World Tourist Destinations

Need for Speed!

Monsoons serve as the quintessential season for taking off on your bikes/cars and zooming off on the water-cleansed roads….



Rains and roads have a peculiar romance! The showers seem to sprinkle a seductive charm on the freshly bathed roads making them all the more alluring. And while Mumbaikars cannot help cursing the rains and crib how the city doesn't give them the space or the chance to speed off, they do admit that monsoon is the perfect time for taking off for a road trip — of course after a lot of mulling over and carefully designing the itinerary though. But hang on before you put the idea down at the thought of going through this painful exercise — there are people or travel groups who are more than happy to chart out your tour plan.
Abhishek Kadam, who is the co-founder of the travel group Konkan Moto Tours, along with college buddies and avid travelers Pratish and Tanmay, aims to promote road trips amongst people. The trio bonded over their common passion for bikes. "We all shared a common love for bikes and riding. When in college, we used to take off for these bike rides very often," says Abhishek. "Soon enough this passion transformed into a parergon and we came up with a first-of-its-kind professional experiential moto tour company, which dedicates itself exclusively to the regions of western Maharashtra. I really feel that Konkan coast is highly unexplored and has such breathtaking sights and seductive roads," he adds.
"People opt for road trips a lot during the monsoons," asserts Avni Patel, owner of Broken Compass, an offbeat travel company. "There are lots of people who want us to chart out their trips to places around Mumbai such as Lonavla, Satara, Alibaug, Pune, Goa, Bangalore, Mysore etc," she says.
Kartik Kapoor, a civil lawyer by profession, is an avid bike freak and he's jaunted off for an impromptu bike ride many a times. "There's an inexplicable high that I get as I zoom off on my bike and feel my wheels spin… it gives me such an adrenaline rush," he admits.
With the advent of travel companies and groups that provide you with a road plan and organise group travels where you can join in with your own bike/car, you'd be spoilt for choice. And of course social media spreads the word like wildfire!

Chasing the clouds...

Actor Aarti Chhabria's trip to Kulu Manali with her family could easily be among her most exciting holidays so far



After actor Aarti Chhabria was declared winner on a stunt reality, she took off with her parents and family for a vacation to Kulu-Manali. "It was a good way to cut off and relax after the grueling schedule of the show," says Aarti. "We banned all mobile phones and the only thing I carried was my laptop."
In their new retreat in the hilly confines of Manali the family stayed in a four-room private cottage. "The view of the valley was breathtaking. Amid the mountains and the greenery, a mist would arise every morning which was visible during our early morning cup of tea," recalls Aarti. They could hear the sound of mountain streams gushing forth and the waterfalls tripping down the slopes. "I also persuaded my father and the rest of the family to go white-water rafting with me since I love adventure," says the actor. While her father was not exactly a fan of the sport, he did it to oblige his fun loving daughter and they rafted down a 14-kilometre stretch specially meant for the purpose. She also went paragliding in the Solan valley and experienced both the short and long flights, the latter which involved a "crazy run off a steep cliff" with an instructor in tow. "I felt like what a bird in flight must experience with the wind in my hair and a feeling of absolute freedom." She also took pictures of her flight from mid-air much to the consternation of her instructor who was worried about safety. "I'll never forget the sight of the thick jungle, of the Beas river undulating gently in a silver stream and of snow-capped mountains," she says.
Aarti's a complete foodie and enjoyed the food in the valley tremendously. "It was different from what we normally experience what with the dhabas by waterfalls serving a reddish rice and chaat. "We ate egg puffs, noodles, local pizzas. Everything tasted different," she says. The family also dined at a la-di-dah Italian restaurant on one occasion and that remains her most memorable meal on the holiday. "It was awesome," she says.
Shopping is one thing that Aarti is extremely fond of and Kulu-Manali was no different. "There were shops selling lovely silver ornaments. I bought a pair of gold earrings from the Tibetan market, a couple of bags and we also had a look at the Tibetan blanket called chingu made from rare fleece though we didn't buy any." Old Manali has small shops selling suede bags, shawls, artifacts and clothes. "It has a warm, laid-back feel to it with narrow roads," she says. "There are also cafes and bakeries." Aarti particularly fell in love with the Dog Cafe; and couldn't stop herself from having endless cups of ginger-lemon tea, she says.
Aarti's strongest memory of the vacation is of the time spent with her family. "It is of sitting in our cottage with the phones off and admiring the spectacular view outside the villa. With the clouds around us it felt as if we were in some wonderland. And I don't think I'm ever going to forget my white-water rafting experience for the rest of my life."

Seniors pack off for satsang in Switzerland

Katha, pravachan and videsh darshan on the agenda of well-heeled senior citizens


Age, language, food is no more a barrier for senior citizens wanting to explore the world.
Now, travel agents are organising tours where all these things are taken care of and the travellers are also able to have a good time, along with some conversation with God.
Vinod Pacheriwal, 81, a Cuffe Parade resident, recently went on a trip to Switzerland, Spain and Singapore with his wife. "We just had to make a one-time payment of Rs1.65 lakh per person. It was a great trip, as there were around 600 senior citizens from around the globe. And our food, visa, insurance, and even language, was well taken care of," says Pacheriwal.
So if the senior citizens want to hear bhajans in Switzerland or prefer to have dal-chawal or khichdi in Spain, all this will be made available to them on the trip.
"In April, we had a five-night cruise and a three-day stay in Singapore. We had 200 people on board. We flew down a panditji along with three musicians who delivered kathas and pravachans aboard the ship," says Kishan Biyani, director of Ark Travels, Lokhandwala, Andheri (West).
"Such trips are a hit with senior citizens as all their needs, including their religious inclinations, are attended to," says Pintu Kejriwal, proprietor, Arika Travels, Goregaon. "We have organised tours to Spain, Switzerland, Singapore, Malaysia; all the travellers are above 55 years of age," he says.
Confirming the rising of golden-years travel, Ritu Sharma, country head, Switzerland Tourism, said, "Senior citizens are increasingly travelling on their own, and Switzerland being a very senior-friendly country, rates among their favourite destinations. From easily accessible public transport to availability of vegetarian food, Switzerland is a friendly and accepting place for seniors."
Biyani adds, "In November, we are organising a tour to Europe and are expecting 200 people. We will take a maharaj (chef) with us to take care of the vegetarian food for our travellers. If English is a problem for the senior citizens on such trips, we have our staff to help them."

Girgaum's century-old landmark Gai Wadi, one of the last surviving traditional cluster housing complexes, is now up for sale. Officials of the Bombay Panjrapole Trust, which owns Gai Wadi, confirmed that they had invited tenders from builders to redevelop the complex.


PRIME PROPERTY Tenders for Gai Wadi, spread across 6 acres, will be opened on September 17 ( )
Most people want redevelopment so they can start living in decent apartments instead of crumbling and dilapidated chawls.
A B H AY G AW D E , owns an office at Gai Wadi
: Amidst new redevelopment projects in every lane in Girgaum, another century-old landmark, Gai Wadi, is now up for sale. Officials of the Bombay Panjrapole Trust, which owns Gai Wadi, one of Girgaum's last surviving traditional cluster housing complexes, confirmed that the trust has invited tenders from developers to redevelop the complex. The tenders will be opened on September 17.
The wadi, comprising five residential buildings, garages and metal workshops, is spread across 18,634 sqm or nearly six acres. The annual rent collected from 176 tenants and 18 lease holders adds to a mere Rs 4 lakh owing to the rent freeze under the rent control law.
The prime property situated off Jagannath Shankarseth Road is expected to fetch more than Rs450 crore, said market analysts. The area has a floor space index of 1.33 to 2.
“We have been incurring losses for several years now,“ a trust official said on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
“People sublet and make thousands of rupees but we get few hundred rupees. There is no way of sustaining this anymore.“
However, the handover may not be smooth. Several legal issues, including more than 20 pending cases between the owners and alleged illegal tenants and lease holders, will have to be ironed out.
“The Trust had been depending on donations to maintain the premises. We wish to use the money received from the sale of the land for better upkeep of the panjrapole or infirmary near Bhuleshwar, where more than 300 cattle and poultry are looked after,“ said Adim Mogradia, secretary of the Trust.

A fictional character becomes a tourism boon for Prince Edward Island
A more th nne of Green Gables, the Canadian novel by author Lucy Maud Montgomery, has sold an 50 million copies more than 50 million copies worldwide since it was published in 1908. Over the years, the heroine Anne has been brought to life in musicals, museums and street theatre on eastern Prince Edward Island, which provides the backdrop for the adventures of the young chatterbox. Now, the sites mentioned in the book have become a major tourist draw, pumping millions of dollars into the island's struggling economy. The recent visitor was Britain's Duchess of Cambridge, Catherine, who visited the island with her husband Prince William in July.
Montgomery is said to have drawn on Anne's childhood experiences in the smallest of the Canadian provinces to describe her life after she is adopted from an orphanage in Nova Scotia to help on a Prince Edward farm. One in four visitors to Prince Edward Island takes in at least one Anne attraction, such as the recreated fictional town of Avonlea, the site of Montgomery's childhood home or the Anne of Green Gables gift shop on the main street of the provincial capital Charlottetown. Prince Edward Island still echoes the charms of early 20th century Canada depicted in the books when villagers travelled in horse-drawn carts, wrote long letters, wore long dresses, and where a cow running amok in the garden accounted for action. “Many people think Anne was a real person,“ said Chantelle Macdonald, who once played Anne in shows on the island. “It's difficult to tell them this person did not really exist. They sometimes confuse Anne with the author.“ Japanese Anne fan clubs Anne is so popular worldwide that the staff at the Cavendish National Historic Site, which includes Montgomery's cousin's farmhouse, have a hard time convincing visitors that she is a fictional character.
And in Japan, where Anne of Green Gables has been on the school curriculum since 1952, the heroine is widely adored. There are Japanese Anne fan clubs, an Anne academy and even a nursing school named after her.
Japanese are the third largest contingent of visitors here, after Canadians and Americans, and some even travel to PEI to get married at Green Gables.
Macdonald suggests their enthusiasm for all things Anne may have helped propel her popularity elsewhere.
“In Italy, only five of the books were translated. But in the 1980s, everyone watched the Japanese animated version of `Anne of Green Gables' on television,“ said Rosanna Gatti, who was visiting from Italy with her family.

I'm not a fan of movie soundtracks. Wild Target, however, was something else



I'm not a fan of movie soundtracks. Wild Target, however, was something else
IKNOW IT'S not a brand new film but have you seen Wild Target? It's a British `action-comedy', starring Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt. It also has Rupert Grint (he of the Harry Potter series fame) and Rupert Everett. In the film, Nighy is a paid assassin in keeping with his family business (his father was one and his mother wants him to be as good if not better). Blunt is a target that he is assigned to kill but that assignment goes awry and it all roller-coasters into an eccentric, action-filled 98 minutes, which if it were not for the excellent acting by Nighy and Blunt, could have gone steadily downhill because of tired gags and a completely absurd plot. Although it was released last year, I watched Wild Target off a DVD only last week and it wasn't just the stellar performances by Nighy and the greatly talented Blunt that kept my finger off the remote's stop button. It was also the music. I'm not hugely into movie soundtracks and I especially detest the ones that are “composed“ in entirety by some big name or the other. But on Wild Target that was not the case. The film was so well held together by around 15 tracks (many of them by musicians or bands that were new to me) that I seriously considered getting the soundtrack album or, at least, exploring the music a bit more.
The first band on Wild Target that made me sit up and listen closely was Fishtank Ensemble whose song was called Mehum Mato. Fishtank Ensemble are an American band but with heavy eastern European influences.
Their songs, like the one I heard, often have lyrics that are in languages such as Serbian and their music is multicultural ­ flamenco, Roma (gypsy) and even Japanese folk. Their music is fiery and high-energy although they use mainly acoustic instruments ­ violin, banjolele, flamenco guitar, double bass and a saw (yes, a saw!).
Fishtank Ensemble are based in California but their music has been described as “cross-pollinated gypsy music“. I'm not a great fan of world music but the multi-ethnic, genre-straddling nature of Fishtank's sound led me to search for something more by them. I found Woman in Sin, their third full-length album, and was floored by it. It is an eclectic bunch of 12 songs, which demonstrate the band members' diverse backgrounds: vocalist Ursula Knudsen is a former opera singer; guitarist Doug Smolens' journey into flamenco territory was via a stint in punk and hard rock; and bass player Djordje Stijepovic played with gypsy bands in Eastern Europe in his teens before moving to rock bands. Thanks to Wild Target, I'd discovered a great band.
And it wasn't the only one. There were other gems. Of course, there were musicians that we've heard before. Such as the Russian-born but New York-based singer-songwriter Regina Spektor whose catchy Hotel Song (“Come in, come in/ Come into my world/ I've got to show/ Show show you/ Come into my bed/ I've got to know/ Know know you“) is on the soundtrack. As is American dream pop duo Beach House's lovely song, Wedding Bell (“Humming/you're humming tomorrow's nursery rhyme/ but you're singing the only words you know/ would you cry if I lie 'til the day...“). But it was the musicians that I hadn't heard before that made Wild Target's soundtrack such a great aid to discovering new music. I'd never heard Imelda May ­ she's an Irish singer whose featured song, Johnny Got a Boom Boom, can make you an instant fan. It's funny and is replete with double entendres.
Besides, May has a great voice.
Sadly, I've still not been able to lay my hands on any of her albums but I shall keep trying.
Women aren't the only singers featured on the Wild Target soundtrack but it was yet another woman singersongwriter, Yael Naim, who impressed me.
Naim is Israeli but born in Paris and her fea tured song New Soul was used by Apple for its MacBook Air ad campaign. But Naim (one critic described her as having a voice “as rich as molten chocolate“), as I discovered, is multi-lingual and sings in French, Hebrew and English I tried looking for her last year's album She Was A Boy but couldn't get it. I found her eponymous second album, which has 13 songs, many of them in English, including (surprise!) a cover of Britney Spears' Toxic.
Wild Target isn't a film that you ought to take seriously. After all, it is about the middle-aged scion of a family whose business is professional assassination and his target-turned-lover is an attractive audacious thief. It is, as what we would call in Bombay, a “pure time-pass“ film as most films in the action-comedy genre usually are. But the bonus clearly is the soundtrack, which led me to discover some fine new musicians.

Is it necessary for restaurants and hotels to have a back story?
Wouldn't that make for places that were more interesting and different from each other?
ABACK STORY is an essentially cinematic concept. What it means is that the events you see on screen have a background, a story that explains their provenance, even if we don't have to confront that back story in the actual plot. Let's take an example. Alfred, the butler, is an important part of the Batman legend. In the comics, Alfred Pennyworth has an extensive back story developed over years of Batman and Detective comics. But on the screen, Alfred is a minor character. In the Batman TV show, we did not really care where Alfred came from or what his motivation was.
In the first few Batman movies (the franchise developed by Tim Burton and wrecked by his successor), Alfred was just a butler. But then, Christopher Nolan took over the task of re-booting the Batman franchise and cast Michael Caine as Alfred in Batman Begins. Caine ­ who is a multiple Oscar winner ­ was not content with playing a butler with no background. So, he created a back story for himself. In his portrayal, Alfred is a former British army soldier from the SAS (an elite commando wing) who took up cooking during difficult postings and who went to work for Dr Thomas Wayne when he retired.
So not only does he understand Bruce Wayne's motivation, but he also understands the world of violence that Bruce plunges himself into when he decides to become Batman after Thomas Wayne is murdered by a robber. Moreover, because of his SAS background, he can actually help Batman as he goes about his task of fighting crime.
Judging by the interviews Caine gave in the run-up to the release of Batman Begins (there has since been the more successful Dark Knight sequel) nobody, including the director Christopher Nolan, told him to find a back story for his character. He just made it up because he reckoned that nothing made sense without a back story.
I had no idea that the same principles applied to hotels and restaurants till I interviewed Jeremy King a month ago. Jeremy was here for the huge Diageo drinks spectacular that involved journos, restaurateurs, barmen and the like from all over the world but which, curiously, seems to have made little impression on our domestic media even though it has been written about extensively by the international press.
If you are an average reader of Rude Food and have never heard of Jeremy King, then don't worry, he is not quite Michael Caine yet.
But if you are in the hotel/restaurant business, then you should have some idea of who he is and what he does.
Along with his partner Chris Corbin, Jeremy has created the greatest English restaurants of the last 30 years: The Ivy, Le Caprice, J Sheekey and The Wolseley. Many years ago, Chris Corbin and he sold Le Caprice, the Ivy and J Sheekey to pizza entrepreneur Luke Johnson who sold them to Richard Caring, a sharply-dressed, ragtrade tycoon who added Mark Birley's operations (Annabel's, George, Harry's Bar etc.) to his empire, and then added some of his own (the revamped Scotts of Mayfair) to create the UK's largest chain of upmarket restaurants. Though Jeremy's former restaurants are the jewels in Caring's crown, I don't think that either Jeremy or Chris Corbin really approve of what Caring is doing to the brands they created. They





are horrified by Caring's attempts to turn their exrestaurants into global franchises (“the New York Caprice is a disaster,“ said Jeremy of the restaurant that Caring runs in partnership with the Taj at the Pierre Hotel) and are horrified by the thought of the Dubai Ivy, the first of many global Ivys. Though I have been a fan of Jeremy's restaurants ever since my friend Willy Landels first took me to Le Caprice in the 1980s, I believe that the Wolseley, which he now runs (post the sale of his other restaurants) is far better than any of Caring's restaurants.
Though the Wolseley remains among London's most fashionable restaurants and is a celebrity dining room, it is distinguished by excellent service.
At any given time, nearly 30 per cent of the tables cannot be booked in advance and if you turn up as a walk-in, you have a good chance of getting in. (The other 70 per cent are booked weeks ahead.)
I asked Jeremy what his principles were.
Being English, he was deliberately vague, but here's what I could gather.
There will always be gastronomic restaurants that do excellent food (Alain Ducasse etc.) at fabulous prices. Remember that you (a restaurateur) are not competing with them. Instead, you are offering really good food that is not necessarily Michelin-starred.
According to Jeremy, this means great dishes with top-quality ingredients and total consistency of food. If you serve fish and chips for instance, it must be made with the freshest fish, the frying must be perfect and the chips should be made with the right potatoes, they should be hand-cut, they must be fried to the right level of crispness and the tartare sauce should be better than any commercial variety.
Service should be warm and regular. Even if you run the Ivy or Caprice which have a celebrity clientele (the first time I went to the Caprice, David Bowie was at the next table) you must treat every guest as a VIP. Nobody should feel like a spectator. “Restaurants are not theatre,“ he says, “There are no actors and no audience. Everybody is on par. Everybody gets the same food and same service.“ Every restaurant must have a back story. If you are, say, Ferran Adria opening in London then that's fine: your food speaks for itself. But unless you are a triple Michelin-starred chef who is sure that people will come for the food, you must create a restaurant with a back story.
Of all of the things that Jeremy said, this was the one that intrigued me the most. What did he mean? He gave me the examples of his own restaurants. Most had a back story of their own anyway. The Caprice was a glamorous cafe society place in the early 20th century. When Chris and Jeremy revived it, all they had to do was to plug into the history, to update the menu and cast it as a modern version of the old cafe society Caprice.
When they bought the Ivy, it was a great theatre-district standby gone to seed.
Jeremy's job was only to revive the quality of the food and service and to recast it as a modern theatrical restaurant. (I guess it helped that he was once manager of Joe Allen's, a theatrical restaurant.)
J Sheekey was more complicated. It was an old fish restaurant at the edge of the theatre district that had fallen on bad days. The Corbin and King solution was to revive the sea-food theme (no meat, only the freshest fish) and to emphasise the origins of the restaurant. Nobody who eats at Sheekey today will realise that there were many years when the restaurant was dead. It seems like a buzzing theatrical place that has been around for decades.
Jeremy is currently working on two places. The first is a deli-style restaurant in Aldwych. He has a back story ready. The place was created by East European Jews escaping persecution.
It started out as a cold meat and sandwich place and then became a full-scale restaurant.
None of this is true, of course, so I asked Jeremy why he bothered. His answer was that unless a restaurant had a convincing back story, it failed in the long run.
This was as true of hotels, he said. Chris Corbin and he have just partnered with the Grosvenor estate to open a new hotel (their first) just off London's Oxford Street. The building used to house the offices of Avis, the car rental company, so the conversion was a challenge. But rather than just build a modern hotel, Corbin and King created a back story.
The hotel was built in the 1920s by a rich American who loved London. It was the toast of the town. Then, the American owner went back to the States and the hotel fell on bad times and was sold to a modern chain which destroyed its character. Now, Corbin and King are renovating it to recover its lost lustre.
This is all made up, of course, and the back story (like Alfred's army origins in Batman Begins) will not necessarily be shared with guests. So why bother with a back story?
Because, says Jeremy, it gives the new owners, the architect, the designer, the management and the staff an idea of what the hotel should be. They don't just say, “Let's convert this office block into a hotel.“ They say “What would the hotel have looked like at its peak in the 1920s?“ And, while designing the rooms, they ask themselves, “What would a luxury hotel built in the Jazz Age have offered its guests?“ The back story serves as a reference point for everybody in the same way that Alfred's back story told Michael Caine how Alfred would react to any given situation.
Jeremy has been to India before and though I tried to get him





THE ORIENTAL IN BANGKOK SELLS ITSELF TO EVERYBODY AS A LEGENDARY OLD WORLD ESTABLISH- MENT
to open up on the subject of our restaurants, he was discreet. But he did say that he found most Indian hotel restaurants swish and soulless. The night before we met, somebody had taken him to Bukhara and he thought that was the one exception: a restaurant in a five-star hotel with soul. I told him that many Indians thought it was old hat and overpriced but he was not convinced. He had no idea that Bukhara had been around since 1978 with roughly the same menu and décor but he thought that fitted in with what he liked about the place when I filled him in on its history. There had to be a back story, he said, in a restaurant that kept packing guests in night after night even though they had to eat on stools and pay high prices.
I thought of Jeremy's insistence on back stories and it struck me that many hotels did have back stories even if they were largely made up. The Oriental in Bangkok consists of two modern buildings and one tiny period structure (rebuilt in the 1960s anyway after a fire). But because it sells itself to everybody ­ guests, staff management etc. ­ as a legendary old world establishment dating back generations, it occupies a special slot. So it is (to a lesser extent, admittedly) with Singapore's Raffles, which is essentially a shopping mall with a small (largely new) hotel attached. But because it believes in its back story, it seems different from other Singapore hotels (it even has an official historian on its staff).
Indian hotels do not consciously use their back stories. The Grand in Calcutta has a terrific history but it seems largely forgotten. Only now has Bangalore's magnificent West End woken up to rediscovering its heritage. The Taj Group spent a lot of money in the 1980s and 1990s destroying the great heritage of Madras's Connemara.
On the other hand, there are successful hotels with made-up back stories. The story of the Vilas properties is ­ or so I would imagine ­ that if a modern Maharaja had lots of money and wanted to build a tasteful 21st century palace, he would build a Vilas.
The Oberois sell that back story so convincingly to staff, media and guests that the Vilas hotels have managed to do what nobody ever thought possible: they have taken on such genuine historical places as the Rambagh and the Lake Palace. And because the back story is so well fleshed into the concept, you know what kind of experience you will get at every Vilas even before you get there.
Should Indian hoteliers and restaurateurs think of a back story before they open new properties? It is an interesting idea. Unless a hotel already has a back story (such as Hyderabad's Falaknuma Palace, for instance), Indian hoteliers are content to focus on the fittings (five feature bathrooms, marble in the lobby, large guest rooms, etc.) and not on the soul. Suppose instead that they gave each hotel a back story before they started building it, wouldn't that make for hotels that were more interesting and ­ at the very least ­ different from each other?
Even existing hotels seem to be crying out for back stories. The ITC Windsor in Bangalore is a 1980s building but it seems to me to be crying out for an Oriental back story that slots the property and motivates the staff. (The Viceroy's Bangalore residence with rooms for his guests and entourage, perhaps?)
It is an interesting thought. Certainly it has worked for Jeremy.
At his establishments, everything is good but that's not why people keep coming back.