What makes for great tourism : remaking the Taj Mahal experience

(Guess whose photo this is! Answer at the bottom of this post)

Recently ran into an interesting check-list of items to be addressed to create great tourism experiences.

1. Enrichment and authenticity
2. Partner with community
3. Invent the themes that will intrigue visitors
4. Engage all the seasons
5. Increase the value inside the tourism experience by including access to people, a unique activity, or combination of both. When you do this , you can increase the selling price
6. Invent new forms of programs that incorporate new mixes of activities, people, traditions and places that showcase and celebrate the community. Invention is the key
7. Personalize and customize your services
8. Add interaction and hands-on activities
9. Involve local community and mentor them those not in the tourism industry to help them understand why visitors find what they have to say and offer is very special
10. Add specific local retail items into the experience or package.

Ok. So let us try to apply this check-list to something we know. How about India’s best known attraction, the Taj Mahal? (Given the very sterile and - sometime very hassling - experience that is visiting the Taj Mahal, I think some creative thought can help). Here is my take on how one could apply some of these principles to the tourism experience of the Taj Mahal.

Enrichment & Authenticity : An ‘immersion’ into the world of Shah Jahan - how about setting up a place where travellers can experience in at least a small way, the nature of life at the time of Shah Jahan. Maybe, this can be in the form of a bazaar recreated in authentic historical detail.

Partner with Community: An obvious area would be to bring in the community into this bazaar. There are other options to bring in local musicians, artisans & cooks into an authentic street scene.

Invent themes that will intrigue visitors: How about “Luxury in the time of the Mughal”, a theme of what it meant to indulge in luxury fit for a king in Shah Jahan’s time. This can cover so many aspects, it is almost endless. As a beginning, the theme can cover Jewelery, Perfumes, Clothing & Transportation (chariots, howdahs etc). The manifestation of the theme can be very multifaceted. It can cover exhibitions, shops, manufacturing, home-stays etc.

Engage all the seasons: This I think is one of the most under-applied principles in Indian tourism. The Indian summer is pretty hot, so we get no tourists at this time. But, think of how we can create a unique experience around this. To me, one of the most impressive features of Mughal architecture was the network of little waterways & fountains across the entire palace that enabled the central asian Mughals to brave the heat of the Indo-gangetic plain. How can we re-create this experience?

Include access to people: For 15 days in a year, the direct descendant of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor will be available at Agra. She will personally talk to a select audience everyday for these 15 days and give them a peek into the world of her ancestors. Extremely unique & authentic, this should be able to bump up the price of an upmarket Taj holiday package by about USD 250 to 500 per person.

Invent new forms of programs: Yup, I really like this. My earlier thought on the bazaar works great for this, especially if that can be clubbed with highly interactive stuff. How about setting aside an area in the bazaar as a street theatre area? In this place, locals as well as travellers are encouraged to come up and show their stuff. From juggling to karaoke, the idea being to mix the modern with the ancient, Indian with foreign and for everyone to have a good time at it. I saw something like this done in Ingos’ night market in Goa and I think that is the right direction.

….and so it can go on…

Wonder why nobody does such stuff in India - there is so much raw material to work on. Unfortunately I haven’t as yet found anybody who will pay me to put together such ideas.

Hulloooo, anybody there?

Now, about the photo at the top. The photo is of Begum Laila Umahani, direct descendant of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal ruler of Delhi. If history had not taken its inexorable course, she would have been sitting on the peacock throne in Delhi. But now, this last of the direct descendants of the Mughals who ruled India for 332 uninterrupted years, lives in a 3 room house in Hyderabad.

Click here for all my posts on Tourism marketing>>

HolidayIQ in Yahoo India Glue Page

Yahoo India has started a really interesting service called the ‘Glue page”. When you search for a phrase (on the search bar of Yahoo), this page shows composite results, including contextual visual results pulled from - as yahoo says - “the best sites anywhere on the web”. For Indian destination information, Yahoo India has decided to partner with HolidayIQ, which once again reinforces HolidayIQ’s position as the creator of the best tourism & travel content for Indians. Along with our already launched partnership with Google (hotel reviews in Google local search), this puts HolidayIQ on a platform where we are recognised as among the best in the world for our area of expertise - which is, helping everyone find high quality travel information & advice.

Sorry to get slightly puffed up on this, but is this cool or what?

Click here to see how HolidayIQ content comes up on a Yahoo Glue page >>

Read an article about Yahoo Glue Page on Content Sutra >>

More Goa photos from Nagesh Acharya

Nagesh, the engineer turned photographer + cinematographer has been at it again. Photographing Goa in between a hectic schedule of shooting a movie there. Here are some of his recent snaps - click on any snap to see it in full size glory.

If you would like to ask Nagesh any questions or leave him a message, please use the comments box in this post - I will forward it to him.

Baga beach

Canacona beach

Honeymoon Island

Honeymoon island - Canacona

Honeymoon Island, Canacona, Goa

Baga Beach

View from Chapora Fort, Goa

Here is the link to Nagesh’s brilliant snaps of St Mary’s Island near Udupi in karnataka.

The Incredible Marketing of India

Singapore has a land area of about 693 sq kms. India has 3.3 million sq km, making us about 5000 times larger than Singapore. In the year 2007, Singapore got over 10 million inbound tourists while India got a little under 5 million foreign tourists, less than half of Singapore . Therefore, using simple arithmetic we are about 10,000 times more inefficient than Singapore in getting inbound tourists. I think that is about right.

What explains this extraordinary incompetence of our country in attracting foreign tourists?

I don’t know.

But a good first step is to provide people wanting to travel to India with some simple, easy to understand information. An obvious place to assess whether we are providing such information is on the national website of our tourism promotion agency (after all, the internet has become the primary & often the only source of information for foreigners). And so I did a tiny exercise to find out Visa information on the Incredible india website and compare it with the tourism promotion website of a high-performing tourism nation, Australia. Here is what I found.

The first para on the relevant page on Australia.com reads as follows:

Visa

You’ll need a visa to enter Australia. Tourist visas are valid for three months, but you can also apply for a longer-term stay. Find out more about the different visas and how to apply.

Contrast this with the opening para of the Visa page on Incredible India, which reads as follows:

Visa fees are non-refundable and subject to change without notice. The High Commission reserves the right on granting and deciding type/duration of visa irrespective of the fees tendered at the time of making application. Granting of Visa does not confer the right of entry to India and is subject to the discretion of the Immigration Authorities. Visa can be applied for in person or by post at the High Commission of India in London. Visa applications from persons not ordinarily residing in the UK or from people of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan origin are considered only in the High Commission of India, London and Consulate General of India, Birmingham and their processing may take one week or in some cases much longer. Applicants not ordinarily resident in the UK and Sri Lankan nationals are required to complete an additional form. Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals have to file special visa application forms. In the following cases processing of applications will take longer: (a) British Nationals holding dual nationality or of other origin, (b) applicants not resident in the UK, (c) where clearance from India is mandatory, (d) visitors to restricted areas and (e) certain cases where documents may need to be verified. Visa Section will contact the applicant about the time of delivery for such passports. Please note that each application is examined individually and the time taken for issuing Visa will vary from case to case.

I don’t know about you, but I found the 34 words on the Aussie site made a lot of sense and invited me in to find out more. In contrast, the 237 words in the first para on Incredible India gives me the strong impression that I am not particularly welcome.

Why?

Who writes this stuff?

Kerala Fish Curry and India’s Demographic Dividend

(How to make Kerala fish curry - in a nice mallu accent)

Last week I walked into the smallest restaurant in Trivandrum and asked for a ‘parcel’ of fish curry. The man at the counter turned and asked a small boy hanging around - “arre chhotu, dekh ke aa, fish item hai” and I did a triple flip : backwards. In all the certainties of my mind (and there were at least 3 of them at last count), the fact that Kerala was the one place in India that did not have Hindi speaking ‘chhotus’ was up on top. So what was happening here?

The short answer - India’s Demographic Dividend.

As we have been told ad nauseum, India has a young population relative to the rest of the world. What we have not been told that often, but is patently true, is that this young population is concentrated in a few states in the Hindi heartland, primarily Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. And Kerala unfortunately has got its Malthusian economics pat and so has a declining population - which gobbledygook actually means Kerala has very few young people. And, with the local economy booming, this means labour is moving in droves from the North of India to Kerala (shades of the migration that is happening from the interiors to the coastal towns of China).

Each subsequent visit to Kerala reinforces this reality of India’s internal migration. So, while famous economists debate whether India’s demographic dividend exists (unlike you & me, they don’t actually open their eyes and look for such answers; they prefer to read long tables filled with numbers : click here at your peril, to know why one says it exists, and another says no) anecdotal evidence is clear. With each passing visit, I find small local restaurants in kerala increasingly invaded by Oriya cooks and Bihari chhotus. Clearly, there are more young people looking for work in Bihar than in Kerala.

As I found while on a six-month stint auditing the dodgy accounts of a cement company in the backwoods of Orissa many years ago, the Oriya people are a delightful group (I actually think Oriya women are the best-looking examples of Indian womanhood - never fails to produce a bored ahem from the missus). But, cooking an authentic Mallu fish curry, I would not count among their accomplishments. And so I reach the inevitable conclusion. India’s demographic dividend has a direct impact on me. With all Mallu cooks gone (mostly evolved out of cookdom; a few stragglers left for the Gulf), my favourite fish curry, heavily laced by a concoction of coconut milk and coconut oil is under threat. And I better tank up before it is fully gone.

Click here for all my posts on Kerala>>

Where is the desert cooler?

It was another hot mid-day in 1979. The infamous loo was blowing in from the Thar desert across Delhi’s Rajpath. And a young boy walked past the black gates of The National Museum in the blazing sun. And walked into the the coolness provided by one of mankind’s ealiest inventions. Across the imposing front doors of the National Museum of India, from the ceiling to the floor was this huge curtain of khus fibre constantly kept moist by buckets of water being thrown on it. I dont know how many of you have had the good luck to smell the wonderful aroma of a khus curtain on a hot north indian day - it remains with me, so many years later. 

The Punjabi migrants of Delhi converted this idea to a nifty little appliance to beat the Delhi heat. And since Punjabis are generally better are creating innovations than in naming them (a trait similar to the inventive Japanese, who succeeded in coming up with some of the corniest names for some of the best innovations around - think ‘walkman’!) they called it the ‘desert cooler’.

The desert cooler was a 3 part contraption. It’s body was a covered box in which all sides are walls of khus fibre held in place by a wire mesh. Its underbelly was a huge tank which held many litres of water and its soul was a massive fan and a pump. Now, this is what happened. As soon as you switched on the desert cooler, the pump would start to pull up water from the tank and start to trickle it down on the khus across all the walls of the box. Inside the box, facing into the room was the fan which would soon start to rotate thunderously and effectively suck up the moisture from the surrounding walls of khus and throw it with great force ino the room. Voila, a very cool room, albeit one with an extraordinary amount of moisture. 

I still recollect this room I stayed in for a few years in Delhi. Shaded by a neem tree and blasted by a huge desert cooler, I spent many a Delhi summer swathed in a razai, which I believe I have never bested before or after for pure hedonism. 

But as incomes have risen, the harsh beauty of the Airconditioner has replaced the comely desert cooler (although calling a Punjabi beauty ‘comely’ shows a deeply besotted mind!). And as I keep an unsuccessful eye out for the Desert Cooler everytime I go to Delhi in summer, I cannot help mourn its passing. With it has passed an age of innocence.  

Click here for all my Delhi posts>>

My European trip

(Theatre of Pompey)

Random phrases one picks up in life sometimes stay with you and keep playing in that background song of the mind. A few such words in my own little background ditty pull me to a Europe I want to explore.

The Ides of March : ‘Beware the Ides of March’ said a soothsayer to Julius Caeser. And sure enough on the 15th of March (the 15th day of a few months were called Ides by the ancient Romans), Caesar was assassinated in the Theatre of Pompey in Rome. There are many reasons to visit Rome, but for me personally, none as compelling as the vision of the soothsayer talking to Julius Caesar and the ensuing murder in one of classical buildings of ancient Rome.

Checkpoint Charlie : Some of the greatest ’spy vs spy’ novels of my young days had an inevitable setting. Checkpoint Charlie, that brutal and brooding bridge separating communist Berlin from its capitalist part. Germany is not a country on my top list of holiday destinations - for some reason, I can never find a great enthusiasm for it. But the one thing that I would like to explore in Germany is Checkpoint Charlie and the peculiar psyche of a city torn apart by ideologies. It does seem to be one of those defining European things.

Frosted Fields of Juniper : Paul Simon sang -

…and when you ran to me

your cheeks flushed with the night

we walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight

i held your hand…

And no one one growing up in an urban (& the slightly westernised part of) Indian metro in the seventies and eighties could have escaped the good Paul. Nor did I. And have wanted to see ‘a frosted field of juniper’ ever since. Of course, once I figured out that Gin is made from Juniper berries, the idea kinda took firmer root (so to speak).

They grow in northern Europe and there is a little town in a quiet corner of Europe, where a granny’s house sits in the middle of a field of Juniper.

Anyone for my European trip?

Stereotypes : the quintessential Indian Tourist, part I

Last week, Sidin Vadukut of Mint sent me a few questions on the “quintessential Indian tourist”, which made me think a bit - and attempt a post on it. (Incidentally, do watch out for his piece later this month on Mint Lounge)

First of all, Sidin’s questions:

Indians are obessed with a few destination nations ; US, Singapore and Hong Kong. Is this true? Why is this? Surely people are aware of more places to go to.

Beaches, amusement parks, resorts and mountains. Is that all the Indian tourist cares about? A recent Kuoni survey seemed to think so.

One of the great joys of going abroad is the food & drink. But do Indian travellers prefer to carry teplas and pickle instead? Are we greatly opposed to eating food abroad?

A recent Expedia survey indicated that Indian tourists were some of the rudest passengers abroad. Only after the French. Is this a true representation of reality? Are we really bad? Or are we just perceived to be so beacuse of language issues and an inherent fear of being ripped off?

Are we stingy travellers? Do we count every penny that leaves our pockets? Is that why some hoteliers are terrified of us?

These are some of the popular stereotypes of the Indian tourist. What is your take on them? Are we just misunderstood? Or is it the sad truth?

Since answering all the questions will result in me being awarded an M.Phil (a highly undesirable condition at my stage of life), let me try a general take on a single aspect : the Indian tourist stereotype.

So, here goes.

I actually think this is great news, Indian tourists getting stereotyped that is.

Movies over the weekend

Balan, the barber in the one-horse village of Melekavu is the protagonist of the Malayalam movie (Kathaparayumbol - ‘when the story is said…’) that I saw over the weekend. Loved it. The story of a little man who wants to lead a simple & happy life circumscribed by the lines of common decency and humility. And how, a modern world, strident in its search for instant fame & fortune hassles the poor guy. Scripted with wonderful comic timing and performed with real prowess - both by Sreenivasan. Like all great comedies, it is the thread of pathos just beneath the surface that really elevates it. If you get to see it, go for it. If you cannot understand Malayalam, take a mallu along for translation. Or try for a sub-titled version. Either way, I guarantee you, you will enjoy it. Or you could wait for its hindi version, although going by past track-record, I would not recommend it. Titled “Billoo Barber”, the Hindi version has Amisha Patel (for God’s sake!) playing the barbers wife.

UTV’s new channel, World Movies is another source for good films. Over the last week, i watched a Japanese movie, Hana & Alice, in bits & pieces and never got around to watching it through. An interesting movie set in urban japan, it is a simple story of two school-girls, childhood friends and how one of them falls in love. Nothing dramatic, but fun. And for someone who has never been to japan, but is kind of obsessed with it, this was riveting stuff.

Movies are an interesting window to the world.

Sehwag’s mom & cross-cultural differences

One of the interesting aspects of travel is the antenna it gives you to spot peculiar differences that exist across cultures.

A few days ago, Virender Sehwag an Indian cricketer hit a lot of runs in a cricket match and I was reminded of his test debut a number of years ago. He scored a hundred runs in his very first test match which for those few who dont know much about the game, is a very big thing in Cricket.

As soon as he made the century, Sehwag was asked whom he would dedicate this effort to (as journalists are wont to do - if I ever make a century and am asked, I will say ‘me’; which is probably why I will never make one and never get asked). Anyway, Mr Sehwag dutifully replied, ‘my mother’ and actually called her up from South Africa which made prime time news in India.

Now, this I find curious. If the same thing had happened to young lads in most other countries, they would have immediately dedicated it to their latest girlfriend and set about checking out other prospects too.

An uncharitable explanation is that Indian men are mama’s boys and cannot get over that even when they are strapping men & hit test centuries. Another explanation is that the Indian middle class is dutiful. The third is that we are hypocrites. The fourth, of course, is that ‘we are like that only’.

Trekking guide to Africa’s highest mountain - the Kilimanjaro

(Photo : http://www.climbmountkilimanjaro.com/)

“Like a herd of elephants on the African plains, the subject of tipping is a bit of a grey area..”

Henry Stedman has written a well-researched, comprehensive and easy to understand guide book to climbing Kilimanjaro. But it is the ocassional quirky comment (as above) that somehow transports this book from being another good guide-book to an interesting read.

The book published by Trailblazer, has sections that cover all of the must-knows including excellent detail on planning the trip such as whom to book the trek with, budgeting for the trek, route options and what to take. It also has good sections on the natural history of Kilimanjaro, its flora & fauna and its people. The hand-drawn maps that give a good deal of information on trek routes and topography will obviously help prepare the trekker well. All in all, a good book to buy, if you want to climb Kilimanjaro.

Of course, the book is primarily for a British audience - so if you happen to be travelling from India (as I imagine many of the readers here would be), there are gaps in information that will have to be filled in. For instance, details on flights into Kilimanjaro or tour operators at home that you can book your trek with. But, that is a minor quibble when you consider the huge amount of valuable information available in the book.

Getting up the Kilimanjaro is not as tough as climbing Everest. In fact, it is essentially a walk and not a climb. Having said that, the book does alert one to the reality that it is no cakewalk - a few people die each year while trekking up the Kili. And so when the book listed Contraceptives as one among the 14 ‘essential equipment’ for the trek, I was a bit surprised. Cannot see that being used on the trek. But maybe there is something I don’t know. And that, Henry’s book isn’t telling.

Using chopsticks

I must have been about 4 or 5 years old, when I sat with my father in a darkened movie hall watching a grainy-white documentary that showed strange men using sticks to pull up strings off the table to stuff it in their mouths. And I loved it right away. By the time I got to my teens, I could not think of anything more sophisticated than insouciantly picking up my roast pork with chop sticks while holding a conversation with an extraordinarily gorgeous Japanese lady. Of course, it hasn’t happened quite that way (the Japanese lady part that is) - but I still think it is way cool to eat with chop sticks. So, a few years ago, I decided to learn how to do it.

It is pretty simple really. Here is how you do it.

You grasp the chopsticks within the fingers of your right hand (ie. if you are genetically left-handed; otherwise, hold it in your left hand). Then push them into a bowl of noodles (always a bowl, never a plate). The chopsticks will immediately come off your fingers. Next, you hold them a bit more steady and try to dig out the noodles harder. The whole caboodle will come out of the bowl and fall on the table. Keep repeating this till your companions at the table (in my case, a wife and two incredulous little boys who could’nt understand why they were not allowed this kind of fun) ask you to go away. Do this for about a month. You will crack it. I did - so I know you can too.

Yup, now I can hear the question. Is there a simpler way of learning to use chopsticks? Unfortunately, No. But, the good part is, this will seem really simple when you realise you need to use chopsticks and the chinese soup spoon simultaneously to get the sang-froid look. That, my friend, is another story.

Click here for all my posts on Chinese Food>>

(Both photos in the post, courtesy: http://www.chinatownconnection.com/how-to-use-chopsticks.htm)

Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh

All the recent brouhaha over Tibet brought to mind a trip I made way back in time, which took me to a place about 6 to 7 kilometers from the Tibetan (and therefore the Chinese) border with India. I was about 21 or 22 years old and had the onerous job as a trainee accountant of a ’site visit’ to check accounts of a construction company building a dam across the Bhaba river in Kinnaur. (I got to really traverse our land as a trainee accountant - I would have of course preferred to do it as a trainee commando, but what the hell..).

So I got to base camp after running the gauntlet inside a Maruti Gypsy driven by the original mad driver across the thinnest of strips of mountain paths, euphemistically called a State Highway. The head of the Site was this middle aged engineer (‘general manager’) who had forsaken the comforts of routine family life for a nomadic existence in various project sites across the country. Later I found that these guys are dotted across the world in all project sites - an interesting sub-genus that thrives on the camaraderie, chaos and an extraordinary satisfaction of Creating you can sense in all ’sites’.

I was there in summer and the weather was lovely - about 5 degrees, if I recollect right. Have you ever dipped your hand in the rushing, upstream water of a Himalayan river? Well, these guys dipped their beer bottles in the water for about 10 minutes and took out the coldest beer I have ever had (and that includes the beer I had while in a North Sea storm). Many egg bhurjis and beers down, I heard about the rigours of winter living in Kinnaur - how all the cabins would be snowed in every night and how the inhabitants had to light a fire inside the cabin to melt the snow outside to be able to push open the door. It was a man-thing that evening; a camaraderie so palpable you could cut it with a knife.

Next morning we set out for the ‘ice bridge’, a walk of about 3 hours across some of the most beautiful terrain I have ever wandered over. Slopes covered with green, soft grass. The occasional sight of small mountain ponies. A few houses in little villages far above or below. The ice bridge was a place where the snow from one mountainside had drifted down and passed over the river in between and had actually climbed up the mountain on the other side. So, you could walk down one mountain on the ice, walk across the river (you could hear the muted thunder of the water beneath the ice and far beneath your feet) and walk up the other mountain. And standing on the ice-bridge, I kid you not here, I actually heard the far away sound of a shepherd’s flute.

As I watched the Dalai Lama talk to Pranoy Roy last evening, I was reminded of my trip to the wonderful land of Kinnaur, Tibet’s closest neighbour in India.

Click here for a few more of my posts on Himachal Pradesh>>

Microsites from Incredible India

The Incredible India website has a number of micro-sites. The idea is to showcase the best of various themes that define Indian tourism. So there are 18 micro-sites for subjects ranging from Ayurveda, Yoga, Summer Retreats, Central India, Walk with the Buddha etc. All fascinating subjects, each of which can be a brilliant site in itself. Unfortunately, all the energy seemed have gone into thinking up these themes. The sites themselves suffer from too little content, poor navigation and that continuing bane of Indian tourism, a gimmicky approach.

Here is what is shown for the entry relating to the Jewish religion in India (in the Pilgrimage micro-site). 3 tiny paragraphs, one each on Kochi, Pune & Ahmedabad. No photos at all. Of course, no videos. No real sense of history, time or context. I have personally stood inside the Jewish Synagogue at Kochi and marveled at the murals depicting the arrival of the first Jews at Cranganore (kodungalloor). Why can’t we make this stuff come alive.

Good idea, poor execution.

Click here for all my posts on Tourism Marketing>>

Business trips - the new lesiure travel frontier

(Shashank with Pandit Ravishankar)

In Mumbai over the last two days on some work, I decided to turn over a new leaf. Instead of doing 18 meetings in one day and flopping tiredly on to my hotel bed, I did a bit less of work and decided to take in a show. A quick glance at what was happening in Mumbai took me to a Carnatic music show, Dakshinayan, run by Banyan Tree at the Nehru Centre. It must have been at least 15 years since I last went for a Carnatic music concert and boy, did I enjoy it.

There was music in the air in my childhood, what with a mother deeply interested in it and a sister learning it for many years. I even had a minor & not very productive brush with Mridangam, although it did leave me with a deep and abiding interest in percussion.

Shashank S played the flute that evening. Shashank is among the young, new breed of Indian musicians. He spoke to the crowd in English, educated us a bit on the connect between Carnatic & Hindustani, played extraordinarily versatile stuff and generally gave us all a great time. For far too long, with a few notable exceptions, India’s classical music virtuosos have not felt the need to communicate to a wider, more cosmopolitan audience. I think that is about to change. Shashank and artists of his ilk will do it. It is this breed that can eventually connect Indian music to the wider world.

The next time you are on work in Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore or Kolkata or Chennai or Pune or…, take time away from your schedule to figure what is on in the city. I wonder why I never did it before.

Click here for my posts on City vacations>>

And here for all my stuff on Music vacations>> 

Planning a holiday abroad? Book your hotel online.

Over the last few weeks I have had a number of people asking me various doubts on planning an independent international holiday & particularly about booking hotels abroad. So, till such time as HolidayIQ launches a comprehensive international section (don’t worry, that is coming soon & I promise, it will be a great planning tool), here is a quick primer on how to book hotels & resorts abroad.

I am an online guy, so my first preference is always to book hotels online. With both Travelocity and Expedia launching India sites, the widest international hotel inventory is available to be booked from India and paid in Rupees. So, it sure beats your neighbourhood travel agent hollow. And since both sites have an Indian call centre, one can also talk to a real person in India to double check your bookings, which is often a real comfort.

I stress-tested booking a family room (4 people, 2 adults and 2 kids) at Orlando - in or around Disneyworld - on both the sites. Both Expedia & Travelocity did a good job and threw up a number of options (although Travelocity gave funny error messages & repeatedly failed in my Firefox browser which was a disappointment). However, Expedia’s search methodology was a shade more user-friendly since it allows you to find hotels by naming the Attraction you want to go to and throws up hotels around the attraction. Of course, both Travelocity & Expedia also allow you to narrow the list of hotels in the search results by distance or ease of access to the attraction.

Both excelled in prices. Hotel room prices around Disneyworld started in Expedia at Rs 1386 per night and in Travelocity at Rs 1583 per night.

Travel writing & the art of writing about Food

“we counted fourteen separate hors d’oeuvres - artichoke hearts, tiny sardines fried in batter, perfumed tabouleh, creamed salt cod, marinated mushrooms, baby calamari, tapenade, small onions in a fresh tomato sauce, celery and chick-peas, radishes and cherry tomatoes, cold mussels. Balanced on top of the loaded tray were thick slices of pate and gherkins, saucers of olives and cold peppers. The bread had a fine crisp crust. There was white wine in the ice bucket, and a bottle of Chateauneauf-du-Pape left to breathe in the shade”

” The main course arrived - rosy slices of lamb cooked with whole cloves of garlic, young green beans and a golden potato-and-onion galette“

“The cheese was from Banon, moist in its wrapping of vine leaves, then came the triple flavours and textures of the desserts - lemon sorbet, chocolate tart, and creme angalise all sharing a plate. A coffee. A glass of marc from Gigondas. A sigh of contentment.”

Peter Mayle can be irritating. Here I had just finished what most observers would call a sumptuous Sunday lunch and settled down to read his “A year in Provence” and before you know it, I am panting for more food. I must say this for the man. He can bring food alive .

A couple of new tourism websites

Here are 2 new tourism websites that I recently came across. Each interesting in a different way.

Smallwander

As its name somewhat elliptically suggests, this is a site about travelling to small towns. Currently it covers only four states in the US. In many ways, this site reminds me of HolidayIQ, since over 70% of Indian destinations carried on HolidayIQ can be classified as small towns. This aspect makes is refreshingly different from the run-of-the-mill travel info sites, most of which give you more information than you need about New York City while not giving you any about say, Damascus, Virginia. I would have liked to see a user-feedback section on this site to complete the experience, but I guess it is early days for the site.

Fabsearch

Fabsearch aggregates information about hotels, resorts and restaurants mentioned in top travel and lifestyle magazines, probably making it the first aggregator of such content in the world. A search of places to eat in ‘Bombay’ throws up options selected from articles in Elle Decor, Tatler, Daily Candy & Our Friends. Some of the other publications they seem to track are Harpers Bazaar, Elle, FT, New York Social Diary, Town & Country, Vanity Fair, Vogue, W and Wallpaper. Interesting enough as a concept to see whether it gets traction.

The alchemy of sound, the language of the world

 

(The sound of the Australian aboriginal ‘Didgeridoo’ - from Youtube) 

Goofing off after lunch, I reached Youtube and got into a music-y mood. Wandered through a live version of Sultans of Swing by Knopfler & Clapton, peeked at a Garfunkel number and ended up at an old live concert video of Kishore Kumar.

What is it about Music? Music changes everything. It energises, it touches, it saddens. It makes you reflect, it helps you remember an old flame, it makes you want to jump into a pool, it puts you to sleep. What is this thing called Sound and what is this amazing stuff called Music?

You cannot touch it, you cannot see it, but you sure can feel it. This most primordial of life’s manifestations, the ‘aum’ that triggered life, this astonishing thing called sound. And, set in a particular sequence, it has the power to elevate you, transport you, destroy you. That is music.

There is a kind of hush, all over the world…, sang Karen Carpenter many years ago. But for me, more than ‘a hush’, there is music all over the world. Which is one of the best reasons to wander around. Tuaregs string their sounds in one way, the aborigines in Australia another way, the Khmers yet another way  and the Latvians a completely different way. But whichever way they sequence it, the result is always arresting. That is music and it is clearly the language of the world.

If you want to take a music vacation, Click here>>

Mallu food at Claypot in Thippassandra in Bangalore

(A surreal snap of a mallu ’sadya’, I found on Flickr - click here for the original)

So you are looking for authentic kerala food in Bangalore. And you want a clean, not fancy place that serves you great food and no attitude. Check out Claypot, the tiny little mallu joint on Rama Temple Road in the midst of the crowded Thippassandra locality just off Indira Nagar in the eastern part of the city. Once there, ask for Benny and say I sent you. Should get you a warm smile. Keeping the determinedly socialist approach of the Mallu, knowing a big kahuna will not change anything else at the place for you - the food will remain the same as for everyone else. Which is good, because the food everyone gets is great.

My personal recommendation is to land up for lunch and to get yourself a mallu ‘meals’ (it is always said in the plural - anyone asking for a mallu ‘meal’ is either a serial-killer or a capitalist or both). Ask for a crab masala or prawn ‘thoran’ - if you can handle tons of lovely grated coconut - and mackerel fry. Say thanks to your God and tuck in.

HolidayIQ in the online travel firmament in India

Yesterday’s Mint newspaper carried the story of Cleartrip’s next round of funding. The associated graphic showed all the 7 players in online space. The 5 players that have been funded for sometime (Yatra, Cleartrip, Makemytrip, Travelguru & HolidayIQ) and the two start-ups (Ixigo, Atyourprice) who have just received angel funding. What is really interesting for me is the extremely unique position occupied by HolidayIQ in this group (even though I say it myself!). We are the only travel information business (media & publishing) and actually works completely complementary to all the other players in the travel space, be it online players, offline travel agents or travel suppliers. The other aspect I notice is the high efficiency of capital we have had, having spent considerably lesser money than the funded online travel agents.

I find the two new start-ups interesting too.

Adam Baron’s photo of St Lucia, Caribbean

I was in St Lucia in the Caribbean last April on a cruise ship from Barbados. While I fell in love with the place, I did not have a snap that did justice. I found one. Here it is.

There are a number of cool snaps of cruise ships and the Caribbean (including the one above in a big format) on this site : Adam Baron Photo.

Click here for my first post on St Lucia : the only place I truly want to go away to forever.

Between Baby Sitter and Brain Doctor : A guide to guiding tourists & travellers

Recently I met someone who has the onerous job of helping first-time European tourists ease themselves into India. And who thought the job was ’somewhere between being a Baby Sitter and a Brain Doctor’. Other than the fact that the phrase has a nice ring to it, it made me think about Tourism (you’d have thought that I have had enough, but obviously not).

I think this neat phrase actually captures the essential difference between the modern Tourist and the intrepid Traveller.

Tourists go to a new place to wonder at how different it all is. The idea is to somehow get to a point where you feel lost, baby-like and in constant need of looking after. And a whole paraphernalia has developed to cosset you in this place. Resorts, guides, concierges, charter flights - the works. The more I think about this, the more I can see its attraction. In a world that demands a lot from each person, a ‘touristy holiday’ is exactly what you need. To leave the cares of existence and move to the cossetting of childhood. In such a situation, I can see how the Baby Sitter idea works.

The Brain Doctor comes in when you meet Travellers. Travellers ‘go away’ for exactly the opposite reason. They go to conquer. Not for them the innocent pleasure of regression.

Google searches to find me..

Google - the ominpotent & ominpresent, brings a lot of people to my blog. A few of them get there searching for, shall I say, rather refreshingly different phrases. Here are a few such search phrases that got in this month (yes, they do find me somehow), all of which gave me a few minutes of innocent fun.

• ‘best indian food for seduction’
• ‘kid’s map of serengeti’
• ‘who went with vasco da gama to explore india’
• ‘thy booking’
• ’saar on map’
• ‘in bottoms up’
• ‘i am looking recipies of gobi manjoori’
• ‘fuk in the beach’
• ‘famous kids in london’
• ‘tiger pet india’
• ‘coorg woman in usa’
• ‘pav vada’

A small game I play by myself is to try to imagine the searchers face when they search on these words and reach my blog.

Nature

I was brought up on a plot of land about a sixth of an acre. Born to a man who had left the embrace of land, but whose father was both a village teacher and a farmer. So land and by extension Nature was always around in my childhood.

Nature entranced me as a child. As I look back, I can trace many of my skills back to the days when I used wander across the compound on Saturday afternoons with nothing much to do other than climb trees, poke into warrens and eat a lot of fruit.

Nature taught me to See.  For the two qualities most required for observation are the qualities that nature absolutely forces on you. The first is a keen appreciation of scale. The second, patience.

As a child you soon learn to appreciate that Nature operates at all sizes. From tiny little bugs that make concentric circles as they burrow in the tropical earth to large trees that groan with the lashing rain, our little plot had the whole spectrum of scale. And for a kid, this is pretty cool - one minute allowing you to rub your nose deep into the mud closely monitoring the intricacies of the earthworm and the next to swinging high on the branches of a monstrous mango tree.

But, you need patience with Nature - as all kids who have tried to catch a dragonfly to tie a knot on its tail will testify. (Incidentally, I tried to find a youtube video showing a real dragonfly and failed. All the videos are of rock bands, toy helicopters, Japanese Animes or even the odd nightclub. Does seem to say a bit about our current relationship with Nature).

Penguin has recently published this extraordinary book by Ruskin Bond on Nature. If you are a lover of nature, run to get your copy. If not, well, my sympathies are with you.

Click here to see my posts on Gardens.

Hippies and the overland Asian journey of the 60s

(An old clip of a part of the hippie overland Asia route)

As I set out for another trip to Goa, albeit for work this time, I am once again reminded of Roy’s narrative of the arrival of the first Hippies to Goa. Roy was all of 15 then and he was thrust into the roller-coaster world of ‘flower power’ Goa. By 1967, Goa was the final destination in what Rory Maclean calls the ‘weirdest procession of unroadworthy vehicles ever to roll and rock across the face of the earth’ - the great overland trek by western youngsters turning their face to the two Cs that dominated their lives, Capitalism and Christianity.

As Goa gets overrun with an increasing array of tourists - a heady mix of Indo-gangetic plainsmen meeting the walrus moustaches from the Russian steppes, it is easy to forget that this land has an interesting claim to contemporary history.

(Another interesting clip from Rory Maclean on the overland route : this time in Afghanistan)

Click here for an earlier post featuring hippies.

And here for all my Goa posts.

1931 AD

American movies were having a good year. Top releases included Frankenstein, Mata Hari, Chaplin’s City Lights and James Cagney’s Public Enemy in addition to Dracula and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Other world events too were apace. Thomas Edison was filing his last patent application. New Delhi became India’s capital. The Empire State Building was being completed. Mao Zedong proclaimed the Chinese Soviet Republic and Haile Selassie signed Ethiopia’s first Constitution.

And in that year, a young man from the backwoods country in the southern tip of India set sail for England to pursue the dream of higher education. Along with 5 other Indians, he would be among the first batch of St Catherine’s College in Oxford University. And would later be immortalised as ‘Lost Alumni‘.

I haven’t as yet informed the Dons at St Catherine’s; but if ever there was a person who was not lost, it was this young man. He went on to do a lot of stuff in life, none of which could be characterised as ‘lost’. I know it, because I knew this young man very well.

But in that world, where telephony was an idea and long distance transport was rudimentary, such displacement was probably the equivalent of ‘lost’.

All of this came to me while listening to Paul Theroux the other day.

Canoeing down a secret lake in Olaulim, Goa

 

Among all the experiences I have had travelling across the world, gently sailing on a lake in a canoe expertly handled by a dimunitive Finnish lady, listening to the enveloping sound of stillness of village life in Goa, with only the pant of 2 swimming dogs as symphony, must surely rank pretty high.

It was about a month ago that I found myself peering straight ahead from the bow of a little canoe in a lake set amidst the verdant and extremely quiet landscape of Olaulim, Goa’s wonderful little village I had written earlier about.

Savio & Pirkko have cracked it - they have figured out what life is all about. And to let you in on the secret - it is about having

Listening to Paul Theroux

 

I was in Mumbai earlier this week and happened to notice that Paul Theroux had been in town and had given a talk. And then got to know that he was in Bangalore the next day evening. So I sacrificed an additional 750 bucks to Jet Airways, changed my ticket to an earlier flight, braved traffic to Koramangala and made it about 30 minutes late to hear Mr Theroux.

I really do not consider myself a writer-groupie and so have never really attended one of these sessions. But the chance to hear some stuff from a travel writer was definitely tempting (confession : I want to be a travel writer one day. Who does’nt?). And Theroux is pretty big in the game.

He spoke engagingly and with wit.