Something I wrote long ago!

I sit here in a familiar airport lounge surrounded by unfamiliar people who keep staring at me. I’m at the Shenzhen, Bao’an airport waiting to get on a flight to Chengdu. I was to go to Lhasa but due to reasons mainly political, which I won’t go into, I was denied a permit. So I’m off to Chengdu for four days and let’s see how I feel about it when I’m back.

Why am I writing this? In the hope that it’ll be published and made and I’ll get to be a travel author and gallivant all around the world? Or it’ll get made into a movie and Brad Pitt will play me. That’ll happen the day an Indian walks on the moon (see! I’m an eternal optimist!) . Unfortunately I don’t articulate my thoughts very well and most of my plot lines are weak. I’m just writing this in the hope that it’ll make for some happy memories ten years later and I’ll be able to remember the people and places and I saw and the feelings that I remember.

So I’m sitting in an airport waiting to catch my flight. Let’s talk about a little about airports shall we? The majority’s opinion seems to center on the fact that airports are filled with bored, angry and irritated people who’ve just realized that their luggage is on their way to Inner Mongolia instead of Hong Kong. I must iterate that I do not hold this opinion. I love airports. I love railway stations even more! Yep, I love the smelly, hot, shit infested railway stations even more! And I’m confident that I’ll love them to my dying day. Airports are wonderful for two reasons. The first one being that they are the best places to watch people over a prolonged period. Being a person with limited communication skills, (I’ve been told by friends that I have the social and communication skills of a two day old dead baby wall lizard) I find it most comforting to simply look at people and imagine how their lives must be. Add to that the fact that in all probability I won’t be ever see these people again, I firmly lick my chops and get ready for a massive bout of unabashed staring. And being in an airport means that I’m going somewhere! The thought of that fills me with as much excitement that it did when I was a kid. I don’t remember a single time I’ve been on a plane when I didn’t ask for a window seat and look out of the window for at least 75 percent of the journey. A friend once told me that one of the most beautiful sights in the world is looking at city lights in night when a plane takes off. I couldn’t agree more.

Let me tell you something about us Indians. Most of us haven’t traveled in an airplane and my generation has traveled mostly in second class railway compartments (read non air conditioned) perfectly comfortable even in summer forty five degree day temperatures. I remember once when I was a kid and we’d traveled from pondicherry to Delhi in peak summer. To add to that the train was 10 hours late. When we finally reached delhi station after a grueling journey of two days and two nights I threw a huge tantrum because I didn’t want to get off the train (chuk chuk gadi). I am sure that my parents wanted to put me up for adoption that day or return me to the vegetable seller they claimed to have bought me from. I’m a little older now and realize that:-

1) I was not purchased from a vegetable seller for a sum of 15 rupees
2) Noodles are not snake babies
3) There was no “good” Darshan in the closet who was ready to take my place if I did anything bad.
4) I’m NEVER EVER going to travel second class again
5) If my kid were to do what I did some fifteen years ago, I’d DEFINITELY put him/her up for adoption.

I still remember the excitement when I got to travel in an air conditioned compartment the first time. By these standards traveling in an airplane is a huge event! And even though air travel has become much cheaper with low cost airlines coming in and people having much more money to spend, I am always filled with excitement when I get on a plane. I am never going to become one of those people pretend fake boredom just to get the message across that they’ve done this so many times before that they’re now bored of it. I know that that might actually be the case with many people but I’ll try to make sure that I don’t become one of them.

I hate bus stations but we’ll get into that another day.

As the great master Yoda would put it, “Struck by wanderlust, you are”. Yes sir I am.

So let’s get back to where we started out. I’m sitting in an airport lounge. Sitting next to me is a Chinese guy with two kids aged around 5-6 years running in circles around him. There’s a couple sitting opposite me and the girl keeps staring at me. I’ve been in china before and I’ve now realized that the reason for the staring is NOT because I’m handsome ( I wish ) but because she’s seen something that looks like me probably for the first time.


If you’re a foreigner in China get ready to have people staring at you 24 * 7. …

It’s like I’m a walking talking zoo every time I’m in China. As I look up I see a shop that says “Ma Yun Fat”. That’s right. Fat. People actually walk into a shop and pay hard earned money to buy “fat”. The words “saturated fat”, “complex carbs”, “atkins” are floating around in my head. In all probability it’s a translation error but I don’t investigate further. I’m too comfortable in my seat to get up. Besides I have other things to do.

So as I sit in my chair waiting, I think about something that my friends are most likely to ask me when I get back; “How was china?” How is China? What do I feel about it? I’ve spent about seven months here spread over three trips. Not long I know, but I’ve still managed to develop a clunky opinion and theory about how the place works. “Do I like it?” I must confess like an agnostic or bisexual I’m somewhere in between. Sometimes I’m struck by how similar we are, Chinese and Indians that is. It used to be Hindi Chini bhai bhai but it’s not like that any more. I must confess that I don’t know my politics very well. But I know that most Indians consider the 62’ war as china stabbing us in the back. Was it? I’m not sure. But I’m convinced that what they did was not right. Weren’t what they were trying to do similar to what Japan did in WW II? Why did they do it? What is the version that Chinese kids study in school in history lesson? I now work in a Chinese company and I’m going to ask one of my colleagues someday.


I’d been to Rajasthan about two years ago (another chapter on that) and stayed in this nice hotel in Jaipur. Mr. Mahendra Singh, the proprietor, a nice old man asked me where I was from. When I told him Bangalore as expected he asked me whether I was in software. Why do all people assume that any one in their 20’s works in software in Bangalore? Unfortunately they are right most of the time. And he was right in my case. The story goes that you close your eyes and throw a stone in Bangalore and you either hit a software engineer or a dog. When I told him that I work for a Chinese company he said something funny. He said, “Oh! So we’re making money for the Chinese now?”

Yes, I work for a big Chinese company and I love it. I love my work, the people I work with, the fact that I get to drive my own car to work everyday, the fact that I can afford to buy an apartment of my own. Would we have all this if we didn’t make “money” for American / European / Australian / and now Chinese companies? I wish I’d told him, “No Mr. Singh, I make money for myself”. But all I managed was an uncomfortable grin. We all know that the most appropriate thing to say always occurs to us 15 minutes after we ought to have said it. There’s only one time I’ve come up with a good riposte in my life and that has been to a couple of racist white ladies I met in Beijing. (I walked up to a couple of white ladies who were standing on a street corner, looking for directions to Tiananmen Square. One lady assumed that I was trying to sell her something and kept waving me away! I explained to them that I was just looking for directions. While walking away I told them that I hoped that this was embarrassing for them as it was for me. I now wish I had added the words “racist white bitch” too!)

Uffff. Too much digression. I’ve just realized that I’ve written three pages about something that I never intended to write about in the first place.

3200 KM

My advice to anyone planning an unstructured and completely unplanned vacation around christmas and new years in India, is not to do it. Do it if you are prepared to sleep in your car or in sleazy lodges in cities that you've never heard the names of ever. Strike that; if you're mentally prepared, this is a lot of fun.

This was the plan anyhow. Drive from Bangalore to Mangalore and then drive up along the Konkan coast through Karnataka, GOA and Maharashtra. Apparently, it's one of the best road trips you can do in India and the 10 day shutdown at office threw up this opportunity that we grabbed by the *ahem* balls.

The idea was to get to Mangalooru and then work our way up the coast from there, cross the western ghats, get to Pune and then from there on to Aurangabad to see Ajanta and Ellora.

I had lost the charger to my Canon 1000D digital SLR wanted to make sure that I could use my camera on this trip. So I had a compliant cousin bring one from the US for me. He did get one, bless him, and it had twenty different attachments. None of which worked. So I had to use my phone camera which, in fact, worked incredibly well. It's liberating not having to carry around so much equipment sometimes.

I'm happy to report that the only casualties suffered during the trip were, in this order, one punctured tyre, a bruised bumper and a broken tail light. For the sake of suspense it shall only be revealed at a later time, why the tail light was broken. Suffice to say that the protagonists of the story are safe and back in Bangalore dreading Monday after the delicious freedom of the past 10 days.

24'th December: We decided to get to Mangalore via Mysore. Apparently the normal route via Hassan cannot be classified as a Road any more and I didn't want to reach Managalooru carrying the car tyres around my neck. So we got on to NICE road and set off. It's nice living close to NICE road! Very few places in Bangalore where you can get to 5'th gear within 10 minutes of leaving your house. Alas though, fate had other plans for us and as soon as we touched 110 KM/hour we realized that our car tyre was punctured. You can always turn situations like these into games though. I always keep time when I change a punctured tyre. This time, though, I wasn't able to break my record (12 minutes).

Next stop Maddur Tiffanys. Lovely coconut chutney and dosa. I avoid Kamat always. It's amazing how hype gets built around certain places; unnecessarily I might add. It was like an effing Kumbh mela the last time I was there. Anyways, we're at Kushalnagar in no time and then the nightmare of road begins. Undoubtedly the worst road I've driven on. Ever. No amount of lowering your expectation or mental preparation will help you get through this without cursing, life in general, GOD and the Karnataka chief minister (not necessarily in that order). I remember someone remarking to me that this road was as nice as a baby's buttock. Screw the baby's buttocks. At least give me Om Puri's cheeks! If I remember who that person was I'll be sure to arrange for a therapeutic session of public stoning. The icing on the cake was that I had to take a work call from the car as soon as the road started getting a little better. My strategy to deal with bad roads anyways is to make my wife drive on them (evil villain laugh). I think she's catching on though. Our driving responsibilities are always shared equally however, and no matter what nefarious schemes I think up of, she *ALWAYS* gets to drive on better roads.

I want to digress here a little bit for a rant I have. Indian highways are not meant for rich kids in cars on road trips (me included). They are meant to transport essential goods across the country. In TRUCKS. So, the next time you curse a truck driver, please think twice. They are amongst the most well behaved drivers on highways.

Anyways, the road gets considerably better after Madikeri and the drive is beautiful. I've always prided myself on being able to do nothing for considerable lengths of time, which then leads me to the conclusion that I could easily live here for a year doing manual labour on a farm. We always tend to romanticize the life of a farmer inside our head don't we? My father's just turned a farmer after 35 years as a architect. I can tell you that it's hard work. Immensely satisfying though. And the profession of the future. Undoubtedly.

We get to Mangalooru around 3PM tired and hungry. I'm blessed to be married to someone who finds it perfectly acceptable to head straight to Ideal cream parlour directly before checking into a hotel and having lunch or rather skipping lunch and having two ice creams each instead. But I think she carries it too far when she doesn't let me have a sandwich in ideal and insists that I have one more ice cream instead. So after my wife as got her "Sandy nuts" into her belly (her words not mine, mind you, and completely innocent) we head to our hotel. To the uninitiated, "Sandy nuts" is caramel and nuts sandwiched between two slabs of vanilla ice cream(heaven). Oh! and one more thing. Pabba's is NOT ideal cream parlour. I have express instructions from my wife to get this information out.

We head to Surathkal beach directly from Ideal cream parlour. It's beautiful. Completely unfettered by development. No resaurants, no hawkers selling anything and not many people. It's just the sea, one vendor selling kadle puri with coconut oil in it (delicious) and a temple overlooking everything. Oh! and also a lighthouse. It's very simple and pure without any embellishments. After the sunset we head to Raghavendra Math in Mangalooru (which my wife's uncle runs) and then head to the hotel.There's just something about checking into a hotel room after tiring day and ordering room service. It's such a hedonistic pleasure (to me at least). Even TV seems more interesting in a hotel room.

So done with Mangalore, we then set out to do what promises to be the most interesting day of driving. It is; and how! My wife grew up (until the seventh standard) in the KREC (now NITK) campus. and wants to visit. So we head out of Mangalore on a beautiful four lane road the extent of which is exactly 15 KM and has been under construction for 5 years. Reminds me of the corsicans in Asterix. We drive into KREC campus and I'm instantly jealous of my wife for having grown up here. She's actually able to identify the house she's grown up in and we actually get invited in by the current residents. Mangalore people are lovely. And I digress here again. The people in Mangalore are amongst the gentlest people you'll find on the planet. I'd recommend a one week vacation in Mangalore to anyone who has generally lost their faith in humanity. Good people do exist and seem to be concentrated in the Dakshina Kanada region in copious numbers. Anyways,
we identify the Baiganpally mango tree, the fruits of which Shama has plucked out with a very long bamboo stick apparently. Here she is standing under it.

We head out of campus and get back on NH-17 and head into the KREC guest house. There's a trick that you should use if you want to get into places that you're not supposed to be in. Simply drive in. Confidently. Also, look like you know where you are going. No one will stop you. The KREC campus has this amazing guest house by the sea and we drive around and stop by the beach again. We see a peacock here. I'm posting a photo. There's a peacock in there. Really.

We get back on NH-17 and this is when it happens. I'm driving and need to come to a complete stop almost because, there's a road roller in front of me and I cant overtake it because of oncoming traffic. That's when the guy in the OMNI comes and crashes into my rear bumper. End of road trip, I'm thinking as I get out of the car to berate him. The damage isn't so bad. I go over to him and he says to me very sweetly, "Ivaga Yentha maduva"? Aaaiiyo, you poor thing, I'm so sorry that you had to come and crash into my car. Go your way and be happy. His Mangalore charm worked on me and I had no choice but to let let him go. We get back on the road spirits not dampened. Stop at Kapu beach which is lovely again for it's lack of pretension and homo sapiens. Traffic is hard until Kundapur but miraculously eases up after that and driving is a pleasure. And then we drive past this. Really, there is a god!



That's me saying, river and sea BTW. (Shama: pretentious idiot)

Next stop, Om beach Gokarna. Note that we think that we can just drive in to Gokarna and "find" a place to stay. Famous last words. Anyhow, we get into Gokarna town and walk through the most amazing temple street to reach the sea. And then we drive to Gokarna beach and see this on the way. As I look at this, I'm thinking inside my head, it would be nice if there was a nice restaurant on the beach with BBQ and drinks. I'm then instantly irrirated with myself for thinking this and here's why. We always look at something and try and embellish it inside our head. Pile something onto it that makes it seem more comfortable. But here was raw natural beauty and I was a quite irritated at myself for not being able to enjoy it for what it was. For what it represented. So I just sat down for a while by myself and stared at the Arabian sea. And felt at peace. There's something about the sea that makes even the most loquacious of people shut up and stare at it. I don't know what it is.

There's no room in Gokarna anywhere save for a sleazy lodge out of which a "decent" looking couple saunters out. Shama's ok with it but I'm not. So we drive on to Karwar. Karwar is a lovely town with nice grid concrete roads and a beautiful beach. Ravindranath Tagore came here when he was 22, stared at the sea and wrote this: "The sea beach of Karwar is certainly a fit place in which to realize that the beauty of Nature is not a mirage of the imagination, but reflects the joy of the Infinite and thus draws us to lose ourselves in it. Where the universe is expressing itself in the magic of its laws it may not be strange if we miss its infinitude; but where the heart gets into immediate touch with immensity in the beauty of the meanest of things, is any room left for argument?". I can imagine why. We find a nice place to stay in Karwar. By nice I mean a room with a bed, notwithstanding the fact that we had to lug our own luggage up the stairs 3 floors. We find an even nicer place to eat (Hotel Amruth). It's Christmas and there's a sad looking santa in there distributing eclairs to kids out of a huge goodie bag. The fish curry is delicious though. I'm pretty much a closet vegeterian though I turn non vegeterian when I'm eating out and traveling.

26'th December: We wake up, checkout, realize the car hasn't been cleaned as instructed, clean it and head out on NH-17. We want to drive through GOA but not spend the night there. Himesh Reshamiya probably has a better odds at sleeping with Uma Thurman than we do with finding a hotel room in GOA around christmas. Armed with Google maps, we drive through the inner roads of GOA hitting random beaches. I'm drinking beer (not in the car) and Shama's driving. We want to have lunch at a nice place and Shama suggests Taj - fort aguada. The staff is considerably frostier when we tell them that we aren't guests. Shama insists that it was my imagination. But I know I'm right. Now the big discussion ensues on where to spend the night. I'm thinking Ganapati Pule, this beach near Pune and we head out after a not so delicious lunch and frosty service. So there. We drive through GOA, and get into Maharashtra and drive through the Konkan region which is beautiful. This is the Alphonso Mango region of Maharashtra. To the uninitiated again, this is the most delicious mango in the world. To anyone, who doesn't agree with me, khopche me aa ke mere se baat kar. I shall then proceed to beat you on your head with a stick. We get to Ganapati Pule, (I (the ostrich) am thinking, I've never heard of Ganapati Pule, who the f goes there anyways. We'll find a room there for sure. My thoughts are rudely interrupted when I see the 5 KM long traffic jam leading into town. We "cut our losses" and scoot. Decide to head to Ratnagiri. The next 20 KM through pitch darkness was probably the best of the 3200 KM we covered on our trip. There's a road that gets you to Ratnagiri directly from Ganapati Pule that is completely uninhabited. Driving on it, with no one else on the road with the moon light glistening on the beach is one of the most surreal experiences I've had in my life. We get to Ratnagari and realize that there's no room there either. I come to the slow realization that even if I haven't heard of a place it's fairly likely that someone else has heard of it and wants to go there and fill up all the fucking hotel rooms. It's now 9:30 PM and we have no place to sleep. We look at Google maps and realize that we have two options nearby. Karad and Kolhapur. Karad is closer to Pune (where we need to go) so we call ahead and book a room (I think my speaking in Marathi to the hotel manager helped). We grab dinner in Karad and head out towards Ratnagiri. Luckily for us, the road is nice and we get to Karad around 1 AM and head to the hotel we've booked. We get there and are very politely informed that there are no rooms available. The bloody "basterd" who booked the room for us gave it to some one else. So it's the middle of night and we still have no place to go. Now I'm thinking, we'll drive to Pune and find a place there. But we want to try our luck in Karad first. We drive into town and luckily find a place in a decent hotel. I think we'd been screwed over enough and it was someone else's turn now.

December 27'th: This was a boring drive. Drives on four lane expressways always are. We got to Pune (met some relatives), picked up my parents (who where there) and headed to Aurangabad to my father's farm.

December 29'th: On a regular day 2000 people visit Ajanta (Ajintha in marathi) daily. On the day we visited, 50000 people decided to show up. The number of buses that take you to Ajanta were not increased though (you're not allowed to drive up to the caves). After waiting in line for an hour we got into a bus and were blown away by Ajintha (I've been there before) despite the crowds. The last time I was there, we had a wonderful guide (Deshpande). He was actually an erudite MA in history who not only explained the history of the place to us but also the philosophical background of the different paintings and sculpture. After taking a look at the caves, we decided to head back and had to wait another 2 hours in line to get into a bus.

Dec 30'th: Started Aurangabad 1 PM and reach Bengalooru Dec 31'st 7 AM. Total distance covered 1100 KM.

So there you have it. My road trip. 3200 KM. 7 days. May there be many many more.