Launchpad and Staycation — New Delhi

A brief hiatus from coffee to share some thoughts about New Delhi.  (For those of you who are wondering about the difference — New Delhi is the capital of India, and is part of a larger municipality known as Delhi.)

Like Jakarta, New Delhi is a city with much to see in its own right.  While one would be hard-pressed to deem it the nicest city in India,  I would argue that is is both overlooked and under-appreciated.  (Again, in a classic example of not listening to “helpful” advice — I’m actually glad that I had several days to enjoy New Delhi and meet some great people!)

A typical tour of Delhi — New or Old, guided or self-explored — will bring you to the following key attractions:

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A peaceful corridor inside the Red Fort.

The Mughal Red Fort (If on your own, get there 30 min before opening rather than baking in the afternoon sun.    Prepare to shove and be shoved — and to be thoroughly irritated by the blatantly discriminatory ticket pricing for foreigners!  Get the audio guide because the signage is not especially helpful.)

Qutab Minar, a UNESCO World Heritage victory minaret in the Afghan style

Humayun’s Tomb, commemorating the second Mughal Emperor of India — and even a tomb dedicated to his favorite barber!   (The steep steps are totally worth it.)

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Humayan’s Tomb — a beautiful place of rest.

Temples/Mosques/Other Houses of Worship:   (I don’t mean to be glib in lumping these all together — but the fact of the matter is that each concierge/tour operator/local will recommend a slightly different combination among the three on the must-see circuit.)

Khan Market:  Khan Market is frequently recommended to tourists as it is relatively tame.  Boasting several nice restaurants, a fun store called Happily Unmarried (which also has a stand in the airport), and tailors / saree makers, it’s a nice enough place to visit, but not necessarily at the top of my list.

There is no shortage of information written about these places.  And they are mostly magnificent.  But what about some of the things that, if not entirely off the beaten track, may not immediately come to mind?

Hauz Khas

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A family enjoys a lazy Sunday afternoon at Hauz Khas.

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The reservoir at pre-dusk.

In Hauz Khas I got a vibe that I seldom felt in New Delhi (or indeed, much of India!).  The vibe?  Chill.  And not just on the narrow strip of bars and restaurants that is the haunt of many an expat, hipster, and hipster expat — but the actual Hauz Khas Complex.  This is where the remains of a fourteenth century village and lush gardens face a beautiful reservoir, the royal tank, and a deer preserve.  In addition to taking in nature and history/architecture — one of the most fun things is people watching.  Hauz Khas also has a number of funky antique shops, international restaurants, good coffee, and even an authentic gelato stand!

Dilli Haat

Chances are you are not going to want to purchase much (if anything) at Dilli Haat.  That said, it is still well worth the trip to this kitschy but entertaining arts & crafts market, designed to replicate a traditional village market (haat).  There are three branches of Dilli Haat that I am aware of — but I recommend going to the original market in INA colony because there is a fantastic food and spice market across the street.

INA Market

INA Market is not for the faint of heart, delicate of nose, or fly-phobic.  And while the name Indian National Army Market may evoke stolid images of commissaries and barracks — INA Market is in fact a lively bazaar offering everything from live fish to imported pasta.  And the spices!  I was in heaven.  Gigantic bags of bright yellow turmeric, green cardamom, black mustard seeds, vibrant red chillies overwhelm the senses.  While every local has their own favorite stall, look for one that grinds and packages spices fresh and on site.

Gourmet Desire

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The feast that we helped to prepare at Gourmet Desire — a combination of Northern and Southern Indian cuisine.

If sightseeing in the baking, and I mean BAKING sun isn’t your thing — New Delhi offers an array of activities to delight even the weariest, heatstroke-prone business traveler.  In my case, this turned out to be a cooking class.  While many five star hotels offer new initiates a variety of options to try their hand at preparing Indian cuisine, my friend P and I decided to try Gourmet Desire, a program run out of the home of Jyoti Agarwal.  Beginning her career as a baker / chocolatier, Jyoti later realized that the many wonderful regional cuisines of India are the perfect way to experience the richness and diversity that is India — all in one place.

Coming up!

New Delhi is also a fantastic launching pad to a number of places with posts forthcoming, including:

  • The Eye-Opening — Amritsar and the India’s Wagah border with Pakistan
  • The Peaceful (aka Royalty for a Weekend) — Udaipur
  • The Obvious — Agra and the Taj Mahal

And many, many more.

ABCD: A History of Coffee (and another India – Indonesia link)

Today was the first day of my three-day professional barista course hosted by ABCD (A Bunch of Caffeine Dealers) in Pasar Santa, a traditional market with a quirky, hipster food-truck culture food court in Jakarta.

I am excited – and ever so slightly intimidated. I am overwhelmed by how little I actually know about coffee. And I find it fascinating.

Coffee originated from Ethiopia around a millennium ago, and is the stuff of legend. Kaldi, an Abyssinian goatherd, noticed that his goats were unusually energetic after eating the red berries and leaves of an unfamiliar tree. He tried them himself, joined his dancing goats, and became known as the happiest goatherd in the Arab world. The story diverges here depending on who tells it. Kaldi either:

  1. Gave the strange fruit to an imam, who upon tasting it, was repulsed and threw it into the fire whereby it emitted a wonderful aroma, or
  2. Gave it to a passing monk who realized that drying and boiling the berries led to the most wonderful beverage.

Was the origin of coffee one of the first religious disputes? Either way, coffee as we know it today was born.

Whichever version of this myth you believe (if at all), it was Yemeni traders who introduced this strange and wonderful brew to the rest of the world along with the spread of Islam. But the growers were wily, only trading boiled seeds. This made them drinkable, but impossible to transplant. As a result, the successful proliferation of coffee is also due to a history of chicanery, mischief, or just plain thievery. And lots of sex.

In the 1600s, an Indian Sufi named Baba Budan smuggled seven seeds to India from Mocha, and started the global spread of coffee cultivation. (I’m pretty sure that THIS story didn’t involve sex given his presumed holiness!) But more importantly, this led the Dutch to try (and fail) to grow coffee at home, until they found an excellent climate in their colonies in the Indies. And in keeping with my Indo-Indian connection theme, it is interesting to note that it was the Dutch governor in Malabar, India who sent the first seedling to the Dutch governor of Batavia (modern day Jakarta).

Offshoots from these plants were reserved as gifts to close friends of the Dutch, including France’s Louis XIV, who jealously cultivated, picked, and roasted his own private coffee stash personally. When French Naval officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu pleaded with King Louis’s court to grant him a few seedlings to grow on the new colony of Martinique, he was denied. However, royal physician Pierre Chirac (any relation to Jacques?!?) was strategically seduced by a woman procured by de Clieu. This unnamed heroine was able to smuggle some seedlings to de Clieu just as he was about to set sail for Martinque. According to some accounts, these seedlings grew to become 90 million trees in the span of 60 years, launching the cultivation of coffee across Latin America.

Meanwhile, amidst a heated border dispute between French and Netherlands Guyana (modern day Surinam), Portuguese colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta was sent as a diplomatic envoy. While little is written about his success or failure to secure the peace, what IS said is that he managed to seduce the wife of the unyielding governor of French Guyana. She smuggled him some seeds hidden in a lavish bouquet of flowers – and the rest is history.

Today, Indian coffee is produced predominantly by small growers in South India (Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu). Their product is low in volume but high in quality –reputed to be the finest shade-grown coffee in the world. (The coffee plant is quite temperamental. Mountain grown coffee gains natural shade from the peak, while plains grown coffee requires the planting of “shade trees” to minimize exposure. )

Indonesia, meanwhile, is the world’s number four coffee producer. Sitting perfectly in the coffee or bean belt, in many ways it is an ideal place to grow coffee. Unfortunately, according to Hendri Kurinawan, our coffee guru at ABCD, Indonesian growers have not been disciplined at segmenting their coffee plants, leading to a challenge for Indonesian growers to provide clearly designated single origin. But distinctly Indonesian coffees include Luwak (yup, the civic poop coffee!) and Timor, a hybrid of Robusta and Arabica beans.

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Map courtesy of National Geographic — thank you for licensing your images for free for non-commercial uses!) The Coffee / Bean Belt stretches equidistant across the equator from the Tropic of Cancer through the Tropic of Capricorn.

Hendri ends today’s class by passionately asking us to take our learnings and become coffee snobs – not in the sense of turning our noses up at coffees we don’t like – but rather to appreciate the many distinct flavors, and demand higher quality from our brewers, who will in turn require higher standards from their roasters, who in turn will only source from reputable, reliable and sustainable growers. I couldn’t agree more – and am excited to see what tomorrow brings.

(Side note – as I write this I am EXTREMELY caffeinated, having completed my first cupping class at ABCD and now sitting in the same Café Anomali sipping a single origin Bali brew. Slowly but surely making my way through their list!)

From the “Indian Archipelago” to the “People of the Indus” – Some Travel Musings

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Just as I have become addicted to batik in Indonesia, I may have gone a bit overboard buying saris in India! Fortunately, I could justify this one as I was unexpectedly invited to a work function and didn’t have a suit with me!

Today I take a break from Indonesia to begin a series of tales on India, and outline my general approach to travel.  This seems particularly à propos as the very name Indonesia derives from two Greek words — Indós and nèsos — the Indian archipelago.  (Fun fact told to me by Vire A. D’Sa — the Experiences Manager of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai.  He is worthy of his own post — which will come later — for now you can find some of his own musings about life and travel here.)

I had always dreamed of going to India, but as a solo, woman traveler, was slightly hesitant.  Some were typically cited reasons (safety, harassment, etc.) and some uniquely “me” (reassurance that someone would take care of me when I was inevitably struck by “Delhi Belly”).  When P, a British friend/colleague was transferred there — and the end of Ramadan provided a nice long holiday here in Indonesia — it was  the perfect opportunity.  Which leads me to my own travel manifesto.

Always go somewhere you might never visit but for having a friend there.

The nice thing about being an expat brat, and then a halfpat (an expat without the hefty salary package and perks) is that  I always knew people living in the most interesting places — both at home and abroad.  I couldn’t believe how few of my friends took me up on the chance to visit Beijing, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta.  (I did, however, get a lot of visitors to Chicago when I lived there!)  For me it’s a no brainer.  You get to catch up with an old friend.  You get personalized travel ideas from someone who actually knows you.  And frequently you can save on lodging costs.  Never in a million years would I have thought about going to Malta, which ended up being one of my top 10 all time trips.  As did India.

Try to tack on a few days of work (in a local office) to your vacation.

On this trip to India, I was fortunate enough to be working for a company not only with offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, but also amazing colleagues.  So I squatted in the office for a few days which was amazing because a) i met some really cool people who gave me great travel advice; b)  i strengthened my professional network; and c)  i got to deduct the vacation days I spent working, and could take a longer trip as a result.  Now I recognize that not all workplaces are this flexible, and not all corporate cultures are welcoming to outsiders.  And many people value the ability to shut off completely.  But even on trips where I wasn’t working (Rome, Istanbul, Paris) — just popping in and saying hello made a world of difference (and got me a few great meals and new friends as a result!)  I also found that I vastly preferred going to the office a few times to being glued to my BlackBerry while ostensibly relaxing.

Try to tack on a few days of vacation to your business trip.

The whole idea for this blog came from the last few years of my career which involved significant amounts of regional travel.   You may recognize some of these symptoms:

  • Waking up in a Marriott in North America and momentarily forgetting  what city you’re in;
  • Going to the wrong floor because you’ve stayed in 3-4 different hotels in the space of a week and can’t remember your  room number;
  • Boasting about having been to a number of exotic locales, only to confess sheepishly that the road between the airport and your hotel was all you saw;
  • Having to tell your friends and family when you’re IN town rather than when you’re OUT because it is the rarity, not the norm;
  • Realizing that your status updates revolve around which airline lounge you’re in at any given time.

Adding 2-3 days to a business trip either to properly explore the city you’re in, or travel to a nearby destination can be re-energizing and make you feel like you’ve seized a bit of control back over your life.  And hey — when the flight’s already covered, why not splurge for a weekend at a nice hotel?

Consider mixing things up rather than staying middle of the road the entire trip.

I’ve written in several places about “low brow high brow” travel, or roughing it on some legs of your trip to enable a once-in-a-lifetime blowout experience.  I spent more at the Taj Lake Palace, Udaipur than on all other hotels on this trip combined.  But I didn’t regret it for  a SECOND.  For the same amount of money, I could have stayed at a nice array of 4-5 star hotels for the duration of the trip.  But I wouldn’t have the same memories.  When I had a much lower budget early on in my career, I stayed at a couple of $7 hotels in Hanoi and ended my trip at the Park Hyatt in Saigon.  And staying at a place aptly called The Backpack in Cape Town allowed my friend C and me to splurge on a private safari in Kruger National Park.

Sometimes it’s OK NOT to Listen to People. . .

As I planned out my trip to India, most people “helpfully” told me that it is a big country.  The typical rule of thumb is to pick an adjacent area (e.g., Delhi, Punjab and Rajasthan).  This, combined with the fact that I wanted to hit a few places that P had not yet visited, led me to plan an itinerary that was a complete mess — but also gave me a nice sampling of both North and South.  I also specifically traveled midweek to places I felt would be relatively less stressful (e.g.. Udaipur), while enlisting P’s company for more adventurous places (e.g., Amritsar and the Wagah Border).  And Kerala and Tamil Nadu were far more fun with a companion.

. . .But Sometimes It’s Critical.

When my friend C and I went to South Africa, we decided that we did not want to be fraidy cats and the typical dumb American tourists scared of our own shadows.  In Joburg, we were quickly disabused of this notion by EVERY LOCAL WE MET.  When we met a colleague of his for drinks one night, and he told us that he’d been shot twice — it really struck home.  We saved our aimless roaming for Cape Town and Stellenbosch, and only went around Joburg with recommended drivers.  And the Apartheid Museum alone made this well worth it!

Do you have any travel principles of your own?  Let me know!