Trivandrum is hot but reasonable

Right, so Trivandrum, or Thiruvananthapuram, the biggest city in Kerala. It is pretty clean and reasonable. There were some things to do, so we did them:

a zoo (you can tell it's an owl because it has a face like a dosa)

The famous Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple. This recently became the richest temple in the world, after they discovered secret underground rooms full of treasure a few months ago. We non-Hindus were not allowed in.

Also, a planetarium, a couple art museums, milkshakes named after Arabian cities, and movies. We saw Shahrukh Khan in and as "Don 2". It was exactly what we expected and hoped.

This may not sound particularly exciting, but Trivandrum has been the first city that's big enough to have these sorts of things to do, but not all full of people trying to take tourists' money. Besides trying to walk down the street (difficult anywhere in India), there has been a remarkably low amount of hassle. You might say the hassle has been very less.

Here is how reasonable Trivandrum is. I wanted to get a lightweight short-sleeved shirt for all the hot weather I'll be traveling through. I went to a Khadi (woven cotton) shop and found one on the rack. The salesman helped me find the right color and size. The prices were fixed, no haggling, and the shop had a 30% sale on everything. I wore it out of the shop, immediately ripped it on a trash can, then got it fixed by a kind tailor, who wouldn't even let me pay him.

On a train, wearing my new shirt. (The guys next to me were playing with my phone.)

I'll deal with all the perils of modernization (megamalls! Brahminization of tribal religions! face-whitening commercials!) later, and just say for now that Trivandrum was pretty nice.

Let's talk about Kerala food.

In Kerala there is some food that is popular throughout all of South India, and there is some food that is unique to Kerala.

For breakfast throughout South India, you can have:

• Dosa. This might be the most popular thing. It is like a big crepe made of rice and lentil flour. One common type of dosa is "Masala Dosa". This is a dosa filled with a spicy vegetable-potato mix. Sometimes it's a flat triangle shape, and sometimes it looks like a giant burrito.
• Dosa variation #1: Rava Dosa. This is made with wheat flour. It's not quite so flat.
• Dosa variation #2: Paper Dosa. This is made with rice and lentil flour again, but it is very flat and therefore huge in diameter. If you were a small child, and very hungry, you might conceivably eat a dosa that is bigger than you.
• Dosa variation #3: Butter Dosa. Also known as "ghee roast" (which sounds awful), this is just a plain dosa with butter. Surprisingly, it doesn't taste super greasy.
• Idli. This is a steamed cake made of rice and lentil flour. The consistency is like a birthday cake but chewier. You usually get two or three of them.
• Vada. This is a fried savory doughnut made of rice and lentil flour. You usually get one or two, with something else. Idli and vada is a good choice.
• Uttapam. This is a big pancakey thing made of (surprise) rice and lentil flour. It's often mixed with vegetables or onions. Kind of reminds me of Japanese okonomiyaki, which is a great food.

All of the above are served with sambar (a spicy soup) and coconut chutney. You use your bready thing of choice to soak up the sambar and chutney.

For breakfast in Kerala, you can also have:

• Appam. This is kind of a catch-all term for foods made with plain rice flour. If you order just "appam", though, you'll usually get a sort of pancakey thing that is thin and light, maybe with a fluffy chewy center. Often served with coconut milk and vegetable stew.
• Idiappam. This is rice noodles made into a cake, and served like appam. Often served with "Tengapa", or coconut milk.

That is a lot of breakfast choices, isn't it? South Indian breakfast is the best. You can eat these things for other meals too.

For lunch, you can have a thali, also just called a "meal". You sit down, they bring you a big banana leaf, scoop a mountain of rice on it, and serve about 9 different things with it. Some of the ones I've had are:

• sambar. You will probably get a lot of sambar; it's kind of the main thing you put on your rice.
• dal (lentils)
• rasam. This is a very thin spicy tangy soupy thing. It's often served after sambar. First you have rice and sambar, then rice and rasam. It is just like that only.
• curd (yogurt), or a thin curd-based sauce
• beans
• vegetables
• a mix of chopped coconut and stuff
• Indian pickled something
• papadum (a crispy cracker)
• payasam, a sweet rice pudding like kheer

Other things you can eat for lunch or dinner:

• Kothukozhi (the zh is pronounced like an r), a chicken dish in a thick dark sauce.
• Fish masala or fish curry. I'd heard the fish was supposed to be awesome here, but it's not been particularly special. Perhaps I am spoiled after Bengal.
• Porotta, which is kind of like Paratha, but less oily and more layered and therefore strictly better.
• Biriyani, rice and things.

Most restaurants are about the same. This is a good thing; they're all great.

Maybe I should only travel goal-oriented

An interesting internet person I follow named Josh Whiton wrote a short bit about travel. He talks about his friend who loves to travel anywhere, just because it's new, while Josh likes to travel with a goal. It's a personality difference; she cares about new experiences and relationships, while he cares more about progressing towards goals.

"This doesn't mean getting in and out, all business no play, without stopping to take it all in, mix with locals, or let some current of life sweep him away. But it does mean all that happens against a backdrop of some mission, even if it changes along the way."

This resonates with me. Maybe I'm just not wired to enjoy anything just because it's new. (food is an exception.) I've thought it was a bit neurotic, like I can't "switch off" and relax, but maybe it's just a thing I need to learn to work with, and I ought to orient my travels, short and long, around certain goals.

Merry Christmas, and an update from Kerala

After Bangalore, I took my last overnight bus in India to Kochi, Kerala, to meet up with Ram and Nicole. Kerala is a skinny little state on the southwest coast of India. It feels kind of like Florida. There are some Dutch and Portuguese influences due to trade and colonization.

Dead Dutch people

Kerala food has lots of coconuts, which is great. Kerala is a pretty well-developed state, the most literate in India, the most English-speaking, and about evenly split between Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.

Christmas-decorated traffic circle

We saw some big Chinese fishing nets that work using physics:

We spent Christmas Eve at midnight at the cathedral. Then, for Christmas, we went to a Jain temple. There was a square with some pigeons. You could feed them. That was fun.

Then on Boxing Day, to finish off our Christmas experience, we also went to a synagogue, one of about three in all of India. The synagogue is in Jew Town. Which street is it on? Jew Street.

Now we're in Trivandrum, or Thiruvananthapuram if you prefer. We'll be here for about 4 days total. It seems like quite the modern city. But more about Trivandrum later.

This is my last week in India. I can't say I'm particularly glad or particularly upset. I can say that I'm having fun traveling this week, largely because Ram and Nicole are great fun to travel with.

I got it figured out, I got it figured out

"When a person says, in a foreign place, "I feel right at home here," he is making a statement about the nature of travel, not in the texture of the place he is in. I don't belittle this sort of travel, which I regard as Traveling As A Version Of Being At Home; but it is wrong to mistake it as the sort of travel that allows a person to make discoveries." - Paul Theroux

So travel may be a journey to "find a city, find myself a city to live in." I think a year ago I was bullish on this prospect; I thought there might be oases of urban prosperity like Seattle the whole world around. I pictured myself hunkering down in, I dunno, Amritsar, and trying to make some work as if I were at home. Hang out in 10 different homes over 10 months, make myself an insider in 10 different places, and thus broaden my life while keeping some depth.

Now I'm not so sure! I think there are a couple cities in India I could live in, and only with some stress. Dharamsala comes to mind first, Darjeeling second, and Bangalore third. The first two are romantic pipe dreams where I awaken to mountain vistas and Buddhist chants, churn out some code for a few hours, eat a delicious meal or three, and occasionally go for a hike. But I already get cranky when I can't work well; daily internet/power/water cuts, lack of computer parts within twelve hours' drive, and the slow Indian pace of life would drive me nuts. And let's not kid ourselves; there's not a big market for computer scientists in Dharamsala.

As another option, I could head for a tech hub like Bangalore. That'd bring a big IT job market and infrastructure, but I'd have to accept all the soul crushing of the Silicon Valley tech world times twelve. Suburban office megaplexes, huge commutes, and no walkability make Dan a dull boy.

We haven't even mentioned monsoons or cockroaches! I think India is not a place I want to live in.

Not the ultimate point of my trip (travel is about changing yourself in reaction to places, not molding places to fit you or discarding them otherwise), but nice to know.

Bangalore more

Continuing the string of people in Bangalore being awesome, I couchsurfed with an awesome Bangalorean (/Bihari) named Siddharth, who showed me even more all around the city, including this temple with a giant bull (Nandi, Shiva's ride) carved all out of one piece of rock.

you can kind of see him in the back there

Food in Bangalore is great, because they take the food from South India plus everywhere else. Siddharth kindly treated me to a Butter Dosa (or should I say, "Better Dosa", hey?), the best Biryani, and Idli/Vada, which I will eat all the time.

Drinks in Bangalore are great, because South India likes coffee. The standard is black coffee, brewed overnight into this super-concentrated coffee sludge, then diluted with milk and sugar, in a tiny shot glass. Yeah, it's a bastardization and tastes like a Starbucks concoction, but it's tasty and small. Also, Cafe Coffee Day started here, which means they have The Best CCD:

Single origin coffees! Single origin coffees from all over the world, including India! I had a french press from a plantation in Karnataka. Not life-changing, but if I paid $4 for it in Seattle, I'd be happy.

Bangalore is glitzy.

This is UB City, a shiny shopping mall. Why am I here?

Tech boom means there's lots of money here. Lots of money means shiny stores and status symbols; people wear brand name clothes and ogle cars. (Once, driving with Moin and driver Ram, we passed a Rolls Royce. Moin: "Wow, a Rolls Royce." Ram: "Yeah, that belongs to so-and-so, a friend of Vijay Mallya." Not just celebrity gossip, celebrity car gossip!) Sometimes prices creep up into American territory.

However, it also means it's a city I can understand how to spend time in. There are pubs (which close at 11:30 by law, but whatever) and coffeeshops, movie theaters and art galleries. Alternative weekly magazines. One microbrewery. There are almost even neighborhoods; most are plastered with malls, but there are hints of real new modern culture developing.

And there are a couple parks. Lalbagh botanical garden:

Not actually a lawn jockey, but a monkey wearing clothes. Is this racist?

Anyway. Bangalore is neat. I feel almost as much at home here as anywhere. Still impossibly unwalkable, and there are some cultural issues (like celebrity car gossip), but then, you have those anywhere. And besides, am I traveling in order to match up each city against some criteria and judge how good they are, or how much I'd like them, or how much I'd like to live there?

Finding home again in Bangalore

So after a train trip in which I didn't sleep, thanks to some coffee-fueled mania, I arrived in Bangalore at 7AM. Dawn must be the best time to be in Indian cities. There are so few people around, and those who are around are so friendly. (Not that I dislike people, but my ideal density is somewhat lower than that in most Indian metropolises.) There are even slightly fewer cars.

Sari shops at 7am

Coffee truck. Guys, coffee truck. How is this not everywhere in the pacific northwest? Coffee truck!

Famous parliament building blah blah

Big city park etc

Bike rental station: awesome. However, they should also work on the fact that cycling on Bangalore streets is a little suicidal. (Ironically, of course, more cycling would help.)

Speaking of dawn, I connected with Dawn Shaikh, a friend of a friend from Google. She, her husband Moin, and their daughters Aneesa and Amara have moved from Seattle to Bangalore for the year. (more on their adventures here.) It was so interesting to talk with them about life as a Googler in Google Bangalore, as American professionals in Bangalore, as IT professionals in India, as students in Indian international schools, as Americans in Bangalore, and as Americans in India. Interesting and refreshing; sometimes I feel like a crazyman here. (both among Indians and travelers.) Plus, they put me up at their place, made some great food, showed me around their town, the whole deal. Really made me feel at home.


The next day, I met up with Thierry (another Googler) and his wife Shika, who were kind enough to host me for a night also. Stuff happens late in this town, so after work (8ish) we went for dinner nearby.  Great talking with them too; in these two days, I've learned more about what it's like to live and work here than in the previous two months.

I saw my first Christmas tree at the Shaikhs' house, and my second at Google Bangalore. Lunch at the office was Christmas lunch, with a big roast bird, western salads and sides, and Christmasey desserts. (Plus Indian food for people who prefer it. Like me.) Santa Claus came around handing out little presents. So, a few dashes of Christmas: a little like home also. Even a few horrible Christmas songs! Friggin' "Last Christmas"...

And finally, and this is weird, I got a big jolt of being back in the mother ship at Google. I realized how much I miss the culture where everyone is brilliant, everyone is optimistic, everyone is techy, everyone is working on sort of the same thing, and everything runs pretty smoothly. Plus the insider feeling from talking about Google things with Googlers. So it goes! You cannot have your career and eat it too! It's a good feeling to have, though, to have left on good terms and to look forward to possibly working there again.

So thank you Google, thank you Christmasey things, but mostly thank you to the Shaikhs and Thierry and Shika. It's nice to feel a bit at home again.

Later I think I will wax philosophical on what it means to feel at home while you're traveling, but I am tired right now.