The Backpacker

A Backpacker’s tip to traveling

Okay guys, enough of the other stuff. Here are a few tips I wanna share with you, all this comes from my own trail and error method.

Did I mention anywhere how a backpacker must travel? I suppose not. In fact it never occurred to me until I was addressing a group of people during the International Literary Society of Dubai meet one day (long gone though) that wanna-be travelers did want to know few details about packing and traveling. Although I have written a book on the subject (which has not yet seen the light of the day), I thought it would be easier if posted here on the web log.

Quick tips:

Traveling light means packing light. There will be no fashion crisis if you wear the same trousers for a week.

Family albums, good luck charms and dogs can stay at home, always.

Travel with a backpack. Good to have your hands free (for any emergencies!!), it allows you to walk faster, everything goes into one place, easy to find space to put it, less time to worry about its maintenance and more time to enjoy.

Backpack at your own pace. That is the best way. If you appear soiled or crumpled, it is for the best. No one wants to mug a ragamuffin!! Believe me, it has worked for me!! No one bothers you when you rest in the train stations or bus stand or even park yourself on the beach. You will look as though you belong.

Carrying large amount of cash is risky, but it is a risk you have to take. Good idea would be to roll your money in dirty socks. Appear intelligent and observant yet laid back.

Carry batteries, a small knife, torch, safety pins (yes!!), a chord.

Trust your instincts. They will never go wrong. Know where you must go before you start. If you don’t care where you are going, keep going anyway. Someone is bound to come up with a good suggestion given a chance.

Be alert. Well, that goes without saying. Don’t get dragged into another man’s fight. You were not the cause of it anyway.

As a woman backpacker, it has been fun learning these things on my own. From getting lost to eating rats, I have perhaps seen quite a bit. Yet there is more to learn. Throwing caution to the wind is fine, but it helps to be careful.

Yes, even a backpacker like me needs to learn that!!

Listen when someone tells you something. They could be right.

People will ask questions. It is their right. Unfortunately they ask all the wrong questions or questions guarenteed to get your goat up. Ask me. I am a standing example of what will happen to a person who has been forced to answer questions that have no answer.

Like yesterday.

Recently I did a short business-cum-pleasure trip to Fujairah. After speaking with fishermen unceremoniously banned from selling fish, I decided to make the best of the short trip to this emirate. The result of which, in my own valuable opinion, was excellent. Well, I did come back with some great pictures to last me thorugh the time I would spend away from the mind boggling place.

The post-Fujairah effects were just about receeding when a wise guy, leaning over my shoulder and peeping into my pic gallery on my computer threw this question.

"You have been to Fujairh?"

No. That was my alter ego posing by the sea, for God's sake. I clearly have no idea what he was driving at and I suspect he did not either but that question did annoy me no end. But I know what it did to me. I felt as though my nerve had been extracted (without being anesthetised) and the whole of US Army had marched over it.

Even now I am wondering if questions need to be asked? Are we so dumb as not to know "a thing" when we see one?

http://photobucket.com/albums/d180/travelblogs/

(En route to Dehra Dun--North India)

My impression of Khatauli was influenced by its idyllic surrounding. It had that picture-postcard perfection, depicting peaceful wayside cafeterias one sees on the cover of travel magazines. A pretty canal ran along the rice fields and the blushing green ears of corn leaned over the cheerful canal to say a quick “hello,” while young boys stretched out against pleasant looking buffaloes under the banyan trees, and the very sun surrendered to the charms of the canal and lay down on its waters.

It was the kind of place that made you put hunger out of your mind. The landscape invited one to walk up to the canal and say, “thank you dear friend, your very sight fills my mind and not to mention the stomach. Now I will move on. Have a good day.”

But in rare moments, even a sight as pretty as Khatauli cannot stop the stomach from wondering why it has been abandoned and try as it might, the gurgling canal cannot drown the groaning sounds it produces occasionally as a symbol of protest. Then one is forced to seek food.

Khatauli had on offer several hotels and cafeterias at strategic points with names that could easily alarm the hungry traveler. After discarding ‘Cheetal’ and ‘Sher Khan,’ we pulled up at ‘Alkananda’.

Not the one to waste time, I made a dash for the nearest table. A waiter sidled up to me noiselessly.

I have something against waiters who walk without a sound. By some deep instinct, I know they are up to mischief.

He launched into a narration of what his hotel had to offer the hungry traveler. Had he not been wearing his red waiter’s uniform, he could have been mistaken for a seller of tickets in the black market. He had a habit of finishing every word with a hiss. And when he came to the end of the rather exhaustive list, he hissed out the last item on the menu, looking relieved. I disliked him even more.

I have had, on one occasion, the privilege of watching a toy train puff its way through man-made tunnels in a children’s park with screaming toddlers on board. That engine was not in the least excited about the work it was assigned to and chugged on unhappily. When it finally came to the end of its short, uneventful journey, it hissed in relief and letting out steam came to a complete standstill. “There,” it seemed to say, “I have done my job. I am going home.”

The waiter, like that train, stood right there, immobile, not in the least concerned over his badly performed job. As far as he was concerned, he had done it. He was not expecting a pat on his back anyway.

On occasions like these, words fail and the eyes do the job of conveying the emotions. I looked at him and said nothing.

He started again, and his list grew slightly longer and comprehensible. He seemed to be just the sort of chap who needed a couple of tries before perfecting his score.

The third round commenced. Yes, it was definitely better. He was getting there.

He started with the south Indian section.

“Idli - vada - dosa,” he murmured, giving clear indications that given a chance he would have liked to forget such a name had passed his lips. I must have stiffened in my chair for suddenly he ceased his narration.

An image of faultlessly fried vada rose in my mind. I even caught the slight whispers of sound as the batter slipped into the boiling hot coconut oil and bubbled there while before rising up to the surface and nimbly turning over and over letting the oil take over. It was a thought that brought a smile to my lips. The waiter knew a look when he saw one and mistaking the smile for an encouragement, leaned closer.

“Idli-vada? One plate? Sambhar or chutney?” he hissed with some urgency.

“All of that,” said I generously. He slipped away as noiselessly as he had arrived. Faced with the possibility of savouring a meal that had my hearty approval, I was quite in a magnanimous mood. I could go as far as saying that I forgave the waiter his lack of mannerisms too.

He came right back bearing a tray bearing two unclean containers and putting it down on the table, he gave me a look.

“This,” it meant, “is what you wanted. I am really so sorry for you.”

Right from the way the vada sat on the plate, lifeless and semi-brown, to the first eye contact I made with it, it was a dampener. It was a terrible blow, a disappointment, the enormity of which I have had only on few occasions encountered. I had imagined a vada brimming with energy, looking to end its short existence in my appreciative stomach, its sole purpose being to appease my approving taste bud. This particular vada lacked that vital element that causes any food lover to lose their head over them. It looked at me with its “eye” half shut.

No connection could be made here. It was simply unappealing.

The idly, chutney and sambhar, did not even merit a second look. A look, if any was needed, was reserved for the waiter. For some reason I knew he was behind the disaster.

I thought of Shankar, the worlds best idli-maker in my opinion, high in the mountains of Yercaud who would have died of shame had his idlis appeared on the table looking jaundiced. The whole thing was to sum it in one word “despicable.”

My efforts to establish friendly connection with my stomach were shot down.

I ordered coffee.

“Yes, madam,” the waiter hissed, eyeing the food and me as if to say he knew right from the start that I was a waster. For reasons best known to him, he seemed to have enjoyed the entire episode.

See what I meant?

He returned with a soup-bowl sized cup.

The cup however was accompanied by a smell that had nothing to do with coffee. That it was chocolate was established even before I saw the flakes floating on the top.

With an impatient wave of my hand, I pushed it away and demanded another, in a smaller, cleaner cup. Also strong and without chocolate.

“Yes madam,” he said and without the slightest suggestion of annoyance, turned and walk right back to the kitchen. There was something suspicious about his submissiveness.

It was quite tolerable the second time. He was still smiling.

I had yet to see the bottom of my cup when he fished out something from his pocket and slapped it down on the table.

It was, I saw, The Bill.

Shocking news, it is universally accepted, must be gently broken down. That is the only situation that justifies beating about the bush. One should, never, ever attempt to shock an individual right after he has ingested a meal his senses have not approved of. It is unkind and cruel. This is a lesson one feels the hospitality industry must learn without fail, seeing that they are the bearers of such a news quite often in the form of a Bill.

You could have knocked me down with a feather. The figures that appeared on the Bill, underlined twice so as to say that it had been double checked, were, to put it mildly, the price I should have paid for the hotel itself had I intended to buy it.

“What is the meaning of this?” I cried. “Go, please check it again.”
His smile widened as though he had another secret weapon up his sleeve and he would not hesitate to produce it if needed.

“I checked, madam. Twice.”

“Seventy rupees? For what, man, tell me. For this?” I viciously jabbed the ugly yellow heap on the plate and then again at the crumpled vada. “Seventy rupees? What for?”

Few passengers from the bus stopped by at the table coughing politely and said nothing.

“For the idli, vada, sambha, chutney,” he explained, politely, “and coffee.”