Why we should run toward Mumbai

This from a New York Time's Op-Ed piece:

But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.
If the rest of the world wants to help, it should run toward the explosion. It should fly to Mumbai, and spend money. Where else are you going to be safe? New York? London? Madrid?
So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. Stimulus doesn’t have to be just economic.

Suketu Mehta

I've always wanted to go to India, and if I had the money, I would go now. Travelling teaches you the paradoxical lesson that nowhere is safe but everywhere is a lot safer than you imagined. Staying at backpackers' hostels you certainly get a biased opinion -- these are people that live, in many cases, just to travel to see the world and get to know its people. And the more obscure or villified the country, the more travellers you meet deny the reports. Venezuela? Be careful, but it's worth the trip. Columbia? Best country to travel in South America. Iran? The nicest and most welcoming people in the world. I'm more cautious than to run toward the explosion, but once the smoke has cleared, and in the wake of cowardly attacks like this, it's our duty to make sure we see the world and understand as much of it as we possibly can.

Expecting the Unexpected

Travel isn't all glamour and high living, great food and warm beds. I currently have bug bites all over my body from a bad bed. My camera was recently taken and so my picture taking days are over, though obviously I'll find some way to take pictures. I won't dwell on this point because it is deeply upsetting. I was luckily able to upload at least most of my pictures to my computer and online.

And while I currently find myself in Mendoza, AR, in the western part of the country, I'm headed back to Buenos Aires and then to Mar del Plata for the Davis Cup final to help out with Tennis.com's Davis Cup coverage, unless something goes wrong between now and then. While my circuitous route around the country is insane and illogical -- I was just in the south, then I took a flight to Salta, in the north and now am headed back cross-country -- it's obviously an opportunity that makes it all worth it.

I've been in Mendoza the last couple days mostly "working" -- helping out with a small travel mag called Get South and it's been nice to just relax and handle some easy writing and editing assignments.

More on the Davis Cup later. Sorry I likely wont be able to post pics...

Why dont Americans travel?

It´s been bothering me that I run into few Americans in my travels here. There simply is no acceptable social construct for traveling abroad, unstructured. I read about 15 percent of Americans have a passport and the ones who do travel do so for structured reasons. Finding out about other cultures, having fun, exploring the world simply isn`t in our blood despite having the means to find out all we want.

Why is that?

In other news, Ive had a whirlwind tour with no photos to show for it because my camera died and I have no way to charge it. Sigh. Im currently in Ancud, Chile, where I saw an incredible display of nature today, pelicans diving into the water and scooping up fish, penguins waddling on small rough looking islands and sea otters clawing at mussels and fish floating on their back. Ancud is a rough, poor Chilean sea town and the main attraction is the penguins. So a 40 minute bus ride later and I was on a small motor boat pulling up alongside these little islands. The water was a phosporecent green, and the air cold and clean. It was an excellent outing.

As soon as possible, I will post photos from Iguazu Falls, one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

Iguazu

I leave tonight for the Iguazu falls, on the far northwest corner of Argentina and home to some of the most spectular waterfalls in the world. The price? A 17-hour bus ride. Wish me luck. --J

Buenos Aires, The Beginning

My teacher at the Spanish school in Buenos Aires where I’ve been taking classes the last couple weeks describes himself as “animal de cuidad” which means what it looks like. We say “city creature,” but it’s become clear after not much time at all here that tapping into one’s animalistic instincts to get around this chokingly crowded but intensely exciting place takes some animalistic instinct. The New York comparisons are frankly apt. This is a place that offers everything, and people pay the daily price while getting a place filled with art and culture, a palpable and religious passion for fútbol (and, to my excitement, tenís) and a gusto for the arts, though it’s certainly a more modest presence than cultural centers like Paris or New York.

The history of Italian immigration has a strong presence, most obviously by way of widespread and accessible pizza, pasta and risotto. In a place that is revered for its parillas or steakhouses, it’s the Spanish jámon – prepared in both traditional and Italian ways – that’s ordered in some variety at least once a day, usually without bothering to look at a menu. You’ll get a menu if you ask for one – but most come in and without hesitation order a jamon y queso to go with their café.

Even after just two weeks in BA – I have one more, filled with the tedium of morning Spanish classes – the palpable itch for space and air is already prescient. They have air here, but it’s filled with smoke, both from untenable traffic and an addiction to cigarettes that consistently fills every crowded sidewalk. I’ve likely smoked 10 packs here without as much as two puffs on the real thing. This is a place where kiosks have a communal lighter and it’s possible to buy one cigarette at a time.

While I might be crying for a little space, I’m also savoring the people, the Argentinean sweet tooth, the arts, the peso and a certain European elegance that has me flashing back constantly to my time in Spain.

Argentina’s economic collapse in 2001 has been a foreigner’s gain: a 3 to 1 peso to dollar rate. Every morning – usually warm from my 30-minute adventure walk across a city that’s number one cause of death is pedestrians getting hit -- I order a coffee that comes with steamed milk and two medialunas (sugar-coated croissants) for $5.50. My first steak – a triumph from an unassuming café – came complete with Spanish fries and poached eggs over top, was in the $15 peso range. The pleasure of going out here, though, comes not from the food or the price but from an interesting, busy and proud people, who are more European in demeanor than I expected but with palpable differences, which I have not yet put my finger on.

One of the best things about the city is the Sunday markets, where I’ve savored the food and the handmade goods and drank mate, a strong and unforgettable tradition, from carts. I’ve brushed by and talked to people from all over the world.

On my first night, I toasted with a muchacho about my age from Mexico in the smoking room of a hostel (I was there because everyone else was there), who took it upon himself – while continuing to fill my glass and say “con respecto” – to describe to me the broken nature of American society, which, he felt, was rankled by prejudice and hate. I felt I took apart his argument as constrictively as possible in a foreign tongue, but the point is this: this is why we travel, why we go to see and experience and to live, to hear those opinions that would never be broadly aired within the safe and politically correct confines of our borders. So far, I’ve mostly the subject of America has been broached mostly respectfully with me, though people generally don’t mind sharing their opinions. The economic collapse has the newspapers and people alike flashing back to their own economic crisis – a smaller-scaled but equally dramatic market collapse in 2001, when Argentinians were told that if they had a $1,000 in the bank it was now worth 1,000 pesos ($US333). My professor told me the protests got so violent they had to airlift the president out of the Casa Rosada.

I’ve also danced in the “VIP” section of a boliche that played American music from the early ‘90s with a bunch of models (OK, 2 models) spent the day drinking beer with Germans and had a lengthy conversation about art with the owner of a gallery in San Telmo, a neighborhood I like very much.

I’ll be here for one more week, taking Spanish classes in the morning and filling my afternoons with naps, museums, steaks, jamón, and streets that are crowded, dense and noisy, but, in the end, worth the trouble. I’m staying with a friendly Argentinean family, who has recently taken in another student from Brazil, whose manners are impeccable along with his Spanish, and I may travel with him to Uruguay next weekend, a short ferry ride.