Though it would be easy to spend another few weeks(or months)here in Diu, we must leave. We fly out of Mumbai in ten days and there are a few places we wanted to check out between now and then. But before we left our favorite ice cream shop gave us a personal tour of their ice cream and sodapop factory. And the four newborn puppies that we watched get bigger everyday have now all be adopted by families. It's time to move on.
It's been eight years since Yo and I have done a big trip together. In 1999/2000 we spent a year and a half traveling around Asia. Now that we are back in Asia its hard not to compare the two trips. Though India has hardly changed(except more cell phones), what has changed is the way that we, and people in general, travel. While we still travel on a budget and with backpacks, we are also now also equipped with an iPod, a digital camera, a blog, e tickets, and a ATM card.
Of the fifty or so places we have visited on this trip, I can think of only a few that did not have an internet cafe or some sort. Some were better than others. A few had keyboards that had been so used that there were no letters left on the keys. You just had to remember which key was which. It slowed things down quite a bit for an amateur typer such as myself. Eight years ago, there were no internets cafes at all along our route, instead we'd pick up our mail at the post restante section of designated post offices. We love getting emails and comments on the blog, but you can't imagine how exciting it was to pick up a packet of letters from family & friends every 4 to 6 weeks. It was our only news from home. We'd always have contests each time to see who would get the most letters. Each letter would be reread several times. Sometimes my Mom would send a care package with all of my favorite foods(of course pretzels). You can't beat email for convenience, but sometimes I miss the visceral feel of a letter. Tom Robbins, an author that refuses to use a computer to write, says that ink is the blood of language and paper is it's flesh.
It would be hard to go many months without any music. So we always travel with a little stereo and speakers. 8 years ago even though CD's were the medium of choice in the first world, cassettes were still the name of the game in the third world, so we traveled with a Walkman cassette player and a small set of speakers that were barely loud enough to be heard above the noise in the streets. We also had a case that held exactly twelve cassette tapes. As you can probably imagine it didn't take long to get pretty sick of those twelve tapes. Occasionally my friend, Tim, would send us a mix tape that was always most welcome or we'd pick up a tape of Indian Bollywood musical hits every so often. Now we have an IPod the size of a pack of gum that holds 200 CDs and a set of speakers that are more than capable of keeping up the neighbors. We can put this iPod on shuffle and not hear the same song for weeks-it's crazy.
In 1999 an ATM was a rare sight on our route. We traveled with thousands of dollars in travelers checks because most of the places we visited(Laos, Vietnam, Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma)had no ATMs at all. In fact the only places that did were India, China, and Thailand. I had a pamphlet that listed all the ATM's in India. Imagine a country the size of the continential US and with 3 times the population and the locations of ALL of the ATMs in this country could be found on a single pamphlet. We'd plan our trip around these ATM stops, stocking up with enough money to hold us over for a few weeks until we hit another one. Luckily this is no longer the case, now you can't walk 100 yards without running into an ATM. You could now very easily leave the country without a penny in your pocket and armed only with an ATM card, travel around the world without any trouble at all.
And then there is the digital camera. The benefits are almost too many to name. First there is the money saved from not having to buy film and then having it developed(last trip we had 70 rolls). It's easy to attach photos to emails and to blogs. Local people always get a kick out of seeing their picture after you take their photo. You can retake photos that do not turn well and delete the ones you do not like. You can entertain yourselves by looking through your photos. We've spent several evenings laughing as we went though all the pictures we've taken so far on this trip. You can take photos of bus/train schedules or of maps so you can use them later. There haven't been many photos of Yo on the blog because she takes most of the pictures and I'm not much of a photographer myself. But when I do take a picture of her now I take 4 or 5 slightly different photos and let her pick her favorite one later.
We're not real technology people, but I must admit that all of these things have made travel a lot more convenient. However, I do miss receiving those letters and packages at post restante.
-Shawn