Amit Sinha's Travelog

Sitting in a hotel room in Beijing, with a view of construction
cranes, concrete slabs that are apartment complexes, and as I try to
make out the mountains in the background through the haze of
pollution, I think back to Laos, where, less than twenty four hours
ago, I was in a country that was still ‘unspoilt’ by development.

I am in two minds about development. It is easy to go, as a tourist,
with a fistful of dollars in hand, into a poor, under-developed
country like Laos, and live large, and enjoy the nature, and friendly
people. Its easy to come back to the modern world, sit at a fancy
restaurant, or in the air-conditioned comfort of your home, and wax
eloquent about your trip, sipping a pinot noir, and talking about how
you enjoyed a place like Laos because it still hasn’t been developed,
and then, as a rejoinder, you sadly mention how you feel its all
going to get corrupted, as the country is opening up its economy. To
me that feels hypocritical. Who am I to deny a country the chance of
improving the lives of its people just so that there is a place that
still has its “charm” for me to return to when I want to get away
from all the luxury that development has bestowed upon me. I see the
modern International terminal in Vientiane airport, managed in co-
operation with the Japanese, and think about the jobs its created,
and think whether its right for me to say that progress such as that
is wrong, because its changing something that in my modern,
westernized mind I find “quaint and exotic”.

Development is good because it provides an opportunity to improve the
quality of life of the people in the region. However, the unfortunate
aspect of development is corruption- both in the conventional form,
as well as social corruption, where, blinded by dollars, people lose
their basic moral fibre, history and culture, and pander to tourists,
or switch to aping the West. If development can be achieved without
such corruption, then I think a healthy balance for both the people,
and the visitors, as well as the environment, can be achieved.

I don’t want the Laos I saw to change. I want to be able to go to
Luang Prabhang and walk the streets without being harassed by
shopkeepers. I want to be able to walk into a village and have a
conversation with the local villagers without being expected to throw
money at them, such as in Tonle Sap in Cambodia. I still want to
retain my faith in the basic genuineness of people. And if this can
be achieved while having better roads, schools, airports, and maybe a
couple of ATMs here and there, then I have no issues with
development. I think its possible, and not just in Laos, but also in
say India, which is probably at a stage that’s early enough so that
development can be channeled in the right way, without unduly harming
the environment, culture, and corrupting the people.

Two very interesting experiences today. Headed out in the morning to the offices of the Snow Leapord Conservancy. Learnt some amaziong stuff about how to promote conservation through economic development. They’ve successfully setup homestays, where tourists can stay in the homes of local villagers and go trekking. Through this, the local villagers earn substantial income directly (instead of the organized tour operators), and at the same time reduce their dependence on livestock for their livelihood. Additionally, they learn about conservation and the environment and its importance- after all, the toursits come to see the wildlife and nature, and that’s what provides the locals with livelihood.

Additionally, the group has several unique educational programs as well, and it was really nice learning about that.

Rachel, a junior from Skidmore College in NY who was also staying at the Oriental Guest House and doing an independent study, joined me on my visits today after over-hearing a conversation i was having at dinner last night.

After the Snow Leopard place, we headed to Chushot, a small village about 15kms from Leh, where Namgyal had their hostel. It was located in a wide open area, with nothing but mountains around. The hostel, and the adjoining government school have a really unique approach to handling disabled children. At the hostel, disabled children mingled freely with regular children, as at the government school. You could see the benefits of this in the way the children interacted with each other and with outsiders such as us. It also gave a lot of confidence to the disabled chidlren, one of whom was the top student in the entire village!

The children were extremely friendly and playful, and included us in whatever activities they were doing. We also got a chance to take a look at their text books, which had been published by SECMOL, a local agency that made text-books catering more to the local children, and you could see how useful that was.

Over here you could see NGO’s working closely with the government, and the government supporting the various efforts, In fact, the government is looking to take over the hostel that Namgyal currently runs. Its just fascinating seeing all this at work, and the efforts put in by the project co-ordinators Madhura, Vidhya, Sujatha and Madhu- its really commendable, and was really educational for me to see first-hand what they have achieved and are working on.

I have a bunch of really nice pictures that I took today which I shall post when I get back to Delhi and greater band-width.

We saw the sunset approaching. Not because time was passing, but because our two small boats were heading towards it. A boat ride can be fun, even romantic at times. However, as a group of fifteen young men, romance was really not on top of our minds. We were putting our lives in the hands of two Jamaican fisherman and their rickety old boats in order to find what we had heard was the perfect bar.

The trip started with a negotiation. The fishermen demanded what was probably a month’s wages to take each of us across. He cited international maritime rules, his many unborn children, and the treacherous seas that he would have to navigate through in order to justify the price. However, as a result of some clever negotiation on our part, which basically involved having a pleasant Aussie currently living in Phoenix by way of Chicago and San Francisco as chief negotiator, we managed to bring it down to just about half a month’s wages. It is always a good negotiation tactic to have two undecipherable accents communicate in order to reach agreement.

With a price finally decided, we carefully lumbered onto two tiny fishing vessels, making sure that we evenly distributed our weight to prevent any chance of someone falling overboard and delaying us from reaching our destination.

After almost twenty minutes of riding the less-than-calm waters, as we moved further away from land and were convinced that something got lost in translation from Australian to Jamaican English and we had ended up purchasing a one-way ticket to Cuba, we finally sighted what the internet calls one of the coolest bars in the world.

On a standalone basis, at first impression, the ramshackle collection of driftwood that is supposed to be Floyd’s Pelican Bar is quite unimpressive. The space is tiny and without any electricity, and probably would fail any building inspection, assuming the building inspector had any inclination of coming this way for an inspection. Located on a sandbank, twelve miles from the nearest beach, this collection of driftwood stands on stilts on emerald-green water. The interiors would probably make your closest look like the Shangri-la, and if you don’t like sitting on tree stumps then you’d better know how to swim and sip a beer at the same time. Any calls of nature can be answered by walking out in the open and into mother-nature’s very own rest room- the sea. But you then look around you, and you see the beautiful still water stretching for as far as the eyes can see, and a sun casting a deep orange net across the horizon, capturing gray clouds, and hear nothing but complete silence, and you know it was worth it.

Here are pictures of the Pelican Bar. For pictures of Jamaica, click here