Jungle jungle phool khila hai...

Dear people with very large photographic equipment,

Please do kindly keep it in mind that your 1000x zoom attachments may actually look very threatening to man and animal. Especially animal. You can't blame a two and a half year old tiger for mistaking them for Howitzer cannons. He is but an adolescent yet to learn the ways of the world. It speaks volumes for the great lineage and upbringing of the Bandhavgarh tiger that he keeps his composure and sang froid in front of a 100-strong motley crowd from all over the world brandishing what look like deadly weapons of mass destruction. Do also realize, that when you are there to see the tiger and tiger will most likely come to you (they've signed an MOU or something) you don't really need the zoom. Tigers are large animals, clearly visible to the naked eye and an average camera. If you must keep them screwed on, cover them up with a cloak or something. You can even cover yourselves up with it, like the photographers in the early twentieth century. Once you are done seeing the tiger, you can bring out the zoom all you like and shoot birds and lizards aplenty.
You sir, the dignified looking elderly gent wearing animal planet logo all over your attire, (were you really from animal planet?) must remember that it is bad form to sit head and shoulders above and in front of everybody on a jeep with pimped up seats when all else are causing serious damage to their neck muscles trying to catch a glimpse from their standard issue open-hooded gypsies.
Dear lady with the 42'' waist pair of jeans,
It intrigued me no end as to what you and your boyfriend kept looking at through your ginormous zoom lens in the Kendua tree at white tiger forest lodge, all morning and afternoon. Yes, I understand there must've been some birds there, but don't you think the rough and tumble of the tiger show in early morning called for a restful day spent with a drop of ale and a 3000 calorie power lunch, fit for the tiger, spread out by the excellent culinary team at the lodge?
Speaking of which, dear reader, it's a party out there. And to quote one Mr. Mark Knopfler, you may kiss the cook, indeed. He's gold. They don't make cooks like him anymore. He just ladles in the LDL. Never shies away from throwing 700 calories into a dish that could've been done within 250. You may call it sinful. I call it grit and chutzpah.
All minor peeves aside, you must come to Bandhavgarh. That's where it's at. (Yes, Dylan.) And hit your triglycerides for a six.

Safar mein dhoop to hogi

In mandiromein dhoop bahut hoti hai sir. Bachche kaise ja payenge itni dhoop me? Bachcho ko kaise ghumana hai, dhoop se hatana hai, main janta hoon. Aap samajh rahe hain na main kya keh raha hoon? Bhartiya paribar me kis tarah ka laj lihaj rakhna padta hai main janta hoon. Mandir kaise dikhana hai, mujhe aata hai. Aththara saal se isi kaam me laga hua hoon.

Thus spake Sri Dikshit. A very oily and objectionable pimp with slicked back hair and shifty eyes. But then his ilk is everywhere, on the streets of Khajuraho. Their target consumer, the Indian middle class tourist. The Americans, Italians, Israelis and Russians are outside their ambit. The rich ones stay at the high end resorts nearer to the airport and are mostly on a conducted tour. The hiker sorts in chappals have their trusty guidebooks and maps, often travel on foot and are unfailingly wary of local touts. Both largely unapproachable.

To cut a long story short, we got around Dikshit. And look where it got us. Into a lot of dhoop. Thankfully the kids were not wilting. Far from it. They were suppressing smiles and pointedly looking the other way and asking other questions. Like why the cow and the boar are gods. So much for Bhartiya paribar, parampara, laaj, lihaz.

Getting through all that dhoop, answers to some questions still remain in the dark for me. Like what's with the lion and the woman? And what is the woman knelt between hind legs of a dragon/horse trying to look at or grab? See pics.

One word. Khajuraho is fun. And totally worth it. If you are ready to live with beer @ Rs. 80. From the retail outlet, that is. Rs. 120 at the eatery. But those are figures all over MP. The saffron raj has made it tough for the tipplers.

The light and sound show is boring. Like they mostly are, anywhere. What's unique here is the guards won't allow tripods inside the gardens during the show, even as they'll let you carry a still camera, which will be completely useless minus a stand. For night photography, the best available spot in town is the famed Blue Sky rooftop restaurant, across the street.


From here we'd travel on to Bandhavgarh, in search of the majestic white tiger. More of that story on a later post. See also the updated flickr album, if you would.

I'm out
(as in "I've outed myself", more commonly used for gay people exposing their sexual orientation, though not in that sense)











Nobody really wanted to see what I look like. I know. However, the editing of these videos was a painstaking process. Took me the better part of a week. I wanted to put up at least micro clips somewhere on the web. In these clips, the bespectacled fellow with an oversized round balding head is me. (many people have compared my features with Subhas Chandra Bose). Likewise the missus and the lass.
We'll be traveling to Khajuraho, Bandhavgarh and Pachmari with a brief touchdown at Jabalpur the second week of March. Anyone who can share some travel tips esp. the journey from Khaj to Bandhavgarh and availability and rates of vehicle rental in the area, please do. I'll be grateful.

p.s. As compared to utube which sucked big time, Vimeo was a breeze. Uploading speed was fantastic and features offered for a free account were great.

The Goddess in Autumn

A one-and-a-half-week spent in a daze of mellow wellness, not counting a minor throat infection afflicted by cold beer in Bong weather. Been to the Durgapujo in Kolkata after a gap of two years. Among many other things, a morning of pandalizing, an experimental cocktail, a dear friend paying for the whole crowd at Tangra at saptami lunch (his novel is out on a Pujabarshiki - his first step into big league, and a call for celebration) and rediscovering New Market.

Some photos. The first two at Badamtala Ashar Sangho, off Hazra road.

We gathered from the hoardings Prabhuji mithun-da is the brand ambassador for this Pujo. (Oh, yes, they all have brand ambassadors now.) Mithun-da would be proud. All in all, we liked the mood and ambiance of the setup. Very old-worldly and nostalgia.

See the old rajbari ( King's haveli) milieu on the sidelines? Update : An utube link for the pandal.

Ekdalia. Garish. I felt like calling it the moor's last sigh (at the moo-rals).

What with the recession, stock crash and all, the organizers at Selimpur Palli were of the grim view that it was the indeed the end of days, apocalypse, Armageddon, whatever. Why else would they think of putting the goddess on Noah's ark?

Rajib, the blackberry guy, was the host for ashtami evening. The inventory included a bottle of Stoli Vanil vanilla flavored vodka, one tequila (Pepe Lopez, not quite top of the line stuff, I hear), and also some VAT (but nobody was in the vatty mood). Rajib insisted that we do the Stoli first, and chase it down with Pepe shots. I suggested, on a whim, that we should try out some sort of a float with the vodka and some vanilla ice cream. Here goes.

1 1/2 oz vanilla flavored vodka

50 ml Ice cream soda/ Sprite

Two scoops vanilla ice cream

Mix the vodka, soda/sprite and ice cream into a smooth consistency. Pour in a highball glass and float a scoop of ice cream on top. Can be served with some strawberry or chocolate syrup topping. Suggested name: Stoli Scream.

The brand Tangra is now a pale shadow of what it used to be. At Kim Fa, the soup was passable, the noodle dishes (as famously put by J.A.P in recent times,) more Shyambazar than Sanghai, the less said about the Szechwan chicken the better. Maybe old man Kim was taking a nap. After all, it was afternoon during durgapujo time and the Bangali Bhadralok who wouldn't know their dim sums from their momos were all out in hordes.

Lately Rajib has developed this annoying habit of having a meal solely consisting of starters while eating out. After a coupla rounds of batter-fried chicken dumplings and babycorns, he sought to secure the kiddies' vote in his favor by announcing : All who want to eat starters only, say "aye", or something to that effect, which, sure enough, was getting some raised hands at the kids camp. Put down firmly by Subroto the mirthless girth with a gem of a statement : "Na. Ami food khabo." Which roughly translated to: "no i want to eat a proper meal", but easily became the best in hungry indignation since Major de Coverley's : "Gimme eat" in catch 22.

The Tangra Chinese are these days cheap neither. We paid 6000 bucks for a crowd of 20 not counting small kids. Sorry, Indranil the novelist payed. Not expensive really, but not dirt cheap by any standards. And the portions don't justify the rates.

The day before I was coming back, I needed to buy some red and green curry paste, lemongrass, nam pla, oyster sauce, bamboo shoots and other veggies I can't buy fresh at my small town marketplace. You can guess I'm trying to dabble in Thai cuisine. I was thinking maybe Spencer's but a friend suggested Hogg market. Hesitantly I went, probably after two-and-a half decades' hiatus. The place was a treasure trove, as ever. I got every item on my list, the way I'd wanted. Not only could I get lemongrass for Rs. 3 a stalk, (Spencer's charge 10, and sell stale stuff) every little shop at the back end alley was a revelation. I even ended up buying some Angostura bitters.

When we were little kids, people in Kolkata used to say that you could buy bat's wings and cheeta's milk at the New Market if you were paying the right price. Indeed. I perfectly see their point now.

A Streetcar Named Desire


All of this last week, in Kolkata, we revisited with bitterness that feeling of constantly walking in water. A mere 300 kilometers away, our sleepy Industrial township has summers when, if you happen to go out in the sun in late morning or mid-afternoon, in all probability you'll catch the loo (not what you think/ plis check out the link) and peacefully drop down and die. On the other hand, if you can mostly stay in the shade and have something cool to drink you'll be fine. Not so in Kolkata. There, thirty seconds outside air-conditioning can get you so wet the sweat will get into your eyes. BTW, I saw the same thing happening to Dhoni in Chennai the other evening. (T20 can be a cruel game, Charlie Brown.)

One evening, while coming back from hospital after visiting a post-surgery uncle, we met this creature.


We had to walk a few hundred yards home, and it was starting to pitter patter. So we hailed, and he did oblige. We sat, he pedaled. His rickshaw was a pleasure vehicle. The seats were low-slung, wider, softer and the hood, when raised, would allow you to sit straight even if you weren't a dwarf. As opposed to your house and garden variety rickshaws in a Kolkata neighborhood. Man was the ride way comphier than any other pedicab! And that peekaboo window at the back, so romantic! Before you raise your hands and holler, yes, the photo was taken the morning after. Be coming back to that.

We reached home and had to alight. Could've gone on for miles y'know. Radio Mirchi was playing Tashan Se on the rickshaw's sound system. We asked him how much. Just being polite. We Knew the fare. He said, "Ja Ichhchhey Diye Din" (Whatever you dim right) "Aar to ei sapta-ta achhi. Next week theke ar amake paben na." (You won't find me here next week on)
"Why? Is anything the matter?"
No. Apparently the Bangla Cinema-r lok-ra had come and talked him into working in a film, so he'd be busy with shooting and all.
The missus, cruel woman, still asked, was it your special pedicab, or yourself, that got them so interested? The man replied mischievously, both, Boudi, both. Thus ended an enjoyable evening of rickshaw-riding. I remember inquiring after the Director and Producer of his debut feature. Only he wasn't into those unimportant details. And how did the Bangla Cinema-r lok find him? Oh, they must have read his interviews in Bartaman and watched him on Tara Bangla.
We nodded in awe, and silently entered home. Us ordinary mortals, with the distinct feeling of having peeked into celebrity zone.

But the slow fluorescence kept itself flickering in my head. By next morn I had seen light. This man had to be put on yonder blog. I went to the rickshaw stand he plied from. He was out, So I had to leave a message and a number. Within minutes, a missed call. I called back, asked him to wait, and went fortified with my camera. I hope this video does justice to the cosiness of the rickshaw, resplendent with all sorts of blinking lights, and belting out chartbusters one after another.




One final nugget. While parting, I offered the fellow a twenty. Compensation for time spent, lost fare and all. I might have taken, like, fifteen minutes of his time. Surprisingly, while he was indifferent about fare earlier on, this time he practically snatched away another fifty with a smile and all the charm of a smooth operator. I was awestruck once again. This man clearly had star quality. He already knew the market economics of interviews and photo shoots. He also knew where real money was for the making. Maybe all these media people have got him wizened up.

Shooting starts on 29th. Wish Ashok-da all the very best.

Heart of the run
(Of grain whiskeys and Royal Bhutan)

The desired spirit is called ‘the middle cut’ or ‘the heart of the run’ and starts to come through as the alcohol content reaches about 75 percent. The heart of the run is the only part of the distillate that will become whiskey. 20 minutes into the second and final distillation the heart of the run start to come through. This so called ‘heart’ is the only part of the distillation that is used. The process of collecting the ‘heart’ takes 3-4 hours. The alcohol concentration of the heart is between 60 and 72 percent, and has an average concentration of 68 percent. This raw spirit is cut with water to 63.5 percent, which is considered to be the optimal strength for the spirit to interact with the casks during storage.

One has sampled some sacrosanct single malts( few and far between), some just about palatable single malts, some hallowed big names of blended scotch, some overhyped BAD blends, some surprisingly good underrated ones, and more than anything else, stuff that barely escape being in the hooch category, in one's not so illustrious career.
G-E-L-E-P-H-U. Name rings a bell? Nope? This blogger has written about the distillery there and it's products. Much as the prime offering is a well known brand in certain circles (picture right), this correspondent found CSJ an average whiskey with unusually strong flavors and a fast-acting blend. This is the best they have on the shelves, priced at about $10 a 750ml. However, the whiskey I really want to discuss here is the ambitiously named "Bhutan Highland". The label honestly says it's a grain whiskey, as opposed to "blended scotch malts", whatever that means in these parts. With a curious looking yellow ribbon tied around the neck of the bottle. Dirt cheap, just above $4 for the same quantity. For that kind of pricing alone, my friend and I had at first taken it for modified tharra. Grave mistake it would have been.
Don't know if it was the cute ribbon, the honest proclamation, or the lighter color of the fluid that made me buy a bottle. For the next three evenings, my friend had I, over diverse terrain, in extremities of weather, under various states of physical exhaustion, have only happy happy memories of the whiskey to recount. Ah, the clarity it struck you with! The energetic delivery! The effortless follow through! I rate it none inferior to Ishant Sharma.
Fooling apart, what I seriously felt about the spirit is :
a) That it's obviously a single grain whiskey, technically, from only one distillery and all, much in the mold of the eminent Cameron Brig or, Invergordon, none of which I've had the pleasure of tasting.
b) The gelephu people, who had a quality whiskey on their hands( blame it on the fabled highland spring waters or the quality of Bhutanese hop) didn't go the fancy maturation in wooden cask route, which explains the absurdly low price. It was bottled fresh off the distillery, like many other whiskey makers in Asia do.
On the third evening, when we finally and truly realized the enormous potential of the whiskey (by which time the bot was empty too) we wanted to travel to Gelephu, kiss the hand of the brewer and congratulate him, and urge him to barrel his fine produce for at least six years before bottling. Then he could give m/s Whyte & Mackay a run for their money.

Travel rant

The rhino doesn't much care. In places like Kaziranga and Jaldapara wildlife sanctuaries, they're used to seeing scores of human clowns everyday. I hear Kaziranga is better. But our travel plans involved Jaldapara in West Bengal. Prior to the overcast and frequently drippy morning on elephant back in the J forest, we had spent two anxious evenings inside two other beautiful, lush and scary jungles, at the Jayanti forest which borders Bhutan, and at little known Chilapata which was more exciting in terms of flora. But it was "wild" elephants we were after. And we missed them by a whisker. Or that's what the guide would make us believe. He was the cat's whiskers. The jungle is a world of make believe. Some travelblog says, only morons aim to see big game when going on a jungle safari. I knew that before I started. But I learned a few things as I went along:

a) The jungle is a beautiful place, and the green does your eyes a world of good if you don't strain them over that elusive fauna. It's ok, really, just listen to the birds twitter. There will also be fowl and pheasants road running, one feels sanguine. Even peacocks, in these parts.

b) If possible avoid the company of guides. They will only weave a spell of high drama. If not possible, turn a deaf ear. It doesn't help to know that wild tuskers had blocked the road day before yesterday at exactly the same spot where you have now exhausted your 20x in all directions. Even makes you afraid to go take a leak by the wayside.
c) The forest rangers and tour guides have numerous tools to impress the lay visitor, viz. life size rubber stamps of big cat feet, which they apply at strategic positions, so every guide on every jeep knows where to look. See below.

d) There are two kinds of animals. The elephant is a stray animal. The tiger is a prey animal. Nobody really knows when and where stray animals will be sighted. However, it is almost certain that a prey animal will not be sighted during an orchestrated morning/evening safari.

e) When you ride on an elephant's back, it will move and you will shake. Stir in the low light inside the jungle in early morn, and you've got a photographic situation not suited for amateurs. The only real rhino I saw, up close, and for about 5 whole minutes, could not be bothered to sit up in the middle of the nullah. Our good man,
the mahout, tried to give us plenty shooting opportunity. I took about 10 shots, the best of which is here, post photoshop. Still lousy. You can see, you need to
know your ISO and white balance and shutter speeds extremely well. I did not. Probably my wife's got a better video. She was on a different elephant and they saw the R standing up. The handycam was smuggled in. You practically have no option. These stupid people will charge 25 bucks for a still camera and 300 for video. In the day and age when you can record passable video on almost everything. I promise to link up that video soon as I learn how to upload something to utube. Help, anybody?

But the tour itself was not half bad. We moved on to the hills in the latter part. Caught the aftermath of a huge hailstorm. Sampled the produce of Bhutanese distilleries, which was a revelation of sorts. Spent a night at a bungalow ghost stories are made of. All of that in part II.



P.S. I have figured out how to upload videos to Utube without help. So, here be.

Mrignayani ki baat suni.
Ab suno mrig ki naynon ki baatein.

Tonight I'll embark on a journey.
I'm going after the one-horned rhino.
Back in ten days.
Will write about what the rhino had to say once I come back.

Been to the Havelock Island lately. Now, you can read about the place here, here and here, but nothing you'll read can prepare you for the experience.
I wonder how many of you have watched the 2000 movie The Beach, which was expansively shot in the Koh-Phi-Phi island in Thailand. Ever since I watched that movie, I wanted to visit Koh-Phi-Phi. But then there came the 2004 Tsunami, and the island was all but destroyed. Petra Nemkova almost died at the island on that fateful boxing day.
Then again, you know, such exotic locations can be quite expensive. Me, I'm ever the broke. Some friends mentioned the Andamans and Havelock in particular as a potentially exotic but way cheaper option. I was sceptical to say the very least. Thus it happened that when I stepped out onto the Radhanagar Beach on a spectacular sunset I had to pinch myself and murmur a prayer.

But theosophy will have to wait. To put in perspective what that sunset really looked like, here,s a photo :

Get niceties out of the way
Every year, about 2,19,000 people come to The Andamans on vacation. 95% of them are Indian PSU employees ( the largest contributor, perhaps, is the steel authority). AVOID these tourists at all costs for they are the absolute dregs who will visit the islands only because it's about the only place they can fly to on leave travel, expenses paid. Thankfully they rarely go to Havelock and even if they do, it's on a day trip. AVOID Radhanagar beach between 11 AM to 2 PM because that's the day tripper slot.
I wouldn't mind leaving Port Blair early, as early as the second afternoon. The first evening was spent at cellular jail. It's okay, everybody does it. Another morning for Ross Island, a nice little place with dollops of history on the side. We took the afternoon boat to havelock curiously named MV Chouldhari. The kids seemed to find a lot of amusement in that name.(Actually the name's after a tribe of aborigines). One must always take the afternoon boat. Wiki calls it tourist special. Normally full of European tourists. These fellows prefer not to linger around Port Blair an extra hour. Smart blokes!

The Havelock certainly deserves a lavish film to be shot here. In beauty of landscape alone, it will rank right at the top of the heap of island gateways around the world. Like many other Indian destinations, what it lacks in is infrastructure. Thank GOD for that. Imagine planeloads of spoilt American tourists flying in from Phuket and junking this heaven. Phew! Not my words. This, from the poetic, almost effeminate Canadian gentleman who teaches English in Taichung, Taiwan and travels Asia on sabbaticals. We met him here.

The tent
Where will one put up at Havelock is one's own choosing. For choices, refer wiki. But as a shoestring affair, this place, the tents at Radhanagar, right smack at the middle of the action, takes the pudding. That of course, is my opinion. In the midst of a tropical rainforest, directly in front of the breakers rising a mere 100 meters away, and the beautiful beach in between. But words keep failing me. Here are more photos.
The red topped tent is your basic dwellings. The powder blue shack in the back is the attached(?) toilet. Surprisingly clean and usable, save the nuisance of sand, which is, well, everywhere. But we'll live.
The Bar To enliven the place and lure customers from nearby Barefoot jungle resort, ANIDCO had opened a magnificent bar in the neighborhood. Due to prohibitive prices or whatever reason, the bar didn't run and had to be closed down. The structure still stands. It's a thing of beauty made of log. The freezers well stocked even now, the parquet floor shining, the throw cushions strewn all over the place. Two full time employees sleep on the plush sofas in the afternoon. Their job it is to stop you to climb the stairs, to prevent you sitting atop, taking in the view and enjoying your own drink.
Yes , we tried. We took our Bacardi to havelock. From Port Blair. @ Rs.300 a bot. It might get dearer on the island. Below is the view one can take in from atop. Those sinful caretaker fellows! I'll never never forgive them.









The motorcycle diaries
We needed wheels. We took them on rent. @Rs.100 a day. Spurious petrol @Rs.50 a liter.And this is supposed to be subsidy territory.The traders profiteer.Petrol is always in short supply here. So far so good. But the fuel is frequently stolen. Beware. As a result, we ended up on the middle of a lonely road when darkness was falling and the engine died coughing. No sweat. Buses ply. Motorcycle stranded by the road. No cry. Nobody can take them away. Board the bus, listen to Dhoom2 on the onboard speakers and arrive at Radhanagar. Enjoy the fish grilled at Mashimaa's shack in the evening. Wash it down with bacardi in coconut water. See pic.

Boatspotting
Boatspotting is big at Havelock. The best time is early morning.
See pics.The first one reminds you of Harry Belafonte ( Come mister tally man and tally me banana).You could also spot many a bird dripping in suntan oil and carrying a suntan mat and scuba gear in tow if you got lucky, but then, I'm getting carried away. The accompanying photos were taken in the morning sun near a decrepit nullah near the the beach.

Travel some
You want to get around. Can do so hiking, biking and stuff. We stuck to our rented machines. It's but a small isle, 8 miles across. One can go Vijaynagar, near the Dolphin resort or Wild Orchid and several other shanties of all descriptions.Or to Govindnagar, to the jetty and the market. And look for lobsters. Hard to find. Find one can a glass bottomed boat custom made for coral viewing and fitted with a sturdy outboard engine. The corals can be viewed thus.
One thing must be said about network, though. Exactly at the moment we were viewing these corals, nearly a mile from shore, close to a small uninhabited isle, madly clicking away and secretly wondering if the glass at the bottom of the boat might not give at any moment, my wife's phone rang. Who else but mommy dearest? What followed was 15 minutes of running commentary. And we were roaming!