Traversing Molvania with a Travel Guide!!!
Google Molvania… and you would be transported to a fictional land… perhaps, made after mixing up the names of Moldova and Slovenia…
Molvania is a fictional country, which lies somewhere in Eastern Europe and entails everything that could be wrong with a country… has hotels that are “appalling and not appealing”… has a language that can be learnt only after putting in 16 years… lacks… sanitation, hygiene and public utilities… and yes good dentists…
And around this fictional country… somebody weaved a travel guide… on the lines of a Lonely Planet… Rough Guide etc. This travel guide is a delight to read… unapologetically funny and unrelentingly sarcastic… on the culture of travel with travel guide books… traveling with stereotypes…
After reading about Molvania… I started wondering about my trysts with the guide books… and at the outset, I would confess that travel guide books haven’t been all that a hurdle for me…
I have, till date, purchased 5 Guide books… Rough Guide and Bhraman-Sangi on India… and Lonely Planet on Egypt, Europe (on a shoestring) and Africa (again on a shoestring)… let me discuss them one by one.
Rough Guide… on India… is contrary to what the Molvanian spoof would like to believe us… it is good in parts… but as I always say… India is too big and too varied to be captured in one book… Rough Guide suffers from the same handicap… however for a beginner; it’s a nice place to begin. The fact that I purchased it with my very first salary… in Mussoorie… would always make it special for me.
I was introduced to Bhraman-Sangi by a Bengali gentleman in a Bookshop near New Market in Kolkata. I was there to purchase heart-full of books… I purchased the Feluda Omnibus, Jibonanda Das’ poetry book (which I sadly misplaced at Kolkata Airport, while taking a flight to Agartala)… and then turned towards the travel book section… and was flipping through Lonely Planet on India… when this Bengali gentleman… having a height of 5 feet 2 inches… black complexioned… salt and pepper hairs… intruded.
“If you want to buy any travel guide on India… it has to be Bhraman-Sangi… nothing comes close… and look at the price only 300 rupees, quarter of what you would pay for a Lonely Planet”… I gave into his logic and confidence… and purchased it.
Bhraman-Sangi is a treasure trove... lots and lots of information… for example… Amarkantak in Chattisgarh (or is it still Madhya Pradesh) has a passing reference in Rough Guide… but in Bhraman-Sangi… you can have almost 4-5 pages of information on it.
However, Bhraman-Sangi has a very “Bengali-centric” worldview… it’s amazingly rich on places frequented by Bengalis… for example… Puri is dealt in some 30-40 pages… other places, though adequately referred, pale in comparison. This is a seriously anomaly… after a while… you start wondering why should Bishnupur be covered in more details than say, Hampi. Nevertheless… Bhraman-Sangi is a great value for money… notwithstanding the fact that I could never connect with the book and couldn’t ever consider it a Bhraman-Sangi (a travel companion)
The question arises… how much I have used the two guide-books… and the answer is… very little. Most of my meaningful travels… in Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal… happened sans these guidebooks. And I believe that had I followed these guidebooks… my travels wouldn’t have been half as interesting. But yes, compared one to another, I have used more of Rough Guide than Bhraman-Sangi… because of ease of use… open-endedness… and secularity.
Along the line… I discovered a great website called indiamike.... The site is an absolute delight… it has thousand and thousand of travelers, who have traveled far and wide in India… experienced varied and vivid experiences… and are willing to advice you… indiamike changed the way I perceived traveling… I was introduced to this site in 2006, and though since then haven’t traveled much in India (because, more or less, since then, I have been outside India)… but am sure, as and when, I would enact one of the many dream odysseys of mine… I know, I won’t even bother to look at Lonely Planets, Rough Guides, and Bhraman-Sangis… I know that I would need to just float a thread and then would be inundated with tried and tested advices… from fellow travelers who wander across the length and breadth of India… searching for new and newer experiences.
Lonely Planet Egypt… was helpful in the sense that it assisted me in taking the first few steps in Egypt… it was quite helpful in deciding the spots I wanted to visit… but stopped at that… it couldn’t tell me the extent and extant of the magic of wandering along the beach of El-Arish… the most cherished memory from Egypt… it could not tell me how magical it was to ride a rickety taxi… in which a cassette of Umm Kulthoum was being played… I just had to close my eyes and recline on the seat and suddenly I was transported to a world of pathos, love, nostalgia… and my own past. Nonetheless, Lonely Planet helped me in deciding the routes of travels… and I would always owe this to it.
The two other Lonely Planets, on Africa and Europe, however, were magical… they introduced me to the world… flipping through its pages, I realized how beautiful, and varied is my world… and it’s all mine… the world’s longest train in Mauritania… the Canoe in Lake Tana, the beaches of Zanzibar... the dunes of Namibia… the Blue Mosque in Istanbul… the beauty of Barcelona… the waters of Venice… everything was mine… to claim… and I knew, thereon, that I may or may not claim it… but the fact that it is mine… would always bring a smile to my face…
Guide Books… suffer from the stereotypes… are often shallow… but then… they are good starting point… but they are losing out, now… so they should, only and only, serve as a starting point… and then the real traveler should take over…
Wikitravel is making them redundant… Lonely Planet’s Thorntree forum is making them futile… and they would have to, sooner or later, re-invent… guidebooks need to be replaced by travelogues… real, extrapolated and fictional… to remain relevant…
Till then Molvania… would keep us smiling.
Molvania is a fictional country, which lies somewhere in Eastern Europe and entails everything that could be wrong with a country… has hotels that are “appalling and not appealing”… has a language that can be learnt only after putting in 16 years… lacks… sanitation, hygiene and public utilities… and yes good dentists…
And around this fictional country… somebody weaved a travel guide… on the lines of a Lonely Planet… Rough Guide etc. This travel guide is a delight to read… unapologetically funny and unrelentingly sarcastic… on the culture of travel with travel guide books… traveling with stereotypes…
After reading about Molvania… I started wondering about my trysts with the guide books… and at the outset, I would confess that travel guide books haven’t been all that a hurdle for me…
I have, till date, purchased 5 Guide books… Rough Guide and Bhraman-Sangi on India… and Lonely Planet on Egypt, Europe (on a shoestring) and Africa (again on a shoestring)… let me discuss them one by one.
Rough Guide… on India… is contrary to what the Molvanian spoof would like to believe us… it is good in parts… but as I always say… India is too big and too varied to be captured in one book… Rough Guide suffers from the same handicap… however for a beginner; it’s a nice place to begin. The fact that I purchased it with my very first salary… in Mussoorie… would always make it special for me.
I was introduced to Bhraman-Sangi by a Bengali gentleman in a Bookshop near New Market in Kolkata. I was there to purchase heart-full of books… I purchased the Feluda Omnibus, Jibonanda Das’ poetry book (which I sadly misplaced at Kolkata Airport, while taking a flight to Agartala)… and then turned towards the travel book section… and was flipping through Lonely Planet on India… when this Bengali gentleman… having a height of 5 feet 2 inches… black complexioned… salt and pepper hairs… intruded.
“If you want to buy any travel guide on India… it has to be Bhraman-Sangi… nothing comes close… and look at the price only 300 rupees, quarter of what you would pay for a Lonely Planet”… I gave into his logic and confidence… and purchased it.
Bhraman-Sangi is a treasure trove... lots and lots of information… for example… Amarkantak in Chattisgarh (or is it still Madhya Pradesh) has a passing reference in Rough Guide… but in Bhraman-Sangi… you can have almost 4-5 pages of information on it.
However, Bhraman-Sangi has a very “Bengali-centric” worldview… it’s amazingly rich on places frequented by Bengalis… for example… Puri is dealt in some 30-40 pages… other places, though adequately referred, pale in comparison. This is a seriously anomaly… after a while… you start wondering why should Bishnupur be covered in more details than say, Hampi. Nevertheless… Bhraman-Sangi is a great value for money… notwithstanding the fact that I could never connect with the book and couldn’t ever consider it a Bhraman-Sangi (a travel companion)
The question arises… how much I have used the two guide-books… and the answer is… very little. Most of my meaningful travels… in Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal… happened sans these guidebooks. And I believe that had I followed these guidebooks… my travels wouldn’t have been half as interesting. But yes, compared one to another, I have used more of Rough Guide than Bhraman-Sangi… because of ease of use… open-endedness… and secularity.
Along the line… I discovered a great website called indiamike.... The site is an absolute delight… it has thousand and thousand of travelers, who have traveled far and wide in India… experienced varied and vivid experiences… and are willing to advice you… indiamike changed the way I perceived traveling… I was introduced to this site in 2006, and though since then haven’t traveled much in India (because, more or less, since then, I have been outside India)… but am sure, as and when, I would enact one of the many dream odysseys of mine… I know, I won’t even bother to look at Lonely Planets, Rough Guides, and Bhraman-Sangis… I know that I would need to just float a thread and then would be inundated with tried and tested advices… from fellow travelers who wander across the length and breadth of India… searching for new and newer experiences.
Lonely Planet Egypt… was helpful in the sense that it assisted me in taking the first few steps in Egypt… it was quite helpful in deciding the spots I wanted to visit… but stopped at that… it couldn’t tell me the extent and extant of the magic of wandering along the beach of El-Arish… the most cherished memory from Egypt… it could not tell me how magical it was to ride a rickety taxi… in which a cassette of Umm Kulthoum was being played… I just had to close my eyes and recline on the seat and suddenly I was transported to a world of pathos, love, nostalgia… and my own past. Nonetheless, Lonely Planet helped me in deciding the routes of travels… and I would always owe this to it.
The two other Lonely Planets, on Africa and Europe, however, were magical… they introduced me to the world… flipping through its pages, I realized how beautiful, and varied is my world… and it’s all mine… the world’s longest train in Mauritania… the Canoe in Lake Tana, the beaches of Zanzibar... the dunes of Namibia… the Blue Mosque in Istanbul… the beauty of Barcelona… the waters of Venice… everything was mine… to claim… and I knew, thereon, that I may or may not claim it… but the fact that it is mine… would always bring a smile to my face…
Guide Books… suffer from the stereotypes… are often shallow… but then… they are good starting point… but they are losing out, now… so they should, only and only, serve as a starting point… and then the real traveler should take over…
Wikitravel is making them redundant… Lonely Planet’s Thorntree forum is making them futile… and they would have to, sooner or later, re-invent… guidebooks need to be replaced by travelogues… real, extrapolated and fictional… to remain relevant…
Till then Molvania… would keep us smiling.
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