Drifting Clouds 片雲の風

RTW2007: Noto Peninsula and Wakura Onsen, wherein our sybaritic sojourner examines earthquake damage and repeatedly plunges into nearly boiling water.

May 19, 2007October 5, 2021jpatokalLeave a comment

After two days of Kanazawa, I took the Noto line local clunker up into Nanao, the end of the JR line. You can always tell you’re in the Japanese countryside when little “Jesus loves you” signs start appearing on houses, local banks adopt vegetables as their logos (for example, Notoshu Bank’s is a carrot) and the biggest building around is the local JA, a mysterious institution whose primary function seems to be converting taxpayer dollars into the world’s most expensive rice.

My destination for the day, Wakura Onsen, has a good claim to being among the oldest hot spring towns in Japan, with 1200 years of recorded history. It’s hence home to some of Japan’s most illustrious ryokan including Kagaya, which now occupies a high-rise complex larger than most major hotels and still charges up to 50,000 yen per person for a stay. However, one week previous to my arrival there had been a major earthquake in the northern part of the peninsula, which had flattened the better part of 1000 houses. Down south, aside from the occasional cracked pavement, Nanao and Wakura weren’t significantly affected, but it was clear that tourists were staying away in droves — there were few guests in hotels, most restaurants and gift shops were closed, Wakura’s solitary museum (dedicated to an intriguing combination of lacquerware and confectionery) was closed for damage checks, and the only industry that appeared to be booming was construction. I found a solitary sushi restaurant open, where I was the only guest, and had a mediocre nigiri set coupled with some really great tuna. (I asked for maguro, the cheapest, but the chef gave me chu-toro, a cut above, for the same price. No complaints.)

It was a balmy 20 C in Fukuoka when I arrived, but the weather had been getting colder and colder, and soon after I’d checked into my ryokan there was a sudden hail of snow that left an inch of slush on the roof. While most of Wakura Onsen is aggressively ugly, all charmless concrete and rusty rebar, Togetsuan, the “Hermitage of the Passing Moon”, was designed as a faithful replica of a 1920s Taisho-era inn complete with cedar shipped in from Yakushima, and I dedicated the afternoon to sampling all the baths in it and its sister operation Hosenkaku. In every single one I was alone, and I contemplated that there are far worse ways to spend a bitterly cold weekday on the roaring Japan Sea coast.

I booked a shared taxi the next morning to take me out to the airport, and the garrulous minibus driver (a very rare species in Japan) quizzed both me and my four fellow passengers. In addition to me and a local lady on her way to Tokyo for reasons undisclosed, the only others on board were three insurance agent salarymen dressed in appropriately drab dark suits, assessing the damage caused by the quake. Indeed, the driver confirmed, business had been completely dead ever since the quake: the day after it struck, the news agencies chartered out 20 cabs for the full day, but that was that. The drive up the twisty road from Wakura through Anamizu was rather charming, although (as I’d correctly guessed) Anamizu turned out to be a thoroughly mundane fishing town of more concrete and rusty corrugated iron that not even the fetchingly named “Iwashi-no-Yu” (Sardine Baths) could rescue.

RTW2007: Kanazawa, wherein our curious culinarist eats metal, is unintentionally insulted by his geriatric innkeeper and narrowly avoids committing electoral violence.

May 18, 2007October 5, 2021jpatokalLeave a comment

I really like Kanazawa. Much of it is modern and funky: you’ve got brand-new buildings, hordes of university students dressed up in the latest Shibuya-kei fashions, fancy shopping malls tucked full of Louis Vuitton and Gucci. But the station sets the tone: it’s a concoction of glass and steel, but the entrance is built as an ancient Japanese wooden temple gate.

Unlike Tokyo or Kyoto, where you have to hunt to discover even a single old building, Kanazawa, spared the devastation of the war, has invested a huge amount of energy into preserving places like the Higashi-chayamachi geisha district, which is probably Japan’s single best-preserved Edo-era area. I had a cup of ceremonial matcha green tea in the Shima geisha house (chaya), gawped at the countless bizarre uses of gold leaf in the restored shops (“say, why don’t we eat it?”), and strolled along the riverbank watching the cherry trees just about to burst into full blossom. I was just one week too early for the cherry blossom festival, but this was a blessing in disguise — the town was not yet inundated with tourists, so finding lodging was not a problem, and both Kenroku-en Garden and the (remains of) Kanazawa Castle were already lit up and open at night, yet not overrun with crowds.

Kenrokuen, being one of Japan’s Top Three Gardens, is to some extent a victim of its own success — what were once meditative footpaths are now wide, roped-off thoroughfares, and souvenir shops dot the park itself. But in the evenings of cherry blossom week there was a nice row of food stalls outside, selling festival fare like great corn on the cob doused with soy abd really bad okonomiyaki. But Hokuriku’s forte is seafood, and indeed, the conveyor belt sushi I had atop the department store next to the station was among the greatest meals I’ve had in a long time: why, oh why, is it that sushi just doesn’t taste the same outside the country?

I spent three nights at the wonderful Shibaya Ryokan, which despite the name is actually a Japanese-style business hotel (4200 yen/night) in a modern house not far from the train station. The owners were a doddering elderly pair who’d actually visited Singapore (as, seemingly, had everybody else I talked with in Kanazawa), but couldn’t rememeber a single thing about it. (After a lengthy scratch of his bald head, hubby opined: “I think we went to some place with flowers?”.) The lady, more talkative of the two, addressed me as otaku, the first time I’d ever run into this — the word literally means “honorable home” and used to be a polite word for “you”, but after serial child killer Tsutomu Miyazaki’s misadventures is now a rather rude term for “obsessive geek” — but evidently meant no harm by it.

At the other side of town from Higashi (“East”) was the inevitable if rather less impressive Nishi (“West”) geisha district and, not too far away, the Nagamachi samurai district, which — unusually for resolutely egalitarian middle-class Japan — preserved and documented the ornate caste system of Japan’s feudal era. The full-fledged samurai at the top of the heap lived in giant palaces full of art, gardens and altars, theirashigaru footsoldiers lived in modest three-room houses, and their chugen petty retainers, tasked with handing over their Lord’s sandals or feeding his horses, lived in drafty one-room shacks.

In addition to being cherry blossom season, it was also election season, conducted in uniquely Japanese style: driving around trucks outfitted with loudspeakers, female voices literally shrieking out the same message in repeat: “Tanaka Taro desu! I’m Tanaka Taro! Mina-san no tame ni ganbattemasu! I will try my best for everybody! Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu! Thank you!” One particularly obnoxious dipshit called Yachi Something, may he rot in Hell, was so incessant and loud (grannies in the vicinity were covering their ears) that I seriously regretted not having a spare shoe to fling at them, as I’d previously done to a Japanese Communist Party candidate blasting through my ‘hood in Tokyo at 8 AM on a Sunday. (They stopped for about 5 seconds as the shoe went “bonk” onto the van’s roof, then continued unperturbed. Next time I’ll aim better.)

Every time I go to Japan, I’m a little shocked at what has changed, and a lot more shocked to realize that it’s been ten years since I set foot there for the first time (as an adult). Things that caught my attention this time:

Non-smoking has caught on in a big way. Taxis, trains, airports, even streets like all of Higashi — unhappy-looking smokers are confined into little smoky boxes. It’s about time!
Facilities for the disabled are now ubiquitous. Of course, the real reason is not that the Japanese care any more about the disabled than previously (they’re still locked away out of sight), but that the population is getting old fast and the elderly vote.
“Jet towels” for drying your hands. Mitsubishi must be making millions off these things: I don’t think I saw a single paper towel anywhere in Kanazawa.

NH318 FUK-KMQ 737-800 “Super Dolphin” seat 2F

May 18, 2007January 3, 2014jpatokalLeave a comment

I headed back to T1 and got there with an hour to spare. While the international side of FUK is pretty slick, T1, which only caters to small planes to obscure domestic destinations, is a bit worn around the edges. After half a year in cricket-crazy India, though, I did like the way that the gate entrances were termed “Wickets” in the English signage. (Bowled for a duck, wot wot?) And then it was time to end this maiden visit and wave buh-bye to Kyushu; I’ll be back.

Sometimes the sheer dedication of Japanese to their job amazes me. As the aircraft rolled out of the gate, they all lined up in front of the gate, waved goodbye to the plane and its passengers, and then bowed deeply. Maybe it was just jet lag and lack of sleep, but I swear I had to wipe away a tear just watching it.

This zippy little dolphin, which can take barely 100 pax, is one-class and as cramped as a cheap can of tuna. But it’s only an hour’s flight to KMQ, so I’ll manage…

RTW2007: Fukuoka, wherein our analytic adventurer admires the amazons of ASFUK and has pork bone soup for second breakfast.

May 17, 2007October 5, 2021jpatokalLeave a comment

Immigration was painless and Customs, unusually, didn’t even bother to open my bag. I hopped on the shuttle bus to the domestic terminals (there are three) and engaged in Japanese speed-reading to figure out that my flight to the non-major destination of Komatsu must be leaving from T1. Female Japanese airline staff tend to be selected for more than just bean-counting ability, but the Ms. Tanaka who awaited me was gorgeous even by ANA standards; more interestingly yet, her nametag proudly proclaimed that she was working for Airport Services Fukuoka, abbreviated “ASFUK” in big capital letters. Oh my.

I’d completed the gauntlet by 8:20 and my flight left at 10:15. This meant there was only one thing to do — head into the city and sample Hakata ramen noodle soup! The subway was right below the terminal, and 15 minutes later I was outside Nakasu-Kawabata station, reading the instructions on the vending machine outside Ichiran: “Just get the basic ramen and go in.” I deposited my 650 yen, got my slip and ventured in. There were a few customers this early Sunday morning, but I took my seat along them in my little curtained partition and handed over my slip, receiving a questionnaire in response. Would I like my noodles firm, standard or soggy? Would I like my soup thin, standard or thick? Would I like my soup mild, standard, or spicy? And so on. I circled all the “standards” and handed over my form, and within minutes, a Japanese Industrial Standard Hakata tonkotsu ramen appeared, faithfully replicated from the platinum-iridium copy kept double-locked in a Parisian vault right next to the official kilogram. I sampled, I slurped, I drained it to the last drop. Delicious. Back in Japan!

TG648 BKK-FUK A300 seat 34K

May 17, 2007October 5, 2021jpatokalLeave a comment

The plane turned out to be the flying museum piece I expected, a crunky old Airbus (the oldest in Thai’s fleet, if I’m not very much mistaken) with all the aesthetic charm and usability of a Commodore 64. I can understand Thai flying these domestically, or even making the occasional hop to Singapore and back, but medium-range redeyes with these things is pushing it. But then again, flying to FUK instead of KIX/NGO/NRT saved some time and (for NRT/KIX) a pretty painful transfer, so beggars can’t be choosers…And it could’ve been worse. The flight was around 70%-ish full, but my neighbor jumped across the aisle, leaving me with two seats to use. After a “light meal” that consisted of a pastry and a cup of juice, I stretched out diagonally and, much to my own surprise, slept for ~3 hours of this 4.5 hr flight.Breakfast was big but bad. Yogurt, fruits and juice I could deal with, but the centerpiece was a “crepe omelette” gruesomely splattered with a vomitous white sauce so foul I could only eat one — I can’t remember ever running across literally inedible airline food before. What happened at TG catering, which is usually pretty good?

The sky over Kyushu was cloudy as we flew in, only the shapes of a few hills peeking through the mist. I girded myself for the battle that awaited.

RTW2007: Bangkok, wherein our intrepid explorer sits on a bus, crams himself with Thai chow and goes flying from a new shopping mall.

May 17, 2007October 5, 2021jpatokalLeave a comment

Before this trip, I’d just spent six weeks in India, dealing with difficult customers and managing to contract amoebic dysentery. After I arrived back in Singapore, I had a little over 24 hours to sort out a couple of months of accounting, personal and corporate taxes, my remaining shreds of social life, pack for the next 6-week trip and head back out to Bangkok, where I’d booked my RTW from, and where this story starts.

After a shamefully long absence, this was my chance to pop into Thailand for all of eight hours and pop my Suvarnabhumi — Bangkok’s new airport — cherry in the process.

First impression: Wow. It’s big, it’s thoroughly modern, it’s funky (well, at least if, like me, you like steel, glass and raw concrete) and it’s just on a whole different level from Don Muang, where the only funk is the strange smell. Parts remind me of Incheon (the neverending travelators), parts remind me of Kansai (the two-layer arrangement of arriving and departing pax, separated by a glass wall), parts remind me of KLIA, only larger (the humongous departure hall). And there are Thai touches here and there, although it certainly doesn’t whack you over the head with them, and that too appeals to my Nordic-Zen sense of minimalism.

Unaccountably, Immigration was using the stupid “one queue per desk” model, and I was stuck in line for a while as the loud guy in front of me, in an equally loud Hawaiian shirt and too many Thai stamps in his passport, was raked over the coals. I didn’t find the infamous post-Customs arrivals crush too bad, although signage was pretty lacking — it took a bit of wandering around until I found my way to Departures (to check in for my connection), and a lot of wandering around until I finally found the shuttle bus stand (is it just me, or is there no signage at all for this?). Signage for the train in the basement was there though in the lifts and all around, just covered up in tape waiting for opening day…

Once I did find the bus stand, the spiffy new “express” shuttle showed up almost immediately and ferried me to the bus terminal, which was surprisingly nice. No sign of bus schedules though, and English signage there was a bit spotty, but asking around a bit confirmed that bus 552 was indeed going to On Nuch, and soon enough I was on my way. (Great to see construction on the Skytrain extension on Sukhumvit taking shape, by the way!)

The bus passed by the enormous Bang Na Central shopping mall and I kicked myself for not seizing this opportunity to save an hour and head there instead. But no, I trundled on to Skytrain terminus On Nut and, pleasantly surprised to find my stored value card still functional, zipped along to Chid Lom and Central World, which half a year after my last visit was still a work in progress. At least the FoodLoft upstairs was now open (mm, phad thai). I decamped to Paragon and whiled away a pleasant few hours in megabookstore Kinokuniya, where I deliberated between notebooks labeled “Sheep Note” and “No Jam, No Stress” (I opted for the latter, as this profound message was being conveyed by a mean-looking robot) and the basement’s mofongous gourmet supermarket, where I picked up a few packets of Fishy Nuts(tm). Then a bowl of kuay tiow naam with pork balls from the stall with the longest queue and a taxi back, which also provided a good chance to check out the progress of the airport link — long stretches already have the viaduct up and they seem to be moving at a good clip on the missing bits too, although there’s apparently still a gap at RCA where the Nasa Superdome was? Once we got on the highway, signage for Suvarnabhumi was comically plentiful, my favorite being back-to-back signs announcing “Suvarnabhumi 14 km” and “Welcome to Suvarnabhumi Airport”. The final approach by night, though, is seriously awe-inspiring — the vast airport spreads out on all three sides, bathed in a sea of light, with the blue-lit hulk of the main terminal building looming ahead.

One thing that struck me, though, is how packed with people the airport appeared on this perfectly ordinary Saturday evening — did they really have this many pax in Don Muang too in its hayday, and can the check-in facilities cope with any more expansion, or are they going to build an entirely separate terminal? It’s not uncomfortably crowded, yet, but it quite doesn’t have the same feeling of vast space as KUL, ICN and KIX do.

Exit immigration was painless and I finally realized why everybody compares the terminal to a shopping mall — the airside area looks just like Paragon, with blinding white walls, designer lighting and fancy boutiques, and I overheard a middle-aged couple whisper, in genuine awe, “this airport is beautiful”. I’m tempted to agree. But having already done my fill of that in the city, I made a beeline for the TG lounge, which also has vast depth and slightly too many people for comfort. Fortunately the PCs are misconfigured so that the network keeps flaking out randomly, so people leave in disgust after a while — a bit of poking around revealed that they’re set to connect to the nearest network, so whenever somebody brings in a laptop with peer-to-peer wifi enabled, bam. I set “aotwifi” as the automatic default and p2p into manual, and now at least two of them work OK.

All in all, for me Suvarnabhumi is looking pretty good, and once the airport link is up and running I’ll be as happy as a clam. Fixing up those cracked runways and such might be nice though…

Earthquakes, Gamblers, Pirates and Oysters, Around the World in 60 Days

May 16, 2007October 5, 2021jpatokalLeave a comment

It all started with an excuse. I “needed” to visit a conference of marginal utility (but serious potential for fun) in Puerto Rico, which would be located 11913 miles away from Singapore if there was a non-stop flight, which there of course isn’t.

As soon as I’d convinced myself that a round-the-world ticket would be the best way to accomplish this, the mathematical perfection of this Great Circle curve started to acquire fractal cruft: stops in Japan, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas on the way there, a visit over to the Bahamas since it’s almost right next door anyway, a detour to Canada, and to France, Finland and Spain on my way back to Singapore. The full route, courtesy of OpenFlights:

SIN-BKK-KMQ-NTQ-TYO-SFO-PHX-LAS-SJU-CLT-NAS-YYZ-YOW-YMQ-CDG-ARN-HEL-BCN-MUC-BKK-SIN

Index

Poco loco público

April 19, 2007September 23, 2012jpatokalLeave a comment

This little island‘s got a lot of things going for it, but public transport ain’t one of them.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to make my way from Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second-largest city (pop. ~200,000), to San Juan, its largest (pop. ~2 million). One might assume this would be easy; one would be wrong.

Puerto Rico has a population of four million, most of which at any given point can usually found in traffic jams, beeping at each other in a laid-back Caribbean kinda way. There are no scheduled buses, no train services (aside from an underused $2 billion white elephant in SJ that goes from nowhere to nowhere) and, in fact, no public transportation of any kind except for the público, a shared taxi along the lines of the jitney, servees, sherut, minibus and its million other Third World cousins.

Ponce has a spiffy new público terminal only a few blocks from the hotel, so a little before 6 PM (just as all the shops around me were battening down their hatches and reloading their AK-47s) I peeped in for a visit. There were neat piers, showing all sorts of fascinating places that you could go, but there were no cars, no people, no information desks, no kiosks, no schedules, nada. I shrugged my shoulders in a laid-back Caribbean kinda way and moseyed back to eat more ice cream at King’s.

So this morning, at (for me) the dauntingly early time of 8:45 AM, I set off to explore públicoland once more. Fortunately, I was waylayed by the friendly tourist info office guy, who informed me that I should’ve been at the terminal at least an hour and a half ago, and would surely be doomed if I failed to haul my gringo ass over by 10 AM. I panicked in a laid-back Caribbean kinda way, which means I ate a leisurely breakfast, meticulously packed up my stuff (why does it seem to multiply by itself?) and rolled my tote down to Calle Union to check out the situation.

There was a large gaggle of people hanging out at pier 5A, who asked me if I was going to San Juan, and I thought how lucky I was — surely we’d be on our way in minutes! Alas, it soon transpired that everybody except me was a público driver, and they needed another 5 pax before the next one would depart. Every other público in the terminal was a clapped-out minivan with dents and a random paintjob, but those to SJ — and only those to SJ — are pimped out white Crown Chevys with red vinyl seats that only need a retractable roof and a couple of boricua flygirls (mm, Catholic schoolgirl uniforms) in the backseat to act as props in a rap video. (Yes, I thoroughly regret not taking a picture.) I chatted with the one guy who spoke good English (thanks to a 15-year stint in NY and PA), practiced my woeful Spanish with the others and whiled away the time until 11 AM, at which time I realized that the total sum of other people who want to go from PR’s second largest city to its largest city on this fine Wednesday morning appeared to stay constant at zero. However, the cabbies had told me that around 1-2 PM-ish, the solitary chófer from San Juan would set off on his return trip home, passengers or no passengers, so I had a clear ventana de oportunidad here. I informed the drivers of my intentions, they nodded, plopped my bag in Don Chófer’s trunk and admonished me to be back by 12, or else.

“Over-cautious twit”, I thought, and set off back to the city to poke around the La Perla theater (being renovated) and the Ponce History Museum (renovation nearly complete, but they forgot to install a single word of English explanations). Cultural quota filled up, I then stopped to pick up a sandwich cubano from the deli nearby, and in a laid-back Caribbean way sauntered back to the bus terminal 15 minutes past 12… only to find el Chófer standing in the middle of the street, telling me to get my lily-white gringo ass into his público pronto. Miraculously, he’d found three others who wanted to go to SJ, and as soon as my mofongo-softened butt hit the seat, he pushed the pedal to the metal and sailed off towards the highway.

After having heard Sapphire’s 3.5-hr horror story, I was rather surprised that our driver headed straight for the tollway, and despite a dribble of construction and a tropical downpour along the way we made the 100 km from Ponce to SJ in slightly over an hour. (The rain actually helped: after it started, he was able to drive straight through the AutoExpresa RFID toll lanes without stopping, because the cameras can’t read yellow público plates in the rain!)

I’d made it to Rio Piedras, público capital of Puerto Rico, now I needed to go the last 10 km to San Juan Viejo. I’d been told that “B-1” was the correct bus to take, but such a beast didn’t seem to exist, and following el chófer’s final advice to Pregunta! Pregunta!, was informed that “A-9” would be a better choice. The A-9 pier was next to the Metrobus Ruta 1 and Metrobus Express piers, which also seemed to go to San Juan, but the bus driver at the Metrobus Express pier was gesticulating wildly in a laid-back, Caribbean style with a cop and wasn’t going anywhere. A chunky Latina chick noted that I’m far away from home, I noted back that yes, I am, and asked which bus I should take. “Any of ’em!”, was the answer, so I sat down and, in a laid-back Caribbean style, chomped on my slightly mushed but still utterly delectable cubano. (I’m still not sure what’s in it, but at least one part of the equation was salted ham.) I was down to my last bite when a M-1 suddenly materialized, causing a surge of people from the A-9 and M-E queues toward it, so I joined in the fray, deposited my two quarters and clambered on board.

This time, too, the journey took around an hour, although it seemed rather longer as it was mostly spent stuck in traffic. A frisson of excitement was provided by the light fixture above me, which regularly leaked water onto me and my fellow passengers, not heeding the advice of the Ass Baboons of Venus, who so clearly notified us all that “water and electricity are dangerous”.

But I did, eventually, find myself in Plaza Colon at the base of San Juan, and I surprised even myself by navigating my way to the HoJo Plaza de Armas without even glancing at a map. Total time from returning to Ponce’s terminal to checking in at the hotel was a little under 3 hours, and total cost (bus fare included) was US$15.50.　　Now let’s see if I can find a decent dinner that costs less than that…

India 6: Googling at Gurgaon

April 17, 2007September 23, 2012jpatokalLeave a comment

Today I’m going to take you on the world’s shortest sightseeing tour, in which we will cross the street from one shopping mall to another. The shopping malls are located in India Shining, the proud, new, resurgent India out to take over the world; however, the street is still firmly in Bharat, the ageless, eternal land of preordained destiny and reincarnation.

Our journey starts at the DT City Centre mall in Gurgaon. It’s a smallish box-shaped shopping mall, three stories high, with maybe 50 shops, rather cramped, and would be entirely unremarkable in most of the developed world — but it was among the first to open in Gurgaon and is a landmark of sufficient stature that a Metro station planned outside will be named after it. Tenants include Ruby Tuesday, where Indians get to indulge their fantasies of being America (wood paneling, cowboy-themed crap, old Coke ads on the walls) and meals of hamburgers and fries cost Rs.500 (~US$10) a pop. Opposite it is Pizza Hut, in the inner atrium is a Barista coffee shop, and most other tenants are small little shops selling jewelry or scarves or CDs or whatever it is that small little shopping mall outlets sell.

As we step out the door, we can watch the security parade, in which all shoppers are made to walk through a metal detector. As everybody is toting purses or backpacks, the detector duly says “beep”, which the security guards duly ignore as they wave everybody onward. But we’re going in the opposite direction. Outside the shopping mall is a parking lot, with modern, expensive cars (nearly all recently dented, scratched and banged). But between the parking lot and the street, there is a 20-meter strip of rutted dirt, muddy in the rain, dusty in the sun. It’s on an inclined hillside, but there are no steps or stairs, so shopper clambers over it randomly, gingerly treading around cow poop and garbage. There’s no road from the parking lot either, so you can also entertain yourself by watching cars try to avoid the worst potholes and pedestrians try to avoid getting run over by monster SUVs.

The strip has recently been bisected by a strip of pavement, running parallel to the main road, but not connected to the parking lot or the main road. This road is inhabited by a permanent logjam of rickshaw drivers, and the strip of dirt next to it has the guy who sells roast yams for Rs.5 (~US$0.10) a pop, the guy who sells paan masala and a scrum of beggars: the mother with listless rag doll child, the wizened old sadhu who looks at you with sad eyes and wordlessly motions toward his mouth, the aggressive ten-year-old girl with a dusty shock of hair, a permanent coat of grime and bony fingers that she uses to pinch those you who don’t pay up.

If you turn your head left, you’ll see a chunk of land cordoned off with Delhi Metro barriers: they’re doing preliminary drillings for an elevated high-speed mass transit system. On the right side, there is a massive construction site for a new shopping mall, and you can watch men bending steel and women carrying baskets of bricks on their heads as the work proceeds. Once the mall is complete, there will be an unbroken sprawl of malls eastward: DT City Centre, One India Place, Vipul’s Agora, Sahara Mall, CWC Mall, and MGF Mega Mall.

But we’ll keep going in a straight line. Ahead of us is Mehrauli-Gurgaon (MG) Road, one of Gurgaon’s two main links to Delhi. It’s three lanes in both directions and full of cars, autorickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, cows and the occasional bullock cart from morning till night. Unusually, there is a pedestrian crossing with traffic lights here; however, the lights are near-universally ignored, and people can thus only cross on foot by massing into clumps of sufficient volume that their bulk and the messy cleanup that hitting them would require intimidates even the most leadfooted of drivers. In the middle of the road is a median strip and a fence, with a gap here for the crossing, usually inhabited by a beggar lady and her baby, whose shit-streaked, naked, blue behind attracts both flies and alms.

If you make it across without being flattened by a truck (Tata Bye Bye!), you’ll find yourself standing in the busy lanes used by cars driving into and out from the MGF Metropolitan Mall. There are no provisions of any kind of pedestrians, so you just have to pick your way across the lane dividers and traffic wardens towards the stairs that come out of the mall and abruptly terminate on the pavement. MGF is anchored by a big cinema multiplex, and from the outside you can also spot a large McDonalds, a popular TGI Friday’s outlet and a Citibank ATM, which is permanently watched over by a dedicated security guard.

As you enter the mall, through another metal detector whose sole purpose seems to be to provide background noise (beep beep!), you’re greeted by a 10-meter pair of curvaceous breasts, barely contained in a lace top. It’s an advertisement for lingerie, in a country where an on-screen kiss in Dhoom 2 (released Nov 2006) generated outrage and a ongoing trial for obscenity. On the left wall, a Bollywood actress in butt-hugging jeans and a clingy silver top; on the right side, a model shows off her backless dress, two slinky legs and pumps that could also be used to skewer kebabs. At the far end of the mall is Chor Bizarre, where you can pay Rs. 500 (a decent monthly wage in some parts of Bihar) for a meal of Delhi-style street food, served by liveried waiters from an antique automobile converted into a buffet table, and whose general manager wrings his hands in genuine distress if you complain that the golguppa shells are a little too chewy.

The laws of writing dictate that I’m supposed to provide some kind of pithy closing statement here, but this is one of those times when India leaves me at a loss for words. Nowhere, but nowhere, in the world will you find the wealth of sheer misery that is India. The slow rollback of Gandhi’s murderously deluded policies of self-reliance and recent surge of economic growth is the best thing that has ever happened in this benighted land, but this distance to be covered yet is dauntingly vast. I’ll be back some day, but for now my quota is full.

And oh yes — do you want to do something? Donate to WaterPartners. Amoebic dysentery nearly killed a friend of mine, but she had the best medical care money can buy: millions of children every year aren’t as lucky, and it’s a terrible, terrible way to die.

India 5: A Jaunt to Jodhpur

February 20, 2007September 23, 2012jpatokalLeave a comment

‘Twas the weekend and the time for my maiden venture into Rajasthan. Having learned from my Haridwar near-misadventure, I made sure I arrived at Delhi station an hour ahead of time, and it’s a good thing I did: this time, the train display board was correctly showing platform 16, but only platforms 1 through 13 seemed to exist. After asking random people and some brisk walking (have I mentioned that Indian train platforms are really, really, really long?), it transpired that platforms 16 through 18 are hidden behind the building, next to platform 12, at the opposite end of platform 13. With the platform spotted, finding the train was easy enough: I located my bunk and clambered on board for my first overnight train trip in India.

First impressions were about par with expectations: air-con two-tier sleepers (“AC2”) are spartan but clean and functional, with a neat pile of bedding already awaiting me. There were six bunks, one row parallel to the tracks, two perpendicular to it, with upper and lower beds in each, and I had an upper perpendicular bunk. The train chugged off on schedule, swaying far less than Malaysia’s narrow-gauge equivalents, and I stretched back, looking forward to a good night’s sleep after a more than usually stressful week at work.

No such luck. The beds were about 10 cm too short for me, and while I could poke my feet out the curtain, if I did so the constant parade of people up and down the narrow hallway bumped them all the time. A flourescent light in the middle of the hallway stayed on, shining bright and clear through the night. There was no secure place to store my backpack, so I had to share my pillow with it. But what pushed me over the edge were my bunkmates, three out of five of whom snored. The guy below me kept his volume down to inoffensive levels, while the guy across the aisle in the upper bunk was stentorian in volume when in full form, but usually stayed silent. My nemesis was in the bunk opposite mine, without even a curtain in the way: he alternated between regular log-sawing and supercharged exhalations like somebody forcefully jumping onto an airbag, the transition between the two states always marked by a disturbing sequence of frantic, gibbering squeaks of the type most of us resort to only when being forcibly sodomized by tentacle monsters. Around 1 AM, four hours after departure, I started seriously contemplating homicide — and I then realized I could hang by bag from the little hook above the window and lock it to the railing. With an additional square foot of space thus obtained, and a temporary lull in the trio, I finally managed to fall asleep.

Around 6 AM the chai-sellers started volubly touting their wares and I invested three rupees in a cup of sweet and milky goodness. We were scheduled to arrive at 8 AM, but the train rumbled on until 8:30, paused for the better part of an hour for no obvious reason, then pulled into Jodhpur station just a few min down the line at 9:20.

One of Jodhpur‘s epithets is the Sun City, located as it is next to the Thar Desert in the western reaches of Rajasthan, so needless to say it had been drizzling all morning and the city was a quagmire of mud. (This is about par for course for me: my first visits to each of the Negev, the Sinai and the Dead Sea, on separate trips at that, have all been marked by rain or, in the case of the Sinai, snow.) The guesthouse sent a guy on a bike to pick me up and we merrily splashed through the puddles, the wrong side of the road and across a field to Durag Niwas, an exuberantly colorful family-run place at the edge of town. I chowed down on a bowl of porridge, pausing occasionally to spit out small rocks, and planned my day ahead.

My first stop was the obvious one: Mehrangarh Fort, founded at the same time as Jodhpur itself and acting not only a defensive bastion, but the Maharaja’s palace as well. It succeeds superbly on both counts: 3 km in diameter, it completely dominates Jodhpur’s skyline and projects a sense of awesome power (with reason: it has never been taken by force), but the inside of the fort hides not just delicately carved sandstone lattices of the palace and its harem, but disco-like entertainment rooms of colored glass and, (for me) most surprisin of all, a large garden within the ramparts, used to this day to cultivate produce. By far Jodhpur’s top attraction, it was well set up with an audioguide system that explains finer points of art and history, plus a wide assortment of living photo-ops in the form of turbaned guys banging on drums or smoking opium (yes, the real thing) from a hubble-bubble — it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. I spent a good three hours wandering around, snapping away like crazy, and on my way back down the hill paid a visit to Jaswant Thada. Built by one of the maharaja’s wives as a tribute to him (how’s that for a Valentine’s Day gift?), it’s just a tiny fraction of the fort’s size but pretty as a pearl and picturesquely perched above a little lake.

In the evening, I completed Jodhpur’s trio by zooming across town to Umaid Bhawan Palace, which holds the honor of being India’s newest royal palace (completed 1944) and is now split in two: one half is still inhabited by HH the Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur, but the other half has been taken over by Taj Hotels, who rent out rooms for a token US$575 a night. Even at that price they seem to have no shortage of takers, as the maitre d’ claimed full occupancy as in order to stop riffraff like me from entering their terrace restaurant. Fortunately, his heart melted when I truthfully claimed that it was my last night in Jodhpur (neglecting to mention that it was also my first), and I was granted a seat at a table by the back, away from the garden and its views over the city. The next two non-resident couples who showed up weren’t as lucky — or maybe they were?

Shortly after I placed my order, it became clear that the flashes of light on the horizon weren’t just for show, and by the time the pot of Rajasthani lamb curry showed up, the palace was hit by a veritable thunderstorm. Tablecloths flew, cutlery clattered to the floor and, while covered by a good ten meters of roof, I was still gently spritzed with rain whenever the wind gusted the wrong way. I chowed down on my pilau, dipped my naan, crunched my poppadums and, by the time I’d finished, was the only guest still braving the tempest outside. I opted to finish my large bottle of rather aptly named Royal Challenge beer inside and, as a token of gratitude, the harried staff neglected to enforce the Rs. 1500 cover, allowing me to slip away for a token Rs. 1340 — or slightly more than my overnight train and guesthouse combined.

Next morning Jodhpur was its usual Sun City self and, after a truly terrible attempt at scrambled eggs that resembled the porridge (if minus the rocks), I set off to the city center on foot. You can really feel the edge of the desert in Jodhpur: unlike the Arab world’s Bedouins, who mostly bash dunes in Land Cruisers and watch satellite TV on their goat-hair tents, the open fields just outside Jodhpur are filled with scraggly nomad camps complete with camels, and Rajasthani women walk around in amazingly colorful dress topped with veils in order to keep both sand and people’s gazes out. Today, though, the air was wonderfully clean and the temperature was just about perfect for walking: warm in the sun, nippy in the shade.

Nai Sawak, Jodhpur’s main shopping drag, terminates at the Sardar Market, a riotous Indian explosion of sights, sounds and stinks. I chowed down on a delectable 6-rupee samosa outside, then headed in, stepping about even more carefully that usual as its alleys were flooded with mud from yesterday’s storm. In addition to the usual profusion of spices, fruits, saris, bangles, utensils, screwdrivers, DVDs and cow poop, Sardar Market seems to specialize in omelettes (thanks to a recommendation for “The Omelette Shop” in Lonely Planet) and steel scrap, with most of the east portion devoted to the noisy disassembly of refridgerators and ancient stereos.

After I’d had my fill, I complemented the samosa with a rawa kachori (onion puff) and headed back in reverse, pausing only to pick up a few bottles of 8% Cobra Gold beer and gawp briefly at another riotously noisy and colorful (I’m starting to run out of adjectives) wedding procession banging and firecracking its way through the streets. I settled down on a quiet bench at a playground near the guesthouse, and amazed at finding a spot in India that was simultaneously quiet, pretty, cool and clean (an unimaginable combo in Delhi), whiled away the rest of the afternoon with a Murakami Haruki book.

Jodhpur Airport (JDH) reminds me of Indonesia’s provincial airports, although with a grand total of 4 flights a day it’s even sleepier. (The present cozy Indian/Jet duopoly is about to be shaken up though, as Deccan has announced cheapo flights from March.) It’s fairly new, thoroughly unstylish (although the exterior is shaped like an ersatz Rajput palace of blue and white), filled with police in offputting shades of brown and facilities are limited to a few tiny gift shops with extortionate prices (Rs.40 for a can of Thums Up?). The only item of food in sight was a solitary Veg Puff on the Cafe Coffee Day counter; after hearing that my flight was delayed by at least 1:30, I snatched it up and settled in for a fast. Airtel had kindly provided a phone charging point, which didn’t work, but at least the electricity outlet for it did and, thanks to my Huawei data card, it was surfin’ time.

We were eventually let into security and The Gate, but in a surprise touch Indian mollified its passengers with a free cup of coffee/chai from the solitary gift shop within. Soon enough, a mere hour after we were supposed to leave, an Airbus (still painted in the old IA livery) roared onto the tarmac and another half hour later we were let out onto the tarmac to clamber on board.

This plane was easily the crappiest-looking Airbus I’ve ever rode on: I though Thai’s A300s were museum pieces, but this A320 must have been one of the first off the assembly line, all beige plastic and scuffed fabrics. My seat pocket, for example, was torn open at the button and could only hold things if the tray was fastened shut. The windows were so beat up it was hard to see outside, although as I was sitting over the wing on a night flight I wasn’t missing much.

But soon after takeoff Indian surprised me: on this flight of slightly under an hour, we were served not just a piece of candy, but a full warm meal: rice, palak paneer, dal makhani, chapattis, pickle, mithai, a box of juice and a bottle of water. The meal was catered by TajSATS, the joint venture of the hotel behind the aforementioned maharaja’s palace and the catering wing of Singapore Airlines, and while not quite gourmet it hit the spot very nicely. Score one for state-run behemoths.

We arrived at Delhi, and spent another forty minutes lazily looping over it while we waited for a slot to land. Once on the ground, two buses most emphatically not of the low-floor variety (score minus one for protectionism) arrived to pick us up, and after corpulent grannies had huffed and puffed to hauled their bare bellies and bulky belongings on board we headed for the terminal. With no check-in bags I breezed out to meet my driver — and then spent the next half hour in a traffic jam trying to get out of the airport. Welcome back to Dilli!