Apu’s World

Recently, a few friends have been asking us for tips on travelling to Europe on a budget, and doing it independently. This is perhaps because most Indians still prefer to travel abroad as part of a group (less planning and hassle, assurance of Indian food etc) - a couple of years ago, the husband and I visited the UK, France and the Netherlands by ourselves, and therefore have a bit of a reputation as “adventurous” travellers!

Be that as it may, one of the issues with travelling independently is that unlike an “all-inclusive” tour group where you have a fair idea of the cost, here you must figure out on your own how to stick to your budget. With the Indian rupee stretching very little in these parts, it is easy to overshoot your budget and end up breaking the bank.

Since June-August is the biggest season in most of Europe, it’s a good idea to start planning now if you want to visit any European country this year. Besides the well-known tips such as using Eurail passes for extensive travelling and eating at roadside cafes rather than restaurants, here are some suggestions for the budget-conscious Indian traveller, based on my experience.

Rather than focusing purely on how to skimp, these are ideas to have fun while saving money.

Edge of season. The European summer itself is a little later than ours, and many local people tend to take their vacations in June-July. But, there is no reason why you shouldn’t travel a little earlier, or later. Travelling in end April, for instance, will mean that you may catch a bit of leftover winter - balmy evenings and nights, but nothing that the average Indian can’t handle. Prices, in particular, air and rail fares tend to be cheaper, and you get better deals on hotel accommodation from owners wanting to fill up inventory.

Go rural. Most Indian tourists run through a “must-do” list of large European cities - London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Zurich, Amsterdam and so on. When one is spending a tidy amount on air travel, it is indeed tempting to do all the ‘big sights’. But, these are also the most expensive places in terms of accommodation, food and entry tickets to monuments. Instead, pick a maximum of 2-3 countries for a 3 week tour and plumb for depth - most European countries are so small (by our standards) that you can easily visit, say, Paris and then dash off for a few days to Bordeaux or Dijon. You get a completely different view of the country by visiting rural areas, not to mention the huge difference in prices.

To give you an idea, a tiny double room in any of the central eight arrondisements of Paris, with complementary breakfast will not cost you anything less than 80 euros per night; in contrast, in Riquewihr village in the Alsace region of France, the princely sum of 55 euros netted us a handsome bedroom, a private sitting room and a beautiful private patio in which to have our complementary breakfast. Saving this amount of money on accomodation also meant that we could sample the local food a lot more in Alsace and even treat ourselves one night at a comfortable restaurant. (And believe me, when you’ve been living on baguettes and cheese, you will want that occasional treat).

In rural areas, people also have more time to stop and chat, there are more enchanting views than in the cities and no shortage of things to do - most European small towns have their own resident castle/tower/ old church/museum, besides specialties such as wine-making, a special style of pottery and so on. For the children, there is the added fun of more open spaces, or perhaps a pony ride or even a ball game in a local park. Coastal villages have the added fun of beautiful beaches, though they do usually tend to be more expensive than inland ones.

Do a picnic. Eating in large European cities is expensive. No getting around it. If you don’t want to eat at a McDonald’s or Burger King (and we didn’t), expect to pay anything from up 7 pounds in a city like London. Add the price of water and 15-20 pounds for every meal for 2 people adds up to a lot in the course of 2-3 weeks. And these are cafe/pub prices, not even restaurant prices, which would be even steeper. If you don’t want boring chain restaurant food and the cafe prices are getting to you, what’s to do?

One option is to pack yourself a picnic lunch occasionally. The lunch itself could be basic - visit the supermarket the evening before and pack up a loaf of bread with cheese or some wraps and filling (you get a lot of these options at reasonable prices). Perhaps add in a little fruit or some flavoured yoghurt.

Now the interesting bit - figure out your route for the day and then pick a picturesque location for lunch. Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy your simple meal watching the ducks at St. James Park or in the beautifully maintained formal gardens at the Tuileries after a tiring visit to the Louvre? A little planning can make it so much more enjoyable, all for under 10-12 euros (9-11 pounds) for 2 people.

Find out what “local” is. Like I said earlier, food is a big expense while travelling in Europe. If you’re the sort of person who wants to try local food, the price can be a deterrent. But, local food can be many different things. Because of their colonial history, many European countries have a tradition of good food from other places. In the UK, this would be Indian food - in France, food from the “Indo-China” regions, in the Netherlands - Indonesian. In Germany, I believe there is a fairly strong presence of Turkish restaurants. Many of these are also now local food, and indeed, you see a lot of locals eating at these places, often in non-touristy locations. When one is craving something hot and spicy, a Vietnamese meal from a small cafe can be the perfect option - large portions, filling and reasonably priced. This is particularly important for Indians, since our foods tend to be gravy based and we soon tire of standard European options.

Check for free events. The really popular shows, for instance at the Lido or Moulin Rouge in Paris, come at astronomical prices - often 75 euros upwards! If you can’t afford these (and we couldn’t), don’t despair - check online for free events during your visit or with local (usually free) city guides. These may not be as famous, but can be plenty fun in their own way. Places like London’s well-known Covent Garden offer plenty of live entertainment at very reasonable prices or even on a pay-what-you-like basis.

Put together your own walk. Most large cities offer guided walks, especially through historical districts. IMO, these are actually worth the fee, since they come with knowledgeable guides. However, if you are the sort who likes planning, why not put together your own walk? Considering the amount of information there is online, all you need is a good map and some back-stories of the places you plan to visit en-route.

Now, for some more ‘functional’ but useful tips.

Drink tap water. In most cities, it’s good enough, but if in doubt, check with the concierge at your hotel. Fill a bottle or two each morning before you set out. Bottled water is ridiculously expensive.

Eat a good breakfast. Most hotels and B&Bs include the breakfast in your room rate, so make good use of it. Eat a filling breakfast so that you can get by on a light, snacky lunch. This also ensures that you are not too sleepy in the afternoon.

Check the budget airlines. While rail travel from one city/country to another usually gives you the best views, rail is not always cheaper. Airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet sometimes offer crazily low prices. The hitch? Check out if the airports you are landing at (smaller ones, usually) have bus/rail connectivity to the town you are heading for, especially at early morning/late night. Taxi fares can really make a big dent in that budget.

Weather essentials. If you anticipate rain/cold weather, make sure you carry a collapsible umbrella/jacket/ woollen socks/mittens. Having to buy these abroad can be expensive. Ditto sunscreen for warm weather.

One advice I would give anyone travelling to Europe is to start thinking in Euros well ahead. Plan your budget in Euros, not rupees. So, if what you can spend is Rs.10,000 a day, before the trip, fix this amount - 160 euros per day; thereon, stop thinking of the euro-rupee conversion. If all your expenses fall under 160 euros a day, you’re doing good. This helps you avoid sticker-price shock (OMG! 10 euros for a meal! That’s more than Rs. 600!) and plan better. It also helps you avoid constantly thinking of how much you’re spending and how much cheaper it would be back home.

After all, you’re in Europe for a reason, and that is to enjoy yourself. So, fix your budget in Euros, use the many tips available in this article and elsewhere - spend wisely, and don’t get obsessed with saving money.

apu Travel Tales

Over at Escape from Cubicle Nation, one of my favourite business blogs, Pam Slim has been doing a series of ‘The Price is Right’ interviews (audio) with various entrepreneurs, and covering some interesting topics such as moving from free to paid and identifying the right price for your market. It’s given me a lot of food for thought, and I notice that I’ve been paying more attention to pricing than I did before. As I’ve mentioned earlier, pricing is one of the hardest things I face as an entrepreneur, and sometimes, that means I decide on an arbitrary price and avoid thinking too much about it

Anyways, the increased attention to pricing also means that I’ve been noticing it in ordinary transactions/ interactions that I go through, as a consumer. Recently, I’ve been thinking about visiting my sisters, both of whom live in the US of A - so it seemed like a good idea to check out what air fares and travel deals might be like.

Almost all deals I’ve come across seem to be for group tours - and this is the funny thing - they don’t seem like deals at all! Thomas Cook for instance, prices a 14 day US holiday starting at Rs. 86000 + USD 2975, and most other packages seem to be in the same league. (Note the clever use of Rs. 86000 + USD 2975 - effectively this works out to almost Rs. 200,000 but then, USD 2975 seems like a smaller number!)

Airfares for individual travellers are about Rs. 60,000 return to most American cities, and one can get a reasonable US hotel for $100 per day (that’s approximately another Rs. 75,000 for 14 days, and that’s for 2 people) - so Rs. 200,000 still seems like a lot of money considering that many expenses will be lower when divided among a group of people. (No doubt, Thomas Cook will be getting much, much lower rates from hotels, cruises, local buses, restaurents and so on). In fact, I think that group tours ought to be cheaper than independent travel.

To my mind, group tours have a number of disadvantages - things are pre-planned, you can’t spend more time at a place if it interests you and god help you if you find the group you are stuck with annoying or just not your type. What’s interesting is that Thomas Cook (and presumably other tour operators) are willing to get people to pay higher prices than they should otherwise, and this tell us something about how there is no one “right price” but simply a price that is right for a particular consumer.

Among some of the reasons why people might pay a premium for a group tour that offers little independence or flexibility -

- Everything is taken care of - for those who haven’t travelled abroad before or are unfamiliar with English, or for older people unused to planning over the Internet, this can be a big plus.
- Indian meals - again, particularly important for vegetarians and Jain vegetarians (which explains why Gujaratis are a big part of the group tour circuit)
- Safety - no worries about landing up in a ‘bad’ part of town/getting lost etc.

apu Entrepreneurship, Travel Tales

I visited Ranganathittoo 6 months ago, while on the way to Coorg. We hadn’t really planned to stop there, but it turned out to be among the most enjoyable things we did on that trip. Below, my piece on that visit. (I had earlier uploaded some pics of the birds at the sanctuary here).

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Some of us like to think of ourselves as global citizens. Two weeks every summer travelling to distant lands, the occasional assignment abroad, dining out at restaurants where food with unpronounceable names is served, flitting at travel websites, we are ready to christen ourselves. Such vanity must pale when we come face to face with the true global citizens – migratory birds that can rightfully call every part of the world, Home.

When I visited the Ranganathittu bird sanctuary in February this year, such were the humbling thoughts that came to mind. Ranganathittu is of course conveniently located for human visitors – a short detour on the Bangalore-Mysore highway, just before reaching the town of Srirangapatna. Its network of islets with their banks covered by reed beds and surrounded by waters well stocked with fish is even more convenient for visitors of the avian kind. There are some who make it their permanent home too. The paddy fields adjoining the area are also fishing grounds for many of the species that don’t fish in water.

On entering the sanctuary, we are very much struck by the well-maintained beauty of the place. Perhaps it helps that at 8:30 in the morning, we are early, well before the crowds will arrive. Still, it cannot be denied that in spite of its proximity to urban areas, Ranganathittu feels a little lost to the world. Its neatly laid out lawns, tree lined and meandering paths, cobbled steps and most of all, the cries of birds that can be heard even before they are seen – offer a vision of a gentler and more beautiful world than what is available to us today. I feel greedy, eager to lap it all up in the short time that we have; but it is an unashamed sort of greed, somewhat like a very large drink of water that someone straggling out of a desert might feel entitled to.

As we approach the lake, the source of the cries comes into view. The banks are too far away to permit identifying any of the birds without binoculars, but the authorities at the sanctuary have got around that. There are boats waiting to ferry passengers around the lake, closer to the islets where birds can be sighted with ease. Thankfully, these are old fashioned row boats that glide through the water silently, not the noisy monsters that pollute the water at so many tourist spots in India.

Almost immediately, we pass a large flock of open-billed storks, their bills joining at the top but not quite closed at the centre. All five people in the boat watch in rapt attention as the birds carry on preening, resting and fluffing up their feathers, paying us no attention. “Open-billed stork, open-billed stork”, we tell one another, with the air of children repeating something new and wondrous.

As we make a circuit of the lake, more birds come into view. The most numerous of these are the egrets. Egrets don’t have the stateliness of pelicans or even the quirkiness of the open-billed stork whose bill won’t quite close. But, what they lack in distinctiveness, they make up for with their abundance. If numbers rule, egrets are the kings (and queens) of Ranganathittu. We saw four species – the large egret, the medium egret, the little egret and the cattle egret.

The pelicans on the other hand, are few in number, but lofty creatures, literally. They occupy higher ground, well away from the water, ensconced in comfortable, large nests. Our boatman acts as a guide, pointing out these surprisingly hard to spot creatures, considering their size. Initially, we advertise our novice stature in the world of birdwatching by mistaking one white bird for another, but soon enough, we start identifying birds confidently. And that is the thing about even a short visit to a sanctuary – very soon, the ‘regular’ world of jobs, commuting, errands and responsibilities starts to seem alien, while this one with its webbed and feathered creatures grows more and more real.

Suddenly, a pair of beady eyes appears in the water, moving alongside our boat for a good five minutes.

“Are there crocodiles in the water?” I ask.

“Oh, over a hundred of them, but don’t worry, this is only a fish”, the boatman tells us. “And they don’t prey on human beings anyway”, he adds, in what is meant to be a reassuring manner.

Only a fish! We find it hard to bring to mind any fish that swims in that peculiar fashion. It disappears as suddenly as it had appeared, but before long, we are greeted by the sight of a crocodile lazing on the banks, about fifteen feet away from us. Motionless, it almost appears dead, until the sight of our boat seems to propel it into action. With a swiftness that I had till now seen only in Natgeo programs on crocodile attacks, it heads straight for us. Hearts go pitter-patter and there is a perceptible movement away from the sides of the boat, as we wait for a thump. Curiously, it passes under our boat, leaving us more than a little relieved. Self. Check. Husband. Check. Ma-in-law. Check. Pa-in-law. Check. Professional photographer sharing the boat with us. Check. Boatman. Check. All on board if a little shaken. The experience also reminds me that despite the ease of sighting birds, Ranganathittu is essentially a place that belongs to the wild.

Sadly, we learn from the boatman that well protected as it is, Ranganathittu is still under some pressure. As the surrounding villages grow, population pressures, he hints, may lead to some encroachment and poaching. There is a larger danger too. If the rural character of the surrounding villages changes and concrete takes the place of paddy and sugarcane fields, many of the birds would find it hard to survive, since it is only some of them that fish in the lake itself.

One of these, a Little Cormorant, breaks into the surface of the water, a speck of black, as it dives for fish. Lighting fast, it is gone before the human eye can spot the direction in which it has flown away. The river tern, a dull-grey bird with a white underside and bright orange beak and legs suns itself on a cluster of stones. The most beautiful inhabitant of the sanctuary, the painted stork, parades itself as I watch enviously. Its wing feathers display a finely traced pattern in black while its tail feathers are shaded a cotton-candy pink. It is a work of art that would find place in any self-respecting gallery.

In the face of such beauty, I feel a strange reluctance to return to urban life with its low quotient of space and quietude. On this trip, Ranganathittu was an afterthought on the highway, a detour while rushing elsewhere. But this afterthought becomes a highlight of the journey. The Salim Ali Interpretation Centre at the sanctuary is still closed when we leave. A kingfisher has eluded us throughout our boat ride – tantalizingly close, giving us a second’s glimpse of its colourful plumage but never deigning to appear. No doubt, other seasons may bring other birds that I haven’t yet seen, or even heard of. I promise myself that I will return, soon.

apu In General, Travel Tales

I’ve finally found my spiritual home!

More prosaically - I got back last night from a wonderful, relaxing, refreshing trip to the Nilgiris. We are usually suckers for homestays and smaller places to stay in, but this time, we decided to stay at this resort, Kurumba Village - about 10-12 kms before you reach Coonoor on the Mettupalayam to Ooty road. We landed up on Fri morning, which meant we were the earliest guests; so we got the most secluded cottage on the property with the best view - spice plantation to the left and the mountains to our front and right.

I am not usually too keen on resorts because they feel impersonal, and one can’t predict if the service is going to be good or just passable. The Kurumba Village has got it absolutely right though - besides a very comfortable room, a beautiful property and a really well maintained pool, it was so nice to meet their genuinely cheerful and helpful staff - and not just a front desk person who is trained to do that, but everyone from the cleaners to the kitchen staff were such nice folks. This place has my vote if you ever go to this part of the world.

This has been one of the most relaxing vacations I’ve ever taken. One reason being that cell phones didn’t work there and we hadn’t taken a camera. Which meant, no interruptions, no taking away from the moment to record it. Just sitting out on the balcony watching the mountains, the green and the many avian visitors that we unfortunately couldn’t watch too closely, having forgotten our binoculars. We did get to see the Malabar squirrel though.

We took a short trip to Coonoor and the sheer ugliness of the place as it came into view took my breath away. Rectangular buildings in every colour cheek and jowl, overhanging electricity lines everywhere, hoardings, traffic - it was unbelievable that this could be a tourist place. Thankfully, as we passed the municipal bus stand area (which is what one sees first), some of the ugliness subsided and the character of Coonoor as a British-built old town is more visible. Upper Coonoor is still quiet and beautiful, with leafy lanes and little traffic. If you do want to stay in Coonoor town itself, make sure you don’t choose a hotel in the bus stand area.

Worthwhile visits in Coonoor include the Sims Park (a fixture on the tourist trail, and deservedly) and the All Saints Church, a beautiful 150 year old church that’s been well maintained and feels just as an old church should, with weeping willows all around the churchyard and its very own shaggy, lazy dog sunning itself.

I know there can be ‘withdrawal symptoms’ post a great vacation, but this time, I enjoyed the mountains so much that I really feel like I’ve left my true home behind. On our return, we found that sparrows have been busy building a nest in our bathroom, since we’d left the window open. Maybe that’s a sign that we’re no longer wanted here!

apu Travel Tales

Some pictures from a recent weekend trip to Ranganathittu and Kodagu. Among the loveliest things I saw were a Racket-tailed Drongo and an Asian Paradise Flycatcher. I couldn’t take pictures of those, but I give you instead… 

A group of painted storks admiring themselves in the water. 

A river tern suns itself on a boulder.

A somnolent crocodile that shrugged of its inertia as soon as it saw our boat. Gave us a few moments of pure terror as it glided away under our boat. 

Pepper plant, not yet ripe for the plucking.

Wild poinsettia, a common hedge in the plantations. 

Early morning light filters through the tree cover at the plantation. 

An elephant gets a relaxing scrub, at Dubare elephant camp. 

The Buddha with Avalokiteshwara and Guru Padmasambhava, at the Golden Temple, Bylakuppe Tibetan settlement. 

Where many roads meet. 

apu In General, Travel Tales