Finally, she proposes a solution to get third world debt to manageable levels. All of this in a simple, understandable way.

At some points, I got the feeling that she was trying to hard to get the point across with some examples being used and re-used in multiple chapters in the book. Also, the solution she proposes is academically sound but unlikely to be executed in reality. But these are minor issues in a brilliant book.

Highly recommended read for anyone remotely interested in global issues or economics! Anyone interested can borrow the book from me. For others, I can send a one-page summary. That's how much I liked the book !

Rating - * * * * *

Book Review - Come Away with Me (Edited by Sarah Macdonald)

'Come Away with me' is supposedly a collection of short stories describing travels of Australian travel writers. Countries covered include Russia, Portugal, France, England Japan, US, Vietnam, China and Sri Lanka. While some stories qualify as travel writing the others are just rantings of writers who could have been in anywhere while they wrote their piece of nonsense. Here is a ranking of the stories in order of (my) liking.

1. A battle with English Equipment – It’s a description of the author’s travel to England for a book launch. It isn’t travel writing in the strictest sense. But I found the self-deprecating humor and casual writing style brilliant. I am sure I’ll love the other books written by Nick Earls
2. From Russia with Love, Sweat & steam – The writer describes 3 key experiences while she stayed in Russia (1) Public baths in Russia where she is beaten with birch twigs, smeared with coffee and honey all in the spirit of a good exfoliating bath (2) A high-end gym which is frequented by socialites and mafia men (3) Her introduction to Russian Deep tissue massage where she befriends the masseuse.
3. Sri Lanka – An informative piece on the writer’s experience when he came to Sri Lanka to interview the leader of Tamil tigers.
4. Same Same but different – An engaging story of the writer’s bike trip to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam
5. Be it ever so humble – An Australian of Chinese origin decides to make a trip to discover the China that she knows about about through her father’s stories. She finds herself to be an outsider and the real China to be vastly different from what she expected. Informative.

The remaining 5 stories are extremely boring and hence tiring to read. These 2 easily qualify as the worst.

1. Nikki Gammell’s self-indulgent tale of visiting Disneyland Paris with her children and how they behaved themselves in this fairy-tale location. I don’t think Disneyland or angelic children qualify as France!
2. Sarah Macdonald’s Australian story of birth of her child. Childbirths happen anywhere & everywhere. Just because the writer happened to be in Australia during the time does not make it an Australian travel piece.

In the end, I just wish it could have been a compilation of fewer, quality stories instead of challenging the reader to separate the good ones from the rest.

Rating - * * *

Day 7 of 'A week in Cambodia'

We had a list of temples to see today. Honestly, all temples were now beginning to look alike. However, since Suporn seemed genuinely excited by going to the temples again, we decided to humour him. We went through the motions of admiring the temple architecture, understanding the history and commending the king who built these temples. Then we moved on the the next temple and did the same again. I remember only one incident during the morning. For the rest, my mind is a blur.

We were in a temple – it could have been Preah Khan just as easily as it could have been some other temple. I had pulled a hamstring the previous day during my climb at Angkor Wat. So I was finding it difficult to scale the steep stairs. Each step was almost a foot in height ! I somehow managed to reach the top without incident. I had difficult in getting down though. I held on to the handrails with both my hands, lowered one leg and then slowly the other. This meant I was doing a speed of 1 step in 5 mins. Sometime during my descent, Abi raced down the stairs and looked up to me (literally!) from the bottom of the stairs. His expression was a look of triumph (at having reached down in record speed) and disguist(at my inability to do the same). I also became aware of a man with a huge backpack standing next to me. My pain was unbearable to him and he offered to help me get down. I had half a mind to accept but I would have felt like a loser if I did. So I didnt. On reaching down, I planned to give Abi grief about not helping me. As soon as I reached level ground I said, “Even a stranger realized I was in huge pain and you didnt bother to help”. Abi ignored me. Not having got the desired response, I continued with this line of conversation for a while. Suddenly Abi turned to me and said “He offered to help you because he is a stranger to your ways. Dont I know what a drama queen you are?” A combination of acute self-realization and extreme anger left me speechless.

By noon we realized that we couldnt possibly eat another random lunch at a shack or look at any more temples. So we requested Suporn to take us back to the city for lunch at FCC. He was deeply hurt that we werent giving Angkor the respect and time it deserved. I was beyond caring now. My mindspace was completely occupied by food. Abi tried to pacify him and said we would return the next day (what a liar!). After an awesome lunch, Suporn decided he would give us a couple of rest hours since he somehow realized he had been through a lot in the past few days. At 4pm, he would come back to take us for a boat ride in the Tonle Sap lake.

We drove through the city for a while and Abi admired the real Cambodia. Gradually, the roads got narrower and the air got smellier. We were reaching the Tonle Sap lake. I obviously expected a relaxing sunset cruise like the one we had in Phnom Penh. I was in for a shock. We were pointed to an unstable looking fishing boat with 2 wooden chairs on it. The smell was positively nauseating now. The water was chocolate brown. A woman was fishing in the lake. Fat chance any fish survived in these hostile conditions and fat chance she would survive after eating fish from this water. We got into the boat and as it started moving, the wooden chairs started sliding backward. I had never felt so scared in my life. As we moved inwards, the water became less brown, the air less smelly and the boat more stable. However, whenever a bigger boat passed us, it did feel like we would topple over. We were taken to a wooden structure in the middle of the lake to see shrimp harvesting. I chose to see the sunset instead. We were completely surrounded by locals each holding a bunch of bananas and offering to sell it to us for a dollar. We (and other tourists) ignored them. Sunset done, we made our way back to Suporn.

At night, we went to watch apsara dance performance – Cambodia’s traditional dance which is strikingly similar to its Thai counterpart. We reached the venue to find that all guests were extremely formally attired. We looked and felt shabby in teams and t-shirts. Even the staff there looked down upon us. We are not easily embarrased at these minor issues and made our way to our seats. I was conscious of atleast hundred pairs of eyes looking at us in disgust. An Old English couple seated next to us tried to get their seats changed but it was a full house. Too bad for them. I liked the dances and the food was passable. Abi looked irritated at having to spend his time and money sitting with pretentious people to watch something he didnt understand. I ignored him, because this is his standard reaction to performing arts.

While this is the end of Day 7, we spent an additional day in Siem Reap just lounging in Blue Pumpkin and reading our books. A well-deserved break after a hectic vacation.

Day 6 (contd) of 'A Week in Cambodia'

Energized after lunch (actually not really), we went to Bantay Kdei which was a Buddhist monastery in the 12th century. We sat under a shady tree and dozed off for a while. Woke up sleepily when I felt something against my leg. I was shocked out of my wits when I realized it was a dog. I tried to run, but twisted my ankle and fell. All this was too much for the dog to take. So it quietly retreated. I looked around victoriously only to find a couple of kids laughing their guts out. One of them had the nerve to actually approach me and try to sell a guide book. I said childishly "you laughed at me, so I wont buy your book". I dont know if he understood what I said. I hope not !

Disillusioned by this place, we went to Sra Srang which is a pool nearby. There were a few stalls en route to the pool. I realized the number of stalls outside a tourist spot is an indication of how popular it is. For the rest of the trip, I used this as a measure to determine how much time to spend at a place. Anyway, as we were walking towards the pool, a young girl approached me. With a sweet smile she asked, "Missy where are you from?". I usually dont bother replying to these people, but I said India. She quickly replied that New Delhi is the capital of India. I saw new found respect in Abi's eyes. He said something about education helping the poor people in Cambodia. This conversation was getting too tedious for me. I decided to go back to my default state of ignoring her. Then she asked me the following questions - (a) married? (she checked my hand for a ring and then gave me a bangle) (b) Husband? (she looked at Abi for a while who asked her if she went to school) (c) Hot day no? (d) Cold drink for hot day? She seemed quite keen to follow us around, so in an attempt to get rid of her I said we would buy it later. I had this exact same conversation with 3 others.

We had a nice, relaxing time by the pool and were totally not prepared for the drama that happened on our way out. The first girl I had spoken to came running towards us to say that we should buy a drink from her stall. Since it was an extra-ordinarily hot day, we didnt mind. But then the others appeared as well and they kept saying "If you dont buy from me, I will cry". We randomly chose one stall and the others aactually bawled like someone had died. I was pretty upset and wanted to leave immediately. Abi said, "you cant allow them to emotionally blackmail you like this". So I sat surrounded by crying girls while he finished his drink. Interestingly, they stopped crying when I wasnt looking in their direction and would start crying if I seemed remotely interested in them. After what seemed like eternity, we were finally on our way out.

We visited a few other smaller temples during the afternoon and finally were on our way to the Angkor Wat. We saw a lake on the way and Suporn informed us that it was Angkor Wat's moat. I felt that the temple must be quite something if its moat was so huge. Angkor Wat is the largest and most breathtaking structure in Angkor. It is believed to be the largest religious structure in the world. I was in awe of the fact that such a huge & intricately carved structure was built so many centuries ago. The central temple has 3 storeys. We easily climbed up the first and second. They were not really high and the stairs were in good condition. The 3rd storey is significantly higher than the first 2 and has 4 sets of steep stairs (one on each major direction). The width of each step is about half the length of a human foot and the stairs were at almost a 90 degree incline. My hypothesis is that Khmer people in the 12th century had really small feet to be able to climb up on those stairs. I shared this with Abi and he was thrilled that finally I was beginning to observe these things and make my own hypothesis.

I was scared to climb up, but also felt ridiculous to have come to Angkor Wat and not go up to the top. So I mustered enough courage to climb up slowly. I felt pretty brave going up because lots of people had actually given up. I reached the top and only then realized how much more scared I should have been during the climb. Getting down was worse. But I had a choice of staying up on the top storey of the temple forever or coming down with the others. So I chose the latter.

From Angkor Wat, we went to Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset. It was a hill that I climbed with great difficulty (this was before I started yoga practice!) only to reach the top and find a cloud cover blocking the sunset. It was a tame end to a brilliant day at Angkor.

(I have been asked by more than a few people on whether I will ever move on from writing about this one trip. I will, there is only one more day to write now!)

Day 6 of 'A week in Cambodia'

We finally woke up roughly at 8am when the phone rang for probably the 100th time and Suporn had banged on our door for what seemed like eternity. We were still tired from the previous day's travel but also excited since we were going to the Angkor temples today. We had a quick breakfast and became aware of busloads (there were 3 buses) of Japanese tourists getting ready to leave for Angkor as well. I said to Abi "Looks like my idea of the temples being quiet & peaceful was not entirely right". Suporn immediately reminded us that he had asked us to get up early to avoid this crowd.

During the 15 minute drive to the gateway of Angkor temples, I read the Lonely Planet about Siem Reap & Angkor. Angkor was the capital of the ancient Khmer empire which ruled Cambodia from 9th-15th century AD. During the Angkor era, stone structures were built only for Gods. Mortals (King included) stayed in wooden structures which have not stood the test of time. The temple ruins of Angkor are located a few kms off Siem Reap between forests. There are over 1000 temples in the Angkor area. Many of them have been restored with the help of UNESCO and foreign governments aid.

We reached the entrance to Angkor area and had to buy an entry pass from a large official entrance booth. Entry tickets are controlled by a petroleum company Sokimex which takes 15% of the revenues as administrative charges. 75% of the revenue is given back to the finance ministry. At the rate of 40USD per person (for a 3 day pass) and over a million visitors, Angkor is a key source of revenues for the Cambodian government. Anyway, enough of money matters !

While I was planning this trip to Angkor, I had realized that all temples looked alike at first glance - stone ruins of temples, weeds growing from them, similar carvings on the stone. To enjoy the experience of Angkor, I had to know & understand the significance of what I was looking at. So I bought a guide book for 10USD afer a bit of haggling. The seller had realized that he could sell a few more books to the busloads of tourists (henceforth referred to as "the bus") than waste his time with me. Inspired by the bus listening to their tour guide in awe, I had taken a fancy to becoming a tour guide as well. I decided that I would be Abi's tour guide for our trip. I quickly started reading the book so that I could seem knowledgeable by the time we reached our first temple for the day.

Angkor temples have some specific styles & structures which are important to know to understand and appreciate the temples better. I wanted to write about it, but found a really clear (and short!) description on Wikipedia, so I am taking a short-cut and pasting the link here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Cambodia

Angkor Area Map


Our first Destination was Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom is actually a fortified city of around 10 sq km which supported a population of one million during its peak. It is enclosed by a wall and encircled by a moat which used to have fierce crocodiles. The moat has dried up now. The city has 5 entry gates and we entered through the south gate, which is most popular since it has been almost fully restored. The gate has 54 demons on one side and 54 gods on the other side holding a naga and churning the ocean of milk.

From here, we went to Bayon at the centre of Angkor Thom city. Bayon is known for its 216 faces of Avalokiteshwara which is said to have more than a passing resemblance to the king Jayavarman VII himself. It is a symbol of his power & control over the kingdom. It is believed that most of the temples were built for this purpose. During Jayavarman VII's reign, Khmer Empire was divided into 54 provinces. Hence the temple is built on 54 towers. The 216 faces indicate that the all-seeing eyes of the king were keeping a watch on the 54 provinces from all directions. The guide book waxed eloquent about each face of Bayon looking like it had a slightly different expression based on the direction of the light and angle of viewing. I tried hard to visualize this as well, but couldnt. All faces appeared alike.

There were atleast a hundred people in Bayon with some tourists hugging one of the over the 100 faces and taking pictures flashing a victory sign ! I didnt understand their thrill in climbing statue and flashing a victory sign. But then I dont understand a lot of other things ! Abi wanted to get his picture clicked with one of the faces as well. So we found one which wasnt crowded. By the time I clicked the picture, 5 V-flashing people materialized out of nowhere.

After an hour at Bayon, we went to the nearby Elephant's terrace and Leper terrace. The sun was getting stronger by the minute. I vaguely remember the motions of going to these places but nothing more. The heat had gotten to me. Then I noticed that the heat had gotten to Abi more than me. He looked as red as a tomato and had sunburns on his face. Needless to say, he was in a sour mood.

We went back to the car and thankfully Suporn had the good sense to stock up on water. After a brief rest, we went to 2 smaller temples - Thommanom & Chau Say Thevoda. Both these temples were built in the 12th century and were dedicated to Shiva & Vishnu. Since Lonely Planet said they were both similar temples, we decided to go to only one of them - Thommanom since it was in a better condition. When we reached the entrance of the temple, I decided I wasnt upto it and seated myself under a shady tree and was content with the pictures & description in the guide book. Abi was tempted to do the same but then he felt since we had come all the way here, he had to see the temples and click pictures to prove his presence.

Well rested now, I was very excited about going to Ta Prohm which was the next big temple we planned to go to. Abi looked like he would drop to the ground anytime. As we entered Ta Prohm, we noticed that the Indian government had contributed to restoring and maintaining the temple. Abi saw the board with the Indian flag and was immediately energized. He insisted that I read out every single word about Ta Prohm from the guide book and we spend quality time here.

Ta Prohm is a buddhist temple dedicated to the mother of the king and close to 80,000 people were required to maintain the temple. It is quite unlike all the other temples we had seen. A large portion of the temple is not accessible today since they are blocked by large piles of stone blocks dislodged by roots of dying trees. To give people an idea of the extent of ruins the temples were in when they were found, Ta Prohm has been left to be swallowed by the jungle pretty much like it was found. I felt that the Indian government had chosen to sponsor the maintenance of the easiest temple. But then we found out that only the big trees have been left in place and the temple has been maintained to give it the appearance of being in a state of disrepair. Hard work indeed ! The temple looks awesome with crumbling walls being held in place by roots of the trees. It is said that the temple will collapse when the tress holding it up die. I think we easily spent an hour here. In the midst of tourists hugging tree roots and flashing victory signs, we did manage to get a few pictures too. There was one particular tree which was quite a favorite with tourists. Some tourists queued up and waited for their turn, others just jumped in from nowhere with a big smile, caps and victory signs. We recognized the first set of tourists as singaporeans and the second as Japanese. The third cateogory of people who watched this from the side (just the 2 of us) were Indians since we are used to standing and watching whenever anything remotely interesting happens.

After a tiring morning, we were really looking forward to lunch. Suporn took us to a small shack within the Angkor area. Abi decided he wanted lime juice to build his energy and informed the waiter that he didnt want it cold. For the next 5 minutes, Abi waited expectantly for the lime juice and conversation had stopped completely. Finally the waiter placed a piping hot lime juice in front of us and thats when Abi lost it completely. He shouted incoherently at the poor guy for a while, then regained his composure and asked for ice. We spent a good part of our lunch hour tying to cool the juice by adding ice pieces at regular intervals.

(Since Day 6 is getting to be really long, its 'To be Continued' in the next blog)

Day 5 of 'A Week in Cambodia'

After snoozing the alarm a few times, I realized there was no option but to get up since our bus was scheduled to leave at 7:00am. We threw in all our stuff in suitcases and went down to the breakfast hall.

All my happiness in the world depends on a nice, leisurely breakfast (specially during vacations). The breakfast buffet at Golden Sand was neither. Rows and rows of cambodian/south-east asian food with no veggie options. I had to satisfy myself with some cold slices of toast, a glass or orange juice and chocolate. After grumbling a bit (actually a lot) about the breakfast, I realized that the restaurant was empty but for the 2 of us. Looks like the others knew of better places to eat.

After breakfast, we set out to find a tuktuk to take us to the bus stop. Abi is averse to bargaining and was ready to pay an atrocious 5 USD for a 5 minute ride. He would have also willingly agreed to pay more if only the tuktuk driver had the good sense to ask for it. I haggled unsuccessfully for a while, not because I like to but because one of us had to. I thought of all the times Abi stepped up to kill the cockroach since I was more scared than him and decided it was my turn to step up now.

We reached the bus stop with 15 minutes to spare. Mekong Express is a bus service between Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh whose operational model is heavily influenced by airlines. Ground staff checked our tickets, secuirty tagged lagguage and checked it in. This done, we entered the bus and were greeted by a smiling lady. Every bus has a hostess who smiles, welcomes passengers on the bus and serves food. She also goes beyond the call of duty and acts as a tour guide, pointing out places of relevance in 2 languages. Her English is pretty difficult to understand. I have a feeling she writes her English script in Khmer (thats cambodian language) and reads it out because she paused in the middle of words, combined a few to make a new word and often missed punctuations. But her Khmer linguistic abilities are strong. This I know because I saw a few passengers nod understandingly when she spoke Khmer. Minor technicality that they were not locals.

Needless to say, we were sitting on the sun-side of the bus. After 4 hours we reached Phnom Penh from where we had to take another bus for Siem Reap, which was another 5 hour journey. We decided to eat a quick lunch at a nearby cafe. When we got back, lots of people were getting into the bus. We stood near the bus and someone quickly loaded our luggage inside. Abi tried to rush me into the bus. I decided I wasnt ready to brave another 5 hour journey without freshening up first. So I gave him the responsibility to make the bus to wait for me. I came back to see Abi waiting with the bags and the bus leaving.

I panicked and tried to pick up a bag and run towards the bus and signalled to Abi to do the same. Strangely, he seemed very calm. As I was trying to lift the bag, I vaguely heard him say that this was not our bus. I paid a little more attention to what he was saying and realized that while I was missing from the scene of action, Abi had been through the drama of our bags being loaded into the wrong bus. He said all the ground staff gave him dirty looks since they had to unload a lot of stuff to get our bags out. I was curious to know how he realized that it was the wrong bus. Apparently a couple who travelled with us from Shianoukville called out to him and informed him that this wasnt the right bus. I dont think they even knew where we were headed to ! But Abi being a big believer in the concept of trust quickly arranged for our bags to be unloaded.

Soon enough the bus arrived and we dutifully took our seats on the sun-side of the bus. The first couple of hours of the journey were fairly uneventful except for the occassional announcements made by the hostess. We stopped at a town on the way for some refreshments. We found a fruit-seller selling mangoes and got down from the bus to buy some. The stall next to ours was selling fried grasshoppers. It probably is a popular tea-time snack since people were buying them by the kilo. I had my fill of mangoes, got back into the bus and promptly fell asleep. Woke up to hear the hostess saying "Thank you for travelling with mekong Express". We had reached Siem Reap a little after 6pm. We were expecting pick up from the hotel. The driver quickly found us and we were on our way to relax after a tiring day.

All I wanted was some peace and quiet. But our driver (and later to be tour guide) was very interested in having a conversation. I completely ignored his attempts to be friendly and hoped we would reach the hotel soon. Abi on the other hand patiently answered his questions - yes we were from India, no we havent been to Cambodia before, yes we were married, no we didnt have children, yes we love Cambodia, no we didnt have a tour guide, yes we would be ok with him taking us to the temples. Mercifully the conversation stopped once he established that he was going to be our tour guide.

We dropped out bags at the hotel and went to the Old market area (Psar Chas) to have an early dinner. We ate at an Indian restaruant which was pretty bad - both food & ambience. Then we went for a foot massage to relax after a tiring day on the road.

Suporn (our driver & tour guide) had made plans of taking us to the temples before sunrise so we avoid the crowds and peacefully admire the temples in the early morning sun. Little did he know that sleep meant more to us than sunrise and temples !

Day 4 of 'A week in Cambodia'

Woke up to see stars. They were actually tiny pin pricks of light coming into the room through holes in the black curtains. Realized we had overslept only when we opened the curtains. We had ambitious plans of being on the beach at sunrise. Having reassured each other of our noble intentions, we had slept the previous night without setting an alarm. Fat chance we would have gotten up without one !

Even during holidays, I am fairly agenda driven. I sub-consciously plan out my entire day though I know its vacation time. Today was different. We had the entire day in front of us and nothing at all to do. Leisurely, we made our way to the beach. Found a cozy breakfast place on the beach and spent about an hour there. During this time, I saw many ferries leaving for nearby islands. I had half a mind to get into a ferry and do a trip of the nearby islands since that would fill my day with some activity. Abi argued that we really had 'planned' to do nothing today and we couldnt possible change plans. Since I couldnt refute such a strong argument, we settled ourselves on beach chairs and started reading.

Soon enough I was half-asleep. Suddenly I was woken up by a woman offering manicure-pedicure services right here on the beach. I dont know whether I was more angry at being rudely woken up or shocked at the idea of getting a pedicure done in public. I quickly shooed her away and got back to reading. Abi went for a quick dip in the water. Almost immediately, 2 children selling mangoes settled themselves on his chair and continued to stare at me. I decided that if I ignored them long enough, they would soon tire of staring at me and go away. It was becoming a huge effort to ignore them. Then suddenly 2 women appeared and were keen to take a photo with these kids probably to show their friends back home what a poor country Cambodia is. The smart kids refused to get a picture clicked unless these women bought mangoes. As soon as they bought it, a dozen other vendors (some children) appeared out of nowhere selling random stuff or offering massage services. At this point, I was internally gloating for having ignored them and saving myself of the pain these women had gotten themself into.

I paused reading (actually I had paused reading long time ago) and looked out at Abi in the water. He seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly and his quick dip had already lasted more than 30 mins. When he did come out of the water, we decided to take a walk along the beach. We realized that we were on a quieter part of the beach. Further ahead, the beach was really crowded. This is because there are a lot of budget/mid-range hotels near this part of the beach. I noticed that Cambodians would go into the water fully dressed and try to hitch up their pants or skirts to avoid getting wet. It immdiately reminded me of beaches in India. We walked a bit more. Soon the sun got stronger and the sand got hotter. So we decided to go back to the hotel and rest for the afternoon.

On reaching the hotel, we realized it was lunch time. Since we were too lazy to go out in the heat and find a restaurant, I decided to make maggi using the kettle in our hotel room. We were carrying enough stock of maggi and ready-to-eat food to last us for a week since we werent sure if we would find veggie food. I believe that if you are on a vacation the one thing you deserve is good food. We started watching a Bond movie on one of the TV channels. I must have fallen asleep because I suddenly saw credits rolling on the screen.

We went back to the beach by early evening and were there till sunset. Sunset was ruined by a cloud covering the sun till it set. Disappointed, we decided to take a walk in the town till dinnertime. When we were hungry finally, we found a moto (which is a nothing but a motorcycle & a driver). Abi & I squeezed into a space that could actually fit only one person. I could feel part of me suspended in the air as we drove through the one main road in the town. I couldnt have held on to Abi & the moto any longer when thankfully we found an Italian restaurant ahead. The food was so awesome that I realized I had mosquito bites all over my legs only after I finished my food. Small price to pay for wonderful food !

Next day morning at 7:00am we were to leave for Phnom Penh and from there to Siem Reap. It would be a long day with almost 10 hours and 550 km of road travel !!

Day 3 of 'A week in Cambodia'

I got up in the morning to find Abi looking unhappily at the cell phone in his hand. Turned out it was because our cell phones had no battery left and we had forgotten to get our adaptor. I am completely ok to live without a cell phone, sometimes I dont even realize that I am not carrying one with me. But Abi feels crippled without it. Actually without any of the things that connect him to the rest of the world (phone, newspaper, TV, Internet). "Duniya mein kya ho raha hai" is extremely important to know. Also, since cell phone was our way to keep in touch with family during the week long trip it made sense to keep them charged and be accessible at all times.

We went down to the reception of our hotel and asked for an adaptor. After a quick chat, we realized that adaptors are not a very commonly understood term in Cambodia even among English speaking locals. Times like these are a true test of your communication abilities - when you think you are being extremely clear about what you are saying and the other person simply cannot understand what you want.

We understood that we need to find other ways of communicating what we wanted. Abi thought it would be simpler to communicate terms associated with adaptor. The 2 words he chose were electrical & electronics. He went up to a tuktuk and asked for 'electrical' and the tuktuk driver said 'central market' in return. Abi beamed at how simple this was turning out to be. So we went to Central market and waded through stores (actually stalls) of perfumes, clothes, footwear
and other things not related to electricity. We asked another person for 'electrical' and he said we need to go into the market which was unfortunately closed since today was a sunday. We decided to peep into the market anyway to check if it was actually closed and we found that the market sold 'electric fans'.

We still had another word at our disposal - electronics. Electronics, as it turns out, is a commonly understood word. So we were directed to a cell phone shop. Abi said cell phones have become as ubiquituos as FMCG goods and confidently strode in thinking that the store owner would have an adaptor waiting for him. No such luck ! We decided that a change in strategy was in order. What began was a session of Dumb Charades - Abi mimed connecting the charging wire to
his phone and plugging it in a socket. Then he showed his phone's battery level and mimed that it was increasing. The store owner was super confused but a customer at the store (so far a spectator in this story) immediately got it and explained something to the tuktuk driver. Excitement was in the air ! With a sense of purpose the tuktuk driver drove in circles around the city. Finally we went to a store (which we had passed thrice during our city trip) and the
tuktuk driver produced an adaptor after exactly 5 seconds of talking to the store owner. We were thrilled at having found an adaptor and getting a tour of the real city (and not just tourist spots) as a bonus.

On our way back, which surprisingly (or probably not) took only 2 minutes to reach the hotel, Abi said that adaptors are difficult to find in Cambodia because not many people travel abroad and hence dont need it. I wanted to say something in return (in addition to nodding in agreement), so I said Cambodia has the same electrical plugs as Thailand. We were both stunned at why I would want to share this useless trivia and were silent for rest of the journey.
All this activity in the morning made us super hungry. We found a nice cafe along the river and had a long brunch. We would be travelling to Sihanoukville in a couple of hours and needed to eat enough to last the 5 hour journey. Out hotel had quoted 125USD as the taxi fare from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville, which is almost equal to the airfare from Singapore to Phnom Penh. So we decided to be smart and take the bus which would only cost us 6USD per head.

We reached the bus station a good hour before the bus was to leave (punctuality is our forte). The bus station was spread out over a 200 sq ft restaurant and a parking space for 2 buses on the road. About 50 people crowded into this restaurant waiting for their buses. I sat next to a woman eating noodles and crying at the same time. I wanted to ask her what was wrong. But as soon as she saw me looking at her, she stopped eating (but continued crying). Abi made me
take ownership of our 2 suitacases and went to find out details of the bus route, Sihanoukville etc. He didnt return for a long time, or probably it just seemed like that with one crying woman next to me, a plate of uneaten noodles in front of her, a swarm of flies over it and a creaking fan above us.

Finally, it was time for our bus to leave. We handed our tickets and I got in. Abi suddenly ran away and said "you go in, I'll be here in a while". I was most upset. I like things to be planned. Sudden changes to the plan (like not getting into the bus after we reached the door) have an unsettling effect on me. The bus started moving and there was no sign of Abi yet. I got up and said "wait! wait!" and everyone stared at me. For some obscure reason I said "bus roko" in
Hindi and miraculously the bus stopped. Turns out the bus moved ahead to make way for another bus behind it. I was highly flustered and at this moment Abi entered looking victorious with 2 bottles of water in his hand.

We sat at our seats and I avoided talking about events of the past 10 mins or so. Abi usually senses when I have been through a huge embarassment (because it happens often with me) and waits patiently till I want to tell him about it. By now the bus was full and I thought it was time for us to leave. I was wrong ! A man entered with 6 red plastic chairs and placed them in the passageway between seats to accomodate an additional 6 passengers. Only after this, did the bus leave for Sihanoukville.

Sihanoukville is a beach town in the southern Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand. It is also the only deep water port in the country. It is not as popular among tourists as Siem Reap and Phnom Penh probably since it is not connected by air to these popular tourist spots. I can imagine how a bus journey like ours would be a deterrent to many. I had included this place in our trip for 2 reasons - (1) It gave us a chance to do a long road trip and see the real country (2) It has fewer tourists. But I didnt know that tourists had been kidnapped & killed enroute to Sihanoukville by the Khmher Rouge as recently as 1994. The place is supposedly safe now with the demise of Khmer Rouge & the political stability in Cambodia. There are also plans to connect it via air to Siem Reap and this is expected to result in a tourism boom.

I was seated by a window on the side of the bus facing the sun. Somehow we always sat on the sun-side on all our bus journeys in Cambodia. We followed the national highway NH3 to Sihanoukville, which was in good shape throughout. I had expected the route to be green with fields and forests. But most of the land was barren. Since I was tired, I took an nap despite the heat. Woke up to find that the bus had stopped for a 10 min break.

We got down to get something to eat. I was tempted to buy the cut fruits since they are a healthier option to snacking on chips. Abi reminded me that Lonely Planet said cut fruits are unsafe since they are usually left in the open for days. While I waited for Abi to get his coke, a pleasant-looking woman stood by my side and spoke to me in fluent English. From our conversation, I understood that she was Cambodian but has been living in the US for 10 years. She was back for a month-long holiday and was pleasantly surprised at how much the country has changed (developed) from what she remembers it to be. She recognized us as Indians and was very surprised since she hasnt seen any Indians visiting Cambodia. But then, she hasnt been in the country for 10 years now.

A loud horn signalled that our bus was ready to leave. We got back to our books. Rest of the journey was uneventful. We reached Sihanoukville bus terminus at 5:30pm and were immediately approached by moto drivers. Moto is a motorcycle taxi that seats 1-2 passengers. Tuktuks are few in Sihanoukville. Abi & I got on 2 different motos and went to our hotel - Golden Sand.

It is a nice looking hotel with extremely bright rooms. Probably that is why all rooms have black curtains. As soon as we reached the hotel, we rushed to the beach to get a view of the sunset. We stayed on the beach till dark and then left to find an Indian restaurant. We took a tuktuk to Weather station hill. The place had a few restaurants and a lot of shady night clubs. We found the restaurant we wanted quite easily. It was dimly lit, had plastic tablecloths, rickety wooden chairs and a handful of lizards. Since we were too tired to find another place, we put up with all this and patiently waited for the food. The food turned out to be awful as well. We went back to the hotel looking forward to a relaxing day at the beach.