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At the End of a Long Drive


Shreesh and Neena Taskar

We didn't make the decision, the decision made us. On October 20th, 2007, we left our comfortable city of San Francisco to follow a simple algorithm - go North till the road ends then turn around and then go as far South. In between those two points was the stage, the timeline, the space, where we made things happen and things happened to us.

The past is fleeting and the stories, the sights and the feelings are perishable. One sees what one wants to see, and perhaps we are not capable of more. We saw that people are kind and helpful even if they were not materially rich. Some we could understand even though we didn't speak the same language, the motivations of others were incomprehensible even though we did. In the end fragments remain - the smell of roasting chocolate, a flock of snow Ptarmigians on snow, the creaking of the rainforest, the rough feathers of penguins, and the intoxication of Curanto.


So these are our stories. Every time you visit the site you will see a random post below. Each starts with Lo que pasa es que...

Videoblog: The Pantanal

Nov 29th, 2008 by

Click to Enlarge

Through the lens

A swampy paradise – Tranpantaneira – Dangerous Jobs for Women. (Map this!)

The Pantanal is a tropical wetland in Brazil, a swampy paradise for birdwatchers and nature lovers. During the rainy season, a large part of the Pantanal is inaccessible due to flooding. The Transpantaneira road is a gravel road 147 kms long with almost as many bridges spanning it. Inspite of this, most of the road is impassable in the rainy season.

Most of the Pantanal is working farms. We stayed at the comfortable Araras Lodge, where one of the episodes of the reality show “Dangerous Jobs for Women” was shot. In this particular episode, some high-flying British women try to show the cowboys that they can easily do in 10 days what the cowboys spent a lifetime learning to do. Not exactly my cup of tea, but it was interesting seeing the life behind the scenes – cowboys having to heard many hundreds of cows through chest deep water in the rainy season. The Pantanal horses are specially adapted to wade through water, somewhat like the sherpas of Nepal have adapted to high altitude.

The Pantanal

For a higher resolution video click here

3 Responses to “Videoblog: The Pantanal”

  1. fred says:
    December 1, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    I too share your rage about Mumbai. Terrorists win when we allow ourselves to be terrorized. I for one refuse to be terrorized, I refuse to dance to their tune.

  2. Shreesh says:
    December 4, 2008 at 11:16 am

    But what does it mean, refuse to be terrorized? We know that the chances of us being killed or injured in a terrorist attack is very small, so there is no reason to be afraid, per se.

    Maybe the best response to terrorism is not to be goaded into a wrathful act that we may regret later. A cool, calculated, and systematic response is needed to undermine the support the terrorists have.

  3. fred says:
    December 5, 2008 at 9:49 am

    Exactly!

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