Masala Dosa on the Mekong

"You are looking for a girl?", she asked. I said, "Sorry?". "Are you looking for a bride?", she said. I was in Kanadukathan village in Tamil Nadu state in southern India.  I was travelling from Trichy to Karaikudi. I was planning to visit the area called Chettinad. The villages in Chettinad were full of mansions, called periya veedhu in Tamil, that were built in the 1700's and 1800's. They were built by rich traders with the finest material available in the world at that time. Their businesses flourished until the arrival of the British. They went into decay when the British imposed harsh taxes on Indians and introduced laws favouring European businesses. Most of the traders in Chettinad migrated to Singapore, a mecca for traders, and are currently multi-millionaires there. I was travelling to explore the Chettinad mansions that they left behind. I was in a bus from Trichy to Karaikudi and wanted to catch a connection to go to Kanadukathan village

"Why is it that a white man never delivers fish?", he asked. A Mauritian Indian was delivering fish on his moped. "Why is it only an Indian or an African?", he said. I was stuck in a restaurant talking to the restaurant owner on a rainy day in Mauritius.  I was on a flight to Mauritius from Bangalore, India and the pilot had just announced that we were passing the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. The Mauritian woman sitting next to me said, "That island belongs to Mauritius. The British stole it from us". The British had forcefully evicted all the residents of the island and shifted them to Mauritius island in the 1960s. A few of them still live in refugee camps. "We call it Chagos Island", the woman said. Diego Garcia now houses a large American naval and air base. I was having a Mauritian meal of crab curry with lemon flavoured rice on the flight, when the flight attendant came and asked me, "Are you an Indian or a Mauritian?&q

 I was hiking alone. Two men were following me. I came to a clearing and stopped. Both of them pulled out knives. I was climbing the trail to Sarangkot in Nepal to get an unblemished view of the Himalayas. I was in a semi open-air lakeside bar in Pokhara talking to two American women. The two women were travelling independently. All three of us had met in the bar. One woman was a younger woman from Denver and the other woman was an older woman from Seattle. The younger woman and I were drinking a local beer, Gorkha Beer. The older woman was having an imported Heineken. "I don't trust local beers", she said. We were talking about Nepal. "I hate Nepal", the older woman said. "The roads are uneven. I get a backache travelling anywhere. The electricity keeps failing", she said. "I don't trust the water supply. I am too scared to have a shower. I brush my teeth with bottled water", she continued. She was staying in a luxury hotel. "That o

 "Do you want to go kiss?", said the young mini-skirted woman. I stared at her. "Only 15 Manat ($10)", she said. I was in Sheki, in the Caucasus mountains of Azerbaijan, close to the border with Georgia.  The trip to Azerbaijan was accidental. My initial plan was to visit Iran. I wanted to use a land border to enter Iran. So, I thought of flying into Baku, Azerbaijan, spending a few days there and then travelling southwards to the border to enter Iran. The reason I wanted to use that border was because it is a notorious border. There were supposedly American, Russian and Iranian intelligence agents and recruiters, money exchange scammers and other unsavoury characters over there. I wanted to see what happens. But my Iranian visa got rejected. I surmise that it was due to the U.S. Green Card stamp in my Indian passport. The rejection letter said that I should apply through a local sponsor in Iran. I do not know a single person in Iran, so that was out of question. Me