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After holding things back for an hour, I crawled out of my sleeping bag and tent to take a leak.

On the way back, I swung my head around because of a noise (of course I'm jumpy when it's this dark). And lo and behold. As I swung my head, I noticed the night sky.

*low whistle*

You would not believe what I saw. Its aglow.

So, I'm wearing shorts and I'm cold. The tent is wet with dew. But I still go back in and fish my specs out.

Then I look up again.

The stars. The milky way. Oh the glory of it all. It could make anyone believe in higher powers.

So, see the attached pic. The Innova came with a DSLR. I've never used one. I have no clue. And yes, I did make one shameful attempt with my phone camera, only to get a completely dark picture. So I go into the car and fish it out.

It won't work. I read some tutorials. I actually stackoverflowed Nikon D90s. It won't work. When I point it at the sky and press the shutter button, it won't click. I tried M A P S. I fiddled with the ISO.

It obviously works in full auto. I took some pics during the day (not showing ya 😜). It only doesn't work with stars. I can't practice the settings during the day because in the day it works. And in the night it's cold and...

You get the drift. It's late and I'm incoherent but I need help. I'm likely headed to Tabo people. I gotta make this useless heavy piece of metal photograph night skies.

OK. Good night.

#NikonD90 #nightsky #nightskyphotography

It's time to call it a night.

The kids decided to do a bit of cleanup around the #campsite. They'd already cleaned the spot where we pitched #tent.

There was endless commentary about the kinds of garbage people had left

The colours that come out at this time of the day here are to die for

#stylebhai

How does one post a wide/tall pic on Instagram?

Anywhoo. Witness some watermelon devourment 🍉

M1 slaughters the dinner. M2 prepares to impale it instead.

#dinner #camplife

Wash basin. बड़ा सा.

#camping #vanlife #roadtrip

And the #camp is up before the sun went down.

We are super excited. And we are missing a bunch of little things. No carabiners 😲. Time to McGyger and #jugaad. @ Chitkul - The Last Indian Village on Tibet Border

Is this a good spot to camp? We are surrounded on all sides by loud cows. @ Chitkul - The Last Indian Village on Tibet Border

Reporting live from the road to #Chitkul. The scenery has now left us speechless.

Instagram wanted to filter this pic 😲

Those of you who are following us on Insta and Facebook, would you please share the link https://www.instagram.com/caravahan/ on these mediums.

We are trying to get to a critical mass of people like minded people seeing our posts. What we are doing is highly unusual for India, and we can use all of the advice and support we can get.

We crossed Nathpa shortly after noon. We should have eaten lunch here, because we found no restaurant after this. At Karcham we turned off of the National Highway towards Sangla. The road quality immediately dropped. I had to be attentive at all times. We are carrying a lot of food, but there wasn't enough space beside the road to stop and eat it.

It's 4pm now and we are having lunch at Sangla. We will head on further after this and hopefully find a good place to pitch tent and set up camp.

I must acknowledge the very useful advice and tips I've received so far from Preeti, Rahul, Gargi, Aman, Chaitali and Priya. More advice, and warnings about road conditions, would be very useful, so do share the link https://www.instagram.com/caravahan/

Thanks much for reading.

Freshly showered.

Yesterday we started from Kasauli at day break, and reached Ponda after sunset. Since we were on the road all through, with the occasional meal break, we didn't have a chance to shower.

This morning we saw people, mostly truckers, showering by the side of the road. How could we pass up the opportunity? What's more, the water turned out to be refreshingly warm. Perhaps a hot water spring was the source.

We have been brushing and going to the loo at temples, monasteries and such. Restaurant washrooms are a hit or a miss, so we avoid them.

Thats what #vanlife is about, I guess. If we build ourselves a proper #caravan, a toilet, shower and kitchenette will be the things we will add in over and above what the #van offers.

#HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #Kinnour #Sangla #SanglaValley

M1 asked why monks keep their head shaved. I told him it's because they want to live a simple, frugal life, and maintaining hair is a pain.

Later, I saw a girl in the nunnery who wasn't, how shall I say, conventionally beautiful. And it dawned on me. A monastery is a place where you focus on the inner beauty and character of a person. Looks and fashion, physical beauty, have no place here. It is a place where everyone is loved and accepted; where you are what you do for others, not who you are.

On the way down from Ponda, we dropped a nun and another girl. The girl was all about her phone, her sim cards, her hair, her lipstick, how she looked, selfies. She was beautiful. The nun girl was simply smiling all the time. And I realised they had almost the same face and looks. It was just embellishment which made one girl look prettier to me.

So, maybe the monks don't have hair so they can focus on their inner selves, not outer selves. And we spend our lives focusing on our and other people's outer selves.

Have one breakfast with monks and you think you've become a philosopher yourself 😁

No photos of the inside of the monastery and their place of worship and study, out of respect, even though photography was allowed. @ Nachar, Himachal Pradesh, India

Tyre burst. We moved to the left of the road to allow a vehicle coming uphill to pass. The water pipeline by the side of the road cut the tyre.

#vanlife #roadtrip #travelwithkids #kidsofinstagram @ Nichar Valley

The monks at the monastery saw us using their restroom and have invited us in for breakfast. Everything you've ever heard about Buddhist monastery hospitality is true.

Seen here, juxtaposition of the traditional with the modern.

Trying to give you a sense of the fantabulous beauty of our perch. We spent the night in the newly constructed parking lot of the #Ponda Buddhist monastery. Sharing panoramas clearly isn't Instagram's thing. Just made friends with one of the monastery #dogs who was all over me. 🐶😁 @ Nachar, Himachal Pradesh, India

M2 is awake. M1 refuses to rise. He slept an hour after us. Says he was looking at the #stars till the windows #fogged up. Sounds so #romantic.

#vanlife #HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #Kinnour

The kids will soon wake up to this view.

The three of us squeezed in at the back tonight. M1 just snuggled in between me and M2 after we had slept. The idea always was for one kid to sleep on a fully reclined front seat. But we were quite comfortable. The 4.5'x6' bed is adequate for the three of us when it's cold outside. Inside it was perfectly warm and cozy.

OK. The boys are stirring. Gotta go.

#nofilter #Kinnour #HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #vanlife #caravan #roadtrip

Our first view of #snowcappedmountains had the kids yelping with joy.

#roadtrip #HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #Jakhari

#Sutlej

Ha ha ha ha ha (maniacal laughter)

Now that I've ensnared you all into following me, I unleash my diabological plan. One of you will use your Google foo and find us a lovely campsite that let's us open camp with our own van and tent. We reach Rampur Bushahar by 4:30pm. Somewhere near there will be ideal.

Pretty please. With sugar on top.

#HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh

#trees #nofilter

I thought these boxes were used to make concrete blocks. M1 correctly identified them as #bee keeping boxes. Zoom in and see the #bees buzzing.

#HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #Narkanda

Are we in #cherryblossom country?

#HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #cherries

Yes yes, at some point we will start cooking our own food. Till then we enjoy local cuisine in a #traditional #thali.

#HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #SanglaValley #vanlife

Someone asked for a pic of the outside of our #van. Here it is. We have made no changes on the outside (yet). Not even a carrier. Indian authorities are notorious in this respect, always picking on people who mod their vehicles. So we are playing it safe.

#vanlife #caravan #roadtrip

Our #watermelon seller is also a #vanlifer. His #caravan is built on a truck. He's got a full size cooking gas, utensils, and some gear in a gunnysack. He's got #thresh on the floor of his truck, and a sheet spread on it works as his bed. His #caravaninteriors are quite roomy compared to ours.

He hails from #Una. He can understand and speak #Hindi, but responded to my Hindi in #Punjabi. The watermelons are from Madhya Pradesh.

🍉 🚐

#vanlife #roadtrip #tinyhomes #tinyhouse #simpleliving @ Theog

@fakeera_baanwra I fed the 🐒s #watermelon for #lunch. Does that make you happy?

#vanlife #Theog #HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #roadtrip

Just saw another guy who lives and works out of a bus and tent. #vanlife doesn't seem so aspirational any more. 😅🎪🚌

Dad got us a full set of #Tintins because he always wanted them as a kid. We aren't allowed to read in the moving car so we read when and where we can. We love him. Dad things Herge is racist, but we are smart enough to not pick up on the stereotypes.

Changed the organisation of our gear a bit. Let's see how this holds up on the #windingroads of #HimachalPradesh

#vanlife #caravan #caravaninteriors

We are leaving this behind and moving on

#Kasauli #HimachalTourism #HimachalPradesh #vanlife @ Kasauli Hills

We woke up like this 😁

#mountainmornings

Good #morning. We are still #sleepy. Fresh #mountainair.

#vanlife #caravan #Kasauli

If you don't know what is going on - we built a caravan, built an Instagram page, and took off for Sangla-Chitkul-Tabo (and maybe Kaza), all in a span of two days. Yes, we crazy 🤪

https://www.instagram.com/caravahan/ is where you can stalk us (and you totally should).

#bros (see top right and bottom left of pic)

#LongPostAlert

Our first night #sleeping in the #van has gone remarkably well. I hadn't thought through the #venting of the #Innova. Keeping the windows open a notch let's mosquitoes in (don't have meshes on the windows of this vehicle; didn't carry #mosquitonets).

I was #tired from a full day of #driving and was #asleep by 10. Just woke up because I heard #monkeys in the vicinity. #Mosquitos haven't been a problem tonight, even thought they exist.

My #motivation for opening this account and #instagramming our #build and #journey is to promote #experientialtravel. Folks often ask me how and why I #travel, #roadtrip and #camp with my kids.

I have fantastic #colleagues. I have fantastic #kids. I keep things very #lowbudget. This lets me travel.

I'm very #motivated and driven about #experientialtravel. When we #build something and #use it, we learn. When we #plan our #journeys as we travel, we #learn. When we #stay in #smalltowns and #villages, #experience different #cultures and #cuisines, we learn.

For kids, it isn't just important to learn. It is also important to learn how to learn from real life experiences. That's a little #meta, but I hope you get it.

The main #expense on this trip is going to be #fuel. The #ToyotaInnovaCrysta I am using is an automatic petrol - I can't drive a stick shift any more 🙄. The average mileage was 9L/100km over the plains (₹6.3/km). Fuel consumption rapidly rose when we hit the hills. Our #stay in the #van is free.

#Food is gonna be another big expense. We ate at a #Tibetan café last night. The food was cheap, delicious, #wholesome and full of #veggies. The gentleman at the shop encouraged us to visit #Tibet. I said I can't visit there and not talk about #FreeTibet, so I'd rather not go. M1 marvelled at the Tibetan map on their wall.

So, food #ontheroad comes with some great #conversations and #entertainment. Of course, we will begin #cooking our own #meals soon. This café wasn't out first choice. The fancy #hotel with #livemusic that we first drove into was very #expensive, so we just used the toilets and walked out.

So, yeah, go #travelwithkids. It helps them #grow.

Had to drive all the way up to #Kasauli for #dinner. The weather is good. We can see things getting #chilly in an hour.

#vanlife #roadtrip #HimachalPradesh

देखो, देखो वोह आ गए

The mountains are here

#vanlife #HimachalPradesh #HimachalTourism #roadtrip #mountains

If we cross #Kasauli today, we can sleep in the van without air conditioning. That's another two hours of driving. And the sun would be about to set. Let's see.

#vanlife #HimachalTourism

On the road again🎸🎸 #I'mdriving🚗
(this is M1)

M2: How do you know the names of restaurants on the highway?

Me: Because it's मूरथल की दाल।

M2: What is the point of building a home van if we eat in a restaurant?

M1: Dad isn't carrying a propane tank inside the #Innova because it isn't safe.

Me: Yeah I went to Badshahpur and the 2 kg tanks were all home made not factory made. Not happening inside, or even outside on the carrier.

M2: RVs in the US are better. They have a full kitchen.

Tough customer, M2.

Instagram needs a pic with anything I say. So, candy land.

Also, table turnover times at Sukhdev are amazing.

#BindooBaba has been keeping us company over the #KMPExpressway. +1 would recommend.

PS: We are now accepting endorsement requests from independent artists and struggling startups without marketing budgets 😂

#indiemusic

I wish that at least my Chinese friends living outside of China should read this, and acknowledge their own history. This happened. You should know. Everyone in the world should know. We should all learn from this, especially the Chinese people.

I may have spoken too soon.

Not two weeks back, I had a discussion with a female employee of our company. She commutes from within Gurgaon. The commute is such a huge problem for her that she is considering quitting her job.

Due to a complete lack of (decent) public transport within Gurgaon, she is forced to use Uber both ways. If she uses UberPool, the time spent on the road is too high. If she uses regular UberGo, the cost is too high.

So yes, lack of public transport impacts the employment rates of women. In this case, the solution isn't to offer her free public transport. The shared auto system is already very cheap, but it isn't the right mode for her.

Women commuting from Delhi actually have it better. They use the metro or Shuttl. Commute times are longer, but the commute is safe.

Making the commute free for women will increase female ridership. Will that make the commute safer? I don't know, especially because one of the key issues is to make the families of the commuter feel comfortable about their safety. We can only know by trying. Ergo, we should try.

Second, this is a good way to subsidise public transport. It is the capitalist way 😁. Instead of the government owning and running public transport, the government is now paying for the tickets. This is not what is happening right now - the Delhi government (part) owns both the DTC and DMRC that it is subsidising. But I hope this is soon extended to metro feeder buses, Shuttl and charter buses.

Third, this should open up avenues for women's employment in sectors that involve a lot of travel. While @[100063777711947:2048:Thinvent] employs a fair number of women, there has never been any representation in field support and repairing/production. These roles require a lot of travel, and conventional wisdom (I know I know 🙄) is that women aren't safe commuting. Metro fares are now very high. We can actually offer a woman higher pay than a man for the same role, because her monthly reimbursement will be close to zero. What businesses really need are monthly passes on the metro system, but this can server as a substitute.

Yes, this is gender biased - giving something free to one gender because of their gender. But there is gender imbalance in the transportation system. You are fighting imbalance with bias. Messy, but you got any better ideas?

The metro has a monopoly. If it were a private entity, I could see it offering free rides to women just to grow its market over the long run. If it were to offer free rides to the poor, that would never grow the market - you could not change the behaviour of the poor, make them change their spending patterns to afford the luxury of the metro. But women cut across all economic strata.

PS: The production role does not actually involve a lot of travel. It does involve some heavy lifting. When we try to hire women for the role, we find that women with an education prefer jobs like security guards. Women without an education prefer working as domestic workers. Or maybe we just haven't tried hard enough.

घर की खेती

Lunchtime yesterday, at California Burrito, Vatika. Checkout lady breaks out of character and speak to me in Hindi...

She: बहुत अच्छा लगा आप लोग एक साथ आए।

Me: नहीं सब लोग एक साथ नहीं आ पाए। पिछली बार production बंद था, सिर्फ़ software और sales वाले आए थे। इस बार बाकी लोग आए हैं।

She: नहीं मतलब आप सभी लोग मिल कर खाना खा रहे हैं, share कर रहे हैं, बहुत अच्छा लगा।

I just smiled and walked away. I was preoccupied by the fact that we drank sodas worth ₹500, when the same quantity of soda could be bought for ₹100 outside. (A part of my brain is constantly optimising cost and time. I am never able to shut that process down. Talk about mindfulness 🙄)

As I left the restaurant, I turned around and looked, and realised the lady was really moved. Then it sunk in. The fact that everyone from cleaner to senior management was eating together on the same table, sharing plates and soda cans, made the woman glow with joy. For a moment I felt good for ourselves; but I quickly brushed that aside. Then I felt sad for the lady - most likely the environment around her was not as egalitarian. And then I just felt sad for all of us.

Not minutes ago, one person in the team had been explaining to the other about the chaturvarna. Was it caste? Was it class? What is it that makes us Indians so divided, that the simple act of a team eating out together turns into social rebellion?

I have shown the Nesamani video to Sanjoli and Kavin. And the ensuing madness, such as people prefixing Contractor to their names. These two are in splits. They understood the whole video without translation. Big up for physical comedy in Tamil movies.

Kavin: 😂 their expressions 🤣 rofl (literally)

मतलब, कुछ भी? Give free rides to the poor; that would make total sense. Or come up with a pass system with unlimited rides to monthly pass holders. थोड़ा दिमाग भी तो लगाया जा सकता है।

Only 20% of bus riders are women. So lets make metro rides free for women. Why not just make bus rides free for women, so they can swamp that medium of transport and fix the gender imbalance.

Prepare to have your heart wrenched 😢

The trade war between the US and China is the reason why countries like India go to space on their own.

ARM, a company headquartered in the UK, and owned by the Japanese, is no longer licensing technology to Huawei, a Chinese company, due to an export ban by the US. I have no love for state-sponsored Chinese companies; China does not play fair. But US export bans are far reaching and debilitating; India’s oil import bill just went for a toss thanks to fresh restrictions on trade with Iran.

India was hit by US export bans early in its journey. Which is why it learnt to be self reliant in a number of science and technology domains. Unfortunately, it is not independent enough. Self reliance does not come cheap. Even in a country like India, where labour and costs are cheap, and highly trained manpower eagerly awaits big challenges in STEM, it is often better to import technology rather than build our own.

A lot of what we need in defence, aerospace and energy is available off the shelf from international vendors - prebuilt, pretested and proven. Commercial components can be assembled together to give you communications and remote sensing satellites quickly and reliably.

It is only when you push the boundaries of what you are doing in space, do you run out of commercial components. You are outside your comfort zone. You’ve got to spin your own. You need startups and research labs building moonshot components. Literally, because you are going to the Moon now. And further on to Mars.

India’s semiconductor industry is abysmally behind the rest of the world. We don’t have world class fabs. We don’t have our own architectures. We don’t have fabless companies worth speaking of. Heck, no one even does wafer packaging in India.

But even for a country like China that has put everything into being self reliant in the electronics space, independence from the rest of the world does not come easy. TSMC tapes out most of China’s processors. And while China does have architectures of its own, it still uses ARM in telecom/mobile and x86 in its supercomputers.

There is never a commercial case for living in a silo, for building cutting edge technology all by yourself from scratch. Until a trade ban comes along.

When I was in school, a targeted trade ban hit India after the Pokhran nuclear tests. The aerospace department of my school, IIT Madras, was blacklisted. The aero guys had a Beowulf cluster of their own. Linux clusters weren’t big at that time; sgi was big, and we had an sgi supercomputer on campus. I did my postgrad research on Beowulf clusters, building one cluster from scratch, and benchmarking and tweaking multiple clusters in and around campus.

Lakhs of researchers chipping away at tens of thousands of problems give you an environment in which a trip to Mars, successful or not, can take place.

Today, IIT Madras has successfully designed a processor based on the RISC V architecture. Open source, patent and IP encumbrance free, royalty free. It has been taped out in our own semiconductor fabs in Chandigarh. And tested in our own Space Applications Center in Ahmedabad.

Shakti is no Kirin. And it doesn’t need to be. For most strategic applications, it is more than adequate. It gives us an end to end toolchain that is all of our own. Already we have global majors like Thales funding Shakti development, so they can derisk their businesses from future events like the Huawei ban.

When I tell my American friends that 4G pricing is $2 per month for 1.5 GB of traffic a day in India, they refuse to believe me. A large part of the Airtel and Voda-Idea network is powered by Huawei. Android and ARM are early nails in the coffin Trump is building for Huawei, China’s largest electronics company and a global success story. If Huawei keels over, what impact will that have on our telecom networks?

I am no fan of isolationism. But we do not live in a perfect world where everyone shares everything at all times. We need to prepare for events like these, when trade wars lead to disruption. BSNL and RailTel, who use a lot of equipment from Tejas Networks and other Indian manufacturers, will be sitting pretty right now, while the Vodafone team bites its nails and watches this disaster unfold.

Next time you meet someone who questions why India went to Mars, you know what to say.

https://www.xda-developers.com/arm-suspend-business-huawei/

Just as I've been doing my entire life...

❤️

(Not my photo. Just a pic off the Internet. I'm still working, not camping. You can relax now.)

Visiting Bangalore. Who is around to catch up?

I did my furniture build at the back of a hardware shop (It was easy to access tools and buy more supplies as we went about improvising the design a bit). The workshop had a few resident cats. When my younger son dropped by to take a look at the build, he of course melted on seeing the cats - he went all awww and mushy.

In the evening, one of the carpenters at the workshop brought a half litre packet of milk and served it to the cats. Even though this was his daily ritual, everyone around praised him for his kindness and generosity. The cats loved it, of course.

This made me ponder on human nature. We keep cows captive, kill their male babies, and steal the milk that the cows make for their offspring. The offspring suffers the same fate as her mother - life long slavery. She also grows up in isolation, sans the comfort and company of her mother, consuming solid food instead of the milk meant for her.

We consider it noble to keep one species enslaved, while feeding its output to another, feral animal. I am equally revolted when I see videos of cute pet dogs and cats consuming meat. Is it not enough that we must enslave, torture and kill some species for our food, clothing, medicine, research and entertainment? Must we now also convert these species into food for other animals that we find cute?

And such people are called "animal lovers". Such animal lovers reguarly feed milk and meat to stray dogs and cats in my neighbourhood, because "the poor animals must survive". Really, one random set must suffer and die so another random set - the set in front of your eyes - can survive?

Perhaps I am too "woke" for my own good (I blame Vanshika and @[600430604:2048:Hemant], among others, for my current state). I also noticed that the milk packet was simply cast away after serving the milk. We now know that most such packets find their way into water bodies and then the ocean, where they bring misery to countless animals for centuries.

Sometimes you just want to be able to turn off your brain and not notice. Ignorance, is bliss.

I don't think my kids have ever eaten Swad. (Or, if they have, appreciate the taste enough.)

I have so much left to cram into their childhood 😄

They've eaten Pulse. And I like Pulse. It's nice. But it isn't the same thing as Swad.

Modi may have been trolled for the cave drama, but this is definitely a good concept and good execution by GMVN.

Three hours and a power saw gives you a book rack. Too bad our power screwdriver wasn't working, or this would be finished by now.

PS: I designed this rack for our office, and built it with the help of two guys from the office. It cost us less than ₹5,000 in material and power saw rental, and three hours of our time. The cheapest quote we had was for ₹24,000 😯. After a month of haggling with carpenters, we decided to just build our own.

Hardly working... when we should be taking interviews.