Selamat datang to Bali

Bali is pretty. Very. Many would say that it's basically a cleaner Goa, but I don't think that's doing justice to the place. I don't want to make claims about Bali being prettier or more interesting or anything, but the two are definitely different. Goa has its own beauty, culture and stories and so does Bali.
With that said, here's the top few things that I took back with me this last week.

1. The magical waters - the color, the majestic waves and everything below

The waters are indeed beautiful (and as I had remarked here about the waters in Croatia), are clearer than I ever expected. You see this remarkable color - the debate on whether its blue or green or turquoise can go on - that captivated me when I saw it first and continued to enamor me even after a week. Now, one may wonder why I should be so enamored with the blue color of the sea, given I have lived in Bombay (or at least close enough to it ) for the good part of my 26 years, one has to remember that if there's any debate on the color of the water on beaches in Bombay its in the shades of brown and olive green.

Just look at the blue. Swear I've never seen it in Bombay. Ever. 

The sea faces are either white sand beaches like this

Or huge rocks that the waves lash out against like this

The waters around have some of the best and easily accessible corals and aquatic fauna in the world. The short snorkelling trip was proof for it and definitely inspiration to brush up those swimming skills and upgrade to diving next time!

2. The temples
Bali is a 95% Hindu region and are these people religious! They have a lot of daily temples. Of course, there are the really famous ones - the ones that have been recognized by UNESCO and all. We saw a couple - Tirtha Empel and Ulu Watu. I love Ulu Watu - it's on a cliff and offers a splendid view - the huge cliff going all the way down the ocean and huge waves coming and lashing against the rock!

The ulu Watu temple is the three tiered conical roof structure you can see on the cliff behind me

The cliff that you can see from the temple

But apart from these, there are temples everywhere you go. People say that if you throw a rock in Bali, you'll probably hit 10 temples and that's probably true. Cause there aren't just the temple complexes, but every home has a temple in its compound and several shops have temples just outside the door.

A temple outside a restaurant

3. The offerings
Religion is clearly a big part of their lives. It's not just in temples that have been built and forgotten. Everywhere in Bali you will see these offerings. It's some flowers, sometimes a ball of rice and a incense stick in a bamboo basket. You will see it at all times at all places - in temples, in homes, outside shops, or at the door of a bar!

4. The doors
So there is a lot of artwork in Bali all around - wood, gold, silver, stone - lots of things. A lot of furniture is really intricate and ornate. A lot of walls are filled with very delicate carvings. The temples are of course very ornate. But the one thing that really stood out for me was the doors - the gates to enter a compounded space, the archways to mark the end or beginning of a city, or the door to enter a house. The gates are mostly pillars on either sides, with flat walls on the inside and pointed peaks. The doors are often made of intricate wood carvings plated with metal sheets

Entrance to a beach

Entrance to a hotel

Another hotel

A replica of a door from the Jimbaran style of architecture

5. The food
Bali is a paradise for seafood lovers - lobsters, prawns, fish, clams! I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Shell fish

Crab

Prawn or the way they call it - Udang

6. It's more than just beaches. 
When you say Bali, you think beaches. But it's more than just that. There's the temples, and the art that we've seen earlier. But even in terms of the natural landscape there are the beautiful mountains.
The central Ubud region is home to a lot of mountains, many of them volcanoes.

Mount Batur

It's a beautiful landscape. You can see the mountain standing tall and the conspicuous lack of vegetation on the black soil marked by the lava from the last eruption. And then of course the charming rice terraces.

Bali was great. Signing off with a shout out to the people who made the trip what it was!

That week in Sri Lanka

There's something about photographs. They have this uncanny ability to bring back the people you were with, the conversations you had, the sounds that surrounded you and the feeling that defined the moment. And somehow, I can't think of many photographs which make me sad. Most just fill me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Now that could be because we tend to click photos when we are happy and not when we are sad. But I also think, it's because our mind selectively chooses to remember the good parts and forget the not so good ones. For instance, looking at a photo with a bunch of friends at shack on the beach, one remembers the conversations, the breeze, the beautiful sunset, maybe even the music that played but rarely do we remember the bad service or the noisy people on the neighboring table or the wave that splashed and damaged your phone.

So, there's something about photographs, which brings back a bunch of feelings and the right ones. And I've really wanted to post about the trip to Sri Lanka for a while now. Also, I'm feeling kinda lazy. Also, Sri Lanka is beautiful. So, here we go -

This was my first glimpse of Sri Lanka. Quite literally. We landed at about 9 pm at Colombo. Got into a cab straight from the airport and landed at Kitulgala where we were to raft the next day. This was the sight that greeted us when we woke up in the morning. 

This was a pit stop we took on our way to Nuwara Eliya. The view was so good, you could see layers and layers of mountains and a lake long into the distance, we wished we could have just stayed there.

We did a hike known as the 'World's end' in Nuwara Eliya. This picture was what we saw as we were beginning the hike. Flat plains on both sides extending as far as we could see. The hike alternated between flat plains like above and rainforests. And finally after about a 4 km hike we reached the end of the plateau to see the 'World's end'. 

Honestly, I wasn't very impressed with the view and I made it quite clear to everyone when I proclaimed quite clearly in English "This view isn't too impressive, na?" causing about two dozen other people to turn around! This was basically the end of the plateau, and one could see the valley extend ahead. Clouds had descended into the valley and it's said that on a clear day one could see as far as the sea. Clearly, the day we chose wasn't clear.

As we continued the hike after seeing the 'World's end', we passed along this waterfall. What I really loved about this view was the bright blue sky. The color of the sky was the textbook blue that you read about and the poster color blue that I used to paint the sky as a kid. 

After Nuwara Eliya, we spent some time in the forests of Sinharaja. Sinharaja was quite an experience. There was no mobile network. Just one landline in the whole resort that worked. That too, only intermittently. We went on some jungle trails, jumped into some natural pools and waterfalls and saw a surprisingly large number of colorful but dangerous looking spiders. The other amazing thing about Sinharaja was the food. This was probably the only place where we had some authentic Sri Lankan cuisine. We had some coconut filled pancakes, omlettes, curries, dry chutneys and loved it all!  

I can't seem to find many pictures of the two days we spent there. Probably an indication that it was good enough to keep us so engaged that we forgot to click pictures! 

After the forest of Sinharaja we headed straight to the beach! We were staying at a relatively small place called Hikkaduwa. This was the place where the waves splashed and got us drenched. Thankfully they didn't get our food, like they did to a few unlucky tables. 

The beach was beautiful. Showed us a beautiful sunset and a beautiful sunrise the next day. 

We made a half-day trip to this quaint little town called Galle, which has a cricket stadium, a fort and a bunch of absolutely cute looking eating places, like this one here. Our evening in Galle was also interesting - we did a little bit of a cycle ride to go around the town, again witnessed a beautiful sunset and went through a couple of hours of a pan-country electricity cut-off.

So that was a glimpse of how Sri Lanka looked to us. I am going to sign off with a shout out to the bunch that really make these photos and memories come to the life! I hope we do more of these, guy!

What's wrong with the increasing reach of free markets?

Over the past half century or so, there has been a definite increase in the reach of free markets and in its vociferous proponents. More and more things have come to be ruled by the power of the market. There are indeed only a few things money can’t buy. That sounds bad, but really what’s so wrong with it? 

Economics of time

When more and more things are governed by the ‘free market’, essentially more and more can be bought by money. The result is that money becomes more and more important and one starts measuring every activity in economic or monetary terms. For instance, it makes economic sense for me to take a cab rather than drive, if the work that I can do in the cab in the time that I would have spent driving myself is worth more than the extra cost of the cab as compared to driving my own car. The risk of this direction of thinking is that it dissuades people from performing any daily chores that are typically mindless and can be outsourced at little cost, such as cleaning the house, washing utensils and now even arranging one’s own cupboard. The very fact that there is such a profession as wardrobe arrangers tells, apart from the obvious hypothesis that we have become lazier than ever before, the extent to which we are now so taken over by the idea of making every waking moment useful. 

An unequal society

These activities, as mindless as they may seem can be a break for our brains. And more importantly, I think they are levelers when everyone has to do them. They ensure that people respect all jobs and consequently respect the people who do those for them. People are strong and weak, rich and poor, educated and illiterate but there need to be some things that remind them that they are all human, all members of the same society and there are some things they have an equal right to. So when, everyone has to go out and throw their own garbage in the trash chute (imagine it is something that can’t be outsourced, you can’t ask your maid to do it) it’s an equalizer. 

The growing divide

When everything is determined by money, ones whole quality of life is determined only by how much money one has. The amount of money one begins one’s life with is a matter, of course, of pure chance and that now determines the quality of ones upbringing to an increasing degree. This will then go on to determine how much money this individual has in his or her life, leading to a vicious or virtuous cycle depending on which side of the average you were born in.

How can we break this cycle?

One way is to work towards giving everyone a similar upbringing irrespective of where one is born. This means ensuring that every child has access to quality education, adequate healthcare, sufficient and healthy food, and a healthy and nurturing home. Now no one would argue with that, right? Of course, every child deserves all this. However, this can’t happen if the best schools in our country are private schools and the best hospitals are private hospitals and are consequently governed by the principles free markets.

I am not against the idea of free markets. They have worked in a lot of places and have resulted in efficiency and self- regulation, but let’s be wary of how far we extend their reach. Let's take a moment and think about who and what we leave behind as we praise the freedom and efficiency that the free market promises.

Cabs and the love for free markets

Surge pricing by cab aggregators has attracted controversy many times and in many places. Most agree that surge pricing during natural or man- made calamities is inhumane and insensitive, as it allows people to make money out of someone else’s misery. And this sounds rather repulsive, so that issue is settled rather simply. But when we are talking about regular situations, it sounds legitimate that people should be allowed to make money and profit according to the laws of supply and demand, right? That’s what free markets are all about.

Let’s for some time assume that it’s okay to apply the principle of free markets to cab pricing. If we are applying the principal of free markets then shouldn’t we apply it to everything related to plying cabs? Plying cabs requires the use of public infrastructure such as roads and highways. Maybe all roads, not just highways and expressways should be tolled and the tolls should vary according to the traffic. Plying cabs also imposes cost on the environment by polluting the air. Cars should be taxed according to the pollutants they emit, and the rate of this emission should also be varied according to the number of the cars on the road, as the same amount of pollutants are more harmful when the air is already polluted. If this were to be done, even then, if all the costs were passed on to the consumer, the prices would be more when the demand is higher, but at least the increase in prices would not be as arbitrary as the present model of surge pricing followed by aggregators.

Now let’s look at why the principle of free markets should or should not be applied here.

The free market believes that the ones who can pay the highest amount for a good or service are the ones who value it the most and hence we can bring greatest utility by letting them have that limited resource. First let’s differentiate between willingness to pay and ability to pay. Willingness to pay may still be an indicator of how much one values a certain good, but what we have here is actually ability to pay. Then, is willingness to pay really the best or only way to allocate this resource, assuming its limited? Why shouldn’t it be allocated instead by waiting in a line? Waiting too is a measure of how badly one needs a cab, right? Or why not just leave it to luck, let’s have a lottery to decide who gets a cab?

Cabs are a means of transportation, and transportation is in a way a public good. It is a necessity for people to carry on with their normal business. One can argue that public transportation like trains, metros and government run buses are supposed to take care if the needs of the public. However, public transportation is clearly inadequate in most parts of our country, and private cabs play an important role in bridging that gap. Given this, it should be treated like a public good and prices should be regulated. There is also the possibility that surge pricing may give drivers perverse incentives to create a situation of artificial scarcity. Drivers can go off the Uber grid and then come back when the prices are higher.

All I am trying to say is we really need to rethink our faith in the power of free markets. 

Croatia, clarity and careers

We were walking through the beautiful Vintgar gorge marveling at the clear, characteristic turquoise blue waters. We had been gazing at these clear blue waters for almost a week now, but we just couldn’t get over them.

Rahul: Look at the clarity of the water. (For the nine hundred and eighty fifth time)

Sailee: Hmm

Anubhav: Yeah, it definitely has more clarity than our career goals. 

An evening in Krakow

The right time to stop eating is when you think you can have a bite more. Similarly I guess the right time to leave a place is probably when you think you would have liked to spend a few hours more. You leave the place wanting to come back some other time. That's exactly what happened with Krakow. 

We had just one evening to spend in Krakow. There wasn't much to do there apparently. No famous palace or museum. I too had decided to go to Krakow because it was the most comvenient place from where one could visit Auschwitz. We landed at the Krakow railway station about 4 and decided to first walk to our hostel and drop our bags. The path we had to take was strewn with the sights and monuments of Krakow and we had seen half of what we eventually saw on our way to the hostel itself. We stopped at the main square for a bit to watch a group performing some hiphop street dance. The square is bound by the cloth market on one side, and two churches at two corners. All along the sides of the square are pretty looking cafes with outdoor seating. Along one side you can find a row of horse carriages. Most driven by smartly dressed young women.

As we walked down the narrow cobble stones streets, I saw this interesting uni-cycle. Unfortunately, I was only quick enough to get a back view.

And soon we had reached our abode for the night - The Little Havana Party Hostel.The hostel takes its name really seriously - partying hard. They even sent us a mail saying we should cancel the booking if we didn't like parties. But it was a lovely hostel. They gave 3 free beers which I didn't care much for but also 1 free burger which was not bad and quite welcome considering we had hardly eaten the whole day. 

This long hall is the cloth market. It is an old building that was historically inhabited by cloth merchants. Today it is still used as a market, but not specifically for cloth. You have an assortment of stalls ranging from amber jewelry to furs to small souvenirs.

Below is the cloth market from outside. Around the cloth market is the main square of Krakow. On different edges of the square are some churches, towers and other historical buildings. Seeing whether the building is aligned along the edge of the square or not is a good way to tell whether the building was built before or after the cloth market. 

Along the sides of the squares were also several pretty cafes, all with outdoor seating. 

As the sun set we just walked around the city with a map, identifying buildings as we walked past them. There were a lot of churches, and almost every church seemed to have some concert. It looked like the churches had concerts almost every day. It was a regular affair. We decided to see one. It was supposed to be classical and film music. I could identify only one song - the track from Schindler's List, nevertheless the concert was really nice. The setting of attending a concert in a church was new to me and seemed to add to the experience. 

Music in Krakow wasn't limited to concerts. There were musicians or singers on almost every street I walked on. This man was playing the violin on the street. He was playing so well that a couple of old couples started dancing on the footpath!

 We stood by the river for a while and then hurried to see the museum of the underground city. They have apparently preserved an underground city. Alas we reached too late and couldn't see it. Then we walked all around the city looking at appetizing restaurants and rejoicing about how much cheaper Poland was compared to Western Europe. Unfortunately, we spent  a tad too much time rejoicing and soon places began to shut down. Eventually we had dinner at the faithful old friend called a Doner shop. 

We ended the meal with a lody each. That's what ice creams are called in Poland - Lody. You get amazing flavours and they are much cheaper compared to Western Europe - sometimes even India. 1 scoop for 0.75 cents. I had tiramisu, mango and coffee over the three days I was in Poland and loved all of them! 

After the dinner we walked around the city for a while. Unlike some other cities, we'd been to earlier, Krakow didn't go quiet at 8. It was quite up and alive till midnight, when we finally went back to the hostel - with people in the street and street musicians keeping the atmosphere alive. I had a lovely evening in Krakow - and I know I owe it to the people as much as to the place, but Krakow was lovely and it's definitely on the list of places I want to go back to. Hopefully soon. 

What I would do different if I wasn't on a student budget

I am writing this list to my future self who may laugh at it and hopefully be rich enough and young enough to do things differently! 

• Not eaten from super markets in Norway. Eating bread and nutella for any and every meal is indeed sad. Not eaten pizza or noodles in Paris! 
• Cancelled the train and stayed in Stavanger after the body breaking trek that Kjerag turned out to be. 
• Not take Ryan air flights from godforsaken airports.
• Taken a river cruise or eaten at one of those boats that take you through the river in the evening in Paris 
• Eaten in those pretty looking cafes with outdoor seating in cobblestoned streets - in Salzburg, Werfen, Krakow, Koeln, Paris and i guess every European city I'll go to. 
• Seen a show and had that dinner worth 180 Euros in Moulin Rouge. 
• Taken the Thalys from Koeln to Paris. For the experience, convenience and time saved.
• Gone inside the castle/ palace at Salzburg having done the 20 minute climb to the gate and for the better view of the city it promised.
• Visited more museums in general. Every city I've been to has loads of museums and I haven't gone inside several thinking they are huge, I won't have time to see them properly and hence do justice to the exorbitant fee I would be paying to enter. If I wasn't on a budget, I'd probably think less. 

That said, I am thoroughly enjoying going around Europe on a student budget and some of these constraints are making for wonderful stories I'll remember for a long time.

Comment with things you'd like to add!