Return to non-innocence

After almost one year on the road, I landed in the United States two hours after the Boston Marathon bombing. As I was standing in the long immigration line, all I could see on the TV was CNN reporters hammering in the early details over and over again. My first thoughts turned to a Pakistani-American friend who was running the marathon that day. Within a few hours, I found out that she had finished the marathon just a half hour before the bombings and was just 2-3 blocks away from the finish line. Last May, my trip started in Egypt on a day which saw the death of 10-15 protesters in Cairo. And this April, my trip ends with the death of innocent athletes in Boston.

Life back in the United States has been fine so far. The first thing I had to worry about immediately after landing was filing my tax returns. Talk about excitement! Navigating that maze meant that catching up with family had to wait for the next day. It was great to see them after such a long time, specially my niece who can engage in proper yet completely nonsensical conversations. It is adorable in its own way. In one year, she has learned to make up stories on the fly; an indication that she is a fiction writer in the making. Other than that, it felt like we had all said goodbye just yesterday. After a day or two of storytelling, we were back to our old ways; pulling each other’s legs and digging up the same old funny stories about each other. That sense of familiarity felt good.

Almost everyone I meet keeps saying that nothing has changed. I look the same and act the same way. And yet, so much has changed! Sure, it was nice to sleep in the same, comfortable bed, take the same shower, and eat some healthy, home cooked food after such a long time. But within a week, I realized that I don’t like driving and traffic as much as I used to. In the whole year that I was on the road, I drove a car only for the ten days I was in New Zealand. The rest was public transportation, flights, and a whole lotta walking. On the other hand, I have learned to enjoy walking. I remember the first month of my trip when I used to get anxious waiting for buses and trains, or walking a couple of miles to get to my destination. I used to feel like I was wasting time. Slowly but surely, I convinced myself that waiting and walking were an integral part of the experience. Walk along, smell the roses, talk to people, learn how wide or narrow the sidewalks are and what the local people throw on it, peek into people’s homes, take in the smells of the side alleys; in the sterilized American suburbia, I miss all that.

In a way, I still haven’t finished my trip because I haven’t started working again. It is still fun to meet old friends and catch up with them. The real test is going to be the first few weeks of my next job. Maybe that is the reason why I am looking for something that will keep me outside of my office and in the middle of the chaos called humanity. But for a few weeks, at least, it is fun to renew all the old friendships. People have moved up the corporate ladder. Some have gotten promoted, others have starter their own businesses, some have completely switched tracks, some have gotten married, some have kids now, and some have them on the way. Then again, just like my fellow travelers had predicted, the things they complain about haven’t changed much. And I haven’t changed my habit of being a patient listener and nodding away. After this trip, I find myself so far removed from the day-to-day struggles of everyone around me that I don’t even know what to say. What should I say? Go pack your bags and see the world. Learn about all the horrific things our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have endured. Climb Kilimanjaro, scuba dive in the great barrier reef, go shark cage diving, breathe in the fresh air of Norway, enjoy the serenity of sitting by the lakes of New Zealand, talk to the young revolutionaries of Egypt, meet random strangers and fall in love with them. Just go out, embrace the world, and find out what you enjoy doing.

But I know they will all look at me with a fake smile and say “You’re funny.” Not really. Life is only as complicated as you want it to be. What if you are an innocent bystander who unfortunately meets his death tomorrow? Do you want to die happy? Or die complaining?

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction

Medellin. My last stop of this crazy journey. Three nights here, a quick stopover in Bogota and then fly back to the United States. No matter how many times I think about it, I still find it hard to believe that I’ve seen and done so much in one year. I guess every good thing has to come to an end.

Medellin is everything that the Amazon jungle is not. A bustling city with chaotic traffic, charming nightlife, and beautiful women, which would beat Buenos Aires and Rio any day. There is a reason why Colombia keeps winning international beauty pageants and it’s called Medellin. But what makes Medellin intriguing is its notorious son, Pablo Escobar.

There are other tours in the city that take you to the city center, the nearby mountains, the churches, and the historic towns. As a foreigner, though, I found the Pablo Escobar tour as the eeriest and the most mind-boggling one. While I had heard about Colombia being the center of the drug universe and Medellin as the cocaine capital of the world, I hadn’t spent enough time reading about Pablo Escobar, the undisputed king of cocaine during the 70’s and 80’s. For the handful of locals that I talked to, the suffering has been too close for comfort. Plus, nobody really wants their country to be associated with drug lords and drug trafficking. Even more so when you’re a proud Colombian because in the 20th century, this is one of the few countries in South America that hasn’t had its democratic institutions trampled on by dictators. Former president Uribe came close to it, but never succeeded in it.

Nonetheless, as a foreigner, Pablo Escobar’s story is a classic rags-to-riches story full of failure of democratic institutions, a twisted sense of morality, grandeur, pomp, unbelievable power, outsized egos, gruesome violence, and everything in between. There is a reason why, regardless of our sense of morality, we find Godfather-like personalities enigmatic and charming. To quote a line from a Hindi movie, these guys engage in illegitimate businesses with a sense of fairness that is sometimes hard to find in the world of legal businesses. Pablo was no exception.

As we started the tour, they started playing the documentary “The two Escobars.” For the uninitiated, this is a good place to start. His rise from a petty thief in the poor neighborhoods of Medellin to one of FBI’s most wanted criminals selling $500 million of cocaine a day is astonishing on a lot of levels. At one point, he was making so much cash that he didn’t know what to do with it or even how to store it! Legend has it that rats were eating away the piles of cash he had. He was schmoozing with prime ministers, presidents, and celebrities from around the world and had 80 airplanes at his disposal. Frank Sinatra visited his ranch in Colombia and when FBI had a $10 million bounty on his name, he visited the United States, took pictures standing in front of the White House, and released them just to rub it in. At the height of his empire, when he started feeling the noose tightening around him, he was still so powerful that he elected himself to the Colombian parliament and ensured the passage of a constitutional amendment to abolish the extradition treaty with the US before he decided to surrender. Surrender he did. And how. When he eventually decided to surrender, he engaged in protracted negotiations with the government to ensure that they would build a five-star prison just for him. As someone who was angry at the government’s neglect of the poor, he perfected the art of greasing the entire democratic machinery to build a criminal empire that set a new benchmark in terms of its size and scope and influence.

And yet, in spite of all this outsized power, he never forgot where he came from. He built hundreds of football fields in the poor neighborhoods of Colombia and acted as the godfather for a whole generation of Colombian football players. He built schools for poor Colombians and, ironically, kept telling young kids to stay away from cocaine. When one of the slums in Medellin burnt down, he rebuilt the entire neighborhood, giving away homes to 300 devastated families. The neighborhood is called Pablo Escobar. To politicians and criminals all over the world, Pablo’s word was Pablo’s word. The guy who brought so much embarrassment to Colombian citizens also gave them a sense of pride and put Colombia on the international football map when the Colombian national football team qualified for the US World Cup in 1994 and started as one of the favorites.

In the end, he got what he deserved. When the Colombian special operations teams came looking for him, he escaped his five-star prison and, after a few weeks of hot pursuit, was killed in broad daylight. Or maybe committed suicide, depending on what version you want to believe. Even after death, visiting his grave gives us glimpses of his split personality. His inflated ego didn’t change his desire to be buried in a simple grave in the community that he grew up in. This entire story sounds more like a fast-paced Robert Ludlum or a John le Carré thriller, except for the fact that as you are taking the tour, they stop by some of the buildings that are still bombed out and stand as witnesses to the carnage that was a result of his wars against the rival Cali cartel and then against the Colombian government.

But the real kicker on this tour is the last stop. After climbing one of the hills surrounding the city, you get to the house of Pablo Escobar’s mother. She is long gone, but Pablo’s brother Roberto still lives there. Roberto was a gifted athlete and won several cycling medals as a teenager, but was sucked into his brother’s thriving business. He was the finance guy of the cartel and handled all the cash flow for their worldwide business. He managed to escape the five-star prison with Pablo, but apparently Pablo convinced him to turn himself in and escape near-certain death at the hands of the Colombian government. He got 22 years in prison and according to the tour guide, learned medicine while in prison and was released after 11 years because of his good conduct. When he was in prison, someone sent him a letter bomb and it blew up in his face. He somehow survived the bomb blast, but it disfigured and disabled him for life. They say multiple plastic surgeries have restored his face, but he has lost almost all of his vision and can’t hear well, either.

Seeing him in flesh and blood is a strange experience. He seems to be cordial and welcoming. He has been claiming for some time now that the money he makes by selling Pablo’s memorabilia and souvenirs goes toward a charity helping HIV research. He also claims that the research has led to development of a vaccine that has already cured 15-20 patients and that they are waiting for approval by regulatory agencies.

I have no way of verifying all these claims, but unlike my fellow backpackers on the tour, I didn’t feel the burning desire to buy any posters or bumper stickers of someone I consider to be a bad guy with a few shades of virtue in him. Roberto, on the other hand, turned out to be a bit of a moral dilemma for me. As someone who handled the money of the cartel, does he have a shot at redemption? Does spending 11 years in prison and partially losing his sight and hearing count as enough repentance? What if his claims about the HIV vaccine are true? Does that count for anything? After all, the difference between arguably morally defensible collateral damage and a cold-blooded murder is the larger context. If the death of an innocent bystander is a part of a larger war to liberate an oppressed society, we are more likely to condone it. Then, what if Roberto’s presumably charitable causes end up saving more people than Pablo’s cartel killed?

As we were getting ready to leave his house, I asked him if he had the chance to change one thing in his life, what, if anything, he would change. Without even a second’s worth of pondering, he said “Toda la vida.” He would change his whole life. If you have to live the rest of your life thinking that you would like to change everything in your past, is there any bigger punishment than that?

I have no clear answers to these questions, but on my way back to the United States, my mind kept going back to this improbable story of two brothers. Drug addiction, money laundering, murders, dizzying amounts of money, unchecked power and its corrupting influence, a sense of justice, and perhaps eventual redemption. Some stories have no clear winners and losers; just a bunch of characters that evoke tough moral and ethical questions. And in a larger context, that is what my round the world trip has taught me. It is easy to sit in one corner of the world and pontificate about good and evil. When you actually visit different countries and try to understand the historic and cultural contexts, the situation gets a lot murkier and you learn to accept the world the way it is. The world is morally too complex for one person or one society to impose its vision on the rest of the world.

It’s not all that hopeless, though. Beyond history, culture, and everything that plagues today’s world, there is the individual. You, me, and every other person in the world. Taking a break from life as usual has taught me to find happiness within. Sure, you can keep striving for a better world, whichever way you want to define “better.” And like MLK famously said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” However, it is important to not get disillusioned and disheartened by the world around you or the setbacks you might face in your pursuit of a better world. As Hindu philosophy says, true happiness lies inside. The world around you is just “Maayaa,” an illusion. If you’re looking for happiness in things around you, you are looking in the wrong place. Look inside and it is right there.

Some nice photos from around Medellin

The Escobar story begins. A destroyed building.

Graves of Pablo and his family members.

Some people still come and leave fresh flowers at his grave.

Pablo’s toys.

His famous photo after he surrendered, hanging outside his brother’s house.

A few years ago, some gang attempted to kill Roberto. A bullet hole from that raid.

Roberto’s trophies and such.

Roberto with the tour guide.

The dinner table where Pablo celebrated his last birthday.

A place to stash his money.

One more hidden location in the house.

Roberto signing some Pablo souvenirs.

Roberto next to the poster announcing a $10 million bounty on him and his brother. Amen!

Amazon.rvr/neversayneveragain.ASAP

Bogota was like San Francisco or Melbourne. The weather can change here so quickly that you can get all four seasons in one day. A beautiful, sunny day with 20-25 degree temperature can suddenly turn into a cold, cloudy, and rainy afternoon. But all that cold weather was gone as soon as I landed in Leticia. This small town is at the southern tip of Colombia, but it’s bang in the middle of the Amazon jungle. In this part of the world, it’s just hot and humid. Nonstop.

At first glance, the Amazon river and the jungle seemed like some sort of a combination of the wide open Nile in Egypt and the thick forests of northern Thailand. After a week in the Amazon jungle, it’s safe to say that it’s much, much more than that. On my last crazy trip, the motorcycle adventure, I had kept the best for the last. Macchu Picchu! This trip is no different. I couldn’t have found a better country to end my trip. The Amazon jungle is so magical that it is impossible to describe it in words. But to experience it, you have to challenge yourself physically and mentally. It’s all about mind over matter.

The heat and humidity are just the start. I didn’t grow up on the coasts. 35-40 degree temperatures and almost 100% humidity is my worst nightmare. On our first morning in the jungle, we walked about 2-3 kilometers in exactly that kinda weather. The backpack was around 5 kilograms and wasn’t a big deal, but we had to cover our bodies to save ourselves from mosquitos. A pullover and slacks. Yep, in 40 degree heat and near 100% humidity. It reminded me of my younger days when I was still playing competitive sports. Going to badminton practice with three t-shirts and returning with two of them so wet that it felt like I had just dipped them in a bucket of water. Except for one difference. There was no point in changing clothes in the Amazon. The weather is such that you’ll have to carry 10-15 pullovers to keep yourself sweat-free. And the more weight you carry, the more you’ll sweat. Good luck!

The battle with my own body resumed as soon as we reached the first stop, which was a Malloca; a hut of one of the indigenous people. By backpacking standards, these stops are a bit touristy in the sense that they prepare food for you and they have designated spots where you set up your hammock and sleep. Or at least try to sleep. The guide served us lunch in the military-style bowls and plates we were carrying with us. When we were done eating, it was our job to wash them. There was no tap water in the middle of the jungle and the mineral water we were carrying was just enough for drinking. So, the guide led us to a nearby pond with still water. I could see a nice layer of algae crowding the lakeshore. Diarrhoea? Dysentery? Ha! For the first time on my trip, I regretted not finishing my Hepatitis A and B vaccination. Wash your dishes, wish your body good luck, eat in the same dish again, and don’t forget to wish your body good luck again!

After lunch, it was time for a nap. How do you take a nap in this kinda weather, inside a hammock with a mosquito net, while your entire body is covered with sweat and full-sleeved clothes? I laid down in the hammock and started breathing the heavy air. With the mosquito net killing whatever little breeze was around, I started sweating even more profusely; my body trying to adjust to the temperature. There was no way I was gonna fall asleep! Sure enough, within 20 minutes or so, my body had gotten used to the weather, I was mentally exhausted, and I dozed off!

When I visited Baja California in Mexico – my introduction to backpacking – I told myself that pit toilets – with a cockroach or two crawling out – would be the low bar. I would never do it again. And there I was, walking into another one. No cockroaches this time, but plenty of fruit flies and mosquitos flying around. How much insect spray are you going to use?

As if pit toilets weren’t enough, I also had to deal with my fear of heights. For the past few years, I’ve slowly been trying to overcome it. Amazon, though, was like a pop-quiz meant to shock me to the core. Before we left, the tour guide had told us that we would be sleeping in a tree house one night. Sounded like fun. What he didn’t tell us was the way we were going to get up there. If they had shown us photos, I would’ve said no way! As we were standing under the 45 meter tree (135 feet), one of the guides held the rope tied to a branch at the top of the tree, wrapped up the climbing gear around his waist, and went straight up. Wait a minute. We’re not gonna go up like that, are we? I thought we were gonna hold on to the tree trunk…or something! No, the tree trunk is 3-4 meters away. You can’t even touch it. No, dude!

I decided to take the bull by the horns and went first. I took the two clamps, wrapped the harness around my waist, and started going up. Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down. I went up 5-6 meters and click-swoop, click-swoop. Once again, click-swoop. One of the clamps wasn’t working. Damn it! This should qualify as poetic injustice. I was suspended in mid-air, hanging onto a rope tied to some random branch 45 meters above ground, I had a million mosquitoes hovering all around me, and then, I had to look down. In that state, I had to wait 10-15 minutes for one of the guides to come replace my clamp so that I could continue my inane adventure.

When I finally reached up, there was no tree house. It was a 5mX5m bamboo platform with rickety rails, supported by the branches of the tree. Sleeping here had never crossed my mind. Not even my dreams. Not even my nightmares! These branches better be strong. We have to sleep here!

And then, the mosquitoes. These are my mortal enemies. If there is even one mosquito in the room, it will manage to sniff me out like a needle in a haystack. And if it starts buzzing around me, I can’t even fall asleep. For someone like me, going to the Amazon is like raising your hand to be a sacrificial lamb. I heard that if you take vitamin B tablets for a week or so, mosquitoes don’t bother you because they don’t like your body odor. The only problem was that I found out about it a day before I started the jungle trip. Oh well!

In spite of keeping my hands and legs covered at all times, and pouring a bottle of insect spray on my palms, neck, ears, and face, I started scratching my whole body like never before. I never signed up for that! One of the guys took a photo of my back as a souvenir and told me that the next time he goes to a jungle, he will take me with him. I was like a good insurance policy for him. Ironically enough, after a day or two in the Amazon, I actually started admiring them. These mosquitoes are so good that they can bite you through your clothes. And they’ve gotten so used to navigating mosquito sprays that they can easily locate that one pore on your skin that you missed. How many times have you had a mosquito bite on the inside of your palm? Or where your fingernail meets the skin? Welcome to the Amazon!

I know I’m making it sound like it’s a Herculean task to go hiking and camping in the Amazon jungle. It’s really not that bad. Hundreds of travelers go to the Amazon every year, walk the same trails, and sleep in the same “tree-houses.” That’s how I played the mind-over-matter game. If so many people can do it, so can I. The reward makes it all worth it. Attempting Kilimanjaro was exhilarating. Shark cage diving was thrilling. The sight of Whitehaven beach was soothing. Perito Moreno was awe-inspiring. The Amazon jungle was just pure magic.

For most of the time, you walk through either layers upon layers of dry, rotting leaves or knee-deep mud; the stench of it mixing seamlessly with the aromas of the flowers to create a unique, heavenly blend. In the middle of the muddy trail, the guide somehow notices fresh pug marks of a puma. Less than 24-hours old. What the hell am I doing here again? Then he picks up a tiny frog and puts it on your nail. It’s called a crystal frog because it is almost transparent and you can see its heart beating. It seems to be a bit scared and holding onto your nail like it is holding onto dear life. How the hell does this species survive? How does this tiny frog find its brethren in this seemingly endless jungle? It’s not really about spotting animals, though. Other than some species of monkeys, spiders, insects, and birds, you don’t see much. It’s more about feeling like a stray dog or a cat walking through a city. You are the stranger and all those animals invisible to you are looking at you. In the city, it’s the honking in the morning and the street lights in the evening. In the thickness of Amazonia, it’s the million birds in the morning and a billion other creatures in the evening. As soon as the sun goes down, the frogs set the tone. But it’s like jazz. They improvise all the time. Sometimes, they get tired and the critters pick it up. Some distant monkey plays the lead screeching for a while, then the howling owls do the aria, and the frogs pick it up again. In the middle of it all, your guide takes you to a night walk to see tarantulas and you start walking to the beat of the frogs. I don’t have arachnophobia, but when you see one as big as your palm crawling 2-3 meters away, and the guide picks up a stick and starts nagging it after telling you that it’s a jumping black tarantula, you ask yourself one more time what the hell am I doing here? You come back, lay down in the hammock, and it starts pouring. All of a sudden, the symphony dies down and you can hear a million small little creeks flowing around you, desperately searching for the river. Listen to Ma Rewa by Indian Ocean, hear the rain pick up as the music reaches its crescendo, and you will experience ecstasy! No pills needed.

As we were cruising our way on the Amazon river and out of the jungle, I told myself for the millionth time that this was the spirit of traveling. It’s fun to see the pyramids, the leaning tower, the terra cotta warriors, and go on top of the empire state building to enjoy the view. But every once in a while, you get the opportunity to immerse yourself in nature and understand where you come from. Become one with the trees, the animals, the birds, the river, the mud, the morning sky, and yes, the mosquitoes. Not to see any sights or to admire feats of human engineering; just to go back to your roots. If the indigenous tribes living here do it everyday, and if our explorer ancestors have done it with means far less sophisticated, so can you. Leaving the creature comforts behind and enduring the minor discomfort is our little tribute to them, certainly more fulfilling than visiting the graves of James Cook or Marco Polo!

Monkeying around. Monkey island near Leticia.

One of the indigenous tribes. Bit touristy, but interesting.

Weaving baskets…or something.

It’s rainy season, which means the water level goes up significantly.

First glimpse of the Amazon.

Leave the motorboat and do some kayaking.

Huge leaves of water lilies.

Parrots, in their original habitat.

Whatever this is, in its original habitat.

Night walk. Spider time.

Jumping black tarantula.

A brown tarantula.

Or maybe three.

A nice close-up.

A road less traveled.

Fresh pug mark of a puma.

Interesting fruit.

Froggy!

All different kinds o trees.

Guest for dinner.

Sunset over the Amazon.

View from the hammock.

And then it starts pouring. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!

Time to say goodbye!

Flying out of Leticia. The mighty river, thick jungle, and do you see the edge of rain?

Aire y Sol y Solitude

Patagonia! That outdoor gear brand. In Argentina, it’s half the country. This province in southern Argentina is all about gusty winds, bright sunshine, and a whole lotta nothing.

I started from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. There is an Argentinean highway, Ruta 3, that keeps going south until it can’t go any further. It’s called Fin del Mundo, or the end of the world. I was under the impression that it would be walking distance from the city center. It turned out to be a good 24 km away from the city. A fellow backpacker told me that I could hitchhike my way to the end of the world, but he forgot to tell me to start early in the morning. With a 3 PM start, I was asking for trouble. Cheap thrills, here I come! Out of the 48 km return journey, I managed to hitchhike for some 30-odd kms. But I failed to find a ride for the all-important final stretch. An elderly couple dropped me off 4-5 kms away from the end and I had to walk the final stretch. In a way, the end of the world was telling me to leave all the man-made stuff behind and use my feet to get there.

The scenery wasn’t as spectacular as Cape of Good Hope, but I wasn’t going there for scenery. It’s the concept. The concept of traveling as far south as the mother earth has roads. Sure, there is Antarctica down below. And if I had the time and money, I would’ve loved to go there. But that’s a sheet of ice; not land in the traditional sense of the world. So, it was great to finally reach the spot where a sign board said that there is no road beyond this point. Of course, there was a tiny church beyond that point. But what is the end of the world without a little bit of religion?

As I turned around and started walking back to find a ride back to the hostel, I realized that this was the beginning of the end. At that point, I still had a little over a month to go. Then again, it was all just a matter of working my way up to the US. A few exciting stops along the way, but the direction of my travels was a bit depressing.

I haven’t even finished my trip yet and I’m already getting withdrawal symptoms. Slowly but surely, I’ve started worrying about my life after the trip. What will my next job opportunity be? Where will it take me? How will I feel to go back to the “normal” life? How long will I last before I start another big trip? Or something else?

Standing in front of Perito Moreno glacier helped me snap out of all those depressing thoughts. The guide told me that this wasn’t the biggest glacier in the world, but it was one of the largest stable glaciers. Boy is it large! Forget about the boat ride and the glacier walk that allow you to touch it and feel it and play with it, but just standing in the viewing gallery, looking at the length and breadth and height of this beautiful creation of nature makes you feel so insignificant that all your depressing thoughts vanish before your jaw drops to the floor. And if that killer view doesn’t solve the problem, there is always whiskey on the Moreno rocks! Yep, as touristy as it sounds, it was fun to have a shot of Jamison on glacial ice.

The grandeur of Perito Moreno set the tone for the rest of my stay in Patagonia. Two weeks really don’t do justice to this part of the world. The soaring Andes and the Pampas on the Argentinean side can easily compete with New Zealand and Switzerland as the most beautiful place in the world. For backpackers, the remoteness and ruggedness of this terrain makes it all the more exciting. Switzerland and New Zealand are equally beautiful, but you have all the amenities in the world to enjoy them. Patagonia is still underdeveloped, making it physically more challenging to experience it all. Wide open lands, semi-paved roads, steep hikes, sun bearing down from the spotless skies; all in all, just like Perito Moreno, everything in Patagonia makes you feel pretty pretty small.

The trip from El Calafate to Bariloche was no exception. These states in Argentina are so sparsely populated that you don’t see anything, not even passing cars, for 2-300 kms at a time. Other than the shrubs and bushes and an occasional distant mountain range, it’s just flat, grassy land as far as you can see. As another cheap thrill, I managed to hitchhike from El Calafate to El Chalten. After that, it was some long-ass bus rides. The solitude of sitting in the bus and staring at the nothingness outside the window naturally makes you look inward. The back-to-back 12-hour bus rides from El Chalten to Bariloche were more than enough for that.

Tik…tok…tik…tok.

On my way from Australia to Brazil, I had a 1-day layover in San Francisco. I used it to catch up with some old friends. These are some of the smartest guys I know. One of them was working for Google and the other had just finished his series of interviews with Google, and was waiting for the verdict. As we all met up, they spent about 2 hours analyzing the interviews. The main question on their minds was the “rank” of the interviewers. How many of the interviewers were level 5 and how many of them were level 6?

And here I was, between levels 5 and 6 of solitude in Patagonia. One day before getting on the bus, I shared a breakfast table with a girl from Belgium and a couple from England, all in their early 20′s. The Belgian girl was three weeks into her 6-month trip to South America. The British couple was nine months into their trip of as-yet-undecided duration. In the backpacking world, it’s called “until the money runs out.” And I was 11-months into my year-long trip. At the end of that conversation, I remember telling myself that pretty soon, I would be sitting around lunch and dinner tables, listening to people’s two week vacation plans. Sigh!

As I was replaying the two conversations in my head, I couldn’t help the wry smile on my face. There are people for whom jobs and careers become their lives. And then, there are people for whom jobs and careers are the means to enable their lives, which exist outside of their office walls.

I have become too non-judgmental to criticize either one. But as someone who thought he would grow up to be the former, I’ve started feeling the overwhelming force to be the latter. Marriage and family have definitely become options. And now, even my job and career will become means. Means for another one-year trip, writing another book, making another movie, going to a foreign country to learn a new language, learning to play the saxophone, or whatever else catches my fancy. I will go wherever my life takes me. If somebody asks me “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I’ll be tempted to say “Definitely not in your chair and definitely not asking that question to another candidate.”

A quick stop in Colonia, Uruguay on my way to Ushuaia.

Cathedral in Colonia.

City Hall of Colonia.

Green car?

Sunset in Colonia.

Ushuaia. On the way to Fin del Mundo.

Last couple of kilometers.

If it looks like a fox, if it sounds like a fox, I’m way too close to it!

Fin del Mundo.

Board on the left.

Board on the right.

Tiny church at the end of the world.

Fading light and shadows at the end of the world.

Beautiful lake near El Calafate.

Abandoned animal near an abandoned cave.

Decaying life.

First glimpse of the Perito Moreno glacier.

Getting closer.

Right half of the glacier from the viewing gallery.

And the left half.

Some photos from the boat ride.

From the boat.

Another view.

Huge sheet of ice falling down. Managed to capture the aftermath.

Getting ready to walk on it.

Looking up on the glacier.

Looking downstream.

One of the sink holes.

Some nice views.

One more.

After a hard day’s work, Jamison on the Moreno rocks.

Patagonia! A whole lotta nothing!

And one hitchhiker.

El Chalten. One of the most charming villages in Patagonia. Fitz Roy mountain in the background.

Beautiful valley near El Chalten.

Other side of the valley.

A river runs through it.

Bad timing. But you get the idea. Fitz Roy after a long hike.

Bicycling around Bariloche.

Nice lake on the bicycle circuit.

Feels like Switzerland? It’s Patagonia.

Bariloche central plaza.

Nice statue in the central plaza.

Before I say goodbye to Argentina, here is one of the important historic symbols seen frequently in the country. These are scarves of mothers looking for their missing children. During the dictatorship and the “Dirty War” in Argentina, the military picked up dissidents, locked them up in prisons, and never acknowledged that they tortured them. This is in the memory of the mothers who marched onto Casa Rosada in BA asking for their kids’ whereabouts.

Maracanã or La Bombonera?

If you are a guy, any discussion of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires has to start with women, specially when your stay in Rio coincides with carnival. Like Guns of Navarone, I think someone should make a movie called Girls of Rio or Girls of BA. It’s not as if every girl walking down the street is Gisele. But those who are beautiful are just stunning! Drop dead gorgeous! And whatever else you can imagine.

Girls of Rio are a mix of everything. Native American, African, Mediterranean, Asian. It’s a bit of history and a bit of culture. Perhaps because of Hollywood, and the US being the sole superpower, slavery in the US gets a lot of attention. When you come to Brazil, you learn that during the 17th and 18th century – peak of slave trade – only about 10-15% of the slaves went from Africa to the US. Most of them went to South America. And a huge majority of them ended up in Brazil. Then there were Germans, Italians, and Japanese who came after the second world war. Add the warmth of Brazilian culture to it and voila! You have more than 50 shades of brown. And all of them are amazing! Brazilians can give South Africans a run for their money when it comes to the “Rainbow Nation” tag.

Girls in BA are the exact opposite. On a sunny Sunday, you can sit in a coffee shop on Ave. 9 de Julio and play the Spain, Italy, Germany game as the model-esque women walk by. Spain, Spain, Italy, Spain, Germany, Italy, Germany, mostly Spain but got the German eyes, Germany but got the Mediterranean dark hair, Italy, Spain, Spain, Germany. On and on and on. The brownest you can get is probably the Mediterranean olive skin. As friendly and happy as the Rio girls are, the BA girls carry their model-ness with them everywhere they go. “Oh, I don’t have time to look at you. There is nothing really interesting going on in front of me, but I’ll still keep looking straight in front of me!”

Rio takes the cake when it comes to the biggest party in the world. I’ve seen a few big ones around the world now. Halloween full moon party, assorted locations for New Year’s Eve…Sydney, Istanbul, Las Vegas. But nothing comes anywhere near carnival. For five days, everything in the city shuts down and the only things people are doing are drinking and dancing. Buses, trains, airports, streets, beaches, intersections; every 50 to 100 meters, there is new kinda music and a new kinda party. For these five days, you can sleep whenever you want, but the city doesn’t sleep at all.

BA is not too far behind, though. BA is a life-long party. There is something going on almost every night of the week. People have dinner at 10 in the night and go out after midnight. Monday is probably the only day when things are a bit quiet in the night. You’ll find a milonga somewhere on a Tuesday night, Wednesday is the official “after-work party” day, Thursday is when you get together with friends and start planning your weekend. And then, there is the weekend! It all comes with a healthy side of haughtiness, of course.

In general, though, Rio reminded me of Mumbai. In a New York minute, everything can change. In a Rio minute, everything can change and come back to how it was. On a normal day, everyone is rushing somewhere, wading through the chaotic traffic. Run-down neighborhoods co-mingle with swanky neighborhoods. On the promenade that goes along Copacabana and Ipanema, you can see Porches, Mercs, BMWs; even an occasional Ferrari. And on one of the side streets, you will find people looking for food in dumpsters or collecting empty cans and plastics for recycling. On my way back home from carnival one day, I was sitting in a bus and saw a dead motorcyclist on the street, with blood flowing out of the back of his head. Buses, trucks, cars, and other motorcycles were all whizzing past the scene. Look out the window, do the cross across your chest, and move on. Life here is so busy and rough-and-tumble that people don’t have much time to stop and think. But at the end of the day, they somehow seem to be happy. And carnival time? Double happy!

BA is a bit of a mixed bag. The pretty girls think that they are the best in the world. Other than that, there is a certain degree of stoicism in the air. It is every bit as rough-and-tumble as Rio. But maybe they’ve borrowed some of that Chinese stoicism. The Chinese are stoic because of all the political and cultural upheaval of the past few decades. The BA people seem to be a bit stoic because of the economic issues they keep having every few years. The world goes through economic downturns every 2-3 decades. Argentinean economic cycles are like the world on steroids. They don’t wait for the world economy to collapse. They find ingenious ways to collapse their economy every few years. As one of the local guys was telling me, the current global recession doesn’t feel all that bad because the credit crisis in late ’90s and early 2000′s was so terrible that there were soviet-style lines outside of grocery stores for food.

Rio seems to smile and take everything in its stride and BA seems to be a bit philosophical about the fact that it used to be the capital of one of the richest countries in the world, but has lost its pre-eminence in the world. You can see it in the architecture, too. Rio is blessed with amazing natural beauty. The views from sugarloaf mountain, the “Jesus” mountain and the Copacabana beach are to die for. But architecturally, it is mostly a few old Portuguese buildings surrounded by concrete blocks and slums. BA, on the other hand, is not blessed with natural beauty, but makes up for it with its impressive mix of architectural styles. There is the old colonial architecture mixed with some Greek, French, and Italian styles. When Argentina was one of the richest countries, the government here paid top dollar for famous European architects to come to BA and build imposing buildings, making the BA city center more charming than Rio’s.

Maybe that extends to culture, too. Brazil seems to be rich in street-culture. There is a guy on the street corner with a guitar singing bossanova songs. There is a girl on the beach juggling a football that would put most Americans and Indians to shame. During carnival, there are people sitting outside in neighborhood restaurants with their musical instruments, playing samba music. People stop by, dance for a bit, hug each other, and move on. BA has a bit of this street culture, too. Mostly due to the Italian immigrants. But, BA is more about the high-brow culture. Operas, classical music, the theaters and book shops on Ave. Corrientes, the fancy sculptures in the sprawling gardens in Palermo and Belgrano. In a way, Rio says “We may not have been the richest in the world, but we don’t care.” And BA says “We know we were the best in the world and we want the glory days back, but we don’t know how.”

It is hard to choose one city, or even one country, over the other. Rio has its paõ du quijo (cheese bread) and BA has its milanesas. Rio drinks Cashaça and BA drinks Fernet. To Rio’s samba, BA replies with tango. The Rio hand gesture is the Ali G style clapping with a single hand. The BA hand gesture is the equally entertaining basketball-style three-pointer sign, held horizontal and moved up and down ad infinitum. The languages in these two cities are pretty intriguing, too. I love Spanish because of its oomph. Even with a paucity of words, the way they express the whole range of emotions in Spanish is incredible. Plus, a “cabrón” or a “la puta que lo parió” used at the right time in the conversation are hard to translate in other languages. Portuguese is a totally different world. If Spanish is the language of love and hatred and everything in between, Portuguese, at least the Brazilian version of it, is the language of love. Every syllable in Brazilian Portuguese is emphasized and extended so much that it sounds like two lovers cuddled up, exchanging sweet nothings. I have no Idea how you can fight in Portuguese!

Sometimes, though, it feels like Portuguese is trying to rub Spanish the wrong way. In Spanish, you would say Rio de Haneiro. In Portuguese, you would say Hio de Janeiro. In Spanish, “Now” is “Ahora,” pronounced as aaora. In Portuguese, they spell it the same way, but call it aagora. C’mon, guys! I only know a little bit of Spanish and I’m just trying to learn the basics of Portuguese here. Why do you have to make Portuguese so hard to understand? Poooor favooooor!

Notwithstanding all this confusion, as an Indian, both the languages have influenced India. Spanish “Pan” for bread becomes “Paõ” in Portuguese and “Pav” in Marathi and Hindi. Portuguese “Caju” for cashew is the exact same word in Marathi and Hindi. Portuguese “batata” for potato is the exact same word in Marathi. Spanish “Camisa” for a shirt becomes Hindi “Kameez” and Spanish “Llave” for a key, pronounced as “Shaave” becomes “Chaabi” in Hindi and “Chaavi” in Marathi. Funny how words travel, eh?

All said and done, if you are a guy, any discussion of Rio and BA has to end with fútbol! Sure, Europe is where all the money in fútbol is, but South America is where the corazón and soul of fútbol is. Maracanã in Rio is easily the Mecca of fútbol. Wimbledon center court, the Lords, and the Yankees stadium all rolled into one. Imagine more than a 100,000 fans watching the World Cup final next year in this stadium! And millions more in and around Rio partying like there is no tomorrow. But even in this department, BA comes up with a fitting riposte. In the gritty neighborhood of La Boca, which the earliest Italian immigrants called their home, La Bombonera, home of the Boca Juniors, stands out like a palace. As you walk into the stadium, they tell you the funny story of how the famous blue and yellow colors were chosen. With the founding members of the club unable to agree on the colors of the club jerseys, they decided to pick the colors of the first ship to sail into the bay, which happened to be a Swedish ship. Ergo, blue and yellow. With its strange shape – one of the four sides just a straight wall with no seats for spectators – it resembles a Roman-era theater. Or reminds you of the green monster in Boston. The more interesting stuff, though, is outside the stadium. Maradona, the famous son of Boca Jr., is plastered all of over the neighborhood walls. Even the Hand of God is painted with pride on the wall of one of the nearby restaurants. Maracanã might be grand, but La Bombonera definitely has more character. It’s like Pele and Maradona. If Pele is the elderly statesman, Maradona is the equally gifted bad boy. Pele is classy, Maradona is flamboyant. Take your pick!

A local friend told me that Rio and BA are like brothers who keep fighting, but still know that they are one family. It’s like my brother and me. Other than our love for bacon, science, and all things sports, we have little in common. And while my brother’s life has mostly gravitated around the US and India, if Rio or BA throws a good opportunity my way, I might just move there. Watch out, South America!

And when two brothers start fighting, big daddy has to step in as the arbiter. Perhaps it is poetic justice that the Iguazu Falls are located roughly the same distance from Rio and BA and are shared by Brazil and Argentina. At four times the expanse of the Niagara falls, these falls are beyond mind-blowing. Standing between Rio and BA, it seems to tell the two brothers “Shut up, boys. Daddy is still in the hizzie!”

Getting ready for carnival. It’s serious business!

What’s up with that?

Final touches…

Directing traffic.

Beer, anyone?

Anything goes.

Flintstones, I guess.

What’s up with that?

You can even parasail through the crowd, if you want.

Anyone need a hat?

I have no idea!

Just another carnival day. This is about 40 degrees with 90% humidity!

Floats getting ready for samba parade.

One more.

The last one.

And then, people get drunk!

And can’t find a toilet.

A bit of the sad side.

But wait, there is another parade!

Some colonial architecture.

In the Rio city center.

Anyone hungry for batata?

The real treasure of Rio. Copacabana beach.

Sun of God?

Another angle.

This city is just stunning!

Another aerial view of Rio.

I generally don’t like to say ridiculously beautiful. But there you go!

Copacabana beach getting ready for the football world cup.

Other side of the sand castle.

Copacabana at sundown.

Who needs more proof that this is the best city landscape in the world?

A few photographs from around Brazil. City of Tiradentes.

Portuguese style cathedral.

Inside one of the cathedrals in Tiradentes.

Three generations of “El Otro Loco’s” family. Father and nephew. Stories about visiting his house in the tiny town of Entre Rios will have to wait.

Charming village life in Entre Rios.

I can safely say that you cannot OD on these.

Welcome to BA.

Can you spot the odd one out?

Nice statues in Palermo.

Still Palermo.

Greek style church in front of an Andalucian style dome. Near Casa Rosada in BA city center.

Nice church near Casa Rosada.

Casa Rosada. Argentina’s White House.

Another church in the city center.

Neighborhood of La Boca.

Colorful!

Very colorful!

Work in progress.

La Bombonera!

This is an after-work party on a regular Wednesday night. Formal dress code is strictly enforced. But if you speak English, they let you in with a jeans and t-shirt.

BA opera house in the night.

Ready for the big daddy?

No commentary needed.

Laziness and vanity, maybe?

I logged into the blogging site the other day and the website told me that it’s my first blogging anniversary. Time flies, specially when you are flying all over the world! So, as my blogging anniversary gift to myself, I have decided to be incredibly lazy and vain today. I came across a blog post reviewing the book I wrote 3-4 years ago. It’s not a review in the traditional sense of the word. But it illustrates why writers keep talking about the joy of writing. I write mostly because I feel like writing. It’s a cathartic experience. What has surprised me over the years is the number of strangers I’ve connected with through writing.

If I were a student of literature and creative writing, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so surprising. Maybe they talk about connecting with readers in those courses. I’m an accidental writer. So, when I get some validation like this, it is icing on the anniversary cake!

Since we just celebrated International Women’s Day, I also congratulate the writer on her courage to carve out her own path and her own place in the world.

http://sunshinenjoy.blogspot.com/2013/03/i-think-i-fucked-up.html

Switch off and connect more!

This article about detachment was originally published in the March 2013 issue of the online magazine “Courageous Creativity.” The magazine issue has other, even better stories about detachment and is available at:

http://flyingchickadee.com/zine.html

Switch Off and Connect More!

It was just yesterday when I visited a contemporary art museum in a city called Inhotim in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. It is easily one of the most magical places I’ve ever been to. It is a sprawling botanical garden spread over 100 or so acres, dotted with beautiful, modern sculptures and galleries with intensely creative exhibits. One such exhibit was a 22-minute movie called “The Last Silent Movie.” I walked into a pitch-dark theater and the movie started rolling. The screen was dark for the entire duration of the movie and the audio track was a collection of words and sentences spoken in languages that are now extinct. There were subtitles in Portuguese, which means that I didn’t understand much. Based on my basic knowledge of Spanish, I could tell that they weren’t saying anything profound in those extinct languages. One person was telling about his life, other was talking about his family, one more was reciting commonly used verbs translated in her dead language, yet another language was entirely based on whistling. If that last one was my only language option, I would’ve been labeled an idiot!

In April last year, I turned off my cellphone and set out to see the world. Barring a few weeks in which I had to coordinate my schedule with some families or friends hosting me, I have managed to keep my phone off. On this yearlong trip, this isolation and distance have helped me experience some genuine moments of ecstasy, agony, compassion, and universal understanding, which means I’ve connected more with less communication. Climbing Kilimanjaro for four days, only to turn around when I had barely 800 meters left to go. Visiting the concentration camp in Auschwitz to confront our own cruel history. Sitting on a secluded beach in Zanzibar and reading Farid Attar’s poem “The Conference of the Birds.” Losing my way in the city of Xi’an in China and trying to explain “The Terra-cotta Warriors” to Chinese people with sign language. I can go on and on.

I’m certainly no technophobe, and I’m intimately aware of what’s going on in the social media world. As a part of my professional life, I’ve had to keep up with the latest trends in science and technology and most of those trends are fast-paced and exciting. But our brains are exquisitely tuned to filter out more than 90% of the information that hits our senses every second of every minute of every day. And here we are, making our brains’ tasks more and more difficult by bombarding ourselves with more junk. Texting, for instance, giving us the illusion of better connection. I have always found it to be a hindrance. A hindrance to the conversation I’m having or the document I’m writing or the movie that I’m watching. Then there’s Twitter, Facebook…Oh wait! Maybe we want to cast as wide a net as possible when we download that latest craze “Bang with Friends.” So, I want to have a one-night-stand and I am not even willing to go out to a bar, talk to the person, see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch, or read it from her body language? Out of fear of rejection, we become willing to outsource the job of our beautiful senses to a click of a mouse button. By playing on our primal instincts, technology is forcing a strange kind of detachment on us from our own senses.

There is still hope, though! Switching off my cellphone and traveling to far and distant lands has been a good way of seeing that ray of light. It’s not just switching off the phone, though. You also have to take a break from your friendships and family relationships. Sure, I have been talking to my family via Skype every once in a while and I am keeping in touch with my close friends through occasional emails. Other than that, I’ve been successful at keeping the clutter down to the bare minimum. And successful at keeping my senses and my brain open to my immediate surroundings. Nobody is waiting for my phone calls or emails and I am not waiting for anything from anyone, either. Every chance one gets to do this is worth grabbing. If you are ever too scared or anxious about what would happen, think of it as a scientific experiment or some bitter pill that you have to take because you are sick. In the end it is always more rewarding in more ways than one.

In hindsight, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise that I didn’t follow the subtitles in “The Last Silent Movie” down to the word. It made me reflect on the title of the documentary. The movie had sounds, but without subtitles, it was as good as a silent movie. More importantly, it made me think about languages themselves. In the heydays of Latin and Sanskrit, I’m sure nobody thought that these languages would ever be dead languages. Today, they are confined to some church masses and Hindu religious ceremonies. Calligraphy, the art of beautifying Chinese script by incorporating images of everyday objects and landscapes, has been relegated to a tool to merely attract tourists. In this age of computers, the whole concept of handwriting is on its way to extinction, anyway. The ephemeral nature of language itself – the tool that has helped humans communicate with each other and dominate other species – was thrown into sharp relief in that tiny theater. Sitting in that small, dark room, miles away from family and friends, and light years away from cellphones and Internet, listening to those dead languages was a powerful experience. It helped me ponder the way we communicate. Writers love to say that everything we do and everything we say melts away into the ether. Your written word stays forever. But how many of us have read any Latin or Sanskrit texts? Forget about our emotions, our ambitions, our dreams, and our hopes, even our language is so feeble that it can’t resist the tide of changing times. And what are you fighting about?

There is a Facebook kind of forced detachment that moves one away from one’s senses and sucks one into the world of mouse clicks and keyboard hits. And then, there is a round-the-world-trip kind of detachment that moves one closer to one’s senses and away from computer-generated reality. The choice is ours!

The middle earth

There is the middle kingdom, with a billion and a half inhabitants, and then, there is the middle earth, with hardly any. The middle kingdom is in the thick of it all, awe-inspiring for some, and fear-inducing for others. And the middle earth has found herself a quiet corner of the world, just on the edge of people’s consciousness. But the middle earth is like that quiet, shy girl sitting in a corner in a coffee shop, solving crosswords and minding her own business. You are worried that if you approach her and say hi, she will start trembling in fear, drop her pencil, mumble a few words, and then go silent. But when you actually go talk to her, you walk away wondering “This is the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. Why did I not talk to her earlier?”

New Zealand is so far away from everything and everywhere that until a few years ago, other than lamb aficionados, and maybe cricket fans, nobody had probably heard about it in their daily lives. If you walked into a fancy restaurant and read “New Zealand” under lamb chops, you didn’t mind paying a few extra bucks for it. And every cricket fan knew where Richard Hadlee, Danny Morrison, Daniel Vitorri and Shane Bond were from.

It all changed after Sir Peter Jackson released a million Lord of the Rings. I haven’t seen any of those. I know, I know! I know that this story of hobbits has strong philosophical undercurrents and that the books are much more vivid and interesting than their screen adaptations. Like the Harry Potters, I just couldn’t get myself to care about them. I also know that I’m probably one of the last four (or five, maybe) people on earth who haven’t seen the movies and if they could, they would put me in a zoo with a tag that says “One of the rare human specimens that hasn’t seen The Lord of the Rings.” But during my two weeks here, New Zealand brought me THIS close to seeing them.

New Zealand has wholeheartedly embraced the status of The Lord of the Rings country. As I got on the Air New Zealand flight to Christchurch, the safety instructions video was entirely based on the Rings theme, hobbits and all, with even Peter Jackson making a cameo. And in a lot of places around the islands, you can see people selling Rings tours and merchandise.

Obviously, the story of New Zealand doesn’t end there. What it does is set the agenda for your trip. The first three rules of New Zealand are natural beauty, natural beauty, and natural beauty. As I was touching down in Rotorua, my stopover on the way to Christchurch, there were hills draped with lush green vegetation for as long as my eye could see. As the plane hit the runway, I could see a horse farm right next to the runway, with horses grazing around, seemingly unperturbed by the noise of the airplane. When I walked into the terminal, a Maori lady welcomed us by playing some folk music on her ukelele-type instrument. A bit touristy, but it did a great job of giving the greenery some cultural context.

First up, nature taketh away. From the minute I landed in Christchurch, it was impossible to escape the consequences of the devastating 2011 earthquake that destroyed much of this beautiful city. You go to the city center and it looks like a war zone. You go to the public library for free Internet and there are flyers galore telling you how you can help rebuild the community. You go out in the night and the neighborhood bar is made out of makeshift structures put together artistically. Every building has emergency evacuation procedures displayed prominently in every room. Everyone has a 9/11-ish story of what they were doing when the earthquake hit and everyone is talking about the time and effort required to bring back the glory days. The dark clouds of the 8.something quake and the two significant aftershocks still hover over this community.

But in a way, it has become part and parcel of life now. In the last year-and-a-half, the city has registered a mind-boggling 11,000 aftershocks! On my first night here, there was a 3.something aftershock, which I failed to notice. On my third night here, I was watching the Federer-Tsonga quarter-final of the Australian Open live and the whole room rattled for 5 seconds or so. I first thought that somebody was probably jumping on the first floor. The local guy sitting next to me asked nonchalantly “Did you feel that?” I said yes and asked him “Should we evacuate?” He pulled up his blanket again and said “Nah, it’s just a minor one. Maybe a 4. We will find out tomorrow morning in the news.” Guessing the intensity of the quake is like a betting game here. A bit unnerving, but hey, Federer was playing! No need to evacuate.

And then, nature giveth! Plenty of it! Once you leave Christchurch, you are transported into a magical world of unlimited natural beauty. I only had two weeks here and restricted myself to just the south island. Even in such a short trip, this country managed to test the limits of how much beauty I could absorb on a daily basis. You have Mt. Cook and a handful of glaciers flowing down from the mountain range. Glacial lakes brimming with turquoise water. There is a small cathedral on one of those lakes. The bus driver taking us along the lake told us that this is the most photographed cathedral in the world. With the Vatican and Notre Dame still standing, it was a bit of an exaggerated claim. But I was too mesmerized to challenge that claim. Milford Sounds, a bit underwhelming compared to Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, but still pretty. Queenstown, with its imposing mountains looking down on a crystal clear lake, was easy to fall in love with. Abel Tasman national park and its breath-taking shoreline! Arthur’s Pass! The bombardment continued unabated as long as I was in the country. No wonder this country is one of the top destinations for European and South American students to “work-and-travel” for one year. If you are under 30, you should seriously consider this option. It’s very easy to get this one-year visa that allows you to work for a few months in New Zealand, make some money, and then travel around the country. Fruit-picking and farming related jobs are pretty easy to find because this entire country is primarily a farming country, by choice!

That’s one aspect of this society that is intriguing. It’s not as if the kiwis are not keeping up with technology. Export of lamb and dairy products are the main drivers of this economy and as you travel around this country, you can see that they employ all the latest farming tools and technologies to run things efficiently. But they don’t seem to have any burning desire to enter the global rat race of tech leadership. They have a few tech companies with global reach, like one of the famous ones that makes video games. And they have a handful of research institutes doing cutting edge medical research. But that’s about it. With a tiny population and vast amounts of land rich in natural resources, they seem to know that farming is their strength and they seem to be comfortable with their position in the world. It doesn’t mean that they are not engaged with the rest of the world. If anything it’s the opposite. An export-based economy can’t afford to be isolated from the world. Reading the newspapers here gives you a good idea of the forces of globalization in play. First of all, you open up the newspaper and there is one page for politics, one for business, one for sports, and two devoted to farming! It’s adorable in its own way. There is an article that talks about how demand for lamb meat plummeted in Europe and North America during the recession and how China came to the rescue with increased demand of high-end clothing made out of sheep wool. Nobody is out of reach when it comes to globalization. And more often than not, China is everyone’s savior.

Then, a kiwi native told me about the recent rabbit invasion in the countryside. Apparently, some outsider introduced a particularly destructive species of rabbits on the south island and, given their prodigious rate of procreation, their numbers quickly reached epidemic proportions. They started destroying crops with such abandon that farmers were struggling to make ends meet. The environmentalists were up in arms against their proposal to use a virus to eliminate the species. The issue went all the way up to the parliament. Eventually, one of the farmers smuggled the virus in and introduced it among the rabbits. The rabbits were gone and within five years, everyone noticed a big jump in farm yield. A cautionary tale about the perils of global trade, disturbing local ecosystems, overreach of environmentalists, how markets sometimes override other humanitarian concerns, and how all politics is local!

Stories like these make this land all the more charming. The issues here are not about cyber warfare, the next country trying to get nuclear weapons, the specter of corporate espionage, or the threat of blocking export of rare earth metals. They are related to more immediate needs. Oh, people from a distant land are not eating as much meat anymore. But wait, with more disposable income, people from some other distant land are demanding more of those woolen clothes. Life here has all the trappings of a technologically advanced country, but the problems that grab headlines here are more “old world.” A nice change of pace.

As they say, if everything is going right, you have ignored something. My two weeks in New Zealand were no exception to that rule. Well, nine out of those fifteen days. With good roads, beautiful scenery, and great camping facilities, this is road-trip country. Renting a camper van and driving around is the best way to enjoy this country. I met up with a 21-year-old Norwegian girl and her 37-year-old Canadian friend and we decided to do the road trip together. Successful and/or adventurous in their own right, they just weren’t my kind of people. I had met the Norwegian girl earlier in Kuala Lumpur, but I had never met the Canadian guy before. In the spirit of backpacking, I thought nothing would go wrong. However, from the minute that we met to the minute we parted ways, it was a barrage of sarcasm, snarky comments, bombastic claims, and overall, a whole lot of negativity. I’m sarcasm personified, but only when I know someone really well. I don’t indulge in sarcasm within ten minutes of meeting someone new! This experience just left a bad taste in my mouth.

There was the group of eight I traveled with in Thailand and Laos, and then, there was this group I met in New Zealand. As abuela, my friend’s 70-something mom, says, if you want to know someone, travel with that person. That’s the best way to know the person and to know if you can live with the person. Beyond this trip, I had no intentions of living with these people. But in the backpacking world of anything goes and “Oh, I can get along with anyone,” it was good to get a reality check and realize that there are some people I can’t get along with! Words of wisdom,
abuela!

First breakfast. From New Zealand, with love!

Downtown Christchurch. Ghost town.

Remnants of the central cathedral.

One side…

…and the other.

Rebuilding…slowly.

That minaret was supposed to be on top of the destroyed building.

Walking around in the red zone of downtown Christchurch.

First glacial lake. On the way to Mt. Cook.

Not a bad view, eh!

Another view.

Say hi to the guardian Shepard.

Allegedly the most photographed cathedral.

I need me some Mt. Cook.

Some more Mt. Cook.

Glacier from ground floor.

Glacier from first floor.

Glacier from top floor.

View from Mueller hut. Near Mt. Cook.

Start your engines. Start of the road trip.

First stop, Abel Tasman national park.

A quick hike in the national park.

Impressed?

This is just the start.

Still Abel Tasman.

Another angle. Lots of mussels.

Just another day on the road.

Getting ready to walk on Fox glacier.

Standing on the glacier and looking up.

Standing on the glacier and looking down.

Looking down some more.

Mouth of the glacier. With a lot of debris, it’s generally pretty dirty.

Cruising along in Milford Sounds.

Mountains and waters. Ha Long Bay lite.

Goodbye, Milford!

Welcome, Queenstown.

Random lakes along the way.

One more…

Ocean this time.

A bench with a view.

Any takers for lakes?

The last one…maybe.

On the way to Arthur’s Pass.

Still on the way.

How about a walk?

Maybe here?

Or here?

It’s all Arthur’s Pass to me.

Beautiful road through the pass.

Tamaso maa jyotir gamaya

After enjoying a rare veal dinner on the the plane because it was Christmas, I finally landed Down Under. This is Australia, the country that is the reason why I’m on this round-the-world adventure. Some five years ago around this time, I rented a motorcycle and traveled for six weeks in South America. When I started, I thought six weeks was a lot, until I started bumping into a bunch of Aussies (and Kiwis) who had decided to quit their jobs and see the world. I came back from that trip and told myself that I’m never gonna be able to do it. But it was like a bug at the back of my mind. Can I really do it? Should I do it? And here I am, eight months into my trip, finally visiting Aussieland.

The first thing you notice here is tank tops. For men and women, shorts and tank tops is like a uniform. Maybe because it’s summer time, but even jeans and a decent pair of sneakers are probably considered formal here. Melbourne is my first stop and the federation square in the heart of the city is easily one of the most charming places for people-watching. There are a couple of fancy restaurants in the square where you can find people sipping beers all day long. Even in these swanky restaurants, everyone from kids to 60-year-olds are in cargo shorts and t-shirts, at best.

What I am about to learn after traveling up and down the East coast is that lack of formality runs through the Aussie DNA. Tank tops and shorts were just the start. Don’t be surprised if you find people walking around barefoot…by choice. Everyone here is your “mate.” Everything here has a short form. McDonald’s is Maccers. Sunglasses are sunnies. Even MCG, short for Melbourne Cricket Ground, is shortened to “G.” Every conversation here ends with a “cheers,” as if everyone is walking around with a beer can in their hands. Given the legendary Aussie tolerance for alcohol, it might as well be true. Baseball is America’s favorite pastime. Drinking is the Aussie pastime. A lot of corporate offices here apparently have a fridge full of beers and in some offices, weekend drinking starts at noon on Friday. If you have to work late hours, it’s ok to open a cold one for some motivation. Germans are known for their love of beer, but these guys take it to another level. But that’s just one aspect of Aussie life. Everyone here is either a surfer, hiker, marathon runner, hunter, biker, or something along those lines. You can probably go to jail for being a couch potato here. All in all, even America would seem to be formal compared to Australia. If California were to secede from the United States and become its own country, it would be Australia. Or maybe Australia-lite.

People here are extremely friendly. They don’t seem to be overly curious about your heritage or culture or history, and sometimes might even come off as being a bit insensitive to all of that. But they seems to be pretty helpful. If you are at an intersection with a map in your hand and a puzzled look on your face, people will stop by and ask if everything is ok. If you walk into a bar, within half an hour, they will buy you a drink, pat on your back, and tell you their life stories. In my one month here, barring one airport incident in which a young white kid unnecessarily taunted a middle-aged South Asian about observing lines and got a mouthful in return, I found Aussies to be open, welcoming, and irreverent. They won’t hold back when poking fun at anyone, including themselves.

But that’s just the people. This vast land is blessed with a lot of natural beauty, too. I didn’t get a chance to experience the rugged desert land of the outback, but this country seems to have something for everyone. In Melbourne, you can go to Philip island and watch the little penguins come home at dusk from a full day of foraging in the ocean. This is a must-see for any nature lover. These guys are so tiny that birds of prey can swoop in and pick them up. So they go to the sea before sunrise and come back home after sunset. When they come back, nobody has the courage to take the lead and cross the beach to go home. The first time they come out of the water, they come out as a group of 30 or 40 and barely go a couple of meters before rushing back to the water. Next time, they go four instead of two meters before running back to the water. They do this at least five or ten times, inching forward at every attempt, before finally crossing the beach and going back home. It is as adorable as it is mind-boggling. You would think that evolution would take over at some point. Or, the elder ones would learn over the years to wait a little longer until it’s fully dark. But, to the joy of hundreds of tourists lining up every night here, they indulge in this “penguin parade” every night. What a beautiful way to waste your time and energy!

That’s just the start. The beautiful waters at Byron Bay, Whitehaven beach off of the town of Airlie beach, where the sand is even softer than Clearwater beach in Florida, and, of course, the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns. All of this is extremely expensive by backpacker standards. Forget about sight-seeing and activities, even food is so expensive here that I was telling a friend of mine jokingly that these days, Subway is running through my veins. At 7.50 Aussie dollars, there is nothing cheaper and as filling as a foot-long Subway sandwich. But that’s besides the point. After eight months of junk food, a month-long Subway diet can’t hurt, anyway. When you start thinking about it, there is no price tag on seeing the tiny, real-life nemos rushing in and out of the coral reefs. Then there is a 1-to-2 meter long fish called Wally who is so friendly that you can play with his beard. Ok, I’m exaggerating. Fish don’t have beards. But fish of this species love it when you scrub their chins. There are tiny little underwater flowers that can sense sounds. If you snap your fingers anywhere near them, they close immediately. And then, if you are lucky, you get to swim with some 2-3 meter sharks. I really need to get an underwater camera. Finding Nemo probably does justice to the vibrant colors of the underwater world, but words can’t do any justice to the beauty of this world. Just do me a favor and learn scuba diving! You have to see it all for yourself.

Besides natural beauty, in my eight months of traveling, this is really the first country where I had to go searching for culture. There are some Victorian buildings in Melbourne and Sydney, but that’s about it. In Melbourne, when I went out looking for culture, apart from the aboriginal art museum, there wasn’t much else. The other two museums were a film museum – an art form Australia hasn’t contributed much to – and a t-shirt museum! Across the street from these museums, there is an alley full of all kinds of interesting graffiti. Some of it is pretty impressive, but graffiti generally comes from a counter-cultural impulse. Traveling along the East coast of Australia, it was hard to say what culture they were trying to counter. In Darwin, you finally get to see that thing called culture. Not the culture graffiti artists are trying to counter, but at least some culture. And it’s mostly aboriginal.

It’s not just one culture. It’s a collection of tribal cultures. Like in the US, after the European settlers reached Australian shores, they managed to eliminate most of the tribes in the south and the east. Their population went down from 3-4 million to around 300,000, mostly scattered around the sprawling desert of Australia. Hiking in the sweltering summer heat of the Kakadu national park, you don’t really get to see aboriginals going about their daily lives, but you get some glimpses of their beliefs and their customs. Some are straight-up superstitions, like a tall, distant mountain in the park that is considered evil because of a series of mishaps associated with the surroundings. But most of them are rooted in practical, empirical knowledge and are pretty intriguing. In the tropical jungles around Darwin, extensive knowledge of the local flora and fauna and its use for daily consumption and medicinal purposes is nothing short of impressive. Among the desert tribes, the venomous snakes are feared and revered; perhaps rightly so. Petroglyphs dotting the landscape depict hunting, some stories of moral teachings, and some other aspects of cave life. To avoid incest, they came up with an elaborate system of “skin names,” which dictated who could marry whom. Not necessarily foolproof, but interesting in its own way. And on and on and on.

But these two worlds, the aboriginal one and the one with European influence, are worlds apart. Even after two-three hundred years of coexistence on the same island, they have struggled to find a common vocabulary. In a bizarre attempt at social engineering, a few decades ago, to “modernize” aboriginals, their kids were taken away from the parents and raised in white, European-descent families. Instead of assimilation, this experiment managed to breed more resentment and misgivings among the communities, prompting a recent official apology to the aboriginals by the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. Traveling around this country, one can sense a state of uneasy equilibrium in which these communities live. They don’t seem to be at war with each other, but they don’t seem to care much about each other, either. Most of the aboriginals seem to have itinerant lifestyle. And, unencumbered with any cultural or civilizational history, the rest have wholehearted adopted a fairly irreverent version of the western lifestyle. Of late, they have tried to wish away aboriginal issues by throwing huge sums of money at it. If anything, this seems to have exacerbated the issue even further by making them more and more dependent on the government. Sound familiar?

A few days before leaving Australia, I learned that the aboriginals might have some Indian connection. Some recent studies seem to suggest that their roots can be traced back to the southern part of India. If proven right, this would be pretty interesting, but the culture wars of modern-day India are, in some ways, polar opposites of the ones here in Australia. Australia seems
to be struggling with the merging of the old and the new. And India seem to be struggling with moving from the old to the new. Throughout her 4-5000 year civilizational history, India seems to have done exceedingly well in cultural assimilation. It’s even astonishing to see how a million different traditions coexist peacefully in today’s India. But for some reason, Indians are going through a social churning like never before. Some of it is related to the maddening pace of globalization. More than that, it is related to selective amnesia about India’s own rich history.

Take the “khap panchayats” in the Indian state of Haryana. Just like the aboriginals, and perhaps even before the aboriginals, Indian society developed a concept similar to skin names called “gotra.” People from the same gotra weren’t allowed to marry each other because they were likely to be siblings. And the khap panchayats, or village councils, were in charge of enforcing these anti-incest rules. That might have been sensible a thousand years ago, but does it make sense today? After so many generations, the possibility of people from the same gotra being siblings has gone down significantly, but the village councils are unwilling to give up their power; ordering honor killings if a guy marries a girl from the same gotra.

It’s the same story when it comes to female infanticide in India. The male dominated nature of the society and the tradition of sons rather than daughters taking care of parents in their old age have unnecessarily overemphasized the importance of a boy child. Even after banning the practice of in utero sex determination, female infanticide is rampant in the underground world. It’s not too difficult to connect the dots between a skewed sex ratio of of 850-900 girls for every 1000 boys and a sharp rise in the number of rape cases. The recent gang rape of Nirbhaya in Delhi followed by her unfortunate death led to a social awakening and touched off large scale protests against the government’s apathy toward violence against women. But this has been going on for a while. My sister lived in Delhi briefly a couple of years ago. As a housewife living in a middle class neighborhood of Delhi, she used to be virtually under self-imposed house arrest from 9 to 5. Reason? Almost daily reports of violence against women.

It’s unfortunate that it took such a brutal act of violence against Nirbhaya for the society to find its pulse. And the government seems to have moved quickly to amend the laws to strengthen the punishment for sexual violence against women. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. The conversation has to have a larger context. The prudish behavior and statements of the so called “moral police” in India do tremendous disservice to the rich and vibrant Indian culture, which has done an excellent job of exploring human sexuality. Some of the most famous Hindu Gods are polygamous. The five pandavs, the good men in Mahabharata embodying desirable traits in men, have a polyandrous wife. And when these good guys bet and lose their polyandrous wife in gambling, and one of the bad guys attempts to disrobe her in public, it is Krishna, one of the best-known flirts in Hindu mythology, who comes to her rescue. India has given the world Kamasutra and the Khajuraho temple, for God’s sake! Before the self-styled members of the moral police start dictating the rules of engagement for men and women in the Indian society, they should probably consider destroying the temple of Khajuraho and burning copies of Kamasutra and other Hindu scriptures in public. If the generally tolerant society of India allows them to destroy such rich Indian heritage, I will accept their legitimacy as moral police.

It is understandable that if a cultural revolution like the one in the USA in the ’60s and the one in China in the ’70s is not gonna happen in India, the pace of social change is going to be slow. But how long are we going to wait to expand the conversation to have this broader dialogue? As the Australians look at their past and struggle to make peace with it, let us hope that the Indian society looks at its own history introspectively and, instead of picking and choosing what is convenient, embraces it wholeheartedly. As they say in Sanskrit, tamaso maa jyotir gamaya. Let us move from darkness to light!

Federation square, Melbourne.

Aboriginal art museum, Melbourne.

Some more art. Snakes are important!

A bit more abstract, but still snakey.

T-shirt museum. Really?

Time for some good graffiti.

Pretty cool, eh?

Some cartoon characters. I’m sure they’re badass.

Even the dumpsters are not spared.

Even graffiti artists need some Hindu good luck!

Getting ready for the parade. Penguin parade beach. Philip island.

Can you see the penguins? Moonrise in the background.

A Victorian farm on Philip island.

Wild Koala, up, close and personal.

A baby penguin in his home.

The remarkable thing about this photo is that this cost me 5 Aussie dollars. It’s not like I’m buying it in Waldorf freakin’ Astoria. Australia hurts….your wallet!

Sydney fireworks on the 31st!

Airlie beach. Ready to sail to Whitehaven beach?

Yep, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world! Whitehaven beach!

Same beach, again.

More Whitehaven.

Crabs digging their homes.

Swimming with sting rays. More like walking.

Looking out to the shores.

Getting a bit cloudy, but still beautiful.

That’s how tilted our sailboat was. Is that normal?

A quick day-trip from Cairns to Kuranda. They said this is one of the most sharply curved railway bridges in the world.

Waterfall along the way.

Nice pastures on the way back to Cairns.

Creepy creatures.

Dangerously creepy creatures! Crocodile cruise near Darwin.

Cue in jaws music.

Jump up, jump up, and get down.

Another angle.

In the crocodile world, two is a crowd.

Petroglyphs in Kakadu national park. Look like a kangaroo?

Some hunting, maybe?

This one is pretty cool. Don’t know what it means.

Cooling off in the waterfall.

Some nice flowers.

Lush green landscapes.

Termite mounds.

Termite cathedral. Designed and built by termites. Yeah, it takes decades.

The hard-working termites.

Another nice waterfall.

One more…at Litchfield park.

A: Harbor bridge, Sydney.

B: Opera House, Sydney.

A U B: Sometimes, you have to be an engineer.

Same same, but different

The unplanned detour to Laos and all the extra time spent in Vietnam meant that I had to rush through Cambodia. A couple of days each in Angkor Wot and Phnom Penh. That’s all I could manage. At a superficial level, beauty and the beast is the phrase that comes to mind. First up, beauty. It may sound a bit ironic that the biggest Hindu temple is outside of India. But this is not just one temple. It’s a temple complex, built over hundreds of years. Over the years, I have seen a lot of places of worship, including the ones in old Jerusalem, the cystine chapel, the mosque in Casablanca, and a whole bunch of Hindu temples in India. But in terms of sheer expanse, I don’t think anything can beat Angkor Wot. It just goes on and on and on. In the precious little time I had, I managed to see just four main temples, which were each bigger than most of the temples I had seen before.

All the temples are in varying stages of disrepair and there are huge restoration projects underway. Still, it’s easy to see how majestic it all must’ve been in its heydays. With a small lake full of beautiful lotuses right in front of it, the sunrise over the main temple is a must-see. And then, there is the “Tomb-raider” temple, with trees criss-crossing and penetrating all the ancient walls. More interestingly, Angkor Wot stands as witness to the Hindu-Buddhist turf war of the olden days. In India, people jokingly say that given the generally pacifist teachings of Hinduism, Buddhists are the only people Hindus can be the aggressors against. Angkor Wot can be Exhibit A for that. For generations, Hindus and Buddhists took turns desecrating each other’s idols, burying them, and installing their own idols. In one of the temples, archeologists found 250-odd Buddha statues buried under a Shivalinga.

I wanted to see some of the other temples, but I had to wrap it up in a day. When you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, “same same, but different” aptly describes the entire region of South-East Asia. The phrase is used and abused throughout this region to describe everything from the mundane to the profound. If you walk into a store and point to two sarongs of different colors with the same price, the owner will say “same same, but different” with a big smile on his face. In Thailand, thank you is “Kopan khaap” and in Laos, it is “Kopchai lalaai.” If you find someone with reasonable knowledge of these languages, he or she will say “same same, but different.” It can even be found on t-shirts and mugs all over this region. But the phrase is not just clever marketing. This pop-culture phrase perfectly captures the heritage of this region.

As you go from Thailand to Cambodia to Laos and Vietnam, the influence of Sanskrit on the local language fades away, only to be replaced by Cantonese. The airport in Bangkok is called “Suvarnabhoomi” airport, a Sanskrit word meaning, literally, the golden land. A bus or train “Station,” called “Sthaan” in Sanskrit, is called ” Sathaani” in Thai. The influence of Sanskrit is easily detectable in a lot of the street names and people’s names here. By the time you get to Laos or Vietnam, you can start detecting more and more Cantonese. “Hello” becomes “Ni hao” and rice becomes “Mi fan.” Even the scripts in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos resemble those from West Bengal and Bangladesh. With the strong French influence, Vietnamese script is more anglicized and is a bit of an exception here. But the pronunciations are quite similar to Cantonese. In a way, South-East Asian languages are to Cantonese what Scandinavian languages are to German. Cantonese and German both sound pretty dry. South-East Asian and Scandinavian languages all have that sing-song kinda feeling to them.

Food goes from being more curry- and spice-based in Thailand to being blander and more noodle-based in Vietnam. God-wise, temples of Ganesha and Shiva can be found scattered all over Thailand. By the time you get to Laos, Ganesha is mostly gone, but every once in a while, you can find a Shiva temple. In Vietnam, Hindu gods are mostly gone. Skin color goes from brown to yellowish-white. Facial features become gradually more and more Asian. Even the traditional dresses go from resembling a sari in Thailand to the hats made out of cane and long-sleeved woolen dresses in northern Vietnam. No wonder Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos are collectively called IndoChina. In a culturally and linguistically interesting way, these countries are “same same, but different.”

But that brings us to the sad part of my stay in Cambodia. Going from the beauty to the beast. Phnom Penh has all the trappings of a capital city. A central district with wide boulevards, huge government buildings, and some interesting monuments. Motorcades occasionally whizzing past your tuk-tuk, perhaps carting politicians around. But once you go past these neighborhoods, it is a fairly impoverished city, even more so than Vientiane. And a visit to one of the infamous killing fields helps you understand this state of affairs.

During the prolonged conflict in Vietnam, the communist forces managed to establish a strong presence in the northern and eastern parts of Cambodia. After the ceasefire in Vietnam in 1975, emboldened with their victory, they managed to take over Phnom Penh and impose communist rule in the entire country. In their post-war euphoria, they decided to eliminate the entire educated class in Cambodia and start from scratch. Highly educated teachers, businessmen, intellectuals, and their families, including kids, were sent to killing fields established all across the country for extermination. And schools were converted into prisons. Cities were considered breeding grounds for intellectuals and village life was considered more basic, more virtuous. In an attempt to downsize the cities, those who were a bit more fortunate, perhaps because they were a little less educated, were sent to the countryside and forced to become farmers.

I wish it was just a sequel of a bad movie, but the killing field in Phnom Penh is a testimony to the most cruel aspects of this attempt of social engineering. After the two-decades-long Vietnam war, both the superpowers were financially and militarily exhausted, with little appetite for engaging in another conflict. The Khmer Rouge took advantage of that and killed 3 to 4 million people in a span of 2-3 years. With no generous supply of weapons from the Soviets, the soldiers decided to use sharp edges of the leaves of cactus- and pine-like trees to cut people’s throats and dump their bodies to rot in the mass graves. Some unfortunate kids weren’t even granted that courtesy. A plaque next to a big here tree says that the heads of kids were smashed against the tree and the bodies dumped in a mass grave right next to it. Overall, the extermination program was so elaborate and widespread that some killing fields in the countryside remain undiscovered or unknown. The most astonishing fact of this story is that, after committing such heinous crimes, the Khmer Rouge was declared as the legitimate representative of Cambodian people in the UN!

After visiting a place like this, comparisons with Auschwitz are inevitable. A part of me was telling me to not indulge in any comparisons. The histories, the reasons, and the nature of these conflicts have nothing in common. More importantly, these are all sites of remembrance for the loss of innocent lives. There is no reason to compare the loss of one innocent life to another. But if human minds were so rational, they would cease to be human.

For better or worse, the killing field in Phnom Penh doesn’t seem as raw as Auschwitz. There is a tower at the entrance of the killing field that houses a few hundred skulls recovered from the mass graves. And there are a few glass cases in the field where shards of bones and pieces of torn clothes are neatly kept. But maybe it’s just the sheer number of clothes, suitcases, utensils, shoes, and empty cans of Zyclon B in Auschwitz that has a deeper impact. On the other hand, there are parts of the killing field where fragments of bones and clothing of victims still keep coming to the surface every monsoon season. Standing next to one of those graves will definitely send chills down your spine.

In a lot of ways, such comparisons are superficial and foolish. The sad truth is that, in spite of the tremendous advances in psychology, sociology, and technology of the past few decades, such mass killings have been occurring with unnerving regularity. Rwanda? Somalia? Sudan? Taking advantage of the war-weariness of the US, the sole superpower, the Syrian regime has managed to kill 60-70,000 people in the full glare of the Internet, cellphone videos, and social media, with no apparent end in sight. If there is a silver lining to all this, maybe it’s the fact that the number of innocent lives being lost to such events is steadily going down. As the flow of information becomes cheaper and easier, dictators are finding it increasingly difficult to commit such crimes and stay away from the international spotlight. But as you are finishing the tour of the killing field, the audio guide plays a western classical song; a tribute to the Cambodian victims. As the song hits the high notes, you can’t help but ponder the inherent cruelty of human nature, and wonder whether it’s all just same same, but different.

My attempt at time-lapse-ish photography at Angkor Wot. Just before sunrise. Might have caught that asteroid everyone was talking about, but don’t know.

Time elapsing…

Elapsing…

Ah…ha! The main temple.

Inside the main temple…

Some Hindu Gods, hangin’ out!

Nice artwork.

Some more artwork!

Semi-destroyed Buddha statue.

Looks more beautiful when the sun is shining.

Some more sun.

Lotus floats!

Sheshnaag and another temple.

Another Sheshnaag and a lion, maybe?

Buddhas galore!

And more galore!

Can you spot any here? They’re there!

Some more details on the walls…

And some more…

As Ed Sheeran would say, We’re not done yet!

Back to Buddhas.

Can you see the faces now?

I’m sure now you can!

Depiction of some story in Hinduism.

Some more detailed artwork.

The Tomb Raider temple, from the outside.

Another angle.

This one looks like the tree is trying to climb the wall!

There is a tiny statue buried in there somewhere (a face). Can you see it?

Shivalinga which literally means Lord Shiva’s penis. Hindus worship the penis of Shiva, the God of destruction. Hinduism is cool like that!

Another look at another temple.

A Hindu temple can’t be complete without some elephants.

Mayan-style steep stairs. Reminded me of Tikal.

Another beautiful temple in this temple complex. It’s incredibly huge!

Light playing with shadows!

A nice Buddha statue.

India contributing to some of the restoration work.

From beauty to the beast. Killing field in Phnom Penh. Shards of bones keep surfacing right about here.

The deadly tree where kids were killed and the mass grave right next to it.

Another mass grave. This one was for adults.

Pieces of fabric of victims.

The tower in which some of the skulls are kept.

The skulls.

Photos of victims. Eerily similar to Auschwitz.

School turned into a prison.

One of the prison cells.

A beautiful painting of hope!

Some monuments in Phnom Penh.

The royal palace. Sun wasn’t cooperating.

A few from Kuala Lumpur.

KL city center.

Some more KL.

Some funky trees in the KL botanical garden.

Some more funky!

Lying in the KL sun and seeing the clouds pass by. Life is good!

Huge statue of Lord Raam in KL.

Another temple in KL city center.