Out of This World
8 Mar
You’d never guess where this is. I spend so much time travelling, and when I’m not travelling, I’m looking at or reading about travel. It’s hard to bowl me over these days. But… this. Every once in a while you come across something truly exceptional like this.
Hint: it’s in my favourite country. The country I unconsciously refer to as my country, sometimes.
Uttaranchal, India, where the Shakti group has created an amazing Himalayan hideaway in the form of the gorgeous 360 Leti. I don’t want to tell you how much this is, but let’s just say it’s more than how much I’d spend travelling through India on first class trains and planes and nice hotels in maybe six months (or if I travelled India the way I do, maybe that money could even stretch to 9 months.. which both means that this place is as expensive as it looks, incredibly, as well as that India is incredibly cheap). That it’s very very expensive is not the point. The point is: an amazing place exists like this, and that India really is Incredible India, because travel in any direction out from any Indian city and you’ll find a completely different world. Desert, beach, hill station, the Himalayas, the Andaman, the backwaters. You’re in a different world in another state, where the food is different and they speak a different language a few hours out in any direction. I keep saying this and I’ll keep saying it — the chaotic Indian cities you see on TV isn’t all India is about. It’s an amazing country that can be very beautiful, in parts, if you’d just give it a chance.
Don’t miss, if you can: the deserts of Jaisalmer, the Himalayan beauty of Uttaranchal, the amazing biryani of Hyderabad (world’s Biryani capital!), the tea in Darjeeling (duh) and its Nepali culture, the Tibetan gompas in Sikkim, the remote Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the makhania lassi of Jodhpur (Sardar Bazaar! Near the clock tower.. Sree Mishrilal, remember that name), the spectacular, untouched Northeast (Meghalaya, the “Scotland of the East”; the tribes of Nagaland, where people are more Southeast Asian than Indian, and Southeast Asians like us fit right in), the food and vibrance of Mumbai, the annual Bob Dylan festival in Shillong (yes, you read right!), and that’s just scratching the surface. It’s not nearly as unsafe or hard to travel as you think! (Quite easy, if you go with the right frame of mind. I could do it with my eyes closed now!) Go to India. At least once. And if you can master the inner workings of Indian Railways, the world’s largest employer, you can do anything. And pack Shantaram, Maximum City and City of Djinns for the train rides that could change your life.
The Indian government needs to give me honorary citizenship now, but a consultancy role with the Indian tourism board might do fine: I may have sent more people to India, especially people most unlikely to go to India, than Incredible India campaigns ;) Oh my Bharat Mata, I miss you so! I read my friend Jamie’s blog Out There Somewhere, it’s a salve when I remember that I won’t be going back for a while, contrary to the pattern in the past years. Jamie, I like to tell people, sold his stuff in the UK and just lives in Asia, mostly India and Nepal, just travelling these days :) As we speak he’s entering Tibet overland, at the moment, something I’ve always wanted to do. Did I also mention he’s a damn fine writer?
The next time I go to India, I’m heading straight for the Bob Dylan festival in Shillong. There’s a special place in my heart for the Khasi Hills, and the beautiful Khasis of Meghalaya (after all, they only just excommunicated a politician for using his father’s surname: challenging the dominance of women in this matrilineal society is possibly worse than apostasy…). I’ll never forget the day I huddled under a big umbrella in the rain, in the world’s formerly wettest place, during the monsoon, chewing a betel nut (with lime, yuck), coal all over my face after crawling through a coal mine in Laitrygnew with the coal miners of Laitrygnew, talking about Bob Dylan with the kiln workers and wondering if I should tell them: did you know that everywhere else in the world but here (and a few other places), you men… rule the world?
Mujhe Bhaarat Maata se Pyar hai!
