November 01, 2004

Gandhi Park

DAY 377: In 1888, a young man from India went to London town to study law. Three years later he passed the bar exam and became a bonafide lawyer under the British court system and eventually became the legal representation of a firm in South Africa. Little did the young Indian man know at the time that a couple of decades later he would be hailed as a saint by some -- and shot to death by another.

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If you haven't figured out whom I'm talking about yet (psst... here's a hint, look at the picture above or read the title, stupid), it's Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi had come a long way since his younger days of parted hair, hats and three-piece suits; his time as a lawyer and learning from his guru Raj Chandbahi only helped him on his later quest for social justice and a moral and just society -- which brought for the older, bald-headed, glasses-wearing image of Gandhi you're probably familiar with. This quest for equality was instilled in him in 1893 when he was to take a train through apartheid-instated South Africa on business, only to be forcibly ejected from his first class seat because of his skin color and nationality.


IF YOU HAVEN'T FIGURED IT OUT ALREADY, this history lesson is a result of my visit to the National Gandhi Museum in Delhi, my low-impact place to visit since technically I was supposed to be in bed all day recuperating from the hole in my leg. I had seen Dr. Gupta that morning to get my wound redressed with iodine ointment and a new bandage; he told me that I should let it heal for two more days in Delhi before moving on and that I should go to him for a fresh wound dressing at least two more times.

That didn't stop me from getting to business as usual. Watching the news in my hotel room with my leg elevated in my bed got to be boring again, so I took one of India's signature auto rickshaws to the National Gandhi Museum across town in Old Delhi. Outside the museum was a replica of the hut he lived in during the early 20th century when trying to protest against the oppression back in India; Gandhi did as much as he could to help the Indian struggle in South Africa before dealing with the struggles back home in 1915.

Gandhi's strategy for dealing with the South African and British oppression was a non-violent one, which he called Satyagraha. Gandhi once wrote: "Truth (satya) implies love and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for... force which is born of truth and love or nonviolence." While that definition sounds like a real stretch, its practice worked effectively. Arguably the most famous of Gandhi's acts of non-violent protest was his ultimate action of civil disobedience, the Dandi March. In March 1930, Gandhi and his followers marched to the shore and did the very, very bad thing of taking salt from the water there -- which was a big no-no in British law. The act caused an uproar in society, which was exactly Gandhi's goal. (The only thing better would be if Gandhi ordered a bunch of pizzas in the Queen's name and didn't pay for them.) Gandhi's non-violent strategy was a big hit, so much that it inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to do the same in the Civil Rights Movement in America decades later.

The story of Gandhi is a long and moving one, most of which is too long to explain here. I'd say if you are interested in learning more about the life of Mahatma Gandhi, go and rent the 1982 movie Gandhi starring Ben Kingsley and directed by Richard Attenborough, who also played the old man in Jurassic Park. I think Attenborough is in the process of working on a sequel to Gandhi called Gandhi Park (working title), in which scientists are able to bring a clone of Gandhi back to life using DNA embedded in a mosquito preserved in amber, so that they can build a theme park around him where he will inevitably show up in his loincloth, chase down park guests and bite their heads off with his bare teeth.


GANDHI'S LEADERSHIP IN THE INDIAN RIGHTS STRUGGLE was praised by men of power all over the world (including Charlie Chaplin). Eventually he pulled enough worldwide support that his work helped bring India its independence. However, not everyone was a big fan of Gandhi. In 1948, an Indian man pretending to bow down to Gandhi in respect after a prayer session, opened fired and shot Gandhi in the heart three times.

"Not since Buddha has India so reverenced any man... Not since St. Francis of Assisi has any life known to history been so marked by gentleness, disinterestedness, simplicity of soul and forgiveness of enemies... We have the astonish phenomenon of a revolution led by a saint." -Will Durant

"Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth." -Albert Einstein

"He was right, he knew he was right, we all knew he was right. The man who killed him knew he was right. However long the follies of the violent continue, they but prove that Gandhi was right. ...Resist to the very end, he said, but without violence... Of violence the world is sick... Oh, India, dare to be worthy of your Gandhi!" -Pearl S. Buck

Yes, India, dare to be worth of your Gandhi, or his clone will inevitably show up in his loincloth, chase you down and bite your heads off with his bare teeth!

But seriously, what India lost was truly a living saint, a light showing the way according to Jawalarla Nehru. Nehru continues, "...the light that shone in this country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years and a thousand years later that light will still be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumberable [sic] hearts."

This light is represented in the physical form at the Raj Ghat, across the street from the museum, where an eternal flame burned near a simple black slab of marble placed in memory of Gandhi at the very spot he was cremated in 1948. A solemn place where women brought flowers and their husbands brought video cameras, it took much needed attention away from the funny-looking trash bins around the surrounding park.


INSPIRED BY GANDHI'S CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, I decided to really go against doctor's orders. Feeling that I couldn't spend another day in Delhi "resting," I went ahead and booked a bus ticket to Agra the following morning. That evening I told Dr. Gupta that I really had to leave and couldn't go in for his wound dressing the next day (it was possible he was just dragging it out for more money), so he simply gave me supplies for me to do it myself. It was a good thing he let me go too because if not, I might have chased him down and bitten his head off with my bare teeth.


Posted by Erik at 09:16 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

November 02, 2004

Playing The Game

DAY 378: Every now and then back home in the metro New York City area, my friends and I, inspired by the movie Swingers, hop in the car for a spontaneous 2 1/2-hr. road trip to Atlantic City so that we can pretend to be high rollers. Because of the free parking (and the fact that we are not high rollers), we often end up in the parking deck of the Showboat casino and eventually walk over to the adjacent Taj Mahal, Donald Trump's palace of green felt tabletops, shiny slot machines and a pretty good buffet.

This big casino is of course named after the hundreds of little family-owned Indian restaurants found across America, which are all named after the big building in India, arguably the architectural symbol of the country. The real Taj Mahal is located in the city of Agra, a six-hour bus ride southeast of Delhi. Half the "fun" was getting there.

I had booked a bus ride from the tour agency in the hotel who assured me that my Rs. 300 ($6 USD) fee would get me a nice "air-conditioned" tourist class bus, which I figured would be worth the splurge because of my leg and all. But I discovered that "air-conditioning" simply meant a fan mounted on the wall and tourist class simply meant a beat-up old bus where some of the seats were coming off their hinges. I was the only foreigner on the bus amidst a crowd of Indians, mostly families all legitimately going to the Taj as tourists on a daytrip that would return them to Delhi late that night.

On the way to the bus I met an Englishman who had done the trip to Agra the day before as a daytrip. He told me that the bus dropped him and his friend off i the center of town with the excuse that "there's too much traffic" and told them to proceed via auto-rickshaw -- and that auto-rickshaw ended up taking them to a bunch of stores they didn't want to go to (in addition to the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort). A girl we met said that they tried to pull the same scam on her, but she stayed on the bus -- there really was too much traffic and as a result her time at the main attractions was rushed and she didn't arrive back in Delhi until two the following morning.


SIX HOURS LATER we were in the center of Agra, out of site from the Taj Mahal when the scam started while the bus was still in motion. The "conductor" got me though, using the excuse that since I'm not a daytripper and needed to find a hotel, I'd better get off now and take a auto-rickshaw, "paid for by the bus company" of course, who would bring me to the sights after I settled in. I really had no choice because the bus stopped just for me, holding everyone else up, until I got off with my bag. I was led to an auto-rickshaw guy named Nati who "worked with the bus company." I told him to take me to the Shah Jahan Hotel recommended in my book, but (as expected), he started up with the "I know a better hotel" thing.

"No, let's just go to the place I know. I have a reservation, I sent an e-mail."

He caught me on my bluff. "There's no computer there." He urged me to go to the other hotel to at least check it out, because "looking is free." The place was mediocre, even worse because it was in the middle of nowhere, requiring me to be dependent on his auto-rickshaw services for my entire stay in Agra. I demanded we go to my hotel, which was just down the block from the Taj Mahal's south gate.

After pulling teeth, I checked into my hotel, which wasn't much of an improvement since it was just as shabby, but it was all about location, location, location -- plus the roof had an obscure view of the Taj Mahal and the ghetto below. I thought the game was over with Nati, but he kept on urging that he must take me around to see the sights because I paid for it already. I argued and argued that I was "too tired" and what not, but he was persistent and then pulled out the guilt card -- he wouldn't get paid unless the company knew that I had made it to all the sights. The hotel manager concurred.

"Fine. Let's say three thirty."


IN THE INTERIM, I went wandering around the Taj Ganj area just south of the Taj Mahal. It was a small area with a couple of restaurants and guesthouses -- nothing big like in Delhi -- and I eventually just walked to the south gate for my entrance into the world-famous Taj Mahal.

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Now I'd been on the road for over a year and was totally jaded on seeing new sights, but my Let's Go had it right when it said "even the most jaded of globe-trotters often find themselves smiling in wonder as they behold the Taj." Despite the fact that the classic view of the Taj was obstructed with the bodies of the thousands of tourists (picture above) trying to get the same shot, the splendor of the real Taj Mahal was worth all the hype, even if there were no slot machines. This Taj Mahal was constructed in 1632 by order of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan not for gambling and comp cocktails, but as the tomb of his favorite wife, Argumand Banu Begum, who died giving birth to their 14th child. He loved her so dearly that only the most beautiful resting place for her would do, and so with the help of Persian architects, French and Italian craftsmen, 20,000 laborers and a whole bunch of marble, construction began. The construction went non-stop 24/7 until it was completed, which was probably due to the fact that like the Atlantic City casino of the same name, there were no clocks inside to signal when it was time to go.

I wandered the palace grounds, in and around the palace itself -- as big as it was, it was still small that I imagined it for some reason. Barefooted (a requirement) I walked passing the mosque to the west and the Jawab building to the east, with its archways that framed the main palace nicely.


IT WAS ALMOST THREE THIRTY when I got back to my hotel and Nati was there waiting for me already. "Where do you want to go?" he asked.

"Let's go to the fort."

"You're the boss."

I was talking about the other big must-see in Agra, the Agra Fort, constructed under order of General Akbar in 1565 as a military garrison and residence for the emperor. Nati tried to convince me that the fort was the same as it was in Delhi so that I might not skip it -- so that I could most likely go to stores he wanted to take me to. Actually, on the way to the fort, we stopped somewhere against my wishes, at the "travel agency" were I should "book [my] bus ticket" for the next day before it gets full. The guy there was most interested in having a drink (most likely tainted) with Nati and me than making a bus ticket sale. I declined with the excuse that I was undecided where I'd go after Agra.

The Agra Fort was in fact similar to the Red Fort in Delhi, with its red ramparts (looking out to the Yamuna River), Diwani-I-Am (Hall of Public Audience), palaces, hallways, courtyards and gardens, all fit for an emperor and an army of tourists. I wandered around pretty jaded (it was no Taj Mahal after all) and then went outside for the inevitable continuation of the game with Nati.

"I'm tired," I told him. "Let's go back to the hotel."

"I will bring you to a market."

"I don't want to go to a market. Please, let's just go to the hotel."

He tried to tell me that the market had many nice things, from pashima shawl to silk scarves, etc. "It's okay, I won't buy anything. I have no room."

This went back and forth, the way the games with auto-rickshaw drivers do, until Nati came out and laid his cards out for me. "I won't get paid unless I bring you. You don't have to buy anything, just look. Looking is free. And they give me money."

Suddenly I was on the other side, finally hearing the side of the rickshaw driver rather than stupid excuses to bring me places I don't want with no motive. "So you get a commission even if I don't buy anything."

"[Yes. More if you buy something, but I still get something if you don't.]"

For some reason I felt relieved that it was no longer a game anymore and he was honest about it. I told him I'd help him out by going to the places with him so he could make some money for his livelihood -- I had no other plans for the day anyway.

"Promise?" he asked, extending his hand for a shake.

"Yes," I said shaking it. "I promise I will not buy anything."

And so, we went from a big craft store to a textile store to a marble factory/store, as two hustlers going around. I went in as the "tourist" pretending to be interested in stuff, just so Nati could get the payout for bringing me there.

"Did you get the commission?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Good."

The last place we went was a big fancy everything-in-one place shop. "They are slow with the money here," Nati told me, the old scamming pro. "Please stay 25-30 minutes."

"Okay."

I played the scamster, leading the salesman around to every room in the big place, pretending I was interested in this and that, always with the excuse that something was off about it, or I didn't like the color, etc. I managed to kill the 25 minutes for Nati and got out of there.

"You are my brother!" Nati said. Again he tried to invite me for a drink with him and "his boss," but I wasn't about to fall for that and just had him bring me to the hotel in the Taj Mahal area. It was dark by that time and the streets were lit up for the people to walk around -- except for the half hour blackout that made everything go dark. For dinner I went to the Shankara Vegis restaurant (for obvious reasons to the Indiana Jones fan), a place with the best lassis I'd had in India so far (with chunks of coconut!) and a really good special thali, or Indian buffet, of different spicy stews and bread served on a silver platter.

There weren't many other travelers to chat with so I chat with friend and Blogreader Rozzie on-line, the only one on AOL Instant Messenger on a Sunday morning back on the North American seaboard that I knew. I told her about how I had become part of the scammer side of things instead of being the scammee, but she pointed out that unless Nati split the commissions with me, I was just used to get money and therefore, scammed even more. Oh yeah, I never thought of it that way. I was just excited that I was in the loop.

Point taken, I told her. And so, just like many a time leaving the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, I came away not as a big winner after all -- but least there was a pretty good buffet.


Posted by Erik at 09:30 AM | Comments (25) | TrackBack

Jaipur Introduction

DAY 379: I woke up in Agra fighting again, the constant fight in my mind between myself and The Blog. "Blog" wanted me to hang out in my shabby room in Agra until I typed up another entry, while I just wanted to get out of there. I really wanted to go; there was a haze over the view of the Taj Mahal, the place was deserted, the toilet was clogged with drainage leaking onto the floor, and I was pretty sure Nati the shady auto-rickshaw driver was going to show up to drive me to another store to make commission if I didn't leave by mid-morning. "Blog" said I could go, but only until I got some work done first.

The power was out again that morning, and I won by default. I packed my bags and went to the bus station on an auto-rickshaw of my choosing, just in time to hop on a 7:15 bus to Jaipur as it was slowly pulling out of the bus station already.


TRAVELING IN INDIA has a beginner's learning curve and I was soon learning how to get around without being scammed. For one, I knew not to book a "special" bus anywhere from a tour agency; taking a local bus was a lot cheaper for comparable service, and without the label of "TOURIST" on the bus to flag down shady guys. I got to Jaipur for a third of the cost of my "tourist-class" ride from Delhi to Agra (it's about the same distance), and arrived at the bus station with everyone else instead of being dumped in the middle of nowhere. After the six-hour bus ride, I found myself in Jaipur's central bus station, avoided all the touts and rickshaw guys and walked the 1 km. to the recommended Evergreen Hotel. My efforts paid off because the place was just as nice as the book described it, a big three story budget hotel complex surrounding a nice green courtyard with trees, lawn and swinging benches. On the compound was an internet cafe, a restaurant and even a swimming pool (which I couldn't exactly find) -- all hidden in a corner of the city away from the street noise. I inspected a room down the hall from the numerous rooms with the doors casually open, occupied by hippie-types that looked like they moved in permanently, and approved it. After settling in, it was time to make some friends.


"HI, I'M ERIK TRINIDAD. I'm a freelance journalist from New York City," I introduced myself to the Principal Private Secretary of the current maharaja of Jaipur, Sawai Bhawani Singh. I figured, hey, if you're going to make a new friend, it might as well be the most powerful guy in town.

My Let's Go guidebook said that it was possible to arrange a private meeting with his highness himself if you simply went through the proper channels in a professional manner. I put on my best outfit -- a new bandage around the hole in my leg, a button-down shirt and the pants I had without a hole in it (the other had a hole in the leg too) -- sprayed on some deodorant and took an auto rickshaw to the City Palace. I asked the guard for the Aide de Camp (ADC) office and they gave me a free pass onto the palace grounds under the pretense I was there for official business instead of as a ticket-buying tourist like everyone else.

The ADC office had a soldier escort me to the office of a Mr. Pratikshit, Principal Private Secretary to his majesty the maharaja of Jaipur, Bhawani Singh, where I started with my formal introduction of "Erik Trinidad, freelance journalist from New York City." (It was no "Dr. Jones," but it was my professional name.)

"I read that it's possible to meet with the maharaja," I asked. "Is that true?"

"[Yes, I can arrange it,]" he answered, "but his highness is not here. He's out of town."

"Oh?"

"He will return in 2-3 days."

I told him I was flexible and I gave him my card. He told me we'd be in contact in the next day or two to discuss a specific appointment with the maharaja when he was back in Jaipur.

"What will you ask him?" Mr. Pratikshit asked.

"Just what it's like to be the maharaja. Like a day-in-the-life."

"His highness had a stroke a while back and can not answer many questions."

"When?"

"Fifteen, twenty years ago."

"Oh."

"So I'm not sure if he can answer. It will just be a courtesy to meet him and take pictures."

Whew, that takes the pressure off of me. "It's okay, whatever I can get for a story idea."

We exchanged phone numbers before I left his office. I hoped he would look up my credentials on the URL I gave him to see that I had some sort of legitimacy as a journalist and wasn't just some nut job on the street.

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I TOOK ADVANTAGE OF MY FREE PASS inside the City Palace complex, built by order of Jaipur Singh II (founder and namesake of Jaipur) in 1729, and checked out the armory museum, the Diwani-I-Khas (Hall of Private Audience, picture above) with its chandeliers and carved arches, and the Peacock Gate, which led to the courtyard in front of the Chandra Mahal (the maharaja's residence). Near the marble-carved Mubarak Mahal (which housed a textile museum), two musicians played music as the soundtrack for a nearby puppet show.

Afterwards I walked passed the Jama Masjid mosque and just wandered around the bazaars inside the Pink City, the old city of which the City Palace was in the center of, a fairly big section of town surrounded by a fortification wall built in the 18th century by order of Maharaja Jai Singh, which was painted pink in 1856 during the British occupation when Prince Albert came for a visit. (He had a thing for pink.) The bazaar to jaded old me was a familiar scene, with stores selling everything from saris to hardware, spices to shoes, amidst the camels pulling carts nearby, the traffic of cars and motorscooters whizzing by and the sacred cows loitering any way they wanted like stray dogs.

Cows were a no-no on the menu at the local McDonald's where I had a bite to eat, since my stomach was a bit off from the Indian food I'd been eating. I needed a jolt back into standardized Western fast food for a change since I felt a little queasy in the tummy, which wasn't the worst thing ever. Things could have been worse; I read and heard from Canadians Angie and Denise (Egypt) that the latest scam in India was that restaurants purposely taint your food so that you have to pay or deal with sales pitches before receiving the antidote to the poison you just drank.

Anyway, regardless of the lack of poison in my strawberry shake, Jaipur so far was my favorite in the India tourist "Golden Triangle," a geographical triangle formed with Delhi and Agra -- and if I got to meet the maharaja before I left, it would be even better. I'm sure The Blog would be happy with it too.


Posted by Erik at 09:41 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

November 03, 2004

Monkeys, Elephants and Pangkot Palace

DAY 380: According to the tips provided by Blogreaders Duaine and markyt, the fictional Pangkot Palace from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is not just a set in a British soundstage. The exterior shots were filmed on location in India, more specifically at one of the palaces in Jaipur. While "palace in Jaipur" is like saying "skyscraper in New York City" or "church in Rome," it was narrowed down to one palace, the Amber Fort, the former residential fort and palace complex built by Maharaja Man Singh in 1592. While the current Maharaja Sawai Bhawani Singh (forty odd generations down from Man Singh) chooses to live not the 11 km. north of the city where the Amber Fort is, but in the City Palace itself (it's closer to the movie theater and the Pizza Hut), the inspiration for Pangkot Palace still remains on a hilltop for tourists to wander and for filmmakers, particularly the ones in Bollywood, to continue using it as a film location.


BEFORE MY PILGRIMMAGE to the real-life Pangkot Palace, I went to another temple, Galta, otherwise known as the Monkey Temple (for obvious monkey-loving reasons). Galta was also outside the city but to the east, a 3 km. hike up and down a mountain eastward from where the city ended rather abruptly outside the Pink City walls. I had a cycle rickshaw cyclist take me to the eastern edge of town, passed the bazaars, the camels and pink paint-marked lamb running through traffic (I assumed on the way to a slaughterhouse), and proceeded on foot up the lonely trail to a hilltop overlooking the city. At the top was the Surya Mandir or Sun Temple, built by Rao Kripa Ram, the envoy of Maharaja Jai Singh II, used to worship Surya the Sun God.

From there it was another pathway down a gorge to the Monkey Temple. I knew I was getting close when I saw the sight of banana peels all scattered on top of a rock. Upon arrival I saw that the Monkey Temple was properly named, as dozens of monkeys gathered around a sacred pool to eat, drink and just sort of hang out. Nearby was another pool for humans to bathe in, as well as other temple buildings, repurposed as healing centers.

It was at the Monkey Temple that I finally met some other travelers, a group of four young voluptuous Israeli girls that I remembered from the day before; they were in the McDonald's and one of them had asked the manager to turn down the radio after he had cranked it up when Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer" came on (much to my chagrin).

"Take some good pictures?" one asked me.

Take some good pictures of yourself that you'd like to give me? I thought. "Yeah," I actually said out loud.

The four of them had come in a car with a driver/guide that they hired for two days to take them to the various sites of Jaipur. They told me they were on their way to the Amber Fort and I told them that I was too. (It was true, not just a feeble pick-up line.) I played the lone-guy-looking-to-bum-a-ride angle in hopes that (if at the very least) perhaps I could hitch a ride with them, but one of them butt in and told me that there really was no room in the car. I sort of hung a bit to see if maybe I'd get a sympathy invite since the only other way to get a ride out of the Galta parking area was to walk up and down the ridge again into town, but again, they gave me the excuse there was no room and abandoned me.

"I'll see you there then," I said, walking pathetically the way I came as they hopped in their shiny ride -- but I never saw them again that day. Oh well, I thought. They hated Bon Jovi anyway.


ABOUT 45 MINUTES LATER I was the bus stop near the Hawa Mahal or Palace of Winds, and hopped on a cheap public bus northbound to the Amber Fort. Finally, my pilgrimage to "Pangkot Palace," the palace I grew up knowing as a child of the 80s. I wanted to go the final leg up the hilltop it in the classic Indiana Jones way, by riding on an elephant -- rides were provided for a steep fee at the base of the hill.

The bus dropped me off near Maota Lake and I walked to a garden on the side which I thought would bring me to the elephants. At the inner edge of the garden I bumped into one of the small government museums with a couple of artifacts extracted from the palace. "How do I get to the Amber Fort?" I asked one of the men there. One of them volunteered to guide me. I never got his name, but for the sake of this story, let's just call him, hmmm, I don't know, Saijnu.

Saijnu guided me up a path towards the palace and I thought we'd arrive at the elephant mounting point, but soon I realized, as people on elephants were going by, that we had missed it. We walk from here, I figured. In five minutes we were near the fort's main gate already and I had arrived at my Pangkot Palace.

As recommended by my guidebook, I hired an official guide to show me around so that "the palace [would] come alive." My guide was not Saijnu but an old man named H.K. Gupta (H.K. for Hare Krishna), who did make the palace come to some sort of life with his explanations of the different areas of the palace ground, built at four different times with different maharajas. He led me through the passageways to the Diwani-I-Am hall, the garden, the Hall of Pleasure, the Ganesh Pol where the mahani (queen) would gaze through a window in a room above, and many other rooms with elaborate ceilings and wall reliefs. The pinnacle of the rooms in the Amber Fort was the sparkly Hall of Mirrors, another place to entertain guests as candles were reflected like a big kaleidoscope all around the room. From the outside of the palace interiors, I saw that perhaps the Amber Fort was used perhaps only in one specific shot in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a brief five-second shot where Indiana Jones asks Short Round where his razor is.

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An entire section of the palace was allocated to Maharaja Man Singh's twelve wives, each in their own ceiling-less room separated from the other by stone walls (picture above), surrounding a central courtyard were they gathered together during festivals. The Maharaja was a smart guy, having built secret passageways from his quarters to any of the twelve wives' rooms, constructed in a way that one would never know which wife he was visiting (unless of course there was moaning and groaning and yelps from his "Oh!" face). While twelve wives might sound extreme for the monogamist Westerner, let us not forget the 350 women the maharaja had on the side outside of his marriages.

H.K. left me to wander after our tour and I saw for myself just how immense the fort was. There was many secret passageways that could have led anywhere -- perhaps even a secret lair where a secret Thugi cult was still in operation -- and I went exploring to the less-visited areas where darkness and spider webs were still prevalent. I found no such secret lair and called it a day.

I thought perhaps I'd finally get my elephant ride back down the hill, but the elephant operators were still charging the round-trip fee for the one-way down -- and without four busty Israeli girls to split the costs with, I declined. The elephant guys gave me the option of riding around in a circle for Rs. 100, but I thought it was silly to just ride with no real purpose in mind, and so, I skipped out on the elephants entirely, walked down the hill myself and hopped on an auto-rickshaw. It zoomed by faster than any elephant anyway.


PASSED THE JAL MAHAL or Water Fort, a fort that looks like an island in the middle of a lake (unfortunately unopen to the public), I rode the auto-rickshaw to the Birla Mandir south of the city center, another building of another wealthy family in Jaipur, the Birla family which funded the multi-religion temple of worship. Built in only 1985 with bright white marble, the craft and artwork of the temple took ideology and images from Hindu deities, as well as Moses, Jesus, Zarathustra and Socrates in accordance with the Birla family's pluralist values. Nearby was an obligatory shrine to Lord Shiva and the Motidungri Fort, an old fortification owned by the maharaja.

Speaking of the maharaja, I made a follow-up call to his Principal Private Secretary Mr. Pratikshit that evening to see if his highness was in town and if he'd meet me. After numerous attempts trying to hold the apparent busy man on his mobile phone, he told me that I should call in the morning to find out more specifics.

I hoped for the best, knowing that even if I didn't get to see the real maharaja, at least I got to see the residence of the maharaja in the Indiana Jones movie, the elephants, and of course, those fun-loving monkeys.


Posted by Erik at 10:00 AM | Comments (31) | TrackBack

November 04, 2004

Look At The Stars

DAY 381: From what I gather, astrology has a bit of legitimacy in the public eye in India. In fact, the day before I saw on the front page of the legitimate Hindustan Times, whose cover story was the US election -- it's the cover story in most countries since the American president affect the entire planet -- one blurb in the corner that had two prominent astrologists tell what the stars said about the election: that Bush and the Republicans would win a second term, but that second term would be tough. At the time, it was not in the hands of the stars but in the hands of American voters, at home and abroad. (The news reported that the American embassy in Delhi had a record voter turnout of 5,000, two and a half times more than usual.)


A FAMILIAR BEARDED FACE SMILED AT ME when I walked out of the city alcove where the Evergreen Hotel was hidden in. It was Baldel, the cycle rickshaw guy that took me to the eastern edge of the city the day before. "I need to go to the Man Singh Hospital," I told him.

"Why you want to go there?"

"I have a problem with my leg."

At the request of concerned Blogreaders (including my mom), I went to have the hole in my leg checked out for a possible infection. I went to the government-run Man Singh Hospital, a big dingy place packed with hundreds of sick people, most I assumed from the lower castes of society. I made my way passed Indiana with far severe problems, some just skin and bones laid out on guerneys hooked up to IVs and throwing up on the floor, and the kids with burns on their skin. I sort of felt a little dumb going there, a Westerner with a little flesh wound.

The admissions guy told me to go to Room 10 and I walked again through the ailing masses. Dimly lit and dusty, the hospital was a really depressing place, the kind of place in a horror movie or something. Surprisingly, the administration was somewhat efficient and after waiting on a line in Room 10, I finally met with a doctor. He told me everything looked fine and that if it didn't hurt it probably wasn't infected. (True, it hurt a lot more when I had the lump of infected pus under my skin.) He prescribed me some drugs but took it back when I told him I had them already. He said to just finish off what I had and get another wound dressing in the back room.

The back room was another nightmare, a very questionably sanitary place with rusty instruments, thankfully soaking in alcohol. A nurse redressed my wound with iodine and a long bandage on a dirty guerney and I was on my way. Across the street were a bunch of medical supply stores (the Medical Supply District) but none of them had really big Band-Aids and I'd have to continue to settle with wrapping my leg in a long mummy-like one.


AFTER ANOTHER CYCLE RICKSHAW RIDE, I made a short visit to the Hawa Mahal, or Palace of Winds, the pink sandstone place built in 1799 as a windy retreat for Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh. I wandered its back courtyard, its terraces and its verandas, its windows and its hallways, all designed to capture wind like a wind tunnel and keep the maharaja naturally air-conditioned on a hot day.

And speaking of the maharaja, it was time to follow up on meeting the current one, and so I called the Principal Private Secretary's office again. I was directed to speak to a John, who told me to come in for a meeting with him. I went through the same guest-on-business procedure with the City Palace guards and got in free again and was escorted to the office.

John told me the maharaja was in fact in town, and I thought that perhaps Id get to meet him that afternoon, but he was in dispose. I think the maharaja was busy swimming in the nude or something. John and I discussed my intents to meet him and I told him it was just for a story idea. Back and forth we spoke, and I thought it was kind of cool to be having a conversation about a man that we'd only refer to as "his highness." John told me to call him that evening to confirm a meeting with Maharaja Sawai Bhawani Singh the following morning. I thanked him and gave him my card to look up my credentials.


AS I STARTED TO EXPLAIN before digressing about my holy leg and his highness, astrology is a big deal in India. This branch of study is not just a pop science of modern day, but has been around for centuries as shown in the Jantar Mantar, or "instrument of calculation," the largest stone observatory in the world, just outside the City Palace. It was built by order of Maharaja Jai Singh, namesake of Jaipur, from 1728-34 with the collected scientific knowledge of astrology books around the global scientific community.

On the ticket line I saw a guy wearing a Kathmandu t-shirt. "Where you in Nepal?" I asked.

"Yeah."

He was Charles, a lone traveler from London and together we wandered the grounds with its stone structures that made it look like a surreal astrological playground.

"Basically it's a series of stairwells that go to nowhere so that you can get a view of the other stairwells that go to nowhere," I pointed out.

"I think this is one of those places where you need to get a guide," he said. "Otherwise we don't know what we're looking at."

"Yeah, my guide suggests one. Wanna split a guide?"

"Yeah, I'll split a guide with you."

DSC02272bigsundial.JPG

Our government-issued guide spoke fast and mumbled in a thick Indian accent but that wasn't the reason I couldn't really grasp his in-depth, well-informed lecture tour -- it was because most of it deal with a lot of math, not one of my stronger points since I went to art school. He showed us that the surreal "sculptures" (picture above) were actually accurate astrological research devices that kept track of the stars and the sun's position at different times of the year. Some instruments showed the zones of the twelve zodiac signs where shadows were cast in accordance to the sun and the angle of the earth. The "stairs that went nowhere" were actually giant sundials that told the time of day, down to the minute, and the bigger the sundial, the more precise as seen in the big yellow 30-meter tall one with a big curved clock arch. I suppose when you are the maharaja and have the power and resources to build such a thing, why settle for a wristwatch or a regular old sundial?


THE STARS WERE CLOSE TO ACCURATE when I split from Charles (who went to explore the Tiger Fort north of the city) and head east to get a next-day train ticket at the (much shorter) Foreign Tourist line at the train station. I stopped by at the local Sheraton on the way back into town to ask the Bell Captain the latest news from the US election -- like I said, it's nationwide news in many countries -- and he told me what the stars had predicted: Bush and the Republicans were ahead. (Charles had told me that that news was a disaster from a world financial standpoint -- all terrorism issues aside -- because Bush in control would worsen the economy in southeast Asia, not very good news to his job as a banker in the UK.)


FROM THE SIGHTS OF THE STARS in the sky, that evening I went to see the stars closer to earth: Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra, John Abraham, Esha and Rimii, Indian stars of the latest Hindi blockbuster out of Bollywood, Dhoom, directed by Sanjay Godhvi in modern action-comedy style, complete with fast-to-slow edits like in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. At the suggestion of the Israeli girls I met the day before, I went to see the movie at the world-famous Raj Mandir cinema, one of India's (and the world's) great classically-designed theaters, for what Let's Go called "an experience in itself." With the advance assigned seat ticket I bought earlier I joined the hundreds of Indians (and a few foreigners) in the Raj Mandir's beautiful lobby for the theater doors to open. Nevermind that I was dateless; from what I saw, seating was arranged in boy-girl order by row and I sat in the back row of other men.

The crowd was of varied ages, most leaning towards teeny-boppers, and they were just as rowdy and enthusiastic as an American theater crowd on Memorial Day weekend with whistling, heckles, cheers and yelps, even during the pre-movie trailers and commercials -- many of which were for the same product, Fair & Lovely's Fairness Cream, for women to lighten their skin tone. Apparently in India, the more light-skinned a woman is, the more "attractive" and socially-acceptable she is deemed.

Anyway, the movie started to a cheering mass with a flashy and sleek title sequence, followed by a fast-paced scene of a perfectly executed armored truck robbery by four faceless guys in helmets on high performance motorcycles. Forget the image of the "traditional" Bollywood film where men and women dance gaily in a palace or out in the countryside. Dhoom was a fast-paced modern movie of cops and robbers with fight scenes and high-speed motorcycle chases -- which always managed to find time to slow down for an obligatory song-and-dance number.

Try thinking Biker Boys meets The Fast and The Furious meets Ocean's Eleven (when the bad guys decide to rob a Goa casino) meets Bollywood. I don't want to give away the story here -- seriously, if you have the means, go out and see it or download the bit torrent (not that I officially endorse movie piracy) -- but it's a blockbuster for anyone to enjoy which pleases both genders with eye candy. John Abraham who plays the lead bad guy is often shirtless and looks like an international Calvin Klein model, and the two actresses, Esha and Ramii, were just tantalizingly sexy and voluptuous. Contrary to what you may think, guys will especially be fond of the musical numbers because the director (God bless him) managed to make sure the curvaceous and leggy actresses always end up in skin-tight clothes that by one way or another, get totally soaked in water, whether it be from ocean waves, a rainstorm or a garden hose. (Ah, God bless the garden hose.)


SEEING THE STAR OF JAIPUR was yet to be determined so I called John at the maharaja's office to find out about my possible meeting. He knew it was me when his phone rang and told me that I'd get to meet his highness the following morning in a short 15-minute window between 10:30 and 10:45, making me one happy pseudo-journalist. And speaking of pseudo-journalism, I got word that night on the internet at the astrologists of the Hindustan Times were right; Bush and the Republicans did seize a second term in the White House. I could only hope that the second term would provide more hot chicks sprayed with garden hoses, but more likely it would be a term of figurative stairs that led up to nowhere.


Posted by Erik at 02:32 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

November 05, 2004

Meet The Maharaja

DAY 382: Baldel, the bearded old Indian man in the paisley shirt, greeted me with a smile and a wave like he did every morning I walked down the market area from the Evergreen Hotel. It was his way of telling me his cycle rickshaw services were available to me without being too pushy like the other cyclists.

"Hello, how are you?" I greeted him.

"How is your leg?" he asked. The day before he had brought me to the local hospital to get my leg checked out.

"It's fine," I told him, hopping into the carriage, no questions asked. "I need to go to the City Palace," I instructed him. He had been there many a time before, it being one of the main tourist attractions in Jaipur. However I was going there not as a tourist but as a journalist. "I'm going to meet with the maharaja."


AFTER THREE DAYS OF PHONE CALLS and meetings with secretaries, I had landed an "exclusive" interview with the current maharaja of Jaipur, His Highness Maharaja Sawai Bhawani Singh. ("Exclusive" to the very few people of which I was one, that did not have the Lonely Planet book; it was Let's Go that informed me that a meeting could be set up with the maharaja behind all the Lonely Planeteer's backs.) The Principal Private Secretary of the Royal City Palace told me that the maharaja would sometimes grant civilians the courtesy of meeting him in person and for a photo opp. I would meet his highness under the guise that I was legitimate journalist from New York -- while that was true to some extent, most of you Blogreaders know that is somewhat of a complete farce, what with all my references to poop and toilet humor. Perhaps it was fitting that my writing credentials included a "low-brow" tabloid like the New York Post (which is not to be confused with the more sophisticated New York Times, which appreciates the "high-brow" humor of belching).

I arrived at the City Palace twenty minutes ahead of my 10:30 meeting with the maharaja. "Hi, I'm Erik Trinidad. I have a 10:30 appointment with his highness." I signed in at the front security guard station as I had done before, this time with a new answer for the "name of person to be met" ("His Highness") and walked over to the Aide de Camp office. The ADC officer had a royal guard escort me to the Principal Private Secretary's office, who had a royal guard escort me back to the ADC office because it was still too early. I sat on a couch while waiting patiently for my scheduled meeting. Meanwhile I crammed with my notes at the last minute, like I was about to take a mid-term, just in case I was "quizzed" on any background history of the maharaja or the members of the royal family. With me I had a printout of their brief history from the Royal Family of Jaipur's official website.

It is important for a journalist to be well informed on the facts before going into an interview with someone of importance, especially when that someone is royalty. I had never met anyone of royalty in person before, so it was sort of a big deal regardless of the fact that with India's modern democratic government, royal maharajas were nothing more than figureheads left over from a legacy of history, much like the Queen of England. While most modern-day royal figureheads did nothing but bask in the glory of their royal lineage -- seriously, what has the Queen of England done for you lately? -- Maharaja Sawai Bhawani Singh actually earned his respect, having served in the Indian Army as a paratrooper and ultimately a commanding officer in the Indian-Pakistan War and the Bangladesh War. He eventually made the rank of Brigadier for life and even served as the first Resident High Commissioner to the State of Brunei from 1993 to 1997. Nowadays, he was old and retired and it was rumored he was very much into playing around with computers as a hobby.

I wasn't worried about getting my facts straight about the maharaja -- that I had down-packed -- I was more concerned with trying to remember facts about his wife the maharani (queen) and his daughter the princess. I had the maharaja's full name engraved on my brain, but I couldn't seem to remember the queen or princess' names without having to look them up. Should I write their names under my sleeve? I wondered. No you idiot, you're wearing short sleeves.

The ADC officer was waiting with me in the room for the royal guard to cue us it was time. "Does his highness always get visitors like this?" I asked.

"Yeah, he's always having people come by or going out to visit people. He gets bored."

Hmm, always having people over or going out to visit others? Sounds like the maharaja was just like me as a teenager.

The red turban- and thick, curly moustache-wearing royal guard signaled us that it was time. The ADC officer and the guard escorted me back towards Chandra Mahal, the residence of the maharaja. "Wait here [outside] a moment," the ADC officer instructed me.

I stood there alone in the courtyard in the sun, waiting for my big meeting with the maharaja. I have to say that up until that point I wasn't really nervous, but at that moment it struck me. I'm actually going to meet a real maharaja. The actual living man of royal blood from the Royal Singh family prominent in the history books, a descendant of Maharaja Jai Singh who actually built up most of this city centuries ago. And I'll be in his presence soon. I gathered my composure and prepared myself, the "journalist" I was. I had let the questions I'd ask him hang on the tip of my tongue so I wouldn't forget them if I got too star struck.

The royal guard came back and escorted me beyond the PPS office and to the next one. Is this it? It was a big office with nice furniture and an old man at the desk. Is that him? Is that the maharaja? Where's the royal red turban like I'd seen in the photos on the internet? He extended his hand and I shook it. Oh! This is the maharaja!. I almost didn't notice his hand extended to me in my confusion and almost left his royal hand hanging.

"Please," he said, extending his hand towards the royal couch and royal armchair across from the desk. We sat. "It's great to meet you," I said.

"What do you want to do?" he said in a sort of confused way. I remembered that he wasn't all with it since his stroke some time ago.

I got right down to it. "Well I've been touring around the city of Jaipur and learning about the maharajas of the past, but I haven't really seen the correlation on how that translates into modern day society," I started, trying to sound all professional. "And I guess that's something that only a man of your status could answer." Dan Rather, eat your heart out.

"I don't understand."

"Well, what I guess I'm trying to ask is what it's like to be the maharaja in a modern world."

Still confused at my tough questions of crack journalism, he said, "I have been in the army."

"Yes, I know you've been in the army..." I started. Whew, that research paid off.

He cut to the chase. "Uh, did you want to take a photo?"

"Yes."

DSC02319maharajame.JPG

He stood up and I followed him over to the wall. The royal guard was called in and I gave him my little camera to take my photo with the maharaja (picture above). "Uh, watch your finger on the lens there," I instructed him like I did to everyone else I'd had take a photo of me. (The lens was on the corner, not in the center.) The flash went off and that was it. Meeting adjourned. His highness extended his hand again in goodbye and I shook it.

"Thank you for meeting me," I said before I left. The maharaja went on with his own business, preparing to leave the city again to visit a friend, probably to play computer games.

Okay, so I didn't get the big inside scoop on life as a living maharaja of India. Luckily His Highness cut our meeting short before I really stumped him with the really pressing questions of crack journalism, like "Do you prefer the end of the toilet paper roll to be hanging from the top or bottom?" and (since he was a computer buff), "Do you, uh, Yahoo?" I guess we will never know the answers to these questions. (In case you were keeping track, yes, I did manage to squeeze in some toilet humor in this article just now.)


I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A SLOW NEWS DAY to report about something else I've noticed in India, particularly in Jaipur, and that is the presence of the neo-hippies everywhere. India is a haven for dreadlocked Europeans and Israelis to come and pretty much do nothing but sit around ungroomed, wearing Indian textiles and make jewelry, under the pretense that they are being badasses rebelling against their Western upbringings.

I don't know if it's because I'm older now (I've hit the big Three-Oh if you recall), but I must say that my tolerance for hippies has really declined. At the expense of sounding like a right-wing nut over here, I really can't stand those goddamn hippies. Seriously, get a haircut and go somewhere other than your room at the Evergreen Hotel. I swear those guys did nothing but walk around barefoot all stoned out, being "all spiritual" by listening to music and trying to make jewelry. I guess it's partially my fault for encountering so many of them en masse; I chose to stay at the same budget accommodation that attracted such a group of people -- but not for long.

I checked out that afternoon, hopped on Baldel's cycle rickshaw, rode my last cycle rickshaw ride in the city of Jaipur and then got on a train bound for my next destination, Bikaner, about seven hours northwest via rail. I had a ticket in second, air-conditioned class, the unofficial "tourist" class since most foreign travelers spent the couple extra bucks to travel in it, away from the constant begging in third. My train car was practically empty, except for an Indian family and two obvious foreign-looking travelers, Michael and Martina, a couple from Vienna on holiday through the State of Rajasthan for a month. The two were on the budget backpacker trail as well, and like me, weren't all hippied out. We got along almost immediately and chat about this, that and our depression about the other big story of the day, the results of the US election. (I'm not a right wing nut after all.) The train zipped through the countryside under the orange sunset and then dark evening sky for just over seven hours, stopping briefly at stations on the way. I killed most of the time reading Dan Brown's Digital Fortress and eating Lay's Indian masala-flavored potato chips (as opposed to Lay's "American" flavor, sour cream and onion).

It was 10:30 at night by the time we arrived in Bikaner, late by Bikaner standards with most places shut down already. The Austrians Michael and Martina had already made a reservation at the Hotel Marudhar Heritage, one of the hotels in India converted from old historical buildings, including some converted from former royal houses after most of the people of royalty realized that they had no real power anymore and had to get a real job. I went with them to check it out, inspected a room and approved. For five bucks (just about a dollar more) I got a nice big room with the usual bed and private bath, but this former royal residence went the extra mile and, unlike a budget hippie haven, provided a TV, blanket, towel, soap and most importantly, toilet paper. Oh yeah, I'm living like a maharaja now! As nice as the room was, there was nowhere to hang the toilet paper roll in the bathroom, finally shedding some light on that pressing issue with the maharaja of Jaipur; perhaps he had no option to have a preference on where the end of the toilet paper roll should be after all.

Erik R. Trinidad for TheGlobalTrip.com, Bikaner.


Posted by Erik at 06:07 PM | Comments (43) | TrackBack

November 09, 2004

Celebrities

DAY 383: I'm hoping that readers of The Blog don't think they don't have to travel on their own because they are simply traveling vicariously through me at their computers. Each journey is different for everyone -- this is simply my story -- events and emotions are based on many individual factors, including the time of the year you travel, your budget, the people you meet, and/or whether or not you perspire the smell of chicken soup. (You guys out there know who you are.) As we've learned on this Blog, appearance is a big factor -- sometimes to one's advantage, sometimes to one's disadvantage. As I read one woman write, "Being an American female travelling alone in India is like being a walking aphrodesiac with a big sign over the top which says 'FUCK HERE.'" [sic]

With my ambiguous Filipino-American physical appearance, I've managed to blend in, disappear into the local crowd in many countries I've been to, including India to an extent, much more so than the average traveler -- and by "average," I mean a Caucasian-looking person. However, being white isn't always a disadvantage in India, despite the woman's comment above (whom I can only assume was white American). For example, from what I've read, being a Caucasian increases your chances of playing an extra in a Bollywood movie for scenes that supposedly take place in Europe.

I got an inside look to the Caucasian-In-India Experience when I spent the day with Michael and Martina, the Austrian couple I met on the train the night before. Apparently, being white can make you sort of a celebrity in India, particularly in a city like Bikaner, Rajasthan.


BIKANER WAS FOUNDED IN 1488 by, not surprisingly, a guy named Bika, Roa Bika, a Rathore prince. The desert settlement was once a stop on the legendary Silk Route that linked trade between the East and Europe, a place for trading and for breeding camels to be used in the caravans. Nowadays it is the State of Rajasthan's fourth largest city, trying to keep up with its sibling cities in the tourism game. With that said, Bikaner isn't as in-your-face as a more touristy place like Jaipur, with its constant touts and aggressive rickshaw men. That's not to say that Indians in Bikaner don't approach foreigners out of curiosity, especially young children who most likely haven't seen a white person in real life before.

Michael, Martina and I proceeded on foot through the streets of downtown Bikaner, a bustling commercial market area full of shops, fruit carts, motorscooters and camel-drawn carriages. It was there that I began to notice that I wasn't having the "average" traveler experience; most people ignored me while paying much more attention to Michael and Martina, greeting them with smiles and extended hands.

We walked to the Junagarh Fort, the late 16th century residential fort of the maharaja of Bikaner, a fort with the special significance that it had never been conquered. Beyond its pinkish ramparts we went, through the main gate near the shrine of handprints of the woman who had performed the old ceremonial practice of sati (burning themselves on their deceased, fort-defending husbands' pyres). Admission to the fort grounds included a free tour guide (to discourage touts) and the Austrians and I tagged onto a bigger group of Indian tourists. The guide brought us around all the areas of the palace fort open to the public, from its courtyards with fountains and colorful imported Italian tiles, its conference room, its bedrooms, its gardens and verandas, its big public audience hall, and its colorfully painted entertaining "cloud room." The guide spoke in both Hindi and English, but it was still hard to understand him. We got the gist of his lecture though, especially the part about the ceremonial dancing on a bed of nails or a bed of swords (ouch!). The last stop of the tour was the armory, which boasted weapons used to defend the fort over the centuries, including German machine guns taken from the Germans in WWI when the Indians fought with the British.

Our ticket purchase got us into the nearby Prachina Museum on the other side of a big courtyard from the main gate. The courtyard was packed with school children in uniform, on recess from a school trip. They were all playing when the three of us walked by and immediately stopped all horseplay to stop to say hello and extend a hand in greeting. "What country are you from?" they'd ask.

"Austria."

"No, Austria, not Australia. It's in Europe."

More kids appeared like the circus was in town to get a glimpse of the two stars going by, led by me, Mr. Chopped Liver. The "hellos" and smiles to the Austrians flowed like a river.

"Wow, it's like you're a celebrity," I said to Martina.

Walking with the poise and sunglasses of a celebrity wanting to be left alone, she told me they got this treatment a lot in India, and that Indians even wanted to take their picture with them. I told her about Blogreader and fellow traveler Maria's similar experience, how Indians took pictures of her because she had blonde hair. "I think they have a fixation with blondes," I told the blonde Martina.

"I'm not even a real blonde."

"Neither was [she.]"

The Prachina Museum was small, but very organized. It displayed the different things used by the royal family through the years, from their royal poofy dresses to their royal silverware, imported from England. Also on display were many photographs of maharajas of the past, many of which sported thick, curly moustaches. (Yes, I thought what you are thinking, speculating that movie critic Gene Shalit is actually a maharaja in disguise.)


AFTER A QUICK SNACK and a 40-minute walk under the Indian sun later, the Austrians and I were in the southern part of town, at one of the entry gates into the Old City, surrounded by a fortification wall. We walked the narrow streets and alleyways that weren't nearly as crowded as their younger siblings in the north -- many places were closed up already at 3 p.m. There were still people around though, which meant there was no escape from more curious hellos and greetings from children. Again, the Austrians got all the attention; most kids wanted to shake Michael's hand like he was the president strolling through. I felt like lesser-known Filipino-American actor Dante Basco (who played Rufio, King of The Lost Boys, in Steven Spielberg's Hook) walking beside Austrian governing superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We eventually made it through the fans to the Bhandeshwar Temple, a big famous house of worship in the Jain religion. Jainism, a sort of extreme version of Buddhism with some ideas taken from Hinduism, is a religion that strictly respects all living things, no matter how small or how much of a nuisance they can be, which explained the tolerance for the hundreds of pigeons perched on its tower -- and the many inside the temple flying and pooping at their leisure. The Jain priest and caretaker of the temple, one Manya Maharaj, was a very friendly Brahmin, the latest in a 31-generation lineage of Jain priests. He gave us a free tour, showing us the beautiful Persian paintings that adorned the interior of which the temple was famous for, and the sculptures of the 24 prophets in the Jain faith. He even allowed us into the sacred center of the temple to see the shrine inside.

Manya's granddaughter Ramala was eager to befriend the new visitors and led us up the tower to the two upper levels. From there she pointed out the views of the city, the expanse of the desert nearby and the cow hospital below.

"Can I take your picture?" I requested of the little Indian girl. She obliged, but only if she posed with the Austrian celebrities. Back downstairs, I requested the same of her grandfather.

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"Yes, I am in all the tourist pictures!" (picture above) he answered. "I'm famous."

Ha, everyone's a celebrity around here, I thought, but he proved it. "Look!" He walked me over to a poster on the wall. Professionally shot with professional lighting and a professional fair-skinned model from Bombay wearing a traditional saree dress, it was a promotional poster for a fancy luxury hotel that used the famous colorful interior of the Bhandeshwar Temple as its background. Huh? Famous he says?

"Look here." In the back, slightly out of focus, there he was, the priest of the temple in the photograph, casually sitting as a part of the background. "See, I'm famous!"


FAME CONTINUED TO BE THE THEME OF THE DAY when a young Indian adolescent also named Michael volunteered to show us around the Old City. He took us to the nearby Laxminath Temple, a Hindu temple that unfortunately was closed, and then through the busy market streets of butter, vegetable and spice vendors. The side streets and courtyards were full of many young boys playing the Indian past time of cricket -- but game time stopped when they saw the Austrians walk by in order for the boys to smile, wave and extend their hands in greeting. One boy even had Martina throw a pitch like she was a celebrity at an American baseball game.

"What country are you from?"

"Austria."

"Australia?"

"No, Austria. It's in Europe."

"Yeah! Australia!" shouted another kid.

We continued walking. "How many times do you have to explain that?" I asked Martina.

"Every time," she replied. "Except in Europe."


THE OLD CITY WAS KNOWN FOR ITS OLD BUILDINGS, particularly its havelis or old mansions. Some were old and abandoned, while others were actually built in recent years as part of real estate developments, according to our young guide Michael. He brought us to the hidden but ultra-luxurious Hotel Bhanwar Niwas, a haveli, half of which was the residence of its wealthy owner. We pretended to be interested in a room so that we could wander the building, with its fancy five-star hallways, fancy sitting parlor and fancy bedrooms, all fit for rich celebrities at 3,300 rupees a night.

We continued our walk through the Old City, again with the kids waving hello from the back of an auto-rickshaw, or their constant approaches wanting to meet the Austrians with their Austrian auras of fortune and glory. I think Michael started to get really exhausted by it -- at one point he had about five kids hanging off of each of his arms -- so we went back to our hotel. (Later I learned it wasn't the kids, but the heat that got to him; he was suffering from a mild heatstroke.)


I HAD DINNER ALONE that night while my famous Austrian friends took it easy, at one of the busy, all vegetarian local restaurants in the area, and dined on a paneer burji and chipati bread. I sat at a corner table, minding my own business, but I noticed that people nearby were glancing stares at me, followed by discussion amongst themselves. I figured it was the usual "What country do you think he's from?" debate, but maybe, just maybe, they were wondering, "Hey, isn't that the guy from Hook?"


Posted by Erik at 10:30 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

November 10, 2004

Holy Rats and Camel Humps

DAY 384: While Bikaner is home to the beautiful Junagarh Fort, it wasn't the architecture that brought me there. No, I had come for something much smaller in size than a big impenetrable fortress, and that little something was covered in dark fur and sported a long tail. Thirty kilometers south of Bikaner lies the Karni Mata Temple, known by many simply as the "Rat Temple" for its thousands of sacred rats that run rampantly through the building. According to Hindu lore, a rat was the reincarnation of the nephew of Karni Mata, Bikaner's patron goddess, and all the male descendants thereafter were also born as rats.

I remembered seeing Karni Mata Temple serve as one of the obstacles the contestants had to overcome in the first season of The Amazing Race -- people had to overcome any fears of free-range rodents running at their bare feet to get to the next clue. It was a place that, like so many other places, proclaimed itself as the Eighth Wonder of the World.


AFTER A PUBLIC BUS RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT, I was dropped off in Deshnok, the small desert town where the temple resides amidst the food stalls that sprouted up when the temple became known as a tourist attraction. I paid the camera usage fee, took off my sandals and prepared for the onslaught of sacred rodents.

As a foreigner I wasn't allowed into the sacred central shrine area, but that didn't mean I didn't get my share of rats. Thousands of rats scurried around the temple pavilion, doing what sacred rats reincarnated from holy deities do, i.e. sleeping, kissing, eating or drinking the offerings brought over by worshippers. Others simply honored the holy rats with music. There was a time when such a scene might have freaked me out -- believe me there were some jumpy people there -- but for some reason it didn't phase me; over the past year, I'd become desensitized to a lot of things in true experienced globetrotter form. Rats? Rats, schmats. (At least they weren't snakes.)

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There weren't really as many rats running around as I thought there would be; I expected it to be one big rat rave, like a big furry moving carpet, but the rats were pretty subdued as rats are, hiding in corners or in the insides of walls -- although one curious rate came over to me to nibble on my foot (picture above). I guess that means I was blessed.


THAT AFTERNOON I WENT TO SEE CREATURES of a bigger size, creatures also with four legs, but with big humps on their backs: camels. Seven kilometers out of Bikaner in the middle of the desert, was the Camel Breeding Center, still in operation today since its origins during the days of the ancient Silk Route. An auto-rickshaw driver took me there and waited for me by the entry gate for me to finish. I signed into the logbook and saw the names above mine: "Martina" and "Michael."

The Austrian couple was there, after recuperating from a night of Michael's heat-related fever and Martina's worrying and nursing of him. They invited me to tag along their short guided tour they were on and we saw the things one sees at a camel farm: lots of camels. Camels walking, camels eating, and camels just sort of hanging out in stables -- everything but camels actually breeding. The in-ranch Camel Museum explained the different kinds of camels in the region (Jaisalmer, Kachchi and Bikaneri) and the versatility of camel-related products, from utensils to textiles to "decorative" camel fetuses. It didn't stop there; camels had also been used once to generate electricity and camel milk is of great importance; not only did it produce milk for the desert people, but camel milk was known to aid in the treatment of tuberculosis victims. Camels were bred for all these purposes, but more significantly for camel safaris, the big thing to do in the region if you had the time and money. (Those of you Blogreaders using this Blog for research for your own trip, a camel safari is a "must do;" I was only skipping out on it due to time restrictions and the fact that I'd done one in Morocco already.)


I MET THE AUSTRIANS back in town at a restaurant recommended in my guidebook, one of the few ones that actually served meat, but when we got there, nothing was being served in accordance with the Muslim fasting season of Ramadan, when food was not to be consumed until after sundown. We looked elsewhere in town for a place that was open before sunset and finally found the Suraj Restaurant, serving Hindus not practicing the Muslim custom. Although no meat was served, it was a good place for proper food, particularly the Kashmir Pullav rice dish I ordered with savory spices and fruits, garnished with a silvery substance that looked like aluminum foil (but edible). For the Austrians and I it was a sort of farewell dinner; I'd leave that night on an overnight sleeper bus to Udaipur, while the two would stay another night and leave early the next morning to Jaisalmer for a camel safari.

"May we invite you for dinner?" Michael asked me. I was confused because we had just eaten.

"Treat you to dinner," his girlfriend corrected his English. "May we treat you to dinner."

"No, it's okay, I can pay."

"No, really. Our treat."

I gave a respectful hesitant pause before saying, "Yeah, okay, sure." Turn down a free meal? Shiet, no way! Michael paid the tab and they sent me off on my way. I suppose that's how Austrians say goodbye.


I BOARDED THE OVERNIGHT SLEEPER BUS of private bus company Nandu Travels -- it was the only way to get to Udaipur since there was no direct train. The bus took me southbound, away from the camels and the rats nibbling on my feet.


Posted by Erik at 09:51 PM | Comments (37) | TrackBack

November 12, 2004

Remembering Bond

DAY 385: Udaipur, the former capital of the Mewar Kingdom, named after its founder Maharaja Udai Singh II, gets plenty of tourism, as it is arguably Rajasthan's most romantic destination with its scenic palaces -- palaces perched on mountaintops overlooking palaces that look like they are floating in the middle of a lake. Even for a "palaced out" guy like me, the "City of Sunrise" was a great feast for the eyes, a place Let's Go says has "somehow managed to retain a number of fairy-tale qualities" -- it's no wonder it served as the perfect exotic locale for Roger Moore as James Bond in 1983's Octopussy, a proud fact that the city of Udaipur proudly clings onto. I remember seeing the movie 21 years before, but upon my arrival, nothing looked familiar or was coming back to me. (Then again Octopussy wasn't on my repetoire of 80s movies I'd seen over and over and over again, like Ghostbusters.)

Being a tourist draw, I had been warned of Udaipur's aggressive touts and rickshaw men that came with the territory. My overnight bus brought me to the private bus stop and from there I hopped on an auto-rickshaw to the Hotel Gangaur Palace, another reasonably-priced ($5) heritage hotel converted from an old haveli or mansion. The rickshaw man took me right there without trying to lead me to another place for a commission, although the touts by the hotel tried to get me into another. "Just come and see. If you like it I'm happy. If you don't like, I'm happy."

"Yes, I know because you get commission either way." I moved on and checked into the Gangaur Palace, where I was expected since I'd called ahead with a reservation.

The rooftop of my haveli hotel had a pleasant restaurant overlooking Lake Pichhola, which was pretty dried up in the heat of the dry season. During monsoon season, the lake I'm told, is especially beautiful and sparkling. In early November the water was at drought levels, so much that one could almost walk to the "secluded" Lake Palace in the middle.

After settling in I took to the palace closer to my neighborhood, the City Palace, Rajasthan's largest, constructed in the 16th century. Nowadays it is part residence of the current maharaja (with no power), part luxury hotel, and part museum, which is how most people saw its interior. I expected it to be just another City Palace, but I was quite impressed; it was the best of the city palaces I'd seen thus far.

After walking through the main gate and the palace door and the starting point of the museum, I joined the other tourists following the arrows that pointed out the designated route through the maze of corridors and stairwells of the palace. They led us to the different rooms, many restored and maintained with their original bright colors. Stained glass windows and mirrors made some rooms look like disco clubs, while others had the classic royal Indian feel, sporting mosaics of royal peacocks. There was a great balance between interior views and views of the outside, with the windows and verandas looking out, and the several courtyards on the palace grounds.

Along the way were many signs with catchy phrases promoting some big shrine to Lord Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu deity (i.e. "You Do Best! He Does Rest!! Meet Ganesha at Zenana Mahal") and it really got me curious. That's gotta be some incredible shrine to Ganesh. In the end, it turned out to be nothing but a gift shop at the end of the tour.


THE STREETS OF UDAIPUR WERE ALIVE and in preparation mode for the coming of Diwali, the festival of lights. Tinsel, garland and saffron flowers were hung all around and I could definitely feel the festive mood in the air. Festive vibe yes, James Bond vibe, no; still, nothing was looking familiar to me. (Then again I was only nine when Octopussy was in theaters.)

I strolled over to the Jagdish Mandir, Maharaja Jagat Singh's 17th-century temple erected in honor of Jagannath, an avatar of Lord Vishnu. There a "guide" showed me around and pointed out everything despite me telling him I was fine and that I could wonder on my own. He shoed me the reliefs on the tower wall depicting scenes of the Kama Sutra (so he said) and the four corner shrines around the temple for other deities, including Kali. He tipped me on some information, that I should come back that evening at 6:30 to see the prayer ceremony, followed by music and dance.

I continued my stroll around the city, beyond the clock tower, stopping by the book stores to browse for more reading material and entertaining the street boys with feigned interest in paintings and artwork -- Udaipur is famous for it's traditional painting school. I walked along the lakeshore and saw the Jag Mandir palace from afar, the other impressive structure situated on another island in the middle of Lake Picchola. Over the centuries it served as a refuge from war for the maharaja, as well as a refuge for British women and children during the Mutiny of 1857. Nowadays during the lake's prime time, boat cruises would have been available to cruise around for exploration, but the water levels were too low to do such a thing. From what I was seeing, the only boat traffic on the lake was from the small boats that simply cruised along a narrow area between the city docks and the Lake Palace, bringing clients back and forth from the exclusive five-star hotel which the Lake Palace had been converted into.

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THE OTHER MAJOR PALACE IN THE AREA that was actually open to the general public was the Monsoon Palace, the third royal palace for the royal family, this one 5 km. away from town on top of a mountain of the Aravelli Range, constructed at such a height to avoid the flood waters of the monsoon season. An auto-rickshaw guy took me there, beyond the gate of the national park it was a part of, and then up the bumpy zig-zag to the palace on the peak just in time for sunset (picture above). From the vantage point of the palace, I saw the sun glow its red, pink and orange hues over the mountains for a group of camera-toting spectators, both foreign and Indian. Inside the palace was another museum, this one focusing on the ecology of the region instead of the same old maharaja history thing.


BACK AT THE JAGDISH MANDIR TEMPLE, I went to see the evening prayer session. Women in saris and men in plain clothes came in to pray in the ceremony led by a Hindu Brahmin with a really big turban. The prayer was followed by singing and clapping with the beating of drums and the ringing of bells, but I didn't stay too long since I was starting to feel my presence was getting a bit obtrusive. (I was the only tourist there at the time.)

It was about seven o'clock anyway, the time of evening when almost all of the restaurants in town did the obligatory nightly screening of Octopussy (the restaurant of my hotel played it along with another movie) for the ever-changing but continual audience of tourists. Over a mutton curry and some masala chai, I watched the 1983 James Bond film with a small group of others and everything finally came back to me. The Lake Palace was the secret lair of the double agent known as Octopussy; the Monsoon Palace was the headquarters of the evil bad guy Kamal Khan and his Indian henchman Gobinda. There was an auto-rickshaw chase down the road where my hotel was, and even a big rickshaw stunt in front of the Jagdish Mandir temple. It was fun to see the movie after walking around its set all day long.

As long as Udaipur continues to proudly boast its former glory as the setting of Octopussy, I'm sure people will come to its palaces and to its nightly VCD screenings at least once -- no matter how tired the restaurant waiters may be sick of having seen it over seven thousand times.


Posted by Erik at 09:24 AM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

November 15, 2004

Trinidad. Erik Trinidad.

DAY 386: The centerpiece of Udaipur is the famous Jag Niwas, more commonly known as the Lake Palace, the one-time summer residence of the royal family when simply being crammed in a boat on Lake Pichhola wasn't good enough. "I think I want a palace built in the middle of the lake," the maharaja probably said. And so it was made. "It's good to be the maharaja."

In 1983, the Lake Palace was the home of double-agent Octopussy in the James Bond film of the same name, a secret lair where she lived and trained an all-female army of acrobatic death vixens. Coincidentally, it was at this palace that James Bond conveniently showed up one night, made out and slept with Octopussy within minutes of their introduction.

"Is it really that easy?" one guy at the movie screening the night before asked the girl at the other table.

"No, no," she replied in some European accent.

"It's because he's James Bond," I interjected. "And he's staying at a nicer place."

"Ah, that's it," he said. "I'm just a poor man." (He was staying at a guesthouse cheaper than the haveli I was staying in.)

Nowadays the Lake Palace is an exclusive luxury hotel on Conde Nast Traveler's Gold List, with rooms costing a small fortune per night. The only way to be allowed on the island is to be a guest rich enough for its luxuriously high rates, or make reservations to have a meal there (also at luxuriously high rates).

For kicks, the night before I called up the Lake Palace to try and get a reservation for the lunch buffet that day (slightly cheaper than dinner). The man on the phone turned me down with the excuse that they were booked solid for lunch because a big group was coming in for a private function.

Oh well, I thought. I wouldn't have spent the money anyway; lunch was Rs. 1000 -- roughly the cost of four nights accommodations -- and while Let's Go said it was worth the splurge, I felt I shouldn't since I was coming down to the end of my funds. But that didn't stop me from trying to get to the Lake Palace anyway.


INSPIRED BY ROGER MOORE AS MR. BOND in Octopussy, I gave myself the mission of the day to try and get on the premises without having to pay anything. I saw in the movie screening the night before that Agent 007 snuck onto the island by floating in a one-man submarine in the shape of a crocodile. Damn, I sort of forgot to pack that. I could have tried walking there since the lake was dried up enough that it was possible if you went the back way, but I had heard from other backpackers who tried without any luck. They were simply turned away from official-looking guardian henchmen of the hotel management. The Lake Palace, for the budget traveler, was every bit impenetrable as it was in the movie.

I was going to go to the official city docks to try to charm my way in, Bond-style, but before doing so I decided to give the restaurant a buzz just for kicks. "I called yesterday trying to get a reservation and I know you are full because of a big group. I was just wondering if there were any cancellations or anything, an opening for one person," I inquired.

"You can come," said the man on the phone. It was a different voice than the one I heard the night before.

"Really? They said it was full for lunch."

"No, you can make a reservation. When will you come?"

"Uh, can I come now?"

"Yes."

Wow, that was easy. I gave my name, then put on my best clothes (the pants without a hole in it, a button down shirt with worn out collar hidden by propping it upward, and my beat up hiking boots) and walked over to the docks. I regretted that I made the reservation; sure I'd get to see the Lake Palace, but I'd also have to pay for it, which wasn't in my mission directives or good financial sense; four nights accommodations for the price of one meal -- and I wasn't even hungry because I just had breakfast.


THE LUXURIOUS LAKE PALACE EXPERIENCE STARTED on the mainland with a fancy stone gateway worthy of a Bond film leading to the dock. Women in royal-looking sarees greeted guests as royal-looking ushers escorted new clients with parasols. I walked over to the desk. "Hi, I have a reservation for lunch."

"Name?"

"Trinidad. Erik Trinidad," I said. It came out pretty organically given the secret mission at hand.

He led me to the end of the pier where I boarded the small boat with some members of that big group going to the island for a private function. They were Americans from the Miami Ski Club, a group of well-off retirees that went around the world for luxury adventures, most of them (but not exclusively) ski trips.

"So where exactly do you go skiing in Miami?" I asked.

"Anywhere but," answered the older guy with a sort of cockiness and attitude of Howard Stern. His name was Brian and he was soon making fun of my tattered shoes. "You're gonna need to get new shoes before they let you in," he mocked me. And so began the Bond-esque introductory conversations 007 has with men of wealth and power in a place like that, although we were all in casual clothes and not tuxedos and fancy dresses.

"So what brings you here?" one woman asked. I told them of my Global Trip and my cover as a freelance journalist from New York. "Which way are you going?" she asked.

"The way that you earn a day."

"What do you mean?"

"You know how when you cross the International Date Line and you lose a day but then you gain it back?" I said. "I'm only gaining a day." Yes, I found the way to cheat the rotation of the earth.

"So who have you written for?"

"The New York Post, Globe Trekker... You know the Travelers' Tales books out of San Francisco? I'm in one of theirs. I was also a weekly travel columnist at Lycos..."

"What's your name, so we can look for it?" one woman asked excitedly.

"Erik Trinidad."

"That's a great name."

We docked on the island after a two-minute cruise on the narrow channel and were escorted by the ushers with parasols again, all the way to the main entrance where some other tourists were posing for photos. The palace gave off a first impression that lived up to the hype, a true luxury palace with fine marble and exquisite decor, all placed with an obvious anal-retention. In lieu of Octopussy's voluptuous female assassins was fine furniture in the parlor, a bar serving up drinks (shaken, not stirred) and a sunny open courtyard in the middle of the lobby.

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The lunch buffet was served in another big open courtyard full of fountains and artificial, but very scenic ponds. I went there and asked a waiter where I was to sit for my Party of One. He led me back to the lobby because the fountain courtyard (picture above) was for the private function only and I was to dine in a separate restaurant. "Please wait here."

While waiting to be seated, Bea, one of the older women of the Miami Ski Club that I met on the boat, saw me loitering around, secretly taking photos with my little spy camera. "Will you join us?" she asked.

"Is that okay?"

"I'm sure it will be fine," she replied. "I'm sure plenty of people would want to meet you."

"Sure if it's no problem." She went to ask her tour leader Mr. Singh if it was okay to "invite a journalist from New York to join [them]," and he obliged with no hesitation.

The all-you-can-eat buffet was included on their tour package and for them it was just another meal for the affluent group, although I heard it was a pleasant change from the meals they'd been having on the train. The Miami Ski Club was just one group of four traveling together on the Palace On Wheels train, a luxury holiday train converted from former cars for maharajas. Anyway, I joined my fellow Americans at a table in a covered but airy room away from the hot Indian sun.

"This is Mr. Trinidad," Bea introduced me to the table. Mr. Trinidad, ha. I love how the formal introductions keep the James Bond vibe going. "He's a journalist from New York on a round-the-world trip."

After filling my plate with colorful (but toned-down-for-tourists) dishes of fish, chicken, mutton and vegetables in delectable Indian curries and sauces cooked up by professional gourmet chefs, I sat down at the table with the older and wealthier crowd -- people who probably would have been in the background of a James Bond scene anyway. They gave me the head of the table as their guest, where I chat mostly with Bea and Brian. Also at the table were other members of Miami's democratic elite, including an old seventy-something reserved man named Stanley who was some sort of a real estate mogul in New York City -- who probably wasn't doing too well in the market since he got up and left after eating and stiffed Brian with his beer tab.

I put on the charm and entertained my hosts with tales of travel and the perils of freelance journalism, although it seemed they were most impressed simply with my name.

"With a name like Trinidad, you're bound to get noticed more than..." Brian started.

"...the John Smiths," I completed.

"Is that a trade name?" Bea wondered.

"Everyone thinks that," I told them. True, most people I'd met, including the Austrians I met in Bikaner, thought it was just a cool sounding fake pen name. "It's a Scandinavian-spelled first name, an Italian middle name and a Latin last name." Hey, I guess I do have the name of an International Man of Mystery. Suddenly "James Bond" sounds kind of plain.

First servings turned to seconds and then dessert. I was fairly content especially since I got the whole thing for free. I celebrated and splurged on a pricey 250 rupee beer with Brian. Mission accomplished, Miss Money Penny.

"Thirty's a good age to start over," Brian told me as we touched on my plans for my return back into normal metro New York society. "It helps if you find a rich woman."

"Like you've been looking for?" Bea joked.

"I know! C'mon, they don't have to be rich, just equal," he joked, apparently pretty well off. "Or just meet me halfway!"

Their tour leader Mr. Singh was signaling their time to go to the City Palace and lunchtime was over. Brian got up and threw me a lei made of saffron-flowers for the coming Diwali celebration. "If you can't get laid, take this," he called out.

The most surprising thing about meeting the Miami Ski Club was that, despite all my references to James Bond and Octopussy in this entry thus far, they had no idea that the movie ever took place in Udaipur -- probably because they were on a package tour with no need for a guidebook that would have clearly spelled it out for them. On the way back to the mainland, they were amazed when I told them about Udaipur's significance in Hollywood cinema. "You have to put that in your story," one woman excitedly said.

"Yeah, sure."


MY NEXT DESTINATION WAS MUMBAI and with most of India off for the Diwali holiday, most of the trains were booked solid already. The alternative was to take a 17-hour overnight bus. Much to my dismay, the sleeper buses from Udaipur were canceled indefinitely and the only way would be via a regular bus, although the travel agents boasted they were "the best buses, Volvos. Swedish buses" with reclining seats and air conditioning.

"Do they play movies?" I asked. They laughed.

I arrived at the private bus office that afternoon and met the only three other travelers getting on that bus from Udaipur, three foreign backpackers: Allie and Kaz, a young couple from England, and Ander, a young Korean woman in between jobs who just got laid off from a company in Delhi and was traveling through India before starting a new job in Beijing. While waiting for the bus to arrive we were entertained by a street boy who impressed us with an impromptu magic show.

When the bus came, we knew we had all been had; the "best bus" wasn't really the best; in fact it had no air-conditioning and the seats, although reclinable, weren't the most comfortable in the world. Above all, the bus apparently didn't have any shocks because the entire ride violently vibrated like we were driving over logs, even though outside the window I saw the road was smoothly paved. The bus made unexpected rest stops that lasted longer than expected, dragging out the total ride time. The worst part of it, at least for Kaz, was that, waiting around and being white and blonde surrounded by Indian men, she was constantly gawked at with obvious stares. (Then again, with her blonde hair in a braided pigtails, she did look like a young Gweneth Paltrow from Sliding Doors, with a more curvaceous figure.)

The violently bumpy ride through the night got us "shaken, not stirred," and it really put a damper on my subtle yet inviting, James-Bond-inspired advances to make out with Ander sitting next to me. She never reciprocated like they do in a Bond movie though and I left it alone -- as the girl said the night before, it's not that easy -- besides, somehow she managed to actually sleep through the rowdy ride. In the meantime, there were plenty of saffron leis around for Diwali.


Posted by Erik at 04:41 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

My New Beat

DAY 387: Mumbai is India's showcase modern and cosmopolitan city, or as Let's Go puts it, "India's largest city, in attitude if not in population...[uniting] all the country's languages, religions, ethnicities, castes, and classes in one heaving, seething sizzler of a metropolis." It is the gateway of India's international business, its fashion capital and India's main source of entertainment, with the second largest film industry in the world after Hollywood (hence its nickname "Bollywood"), and it's Indian pop music scene. In fact, in the Indian Idol reality show (the Indian version of American Idol), people who try out in the first round and impress the judges get overjoyed when they hear the phrase, "You're going to Mumbai."

As glitzy Mumbai may be to an Indian citizen, for the average backpacker it is the simply the mid-way stop on the beaten path from the old palaces northern India to the beach culture of the south. The usual touts and cabbies know this and behave accordingly.

"Taxi? Taxi?" The cabbie touts were incessant, particularly because I stood out as an obvious tourist with my big bag and the Brits Allie and Kaz standing next to me. Korean Ander had gone her own way to the hotel she reserved when the bus stopped at the private bus stop in the suburbs, leaving me and the young English couple to find our own way to the tourist district of Colaba on the southern end of the peninsula city. Getting there was sort of a problem because we didn't know exactly where we were; the private bus company's office was somewhere off the map. Auto-rickshaws and taxi cabs swarmed us like buzzards over a slowly dying zebra, all trying to make some money off of us.

"How much to Colaba?" Allied would ask a rickshaw guy.

"You have to take a taxi." None of the rickshaw men would take us to Colaba for some reason. (Later I learned it was because they weren't allowed in Mumbai in a city effort to relieve traffic congestion.) All the taxi drivers quoted us Rs. 200-350 for the ride.

"No. There's no way it should cost as much as it took to get here from Udaipur," Allie argued. "Let's move on farther down [the road.] These guys are touts."

It was more of the same anywhere we went though, and it really just got Allie more aggravated. Apparently he and Kaz had a string of hassles in all their travels in India so far because of the color of their skin. We managed to find a bus stop and men there told us a bus for Colaba was coming. It took forever to get there though and Allie was convinced the guys were telling us it'd come when it wasn't, so we'd cave and take a taxi.

The bus came though, after numerous buses passed us, all labeled in written Sanskrit, and we made it to Colaba for just Rs. 24 in about 45 minutes. "I managed to figure out where we are on the map," I told my temporary compadres. We were in fact, way off the map in the northern suburbs somewhere. "That was kind of far. Maybe it was a 200 rupee ride after all."

"Yeah, I know. But I'm glad we did it this way," said Allie.


"IT KIND OF REMINDS ME OF SPAIN," was my first impression that I shared with Allie and Kaz as we walked from the bus stop to where my reserved hotel was. The Iberian influence was due to the fact that the Portuguese had originally settled there during the hey day of seafaring trade. In fact, until recently when Indian pundits of political correctness reverted the name of the city to its original "Mumbai," it was known around the world as "Bombay," the bastardized English pronunciation of "bom bahia" ("good port" in Portuguese) when the British took control over the territory in the 17th century.

Touts followed us through the quiet side streets near Mumbai Harbor where tropical vegetation and heat grew, rounding off the first impressions. "It's actually quite pleasant here," I said.

"Yeah, I haven't seen any cow shit," Kaz said. "Or cows for that matter."

We made it to the Kamal Mansion on the south end of Colaba, an old mansion converted into three individually-managed hotels on its own floor. We checked the rates in all three and settled on the Hotel Sea Lord on the second floor. I got a single while the Brits waited for a double to open up at noon -- however, when I went to knock on their door after settling in, I learned they decided to move somewhere else. I never saw them again.


COLABA BECAME MUMBAI'S TOURIST ENCLAVE, not just because of its Western-style food available (including McDonald's of course) and the nearby luxury Taj Mahal Hotel, but because of its proximity to arguably the architectural icon of the city, the famous Gateway of India, a triumphal arch that blends European architecture with Islamic motifs, built in honor of King George V and Queen Mary when they came to visit in 1911. While for tourists it served as a must-see and the starting point of a ferry to nearby Elephanta Island, for touts it served as a place to lurk and scam a couple hundred rupees. In recent history, it served as the perfect target for Islamic-extremist terrorist groups as it was the sight of a fatal bombing in 2003. Wandering around I saw no sign of another terrorist attack -- although I suppose that's the nature of terrorist attacks, to be hidden.

Anyway, the Gateway of India to me was a symbolic gateway of the old India I'd seen in the north and the progressive modern India surrounding me. I saw that Adidas and Nike had their mark already as I walked the streets passed the Victorian buildings built by the British, now occupied by stores and cafes. The British-influence was very apparent in the city, from the double-decker buses to the Prince of Wales Museum, which held priceless artifacts of the past. Nearby was the Jehangir Art Gallery, a Modern art gallery with contemporary artists' interpretations of Indian history and culture. One exhibition was a retrospective of Indian painters Dattatraya C. Joglekar and Vishwanah G. Nageshkar, who had both painted during the hey day of Modernism in the early 20th century.

Victorian architecture continued to be apparent when I saw the High Court and the clock tower of Mumbai University, but just across the way, on the other side of the Oval Maiden field where citizens came to relax or play cricket, was the art deco sector, where streamlined residential buildings and movie theaters in pastel colors still stood since their construction in the 1920s and 30s.

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Year-round tropical weather? Trendy waterfront promenades? Contemporary art and art deco architecture? More and more Mumbai was reminding me of Miami. (With a slight letter switcheroo, it'd be easy to convert "Mumbai" signs like in the picture above with "Miami.")

I eventually made my way up passed the Hutatma Chowk Flora Fountain, St. Thomas' Cathedral and the Horniman Circle to the Old Fort district, home of the tremendous Victoria Terminus Railway Station, the municipal building and my final destination of my stroll through town, the office of The Times of India newspaper and its affiliated publications.


AT THE SUGGESTION OF BLOGREADER DUSTY, I contacted her friend Cuckoo in Mumbai, a reporter at the Economic Times, published by the Times Group. She invited me to come over, one journalist to another, and I gladly accepted; it's always nicer to get a perspective of a city from a local instead of from a guidebook written by Westerners. She escorted me up to the bull pen, the open area where she and her reporter colleagues sat around like newshounds do.

"So what is it that you want to see?" Cuckoo asked.

"Well, this is, as they say, your 'beat,'" I said. "What should I see?"

Of course you've probably been asked this question before wherever you are from and draw a blank. In the meantime, she took a break and took me down the block to the Press Club of Mumbai, the exclusive members-only hangout for journalists in Mumbai and their guests.

"Do you ever get homesick?" Cuckoo asked me.

"Nah, I think I'm over that. Besides, there's always a McDonald's around so I'm never far from home."

"Ah, the stereotypical American."

That afternoon the club was busier than usual, for just across the street the big story of the day just happened: the new Chief Minister had been sworn in. Otherwise it was just another slow news day. Cuckoo and I got a table anyway amidst the other journalists for a drink and a thali meal. Immediately Cuckoo was impressed with my embrace of real Indian food -- chapatti, dal, curd, etc. -- and no longer was I a guy that just ate McDonald's in her eyes.

"So do you call it Mumbai or Bombay?" I asked.

"Well, recently the right wing said it should be changed back to its original name Mumbai, but we've all grown up calling it Bombay and we just still call it Bombay. But it's changing."

Cuckoo and I hit it off fairly easily talking about travel, pop culture, politics and the ups and down of writing daily, and for me it was refreshing to be away from the usual backpacker inquisition of "What's your name?" "Where are you from?" "Where have you been so far?" and "Where are you headed?" (Juanita [New Jersey, Cape Town] called this ultimately tiring but never-ending cycle of meeting like-minded backpackers, "Backpacker Hell," which at the time in South Africa I would have disagreed with, but was slowly agreeing with, having been away for over a year thus far.)

Cuckoo introduced me to the manager of the Press Club's Media Center, a cyber cafe for journalists to work and surf the web. "This is my friend Erik. He's a journalist from New York City."

Wow, this "journalist" label has really been opening a lot of doors for me lately, I thought. Cuckoo told me that journalists in India were much more respected than (from her experience) ones in the U.K., a place where people wouldn't even give a quote to the press without asking for a fee.

My fellow journalist went back to work but she pointed me in the direction of the west, to see the sights along Marine Drive and Chowpatty Beach in time for sunset. I took her suggestion and started walking through a non-touristy commercial area passed the locally famous art deco Metro theater, home of many Bollywood premieres. I continued to feel like I was in an Indian-influenced Miami -- apparently complete with transvestites since Cuckoo informed me of its underground scene.

I walked through the affluent Malabar Hill district of luxury high-rises and the American Embassy and found a peaceful park called Breach Candy overlooking the Arabian Sea where the sun was just about set, turning the sky into blend of pinks and oranges, a phenomenon that never seems to get old like the questions of "Backpacker Hell." A taxi took me back to Colaba where I passed out fairly early from my exhausted of covering my new "beat" that day, and the fact that I barely slept on the overnight bus ride the night before.


I WAS AWAKEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT by the sound of a large explosion and I immediately thought it might be another terrorist bombing at the nearby Gateway of India -- but it was nothing more than a mere kid with a big firecracker bomb setting it off a couple of days early before the firecracker-a-plenty Diwali holiday. It remained a slow news day in my new beat after all and I went back to sleep.


Posted by Erik at 04:50 PM | Comments (38) | TrackBack

November 17, 2004

Sacred Stones and A New Home

DAY 388: Within the confines of Mumbai Harbor is an island known as Elephanta Island, named by the Portuguese when they "discovered" it and found a big elephant statue on it. Elephanta Island, regardless of its lack of actual live elephants, is a popular day trip from the Gateway of India, as it is just one-hour away via one of the ferries that leave every half an hour.

Elephanta Island, originally known as Gharapuri, is known for its UNESCO World Heritage ancient caves dating back to the 5th-7th century A.D., filled with statues of Hindu god Lord Shiva in his many incarnations. It is also known for its Shiva lingas, sacred stones in Hindu lore that provide prosperity and fertility to those who believe in it. Fans of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (of which I am an avid one of, if you haven't figured that out already) undoubtedly recognize the term "Shiva linga" as it was this type of stone the famed fictitious archaeologist had to rescue for a small village that had lost its prosperity when "[the Thugi] came from palace and took Shiva linga." (Furthermore, "Shankara" is simply another alias of "Shiva," although if you ever asked me "What is Shankara?" I'd answer, "Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.")


AFTER THE ONE-HOUR CRUISE, I landed on the dock off the shore of Elephanta Island and took a tramcar train to the fishing village nearby. Most of the village was away off the trail that led up to the park entry gate, with table vendors and little food stands along the way catering to the foreign and Indian tourists from the mainland. A tout boy tried to convince me to buy a mini guidebook for the caves because "There is no guide," but I knew better after chatting with a private guide on the boat who told me admission included a free government-approved guide.

My tour group of the historical site consisted of just two others, Ian and Mary from Scotland on their second trip through India (you can't see it all in one shot), and our trusty tour guide Veer, a tall middle-aged Indian man with a receding hairline. He brought us around the main cave, a huge carved out hall supported by stone pillars. All around the walls were carved out stone reliefs of the many faces of Lord Shiva & Co.

"[The Portuguese] must have been amazed when they found this," Mary commented.

"No, the Portuguese have no brains," Veer answered. "It was the British that saved this." Most of the ancient sculptures had been severely damaged and chipped away by the Portuguese who, when using the island as a trade stopover, saw no value in the sacred sculptures other than for target practice.

"So this is all Shiva?" I asked as we walked around, relief to relief.

"Yeah, he's a very versatile god." Versatile was right. Shiva was seen in different scenes as a cosmic dancer, a warrior, a yoga master, a cheating gambler, a playboy flirting with voluptuous Hindu mountain goddess Parvati, and as a (half-voluptuous) half-man, half-woman. The centerpiece of it all was Shiva as Trimurti, the three-headed creator/protector/destroyer of the universe. Create, protect and destroy? The universe? Now that's multi-tasking. (The only one more powerful would be Bill Gates with his latest version of Windows.)

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In a small temple shrine area within the cave surrounded by pillars and guardian dwarapalas was the main prosperity-giving Shiva linga, a much bigger and much more phallic-looking stone than the one in the Indiana Jones movie. Veer's tour ended there and he left us to explore the four other lesser caves in the area, each also with a Shiva linga (picture above). From what I saw, it appeared that there were five stones in the beginning, but one was either destroyed by the Portuguese or stolen, dispersed in wars by thieves. (They took the stone from here.)

The Scots and I wandered around the scenic walkway with the monkeys, had a snack at one of the food stalls and then walked back to the docks. The same tout boy followed me back to the boat trying to sell me the same guidebook he tried to sell me on the way in. "You know that we're leaving the island and that we wouldn't need the guidebook anymore right?" I teased him.

The boat left the island, taking us and about thirty other passengers away from the touts and Shiva lingas. Although there may have been one prosperity-giving sacred stone missing, four out of five ain't bad, and I'm sure the people on the island would prosper with the four as long as Elephanta Island was on the tourist trail; I saw that a German couple on the boat bought one of the little guidebooks the tout boy was selling.


"HEY CUCKOO, I'M AT THE PRESS CLUB," I said to my "colleague" in journalism on the phone. I was in the exclusive Press Club of Mumbai's Media Center trying to upload some files on a bad connection, so bad that I just gave up and decided to give my new Mumbai friend a buzz.

I met Cuckoo back at the Times of India office and she took me out for a snack and falooda (ice cream and tapioca shake) at Kyani & Co., one of the few remaining old-fashioned restaurants run by the Parsis. The Parsis, she explained to me, were a fair-skinned race descendant from Persia within Indian society, particularly in Mumbai, that owned many old businesses. Parsis, from what I learned, sounded something like a fading cult, a small group of wealthy Zoroastraians, who not only discouraged marriage outside their own, but left their dead out for vultures to eat in Mumbai's Towers of Silence as part of their beliefs. Of course that image had not yet been planted in my head when I happily ate Kyani's Special Double Decker sandwich and my frosty drink at the table with Cuckoo.

"What program do you have today?" Cuckoo asked me about my plans for the rest of the afternoon.

"I don't have any program," I said. It amazed her that someone could go through life without anything scheduled ahead.

"What impresses me about you is you're always smiling and happy," Cuckoo noted. "It's very unlike people around here. Everyone I know just sort of mopes around."

"Well, that's because I don't have a program."

"Don't rub it in."

"Where should I go [tonight]?" I asked her. Earlier I asked her if there was any sort of definitive Mumbai night spot I should check out. She was drawing blanks; any club or bar would just give me a sort of generic Western experience I could get anywhere. She was trying to think of a place where I might get to experience the Diwali holiday, but nowhere in the touristy Colaba district would really have an authentic one.

"If I was a visitor from somewhere else in India, where would you take me?"

"Well, I would take you home."

"Is that an invitation?"

"Yeah, if you'd like to." The idea excited both of us. She'd get to play host and I'd get to experience the life of a modern Indian family, and on the big Diwali holiday no less.

I rushed back to my hotel in Colaba via double-decker bus, packed my bags, tried to get some money back from the reception (didn't happen), and took a taxi back to the Times of India where I met back with Cuckoo before walking across the street to the rush hour crowd of Victoria Terminus Railway Station. I was pretty excited at the fact that I was leaving the tourist scene for a bit, away from the touts calling out, "Psst... you want a bus to Goa?" (Goa was the next stop on the beaten backpacker trail.)


CUCKOO EXPLAINED MY STORY to the curious passengers in our first class car on the commuter train to the northern suburb of Thane, about an hour away. Added attention was inevitable with my blood-stained Yankees cap and big backpack on the overhead rack that everyone was afraid was going to fall on their heads. We took an auto-rickshaw from the Thane station across town to her high-rise apartment building of many young modern Indian families, where she lived on the fourteenth floor with her husband Nandu and seven-year-old son Vineet.

Diwali holiday lights were hung over the front door just that day by Nandu, after a day of work as an aircraft engineer. Although the half-Hindu/half-Christian household was somewhat non-practicing in either religion, they wanted their home to be a bit festive to get in the holiday mood and for the sake of their son. The front door remained open, along with the front doors of the other three apartments on the 14th floor, since all the individual families sort of saw and treated each other as extended family. The kids of each household played with each other, running back and forth from the different living rooms. I met Vineet as he was playing with the little girl next door, Puja, until he wanted to show his parents the new moves he learned in karate class.

Within a short period of time, I learned that Nandu was a classic rock and Bruce Lee fan, and Vineet liked watching WWE wrestling and was a big Spider-man fan. That, mixed with my rapport with Cuckoo and the fact that there was a speedy internet connection in the house, I couldn't have felt anymore at home. Now if only there was a copy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom around...


Posted by Erik at 11:07 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Holiday For Pyros

DAY 389: The Let's Go: India & Nepal guidebook just has one sentence to describe the Hindu holiday of Diwali in all of its 891 pages:

"The autumn holiday of Diwali is an especially auspicious time of year when Hindus look to Lakshmi [goddess of wealth, fertility, and general well-being] to bring prosperity during the new year."

This of course is a very textbook definition, akin to merely saying "Christmas is the Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ" without giving mention to the Christmas tree, the holiday lights, the decorations on the front porch, the last-minute gift shopping, the sweets, and the holiday movies at the theaters. Diwali is practically identical to Christmas in a commercial sense, except that saffron flowers replace the evergreens and holiday movies are in Hindi. (The big 2004 Diwali movie was romance epic Veer-Zaara, a Bollywood flick with the usual song and dance in palaces and countryside fields.)

Diwali is sort of like the Jewish Hanukkah as well, as it is the "Festival of Lights." But instead of lights coming from a menorah, they come from the single candles placed in windows and in front of doorways -- and more notably, from the tons and tons of fireworks that everyone sets off by themselves without a permit. In a way, Diwali is sort of "mega-holiday," like Christmas meets Independence Day meets Hanukkah for five crazy nights.


IT IS CUSTOMARY ON THE FIRST MORNING OF DIWALI for kids to wake up at sunrise and open their bags of firecrackers -- or as they call them locally, simply "crackers" -- to "go bursting" and wake up the neighborhood adults. From my floor mattress in the computer room that Cuckoo and Nandu put me up in, I heard that some kids had already started before sunrise, with big crackers that set off car alarms.

Like a kid on Christmas eager to open gifts, Cuckoo's son Vineet was wide-eyed by 6:30 to open his big bag of do-it-yourself pyrotechnics, all while wearing his new Kawasaki motorcycle jacket he got for Diwali. (The hi-performance motorcycle craze was big in Indian pop culture, as I saw in the Bollywood action film Dhoom in Jaipur.) This particular Diwali was a special one for the seven-year-old, it being his first where he'd do the "big boy" thing of going bursting without his parents. I tagged along simply as an observer to leave him to his pyrotechnic devices.

"Take him to where all the action is," Cuckoo instructed him as she led us out the front door.


THAT MORNING, with dozens of young neighborhood boys and girls, I partook in the festivities of bursting crackers in the front yard for Diwali. Cuckoo told me it was a custom similar to Halloween's trick-or-treating in that one outgrew it in his/her mid-to-late teen years -- which meant that India was perfectly fine with the fact that explosive devices were being handled by just children who had probably just grown out of their "spinning around in a circle until they fall down dizzy phase."

As a former child that never really got to play with fireworks in an area where they were deemed dangerous and illegal, I thoroughly enjoyed the loud bangs and miniature and short-lived light shows that morning. I especially took a liking to "cartoons," the small firecrackers mounted to cardboard cutouts of random things such as innocent bunny rabbits. Cartoon bunny rabbits, when their fuses were lit, turned into nothing more than another marking on the ground.

This holiday is awesome.

Vineet bursted his crackers and his "bombs" until he had no more for that morning. A bright kid, he knew to save the better more spectacular ones for nightfall when sparks would shine through the darkness. By 9:30 a.m., most of the pops and booms of the younger kids' crackers had died down -- only to make way for the bigger kids that never outgrew the custom, twenty- and thirty-somethings with money to buy bigger and louder firecrackers. Two guys had three packs of "Vulcano" bombs, green cherry bomb-looking things perhaps five times louder than any of the others I'd heard so far. One by one they lit the fuses and ran for cover.

BAAAAMMMPPPP!!!

As loud as they were, they were probably nothing compared to the more expensive, higher-end firecrackers on the market that Diwali season, ones that I had read about in the Times of India: the "Bush Bomb" and "Bin Laden Bomb." (You really have to love marketing guys, huh?)


"DO A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE WORK TODAY?" I asked Cuckoo.

"No, just oddballs like aircraft engineers and journalists," she answered as we were headed to the Thane train station to go back into the city. (Her husband Nandu had already left for work early to do an early shift at Air India.) We walked Vineet (who was still wearing his Kawasaki motorcycle jacket despite the morning heat) to his grandparents a couple of blocks away and then went back to the commuter rail station, where an elephant was blessing passers-by for a donation. We hopped on a train for Victoria Terminus Railway Station in Mumbai; it was just another day at the office for some. Working on the first day of Diwali wasn't too bad; the festivities wouldn't pick up until that night anyway.

While Cuckoo went to write her piece for the Friday edition of The Economic Times, I had business of my own to take care of, namely trying to figure out my next move in my bigger, global trip. Because of the still-healing crater from the abscess in my leg, I opted against the wet and sandy beach scene of Goa with a sigh -- but had a more promising option to pursue because I had just gotten word that my good family friend Chrissy from New York had just started working at an NGO in the city of Chennai (formerly Madras) on the southeast coast of India. I went to the Foreign Tourist Window at the reservations office at VT Station and got a ticket for the Mumbai-Chennai Express the following afternoon. It was a good plan to me (as opposed to leaving that night on an overnight bus to Goa) because I'd get to partake in Diwali festivities that evening and the following morning. Diwali, the holiday that quite literally started off with a bang, had instantly moved in my mind as my favorite holiday abroad.

Meanwhile, all the European hippie-types on the reservations line weren't embracing the Hindu holiday as much as me; in fact, many of them just saw Diwali as a nuisance, thwarting their travel plans since most of the trains were booked solid by Indians traveling for the holiday.


WITH MY TRAIN TICKET SETTLED, I had to settle an airline ticket -- try and find out if I could fly out of India from Chennai instead of having to backtrack to Delhi -- and so I hopped in a taxi to the Air India office in the Nariman Point district along Marine Drive. Keep in mind that I got a taxi from the tourist-frequented railway station, a place where scammers hunted for prey.

"I need to go to the Air India office in Nariman Point."

"Okay," the cabbie answered. I flipped up the taxi meter as people do, but he ignored it.

"It will be one hundred rupees."

"No, it should be about fifty."

"One hundred."

"It only cost me fifty to get here from Colaba." (Colaba and Nariman Point were fairly equidistant.)

"One hundred rupees."

"If it's one hundred, forget it, I'll get out of the car." I put my hand on the door handle and he caved.

"Okay, okay."

We rode to the big Air India office and I gave him a one hundred-rupee note.

"I thought fifty," he said.

"Yeah, I need change." He didn't have any of course and I went over to another cabbie, who gave me ten ten-rupee notes back. I gave five to my cabbie.

"Ten more rupees."

"I gave you fifty." He held it out and I counted it again. "Ten, twenty, thirty, forty... see fifty."

"No, it's ten more rupees."

"You said fifty!" Can't people just stick to what they say around here? I can't wait to get back off the tourist trail in the suburbs.

"Okay, okay."

Jerk. I left him, handled my business at Air India after waiting on line an hour, and then found another taxi driver to take me back to the Times of India -- a non-touristy place I might note, which was why I think the new cabbie was honest about my fare. Turns out that first guy (and the cabbie the night before) scammed me anyway; it was only Rs. 25.


AFTER A MINT COFFEE ICED DRINK and some vegetable samoosas at India's chain Cafe Coffee Day (akin to Starbucks), I met Cuckoo back at the office and we hopped on the train back home. I sat in cheaper second class while she used her commuter pass for ladies-only first, but we met back at the station in Thane.

It was dusk by the time we arrived back in the suburb and it was easy to get back in a holiday mood: saffron flowers were still being sold, holiday lights were starting to light up, and front porches sported their rangoli, decorative artwork made with colored powders. Cuckoo and I went to her parents to pick up Vineet, who extended their hospitality to me by offering me some homemade halva, an Indian sweet made of flour and ghee, a dessert dish similar to brown sugar. Cuckoo's parents were a friendly couple that had moved in the neighborhood in support for their growing grandson; it was here that he got his fill of Cartoon Network since Cuckoo didn't keep a TV in the house.

It was dark by the time we got back home, the perfect setting for the continuation of the Diwali pyrotechnic festivities. "I will leave you two of you to each other," Cuckoo said, leading Vineet and I out the door with a new ration of crackers. It would seem that my role as an "observer" was code for "chaperone," but when the elevator door closed, it seemed it was the other way around.

"Are you wearing cotton?" Vineet asked me.

"Huh?"

"Cotton is good. It burns slower." Apparently Vineet was a little expert when it came to fireworks. I told him my shirt was cotton but my pants weren't.

"Oh, that's bad. You will burn." Later on at one point, he told me, "Be careful, you are my responsibility."

Outside in the front yard of the hi-rise buildings, all the kids were out with their "harmless" explosives and sparkly toys. I set up a candle for a constant flame to light the fuses from. Vineet had an incense stick for the transfer of fire to light his crackers and his bombs. When that ran out, he used a sparkler stick, which was kind of tricky; with all the sparks it was difficult to see if a fuse was lit. I swear he had a couple of near-misses when he threw some firecrackers in the air that exploded less than a second of it leaving his hand.

Vineet and I were just two in a bigger group of kids setting off sparkly displays and isolated explosions left and right.

BOOM!!! SNAP!!! PHSSTT!!! BAAAM!!! KEK!!!

"Light the black part, not the white or it will be faster and you will burn," Vineet instructed me, the little pro. I lit a few fireworks, running for cover after each ignition.

"Woooo!" I yelped giddily.

"Why are you laughing?" he asked. I told him it was because where I came from, firecrackers were illegal and it was fun to finally do it out in the open with a bunch of kids. He really questioned why such a fun activity might be deemed "illegal;" he lived in a place where police patrol cars drove by the rambunctious display with a look as if to say, "Okay kids, carry on."

My first Diwali was educational as much as it was fun; for me it was a look into the behavior of kids on such a holiday. It was true a caste-leveling holiday where kids of different classes played together; Vineet even gave up some of his little crackers for some of the poorer street kids. The street kids were funny, jumping and dancing in the sparks of a whirling wheel with their bare feet.

On the flipside, there were your kids bragging about their stash. "Do you have Butterflies?"

"Yeah, I have one."

"I have a whole pack that I'm going to burst tomorrow."

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Bursting crackers on Diwali wasn't just a boys thing either; in fact, I think I saw more girls out there setting them off, trading particular ones with other girls and some boys. There were many different types of crackers and bombs, from whirling "chukkars" to audible "musicians." My favorite was the "flower pot," an upside-down cone thing that, when lit, erupted a big stream of sparks upward like a geyser (picture above). One group even had the real deal, a couple of big fireworks like they have on Independence Day, and launched them straight up to explode in the air aside the hi-rise building. Luckily there were no cases (like there had been in the past) where a fireball went through a window and set a fire in an apartment.

Speaking of fire, after all of Vineet's pyrotechnics were exploded, he said it was "time to burn paper." He collected his empty cardboard boxes and lit one using one of the four remaining matches (after he had finished lighting most of them for fun).

"Hey, don't burn the plastic--"

It was too late; his plastic bag was melting in the pile. Needless to say, there was definitely an infectious feeling of pyromania because Vineet and his friends just kept on adding all available cardboard to make the fire bigger. Police patrol cars went by and again saw everything was "in order." Move along, nothing to see. Soon, people started throwing actual fireworks into the bonfire.

"Move! Run!"

I ran for cover a couple of times, laughing the whole way of course. It wasn't until a building security guard that saw the fire might escalate into something much worse that the fun was put an end with a bottle of water.


BEFORE ANOTHER FAMILY DINNER back upstairs in the lantern-lit apartment, the family from across the hall came over, the extended family they were, in a holiday gathering: Pradeep, the father/husband; his wife Deepti; and his two young daughters Aksheta and Anjali (ages 7 and 11 respectively). They were excited to meet me after Cuckoo's introduction: "Erik, who's traveling the whole world." (She'd always introduce me to a new person with a circular hand gesture to show the circumnavigation.) Nandu pulled out an atlas with a world map, and I traced my path for all of them thus far, with my stories. Meanwhile the young ones were running in and out of the hall -- Aksheta getting her hands all green from making a powdery rangoli painting and Vineet quite possibly playing with matches again.

Anjali, at the more mature age of eleven, seemed genuinely interested in my tales of my travel. "Which country is the least developed?" she asked me.

I thought about it and answered, "Maybe Zambia or Ethiopia."

"So not India?"

"No, India's actually pretty modern." She smiled.

Modern indeed, especially in the modern suburbs of Thane, despite the barbaric sounds of explosions that had just started since the bigger kids had just arrived and were at it again. The first day of a holiday that started off with a bang, ended with one too.


Posted by Erik at 11:35 AM | Comments (20) | TrackBack

November 18, 2004

Hindu For A Day

DAY 390: Despite the mass commercialization of the Christian holiday of Christmas, with its holiday songs, plastic lawn ornaments (that look absolutely awful if there's no snow on the ground), and disgruntled mall Santas with sore thighs from the constant kids on their laps asking for things they probably don't deserve, a small minority still remembers that at its core, Christmas is a religious affair, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Churches around the world get a surge in attendance on December 25th more than on any other day of the year.

Diwali, as commercial as it has become with its holiday movies, gift giving and fireworks, is a religious holiday of the Hindu faith, a celebration of the return of Lord Rama (incarnation of Vishnu) after defeating the dark king Ravana of Sri Lanka and returning to India with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. The candles of this "Festival of Lights" are lit as a symbol of leading Rama and Lakshmi back home, and the decorations and powdered rangoli paintings on the porches are intended to welcome Lakshmi into the house so that perhaps she will rub off a little of that wealth to those who dwell inside. Doors and windows are left open during Diwali to let the prosperity come in.

Another way to invite Lakshmi into the home is to perform puja, a prayer and offering ceremony. The second day of Diwali is the day to do just that, in hopes of inviting good fortune in the new year. Now I'd been raised Catholic so I didn't really know the procedures of a puja, but I was soon to find out, and on an important Hindu holiday no less. (Hindu readers: most of this you probably know already; you may continue reading or excuse yourself and go play Solitaire now.)


CUCKOO'S HOUSEHOLD WASN'T A FULLY PRACTICING HINDU ONE (she was raised Christian), but we were invited by the Maheshwari family next door to attend their puja. Nandu was off working his obligatory morning shift, leaving the remaining three of us to join Pradeep, his wife Deepti and daughters Aksheta and Anjali that day.

Vineet was in the kitchen playing with matches as I got ready after breakfast, and Cuckoo surprised us both when she came into the room, not wearing her regular modern clothes but a traditional sari.

"You look beautiful, Auntie," Anjali complimented to Cuckoo when she and her sister ran into the room. The surprises didn't stop there. "Happy Diwali!" the girls greeted me, handing me a gift.

"Thanks! Happy Diwali!" (It was a sack of pistachio nuts wrapped daintily in orange cellophane and a red ribbon.) Aw, you shouldn't have.

We piled in Pradeep's Hyundai -- I sat in the front with Vineet on my lap while all the girls piled in the back -- and drove not to a Hindu temple, but to his office, an appropriate and common place for a puja performed specifically to encourage wealth and prosperity. Pradeep ran a lucrative corrugated cardboard company from a location not too far from home that managed a factory about 300 km. away. In the lobby of the office the puja was just beginning with a pandit chanting in front of one of Pradeep's employees and his wife.

The kids and I were led to the office in the back to wait while someone placed another blanket on the floor for us to sit and join in. (It was sort of like being led to the kiddie table on Thanksgiving, which I never really mind since I still enjoy the juvenile humor of fart jokes.) Vineet, Aksheta and Anjali took turns sitting in the big office chair behind the desk, pretending to be the big boss, for the lens of my camera.

"I'm the vice president," Anjali said.

"You can be the vice president. I am the chairman," Vineet said, still wearing the Kawasaki motorcycle jacket he got for Diwali.


WE SAT BEHIND THE COUPLE performing the puja, giving offerings to a small shrine on the floor with images of Lakshmi and other Hindu deities, such as monkey-faced Hanuman. The girls attentively looked on while Cuckoo and Deepti explained to me everything that was happening. Meanwhile, Vineet was playing with matches (without lighting them).

"They are spreading the rice around as an offering," Deepti explained. "The rice is very auspicious. [It will bring food.]" The couple in front of us adorned the shrine with rice and flowers, and placed clothes as an offering. The pandit chanted in an ancient spoken Sanskrit that no one in the room could understand. Deepti told me that when the pandit recited all the ancient Sanskrit prayers in his life, he would achieve sainthood.

Deepti continued her explanation of Diwali as the puja remained in progress. "We keep the doors and windows open in the home to welcome Lakshmi. We believe that she can come at any time in any form, like a cat, or a guest," she said.

A guest? Was it possible that they believed that I was this year's embodiment of the goddess of wealth, who had conveniently arrived unexpectedly into their lives in time for Diwali?

The puja continued with more Sanskrit chants, more offerings, the blowing of a conch shell, and an individual waving of a plate of fire and other assorted goodies for Lakshmi as an offertory gesture. The pandit blessed each of us by wrapping holy thread around our wrists like bracelets, adorning us with the tika on the forehead (followed by rice), and feeding us a sweet concoction of milk and sugar (and other things I forgot) in the palm of our hands, followed by a coconut cookie-type morsel. Sweets on Diwali were another auspicious thing.

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AFTER THE OFFICIAL PUJA WAS OVER, Pradeep had meet sit in front of the shrine (picture above) so that I might have a go at the Hindu ceremony. "Do you want Lakshmi to bring you wealth?" he asked.

"Uh, sure."

He led me through the offerings of auspicious elements and the adorning of the tika on images of Lakshmi, Hanuman and the other deities with the red ointment I had just had been adorned with on my forehead. Cuckoo went from press reporter to press photographer and shot the event for me.

After being Hindu for a day, I joined the rest in the back office for a catered meal of Indian vegetarian finger foods. Vineet was still trying to play with matches and Aksheta vomited for some reason. Ah, the joys of childhood. As fun as it was, the day was going by fast and I had to get back to Mumbai to catch my train. I thanked Pradeep for his invitation to their sacred event -- who knows what sort of prosperity would have come out of the swapping of our e-mail addresses?

I posed for one last picture with my extended host family in Thane, rushed back to the apartment with Cuckoo and boarded the commuter train back into the city. The commuter trains were on the honor system in that you are supposed to have a ticket or pass on you, but checks were seldom and random. We were in such a rush to get a train back to Mumbai before my train to Chennai that we just hopped on the next departing train. Luckily no one checked our tickets -- perhaps in the spirit of the holiday.

"Are you usually good with kids?" Cuckoo asked me on the way back to VT Station.

"Yeah. I think because I still see myself as one."

"The girls told me to tell you not to go. They didn't want you to leave."

I suppose, being the form of Lakshmi or not being the form of Lakshmi, my surprise presence in Thane on Diwali 2004 had an effect on people. Just like with the ZEHRP crew in Lusaka, Zambia, the ex-pats in Moshi, Tanzania, the Raichelsons in Hong Kong, and Liz and Hiroshi in Tokyo, my presence at the very least stirred things up in the normal routine. As Shelle in Zambia and Tony in Moshi both put it, "It's nice to have a fresh face."


CUCKOO DROPPED ME OFF AT MY PLATFORM before she headed back to the office to write her next daily piece for The Economic Times. "Thanks for inviting me," I said, still wearing my tika on the forehead. "I think it's been the highlight of my trip to India so far."

"I'll be following you on the web," she said. We said our goodbyes and parted ways. I boarded my second-class air-conditioned sleeper car for the 26-hour overnight train across the country to Chennai on the southeast coast of India. The train took me farther and farther away from my extended host family, but I still had the neatly-packaged bag of pistachios the girls gave me to remember them by. It was the first Diwali gift I'd ever received -- "Happy Diwali" indeed.


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Family to Family

DAY 391: Because of the hole in my leg from the pus drainage operation of the abscess I developed in Nepal, I wasn't exactly the most beach-worthy traveler in India. While salt water might have aided in the healing of the skin, the conditions of the beaches of southern India, as scenic as they were, probably weren't the most sanitary, what with all the foreigners peeing in the ocean and all. (You know who you are.) The usual place to go to after Mumbai was the former Portuguese colonial beach city-turned-hippie haven of Goa about twelve hours directly south by bus, and as much as I wanted to see it, I knew I'd just feel like a dunce being at the beach town, not being at the beach. I wouldn't be able to even just stroll on the beach in shorts for fear that sand would blow into the hole somehow, or even worse, the eggs of sandworms. Eww.

No matter, I had another plan of attack for my continuing journey around the world, and that was to go to Chennai (formerly Madras), on the southeast coast of India in the state of Tamil Nadu. Three days prior, I got word that my friend Chrissy from New York had just arrived there to start a volunteer job at an HIV research clinic, organized by the American Jewish World Services with a stipend from Columbia University. Going to Chennai was not only a good thing because I'd get to visit an old friend, but I'd be surrounded by doctor-types that could assess the hole in my leg -- and the second, possibly-infected insect bite (on the same leg, just about five inches away from the first) I just got the night before that looked like it too might develop into an infected pus-filled abscess. Two similarly infected insect bites on the same leg? What the hell?

Insect (thinking like Homer Simpson): Mmmmm... Erik's leg.


THE MUMBAI-CHENNAI EXPRESS CONTINUED to cruise across the subcontinent, passed desert regions and tropical ones. The food served in A/C'd second-class was surprisingly good: freshly-prepared dal and rice and even chicken masala, which I ate the Indian way, with just my hands. I started and finished Yann Martel's Life of Pi, which coincidentally partially takes place in the State of Tamil Nadu where I was headed.

I arrived in Chennai Central by a quarter to five in the late afternoon, and took an auto-rickshaw to the local Air India office to get the correction sticker on my airline ticket -- the representative on the phone told me that my request to switch my origin city out of India from Delhi to Chennai went through, and that I simply had to get it put in writing at an office. However, when I got there the woman at the desk told me that what I heard was a mistake, that I still had to fly out of Delhi. I rushed around the different airline headquarters in the area to figure out a Plan B, but most offices were closing by that time and I was tired of lugging around my bag (making me a target for touts). I simply moved my Delhi-Bangkok flight to the end of the week to figure out the rest later, and headed for the guesthouse that Chrissy was staying in.

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WHEN CHRISSY TOLD ME SHE WAS STAYING AT A GUESTHOUSE in Chennai, I had this image that it'd be like one of the regular, impersonal guesthouses frequented by backpackers that I'd been to. It'd be a slap back into the reality of budget travel after comfortably staying in the hospitality of Cuckoo & Co. in Thane. However, when I arrived at the Akshaya House (picture above) at 47 G.N. Chetty Road, I saw that this guesthouse was very casual; in fact, it felt less like being at a tourist accommodation and more like crashing at a family's home.

The building was a big house with a dining room, living room, kitchen, VCD library, book library and plenty of individual bed rooms, run by a modern middle-aged Indian couple, Kenneth and Geeta, parents of a film student daughter named Laika. They greeted me when I arrived and showed me to the room that Chrissy had reserved for me, even though she wasn't around just yet.

"Our home is your home," Kenneth told me as he settled me into my big spacious room with A/C, TV, private bathroom, hot water, a desk and a little coffee table with two chairs. "You can do whatever." Wow, the hospitality here.

"I really just want to take a shower," I told him.

"Yeah, you smell like you were on the train," he said frankly in a joking kind of way. Maybe I take that back. I could definitely sense he was a guy of corny old-man sarcasm and humor.

There was a knock on the door after I had showered the smell off me and flipped through the cable TV while tending to the wound in my leg.

"Hey!"

"Hey!" Chrissy had arrived with open arms and it was great to see a familiar face from home -- I hadn't seen one since markyt and wheat met me in Rio de Janiero a whole lifetime ago. (I hadn't seen Chrissy since my going away party two lifetimes ago.) My dynamic with Chrissy was a strange one. Our families were friends back in the New York/New Jersey area, and we had a sort of cousin dynamic, so much that we'd just introduce ourselves to others as "cousins," even though we had no blood relation. Regardless of that, I really welcomed the presence of someone familiar, someone else that could understand certain New York-specific references, like "Page Six" (which is actually on Page 10). Plus, she was a big Will Ferrell fan.

Meeting up with Chrissy was good in a medical way too because she had some Bacitracin, the cure-all topical ointment for "minor cuts." She led me to her new friend Koco in another room, an American from Hawaii who worked in a local hospital. She told me that the wound looked like it was healed to the point I wouldn't have to pack it anymore and that I should let it breathe a little and let it start to scab over.


THE HOMEY FEEL OF THE GUESTHOUSE continued at dinner. Dinner was not at individual tables, but a communal gathering of all the guests at a big dining table, with the lively Kenneth and Geeta. Food at the guesthouse was comparable, if not better than any Indian restaurant, with home-cooked meals prepared by a cook named Shanti who made a mean roti. At the table, Chrissy introduced me to Tom, who worked at the hospital where Koco worked, and Ganesh, an Indian engineer. After an amazing vegetarian dinner, Koco brought up her laptop to show off some pictures of her travels, one of Makalawena in her home state.

"Ma-ka-la-wena," Kenneth started to sing to the melody of "Guantanamera." Chrissy couldn't stop laughing; Kenneth was the corny old uncle-type that many people have.

That night I slept in my bedroom like a log since the night before on the train wasn't that conducive to sleep. I was happy that after leaving my host family's home in Thane/Mumbai, I had landed another family-oriented home of home-cooked meals, "cousins" and corny old uncle-types.


Posted by Erik at 05:26 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

November 20, 2004

Return Of The Touts

DAY 392: It was Sunday, the one day weekend for Chrissy at the NGO she worked for since they expected her to work with the reset of them on Saturdays. (This she would complain about because she was already working ten-hour days, and voluntarily for free, too.) Taking advantage of the one day off, we decided to venture outside the city limits with Koco to the main tourist sites. Translation: we decided to leave the security of Kenneth and Geeta's Chennai guesthouse to be open prey for scammers and touts.

After an Indian breakfast of the southeastern delicacy dosais (Indian pancakes served with a variety of sauces), we hoped in the white classic Ambassador we hired for the day. At the wheel was Sehtu, a very friendly driver who worked with the Tom and Koco's NGO.

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Our first stop, Kanchipuram, was about three hours away through the tropical landscape, home of three main temples of the southern Pallava architecture style indigenous to the region. The first was the Arulmigu Devarajaswamy Temple, dedicated to Hindu Lord Vishnu. There was a sign in front in plain English that showed us the fees expected: one rupee for admission and five for still camera permission. We paid the fees to the local pandit with the marking of Vishnu adorned on his forehead (picture above). He guided us on an informal tour of the only temple in the multi-edifice complex open to visitors, from the statues of the different deities, the sacred pool in the back, the wedding altar and the intricately carved out columns -- some of which were made of hollow granite that made sounds in different pitches depending where you tapped on. His presentation was fast and sort of rushed, but we just nodded our heads in acknowledgement.

We didn't realize that at the end that the whole tour was done for a donation (silly us). The pandit held out his hand for some money, but made a face when we only gave him coins. He left us with a dirty look so that we could take photos. "I feel like I know nothing about this temple," Chrissy told me. "When it was built, how old it is... I need my pamphlet."

"Well, it's old, it's made of granite and some of it is hollow," I said.

"So you can make steel drum noises."

"Yes, it's actually a Caribbean temple."


THE TOUTS AND THE GUYS LOOKING FOR "DONATIONS" continued when Sehtu brought us to the Sri Ekanbaranathar Temple, a temple dedicted to Lord Shiva. The scams started even before we reached the main temple area. Two old women came to us, each with plates of puffed rice krispies, the auspicious offering to Hindu deities for good fortune. One woman followed Koco while the other targeted me. She stuffed some rice krispies in my hand and grabbed me by the wrist. "Wait, where are we going?" I played along, curious to where she'd lead me -- Koco and Chrissy got a kick out of it because they saw I really had no escape.

The old woman walked me over to a statue of Shiva with a metal offeratory plate in front and she had me spill the rice in. Then she grabbed me by the wrist with one hand while holding plates of rice krispies in the other and walked me over to a carved relief about 50 ft. away, all the time chanting "good luck, good luck" in such a fast fashion that it was more like "goodluckgoodluckgoodluck..." It was then it was more obvious to me that I had fallen into a scam; she was declaring what I was getting, so that I had to reciprocate monetarily. Meanwhile, Koco was getting the spiel from her old woman that giving the offerings to Shiva would bring her "good husband" amongst other things.

I was taken to the relief for the sprinkling of rice krispies. The old female tout continued her "goodlucks", touching the stone and then blessing me. Then, (sarcastic drumroll here), she held her hand out for a "donation."

"Only if I can take a picture."

"Donation first."

"Okay." I gave her a ten rupee note.

"No, not ten, one hundred."

"No, no. I only want to give ten."

"But it's one hundred rupees," she said, giving me back the ten.

Doesn't she understand the concept of a donation? "No, I'm only giving ten," I said. "If you don't want it, fine."

She started getting pissed. "One hundred rupees. Donation! This is for your good luck! Shiva!" A small crowd developed and I realized it was the usual gang-up-on-the-tourist deal.

"I only want to give ten. It's a donation."

"No. More." She pointed to my pocket as if she knew there was money inside.

"It is one hundred rupees donation," one man interjected.

"I don't have a hundred."

The woman pointed to my pocket again. I emptied it and there was some ticket stubs and twenty rupees. "There." I gave her the twenty.

"No, no! One hundred!"

"That's all I have."

"[I have] change for five hundred," another woman in the crowd said. The first woman played the angry bit some more but I just walked off and rejoined the girls. Koco said the trick to get rid of the touts was to simply turn away, and have them "talk to the hand." Chrissy, who had tried to get ride of an incessantly begging girl amidst the rice krispie affair, asked us, "Is it okay to shove little children?"


ANOTHER PUNDIT APPROACHED US in the temple complex -- most of which was under scaffolding except for one temple in the back -- and he too was eager to show us around.

"No, it's okay," I told him.

"But I am a priest. I can show you around."

"Yes, I know. That's okay. We're fine."

"There," he pointed. It was a sign by the entry into the temple asking for donations for entry inside.

"No, it's okay."

"But it's Shiva!"

We gave him the hand and walked away.


"ALL THE TEMPLES LOOK THE SAME, just the history is different. But you can read that in the books," our wise driver Sehtu said. We went to the third major temple in the area anyway, the less-frequented Kailasanatha Temple, not dedicated to any deity in particular, which was probably why it wasn't so heavy with touts. (Either that or the touts were distracted by the big French tour group being led around, all while they all wore cloth booties on their feet to cheat the bare foot rule.) We wandered the little temple area with little sacred stones near the entrance pretty much hassle-free, which made us happy.

Happiness continued when we had Sehtu take us to Mahabalipuram, a laid back seaside town a couple hours drive away, the home of Moonraker's, a local institution run by three Indian brothers known for its seafood and Western blues music. The middle brother Vivek showed off their fresh catch of tiger prawns (the size of small bananas!) and I had them cooked up with tomato and onion with a side of Kingfisher beer.

The last page of the menu was not for food but for massage services provided by the brothers' friend next door. Koco and Chrissy partook in his services and were quite pleased (despite the questionable sanitary conditions of his parlor). Meanwhile, I had an internet session.


WHILE KOCO WENT SHOPPING, Sehtu took Chrissy and I to the nearby touristy sites by the shore: the Shore Temple, built in the 8th century A.D. by Pallava King Rajasimha, appropriately nicknamed for its proximity to the shore; and the Five Rathas, built in the 7th century A.D. by Pallava King Mamalla, appropriately named because they were (one two three four) five of them. The latter was a collection of monolithic temples carved out of boulders, with some animal sculptures outside such as sacred cows and elephants. To our extended happiness, both sites were gated and required a small fee, which kept out the touts and hassles.

The return of the touts came when we walked along the strip lines with stone carver shops, which produced not only local Hindu statues but others for the global market. Chrissy and I walked over the big park with the lighthouse nearby where the main rathas of Mahabalipuram were carved out of rocks alongside really impressive stone reliefs. It was a popular places for foreign and Indian tourists albeit goats, monkeys and more monkeys.

Touts approached us with boxes of little stone sculptures (translation: paperweights sans the green felt on the bottom), each calling out "Ten rupees! Ten rupees!" but we gave them the hand. Touts frequented the streets preyin on anyone that looked like a tourist.

"...Twenty dollars," we heard one of them tell a couple of Japanese(?) girls.

"Nothing costs twenty dollars around here," I told Chrissy.

While waiting for Koco to negotiate a fair price on a sculpture of goddess Lakshmi -- she did this by inventing a husband that she had to consult before making a big purchase, something Indian salesmen completely understood -- I went to get a fresh coconut from one of the many vendors on the street.

"How much?" I asked an old woman.

"One rupee."

"Okay."

She chopped off the top, put in a straw and handed it to me. I gave her a ten rupee note, the smallest denomination I had on me and waited for change.

"It's ten."

"You said one rupee."

"No, ten."

"Forget it. I don't want it then." She wouldn't take it back or return my money.

"You said it was one rupee!" I pleaded.

"No, it's ten. That's the price for Indians!"

"No, you said one. One rupee."

"It's two for twenty," one guy interjected. Again with the team up.

"Two for twenty. That's ten for one," the woman said.

"I'd be happy to pay ten if you said 'ten' in the beginning, but you said 'one.'" She wasn't budging and I left it alone. Whatever, bitch. Why bother arguing over the matter of 17 American cents?


"THOSE PLACES ARE A FRAUD!" Geeta, the mother of the guesthousehold said to us at the communal dining table that night at dinner back in Chennai. Koco, Chrissy and I entertained the rest of the table with our stories of the day, the rice krispie affair, the donation-hungry pandits and Koco's clever invention of a husband, which used Indian macho social values to her advantage. Geeta was really vocal about her distaste for the touristy temples; she had one showed a Japanese guest to the same sites and was hassled, even though she was a local and a Hindu no less.

"Nothing is written [in Hinduism] that says foreigners are not allowed. The temples are open to everyone."

With that said, perhaps we had been had more than we thought, but were glad we were back in the comfort of a home, a home away from touts and ten-rupee coconuts. Er, I mean one-rupee coconuts.


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Female Condomania

DAY 393: Monday. For most people, the day to go back to work, a day when business reopened after a one- or two-day weekend. My only goal of the day was to go to the open airline offices and figure out my itinerary after Chennai -- but before breakfast was over, I had an additional mission: to track down a female condom.

Chrissy worked in an HIV research and awareness project, and one of her upcoming obligations was to do a demonstration of the female condom -- but one was hard to come by in a place like Chennai. Tom, Chrissy, Koco and I were at the breakfast table eating dosais that morning and discussed my new mission objective.

"Oh, I'm all about trying to find a female condom in Chennai," I said. Up until then I didn't know what my angle of the daily entry would be.

"There's that pharmacy on the ground floor of Spencer's," Koco advised. "You could start there." The three of them went to work and left me on my mission.

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IT WAS A MORNING OF RESEARCH walking in the sunny tropical weather of Chennai (picture above) amongst the southeast Indian men in their common and socially-accepted leg wraps, back and forth from Air India, Indian Airways, Jet Airways and new budget domestic carrier Air Deccan, conveniently all within a block of each other. I explored the possibility of going to the holy city of Varanasi up north for a couple of days before heading back to Delhi for my obligatory flight to Bangkok, but I couldn't justify the $300 plus cost for an experience that quite possibly might just blur in with similar experiences. (Varanasi, the holiest place to die in Hinduism, is known for its cremation ceremonies; I had been there, done that in Kathmandu already.) At the end of this mission objective I simply ended up with a cheap domestic flight on Air Deccan to depart on the morning of the day I'd leave India and head back to Thailand.


SPENCER PLAZA, IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN CHENNAI, was a continual mall-in-progress, with different phases of its construction opened as it became available. It was a mall in the Western sense, only with a lot more confusion with its lack of maps and a decent directory. Most of the stores were closed when I got there because of the big Muslim Eid holiday, marking the end of Ramadan, but luckily the pharmacy Koco spoke of was open.

"Uh, this might sound unusual, but I'm looking for a female condom," I asked the woman working the floor. I was expecting a weird look or something, but she wasn't bothered.

"We only have these," she said when she led me to the regular old male condoms.

"Oh, that's it?"

"Yes, just the male ones." She called over his boss or co-worker to confirm.

"I'm looking for a female condom," I asked him.

"Sorry, just those."

And that was the end of that. Of course if they had them in inventory, it might have escalated into one of embarrassing scenes similar to teenage boys on their first condom-buying experience, when there's no price sticker on the box and the cashier has to get it by usage of the PA system for everyone to hear (presented in ALL CAPS to accentuated the embarrassment factor):

"PRICE CHECK. I NEED A PRICE CHECK FOR ONE BOX OF LATEX CONDOMS. THIS GUY HERE WANTS TO BUY THEM, A BOX OF CONDOMS THAT IS, BUT THERE IS NO PRICE ON THEM. NO PRICE ON THE BOX OF CONDOMS THAT THIS GUY IN THE FRONT WEARING THE GREEN SHIRT WANTS TO BUY." (The cashier gets a call on the phone but then she gets back on the PA system.) "NO, THAT'S THE PRICE FOR MALE CONDOMS. THIS FREAK WANTS A BOX OF FEMALE ONES...."

That never happened though and I went off to wander the mall. I browsed through the big book and music store Landmark and had a six-inch chicken tikka on Italian at Subway. (Jared's picture was up.) I found another pharmacy in my wanderings and asked about the evasive female contraceptive device.

"Uh, this is a homeopathic pharmacy," the pharmacist said.

"Oh."

I walked back to the guesthouse from there hoping to run into another pharmacy on the way, but there weren't any.


KENNETH ASKED IF I WOULDN'T MIND sharing a room with Chrissy since the house was booked already -- I was originally only supposed to be there for two nights and those had passed already. Chrissy was fine with it and I was as well (the pricey rate would be split in half) and Kenneth had a bed and my bags brought over.

"Come look at his abscess," Chrissy my new roommate said to Kenneth when he was in the room when I was applying some more Bacitracin on my leg.

"Oh," he said with interest. "Abscess makes the heart grow fonder."

His corny uncle demeanor continued to keep Chrissy laughing -- that and the fact that ever since Jaipur, India, I could only use my laptop with a big clunky clamp on its side to squeeze together a bad internal connection that would make the screen go dark.

The family atmosphere in the guesthouse was ameliorated when I met another Asian-American guest just back from an excursion in Delhi, Amanda, originally from Sacramento, who had the same physical features and demeanor as Chrissy's (real) cousin and my friend Lizle back in the metro New York area. Having her around furthered the feeling that my stay in Chennai was like being home for a while; she was a Princeton grad and we reminisced about Princeton's Halo Pub, which made arguably the best homemade ice cream in the American northeast. (I include Ben and Jerry's in this statement, but feel free to beg to differ in the comments below.)

Amanda and I played ping-pong with Tom that night, but all three of us were no match for one of the one-nighter Indian businessmen staying that night, Ninesh, who quite possibly could have been on the Indian Olympic Ping-Pong Team. With speedy reaction time and fancy footwork, he was a true master of the paddle and the ping-pong ball.

And speaking of things that have been known to be inserted into a women's privates (don't deny that you know this already), Chrissy told me that in the end, she'd just reuse the one female condom she brought over from the States over and over (for demonstration purposes only of course). I don't know how much Chrissy paid for it, but I'm sure if there was a big scene over finding the price, I would have heard about it.


Posted by Erik at 04:06 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

November 21, 2004

Martyrs and Magicians

DAY 394: Chennai, India's fourth largest city formerly known as Madras, isn't exactly on a backpacker's must-see list. Cuckoo in Mumbai warned me there wasn't much to see there in terms of tourist sites. Geeta said it's primarily a place where people travel to for business. Some Indian girls at the guesthouse said that in terms of nightlife, Chennai was "a sleepy town."

Chennai did host an old fort and some decent museums -- just as many other Indian cities -- but it did have one major thing that separated it from other places: it was here that in 72 A.D. that St. Thomas, one of the Apostles of Jesus Christ, was martyred when he was pierced to death by non-believers on the top of a nearby mountain. It should come as no surprise that a shrine had been erected where he died, making Chennai on the must-see list of Christian pilgrims. I was templed out and forted out already and gave it a whirl.

"How do I get to St. Thomas Mount?" I asked Geeta after breakfast. She showed me where it was on the city map hung on the wall.

"You come with me," she suggested. "I'll bring you [halfway.]" St. Thomas Mount was about 12 km. from the city center in the same southeastbound direction as Geeta's workplace, a software company where she worked as a Japanese translator. I hopped on the back of her motorscooter and she whisked us away wearing her helmet and dust mask. I hopped off the scooter and jumped into an auto-rickshaw while we were stopped at a traffic light. Geeta negotiated a reasonable fare for me and zipped off to work.

The "auto" (as auto-rickshaws are called locally) took me to the base of the mount, the beginning of the upward path lined with the Stations of the Cross, depicting the scenes of the Passion of Jesus Christ, from the carrying of the cross, the nailing and ultimately to the crucifixion itself, sculpted in life-size scale at the top of the mountain. Aside from the nice view of the haze above the city, the top of the hillock also had a church built by the Portuguese in 1523, consecrated in 1986 by Pope John Paul II in his visit to Madras. The building held a relic (a piece of bone) of St. Thomas himself, as well as several ancient paintings of the Jesus and his apostles. The most notable holy item in the church was the stone cross that St. Thomas was praying to when he was killed which, according to Christian lore, bled every December 18th (the anniversary of St. Thomas' death) between 1551 and 1704.


THE DAY TURNED OUT TO BE A SCORCHER by midday, so I just chilled out in the "harem bed" in my room with my laptop to catch up on Blog duties and flip through the additional DVD content of the Bollywood film Dhoom that I bought the day before. Amanda came home early from work and stopped by to see what our plans were for the night.

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Chennai might be a "sleepy town" as the whole, but fun can be found if you just look for it. It was Tom's last night in town before leaving to Nairobi to present a documentary he shot, and we decided to go out to the big to-do in town: the magic show of Jagudar Anand (picture above), performing his last week at a big auditorium in Chennai.

Amanda, Chrissy, Tom and I joined Shakti and his partner (I forgot her name), a Chennai couple that ran an indie film and video production company that worked with Tom. We piled in Shakti's car and rode not too far away to the auditorium just before the show started. All the cheap 50-rupee seats were sold out, but we got a row to ourselves in the 200-rupee section. We passed around the bags of spicy popcorn that I bought until the show began.

Shakti told us that magician Jagudar Anand was in the Guinness Book of World Records for the busiest magician in the world, with the most performances per year than anyone else, or something like that. The Great Jagudar Anand had been performing in Chennai for forty days straight thus far, twice daily at 4 and 7 p.m. When the show started, his exhaustion was evident as the first act was a barrage of off-the-shelf tricks that he did left and right as assistants brought them over in rapid succession, all without the enthusiastic flamboyant flair that most stage magicians have. Rabbits disappeared and reappeared, birds flew out of cages and paper flowers "magically" materialized from thin air.

Covering the bags under his eyes was caked on make-up that made him seem plastic and a bit frightening. (Chrissy said that and his turban, he looked like Jambi from Pee Wee's Playhouse.) It was this same kind of make-up that was used on his younger female assistants, who were probably covering not just their exhaustion, but their drugged out looks since they were most likely strung out on morphine to keep the show going twice daily. We swore the girls were probably kidnapped and forced to work in the show; whenever they walked off the stage after a trick, they moped with the most unenthusiastic (and therefore funny) waving of the hands to the audience.

The show went on with its 70's funk-meets-80's video game music soundtrack as Jagudar narrated the entire show on a microphone. His creepy demeanor was made a bit more freaky with his soft spoken, yet somewhat raspy voice that made him sound like a child molester or something. In fact, in one of the acts he sort of played the part of such a fiend since he had his hands all over some young volunteer boys from the audience. One of the three boys luckily ran off before the big part of the trick with the excuse that he had to go to the bathroom -- he narrowly missed what Jagudar did to the next boy over: unzip his pants and magically make him urinate milk from a funnel he placed over the boy's crotch.


THE MAGIC TRICKS GOT BETTER as the show progressed. It wasn't anything new, just your basic saw-a-woman-in-half, move-a-woman's-head-independently-of-her-body, and turn-a-woman-into-a-"gorilla" sort of thing. "Now we will turn a beauty... into a beast," he said in his dramatic, child molester voice when he introduced the latter. "Ask yourself, can a body... pass through... another body?" he said to the audience to introduce the trick where he stood behind a free-standing box where his unenthusiastic assistant popped out of, seemingly passing through him. Afterwards, she walked off stage with her drugged out wave to the audience.

The one trick that we were looking forward to see wasn't his final trick as expected: an elephant named Lakshmi walked from the back of the auditorium to the stage, and he "magically" made her disappear after a quick flash of light and then quick period of darkness. An elephant wasn't the only thing he made disappear. A guy assistant playing Harry Houdini magically escaped out of a box, only to magically appear in the aisle of the auditorium. "I'm here!" he yelled from the back. In that trick, just as in every one, no one knew exactly when to clap. Often after a trick there would be no applause from the audience except for when a little five-year-old girl started clapping her hands off.

Not all of the show went as planned. When Jagudar called for a girl to volunteer from the audience, one of the girls in the row in front of us ran up -- only to have Jagudar motion her "not this trick, the next one." When she finally got up to "volunteer" in a trick where he'd magically pierce a skewer straight through her neck, she freaked out and ran off. (Perhaps she was creeped out by his child molestation behavior.)


AFTER TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF MAGICAL HIJINKS (and dancing midgets), The Great Jagudar Anand ended with a levitation as his assistants danced around in Mexican costumes to Mexican music. "It's magic," I said. "He's turned Indians into Mexicans."

The Mexican theme continued when a waiter brought over a plate of nachos at Zara, a hip, modern Spanish tavern that we went to after the show, a place where Chennai's business class hung out over cocktails and entertained clients. The six of us shared an assortment of tapas over drinks and conversations about the show. "You think that boy's going to be scarred for life?" Tom said.

"I think we're all scarred for life," I said.

Chrissy and I shared a pitcher of "Indian sangria," which was just like regular Spanish sangria with an Indian twist that we couldn't really figure out. Regardless of that twist, it got both of us pretty drunk; Chrissy made us laugh with her dead-on impressions of the unenthusiastic assistants walking off stage with their hand waves. Later on our amusement continued when we flipped through the 80's Indian music videos on TV, all of which starred really beautiful Indian women and really sleazy-looking Indian men all of which sported thick moustaches.


IT WAS A SHAME NO PHOTOS WERE ALLOWED during the magic show -- I was even busted when I tried to get a photo of the elephant walking down the aisle -- but in lieu of that, watch now as I magically make this can of Coke... disappear. That may seem pretty lame, but at least it didn't involve any child molestation.


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November 22, 2004

The French Connection

DAY 395: Pondicherry, the one-time capital of French-occupied India, remains a city with a French influence, a place where curry meets crêpes. Pondicherry, which is of course English for Pondichéry, was founded in 1673 when France took over the area as a base of their trading routes, so that they may have an advantage over the English and the Dutch -- it wasn't until 1954 that the French gave the land back to India. Readers of Yann Martel's popular contemporary fable Life of Pi will recognize the city's name as the first part of the story takes place there, the part when the hero, Pi Patel, sneaks behind people's backs to be a Christian, a Hindu and Muslim all at the same time. (No, that doesn't spoil the plot in case you were going to read it.)

I left Chrissy and the rest of the Christian/Hindu guesthouse for the day and hopped in an auto-rickshaw -- whose fare was negotiated by a nice old random Indian man on the street who sympathized with confused American me because his son was also living in the States -- which took me to the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus. Buses to "Pondy" left about every half hour, and soon I was on the 1 p.m. one for the three and a half hour ride southbound through Tamil Nadu on East Coast Road.

Pondicherry's blend of India and France mixed as well as oil and water; architecturally speaking, the two weren't really integrated with each other, with the classical French part of the city and the modern, air-polluted Indian one separated by a dried up canal. Accommodations were cheaper in the latter and I checked in to the Amala Lodge, a much more basic place than Kenneth and Geeta's in Chennai, before taking to the streets on foot.

On the eastern side of the canal the French influence on India was immediately seen, with its bilingual street signs, colorfully painted buildings and French embassy. I walked passed the Government Park and the European-styled Pondicherry Museum and head for the shore along the Bay of Bengal. On a stroll down Goubert Salai (Beach Road), I continued to see the Europe meets India influence, with its cathedral, lighthouse and war memorial, commemorating the fallen soldiers from French India in WWI. It was a beach where Indian locals walked aside French tourists and ex-pats, a beach where a statue of Gandhi shared the sand with Marquis Dupleix.

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Even the police in Pondicherry were influenced by the French, at least in uniform, with every officer patrolling the streets in red French police hats that made them look like brown-skinned gendarmes in Paris. The police were a particularly busy bunch since Pondicherry had a lot of strict rules on public smoking and drinking, vehicle theft and swimming. The few guys in the ocean didn't seem to mind the strong riptides though. Everyone else played it safe, I think mostly because, despite the cleanliness signs posted in the French part of town (picture above), the beach was really polluted and uninviting. France On The Ocean usually invokes an image of the Riviera, but Pondicherry was nowhere near such a thing; in fact, Pondicherry, despite the photos you've clicked on so far that make it seem nicer than it actually is, reminded me more of a sleepy New Jersey shore town (sans the drunken frat boys, Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen playing out of an old IROC-Z). Later on, I concurred when Kenneth told me he didn't know what the big deal about Pondicherry was; it's "just a big Indian village."


I HAD DINNER AT SEAGULL'S, one of the few eateries with a view of the ocean, and dined on a delicious and spicy meal of prawn curry on rice with a side of Kalyani, the French Indian beer only for sale in Pondicherry. It seemed to be one of the few places I could have such a refreshment; most of the guesthouses I'd seen seemed to extend the no drinking, no smoking rule into their private properties, many of them run by devout Christian-types. When I went to the internet cafe across the street from my lodge, the zealous Indian guy there berated me for not loving George W. Bush -- "You know The Bible says you should love your enemy..." -- and when Windows 98 finally loaded up I saw his wallpaper was a quote from Deutoronomy.

"A chacun son gôut," was a phrase I once learned in French class. "To each his/her own taste." In a place like Pondicherry, where one could by an Indian newspaper in the Tamil language or an issue of French tabloid Paris Match, that phrase couldn't be more fitting -- with its eclectic mix of Indians and French, Christians, Hindus and Muslims -- as long as everyone behaved himself on the beach.


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Mothers

DAY 396: Pondicherry isn't just known for its France meets India vibe; it was in Pondicherry that a worldwide New Age movement was born in the 1960s based on the "integral yoga" teachings of Sri Aurobindo Ghose, which combined yoga with modern science. To the uninformed person, the movement appears like some sort of a futuristic science fiction cult, especially since followers of it meditated around a big crystal ball that focused the energy of the sun and the fact that the movement's primary organizer was a woman whom is only referred to as "The Mother."

The purpose of the movement is similar to that of most organized religions, as it is a pursuit of Divine Truth, although one main pillar of the movement is that it embraces no religion. One mission statement by The Mother states, "...Research through experience of the Supreme Truth. A life divine but NO RELIGIONS. Our research will not be a search effected by mystic means. It is in life itself that we wish to find the Divine. And it is through this discovery that life can be transformed." In this respect, it is a sort of organized Atheism "beyond any religion" based on self-meditation that aims to bring forth a "supramental consciousness" so that followers evolve to a "level beyond the human."

Within Pondicherry city limits the movement is present at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the former residence and headquarters of Sri Aurobindo Ghose and The Mother (born as artist "Mirra Alfassa"), when they met and worked together after their individual life struggles and thirst for spirituality. The ashram Sri Aurobindo writes, is "not for the renunciation of the world but as a center and field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness." In other words, the ashram is open to anyone as long as he/she takes her shoes off first (the first rule in most Asian religions).

I took off my sandals and went inside. The place was silent in a sacred and holy way, although with its philosophies there was nothing "holy" about it. Devotees surrounded a central meditative altar called a samadhi and meditated to reach higher levels of consciousness while pictures of The Mother were hung up, her constant gaze staring down in (at least for me) a sort of creepy way. "Love The Mother. Always behave as if The Mother was looking at you, because She is indeed, always present," read a nearby sign.

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THE REAL EPICENTER THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother lies not in Pondicherry, but 12 km. to the north in Auroville, The Mother's experimental Utopian community where true devotees of the New Age movement resided and used all efforts for the betterment of humanity. At the center of Auroville stood the Matrimandir, a huge golden geosphere that looks like Spaceship Earth at EPCOT Center. Inside, so I've read, lay a big crystal sphere (picture above) which, due to its positioning in the center of the geosphere, concentrated the power of the sun into one focal point, so that devotees could sit around it and meditate on The Divine.

As culty as this all sounds, Auroville and the movement are recognized and supported by the United Nations. The 1,500 odd residents of Auroville (no pun intended), many of which are foreigners who came to India in their own searches of spirituality, don't just meditate, but help local communities in environmental and educational programs. One of Auroville's mission statements reads, "Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women from all countries will be able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The aim of Auroville is to realise human unity." [sic] The Mother continues, "Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness."

I only had an hour to explore Auroville that morning after breakfast -- my auto-rickshaw's meter was running -- but in that time I got a taste of what Auroville was like; as nice as everything looked on paper, if you weren't one of "them," it was sort of weird being there, especially with the ever-suspicious security guards eyeing me down in case I illegally took a picture of anything. (The pictures so far are pictures of pictures that I snuck in the Visitors Center Museum when no one was looking.) I left Auroville with the content feeling that, at the very least, I learned about something new that day.


FROM "THE MOTHER" IN PONDICHERRY I journeyed the three and a half hour bus ride back to the mother of the guesthouse in Chennai, Geeta. Since my first day in Chennai, she was always a friendly motherly type who gave me a ride on her motorscooter and, more importantly, didn't have a creepy picture of her on the wall staring down at everyone -- and really, that's a comforting feeling. She was a progressive modern Indian mother, who didn't seem to mind when her daughter Laika left the house to go on a date or something, dressed to kill in a sexy dress.

"How many girls do you [impress] with your dimples?" Geeta asked me the first night at dinner.

"Uh, none really. Just my mom."

"No, really."

I thought about it some more. "No really, it's just my mother that seems to be impressed by them." I supposed it was just a feature that mothers picked up on.


CHRISSY CAME HOME AFTER WORK and with Amanda and Dr. Alexandra from Boston (who had assessed the hole in my leg and said everything was fine), we went out shopping. At Pondy Bazaar, Chrissy bought a cheap pair of earrings, Amanda got some Indian sweets to bring back home to Seattle since she was leaving the following day, Alexandra got some new outfits and I got some genuine Jockeys for less than two dollars each. It was a final dinner that night back at the house, my last sitting of yummy home-cooked Indian food and Kenneth's corny jokes. Afterwards, we sat around the living room for farewell pictures and conversations with the modern Indian couple, who continued to entertain us with tales of modern family life in Chennai.

"I told my daughter one day, 'I think we should have The Talk,' and she said, 'Okay, what do you want to know?'" Kenneth told us. He strummed his guitar to serenade us with his self-made comedy classics like "Once there was a woman who walked like a duck..."


A TAXI PICKED ME UP AT 4:30 early the next morning to bring me to the airport for my morning flight back to Delhi that connected to my flight out of India that evening. Chrissy, who had graciously donated to my cause by taking on my relatively costly tab for my entire stay in Chennai, woke up to see me off in the darkness of the pre-dawn morning, as did Geeta who had the keys to open the front gate. "Bye, thanks for everything," I said. My goodbye hug to Chrissy was a given, but then Geeta opened her arms as well. I reciprocated of course -- really, you just don't get that sort of motherly treatment in a plain old backpacker guesthouse -- for I knew the goodness of humanity didn't necessarily have to involve creepy pictures or meditation around a crystal sphere.


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November 23, 2004

All Roads Lead To Bangkok

DAY 397 (42 days since last Thailand entry): In India, I had a somewhat unique experience unlike the average backpacking Brit on "gap year" between high school and "uni," what with my "press credentials" opening doors for me, and my invitations to stay with modern Indian families instead of backpacker haunts. However, it was inevitable for me to put on my hiking boots and get back on the Backpacker Trail since I was headed back to southeast Asia. When you're on the budget travel circuit in southeast Asia, all roads inevitably lead to Bangkok, a place that one t-shirt I saw proudly proclaimed is the "mecca of backpackers."

My nine-hour layover in Delhi wasn't too bad; I touched down at the domestic terminal, waited for the armed transfer bus to the international one, and waited around some more. The hours flew as I attended to Blog duties and started reading Eoin Colfer's The Supernaturalists. The only time the time dragged was when I was unluckily on the slowest immigration line, which processed one person for every five on another. Of course I never wanted to leave my line to go on the back of another since I was near the counter, but airport guys kept on letting people on the "now departing" flight cut ahead of me. I swear I was standing on line for a good 45 minutes.

There was more time to kill in the next waiting room. I had the urge to pee at one point, which of course is definitely more information than you needed to know, but I only mentioned it because on the way to the men's room I ran into a familiar face.

"Are you Paul?" I asked.

"Yeah," he answered. I saw his face trying to remember my name.

"Erik."

It was Manchester Paul, whom I had met one day on the Everest Trail in Nepal, over a month prior. He was on the same Air India flight to Delhi as mine. "Funny how we're bumping into each other like this," I said. "Originally I was supposed to fly out of Chennai."

"Yeah, me too. I was [originally] supposed to take the flight December second," he said. He had moved that flight up twice to earlier dates, ultimately to the date I was leaving India. "I suppose it's fate."

With him was Neil, a young backpacker with a guitar from Nottingham who was shocked when I told him I'd heard of it. "I'm surprised how many Americans never heard of [Nottingham.]"

"Isn't that where Robin Hood takes place?"

"Yeah." Neil too was a familiar face to Paul; a couple of days prior, they had randomly bumped into each other in a similar way I had just bumped into him. Funny how that happens; like I said, in southeast Asia, all roads lead to Bangkok, and you're bound to bump into someone you know.

Paul filled me in on his Everest experience. He had taken an extra rest day on the way up and saw my guide Tilak being carried down that one dreadful day. Paul eventually made it up to Gorak Shep and did the two day treks to Everest Base Camp and the peak of Kalapattar -- he too didn't make it all the way, just far enough for the same view and bragging rights. Fortunately for him, his guide didn't get sick and he took an extra rest day at Gorak Shep after the fact (something I wanted to do) and survived.


FOUR HOURS LATER, the three of us touched down in Bangkok, capital of Thailand, and capital of 7-Eleven convenience stores -- I swear there were more 7-Elevens per block than anywhere in the world, and I include the USA, Tokyo and Hong Kong in that statement. Neil was supposed to meet up with a Brazilian girl that he had met in Goa who had arrived in Bangkok before us at the airport, but she was nowhere to be found. Instead, the three of us just split a cab to the backpacker district by the legendary Khaosan Road. It was Paul's sixth time in Bangkok, Neil's first and my second, although my first time embracing its social scene instead of complaining about being behind on The Blog, like the last time. My new backpacker friends and I checked into the Sawasdee House, which Let's Go describes as "a socialite's dream... practically a backpacker convention." It was near 2 a.m. with the time zone difference when we finally settled down at a table in the bar for Welcome to Bangkok cocktails.

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We did the backpacker thing of going out for late night banana pancakes from a street vendor on Khaosan Road (picture above). Paul raved about one guy's in particular. "You're going to love them. They're better than sex," he joked.

There weren't many people out at 3 a.m. since most places were shut down already -- just a handful of Thai prostitutes, "ladyboys," and drunken backpackers. While waiting for chocolate banana pancakes, we befriended Billy, a hipster-type from Melbourne who had just arrived in Bangkok earlier that evening. She was surprised how trendy the backpacker scene on Khaosan Road had become. Paul said he remembered years ago when it was all grungy backpackers in hiking boots and the like, but now it seemed to all of us that the 2004 backpacker set had "gone metro."

We walked around with Billy and chat for a bit, passing around a big bottle of Singh beer until we called it a night and head back to the house just before the roosters started crowing. "How were the pancakes?" Paul asked me.

"Good," I answered. "I don't know if they're better than sex though."

He concurred.


WHEN YOU ARE A BUDGET TRAVELER going around the world, the backpacker scene is inevitable. Sometimes it can be "Backpacker Hell," but sometimes, when you're in the company of good people, it can be a good thing too -- better than banana pancakes even.


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Thai By Night

DAY 398: From what I've gathered, it seems that what the Thai hotel and restaurant managers do to keep out Thai touts and Thai whores away from their legitimate Westerner-catering establishments is to assume that all Thai people off the street are unfavorable. A big sign at the front desk of the Sawasdee House where I was staying read:

NO Thai people permitted in the hotels rooms.

"That's a bit harsh," Paul commented.

Every time I went up to my room I anticipated getting stopped and questioned of my nationality, but fortunately it never happened.


AS THE SAYING GOES, "If the shoe fits, wear it," and as a foreigner I played by the rules that day and paid the foreigner admission fees for the sites I went to, even though I might have been able to slip in as a Thai guy. I walked passed the people feeding pigeons and Sanam Luang park, where a big health and wellness fair was going on, and arrived at the big must-see in the area, the Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and the Grand Palace.

The two huge complexes, which were adjacent to each other, were easily to navigate with the mini-disc audio tour available. An English-speaking man with a Thai accent spoke into my headphones and led me around, first in the Wat Phra Kaew complex. I walked amidst a huge crowd of tourists, from the statue of the Hermit doctor, to the murals on the wall depicting the epic Hindu story of Rama (basis of Diwali), to the golden bell-shaped Phra Sri Ratana Chedi pagoda, to the Phra Mondhop (the royal Buddhist library). These were all parts of a bigger collection of structures, which also included a belfry, a shrine to goddess Kun Iam, statues of big guardian demons, statues of smaller "chicken demons," and many other pagodas -- some adorned with dancing guardian demons. They all surrounded the main central building of the complex, the Royal Temple of the Emerald Buddha, which housed the sacred Buddha made of emerald, Thailand's most sacred Buddha figure, discovered in 1434.

From the Wat Phra Kaew complex, the voice with the Thai accent led me across the way to the grounds of the Grand Palace, just beyond the European-styled Barom Phiman Hall where former U.S. president Bill Clinton once stayed during his visit to Thailand. Nearby was the Phra Maha Montien sub-complex, used for public ceremonies, followed by the magnificent Chakri Maha Prasat Hall, the former royal residence of King Rama V, now used for state banquets but still guarded by stoic armed soldiers for that ever-present royal feeling. Beyond the Chakri Maha Prasat Hall was the throne hall, the Dusit Maha Prasat Hall (guarded by stoic stone soldiers), and the Emerald Buddha Museum.

It took a good ninety minutes to see everything I just mentioned in the past two paragraphs, and so I sat down for a breather just outside the entry gates. Nearby there were some Thai schoolgirls interviewing foreigners for some school project, and not surprisingly, they ignored me and only approached Caucasian people with their clipboards.


JUST SOUTH OF THE GRAND PALACE was another notable site for tourists and locals alike, the Wat Pho, home of the Reclining Buddha. I paid the 50-cent foreigner fee to enter the complex of temples and pagodas, and saw the temple of the big Reclining Buddha, which allowed for interior photos to my surprise. Fifteen meters tall and laying 46 meters across, the golden Buddha "relaxed" for everyone to see. From the western end of the building I saw that Buddha had really big feet -- and you ladies out there know what it means when a guy has big feet. (Big shoes.)

After my sightseeing I went back to the backpacker district to chill out. I had an internet session and got my hair cut from a Thai lady barber who, not surprisingly, initially thought I was Thai.


"I'M REALLY EXCITED THAT I'M GOING TO SEE A MANCHESTER GAME with someone from Manchester," I told Paul when we started the evening out at a sports bar on Khaosan Road to see his home team play on a big screen -- he was a huge Man. U. fan and tried to see every game, no matter where he was. For those North Americans who don't follow soccer (football), Manchester United is akin to the New York Yankees in baseball (before the 2004 World Series), in that unless you are a fan on home turf, every other sports fan hates your guts because your team keeps on winning games to the point that it's considered unfair. (It should come as no surprise that Manchester United and the New York Yankees have a commercial partnership and sell each other's merchandise in their respective stores.)

Joining us for the night was Neil and his new gal pal Carol, the Brazilian girl he met in Goa some time before that we were supposed to meet at the airport the previous night. Born in Sao Paolo of Korean parents, her look was about as ambiguous as mine, with many features leaning towards the darker-skinned Asian one, i.e. the Thai look. "I'm so glad I met you," she told me. "You know how it is [to have the Thai look.]"

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As Manchester United proceeded to kick ass on the four television screens around us, we ate and drank many beers, trying to distinguish the difference in the local brands, Chang, Leo and Singh. "After a while it doesn't matter," I told Paul. After the game we went wandering Khaosan Road (picture above) to find some live music or something entertaining, but in the crowded street of pedestrians, Carol and I got separated from Paul and Neil -- for so long that we just stopped searching for them and decided to go out for drinks by ourselves.

Carol and I went barhopping, checking out the scene here and there and eventually ended up at another outdoor bar over a big bottle of Chang. She told me about how annoying it was for her to be in Bangkok, particularly as a young female looking the way she did; often she was mistaken for a Thai prostitute and would be groped or hassled by Western assholes who didn't know any better. Bangkok, aside from being known as a mecca of backpackers, is also a mecca of sex tourism, enticing many old men to come and feel special by young Thai call girls pretending to be in love with them (and screwing their brains out) -- all for a fee of course. It was pretty common to see an old gray-haired (usually fat) European-looking fellow holding hands with a young Thai woman that you could tell was obviously in it for the money. "No money, no honey," as the saying goes.

I thought that my little support group with Carol might have led to something more intimate, but she made it clear throughout the night that she was with Neil -- in fact Neil was slated to switch houses and move in with her the next day. With that said, we went looking for the pair of Brits again, this time at Gulliver's Travelers' Tavern, a huge backpacker hangout on the corner of Khaosan Road and Chakrapong Road. I walked in the front door and into the foyer, only to be stopped by a bouncer.

"No, not you," he said. It was obvious to me to why he said it.

"But I'm American," I said politely.

He didn't believe me. "No." He hand was on my shoulder ready to shove. Meanwhile, a Caucasian guy walked in hassle-free.

What the fuck? How can Thai guys be racist against their own kind? Wait a minute, I'm not even Thai! I had enough beer in me that I was already put over the edge, especially with the stories I'd heard from Carol that night. "What?! Because I'm not a WHITE GUY?!" I shouted at the bouncer.

Of course at that point, the scuffle that started with the two bouncers wasn't racially-charged anymore, but charged because of my drunken belligerence. Then again, the belligerence probably wouldn't have spawned if the asshole didn't stop me in the first place. HE started it.

"Please, let's just go," Carol urged, trying to pry me away.

"NO! We can get in here!" I exclaimed, reaching for my U.S. passport. "I'm AMERICAN!" Again, my voice was raised, not really putting me in a favorable light for admission. At that point it didn't matter anyway; I just wanted to prove my point. You can't do this to me, I'm an American! I tried to shove my way into the main door, only to be pushed back with their physical force.

The two bouncers teamed up on me and shoved me out the door. Carol followed behind me on her own will. One bouncer closed the glass door and held it shut when I tried to open it again. Whatever dick. I followed Carol's advice and we left the scene. Needless to say, I was still pretty pissed off.


EVENTUALLY WE FOUND PAUL AND NEIL and explained the whole situation. I was much sober by that time and we went back to Gulliver's, this time with the two white Englishmen. I followed in after Paul, but the bouncer recognized me and stopped me. "No."

"It's okay, he's with me."

Still nothing.

"I'm not even that drunk now, I just want to know why," I said.

No response. He just gave me the evil eye from behind the glass door.

"Fine. Whatever. I don't even want to go anymore." I was sober enough to keep calm amidst the new hostility, but still had enough alcohol in me to start ranting about how I was a journalist from New York City and that I'd slam them in anyway that I could.

If you have any plans to go to Bangkok (all estimated 38,000 of you readers), PLEASE BOYCOTT GULLIVER'S TAVERN -- or even better, get in there (if they let you) and set the place on fire. "We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn... Burn motherfucker, BURN." (How's that for belligerent?)


PAUL AND I SPLIT UP from Neil and Carol and wandered around some more. At the end of the night we randomly bumped into Carol again, who was a bit hysterical from something that just happened -- I assumed another grope from a nasty old man. "I'm sorry you guys, I have to go. I can't take it anymore! I really have to get out of here." She seemed to be on the verge of sobbing and ran off.

I don't know who wrote the lyrics to the famous 1980s pop tune -- "One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster..." -- but whoever it was, it was obviously a white male.


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November 24, 2004

Mallkings

DAY 399: "I hate it when [travelers] say you can't get a real [Thai] experience in a big city," I said to Paul as we rode in a souped-up air-conditioned taxi across town. "What, like fake Thai people live here?"

Paul agreed with me and said that there's nothing out there that says a little village can't evolve into something bigger.

We were on our way to Siam Square, the downtown area named after the Kingdom of Thailand's former name, before the political decision in the 20th century to unify all country folk under the "Thai" label, which actually refers to the majority Tai-Kadai people. I was feeling a bit rough after the night before -- Carol told me I had a "Changover" because we had cheap Chang beer -- and for Paul and I it was to be a day to just chill out and recover in the air-conditioned environment of a shopping mall instead of joining Carol and Neil at the popular, but crowded and sweaty outdoor weekend markets outside of town.

"Sunday. A day of rest," Paul said.

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LET'S GO DESCRIBES M.B.K. CENTER (picture above) as a shopping mall that "puts some Western shopping malls to shame." A huge seven-story shopping and entertainment complex, it is the retail commercial epicenter for real Thai people -- and one "fake" one (me). Walking around was a familiar scene for me having grown up in New Jersey, USA near five shopping malls, all within a five-mile radius. (It's no wonder New Jersey is the location of the Kevin Smith film, Mallrats.) Paul and I walked through the never-ending halls of jewelry vendors, clothing shops, pants stores and electronics stores, and pretty much had a leisurely day of doing nothing. At one point we ended up at a fancy upscale internet cafe with the most comfortable cushioned recliner seats for an on-line session and a short game of Battlefield: Vietnam. But for the most part, we, as the Brits say, "did fuck all."

The Thai mall experience was just like any one that would happen in the Western world; yes, "real" Thai people do go shopping, eating and loitering like Western Mallrats. Of course there were subtle differences, like the fact that most things were written in Thai, and that the music I heard wasn't just American pop, but Thai pop as well. I swear twelve times throughout the day I heard the dance track "Dhoom Dhoom," the English-speaking version of the song from the Bollywood film Dhoom, which was performed not by an Indian but by Thai Sony Music recording artist Tata Young, a teen singer-turned-sex-symbol, Thailand's Britney Spears if you will. (Have a look at the "Dhoom Dhoom" music video at her official website and you'll see what I mean.)

Alongside more real Thai people and a handful of foreign-looking people, Paul and I had lunch at The Pizza Company, where we went not for its "Extreme Pizza" but for other items on the menu we hadn't had in a while: chicken wings and salad from the all-you-can-eat salad bar. "Oh, this is good," Paul the balanced-diet guru said. "We're eating like kings." The food filled us up until we walked on the covered walkway to the other big mall next door, Siam Discovery Center, a more upscale (and "metro") mall with art galleries and an Apple store. Paul browsed for a new VAIO laptop until we went up to the top floor to go to the movies.


IF THERE'S ANY ONE NOTABLE DIFFERENCE between the Western mall cinema-going experience and the one in Thailand, it's the option of VIP Class for a couple of bucks more. "Gold Class Suite" service included heated, reclining massage chairs (the kind most people see at The Sharper Image or Brookstone and sit in but don't buy), socks, a pillow and blanket, and complimentary drinks and a few sweets, brought over by waiter service. Basically, it was like paying to be in First Class on a plane without going anywhere.

"What should we see?" I asked. The three films playing in VIP class were Ladder 49, Taxi, and After The Sunset.

"Which one is longer?" Paul joked.

It really didn't matter what we saw -- we just wanted to get the VIP treatment that we had heard so much about -- and just got tickets for the next film up, Ladder 49. The firefighter drama starring Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta was pretty mediocre, but I especially enjoyed the part when the massaging vibrating nodes in my chair did this fast-trickling thing down my back. "We're really living like kings," Paul reiterated.

Watching the movie, which takes place in Baltimore, USA, was a nice look into life in my homeland, but before all that we were hit with a big dose of Thai propaganda. Right before the film started, the screen requested that everybody pay respects to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Everyone in the audience stood up like Americans pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America at a baseball game, and watched a montage of the King and all his accomplishments to the country. Thailand's people over the years have generally liked their monarch (even though they went democratic in the early 1990s) -- Thailand proudly brags that it is the only country in southeast Asia that had never been colonized.


PAUL AND I COULDN'T GET THE IMAGE of The Pizza Company's "Extreme Pizza" out of our minds, so we went back for dinner to dine on pizza so extreme that the crust was filled with sausage, cheese and bacon. Tata Young's "Dhoom Dhoom," was still playing, followed by the American standards of Britney and Beyoncé. Afterwards, we took a tuk-tuk (auto-rickshaw) back to Khaosan Road. Later that night we watched a bootleg of Team America World Police, shown in one of the restaurants nearby.

At the end of the day, it was a pretty plain but relaxing day whether you are a real Thai or a fake one.


Posted by Erik at 12:11 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

November 25, 2004

Moderation

DAY 400: Paul and I met in the Sawasdee House's trendy-looking ground floor restaurant that morning, the same way we did every morning in Bangkok thus far. It had become our Central Perk (from Friends), our Monk's Cafe (from Seinfeld). He nursed his bottle of water while I sipped on a Thai iced coffee. Cold coffee, for Paul, wasn't a concept he could grasp -- but to each his own taste.

"What are your plans for today?" I asked him.

"I need to get me camera sorted out," he told me. I forgot that he told me he needed to get his big SLR serviced since it ceased to power on after an Aussie girl he had traveled through Kashmir with dropped it by accident.

"I think I might check out the temples around here," I told him, pointing to a section on my map after he reciprocated the question. He seemed disinterested -- he had been to Bangkok many times before and really knew that all temples looked the same (i.e. he was "templed out") -- and had his own errands to run anyway, but we made plans to meet up later that evening.


I GOT SIDETRACKED RIGHT AWAY when I started my walk towards my first temple -- beyond the nearby Democracy Monument, commemorating the transition of absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy in 1932 -- and I saw from my map that I could check out the sights of the nearby Dusit district first. I got even more sidetracked when I got lost in Bangkok's streets on the way there (I was disoriented as to which way was north), but managed to stroll through a nice, quiet residential neighborhood of Bangkokers, with houses so close together between intimate alleyways, so secluded from the backpacker district that I felt that I was intruding on someone's property.

I eventually found the Dusit area, where some sort of Thai Muslim carnival fair was going on. In front of the Parliament building was the point-of-interest I saw on my map, the statue of King Rama V. Also known as King Chulanglongkorn, he was (and still is) arguably Thailand's most revered king, who reigned from 1868 to 1910. It was because of his strong hand that Thailand never got occupied and colonized by the British and French, who at the time, had infiltrated the neighboring countries like Cambodia and Vietnam. King Rama V has also been credited for abolishing slavery and modernizing Thai society -- and hey, while we're at it, we can thank him for bringing yummy Thai food to the rest of the world too (but don't quote me on that).


BEFORE MY BARRAGE OF TEMPLES I went to check out the Queen's Gallery, a contemporary art gallery showcasing the latest show "Trinity" by painter Thawan Duchanee, an exhibition with a series of three-headed creatures in a wild, almost comic book style. It was unlike anything I'd seen in the art world recently, which is the exact opposite notion when I finally went out to see the temples. Yes, when you've seen many temples, especially on a trip like this one, many of them begin to look the same and you get "templed out" -- the key to keeping sane is to see them in moderation.

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With that said, I decided to see only three that afternoon, each one unique in its own way. Wat Saket, a big golden pagoda 80 meters tall, was built atop the Golden Mount, an artificial hill with a view of the city, accessible by a big, long spiral staircase. Wat Suthat housed Thailand's largest cast-bronze Buddha, as well as some statues of horses sculpted with attention to anatomic detail. And Wat Arun, also known as the Temple of Dawn, was on the other side of the Chao Phraya River (easily accessible by ferry for just 2 baht). With its Khmer-style architecture, the Temple of Dawn was meant to be seen in the dawn's early light, but I thought that it was just as impressive at dusk as well (picture above).


"SOMEONE DIED HERE," Paul told me back at the house as we were munching on the fried chicken we were offered by the two girls working the travel desk who had befriended us. "I seen the body. An American guy. He was from my floor." Paul got details from a police officer when they got prints and carried the body away down the block. Apparently, an American backpacker had drank himself to death -- not surprisingly, the bar/club scene of the Khaosan Road area would be conducive to such a thing -- and the night before he had been in the bathroom vomiting over a toilet, only to choke on his own puke and suffocate. A cleaning woman found his body the next morning. What a shame.

With such a downer on the mind, there was just one pick-me up to do. No, not go drinking you alkie, I'm talking about the Thai massage. Bangkok is full of many massage parlors, many of them fronts for prostitution, which really isn't a good thing with the epidemic of AIDS and other STDs around the country. Paul knew of one parlor that was legit and we paid the 180 baht for a one-hour session each.

After a woman washed off our stinky feet, we were led upstairs to disrobe and put on this huge pair of boxer trunks big enough for Michael Moore. We were led into a big dimly lit room of mattresses where a speaker softly played soothing Asian melodies. The two women asked to lie down on the mattresses and relax. Uh, is this place really legit Paul? I wondered.

It was legit in the end; there was no sexual or romantic undertones with these two. Mine laughed at me for some reason and Paul's girl actually teased his hairiness and called him "Monkey Boy." To add to the legitimacy, as the hour progressed, the room filled up with other clients, both male and female, each with a professional Thai masseuse.

The Thai technique involves a lot of kneading, pulling and stretching (unlike the Chinese one, which involves a lot of hard pressing on pressure points) and it was every bit relaxing as I had heard about. The grand finale was when we placed our heads in the girls' laps, and they massaged our face muscles and temples; it was one case where I wouldn't have minded getting "templed out."


PAUL AND I WERE OUT FOR STREET FOOD and a couple of drinks that night, when one girl that he met in his travels a while back recognized him on the street. The Irish girl was Orla and with her was fellow Irish girl Ruth; we hit it off right away and went out for a round in a local pub to talk the regular backpacker stuff. The session, which might have escalated into something longer, was short-lived when the Irish pair called it quits early because they had to pack to leave the following day.

Paul and I headed back to the Sawasdee House to partake in a nightcap, some of his prized bottle of Glenfiddich whiskey, which he only brought out for special occasions (which was pretty often).

"Oh, that's nice," I said, the velvety liquor hitting my lips and going down smoothly.

"Smooth as a baby's bottom," Paul said.

Aged fifteen years, Glenfiddich is not a liquor to gorge and Paul knew this; he poured just two mini-shots for the each of us, enough to get us warm and toasty and a bit more drunk, but nothing too crazy -- unlike the guy whose body was found on the third floor bathroom that morning.

I guess in a city like Bangkok, a city where you can get mostly any vice you want and plenty of it, a place where you can get "templed out" by day and "boozed out" by night (sometimes permanently as we learned), the key to survival is definitely moderation -- at least until the next binge session.


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November 27, 2004

So An Englishman, A Scotsman and An American Don't Walk Into A Bar...

DAY 401: "Sometimes I have to stop and think of what you're saying," Paul told me as we walked Ratchadamnoen Road, a main thoroughfare in Bangkok with elephant-shaped shrubs, archways that honored the king, and the United Nations building. I had used the word "block" (as in "down the..." and "New Kids On The...") and Paul had to think about what I was saying; he told me the British used "street" or "road" instead, and gave directions in a town or city not in "blocks" but in meters.

I took note of this and added it to my on-going list of British English jargon, a list which included holiday (instead of vacation), "fuck all", colour, flavour, chips, crisps, "take away," bullocks, and "to take the piss at." British English and American English really do have their differences and often times when I talk with a Brit I too have to stop and think of what he/she is saying. (On a side note, Brit Sarah [Garden Route, South Africa] mentioned that in a BBC documentary she saw, they stated that American English is actually closer to original English than modern British English, which had gone off so many tangents over the centuries.)

Language isn't the only thing that doesn't exactly translate 100% between Americans and British; humor (which is American English for humour) also doesn't transcend the two cultures completely. I blame what is exported to the mainstream audience back and forth across The Pond (the Atlantic). For example, many Americans find the humour of the BBC's Emmy Award-winning show The Office too dry -- they prefer the office humor of the movie Office Space -- meanwhile, the Brits get Seinfeld, arguably "one of America's funniest sitcoms of all time" and don't quite get Jerry's witty observational humor. "This is shit," Brit Lara once told me when we were watching it in the apartment we shared in Rio de Janiero. (It was the episode when George, Jerry and Elaine volunteer to care for old folks. Don't ask me how I remember that.)

"I was traveling with an American guy who had that same sort of humor [of Jerry Seinfeld,]" Paul told me.

"Oh, like observational humor."

"Yeah, and he wouldn't stop, and he'd just go on and on." After a while Paul got pretty annoyed and quite bored with it. "We're a bit raunchier in Great Britain I think. I don't want subtle [observational humor], I want my humour served up on a big platter by big-breasted women."

Obviously, he hadn't heard of Howard Stern.


FOR ME IT WAS A DAY TO DO "FUCK ALL" (nothing). I might have left Bangkok already but I was waiting around for my visas to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. I vegged around, had some street pad thai, checked out the Chai Chanansongkram temple "down the block" (source of the monks waiting for cabs nearby), and took a nap in my dark closet-of-a-room with a fan but no windows. I met up with Paul that evening and we strolled the area to get some street food, which included yummy savory Thai dishes with noodles and rice. For dessert we sat in the air-conditioned comfort of Swensen's, one of the many locations in Bangkok of the San Francisco-based ice cream franchise. Suddenly a guy with in a blue t-shirt and cap stormed in the door.

"Hey, did I meet you before?" he asked the Englishman in a thick Scottish accent with a big grin. He was happy to see a familiar face since he'd been wandering solo all afternoon after touching down at Bangkok International that morning. Paul analyzed his face and was drawing a blank, mostly because the Scotsman's hair had really grown out since the last time he might have seen him.

"I know I've met you before," the Scotsman said. "You got one of those faces." Paul kept on thinking, calling out places he'd been in the past several months.

"Were you in Byron Bay [Australia]?"

"Yeah,"

"What month?"

"April."

"Oh..." As many places as the Englishman and the Scotsman mentioned, nothing seemed to match.

"He's really just a stranger," I interjected.

The stranger's name was Mark, but gradually he became a stranger no more; in the time the two tried to figure out where they knew each other from, we were getting along with wisecracks that transcended all three nationalities.

"Have you been to that bar on the corner?" Mark asked. He was referring to Gulliver's Travelers' Tavern, the big backpackers bar on Khaosan Road.

"They wouldn't let him in," Paul informed Mark.

"Why not?"

I sighed. "They think I'm Thai." The Thai bouncers there denied me admission a couple of nights before on the assumption that I was some lowly Thai guy off the street.

"Oh, forget it, I'm not going there then," Mark announced.

NOTE TO GULLIVER'S TAVERN: Hear that?! You're going down Gulliver, one Liliputian backpacker at a time!

"They have places out on the street," Paul told the newbie. We got up and strolled down Khaosan Road and ended up sitting around on plastic stools in front of an impromptu cocktail stand set up on the curb. It was perfectly legal to drink out on the streets if you were of age -- although the makeshift bar we were at proudly boasted a sign that read, "WE DO NOT CHECK FOR I.D." We bought a round each of what another sign called "VERY STRONG COCKTAILS" and sat around being merry. Mark and Paul still hadn't agreed on where they might have met in the past, but it didn't matter at that point.

"[The English and Scots aren't supposed to like each other,]" Mark told me, "but keep meeting them and every time I just keep on gettin' along with 'em."

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We sat and toasted another round amidst the wandering crowds of Khaosan Road, also drinking and being merry despite the big parade that came through sponsored by some non-profit Thai organization against smoking and drinking. Many guys put down their cigarettes and drinks and picked up their cameras when a squad of supple Thai cheerleaders danced on through with their short skirts (picture above) -- but just went back to smoking and drinking when the girls left the area.

We wandered some more -- passing and ignoring Gulliver's Tavern -- and moved onto other impromptu outdoor bars, this time at a makeshift lounge of lawn furniture and hammock chairs placed by TheBackpackersJoint.com in a promotional event of free shots of disgusting cheap spirits.

"Should we have another round?" Paul asked.

"Sure," I said.

"I keep wondering when it's going to end," Mark said, but with no qualms to oblige another round.

Three more drinks made it to our hands, and we continued the conversation. Mark still couldn't get over how rude Gulliver's Tavern was to me, although that wasn't his main concern. In crude Scottish true-life humour, he told us that during the entire flight he had an erection in his pants and intended to land in Bangkok and immediately go out for a handjob. But once he landed a wave of morality hit him since he only flew to Bangkok to meet up with his girlfriend that he hadn't seen in a long time -- "That's not my style," he said -- and just walked into the fancy Sheraton and whacked off in the men's room.

"PAM's great, isn't it?" Paul joked.

"Sure is," I said, adding PAM (a British colloquialism for masturbation) to my mental British English jargon list.


SO AN ENGLISHMAN, A SCOTSMAN AND AN AMERICAN DIDN'T WALK INTO A BAR that night, and with all the nightly outdoor activity in the streets of the backpacker district, one didn't have to. We continued the do-it-yourself party in Mark's hotel room with small shots of Paul's bottle of Glenfiddich whiskey -- "Smooth as a baby's bottom" -- and before we knew it, Mark just passed out in his bed. Paul and I were still pretty levelheaded as the Scotsman rested in peace after a long day. "Take a picture," Paul suggested.

I said nothing and just pushed the button. We snickered back to the madness outside in the streets of Khaosan Road.


AS THE LYRICS OF THE 1980s POP SONG "One Night In Bangkok" state, "the bars are temples," but sometimes the beauty of a temple is what's on the outside, not in.


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November 28, 2004

Kicking Ass

DAY 402: Muay Thai, also known as Thai Boxing, is a free-for-all martial art invented in the 15th century by the Siamese military as a way to keep the troops fit in hand-to-hand combat. Nowadays the style of fighting is seen in stadiums, movies and even in fighter video games. With punches, kicks, grabs, holds -- anything but headbutting -- it is boxing meets karate meets wrestling. When the bell rings in Muay Thai, you can literally kick your opponent's ass.

Every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, Muay Thai fighters come to Ratchadamnoeon Stadium in central Bangkok at their own will (and the suggestion of their promoters) to duke it out mono e mono. That morning I walked the twenty minutes to the box office to get a ticket for the fights, but it wouldn't open until the early evening. Thai boxing, for the meantime, would have to wait until the later part of the day.


"ARE YOU THE GUY FROM CHICAGO?" I asked a seemingly random guy sitting at a table across from Paul at the Sawasdee House lounge. With him was a young female. If they were who I thought they were, they were an American couple from Chicago that Paul had befriended in Nepal.

"Uh, yeah."

"Question for you," I said with a serious tone, placing my notebook on the table like it was a case file. "Is tomorrow Thanksgiving or it is next week?"

"Tomorrow," he answered.

"It's always the last Thursday of November," the girl added.

"I haven't seen a calendar in a while," I told them.

They were Darrough and Aerin, a young couple from Chicago on a trip through the southeast quadrant of the globe. Not surprisingly, Darrough was a former dot-comer twenty-something who also kept a travel Blog. Although they had just arrived, the Chicagoans were to waste no time in Bangkok and were slated to leave that night via train with Paul to the beaches of the south after having traveled through India for the past couple of weeks, just like Paul and me. It seemed we all had similar itineraries and went to the same places. "Did you see the movie Dhoom?" Darrough asked me.

"Yeah." Wow, this Bollywood movie was pretty big, even for foreigners in India.

"[Aerin] met one of the [bad] guys in a nightclub in Mumbai."

"Which one?"

"Not the guy that dies, not the main guy, not the guy that looks like Ben Stiller," Darrough said. "The other one."

"Oh." They too were impressed with Bollywood's version of The Fast And The Furious.

"When we got to the airport we saw the music video."

"I got the DVD," I told him.

"Yeah, I was thinking of getting it."

With that said, we were bonded and, along with Paul, we went for a walk around the backpacker district. It was their first time in Bangkok and we gave them the tour of Khaosan Road, a repetitive cycle of a 7 Eleven, a bootleg CD vendor, a food vendor, a backpacker bar, and so forth until the next 7 Eleven. Paul mentioned the sausage, bacon and cheese Extreme Pizza at The Pizza Company chain and we went to fill our stomachs before the nights ahead of us.

"So who has the better pizza [Chicago or New York]," Paul asked. Each American city was known for its distinct style of the Italian import; one might think there was a rivalry.

Aerin and I looked at each other and agreed on an answer without speaking. "They're just different," we said in unison.


RIVALRIES RESURFACED THAT NIGHT after Paul and the Chicagoans got a cab to the train station to head south and I went over to the Ratchadamnoeon Stadium for a night of violent Muay Thai fighting. There were ten bouts scheduled, mainly in the featherweight division with the average weight at 106.9 pounds. No boxer seemed to be taller than 5' 6".

What these short guys lacked in height, they made up for it in pure brawn (unlike short guys like me that make it up in witty Blog humor and pictures of poo). After a ceremonial respectful pledge to the king, the first two fighters were introduced to the ring, where they proceeded with stretching exercises.

In the red corner, weighing in at a hundred one and one half pounds... Jaosein POMKHUANNARONG! And the challenger, in the royal blue boxing trunks, all the way from the Kingdom of Thailand... Tweesaklek CHORTWEESAK!

DING!

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The traditional Muay Thai fighter music came on, a strange blend of bongo drums and a clarinet that seemed like (not to sound culturally insensitive here) it was being played by a snake charmer who had a bit too much to drink. The two fighters duked it out with punches and kicks (picture above), although most of the time they locked arms in a grab and tried to kick the other guy's side with their feet or knee him in the chest.

After four three-minute rounds (one short of the total five), Pomkhuannarong won by knockout (KO), when he punched a guy to the ropes and the guy couldn't stand straight anymore. In simpler terms, he kicked the other guy's ass.


THE SUBSEQUENT MATCHES WEREN'T AS EXCITING since there were only wins by TKOs -- after a while they got repetitive and I got "Muay Thai'd out" by the fourth bout already. Perhaps my growing disinterest was due to the fact that I didn't make it interesting by making a wager like most of the people in the stadium were doing, calling out to bookies with hand gestures I couldn't understand. I was careful not to scratch my nose for fear I was actually placing a bet with the 1000 baht.

The seventh bout was the main event, "main" probably because it involved the heaviest fighters -- Dechsak Sortammaphet and Anantaska Loogbaanyai -- at the "heavy" weight of just 126 lbs. The crowd was really into this one, shouting their heads off and placing more bets, and for good reason: not only was an intense match of punches, kicks and holds right at the get-go, there was throwing against the ropes and tackling down to the tarmac.

In the end, Sortammaphet won by TKO, making a lot of gamblers happy -- in their minds they were probably thinking the Thai equivalent of the American slang, Kick ass! as the floor bookie paid them out, for that's what fighter from the red corner just did for them.


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Giving Thanks

DAY 403: Thanksgiving Day. The American holiday that celebrates the first harvest produced by the first European settlers (who wore big funny hats so big they needed belt buckles of their own) with the help of the indigenous people (wearing big funny hats with lots of feathers). Today the holiday often skips over the part in American history when the European settlers murdered off the indigenous people almost to the point of extinction, and goes right up to the point in history when big inflated balloons parade down New York's Broadway. This is followed by the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, a gathering of family and friends over a meal, usually with a turkey, whose meat is often so sleep-inducing, most people pass out before the Sears Family Movie gets underway on TV that night.

Being abroad, Thanksgiving wasn't a big deal; the travelers from other countries don't have the holiday, and the Thai people probably had no clue as to what it was. Without the lack of grammar school plays of kids starring in funny hats or supermarkets giving away free turkeys, Thanksgiving was pretty much non-existent in Bangkok. In fact, up until the day before when I met Darrough and Aerin from Chicago, I had forgotten on which day the American holiday was on. It might have been nice to share Thanksgiving with the Chicagoans, but they took off for the shore, leaving Filipino-American me to celebrate alone without other Americans, since they were few and far between (which wasn't surprising when 90% of the American population didn't even have a passport).

Turkey isn't a food that is readily available in Bangkok so I scrapped that idea altogether. What's a classic nostalgic American meal? my italicized inner voice wondered. Oh wait! I got it!

No, you can't go there, the other voice in me said. Don't you remember last night?

Inner-Voice-In-Bold, where did you come from?

I've been busy scoping for chicks.

Oh.

Classic American Meal translated immediately to McDonald's in my mind, but I'd just seen the anti-McDonald's documentary Supersize Me for the first time in a lounge the night before and was quite determined to lay off the Golden Arches for a while.

Okay, something Thai then. You're in Thailand for goodness sake.

Whoa, look at the fun bags on that one!


THAT AFTERNOON I WENT TO CHECK OUT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, which showcased many artifacts in the history of Thailand, a history where unlike in America, the indigenous people were able to fend off the European settlers. The museum was like any other and after a while the rock statues just started blending into each other and each subsequent one was just another rock collecting dust. The statues of the hawkman guards and the battle dioramas were cool though.

As I wondered the museum I tried to think of something unique to have for Thanksgiving other than the usual green curries, pad thais, and fried rices I'd been having. And then it hit me.

Eureka!

What, do you see a nipple?

Deep fried scorpions. Paul and I had seen them two nights before, being served on a skewer by one lone street food vendor that we saw by the Swensen's ice cream parlor.

"How much are they?" I asked the woman.

"Ten baht."

"Uh, I think I'll go for ice cream [instead]."

"Even if she said one baht, you would have said let's go out for ice cream," Paul said.

As courageous I was in the gastronomical arena (guinea pig, butterfly larvae, dog, fugu, raw horsemeat), I have to admit I was quite freaked out by the scorpions. They weren't battered and deep fried (which often makes anything taste a hundred times better), they just sat there, glazed, shining in the lights like, well, poisonous bugs. Each one had its whole tail intact and pinchers, and who knew if they had be depoisoned properly?

I mustered up the courage and walked down to the Bug Vendor (who also sold mealworms and fried cockroaches) for my Thanksgiving meal.

Do it for The Blog.

When I got there the Bug Vendor was nowhere to be found.

Oh, look at that. What a pity, I thought sarcastically.

I looked all over the area. Nothing. I walked up and down Khaosan Road and the two other main strips of the backpacker district, passed the usual CD stands and fruit shake vendors. Still nothing. The Bug Vendor must have had the night off or something.

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The closest thing to long-tailed, pincher-wearing scorpions was of course shellfish. I went to a restaurant with an enticing display of their latest catch (picture above) outside and got a big crab and a king prawn. You've probably heard the debate before: how can you eat crabs and other crustaceans; they're just big bugs in the ocean! I don't have an answer to that one. It's just different, maybe because the bugs are constantly being washed in salt water before consumption. You can debate it all you want, but I love seafood and I'll take crustaceans over scorpions anyday.

Yeah!

Right-O! Happy Thanksgiving!

The prawn and crab weren't filling enough though and so I just went to McDonald's to end my Thanksgiving meal with a cheeseburger. (The effects of Supersize Me only last so long.)


THAT NIGHT I TOOK A CAB to the train station and boarded the 10 p.m. overnight express to the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. Thanksgiving Day came to an end and amongst other things I was thankful for, I really gave thanks for one thing: that the Bug Vendor wasn't around that night.


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