A lesson in exchange for memorable photos

Now that the anger has faded and I've stopped kicking myself, maybe I can focus on the lesson. Indeed, I've started downloading photos mid-trip from our camera fairly diligently and regularly. Sometimes we have to pay a high price to relearn well-known lessons.

Several months ago, we traveled the Himalayan region of Uttaranchal by road, moving at a relatively leisurely pace, taking buses from one town to another. We visited small towns and ashrams and temples. And all along we kept taking photographs.

Photos of the smiling locals, of small children, monkeys, saffron-clad swamis with flowing beards, of temples and creeks and waterfalls and mountains. I had my laptop with me, but each night I put off downloading the photos because we were too tired and there was plenty of space in the camera's memory card anyway. I was lazy.

Many journeys into the Himalayas begin in Haridwar (literally the 'gateway to the gods') as did ours. After three very enjoyable weeks, and with over 800 photographs, we boarded the return train at Haridwar. And in that brief melee while rushing to get on to the train, someone walked away with our bag of valuables. The train's conductor believed us and let us travel without the tickets which were in the bag. We called US and froze the credit line. We got over the monetary loss fairly quickly. We got a new ATM card. We upgraded to a new cell-phone to replace the one that was stolen. We bought a sleeker camera. The biggest loss turned out to be the photos. We don't have a single photo of the trip. Like I said, lesson learned.

Himalaya by Michael Palin - BBC Video

One way to enjoy the Himalayas is to go there and visit places for weeks at a time, taking in the scenery and the charm. The next best thing is to watch the BBC video series Himalaya. I recently viewed this 3-DVD set which is hosted by Michael Palin of Monty Python fame.

Michael is very down to earth, with his own brand of humor and that makes the viewing all the more enjoyable to me. Having previously watched his "Around the World in 80 Days" program, I knew I was in for a treat. Michael is at times very serious, touching on politically sensitive topics, and at other times he is delightfully irreverent, with his quirky little antics when he jokes with the people he encounters.

This is a 6 part series. The countries he visits are Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tibet, Nepal, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh. He starts in the westernmost parts of the Himalayas (Hindu Kush & Karakoram) and ends his long journey where the river Bramhaputra's delta runs out to the sea.

Along the way, he visits places along the Indo-Pak border where conflicts are a way of life, he gets an audience with the Dalai Lama, he goes to Everest base camp, he gets to circumambulate Mt. Kailash in Tibet, he does the Annapurna trek, he drives the Katmandu to Lhasa highway, goes to monasteries, and to a number of other towns in these 8 countries.

Everything that I come across produced by BBC Video seems to me to be of very good quality. If you are at all fascinated by the Himalayan mountain range, these extremely well produced episodes are a great way to vicariously travel this region.

The Things Husband Tell their Wives

Here are a couple of things I overheard when walking the reasonably crowded trails in Utah's Arches NP this summer.

A young husband to his wife who refused to accompany him up the rocks in the Double Arch trail because she was afraid of vertigo: "Yes, but it's not the fear of heights. It is not even the fear of falling. It is the fear of landing."

An elderly husband, laughing at himself while pointing to his (I assume) new tiny digital camera and telling his wife, "No wonder I couldn’t find the button to press. I was trying to take the picture holding it upside down."

Incremental Innovations

In this trip within the US, I saw a couple of incremental innovations that were pleasing. (When you live in a country for 20 years, you start to take things for granted and stop noticing the improvements.)

Used to be that in museums, we'd pay around $6-$8 to rent an "audio guide" – a long black hand-held device which would narrate once we pressed the exhibit's number. This time, I saw that in several places, they asked us to use our cell phones instead. No renting or paying anything. You dial the number and the displayed extension, and a voice recording tells you about what you are looking at, with options for more details if you are interested. I saw this in the OKC memorial, in art galleries in Taos, and also in a botanical garden in Lincoln, NE. This is a great way to increase the usage of a device that all of us carry around -- the cell phone.

In the Wal-Mart in Durango in Colorado, I noticed that the receipt was unusually small. Then I saw why. Both sides of the paper had been used to print our purchases! It may not sound like much, but I am sure eventually the savings in paper used adds up to something significant.

"Most of the innovations that matter are the tiny changes we constantly make to the millions of procedures and methods we use."
Robin Hanson, Innovations and Economic Growth

Harley Pride

In this road trip through several of the southern states in central U.S., the sheer number of motorcyclists surprised me. They are a proud bunch, typically traveling in small groups. Two or three or four motorcycles per group, driving through national parks and scenic byways.

They seem to be really enjoying the summer, sauntering along in no big rush. At every vista point or overlook, they stop and get off their bikes. Then they pull out their cameras, take a quick peek at the view, then they turn around and photograph their shiny bikes from different angles. Then they get on, and drive off to the next scenic spot.

Highway Quotes

Perhaps because I am on the road these days, these quotes resonated:

No matter what road I'm traveling, I'm going home. – Shinshio

"The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway." – Emerson.

Your Radio or Your CD Player?

I was at the auto mechanic's, getting the car we had just purchased ready for a long road trip in the US. The radio was only able to receive one or two stations, and neither of them was NPR. I wanted that fixed.

The mechanic spent nearly 20 minutes pulling out everything. He conferred with his boss, and then they both came to discuss with me. "The antenna can go either to the CD player or to the radio, but not to both. Which one do you want?"

I had to decide on the spot, and since we had paid an extra $300 for the luxury of having a 12-disc CD player, I told them to leave it the way it was. Sensing my disappointment, the head mechanic only charged me half the quoted price.

On the evening before our departure my friend Kalyan said, "Part of the fun of a long road trip is being able to listen to random radio stations in the places you are driving through." I then wished that I had opted for the radio.

The next day we set out, with a few favorite CD's in the player. That evening, in Bloomington IL, when my wife was out of the car somewhere, I decided to fiddle with the radio again. And to my surprise, NPR came on loud and clear. Earlier, sometime during the drive, my wife had pushed a couple of buttons to shut off the CD player. (Later on, we figured it out. The radio would come on only if the player was fully shut off, something that both the mechanics had missed.)

So now I can listen to my CD's or to NPR in the car as much as I want. Happiness, it seems, is in having small choices.

Stay a little longer

My excuse for not posting here is that I am on the road, traveling the western US. But I decided that I could write quick posts from time to time. So here's one.

When we used to travel before, we used to fly into a country (say in Europe) and try to cover as many places as possible. So typically, we'd fly out of Chicago, land in City A, travel to B, C, and D, come in to city E and fly back to Chicago from there. We'd be switching cities most nights, and would hardly ever stay in one hotel for more than 2 nights. This is the mode of traveling that Lonely Planet derisively calls "sand bagging" but we had to conserve vacation days, didn’t have much choice.

Back home, when we reflected on the trips though, we found that we enjoyed most the ones where we had stayed put and taken our time. I know the quality versus quantity argument is really an old one, but sometimes even obvious things take time to sink in.

So now, finally, we are meandering at a much slower pace. Recently, we spent 2 days in Oklahoma City (a place I had overlooked before) and 2 more in White Sands, NM and both were richly rewarding.

BBC's Around The World in Eighty Days - Michael Palin

The next best thing to actually being on the road is to read about travel, or to watch a well-made travel video. Which is what we have been doing of late. It took us a number of days to watch all the episodes in the 3-DVD set of BBC’s ‘Around the world in 80 Days.’ Former Monty Python actor Michael Palin does both the traveling as well as the narrating. He’s got a great mix of earnestness and British humor and it makes for very engaging viewing.

Back in 1988, Michael Palin started from London and without ever boarding a plane, he traveled all the way around the world, racing against time to complete the journey in 80 days. In a very literal sense, his journey is the destination. And we get to go along.

One reason to watch this particular series is that in many ways, it is a time capsule. We get to see a slightly more innocent world, and it is great opportunity to observe what has changed and what hasn’t in the past 20 years.

For me, there was a particularly relevant segment of the journey. Michael takes a train from Bombay down to Madras. Back in 1988, my parents lived in Bombay and I was studying in Madras and so I’ve made that exact train trip quite a number of times. He traveled in November ’88 and just a month later, I know I made the same trip. Watching the footage of the train, the platform food- and magazine-vendors and the stations rolling by unleashed a flood of nostalgia.

This was a very popular show when it was first aired, and over 12M people ended up watching it in the UK. Most public libraries in the US should have a copy. Check it out.