Like-a-local
When teh interwebs were still young, my webpage proclaimed the intention to get to know people around the world, so that when I finally had enough money to backpack around the world, I’d have places to stay, friends to hang out with who’d point me to the good, cheap food, the cool places to go, and so on. Having the foresight of a new-born puppy, I didn’t start a dot com, and here I am earning my holiday fund, peanut by peanut, writing for this travel mag.. Never mind. This company takes that basic concept and adds a fee to it, to save you the trouble of actually making new friends. It operates in just seven countries in Europe as of this writing: Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK. And you can choose to ‘live’ (€25) ‘eat’ (€15) or ‘go’ (as in ‘go see stuff,’ (€15) like a local by registering on the site and stating your requirements. The site will then link you up with pre-vetted locals. Or you could choose to search for what’s on offer and make up your mind when you see something you like. The company’s also open to people volunteering to sign up as locals, by the way. Though there’s no mention of any plans for this part of the world. Hm. Perhaps it’s not too late..
Published in Outlook Traveller, May 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Showing posts with label Outlook Traveller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outlook Traveller. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 May 2008
A midsummer evening’s dream
Act One
Grizzled narrator ambles in, props butt against large black cube, the only prop on stage.
Narrator: Back in the day, I appeared in a musical, and got to see a few Bombay theatres from what has always been the right side of the proscenium for me. Later, performance put aside, I did reviews, visited pretty much every theatre in the city. And, despite my early pash for stages large enough to swing a cat (or Cats) in, I fell madly in love with little Prithvi, the first of its kind that I’d ever set foot in. One day, I said, one day..
Editor, off-stage: Get on with it, dammit!
Narrator: Enough about me. A little background to, heh, set the stage?
Lights fade.
Act Two
A clock face is projected on to the backdrop, its hands spinning backwards. Dissolve to sepia-tinted vignettes. A rich, warm voice, Naseerbhai for choice, speaks..
Father Time: In the 1940s, Prithviraj Kapoor strode majestically across our silver screens. He was also actor-manager of his touring theatre group, Prithvi Theatres. And he founded a film dynasty: his sons, Raj, and then Shammi, moved quickly from stage to massively successful film careers. As did the youngest, Shashi; but not before falling, hard, for the beauteous Jennifer, lead actress of Shakespeareana, the travelling theatre company led by her father, Geoffrey Kendall. The story goes thus: at the now-defunct Royal Opera House in Bombay, Shashi peeped through the curtains at the audience, and saw “this fabulous looking girl who looked Russian.” Shakespeareana had the next run after Prithvi vacated; so she was at a loose end. Shashi worked up the nerve to first ask Jennifer out, then propose to her, and eventually, despite initial parental disapproval, marry her.
In 1975, the couple set up the Shri Prithviraj Kapoor Memorial Trust (the patriarch’s died in ’72) and then, in ’78, Prithvi Theatre, on land the old gentleman had once leased, intending to set up his own theatre.
A voice from the audience chimes in. Spotlight on pretty lady sitting on the steps near the exit.
Sanjna Kapoor: I remember a peculiar L-shaped building completely unsuitable for theatre. My grandfather eventually used it to store costumes! The trips out to Juhu were wonderful; I played on the beach with my dog while my mother pored over plans with the architect. Prithvi opened when I was ten. I used to fall asleep in the sofas in the last row! I turned sixteen during the first Festival my mother organised.
She ran Prithvi until she died in 1984. Then my brother Kunal, and Feroze Khan, kept it running smoothly. I apprenticed under them, learnt a lot, and in 1990, I joined in.
Act Three
The narrator saunters back into the spotlight like he owns the damn thing.
Narrator: Prithvi is a ‘little’ theatre, seating 200 on three sides of a ‘thrust’ stage that places the action intimately close to the audience. Despite its tucked-away-in-Juhu location, convenient only for residents of the not-too-far-flung western suburbs, almost every actor of consequence who has set foot in the city has passed through its green room, every theatre lover in the city has applauded here at least a few times. Prithvi also hosts workshops, exhibitions, films, music, and poetry. Integral adjuncts are a wee bookshop, and Prithvi Cafe, hang-out not just for the after-theatre crowd and off-duty actors but also for the suburban folk acquiring cool cred over coffee. Sanjna, fortified by two strong theatre bloodlines and a deep love of the stage, has kept it going—and growing—against the depredations of weekend movies on TV, 24/7 channels, video (and VCD, LD and DVD) libraries, and if that wasn’t enough, multiplexes, malls and downloadable entertainment.
The spotlight shifts again, to the last row, where Sanjna sits, smiling..
Sanjna: I don’t fall asleep in the last row anymore. At least not lying down! (She continues, more seriously..) We have kept Prithvi affordable, both for the players (charges go as low as seven rupees per ticket sold, basic lights and sound free) and audiences (you get 50 rupee tickets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Sponsorship has kept us going. The Trust, a non-profit, is building up its own corpus. Donations are welcome; you’ll find details at prithvitheatre.org. We have great plans for the thirtieth anniversary. I don’t want to let out too much just yet, but it will be a mix of local, national and international theatre, and I wish my days had thirty-six hours!
Curtain Call
The narrator stands on the black cube, beating his chest, Tarzan-style, and simpering coyly. Simultaneously. Obviously we’ll need a virtuoso performer.
Narrator: Recently, an old, secret dream came true: I was centre-stage at Prithvi. Not quite in the way I dreamt of, all those years ago; it wasn’t a play, it was an evening of poetry, and I was the obscure newbie reading with a half-dozen luminaries; and no, it wasn’t packed to the rafters with screaming groupies. But they clapped. And it was sweet, so sweet.
Published in Outlook Traveller, May 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Grizzled narrator ambles in, props butt against large black cube, the only prop on stage.
Narrator: Back in the day, I appeared in a musical, and got to see a few Bombay theatres from what has always been the right side of the proscenium for me. Later, performance put aside, I did reviews, visited pretty much every theatre in the city. And, despite my early pash for stages large enough to swing a cat (or Cats) in, I fell madly in love with little Prithvi, the first of its kind that I’d ever set foot in. One day, I said, one day..
Editor, off-stage: Get on with it, dammit!
Narrator: Enough about me. A little background to, heh, set the stage?
Lights fade.
Act Two
A clock face is projected on to the backdrop, its hands spinning backwards. Dissolve to sepia-tinted vignettes. A rich, warm voice, Naseerbhai for choice, speaks..
Father Time: In the 1940s, Prithviraj Kapoor strode majestically across our silver screens. He was also actor-manager of his touring theatre group, Prithvi Theatres. And he founded a film dynasty: his sons, Raj, and then Shammi, moved quickly from stage to massively successful film careers. As did the youngest, Shashi; but not before falling, hard, for the beauteous Jennifer, lead actress of Shakespeareana, the travelling theatre company led by her father, Geoffrey Kendall. The story goes thus: at the now-defunct Royal Opera House in Bombay, Shashi peeped through the curtains at the audience, and saw “this fabulous looking girl who looked Russian.” Shakespeareana had the next run after Prithvi vacated; so she was at a loose end. Shashi worked up the nerve to first ask Jennifer out, then propose to her, and eventually, despite initial parental disapproval, marry her.
In 1975, the couple set up the Shri Prithviraj Kapoor Memorial Trust (the patriarch’s died in ’72) and then, in ’78, Prithvi Theatre, on land the old gentleman had once leased, intending to set up his own theatre.
A voice from the audience chimes in. Spotlight on pretty lady sitting on the steps near the exit.
Sanjna Kapoor: I remember a peculiar L-shaped building completely unsuitable for theatre. My grandfather eventually used it to store costumes! The trips out to Juhu were wonderful; I played on the beach with my dog while my mother pored over plans with the architect. Prithvi opened when I was ten. I used to fall asleep in the sofas in the last row! I turned sixteen during the first Festival my mother organised.
She ran Prithvi until she died in 1984. Then my brother Kunal, and Feroze Khan, kept it running smoothly. I apprenticed under them, learnt a lot, and in 1990, I joined in.
Act Three
The narrator saunters back into the spotlight like he owns the damn thing.
Narrator: Prithvi is a ‘little’ theatre, seating 200 on three sides of a ‘thrust’ stage that places the action intimately close to the audience. Despite its tucked-away-in-Juhu location, convenient only for residents of the not-too-far-flung western suburbs, almost every actor of consequence who has set foot in the city has passed through its green room, every theatre lover in the city has applauded here at least a few times. Prithvi also hosts workshops, exhibitions, films, music, and poetry. Integral adjuncts are a wee bookshop, and Prithvi Cafe, hang-out not just for the after-theatre crowd and off-duty actors but also for the suburban folk acquiring cool cred over coffee. Sanjna, fortified by two strong theatre bloodlines and a deep love of the stage, has kept it going—and growing—against the depredations of weekend movies on TV, 24/7 channels, video (and VCD, LD and DVD) libraries, and if that wasn’t enough, multiplexes, malls and downloadable entertainment.
The spotlight shifts again, to the last row, where Sanjna sits, smiling..
Sanjna: I don’t fall asleep in the last row anymore. At least not lying down! (She continues, more seriously..) We have kept Prithvi affordable, both for the players (charges go as low as seven rupees per ticket sold, basic lights and sound free) and audiences (you get 50 rupee tickets on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). Sponsorship has kept us going. The Trust, a non-profit, is building up its own corpus. Donations are welcome; you’ll find details at prithvitheatre.org. We have great plans for the thirtieth anniversary. I don’t want to let out too much just yet, but it will be a mix of local, national and international theatre, and I wish my days had thirty-six hours!
Curtain Call
The narrator stands on the black cube, beating his chest, Tarzan-style, and simpering coyly. Simultaneously. Obviously we’ll need a virtuoso performer.
Narrator: Recently, an old, secret dream came true: I was centre-stage at Prithvi. Not quite in the way I dreamt of, all those years ago; it wasn’t a play, it was an evening of poetry, and I was the obscure newbie reading with a half-dozen luminaries; and no, it wasn’t packed to the rafters with screaming groupies. But they clapped. And it was sweet, so sweet.
Published in Outlook Traveller, May 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Siteseeing - 17
ResponsibleTravel & The Responsible Tourism Awards
Responsible Travel is a bit of a thing with us, starting with hikes in the Sahyadris as a college student; the Adventurers and Mountaineers Club walked with a large bag, where all hikers were supposed to dump their garbage, on pain of ostracism. ‘Take nothing by memories, leave nothing but footprints’ and all that. So it was a delight to chance upon these sites. The first claims hand-picked listings for 270 tour operators, and they cover pretty much all of the planet and various preferences, ‘over 160 countries, 250 different types of activities.’ (Yes, 173 India holidays as of this writing.) And it’s not just agents and operators—we would not have bothered with the site if that was it—but a lot of accommodation-only options, even self-catered and volunteering opportunities. The site also features unedited user reviews of listed holidays to help you make your choices, and the ability to book holidays through them. RT also created and runs the awards site, a reflection of the need to honours best practices in responsible travel. The awards ‘recognise individuals, companies and organisations in the travel industry that are making a significant commitment to the culture and economies of local communities and are providing a positive contribution to biodiversity conservation.’ You’re too late to nominate entries to the 2008 awards, but you can check out previous winners and their accomplishments. Go green, my children.
Published in Outlook Traveller, April 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Responsible Travel is a bit of a thing with us, starting with hikes in the Sahyadris as a college student; the Adventurers and Mountaineers Club walked with a large bag, where all hikers were supposed to dump their garbage, on pain of ostracism. ‘Take nothing by memories, leave nothing but footprints’ and all that. So it was a delight to chance upon these sites. The first claims hand-picked listings for 270 tour operators, and they cover pretty much all of the planet and various preferences, ‘over 160 countries, 250 different types of activities.’ (Yes, 173 India holidays as of this writing.) And it’s not just agents and operators—we would not have bothered with the site if that was it—but a lot of accommodation-only options, even self-catered and volunteering opportunities. The site also features unedited user reviews of listed holidays to help you make your choices, and the ability to book holidays through them. RT also created and runs the awards site, a reflection of the need to honours best practices in responsible travel. The awards ‘recognise individuals, companies and organisations in the travel industry that are making a significant commitment to the culture and economies of local communities and are providing a positive contribution to biodiversity conservation.’ You’re too late to nominate entries to the 2008 awards, but you can check out previous winners and their accomplishments. Go green, my children.
Published in Outlook Traveller, April 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Paul Theroux
In The Elephanta Suite, you examine the lives of visitors and tourists to India. Why did you choose to look at the outsiders? I chose Americans as the central characters in these stories because I cannot pretend to know much about the inner life of Indians. I have made the dramas of Americans abroad one of my obsessive subjects, and in this sense I am a great fan of the writing of Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky and many other works) and Graham Greene, whose characters are English but in alien surroundings.
You have travelled through India and Asia several times, including long train journeys. Could you tell us about your most unusual, most memorable experiences? I live and travel in the hope that I will meet someone — a trader, a desperate youth, an enigmatic woman, an Ancient Mariner, who will fix me with a glittering eye and say, “A strange thing once happened to me...” My travel books are full of such encounters. A man in Cambodia said to me last year, as an opening, “I did something in Siem Reap that I've never done before in my life...” See my new book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, for the whole story.
That’s the revisit of your classic The Great Railway Bazaar, retracing your steps through the countries you wrote about then? As I said, the book is called Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, and yes it is a revisiting. It was a tremendously enlightening experience. I was startled by the changes — in many countries, and in myself. I was also startled by the changelessness of — say — Burma. What is most striking is the materialism in India, SE Asia and China — places that, 35 years ago, were traditional societies, scraping along, are now countries full of rapacious consumers; not a happy sight, but perhaps inevitable. Where will it lead? Ask me in 20 years.
Have you seen any great travel writing from India? Vikram Seth’s From Heaven's Lake and Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown India both have a powerful sense of place and time. But much of Indian writing that I've seen is concerned with family life and seems to me more a sort of anthropology.
And any great travel writing about India? The obvious books are by Naipaul, Forster and others, but these describe surfaces and are probably very irritating to Indians — as irritating as books by Indians on American life, which, to me, are full of howlers.
You're off to lead a workshop with travel-writers-in-the-making at Madras/Chennai. Do you often do that kind of thing? People who conduct workshops often say that they wind up learning as much as the participants. Do you find that true for you? I very seldom do this sort of thing, which is why I volunteered. I wanted to meet unpublished writers and to read what they'd written. A lucky teacher learns from his or her students and when they stop learning it's time to find a new job.
Are you still haunted by Sir Vidia's Shadow? Is the catharsis complete? Not haunted at all. The book remains one of my favorites and I feel blessed that I met Naipaul when I was young, that I knew him well and that the friendship ended, so that I could write about it. I have moved on, and so has he. I look forward to Patrick French's biography — out in the few months.
Published in Outlook Traveller, in a section called 'Fellow Traveller,' April 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
You have travelled through India and Asia several times, including long train journeys. Could you tell us about your most unusual, most memorable experiences? I live and travel in the hope that I will meet someone — a trader, a desperate youth, an enigmatic woman, an Ancient Mariner, who will fix me with a glittering eye and say, “A strange thing once happened to me...” My travel books are full of such encounters. A man in Cambodia said to me last year, as an opening, “I did something in Siem Reap that I've never done before in my life...” See my new book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, for the whole story.
That’s the revisit of your classic The Great Railway Bazaar, retracing your steps through the countries you wrote about then? As I said, the book is called Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, and yes it is a revisiting. It was a tremendously enlightening experience. I was startled by the changes — in many countries, and in myself. I was also startled by the changelessness of — say — Burma. What is most striking is the materialism in India, SE Asia and China — places that, 35 years ago, were traditional societies, scraping along, are now countries full of rapacious consumers; not a happy sight, but perhaps inevitable. Where will it lead? Ask me in 20 years.
Have you seen any great travel writing from India? Vikram Seth’s From Heaven's Lake and Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown India both have a powerful sense of place and time. But much of Indian writing that I've seen is concerned with family life and seems to me more a sort of anthropology.
And any great travel writing about India? The obvious books are by Naipaul, Forster and others, but these describe surfaces and are probably very irritating to Indians — as irritating as books by Indians on American life, which, to me, are full of howlers.
You're off to lead a workshop with travel-writers-in-the-making at Madras/Chennai. Do you often do that kind of thing? People who conduct workshops often say that they wind up learning as much as the participants. Do you find that true for you? I very seldom do this sort of thing, which is why I volunteered. I wanted to meet unpublished writers and to read what they'd written. A lucky teacher learns from his or her students and when they stop learning it's time to find a new job.
Are you still haunted by Sir Vidia's Shadow? Is the catharsis complete? Not haunted at all. The book remains one of my favorites and I feel blessed that I met Naipaul when I was young, that I knew him well and that the friendship ended, so that I could write about it. I have moved on, and so has he. I look forward to Patrick French's biography — out in the few months.
Published in Outlook Traveller, in a section called 'Fellow Traveller,' April 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Saturday, 1 March 2008
Indra Sinha
You left India as a young man. How often have you returned? Regularly since my association with the Bhopal survivors began in the mid-nineties, but before that there was a 15-year gap.
Any memorable journeys? From Kathmandu to Nepalganj, an airstrip on the Nepalese side of the border. Our tiny plane whirred into the air like a metal grasshopper; the high Himalayas rose up behind the foothills, white and shining for hundreds of miles. Nepalganj airport was a grass field, the terminal a hut; a small road vanished into fields of sugarcane, not a vehicle in sight, much less the taxi I had promised Vickie. A boy leant his bicycle against a tree, came forward shyly and said, “Indra? I am Shobha. Grandfather sent me to fetch you.” He flagged down a passing bullock cart and negotiated passage to the border. Vickie sat on the luggage, Tara (then aged 2) in her lap, Shobha on his bike, held onto the tail of the cart, I walked alongside, through the thick sugarcane fields into which Nana Saheb and his defeated army had vanished 125 years earlier. At the border, two square brick buildings, stood an amazed Indian customs officer. Ours were the first overseas passports he had seen in six months, he told us. Hearing grandfather’s name he said, “But I know him!” He telephoned Nanpara PO telling them to tell Iqbal Bahadur sahib that his family had arrived safely. Chairs were set in the shade; tea appeared, as did a photo album of his family. We passed a pleasant hour before the bus took us all away to grandfather and new adventures. I want to tell this story properly one day in a book of travel writings.
A busy advertising career, the online addiction you describe in The Cybergypsies; was there time for travel? We never had much money for travel when the children were young, but over the years we’ve seen quite a bit of Europe and of course the dear old UK. I loved living in England and love living in France. Our best family holiday was a six-week tour of France, Switzerland and Italy, with two weeks in the Lot, where we now live. In fact it is directly because of that holiday that we are now there.
You just visited the most touristy destinations in India: Rajasthan and Goa... A lot of people I know in Rajasthan are turning their houses into heritage hotels. There is a sort of build-your-own-haveli emporium where you can buy ancient carved doors, jharokas, silver furniture, rugs and hangings, everything you need for instant Rajasthan. The Jaipur Festival was Disneyworld, complete with elephants and fire-eaters; old Rajputana would have been dancing girls and opium. Goa is wonderful, when you get used to it. From Candolim to Calangute you get the same tourist tack as in Rajasthan; all that’s missing is Goa. Old Goa is still there; an outsider has to work a little to discover and get into it. Having loved John Berendt’s books about Savannah and Venice (and loved being with John too and learning how he came to write them) I keep thinking there is something to be done either on Rajasthan or Goa. Or both. But I have a number of novels to write, so I don't know when I might get time for travel writing.
Have you seen any great writing about India? I am rather sick of books about India. I would rather read books about Brazil, or Cuba, or the Congo, or somewhere I’d like to visit.
Published in Outlook Traveller, in a section called 'Fellow Traveller,' March 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Any memorable journeys? From Kathmandu to Nepalganj, an airstrip on the Nepalese side of the border. Our tiny plane whirred into the air like a metal grasshopper; the high Himalayas rose up behind the foothills, white and shining for hundreds of miles. Nepalganj airport was a grass field, the terminal a hut; a small road vanished into fields of sugarcane, not a vehicle in sight, much less the taxi I had promised Vickie. A boy leant his bicycle against a tree, came forward shyly and said, “Indra? I am Shobha. Grandfather sent me to fetch you.” He flagged down a passing bullock cart and negotiated passage to the border. Vickie sat on the luggage, Tara (then aged 2) in her lap, Shobha on his bike, held onto the tail of the cart, I walked alongside, through the thick sugarcane fields into which Nana Saheb and his defeated army had vanished 125 years earlier. At the border, two square brick buildings, stood an amazed Indian customs officer. Ours were the first overseas passports he had seen in six months, he told us. Hearing grandfather’s name he said, “But I know him!” He telephoned Nanpara PO telling them to tell Iqbal Bahadur sahib that his family had arrived safely. Chairs were set in the shade; tea appeared, as did a photo album of his family. We passed a pleasant hour before the bus took us all away to grandfather and new adventures. I want to tell this story properly one day in a book of travel writings.
A busy advertising career, the online addiction you describe in The Cybergypsies; was there time for travel? We never had much money for travel when the children were young, but over the years we’ve seen quite a bit of Europe and of course the dear old UK. I loved living in England and love living in France. Our best family holiday was a six-week tour of France, Switzerland and Italy, with two weeks in the Lot, where we now live. In fact it is directly because of that holiday that we are now there.
You just visited the most touristy destinations in India: Rajasthan and Goa... A lot of people I know in Rajasthan are turning their houses into heritage hotels. There is a sort of build-your-own-haveli emporium where you can buy ancient carved doors, jharokas, silver furniture, rugs and hangings, everything you need for instant Rajasthan. The Jaipur Festival was Disneyworld, complete with elephants and fire-eaters; old Rajputana would have been dancing girls and opium. Goa is wonderful, when you get used to it. From Candolim to Calangute you get the same tourist tack as in Rajasthan; all that’s missing is Goa. Old Goa is still there; an outsider has to work a little to discover and get into it. Having loved John Berendt’s books about Savannah and Venice (and loved being with John too and learning how he came to write them) I keep thinking there is something to be done either on Rajasthan or Goa. Or both. But I have a number of novels to write, so I don't know when I might get time for travel writing.
Have you seen any great writing about India? I am rather sick of books about India. I would rather read books about Brazil, or Cuba, or the Congo, or somewhere I’d like to visit.
Published in Outlook Traveller, in a section called 'Fellow Traveller,' March 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Siteseeing - 16
The Indian Railways Fan Club
In these days of budget airlines and frequent flyer miles, and to hell with carbon footprints, this site is almost like leafing through an old picture album and finding photos of an old flame. Wait, did we say leafing through an album? Jeeze, we almost let on how old we are. ‘Browsing,’ we meant. So there. Like we were saying, this site brought back a rush of soft, fuzzy memories, of coal and steam and lonely whistle-stops in the middle of the night. The IRFCA is ‘a mailing list for discussing all aspects of railways in India.’ Started in the late eighties in the old Usenet days, hosted on various American university servers (the ‘A’ is a relic of its origins in America), became a mailing list, and, later, members consolidated material from personal sites and brought them all together in this domain. You can still join the list, or just have a great time wandering the existing content: maps, passenger services, routes, timetables, technical and seriously geeky stuff, travelogues, historical notes, and a treasure trove of photographs to warm any rail-lover’s heart. (There are also audio and video galleries.) There’s even a set of simulations, and screensavers. And cellphone wallpaper! No ringtones though. What I’d give for the sound of a train horn in the distance on a quiet night...
Published in Outlook Traveller, March 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
In these days of budget airlines and frequent flyer miles, and to hell with carbon footprints, this site is almost like leafing through an old picture album and finding photos of an old flame. Wait, did we say leafing through an album? Jeeze, we almost let on how old we are. ‘Browsing,’ we meant. So there. Like we were saying, this site brought back a rush of soft, fuzzy memories, of coal and steam and lonely whistle-stops in the middle of the night. The IRFCA is ‘a mailing list for discussing all aspects of railways in India.’ Started in the late eighties in the old Usenet days, hosted on various American university servers (the ‘A’ is a relic of its origins in America), became a mailing list, and, later, members consolidated material from personal sites and brought them all together in this domain. You can still join the list, or just have a great time wandering the existing content: maps, passenger services, routes, timetables, technical and seriously geeky stuff, travelogues, historical notes, and a treasure trove of photographs to warm any rail-lover’s heart. (There are also audio and video galleries.) There’s even a set of simulations, and screensavers. And cellphone wallpaper! No ringtones though. What I’d give for the sound of a train horn in the distance on a quiet night...
Published in Outlook Traveller, March 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Friday, 1 February 2008
Siteseeing - 15
travel bookmarking
‘Social bookmarking’ isn’t new. When you share a cool link with friends, that’s what you’re doing. Sites like del.icio.us make it ludicrously easy to do, giving you the added bonus of saving ’em online. (Psst, if you’re on del.icio.us and know of sites you think we should cover, tag them ‘for:zigzackly’) This site goes further. For one, as it’s name indicates, the focus is travel. Secondly, it lets you write your own notes, or import content from free sites like World66 and WikiTravel (which we have covered in this space), or its parent site, So Much World, to make your own custom travel guides. You can share your guides with your pals, and, naturally, go check out guides created by other members. You’ll find this site more useful if you’re travelling abroad—in the west; basically, and more specifically, the USA— than you would if you tried to check out India, which has negligible mention as of this writing. You have some spammers there too, which is worrying, because it makes it more difficult to find good stuff. The wisdom of crowds helps: search for ‘popular’ links. And you can change things yourself; that’s the point. So go sign up and mark out good stuff, hmm? Make sure to mark outlooktraveller.com, and maybe the Ed will give me a bigger cheque. Hah.
Published in Outlook Traveller, January 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
‘Social bookmarking’ isn’t new. When you share a cool link with friends, that’s what you’re doing. Sites like del.icio.us make it ludicrously easy to do, giving you the added bonus of saving ’em online. (Psst, if you’re on del.icio.us and know of sites you think we should cover, tag them ‘for:zigzackly’) This site goes further. For one, as it’s name indicates, the focus is travel. Secondly, it lets you write your own notes, or import content from free sites like World66 and WikiTravel (which we have covered in this space), or its parent site, So Much World, to make your own custom travel guides. You can share your guides with your pals, and, naturally, go check out guides created by other members. You’ll find this site more useful if you’re travelling abroad—in the west; basically, and more specifically, the USA— than you would if you tried to check out India, which has negligible mention as of this writing. You have some spammers there too, which is worrying, because it makes it more difficult to find good stuff. The wisdom of crowds helps: search for ‘popular’ links. And you can change things yourself; that’s the point. So go sign up and mark out good stuff, hmm? Make sure to mark outlooktraveller.com, and maybe the Ed will give me a bigger cheque. Hah.
Published in Outlook Traveller, January 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Siteseeing - 14
Travel Greener
Quicker than you can say Pachouri, we’ve suddenly come all over environmentalist. We now talk grimly of recycling, cutting emissions, carbon footprints and more, not just as dippy tree-hugger behaviour, but as something we all need to know more about. More talk than action, it must be said, but at least we’re taking it seriously. And we travellers—yes, you too, dear reader—must do our share too. The buying and selling of ‘carbon credits’ is one of the businesses born of this awareness.
Now I have to admit that I’m just over the clueless line about how exactly this works, but what I understand is this. When you fly, your share of the plane’s emissions significantly increases your personal carbon footprint. (A Bombay-Delhi flight would send 288 kilos of carbon into the air; Bombay-Boston would be 2689kgs.) You can offset the damage to the environment by purchasing carbon offsets, which are used in projects that reduce CO2 emissions elsewhere.
This site lets you make travel bookings (flights, hotels, cars), and uses its commissions to fund its environment-protecting projects. It also has calculators that let you calculate flight or road-trip emissions and then buy offsets directly. (The road-trip calculator only works for US trips, alas.) Cool idea, and a worthy model for someone to emulate in India. And when you do, please send me some free credits for pointing it out to you, okay?
Published in Outlook Traveller, Januray 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Quicker than you can say Pachouri, we’ve suddenly come all over environmentalist. We now talk grimly of recycling, cutting emissions, carbon footprints and more, not just as dippy tree-hugger behaviour, but as something we all need to know more about. More talk than action, it must be said, but at least we’re taking it seriously. And we travellers—yes, you too, dear reader—must do our share too. The buying and selling of ‘carbon credits’ is one of the businesses born of this awareness.
Now I have to admit that I’m just over the clueless line about how exactly this works, but what I understand is this. When you fly, your share of the plane’s emissions significantly increases your personal carbon footprint. (A Bombay-Delhi flight would send 288 kilos of carbon into the air; Bombay-Boston would be 2689kgs.) You can offset the damage to the environment by purchasing carbon offsets, which are used in projects that reduce CO2 emissions elsewhere.
This site lets you make travel bookings (flights, hotels, cars), and uses its commissions to fund its environment-protecting projects. It also has calculators that let you calculate flight or road-trip emissions and then buy offsets directly. (The road-trip calculator only works for US trips, alas.) Cool idea, and a worthy model for someone to emulate in India. And when you do, please send me some free credits for pointing it out to you, okay?
Published in Outlook Traveller, Januray 2008.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Saturday, 1 December 2007
Siteseeing - 13
redBus
You can book all your transport in India online these days: planes, trains and cars—sort of—but not busses. Until now, with redBus. Aside from e-tickets, you can order ’em by phone or SMS, and have them delivered to you at a small premum (in major metros). You can even get them from physical shops, which seems to me to defeat the point, but then, hey, I have exactly zero successful start-ups to my name.
They claim 3500 routes, over 2000 destinations and tie-ups with over 150 bus operators, mainly, so far, in the South and West. It’s difficult to verify this; there are no lists onsite, and the Search selections are dynamic, so I was unable to search for anything except the site-dictated destinations once I’d chosen a start point. Gah. And then I got few or no choices on a number of routes.
There are several other speedbumps. One search I tried got a result that seemed to imply an impossible one-hour journey. Because the site neglects to add the date of arrival, which would have revealed that it would take 27 hours. Criminal sloppiness. Then tere’s no way to easily plan a multi-leg journey. No maps either, unforgivable in this era of mash-ups, not even a lists of stops en route.
They can get away with this now. But when competition steps in, they might wind up missing the bus.
Published in Outlook Traveller, December 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
You can book all your transport in India online these days: planes, trains and cars—sort of—but not busses. Until now, with redBus. Aside from e-tickets, you can order ’em by phone or SMS, and have them delivered to you at a small premum (in major metros). You can even get them from physical shops, which seems to me to defeat the point, but then, hey, I have exactly zero successful start-ups to my name.
They claim 3500 routes, over 2000 destinations and tie-ups with over 150 bus operators, mainly, so far, in the South and West. It’s difficult to verify this; there are no lists onsite, and the Search selections are dynamic, so I was unable to search for anything except the site-dictated destinations once I’d chosen a start point. Gah. And then I got few or no choices on a number of routes.
There are several other speedbumps. One search I tried got a result that seemed to imply an impossible one-hour journey. Because the site neglects to add the date of arrival, which would have revealed that it would take 27 hours. Criminal sloppiness. Then tere’s no way to easily plan a multi-leg journey. No maps either, unforgivable in this era of mash-ups, not even a lists of stops en route.
They can get away with this now. But when competition steps in, they might wind up missing the bus.
Published in Outlook Traveller, December 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Siteseeing - 12
TripIt
Right, so there’s a heckuva lot the prospective traveller can do online—that’s why Editor-san pays me thebig bucks coffee money to write this little thingy for you every month—buy air tickets and hotel rooms, book cars or restaurant tables, view route maps, meet people, whatever. Thing is, by the time you’re done, you have one heckuva lot of e-threads to keep track of. This services does that for you. Just mail an e-booking to plan@tripit.com, and then, as you finalise stuff, mail all your other confirmations to it too. It then sorts all those confusing bits and bytes, and gives you, just like that, a ready-made itinerary, adding for good measure, links to check-ins, maps, weather, photos where available, and so on. Of course you can log in and chop and change all you want, even let friends in, so they can, for example, figure out when you’re free to be taken out for a drink. Limitations: the service providers it “recognises” are mainly from North America and Europe. So, if you want to use it elsewhere (or with more obscure services in the West) you will have to a certain amount of manual filling in. Right now, I’m taking bets: will TripIt cover our part of the world soon? Or will some desi quickly do a rip-off painted in the tricolour?
Published in Outlook Traveller, Mumbai edition, November 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Right, so there’s a heckuva lot the prospective traveller can do online—that’s why Editor-san pays me the
Published in Outlook Traveller, Mumbai edition, November 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Monday, 1 October 2007
Siteseeing - 11
EveryTrail & GlobalMotion
Sister sites, with the same basic idea: mashing up maps (specifically Google Maps and Google Earth with some other services as well in the USA), GPS data, photographs, and personal notes. They differ in the fine focus. EveryTrail is about trips, and works best for treks and road trips. Routes are mapped via GPS device, and photographs are “geo-tagged” to the exact time and location at which they were taken (i.e. if your digi-camera and GPS thingummy are set to the right time). You can add notes as well, and then share the whole thing with friends. In places where you can get high-res imagery, you can practically do a virtual glide over a route. GlobalMotion is a wiki—anyone can edit it—and focussed on places. Each has pictures that are geo-tagged at that location, and notes, and downloadable data for your GPS. With both services, you can get deep into an actual satellite image, and put yourself into the shoes and behind the eyes of someone who stood at that exact spot and took a picture. They’re both still newish (GeoMotion will be a little over a month olf by the time you see this), but have a fair amount of stuff to snoop on. Go look. Add your own. While I go lobby the editor about giving me a GPS machine for my next trip.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in Outlook Traveller, October 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Sister sites, with the same basic idea: mashing up maps (specifically Google Maps and Google Earth with some other services as well in the USA), GPS data, photographs, and personal notes. They differ in the fine focus. EveryTrail is about trips, and works best for treks and road trips. Routes are mapped via GPS device, and photographs are “geo-tagged” to the exact time and location at which they were taken (i.e. if your digi-camera and GPS thingummy are set to the right time). You can add notes as well, and then share the whole thing with friends. In places where you can get high-res imagery, you can practically do a virtual glide over a route. GlobalMotion is a wiki—anyone can edit it—and focussed on places. Each has pictures that are geo-tagged at that location, and notes, and downloadable data for your GPS. With both services, you can get deep into an actual satellite image, and put yourself into the shoes and behind the eyes of someone who stood at that exact spot and took a picture. They’re both still newish (GeoMotion will be a little over a month olf by the time you see this), but have a fair amount of stuff to snoop on. Go look. Add your own. While I go lobby the editor about giving me a GPS machine for my next trip.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in Outlook Traveller, October 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Saturday, 1 September 2007
Deckchairs of the Kings
Two-and-a-half kilometres of beach all to myself. A waiter from the restaurant trudges across the sand, bearing provender. I’m in one of those long pool-chairs, under a thatch umbrella. The waves gambol in a few feet away. A fairly determined sort of breeze comes in from the west. A chap could get used to this.
I’m at the The Beach at Mandvi Palace. It sits in the middle of the 450 acres of mildly domesticated jungle that make up the backyard of Vijay Vilas, the summer retreat of the former rulers of Mandvi. Rajesh Singh, the manager, tells me that it in bygone years, when the family and guests came out for hunts and suchlike, tent camps would come up around the palace. Right now, it is the only privately owned beach in India, with the property extending right up to the waterline. I hear that the family has refused offers from various hospitality chains to take over and run the palace as a hotel.
The current head of the family, Pragmulji III, doesn’t live here—he divides his time between Bhuj and Bombay—but he has entrusted the running of this venture to his nephew, Paranjayaditya Parmar. And what the younger man has wrought is a pretty nifty get-away-from-it-all kind of place.
I didn’t get to meet him either, because he was off campaigning for the elections way over on the other side of Gujarat, but when we spoke, his enthusiasm for the place was evident. Seeing the tent resorts in touristy places, he decided that tents made better sense to start up with, rather built up structures, which require lots of paperwork. But he was determined to do it his way. Instead of using the available block-printed Rajasthani tents, he and his wife designed their own versions and got them made locally. The furniture and other modifications came from a similar ad hoc process.
There is accommodation for ten pairs of guests at the moment, so it works out to a comfortable 200 metres of beach per couple at peak occupancy, a ratio that I have only seen in one beach in Goa and one other nearer home. (And no, I’m not telling you where either of them are.) Well, I exaggerate; the place also takes in day trippers, charging them a fee for access to the beach, so it may not be as desert-islandish for you as it was for me. But since it’s an eight kilometre drive to Mandvi, which in turn is many miles away from the rest of the world, you’re not going to get Anjuna levels of madding crowd any time soon.
As of this writing, the camp consists of ten tents in a clearing, each sleeping two, a sand dune and a line of scrub and trees separating them from the beach and protecting them from the worst of the weather. Each one is set on its own concrete plinth, a little sit-out in the front, with a couple of dinky camel-leather deck chairs. The styling is reminiscent of royal expedition tents of yore; scalloped edges, carved finials atop the tent poles, awning over the entrance. One looks around automatically for men on horseback returning from the shikaar or from a battle.
A quibble: considering the vast acreage available, they’re set rather too close to each other, with the support ropes of neighbouring tents overlapping. Given canvas walls, it might get noisy when the place is fully booked.
The tents are triple-layered, a candy-striped inner tent, over that a thicker outer, and over it all, a waterproof roof. It keeps the rain out very well, and the lack of natural ventilation is more than compensated for with a high power air-conditioner.
Inside, a coir-carpeted floor, twin beds, bedside tables with a small storage space, carved wood chairs, and a writing table. The chairs are nice-looking, but, alas, not comfy for lazing around in. So I wound up spending most of my time indoors in bed. Lighting is a couple of lamps beside the beds. At the back, behind the flap, is a largish tiled, walled bathroom, its roof an extension of your tent. Electricity and water are on 24 hours.
Meals are delivered to your tent, or you can amble over to the thatched roof restaurant that looks out on to the beach. Speaking of the fodder, nothing to write home about. The restaurant claims to serve Indian, Continental and Chinese, and local specialities. I tried all of them, and was, well, unimpressed. Perhaps it was just me, all grouchy about the Gujarati preference for tea, which meant getting instant swill instead of real coffee. On the plus side, I must add: outside of a 5-star hotel, this is the only place where I’ve had decent scrambled eggs. The manager tells me they do a good barbeque. I decided not to test this—as the only guest, it seemed a bit selfish to get them to rig it all up just for me—but he also tells me that they happily customise the menu to suit guest preferences.
Overall, the place does itself a disservice with its branding: it calls itself a luxury beach camp, which raises expectations way too much. It is, no doubt, very comfortable (ACs and proper plumbing in the tent!, Woohoo!) and gives fair value for your rupee, but I have seen and paid for—or rather, this magazine paid for—luxury, and this falls short. Dismiss that claim and take the place for what it is, and you have a pretty unique getaway.
The service is excellent; polite, attentive, eager to cater to personal preferences, quick to acknowledge, and compensate for, shortcomings. And the location the location! Ah, my friend, the calm beauty of the place, the exclusivity, more than make up for any complaints a sour journalist can think up.
Item: A waiter making the long walk from the restaurant with a tray of tea and toast, waving out to you as you wallow in the blood-warm tide pool you have discovered, waiting patiently for you to get back and get dry to offer to pour a cuppa for you.
Item: A semi-tame nilgai (the staff fed it when it was injured, and it has stayed around ever since) attempting to snuffle the mosambi slice off your glass of fruit juice. And an almost-feral cat prowling around the restaurant periphery, not begging, just implying by her manner that she would perhaps, maybe, when she feels like it, find the time to help you get rid of some of that pesky food on your plate. You throw her a bone, she pounces on with alacrity, and carries it off to the undergrowth where she can eat undisturbed by commoners and dogs.
Item: A symphony putting you to sleep at night. The wind soughing through the trees and the murmur of waves layered over with a chorus of frogs singing bass serenades, crickets chirruping the high notes.
Item: A cloudless night. I sit alone on the beach. The faint glow of Mandvi off to the East, the moon sinking below the horizon to the West, and overhead, a dazzling array of stars, with the haze of the galactic disc cutting a broad swathe through it all.
Item: Dammit, I could go on and on. Let’s just say that the place is so relaxing that in the course of about 48 hours, despite around eight hours in the water, and sleeping in late, I unwound enough to write, sketch, finish two books and sip from a volume of poetry. I didn’t miss the internet—I’m a certifiable web junkie—and it never occurred to me to try the camel rides or horseback jungle walks on offer, or even to go visit the palace. And I’m an absolute sucker for old piles. I’m still kicking myself for that one; from the photographs I’ve seen, the palace is in excellent condition, and well worth a visit.
Parmar tells me, in one of our chats, that he is checking out the possibility of bringing in a few kayaks and other unpowered craft. And that there were changes afoot. he plans to build a spa resort in the property; 20 cottages, a pool, a bar.
Yes, you heard that right, a proper bar in dry Gujarat. Apparently the government has declared that of the state’s 1666-kilometre coastline, the 15km stretch around Mandvi is now a Special Entertainment Zone (which makes SEZ a far cheerier acronym, no?) and liquor licenses and the like are in the process of being applied for and allotted. Good news for the Gujarati tippler, who now can get sloshed in-state rather than having to choose between patronising a bootlegger, importuning visiting friends to sneak a bottle or two in, or strolling across the border for a piss up. Alas, it probably means that this stretch will shortly be overloaded drastically, as the holiday-makers converge.
But as long as the Mandvi Maharao and his family use their property as sensibly as they have thus far, I’m inclined to think that their little slice of paradise will stay pristine.
Information
Getting there.
Bhuj, a little over 60 km away, is the nearest airport and railhead. There is at least one flight in and out every day, mainly to Bombay. Two trains connect with Bombay and other parts of Gujarat. From Bhuj, you can take a local bus (roughly half-hour frequencies), to Mandvi, and then take a taxi or a rickshaw to the Beach Camp. Or you could haggle for a taxi; fares are extortionate, higher even than Goa, so you could wind up paying as high as Rs 1000 for the trip.
Other possible connecting points: Gandhidham, 90km, Rajkot, 250 km; Ahmedabad, 450 km.
Things to see and do
The Palace is open for guided tours during the day. You can also take walks, or camel or horse rides, on the beach or within the woodland around the camp, effectively a private sanctuary, with plenty of birds—flamingo in the right season, partridge, peacocks—and if you’re lucky, nilgai, chinkara and jackals.
The management will make arrangements for you if you want to make day trips from the camp. The Lala Bustard Sanctuary is 74 km north, where you can see the Indian Bustard, an endangered species, and the rare Lesser Florican. You may also see gazelles, foxes, jackals, wolves, and of course a wealth of bird life. For the devout, the 72-Jinalaya Jain complex at Badreshwar, the Jain temples at Naliya and Tera, the Hindu shore temples of Koteshwar and Narayan Sarovar, and the Lakpath gurudwara are within striking distance. The Bhuj-Mandvi area is good for shopping for Kutchi handicrafts. Mandvi is a big boat-building centre, and on your way in, you cross a creek where you can see massive wooden boats being built from the ground up. See the day trips section on the website (URL below) for more details on ll of these.
At the camp, your options are limited to what you bring with you and who you come with. No TV, but there’s satellite radio in the restaurant.
Cellphone connectivity is excellent on the beach, but can disappear in parts of the grounds. No internet access closer than Mandvi town. No alcohol served, since Gujarat is a dry state. Wait for the SEZ!
Best time to visit
Gujarat gets some pretty extreme doses of the monsoon, so, while the place is breathtakingly beautiful and pleasant in the rains, you could wind up stranded if transport succumbs to the weather. And, though the water deepens very gradually, the current is strong, and the water is choppy and brown. Summer gets extreme too: over 40°C in the day time. Peak “season” is December to March, when the westerners come in search of sunbathing. The water is calm and blue then—so management says, and the photographs I’ve seen agree—and it’s cool. In fact night temperatures in December can go as low as 7°C, so take thick pajamas!
Tariffs:
Rs 5500 per night (12 noon check-in/check-out) for two people, with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Packages available: 3 days / 2 nights, with meals, Rs 10,999 on weekends, public holidays and the Chritsmas / New Year week, Rs 8,999 on all other Mondays to Thursdays. These rates are for Indian citizens and foreign residents of India (who will have to produce proof of residence). Foreign tourists pay more: US$125 per day with breakfast, or US$150 per day with breakfast, lunch or dinner. (Taxes extra on all tariffs.)
Reservations
Tel: + 91 2834 295725 / 9879013118. Email: reservations@mandvibeach.com Web: http://www.mandvibeach.com/
Published in Outlook Traveller, September 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
I’m at the The Beach at Mandvi Palace. It sits in the middle of the 450 acres of mildly domesticated jungle that make up the backyard of Vijay Vilas, the summer retreat of the former rulers of Mandvi. Rajesh Singh, the manager, tells me that it in bygone years, when the family and guests came out for hunts and suchlike, tent camps would come up around the palace. Right now, it is the only privately owned beach in India, with the property extending right up to the waterline. I hear that the family has refused offers from various hospitality chains to take over and run the palace as a hotel.
The current head of the family, Pragmulji III, doesn’t live here—he divides his time between Bhuj and Bombay—but he has entrusted the running of this venture to his nephew, Paranjayaditya Parmar. And what the younger man has wrought is a pretty nifty get-away-from-it-all kind of place.
I didn’t get to meet him either, because he was off campaigning for the elections way over on the other side of Gujarat, but when we spoke, his enthusiasm for the place was evident. Seeing the tent resorts in touristy places, he decided that tents made better sense to start up with, rather built up structures, which require lots of paperwork. But he was determined to do it his way. Instead of using the available block-printed Rajasthani tents, he and his wife designed their own versions and got them made locally. The furniture and other modifications came from a similar ad hoc process.
There is accommodation for ten pairs of guests at the moment, so it works out to a comfortable 200 metres of beach per couple at peak occupancy, a ratio that I have only seen in one beach in Goa and one other nearer home. (And no, I’m not telling you where either of them are.) Well, I exaggerate; the place also takes in day trippers, charging them a fee for access to the beach, so it may not be as desert-islandish for you as it was for me. But since it’s an eight kilometre drive to Mandvi, which in turn is many miles away from the rest of the world, you’re not going to get Anjuna levels of madding crowd any time soon.
As of this writing, the camp consists of ten tents in a clearing, each sleeping two, a sand dune and a line of scrub and trees separating them from the beach and protecting them from the worst of the weather. Each one is set on its own concrete plinth, a little sit-out in the front, with a couple of dinky camel-leather deck chairs. The styling is reminiscent of royal expedition tents of yore; scalloped edges, carved finials atop the tent poles, awning over the entrance. One looks around automatically for men on horseback returning from the shikaar or from a battle.
A quibble: considering the vast acreage available, they’re set rather too close to each other, with the support ropes of neighbouring tents overlapping. Given canvas walls, it might get noisy when the place is fully booked.
The tents are triple-layered, a candy-striped inner tent, over that a thicker outer, and over it all, a waterproof roof. It keeps the rain out very well, and the lack of natural ventilation is more than compensated for with a high power air-conditioner.
Inside, a coir-carpeted floor, twin beds, bedside tables with a small storage space, carved wood chairs, and a writing table. The chairs are nice-looking, but, alas, not comfy for lazing around in. So I wound up spending most of my time indoors in bed. Lighting is a couple of lamps beside the beds. At the back, behind the flap, is a largish tiled, walled bathroom, its roof an extension of your tent. Electricity and water are on 24 hours.
Meals are delivered to your tent, or you can amble over to the thatched roof restaurant that looks out on to the beach. Speaking of the fodder, nothing to write home about. The restaurant claims to serve Indian, Continental and Chinese, and local specialities. I tried all of them, and was, well, unimpressed. Perhaps it was just me, all grouchy about the Gujarati preference for tea, which meant getting instant swill instead of real coffee. On the plus side, I must add: outside of a 5-star hotel, this is the only place where I’ve had decent scrambled eggs. The manager tells me they do a good barbeque. I decided not to test this—as the only guest, it seemed a bit selfish to get them to rig it all up just for me—but he also tells me that they happily customise the menu to suit guest preferences.
Overall, the place does itself a disservice with its branding: it calls itself a luxury beach camp, which raises expectations way too much. It is, no doubt, very comfortable (ACs and proper plumbing in the tent!, Woohoo!) and gives fair value for your rupee, but I have seen and paid for—or rather, this magazine paid for—luxury, and this falls short. Dismiss that claim and take the place for what it is, and you have a pretty unique getaway.
The service is excellent; polite, attentive, eager to cater to personal preferences, quick to acknowledge, and compensate for, shortcomings. And the location the location! Ah, my friend, the calm beauty of the place, the exclusivity, more than make up for any complaints a sour journalist can think up.
Item: A waiter making the long walk from the restaurant with a tray of tea and toast, waving out to you as you wallow in the blood-warm tide pool you have discovered, waiting patiently for you to get back and get dry to offer to pour a cuppa for you.
Item: A semi-tame nilgai (the staff fed it when it was injured, and it has stayed around ever since) attempting to snuffle the mosambi slice off your glass of fruit juice. And an almost-feral cat prowling around the restaurant periphery, not begging, just implying by her manner that she would perhaps, maybe, when she feels like it, find the time to help you get rid of some of that pesky food on your plate. You throw her a bone, she pounces on with alacrity, and carries it off to the undergrowth where she can eat undisturbed by commoners and dogs.
Item: A symphony putting you to sleep at night. The wind soughing through the trees and the murmur of waves layered over with a chorus of frogs singing bass serenades, crickets chirruping the high notes.
Item: A cloudless night. I sit alone on the beach. The faint glow of Mandvi off to the East, the moon sinking below the horizon to the West, and overhead, a dazzling array of stars, with the haze of the galactic disc cutting a broad swathe through it all.
Item: Dammit, I could go on and on. Let’s just say that the place is so relaxing that in the course of about 48 hours, despite around eight hours in the water, and sleeping in late, I unwound enough to write, sketch, finish two books and sip from a volume of poetry. I didn’t miss the internet—I’m a certifiable web junkie—and it never occurred to me to try the camel rides or horseback jungle walks on offer, or even to go visit the palace. And I’m an absolute sucker for old piles. I’m still kicking myself for that one; from the photographs I’ve seen, the palace is in excellent condition, and well worth a visit.
Parmar tells me, in one of our chats, that he is checking out the possibility of bringing in a few kayaks and other unpowered craft. And that there were changes afoot. he plans to build a spa resort in the property; 20 cottages, a pool, a bar.
Yes, you heard that right, a proper bar in dry Gujarat. Apparently the government has declared that of the state’s 1666-kilometre coastline, the 15km stretch around Mandvi is now a Special Entertainment Zone (which makes SEZ a far cheerier acronym, no?) and liquor licenses and the like are in the process of being applied for and allotted. Good news for the Gujarati tippler, who now can get sloshed in-state rather than having to choose between patronising a bootlegger, importuning visiting friends to sneak a bottle or two in, or strolling across the border for a piss up. Alas, it probably means that this stretch will shortly be overloaded drastically, as the holiday-makers converge.
But as long as the Mandvi Maharao and his family use their property as sensibly as they have thus far, I’m inclined to think that their little slice of paradise will stay pristine.
Information
Getting there.
Bhuj, a little over 60 km away, is the nearest airport and railhead. There is at least one flight in and out every day, mainly to Bombay. Two trains connect with Bombay and other parts of Gujarat. From Bhuj, you can take a local bus (roughly half-hour frequencies), to Mandvi, and then take a taxi or a rickshaw to the Beach Camp. Or you could haggle for a taxi; fares are extortionate, higher even than Goa, so you could wind up paying as high as Rs 1000 for the trip.
Other possible connecting points: Gandhidham, 90km, Rajkot, 250 km; Ahmedabad, 450 km.
Things to see and do
The Palace is open for guided tours during the day. You can also take walks, or camel or horse rides, on the beach or within the woodland around the camp, effectively a private sanctuary, with plenty of birds—flamingo in the right season, partridge, peacocks—and if you’re lucky, nilgai, chinkara and jackals.
The management will make arrangements for you if you want to make day trips from the camp. The Lala Bustard Sanctuary is 74 km north, where you can see the Indian Bustard, an endangered species, and the rare Lesser Florican. You may also see gazelles, foxes, jackals, wolves, and of course a wealth of bird life. For the devout, the 72-Jinalaya Jain complex at Badreshwar, the Jain temples at Naliya and Tera, the Hindu shore temples of Koteshwar and Narayan Sarovar, and the Lakpath gurudwara are within striking distance. The Bhuj-Mandvi area is good for shopping for Kutchi handicrafts. Mandvi is a big boat-building centre, and on your way in, you cross a creek where you can see massive wooden boats being built from the ground up. See the day trips section on the website (URL below) for more details on ll of these.
At the camp, your options are limited to what you bring with you and who you come with. No TV, but there’s satellite radio in the restaurant.
Cellphone connectivity is excellent on the beach, but can disappear in parts of the grounds. No internet access closer than Mandvi town. No alcohol served, since Gujarat is a dry state. Wait for the SEZ!
Best time to visit
Gujarat gets some pretty extreme doses of the monsoon, so, while the place is breathtakingly beautiful and pleasant in the rains, you could wind up stranded if transport succumbs to the weather. And, though the water deepens very gradually, the current is strong, and the water is choppy and brown. Summer gets extreme too: over 40°C in the day time. Peak “season” is December to March, when the westerners come in search of sunbathing. The water is calm and blue then—so management says, and the photographs I’ve seen agree—and it’s cool. In fact night temperatures in December can go as low as 7°C, so take thick pajamas!
Tariffs:
Rs 5500 per night (12 noon check-in/check-out) for two people, with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Packages available: 3 days / 2 nights, with meals, Rs 10,999 on weekends, public holidays and the Chritsmas / New Year week, Rs 8,999 on all other Mondays to Thursdays. These rates are for Indian citizens and foreign residents of India (who will have to produce proof of residence). Foreign tourists pay more: US$125 per day with breakfast, or US$150 per day with breakfast, lunch or dinner. (Taxes extra on all tariffs.)
Reservations
Tel: + 91 2834 295725 / 9879013118. Email: reservations@mandvibeach.com Web: http://www.mandvibeach.com/
Published in Outlook Traveller, September 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Siteseeing - 10
Airline Meals
Truly, my fellow travellers, the interweb is a wonderful place. One thought, when one covered websites dedicated to toilets, that nothing else could surprise one. But, I kid you not, there is a site dedicated to that other necessity, food, and the variety of it available in the air, as the name has already told the smart ones in the class.
The site started with a few of its creator’s photographs. He then found some others online, and added those. Later, he posted about it on some online forums, then got written about in the media, after which, the deluge: almost 19,00 images and 536 airlines covered as of this writing.
What you get is a picture of the food tray, with a description of the food, and a rating, sorted by airline. You will also find a special preferences section (Indian vegetarian figures, as do more niche categories such as lacto-ovo-vegetarian, and medical necessities like diabetic and gluten-free meals), airport meals, crew meals, behind-the-scenes pictures, menu cards, and even old airline ads. And if that’s not a bellyful, you can go to the forums to discuss all of the above. Now, put down your tray-table, little boy, and stop kicking the seat back of the nice columnist in front of you.
Published in Outlook Traveller, September 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Truly, my fellow travellers, the interweb is a wonderful place. One thought, when one covered websites dedicated to toilets, that nothing else could surprise one. But, I kid you not, there is a site dedicated to that other necessity, food, and the variety of it available in the air, as the name has already told the smart ones in the class.
The site started with a few of its creator’s photographs. He then found some others online, and added those. Later, he posted about it on some online forums, then got written about in the media, after which, the deluge: almost 19,00 images and 536 airlines covered as of this writing.
What you get is a picture of the food tray, with a description of the food, and a rating, sorted by airline. You will also find a special preferences section (Indian vegetarian figures, as do more niche categories such as lacto-ovo-vegetarian, and medical necessities like diabetic and gluten-free meals), airport meals, crew meals, behind-the-scenes pictures, menu cards, and even old airline ads. And if that’s not a bellyful, you can go to the forums to discuss all of the above. Now, put down your tray-table, little boy, and stop kicking the seat back of the nice columnist in front of you.
Published in Outlook Traveller, September 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
Siteseeing - 9
PairUp
Every website with a few dollars to fling onto the table is talking communities and user-generated content these days. Anything more than small coins, and they commission a shiny logo with a half-shadow, throw in bevelled edges, stick a ‘beta’ below the site name, and hey, presto, Web 2.0!
This site, to give it is due, has focus. It aim—with a ™ at the end and all—is “Connecting business travellers.” Simple approach: upload contacts, share travel plans, and use the site to find people at the other end and set up meetings. You also get a heads-up when folks from your network are visiting your own stomping grounds. You have a fair amount of control over who gets to see what parts of your info, and yes, it’s free. The critical thing here, of course, is that you succeed in getting all your contacts on to the site too. Thing is, with so many prospective connectors falling over themselves to get your sign-up, is it worth the effort to go through the tedium of building your network on Yet Another Social Networking Site? Perhaps you suited folks who don’t want to be seen with the backpacker crowd would welcome the business focus? I dunno, really. I haven’t put on a tie since the last friend’s wedding. And for that, I knew the guest list. And the barman.
Published in Outlook Traveller, August 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing, GT (It's a Guy Thing), Time Out, Mumbai, Man's World, Snapshot, In Search of the Perfect..
Every website with a few dollars to fling onto the table is talking communities and user-generated content these days. Anything more than small coins, and they commission a shiny logo with a half-shadow, throw in bevelled edges, stick a ‘beta’ below the site name, and hey, presto, Web 2.0!
This site, to give it is due, has focus. It aim—with a ™ at the end and all—is “Connecting business travellers.” Simple approach: upload contacts, share travel plans, and use the site to find people at the other end and set up meetings. You also get a heads-up when folks from your network are visiting your own stomping grounds. You have a fair amount of control over who gets to see what parts of your info, and yes, it’s free. The critical thing here, of course, is that you succeed in getting all your contacts on to the site too. Thing is, with so many prospective connectors falling over themselves to get your sign-up, is it worth the effort to go through the tedium of building your network on Yet Another Social Networking Site? Perhaps you suited folks who don’t want to be seen with the backpacker crowd would welcome the business focus? I dunno, really. I haven’t put on a tie since the last friend’s wedding. And for that, I knew the guest list. And the barman.
Published in Outlook Traveller, August 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing, GT (It's a Guy Thing), Time Out, Mumbai, Man's World, Snapshot, In Search of the Perfect..
Pies and Prejudice [Book Review]
Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North
by Stuart Maconie
Paperback, 352 pages
Ebury Press
ISBN 9780091910228
England, to me, looks way too small to have a North, so this book is an education. My perceptions, I realised, cringing, are just the kind that I take voluble delight in castigating when I hear them in non-Indian accents about India. The England I know through books, movies and TV is London, plus stray other cities, plus an interchangeable bunch of counties in which thrived the Yorkshire dales and quaint accents of James Herriot’s stories and the never-was-land of Wodehouse. I know better now.
Maconie knows his subject intimately, and loves it unabashedly.
He explains the essence of Northness thus: Northerners, he says, are “different, we think; harder, flintier, steelier. We are the ones who turn the air-conditioning down in the meeting room, who want to sit outside the pub in October, who order the hottest curries, the strongest beer, the most powerful drugs. We like to think we’re different, and we cherish our prejudices.”
We go walkabout, from city centre to pub to concert to museum, as he chats merrily about wars, football, architecture, food, popular music (yup, the Beatles), Marx and Engels (“Eleanor [Marx] was married to Karl of course, who by contrast was a bit of a lardarse with rubbish hair who nicked all Freidrich’s ideas”), George Orwell, industrial decline, renaissance, Transcendental Meditation (“as it’s a trademark, TM™”), biting insults peppering even-handed overview. The cultural differences between North and South and the even lesser known (to the outsider) rifts within the north itself are fascinating. The rivalries of the natives—Lancashire and Yorkshire, Liverpool and Manchester—were ancient history, or jovial football rivalries to me, not simmering pressure cookers that explode every now and then even today. But no, it’s no sociological treatise, and it’s not a tourists’-eye view of the sights. This is from the inside, living, breathing, reminiscing with a chuckle or a sigh.
He’s a witty man, is Stuart Maconie. And he’s made a pretty good career out of it; the author note says he’s “known to millions,” with a reputation both in broadcast media and in print. And that’s one of the problems I have with the book. Not the fame; the wit. I will choose a funny read over high lit any day, but he never stops. Reminds me of some chaps I know, always the wise guy. It gets tiring, difficult to take in a book-length dose. I’d have enjoyed it more as, say, a weekly half-hour radio programme. More seriously, it’s a book that gives one the feeling that while it’s written from the inside, it’s also written for the insider. So many in-jokes, obscure references, untranslated argot that I kept flipping to the back, vainly looking for a glossary.
In this age of search engines and short attention spans, perhaps those quibbles are irrelevant. So read it in short spells, stay online while you read, and it’s worth your time.
Published in Outlook Traveller, August 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
by Stuart Maconie
Paperback, 352 pages
Ebury Press
ISBN 9780091910228
England, to me, looks way too small to have a North, so this book is an education. My perceptions, I realised, cringing, are just the kind that I take voluble delight in castigating when I hear them in non-Indian accents about India. The England I know through books, movies and TV is London, plus stray other cities, plus an interchangeable bunch of counties in which thrived the Yorkshire dales and quaint accents of James Herriot’s stories and the never-was-land of Wodehouse. I know better now.
Maconie knows his subject intimately, and loves it unabashedly.
He explains the essence of Northness thus: Northerners, he says, are “different, we think; harder, flintier, steelier. We are the ones who turn the air-conditioning down in the meeting room, who want to sit outside the pub in October, who order the hottest curries, the strongest beer, the most powerful drugs. We like to think we’re different, and we cherish our prejudices.”
We go walkabout, from city centre to pub to concert to museum, as he chats merrily about wars, football, architecture, food, popular music (yup, the Beatles), Marx and Engels (“Eleanor [Marx] was married to Karl of course, who by contrast was a bit of a lardarse with rubbish hair who nicked all Freidrich’s ideas”), George Orwell, industrial decline, renaissance, Transcendental Meditation (“as it’s a trademark, TM™”), biting insults peppering even-handed overview. The cultural differences between North and South and the even lesser known (to the outsider) rifts within the north itself are fascinating. The rivalries of the natives—Lancashire and Yorkshire, Liverpool and Manchester—were ancient history, or jovial football rivalries to me, not simmering pressure cookers that explode every now and then even today. But no, it’s no sociological treatise, and it’s not a tourists’-eye view of the sights. This is from the inside, living, breathing, reminiscing with a chuckle or a sigh.
He’s a witty man, is Stuart Maconie. And he’s made a pretty good career out of it; the author note says he’s “known to millions,” with a reputation both in broadcast media and in print. And that’s one of the problems I have with the book. Not the fame; the wit. I will choose a funny read over high lit any day, but he never stops. Reminds me of some chaps I know, always the wise guy. It gets tiring, difficult to take in a book-length dose. I’d have enjoyed it more as, say, a weekly half-hour radio programme. More seriously, it’s a book that gives one the feeling that while it’s written from the inside, it’s also written for the insider. So many in-jokes, obscure references, untranslated argot that I kept flipping to the back, vainly looking for a glossary.
In this age of search engines and short attention spans, perhaps those quibbles are irrelevant. So read it in short spells, stay online while you read, and it’s worth your time.
Published in Outlook Traveller, August 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Sunday, 1 July 2007
Siteseeing - 8
Arzoo
After he and Jack Smith sold Hotmail to Microsoft for 400 mill, Sabeer Bhatia started a new company, Arzoo, which aimed to play matchmaker between tech experts and companies that wanted their services. Perhaps the plan wasn’t unique enough; certainly the timing was unfortunate. Arzoo dotbombed in 2001. Last year, Bhatia made it over into a travel portal but didn’t make too much of a noise about it. Recently, the site’s new avataar completed a year of operations, and badly written press releases flowered in journo inboxes, announcing a new and improved look. Not having seen the old design, one assumes, going by this underwhelming version, that it was horrible. (Get a decent designer, folks. And lose that awful logo!) Anyway, what’s on offer? There’s a bunch of decent holiday packages, national and international, service apartments, and an airline search-and-book section. A quick trial of this last service threw up a large array of options, each claiming an “Arzoo Rate.” But, I found, when I went directly to an airline’s site, I wound up with cheaper flights with the same parameters. So, nice to compare rates, but I’d have bought direct. Overall, not exactly one’s heart’s desire, but with some work on the details, it could be a useful site to bookmark.
Published in Outlook Traveller, July 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
After he and Jack Smith sold Hotmail to Microsoft for 400 mill, Sabeer Bhatia started a new company, Arzoo, which aimed to play matchmaker between tech experts and companies that wanted their services. Perhaps the plan wasn’t unique enough; certainly the timing was unfortunate. Arzoo dotbombed in 2001. Last year, Bhatia made it over into a travel portal but didn’t make too much of a noise about it. Recently, the site’s new avataar completed a year of operations, and badly written press releases flowered in journo inboxes, announcing a new and improved look. Not having seen the old design, one assumes, going by this underwhelming version, that it was horrible. (Get a decent designer, folks. And lose that awful logo!) Anyway, what’s on offer? There’s a bunch of decent holiday packages, national and international, service apartments, and an airline search-and-book section. A quick trial of this last service threw up a large array of options, each claiming an “Arzoo Rate.” But, I found, when I went directly to an airline’s site, I wound up with cheaper flights with the same parameters. So, nice to compare rates, but I’d have bought direct. Overall, not exactly one’s heart’s desire, but with some work on the details, it could be a useful site to bookmark.
Published in Outlook Traveller, July 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Friday, 1 June 2007
Siteseeing - 7
Cybercafe Search Engine and Cybercafes
In these days of wireless. connectivity and hand-held devices that help you connect up wherever you are, who needs cybercafes? Well, until Editor Sahib ponies up more dineros for his hard-working freelancers, I do. You see, WiFi is still pretty expensive in this country, and not exactly ubiquitous. And as for connecting up via cellphone or other hand-helds, you’re hostage to phone-provider signal, which can be spotty, to say the least, in some parts of the country. Cybercafes still rule for the likes of me, when I’m rambling. I tried searches on both of them. Cybercafes seems more flexible. It doesn’t have any obvious submission method, so perhaps the database doesn’t get spammed. It list just 417 establishments all-India, as of this writing. Cybercaptive has Country Search disabled, and doesn’t recognise the Indian state names I tried, so I wasn’t able to get a comparative figure. It does list other means of access, though, like cruise ships, hotels and airlines, and is, overall, friendlier in its tone, though a design overhaul is long overdue, methinks. Both deliver better results for North America searches, so if that’s where you’re headed, you’ll like them both. Got to go now. My home net connection is down, so I need to find a caf from where I can send this in.
Published in Outlook Traveller, June 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
In these days of wireless. connectivity and hand-held devices that help you connect up wherever you are, who needs cybercafes? Well, until Editor Sahib ponies up more dineros for his hard-working freelancers, I do. You see, WiFi is still pretty expensive in this country, and not exactly ubiquitous. And as for connecting up via cellphone or other hand-helds, you’re hostage to phone-provider signal, which can be spotty, to say the least, in some parts of the country. Cybercafes still rule for the likes of me, when I’m rambling. I tried searches on both of them. Cybercafes seems more flexible. It doesn’t have any obvious submission method, so perhaps the database doesn’t get spammed. It list just 417 establishments all-India, as of this writing. Cybercaptive has Country Search disabled, and doesn’t recognise the Indian state names I tried, so I wasn’t able to get a comparative figure. It does list other means of access, though, like cruise ships, hotels and airlines, and is, overall, friendlier in its tone, though a design overhaul is long overdue, methinks. Both deliver better results for North America searches, so if that’s where you’re headed, you’ll like them both. Got to go now. My home net connection is down, so I need to find a caf from where I can send this in.
Published in Outlook Traveller, June 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Abandon, Ship
I’m floating on my back, in a blood warm-sea. Land is a thin smudge on the horizon. There’s not a sound to be heard except the stray seagull, and the watery patpatpat of the swell against my body. A voice yells my name. I raise an ear out of the water; Kedar, leaning over the rail of the Rosa, is demanding that I turn over and swim for the camera. Damn. Duty must be done. I flip over, and execute a few energetic freestyle strokes.
Rosa is the first recreational yacht ever listed on the Register of Indian Shipping. For those that know and care about these things, she’s a Gazelle (a design by the American naval architect Colvin), a bit under 60 feet, and uses a Chinese-style “junk rig.” She has been built a few miles away, in the yard of Kyondo Syokai Marine, in the backwaters of Fort Cochin. Dr John Crabtree, expat Brit, co-founder of the group, and skipper on this sail, says she’s more than ninety per cent Indian with just a few imported parts.
We had hit Cochin the previous day, grouchy as hell after waking up at dawn for a flight that was eventually more than an hour late. After a leisurely coffee with Dr John (as most people seem to call him) and Arun Louis, COO of the group and son of the other co-founder, the hospitality and real estate tycoon T M Louis, we learn that our plans—an overnight cruise and a picnic on a remote beach—had changed. The pre-monsoon winds make the water a bit choppy at night, and seeing as Kedar and I were landlubbers with not much more than a few ferry rides and white water rafting jaunts between us, John decides not to take a chance on us getting seasick. Instead, we drive down to the boatyard at Mattencherry, one of the oldest quarters of this old town, and get a guided tour of the rather grandiose-sounding Malabar Yacht Club. Sneezing through the faint hint of pepper in the air (hey, it’s the Spice Coast, and this is where them spices have been leaving our shores from for centuries), we walk through the rather beat-up boatyard, where a yacht is up for repairs, to the jetty, where Rosa bobs, sparkling white, with a big red star on her bows. John shows off the boat (GPS! Satellite radio! a hook to dangle mobile phone from! and yes, a large, traditional compass too), and tells us about the company.
From what I gather, he made his pile in the Gulf, met his wife there too, and after a bit of soul-searching, he decided to get into the yachting business in India. He scouted around for partners, and found an ideal fit in Louis Senior. After all the groundwork, the registrations and permissions, the land buying, the hiring of young trainees, they launched Rosa, and spent the 2006-07 season fine-tuning the boat and their business strategies, and doing the hard job of selling the concept to Indian tourists. Not much success so far—most of their customers have been holidaying westerners—but he’s optimistic of turning that around. The company has interesting plans: three more boats on the water soon, incorporating all the little refinements that last season taught them; cruises to Lakshdweep (with one boat based in the Islands); boats leased out to other operators along the coast; a proper, methodical sailing training programme that will get its graduates an international certification; and so on. John hasn’t had much luck with getting local lads keen to sail—his current trainees are from Tamil Nadu and Lakshdweep—but the boatyard and the resort are staffed from around the neighbourhood.
We head off to the company’s resort, Michael’s Land, at Kannamaly, about a dozen kilometres from Fort Cochin. The place is practically an island (it’s actually a peninsula, but connected only by a dirt track that’s just about cycle-worthy), about 10 acres in all, surrounded on three sides by placid backwaters. We’re met off the main road, where it kisses the lagoon, and ferried across in a small, canopied outrigger canoe, its outboard motor’s gentle coughing only a wee bit louder than the swish of prow cutting through the water.
Smiling staffers welcome us at the jetty, and our bags are whisked off to our rooms before we remember to lift them off the boat. We stroll down the coconut grove, to the small row of bungalows.
We meet John’s wife, Fumiyo, and over beer, prawns cooked Japanese style, and appams and stew, we chat some more. We decide on an early night, to get the most sailing we could out of the morrow.
I’m asleep ten minutes after dinner, and (this one’s for the books!) am up before dawn, wandering the shore, taking pictures in the soft light. At the far end of my perambulations, I see that Kedar has found an even better spot, where the sun picks golden flecks out of the ripples, and several boats have obligingly stopped in just the right spot. Swine.
Massive breakfast ingested, we head off to Matencherry, where the crew are scuttling around tightening whatchamacallits here, loosening thingummybobs there; and then we push off from shore. The motor takes us out of the harbour (moving under sail is discouraged by the port authorities) past massive dredgers, peppy pilot boats, passenger ferries and all manner of fishing boats. As we pass the famous Chinese fishing nets, my pulse has slowed down to Buddhist monk standards, and I am lost in thoughts of pirates, three-masters and the bounding Main... but I am jolted out my reverie by the ear-splitting klaxon of what seems like a bloody floating skyscraper behind us. It is one of the dredgers that work constantly at keeping the shipping channel navigable, imperiously demanding that we gedoutttheway now.
In a bit, we’re past the mouth of the harbour, nothing ahead of us but distant ships at anchor... and Africa. To my great delight, we twice pass encounter dolphins, far closer than I’ve ever seen them before, despite many alleged dolphin spotting rides. They do not do any spectacular breaching, and they disappear before I can get my camera focussed, but it’s still a major thrill.
We shut off the engine, the young rookies get the sails up, and we change course to sail South, parallel to the coast. There isn’t much wind, but John is optimistic about it picking up. A fishing boat is to meet us out at sea later, so that Kedar can take some pictures of the yacht in full sail from a distance. We drift along at the nautical equivalent of walking pace. One of the lads tells me of his ambitions: to learn to sail, to eventually get a job in shipping, and to get over “this vomiting.” He is shortly, and copiously, sea-sick, and spends most of the rest of the day looking quite miserable.
We’re not getting much wind at all, so I decide to take a swim. (Another option is a spot of angling, but we have no fishing tackle.) The sails are adjusted so that we’re holding our position relative to the sea floor. Ropes and floats are trailed off from the stern, because there’s a distinct current pulling in to the shore. I’m briefed about holding on to the ropes and getting towed behind the boat, and then I jump in. It doesn’t take long to realise that a half-knot’s worth of current can stretch pool-learned swimming abilities to embarrassment point, so I latch on to the ropes and let the boat hold me in place.
Until, of course, Kedar demanded those pictures.
It’s early afternoon now, and the sun is blazing. I am helped back aboard, and shortly after, we reverse direction, heading back North. We learn that the fishing boat’s owner had made extortionate demands for his services, so negotiations had, um, floundered. Visions of cold beer and chunky sandwiches evaporate (the boat was to also deliver our lunch, since we’d set out much earlier than was routine, before the restaurants had opened), but John comforts us with promises of a spread waiting for us at the jetty.
The much-hoped-for wind is also a no-show, so we sail back at the same sedate pace. I am badly sunburnt by then, so I sprint for the ACed comfort of the office the moment we dock. After the promised meal, I attempt to shower off the salt, with not much success: the plumbing is, er, basic.
As we head back to the airport (to find that our flight is, sigh, two hours late), I tot up the score. Cons: Bad sunburn. Lousy shower. Pros: A lazy day on a real, kosher yacht! A swim out at sea! And dolphins!
I’m ahead of the game.
The Information
Konda Syokai’s operations are grouped under a baffling array of names.
Costs: The sailing will set you back Rs 2000 per person for a five-hour cruise, including lunch and beverages on board. Should you want to stay at Michael’s Land, it costs Rs 2000 a night for a comfy double room, ACed, with attached bath; breakfast included, and other meals by arrangement. The resort is pretty secluded, so if you’re the type that needs proximity to the noise and the fleshpots, you should stay elsewhere.
Sailing + Stay Package: includes airport (Kochi) pickup and drop, a night at the resort, and sailing on either day, with a bit of sightseeing on land as a paid extra on the other day. The room will cost you Rs 1500, including breakfast, and the sailing, with lunch, Rs 2000 per person.
There are also overnight cruises available by arrangement, with a beach picnic down the coast, at Rs 4000 per person, requiring a minimum of three passengers. Yachts are available for longer cruises at Rs 12,000 per day, for up to six passengers.
Tips: The crew will give you anti-histamines; take them before the sail if you are at all prone to motion sickness. Take a swimsuit. And, as my peeling skin will tell you, do not forget to slather on sunblock, and take it with you if you plan to swim and need more for after you get out of the water.
Getting there: The resort is a twenty-minute drive from Fort Cochin (add an hour for the airport leg). The Malabar Yacht Club (where the sailing trips start) is five minutes from Fort Cochin. Detailed directions available online.
Contact: Michael’s Land: +91 484 2282899. Arun Louis (for sailing): +91 9349247899. Email: admin@kondosyokai.com. Web: www.kondosyokai.org
Published in Outlook Traveller, May 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Rosa is the first recreational yacht ever listed on the Register of Indian Shipping. For those that know and care about these things, she’s a Gazelle (a design by the American naval architect Colvin), a bit under 60 feet, and uses a Chinese-style “junk rig.” She has been built a few miles away, in the yard of Kyondo Syokai Marine, in the backwaters of Fort Cochin. Dr John Crabtree, expat Brit, co-founder of the group, and skipper on this sail, says she’s more than ninety per cent Indian with just a few imported parts.
We had hit Cochin the previous day, grouchy as hell after waking up at dawn for a flight that was eventually more than an hour late. After a leisurely coffee with Dr John (as most people seem to call him) and Arun Louis, COO of the group and son of the other co-founder, the hospitality and real estate tycoon T M Louis, we learn that our plans—an overnight cruise and a picnic on a remote beach—had changed. The pre-monsoon winds make the water a bit choppy at night, and seeing as Kedar and I were landlubbers with not much more than a few ferry rides and white water rafting jaunts between us, John decides not to take a chance on us getting seasick. Instead, we drive down to the boatyard at Mattencherry, one of the oldest quarters of this old town, and get a guided tour of the rather grandiose-sounding Malabar Yacht Club. Sneezing through the faint hint of pepper in the air (hey, it’s the Spice Coast, and this is where them spices have been leaving our shores from for centuries), we walk through the rather beat-up boatyard, where a yacht is up for repairs, to the jetty, where Rosa bobs, sparkling white, with a big red star on her bows. John shows off the boat (GPS! Satellite radio! a hook to dangle mobile phone from! and yes, a large, traditional compass too), and tells us about the company.
From what I gather, he made his pile in the Gulf, met his wife there too, and after a bit of soul-searching, he decided to get into the yachting business in India. He scouted around for partners, and found an ideal fit in Louis Senior. After all the groundwork, the registrations and permissions, the land buying, the hiring of young trainees, they launched Rosa, and spent the 2006-07 season fine-tuning the boat and their business strategies, and doing the hard job of selling the concept to Indian tourists. Not much success so far—most of their customers have been holidaying westerners—but he’s optimistic of turning that around. The company has interesting plans: three more boats on the water soon, incorporating all the little refinements that last season taught them; cruises to Lakshdweep (with one boat based in the Islands); boats leased out to other operators along the coast; a proper, methodical sailing training programme that will get its graduates an international certification; and so on. John hasn’t had much luck with getting local lads keen to sail—his current trainees are from Tamil Nadu and Lakshdweep—but the boatyard and the resort are staffed from around the neighbourhood.
We head off to the company’s resort, Michael’s Land, at Kannamaly, about a dozen kilometres from Fort Cochin. The place is practically an island (it’s actually a peninsula, but connected only by a dirt track that’s just about cycle-worthy), about 10 acres in all, surrounded on three sides by placid backwaters. We’re met off the main road, where it kisses the lagoon, and ferried across in a small, canopied outrigger canoe, its outboard motor’s gentle coughing only a wee bit louder than the swish of prow cutting through the water.
Smiling staffers welcome us at the jetty, and our bags are whisked off to our rooms before we remember to lift them off the boat. We stroll down the coconut grove, to the small row of bungalows.
We meet John’s wife, Fumiyo, and over beer, prawns cooked Japanese style, and appams and stew, we chat some more. We decide on an early night, to get the most sailing we could out of the morrow.
I’m asleep ten minutes after dinner, and (this one’s for the books!) am up before dawn, wandering the shore, taking pictures in the soft light. At the far end of my perambulations, I see that Kedar has found an even better spot, where the sun picks golden flecks out of the ripples, and several boats have obligingly stopped in just the right spot. Swine.
Massive breakfast ingested, we head off to Matencherry, where the crew are scuttling around tightening whatchamacallits here, loosening thingummybobs there; and then we push off from shore. The motor takes us out of the harbour (moving under sail is discouraged by the port authorities) past massive dredgers, peppy pilot boats, passenger ferries and all manner of fishing boats. As we pass the famous Chinese fishing nets, my pulse has slowed down to Buddhist monk standards, and I am lost in thoughts of pirates, three-masters and the bounding Main... but I am jolted out my reverie by the ear-splitting klaxon of what seems like a bloody floating skyscraper behind us. It is one of the dredgers that work constantly at keeping the shipping channel navigable, imperiously demanding that we gedoutttheway now.
In a bit, we’re past the mouth of the harbour, nothing ahead of us but distant ships at anchor... and Africa. To my great delight, we twice pass encounter dolphins, far closer than I’ve ever seen them before, despite many alleged dolphin spotting rides. They do not do any spectacular breaching, and they disappear before I can get my camera focussed, but it’s still a major thrill.
We shut off the engine, the young rookies get the sails up, and we change course to sail South, parallel to the coast. There isn’t much wind, but John is optimistic about it picking up. A fishing boat is to meet us out at sea later, so that Kedar can take some pictures of the yacht in full sail from a distance. We drift along at the nautical equivalent of walking pace. One of the lads tells me of his ambitions: to learn to sail, to eventually get a job in shipping, and to get over “this vomiting.” He is shortly, and copiously, sea-sick, and spends most of the rest of the day looking quite miserable.
We’re not getting much wind at all, so I decide to take a swim. (Another option is a spot of angling, but we have no fishing tackle.) The sails are adjusted so that we’re holding our position relative to the sea floor. Ropes and floats are trailed off from the stern, because there’s a distinct current pulling in to the shore. I’m briefed about holding on to the ropes and getting towed behind the boat, and then I jump in. It doesn’t take long to realise that a half-knot’s worth of current can stretch pool-learned swimming abilities to embarrassment point, so I latch on to the ropes and let the boat hold me in place.
Until, of course, Kedar demanded those pictures.
It’s early afternoon now, and the sun is blazing. I am helped back aboard, and shortly after, we reverse direction, heading back North. We learn that the fishing boat’s owner had made extortionate demands for his services, so negotiations had, um, floundered. Visions of cold beer and chunky sandwiches evaporate (the boat was to also deliver our lunch, since we’d set out much earlier than was routine, before the restaurants had opened), but John comforts us with promises of a spread waiting for us at the jetty.
The much-hoped-for wind is also a no-show, so we sail back at the same sedate pace. I am badly sunburnt by then, so I sprint for the ACed comfort of the office the moment we dock. After the promised meal, I attempt to shower off the salt, with not much success: the plumbing is, er, basic.
As we head back to the airport (to find that our flight is, sigh, two hours late), I tot up the score. Cons: Bad sunburn. Lousy shower. Pros: A lazy day on a real, kosher yacht! A swim out at sea! And dolphins!
I’m ahead of the game.
The Information
Konda Syokai’s operations are grouped under a baffling array of names.
Costs: The sailing will set you back Rs 2000 per person for a five-hour cruise, including lunch and beverages on board. Should you want to stay at Michael’s Land, it costs Rs 2000 a night for a comfy double room, ACed, with attached bath; breakfast included, and other meals by arrangement. The resort is pretty secluded, so if you’re the type that needs proximity to the noise and the fleshpots, you should stay elsewhere.
Sailing + Stay Package: includes airport (Kochi) pickup and drop, a night at the resort, and sailing on either day, with a bit of sightseeing on land as a paid extra on the other day. The room will cost you Rs 1500, including breakfast, and the sailing, with lunch, Rs 2000 per person.
There are also overnight cruises available by arrangement, with a beach picnic down the coast, at Rs 4000 per person, requiring a minimum of three passengers. Yachts are available for longer cruises at Rs 12,000 per day, for up to six passengers.
Tips: The crew will give you anti-histamines; take them before the sail if you are at all prone to motion sickness. Take a swimsuit. And, as my peeling skin will tell you, do not forget to slather on sunblock, and take it with you if you plan to swim and need more for after you get out of the water.
Getting there: The resort is a twenty-minute drive from Fort Cochin (add an hour for the airport leg). The Malabar Yacht Club (where the sailing trips start) is five minutes from Fort Cochin. Detailed directions available online.
Contact: Michael’s Land: +91 484 2282899. Arun Louis (for sailing): +91 9349247899. Email: admin@kondosyokai.com. Web: www.kondosyokai.org
Published in Outlook Traveller, May 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Siteseeing - 6
Slow Travel
If you’re into itineraries and checklists and package tours with accompanying cook to make you food just like mummyji’s, turn the page now, there’s a good lad.
Right. So what is slow travel? It’s an unpackaged tour, if you like. The thought came from the Slow Food concept, which gave rise to the Slow Movement in general. (Look them up. Later. No rush.) The idea of slow travel is that you truly experience a place, staying at least a week in one location. You’re advised to hang around, make no must-do lists, see only what’s nearby. Slow travel could suit travellers across the bank balance spectrum. As the site says, you could rent house to give your kids run around space. Or stay on a farm to save money. Heck, you could rent a mansion and take your staff along.
The site has loads of tips and articles, affiliations with sponsors, listings and more. Weaknesses: as with so many good sites, it is, alas, aimed at the US resident, and is largely focussed on Europe. There is a paid editorial staff selecting what goes up, so it’s not your usual user-generated content site. You can check out the sister sites—a message board and a photo-posting forum—for the uncut versions.
Published in Outlook Traveller, May 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
If you’re into itineraries and checklists and package tours with accompanying cook to make you food just like mummyji’s, turn the page now, there’s a good lad.
Right. So what is slow travel? It’s an unpackaged tour, if you like. The thought came from the Slow Food concept, which gave rise to the Slow Movement in general. (Look them up. Later. No rush.) The idea of slow travel is that you truly experience a place, staying at least a week in one location. You’re advised to hang around, make no must-do lists, see only what’s nearby. Slow travel could suit travellers across the bank balance spectrum. As the site says, you could rent house to give your kids run around space. Or stay on a farm to save money. Heck, you could rent a mansion and take your staff along.
The site has loads of tips and articles, affiliations with sponsors, listings and more. Weaknesses: as with so many good sites, it is, alas, aimed at the US resident, and is largely focussed on Europe. There is a paid editorial staff selecting what goes up, so it’s not your usual user-generated content site. You can check out the sister sites—a message board and a photo-posting forum—for the uncut versions.
Published in Outlook Traveller, May 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
Sunday, 1 April 2007
Siteseeing - 5
http://www.world66.com/
World66 is a wiki-like site where content is completely user-generated. I say “wiki-like,” because you don’t have to know a lot of weird wiki mark-up language. How does it stack up against other user-driven travel guides? Pretty decently. The format is clean and well-structured and the user-interface make it simple and very quick to start new sections, based on what’s available already, or add to existing sections, through a quick set of menu choices via links and pull-down menus. How quick? It took me all of three minutes to add a new location (a very sketchy entry, admittedly) and add a section to another location. And that’s without even bothering to create a User ID, which you’d need to do if you’d like your edits to be credited. What this translates to for the casual reader or holiday-maker researching the options is a site that presents information in a clean, no-nonsense format, one that lets you spot instantly whether a place is covered in any level of detail. It also features an Accommodations section, a tie-up with an online provider, where you can make bookings, and a My World66 section, for registered members, with a few doodads for the quasi-geek ones among ye to play around with.
Published in Outlook Traveller, April 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
World66 is a wiki-like site where content is completely user-generated. I say “wiki-like,” because you don’t have to know a lot of weird wiki mark-up language. How does it stack up against other user-driven travel guides? Pretty decently. The format is clean and well-structured and the user-interface make it simple and very quick to start new sections, based on what’s available already, or add to existing sections, through a quick set of menu choices via links and pull-down menus. How quick? It took me all of three minutes to add a new location (a very sketchy entry, admittedly) and add a section to another location. And that’s without even bothering to create a User ID, which you’d need to do if you’d like your edits to be credited. What this translates to for the casual reader or holiday-maker researching the options is a site that presents information in a clean, no-nonsense format, one that lets you spot instantly whether a place is covered in any level of detail. It also features an Accommodations section, a tie-up with an online provider, where you can make bookings, and a My World66 section, for registered members, with a few doodads for the quasi-geek ones among ye to play around with.
Published in Outlook Traveller, April 2007.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Siteseeing
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