National Geographic Traveller India July 2017

J U L Y 2 0 1 7 • ` 1 5 0 • VO L . 6

I S S U E 1 • N AT G E O T R AV E L L E R . I N

Imtiaz Ali Ruskin Bond Amit Chaudhuri Simon Winchester Sudha Murty Pico Iyer Zac O’Yeah Parvathi Nayar T.M. Krishna Bee Rowlatt Shivya Nath Karishma Grover Aneeth Arora Aditya Sinha

I travel,

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N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C T R AV E L L E R I N D I A

july2017

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voices 16 WHERE’S MY PASSPORT? The enviable life of driver-guides who take people to the coolest places 18 WAYFARING Travelling alone is the best antidote to the blues, and to loneliness itself 20 CREW CUT The universe within the airport is a perfect microcosm of the world outside

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30 CYCLING INTO THE WILD From Alaska to Argentina: Inside Dhruv Bogra’s epic solo cross-country tour 36 MOVING LIKE A LONE FOX Ruskin Bond recommends taking the road less travelled 40 THE EMPRESS OF HER MALADY Undertaking her toughest ever trek brought back a sense of normalcy in breast cancer survivor Ahtushi Deshpande's life 44 HAPPY CAMPER Shooting time-lapse videos of the Himalayas is a spiritual journey for Saravana Kumar, a former techie

60 DOING HER OWN MARKET RESEARCH

Writer Sudha Murty treats every holiday as a “hard-core study tour” ON THE COVER Travel monopolises our memory. Sitting at our office desks, we often return to a beach, city or mountain we had I travel, once made home.

But travel also has the capacity of defining our future. We dream of escape, and also sometimes, of return. More than travel destinations, it is you, the traveller, who matters.

Photographer Marco Piunti seems to know that. In this issue, we carry your memories and dreams with us.

JULY 2017 • `150 • VOL. 6

I S S U E 1 • N AT G E O T R AV E L L E R . I N

Imtiaz Ali Ruskin Bond Amit Chaudhuri Simon Winchester Sudha Murty Pico Iyer Zac O’Yeah Parvathi Nayar T.M. Krishna Bee Rowlatt Shivya Nath Karishma Grover Aneeth Arora Aditya Sinha

T H E R E F O R E

THE VOYAGER

50 THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH Being on the road alters biker Aditya Raj Kapoor’s perception of everything

26 AROUND THE WORLD IN

54 THE LIFE AQUATIC OF

Cassie De Pecol came away from a trip to 196 countries humbled

Wonder and curiosity have tied a solo sailor to her boat for a decade

18 MONTHS

58 REVOLUTIONARY ROAD A bike trip in South America was the starting point of change for neuroscientist and engineer Mauktik Kulkarni

EMILY RICHMOND

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AROON THAEWCHATTURAT/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (RUSKIN BOND), PHOTO COURTESY: BEE ROWLATT (BEE ROWLATT), PHOTO COURTESY: TAMASHA (IMTIAZ ALI), SUDHA PILLAI (SUDHA MURTY), GARY DOAK/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (AMIT CHAUDHURI) MARCO_PIUNTI/ISTOCK (COVER)

VOL. 6 ISSUE 1

Regulars 12 Editor’s Note | 14 Passenger Sheet | 144 Travel Quiz

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HOW WE TRAVEL 64 LIKE A FISH UNDER WATER

85 MEETING THE DEADLINE

116 FREEZE FRAME

90 KARISHMA GROVER WALKS INTO A BAR…

120 RWANDA REDUX

Aditya Sinha went to Peshawar to cover a war. He stayed for the kebabs

A scuba diver explains why scouring the oceans is a spiritual quest

…because she is a vintner who loves exploring cities, one tavern at a time

66 SILVER LININGS SKETCHBOOK

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A trip to Scotland gives an artist the fodder that only travelling affords

70 ‘THE BEST TRAVEL PLAN IS TO HAVE NONE’

Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali on why he never follows a fixed itinerary

76 SEEING PATTERNS IN THE EVERYWHERE

Designer Aneeth Arora went to Mexico and returned with a new collection

URBAN LEGENDS 94 NEVER TOO OLD-SCHOOL

WHY WE TRAVEL 126 DESTINATION NOWHERE 128 GUT INSTINCT

ADDRESS

Amit Chaudhuri reappraises Bombay

104 SEXY IS THE CITY

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For vocalist T.M. Krishna, mountains are a lesson in shifting boundaries

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98 A STRANGE AND SUBLIME

80 HIS ONE-TRACK MIND

82 HITTING THE HIGH NOTES

Wildlife guides tell heart-warming stories of a country looking out for its forests

A surprise layover becomes a free day of unexpected discoveries for Pico Iyer

78 MAKING THE WORLD HOME

Sridhar Venkatesh is running a ceaseless marathon across the globe

Spiti Valley is a land of ancient monasteries and welcoming faces

Simon Winchester reflects on Oxford

Writer and journalist Bee Rowlatt on culture and counterculture in Frisco

Travel has been a recurring theme in Amanpreet Bajaj’s life

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THE INSIDER 110 A PLACE THEY CALL OWN

Five local guides, chefs, and hotel staff describe the best of the Philippines

Zac O’Yeah’s philosophical enquiry into the bellyaching that accompanies travel

132 THIS HOME HAS NO ADDRESS Why travel blogger Shivya Nath gave up on having a permanent abode

136 TINDER LOVING CARE

Modern-day love, like modern-day travel, is making the world a revolving door

139 FINDING THE MAGIC FARAWAY MOUNTAIN

A mother’s definitive guide to climbing Wales’s Mount Snowdon

MICHAEL_WHITEFOOT_GALLERY/ISTOCK (LIGHTHOUSE), SARINE ARSLANIAN/SHUTTERSTOCK (WOMAN)

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EDITOR’S NOTE SHREEVATSA NEVATIA

LOST AND FOUND

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WE BORROWED WOODY ALLEN'S FRAMES TO DRAW MAPS THAT ARE MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL THAN GEOGRAPHICAL

he characters of Woody Allen’s early films hardly ever leave New York.

Until the 21st century, the city, for Allen, was sufficient. Then, suddenly, Scarlett Johansson made it to London in his 2005 Match Point. Vicky and Cristina went to Barcelona in 2008, and then—most memorably perhaps—Owen Wilson, hands in pockets, walked down the streets of Paris in 2011. Midnight in Paris, I’d argue, sees Allen at his drollest. I might be biased, though. Wilson plays Gil Pender, a screenwriter struggling to finish his first novel. Like him, I too believed Paris would give me flourish, a climax even.

Sadly, I didn’t make it very far.

Paris, for writers especially, is a city that is easy to romanticise. The boyish Gil bumbles his way through life. He is bullied by his fiancée and his ambition is mocked by her parents. Yet, in Paris, he finds abandon. As he begins walking the streets of the city, he comes to be literally transported. At midnight, a carriage whisks him away to bars, to raucous parties where he meets Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. He falls in love with Picasso’s muse. More tangible than the cities we see are the cities we first imagine, and the 1920s Paris Gil moves through is the Paris of his fantasy. In the worlds of Allen, travel—time or otherwise— makes his protagonists come of age. The city changes Gil. He leaves his overbearing fiancée.

He finishes that manuscript of his and he decides to make Paris home. But the city, in

the end, is a bit irrelevant. It’s only a setting for change that’s personal and also enabling.

Although travel writing employs the first person point of view, it is often more interested in “where” we travel, not so much the “why”. Destinations eclipse the traveller. The observer, complex and elaborate, is sometimes hostage to his or her own objectivity. Anniversaries are of course occasions to celebrate and introspect, but they offer our experiments some amnesty. Our magazine is five years old, and we felt now would be a good time to take stock and ask a simple question—what do we (really) think about when we think about travelling? In the pieces we commissioned and compiled, we borrowed Woody Allen’s frames to draw maps that are more psychological than geographical.

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino writes, “Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had.” This is the kind of discovery that Ruskin Bond, Sudha Murty and a set of other voyagers first describe.

For our second section, professionals talk to us about how their work defines their travel.

Writers Amit Chaudhuri, Simon Winchester and Bee Rowlatt then speak about cities they either find strange or sublime. Destinations like Rwanda and the Philippines are seen through the eyes of locals, and finally, our contributors ask how Tinder, family and food now shape our varied itineraries. This time our page of contents is a list of our favourite things and people. We do hope you like them too.

OUR MISSION National Geographic Traveller India is about immersive travel and authentic storytelling, inspiring readers to create their own journeys and return with amazing stories. Our distinctive yellow rectangle is a window into a world of unparalleled discovery.

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​Write to me at natgeoeditor@ack-media.com or Editor, National Geographic Traveller India, 2nd floor, Sumer Plaza, Marol Maroshi Road, Marol, Andheri East, Mumbai 400059.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | JULY 2017

VOICES WHERE’S MY PASSPORT?

GOING FOR A LITTLE DRIVE A LIFE BEHIND THE WHEEL HAS A CERTAIN APPEAL

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required! By law!—to carry a gun. You go out there with the certain knowledge that if you do something stupid and make that bus topple, being eaten alive would be the quickest, easiest death. This is the kind of job where you are legally allowed to have a steely glint in your eye.

Similarly, in Iceland, you’re taken out to the volcanoes, which could pop at any minute, faster even than your insurance premiums. You have to manage loose stones up near-vertical grades, pack for ice storms and dodge the occasional flying rock and lava flow, much the same way a Mumbai driver has to dodge the occasional

You go out there with the knowledge that if you do something stupid, being eaten alive would be the quickest, easiest death rickshaw. You have to do things that would put hair even on Daisy Duck’s chest. You will learn, my friend, how to inflate your tyres with a gol-danged blowtorch.

What an adventure it would be! I imagine myself driving along the savannah, or with icy mountains rearing up in the distance, with miles and miles of no traffic and spectacular scenery, the soundtrack to Indiana Jones or The Ghost and the Darkness playing in my head, pretending I’m in my own movie. I could even manage a steely glint, and chew a toothpick to complete the effect. It doesn’t have to be something impossibly exotic, either: the

Alps would do just fine, if you’re offering, or a monsoon-drenched forest road in Chhattisgarh, or Utah. “Yeah,” I could drawl at my passengers, with a manly sniff. “Just another 3,000 miles. Piece-a-cake.”

I do have some problems with driving long distances, though. One is that I get really sleepy when I’m tired, which is not good when you’re driving, and the second is that I have mild lactose intolerance, and a weakness for coffee and ice cream. I, therefore, would need a vehicle that I could live in. The main reason I read Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley was because there was a dog in it, and because he had a camper van with its own loo. And bed. And kitchen.

But camper vans aren’t cool: make mine an overland truck, and I’m sold.

I could take people across Mongolia and into Siberia, or along the Andes and the Atacama desert to Ushuaia, after which there is a patch of cold water, and then Antarctica. And I could do all that while being able to make a sandwich, take a nap and regret my last ice cream, all without leaving my little cocoon. I could have my own coffee machine. On the road. If that isn’t a Boy’s Own kind of life, I don’t know what is.

Of course, if nothing else works out, Uber could always do with another taxi.

Vardhan Kondvikar is a travel, car, and humour writer and editor, who is known for road trips, generalised exasperation and far too many bathroom stops.

MCPHOTO/DINODIA PICTURE LIBRARY

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hen I grow up, I want to be a driver. No, not that kind. I don’t want to drive some shiny officegoer every day, forever looking for parking spaces and settling down to a good newspaper only to be hauled away to drive to some lunch appointment or other. (If the car is an S-Class or equivalent, though, with massaging seats, I do have a CV handy.)

What I’m talking about is those driverguides who take people to the coolest places on Earth. In Tanzania, after a few lifechanging days on safari, my guide, Hosea, at the wheel of his enormous Land Cruiser, said, “Yes, this was all right. A couple of times, I’ve had a cheetah come sit on top of the car. Its tail was waving around inside.” I couldn’t do much to him in retaliation, other than silently questioning his parentage, but damn I envied him. This guy, I thought, spends his days going to Ngorongoro and the Serengeti and Olduvai Gorge, on daily commutes that would be epic to anyone else, dodging elands and worrying less about unclean loo stops than locating a handy bush and then checking whether it is already occupied. By a lion.

In Churchill, Canada, they drive out in giant buses to go meet polar bears. If you’ve seen photographs of this, the bears only come up to the height of the tyres, which makes them look tiny. Then you read up and find out that the tyres are eight feet high, and you quake a little. Even the thought of just driving these giant things makes me whimper. But these people, men and women both, drive out in howling winds, on all the dangers that ice and snow present even when the only wildlife out there is fluffy little bunnies. You are required—

THE VOYAGER RUSKIN BOND

MOVING LIKE A LONE FOX FROM SPENDING HOURS AT OBSCURE RAILWAY STATIONS TO SLEEPING IN WAYSIDE DHABAS, RUSKIN BOND RECOMMENDS TAKING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED BY RADHIKA RAJ

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rhododendron. “A writer must always have a window. Preferably two,” he says, as we recall the tales of wildflowers, macaques, pines and birds that this view has inspired. The most famous sight is the haunted, uninhabited Pari Tibba or Fairy Hill, burnt down by lightning. Bond’s fans religiously scale Pari Tibba on their trips to Mussoorie.

“I was seduced by fairies there,” he tells us with a straight face.

Like the tales of ghosts and fairies of Pari Tibba, Bond’s travelogues are almost always part-fiction, part-real, and deeply inspired by his own idyllic adventures, and the people he meets on them. Set in seemingly unremarkable places—dusty Indian towns, lonely railway platforms, passable hamlets in the hills, and seedy hotels—these stories are loved for their generous

In Dehradun, where Bond lived in his 20s and 30s, his long walks earned him the title of “the road inspector”

Bond grew up playing on the beaches of Jamnagar (left). As a young adult, he enjoyed reading in the hills of Mussoorie (middle). Now 83, the author finally feels at home amidst the many book towers that populate his living room in Landour (right).

humour and delightful plots, starring bakers, bidi-smoking farmers, stationmasters, garrulous khansamas, stuffy schoolteachers, and an occasional leopard. “I like neglected places. I find them charming,” he says. Some of his popular travelogues, such as Tales of the Open Road (2006) and the more recent Small Towns, Big Stories (2017), transport you to the lesser-known north Indian towns and hillside hamlets such as Chhutmalpur, Najibabad, Barlowganj, Shamli or Pipalnagar.

Even when going somewhere wellknown, Bond doesn’t head straight to the monuments. “I remember writing a piece on the Taj (Mahal) that had very little to do with the Taj.” The short story, “The Taj at High Noon” recounts chasing peacocks on the mausoleum’s lawns and conversations with the gardener’s son over sweet-and-sour fruit. Years later, Bond wrote in Journey Down the Years (2017) that it was not the sight of the

PHOTO COURTESY: RUSKIN BOND (AS A BABY AND AN ADULT), SAPTAK NARULA (BOND AT HIS HOME IN LANDOUR)

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hen I finally met Ruskin Bond—author of over 140 novels, children’s books, travelogues and short story collections— it was a result of a well-plotted conspiracy. First, I pitched a story around the big release of the 83-year-old master storyteller’s latest title, Lone Fox Dancing: My Autobiography. Persistent calls to his publishers finally secured me an interview, in Bond’s home town of Landour, Mussoorie, no less. Finally, my partner-in-crime and I booked a room in the mishmash Bollywood-HollywoodTibetan guest house that shares a wall with Ivy Cottage, the tin-roofed home on a ridge where Bond has lived with his adopted family for three decades.

“I can throw stones at your roof!” he laughs, when he hears we are living next door. Locals will willingly point you to Bond’s home, but it is easy to miss the unassuming entrance. Narrow brick-red stairs lead to a warm, yellow room packed with thick wooden bookcases and precarious book towers, delicately balanced on chairs, tables and stairs. An adjacent balcony with a window overlooks Mussoorie’s rolling valleys of maple, oak and Himalayan

Taj that stayed with him, but the “sharp flavour of the kamrakh (star fruit).”

In search of conversation, Bond has taken several long solo walks off the beaten track, which he highly recommends to young travellers. “I have come to believe that the best kind of walk, or journey, is the one in which you have no particular destination when you set out.” Sometimes, these walks have ended in evening chats in chai shops, or sleeping in wayside dhabas.

At these hillside shops there are always old-timers who have ready stories to tell. “Older people have stories,” he says, “the young are still looking for them.” At one such tea shop, he made friends with the owner’s father, who had served as a soldier in the British army and was stationed for a few months in Paris during World War II. Though now wrinkly, bearded and retired on a modest pension, he kept remembering and talking of a French girl. “The last place you’d expect to hear a love story in Paris, eh?” asks Bond.

In Dehradun, where Bond lived in his 20s and 30s, his long walks earned him the title of “the road inspector”. But some of his earliest (and best) stories, written in the 1950s and ’60s, when the Indian Railways were still developing, are about trains. “You sit on a railway platform long enough, and you will have a story to tell,” Bond says. In his autobiography, he writes that “The Ambala Junction gave me ‘The Woman on Platform 8’, the Kalka Shimla Railway route gave me ‘The Tiger in the

Tunnel’, and a small wayside halt on the fringe of the Shiwalik forests gave me the The Night Train to Deoli (1988).”

Bond regrets that he is no longer fit to travel on trains, and though he does have funny encounters at airports, he says plane journeys are too fast and nothing much happens in between. At airports people occasionally recognise him, or mistake him for someone else.

A few months ago, a woman at the Delhi airport asked, “Are you Bejan Daruwalla?”—a popular, portly Indian astrologer. “I said no, but I offered to read her palm,” he says. Often children approach him, nervously. “Once a kid told me that he loved my book, Tom Sawyer,” he chuckles. “So I signed his autograph as Mark Twain!”

But Bond still yearns for the steady rhythm of a train journey. His grandfather was once a stationmaster, and Bond wonders if his fascination has something to do with that. “There is still some engine soot in my blood,” he writes in Journey Down the Years. Even now, he sometimes buys a platform ticket so he can settle down on a station bench and wile away the hours watching trains.

Three years ago, during a road trip to the Himalayan foothills, Bond decided to take a detour to Kansrao, an obscure railway station on the edge of the Shiwalik hills, which he had spotted on his train journeys from Dehradun to Delhi. “I had never seen anybody on this station. I was very curious.” Though trains pass through Kansrao, only one

stops there. The long, lonely station is run by a middle-aged man, who has to lock himself up in his cabin on summer nights, because elephants descend from the hills to drink water from the station’s water hydrant.

Bond discovered that the stationmaster had grown up in Mussoorie, like himself. In his younger days, the man had played cricket for Mussoorie-based actor Tom Alter’s team. Bond had once played for Alter’s team too, but “they threw me out eventually because I was too lazy and wouldn’t run between the wickets.” As the sun set, the stationmaster returned to his cabin. “There he was sitting all alone, like a character straight out of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. There was a whole story there.” Romance, as Bond reminds us, lurks in the most unlikely places.

BOND’S BEST TRAVEL TALES Lone Fox Dancing: My Autobiography Non-Fiction  Tales of An Open Road Non-fiction  Small Towns, Big Stories Fiction/Non-fiction  Roads to Mussoorie Non-fiction  Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas Fiction/Non-fiction 

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RCHPHOTO/ISTOCK (TRAIN), PHOTO COURTESY: GAUTAM BOND (BOOK COVER), PHOTO COURTESY: RUSKIN BOND (MOUNTAIN)

Some of Bond’s best stories recreate scenes from crowded railway platforms and trains (left). In fact, even today the author finds airplane journeys boring. What does excite him is this view of Mussoorie’s rolling hills from his window (right).

THE VOYAGER DHRUV BOGRA

CYCLING INTO THE WILD CLOSE SHAVES WITH BEARS AND LIVING OFF THE GRID—INSIDE DHRUV BOGRA’S EPIC SOLO CROSSCOUNTRY TOUR OF THE GREAT AMERICAN CONTINENT BY LUBNA AMIR | PHOTOGRAPHS BY DHRUV BOGRA American Highway, from Alaska to Argentina, in its entirety if everything goes to plan.

A dedicated cyclist in his youth, his passion fell by the wayside once his corporate career took off. A few years ago, he met someone in Mumbai who cycled his way to work. On an impulse, he bought a mountain bike for himself.

From that moment, his biking dreams were reignited.

The Beginning

In a conversation from Peru, Bogra reminisces about rediscovering his passion as an adult. On weekdays, he often woke up at 4.30 a.m. to cycle

Quest, Bogra’s beloved bicycle, has been his trusted companion in his journey. Quest also keeps him going in places that are not as pleasant as Mount Robson Provincial Park in the Canadian Rockies.

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while weekends were meant for biking to the outskirts of either Mumbai or Delhi, wherever he was based for work.

He also made friends with a group of cycling enthusiasts. The group’s weekend rides started to get longer and soon enough, they were training to cycle from Manali to Khardung La. That journey, undertaken in 2011, was arduous and heady, and was Bogra’s introduction to touring cycling. He says, “The success and the achievement of this [tour] spurred me on to start looking at bigger biking goals for myself.”

The idea of the sport being selfsustained, with no support vehicle to

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hen a man is on a solo cycling trip for nearly a year, the comforts of modern life begin to fade and all he is left with is nature, harsh and majestic by turns. Travelling for days without meeting a soul, he becomes attuned to the rhythms of the wind and the mysterious ways of animals. Alone at the end of a long day, he learns to grapple with his demons.

Dhruv Bogra, a 49-year-old former corporate executive from Delhi, is on this remarkable journey right now.

Currently in South America, he is only a few months away from accomplishing a feat unfathomable for the average person: riding through the Pan

Three hundred kilometres above the Arctic Circle, North Slope, Alaska

Montana Lighthouse Hostel, California

Baja Desert, Mexico

fall back on and delving deeper into a territory, inspired and excited him.

Touring cycling, as a sport, is not a norm in India. But that did not deter him. Bogra had found his next personal project: cross-country biking.

For any cross-country bicyclist, three routes present the ultimate challenge: the Silk Route, Siberia and the PanAmerican Highway. After researching all three, he chose the Pan-American Highway mainly for its difficulty (it’s the most arduous), its varied terrain (the route traverses glaciers, deserts and tundra) and the cultural diversity (it goes through around 20 countries). As Bogra puts it, “I had this fascination for South America since I was a kid—the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas. This is a land I really wanted to go to.”

It took him six months to figure out the kind of cycling gear he needed, and around five months to build the bike.

Most of his gear and components were imported from across the world; the gear hub alone cost over a lakh rupees.

His intensive training routine did not just include cycling; it also meant sleeping in a tent in his own house to get used to sleeping on the ground, wearing the same four T-shirts to learn how to live with less, and detailed research.

The Journey

Volcano Concepción, Ometepe, Nicaragua

Traversing through deserts, glaciers and volcanic mountains, Bogra has so far clocked 14,000 kilometres in 400 days.

After spending hours every day poring over maps and blogs, his plan was to start from Deadhorse, Alaska, and end at Ushuaia, Argentina. Bogra’s friends and family laughed off his plan as one of his more fanciful ideas, but when he finally left, everyone wished him well.

Since hitting the road, he has covered JULY 2017 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA

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TRAVEL LIKE A FILMMAKER

Imtiaz Ali can be an impulsive traveller, the sort who jumps off the boat into the waters below. He prefers the calm of the mountains to the chaos of touristy beaches.

By Humaira Ansari

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Imtiaz Ali never hires a guide or follows a travel itinerary. The filmmaker records the places he sees, the food he eats and the music he hears—in his mind

THE BEST TRAVEL PLAN IS TO HAVE NONE

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AMAN DHILLON

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TRAVEL LIKE A FILMMAKER

This is the bedtime story filmmaker Imtiaz Ali’s daughter, Ida, grew up listening to. She is now 16, has finished her Class 10 exams, and is soon set to visit Jordan with her dad.

Ida is now old enough to realise that the real Jordan is a place more layered than in the fairy tales she heard. And dashing as Jordan’s current crown prince Hussein bin Abdullah might be, he is more likely to be taming a Ducati than riding a pony.

Whether it’s postcard-pretty Corsica (in picture) or Manali’s misty hills, Ali visits his film locations a number of times before shooting.

“Jordan was a fictional place I created in both Ida’s mind and mine since she was two,” says Ali, who “randomly” decided to weave a fairy tale around Jordan one night. “Now that we’re planning to go there real soon, we’re excited about exploring a country that

PHOTO COURTESY: TAMASHA (IMTIAZ ALI), ALEXLMX/SHUTTERSTOCK (CLAPPERBOARD)

there lived a handsome prince in the kingdom of Jordan. Young and carefree, he loved playing with his pet dog, and riding his white pony through his estate’s cobbled streets, soaking in the aromas of fresh fruits and fatty meats. Although he was the king’s ninth and youngest son, the prince was known to solve problems with his common sense, goodness and positivity.

WORLD

Locations are more than just pretty backdrops in your films. The theme of travel and the journeys taken by your characters are often deeply woven into the narrative.

Your thoughts?

As a filmmaker, I don’t know why I do the things I do. Sometimes I do wonder, but chiefly, I’m not even interested in finding out. For me, there has always been a relationship between imagination, stories and travelling. Also, when I travel to a place to shoot, I discover it many times over. I meet many people. I see 25 options for one location. I must have scoured all the beaches in Goa before settling on one. I went to Prague several times before I shot Rockstar there. Travel is part of my work, and the more I travel, newer are the details that crop up each time. These details then become the thread between travel, imagination and stories. It’s a spiral situation.

Also, I often assume a false identity while travelling. So, on a bus or a train, I would tell co-passengers that I’m a writer and leave it at that. When I grew a little older, I would say that I can’t disclose where I work. I’ve even presented myself as a spy.

Why would you pose as somebody else while travelling?

Well... to make myself more interesting to others, and to myself. Then I lapse into being that person for the rest of the journey. Even now, if somebody doesn’t recognise me, I don’t claim to be myself. This way, the interesting people I meet, out of the zone of everyday life, seep into my movies. When I write stories then, these motifs appear and reappear. So that’s why there’s a girl on a train (in Jab We Met); that’s why you escape to Goa (Socha Na Tha); that’s how travel comes into my stories.

You had mentioned in earlier interviews how Geet’s character in Jab We Met had traces of a woman you met on a bus in Delhi. Can you tell us other personal travel encounters that have made it to your films?

(After a long pause, a poster of Jab Harry Met Sejal on his desk catches his eye) Oh yes, look at this poster! This was shot in Lisbon’s Alfama district. There’s a backstory to this. I had

Filmography

been to the same spot five years ago with 10 close friends. The bars, promenades, lanes, wooden walkways, hotels, and clubs… all the places I visited with my friends are in this film. Now, in retrospect I wonder, was I having a great time with my friends or was I actually subconsciously working? Maybe I was.

Your movies often bring to fore your characters’ internal turmoil or their sense of self-exploration. But in the end there’s always some resolve, isn’t there?

It all depends on the story. It’s unlikely that a story will not end with some sort of resolve of some kind. The resolve could be anything—just a compromise with the fact that the journey doesn’t end is also a resolve, isn’t it?

Does this mean you always look at places and people through a filmmaker’s lens even on a holiday?

I’ve often wondered about the same. For instance, when I see a beautiful sunset, my first instinct is to record that moment and use it in a film. When I’m shooting at a beautiful location with a solo bench somewhere, I often go like, “I wish I had the time to sit on that bench and enjoy the sunset.” I find it impossible to exist without a story in the mind. But I really can’t escape the experiences I have as a person. And the person can never escape the fact that the director is always watching.

Where all so far?

have

you

travelled

I’ve travelled across Europe. While you can see Corsica, Prague and Portugal in my movies, there are other destinations that I love in that part of the world.

Bosnia is one of them. It has Sufi shrines and a sizeable Muslim population.

There’s a lot of Turkish influence, and interestingly it’s the younger generation that’s trying to be religious.

In Southeast Asia, I find Hong Kong fascinating because of its metropolitan culture and the vintage vibe. Since the Chinese take a lot of pride in their culture and food, even today nobody f***s around with dim sums here. I’ve also travelled across Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir, and there’s nothing in this world like Kashmir; it’s exotic, and culturally and naturally rich. It leaves you with a spiritual, blissful feeling.

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has been part of our imagination for years.”

What fascinates Ali is how imagination and stories feed off each other through the prism of a real location or even a fictional land. Unsurprisingly then, most of his movies embody or unravel this thought. In his debut film Socha Na Tha (2005), for instance, two youngsters discover and rediscover each other at a non-touristy beach in Goa. In his first blockbuster Jab We Met (2007), two strangers meet on a train in Mumbai, bond in Madhya Pradesh and have a moment amidst Manali’s misty hills. Rockstar (2011) essays a man’s singer-to-rock star journey, and the love he finds and loses along the way, in Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, houseboats in Kashmir’s Dal Lake, and Prague’s State Opera. In Tamasha (2015), his protagonists romance in the postcard-pretty French island of Corsica. And in his upcoming film, Jab Harry Met Sejal, Shah Rukh Khan plays a Punjabi tourist guide in Portugal.

Exhaustive as this list might read, it’s indicative of how the theme of travel is integral to the plot in almost all of Ali’s movies. In this interview with the National Geographic Traveller India, 46-year-old Ali tells us how his mind can never exist without a story and how each story has something to do with the places he visits and the people he meets

TRAVEL LIKE A MUSICIAN

High Notes hitting the

FOR CARNATIC MUSIC VOCALIST T.M. KRISHNA, MOUNTAINS, LIKE HIS ART, TEACH HIM TO SHIFT BOUNDARIES

AKHILA KRISHNAMURTHY

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S.HARIHARAN

AS TOLD TO

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The next morning, my brother, a group of friends, and I trekked to the glacier, and it was sheer magic. I felt something so deep; it was as if I could breathe in a way that we don’t normally do.

It was my moment of epiphany.

I knew I had to keep coming back to the mountains.

That was in 2010. Strangely, when I think about it, that year also coincided with a perceptible shift in many aspects of my music—the way I sang, my relationship with aesthetics, the socio-politics of music, everything found a newer meaning and expression.

And then, exactly a year later, I met Badri Vijayaraghavan, a seasoned mountain climber based in Chennai. I told him I was keen to climb and since then, we’ve become climbing buddies, making that experience an annual ritual, allowing the mountains to move us in a way that only they can.

That’s the thing about mountains; they allow you to quietly and deliberately look at everything that is going on, within and outside, enabling almost an outsider’s perspective of who you are, what you are doing and how you live your life.

My journey in climbing—I had only trekked until then—began with Ladakh when we summited Stok Kangri, the highest mountain in the Stok range of the Himalayas, at 20,187 feet. For a first-timer, I think I did well, and since then I’ve been hooked.

Climbing is addictive; and it’s not because it’s a quick-fix solution to all your problems. I think the mountains provide me the space to return to my life with a sense of calm, breathe better and let things flow.

It’s not easy, mind you. Climbing instilled in me the need and importance of physical and mental discipline. I train religiously, almost rigorously, through the year to prepare for a climb that is

Every year, artist T.M. Krishna (facing page and top, right) and fellow climber Badri Vijayaraghavan (top, left) push their limits by scaling mighty mountains together. Last year, the duo reached a new high by summiting Mount Elbrus in Russia, Europe’s highest peak.

almost always a life-changing experience.

Yet, no amount of preparation is enough because the mountains will throw you a challenge that you’re either unready for or never anticipated. I remember this story from my climb in Bolivia couple of years ago. We planned to climb two or three mountains and after summiting one of the mountains—a very technical climb—I was gearing up to summit Huayna Potosi which is about 20,000 feet above sea level. At about 3.30 a.m., we were climbing a 30-foot ice wall. I was double harnessed and my guide who went up first wanted me to pull myself up; she was confident I could do it, and so was I. But just as I attempted it, my ice axe slipped out of my hand and fell into a crevice about 20 feet below, and my climb was over. I was very angry; angry with myself and with the situation, but in hindsight, I know that story taught me a lesson in being better prepared and never taking the mountains for granted.

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PHOTO COURTESY: T.M. KRISHNA

I still remember that day vividly. I was at the outpost of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police force, about 45 kilometres from China and very close to the Milam Glacier in the Kumaon Himalayas. It was about 4 p.m.; I took my sleeping bag outside my tent, lay down on it and all I did was look at the sky.

In Bombay, says Amit Chaudhuri, the eye runs across the streets and meets the water. When seen from places like the Gateway of India, the city comes to be defined by the sea and the horizon.

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URBAN LEGENDS AMIT CHAUDHURI

MUMBAI

a strange and sublime address WRITER AMIT CHAUDHURI GREW UP IN B O M BAY, B U T T H E C I T Y TO O K A F E W DECADES TO GROW ON HIM

as told to shreevatsa nevatia

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photographs by supriya kantak

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URBAN LEGENDS AMIT CHAUDHURI

In Amit Chaudhuri’s new novel, Friend of My Youth, he writes at one point, “The eye covers distances in a second. It lusts for freedom. Looking out, I often wanted to be free—not of home, but of the city.” There is something ambivalent about the Bombay Chaudhuri refers to. It is hard to pin down. Chaudhuri’s own relationship with the city, the book suggests, has always been hesitant. Even after you have reached the end of the writer’s slim, warm and utterly compelling 137-page novel, you can’t be certain if he likes or dislikes the city. The narrator of Friend might well be Amit Chaudhuri, but he makes no declarations on the writer’s behalf. He seems to have considered both Bombay and Mumbai deeply, but surprisingly feels little nostalgia for either. Though he grew up here, he only returns as an outsider. thing that has changed for me since I was a child, looking out at the sea, is my ability to notice it, to have a sense of what it means to be in a seafront city. I also notice things about that seafront, especially Marine Drive. I see how it has become a place of congregation for all kinds of people, which when I was growing up, it was not. It was more or less a barren sort of place, and only very few people lingered there. Today, Marine Drive’s broad pavement is a part of Bombay’s attempt to reuse its spaces. That, for me, is a big part of the rediscovery.

Though my parents left Bombay in 1989, I had left a few years earlier, in 1983. When I would return to Bombay in 1985, my parents had moved from Cuffe Parade to St. Cyril Road in From my first book [A Strange and Sublime Address] onwards, I Bandra. In a place like St. Cyril Road, Bombay didn’t seem like notice that I have written repeatedly about going Bombay. It was not the Bombay I knew. For me, that was a huge somewhere else, about visiting another place. discovery because I would come back from the silence of LonThe first book is about going to Calcutta, but I don to a third-storey apartment where I could hear things and suppose the whole idea of writing about return look at them. The St. Cyril Road flat looked out onto the lane, crystallised for me with Friend of My Youth. I onto the trees, and also out have always found interesting onto another building where the kind of transformation a Parsi couple lived. I could that results from being in now glimpse these other lives a place that one is partly “AS FA R AS BO M BAY I S in other houses. I couldn’t familiar with. Without that CO N C E R N E D, EV E RY T H I N G I have done that from the 12th being an agenda, I like it when and 25th storey of buildings one rediscovers a place or one’s SAY S E E M S TO H AV E A K I N D O F in which I had grown up, and sense of place. That, for me, which overlooked the sea.

H I STO RY W H E R E T H E O P P OS I T E has been the way narratives After my parents left for work. To me, the story rather WAS A LSO T RU E ” Calcutta, I would only visit than being directed by plot, Bombay occasionally for book has always simply to do with launches and events like that, going somewhere. When you and I still held it in some contalk about a return to Bombay, tempt because of my memory of its ostentation. And when I say though, you see other things begin to converge in the confluence “it”, I mean the kind of Bombay in which I had grown up, and of the past and the present. that is now called South Bombay. But despite its flaunting of In one part of Friend of My Youth, I talk about Bombay being wealth, something drew me to the city. It had been transformed, a city that is quite literally defined by the sea and the horizon. and I think part of that transformation had to do with how farI talk about looking out at the sea and not seeing it. The eye flung Bombay became, and how you were now connected to new kind of runs across the streets and then meets the water. One When National Geographic Traveller India did call Chaudhuri in Kolkata, he spoke about ‘Bombay’, not Mumbai. Chaudhuri said, “I have spent more than 30 years calling the city Bombay.

Why would I call it Mumbai all of a sudden? The word has no history for me in the English language.” He added with a laugh, “It’s a kind of Alice in Wonderland situation, and that’s not a situation I want to be in.” The writer spoke to us about his work, about growing up in Bombay and how Bombay has grown on him. Though only an extract, here is a sample of his thoughts on a city he has found both ostentatious and addictive.

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MUMBAI

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As the city opened up, Chaudhuri saw older churches and mosques become visible. The Mount Mary Church in Bandra (top), for instance, became iconic over the years. Marine Drive (bottom) also became a place of congregation and a part of Bombay’s attempt to reuse its spaces.

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A E C LL A PL CA t ee m Y t u E ou yo N b f f TH OW hotel sta stories abe the wn nd cri s o a e r , i fs sd he e t r h e c e sid pines s, av n e h i uid vels try ilip s g h u a P U The our tr e ind f the AS v y i B o A on me. F best EL M ho RU BY

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RUMELA BASU (HARRY & CARLOS), PHOTO COURTESY: ALLAN LUNETA, PHOTO COURTESY: ZAMORA D. SANTIAGO, PHOTO COURTESY: JOSE CARMELITO

THE INSIDER

PHILIPPINES

ALLAN LUNETA, 41, TOUR GUIDE, PALAWAN

“I used to be a paramedic,” says Allan Luneta, leaning against the sliding door of our van and looking completely at ease in Bermudas and a T-shirt, his sunglasses resting on his cap. “I even worked with the city government here before I decided to change jobs.”

I am pleasantly surprised, though I can understand why Luneta left the bustle of Manila for the relaxed life of Palawan province in northern Philippines. We are returning to Puerto Princesa, the region’s tiny capital city, after a morning of snorkelling and swimming in the sea, and lazing in open cottages on the sandy shores of a pristine beach. The hunger stoked by swimming had been appeased with grilled crabs and fresh sea grapes: algae that look like a bunch of tiny green grapes and taste of the sea.

“It is a peaceful life,” says Luneta. “I lived in Manila almost all my life, and people from here go there chasing opportunities, but I decided to come here. The islands of Palawan have a lot to offer.”

Since the Puerto Princesa Subterranean National Park, more popularly known as the Underground River, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, travellers have flocked to the city. But Alan believes there’s much more to Palawan than the river. He has some special spots in mind. “We are known as the last ecological frontier because of the biodiversity. You can swim with sea turtles and whale sharks, snorkel to see a colourful underwater world, venture into caves and trek in a forest. It is all here. I would take people up north to Port Barton or Linapacan, which is one of the cleanest bodies of water; or, the unspoilt beaches in Corong.”

A dazzling smile appears on Luneta’s face, there’s a twinkle in his eyes. He is content with the simple life and in love with his island home. “I travel three hours south whenever I feel like getting

“You can swim with sea turtles and whale sharks, snorkel to see a colourful underwater world, venture into caves and trek in a forest.

It is all here”

away. Some days there is no electricity and I can stay at the beach all day, even though that’s usually where I am because of work,” he laughs.

Puerto Princesa buzzes with people and cars, and there are far fewer tricycles than there were in 2008, when Luneta moved here. “But it still has its charm,” he says. “You have to really spend time here and take it all in. Most locals are migrants and it is a melting pot of cultures. In fact, in Palawan, it is not just about the picturesque sights, it is about the people.”

According to Luneta, there is even a name for the draw of the island: “We call it the ‘come back-come back’ syndrome of Palawan,” he chuckles.

Luneta would like to travel to other Southeast Asian countries “to see what they are doing differently or better.” Or, just move farther away from the city and live by the sea.

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RUMELA BASU

Quiet in the day, Puerto Princesa's City Baywalk Park is most lively by dusk. Food vendors open their stalls, people stroll leisurely while watching the sunset, and kids and adults cycle on rented bikes.

WHY WE TRAVEL

THIS HOME HAS

NO ADDRESS Once ennui set in, Shivya Nath gave it all up. But most of all, the travel blogger gave up the idea of a permanent home Text and Photographs By SHIVYA NATH

A stroll down a beach in Zanzibar reminded Shivya Nath that she too is a nomad, much like this Masaai man.

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the space is full of septa-tinted memories.

The old photos around the house filled me up with a strange wistful longing; there was even one of the grandparents with Tito, the exYugoslavian president.

In the weeks I spent there, I hiked and cycled amid breathtaking panoramas of the Alps.

Through conversations with neighbouring locals, I visualised Slovenia’s transformation from a socialist to a capitalist country. I spotted shooting stars and the Milky Way in the dark night skies, and swapped life stories with my host family. One evening, I joined them in planting chives, a variety of mint called melissa and a local variant of the cabbage, in their little garden. As we were planting these, a friend of my host’s father, a former forest official,

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I

wrote this piece with sweet nostalgia in the backdrop of the dramatic Kamnik-Savinja Alps, in the remote Slovenian valley of Logarska Dolina. It’s home to only 30 families. Surrounded by wild dandelions, and purple, pink and yellow wildflowers, my “home” in this part of the world was Lenar Farm, the working farmstead of a Slovenian family that first opened its doors to guests in 1931.

Unfortunately when World War II struck, the entire farm was burnt down in 1944. But the family picked up the pieces. The four cousins split the sizeable acres and my host family rebuilt theirs in traditional architectural style—wooden attics for sleeping and woodburning stoves to keep warm in winter. They reopened for tourism in the 1960s, and today

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brought in the news that the rare Lady’s Slipper Orchid had just started blooming in the forest. Excited, we left for the forest to look for it, for this is believed to be Europe’s biggest native orchid and blooms only for one week every year. Back in 2010, on the verge of extinction in Britain, the Lady’s Slipper Orchid was even subjected to police protection and a fine of upto £5,000 (approx. `4,16,260) for being cut. In those weeks, I felt as if I was living in a fairy tale; a vivid Alpine dream.

This dream began four years ago.

I clearly remember that night, in August 2013, when I sat on the roof of the shabby Delhi barsaati (house with an open rooftop) I had rented. As I stared at the hazy, starless sky, my heart filled with a strange melancholy. It had been two years since I had quit my full-time job as a social media strategist in Singapore and returned to India. All I aspired was to lead a semi-nomadic life as a freelance travel writer and blogger. That night though, I felt strangely unfulfilled. My spirit craved more adventure and freedom. The high I felt on my frequent travels always left me feeling glum on my return to Delhi, even though it had nothing to do with the city itself. It was actually the nagging feeling of constantly coming

back to the same place, paying rent, thinking about the things I owned and drifting along in a humdrum existence. As I began questioning this average way of life on that average Delhi night, a realisation dawned on me.

And just like that, with a strange sense of liberation, I decided to leave my Delhi apartment, sell most of my belongings, store some in the boot of a friend’s car (for a rainy day), and start calling the road home.

Released from the shackles of a place to return to, I travelled with a renewed feeling of freedom, looking only forward, carrying no baggage of the places I came from, moving as much within as with my feet. On some days I felt like a soul without a compass, on other days I was an uncontained spirit. When I felt the strain of saying goodbye to places and people I had come to love, too often and too soon, I discovered the joy of slow travel. No longer a fleeting crush on a gorgeous location, travelling became all about fostering a deeper relationship with a place, its people and its food, and the memories it left me with. This altered travel philosophy led me to slow down in Aldona, a sleepy Goan village away from the touristy beaches; steep myself in the Mayan way of life in a dreamy lakeside house in

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I’m no longer yearning to find my perfect place or get to anywhere in particular

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