Another year begins and all of our resolutions are probably in high gear. This year I have taken a couple of very reasonable and achievable resolutions (which shall remain a secret). I will report a scorecard in Dec 2013! My wife and I had a great time in India, visiting relatives and friends and making a trip to a couple of really great historical sites in Tamil Nadu & Karnataka.

The leftmost picture above is the Brihadeeswarar Temple (aka The Big Temple!) in a town called Tanjore (where I spent a considerable amount of time while going to College). This temple was built in the 11th century by a great Chola King called Raja Raja Chola and it is just a marvelous temple with so many sculptures in and around, that have been remarkably preserved – primarily because of granite construction and that the deep south was immune from invaders of other religions. This is a UNESCO World Heritage site called the Great Living Chola Temples.

We also visited the ruins of Vijayanagar empire (14th-16th century) in a place called Hampi in Karnataka. Though Hampi was a critical place in the empire’s history, the ruins there are primarily from the early 16th century. These were excavated beginning in the 70’s and declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in the mid-80’s. Near Hampi are three other historical sites, called Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal. Badami has four cave temples that have been extremely well preserved (because they are inside caves) and the sculptures there are breathtaking. They are from the 5th-7th centuries. Aihole and Pattadakal also have temples and sculptures that are from the same period. I have attached a few pictures above from these places.

This time around technologies worked even better than the last time in India. I wanted to use my AT&T phones in India using local SIM cards so I could save some money. Of course that does not work. AT&T will not unlock phones that are under contract. I don’t understand it. Precisely because you are committed to honor the contract, they should do it, because you are unlikely to leave them – you are bound by contract. Frankly, I have stopped caring about these telephone companies and their business models long time ago. They are the only ones who can still charge an arm and a leg for copper lines that were laid 80+ years ago and get away with it! Anyways, I luckily still held on to a couple of older Samsung phones out of contract that they helped unlock.

I did not want to take any chances, so I did sign up for the international roaming plan for data ($30 for 120 MB, somewhat reasonable). So until I picked up the SIM from a friend, I was connected using this. Upon receiving the SIM, it was like magic – I could just walk to a neighborhood store and add minutes to the plan. Then, right from my Samsung phone, I could send a code to purchase the 2 GB data plan for a half a buck! Really, I am not kidding. It was followed by text messages giving me clear instructions on how to configure my cell phone settings, which I did, and everything worked perfectly from then on. I was so happy that all my relatives thought there was something wrong with me for a moment!

Of course, I turned off my AT&T phone. Now I could also make local calls for pennies, international calls for a few more pennies and text messages for 2 cents. So, we were constantly in touch with our children.

The other thing that I noticed was that many of the new “flats” (apartments) that some of our younger relatives have purchased are already fitted with 110V flat pin connections, so the converters became moot there. This was also the case at the hotels we stayed in Karnataka. This made the whole trip so much more enjoyable. I know, I know… I cannot be without connectivity even if I am vacationing. Sorry!

We were so lucky to have two excellent English speaking guides in Karnataka, who were very knowledgeable about the history of the place. But how does one know that they are not cooking up stories? Initially, I would jump to the UNESCO site to verify some of what they were saying and they were right on the money. Also, some piercing questions from my wife (who knows a lot about the history of that region – mostly through repeated readings of a couple of long historical novels about this area in Tamil) were a bit too much for the guides to handle. I became the “expert” and thoroughly impressed the guides in the process. I gave them advice on getting one of these devices to help them with unanticipated questions and also suggested to them that they should set up websites and engage in shameless self promotion using the social media. I recommended them to many friends in India and tweeted their contacts. They were that good!

The very fact that the Hindu religion has so many Gods and Goddesses as well as different forms of each of them has given the sculptors fabulous opportunities to introduce interesting varieties,  Our guides would challenge us to identify them and between my wife and I we did a pretty good job. No, I did NOT use Google goggles. Whereas most of them were religious sculptures, there were a few that were of commoners or the royals. The guides took great pleasure in that we failed miserably in identifying them initially because we thought they were Gods too. One of them would chuckle and point to sculptures of intimate couples and say “Happy Couple”. Soon, we became experts at identifying those happy couples also.

Travel in India continues to resemble many other aspects of India – there are a few great roads and highways that have been built recently where the cars fly at 120 Kmph (or 75 mph) while navigating “lorries” moving at 40 Kmph in the passing lane as well as two wheelers and bullock carts coming at you from the opposite side in a divided lane. But most roads are terrible for travel by western standards and it is unclear when they are going to be (if at all) fixed. BTW, I was told that whoever is the transportation minister at the top, that state gets the most highway funding (sounds very familiar, of course!)

This type of drastic contrast that has always defined India is everywhere. Real estate prices are rising continually at a pace that is hard to comprehend and people are being able to afford them somehow. Yet, the poor are getting poorer and many of the tourist sites have a fair share of the poor and helpless which breaks your heart. Because of politics, the state of Tamil Nadu, which depends on the monsoon (which seems to have eluded everyone twice in a row) and its northern neighbors for water has severe water and electricity issues. Chennai, its capital, is blessed with a very well advertised 2 hour power outage every day (which rotates to a different two hours every month for different regions of the city), while the interior portions of the state have 12 hour outages. Many have UPS like devices (called inverters there) to power critical things like a few lights, refrigerators and yes, TV – impossible to live without those soap operas! Everyone seems to take all of this with a smile…

And I didn’t dare open my mouth and discuss any of this – who am I after all? Someone who deserted the homeland and left for the USA. My friends and family willingly discuss some of the issues on their own debate about it. However, if I open my mouth, all of their ire will be directed at me 🙂 It is a sensitive subject and I totally respect that.

Now, it is time to start work. There is a lot going on as always and I am ready to start… Happy New Year everyone!