India is a large enough country to have corners that are totally un-Indian. Tawang Valley, located in a corner of Arunachal Pradesh, is such a place. Ethnically, this is a side-branch of Tibet, and the local Monpa people speak a dialect of Tibetan. The food is similarly Tibetan-influenced, as are buildings, clothing and the general [...]
This post comes with apologies for the lousy out-of-focus picture, but bear with me: there’s a story behind it.
The other day we went to restaurant Sachin in Tezpur, Assam. I was feeling a bit bored by restaurant food in general and Indian food in particular, so I decided to order myself a nice hearty tomato [...]
Today, we took time off from our Arunachal Pradesh quest to visit a national park – and what a park. Kaziranga is perhaps not the best known park in the world, but for us it ranks among the top attractions in India – it even counts as one of the major highlights of this whole [...]
We both woke up at 3:30 AM and looked at the dawn-lit windows of our hotel room.
“Funny, it’s daybreak already”, said Jaime.
“Yeah, weird, it was light already at 2:30!”, I replied.
Next thing we knew, the alarm went off at 4:30. We looked out through the still dawn-lit windows. Our early sunrise was the front porch [...]
We’ve been pretty lax about featuring Bacon on this blog lately, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to find our proud Swine at the keyboard today, chopping away at a post of his own.
He is a multi-talented pig, our pig.
How to receive a travel permit for Arunachal Pradesh trough a travel agent in Guawhati, Assam
Guwahati is the capital of Assam, and pretty much unavoidable if you wish to travel in India’s north east. It is a convenient hub with most of the mod cons (espresso, okay restaurants and travel agents). It also picks up a few points for its scenic location by the mighty Brahmaputra river. Other than that, [...]
This actually qualifies as entertainment in Guwahati: bring your best friend, lock yourselves into a transparent bubble, zip it closed and commence splashing around on an artificial pool.
As the late Hunter S. Thompson used to say, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
We’ve arrived in Guwahati, the capital of the state of Assam. It is the jumping-off point for the ’seven sisters’ – the seven small Indian states in the north-eastern part of the country. Our mission here is to try to get a permit to visit one of the sisters: Arunachal Pradesh, and then move on.
Ethnically, [...]
Today, we yet again failed to secure a permit for Arunachal Pradesh (they’d moved the office to another part of town). We did, however, have a lengthy conversation with the Commissioner at the Manipur office. I’m posting this here for the benefit of travelers interested in visiting Manipur, because there is so much misinformation out [...]
The term ‘Cult Book’ is generously awarded to nice-selling niche books, most often by the author’s own publishing house. Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, however, is one of the true cult classics – a story that has managed to transcend its temporal and geographical setting and speak to multitudes of readers. By now, it has sold [...]
As a part of our ongoing quest to secure a special permit for visiting Arunachal Pradesh, we recently acquired a couple of application forms from the proper authorities.
It took me a bit to figure out what it was that made them feel unusual and strange. They have been manually typed by a typist – a [...]
While meandering through the BBD Bagh area today, we happened to stumble upon a curious sight: Kolkata’s Chinatown.
Today, hardly any ethnic Chinese live in Kolkata. Those who did – mostly merchant families brought there by the Brits in order to stimulate trade – moved to Vancouver, London and the US a long time ago.
Of the [...]
Kolkata is perhaps better known under its old name – Calcutta: a name that evokes images of poverty, beggars, Mother Theresa and vast overpopulated slums. After a couple of days here, I have to say that our experiences of the city are far different.
In contrast to other Indian cities, we’ve found Kolkata to be decidedly [...]
The Indian Museum in Kolkata is a glorious throwback to what museums used to be like. It has everything from intact whale skeletons to Egyptian mummies and Naga crossbows. The taxidermied animal section is especially freaky-looking, with a moth-eaten Polar Bear that has turned brown with age, a Tiger so amateurishly stuffed that he looks [...]
You know the term, “fly by the seat of your pants?” Well, that's been our philosophy for most of our adult lives – before and after meeting, falling in love and marrying. We're now taking that idea on a 14 month round-the-world trip. Follow us as we share the good, the bad and the downright nasty of life on the road.
