Two ends of the spectrum

We were driving amidst green and serene coffee plantations in Coorg, Karnataka. Due to some commotion ahead, our car had to slow down to a crawl. The entire Coorg area is at an elevation, and while not really hilly, the roads were narrow and winding with lots of ups and downs.

These plantations employed the absolute state-of-the-art technology for coffee cultivation. They were able to simulate the timing and amount of rain needed to maximize their crop output. All this technology, combined with migrant labor (needed to harvest the coffee) made for a winning formula for the plantation owners.

The commotion ahead of us was because a huge red tractor had overturned by the side of the road. I don’t mean that it was tipped over to its side. It had turned over 180 degrees, with its 4 gigantic wheels facing up. I fully expected to see the mangled remains of the driver, but fortunately it seemed that he had jumped out in time.

There were around 12-15 men (workers and passers by) who had gathered, and were pushing the tractor with all their might, trying to turn it back on its wheels.

Now, if this was in the US, a traffic cop would stop by, summon a tow truck which would get the vehicle upright, take it to a shop to get it checked and be done with it.

But in India, even with so much technology around, it was just a few people trying to do it with their bare hands. There was no use of levers, and not even one rope was being employed.

To me, this seemed a very apt metaphor for what I’m constantly seeing in India. A select few are able to leverage automation and technology to attain stratospheric opulence, while the masses are still relying on brute manual labor to achieve their modest goals. For the few minutes that it took us to get pass it, the tractor hadn’t budged an inch.

Listening to Patricia Schultz - 1000 Places to See Before You Die

It turned out that I was very unfairly biased against Patricia Schultz, the author of ‘1000 Places to See Before You Die.’ There are a number of variations of these books on sale, and I’d assumed that these were hack jobs. After all, with the help of the internet, it won’t take long to put together a list.

Patricia Schultz was the top featured keynote speaker for Sunday at the Chicago Adventure Travel expo. I had low expectations going in. However, within 5 minutes of listening I realized that I had grossly underestimated her efforts and her ability to connect with the listeners. Patricia is no hack.

For an entire hour, she had the audience of around 200 listening to her spellbound (100+ were standing). She had the unenviable task of picking 25 places from her list of 1000. (Here are a few places that she chose that might not be that obvious: Burma, Berlin, Prague, the Masai Mara herd migration, the Namib Desert, Monument Valley, Belize, Petra and Patagonia.)

She had picked one photo per place and had a small quotation to go along with it. For every place on her slide, she had stories about the country, about her trip. And from her digressions it was clear that she would happily talk about all 1000 places, if only there was time.

So what was it about her presentation that made it likable? First, it was the overall grace with which she conveyed her passion for travel. She didn’t come across as a know-it-all and was grateful for the travel opportunities that have come her way.

Ultimately, I think she resonated because she tapped into the universal longing (at least in that audience) for more travel to more exotic places.

Top 5 Takeaways from attending the Adventure Travel Expo 2009 in Chicago

This past Saturday, in spite of excessive snow and unplowed roads Rupal and I drove to the Rosemont Convention Center. We didn’t want to miss the Adventure Travel Expo. It’s an annual event and whenever we’ve managed to go we've been inspired wandering the booths and listening to the presenters who are authors of travel books, personalities from The Travel Channel and the National Geographic Adventure magazine.

Here are my top takeaways from this year's visit:

1. It’s happening in Africa: Africa seems to be poised to enter mainstream tourism for 2009. For this crowd of travelers Bangkok’s Kao San Road has become very passe. We saw a number of talks and booths around the travel opportunities in Africa. For those looking for something beyond Morocco and South Africa, this might be the year that Gabon, Rwanda and Niger become real possibilities.

2. Experiential Travel: Fewer and fewer people seem to be opting for the "let’s sack-out-on-the-condo-by-the-beach” type of vacations. Increasingly, people want their travel to also be meaningful experiences, usually by adding a volunteering or a social benefit component to their vacations.

3. Visit just one place, but slowly: Given our limited travel time and the ever-increasing list of places still to be seen, it is natural to rush around checking off places. This crowd is advocating a slower pace of travel. (More depth versus breadth.)

4. Green is a given now: The adventure travel bunch was eco-friendly long before the rest of us even heard of the term. This is an interesting bunch of people, who live in tents for weeks, spend as little for food as they can and yet they have loads of cutting-edge electronic gadgets with solar-powered battery chargers.

5. You make it happen: A paid gig at National Geographic is the poster-child for dream jobs everywhere. Listening to a number of National Geographic writers and presenters, I see that these guys made it happen with the right combination of talent, ambition, gumption and unrelenting perseverance. (I read somewhere that Food Channel personality Rachel Ray, before she broke through, used to regularly make 25- and 50- mile trips in her local area for her cooking shows which barely 3 women attended.) These people are travel writers and photographers because they were working at it while the rest of us ventured no further than wishful thinking.

Related Post: About the expo

Adventures in Travel Expo 2009

A quick note about this travel convention. Especially relevant for travel enthusiasts in the Chicago area.

This coming weekend in Chicago (Jan 10th and Jan 11th, 2009) at the Rosemont Convention Center there will be several big name travel personalities presenting slides and talking about their trips. (In addition to Chicago, they have conventions in DC, NYC, Seattle and LA.)

In the main floor they will have lots of travel and tourism booths. I’ve attend this event a few times in the past (it used to be called IATOS then) and it is invariably inspiring to hear the stories of what people have been doing.

If you are in the right place, you should definitely consider attending.