Reader feedback

I wait for reader feedback with trepidation. Although most has been very nice and positive I had a surprise last week when a friend called me to take issue with something I had said. I had expected historical disagreement, the pointing out of terrible errors and abuse, but not the point he made. On page 90 I had said, after looking for the lost railway which transported tea from Munnar:

"Processed tea went up to Top Station on a monorail system, built in 1902 and replaced by a 24 inch gauge railway in 1908. We might have arrived on the west coast, but by the time that the crop had developed into a significant export, most of it went via Madras, on the east.
The tea went up to Mattapetty and on to Top Station before taking the rope-way back to Kottakudi and to Bottom Station, in Tamil Nadu. From there it was transported to various places in India for shipment and processing. It is almost impossible to trace the railway now as it followed the course of the road, but there are remnants of the ropeway system, most recorded by Jimmy Jose on  the informative website at
http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/Kundala .

Even I nearly turned into a railway buff trying to pick out the last vestiges of this long-lost line in a changed landscape, the difficulties and rough terrain lending the endeavour a glamour I didn’t feel when contemplating the Settle to Carlisle line, for instance."

I would like to record my heartfelt apologies to one of the most interesting, spectacular and historic railways in the UK.

There is still a sneaking feeling that the vertiginous cliffs and viaducts of the railways in the Western Ghats are more romantic and engaging than the lonely line across the moors, but as I now have to admit that I have never been on the Settle to Carlisle Railway, perhaps I am in error.

This web page shows pictures of the lost Kundala Valley Railway.
http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/Kundala/

The Nilgiri Hill Railway to Ooty shows what the line might have been like today.

Elephant ivory out of Muziris

Evidence for the existence of Muziris is sparse but well-documented in a few fragments remaining from the time. As well as the Periplus, the sailors' notebook which numbered Muziris amongst a number of ports, the Muziris Papyrus documents a cargo from India belonging to an Alexandrian merchant. It originates from the second century CE.
The document lists pepper and spices traded out of Muziris on board a Roman merchant ship called the Hermapollon. A valuation is given of three-quarters of the cargo which fits well with the list in the Periplus of the commodities which were exported from the city.
A portion of the cargo was made up of ivory, both low-quality trimmings taken to reduce the weight of the tusks of fighting elephants, and high quality, complete tusks, often taken from elephants which had died in captivity. At this time, Africa was not a significant source of ivory, but Pliny the elder states that by his time the male Indian elephant is often born with very small tusks, or none at all. This is true today, a fact often put down to the poaching of the ivory-bearing tuskers from the forests, but it seems that the elephants of the south were already protecting themselves by genetically reducing their ivory-bearing capabilities!

Mamalapuramn Tamil Nadu

It is likely that the ivory shipped in the Hermapollon was local, the Chera kings controlling the rich forests of the Western Ghats, where the elephant thrived. The indigenous forest-dwellers hunted elephants for their meat and their ivory, which made its way to Muziris.
The trade in ivory is a complex one, and by the time of the Periplus in the 9th Century Africa had overtaken India as a source of fine-quality tusks. The African elephant has larger tusks than the Indian, although smaller tusks were often shipped from animals which had been killed to eat or in the constant struggle against crop raiding.
The trade in ivory continues in spite of its ban under the CITES convention of 1989. There are concerns that the population of elephants in some areas is drastically skewed towards female herds where the males are lacking the socialisation necessary to integrate them into the sophisticated "family" structures.

Today it is rare to see a wild elephant with large tusks. Older animals, working in temples, do often have magnificent tusks but these are getting rarer as the elephants die off.

Comments on Amazon

Although I have sold a few books and some Kindle downloads I am not getting many comments on Amazon yet. I put this down to the fact that there are a lot of pages to slog through and possibly that people are being too kind to tell me what they really think.

I have gleaned one 5* review from someone who will remain anonymous and who pointed out the perils of too much boring detail. Ah well!

It is hard to start marketing something which seems to have gone off on its own and doesn't want to belong to me any more. I wrote it because I wanted to and now telling the world about it is difficult and a little embarrassing.

Perhaps when the summer is over and I am shut up in my shed in the rain I will be a bit more energetic about telling the world. Until then my excuse is that without reviews I can't start to shout loudly to the world in general.

Muziris and the Borabadur connection.

For me the romance of the "Periplus of the Erythraen Sea," the sailors' handbook which listed the trade commodities, routes and ports from the Mediterranean to India is contained in the mystery of its language. Names have changed, as have the trade goods on which earlier civilisations depended. The loss of names and growth and death of ports is one reason why it has been so hard to find Muziris and why its location is still contentious with some.

"Muziris, Nelcynda and Bacare;
(to which large ships come for pepper and malabathrum).
Exports:
Pepper, produced in Cottonara
Fine pearls in great quantity
Ivory
Silk cloth
Spikenard from the Ganges
Malabathrum from the interior
Transparent stones of all kinds
Diamonds
Sapphires
Tortoise-shell, from Chryse and from near-by islands"

The goods listed in the export list show that these three ports on the West of present day Kerala were not only sending out native products, but were trading in commodities imported from elsewhere. The pepper was produced in the area around the Pamba River, named Cottonara by Pliny the Elder, and the malabathrum grew in Himalayas and had a long journey South, probably via Cape Cormorin, along with the spikenard.
The silk, pearls and precious stones probably came from present-day Sri Lanka and China and the tortoise shell from as far away as the Phillipines, which was known to the Greeks.

I found a clue as to how these goods travelled such enormous distances routinely on a visit to Java a couple of years ago. A panel in a huge frieze round one of the levels of the temple at Borabadur looked as though it had been sculpted far more recently than the 9th Century.

One Borabadur Ship

Borabadur ship by Michael J. Lowe

Archaeologists reconstructed this ship and its voyage to Madagascar and Africa in 2003. Less well known than the Chinese Junks which traded all over the Indian Ocean, these boats were trading half way across the world in the 8th Century.
The web of trade was vast and worth huge amounts of money. Muziris must have been a very rich place indeed.

Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Digging around the internet for Muziris-related information I was suddenly struck by the lack of anything about the Fort Koch-Muziris Biennale. The last one, in 2012, was a great success, but this year the event, due to start in December, is not out there yet. The biennale web site has artist interviews and reports of the 2012 event, but there is no programme. The link on the website is an impressive, completely blank page, no headers or information..

I shall probably be in Kochi in February and may catch the last of the exhibitions. It is probably the usual last-minute dash of Indian planning, but I feel uneasy on behalf of the international audience and exhibitors who should know by now what they are exhibiting and where. It is no small thing to mount an art exhibition at home, let alone a flight away. After the last success it would be sad to see this going the way of all tourist initiatives in Kerala, lots of hot air, a great launch and fanfare and then a slow sink into obscurity.

Phase Two of the Spice Trail, taking in the Muziris Heritage Project was launched in February with the creation of a new government company to oversee its development. That gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach too. Again, the web is mostly silent on current developments, apart from the usual "there will be" statements about new boat jetties etc. The original sites are being promoted, but the interesting developments are those by private individuals taking advantage of the heritage concept and creating their own spice trails within the state. There is so much to see that this may well serve the interests of "heritage" and tourism in the state far more effectively than the grandiose, stalled state projects.

The joys of the road trip

Every trip we took to India seemed to be a road trip. The distances are sometimes not huge, but the time taken to get from A to B is stretched out by the state of the roads and the mass of other vehicles trying to prevent your progress. Indian roads are renowned for their lethality, lack of rules and general anarchy and we experienced this every time we landed. Once you have acclimatised to the prevailing culture of trusting to whatever god you have faith in, a journey by car is a delight of strange sights and happenings and the time goes quickly.
A source of entertainment is always the other road users. The horror show of whole families belting along a major road on one motorcycle, with the baby balanced on the handlebars soon loses its nerve-racking shock value and the novelty of the various types of vehicle provides an amusing backdrop to the endless tarmac. That is if you have tarmac on your particular road.
Buses, lorries, autorickshaws, jeeps, cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and bullock carts all go about their frenetic daily tasks. These are some of my favourite transport photographs.

The sleeping cart driver

Electioneering- make sure your voice is heard!

The daily commute

I was waiting for this man to take off!

Camel rides

Pig on a bike

Whatever next?

Now that I actually have the book in paperback form the question arises, what next? I never wrote the thing to get it read, particularly, but now it is out there I feel I ought to do something to let people know there is yet another travel / history book about India for them to enjoy.
Publishing was hard enough, but marketing is yet another new game to play and one with which I am not exactly comfortable.
I recently had the experience of sitting in a room with several acquaintances who enthused over the fact that I had written a book. Some of them had been to South India and were genuinely interested, but others seemed to think that writing a lot of words was an achievement in itself. All very embarrassing!
The dreaded Amazon gives many tips and articles on marketing, all of which hinge around having reviews on the site. I think that is going to be a very slow process. It is not a short book and most of the people who have bought it so far (thank you friends!) as far as I can tell, may not necessarily have bought or read yet another travel / history book about India. They have bought it because they know me.
I feel as though I have stripped off in public. I really wouldn't mind severe or negative reviews, I don't think, as long as they were honest. No reviews at all is really scary. Letting it sink without trace is such a relaxing idea!