The Himalayas in 13 Photos

You can look at another another set of photos from Ladakh, but here's the deal in 13 shots:




Recovering from the altitude took a whole day. We didn't feel so amazing the next day, either.


The approach to the Leh monastery. I developed a bad attitude about halfway there.


Prayer wheels at the Hemis monastery. You turn them (clockwise direction only) to spread prayers outward.


Prayer scarves tied to door, I believe as a sort of offering.


Usually located at the top of a mountain, the Buddhist monasteries had views that sometimes rivaled the structures themselves.


We hired a driver for two days to drive us to a total of six monasteries. I can tell this photo is from the second day because the driver had moved the rose up, so that it didn't cover up the mirror anymore. The driver spoke no English, and we spoke no Ladakhi. He was an aggressive driver and kinda sullen, but maybe you have to be both on roads like these, especially the mountains paths we hit on the second day, heading west of Leh.


The temple complex at Alchi was one monastery that wasn't on a mountain. It was at the bottom of town, sloping down near the Indus. Streams of water were flowing all around the buildings, like small moats.


Likkir monastery's Buddha is huge -- maybe 40 feet tall. Somewhat unusually, it's also out in the open.


While we checked out the monasteries, our driver would hang out and smoke cigarettes. At Likkir, he went behind a barrier and sat next to one of the many streams. How do I know he did this? Because he lost the car keys, and that was where they were finally found. Oh, that was a funny 15 minutes, while we all looked around and wondered when and how we'd get back into Leh. The driver went up the hill a bit more, pressed the boy monks into service (or they volunteered) and one of the youngest found the keys. The kid monk were all very sweet, and used to posing, as you can see.


This is a shrine for a sage at the Spituk monastery.


Geddit? It was a bottle of Old Monk, and there were actual old monks in the vicinity. Oh, never mind. (The bottle most recently held vegetable oil, I think. For the many lamps.)

Ladakh Pics

Here's the first batch of our photos from the Himalayas. I'll pick out some good ones tomorrow . . . .

What's Better than the Qutb Minar?

I forgot to say yesterday that the Da Vinci Code Guide ended his talk by mentioning a new super-duper temple that (in his humble opinion) was more splendid than even the Qutb Minar. But you couldn't get there, he said, because no rickshaw driver would take you! This made it sound even more exotic, but I think he just meant that because it had just been finished last year, few people knew where it was yet. It was only when our friend Katherine sent us the NYT's coverage of the Disney-esque Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in east Delhi that we figured out what he was talking about.

Looks pretty great to me, but I don't see the point in entering it and the Qutb Minar in some monument beauty contest.

The photos are from Mahuresh, who has a nice Flickr photoset of and notes about the temple.

The Things You Learn

On our way to and from Leh, we stayed overnight in Delhi. Surprise -- it was hot, which made wanting to leave the air-conditioning of our hotels hard in both cases. But we were glad we did. On the second visit, we took the very long rickshaw drive down to the Qutb Minar and the surrounding monuments. It's an amazing structure, 24 or so stories tall, and built in the 1200s. It's surrounded by the outer walls of a mosque whose columns were taken from 27 Hindu and Jain temples and "repurposed." Lots of locals and Indian tourists were there, partly to see it all and partly to have a picnic or take a snooze in some shade inside the large grounds.





The place is large and full of interesting stuff, so we decided to get one of the tourist guides who hang out by the ticket windows waiting for lost-looking foreigners. These guides are a mixed bag, but even bad guides can be entertaining. You can be sure that every cornball legend about the monument in question will be trotted out. This guy definitely kept our attention -- he was the Da Vinci Code of tour guides.

"Facts" we found out:

• The Qutb Minar is a big old sundial. The Hindus needed it for astrological reasons. It looks crooked from one angle because it was used to tell the date of the solstice.
  
• What's that, you say? The Muslim rulers built it over many years, as all the signs and guidebooks say? Well, carbon dating shows that the foundations were built in the 4th century. So the base was Hindu. Or something.
  
• Also, there are people who say that the Taj Mahal was sort of built before the (Muslim) moghuls got their hands on it. (We didn't really get that part. What was there before?)
  
• And "Qutb" is Latin for tower. As Don pointed out later, the word is just about the most Arabic-looking word there is. Latin loves vowels way too much for a word like that. The ruler who got the work started happens to be named Qutb-ud-din Aybak. And you have to admit, the Minar looks pretty minaret-like, right? Coincidence?

As you can see, there was a certain pattern in the guide's theories. I wondered if he was just busy making jokes at the stupid Americans' expense, but he seemed caught up in it all. I'd love to go back, get another guide, and see what else I unearth. The truth is out there!

Click Click

Flying into Leh
Originally uploaded by jrambow.

As we got nearer to Leh on the hour-long flight from Delhi, everyone got excited and started reaching for their camera. In this photo, the nice Italian girl sitting next to me was moving back in her seat so that I could get a better view.

Leh Is Very High Up

Wow, that altitude adjustment is no joke. We flew into Leh very early yesterday, and spent the first five hours at the hotel doing little more than sleeping. (I also enjoyed reading the same chapter of A Suitable Boy over and over.) And also, we had to pee a lot. Is that part of the altitude adjustment too? Someone please tell us if it's the Himalayas or just nervous bladders.

Anyway, today was great -- we walked up to the dilapidated Leh Palace, climbed up four rickety ladders, managed not to fall off the hill, and got some great views of the town below. Later that day we climbed up higher, to a gompa (temple) that was closed. And then we got lost in a village and its barley fields. Good times.

Off to Leh

We'll be out of commission this week as we head up to Leh, in the Himalayas. We're flying instead of taking the road, a journey which everyone says is breathtaking (but scary). Only one of the two highways to get there is open yet -- snow's the problem. Leh itself is a desert; it gets just few inches of rain a year. And very little oxygen! The first day or two, you can do very little as you get used to the thin air. The Fodor's guide advises taking (among other things) a "thick novel." I'm taking the farcically large A Suitable Boy, so that's covered, but what I'd really love to have with me is a Playstation 2.

I won't need it for this trip, but British Airway's tips on avoiding jetlag will come in handy for the trip back to the States. If nothing else, following the super-specific advice about when to avoid the sun, when to be awake, etc., will provide lots of distractions. [Via Gridskipper]

Rendezvous with Semi and Simi

I've been loving this show, which is on MTV India. Every episode is the same: the suspiciously mannish host has on fake versions of Indian celebs while constantly trying to get them to talk about her beautiful flowers, studio, spirituality, just about anything. With any luck, the celebs fight with either each other or with Semi. It's a little bit Dame Edna, and it's entertaining even if 75% of the humor (and the Hinglish) goes over your head.

The way that Semi is constantly bringing things around to herself while never being less than nicey-nice is a set-up familiar from many U.S. chat shows (*cough* Oprah *cough*). But I didn't even realize until now that Semi is a specific parody of one person in particular: Simi Garewal is a former Bollywood actress and documentarian whose own Rendezvous show evidently airs at the same time as Semi's. Unfortunately, it's on a channel we don't get. So someone's going to have to help me out and tell me what it's like -- from the web site, it's awfully earnest and just chockablock with caring and sharing.

Defacing/Mutilating an Excellent Book

I admire the fact that someone at the library took the time to stick in a note about not writing stuff in this well-used (and, yes, excellent) book about language (click on the picture for a close-up of the note.)

I'm not sure if the note is generic or was crafted especially Mr. Howard's work. Either way, I definitely kept my pen out of my hand while reading; the handwritten comments mostly died out after the introduction.

I'll Take 20 of "I'm with Stupid"

I just came across a newish article by Rolf Potts that tackles Why We Buy Dumb Souvenirs. During a visit to Key West, he was struck by "the bizarre overabundance of T-shirts emblazoned with rude messages." I'm sure there's a much bigger supply in Florida, but even Bangalore has several shops selling touristy shirts like that, and I'm not sure why. Having "Female Body Inspector" covering your chest makes some sort of sense in Key West, but it's really hard for me to get my mind around wearing one in India, even in Goa. Or even worse, taking one back home and trying to convince the recipient that you bought it on the streets of Bangalore. (By the way, if you do need to get some goofball T-shirts while in India, look for the Tantra brand. I've gone on about them elsewhere.)

Rolf also talks about the differences in what people are looking for in Indian markets:

[In] Calcutta's New Market, an unspoken caste system exists between Indian shoppers and souvenir-seeking tourists. The travelers instinctively gravitate toward boutiques that sell carved elephant figurines and decorative jars of saffron, while the Indians shop for rubber bathmats, stainless steel pans, and digital calculators. Buying an electric blender might be more representative of day-to-day Calcutta life than buying Kashmiri silk, although, admittedly, a blender would not look as good in your living room.

But that Indian blender might look awesome in your kitchen, especially once you get that voltage thing sorted out! I agree with him that "department stores and supermarkets" are often a better source for good presents than a souvenir shop is likely to be. Let's just say that when I finally do leave town, my suitcase is going to contain lots and lots of tea. And chickpeas. And maybe one of those cool sari Barbies.

The Monsoon, for reals this time

This past weekend we took a quick trip to Kovalam. This beach town, in the state of Kerala, is at just about the southernmost point of India the Indian subcontinent. As the plane descended, the enormous numbers of coconut trees coming into view made it clear we were in a much different more tropical climate than Bangalore. Kerala is only about 9 degrees north of the equator.

We weren't the only arrivals on Friday -- the monsoon also rolled into town that night, coming from the Arabian Sea and making land a couple days earlier than predicted. This was the actual, real monsoon, not the earlier rains that we (and others) had been calling monsoons at various times in May. It rained as we took the taxi from the airport and through most of the evening, it rained again around 5:30 in the morning, and then it rained on and off on Saturday, as we walked along the boardwalk in the main, touristy part of the beach. We were really soaked by the end, but we were glad for the rain and the way it cut through a bit of humidity.

I don't think I've even been in a place where there was so much moisture in the air. The pages of books stuck together, and newspapers were extra floppy and even sounded different when they were plopped down on the table. My glasses fogged up several times while I was just walking down the street, minding my own business.

When Sunday arrived, it was sunny and nice in the morning. We spent it out on the beach in front of our hotel, the Rockholm. We got a couple hours in, splashing around in the very strong surf, until it was time for lunch at a beach restaurant. And then it was time for more rain and wind. We waited some of it out at the restaurant, the cheesily named Beatles.



For more on monsoons, and this time from someone who isn't constantly making it up as he goes along, check out India Travel Blog's Monsoon FAQ -- for background, Wikipedia is also good.

When Roaches Attack

We really have an amazing number of cockroaches in the kitchen. I've seen more than few roaches in my day, sure, but I've never been in a place with multiple species living together. They're not living in harmony, but they are living together all the same. The enormous big ones that New Yorkers quaintly call "water bugs." They're here. And midsize ones, and dainty ones that can run faster than a hand can move to smash them, and weird fat ones that I've never seen before. It's as good a reason as I've ever seen for the stainless steel containers that everyone uses here for spices, flour, lentils, rice, and just about everything.

Stuff like Raid and their little roach motels isn't really available here. There's poison powder and spray-on poison, and it all seems too hardcore to use in the kitchen. And even if we put it down, and even if we did a better job of cleaning up, I'm not sure how much good it would do. There's a small hole in the floor, the tile isn't well sealed, and the windows are open to the outside and the many apartments down the hall.

When I asked the apartment's manager about our many roachy friends, he said we could get an exterminator -- one that would use stuff that would kill "anything -- roaches, bugs, rats." The idea of using something that could kills rats as well as roaches was upsetting. I think I'll keep with the smash-with-the-Times-of-India method, at least in the short-term.

What I Spent, Part 2

• Lunch at McDonald's, 99 rupees ($2.17). The placemat had a food pyramid, a picture of the McChicken, and arrows showing which components took care of the protein, carbohydrates, etc. For "fibre" they had to point to the lettuce.
  
• Four (just four) replacement blades for our stupid Mach 3 safety razors, 332. To put this in perspective: 332 rupees would buy about 20 kg of tomatoes.
  
• Pair of shorts for newly joined gym, 399. Even more tomatoes.
  
• Six airmail stamps, letter rate, 90.
  
• For me: one-way ticket home, with a four-day stop in Bangkok; for Don: roundtrip ticket from Bangalore to Bangkok, 69317 ($1521) total. I have to leave before he does, because of visa issues.
  
• About 2.5 square m of cotton cloth, for more shorts, 148. Having shorts made is easier than actually going to the gym.
  
• Rickshaw ride home, with tip, 14.
  
• Pani puri from the cart outside the apartment, 9.

For more tedious details, see What I Spent, Part 1.

Four Top Indian Takeaways

Last night Don and I were talking over dinner about the ingredients and food ideas that will be easiest to bring back to the United States. And the talk isn't academic -- my visa expires in early July, and Don's job wraps up three weeks later. So it's time to eat those dosas while they're still hot and easily available down the block, and to get a handle on the ideas and ingredients that travel better. Here are our nominations:

• Fresh lime sodas. Everyone should be making these wherever and whenever limes are cheap. With a handheld juicer, it takes only a little longer to make one than it takes to grab a Coke from the fridge, and it's often a lot more refreshing.
  
• Little brown chickpeas, which I think are called kala chana. Before we came, we only knew about the larger yellow ones (called kabuli chana). The little brown and black ones seem much tastier, though they need some serious cooking time to be transformed into something edible. Which brings us to
  
• Pressure cookers. Just about every India household with a stove has one or two pressure cookers. Our apartment didn't come with a huge assortment of kitchen stuff, but it did come with two pressure cookers. In addition to saving energy, the intimidating devices also save a lot of time in a place where menus are so focused on lentils and other tough-to-cook ingredients. Don used to use one on occasion back in New York, and I've managed to cook with them a couple times without blowing up the kitchen. They're retro and they're scary -- what could be more fun?
  
• Gobi manchurian. Fusion at its best, this Chinese-Indian concoction of deep-fried cauliflower in a tangy, spiced-up sauce has become our default bad-for-you appetizer at so many restaurants around town. We made it at home last night, using a kit from the store. The kit wasn't necessary -- it didn't save any time -- but it did confirm that this delicious dish is also trashy -- one of the ingredients you had to add was a small packet of ketchup.

Three Old-Timey British Authors Who Are Still Superstars in India

• P. G. Wodehouse. So many collections -- some bookstores seem to have entire sets.
  
• Agatha Christie. Ditto.
  
• Enid Blyton (Kids' books. Never heard of her til I moved here)

Would you recommend this restaurant to your friends?

Meals at all but the simplest restaurants here end with a final flurry of objects: finger bowls of warm water with a small chunk of lime floating in them for dissolving all that butter chicken residue, toothpicks in a holder, and sugar-coated saunf (fennel seed) and other chewables to freshen your breath. And then the bill, of course, but not before the waiter has earnestly encouraged you to answer some questions.

Dreaded by some and loved by others (like me), questionnaires appear probably about half of the time we eat out. The top half is full of blanks that only the most naive or starved for attention would fill out completely and honestly: full name, address and phone and email of work and home, names of your wife and kids, and the birthdates of all concerned. And your anniversary.

After trying and failing to think up jokey answers for all those blanks, it's time to move on to the multiple choice questions, which take their cue from Lake Wobegon children. You can always rate the ambience, service, food and whatever as "Excellent," or "Good" -- and yes, even "Average" if you're the sort of jerk that's never satisfied. Very few questionnaires have boxes for marking "Poor" or that teacher's favorite, "Needs Improvement." On occasion I've been moved to shade in my own little "Needs Improvement" box, but it's just not the same.

If you've finished with the boxes, you can move on to the short-answer portion, which is often equally optimistic. One I got a couple days ago asked "What is your favorite thing about [this restaurant]?", but it didn't want to risk finding out what I disliked. (It was the questionnaire.)

If you find yourself filling out one of these puppies yourself, for God's sake be prepared to back up your answers. Once, after we wrote a chi-chi restaurant that a couple dishes had been slow to appear and that a drink had never come at all, the waiter followed us toward the door, told us it wasn't his fault, and seemed to be asking us to take it back. When we showed up at the same restaurant the next day, he came over for more profuse apologies. It made us glad that we hadn't had anything to actually complain about, but also thinking that the whole questionnaire thing Needs a whole bunch of Improvement before it'll be worthwhile.

Tea: Not so bad after all

I used to always hate tea. It was super-wimpy, good only as a first step toward making some super-sweet, thirst-quenching ice tea. But moving to India's given me a better appreciation for the stuff in its non-chilly form. For one thing, normal everyday supermarket tea here (e.g. Liptons or Twinings) seems a lot better than comparable tea back in the states. For another, I used to always make and drink cups that were way too weak -- now I make it the standard Indian way, brewed with lots of tea leaves and then finished off with a bunch of milk and sugar. Unfortunately, I'm still drinking it in large mugs, so that now it's 10:30 AM and I'm FEELING VERY NERVOUS AND SHAKY. Better cut down a bit.

Oh, and about "chai." Here it has none of the la-di-da baggage it has in the United States -- it's just normal, supermilky and sweet tea with some cardamom or cinnamon or other spices thrown in. It's what you buy for three rupees from a 16-year-old kid walking down the street with a couple big metal pails of it. The chai is usually so full of milk that the little cup you drink it from gets a milk skin on top if you take longer than a couple minutes to drink it.

Tea here is so common and non-classy that a fancy tea cafe and shop near our house opened in part to try to get Indians to drink their tea straight instead, with little or no additions but with lots of fuss over the tea itself. The place is nice, but I'll be sticking with lots of milk and sugar in my tea.

Parashakthi Temple Trust

Parashakthi Temple Trust
Originally uploaded by jrambow.

This is probably my favorite temple at the moment. I like the massiveness of the goddess (she's maybe a story and a half?) and also the way her feet extend out from the glass. Katherine and I came across the temple on Seppings Road, south of Francis Xavier Cathedral on St. John's Road.

This Ain't No Monsoon

All today's papers say that the Southwest Monsoon, which starts at the bottom of India and travels north through most of the year, hasn't even begun yet. The India Meteorological Department is predicting that it will reach the coast of Kerala, India's southwestmost state, on 30 May.

After months with just a couple rains, I thought that the three afternoon rain showers we had on consecutive days last week meant that monsoons were here, but it sure doesn't sound like it. Some of Don's co-workers thought so too. Either way, the monsoons are coming . . .

The Bats at the Window

Even though the first of the monsoon rains began last week (or did they? See the next post), the mosquitoes haven't yet started rising up as a mass. So we still usually leave our windows open at night. That's fine until 5:30 AM or so, when the bats come home to roost. The trees they make their home aren't so very far from the apartment windows, and because of the way their little squeaks echo against the stone, it sounds as if the bats have made it in and are about to swoop down for a vampiric feast.

Don claims that the bats eat fruit or something, but I'm not so sure.

Monsoon Rainbow

Katherine snapped this shot of a rainbow from the living room. The double rainbow was too faint to show up well. The day's rain began about 20 minutes later.

Monsoon Cooking, or My Big Fat Indian Dinner

Here's a guest post from our friend Katherine, who's hanging out with us this week:

After a week and a half of traveling throughout India and experiencing classics of northern as well as southern Indian cuisine, I thought I'd try my hand at cooking an Indian meal. On the menu: green beans in a tomato gravy, moong dal, kachumbar, rice, and kulfi (for lack of time, John and I decided to forgo attempting to make a bread). For guidance, we used Janet and Sayeed Rizvi's excellent The First-Time Cookbook (HarperCollins India, 2003) and Vimla Patil's Indian Cuisine: Dal Roti (Rupa & Co., 1985). The kitchen being equipped with only a two-burner gas range, cooking proved to be an exercise in pot and pan choreography. And the dal recipe required use of an unwieldy pressure cooker, whose sudden, frequent and violent bursts of steam made me jump every time.


While I prepared the kulfi (mea culpa: we used a store-bought package), John measured spices. It should come as no surprise that a well-stocked Indian pantry entails an enormous selection of spices. Our recipes alone required ginger-garlic paste, chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, cumin seeds, mustard seeds and coriander leaves (all pretty standard). For the base of the tomato gravy, I sautéed onions and spices in mustard oil, adding the tomatoes once the onions had browned. The gravy simmered a good 40 minutes, long enough for the tomatoes to completely disintegrate. Some parboiled green beans were added to the tomato gravy shortly before serving. With the magic of the pressure cooker, the lentils were quickly converted into dal, but the final seasonings (garlic, tomatoes, green chillies plus spices) were not added until shortly before serving. The kachumbar, a classic tomato, onion and cucumber salad, was the least time-consuming to prepare. John had warned me that cutting onions might seriously sting my eyes, but as I experienced no such side effects, apparently I encountered a relatively mild batch. As an extra precaution against possible pathogens, the cucumbers were peeled and the tomatoes were briefly boiled. The white rice was served plain, which is not to say the Basmati rice available here isn't something special. Yum.


From start to finish, the dinner took well over two hours to prepare. And that despite using shortcuts such as store-bought ground spices and ready-made kulfi mix! Granted, we might have been distracted from cooking by a massive thunderstorm outside: looking out the 6th floor apartment windows, we observed an enormous bank of purple clouds approach from the north. We're not sure, but it may or may not herald the beginning of the monsoon season. I for one was thankful to have been inside -- Don, on his way home from work, was not so fortunate. The roads in Bangalore are prone to flooding, which makes finding transportation home quite a challenge. One could theoretically walk home from the office, but even at the best of times, coping with Bangalore traffic is a daunting task. Let's just say crossing the road in India is much like playing Frogger. . . except that the cars, trucks, motorcycles, foodcart vendors, rickshaws, bicycles and the odd cow, camel, elephant or dog coming at you from all sides are all very real. But to quote a new-found Indian friend, "That's what makes India incredible!"

Mangoes in Mumbai

Today the New York Times is all over Indians' big, big love for mangoes, especially for the tasty and expensive Alphonso (it's the remains of a cheaper version pictured above). When we flew to Mumbai last month, we got a hint about mango popularity before we even left the airport. Several small boxes of Alphonsos were circulating on the airport's conveyer belt along with the luggage. I'm not sure why anyone was bringing mangoes to Mumbai, because there were loads and loads in Crawford market, as the article shows.

I'm also not sure why the reporter paid so much for his Alphonso mango, but what do I know? I bought six of them for 70 rupees, and took several with us when we moved on to Delhi. The owner of the Delhi guesthouse we were staying at took one look at them and said that they didn't look very good at all. So much for my fruit-picking skills. They tasted great to me. More research is needed.

A Run through India

Posted on 8 May, written on 30 April.
A week ago from yesterday, my sister flew into Bangalore. After giving her a little more than 24 hours to get her India legs, we flew from to Goa and its calm beaches, nearly empty hotels and Kingfishers and onion pakora on the beach. We also spent a day at the Gothic churches of Old Goa and the well-kept houses and government buildings of Panaji.

After that it was on to Mumbai for a couple days of quick visiting. We got someone to try to sell us mangoes for three times the right price, we saw the amazing Prince of Wales Museum, and also the Taj Mahal hotel. It's clearly a vibrant, amazing city, and I hope we get the chance to visit it again. Not sure if we’ll stay at the same oddball, stuck-in-the-1940s hotel, but it did have its moments. Pix of the cool vintage furnishings will be coming soon.

On Sunday, Don headed back to Bangalore for work. The day after, my sister and I flew to Delhi to meet up with our friend Katherine for a tour of the Golden Pyramid, tourist talk for a trip to Delhi, Agra (home of the Taj Mahal) and Jaipur. At this time of year it's a bit less Golden and a bit more the Hot, Dusty, Morale-Lowering Pyramid, at least from noon to 4 or so.

Out of Town

Ulsoor Lake
Originally uploaded by jrambow.

The two of us will be out of town for the next several weeks, so posts will be few and far between.

(We think the statue, near the northeast corner of Ulsoor Lake, was given a Christo-like wrap to protect it during park renovations.)

At the Beach

A few weeks back we went to the Devbagh Beach Resort, on an island in the Arabian Sea. To get here, we flew to Goa airport and then got driven two hours south to the town of Karwar. From there we took a motor boat on a five-minute trip to the island. The resort was fairly simple, with log cabins on poles, some tents, and an impressive, long beach. It wasn't roughing it, since the resort cooked all the meals, and the cabins were wired for electricity via a generator. The generator worked really well, until the last day, when the two cabins next to ours became occupied by a couple and a woman we collectively called the "VVIPs." I couldn't get anyone to tell us who they were (they weren't Bollywood stars!), but we think they were probably bureaucrats, or bureaucrat relatives (the resort is owned by the state). In any case, the preparations for their visits included the installation of air conditioners in their cabins, and when that AC was turned on in the middle of the night, our ceiling fan stopped turning. It started again after a few hours, but it made for an uneasy night.

The resort shares the island with a fishing village, and on our second day we went for a long walk to check it out.




We wanted to walk all the way around the island, but after going in one direction for 90 minutes and having a brief but intense encounter with a small herd of water buffalo, we had to turn back. We'd thought a guide had said the island was 110 acres, but I think we'd misheard, and it was just the nature preserve itself that was 110 acres.

Don had another memorable animal encounter when he went for a swim and some feral dogs started a tug of war with the shorts he'd left on the beach. Here he is simulating the concern he felt at the time.

The shorts (not shown) were recovered and were more or less unharmed.


For more Devbagh info, here's a post I did for Jaunted. And here's the Flickr photoset.

Shopping

Back in New York I hated to shop. Especially for clothes. I wore shirts until they had holes in them. I hated the crowded stores, the overattentive and insincere sales staff, the high prices, the whole hassle of devoting an entire afternoon to the retail experience. I buy everything I can online, but clothes I've never been able to get that way. I have a narrow frame and a lot of stuff doesn't fit right. Everything has to be tried on. I hated that, too.

But here in India, I have surprised myself by taking up the shopping habit and discovered that retail can bring joy as well as aggravation. There are several reasons for this. The most obvious is that my dollar goes a lot further here in Bangalore than it does in Manhattan. At the high end of the mid-range department stores here (the equivalent of say Bloomingdale's), a nice button-up shirt will run you around 800 to 1200 rupees, or $18 to $27. You can pay more than that, sure, but even at the top-of-the-range places shirts will rarely cost more than fifty bucks, which would be a very average price back home. And some things are very much cheaper. I got a pair of prescription sunglasses here for $200; the identical frames and lenses (same brand, everything) cost about $600 in New York. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that it's more fun to buy things when they cost less, but I kind of was.

Another truly wonderful and unexpected thing that I have discovered is that I have the body type of a typical Indian man. So the clothes here tend to fit more often than not. This has changed my life completely. The frustrating experience of finding items I liked the look of only to discover that they made me look like a circus tent has been lessened considerably. You'll see people with the whole range of body sizes here, of course, but on average, the men tend toward the rakelike. I offer as evidence that the smallest waist size generally available for adult men here is 26 inches. In the US you are lucky to find a 28 and more often you start with a 30. I'm a 31, and that puts me more in the middle of the range than at the lower end of it. When you tend toward the median, more stuff is available to you. Hurrah!

The last reason is probably the most important one: there's not that much else to do in Bangalore other than shopping and going to restaurants. Bars and nightclubs are forced by law to shut down by 11:30, curtailing nightlife severely; we've done the few tourist attractions the city offers by now; and it's getting awfully hot. All this makes visiting the city's many air conditioned, often uncrowded malls an inviting prospect. And I'm going to take advantage of it as long as I can. Maybe if I stock up here, I can avoid clothes shopping completely for a year or so after I get back to New York . . .

Easter Dinner

On Easter, I was feeling a little homesick and wanted to find some sort
of vaguely Eastery food. The Only Place, an old-school sort-of steakhouse,
seemed like the best choice by far -- they'd even hung up over the
street a banner advertising their Easter dishes. It included mutton
biryani (a kind of rice casserole). Not my idea of Easter, but it
definitely sounded good.

The Only Place made for good people-watching -- a lot of expat
westerners, and also many rich-seeming Indians. At the table next to
us, a family of eight or so was ordering steaks for all -- I was
impressed. Don and I both got the Easter special, which was turkey,
mashed potatoes, stuffing, and vegetables. And our own gravy boat full
of gravy. Admittedly, this special brought to mind Thanksgiving more
than Easter, but we were grateful for it.

Parker Meridien

The exit gate (and employee entrance) of the Parker Meridien. The flag is a regional one, for those speaking and identifying with the Kannada language. The hotel had suffered some minor vandalism -- broken lights out front. While we were there, Friday morning, staff was busy putting up a big Rajkumar banner on the front door. We'd walked there to try to get newspapers, but no dice. Not sure how anyone managed to buy a paper, since (almost) all the businesses were closed. More about that later.

Bangalore Central

About half of all businesses were open on Friday, and almost all had impromptu memorials, such as this one in front of the large Bangalore Central department store.

From Springfield to Bangalore

We were so excited to hear that Homer Simpson paid a visit to India on last Sunday's episode (thanks, Alex!). Mr. Burns outsourced the entire nuclear plant to Bangalore, and Homer won the toss to be the one employee to be transferred and not fired.

The Simpsons don't play here in India, but through the magic of the internets, we were able to see what our temporary town looks like when filtered through cartoon magic.

Homer got into trouble right after landing, when a cow took his iPod.




The real streets have a lot more rickshaws and and fewer people. Is that Kemp Fort across the street?




If the Taj Mahal had become part of a nuclear plant, would it cost less or more than it already does to visit? (And no, the Taj is nowhere near Bangalore.)



In the end the plant was outsourced back to Springfield, and there was still time left for a dance number.

Civic Unrest

Well, I got to leave the office early today. There were disturbances in the streets of Bangalore and the riot police were called to keep the peace. Around four o'clock the management solemnly urged the employees to leave immediately to ensure that they got home in case things took a turn for the worse.

No, it wasn't Muslim-Hindu tension, or anger at corrupt local politicians, or a protest against the recent Simpsons episode (sort of) set in Bangalore. What happened was that Raj Kumar, Kannada-language film star, had died. At age seventy-eight. Of natural causes. This is what drives people to the streets in this city?

The answer is yes. I left the office and the streets were filled with people like me, trying to get home in the suddenly heavy traffic. Fortunately, the actual distubances were centered around Raj Kumar's home and also the government assembly building where the body was to be buried, neither too close to my office. I was very lucky and got an autorickshaw right away; the driver was honest and didn't try to extort money out of me in the face of high demand, though he did disconcert me by laughing at all the folks along the road trying frantically to get rickshaws of their own. "Bandh, bandh," he said to me, gesturing at all the shops closing up their shutters on the main throughfare of MG Road. "All bandh." A bandh, loosely speaking, is a strike or a general closure of businesses. And sure enough everything was shutting down, even the main grocery store.

I made it home just fine, without witnessing any trouble other than the traffic. No one seems to have been injured. Raj Kumar was simply a vitally important person to the locals in Karnataka. And to be fair, he was not just a prolific actor (200+ films), he was also an advocate for Kannada-language cinema. And naturally his biography has a bizarre twist to it; in 2000 he was kidnapped by bandits and held hostage for 100 days in an attempt to free some Tamil activists held in jail.

Tomorrow the funeral is scheduled to take place in a large sports stadium in town. The state of Karnataka is declaring two days of mourning. The office will be closed. Stores will be closed. The TV is already given over to Raj Kumar retrospectives. So I guess I'll catch up on my reading.

UPDATE (April 13, 2006): Some serious violence occurred today. At the stadium where the memorial was taking place, some sectors of the crowd turned unruly. Six policemen were injured, and authorities fired tear gas on some groups of mourners. Near the bus station, a city bus was set on fire by rioters, and there were also reports of stones thrown and ATMs attacked. We took a walk this morning; our street was quiet as could be, nobody out except police and all the stores shut up as tight as clams. We walked to the end of Cunningham Road to the Parker Meridien hotel in hopes of getting a newspaper, and we saw that the lamps outside the hotel entrance had been smashed. So we won't be venturing out much until things calm down a little more.

through thatgayeway, evil will invade the word.

I've always had a weakness for horror movies, ever since watching the Son of Svengoolie on channel 32 in Chicago. So it was an exciting surprise to visit the Landmark store in the Forum Mall a few days ago and see their wide selection of cheap and awful horror movies.




Any guesses as to why I had to have this particular specimen?



In my heart of hearts I knew that only in an alternate universe could there be a grade-Z horror movie "including" Meatloaf and Helena Bonham Carter and, er, "Brad Fitt," but what if I'd tracked down a lost gem that IMDB had neglected to put on David "Se7en" Fincher's directorial resume?

Anyway, I haven't watched much of this movie -- too scary! But I've seen enough to say that Jared Leto et al. don't appear in a movie that sounds much classier when it's called Paura nella città dei morti viventi.


(Random note: Like most movies sold here, City of the Dead was sold in the VCD, not DVD format. You can play VCDs on computers, but I think that many people use special players to watch them -- DVD players are just too expensive. The VCD format isn't as good as DVD, but it's quite enough, especially for stuff like this.)

Hampi photos

Lotus Palace
Originally uploaded by jrambow.

We went to Hampi two weeks ago, and in between sweating a lot we saw some amazing buildings. Here's a set of our photos.

You can read a little about Hampi here.

Someone Like Me for a Member

When I was interviewing for this job, one of the managers from the UK casually asked me if I was interested in "club life." "If you are, we can fix you up at the Bangalore Club," he mentioned. "Winston Churchill was a member."
That bit about Winston Churchill is what everybody tells you about the Bangalore Club. He didn't ever settle his drink tab and it is now displayed in the bar for anybody to see. Well, not anybody. It's a club, you see, so you have to be a member, or a guest of a member, to go inside. I didn't really have any experience with this sort of place, although I knew there were clubs along those lines for rich old guys in New York, institutions like the Harmonie Club and the University Club. I'd even read a funny article in the Times about how naked swimming (men only) was the custom at some of them, and so my idea of "club life" mainly involved a mental image of fat moguls dangling and dripping after their morning dip. That, and a healthy suspicion of the whole phenomenon, nurtured by a lifetime of watching movies and reading novels where the country-club set was an easy stand-in for the forces of small-minded status consciousness.

Nonetheless, the Bangalore Club has a couple of things that are hard to come by in India. One is a swimming pool. Fancy hotels have pools, but most won't let outsiders use them, not even for a fee. The other is a fitness center, which I was very keen to have access to. It's hard to get exercise in Bangalore -- it's not a walking city, as the sidewalks are appallingly poor and the traffic makes crossing the street a genuine challenge. And a part of me was curious to see what it would be like to walk into the swankiest club in town. It's not like New York's Union League Club has been knocking on my door with an invitation, or is ever likely to.

So after a very torturous process that took many weeks, involved several passport-size photographs, and required perfect strangers to sign a form attesting that they had known me for six months (thank you, Dr. P. Rao, whoever you are), finally, finally, my very limited temporary membership card was issued and stamped by the secretary of the club. The major drawback, not revealed until I had already jumped through this multitude of hoops, was that I was not permitted to bring guests. That sucked: who wants to sit in an overstuffed leather chair and drink brandy all alone? But, however tenuously and provisionally, I was in.

So, what's "club life" really like, you ask? So far all I've taken advantage of are the gym and the pool. So it's not too different from my usual workout place, the YMHA on 14th St, which also has a gym and a pool. (Well, ok, that's disingenous. It's a lot nicer than the Y: the grounds are beautiful and there's a battery of attendants to hand you towels.) It's busy after work, like any gym, and there are limits on how long you can use the treadmill, like any gym, and there are often too many kids in the pool, like any pool. You'd notice a few differences, too: for example, the stuffed leopard in the club house. I haven't ventured into the bar yet to see that tab of Churchill's, but I'll get around to it sooner or later. Before my membership is up, anyway.

Photo from Bangalore Club's web site

A Typical Day

Usually we get up around 7:30 or so. If we're lucky, one of us remembers to throw the switch on the "geyser," a hot water tank that's mounted on the bathroom wall. It takes about 20 minutes for the electricity to warm up the water.

The shower is freaky -- it's just a shower head, shower curtain, faucets, and a drain in the floor. When properly operated, it gets the whole bathroom floor wet. And if the drain gets clogged with towel lint or hair, you can flood the bedroom too. That's kind of exciting, but we only did that once.

Showers done and bathroom floor wetted, we get dressed and head out to the local Barista, which is just down the block. This is part of a newish chain of coffee shops that are in the Starbucks model. I can take or leave Starbucks back in the states, but I'm really into Barista, the people that work there and its Texan Potato sandwiches (spicy fried potato slices inside toasted bread) and Mr. Fudgee brownies. The chicken tikka sandwich is also a winner (this was off the menu for a while because of bird flu fears, but it's back). And as Don points out, the fact that we don't have to cross any of the very busy Bangalore streets to get our coffee is also a big point in its favor.

When I get home, I usually throw a load of laundry in our Whirlpool Whitemagic washer with Agitronic Soak. You can only do small loads, and they take about 75 minutes to get done, so it's good to get one going when you think of it. (Besides, you never know when a power cut might take the washer out of commission for an hour or two.) The washer is cold-water only, but the hokey "agitronicness" (basically soaking and agitating over and over for half an hour) really gets our whites white! When a load's finally finished, it's time to put the laundry on a drying rack. No dryer -- they're very rare here.

While I'm doing that, I'm usually getting some posts done for the travel blog Jaunted. That takes however long it takes, but I'm usually done by early afternoon. Then it's time for running errands, writing, bumming around, watching weird Indian TV, coming up with article pitches, etc.
Around then I usually also crack open the First-Time Cookbook. Unlike most of the other cookbooks I've tried to use here, it takes the time to name and investigate, say, the many many different kinds of lentils and beans that can be turned into dal. It was written for India's yuppies, who presumably have little time and don't know about cooking Indian, just eating it (I might have gotten that last phrase from the cover copy . . . ). Anyway, the book's very clear and good -- I'll put up a couple recipes later.