I hope some of you agree

Apparently there's a West Linton, Indiana. And a whole page devoted to how You'll like Linton.

Its actually a little creepy. The slogan won a competition back in the 1930's. They have a song. And multiple signs like the one above.

Blogger's business model

“I know half of my advertising budget is wasted. I just don’t know which half.”
--19th century Philadelphia department store owner John Wannamaker

This isn't at all related to the trip, I just thought I'd say a quick note about how impressed I am by Blogger's business model.

Their business model is based off of one simple observation about media companies: content generation is the single biggest cost. Once NBC has an episode of "Friends" filmed, they can copy it, transmit it, modify it, sell it for a fraction of the cost of getting that first copy.

Part of the reason reality shows have been so successful is that they tend to be cheaper to make than sit-coms or other shows. You need a few sadistic "idea people" and a few more masochistic exhibitionists, and you're off. Since content is the most expensive part, more of your revenue is profit.

The problem with reality shows, and with much of television, is specificity of audience. The majority of Americans (even for hit shows) don't watch. The Superbowl only tops in at 140 million, which is less than half of Americans. And furthermore, even if they did watch, its unlikely that every ad you showed during the show would appeal to each of them. So there's waste, which means lost revenue.

The same twin difficulties of content generation and ad specificity applies to other forms of media, although they try to ameliorate the problem. For example, websites like the Washingtonpost.com try to keep track of your clicks and searches and from that "guess" the ads to which you'd be most likely to respond. But thinking like people is tricky for machines, as evidenced by the fact that Washingtonpost.com is trying to sell anti-wrinkle cream on me while I read an article about Saddam Hussein’s trial. (Actually, maybe they know something I don't...)

But now the consider the genius of blogger. They get people to write content absolutely free. If that isn't enough, they offer a service where you can choose a menu of advertisements to post to your blog, and then get paid for click-thrus. This encourages content writers to pick the most appropriate ads for their audience, who they supposedly know pretty well. This laser-like focusing of specificity greatly increases the chance of click-thru, which means the advertisers are less likely to spend money on ads to uninterested people.

So blogger gets people to write their own content for free, and then has them manage the ads shown to their readers. It takes a percentage of the revenue to run the webservers, and everything else is profit. It really is genius, and I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Now, if only they’d somehow solve the problem of more bloggers than editors, it would truly be the perfect medium.

Indian Fair

Dave and I went to an Indian fair yesterday. Pretty standard fair stuff, I think they were trying to emulate the image of an American county fair. Some things were off, however.

Note, for example, how this ferris wheel is being driven by people, like its a giant hampster wheel. These guys would run/climb/hop from the internal struts, making the wheel go round. Then stop when they got tired and unload everyone.

There were a few problems with this method. For one thing, the operators had little control over the wheel balance. Basically, fat families all seemed to went to get on together, while the other chairs around the wheel were filled with toddlers. This made the wheel unbalanced, which gave the two "running it" a hard time getting started. While I'm sure they were both strong, combined I'd be surprised if they were more than 300 pounds. Once momentum was on their side, however, they were fine.

Also, stopping was a little tough, it seemed. They slowed down the pace of the awkward run/climb/hop they they had going, until finally a guy at the bottom attached what looked like bungee cords with hooks onto the frame, rocking it to a halt. They then went one at a time unloading the old and loading the new customers.

Anyways, this is another elegant Indian solution in an environment where machinery is expensive, electricity is spotty, but people are cheap.

Only in India...

Cashing in on good karma (a case study in "you win some, you lose some")

At the same fair where we saw the human-driven ferris wheel, they had raffle tickets for plane flights sponsored by various airlines. They were 50 or 100 rupees a raffle, so on a whim, Dave and I entered a few of them. Not bothering to stay around until 4:30 when the drawing was, Dave and I wrote our cell numbers on the raffle tickets and left the fair. I honestly forgot about the raffle--I figured it was for charity, and that was enough.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when a few hours later I got a call from a very pleasant Indian matron who informed me that I'd won a voucher for two free plane tickets from Delhi to Goa! (Actually, they were for either "Delhi Mumbai Delhi, Delhi Goa Delhi, or Delhi Pune Delhi; yourrr choice." She said it exactly this way at least three times, with a roll of the R.) She said further that I could come to her apartment in Gurgaon, the trendy "growth" suburb of Delhi, to get the prize voucher. Finally, she mentioned that I'd need to bring the winning raffle ticket.

And that's where the problems began. Looking through my pockets, I realized I didn't have the winning raffle ticket anymore! I had every other raffle ticket, Dave had all his raffle tickets, I was missing that one raffle ticket that was needed! I looked through the bag I brought with me to the fair. Traced my footsteps since arriving back at the apartment, I double checked everything. No ticket. I called the person who was kind enough to give us a ride back from the fair, asking him to check his car; nope. I began contemplating how funny it would be if I never found the ticket; easy come, easy go. I started to concoct plans to convince the pleasant Indian matron that I didn't actually need the ticket, after all she had called me, that should be evidence enough.

In exasperation, Dave suggested I go check by the front gate of their house, in the chance that it had fallen there when we were dropped off. So, mainly to humor him I trudged downstairs in the dark, dejectedly unlached the gate, and...found it!

It was laying face-down by the gate, where it had been for hours. With a whoop (literally, the children playing cricket in the street actually turned to look at me) I scooped up the ticket and rushed inside. Very heartened by the whole affair, I declared victory for the day and went to bed.


But alas, finding the lost ticket was only the begins of the voucher saga. To explain why this was a saga, let me explain the first rule of Indian travel: Traveling in India, no matter what the distance, is cheap and easy provided you don't need to be anywhere at a given time. As soon as you have a schedule, that is the need to occupy a pre-determined set of coordinates at a certain time, India conspires against you. Lights will turn slower. Traffic will be thicker. Your driver will get lost. The woman giving directiosn will mix up left and right. The clock will seem to magically skip minutes in an inexorable drive to make you late. Just as nature abhores a vaccume, India has contempt for schedules.

And this was the rule I forgot. Being the seasoned traveler that I'd thought myself to be, I felt I could bend the rule by sufficiently padding the schedule. Looking back, it was pure hubris: I planned on going to Gurgaon in the morning, being back by 11:30 to stop by the train station to pick up tickets, then on to the denist for a 12:45 battery of fillings. It was to be a thing of glory; i would arrive home from the dentist in time to double check my bags, type up a victory blog post about winning the vouchers, then catch the express train out of town. Sadly, India started gnawing on my plans even before the driver showed up, and it had chewed up then spat them out before we even started back to Delhi.

Rather than bore you with further details, let me say India had a number of tools in its schedule-destroying arsenal. To begin with, the journey to Gurgaon involved a stretch of evil road called "highway 8," which is secretly the site of Indian experiments in perpetual traffic jams. We got lost multiple times in Gurgaon; my driver was relatively new, and confessed afterwards that he had never been to Gurgaon before. Once I arrived, the pleasant matron insisted I have tea with her, which was very kind except it put me further behind. Not that the lost time mattered, since highway 8 again caught us and blew the whole schedule to smithareens. To culminate a disaster of a morning, I skipped the train station (having missed the purchase window) and finished up in dentist's office to get my teeth drilled. Fun fun.

But, I did get a voucher for free airline tickets. And I'm planning on leaving for Bombay tomorrow...

Rational Actor model (a case study in putting your money where your mouth is)

As a side note, when I was having tea with her, the pleasant matron informed me that of the eleven flights that were up for raffle, one guy won 5 of them. He filled out hundreds of raffle forms, spending thousands of rupees. He set up a production line with his entire family filling out forms.

Probabilistically, it was worth it. There weren't all that many raffle entries, you could see them in the jars from which they were to be drawn. In addition, the cost of each ticket was very low, compared to the pay-off of things like 2 free first class tickets anywhere in the US on Continental. As a result, so long as the price of each ticket was less than the expected value of it paying off, it was rational for him to buy an extra ticket. Its just impressive that he did the calculation and actually acted on what he found.

In some parts of risk analysis they talk about how people are risk-adverse. That is, actual people are unwilling to take some risks even when the expected value is in their favor; that they feel the pain of loss more heavily than the happiness of success. Most people, acting irrationally, when confronted with a lottery like this would buy a bid or two and hope for the best, partially because their past failures to win lotteries make them think that they could never win a lottery. They console themselves when they lose with the knowledge that they only lost a little. Not this guy, though.

The fact that he bought so many tickets is doubly impressive because he apparently tried this same trick last year, and did not win a single one. Its to his credit that he came back a second year to do it. It represents an almost inhuman faith in the law of large numbers and the independence of random events. If it weren’t for the fact that it made other rafflers (a person who participates in a raffle) upset, I’d say it had potential to be a made-for-TV-movie.

Just as a side note, while people at the drawing were angry at the one guy for getting so many prizes, she didn't seem angry at him for gaming the system. More than anything, she seemed exasperated that he spent so much time. Its as if she thought: "if only he knew the right 5 tickets to buy, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble."

One thing I can question was his timing in buying the tickets. He came late in the day, half an hour before the raffle closed to buy his many tickets. I'm sure he did this so he could look in each raffle bin and buy more of the ones which he felt were under-filled. At the same time, however, if he had come in the beginning of the raffle, and bought all his hundreds of tickets, leaving them in the bin all day, I wonder if he could have intimidated people from ever signing up at all; I personally I signed up for the two raffles I did because I the bins were near empty and I liked my odds. If he could have intimidated small time people like myself in this way from the beginning, his odds overall would have been even better.

Perhaps he’ll think of that when sipping champaign in First class on one of his cross-country flights.

The Taj

I went to Agra and saw the Taj Mahal. As a tourist in India you're pretty much expected to go at some point. To be honest when I read Rabindranath Tagore's claim that the Taj is "tear drop on the face of eternity," I prepared myself for disappointment; its almost impossible for anything real to live up to statements like that.

In actuality, the Taj was a little overhyped, but not as bad as I'd feared. Its kinda like a supermodel in a kiddie pool--very photogenic, but none too deep.

So, go in the morning when the light is best and crowds aren't bad. Take few pictures, and move on. If you have time, your ticket from the Taj will also get you into Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri, so go see them too.

Here are some of the better photos I took.

Interesting quote

"I put my foot in the stirrup of resolution and set my hand on the reins of trust in God and moved towards Delhi and the domination of Hindustan."

--Babur, the first Moghal Emperor of India, regarding his decision to invade India from modern-day Afghanistan.

I guess if you read a history of a horse-riding people, you should expect horse-riding metaphores...

Symbols

I took this in the Fort at Agra. Its just a set of wall carvings, but is notable for the trippy mixture of swastikas and Stars-of-David put side-by-side. It was made centuries ago by Babur, the first great Moghul emperor, so they meant completely different things to him than they do to modern western minds. Just more evidence that one needs to be careful when interpreting symbols across cultures.

More Indian Jokes

I just remembered another joke that Adil told me:

Child to Grandfather: "Why do you have hair on your face, but none on your head?"
Grandfather to Child: "Because the hair on my head was 20 years older than the hair on my face"

Horses

For those of you in readerland to like horses, Pushkar had a lot of them, too. Note the curved in tips of the ears. This means these are a breed called "Marwari," and were prized for their ability to withstand intense heat and cold, and their ruggedness over long distances.

Close to the Maddeing Crowd

I have a hard time emphasizing enough how many people there were at Pushkar. There were lots. Here's a picture of the crowd trying to enter the temple to Lord Brahma. Pushkar's camel fair co-insides with a major pilgramage to the temple, which explains why people were so keen to go inside. You can't take pictures inside the temple, but I asure you it was crowded inside too.

The temple is significant because it is the only one in the world devoted to Brahma, even though Hindus believe him to be the creator of the universe. The derth of temples is attributed to a fight between Brahma and his wife, Savriti, over something that never made sense to me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all have a good one.

Pushkar in the morning

Shannon and I got up early one morning to go see the sunrise in the camel fair. Unexpectedly the air quality was far worse in the morning than during the day, largely due to the fact that they burned camel dung for cooking fires. Anyways, this way my attempt at stiching together a wide-angle shot of the fair. Note the low-hanging smoke covering everything.

If you click on the picture, you can see a larger view.

Pushkar camel fair

After leaving Jodhpur, I hopped on a bus towards Pushkar and its famous camel fair. It was...touristy. That's the best single descriptor I can think of. While I'm sure that lots of actual camel trading goes on in Pushkar, there are ten times as many touts selling things to tourists at rediculous prices. Prices for little paper-mache elephants would begin at 500 rupees, but if you showed no interest would drop as low as 10 rupees.

So, imagine 300,000 people decending on a town of 20,ooo for ten days out of the year. There are so many people they overflow the town into the surrounding dusty desert. Imagine a hundreds of thousands of camel showing up to be bought and sold. In addition to the camels, cows, horses and goats are all over the place. Now imagine walking through this dust-filled noisy environment surrounded by people selling things.

That was my experience of the Pushkar camel fair.

Eeewwww....

This is actually a picture from the rafting trip to Rishakesh. Thought I'd lost it. Sadly, I didn't, so I thought I'd foist it on you...

Indian Jokes

Adil, Veronique and I compared jokes from our different countries one evening over coffee. Canadian jokes and American jokes are pretty much the same, which isn't all the surprising. They tell "Newfie" jokes about New Foundlanders where we tell Blond jokes. Some were kinda funny.

But I definately don't get Indian jokes. For example, one which he thought was hilarous:

A man is walking on the street carrying a briefcase and wearing a suit. His friend stops him and asks "So, what are you doing?" Obviously, he's going to work.
A little while later the same man is waiting in line to see a movie. Same friend approaches and asks "So, what are you doing?" Obviously, he's going to see a movie.
Finally, during intermission the man walks into the bathroom, where his friend finds him and asks "So, what are you doing?"

And there the joke ends. You're supposed to infer that he's using the restroom. I *think* is poking fun at people who ask obvious questions, but I'm not sure. Or maybe its obscure potty humor, I dunno. I told the joke back to him to make sure I understood him properly, he howled with laughter.

Another joke he told that was kinda funny was about three wives sitting around discussing the color saree they wear.

One wife says "My husband has black hair, so I wear a blakc saree."
The second wifes says "My husband has white hair so I wear a white saree."
The last wife looks alarmed and says "My husband is bald!"

In fairness he didn't seem to get my jokes either. The puns I could understand; you kinda need a close t0 native grasp on English to get those. I told knock-knock jokes, but even after we explained the pattern, he couldn't tell when the joke ended. I told a few man-walks into a bar jokes, some engineer jokes, even some dead-baby jokes. The humor just rolled off him. I finished with the coup-de-gras, the joke that has been scientifically proven to be the best joke in the world. He didn't even crack a smile. Maybe I need to work on the delivery. Or maybe he was laughing on the inside.

Mustachioed Men

One of the more distinctive things about India in general but Rajisthan in particular is the obvious pride that men take in their mustaches. Perhaps is a remnant from the British, I don't know. But these are some of the more extreme examples I saw while touring around Jodhpur's fort.

Jodhpur

Jodhpur is a very pretty city as well, though not quite as pretty as Udaipur. Jodhpur is also known as the "blue city," but I thought the houses in Bundi were more consistently painted blue. Not that Jodhpur wasn't awesome. The fort was fascinating, the best I've been to, and the narrow streets of the old town are some of the most interesting to walk down.

This picture was taken from the fort overlooking the town.

A close shave...

It was in Jodhpur where I finally worked up the courage to go to one of those street-side barbers. A number of them were lined up in a row, and Adil joked afterwards that he suggested the one he did because that barber had the worst haircut. You don't want a barber with a good haircut--it means there's a likely a better one nearby.

Few things focus your attention like having a complete stranger hold a straight razor to your throat, no matter how experienced or trust-worthy you're assured he is. Its the closest I've come to understanding what the Buddhists mean when they say to be mindful of the present. Not that I was thinking about this at the time, of course.

That said, he really did do a good job. It was amongst the closest shaves I've had, and with very few nicks or razor burn. He used three different kind of shaving gels, a brand-new straight razor, two types of aftershave and cologne.

All told, the shave was 10 rupees, a hair cut would have been another 10. It was almost a shave and haircut, two bits.

Exercise Guy

I got up early to see the sunrise in Udaipur. It was okay, water reflecting the rising sun, warming the buildings. But the real pay-off was seeing the morning routines of the indians by the water. Most people were washing up or cleaning clothes in the morning. One guy was doing what appeared to be a combination of yoga, tai-chi and calisthenics.

He let me take this picture of him.

Another picture

Not that the adults were any less fascinated by us, they just were more polite about it. (I know that sentence sounds stuck-up but I'm just calling 'em how I saw 'em.)

Even in this photo you can see the kids swarming around.

A star for a day, kinda

One of the more surreal things about going to visit Adil's family is that all the local children were fascinated by us. They followed us as soon as we entered the neighborhood, trying to touch us, asking to shake our hand, saying "hello," and just generally staring openly at us.

I couldn't help but feel that this is how movie stars feel when walking around.

This picture doesn't really do the experience justice, because I couldn't get a wide-enough angle. The kids extend around half again on each side. After I took the picture I was swamped with children wanting to see the LCD screen.

Adil's family workshop

Adil's father is apparently reknown for the types of dyes he uses in his prints--they have a number of plaques referring to awards won for their work. After hanging out in the shop, Adil took us to his family's work shop where they showed us how they make the prints. Very neat.

Pictures

These are just some pictures from the day spent hanging out in Adil's shop. Note me in a turban. The old guy is a friend of Adil's family, who's name I never caught. He was (and remains) the only vaguely negative reaction I've gotten from someone upon saying I was from the US. He lanched into a 10 minute harrangue of President Bush, and then asked that I address this upon returning home. The young guy is Adil's best friend, Reyaj.

Veronique and Adil

This is a picture of Veronique and Adil, two folks I met in Udaipur and traveled to Jodpur with a few days later. Veronique is a medical student from Canada who is taking a year off to travel. Adil works in his family's business making and selling printed textiles.

They're both good people and figure a lot in my travels for a few days. We spent a day in Udaipur hanging out in Adil's shop, just sitting and watching customers come and go. It was neat watching the other side of small-business retail. I'm not sure I could do it myself, but I certainly admired Adil's salesmanship.

Afterwards we went to a number of places where natives congregate and chill. They reminded me a little of German beer gardens, but without alcohol. It was also remarkable because there were people of all ages there, and both genders. The majority of people were there with their entire families. I was reminded of kind of the small town gathering atmosphere which (I percieve) existed in the US back in the 50's. It was really fun.

Also, as you can see, Adil drives the obligatory motorcyle that all Indians in their early 20's seem to drive.

Me! Meeee! Mmeeeeeee!

This was the official seal of the Raj of Udaipur. It depicts the latest Raj with his face as the center of the sun. Traditionally the Raj was apparently worshiped as a minor sun deity of some sort.

It just strikes me as one of the most self centered things possible...

Tiger hunting, Raj style

There was one photo in the city palace that I wish I'd been able to take. I depicts the Raj on an elephant engaged in a tiger hunt. Considering my prior frustrations and musings about the tiger hunting process, I was very interested in this.

At least from what I could garner from the painting, it looks like the Raj had help. In a circle all along the edge of the painting were depicted hundreds of servants with trumpets. They appear to be walking through the forest, frightening the wildlife ahead of them. The Raj meanwhile sat in a clearing in the middle of this giant noose on top of an elephant with a rifle. He shot the animals he wanted as they appeared from the underbrush.

Pretty sneaky, but its good method if you can do it.

City Palace

Over looking the Floating Palace is the City Palace, which is open to visitors. Its an extensive palace which is still owned by a line of Raj's that ruled Udaipur for over a thousand years. They claim theirs is the oldest unbroken line of succession in India.

it cost 50 rupees to get in, but 200 rupees for a "camera fee" and another 200 for a guide, neither of which I could justify paying. So i don't have any pictures of the inside. It was kind of too crowded to take many good pictures, however, and most people were pushed through by guides in a rather harried manner, so I don't think I missed much.

I couldn't help but overhear a few different guides talk about the same exhibit. There were three different stories, even though these were all supposedly "officially sanctioned" guides. For example, conserning one bath tub made from a single solid piece of marble, one guide said that this was the Raj's favorite bathing place. Another said that the Raj's would fill it with their own weight worth of gold, then distribute the gold to the townsfolk. A third said it was where one unlucky Raj was killed in a failed coup attempt. I suppose all three are possible, it was just strange that none of them mentioned more than one story...

Other than that, the palace is quite impressive and deserving of a look.

Udaipur

I've been told Udaipur is India's most romantic city. I'd believe it.

Ths is a picture of the Floating Palace, which was built in the middle of the lake that Udaipur surrounds. Rooms run around $450 a night, and so were out of my price range. Still, its pretty to look at.

Just a bit of triva which visitors are never allowed to forget, the Floating Palace is where part of the Bond movie "Octopussy" was filmed. This is mentioned everywhere. By random passerbyers, sometimes. Many restaurants have nightly showings of the movie for their patrons.

Chittor

Between Bundi and Udaipur I stopped off in the town of Chittor to look at the biggest fort in Rajisthan. And big it is. They had it encompassing the whole of a plateau overlooking the city. To give some sense of its size, the fort has its own lake. At the moment 4k people live up there, and back in the day it was apparently many more.

I'm not sure its worth an overnight stay in Chittor (I didn't) but it is definately a nice way to break up the 10 hr bus ride from Bundi to Udaipur.

Eid al-Fitr

I spent Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim end of Ramadan, in Bundy. The entire day prior I noticed a set of ominous loudspeaker carts set up throughout the city. The night of, those carts began blaring chants and song for a solid hour or so. Then Muslims just got rowdy and were driving all around the town honking horns, yelling and just making nuisances of themselves.

But, after a month of fasting, perhaps I'd want to cut loose, too.

Bundi Lake

This is the lake near Bundi, where Kipling wrote much of "Kim." Very pretty.

Bats!

The Bundi palace has bats. Lots of them. They've closed off rooms because of the bats.

Bundi from the palace

There's a very pretty fairy-tale palace over looking Bundi. Here's a picture of the palace from Bundi. And one of Bundi from the palace.

"Sometimes Problem"

Just like there's an "American English" and a "Australian English" and a "British English," there is an "Indian English." It goes beyond speaking english in a funny accent to how they structure their sentences and their common word choices.

There are more attributes to Indian english than I'd care to go into here, but one aspect which stands out is the propensity to say "No Problem." They say it a lot, especially young indians, similar to the range of contexts which young americans say "cool," or "sweet." So it might get dropped 10 or 15 times in one conversation.

Anyway, so I'm speaking before dinner with Pinky, the 19 year old granddaughter of the ower of the Shivam Guest House. She is peppering the conversation with "no problems," but more that usual because we are talking about my travel plans the next day. Suddenly, from the kitchen her mom pops her head in and with an exasperated wag of her finger says: "No Problem! No problem! Sometimes Problem!"

Paying Guest Houses

One of the cooler things about Bundi is that there are no hotels, there are paying guest houses. This basically means you stay in a local family's house, but with a few extra rooms for guests. Its a nice way to meet some locals in a relaxed setting. Plus you get nice home cooked meals for cheap.

The guest house I stayed at was named the "Shivam Guest House" and had just opened in the last two years. This made it difficult for them because they had missed the most recent "lonely planet" pass through, and so were not listed in the guide book. As a result their son had to spend much of his time down at the train station trying to drum up business. While this isn't all that surprising, it is an aspect of the tour book industry I hadn't thought much about; one as popular as the lonely planet basically determines winners and losers in many areas, and so has a very powerful economic impact. The problem is exaserbated by the fact that the Lonely Planet seems to go with the same places from edition to edition--its like congressmen, hard to get a seat, but once you're in, its tough to get dislodged.

I actually learned about Shivams Guest House from the recommendation of a fellow traveler, and was very please by it. They're working hard to get themselves in the next edition, and I wish them all the best with it.

This is a picture of the main water tank of the city from their place.

Woman in Bundi

I took this picture of a woman I saw from the top of my "paying guest house" while I was in Bundi. She saw I had a camera and offered to be photographed...put her shawl on and everything. Just more evidence of how awesome people in Bundi are.

Disinfested on the Train

That 26 Rupee train I was telling you about. Good to know it had been recently disinfested...

Ranthambore Pictures

Here is one of the better pictures I took in Ranthambore National Park. Note the pretty ruins of the Raj's hunting lodge overlooking the pretty lake. Note also the total lack of tigers in this picture. They're all like that.

Back in Delhi

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I'm back in Delhi at Dave and Shannon's recovering from a pretty bad cold. I'll post more soon about my travels in Rajisthan and all the neat things there.

Cheers!

Udaipur/Chittar highway

I'm in Udaipur now. Just for my fellow travelers, there is an honest-to-Pete highway between the cities Udaipur and Chittar. It has two lanes each way. There are no cows, pigs, camels, children in the road. God bless 'em the drivers stayed in their own lanes, except while passing. There was little to no honking. I'd guess my bus made a very respectable 90 kmph while on it (about 55mph). It was very nice, while it lasted.

Emulating lance Armstrong

Well, not really. But I did rent a bike for a day with an Australian and a Swede that I met in Bundi. It was loads of fun, we went for a ride out to a nearby lake, saw the place where Rudyard Kipling wrote "Kim."

All along the trip people were constantly saying "hi," running along beside us, waving, and so forth. My guess is that they didn't see westerners on bicycles all that often and so thought it very funny.

One of the more alarming things was the traffic jam we caused. About 5 km out of town the road narrows to a one-lane each way thing, on which heavily laden buses, motorcycles and truck travel with frequency. We had stopped to look at the map and get our bearings, when a giant tanker truck pulls up next to us and tries to talk to us. Since the truck fills the road way, two buses following close behind also stopped. One tried going around, but couldn't and so was stuck, which then stopped the flow of motocycles going the other way. The truck drivers were very content to ignore than angry honking, and just stayed put. This prompted people to get off the bus to see what the fuss was about.

Before we knew it, there was a traffic jam in both directions, and 30 or 40 Indians milling about us. Likely as many more in the buses an other vehicles. Confused and overwhelmed we pulled out bikes off the road and away from the truck to get it to move on, which it eventually did. After a little more honking the jam subsided and we went on our way.

Shannon's take on Diwali

As usual, Shannon writes more eliquently than I do. Check out her take on Diwali and other events:

http://homepage.mac.com/prosemasala/Personal30.html
PASSWORD: "masala"

Bundi

After Sawai Madhopur I went to Bundi.

Bundi is awesome.

That is all.

No, seriously, it is a fantastic little city. The people are some of the friendliest I've meet in India. Everwhere you walk people say "namaste, hallo!" just to say hello. They don't try to sell you something. They don't want to take you somewhere, you just say "namaste" back, and go along your way. Its refreshing.

The city itself is very pretty as well, being situated in the valley between two overlooking hillforts and a palace. The sunset light is fantastic on the palace, and makes for some really great photos.

Tiger Spotting Industry

I just want to talk a little more about the "tiger safari" industry.

You sign up with your hotel to get in on a canter ride through the park. This costs about 450 rupees, and includes the 200 rupee park entrance fee. Alternatively you can rent a private jeep for 1050 rupees, plus 150 for a guide and 200 park entrance fee for each passenger. I chose the canter.

A canter is a school bus with the roof sawed off. Slightly bigger tires. But in terms of noise, number of passengers, smoothness of ride, the two are identical.

At this point I should pause and emphasize what it is that the tiger spotting industry does. They do not sell tiger spottings; you go to a zoo for a guaranteed tiger spotting. Instead they sell the possibility of tiger spottings, in a context unconstrained by zoo bars. So really the 450 rupee fee we pay does not reflect the utility to us of a tiger spotting. It reflects the expected value of a tiger spotting, E[x]--the tiger spotting utility times the probability you'll spot one. Its the probability where they get you. In theory, I could set up a tiger safari in New York City; I'd make no money because anyone can see the location make the probability too close to zero. In a place like Ranthambore park, on the other hand, the location is supposed to be good, but the probability is still pretty low because of the way they operate.

Every morning 15 canters and 15 jeeps line up outside the gate of the Ranthambore national park. At 7:01 the gate is opened and everyone goes tearing into the park, fanning out to look for tigers. You then spend the next 3 hours on dirt roads winding through the park, while your guide points out all the wildlife that isn't tigers. When you meet another canter or jeep, rumors of sightings are exchanged and you then go tearing off in the direction suggested. Invariably you meet three or more canters going in the same direction, which results in so much dust and noise than any tiger which might have been there has long since left before your arrival.

What you don't do is stop near a source of water and sit still. Nor do you put out tiger bait of some sort. Nor do you play recordings of tiger mating calls, make sounds like an injured animal or do pretty much anything else which might entice a shy tiger out of its well-adapted concealment. Why we didn't do this was never clear to me.

In fairness, perhaps it would have been pointless. I will acknowledge that there was no way that we would be able to sneak up on a tiger; I'm sure both the canter and people smelled too much, never minding the noise that the people talking made. At the same time, however, the Maharajahs used to hunt tigers on elephants, which I'm sure in size, strength of smell, noise level and speed over rough terrain are similar to canters. I'm not sure how they did the hunt, but I believe they were successful--whole hunting lodges attest to this. But then again, maybe all they did was wander around listening for tiger rumors.

Leaving Sawai Madhopur

Leaving Sawai Madhopur was a great experience in Indian-style transportation. I won't go into all the boring details, but I'll just touch on the highlights:

--I was unstatisfied with the tiger hunting process, and had decided it would never work.
--I teamed up with a group of 3 Germans staying in the same hotel as myself to catch the 13:10 train to the next stop. From the time that the suggestion to leave was proposed until we got on the train was less than 90 minutes.
--I was part of a 4-passenger pile into an autorickshaw. We fit 4 people plus luggage plus the driver into it. I hung on with one hand off the side next to the driver. While this is unremarkable by Indian standards, its the most westerners I've seen fit into an autorickshaw.
--We made extensive use of the "women-cut-to-the-front-of-the-line-rule" in the Indian rail system
--The train ticket we got was 3rd class local. The cheapest of the cheap. I traveled 150km for 24 rupees, about 60 cents.
--The compartment was packed. I was one of those idiots you see on the trains sitting in the doorway of the moving train; for a while it was the only space available.
--For those of you who have seen it, towards the end of the movie "Mission Impossible" there is special effect of a highspeed train zipping past the camera. It had a whooshing sound and a massive blur of steel and glass. I can now attest this special effect is almost extactly right; while sitting in the doorway, a train passed within about a foot of me going the other way at a relative speed of 120 kmph. After it passed, I came to my senses and forced my way fully into the compartment.

We have no tigers

Yesterday I got up early in Sawai Madhopur and went of a tiger safari through Ranthambore national park. RNP is famous for its tiger population, which supposedly numbers in a the 60s. Sadly, there were no tigers to be seen.

On the positive side, I did get to see a number of peacocks, spotted deer, gazelle, owls, bob-cats and jackals. So, the morning wasn't a total waste. I also got some really cool pictures of Ranthambore fort in the morning sun--when I get to a place which lets me download pictures, I'll post 'em.

Off to Rajisthan!

Hi Everyone,

After a false start (the train I wanted was full) I'm headed southwest of Delhi today to the state of Rajisthan. Gonna see palaces on lakes, deserts, mountains, pink cities, blue cities, yellow cities camels and possibly tigers. It should be good.

First stop: Sawai Madhopur and the Ranthambore wildlife preserve.

Onward!

Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali everyone! The firecrackers are already going off here; they started at 9am.

German Oktoberfest

The Oktoberfest party was pretty much a small scale version of what I recall Oktoberfest to be like in Munich. They had set up tables picnic like outside. Blue checkered table cloths over everything. 30 or so people sitting in rows holding steins. The host and hostess were in lederhosen.
I guess the major disconnect is that everyone was drinking Foster’s instead of something Bavarian. But is apparently the only decent beer available in quantity here in Delhi.

One funny story. There were a number of tins of snuff, snorting tobacco, being passed around the party. I had never really seen snuff before and so was looking at the tin in puzzlement. On the back is a warning that simple said: “Causes Cancer” in German and in English. I found this disarmingly direct--in the it US would read something like: “Warning: Studies have suggested that extended use of this product might cause cancer in certain individuals.” No such waffling from the Germans, they call these things as they see 'em.

Hindu Wedding

Three nights ago I attended a Hindu wedding. It was amazing. A line of 30 white horses with riders and torch men greet attendees along the entrance road. The groom entered riding a horse, the bride entered to fireworks. There was a flower cannon which fired flowers like confetti over the happy couple. There was a full-fledged production crew videotaping the whole event. They had a jumbo-tron TV set up so all the guests could see what the bride and groom were doing. I'd say around 1000 guests. And lots of dancing. everyone dancing

Soo much dancing. Much more than in Western weddings. The groom’s entrance was preceded by dancing, as was the bride’s. Indians kept dragging me into their ebullient little mosh-pits. Saying "enjoy! This is a happy time!" 80 year olds doing the funky-chicken, four year olds just jumping up and down. The Indians are really good dancers, but being white, I confined myself to doing the “screw in the light bulb, turn the door knob,” or “the grocery cart,” both of which they found very funny.

I didn’t stay for the whole thing. I went with a German friend I met through Dave and Shannon. We arrived at 19:45, since the invitation said it would begin at 20:00. Of course this being Indian Stretchable Time, events did not actually kick off until 21:15. The actual union ceremony, which involved walking 7 times together around a fire, wasn’t to take place until the most auspicious moment, determined by star charts to be 4:23 in the morning. So, having decided we’d seen enough to get the flavor of an Indian wedding, and following the maxim that one should leave a party while you still want to stay, we beat a regretful retreat around 23:00, heading for an Oktoberfest celebration being thrown by the Germans.