on the itenerary for the next decade of wandering

Owned by a local Navajo family, the View is the only hotel in the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. It was designed with meticulous care to blend into and capitalize on the splendor of the landscape,

check the slideshow here ....

gangotri

a pal went to the source of the ganges...brought back some pics..the glacier is fast receding and so is his hairline...but whatevers there looks kinda good....see the album here

batli more

been busy drinking...was my birthday..then diwali, the festival of lights and then just happened to stop by an irish pub at midnight on sunday, when better sense should have prevailed. Been playing catch up ever since. Suffice to say that I roamed the area from Boston or Bastun to Batlimore or Bawlmer during these three days, and my chariots were winged, rubbertyred, steelwheeled and laced. I ate pizza and drank beer, ate a full indian wedding meal and drank whiskey, met a new born baby and drank whiskey, slept on the floor of an apartment without any furniture whatsoever and drank whiskey, played tennis, drank beer in the airport and in the irish pub and still had enough time left over to sing devotional hymns and the latest chartbusting hindi songs.... one wonders where all that time comes from. All this in one weekend and there was lots of time left over. Even got through 400 pages of a book called 1491 which is awesome and I shall be reviewing here shortly, if I can digest it. Right now its gotten inside my head and I suddenly feel like an expert in pre-columbus history of the Americas, but lets see what happens once i finish reading it.

Found a nice description of Baltimore, where i just spent 3 idyllic months wallowing in americana. This was in Salon.com, heres an excerpt -


To understand Baltimore, it's helpful to get a grip on its geography. Baltimore is one of those odd American cities that lies in no county; instead, it dangles in the water, surrounded by a ragged blob of land. It has been said that Baltimore County looks like a monkey wrench hanging from the Mason-Dixon Line, which makes Baltimore City the bolt -- one that has been tightened a hair too much. Incapable of expanding, the city has been losing population and political clout since the 1960s, when white residents began to flee for the suburbs. Fittingly, all quintessentially Baltimore stories have a "Wizard of Oz" quality: Characters dream of escaping to someplace new, only to yearn for home. Or, as we say in Bawlmer: Hooooooohme.

read the full article here, after watching the mandatory advert :)

The America Diaries

but baby you should see new york....its the most amazing place....theres so much energy there...everyone is busy and working hard...and the streets are full...and lights and music and noises...and people in cafes on the street...and small markets besides the streets...and all kinds of dresses....and all kinds of people...all types of languages being spoken.....its wonderful....

From the first bartender in an underground pub in penn station, to the cleaning woman at mcdonalds, to the concierge of the building, to the artist in the streets, to the cab driver from brazil, to the singer in the classic rock bar, to the poets in the campuses, to the bankers on wall streeet, to the kids skateboarding on concrete, to the pretty women puking in the darkened doorways, to the old man striding across the park puffing a pipe, to the guys reading about afghanistan while sipping a latte, to the girls doing their homework in cafes, to the dancers on the streets and the homeless covered in styrofoam.....this is my salute to you. New York, I had heard a lot about it, and I am happy to report that it rocks!!!!!

The America Diaries - 1

It doesnt get better than this. This is the absolute top of the heap of the american experience...the football cheerleaders.

5 things to do in noida

That was kind of fun, writing down 5 things to do in Delhi. It brought back many a happy memory. Memories of rushing towards a government wine shop with one eye on the clock, trying to burrow your way through the mass of humanity thronging the counter and getting your arms around a bunch of bottles before the "theka" or liquor store, closed at 9 pm. Now I think I shall refine it a bit...and go for 5 things to do in Noida. Its been a while since I lived in Noida, and maybe some of the places I remember do not exist anymore or have fallen into disrepute, superceded by newer attractions. Still, for what its worth, I give you - 5 things to do in Noida

1. Have an iced tea with a cheese tomato sandwich. Or if its winter, then a warm cup of almond kahwah. The lal market, just besides sector 30 and 36 is a great place to hang out, and not just for the young army daughters. Theres a little Tea Shoppe, just next to the Lal Market. Run by a gentleman who retired after running a tea estate, its a great place to enjoy a cuppa. Sit down on the cane chairs, warm your hands on the little coal fires and have long conversations with friends while sipping endless varieties of tea. A must-do if you are in noida.

2. Score some pot. Noida is liberally sprinkled with good old fashioned pot sellers. All you need to do is ask. You dont need to smoke it, but just for the fun of scoring it, its a must do activity. You would be taken into bylanes, into slums, into wierd clearings in slums where frightening statues of the mother goddess look over a bunch of hash devotees, to crowded marketplaces where the stuff is sold in sealed plastic bags so professional looking that you almost expect to see a bar code on them. If in case you shrink from this activity, have no fear, just walk around to the naya bans market in sector 15, ask for the government hemp shop and provided that you have a ten rupee note, walk away with a government approved and distributed bag of indian pot leaves that you might be able to finish in a month, if you smoked really fast.

3. Grab a camera and a motorcycle and go out at midnight to the noida expressway. Driving along it in the middle of the night as it snakes its way over the Yamuna river is a real fun thing to do. Stopping at various points to take photographs and communicate with the river goddess is highly recommended. Round this off with a drive down towards Kalindi, when you get in from the expressway, head towards Mayur Vihar and take a left in front of the aiims apartments, on a small nondescript road. This little road snakes its way along the Kalindi reservoir and is a beautiful drive. A great expanse of water stretches out as far as the eye can see. There are various birds and stuff to entertain you. The moon shines down on a lonely fisherman rowing his boat across it and casting its net. Dont stop too long unless you know your way around, for the police have a habit of being rather inquisitive and butting in without being introduced. A good story is that of being a staff photographer for a newspaper and showing them your camera. They are a little wary of fleecing journalists and so usually will let you alone.

4. Food at Laxmi's. Down at Brahmaputra market in sector 29 theres a little udipi joint called Laxmi which has the best coconut chutney ever known to man. The food is cheap, hot, fresh and mouthwateringly delicious. Try the rasam as a start, then the days special and then keep eating as long as you can. Make sure to round it off with a filter coffee. The surrounding areas are great for bird watching. Also if you walk down a bit you come to ganga shopping complex which is like the underbelly of noida. All night cybercafes, bars, restaurants, a lovely parantha shop, liquor stores and sundry offices make up this shopping complex. Everything is cheap, but watch out for the drunks.

5. Sector 18. Still the coolest place to hang out. Sit outside on the corner of Barista and watch the human parade. Best to have hot drinks and keep watching till you feel a sense of contentment. Good place to meet new people too. Then toddle down to the nearby theka, buy a beer and drink it in a shady corner keeping an eye out for cops. Have some food off the streets and top it off with an icecream from mcdonalds. For further entertainment, theres always elevate.

5 things to do in Delhi

Got a little homesick..and when erimentha ( that sounds like a cough lozenge )tagged me.. Now I gotta tag 5 people too who will do something similar..thats the hard part..let me do the easy part first.

.I started to think about Delhi and what were the things I loved to do there.. so here goes the 5 point action programme for Delhi.

1. Get drunk in the afternoon in Rodeos ( its amazingly cheap in happy hour )in CP, then have a milkshake at Keventers, then take a walk around the inner circle to get your brain cleared out..then walk towards Paharganj, watch a bar dance, talk to the drug pushers, chat up the hippie tourist types, get drunk again and then either rent a room and crash there ( again amazingly cheap ) or catch a bus or train out of there.

2. Pack up all your computer junk and raid your neighbours,relatives for other computer junk that they no longer use ( or wont notice that its gone ). Go down to Nehru place and sell all the stuff. After that buy some wierd CD's, new gizmos, second hand books and a working class meal. Then head to the bar in the Park Royale and get drunk or check the disc out. After all, theres a great feeling of spending money thats earned from waste.

3. Get drunk along with a friend, get a motorbike, start out at 12 midnight and do a full circle of the ring road. Stop on the way at AIIMS for snacks, Moolchand for parathas, ISBT for cigarettes and in west delhi for some booze. Repeat till tired or arrested.

4. Go to Shakuntalam in Pragati maidan, for a cheap movie show. Then toddle down to Kamani Auditorium and catch a musical recital or a play and end it with a walk down Janpath shopping for clothes.

5. Go to Gurgaon and keep trying to get into either Buzz, Mojo, Buddha Lounge, Saffire, Odyssey, Peppers etc. Try doing this on Saturday night without being accompanied by a girl. If nothing works, get into Last Chance in Sahara Mall and keep drinking beer and dancing like crazy till the sun comes out.


cheeerssshhhh

travelling on

My first visit to the US of A. Left friday night from Delhi. It was a close thing... we were stuck in traffic on the way to the airport and it was looking pretty rocky. I had to get out twice to direct traffic and try and get our car through the insane clutter of tractors, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles, autorickshaws, cars and jeeps. Reached the airport at 9:15 pm and the flight was to leave at 10:45..but luckily everything went smoothly from then on...had to stand in queues and answer a lot of questions and get searched a few times..but made it on to the flight in time and settled in by the window. It was a 15 hour direct flight and the service was pretty good ( continental airlines). Our plane flew over the cities of samarkand and bukhara and the skies there were cloudless and the cities glowed like jewels in the night. Would love to visit there sometime...looked really pretty.

Slept off intermittently, woke up again when we were flying over norway and then when we passed over the glaciers of Greenland before finally landing in Newark NJ. From the air newark and the area around was just one huge sheet of yellow light...stretching as far as the eye could see. When the roads came more clearly into view, it looked very unlike india. The carlights were evenly spaced and were moving at a constant speed in a straight line...there were no clusters of cars or zigzag patterns....everything was relaxed and in order.

Stood in a few more queues and then had breakfast with a guy from work. Then got onto a plane to Baltimore and got settled in a motel here. The cars are nicer, everyone wears shorts, there are no people on the streets, traffic never stops and all you have to do to eat is to buy food and warm it.

I miss home already :( but am looking forward to work on monday. It seems like a great place to get work done. Theres efficiency in the air :)

a train journey - rajneesh

Read a nice thing written by OSho ( Bhagwan Rajneesh , Acharyaji or whatever...this is just a nice description...)..you can read the page here..

Because I had slept, and there was now no need -- and it was night, a full-moon night -- I said to myself, "Enjoy yourself, go third class."

I had an air-conditioned-class ticket. When the ticket collector looked at my air-conditioned-class ticket and then looked at me, he thought I was crazy. I said, "You are right" He handed the ticket back to me."

He said, "This is strange. What are you doing here? Your seat is reserved and it is empty."

I said, "Let it be empty. If I get fed up with this experience I will come along."

He said, "What experience?"

I said, "You don't know what is happening here. If you want, you can stay with me just for one station."

He stayed and he said, "Really, it is an experience."

What was happening was at the station, the lights of the compartment would come on, and as we left the station behind the lights would go out. And ninety people in that small space... and who is pulling whose leg? It was such a joy! I enjoyed it like nothing else in my life.

A Hindu monk was sitting by my side. I was hitting his head, and he would tell me, "Osho, somebody is hitting me."

I said, "In the dark it is very difficult. Remain patient, and if you want to hit, hit anybody! There is no question of who is hitting who."

A woman who was sitting in an upper berth... somebody pulled her leg and she fell down. And she said, "This is strange -- someone is doing this to a woman. Who is this nasty fellow?"

In the darkness nobody could be identified as nasty, and as the next station appeared, everybody was sitting perfectly correctly. And in the station the lights would come on. If it had been the other way round things would have been simpler. If the compartment lights had gone out at the station, there would have been no problem because the station lights were there.

The train was going really crazy, and people were shouting in the darkness, "Somebody is pulling on my leg." And, "Who is this fellow?" And, "I will try to find out, but it will be difficult." "Please don't pull my leg!" -- but no answer came. In the third class it is certainly the real India you meet. In the air-conditioned, it is not part of India.

travel memories

2 August, 1998 Delhi. I’m waiting to collect my salary. Elsewhere Arshad was doing the same and we were to meet on the Brahmaputra Express. I just made it and soon spotted an outsized grin coming towards me. "Arshad Miya" I yelled and we got settled in. Two young girls, their mother and three tough guys made up our cabin.

At night a hand slithered down over the girl sleeping in the lower bunk. She shriveled into a corner. The train clanged over the moonlit swollen Son River and I saw the scene being repeated with her sister. I walked down and found a railway constable, offered him a cigarette. We had to come back to my cubicle for matches ;)

In the morning they (not the guys) shared breakfast with us and we got off at Alipurduar with a mother’s blessing warm on our foreheads. The trip was on.

n sum more

 
 
 
  

some more pics

 
 
 
  

first leg of trip - pics

 
 
 
  

Vacationing and vacating

well i was away...

i was on vacation...

after a year of being a good boy and working my way through corpoland... the old soul was becoming corpulent and needed indulgence....so i moaned on the phone to the big boss..who first thought i was going to quit...so desperate did my pleas sound....then he negotiated me down from 4 weeks to two..and i was handed my ticket to 2 weeks of living like a man on this land...to feel the breeze on my face..the sun in my eyes...the sand in my toes and the chance to live away from my box of concrete, my box of metal and rubber which runs on petrol..and my my box in a box with a box on a desk which is where i see what i type appear.

landed in chennai on friday night....drove all night along the east cost road and reached pondycherry just as dawn was breaking. Found a lovely machan house..or hut on stilts...by the beach and settled in...and the next few days passed by like three years... detoxing...dry cleaning...emptying out.... Moved on and travelled overnight and reached bangalore in the morning.... stayed a few days with my sister and played with my lil niece who at the age of 10 months can scroll down to her favourite ringtone on most cellphones. Then onwards to guwahati in the eastern corner of india... it had been a dream of mine to do this once....10 days in the land of the brahmaputra, where tribes with names like Khasi, Garo, Bodo, Naga live...and where the mountains are carpeted in green and shrouded in wispy white veils, where humans live with respect for nature and life flourishes beautifully.

walked along the mountain trails...bathed in streams, rivulets, lakes, waterfalls and hotel shower cubicles, ate all sorts of things, smoked peace pipes with strangers sitting alone tending to their little meadows on their mountains and it was fun.. saw the bangladesh border ..saw the army camps...saw the tribal dances...saw a society where women dominate, property is inherited from mother to daughter and after marriage the groom goes to live with in his wifes house, where women are not looked at like commodities, where there are no strangers and people help each other and where all of these tribes are engaged in a dance to the death, fighting among each other, trying to jostle into positions of power and influence and theres a new movement everyday....all in all one incredible vibrant mad and merry part of india....but sadly messed up because of guns per capita ratio.

took a few photographs...will post soon.

bhutan - the land of the blue mountains

Its a funny place, Bhutan. There is a timelessness about the land. Hundreds of years ago, this place would still have looked like it does today. The Bhutanese were either a very paranoid race or just plain fond of mountaintops. There is a certain pattern to the big monasteries that one sees there. One simple design priniciple seems to be that you pick a small mountain with big mountains around it. Then you build a fat stone building on the top of the small mountain and settle down cosily knowing that any unexpected guests would be seen miles away and would be rather tired after climbing up and down the mountainside. They valued their privacy and their solitude those monks and they built their Dzongs to ensure that. After making a building like this, i guess you dont need to ask people to call before dropping in.



I used to call my trips to Bhutan, " a walk in the clouds ". Probably because the movie of the same name was rather nicely done and very romantic and my initial trips to bhutan were inspired by a rather pretty girl who lived there. I didnt get anywhere with her, but Bhutan got to me. I had grown up close to the nepal border, and had always loved the himalayas, but Bhutan turned out to be special. The clouds trailing wispily across the mountain roads, the unspoilt green mountain forests, the cheerful faces, and the hundreds of archery and dart games going on all over the country...all of this was somehow special. Red chillis drying on roofs, steaming hot bowls of noodles at small eating places by the road, neatly dressed naughty children on their way to school..these contrast vividly with the solemn stillness of the old buildings...and create an effect like no other.

Gurgaon - Jaggery Village

Gurgaonhas a lot of potential. And by and large it offers a lot of advantages in comparison with other business hubs. In north india, I think this is the only relatively clean and decongested business hub with easy access to international airports, good hotels and well constructed and maintained office infrastructure. As a thumb rule, 1 square foot of office space added in a city requires 7 sq ft of residential space and in that respect Gurgaon seems to have a good enough plan. The available office and residential space is meeting the current growth rates and there seem to be no bottlenecks. In terms of connectivity and roads, it is good enough by Indian standards, and I dont think we should be comparing it to Singapore yet. The other factor that I found good in Gurgaon as compared to Noida is the work culture. It might be surprising to some, but my experience has been rather positive, the roadside mechanics, the rickshaw pullers, the small eating places and sundry small scale businesses are mostly hardworking and honest and do not attempt to rip you off or overcharge. There also seems to be less criminalisation and goonda'ism, though I admit, UP is not a good benchmark to compare. Also most areas are supplied with good drinking water by HUDA from its water treatment plant and the drains are mostly not stinking and uncovered like in Noida. There are wide open spaces, greenery and less open garbage. Electricity is a problem but nowhere as bad as in Noida, but worse than in Delhi/Mumbai/Bangalore. The streets feel safer too than Noida.



I had occassion to visit the nearby villages and I found them to be relatively prosperous and vibrant. The road and electricity network too was not bad at all. This is where I feel that Gurgaon might actually derive strength and grow. Unlike Bangalore or Hyderabad with starving farmers in the countryside around it, there is development spread out into the countryside too and the living standards are not bad. The people native to this area too are healthy and hardworking with a lot of pride and self respect. I think the only problem that can trip this growth up is either a water crisis ( since local sources of water are rare) or a power grab by vested interests and a breakdown in law and order. Electric supply too seems to have reached a critical point and it is a very crucial time now, as either it will get worse and go the Noida way or improve towards Delhi conditions.

I hope the government realises that most of this growth is from carpet-baggers, the floating capital and working class, which can anytime pack its bags and move on to the next new destination.

auroville .. may you stay forever young

Auroville is a little town on the bay of bengal. I first reached there in july 1997. I was wandering around the south of india during the summer break from college and was putting up in REC Trichy ( thank you again arnab ). 

The rain in delhi had been driving me crazy and i just got up and left with a vague memory from school geography lessons, that tamil nadu gets the monsoon in winter. Thats the place to go, i thought and after a joyous celebration in trichy, i was wondering where to go next. 

Then i remembered Shankar, who while teaching us architecture, also dropped little nuggets of information. Shankar had said, that for an architecture student, there are some places that one must visit, auroville, chandigarh, ahmedabad and mumbai. I inquired around, and a few trichy'ites got sober enough for a brief while to tell me how to get there. So with a copy of Amitav Ghosh's Shadowlines, a small canvas bag with a towel n swimming trunks, a pair of sunglasses and few currency notes I took the bus and landed up there. And what I saw opened my eyes. 

After a long long time, I felt the rush of excitement and stimulation of my mind. It had been so long since i was in a place that broke existing conventions, that I had almost given up my own non-conformist attitude and no longer believed there could be an alternative model to the consumerist colonial capitalist paradigm. 

Any story of my life has to start with Auroville...coz auroville gave me back hope. It removed the dark edges that were starting to encroach on my personality. I rejoiced as a child in the sunshine and in the friendship of the people there. I basked in the glorious cloudy days and splashed around merrily in the warm sea. I rode a bicycle through mud tracks and sang songs around a fire with strangers. I asked a pretty girl out to coffee and fell in love with her on a starry night on the beach. 

The defensiveness and edginess that a metropolis breeds in you, disappeared to be replaced by the sheer joy of being alive. To people who ask me, what auroville is...i offer the same reply as do the old aurovillians.... its whatever you want it to be...its a small town that is trying to live peacefully and happily...and you can only understand it if you come down there...and stay there for a few days...do not bring too much money...do not come expecting to drink beer on the beach...do not come to ogle naked white flesh ...do not come to see the sights...come if you want time with yourself...and come if you want just to be alive in a nice place....come if you are tired of anonymity.... It sounds idealistic...and my memories probably make it more so. 

Since then I have gone back countless of times....snatching a few days here and there ...just to immerse myself in the warm celebration of the human spirit that is auroville. I never saw the girl i loved again...the magic sometimes seemed faded....sometimes somethings felt racist, sometimes it felt commercialized into a yogic version of goa...but I kept going back. And yes...it wasnt auroville that had changed...it was me... it just reflected what was inside me.... 

Auroville gave me some of the best friends I made. People who trusted me and opened up like we had known each other our whole lives. I hope someday to go back there and live among the whispering palms once again. 

I hope there still would be chocolate pancakes there....there still would be pretty girls fired up with a passion in life....there would be rootless children who weep with joy at the love they found in auroville...there would be the old man doing pranayam at sunrise on the beach...there would be the happy tamil guy with his two blonde girlfriends feeding him coconuts...there would be stoned dogs hanging around the bedroom window of a italian honeymooning couple who smoked pot like it was food...and always there would be a hot meal in the solar kitchen....an old guitar lying in a corner of the guest house... and thunderstorms lashing a thatched hut under which we would sleep.