It’s Monsoon season here in Tamil Nadu. Except the monsoon rains are conspicuously missing (useless geekish fact #394: the word monsoon refers to the weather pattern, not the actual rain that occurs during the monsoon). When I was here in 2006, the monsoon season started as soon as I arrived and finished the moment I… Continue reading
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What do you want to know about India?
I’ve been going through a bit of a dry patch recently, trying to come up with some inspiration on things to write about on my blog. Days are whizzing by, months are coming and going, pretty soon I’ll be going home for Christmas…and I’ve only been in India since last week, or at least, that’s… Continue reading
Diamonds in the rough?
I have often posted about how bad the tuk tuk drivers are here in Chennai. They see the white skin and little dollar signs flash in their eyes. A journey that should cost Rs 80 to a local will cost Rs 150 for a foreigner – as if we’re all made of money. Yeah, right!… Continue reading
Waiter, what’s this fly doing in my soup?
I think it’s doing front crawl, sir. OK, so yesterday I had my first cockroach experience. Henceforth know as “that thing that happened and what we will never talk about again. After today”. Now I have seen plenty of cockroaches in India. Some of them are big buggers and fly (FLY! who knew?!), others are… Continue reading
Smile; We’re All Doomed
Tomorrow, about lunch time, we’re all gonna be doomed. Why? Scientists in France and Switzland are going to switch on a $9bn experiment which contains a ‘slight’ chance of creating black holes. On Earth. For anyone that doesn’t know what a Black Hole is, it’s one of the most destructive things in nature. Nothing can… Continue reading
Cuisine of Goa
One of the big things that I was worried about when I first came to India in 2006 was the food. I’m a self confessed fussy eater, and the list of things I don’t like could be turned in to a book 500 pages long. However, this worry was unfounded because the food in India… Continue reading
Touchy, Feely, Inquisitive Goa
Having lived in possibly the most conservative place in the entire world, where even at school, boys and girls are kept separated and even speaking to a member of the opposite sex can result in a 10,000 rupee fine, you kind of get used to the fact that you can never shake hands with, or… Continue reading
Goa: Where everyone has a story to tell
OK, so in my last post I said that Goa is the equivalent to Benirom or Daytona. I wasn’t far off the mark, but it’s not entirely accurate either. It’s a bit like one of those Greek island resorts where the tourism is aimed at the middle aged and families with young children. There is… Continue reading
Kerala – What Western Tourists Should Know
Kerala – What Western Tourists Should Know In my previous post I lampooned India’s tourist industry by writing some fake tour guides for 3 completely lame tourist attractions – attractions which the Indian nationals queue up for and visit in their hundreds. However, what is apparent, is that the things that entertain Indian’s (standing on… Continue reading
Awesome Olympics
Being in a country where the national sport is Cricket which doesn’t feature at the Olympics, and other sports are so far off the radar you probably won’t even be able to read about them on Wikipedia, the Olympics have been relatively low key over here – with the exception of when Bindra won his… Continue reading