An island of cockatoos

A slightly different entry today - the first time I've written about travel in my city of origin; Sydney, Australia. And why not?

Sydney is justifiably renowned for its harbour, which most people would agree is pretty special. Ask anyone about Sydney and you're likely to get comments about the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, both iconic structures on the harbour. But even most Sydneysiders won't know too much more about the many other sites to be found in and around the harbour, and in particular the various islands in the harbour.

Originally there were 14 islands. Two, once separated by a narrow stretch of shallow water, have been joined to form the present Spectacle Island. Five others, formerly islands; Garden, Bennelong, Darling, Glebe and Berry Islands, have been joined to the mainland. The other remaining islands are Shark, Clark, Fort Denison, Goat, Cockatoo, Snapper and Rodd Islands.

The Turbine Workshop, Cockatoo Island

Many of the islands have either a penal or industrial (or both) background. The largest of the islands is Cockatoo Island, which has been at various times in its life a prison, a reformatory school for girls, and a shipbuilding dockyard. Activity reached its peak during the time of the world wars, and continued until the facility was closed in 1991. It stayed abandoned and becoming derelict until 2001 when the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust took it over and undertook restoration works. Today it's been listed as a Unesco World Heritage site and is open to the public.

But enough history. This morning I took a ferry down the Paramatta river to Cockatoo Island. I'd made this trip before, but had never actually visited the island, simply passing by since I'd been heading to the city. Today however the destination was Cockatoo Island to do something I hadn't done in years: a bit of Orienteering ("cunning running"). Orienteering is more associated with navigating through the bush, but in fact can also be done in an urban environment. On an Island there's not much risk of getting lost (keep running in one direction long enough and you'll get wet) but it was a fun event navigating around and through old workshops, dry-docks and so on. A little extra interest came from the several tunnels bored through the sandstone of the island, as well as working out the most efficient way of getting from the sea level areas up to (and down from) the middle section, which is up on a cliff.

Orienteerers adding a little colour to the sandstone-and-iron island

Apart from the orienteering aspect of the visit, it really struck me how easy it is to know so little about your own city of origin. I've travelled all around the world, to some pretty remote and obscure places. I've even travelled extensively around Australia. Yet so much of Sydney remains to be discovered: it's the usual "too close to home" syndrome I suppose; having grown up in Sydney I have tended to take it for granted. Note to self: must spend more time discovering Sydney.

Relics of a different era (actually, not that long ago)

Another day, another flight

The Ambassador - production is finally ending after almost 60 years

The drive to the airport is fascinating; the time passes quickly with so much to see along the way. It's a visual and olfactory adventure going from my hotel in down-town Dehradun out to Jolly Grant airport. The driver is taking a different route, which passes through little villages and through a forest. It's a windy road, made more so by the fact that whoever built it seems to have had an aversion to cutting down trees. So the road meanders around large trees, and there's even several (many, in fact) places where there's actually a tree in the road, and the roadside barrier goes behind the tree rather than in front of it. I try not to think of the safety aspects of this system. Cows walk leisurely along, and across the road. Motor bikes rush past, all of them with at least two people. In most cases the rider is "wearing" his helmet by putting his arm through it, rather than having it on his head. Perhaps this somehow satisfies the requirement of motorbike riders having to use helmets? Once out of town, we see few of the almost-ubiquitous Ambassador cars. These still ferry government representatives around, and are also used as taxis in some areas.

The road passes through some small villages, where it becomes very narrow. We're in a little Tata, but often very much larger Tata trucks bear down on us from both directions. "My Tata is bigger than yours" you can almost hear the truck drivers thinking as they take right of way. forcing us out of their path.

Singapore Changi

Self portrait with A380

Singapore airport: a world apart from any other. I arrive on schedule (of course) at 06:00 from Delhi. My connecting flight leaves an hour later and in any other airport attempting a connection with so little time would be a complete lost cause. It takes me ten minutes to walk from my arrival gate to the departure gate and a few minutes to go through the security checks. I even have time to connect to the airport's WiFi, which is a painless experience (unlike other airports I can think of). The WiFi has a speed an order of magnitude faster than the lamentable connection at Delhi.

Not long after, boarding starts and then the flight leaves, right on schedule (of course). I wonder about my luggage, but when I arrive at my destination, my bag is there waiting for me. Not only have I made a connection in less than an hour, but my luggage has made it too. I am very impressed!

I've come from an A380 and connected to a 777. I am enjoying the comfort of the business class seating on these flights and it is virtually the same in each aircraft; it feels sort of nice to be in a familiar place despite the change of plane. The seat is the massively wide cocoon which Singapore Airlines first introduced when we were in Paris; Ann and I happened to take the very first flight out of Paris that featured the new seating (how we managed to wrangle business class then I do not recall, but we did not complain!)  I still remember the bemused reaction of the cabin staff when we sat next to each other in the one seat (just to show how wide it really was). But today my seat isn't working; it won't recline and the reading lights don't work. It's like the whole seat has lost power. The staff is brilliant and immediately offer an alternative seat but for the moment I prefer to keep my spot by the window. A moment later the cabin manager appears, addressing me by name, apologising for the trouble. Even better, he fixes the problem by rebooting my seat. So now we live in a world where even the chairs can crash and need to be rebooted!

As I have a window seat I spend much of the flight looking out the window rather than at the screen in front of me; things are more interesting out there. We skirt several impressive cumulonimbus - we are at over 36,000 feet so these are serious thunderstorms. The islands of Indonesia pass below. Some time later the west coast of Australia comes into sight: red earth meeting a turquoise blue ocean under an impressively bold blue sky.

First sighting of Australia

The Forest Research Institute

The Forest Research Institute

Finally, on my third visit to Dehradun, I make it to the Forest Research Institute. What an amazing place! While I had read that the building is quite impressive, I wasn't prepared to see what could be taken for an Indian version of the Chateau de Versailles essentially in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by gorgeous forests. It's a very impressive example of British Colonial architecture and building; an enormous structure, built entirely of red bricks. It is a vast structure, set in manicured lawns surrounded by forests. Dating from the beginning of the 20th century, the building covers an amazing 2.5 hectares just by itself. It is worth visiting for its own sake and there are some wonderful photo opportunities in the long arched colonnades.

The building houses several museums, which can be visited by purchasing a ticket from the princely sum of 25 rupees (about 50 cents). I buy a ticket and walk around the complex, losing myself in the many passageways and getting constantly distracted by the terrific perspective views everywhere.

The first of the museums I visit is the Sylviculture museum. I have never heard of sylviculture, but now I learn that it is essentially the science of improving forests through selective use plants and seeds. The room looks old fashioned, which it is. It is dominated by large dioramas in wooden cases with glass fronts. Each one represents an enormous amount of work by someone, depicting a scene of forest life, deforestation and so forth. Clever, but not really very exciting. More interesting is the stuffed tiger in a beautiful glass and wooden display box. There are a couple of round white mothballs at his feet and then I spot one in his mouth, which somehow takes away from his fierce look. It's a little like he's sucking on a lolly. There's also a large collection of old B&W photographs which have been hand-coloured. There's an interesting one titled "Australian exotics successfully introduced into India" showing a presumably British colonial forester wearing a pith helmet (they really did dress like that) standing underneath a large eucalyptus. I can't help wondering how "successful" eucalypts really are in India, and what their long-terms effects have been on the native forests. A little further along in a lovely hand-coloured photograph of a teak plantation with an Indian forester, stiffly standing to attention in his colonial uniform. I walk around, regretting the fact that none of the exhibits have any dates on them. Then I spot another photograph: "Effect of the frost of 1905, seen six years later". So now I have a date for these images; 1911.

Bright tops compensate for the drab uniform of these schoolgirls

A long line of schoolgirls shuffles through the museum, politely looking into all the display cases while secretly whispering and giggling with each other. I am guessing they may not be discussing the exhibits. Later I ask a couple of them which school they are from, and am quickly corrected: they are from a "college". A little later, one of their teachers asks me for directions (which I find quite amusing, given that I am as lost as they are, but as it happens, am heading for the same place). From her I learn that this is a nursing college and these girls (and in fact a couple of boys) are training to be nurses.

Next I visit the timber museum, which is much more to my liking. It's a large room, with three of the four walls lined with panels of wood from all the different types of trees in India. Each panel has a picture of the tree, and a sample of finished and unfinished wood. Wonderful. There's a large assortment of models of wood-drying kilns and the like. First I am impressed by a section of a 330-year old tree, but then I spot at the end of the room an enormous slice of tree, which is almost 800 years old, having been "born" in 1215 AD. The diameter of the tree is almost 3 metres! The explanations and markings on the cross-section state that the tree is 704 years old, so the exhibit itself dates from 1919.

At one end of the room are a couple of replica living rooms, built entirely from wood panelling, wooden floors, and lovely wooden furniture. Beautifully rich. In one of the rooms, there's a curious apparatus built into the sideboard. It's a rotating (wooden) drum that contains many cut-outs which hold glass plate photographs. It's internally lit and looks like some sort of slide display system; something that would predate slide projectors and of course television (and even commercial radio, for that matter) as a source of family entertainment perhaps.

Colours at the Forest Research Institute

More notes from India

I'm in India for the week in an aging and run-down building that appears to be undergoing a "renovation" of sorts. During the week I have been trying to decide whether the building actually needs renovation, or whether demolition would be more appropriate. There's scaffolding set up all around the outside walls. The scaffolding is supported in places on the uneven ground by pieces of brick under the legs and it doesn't appear to be tied to the building anywhere. What exactly is holding it up, if anything, is mystery. There's a workman using a high-pressure hose to clean the outside of the building. He's standing up on the scaffolding, several floors up in bare feet and I can't help thinking about how slippery that wet scaffolding must be. He's wearing a safety harness, but the harness is connected to a rather sad-looking piece of rope which is tied to the scaffolding below him. The mind boggles - if he falls he's going to go crashing down until the rope pulls him up, possibly before he hits the ground. I'm not sure which would be worse - falling on the ground or being smashed into the side of the building on the end of a piece of rope (assuming the rope doesn't break). Something that smells remarkably like diesel or perhaps kerosene is being used in the high-pressure cleaning and there's a mist of it wafting around the corridors.

The mystery source of the Naan - found!

Lunch and morning and afternoon tea is served in the "Executive canteen". Tea consists of a cup with a tea-bag in it, which is then filled with teeth-tinglingly sweet milky water from a large urn. Lunch is essentially the same every day, and while it doesn't look particularly appealing, the contents of the large stainless steel trays sitting on burners are actually not bad at all. One of the trays is marked "non-veg" (it's the one that contains meat, although they mostly all look the same, hence the need for the sign I suppose). This is a different take on what I am used to: having one or two dishes marked "vegetarian". Here in India, vegetarian is the norm and eating meat is the exception, not the other way around. Every so often someone appears from behind the scenes with a tray of freshly-cooked Naan, which is quickly snapped up by the lucky few who are nearby. I wonder in passing where this Naan is coming from. Later in the week, while I am on a walk around the complex, I spot a guy standing outside the building next to a tandoor, with a table of balls of dough. He's preparing the dough, then popping it into the tandoor. I've found the source of the Naan!

In the training room, there's an overhead projector hanging from the ceiling. The remote control is long gone, which is hardly a surprise of course. But I find an old stick (actually the base of a roller-screen which presumably hung on the wall at some time in the past) in the corner of the room which I can use to just reach the on/off button on the projector. It's my "remote control" for the week.

The class is quite varied, including people of widely differing seniorities in the company. I'm pleased to see that there are also four female students in the group. During the week I continue to be impressed with the ability of the students to pay attention throughout the entire day, and not only that, but to also retain the material to a remarkable level of detail. The quiz held at the end of the course confirms the impressive ability of these students to learn - and not just memorize -  the material.

The morning commute

I begin to recognise the same things every morning: The cow in the middle of the intersection, scratching itself against the (not working) traffic light. The mangy stray dogs lying peacefully on the roadside while the traffic rushes past. The man on the scooter with a steel milk urn strapped on either side (presumably making the morning milk delivery). The woman riding side-saddle on the back of the scooter, her thick braid of black hair hanging all the way down her back and her sari flapping in the breeze (at night the sari neatly obscures the tail light). The previously neat, but now abandoned traffic police stands in the middle of intersections. The vagrant with a mop of unruly hair and pants that haven't been washed - or probably even taken off - in perhaps years, lying on a traffic island in the middle of an intersection. The collapsing buildings with pieces of masonry dangling ominously from upper levels, handing by their reinforcing rods. The old men with white beards and turbans, squatting on their haunches by the side of the road. The piles of rubbish collected along the roadside. The occasional rubbish skips, full to overflowing, with a collection of cows, dogs, and people rummaging through their contents looking for something to salvage. The roadside barber, rickety chair on the footpath, mirror tied to a tree or to a wall, wet-shaving someone with a cut-throat razor. The impeccably neatly dressed school boys in their blazers and ties, running to catch the next rickshaw.

Colourful shops along the road

Looking ahead, there are two cars, a couple of scooters, and a bicycle bearing down the road in the opposite direction, each overtaking the other. The driver doesn't flinch - or slow down - and as we meet, somehow all the vehicles manage to pass by each other unscathed. I'm reminded of the story of the mad man who had come up with the idea that since everything is made of atoms which are moving freely in space, it should be possible for any object to simply pass through another, emerging on the other side intact - and then tried to prove his theory by driving his car through the one in front. A bit later, there's a woman on a scooter coming down the middle of the road towards us. Naturally I expect her to pull back to her side of the road, but no, she continues gradually crossing over to our side, and then as we meet, she passes down our left side since she wants to turn onto a side road (there are other oncoming vehicles passing our right side). So we go through the middle of two opposing lanes of traffic. At the only intersection where the traffic lights are working (complete with a count-down timer to show when the lights will change) the middle of the intersection is filled with scooters and motorised rickshaws who are positioning themselves to jump the red light on any gap in the traffic. They have stopped, but there's no way that they are going to wait for the light to turn green before heading off.

Recycling old engine oil at Vijay Motors

Notes from India

I get into the back of the little Tata taxi which is to take me from the airport to my "home" for the next week; a hotel in central Dehradun. Unlike the cars I've had on my last visits, this one actually has working seatbelts in the back, although they are the old non-retracting type I haven't seen in decades. They have clearly not been used for a very long time (probably never) and I spend quite a bit of time struggling with them before I get them working and fitting properly. The driver is no doubt wondering what I am doing - I don't think I've ever seen anyone wear seatbelts in the back of a vehicle here and he probably hasn't either.

The drive from the airport to town takes something like 45 minutes and for the uninitiated is definitely an eye-opening experience. Even for those of us who've made this type of journey before, it's still an interesting experience! Driving here is characterised by constant use of the horn and driving on wrong side of the road when it seems convenient - if necessary forcing the motorbikes (not to mention cyclists) off the road. It's often a bit of a game of "chicken" with traffic coming from the opposite direction bearing down upon your car as your driver overtakes the motorbike overtaking the motorized rickshaw overtaking the bicycle. Who will get back to their own side first?

I spot little stalls along the road with big signs advertising "goggles" - "Lucky" and "Fancy". It turns out that they are selling sunglasses, but why not call them "goggles"?

The section of the road passing through a forest populated with red-bummed monkeys seems to be still the same as it was back in January. The dual-lane road is still under construction, so that sometimes you have opposing traffic on your side of the median strip, and sometimes it's on the other side of the median strip. It's a bit random, and there's no formal indication of whether you're driving on a section that has one-way or two-way traffic. Just the fact that suddenly there's traffic coming in the opposite direction on your side. The monkeys are still there, scratching themselves by the side of the road, or flashing their red bums and enormous balls as they scuttle across the road. I have yet to see a squashed monkey on the road, although I can't imagine how many of them are not hit by cars each day.

We arrived unscathed at the hotel, which is on Rajpur road, the main road running through the centre of town. It all looks much the same as it was ten months ago, which is good in the sense that it's all familiar, but not so good in the sense that it doesn't appear to have improved at all.

Room with a view

The hotel has been (or is being) refurbished - which seems to mean essentially new painting: everything is painted, even things that shouldn't be. There are multiple botched repairs and in the bathroom of my room there is mould growing in the new grouting, there's loose plumbing, exposed wires to a light in the cupboard, remnants of cement on the bathroom floor under the basin and so on. The new paint is already bubbling in places on the walls where moisture, probably from the bathroom next door, is seeping into the wall. The curtains are drooping from broken tracks and the pull cords are brown from years of greasy hands on them. Cigarette burns already pockmark the new(ish) carpet. Apart from these little details, the room is fine and the air-conditioning works. There's what appears to be clean towels in the bathroom and the bed linen looks good. I am not game to even think about what might lurk under the mattress or under the bed. Then I remember reading a news article about a dead body that was discovered under a hotel room bed after having been there for 13 years, although that was in the USA, not India. I resolve to definitely not look under my bed.

In the hotel restaurant there is a couple who sings on a little stage at the end of the room almost every night. I recognise them from my previous visit. It must be deadening - every night going on stage, singing (accompanied by mechanical-sounding recorded music) while your audience, who at times number only one or two, are eating and completely ignoring you. But I don't have too much sympathy for them, as their music is pretty awful, and it is overpowering as well.

Tonight the restaurant was full - something I haven't seen before. There's a large table set up near the stage and tonight we are being treated to the raucous sounds of a farewell party for someone. My initial joy at seeing that the usual singing couple were not performing is quickly replaced by dismay when I realise how noisy this group is. And it gets worse. There's some sort of singing theme to this farewell party, and the guests begin taking it in turn to serenade the rest of the group. Some of them can sing; most of them most definitely not. There's two who stand out from the group: a woman with a half-decent voice, and an older man who has the uncanny ability of looking like he's having a conversation or giving a speech, but he's actually singing. The restaurant is big enough for me to get a slight delay between his movements and the sound of his voice, which adds to the surreal feeling of the event.

I'm surrounded by the babble of voices in multiple languages: to my left there's an Indian couple. She is heavily made up with black eyes and red lips, and she talks at a rapid-fire pace. Her partner doesn't have to say much and I can't understand a word (of course). To my right are a couple of guys form Africa, speaking heavily African-accented English. They are stereotypes in their mannerisms and actions, and instantly take me back to Nigeria. Across the way is a large group of Indian businessmen with what are probably two foreign guests. One of the guests is enormous and he looks even bigger sitting next to his colleague who is rather small. The big one is also loud (and his English sounds American-accented) and he's dominating the table, both physically as well as vocally.

Interestingly, both on the night I arrive, and the night before I leave, there are large wedding parties being held at the hotel. My room looks out over the lawn (I use the term rather liberally) and it is again set up with tables and a stage. There's a band (incredibly loud, and the old unsealed windows of my room give me the full benefit of its repertoire) and a large crowd of people, many of whom, especially the women, are beautifully dressed. It's all colourful flashing lights and bling.

The wedding party in full swing - the happy couple is on the stage for photographs

Speaking of weddings, the Sunday paper has a complete "Matrimonials" section complete with several pages of classified advertisements for brides: Wanted Brides / By Caste. One ad reads, in part: "We are looking for non Manglik extremely beautiful, slim, tall & smart bride...". Probably not an ad you'd see in a European, US, or Australian newspaper.