13 July Jaisalmer, Rajasthan The Thar Desert is selective on who lives or dies and what flourishes or withers. Make no mistake, it has the final word. It is a flat, featureless plain of low, bristly scrub. The Chhalanis and I roll through the Thar in the Chevy hatchback. Conversation among them flows between business and family. I stare fifteen miles into the distance and no changes in the landscape. I cannot help but fear what would happen if a vehicle broke down and there was no assistance. The sixty kilometers ride permits the family to question me. After having explained [View Full Entry]

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14 July Jaisalmer, Rajasthan That there would no air-conditioned coaches on the desert rail line between Bikaner and Jaisalmer made little difference to me. So what? Why should it matter? It is a morning journey. I’ll be in a hotel room by mid-afternoon anyway. But for the padding on the seats, there is little difference between traveling this train in second class or the inferior sleeper class. The masses jump on the hard wooden benches of the sleeper cars, as the empty train halts at Bikaner station twenty minutes before the seven-thirty a.m. departure. Moms apply padding of their own to [View Full Entry]

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12 July Jaisalmer, Rajasthan Mr. Chhalani and his son were there to meet me on the platform as promised. The father speaks in spurts. If you haven’t gotten to know him well enough, you’d think he has a crabby disposition. His deceptive irritability shields an unconditional, yet forceful kindness. Hanging out with the entire Chhalani clan is an exercise in tag-team hospitality. Once one of them is done strangling you with generosity and consideration, he runs to the corner of the ring and slaps the hand of a brother or the lady of the house; on comes the next to smother [View Full Entry]

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9 July Jaipur, Rajasthan The phone rang to his landline at home. His cell phone rings far more often. His primary servant Dinesh, a rather sheepish man, handed me the cordless receiver in order to speak with his boss. “Richard,” Madhukar called out on the other end, “how is everything? Are you comfortable?” Well, yes. I have a two servants looking after me, a private driver at my disposal, and an armed guard for protection. The house is my own and the air conditioning makes my room feel like an Arctic biome. Things are looking pretty good. “Fine, just fine, thank [View Full Entry]

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There’s something to be said for a game named after an insect that takes the better part of a PhD to understand. Having showed the mildest of interest after watching to the side for ten minutes, the eldest man looked at me and pointed the handle end of the bat at my chest. I was seated on some steps to the side of a water pump; my feet reached over the open sewer ditch to the ripped asphalt. “Do you want to bat?” he asked me. I admit I hesitated. Fifteen years ago, I would not have. How hard could it [View Full Entry]

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Whole families had already jumped to the platform before the train came to a complete stop. Long gone was the thoughtful man with whom I shared my open compartment. The overnight train from Calcutta to Jodhpur arrived to collect the masses in Agra two hours late, at ten o’clock in the evening. In a lapse of judgment, I expected ushers to bring meals or snacks and would but from him. But all in the couchettes had spread out their sheets and drawn the drapes across their compartments. Services had ended and it was time to go to sleep. For me that [View Full Entry]

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“You choose! This is your India!” he exclaimed. Pasar’s final destination was also mine, though his journey started twenty-four hours before. We had joined up on the same bus from Agra to Mathura, an eighty-minute journey in a lunchbox on wheels. Having stepped into the chaos of the bus terminal, I asked him if it would matter how we should move forward, either by shared rickshaw or grab one of the several private ones on the side of the road. His emphatic answer pleased me. With a youthful tangled beard and white robe fastened at the waist by a red sash, [View Full Entry]

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30 June Agra, Uttar Pradesh I take joy in the stupidity of others. It also helps conquer boredom. Our rail coach was a blend of foreign daytrippers and uppity Indians who enjoy bossing service personnel around as if they were unresponsive oxen. Across from me sat an antsy Indo-Frenchman heading a group of college interns on a three-day excursion from Delhi. Conditions were ideal to begin with: I had been assigned a window seat and there was a table in front of me to place my notebook. I could stretch my legs to their full length below the seat facing me. [View Full Entry]

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28 June Delhi, India In many ways, Delhi is exactly what I expected it to be. Nothing about the Indian capital has taken me by surprise. It is an effortless analogy to my arrival in Bangkok last year, but with more haze and blaring car horns. The Hotel Indrapasthra anchors a street in Karol Bagh, a district of local shops, idle cycle rickshaws, mediocre restaurants, and banished cheap hotels. Mine is one of many in the same range that offers some privacy, cramped accommodation, and overstaffing to ensure the amiable boss does not have to lift a finger, but to feed [View Full Entry]

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June 29, 2008 Delhi, India No one ever wants to hear about what happens at an airport. Start telling stories of delays at check-in, indigestible airline food, and the in-flight movie, and eyes roll to the back of sockets after they quickly gloss over. But that’s not always true. American Airlines’ terminal at O’Hare International Airport is essentially a massive self-contained, self-sustaining, detached suburb of Chicago. It summons me to give it more than a cursory look beyond the hunt for a connecting departure gate down halls where the last gates are not visible to entering them. Tuesday afternoons cater to [View Full Entry]

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