The constant traveler
Pictures, tales and insights from my 30 years travels to India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka
Imagine ……
Posted on April 23, 2017
Imagine just for a while a world without money. Lets replace the value of money with curiosity and benevolence to the planet.
What a world would it be without the competition, without the unequal distribution of wealth? A world where we are all the same, no border, no banks, no politicians would tell us what to do. Things would be done because of the inherent curiosity and goodness in humanity. Today crime is at its peak and mostly because of money or the need to divide us into races and religions. Take away money and religion (make it philosophical instead) and there would be much less crime.
Imagine a man who loves gardening and a man who loves to create cars. The man with the garden, needs a car to bring his goods to the people. So he goes to the man who builds cars and explains his needs. The man with the cars tells him, just look around, take one, its there. The gardener happily drives his car to the people and tells them; hey if you’re hungry, take, its there. You can spin this thought to everything in life and realise, yes it can be done. There is enough curiosity to create technology that is beneficial to the planet and all its inhabitants. There is enough land to grow food for everyone. There is enough of everything if we take away the principle of what we are built on right now.
The monetary system we are bound to has too many flaws. It favours a few, divides people, countries and cultures and worst of it all it is based on a lie. It has never given the equality it promised, has not stopped hunger and exploitation as politicians, economists and bankers told us it would. In fact it is and has been the catalyst of all the evils of today. Its basic principle works like with an endangered species. Lets take Elephants, Ivory today is double the price of gold and the fewer there are, the more are killed, because in our system rarity promises higher gain. The same rule can be applied to everything in life.
So lets just sit back and fathom a planet without money …..
Thanjavur
Posted on April 20, 2017
People call it the “big temple” and the talk is of the probably grandest structure in South India, the Brihadeshwara Temple at Thanjavur. The top of the temple is adorned by a 70 ton rock and till date the speculation is on, on how this giant rock was brought up there more than 1000 years ago. The tenple is not s colorful as many other and that makes him sort of a change. Is the size that impresses and its simplicity. The temple feels like an oasis, just a wonderful place to see.
If you are in Thanjavur you have to make sure to visit one of the famous Veena makers. The Sarasvati, or Rudra Veena is a South Indian classical instrument that hasn’t changed much since the times of the vedas, almost 3000 years ago. Its a string instrument made from the wood of the jack fruit tree and it takes a craftsman several weeks to create one instrument. To visit these craftsmen is like visiting a museum, where literally thousands of years greet you in a still active environment.
Traveller’s seek…….. a forgone conclusion
Posted on April 15, 2017
There is only one species that is going to change the consciousness of the planet – the seeker and the cross cultural traveller!
Some 30 years back the planet opened up. Countries that were closed because of internal policies, wars and turmoil became peaceful and opened their door to visitors. People left borders behind and took travel as a human right. They went out exploring, learning and connecting to other cultures, continents and places. Of course it was not all sunshine out there. Many western people realised the power of their money and brought suffering in forms of prostitution, drugs and other human abuse to many places and unfortunately to some extend continue to do so.
Yet, travel became the means to connect and getting to know each other. Because of this keen seeking to keenness to understand the world enjoys today a variety of wonderful manifestations.
We enjoy fusion music, world cuisine, student exchange programs, international researches in almost all fields, and so many more. Without the curious seeker, on whats beyond the boundaries of his home land much of this would never have happened.
If I look at todays world, it seem that travel is often no longer a human right, but slowly turning into a privilege. Right wing politics, racism, religion and “the so called war on terror” are closing down ever more borders and from the look of it, travel will even get more restrictive in the years to come.
Even the knowledge that it is just a few big conglomerates that benefit from the present war mongering is not going to change the situation as it stands.
However we can live without Avocados from Chili that turn vast landscapes into desert.
We can live without mangoes and beef from the amazon, who’s production destroys thousands of hectares of land each year. We can exist without changing the car every two years and we certainly can live without the handbags and shoes from high end fashion brands, because we know that they produce them at minimum wages in horrible conditions in Bangladesh and Vietnam.
What we should not live without, is travelling the globe. Experiencing new cultures, learning new ways of live and fill our memories with un-deletable pictures from what we experienced. Even the carbon print produced by travelling is offset by a long shot if we live a little bit more local at home.
Tourism is the only industry, not dominated by the very few big and dominant corporations. Its core drivers are local hoteliers, local money and local employment. Tourism weaves a string between cultures and is by all means forged by human spirit. If you choose well, you will always find the local spirit in where ever you go.
Easter is symbolically the resurrection of the spirit and if we travel, we will continue to use the experiences we make to transform our inside. Even Emperors like Akbar realised it in his vision of “Din-i Ilahi”; which says that if you merge all your knowledge and experiences of all cultures and religions, your wisdom and tolerance will be without limit.
Indigenous people of North Kerala
Posted on November 27, 2016
I recently had the good fortune to visit some of the small villages of the indigenous communities in Wayanad, North Kerala. Together with our GM Subi from Wayanad Wild, our Chef and a social worker we climbed the hills in the forested areas of the Wayanad plateau. People here still live a lot from the forest, collecting roots, honey and herbs for their daily needs. The create amazing bamboo traps for fishing in the rivers and I was told that earlier they were great archers too. Today the law forbids them to hunt.
Their way of live is rapidly changing. Forests have been turned into Plantation, devoid of the food they used to find. National parks have sprung up, restricting their movements to collect honey, herbs and bark for the food and indigenous forms of medicine.
Lately their way of using plants and barks for curing has caught the attention of scientists now probing into their secrets of the forest. Unfortunately their lack of school book knowledge will eventually prevent them from benefitting of their old age tradition and art to cure.
To me it was a touching encounter with people that live on the earth around them and me a traveller from across the oceans. Their smile and shy laughter turns as always into exercise of humility for me. Communication is nothing but a smile and the words of the social worker in her broken english.
Walking trough their simple village, Standing Rock comes to my mind, where even today the erstwhile owners of the land still have to fight to get their rights respected. And I wonder how much the situation differs from the land across the sea.
