National_geographic_traveller_india__july_2017.pdf

J U L Y 2 0 1 7 • ` 1 5 0 • VO L . 6

I S S U E 1 • N AT G E O T R AV E L L E R . I N

Imtiaz Ali Ruskin Bond Amit Chaudhuri Simon Winchester Sudha Murty Pico Iyer Zac O’Yeah Parvathi Nayar T.M. Krishna Bee Rowlatt Shivya Nath Karishma Grover Aneeth Arora Aditya Sinha

I travel,

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C T R AV E L L E R I N D I A

july2017

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voices 16 WHERE’S MY PASSPORT? The enviable life of driver-guides who take people to the coolest places 18 WAYFARING Travelling alone is the best antidote to the blues, and to loneliness itself 20 CREW CUT The universe within the airport is a perfect microcosm of the world outside

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30 CYCLING INTO THE WILD From Alaska to Argentina: Inside Dhruv Bogra’s epic solo cross-country tour 36 MOVING LIKE A LONE FOX Ruskin Bond recommends taking the road less travelled 40 THE EMPRESS OF HER MALADY Undertaking her toughest ever trek brought back a sense of normalcy in breast cancer survivor Ahtushi Deshpande's life 44 HAPPY CAMPER Shooting time-lapse videos of the Himalayas is a spiritual journey for Saravana Kumar, a former techie

60 DOING HER OWN MARKET RESEARCH

Writer Sudha Murty treats every holiday as a “hard-core study tour” ON THE COVER Travel monopolises our memory. Sitting at our office desks, we often return to a beach, city or mountain we had I travel, once made home. But travel also has the capacity of defining our future. We dream of escape, and also sometimes, of return. More than travel destinations, it is you, the traveller, who matters. Photographer Marco Piunti seems to know that. In this issue, we carry your memories and dreams with us. JULY 2017 • `150 • VOL. 6

I S S U E 1 • N AT G E O T R AV E L L E R . I N

Imtiaz Ali Ruskin Bond Amit Chaudhuri Simon Winchester Sudha Murty Pico Iyer Zac O’Yeah Parvathi Nayar T.M. Krishna Bee Rowlatt Shivya Nath Karishma Grover Aneeth Arora Aditya Sinha

T H E R E F O R E

THE VOYAGER

50 THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH Being on the road alters biker Aditya Raj Kapoor’s perception of everything

26 AROUND THE WORLD IN

54 THE LIFE AQUATIC OF

Cassie De Pecol came away from a trip to 196 countries humbled

Wonder and curiosity have tied a solo sailor to her boat for a decade

18 MONTHS

58 REVOLUTIONARY ROAD A bike trip in South America was the starting point of change for neuroscientist and engineer Mauktik Kulkarni

EMILY RICHMOND

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AROON THAEWCHATTURAT/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (RUSKIN BOND), PHOTO COURTESY: BEE ROWLATT (BEE ROWLATT), PHOTO COURTESY: TAMASHA (IMTIAZ ALI), SUDHA PILLAI (SUDHA MURTY), GARY DOAK/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (AMIT CHAUDHURI) MARCO_PIUNTI/ISTOCK (COVER)

VOL. 6 ISSUE 1

Regulars 12 Editor’s Note | 14 Passenger Sheet | 144 Travel Quiz

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HOW WE TRAVEL 64 LIKE A FISH UNDER WATER

85 MEETING THE DEADLINE

116 FREEZE FRAME

90 KARISHMA GROVER WALKS

120 RWANDA REDUX

Aditya Sinha went to Peshawar to cover a war. He stayed for the kebabs

INTO A BAR…

A scuba diver explains why scouring the oceans is a spiritual quest

…because she is a vintner who loves exploring cities, one tavern at a time

66 SILVER LININGS SKETCHBOOK

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A trip to Scotland gives an artist the fodder that only travelling affords

70 ‘THE BEST TRAVEL PLAN IS TO HAVE NONE’

Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali on why he never follows a fixed itinerary

76 SEEING PATTERNS IN THE EVERYWHERE

Designer Aneeth Arora went to Mexico and returned with a new collection

URBAN LEGENDS 94 NEVER TOO OLD-SCHOOL

WHY WE TRAVEL 126 DESTINATION NOWHERE 128 GUT INSTINCT

ADDRESS

Amit Chaudhuri reappraises Bombay

104 SEXY IS THE CITY

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For vocalist T.M. Krishna, mountains are a lesson in shifting boundaries

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98 A STRANGE AND SUBLIME

80 HIS ONE-TRACK MIND

82 HITTING THE HIGH NOTES

Wildlife guides tell heart-warming stories of a country looking out for its forests

A surprise layover becomes a free day of unexpected discoveries for Pico Iyer

78 MAKING THE WORLD HOME

Sridhar Venkatesh is running a ceaseless marathon across the globe

Spiti Valley is a land of ancient monasteries and welcoming faces

Simon Winchester reflects on Oxford

Writer and journalist Bee Rowlatt on culture and counterculture in Frisco

Travel has been a recurring theme in Amanpreet Bajaj’s life

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THE INSIDER 110 A PLACE THEY CALL OWN

Five local guides, chefs, and hotel staff describe the best of the Philippines

Zac O’Yeah’s philosophical enquiry into the bellyaching that accompanies travel

132 THIS HOME HAS NO ADDRESS Why travel blogger Shivya Nath gave up on having a permanent abode

136 TINDER LOVING CARE

Modern-day love, like modern-day travel, is making the world a revolving door

139 FINDING THE MAGIC FARAWAY MOUNTAIN

A mother’s definitive guide to climbing Wales’s Mount Snowdon

MICHAEL_WHITEFOOT_GALLERY/ISTOCK (LIGHTHOUSE), SARINE ARSLANIAN/SHUTTERSTOCK (WOMAN)

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Editor-in-Chief SHREEVATSA NEVATIA Deputy Editor LAKSHMI SANKARAN Senior Associate Editor KAREENA GIANANI Senior Associate Editor HUMAIRA ANSARI Assistant Editor RUMELA BASU Junior Assistant Editor LUBNA AMIR Contributing Editor BHAVYA DORE

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Disclaimer All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is strictly prohibited. We do our best to research and fact-check all articles but errors may creep in inadvertently. All prices, phone numbers, and addresses are correct at the time of going to press but are subject to change. All opinions expressed by columnists and freelance writers are their ownand not necessarily those of National Geographic Traveller India. We do not allow advertising to influence our editorial choices. All maps used in the magazine, including those of India, are for illustrative purposes only. About us National Geographic Traveller India is about immersive travel and authentic storytelling that inspires travel. It is about family travel, about travel experiences, about discoveries, and insights. Our tagline is “Nobody Knows This World Better” and every story attempts to capture the essence of a place in a way that will urge readers to create their own memorable trips, and come back with their own amazing stories. COPYRIGHT © 2017 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PARTNERS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER: REGISTERED TRADEMARK ® MARCA REGISTRADA.

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N AT ION AL G EOG RAP H IC SOCIE T Y President & CEO GARY E. KNELL Board of Trustees Chairman JEAN N. CASE Vice Chairman TRACY R. WOLSTENCROFT Explorers-in-residence ROBERT BALLARD, LEE R. BERGER, JAMES CAMERON, SYLVIA EARLE, J. MICHAEL FAY, BEVERLY JOUBERT, DERECK JOUBERT, LOUISE LEAKEY, MEAVE LEAKEY, ENRIC SALA

N AT ION AL G EOG RAP H IC PART N E RS CEO DECLAN MOORE Editorial Director SUSAN GOLDBERG Chief Financial Officer MARCELA MARTIN Chief Communications Officer LAURA NICHOLS Chief Marketing Officer JILL CRESS Strategic Planning & Business Development WHIT HIGGINS Consumer Products and Experiences ROSA ZEEGERS Digital Product RACHEL WEBBER Global Networks CEO COURTENEY MONROE Legal & Business Affairs JEFF SCHNEIDER Sales & Partnerships BRENDAN RIPP Board of Directors Chairman PETER RICE

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | JULY 2017

EDITOR’S NOTE SHREEVATSA NEVATIA

LOST AND FOUND

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WE BORROWED WOODY ALLEN'S FRAMES TO DRAW MAPS THAT ARE MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL THAN GEOGRAPHICAL

he characters of Woody Allen’s early films hardly ever leave New York. Until the 21st century, the city, for Allen, was sufficient. Then, suddenly, Scarlett Johansson made it to London in his 2005 Match Point. Vicky and Cristina went to Barcelona in 2008, and then—most memorably perhaps—Owen Wilson, hands in pockets, walked down the streets of Paris in 2011. Midnight in Paris, I’d argue, sees Allen at his drollest. I might be biased, though. Wilson plays Gil Pender, a screenwriter struggling to finish his first novel. Like him, I too believed Paris would give me flourish, a climax even. Sadly, I didn’t make it very far. Paris, for writers especially, is a city that is easy to romanticise. The boyish Gil bumbles his way through life. He is bullied by his fiancée and his ambition is mocked by her parents. Yet, in Paris, he finds abandon. As he begins walking the streets of the city, he comes to be literally transported. At midnight, a carriage whisks him away to bars, to raucous parties where he meets Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. He falls in love with Picasso’s muse. More tangible than the cities we see are the cities we first imagine, and the 1920s Paris Gil moves through is the Paris of his fantasy. In the worlds of Allen, travel—time or otherwise— makes his protagonists come of age. The city changes Gil. He leaves his overbearing fiancée. He finishes that manuscript of his and he decides to make Paris home. But the city, in

the end, is a bit irrelevant. It’s only a setting for change that’s personal and also enabling. Although travel writing employs the first person point of view, it is often more interested in “where” we travel, not so much the “why”. Destinations eclipse the traveller. The observer, complex and elaborate, is sometimes hostage to his or her own objectivity. Anniversaries are of course occasions to celebrate and introspect, but they offer our experiments some amnesty. Our magazine is five years old, and we felt now would be a good time to take stock and ask a simple question—what do we (really) think about when we think about travelling? In the pieces we commissioned and compiled, we borrowed Woody Allen’s frames to draw maps that are more psychological than geographical. In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino writes, “Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had.” This is the kind of discovery that Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty and a set of other voyagers first describe. For our second section, professionals talk to us about how their work defines their travel. Writers Amit Chaudhuri, Simon Winchester and Bee Rowlatt then speak about cities they either find strange or sublime. Destinations like Rwanda and the Philippines are seen through the eyes of locals, and finally, our contributors ask how Tinder, family and food now shape our varied itineraries. This time our page of contents is a list of our favourite things and people. We do hope you like them too.

OUR MISSION National Geographic Traveller India is about immersive travel and authentic storytelling, inspiring readers to create their own journeys and return with amazing stories. Our distinctive yellow rectangle is a window into a world of unparalleled discovery.

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Write to me at [email protected] or Editor, National Geographic Traveller India, 2nd floor, Sumer Plaza, Marol Maroshi Road, Marol, Andheri East, Mumbai 400059.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | JULY 2017

PASSENGER SHEET

Lakshmi Sankaran

NGT India’s Deputy Editor Lakshmi Sankaran fantasises about a bucketlist journey to witness the aurora borealis someday. She prefers random meandering to an overly organised travel schedule and will also follow a captivating tune to the end of this world, no questions asked.

Bhavya Dore

Bhavya Dore is a Mumbaibased freelance journalist. She was previously a beat reporter with the Hindustan Times. She usually writes on criminal justice issues, culture, books and sports.

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Kareena Gianani

Kareena Gianani is Senior Associate Editor at NGT India. She loves stumbling upon hole-in-the-wall bookshops, old towns, and collecting owl souvenirs in all shapes and sizes.

Lubna Amir

Lubna Amir travels in search of happy places (which invariably involve a beach) and good food. She works as Junior Assistant Editor at NGT India and is always planning her next big escape.

Radhika Raj

Radhika Raj is a struggling ethnographer, occasional writer, and an amateur potter.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | JULY 2017

Sayoni Sinha

Humaira Ansari

Rumela Basu

Nihari-lover Humaira Ansari travels with an open mind and lots of earbuds. She loves neigh-bourhood walks and discovering urban nightlife. She is Senior Associate Editor at NGT India.

Rumela Basu is Assistant Editor at NGT India. Her favourite kind of travel involves good food, literature, dance and forests. She is still looking for that perfect getaway destination.

Devang H Makwana

Brijesh Gajjar

Devang Makwana is Art Director at NGT India. He believes Kashmir is paradise on Earth, and everyone should visit it once in their lifetime. A big movie buff, he spends most of his weekends in theatres.

Sayoni Sinha is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist who writes on films, food and everything in between. Her hobbies include breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Garima Gupta

Garima Gupta is a travel, food, and lifestyle writer. She has written for Women’s Health, Hindu Business Line’s BLInk, Reader’s Digest, and Luxpresso.com. She now portions her time between writing, getting lost in the Himalayas, and evangelising solo travel.

Brijesh Gajjar is Senior Graphic Designer at NGT India. He is a passionate foodie and one his favourite destinations is Singapore. When not on a travel adventure, he likes to indulge his love of photography.

Riddhi Doshi

Riddhi Doshi is a Mumbaibased freelance journalist, and dance and movement therapist. When not writing, she can be found dancing, chatting up strangers, soaking in some art and culture and hugging trees.

Akhila Krishnamurthy

Akhila Krishnamurthy is a Chennai-based arts entrepreneur and freelance journalist. She loves running, is obsessed with drawing up task lists, and constantly scouts for apps and means that will help will help her manage her frenzied life better.

VOICES WHERE’S MY PASSPORT?

GOING FOR A LITTLE DRIVE A LIFE BEHIND THE WHEEL HAS A CERTAIN APPEAL

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required! By law!—to carry a gun. You go out there with the certain knowledge that if you do something stupid and make that bus topple, being eaten alive would be the quickest, easiest death. This is the kind of job where you are legally allowed to have a steely glint in your eye. Similarly, in Iceland, you’re taken out to the volcanoes, which could pop at any minute, faster even than your insurance premiums. You have to manage loose stones up near-vertical grades, pack for ice storms and dodge the occasional flying rock and lava flow, much the same way a Mumbai driver has to dodge the occasional

You go out there with the knowledge that if you do something stupid, being eaten alive would be the quickest, easiest death rickshaw. You have to do things that would put hair even on Daisy Duck’s chest. You will learn, my friend, how to inflate your tyres with a gol-danged blowtorch. What an adventure it would be! I imagine myself driving along the savannah, or with icy mountains rearing up in the distance, with miles and miles of no traffic and spectacular scenery, the soundtrack to Indiana Jones or The Ghost and the Darkness playing in my head, pretending I’m in my own movie. I could even manage a steely glint, and chew a toothpick to complete the effect. It doesn’t have to be something impossibly exotic, either: the

Alps would do just fine, if you’re offering, or a monsoon-drenched forest road in Chhattisgarh, or Utah. “Yeah,” I could drawl at my passengers, with a manly sniff. “Just another 3,000 miles. Piece-a-cake.” I do have some problems with driving long distances, though. One is that I get really sleepy when I’m tired, which is not good when you’re driving, and the second is that I have mild lactose intolerance, and a weakness for coffee and ice cream. I, therefore, would need a vehicle that I could live in. The main reason I read Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley was because there was a dog in it, and because he had a camper van with its own loo. And bed. And kitchen. But camper vans aren’t cool: make mine an overland truck, and I’m sold. I could take people across Mongolia and into Siberia, or along the Andes and the Atacama desert to Ushuaia, after which there is a patch of cold water, and then Antarctica. And I could do all that while being able to make a sandwich, take a nap and regret my last ice cream, all without leaving my little cocoon. I could have my own coffee machine. On the road. If that isn’t a Boy’s Own kind of life, I don’t know what is. Of course, if nothing else works out, Uber could always do with another taxi.

Vardhan Kondvikar is a travel, car, and humour writer and editor, who is known for road trips, generalised exasperation and far too many bathroom stops.

MCPHOTO/DINODIA PICTURE LIBRARY

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hen I grow up, I want to be a driver. No, not that kind. I don’t want to drive some shiny officegoer every day, forever looking for parking spaces and settling down to a good newspaper only to be hauled away to drive to some lunch appointment or other. (If the car is an S-Class or equivalent, though, with massaging seats, I do have a CV handy.) What I’m talking about is those driverguides who take people to the coolest places on Earth. In Tanzania, after a few lifechanging days on safari, my guide, Hosea, at the wheel of his enormous Land Cruiser, said, “Yes, this was all right. A couple of times, I’ve had a cheetah come sit on top of the car. Its tail was waving around inside.” I couldn’t do much to him in retaliation, other than silently questioning his parentage, but damn I envied him. This guy, I thought, spends his days going to Ngorongoro and the Serengeti and Olduvai Gorge, on daily commutes that would be epic to anyone else, dodging elands and worrying less about unclean loo stops than locating a handy bush and then checking whether it is already occupied. By a lion. In Churchill, Canada, they drive out in giant buses to go meet polar bears. If you’ve seen photographs of this, the bears only come up to the height of the tyres, which makes them look tiny. Then you read up and find out that the tyres are eight feet high, and you quake a little. Even the thought of just driving these giant things makes me whimper. But these people, men and women both, drive out in howling winds, on all the dangers that ice and snow present even when the only wildlife out there is fluffy little bunnies. You are required—

VOICES WAYFARING

THIS EXIT IS FOR SINGLES ONLY TRAVELLING ALONE IS THE BEST ANTIDOTE TO THE BLUES, AND STRANGELY, TO LONELINESS ITSELF

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Every woman (or man) should embark on a solo trip now and then. Like how celebrities indulge in an enema now and then. It cleanses your system inside out. It rejigs and rewires you. Travelling solo allows you the freedom to be whoever you want to be (or do what you want) without the fetters one combats in regular day-to-day life. More often than not you are your truest self when you travel solo. The echoes are often heeded when the bags are unpacked. This solo walk down the ‘freedom path’ is strewn with stunning discoveries. For example, dancing to Jailhouse Rock (playing in your mind), in a tree house 90 feet above the ground with only creatures of the night for company and clad in nothing but

Solo travel allows you the freedom to be whoever you want to be gentle breeze rolling off the tree tops can be nirvana-esque. It is on solo trips you learn to push through your fears—be it talking to strangers, walking alone into a fine dining restaurant or sleeping alone in strange places (keep the lights on). You learn to ‘ask’, to receive, to give and to take. Prejudices dissolve. You learn to trust humanity. And yourself too. Just like playing Sudoku, travelling solo engages your brain; it also makes you street-smart, sharpens your instincts, and opens your heart and mind to all that this world has to offer. (According to a survey, “Asian women and their influence on travel decisions” conducted by TripAdvisor, 68 per cent women believe they learn

something about the world, 61 per cent women become more open-minded and 33 per cent believe their outlook on life changes every time they travel solo.) At 14, for instance, Evelyn Hannon met her husband-to-be. At 42, she was a divorced single mother of two. Up until then, she lived in a comfortable cocoon, her life revolving around her family. Now, she stood staring at an entire life ahead. And she had no clue where to begin. After spending a year in tears and loneliness, she took all her savings to a travel agent and asked for the “cheapest ticket to wherever”. She landed in Belgium with a small bag and no itinerary. For the next 35 days, she had a storybook adventure travelling around Europe. In her words “I soared in the heavens and wallowed in the depths. There were good days, and there were bad days. The music had not stopped. The melody was simply changing. This was only the beginning.” Evelyn Hannon is known as the “mother of travel blogging” today. Now in her 70s, she started Journeywoman, an online newsletter (now magazine) in 1997 to help women travellers. She still travels several months in a year. When I met Hannon in Canada, she gave me a unique piece of advice: “Loneliness, my dear, is nothing to fear. Go, travel.”

Sudha Pillai is an artist, photographer and writer. She writes about her encounters with people, places, art and culture.

UDHA PILLAI

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here are three things women on the threshold of colossal change do: get a new hairstyle, get inked or travel solo. Of all the three it is that last decision which stretches an individual to lengths that change their warp and weave. It’s not just about getting out of a comfort zone. It is about turning shy Mary into Wonder Woman, pronto, without giving her a choice. When I left my parents’ house to start a new job and life in another city, I marked my independence with a new hairstyle (my mother had nightmares for days). But after working 24/7 for seven years at a job that took a toll on my life and health, I bought a ticket to Goa. I shacked up in a hotel close to the beach. For the next two weeks, I did everything I hadn’t done for the last seven years. I ate breakfast for lunch and lunch for dinner. And dinner was on the beach at an ungodly hour when spirits of the netherworld tangoed. I spent hours staring at the grey waves smudging into the black sky on the horizon or deciphering the language of the howling sea. In gigantic clouds on a moonlit sky, I saw horses riding dragons and damsels. They raced giant birds with their mane flowing. All the while I let the tears flow freely. Once they dried, I beachcombed. I roamed the sleepy lanes and by-lanes. I had coffee by myself and with strangers. Ate bucketloads of fried prawns with nameless women and held hands with Russians with bulging forearms. All the while pretending to be someone else—till I found myself. Over the years, at various stages, solo travel has played many roles in my life—therapist, lover, friend, guide, partner-in-crime and so on.

VOICES CREW CUT

THE AIRPORT IS MY AQUARIUM IN AN AIRPORT, EVERYONE GIVES THEIR EMOTIONS A FREE RUN AND EVERYONE IS ON THE PHONE. IMPORTANTLY, EVERYONE IS ALSO EQUAL

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saying goodbye to some people, even though I knew I’d be back in couple of days. Maybe it’s the idea of leaving a place, maybe it’s the uneasiness of being disconnected for those few hours, or the trust we place in technology we don’t completely understand. Whatever it is that governs these emotions, I’ve hardly seen anyone who isn’t on their phone texting or talking just before take-off. And nine times out of ten, I assume they are communicating with people they care about. That is another thing that is common between everyone in an airport—the heightened emotions and the need to communicate with someone. The inference could be presumptuous but

The little universe within the airport is a perfect microcosm of the larger world outside maybe secretly we’re still awestruck by the mysterious sky, or maybe it’s simply comforting to know that there is someone dear and familiar beyond the runway borders. Recently I was telling someone how airports fascinate me. Turns out airports fascinate him even more. One of the first things he said to me was, “Airports sort of make everyone equal. Time binds everyone. They have to abide by it. Everyone is going somewhere.” It made me think that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you know, you still have to do what everyone else is doing if you want to catch your flight. This brought to mind an instance from my travels last month. The family in front of me in the

immigration queue couldn’t find some of its members. Oblivious to the fact that his brothers and two of his children were lost in the airport, I saw a grandfather listening intently to his grandchild explaining flights, airplane food and earaches. I chuckled remembering the time I did the same with my grandfather when I was about six. I took my first flight at three months old, and by the time my grandfather was on his second flight in his 50s, I’d already taken a few, so it seemed natural that I should explain things to him. Maybe if we were taking a train or bus, I would be the one listening. I was more comfortable at the airport than he was but after the conversation I’d just had, I realised that to the grouchy security personnel stamping my boarding pass and wise-looking gentleman in the next line, it didn’t really matter what I knew. The little universe within the airport is in many ways a perfect microcosm of the larger world outside. There are characters and stories, rules and systems, romanticism and facts. As writer Alain de Botton says, “Had one been asked to take a Martian to visit a single place that neatly captures the gamut of themes running through our civilisation…then it would have to be to the departures and arrivals halls that one would head.”

Rumela Basu is Assistant Editor at National Geographic Traveller India. She loves poetry and food, and travels not just to discover new destinations, but also aspects of herself.

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irports make me bold. Given the security we see in international airports today, bravado might not be the safest of emotions, yet I find myself feeling dauntless. This sense of bravado, or even freedom, is perhaps often born when amidst strangers. As you look around a terminal and watch its people, you are left with the abiding sense that the airport is just a dry run for the destination. You are not there yet, but your journey has already begun. You feel like a different person from the one you are at home. At least I do. I feel more responsible—my bags, passport, identity card must be handy, the hot chocolate finished before I board the flight lest I spill it. I am confident about the supervision-free choices I make—a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream (the large one) from duty-free, the aisle seat over the window, and people-watching from my perch in the first floor coffee shop. I can be whoever I want to be. So can everyone else. In all my travels, I have found that there is nothing more amusing than watching people at airports. Confused first-time travellers, people in business suits glaring at their phones, headphone-wearing jaywalkers, excited children, bored adults, cosy couples, quiet readers, and backpackers with their 20-odd kilo rucksacks, are all found at airports. What intrigues me is that no matter what the purpose, everyone and everything is in a constant state of motion—machines buzzing, people talking, reading, or thinking, and a constant play of emotions on every face. While the machines don’t have much of a choice, it is the study of emotions that is interesting. I have never boarded an aircraft without

The Voyager

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PHOTO COURTESY: AHTUSHI DESHPANDE

THE EMPRESS OF HER MALADY

How the Manaslu trek brought back normalcy in a breast cancer survivor’s life

26 AROUND THE WORLD IN 18 MONTHS 30 CYCLING INTO THE WILD 36 MOVING LIKE A LONE FOX 

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44 HAPPY CAMPER 50 THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH 54 THE LIFE AQUATIC OF EMILY RICHMOND 

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58 REVOLUTIONARY ROAD 60 DOING HER OWN MARKET RESEARCH 

JUNE 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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THE VOYAGER CASSIE DE PECOL

AROUND THE WORLD IN 18 MONTHS CASSIE DE PECOL CAME AWAY FROM A TRIP TO 196 COUNTRIES HUMBLED BY LAKSHMI SANKARAN

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he town of Hawf along Yemen’s border with Oman is as innocuous as places go—it’s a hot and dusty dryland that’s not exactly teeming with people. But on February 7 this year, that little spot must have felt like the centre of the universe to Cassie De Pecol. Dressed in a black top, billowing loose grey pants and head covered in a black shawl, there she was, exhausted yet exultant at capping 18 months and 10 days of travel. De Pecol had visited 195 countries in the world and Yemen was her 196th and final stop on this whirlwind expedition. As a fitting coda to this journey, she was welcomed into a local family’s home with food. Later, in her concluding note on her blog, she would describe that 26

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meal of fish, rice, salad and home-made sauces in glowing terms and thank those strangers whom she had trusted her life with. Touching down in every country is not impossible in today’s hyperconnected times. But it’s still a daunting prospect. The 28-year-old’s feat made her the fastest American woman to do so. The caveat was that she became the fastest documented woman to accomplish this—she kept meticulous proof and records of her presence in every nation. “This project was more than just about following my dreams,” she says in an email conversation from Hong Kong. “I wanted to commit to something greater than myself.” During

the trip, which cost $111,000 (approx. `71,60,000) to fund, De Pecol travelled solo. But more than the voyage itself, it was marshalling resources beforehand that took maximum effort. “A month turned into six, which turned into 12, which turned into 18 before I was ready to finally take off,” she says.“I thought I could get donations and grants in order to fund myself, but it took an immense amount of research and networking to figure out how I could make it happen.” At some point in the planning stage, discussions about her security took precedence. “My parents and my financial sponsors had to consider kidnap and ransom insurance and think about whether I needed military

CASSIE DE PECOL

Cassie De Pecol familiarises herself with a falcon in the U.A.E. “The Middle East is so misunderstood,” she says.

THE VOYAGER CASSIE DE PECOL

personnel to escort me into some of the more strife-torn regions,” she says. Eventually, she decided against it and set forth on the expedition. De Pecol started off from Palau, a group of islands near Guam, on July 24, 2015. In each country, she spent a few days, usually acquainting herself with the sights and culture. From conflict zones to crime-ridden pockets, no matter where she was, her instincts kept her in good stead. “In conservative cultures, I made sure to dress appropriately while in places with high crime rates, I was careful about presenting myself as a westerner with money,” she says. In North Korea, she recalls a harrowing 30 minutes when she was crossing the border. “During

This expedition was more than just about following my dreams

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De Pecol believes that Antarctica (top) is, to this day, the most exquisite of all places that she has had the privilege to visit; De Pecol outside the Petra tomb (bottom) in Jordan.

Pecol never felt viscerally threatened or in danger. Largely because this was not the first time she had spent long stretches of her life in strange lands interacting with foreigners. In 2010, the Connecticut native took off to Europe with her brother Jason, stopping by Belgium, Germany and Switzerland among other places. While her sibling returned to normal life, De Pecol moved on to Turkey and spent the next two years couch-surfing and intermittently working in different countries.

Travelling is a great leveller, she believes. Countries have disparate national identities and lifestyles, but the cliché that some things are universal holds true. De Pecol’s view is not for the cynics of this world. She says, “What I’ve noticed among most people in every nation I’ve travelled to is that we all want a roof over our heads, a hot meal in front of us, the ability to provide for our families and just be happy. These are the common values that unite all of us.”

VADIM NEFEDOFF/SHUTTERSTOCK (PENGUINS); CASSIE DE PECOL (PETRA)

my time there I felt like I was walking on eggshells. At the border, the security guards held me up for half an hour because of some formality that the tour agency had not followed,” she says. But for most part, her memories are pleasant. The Middle East, in particular, left a lasting impression. “The people are some of the most welcoming and hospitable I’ve come across, while the landscapes are breathtaking. The food, music and history—it’s all enchanting,” she says. Personal landmarks were celebrated in faraway and exotic places. When De Pecol turned 27 in June 2016, she found herself in Mongolia. This was not a birthday she would be spending with close friends or family. “For a week, I was in the wilderness, in a yurt, free of Wi-Fi and a mobile connection, all by myself,” she recalls. There were many awe-inspiring moments throughout but she singles out being in Antarctica as the most special of them all, mainly for its unvarnished natural beauty. “Floating on the placid sea, everything felt silent. There were 30-foot waves crashing against the shore and high winds raging while I crossed Drake Passage. I was just transfixed watching penguins and sea lions, resting on icebergs,” she says. Barring a few stray incidents, De

THE VOYAGER DHRUV BOGRA

CYCLING INTO THE WILD CLOSE SHAVES WITH BEARS AND LIVING OFF THE GRID—INSIDE DHRUV BOGRA’S EPIC SOLO CROSSCOUNTRY TOUR OF THE GREAT AMERICAN CONTINENT BY LUBNA AMIR | PHOTOGRAPHS BY DHRUV BOGRA American Highway, from Alaska to Argentina, in its entirety if everything goes to plan. A dedicated cyclist in his youth, his passion fell by the wayside once his corporate career took off. A few years ago, he met someone in Mumbai who cycled his way to work. On an impulse, he bought a mountain bike for himself. From that moment, his biking dreams were reignited.

The Beginning

In a conversation from Peru, Bogra reminisces about rediscovering his passion as an adult. On weekdays, he often woke up at 4.30 a.m. to cycle

Quest, Bogra’s beloved bicycle, has been his trusted companion in his journey. Quest also keeps him going in places that are not as pleasant as Mount Robson Provincial Park in the Canadian Rockies.

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while weekends were meant for biking to the outskirts of either Mumbai or Delhi, wherever he was based for work. He also made friends with a group of cycling enthusiasts. The group’s weekend rides started to get longer and soon enough, they were training to cycle from Manali to Khardung La. That journey, undertaken in 2011, was arduous and heady, and was Bogra’s introduction to touring cycling. He says, “The success and the achievement of this [tour] spurred me on to start looking at bigger biking goals for myself.” The idea of the sport being selfsustained, with no support vehicle to

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hen a man is on a solo cycling trip for nearly a year, the comforts of modern life begin to fade and all he is left with is nature, harsh and majestic by turns. Travelling for days without meeting a soul, he becomes attuned to the rhythms of the wind and the mysterious ways of animals. Alone at the end of a long day, he learns to grapple with his demons. Dhruv Bogra, a 49-year-old former corporate executive from Delhi, is on this remarkable journey right now. Currently in South America, he is only a few months away from accomplishing a feat unfathomable for the average person: riding through the Pan

THE VOYAGER DHRUV BOGRA

Three hundred kilometres above the Arctic Circle, North Slope, Alaska

Montana Lighthouse Hostel, California

Baja Desert, Mexico

fall back on and delving deeper into a territory, inspired and excited him. Touring cycling, as a sport, is not a norm in India. But that did not deter him. Bogra had found his next personal project: cross-country biking. For any cross-country bicyclist, three routes present the ultimate challenge: the Silk Route, Siberia and the PanAmerican Highway. After researching all three, he chose the Pan-American Highway mainly for its difficulty (it’s the most arduous), its varied terrain (the route traverses glaciers, deserts and tundra) and the cultural diversity (it goes through around 20 countries). As Bogra puts it, “I had this fascination for South America since I was a kid—the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas. This is a land I really wanted to go to.” It took him six months to figure out the kind of cycling gear he needed, and around five months to build the bike. Most of his gear and components were imported from across the world; the gear hub alone cost over a lakh rupees. His intensive training routine did not just include cycling; it also meant sleeping in a tent in his own house to get used to sleeping on the ground, wearing the same four T-shirts to learn how to live with less, and detailed research.

The Journey

Volcano Concepción, Ometepe, Nicaragua

Traversing through deserts, glaciers and volcanic mountains, Bogra has so far clocked 14,000 kilometres in 400 days.

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After spending hours every day poring over maps and blogs, his plan was to start from Deadhorse, Alaska, and end at Ushuaia, Argentina. Bogra’s friends and family laughed off his plan as one of his more fanciful ideas, but when he finally left, everyone wished him well. Since hitting the road, he has covered

THE VOYAGER DHRUV BOGRA

Bogra records his travel expeditions in a journal, often around campsites such as this one in Yukon’s Continental Divide Campground in Canada.

an average of 35 kilometres a day; in 400 days he has travelled 14,000 kilometres. During breaks, he pitches a tent at campsites or any resting place that looks inviting enough. Occasionally, he checks into spartan hostels or motels. In Alaska, when riding along less travelled and smaller roads, he had a few close encounters with bears. Bogra admits that to some locals he came across as “mad” for doing this and, they started referring to him as “The Bear Whisperer”. Twice, his health failed him when he suffered from typhoid. But instead of heading to a physician, he opted for self-diagnosis. “That’s a chance you have to take,” he says. “Medical aid is not always available. You may be in a very small town where there is no doctor, or you may not trust the doctor.” Luckily for him, there was a doctor he could trust when he consumed grasshoppers in Mexico and got a severe allergic reaction. Notwithstanding grasshoppers, Bogra is a fan of Central and South American food like chilaquiles (fried tortillas in green or red salsa), frijoles (a dish made with black beans), guacamole and pupuseria (tortillas with savoury stuffing). Despite carrying an alcohol stove and rations (which were used mostly during his travels in the U.S. and Canada, because eating out there was expensive), he indulged in local cuisines south of the American border. In cases where that’s not possible, he relies on his personal food kit stocked with nuts, oatmeal, butter, cheese and dried meat, for use in colder temperatures. Being on the road all by himself has made him reconsider some life choices—like his decision to eat meat. The dried meat, he carries only out 34

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of necessity, says Bogra. If anything, he wants to turn vegetarian once he’s “back to civilisation”. One of the transformational aspects of his journey has been an attitude that’s “more loving towards Mother Nature” and consumption of meat now induces guilt pangs in him.

shop and a gang war has started. It would be because of my bad luck that I happened to there, and not because I’m cycling alone.” There was never a moment when he felt threatened in Mexico; the country, according to him, has four levels of police patrolling during the night. This is not to suggest that travellers throw caution to the wind. Bogra merely urges them to exercise common sense. In Mexico, he was warned not to cycle in certain parts after 6 p.m. “The drug lords shoot first and ask questions later.” Even El Salvador, a country known in the international media as the murder capital of the world, was a humbling experience. “It is a society imprisoned by its own fears. All houses have electric fences, stores have grills and armed security guards,” he recalls. The world out there may often seem intimidating but Bogra is nonplussed. On the road, he has cut himself off from news feeds and breaking stories. “It didn’t change my life one bit. Not once did I feel I’m missing out on something by not reading the news,” he says. The overarching theme of his cycling trip is transformation, a word he often uses during conversation. “People keep telling me I’ve changed,” he says, of friends and family in India. For now though, his focus is on completing the journey by September. To refuel after that, he is planning another escape. “I want to go to the mountains to recuperate once I’m home,” he reveals. Clearly, despite a year of nomadic existence, Bogra’s wanderlust is alive and well.

The Discovery

This journey has shattered some of Bogra’s preconceived notions about places. He found that mobile connectivity atop a mountain in Guatemala is better than that in areas along America’s West Coast. And, that internet accessibility in Mexico is far better than that in Canada. South America consistently threw up surprises. Any concerns he had about his safety in countries like Mexico and El Salvador, notorious for their crime rates, were vastly exaggerated. He says, “If I do get hit by a bullet in Mexico, it’ll be because I’m sitting in a coffee

Bogra enjoyed dance performances in Nicaragua; In El Salvador, he came across a cheeky note left by a fellow traveller (middle).

THE VOYAGER RUSKIN BOND

MOVING LIKE A LONE FOX FROM SPENDING HOURS AT OBSCURE RAILWAY STATIONS TO SLEEPING IN WAYSIDE DHABAS, RUSKIN BOND RECOMMENDS TAKING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED BY RADHIKA RAJ

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rhododendron. “A writer must always have a window. Preferably two,” he says, as we recall the tales of wildflowers, macaques, pines and birds that this view has inspired. The most famous sight is the haunted, uninhabited Pari Tibba or Fairy Hill, burnt down by lightning. Bond’s fans religiously scale Pari Tibba on their trips to Mussoorie. “I was seduced by fairies there,” he tells us with a straight face. Like the tales of ghosts and fairies of Pari Tibba, Bond’s travelogues are almost always part-fiction, part-real, and deeply inspired by his own idyllic adventures, and the people he meets on them. Set in seemingly unremarkable places—dusty Indian towns, lonely railway platforms, passable hamlets in the hills, and seedy hotels—these stories are loved for their generous

In Dehradun, where Bond lived in his 20s and 30s, his long walks earned him the title of “the road inspector”

Bond grew up playing on the beaches of Jamnagar (left). As a young adult, he enjoyed reading in the hills of Mussoorie (middle). Now 83, the author finally feels at home amidst the many book towers that populate his living room in Landour (right).

humour and delightful plots, starring bakers, bidi-smoking farmers, stationmasters, garrulous khansamas, stuffy schoolteachers, and an occasional leopard. “I like neglected places. I find them charming,” he says. Some of his popular travelogues, such as Tales of the Open Road (2006) and the more recent Small Towns, Big Stories (2017), transport you to the lesser-known north Indian towns and hillside hamlets such as Chhutmalpur, Najibabad, Barlowganj, Shamli or Pipalnagar. Even when going somewhere wellknown, Bond doesn’t head straight to the monuments. “I remember writing a piece on the Taj (Mahal) that had very little to do with the Taj.” The short story, “The Taj at High Noon” recounts chasing peacocks on the mausoleum’s lawns and conversations with the gardener’s son over sweet-and-sour fruit. Years later, Bond wrote in Journey Down the Years (2017) that it was not the sight of the

PHOTO COURTESY: RUSKIN BOND (AS A BABY AND AN ADULT), SAPTAK NARULA (BOND AT HIS HOME IN LANDOUR)

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hen I finally met Ruskin Bond—author of over 140 novels, children’s books, travelogues and short story collections— it was a result of a well-plotted conspiracy. First, I pitched a story around the big release of the 83-year-old master storyteller’s latest title, Lone Fox Dancing: My Autobiography. Persistent calls to his publishers finally secured me an interview, in Bond’s home town of Landour, Mussoorie, no less. Finally, my partner-in-crime and I booked a room in the mishmash Bollywood-HollywoodTibetan guest house that shares a wall with Ivy Cottage, the tin-roofed home on a ridge where Bond has lived with his adopted family for three decades. “I can throw stones at your roof!” he laughs, when he hears we are living next door. Locals will willingly point you to Bond’s home, but it is easy to miss the unassuming entrance. Narrow brick-red stairs lead to a warm, yellow room packed with thick wooden bookcases and precarious book towers, delicately balanced on chairs, tables and stairs. An adjacent balcony with a window overlooks Mussoorie’s rolling valleys of maple, oak and Himalayan

THE VOYAGER RUSKIN BOND

Taj that stayed with him, but the “sharp flavour of the kamrakh (star fruit).” In search of conversation, Bond has taken several long solo walks off the beaten track, which he highly recommends to young travellers. “I have come to believe that the best kind of walk, or journey, is the one in which you have no particular destination when you set out.” Sometimes, these walks have ended in evening chats in chai shops, or sleeping in wayside dhabas. At these hillside shops there are always old-timers who have ready stories to tell. “Older people have stories,” he says, “the young are still looking for them.” At one such tea shop, he made friends with the owner’s father, who had served as a soldier in the British army and was stationed for a few months in Paris during World War II. Though now wrinkly, bearded and retired on a modest pension, he kept remembering and talking of a French girl. “The last place you’d expect to hear a love story in Paris, eh?” asks Bond. In Dehradun, where Bond lived in his 20s and 30s, his long walks earned him the title of “the road inspector”. But some of his earliest (and best) stories, written in the 1950s and ’60s, when the Indian Railways were still developing, are about trains. “You sit on a railway platform long enough, and you will have a story to tell,” Bond says. In his autobiography, he writes that “The Ambala Junction gave me ‘The Woman on Platform 8’, the Kalka Shimla Railway route gave me ‘The Tiger in the 38

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Tunnel’, and a small wayside halt on the fringe of the Shiwalik forests gave me the The Night Train to Deoli (1988).” Bond regrets that he is no longer fit to travel on trains, and though he does have funny encounters at airports, he says plane journeys are too fast and nothing much happens in between. At airports people occasionally recognise him, or mistake him for someone else. A few months ago, a woman at the Delhi airport asked, “Are you Bejan Daruwalla?”—a popular, portly Indian astrologer. “I said no, but I offered to read her palm,” he says. Often children approach him, nervously. “Once a kid told me that he loved my book, Tom Sawyer,” he chuckles. “So I signed his autograph as Mark Twain!” But Bond still yearns for the steady rhythm of a train journey. His grandfather was once a stationmaster, and Bond wonders if his fascination has something to do with that. “There is still some engine soot in my blood,” he writes in Journey Down the Years. Even now, he sometimes buys a platform ticket so he can settle down on a station bench and wile away the hours watching trains. Three years ago, during a road trip to the Himalayan foothills, Bond decided to take a detour to Kansrao, an obscure railway station on the edge of the Shiwalik hills, which he had spotted on his train journeys from Dehradun to Delhi. “I had never seen anybody on this station. I was very curious.” Though trains pass through Kansrao, only one

stops there. The long, lonely station is run by a middle-aged man, who has to lock himself up in his cabin on summer nights, because elephants descend from the hills to drink water from the station’s water hydrant. Bond discovered that the stationmaster had grown up in Mussoorie, like himself. In his younger days, the man had played cricket for Mussoorie-based actor Tom Alter’s team. Bond had once played for Alter’s team too, but “they threw me out eventually because I was too lazy and wouldn’t run between the wickets.” As the sun set, the stationmaster returned to his cabin. “There he was sitting all alone, like a character straight out of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. There was a whole story there.” Romance, as Bond reminds us, lurks in the most unlikely places.

BOND’S BEST TRAVEL TALES Lone Fox Dancing: My Autobiography Non-Fiction  Tales of An Open Road Non-fiction  Small Towns, Big Stories Fiction/Non-fiction  Roads to Mussoorie Non-fiction  Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas Fiction/Non-fiction 

RCHPHOTO/ISTOCK (TRAIN), PHOTO COURTESY: GAUTAM BOND (BOOK COVER), PHOTO COURTESY: RUSKIN BOND (MOUNTAIN)

Some of Bond’s best stories recreate scenes from crowded railway platforms and trains (left). In fact, even today the author finds airplane journeys boring. What does excite him is this view of Mussoorie’s rolling hills from his window (right).

THE VOYAGER AHTUSHI DESHPANDE

THE EMPRESS OF HER MALADY UNDERTAKING HER TOUGHEST EVER TREK BROUGHT BACK A SENSE OF NORMALCY IN THIS BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR'S LIFE BY SAYONI SINHA storms, even the ones raging inside. On her first trek, to Beas Kund at the age of 21, “there were no smartphones or GPS tracking devices and despite frantically looking for it, we weren’t able to find the lake.” She never stopped thinking about it, though, and years later trekked the route with her 10-year-old daughter, eventually finding the waterbody. But the cancer treatment tested even Ahtushi’s resilience. “After every chemotherapy session, my knees would hurt and all I would think is if I would be able to trek after all this,” she says. “There are two things a woman never wants to lose—her hair and her breasts, the hallmarks of femininity. Breast cancer directly attacks both these aspects, leading to considerable adjustments.” Ahtushi dealt with this difficult time by documenting her journey through a photography project and subsequent exhibition, The Colour of my Cancer.

Ahtushi had first heard of Manaslu on an expedition to the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal, a few months before her diagnosis. Her guide told her about the trek, which was recently converted into a teahouse circuit. “I returned to Delhi and forgot about it. When it came up again in a conversation a few months later during my treatment, I decided to trek to it after my surgery.” Ahtushi began the 14-day Manaslu Circuit Trek from the roadhead at Soti Khola, a small town on the banks of the raging Budhi Gandaki river. The path meanders upriver, along the ancient salt trade route of Tibet, following the deep river gorge, crossing picturesque waterfalls and across suspension bridges set amidst an ever-changing forest cover. “Manaslu means ‘mountain of the spirit’ and has a cloud deity, as a cloud hovers over its peak. In April, the sky is clearer and the cloud deity is nowhere to be seen,” says Ahtushi.

The rocky descent from Larkye La, which is part of the Manaslu Circuit Trek, offers stunning views of the Annapurna on the left and the Himlung Himal on the right.

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n a cool April morning this year, Ahtushi Deshpande stood in the village of Lho in Nepal, dwarfed by Manaslu, the world’s eighth highest peak, which rises just east of the Annapurna massif—like a white dagger shining in a cloudless blue sky. She was in the lower reaches of the valley on the fifth day of the Manaslu Circuit Trek, and the first spectacular sighting of the mountain stopped her in her tracks. Though the 47-year-old travel and documentary photographer already had a dozen major peaks under her belt, Manaslu would be one of her tougher climbs. What made the accomplishment even more special, was that Ahtushi had just recovered from aggressive midstage breast cancer. In October 2015, Ahtushi was diagnosed with the life-threatening condition. After processing her initial shock, she realised that years of trekking had conditioned her to weather

THE VOYAGER AHTUSHI DESHPANDE

“Besides the stunning and everchanging views of Manaslu, there are over 10 peaks visible en route. That I witnessed sweeping views of these white giants day after day, against the backdrop of clear blue skies was a welcome anomaly.” As she trekked through the subtropical jungle in the lower reaches, to forests of oak, rhododendron, walnut and blue pine by the third day of the trek, Ahtushi found diverse scenery along the trail. The path gradually climbs high above the gorge, where spring wildflowers abound and the vegetation thins to juniper and birch trees, then high-altitude lichen and tussock covered hillsides.“Clocking a total of 240 kilometers, I ventured off

Deshpande sat in silence with a lone shepherdess, who lived in a stone hut with only her yaks for company. She felt “life opening out in beautiful ways after having done the cancer journey”

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Ahtushi Deshpande is no stranger to circumstances that test her mind and body, be it chemotherapy to battle breast cancer (bottom), or completing the Manaslu Circuit Trek in April this year (top).

good views, we kicked off the pass day at 3.30 a.m. My lungs beat against my chest as I took slow laboured steps.” The approach to the pass is long, with an equally long descent—about 10 hours. But the views of Annapurna II (26,040 feet), Cheo Himal (22,375 feet), Kang Guru (22,900 feet), Gyaji Kung (23,065 feet), Himlung Himal (23,380 feet) and the suspended glaciers that drain these giants, more than made up for the journey. “Needless to say, I felt ecstatic for another clear day on a pass notorious for sudden snow storms,” Ahtushi says. At the pass, Ahtushi strung up a

prayer flag she had carried, next to others blowing gloriously in the wind. It was an emotional moment. Exactly two years ago, she had put up a similar flag at the Annapurna base camp. “After being diagnosed with cancer, there were times when I wondered if my weakened body would ever set foot atop a mountain again,” she says. “Yet here I was, six months after the treatment, feeling the fittest I’ve ever been.” It was the spirit of Manaslu that had restored Ahtushi’s much longed-for feeling of normalcy. “I was back in the saddle with a bang,” she says.

PHOTO COURTESY: AHTUSHI DESHPANDE

the main trail several times. Entering the hidden valley of Pung Gyen Gompa was like venturing into a forbidden land. The meditation caves are cut into sheer cliffs below the main summit of Manaslu and its eastern pinnacle. A sweeping chunk of glacier tongue sits alongside. The thawing meadows surrounded by the high mountain wall of the Himalayas and its glaciers made for an idyllic setting.” Ahtushi sat in silence with a lone shepherdess, who lived in a stone hut in this valley with only her yaks for company. She felt “life opening out in beautiful ways after having done the cancer journey.” The pace of the trek allows for good acclimatisation, from 2,200 feet to 16,750 feet at Larkye La, which connects the Budhi Gandaki and Marsyangdi river systems. On the approach road to Larkye La, Ahtushi stopped at Gurung and Tibetan villages, and quaint Buddhist monasteries. “In order to make good time and get

THE VOYAGER SARAVANA KUMAR

HAPPY CAMPER A FORMER TECHIE WHO NOW MAKES A LIVING SHOOTING TIME-LAPSE VIDEOS OF THE HIMALAYAS, TELLS US HOW HE FOUND HIS SPIRITUAL HOME AND WHY HE LOVES THE SPRINGS OF SPITI BY GARIMA GUPTA | PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARAVANA KUMAR

When shooting a time-lapse video of the sunrise in Kibber, disappointment changed to awe for Kumar as clouds gave way to a colourful sky.

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was walking to catch the early morning prayers at the monastery in Komic, the highest motorable village in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, when I caught sight of a sun-burnt backpacker washing his utensils in the spring outside the monastery. In the distance was his one-man tent with some camping equipment strewn around. The night before, the temperature had dropped to 2°C and howling, cold winds shook the village. Coming straight from my warm, blanketstrewn cocoon, my first question to him was incredulous: “Did you really spend the night out in this pasture?” The answer was phlegmatic: “It was warm enough in my tent and sleeping bag. I’m used to this.” We began chatting as 39-year-old Saravana Kumar rolled up his camp with practiced, economical movements. He was on a twomonth-long one-man expedition through the region, shouldering camping and camera equipment to capture high-definition time-lapse 44

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footage of the majestic Spiti landscape. Kumar, a former engineer, has been travelling and shooting full-time since 2010, making time-lapse videos while trekking in the Himalayas and selling the footage to photo outlets and video libraries. He has been there thrice and spends a few months at a time, trying to capture the different landscapes across seasons. He travels with a tent, a high-altitude sleeping bag, an 11-inch MacBook, a stove and some utensils, his Canon 5D Mark II and Panasonic GX85 cameras, Carl Zeiss lenses and tripod, power banks, extra

Sunlight and clouds raced across the pristine surface of the lake, and the night footage was like a NASA documentary on the Milky Way

batteries and back-up hard drives. Trekking in the high-altitude desert landscape of Spiti and Ladakh is a harsh endurance test. Altitude sickness is a real danger if you haven’t bothered to acclimatise. Hiking up to Komic is especially tough—the village is located at 15,049 feet above sea level or roughly halfway up Mount Everest. The short walk up from the village to the monastery had left me winded, so Kumar’s mode of travel seemed almost superhuman to me. “I’m fascinated by how the nomads live in these regions, how they migrate, what they eat, how they make do with what little they have,” he later told me. It’s a philosophy he aims to emulate in the way he lives himself and how he travels. At Chandra Taal lake, an hour’s ride from Kunzum Pass, Kumar camped with the shepherds by the lake, and stayed for three days shooting his videos. Later I’d discover how astonishingly close he had been to the waters, when I camped there just days after his

THE VOYAGER SARAVANA KUMAR

From the Talthak meadows (top left) and morning prayers at Komic (top right), to the sunset in Kanamo (bottom right) and the people at Hikkim (bottom left), the beauty of Spiti has drawn Kumar back to the valley time and again to shoot videos and to explore.

expedition and found that all campsites were pitched two kilometres away from the lake to contain the pollution. He showed me the first cut of his Chandra Taal time-lapse video. Sunlight and clouds raced across the pristine surface of the crescent-shaped lake, and the night footage was like a NASA documentary on the Milky Way. Shooting a time-lapse video is an exercise in patience and luck: you need to do a recce of every new place, figuring out what to capture and in what sequence. If you miss your shot, you have to wait a whole day. Even then, the weather can turn bad or it could get cloudy. Once you set up your shot, you wait and watch, and record, adjusting the exposure as the light changes. The loss of footage would be devastating, so all clips are backed up on multiple hard drives. Kumar’s full-time travelling might seem like a big shift for a former techie. 46

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After completing his engineering degree from Coimbatore, he took a job in Bengaluru where his colleagues introduced him to trekking. Bitten by the bug, he worked on creating his own travel portal. Even when travelling for work, he sought out the country’s remote regions. “My first high-altitude trek was in China in January 2007, a horse trail in the Sichuan region. We bedded down in the nomads’ tents, sheepskin blankets layered over our sleeping bags. This was also my first brush with Tibetan culture,” he recalls. Once back in India, he started taking longer breaks from work. Hiking and camping in Sikkim alone for the first time made him realise, “I can do this on my own.” That’s when he fell in love with the Himalayas. It was a photographer friend who first showed him time lapse videos, and Kumar immediately took to them. “I really liked the concept of staying put in one

place, it felt natural to me,” he says. He started posting videos of his journeys online. In the summer of 2015, the motorcycle manufacturer Royal Enfield asked him to produce videos capturing the adventure of riding a 2012 model Classic 500 in Ladakh. This was his first commercially commissioned work. It was a push to leave the tech world behind. “I’d worked on my travel portal for four years without taking the final step. I realised that even with a start-up I would be back in the corporate world, and I really wanted to get away from that notion of success,” says Kumar. Giving up a steady income to travel full-time was a big risk but, “we have just one life and I wanted to live it on my own terms”. On his second visit to Spiti in the monsoon of 2016—when we met—he had planned an exhaustive itinerary: starting from Chandra Taal, he made his way through Himachal, from

THE VOYAGER SARAVANA KUMAR

Key monastery, Gette and Tashigang, onward to Kibber and Chicham. He made a pit-stop at Kaza then followed the Langza, Hikkim, Komic and Demul circuit, and later trekked to Dhankar, Tabo and Mane villages towards the Kinnaur side. The last leg was his favourite: a solo trek through the lush Pin valley towards the Bhabha Pass, leaving behind the golden aridity characteristic of Spiti. “This time, I completely ran out of money and I was camping as much as I could to avoid the homestays. Once when I came down to Kaza, the ATMs weren’t working. Even though people offered to loan me money, I decided to fast. I just drank water for those two days,” he says, matterof-factly, to my question about how he financed the trip. The biggest discovery for him on this visit was the layered landscape of Spiti, the changing colours of the mountains, and the hidden springs which are a boon to a camper. Every village has arable land at its boundaries; beyond those lie the grazing areas for cows, sheep, goats

and donkeys. After walking for two to three hours up the slopes you’ll find the yak pastures. Further on are glaciers and snow-capped mountains. “I made it a point to go up from each village. That’s when you find interesting things, like the spring that suddenly gushed out of the barren cliffs above Mane village,” he says. Travelling in these remote landscapes with a complete lack of connectivity— only BSNL works here—isn’t hard. “Now I have to promote myself on social media, post pictures on Instagram, but I’m the happiest when I get no cellphone

signal,” he insists. He does have to grapple with food issues while on the road though: “At the beginning of the trip, I was eating a lot of processed food, anything that could be cooked quickly. By the time I reached Dhankar, I’d lost a lot of weight and was quite weak,” he says. His solution was to start soaking rice and dal overnight, to cook in the morning. While trekking, he’d seal rice and dal with water in Ziploc bags so it was ready to be cooked for lunch. When I ask him why he keeps returning to the Himalayas, he takes a moment then replies. “I’ve done meditation courses and attended satsangs in Rishikesh. I’ve read Advaita philosophy. The people who are involved in this are seeking a deeper spiritual realm. They are told to let go of attachments, to accept that nothing will matter once we die. I realised that without trying I am in this mental state in the mountains. My bank balance is zero, my parents are growing older, so I have problems in life but these things fall away.”

Kumar took three days to complete a four-hour trek from Kunzum pass to Chandra Taal lake because he kept stopping to view the Chandrabhaga mountain range (bottom); He believes that locals, especially kids, make the best guides (top) and can take you to undiscovered spots.

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THE VOYAGER ADITYA RA J KAPOOR

For the past seven years, Aditya Raj Kapoor's Royal Enfield has been his trusty companion on his travels across the country.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

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or the last few years of Shammi Kapoor’s life, his son, Aditya Raj Kapoor, busied himself caring for the veteran actor. After his father died, Aditya Raj, a retired management consultant, felt he had lost his purpose. Seeing him at a loose end a year later, his son recommended investing in a motorbike—even though the then 56-year-old had never been on a twowheeler. In 2012, Kapoor bought a Royal Enfield, named it Baby Blue and decided to see the world on it. But first, he mastered “road respect” at a biking club in Mumbai, completed two trips across India, and acquired a “call name” (every biker has one): Lord Fusebox. Eight months after acquiring Baby Blue, Kapoor invited his wife Priti to join him on a 5,022-kilometre round trip from Mumbai to Lahaul and Spiti. Half expecting her to bail out, he meticulously planned the trip, staying 50

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mostly at state tourism hotels, as “they have the best views”. “Every single day for 25 days, I anticipated that she would be fed up and take a flight back from the nearest airport,” says Kapoor. He later summarised his trip in a book, Bike on a Hike. Priti gamely joined him on his adventures, but the couple did meet with a few hitches. “We were scaling the Jalori Pass in Shoja district of Himachal Pradesh, which is 10,000 feet above sea level,” says Kapoor. “Naturally, we were restricted to five kmph, as the road was very treacherous, full of stones and dust. For three hours, I rode in first gear as we crossed the steep incline. Eventually, I got exhausted, lost balance and we both fell. Nobody was injured, besides our egos.” That was the point when Priti broke into tears for the first time. “I felt bad for getting her into such a situation. But we collected ourselves,

hugged each other, and made calls from a passer-by’s phone to the hotel. We were concentrating so much on the road, that we missed the turn to our hotel. I made it up to my wife by taking a three-day break before the next leg.” While descending the pass, after 500 kilometres of rough mountainous terrain, the Kapoors found themselves at a hairpin bend, with a hatchback approaching them. “I couldn’t take any risk as I had a pillion and luggage, so I stopped to allow the vehicle to pass. The other vehicle also stopped, and after waiting, we both approached at the same time. I barely managed to brake before collision, lost balance and fell.” A crowd (from 10 cars queued along the road) gathered to help the Kapoors up. Some people accused him of being a “rash driver”, saying he “should’ve been more careful since he was riding with his wife”. “I knew that they were only

TUNALI MUKHERJEE

ADITYA RAJ KAPOOR PLANS TO TRAVEL THE WORLD ON HIS BIKE BY SAYONI SINHA

THE VOYAGER ADITYA RA J KAPOOR

concerned about our well-being,” says Kapoor, who became even more cautious for the remainder of the journey. In 2014, Kapoor took off for another trip across India, Bhutan and Nepal with a fellow biker from his club. They left Mumbai on October 21—Shammi Kapoor’s birthday—and rode from Mumbai to Khardung La in Ladakh, to Dehradun via Manali, and to Nepal through Ranikhet. From Nepal, they cruised up to Sikkim, descended to Paro and Thimphu, then Puri, and finally all the way to Kanyakumari before returning to Mumbai. They covered 13,000 kilometres in 73 days. “Ordinarily, this trip shouldn’t take more than a month but we decided to take it slow and enjoy our ride,” Kapoor says. “We stayed in Bhutan for five days and travelled across Ladakh for 15. We stopped at Pondicherry for three days and spent Diwali in Ranchi. But on reaching Kanyakumari we were so homesick and tired that we rode straight back to Mumbai.” While Kapoor was prepared for any eventuality, the first nine days were gruelling, with constant stop-start rain. “When we reached Punjab, we took shelter at the Golden Temple, and prayed to the Maharaj to rid us of this miserable rain. Our gear was always wet, the roads were slippery and it was difficult to ride. Our prayers were heard and it didn’t rain until the last leg of our trip in the southern tip of India,” laughs Kapoor. Unlike his previous trip with Priti, this time Kapoor roughed it out, staying

at cheap motels and dhabas, where strangers treated him with utmost generosity. He recalls a memorable encounter at a highway eatery in Jharkhand. Bored of the monotonous food he invariably found in such modest establishments, Kapoor walked into the kitchen, and enquired about lunch. “When the cook pointed to the fresh catch of the day, I asked him to fry the fish with some masala. The owner, who had been observing us, enquired where we were from.” On learning about their trip, he jokingly asked if their wives had

Being on the road has altered Aditya Raj Kapoor’s perception of humanity, in every Indian state he has visited evacuated them from their homes. He invited the bikers to wash up before their meal. “The freshwater catch from the nearby pond was delectable. The owner refused to let us pay, and even offered his place for the night. We offered the sum to the cook instead.” Being on the road, Kapoor says, has altered his perception of humanity, in every state he’s visited. Discovering that they were long-distance travellers, a small roadside dhaba in a Punjab village cooked them fresh food beyond its business hours. In Odisha, a policeman made them feel like royalty. “Just before

we reached Cuttack, following hours of riding, we were a bit clueless about the route,” Kapoor recalls. “Exhaustion had altered our road sense. We reached out to a policeman at a crossroad, explained our situation and told him that we wanted to get to our hotel in Bhubaneswar before sunset. He advised us to follow the road till we met another policeman who could guide us.” The officer then blew his whistle, bringing the traffic on all sides to a halt to let the bikers pass. Kapoor’s ambitious world trip, which he has been planning for nearly a year and a half, involves studying every route on Google, binge-watching YouTube videos, and even chatting with bikers who’ve completed similar rides. He calls it “The Quest”, and plans to cover 50,000 kilometres in 10 months. Kapoor will fly to Vladivostok in East Russia, kicking off with a 60-day ride to Moscow along the Trans-Siberian Highway. Then, Kapoor will ride to Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and the U.K. From London, Kapoor will take a second flight to Newark. “In the U.S., my son will accompany me, and I will go to meet my daughter on my bike. My last flight will be to Indonesia, and from there, I’ll ride to Malaysia via Singapore and get to Thailand, Myanmar and to Moreh village in Manipur.” Kapoor’s Quest will take him places, but for the moment, he’s concentrating on another first: perfecting biryani for his Couchsurfing hosts in Russia.

Be it roadside dhabas (left), restaurants (middle), or the dizzying heights of Tiger's Nest in Bhutan (right), Kapoor’s drives brim with a sense of discovery.

PHOTO COURTESY: ADITYA RAJ KAPOOR

Stumbling upon beavers (left) en route to Tso Moriri Lake and driving to Chang La (right) pepped up Aditya Raj Kapoor's (middle) travels across Ladakh.

THE VOYAGER EMILY RICHMOND

THE LIFE AQUATIC OF EMILY RICHMOND AFTER A DECADE SPENT TRAVELLING ON HER BOAT, AN AMERICAN SOLO SAILOR SAYS SHE ALWAYS ONLY BELONGS TO AN ELSEWHERE BY BHAVYA DORE

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en years ago, Emily Richmond graduated from college and bought herself a boat. Not a standard graduation gift to yourself. But then nothing about Richmond, 32, an intrepid American solo sailor has been standard. She has sailed past pirates, been adopted by a Papua New Guinean tribe and journeyed across more 54

than 30,000 nautical miles of ocean, alone. Richmond grew up reading National Geographic magazines, thick volumes that packed in their iconic yellow borders stories of marvellous places and people from remote parts. For a girl growing up in the U.S., it felt like a portal to another universe. College had been unsatisfying, and she itched

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for something more edifying. “I wanted to go see and learn stuff,” she says, on the phone from North Carolina, where she is now. “I had been to school and got my degrees but I felt like I didn’t know anything. I felt like a fraud… I felt like the university system was just a factory system to raise us all the same way.” That’s how the rickety little $1,000

boat came into the picture. “So I just wanted to strike off and go see other cultures, hopefully make friends along the way and learn a little something.” The first little something she had to learn though, was how to sail. And she learned that skill, at sea, on her maiden trip to Panama at 21. “It’s a really good way to learn,” she says, plaintively.

PHOTO COURTESY: EMILY RICHMOND

Emily Richmond, aboard Bobbie, the boat on which she sailed around the world for five years.

“Because you have to learn.” Richmond had been to Europe earlier, but it wasn’t drastically different from what she knew in the U.S. “I wanted my whole world turned upside down,” she says. “Which to me, is why you travel.” In January 2010, she left Los Angeles, California with a mandate to see the world. The romance of the sea was a very strong pull, but the first prosaic note struck when her engine sputtered and died early on. So she pretty much had to wing it on wind power and good fortune. The open seas, the brigands that prowl them, the possibility of storms, none of this daunted her— then or now. “I have never really felt scared,” she says. “When you say you are going to sea, people talk about the dangers of the weather. But I can’t remember ever being scared of that. People are the more dangerous things, and most of them are not. You have to be

open and vulnerable to making friends.” During her years away she has had “amazing relationships” with the full spectrum of humanity: from avocado farmers and Vietnamese shipping captains to Indonesian immigration officials and tribes living on remote mountain tops. Her journeys have spanned the islands in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Central America, from Samoa and East Timor to the Pitcairn Islands and Costa Rica. People sail, ride and fly their way around the globe, chasing records and headlines. But Richmond had neither those ambitions nor a fully pre-determined plan. “It was not just to say ‘oh I’ve been around the world’,” she says. “For me a period of long distance sailing was essential because I actually wanted to go to these places that are so hard to get to, except by boat.” There was no itinerary or bucket list. She’d drop anchor and stay for a while,

sometimes months on end. “For me it was about the experience of being there,” she says. “Being among people who were so culturally different from the place I had come from.” But perpetually being on the road—or in her case, the high seas—means forming bonds, only to have them dissolve a few weeks or months later. “There is a constant regret that you have to leave people. I wish I could be in all those places at once,” she says, “or any place other than here.” Here is now the east coast of the U.S. and Richmond sounds wistful, constrained by being grounded on terra Americana as she works on her book. A boat in the middle of the vast ocean isn’t the loneliest place to be, that place is actually home. “I can’t wait to be gone again,” she says, her voice suffused with yearning. “It can be so isolating in the U.S.,” she continues. “It’s all about going to your job and being productive. The spiritual side

I have never got sick of travelling. I absolutely cannot think of anything better because travel allows you to be in a constant state of wonder and curiosity

Richmond’s (bottom right) travels on her current vessel, Bobbie, have led her to places like Semporna, Malaysia (bottom left), where, in 2014, she spent six weeks; Bobbie is always equipped with food supplies and GPS required for months-long solo sailing (top).

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PHOTO COURTESY: EMILY RICHMOND

THE VOYAGER EMILY RICHMOND

I ask her how her travels in reality measured up to whatever crazy, romantic ideas she had in her head when she first started out. “It’s been everything I thought it would be, and more,” she says, emphatically. “I have never got sick of it. I absolutely cannot think of anything better because travel allows you to be in a constant state of wonder and curiosity.” There’s a heightened sense of awareness, an alertness and openness that becomes one’s default setting. It also lets you be apart, untethered to social or familial ties, something Richmond finds liberating. “Travel is so much about solitude and the direct experience of nature,” she says. “When you are completely separated from people you become more of your animal self. And that is more interesting to me.” It has been more than a

For Richmond, the joy of sea voyages is not only in discovering littleknown places like Semporna, Malaysia (top), and Setriuk village in Kalimantan, Indonesia (bottom), but also in living with the locals.

decade, but Richmond has no intention of retiring the sails and putting down some roots—at least not yet. “I don’t know,” she says. “There are so many places I went to that I thought, ‘I can

live here’.” She pauses, and then continues, dead-pan, “I think it would take losing an arm or a leg or being incapacitated in some way for me to stay in one place.”

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PHOTO COURTESY: EMILY RICHMOND

of life is missing. It’s isolating to be in a culture like that.” Richmond speaks with a distant fondness of family and friends in the U.S., people whose company she enjoys but simultaneously feels oddly stranded amongst. “You have all these experiences and wherever you come back to, you sort of forever are a traveller,” she says. “You live alone in your own world because nobody knows where you’ve been or what you’ve done.” Richmond is critical of her own society, but just as self-aware that she has perhaps, not seen enough of it. Next year she plans on walking through the U.S. for about nine months, mostly through reserved land and forested areas. It’s about veering off the interstate highway and getting a feel for the land in a much more visceral way. Once she’s done that she plans to sail around Africa in about two years. On such voyages there are of course, the practical things to take care of— food and water supplies, equipment and maps, staying alert to avoid pirates. A voyage isn’t just a glamorous adventure, it’s also routine, workaday housekeeping. “It’s like a full-time job,” says Richmond, who has had four vessels over the years. “People wouldn’t believe it, but it’s constant work to keep the boat going.” You’d think a boat would be an expensive mode of transport and the least effective way to see the world. But in the U.S., there is a fairly large market for good quality, relatively inexpensive boats. “I think I spend less money travelling to exotic places full time than I do just living in America,” she says. “Travelling is actually cheaper.”

THE VOYAGER MAUKTIK KULKARNI

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD A 2008 BIKE TRIP ACROSS PERU, ARGENTINA AND CHILE WAS THE STARTING POINT OF RADICAL CHANGE FOR NEUROSCIENTIST AND ENGINEER MAUKTIK KULKARNI BY RIDDHI DOSHI

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ravel is many things to many people. To some it’s respite and liberation. To others, it’s inspiration and immersion. For neuroscientist and engineer Mauktik Kulkarni, it has become an act of personal and social awakening. When Kulkarni went on a 3,000 kilometre-long backpacking trip across India in October-November 2013, he steered clear of well-worn territory. Instead he and his backpacking partner, 25-year-old American anthropologist and medical student Samantha Jo Fitzsimsons, headed to unconventional destinations: the village of Hemalkasa in Maharashtra and the outskirts of Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, to name a few. The duo’s journey has been chronicled in a crowdsourced film, Riding on a Sunbeam, directed by 58

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National Award winner Brahmanand Singh. Kulkarni stresses that his aim with the project was to showcase the beauty of unplanned and unstructured travel. “Travelling solo without an agenda forces you to interact with strangers and learn different ways of living a successful or happy life,” he says. He also felt an urge to understand his own country better, something that was sparked by his solo

Travelling solo without an agenda forces you to interact with strangers and learn different ways of living a successful or happy life

travels around the rest of the world. He took his first such trip in 2008, spurred on by one of the most enduring travel icons of all time—Che Guevara. Four years before that, as a masters student at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S., he had seen The Motorcycle Diaries, which was about Guevara’s epic 1952 journey around South America. A moved Kulkarni set off on a sixweek solo bike ride across Peru, Chile and Argentina. En route, the people he interacted with were unlike those he had encountered in his life until then. In Chile he met a Belgian electrician who had been cycling from Ushuaia in Argentina to Colombia. The traveller revealed to Kulkarni that for six months a year he roamed the world, and for the other half, he held a regular job. “What surprised me was that he knew more about the India I grew up in than I did

TANVI JAIN

Mauktik Kulkarni picked Samantha Jo Fitzsimsons as his partner for a 3,000-kilometre trip across India because she had backpacked across Europe, China and Central America.

Kulkarni went on his first solo trip in 2008, biking across Peru, Chile and Argentina. Thus began his insatiable desire to discover dramatic landscapes, such as Cappadocia in Turkey (in picture).

those children was so heart-warming.” As for Kulkarni, his cumulative travel encounters have pushed back against some entrenched notions. For instance, he is now happy with a spare wardrobe. “People make fun of me for wearing the same clothes over and over but it’s all good,” he says. He also doesn’t need company to enjoy himself. “Solo travelling taught me how to be at peace when I am alone. I could spend hours reading a book or watching people on the beach.” The turning point for him was a nerve-racking, near-death experience in Norway in 2013. Due to a technical

glitch his airplane nose-dived rapidly for 10 minutes. Oxygen masks dropped and the pilot shouted instructions in a language that Kulkarni couldn’t understand. He braced himself for the end, but thankfully the plane soon stabilised and the danger passed. But its impact was everlasting. Thinking back to that moment, he reveals, “When confronted with the possibility of death, it becomes easier to sort out the ‘must haves’ and ‘nice to haves’ in life. I don’t have any bank balance targets, career goals or a list of musthaves anymore.” JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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as he had done a similar bicycle trip from Kanyakumari to Kashmir in the 1980s,” Kulkarni says. Personal change was also accompanied by political transformation. As a student, Kulkarni was a firm believer in the capitalist mantra: work hard and secure a high-paying job, then material success shall follow. But biking through remote villages, he began to reconsider this. He came around to the view that the answer to local problems faced by everyday people lie in local solutions. “I wasn’t even aware of these shifts until I decided to travel and found enough time to introspect,” he says. By the time Kulkarni was done with the three countries, his love affair with the road had grown strong. During 2012-2013, he stretched himself further, travelling to 32 countries, including Syria, Poland, Germany and Norway, with only a 10-kilo backpack. The more hours he spent travelling, the more his life philosophy altered. “The predictable agenda of collecting degrees and working in a multi-national company went out of the window,” he admits. When the opportunity to make a travel film on India came along, he jumped at it despite not having any prior experience. During the planning stage for Riding on a Sunbeam, Kulkarni decided to team up with a fellow traveller. Fitzsimsons was chosen from 20 applicants because of her extensive backpacking experience and also because a foreign woman journeying across the country was sure to be an intriguing study in social and cultural mores. Revealing why she consented to be part of the trip, Fitzsimsons says, “I was a student of anthropology and I love travelling. Challenging the way I’ve been taught to eat, sleep, and live life is an empowering feeling.” Her favourite destination of all the places the two visited was Anandwan in Maharashtra, a selfsustaining community of differentlyabled people founded by social reformer Baba Amte. While exploring the village at night the crew stumbled upon a local boys’ hostel for the hearing and visually challenged. At the time, the teachers were conducting a class in mathematics and spellings for students. Fitzsimsons says, “For me, meeting

THE VOYAGER SUDHA MURTY

DOING HER OWN MARKET RESEARCH WRITER SUDHA MURTY TREATS EVERY HOLIDAY AS A “HARD-CORE STUDY TOUR”, EVEN IF IT MEANS ENROLLING IN A THREE-MONTH BIBLE STUDY CLASS BEFORE A TRIP TO ISRAEL BY SUDHA PILLAI

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he travels with a diligence usually reserved for those seeking bodhi. Travel for Sudha Murty, chairperson of the Infosys Foundation and an author, always has this element of a quest. Her husband, Infosys cofounder Narayana Murthy, calls her travels “hard-core study tours”. Not many people enrol in a threemonth Bible study class before embarking on a journey to Israel. At the Stations of the Cross, Murty was so immersed in the experience of following in Christ’s footsteps, that she wept copiously and “unknowingly,” she says. A love of history dictates Murty’s travel itinerary. “I am attracted to places that have historical significance,” she explains, due to a childhood suffused with stories told by her grandfather and 60

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mother, both history teachers. At age nine, Murty travelled with her mother to the grand Badami Caves in Karnataka. Though theoretically she knew all about the famous caves, nothing prepared her for the exhilaration she felt when she realised that she was standing in a historically significant place. “That journey marked me for life,” says the 66-year-old philanthropist. When she was 29, Murty went on her first solo trip—backpacking across

In the 1980s, in Harlem, cops mistook Murty for a Hispanic drug dealer, but all they found was a dabba of curd rice

America for three months. Even today, she almost always travels solo or occasionally with her sister. (“My husband hates travelling. He was in Paris for three years and never visited the Louvre Museum. I spent six days touring the museum.”) It was in Harlem, New York, that the local cops mistook Murty for a Hispanic drug dealer. In the 1980s tourists weren’t encouraged to walk around Harlem late at night. Her large backpack didn’t help matters. However, when the cops rummaged through her bag looking for drugs, they were flummoxed by a dabba of curd rice. “They just didn’t get it,” Murty says. The journey pushed her boundaries in other ways, too. It taught her to plod through her fear when she lost her way, and had to spend a night in the Grand

PHOTO COURTESY: SUDHA MURTY

Murty (extreme right) mostly travels solo or with her sister Sunanda Kulkarni (second from right). Here the siblings can be seen braving Icelandic cold.

Murty (left) usually wears silk saris on a holiday because they don’t need ironing; She also likes to explore places at her own pace. For instance, she spent six days in Paris’s Louvre museum (right); Her husband, on the other hand, skipped Louvre altogether in the three years that he lived in Paris.

to Murty’s experiences in Japan. She still fondly remembers a shopkeeper in Kyoto, who shuttered his shop so he could take a “thoroughly lost” Murty to her destination. “He didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Japanese. We kept bowing to each other, he more than me. But he knew I was a guest in their country and felt it was up to him to see me safely to my place.” “Travelling has made me realise,” Murty says, “that there is always someone bigger and better than you.” This extends from people to cultural artefacts. “When you see the beautiful ancient masjids and temples in Iran and Cambodia, you realise they are better than the ones back home, which you were boastful about. That revelation does not make you feel inferior. It only opens your eyes to different possibilities.” Travel can bring to light connections between cultures, “your own country’s influence on other cultures,” says Murty. In fact, she is currently writing a book on the influence of Bollywood in foreign lands. A film buff, she reels off with glee anecdotes about discovering a Raj Kapoor lounge in a Tashkent hotel, and hearing an Icelander sing songs from Dilwale. Her favourite encounter was with a baker in Iran, who refused to accept money for the four naans she bought. “We did not speak a common language. But he knew I was an Indian because of my sari.” He asked her

four questions: “India? Amitabh Bachchan? Madhuri Dixit? Salman Khan?” Sudha answered, “yes” to all four. That was the only necessary transaction. “Travel informs you that in spite of the difference we are not different as humans,” Murty says. “Emotions and feelings are universal.” Murty is one of India’s richest citizens, and the question of how money

“If you want to experience the soul of a country, visit its markets. I go to the market to watch life, the sounds and smells of a land” influences her travel is unavoidable. “How would I travel to all the exotic places if I didn’t have money?” she quips. Money, she acknowledges, has helped her travel far and wide, stay in comfortable and safe hotels, and hire the most knowledgeable English-speaking guide in town. However, she never spends money on shopping. “I prefer to spend money on experiences,” Murty says. Ironically, this may mean visiting the markets of the countries she travels to. “If you want to experience the atma or soul of a country, you should visit its markets,” she says. “I go to the market to watch life; the JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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SUDHA PILLAI (SUDHA MURTY), LATSALOMAO/ISTOCK (PEOPLE)

Canyon. Her instincts became finely honed, and she was constantly humbled by the kindness of strangers. Murty carries out in-depth research, including extensive “note-taking”, before travelling to a place. The research can last a few months or even a few years. Knowing the history of a place adds a different dimension—of time travel—to a journey. But however well-acquainted in theory Murty is with a place, it is imperative, she says, to travel “with an open mind”: devoid of prejudices, delusions and expectations. “Every place on this earth has something to offer,” she says, “if you are willing to accept.” Murty has travelled to over 70 countries and might be on the move for up to 200 days a year. As a philanthropist, she “sees a place from an economic perspective too. I like to know about their history, culture, and how they deal with their economy.” She adds, “I don’t particularly care about the political perspective.” Her travels in India tend to revolve around philanthropic work. But she sets aside one day to explore her destination. She points out that “Our poor infrastructure and public utilities make travelling in India tedious. It is scary to travel in India at night unlike say in Norway or Sweden. Moreover, when people know you are from a different state or country, and you don’t speak their language they don’t think twice about cheating you.” This is a contrast

THE VOYAGER SUDHA MURTY

The opulence of the Hazrat Imam Complex in Tashkent left an indelible impression on Murty.

A rigid vegetarian, Murty carries an endless supply of thepla and dry avilakki (flattened rice) whenever she travels. She wears silk saris on her journey. “It does not require ironing. You fold it, keep it under the bed, and you are good to go the next day. Moreover, because it is colourful and shiny, people love to touch it and have photos taken.” She does not carry a camera and has not taken a single photograph of her journeys in 20 years. “I prefer to live in the moment and absorb all that it offers,” she says.

Bizarre Encounter Clad in a Mysore silk sari, Sudha was responsible for a security incident at Madrid's Prado Museum. The metal in the zari made security machines go haywire. “We didn’t speak the same language, so the cops couldn’t understand when I told them the zari was the culprit. I was taken to a room, made to remove my sari, and bodysearched. While I stood in my petticoat and blouse, my sari was examined with a fine-toothcomb. I wasn’t miffed at all. They were just doing their job.”

Surprising Encounter “When I went to Tibet, a very old lady fell at my feet with tears in her eyes. I was taken aback. She said, ‘Thank you for letting our Dalai Lama live in India. Consider this my gratitude towards your entire country.’”

Favourite Places in India  Ranakpur near Udaipur.  Belur-Halebid, Karnataka  Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh  Kashi, Uttar Pradesh. “Though it is very dirty, I still like it because it is a 5,000-year-old city and is mythologically connected.”

Funny Encounter “When I gave a beggar sitting outside a church in Portugal a dollar, he looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘You know we ruled you guys for 400 years’. Initially, I was angry. Then I realised you cannot change history. I smiled and told him, ‘Yes, but that was then, and this is now.’”

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Favourite Journeys  Iran. “Persia is historically connected to India. Kannada has around 2,000 to 5,000 Persian words in its dialect.”  Uzbekistan  China  Egypt  Lahore, Pakistan. “All these places

have historical significance, and you can relate them to contemporary India.” Favourite Markets  China. “It is massive, and you can get anything from pearls to perfumes, to snakes and scorpions.”  The markets in Central Asia.  Purana Qila Market, Delhi. Favourite Museums  British Museum, London. “Spent eight days touring it.”  The Louvre, Paris  The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.  The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo  National Museum, Delhi. “Even today, when I visit the capital, I always set aside half a day to spend at the Delhi museum. It is beautiful.” Unforgettable Monuments  Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia.  Borobudur and Prambanan temples, Indonesia  Nasir-al-Mulk mosque, Iran. “Almost all the masjids in Iran are unforgettable.” Top of her bucket list Travelling the old Silk route of China.

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T R AV E L

sounds and smells of a land. Markets are the reflection of a culture of a country. Except in Dubai and Singapore,” she adds. “There is no atma there. Just imported goods.” Years of travelling to many ancient lands have given Murty a perspective on life. “Nothing is permanent,” she says. “Many emperors thought that they or their clan would endure infinitely if only they became the most powerful or wealthiest in the world. Taimur the Great killed five per cent of the global population. Genghis Khan killed 20 per cent of the world's population. What remains of their countries now? Mongolia is a forgotten country on the map.” This learning reflects in Murty’s personal philosophy. “I am often reminded that when you are at the top, you should be kind and compassionate; do philanthropic work if you can,” she says. “Because no matter how powerful you are, one day you will perish. That decree directs my day-to-day life.”

How We Travel 70

‘THE BEST TRAVEL PLAN IS TO HAVE NONE’

AMAN DHILLON

Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali on why he never follows a fixed itinerary

64 LIKE A FISH UNDER WATER 66 SILVER LININGS SKETCHBOOK 76 SEEING PATTERNS IN THE EVERYWHERE 

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78 MAKING THE WORLD HOME 80 HIS ONE-TRACK MIND 82 HITTING THE HIGH NOTES 

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85 MEETING THE DEADLINE 90 KARISHMA GROVER WALKS INTO A BAR… 

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TRAVEL LIKE A SCUBA DIVER

Like a Fish Under Water A scuba diver explains why scouring the oceans for aquatic beauty is a spiritual quest

Mankind got an exceptionally raw deal being born on land, says Sarvesh Talreja. But the thrill of swimming beside turtles and sharks, like here in Malaysia’s only oceanic island of Sipadan, helps him reclaim his end of the deal.

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By Sarvesh Talreja

WORLD

is at least one similarity between a diver and a pilgrim. Both categories of traveller either go to places that others consider obscure, failing which we may go to a popular destination and simply spend all our time focused on something few others would understand or appreciate. While for the pilgrim it may be a shrine, for the diver it’s usually a revered and hallowed dive site. The patience and ridiculous amount of time it takes to reach such spots, and the sheer economics of it, would make someone more objective think we are devoid of reason. And yet, how else can I explain what a dive trip is like? In search of two to three hours of stunning visual beauty each day, we fly to entirely new countries, take a connecting flight and then have a car whisk us away to a base, from which we take boats for up to six hours a day. Even so, there isn’t a better way for me to spend time while on vacation. I’ve travelled to Thailand and spent just two nights in Bangkok, using the vibrant city like a hostel—to only get a night of rest on my way in and out of the country. I’ve visited Malaysia and disregarded Kuala Lumpur the way one dodges an ex-girlfriend with a new partner. Funnily, I’m sure my first trip to Egypt may not involve a single sighting of the pyramids outside of a postcard. Instead, I hope to be in the Red Sea, chasing the sight of sharks from a liveaboard. Not only do we find spiritual pleasure in places barely known to the rest of mankind, scuba divers also pack, eat, and drink differently. An average suitcase to a beach town contains swimwear, sunglasses, and a

lot of T-shirts. A quick peek into a diver’s suitcase will reveal some contraptions we consider essential to our survival— a mask that we’re more comfortable in than our mother’s lap, a dive computer to let us know how we’re doing underwater and how much time later we can jump back in, and fins that are often just two feet in length and yet propel us by miles. While most vacation diets consist of heavy and indulgent local fare, a diver is essentially missing out on up to two meals every day. A diver’s diet emphasises portability and not flavour. Though such food can be good, it’s often functional. Alcohol intake is limited. So while the rest of an island may be on its own planet, hosting parties with generous servings of alcohol, a responsible diver will drink little more than a beer or a glass of wine. We know that each drink reduces about 30 seconds on our dive, which can instead be spend gazing at a Manta ray twice as broad as we are tall. Sleep is strangely rationed on a dive trip. Often, we wake up at 6.30 a.m. for an early breakfast and a dive briefing. The laid-back ones are known to show up at 7 a.m. instead, forgoing breakfast for some vacation shut-eye. We’re also found in two stages on the way to and from a dive site. In one, we are in a reverie that involves gazing into the horizon, still ecstatic from looking at a leopard shark or a school of yellow travelli, as large as a house and as lively as a heartbeat. The second scenario is when we wake up from a sudden bump from a speedboat, amused, embarrassed, and willing to swear that we were underwater playing stalker to a stingray for five seconds

While in Egypt, Talreja (middle) is more likely to head to the country’s popular snorkelling and diving destination Sharm El Sheikh (left). He’d rather see some Manta rays (right) than the Great Sphinx of Giza or the pyramids.

before it sped into the aquatic abyss. Other adventure sports take up a certain amount of time. A trekker, for example, treks for about eight to 10 hours a day. Someone paragliding may be up in the air for a couple of hours each day, if not more. Diving, however, can vary wildly. Though it is rare to dive more than twice a day, sometimes divers may spend up to four hours a day underwater, spending the remaining time napping, eating, or aching to jump back in. Based on the distance to and from the dive site, one could leave at 8 a.m. and come back past 2 p.m., tanned, slightly sleepy, halfhungry, and deliriously thrilled to have seen more purple coral than imaginable. Divers typically come back to home cities inspired, wistful, humbled and tired. Our journeys often leave us in simultaneous states of satisfaction from the sights, exhaustion from the demands of the sport, relaxation if we can stay put in our resort for enough time, and with a lot of friends—many of whom are too pretty to be on land. My first thought after every last dive on each vacation has stayed consistent. From my trips to Havelock in Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2013 to Koh Fanta in Thailand in 2017—I always come back believing that mankind got an exceptionally raw deal being born on land. Sarvesh Talreja edits a food website. He travels to be underwater, unless he’s already travelling or is underwater. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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KONOPLYTSKA/ISTOCK (DIVERS), PHOTO COURTESY:SHIVAM TALREJA (SARVESH TALREJA), GOODOLGA/ISTOCK (FISH)

There

TRAVEL LIKE AN ARTIST

Silver Linings

Sketchbook A trip to Scotland gives an artist the creative fodder that only travelling affords By Parvathi Nayar

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he clothesline of the heavens is hung with a deep grey fabric that stretches down to the low horizon. Beyond the gunmetal cloud bank, unseen yet real, a pale sun turns to silver—liquid, magic silver—the edge where loch meets sky. The air shimmers with water, and in four hours exactly my daughter will see her first-ever rainbow. We are travelling on the Trotternish Peninsula of Skye, looking down the hill towards the village of Uig. The landscape, spare, majestic and desolate, unfolds along the ribbon of the road for just the three of us, which includes my eight-year-old daughter and Pam, who is driving the bus. The scale of space that I have come to drink in is breathtaking. It’s one of the key reasons why I keep my passport updated: to restock that inner reservoir of

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wonderment upon which I can draw. It is a feat that can be accomplished only if I am physically at the place in question. It’s the difference between sending the postcard of a glorious sunset and beholding the sunset myself. The former demands that I undercut its prettiness with some scribbled wit: “The weather is here, wish you were nice”; but if I am present then I become witness and participant, a mourner in the ritual of the dying day. Executing the desire to travel isn’t an easy achievement for me, and involves the deft juggling of time, finances, work and familial pressures. Pressures that can so easily kill the travelling impulse. Yet, time after time, I have found how travel clears the cobwebs that creep into my mind, when its geography has remained unchallenged for long stretches of time. The Isle of Skye has been replete with many such cobweb-clearing moments, from watching seals swim in the distance to listening to the eerie sounds of wind and water at Kilt Rock. Originally, though, I had booked myself into this, my first coach tour, with some nervousness: what if the tourist busloads destroyed that intensely personal involvement with a place? However, it proved to be the perfect choice: one, because it was just the three of us, and two, because the Scottish Highlands yield perfect landscapes for long stretches of travel in a bus. Every frame of the Highlands is a still from some sci-fi film, and I feel the pressure to record it with my camera. I am the child in the candy store who wants to taste everything, all at once.

But once that frenzy settles down, I am content to just look and experience—the spookiness of Glencoe, or the colour explosion of the golden gorse, or building my own small cairn with stones that I have collected along the way. Scotland is a rare place where rain has the gumption to present itself as a necessary addition to the atmospheric vistas—happily enjoyed in the dry comfort of the bus. But back to our moment of admiring the skyscape over Uig. It is decision time: should we drive past the otherworldly landscape of the Quiraing again or head off in search of the Faerie Glen? The lure of the little people wins, and off we go on our expedition, giving me time to segue into a reverie on the wherefores of journeys. The story of art is peppered with many lifechanging expeditions undertaken by artists: Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s journeys to Italy or Paul Gauguin’s voyages to the South Pacific or Paul Klee’s

In the small, picturesque towns scattered along the Skye (top), Parvathi Nayar (previous page) encountered not only friendly local folk, but also deer (bottom) who trotted amiably to munch on her offerings of carrots and apples.

trip to Tunisia. Travel, in these cases, profoundly influenced the visual language of the artists and the works they produced. For me, the act of travelling does sometimes yield actual fodder to create art. For example, though not a landscape painter, I am fascinated by water and by the monochrome palette. I find myself shooting endless images in Scotland of how nature presents herself in grey, black and white. Perhaps these images will find their way into a show as photographs or video art. Or perhaps these inspirations

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PHOTO COURTESY: PARVATHI NAYAR

SCOTLAND

will work subtly, expressed in the scale or emotion of an artwork. It is a very agreeable pastime just to be a flâneur: walk, move, observe and let the milieu wash around oneself. I can see variations on a theme, and that changes perspective; I notice how people are different and yet the same. I also travel to see art. It is the creative equivalent of the religious pilgrimage— the opportunity to visit historically important sites, museums and galleries. We may live in the digital age, but no image can replicate the experience of being in the presence of the actual work. Just as a writer is exhorted to read more and more to become a better writer, equally, it is important to have a sense of the vast history of the art 68

Though mine is largely studio-based art, I have experienced how it can be energised by different inputs

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | JULY 2017

to which one belongs, in an infinitesimal way. As the ways of the Scottish landscape wind past me on our way to the Faerie Glen, I can’t help wishing I had the time and resources to create a mini art residency for myself here. To rent a croft and stay a while—with the optional extra of someone to cook and clean as well. You may well ask what difference it makes to think about art, or make art, in a different country. Though mine is largely studio-based art, I have experienced how it can be energised by different inputs. There are also many pragmatic advantages to being away from the quotidian routine. Recently, I was fortunate enough to do a couple of informal residencies in France—which offered fresh inspiration

to contemplate, create, ruminate. In some cases— and, I would argue, in the best cases—the art residency is deliciously unstructured time in which to think things through. When the inputs are different, the methods of processing do alter—and that’s an organic way of growing, rather than forcing change upon one’s art and self. My residency in Brittany was close to the woods and to the little town centre—so I could head either way daily for a spot of inspiration. I found myself writing a lot—all day sometimes. While the other French residency in Nancy offered an unusual chance for some collaborative work, I was immersed in a different iteration of the creative impulse. Sometimes it is fun to experience being an “artist

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TRAVEL LIKE AN ARTIST

as a journeyman”—and by that, I mean a combination of the historical sense of the term “skilled worker” with some literal sense of a person who journeys to many worlds. If there is a romantic notion of the artist as a wanderer between worlds, to me it has a particular truth— underscored as we arrive finally at the small-scale world of the Faerie Glen. While Pam and my daughter skip ahead, I find myself trundling more slowly up the path. Clutching at the errant camera, coat, cap and scarf blowing madly in the wind, I arrive at the glen feeling like some blowsy witch who has stumbled upon a charming sanctuary of the faeries. It is a world in miniature with small groves of trees, stepped slopes, a hill with a basalt top that’s oddly called

Castle Ewan, and grassy, cone-shaped “mountains”. There is the ubiquitous presence of nonchalant sheep, perched at impossible angles on steep slopes. Below us are circles made of stones and mud and grass, patterns which add to the whimsy of the place, but which locals may perhaps dislike as something man-made. Earlier, Pam had shared with me a map of the Isle of Skye. When we leave the Faerie Glen, I’m poring over it, trying to track where we are. I see relationships between travel, art and cartography. Especially during the major shifts in my life—such as relocating from Singapore to Chennai—the geographies of where I was moving from and to became particularly important. The notion of mapping and fragments of maps became

Soaking in the Isle of Skye is about enjoying the small things, like watching the sunset from the iconic Neist Point Lighthouse (top) or marvelling at the sure-footed sheep (bottom) that tread some very treacherous slopes. Facing page: Portree’s magic lies in its dreamy location; the way the water hugs its harbour and in the rise of its craggy cliffs.

subject matter in the works. Maps represent for me a duality of abstraction and reality, which is something I explore in my art; i.e., the map of Skye is an abstraction but it also points to very real places on the island such as Portree, to where we are now headed. Finally we reach the place we are staying, the accurately named Pink Guest House that overlooks Portree Harbour, which my daughter adores. She looks over the waters, sees and feels the pure pleasure of her first rainbow. There are boats and lights, fresh seafood for dinner and a prolonged blue twilight that will last long. I think for an artist, travel can be a synonym for experience, or even knowledge, but you need to be using the right dictionary.

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NICK FOX/SHUTTERSTOCK (LIGHTHOUSE), PHOTO COURTESY: PARVATHI NAYAR (SHEEP)

SCOTLAND

TRAVEL LIKE A FILMMAKER

Imtiaz Ali can be an impulsive traveller, the sort who jumps off the boat into the waters below. He prefers the calm of the mountains to the chaos of touristy beaches.

By Humaira Ansari

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Imtiaz Ali never hires a guide or follows a travel itinerary. The filmmaker records the places he sees, the food he eats and the music he hears—in his mind

THE BEST TRAVEL PLAN IS TO HAVE NONE

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AMAN DHILLON

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TRAVEL LIKE A FILMMAKER

This is the bedtime story filmmaker Imtiaz Ali’s daughter, Ida, grew up listening to. She is now 16, has finished her Class 10 exams, and is soon set to visit Jordan with her dad. Ida is now old enough to realise that the real Jordan is a place more layered than in the fairy tales she heard. And dashing as Jordan’s current crown prince Hussein bin Abdullah might be, he is more likely to be taming a Ducati than riding a pony.

Whether it’s postcard-pretty Corsica (in picture) or Manali’s misty hills, Ali visits his film locations a number of times before shooting.

“Jordan was a fictional place I created in both Ida’s mind and mine since she was two,” says Ali, who “randomly” decided to weave a fairy tale around Jordan one night. “Now that we’re planning to go there real soon, we’re excited about exploring a country that

PHOTO COURTESY: TAMASHA (IMTIAZ ALI), ALEXLMX/SHUTTERSTOCK (CLAPPERBOARD)

there lived a handsome prince in the kingdom of Jordan. Young and carefree, he loved playing with his pet dog, and riding his white pony through his estate’s cobbled streets, soaking in the aromas of fresh fruits and fatty meats. Although he was the king’s ninth and youngest son, the prince was known to solve problems with his common sense, goodness and positivity.

WORLD

Locations are more than just pretty backdrops in your films. The theme of travel and the journeys taken by your characters are often deeply woven into the narrative. Your thoughts?

As a filmmaker, I don’t know why I do the things I do. Sometimes I do wonder, but chiefly, I’m not even interested in finding out. For me, there has always been a relationship between imagination, stories and travelling. Also, when I travel to a place to shoot, I discover it many times over. I meet many people. I see 25 options for one location. I must have scoured all the beaches in Goa before settling on one. I went to Prague several times before I shot Rockstar there. Travel is part of my work, and the more I travel, newer are the details that crop up each time. These details then become the thread between travel, imagination and stories. It’s a spiral situation. Also, I often assume a false identity while travelling. So, on a bus or a train, I would tell co-passengers that I’m a writer and leave it at that. When I grew a little older, I would say that I can’t disclose where I work. I’ve even presented myself as a spy. Why would you pose as somebody else while travelling?

Well... to make myself more interesting to others, and to myself. Then I lapse into being that person for the rest of the journey. Even now, if somebody doesn’t recognise me, I don’t claim to be myself. This way, the interesting people I meet, out of the zone of everyday life, seep into my movies. When I write stories then, these motifs appear and reappear. So that’s why there’s a girl on a train (in Jab We Met); that’s why you escape to Goa (Socha Na Tha); that’s how travel comes into my stories. You had mentioned in earlier interviews how Geet’s character in Jab We Met had traces of a woman you met on a bus in Delhi. Can you tell us other personal travel encounters that have made it to your films?

(After a long pause, a poster of Jab Harry Met Sejal on his desk catches his eye) Oh yes, look at this poster! This was shot in Lisbon’s Alfama district. There’s a backstory to this. I had

Filmography

been to the same spot five years ago with 10 close friends. The bars, promenades, lanes, wooden walkways, hotels, and clubs… all the places I visited with my friends are in this film. Now, in retrospect I wonder, was I having a great time with my friends or was I actually subconsciously working? Maybe I was. Your movies often bring to fore your characters’ internal turmoil or their sense of self-exploration. But in the end there’s always some resolve, isn’t there?

It all depends on the story. It’s unlikely that a story will not end with some sort of resolve of some kind. The resolve could be anything—just a compromise with the fact that the journey doesn’t end is also a resolve, isn’t it? Does this mean you always look at places and people through a filmmaker’s lens even on a holiday?

I’ve often wondered about the same. For instance, when I see a beautiful sunset, my first instinct is to record that moment and use it in a film. When I’m shooting at a beautiful location with a solo bench somewhere, I often go like, “I wish I had the time to sit on that bench and enjoy the sunset.” I find it impossible to exist without a story in the mind. But I really can’t escape the experiences I have as a person. And the person can never escape the fact that the director is always watching. Where all so far?

have

you

travelled

I’ve travelled across Europe. While you can see Corsica, Prague and Portugal in my movies, there are other destinations that I love in that part of the world. Bosnia is one of them. It has Sufi shrines and a sizeable Muslim population. There’s a lot of Turkish influence, and interestingly it’s the younger generation that’s trying to be religious. In Southeast Asia, I find Hong Kong fascinating because of its metropolitan culture and the vintage vibe. Since the Chinese take a lot of pride in their culture and food, even today nobody f***s around with dim sums here. I’ve also travelled across Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir, and there’s nothing in this world like Kashmir; it’s exotic, and culturally and naturally rich. It leaves you with a spiritual, blissful feeling.

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has been part of our imagination for years.” What fascinates Ali is how imagination and stories feed off each other through the prism of a real location or even a fictional land. Unsurprisingly then, most of his movies embody or unravel this thought. In his debut film Socha Na Tha (2005), for instance, two youngsters discover and rediscover each other at a non-touristy beach in Goa. In his first blockbuster Jab We Met (2007), two strangers meet on a train in Mumbai, bond in Madhya Pradesh and have a moment amidst Manali’s misty hills. Rockstar (2011) essays a man’s singer-to-rock star journey, and the love he finds and loses along the way, in Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, houseboats in Kashmir’s Dal Lake, and Prague’s State Opera. In Tamasha (2015), his protagonists romance in the postcard-pretty French island of Corsica. And in his upcoming film, Jab Harry Met Sejal, Shah Rukh Khan plays a Punjabi tourist guide in Portugal. Exhaustive as this list might read, it’s indicative of how the theme of travel is integral to the plot in almost all of Ali’s movies. In this interview with the National Geographic Traveller India, 46-year-old Ali tells us how his mind can never exist without a story and how each story has something to do with the places he visits and the people he meets

1

2

3

4

I’M A VERY OPEN TRAVELLER. I DON’T LIKE TO BOX MYSELF. A REGIMEN DURING A HOLIDAY IS MIND-NUMBING FOR ME How do you pick your destinations?

While the politics of a place is not an influence, knowing a bit of local politics makes travel more interesting for me. It is about the cultural experiences, not visual ones. I see that culture in the food, people and music, even if these sights are not visually exhilarating. I’m more interested in how cultures evolve within a certain time period and confines of geography. I’m not interested in wilderness only. I’m also interested in knowing how a small hamlet in the Amazon rainforest has adapted to its topography—why the chimneys are designed the way they are; why the food is cooked the way it is.

1 Every trip to Kashmir leaves Ali feeling spiritual and blissful. 2 He loves Hong Kong’s modern-vintage vibe, and the fact that nobody messes around with dim sums there. 3 The authenticity of Ali's characters often comes from his personal travel encounters—like a humble meal at a local's home along a nondescript highway. 4 In Bosnia, the filmmaker was surprised to discover Sufi shrines and the post-Balkanisation Islamic influences in the way the Muslims there eat, pray and dress.

When do you typically feel like taking off?

Mostly, I’ve been travelling around for work, and it does not always take me to exotic locations; even a place like Ahmedabad counts as “travel”. If I have to travel for an event, and if the choice is, say, between Bangalore and Pondicherry, I will choose Pondicherry because its culture is more unique to me. Yash Chopra popularised Switzerland. Tamasha introduced us to Corsica. The Hindi film industry is known to boost tourism from time to time. But personally, to what extent does a place affect you, your perspective, your mood?

Quite a lot. I feel places leave an indelible impression on people. I read somewhere an interesting observation made by Ernest Hemingway. He spent some money to take his daughters on a holiday. He spent much more money in refurbishing their bathrooms. Two decades later, his daughters kept thanking him for the holiday, not the fancy bathrooms. So yes, travel

BLAINE HARRINGTON/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY (BOAT), FUMIO OKADA/ORIENTAL TOUCH/DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY (DIM SUM), BEW AUTHORS/BE&W/DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY (WOMEN), FACING PAGE: LUCAS VALLECILLOS/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY (OPERA), AMAN DHILLON (IMTIAZ ALI), URF/ISTOCK (PUB)

TRAVEL LIKE A FILMMAKER

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Do you easily befriend people on your travels?

I actually do. For instance, once I was roaming the streets of Lisbon after my friends left the city. I walked into a souvenir store, where a Bangladeshi man recognised me because he had watched Jab We Met. He invited me to his place, fed me mutton curry and rice, and hosted me for the night. At 4 a.m., his friends picked me up and drove me around the docks of Lisbon, where many Bangladeshis work. They then dropped me to the airport for my flight to Belgium. Take us through the contents of your suitcase.

A box of Darjeeling First Flush tea from a tea estate called Namring, where I once holidayed with my family. I carry a special strainer and I brew the tea myself. In fact, I like that tea so much that I carried it to another tea estate in Sri Lanka, and those guys were like “Sir, our tea is fresh too.” Otherwise, I’m a light traveller. I carry my MacBook, but still like the romance of a notebook (there’s one on his desk).

5 Ali's film, Rockstar (2011), prominently featured the opulent State Opera in Prague. 6 The Mediterranean island of Corsica formed the stunning backdrop in the film Tamasha (2015). 7 A trip to Lisbon’s Alfama district with friends led Ali to discover Fado, a music genre that goes back to the 1820s and is still played in its pubs, bars and restaurants.

Are you a planner? Do you draw up an itinerary?

The best travel plan is to have none, and the best travel guide is the one you write while you travel. I never take a guide along, never do any prior research, even for a personal holiday. I’ve lived in Mumbai for years and I come from Jamshedpur but I don’t know everything about these two places. So I’ve compromised with the fact that I may not be able to see everything everywhere I go. Sometimes I go to the same cafeteria thrice a day. I’m happy to spend time there, admiring the river in front of it. But if a conversation with a waiter or a fellow diner leads me elsewhere, I’ll get into my car and drive. I remember walking into a café somewhere in Italy and ordering bufala cheese (mozzarella made from the milk of an Asian water buffalo). When somebody told me how the best bufala is served in Naples, I knew where I had to be next. So, I’m a very open traveller. I don’t like to box myself. A regimen during a holiday is mindnumbing for me.

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can alter your perspectives. It can change you forever. As a filmmaker, I’m glad to have shot in offbeat locations, and that has given a fillip to smaller and more interesting places. After we shot Rockstar in Prague, the Czech Republic said the number of Indian tourists shot up. Somebody started a Jab We Met bus tour in Manali. Over the weeks I spend in locations, I am able to get under the skin of a place like a regular tourist might not. And I hope that helps other travellers discover these places better.

Patterns Seeing

Fashion designer Aneeth Arora took off to Mexico and came back with a new collection

As told to

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Four years ago, I was travelling through Mexico and had immersed myself in the local textile culture. I tend to travel through my books on textiles and designs. When people think of Mexico, they think of colours, Frida Kahlo, and big florals. And I certainly experienced this, but I’d also read about the huipil—a square poncho-like garment that has bright stripes and embroidery around the neck—among other textile traditions. As soon as I landed in Mexico, I began searching for authentic samples of this clothing. More specifically, I was keen 76

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to meet the people who wove them and still wore them. This is what I like about travel: once you leave the itinerary behind, you discover new things, simply by talking to people. I’m a backpacker and I like to travel light—two pairs of jeans, a couple of T-shirts, a pair of sneakers, my notebook and a few pens. I’ve even stopped carrying a camera: the photographs weren’t communicating my experience. Instead, I use my notebook as a chronicle. I collect ticket stubs, samples of interesting fabrics, stamps, matchboxes, I scribble and draw what

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Garima Gupta

NAYANTARA PARIKH (ANEETH ARORA (LEFT)); PHOTO COURTESY: PÉRO (NOTEBOOK); SACHIN SONI (ANEETH ARORA (RIGHT))

in the Everywhere

I’m seeing. The only photographs I take are on my him the neon-coloured bands of Mexican shawls. phone, they are for documentation rather than for I’d forgotten about this but now I started readsocial media. ing my Mexico notebooks again. Some of the My favourite kind of travel is one without tribes we were researching tend to move an agenda and without hotel reservations. across international borders, so we ended I’d rather see where the road takes me. In up incorporating traditions from Peru and Mexico, the first huipils I found were at a Guatemala too. The true aesthetic leap local weekly market, which are similar to came when I was looking through my the haats we have in India. But these were books on China. South American fabric of poor quality and I knew what I wanted usually begins with a neutral base then from having read the books. So I started bursts out in vibrant weaves and embellishasking questions—is there a place where I ments. I found this replicated in some Chican see more authentic or older garments, or nese tribal clothes too, and all these elements visit a place where the garment is made? Could found their way into the collection. I interact with people who still wear them? These So you never know when your journeys will come sorts of connections determine where I go next. back to you and in what form. Of course, now I want At the time, I was travelling with two Mexicans which eased to visit China. Japan is also at the top of my wish list. Somemy hunt—it helped bridge the language barrier and I gave one once told me, “There is life before Japan and then life after myself over to the journey without bothering about anything Japan.” I really want to experience this for myself. Reading about else. All I did was look for textiles, eat amazing Mexican street Spain and Istanbul has sparked a desire to see these places too. food in every region, and listen to their music which is so difI love getting lost in the villages of India, and in and around ferent from ours. Venice and Milan. I think the last time I travelled carefree was My travels within India are of a similar nature. Every collecas a student. Now, I’m always looking for inspiration, for that tion of mine combines five different textile traditions within it. eureka moment—it doesn’t have to come just from the clothes. Every six months I visit five different regions in the country for Music, art, architecture, food and people—all of these leave new textiles. Once on the road, I like staying with weaver famian impression on me and somewhere I feel changed by these lies, walking in the village as people go about their business and journeys too. watching how they dress themselves. While I start the journey light, I come back lugging things. I’m design-driven so I pick up anything that catches my eye, which is indigenous or handmade. I have shipped handwoven baskets from Australia to Delhi, and in London, I’ve bought stationery: I found envelopes which had leaves instead of pages to write on. When I start working on my collections, I sometimes go back to my archives and this might spark an aesthetic journey—like a string of strange coincidences that culminated in “The péro tribe”, my Fall/Winter 2017 collection. The Crafts Museum in Delhi is where I go to with my notebook to sit and think. On this particular day, I was sitting under the Kullu hut in the museum’s village complex, exploring ideas for my new collection. I remembered that four Arora visited Mexico to scour unusual indigenous weaves (top) and made several trips to local years ago I had sent a postcard to markets (bottom) in search of the intricately designed garment—huipil. my weaver from Mexico. He lives Facing page: Aneeth Arora’s “Journal of Love” kit (middle) from her Fall/Winter 2017 collection— in Kullu and I wanted to show péro—was inspired by the tribes of Mexico, Peru and Guatemala. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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TRAVEL LIKE A BUSINESSMAN

M A K ING THE WORLD HOME Before it became his occupation, travel was a recurring theme in Airbnb country manager Amanpreet Bajaj’s life By LAKSHMI SANKARAN

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around Paris to dropping by the best restaurant in Amsterdam or checking out the latest hotspot in New York. Wanderlust runs in Bajaj’s family. His father owned a transportation business and any downtime was spent taking road trips, often through north India as they drove to meet relatives in Delhi. “My father was the kind of person who wouldn’t just drive from one location to another. He would stop at roadside dhabas, enjoy the sights and love to start a conversation with people. He encouraged me to do the same,” remembers Bajaj. It’s an ethos he has carried through to his dealings today. Thanks to travel, he

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has also picked up hobbies he never would have considered. Sailing is a fledgling interest. “I wouldn’t have ever considered sailing in India. I experienced it for the first time in Greece and because I had such a wonderful time, I now sail whenever I go there. I find someone who has a boat and we go to one of the islands nearby,” he says. Greece, sunny and postcard perfect, is a perennial favourite with Bajaj. Its genial hospitality and familial culture appeal to his Indian roots. “Greece is like another home to me. Everywhere you look, there are remnants of the country’s ancient history and civilisation. The people are warm and value family

ties. And, the cuisine is delightful,” he says. In Athens, Bajaj’s usual stomping grounds are the local flea markets, in and around the city centre, or Brettos, one of the city’s well-known bars. “Brettos is the oldest distillery in Athens that serves ouzo (a traditional Greek aperitif), high quality brandy, and more than 36 different flavours of liqueur, many of which are not available in other establishments,” he reveals. Bajaj’s idea of fulfilling travel isn’t extreme, either in luxury or adventure. He prefers down-to-earth interactions with new faces instead. “Travel is a good way to realise that

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manpreet Bajaj is by all accounts a busy man, whose job entails taking a flight out to somewhere in this world at least once a month, but he is loath to consider himself a typical business traveller. Instead the India country manager of Airbnb, the online rental platform that has reinvented how people travel since 2008, prefers the new-age concept of “bleisure”. The explanation is self-evident: business trips that also afford some of the joys of unencumbered travel. In a conversation over the phone from his office in Delhi, 36-year-old Bajaj reveals that he had been travelling for work long before Airbnb. “I was lucky because I was a consultant (with Ernst & Young, India) early in my career. Part of that role involved constantly going to a different country to learn. The friends I made when I was in those places ensured that I was made to feel at home,” he says. In his consulting days, Bajaj would spend at least three to four weeks in a foreign location. “I worked through the week and then weekends were spent exploring whichever city or town I was in,” he says. That meant anything from spending hours roaming

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whatever apprehensions a person might have before he or she goes somewhere, the people they meet are probably thinking the same way. So that presents a great opportunity for cultural exchange and finding common ground,” he says. Home or how to make people feel at home is a constant motif in his responses perhaps because Airbnb’s equity with travellers around the world depends on it. In November 2015, that skill faced its greatest test after a series of terrorist attacks shook Paris. Bajaj was there that night dining at Flora, along with some Airbnb hosts who were in town for an annual company event.

“As soon as the news broke, we went to our Airbnb listing which belonged to a Frenchman,” he remembers. “We spent almost one-and-ahalf days in his home trying to locate every employee and making sure they were safe. We couldn’t step outside but the French host was so kind.

He called us to let us know that there was enough food in the fridge to last us during our stay there.” For Bajaj, that was a life-affirming moment and, according to him, it’s what travelling comes down to—forming real and authentic connections

with strangers. And there’s no substitute for that. “I know that there’s talk these days of Virtual Reality (VR) replacing travel one day but all that will remain a novelty. As long as we are human, we will want to go to a place and feel it in our bones,” he says.

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BORIS STROUJKO/SHUTTERSTOCK (LAKE) PHOTO COURTESY: AMANPREET BAJAJ

When in Greece (left), Bajaj often picks up artefacts for his home from flea markets (far left) in and around Athens; Switzerland (below) is another favourite destination. “The whole country is so picturesque and the people are highly disciplined,” he says.

His ONE-TRACK MIND TRAVEL LIKE A MARATHON RUNNER

From Chennai to Morocco to Indonesia, Sridhar Venkatesh is running a ceaseless marathon across the globe BY BHAVYA DORE

n May this year, 45-yearold Sridhar Venkatesh chugged through the mountainous, partly wooded terrain of the Rinjani volcano trail in Lombok, Indonesia. It was supposed to be a 36-hour non-stop ultra-marathon with participants carrying their own equipment and food. The route followed a winding 100-kilometre

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path starting with a summit of the 10,748-foot volcano amidst the clouds and then over three smaller peaks. As his shoes padded on the soft alluvial soil, Venkatesh, was troubled by the height, but the cool air and the overpowering pleasure of why he kept doing this, hit him nonetheless. “I chose Rinjani because it combined a trail run

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with altitude and I wanted to get more experience with both,” he says. “A big incentive was not just taking on the challenge, but to experience running in different terrains and under different conditions.” Though he didn’t make it to the half-way mark in time, and, as a result didn’t finish the race, he is determined to run it again. “I really loved

it,” he says. It’s one of eight marathons that Venkatesh, founder of the tech start-up Indix, has travelled for in the past decade—including Korea, Cambodia, Italy and Sri Lanka. Usually once a year, he takes off to do a marathon or a trail run in a different part of the world. It all started in 2007, when the San Diego-bornand-bred Venkatesh, moved

PHOTO COURTESY: SRIDHAR VENKATESH

Marathon des Sables, a 250-kilometre run through the Moroccan desert, which Sridhar Venkatesh completed last year, is said to be the world’s toughest foot race.

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to Chennai with his wife and three sons, for work. Those were still early years for the marathon culture in India, and he ended up with a group of friends who decided they would do a marathon every year. As people started to move out of Chennai, planning to run marathons in cities that friends had moved to became a natural choice. They’d pick a place, pick a date and train towards that goal together even though they were scattered across locations. “It was a way to keep in touch and keep the spirit going,” he says. And so the families would meet, run and spend time together. Though

Venkatesh had always run and swum, the calcifying of running as a group activity propelled him towards more serious running challenges: the ultra-marathons or foot races longer than the usual 42-kilometre length. Last year he ran the Marathon des Sables, a 250-kilometre multi-stage race through the Moroccan desert, often described as the toughest foot race on earth. Running through the dusty, unforgiving sands in 40°C-plus daytime temperatures was enervating, but a completely different way of experiencing the country. “City marathons tend to be road races, but I

like looking for something that I can’t do at home,” he says. This one too was “self-supported” which meant runners had to carry their own packs for the duration of the week-long run: sleeping bag, gear, food. They’d pitch up for the night in tents set up for them by the organisers. They even had to endure a sandstorm, aside from garden variety muscle pains. “When you are running for seven days with the same group and suffering with them, you tend to get very close very quickly,” he says, of his first experience of a selfsupported race. And over time, running different races across the world fosters a sense of community. “You see a lot of the same people, it’s very collegial.” He has next set his sights on running the Grand to Grand Ultra in the U.S.—from the edge of the Grand Canyon to the top of the Grand Summit from Utah through Arizona. With a route that winds through dunes and tablelands, it promises the kind of diverse terrain that Venkatesh is in keen pursuit of. Though his usual routine in Chennai is just training by

running along the highway, this sort of “marathon tourism” through forests, hills and deserts sharpens the pleasures to be had from hitting sole to road. And in India, Auroville ranks amongst his favourite places to run. “It’s wooded and the people are really friendly and there’s a nice energy to the place,” he says. Venkatesh’s passion for openwater swimming, surfing and the outdoors in general, has tended to determine his and the family’s holiday choices. “Our travel is pretty active and we aren’t big on sightseeing or going to museums,” he says. Travelling through a new city is one thing, but really tapping into a city’s soul is quite another. And for Venkatesh, running— whether in a marathon or simply on the pavement—is one way of thrusting oneself towards discovering its beating heart. “Even if I’m travelling for work, just to be able to run through a place in the morning is special,” he says. “When it’s 5 a.m. in a new city and you go for a run, and see the city waking up, it’s a different way of looking at a place.”

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JGGRMSON/SHUTTERSTOCK (TEMPLE), JAMOO/SHUTTERSTOCK (LAKE), JAMES CARNEGIE/SHUTTERSTOCK (DESERT)

His passion for running has taken Venkatesh to marathons in locations around the world, from the Moroccan desert (top left) and Cambodia’s Angkor Wat (bottom) to Mount Rinjani in Indonesia (top right).

TRAVEL LIKE A MUSICIAN

hitting

High Notes the

FOR CARNATIC MUSIC VOCALIST T.M. KRISHNA, MOUNTAINS, LIKE HIS ART, TEACH HIM TO SHIFT BOUNDARIES

AKHILA KRISHNAMURTHY

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S.HARIHARAN

AS TOLD TO

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The next morning, my brother, a group of friends, and I trekked to the glacier, and it was sheer magic. I felt something so deep; it was as if I could breathe in a way that we don’t normally do. It was my moment of epiphany. I knew I had to keep coming back to the mountains. That was in 2010. Strangely, when I think about it, that year also coincided with a perceptible shift in many aspects of my music—the way I sang, my relationship with aesthetics, the socio-politics of music, everything found a newer meaning and expression. And then, exactly a year later, I met Badri Vijayaraghavan, a seasoned mountain climber based in Chennai. I told him I was keen to climb and since then, we’ve become climbing buddies, making that experience an annual ritual, allowing the mountains to move us in a way that only they can. That’s the thing about mountains; they allow you to quietly and deliberately look at everything that is going on, within and outside, enabling almost an outsider’s perspective of who you are, what you are doing and how you live your life. My journey in climbing—I had only trekked until then—began with Ladakh when we summited Stok Kangri, the highest mountain in the Stok range of the Himalayas, at 20,187 feet. For a first-timer, I think I did well, and since then I’ve been hooked. Climbing is addictive; and it’s not because it’s a quick-fix solution to all your problems. I think the mountains provide me the space to return to my life with a sense of calm, breathe better and let things flow. It’s not easy, mind you. Climbing instilled in me the need and importance of physical and mental discipline. I train religiously, almost rigorously, through the year to prepare for a climb that is

Every year, artist T.M. Krishna (facing page and top, right) and fellow climber Badri Vijayaraghavan (top, left) push their limits by scaling mighty mountains together. Last year, the duo reached a new high by summiting Mount Elbrus in Russia, Europe’s highest peak.

almost always a life-changing experience. Yet, no amount of preparation is enough because the mountains will throw you a challenge that you’re either unready for or never anticipated. I remember this story from my climb in Bolivia couple of years ago. We planned to climb two or three mountains and after summiting one of the mountains—a very technical climb—I was gearing up to summit Huayna Potosi which is about 20,000 feet above sea level. At about 3.30 a.m., we were climbing a 30-foot ice wall. I was double harnessed and my guide who went up first wanted me to pull myself up; she was confident I could do it, and so was I. But just as I attempted it, my ice axe slipped out of my hand and fell into a crevice about 20 feet below, and my climb was over. I was very angry; angry with myself and with the situation, but in hindsight, I know that story taught me a lesson in being better prepared and never taking the mountains for granted. I think climbing is both a science and an art. The art aspect is in the very act of climbing; mentally, JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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PHOTO COURTESY: T.M. KRISHNA

I still remember that day vividly. I was at the outpost of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police force, about 45 kilometres from China and very close to the Milam Glacier in the Kumaon Himalayas. It was about 4 p.m.; I took my sleeping bag outside my tent, lay down on it and all I did was look at the sky.

it requires clarity, discipline, acute awareness, and copious endurance to deal with the fatigue that almost always seeps in. And then of course, there is the technique of climbing—how you walk, how you rest—which is the science of it. I think that coming together of science and art also resonates with who I am, as a person, as a musician. I have always loved pushing myself, my creative boundaries to the very end, to see what will happen, after all. As an artiste, I’ve always been amazed at the sense of wonderment that envelopes me every time I’m up there in the mountains. And after all, art too is about that wonderment—to be deeply moved and to reflect about yourself and the world you live in. I love that a mountain has a personality and a mind of her own, and must allow you to climb her. I know I use the feminine gender in referring to the mountains but for me, the mountains, like music, is a woman. That apart, I’ve learnt to appreciate the very opposing personalities of the mountains; every mountain from afar is intimidating but when you start climbing, you almost feel a sense of embracement. It’s like she has granted you the permission to make her your own. That respect that the mountain commands—in a way that she is both delicate and powerful at the same time—has made the journey and the return to reality, exciting and humbling. Incidentally, last year, Badri and I meant to climb Cotopaxi, a volcanic mountain in Ecuador but it was fuming and we couldn’t. The mountains have also become for me a storehouse of magical experiences, aesthetic and visceral. Last year, Badri and I summited Mount Elbrus in Russia, the highest mountain in Europe, and the 10th most prominent peak in the world. My guide, Lisa, and I were on our way, climbing a good slope on hard ice. In the wee hours of the morning, at 4.40 a.m., Lisa said, “Krishna, look to your left.” And what I saw will remain with me forever. I saw in the sky a shadow of Elbrus; it was like a triangle on the sky. It was an incredible sight filling me with humility and a sense of the fantastic. And I don’t know if it was that visual creative or the fact that I was in good shape, but we actually summited Elbrus in a ridiculously short duration— a mere five hours and 50 minutes. Ask anyone and they’ll say the climb and descent takes nothing short of eight hours. I’d be lying if I said there is no sense of achievement that comes with every mountain you summit. It’s also a very cathartic experience. To be 84

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Be it Russia's Mount Elbrus (top) or Stok Kangri in Ladakh (bottom), climbing a mountain is a moving, visceral experience for T.M. Krishna. He celebrates the feat with a song or two.

honest, I’ve cried on every mountain top, and almost naturally, when I reach the top of a mountain, I do what I know best—sing. I’m also always intrigued by what is perhaps the most interesting thing about the process of climbing—you don’t run while climbing; you take short, steady steps and never stop. Nobody is ever in a hurry; climbing reinforces the idea of slowness. It’s about focusing on every step, every moment. It’s about being measured and consistent. It’s a lot like life; you just have to keep going and as long as you do that, the summit will come.” As this story goes to press, T.M. Krishna will summit Cotopaxi in Ecuador.

PHOTO COURTESY: T.M. KRISHNA

TRAVEL LIKE A MUSICIAN

PAKISTAN

Meeting the

Deadline

Millions of Afghan refugees, driven out of their country after years of wars, live and work in Peshawar as low-wage labour.

TON KOENE/AGE FOTOSTOCK/ DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY

IN PESHAWAR, A JOURNALIST GOES TO COVER THE WAR ON TERROR AND STAYS FOR THE CHAPPAL KEBAB

BY ADITYA SINHA

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eshawar may be to the War on Terror what Vienna was to World War I and Casablanca to World War II, but as a result, South Asia’s oldest city has fallen off the tourism map. Though random bombings have lately decreased, the December 2014 massacre of 132 Army Public School children has done irreparable damage: even Pakistanis have stopped visiting the city. Fortunately I managed to visit Peshawar in September 2001, as a war correspondent covering the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. I was on my own; never have I been an embedded correspondent. I’d begun my travelling in terror-torn Punjab; I was in the Assam jungles, when a mass grave at Lakhipathar, dug by separatists, was discovered (it had a rank stench); and I built my career during the worst of the 1990s insurgency in Kashmir. Though I reported from places like Brazil, Germany, Israel and Thailand, nothing was more satisfying than reporting from a conflict zone. The thrill of the unknown was at the very heart of reportage; making sense of the bits and pieces of reality, when it was hardest to do so, was its own reward. Peshawar looked no different from any Indian large town. The heart of this 2,500-year-old city is its crowded and squalid old quarter, a labyrinth of narrow streets skirted by mildew-y colonial houses now used as spice shops, dental clinics (the streets were filled with giant sets of teeth on signboards), and currency storehouses for traders in the worthless “Afghani”—bundles of it were stacked fearlessly on the roadside. The smell of meat permeated the place, both the raw meat hanging in shops as well as the stale meat in the streets. Clouds of flour exploded out of bakeries. And occasionally, a gleaming mosque where youngsters would display indignance over the U.S.A.’s War of Revenge. This old quarter is filled with Pashtun men—don’t call them Pathans—burly and craggy, and dressed in crumpled “pathan suits”, skull caps and beards. At the edge of the old quarter is the Bala Hissar Fort, standing between the city and the Khyber Pass to the West, from where India has been historically invaded. The fort is a cleanly kept ruin, with Army cannons peeking out of the 86

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ramparts and turrets. The British came to Peshawar in the 19th century to fight three unsuccessful wars against the Afghans and built a cantonment beyond the fort. It is sprawling, spacious and leafy, like most cantonments in India, as if it were deliberately the opposite of the noisy, crowded civilian life. When Peshawar began to bulge, new residential colonies sprouted in concentric circles around the centre. The poshest have developed along an invisible line that extends from the old quarter through the cantonment and beyond, towards Afghanistan. The Afghan settlements that followed the December 1979 Soviet invasion (and the War on Terror) have come up west of the residential colonies: these are Pakistan’s “Afghan Cities”. Donald Trump rails against “thousands and thousands” of refugees coming to the U.S.; but as a character in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West says, millions of refugees have already streamed into Pakistan because of the wars. Peshawar’s Sadar Bazaar is a bustling high street between the cantonment and the old quarter, lined with Afghan-owned shops where one could buy semi-precious stones, cell phones or ancient technicolour postcards featuring a beaming King Zahir Shah looking more youthful than his 87 years. And also T-shirts featuring a tranquil Osama bin Laden, accused of the 9/11 attack. This street’s monotonous commerce continued even as daisy-cutters were being dropped just miles to the west, proving that death too could not stop life. For peace and quiet, however, I walked around University Town, where I stayed during my five weeks in Peshawar. It sprawls between the cantonment and

the University of Peshawar; further to its west is Hayatabad; and further west are the smugglers markets and the Afghan cities. The wealthiest Pashtuns lived in Hayatabad. Its roads were lifeless. Abdul Haq, the former Mujahideen commander who lost half a foot to a landmine, lived here; after the Soviets fled he set up a prosperous business in Dubai in dry fruit and heroin. The CIA sent him into Afghanistan to take on the Taliban, and he was promptly killed. Pir Syed Ishaq Gailani, right-hand man to one of the Afghans’ main spiritual leaders, also lived here. He and his men were “Gucci Mujahideen”; because he lived in luxury, surrounded by gadgets, eating his buttered bread with a knife and fork. It baffled me that this Afghan was not eating Afghan food. When I arrived in Peshawar, one thing I looked forward to (besides reportage) was Afghan cooking. Central Asian cuisine was no doubt the baap of Mughlai cooking. It was the central Asians that established the Mughal Empire who invented chilli-rich recipes to kill the local stomach bugs. Just imagine. Mughlai cuisine was invented to fend off Delhi belly. It was an upset tummy that kept me low-profile the first 10 days I was in Peshawar. The toughest battle that any war correspondent faces in a conflict zone is the one against diarrhoea. Riaz, the Dawn’s local bureau chief, said it might be a “hill bug”, which sounds unglamorous. I visited Islamabad three weeks into my trip, and was in a visa-renewal queue when I heard several Americans bragging to one visibly suffering cameraman about how they had already got over their bouts of “loose motions”. Once I was no longer “bogged” down by the “runs”, it was time to hunt for food. I couldn’t of course go looking in Afghanistan, which had suffered three consecutive years of drought by the time the Americans showed up. Even the dry fruits of the lush Shomali Valley Facing page: 1 In the rundown old quarter of the city, spice shops jostle for attention next to dental clinics. 2 Afghani-run establishments can be found all over Peshawar, especially in the crowded Sadar Bazaar. 3 The spectre of war always looms in the city’s background; not far from Peshawar, to its south, is an infamous black market for weapons. 4 Peshawar’s most famous delicacy: the chappal kebab, named after the flat side of a shoe.

ROBERT HARDING/INDIAPICTURE (CROWD), TON KOENE/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY (PHOTO) GONZALO AZUMENDI/AGE FOTOSTOCK/DINODIA PHOTO LIBRARY (GUN) TRAVELIB PAKISTAN/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (FOOD)

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had, well, dried up. Anyone who could afford to cook a proper meal had already fled Kabul and the inevitable American bombs. Only the poorest remained. For Afghan food you had to go to where the Afghans had conquered the restaurants: Peshawar. Peshawar, though, had its own speciality, the chappal kebab. Why chappal kebab? “You know chappal?” The Nation’s chief reporter Shamim rhetorically asked. “Yes, it’s like the bottom of the chappal.” One day, Herald’s Peshawar correspondent Ilyas and I went out to look for the chappal kebab. We had just covered a demonstration by the Sipah-eSahaba, extremist Taliban-friendly Sunnis who habitually gunned down Shias at prayer. Expectedly it was filled with boring speeches, followed by the obligatory effigy-burning. Foreign cameramen clicked the protest like Geiger counters at Chernobyl. We left before the teargassing and drove out of the old quarter, in search of minced mutton shaped like sandals. Ilyas quietly drove through Sadar Bazaar; something was not right. He went into the cantonment. Still quiet. We passed one ramshackle dhaba after 88

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another but they were shuttered, their large pans empty. Over the railway tracks but no luck. Oh no, Ilyas groaned. “Tuesdays and Wednesdays have been declared meatless days in Peshawar,” Ilyas explained. “For ecological reasons.” And today was a Tuesday. Yet this only meant no mutton or beef; chicken was still fair game. Indeed, the afternoon of October 7, hours before the bombing began, I sat in a restaurant with Ilyas and with the Hindustan Times’s Islamabad correspondent Mubashir, and asked for beef. They were horrified. “Isn’t it forbidden for Hindus?” Mubashir wondered. “The beef here is no good,” Ilyas added. They were taking their famed Pashtun hospitality too far. I’ve eaten lots of beef in my life. When I was a teenager in New York, my father and I ate many steaks at Beefsteak Charlie’s. My father is now a supporter of beef bans. Desperate for beef I one day stole out of my hotel, ran across University Boulevard and ducked into Chief’s, where I ordered a beef burger. It was meant to be a quick replenishment after a morning of interviews and meetings, and an afternoon of writing copy. Yet it was nothing but a tasteless heap of chopped beef.

The next day I ordered the Chief’s Cheese Steak Beef Burger, but it was just too tough to chew and too much for my hillbug shrunken stomach to digest. “Okay,” I agreed to chicken with Ilyas on that beefless Tuesday, even though I had already had a whole coop of chicken handi, cooked in lots of tomato in oil with plenty of onions. The portions were always Shrek-sized. Even for in-room dining, I’d be served a handi that was enough for three. And Afghan naan is as big as a towel. The Pashtuns always looked horrified whenever I turned down a third naan. But we had no choice. A large pan of chicken was placed between us, with one large naan thrown on top. No plates were provided. The Pashtun motto, I suspect, is “Dig in without further ado”. We tore off pieces from opposite ends of the naan and dipped into the pan. We chewed and picked out pieces of chicken, depositing them on the edge of the sloping pan. I held my naan fragments in my left hand —yes, the hand I wash my ass with. But it was a tasty chicken that travelled into my tummy. The Pashtun chicken was a tad larger than its Indian counterpart, and far tastier than the American chicken, pumped up with more

SHAHID KHAN/SHUTTERSTOCK (MOSQUE), HEMIS/INDIAPICTURE (POSTER)

Militancy and political conflicts have ravaged Peshawar and it has faded from the tourist circuit. But for curious and intrepid seekers, the city has much to offer in terms of local culture (centre and right), historic monuments like the Sunehri mosque (left) and wonderful cuisine.

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way no doubt, but still I would rather have torn my pieces myself. The skin was ever so slightly crisp. The white meat ever so slightly chewy. The aroma, though, was Total Extreme Chicken. As if that chicken had unwittingly wandered into a clay oven. Oh, the solidity of meat. No wonder we fight. I felt blessed on being fed by ISI stooges rather than the CIA ones. The Americans were air-dropping food packets on starving Afghan civilians while bombing the crap out of the country; these contained peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was another brainwave from the heartsminds-and-stomachs department, who figured the Afghans couldn’t get food aid after Pakistan sealed its border. But what difference would 34,500 packets of PBJ make in Kabul, where the population was still in millions, even after bombing and fleeing? It made a difference outside the cities, in the empty fields where children ran for the packets and were maimed by Soviet mines still littering Afghanistan. The United Nations in 2001 estimated that the day peace returned to Afghanistan, it would take 10 years to de-mine the country. In 2017, peace is still distant. In 2001, American food literally cost children an arm and a leg.

Well, no PBJ sandwich for me if I ever got to Kabul. I would not leave Peshawar without having a chappal kebab either. So one day I asked a hotel staffer to go buy me a plate of chappal kebab. A flat, oval and greasy mass arrived. It was shaped something like a steak—as if a herd of goats had been aerially bombarded and turned into finely ground mutton. It was subtle, it was chewy, and it was heavy. There were two pieces in my plate. After the first I was exhausted. Greed forced me to begin the second but halfway through I dropped on my bed, heavily, like the Mother of All Bombs. I clutched my abdomen and begged for mercy from the God of Fried Things. My visit to Peshawar was now complete. Aditya Sinha is the author of The CEO Who Lost His Head (2017), Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years (2015, with A.S. Dulat); Death of Dreams: A Terrorist’s Tale (2000); Farooq Abdullah: Kashmir’s Prodigal Son (1995). He is a regular columnist for Mid-Day, Khaleej Times, and Provoke magazine. He is currently working on a memoir set in lower Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School in the late 1970s. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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steroids than an East German swimmer. The tastiest I had was roasted, whole, along with hundreds of other chickens, courtesy the ISI. The chickens were prepared for a tribal assembly of Afghans, held in Peshawar in late October 2001. Afghan spiritual leader Pir Syed Ahmed Gailani, openly bankrolled by the ISI, had Pashtun tribesmen together for a loya jirga—a grand assembly—to demonstrate his suitability to be a future ruler of Afghanistan. Around a thousand hefty, bearded men in elaborate turbans sat through the usual speeches about peace, reconciliation and the doddering ex-King. The reward was a hearty lunch that was also open for us intrepid journalists. Three reporters who cheerfully admitted they were religious right-wingers invited me to join them. A tray arrived that was dominated by a mountain of mutton biryani, dotted with raisins and cashews; on top lay a roasted chicken; and around the tray’s perimeter were saucers of meatball curry and vegetables. My devout colleagues each attacked a corner of the biryani with their unwashed hands. I hesitated, so one asked if I was a vegetarian. So I jumped in as well. It was a delight, especially the raisins and cashews. One of the jamaatis began tearing the chicken for the rest of us, in a brotherly

TRAVEL LIKE A WINEMAKER

KARISHMA GROVER WALKS INTO A BAR...

... because she is a vintner who loves exploring cities one tavern at a time BY HUMAIRA ANSARI 90

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F11PHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK

Memphis is all about the music and a stroll down the city’s Beale Street is enough to chase away those Monday blues.

WORLD

The next time you are in Nashik, drop in to Grover Zampa’s magnificent vineyard for a tasting tour.

humorous, hardworking team player, she “hates” being called an “heiress”; when Grover travels, it’s almost always for work, not leisure. Grover lives in Mumbai, but during the grape harvest season—between January and March—she parks herself in Bengaluru. She also spends a week there every month for the rest of the year. “Bengaluru is indeed my second home,” Grover says, locking her fingers around a coffee mug. “On a recent trip to London, for instance, when the landing announcement did not mention Bengaluru, I had to pinch myself. For a second there, I felt like I was on the wrong airplane.” The London trip was to participate in the London Wine Fair. Grover has attended similar trade events in Australia and New Zealand too. Her business trips typically involve overseeing her company’s stalls, tasting vintage wines,

schmoozing, and often enough “educating foreigners about how India not only produces wine but it produces some damn good quality wine.” Sometimes this requires challenging conventional notions of wine-drinking, such as “the fuss” over pairing certain kinds of wine with only steaks or artisanal cheeses. “That’s when I chime in with my standard response—90 per cent of my country doesn’t eat steak, my friend! Even in France, families sure sit down for dinner with a bottle of wine, but it’s not like every dish is cooked to complement the wine.”

Through the Looking Glass

Apart from work trips and the monthly Bengaluru darshan, Grover has managed some travel for fun. “Not too many places really, because there’s just no time,” she says. “My target is one holiday a year but that’s me being ambitious. I did Turkey in 2014. In July, I am visiting New Orleans, which, when it comes to jazz music, I am told, is like Memphis on steroids.” This target is exclusive of token weekend trips to Goa, Pench and Alibaug. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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PHOTO COURTESY: GROVER ZAMPA

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nside the minimalist conference room of Indian wine company Grover Zampa’s Mumbai office, associate winemaker Karishma Grover can’t stop fidgeting with the remote for the air conditioner. “Turn it off and it gets stuffy. Turn it on and you freeze,” says Grover, who is wrapped in a red shawl and is mildly frustrated at the machine’s inability to find a middle ground. She strategically parks the remote on top of the table separating us, and there it stays, always within her reach. Grover is good at monitoring and controlling temperature—in fact she is trained in it. The 32-year-old graduated with a degree in viticulture and oenology from the University of California, Davis, and she now puts her considerable knowledge about temperature and terroir to use in her family’s Bengaluru and Nashik vineyards, leading a team of 50 people. Grover is India’ oldest wine company, and Karishma, the owner’s older daughter, has to be a hands-on boss. A

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The sparkling wine in these uncorked bottles is left to age for upto a year for it to acquire a crisp, fruity flavour.

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Shed Inhibitions, Travel Light

It takes skilled hands and eyes to sort grapes at the Bengaluru-based Grover Zampa winery.

were Turkish, so we broke the language barrier via Google Translate.” Grover has found television shows to be a good conversation starter. Another bunch of strangers in a London bar became friends over a “crappy” American reality TV show, Southern Charm, about seven socialites living in South Carolina. In Memphis, one of Grover’s fondest memories is of bar-hopping on Beale Street on a breezy Tuesday night. At her first stop, she found the “the young and handsome jazz singer” and his band pretty amazing. “At another bar on the same street I hummed to the tune of a drummer who was playing there for the last time. The next day he was off on a Katy Perry tour.” Grover was impressed by the fact that A-list musicians perform in matchbox-sized pubs abroad, something that’s hard to imagine in Mumbai or Bengaluru.

As a traveller, Grover is more pragmatic than sentimental. Cutting the cord with places she has already visited involves zero drama. For instance, Cakebread Cellars in Napa Valley, where Grover interned, is a place she is happy to skip on her next U.S. trip. “And that’s not because I had to pick grape peels and pulp off the drain, or because I had to fill up 600 oak barrels in the three months that I was there,” Grover says, smiling. “I loved my stint there. But I’m a sucker for new experiences.” Her travel essentials include a book, a hefty tube of moisturiser and an open mind. She is also a “super light traveller.” “Even for a heavy-duty Indian destination wedding, all I need is a medium-sized suitcase.” She favours saris over bulky anarkalis; flip-flops replace stilettos. “Nobody gives a damn about what shoes you’re wearing below a sari,” she says …“which I absolutely love.” To sum it up, travel for Grover is about self-exploration and chasing the offbeat. “Unfortunately, travel is being perceived as such ‘a cool and in’ thing to do that it has become fraught with expectations. One friend goes to Croatia, everybody follows,” she rues. The real magic, Grover contends, takes place when you are open to diverse experiences and people. Though she can’t take off from work very often, she might argue that travelling is actually just a state of mind. “Physically, I could be sipping Rosé by some poolside in Mumbai. Mentally, I could very well be relaxing somewhere in the south of France.”

PHOTO COURTESY: GROVER ZAMPA

“When I do take off though, I try to switch off the winemaker in me,” Grover adds. But can a workaholic, happy-golucky winemaker ever really resist a trip to a winery in a foreign land? In Turkey, Grover squeezed in visits to three wineries in a single day. “By the time we reached the third one, my friends were ready to kill me,” she says, laughing. “But then again,” she quickly regains her composure, “look, wine is an expensive drink. I’m the last person to pressurise friends into buying a bottle or even a glass. Plus, as much as I love wine, I do drink everything else.” Grover also likes to travel solo. She is someone who can comfortably spend time with herself, by the beach, in a bar, or “reading Jeffrey Deaver’s Solitude Creek in a quaint coffee shop in San Francisco.” She especially loves to explore every aspect of a city, including its nightlife. “Some cities get chaotic at night, others become calmer. I like soaking in both vibes,” Grover says. In London and San Francisco especially, she loves navigating the streets past 2.30 a.m., strolling in and out of bars, chatting with locals and fellow travellers. She enjoys labyrinthine bazaars; Turkey’s Grand Bazaar reminded Grover of Mumbai’s Crawford Market— “Save that Grand Bazaar was cleaner and more orderly.” Taverns are Grover’s thing, and befriending strangers comes naturally to this extrovert. When her flight from Istanbul to Mumbai was delayed by four hours, she immediately knew what to do: walk into the airport bar. There, she befriended a group of teenagers. “They

Urban Legends

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A STRANGE AND SUBLIME ADDRESS

SUPRIYA KANTAK

Though Amit Chaudhuri grew up in Bombay, it only grew on him later

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URBAN LEGENDS SIMON WINCHESTER

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ENGLAND

NEVER TOO OLD-SCHOOL First as a student, now as a fellow, journalist and writer Simon Winchester reflects on Oxford BY BHAVYA DORE

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n a chilly winter Tuesday morning in 1962, Simon Winchester, then about 17 years old, got off the train at Oxford. The young man had just arrived at one of the world’s most eminent universities from his home town of Dorchester, in the southwest of England. It was his first visit, and he was en route to the college where he was to write his entrance examination, when something hit him sharply. It was the bewildering but bewitching scent of marmalade, and it seemed to engulf the air. “And I thought, this is so delightful,” says Winchester, on the phone from Massachusetts, U.S.A., “but why is it happening?” It turned out the aromatic ambience was one those vintage Oxford traditions, courtesy Frank Cooper’s jam factory nearby—makers of the famous Oxford marmalade. “On Wednesday they made strawberry, on Thursday they made blackcurrant, but on Tuesday they made marmalade,” he continues. “I thought that was a wonderful introduction [to Oxford].” Winchester, a journalist and travel writer, has chronicled fascinating true stories from the forging of the United States of America, to the man who mapped England and the volcano that singed a region. But before he became the distinguished non-fiction writer, he was just a boy laid low by the smell of jam, and over the shaky phone line he narrates this adolescent memory with relish. Smitten by this wonderful Emerald

City, Winchester eventually made it to the entrance examination, where the question paper contained one essaytype question that stood out among the rest. It went: “Two cheers for democracy: is two the right number?” “And I often thought,” he says, “any institution that asked me a question like that is an institution I would like to be a member of.” When Winchester arrived that Tuesday, allowing the soaring spires, triumphant turrets and imperious stone buildings to wash over him, it would not be the last time he visited. A little after that, he got in to the university and in 1963 began his degree in geology at St Catherine’s College. As a boy, Winchester grew up in Dorset county—best known as Thomas Hardy terrain—in a smaller, but equally historic town. But when asked to pick a city that had transformed him or affected him deeply in some way, he immediately picked Oxford. “It was the most important city for me,” he says. “Because I never dreamed I would get a place at Oxford University and when I did, those three years really opened my eyes to the realities and possibilities of the world. So, on a personal level, it was important.” The university town is a grand architectural poem; a cornucopia of Gothic, Tudorian, Georgian styles and wonders, with some buildings dating back 800 years. The river Iffley runs through, and nearly every structure is an arresting marvel of its own. “It’s the

Facing page: Simon Winchester (top) is an honorary fellow at his alma mater St Catherine’s College at Oxford University (bottom), where he read geology in the 1960s. “I go back to Oxford frequently,” he says. “It’s the most beautiful, most important city I know.”

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around. Later, Winchester will return in September, for the release of the book about Oxford University. Each phase of his relationship with the city has taken on its own flavour, but restaurants and hang-out places have naturally changed over time. The old shoemaker Ducker and Son, whose store stood for more than 100 years, shut down a few months ago, so a shoe pit stop is no longer possible. Still, some things are determinedly part of the built fabric; Winchester always visits Blackwell’s, one of his favourite book stores for decades. Book stores and gardens—especially the ones at Exeter College and Trinity College—are very much on the Oxford beat. There are friends everywhere. And a visit to his old tutor, who is past 90, is also on the agenda each time. “Favourite restaurants of mine in the 1960s and 1980s have gone but the colleges and libraries are still there and I have many friends there,” he says. “So there is a wonderful unchanging quality about Oxford which I like.”

The coat of arms at the famous Bodleian Library (far left, bottom); Oxford has close to 100 libraries across different institutions like Trinity College (middle); The university has several iconic architectural marvels like the University Church of St Mary the Virgin (far left); Winchester, whose first memory of arriving in Oxford was of the scent of marmalade (bottom, far right), says that his wife doesn’t enjoy it as much when she’s visiting on her own because Oxford (top, right) can feel inaccessible to an outsider.

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NEIL MITCHELL/SHUTTERSTOCK (CITY), URBANBUZZ/ISTOCK (JAR)

but natural, given his years spent there as a student, researcher and now a fellow. But what is the city like for someone who has not lived and worked there and who is somewhat more of an outsider? “My wife, for instance, who is not connected to the university at all, sees it in a very different way,” he says. “If she’s on her own, then she can’t gain access to the institutions and so she feels it’s a city of walls that keep out people, and to me it’s a city of walls that let people within. So she likes Oxford when she’s with me but doesn’t care for it so much when she’s not with me.” Winchester’s most recent trip was in March, when he was there to work out certain filming permissions. This month, he will be back when they film for The Professor and the Madman, based on his first book, a global bestseller that detailed the obscure and bizarre tale of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. The film stars Mel Gibson and Sean Penn, and the crew will be shooting for three days at Christchurch College, so they’ve requested him to be

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A dream destination

Tel: 011-26236525 | Email: [email protected] www.tourism-mauritius.mu

In Bombay, says Amit Chaudhuri, the eye runs across the streets and meets the water. When seen from places like the Gateway of India, the city comes to be defined by the sea and the horizon.

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MUMBAI

a strange and sublime address WRITER AMIT CHAUDHURI GREW UP IN B O M BAY, B U T T H E C I T Y TO O K A F E W DECADES TO GROW ON HIM

as told to shreevatsa nevatia

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In Amit Chaudhuri’s new novel, Friend of My Youth, he writes at one point, “The eye covers distances in a second. It lusts for freedom. Looking out, I often wanted to be free—not of home, but of the city.” There is something ambivalent about the Bombay Chaudhuri refers to. It is hard to pin down. Chaudhuri’s own relationship with the city, the book suggests, has always been hesitant. Even after you have reached the end of the writer’s slim, warm and utterly compelling 137-page novel, you can’t be certain if he likes or dislikes the city. The narrator of Friend might well be Amit Chaudhuri, but he makes no declarations on the writer’s behalf. He seems to have considered both Bombay and Mumbai deeply, but surprisingly feels little nostalgia for either. Though he grew up here, he only returns as an outsider. When National Geographic Traveller India did call Chaudhuri in Kolkata, he spoke about ‘Bombay’, not Mumbai. Chaudhuri said, “I have spent more than 30 years calling the city Bombay. Why would I call it Mumbai all of a sudden? The word has no history for me in the English language.” He added with a laugh, “It’s a kind of Alice in Wonderland situation, and that’s not a situation I want to be in.” The writer spoke to us about his work, about growing up in Bombay and how Bombay has grown on him. Though only an extract, here is a sample of his thoughts on a city he has found both ostentatious and addictive.

thing that has changed for me since I was a child, looking out at the sea, is my ability to notice it, to have a sense of what it means to be in a seafront city. I also notice things about that seafront, especially Marine Drive. I see how it has become a place of congregation for all kinds of people, which when I was growing up, it was not. It was more or less a barren sort of place, and only very few people lingered there. Today, Marine Drive’s broad pavement is a part of Bombay’s attempt to reuse its spaces. That, for me, is a big part of the rediscovery. Though my parents left Bombay in 1989, I had left a few years earlier, in 1983. When I would return to Bombay in 1985, From my first book [A Strange and Sublime Address] onwards, I my parents had moved from Cuffe Parade to St. Cyril Road in notice that I have written repeatedly about going Bandra. In a place like St. Cyril Road, Bombay didn’t seem like somewhere else, about visiting another place. Bombay. It was not the Bombay I knew. For me, that was a huge The first book is about going to Calcutta, but I discovery because I would come back from the silence of Lonsuppose the whole idea of writing about return don to a third-storey apartment where I could hear things and crystallised for me with Friend of My Youth. I look at them. The St. Cyril Road flat looked out onto the lane, have always found interesting onto the trees, and also out the kind of transformation onto another building where that results from being in a Parsi couple lived. I could a place that one is partly now glimpse these other lives “AS FA R AS BO M BAY I S familiar with. Without that in other houses. I couldn’t CO N C E R N E D, EV E RY T H I N G I being an agenda, I like it when have done that from the 12th one rediscovers a place or one’s and 25th storey of buildings SAY S E E M S TO H AV E A K I N D O F sense of place. That, for me, in which I had grown up, and H I STO RY W H E R E T H E O P P OS I T E has been the way narratives which overlooked the sea. work. To me, the story rather After my parents left for WAS A LSO T RU E ” than being directed by plot, Calcutta, I would only visit has always simply to do with Bombay occasionally for book going somewhere. When you launches and events like that, talk about a return to Bombay, and I still held it in some conthough, you see other things begin to converge in the confluence tempt because of my memory of its ostentation. And when I say of the past and the present. “it”, I mean the kind of Bombay in which I had grown up, and In one part of Friend of My Youth, I talk about Bombay being that is now called South Bombay. But despite its flaunting of a city that is quite literally defined by the sea and the horizon. wealth, something drew me to the city. It had been transformed, I talk about looking out at the sea and not seeing it. The eye and I think part of that transformation had to do with how farkind of runs across the streets and then meets the water. One flung Bombay became, and how you were now connected to new 100

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As the city opened up, Chaudhuri saw older churches and mosques become visible. The Mount Mary Church in Bandra (top), for instance, became iconic over the years. Marine Drive (bottom) also became a place of congregation and a part of Bombay’s attempt to reuse its spaces.

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routes and flyovers that didn’t exist before. For instance, Tulsi industry. People become touts or helpers of touts. You see this Pipe Road, which one hardly ever went down before, had now in Istanbul. You see this in Morocco, even Edinburgh. Bombay become a kind of alternative route. When going down these does have tourism, but it also has its own reasons for being a routes, one saw forms of habitation including old buildings, commercial city. Sites like Colaba, for instance, are being used churches and mosques, which one never saw before. I found and reused without becoming heritage sites. That is good to see some of that very moving, some of this opening up, some of this and quite a feat to pull off. movement in the city which was newly possible. What I do find very disturbing, though, is the way trees are being felled in Bombay. I thought Bombay had moved to a place ***** Bombay and Calcutta, each in their own way, have some very where it had found a way to be the only city that was being European characteristics, which almost take them beyond the extremely sensitive to the way in which it preserved its ancient colonial metropolises that they were. Though that common trees. For an ostentatious city, it was very unostentatious about aspect does interest me, there are differences as well. I think the way in which it preserved its trees and its gardens. I am not the light in Bombay is very different from the light in Calcutta. a frequenter of gardens, but Bombay had forced me to revise my It is a bright, optimistic light. It doesn’t create an ethos for view about these places. And by gardens, I don’t only mean the retrospection or slowing down. It creates an ethos that one iconic Kamla Nehru Park in Malabar Hills, but also the gardens might move forward in. I feel you inhabit that light the moment found on the stretch between Marine Drive and Mantralaya. I you arrive in the airport. have seen them from the outside, and they are extraordinary for In Calcutta, however, there are moments when I’ll be being so beautiful without the beauty being laboured in any way. reminded of Bombay; for instance, if I hear someone speak in I feel the felling of trees is a slap in the face of those who have Gujarati, or smell curry leaves or vadas. I realise I miss those come to respect and adore Bombay, the Bombay I lived in and things. When I am in Calcutta, I miss the kind of Maharashtrian the one I’m reappraising. or South Indian influences you find in Bombay. I miss the Parsi ***** and Goan elements of life. I miss the overheard conversations No addiction can ever have an immediate answer, and its cause and the smell of food. When can never be known. We never I hear something or smell know why one is addicted to a something, Bombay will come substance or thing, and that “ I N CA LCU T TA , T H E R E A R E back to me. I always believed is why these addictions are so M O M E N TS W H E N I ’ L L B E Bombay was not formative to enlivening and corrosive. If me, but I now see it clearly was. we knew exactly why we were R E M I N D E D O F BO M BAY I F I H E A R I’m in a peculiar position of addicted to something, we having grown up there, while would know how to deal with SO M EO N E S P E A K I N GUJA RAT I having felt I never belonged it. The power of addiction O R T H E S M E L L O F CU R RY L E AV ES there. Ironically, though, for would have also been much a person who felt he never diminished. It is precisely O R VA DAS. I R E A L I S E I M I SS belonged to Bombay, I now because of reasons that we think I’ve always belonged are not aware of that we are T H OS E T H I N G S ” there. As far as Bombay is addicted to cities, to certain concerned, everything I say cities. I have often said that seems to have a kind of history where the opposite was also true. I am addicted to modernity. I am addicted to the modernity that I first saw embodied in Calcutta, and that’s why I grew up ***** The Kala Ghoda Festival [Chaudhuri has spoken at the festival with this addiction to Calcutta. There is also in me an addiction over the years] sometimes puts me up at the Astoria Hotel, so to Bombay, I realise: its different kind of light, its different when I now walk down Churchgate, I remember that I have forms of animatedness. I now realise that these are all deeply had the experience of walking down that stretch on multiple engrossing to me. occasions at multiple times of the day. Walking down that When I was a child I missed my visits to Calcutta and pathway, you again feel the animation of people around you, felt the kind of withdrawal symptoms an addict suffers from. and you see all kinds of people. One of the nice things about I feel the same thing sometimes with Bombay these days. Bombay has been that it has allowed informal trade to exist in My wife seems to have become addicted to it as well. She these so-called heritage precincts. People admirably fought for quite recently remarked that it would be nice to spend a these precincts, and that’s why you have these great buildings few days in Bombay. And that is a very weird thing to say that still exist in the area, but at the same time, these precincts because people would say it is nice to go and spend some time have not been entirely sanitised. You still have the same kinds in a quiet retreat or to go and see some famous monument of informal trade there that you have in other parts of India and somewhere, but to say you want to go to Bombay, to say you in other cities, the kind of trade that you had in Bombay when want to travel to the city is odd. That can only be explained I was growing up. You have this multiplicity of life and activity, by some kind of addiction having entered your blood. You and one finds this very moving when one is walking through it. are missing something. You are not going there because you Bombay, it must be said, has managed to hold and reuse are going to see a historic landmark or site. Something is whole sections of the city without making it a heritage site. In missing from the bloodstream and the bloodstream needs and a heritage city, everybody risks becoming part of the tourism recognises this.” 102

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Houses in Bandra (top left) always fascinated Chaudhuri. Once typified by the Bombay Stock Exchange (top right), the writer finds most residents of the city now co-opted by commercial enterprise. Most aerial views of Bombay (right) suggest an animatedness that Chaudhuri finds addictive, and as Dhobi Ghat (bottom left) shows, the city is both ostentatious and egalitarian. Amit Chaudhuri (bottom left) inside the Cathedral and John Connon School where he was once a pupil.

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U.S.A.

Writer and journalist Bee Rowlatt on nature, culture and counterculture in San Francisco

ENGEL CHING/SHUTTERSTOCK

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The grand art deco Golden Gate Bridge, says Bee Rowlatt, is a testament to America's can-do spirit.

ee Rowlatt’s first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge left her quivering with joy. Five years later, she still trills in delight at any mention of the grand, vermilion San Francisco edifice. “I wrote a travel piece about it in which I go nuts,” she says, laughing. “It’s the most beautiful thing!” Her pitch rises. “You can’t believe it. It’s a testament to human willpower. They said it couldn’t be built, but the whole American spirit of can-do seems embodied in it. I found that quite moving.” In the piece-in which-she-goes-nuts, 45-year-old Rowlatt writes in The Telegraph of joining the fan club: “How could I not? It’s huge. It’s orange. It’s art deco.” All good points. During the course of our conversation, she will proceed to make many more. Rowlatt, a journalist and broadcaster, now based in India, considers herself “a newly burnished Dilliwaali”; and is quite prepared to enlarge upon the capital’s charms. But before she moved here, she had begun an affair with the city on the Bay, and on the phone is reduced to energetic rhapsodies. Rowlatt speaks with an admixture of wonderment and humour. During her two-week trip she dipped in a soothing hot spring (“swimwear optional”), ingested gourmet delights (“Michelin-auditioning stuff”) and walked among murals (“huge, gorgeous”). But wait, one more thing, how could she forget. “The wine,” she exclaims, a breathy sigh invoking the remembered

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pleasures of full-blooded Merlots and luscious Chardonnays. The California visit was the culmination of a month-long journey for Rowlatt, author of the travel memoir In Search of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys. It was the third act in an adventure retracing the swashbuckling steps of Enlightenment thinker and proto-feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft travelled with her baby, went looking for some treasure and wrote a bestseller on the way. In the 18th century, a woman on the road alone would have been unheard of; a woman with a baby would have been cognitively indigestible. Rowlatt was captivated by

that story and set out to travel to those same places, with her two-year-old. Both women worked their way through Scandinavia and Paris. The U.S. never featured on Wollstonecraft’s itinerary, though it was very much on her wishlist. And for Rowlatt, tacking on California to this homage trip was both a tribute to the feminist and an important pitstop to a crucible of the feminist movement. It’s an arc that begins with Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women all the way to contemporary debates on intersectionality. “I’m very much part of the second wave feminist movement. That’s where I come from. So, for me, heading to California was

obvious,” she says. “One of the themes I tackle is the notion of second wave feminism, the idea of having it all. And that really needed some closer examination,” she continues. “So I went.” That was her first visit out West—she’d been an “East Coast girl” until then—and took with her standard images of flower power and dippy hippies. “The quest of my book comes to a head in San Francisco, and I have to say it’s a city I fell very much in love with,” she says. “It seemed to me the peak of civilisation for a number of reasons.” The counterculture movement and civil rights ferment of the 1960s exploded in California, becoming home turf for any kind of anti-

establishment resistance. And that’s still true. Now of course, it has become the first front of battle against new U.S. President Donald Trump. The University of Berkeley has been the site of dynamic free speech debates and the salty air is ripe with revolutionary energy. “Having spent time in San Francisco,” she says, “it does not surprise me in the least.” The hippie-hipster aftertaste is very much in the ether. There are trendy icecream parlours and wooden painted houses and lively immigrant neighbourhoods. “I found it utterly bewitching,” says Rowlatt. There’s actual witches too—so the magic

Quaint houses and plush highrises juxtaposed against a vermilion San Francisco skyscape make for a fascinating contrast says Rowlatt.

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isn’t entirely surprising. Rowlatt stayed with a wiccan who did tarot readings in an old house with her grumpy cat (“it was all very mystical”). But in the Golden State, weirdness and nudity pitch up alongside slick office complexes and scandalously expensive real estate. There is Silicon Valley and the temple of technology and business “living cheek by jowl” with the sun-kissed Bohemians and vegan activists. “In our heads it’s all about hippie love and flowers in your hair,” says Rowlatt. “And certain aspects are like that, but in certain other aspects it’s more modern and far more cutting-edge than I expected.” The Bay Area hosts some of the richest companies in the world and has been the engine of the economy in recent decades. And that’s just the built environment and cultural experiences

we’re talking about. San Francisco also has vast stretches of sandy beaches, a wonderfully salubrious climate and one of nature’s most arresting sights: the redwood trees. “You’ve never seen anything like it. You just can’t believe your eyes.” Rowlatt exclaims. “There’s the glittering commerce of Silicon Valley right next to these ancient, ancient trees that predate most of western history. You can see time in those old, aged giants. It’s very humbling.” Earlier this year at a travel writing panel at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Rowlatt chose to read a section from her book in which nothing happens: just her and little Will on a massive, empty beach. “It was a very special moment,” she says. “I’m English, so I talk about the sea but Americans say the ocean. It’s on an epic scale. The thing about California is everything’s bigger.” No wonder, Rowlatt’s

enthusiasm-on-steroids response when she reflects on the grand expanses. And it’s an especially West Coast feeling. “I think the difference is the scale,” she says. “You feel utterly dwarfed by the giant redwoods, the vast ocean. It’s a beautiful thing, a sublime thing to be so completely overwhelmed and humbled by nature. And that’s a very Californian experience.” San Francisco was also fairly pedestrianfriendly and child-friendly. Rowlatt walked and cycled, pushing her baby around with her. She found kindness everywhere, just as Wollstonecraft, writing centuries earlier, had too. The journey was of course, the main point, the destinations incidental. Rowlatt was determined to walk in Wollstonecraft’s shoes with the same insouciance and curious openness. “She was utterly fearless and

I wanted to measure up to her, to channel some of her courage,” she says. “It’s also about exploring boundaries and the selfimposed boundaries of motherhood. Taking a baby and taking off on the road.” Rowlatt knows she has to go back there some day, though she doesn’t have any concrete plans at the moment. She lives in Delhi with her four children and her husband—who works for the BBC—so planning a trip from halfway across the world isn’t quite feasible. But until then she’s quite happy assailing San Francisco natives with a desperate urge to talk to them about their city. “I’m going, ‘Oh my god I love your city so much’, and I kind of want to connect with them and they’re just like go away,” she says, with selfdeprecating good humour. “I definitely left part of my heart in San Francisco.”

PHOTO COURTESY: BEE ROWLATT

In her journey to retrace proto-feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft's footsteps, California was a final stop. Rowlatt loved exploring the larger-than-life city with her son, Will.

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RWANDA REDUX

VARDHAN KONDVIKAR

Wildlife guides tell heart-warming stories of a country looking out for its forests

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A E C LL A PL CA et e Y N you m out E H aff es ab t s T OW hotel stori be the wn nd cri s o a e r , i fs sd he e t r h e c e sid pines s, av n e h i uid vels try ilip s g h u a P U The our tr e ind f the AS v y i B o A on me. F best EL M o h RU BY

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RUMELA BASU (HARRY & CARLOS), PHOTO COURTESY: ALLAN LUNETA, PHOTO COURTESY: ZAMORA D. SANTIAGO, PHOTO COURTESY: JOSE CARMELITO

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PHILIPPINES

ALLAN LUNETA, 41, TOUR GUIDE, PALAWAN

“I used to be a paramedic,” says Allan Luneta, leaning against the sliding door of our van and looking completely at ease in Bermudas and a T-shirt, his sunglasses resting on his cap. “I even worked with the city government here before I decided to change jobs.” I am pleasantly surprised, though I can understand why Luneta left the bustle of Manila for the relaxed life of Palawan province in northern Philippines. We are returning to Puerto Princesa, the region’s tiny capital city, after a morning of snorkelling and swimming in the sea, and lazing in open cottages on the sandy shores of a pristine beach. The hunger stoked by swimming had been appeased with grilled crabs and fresh sea grapes: algae that look like a bunch of tiny green grapes and taste of the sea. “It is a peaceful life,” says Luneta. “I lived in Manila almost all my life, and people from here go there chasing opportunities, but I decided to come here. The islands of Palawan have a lot to offer.” Since the Puerto Princesa Subterranean National Park, more popularly known as the Underground River, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, travellers have flocked to the city. But Alan believes there’s much more to Palawan than the river. He has some special spots in mind. “We are known as the last ecological frontier because of the biodiversity. You can swim with sea turtles and whale sharks, snorkel to see a colourful underwater world, venture into caves and trek in a forest. It is all here. I would take people up north to Port Barton or Linapacan, which is one of the cleanest bodies of water; or, the unspoilt beaches in Corong.” A dazzling smile appears on Luneta’s face, there’s a twinkle in his eyes. He is content with the simple life and in love with his island home. “I travel three hours south whenever I feel like getting

“You can swim with sea turtles and whale sharks, snorkel to see a colourful underwater world, venture into caves and trek in a forest. It is all here”

away. Some days there is no electricity and I can stay at the beach all day, even though that’s usually where I am because of work,” he laughs. Puerto Princesa buzzes with people and cars, and there are far fewer tricycles than there were in 2008, when Luneta moved here. “But it still has its charm,” he says. “You have to really spend time here and take it all in. Most locals are migrants and it is a melting pot of cultures. In fact, in Palawan, it is not just about the picturesque sights, it is about the people.” According to Luneta, there is even a name for the draw of the island: “We call it the ‘come back-come back’ syndrome of Palawan,” he chuckles. Luneta would like to travel to other Southeast Asian countries “to see what they are doing differently or better.” Or, just move farther away from the city and live by the sea.

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RUMELA BASU

Quiet in the day, Puerto Princesa's City Baywalk Park is most lively by dusk. Food vendors open their stalls, people stroll leisurely while watching the sunset, and kids and adults cycle on rented bikes.

THE INSIDER

JOSE CARMELITO S. QUIZON,

At the sand bath at Puning Hot Springs (top) visitors are covered with heated volcanic sand; Turon (bottom left), a local sweetmeat, is made by wrapping filo pastry around ripe bananas and then deep frying them.

“Kapampanga, the people of Pampanga, are considered really good cooks. I’m from Pampanga so I can say I have good taste.” Chef Jose Carmelito S. Quizon laughs a little sheepishly as I dig into the sisig he has ordered for our dinner at the Park Inn by Radisson in Clark. Sisig, a dish made of finely chopped pig ears and face is one of Quizon’s favourite dishes and a delicacy in Pampanga, the central plains of the Philippines. According to Quizon, after the day I had just had—immersing myself in hot springs, being buried in a warm sand bath, and hiking through a forest to meet members of the aboriginal Aeta tribe—a glass of the local San Miguel beer and a plate of wok-tossed pig face is the perfect way to unwind. Pork dominates the food scene in the Philippines, and adobo, meat marinated and cooked with vinegar, garlic and soy sauce, is famous in the country. However, when in Pampanga, Quizon insists that one must definitely try the kare-kare (chunks of beef stewed in peanut-sauce), (carabao milk pudding) and (banana spring rolls). The local dishes are often spicy, but there is also a great love for sour condiments. “However, if you go to the south, like the region of Bicol, coconut milk and chillies rule the palate. Every region has something different to offer,” Quizon adds. While I savour a special grilled chicken dish, he tells me that food isn’t only about sustenance in the Philippines. It is “a cele-bration.” Quizon’s pride in his land’s 112

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“In the Philippines, food isn’t only about sustenance. It is a celebration”

bounty shines through the smile breaking across his face as he elaborates: “There is a sisig festival in Pampanga. The Binulo Festival in Porac celebrates the food of the Aetas by cooking food in bamboo. There is a tuna festival in General Santos City, a lechon festival in Batangas, a festival in Pangasinan, where they cook bangus or milkfish in different ways.” While Quizon dabbles in a lot of different cuisines, Filipino food is closest to his heart. “I love the comfort of flavours I have grown up eating. Filipino food, in my opinion, has the lure of the exotic. It is adventurous, like the balut (boiled duck embryo eaten from the shell) and stuffed frog legs, but it can also be very simple like the sisig or adobo.” According to the chef, you can experience the influence of Malay and Indonesian cultures, Spanish colonial history, and even snazzy new culinary technology, all on a plate in the Philippines. Yet, the charm of the country is not in the food alone. “Come here for the warm people. And try the food made by the people. Knowing their cooking techniques, the produce, and the conversation and experiments around food, you will see the essence of Philippines,” he says. As I bite into a sweet, creamy leche flan, Quizon tells me about his daughter, who he says is not interested in burgers and fast food but curious about baking and the food her father makes. “Maybe she gets it from me,” he laughs. Chef Quizon would like to travel to France one day to learn about the food. For visitors, he would cook kare-kare dagat, or seafood kare-kare.

RUMELA BASU (SAND BATH & JOSE CARMELITO), KIM DAVID/SHUTTERSTOCK (FOOD)

33, CHEF, PAMPANGA

PHILIPPINES

ZAMORA D. SANTIAGO, 50, TOUR GUIDE, ILOCOS Laoag city. The buildings that surround the park and the park itself are part of the country's history. Santiago would like to someday explore faith and history in Israel.

“While the horse’s shoes clatter on cobblestone streets, and church ruins tell tales of centuries past, the scent of coffee wafts out of a Starbucks housed in a colonialstyle building”

In Vigan city, one can experience Philippines' colonial past—from 16th-century buildings and horse carriages (bottom), to Spanishinspired empanadas (top) sold in street stalls. PHOTO COURTESY: ZAMORA D. SANTIAGO (ZAMORA D. SANTIAGO), STEFANO PATERNA/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (FOOD), AKARAT PHASURA/SHUTTERSTOCK (STREET)

The reason why Zamora D. Santiago—or Zaza as she likes to be called—became a tour guide was that “it is like being paid to go out and have fun with friends.” That was 17 years ago, and she’s been at it ever since. San Nicolas, in the province of Ilocos Norte, is the town Santiago calls home. Ilocos Norte, its capital city Laoag, and the surrounding region have some of the best preserved structures from the 16th century, when the Philippines was colonised by Spain. “The past and present come together in Ilocos,” says Santiago. “There are world heritage sites, like the churches, and you can also go sand dune bashing in a 4x4 vehicle.” In the city of Vigan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, we walk past little stalls selling empanadas, a deep fried snack that is a legacy of the Spanish, and look up at the shell-framed windows and steep roofs. The Spanish and Chinese influences blend with Filipino traditions, and it is easy to understand why Santiago loves it so much. Yet, it is not just the structures that are close to her heart. “Look at the people. They are always smiling and they are always friendly. Their cultural roots are stories in themselves.” A ride on a , or horse carriage, around Vigan can suck you into a time warp. While the horse’s shoes clatter on cobblestone streets, and church ruins tell tales of centuries past, the scent of coffee wafts out of a Starbucks housed in a colonial-style building, and people click selfies in the central plaza. “Actually Ilocos is my favourite part of the Philippines,” Santiago elaborates. “I love it here, and this region is what I would show anyone who comes to visit me. And also stop at Aurora Park in the heart of

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CARLOS REYES, 60, TOUR GUIDE, PAMPANGA “You should get your eyes checked! I am 60 years old.” Carlos Reyes’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he laughs at my remark that he looks much younger than his age. “I have lived in Manila for 30 years now and I have been a freelance tour guide for 10 years.” Reyes’ sense of humour is heavy on dad jokes, but ones that makes most people laugh anyway. He keeps us chuckling throughout the day tour. “The Philippines is a country of contrasts, and the people, culture, customs vary from the mountains to the plains, to the seas. We even have different jokes about the people from every region—the ones in the north are thrifty, the south is flamboyant,” he tells me. As I smile at that, he tells me about his childhood. “I grew up in the mountains in Baguio. A city 5,000 feet above sea level, which is today the country’s most popular summer destination. It was a former American hill station,” he says. From the way his features soften, it is apparent that the mountains hold a special place in his heart. “I would love to take you to the mountains in the north to see the rice terraces in Banaue, Ifugao. That is a part of the Philippines that was not built by colonisers. That is built by Filipinos. There are only seven wonders of the world, but we call this the eighth wonder because it is a living museum. The agricultural way of life from 2,000 years ago still remains today. These rice terraces are still used.” Reyes became a tour guide because he is a “people’s person” and this job lets him meet many different people from many

“The rice terraces is a part of the Philippines that was not built by colonisers. This is built by Filipinos... it is a living museum”

different places. He says he has friends around the world now. According to him it is the people that draw travellers back to the Philippines as well. “Filipinos are easy-going. Most probably when you talk to someone, they will ask you how long you are staying and where you are from. Our infrastructure is not that developed in parts, but the people make up for it.” “This is what the Spanish call calidad humana”, he says. “It encompasses the welcoming, hospitable attitude of the Filipinos.” It is literally the human element. Reyes has visited Europe, Asia and Scandinavia. He would like to see India because his father, who studied in Delhi, told him of “India, and Gandhi.” However, his dream destination is U.S.A. because “we were colonised by them and their history is entwined with ours.”

SURIYA99/SHUTTERSTOCK (LANDSCAPE), RUMELA BASU (CARLOS REYES)

The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras are a representation of 2,000-year-old agricultural practices carved into the Cordillera mountain range in Ifugao.

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PHILIPPINES

HARRY FURIO, 49, CHEF, MANILA

“I love rogan josh!” says Chef Harry Furio at the Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria in Galleria, as we sit down for a chat after breakfast. “But in local food, I like adobo. And sinigang, especially salmon belly sinigang. I like food that is saucy, not dry,” Sinigang, a colourful sour and savoury stew, perfectly embodies the essence of most Filipino food according to Harry. “We are extravagant when it comes to ingredients. There is no rationing in that. Filipinos love to eat. You will see people always eating from morning to night,” he laughs. Furio believes that putting your heart into cooking any Filipino dish makes all the difference. He has worked in Manila and the Crowne Plaza for over a decade, and has seen the food scene of the capital city evolve. Different restaurants, including Indian and Korean ones, have sprung up in recent times. But local flavours still reign. “The way of cooking is still largely traditional, but chefs experiment with local flavours especially in Manila. You will see restaurants putting a twist to traditional dishes and people love it. Travellers have often told me that some of the best experiences they have had have been with local food. Some are adventurous and will try exotic dishes like balut, and some really like the tangy-savoury flavours of our food, or even the devil’s chilli that is widely used in Bicol.”

“We are extravagant when it comes to ingredients. There is no rationing in that. Filipinos love to eat”

Surprisingly when I ask him what travellers should look for when they come to Philippines and why they should visit at all, food is not his first thought. He insists that a dip in the sea at Palawan or Boracay is mandatory, but like the others I’ve met, the first thing he mentions is the people. “There are always smiling faces in the Philippines. We will always take care of you. And if possible, we’d like to show you every corner of the country, because there is something to see and of course something to eat in every corner. Our food, our warmth, and our smiles are things we are proud of.” Chef Furio would like to see the cone volcano in Bicol. Outside the country, he would go to Malaysia because “it is a trending industry, and I love coconut milk and ginger.”

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KIM DAVID/SHUTTERSTOCK (PROMENADE), PHOTO COURTESY: HARRY FURIO (HARRY FURIO), BONCHAN/SHUTTERSTOCK (FOOD)

Manila's San Miguel by the Bay (top) is a popular night-time spot in Manila with shops, restaurants, recreational spaces, and the city's largest Ferris wheel; The sour and savoury stew, sinigang (bottom), is commonly flavoured with the local Manila tamarind.

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Lama Tsering is in charge at the Dhankar monastery, the oldest in Spiti. Tsering spends his time praying and researching Tibetan art, and occasionally playing the dungchen, a Tibetan horn used in prayers.

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THE INSIDER

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Winters in Spiti are intense. Pin Valley (top) is covered in snow for most of the year. Despite temperatures dropping 30 degrees below zero, visitors are likely to encounter locals who are happy to strike up a conversation. Some are curious about city life because their own lives seem staid in comparison. I remember that one local host told me, “I watch TV shows and know all about how you guys live. Our lives are so boring.” However, the people I met here were anything but that. Take for instance, Tsering Lama (bottom left) at the Lhalung monastery, who impressed me with his depth and knowledge of the region’s culture and history. Then there was Dorje Bodh (bottom right), a villager from Kibber. A government employee, he devotes himself to wildlife conservation and farming in winter. He is also a passionate lensman, who photographs snow leopards, a skill he acquired from wildlife filmmaker Chinmay Rane, when he visited his village.

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SPITI VALLEY

Handicrafts are an essential feature of life in Spiti. For Dolma Tsering, sporting a traditional coat she wove herself, the practice is almost meditative. Tsering (a common name in Spiti) also loves to watch TV but she has to do so stealthily, keeping the remote away from her two bratty grandchildren.

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Abhinandita Mathur is a photographer and researcher based in Goa. She has travelled to Spiti four times including once to photograph the Incredible India campaign. Her work gets her to travel to exquisite places often. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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THE INSIDER

Rwanda

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Conversations with four wildlife guides unearths heart-warming stories of a country and its people looking out for its forests Text & Photographs By Rumela Basu

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Ildephonse Kambogo Tourism Warden, Nyungwe National Park

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ittle buffalo. That is what Kambogo means in Kinyarwanda, our local language,” Kambogo says looking at me expectantly for his name’s Hindi translation. As a tourism warden of Nyungwe National Park in southwest Rwanda, his job is to supervise conservation activities. He is also our guide for the day, designated to take us through the mountain forest up to the 196-foot-high canopy walk. As a first-timer on a trek this long, I take my time through the forest trail holding trees for support and avoiding mushy areas on the leafy carpet. But Kambogo walks as casually as I would stroll on a seaside promenade in my city. He does this numerous times every day and is used to it. He is also clearly in love with the forest. “I visited a national park for the first time when I was in school and that’s when the desire to learn about the forest was born. Nyungwe is paradise to me, a school where the course never ends. It feeds the Nile and Congo rivers, and Rwanda gets 70 per cent of its water from Nyungwe,” Kambogo tells us. This forest makes him proud and so does his government’s conservation efforts. Wildlife-friendly policies and restoration of once-encroached wildlife reserves such as the Gishwati-Mukura National Park, he believes, are a step in the right direction. Kambogo is visibly in awe of the forest; he urges even the slowest of us to complete the trek. It is wonderment he wants

to share. “We lost a million lives (in the genocide) but today Rwanda is a country of a million smiles; one that is clean and safe, one where people care about its forests. When you visit Rwanda, expect to meet happy people with tragic pasts, expect to see miraculous development and expect to fall in love with nature—watch the big five, meet gorillas or trek in a rainforest.” After crossing the canopy walk, I wait on the other side of the platform and watch Kambogo encourage one of the group members to take the last few steps and complete her canopy walk. She is petrified of heights, and he urges her to not look down and focus on the back of his head instead. Overcoming her fear, she shouts out that he is bald and there’s nothing to see, making the rest of us laugh out loud. Just then I recall a conversation from earlier in the day that makes me realise that this man whose entire life is this forest, has a name that resonates with nature, grief, and hope. “According to my mum, there is a tradition that when someone realises one of their children is sick or dying, then the child born after is named after a powerful animal to scare away death. My sister passed away before I was born and that’s why my parents chose to name me Kambogo—after the buffalo.” Kambogo can never make up his mind about what his favourite activity in the park is. He is as excited about trekking to see the chimpanzees as the seemingly simple canopy walk. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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FACING PAGE: S. FORSTER/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (ILDEPHONSE KAMBOGO)

The canopy walk is the perfect vantage point for a bird’s-eye view of Nyungwe Forest. The rainforest is home to 13 primate species including chimpanzees.

THE INSIDER

Hope Muranira Guide, Nyungwe National Park

Unlike the adults, black-andwhite colobus monkey babies have white fur until they are six months old. A troop of almost 400 members lives in the Nyungwe Forest.

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t was the thought of seeing charcoal faces and twinkling eyes of the black-and-white colobus monkeys that managed to get a group of sleep-deprived travellers out of bed and ready for a hike in the morning. As we wait to be driven to the starting point of the journey, a smiling young man walked to us and says, “Hello. I’m Hope.” We couldn’t help but smile at how it is so apt to have someone named Hope lead us through the walk. Muranira began as a guide in 2006 and trained at Volcanoes National Park in northwestern Rwanda for six years before coming to Nyungwe. “I love it here. I think I always knew this is what I want to do in my life,” he says as we walk along the pruned bushes of the tea estates that border parts of Nyungwe National Park. We stop to watch a snow-white colobus baby reaching out to its mother and a collective “aww” rises from the group. Turning around, I see Muranira talking to his colleagues Odette and Erik, whose job is to catalogue every detail of the primate families that inhabit Nyungwe. I ask Muranira how he came to be a guide for primate tracking. “Oh! It’s not just the primates. I take people on all kinds of guiding tours and I can’t pick any that I like better than the other. I just love being in the wild.” For Muranira, there is always something more that can be done to nurture the wild. “No one will tell you that enough is 122

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being done because there is always something more to do. But involving local communities does make a big difference. When the people living around the forests are happy, the forests will be happy too.” According to him, Rwanda’s forests have been “really happy only after the genocide ended in 1994. During the genocide, the forests suffered a lot. There was rampant trespassing and trees were hacked. No one could pay attention to the wildlife. But the forest held strong, and it survived and flourished. Nyungwe is very old, it survived the Ice Age.” There is something very restful about Muranira’s demeanour. His smile never wavers, he speaks softly and with care, and there is a sparkle in his eyes as he talks about the monkeys. He seems much like the forest he loves so much—calm on the outside, yet brimming with activity once you set about to explore it. Muranira is very happy that researchers, students and travellers from around the world are coming to Rwanda to study the forest, “because all the money that comes in goes to conservation and to support local communities around the forests. It helps keep the forest happy.” When I ask him what he would like to say to someone travelling to Rwanda about his country, he simply says, “It is a lovely country. I like it.”

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Francois Bigirimana Guide, Volcanoes National Park

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nce he leads our group of eight hikers to a shaded spot for a pre-trek briefing, the first thing Bigirimana does is growl. He then beats his chest and grunts. “That’s what a gorilla does to show his dominance.” The power dynamic is instantly established. Bigirimana leads. We follow. He has been guiding travellers up the Virunga Mountains, northern Rwanda’s volcanic range, for 35 years. An accompanying tour guide had told us that he also assisted American primatologist and anthropologist Dian Fossey. But Bigirimana won’t spill these details because he is simply doing his job. As we walk towards the jeep set to take us to the starting point of the trek, I try to dissect his personality. I wonder if we amuse him—a bunch of unfit travellers, some of whom are dressed in pants that are too thin and regular sports shoes that may not be suitable for the moderately difficult trek. Geared up or not, we are all equal parts excited and nervous at the prospect of meeting gorillas and as if sensing our feelings, Bigirimana gives us our first set of instructions. “You have to speak gorilla today,” he says as if “gorilla” is a language we should naturally know. “Because when you go home and meet your friends and they ask you what the gorilla said, you should be able to translate.” He follows this up with a demonstration that involves some more grunting and growling. I crack up silently at the back. His antics apart, standing at the foot of the misty mountains once we disembark from the jeep, I am enthralled by the rich green cover around me. The Virungas are Rwanda’s pride, and the guides, trackers and guards who work here look after it well. “Since the mountains fall within an international border range, we have patrol guards to watch out for any illegal activity. However, poaching is not a problem anymore; at least not since the community living near the mountain has been involved in conservation. They take care of the gorillas too.” As we huff and puff our way up the slippery, muddy path, grimacing as our legs are grazed by nettles in the thicket, Bigirimana walks with a sense of familiarity. He stops to bite off chunks from tender bamboo that grows all over the forest and even offers some to me. It tastes mildly sweet and grass-like. These mountains that form the natural border between Rwanda, Congo and Uganda have been Bigirimana’s home for more than three decades, so he knows every square inch of the forest including the primates inhabiting it. His nonchalance is most apparent when he briefs us about what to expect and how to react when we spot the gorillas. “They might gently push you back if you happen to stand in front of their favourite plants. The young ones are affectionate and curious. They might come near you and hold your legs. Don’t get scared or harm any of them. They will move away on their own.” He says this to us in the most casual manner making it seem like he is merely taking us to meet some of his inquisitive, temperamental human friends. In the time we spend with the gorillas, Bigirimana communicates with the primates in grunts and growls. But only when the silverback walks away, does he gently thump his chest.

Travellers can visit 10 of the 20 resident gorilla families at Volcanoes National Park. Every day, only one group of eight members is allowed to visit one family for an hour. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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THE INSIDER

Kirenga Kamugisha Birdwatcher and Guide, Akagera National Park

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wanda’s wildlife is quite diverse. There’s so much more to see beyond the gorillas,” Kamugisha tells us as he drives us around eastern Rwanda’s Akagera National Park. He is a guide who specialised in birdwatching solely because he wanted people to explore all the other wildlife his country shelters. Akagera’s savannah landscape is home to large numbers of animals, from zebras, antelopes and wild boars to grey crowned cranes, and the famous big five (African lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, African leopard and rhinoceros). And over the past few years, with the recent reintroduction of species like the black rhino, the park has transformed tremendously. Kamugisha joined the tourism industry as a wildlife guide in 1999. Almost 18 years later, he is proud of his contribution to the industry, “I trained in birdwatching in 2003 and founded the Rwanda Safari Guides Association two years later. It is an organisation that trains guides in people skills. We also teach them how to drive through thick forests and how to keep 124

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themselves and the visitors safe while doing so. Only if you have a good guide, will you have a good trip.” Kamugisha, for one, is indeed a good guide. He willingly fields questions. He also takes pride in his work, a trait that reflects in his active participation to satiate our touristy curiosities. For instance, he drove us around for an extra hour just because a passing jeep informed us that a rhino was spotted blocking the road a few kilometres away. By now it becomes clear that Kamugisha admires the forest and wants to show us as much as he can in the limited time that we have. Rwanda, in his eyes is like a person who has lived through different phases in life “but the country is finally moving in a positive direction. I can tell you that it is a safe country, but you have seen that for yourself. I can tell you it is developing fast, but you are seeing that for yourself too. Today, Rwanda is a flourishing, safe and hospitable land. We have the power to decide our future.” Kamugisha prefers morning safaris and always has some information or trivia about any place or animal we point to.

SHUTTERSTOCK/INDIAPICTURE (GIRAFFE)

Akagera National Park is home to most of Africa's famous wildlife species including giraffes, zebra, grey crowned cranes, and impala; The famous Rwandan longhorn cattle (top right) are highly revered in the local culture and farmers with their cattle can often be spotted on the way to the park.

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SHIVYA NATH

Why travel blogger Shivya Nath gave up the idea of having a permanent abode

126 DESTINATION NOWHERE 128 GUT INSTINCT 

136 TINDER LOVING CARE 139 FINDING THE MAGIC FARAWAY MOUNTAIN 

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U.S.A.

owhere is the place you never want The movie and meal behind me, I went for a walk, and, to go. It’s not on any departure board, looking in on the Marriott down the road, found myself caught and though some people like to travel up in the last dramatic seconds of an NFL play-off game on a so far off the grid that it looks like giant screen, doubly exciting for one who doesn’t have a TV set Nowhere (or Nome or Nuuk), most at home. The whole event was made festive by the conference wanderers ultimately long to get goers who had turned the impersonal space into a weekend somewhere. Yet every now and then—if party. Heart still pounding as the players rushed the field, I there’s nowhere else you can be and all stepped out again, strolled along the water, and caught sight other options have vanished—going nowhere can prove the of yellow arrows pointing to the finest burgers in the West. My best adventure around. dinner at In-N-Out cost me all of $4.27. One beauty of Nowhere is that it’s entirely uncharted; you’ve Nowhere is so far off the map that its smallest beauties are a never read a guidebook entry on it or followed Paul Theroux discovery. And as I made my way back to my hotel, lights began on a train ride through its suburbs. Few YouTube videos exist to come on in the hills of Millbrae, and I realized I had never of it. And this leads to the second grace of Nowhere, which is seen a sight half so lovely in clamorous, industrial Osaka. Its that it’s cleansed of the most dangerous kind of luggage, exneighbour Kyoto is stunning, but it attracts 50 million visitors pectation. Knowing nothing of a place in advance opens us up a year. to a wide-awake vitality we seldom encounter while traipsing Not so Millbrae. I had the waterfront to myself and no need around Paris or Kyoto with a list of the 10 things we want—or, to dodge tour buses or postcard peddlers. Back in my room, I in embarrassing truth, feel we need—to see. saw that the irresistibly unbuttoned Golden Globes were on— I’ll never forget a bright January morning when I landed I’d never managed to catch them before—and I was reminded in San Francisco from Santa Barbara, just in time to see my that one of the blessings of any trip is that it can open your connecting flight to Osaka take off. I eyes to what you’d never take notice of hurried to the nearest airline counter at home. to ask for help, and was told that I Next morning I headed back, would have to wait 24 hours, at my uncharacteristically refreshed, to the own expense, for the next day’s flight. airport and collected my suitcase from The airline wasn’t responsible for the left-luggage counter. I arrived there fog-related delays, a gate agent to find a slim silver laptop opened to declared, and no alternative flights YouTube. On it, Martin Luther King, were available. Jr., was extolling “the fierce urgency of Millbrae, California, the drivenow” and his dream of the glorious day BY PICO IYER through town that encircles San Franwhen “the rough places will be made cisco’s airport, was a mystery to me. plain and the crooked places will be ILLUSTRATION BY With one of the world’s most beautiful made straight.” JON McNAUGHT cities only 40 minutes to the north, I looked up and saw that the managand the unofficial centre of the world, er of the left-luggage counter, an older Silicon Valley, 43.5 kilometres to the south, Millbrae is known black man with a greying beard, was standing beside me, eyes mostly as a place to fly away from, at high speed. And an unanwelling, as moved as I was. We stood together in silence, and it ticipated delay is exactly what nobody wants on his itinerary. came to me, belatedly, that this was Martin Luther King Day. But what I found, as I dropped my checked-in suitcase off at If my trip had gone according to plan, I’d have missed the day a left-luggage counter, reserved a room at an airport hotel, and almost entirely, turning my watch 16 hours ahead and arriving walked out into the winter sun, was that Nowhere can have in Japan just as it was all but over. grace notes that Anywhere would envy. I’m not sure I recognised the smiling traveller who boardIt was a cloudless, warm afternoon as a shuttle bus deposited ed his flight to Osaka, newly aware of both this particular me in Millbrae. Locals were taking their dogs for walks along holiday and the meaning of every holiday. I’d slept well, and the bay while couples sauntered hand in hand beside an I’d seen a pretty, unpresuming town that I’d never thought to expanse of blue that, in San Francisco, would have been explore before. crowded with people and official “attractions.” I checked in Who knows if I’ll ever visit Millbrae again? But I’m confident to my hotel and registered another advantage of Nowhere: that Nowhere will slip into my itinerary many times more. And Nobody knew I was here, and there was nothing I had to do. I’ll relish whatever it serves up to me. No place, after all, is Suddenly I was enjoying a luxury I never allow myself, even uninteresting to the interested eye. on vacation: a whole day free. I ordered a salad from room service—healthier and much tastier than anything I could have Santa Barbara-based Pico Iyer is the author, most recently, of eaten in seat 17L—and then noticed that The American, a The Man Within My Head and The Art of Stillness. Illustrator movie I’d longed to see when it sped through the cineplex, was Jon McNaught is based in Bristol, England. His next comic available on my TV. book, Kingdom, will release in 2018.

A surprise layover becomes a free day of unexpected discoveries

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WHY WE TRAVEL

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1 Bhutan’s national dish

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of boiled chillies tastes heavenly but travellers must eat it at their own risk. 2 A manhole cover in Australia, named after author Joseph Conrad, is selfie material. 3 Going up Taiwan’s Taipei 101 can be a stomach-churning experience. 4 Scandinavian landscapes, even with garbage dumps in the backdrop, make a pretty good frame.

WORLD

Gut Instinct A PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY INTO ALL THE BELLYACHING THAT ACCOMPANIES TRAVEL

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t’s one meal I’ll never forget. A day before I was about to catch a bus to Nepal, I celebrated a successful tour of India as a young and inexperienced backpacker with tandoori chicken in a seedy drinking den in Patna. I bet you can guess what happened? At 3 a.m. I made a desperate dash for the toilet as it seemed that the chicken was in violent disagreement with my gut. Horrors of hell! It wasn’t looking like I was going to go travelling anywhere soon—in fact it felt like one of those days when you cannot survive more than 10 feet away from the lavatory. I could go into graphic detail here, but I’ll spare you the scatological aphorisms and haikus. Suffice it to say, this is not a holiday memory I’ve ever posted selfies of or even recorded in my private photo albums. If anything, I’ve never told anybody of my ignominy, not even my wife, but in hindsight it is a hilarious episode to throw into a travelogue to raise the stakes. Did I make the bus to Kathmandu? Yes, thanks to around one kg of Imodium that turned my intestines into a block of concrete. Another time, about 10 years later, I was being taken around by a stubborn guide to every single batik shop on Sri Lanka’s sunny west coast. He seemed hell-bent on getting me to buy enough batik to clothe an entire generation in hippie garb. That was when I started to experience telltale burps; evidently some kind of gastric malfunction derived from dicey seafood. The only reason I continued to shop with him was because I hoped one of the shops had a customer loo. Finally I found relief in one grimy backyard bathroom, but for days afterwards, my tummy continued to feel like a carton of champagne bottles about to self-detonate. As I was checking out of the hotel on my final day, with the train to Colombo about to leave, the manager refused to let me go and kept asking, “Why didn’t you order food from the room service? We have king prawns.” “Can you book me a tuk-tuk? I need to be at the station in seven minutes!” “Sorry, phone is out of order.” I simply threw 1,500 Lankan rupees on the counter to cover the room service meals that I never ordered and ran. As I

was jogging towards the railway station, a tuk-tuk passed by. “Colombo train?” the driver asked. “Yes, yes!” “Train is 8.45,” he said and pointed at his watch. It showed 8.45 a.m. Fortunately, the train was delayed as usual. I asked the station master for the nearest restroom, because by now my tummy felt as if those champagne bottles believed that New Year’s Eve was just minutes away. “It’ll come,” he said. “What will come?” “Toilet is on train. It’ll come in half an hour.” Needless to say, the nearby coconut grove got its fair share of fertilizing that day and I got a funny column out of it. A third time, just the other year, a colonic catastrophe was caused by one of those oh-so-delectable fried mussels known locally as kallumakkaya that are a speciality served in Thalassery, the fishing town in northern Kerala. Out of culinary curiosity, I had been snacking on them all day. One individual must have been in a sour mood at having been deprived of its shell and thrown into sizzling coconut oil, only to see its life pass by. Clearly, it didn’t like being inside my tummy and started knocking on all emergency exits at around 2 a.m., sending me out of bed to projectile vomit into the wastepaper basket in Room 44 at the Hotel Malabar. Afterwards, I decided to name it Fred, to humanise it and also as an homage to that legendary turtle soup served in New Orleans at the iconic Galatoire’s where, as per tradition, the waiter always leans forward after setting down the tureen to whisper, “Its name was Fred.” According to my research there have been some world records in this specific field among travellers. The highest known score so far is 37 t.t.b/h. (37 trips to bathroom per hour). In my 25 years of professional travel writing, I’ve sometimes felt like I’m about to breach that seemingly impossible limit, but it has never gotten that bad. By now you’re obviously wondering why I am going on about these farty aspects of travel. The larger point is that over the years, I’ve had thousands of JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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doing achieve enlightenment. What have my tummy chronicles revealed to me about the art of travel? That the best laid plans don’t always work and that even then one ought to make the most of the situation. In other words, we could, for instance, bank on catching the ferry from Calcutta like the gentlemanly Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days, but our train might run out of railway tracks somewhere in Central India. In Jules Verne’s 1873 novel about those early days of tourism, this unforeseen change in travel plan results in the memorable scene where Fogg rescues a virtuous maharani from a sati pyre and later marries her. Every trip we undertake needn’t result in marriage with a native, but the idea is to be prepared for the unexpected. The art is therefore about learning to adjust when conditions change and accommodate another passenger when the bus is overcrowded. I was, for example, once robbed of all my money and travel documents by miscreants on a train in Assam, but the other passengers offered me bidis and snacks until I got to Delhi Sri Lanka has beautiful coastlines (top) and great seafood, but that one evil prawn can throw where a hotelier recognised me from previous your tummy into a tizzy. A shady mussel in a Keralite curry (bottom) poses a similar risk. visits as an unfussy guest, so he offered me free extraordinary meals ranging from grilled kangaroo in Australia accommodation until I got my things in order. At other times, to fried silk worms in Shanghai, from the national dish of when I’ve had no such luck, I’ve slept on railway platforms in boiled super-hot chillies in Bhutan to the weird rotten shark Salt Lake City or flea-infested bus stations in Africa or under a delicacy so beloved in Iceland, from curried goat intestines bush in Copenhagen. in Zimbabwe to corn dogs in San Francisco, all of which have It is the price that a frequent traveller pays, but all such minor given me miles of ideas for writing. And since 50 per cent of my disasters are just that—minor disasters—when compared to travel writing is about local food, I’ve suffered as many forms the larger project of the many journeys of a lifetime. There’s of tourist diarrhoea as the Eskimos have words for snow. Yet indeed something ridiculous about expecting everything to go the occasions of “Calcutta chromosomes”, “Kathmandu killerperfectly without hitches. Staying at and eating in a five-star is craps”, “Pharaoh’s farts”, “Istanbul intestine”, “Beijing burps” and not a safeguard either, so one may as well dive right into the so on are an integral if annoying part of the overall sightseeing adventure and take the farts as they come with the art. exercise. But even when that yummy, spicy chhole in old Delhi Situations where one negotiates the unexpected and manages gave me the predictable Delhi belly, I tried to take it in my stride to retain an optimistic approach, rather than taking the next by humming, “Chhole ke Peechey Kya Hai?” flight home to sulk, are the moments when one’s resolve is tested On the one hand, if I played it safe, I may not have suffered in order to reap the rewards later—hopefully. At least in theory any inconvenience—some backpackers tramp around for years these instances enable us to understand more about ourselves without a snafu, but they probably spend their time on the road (and how to deal with crises in life) and other people (humans eating yoghurt and nuts without appreciating any country’s gasare essentially kind and social). Incidentally, I learnt the art of tronomic treasures. As for me, without Fred and his bacteriapatience one day in the Himalayas when I reached a bus stop on infested buddies, I would not have been writing this piece toa winding mountain road and asked the uncles hanging about if day. Or hundreds of other stories, in which foreign eating habits the semi-deluxe was expected soon. become an essential and deeply intertwined part of the larger “Yes,” they agreed. narrative of a place and its culture. So the above examples, I waited with them but nothing happened. distasteful as they may seem to dignified readers, illus“Is it coming today?” I asked half an hour later. trate three important aspects of successful voyages: “This week for sure,” said one of the men who knew 1. the need for preparation (never go on the road a bit of English. without Imodium) 2. the need for adjustment “This week! Why didn’t you tell me an hour (learn to use coconut groves creatively) 3. and ago?” I shouted back. the need to be human (even if it is painful, give it “Or next,” he replied coolly. a name like “Fred”). I walked to the nearest village to find One crucial aspect of travel, and that not all accommodation until a bus came around, but I travellers keep in mind, is the need to analyse also realised that these uncles by necessity spent oneself and one’s reactions—both physical and much of their lives waiting for transport that might or might not show up—while I was free to move on. mental—to what happens on the road, and in so 130

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AZAMOTKIN/ISTOCK (COASTLINE), NOUFAL MQ/SHUTTERSTOCK (FOOD)

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That was 25 years ago and my first real trip anywhere in the porcelain camel on my windowsill transports me to Xi’an. world, but it was followed by much more learning on the road. However, as we know from thousands of years of travel hisPoint is, we should interact with strangers (who are locals, the tory, the primary form of documentation is the written journal. real people, while we are the strangers who just pass through) Julius Caesar kept one. Xuanzang (also spelled as Hsien-tsang roughly in the same way that we act with our own friends. Of in mustier tomes) did so when he toured India. Mark Twain, course, to call yourself a genuine artist of travelling, presupposes ditto. Their writings are now invaluable records of locations and that you have backup plans—scans of important documents in how they appeared in historic times, knowledge that otherwise the Cloud, sufficient insurance coverage, a global SIM and a kilo may have been lost forever. of Imodium—because the creative solutions that you (or others) If your notebook is the old-fashioned, hard-bound type that think up on your feet are only as useful as they turn out to be. has a spine, you can stand it in the bookshelf and insert into Nonetheless, the moment you make it down alive from a steep it printouts of the nicest travel snaps—in a few years the photo mountain after having lost sight of the trekking path in the format your phone uses will anyway be obsolete—and other memist, or talk your way out of a tricky situation in which Egyptian mentoes: train tickets, crazy newspaper cuttings, the bill from desert militia are about to pepper your taxi with machine-gun that restaurant that served the best meal of the trip, exotic bottle fire and you reach the coast of the Red Sea, it will seem that labels or the odd foreign banknote. It may not seem like a meanno matter what absurdities you’ve gone through, the trip was ingful activity to the digital generation, but years down the line, so worth it that you immediately want to do it again. At least I when your hard disk has been wiped out by viruses or encrypted did. Like with most art forms, the end justifies the means. You’re by ransomware, diaries with their faded appendages will turn feeling richer and spend hours at the café bragging about your into a gold mine. They are the true history of your personal exploits. Like Baron von Munchausen’s legendary feats, your explorations. And, who knows, the start of a writing career? travails and triumphs grow with each retelling. If you sell your story to a magazine, you might get rich. Zac O’Yeah is the author of crime novel Mr Majestic: The Tout of The final step, then, of any journey is its dissemination or else Bengaluru (Hachette India, 2012). His latest novel is Hari, a Hero with time it will lose its meaning. The click-and-go generation for Hire (Pan Macmillan India, 2015). might be satisfied with WhatsApping selfies, but that is no long-term solution because as the saying goes: elephants have memories, humans only Facebook. For older generations, holiday documentation was about embellishing one’s trophy shelves with Russian dolls, German schnapps glasses engraved with names of different cities, and porcelain plates where the mouth of the British Queen smiles at the spot the chateaubriand should sit. I too have stocked up on fun objects to use in daily life—a branded Greyhound thermos mug on my desk reminds me of an American overnight bus journey, a soft silk shawl from Antakya brings me back to the Mediterranean end of the ancient Silk Route the same way New Orleans is the city known for its ghost walks, its evocative graveyards and a turtle that dies every time the polychromatic T’ang style anybody orders turtle soup at Galatoire’s, a fine-dining restaurant in the city’s French quarter. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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I’VE SUFFERED AS MANY FORMS OF TOURIST DIARRHOEA AS THE ESKIMOS HAVE WORDS FOR SNOW

WHY WE TRAVEL

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NO ADDRESS Once ennui set in, Shivya Nath gave it all up. But most of all, the travel blogger gave up the idea of a permanent home Text and Photographs By SHIVYA NATH

A stroll down a beach in Zanzibar reminded Shivya Nath that she too is a nomad, much like this Masaai man.

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the space is full of septa-tinted memories. The old photos around the house filled me up with a strange wistful longing; there was even one of the grandparents with Tito, the exYugoslavian president. In the weeks I spent there, I hiked and cycled amid breathtaking panoramas of the Alps. Through conversations with neighbouring locals, I visualised Slovenia’s transformation from a socialist to a capitalist country. I spotted shooting stars and the Milky Way in the dark night skies, and swapped life stories with my host family. One evening, I joined them in planting chives, a variety of mint called melissa and a local variant of the cabbage, in their little garden. As we were planting these, a friend of my host’s father, a former forest official,

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wrote this piece with sweet nostalgia in the backdrop of the dramatic Kamnik-Savinja Alps, in the remote Slovenian valley of Logarska Dolina. It’s home to only 30 families. Surrounded by wild dandelions, and purple, pink and yellow wildflowers, my “home” in this part of the world was Lenar Farm, the working farmstead of a Slovenian family that first opened its doors to guests in 1931. Unfortunately when World War II struck, the entire farm was burnt down in 1944. But the family picked up the pieces. The four cousins split the sizeable acres and my host family rebuilt theirs in traditional architectural style—wooden attics for sleeping and woodburning stoves to keep warm in winter. They reopened for tourism in the 1960s, and today

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brought in the news that the rare Lady’s Slipper Orchid had just started blooming in the forest. Excited, we left for the forest to look for it, for this is believed to be Europe’s biggest native orchid and blooms only for one week every year. Back in 2010, on the verge of extinction in Britain, the Lady’s Slipper Orchid was even subjected to police protection and a fine of upto £5,000 (approx. `4,16,260) for being cut. In those weeks, I felt as if I was living in a fairy tale; a vivid Alpine dream. This dream began four years ago. I clearly remember that night, in August 2013, when I sat on the roof of the shabby Delhi barsaati (house with an open rooftop) I had rented. As I stared at the hazy, starless sky, my heart filled with a strange melancholy. It had been two years since I had quit my full-time job as a social media strategist in Singapore and returned to India. All I aspired was to lead a semi-nomadic life as a freelance travel writer and blogger. That night though, I felt strangely unfulfilled. My spirit craved more adventure and freedom. The high I felt on my frequent travels always left me feeling glum on my return to Delhi, even though it had nothing to do with the city itself. It was actually the nagging feeling of constantly coming

back to the same place, paying rent, thinking about the things I owned and drifting along in a humdrum existence. As I began questioning this average way of life on that average Delhi night, a realisation dawned on me. And just like that, with a strange sense of liberation, I decided to leave my Delhi apartment, sell most of my belongings, store some in the boot of a friend’s car (for a rainy day), and start calling the road home. Released from the shackles of a place to return to, I travelled with a renewed feeling of freedom, looking only forward, carrying no baggage of the places I came from, moving as much within as with my feet. On some days I felt like a soul without a compass, on other days I was an uncontained spirit. When I felt the strain of saying goodbye to places and people I had come to love, too often and too soon, I discovered the joy of slow travel. No longer a fleeting crush on a gorgeous location, travelling became all about fostering a deeper relationship with a place, its people and its food, and the memories it left me with. This altered travel philosophy led me to slow down in Aldona, a sleepy Goan village away from the touristy beaches; steep myself in the Mayan way of life in a dreamy lakeside house in

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I’m no longer yearning to find my perfect place or get to anywhere in particular

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Today, even as wedding announcements crowd my Facebook timeline, my own updates are a reflection of how far off corners of the globe have become my neighbourhood. Yet it was on Facebook that I stumbled upon the incredible story of Jason Lewis, a British man who travelled the globe for 13 years without any mechanised means of transport, only cycling, kayaking, rollerblading and walking. Upon his return to the U.K., he wrote in his book, Dark Waters, “if you go away for too long, there’s really no coming back. You can’t fit back in.” The more I travelled, the more I realised there is no coming back. Having lived in the traditional home of a Romanian family; having celebrated Mopin, the annual harvest festival of Arunachal Pradesh’s Galo tribe; having revelled in Sunday brunch with an Italian family in their 500-year-old Umbrian home; and having played basketball with the Mayan folk of Guatemala—descendants of the ancient Mayan civilisation that created the end-of-the-world scare with their calendar in 2012—I couldn’t fathom living any other way.

GOING VEGAN And then, just when I thought I had found stability in my nomadic life— financially, emotionally and philosophically—a chicken bus ride in the often overlooked Central American country of Nicaragua shook my very foundation. But that’s how it is with the road; it jolts you when you least expect

it to. I no longer remember what our destination was. All I remember was that the chicken bus, called so because people are crammed in like chickens, was more crowded than usual. It was New Year’s Eve and locals were returning home to the rural countryside. An elderly Nicaraguan lady entered the bus and placed her sack next to my feet. I felt something inside it move. I shot her a look but she ignored it. So, I politely asked her in Spanish to move it away from my feet. She picked up the bag, but it kept grazing against my shoulder. And then suddenly, something poked me. As I turned to my left, I was horrified to see three squeaking chicks gasping for air. This incident stayed with me. The next time I stepped into a kitchen to make an omelette, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. I started reading up on eggs. I was heartbroken to learn about the cruelty that dairy farming entails. I slipped into a dark hole upon realising what I had been eating all this while, even though I had turned vegetarian more than a decade ago. Thereon, began my vegan journey. One that has me striving to eliminate animal cruelty in all its unimaginable forms, from my diet and life. Being a vegan nomad might sound difficult, but the universe has somewhat magically led me to places where my vegan lifestyle has not only been welcomed, but

Work doesn’t really feel like work when you get to stay in a dreamy lakeside house in Guatemala.

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Guatemala; cycle across the countryside of northern Thailand; and introspect about Buddhist teachings with young nuns in Ladakh. The longer I stayed on the road, the more I realised how my travels can directly impact the environment and local communities. I saw with my own eyes how tourism has eroded entire cultures and ecosystems. If I was not going to stop travelling, I had to change my travel philosophy yet again. This realisation made me seek out more responsible travel experiences and in turn, helped me connect with locals around the world in more authentic, immersive and adventurous ways. This new search had me manouever rapids on a wooden canoe to reach the forests of the Bribris—the isolated, indigenous cacao growers of Costa Rica. It made me venture solo into the fascinating tribal world of the Mundas and Bondas in Odisha. And in June this year, I landed up on the Slovenian farmstead. When I had first packed my home into a backpack and decided to hit the road indefinitely, I wondered, as much as those around me, how long it would take me to crave a “normal life” again. A couple of years into my location-independent lifestyle, I realised that a different country every few months, a different bed every few weeks and a different way of life every now and then, is my new definition of normal. When others find my normal strange, I remind them of our ancient ancestors. Nomadism was the only way of life they knew before materialistic wants compelled them to settle down in one place.

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also influenced my hosts and fellow travellers to broaden their perspective on compassionate living. Along the way, I have made some unexpected discoveries too. Living with the indigenous Quichua people in Ecuador, I discovered that their traditional diet was vegan until the Spanish conquered them and introduced dairy. In Ethiopia, I was delighted to learn that locals follow an Orthodox form of Christianity and “give up” all animal products for almost 200 days in a year. Closer home, I have met native tribes in Odisha and Maharashtra who consume no dairy. Not even in tea, because they believe that a cow’s milk belongs to the calf.

THE HOMECOMING THAT ISN’T The concept of travelling the world without a home base is hardly unknown in the West. But as an Indian, with my notorious passport and its visa restrictions, and without social security, substantial family inheritance or the experiences of any fellow Indians to fall back on, it comes with a different set of challenges. Even as the road gently moulds me, somewhere deep within, I’ve felt a longing. When I brace my ailing heart to say goodbye to a place I’ve come to love, when I’m filled with adrenalin by the uncertainty of where this journey will take me next, when the soles of my feet hurt from days of travelling, when I feel my feet itch from being in the same place too long; on days good and bad, warm and cold, happy and sad, I’ve felt a quiet longing for “home”. I was 17 when I left Dehradun, the sleepy valley I grew up in. I didn’t know it then, but that was as close as I might ever get to the illusive feeling of being home. I don’t long for the homes I have left behind but perhaps I long merely for the idea of one. Imagine my joy then when I met someone in Wales who introduced me to a Welsh word (with no direct translation in English) that exactly encapsulated this feeling. The word was hiraeth, a sense of homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. As a professional travel blogger, my unquenchable thirst for travel did derail offline relationships. I have had to miss momentous occasions. WhatsApp calls from halfway around the world are not

nearly the same as catching up for everyday banter in a café. And although I’ve been lucky enough to foster friendships on the road, I’m also always saying goodbyes. While I’ve been able to walk away from the pressure of “settling down” and getting a “real job”, my parents still struggle with what it is that I really do. Until a few months ago, they still asked me when my holiday will finally end so I could get serious about life. I don’t blame them. Like anyone who wants to see the world, I’ve dreamt of seeing all of it. Lingering on a little longer, a little deeper in places like South Australia, Mauritius, Turkey and Uttarakhand has allowed me to observe the little whimsies of life beyond just a shallow peek. I am slowly coming to accept that I can’t experience everything in this lifetime. But what I can, I will try to experience deeply. In this journey, I often find inspiration

in the words of poets and authors. Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson is one of them. He wrote in his book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” At 23, when I quit my full-time job to travel on my own terms, I didn’t quite understand what Stevenson meant when he said he travels for travel’s sake. On the other hand, I wanted to travel for the sake of contemplating life with Tibetan monks, hiking in the majestic Andes and discovering fascinating traditions across rural India. But after four years of calling the road home, I have gradually inched closer to Stevenson’s state of mind. Even as I wrap up my time in the Slovenian Alps (we did find the Lady’s Slipper Orchid after all), I am plotting dreams of slow-travelling in Kargil and Iran. I want to continue to experience life in far off corners of the world, feel the humbling power of nature’s greatest wonders and explore dimensions of my own solitude. Yet in the bigger picture, I’m no longer yearning to find my perfect place or get to anywhere in particular. The great affair is to move. Shivya Nath is the author of the travel blog, The Shooting Star. She believes that slow, solo and sustainable travel has answers to some of life’s biggest dilemmas.

A ride through choppy waters is what it takes to meet Costa Rica’s isolated Bribi tribe of cacao growers (top). But to stay inside a Slovenian family’s home, all you need is a friendly attitude and some euros (bottom). JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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Modern-day love, like modern-day travel, is making the world a revolving door By Mithila Phadke | Illustrations By Sumedha Sah

little over two years ago, I met Israel on Tinder. He was Mexican, and beautiful, which sounds redundant, but in my defence, he was a particularly beautiful one. He was travelling across India for three months— the ol’ Varanasi-JaipurUdaipur circuit—and we matched during the two weeks that he was in Mumbai at the end of his trip. The conversation moved rapidly from Tinder to WhatsApp, and we soon met for drinks at my favourite dive bars, Matunga breakfast dates and many auto-rickshaw kisses back to his Airbnb digs (Aai-Baba at mine would probably not approve). It’d be a breezy summer hook-up, I figured, as I spent afternoons digging around for souvenirs at Bhendi Bazaar with him, dropping by the crumbling but glorious Taj Icecream for a scoop of sitaphal, wearing our loosest pants for a gheedrenched thali-with-aamras at the famed Thaker’s, and ambling around old Bandra lanes. He tried (and failed) to teach a clumsy me to roll the perfect joint, insisted I drink my tequila without “the stupid salt” like Mexicans did, and told me stories of childhood Christmases at his grandmother’s in Puebla. If this all sounds like a string of unreal, nausea-inducing clichés, it is. I was surprised at how quickly we became close. We marvelled at this together, fancying ourselves part of some cut-rate Before Sunrise. It was all pretty disgusting and very, very near to perfect. 136

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When Israel left for home, post a teary airport goodbye, we mailed each other. Actual handwritten letters, with Polaroids and the occasional tiny gift. We had even discussed me visiting Mexico for my next trip. Over time though, life happened. Our respective schedules caught up and the letters petered out. One day, he wished me on my birthday and I realised it had been months since we had last spoken at all. And when the time to book a flight for my trip came around—the dates I was supposed to be in Mexico—I picked China. The idea of flying halfway across the world for romance now seemed like zabardasti se dragging out what had run its course. It’s a story very much of our time. We meet people, have an intense connect and then they move—to a different city, a different country—and then we never see them again. Never before has our world been so much of a revolving door, with so much capacity for meeting people from utterly random places, and as much the possibility of losing them forever to other, equally random places. It’s something that has been driven by the popularity of dating apps—Tinder being the most popular of the lot. So many of us use it when we travel—for a hook-up, a drinking buddy or a local to discover a new city with. My friend K used it while in Rome, and not just to do the Romans. “One of

my favourite memories of the trip was haggling at this flea-market a Tinder dude took me to,” she recalls. “It was the kind of place I would never have thought to visit.” In China, some of my favourite hutong bars, live music venues and jiaozi places were those I first visited on Tinder dates with people who had been here longer. Despite all the rolled eyes it inspires and the lunkheads it throws up, it genuinely can put you in touch with people that are interesting enough to make you want to spend some of your trip with them. Some of them you want to stay with a little bit longer. And if not for this specific perk of modern-day travel, your paths would probably never have crossed. “There was this girl I met on Tinder ago who first brought me here,” laughed Michael, when I asked him how he discovered Cellar Door—a pocket-sized bar tucked away inside Fangjia hutong. Bathed in candlelight, walls covered with postcards of music icons, it used to be among our favourite Beijing haunts. When it shuttered last month, it broke my heart. That old chestnut about good things and endings, anyone? It’s now been three months since I’ve begun seeing Michael, and we’re close. From September though, when he leaves to go back to the U.S., we probably won’t be. He and I will meet other people, maybe they’ll stay, or leave in turn. If this all sounds highly depressing, hey, perhaps it’ll turn out another way. My

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friend Cameron met a lovely woman on Tinder, and now they’re moving to Hong Kong together. Could that happen? It’s possible. But probably not. The thing about modern-day love is that it refuses to just stay still, with work and degrees and assorted life plans ushering people in different directions. Occasionally, Israel and I still message. He talks about us maybe sending letters again, and I play along. In all likelihood, we are never going to be in the same room again, and though he’s a plane ride away, I know I’ll probably never take it. Modern-day relationships, for so many of us, are forming, evolving and then often dissolving. We are taking our time to put down roots as we figure out who we are, and while our relationships might be transient now, the intimacy they bring doesn’t need to be so. Because if not precisely for this constant movement, we wouldn’t be meeting people from parts of the world we couldn’t even point out on a map (or 138

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maybe that’s just me, I always sucked at geography). We wouldn’t be having perspectives shifted or new passions discovered or the loveliest hutong bars visited. This constantly changing, frustrating nature of finding love today, spurred by technology, is also what’s made it so damn exhilarating. I wrote about the exhaustion of dating in Beijing recently, about the constant fear of exoticisation that clung tight to my skin, and the need to just fit in. “You’re beautiful,” said Michael to me. He had just read it. I hadn’t told him about the piece, unsure how he’d react, but it got posted on his Facebook feed. We spoke for hours about it—this razorsharp white American boy and I—and racism and fetishisation and feminism. One dude called me an Indian princess, another one discussed intersectional politics. I approved of the balance. Come September, all of those discussions will move entirely to digital platforms for the foreseeable future. There will be more teary goodbyes but

then, it’ll be okay. “Visa breakups are the f***ing easiest breakups,” says my friend Naomi, when I occasionally whine to her about them. “Out of all the breakups in the whole goddamn world, you choose the visa breakup over every other kind literally every single time. They’re the least hurtful in the heart, nobody needs to get rejected and the only thing that makes the relationship gently wither away is that people aren’t physically close to each other anymore.” Mithila Phadke is a journalist from Mumbai, recently transplanted to Beijing. Her writing covers remote valleys in North East India, the crowded bylanes of old Bombay and her current new home. Sumedha Sah is a selftaught artist and an architect. She loves to travel, bake and write letters.

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SHREYA SEN-HANDLEY (KIDS), KOZYRINA OLGA/SHUTTERSTOCK (MAGIC WAND)

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Having climbed Wales’s Mount Snowdon with her children, a mother writes the definitive guide to a perfect family vacation

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“Shall we climb Mount Everest, Mommy?” asked our son after having studied about it in school. He was particularly impressed by the tales of Himalayan hazards and heroism he’d heard, and wanted his own high-octane, high-altitude adventure. Being only nine though, he realised he would need his parents and his equally intrepid seven-year-old sister along, hence the question to me, quite out of the blue, one wintry English morning. It sounded a good idea though, not the distant Himalayas perhaps for our Blighty-based family, but a British mountain holiday instead of our usual (albeit thoroughly enjoyable) seaside sojourns. So we plumped for a jaunt to Mount Snowdon in the summer, the tallest mountain in Wales and third highest in the U.K. at 3,560 feet. Besides that, the name itself conjured up visions of snow-covered summits, majestic slopes, and dizzying passes, that the kids couldn’t sit still from the excitement of our approaching holiday (Top Family Trip Tip #1: Natter non-stop about impending adventures because children enjoy savouring the idea as much as the experience itself)! But even better was that, dramatic though it sounded, beautiful as it undoubtedly would be, Mount Snowdon was going to be a walk in the park, I figured, compared to a Himalayan climb. And that’s just the type of tepid adventure we parents wanted, now that keeping the kiddiewinkles safe at all times was our priority (though going easy on our old bones was tempting too). Therefore, the slopes couldn’t be too steep, the weather too inclement, or the fall uncushioned by springy green meadow, if a small tumble were to be taken while winding our placid way up. So, the weather forecast, the gradient of the slopes and the availability of shelter and washrooms at the top were checked and found satisfactory. Then the summer was upon us, and with it the need to pack wisely. Children on holiday, as you soon discover, have the boundless appetites of Gremlins at midnight, and have to be fed and watered at regular intervals. And so our rucksacks, unlike most sensible climbers (those not transporting tots to the top), were stuffed full of biscuits, brie, ginger beer and yes, several copies of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five to consult should the going get tough. Who, after all, would know how to solve the little snarls on an English adventure better than Timmy and George, our daughter asked, quite rightly (Top Tip #2: Consult the kids when you pack your bags, only they know what enchanted and improbable objects they will need on holiday). And so we set off, on our idyllic dawdle up the mountains, our prance up picturesque slopes that would put The Sound of Music’s Maria’s Alpine pirouettes to shame. It would be a cakewalk, not a climb, and certainly no uphill task. Or, that’s what I thought. Oh, how wrong I turned out to be (though it did in fact culminate with cake)! The unpredictable weather of the British Isles colluded in turning our holiday on its head and leading us far, far off the planned promontory. The Beeb had promised us sunshine, our hiking boots had had little workouts at the Welsh castles— grand Caernarfon and hill-top Harlech—we’d combed on our way, and our binoculars were poised and at the ready for magnificent rises and meadows strewn with lamb (Top Tip #3: When child is bored or upset, point out bouncing baby animal and all will be well). It had been pouring all night however, as 140

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JOEDUNCKLEY/ISTOCK (TRAIN), LILLY TROTT/SHUTTERSTOCK (SHEEP)

When strong winds make the trek difficult, hopping on a vintage train is a good way to reach the summit in Snowdonia, Wales (previous page). The ride promises vistas of green valleys and grazing sheep (inset).

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it does often in beautifully lush yet undeniably wet Wales. But this round of rainfall had been extraordinarily torrential. In the morning, the clouds hung heavy over flooded ground, promising more rain and forcing us to change from our planned route to the mountains to less-travelled roads. But our aged jalopy, it transpired, was not quite equal to the task, slipping and sliding up slick mountain roads, before we decided to abandon it altogether. That proved to be providential, as unexpected turns often are on family holidays, because we left it by the most glorious lake, stopping a while to take it in as the sun miraculously peeped out. Before us was a twinkling expanse of turquoise water, with a darker undertow hinting at mysteries beneath, and deep green mountains looming behind. Lake Cwellyn seemed a scene from a Celtic dream of King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake. But Snowdon summoned and we dared not tarry. There, however, another obstacle waited. We were informed on arrival that the wind speed had soared to 50 kmph that morning, making an ascent to the summit inadvisable, especially with children in tow. Deeply disappointed, we stood, buffeted by the very winds that would prevent our climb, wondering what to do. Despite our every effort to make it happen, would we have to abandon our long-anticipated mountain adventure after all? “I hear a chugger, Mommy,” our little girl said just then, pointing to the heritage train station nestling at Snowdon’s base (Top Tip #4: Let your kids’ sharper sight and hearing find the silver lining to every washed-out trip; they’ll be cock-ahoop about it). Gathering our rucksacks, children and hastily bought tickets, we were about to board the historic locomotive

when we were stopped yet again. The gale-force gusts assailing the mountains might make it impossible, the conductor warned, for even a sturdy little train like theirs to reach the summit; could we withstand that disappointment? Did we want to take that chance? We most certainly did! So, up we chugged in our ancient yet well-oiled train, with winds whipping around us. Up towards the clouds clustered thickly at the top, where the higher we climbed the more breathtaking was the beauty we could see. The mountains morphed from luminous to a sombre, shadowy green. The crags and ridges stood out more proudly. Boulders studded every slope like giants’ teeth and the waterfalls roared louder in antipathy. There was even a grey cloud-crowned peak I could have sworn belonged in Mordor. Then with the wind screaming like a banshee all around us, everything went blank. We had got to the last stage of our ride and were in the clouds. The train driver clanged his bell and announced that he would have to take a wind reading to see if we could go any further. An unnatural hush descended on the carriage, even as the Weather Gods continued bellowing outside. The children’s faces fell. Then their heads drooped. And I remembered what we’d brought in our bags—tons and tons of Enid Blyton! So I whipped out The Magic Faraway Tree (who knew they’d smuggled that in too) and started reading aloud. They read omnivorously and on their own but this was an emergency. I read about Moonface and Silky and their adventures in the clouds. I related the delight of the fictional children every time they entered a wonderful new world, while my own listened rapt (Top Tip #5: Aint a child who doesn’t love a story, so keep ‘em handy). The train driver, in the meantime, had finished his wind check and waved us an all-clear triumphantly. We were on our way to the summit after all! So what if we were so lost in billows of white we could barely see at all? We were chugging up that last incline and totally chuffed. True to form on that trip, we could see nothing at the top either. Our dream of viewing wondrous, verdant Wales in all its glory from Snowdon’s summit, was dashed, as we’d suspected it would be. Dark, wet and gusty at its crest, we had no choice but to board our train again and head down to the dramatically forked Rhyd-Ddu Path near which we’d left our car. In the end though, it was neither an anti-climax nor a disappointment. We did get to the top. And what a glorious ride it was, with magnificent vistas to be spied on either side as the train trundled on. But like every family film and fairy tale, the best had been saved for last. At journey’s end in teeny, tiny Rhyd-Ddu, we stopped for a snack in the only shop in town, Ty Mawr. And in that charmingly homely, higgledy-piggledy café, we found the kind of adventure we’d been looking for all day. With no peaks and no troughs, and not a smidgeon of scary, it came chocolate-laden, apple-topped or oozing honey. Large, flat, round and hot, they were just what we needed after our nippy exploits at the top. Here were crêpes to equal Daddy’s Shrove Tuesday pancakes and we talked about them long after our summit attempt had been forgotten (Top Tip #6: a tummy full of good food, we’ve found, is all the adventure kids need sometimes). That is, till we got back home and my son piped up again, “So when are we going to the Himalayas, Mommy?”

The joy of making it to the top, even if it’s dark and grey, can trump the disappointment of being unable to see the summit in its verdant glory.

Shreya Sen-Handley is a former journalist and television producer who now writes and illustrates for British and Indian media.

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RONI-G/ISTOCK (SUMMIT) FACING PAGE: CHRISHEPBURN/ISTOCK (PARK), STEPHEN HANDLEY (SHREYA WITH HER KIDS)

WHY WE TRAVEL

WALES

Setting Out For Snowdon

The best views are to be had scaling Snowdon by foot, by the Llanberis path or the Ranger track which are the gentlest routes to the top. The path up from Rhyd-Ddu is popular too. But in bad weather, or with young children, any of these could become a challenge. That’s when the train to the crest comes in handy. 

The 121-year-old Snowdon Mountain Railway from Llanberis, provides a scenic ride to the top, with return tickets at £29/`2,375 for adults, and 

£70/`5,735 for a family (discounts can vary), on the Traditional Diesel Service. It gets full very quickly and tickets are best bought in advance. If winds go over 50 kmph though, the train will not attempt to scale the summit and you can decide to cancel and get a full refund, or go up part way and get a discount. If you want to have a ride to the foot of the mountain, and then canter up, there is also the Snowdon Sherpa Bus service connecting Snowdon’s base with its surrounding villages. 

There are trains from London Euston (and many other parts of the U.K.), as well as coaches from London, Chester and Manchester to the bigger, busier towns in Snowdonia like Llandudno, Bangor, Caernarfon, and Porthmadog. But flying into London, Manchester, Liverpool or Birmingham and hiring a car for a drive through the mountains and villages of Wales (and some motorways) could work just as well. 

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Snowdonia, a range of mountains in North Wales in the U.K. is best visited in the summer. Average daytime temperatures are between 17°C and 19°C from June to August, making it ideal weather to scale its highest peak, Mount Snowdon. But inclement weather can disrupt your climb, therefore, it is always best to consult the Snowdon Summit weather forecast before making plans. 

Shreya Sen-Handley’s son (top) suggested a trip to the Himalayas, but the family was just as happy to soak in the views at Snowdonia. JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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TRAVEL QUIZ Y O U R

T R A V E L

I Q

1

2

3

DAVE CORNTHWAITE BROKE THE WORLD RECORD FOR THE LONGEST DISTANCE EVER SKATED IN THIS COUNTRY IN 2008.

THIS MAN WAS FEATURED IN A SEVEN-PART BBC DOCUSERIES INSPIRED BY JULES VERNE’S AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS.

WHICH BOOK, PUBLISHED A YEAR AFTER ON THE ROAD, HAS AUTHOR JACK KEROUAC SEARCHING FOR TRUTH, THE ZEN WAY?

4

5

6

A FIXTURE OF THE HEROIC AGE OF ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION, THIS EXPLORER LED THE SHIP ENDURANCE ON A TRANSATLANTIC MISSION.

THIS IRISH DAME IS A TOURING CYCLIST AND AUTHOR OF FULL TILT: IRELAND TO INDIA WITH A BICYCLE, BASED ON HER OWN JOURNEY.

WHICH TRAIL WAS FEATURED IN THE 2015 MOVIE ADAPTATION OF BILL BRYSON’S NOVEL, A WALK IN THE WOODS?

ANSWERS 1. AUSTRALIA 2. MICHAEL PALIN 3. DHARMA BUMS 4. SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON 5. DERVLA MURPHY 6. THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL, U.S.A.

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PHIL REES/ALAMY/INDIA PICTURE (SKATER), WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/INDIA PICTURE (BOOK), IP-BLACK/INDIA PICTURE (IDOL), HECKE61/SHUTTERSTOCK (SHIP), DESIGN PICS INC/ALAMY/INDIA PICTURE (WOMAN), NICO SCHUELER/SHUTTERSTOCK (FOREST)

T E S T