Maldives and Sri Lanka

Maldives

Maldives are a strict Muslim country. One cannot be a Maldivian without being a devout Muslim, making the country 100% Sunni Muslim. It naturally follows that all of their religious rules are applied as an official law, which in practice means that alcohol is illegal, bikini swimsuits as well as any women clothing showing shoulders/thighs is illegal, and after each call to prayer, all the businesses close for 15 to 30 minutes. All of this can be very inconvenient, especially if you’re there to take a swim on a gorgeous beach and you have to do that fully dressed. If you want to buy something and there was a call to prayer just a few minutes ago, you will have to wait for half an hour, nobody will sell you anything during prayer time. Although seemingly very strict, this does not mean that they are unfriendly to non-Muslims. In fact, they are one of the friendliest cultures I’ve ever met. Even though strict in what they do, they understand completely if you make a mistake that is illegal in their world, and they will politely warn you that what you’re doing is inappropriate or even illegal. People, even though poor, are not obsessed with money and can be very helpful without expecting any tip. They are also very hard working and you will see them going from island to island all the time, doing their jobs. However, all of this is not seen at all within a private resort, which is what most of the tourist see exclusively. Private resorts are on private islands and have no rules about alcohol or clothing etc.

Maldives has sort of a split personality, one being a devout Muslim locals, and the other being private resort tourists. A few years ago they made it legal for tourists to visit inhabited islands and get to experience both of these personalities, which is exactly what I did. What I realized was that anything that is in any way connected to tourism, will be very expensive and the price will be in US dollars, and whatever is only used by locals will be extremely cheap and in their own currency. For example eating a meal in a local restaurant will cost you about 60 Maldivian Rufiyaas (1 EUR = 20 MVR or 1 USD = 15 USD) and the local transport, a ferry, costs 53 MVR for a 6 hour ride from the capital to the nearby atolls and 6 MVR for a quick ferry ride to a nearby inhabited island. Tourist prices stay almost the same, but unfortunately they change from MVR to USD, meaning that the prices soar to 15 times its value and the smallest souvenir costs no less than 10 USD. The resort cost starts at 300 USD per night, while on the other hand, you can find a room on an inhabited island for 300 MVR per night. Transport is obviously the most outstanding difference, since a 6 hour ferry ride costs only 53 MVR which is about 3.5 USD. To get to a resort, you can use that ferry and then take a cheap boat to the resort, or you can get their official form of transport – a seaplane, which will take you to your resort in 30 minutes, but will also cost 350 USD one way. 

Both types of living standards in Maldives are very appealing for an adventurer like me and obviously I had to try them both. A cheap and chilled out way of living as a local and a luxurious laziness of a comfortable resort. The beaches are outstanding on each and every island and the marine life is just way too active for me to comprehend what I was actually seeing. I got to see a whale shark swimming right beside me, dolphins playing in the ocean, sting and manta rays, reef sharks swimming around in shallow water, sea turtles, and gazillion types of fish. The coral reefs are so beautiful that none of the pictures of Maldives do them justice, no matter how amazing they look. The water is not too cold and the sand is incredibly thin, which makes it perfect for relaxing on the beach, reading a book while taking an occasional dip in the ocean. The only problem while laying on the beach is an equatorial sun which is not to be taken lightly. An hour on the sun without any sunscreen can cause severe sunburns.

Sri Lanka

Whoever tells you Sri Lanka is cheap is a big fat liar. Sure, maybe those small roadside places to eat local food are cheap but that’s also where it stops. Even the cheapest accommodation was not as cheap as you would think, considering it should be a lot like India. Prices for anything connected to tourism are again in USD, just like Maldives. When in India, you can find a place to crash for under 1000 Indian Rupees (less than 10 USD), in Sri Lanka the cheapest I could find was 25 USD plus tax. To get to your hotel it will cost you even more, a taxi for a few km was 10 USD and a car rent for a day with a driver is about a 100 USD. Of course, these are reasonable and cheap prices for Europe, but in this part of the world, it’s very expensive. However, all of this was still more or less acceptable. What I cannot accept are their enormous entrance fees. Sri Lanka is a beautiful place and has many sights, ranging from historical ruins, natural sights, to temples and museums. All of these places have an entrance fee, which is almost free for the locals, and completely absurd for foreigners. SAARC nationals (South Asia) will have to pay half of that absurd price. For example, Sigiriya rock entrance fee is 30 USD per person. To make things even worse, at each place there are numerous locals trying to be helpful to you in any way, only to demand a tip. I had a guy rushing before me to the bathroom and opening the tap for me, and demanding a tip after. A monk talking to us and explaining how Buddha renounced all earthly pleasures and materialism finished his speech pointing at the donation box. Taking a picture with an elephant in an elephant orphanage will cost you a few tips again. And all of that is after paying an outrageous entrance fee. 

Having complained enough about the costs, I have to say that Sri Lanka is an extremely beautiful country. If Maldives are a beach paradise on Earth, Sri Lanka is a land paradise on Earth. There is actually a place where Adam was supposed to live, making it the biblical paradise. Nature is very green, there are coconut and pineapple palms, tea plantations, gorgeous hiking trails and views over the mountainous ranges, multitudes of Buddhist temples and all the statues of Buddha you can handle. There are also beautiful beaches and marine life, but coming from Maldives I cannot really boost that part.

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Manipur, India

I don’t usually use quotes in whatever I write, well, I just prefer to think on my own. But this time I’m going to start with what I read in Lonely planet about a place I was about to visit:

“There aren’t all that many places left in the world where the maps may as well have blank spaces on them, snowcapped mountains remain unnamed and unclimbed, forests are filled with creatures that scientists have yet to lay eyes upon and hill tops are crowned with unmolested tribal villages, but northeast India is one such place.” – Lonely Planet, India

So I ask myself, how can that be, we live in the world of explorers and scientists that want to research every single detail on the planet. The reason for this unknown place being still so authentic is manifold. First of all, up to this year, the area was closed for general public. It was very hard to step foot into this part of India if you were not a native. The northeast India is filled with rebels on one side and national army on the other. In Manipur, army has a right to shoot on sight based solely on suspicion. This year however, they have come to an agreement for a ceasefire and the states are finally open for foreigners. Still, the foreign ministry of Slovenia advises against all travels to Manipur, especially Imphal. Another reason for this region being still so authentic is that it’s a part of India. The explorers prefer to visit new countries and research them, and India is quickly dismissed as being researched enough already. So they focus on other countries, the more remote Asian countries and of course Africa. A third reason that I can think of is that people here are not really concerned about making the region publicized. Who knows about Manipur, the land of jewels? Who knows about Assam, except for the tea? Most of the tea drinkers have no clue where the name comes from. Many people know that the coldest place on Earth is Siberia, but how many know that the wettest (most rain) is in Meghalaya? How many people know that Manipur contains the only floating natural park in the world and the world’s hottest chili? These reasons should be more than enough to have the region majorly publicized even if it was not possible to visit it as a tourist.

Unfortunately, my trip was far from long enough to get to experience all of this. However, I had a great introduction and have definitely developed interest to come back and spend more time here. I was on a trip to Imphal to attend a wedding in a Thadou Kuki tribe village in Manipur. It can hardly get more authentic than this, so I was obviously extremely excited about the whole week that I was to spend in Manipur and learn about such a remote a culture.

Thadou Kuki is a Tibeto Burman tribe that speaks its own language. It has 250 thousand people in India and another 150 thousand spread in the neighboring countries of Myanmar and Bangladesh. It’s a hill tribe and it’s over a 1000 years old with a long and strict culture. Their race in no way resembles mainland Indians, but look a lot more like Southeast Asians, a Mongoloid race. They had their own gods but converted to Christianity in the last century. Official language in Manipur is Meitei, so each Thadou Kuki tribesman also speaks Meitei. Add also Hindi and English, the official national languages, to get 4 that every tribesman speaks already as a child. People want to be modern but have to live according to their possibilities. They have electricity, even the remote village on a hilltop that’s only accessible by a three hour walk has electricity. They may be poor and stuck in this part of the world, but they seem advanced and extremely capable. Due to unclean water, their food is always boiled and offered together with rice and the hottest chili in the world that grows in Manipur. They only drink tea, which is very sweet - sugar used to be expensive, spending it on a guest is a sign of hospitality. There is no sign of prejudice towards anything, especially not something as different as a white man coming to meet their tribe. People were genuinely interested to meet me and talk to me and I could sense no hint of hostility of not belonging there, even though I was probably the first white man they ever saw outside of their television. I could really feel they accepted me as one of their own and that made it possible for me to really experience a tribal life.

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Map

Anyone can travel

The more I travel, the more questions people have about how much money I make and how I can afford to go to such distant places and even pay for my lady to join me. I must be loaded, right? Actually, no. Far from that. It's another one of those hard truths that people can't accept - anyone that is not exactly poor can travel around the world. And I don't mean poor in the sense of barely makes a living, I mean poor in the sense of living in the street and going hungry. That guy is the only one that cannot travel. You might think I'm crazy and I'm talking nonsense, but if you recalculate your finances, sooner or later you'll figure out that one beer less every week and cooking your own food instead of eating out at a restaurant will in a year accumulate to a plane ticket to the other side of the world. 

Prices of plane tickets have gone down, intercontinental flights have halved and continental low cost airlines have a price that probably makes next to no profit for them. You can get from Europe to Australia for less than $500 or from USA to Europe for $300 if you get the super awesome deals and have a flexible schedule. The regular prices might be double this price, which is still not much. Europe and Asia have low costers which are priced at less than $50 one way. And when you get a plane ticket, the major part of the budget is taken care of. Then you have to worry about food and accommodation. Each country has its poor citizens and a way to host them, so each country has a cheap place to eat and mostly also a cheap place to sleep. If there's nothing on hotel search websites, you can always find a couch surfer. Of course these prices will depend on the country's standard of living as well, so not all countries will be affordable on the same level. But in any case, there is always a way to make any travel cheap. 

I guess the reasons why people cannot afford traveling are manifold. The most important factor here is how much people want to save money all the time. You people save so much it's unbelievable! What are you saving for? Some save for a new phone or a new TV, some save for a new car, some save for a house, some for a yacht etc. Pretty much every single one of you out there is saving for something. I don't. I have all I need. I have a phone, a computer, an old car, and a place to stay. I need absolutely nothing else. Everyone around me is the same - they have everything they need, yet they constantly dream about a sports car they can't afford or a new phone that's just coming out or I don't know what. To what end? To wanting a newer same thing as soon as they get the thing they dream of. This makes absolutely no sense to me and is also the major reason why I have more money than the people that make more money than me. The second big factor is that people live a daily life that's full of unneeded expenses. Every day, I see people drinking in bars, eating in restaurants, stuff like that. Can it really be a special occasion every day? I don't think so. Socializing can be done also if you walk through a park with your friends, and it's free. Last but not least is the way people want to travel. If one wants to relax in a 5* all inclusive resort, things get very different. Of course even then you might find some good last minute deals from travel agencies that have leftover spots, but regular luxurious deals will usually be very expensive. 

I realize all of this is particular to me. My values tend to be very different from people around me and I'm very well aware of that. The only lesson I'm trying to teach here is that no matter how much money you earn, if you can appreciate what you already have, you lead a modest daily life and are adventurous enough to travel as a local in the country of your destination, you can afford to go anywhere you want. 

Flying in India

A person that travels frequently gets very used to the procedure one has to follow to travel with a plane. For those that are not, normal air travel begins with arriving to the airport an hour and a half before the flight, getting a boarding pass, going through a security check, a passport control if the flight is international, and boarding the plane. This works in 99% of the airports. India, however, is a whole new world. I suspected something fishy already when the plane ticket said you should be at the airport four hours before the flight. In any other country, check in counters would still be closed at that time. So let's take a closer look at how the Indian airport operates, in this case a flight with IndiGo from Imphal to Delhi:

You arrive at the airport many hours before the flight. Even before going out of your ground transport which takes you to the airport, there will be a security check that won't really check anything except for a quick peek inside the vehicle. If you then want to enter the airport, you better have your ticket printed out. That's also the only country where you really should have all your tickets printed out since you cannot even enter the airport without it. A security person will check your ticket and your passport and quite possibly ask you questions about the travel which would normally only be asked by an immigration officer. If you pass this test, you can advance a few steps further, where there will be a screening of everything you have with you. At some airports, you have to point out the luggage that will be checked in and the luggage that will be your carry-on. Then the security will completely seal the luggage to be checked in, so you better not count on rearranging anything by the check in counter. After those few checks you can actually go to the check in counter to get a boarding pass. However, the airline ground staff is no good at finding your tickets, you better show them a print out again. Even better, some airlines will require you to show them a credit card with which the ticket was purchased. If you travel on a visa, you may even be asked to show them the documents needed to obtain it, e.g. an invitation letter. After some nuisance you get a boarding pass, which means you can find the gates and rest until the boarding starts. To go through the regular security is then no easy task. First, one person will check your boarding pass, passport, and a tag on each of your hand baggages. It better all be empty and non stamped, if it is stamped, you're in trouble. If you transferred from another flight, your hand baggage tags will have a stamp already, to which the security gets extremely confused and makes you tear it off and get another one back at the check in counter. I dare not think of what would happen if after security, you go out of the airport and want to go back in, with a boarding pass already stamped. Anyway, after this empty stamp check, you earn the right to have yourself and your hand baggage screened. Hand baggage screening will be very hard if you have a laptop bag, since they get very confused if they see cables inside. So in addition to taking out your laptop, you will also need to take out any cables, and basically the best idea is to just take out everything connected to electronics. Then you can walk through the security gates, women and men separately, since everyone has to be manually checked no matter if the gates beeped or not. Touching women is a delicate issue in India and they always have to be not only apart from men, but also in a specially designated room during those checks so that nobody can peek in. I wonder what happens in there. Anyway, after the body check, you get a stamp on your boarding pass and a stamp on tags of each of your hand baggages. If you still have any time left, which you probably don't, you can then finally rest a bit. You might think that the checking is over, but when the boarding time approaches, the most useless checks have not even yet begun. First there will be a person checking your boarding pass and passport, then a person right next to the first one will check your boarding pass for the stamp, then there will be another person checking baggage tags for a stamp. After that, there will be another check of baggage tags for stamps and those tags will get another stamp. Then another body check, men on one side and women in a special mysterious room again. After that, another person will check for a boarding pass, its stamp and two stamps on each baggage tag. Then you get to board the plane, but before the plane gate, there will be two more persons doing exactly the same thing once more, checking all the stamps and the boarding pass. Then you get on the plane, where you usually have to show the boarding pass to a flight attendant, which will point you to the direction of your seat. If you have an aisle or a window seat and were among the last to board the plane, you will most likely see your seat already taken. Arguing about which seat is yours is of no use, it's better to just figure out which seat belonged to the person that sits wrong and go there. If you successfully made it thus far, you should probably get some hard liquour during the flight, since that's the time you don't have to worry about anything. That is of course, if you trust the Indian pilots to take the plane to the destination safely. When the plane lands and if you're still in India, you will have to show the boarding pass again, so you better not lose it during flying.

Here is a list of checks where checks in bold are the ones that are normal at all other airports:

• Vehicle check
• Airport entry check of a ticket and passport
• Airport entry security screening
• Check in baggage sealing
• Check in
• Passport and boarding pass check
• Empty stamp check
• Hand baggage screening
• Walking through the security gate
• Manual body check (also at regular airports if the secuirty gate beeps)
• Stamping of boarding pass
• Stamping of hand baggage tags
• Boarding the plane
• Boarding pass stamp check
• Hand baggage tags stamp check
• Stamping hand baggage tags again
• Manual body check
• Boarding pass and stamp check
• Boarding pass and stamp check

I don't know what the reason is for so many checks, especially since most of those checks are just checking whether you have the right stamps. Maybe it's to pass time before the flight, maybe it's to employ more people, I don't know. But one thing I know is that it's no more secure than all the other airports in the world. I dare to say it's even less secure. Security in India focuses on checking the stamps, security everywhere else focuses on what you're actually bringing with you on the plane. In any case, don't worry if you need to be at the airport four hours before the flight, you will not be bored. Take it easy however, stressing over the procedure is useless, as are 75% of their checks.