Why do I travel?

I was asked to write for the Logica’s Women Network blog on Travel. They couldn’t  have chosen a better topic for me to write on. Below is what I posted on the Garam Chai blog.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page! -  St. Augustine

I love to travel, explore new places and re-explore already explored places!
People who know me say, my eyes twinkle and I become a different person when I talk of old travels and plan for new travels.
Why do I travel? To learn and grow – when I visit better countries, I wish to improve my own. I have now realized it is possible to drive without honking and I do try to do so. And if I travel to a country worse than mine, I learn to appreciate my own country.

The perspective of the word Still changed after my visit to the Amazon Forest.
Visiting Hampi, Ajanta & Ellora, Golden temple, I learnt that as we build the so called ‘state of art’ sky scrapers, we forget Beauty.
Fear was redefined after being chased by an elephant in Kabini.
Skydiving in New Zealand instilled in me a new found Respect for myself.
Scandinavians give a new character to the word Honesty.
As we travelled in the Norwegian Fjords, I discovered Majestic.
For the first time we Listened to our guide to stick together, after my friends were mugged on Copacabana beach in Rio.

I could go on and on but for now I want to leave you all with a beautiful quote from Mark Twain - “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Shanghai, China - Oct 2008

On an impulse I sent a message to Sumitra on 28th Sept...what if I want to go with you on the China trip leaving Delhi on 10th Oct? I didn’t think she could pull it off considering I was returning to India only on 2nd Oct. She had only 7 days and moreover it was the Chinese National Week and the embassy was shut till 7th, but she was quite hopeful. So fingers crossed, I sat and waited for the visa.
Well I guess crossing one’s fingers works...coz there I was at the airport for the flight to Shanghai where I met some 20 other women all dressed in shades of pinks (as with all WOW trips).

I was walking with Uma at the Shanghai airport. As everyone made their way to collect their baggage, she was like I don’t have any baggage...only this backup that I am carrying. I was like...wow this woman travels light! I wish I had a snap of hers as we were checking in at Beijing on our way back home. She shopped and shopped and bought gifts for everyone including her building chowkidar I think!
As I looked around I saw Vidya with a trolley bag and I thought ...looks like they all travel light...when suddenly I see her pulling a biiggg suitcase from the conveyor belt :-)
Little did I realize at that point how valuable that suitcase was...with its MTR’s and snacks...without which us vegetarians (vegiterraneans as per Chi / vegetables as per Mary) would have probably starved.

The Shanghai airport was quite impressive. In fact the infrastructural facilities across China were excellent…and made me thank my stars that they have a problem with the English language. Otherwise all the BPO and IT work would move there.

Shanghai is also called the Paris of the Orient for it is supposed to be very fashionable. One day around and I would call it the Land of Duplicates. You can get a duplicate of everything here, including the Guide – as Chi herself pointed out as she was not a native of Shanghai really but from some province in Western China!

After check in, Sumitra wanted to go pick up some local wine for our WOW evening later. That was when we got our first shot of the LANGUAGE PROBLEM. We tried everything to explain Rum, Gin, Vodka, and Rice Wine to them. This included enacting drinking and giving a tulli look. But it didn’t really help. Finally she picked up some local drink.
And this was in Shanghai, which is supposed to be quite cosmo!!!

Our first meal in China was a dinner at Shanglin Teppanyaki. Teppanyaki is a style of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle (teppan) to cook food, frequently with the teppan located in the center of the diners' table. I guess I was too excited with the whole concept and clicking snaps that I paid less attention to the food. Someone even commented the vegetarians are too busy clicking snaps while the non-vegs are too busy eating the food! There was some complaining but I enjoyed this meal. It took about 3 days for the food to get on my nerves!

After dinner Chi took us to this place where she said you get the GOOD DUPLICATES of all brands...she was sooooo convincing and so even though we were tired we agreed...guess she wanted us to loosen our pockets there before we saw that the stuff is being sold by even street vendors at every corner in China. Whoever shopped here later realized that it was expensive and we still didn’t know that in China one has to bargain like crazy and drop the prices by 90%!!!

Next day began with a visit to the Jade Buddha Temple followed by the Shanghai Bund. The bund means the Shanghai skyline. Chi was so proud of it and many people liked it. But I thought – this could be anywhere in the world. In fact that is what I felt about Shanghai as a whole. While most people preferred Shanghai, I personally liked Beijing more. People felt that Beijing was soooo dead, Shanghai was alive. I agree but that is the case world over. The financial capitals be it Mumbai, New York, London will always be bustling cities. But it will be the smaller towns (not that Beijing was small) which will have a character of their own.
Post Chinese lunch – food still good (read tolerable!), we went to Yu Garden. At the entrance we saw 2 imposing lions very similar to the ones outside our hotel. Infact later we realised that statues of lions are seen at the gates of all the imperial palaces, official residences, temples, tombs. This represents a male lion on the left with the right paw on a ball - the symbol of unity of the Chinese empire and a female lion on the right with a cub under the left paw - a symbol of offspring. The garden itself was a very quiet and elegant place with old trees, beautiful flowers, ornamental ponds and flower walls. There was a very interesting stone carving of a dragon that sat on a wall.

Next was a visit to a tea shop for a tea ceremony – basically they make you taste different kinds of tea. The dried flowers teas are quite nice - it was quite amazing to see the chrysanthemum flower open slowly as it was infused with the hot water.

After shopping and testing our bargaining skills in the bazaar that has developed around the garden, we went for some more sightseeing which included a visit to a silk factory.

Post dinner (Imp note: food still good!), we went around Shanghai to see it by night as Shanghai is said to come alive at night. The highlight was the view of Shanghai from the Shanghai Grand Hyatt Hotel on the 88th floor of the Jin Mao. There is a very interesting building right next to it - the Shanghai World Financial Center building which looks like a beer bottle opener! It was made like that with an aperture at the top to reduce the stress of the winds.
Here I managed to win over a Japanese fan – he seemed to be impressed with my photography skills as I experimented with clicking Parul’s snap with a top-down view of the atrium. We both were literally leaning over the window and believe u me the results were quite good :-). He even wanted a snap with Parul and me!!!
That day Chi was wearing a really short dress...and as she modeled and walked in her stylish way towards the entrance, one man literally followed her making a movie with his handy cam. She just turned, smiled and said to him "you have to pay me for that!"
I guess Chi thought we still hadn’t had enough of Shanghai so she took us to a posh part of Shanghai, the French settlement area called Shin Ten Tee for coffee. And it was like we were actually in Paris or somewhere with the outdoor cafes and stylish boutiques.
All this was not really a part of the itinerary but Chi just wanted to show off Shangahi.

Apart from the usual stuff next day like the Shanghai museum and Nanjing Road, what the vegetarians loved was the Indian Lunch (yippee) and what bought smiles to everyone’s face was the ride to the airport on the sleek and fast Maglev train - it rocketed to 300 kph in two minutes flat and as the LED continuously blinked and informed us of the speed…we reached the max speed to 430 kph. It was an amazing experience as even at that speed, the train was sooooo smooth.

With this we bid adieu to Shanghai and Chi who in her typical dramatic style said…Chi not cry and you not cry!

Our guides in China - Oct 2008

4 cities, 4 different guides...all deserve a small write up before I actually write anything else on my trip to China.
At the Shanghai airport we were greeted by our very, very cute and stylish guide, Chi. Someone liked her dress, someone her hairstyle and someone else her bag...she personified the saying that Shanghai is the Paris of the Orient.
In the Chinese language it seems that for every alphabet there are 4 or 5 tones. And when she spoke she emphasized on the different tones with fulltoosh facial expressions and hand gestures… sometimes it seemed we were attending some theatre!
She taught us the Chinese numbers using the hand .And the way she taught us, I don’t think I will ever forget. I wish I had recorded it… her hands gestures were soooo illustrative. E.g. 6 is the thumb and index finger pointing like a gun. So Chi says – "six...like a gangster shoot" and her index finger goes to her forehead and she tilts her head as if she is dead...toooo cute.
She spoke non stop giving us an insight into many aspects of Shanghai, whether it was the property prices or generally what the building was or notes on the famous Shanghai husbands. That she loved Shanghai was evident in the way she spoke of the city.
She really wanted us to love the city too and so was willing to take us around late into the night...whether it was to Shin Ten Tee (don’t know if that’s the correct spelling, but that’s the pronunciation as taught by Chi and her hand gestures indicating which word is in high tone and which in neutral tone etc) or a walk along the Bund or the duplicates market.
Often she would discuss her personal life. Guess that came from the loneliness of no siblings as a result of the one child policy in China, and the fact that she lost her mother when she was very young. As she said, ‘I have no one to share my happiness or sorrows with’ one really felt sad.
One of the other things that I liked about her was the fact that unlike the rest of the guides, who used their American names, she had given up her American name and asked us to use her Chinese name, which she simplified for us - Proud to be Chinese.

From Shanghai we went to Guilin. Kathy was the stark opposite of Chi - short with what as kids we called a boy cut, in jeans and keds, she looked like a little boy- absolutely devoid of style. But what she lacked in style she more than made up for in her excellent skills as a guide. Her time management skills were awesome.
In the morning on our way to the cruise, at one place the road had suddenly been made one way by the traffic police. She tried to get the traffic guy to let us through but he wouldn’t agree. Then she’s asking the driver to speed up as we may get late and when he wouldn’t listen to her, you should have seen her. She started stamping her feet and like the Maglev train she took off in high speed Chinese scolding him...toooooo cute. She was really hassled for the next 15 minutes as she was worried that we may miss the cruise, which I would interpret as sincerity towards her job. It wasn’t her fault if we missed the cruise and these things happen on holidays, but only after she was sure that all was OK did she turn to us and start telling us more about Guilin.
In Guilin apart from the Li river cruise, there were 3 other activities that we could do after the cruise from 3 PM onwards – visit to the Pearl Factory, Chinese Foot Massage and a show in the evening. There were various combinations with Uma taking the cake as she wanted to do all three. And Kathy actually managed to organize that. She left one group someplace, and then took the next group someplace else and then returned to the 1st...Absolutely Amazing.

I guess all good things must come to an end... the next guide in Xian, Mary was one helluva a jerk and weirdo. She was supposed to be an MA in English but her pronunciation was tooooooooooooooooooo funny. The way she put the emphasis and stress on words was sure to give everyone a headache especially the way she said Tang and Dynasty.
She came across as one of those extra chaloo ones...whereas Chi and Kathy were flexible and were open to show/do things outside the itinerary, when we asked this one anything she would feign ignorance or pretend that she couldn’t understand the language.
Her communication regarding our onward journey and luggage arrangements were not correct which irritated many of us, so we decided that we wouldn’t tip her. But imagine her guts...she asked Sumitra for the tip!!!

And finally in Beijing we were to get a male guide Mark. But all our hopes of a good looking hunk were dashed.
Soon we were calling him – ‘on your MARK, get set go’, because he would get off the bus and not even wait for all the tour members to get off and start charging...don’t know what hurry he was in. Since he was at the receiving end of all our irritation because of the luggage confusion caused by Mary, I guess he just wanted the trip to end and pack us off. In fact he left us at the airport 4 hrs in advance. Crazy fellow and as Vidya aptly put it – ‘If I see him again, I’ll smack him’