… riding through Mexico, I realized I was being taken for a
Mexican whenever I spoke Spanish.
America is a place where your origin isn't as important as
what you are capable of doing and who you are as an individual.
… the well known beauty of Medellin women became apparent to
me….. they all possessed a glowing, inherent grace and beauty. I later learned
that plastic surgery is very popular in Colombia and neighboring Venezuela.
Regardless, the wide smiles and pronounced cheekbones brought out the natural
beauty in these women. Their features were in sharp contrast to the men, who
were comparatively average-looking. One can easily pass time over a beer
pondering Columbia’s evident gender ‘imbalance’; a fate shared only by a few
nations. That evening, I mused on stories about travelers who had reached
Columbia and not ventured further because they had been trapped by the beauty
of the women.
Being brown, I felt like I could mingle with the indigenous
population of Peru…..I was intrigued by the fact that chillies had actually
originated in Peru but are hardly used in their local cuisine nowadays.
My reason for leaving Chicago in the cold of March was so
that I could cross the Amazon in August, the driest month of the year in the
rainforest and the safest time to make the crossing solo.
Eudaimonia, found at the intersection of what's true, good
and beautiful, is an oft-forgotten philosophy from Socrates’s time.
I had seen people bathing in public by leaving their
underwear on and found it strange……….. it was perfectly normal, at least in
rural parts of South America, to strip naked if it was to bathe yourself. This
whole continent is quite conservative since Roman Catholicism is the major line
of faith, Primarily in the urban areas. In rural areas, privacy is a luxury
that not many can afford, and people go about their business without putting
much thought into coming across as prudish.
Each positive experience in Brazil was helping me build a
very friendly impression of the country…… the development of the roads with
proper tarmac and regularly spaced distance boards confirmed that Brazil is
much more advanced than Bolivia…….. the road…..the legendary TransAmazonica…..
this road is mythical in the adventure riding community and as I later found
out, even amongst the locals. it was built in the 1970s by the then military
government of Brazil to bring development from the Atlantic Coast deep into the
vast Amazon region. The construction was treacherous as a rain forest is no
easy place to clear a path and then keep it clear. The initial plan was to pave
the whole stretch from West to east, but thankfully to adventurers, it is yet
to be done…… the utmost difficulty in traversing this route. it is an unpaved
road through not just any rainforest, but the Amazon rainforest, which means
the road surface is primarily clay…… it rains eleven months of the year in the
Amazon, being the heaviest around the beginning of the year. Of course, it was
quite intense during the other months as well since it was a rainforest…… I was
pleasantly surprised to see that the Amazon was not a flat plain, as one might
imagine while seeing satellite pictures, but it is instead quite hilly………. My
admiration for good-natured Brazilians was only increasing with each
interaction…. There was something about the openness among Brazilians I had
come across so far that I found very comforting.
Maybe Brazilians have an understanding of how important a
bath is at the end of the day since it is always so humid and hot. This was my
kind of place. …. We walked back to his little hut as I wondered why he had sat
there looking at me while I bathed. But I knew that Brazil was more open than
most cultures and nudity was really nothing special.
At the end of the tour, Mauricio, in a spontaneous act I had
come to love and expect in South America, invited us to a street party in the
evening.
The blinding white salt surface of the Salar de Uyuni raced
ahead of me all the way to the horizon….. This is a 10,582 sq km…. flat, dry
salt lake at 3,656 m (11,955 ft) that doesn't vary by more than a meter across
its whole surface. Due to its near uniform geological flatness and high
reflectivity (being white), the Salar has been used for many decades to
calibrate the altimeters of earth-observing satellites. It's also an easy place
to get lost…… The brine is a solution containing large amounts of different
salts ranging from sodium, potassium, lithium and magnesium. Of those, lithium
has the most economic value. Bolivia harbors about 50 per cent of the known
reserves on this planet and most of these are under the Salar de Uyuni. This
rare substance already in very high demand because lithium batteries power
almost all electronic devices today………. The flatness has been attributed to its
annual flooding, which levels out any changes in the malleable topography.
….. I knew from other travelers that Argentina was a safe
country with an established damping culture….. Argentines are very friendly
people…..
To avoid paying for a doctor, most cargo ships around the
world have welcome no more than twelve passengers on their voyages across the
sea. It's a niche travel sector known as freighter cruises.
Feeling very much at home across South America, I wondered
if my skin color had played a part in that. I have been surprised, time and
time again, at how curious people were about India.
….’ Oh, I'm sorry, you are too late, come again on Monday.’
‘But Sir, the boat is leaving on Monday!’ I pleaded as I thrust my clutch of
documents towards him. He saw the Ashoka emblem on the cover of my passport and
exclaimed, ‘Oh, you’re from India? Amitabh Bachchan is great! I'll help you
out, one second.’ The reference to one of India's Bollywood greats momentarily
stumped me, and I stared at the officer for a second with the papers held out
in my hand before he took them and swept into action. My Indian passport had
worked in my favor…….
Even while Sudan happened to be in the world’s consciousness
for all the wrong reasons, such as the conflicts in Darfur and Abyei and for
it's authoritarian president, other travelers had informed me that the people
of Sudan were one of the most genuine they had encountered in all of Africa…………
Just like Egypt, it [Sudan] was expensive to enter, but once inside, travel was
cheap….. I asked him about his time in India and he said that he loved it,
besides the occasional racial slur that is strangely common against black
people in India
Zambia are being one of the few African countries never to
have had a coup or military dictator….. Unlike Indian migrants who went to
South Africa or other parts of the continent, Indians who came to Zambia (or
Northern Rhodesia as it was known before independence) were not indentured
laborers, but artisans and business people. Contrary to the uneasy relations
between Indians and locals in other African countries, such as Uganda in the 70s,
Zambia has been good to its Indian community, which is maybe why so many stayed
and prospered
…… The popularity of Indian food in South Africa….. it was
intriguing to witness how Indian food had spread into the local cuisine.
Chapati and samosas were very much a part of the staple in a lot of areas…
….. The Hoba meteorite site….. A massive boulder that didn't
look like any rock I had ever seen before. Squat, square, shiny and most
certainly, other-worldly. It had excavated a shallow crater as it crashed into
earth 80,000 years ago…… What remains is the largest known meteorite and lump
of naturally-occurring iron on earth.
The only word of caution they gave me was to remain in the
campgrounds. The risk of snakes and other animals was just too high in Namibia……….
The Namib desert is considered the world's oldest desert. It formed around
fifty-five million years ago and has been arid ever since. In comparison the
Sahara is only around seven years old
Surrounding Deadvlei were the largest sand dunes I had ever
seen. Bid Daddy at the far end of the vlei, soaring almost 325 m (1067 ft)
above, is one of the largest sand dunes in the world. It is an enormous wall of
rust orange sand rising from the desert floor….. This was one of the strangest
places in the world.
in all my travels, I have seen a greater sense of civility
in rural areas then in urban areas…….. unlike the aggression that is so typical
of the plains, people in the hills are a lot friendlier and more amiable,
almost certainly a result of the climate.
……. like most places in India, pollution came with the
passage of people. Alas, it is something I have found be far more pronounced in
India than in most other countries I have visited. The mindlessness with which
I would see people throw empty bottles, candy bar wrappers and plastic bags,
regardless of the national beauty they were in the midst of, remains an
Incomprehensible affront to our country. This bothered me even more because I
know that Indians don't behave the same way abroad. Lamentably it is getting
steadily worse amongst the younger travelers whose lack of shame was all too
evident……. India's attitude towards its environment has become a national shame
Manali-Leh highway is one of the most incredible rides on
the planet and its popularity is well deserved.
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