The Unknown Colombia - Tundama Territory

Hello there – This is the second part of the cultural shock series and I continue with the shocks that I received initially when I came to Colombia. 9. There is no operational railway Colombia is a big country. It almost is 33% of India for the size but has the population of just 5% of India (Imagine, a fifth of Colombia just lives in Bogotá). For the size, it is fair to expect a functional railway system, but no, Colombia doesn’t have one. For travelling to other cities, buses, flights or cars are the options. Buses are comfortable, but they can never be as comfortable as trains. There are huge lengths of unused railway lines in many regions, which makes think of what if they were operational? Yes, there is the over prized and slow train to Zipaquira, but is not the same. Flights are like lotteries, sometimes you get a better deal than buses, some times you spend more. Sometimes, you end up spending almost the same time as buses for flights. This was a cultural shock as for th...

India   is chaotic, India   is   disorganized. Yet India is beautiful, there is an underlying order that is visible in the chaos. The connecting factor between the chaos and ethos is the people. Colombia is equally chaotic and disorganized. Yet, Colombia is beautiful and people act as the connection between chaos and ethos. So what happens when an Indian travel to Colombia? It results in a clash of culture. One of which is the oldest living classical civilizations ( Tamil ) and the other is an interesting mix of indigenous and Spanish flavors.   In this post, I want to cover the cultural shocks that I faced as an Indian , a Tamilian and a Madrasi . 1.   Excessive Politeness In buses especially, there are special seats for differently able'd, pregnant women and senior citizens which are marked in blue. Those seats are never almost occupied by the rest even if the buses are full. So the people here are really polite and nice.  The b...

When I first came to Colombia, the lady from payroll had a last name ‘Paipa’. When I first heard of Paipa , Boyacá , I was wondering why does this girl have a last name from a town? Then I found that it is the other way, the girl does not have the last name from a town, but the town has the name which is the last name from the girl. Highway to Paipa This is something common in Colombia, and we can find a lot of names of towns named after people. In Tamil Nadu, if a town or a neighourhood is after a person, it will usually have a Nagar (Gandhi Nagar), Ur (Thirumalpur), Pattinam (Chenna Pattinam) etc., However, in Colombia, they just name the states, towns and neighborhoods from the names of the people. So it is common to find such names – Paipa, Santander , Villavicencio , Nariño , Pereira , Restrepo , Bolívar etc. Some names in Colombia are really different when we hear it for the first time. There is one La Mesa in Cundinamarca, which means the table. There is one Purificac...