I attach a letter from my friend and school-mate Paul Mathew as an addendum to 'Trekking Advice'. Paul is a US-based doctor and a trekker, and has a perspective that combines these (and is therefore rare). Very useful additional information, particularly on implements and appliances and on must-have medicines. Please have a read!
Dear Ajit
Thanks for sharing this personal note with me. It was very interesting to see a perspective from someone who has done a lot more high altitude than I have or perhaps ever will....
I jotted a few notes while reading it, extracting from memory some of the stuff I found valuable from the last trip...I should say that we had mules carrying stuff on their backs for us so weight was not as much a concern although clearly there were limits.... we did carry our layers, water and snacks in Himachal.
- Wet wipes were a savior but a bundle of them does have significant weight...nevertheless a great personal hygeine item to freshen up the unmentionables and deal with the ripeness. A well calibrated number of them e.g. 3-6 per day shouldnt weigh that much....didnt use a shit mug as thats a very Indian thing you know...just toilet paper followed by wet wipes.
- My all time fave was the pee bottle for the night in high altitude. I still give thanks to the Almighty for just being able to roll over, unzip, pee, rezip and go back to sleep...no getting out into a freezing night and panting and gasping just to pee. Plus since we are pushing fluids, I had to pee twice every night...prostate isnt getting any smaller you know...The key things was not to overfill the bottle or spill it inside the tent ! My tentmate Vinod was both jealous and suspicious of the thing...he thought I derived personal enjoyment from its use....somehow he never got up at night to pee and was able to hold it... I wondered at that.
- Highly endorse the layers concept. Including liner socks below the woolen ones, woollen hat that comes down over the ears...I avoided cotton as it doesnt wick as efficiently. I tried to get all breathable woolen stuff as undies for the cold......I had a non-woolen top-and-bottom pair for the lower altitudes and warmer temps to be flexible. A rinse at the end of the day before the sun goes down when the opportunity arises allows it to clean and dry fast....It was good to have a water and windproof outermost layer - both jacket and trousers.
>>>
- For the snow, wrap-around goggles were better than the sunglasses which leaked in glare from the sides....
- I didnt have camp slippers but up high I preferred to unlace my boots so that they were loose and tuck the laces into the boots and walked around camp that way...it was easy to slip in and out of them.
- For drinking the platypus (or bladders as you may call them) that contained up to 3 liters of water with electrolytes (1 tab/liter) in them helped stay the inevitable cramps that I dread at night...I also had a nifty large capacity water filter and iodine tablets for purification. Yup, the weight did add up but again, there were mules...
- Another major joy was the inflatable lightweight (1 lb) ridge mattress that provided sweet comfort and insulation as we camped on snow. I had an insulating sheet over it (vanishingly light material) and then over that my sleeping bag.
- We took diamox for high-altitude sickness prophylaxis and had dexamethasone on hand in case we got sick. Ending up using it as we did ascend rather fast and I started getting headaches and feeling out of it....probably was overkill...but I felt a helluva lot better the next morning and cut down on the dex....There are pretty good websites out there that give good scientific opinions on what best practices are for prevention and treatment of high-altitude sicknesses of varying severity...
Having antibiotics (azithromycin preferred over ciprofloxacin based on my travel docs advice and he was right...cipro didnt work but azithro did for the diarrhea...I was surprised) and anti-diarrheals was great as there was shit everywhere on the trail close to our water sources and we all had loose stools eventually...there are some warnings out on azithromycin and heart arrhythmias now...so we'll see if the recommendations change...
Insect-repellant always a good idea if there are flies/mosquitoes possible...I had hell in Yosemite with the mosquitoes one August. They seemed immune to the repellant..
A whistle in a pocket is a great thing to have - managed to scare a bear that was coming straight toward me while alone on a path in Yosemite...and it could be useful to call for help if needed...
Dont know how to use a compass....yet...or read a relief map. Hoping to take a course on that but with a guide, one doesnt really need that...as long as you are on a well-marked trail...
How about trekking poles? I loved having them, as much for the downhills to take pressure off the knees (fully extended) or on the stiff uphills or traversing rocky surfaces, to test their stability or even while crossing a
stream, for stabilization....
An inner pair of gloves able to operate a camera was also useful in the cold if the outer gloves were too bulky....
Head-torch is the best...hands-free in the bogs...
Learning to shit into the hole with all those clothing layers was quite a performance. Of course the closer you get to the shit tent, the urge to explode is something else !!!
Some of the gear I am mentioning can be expensive stuff but I am hoping to have long use of what I have now...
Anyway, this is the fat spoiled American version...I couldnt help noticing the casual underdressed look of the local camp crew...they are hardy hill folk and I am just a city slicker so not too much shame there....
I think fitness is a big deal as you put it...we were pretty close in fitness until we got above 12,000 and then I really started to struggle...I think it was not merely a fitness thing but a high-altitude tolerance variable as well.... but next trip, I want to be in better shape than I was in Himachal so lets see if I actually follow through....
Keep in touch...ending up being a rather long note...apologies...
XX
Paul
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Monday, June 18, 2012
East By North East
EAST BY NORTH EAST
By Ajit Chaudhuri
I am sometimes asked about the nicest place I have been to! My standard answer no. 1 is – easy, it’s the place I’m visiting next. No. 2 is – I like very much at least something about every place I go to – as a travel principle, even hell has its silver linings (and heaven its flaws) – and can therefore extol the virtues of places like Maharajganj, Mehboobnagar and Mumbai that in reality have very little to recommend themselves. And no. 3 is – home!
All three standard answers are somewhat true. In a candid (or a drunken) moment, however, I would confess that the niceness of places follows a statistically normal distribution, with about 95 percent of places falling within two standard deviations of the average (ranging from ‘liking very much’ to ‘ticked my been-there-done-that list but never again’) and 2.5 percent falling into the category of hardcore shit-holes. It is the positive outliers, the 2.5 percent of places that grab me by the heart and have me looking for any hint of an excuse to visit again, usually because of the wildness of their scenery, the niceness of the people (and the beauty of the women), the quality of their cuisine, and that extra something, that keep me going on the road.
India’s North East, for those who haven’t been there, is a homogenous hilly landmass in a forgotten corner of the country, and it is full of tribals, insurgents and bamboo dancers, with a few footballers, drug addicts and musicians interspersed within. For those who have, it is socially, culturally and linguistically one of the most varied parts of the country, with each of its constituent states, the ‘seven sisters’, completely different from each other and completely different within themselves as well. I am fortunate to have spent a fair bit of time roaming around in this region, not all of it pleasant, and can vouch for the fact that, while it has its share of dull spots (such as Guwahati and Silchar) and shit-holes (Dimapur comes to mind), the North East is tilted broadly towards really nice places that are a pleasure to visit. And even with this overall skew towards the positive, there are some places in the North East that are far and away in a category of their own.
The corner-most of the seven sisters, Mizoram, is one. It is possibly the most difficult to reach (unless one does it the boring way, by air from Kolkata or Guwahati), with a road coming in from Silchar that enters Mizoram at Vairangte, which hosts the Army’s renowned jungle warfare school, and continues through the Lushai Hills into the state’s capital, Aizawl. It is also possible to come by road from Tripura via Khedachhara and Damchhara, and from Manipur via Churachandpur and Tipaimukh, both not normally done by outsiders because of the remoteness, the difficulty of the terrain, and the fact that the adjoining areas are insurgent controlled – at least, they were in 1998 and 2008 respectively, when I had done them – a great pity, because they are both journeys of remarkable beauty and splendour. The highlight journey, however, was one I did in 2008 to exit Mizoram – Aizawl to Tipaimukh by road with a night halt at Sakawrdlai, and then 10 hours by boat down the Barak river to Lakhipur in Assam in a journey reminiscent of the film “Apocalypse Now”, on and on in rushing waters with heavy jungle on both sides.
So much for getting in and out of Mizoram! The journeys within have been fun as well, more so the ones undertaken with my friend PL Liandinga who’s travel philosophy, that the joy is in the journey rather than in reaching the destination, is one I share. Pu Liandinga is a civil servant by day and a social worker, traveller, scholar and carpenter in non-work hours who has, inter alia, translated the entire Sherlock Holmes series of Arthur Conan Doyle into Mizo. Our first journey together was in 1996 to and from Ngopa, a village along the border with Myanmar, for the annual general conference of the Young Mizo Association, to which I was an invitee. Pu Liandinga’s official vehicle (he was then the General Secretary of the YMA) was stopped outside Ngopa by the conference security and his bags checked for booze (Mizoram is a dry state) and other contraband stuff in full view of about four busloads of conference delegates. He later explained that this was done because Ngopa was expecting about 5000 delegates for the conference, and security’s bag-checking exercises would be rendered more acceptable if people knew that the General Secretary’s bags had also been checked. Some traits like this, and the expectation in Mizo society that a person should put more in than s/he takes out, differentiate Mizoram from the rest of the country.
We undertook several other journeys together and it is the last one, around the southern part of the state in 2008, that was memorable for me. Southern Mizoram is inhabited by tribes that are less ‘Mizo’, tribes like the Lai, the Mara and the Chakmas (who are Buddhist in this predominantly Christian state), all of whom are afflicted with the North East disease of struggling for independence from everyone else. Southern Mizoram in 1996 was one district, called Chhimptuipuii after the river that separates it from the rest of the state – physically so for three months every monsoon, when it would be in spate and render crossing impossible. In 2008 it had been trifurcated into three autonomous councils, one for each of the dominant tribes, and there was an all-weather bridge across the river as well. Lawngtlai, the district of the Lai, is also where Mizoram’s highest mountain, Phawngpui, is located and this, seen in the early morning sun with a dash of mist and cloud from the nearby village of Sangau, where I had stayed the night, is a sight to behold.
Every Mizo village has a road leading to it, a functioning school and health centre, and basic infrastructure. People in the development business may wonder, how is it that a remote place like this has basic services functioning while villages much closer to Delhi do without? I have two answers! The first is that the village infrastructure was created during the Mizo insurgency of 1968-1986, when the Indian Army adopted strategies used by the British during the Malay insurgency that included pulling people out of their original villages and resettling them on hilltops where movements could be watched, a strategy that served to separate the insurgents from the community and deprive them of rest and recreation. Difficult to do today because of the human rights violations that it entails, but it had the positive externalities of ensuring roads into every village (at the time, to enable troop movement), the heights had less malaria than the areas closer to the river, and basic infrastructure was built as a sop. The other is that the Mizo community is such that, unlike the rest of India, it would be unacceptable for a doctor or teacher to be absconding – for both the doctor or teacher and the community.
For development sector types like me, travel here entailed some rethinking of basics. It was unacceptable to attend a village meeting in anything less than a coat, tie and black shoes – old jholas, kurtas and pseudo-poverty be damned. In meetings with women groups, it was done to make eye contact with the women, including the young and beautiful ones. And when I was travelling around in 2008 in the aftermath of the flowering of bamboo (the flower is an aphrodisiac for rats, who multiply rapidly and attack grain supplies) looking for signs of malnutrition among children in times of food shortage, I couldn’t see any even though I knew that there were severe food shortages. My food security expert friend, Biraj Patnaik, subsequently explained the contradiction – saying that in a society with strong safety nets, everyone sinks slowly together rather than the weak first and the strong not at all. The difficulty of this otherwise admirable trait is that, when the community does cross danger lines, it is in a sudden deluge rather than in a trickle.
A word about my favourite subjects; food and women! Mizo food is a little different – everything that moves is eaten, and it is cooked a little differently to what one is used to. In my initial travels in the state I found that eateries would make assumptions from my Indian features and produce some rice, some potato, and two fried eggs for me, all while everyone else tucked into a variety of meats. I later would have none of that, and ate what others were eating – yes, for those who want to know, including frog (a bit like chicken), dog (unremarkable), bees (tasted like chips) and monkey (truly yuk). On the whole, not a cuisine that has one’s mouth watering with anticipation – food here is to be endured rather than enjoyed.
The same can’t be said of the women, who are beautiful, hard working, and educated, and who manage to get that difficult combination of working and looking after their man absolutely correct – all of which combine to make Mizo men (and others who marry them) subjects of envy. They have a right to choose, and a right to indulge themselves while making choices, and it is normal for young men to visit an unattached lady’s home with their guitars, and to take them off after dinner. Evening meetings with village women’s groups would invariably turn interesting, with the older biddies jokingly telling me to spend the night in their village because the younger women were beautiful. And the formal meetings, in which all the women wore traditional puans, beautifully designed and crafted wrap-arounds, were paradise for one’s eyes. An interesting trait among Mizo women was that of re-tightening their wrap-arounds in a flicking motion that, if one anticipated and watched carefully, one got a glimpse of what lay beneath. As you can imagine, I spent a fair bit of time hanging around in market places watching the ‘Mizo flick’.
I would like to conclude here by saying that my many visits to Mizoram have not been by accident; I have worked hard to ensure that this remarkable state has remained part of my beat over the years despite its forwardness and general state of development. And I would like to thank those who have joined me on these journeys and contributed to making them memorable – Sanjoy Ghose and Sunil Kaul, Pu Liandinga and Pu Vanlalzawma, CP Jayalakshmi and John Pudaite. Things wouldn’t have been the same without you!
By Ajit Chaudhuri
I am sometimes asked about the nicest place I have been to! My standard answer no. 1 is – easy, it’s the place I’m visiting next. No. 2 is – I like very much at least something about every place I go to – as a travel principle, even hell has its silver linings (and heaven its flaws) – and can therefore extol the virtues of places like Maharajganj, Mehboobnagar and Mumbai that in reality have very little to recommend themselves. And no. 3 is – home!
All three standard answers are somewhat true. In a candid (or a drunken) moment, however, I would confess that the niceness of places follows a statistically normal distribution, with about 95 percent of places falling within two standard deviations of the average (ranging from ‘liking very much’ to ‘ticked my been-there-done-that list but never again’) and 2.5 percent falling into the category of hardcore shit-holes. It is the positive outliers, the 2.5 percent of places that grab me by the heart and have me looking for any hint of an excuse to visit again, usually because of the wildness of their scenery, the niceness of the people (and the beauty of the women), the quality of their cuisine, and that extra something, that keep me going on the road.
India’s North East, for those who haven’t been there, is a homogenous hilly landmass in a forgotten corner of the country, and it is full of tribals, insurgents and bamboo dancers, with a few footballers, drug addicts and musicians interspersed within. For those who have, it is socially, culturally and linguistically one of the most varied parts of the country, with each of its constituent states, the ‘seven sisters’, completely different from each other and completely different within themselves as well. I am fortunate to have spent a fair bit of time roaming around in this region, not all of it pleasant, and can vouch for the fact that, while it has its share of dull spots (such as Guwahati and Silchar) and shit-holes (Dimapur comes to mind), the North East is tilted broadly towards really nice places that are a pleasure to visit. And even with this overall skew towards the positive, there are some places in the North East that are far and away in a category of their own.
The corner-most of the seven sisters, Mizoram, is one. It is possibly the most difficult to reach (unless one does it the boring way, by air from Kolkata or Guwahati), with a road coming in from Silchar that enters Mizoram at Vairangte, which hosts the Army’s renowned jungle warfare school, and continues through the Lushai Hills into the state’s capital, Aizawl. It is also possible to come by road from Tripura via Khedachhara and Damchhara, and from Manipur via Churachandpur and Tipaimukh, both not normally done by outsiders because of the remoteness, the difficulty of the terrain, and the fact that the adjoining areas are insurgent controlled – at least, they were in 1998 and 2008 respectively, when I had done them – a great pity, because they are both journeys of remarkable beauty and splendour. The highlight journey, however, was one I did in 2008 to exit Mizoram – Aizawl to Tipaimukh by road with a night halt at Sakawrdlai, and then 10 hours by boat down the Barak river to Lakhipur in Assam in a journey reminiscent of the film “Apocalypse Now”, on and on in rushing waters with heavy jungle on both sides.
So much for getting in and out of Mizoram! The journeys within have been fun as well, more so the ones undertaken with my friend PL Liandinga who’s travel philosophy, that the joy is in the journey rather than in reaching the destination, is one I share. Pu Liandinga is a civil servant by day and a social worker, traveller, scholar and carpenter in non-work hours who has, inter alia, translated the entire Sherlock Holmes series of Arthur Conan Doyle into Mizo. Our first journey together was in 1996 to and from Ngopa, a village along the border with Myanmar, for the annual general conference of the Young Mizo Association, to which I was an invitee. Pu Liandinga’s official vehicle (he was then the General Secretary of the YMA) was stopped outside Ngopa by the conference security and his bags checked for booze (Mizoram is a dry state) and other contraband stuff in full view of about four busloads of conference delegates. He later explained that this was done because Ngopa was expecting about 5000 delegates for the conference, and security’s bag-checking exercises would be rendered more acceptable if people knew that the General Secretary’s bags had also been checked. Some traits like this, and the expectation in Mizo society that a person should put more in than s/he takes out, differentiate Mizoram from the rest of the country.
We undertook several other journeys together and it is the last one, around the southern part of the state in 2008, that was memorable for me. Southern Mizoram is inhabited by tribes that are less ‘Mizo’, tribes like the Lai, the Mara and the Chakmas (who are Buddhist in this predominantly Christian state), all of whom are afflicted with the North East disease of struggling for independence from everyone else. Southern Mizoram in 1996 was one district, called Chhimptuipuii after the river that separates it from the rest of the state – physically so for three months every monsoon, when it would be in spate and render crossing impossible. In 2008 it had been trifurcated into three autonomous councils, one for each of the dominant tribes, and there was an all-weather bridge across the river as well. Lawngtlai, the district of the Lai, is also where Mizoram’s highest mountain, Phawngpui, is located and this, seen in the early morning sun with a dash of mist and cloud from the nearby village of Sangau, where I had stayed the night, is a sight to behold.
Every Mizo village has a road leading to it, a functioning school and health centre, and basic infrastructure. People in the development business may wonder, how is it that a remote place like this has basic services functioning while villages much closer to Delhi do without? I have two answers! The first is that the village infrastructure was created during the Mizo insurgency of 1968-1986, when the Indian Army adopted strategies used by the British during the Malay insurgency that included pulling people out of their original villages and resettling them on hilltops where movements could be watched, a strategy that served to separate the insurgents from the community and deprive them of rest and recreation. Difficult to do today because of the human rights violations that it entails, but it had the positive externalities of ensuring roads into every village (at the time, to enable troop movement), the heights had less malaria than the areas closer to the river, and basic infrastructure was built as a sop. The other is that the Mizo community is such that, unlike the rest of India, it would be unacceptable for a doctor or teacher to be absconding – for both the doctor or teacher and the community.
For development sector types like me, travel here entailed some rethinking of basics. It was unacceptable to attend a village meeting in anything less than a coat, tie and black shoes – old jholas, kurtas and pseudo-poverty be damned. In meetings with women groups, it was done to make eye contact with the women, including the young and beautiful ones. And when I was travelling around in 2008 in the aftermath of the flowering of bamboo (the flower is an aphrodisiac for rats, who multiply rapidly and attack grain supplies) looking for signs of malnutrition among children in times of food shortage, I couldn’t see any even though I knew that there were severe food shortages. My food security expert friend, Biraj Patnaik, subsequently explained the contradiction – saying that in a society with strong safety nets, everyone sinks slowly together rather than the weak first and the strong not at all. The difficulty of this otherwise admirable trait is that, when the community does cross danger lines, it is in a sudden deluge rather than in a trickle.
A word about my favourite subjects; food and women! Mizo food is a little different – everything that moves is eaten, and it is cooked a little differently to what one is used to. In my initial travels in the state I found that eateries would make assumptions from my Indian features and produce some rice, some potato, and two fried eggs for me, all while everyone else tucked into a variety of meats. I later would have none of that, and ate what others were eating – yes, for those who want to know, including frog (a bit like chicken), dog (unremarkable), bees (tasted like chips) and monkey (truly yuk). On the whole, not a cuisine that has one’s mouth watering with anticipation – food here is to be endured rather than enjoyed.
The same can’t be said of the women, who are beautiful, hard working, and educated, and who manage to get that difficult combination of working and looking after their man absolutely correct – all of which combine to make Mizo men (and others who marry them) subjects of envy. They have a right to choose, and a right to indulge themselves while making choices, and it is normal for young men to visit an unattached lady’s home with their guitars, and to take them off after dinner. Evening meetings with village women’s groups would invariably turn interesting, with the older biddies jokingly telling me to spend the night in their village because the younger women were beautiful. And the formal meetings, in which all the women wore traditional puans, beautifully designed and crafted wrap-arounds, were paradise for one’s eyes. An interesting trait among Mizo women was that of re-tightening their wrap-arounds in a flicking motion that, if one anticipated and watched carefully, one got a glimpse of what lay beneath. As you can imagine, I spent a fair bit of time hanging around in market places watching the ‘Mizo flick’.
I would like to conclude here by saying that my many visits to Mizoram have not been by accident; I have worked hard to ensure that this remarkable state has remained part of my beat over the years despite its forwardness and general state of development. And I would like to thank those who have joined me on these journeys and contributed to making them memorable – Sanjoy Ghose and Sunil Kaul, Pu Liandinga and Pu Vanlalzawma, CP Jayalakshmi and John Pudaite. Things wouldn’t have been the same without you!
Monday, May 30, 2011
TREKKING ADVICE
TREKKING ADVICE
By Ajit Chaudhuri
It’s summer, and we are all looking to hit cooler weather. Some of us will head to the hills, some of this group will try a trek, and some of this group will be relatively new to trekking. This paper is aimed at the last group, and is written by an irregular and inexpert trekker who has made plenty of mistakes.
Yes, that stuff you read in the glossies that mountains are beautiful and trekking is a great aesthetical experience that fills your soul and brings you closer to nature and helps you recognise your inner being and so on is true. What they don’t say is that treks are also a test of physical and mental endurance, and that stupidity, overconfidence, inexperience and bad luck can be costly. This paper is based upon personal experience, and attempts to help you to prepare without repeating obvious stuff from trekking guides.
At first, let me clarify that by trek I mean at least two days walk in the hills with nights spent in tents or basic accommodation en route. I do not mean a day’s expedition, no matter how strenuous, with a return to the comfort of one’s hotel room. And I also do not mean anything that requires technical skills and/or climbing equipment. I categorize my advice into matters relating to the route, the altitude, and the weight on one’s back.
The Route:
Select your trek carefully (my group finds Outlook Traveller to be a good source of possibilities – the trekking write-ups are written by someone who has actually done the trek), and, once you have, do some homework regarding it. You should know a little about the road heads, the degree of difficulty of the route, the terrain, the major climbs and descents, the altitudes, and possible weather conditions. Find people who have done the trek before, and talk to them. Good websites for relevant advice include www.mountain-forecast.com for weather and www.indiamike.com (and into the forum on trekking and mountaineering in India) for almost everything else. And don’t worry, no matter how much you prepare, you will still be surprised.
Don’t go alone! The human mind does strange things when it does not have company, including losing its sense of proportion in difficult situations. There is both physical and mental safety in having a group of people with you. But, be selective about your group – you are going to be in close contact with these people for 24 hours a day for several days. You will find that, no matter how well you know someone, you never know how s/he will behave in a group, under pressure, in the middle of nowhere. People who are serious about the trek, in that they are involved in the preparations and arrangements and get themselves fit in the weeks before are usually good to have along. People who are casual and non-committal also have a tendency to dropout or bring some pal of theirs along at the last minute – so it is better to ensure that the group is finalised at least three weeks before the trek and all members make a financial deposit into a common kitty about then. Avoid people who are obviously unfit given the trek’s degree of difficulty, and avoid people who are looking for networking opportunities, romance and/or drinking buddies.
Indulge in good group behaviour yourself while on the trek. Do something for the general good of the group every day, and do something for some other member (possibly one who is having more difficulty than you) every day as well. Small acts reciprocate and build a good atmosphere within the group.
A good guide is worth his weight in gold – one who knows the trekking route well, who can gauge the level of the group in the first few days and then adjust the daily schedule accordingly, who is calm when things get tough, and who is able to help along the weaker members of the group. If you are crossing a snow-bound pass, your guide needs to know the highest possible point to camp overnight on one side so as to make it up, across, and down to another campsite on the other side in one day while the snow is hard.
Most daily schedules involve starting in the morning and walking between 10 and 15 km. You should aim to reach the next camp by mid-afternoon or latest early evening. The distance is not as important as the terrain – a 20 km walk across undulating territory can have one arriving as fresh as a daisy, whereas an 8 km steep uphill can really zonk you out. While walking, try and build up and then maintain a momentum. This also means not resting every time you are a little out of breadth – try and rest only when you are tired, or when there is some especially beautiful scenery, or when you pass a water source.
Keep drinking water! Do so even if you are not feeling thirsty. Dehydration is dangerous. How do you know that you are not dehydrated? You are pissing a lot, and often! And keep a watch on your group for this – anyone not pissing is likely to end up dehydrated, and it’s then goodbye trek, so don’t worry about being seen as a pervert because you are tracking pissing patterns.
Don’t try to come first – you are not in a competition.
Don’t just endure the ascents – enjoy them! Don’t forget that downhill may be less tiring than uphill, but it is also more stressful on your knees and thighs.
When you reach your destination road head and are making payments, don’t forget to include a tip to your support staff (guide, porters, cooks, etc.).
Altitude:
If your trek involves going higher than about 10,000 feet (or 3,000 meters), you will be dealing with the effects of less oxygen in the air. Breathing is a little strained, simple movement and activities (such as tying shoelaces or getting up) become tiring, and you may get headaches and have difficulty sleeping. Altitude affects some people more than others, and this has little to do with physical fitness, preparation, or lifestyle issues – you just are susceptible or you are not. The only way to really find out is by going up.
Acclimatization is important. Going up gradually always helps. And if you start your trek at altitude (and have reached the road head by road or air), it may be a good idea to spend some time at the road head doing a daily expedition or two before actually beginning the trek.
When you are in altitude, always come down to your overnight camp i.e. go at least 1,000 feet higher and come down to it.
Accept the breathing difficulties, the headaches, and the broken sleep. It doesn’t mean that you are going to die, and by the second or third night in altitude you should get used to it (much like the aches and pains from walking and carrying weight) and also overcome it. If you don’t, or if someone does pick up acute mountain sickness (at least two symptoms out of headaches, swelling of hands and feet, breathlessness even when lying down, nosebleeds, lack of appetite, nausea, vomiting, etc.), try and get down to a lower altitude. Yes, even if it means breaking up the trek.
Weight:
The philosophy differs depending upon whether you are carrying your stuff yourself. If you are not, it would make sense to carry a small rucksack with your day’s stuff (water, some chocolates, camera, a layer of clothing, some waterproofing, etc.) so that you are not dependant upon your porter or mule being in the vicinity when you need something. The rest can be carried in a suitcase (easy to pack on a mule) or a rucksack (if a porter is carrying it).
If you are, then you need to prioritise and minimise. There are basic necessities that you have to take along, some things that are situation specific (if the situation arises, it is critical, but if it doesn’t, you’ve just lugged something around that you didn’t need – like a raincoat), and some things that depend upon your own interests (like camera equipment). I personally throw out anything that I don’t deem necessary, and I don’t plan for every possible form of emergency. This policy has occasionally backfired, most spectacularly when I didn’t have a waterproof tent for a Leh to Spiti trek (cold desert, no precipitation, an ordinary tent should do!) and it rained and snowed every night. You should not have more than 10-12 kilos on your back. Be sure that, while it won’t seem much when you start out in the morning, it will get heavier as the day progresses until it is a source of agony as you approach your evening camp. And also that, by the third or fourth day, your shoulders will get used to it and you will be fine after that, even missing the weight on days when you return to the same camp and therefore don’t have to carry it.
Your rucksack is critical. These can be very fancy (and expensive) or very basic. The minimums, for me, are that they have a separate enclosure at the bottom for a sleeping bag (so you can take it out without emptying the rucksack) and that they have a strap at the waist so that your hips can take some of the weight. A waterproof protective cover, too, is useful.
I always take a metal shit-mug along – one with a closed handle so that I can tie it on the outside of the rucksack and access it easily. In addition to washing up after morning duties, it can be used to drink (and heat) tea, coffee and soup. And it is easy to fill it up from a stream that you are passing – a bottle takes longer and you have to bend more, especially problematic in altitude.
A cap is necessary to provide protection from the sun, which is sharper the higher you go. You need sun cream for this as well. Dark glasses are important when you are in a combination of sun and snow; they protect you from snow blindness. For the rain, I use a poncho raincoat that covers my rucksack along with me. All these need to be easily accessible while walking.
Your sleeping bag needs to be suitable for the conditions you are likely to encounter. A 0 degrees sleeping bag is different from a -10 one, which is different from a -30 one. Don’t expect to sleep well until you get used to the constraints of a sleeping bag, which usually happens by the third night.
I take some basic medicines; a crepe bandage, a bottle of Dettol, some Vaseline, painkiller, Band-Aids, light bandages, and something for headaches. A torch is necessary, and now you have a type that is attached to the forehead (and so leaves your hands free). Talcum powder (freshens your feet and lightens the odour of socks in the tent)! Super glue! Salt (the only thing, apart from tobacco, that gets leeches off your body parts)! Swiss knife!
Your tent should have a separate outer cover for rain protection. Your shoes should have ankle support and a thick sole with a good grip for icy, snowy or wet conditions. It is also good to have got used to your boots a bit – the middle of your trek is not a good time to discover that they don’t really fit.
Dealing with weather is important! There is a Norwegian saying that translates to ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing and bad preparation’. The weather in higher regions is unpredictable, and when it is inclement it can get difficult. Violent thunderstorms can go on for a long time, heavy rainfall can challenge your waterproofing, and having only a tent for protection in heavy wind, rain and snow can be terrifying. And then the next day can be perfect – sunny, cloudless, with magnificent 360-degree views.
Regarding the cold, some learning from two winters in the Changthang region of Ladakh included that layering of clothes is more important than the clothes themselves, that air trapped between layers is an important protection from cold, that you need tight ends (sleeves, ankles, neck, waist) to trap air effectively between layers, and that, below minus thirty, there is nothing as effective as natural fur (with due apologies to PETA).
So, I use a cotton T-shirt and then layers on top of that with a windproof jacket on the outside, and a pant with a track pant under that in colder weather, and one, two or three pairs of woollen socks, again depending upon the cold. I wear the inners for two days (yes, including sleeping in them), and this decides the numbers that I need to carry. And I pack everything in my rucksack in plastic bags for one more level of protection from rain.
To conclude, I hope that this paper encourages rather than discourages you to go ahead. If it does, may I add a warning – this may be the beginning of a lifelong addiction to walking on soft ground with a bit of weight on your back. And if that happens – join the club! We should do one together some time.
By Ajit Chaudhuri
It’s summer, and we are all looking to hit cooler weather. Some of us will head to the hills, some of this group will try a trek, and some of this group will be relatively new to trekking. This paper is aimed at the last group, and is written by an irregular and inexpert trekker who has made plenty of mistakes.
Yes, that stuff you read in the glossies that mountains are beautiful and trekking is a great aesthetical experience that fills your soul and brings you closer to nature and helps you recognise your inner being and so on is true. What they don’t say is that treks are also a test of physical and mental endurance, and that stupidity, overconfidence, inexperience and bad luck can be costly. This paper is based upon personal experience, and attempts to help you to prepare without repeating obvious stuff from trekking guides.
At first, let me clarify that by trek I mean at least two days walk in the hills with nights spent in tents or basic accommodation en route. I do not mean a day’s expedition, no matter how strenuous, with a return to the comfort of one’s hotel room. And I also do not mean anything that requires technical skills and/or climbing equipment. I categorize my advice into matters relating to the route, the altitude, and the weight on one’s back.
The Route:
Select your trek carefully (my group finds Outlook Traveller to be a good source of possibilities – the trekking write-ups are written by someone who has actually done the trek), and, once you have, do some homework regarding it. You should know a little about the road heads, the degree of difficulty of the route, the terrain, the major climbs and descents, the altitudes, and possible weather conditions. Find people who have done the trek before, and talk to them. Good websites for relevant advice include www.mountain-forecast.com for weather and www.indiamike.com (and into the forum on trekking and mountaineering in India) for almost everything else. And don’t worry, no matter how much you prepare, you will still be surprised.
Don’t go alone! The human mind does strange things when it does not have company, including losing its sense of proportion in difficult situations. There is both physical and mental safety in having a group of people with you. But, be selective about your group – you are going to be in close contact with these people for 24 hours a day for several days. You will find that, no matter how well you know someone, you never know how s/he will behave in a group, under pressure, in the middle of nowhere. People who are serious about the trek, in that they are involved in the preparations and arrangements and get themselves fit in the weeks before are usually good to have along. People who are casual and non-committal also have a tendency to dropout or bring some pal of theirs along at the last minute – so it is better to ensure that the group is finalised at least three weeks before the trek and all members make a financial deposit into a common kitty about then. Avoid people who are obviously unfit given the trek’s degree of difficulty, and avoid people who are looking for networking opportunities, romance and/or drinking buddies.
Indulge in good group behaviour yourself while on the trek. Do something for the general good of the group every day, and do something for some other member (possibly one who is having more difficulty than you) every day as well. Small acts reciprocate and build a good atmosphere within the group.
A good guide is worth his weight in gold – one who knows the trekking route well, who can gauge the level of the group in the first few days and then adjust the daily schedule accordingly, who is calm when things get tough, and who is able to help along the weaker members of the group. If you are crossing a snow-bound pass, your guide needs to know the highest possible point to camp overnight on one side so as to make it up, across, and down to another campsite on the other side in one day while the snow is hard.
Most daily schedules involve starting in the morning and walking between 10 and 15 km. You should aim to reach the next camp by mid-afternoon or latest early evening. The distance is not as important as the terrain – a 20 km walk across undulating territory can have one arriving as fresh as a daisy, whereas an 8 km steep uphill can really zonk you out. While walking, try and build up and then maintain a momentum. This also means not resting every time you are a little out of breadth – try and rest only when you are tired, or when there is some especially beautiful scenery, or when you pass a water source.
Keep drinking water! Do so even if you are not feeling thirsty. Dehydration is dangerous. How do you know that you are not dehydrated? You are pissing a lot, and often! And keep a watch on your group for this – anyone not pissing is likely to end up dehydrated, and it’s then goodbye trek, so don’t worry about being seen as a pervert because you are tracking pissing patterns.
Don’t try to come first – you are not in a competition.
Don’t just endure the ascents – enjoy them! Don’t forget that downhill may be less tiring than uphill, but it is also more stressful on your knees and thighs.
When you reach your destination road head and are making payments, don’t forget to include a tip to your support staff (guide, porters, cooks, etc.).
Altitude:
If your trek involves going higher than about 10,000 feet (or 3,000 meters), you will be dealing with the effects of less oxygen in the air. Breathing is a little strained, simple movement and activities (such as tying shoelaces or getting up) become tiring, and you may get headaches and have difficulty sleeping. Altitude affects some people more than others, and this has little to do with physical fitness, preparation, or lifestyle issues – you just are susceptible or you are not. The only way to really find out is by going up.
Acclimatization is important. Going up gradually always helps. And if you start your trek at altitude (and have reached the road head by road or air), it may be a good idea to spend some time at the road head doing a daily expedition or two before actually beginning the trek.
When you are in altitude, always come down to your overnight camp i.e. go at least 1,000 feet higher and come down to it.
Accept the breathing difficulties, the headaches, and the broken sleep. It doesn’t mean that you are going to die, and by the second or third night in altitude you should get used to it (much like the aches and pains from walking and carrying weight) and also overcome it. If you don’t, or if someone does pick up acute mountain sickness (at least two symptoms out of headaches, swelling of hands and feet, breathlessness even when lying down, nosebleeds, lack of appetite, nausea, vomiting, etc.), try and get down to a lower altitude. Yes, even if it means breaking up the trek.
Weight:
The philosophy differs depending upon whether you are carrying your stuff yourself. If you are not, it would make sense to carry a small rucksack with your day’s stuff (water, some chocolates, camera, a layer of clothing, some waterproofing, etc.) so that you are not dependant upon your porter or mule being in the vicinity when you need something. The rest can be carried in a suitcase (easy to pack on a mule) or a rucksack (if a porter is carrying it).
If you are, then you need to prioritise and minimise. There are basic necessities that you have to take along, some things that are situation specific (if the situation arises, it is critical, but if it doesn’t, you’ve just lugged something around that you didn’t need – like a raincoat), and some things that depend upon your own interests (like camera equipment). I personally throw out anything that I don’t deem necessary, and I don’t plan for every possible form of emergency. This policy has occasionally backfired, most spectacularly when I didn’t have a waterproof tent for a Leh to Spiti trek (cold desert, no precipitation, an ordinary tent should do!) and it rained and snowed every night. You should not have more than 10-12 kilos on your back. Be sure that, while it won’t seem much when you start out in the morning, it will get heavier as the day progresses until it is a source of agony as you approach your evening camp. And also that, by the third or fourth day, your shoulders will get used to it and you will be fine after that, even missing the weight on days when you return to the same camp and therefore don’t have to carry it.
Your rucksack is critical. These can be very fancy (and expensive) or very basic. The minimums, for me, are that they have a separate enclosure at the bottom for a sleeping bag (so you can take it out without emptying the rucksack) and that they have a strap at the waist so that your hips can take some of the weight. A waterproof protective cover, too, is useful.
I always take a metal shit-mug along – one with a closed handle so that I can tie it on the outside of the rucksack and access it easily. In addition to washing up after morning duties, it can be used to drink (and heat) tea, coffee and soup. And it is easy to fill it up from a stream that you are passing – a bottle takes longer and you have to bend more, especially problematic in altitude.
A cap is necessary to provide protection from the sun, which is sharper the higher you go. You need sun cream for this as well. Dark glasses are important when you are in a combination of sun and snow; they protect you from snow blindness. For the rain, I use a poncho raincoat that covers my rucksack along with me. All these need to be easily accessible while walking.
Your sleeping bag needs to be suitable for the conditions you are likely to encounter. A 0 degrees sleeping bag is different from a -10 one, which is different from a -30 one. Don’t expect to sleep well until you get used to the constraints of a sleeping bag, which usually happens by the third night.
I take some basic medicines; a crepe bandage, a bottle of Dettol, some Vaseline, painkiller, Band-Aids, light bandages, and something for headaches. A torch is necessary, and now you have a type that is attached to the forehead (and so leaves your hands free). Talcum powder (freshens your feet and lightens the odour of socks in the tent)! Super glue! Salt (the only thing, apart from tobacco, that gets leeches off your body parts)! Swiss knife!
Your tent should have a separate outer cover for rain protection. Your shoes should have ankle support and a thick sole with a good grip for icy, snowy or wet conditions. It is also good to have got used to your boots a bit – the middle of your trek is not a good time to discover that they don’t really fit.
Dealing with weather is important! There is a Norwegian saying that translates to ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing and bad preparation’. The weather in higher regions is unpredictable, and when it is inclement it can get difficult. Violent thunderstorms can go on for a long time, heavy rainfall can challenge your waterproofing, and having only a tent for protection in heavy wind, rain and snow can be terrifying. And then the next day can be perfect – sunny, cloudless, with magnificent 360-degree views.
Regarding the cold, some learning from two winters in the Changthang region of Ladakh included that layering of clothes is more important than the clothes themselves, that air trapped between layers is an important protection from cold, that you need tight ends (sleeves, ankles, neck, waist) to trap air effectively between layers, and that, below minus thirty, there is nothing as effective as natural fur (with due apologies to PETA).
So, I use a cotton T-shirt and then layers on top of that with a windproof jacket on the outside, and a pant with a track pant under that in colder weather, and one, two or three pairs of woollen socks, again depending upon the cold. I wear the inners for two days (yes, including sleeping in them), and this decides the numbers that I need to carry. And I pack everything in my rucksack in plastic bags for one more level of protection from rain.
To conclude, I hope that this paper encourages rather than discourages you to go ahead. If it does, may I add a warning – this may be the beginning of a lifelong addiction to walking on soft ground with a bit of weight on your back. And if that happens – join the club! We should do one together some time.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
BEYOND THE HINDUKUSH
BEYOND THE HINDUKUSH
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
 |
| The author (extreme left) and colleagues at the northern mouth of the Salang Tunnel |
Northern Afghanistan is a little different! It is separated from Kabul by the Hindukush mountains, and from ex-Soviet Central Asia by the Amu Darya River. The main cities are Kunduz, a mainly Tajik city from where the Taliban ruled the north, and Mazhar – e – Sharif, home to the Uzbek Rashid Dostum, now on the wane but at one time the only warlord in the world to have his own air force. Afghan Tajiks and Uzbeks share linguistic links with their respective ethnic brethren across the border but cultural commonalities are few. Some official cross border trade happens along the bridges across the Amu Darya, but this is dwarfed by unofficial trade – mainly opium making its way from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to markets in Russia and the West.
Faizabad is the headquarters of the northeastern province of Badakhshan, one of the few parts of Afghanistan never to have been ruled by the Taliban. This was thanks in part to the province’s remoteness and to the Northern Alliance (Ahmed Shah Masood and Co.) policy of blowing up bridges and roads. It is only now that a road connecting Faizabad and Kabul has been rebuilt, and bus services between the cities (about 500 km and 10 hours) have resumed. I used the road to travel between Faizabad and Taloquan, but unfortunately could not go further because of travel restrictions on foreigners (read – Taliban in control of the road around Kunduz).
Faizabad is a sleepy little place, with the Kokcha River separating the old town from the new. I got to relive long forgotten pleasures such as roaming up and down the bazaar, speculating upon the wares of the chador clad women I passed. I made the discovery that masks and covers are minor barriers to signalling that you are beautiful – the choice of perfume, the cut of your salwar, the sway of your chador, the use of stilettos on a stone and mud street – there are subtler indicators than face and figure. As you can imagine, a fair bit of spare time was spent ostensibly looking for gifts for relatives.
 |
| The author along the Kokcha River |
Badakhshan is famous for three reasons. The first is its mines – it is the source of lapis lazuli, a blue stone that is distinctively Afghanistan. The second is the Wakhan Corridor, a geographic relic of the Great Game that provided a neutral territory between the old British and Russian Empires. Wakhan is a narrow 250 km eastward extension of Afghanistan that separates Pakistan from Tajikistan and connects the Karakorum, Hindukush, and Tianshan ranges right up to the Pamirs (and China) in the east. The ‘Wakhan Walk’ up this remote valley to where the Amu Darya begins its 2400 km journey to the Aral Sea is considered the gold standard in machismo in the international trekking circuit. And the third is the game of Buzkajhi, played on horses with a goat carcass acting as a ball, which originates from this region.
How does one judge a place? I use three indicators – the opulence of its scenery, the beauty of its women, and the taste of its food. Northern Afghanistan scores high on all three fronts. The landscape is a sparsely populated desert surrounded by snow covered mountains, with harsh long winters and short but pleasant summers. The food is light and meaty, with Palau that is slow-cooked so that the taste of the meat seeps deep into the rice. The meat is soft and well cooked, and peals off the bone without effort. The vegetables, mainly cauliflower and lady’s fingers, are oversized and lightly cooked, settling well into one’s stomach. I also got to eat naan and kebabs in the market some evenings, where one pulls the meat off skewers with naan and washes it down with green tea. Having said this, I must confess that I returned to Kabul and eschewed Afghan food for heavily masala-ed mattar paneer and dal made especially for south Asian taste buds.
And regarding the women – I met a few in the course of my work and checked out more the old fashioned way, by hanging around the bazaar. ‘Easy on the eye’ would be an understatement. The women I worked with, mostly provincial government employees and local NGO workers, dumped their chadors as soon as they entered the office campus to reveal lovely faces, some of them with make-up, and sedate but fashionable dresses. All of them had obtained an education the hard way, and most had a thirst for learning (a trait shared with the men) that made teaching a pleasure. One of them, a smashing young redhead working in the anti-narcotics department, insisted that I visit her home for a meal, which I (and my interpreter) did. It was my first visit to an Afghan home, and we were given a treat of a meal washed down with salt tea. We did not, however, get a glimpse of the young lady who invited us, or any other women, and were instead entertained by her father and other male members of the extended family – tall bearded men who looked like they had launched a missile or two. I also saw a father’s pride in his intelligent daughter – he had encouraged her studies, kept all her certificates carefully (which he showed us much like recently married people show wedding photographs), and revelled in her responsible government job. I also saw a lot of young, beautiful, educated, single women around, and learned that Afghans do not pay dowry and there is no stigma attached to having daughters.
Yes, to those who are asking the obvious question, there is an active insurgency in north Afghanistan and had I not looked as Afghan as I do I would probably not have been able to hang around in public areas as much as I did. Some of my travel was curtailed, and one of the field visits we had planned could not happen for security concerns. After another field visit to a village in Kalafgan district, a group of middle-aged men came up to me and made conversation in Urdu, speaking like Kabuliwallahs in old Hindi films. It turned out that they had learnt it in camps in Mirpur (in Pakistani Kashmir) and had visited Srinagar and other parts of Indian Kashmir. It was a friendly conversation, and they were mostly looking to practise their Urdu, but we did stay away from topics such as ‘what exactly were you doing there?’
I got the impression that people were more frustrated with the administration than with the insurgency. Warlords were in control of government, corruption was rampant, doors were open only to those with connections, and an inherently egalitarian society was turning into one with a deep schism between haves and have-nots. My trainees expressed their frustrations to me, young engineers who joined the government to contribute to nation building, the management graduate from Kirgizstan who returned to Taloquan to marry the man she loved, the young women looking for any way to get out. And yes, foreigners were seen as a part of the problem, not the solution.
As I hope is obvious to the reader, I both enjoyed myself and was made very welcome in northern Afghanistan. It may not be every traveller’s cup of tea, but I do recommend it to those looking to go where footprints are fewer.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
EYE CANDY
EYE CANDY
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
The problem with an end to a decade is that we are all bombarded by ‘ten best’ lists. My own contribution to the bombardment, which follows, is a listing of the ten best sights that I have seen in India. It is in no particular order.
One: The Indus in winter – Ladakh, J&K
Yes, the river that gives our country its name does flow in India. Most of those who have seen it during visits to Leh have done so in summer for the obvious reason that it gets a bit chilly at other times. A great pity, because the Indus in winter is an experience! It is a solid block of ice in the Changthang, where it enters India, traversing through a wide snow-filled valley that gradually narrows as it enters Kargil district. The ice recedes to the sides, with deep blue water in the middle, as the river flows along villages such as Dharsiks and Garkon – famous for their pure Aryan inhabitants (and beautiful women) – before going on into Pakistan at Batalik. The Dak Bungalow at Dharsiks is located up the mountain to provide a stunning view of the river. Winter is also a time when wolves and snow leopards come lower for their prey, and the chances of seeing them increases significantly. I was here leading a research team in December 1997 and February 1998.
Two: The Golden Temple at Night – Amritsar, Punjab
A visit to the Golden Temple at any time is an experience, even for the hardcore atheist like me, providing a sense of inner calm and peace in this tumultuous world. At night, when it is lit up, it is all that and more – a sight to behold that is difficult to describe in words. I visited with the family in 2007.
Three: Nancowry Harbour – The Central Nicobars, A&N Islands
This is a tough place to reach for remoteness and bureaucratic formalities, even by the standards of this listing, but if you do, the view of Nancowry Harbour from Komorta Island will make the hassle worthwhile. The harbour is famous as the location of the INS Vikrant during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. See it from the Komorta PWD Bungalow atop the hill, especially at night with the lights on, and you are in for a visual treat. I was on tsunami relief duty in the nearby island of Kachal in January 2005, and made the occasional journey to Komorta for a bit of R&R and, finally, to catch a ship back to Port Blair.
Four: Sunrise at Sangau – Lawngtlai, Mizoram
Sangau falls in the Lai Autonomous Council area in the south east of Mizoram, about a day’s drive from the state capital Aizawl. From here, one can see Mizoram’s highest mountain, Phawngpui. Seen early morning, with a rising sun and a dash of mist and cloud, and it is a sight to behold. I was here with my friend PL Liandinga in January 2008, enquiring into famine.
Five: The Flamingos at Chhaari Dhaand – Kutch, Gujarat
This is a huge water body north of Bhuj that I visited in December 2006 – in the aftermath of a good monsoon, with large colonies of birds to see, including the famous pink flamingos out in all their majesty. This is in the middle of nowhere, there are no roads or anything and therefore a vehicle that can perform off the road and a guide who knows the way are necessities. The family spent a day to remember, making our way slowly around the water body checking out the birds. The flamingos? To quote the kids – Awesome!
Six: The Brahmaputra in Spate – Jorhat, Assam
Getting to Majuli, a river island in the Brahmaputra, is quite a task at the best of times. Making the crossing from Jorhat when the river is in spate is an experience. The river is like an ocean, with a width that goes up to 17 km. There is little pollution upstream, no industries of any sort, and one can see river dolphin frolicking around. And the currents are something – my ferry once missed the jetty, and it took half an hour to turn it around and re-dock. My work took me to Majuli Island through 1996 and the first half of 1997.
Seven: The Sky from Sheruvala Basti – Bikaner, Rajasthan
This remote desert village, reachable only by a 15 km journey on sand dunes from the nearest road head, provides a sunrise, sunset and night sky that is worth seeing around the year. I had the pleasure of working here in 1991-92.
Eight: Tso Moriri Lake – Ladakh, J&K
This huge blue water lake nestles at about 14,000 feet in the Himalayas, surrounded on all sides by snow clad mountains and desert. I once journeyed from Leh to Spiti in 1995, which included walking about 30 km along the lake and camping overnight at Korzok and Kyangdom. What can I say? When I was tired, I just had to look at the lake and feel rejuvenated. And one of those nights had a full moon whose light reflected in twinkles off the water and off the mountain snow. A must see!
Nine: A Tiger in the Wild – Corbett, Uttarakhand
A tiger in the wild is a phenomenal sight. Corbett National Park is not one of those sanctuaries in which they pack the tigers in and where you are almost guaranteed a sighting – one has to be really lucky to see one here. My vehicle lagged behind the safari convoy one visit with the family in 2002, and the guide sort of got a whiff in the air that there was a tiger in the vicinity. We waited and waited and sure enough, there was one in the foliage – waiting for the sun to get lower before hitting on the deer in the grasslands a little below. The sight, combined with that hint of fear in the air, was something else!
Ten: Ambedkar Stadium when India is Playing – Delhi
I have had the pleasure of watching football at some well-known stadiums (including The Emirates and Stamford Bridge) but there is something about that little one in my own hometown that merits a mention in this list. It is unremarkable on normal matchdays, a little less so when a Punjabi team plays a Bengali one, but when India is playing, it transforms itself into something akin to the Brahmaputra in spate (see above). The atmosphere injects something into the national team, which has taken on and beaten much higher ranked opponents here, which in turn feeds into the atmosphere. The crowd is diverse, with the traditional football lovers from Daryaganj mixing with newer English-speaking types and the Bengalis, Punjabis and Malayalis. No wonder Bon Houghton insists on playing the Nehru Cup here.
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
The problem with an end to a decade is that we are all bombarded by ‘ten best’ lists. My own contribution to the bombardment, which follows, is a listing of the ten best sights that I have seen in India. It is in no particular order.
One: The Indus in winter – Ladakh, J&K
Yes, the river that gives our country its name does flow in India. Most of those who have seen it during visits to Leh have done so in summer for the obvious reason that it gets a bit chilly at other times. A great pity, because the Indus in winter is an experience! It is a solid block of ice in the Changthang, where it enters India, traversing through a wide snow-filled valley that gradually narrows as it enters Kargil district. The ice recedes to the sides, with deep blue water in the middle, as the river flows along villages such as Dharsiks and Garkon – famous for their pure Aryan inhabitants (and beautiful women) – before going on into Pakistan at Batalik. The Dak Bungalow at Dharsiks is located up the mountain to provide a stunning view of the river. Winter is also a time when wolves and snow leopards come lower for their prey, and the chances of seeing them increases significantly. I was here leading a research team in December 1997 and February 1998.
Two: The Golden Temple at Night – Amritsar, Punjab
A visit to the Golden Temple at any time is an experience, even for the hardcore atheist like me, providing a sense of inner calm and peace in this tumultuous world. At night, when it is lit up, it is all that and more – a sight to behold that is difficult to describe in words. I visited with the family in 2007.
Three: Nancowry Harbour – The Central Nicobars, A&N Islands
This is a tough place to reach for remoteness and bureaucratic formalities, even by the standards of this listing, but if you do, the view of Nancowry Harbour from Komorta Island will make the hassle worthwhile. The harbour is famous as the location of the INS Vikrant during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. See it from the Komorta PWD Bungalow atop the hill, especially at night with the lights on, and you are in for a visual treat. I was on tsunami relief duty in the nearby island of Kachal in January 2005, and made the occasional journey to Komorta for a bit of R&R and, finally, to catch a ship back to Port Blair.
Four: Sunrise at Sangau – Lawngtlai, Mizoram
Sangau falls in the Lai Autonomous Council area in the south east of Mizoram, about a day’s drive from the state capital Aizawl. From here, one can see Mizoram’s highest mountain, Phawngpui. Seen early morning, with a rising sun and a dash of mist and cloud, and it is a sight to behold. I was here with my friend PL Liandinga in January 2008, enquiring into famine.
Five: The Flamingos at Chhaari Dhaand – Kutch, Gujarat
This is a huge water body north of Bhuj that I visited in December 2006 – in the aftermath of a good monsoon, with large colonies of birds to see, including the famous pink flamingos out in all their majesty. This is in the middle of nowhere, there are no roads or anything and therefore a vehicle that can perform off the road and a guide who knows the way are necessities. The family spent a day to remember, making our way slowly around the water body checking out the birds. The flamingos? To quote the kids – Awesome!
Six: The Brahmaputra in Spate – Jorhat, Assam
Getting to Majuli, a river island in the Brahmaputra, is quite a task at the best of times. Making the crossing from Jorhat when the river is in spate is an experience. The river is like an ocean, with a width that goes up to 17 km. There is little pollution upstream, no industries of any sort, and one can see river dolphin frolicking around. And the currents are something – my ferry once missed the jetty, and it took half an hour to turn it around and re-dock. My work took me to Majuli Island through 1996 and the first half of 1997.
Seven: The Sky from Sheruvala Basti – Bikaner, Rajasthan
This remote desert village, reachable only by a 15 km journey on sand dunes from the nearest road head, provides a sunrise, sunset and night sky that is worth seeing around the year. I had the pleasure of working here in 1991-92.
Eight: Tso Moriri Lake – Ladakh, J&K
This huge blue water lake nestles at about 14,000 feet in the Himalayas, surrounded on all sides by snow clad mountains and desert. I once journeyed from Leh to Spiti in 1995, which included walking about 30 km along the lake and camping overnight at Korzok and Kyangdom. What can I say? When I was tired, I just had to look at the lake and feel rejuvenated. And one of those nights had a full moon whose light reflected in twinkles off the water and off the mountain snow. A must see!
Nine: A Tiger in the Wild – Corbett, Uttarakhand
A tiger in the wild is a phenomenal sight. Corbett National Park is not one of those sanctuaries in which they pack the tigers in and where you are almost guaranteed a sighting – one has to be really lucky to see one here. My vehicle lagged behind the safari convoy one visit with the family in 2002, and the guide sort of got a whiff in the air that there was a tiger in the vicinity. We waited and waited and sure enough, there was one in the foliage – waiting for the sun to get lower before hitting on the deer in the grasslands a little below. The sight, combined with that hint of fear in the air, was something else!
Ten: Ambedkar Stadium when India is Playing – Delhi
I have had the pleasure of watching football at some well-known stadiums (including The Emirates and Stamford Bridge) but there is something about that little one in my own hometown that merits a mention in this list. It is unremarkable on normal matchdays, a little less so when a Punjabi team plays a Bengali one, but when India is playing, it transforms itself into something akin to the Brahmaputra in spate (see above). The atmosphere injects something into the national team, which has taken on and beaten much higher ranked opponents here, which in turn feeds into the atmosphere. The crowd is diverse, with the traditional football lovers from Daryaganj mixing with newer English-speaking types and the Bengalis, Punjabis and Malayalis. No wonder Bon Houghton insists on playing the Nehru Cup here.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
Let me begin with a cricket story from the mid-to-late 1980s! Mark Waugh, later to become one of the pillars of the Australian batting line-up, was languishing in first division cricket while his twin brother Steve was already a Test star. Some local wag cruelly nicknamed Mark ‘Afghan’ (and the name stuck) – because he was the forgotten Waugh. This was with reference to a time when the Russians were still in Afghanistan and fighting it out with the US backed Mujahedin in a vicious but then out of sight (and out of mind) war.
Afghanistan and war are synonymous. Land based invasions of India have either passed through (Greeks and Moghuls) or originated from here (Ghazni and Ghori are Afghan provinces). It features in British military folklore (there were three Anglo-Afghan wars between 1838 and 1919, including a British retreat from Kabul and massacre in the Khyber). It features in Russian military history as well, also including a retreat that culminated in the end of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the bi-polar world. The American war is still on, and there is little to suggest that it won’t result in Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard of superpowers remaining intact – the debate has changed from ‘when do we win’ to ‘how do we get out with dignity intact’ and NATO is feeling the strain of members’ conflict between the need for American protection and the reality of sending young men to die in this faraway land.
What is it about Afghanistan that makes for this? That makes that one step across the Khyber, or that one crossing of the Oxus, a journey too far? And what is Afghanistan actually like? I spent a week there in March 2009, visiting Kabul and Bamiyan, and this paper is my own take on some of these matters.
Afghanistan is a difficult country! It is mountainous, dry, rocky, and extreme in climate, with the only bountiful crop being opium. Its people are divided across different ethnic groups, with Pashtuns having more in common with Pathans in Pakistan than with their fellow countrymen of different ethnicity, and similarly with Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Turkmen. And yet, there are some differences between Afghan Pushtoons, Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc., and their ethnic compatriots across borders. An Afghan colleague summarized these for me as, one, Afghans tend to be what they show (unlike others who project one thing and are in reality another). And two, if there is even a minor difference of opinion between two viewpoints there will never be a convergence – no amount of conflict resolution will bring this about. Nation building is thus an onerous task, more so because none of the current crop of leaders are able to rise above and display Nehru-esque or even Jinnah-esque qualities.
Afghanistan has been at war for a long, long time and this is obvious. Physically obvious in the large number of ruins and shelled buildings, including the Amanullah Palace in Kabul, and the rusting tanks and armored cars that are just lying around all over the place. And in the minds of people as well, in that everyone has been a refugee, everyone has lost family members, and every single individual you see there has a story of guts, survival and hardship. And yet, you only see smiling faces all over, and people looking for any excuse to laugh, enjoy and be happy.
How is the current war going? The fact that it is still on – almost eight years after it was supposedly won – is not a good sign. The ISAF forces are a battle-hardened lot, and move around in tense formations with fingers on the trigger – even in the more peaceful regions. I was subject to a checking in the central highland region along with a vanload of locals (leave the vehicle, line up, get body searched, the vehicle is searched, get back in and move on) – standard procedure but pissing off for a foreigner like me and incensing for locals when being done by foreign soldiers. There were mutters of the need to do to this lot what they had done to others, and counter mutters of remembering the Mujahedin times and that at least these guys were merely checking, and not looting and pillaging as well. I was irritated enough to tell the New Zealanders, who made up the ISAF force in the region, checking me that I hoped our cricket team (who were touring New Zealand at the time) would give them a sound thrashing and I am happy to note that they duly did.
Kabul itself reminds one of a mix of Srinagar and Leh. The surrounding areas are dry, mountainous desert a la Leh and the city itself is a bit like Srinagar in ruins, with police and army pickets all over (one of which had ‘Chick Point’ written across it) but with happier faces. As a foreigner, I was supposed to travel only between designated safe areas (guest house, office, specific restaurants – my hosts had a seven page manual on these matters) in designated safe vehicles. Thankfully I had a like-minded vis-à-vis what-one-is-supposed-to-do batchmate in town, and we went to restaurants where ordinary Afghans ate and relished the Naan and the Kebabs. The highlight of my visit to Kabul was visiting the Bagh-e-Babur (also off the safe list), the gardens that include Babur’s mausoleum, on Pharsi New Year. Sanjeev Gupta and I were the only foreigners there, and we were made to feel very welcome by the huge festive crowd. Kabul is everything that they say about it! There is almost no conventional crime, but Taliban attacks, bomb blasts and occasional bouts of misbehavior by warlords who forget that they are now part of the administration keep happening. And yes, within 15 minutes of an attack ending the place is cleared up, the bodies removed, and life goes on.
The shortest road between Kabul and Bamiyan goes through the ‘restive’ Wardat province – a euphemism for Taliban elements being operational within. I had to take a longer route – about 80 km north on the highway connecting Kabul to the old Soviet border, and then about 140 km southwest on kuchha road through the mountains (and two snow covered passes) into Bamiyan. This was done in some comfort in a muscular Toyota Land Cruiser in which my driver was constantly relaying our position back to a central security unit via satellite phone, he used the words durast, durast a lot. We were together four days, the only common language we had was a smattering of Russian, but we discovered a common love for eating kebabs and we did a lot of that in places with large numbers of bearded shawl clad men where I had to keep quiet to ensure that I was not identified as a foreigner.
Bamiyan itself is a beautiful town situated in a valley at an altitude of about 9,000 feet. It was still under snow at the time, and the mountains around in every direction provided a stunning backdrop. This is a Hazara dominated area (the region is called Hazarajat) and is slightly more liberal than other parts of Afghanistan in that women wear the headscarf but not the mask. As there are no Taliban elements in the area, one is able to walk around freely and I did so. Must visits include the hundreds of caves in the mountainside that housed a major Buddhist centre of learning in the 4th century. We all know that the Taliban destroyed the world’s largest carvings of Buddha, dating back to that time, because they symbolized the idolatry that is anathema to Islam. The caves, however, and the wonderful wall paintings within, were destroyed over a longer term as they served as barracks for Mujahedin and Taliban. Ironically, the only cave that still has a semblance of paintings intact is the one that housed the commander. Sadly, nobody in Bamiyan gives a crap about the heritage site that is ‘just there’ to them.
The outskirts of Bamiyan house the Shahar-e-Golgola, a city that was razed to the ground by Genghis Khan and remains intactly razed even today. I also visited Dragon Valley, a large rock formation in the mountains that has a deep and narrow cleft running across the middle, where legend has it Ali killed a dragon with one sword strike down the middle of its back. Sadly, I was unable to visit the Bandh-e-Amir, a series of natural blue water lakes high up in the mountains, because the road was still under heavy snow. The other must-do in Bamiyan (and I therefore did not do it) is to visit the airport, get into the remnants of a crashed plane that it still, many years after the crash, lying around near the runway, and be photographed waving from the window.
All very nice for me, you would say, but what is Afghanistan like for women. Pretty tough! Kabul is said to be comparatively liberal, and always has been. In all other places, the dress code is that your contours should not be discernable. And Afghan women who work need to be accompanied by a mehrab or male companion, be it husband or younger brother or whatever. This creates havoc for any employer’s HR policy. Having said this, I was also told about how gender specialists, many of whom inversely relate women’s empowerment with the extent to which they are veiled, are confounded by the freedom and say an Afghan woman has inside that tent-like exterior.
And what about Indians? Are we as welcome as Feroz Khan in ‘Dharmatma’? Being Watan-e-Hind is a double-edged sword. The Taliban do not like us (to put it mildly), and we are in danger in all areas controlled by them. Others generally find Pakistanis and Arabs distasteful as they controlled the Taliban administration pre-9/11, and see India and Iran as acting in Afghanistan’s interest. India’s low key but critical development aid is popular and seen as effective. Many Afghans were refugees in Peshawar and speak Urdu, and communicating with them is easy. It is more difficult with those who were refugees in Iran. Those who were/are refugees in the west have generally not returned – their children have greater difficulty adjusting back. Nor are they particularly welcome, their earlier attempts to act superior because of having made it to the west did not go down well and they are termed as ‘dog walkers’ in recognition of the menial jobs that most of them do in Paris, Berlin, LA, etc.
To conclude – Afghanistan is everything that is said about it, and much more. Would I return? If I get an opportunity, a qualified yes! The good experiences far outnumbered the bad. And there are unseen areas that beckon, such as the Wakhan Corridor, the Oxus River and Mazhar-e-Sharif. Not to mention the fleshpots in Dushanbe and Khorag across the Tajik border. Inshallah!
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri
Let me begin with a cricket story from the mid-to-late 1980s! Mark Waugh, later to become one of the pillars of the Australian batting line-up, was languishing in first division cricket while his twin brother Steve was already a Test star. Some local wag cruelly nicknamed Mark ‘Afghan’ (and the name stuck) – because he was the forgotten Waugh. This was with reference to a time when the Russians were still in Afghanistan and fighting it out with the US backed Mujahedin in a vicious but then out of sight (and out of mind) war.
Afghanistan and war are synonymous. Land based invasions of India have either passed through (Greeks and Moghuls) or originated from here (Ghazni and Ghori are Afghan provinces). It features in British military folklore (there were three Anglo-Afghan wars between 1838 and 1919, including a British retreat from Kabul and massacre in the Khyber). It features in Russian military history as well, also including a retreat that culminated in the end of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the bi-polar world. The American war is still on, and there is little to suggest that it won’t result in Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard of superpowers remaining intact – the debate has changed from ‘when do we win’ to ‘how do we get out with dignity intact’ and NATO is feeling the strain of members’ conflict between the need for American protection and the reality of sending young men to die in this faraway land.
What is it about Afghanistan that makes for this? That makes that one step across the Khyber, or that one crossing of the Oxus, a journey too far? And what is Afghanistan actually like? I spent a week there in March 2009, visiting Kabul and Bamiyan, and this paper is my own take on some of these matters.
Afghanistan is a difficult country! It is mountainous, dry, rocky, and extreme in climate, with the only bountiful crop being opium. Its people are divided across different ethnic groups, with Pashtuns having more in common with Pathans in Pakistan than with their fellow countrymen of different ethnicity, and similarly with Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Turkmen. And yet, there are some differences between Afghan Pushtoons, Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc., and their ethnic compatriots across borders. An Afghan colleague summarized these for me as, one, Afghans tend to be what they show (unlike others who project one thing and are in reality another). And two, if there is even a minor difference of opinion between two viewpoints there will never be a convergence – no amount of conflict resolution will bring this about. Nation building is thus an onerous task, more so because none of the current crop of leaders are able to rise above and display Nehru-esque or even Jinnah-esque qualities.
Afghanistan has been at war for a long, long time and this is obvious. Physically obvious in the large number of ruins and shelled buildings, including the Amanullah Palace in Kabul, and the rusting tanks and armored cars that are just lying around all over the place. And in the minds of people as well, in that everyone has been a refugee, everyone has lost family members, and every single individual you see there has a story of guts, survival and hardship. And yet, you only see smiling faces all over, and people looking for any excuse to laugh, enjoy and be happy.
How is the current war going? The fact that it is still on – almost eight years after it was supposedly won – is not a good sign. The ISAF forces are a battle-hardened lot, and move around in tense formations with fingers on the trigger – even in the more peaceful regions. I was subject to a checking in the central highland region along with a vanload of locals (leave the vehicle, line up, get body searched, the vehicle is searched, get back in and move on) – standard procedure but pissing off for a foreigner like me and incensing for locals when being done by foreign soldiers. There were mutters of the need to do to this lot what they had done to others, and counter mutters of remembering the Mujahedin times and that at least these guys were merely checking, and not looting and pillaging as well. I was irritated enough to tell the New Zealanders, who made up the ISAF force in the region, checking me that I hoped our cricket team (who were touring New Zealand at the time) would give them a sound thrashing and I am happy to note that they duly did.
Kabul itself reminds one of a mix of Srinagar and Leh. The surrounding areas are dry, mountainous desert a la Leh and the city itself is a bit like Srinagar in ruins, with police and army pickets all over (one of which had ‘Chick Point’ written across it) but with happier faces. As a foreigner, I was supposed to travel only between designated safe areas (guest house, office, specific restaurants – my hosts had a seven page manual on these matters) in designated safe vehicles. Thankfully I had a like-minded vis-à-vis what-one-is-supposed-to-do batchmate in town, and we went to restaurants where ordinary Afghans ate and relished the Naan and the Kebabs. The highlight of my visit to Kabul was visiting the Bagh-e-Babur (also off the safe list), the gardens that include Babur’s mausoleum, on Pharsi New Year. Sanjeev Gupta and I were the only foreigners there, and we were made to feel very welcome by the huge festive crowd. Kabul is everything that they say about it! There is almost no conventional crime, but Taliban attacks, bomb blasts and occasional bouts of misbehavior by warlords who forget that they are now part of the administration keep happening. And yes, within 15 minutes of an attack ending the place is cleared up, the bodies removed, and life goes on.
The shortest road between Kabul and Bamiyan goes through the ‘restive’ Wardat province – a euphemism for Taliban elements being operational within. I had to take a longer route – about 80 km north on the highway connecting Kabul to the old Soviet border, and then about 140 km southwest on kuchha road through the mountains (and two snow covered passes) into Bamiyan. This was done in some comfort in a muscular Toyota Land Cruiser in which my driver was constantly relaying our position back to a central security unit via satellite phone, he used the words durast, durast a lot. We were together four days, the only common language we had was a smattering of Russian, but we discovered a common love for eating kebabs and we did a lot of that in places with large numbers of bearded shawl clad men where I had to keep quiet to ensure that I was not identified as a foreigner.
Bamiyan itself is a beautiful town situated in a valley at an altitude of about 9,000 feet. It was still under snow at the time, and the mountains around in every direction provided a stunning backdrop. This is a Hazara dominated area (the region is called Hazarajat) and is slightly more liberal than other parts of Afghanistan in that women wear the headscarf but not the mask. As there are no Taliban elements in the area, one is able to walk around freely and I did so. Must visits include the hundreds of caves in the mountainside that housed a major Buddhist centre of learning in the 4th century. We all know that the Taliban destroyed the world’s largest carvings of Buddha, dating back to that time, because they symbolized the idolatry that is anathema to Islam. The caves, however, and the wonderful wall paintings within, were destroyed over a longer term as they served as barracks for Mujahedin and Taliban. Ironically, the only cave that still has a semblance of paintings intact is the one that housed the commander. Sadly, nobody in Bamiyan gives a crap about the heritage site that is ‘just there’ to them.
The outskirts of Bamiyan house the Shahar-e-Golgola, a city that was razed to the ground by Genghis Khan and remains intactly razed even today. I also visited Dragon Valley, a large rock formation in the mountains that has a deep and narrow cleft running across the middle, where legend has it Ali killed a dragon with one sword strike down the middle of its back. Sadly, I was unable to visit the Bandh-e-Amir, a series of natural blue water lakes high up in the mountains, because the road was still under heavy snow. The other must-do in Bamiyan (and I therefore did not do it) is to visit the airport, get into the remnants of a crashed plane that it still, many years after the crash, lying around near the runway, and be photographed waving from the window.
All very nice for me, you would say, but what is Afghanistan like for women. Pretty tough! Kabul is said to be comparatively liberal, and always has been. In all other places, the dress code is that your contours should not be discernable. And Afghan women who work need to be accompanied by a mehrab or male companion, be it husband or younger brother or whatever. This creates havoc for any employer’s HR policy. Having said this, I was also told about how gender specialists, many of whom inversely relate women’s empowerment with the extent to which they are veiled, are confounded by the freedom and say an Afghan woman has inside that tent-like exterior.
And what about Indians? Are we as welcome as Feroz Khan in ‘Dharmatma’? Being Watan-e-Hind is a double-edged sword. The Taliban do not like us (to put it mildly), and we are in danger in all areas controlled by them. Others generally find Pakistanis and Arabs distasteful as they controlled the Taliban administration pre-9/11, and see India and Iran as acting in Afghanistan’s interest. India’s low key but critical development aid is popular and seen as effective. Many Afghans were refugees in Peshawar and speak Urdu, and communicating with them is easy. It is more difficult with those who were refugees in Iran. Those who were/are refugees in the west have generally not returned – their children have greater difficulty adjusting back. Nor are they particularly welcome, their earlier attempts to act superior because of having made it to the west did not go down well and they are termed as ‘dog walkers’ in recognition of the menial jobs that most of them do in Paris, Berlin, LA, etc.
To conclude – Afghanistan is everything that is said about it, and much more. Would I return? If I get an opportunity, a qualified yes! The good experiences far outnumbered the bad. And there are unseen areas that beckon, such as the Wakhan Corridor, the Oxus River and Mazhar-e-Sharif. Not to mention the fleshpots in Dushanbe and Khorag across the Tajik border. Inshallah!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
CANADA
CANADA
Visited in June/July in 2003 and 2006
My family has a strange relationship with Canada. My Grandfather went there as the Indian Ambassador, and it was there that he married for the second time. Aunt Helen, as we called our Step-Grandma, came back to India with him – returning to Canada 13 or so years later, after he died. The highlight of my two visits to Canada was meeting her again. My Father’s Brother too settled in Canada, leaving India in the late 1960s to set up a successful car dealership in Toronto – I have met him only once, on his only visit back to India in the late 1970s. Another Uncle, a con man who had been cashiered from the Army for having it off with a (female) CIA agent in Paris, dumped his second wife to move there in the 1980s with a young lady and apparently just a step ahead of the law – he now has children younger than his grandchildren. My Father too made (ultimately unsuccessful) plans to emigrate in the early 1980s, but I remember being clear that I would not go with him.
And so, when my organization enrolled me in a course on development evaluation at the Carleton University in Ottawa in the summer of 2003, I set off with a sense of wonderment. This was my first visit to the western world outside of the UK and Europe.
The most pleasant thing about Canada was discovered even before reaching there. I had taken a Gulf Air flight from Delhi to Muscat, changed for another to London, from where I flew on Air Canada to Toronto. By London, some of us passengers had become friends – including one guy from Delhi who was emigrating there, and was going for the first time. At every Canadian passport check, they would see his passport and burst into smiles and words of welcome to the country. Unlike the UK and Europe, the word ‘immigrant’ is not a pejorative in Canada. Right through the visit, people I met would ask whether I was here to stay and on discovering I was not would ask why not, that Canada was a great place to live in.
I arrived in Toronto at 0005 hours – not a good time to arrive on a strange continent with plans only to get a bus onward to Ottawa. Where should I spend the night? After pumping the fellow who hailed cabs outside the airport, who turned out to be from Pune, for information, I decided to sleep off on a couch at the airport itself and catch the first bus from the airport to the bus stand (what they call the Greyhound Station) in the morning. The plan went perfectly, and I soon found myself on an early morning Greyhound bus making the six-hour journey to Ottawa. And here was the second discovery – of Canada’s size. A six-hour road journey in Europe takes you from one end of a country to another, but in Canada it is a journey between neighbouring cities.
Canada is the largest country in the world after Russia, but has a population of only about 30 million (two Delhis) most of whom live in a small belt running along its southern border with the USA. The most famous Canadian (for my generation of men) is Pamela Anderson. Most Americans, with some justification, think of it as a giant refrigerator – but my experience in June and July was of a pleasantly warm and sunny climate with long days and lightly cool evenings. I’m told that things are a little different at other times of the year. Canada’s size makes it a difficult country to really see, except in patches. I managed to take in Ottawa and Montreal.
Ottawa itself is a nice but limited city – a seat of government, straddling the divide between French and English speakers by virtue of its location across both Ontario and Quebec provinces. People are relaxed and friendly – if you don’t have correct change for a bus ticket the driver just waves you in anyway and says to just forget paying. The height of excitement is Canada Day, when you have a series of public events. The highlight is the musical ride, a horse event performed to music by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. There is also a rock concert with singers from all provinces of Canada, and an impressive fireworks display. The youth are all drunk out of their minds, in a pleasant and unaggressive way, and the smell of dope is also heavy in the air. The meanest thing I saw in Canada was the police finding very drunk kids and pouring their remaining beer supplies into the drain. And someone had photographed a kid taking a piss on a monument to Canadian war casualties, and there was a public outcry after this was published in the papers. The poor kid was identified a few days later and said that he was so drunk that he had no idea of where he was pissing, and there was no malicious intent. I sympathised – the queues for the public toilets were miles long and, as they say, ‘when you gotta go, you gotta go’.
I used Montreal as my point of entry and exit the second time I visited Canada (this was to attend the advanced course of the same programme), and ensured that I arrived at a civilised hour. There was a bus from Montreal airport to Ottawa, for which many people had pre-booked tickets so I had to smarm up to the driver to let me on. This was done by helping her with the luggage – she not only had to drive, she also had to load and unload all the luggage of all the passengers, unpleasant when you have over 40 passengers all of whom have heavy luggage. No coolies, no khalasis here – it was her job and she had to do it, and none of the passengers lifted a finger to help.
Montreal is unique in North America as a city with a European feel, cobbled stone city centre and all. This is not particularly exciting when one has been to many European cities, as I have, but as it counts among its residents my Step-Grandma it was a must-visit for me. I hadn’t seen her since 1984, and had not had any contact, and so had to locate her in 2003 using phone books and searches on the Internet. The phone number that I finally got was for that of her Mother, and thereby contact was re-established. I spent a very enjoyable two days with her in 2003, regressing back to my college days when I used to go over to her house in Delhi and just eat, sleep and read. I also met members of her family, some of whom I had met as a child (Aunt Anne and Aunt Lovey) and some who were just names to me (Aunt Helen Sr., my Aunt Helen’s Mother, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen’s Brother Glenn – who like me has very bossy sisters and two sons). In 2006, with the advantage of knowing where she was and with better planning, I spent a few days with her and we did the sights – a visit to the casino, a visit to a lake in the north along upon which Uncle Glenn had a cottage, a fair bit of wining and dining, etc. Montreal provided me with my third discovery – that language chauvinism was a first-world phenomenon as well. The signs were all in French, and when there were signs in English they were below the French ones and smaller, and there were laws in place about how much below and how much smaller an English sign should be to the French one. French speakers have a strong feeling of losing out in Canada, and this has resulted in a movement for secession that remains despite umpteen referendums, some ridiculous laws to accommodate French sentiments, and an anti-English sentiment that is obvious even to new visitors. There were also signs of a backlash from other parts of Canada, especially in the west, of ‘let’s not accommodate them any more – if they want out let them get out’ and even among non-French speakers in Quebec ‘if they have a right to secede from Canada, we too would like the right to secede from Quebec’. Quite a khichdee here!
I would have liked, given the opportunity, to see more of Canada’s North – such as the newly formed province of Nunavut and its headquarters Ikaluit (formerly Frobisher’s Bay), Baffin Bay, and the Mackenzie Delta in the northwest. The Canadian North is still the preserve of groups such as Indigenous Canadians (formerly Red Indians, now called the First Nations) and the Inuit. Canadian policy towards them is fairly familiar – keep them happy with lollipops in the form of subsidised services, good unemployment benefits, et al, while extracting gas, oil, minerals and electricity from their regions. The result is a thoroughly emasculated indigenous population with low education and high unemployment, drunkenness and domestic violence levels and an attitude of ‘they are just a bunch of moronic tribals living off the taxes we pay’ among others. Discovery no. 4 – it doesn’t happen only in India.
Are you looking to emigrate to Canada? I spent some time with first generation Canadians and spoke to them about what it was actually like. Canada welcomes immigrants and is comfortable about people having dual identities – their Canadian one and the one of the country from which they came. This was obvious and visible to me as well. But life is tough here. Getting a job is difficult, especially if you are well educated and used to a certain station. Being unemployed is difficult, because the cost of living is high. The winters are long and severe. The main advantage is for your children, who will come up through a world-class education system and will reap the benefits of being Canadian.
Visited in June/July in 2003 and 2006
My family has a strange relationship with Canada. My Grandfather went there as the Indian Ambassador, and it was there that he married for the second time. Aunt Helen, as we called our Step-Grandma, came back to India with him – returning to Canada 13 or so years later, after he died. The highlight of my two visits to Canada was meeting her again. My Father’s Brother too settled in Canada, leaving India in the late 1960s to set up a successful car dealership in Toronto – I have met him only once, on his only visit back to India in the late 1970s. Another Uncle, a con man who had been cashiered from the Army for having it off with a (female) CIA agent in Paris, dumped his second wife to move there in the 1980s with a young lady and apparently just a step ahead of the law – he now has children younger than his grandchildren. My Father too made (ultimately unsuccessful) plans to emigrate in the early 1980s, but I remember being clear that I would not go with him.
And so, when my organization enrolled me in a course on development evaluation at the Carleton University in Ottawa in the summer of 2003, I set off with a sense of wonderment. This was my first visit to the western world outside of the UK and Europe.
The most pleasant thing about Canada was discovered even before reaching there. I had taken a Gulf Air flight from Delhi to Muscat, changed for another to London, from where I flew on Air Canada to Toronto. By London, some of us passengers had become friends – including one guy from Delhi who was emigrating there, and was going for the first time. At every Canadian passport check, they would see his passport and burst into smiles and words of welcome to the country. Unlike the UK and Europe, the word ‘immigrant’ is not a pejorative in Canada. Right through the visit, people I met would ask whether I was here to stay and on discovering I was not would ask why not, that Canada was a great place to live in.
I arrived in Toronto at 0005 hours – not a good time to arrive on a strange continent with plans only to get a bus onward to Ottawa. Where should I spend the night? After pumping the fellow who hailed cabs outside the airport, who turned out to be from Pune, for information, I decided to sleep off on a couch at the airport itself and catch the first bus from the airport to the bus stand (what they call the Greyhound Station) in the morning. The plan went perfectly, and I soon found myself on an early morning Greyhound bus making the six-hour journey to Ottawa. And here was the second discovery – of Canada’s size. A six-hour road journey in Europe takes you from one end of a country to another, but in Canada it is a journey between neighbouring cities.
Canada is the largest country in the world after Russia, but has a population of only about 30 million (two Delhis) most of whom live in a small belt running along its southern border with the USA. The most famous Canadian (for my generation of men) is Pamela Anderson. Most Americans, with some justification, think of it as a giant refrigerator – but my experience in June and July was of a pleasantly warm and sunny climate with long days and lightly cool evenings. I’m told that things are a little different at other times of the year. Canada’s size makes it a difficult country to really see, except in patches. I managed to take in Ottawa and Montreal.
Ottawa itself is a nice but limited city – a seat of government, straddling the divide between French and English speakers by virtue of its location across both Ontario and Quebec provinces. People are relaxed and friendly – if you don’t have correct change for a bus ticket the driver just waves you in anyway and says to just forget paying. The height of excitement is Canada Day, when you have a series of public events. The highlight is the musical ride, a horse event performed to music by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. There is also a rock concert with singers from all provinces of Canada, and an impressive fireworks display. The youth are all drunk out of their minds, in a pleasant and unaggressive way, and the smell of dope is also heavy in the air. The meanest thing I saw in Canada was the police finding very drunk kids and pouring their remaining beer supplies into the drain. And someone had photographed a kid taking a piss on a monument to Canadian war casualties, and there was a public outcry after this was published in the papers. The poor kid was identified a few days later and said that he was so drunk that he had no idea of where he was pissing, and there was no malicious intent. I sympathised – the queues for the public toilets were miles long and, as they say, ‘when you gotta go, you gotta go’.
I used Montreal as my point of entry and exit the second time I visited Canada (this was to attend the advanced course of the same programme), and ensured that I arrived at a civilised hour. There was a bus from Montreal airport to Ottawa, for which many people had pre-booked tickets so I had to smarm up to the driver to let me on. This was done by helping her with the luggage – she not only had to drive, she also had to load and unload all the luggage of all the passengers, unpleasant when you have over 40 passengers all of whom have heavy luggage. No coolies, no khalasis here – it was her job and she had to do it, and none of the passengers lifted a finger to help.
Montreal is unique in North America as a city with a European feel, cobbled stone city centre and all. This is not particularly exciting when one has been to many European cities, as I have, but as it counts among its residents my Step-Grandma it was a must-visit for me. I hadn’t seen her since 1984, and had not had any contact, and so had to locate her in 2003 using phone books and searches on the Internet. The phone number that I finally got was for that of her Mother, and thereby contact was re-established. I spent a very enjoyable two days with her in 2003, regressing back to my college days when I used to go over to her house in Delhi and just eat, sleep and read. I also met members of her family, some of whom I had met as a child (Aunt Anne and Aunt Lovey) and some who were just names to me (Aunt Helen Sr., my Aunt Helen’s Mother, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen’s Brother Glenn – who like me has very bossy sisters and two sons). In 2006, with the advantage of knowing where she was and with better planning, I spent a few days with her and we did the sights – a visit to the casino, a visit to a lake in the north along upon which Uncle Glenn had a cottage, a fair bit of wining and dining, etc. Montreal provided me with my third discovery – that language chauvinism was a first-world phenomenon as well. The signs were all in French, and when there were signs in English they were below the French ones and smaller, and there were laws in place about how much below and how much smaller an English sign should be to the French one. French speakers have a strong feeling of losing out in Canada, and this has resulted in a movement for secession that remains despite umpteen referendums, some ridiculous laws to accommodate French sentiments, and an anti-English sentiment that is obvious even to new visitors. There were also signs of a backlash from other parts of Canada, especially in the west, of ‘let’s not accommodate them any more – if they want out let them get out’ and even among non-French speakers in Quebec ‘if they have a right to secede from Canada, we too would like the right to secede from Quebec’. Quite a khichdee here!
I would have liked, given the opportunity, to see more of Canada’s North – such as the newly formed province of Nunavut and its headquarters Ikaluit (formerly Frobisher’s Bay), Baffin Bay, and the Mackenzie Delta in the northwest. The Canadian North is still the preserve of groups such as Indigenous Canadians (formerly Red Indians, now called the First Nations) and the Inuit. Canadian policy towards them is fairly familiar – keep them happy with lollipops in the form of subsidised services, good unemployment benefits, et al, while extracting gas, oil, minerals and electricity from their regions. The result is a thoroughly emasculated indigenous population with low education and high unemployment, drunkenness and domestic violence levels and an attitude of ‘they are just a bunch of moronic tribals living off the taxes we pay’ among others. Discovery no. 4 – it doesn’t happen only in India.
Are you looking to emigrate to Canada? I spent some time with first generation Canadians and spoke to them about what it was actually like. Canada welcomes immigrants and is comfortable about people having dual identities – their Canadian one and the one of the country from which they came. This was obvious and visible to me as well. But life is tough here. Getting a job is difficult, especially if you are well educated and used to a certain station. Being unemployed is difficult, because the cost of living is high. The winters are long and severe. The main advantage is for your children, who will come up through a world-class education system and will reap the benefits of being Canadian.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
