Don't think too hard about "filling time"; or, I'm going to Hampi.

Honestly. When in your life do you have the problem of a few extra days with no obligations other than "get from resort town A to resort town B and keep yourself relatively entertained in the meantime"?

I'm going to Jaipur tomorrow night, arriving on the morning of December 13. On Dec 24 I meet Ram and Nicole in Cochin. Here is a map of how far that is. In a car, it's 2385 km; that's 1482 miles. Googling tells me that that is the same as the distance between Phoenix and Missouri, or between Kansas City and Calexico, California.

(ponder for a moment the weirdness of googling "2385 km" and getting "the distance between Kansas City, MO and Calexico, CA." It's like Jeopardy.)

Ages ago, I booked a ticket on the Jaipur-Bangalore express train on Dec 14. This still seems to be approximately the best route, and trains get booked far in advance (especially now with every single tourist going to Kerala), so this still seems to be my best chance to actually get south.

But of course I don't have to take it all the way to Bangalore, and indeed, I think I won't. See, if I get off 7 hours before Bangalore, in Guntakal, I can catch a bus for a few hours to Hampi. Hampi looks like a magical city of ruins that I had ignored because I didn't think I'd be bumming around in Karnataka state. I'll be there about Dec. 16-18.

And then I'll head on down to Bangalore for Dec 19-23, to experience big city life in India one more time. I'm excited about this too, after pretty good times in Kolkata. Big cities in India can be awful, but they also can offer opportunities to meet up with Couchsurfers and other actual people who aren't trying to sell you stuff. Plus, Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India, the "pub city" of India, and I guess they grow coffee nearby, so it's basically the Seattle of India, right? Right.

So. Time filled. Let's see some ruins and stuff.

My camel had a name (it was Papaya)

but that didn't stop us from singing this around a campfire.

One popular thing to do in Jaisalmer is to ride a camel in the desert. It is kinda the main thing to do in Jaisalmer. Everyone and his brother will take you in the desert on camels. I booked a trip through Ganesh Travels, which is listed in the Lonely Planet, but for good reason: they deliver honest quality tours for a good price and no BS. Seriously, at $13/day, going on a camel safari is cheaper than not going on a camel safari. Highly recommended.

Good things that were good:

Scrubby desert

Dunes! Did a couple of awesome dives and flips. Am still pulling sand out of my ears.

The other folks on my tour! This is me, Rob, and Joe, posing for our album cover. (we'd be named the Ambassadors of Morocco, but Joe's old band already has that name.) There were 8 people in our group, and I'm sorry to have missed the others in photos. Great mix of people from UK, France, Holland, Germany, and China. It's really the people who make the trip, and our group was no exception.

Also not pictured: our guides, Mr. Khan and Selim. They were wonderful too. Managing 8 tourists and 8 camels cannot be an easy task, especially when you're also setting up camp, cooking three meals, arranging mattresses and blankets, and building fires. And the language barrier was low enough that we could actually communicate sometimes as humans, not just customers.

Sunsets. Nights. All these things in nature, where I am not used to being. To quote the travel agent, Sebastian, at Ganesh Travels: "And you can sleep under the stars. Ohh, so beautiful!"

The camels! Riding was actually not bad, when we were walking. A little bouncy but you get used to it. Kind of calming, really. When we trotted a little bit, that's when it got tough. I don't know how camel riders ride fast for long distances. I really don't know how camel riders have children.

's about it for now. One of the better experiences I've had here in India. Otherwise I'm in Jaisalmer, which is pretty much a tourist town, with pretty heavy tourist-hustle, but it features this incredible fort.

Inside the fort, if you can get away from touts and find a nice place to watch the sunset, it's actually peaceful!

Practical tips about Jaisalmer: I stayed in the Artist Hotel, which was clean enough, had some plumbing issues, but friendly, and a ways north of the fort, for Rs300. Inside the fort, look for Kuku's Coffeeshop (near Hari Om Jewelers) and meet Deepu, as he is a friendly guy who can help you do whatever you need without getting conned. The Desert Eves Restaurant inside the fort is a nice place to sit for a while and use wi-fi on a rooftop.

Oh, one more thing: maybe not Iran

When I've been telling people about my route, they always comment on Bhutan (enthusiastically) and Iran (somewhat less so).

My reasons, it is now clear to me, were twofold: about 20% to get the word out that Iranians are normal reasonable good people too, and about 80% to have the satisfaction of "proving", to a few relatives, that Iranians are normal reasonable good people too. So I've got about 20% of a good reason to go. (also to see amazing buildings history food and all the other stuff; so 1.2 good reasons to go.)

Unfortunately, there are a number of good reasons for me not to go to Iran, and note that "terrorists will kill you" is not one of them.

• It'd cost me about $1200, not counting airfare, for the group tour I picked (you have to go with a group or a guide)
• It's a group tour
• It's a sightseeing tour
• A lot of shenanigans like "you can't bring laptops in the country" and "there are no ATMs" make planning a bit difficult
• Recent embassy stormings are less than awesome for tourists I guess
• And here is the new one: I heard that, apparently, going to Iran puts you directly on the US Terrorist Watch List? And your family too? For the record, our government is nuts. But while there's honor in organized civil disobedience, there's little honor in helping yourself get screwed by the system.

Thoughts? (I mean, besides my family; their thoughts I already know :)

And hello, and goodbye again

I'm going out to the desert. For a camel safari, tomorrow. Someone remind me, never talk to a travel agent when I'm high on caffeine. But seriously, though, should be cool. They seem like good guides, there's a good mix of folks going, and in a town full of camel safari operators, they advertise as "probably the best in town." I'm sold. See you in 3 days!

"A guest is like God"

or so the saying goes. My friends Hemant and Gaurav (each, independently) told me of this Indian saying, and indeed, they believe it. Again, their mom and they put me up for a couple days, attending to my every need, and then some. Plus, we saw some stuff around Delhi, had some whiskey, saw a dirty picture, watched some cricket, you know. Ate delicious food, thanks to Mrs. Mohan. Skyped with my family, after some hilarious MacGyvering the internet on both ends. (Many thanks to the Kumars for helping this happen.)

(okay, okay. it's a Hindi film called "Dirty Picture," about an actress in the 80's. Mildly scandalous by Bollywood standards, not scandalous by Hollywood standards. Mildly confusing by English-speaking standards. For some reason I thought Hindi films might sometimes have subtitles?)

I met up with Satti, a co-worker of my mother's who works in Noida. We had some delicious kebabs of all kinds.
KEBAB INTERLUDE
Someday I will understand what "kebab" means, but that day is not today. Growing up, "kebab" was only used in "shish kebab", and it meant we put pieces of chicken and peppers on a skewer and grilled them. In Europe, "kebab" meant "doner kebab", a sandwich with slices of roasted meat. Beloved by us inexperienced foreigners, especially after some beers; I may or may not have memorably sang "K is for Kebab" in a Cookie Monster voice at one point. Today, at the Kebab Factory (a fine place, despite the fact that if your restaurant is named "factory", you're doing it wrong), we were served a very nicely soft textured patty of spiced meat, a chicken leg, a fried bit of fish, a piece of boneless chicken, and a sausage link. And they were all "kebab"?!
END KEBAB INTERLUDE
Anyway, he generously took me to lunch and then to see his office, despite the fact that he is surely a much busier man than I!

And then I bid a sad goodbye to Delhi. Rather, I bid a sad goodbye to the people I know in Delhi. I'm not all too choked up about the city itself; it must be the least walkable place on the planet, and the suburbs are worse. (and yes, walkability is the only thing that matters; discuss.) I got to the train station an hour early, so I decided to walk back to the famous Chandni Chowk, and I'll agree with William Dalrymple's assessment that it's become a rather crummy place.

But right, the people I know in Delhi. I am quite bowled over by their kindness. I can only hope to host them in the US someday and return the favor; a distant possibility perhaps, but the offer is indeed open!

Safety Nets

Back on the net! Here come all the blogs, starting with a thought I've been having:


I've got a lot of safety nets, right? Safety net 1 is my savings: if something bad happens, I can throw money at it until it goes away. Safety net 2 is also monetary, I guess: my job. Or, if I'm unemployed, like now, it's my ability to get a job. Tangled with that is safety net 3: people I know professionally who might know someone who knows someone who could help me get a job. I guess you could say my "network". Failing all that, there's safety net 4: my skills and resume. I could get a job writing software at any old place. And if all these fail, I have a lot of family and friends, who could probably help me out for a time if I really needed it.

So I was reading "Revolution 2020" by Chetan Bhagat. I guess he's a popular paperback author. The writing wasn't great, but as a window to parts of India, it was fascinating. He describes the life of Gopal, an average guy from Varanasi whose family has some problems. Gopal's mother died years ago, his father inherited some land but his uncle tried to legally wrangle it away, and his father is even having health problems too. So Gopal's father puts his hope in Gopal becoming an engineer.

There are two national exams for engineering schools: the AIEEE (to get into NIT, the National Institute of Technology), and IIT-JEE (to get into the world-famous India Institute of Technology). IIT is more prestigious, but even NIT is tough. After the one-shot exam, all >1 million aspiring engineering students are ranked, and if you get in the top 30k, you can get into NIT. So 3% "pass".

Gopal's rank is about 50k. So his father uses the last of his savings to send Gopal to a coaching school in Kota, where Gopal spends the next year studying, so he can take the one-shot exams again. This is like year-long full-time SAT classes, but more pressure. You have to get yourself into the top 3% of students; 97% of you are guaranteed to fail. Furthermore, there are varying levels of quality and prestige among the coaching schools, so the schools have entrance exams. There are even coaching classes for those.

Why go through all this? Because he has no safety nets. If he doesn't pass these exams, which 97% of students must fail, he's got no chance! At one point, he jokes about running through his options: exile to the mountains or a hard life of manual labor. (spoiler alert: he finds option 3, a life of shady business, and later has a moral crisis because of it. I said it's not a great book.)

Now, the safety nets come with a slight cost, while traveling: to quote Pulp, when I'm "lying in bed at night, watching roaches climb the walls, I can call my daddy and he can stop it all", and as a result, I can't really relate to most people. I can't understand why (for example) it'd be reasonable to keep trudging through a job you dislike, because I haven't felt the icy stomach flops from falling through all the safety nets. But nor do I desire to; having the essentials taken care of allows you to focus on the "better things" in life, whatever your definition of "better things" is.

And so I guess there is the crux of it. If you were looking for a Thanksgiving post, here it is. (it's not late, it's just, time zones, y'know?) I'm thankful for my safety nets. And traveling through India, a land of few safety nets, has made me more so.

I remember reading that it's impossible to like Kolkata; you must love it or hate it

Moment-to-moment, that's true. I've had very few moments of liking Kolkata. I've had a lot of love moments and a lot of hate moments.

The love moments:
- meeting up with the Kolkata Couchsurfing community. Even though I couldn't actually find any available hosts, I got a chance to talk with a bunch of cool people. A lot of young folks and a lot of men, although a few women and older people too. One, Avik, even invited me and another CSer to dinner (which was a great time, and delicious); another CSer, Ratnish, invited a bunch of us to his house for some board games, including Taboo. Now, Taboo is great, but kudos to the Indians, Germans, Austrians, and others there who had English as a second language! That would be tough. And I got to play chess with another, Prithvi. Good folks all.

- meeting a couple of Australian folks who run a travel business and just bought a house in north Kolkata. They've lived here for 16 years, but they go back to Australia for the summer and monsoon season. (Summer sounds awful: over 100 degrees and humid, constantly.) Then they come back to find mold on their walls. They have running water for a few hours a day; they store it in a tank that effectively gives them running water for the rest of the day. But this tank has a hose which they have to remove at night, because otherwise the rat will chew through it. Sometimes stores are closed (like today!) because of strikes. The most recent one is because of supermarkets: the government's making some deals to allow Wal-mart, Carrefour, etc to set up shops in India, and there is a complicated issue. (which I would love to talk about sometime, incidentally.)
Their business is Kali Travel Home at traveleastindia.com or traveleastindia at gmail. Highly recommended! They do walking tours and coordinate cooking classes with locals, as well as a bunch of other stuff on their website.

- seeing everything in one day, courtesy of a motorcycle tour by a guy named Sukant.

Park street cemetery: neat overgrown/crumbling atmosphere.

The Great Banyan! It is all one tree!

Flower market. Spices too.

"Now we are going to the Garbage Mountain! ... There is the start of it." "Where? There? No..." "Yes! It is five kilometers long!" This was actually fascinating. Fifty years' worth of garbage. I don't know if you can see any people in that photo for scale, but it is immense. Meanwhile, everything gets sorted out: glass bottles, plastic bags, scraps of foil, colored plastic, etc. As we rode past it, we saw all these little piles of one type of thing which would get recycled. I imagine every American city has multiple Garbage Mountains, but we never see them, and we recycle a lot less. What can we learn from Kolkata? Well, I don't know: all this recycling requires an army of people climbing on top of that mountain, picking through all the junk.

(again, more photos if you click the "photos" link above.)
If that's a thing you'd like to do, check out Tour de Sunderbans.

- Kolkata is nicely navigable and walkable, especially the central bits.

- Bengali food is so good all the time. Kathi rolls for snacks, delicious fish curries of pomfret and ilish for meals, shondesh and mishti doi for dessert. Anyone want to open up a Bengali/Nepali restaurant with me?

The hate moments:
- beggars. Well, now I know, ignore them all, just as you ignore all touts. You are even allowed to do such absurd things as hard-core shunning them, yelling "no" or "chalo!" ("go away!"), ditching them, or pretending not to speak English.

- on that note, Kolkata is terrifying! Not because I ever felt unsafe, really, but because you're surrounded by countless examples of "there but for the grace of God..." I guess a few roaches here and there is a fact of life. I can't imagine running a house, like those Australian folks.

- the tourism zone (including the internet cafes) is more soul-crushing than most. I trust a Kolkata tourist-businessman less than I can throw him.

- I am tired! My travel gumption is fading, and I cannot seem to recharge. Being in a big city is nice, but it's also tough in its own way. I was planning to spend next week in Delhi, but I think instead I will spend a few days and then go to Rajasthan. (in retrospect, I should have planned to stay a couple weeks, because meeting the same people a few times is nice.)

So yes, love and hate. If you take the average, though, I'd say overall I like Kolkata.