3/10/07 - Cochin, India

see a map of my travels since Istanbul (and before) here

Highlights, Observations, Rants, etc.
With my less-than-conscientious blog writing over the past 3 months, there's a lot to cover and condense into this entry (at least without spending days in front of the computer). Luckily for me two of the definite highlights of my travels since the beginning of December have taken up the bulk of that time. My extended stops in Istanbul and northern Tamil Nadu were much different from the rest of my trip, in that they haven't so much entailed traveling, but rather a break from it.

• Lazy Istanbul - Only after I got to Istanbul and spent a few days sightseeing there did I realize how exhausted I was. Looking back, the final push through Greece, partying in Thessaloniki followed hard on by my three-day 'pilgrammage' to Mt. Athos (and the corresponding lack of sleep that came with attending 3AM church services) had sapped away the rest of my long-dwindling desire to do anything other than vegetate for an extended period of time. So in Istanbul, it was absolutely glorious to be able to sleep in, watch (mostly bad) movies, and properly catch up on email, news, finances, etc. thanks to access to the internet other than in cybercafes. I joined a gym and went almost every day, tried Turkish food at a variety of different restaurants, and met a lot of great people (almost exclusively Turks, thanks to the constant introductions of my friend Emre, who seems to know everyone in Istanbul). And, maybe best of all, I slowly explored Istanbul - an amazing city steeped in history, brimming with modern culture, and posessing a bright future - at my own pace, without feeling compelled to cram in a bunch of activities in a short time before I was scheduled to leave. My only two regrets are not learning more Turkish than I did, and not traveling more throughout Turkey (with the exception of one trip south to Bodrum and Selcuk with Emre, I didn't leave Istanbul), but either of those would have required an effort I guess I wasn't prepared to exert.
• Saving the World, One Indian At A Time* - If my stay in Turkey was about resting from traveling by not doing much of anything, my 1-month stint volunteering for the small NGO ASSCOD in northern Tamil Nadu was, although still a break from traveling, an about turn from Istanbul. I arrived in ASSCOD's office in Karunguzhi (about 2 hours southwest of Chennai) not burned out from travel, but rather ready to work, and it was surprisingly nice to settle into a routine and do something productive after a 10-month hiatus.
  My experience was often rewarding (when I felt like I was making a small positive difference) and often frustrating (when I felt like my work would have no long-term impact), but at all times fascinating. I spent most of my time helping with office work (budgeting, strategic planning, writing project proposals and other correspondence), since given the fact that I didn't (and still don't) speak Tamil my ability to work in the field was severely limited. But I did make the rounds to ASSCOD's field offices and a few of the villages where it works, and this was one of the main highlights. This was a side of India about as far from the beaten tourist path as you can get, and one I definitely would have missed simply by wandering around with my pack throughout India for the same amount of time. Despite the often grinding poverty, I was amazed with the grace and friendliness with which people welcomed me when I showed up in their village on the back of a motorbike, and because they were unaccustomed to seeing 'tourists' as such, I wasn't once asked for money, or a 'school pen', or a coin from my country: the requests with which one is constantly bombarded in places frequented by foreigners and which get very tiresome very quickly. Refreshingly, in the area where I was working, which tourist dollars (or euros or pounds) hardly ever reach, the locals were naturally friendly, not simply because I was a rich westerner who might give them something, and despite my 'kunjum kunjum Tamil' ('little little Tamil'), it was amazing how far I could get with my simple greeting of 'vanakkam' and their few words of English.
  Although at first I was somewhat skeptical of how much ASSCOD was actually helping its benificiaries, after a little while the positive impact became undeniable. For the past few years, ASSCOD has been working mostly to organize local village women (about 2500 in total) into small self-help groups, and provide various sorts of training as well as encourage them to save a small amount of money every month (literally around $1) and then loan that money on a rotating basis to other women in the group to buy cows, start small business, etc. It's a slow process, hampered by various social factors (including the generally chauvinistic nature of Indian society, very low wages and intermittent manual labor), but gradually ASSCOD has empowered these women to improve their own lives and the lives of their families, and hearing the pride and self-confidence in several women's voices when they spoke about their accomplishments since ASSCOD initiated its work was very encouraging.**
  My stay in Karunguzhi also offered me a chance to get to know south Indian cooking beyond the standard fare on offer in tourist restaurants. It's simple, mostly vegetarian cuisine but quite good nonetheless. Generally, it consists of either the ubiquitous rice with samba and/or rasam (both liquidy and spicy vegetable soup-type concoctions) or what we would probably call curries (although that word doesn't really exist in India), served with variations on 'bread', or at least grain-based food of some sort: dosa, a very thin pancake; idly, a sort-of rice dumpling; parotha, a fried disc of strand-like dough; chapathi, similar to a tortilla; and puri, large fried puffs of dough. Plus I gradually learned (at least sort-of) to eat indian-style, with my right hand only. It doesn't sound that bad, but it goes against just about every sort of instinct you have, especially when it comes to simple things like tearing a piece of bread. The rice and samba/rasam combination proved especially tricky, but slowly I got better, and now only about 10% of every handful I try to neatly flick into my mouth ends up in my lap, compared to probably around half when I first arrived in Tamil Nadu.
  *If I'm going to to back to grad school, I suppose I should get in the habit of properly citing my sources. So I can't take credit for this phrase, as it was originated by my friend Hal Hodes. But first I need a reference librarian to tell me the proper citation format for an email...
  **I also agreed to raise some money for a new project ASSCOD has initiated to benefit some of the local tribal people. I've already sent emails to many of my friends and former colleagues in the US, but if you're interested in contributing, email me at mark.fiorello@gmail.com and I can send you more information, both on the project itself and on ways to donate.

• The Almighty Dirham - On the way from Istanbul to Mumbai, the cheapest flights were on Emirates (a highlight in and of itself, as it's far and away the nicest airline I've every flown), so I booked a 6-day stopover in the UAE. 5 of those days were spent in neighboring laid-back Oman, which proved to be quite a contrast to my one final day in brash, commercial Dubai. I'm glad I had the opportunity to have a look around and visit the UAE's newest and largest shopping mall and it's only indoor ski-slope, but one day was more than enough to figure out I didn't care for Dubai very much. It is a place so intoxicated by its recent explosion, so inebriated with money, and so enamored with commercialism that you either buy into the mentality (or hype) whole-heartedly, or are utterly revolted by it. The only other place I can begin to compare it to is Las Vegas, but strangely, I have absolutely no quarrel with Vegas, because it’s a temporary diversion -- you go, blow some money for a few days, and then head back to your normal life. And at least Vegas is upfront about the fact that absolutely everything is for sale. In Dubai, on the other hand, money rules, but there's a heavy undercurrent of religious hypocrisy (gambling is illegal, but raffle tickets for luxury cars and cash sums are advertised and sold everywhere, and by law bars are only allowed to exist within hotels). And Dubai - with its megamalls and investment properties on artificial islands being created just off the coast in the shape of palm trees and world maps - bills itself as the beacon of new and improved way of life; the frightening thing is that this may be true, since it has certainly struck a chord with many people (or at least real estate developers...
  One of the additional scary things that struck me about Dubai (although this is certainly true in a host of other places around the world as well) is that the in-your-face obsession with money seems to equate to a complete disregard for how you made it. You get the feeling that it doesn’t matter whether someone earned his dirhams by discovering the cure for AIDS, or stole them from the guy who did, as long as he’s prepared to part with them.
  I was walking back to my hotel after a few pints from the Irish Village (a pub so big that it's no longer content to call itself a mere pub, but rather a whole 'village'), trying to come up with a way to sum up this brash commercial culture, when I walked past a billboard that did it perfectly for me. There, in the middle of the road, stood an ad for Etisalat (the national telecom provider). On the first line: 'Celebrate the joy of togetherness'; on the second: ‘Celebrate Shopping!’ I stopped for a second, completely dumbfounded, and then burst out laughing. I mean, I’m all for extolling the virtues of spending in the company of others; so celebrate friends, celebrate family, celebrate sports, celebrate whatever. But shopping? Seriously?

Random Tidbits

• If the bobblehead doll wasn't invented or at least inspired by an Indian, it probably should have been. Almost all Indians (more prominently men, but women do it, too) have the curious habit of rapidly wobbling their head from side to side as a form of non-verbal communication. Until you get used to it, at best it's confusing and at worst downright maddening, because it can variously mean 'yes', 'I think', 'maybe', 'I understand', 'I'm listening', 'I don't know', or 'OK, but I can't officially condone it'. To make matters worse, in some cases the movement is almost a sideways motion very similar a shake of the head, meaning there have been several times that I've understood it as 'no' when in fact it meant the opposite. It seems 'no' is actually often indicated by a one-way wobble or brief cock of the head, but it's taken me a while to figure that out. The whole thing is best demonstrated by what happened when I got on a train from Margao in Goa to Bangalore with a waitlist ticket, and thus no clear idea of where I should sit:
  Me: 'So I'm supposed sit in seat number 14?'
  Conductor: [head wobble]
  Me: 'But it's ok if I sit here?'
  Conductor: [head wobble]
  Me: 'Does that mean yes?'
  Conductor: [head wobble]
• After driving back from Sur to Muscat through the arid landscape of inland Oman (having taken the stunning coast road in the opposite direction), I can now say I've experienced the phenomenon of seeing a mirage of water in the middle of the desert. Occasionally, the reflection of the sun from high above would glimmer across the surface of the far-off sand as though there were pools of water scattered among the rocks and scrub trees. This wasn't just the usual heat waves causing the distant ground to shimmer; if I hadn't known better, I would have sworn the whole area was covered with a shallow layer of water. Interestingly, it wasn't a constant occurence, but rather only happened in one or two places, although after the first instance I kept glancing out my window to see if the 'water' would reappear. And I still don't know why the mirage existed only where it did; the desert appeared no different from other places where there was no mirage, nor was I particularly thirsty...

Photos (although I haven't yet had the chance to add descriptive information to all of them)

Next Stops

• continuing my travels through India (northern Kerala, southern Karnataka, Hyderabad, Kolkata & the Himalayan foothills around Darjeeling), then Singapore and Bali for my friend Jack's wedding.