Madagascar
April 5th, 2006 | Published in travel | 26 Comments
The urge for new places and new things began quite early on; my first personal computer came bundled with the PC game, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? At 10 years of age, I finally found out why I shunned boardgames and card games: they couldn’t talk back to me, I couldn’t make them do interesting things, and I couldn’t see pictures of exotic places, or learn smatterings of foreign tongues. This little disc I slipped into my 4x CD-ROM drive, could. Even if it went along at Pentium I 120Mhz.
I was addicted to that game for it combined two of my favourite elements: mystery, and travel. It was quite a ridiculous game: you played the detective that was to hunt down the master villain Carmen, but she kept giving you the slip, but not without leaving a ridiculously simple clue. At least, it seemed simple to me at the time ââ¬â of course everybody knew that La Paz was a city in Bolivia, that kabuki=Japan, that Nigeria and Lebanon had large Christian and Muslim populations, right? So why does the in-game travel agent keep offering me silly options which didn’t make sense?
After 7 days of non-stop playing (I hadn’t, at 10 years of age, found a suitable activity online to be preoccupied with, other than wondering if I could extract .mpg files from VCDs or copy .wav files into a floppy disk), a strange country appeared in the game, and found its way into my vocabulary. Madagascar. I loved how it sounded, how it took so much effort to say it, yet slipped off my tongue with aplomb. Ma-da gas-car. There was an accompanying photograph of a native, and monkeys, and coconuts ââ¬â and clear, blue, waters. It became my favourite catchphrase. My schoolmates would say, “So I went to Japan during the March holidays”. And I’d say: So? I’m going to Madagascar. One day.
I haven’t been there yet, but I’ve had this insatiable obsession with places I can barely pronounce, since. From the long and lilting phrases in Thai which put my Teochew-trained tongue to shame (try “getting to Thong Nai Pan Noi by songtaew and going to Haad Thansadet for an afternoon siesta, pad prik pao and cha dam yen); to the magical desert city of Jaisalmer (from which we will proceed to Jodhpur then Udaipur then to take a bus to Ahmedabad to see Gandhi’s ashram), and catch a train to Madgaon in Goa; to skipping the boat ride to Sihanoukville, and going by taxi (air-conditioned) from Koh Kong on which you couldn’t see any markings of road and returning by bus, turning down Battambang, Kompong Thom, though we badly wanted to go to cross the border to Laos but that would mean having to cross the border at Stung Treng…
My parents’ unorthodox beliefs about travel helped, too. When all my classmates were taking packaged tours to Japan and Hong Kong, my mother planned train journeys, put us up in the outskirts of Seoul where absolutely no English was spoken or written, found her way to navigate back alleys and canal boat journeys, took us hiking up strange Korean hills because she heard from the locals “there’s a shoe factory up there, and they sell wholesale” (she found it, and had a ball of a time). My father and I didn’t have a choice but to follow. If she’d had her way (and time to do so), we’d have sailed home from Korea via Qingdao.
I grumbled for a while: we never did tourist class hotels (she hated them and found them too expensive for ‘dingy and soulless’), we stayed in yogwans, the equivalent of the bed and breakfast, ate absolutely amazing food on the streets. Eventually, I got it. You see, being checked out of your hotel at 1am, with no “next action” planned, and driving out of Seoul on a highway, not knowing where you’re going, and finding all hotels booked, and ending up in a strange, gaudy, hotel with glow-in-the-dark ceilings and condoms and sex toys on sale in vending machines on every corridor ââ¬â with your parents (I was 15), can be, shall we say, potentially lifechanging. Especially when you wake up the next morning realizing where you were at, wander out of your hotel room to look for your parents (who’d ditched you and gone on a morning walk), and strange Korean men ask you in the Korean you understand but can’t reply to: “So lady who are you here with?”
I learned all I needed to know on the road, and I’m not done. I’ve collected a fair amount of stories, but I’m hoarding them for now. I want to tell you all about military men with rifles in our trains and buses. I want to tell you all about Indian Army soldiers who fought at border skirmishes, and have so many stories to tell I feel I need to learn Hindi so I can talk to them. I want to tell you all about our motorcycle-taxi driver who was so sweet, you couldn’t tell he was ex-Khmer Rouge. I want to tell you all about the 80 year old men who work as porters or waiters at The Planter’s Club, and who won’t respond to anything except “boy”, even though they’re 80. The little children holding dead babies outside the National Museum, asking for money, which breaks your heart but you know you can’t give money to. The beautiful street children who run up to your after your plane lands at Dum Dum airport. Shocking myself, when I found myself in a fellowship with a Nepali pastor in the transit town of Siliguri. Seeking out safety and familiarity among Teochew shopkeepers while waiting for a friend to find us in the insanity of the Phnom Penh bus depot. So when you say, she likes the Third World too much.. I first want to laugh at the ignorance behind the brandishing of this phrase (what is Third World if the Cold War is already over, and the Second is gone?), and next pause to think, that is my world. My world of border crossings, travel by train and boat, Indian Army and Khmer Rouge, roadside restaurants and chai in terracotta cups.
Stories and conversations beginning with Madagascar, winding up all over the world. In two weeks I return to love Kolkata, eat scones in Darjeeling, trek to Sikkim, buy Benares silk or look at burning corpses along the ghats in Varanasi, see Pink City (Jaipur) and Blue City (Jodhpur), steam in the summer on the Thar Desert, ponder upon the Taj Mahal, stake out the set of my favourite movie (_Octopussy_, in Udaipur), go to Ahmedabad just to see Gandhi’s ashram, live it up in Goa and Mumbai. In short, I’ve made a habit of packing my life into a 65L backpack, collecting stories, telling stories, listening and watching. One-sixth of a year spent on the road suddenly doesn’t seem long enough.
And I either need a bigger backpack, or discover laundry. Though what I also learned on the road was, take as little as you can, buy everything you need on the road and throw them away. If only life itself could be as simple as that.
April 5th, 2006 at 4:24 pm (#)
Beautiful writing. Found your essays (esp Dreaming of India and ‘Why Am Still A Feminist’) thought-provoking.
Best wishes,
dev
April 5th, 2006 at 5:15 pm (#)
The difference between you and most other travellers is that you’re willing to explore places realistically. And that is admirable.
April 5th, 2006 at 6:05 pm (#)
“If only life itself could be as simple as that.” How true. It’s funny, we seem to have been making very similar journeys of late. In the last ten months I too have spent lots of time with Indian Army soldiers (Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam), puttered around the South-East Asian waters (no beaches though, just rivers) of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos (a place I highly recommend crossing the border to next time you have a chance. it is simply wondrous.) and soon I will be heading first to Gokarna (near Goa) and then to Nepal. Any ‘can’t miss’ recommendations for Nepal that aren’t in the guidebooks? Safe travels.
April 5th, 2006 at 11:07 pm (#)
- Can I paypal you some money, for an Indian Care package?
April 6th, 2006 at 12:59 am (#)
take me with you!!!!!! haha…. I would love to do those things, but I’m getting old and I sweat buckets…. so I need laundry… Have fun
April 6th, 2006 at 1:49 am (#)
i’d forgotten how young you were. carmen sandiego on a 120mhz pentium is insane! i recall it ran on a 25mhz 386SX.
April 6th, 2006 at 3:09 am (#)
[...] Musings about travel. [...]
April 6th, 2006 at 8:29 am (#)
And, as if on cue, gosu has this wonderful shot. :) Madagascar
April 6th, 2006 at 8:30 am (#)
it strips the HTML in comments? http://gosu.co.za/index.php/image/IMG_2599/
April 6th, 2006 at 10:32 am (#)
“take as little as you can, buy everything you need on the road and throw them away. If only life itself could be as simple as that.”
But life is that simple, isn’t it?
When you are forced to distill everything down to the volume of your 65L backpack, you notice the unimportant stuff gets discarded really quickly. Only the stuff of significance (material, financial, emotional, etc) makes it.
And when we finally die, we do not even get to pack a bag!
April 6th, 2006 at 11:14 am (#)
roshan: are you flying to nepal? the nearest land border crossing might be all the way up at Sonauli through Varanasi, or Raxaul through Calcutta. long journeys! :) i haven’t been to nepal, and i’m not sure i will this trip though i might since i’ve already done enough planning and research for it (i have no itinerary). if i were going, (other than kathmandu and pokhara) i’d like to go to janakpur and gorkha as well. the only thing holding me is the time and expense of travel within nepal so i might just save that for another trip. and yes, i am constantly dreaming of laos. :)
April 6th, 2006 at 12:13 pm (#)
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego did it for me too, though it was an earlier version that ran at 320×200 4-color CGA resolution. CD-ROM drives were exotic devices then, way beyond my reach.
Carmen was definitely the source of my fascination with maps and places, and eventually, the travel bug. I seem to be the only one in the family who has caught it: bro and parents have never been out of the country and don’t even consider it.
April 6th, 2006 at 1:38 pm (#)
Its Madgaon, not “MAD-GOAN”!!! That’s funny like hell…u made everyone living there crazy…haha
April 6th, 2006 at 1:45 pm (#)
ur mum is cool lah!!
April 6th, 2006 at 2:20 pm (#)
anon: oops, sorry, changed ;) i’m sure they are, to an extent, at least as they say they used to be in anjuna.
April 6th, 2006 at 5:11 pm (#)
Hey, I love how you write the article on ‘Why Am Still A Feministââ¬â¢. You just put my thought to words. Wonderful! Anyway, I’m thinking of a trip to Thailand. Perhaps you could give me some tips? :) Gd luck to your exams!!
April 7th, 2006 at 12:11 am (#)
Hi adri !
i did my bachelors from Ahmedabad, if you going there dont forget to eat the Gujarati Thali, in a restaurant called PAKWAN (means food in hindi). Also, remeber Gujarat is a dry state, so better not to carry any alcohol, it might be a problem to deal with indian police sometimes :-)
enjoy your trip, will mail u later
chao
April 7th, 2006 at 12:56 am (#)
I share your love for travelling, and this entry was beautifully written.
It expressed a lot of how I feel sometimes.
Have great fun in India, and regale us with your stories of the vibrant country.
April 7th, 2006 at 3:23 am (#)
Cool…will look up Janakpur and Gorkha. I’ll be there April 28-May 12. Let me know if you go…
April 7th, 2006 at 3:59 pm (#)
oh, and check out Tansen too. also known as Palpa. i’ll be in varanasi around the beginning of may but no plans after that. if we do agra and rajasthan then we’re not going to nepal. if we don’t then maybe a little detour up to nepal will be a good idea. but my guess is we’re staying on for india.
here’s a good website for nepal and travel advice.
April 8th, 2006 at 10:38 am (#)
haha, i enjoyed playing that game too. though it seemed kinda stupid, searching around, and looking for clues, i especially liked the idea of flying all over the globe.
April 8th, 2006 at 11:59 am (#)
OMG, Carmen Sandiego. Does anyone remember, I forget which channel it was — had a TV show about the game? It was some like interactive program, and I think PBS ran it. But it was so cool. And I can’t remember the specifics about it, but I know there was a TV program based off the computer game or vice versa. I tried the other versions of Carmen Sandiego, but I think I beat the US version a few times. Oh… do they still make that? Like just for fun I’d put it on my Mac and relish in childhood teen spirit.
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego… oh the theme song too!
April 8th, 2006 at 10:53 pm (#)
How enticing. Heh, I mean that paragraph where you say you’re hoarding stories, and then you go on to give examples, but sans the details. :(
April 16th, 2006 at 3:05 am (#)
Beautifully written post. Reading it for the second time actually, yet it seems as refreshing as it was, the first time I read it.
Have you read “From Heaven Lake” by Vikram Seth? If you haven’t, my guess it you will find it thoroughly absorbing. It’s about Seth’s travels from north-eastern China to the north-west of China, then south towards India trough Tibet and Nepal. Great book…
April 16th, 2006 at 10:07 am (#)
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was my 1st store bought game! I think there was another version Where in the USofA is Carmen Sandiego too…
oh well… memories… =)
May 31st, 2006 at 2:36 am (#)
Hey there, I’m a Madagascarphile as well. I just spent last June and July trekking around the country with two of my girlfriends and we had a PHENOMENAL time. Lemurs, chameleons, beaches, rainforest, deserts, hiking, diving, snorkeling, and DELICIOUS French cuisine. We loved it so much there that we are planning to go back again this fall (Novemberish.) I cannot sing high enough praises for this wonderful, wild place. Do not give up on your dream to go!! The most expensive part of the trip are the tickets, but once you get there food and accomodations are ridiculously cheap. You can eat in nice restaurants 3 meals a day and stay in 3 star hotels (by US standards) for less than US$20/ day. The best part of Madagascar, besides the wildlife and food, are the people. The Malagasy (the name for the native people of Madagascar) are very friendly and extremely polite. Check out a guide called Madagascar by Hilary Bradt. It has everything you want to know and more. The Lonely Planet guide is ok but not as comprehensive as the Bradt guide. And be sure to book your tickets on Air Madagascar through their office in Paris, you will receive 50% off your domestic flights while on the island! You should definitely go!! Madagascar C’est Magnifique!!!!
marina