A long cherished dream comes to life

I have grown up with the fact that my father was the first Indian Army officer to have successfully graduated from Fort Bragg, North Carolina after completing the Rangers Course. He thus became the first Indian Green Beret, a la Rambo. He then went on to start the Commando Wing for the Indian Army. In his later days he commanded the Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School which has made quite a name for itself in recent years ... globally. He, I believe, always had a smirk on his face, a wry smile, whenever he heard of some officer not being able to complete the Commando Course. After all he designed the Course and the pass out rate was less than 10%.

Well, with that kind of a heritage looming large over me from the time I was learning to walk, was a pretty daunting task. Maybe my getting into the adventure and exploration space was a way of gaining his pleasure. I will never know since he passed away a few years before I started OutThere Adventurers.

I have travelled around the country, seen places few see, got myself a couple of records, gunning for a few more, shattered my leg, walk with a limp, I have done all that. But somewhere deep inside was a doubt whether I knew enough about the wilderness, enough about survival. I still vividly remember the night I spent at 16,500 feet, in the open, with just a sleeping bag, no tent, no acclimatisation, all because my motorbike went kaput. I did not know whether I would surviv e the night. As it happens, I did, and the thought that I needed to learn more about survival was never far away from the top level of my consciousness.

I have wanted to learn about knots, how to set traps, to to perform CPR, how to drink out of fetid pool of stagnant water, how to suture a wound. I have wanted to learn all of that, and over the years have picked up some tips and tricks. I still have a long way to go.

But the things I have learnt is something that I have wanted to pass on to others. And I have this discussion with virtually every member of every group that accompanies me on the road trip to Ladakh. I know what the dangers are, while many people look at it as just another ride. I scare them silly, while they look at me funny thinking, "This guy is loco, surely I will not die." But people do fall sick on those high mountains. Anyway, once the trip is all done and the memories are full of happy tidings, they look at me and say, "See, nothing happened." I turn back and tell them, "Nothing happened because I scared you silly and you did what I told you to do." Precaution is always better than cure, every day of the week and every hour of the day.

How could I structure these learnings and spread the good word? Finally it came to me. Let's start a schoo. And that is how the worm that had been germinating in the mind for so many months and years came to finally see the light of day. The OTA Survival School was launched.

Classes are yet to begin, they should commence in a couple of weeks. I am now tying up locations where the weekend and week long courses can be conducted. In the hills, in the jungles, in the desert. I still need to figure out water survival for myself, so that is not yet part of the course. Will need to get into that pretty quick.

Well, the School is up and about, taking its first tentative steps. We also cut a film that started out being less than an hour long, but has ended up being over three hours. Packed with lods of information. And it comes along with a 68-page, pocket-sized, free booklet that can be carried as ready reckoner. Now to get the show on the road.

Here's to the future. And like I say in the film and in the book and on the website, and I am sure will tell all participants, remember the 7 Ps - Proper Planning, Preparation and Practice Prevents Possible Problems.

Have fun in the wild and maybe I will see you on one of the OTASS courses.

Lord give me a winner so that I can gloat

All of India is in a state of frenzy over the past couple of weeks. The cricket world cup was on ... it just got over, but more on that later. Miraculously almost, Indins found that their team was on the verge of reaching hallowed ground - the finals. And war was declared when it was found that the team India had to vanquish on the battlefield was none other than arch rivals Pakistan. We went back to the days around Independence, the riots that followed partition, the war of 1948, the 1965 battles, the creation of Bangladesh and India's role in that, Musharraf and the Kargil War of 1999, the continuing miltancy that rages on in the Valley. And now the enemy was near. And the battlefield was designated as the Mohali Stadium. Prime Ministers were in attendance, seven tiered security was in place, in fact there was talk of fighter jets flying over the city to prevent any arial attack. The cricket crazy (and mindless) Indian fan was lathi charged looking for that elusive ticket. Finally after all was said and done, India beat Pakistan and entered the finals of the World Cup. Who cared if India won or not, India had beaten Pakistan and that was that. The cup be damned.

If the political, military and diplomatic problems between the two countries could have been solved through one cricket match, life would have been so much simpler. Forty odd thousand rooting fans in the stadium, a billion or so baying for blood, as twenty two gladiators fight it out in the middle, two with wooden sticks, one charging in like a raging bull all set to hurl a five and a half ounce round piece of leather, while a dozen other look on for the outcome that would settle all rows once and for all. The winner takes Kashmir. Hmmm, life could have been so simple.

I think there is a case in history where a war was averted through a football match, the winner of the match would be the winner of the military dispute. Anyway, I am digressing.

India reached the final, like all Indians had prayed for, like all the bookies had predicted, and like ESPN STAR had hoped. And then by jove, they thrash the Lankans after giving eveyone lumps in their throats and mini heart attacks all around. Sehwag gone second ball of the match for a duck. Sachin, the God, sent back with a peach of a delivery. No hundredth hundred for the Master. At 32 for 2, it seemed that all was over. But then the match could not finished so early. What about all the commercials that were to run through the next 75 odd overs. Gambhir and Kohli stabilised the ship and Dhoni came and finished it all off with a captain's knock. India won, Lord Rama had triumphed over Ravana. History was rewritten and it was a slap in the face to everyone who ever doubted that the Ramayan was based in myth and fiction. Here was proof, Dhoni in his role as Rama had once again vanquished the Lankan demons. And legends were born.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India took centre stage and immediately announced a crore of rupees (a little less than US$ 250,000) to each member of the team. I believe Dhoni is being conferred a Jharkhand Ratna. I am sure a slew of other gifts - monetary and otherwise - will follow. Why, I read a Facebook post that suggested Dhoni should stand for Prime Minister.

Now to my point, the one I want to make but cannot find the words for. It was and will continue to be just a game. Maybe I am wrong, but a game is a game is game. Someone wins and someone loses. And this is cricket. And everyone agrees that the real contests of the world begin from the quarter final stage, when the big guns play against each other. But there are only about half a dozen countries in the world that play the game and deserve to be in the BIG league. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Am I missing some countries here? Bangladesh? Kenya? Zimbabwe? Netherlands? Canada?

The 2011 Census is just out. We have added 181 million people to the population inthe last decade. That is more than the current population of Pakistan. We add more than the population of Australia every year. Many of our smaller states have a larger population than all of Sri Lanka. We of 1.2 billion people are proud to have picked up a cup after a wait of 28 years. Is it something to be proud of or are we missing a trick here? The sheer might of numbers would suggest that there is talent lying behind every corner in the country. But who needs individual talent? We are happy to usurp the glory that others strive hard for. OK, even if the Indian team has won the World Cup after 28 years and after competing against half a dozen countries, it still had to be done. Kudos to the team. What I am questioning is, what are we individuals have so much to gloat about? Is it because we lack icons that we have to lay the glory of others on our own mantlepiece and usurp it as if it were our own?

To be honest, there are so few icons that we can be proud of. Sachin Tendulkar is one the greatest that has played the game. It is not his fault that he chose to excel in a game that is played by so few countries. He did and he is great. But why ignore other icons? Why not allow the same space to them? Is Saina Nehwal any less? To my mind Sania Mirza is more hype than substance, though she had her chances at glory. Somdev Devvarman is going great guns. Dhanraj Pillai never got the rcognition that he deserved so much. And hockey was once to Indians what cricket is today. I still remember the Test match in Delhi when Geoffrey Boycott crossed 8,032 runs to become the highest run scorer. The stadium was empty because there was an India versus Pakistan hockey match going on in Delhi that afternoon. People streamed out of the Ferozeshah Kotla ground and headed for Shivaji Stadium to watch that match.

Cricket has taken over our collective psyche and to be fair, it is one thing that does bind the country together. Corruption, scams, and political incompetence have two maybe more sides defencing one action or the other. Cynicism abounds. But when there is a cricket match going on, it is Chak De India around the country with Vande Mataram being sung in the stadium by people interlocking their arms and waving the Indian tricolour. True, nothing binds this country stronger than a game of cricket ... well, a game of cricket where Indian is winning. We are just as quick to banish the heroes into the wilderness at the slightest loss of form, or God forbid at a loss to Pakistan. Remember someone called Chetan Sharma? He still rues the time of day when he bowled that last ball of that last over to Javed Miandad. With that glorious six, a promising career ended. Today even political parties are wary of soliciting his support because of the memories that the name Chetan Sharma brings up. One unfortunate ball that got hit for a six could ruin the fortunes of a person or a party trying to run a country. How ironic.

All I want to say is can we rise above ourselves and be happy at someone's achievements, but be man enough to emulate the achievements and not just rest on the laurels that others have gained for themselves. A gripe I have about my country cousins from Bengal. So few have risen beyond the fact that they come from the same land that gave birth to Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray. So what if I have done nothing, I come from the land of Geetanjali and Pather Panchali. That is my claim to fame.

Let us rise above ourselves and better each other in whatever field we choose for ourselves. Be happy for the glory of others, but strive for personal glory. That is what will make India great. The other day I was reading as book and I think there was a quote from Nehru who mentioned a few years after Independence, "We have created an India, now we need to create some Indians." India is shining, now let us Indians rise up and shine. Give others the opportunity to gloat over your achievements, instead of just being happy at gloating over someone else's achievement, however glorious they may be. It is still someone else's achievement. On the day of judgement, each of us should be able to look int he mirror and say, "I did my bit."

What's the YouTube story?

Twenty days have passed by with Dirty Old Boots being in the public domain. And it has been a good twenty days. We are adding about a thousand views every day on average which to my mind is pretty decent going. And we are getting 300 views or thereabouts to almost each video we launch in just a few hours. And then ... kaput. It freezes. The views that is. YouTube seems to have some kind of policy against increasing the number of views beyond 300 or thereabouts mark. Probably for new kids on the block like Dirty Old Boots. They might think that we are somehow manipulating the views. How can a video become so popular is so short a time, particularly if it does not have some crazy, zany, kinky, wierd stuff? And there are a lot of kinky things going on on YouTube. Take a look at some of the popular videos and channels. Millions and millions of views, thousands of subscribers, for what to my illiterate mind seems to be utter rubbish.

We were watching a video made by a guy which has got a zillion views. The video is about this guy being a snake. He hisses, he makes strange noises, even stranger faces, has a hat on that no right thinking person would be caught dead in. There is absolutely nothing in the video that is worth watching. Yet, a zillion or so people have watched it alrfeady and we in the office milled around the screen and watched it too. We laughed, we kicked ourselves, questioned why we were wasting our time, yet there it was, playing itself out.

I get the feeling that videos need to be zany, utterly without a plot, strange ramblings of people, uttering stuff which no one should be interested in. But yet, the proof the the pudding as they say. Huge amounts of traction.

Maybe we are going wrong somewhere. Maybe we need to put in some zany stuff. We were talking in the office in the afternoon. We call ourselves Dirty Old Boots. Let us make a video of a bunch of people throwing dirty boots at each other. Better still ... every one smelling dirty boots and shoes and socks. Maybe a candid camera of people wearing dirty boots. Heaven knows what, but we need to be knocking on those doors to figure out what we need to do to make videos go viral.

But then we also need to figure out how to make YouTube decided that we are not manipulating the numbers, and give us the actual viewership data. We are at 12,000 views as of now. My feeling is it should be at least thrice as high.

The other thing that I have not been able to figure out is the YouTube rankings. One day one video or a channel is at the number one spot, the next day it disappears right off the charts. A look at the numbers shows up a highly viewed video at a lower ranking than a video which has been seen by far lesser number of people.

I think I have not yet figured out how YouTube works. They seem to have a system in the madness, and I need to figure out what that madness is.

One thing is for sure. Even though our videos are well produced and with a lot of information, what is lacking is the glam quotient. I don't think people are interested in watching my gob in video after video, or listen to me droning on and on. What we need is another anchor, a female anchor. With personality, poise and appeal. The hunt is on.

Just rambling...

As the title states, I am just rambling. The last week has been nice. The Lathmar Holi video on Dirty Old Boots has been received quite well. In fact I was just checking its status on Metacafe. Our video had 69 views while NDTV's had 6. Felt nice. Must be doing something right. On DailyMotion ours waas the only video on Lathmar Holi. Does that mean it is not worth uploading or does it mean that others have somehow missed the trick on a unique festival. I would rather be biased to my way of thinking. Dirty Old Boots is alive and well and the first few tentative steps that began about three weeks ago are becoming a lot more surer. A long long way ahead. We have not even begun to project the kind of things that we want Dirty Old Boots to become. A definite travel resource. Today it is little more than a drop box of sundry videos. To a casual visitor to the site, focus is something they will feel is lacking on the site. But we know where we want to go from here on in. And we will get there. Slowly and surely.

The other day I was speaking to a friend of mine and he suggested something that I have been grappling with for some time. How does Dirty Old Boots generate revenues for itself without waiting for advertisers to come in. I know advertisers will com ein, but that is still some distance away into the future. We need a threshold level of traffic to the site to generate advertising revenue. Till then ... what?

Well, on ething that I have been doing and now will intergrate into Dirty Old Boots is tours. I go to Ladakh every year. I love going back to Bhutan at every opportunity. Sikkim is a favourite. My plans of rafting down the Zanskar this August and the Brahmaputra this December is final. Why don't I start packaging all these trips, plug them with the videos that we produce and generate revenues from that? Sounds like a plan. In fact that is something that has kept me busy for the better part of today. Added five trips that we plan to promote this year - Ladakh, Zanskar rafting, Bhutan, a road trip to the base camp of Mt Everest and a trip to Kailash and Mansarovar. The last two I have been wanting to do for ages, maybe 2011 is my lucky year.

One route I would like to add to the offering is Mongolia. It is a mystical country, relatively unknown and exotic. A horse trek across the Mongolian steppes, through the Gobi desert, witnessing the Nadaam Festival, maybe even spending a week out with Kazhak eagle hunters. Mongolia is a place I will need to recce soon. Maybe spend a month there figuring out details, then packaging shorter trips.

The other thing I have kind of figured out is the difference between budget packages and high end packages. I would rather work on the second kind of guests. But this year may be too early for that, I am not yet geared to cater to the high end clientele. 2012 for sure.

Well, enough ramblings for now. I was kinda hoping that during the course of my ramblings Dirty Old Boots would have crossed another milestone. It is at 9,858 hits, and I was hoping it would cross the 10,000 mark. No sweat, probably sometime during the night. Just the beginning. Need a million hits a month for Dirty old Boots to do what it is gearing up to do. Godpseed.

Lathmar Holi at Barsana

A lot many of us have played Holi in our lives. Some have not for various reasons. And most have us have played Holi living in the cities, played with friends and family. Holi is all about celebrations and camaraderie. A festival of colours where each grain of colour mixes with the others symbolising harmony among people. But Holi over the years, particularly in the cities, has degenerated into something else altogether. There is shameless harassment of women, the colours have become synthetic and for a large part, become a festival to be scared of because of all the hooliganism associated with it. Hooliganism that has nothing to do with the festival, but with those who use the canvas of the festival to indulge in absoluet nonsense.

A trip to Barsana and participating in the celebration of Holi there will take you back to the time when Holi was played as intended. The whole community participates and there is no hooliganism. Complete strangers smother each other with colour, hugs are exchanged and praises are raised to Lord Krishna and his favourite consort Radha. Actually Barsana is where Radha used to live and Krishna used to live in Nandgaon, less than ten kilometers away. The practice of Holi in Barsana dates back to those times and the traditions of Lathmar Holi continues from days of myth and legend, right up to this present day.

The small town of Barsana with a population of around 10,000 transforms in itself at this time of the year when literally lakhs of people from all over the country, and indeed the world, come here to witness a celebration of Holi that is unique for this village. Holi in Barsana is unique for the story that plays out every year.

Legend has it that Krishna stole the clothes of the gopis as they were bathing in the pond. Radha and her friends decided to teach Krishna a lesson and beat him up with sticks, or lathis. The occasion of Holi re enacts this story when men from Nandgaon impersonating Krishna come to Barsana to play Holi with Radha and the women of Barsana impersonating Radha beat Krishna up. The men are not supposed to retaliate while the women rain blows on them, quite aggressively and with all their vengeance I might add. In fact I saw a couple of bamboo sticks actually split wide open in the process. The men parry the blows with leather shields as they sit on the ground, with heavily padded turbans on their heads, waiting for the blows to stop.

It is interesting to note that only the wives of Barsana participate in the "lathi charge", the sisters and daughters do not.

The day following the Lathmar Holi at Barsana, the entire scene is repeated when the men from Barsana go to Nandgaon to get beaten up by the women (Radhas) of Nandgaon. All in good humour, but entirely aggressive and violent, the Barsana Holi is an experience one cannot afford to miss.

For a small town with narrow alleys and an infrastructure built to cater to a small population, it is immensely well-geared to handle the hundreds of thousands of people that converge on the village. The Police bandobast is top rate and intervention is immediate at any sign of impropriety.

On the road towards Agra from Delhi and about 20 kilometers short of the turn towards Vrindavan there is a road to the right that leads to Barsana 17 kilometers away. Reach early and revel in the gaiety throughout the day, ending with the spectacular Lathmar Holi of Barsana.

Happy Holi. Radhey Radhey. Banke Bihari Ki Jai.

Welcome to Dirty Old Boots

After having travelled for over a decade and exploring the vast expanse of this wonderful subcontinent, I decided to structure the experiences, remove the pitfalls and answer some queries that I have had over the years. That was the germ of an idea some three or four years ago and today it has culminated in the launch of Dirty Old Boots. It is a travel resource for travellers, by travellers, with information that travellers want. Largely I have found that information about places, destinations, things to see, routes, maps, etc are very inadequate. Information that is available is guarded as State secrets. Dirty Old Boots is trying to address that situation.

I love travelling and I love photography. And Dirty Old Boots is a resources that is entirely on video. Take a look at the website and you will get a glimpse of things to come. It is still in its early infancy and over the next few months we hope to create something unique, something relevant, something different and something very new. The target is to have at least 50,000 videos in the next two years. And when I say infancy, the proof of that is in the fact that Dirty Old Boots has all of 31 videos today. It is not just work in progress but the raw materials are being gathered. We have put the information out in the public space because we are way too excited. Four of us - Plaban Bagchi, Prerna Siddharth, Akhilesh Mishra and me - are trying our best to put a structure to what we all have in our heads. Just wait for the next few months.

Life has been exciting these last couple of months. we enjoy our work, we have fun and seeing each new video in the public space gives us immense joy and satisfaction. I still remember the time when we cross 100 video views. It was elation. And then we crossed 1,000. Today we are just over the 7,000 video view mark, inching towards the magical 10,000 mark. Someday we hope a whole lot more zeros will be in that number.

In the last month we have travelled to Manali, we have rafted down the Ganges in Rishikesh, we have prayed with the faithful at Har Ki Pauri, we zip up and down the streets of Delhi every day, capturing all that we can. In a couple of hours we are off to Mathura - Barsana actually - to capture on film the unique festival of Lathmar Holi.

For the moment take a look at the video we produced on rafting down the Ganges. The film on Holi should be up in a week or so.

It is great to be back on the blog. I hope to update it as often as I can. Do visit the site, click on the LIKE button and share it with your network on Facebook. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel ... http://www.youtube.com/user/mydirtyoldboots. And you can do all this from any page on the website - http://DirtyOldBoots.com

I'll see you when I see you. Have fun

Something new coming up

WHile we wait to finalise the partners for OneHelluvaRide, life could not have come to a standstill. So something that was lying in the backburner for a few months was taken out, dusted and put on simmer. And it is moving towards a boil. A 20,000km drive around India, Bhutan and Nepal, criss crossing the subcontinent, from the edge of the ocean to the highest roads in the world, through the heart of the country and right into the desert. The Nagarpurabad Challenge will take me over 22 Indian states, Bhutan and Nepal, in about a month, over 20,000 plus kilometers. Why? Well, the effort is to attempt four (no less) world records. The fastest traverses - East/West, North/South, Coastal and Trans Himalayan. We are trying to stream the effort LIVE over the internet so that you get to know real time what's up with the journey. A few things need to be tightened before we can hit the road. Meanwhile take a look at this promotional video.