Nero's backpacking through South East Asia : The Prologue

A year ago when I left for my first solo trip to Europe, I knew a few things that I wanted to do. First and foremost, I was going to run with the bulls in Spain. Second, I would stay with Couchsurfers and not in hotels. Third, I would not pre-book any internal transport. And fourth, I would not speak to anyone in India while I was away.

The first motivated the whole trip. The second came about because one understands a city better when one travels with a local. Else, we end up doing touristy things. The third was to ensure that I was completely flexible and could change plans any time. And the fourth, so that I would have to stay out of my comfort zone even when I felt compelled to fall back on it.

What I did not know then when I sat on the plane to Barcelona was that I would fall right under a bull during the race. That when I was in Italy, I’d change a lot of my plans, and head for Croatia. That one night I would have no place to stay and would camp in a forest, and would come face to face with a bear.

That when I came back to India, I would not look for a full-time job.

It’s been nine months since that trip, and life, well life has changed in some ways and not in some others. 

Nine months since that unusual month of 2013, I embark on another month-long solo trip – this time through South East Asia.  Geographically, the idea is to cover Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. If you look at the map, one can almost draw a circular (alright, maybe oval) route around these countries. The rough plan is to start and end the journey at Bangkok. 

From Bangkok,   I’d probably head to the southern islands (the only part that falls completely off-route) of Phuket and Krabi for some sea kayaking, rock climbing and canoeing through caves and mangrove forests.  Then, I move up north towards Chiang Mai, where the plan is to trek for three days through some forests and waterfalls and spend one night with an ancient hill tribe. Once in life, we must all quietly sit and smilingly stare at an old man of an old tribe, as he smokes on a mountain.

Once back in Chiang Mai, I’ll take the slow boat to Laos.  The very idea of just sitting on a rickety motor boat, with its paint half peeled off, and slowly chugging along on a river sounds extremely seductive to the writer in me.  Hopefully, it would hold more power over me than the giant mosquitoes and insects that hover about. The Mekong river, on which we shall set sail, is the 12^th largest river in the world, and for Laos – a country full of mountainous terrain, the river is the principal transport.  It also flows through China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.  There is a point in the river where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet and it is known as the Golden Triangle area. More famous for rampant drug production, it is an area I won’t be seeing on this trip. In my shallow imagination, I see restless men lurking between forested trees, some patrolling with guns, some hurrying with wooden crates.

The route from the Thai border to Luang Prabang where the boat docks, is supposed to be naturally stunning and that shall probably have to compensate for any sting operations I was conducting in my dreams in the Golden Triangle.

Back to our docking point. Luang Prabang used to be the capital of Laos till the communists took over. Now, it is a charming city full of provincial French buildings, wooden houses and smiling monks. Must walk on the streets and try some authentic Laotian food.

The city’s close to the Vietnam border and hopefully I’ll get a fast bus to Hanoi. In Vietnam, a group of college kids have promised to show me around their city, should I teach them a bit of Bollywood dancing. Then, a girl who’s studying English literature in university wants to take me to her home, which is in a small town, so that she can talk in English with me and show off her skills to her family.  I shall probably miss out on her brother’s wedding which is in April. Damn bad luck, it would have been so nice to see a Vietnamese marriage.

There are so many plans, and I do not really know how many will materialize. I mailed a couple of animal organizations in Cambodia and Borneo, asking if they would let me volunteer with elephants and orangutans. All of them charge high fees from the volunteers so that looks quite unlikely.  Then, a village school in interior Cambodia replied to me and said that they would like it if I could come and spend some time with the kids. I have no idea what I shall tell them, maybe to chase their dreams.

A year ago, when I left for Europe, I knew a few things. First, that I wanted to actually do some of the things I put on a bucket list. That, I would write about those stories when I would get back. That I would make a few more friends.

What I did not know then was that nine months later, I would want the same things still.

-----  The End  ------


Now Read:

1) Nero goes to Spain
2) The Sikkim Bhutan Series: Prologue
3) The Mahindra Adventures: Prologue

The Ganga Kayak Festival: A Racy Affair

Somewhere a clock strikes twelve. I don’t hear it as I stand next to the door of my train compartment. It is dark. In the rhythmic movement of the train, in the silence of the bogeys, a hundred questions ring in my head. It’s been 9 months since I quit my job. Does all this travelling really make sense? In my childish desire to wander, am I putting too much at stake, am I drifting? Would it be better to go back and work in an office space?

I push my head outside the door, and let the wind hit my face. As my eyes close, so does my mind.

Next morning, I reach Haridwar railway station at 8 am. I am now even more restless than the previous night. The train’s late by 2 hours. By this time, I was supposed to be in Rishikesh, at the meeting point in Tapovan. A shuttle was supposed to transfer me from the prefixed point to the event area. Now, I will have to find my own way to get there. I wonder if I should have come on the trip in the first place. The previous night’s questions are still preying on my mind.

I am not used to doubting myself. As close and exasperated friends would testify “He is too deluded and narcissistic for that.”

I finally reach the event area at 10 am, hunched up in a Bolero with a group of musicians. In front of me lies the Ganga, flowing furiously and shimmering turquoise green.

A huge banner proclaims ‘Welcome to the 2^nd Edition of the Ganga Kayak Festival’

I walk up a narrow path, to the top of a hillock and meet Jennifer – the friendly event organizer. Later I am introduced to Anil, who is from The Outdoor Journal - one of my favourite adventure magazines.

As we talk, the wind hits my face again. This time I do not close my eyes.

Anil and I walk down to the river and stand with the kayakers. There are over 50 of them.  The large majority are Indians, but  4-5 have also come down from UK, Canada and Norway. The Nepali team is a serious threat in the competition.

Already, I can feel the change inside me. I can’t stop feeling happy. Here, in front of me, are men I do not know at all, men I haven’t seen or heard of ever, but like. I look at them, at their brown burnt faces, and it speaks of the amount of time they have spent under the sun. I look at their forearms and it speaks of all the rowing they have done over the years.

A lot of the Indian kayakers are from Uttarakhand, Himachal and Ladakh. They all look like boys. I am standing with India and Nepal’s top kayakers and they are all boys. Most of them work as rafting guides. I have a feeling they aren’t bathing in money. Kayaking is still a nascent sport in India. Maybe it isn’t even looked at as a sport yet, more as a hobby or an adventure activity. The Ganga Kayak Festival wants to change that notion.

It is the brainchild of the well built Bhupendra Singh Rana or ‘Bhupi’ as the local community lovingly call him. An expert kayaker himself, Bhupi has kayaked in the White Nile in Uganda, in Austria and other parts of Europe, and all over India. It is now his burning desire that kayaking gets better recognition in India, that kayakers get more opportunities, that they can stand up to international competition, and eventually the sport gets Olympic representation from India.

Once the opening ceremony is done with, the kayakers move towards the banks. There are flags at the starting point and the end point of the race, and they will all go into the river one by one. The winner will be decided based on timing.

A spectator table has been set up on the hillock for people to get a birds eye view of the race. The commentator announces the name of the first kayaker, and the lad is ready and sitting in his kayak on the top of a ramp. When he hears the ‘Go’ command, he pushes the kayak and it slides down the twelve foot ramp, into the water. With fast strokes, he speeds and steers his kayak towards the rapids. Everyone cheers. Some of the kayakers are screaming out advice to him. He cannot hear them over the roar of the Ganga, but they try anyway. This is sport at its purest.

One by one, the kayakers step into the water.  Here at the Golf Course stretch of the river, the rapids are quite powerful and it is a tricky business to manoeuvre through them. A few kayaks unbalance in the rapids, and overturn. But the kayakers roll over within seconds and continue paddling furiously to the finish line.

A little later, Anil and I walk along the bank. There are a number of rocks that are jutting out into the river, and end very close to the rapids, so the two of us hasten in that direction. We spend the next hour, near this curve, sitting on some rocks right next to the rapids, watching the river swirl, dip, roar and overwhelm. We watch the kayakers come towards us, and as they weave and toss through the rapids, our knees, our muscles, our arms twitch with anticipation. I know when I look at Anil, that he loves the outdoors just as much as I do, that there lies a sportsman in him, that if given a chance he would love to get into a kayak and battle the river. I know it, because I feel the exact same way.

Rahul Talwar Photography

I am introduced to Tipu, a mountain climbing guide. Sitting next to him is another boy, ‘Tony’. Anil tells me that Tony is the coach of the national climbing team. I stare in disbelief. He looks like a wiry kid. He looks so normal. A writer could not have put the previous sentence in a more crude way. Nor more honestly.

I talk to them for a while and then clamber over the rocks till I reach and sit over the rock right in the front.  One wrong step, and I shall fall right into the rapids. I can see it swirl below me.  But I am overwhelmed.  The river is so green and cold. The mountain air so pleasant.

It is a Wednesday afternoon. Every single person I know is sitting in an office. I realize now that I couldn’t be all that wrong.  That maybe this is how I want to live my Wednesdays and other days, in the outdoors, near a river, a mountain, an ocean, in the company of people like Tipu and Tony.

Around 4 pm, Anil and I ask Jennifer the route to our camp. We are staying at the Elephant Brook Resort camp. Behind the hillock where the commentators, the staging table, the volunteer tent is set up, a shallow stream flows between two hills. Jen tells us that if we walk along the stream, we shall eventually reach the resort after 2 kms.

Anil and I scramble over the rocks. The route is pretty. Brambles come up routinely as obstacles. So does a huge family of langurs along the way. As we plod one, there are a few horses grazing on the opposite bank. They trot across the water to our side, and I run my hands over one’s skin. We walk on, and a light drizzle starts. Sometime later, we reach the resort.

In the night, I sit with Tipu, Tony, the Outdoor Journal guys and a few kayakers. It is cold and I am cursing myself for carrying only one sweater. A bottle of rum is being passed around and we are taking large swigs. A bird sings loudly somewhere in the mountains, and one of the men identifies it for us. These men have lived so close to nature.

It is getting late. Tomorrow is the second (and last) day of the festival. There will be the mass boater cross, beginners’ and women’s races held on this day. One of the girls participating is only 14 years old.

There is a concert. Everybody is drinking and dancing. Even the bemused Brits and Canadians try to shake a leg. Bhupi is going berserk, dancing in the centre of a large gang. He sees me and waves madly. I smile back. Later, I step outside the tent and walk to one end of the camp to stare at the stream, at the mountains.

Somewhere a clock strikes twelve. I don’t hear it. It is dark. A hundred thoughts run in my head. Its been 9 months since I left my job. How less I have seen of the world, how innocent these people - these part time athletes part time rafting guides are, how we need many more events like the Ganga Kayak Festival, and how many stars there are in the sky here.

I let the wind hit my face.  The Ganga flows as it always did, and the mountains look over it as they always do. 

--------------   The End -----------

Now Read: 

1) How I Went to Kashmir
2) The Thimpu Bookstore
3) Barcelona, Absinthe and Conversations

How I Went to Sonamarg: Kashmir Tour Diaries

Disclaimer: This is the second story of the 'How I went to Kashmir' series. If you haven't read the previous one, well, in short, it is the year 2012 and Nero is in Kashmir, as tour leader of a group holiday. Having arrived the previous day, he’s had a trying evening as they all go shopping and in different directions. For hours. What will happen hereafter on the trip?

There are many troubles in the life of a tour guide.  With that profound thought and a snort, I shut the alarm that had been behaving most uncouthly.  The worst , I thought to myself as I flung the blanket in disgust and left my bed 2 minutes later, was to have to wake up before your group did.

As it turns out, there are far greater problems in the world. Loud children at a breakfast table, grandmothers assuming its their right to demand dosas for breakfast in Kashmir, flustered waiters rushing in with dishes that were not in the pre-decided menu, disapproving hotel managers, grumbling drivers waiting outside the hotel, and the ability to keep all these people happy.  Aah, the joys of a vacation.

An hour later, we left for Sonamarg. As tour leader, I sat at the front with Fayaaz, our twenty five year old driver. Throughout the six day trip, he would tell me the stories of Kashmir.

Behind us, everyone was singing songs and being extremely off-key. Packets of chips were being passed all across the mini bus, and the kids were devouring them as if it was their last meal. But that’s what tourist holiday are like eh. I looked outside, feeling the cold breeze on my face. The rain fell ever so slightly, that exact amount of  drizzle which draws you to put your hand outside the window and let the drops slither over your arm. Silently, I recounted to myself all that I should know about Sonamarg, to tell my group once we got there. My research, I congratulated myself, was impeccable.

“Uh Neeraj, can you tell me what tree that is?” a voice asked from the background. I turned back and saw an old man beaming at me, positively pleased with his question.

There comes a time in every man's life when he wishes he had actually watched those Krishi Darshan shows on DD. I stared hard at the tree, and strangely it looked just like any tree should – leafy, barky, greeny ..

There are two ways of reacting when you don't know an answer to a question. Either you can do the right thing and accept that you do not know but will get back later with the answer. Or, you can furrow your eyebrows so exaggeratedly that the audience is misled into believing that you do know the answer but god damn forgot it one nano second back. It's a trick I have mastered over years of not knowing answers in my school, college and MBA years. I chose the second approach and went about furrowing, exaggerating, furrowing some more.

“It’s a kikar,” Fayaaz whispered softly. “Kikar” I boomed loudly to my audience. “Used for firewood, and in building fences,” Fayaaz muttered again. “Used for building fences and hedges. And also as firewood,” I declared with the voice of a man who had been talking about Kikars all his life. The old man looked satisfied now.  And I, well I winked at my driver, and the seeds of a new friendship had been sowed.

Sonamarg is an approximate 56 kms drive from Srinagar. It lies on the Srinagar – Ladakh route, and is usually the last halt on the Kashmir side.

We stopped at a roadside dhaba on the way , and rushed to eat the steaming hot pakoras that a young lad was cooking on a slow flame. Its back opened out to a gurgling stream. The kids enjoyed splashing water on me, and the parents enjoyed their kids splashing water on me. I bore it, all the while feeling like a martyr.

Once the tourist cars reached Sonamarg, they were made to halt at the check point. The mountains should have overwhelmed our every sense,  for they rose everywhere wherever our eyes could go. However, it was our immediate surroundings that drew our attention, unfortunately. For as soon as  the vehicles came to a halt, a melee of  young Kashmiri boys rushed towards us, offering their services, extolling their horses, doing anything to have you pay them.

It is not a pleasant sight, the way they madly scramble towards you. Behind them are small tents. Once you hire the services of a guide, they usher you to these tents and you can change into your rented snow clothes. Small, overworked, weak ponies stand nearby, waiting for yet another journey into the mountains.  There are 4-wheel drives ready to take you up too, but then at that moment you think you are Robin Hood, Don Quixote and Rana Pratap all rolled into one , as adventurous as can be. Hence it's only a horse you want to mount. Tourists will try to clamber onto the horse’s back, and since most of them have never done so before, they will push wildly at the saddle, jerk the reins, dig their shoes onto the animal’s body, grapple with its neck all to just clamber on top of it. It is a living thing, you know. If only I could punch you for being so insensitive.

The journey up the mountains to Thajiwas glacier is amazing. As you trot ahead, one pony step at a time, the panorama literally opens up to you and you can see the different hills coming out of their hiding and taking shape.  While the lower hills are half brown, as you go higher, everything becomes pristine white.  I took all of it in, but a part of me couldn’t stop worrying about the pony and my guide. “Rani”, said Pervez (my young guide) when I asked him the pony’s name. You really are a queen, little one.

The path gradually became narrower. And more crowded. The melted snow had turned the mud to slush, so it became even more difficult for walking. Some of the horses veered around the edges of the cliff, and a few people shrieked thinking they might fall down the gorge. Pervez just smiled. He and the horses had been here too long, traversed this path everyday and were sure of each step they took. It would take some doing for a horse to actually fall down the cliff.

When we reached the snow boarding point, there was a huge number of people there. It should have tainted the beauty of the place, but so massive were the cliffs, so jagged their faces that you could not help but feel excited. The sport of snowboarding involves a wooden sled, dragging it up hill and then sitting on it and sliding down the slope. The bad part is that here, a man pulls you and the sled up the slope.  Everywhere boys were pulling kids, mothers, fathers on the sleds up hill and it took every bit of their muscles to do so.  I exchanged positions with my fellow,  and tried to pull him and the sled up the slope, and I slipped, skidded, heaved for ten feet before stopping and laughing  at the fruitlessness of it all.

Just walk up the hill with your boy, people, instead of making him pull you up on the sled. It’s the right thing to do.

We left Sonamarg in the evening, and went back to Fayaaz, the mini bus and darling Srinagar.  Earlier, we had played in the snow - even the adults gamboled about like mad kids, laughing and screaming. Then, a kid could not be found for some time and there was chaos - a crying mother, a furious grandfather, and a darkening sky. 

But those have not been detailed, for Sonamarg, much like any or all of Kashmir is not about the tourists – it is about Pervez and Rani. It is about the hills we saw. It is about the slush and the snow.

Aah, the joys of a vacation.

In Case you haven't read part 1 of the series - here

You can also read,

1)The Thimpu Bookstore
2) Dancing with a man in Malaga airport

How I Went To Kashmir

Disclaimer: I went to Kashmir 2 years ago, for the first time as a tour guide. This is a prelude to the series of Kashmir stories I shall be sharing on my blog.

It was in the summer of 2012 when I led my first group tour to Kashmir. With me was a family of 25 people of all shapes and sizes, but mostly large and extra large. They had come to Delhi from the interiors of Tamil Nadu and not very comfortable with either English or Hindi, they wanted a guide to show them around Kashmir. On 24 June, as they animatedly chattered away on the flight to Srinagar, all I could think was how in the devil’s name was I going to make them like me, when I couldn’t even speak their language. This story is, however, about a lot more than that.

Let’s commence at the beginning. The tale of Kashmir will always start with that cold breeze that hits your face as soon as you get down at Srinagar airport and stays with you faithfully till the end. The story will, as it must, talk of the beauty of the land – of the omnipresence of the Himalayas in every frame, and the streams that always ran parallel to our tempo travellers throughout the trip. It will talk of the apple orchards and the saffron fields you read about in your Lonely Planet Guide, but it must not forget the chinars – those magnificent trees with trunks so large that you could not help wonder if this is what Enid Blyton had described as the faraway tree.

What the guide books never tell you, for they are written only to glorify, is of a shadow that shrouds the land.  Of the barbed wired check posts that you start seeing right from when you leave the airport, of the soldiers standing in the farms, of the uniformed man watching you from his makeshift asbestos cabin near the Dal.

When we read of Kashmir on travel websites, they tell us of the pretty houseboats on the Dal, Gulmarg’s cable car (the highest in the world) and skiing track, and Sonamarg’s  popularity as a snowboarding and horse riding destination.  Visit Kashmir, they tell us, to spend your honeymoon, to live in the land of the Gods, to ski, to paint, to love. A tourist’s heaven, they say excitedly.

It’s a state that desperately depends on tourism to make daily ends meet.  It is the story of the handsome Firdaus, a 17 old History Hons student, sitting in his pheran (local Kashmiri male robe) in a dingy shop just outside Gulmarg, renting out snow jackets and shoes to tourists eager to ride up the highest cable car in the world. It is also the story of Pervez, that young lad from Sonamarg, whose job is to seat tourists on underfed, overworked ponies and then guide them uphill over 6 kilometers of grass, slush and rocks to those snow-white hills where we ski and sled so joyfully. Everywhere in Kashmir there are hundreds of young men like Firdaus and Pervez, and that includes the courteous bell boys at the Adhoos hotel where we were staying – them with graduate educational backgrounds but no jobs that these degrees should have rightfully procured. 

It’s also about Fayaz and Farooq who drove us around the beautiful state for six days, and became my friends. One evening, I slipped out of the hotel and went over to Farooq’s to spend the night with his family. As I saw the lean man, hunching over his food, the wrinkles and grey hair shining in the lamp’s beam, I figured he must be around fifty. “Thirty two,” he replied when I asked him. “Twenty five,” quipped Fayaz. It is the tale of a state whose political misfortune and stress has caused an entire generation and the next to age quicker.

And that is why the internet needs more travel writers. A content writer has only the freedom to look at a place for its lush verdant valleys or sun kissed beaches. Kashmir, of course, has oodles of the former. But a travel writer has the power to smell the air, to peer inside a house, and most importantly the power to bring out a story, hopefully with compassion and life.

In Kashmir, you shall see handsome young men, with their stubbled beards and hair parted in the middle. The women are light eyed, and their heads are covered with scarves. It is a race that is naturally beautiful – apple cheeks and glowing skin.

Kashmir has had a torrid past, but conditions are now improving. The last 4-5 years have seen tourists come in thousands, the most in the last 20 years.  And that’s how we came in too, to ride the shikaras on the Dal, to tramp through the Mughal Gardens, buy original saffron and dry fruits, to run up pretty white mountains and click a dozen pictures in all these places.

But that day as we first sat in the flight from Delhi to Srinagar, I was absolutely unaware about how this journey through the beautiful land would completely overwhelm me. As my tour party chattering animatedly with each other in the tempo traveller that drove us from the airport to the hotel, all I could think of was how in the devil’s name was I going to make them like me, when I couldn’t even speak their language.  The breeze kept blowing merrily though.




---------   The End ----------

More stories on the Kashmir trip coming next week

Now Read:

1) Couchsurfing in Goa : The House near Toff Toff's
2) The Road Trip Adventures: A Prologue
3) The good men of India: A story at 17000 feet
>/br>

One Night on the Andaman Sea

‘There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea,whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.’  - Herman Melville (Moby Dick)


Once upon a 2008 March night...

“I think I need alcohol,” Sanju informed me in a manner most matter of fact.  It was quintessential Sanjay, to want alcohol in a most matter of fact sort of way, even when we were on a ship.

“You already know its not allowed on the ship,” Divya reminded him, without sounding like a preacher. And correct she was, for the M.V.Harshavardhana, as well as all other passenger ships that ply between the Indian mainland and Port Blair prohibit liquor drinking on board.  The six of us ambled along the remaining distance to the deck in silence.

There were a large number of people lined up on the deck. The stood at the edge, their hands on the railings, chatting away under the evening sky.  And then the breeze hit me.  Not like the pleasant variety that gently passes you by on a cloudy city day; this was a wind that did not care much for manners, strongly youthful and in your face. It whistled, marched along like a man on a mission, setting to conquer all. It did not want you to smile at it, it wanted you to gush in awe.

And then, I noticed her, smiling at him.

Sanjay caught my look and shook his head. He couldn’t accuse me of inconsistency though. I had been furtively looking at her for two days now, right from when the group had first reached my house in Chennai.  “Not really great manners to keep your mouth open while staring, you know,” Aditya helpfully informed. And since I am a receptive man, I closed my mouth with such a clang that all those who stood at the deck railings peered over, to gauge if the ship had hit an iceberg or something.

She was pretty. Worse, she was composed, enviably so. A kind of composure that maybe comes from being completely secure about yourself, from being brought up well and by a loving family, from being liked by all. Her grace unsettled me, even made me feel like a child in comparison, and I found myself falling deep. Rahul however was doing a significantly better job at the opening-the-mouth business, for every time his jaws parted and he said something that, she would, and this the part I don't understand, laugh. Highly unacceptable behaviour from both.

I figure that you have now been introduced to the six of us – Sanjay, Aditya, Rahul, Divya, Shweta and I. Notice how subtly I put Shweta and my name together without you realizing it? Sheer class.

We found ourselves a small vacant spot on the deck and spread a bed sheet.  In a move cleverer than the one I last spoke of, Rahul ensured that when we lay, his diabolical self would be lying next to her. I meanwhile was left rotting in between my two best friends Sanjay and Aditya.

“You really had to call Rahul for this trip?” I hissed to Sanjay. “I think they are kissing,” was the helpful reply. “Oh please. There is only so much space on the sheet. That’s the only reason why she’s letting him lie that close. No body contact.” I croaked, peering over the bodies. The roar of the waves smothered the guffaws of my friends, if not the tremors in my heart.

The wind won over us all, one man one woman at a time, and we dozed off, on that tiny bed sheet, on the deck.I do not know why I woke up when she stood and left.  If life had a way of replaying itself, I would have known that it was Adi placing his thigh on my stomach that had roused me (not aroused me), but since nature does not allow any such replays, I deluded  myself to believe that it was love that was responsible.

She went to the railing and looked at the sea, possibly for answers she would not get back. From the corner of my eye, I saw a man who stood a couple of metres from her, go closer. His face was unshaven, his hair tousled and wavy. The wind pushed his mop of hair back in a way that one might think his hairline was receding.  Concerned, I stood up and seeing me, she beckoned me over with a smile. When I reached her, the man grinned at us, and retraced his steps. He had just been a regular guy wanting to talk to a regular girl.

“Are you a good swimmer?” she asked me, looking into the black swirling waters below. “Like a fish, in my tub back home. Err but put me in any water that rises above my eyebrows and all you have is an expert drowner." After a pause, I added "And you?"

“Oh I have always been a water baby. My father used to take us all to the club pool every day. Despite his weight, he was the best, cutting through the water like an athlete”. The pride in her voice was too glaring to miss. I tried to imagine an overweight man metres ahead of a floundering family in the pool. Years of courting has taught me that it’s always better to tease, than to admire. But at that moment, she had too much power over me, and despite myself, I found myself complimenting her father - her man.

“Have you heard of the Moken?” she asked me, looking at my eyes for a moment.  When I shook my head, she pointed to her left, out a long way into the sea.

“The Moken are the people of the sea,” she said and the waves swirled, as if it was their, and not her, secret she was revealing.  I touched her forehead and she smiled a bit, at my mock attempt of checking her temperature.

“Deep in the Andaman Sea, somewhere between Burma and Thailand, live the Moken people, or the sea gypsies .  They travel the seas in the boats that they live in, eat from the sea, only return to land during the monsoons.”  Aditya had now stirred and was urgently trying to wake Sanjay up to tell him about us standing alone. My friends, I realized, don’t let up ever, not even on nights as starry as these.

“The Moken,” my story teller continued, “are extraordinary divers. Having lived in the sea all their lives, they can see better and stay underwater for longer durations than other humans. They are lightning fast in water and can catch fish and sea cucumbers with their bare hands. You know Neeraj, Moken babies can swim even before they learn to walk. Isn't that awesome!” I liked how she took my name. I must admit I found that relatively more awesome.

The boat was leaving a beautiful wake behind, that gleamed silver in the moonlight.  “Maybe we shall spot them tomorrow during the day,” I remarked, envisioning several dark semi naked people, staring back at us as curiously, from their handmade boats.

That night, we spoke of other things too; of the constellations in the sky, the books we liked, and why Adi looked so ungainly while lying down. When we returned and took our respective spots , I looked at my friends, expecting they would  ask me all.

“I need some alcohol,” Sanju informed in a manner most matter of fact. Quintessentially him.
—–
P.S. Later in that trip, we saw flying fish, and dolphins that raced with the ship for dolphins will always be show ponies first and cautious later. But we never saw the Moken, for they who have been living in the sea for centuries know how to hide themselves if they want to.
I wasn’t to know until many years later that when the tsunami struck the coasts of the South Asian countries that 2005 December, and caused such widespread death and destruction, the Moken were left untouched. Having lived so close to the waters, they knew its every mood and whim, and had retreated to high ground a day before the tsunami eventually struck.  What we and all our modern technology could not foresee, these people had just by being close to, and respecting the sea.  That day, however the sea stayed quiet, taking care of all those who rode it.

Now Read:

1) Kathmandu: In the House of the World's Only Living Goddess
2) Conversations with a Russian Backpacker
3) The Man who Hitchhiked 25,000 kms across the World

It Takes Two to Tango

I first heard of ‘Argentina’ during a football game my father was watching on our 14 inch television, while I sat under his arm trying to do what men did. Watch the match I mean, not admire his armpits. They were all running in their striped white and blue shirts, but one curly haired boy was running faster than all of them. My father, well he was laughing because this man would keep falling without a reason, and earning a foul for his team much to the anger and shock of the opposite team.

I guess I have a thing for curly haired boys. The other one I liked went on to become the greatest batsman in the world.

Argentina, however, for a very long time, meant Diego Maradona to me. It had a beautiful ring to it, ‘Maradona’. You are bound to be something, with a name like that.

Over the years, I started to view life from outside that big man’s arm. Argentina did not come much into my reading in those days. When it did, it was because I was reading about a handsome fellow who started from his home in Argentina and travelled across the South American continent, on a motorcycle with a friend. The journey disturbed, educated and changed him as a man.  It also became the single biggest reason for making him one of the most recognizable figures across the world. You can see his posters plastered in the small shops of Palakkad and on the back of the buses in Thailand. His name? Che Guevara. You are bound to be something with a name like that.

But this story is about neither men.  A month after I saw the Motorcycle Diaries (based on Che’s life), I was at a wedding and found myself talking to this rather attractive looking soul. The conversation veered around movies and I launched into what I thought was a sufficiently intellectual discourse on Che and Argentina). The world was not conspiring for me though, and soon a diplodocus invited her to the stage. Not the dinosaur breed, we are referring to a suitor here. Without any warning, they launched into a sensual dance, flowing into each other’s arms and bodies, stamping the floor as if they held it in contempt, yet moving across it like lithe beings. The rest of us just stood there transfixed, in admiration.

“Tango,” someone declared. Later, as I was having dinner, she came up from behind and whispered “I hoped you liked that. It is Argentine too.”  I would have choked on my food had I not taught myself, over several years,  to not choke in the presence of prettiness.

Very few good things have come out of slavery. Tango’s one of them.  In the 1800s, Africans were shipped as slaves to the Americas, and Argentina was no exception.  The dances popular in Argentina at that time were the Polka and the Cuban Habanera. Along came the African Candombe.

Earlier couple dances were mostly restricted to holding hands. The Viennese Waltz (in 1830) was the first dance in which the lead held one hand of the follow, and put his second around her back, and it became a craze in Europe. 10 years later, the Polka became the second dance to use such a hold.

In 1853, Argentina banned slavery, and the Africans tried resurrecting their lives.  Disillusioned, bitter, these compadritos (young men) in slouch hats, loosely tied handkerchiefs, boots and knives tucked casually in their belts, frequented the ghettos outside Buenos Aires, and tried to lose their despair in the music, the lights, the revolving dance, and in the bodies of their partners in these modest bars and brothels. It was first in such establishments where the African rhythms were introduced to the Argentine Milonga music, and it became the poor man’s dance, a dance of the streets.  It was voluptuous, raw, passionate. Cheeks touched close, teeth were gritted, and the lead led with a rose in his mouth. It was nothing like what the world had ever seen before.

Argentina’s high society looked down upon this, just as all high societies do all over the world. However, it did not stop many young men from rich families to visit the slums and the brothels. Soon everyone knew about the Tango, and it started spreading from its birth city, to Uruguay.

In the early 1900s, rich families from Argentina sent their sons to Paris (the centre of the world in those days). Parisian society, always eager for innovation, did not disapprove of the risqué dance moves. Nor did they mind dancing with wealthy young men. The African rhythms, the Latin heart, the fast paced nature, the shocking body contact, and the erotic nature of it all helped spread it like wildfire in Paris.  In 1910, the frenzy gripped London.

In 1916 the American dancer Isadora Duncan visited Argentina and declared: “I have never danced Tango, and today a charming tourist guide forced me to dance. My first steps were timid, but the feeling of the languid music caused my body to respond to the voluptuousness of the dance. Soft as a caress, toxic as love under the midday sun, cruel and dangerous as a tropical forest.”

The high society in Argentina which had shunned the Tango all this while, were now ready to accept it as a National treasure after Paris and London, and the whole world had fallen in love with it.


Rock and Roll invaded the world in the 70s and it lead to an almost an extinction of the Tango. However in the 90s, there was a Tango Renaissance and today there are clubs all over the world (India too) where people, like that girl I met once, learn the dance. In the last World Tango Championships, a Japanese couple won first prize.

 There are certain etiquettes associated with the dance.  On entering the hall (especially in Argentina), it is regular practice to not approach a person directly, but to try and catch their eye. If they do make eye contact and look back at you with favour, the man leads the lady to the floor. This practice of asking someone to dance with eye contact and a nod is called ‘Cabaceo’. Dancers have the right of passage of way, and be careful to not go through it, but around it. Don’t hold up the traffic, the floor is constantly moving forward. It is common to dance in an embrace during the Tango, but be aware and sensitive to your partner’s comfort zones.  Once a dance is over, even if you want to dance again with the same person, you are supposed to go off the floor and wait till the music starts again. This is to let all dancers have the opportunity to make eye contact with people they want to dance with.
For the last 50 years, Argentina and Uruguay have been fighting tooth and nail, insisting that the dance originated in their country. Recently the United Nations gave the dance an “Intangible Cultural Heritage Status” and jointly recognized both nations as the source. Well, maybe it really takes two to Tango.