Day 2: I wake up to news of bomb blasts and airport closures

This morning's Straits Time's headlines: Protesters wreak chaos; Army chief's poll call shot down; Tourists trapped. Oh wait, but then my cousin tells me to check out CNN: Terrorists take over Mumbai, bomb blasts rip thru the city; 80+ dead 200 injured in terrorist attacks.

What's going on in South & SE Asia? It's a grim welcome at the outset of my 2 month vacation. There's a lot of real time information on CNN right now who's doing 100% coverage of the Mumbai blasts, but the gist of it is that the venerable Taj and Oberoi hotels were targets of bomb blasts and the Oberoi has the added bonus of a hostage situation in which terrorists have singled out American and other Western passport holders. These are India's 5 star hotels, and large tourist areas. There were also blasts at a hospital and train station among many other reports of violence in the western peninsula section of the city.

Here's a timeline by the WSJ, textual, not visual. For some reason it excludes the Dec bomb blasts last year in Mumbai.

I'll have to wait it out and see what happens in Thailand before deciding to go to the south. I'll def be avoiding Bangkok at all costs. The main airports are shut down as 1000s of PAD protesters organized a sit-in. They're upset with corruption in the current administration which they feel is simply a proxy for Takshin Sinawatra's previous regime (the former king and PM stepped down and is in exile right now). The current PM refuses to step down and the military as it did in 2006 may step in and forcibly remove the current government to appease the protesters. The current PM is at an APEC summit in Peru and making all his comments from there, I wonder if and when he'll return to Thailand. A few violent clashes have broken out, but no violent steps have been taking by the government in suppressing protesters... yet.

On the Phone with "Aggi" (that's Kannada for Grandma)

I rang my uncle a couple nights ago, to let him know that I'd be visiting the city also known as B'Lore or The Silicon Valley of India. Instead the housekeeper picked up the phone recognized I was a foreign caller and gave it to my grandmother who's been living under the same roof as my bachelor uncle for many many years, in a nice residential neighborhood of B'Lore. I told her it was "Guru" and she took a second to recognize my voice and responded "oh-ho, charana!". She prefers to call me Charana.

In my broken Kannada and her vastly superior command of English we conversed for 15 minutes about my upcoming trip to Asia. She told me my uncle was at work and that I should call back later to arrange pick up from the airport. Perhaps I should email a cousin as well, she suggested, who'd do a better job relaying the message as my uncle doesn't check is email that often.

I asked her if she'd ever visited some of the places I'm trying to see on this trip: hindu ruins at Hampi, himalayan foothils in Darjeeling, Goa beachs, Rajasthani lake palaces. She responded with a short sigh, "No." My grandmother never really travelled outside the vicinity of her home cities of Mysore and Bangalore, which comes as a surprise to me considering her politician father who was of considerable means. She explained to me that she married young and started her family early (we're among the youngest of her grandchildren as my mom was her youngest of 6 children). My grandfather was a succesful lawyer, but with a large family and perhaps cultural reasons I have yet to understand, their discretionary spending was quite limited.

At the end of our conversation we reminsiced about the time I spent with her while she was recovering from hip replacement surgery on a trip I made to India 5 years ago. I told her I was looking forward to seeing her and half jokingly suggested that she join me for some excursions to ancient ruins. She laughed heartily, but as I epxected declined. It was totally out of the question she indicated, at her age and with limited mobility (she uses a walker). It's astonishing to me that she's scarecly seen the rest of India. Maybe she's forgotten, I'll have to ask her when I show her pictures at the end of my trip.

Pre Trip: The Context*** of it All

I'm leaving the country in 4 days. I hope to visit 5 countries over 48 days. The first 20 days will be devoted to South East Asia; my home base will be Singapore. The latter half of the trip will be 28 days in India. It's an ambitious trip for several reasons: (other than the obvious ones of duration and mileage**)

1) I'm rather oblivious. While I've been to India 9 or 10 times since I was a wee babe, I've usually always had everything taken care of in terms of itinerary, flights, etc. My mom and dad always planned our family trips and we never strayed to far away from Bangalore, save for a couple of visits to Bombay which I hardly remember. My most recent visit to India was in the summer of 2003, where I spent 3 months living in the Domlur neighborhood of Bangalore as a Stanford Asia Technology Initiative Fellow working for a biotech company in the area; AKA, we partied a lot, but I didn't leave my comfort zone in South India. I haven't quite spearheaded my own international trip until very recently when I attended my friends wedding in Peru. The other places I've visited are the Bahamas (cruise), Canada (for like 5 hours), and Tokyo, Japan (Lions Club Exchange Program).

2) I'm somewhat lazy. I quit my cushy advertising gig at Google a little over 6 months ago, and I've decided not to work again... for as long as possible. Good luck in this economy right? Actually, things weren't looking so bleak back in May, but I may be in dire straits upon my return to the states. We'll just have to see! So travelling during my self-imposed sabbatical seems to make the most sense. The catch is that I've procrastinated on almost every aspect organizing my Asia trip. I pretty much decided to make this trip a year ago, but only booked my ticket last month (October 1st to be exact). I used miles so maybe it wasn't such a huge deal, but if I had been bargain hunting, earlier ticket purchase would've been better! On a positive note, just yesterday I wired the deposit for the Goa beach hotel we're staying at for New Years. But folks, that's all I've contributed towards my 48 days: a 4 night stay in Goa. 1/12th of my trip planning complete, check! Only 11/12ths to go.

3a) I'm not a fan of flying. Nuff said.

3b) I always get sick in India. And let's just say it always involves copious water-loss. Double nuff said. Crossing my fingers. Trying to make a deal with the patron saint of Protozoa.

4) I've never really traveled alone (and I'm somewhat paralyzed with fear). And I'm not traveling alone for parts of this trip, but there will be times when I'll be totally on my own in a foreign land, perhaps with a tour group, but perhaps not! I anticipate solo travel in Thailand and Cambodia and certain legs of my India journey. Just missing out on that extra brain scares me a bit because you can never have too many extra brains to help you decipher maps, languages, customs, or expat style party stratagem. I know, I should have said "strategery", but it's been played out.

If you've gotten this far, thanks! I hope you enjoy my onslaught of posts. And I hope I can actually keep up with the foreign correspondence from internet cafes in Asia. This past August I learned first hand that Peru had funny Spanish keyboards that screwed me up while IMing. Japan's keyboards are a menace to society. India should have US friendly keyboards since everyone who can use a computer probably speaks a decent amount of English. SE Asia, I have no clue.

I said earlier that I'm not traveling alone for parts of my trip and I wanted to provide details. I'm flying out on the SFO-Changi, Singapore leg with my college buddy and bandmate, Ravi. On Nov 26th we'll separate while I stay in SE Asia and he continues to India. In mid December we'll be crashing a wedding in Pune, doing toursity stuff in Rajasthan, a rolling the dice for a wild card Indian destination (Darjeeling, Darjeeling, Darjeeling! please!) Oh and how can I forget, the impetus for this whole Asia tour: New Years in Goa. Let's just say that it started with a young man's dream and a summer of 2006, travel article in the San Jose Mercury. And by that I mean I read a cool article in the newspaper 2.5 years ago and have wanted to visit Goa ever since. That's with Ravi, for the rest of my trip I'll be meeting up with family in places like Singapore and Bangalore. There's also a chance I'll be catching up with old Stanford friends in SE Asia.

Phew, that was long! Cheers!

** notice "cost" is not included in this "obvious list" that's summarized by the wise words of Jermaine Dupree, "Money ain't a thang."
*** did I really provide enough context here? maybe I'll host a poll asking people if they had any understanding of my motivations for world-travel based on this first post...