Extracts from a Diary

Last week of August, I was fortunate to have travelled to Vietnam. I say fortunate because I loved every bit of it, and hope to be able to travel there again. We visited Ho Chi Minh City (also called Saigon or HCMC), Da Nang, and Hanoi — the three major cities across South, Central, and North Vietnam respectively. Each of those had a different flavour across the many dimensions — food, culture, traffic, road infrastructure, markets, coffee, among other things. Our trip was for about 8 days, and we definitely felt that was too short to fully soak in the things the country had on offer. But, it’s better to leave with an incomplete appetite and a desire to return, than otherwise. It was an excellent trip in absolute sense and in terms of value for money. History While Vietnam has had a continuous history of about 3000 years, in the modern era, it’s been a theatre of the different world powers. Under French colonial rule until World War II, control shifted to Japan after France fell to Naz...

Between 2023 and 2024, the wife was studying in London for her second Masters’ and I was fortunate to make a few trips to London (and a few surrounding areas) through that period. The first time that I landed in London, at the Heathrow airport, I was very pleasantly surprised by some of the choices they had made. While there are many many great things to write about London – it is a legit great ‘international’ city with so many different nationalities and cultures (and their respective food/restaurants!), high density of public parks, high pedestrian friendliness, very well-connected public transport system, wonderfully informative (and so many!) museums, active theatre scene, the weekend/seasonal markets that come up etc. – I intend on only covering one (or related two!) tiny sliver(s) in this post. There may be some follow-ups – I don’t know. But, before that, some general housekeeping. Each of these points I mentioned above – they can be a separate post on its own merit. Also, yes –...

To read the previous two instalments, read here and here respectively. <10 th July 2012, 1540 hours, Gopalapuram, Chennai> The next day, Monday or Day 3 of my trip, around afternoon, I leave for Kheerganga, with a plan to spend a night there, travelling to Tosh and then returning to the familiar lands of Kasol and eventually the plains. I started on the trek, as I realised later, quite underprepared and late for it. I was wearing slippers, without carrying any food to munch upon, and barely sufficient water – of course, with a healthy stock of ciggs, though. Definitely not the best thing if you’d be travelling in that region of sparsely located overpriced or often closed dhabas for somewhere close to 6 odd hours (~10 kms) one way. Even in those altitudes, the June sun was making it harder – lazily starting late was obviously not a smart choice – but in those narrow pathways randomly, but frequently nonetheless, appearing stretches of puddles were making the footwe...

For the first part, you might want to refer here . <17 th June 2012 1918 hours, Barista, Ludhiana> I am at a Barista, looking to complete my travelogue from where I left it off. So, I’d reached Bhunter at around 1030 hours, munched a bit of food here & there, before finally taking a bus to somewhere we could start the trek to Malana from. On the way, chatted up with this stranger in the bus regarding the way to Malana, movies, mundane day-jobs etc. It turned out he was a documentary filmmaker & a PR professional going to Kasol for the two day trance party on sat-sun (9 th & 10 th June) there. My friend and I get off at Jari, discuss the possibility of attending the trance party at Kasol, but decide to trek to Malana instead. It is sometime in the afternoon with the sun shining strongly. We are told it is about 4 odd hours and we trek along the area of Malana Hydropower Project – an interesting contrast to the otherwise natural ‘unadulterated’ habitat of ...

<Kasol, 12th June 2012, 2130 hours> So, after resignation, I had 7 odd days of casual leaves remaining and despite the shitload of pending work, on the evening of 8th June, I take off from Ludhiana, reaching Chandigarh at 0005 hours 9th June. A friend from my engineering college is to reach Chandigarh from Delhi at 2am. I wait around jobless, having a swig from my bottle of Bacardi, white rum. I go off to a random tea-shop dweller looking for some ciggs. He is smoking up and my trip to Kasol and elsewhere starts early. I chat up with him to find out that he got his hash from a local farmland in town (and I don't testify to his authenticity). He explains a ring side view of the trade that gets shaped later on in the trip. From local villages of Kasol, namely Tosh, Malana etc., around sept-oct each year, the dealers come to pick up a quintal or two from the then very recent harvest. The most tender leaves go on to become the most sought after - super cream (or simply cream...