ShangriLa's PhotoBlog

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2008-05-18T18:14:39Z

Don't forget your rabies shots

2008-05-17T09:51:50Z

There are 20 million dogs in India. Here are some of them. Most dogs I encountered were well-fed healthy specimens, generally disinterested in foreigners and evidently not infected with rabies. However, dogs - even puppies - with rabies tend to want to bite you. Long-term travellers (over 3 months) to India and those travelling in remote areas are advised by authorities to get the rabies vaccinations. If bitten (or even licked on an open wound) by any dog or puppy, you can't afford not to take it seriously and there's a good chance getting the full treatment will bugger up your holiday quite a lot. But not so as much as not getting treatment could bugger up your life. Death is the certain outcome of a rabies bite if the disease gets to your central nervous system and symptoms begin to show. This can take anything from 10 days to two years. There has never been any suggestion that your body could fight the rabies virus on its own as we have no natural immunity to it. Vaccines are your only chance of survival. Having rabies shots before an incident has the off-putting factor of high cost. It took me one month of research and consultation before I could be persuaded to go ahead and get them. In Australia it costs about AUD$300 but in the end I found a cheaper way - health insurance. The cheapest vaccines, if you have time, can be got in India. Only three are required - on day 1, 7, and 28 (I think). If you leave it until you've been bitten, you require 5 vaccine shots plus an immuno-globulin shot asap after the event to give you an immediate supply of antibodies. Otherwise the virus is working in your system for at least one week before your body can start to fight it off. Accessing, this last shot is particularly problematic in India. All the shots must be kept in refrigerated conditions, meanwhile India has regular power failures. But hospitals have generators. The problem is, how far are you from a hospital that has this shot in stock and how rigorous are the people who manage the storage of the drug? Supply is an issue that may mean you have to fly across the country to get a dependable shot. Locals regularly do not survive a rabies bite despite getting treatment. Many reasons have been given for this. In most cases 'fault' can be attributed to the victim's side (lack of money to get the whole course of treatment, getting to treatment too late), but some have been attributed to the fault with supply and administration of the treatment (stale supply, incomplete treatment). Can you afford to take such risks. There have been rabies deaths of foreigners visiting India and dog bites are fairly common. The case I am most familiar with was of a woman who was on a two-week holiday in Goa. A puppy on a leash nipped her ankle. She did nothing about it. At home, she got sick and went to hospital. There they were able to get the story but were unable to save her. It's not that the risk of getting rabies is especially high. The usual statistic is 20 000 deaths in India per year. In a country with a population of 1 billion this is not so high. That is only 2 cases per 100 000 people pa. And then you can consider that many of these cases are children who are more vulnerable. The risk is that once symptoms appear, you die and getting good treatment promptly is difficult and upsetting for your trip, and you can't always tell if the dog that has bitten you is rabid or not. Assuming you have your shots and then get bitten. The first thing to do is wash the wound thoroughly but gently with soap and water for about 10 minutes. This is very effective in washing most of the virus out and the alkalinity of the soapy water can help kill the virus. Then apply an iodine solution and get to a hospital, doctor or pharmacist ASAP for the vaccinations. But there is no guarantee that no virus is in the wound, so get the treatment. Even if you've had the vaccine before being bitten, you will still need three (or is it only two) afterwards but not the difficult immunoglobulin one. Also, if its possible, notify people in the vicinity that the dog has bitten you and ask them to put it in quarantine or to get advice from health authorities - vet or medical doctor. Dogs kept in quarantine for a certain time will show whether or not they are rabid. If they are, then the local people can avoid further incidents. To avoid getting bitten, give dogs a wide berth as much as possible. Don't pat them, don't tease them. Best to ignore them. If you must feed them - and really I don't advise it as they start to recognise foreigners as a food source and start pestering you which is unnerving - drop the food discretely and leave.

Last Day in Delhi - before flying out

2008-05-11T07:47:09Z

I had a lot to do on my last day in Delhi but the main task was to get my bike boxed. Most of the pictures above are taken from the back of a rickshaw when I was transporting my boxed bike back from Chandni Chowk to my hotel room in Pahar Ganj for my last night.

Figurative work - nothing else like this in India - Part 3

2008-05-10T08:03:02Z

Nek Chand, artist; The Rock Garden, Chandigarh, Punjab See the previous two entries to see more of this park.

Sculpture Park - nothing else like this in India - Part 2

2008-05-09T14:19:42Z

Nek Chand, The Rock Garden, Chandigarh, Punjab. With Partition, the capital city of Punjab, Lahore, went to Pakistan and Punjab needed a new capital. The government settled on Chandigarh. If it existed at all, it was only a town but was demolished in order to build a new modern capital. Chandigarh is a planned city. At least in part because of the pain that the region had suffered during Partition, Chandigarh was made a special project. The famous Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed the final city, though he was not the first architect on the job. The original team was American. Anyway, it was Le Corbusier's ideas which prevailed and if you know anything about his work, it is interesting to visit this city and see his ideas in the real. Wide boulevards built on a grid, strong geometric lines, an absence of flourish and ornamentation, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency; and cement as the favoured building material for a start. But as is the way in real life, other unplanned-for factors take over and India has stamped its identity all over the city - it's a grey and dusty city with signs of decay settling in right down to all the details. I went to hire a bike from the government tourist office and found I couldn't because all 10 of them were in a state of disrepair. Consequent upon the demolition of the original town, a large supply of free building materials became available and Nek Chand began his illegal garden project. (see previous entry in wiki link for the story). His project was legitimised 1976 and funds were made available but later on a world trip, the funding was pulled and the garden was vandalised. Today you can see signs of the rot setting in. Nek Chand is an old man in his 80s and it is highly likely that when he dies, his park will fall into ruins. I think Le Corbusier would have approved of the radical artist who was playing with modernist artistic ideas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandigarh

Sculpture - nothing else like this in India

2008-05-08T10:58:14Z

Nek Chand, the artist, The Rock Garden, Chandigarh, Punjab. The story goes that back in the 50s (or late 40s) when Chandigarh was being built, and the villages where it would be built were being demolished, an inspector or roads, started collecting the waste and began creating forms on a patch of unused land. "In his spare time, Chand began collecting materials from demolition sites around the city. He recycled these materials into his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani, choosing a gorge in a forest near Sukhna Lake for his work. The gorge had been designated as a land conservancy, a forest buffer established in 1902 that nothing could be built on. Chand’s work was illegal, but he was able to hide it for eighteen years before it was discovered by the authorities in 1975. By this time, it had grown into a twelve-acre complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. His work was in serious danger of being demolished, but he was able to get public opinion on his side, and in 1976 the park was inaugurated as a public space. Nek Chand was given a salary, a title ("Sub-Divisional Engineer, Rock Garden"), and a workforce of 50 laborers so that he could concentrate full-time on his work. It even appeared on an Indian stamp in 1983. The Rock Garden is still made out of recycled materials; and with the government’s help, Chand was able to set up collection centers around the city for waste, especially rags and broken ceramics. When Chand left the country on a lecture tour in 1996, the city withdrew its funding, and vandals attacked the park. The Rock Garden Society took over the administration and upkeep of this unique visionary environment. The garden is visited by over five thousand people daily, with a total of more than twelve million visitors since its inception." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nek_Chand See also the Nek Chand foundation. and see also Chandigarh In the West, it has been a trend to create art from used materials for several decades but Chand was doing it over half a century ago, probably as the only way to access materials, rather than out of any progressive desire to save the planet. However, it's a model that india, as it advances as a modern economy, is going to desperately need. People like to discuss whether Chand was an innovator or a borrower of ideas from Europe's modern artists - you can see resemblances to the work of Gaudi and Henry Moore. I don't really care about this. What's more interesting to me is that these inveterate makers pop up all over the world and when there is little access to formal art education, the ones who really can't help themselves go ahead and create stuff. It's a drive some people have. Of the above works my favourites are the smaller forms made from lumps of old building materials. Next entry, I will put up pictures that show the architecture of the park itself.

The Golden Temple, Amritsar

2008-05-07T15:10:56Z

My cycling trip ended in Kerala and from there I sent my bike off to Delhi on the train by itself while i continued on by a different route. We eventually met again in Delhi but in the meantime, I did some travels by conventional means. I went to Amritsar, in Punjab, for the experience of the Golden Temple and I would highly recommend it to every traveller to India. Amritsar itself is nothing to get excited about. Its a grey dusty congested city. Just as most Indian cities are described in my guidebook. This one though fits the description better than all the other cities I visited. The Golden Temple is a sikh temple. It welcomes people of all religions and travellers from anywhere. It's a sanctuary like no other religious centre I have ever experienced. There was one thing I didn't like - having to take your shoes off when inside the temple gates - so that means cold and wet feet for quite a long time because its a large area. Apart from that its a fascinating place and very different. Anyone can stay in the accommodation provided by the Temple. Indians who can afford to pay, tend to pay 50r for a family room while, as a traveller, I was shepherded to a free dorm. I think i would have preferred the room but never mind. Next to our dorm, and between us and the toilets and showers, hundreds of poorer pilgrims stretched out their blankets and mattresses on the ground where they slept. There were a couple of very old sick men who must have come to die here. One of them could do nothing for himself. He looked in pain. It was humbling and shocking (in a good way - for the want of a better word) to have to walk past him several times a day. The temple also provided free meals. I only ate their one as it was a bit off-putting to have your meal sloshed onto your plate so that most of it fell on the floor beside your dish. Anyway, you have to experience these things. Dinner was simple chapati, dal and rice pudding. And water. The pilgrims - all of us - were invited to help out in the large communal kitchens. I had a go at making chapattis. There was a lovely atmosphere in the chapati rolling room but they also had a chapati machine which was less interesting. I also loved the sound of tin dishes being banged about by the hundreds of dishwashers. Seating and organisation of the dining room was interesting. I don't know how they could have done it better. You walk into an empty hall. On the ground is a long mat and you sit down on it, next to the last person to have sat down. The servers go along the seated queue of diners. Someone has already given you a dish and cup. The server slops your food out and then after you've finished, assuming you don't want a second helping, you leave taking your dish with you. Meanwhile the queue has gone on and there might be several hundreds of people eating dal and rice all at once in the great room. That's all for now. Maybe I will write the rest up the top.

Delhi Dogs

2008-05-07T12:16:18Z

A bit of Mumbai

2008-05-06T14:35:03Z

I had a great time in Mumbai. I hardly took any photographs in the three or four days I was there as I had company and was just too busy - seeing movies, going to kids parties! eating eating eating everywhere, visiting the cricket club, visiting the bazaars, having whirlwind tours around colonial mumbai, the beach, the waterfront, drinking at Leopold's. It was all I could do to get a shower at night and into bed at a reasonable hour. Some of the first pictures are of the Dhobi Ghat. Its a professional laundry and a famous spot to visit for tourists. Mumbai taxis were quaint. We went shopping in the bazaars, rather racing through them. Allow lots of time for visiting the bazaars if you get there. This is where we bought these beautiful figs from. I think my favourite sight was Haji Ali's Mosque by the sea, so make sure you visit it if you are going. Very ordinary pictures so I haven't included them. The best pictures were of my friends so I left them out also. We also went to the Mahalaxmi Temple. And the oldest temple in Mumbai - near the bazaars.

Weaving Factory, Cherai

2008-05-05T12:44:23Z

One day on my way to Cherai Beach, I heard the familiar clack clack of weaving looms. I decided to go in and check it out. None of the women here spoke English but they were perfectly happy for me to take a look around and take their pictures. Unfortunately, their idea of posing was to keep working or to stop completely and strike a non-weaving pose, so I didn't quite get the shots I was after. I was really struck by the woman winding the thread. If there's a laborious way to work, Indians will find it. Or perhaps the truth rather is, that most indian workers still work with very antiquated methods, tools and equipment. It is striking how backward India is in this regard. I think the reason why it persists is that those who are in a position to provide more modern equipment don't because it is cheaper to employ more workers, they are paid so badly. These women would be lucky if they earned 75r or AUD$2 per day. They may well earn a lot less.