To See What There Is To See : SloWord

The Grand Canyon, AZ, USA

I travel to see what there is to see.

To travel is a privilege for most. For some, it is a chore. For most, it is a pleasure. For me, travel is a privilege, a chore and a pleasure all at the same time.

Also: to do what there is to do…..

Hang in there while we discuss these weighty matters to my satisfaction and your probable boredom!

To travel or not.

This is the first question we must ask ourselves. I don’t ask myself this question. It’s a no brainer for me.

I want to travel and see what there is to see.

(Digression Alert #1: When I was just a lad of 4 or 5 or 6, I was intrigued by a book, the first of many I have been intrigued by. It was a tale of a gentleman who had lived in the countryside all his life, until one day he decided to explore the world. And so he set out “to see what there is to see”. This phrase has stuck with me all these years and my Beloved Bangalan has now also adopted it. There was a drawing of the gentleman clambering over a stile or cliff or something and the butt of his pants had a patch sewn on. I’m guessing this is what initially struck me. And then the phrase.)

To tell you the truth, this is not really a Digression, but a meaningful introduction to why I like to travel, viz. “to see what there is to see”.

Do you want me to go back and edit the Digression Alert and make it a part of the post itself?

No?

You don’t care?

Oh, hmm. Ok, then! Let’s move on!

Travel Types

Let’s talk about the types of travel. There are two basic kinds.

One driven by the need for revenue. I call this “Work Travel”

The other driven by a desire to relax, a curiosity to examine things you’ve just heard about, to revisit history. I call this “Pleasure Travel”

There is a third type, emergency travel. For the purposes of this, possibly, brilliant and sleep inducing article, we shall ignore this reason for travel.

Over the years, I’ve traveled for both reasons. In some cases, the work was fun and in other cases, the travel merely meant revenue, good revenue that I stored in a secret underground lair so I could then use it for things I like to do, such as:

Eat okra, bhindi, if Indian
Travel – to see what there is to see

See?

See. And Do.

Work Related Travel

Work related can be spilt, because I said so and I run this website and am writing this article, into two categories viz. Employment Travel and Business Travel.

Employment Travel

There was a time in my life when I was despatched to distant places, by an employer. It was part of the service I provided to my employer (brain, believe it or not!) and the service the employer provided to its client.

In India

The first type of work I did was help the paying customer. This help, mostly, consisted of teaching them how to do stuff they’d never done in their lives. Usually, this “teaching” consisted of doing it for them and have them watch over my shoulder to learn what there was to learn. This source of revenue helped me put butter on the bread I was now able to buy.

The paying customer paid my employer and the employer paid me a few paise for my troubles.

This took me to some strange hotels. The Palace Hotel in the industrial town of Durgapur, where we had to call down from the top of the stairs for a bucket of hot water for our bath, was one such. It was dubbed the “Hotel Palash”, which, Unca Googoo tells me, means “flower” in Bengali.

Or the very strange and shady hotel in the coal town of Dhanbad, where the collapsible gates shut down at night, for the town had a coal mafia that was strong, powerful and likely to be violent. You kept your antennae deployed in a state of high alert, humming at 6GHz, for you were only 25, quite silly, not at all street smart and didn’t want to run into anyone or anything that could, you know…

Or the one in Bhubaneshwar, where late at night, the TV in my room lit up with lovely ladies, who found themselves in strange circumstances which prompted them to disrobe with speed and etc etc.

It was a lonely existence, because the powers that caused my salary, also deemed me quite capable of working alone, unassisted and without companionship.

Some of these tales may be found at My Life – the 1980s.

I’d recommend:

Prohibition and Aristocrat
Mr Deka’s Nightmare

USA / Canada

My first source of revenue after I moved to Canada (see more on this move in Immigrant Tales here) came from employment in the USA.

Yep! The Canadians, who had fast tracked my immigration, on the strength of the belief that I was highly employable or entrepreurial or something, were let down by the potential employers who didn’t like my good looks, my wit and charm, and refused to hire me. They heard me speak colloquially and were very confused…. (I shall include them, some, in a book I shall write… soon. Yeah)

So, I got me a job across the border.

I lived in Canada, in the honeymoon capital, viz the city of Niagara Falls, ON, and drove across the border everyday to do things for my employer who hired me out to do things for their clients. This led to some interesting exchanges between the border guards and the freshly minted immigrant with the Indian passport, who doth dare to croth into the U Eth, to take away jobth from the localth. (I wrote about this in this lament.)

It was a fun couple of years. I learned to play golf, drink at the bar, eat chicken wings, and not just any chicken wings, Buffalo chicken wings!

There was a day trip to Baltimore, where I didn’t know exactly where I was going, relying as I was on my boss who was accompanying me, being at my side. She wasn’t. It was an exasperated border security guy at the airport who finally stamped my passport, shaking his head at idiots who didn’t know where they were going. Hey! I’d only been at work for like a week! Besides, I’m stupid! I used to travel without information. See Ye Famouse Nepalese Adventure! Later in this article I will tell you something!!

I had another round of US travel, ten years later, which entailed flying every Monday (in) and Friday (out) to the most lively, throbbing, pulsating city in the state of Ohio.

Columbus.

While my friends were being flown to Peru, Rio and other exotic places, for work, I had to learn quickly to stop the chefs from smothering my food with the horrible white “cheese” they threw at everything. I got strange looks and raised eyebrows, but I also got something reasonably edible.

The US Border Security officers were marginally better this time around.

There was the older guy who flagged my car down on my 7 hour work commute to Columbus and gave me a spiel about permits and things, before he saw his screen and saw I was a regular border-crosser.

“Ah! Why am I telling you all this! Get on out of here!” (NOTE: Time taken to drive from home to Columbus was the same as flying…….. go figure!)

There was the lady who silently motioned for my passport, scanned it, checked work permit, flipped over to my photograph, looked at it, looked at me and said “We’ve gone a little grey now, haven’t we?” as she handed it back to me.

I had to agree.

Business Travel

India / Nepal

A second type of travel, as our little itty-bitty business started to grow, was to find customers (or clients), make them sign on a dotted line and convince them to hand over a cheque (check, if American). This took me to strange places. Of these one can (I can) say they were educational, interesting in the extreme, daunting at some level and required the use of quick thinking, deep meditation and

There was, for instance, the Trip Where Everything That Could Go Wrong Did Go Wrong. Highly traumatic, but highly successful in terms of revenue gained aka the biggest contract of our lives at that point.

There were other trips. The Black Diamond Express, leaving Howrah at 6:15 (AM!!!!), which would get me to the Pepsi bottling plant at Durgapur. I would get on and the steward would show up.

“Sahib, breakfast?”

“What do you have for breakfast?”

“Arre, sahib, you get on everyday, you sit in the same seat and ask the same question! Why do you bother to ask? It’s the same tea, the same cutlet! This is Indian Railways, sahib!”

It was worth it, because after weeks of this, a very harried and highly business like boss asked me how much I would charge to automate all the Pepsi plants in India. He signed a check without a word. I liked him. No nonsense check, or cheque, writers are the salt of the earth. I heard he left the company shortly thereafter…..

USA / Canada

Business in USA Canada, consisted mostly of commuting into the city to the east of me. This had its own rewards and challenges. And, there was the flights to Saskatoon, SK, every two weeks.

Saskatoon was an amazing city. My rented apartment was exactly 8.28367 minutes walk to my client’s office in “downtown S’toon”. You could, at rush hour, jay walk across the street. There was a Tim Horton’s coffee shop across and there I met a most amazing man.

He was sitting there three of four tables away. I’d seen him there before sketching yachts on chart paper. One day he pulled a napkin to him, drew this and gave it to me. I thanked him, chatted briefly, but had to rush back to the office. I meant to buy him a coffee, sit down with him, get his story, buy one of his yachts, and have something to use in a future story I may decided to write. It didn’t happen, but I meant to.

Pleasure Travel

Now we’re getting to it!

The real deal! Over the years, I have had the opportunity to travel to multiple countries. For pleasure, for fun, to see what there is to see, to relax.

I can now state that I have touched ground, walked around, and enjoyed the following countries.

India
Nepal
USA
Canada
Thailand
Mexico
Cayman Islands
Jamaica
Dominican Republic
Dubai
Cuba
Curacao
Turks and Caicos
France
England
Italy
Switzerland
Portugal
Turkey
Germany
Austria.

I don’t think I’ve seen enough. These trips have included the sea, the mountains, canyons, rivers, cities, foods, colours, noises and smells. Also, palaces, churches, mosques, fortresses and other places of historic interest.

Travel Experiences

The trip to France, almost fully chronicled here, was eye-opening. We lived in a small hotel in 14th Arrondisement in Paris, used public transport, had breakfast at the cafe across the street, chatted with people and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly with the croque monsieurs and baguette sandwiches and coffee. We also did some road trips in a rented car. It gave us confidence.

The first England trip has some introductory pieces listed here, but I got bored with writing out what was, for me, a dream, one that threatened to turn into a nightmare at any moment. It had some exciting moments!

Everywhere we go, we like to use as much local transport as we can. Driving is a necessary evil, required to do certain, specific things. For example, we used trains exclusively in Italy. We drove in Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, but gave up the car for the rest of the trip. We hung out in crowded trams in Istanbul, trams and trains in Germany and Austria. We did rent a car to do the Romantischestrasse, because that was what it entailed and the High Alpine Road to Grossglockner was a driver’s thingy.

We like to talk to the locals. In France, I was less constrained. I did mention in this coffee post that I have the ability to speak Franglaise like a badly educated peach tree. It allowed us to make it to the paratroop drop re-enactment for D-Day. In other places, it was more, much more challenging.

German, with its complex words, usually needed a minute or fifteen to split the words out into the Latin antecedents to get to the gist.

The Italians were easy-going, and they seemed to like it when we said “buongiorno” and “prego”.

The English were surprisingly Russian, or Polish or Romanian, but English is a language I do know enough to converse with people and loved the fact that the waiter in the Lambs Inn in the Cotswolds, crouched down next to our table and said, “We have stuff, but you can also get rabbit food, green stuff”.

I gave up trying in Turkey! And in Spanish speaking Caribbean it was enough to brightly say “Hola!” and move along!

We’ve had good luck with people, too. I remember in France, my younger son had the waiter making mooing and bleating noises to explain the menu items. He also, shook his finger and said “non, non” to stop him from ordering some entrails. Very nice of him. The older lady at the coffee shop oppsite Dead Man’s Corner in Normandy was able to serve us with a smile, probably at my mangled Franglaise.

I’m of the opinion that your body language and the way you connect with the people goes a long way towards how they treat you. I’ve heard so much about the rude waiters in France and in Europe, in general. I’ve not had any such experiences. I tend to veer to the opinion that American travelers are entitled and treat everyone with disdain. And so they get it back. Thus the repuation… (Also, the flipflops and shorts and swaggering walk don’t help.)

Recent Travels

Since my employer couldn’t find a way (or didn’t want to – same difference) to use my brain, we called it a day in the last quarter of 2021. An amicable settlement. I was bored and they were confused….

I promptly embarked on a few trips.

The Easter Townships (roadtrip)
Owen Sound and the Bruce Peninsula (roadtrip)
Portugal and Dubai (built around a wedding in Dubai)
England and Turkey and England (built around a single wedding in two parts Istanbul and London)
L’Orignal, Ottawa, and towns across the river in Quebec (roadtrip)
Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa (roadtrip)
USA (Las Vegas in Nevada, Springfield in Utah for Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon in Arizona, and then California – Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Goleta, Cambria, San Jose, San Francisco) – this was built around a wedding in LA.
Germany and Austria

As you can see this is a fair amount of running around! Not including things like drives to the Niagara Region, trips to Lake Huron etc.

Lessons I’ve learned

I’ve learned a few things along the way, about myself, about the places, about people and about the logistics / mechanics of traveling

I can still drive a stick shift on the other side of the road.
Some Turkish food is served cold
There are a lot of waterfalls and lakes in the world and some rival Niagara Falls in looks and ambience
I still like rolling meadows with trails running across them
Mountains will win over the sea – any time
Large cruise ships are not for me
Fancy hotels don’t do anything for me
I like wandering around aimlessly in cities and chatting with people
Museums are of two kinds (Madonna and Child and plushy regal chambers with asthma inducing drapes) I need air after ten rooms.
I like manicured gardens like the French have
I like English gardens with their careful carelessness
The food in Europe is far, far, far tastier than anything in the US and most of Canada
If the place is within 12 hours drive in North America, it ain’t worth flying there, thanks to airlines, airports and the stupid processes they all have
People are nice, if you approach them nicely. (Not in Delhi…. and I say this as a Delhi born, and parts of the US)
I don’t much care for conducted tours, preferring to trust my history lessons, my native intelligence not an iota of which is artificial
I don’t wish to go somewhere and just park myself in someone’s house or a hotel (all-inclusives have their place, but man, I’m bored stiff after Day 4)
There is a lot to see if you dig deep into the recesses of your geography and history and the internet
Trains are extremely useful
Don’t check bags in. It’s possible to survive a 6 week vacation with cary-on baggage
FINALLY – You must, must, must, HAVE A PLAN!

Aha!

The Plan!

You knew it! All the pain of reading that culminates in The Plan!

What a dastardly person this SloWord chappie! It was always about the plan, wasn’t it! You’re going to unleash some weird app or spreadsheet on us now, right?

Nah! I won’t bother!

Should I?

Well, let me give you the headings, then, just the column headings? Yeah?

Some other time, eh? You have things to do? You have to water the plants? How many are there? Just the one pot? Hmm.

Oh ok!

But you know what I could do?

Either write about the past trips or go away on another trip.