Perfection Not Required

Quitting India

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:14:00 +0530

Note: this post opens with some political opinions on the Iran war. If that’s not your thing, feel free to skip straight to Goa.

My trip draws to a close. I am in an Uber traversing the narrow Bombay streets on my way to the airport. It is 9:54, but my flight is at almost 3 AM. I am starting early to make sure I have some time for duty-free shopping before takeoff.

Pondicherry, Auroville, and Western Spiritualism in India

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:31:00 +0530

I arrived in Pondicherry on Monday. We — my mom and I — flew into Chennai, a city of 13 million in south east India, and took a car from the airport. Pondicherry, or Pondi, is a small-ish town, by Indian standards: just one million people. Until 1962, it was a French colony for some two hundred years; prior to that, it was colonized by the British, Danish, Dutch and Portuguese. It’s on the tourist route because of the combination of French and Tamil influences, the sea-side atmosphere and the presence of a notable ashram and nearby spiritual community, Auroville (more on that later). Pondicherry ranked second in Lonely Planet’s places to visit recently.

Nice People in Kerala

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:28:00 +0530

I’m wrapping up several days in Kerala, a state on India’s western coast that’s home to some 35 million people. My mom joined me in Bombay on Sunday, and we flew to Kochi, the capital of Kerala, on Tuesday morning. From the airport we took an Uber to our homestay in Fort Kochi, which took over an hour. We immediately noticed how Kochi seemed less crowded than Bombay and Northern India. Yes, there are still lots of people, but in general traffic is well-behaved (despite roads being narrow) and we saw almost no slums. The air, however, was still a fairly noxious gray, with an AQI of 130.

Maximum City

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:17:00 +0530

I left Bombay two days ago, but I am only now finishing Maximum City (written in 2004 by Suketu Mehta), a massive nonfiction jaunt through India’s most iconic city.

It’s interesting to read about a city while you’re in it. Some of the places called out in the book, I had been to. Specifically, the author himself grows up on, and returns to live in, a home in Nepean Sea Road, now renamed to Lady Laxmibai Jagmohandas Marg (but still usually referred to by its British name). Nepean Sea Road is one of the poshest roads in Bombay, in Malabar Hill, one of the poshest neighborhoods in Bombay. In fact, in the book, Nepean Sea Road is a metonym for wealth:

Bombay

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 09:13:00 +0530

Praise be: this city has sidewalks!

No, really, Bombay/Mumbai is the best city I’ve been to in India so far. This feels like a world city: huge, vibrant, chaotic, multicultural, historic, beautiful, ugly, fascinating. Riding the trains at night with people hanging off the side, and then jumping from the moving train to the station, is something from a movie. They call this the dream city for a reason.

My Day with Miss India

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:01:00 +0530

A lot has happened since I last wrote, almost all of it good. I wished for fun, and human interaction, and I’ve gotten it in spades.

Precursor: Jodhpur and Jaisalmer

First, I went from Udaipur to Jodhpur, the blue city. There, I met Yassi, a German-Sudanese tourist staying at the same Haveli as me. We visited the monumental Jodhpur fort together, chatting about our travels, politics, life in Germany and the US, and so on. It was a welcome diversion from two weeks where I’d been mostly solo.

Book Review: Dirt Music

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:23:00 +0530

After finishing Shantaram, I picked up Dirt Music, a novel by Australian novelist Tim Winton. The way I chose the book was as follows: I went to a bookstore in Udaipur. They had a disappointing selection of English-language books, none of which spoke to me. I then returned to the haveli I was staying at and asked the manager if he had any English language books. He had four. Dirt Music was the only one that looked halfway good.

Leaving Udaipur

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 18:57:00 +0530

I’m in the back of a car driving from Udaipur to Jodhpur, from the white city to the blue city. I’m sweating in my too-warm sweater which I don’t want to take off, out of laziness more than anything else. And I’m fed up: fed up with this country where almost nothing works as advertised, where everyone seems out to make a buck off you (everyone, that is, who has any reason to talk to a tourist), and where I am very, very, alone.

Shantaram: Autobiography as fan-fiction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:42:00 +0530

Shantaram is the story of an Australian bank robber and heroin addict who escapes prison in the 1980s and flees to Mumbai, where he lives for several years. In that time, he joins the mafia, opens a free clinic and treats a cholera epidemic, and fights with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, among numerous other death-defying feats.

In his defense, nowhere does Gregory David Roberts, the author of Shantaram, say the book is fact: it is a novel, after all. And he can write whatever he wants in a novel. Including thinly-veiled fan-fiction about his own life.

Jaipur

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 06:34:00 +0530

Ah, three days without getting scammed!

I arrived in Jaipur from Varanasi on Saturday. Was exhausted and went pretty much right to bed after a small dinner (a “mini thali” in my hotel’s restaurant).

The hotel I’m staying at is quite chic, I must say. It’s a “heritage” hotel which means it’s in a very old, beautiful building — presumably from the 1800s or early 1900s. The one downside, which seems perhaps unavoidable anywhere in Jaipur, is the muezzin (the Muslim call to prayer) that wails over loudspeakers every morning before 6AM. This practically ensures I need to go to bed pre-10 PM to get anywhere close to 8 hours. The noise is itself not unpleasant, but the timing is rough!

Scammed in Delhi and Agra

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 11:23:00 +0530

Almost seven days into my trip, I’m tired and already disillusioned: it seems everyone, or almost everyone, I meet here is eager to part me from my money (to be fair: almost everyone I meet is a tout, driver, or guide, so the sample is skewed).

In fact, the stories of how I’ve gotten scammed in various ways over the past week offer a fairly comprehensive summary of everything I’ve done in India so far. Almost everything I’ve done has been scammy or scam-adjacent, with a couple notable exceptions.

Varanasi

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:01:00 +0530

I know I owe readers a post about Delhi and Agra. But I want to write about my morning in Varanasi while it’s still fresh.

I got here yesterday via train. Caught the train at 6 AM in Agra, and got off at 3 PM in Varanasi. Sleep was impossible because people watch videos with the sound on on their phones, even in “executive class.” This happens on the NY subway too.

Liftoff and the White Tiger

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 15:42:00 +0000

I’m writing from London Heathrow, en route to Delhi.

I moved my flight forward almost 24 hours and chose to route through Heathrow instead of JFK to avoid winter storm Fern, which indeed resulted in the cancellation of my previously-booked flight:

I’m also not opposed to getting an extra day in Delhi. Now I arrive in the morning instead of at night. Going to be exhausted — I slept 3.5 hours on the redeye from SF to London — but if I sleep a bit more on the plane to Delhi, I imagine I’ll be able to push through. I do have some NyQuil I might dip into.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Ian Hoffman — software engineer, Californian, New Yorker, reader, occasional writer, and probably more things it’ll occur to me to add to this list later. I started this blog as a way to chronicle my trip to India in January - March 2026, and will try to maintain it sporadically with thoughts and musings.

The blog’s title is mostly a memo to myself, and a motto that has worked well in my career (and that I’m less successful in applying to my life, sometimes!): that effort is much more important than perfection. Only by trying and sometimes failing do we ever get anywhere. In that spirit, these posts are mostly unfiltered and unpolished. If there’s something you disagree with, I’m sorry! I’m often just thinking out loud here. You can always email me (ianhoffman10@gmail.com) and we can discuss.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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