My fascination with Pondicherry began many years ago when I saw it in the movie Life of Pi. It’s an incredible film, and while most of it takes place at sea, the beginning of the film, as well as the narration throughout, is all set in this idyllic French colonial town in India. Of course I was curious about this place, so I looked it up, and there it was: Pondicherry! It had been sitting on a quiet part of South Indian coast this whole time, but there weren’t many major cities around it so my eyes had never lingered on this particular part of the map. I remember thinking that this far-flung place seemed a bit surreal… it looked like France… but it was in India? I knew very little about South India at the time, and I’d probably never go there… but the way it was represented in the film was absolutely intoxicating!
With a metro area population of roughly ~14.5 million people, Chennai is currently the 4th largest city in India, behind only Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. It’s also the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which is the formal administrative division corresponding to the Tamil cultural identity. Tamil culture is unique because it is one of the most ancient surviving cultures not only in India, but in the whole world. Its roots can be traced back to ~300 BCE and the Tamil language—one of the world’s oldest living languages—has more than 2,000 years of recorded literature. The Tamil-verse includes multiple different religions (such as Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity), so religion’s typical role as a cultural unifier does not apply here. In its place, the language itself has taken on a unique level of significance.
So, what exactly is Goa? Because it’s so tiny, I was surprised to learn that it is actually a stand-alone state in India, on the same administrative level as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, or Maharashtra! Indeed, it is the smallest state in India, and its modern-day borders correspond to the legacy boundaries of Portugal’s once-upon-a-time colony on the Indian Subcontinent.
We mostly associate India’s colonial period with Great Britain, but France and Portugal both had small carve-outs in South India too. When the British finally left India shortly after WWII, the newly independent Indian government had expected Portugal to pull out of Goa as well, but Salazar (dictator of Portugal at the time) had other ideas. Long story short, India reclaimed Goa from Portugal via military force in 1961. The story of Goan identity as it relates to India and Portugal is quite complex, so I won’t delve into it fully here; hopefully in a future article. But I will tell you that Portuguese culture is still part of Goa’s DNA. It’s even got a large catholic population, which is quite out of place in India.
When I first began traveling, my operating assumption was that pretty much everything was a “once in a lifetime experience”. Because, for most people, they are! “Next time” was absolutely never guaranteed. That was definitely the case when I visited the Taj Mahal for the first time in 2015. It’s only just now that I am starting to have the experience of going back to places I’ve already visited. Initially, I was resistant to this, but I’m starting to realize that life is a bit longer than I’d originally thought when I was in my early 20s… I have enough time to do things twice. Or, hell, maybe even 3 or 4 times if I’m lucky! But don’t worry—we’re going to be back to breaking new ground after this article. 😉
I wouldn’t be writing this article at all if I didn’t have a slightly new dimension I wanted to explore on this topic. Unfortunately, it’s pollution. I touched on this while I was in Delhi, but this little excursion was where the issue really slapped me in the face for the first time.
With a metro population of roughly 33 million people… (pause for dramatic affect)… Delhi is the largest city in the largest country on earth. In the overall world rankings, it is 2nd only to Tokyo, but it’s gaining ground fast! In the average Delhi day, there are ~837 births and ~360 deaths, which gives us a natural increase of ~477 people per day. On top of that, there are an additional 200–275 migrants that arrive here per day, mostly from neighboring countries, or rural parts of India. Meanwhile, Tokyo is actually shrinking.
You may have heard about Indian weddings before… TL;DR, if you get invited to one, try your very best to make it. They are extremely cool. But this wedding… I need to disclaim now that this is absolutely NOT representative of what most Indian weddings are like. This is going to be extravagant. My other Indian friends in attendance would caption the obvious, saying “most Indians will never go to a wedding like this in their whole life.” But I’m not going to spend much time talking about the economic dimension of this event. We’re just going to enjoy it for what it is.
With a population of ~4.3 million, Jaipur is the largest city in the magical west-Indian state of Rajasthan. It is also the capital of Rajasthan, and thusly is the center of political and economic power in Rajasthan. Jaipur was not built until 1727, which is relatively late in the grand scheme of India. Indeed, it was constructed from scratch to replace the previous Rajasthani capital, Amber, which—having been a center of power since the 11th century—was apparently getting crowded and having issues with water availability.
Jaipur was the first city in India to have been planned from scratch, and as such, it has some unique features. To me, the most striking of these features is that it adheres to a very strict grid system, like Chicago. In older cities that evolved over centuries or millennia, in India and elsewhere, you will find no such geometric uniformity.
I would be so racist against Indian people by now if I hadn’t taken so many trains. In a place like India, my white skin makes me a huge target because of my perceived level of wealth. As such, most of the interactions I have with locals are about money, and the unfortunate majority of them are not positive. Traveling through this kind of environment, it's easy to get cynical. My saving grace throughout my whole time in India was my time on the trains.
In Asian markets, there is always a huge diversity of marine life packed in ice, frozen in suspended animation, or floundering/wriggling/writhing, being kept alive in 2 inches of water. Some of these specimens are small, but others are freaking sea monsters! It looks like the cast list for one of National Geographic's "deep sea" segments all got caught in the same net. You’ll find the same smorgasbord of marine animals in cities inland as you will in coastal ones, and whenever I bear witness to it, I always find myself wondering the same thing: how did these fish get here? You'd never see fish like that in American supermarkets, so I’ve always been curious. In Mumbai, I finally got the chance to see some of the supply chain, and it did not disappoint.
Mumbai's Kamathipura is the oldest red-light district on the Indian subcontinent, and is the 2nd largest on the entire continent of Asia. The 1st largest is Calcutta, which is something that I didn’t realize when I was actually there. If I had we probably would have paid it a visit, like we're about to do in Mumbai.
