News from the North

Start with the default state of humankind: poverty and insecurity 1 . In the cities, this means slums: tin-roofed shacks jammed up against one another, sometimes for miles; shit-strewn streets; spaghetti tangles of pirated power or local generators, if any; sardine-packed minibus taxis; unemployment; gangs; hardly any health care. Things don't seem so bad in rural areas, except you're easily victimized by disease, drought, politics, and, more insidiously, population growth: the land that fed your ancestors enough that they grew and multiplied isn't sufficient to feed your family, because you're more numerous than they were. This would be much less of an issue with better inputs - seeds, fertilizer, etc. - but we're talking subsistence farming here. Development. Meaning what? Not GDP growth, necessarily. The short version is, things getting better . Real health care. Real education. Work that turns into a job that turns into a career. Things built to a higher stand...

I maintain a Flickr set of all my very bestest pictures, and these are its entries from my latest wanderings. Click through to view large versions. (Apologies for the repetition from previous posts, but it's handy to have 'em all in one place.) Spooky monk, Lalibela, Ethiopia. Wall, Axum, Ethiopia. Sign, Djibouti. Salt pearls, Djibouti. Salt field and volcanoes, Djibouti. Salt lake, Djibouti. Tree in lava field, Djibouti. Pigeons, Delhi. The Jantar Mantar, Delhi. Pines, Van Vihar, Manali, India. The Spiti Valley, India. Himalayan zoom, India. Himalayan desert, India. Stok La, Ladakh, India. Sunset, Ladakh, India. Marine Drive, Mumbai.

I am back! In Toronto. And full of the usual returned-traveller's appreciation of all the little things, such as Starbucks, air-conditioning, reliably heated & drinkable water, and especially, peace & quiet. India (outside of the Himalaya) is a very noisy place. Meanwhile, I've been reaping some egoboo benefits of my TechCrunch gig: in the last few days I have popped up at The Times of India , The Atlantic , CNN , The Week , TC sister/mother publication The Huffington Post , Newsweek Polska , and the Spanish-language eNewspaper . I leave you with a few photo highlights of this trip. 'Twas quite a good trip. I did not get to South Sudan, but that didn't seem fated to be, and Djibouti was a sufficiently weird substitute. I did not get to Srinagar, but between the monsoon and a pilgrimage of tens of thousands that was going on, all the transport links would have been flooded, so that's probably for the best. I did get to hike up to an ancient Ethiopian monaster...

As threatened In the pines. India in miniature. The last village. The Jantar Mantar. Jantar Mantar detail. Gurgaon, from MG Road Metro. They don't call it "weed" for nothin'. The first snowcapped mountains. In case you didn't notice. Fallingwater. Cobra temple. Onwards and upwards. Under construction.

Uh-oh. I fear I'm out of shape. Well, I'm not as out of shape as I first feared I was, but I'm still out of shape. We went on a day hike today, and after a mere half an hour of steep ascents, I was seriously dogging it. (M., being ferociously fit, barely even broke a sweat.) We're only 2000m up, and it's our third day here, so it shouldn't be altitude. Fortunately, I seemed to kick it up another gear for the rest of the day, and/or the ascents were lower-grade. I think basically my aerobic fitness is OK, but my anaerobic fitness has gone all to hell. I hope Phil-my-Montreal-boxing-coach never reads this. He'd be so disappointed. So where was I? Oh yes. Leaving Chandigarh, and ascending into the mountains. We felt them long before we saw them, swaying back and forth with every switchback, as we passed Tata and Ashok Leyland trucks - some driving by night, many more parked beside the road. The only road to Manali and thence Leh, National Highway 21, is not a r...

Wow. India has gotten positively mellow . Well, relatively speaking. Once - which is to say, the first two times I came here, in 2000 and 2004 - it was a pounding, nonstop, all-out assault on every one of the human senses, including especially those of dignity, decency, propriety and personal space. For travellers it was a destination of constant hassle, a land of lies and scams (some so elegant that they were almost beautiful.) Those moments of transition when I first stepped out of the airport and into India proper - the arena, if you will - remain two of my most searing, powerful travel memories. This time? I girded my loins, battened my hatches, readied my defenses, and stepped past the airport barriers, and found myself beset by ... nothing. There was no gauntlet of touts or taxi drivers. Nobody noticed or cared. A 21st century train service took me to New Delhi Railway station. There was indeed a vast mass of humanity there, waiting to be security-groped before entering the metro...

There were six crew and twenty divers on yesterday's expedition: two Frenchmen who owned the boat; two South African women who were the divemasters; two Djiboutian crew; nineteen members of the US military, ranging from career desk jockeys to some Special Forces dudes, all using their Sunday off to go diving - and one random Canadian tourist. Although at first everyone just assumed I was a new contractor or something, and I wasn't actually outed until just before the second dive. It wasn't until then that the Special Forces dudes started talking to me. It seems the military has implicit but clear social hierarchies. They seemed to approve that I had randomly come to Djibouti, and they seemed pretty plugged-in, too; when I mentioned I had originally planned to visit a friend in South Sudan, they started joking that it was Joseph Kony, a name none of the regular military recognized. Alas, I think they started watching what they talked about, then, too; the best semi-overheard...