Amit Sinha's Travelog

In 2006 I had started this blog to record my thoughts as I traveled around the world on a 6 month sabbatical. 3 years on, I am now married, have a son, and am back in New York at my job.

I am now starting my blog again, with the intention of making this a resource for travelers who want to head out on their own, or with friends/family, and are seeking destinations, tips and things to do that one wont find in the typical guidebook.

I have just three days to go before I end this phase of travel. On Wednesday I leave Bangkok for Chennai, and will spend the next five or six weeks working for a microcredit organization, following some of the work they’ve done.

Travel is great, and I’ve enjoyed the last five months or so immensly. Its hard to find a better way to know yourself, and the world, really. However, I did realize that there will be more opportunities for me to travel, and I’d rather use the time remaining to do something that I would otherwise not be able to do. And that’s the experience I hope to get in the next month or so, in India.

Unfortunately, that does leave Africa and South America out of my ‘six continents in six months’ scheme, but I have a good idea of what I want to do there, and over the next couple of years, I’ll use my vacation time to experience them.

I head to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for a couple of days, and then have a few days in Chennai, which I shall use to update my blog, photos and suchlike.

I hate to sound all philosophical, but life truly is a journey, and being on the road, seeing new places, meeting different people, and adjusting to different ways of life, is just an incredible and enjoyable learning experience. It also refreshes you in many ways, and helps clear things a little, as while discovering the world out there, you find out more about yourself.

Dee is a wonderful woman. For the past three years I have not seen anyone but her. She is a lovely Croatian woman, and despite her busy schedule, always makes time for me. I would even leave work early sometimes to meet her. If I had to stay late, I would often meet her, and then head back to work.

Yesterday, I was unfaithful to her. Upon being dragged to Footscray in Melbourne for bargain shopping, I got thoughroughly bored and broke my promise, and headed over to a beautiful young Chinese girl… to get a haircut. For the first time in three years I had someone other than Dee cut my hair. I felt guilty, yet it was necessary.

Some people become models when they let their hair grow long, others become terrorists. Unfortunately, I seemed to belong to the latter, and the stares that I was getting were becoming unbearable. Furthermore, my family were considering disowning me (the last time they tried that was when I gave up eating fish, about twenty five years ago). Plus, I needed something, anything, to pass the time while my mom and cousin went around town finding trinklets and crockery and god knows what else.

So, true to form, modern technology was there to record this historic moment and bring it to the thousands of computer screens across the globe that intently follow the happenings in the life of Amit Sinha:

Musings from Melbourne

Its a little after 9pm. Yet, if I look outside the window, I see
nothing, and can’t hear a thing either. I walk out, and I find rows
of pretty houses, manicured lawns, and assorted Camrys, Accords and
Fords arranged neatly along a winding path. Its absolutely quiet,
with hardly a soul stirring. You see lights in the occasional living
room, and if you are lucky and the blinds are open, catch a
flickering telly.

I am in Hoppers Crossing, a suburb of Melbourne, but I might as well
be in a town along the Northeast corridor in New Jersey. The train
line is a ten minute bus ride or twenty minute walk, and the local
train dutifully follows the schedule and takes you into the heart of
the city, every fifteen minutes to half an hour. Its Melbourne’s
modernized version of the NJ Transit.

I am spending a couple of weeks here, taking a break from my travels
and attempting to relax and try and live a civilized life. While I’m
having success with the latter, the former is a little tougher. After
four months of scaring border officials, I finally got myself a
haircut, and my jeans saw the insides of a washing machine the first
time this year. I have three meals a day in a table on a kitchen,
wear clean socks, underwear, and actually use face wash and not soap
to clean my face. I still forget sometimes to change into PJs at
night, as I’ve gotten used to sleeping in the same clothes that I’ve
been wearing during the day.

When I got here I thought I would get some time to myself, not
rushing around taking in sights and experiencing the city life, and
provide me with the opportunity to catch up on my blog, post
pictures, etc. However, its been quite the opposite, as I’ve been
dragged into the suburban family lifestyle. My cousins here have
three kids, aged one, three and eight, and have discovered a
benevolent, inexperienced and extremely gullible babysitter in me. I
enjoy being with children, and for some reason they seem to relate to
me as well, must be something to do with my mental maturity! However,
what starts as a two minute ‘oh lets play piggy back’ ends up
becoming an hour-long yelling, screaming, hair-pulling playfest which
invariably ends up in one of the kids crying and everyone accusing
each other and a hapless wannabe world traveller in their midst,
desperately seeking help, and completely adoring them at the same
time. Kids really are terribly wonderful. I can see why people go to
such pains in order to raise a family, including moving to this
mysterious and crazy place called Suburbia.

A family and suburbia does crazy things to your life, as I’ve noticed
out here. First, the basic things in life take a lot more planning
and time. You don’t just decide to go somewhere and head out of the
house, You need to make sure you have baby food and water packed. Is
the baby seat in the car? Oh, and yes, you do need a car for
everything. Two is preferable. It takes about two hours to get a kid
ready, before they decide they need to use the bathroom, and then
repeat the process all over again. Shopping, is never a trip, its an
expedition. You never buy a small pack of anything. Its got to be
bulk. You can’t just stop and buy a coffee. You need to get ice cream
and hot chocolate for the kids, and next thing you know, that one
tiny cup of vice turns into a six item order. The regard I have for
my cousins keep going up several notches as I see them undertake this
battle every day. They do seem to enjoy it. Despite the hour long
commute each morning, the cacophony of childrens’ voices and demands
and games that greet them when they return, they would not trade this
for anything else in the world.

I’ve never lived in Suburbia. I grew up in Madras, a city of four
million people (at that time) in India, and now live in Greenwich
Village, New York. I am used to having several stores, open at all
hours, right outside my home. I am used to noise, blaring horns,
ambulances and drunk revelers making valiant attempts at disturbing
my sleep. I am used to walking outside on a sunny afternoon and
finding a cafe with Wi-Fi and cappucino. After my matchbox studio, I
feel lost in a large three bedroom house with a garage and a lawn and
a backyard. I’ve started running every day, and am hard pressed to
see more than ten people each time.

After a few days in the comfortable confines of my cousin’s suburban
home, and a couple of trips to the mall, I grew antsy and needed my
city fix. I took the train into Melbourne and felt rejuvenated. Here
was a city that seemed to have found the perfect blend between a city
and natural beauty. Lovely parks alongside skyscrapers. Wide
boulevards, people, shops, cafes, and runners. A lot of them. At all
hours. What’s more, they even have a golf course and driving range in
the heart of the city.

All-in-all, its probably been the most well balanced couple of weeks.
I’m enjoying the comfort of suburbia, while getting to enjoy the
city, spending time with family, being entertained by the kids, and
exploring a new city at the same time. My cousins, who love driving,
have been showing us around, and thanks to them I saw my first
Koalas, Kangaroos, Pelicans and Penguins on Phillip Island,
experienced some breath-taking scenery along the Great Ocean Road,
and roamed a weekend flea market.

We were driving out of the Timbaktu collective on our way to the main village. It was around noon, with the hot sun above us, and really dry land and grass all around us. You could feel the hot wind blowing. Being the manic trigger-happy photographer that I am, I was looking out of the car window, eagerly scouring the landscape for anything I could train my lenses on. In the distance I noticed something that looked like a fire. As we drove closer, not only was there a fire, but you could see large tracts of land colored black and could plainly see the fire spreading. Now, having grown up in a city, and living in New York, a fire is something you don’t brush off too easily (pardon the pun). However, Subba, the Timbaktu coordinator, looked non-chalantly at it and made some comment about how someone behind us might come and stop it. Seeing the worried expression on our faces however, he decided to stop and along with the driver and a few of the village women we picked up earlier along the road, went up to the fire, picked up a couple of tree branches and swiftly in a matter of minutes, managed to contain the fire.

Subba later explained that fires are pretty common here, and the dry climate contributes to a quick spread. Instead of fighting the fire, they work more to contain it and prevent it from spreading. All in a days work out here.