This Is India Podcast 2

September 2, 2010  |  Featured, General, Travel  |  View Comments

Wel­come back!

This is the second pod­cast in the This Is India col­lec­tion. It tells of Cesca and my jour­ney high above the swel­ter­ing plains of India to the moun­tain retreat of Ooty. We recor­ded it last night and both really enjoyed revis­it­ing what was one of the most pleas­ant sec­tions of our trek around this enorm­ous country.

Ooty holds the envi­ous pos­i­tion of being high enough to be cold by Indian stand­ards, but still within the heart of the coun­try that it over­looks. It has a a very fam­ous train ser­vice, upon which the ded­ic­ated crews work tire­lessly to bring tour­ists, loc­als and trav­el­lers alike up and down from the plains of Ker­ala to the high sta­tion at Ooty. The people here, com­pletely the most Eng­lish influ­enced of Indian peoples, dress uniquely, wor­ship in their own way and all exhibit the strength that high sta­tion liv­ing gifts those who end­lessly pitch their lungs against the thin­ning air.

We hope you enjoy it and as before we have setup a slideshow of pic­tures of our time there that we will refer to as we talk on.

If you like the pod­cast, please con­sider leav­ing a com­ment or spread­ing the news on face­book, twit­ter or whatever is your per­sonal social medium.

CLICK to play:
 
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Click the more to get the altern­ate player, com­ments and links from the pod­cast:
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Mysore

Mysore

July 26, 2010  |  Featured, General, Travel  |  View Comments

“Can you take us to this hotel please?” I asked the tuk tuk driver.

He shook his head, “No, that hotel burned down.”

“Burned down? I just spoke to them on the phone…”

He held his hands apart and looked slightly hurt that I was doubt­ing him, “Hotel closed,” he insisted, “I take you to one much better.”

Time for the Bad Cop.

In India, catch­ing a tuk tuk and nego­ti­at­ing the fare – or even the simple exist­ence of the des­tin­a­tion – is a national pas­time. Not one driver, in three months, took us where we wanted to go without com­ment, argu­ment or an all out fight. At first, this grates on the nerves and then you cant help but be brought down by it. Then you feel vic­tim­ised for being west­ern and (rel­at­ively) rich. You start to think that they are all out to get you per­son­ally. How­ever, it is none of these; it is an offi­cial sport. Take it as a sport, a spar­ring match, and you sud­denly find it fun.

And you develop tactics.

Our tac­tic is to use the old Good Cop, Bad Cop routine, but with a twist. The twist being that I, the large white man in slightly mil­it­ary cloth­ing, am not the bad cop. Cesca is. There is some­thing about con­fid­ent Eng­lish women that is like Krypton­ite to a tuk tuk driver. We some­times really played it up. Cesca would fake anger at the guy and then I would step in and take his side.

“But Darling,” I would plead, “he has to earn a liv­ing, I am sure he is not rip­ping us off.” I would then give the driver a look, one I prac­ticed, which said ‘Hey buddy, look at this, I have an angry white women here. I know you need to rip us off, you know I know, but please let’s just defuse this bomb before it goes off and we both look embar­rassed’. It was a kind of shared-trauma plead­ing look.

Worked 90% of the time. The 10% is a story for later…

It was very easy to feel a little guilty about such beha­viour, but hon­estly this is just part of the game as well. There is no White Man’s Bur­den, I didn’t owe any­one being “gouged” (the trav­el­ers term for rip off rides).

Cesca looked the guy in the eye and scowled – some­thing she is very good at, “We want to go to this one please?” She said prof­fer­ing the Lonely Planet aloft.

This guy was not crack­ing, “I not take you to that one,” he said.

Time for Phase Two. Read More

Basho and Cesca visit Bangalore, and kind of wish they hadn't

Basho and Cesca visit Bangalore, and kind of wish they hadn’t

May 20, 2010  |  Featured, General, Travel  |  View Comments

Ban­galore is a strange place because it is just like cit­ies at home. Almost slap bang in the middle of India, it sits like a jig­saw piece put in the wrong box. To some, it is the epi­tome of the “two tier” soci­ety out­siders see when they look this coun­try. But that is just in mean eco­nomic terms, and when you actu­ally get here you soon real­ise that West­ern ideas of how soci­ety struc­tures itself into two halves down purely how much cash is in your account is the worst of mod­els. It just doesn’t work in India; there is another dimen­sion to the whole thing, a spe­cial dimen­sion of multi-layered reli­gious and social tiers lay­ing next to each other for a thou­sand years. Most of the time, India provides a refresh­ing change for vis­it­ors. How much money you have does not define you and your world.

And then you come to Bangalore…

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This Is India Podcast

This Is India Podcast

March 24, 2010  |  Featured, General, Travel  |  View Comments

Hello and wel­come to an experiment!

Cecsa and I have sat down and recor­ded a pod­cast of our time in Ane­gundi in India. This is a total-first for us and so please strap your­self in as we try and cap­ture our feel­ings about the amaz­ing Hampi area without really know­ing what the hell we are doing. I haven’t edited it much, nor put on any intro and outro — this is raw stuff. If you like it, then let us know and I will make sure to up the pro­fes­sion­al­ism about 1000% for next week.

Oh and warn­ing for a few swearwords!

I have uploaded a col­lec­tion of pho­tos for you to browse as we speak as we refer to them as we go along. Hope­fully, this will keep us on track and give you some­thing nice to look at while we blather on. Here is a slideshow of the images, click to open in Flickr and you can go through them as I refer to them in the audio.


(Dir­ect link:Flickr Set)

And here is the pod­cast, click play to start it:
 

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Outside Context New Zealand articles now on iPhone

Outside Context New Zealand articles now on iPhone

March 17, 2010  |  Featured, General, Travel  |  View Comments

The most com­mon ques­tion I have been asked by people after return­ing home is, “which was your favour­ite coun­try to visit?” For Cesca and I it has to be the majestic New Zea­l­and. Not because it is ter­ribly exotic. as everything is famil­iar (espe­cially the road names), but rather because it is so much like you wish Eng­land could be. The lakes, the moun­tains, the rivers, the beaches. New Zea­l­and has everything. The people have a real “get up and go” atti­tude that is infec­tious. They love their coun­try, they also appear to know who they are and what they want. Liv­ing in such a cul­ture is, and I hes­it­ate to write this, idyllic.

Shame I don’t live there then!

Cesca and I have writ­ten many art­icles on the sub­ject of New Zea­l­and and also made a “love let­ter” of a short-film cel­eb­rat­ing the coun­try (found under “films” in the nav­ig­a­tion bar). How­ever, I have always wanted to do more to speak of our time driv­ing around these islands.

Well, our wish has come true.

About a two weeks ago I was approached by a com­pany work­ing for Air New Zea­l­and. They wanted to license all our con­tent on New Zea­l­and for use in the offi­cial Air New Zea­l­and iPhone app!

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Goa: The Beach Life

Goa: The Beach Life

February 24, 2010  |  Featured, General, Travel  |  View Comments

I lay on my back and tried to relax. The sound of rolling waves crashed back and forth in the dis­tance, which helped. How­ever, the sun was beat­ing down, heat­ing the air and leav­ing me gasp­ing like I had my head in an oven. It was also mak­ing the sand hot to the touch and the use of san­dals more of a neces­sity than just a fash­ion statement.

San­dals.

I hadn’t worn shoes for 2 months. A new adult first, mean­ing that my feet were always dusty; the ever present Indian dirt and sand sticked to my toes. Every night I showered and a tor­rent of black washed off my feet. I turned onto my side and spied Cesca on the next sun loun­ger, she was tak­ing in the sun by lay­ing on her front, her bikini open at the back to allow a tan, but – since I had rubbed in some cream for her — no white line or burn­ing. I reached to the table between us and took down my beer and my book. It was called The Mas­ter of Go, by Nobel Prize win­ning author Yasunari Kawabata.

Then my phone rang. It was my best friend Mark.

I thumbed the screen and the call con­nec­ted, “Mark!” I exclaimed, genu­inely please to hear from him, “It’s great to hear your voice. Where are you?” From over the con­nec­tion I could hear what soun­ded like traffic and men talk­ing; the sounds of Lon­don. The sounds of home.

“Heyya, I thought I would give you a call,” his voice was raised like he could not really hear me and was com­pens­at­ing by shout­ing; he must be at work on a build­ing site, “I’m in a man hole at the moment sort­ing out found­a­tions for a new tube station.”

“Wow,” I said, interested.

“Yeah, it’s for the Olympics and all that. Any­way, it’s cold, wet and hor­rible and I am down this smelly hole and I thought I could do with cheer­ing up. Where are you?”

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The Ellora Caves

The Ellora Caves

February 18, 2010  |  Featured, General, Travel  |  View Comments

One of the unique things about India, and one that you never quite come to terms with, is the trains. I would even go as far as to say that if you could under­stand Indian trains, then you might well lay claim to being truly at home in India. For almost everything that there is to exper­i­ence in this wild and beau­ti­ful coun­try is cap­able of being exper­i­enced by rail.

You see all sorts of things just by walk­ing into a sta­tion. They are often grand build­ings left over from the Brit­ish age of iron and func­tion as hotel for thou­sands of home­less trav­el­ers of all types. They have some of the best and very worst toi­lets in the world, and for some over the edge of the plat­form is pre­ferred. They are often smelly, fre­quently dirty and occa­sion­ally hor­rid. But, for every bad thing there exists a good to bal­ance it out. Sta­tions are packed with fam­il­ies play­ing together, sleep­ing and eat­ing together. There is the bustle and fizz of people meet­ing, people depart­ing from loved ones and people wish­ing they were on their way. The best book­shops I found in India were oper­ated out of mobile stores. Almost any­thing you could want is for sale on these strips of con­crete, and after hours on a train you will eat almost any­thing (no mat­ter where it has been). They are amaz­ing places, a sort of nexus point and a melt­ing pot of cul­tures. The gaps between the high and low fade away on these platforms. They are to India what black­cabs are to Lon­don. Almost, but not quite, romantic.

People sleep­ing at a Station.

India has inves­ted heav­ily in its trains, a trick they learned from the Vic­tori­ans, and some­thing we back home should con­sider care­fully. Short of fly­ing, trains remain the quint­es­sen­tial method of trans­port around India. The tracks are every­where. All the major cit­ies are linked, and most of the minor ones. In fact, we never struggled to find a train going any­where we wanted to go, from the high tech city of Bengaluru (Ban­galore) to the deep desert city of Jaisalmer.

We just struggled to get on one or two.

They are not slow either. For while a jour­ney, say from Varanasi to Agra, takes place over one night, a simple look out of the win­dow shows how the train is ham­mer­ing out the miles at mind-meltingly fast speeds. It’s just the coun­try is massive. Even­tu­ally, train trans­port became a wel­come break for us. We would even plan our jour­ney around it and use it as a “free nights’ accom­mod­a­tion”. For see­ing into a heart of India, trains are your choice.

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