Mumbai

It seems appropriate that the last place that I visited this summer was Mumbai, the biggest city/mass of humanity on the planet.

Mumbai was known as Bombay until the Indian naming movement around 5 years ago led to name changes across the country (Madras became Chennai, Calcutta became Kolkata, etc.) And its "vibrant community" of 19 million people encapsulates everything I have seen in India in one swarming mob.

Over 60% of the city lives in slums that are among the worst in the world. Heading in to town you can see countless children picking through awful smelling fields of garbage, trying to find scraps of food. Mobsters control huge swathes of the city, and many are elected into local government to protect their territories. Hindus and Muslims live side-by-side, despite numerous targeted bombings and religious riots over the last 15 years. Many people live literally on the sidewalk, and carving out a space to sleep at night on the sidewalk is a huge battle.

At the same time, Mumbai is home to the dabbawalla (the lunch deliverer), 5-star fusion restaurants, and South Asia's most expensive real estate. It was also the largest British stronghold during their occupation of India and remains home to Victoria Terminus, the Gateway to India arch, and countless Victorian buildings and roundabouts.

Mumbai is also the biggest commuter city in the world, with millions of people commuting from suburbs and villages 2-3 hours each way literally hanging off the sides of Mumbai's commuter trains. So naturally I started my stay here by taking one of these famous trains. The guidebook generally advises against this, and I was the only white person at the station or on the train. But it has been important to me throughout the summer to see how "real people" live day-to-day, so I was definitely going to take the train.

After I landed, I took a rickshaw from the airport to the nearest train station, though the confused driver asked me three times to make sure that was really where I wanted to go. My stay at the station started with a 45 minute wait to buy a ticket, under a corrugated tin hangar with about 2,000 people in 6 different "lines" and 7 slowly moving electric fans. Finally, I fought my way to the front, shoved my money at the ticket counter, and got a ticket to Victoria Terminus. Then, it took me about 15 minutes to find platform 6, which was conveniently placed down a side path from platform 1 instead of being next to platform 5. Since I missed my train, I had to wait about 25 minutes for the next one. Finally, I boarded my "first class" carriage. Even the first class car was the worst train car I have ever been on, by far. A few fans sat idle on the ceiling, despite the midday heat, and people stood side by side all the way to the few who were hanging literally out the "door" (which obviously does not close) as we rattled slowly into town. After the huge line, my ticket was never checked.

South Mumbai was a pleasant surprise however. Mumbai is a long skinny peninsula, so near the south tip it's possible to walk from one side (the bay) across the peninsula to the Arabian Sea side, and there are fairly pretty walks down both sides of the shore. The whole downtown area was very enjoyable to walk around, with lots of very nice buildings (for India), relatively quaint streets, a huge cricket green/park in the middle of town, a really nice University with lots of Victorian buildings, lots of cool shops and cafes, and a really fun and enjoyable vibe. Maybe India has just grown on me, but even the pushy street vendors seemed a little bit friendly. I walked all around, took photos, had some coffee and ice cream, ate some North Indian food, and all-in-all had a great time.

After leaving Bangalore, I had no real intention of returning to India unless I was re-incarnated on the sub-continent. But, after today in Mumbai, maybe I should say "never say never".

Hyderabad

For my last weekend in India, I went to Hyderabad to visit some friends from Stanford and to see the city. Hyderabad is about 350 miles northeast of Bangalore, in Andara Pradesh state. It's known locally as "Cyberabad" and by many accounts has taken the mantle of India's Silicon Valley from Bangalore. Bangalore and Hyderabad are similar in many ways, so I will describe Hyderabad mostly in contrast to Bangalore.

Hyderabad was actually one of the nicer cities that I have been to in India. It was pretty similar to Bangalore in appearance, but a little nicer and better organized. The downtown was more substantial than Bangalore. There were many nice looking shops and a few nice looking parks. The roads were fairly well paved. Traffic was terrible, but did not seem quite as bad as Bangalore.

A quick history note. Bangalore is basically a British town. It was just a small village when the British came in the mid-1800s and used it as a hub to monitor south central India. Hyderabad on the other hand was ruled by a strong maharajah. It was one of the few regions of India to never be ruled by the British, and it only joined with the rest of the country some time after Indian independence. As a result, Hyderabad has an interesting culture and unique feel to it where Bangalore largely does not. This NYT article describes the rocks that give Hyderabad some of its character. Perhaps another sign of Hyderabad's position versus Bangalore - I have 5 Stanford classmates who are working in Hyderabad this summer while I am the only one in Bangalore now.

But, Hyderabad's heavy Stanford presence made this weekend a good opportunity to catch up with some friends from school. On Saturday, my friends Jim and Anu picked me up at the airport for a day of sightseeing. We saw the Chaminar (a 16th century monument to the ending of a plague), the Mecca Mosque (a big mosque whose arch contains soil from Mecca), and ate some great biryani (like Indian paella). We also went to the big Fort which overlooks the town, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately at the fort the South Indian monsoon brought the noise. We got completely soaked, and eventually opted to cut our fort visit short. We headed home and skipped viewing Hyderabad's famous Buddha Statue (which sits on a pedestal in the lake in the center of town).

It turned out that the rain was fortunate, as Saturday evening tragedy stuck Hyderabad. Two bombs exploded Saturday night in the city, one at the park by the Buddha Statue, and one at a local restaurant. Over 40 people were killed and dozens more were injured. 19 other bombs were found unexploded around Hyderabad Saturday night and Sunday, as security was stepped up.

Hyderabad's population is about a 50/50 Hindu/Muslim mix, which makes its Muslim population much higher than most Indian cities. It is not clear if this is why Hyderabad was targeted, if it was targeted because of its growing high-tech presence, or even who was behind the attacks. The local government immediately pointed to Pakistan or Bangladeshi terror groups, but it is not clear whether there is any evidence to justify that connection.

I heard of the bombings on Saturday evening at dinner with Jim and Anu. Jim works for Google, and one of his coworkers called him to let us know and to tell us to come back to Google's campus. We finished dinner pretty quickly and headed home. I stayed there with Jim and another GSB guy, Stephen, who was out of town until late Sunday night. Sunday, Google did not allow us to go into town, which was probably wise. Instead, we stayed around Google's campus in Hi-Tec City (Google employees here have an awesome setup incidentally, with unlimited food and drink, access to 24 hr car service, a nice gym, etc), went to the nearby Novotel hotel for a great Sunday brunch with another classmate Ohad and his wife, and crashed the Novotel pool. A bit of a surreal day, spent mostly trying to relax and settle back into a normal life.

The bombings really brought home India's terrorism problem, of which I had largely been blissfully ignorant. I now at least understand why the airports and public buildings have such extensive (if amazingly poorly implemented) security measures. Since 2004, India has had more deaths from terrorism than all of North America, South America, Europe, and Eurasia COMBINED. Over 3,674 people have died over the past 3 years and 3 months, making India the country with the 2nd most terrorist deaths (less than Iraq but more than Afghanistan).

All in all, I still have a favorable impression of Hyderabad as an Indian city. If I were ever to be forced to return to India for work, I would likely prefer Hyderabad to Bangalore. But I am sure it will forever be connected in my mind with the dark cloud of terror.

Kerala - La Casa de Madhu

When I was working in Shanghai, one of my GSB classmates, Bret, was also working there. We hung out a few times, and he introduced me to his coworker Seph. Seph goes to MIT b-school and has been in Bangalore for the past few weeks. A couple weekends ago, one of Seph's classmates, Dave, came to Bangalore for the weekend. So I met Dave, who is working in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. Dave's classmate Ashesh is from Cochin, Kerala. Ashesh emailed his cousin, Madhu, to say that Dave and I were going to the Snake Boat Races. And, for some reason, Madhu insisted on organizing our trip to Kerala, driving us around, and playing host for the weekend.

Given our not-exactly-direct connection, I was not entirely sure what to expect. But sure enough, when I got off the airplane Friday night, Madhu was there to pick me up. He was an absolutely amazing host (especially since he had no idea who I was!) He had arranged a hotel for me, so he drove us into town to check in. Then we went out to dinner and to a bar where we hung out until about midnight. Saturday morning he drove us down to the backwaters where we had lunch, met Dave, and headed to the races. After the races, he drove Dave and I back to Cochin where we went out to dinner. Sunday morning, he came and picked us up and drove us around for a full day of sightseeing. We then dropped Dave off at the train station to go home, but my flight was not until 8pm. So we went to Madhu's house, where I met his wife and children. We drove his daughter to her boarding school (about an hour away), before finally he took me to the airport.

In addition to his unbelievably amazing hospitality, Madhu is a really interesting guy. He is 42 years old and has an 11 year old daughter and a 5 year old son. His father started a seafood business which is now and run by Madhu and his brother. His brother runs the operations side, and Madhu runs sales and marketing. This involves extensive travel, particularly to Europe which is apparently a big buyer of Indian shellfish. In the past two decades, he has lived in Spain, Portugal and England, as well as all over India. He speaks Tamil, Hindi, Urdu, Malayam, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German. We listened to his Shakira cds on the way to the race and joked in Spanish about the Fiesta de los Barcos. What a great guy.

Me and Madhu at the race:

It was awesome getting the chance to spend 20+ hours talking with a knowledgeable local about anything and everything Indian. I learned a lot about Cochin and Kerala, which is a really interesting place.

Some facts and findings:

Cochin is one of the oldest port cities in India, and it was the first burial site of Vasco de Gama. The old town has Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, and English cultural and architectural influences.

The oldest church and oldest synagogue in India are both in Cochin. A slight majority of Cochin's residents today are Indian Catholics. There are also a few Indian Jewish residents as well. They live in a part of town subtly called "Jew Town," mostly on "Jew Street".

Cochin has the world's only Spice Exchange, where cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, etc are actively bought and sold on the trading floor.

Kerala is known for its seafood, and we had some amazing fish. We had several fish curries, a few different varieties of fried fish, and a great local dish that was like fried anchovies (surprisingly good bar snack).

Locals fish with these Chinese fishing nets that were supposedly introduced by Kublai Khan. The huge nets are operated by four men who raise and lower them with a rock and pulley system. They do not use bait, but the rising tides trap fish in the nets, which are lowered for about 2 hours at a time.
Cochin has the nicest airport in India. It was built by a public/private partnership, and now has international flights to five countries even though Cochin has only 1 million people.

Most men in Kerala wear dress shirts, dhotis, and flip-flops. Dhotis are basically a sheet that is wrapped around your legs like a towel, then tucked in the front. It looks a bit like a big diaper, but is supposedly quite comfortable. I hope this someday becomes acceptable business casual wear in the US.Even though Kerala is a Communist state, Cochin has a new and booming IT industry. Investors from Dubai are in the middle of constructing one of the largest IT parks in India just outside Cochin. Despite the government's best efforts to slow things down, investment is booming and real estate prices are soaring.

Finally, like everywhere in India, cricket is the most popular sport. A local pickup game.

Snake boat races

I spent Saturday at the immensely cool annual Nehru Trophy Snake Boat Races in Alappuzha, Kerala.

A little bit like a once-a-year NASCAR race, the Snake Boat race is a big annual party. Keralites from all over the state come to watch the race. And it's quite a spectacle.

Snake boats are really long, really skinny boats that people paddle like canoes. The biggest snake boats carry up to 135 people at a time (about 125 paddlers and 10 people clapping and banging drums to set the pace). Participants spend 4 to 5 months training for the race. Races are about 2 km long, with 4 boats racing at a time in each heat with the winners advancing.

I spent the weekend with my friend Dave from Sloan Business School, his roommate, and my new friend Madhu. Madhu arranged a boat for us to watch the race which was definitely the way to go. Since we were running late we had a bit of adventure and had to take a canoe to get out to our big boat just in time for the race. But we ended up making it without a problem.

People lined all along one side of the lake watching along the shore or in places in basic grandstands. Along the other side of the course, everyone who could get on a boat lined up and watched the races from the water, and generally sang and swam and had a festive time.

Here are a number of photos.

Rowing out to our main boat just in time for the start of the races

Snake boats in actionThe official umpires did nothing but occasionally wave a white flag

The crowd was extremely festive. Actually, the boat next to us tried to start a fight with the next boat and a few people started throwing 2x4s. Nearly a disaster

Sometimes coordinating 135 people doesn't work well. If people get off rhythm, the boat starts to fill with water and ends up sinking. This boat was stuck half under-water for about 15 minutes

The final race was the closest

Finally, the sun went down on a long, tough day of snake boat spectating

Weekend plans

Bangalore is not the most happening town. There are some good shops and restaurants. Lots of movie theaters. A few bars that stay open until 11:30. But that's about it.

Last weekend, I had a nice, relaxing weekend. I went out to a couple great restaurants with some MIT business-school guys I have become friends with. We played golf at the "#1 golf course in India". I made a clutch birdie to win two Kingfisher beers (don't worry though, I still had 4 or 5 three-putts). I walked around town some, saw a movie, and did some shopping. But I think I have seen what there is to see in Bangalore.

I decided yesterday that I am going to Kerala for the weekend. This region in the southwest corner of India is known for its "backwaters". This weekend they are having the annual Snake Boat Race and Festival on one of the lakes. My first question, of course, was, "Does a snake boat race involve actual snakes?" Luckily, the answer is no, much like Chinese Dragon Boats do not involve actual dragons. So I decided to go check it out.

I do not know much about the backwaters, Kerala, or snake boats, but I am sure by the end of the weekend I will.

Indian airport security

India is often thought of in the US as a great place to outsource business processes. Some of the processes here though are absolutely ridiculous. I will describe the process for boarding a plane, which I have now been through 4 times and am just starting to understand.

First, to enter the airport you have to show your ticket to a military policeman at the airport door. If you only have an e-ticket, you have to go to a little stand that is setup for this purpose outside the airport and print a copy of your itinerary from the internet. Then you can show the guy at the airport door a ticket and enter the airport.

Upon passing the guard at the door, men have to go through a metal detector (#1). Women do not. To go through this metal detector, you do not need to take your bags off, you just walk through it, set off the alarm (luggage almost always has metal), get patted down and move on.

After entering the airport, you walk through the lobby towards the check-in counters. But to get to the check-in counters, you must have all your checked baggage x-rayed. To get your bags x-rayed, you need to put a bag-tag on them. Then you walk through the metal detectors again (#2) - both men and women this time, though there is a separate Ladies Line - get patted down and go to pick up check-in baggage. Check-in bags need to get stamped on the bag-tag by security or they won't be accepted for check-in.

Then you check-in. This process is not particularly unusual, except you need to get bag-tags for carry-on bags.

After checking-in, you need to go through security to get to the gates. To do this, you need
to go through a metal detector (#3), get patted down, and get the bag-tags on the carry-on bags stamped.

Once you find your gates, then you have the check-in baggage identification. All bags that are going to be checked for the flight get piled up by the gate for that flight. Before boarding, you need to go to the pile of bags and point to your bags. Then your boarding pass gets a mark written on it and your bag gets marked.

Here is my backpack with destination Jaipur (JAI) marked in chalk.
Finally, to board the plane, there is a final wanding with a metal detector (#4), a final x-ray of the carry-on bags, and an inspection of the boarding pass markings and the bag-tag stamps on the carry-on bags. If all is successful, you are allowed onto the bus that takes you to the plane.

Why 4 (or 3 for women) metal detector screenings and numerous stamps are needed to board a plane is not clear. I guess labor is cheap and plentiful but not especially trustworthy. Still, most foreign travelers find this process more than a bit confusing.

Some travelers, however, get special exemptions from the security process. Note numbers 17 and 19 below.

Holy Cow

I have alluded to India's unique cow dynamics before, but it deserves its own post.

Before coming here, I was aware that Hindus considered the cow to be sacred and did not eat beef. That however is only a tiny portion of the story.

The biggest surprise was how cows are just allowed to wander around. Goats, chickens, and other animals move around the cities, though most are clearly marked as somebody's property. Cows, however, just seem to walk around wherever they please. They wander in the middle of the street in traffic, drink out of puddles in medians, and plop down on the sidewalk. Nobody seems to watch or take care of them. They basically forage through the trash for food, though people sometimes throw them scraps of grains. But mostly, they seem independent and have their run of whatever they want to do.

I have asked a number of people about the cows and have gotten widely varied answers. The most reasonable answer I have heard is this: There are two types of cows - milk-giving cows and non-milk-giving-cows. Milk-giving cows (even though it may not seem this way) are owned by someone who milk and feed and generally watch them. But, since it is illegal to kill cows - and cows can't be eaten - when a cow stops giving milk and becomes a non-milk-giving cow, there isn't anything to be done with them. So their owners just let them go free. These cows just wander around town completely on their own.

In terms of dietary impact, since the cow is sacred to Hindus and Muslims (~175M muslims in India) are forbidden to eat pork, essentially zero pork or beef is served in India. Even McDonald's will not sell either beef or pork so as not to offend its Hindu or Muslim customers (Don't worry, the filet-o-fish is on the menu).

Many Hindus are also vegetarians, and almost all Indian restaurants have numerous "veg" and "non-veg" options. The number of vegetarians varies dramatically by state. In some places, like Gujarat state, the number of vegetarians is estimated to be 90%. But all over the country, each time you book a train or plane ticket, you have to specify veg or non-veg.

Every restaurant posts on its sign whether it is a veg or non-veg establishment and a surprisingly (to me) high number are veg only. Our office cafeteria laughed at me when I asked if they had non-veg options. So lunch is either rice with tomato sauce and yogurt or a dosa (a pancake like thing) with potatoes and sauce. Not outstanding.

The only non-veg options that are commonly available are chicken and mutton. Mutton here, however, means goat, not lamb (or dog). But many of the veg options are quite good and I have really enjoyed Indian food overall. I have definitely had many more veg-only days in the past three weeks than I have had in the rest of my life combined - some because there were no alternatives, but a few by choice.

Still though, I am getting on Atkins as soon as I get home.

Southern India

I guess it should not have surprised me that Bangalore is entirely different from everywhere that I have been in Northern India. But somehow, it has.

I wrote in a previously post about how China should be thought of more like Europe than the US because the differences among provinces in China are of similar magnitude to the differences among European countries than that of US states. I also recently read an article discussing how Europe has been vastly over-emphasized by Western society and should be thought of as a sub-continent along the same lines as China, India, and the rest of Asia. This article suggested that there should be 5 traditional continents (Antartica, North and South America, Africa, and Australia) and a 6th continent of Eurasia. Eurasia would consist of 4 sub-continents - Europe, China, the Indian sub-continent, and everything else.

While I am not sure what the practical purpose of this argument is, I think it further reinforces the idea that Westerners need to remember the political, economic, cultural, geophysical, and linguistic diversity within India and China.

Yet still, when I got off the plane in Bangalore, I was surprised at how big of a change it was going from Northern to Southern India.

Here, there are palm trees instead of deserts, a wet climate, and especially noticable - a vague semblance of order in the streets (there are occasional traffic signals) and somewhat less visible poverty. This factor may be less of a North vs South difference and more because this is the "Silicon Valley of India" but the difference remains.

There is also much less livestock in the streets (though it is definitely still prevalent - this morning a cow came up and started to drink from a puddle inches away from my feet as I waited to catch an auto-rickshaw to take me to the office).

The food is different - much spicier here, and with different breads and less rice than the north.

People speak different languages. In the north, Hindi is spoken by about 200 milion people. Here in Karnataka state (where Bangalore is), the three most widely spoken languages are - you guessed it - Kannada, Urdu and Tegalu.

And while I go most days without seeing a white person, they are more common here. Or at least nobody has tried to take a photo with me yet here.

The Malls of Bangalore

One of the biggest malls in India is not far from my house. Not much else interesting is near my house, so I have already made two trips there.


I wrote some about the amazing economic dichotomy in China. This is the first real place that I have found it here. In fact, in northern India, there was much less dichotomy than I expected. Maybe this was just circumstantial, but during my two weeks in northern India, I was not able to find any upper class areas. Almost everyone I met was in poverty or at most in the lower middle class. There was little dichotomy - everyone was poor.

Supporting my crude impression, McKinsey divides India today into five economic classes. The lowest two buckets - the "Deprived" and the "Aspirers" make up 94% of society. The Middle Class equivalent bucket makes up only 4%, while the top 2 buckets (upper middle, and upper class) each only make up 1% of society.

But here in Bangalore, that small middle class makes its presence felt, at least a little. And the mall by my house is one example of this. The mall has nice depatment stores, medium-high end brand stores (Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Adidas, to name a few), an Apple reseller store, and a nice bookstore. No Prada or Gucci or super-premium brands, but still some pretty nice stores. There is also a Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and a food court with lots of fast Indian food and other Asian food. I had some chicken and rice from a place called Yo!China for dinner. Not great, but it sort of satisfied my first Chinese craving in a while. I also got a US$3 gelato from a pretty good ice cream place.



The mall does have a few weird aspects though:


To enter the mall, everyone has to walk through a metal detector. This metal detector is about 3 feet wide, and everyone tries to squeeze through it as fast as possible. So there are always multiple people going through it at the same time. And you do not have to take the metal detectors out of your pockets or take metal out of your bags. But the detector never, ever beeps. So there is a huge 30ft wide glass entrance to the mall, a line of people squeezing through a tiny metal detector under the watchful eye of security, and absolutely no point to any of it.


After dinner one night, I headed to walk home. But outside, it had started pouring. I asked a guy where I could get an umbrella. He pointed to a store on the second floor. I trudged up there, and asked where the umbrellas were. The clerk said that they did not have any. I asked where in the mall I could get one. He said he did not think anyone in the mall sold umbrellas, but maybe I could go to a few blocks down the street. How does a mall not sell umbrellas in a city where they have a monsoon season?


Also, for a while I got stuck behind three women trying to get on the escalator. They were stopped at the bottom of an up-moving escalator, giggling and not moving. A little confused, I tried first to get around them, couldn't, then stepped back to watch. A few other people came up and tried to get by but couldn't either. After a bit, it became clear that these women (or at least 2 of the 3) had never ridden an escalator before. They were dressed in their "sunday best" sarees for the trip to the mall. They seemed to be in their 40s or 50s. All seemed to be having the best time. Finally, two of them bit the bullet and did a small leap on to the escalator. The third did not jump. The first two shriked with joy. The third smiled, shrugged, turned, and walked up the stairs next to the escalator. All three hugged at the top.


Finally, I bought the new Harry Potter book today. It cost R975, or about US$25. For perspective, I spent R300 / night in Leh for my hotel. But the Harry Potter phenomenon is amazing. India's infrastructure and logistics capabilities are incredibly bad. There are few good roads, almost no runnning water, and the power goes out every few hours. In Jaipur, for a specific example, residents have running water for 15-20 minutes per day. Yet somehow, in every city and town of any size that I went to, you could find the new Harry Potter book. Today, I caved and bought it. Somehow, it seemed necessary.

Animal House

At the risk of over-emphasizing the zoological portion of traveling around northern India, I wanted to write avout two recent adventures with animals who I don't get to play with very often - the monkey and the camel.

First, at dusk one day in Jaipur we went to the Temple of the Sun God. The temple was set in a pretty cool, crazy canyon. Vines and trees climbed their way around the buildings, and the temples were intricately carved and painted different pastel colors. If you picture a sun god temple in India (or if you can't, imagine something from an Indiana Jones movie), this was it.

The temple had two notable inhabitants. First, the sun god worshippers. They chanted songs and banged drums. At sundown, they formed a little, raucus parade and marched from one end of the temple complex to the other to make an offering to the sungod.

Coexisting with the worshippers were thousands of monkeys. They made a similar pilgrimmage jusyt after dusk from one end of the temple to the trees at the other. They also played with each other, climbed up and all around the temples, and pretty much had their way with things. We fed them portions of banana. They would come up, look at me and the banana a bit suspiciously, then reach out and grab it with their hand before scampering off a few feet to eat it. Really cool. And amazingly, no tourists - just us, worshippers, monkeys, and about a dozen military police there for no reason.



Second, I also took a day trip to Pushkar. This tiny (pop. 15,000) desert oasis town was once a major Hindu pilgrimmage site, as pilgrims would come and bathe in the bathing ghats in the lake in the center of town. Now, the town is a terrible mess, rundown, rancid, full of little shops for skeptical tourists.

The lone highlight were the camels. There are camels everywhere in Rajasthan, and we saw this caravan crossing the highway on the way.


The process of riding camels was also fairly interesting.

First, we went to a "travel office" in town and set up a camel ride. Then we took a guy from the travel office in our car to a pretty nice house just outside of town. This was the camel owner's house, and there were 3 camels tied up in his yard. When his two employees saw us approaching, they began to saddle and prepare the camels.


We got on the camels and set off for our sand dune ride. First, we set off down the residential paved street, on camels with our two guides. Then we turned and walked a bit down a major paved road, joining traffic with other bikes and cars. Finally we turned off and went off into the dunes.

Along the way, we had the following conversation with one of the guides who spoke english.

"My boss is a very rich man. He owns 10 camels, 20 bikes, and 1 car. He also has 2 wives."
"Two wives?"
"Yes, the first one could not bear him children. So he got a second one who gave him two sons."
"Oh. I see."

Riding the camels in the dunes was fairly fun, but since it is monsoon season the dunes are fairly green. More dry fields than sandy dunes. Still fairly cool, but we rode for about 1.5 hours. About 30 minutes is plenty of camel riding for me.

end-of-day hiking adventure in Jaipur

Around 5:30 one afternoon in Jaipur, we tried to take a rickshaw up to Nagaranth fort, which overlooks the city and is supposedly good for sunsets. Instead of being taken all the way to the top though, we got taken to a path 2km below the fort on the hill and got asked to walk up the path or pay R500 extra. We chose to walk, but arranged for the rickshaw to come back and pick us up after sunset at the end of the path.

We started to walk up to the fort, and aside from the few beggars at the beginning and occasional massive reeking piles of trash, the walk up was a little sketchy but pretty nice.

Once we got up near the fort, there was only one group of guys who yelled some Hindi at us but seemed harmless. We eventually found the "entrance" by ducking through a hole in a door and found ourselves in a huge fort, almost all to ourselves. We walked for 10 minutes or so along the mountain ridge to what turned out to be a deserted spot looking over the city. It was really cool and turned out to sort of be a cafe, as a guy brought us a beer for 100 rupees. A few other people even showed up and were milling around watching the awesome sunset as well. I offered to take a picture for the group of Indian guys next to us, who then gave me a bag of super spicy potato chips. All was well.


The sunset was so cool in fact that we sort of lost track of time. And after the sun went down, it got very dark. When we realized how dark and late it had gotten, we hurriedly tried to find our way back to our path down the mountain. There were a few guys lurking around in the shadows, and just to be safe I moved some money and a credit card to a second pocket, just in case things took a bad turn.

When we got back to where we entered the fort, the door we had come through was closed up. We walked around a bit and found a different path that looked like it might go down to town, and followed it a bit. It was really dark though, and we couldn't tell where it was going. A little concerned as the night got darker and the fort felt more deserted, we decided to go back towards the "cafe" to see if we could find some people to walk down with.

We asked the first group we passed on the way if they knew how we could catch a taxi or rickshaw. They did not and said that nobody really drove up here. We thanked them and kept walking further.

Almost back to the cafe, a group of about 20 Indian men came walking towards us, singing and chatting loudly. In the middle of the group were the guys whose photo I took! We spotted them and I asked if they were walking down to the city. They said no but they could show us the way. Excited, we turned right around and joined the group.

We talked to some of the guys and it turned out they were in Jaipur on a management retreat for an Indian Conglomerate called ITC (incidentally we had a Stanford case on their agri-business, ITC e-Choupal, though these guys were from the technology business). They had a bus waiting for them outside the gate. Walking back with them, we picked up the guys we had passed before, who were also part of their group. Apparently it was just us and ITC at the fort.

When we got to the entrance where the bus was, they offered to drive us into town, and we gladly accepted. So there we were - on a bus with 25 men (no women) from all over India, totally crashing their corporate outing.

The guys were super nice, offered us water, more potato chips, and seats in the front of the bus, and we took off. In the bus, everyone kept singing. As best we could tell, people were taking turns singing songs from around the different parts of the country they were from, mixed in with some Indian pop songs. Everyone was laughing and having a great time. We felt slightly out of place.

We rode along for a good 30 minutes (the road down was much less direct than the path we walked up) and enjoyed the singing and generally laughed at the situation. Then, it became our turn to sing. Brittany and I are not the best singers in the world and the prospect of singing to a bus full of people was a bit intimidating. Despite out adamant protests, the crowd kept yelling at us and forcing us to sing something. Finally we managed to belt out two terrible versions of American Pie and California Girls but they seemed to make the crowd happy.

Earlier in the day, we had bought tickets for our first Bollywood movie at a huge movie theatre off the main street. The bus took us all the way into town and dropped us off right by the movie theatre. We thanked them and said goodbye. The whole bus waved to us as they drove off, and we waved back, then turned to head into the movies.

Rajasthan

We left Leh Tuesday morning and headed to Jaipur, a city of close to 3 million people in the state of Rajasthan. Lonely Planet describes Rajasthan as "a step back in time from Delhi". We were not certain how that was possible, and definitely were unsure of what to expect.

On the plane here, I read an article about Rajasthan. Near the end, it said that Rajasthanis regard moustaches as a sign of "manliness, virility, and macho power" and nearly every man has one. So of course I decided that I was trimming my emerging beard down to a moustache. And it's sweet.

In many ways, Jaipur is what I expected Delhi to be like. Its a pretty big city, and there is definitely poverty everywhere (beggars on every corner and people sleeping on every sidewalk), but there are also some nice areas as well. Traffic is still chaotic at times but some intersections have traffic lights and a semblance of order.

There are also a few interesting aspects of Jaipur worth noting here:

Jaipur's maharaja in the early 1800s was huge. Literally. He was 6ft 6in tall and weighed 560lbs. He also had 108 wives. This is where he lived. His pants were on display, but sadly photos were not allowed. The waist was over 4 feet.


Jaipur is known as the pink city. This is because, naturally, all the buildings in the old town are painted pink. This is not an ancient tradition however. In the 1800s the British King visited Jaipur. They painted the city pink for his visit, then decided to keep it.

As Rajasthan is largely desert, camels are big in Jaipur. So added to the traffic mix are urban camels pulling carts of vegetables and construction supplies or passengers. And in front of many buildings are hitching posts for tying horses (also used regularly) and camels. See if you can find a camel, horse, auto-rickshaw, bike-rickshaw, bicycle, scooter, pedestrian, and bus in the photo of the busy intersection with no traffic signals below.

The maharaja a few rulers previous to the fat man was a huge astronomer. He built 5 observatories around India, but the one in Jaipur is the biggest and best (#1 observatory). It also has the worlds biggest sundial (#1 sundial) in addition to numerous other astronomical and astrological instruments. Supposedly they all still work. It seemed like that was at least mostly true. We took a sweet guided tour. Also, a monkey ran around the observatory with us.

We went around to a few other forts and palaces which were fairly cool.

Below is me with the #1 largest silver object in the world, along with some guy who guards it.

Our last stop of the afternoon was for coffee. Jaipur's super trendy coffee shop is of course at a gas station. I sipped an iced mochachino as we listened to Ludicrus and US hip-hop music in comfy, modern, air-conditioned couches. Outside, 6 gas station attendants scurried around the 4 pumps serving rickshaw drivers a liter of gas at a time.

Finally, to reiterate, I have a moustache, and it's sweet.

Trekking in Northern India

After two days in Leh, it was time to do some trekking in the Himalayas. So naturally, we hired a jeep and driver and set off for a couple days of mountain exploring and hiking. Cost of a jeep for 500km, gas, tent, sleeping bag, and a driver for 2 days - $200.

Our first target was Tso Moriri (Tso means lake in some language). It was described by people in town as somewhere between a 6 and 11 hour driver. Our driver - Tashi - despite his propensity to stop for tea at every opportunity seemed to think we could make it in 6. It ended up being 7 and a half "rough and tumble" hours in the back of the jeep. But the views were awesome and the lake and mountains were absolutely amazing.

We camped for a night at the lake which was really cool. It was also at 15,100 feet. Immediately after arriving and setting up the tent I set off to see how high I could climb in the surrounding mountains. Despite my mountain goat-like characterisitics, the answer was not very far. I was out of breath after every few steps. I did make it up to the top of a peak-let (is that a word?) that was over 16,000 feet for sure. Really amazing views. Night though was freezing and super windy, and I was definitely underprepared. And after my high altitude wanderings I kept waking up breathless and with a pounding headache. But even though I first checked my watch hoping it was morning at 910pm (8pm was bedtime) I made it through the night fine and the tent did not blow away.

On the next day we headed back on the scenic route past a big salt lake - Tso Kar. These roads were somehow worse than the day before. Lots of dirt, sand, rocks, everything else. At one point, the road we were on ended and Tashi looked around, confused, then asked me for help. My sense of direction in the Himalayas is not so good either but I did manage to spot where the road started up again and we darted through some scrubbrush to get there.

One section of the road was mostly sand, and after a few close calls, we naturally ground to a halt mid-morning, stuck in a dune in the middle of nowhere. Tashi announced "Sorry, sir" and we both got out to assess the situation.

We soon settled into a nice routine. First, we dug with our hands a little path forward for each tire. Then I got in the back to push, and Tashi started the car. We would go about 3 feet, and the car would stall out. Then, we would repeat. Finally, after about 30 minutes and a dozen repetitions of our car-pushing routine, the tires caught for good and we made it back to the road.
The rest of the drive was relatively smooth. We went over the second highest motorable pass in the world at 17,500 feet. We also stopped for lunch in a Tibetan familly's tent (noodles, hard boiled eggs and tea) which was a welcome change after 2 days of clifbars, fruit, and a few cheddar cheese sandwiches. We even found Tso Kar, though it turned out to be a scenic but smelly salt lake full of muck not too different from the Great Salt Lake. Finally, we made it back to Leh before nightfall.

Noteworthy animals spotted (in addition to the standard goats, donkeys, and cows in the streets):
- 1 yak
- 5 asian wild asses (seemed like a cross between zebra and antelope)
- Many Himalayan desert birds and lizards
- Countless marmots (These critters look like big meerkats or small beavers, or furry snipe. They outnumber humans 50 to 1 in Ladakh. They live in little holes all over, and as hard as I tried, I could not catch one)

Leh, Ladakh

[more pictures to follow]
First - where is Leh, Ladakh? An excellent question, as I had not heard of it until recently. Leh is in the Ladakh area in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, all the way in the north of India. J&K state is best known for its Kashmir area which is continually disputed over and claimed by both Pakistan and India. Ladakh is in a region of J&K whose border is disputed with the Chinese, but is relatively far from the Pakistani disputed area. There is a very heavy military presence in lots of random spots and numerous patriotic signs (e.g. "We love peace but are ready for war"), but this and the excessive permits needed to travel around are the only signs of conflict in the Ladakh area.

Ladakh is a heavily Tibetan influenced area of the Indian Himalayas. Most people speak Ladakhi, which has the same written script as Tibetan but is pronounced differently. Most people look and dress Tibetan, though there are definitely Indian influences as well.

The north and west sides of the Himalayas (where I went in China) are very wet and are mostly rainforest at altitudes where plants grow. The south and east sides of the Himalayas (here) on the other hand is very dry and is mostly desert.

We spent the first day mostly acclimatizing to Leh (altitude of 13,000 ft) and exploring some of the old Tibetan monasteries in town. Day 2 we explored some of the sights in the immediate vicinity of Leh. These included a really cool fort/palace built into the mountainside and a big Tibetan monastery above the fort.

These Tibetan monasteries looked almost exactly the same as the ones I saw in Shangri-La. The one major difference was the photos of the Dalai Lama. Here, there were many pictures of the "real" Dalai Lama. In China, however, the government imposed a PRC friendly Dalai Lama in the 1970s. It is illegal in China for a monastery to show photos of the real Dalai Lama, so they all have photos of the China-appointed Lama. Though a few times, way in the back, you could see some pictures of the real Dalai Lama in China.