Footprints on the Mountainside

Heh. This is an easy one for me to write, and if you really think about it, it is all stuff you know anyway. How many points for betting that you may not have thought of things like that?

One of the best ways of knowing if the promotion material’s claims and the experience match is hindsight. *ducks under the table*

Ok. I’m serious now. What follows are the real ways to tell.

1. Count the number of destinations offered, deduct 2 and divide by the number of days of your tour. If the number you get is greater than one, your tour is going to be too hectic to really see anything. The lower the number, the better. I like 0.7ish
2. Sleeping in a new hill station every night is not seeing the Himalaya. If you don’t have the time to do something special in each place, the pace is too fast.
3. Does your guide love the place he is showing you? If he doesn’t, you’re missing out on insights collected over years of experience - which is something you are paying for when you ask for a guide.
4. Ask to meet the guide before you pay. If your guide doesn’t go all enthusiastic about the place in ways not mentioned on the brouchre, you might as well save the money and travel with a road map and brouchre.
5. Does your guide speak the language of the place - even a little is good - but do you have someone handy to communicate with the locals?
6. Read what is being offered in the tour carefully. How much of it is statistics and luxury descriptions and how much is local information? You can be sure that the same will be reflected in your tour most of the time. So, if you want luxury, or if you want interesting stuff, or something else, reading up befopre paying up can be a good idea.
7. Ask questions. Before you pay, make an effort to read up about the place and ask questions in the meeting. Knowledge shows - even if it means admitting ignorance, but having a good idea on where to find out.
8. Do the people have a sense of fun? Self-explanatory.
9. Find out about other people on the tour and ideally, attend a group meeting to make your payments to get a good idea of whether you will gel with the group or not.
10. To find out if an operator is reliable - simply show an interest in an unlikely variety of tours anthropology and pilgrimage, for example. If they want to sell you anything you point at, get out fast. They don’t really care what your interests are, as long as you buy a tour.

Or come to Wide Aware

Its Ganesh Chaturthi time. This is big happenings near Mumbai and Pune. Everybody and his cousin will install a Ganesh idol in their home on Ganesh Chaturthi and keep it in their homes for worship for durations varying from a day and a half to 21 days. At the end of whatever duration has been selected, the idols are immersed into the sea/river/other water bodies.

It is a time of great worship and cultural value. Hindus believe it to be an honour (to themselves?) to host the God in their home. Even if you don’t follow this practice, you can’t remain unaffected. You will be invited to go and pay your respects in the homes of those you know. A time of meeting people and great joy.

However, there is the dark side of the Ganpati celebrations. The dark side is the utter litter of broken, half dissolved idols marring beaches and shores of all water bodies after these celebrations are done. There is a great pride in creating huge idols, which are invariably of plaster of paris or fibreglass as opposed to the traditional clay idols, which don’t even dissolve away, like they are supposed to.

This Ganesh Chaturthi, I’d like my readers to take the initiative in spreading the word about the damage done to our natural resources through this practice. It is also completely disrespectful to the God you love for so many days in your home to be lying around like garbage once you’re done with your worship.

I have several suggestions I would like to make to Hindus who follow this practice, and I hope they realize that Hinduism is an evolving religion, and knowledge and understanding shaping practices is highly respected, and make an attempt to shift some of the practices to make our environment better. These are inspired by today’s visits to people we respect highly, and you will see why.

This is an idol in the home of Mr Mahesh Atale - an outstanding mallakhamb coach (he was my husband’s coach, when Raka used to perform mallakhamb) and a man with a social conscience. This idol is made of paper mache and painted with eco-friendly paint. When immersed in water, it will dissolve completely within a day - normally, within 8-10 hours. Still, he immerses it in a bucket of water at home.

Another friend and old time guide/teacher is Dr. Milind Chitley. A doctor who is also a mountaineer and Raka’s first employer in the outdoors. Raka worked with him for 8 years and learnt much of what he knows about operating programmes from him. Dokya, as he is fondly called, was not at home, but his parents were, and we had come to pay our respects to the decorated big boss anyway, and he was there.

Dockya has an idol made of silver. It is also immersed in a bucket of water and used again next year. Of course, it doesn’t dissolve, but that is obviously not what we want with a silver idol

A friend of ours, Nikhil Mhapankar, was among those we couldn’t visit due to a shortage of time. He is planning an idol of “panch dhatu”, which is five metals - gold, silver, copper, tin and lead. He is planning to recycle some ancestral silver and gold for this to add sentimental value.

This is an idol in the home of Mr Shrikant Warkhedi - the son of respected sculptor Gururaj Warkhedi and my husband’s maternal uncle. Shrikant mama doesn’t do much sculpting, but makes the Ganesha idol himself without fail each year, like his father used to. This idol is created and used for worship while it is wet. No paints of any kind are used at all, and it is immersed in a bucket of water at home at the end of celebrations and the clay is reused for the next year’s idol.

There are other things people do as well. A chawl in the town area uses an intricate water colour painting on a wall, which is simply washed away. Other practices include reusing fiberglass idols after repainting them, keeping a stone shaped in a way the worshiper finds symbolic of lord Ganesha, and drawing the shape with grain, which is later donated.

Whatever the method, it is different, expressive of caring for the environment and love for the God. I request all readers to promote such ideas among everyone they can. Each year, we have lakhs of idols littering water bodies and devastating the ecology with lead paint and plaster of paris. Every person we can convert toward the protection of God’s creation while engaged in worship is one idol less lying demeaningly on the shore.

I particularly request large public celebrations to adopt eco-friendly practices and become role models for upcoming celebrations. Do it for God’s sake, or environment’s sake, but do it.

Honestly, sometimes I feel like shutting down Wide Aware completely and I would, if that would stop people from “loving” the outdoors so much. But it will not, so the best I can do is to do my bit for the outdoors.

What is this bizarre mood I’m in? Its no bizarre mood. It is looking at some photo albums on the net. Lovely pictures of hill forts in the Sahyadri, with litter in the foreground.

What struck me, is that it is really no shock to find garbage almost anywhere you head out into the outdoors in India. Its like free decoration of the mountainside. Why is it so? Because there are so many people who love the outdoors, that they just have to go there. Apparently, once they have seen the place, its done. The place can go to hell for all they care after that.

You think I’m being anal? Think again. Been to Kondana caves? Why go that far? Been to the National Park? Even with people employed to keep the place clean, the garbage is not under control. The poor playground near the train station is literally swept with brooms every day and all it manages to achieve is soil erosion I guess. The flood of nature lovers doesn’t end.

Do everyone a favour folks. Stay the hell away from the outdoors, if picking up after yourself is beyond your capabilities. Pick up every bit of garbage you throw whether it is biodegradable or not. Smokers, don’t forget the stubs. and gutkha eaters, the wrappers are not for permanent route marking for hikers to come.

And yes, I’m angry. So would you be, if every spare moment in the outdoors was about cleaning up the place. And if you don’t, please do. Pick what litter you find. Speak with groups you come across and ask them to do the same.

Please, while you’re at it, pick up the degradable stuff as well. LEAVE NO TRACE. If possible minimize traces people have left too.

Bio-degradable stuff has an impact on the environment too. Plus, it is going to be litter until it decays, and the place will never be clean, because there will be other people throwing bio-degradable stuff constantly. To put it bluntly, shit is biodegradable. Do you like sitting next to it?

Think of a beautiful location in the outdoors. You’re the only person there. Its untouched. You like? Untouched is only going to be possible when we clean up the place and give it some time to recover. Not if we keep allowing “touches” to remain behind - degradable or not.

I almost forgot: Leave no trace! READ IT, PROMOTE IT, PRACTICE IT.

Ugh. I think it is an occupational hazard for a consultant to feel obligated to have a say on everything, regardless of how inane it sounds. The more broke the consultant, the more desperate he is to say something, anything, as advice. I found this article on CiteMan.

Overcoming Office irritations

My response to this was of such magnitude, that I thought comments wouldn’t suffice, and dragged the whole thing here.

The article opens with seeming to be about employees being unlucky in their employers and suffering from an unhappy work life. Ok, so far, so good. Looks like we have a subject.

Then, we get into generalities about the employers practices and how they are not all bad and also say, “they will definitely not turn ones workplace a place where one wants to be for a long time“!!!???!!! Does that really mean that the employer will want to leave?

Then the whole article does a nose dive and turns into that “ten tips for career success” tone, with a whole load of advice given without any qualification of circumstance whatsoever. What is happening?

We have “An employee must get himself assigned to a project.” Come again? Do employers really leave employees idling around until they get themselves assigned somewhere? Why work at all? Just sit around and enjoy the salary. Then “An employee can tell the employer that to keep ahead of competitors he wants to do research and find out the need of customers and solution to solve their problems. This will give a chance to step out and speak to people and the employee can interact with people on line or simply get busy on the telephone or go and meet them.” No comments.

And, hold-your-breath “Sometimes it is just not the day when one feels like going to work. If that’s the case and if ones work permits then all one has to do is work from home. Do the work in the same fashion as watching TV or play with ones child and send in reports twice in a day. If ones boss resists, explain that this style of working is helping him get the work done efficiently and could not attend work because of minor health problem.” Have I missed something about the corporate world completely? Is being a well taken care of employee about working from home if one doesn’t feel likegoing to work? Does the author realize how condescending it sounds to be explaining to a boss “resisting” this working from home thing? Particularly when speaking of efficiency as the explanation, while doing the work like watching TV or playing with a kid - as in, not with any major effort or concentration?

I’m not continuing with this nonsense, because I just realize I’m copying almost the entire article - each sentence is a masterpiece of “teenager-playing-dream-consultant”, and I just suggest you hop over to the article to believe it.

Is this a training article or what? It sounds more like something from Cosmopolitan - “Ten things to do when you’re bored at work“

It is really a pity there is no author here to quote, but the link leads to the CiteHR. Honestly, I would have expected far better from an HR site, but that just goes to show how the better consultants mint money with competition like this.

I have news for you, Mr. Author, whoever you are. If the employee can genuinely think of working from home, opting in for projects when he feels like it, exchange assignments in the name of multitasking and do any of the many of the things you recommend, it is the employer, not the employee that is unfortunate.

I have just one reply to any whining employee following this nonsense, and even more to the “trainer” who wrote this - If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

I think this is a rant, but I’m not sure yet what direction it will take as I write.

We were casually chatting with a friend/free lance instructor with us, and he was telling us of his experience with another group of tour operators he was hired to work with. He is a good outbound instructor, and experienced, but he still doesn’t handle groups on his own when he works with us. Reason being, we aren’t sure of his instincts in an emergency.

And the incident he told us about reinforced it. Let us call him “Raju” for now.

Raju had no bookings for a particular day, and was hired by a new “adventure sports company” in Mumbai. Well, when you’re a free lancer, you take what comes along. Heck, when you’re a business owner, you still mostly take what comes along.

Raju lands up on the location for the programme, and discovers that he is the only experienced instructor there. Well…. he has confidence in his abilities, so…. he’s ok with that. Then, he discovers that it is a group of 40 people and throws a fit. How is a person to handle rappelling for 40 people solo in a 4 hour morning session? The owner hurried to assure him that he had some experience and would help.

Well… when you’re thrown in the water, you swim. Raju begins to set up the rappelling and discovers insufficient equipment. He is encouraged to “adjust”. Great. He adjusts, and changes the site of the rappel as well, so that the length is shorter. Then comes the parade. One participant after another. Owner apparently is clueless about putting on the harnesses he himself owns. Raju teaches him. Very late into the day, they still have about 10 people left. Lunch time is long past.

Participants are bored from sitting while one person at a time does the rappelling. They are hot, hungry, and very irritated, because their promised 100ft rappel is now 40ft. At the end of the day, there are complaints about how Raju is slow. And the bottom line is that these guys are extremely lucky that no one died, but of course, no one there realizes that.

As far as I am concerned, Raju is NEVER going to be a chief instructor at Wide Aware. If my chief instructor can’t have the guts to cancel an activity when there is a shortage of resources - both human and equipment wise, I’m not interested. If I wanted yes men, I would hire yes men. I don’t. I want an instructor to speak up and make a stand when security is compromized.

Of course, such a situation wouldn’t come up with Wide Aware in the first place. We maintain a minimum of a 10 participants to one instructor ratio on our programmes, and it works well. I’m not planning on changing that. I’m hiring a vehicle for transport anyway, so where is the point in being stingy with equipment? If its not needed, it can sit around and come back untouched. Raka would throw a fit if he were expected to handle rappelling or climbing without a rope of adequate length sitting around anchored and unused for use in an emergency. And honestly, I wouldn’t expect him to adjust on that either.

What would I or Raka have done in the place of Raju? To begin with, we would have booked instructors and carried the equipment needed for that group size. If something went wrong, and we ended up being without equipment, we would have cancelled the activity and done something else that could be managed safely in the resources we had. Non-negotiable. I don’t care if I don’t get paid or have to issue a refund when the option is putting clients in danger.

When we do our mad cap adventures, we are experienced and know what we are getting into. Clients are paying us to know that for them, and we KNOW that if they had the experience, they wouldn’t be paying us. I think this is cheating and endangering the client.

Why does anyone want to make such a great profit, or offer services at such a competitive rate, that there is no basic infrastructure offered?

The ministry of tourism is making efforts to regualate adventure tourism, but unfortunately, there is nothing yet about rock climbing and rappelling below 6000m. Is there a rule that says climbing accidents don’t happen below 6000m?

But still, I recommend that that moronic operator read this link. One climbing accident is going to make all our clients leery, and honestly, there are less climbing accidents than road accidents, but that hasn’t factored in potential stupidity. It takes one.

Call me paranoid, but I’m actually seriously reconsidering hiring this Raju at all, if he finds it ok to operate under those circumstances. Will he speak up about any problem he sees, or simply shrug it away thinking it is better than “that” company anyway? I don’t even see that company as a comparison, and I have made it clear to him, but I’m going to be keeping a very close eye on the guy for the next forever, until I find him being more assertive.

I see this as his fault entirely, as the only guy around who knew the game, and allowed that huge risk to happen.