Playing host in California

During the course of my surprisingly long and unpleasantly single life I have played a number of things. I have played cricket, football, golf, tennis, basketball and table tennis – all of them to varying degrees of spectacular embarrassment. I tried to play the tabla and a friend of mine tried to teach me how to play the guitar, but the word “unsuccessful” isn’t strong enough to describe the abysmal depths that I reached. I would like to play the field but I find it remarkably hard to go up to a woman that I don’t know and say something like “Hey. You smell kind of pretty. Want to smell me?” [Line courtesy the cartoon character Johnny Bravo, in case you’re wondering]. However, despite all this playing, I have rarely played host. This is, at least in part because most of the people I know don’t really like me.

All that changed on Friday when three very good friends of mine decided to take a break from dreary old London and visit sunny, glorious, Ganju-infested California. I collected them from the airport and after a quick break at home we headed to Yosemite. As it turns out, all the large, rumbling, painfully slow trucks in the Bay Area had the same idea. It was a pleasant drive.

Fortunately the reward at the end of the drive made it worthwhile. Beauty at Yosemite is one of the few things in life that you can depend on – like the high quality of the songs that Springsteen sings or the inanity of the comments from cricketers turned commentators or the looseness of a stomach after eating gol guppas and tikki chole at Dana Bazaar. Of course since we got there close to midnight and there were three jet lagged investment bankers falling asleep in the car, my energies were devoted to staying awake. The beauty would have to wait.

Next morning we were up bright and early and despite lazing around for a while we were all set to start hiking the ‘Mist Trail’ at 10 am. Since my friends are investment bankers, and as a consequence bound to be unfit I had selected a hike of moderate difficulty. A 12 kilometre round trip which involved gaining (and then giving back) 1,900 feet. As it turns out, I was spot on as far as our relative fitness levels were concerned. Ten minutes into the hike I stopped to take a breath and get my bosom to stop heaving (I’ve always wanted to talk about my bosom) only to find that up ahead in the distance the other three were jauntily skipping up the path, evidently unaware of, and entirely unconcerned by the fact that the path was ridiculously steep. And so, the format of the hike was set. My “unfit” friends would waltz along the path and I would trudge up, looking like I was going to die. They would then stop to wait for me. Ten minutes later I would scramble up, perilously close to collapse. When I would get to them they would ask me in a concerned fashion if I was all right. And in a show of faux bravado I would pull myself up off the ground – heaving bosom and all – and insist that I was fresh as a daisy. So onward we went, onward we went. And when we got to the half way point, the top of Vernal falls I was about as far away from being daisy-like as is possible.

After a half an hour break, during which one of my friends was attacked by a bee the size of a small rhinoceros, we continued with our hike and made our way to the top of Nevada Falls. Unfortunately it’s the end of summer and so both the falls were little trickles as opposed to the full blown torrents they are in the spring, but at least the view was quite beautiful. We decided to be adventurous and take a different route – the John Muir trail – down and we were rewarded with some even more spectacular views of Nevada Falls, which made it worthwhile. More significantly, while I hate walking up, I love downhill hikes. And so, magically I was transformed from a heaving bosomed wreck to a jaunty skipper. That evening, in an attempt to give our (okay, maybe it should be “my”) overworked muscles a break we just lazed around at the hotel and sat in the jacuzzi. Ah, the simple joys of life.

Exhausted - having got to the top of Nevada Falls

Starting our walk down the John Muir Trail. That's Half-dome on the left, Libery Cap in the middle and Nevada Falls on the right

The next day we decided to be less adventurous and drove to Glacier Point. Glacier Point is supposed to have one of the most magnificent views of Yosemite Valley and while I had already hiked all the way up to Glacier Point in May, I hadn’t seen a thing because of the massively thick cloud cover and the heavy snow on that painful day in May. Fortunately this time I got to see all there was to see. I’d use the word magnificent again, but I’ve always used it once in this paragraph.

The view from Glacier point when I went in May ...

... and the same photograph this time round.

More of the view from Glacier Point - Yosemite Valley in the middle and Half-dome on the right

On our way out we stopped by the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and marvelled at just how gigantic the sequoias were and also at just how rapidly we lost our interest in the trees and decided to drive back to the Bay Area.

As if that wasn't enough the following day, which happily enough was off because it was Labour Day or some such thing, we all piled in to my car and drove to Napa Valley. While I am a minimalist drinker, my friends are the type of people that spend all weekend in a pub, conveniently attributing their behaviour to their attempt to assimilate into popular British culture. I probably shouldn’t have been entirely surprised that they decided to stay on in Wine Country for the next two days!

Taking photographs while my friends taste some wine

And so, after three days of revelry, I bid them a temporary farewell and made my way back to my life. And as I drove back I wondered, when oh when will I escape?

Swimming, weight-loss and other exercises in futility

A few weeks ago I decided that it was time I learnt how to swim. I’ve tried on numerous occasions in the past to learn and on each successive occasion my failure has been more spectacular and on a grander scale than the previous endeavour. The nadir was hit a few years ago as I bobbed around like a piece of bloated flotsam in the ebb and flow of the tepid Arabian Sea. I was bobbing, the sea was ebbing (and flowing) and I hadn’t a care in the world. Of course I would have liked to swim, but swim I can’t. So it was really just bobbing and ebbing and flowing on the menu that day. Tragically this rather indolent state of affairs was shaken when an unexpected wave reared up behind me and knocked my lovely glasses off my face, and banished them forever to the murky, sandy, grey-blue underbelly of the sea. And there my attempts to swim came to an end.

However, given that a fair amount of time has passed I decided it was perhaps time to give water one more chance. And so for the last four weeks I have been getting into a swimming pool every Saturday and trying as hard as I can to swim.

Technology has insidiously and irrevocably changed the way we live. I communicate with friends all over the world electronically. I write my diary on a computer. I even do most of my shopping online – books, music, cameras, air tickets and my wonderful blue “ultra comfort” prescription swimming goggles that will hopefully not get washed away quite as easily. I have now decided to take this one step further by trying to learn how to swim over the Internet.

Ah, the joys of being able to see!

Of course I swim with friends and cousins who are nice enough to point out what I do wrong and more importantly what I do right, on the rare occasion that I actually so something right. But most of my theoretical instruction comes from various swimming videos on youtube. Secretly I’m hoping to become the first person to learn how to swim electronically.

The sad thing about hopes is the loud clinking noise they make when they come crashing down. Much as I try I just don’t think I will learn how to swim. I mean I can float (face down) and I can move my arms and legs, but every time I take my head out of water the rest of my body adopts a rapid and linear downward trend. If I were to be traded on a stock market they would describe me as bearish. In effect I can swim perfectly well apart from the fact that I can’t breathe. I am now trying to learn how to inhale by turning my head to the side and that’s just about working. I can manage to swim 12 feet. As I was telling the father, if I get ship-wrecked 12 feet from the coast I’m set. Anything further and I have a little bit of a problem.

As if this whole swimming thing wasn’t enough I have also been trying to play tennis. Every Saturday we start the day with two hours of tennis before getting into the pool. Tennis has been as unsuccessful as swimming; however what makes it vastly more appealing is that if you make a mistake the score goes to 0-15. You don’t actually drown. To be fair to swimming I haven’t drowned, not yet anyway, though I did swallow 6% of the swimming pool last week.

The part I like most about swimming and tennis and the occasional round of golf is that I am now getting much more exercise than I ever have. If nothing else, at least I might control the seemingly wanton expansion of my stomach. The weighing scale indicates that I’m making excellent progress. In the four weeks that I’ve been exercising I’ve gained two kilos.

Life, as they often say, is a lot like a dog of the female persuasion.

To England Again

On a cold and wintery night in February of 1959 a plane crashed in the shadows of the North American Great Lakes killing Buddy Holly. Twelve years later a singer called Don McLean wrote a song that he called ‘American Pie’. And in this song he paid tribute to Buddy Holly and to the other musicians who were killed on that fateful evening in the light snow of Wisconsin. McLean referred to that evening as “the day the music died”.

It’s been a busy few weeks for me. I suppose the highlight was that I visited England – again. And yes, I know. It’s starting to look like I visit England every alternate Tuesday, but no – life isn’t quite that good. This particular trip had in fact been planned many months in advance. It was the trip in May that had been the “ultra-impulsive, let me burn my meagre savings for no apparent reason because I enjoy being nearsighted and poor” type trip. Heap scorn, if you must, upon the last trip. Leave this one unscathed.

England, as always, was absolutely and completely fabulous. The parents had also made the long trek to Oxford and so I started my vacation with six glorious family days. My nephew remains the superstar and undisputed champion of all my England trips but there’s a tussle for second place between the rest of my family and the doner kebabs in Oxford when it comes to my motives for visiting England. I realise that my friends in London might be a little miffed, but if it helps they were a very close third.

The fun thing about family vacations is that you don’t really need to do anything, apart from the occasional visit to the kebab van, to have a nice time. There is no pressure to visit 1.76 tourist spots per hour and you don’t actually have to click a photograph every few seconds. You just sit around, go for walks, shop a little, consume large amounts of food and wonder why you live so far away from home. Ah the simple pleasures of a simple life.

Oxford's version of the Bridge of Sighs

This simple life was then shelved for a bit and my last two days were spent in surprisingly sunny London. And despite unflattering comparisons with Middle Eastern food it was wonderful to catch up with my friends. Two days really weren’t enough, especially when you throw in a horrendous round of golf (that made me swear never to play again) but I did manage to meet many many friends and eat some wonderful kathi kebabs after a kathi-less year. I would tell you more about the delicious unda shammi kathis but I’m running the risk of letting food take over my life, my blog and the dull grey-blue matter that lies in between.

Flying over Greenland on the way "home"

Of course, the most depressing part of these trips is the sitting on a plane for eleven painful hours and coming “home” to the wrong end of the world. The mild consolation was that I had Wimbledon to keep me company. Wimbledon would provide me with those almost imperceptible, loose links to my happy days in England. But Wimbledon alas, is dead. And may I humbly ask you not to bring it up again?

Yesterday I woke up at six to watch the tennis. Yesterday the tennis didn’t go according to plan. Yesterday I witnessed what I never thought I’d witness. Yesterday, finally I understood what Don McLean was feeling all those years ago when he talked about …… the day the music died.

Snowy, misty, glorious Yosemite (with a dentist thrown in for good measure)

The problem with this blog is that it makes me sound enthusiastic and adventurous. It makes me sound like a person all set to throw my battered backpack onto my browbeaten back (assuming of course that backs can be browbeaten) and trudge off to explore new and exotic corners of the world armed only with my passport, a pair of underwear in a waterproof pouch and some baby wipes. Alas, nothing could be further from the truth. And while I don’t typically object to inadvertently being portrayed in an exaggeratedly positive light, in this case it did have one entirely unforeseen downside.

A friend of mine having paid careful attention to my blog decided to block out all that she had previously known about me. It helped that she’d been trying to do that from the day she’d met me. And so when she landed in California a few weeks ago she expected that I would be extremely excited at the prospect of hiking in Yosemite. Yosemite, as a great man once concluded, is absolutely beautiful. I loved the idea of visiting it once again. It’s the hike that seemed less appetising.

After a little negotiation, most of which I ended up losing, two weekends ago I found myself in glorious Yosemite once again. We stayed at a charming little Bed and Breakfast just outside Yosemite, and drove in to Yosemite Valley bright and early on a grey and drizzly Saturday morning. Since I was in charge of planning the hike I initially suggested a relatively easy hike – a half kilometre loop around the pizza restaurant. But some research and a wild streak of impulsiveness led us to decide instead on this grueling 16 km hike, rather misleadingly called Four Mile Trail, with a 3,200 foot ascent and descent that would get us to something called Glacier Point which apparently has the most magnificent views of Yosemite.

We started hiking a little before nine in the morning and despite stopping every four minutes we made surprisingly good progress. But since this is my blog it probably isn’t all that surprising that this joy and silent exultation rapidly and irreversibly changed to fear, panic and mental chaos when the steady rain morphed itself first into hail and then into snow as we got higher up. It isn’t that I object to snow, per se – I must confess it really was beautiful. It’s just that we were dressed for a nice pleasant hike in warm and rainy California. An Arctic blizzard was the last thing on our shopping list. However, given that we were more than half way up, onward we walked towards our impending doom. [Actually there was no doom. I just like the sound of that line].

A lovely little spot close to the top

When we finally got to the top, three and a half hours later we were struck by the fact that (a) it was snowing fairly heavily, (b) it was absolutely empty because the road to Glacier Point was closed thanks to the snow [refer point (a)] and (c) despite being promised the most magnificent spectacle that Mother Nature had to offer, all we could really see was a huge grey cloud and a beautifully vivid diagram mockingly showing us what we would have seen, had it not been rainy, cloudy, misty and snowy. And while point (c) was in theory at least rather disappointing we weren’t too upset because points (a) and (b) made the entire place feel quite magical and I found the sub-zero temperatures had slowed my ‘always ready to be slowed’ cognitive processes. So to summarise, despite the rain and the snow and the complete lack of view we really did have a good time.

The diagram shows us what we should be able to see. The cloud was all we actually could see.

Magical, snowy Glacier Point

The following day we drove back into Yosemite and went to something called the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias which had these magnificently massive trees, some of which were thousands of years old. Since it was rainy and we were still tired from the hike we didn’t spend much time there – just enough to take the requisite number of photographs to prove to ourselves that we had in fact been there. Travelling before the invention of the camera must have been a much slower process.

A 2,700 year old tree called Grizzly Giant that is much bigger than what this photograph suggests

The root of an uprooted Giant Sequoia dwarfs the otherwise ample-sized me

Of course the depressing thing about all these little mini-vacations is the getting home bit. As if that wasn’t depressing enough, once I got back I had to go see my dentist again. A few weeks ago I found something dangling in my mouth. In a rare display of decisiveness I went and saw a highly recommended dentist, which is where my life’s happiness ended. The dangling piece in my mouth luckily turned out to be an old filling but that apparently was merely the beginning. After a careful examination the dentist uncovered two more cavities and three other “relatively urgent” procedures that needed to be performed. I have as a consequence spent 6 hours over the last four weeks lying horizontally with an anaesthetised mouth, looking up into a blinding light and saying “Aaaaa” which would seamlessly change to an “Aaaarrgghhh” unpleasantly regularly.

I’d like to ramble on some more about the hike, my tooth and the snow on the hill. But alas the blue packet of palak lying in my fridge expires tomorrow and so cook it, I must. Cook it, I must.

England on a Whim

Life needs to smell better.

It all started two Thursdays ago when I was sitting in office, just after lunch, continually slapping myself with a wooden ruler in a desperate attempt to look awake, efficient and stream-lined or whatever it is that people who actually get raises and promotions look like. In the midst of all this slapping my sleep deprived mind suddenly processed a rather depressing fact. Apparently in the middle of May, six of my painstakingly (and painfully) earned days of leave were going to lapse. Lapse. As in disappear. Vanish. Like the mint chocolates from my kitchen cupboard. I’d be damned if I was going to let my leave go the way of the chocolates.

I initially considered going to Washington DC. Let’s be honest. I am in America. No amount of denial or eating at Lucky Dhaba or shopping at India Cash and Carry or cooking palak paneer or swearing at my friends in an unpleasantly artificial Punjabi accent will alter the fact that I am in America. And since I have travelled all this way to the country which seriously, and with no attempt at humour or hint of self-deprecation genuinely believes that it is the biggest, brightest, best, most benevolent and in the interest of alliterations ‘beautiful-est’ country in all of class VII-B, the least I could do was visit their capital city. I vaguely considered taking a day or two off and flying there but a $461 ticket for an unplanned weekend seemed extravagant.

Since I was bored [you will recall that it was a sleepy Thursday afternoon] and in the process of digesting my Cheese Enchiladas I decided to, just for the heck of it, check how much tickets to London would cost. British Airways offered me tickets at a very ‘special’ price of $2,730. Virgin Atlantic was even nicer and made me feel more ‘special’. All I would need to give them was $1,710 plus taxes plus a fuel surcharge plus a passenger security fee plus, and here’s where they were really flexible, any internal organ I felt I could part with. Dejected and rather keen to keep my already appendix-less anatomy free from further intrusive extractions I was about to give up when I tried one last website. This wonderful site offered me the very same Virgin Atlantic ticket for a mere $665, which after some amount of mental arithmetic and temporary suspension of the laws of logic and subtraction seemed significantly lower than the ticket to Washington. I now reached a state of near excitement. I could almost smell my freedom – or in this case my escape to England.

At this point I called up a friend in London and the sister in Oxford and asked them, before announcing my intention, what their plans were for the next week. And so having left them with no available escape route, twenty six hours after having first thought about using up my leave, there I was, sitting in seat 41C, watching the stewardess flail her arms about in an attempt to teach us all how to unbuckle our seatbelts and flap our arms really vigorously in the event that the plane lost one of its engines.

Of course I have now spent way too much time talking about the ticket buying process but frankly the “Oh, I may be old and boring, but for once in my life I’m being impulsive” rush was extremely exciting. I suppose, however, it’s time I got to England.

I absolutely and completely love visiting England. It’s not that I love the country per se given that it’s ridiculously expensive (everything costs twice as much as the US and the portions of food are smaller), colder than I’d like it to be, has absolutely awful sausages compared with the fabulous sausages available pretty much everywhere else in Europe and everyone assumes that if you’re Indian, Pakistani or Middle Eastern you either have a van out of which you sell doner kababs and chips or you're a taxi driver. Despite these and other shortcomings I love visiting thanks to the presence of some wonderful friends in London and family that I’m very close to, in quaint and quiet Oxford.

Trying desperately to get into the same frame as Big Ben

Over four days in London I managed more socialising than what typically gets done in a month, ate and drank until I was bursting, flirted with women after what seems like an eternity [California has no single women at all. As in not one single woman. I’ve looked everywhere, including behind the wooden cabinet. But no, not a single single woman.] and generally sat around with friends who I love deeply and talked incessantly about nothing at all. It was a fabulous four days.

London Eye by the river

A solitary boat bobs up and down on the Thames

On my fourth and final day in London, as all my friends got back to their fancy investment banking jobs where they bought and sold companies for fun, restructured debt instruments during their lunch break and helped control the slow decline of LIBOR [London Interbank Offer Rate, I believe] on the way home, I involved myself with more simple pleasures. After a long time I spent all day just being a tourist. I walked all over central London [Google maps’ distance calculator tool tells me I walked 13.5 km], took photographs, did some shopping, ate when I was hungry and allowed the frenetic vibe of the city to wash over me. In case I haven’t already mentioned it, it was a good four days.

Trafalgar Square on my sight-seeing day

I then made my way to the wonderfully charming city of Oxford and spent another four days just relaxing with family. I have the single most adorable nephew in the history of the universe and I spent many happy hours talking to him and getting to know him and his constantly evolving personality a little better.

Wonderful Oxford

And then, after a week that came remarkably close to perfection I was forced to tear myself away from friends and family alike and make my way back to this, my temporary place of residence that I suppose I ought to call home. I open the window and fervently hope that the all pervasive smell of despair wafts away on the gentle breeze.

Life, as I said a short while ago, needs to smell better.

Blackjack in Las Vegas and a Nightclub called Tao

I suppose it’s my long and unblemished record of being extremely dull and boring that always causes people to gasp in surprise when I tell them that I love Las Vegas. Love for Las Vegas is typically associated with men who wear bandanas, have tattoos of machine guns on their biceps or at the very least whistle at women as they walk by. I’m rather happy to report that I don’t quite fit that image. But that doesn’t change the fact. I do love Las Vegas. Love for Vegas having been established, I believe it is time to move on with this narrative.

The Paris Hotel

Two weeks ago five of us decided to go spend a weekend at the wonderful Venetian hotel and drink in the sights, sounds and spectacles on offer in this strange little city in the middle of the Mojave Desert. We got there on a Friday evening all set to “boogie” or whatever it is that cool people do. Despite its image, Las Vegas is apparently a relatively formal place and so, much to my consternation, I was forced to wear shirts on both the evenings. Since I absolutely refuse to iron two additional shirts on any given weekend, the following week I worked from home twice, to "save" two shirts and to ensure that equilibrium was maintained. But as always I’m getting lost in my own inane tales. Where was I? Ah yes, so on Friday night after having eaten dinner at one of those magnificently elegant places which make you want to stand ramrod straight, speak in a ‘propah’ British accent and then inspire you to cower in trepidation with tears uncontrollably streaming down your face as the bill arrives, we went to what is apparently the most “happening” night club in Vegas. Something called Tao, which conveniently enough was in the Venetian, so we didn’t have to wait in a painfully long line for an inordinately large man dressed in a black suit to look us up and down and decide if we were hot enough to get in.

A copy of Venice's Rialto bridge at The Venetian

I’m not exactly a nightclub person. My perfect evening would involve large amounts of good food, pleasant music, and interesting company and if I’m being a little demanding, India beating Australia in a test match at Perth. Perfection is of course hard to come by but I’m willing to make do with palak paneer and rice in front of the television. There isn’t, in case you haven’t already noticed, any room whatsoever for nightclubs. Anyway. As we walked into Tao we were plunged into a world of near darkness, ridiculously loud music and what can only be described as a horde of people. If it wasn’t for two women dressed only in strategically placed flower petals dancing in a bathtub and a number of strange women rubbing up against me on the dance floor I would have been certain that Tao was the Las Vegas franchise of hell.

The roof of the lobby at The Bellagio

Having managed to survive both the dinner and the torrid experience so flippantly called a nightclub we made our way back to our room and happily I watched India dismantle South Africa, swearing to never again leave the side of my cricket-spewing computer. That resolve, alas, was set not to last. The main attraction of Las Vegas for me, and again this invariably causes raised eyebrows amongst my friends, is blackjack. When I was last in Vegas, five years ago, I had played blackjack without having a clue as to what I was doing and despite at times causing the dealer to laugh, for a few brief but happy moments I was actually making a small profit (which needless to say, disappeared rather quickly). This time I had no intention of allowing luck to play any role in my blackjack and so I had spent many hours carefully learning ‘Blackjack basic strategy’.

I could, at this point, tell you about the casinos we went to, the various blackjack games I played or how I manfully tapped the table and said “Hit me”. Or I could save us all some time, effort and emotional upheaval by jumping straight ahead to the point where I was curled up on the floor of a casino, rocking myself gently, beseeching god to magically appear and give me back my money and while he was at it, a girlfriend, a better job and a fancy sports car wouldn’t be unpleasant either.

Blackjack tables at The Venetian

The excitement of blackjack having vapourised rather quickly, we were left with no option but to turn our attention to the other attractions of Las Vegas. Fortunately there were quite a few things to do. We watched a wonderful show called The Beatles: Love, ate some delicious food and watched these extremely cool musical fountains at the Bellagio.

The Musical Fountains at the Bellagio

And after packing in a month long vacation into 48 hours we were rather unsurprisingly utterly exhausted by the time we got back home. Next morning as I headed to work, I gloomily thought back to Las Vegas – the fancy hotels, the surreal casinos, the amazing food and the glitzy lights. But ever so imperceptibly, ever so gently this sense of quiet contentment started to envelop me. And ever so slowly I started to smile.

My day may be a little dull, my work a little uninspiring. But at least, thank goodness, I didn’t have to deal with a nightclub.

A Tooth, a Rock and a Second Encounter with Springsteen

I’m particularly distraught because I recently lost one of my wisdom teeth.

It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. I have two wisdom teeth that I keep on my Malm 4 Drawer Chest (Medium Brown) inside my walk-in closet [I keep the other two in my mouth]. I’m not sure why I keep them on my chest of drawers. All I know is that once I had been through the excruciating pain of a little dentist in ‘Bengalooru’ reaching up into my mouth and tugging and pulling and pushing and prising and almost hanging from my tooth on not one but two separate yet equally unpleasant occasions I thought I deserved a medal of some sort. Apparently the ‘out patient department’ at St. John’s Hospital was unfamiliar with such requests. As a consequence I had to make do with my two half-eaten wisdom teeth.

So these two wisdom teeth that live in my walk-in closet have fairly decent lives. They travel in my suitcase to most of the places that I go to and return to their rather indolent lives once I’m back. I don’t ask much of them and they in turn aren’t too demanding. Tragedy struck when last week I discovered that one of them was missing and the other was understandably looking forlorn. The missing tooth is either behind the chest of drawers, which is painfully heavy to move, or has been stolen by Jose’s Cleaning Services. I’m not sure what to do about it, but if you see a tooth – about 15 mm long, of the wisdom variety, white and shiny on one side and decaying on the other – do let me know.

My sole remaining wisdom tooth (not counting the two in my mouth)

After the pain and sadness of losing my tooth, the weekend offered much needed respite. Alas the respite on offer was shunned in the vain pursuit of exercise. So off I headed to a place called Planet Granite to indulge in a spot of indoor rock climbing. Unfortunately indoor rock climbing is exactly what it sounds like. You walk into a door that looks like any other door in a world full of doors and that’s when things take a steep downward turn. Once inside you are faced with multiple walls between 40 and 50 feet high that look like sheer rock faces. They are covered with little multi-coloured stones that are to be used as hand and foot holds in the process of hauling yourself 40 or 50 feet up with no promise of reward, no medal - not even a half decayed wisdom tooth.

The climbing surprisingly enough wasn’t scary – you’re always tethered to a rope that is connected via a pulley to a person who stands on the ground and is called a belayer. I was a popular belayer with my friends, partly because my belaying technique was fresh and effective since I had just taken the belaying course, but more so because I offered a significantly higher counter balancing weight than anyone else there. I tried to take that as a compliment.

Despite my abysmal fitness levels I actually managed a few of the very easy climbs but the climbing process was made just a little tougher by my colour blindness. The way it works is that the hand and foot holds that can be used as a part of a particular climb are distinguished from other similar looking stones based on colour. It’s an extremely unappetising experience to be hanging on to a little orange stone, praying for your life, and wondering whether the grimy little stone next to your now removed appendix was at one point of time in its distant past painted a dull shade of orange.

Despite the experience I vaguely considered the idea of going back. I would have considered it some more if I hadn’t been roused the following morning from my otherwise restful slumber by an unexpectedly strong pain in my forearms. Evidently my forearms have muscles in them. Even more evidently they haven’t been used for a while.

And finally, after many many years of listening to and loving Bruce Springsteen’s music, this weekend I managed to watch him play live for the second time in the space of a few months. This time it was even more amazing because we managed to get floor tickets and were about 40 feet away from him as opposed to the 1.73 km last time. The music was fabulous, Springsteen was amazing, and as I sang along with his wonderful voice ever so fleetingly a rare thought popped into my mind. It was something along the lines of, “Ahhhh. Perfection!”

The amazing amazing experience of watching Springsteen play live
[Photograph courtesy the cousin]

Social Jousting at the Airport and Other Stories from Austin

I have a friend. No seriously, I do. I realise it might be a little hard to believe but I’m telling you I do. Anyway – we’re getting side tracked. So I have this friend and two weekends ago, I decided to go meet her in Austin. I got there on Friday night, and there she was at the airport, looking very excited in general but not particularly excited when she caught sight of me. I began to suspect that over email she might have mistaken me for someone else and wasn’t expecting me. This suspicion was furthered when she smiled at me cheerily and said “Oh hi, what are you doing in Austin?” I looked at her warily and told her that I was there to see her as planned. At that point she collapsed into a heap and came up coughing. I think I caught sight of a few tears as well. She later insisted that it was the remnant of a cold she had had and of course she was ‘just kidding’ when she asked what I was doing in Austin. I’m trying to believe her, but personally I’m still unconvinced.

A river in Austin called 'Town Lake' - I really don't know why

To her credit she recovered from this body blow manfully, and proceeded to show me a wonderful three days in Austin. Austin incidentally is the capital of Texas, which may come as a surprise because (a) no one’s really heard of Austin and (b) Texas doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would have a capital. You imagine Texas with large steaks, men in cowboy hats playing with their branding irons and women named Debbie having rather a good time in places called Dallas but you don’t really think of a capital. Or at least I didn’t think of a capital. Anyway.

The Texas Capitol Building

Austin was surprisingly nice. It’s this little university town and has a wonderful feel to it. Over the three days we watched movies, drove around town, visited nice coffee shops and bars and met with some of her friends. In an attempt to be cultural we even watched a play. Now I’m all for plays especially if someone else makes all the effort and I just need to show up. [As I type this I realise that this sort of preference is not limited to just plays. It applies to pretty much anything that involves social activity. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that I typically relate to the word ‘friends’ in its singular form. But yet again I digress.] However it wasn’t quite that simple.

In front of University Tower

Apparently I was required to 'dress up for this play which meant wearing a shirt. I should point out that in the good old ‘Bengalooru’ days I used to wear shirts pretty much every day. When I don’t need to iron shirts I’m extremely pro-shirt. It’s just that in this blessed country, every shirt I wear eats up 16 minutes of the following weekend as I struggle to tame its unwieldy folds and creases under the calming influence of my iron. And so after much grumbling I agreed to wear not just a shirt but also a pair of nice trousers (more ironing - sigh). Once we got to the play we found that the ‘auditorium’ was approximately the size of my walk-in closet and seated about thirty people. Everyone else was Caucasian, in their early to mid eighties and dressed in jeans and t-shirts so we fit right in. On the bright side the play was excellent and that made up for everything else. Well almost everything. I still refuse to iron my shirt and in order to postpone the inevitable I have conveniently forgotten my shirt in Austin.

While in Austin we also went to this wonderful place called the Alamo Drafthouse which is a movie theatre where they serve you food and alcohol while you watch the movie. I am still reminiscing about the chocolate milk shake I had there. We watched Juno, which I really liked and to be honest completely related with. Well not completely inasmuch as I wasn’t pregnant when I was sixteen. One of the reasons why I wasn’t pregnant at sixteen is that it is biologically impossible. Or at least I thought so. For some reason that remains an elusive mystery to me, for the last three months I have been receiving a magazine which I didn’t subscribe to but leads me to question this previously firm belief. The magazine is sent to me, to my current address and it doesn’t look like a promotional magazine. It’s almost as if I had subscribed to it and forgotten about it completely.

I’m just wondering why I subscribed to ‘Working Mother’ magazine.

My latest copy of 'Working Mother' magazine

Pain, Nightmares and an Inadvertently Purchased Enema Set

There are times in my life when exciting things are happening, like moving to a new part of the world, visiting cloud forests in Central America or hiking in Patagonia. On the other hand there are times when nothing seems to be happening, life seems to be growing monotonous and all I can think of is how I've inadvertently bought an enema set. Yes, it’s been that sort of a week.

It all started with a bit of pain in my right shoulder, right arm and right wrist. In order to assuage this pain I made my way to Safeway and searched the aisles for a hot water bottle. When I asked the people there they thought I was looking for a thermos and so I gritted my teeth and continued my eventually unsuccessful search. I then decided to check at Long’s Drugs and this time since I was determined to get what I had come for I was undeterred by the blank stare on the face of the salesperson at the term “hot water bottle”. I proceeded to indulge in a strange charade where for some reason, known only to my then pain tormented mind I acted out the process of filling a bottle with hot water, screwing on the cap, enjoying the warm sensation of the bottle and using it to soothe my painful shoulder. Remarkably it worked. The salesperson in question said “Ah, you mean a heating bottle” as if I had previously asked for a yellowy pink bungee jumping nostril plug by mistake. I guess this is what life and growing up is all about – miming the act of shoulder fomentation and overcoming the immense urge to fling at an annoying and supercilious salesperson a newly acquired hot water bottle (or for that matter a yellowy pink bungee jumping nostril plug).

The now enlightened salesperson then took me to the appropriate section of the shop and handed me the only hot water bottle available and we both tried to recover from this unseemly episode. It is only when I got home that I discovered much to my shock and horror that the box said Goodhealth Combination Douche, Enema and Water Bottle System. I didn’t know what ‘douche’ meant (tragically enough I knew exactly what enema meant) and so checked online to find that “A douche is a device used to introduce a stream of water into the body for medical or hygienic reasons”. I’m not usually an emphatic person, but I find the need to state rather emphatically that there will be no, I repeat NO introduction of streams of water for any reason whatsoever into my body.

Having unpacked the box I found strange hooks, tubes, screws and other assorted weapons of rectal invasion that sent shivers down my lower spine. That night I did manage to use the hot water bottle but on what could be a related note I had a recurring dream of a rubber tube trying to introduce streams of water into my body.

I’m happy to report that the pain in the shoulder now seems a little better. The nightmare however shows no signs of abating.

The contents of the nightmare inducing box.

My Experiments with Superglue

I have this mortal fear of superglue. There are a number of stories of people sticking assorted body parts, invariably embarrassing body parts, either to other body parts or to an inanimate object which would undoubtedly make life difficult. I can’t, for instance, begin to imagine what it would be like to have my shiny toaster permanently affixed to my left thigh.

It was with this and other fears in mind that I approached the little tube of superglue with much trepidation. You see I have this jacket. And from this jacket two buttons had fallen off. And while I’m sure there is a more elegant solution to a fallen jacket button than sloshing on superglue I must confess I couldn’t think of one. Surrounding myself with a large number of paper napkins I laid my jacket on a table, muttered a quick prayer, held my breath and carefully squeezed the tube of glue. With furrowed brow I watched the tube, the jacket and the errant button but nothing seemed to happen. Only then did I notice that the tube I was using was still sealed. At this point I remembered to exhale.

Having fetched the open tube from the cupboard I repeated the process and this time I covered the little button with superglue and pressed my jacket down on the button. I know that you’re supposed to hold it down for a few minutes but I was anxious and so, gingerly I lifted the jacket flap only to find that I had over-filled the button and so instead of sticking the button to the jacket flap the superglue was instead actively sticking together the two flaps of my jacket. Mortified at the prospect of converting my jacket into a poncho I quickly pulled apart the jacket flaps and began to dab the excess superglue with one of the many paper tissues I had on hand. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been overcome by the urge to dab superglue with a tissue. If you have, well I would strongly advise you to resist the urge. You see some tissue particles at this point decided to side with the superglue instead of the rest of the tissue and so my now gluey jacket flap was covered with a fine layer of brown tissue. At this point I could have tried to remove the tissue particles with a knife but I didn’t like the idea of having a knife stuck to my jacket and so manfully I stood and watched as the tissue paper forever attached itself to my jacket. Once the superglue had dried I decided to try and scrape off some of the tissue-y parts of the superglue-cum-jacket and to make an unpleasantly long story a little bit shorter I now have a strange, messy blotch on my jacket. And here I would like to end this sordid tale of the jacket, the button the superglue and the tissue.

And if you ever bring this up again I promise I will superglue your eye shut.

The mess I created on my lovely jacket. Sigh.

A Vacation in Costa Rica: A City, a Cloud Forest and a Rental Car to Remember

Over the last few months a number of people have told me how wonderful Costa Rica is, and so when my parents decided to come visit me I thought it would be a great opportunity for all of us to go take a look at it. Sunnyvale, California for all it’s redeeming qualities typically holds one attention for between seven and seven and a half minutes. By the eighth minute you are already planning your exit. And so on Christmas day we all made our way to Costa Rica.

We changed flights in San Salvador, which is the capital of El Salvador. I know absolutely nothing about El Salvador except for the fact that in 1969 they went to war with neighbouring Honduras over a football match. And I thought I was the only one who took sport too seriously. The airport at San Salvador was small but clean and rather reminiscent of a hospital in India. Well a hospital with shops. And of course aeroplanes. And without any doctors, patients or hairy nurses called Binsy [I’m not making Binsy up. When I had my appendix removed in 2002, through all the pain I remember that there was a malyali nurse called Binsy. And she had hairy arms.] But apart from that it was just like an Indian hospital.

The hospital-like airport at San Salvador

After six rather long hours in San Salvador we caught our flight to the Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose, Costa Rica [Juan Santamaria is a hero in Costa Rica. In the 1850s when Costa Rica was fighting the North Americans he successfully set an inn on fire killing many of them. He was mortally wounded but now is an important part of Costa Rican history]. We then made our way to this little hotel which I had found on the Internet and it was all very depressing. For starters this was the only room available in the hotel and as a consequence it wasn’t very nice. We then went for a walk and not knowing exactly which roads to avoid we walked into some of the most depressing roads I have ever seen. I was quietly wondering why so many people had recommended Costa Rica and I figured they were all from the ‘first world’ and found this backward squalor fascinating. We however have lived our entire lives in India and as a consequence find little joy and beauty in squalor – backward, forward or anywhere in between. Fortunately we quickly found our way to the nicer part of town and we breathed a collective sigh of relief. We then spent a day and a half walking around San Jose. While San Jose isn’t a very small city, we were staying very close to the centre of town and everything that I had seen on various websites and in guide books were within walking distance.

Various portrayals of Juan Santamaria. No one knows what he really looked like.

The courtyard in the hotel

The Teatro Nacional (National Theatre) in the nicer part of town

On our second day in San Jose we happened to catch a carnival. The carnival consisted of a huge number of cow boys and a few cow girls riding their horses down the main road in San Jose. It was also really interesting to watch how things worked. A cow boy, all of whom were clearly admired, would ride up to the side and then would ask a hot girl if she wanted a ride on his horse. The girl in question would squeal in delight and clamber onto the horse in a most ungainly fashion. Her father would look on smiling benevolently and her mother would try to hide her panic with a half hearted smile. A few minutes later the girl was deposited back to her parents and the carnival went on. My camera unfortunately did only a moderately good job of capturing the audio and visual aspects of the carnival. And unfortunately it was entirely incapable of allowing me to share the rare bouquet of beer and horse manure on offer.

The fuzzy audio-visual experience of the carinival

A church in San Jose

On the third day we set out for Monteverde. Monteverde is a little town about 150 km from San Jose which has some wonderful cloud forests. The really interesting thing about Monteverde is that it straddles two continents. Within a few kilometres of each other you can find the vegetation and eco-systems of North and South America. Of course all vegetation looks the same to me – but apparently to ecologists this is quite fascinating. I suppose I would be fascinated if I found a left arm chinaman bowler who could also bowl right arm off spin with equal proficiency but it wouldn’t matter quite as much to the ecologist. But I am jumping ahead. Dreams of cloud forests, ecology and straddling continents were still some way away. We first needed to get there. To get to Monteverde we decided to be adventurous and rent a car.

The problem with the world as it is today is that there are too many ideas, opinions and view points. Every person seems to have a carefully crafted individual perspective on every conceivable topic and the phenomenon of a consensus seems to have been lost around the time that we lost the unwired world where knowledge and instant expertise used to be more than just a series of clicks away. As a consequence I should have been rather happy to find that there was in fact one thing everyone agreed upon – when you rent a car in Costa Rica you have a high chance of getting robbed. I wasn’t.

When we got to the car rental place we were told the same story. It is quite common for people to identify tourists and then slash a tyre on their car. They then drive up behind you and offer to help when you stop to change the tyre. Once they have you engrossed in the tyre changing (for who would not be engrossed in changing a slashed tyre on a Costa Rican highway?) their partners drive up and rob your car. While I often disregard such warnings, it was widespread and consistent enough for me to pay heed to it. However once I was in the car and we started driving I tried to forget about it and headed towards the highway. This state of happy forgetfulness was not set to last. Within three kilometres there we were, parked on the side of the road with a flat tyre and a ‘helpful’ Costa Rican driving up to us and saying “I Mechanico, I mechanico.” Having politely declined his generous offer to help we drove back to the rental place where they confirmed that the tyre had been slashed and changed it for us. And so an hour late and with spirits considerably dampened we were once again on our way to Monteverde.

After the initial adventure the drive to Monteverde was relatively free of excitement apart from the fact that I desperately needed to use the loo. It didn’t help that the last 30 km are unpaved since they do not want too many tourists to visit Monteverde and ruin the ecological balance. While I’m all for ecological balance each bump on the unpaved road took its toll on my bladder and when we finally got to the hotel I breathlessly burst in to the reception and said “Hi, I have a reservation here, but first can you please tell me where the bathroom is?”

Monteverde was very nice and we took a guided tour of the cloud forest reserve. Having spent most of my life in urban India a cloud forest is the diametric opposite of my natural surroundings. As a result it was quite amazing to walk through the forest and look at the various trees, plants, animals and birds that the guide showed us. We even saw a bird called the Quetzal which is in large part responsible for the commercialisation of Monteverde. In 1983 the National Geographic magazine ran an article where they mentioned that Monteverde was the top place to see the Quetzal causing hordes of tourists to make their way there. And it is to keep back these hordes that all the roads to Monteverde remain unpaved.

A leaf eaten away by insects and catepillars

A Quetzal photographed through the guide's telescope

After a day and a half in Monteverde we drove back to good old San Jose and despite the rental car making all sorts of rattling noises we managed to make it back, all along resolving never to rent cars again in Central America.

The beautiful countryside on the way back to San Jose

On the final morning we used our last few hours in San Jose to visit the Museo del Banco Central (Central Bank Museum) which had an excellent pre-Columbian gold exhibition as well as a Numismatic exhibition. It was all extremely interesting and an excellent way to end our vacation.

Gold artifacts at the pre-Columbian Gold exhibition

I guess when I think about it Costa Rica really was very nice. Pleasantly enough it is a country full of pretty girls – which is always a good thing. The only drawback was that I could not freely use my Spanish. You see I have a vast Spanish vocabulary of 17 words (which was surprisingly useful on a few occasions). Within these 17 words I am most comfortable with Hola (Hello) and Cuanto Cuesta (How much). My big fear was that I would smile at a pretty girl and instead of saying “Hola!” I would let out a “Cuanto Cuesta?”

The pretty girls alas remained un-greeted.

Shabu-shabu, Decorative Sand and Orange Towel Fibre on my Face

Last Saturday I had shabu-shabu food and since then whenever I have a quiet moment to myself I involuntarily say “Shabu-shabu.” In order to try this shabu-shabu food, which incidentally is a Japanese cuisine where they place a boiling pot of water in front of you and then make you do all the hard work, I drove 35 km to San Mateo. San Mateo is a small little town which you really shouldn’t have heard of but apparently everyone else has. As a consequence I had to spend way too much time looking for parking. When I finally found a spot I discovered that I didn’t have enough coins for the parking metre and so I drove to a parking garage. These parking garages usually take currency notes and credit cards. Once I parked my car I went to the “Pay Machine” and discovered that it didn’t take credit cards. Even more happily, while it accepted notes it refused to give you any change. Irritated because if I had change 75 cents would have sufficed, I put in a $5 note but the machine spat it back at me. Apparently I was paying for 20 hours of parking, which exceeded the time limit. I was now unsurprisingly getting late for my shabu-shabu lunch and so I looked around to see if anyone could help. Fortunately I saw a lady and rushed up to her and asked for change. She had two $1 notes and I told her it was fine since I was in a hurry. Unfortunately she wasn’t in a hurry and said she couldn’t possibly take $5 in exchange to $2. I assured her it was all right but she was adamant. Evidently she had all afternoon to chat about this and reach a mutually agreeable solution. The shabu-shabu was now in serious danger of not getting consumed. I finally promised her that I would come to her shop and collect my remaining $3 once I had ‘shabu-shabu-ed’. It was all very trying.

Once I got to lunch I was greeted by my friends, but more significantly by the boiling pot of water. I was then presented with a plate of raw vegetables and some thinly sliced beef. The idea was to boil the meat and vegetables and then consume them after dipping them in various sauces. I am not usually very adventurous when it comes to food, but I had seen this on a travel show and it had looked very promising indeed. Excitedly I set about my shabu-shabu and shovelled all the ingredients into the pot. Unfortunately this is where the excitement ended. You see I had been given a pair of chopsticks. And I can’t use chopsticks to save my life. I can’t really think of a life threatening situation that would be averted with the dexterous use of a nimble chopstick, but you never really know. Anyway. So there was my food, floating around in this boiling cauldron as I sat armed with my chopsticks, trying desperately to fish it all out. Finally, I gave up and asked for a fork. At this point you might be saying to yourself “Ah so he got his fork and ate his shabu-shabu.” Alas not. It wasn’t quite time to shabu-shabu. If you haven’t tried retrieving assorted vegetables from a boiling pot of water aided only by a little fork you have absolutely no idea of how difficult it is. After watching this apparently comical performance for a while (and probably video taping it for his friends) the guy at the counter, in a moment of rare pity, handed me a pair of tongs. By the end of the meal I had the entire cutlery collection of the restaurant in front of me, while little bits of vegetable continued to float tauntingly about in the water. The line between afternoon meal and public humiliation has never been quite as blurry.

After this, the longest lunch in the history of shabu-shabu, I made my way back to my little apartment. While I really do like my apartment, and try my best to keep it neat and tidy I don’t exactly clean it as often as I should. Apparently you’re supposed to vacuum your bedroom every alternate day. Some people are a little nicer and advise a weekly vacuum. I however only aimed at vacuuming once every two weeks. It turns out that I narrowly missed my target. In the last 6 months I’ve only vacuumed once. I decided that enough was enough and so in another unpleasantly rapid step along the slippery path of growing up I engaged the services of Jose’s Cleaning Services to clean my apartment once a fortnight. Jose’s Cleaning Services’ method of operation borrows heavily from the elves that helped the shoemaker. I go to work in the morning – leaving behind my neat, tidy but slightly ‘un-vacuumed’ apartment. When I return in the evening everything in my apartment, everything – carpets, counters, floors, taps and even my toaster – is magically clean and gleaming. I was stunned to find that my bathtub didn’t actually have a brown, artistic design on it and the taps in the loo were actually shiny silver as opposed to a dull copper. It was all very exciting.

Look at how shiny the bathroom fittings are! If you look carefully enough you can even see a reflection of my dangling camera strap.

This home improvement endeavour did not end at Jose’s Cleaning Services. Since I wanted to enliven my apartment I made my way back to Ikea and bought three vases of varying shapes and sizes to put in my living room. Some people believe in things like meditation, yoga and silent prayer to achieve true self-realisation. I just go to Ikea. Each trip to Ikea helps me uncover yet another hitherto unknown facet of what is turning out to be quite an interesting self. For instance, I never quite realised that I was the kind of person that would appreciate decorative sand. If you had asked me, prior to my latest trip to Ikea, if you could interest me in some decorative sand I would, in all likelihood, have condescendingly scoffed at you. I might even have followed it up with a sharp, cutting one liner, something like “Phahh!” [Don’t miss the exclamation mark at the end of the “Phahh!” That’s what adds the oomph.] I was until fairly recently rather certain that sand – decorative or otherwise – had its place on beaches, in the construction industry and possibly in living rooms of people with sophisticated names like Genevieve, Jean-Pierre or maybe even Melba. But here I am, a self-confessed ‘sand phahh-er’ sitting in my now vacuumed apartment and looking adoringly at my vase with its red and black decorative sand. It really is very nice.

The wonderful decorative sand sitting quietly by the lamp.

And one final note on Ikea. Some time ago I had bought some new towels from Ikea. I particularly liked the orange one and decided to inaugurate it. The inauguration however turned ugly when three hours into my office day I visited the bathroom only to discover my stubble covered in a multitude of little orange fibres.

And all along I was wondering why the hot girls were looking at me.

To Patagonia and Back!

Some people spend their money on big, ostentatious houses with private swimming pools. The less wise people choose to buy fancy sports cars. The really silly people blow large sums of money on luxurious cruises where all they do is lie back, relax and watch the world go by while casting intermittent furtive glances at attractive women in skimpy clothing. But if look hard, really really hard you might just find a group of eight people, eight otherwise sensible, relatively intelligent people, who choose to spend their money travelling to the end of the world, placing all their worldly belongings on their respective backs and walking 70 km in four days. And yes. Yes yes. I am in fact guilty of being one of those eight people. I might during the course of the hike have thought that I was in jail, but the loud clanging emanating from my now empty bank account repeatedly reminded me that not only was I there voluntarily, but evidently I had paid to be there. The silver lining, albeit slightly tarnished, is that I can now honestly say that I survived what is called the W-Trail. And since I’m too exhausted – physically and mentally – to actually say it out loud I’ve bought myself a t-shirt to say it for me. But as is my wont I am jumping ahead. And so I shall now try and rewind to close to where it all started.

It was two Saturdays ago that I crossed the equator for the first time in my life and visited the southern hemisphere [Quick digression: A few weeks ago I realised that since I was going to the southern hemisphere for the first time I must drain a sink each in California and in Chile and observe the difference. Theory suggests that in the southern hemisphere a draining sink creates a clockwise vortex; in the northern hemisphere the vortex rotates anticlockwise. I’m sad to report that the experiment was a failure because (a) when I drained a sink at home it just went straight down suggesting, rather eerily, that my apartment is bang on the equator and (b) I forgot to drain a sink when I was in Chile.]. After changing flights in Miami and Santiago and spending a day and a half travelling we finally got to Punta Arenas and fortunately we were all too tired to debate whether or not we were in the world’s southern-most city.

The Andes from the air

The following day we all stuffed ourselves into a little mini-bus and after stopping for a short while at the Seno Otway penguin colony to, rather unsurprisingly, see the penguins we drove 400 km to this national park called Torres Del Paine (Paine is pronounced ‘pie-knee’). In the midst of the vast open grasslands that form large parts of Patagonia, Torres Del Paine is an oasis teeming with beautiful lakes, rivers and streams, big icy glaciers and magnificent snow capped mountains. There is rare pleasure to be found in standing on a hillside looking out to a lovely blue lake which has little rivers running into it, a glacier in the background and not another human being in sight. Of course an even rarer pleasure is getting lost in the beauty of what lies before you when a sudden gust of wind upwards of 80 kilometres an hour appears out of nowhere and tries its best to blow you off the narrow path on which you have precariously balanced yourself. Suddenly your appreciation for the lake, the rivers and the glacier pales in comparison to the relief you feel at the fact that you are not in fact tumbling down the mountain side and into the lake. Emotion wise it was all ups and downs.

According to the 2001-02 census the Seno Otway penguin colony has 10,729 penguins. We saw 17.



The long road to Torres Del Paine


The very blue Lago Los Patos

The day after we got to Torres Del Paine we started hiking, and over the next four days we covered the W-Trail – 70 excruciating kilometres of hiking, 24 of which were with our full backpacks. That we survived is a minor miracle. The joy and revelry of having completed this gruelling hike is mitigated only slightly by the fact that we, eight relatively young but woefully unfit people have created new records for being the slowest group to hike in Torres Del Paine. Not once in the four days did we ever overtake anyone. At one point of time on the fourth day we thought we might just go by this couple that was dawdling along and so in anticipation we all whipped out our cameras. Overtaking someone was a momentous occasion and we wanted photographic evidence of it. I’m not sure if it was the camera whipping process or if the dawdling couple ‘un-dawdled’, but when we looked up they were gone, and our four day long quest to overtake anyone or anything remained unfulfilled. In near desperation I turned to our guide and asked him if we were the slowest group he had ever accompanied. And while a dithering smile was trying to form on my lips, in my eyes he could see but the last glimmer of hope. So he racked his brains and reached into the depths of his memory trying hard to give us some good news. Suddenly his face lit up. After some amount of effort he had managed to recall a middle aged, drunk, drugged and slightly injured woman who might have been almost as slow as we were.

The W-Trail - 70 km, 4 days - hell!

Jumping across a little river

But slowness aside it really was a memorable hike – truly a once in a lifetime experience, largely because I won’t be doing any such thing again in this lifetime. During the course of the four days we climbed up a moraine (‘an accumulation of boulders, stones, or other debris carried and deposited by a glacier’) to reach the Base of these magnificent granite towers called Las Torres, we walked along the wonderfully picturesque Lago (lake) Nordenskjold, we sat by a still lake and we made our way to this amazing glacier, Glaciar Grey. And finally after four days of hiking we came back to our refugio (hostel) and celebrated the fact that though bruised, battered, achy and painy we had in fact done it. On the last evening we sat in the refugio playing cards when we noticed this man standing and talking to someone while dressed only in a shirt and his undies. Buoyed by the joy of having finished the hike and eager to end on a happy note three of us (unfortunately all men) went back to our room, giggled uncontrollably for about ten minutes and then dropped our pants and went back to play cards. Of course everyone was laughing too hard so we did have to come back and re-clothe our hairy legs before there was any card playing possible, but it was all very amusing.

At the base of the Las Torres Towers

A condor soars over Lago Nordenskjold

The magnificent Glaciar Grey

And one final note. After the four days of hiking we made our way back to Punta Arenas and enjoyed a nice relaxing day there. It was on this nice relaxing day that I was in the shower (yes yes, my stories invariably involve a bathroom) and upon reaching the end of my nice relaxing shower I started to turn the water off. Unfortunately the taps worked a little strangely and for some reason while the cold water went off the scalding hot water burst forth unabated. Experiencing a deep burning sensation I grabbed for the shower in an attempt to direct it away from my ample stomach and in doing so I slipped. Having slipped I fell backwards, out of the bathtub and found myself lying like a beached whale on the floor of the bathroom swathed in the rather colourful shower curtain that had also come crashing down. I survived the four day hike, but almost knocked myself out in the loo – such are the ways of the world. Luckily I got away with a little bump on my elbow and a slightly less hairy paunch. But apart from that all is well, all is well.

An orange ship in the Straits of Magellan quietly watches over Punta Arenas

Warm Clothes, Hiking Gear and a Water-Proof Pouch for my Undies

I am currently sitting on my sofa with my feet up on the coffee table and Springsteen is singing softly in the background. But this state of quiet contentment will alas not last much longer. On Friday morning, early Friday morning, early early Friday morning (so early that it’s almost Thursday afternoon) I shall be trying desperately to stay awake as I drive to the airport. And from this airport I shall fly to another airport, and then to another and then finally to a fourth airport. And after 30 hours of travelling I shall hopefully be in a little city called Punta Arenas in Chile. Punta Arenas claims to be the southern most city in the world. This claim conveniently ignores the existence of a city called Ushuaia in neighbouring Argentina. Ushuaia is in fact further south of Punta Arenas, but Punta Arenas is not so easily beaten. The smart people of Punta Arenas carefully studied the phrase ‘southern most city in the world’ and having realised that they can’t really fault Ushuaia’s southern-most-ness they decided to question its city-ness. According to Punta Arenas, Ushuaia is just a town or a village or some such thing and not really a city, and so it can't be the southern most city in the world. I’m not sure which way the debate is going to go, but either way I shall be in Punta Arenas, not Ushuaia. And I shall claim to have visited the southern most city in the world. So there! But as always this first paragraph has rambled on for no apparent reason and the only thing that has come of it is that I can now spell Ushuaia.

I’m not really going to tell you about my Patagonia trip right now, largely because I haven’t been on it yet. What I am going to tell you about is the 6-month long period of preparation and anticipation. On the day I arrived in the US the cousin and his wife picked me up from the airport, took me to lunch and just as I was biting into my first slice of pepperoni pizza they asked me if I wanted to go to Patagonia. I am indecisive to a fault. It had taken me fairly long to decide to have the pepperoni. A decision like Patagonia requires weeks and months of careful analysis on the internet and my excel sheets. Luckily I had to decide within a week, and sound advice from all around me ensured that I signed up. What I didn’t quite realise was that I was signing up for a trip that would bleed me dry of every last cent that I earned, that too before it even started. I’m beginning to think a high maintenance girlfriend would have been more cost effective. Ah a girlfriend. Sigh. But let’s not go there right now.

The first thing that you need when you’re travelling to a place that is 1400 kilometres from Antarctica, has winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour and is inhabited by penguins is warm clothing. So off we went to these fancy stores and I ended up buying:

• A sleeveless fleece jacket to wear on the inside.
• A long-sleeved ‘wind-stopper’ fleece jacket – to keep me warm and stop winds of up to 60 miles an hour [60 miles an hour is 96 kilometres per hour. I figure I can handle the last 4 kilometres an hour.].
• A bright orange water proof (as opposed to water resistant which keeps you dry in ‘all but the most torrential rain’) jacket to keep me dry. It is bright orange so as to attract the attention of the rescue party when I get lost and the hot hiker-girls when I’m found.
• Hiking pants which really are just pants but they are light weight and quick drying. An added advantage is that the legs zip off and they become awkward looking shorts. Given that the maximum temperature is going to be 6 degrees Celsius I suspect the pants will remain un-short-ified.
• Rain proof pants that also offer protection from the wind.
• Backpacking shoes which are different from Trailing shoes, Light Hiking shoes and Hiking shoes because this is America and they’re exploring the idea of capitalism here.
• A massive 80 litre backpack which will be stuffed with everything I bought and then heaved onto my back as we walk all over Patagonia in the blistering cold and the gale like winds. Did I mention that I’m really excited?
• And of course a sleeping bag to collapse into after our prison-like hikes.

Having now spent all that I had earned in the last six months I thought I was all set for Patagonia. But just as I was about buy myself the last meal that I could afford I discovered a whole new set of expenses:

• A little notepad because for the first time in years I will be travelling without my laptop and even though I won’t have my laptop I will still need to write about my day in my excel-based diary and note down every rupee, dollar and peso that I spend in my spending tracker once I'm back.
• A 2-gigabyte memory stick for my camera since I won’t have my laptop to download photographs onto, and I want to take many photographs.
• An extra battery for my camera because I don’t want to lug around the heavy, unwieldy camera charger. [Unfortunately this hasn’t worked out too well. While ordering the battery online I accidentally clicked on ‘Standard Shipping’ instead of ‘Expedited Shipping’ and so it will arrive at my place at just about the same time that we will be landing in Punta Arenas. As a consequence, tomorrow I will go buy another battery from a brick and mortar shop and return the online one. Since the brick and mortar shop is more expensive and I will also need to pay the shipping charges of the online shop, that one little wrong click is going to cost me $33!]
• Travel sized toothpaste, shampoo, shower gel, soap and shaving foam to reduce the weight of my toiletries kit.
• Hand sanitizer to sanitise my hands, sun block to prevent me from getting sun burned and baby wipes because, as has been recorder earlier on this blog, I cannot dry clean my bottom.
• A wind proof hat, because it will be cold and windy and hats make me look fetching.
• 4 sets of toe warmers which come in small little plastic packets and will apparently warm my toes at night thereby increasing the chances of my still having them in the morning.
• 4 quick drying t-shirts because if my toes survive the chill of the night my torso will perspire as I hike the following morning and a cotton t-shirt would remain damp and I would die of a sordid combination of pneumonia and tuberculosis.
• A quick drying, lightweight towel because a soggy, heavy towel is no fun to carry, especially after you’ve lost your toes to frost bite and you’ve come down with pneumonia and tuberculosis.
• A massive rain cover for my backpack in case it rains heavily and my water resistant backpack can’t deal with the rain.
• A small water proof pouch in which I will stash away my passport and a pair of underwear just in case there is torrential rain and wind, and I lose my footing and get blown into a lake and while I am falling into the lake the waterproof backpack cover comes undone and the backpack gets drenched. Life will of course seem miserable at that point, but my dry pair undies will be my silver lining.

I am however rather happy to report that I did resist the urge to buy some of the things on offer:

• A travel pillow to be used in conjunction with previously purchased sleeping bag.
• Hiking poles which look like ski poles but apparently are quite useful for support on uneven terrain.
• Hiking water bottles which are like normal water bottles except that they have the word ‘hiking’ prefixed to the ‘water bottle’ and as a result cost twice as much.
• Hiking socks which are a close analogy of the hiking water bottles but, in fairness, due to their thickness make hiking a little more comfortable and a little less blister-inducing.

And now as I sit in near darkness because I can’t afford to switch on the lights I wonder if I should go back and buy those hiking water bottles, the hiking socks, the hiking poles and that wonderfully soft travel pillow.

While I would like to show you photographs of all my new stuff, I have already packed. So I leave you instead with a picture of my suitcase and the sleeping bag which absolutely refuses to fit in. I'm considering draping it around myself and claiming that it's a toga.

A Californian earthquake, a trip to Texas and the Consulado General de Chile

The problem is that I have too much to say. I suppose I should dive straight in without getting side-tracked with counting my laundry.

The first report-worthy incident is that I have lived through my first Californian earthquake. About two weeks ago I was sitting in my apartment surfing the net when everything started to shake. My apartment shakes from time to time (I don’t really know why it shakes but now as I type this I begin to realise that it is just a little odd) and so my initial reaction was to ignore it. When the shaking continued I figured that this was in fact an earthquake and so I tried to marshal my thoughts. Unfortunately I am not a particularly quick ‘thought-mashaller’ and so as I hemmed and hawed about what to do the apartment started shaking with a vengeance. I decided that the right thing to do would be to go outside and try and avoid getting crushed if the apartment did in fact collapse. I walked out of my apartment door and was about to walk down to the ground floor when I came across the rather cute Irish girl next door. I have already alluded to my limited cognitive abilities and this limitation kicked in once again. Distracted by the cute girl I completely forgot about the earthquake and started talking to her. But of course this is me, and as a direct consequence this is my life. I hardly need to mention that within a few seconds a large Irish boyfriend/ husband appeared and there ended the conversation, the earthquake and this story.

This week I had to go to Dallas (which is in Texas) for a team meeting. On the way there I was sitting next to a strange little man. When the lady sitting by the window wanted to use the loo I stood up to let her out. The strange little man decided that was too much of an effort and so he decided to stand up on his chair and crouched under the low ceiling thereby rolling himself up into a little ball. It was all rather amusing. Once he had unrolled himself the air hostess came around selling food and drink. I get paid very little, practically nothing. As a consequence I believe in ‘living it up’ when the company is paying and so even though I wasn’t particularly hungry or thirsty I decided to ask for a Diet Coke and then asked if they accepted credit cards. She said “We do, but the drinks are free.” Suddenly I lost the desire to drink my coke. I wanted to tell her that now that it was free I didn’t really want the coke – but that was a little too weird … even for me.

Once I got to Dallas I rented a car and drove to my hotel. Of course I had no idea where my hotel was so I rented a car with a GPS system that eventually did get me there despite giving me absurd directions at times. The following day the team met for the first time despite the fact that we’ve been working together for 6 months. I wish some of my friends were more like that. After work we all went for a team dinner and then I gave a colleague of mine a ride back to the hotel. On the way back she said that when she had come in the previous night she had given her car to the valet to park but she had seen a similar looking car outside the lobby in the morning and was hoping that there wasn’t a problem. When we got back to the hotel the ‘similar looking car’ was still there so she walked up to the doorman and asked if that was in fact her car. The doorman looked a little confused and said he didn’t really know, but implied that maybe she should. She said “Oh, I handed the keys to the valet last night and checked in.” The doorman shuffled his feet a little, trying to figure out the gentlest way of putting it and decided to go with, “Eh, actually we don’t have valet parking.”

Oh and the last note on Dallas. In some of our offices you have notices asking you not to smoke, other offices prohibit photography. In Texas it’s a little different.

Sign in the Dallas office parking lot

After three days in Texas I really was quite happy to get back to California in general and more specifically to my wonderful car. The next morning (which happened to be the Friday that’s just passed) we sat in my wonderful car and headed to the Chilean consulate.

We had first visited the Chilean Consulate, more accurately the Consulado General de Chile, a month ago. Having been to embassies and consulates in India I had expected a fortified building with rude officials, nasty visa officers behind bullet proof glass and gun toting guards who would spit in our general direction. This was a little different. It actually was nothing more than a moderately sized room divided in the middle by a counter which could just well have been a doctor’s waiting room or the San Francisco branch of New India Assurance. We got there at 9:15 am (this is still the first visit a month ago) and found that it was locked despite the fact that it’s supposed to open at 9:00 am. A few minutes later a lost yet officious looking woman wandered up and asked us what we wanted. We said we wanted visas. A look of surprise and confusion crept across her face. “Visas?” she asked with large amounts of incredulity as if she hadn’t quite understood what we meant. Never ones to hold back on due praise and appreciation we repeated “Visas” nodding gently in a congratulatory fashion [It really is fun to nod gently in a congratulatory fashion]. “Which country?” she asked and almost involuntarily I said “Chile” which probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world given that we were at the Chilean Consulate. She now produced a look of derision and said “Yes yes, I know that, but which country are you from?” Sheepishly I looked to the ground and the others said “India”.The mist in her eyes appeared to clear just a little and there were some signs of cognition. Then just to make sure that we were all on the same page she once again said, “Visas” and having received another set of gentle, affirmative nods let us into the Consulate.

As it turned out the visa officer was on leave and so we left our papers with the lady with the now 'un-dazed' eyes and she asked us to call back in 2 weeks. We then spent the next 4 weeks dialling their number every 15 minutes but for 4 weeks they resolutely refused to answer their phones. It is the sort of resoluteness that makes Chile a great country. When we finally managed to get through they asked us to visit them again and so on Friday we all made our way back to the Consulate. The first big difference we noticed was that the little room actually had other people waiting around. The second big difference was that the visa officer was back. The visa officer was this stern little woman who had a computer, a printer and lots of little rubber stamps. One by one she would pick up our passports, look at them suspiciously, consult her computer and then would randomly choose four or five rubber stamps and start stamping our passports with just a hint of fury. The cousin and I found this all very amusing as we stood there giggling like little girls and decided that this would probably be more fun than the actual trip. Despite our deep suspicion we got all four passports back, with four very smudged and just about legible Chilean visas.

And yes yes, your brilliant insight is indeed not misplaced. We are in fact headed to Chile. And yes, it really is very exciting. And yes, I will try and have a great time, thank you very much. I think I’ll now go sit down and digest all the excitement.