The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings (LOTR), the trilogy is listed everywhere among the all-time top 20 movies. However I never had a 'real' chance to watch them. I have watched the 1st and 3rd one, however at that time I was not familiar with American Accent, and ended up with little understanding of the movie, that there was an evil ring and Frodo (Elijah Wood) was supposed to carry it to the evil city and destroy it. And others Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), & Legolas (Orlando Bloom) were the ones who were the good guys and supported him. Other than that I enjoyed the extravagant war sequences and special effects.

However I always thought that there must be something special about these series and that is the reason so many people actually love it, and now that my understanding of foreign accented English has improved, I wanted to see all of them again, but never got a chance. In fact I got all three movies on DVD (Extended Editions), however was not able to watch them.

Yesterday being Sunday, and nothing major to do, I thought "today was the day". So I sat through entire day and watched the entire series again, yes the entire 12 hours of it. And was I glued to it !! even though I found them a tad lengthy (but maybe that is the reason they are "Extended Editions" and were not released in theaters) but I loved them. Specially the story, as it was something very new for me, I am sure that 95 % or above Indians, have never heard about LOTR or J.R.R. Tolkien, and that is the reason we are not familiar with elves, orcs, hobbits and all.

There might be another reason, because our history is full with huge epics and mythologies, two of the most important ones being Ramayana & Mahabharata. So LOTR might be the work that gets closest to Mahabharata in terms of scale and proportions, however latter was written thousands of years back and is still among the lengthiest piece of writings. Other then scale there are other similarities like good versus evil theme, however there is a major difference, and I believe this difference is due to religion and cultures. LOTR is work of west, which is being dominated by Christianity, and Mahabharata is an Indian tale, in fact it would be more appropriate to say that its a Hindu tale. Even though I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on this, but I still feel that Christianity is Black & white religion, either you have good OR evil, however Hinduism is bit different in this regard. We have a lot of Grey. That is why Mahabharata is so different, there is always a conflict in minds of characters, more from the point of Dharma VS Karma. The story of Mahabharata is far more complicated, huge in scale & humane in nature.

But lets not get drawn from LOTR for the time being, I immensely enjoyed the movies, specially the fact that special effects and great artwork, never took over the actors. They were brilliant in there roles. Peter Jackson despite the scale, always had a grip on the story and didn't let it all fall apart, which was a major possibility in a work of such proportions. In fact they excelled in almost all the departments like screenplay, make-up, background score etc.

I really hope that I again get a good Sunday to myself and I can watch the trilogy again ;-) !!

Why Nepal !!

As I have mentioned in my profile that I have been able to strike a balance between tradition and modernity, however we all know that necessity is the mother of all inventions (ok.. balance in my case). In our contemporary Indian life, its important for us to realize and attain the balance. Even though our society is progressing (not essentially westernizing but to some extent), both socially & economically , however it is not possible to override the values and traditions as well, specially those which are as relevant as they were before OR with the advent of Western culture have become more relevant then ever.

Now the reason I have written the above paragraph is to justify my Visit to Kathmandu. Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal, which has an open border policy with India. Nepalese people can easily come and go from India and the same is with Indians, so we no not need any passport or permit or currency exchange to visit Nepal.

Nepal is a Mountain Kingdom and almost the entire country is based in Himalayas, leaving it landlocked. Manufacturing is not very common in Nepal, maybe due to high transportation costs, lack of local demand OR non-supportive government policies, that is something that has to be thought of by economists.

Now you might be thinking in what direction I am taking you, the reader; I simply wanted to emphasize that since there is not much manufacturing going on, so there main source of income besides agriculture & cottage industry is tourism. And Nepal is particularly famous for its Treks, may that be Annapurna range or Everest. There are hordes of western tourist coming to this place every year, and due to this fact there is a lot more influence of western culture on Nepal.

So In stark contrast to the reason westerners visit Nepal, when people in India want to gamble in casinos, spend nights in discos and enjoy free flowing food & liquor, they head to Nepal.

A brief History

I intend to start this blog from November 2006, when I visited Kathmandu and Pokhara in Nepal. However since I consider myself travelholic, one who travels for the road, not mentioning a brief about my previous travel exploits would be injustice to this blog, on the other hand I cannot go too much in the past as it would take a lot of time and I might not be able to gather all the facts. I am mentioning some places here, many of them would be of interest to foreign tourists and almost all of them to Indian tourist. Would not be able to write details about each and every place at this stage, however as time will progress I will keep on posting whatever I can recall of, or on request of any of the readers.

(In no specific Order)

1. Udaipur, Rajasthan
2. Jaipur, Rajasthan
3. Mehndipur Balaji, Rajasthan (Hindu Religious Importance Only)
4. Salasar Balaji, Rajasthan (Hindu Religious Importance Only)
5. Khatu Shyam Ji, Rajasthan (Hindu Religious Importance Only)
6. Mt. Abu, Rajasthan
6. Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh
7. Nainital, Uttarakhand
8. Chandigarh, Punjab/Haryana
9. Mata Vaishno Devi, J & K (Hindu Religious Importance Only)
10. Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
11. Mumbai, Maharashtra
12. Agra, Uttar Pradesh

I have highlighted some places by using Bold Characters, these are the places that should be there on the Map of a Western tourist to India.