Parlez Vous Anglais?

A city unlike any other

I think fluorescent tube-lights cast a very unflattering white light. Add to that a clattering metro train with an ageing steel chassis, worn purple seats and damp grey platforms outside the grimy windows and you definitely don’t have the most cheerful of atmospheres. The crowd is a mix of black and white people, with a stray brown bloke like me thrown in. This could easily be New York’s gloomy subway. It’s even got the same garish fluorescent graffiti on platform walls and tunnels.

Arguably the most famous iron structure in the world

But then you start to notice things that make you rethink the city you are passing under. The station name that reads Bréguet-Sabin announced is ‘Bghreegay Sabaan’. You take a closer look at the blacks, whites and browns in the train and notice that all of them (except yours truly) are unusually well-dressed for a regular rush-hour commute in October.Understated shades of grey, burgundy, brown and black are everywhere. No frumpy shoes, sweat-shirts, pink and red coats, or synthetic wind-cheaters here-everyone is complete with a warm woolen coat and a subtle scarf. The younger lot (which is almost everyone in the carriage) sport slim fit jeans and t-shirts. (And they all are ‘slim-fit’ sized-no bulging biceps and buxom beauties here) The much-talked about man-bag makes an appearance along with the designer purses. Many have their noses buried deep in thick paperbacks rather than a game of Angry Birds on i-Phones. As the train slows, you notice the posters on the platform walls with their faded, old but tasteful tile-work. A huge print of a classic Raphael oil on the walls declares “’Raphael in Rome’ opens at the Louvre”. The adjoining one urges you to watch for the annual event of Salon du Chocolat starting from 31^st Oct. An announcement booms through the underground station in that language which is always music to the ears, even if you don’t understand it. A Bonne Journée stall near the exit selling the last of its croissants off the now empty shelves completes the picture.

I was riding in to Paris on the metro from the Charles De Gaulle Airport to my brother’s apartment. Over the next nine days, I would get up close and personal with the arts, architecture, language, people and food of this city and repeatedly confirm what I had realized on that first day- Paris is like no other city in the world. And that is so because Parisians want it to be so.

Arc de Triomphe

For one, Paris, (like the rest of France and Europe) is a place that reminds you of the origins of English from a small group of islands off the Channel Coast. That it became the ubiquitous global super-language we know now was a game of chance, the French would have you believe. It’s little surprise that the title of this blog-post is the question I started most of my conversations from Oct 10 to Oct 19 with. The answer varied from ‘Yes I do’ to ‘Un peu (a little)’ in Paris; but in the sea-side town of Granville on the coast of Normandy I also got a flat ‘Non’ with the classic French shoulder-shrug from a waiter. (This resulted in considerable agony since the menu of the only open restaurant within a 2 mile radius was French. When - out of sheer dare-devilry - I ordered the first item in the menu, they turned out to be bulots - sea-snails. I am only glad they didn't taste half as bad as they looked).  This disregard for English is a strange feeling for someone from a country that no longer thinks of English as a foreign language. The French, however, have resolutely stuck it out so far, and still relegate a lowly second place to Anglais on their sign-boards – if at all that is.(Also, the English font is at least 5 sizes smaller). Parisians, however, are conceding some ground-most Parisian signboards do have both languages.

Evening settles over Paris, seen from the Montparnasse

For another, much of Paris it looks like it just stepped out of 1892 into 2012. The World Wars that flattened so many cities in Europe, especially in Germany, spared Paris. The city rarely rises above 4 storeys. And those 

are 4 storeys of ornate stone facades with the top windows jutting out of sloping roofs, while the bottom levels are occupied by beautiful cafes and shops. Even a simple pharmacie in Paris can have art deco lettering and a 1920’s shop-front. Parisians have stubbornly refused to allow any new construction within the confines of their old city. The top of the new Montparnasse tower built in the early 70s is snidely called the best spot in Paris, because it is the only place in the city from where you cannot see the skyscraper. This heritage tag attached to every brick and paving stone has strangled the supply of new homes within the city limits. As a result, many Parisians just end up renting a house and never buying one all their lives. Even the portable green ‘box’ book shops on the banks of the Seine (‘the only river that runs between two bookshelves’) are coveted property.  A tradition harking back to the 16^th century, new licenses for these bookshops are no longer being issued and existing ones are handed down like family heirlooms. 

The sun after the rain

Finally, through the long years of the 18^th and the 19^thcenturies, Paris has been the crucible for experiments in urban living, pursuit of the arts and philosophy, free thinking and sophistication. The process may have been catalyzed by the many revolutions that France went through, the French Revolution of 1792 being the most famous. But it has also been a process of maturing as much as it has been about upheaval and churning. Paris has been home to some of the West’s most famous intellectuals, iconoclasts, artists and rebels through the golden years of its history. These people have contributed to the texture and flavor of the culture that Paris has so prided herself on. 

A Parisian street leading to The Luxembourg Gardens

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Voltaire, Sartre, Orwell, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and the other names that I heard on my various excursions in the city, lived and worked here, created some of their most famous works here, and quite literally, rubbed shoulders with each other. And I don’t just mean at the salons¹ or the Salon de Paris². I mean rubbing shoulders in everyday life, in the parks, on the streets, and in the cafés.  A walk down through the neighborhoods of St. Germain and Montparnasse can take you past a Café de Flores, where Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir spent a lot of their time, or a La Rotonde or a Le Dome, which regularly hosted Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Eliot, and even found a mention in their novels. Go  further down from St. Germain and you can see the famous Luxembourg Gardens, Victor Hugo’s choice of setting to get lovers to meet in Les Misérables, and a favorite rendezvous spot for Hemingway and his contemporaries like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. 

Les Invalides after a squall of rain

Autumn in Paris is unpredictable weather, and cold drizzling rain can last for whole days. But when the sun does come out it can be worth the wait. We got on to an open-top double-decker hop-on-hop-off bus, Le Open Tours, on one such sunny day and were treated to a city basking in glorious sunshine. The buses were, for a change, filled with people as inept at French as us, and I bet that common handicap gave everyone a bit of unknowing comfort. 

The gardens of Les Invalides 

Of course we hopped off at every major monument for a closer look. But we also saw much of the city from the upper deck, as we rode past leafy boulevards littered with autumn leaves and windows with roses blooming on the sills, past chiropracteurs and boulangeries, and marchés and bureax de poste, and fleuristes and brasseries, across narrow cobblestone streets and wide bridges over the Seine. The city is an incredible portrait of the 18^th century urban aesthetics of Europe. 

“Parisians seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on appearances”, my brother had quipped when I had first asked him about his impressions of the city. Well, the city does it too, and in grand period style.

A bright autumn day in Paris

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1. Salons: 17^th and 18^th century literary gatherings to exchange and appreciate each others’ work

2. Salon de Paris: The official annual/biannual art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, arguably the West’s greatest art event in the 18^th & 19^th centuries to which many a Monet owes his fame

Of Dinners and Museums

Fine dining  is a concept that Paris has given to the world, among other things. Even as a kid, I remember my characters in Enid Blytons and PG Wodehouses drool over French cuisine. Wodehouse’s celebrated French chef, anatole, has always been a key bargaining chip in negotiations to extricate Bertie Wooster from the soup he usually finds himself in. 

Coffees and Conversations from the city that gave the world the Café

The Sacré-Cœur Basilica at Montmartre

Dining out is serious business in Paris and has been so for far longer than any other place in the world. You could choose to eat in a Café, a Bistro, a Brasserie, or a Crêperie³. The food is delectable and expensive-a meal in Paris with wine can cost anywhere upwards of 20 Euros per person. The confit de canard (duck), the chèvre (goat cheese) pastas, the moules-frites (mussels and fries), the Crème brûlées and the vins (wines) that I had at various times on this trip were absolutely delightful, my preference for vegetarian food notwithstanding. But dining in Paris is as much about the company as it is about food. You catch up with old friends and even meet new ones over long leisurely dinners. One dinner I had lasted for 2.5 hours. No plates were cleared until the last person on the table had finished eating and no check was produced until we asked.

Paris lights up at dusk

The notorious French working culture was inevitably the topic of conversation that night. ‘Is it really like that?’ we asked our French friend we met over dinner that night, after discussing a few horror stories about how the French (don’t) work. He smiled. “It’s always a bit exaggerated. A 60 hour work week for people like us is not uncommon at all. Nowadays it might only be the lower ranking staff like bank tellers who can pack up and leave at 5 everyday. Anyone who holds a position of responsibility and has the ambition to build a career had better think twice about how he works”. A highly educated fresh graduate, perhaps he represented a changing face of the French workforce (one that spoke English very well). And he never spoke a truer word. With two rating agencies stripping France of its AAA rating and a not-so-veiled threat to do likewise from the third⁴, the France is going to have to pull together its game, and soon. One misstep and it may find itself on the path to join its Mediterranean neighbors in the south.  But change is slow. Some things will be hard to let go of, and I can very well imagine why.  A passing mention of his 50 ruddy days of vacation a year was enough to leave us green with envy.

The glittering city seen from Montmartre

“I feel so nice when someone makes the effort to learn and speak French. We’re rather proud of our language, and appreciate it when someone takes notice of it”, he said, steering the conversation to calmer waters and echoing the sentiments of many other French men and women I met through the trip. A little ‘Bon Jour’ and ‘Excusé Moi’ and ‘Merci’ can change the tone of a conversation.  French is indeed a very beautiful language. Other merits of a language apart, it sounds incredibly musical to the ears, far more so than English or any other language I know. You only have to hear a French song like La Vie En Rose to realize that the language was built for music, with its nasal ‘ain’s, the curvy ‘oi’s, the sensual ‘j’s ‘ and the very French ‘u’s (made by pronouncing an ‘ee’ but puckering your lips as if to kiss). Even the soft throaty ‘r’s manage to join in the harmony. German on the other hand sounds like chain saws, and many Indian languages, like rattling trains.

The Mona Lisa holds court at the Louvre

A medieval German bust of Christ 

That very satisfying dinner had come on the heels of a very rainy afternoon well-spent at the Louvre. I doubt if any other museum in the world is so famous, and has so many visitors who couldn't care less about history and art. I know people who would prefer water-boarding at Guantanamo to visiting museums. And yet they all have visited the Louvre. Their recollections of  the place usually consist of statistics like the 10 miles they walked inside the museum in a single day, and the 20 minutes within which they managed to ‘cover the whole of Renaissance and Ancient Egypt’. Well, I decided to spend 20 minutes at the entrance with a map instead, and  concluded that I only wanted to see the Dutch and Italian paintings, the Marble Sculptures and Napoleon III’s apartment. And to start with, I made a beeline for the Mona Lisa. 

The Marble Warrior

At the end of the day, I walked very few miles at the Louvre, but had more than enough time to marvel at the lush works of art that stood arrayed before me.  These masters have shown that heroism, pathos, love, pain, all can be carved out of stone and frozen on to a canvas. It must have taken a detailed study of human anatomy, years of practicing their workmanship, and finally, a heart to feel everything that you wanted your viewer to feel. The Dutch landscapes, for instance, have the power to stop you in your tracks.  They take you straight to the hills and rivers and woods of the European countryside, under the open skies.

The Louvre

But nothing comes close to the Impressionists’ works that I saw at the Musée D’Orsay the day before. It was a great pity that I could not capture them with my camera. The Impressionists paint light. A summer afternoon under the trees, the afternoon sun on the river, the sunlit fields and woods, the pale winter sunshine on a snowy day, the hedges full of flowers and the sky full of colors, the city streets glistening under the lights of the night: every Impressionist painting that I saw took my heart away. Renoir, Monet, Manet and others have given the world an enduring gift-a bit of sunshine on a canvas.

Autumn sunshine at the Luxembourg Gardens

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3. Café : a restaurant primarily serving coffee as well as pastries and light meals such as sandwiches 

Brasserie: A type of French restaurant with a relaxed, upscale setting, which serves single dishes and other meals. A brasserie can be expected to have professional service, printed menus, and, traditionally, white linen —unlike a bistro which may have none of these. Typically, a brasserie is open every day of the week and serves the same menu all day 

Bistro: a small restaurant serving moderately priced simple meals in a modest setting. Bistros are defined mostly by the foods they serve. French home-style cooking with robust earthy dishes, and slow-cooked foods like cassoulet, a bean stew, are typical 

Crêperie: a takeaway restaurant or stall, serving crêpes as a form of fast food or street food, or may be a more formal sit-down restaurant.

4.Standard and Poors and Moodys have downgraded France's sovereign debt rating from AAA and Aaa to AA+ and Aa1 respectively in 2012 while Fitch has a negative outlook with its AAA rating

Impossible City?

Changing times

A whirling dancer at the Desert Safari

The Muezzin’s call floated across the glass panels, white tiles and soaring ceilings of the building. It was loud enough to not be missed but soft enough to not startle me in the air-conditioned quietness. My eyes were instantly drawn back to the signage displayed everywhere. Next to  every sign for restrooms and drinking water were the stylized figures of a lady in an abaya and a man in a guthra (head-scarf) kneeling in prayer. ’The Prayer Rooms for men and women are separate’, I registered mentally, and cast a furtive glance around to see if I should stand up in reverence. No one seemed to react to the slow, melodic and unmistakable chanting. So I continued reading my P.G. Wodehouse and waiting for my friend due to arrive in a couple of hours.

It was noon and I was in the waiting gallery of Terminal 3 of DXB (Dubai International Airport), one of the largest buildings in the world by sheer floor space. All of that space is exclusively dedicated to Emirates, the country’s national carrier. (There are two more terminals for others). Flights from Christchurch, Karachi, Muscat and Europe were scrolling across the display counter, and below me I could see the baggage arrival section that I had taken some 15 minutes to walk across. Baggage belts stood in two rows, some churning out bags, others silent, making the place look like a factory floor. Beyond the glass walls, a city shimmered in the desert heat in hues of beige and khaki. Over the next three days my friend and I would visit a place that almost everyone I knew seemed to have already visited, and talked about as if it were a distant suburb of some Indian city. ‘Better late than never’, I said, going across a mental checklist. ‘Dubai: Check’.

The Burj-Al-Arab

Sunset in the Sands

It is easier for a foreigner to get by in Dubai knowing Hindi rather than English. Expatriates make up more than 3 quarters of the population, and more than half of them are from the Subcontinent. Besides, cultural imports like Bollywood make their mark on the locals. Arabs love Hindi films. Comparing the dialogues with the Arabic subtitles can be one way of learning Hindi. But despite the South Asian invasion, Arabic cultural influences are everywhere. Local men unhesitatingly wear the kandura (the long white robe),the guthra and the associated accessories. The delicate slender fingers of the Arabic script can be seen on every sign-board, shop front, and shopping bag. Mosques dot the city landscape which has a profile no more than 2 or 3 storeys high except in the down town. Dry spiny palm fronds jut out from behind high compound walls. And above all, the desert makes its presence felt everywhere, in the yellowish dust on the road sides, the baked dry plots of land that lie vacant, and even in the lush green lawns that are always seen with a fine spray of water from the sprinklers shimmering under a relentless sun.

Ready for Dune Bashing

I wonder where the term ‘Dune-bashing’ was coined. It could be better described as Passenger-bashing, in an SUV in top working condition, blaring Arabic music that blends in with screaming passengers, and driven over sand-dunes with the reckless abandon of a drunken camel. It’s a great ride to start your trip of Dubai with and is a part of the famous Dubai Desert Safari. We took the trip on our very first day, and I was glad to get up close and personal with the desert right away-it was my first look at any desert. It kind of lived up to my expectations-it was sandy alright, and dry, with stunted bushes dotting the landscape. But we hadn’t gone too far from the city, the mineral water bottles strewn in the sand were proof of it, and there always seemed to be a busy highway with a little hamlet right across the next dune.

Arabian Nights

Golden Butterfly

The evening ended in a desert camp, with a stage in the centre, and low seating on rugs all around to eat,drink and watch the performers. I had ended my trip to Turkey last year with the slight regret of not having seen a belly dance performance – which I was able make up for in ample measure here. The music can only be described as a heady melody with a sensuous throbbing rhythm. The belly dancer curved, writhed and gyrated like a snake, as if the music had been cast into flesh. We went back to the hotel wondering how the same society that asks its women to wear long black abayas reconciles itself with this ancient art-form that must have had tribal origins. In the distance were the lights of downtown Dubai, as we sped down the freeway into the night.

The Dubai Mall and 'The Address' on the right

“They have very little oil, they’ve turned to tourism, shopping and real estate to make money. The real estate bubble was pricked a few years ago though...”, said my friend’s husband on the second day as they drove us around The Palm. This friend of mine has been living in Dubai  with her husband for the past few years and I met up with the couple for dinner after an evening at the Dubai Mall.

Viewing Gallery atop Burj Khalifa

The Palm is one of Dubai’s many extravagant real estate projects that lie waiting for the times to turn again. Built on reclaimed land stretching into the sea in the shape of a palm frond, the place looked particularly desolate at night, with no pedestrians on the streets and lights switched on in less than half the luxury apartments. This was in sharp contrast to the Dubai Mall. The place overflowed with people, designer brand stores, eateries and entertainment, all inside a sleek, sparkling, warmly lit and climate-controlled building of immense proportions. We had taken a full 20 minutes to just drive out of the seven storeyed parking lot.

“How do you like living here?” I asked my friends over a Lebanese dinner. They lived a three hour flight away from home, enjoyed the comforts of first world living, had plenty of company of fellow-men from the home country and enjoyed a 1 AED to 13 INR currency conversion rate. They even had a two day weekend, on Friday and Saturday. “And the earnings are completely tax-free”, they said. Not a particularly bad deal, eh?

Impossible City

The Burj Khalifa is a magnificent building in downtown Dubai, and is the world’s tallest. Stretching almost a kilometre into the sky, it looks across a landscape that looks highly improbable to say the least. Dubai has risen out of nowhere, in a land with almost no natural resources. (The meagre reserves of oil don’t really count for much of its revenues). What it does have is a narrow inlet of the Arabian Gulf, which forms the Dubai Creek, and has allowed the small pearl-diving community to develop into a port and a trading hub. The Al Maktoum family has ruled this place for years and have played a crucial role in deciding the city’s fate. The earlier ruler dredged the Dubai Creek for the first time, allowing larger vessels to dock, and giving a huge boost to its status as a trading hub. The current ruler has adopted the strategy to develop the region as a centre for business and tourism. It was he who spearheaded grandiose projects like The Palm. ‘Well, they’re at least doing something even if it looks like a gamble’, I said to my friend, as we looked at the Palm and other equally grandiose reclamation projects that lay unfinished just off the coast.

By-lanes of Grand Souk

Gold Souk

After the towers and malls, we wanted to have a look at the old quaint side of the city on our final day. We spent it wandering down the crowded sections of the old city around the creek, called the Deira. (The other, more developed side of the creek where we were put up, is called Bur Dubai). They have bazaars here, the lanes are called souks, and they have different ones selling different kinds of merchandise. The Gold Souk is not to be missed, of course. But the dark shaded lanes of all souks hold many interesting sights, sounds and smells worth taking in.

It was my first time in a desert climate, and the sun was everywhere during the day. A walk down a city block in the sun was enough to leave me dazed. But step into the shade, and I could appreciate the crisp dry air, clear skies, and balmy temperatures heralding the approaching winter.  We were told the place turns into a baking oven during summer, and no one dares to step out. Even schools close at the height of summer. The late October sun was enough to convince me of that. It had already got the better of us and we decided to cut short our walking tour of the old city.

The Dusky Beauty

The Green Eyed Half-Face

We spent some time instead at a small Cafe by the creek having a traditional middle-eastern lunch of cold salads. Save for the one Lebanese dinner with my local friend, the rest of our food in the hotel and on the Desert Safari had been Indian, without even asking for it. I wouldn’t blame them though-the bus-loads of Indian tourists did make it feel like a suburb of Surat or Ahmedabad. So the effort to find some authentic Arabic cuisine was worth it. Besides, we were joined at lunch by the local cats that ran along the water’s edge from table to table, getting fed lunch scraps. At our table they had to earn their food by posing for my camera first.

Later that afternoon I was back in Terminal 3 of DXB for my flight back. I realised that I had missed out the one great purpose that most people land up in Dubai for:Shopping. But I wasn’t sure if that had detracted from or added to my experience.  I think the era of coveting stuff bought in Dubai is over anyways, for malls all over the world are notoriously identical these days.  If anything did not define Dubai for me, it was the malls. Nevertheless, I decided that tradition shall be adhered to. A box of dates stuffed with candied orange peel, with a ridiculous price tag, was my purchase from DXB Terminal 3. Less than an hour later I was in an Emirates A330, on my way back. As expected from one of the world's few profitable and renowned airlines, the service was crisp, efficient and courteous. And as expected it was provided by personnel, most of whom were not Arab.

The Spine of the Peninsula

Layered Basalt, Mahabaleshwar

Road to Sinhagad
The Lion Fort

If you happen to be flying into Mumbai from a south-easterly direction during the day, you cannot miss them. Just as the descent into Mumbai is announced, the dusty plains suddenly break up into long rectangular and jagged hills. A dam here and there, a river snaking its way, a patch of unbroken forest, and bare step-like cliffs – the details are all the more visible as the aircraft loses altitude. They disappear as quickly as they appear, and soon the creeks, mangroves and slums of Mumbai replace the view, before you touch down.

The Western Ghats form a 1600km long wall against the western coast of India, starting near the southern border of the state of Gujarat, down to southern tip of India. Himalayas may be the more famous of the Indian mountain ranges, but the Western Ghats are far older. They are remnants of volcanic activity when the Indian landmass broke away from Madagascar, on its way to ram in Eurasia and push up the Himalayas. They are, in fact, the faulted western edge of the Deccan Plateau, created by layers of volcanic rock. Hence the steep cliff-like western slopes, and the gentle, at times barely discernible, eastern slopes.

The Scorpion's Sting, Lohagad, The Iron Fort

They’ve walled off a narrow strip of coastal plains to their west from the rest of India. Called the Konkan coast in the north, the Canara coast further down, and the Malabar coast near the southern end, this is the land that greeted the first western traders to come to India in search of trade, and later, colonies.

The Ghats are a couple of hours drive from two of the biggest cities in the state of Maharashtra, Mumbai and Pune. For guys like me who grew up here, it is almost impossible not to have visited the hill-stations and forts in the Ghats on picnics and treks. Most visits were revelations though - middle school history and geography made sure that we knew about these hills in as uninteresting and hopelessly pedagogic a way as possible.

Atop Lohagad

Monsoon Clouds 
Sinhagad 

Locally called the Sahyadri Mountains, the Ghats provided significant military advantage to those who held control over them. The flat topped hills made for perfect military outposts and watch towers over the few navigable passes from the plateau down to the coast. Numerous forts have been built at strategic locations, to control the valleys and trade routes they overlooked. Where the cliff-faces were not steep enough, they were blasted using explosives to create sheer rock walls hundreds of feet high. And where that was not enough, massive stone embankments were constructed, many of them strong enough to be still standing for over half a millenium.

In a period pre-dating the use of motorised vehicles and aircraft, it is easy to see why a few hundred people armed with canons and guns could hold the fort - and effectively hold the surrounding countryside. The roots of the Maratha Empire can be traced to here. In its early years, Marathas, the local warrior peoples, held their own in these hills against the Deccan Sultans and the mighty Mughal Empire for decades, with the help of guerrilla warfare. Now, are all that’s needed to visit these forts is a fit pair of legs, some endurance to the sun and thirst, and a love of the outdoors-they make for great weekend hikes.

Road through the Ghat forest, Mahabaleshwar

Fruit Crushes, Mahabaleshwar

The Western Ghats profoundly affect climate and life, in ways that are now taken for granted. India’s south-west monsoons hit the Ghats before they can cross over into the peninsula, causing heavy precipitation on their western slopes. The coastal plains and the Ghats are much wetter, greener and tropical than the dry grasslands further in. The climates of Mumbai and Pune are testimony to this fact-incidentally, Pune with its hot dry summers and cold winters is definitely more liveable than coastal Mumbai, which is always humid and warm, save for a few months of winter.

Further south, on the Malabar coast, the Ghats create the climate that allows the cultivation of spices. Spices were the reason why Vasco Da Gama set sail for India, and why Columbus, though he set out for the same destination, bumped into America. In the higher reaches, the Ghats create a  cool climate that European colonisers sought so much in the tropics, and created the many hill-stations that dot the range.

Monsoon Torrents
Magod Falls, North Karnataka 

Fresh Produce
 Mahabaleshwar

Moreover, dozens of rivers arise in the Ghats, and depending on whether they flow west or east, they either have a few dozen or upto a thousand five hundred kilometres to flow across. The ones that happen to flow down the eastern slopes of the Ghats become the life-line of millions across the peninsula. So in a way, though the Ghats block rainfall from the Deccan Plateau on the one hand, they also provide perennial water supply to these parched lands on the other.

Down south, the terrain and the climate in the Ghats have given rise to vast stretches of semi-evergreen and evergreen forests. Sholas, unique high-altitude mountain forests of dense short tree cover interspersed with grassland-occur nowhere else but here. The richness of the flora and fauna caused this area to be recognised as one of the world’s Biodiversity Hotspots-an area holding a great wealth of diverse plant and animal life, but under intense pressure from population. They are also being considered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sunset, Lohagad

Monsoon Freshness, Sinhagad

All in all, the Western Ghats are special. They are home to some of the wildest and most pristine natural habitats in India, a huge huge attraction for me. The Shola forests around Kudremukh National Park, the rain forest around Agumbe, and the many national parks around the Niligiri and the Annamalai hills are very high on the to-visit list. With some luck, I shall write about them here.

WAUMJKGPNFMA

Island of the Gods

The similarities were unmistakeable..the swaying palms, the small shacks all along the streets, the rented scooters and motorbikes thronging the roads, the many sea-food places advertising the best food in town and the swarms of European and American tourists everywhere..Bali was a larger version of Goa, India's most famous sea-side resort.

Bali has a very strong Hindu culture, in fact it has its own version of Hinduism-Balinese Hinduism. Hinduism is not a stranger to many different sects and streams, all with their own Gods and Godesses gathering under its umbrella. It's probably the most diverse religion in the world, and Balinese Hinduism, with its presiding deity, Acintya, is one of these many forms.

Thanks to this religious influence, Bali has a multitude of temples, with their own unique architecture, motifs and ornamentation. The dwarapalas or the temple guardians at the gates here are some of the best I've seen. With their fierce faces and fangs, they reminded me of Chinese dragons and the ornate statuary of South India at the same time.

Here's a closer look at one of the Balinese temples, bang in the centre of Kuta, the town close to the Ngurah Rai International Airport. All around the temple, which formed a largish traffic circle, the evening traffic screamed and honked and fumed, and shops buzzed with people. And yet, right in the centre was this calm little temple that looked strangely out of place.

Other Balinese temples are located in much more spectacular locales than traffic islands.The temple at Tanah Lot for instance is built right into the sea, on a giant monolithic piece of rock jutting out of the sea a few hundred yards from the coast. It can be reached on foot during low tide, but during high tide it is guarded by fierce waves and a frothing churning sea.

I also happened to witness this evening prayer ceremony taking place at one of the shrines on the mainland near the Tanah Lot temple. A prayer is beautiful by itself, but a setting like this makes it seem as if the prayer itself has come alive in the sky,the clouds and the sea.

Bali's traditions and customs are as beautiful as its scenery. Its a pity we did not have time to watch any traditional Balinese dance performances, but they're quite beautiful watch, with splendid traditional costumes and finery. And equally splendid is Balinese food, with it's liberal use of spices, seafood and rice. Seafood lovers, its your paradise; vegetarians, its a golden chance to convert.

Bali is famous for is its coffee. We did manage to go to a coffee plantation located on the higher slopes of Bali's hills.As we reached there at around 4ish in the afternoon, it was coffee time already and the aroma of freshly roasted coffee was very welcome in the cool mountain air. We were ready for a steaming hot cup of coffee, or hot chocolate or herbal tea, and we tried all of that. We also tried a very unique Balinese coffee that makes for very intersting coffee time conversations, if not anything else.

The Asian Palm Civet, a small cat-sized animal, produces this highly sought after and expensive coffee. It's called Kopi Luwak ( Kopi = Coffee, and Luwak = Civet), and believe it or not, its made out of coffee beans defecated by this blighter, the Luwak. Some explanation is in order. The Palm Civets love eating coffee berries. They tend to pick the ripest and the sweetest berries, and thereby the ripest coffee beans. Moreover, the digestive system of the civet breaks down the protiens that give the coffee bean it's bitterness. The enzymes also 'add' to the flavour. The rest of the bean, stripped of its bitterness, passes out undigested. The beans are then lightly roasted to produce this coffee. We tried it out. It was a bit anticlimactic though, it seemed quite unremarkable to me at least. ( The coffee beans in the picture above are the regular ones.)

Batik is Indonesia's gift to the world of textiles. We  had a look at this traditional process of block printing, at a handloom centre. This is the stuff that interior designers are probably looking for all the time, to get that 'ethnic' look and feel. The cotton fabrics were indeed quite handsome, and we saw exactly how the painstaking process of handweaving them was.

As the sun set on the last day of our visit to Bali, I was thinking about our short 3 day trip. Bali has something to offer everyone. Whitewater rafting, paragliding, parasailing, scuba diving, spas and massages, shopping, great food, traditional performing arts, a national park for nature lovers, temples with some eye-catching architecture, plenty of opportunities for the photography buff and nightlife for the party lover (HardRock Cafe, Kuta, has a mean rock band). Of course its a paradise  for honeymooners, but that is equally true for families, friends and casual vacationers. Whoever you are, the Island of the Gods has something for you.