Getting to Know Indian Wildlife

This weekend we went off to Coorg, a region southwest of Bangalore, to stay on a coffee and cardamon plantation. We got a car and driver to pick us up around 5 am and set out. The driver made great time -- it took about 5 hours. The roads around Coorg were noticeably better than then were the first (and only other) time we went there, in March 2006. Still some bumpy and twisty parts, but much easier going.

The plantation, Honey Valley Estate, is at the top of very rough, unpaved roads. Our car had to stay at the bottom and we were picked up by a jeep for the last few miles. As soon as we got into our room and had a little tea, we headed out for a hike down a slope nearby. There were lots of bugs we'd never seen:







That last one moved like an inchworm, standing on one end and then bending over and pulling itself forward. In fact, it seemed to wave in the air and then head in our direction. The first time we saw it, it seemed really cute.

We walked down the path a little. And then Don felt a prick and a little movement on his leg. There was something black, slightly pulsing, on his shin. With great disgust he ripped the thing off and threw it away. Those things weren't inchworms, they were leeches. Time for a retreat.

After making our way back up the path to a rockier part, we de-leeched our legs and feet. I had three or so on me, with one actually attached through my socks. Only one of them had been there long enough to get really big. I pulled him off and squished him on a rock, happy to see him dead but not so glad to see the four inches of blood that spurted out on the ground. Hey, I was using that!

During the retreat, there may have been disgust. And swears. Maybe even whimpers.

When we got back to our room, Don had to take off a couple more leech friends, and I had to track down one, waiting near the door, that had hitched a ride on my jeans but hadn't been able to suck yet. And here's Don's foot. He'd wiped off the blood but it was still beading up. The chemicals leeches inject into the wounds they make stop the blood from coagulating, but the bites also have things that increase blood flow and spread the chemicals farther into the bloodstream. It's a drug cocktail that guaranteed that the Band-Aids I slapped on my big bite kept getting soaked through.



Soon we'd calmed down enough to wish that we'd just spent the weekend drinking too many pots of tea and going to the Forum Mall to buy shirts with loud patterns. And wishing we had some post-leech-trauma medication. And deciding that if we had to spend the rest of the weekend on the porch reading large books and sending psychic waves of hate to leeches everywhere, then that was A-OK.

Important note: our Outlook Traveller guidebook does say to avoid the area from July-August, "when the rainforest receives heavy showers and teems with leeches." But we didn't really read that bit until we were speeding down the highway. And to us, leeches are something that live in stagnant, dirty water, not something waiting for you on winding paths. Oops! Somehow the many many nature documentaries shown here extolling India's natural wonders never got around to Coorg's evident richness in leeches.

Tune in tomorrow, to learn leech wisdom from a plucky Australian and a host of others.

Cosies Will Never Die

And yesterday's BBC News had more about the Agatha Christie comics I was mumbling about yesterday.

Gecko to the Rescue

In addition to our normal levels of cockroaches, ants have decided to join us in the apartment, especially in the kitchen and the bathroom. If I leave out an empty mug with sugar on the bottom, and I usually do, I can be sure that it will be filled with tiny tiny ants in a few hours.

And that's why we're so pleased that a gecko has moved into the kitchen cupboards. The little beasts have been an obsession for a while, and our own couldn't have come at a better time. Here's hoping he eats to bust a gut every day.

Action Without Vision Is a Nightmare

Another day, another press release:

Read between the characters of Queen of Crime-Agatha Christie as it comes in a new avatar! Euro Books, India’s largest Children Publishing House presents the entire collection of Agatha Christie in graphic novels format.

They say that Vision without action is a daydream and action without vision is a nightmare, now read these action-packed crime stories in an attractive captivating format! Also, Euro Books is the pioneer to come up with crime thrillers in graphic novels format in India.

While Agatha Christie’s novels have been hugely popular with generations of Indian readers, the new format of Graphic Novels is just what today’s Gen Next kids would lap up. Millions of kids and teens across the world find these stories are brought to life by lively sketches and make a better read than the traditional novel format.

These books are available across all leading bookstores in India, individuals priced at an M.R.P of Rs 199/- and the pack of 3 at M.R.P of Rs.450/-.

Bookslut says a bit complacently that "no one's going to read these things anyway," but I doubt the good folks over there know how much acreage Dame Christie's paperbacks take up in the average Indian bookstore of any size. I'm guessing a few parents who want to get their kids into reading something will think (probably wrongly) that Miss Marple would be a good means to that end.

The publisher's managing director, at least, would like to get a Christie-as-Literature theory started: he "thinks that Indian children should be invited to read classic titles such as Agatha Christie so that they have knowledge of the past in terms of good writing."

Next up, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew: more here.

Orchid-Gathering Monkey

From the The Hindu:

Well-known botanist T. Ananda Rao has collaborated with ornithologist and photographer S. Sridhar, to bring out “Wild Orchids in Karnataka- A Pictorial Compendium”, which is at once a run through the captivating world of orchids and a journey in the ecological hotspots of Karnataka. The original “Orchid Man”, Dr. Ananda Rao, has dedicated the book to Hanumanthu, a monkey that helped him collect orchids from tall trees in the Western Ghats, in the “orchid guilds”, or the special ecological niches where orchids can be found in the Talacauvery range, the Bababudangiri-Kudremukh National Park area, and in the Dandeli-Sirsi-Yellapur area.

How did the botanist train the monkey to grab all those orchids? Well, it took six months. Much harder than teaching a monkey to do dishes.

Sadly, as the previous link mentions, Hanumanthu was beaten to death by a policeman when the monkey was being used by a street performer. Rao tried to train a replacement, but "it is not obedient. It eats up the entire banana and refuses to do the work. However my field work has come to end point there is no necessary to train a monkey or its young one which is not obedient to do its work. For some period I had hired two tribal men for my fieldwork, but nobody is as good as Hanuman."

[By the way, what does the "-thu" at the end of Hanumanthu's name mean? Is it like "little Hanuman"?]

Penguin Ice Creams, Mysore

I liked this "re-purposing" of the Penguin Books mascot. His distant relation is selling something you'd think the little black and white beasts would know a lot about. The awning with the penguin crowd is also kind of awesome.

The store is semi-famous, I believe. I should have stopped, but was in a hurry.

Green Wall

Green Wall, originally uploaded by jrambow.

More about last week's trip to Mangalore later, but for now here's a picture of what many walls look like during the monsoon, at least along the coast.

Tacky or Wonderful?

Rag Rug, originally uploaded by jrambow.

A confession. Buying a fancy wool or silk rug in India is not very high on my priorities. All the pretentious talking. All the offering of milky tea. All the bargaining and BS-ing. All the ignorance (on my part) about thread counts and natural dyes and blah blah blah. And worst of all, all the looking at rugs.

So although it seems dumb to not come back from the place with something substantial that I paid too much for, it's probably not going to happen. Instead, this is my idea of good rug. It's bouncy and cheerful. It's made of scraps. It cost 65 rupees.

True, the stallowners who sold it to me on Commercial Street didn't offer me any tea or any stories about Kashmir, but that was really OK.

Happy I-Day

It's Independence Day today, and that means the streets are very quiet and many stores are closed for at least part of the day. And it also happens to be a very sunny day good for walks in the park -- never something you can count on during the monsoon. I've been trying to finish up some work in between reading lots of I-Day stuff (the BBC, the extra-large edition of today's Hindu).

I've also been thinking a lot about the floods in the north, which have affected 45 million people, and killed at least 2,200. If you can afford it, please consider a donation to a worthwhile charity. One that looks good to us is Oxfam.

Wine Time 3: Chantilli Cabernet Sauvignon

A bit of a surprise. I bought it at the store on a whim, mainly because its label didn't look that annoying, and because I didn't have enough rupees for a fancy-pants reserve wine that was shinier. But we lucked out, because it was actually darn good.

Our wine was bottled in 2005 and cost 368 rupees ($9). It's from Chateau Indage, a winery that began in 1982, and the grapes are from the Sahyadri Valley, in Maharashtra.

The first thing we noticed about this wine was the strong smell of alcohol -- you get a hit of that, and you also get a hit of the slightly sweet smell (like toast) of the oak barrels it was aged in. As for taste, it's dry, but you can also taste a lot of the fruit. For once, I agree with the wine label: there really were "rich aromas of ripe fruit, plums, cherries, and green pepper." (I didn't taste any green pepper, and that's just as well.)

This is a big wine, and I'm not sure how well it would work with lots of Indian food -- I think it would clash with all the strong flavors in a lot of dishes. We had it with some pizza, and that seemed a good fit. It would also be good with a burger.

A good wine! We give it a 7.

Lalbagh Flower Show

This time we got our act together and made it to the flower show, held at Lal Bagh, the botanical garden here. The show's held twice a year, the week before Independence Day (tomorrow) and Republic Day (in January), and perhaps because it's so regular, there are not many announcements about it. To everyone else, I think, it's really obvious when it's about to occur.

Anyway, the show is held mainly in Lalbagh's big Victorian-style glass house , and in addition to lots and lots of flower varieties, there were big sculptures made of flowers -- the centerpiece was one of the Taj Mahal. And then there was the space shuttle.



But the best part, even better than all the incredible flowers and the good, clear non-monsoonish weather we lucked into, was the people-watching. Unlike most flower shows in the states, this attracts lots and lots of people, and it seemed as if every student in the Karnataka was there.

Motimahal Hotel

Perhaps this won't be funny to many other people, but it made me smile to see how prominent the Moti Mahal hotel makes its staff hierarchy. India in general is a very hierarchical place, but even for here it seems unusual to put it on the web site, next to pictures of the rooms and discussion of the size of the banquet halls.

By the way, the restaurant has very good seafood. I could do with some right now.

Snack Time: Aulose Unda

It may very well be because of my weakness for buying snacks at the grocery that Don is always surprised when I tell him that I happen to be on a diet. In any case, it's our loyal readers I'm thinking of when I see products like the one below and grab them.


These appealed to me partly because they seemed pretty simple: you've just got some rice flour, dry ginger, jaggery (delicious palm sugar), jeera (cumin), and elachi (cardamon). As a side note, it's a very rare kind of snack like this that doesn't have cardamon. I personally think it's usually a distracting and overpowering taste, but I'm trying to get used to it -- it's clear from its heavy usage that it's not going anywhere.

And what are these little golf balls like inside? Dry and crumbly! There were slightly gingery, but the main thing they have is a mealy texture.


I could also taste little chunks of jaggery. And those were the best parts. But a much more efficient way of getting that jaggery taste is just to buy big yellow chunks of it at the store, take them home, lock the door, and gnaw on them when no one's looking. (Surely I'm not the only one who does that.)

Anyway, one or two of these might be OK, but beyond that, I think they're doomed to remain uneaten and unloved, at least at our house.

Unda seem similar to laddoos. Here'a recipe for Mangalorean undas with coconut and a little ghee.

Voltage Stabilizer Part 2

So that horrible Voltage Stabilizer drove us crazy with all its "chattering." A couple nights it was so bad and constant that I woke up, and it wasn't a treat to hear it during the day, either. So we unplugged the old one, took if off the cabinet carefully (it seemed to weigh about 40 pounds), and upgraded to the much smaller specimen below-- Oscar. The cost of around 1000 rupees seems like a small price for a much quieter house. And I love its name, red color, and 1970s good looks.

The Super-Hot Pepper

Here's an funny story about the super-hot bhut jolokia (ghost chili), which is grown in Assam.

You know, lots of Indian food is not really that hot, but of course the stuff that is, is usually memorable. It's always good to make sure you have some raita (yogurt/curd with spices and vegetables) nearby. Just in case.

Is This What San Francisco Feels Like?

We're still taking a while to get used to the monsoon. It's strange to wake up to grey skies so often, and it's also weird how chilly it often is. At the moment, around 6 pm, it's around 75 F (24 C), but it feels much chillier because of the dampness and the breeze. And it's lasting longer than we thought it would. At least one person had told us that the monsoon usually petered out by the end of July. But no.

All this dampness causes fashion problems. It's hard to know what to wear, since a bright and sunny day can cloud over in a few minutes, and of course vice versa. And a lot of what I could wear still have to be washed. We have a washing machine but no dryer -- just a clothes rack. (Dryers are extremely rare in India.) At the moment that rack is full of still slightly damp clothes from yesterday. It's hard for a cloudy sky and a damp breeze to have much effect on them. It makes me want the sun of March (just a little). Back then, you could dry two batches of laundry a day. It was amazing.

But that sun's not coming back like that for while. Yesterday, I broke down and bought a man shawl (that is, a shawl in manly colors). It looks pretty good on the couch, but I don't think I'll be wrapping it around myself, covering my torso and neck and perhaps my head as well, before leaving the house. That's the way you often see old men wearing them on the streets, especially in the early morning and night.

USD for Me, INR for You

It's normal for most medium- and high-end hotels in India to charge foreigners extra. The usual way they do this is to quote foreigner prices in US dollars, with the Indian price, obviously, in rupees. The trick, if you want to call it that, is that the USD price is almost always higher than the rupee price. I'm a little hazy on how exactly this system arose, but it's clearly a way to get a bigger bite from the foreigner wallet. When it comes time to pay up, the foreigners are actually charged in rupees, so they end up paying more AND still usually having to pay for some sort of currency conversion. The "foreigner tax" generally amounts to paying 10-15% more*.

So, for instance, the Taj luxury hotels chain asks for 13000 rupees for a sea view "luxury" room in Goa when the person staying there is Indian. But for a foreigner, that price is 13,935 INR ($345). That's 935 rupees ($23) extra for not being from these parts. (Of course, the dollar buys fewer rupees than it did last year at this time--the foreigner premium was higher then*.)

I've gotten used to the system (it helps that I rarely stay in places fancy enough for there to be much of a difference, if any, in the prices). But I was a little taken aback to discover a resort that wants foreigners to pay 2800 inr (almost $70, or 33%) extra for a cottage suite. And that's the outdated tariff -- the one the hotel emailed me has the Indian rate at a 1000 rupees less and the dollar rate staying the same. All I can hope is that foreigners get perhaps some sort of keepsake for all that extra cash. Or maybe they could promise to be 2800 rupees' less messy? (Seriously, if I were even thinking of staying here I'd yell and scream to try to get the rate down. Way down.)

But there's a little hope that this may not always be the way things are: The Taj and Oberoi groups, among others, might be getting rid of this system, and Hyatt already has. This is a good thing, I think, and probably a sign of the hotels' increasing confidence. After all, the Taj owns hotels in the U.S. now -- I doubt there are two tariffs listed at the one in Boston.

* Interestingly, at the moment the Oberoi in Bangalore is asking foreigners to pony up "just" the equivalent of 27,265 rupees ($675) for its executive suite, and that's basically the same as the Indian price of 27500. Last year, $675 was closer to 30,375 rupees. Foreigners are getting a (very tiny) deal for now, but we can expect the prices to be re-adjusted when the current rates expire at the end of the month.

Dung beetle

Dung beetle, originally uploaded by jrambow.

The Chamundi temple is at the top of a hill with 1000 stone steps leading down to Mysore itself. Pilgrims walk up, but Don and I took a car up and walked down. Just about every one of the steps had a pile of red and yellow powder on it. The piles were slowly expanding as people walked up, adding a little to the pile each time as a way of puja, or worship. I think I only saw women putting down the powder.

But there's not just powder on the steps. Of course there's also manure here and there from cattle and other animals. Here's a little dung beetle taking advantage of the free food supply. I like how he caught a few specks of color up in his ball.

Off to Mysore

See you on Tuesday.

The Darjeeling Limited

Three messed-up brothers, coming together through the power of India's "vibrant and sensual landscape," in a beautifully shot movie full of carefully chosen old-time songs. Emotional and spiritual lessons will be learned. Gotta say that this upcoming movie from Wed Anderson sounds awfully familiar. I'm still going to see it and probably buy the soundtrack.

Click above for trailer on Youtube. Higher-quality trailer here.

And after you watch, maybe you can tell me where all the Indians are. Every train I've even been on has been a little more heavily attended.

Dept. of Good Web Sites

Random Plug:
We don't have any immediate plans to go to Hampi again, but I have been checking out the unofficial site at hampi.in a lot recently, for work. It's one impressive site, and the pix are nice to look at if Hampi's not in your plans yet either.

Wine Time 2: Grover's La Reserve

In our second Wine Time feature, we decided to take the advice of a commenter and get some La Reserve, Grover Vineyards' premium product. The company describes it as coming from "vines imported from France, [which] are now thriving at our vineyards on the sunny hill-slopes of Nandi Hills near Bangalore, India. This fine red wine is a blend of [80%] Cabernet Sauvignon and [20%] Syrah [aka Shiraz] grapes. Aged in French oak barrels, it has a luscious bouquet of fruit and spices with a distinctive oaken flavour. Ready to enjoy immediately. La Réserve only improves with age."

Our bottle was of a 2005 vintage, bottled last month. We have bought this wine several times before, and I (but not Don!) remember it as being much better.

Like the Shiraz, it was one dimensional, with an overly sour taste. The taste disappears very quickly, so it doesn't work as a big wine, which I think is what they're going for. The main taste was sour, and the ending was slightly tannic, but not in a good way. I guess that was the French oak talking.

I would still consider getting La Reserve again, in hopes that my memory didn't mislead me, and that other vintages of the same wine are better. At some point (I can't find the actual article), Decanter magazine judged La Reserve the "Best New World Red Wine." Maybe there's hope. If India can be part of the New World, then who knows what other wonders are out there?

Where it probably couldn't complete is in an open or semi-open marketplace, because of its price. This wine cost 475 rupees ($12) -- given its quality, that's a real reach. If we had bought a similar wine in New York for $12, we'd have expected a lot more from it.

On a scale of 1 to 10, we give it a 5. It's OK, but just barely.

Simple Rules for the Phone

By and large it's not to hard to call people on the phone here. But sometimes it is -- you need another digit, or the number is always busy, or the number is toll-free but doesn't work with your phone company. That's why I loved these rules from a Hyderabad web site:

Changed Telephone Numbers


While fullhyd.com works on updating the telephone numbers on its site after various exchanges have made modifications to their numbers, this is how you should use the current numbers on the site.

1: If the number has 7 digits and starts with anything other than 6, put a 2 in front of the number.

2: If the number has 7 digits and starts with a 6, make the first 6 a '55'. If that does not work, it means the number is a mobile and not a landline. In that case, instead of doing the earlier, put a 924 ahead of the number. (And if even this doesn't work, call 1952.)

3: For 8-digit numbers starting with a 3 (Reliance numbers), substitute the first 3 with '939'.

In general, call 1952 if the number doesn't work. Hyderabad's STD code is 040, and India's ISD code is 91. If you are calling from outside India, dial 009140 and then the number. If you are calling from India but outside Hyderabad/Secunderabad, dial 040 and then the number.

[This phone, with locking panel to prevent unscrupulous folks from using it, is from a museum in Udaipur. Not an exhibit! As you can see, the panel was busted.)

Malleswaram

Today I went to Malleswaram, a neighborhood northeast of where I live, to check out the Villa Pottipati and the ISKCON (aka Hare Krishna) temple. Although Malleswaram is not so very far away, I had only gone through it a couple times. Besides the temple, there aren't really any touristy sights there, and I really hadn't had any reason to go. But it does seem like a very cool, laid-back middle-class, traditional area, and it was fun to go for a short walk around.

Lots of smaller temples here and there, lots of fruit and flowers and other things being sold from carts or literally on the side walk, and people mostly walking everywhere (rather than in auto-rickshaws or cars or on cycles). It was noticeably quieter, with lots fewer trucks and cars and honking. And very little English heard on the streets, although I imagine many people know it.

One thing I know it's famous for is the traditional South Indian food, such as dosas. I ate at a random place near the Villa Potapati that was good but not worth a special trip. Have to return once I have a better sense of where to head to.

And this recently discovered temple also sounds like it's worth a trip.

A Bollywood Break

Today was a long day of running around doing travel guide stuff. I'm all wiped out.

In such times, what could be more refreshing than a Bollywood video? Here's a good one called Kajra Re from a movie called Bunty Aur Babli (2005). Ever since I saw the clip on TV a few nights ago, the song's been stuck in my head.

Wine Time: Grover's Sante Shiraz

Selling and making wine is seen as a growth industry in India. All you have to do is to pick up just about any issue of a magazine or a newspaper's lifestyle section to be confronted with claims that more and more wine is being guzzled like crazy.

The reality is completely different. Wine can hardly help being a growth industry since there's so little of it drunk. As the Outlook article below states, "per capita consumption [of wine] is a mere six ml, compared to China's 300 ml." It's not just that a tiny proportion of the population drinks wine. It's that the tiny proportion of the population that can 1) afford such luxuries and 2) cares to drink actually drinks wine. Imported wine remains very expensive, primarily because of duties (although they are going down somewhat), and the wineries in India are still by and large quite new, with all the growing pains that that implies.

But all that being said, there are more and more domestic wines being bottled every day. As our humble service to you, we thought it would be fun to review all the Indian bottles that come through our door.

First up is a wine from Grover Vineyards, whose winvery is right here in Bangalore. We had their 2006 Santé Shiraz, priced at Rs. 275 (about $7) and bottled in 2006. The label actually listed a price of Rs. 225, but the clerk told us that it had mysteriously gone up. We didn't protest too much, but we hadn't tasted it at that point.

This is not good wine -- too sour. The label claims that there are those wine clichés of "black pepper and blackberries" inside, but if there were, the sourness keeps them well hidden. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 4. Do not drink, except in an emergency situation.

Voltage Stabilizer

When we got back to our apartment in Bangalore, we found that this little monster had been hooked up to our refrigerator and placed on the cupboard above it. Before we left, the boxy thing had just been lying unplugged on a shelf in the storage room. Sometimes we'd look and it and wonder if we should have been doing something with it, but its bulk meant that we just left it sitting there.

All the thing does is what its name implies: massage the sometimes wildly varying local voltage into something more constant and easier for large appliances to deal with.

I hate the stabilizer. It extends out from the cupboard, so the doors have to stay open a little. Even worse, it makes fast-paced noises that are somewhere between noisy typing and a bug zapper that's just killed a bunch of gnats. As you can see, this model dates from long ago, and I doubt that more modern versions are as annoying.

Now I'm wondering I should have my laptop charging using one of these things. Probably I should, but since it's gone a year without one, I'm not in a huge hurry.

Back in India

So I got in early yesterday, a day in which I spent several hours thinking was Tuesday but that was of course Wednesday. Where does all the time go? Oh yeah, it goes into crossing one time zone after the other.

The jet lag wasn't too bad -- around 6 am, when I got back to the apartment, I told Don that I thought that sleep was surely just a plot by "them" to make sure no one ever gets anything done. I felt great, despite sleeping very little on the plane. (There may have been a little napping in the afternoon . . . )

I'd have gotten home a little sooner if it hadn't been for one of the things I hate the most in Indian airports -- the dreaded luggage cart.



Hidden within that herd of carts is the slowly moving baggage claim belt. When you finally see your bag, it's an adventure getting close enough to actually grab it by its handle. The carts are free, so just about everyone takes one, even people with just a couple pieces of luggage, and that means that the luggage is sealed off from its owners by a hedge of shiny, hard-to-navigate metal.

If I ruled the airport system of India (scary thought), the first thing I'd do is make the carts cost money (maybe 100 rs., with half of that refundable when you return it). Most important, I'd make the area immediately next to the moving belt a no-cart zone.

[Those signs saying "We Are Being Watched" are encouraging airport advertising, not Big Brother. We did have a lot of time to read them, it's true.)

Airport Movie Round-up

300: campy, bloody, entertaining.

Hot Fuzz: I liked it, but what happened in the middle? I think I was resting my eyes then.

Practical Magic: Nicole Kidman had pretty hair and a very large house.

Terminal 5, You Need More Fun

Hello Everybody, I'm at O'hare waiting for my (slightly) delayed flight to get going. It's not very exciting in Terminal 5 (no restaurants and hardly any stores are available after you pass through security), but at at least I'll be on my way soon. Or soonish.

Once I arrive in Bangalore, I'm looking forward to fresh lime sodas, being in India during the monsoon season, but of course most of all seeing Don again.

No Room Service

Unlike yesterday's, these photos really are from Varanasi. It's from the dining hall of the hostel we stayed at in Varanasi. Somehow I think all these times could have been boiled down a little better -- and I wish I'd taken time to avail the "Hot Drinks Time" -- all 15 minutes of it. At this place, room service would have been a problem in any case -- I don't think the stripped-down rooms had any phones.



[click for a close-up]

The hostel may not have been very fancy, but the view seemed like one of the best in town:

Octopussy Today Tomorrow Forever

As I mentioned below, I'll be flying back to Bangalore on Monday. Don's there already, taking in the always changing cable choices (Ugly Betty, US edition! Jewel in the Crown! Battlestar Galactica! A million more nature specials about tigers and crocodiles and snakes!) and getting used to Bangalore, Monsoon edition.

In the meantime, I thought I'd pull from the vault some of our classic (i.e. old) photos I didn't get around to posting last time.

Here's a sign from one of the many dreadful, backpacker-style restaurants in Varanasi Udaipur. If you stay near the ghats, these places are by and large your only option for hanging out. Handily located on the roof of a backpacker hotel, they usually feature a simple menu of badly prepared "continental" cliches like fish-and-chips and pasta stuff (there's lousy Indian too!). Still, they are a nice place to get a good view of the city around you.

Because Octopussy had scenes filmed in town, these restaurants show the movie on an endless loop at night. Some mix is up a bit with other flicks, but not nearly enough. I think a few Bollywood movies would be a good addition. Or anything, really.

[Update: Sorry, Varanasi! It's Udaipur that got the James Bond treatment.]

First, Draw a Line Through the Letters

I thought this article about "The Hindi-fication of a Typeface" was interesting. It's about a type designer in Australia and the font he designed for a museum show about Bollywood. The comments to the post include a couple about "ethnocentrism" and other faux pas. I don't love the typeface (the random capital letters bug me), but it's hard for me to see the harm in it.

I've got soft spot for this and other "Hindi-fied" typefaces, which seem to appear a lot in English-language signs and billboards throughout India. Obviously, they're always used in a jokey fashion, and a little of them goes a long way. The words are usually hard to read.

But it isn't just Hindi that gets this treatment. In Bangalore I also saw Chinese-ish typefaces, which mostly appeared on restaurants and on beauty parlors (there are a couple really good examples around St. Mark's Road). Seeing these signs made me homesick for the U.S., since Chinese restaurants here use similar cornball typefaces. (That's where this example came from.)

When I get back to Bangalore in a few days, I'm hoping to find a few examples of English typefaces that have been Kannada-fied or Tamil-fied. I think I've seen some, but nothing specific comes to mind. A little help? And for the grand championship, are there any non-English signs that ape typical English-language typefaces?


P.S. Here are the photos by Jonathan Torgovnik that appeared in the exhibit. They're worth a look.

Hometown

I've been back in New York now for about two weeks. Our big news is that we'll be heading back to India in about a month. Until that time you can expect a few posts, but not too many.

After getting back to the United States, I spent a few days with my parents back in Wisconsin. I kept taking lots of pictures of trees and clouds, in part because they both looked so different that what I'd been looking at in India. It also seemed very cold to me -- it was a cold spring, even for Wisconsin, but I might also gotten used to the Indian sun. The above photo was taken from my old bedroom window. My parents are farmers, and you can see where the fields start behind the backyard.

And below is the town square of my hometown of about 2700. It's grown a lot since I've been gone, but most of the newcomers live in developments on the other side of town. Anyway, it looks a lot different from an Indian village of the same size, that's for sure. For instance, no cows, and not too many people just walking down the street.

More Stuff Soon

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."

G.K. Chesterton, "On Running After One's Hat", via Terry Teachout

Film City, so far away

We've both been back in the United States for about a week at our respective families. One has no internet, and the other has dial-up only, so expect slim posts for a while at least.

In the meantime, watch the above video for Basement Jaxx's song "Romeo." It might be old hat to some of you, but I was amazed when I saw it for the first time yesterday. I found it when looking up stuff on Ramoji Film City, the film studio/amusement park outside of Hyderabad where the video was shot. Part of the fun is seeing how all the Indian musical number conventions mash up with a very western song. For more on Film City, here's the New York Times's take.

Howdy

A hearty welcome (as they say) to everyone visiting here from Boing-Boing. As the tagline says above, we're a couple of Americans staying for six months a year a while in Bangalore. I'm a travel writer, and Don works in publishing. While we're not working, we're usually traveling, trying to cross the always-busy streets here, inviting stares, breaking things, buying tablecloths, eating dosas, that sort of thing.

Here are a few older posts you might like:

• Chicken à la Kingfisher
  
• As Many Arms as Vishnu
  
• Monsoon Cooking, or My Big Fat Indian Dinner
  
• At the Beach
  
• Some Notes on the Office
  
• Not Cuckoo for Coconuts and Counterpoint: Coconuts Are Great!

(Mango pic from 2006 -- haven't gotten any yet this year.)

Drum Machine

Drum Machine.JPG, originally uploaded by jrambow.

I thought this was really cool. It's a drum and bell machine I saw at Bangalore's Bull Temple. You can see the motor to the left and how it's connected to the drumsticks. It wasn't going, unfortunately -- would be fun to see it at work, and to see how you adjust the speed of the drums and bells.

As you can see, the machine was in a cage to prevent curious people (and monkeys!) from getting a rhythm going at the wrong times.

If some hipster band in Brooklyn or Berlin or Rio knows what's good for them, they'll try to get their hands on one of these ASAP and use it on their next album. Maybe someone already has . . .

Flying Ants on M.G. Road

Here was a sight that made me a little scared. This is a huge billboard in front of the Vijaya Bank building on M.G. Road. All those specks are flying ants! I managed not to run for my life and instead just kept on walking. Maybe I shouldn't have been so scared -- now that the bees are abandoning their hives because of cell phones, we can look to the ants to take up some of the slack and start pollinating.

What We'll Miss

Don and I are both due to fly out of Bangalore and back to the United States next Friday. If this time is anything last the last time, I predict that next week will be light on posts and high on silence. Although I intend to keep posting even when we're out of India, at least for a while, I thought it would be good to start thinking of some things I'll miss when I'm gone.

• fresh lime sodas
  
• people who are friendly and patient even when you don't speak any of India's mother tongues
  
• clothes that are all at least 25% more vivid than anything in New York City. It's going to be hard to go back to black, grey, and black.
  
• A dialect of English that didn't always make sense to me but was always interesting. Here, you always "avail offers" rather than take advantage of them, and have "power cuts" rather than "power outages" (we had about five yesterday, so it's on my mind). And why say just "OK"? Say "OK OK OK" instead. And if something (like power cuts!) is hardly worth mentioning , you can say "power cuts are there."
  
• paan
  
• high purchasing power. Obviously, having dollars and the large amount of rupees that they buy has made for a better time.
  
• cable TV and the amazing channels inside. One favorite right now is the Udaya channel, which broadcasts in Kannada. They have a great cooking show, in which housewives come on and make a dish and are then given a sari for their trouble. We would love it more if we knew better what they were saying/making, but it's already fun the way it is. There was a guy on it once, too.
  

Next time, some of the things we won't miss so very much.

Don't Trip

Over the weekend we went to the wonderful Jain basti (temple) in the town of Sravanbelagola. More about that later, but first here's a shot of the enclosures that covered some ancient inscriptions on the hill. We thought it all looked like some sort of Dutch or German art installation -- the red and blue parts sticking up hold summaries of the inscriptions. And those are German tourists in the background, so it all fits.

The Mysterious Pre-Monsoon

In my year in India, the monsoon remains just about as confusing as it was to start with. We've had a couple rains since we got back to Bangalore at the start of the month, and one of our acquaintances said the unusual rains were something called the pre-monsoon. They would have to be very "pre", since the monsoon won't arrive in Bangalore until June.

The storm today was impressive. All the afternoon was hot, and the skies kept getting darker and darker. Finally by about 8 o'clock lightning began to spike down. We were up in a restaurant on the 10th floor, so it was fun to watch the lightning appear to the west. And finally the rain came. Standing water appeared in the roads almost immediately, and the temperature dropped way down.

The rickshaw driver who took us home from the restaurant said that all this rain was because of the tsunami. Wha? There is a tsunami in the South Pacific at the moment, but that doesn't make any sense. He must have meant the deadly and terrible tsunami of 2004. What could that have to do with it? I have no idea.

And that's why I keep asking people about monsoons and the weather. Just about every answer is interesting.

Gaur!

We just got back from a big road trip that included several days at the Jungle Lodge's K Gudi camp, south of Mysore. We didn't see any tigers, but we did see a leopard, lots of deer, and many gaur, the world's largest bovine. The bulls are hilariously big -- the cows are the size of blown-up brahmin dairy cows. My favorite sighting were five wild elephants swimming in a small lake. Here there are exiting the lake after deciding they had had enough of all our photography.



And here is a gaur, looking shy but muscley.

Hyderabad Hot Spot

Now's the part where the blogger apologizes for light posting, except I'll just skip that and say that I'm in Hyderabad at the moment, working on a travel guide. I'm dusty and sleepy and a little bitter that my hotel isn't as nice as either of the two Taj's I toured this afternoon. Of course, I'm not exactly paying Taj prices, either. (Note for rich people out there: the presidential suite in the Taj Krishna is really amazing [your own pool!], but only you can decide if it's worth $1200 a night.)

I love exploring cities, but sometimes I really wish I could skip that part of the learning curve where I flounder around trying to figure out how to get from point A to . . . just about anywhere. Hyderabad has what might be a unique water feature -- an enormous tank (water reservoir/lake) separating Hyderabad itself from its suburbanized twin, Secunderbad. from the newer suburban town of Secunderabad. I spent lots of time today walking along the eastern edge of the lake, Hussain Sagar, thinking I'd reached the southernmost point, but actually nowhere near. Luckily there's a big 50-foot Buddha near the south, so in the future I'll be desperately keeping Buddha's head in sight if ever try to walk anywhere in this very hot city again. Walking is NOT very popular in the parts of town I've been in so far -- it was basically just me, the beggars, and a few random students. Undoubtedly the old city part will be a little different.

Tomorrow will be devoted to sight-seeing. I'll be the one taking pictures of the admission windows and their ticket prices, asking people questions about opening hours, and rushing through the things on view.

China Leaves the Simpsons Full of Holes

While we've been in Delhi, we've started making it a habit to start the
morning out right, not with the tedious Anderson Cooper or the slightly
less boring BBC News, but instead with the Simpsons, which appears on the
wonderful Star World at 8:30 AM. Star World is the expat American's
friend -- it's got the OC, American Idol (current season), and a slew
of other prime export-quality shows.

Anyway, yesterday's episode was titled Simple Simpson.
In it Homer becomes a kind of pastry vigilante/superhero, getting back
at bad people by throwing big fat pies in their face. It's all going
wonderfully until he's caught by his boss Mr. Boss, who discovers his
secret identity and threatens to reveal it unless he only pies people
Mr. Burns is against. Girl scouts, that sort of thing.

But the episode's ending was confusing -- Lisa was introducing someone
on stage, Homer was getting ready to pie whoever it was, and then
suddenly Homer had a change of heart and gave up. At first I thought it
was because there had been sloppy cuts because of ads or something, but
then Don remembered that it's the Dalai Lama who's about to get a pie.

And that's when it made sense -- Star World broadcasts in China too,
and the cuts were probably made to get past the censor there (See the
above link for more). Sad that it also means a censored episode here in
India as well.

[Update: the linked-to article claims without a citation that the Dalai Lama cut was done "to appease the predominantly Buddhist viewers of East, South, and Southeast Asia with regards to any view of mocking the Dalai Lama." Not sure which theory's right.]

Monkey Washing in Assam

Despite the important-sounding name, the Asian Age is a low-rent newspaper, as you can see by what they chose to include on the top half of their "Newsmakers" page (19 March edition). The caption reads: "GOOD DEAL: A monkey cleans the utensils of a shopkeeper in exchange for two bananas at Tezpur in Assam on Sunday. This monkey comes frequently to the shop and helps the shopkeeper by cleaning the utensils."

The hell? How is this at all likely? What do they mean "frequently"? And what do they mean by "clean"? Most monkeys I've seen make things dirtier than before. On the other hand, this monkey looks especially obese, so maybe it's remotely possible that he's given up his happy wild life of terrorizing anything he thinks is weaker than him and instead decided to work for bananas rather than steal them. But I just don't think so.

What gets me is that surely almost everyone reading this Indian paper has had at least some interaction with monkeys -- enough to know that they're cute at a distance and evil up close, with large teeth and an inclination to steal anything that looks interesting (just like this blog?). It's no more likely that monkeys would start cleaning things than that people would spend their days walking along each other's balconies, stealing water bottles, and mating on roofs.

For a more realistic approach to monkeyshines, I think you only have to look at the inside of the door leading to our balcony at the cheapo hotel we stayed at:

The Mughal Gardens

And the day after the Haus Khaz rose gardens, we remained on a flower rampage. We headed to the Mughal Gardens, part of the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President of India's house).

This was an amazing place -- a complex of about five gardens laid out in the late 1920s by Edwin Lutyens, who designed most of the "New" infrastructure in New Delhi. The best and biggest garden was like a typical Mughal-style garden, with small streams of water forming a rectangular pattern and meeting near the center. The garden is only open for about 5 weeks of the year, and I was glad we had a chance to go.

Given its location more or less in the center of India's government, it's wasn't too surprising that security was so tight. And the sign above explains why I don't have any pix of the amazing, huge zinnias, or anything else. The government had put thought into more than just security. There was bottled water available, as well as a handy supply of bathrooms and even "lounges" (covered tents) for getting out of the heat.

The lines moved fairly fast when we arrived in mid-morning, but when we left around noon they were much longer. Clearly, visiting the gardens is something that lots of families do as a tradition. But what people evidently don't do is stop and smell the roses -- we got lots of funny looks when we did so. And with rosewater such a common ingredient in desserts as well as perfumes, this seemed especially surprising.

Wi-Fi: A Highly Selective Delhi Guide

In the Greater Kailash area, the only public place I've found that has Wi-Fi is the Cafe Coffee Day in GK-2 market (that's the M block). If you ask your server, he might say it doesn't work, but look for the Airlink signal. You'll have to pay via credit card, not by buying one of those cards. Also, it's expensive at 45 rupees an hour or so, but since it evidently has a monopoly for a large portion of South Delhi, I can't argue.

If I've missed any Wi-Fi spots somewhat near GK, please let me know.