Mount Kangchenjunga eluded us that day, keeping to itself. Yet we were still thankful for the excuse to rise early, if only to witness the village come to life in the morning ritual that marks the beginning of another day.

Open up the panorama and join us.

Panorama: Early Morning in a Mountain Village in Sikkim

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Articles About India

Breaking Bread in Chandigarh

Southern India Scavenger Hunt

What India Taught Me, Part 1: A Taxi Nightmare and Where Lost Baggage Goes to Die

South Indian Food: A Few Favorites

More Photos from India

Best Of Southern India

Sikkim

Kolkata (Calcutta): The Old Colonial Mixing Bowl

Photos from Darjeeling

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 8 comments

A lot of places, we’re sure. But most certainly in India. India is a place where truth is often stranger than fiction, where each day features an adventure, and where sensory overload is the norm. Perhaps, then, there is no better place to bump into an elephant than in India.

We did our share of elephant bumping, but one stands out, quite literally — this one, poking around the street markets of Udaipur in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

If you do see an elephant crossing the street, perhaps you should ask him why he crosses the road. Maybe you can follow him for a blessing at the temple for a dose of karmic fortune. Elephant blessings are, well, a blessing. Along the way, you’ll have to dodge all the motorbikes, carts, people — and maybe even other elephants — coming at you from every direction.

Open the panorama below to get started!

Panorama: Udaipur Market and Elephant Encounters – Rajasthan, India

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Articles About India

Breaking Bread in Chandigarh

Southern India Scavenger Hunt

What India Taught Me, Part 1: A Taxi Nightmare and Where Lost Baggage Goes to Die

South Indian Food: A Few Favorites

More Photos from India

Best Of Southern India

Sikkim

Kolkata (Calcutta): The Old Colonial Mixing Bowl

Photos from Darjeeling

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 19 comments

When we visited Purani Subzi Mandi, the old vegetable market at Udaipur’s Delhi Gate, it was a warm day which would cook up gray skies that eventually opened up to rain. But before all this, we spent time with vegetable vendors and basket weavers, moms and kids. It’s no secret that we love street markets, a typical first stop when we arrive somewhere new. Markets help us get a feel for the people, the energy and the culinary pulse of a place.

This was no different. The whole scene was so perfectly representative of India’s notoriously colorful Rajasthan state.

Panorama: Fresh Market in Udaipur – Rajasthan, India

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Articles About India

Breaking Bread in Chandigarh

Southern India Scavenger Hunt

What India Taught Me, Part 1: A Taxi Nightmare and Where Lost Baggage Goes to Die

South Indian Food: A Few Favorites

More Photos from India

Best Of Southern India

Sikkim

Kolkata (Calcutta): The Old Colonial Mixing Bowl

Photos from Darjeeling

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 9 comments

Recently, I’ve settled into a familiar morning routine: a masala dosa and sweet milk coffee in a simple canteen just down the street.  Attendants make their rounds with metal pails full of sambar and colorful wet chutneys, ensuring that all customers have ample supply, more than enough to eat.

The activity, the flow, the smell and most certainly the taste all make me feel at home.

Though I’m physically in one of Kuala Lumpur’s Indian neighborhoods as I write this, these morning moments take me back to our travels through India, and more specifically southern India.  There, as my taste buds adapted to the flavors and style of South Indian cuisine, the masala dosa emerged as our savory breakfast of champions.

“South Indian cuisine? Isn’t all Indian food the same?” you might ask.  

Not at all, even by the standards of my amateur taste buds.

South Indian cuisine is distinct.  If you don’t think so, just get a food passionate northerner and southerner from India together in the same room and ask, “Which is better, food from the North or the South?”  God forbid, you get someone from Mumbai to debate whether chaat (street snacks) are even better.

Here’s the deal with Indian food:  most Indian restaurants in the West serve northern Indian (or Punjabi style) food – rich, creamy curries and sauces; dishes like butter chicken, navratan korma, tandoori baked meats and naan bread.

In southern India, vegetarian meals are the norm. Instead of the cream, South India goes for seeds, popped spices, tomatoes, and various dals (lentils) used as accompaniments. Theirs is also a style of eating that incorporates light meals and snacks, known as tiffins, throughout the day.

Let’s dig into some of our favorite dishes from Kerala and Tamil Nadu in southern India.

1. Dosa
The first few times I tried masala dosai outside of India, I wasn’t impressed. Only in Fort Cochin (Kochi), India did I eventually warm to them. By the time we arrived in nearby Kollam, I was hooked. There was something so perfect in the combination of the crispness and nutty flavor of a dosa (a thin, large pancake made from a batter of ground rice and urad dal) and the mildly spiced crushed potato mixture inside (that’s the masala).

Add to this the pails of sauce that circulate in a typical South Indian cafeteria: sambar (a slightly sour-savory sauce made from tur dal, tamarind, and vegetables) and various wet chutneys, including ones made with popped mustard seeds and ground coconut (white), chili/mint/coriander (green), and tur dal chutney (red).

A full treatment of dosai – including Mysore, rava, onion and all permutations thereof — could well be the topic of a tasty dissertation.

A dosa – in all of its wet topping goodness – is typically eaten with the right hand. South Indian restaurants have a sink at the back to wash your hands, before and after, but don’t be afraid to ask for a fork and spoon if you feel uncomfortable digging in with your paws.

2. Banana Leaf Thali
Thalis are like many little meals in one, a little buffet on a banana leaf or metal tray. For the small plate snackers in us, a joy to eat. Simple and beautiful.

A large pile of rice forms the base and smaller piles or tin cups of curries, chutneys, pickle can be found in orbit. Topped off with a chapati bread round or papadum and you are all set. The idea: salty, sweet, sour and bitter merge in the mouth in one sitting.

On our first day in Kochi, we poked into a vegetarian restaurant for lunch and had our first real South Indian thali served on a banana leaf. Piles of red rice in the center with endless ladles of dal (lentil), sambar, and cooked vegetables to go with. Typically, it’s all you can eat, and the price runs roughly $1-$2.

3. Vada
Think of a fried, savory and dense donut and you’ve got a vada. It’s the dal, lentil, gram flour and occasional potato mash that provide the vada its heft. It can be eaten straight as a snack on the street or taken in a restaurant with the familiar sides of sambar and wet chutneys.

4. Idli
Savory, steamed saucer-like cakes made of a batter from fermented black lentils and rice. The result is soft, almost fluffy. And, you guessed it – they are served with the side pails of sambar and wet chutneys.

When faced with the choice, we’ll choose a dosa or vada to an idli, but don’t hold that against them. Idli are especially popular in the morning and appealing, particularly after they’ve been steamed fresh.

5. Kozhikode Biryani
I used to think of biryani as an inferior dish on the menu, akin to Chinese fried rice. I also used to think of it as only northern Indian. But then we tasted what we called “community biryani” in Kollam served straight from a pot meant to feed hundreds, the taste was surprisingly complex: cinnamon sticks, star anise, cumin, cardamom, even a little coconut milk.

We usually found biryani in the Muslim areas of towns in southern India. They were often served with mutton, but there were vegetarian versions, too (especially when the local mosque is serving it for free). You can spot the biryani shops: men out front stirring a massive pot of colored rice, stewing and stirring it until the spices have settled in.

6. Yogurt rice (or curd rice)
We first recall hearing of this dish when we lived in Prague. A friend there had spent a couple years living in Chennai and this fast became her Indian comfort food.

Curd rice is made with lightly fried spices such as mustard seed, cumin, coriander leaves, asafoetida (stinky, but good for the tummy) and turned with plain yogurt (or curd). It serves as a cooling agent both from the spice of South Indian food and from the intense Indian heat that sometimes leaves you without an appetite. A tip for tummy-troubled travelers out there: it’s often used to nurse upset stomachs back to health.

7. Coffee Wallah Special
When the show’s over and you are filled to the gills, take a glass of Indian-style coffee or milk chai served with lots of milk and sugar (heresy to the hard-core coffee aficionados, I know). Indian coffee wallahs will toss the piping hot milk and coffee between two metal cups until it’s well-blended and at the perfect drinking temperature.

Fun to watch.

—-

So next time you are in India or on the hunt for Indian food, be on the lookout for South Indian cuisine. The dishes may not be as creamy as your favorites from the north, but no less tasty. And like us, maybe you’ll find that the more you eat it the more you’ll grow to love it.

As I strike the final key, I’m preparing to leave for the airport and planning a dinner strategy. I think it’s time to hit the cafeteria for one last dosa before boarding my flight to Amman, Jordan.

These are a few of our favorite South Indian dishes. What are yours?

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 40 comments

Experiences, emotions, and even memories of certain smells came back to me as I added labels and descriptions.

Sometimes a story behind a photo really stays with you.  While sifting through our images from Udaipur (a terrific town in the Indian state of Rajasthan), I came across this photo of a girl we’d met in the market there.  In some ways, it looks like so many of our other photos of children and people in India – colorful, human, evocative.  But to me, this image carried a story — and a lesson.  

She was a garbage scavenger, one of many making a living from finding spare scraps of metal and other discarded bits and pieces that could be sold or recycled.  She walked through the winding streets of the main market in Udaipur.  She was dressed in simple clothes that bordered on rags, a contrast to the school kids passing us in bright, pressed uniforms with shirts so white they almost glowed.

As we made our way through the market, she followed us through the labyrinth of streets, a woven plastic bag slung over her shoulder, half-filled from the fruits of her morning’s labor.  But she kept her distance. Each time we would stop to speak with a vendor or explore a market stall, she would hover just a few meters away. The expression on her face: pure curiosity. Perhaps she wanted to know what it was that two foreigners found interesting at her market, what we talked about with vendors and why we took all those photos.

Each time we would emerge from an interaction, I’d turn around and give her a smile. In response, she’d put her head down in shyness.  When we’d begin moving again, she’d continue following us, keeping the distance that made her just comfortable.

She wasn’t begging.  She didn’t appear interested in getting money from us.

After about twenty minutes, I approached her and asked her name and a few other simple questions.  She didn’t speak any English — not surprising considering that she’d probably never attended school. So verbal communication didn’t really work.

As a way to connect, I pointed to the camera, smiled and motioned to her so as to communicate, “Can I take your photo?”

She nodded excitedly.  She was thrilled.  Then she broke into a smile.

After our interaction, she picked up her sack and headed on down the road to continue her day.  Perhaps her curiosity had been satisfied. Perhaps she just wanted us to take her photo the whole time – to give her the same attention and care we’d given others at the market – but she was too shy to ask.  We’ll never know for certain.

As I looked at the photo and thought about her, I was reminded how easy it is to keep walking and never turn around to acknowledge the people around us.  We’re busy, we’re tired; there’s to-do lists to check off, places to go, people to see, events to fill in the white spaces.   There are so many reasons to keep moving.

And sometimes in the midst of all this, opportunities are missed.  The littlest of opportunities that we’ll never know. And it’s those opportunities that can enhance one’s life and make a difference, however small.

In this case, I did turn around. I don’t kid myself that this was a life changing experience for either of us. But, my life is enriched for the experience; I can only hope that perhaps hers was, too.

So on this New Year’s day, I’m reminded of this girl, our brief encounter on the streets of Udaipur and what it all means.

Happy 2011.

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 26 comments

A few minutes later, at a nearby bike repair shop, we met a fellow customer named Rajiv. He’d come to our rescue with a little German translation and haggling help. Originally from the IT-famed southern Indian city of Bangalore, Rajiv now calls Berlin his home.  

We asked him where to find the best Indian food in Berlin. “London,” he joked.

Later that evening, Audrey and I returned to reminiscing, well beyond food, about the time we spent in southern India.  These were the images and experiences – some from a guidebook, others from grace – that we turned over in our memories.

1.  Kathikali Dancing – Kochi (Fort Cochin)
Audrey’s relationship with Kathikali dancers goes way back. Growing up, her family had a Kathikali dancer doll with one of those wobbling heads; it always spooked her.

Although we can be skeptical of ethnic dances served up exclusively to tourists, we enjoyed the Kathikali performance put on by Kerala Kathikali Centre in Fort Cochin.  Proceeds from their performances go toward training new dancers and keeping the tradition alive.  Go early so you can catch the elaborate make-up and pre-show.

2.  Street Cricket – Kochi (Fort Cochin)
The only way to find this: seek out the most unlikely alleyways in the city.  When you hear kids squealing in a courtyard, poke your head in and you may just be invited to a game of street cricket.

Ask for help on how to hold the bat properly. (You can see it did me no good.)

View a Slideshow of Photos from Fort Cochin (Kochi)

3.  Kerala Backwaters Boat Trip – Alleppey
We did not opt for the traditional Kerala Backwater live aboard houseboat tour.  Instead, we arranged a day tour from our guest house in Fort Cochin one day and opted to hire a man with a dugout canoe in Alleppey on another.

Our favorite:  the day-trip in a dugout canoe outside of Alleppey. Since we were in a tiny boat, we could get into small canals and get up close to homes and villages along the way. Our canoe captain introduced us to his family.  The mangroves and lilies were so thick that we even got stuck.  To give you a sense of how dire our circumstances, my manpower was required to extricate us from the mangroves and water lilies that had engulfed our boat.

View a Slideshow of Photos from Kerala’s Backwaters

4.  Biryani Festival – Kollam
After emerging from one of the most incredible masala dosas in all of India (Sree Suprabatham Restaurant), we stumbled upon a group of men in a parking lot (isn’t all of India a parking lot?) stirring an enormous tin pot of biryani.

From what we could make out (not a lot of English was spoken here), it was a Muslim holiday and the men were handing out free vegetable biryani to anyone and everyone. They insisted we take a bag.  Tasty and unusual, it featured hints of coconut, star anise and mint.

If you don’t happen to be in Kollam on a Muslim holiday that includes free biryani, have no fear, an experience still awaits.  Just head towards the market.  It’s terrific and winding, and the people are outrageously friendly and colorful.

View a Slideshow of Photos from Kollam and Alleppey

5.  Flower Market – Madurai
In Madurai, the Sri Meenakshi temple gets much of the attention (and rightly so).  In case you wonder where all the flowers and garlands in and around the temple come from, check the flower market on the outskirts of town. Flowers play an important role as offerings in Hindu pujas (prayers) and ceremonies.

Wipe those images of Dutch flower markets from your head.  The Madurai flower market is the antithesis –sensory overload, sweet flowers, trash heaps. Vendors stack flowers, everyone’s negotiating.  It’s fascinating and beautiful in that inimitable Indian fashion.

The flower market was actually listed in our Lonely Planet guide, but it has moved to “middle of nowhere outskirts” (yup, that’s it’s official address) Madurai. It took a small village of friendly locals and bus drivers to get us there. So, ask at your guest house or ask early and often how to get there.

View a Slideshow of Photos from Madurai

6.  Momos and Pav Bhaji in Kodai (Kodaikanal)
Tibetan food and Bombay chaat (snacks) in a southern small Indian hill town? Kodaikanal’s cosmopolitan culinary selection is thanks to the diversity of the student population at the Kodaikanal International School; restaurants know that students like a taste from home.

We were in town to check out the town where Audrey’s mother went to elementary school.  Unfortunately, it rained buckets the whole time, so hikes and boat rides were out and eating round-the-clock was in.  We chowed down on momos (Tibetan dumplings) and Bombay street snacks like pav bhaji and sev puri.

View a Slideshow of Photos from Kodaikanal, Mamallapuram and Pondicherry

7.  Elephant Blessing in Tiruchirappalli (Trichy)
Here’s the great thing about India: if you walk around enough and keep your eyes open, you are quite likely to run into an elephant at some point. (Actually, you could keep your eyes closed and run into an elephant, too.)

We not only found an elephant at the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple, but he was offering blessings to boot! (A few rupees to his owner for the privilege, of course).  It was fun to be blessed, but even more fun to watch kids like these being tickled by the trunk of an elephant.

View a Slideshow of Photos from Trichy (Tiruchirappalli)

8.  Cows Licking Their Chops in Puducherry (Pondicherry)
It is well known that cows are sacred in India.  What you may not know, however, is that there is often a system at work of shopkeepers and vendors feeding random samosas and food bits to these sacred cows. It’s as if the cows have a routine; they know which vendors have the best snacks and hit them up first. For the vendors, it must be good karma to give food to a sacred animal.

So when we ran into cows in Pondicherry licking their chops, we began to wonder who’d just fed them.

9.  Entertain a school group – Mahabalipuram (Mamallapuram)
What do you do when you meet a group of school kids on a trip to the rathas (rock-cut temples) in Mahabalipuram?

Pull out the camera and have some fun.  (Truth is you pull out the camera wherever you meet a group of schoolkids in India.).  While the engravings and Krishna’s Butter Ball are worth a quick look, the kids on the field trip stole the show.

10) George Town market – Chennai (Madras)
Audrey lived in Chennai until she was two years old, so her memories of the city are, shall we say, a little vague.

So we paused our temple hopping and paid a visit to the George Town market (behind Fort St. George) and we asked around there to see if anyone remembered her.  

Unfortunately, no one remembered Audrey, but that didn’t prevent them from offering a smile.

View a Slideshow of Photos from Chennai (Madras)

And if you happen to embark on your own scavenger hunt to southern India, we’ll be curious to know what you find.

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 15 comments

As cool as the Nek Chand Rock Garden is, the story of its construction and evolution in the unlikely city of Chandigarh is even cooler.

Over 36 years ago, a man named Nek Chand began making sculptures out of industrial trash he found at demolition sites scattered around his northern Indian hometown, Chandigarh. The city was being rebuilt to Le Corbusier’s vision of a new capital for the Indian Punjab (now referred to as Punjab and Haryana States).

Chand cleared a small area in the jungle and, knowing it was illegal, successfully hid his creation for over 18 years. Instead of fining Chand upon their shocking discovery, authorities granted him 25 acres of land to expand his dreams. And with that space, he created a mesmerizing sculpture garden park constructed of broken glass, tiles and Indian bangles.

His fantasy world was complete with waterfalls, swings and leagues of imaginary creatures.

Panorama: Nek Chand’s Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India

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We found ourselves in Chandigarh visiting a software programmer we had engaged on an outsourcing website to finish a small portion of our photo gallery. From awarding the project online to meeting our provider in person, globalization and outsourcing had come full circle for all of us.

Through a series of astounding meals (be sure to read Breaking Bread in Chandigarh), we made a connection with an unlikely Indian tourist destination.

No matter what may bring you to Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab and Haryana States, be sure you visit Nek Chand’s Rock Garden and see how cool it is for yourself.

Travel articles from India

• Oh What a Night: An Overnight Bus from Mumbai to Udaipur
• Audrey’s New Job: Working a Street Food Stand in Varanasi, India
• What India Taught Me, Part 1: A Taxi Nightmare and Where Lost Baggage Goes to Die
• Microfinance Diaries: Seeing is Believing in West Bengal

Travel Photo Slideshows from India

• Breaking Bread in Chandigarh
• Kathakali Dancers, Street Cricket and School Kids in Kochi (Cochin) in Kerala
• Relaxed Pace of the Kerala Backwaters
• Kathakali Dancers, Street Cricket and School Kids in Kochi (Cochin) in Kerala
• Faces and Flowers in Madurai, Tamil Nadu
• Markets and Muslim Festivals in Kollam and Alleppey in Kerala

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 20 comments

And they were waiting for us.

We were just photographers, storytellers coming to collect some impressions for Five Talents, a microfinance organization. But the women gathered for us like we were royalty.

“What if we don’t live up to their expectations?” I wondered as I took in all their expectant faces at once.

I couldn’t fashion a better lesson in humility.

On an average day, India overwhelms. Our travels overland from its southern states to its northern border with Nepal taught this day-in, day-out. The colors never end, the cities are beautifully cacophonous and the simplicity of rural life contrasts starkly with everything a Westerner knows.

But this time was different.

If you have ever wondered what has kept me on the road for over 1000 days, I will give you a hint: it’s not the ruins and the beautiful landmarks. It’s the bumpy-road rides to remote villages like this where a group of 13 women take a loan of 175 dollars, turn it into a 350-dollar profit, and the profit ripples its way to a crossroads of social transformation.

This is microfinance at work. This is microfinance at its best.

As we depart for the Andean hill town of Huancavelica, Peru to work again with Five Talents, I’m reminded of our first project with them and the rural women and microfinance groups we encountered in northern West Bengal.

Balancing Theory with Reality
For over a decade, I have been reading books and articles about microfinance organizations like the Grameen Bank. Through textbook definitions I understood what microfinance could do: provide small loans to help families and communities make their way out of poverty by developing small businesses. What I didn’t gather from my reading was the potential of microfinance programs to challenge social norms and to alter perceptions of women in society. Microfinance is not a cure-all for poverty, but it can offer opportunities where none stood before.

In this series we’ll share with you the unique story of each village we visited in the Indian state of West Bengal, and how microfinance played – or could play – an integral role in changing villagers’ lives there. Hopefully you’ll get a sense of the India we saw and the complex historical canvas of poverty, caste, and British colonial tea plantation legacy that serves as a backdrop to today’s opportunities.

Seedlings, Literal and Figurative

The women of Deep Colony (yes, that’s the name of the village) were proud of their accomplishments. But they were shy. In turns, they diverted their eyes when we caught their stares, but stole curious glances when they thought we weren’t looking. Children hopped from lap to lap. Who was whose? It was difficult to tell; each child was equally comfortable with everyone. The feeling of community was evident.

After introductions, the women showed us their enterprise: a seedling nursery. The thirteen women in the group used a small loan plus their own investment money to start their business with 7,000 rupees ($175). They used the money to buy seeds and rent a plot of land from a fellow villager.

Each member of the group was paid for her labor. And each earned a share from the profits ($350) and took home 50 seedlings to sell or to use at home. The nursery was successful; the women were making plans to buy a plot of land in the group’s name in order to expand the following year.

Chipping Away at the Walls of Caste
As the leader of the group described its business, four women squatted in the dirt and began tending the plants. Before the days of the seedling business, these women of varying castes and social groups did not interact much, if at all.

Now, they worked side by side.

The group leader, a widow raising three children on her own, explained how being part of the group has allowed her to earn enough money to send her children to school. Her self-confidence has grown so much that she had recently been elevated by her peers to the role of group leader. Her body language – in fact everyone’s gestures — reflected this newfound self-esteem and dignity.

“What is the best thing about being part of this project?” I asked the entire group. Without a pause, one woman answered: “We earn as much as our husbands.”

I looked around; all the women – young and old – smiled, nodding in approval, as if they were offering one another silent “high fives.”

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 10 comments

To say that you’ve seen the world before seeing India is like saying you know yourself before taking a good long look at your naked body in the mirror.

Evening Puja (Prayers) in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Click Fullscreen (4 arrows) and move around the panoramic image.

Author’s Note: As we begin to write about our last visit to India in greater depth, I’m reminded of my first trip there — also my first trip abroad that I took solo in 1997. Those were the days of traveler’s checks, thick stapled wads of Indian rupees, and exorbitantly priced, poor quality phone calls booked from telephone wallahs on the street. The ATM machines, internet cafes and easy-to-purchase mobile phone SIM cards of today’s India seemed only a pipe dream back then.

This is the first of a multi-part series chronicling the bizarre experiences and lessons – about India, travel and me – that first visit imparted. No other trip since has affected me in quite the same way.

December, 1997

1:00 AM: Delhi Airport. I willed my backpack to appear on the conveyor belt, an empty endless loop. It never did. A few money changers and rifle-toting guards still lingered, but I was the last passenger out of the airport that night.

I prepaid a small amount for a taxi (around fifty cents) and fully expected to find my driver on the other side of the exit waiting patiently for me in the peace of the early morning. That was what my American upbringing had taught me would happen.

Instead, I was besieged by no fewer than 200,000 of Delhi’s taxi wallahs.

“Hello my friend. You come with me. My taxi. Yes, my taxi. Yes, my friend. Hello my friend. Come with me, my friend.”

A cloud of humanity grew around me; all I could see in the darkness were the whites of eyes and teeth. I was demoralized, exhausted and more than a little bit frightened. This was not how my “trip of a lifetime” was supposed to begin.

My taxi reservation chit featured some numbers scrawled at the top. A license plate number perhaps, but they could just as well been last week’s lottery numbers. Paper in hand, I searched frantically to find my ride, lurching hither and fro in a parking lot full of taxi clones.

Needle-in-a-haystack hopelessness. The clock ticked.

To move forward and escape the mob, I randomly chose two young men and quickly hopped in the back seat of their Ambassador (the ubiquitous Indian taxi). In moments we were on what looked like a highway, a few weak lights from truck stop dhabas punctuating a dust-filled Delhi night.

I offered the driver the name and address of the guest house where I was headed: “La Jacaranda, Greater Kailash, GK1. M Block.”

“Oh, so sorry sir. You see, it is closed,” the driver offered with a head waggle.

“No, I spoke with them two days ago. They are open.”

“Sorry sir, they are full.”

“Hmmm. How do you know that?”

“La Jacaranda, you say. Yes, full. I know better place.”

“Take me there anyway.”

“But sir, I know better place.”

“I don’t want better place.”

We repeated this routine a half dozen more times, my irritation and fear growing with each exchange.

After one of our impasses, the driver stopped. He pulled off the road and into what looked like a jungle, engulfing us in almost complete darkness.

His sidekick turned around, with a hint of a smile, “You have money.”

I was frightened. It was dark and I had absolutely no idea where we were. In the middle of nowhere, I was with two men who clearly did not have my best interests in mind. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

This sucked.

I surreptitiously peeled away 100 rupees from my stash and handed it over the seat in hopes this would appease him so that we might continue.

Instead, the driver exited the car and lit a cigarette.

His sidekick got out and began urinating into the night. The Ambassador’s dim headlights caught him as he jumped and laughed, gyrating and arcing his prodigious stream of urine in every direction in front of the cab.

They were having fun at the expense of my sanity and a dwindling night of sleep I would never reclaim. I realize now that I must have looked like such fresh meat to them. I showed my fear on my sleeve. Fresh meat and fear: fuel to the fire of opportunists – be they taxi drivers or garden-variety shysters — around the world.

Another 100 rupees to start the car.

Two-and-a-half hours and a couple hundred rupees later, it was 3:30 AM and we pulled up to a private home, apparently La Jacaranda.

I rang the bell. The man of the house, half asleep, shot a dirty look at the taxi drivers and looked at me as if to say, “Where the hell have you been, my boy?”

I was thankful to be alive; I clung to what few possessions I had.

Then I collapsed.

Awareness is productive, but fear yields absolutely no advantage. In fact, it tends to self-fulfill. But fortunately, like most cheats in India, these guys never meant any physical harm or violence. They simply wanted to mess with my mind and separate me from a few of my rupees. And guess what? It worked.

After suffering a fitful jetlagged four-hour sleep, I took breakfast in the kitchen-cum-dining room of La Jacaranda. As I tucked into my breakfast of Indian pickle and paratha (stuffed flat bread), a man emerged from another guest room.

Oh my God, I know this guy. I cleared the sleep from my eyes. Perhaps I was seeing things.

“William?” I said.

William, as in the ex-husband of my next door neighbor in San Francisco. In no guide book does it say: “Go to Delhi to bump into your neighbor’s ex.” This trip was beginning to blow my mind.

What do these kids have to do with William? Nothing. They just blow my mind.

“Oh, hi.” He was unfazed by our chance meeting.

The full impact of this astounding coincidence was lost on me at the time. My focus was squarely on the problem at hand: I did not have a spare pair of underwear. Nor did I have any idea if or when my backpack would resurface. And those were the days I could not conceive of wearing a pair of underwear more than one day. (I will not share with you how long some pairs last these days.)

I asked William for help and after breakfast he guided me to M-block market for underwear, a t-shirt and other provisions. Over lunch he entertained me with stories of his journey from Lucknow for a kidney operation of the sort that he could only get in Delhi.

I still couldn’t believe it. I was new to India, new to the world of travel, and new to the coincidence that visited both frequently.

William didn’t seem to find our encounter odd. He knew India well.

Two days later, Air India called La Jacaranda guest house and left a message: “It’s ‘quite possible’ that Mr. Noll’s bag was recovered. If he would like it today, he must come to Delhi airport to retrieve it.”

“Quite possible?” What on Earth did that mean?

As my taxi wound it’s way to the airport, I realized how different and how much less frightening the fringes of Delhi appeared during the day. Just as dusty but oddly rural with pockets of industry for good economic measure.

Along the highway we were forced to stop for a few minutes to allow a vast herd of sheep to clear. The scene was surreal, exotic. I was simultaneously mesmerized by a cloud of moving wool and the shape of my Sikh cab driver’s beard.

After arriving at the airport I asked around for the lost baggage office in a fit of enunciated American English and charades. I was once one of those people who believed that speaking clearly and raising one’s voice helped bridge the language divide.

I was directed to the rear of the building. There were no signs, just a decrepit little staircase leading somewhere dark.

Retrieving luggage from lost baggage claim should not amount to a Herculean task. But as in all things Indian in 1997, it did. In the war of underemployment and itinerant souls, the Indian bureaucracy had won the battle by giving jobs to leagues more people than the tasks demanded.

“I received a call. My bag is here. I would like to claim it.”

From behind a randomly placed wooden desk, an attendant waggled his head in acknowledgment, grabbed my piece of paper, tore a notch into it and directed me to another man further back sitting behind yet another randomly-placed wooden desk.

Man #2 waggled his head, grabbed my piece of paper, tore another notch into it and gave me another piece of paper. It had a stamp.

Stamps are good. Official, I figured.

He pointed further back to another series of desks. The two men there took my original baggage claim check and the official looking piece of paper, fumbled with those and gave me yet another piece of paper that looked vaguely like currency dating from the British colonial empire.

With head nods, they pointed me further back into their lost luggage labyrinth.

Another man stood in front of a doorway. I explained to him my situation and showed him my papers.

“Sir, it is lunch time. You must return later.”

It was 11:00. “No fu**ing way!” The few remaining shreds of my cultural sensitivity and patience evaporated. “What do I need to convince you to postpone your lunch a few minutes so I can get my bag?”

“It is simply our lunch break. You must come back later.”

Perhaps a few rupees could have flexed this man’s rigid plans for lunch. Instead, I found a chair in the shadows, pulled up and waited.

After about 20 minutes (during which no lunch was consumed), the man capitulated. He approached me, took my piece of paper, ripped it and gave me another piece of paper and directed me to the doorway behind him.

This was the final stop: the lost baggage window. The air was stale and thick. Expectations were high. I gave the little man tending the window my pitch, which by now I had memorized. He held out his hand, head-waggled, and snatched the last bits of evidence that someone owed me my backpack.

At first glance, the Delhi lost baggage office appeared to house a few hundred bags. A surprising amount, I thought. The man then turned around and headed to a black steel door twice his height.

He opened it and beckoned me just inside. With a hand motion, he asked me to stay put while he conducted his search.

“There’s more?” I craned my neck to get a look at the crypt.

What I saw astounded me: a veritable warehouse, over a football field long, and at least two or three stories high full of shelves filled with bags. In my wildest of travel hallucinations, I could never have imagined there was this much lost baggage on the planet, let alone in the Delhi airport. Dust and oil gathered on suitcases, multi-colored Chinese market bags, strapped boxes, backpacks, body bags.

The man vanished into the darkness. And I waited.

After no more than three minutes, he re-appeared. And there was my bag.

There’s an intricate system at work in India. It’s just that the casual visitor cannot see it through the dust and din.

NEXT UP: Tourist traps, poverty vs. happiness, and when to listen to yogis.

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 31 comments

Now, men get their say.

For all the women out there who spend countless hours wondering what annoys men, this one’s for you.

The credit goes to a Kolkata (Calcutta) weekend newspaper we picked up in April 2008. I recently found the newspaper clipping. However, a quick Google search yielded that the real source of this advice is actually a Russian newspaper. Russian dating advice for Indians? Maybe that explains #1.

My favorites: #1, #4, #5, and #9. And yours?

Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 5 comments