12 books to read in India

1. White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga.

What: Corrupt, psychotic and wonderfully entertaining Bangalore businessman with a murderous past in Delhi writes nightly letters to the Chinese prime minister.

For whom: People who believe India is a country of ancient wisdom and spirituality.

An eye-opening 2008 Booker Prize winner. Thumbs up.

(An earlier comment can be found here.)

2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

What: A mother of two has a steamy affair with an untouchable and everything goes down the drain. Features pedophilia, Indian communism, caste system terror and a heart breaking love story.

For whom: Strong gutted bookworms with a passion for poetic novels.

An enthralling yet demanding read. Booker Prize winner from 1997.

3. Are You Experienced? by William Sutcliffe

What: English backpacker gets stoned in Manali, laid in Goa and sick from a curry. Features every single cliché in India's backpacker scene, with the sex ashram story as a highlight.

For whom: For everyone traveling to India to find out who they really are.

A fun quick read. Highly recommended.

4. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

What: An orphaned daughter of an Indian cosmonaut moves in with her grandpa and faces the atrocities of the Nepalese uprising in Darjeeling in the mid-eighties.

For whom: Those who've been wondering how Heidi would have turned up had she been raised in the politically unstable Himalayas instead of the Swiss Alps.

Another great novel on modern India. Booker Prize winner from 2006.

5. Holy Cow, An Indian Adventure by Sarah MacDonald

What: A young Aussie woman travels around India and is oh so taken aback by the cruelty of current day India. Plot spoiler: In retrospect India turns out to be a fantastic life changing experience. Note, that this might also not be a spoiler as I could not be bothered to finish the stupid book.

For whom: Members of the baggy pants brigade who would just love to tell you how their two weeks in Arambol have completely reformed their outlook on life and that they are now thinking of getting a tribal tattoo.

A rubbish read. Listed here as a warning since it's still sold in every backpacker neighborhood in India.

6. Son of the Circus, by John Irving.

What: Emigrant doctor returns to Mumbai seeking the gene that causes achondroplasia dwarfism. Were else would one find appropriate dwarf subjects for study than in Indian circuses?

For whom: Bigoted John Irving fans who would like to see their literary hero fail when he takes his act away from his native Maine.

A New York Times bestseller. I do not understand why.

7. The yearbook of Indian Cosmopolitan magazine

What: Middle class Indian women struggle between tradition and modernity. Features refreshing articles on how to make your arranged marriage work and how to please your husband by serving him meat dishes (no beef of course).

For whom: Those wanting to time travel back to the age when it was still extravagant for married women to have jobs.

Even if you would never read Cosmopolitan, give the Indian version a try. It gives "bizarre" a whole new meaning.

8. Mahabharata written down by Ganesh, the elephant headed deity and dictated by Vyasa, considered to be an avatar of Vishnu, the All-Pervading essence of all beings.

What: A hindu epic. Features lots of gods and 1,8 million words. According to the Wikipedia roughly 10 times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined and roughly 5 times longer than Dante's Divine Comedy.

For whom: People desperate to look cool.

I liked the Bollywood version I saw.

9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel

What: A shipwrecked boy from Pondicherry sails the world on a life boat with a zoo and ends up alone with the tiger after the beast has eaten up all the rest of the animals.

For whom: People who drink Sprite. Impossible is nothing. Thirst is indeed a major issue if you are shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific.

An entertaining Booker Prize winner from 2002.

10. The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation: As Taught by S. N. Goenka by William Hart

What: A guide book to Vipassana meditation. Features lessons on how to be relieved from suffering through the practice of meditation.

For whom: People who don't know the meaning of the word "cynical". Popular among those who've just been divorced or fired.

A curious read.

11. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

What: Australian robber escapes from jail and finds himself living in a Bombay slum where he finally turns into good but still remains tough when needed.

For whom: All those romantics who in secret admire righteous criminals (as if they existed) and either a) enjoy reading long and boring pseudophilsophical dialogues or b) are practical enough to skip all those boring parts of the book and concentrate in the essential action.

A good read, anyway.

12: Ram Ram India by Nick Rossiter and Alex Thompson

What: Two English university graduates decide to cycle through India and leave preparations for those, who need to prepare. Everyone can ride a bike, eh?

For whom: Eternal optimists who need reassurance that planning is not essential. Travel planning perfectionists, who need proof, that planning is everything and lack of it destroys everything.

A Hilarious read.

5+2 alcoholic drinks you could try this weekend

1. Disco Gin, India. The blinding cousin of Bombay Sapphire smells like catfish and boasts a rare oily texture. No mixer in the world will soften the blow. Dance steps recommended when you have to make a run for the bathroom.

2. Dynasty, China. This red wine can be distinguished by its unique bouquet which gives a whole new meaning to the word "stale". The imaginative makers of this wine must have been inspired by the dryness of the Gobi desert and the thinness of the finest rice paper. There is no way Dynasty could be served in France without the sommelier facing 2 years behind bars. Thank God it used to be so expensive one could only afford it once.

3. Bia Hoi, Vietnam. As featured in Wikipedia: "The beer is brewed daily and each bar gets a fresh batch delivered every day in plastic jugs. It is a very light (~3% alcohol) refreshing lager at a fraction of the cost of draft or bottled beer in the Western-style bars. Bia Hơi production is informal and not monitored by any health agency." Best to be consumed in gallons (in the pic on the left) while sitting on kid's sized plastic chairs by the road side. Taste, texture, and smell vary from endearing to somewhat odd.

4. Cachaça, Brazil. This rum like liquor made from fermented sugarcane juice is best known as the basis of the popular drink caipirinha. Should you like to be different this weekend try this: Buy the cheapest bottle of Cachaça somewhere in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro's slums. Carry it to your home country. Consume it like the Brazilian alchies, straight and luke warm. Bonus prize: There's a fair chance that you'll pass out in the subway.

5. Slivovitz, the Balkans. If consumption of this plum brandy is began in early teen years, chances are that by the age of 14 the future bum can boast a skin free of zits and his first wrinkles the following year. It's also known from Swedish musical contest Melodifestivalen, where the brilliant group Andra Generationen performed a song called "Kebabpizza Slivovitza."

+ 1 Red Horse, Philippines. I've praised the world's most sympathetic beer earlier here.

+ 2 KLB Rasberry Wheat, Ontario, Canada. I wrote about a travel disaster related to world's most refreshing beer here.

20 symptoms that tell it is time to leave India

1. You don't swear anymore if you step on cow dung.

2. It's July and the monsoon is at its worst but you are still in Goa, playing to be a baba and living in the jungle.

3. You've found a way to make the 10 rupee begging kids to give you money.

4. Explicit carvings in places of worship don't make you want to photograph them anymore.

5. You drink tap water in order to cut expenses.

6. You pray to Hanuman and think it's perfectly normal for Westeners to pray to a monkey god even if they still were Christian yesterday.

7. You manage to spend days without anyone asking you "what is your country" or "what is your job".

8. You sport natural dread locks and think they look cool.

9. Blood red teeth and gums from betel nuts don't seem gross to you anymone. In fact, that's just how your mouth looks like.

10. You've developed immunity to seeing deformed children.

11. The old hippies in Pushkar seem neither tragic nor funny to you anymore.

12. You don't think it's weird when an internet cafe owner strikes a conversation with you about how having sex with horses is good for manhood.

13.You can't remember the last time you had Delhi belly.

14. You can describe filth with the same precision as the Inuits do when decribing snow.

15. You know your way around the old town of Varanasi.

16. You don't freak out if you get bitten by a stray dog as you figure that you probably would have had rabies already if you were meant to have it.

17. Even Indians understand why you are not married.

18. You don't get angry if you see a rape victim's name and photo in a newspaper.

19. You see a green dog and think nothing of it.

20. When you wake up in the middle of the night because a cockroach is crawling up your nose your first thought is not "fuck" but "I'd like some chai".

Want to read more? Ten additional symptoms can be found here.

Why to be a cheapskate?

Why would anyone choose to stay in a 3 dollar shed with a bucket cold water shower when for 5 dollars you could get a nice bungalow on the beach ? Why to be such a cheapskate?

While most backpackers would claim that they are so frugal only to make their dollar stretch longer, this is not entirely the case. There are other reasons to holding to your pennies, some of which are quite shameful to admit.

1. Being cheap is an essential part of the game. Getting to tell your fellow travelers that they overpayed big time is like Nelson ha-haing Millhouse after pulling poor old Millhouse's pants down in front of the class. It's just harmless fun.

2. Not only is it fun to make others look stupid, you also get traveler street credibility by letting them know that you are au curant with the latest of the country you are in. This in turn makes you feel like a hero, something you deserve after sleeping in that shed surrounded by manic roosters on amphetamine.

3. You want to make sure you are not paying a foreigner's price and getting fooled. While haggling down a ricksha ride from 40 rupees (58 euro cents) to 30 (45 euro cents) might not seem to be the sanest thing in the world to do, it's still annoying to find out you fell for a tourist price. Too bad if that 13 cents you saved actually might have mattered to the ricksha driving father of ten - if it didn't why would he try to overcharge you? (Probably just because he often can and possibly because the ricksha drivers have a secret society set up as venue for boasting about how much money they pulled from the absent minded tourist gaping at the holy cows on the street.)

4. Staying in the bottom end guesthouses you'll meet like minded bums with whom you can babble on and on about what a fantastic cheapskate you are while drinking warm rum from glasses cut from empty water bottles and sitting on a veranda with a view to a pile of dirt.

Why to count countries?

Why to count how many countries you've been to? Earlier on I wrote about country bagging, the art of traveling to as many countries as possible. The idea was met with a some criticism from bores who either think it's

a) stupid because the important thing is to experience another culture and thus learn valuable lessons or

b) useless as the only place where country count matters is in a backpacker reunion for the class of Goa, spring 1971, or

c) pompous to count countries since they haven't been to as many countries

as I have.

As the argument c is perfectly valid, I'm not going to argue against that, and anyway, I made it up, so it doesn't really count. The argument b has more truth to it, but as there indeed are places like the Old Hippies Forum on the internet where old hippies can boast about Goa in the seventies, I take argument b as stillborn.

Which leaves me to tackle with the argument a. Is it stupid to count countries when really, you should be observing, experiencing and learning?

No. And here's why:

1. Learning and experiencing? You might as well book a cheap holiday in Bulgaria, experiment with Rakia, the local brandy and learn that it does give you a nasty hangover. Who would have thought.

2. Counting countries gives you a reason to keep traveling after you've been to the My Sons of the world (My Son, in Hoi An, Vietnam, is the single most boring Unesco World Heritage site in the world, have a look at the picture on the left) in case you haven't come up with anything more fun to do in your life and collecting stamps is not an option.

3. It's actually fun to see how people react to hearing about your country bagging project by starting to count how many countries they've been to.

4. Begging the question: Aren't most things we do stupid in one way or

another aside from helping the starving children of Africa - and even that has been questioned by militant Darwinists.

5. Country bagging and the more mighty reasons for travel are hardly mutually exclusive. You can have both, it just takes a little time, that's all. Bummer!

Traveling on the Google Analytics map

As this blog is about to get its 1000th visit after being on the Google Analytics tracker for two weeks I thought I'd do a geographical analysis of where the readers are from. It's almost travel blogging, which I will begin exactly 4 weeks from now.

1. My favorite reader

My favorite reader hails from Roukalahti. Never heard of Roukalahti? Me neither, so I did a Google search on Roukalahti and found out that it's a small township in Liperi, Joensuu, Eastern Finland. This wonderful and tasteful person has checked this blog quite a few times by now and has usually spent some time here as well. Who ever you are, I love you. Unless you're an ex. If you are, you are just pathetic. (And should you be pedantic, I should add that this info is actually from Sitemeter. Roukalahti is apparently too small to appear in Google Analytics.)

2. Geographical overlay

This blog has been accessed from a whopping 49 countries, Finland unsurprisingly being the focal point. After Finland come the US, the UK, Oz, Philippines, Germany, Ireland (Cheers Dara!), Canada, Sweden and as 10th India, from where this blog has had 9 visits

.

3. Surprise readers

Out of these 49 the blog has had one single visit from 19 countries. Among these visits there's one from Colombia which lasted an amazing 18 minutes and 40 seconds and consisted of 9 page views.

4. Readers in Finland

On a more detailed note, this blog has been visited from 46 towns in Finland, with the highest concentration of visits in Helsinki. Now that's hardly any news as I've forced all my friends to click here. But why on earth has Pori taken a second place? I so hope Ässät gets a super team together for the upcoming season.

5. Readers by cities

All in all this blog has had a visit from 257 cities, the most peculiar ones being Enkhuizen, Uijongbu, Givatayim, Lake Montezuma and Beverly Hills.

My first trip - A 7-year-old's perspective on traveling in the Soviet Union

1. Let your parents, who've been abroad once, to Vienna, Austria, book a 10-day holiday in Caucasus, Soviet Union. Terrain to be covered: The future Armenia and Georgia with a side pass to Azerbaijan.

2. Behave relatively well during the 6 hour wait for a connecting flight in the Leningrad airport, the architecture of which was probably inspired by the blossoming prisons of the pre-perestroika era. In awe of the sheer amount of concrete around you, contemplate the communist doctrine.

3. Fly to Tbilisi on an Aeroflot flight populated by about 150 Finnish tourists smoking their lungs out. Let your condescending mom tell you how most of them were on their way to the Soviet summer drinking den Sothsi and that's why they behaved a little oddly.

4. Once in Tbilisi get the queen sized suite and seriously start believing that this is how you will always be treated when staying in a hotel.

5. Marvel the amount of water fountains and ponds in Tbilisi. Begin your career in country counting by keeping track of how many ponds you see. Who would have thought there were lots of fountains in the periphery of Soviet Union? Seriously, I'm sure they were plenty.

6. Eat cherries for the first time in your life, not knowing that 24 years on you still reminisce how those cherries, bought from a street stall on the side of a road, were the best cherries in the world.

7. Be surprised by the fact that random people want to touch your hair, which at the time wasn't even that blonde. Forget you initial wonder when the same people offer you sickeningly sweet Eastern block style chocolate.

8. Ride a bus for ages to get to Yerevan, while stopping on the way in Azerbaijan (pic on top). 24 years later wonder what could you possible have done to stop your parents from taking you to, say, Legoland, in Billund, Denmark, something which you at 7 probably would have enjoyed more than this god forsaken bus ride to eternity. Thankfully you were perfectly oblivious to the fact that there were a zillion longer bus rides awaiting in the years to come.

9. Once in Yerevan start comparing the cities you've been to which are Tampere in Finland, Tbilisi and Yerevan and possibly Helsinki. Decide you like Tbilisi best.

10. Fly Aeroflot home with the reeking Finnish drunks, one of whom has burnt himself so badly after passing out in the sun that he has to picked up by an ambulance from the plane. Be thankful that your mom is a journalist - otherwise you might have missed this curious insight into traveling in the Soviet Union in the mid-eighties.

Inspired by some old pics I went through this weekend when I was visiting my folks at home.