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India Booked | Travelling Tales of Tibet
110 Plays4 years ago
‘The ‘Other’ Shangri-La: Journeys through the Sino-Tibetan frontier in Sichuan’ is a narrative travelogue based on author Shivaji Das and his wife’s journey which explores the region’s history and the lives and cultures of the people inhabiting these remote lands in detail.
In this episode of India Booked, Shivaji Das and Yolanda Yu recount their journey to Tibet as writers and more significantly as travellers, embellishing it with quirky incidents and fascinating anecdotes.
The travel enthusiasts and companions share with Ayushi Mona the highlight of their trip with surprisingly different approaches, one recounting how they got entangled in the unfolding of a love triangle, while the other underlines the realities of them travelling on rugged roads fraught with danger.
The podcast narrates the adventures of travelling into lands far away, the edge of touring as a couple, the culture and habits of migration amongst the Tibetans and the dangerous journeys they undertake that “make men out of boys”, as Shivaji puts it.
Tune in to hear them discuss elements of nature that are worth going back to and draw parallels between the two diverse cultures of India and China. This episode is for writers and travellers alike, as it explores the routines they follow as writers and the thrills they experience as travellers on a journey!
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Transcript
Introduction to India Booked Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
I'm your host Ayushi Mona and you're listening to India Booked, a podcast where we lean into the idea of India through its literature and we speak to authors who bring this to life.
Exploration of 'The Other Shangri-La'
00:00:29
Speaker
There are few passions as consuming as a love for travel.
00:00:35
Speaker
Author Shivaji Das has written The Other Shangri-La which is about his journey through the sign of Tibetan frontier in Sichuan. Do you want to know more about the world's highest town? That's also the birthplace of important llamas. The world's largest monastery and also the highest slum. A beauty valley famed since antiquity for its good-looking and strong-minded women.
00:01:02
Speaker
a pilgrim circuit once terrorised by bandit monks and a small town that gave birth to China's favourite love song, then do grab a copy of the other Shangri-la and listen to this episode of our book where we talk about this very lucid narrative that Shivaji Das spins on this adventurous bunny across the Sino-Tibetan front with his wife.
Meet the Guests: Shivaji Das and Lobo
00:01:28
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I am Ayushi Mona, your host on India Booked, a podcast where we lean into the idea of India through the voice of authors and literature. Today, I'm elated to have with me Shivaji Das and Lobo. Lobo was born in Northeastern China, lived in Singapore since 98. She's an award-winning writer and poet, and she also run YoYo's Career Channel on YouTube.
00:01:55
Speaker
Shivaji is the author of four travel memoirs and photography books. His latest book is The Adashangrila's Journey Through the Sino-Tibetan Frontier.
00:02:07
Speaker
This is the book that we're going to be discussing today. Apart from this, Shivaji's work has been featured in Time, Economist, BBC, et cetera.
Shivaji's Multidimensional Work
00:02:16
Speaker
He conceptualized the acclaimed Global Migrant Festival, as well as the refugee poetry contest, and is also the managing director, APAC, for Frost & Sullivan, which is a research and consulting company. I am extremely excited to have Shivaji and Lobo both on the show. Welcome to the show.
00:02:37
Speaker
Hi, thanks for having us here. Hi, great to be here.
Travel Experiences and Portrayals
00:02:42
Speaker
So I think my first sort of, you know, and this is really my feedback as a reader, is that if I had to pick an adjective for this particular book, you know, it would be quaint. I feel at times that, you know, a lot of travelogues encroach upon, you know, the places that authors write about, right? There's a certain amount of distancing
00:03:07
Speaker
or a certain layered objectivity almost when authors try to describe a place.
00:03:16
Speaker
tie in so much as to what they want to say from the heart. It's really that, oh, we enjoy traveling. This is what is fascinating about this place. And this is how I have discovered myself through it. But your book really for me was interesting. And why I call it Quint is because I felt a sense of kinship
00:03:38
Speaker
And that's not often how I feel when I write travelogues. What was the traveling experience like for both of you? And do you think that that kinship was palpable when you were experiencing or is it just something which, you know, my reader's mind has really conjured as an afterthought?
Traveling Through Challenges and Kinship
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think of course this is not the first long trip that we took together. We have been traveling in similar style to many other locations around the world and often they have been away from the luxury or the sense of luxury that we usually look forward to when we are traveling.
00:04:21
Speaker
And often in these circumstances, you meet people, strangers who are from different socioeconomic backgrounds and who have nothing to really get from you other than just your company. And throughout this travel, all these strangers we met, there was a sense of caution on our part, especially I think in the initial parts of the travel when we had read a lot of
00:04:48
Speaker
travel guides and travel books which asked us to be cautious because people will be looking out for cheating us or asking for our money. So that bit of caution was there, but as we went along, as the days went by, and the kind of kind gestures that we received, the kind of openness and curiosity that we were greeted with with everyone along this journey.
00:05:11
Speaker
and when especially you are in these very harsh conditions, living with the nomads, going through very dangerous roads with fellow companions, that sense of kinship I think I felt very closely, you know, like this is a matter of life and death, not just for me but for all these people and we might as well as survive together and get through.
Lobo's Travel Insights
00:05:32
Speaker
So that was always there and this is something that I
00:05:38
Speaker
small gestures of kindness and small shared sense of humanity is something which I really enjoy and makes me want to travel every now and then. Yeah, I pretty much align with what Shivaji just shared. So on my part, I think there are also two more things that's interesting for me. One is to really wake up, for example, in the neighborhood of
00:06:04
Speaker
You know, sort of a very small town that's hardly featured in any travel guidebook. And then, you know, going around to find a place where the locals would eat at. And so that's the authenticity. And the other point is really the surprise factor, because in the places where, you know, you don't go to, if you don't go to a chin hotel, you actually don't know, you don't have expectation of how it could be.
00:06:33
Speaker
and if anything goes very different from the normal kind of hotel experience you really just take that as what it is instead of complaining about the selfies.
Unique Travel Anecdotes
00:06:47
Speaker
You know this brings me to the second part really right of every travelogue really is also about a lot of
00:06:59
Speaker
insights and a lot of interesting touch points that one has in terms of quirky experiences. And you've shared plenty of them. I mean, there is that particular anecdote about the ear cleaner, or the anecdote about, you know, getting a refund at your buffet. So which, for both of you, you know, anecdote from this book, that you'd like to share with the listener.
00:07:29
Speaker
For me, there were so many interesting ones and the whole highlight of this trip were these very unique characters who were unique in their own ways and went beyond any stereotype that people would make of Tibetans or Hans in these areas.
00:07:47
Speaker
But if I were to consider the entire trip, the highlight for me would be towards the end of the trip when we were witnessing. Surprisingly, we didn't expect that there was a beauty contest happening in this town famous for Queens and Queendom. But then suddenly we chanced upon this beauty contest.
00:08:07
Speaker
And then as we were watching this beauty contest and spent a few days, we got kind of entangled and were kind of co-conspirators in a laughter angle, which was kind of unfurling just in front of our eyes. And there was a lot of suspense initially in our minds, like what was happening? What was the relationship between these characters? And slowly bit by bit, the clues were revealing themselves. And we were on our own journey. They were on their own journey.
00:08:35
Speaker
and eventually all these stories fell in place. So this whole love triangle in such a context where you have the most beautiful women the town was famous for, and then you also have the surrounding regions where the men are especially known for their tall and handsome nature. And to see a love triangle opening up through the suspenseful manner right in front of our eyes, that was the most exciting and interesting one for me.
Travel Challenges and Cultural Perceptions
00:09:02
Speaker
The eventual denouement of that in the way the man involved was expressing his whole vulnerability in terms of knowing that he is doing something wrong in his mind, but at the same time, he's forced to kind of continue with that situation. And that vulnerability from a person who is famed for the macho character was also very interesting for me. Lobu, how about you?
00:09:28
Speaker
Well, for me, it was slightly different because when that love triangle was sort of voting.
00:09:36
Speaker
We were actually on such an even and pretty dangerous road to go into a very remote village. And as the driver was very engrossed on the phone and then talking to us to showcase that he had foreign customers in the car not focusing on driving, my heart was just almost out of the throat.
00:10:03
Speaker
So I was really nervous. And the car went on and on. And the rocks sometimes were just falling from the side of the curve. And then he was suddenly stopping in the middle of a slope, getting a lady into the car. It was not at all that enjoyable and adventurous at that moment for me. That's hilarious. And I think these are things that one sort of experiences
00:10:33
Speaker
I was also and of course, I mean, the podcast really is to also really understand one aspect is to
00:10:42
Speaker
come and look at books, but the other aspect is to sort of touch base with aspects of India and could be cultural and social or political, you know, from multiple aspects. And throughout this book, right, that every time Shivaji, you identify yourself as Indian, right, locals respond with reverence really for the home of the Dalai Lama.
Indian Identity and Cultural Exchanges
00:11:08
Speaker
So that's something that in like a mainstream Indian consciousness,
00:11:12
Speaker
We don't really think of ourselves as a country where the holy Dalai Lama lives and stays, right? And then currently, it's really not even part of the discourse so much. But what was your experience in terms of being Indian-like, right? How does it sort of personally influence you on this journey? And would it say have been different had, say, Lobana really been around to guide you?
00:11:42
Speaker
language being one but what if it was a solitary journey and that's something that I was you know sort of musing over. Yeah that's an interesting question and I've been to China as such several times and some of those times I have been without Lobo as well on my own. I must say in terms of say the warmth of the people or the welcome that I've received
00:12:08
Speaker
It has not been that different. In fact, when I've been alone, maybe I was welcomed even more by some strangers and that's maybe the nature of hospitality. The Chinese are one of the most hospitable and they take really great care of their guests and very few cultures compared to that.
00:12:27
Speaker
but in this trip in particular it opened a lot of windows I must say it opened a lot of opportunities for us to interact with people especially with the Hans who were sharing a lot of their perspective about Tibetans with us because they could speak the language and they had a logo they saw logo in in my company but also I think it opened opportunities in terms of language being able to
00:12:55
Speaker
interact with them in a much deeper sense of which that language familiarity brings in. And in that sense, I was perhaps fortunate to have logo around with me. But also, I think that myself being Indian also opened out the Tibetans to speak a bit more openly and they took some risks, I would say.
00:13:16
Speaker
to share their opinion about India and about Dalai Lama and about Hans in general and maybe it was also because they could trust us as a couple because they saw these two people from these two very different backgrounds and maybe that strangeness made them trust us even more. So I would say that two of us coming from two different cultures
00:13:37
Speaker
together in this trip, perhaps opened a lot more boundaries, opened a lot more opportunities for us to interact and understand a bit deeper some of the people that we met along this journey. And it could have been a bit different if I was travelling along. That's interesting. Lobo, would you say between the two of you, right? I bet nuances, right, that, of course, one aspect
Female Perspectives in Travel
00:14:04
Speaker
is that you're married to each other but you're also travel companions right and you're almost sort of this prism through which the journey is experienced right because you're translating along. What are some, have there been challenges or interesting times in your previous and current travels you know where there have been nuances that really struck at you
00:14:29
Speaker
or an anecdote, perhaps, of something that you found really difficult to translate, which would have completely different context, say, from, say, a Chinese versus an Indian perspective. Right. I think, overall, I think in all these trips, almost nothing like that about us being Chinese and Indian couples.
00:14:58
Speaker
And of course, there are times they don't even figure out we are couples such as like in Nepal, they thought he's my tour guide. And then the other time in China, they thought I was his tour guide. But I think the nastiest comment we received was actually in Busan in Korea.
00:15:18
Speaker
In one of the migrant towns, there were a lot of Bengalis and also some Chinese workers. And when I went down to talk to one Chinese labourer who moved there, he was like, why did you marry a Bengali or an Indian? Because he thought I married someone like, you know, the people he knew. But I thought that was like the nastiest command ever to get a couple.
00:15:42
Speaker
But in China, indeed, I think we received a lot of very curious glances, but that curiosity was...
00:15:50
Speaker
often leading them to you know leading to them coming to us to talk to us and finding out more but there was nothing like sort of from the other angles and if i can just add on to that traveling together in this way maybe i've been more fortunate than other travel writers in the sense that i get access to a lot more women and the female perspective yeah and
00:16:15
Speaker
Many of the experiences that I write about in this book and in other books as well has been Lobo just talking to other women when I was not around and then later understanding them. Also many women feel comfortable interacting with me because they see this
00:16:31
Speaker
lady who is also accompanying me. So in that sense and what people have said also after reading this book there are a lot more women characters in this travelogue and other travelogues that I've written and I think the big reason for that has been the way we have traveled together.
00:16:49
Speaker
There's actually a very interesting perspective, Shivaji. I was speaking to Terasa Raman, you know, and in one of my other episodes, and she covered conflict journalism in the northeast of
Tibetan Migration and Cultural Insights
00:17:04
Speaker
India. And she was telling me that her biggest trump card really, and she mentioned this on her episode,
00:17:10
Speaker
is the fact that she looked at things from a female perspective and asked questions or talks to people from a lens that people normally don't think of. So when you think of a military camp or a terrorist outfit, you don't think of women cooking in their kitchen.
00:17:29
Speaker
Similarly, I think when I spoke to Rajat on his he said that he felt a part of what you know could be his book was the women on the highways of India, which he obviously couldn't access. So I think that's actually like a fantastic point.
00:17:47
Speaker
It also makes me curious, right? You have done a lot of work around this whole, you know, the work that you've done around the Global Migrant Festival. Tibetans, of course, are one of the largest migrant communities today in the world. And we all are aware of this sort of political tension and the complexity of the lives of Tibetan folks. How does your understanding of the whole migration landscape
00:18:15
Speaker
play into writing this book? Yeah, I would say that one of the things that always impresses upon me is this instinctive nature of people to migrate, whether it's forced migration or whether it's out of just curiosity and the sense of adventure.
00:18:37
Speaker
And like you rightly said, Tibetans are one of the greatest migrants, I would say, not just because of the political condition out of which many have migrated to India or to the West and to even Singapore, but also by nature over centuries Tibetans
00:18:55
Speaker
have undertaken these very difficult and very long journeys because their settlements are remote, they are far from each other. So in order to get some of the things they need, they really have to travel very long distances, very long time horizons. And so much so that this whole aspect of traveling is very much embedded in Tibetan culture, which has come in over the last thousands of years.
00:19:20
Speaker
So they have auspicious days and auspicious symbols which determine when you can travel, when you should stop, and many symbols and signs they take from the environment. And many of these drivers, for instance, who we met along the way, have made these very long journeys along the Sino-Tibetan Highway, which is so dangerous that it is supposed to make men out of boys, as they say.
00:19:42
Speaker
So I would say that my work with the migrants has that curiosity angle and also a bit of familiarity with the nuances of different cultures and what has been their trend towards migration and habits of migration over the last few centuries and that kind of educated in some way my understanding of the people that we met along the way.
00:20:06
Speaker
And along the way, we did meet a lot of such great migrants who were taking journeys, either because of economic reasons, going from one place to another, Chinese who were coming all the way from Southeast to set up a small hotel in so far a place, so high, unfamiliar place.
00:20:25
Speaker
And then there are also the pilgrims. Tibetans are known for taking these very long journeys for the sake of pilgrimage and we met countless such pilgrims who were actually traveling in very dire conditions with very little material comfort. Some of them have been prostrating and then going in that fashion very long distances in this high altitude and they were all covered with mud and soil and when they reached their destination that smile that we saw in many of their faces
00:20:54
Speaker
That is something which is very hard to describe. So to answer your question, I would say this work that I've been doing has kind of educated me a bit on some of these nuances. That's really interesting. You know, another piece, and I think you say this quite early in your book as well, is that and travel, of course, reinforces this.
Preservation and Cultural Hopes
00:21:16
Speaker
But I think there's this one section where you speak of how in the Middle Ages, you know, it was a matter of prestige.
00:21:23
Speaker
for Tibetan kings and nobles and royalty to sponsor masters of Buddhism from India to their provinces. And the monks would thank each and there would be scriptures. But over time, all of this has been stranded or lost due to lack of interpretation and the thin landscape
00:21:45
Speaker
in the last whatever 100 years or more than that actually. So a lot of these luminaries have been lost and people are forced to live nomadic lives. What really for you from this entire experience was perhaps very startling was something that sort of made you yearn for you wish this could go back to being this way again.
00:22:14
Speaker
If there was something like that, of course it need not be the case again. This is again a reader's sort of afterthought. But was it something that in your particular experience you wish that was not lost or could be transformed or something that both of you think should change for the better or go back to being moved?
00:22:33
Speaker
I think that's an interesting question and you know this is something I try to consciously kind of avoid this sense of nostalgia and kind of thinking that the past was better than the present which is very tempting because from the past we often only remember the most
00:22:51
Speaker
horrific stories or the most glorious stories. So there's these things in between. We forget what has happened in the past. So in that sense, even if I look at this region, although there are many political tensions and all which are there, but the material improvement in people's lives
00:23:08
Speaker
has been real. The kind of well-being that they have now in terms of health or in terms of just economic situation is much better than they used to have. Many aspects of the earlier society in terms of the feudal nature, the limited rights that many of the people had in this region, those are much better in the current circumstances.
00:23:31
Speaker
So I'm cautious about thinking that, you know, the past was better and we should go back to some elements of it. But like you mentioned, there may be some elements which are perhaps worth going back to. One I would say maybe is the the whole Tibetan love for nature and appreciation of nature. And again, this is something very much in their culture just because of the beauty and the starkness of the weather and the
00:23:57
Speaker
Sun and the skies that you see in that place and in the recent years because of mining because of cultivation and because of rapid development a lot of that has been damaged and so this
00:24:10
Speaker
renewal of respect for nature is something I would wish to go back to. The second like to mention is this whole cultural confluence between Mongolians, Indians, Hans, Chinese, Tibetans, which used to happen in the past. Of course, it used to happen in a limited manner, but still there were these channels which were open and that was there until the 80s, I think,
00:24:32
Speaker
when Deng Xiaoping sort of opened up China to some extent in the 80s. There were many Tibetans who could still travel to India and you have that generation of Tibetans who can speak a little bit of Hindi even if they are living in Tibet now. So those windows have kind of closed down in the last few years and I wish and I hope that a lot of these rivalries that we have without really knowing much about each other
00:24:59
Speaker
And having a bit of greater understanding about Chinese culture because of the family relationship that I have, I found that there are a lot more in common between these two cultures than that divides us. So going back a little bit, a little back into those era when there were these channels open for travel, for intercultural exchange would be something I would hope it come back. Fascinating.
00:25:28
Speaker
I just also think that, you know, that whole piece around the world's largest monastery and highest slum, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right because obviously my pronunciation is based on what I've
Reflections on Tibetan and Indian Life
00:25:41
Speaker
read. La dungad, right?
00:25:43
Speaker
So I think I found the whole excerpt very very interesting and of course as I think right now foreigners are again no longer allowed to visit but life and I think I came across articles and pictures you know of pilgrims performing ritual prostrations in La Rung
00:26:05
Speaker
or small restaurants or these houses right which are which are just tiny enough to with for a bed or a stove right and there's no heating it's all communal it just and it's home to 4000 monks and nuns and it just sort of you know makes me and I was completely you know nodding my head Shivaji while you were speaking because
00:26:28
Speaker
when you sort of start looking at people as individuals and not nations, you all really have so much in common, whether it's, you know, really an ordinary person's fight for survival or a quest towards religion or, you know, looking at fulfilling daily needs. And then they say, I think a passing remark that one of the young monks makes, right? He says that, oh, it will take so much days to build a house and the children, that's where the children stay.
00:26:58
Speaker
and you know people feed birds and cats and nobody really has a clue there's no census really of how many people are staying but you sort of have an idea that the settlements have so many people and it's such ordinary living right if you ask me this could be the story of say a slum in Mumbai or a slum in Delhi or Calcutta you just have to take it out of the context of it being like
00:27:27
Speaker
you know the world's largest monastery and and these people having a particular background as monks but they could be ordinary people because their concerns are so ordinary and
00:27:40
Speaker
all of us really are the same. So what you said I think deeply resonated with me and I concur also with some of this point of view right that it's very easy to negate and neglect when you don't really know a lot about each other except what you're told versus what you experience yourself. I have
00:28:02
Speaker
I think I have a very fundamental question for you. Do you look at yourself as a traveler first or do you look at yourself as a writer and where does this whole aspect of writing come?
Traveler vs Writer: Embracing Experiences
00:28:19
Speaker
Do you write on your travels or do you just record things? Do you store them for memory? What is the author's experience for you versus a traveler experience for you like?
00:28:30
Speaker
So thanks for asking that. I will take this opportunity to clarify that. I consider myself first and foremost a traveler. The writing of the importance of writing comes way down below in terms of how important I consider that. So what I take from all these opportunities to go around is this whole idea of interacting with people from very diverse backgrounds, getting to know a little bit more about their culture
00:29:00
Speaker
which is perhaps different from mine. And that's really what is fascinating for me. And only if I see that there is sufficient enough material where I can add a bit more value and that has been known to the rest of the world is when I pick up the pen or the keyboard and decide to take it on as a book.
00:29:20
Speaker
So I have traveled a lot more than I have written about by many multiples, I would say. And first and foremost, any decision that I make to go to any place will be the whole ability to enjoy the travel experience. Not that there is an opportunity to write about that place.
00:29:38
Speaker
But to your other question, yes, when I travel, we travel actually, there is this ritual that every night we will come back early to our hotel room and open our notebooks and start scribbling down all the experiences that has happened during that day.
00:29:55
Speaker
Again, I would say for my case, it's not with the point of view of bringing it out as a book or an article, but just to keep the memory alive. And even now, sometimes I go back to some of the notes I had taken a few years of journeys a few years back, and it always makes me smile.
00:30:14
Speaker
That's really really commendable you know because you know a lot of people who don't really foremost consider themselves writers right would say shy away from taking to the pen right because of course there's so many ways of chronicling one's experience with travel right and then today you could say just start an Instagram page or a blog right but to really sort of dedicate yourself to writing like a 200 page book
Travel Book Recommendations
00:30:43
Speaker
requires I think a certain amount of discipline so I frankly think it's quite commendable. I think my last question and this is really for you know
00:30:55
Speaker
again not really as a writer but which is a book on traveling that has influenced you both deeply that you would like to recommend and which is probably a book that may or may not have anything to do with travel that you would like to recommend to our listeners okay i'll go first so there are so many writers whether they are travel writers or reporters
00:31:23
Speaker
who have left a big mark on me. And the ones I would like to name are the early works of B.S. Nightfall, when he was going through India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, those books. Also Richard Kapuczynski, the Polish journalist who has been all around the world at his works. They are not necessarily travel writing per se, but again, very influential as far as I'm concerned.
00:31:49
Speaker
But if I really pick one book which made my feet itchy and made me very disturbed at work and wanting to just leave it all and take a backpack and leave, was this book On the Road by Jack Kerouac and it had a big influence. And if I read it now, maybe it doesn't make me that excited at this point. But when I read it in my early 20s, I felt really restless for at least two, three years and wanting to replicate
00:32:19
Speaker
what he was doing in the United States, I wanted to do the same thing in India. So yeah, I would say Jack Kerouac's on the road would be the most influential from a travel perspective as far as I'm concerned.
00:32:31
Speaker
I think when it comes to traveling, Shivaji was the one who kind of opened that window for me. So I only started traveling when I met him. And the most traveling books I've read, I think, must be from him as the single author. Of course, a recent traveling book I've been reading was from V.S. Nappom in India.
00:32:55
Speaker
Great. I think thank you so much for both these recommendations. It's been lovely to talk to both of you. And to, of course, read the book, Chivaji. I read through it in two sittings. And as I said, I felt a sense of kinship, which is something that one doesn't always feel while reading travel books, because they always seem to be making a point about the place.
00:33:23
Speaker
as opposed to just embracing the journey. And I felt that about your book. So thank you so much for writing. And I wish a lot more people read it and buy the book. Thank you so much, Aushi. Thank you for reading and also for the kind comments and for also having us on this show. Thank you, Aushi. A beautiful night.
00:33:45
Speaker
Thank you so much.
Conclusion and Book Purchase Information
00:33:47
Speaker
To everyone listening in, Shivaji's book, The Other Shangri-La Journey Through the Sign of Tibetan Frontier is available on Amazon. You can read it in a Kindle version. You can buy it off Flipkart. If you are somebody who's looking for a slim read on travel with a lot of endearing anecdotes, I highly recommend it. Wishing you all a great
00:34:13
Speaker
Morning, evening, night, depending on whenever you're listening to this podcast. And Shivaji and Robo, thank you once again for doing this. Do not forget to tune into us on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Ghana, and HD Smartcuts.