Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War - Netflix Series

Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War | Official Trailer | Netflix India
Netflix India

Pakistan and India have been fighting over Kashmir since forever. It's basically been a stalemate, but back in 1999 Pakistan got a bee in their bonnet and decided to push a little harder.

I was looking for a map of the area but I'm not finding anything that's making me happy, but then I noticed we've got the Indus River running through the area. This video lays essential ground work if you want to understand what's going on here:

Indus River explained in under 3 minutes
FactSpark

Kashmir is basically a bunch of snow covered mountains. Every spring the Indian and Pakistan armies advance into Kashmir and approach the Line of Control. In 1999 Pakistan decides to advance early and pushes past the Line of Control into territory normally held by India. Now things get hot and the Indian Army is having a tough time so the Indian Air Force gets called in to see if they can do something about it.

This show is basically an Indian version of Top Gun expanded into a series. It's pretty good. The shots of the jets are wonderful and the scenes of domestic life are not too tedious, so it's fine.

There are some very tense scenes of jet fighters zooming through canyons in the Himalayas. Sometimes these scenes get very intense, although if you look at it objectively the scenes are impossible. Jet fighters do not sideslip at 45 degrees when they are traveling at 500 knots, but the scenes are so well crafted that you get carried along emotionally. So now you are watching a scene that is simultaneously believable and unbelievable. Great stuff.

Indian Air Force MiG-21

The show focuses on the Golden Arrows squadron. They are flying MiG-21 jet fighter aircraft. They start off flying photo reconnaissance missions but because they are equipped with GPS they soon get tasked with bombing those dirty Pakistanis. It is an Indian movie after all. The show makes a big deal about altitude, and while the Himalayas are tall, the MiG can easily go much, much higher.

Specifications (MiG-21bis)
Length	50	feet
Wingspan	24	feet
Weight: 10 tons	19	tons
Maximum speed	1,350	mph
Landing speed	160	mph
Range	410	miles
Service ceiling	57,000	feet
Guns	1	internal 23 mm Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-23L autocannon with 200 rounds
Hardpoints	4	underwing
Hardpoints	1	ventral, reserved for fuel droptanks

Can't mention Kashmir without mentioning Led Zeppelin:

Led Zeppelin - Kashmir (Remaster) (Official Audio)
Led Zeppelin

Vasna at Bombay

Vasna at Bombay - Robert G. Lloyd

Royal Navy Research Archive has a history of this ship as does P & O Heritage.

Artist's website here.

Battle of Delaware Bay

Battle of Delaware Bay

The battle was fought on April 8, 1782, months after General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.

Wikipedia: 

The Battle of Delaware Bay, or the Battle of Cape May, was a naval engagement fought between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States during the American Revolutionary War. A British force of three vessels attacked three American privateers that were escorting a fleet of merchantmen. The ensuing combat in Delaware Bay near Cape May ended with the American sloop Hyder Ally capturing the British sloop-of-war HMS General Monk.

Background

Twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Joshua Barney of the Continental Navy commanded the privateer sloop Hyder Ali during the battles. She was owned by Pennsylvania businessman John Willcocks and was issued a letter of marque. The sloop was armed with 16 six-pounders and had a crew of about 110 men, officers and marines, and was named after Hyder Ali, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore and a British enemy.

Hyder Ali? You mean the king of southern India? Yes, that Hyder Ali:

Hyder Ali was an innovator in the military use of rockets, which were used against positions and territories held by the East India Company during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. Although rocket technology originated in China and had made its way to India and Europe by the 13th century, development of accurate cannons had sidelined rockets as a military technology in Europe. Rocket technology was already in use when Hyder's father served (he commanded a company of 50 rocketmen), but it was Hyder who improved them and significantly expanded their use in the military. Technological innovations included the use of high-quality iron casing (better than was then available in Europe) for the combustion chamber, enabling the use of higher-powered explosive charges. . . . Rockets developed by Hyder and Tipu led to a renaissance of interest in the technology in Britain, where William Congreve, supplied with rocket cases from Mysore, developed what became known as Congreve rockets in the early 19th century.

Battle of Pollilur 1780 - Charles H. Hubbell

In Hyder's time the Mysorean army had a rocket corps of as many as 1,200 men, which Tipu increased to 5,000. At the 1780 Battle of Pollilur, during the second war, Colonel William Baillie's ammunition stores are thought to have been detonated by a hit from one of Hyder's rockets, contributing to the British defeat.

Delhi Crime: Season 3 - Netflix Series

Delhi Crime: Season 3 | Official Trailer | Shefali Shah, Huma Qureshi, Rasika Dugal | Netflix
Netflix India

The third season of Delhi Crime moves away from its primary Delhi focus, following a sprawling, interstate investigation into a brutal human trafficking network that targets vulnerable young girls across India.

Badi Didi is a 30-ish woman who runs this smuggling operation. She gathers up young women (15 to 18 years old) and ships them to John Ji, who I thought was in Thailand but I may have got that wrong. He may just be somewhere around Bombay. The story Badi Didi is telling the girls is that they are going to get good jobs, like maid or waiter, but the implication is they are being sold into sexual slavery. I mean every way point on their journey to Badi Didi is a brothel. On the other hand all the girls speak English and apparently have passports. I'm pretty sure you don't need to speak English in order to have sex, so maybe they aren't being sold into sexual slavery, but maybe they are being sold into call center slavery.

Finished the series last night and this morning I see this on the Daily Wire:

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

FBI Makes Largest Crypto Seizure Ever In Global ‘Scam Compound’ Crackdown

The FBI recently took out a massive internet scam network, arresting over 300 people, freeing over 2,000 people from human trafficking, and seizing over $8 billion in cryptocurrency.

The FBI said last week that it primarily focused on taking down what it calls “scam compounds” in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The scam compounds are typically guarded and filled with trafficked workers who are forced to conduct romance scams and fake investment schemes that target many Americans. Over 2,000 people were freed from the compounds.

The operation focused on Prince Holding Group, a company in Cambodia. Authorities also took out a criminal compound in Dubai, Myanmar, and Thailand. Altogether, the FBI seized over 127,000 bitcoin from the nine scam compounds, which is over $8 billion, making it the largest crypto seizure in human history.

People in a shipping container

At one point Badi Didi drugs 20 girls and loads them into a 20 foot shipping container. The plan is for them to only be in there for 10 hours. Just looking at the map this looks like a bad deal. It takes a full 24 hours to drive to Bombay. Google says one person could survive in container for a day or two. This website has a full analysis of container survivability, and they claim three days for one person. Having a bunch of people in there is going to reduce that number considerably.

Season 1 of Dehli Crime

Kohrra: Season 2 - Netflix Series

Kohrra: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Mona Singh, Barun Sobti | Netflix India
Netflix India

India is a strange place. On one hand they have an elite subculture that has adopted many Western ways. On the other hand the vast majority of the country is totally enthralled with their infinitely long tradition of being Indian. Makes trying to enforce the Western idea of law and order a very iffy proposition.

Season 1 post here.

Great Hedge of India

The route of the 1870s Inland Customs Line (red) and Great Hedge (green)

More weirdness from 19th century British India. Giant hedge grown from prickly, thorny and otherwise nasty plants.

From Wikipedia:

The Inland Customs Line, incorporating the Great Hedge of India (or Indian Salt Hedge), was a customs barrier built by the British colonial rulers of India to prevent smuggling of salt from coastal regions in order to avoid the substantial salt tax.

Via Bayou Renaissance Man

Indian Ambulance

Miracle പടത്തലവൻ🚨Orginal video🚨Refering🚨#pooram #kodungallur🚨救护车 #keralaambulance #drivingstatus

Just kinda nuts.

പടത്തലവൻ is Malayalam for Warlord

Pooram is a major temple festival in Kerala, India

Kodungallur is a town in the Indian state of Kerala

救护车 is Chinese (Simplified) for Ambulance

The Buckingham Murders - Netflix Movie

The Buckingham Murders | Official Trailer | Kareena Kapoor Khan
Netflix India

Curious kind of show. It's an Indian production about Indians living in England. All of the leading characters are Indian, but there are plenty of English cops around, but they are all just background. The story is twisted as all get out. School-age boy goes missing and is eventually found dead, by drowning, sitting in a car, so we've got a murder. We also have drugs and a faggot who rather be convicted of murder than sent back to India. There is also have usual panoply of generic misbehavior: adultery, dysfunctional families, and misogyny. Worst of all, there is vengeful a woman. Not a happy story.

Chenab Rail Bridge

Chenab Rail Bridge

India just opened the highest bridge in the world. It's in Kashmir, basically the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains where India & Pakistan have been fighting since forever.

Chenab Rail Bridge
Area shown is approximately 650 miles across

Via RT

India: It’s Worse Than You Think

Indians

This is quite the story. The author has a very low opinion of his fellow Indians. I copied the opening paragraphs here. The article is quite a bit longer. It was taken from a speech by the author. You can listen to it here.

India: It’s Worse Than You Think by Jayant Bhandari

Most Westerners know nothing about India beyond vague ideas about Hinduism, yoga, gurus, and maybe a dash of Bollywood. To such people, this article will be a rude awakening.

I grew up in Bhopal in central India. Since as early as I can remember, I worked in my father’s printing press. I studied engineering in the nearby city in Indore and went to Manchester Business School in Britain to do an MBA. I returned to India to set up a subsidiary of a British company, which was a huge success. When I lived in Delhi, I wrote for the mainstream Indian media. I traveled widely in India and around the world.

I had first returned to India with the idea of improving it, but after 11 years, I realized that India was a sinking ship, with worsening and increasingly shameless corruption, degraded people, and a society that was falling apart. I had never met an honest bureaucrat or politician. I applied to emigrate to Canada and my application was approved in a record three weeks.

I now advise East Asian and Western corporations on investing in India. Most of what I tell them sounds to them exaggerated, unrealistic, and unbelievable. After much dance, drama, and a great deal of lost money, they begin to believe what I tell them. However, this learning is never institutionalized because of a refusal to understand India. This is a form of political correctness, a poison eating away the innards of Western values.

Shellac

Why Melted Bugs On Candy And Lemons Fuel A $167 Million Industry | Big Business | Business Insider
Business Insider

Weird. I remember in middle school shop class we used shellac to finish our woodworking projects. That would have been around 1965. Don't think I have used it since.

Euphemism of the Day

INS Sumitra

From India’s navy rescues pirated Iranian ship in Arabian Sea:

The Indian Navy’s warship INS Sumitra, which has been deployed in the Gulf of Aden on an anti-piracy operation, rescued a hijacked Iranian vessel on Monday and ensured the release of crew members and the boat itself, amid ongoing tensions in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.

The patrol vessel responded to a distress call from the Iranian fishing boat Iman, which had been boarded by pirates along the east coast of Somalia, a navy spokesperson said, adding that the crew were being held as hostages. Sumitra intercepted the fishing boat and “ensured the successful release of all 17 crew members along with the boat,” the Indian Navy said in a statement. The vessel was then sanitized and released for onward transit.

The vessel was sanitized? I'm afraid to ask what that means.

Hijacked Fishing Boat

Marathi Oxen Race

बकासुर आणि बलमा गट पास पलशी मैदान फाइनल bailgada sharyat #बकासुर #bailgadasharyat #recommended #live
Ghumakkad Sandeep Uk07

Feed the tags to Google Translate and it tells me the language is Marathi.

India State Maharashtra where the Marathi language is spoken

Maharashtra has a population of 112 million people , which is only one third of the population of the USA. How is it that they have ox racing but we don't?

Update May 2024 replaced missing video with another about Marathi Oxen racing.
Update November 2025 replaced missing video with one with the same title, just a different poster.

Surat Diamond Bourse

Surat Diamond Bourse

World's largest office building opened today. It is located just south of Surat, India, which is 150 miles north of Bombay on the west coast of India.

Asia is kind of like a bigger version of the United States. There is Russia, China and India, corresponding to the West Coast, the East Coast and the South, which includes Texas. There is a big desert separating Russia and China, much like the West Coast is separated from Texas. We have the Rocky Mountains that separate the West Coast from the rest of the country, much like the Himalayas separate India from the rest of Asia.

Combined they also have a much larger population, three billion people which is nine times larger than the USA.

Via RT

Kohrra | Official English Trailer | Netflix Original Series

Pretty good murder mystery from India. We've got the full panoply of people: liars, drug dealers, women of questionable morals, entitled rich folks, hired killers, fools and one hard nosed cop. Just like I like my murder mysteries.

C-46 Commando

Curtiss C-46F Commando

First Nations Transportation Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando

Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando
Flying Over The Himalayas Between India And China During WW2

C-46 is kind of an odd duck. It has was designed to be a pressurized airliner. In order to be pressurized, the fuselage has 'double-bubble' cross section the idea being that two smaller tubes can withstand more pressure than a single large one. However, none of the aircraft sold to the Army were pressurized, and near as I can tell the Army was the only customer.

In terms of power, size and carrying capacity the airplane was roughly 50% bigger than the DC-3 / C-47. Roughly 3,000 were built, or a third of the number of DC-3 / C-47's. The C-46's biggest claim to fame came from flying 'over the hump' from India into China.

Pilot's Post has a history of the Commando.

Semi-related post about The Flying Tigers.

Real Life India

Man on motorcycle, India

Statue of Unity

The Statue of Unity at Kevadia in Narmada district of Gujarat

The Statue of Unity is the world's tallest. It is fairly new, construction was completed in 2018. The statue  alone is 600 feet which is four times as tall as the Statue of Liberty. It dwarfs all the other big statues like the Spring Temple Buddha and Russia's The Motherland Calls.

Tall Statues

Looking over my old posts for big statues I only found a few, but I surprised to see how many posts I had done about more normal size statues.

P.S. Reminds me of all the giant statues / buildings we see in future London in The Peripheral:

London in The Peripheral

Delhi Crime - Netflix TV

Delhi Crime: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix India
Netflix India

Sometimes they are speaking in English, sometimes they are showing English subtitles while they speaking furrin gibberish, and sometimes they are speaking furrin gibberish that nobody on the squad knows, so we get no subtitles until they get that one guy who knows the lingo, and then he tells everyone else what the furrin gibberish spouter is spouting. 

Working as an everyday cop in Delhi has got to be a thankless task. You would really have to believe in what you were doing in order to keep showing up everyday. Shoot, I shouldn't pick on Delhi, it's just like anywhere else. 

It's a tightly told story of the investigation of a couple of brutal murders and the subsequent tracking down of the perpetrators. Seeing what life is like there is a bonus. It's all just backdrop for the story, but it doesn't look like main street USA. There are only five episodes with maybe four hours of run time. Most of the leading characters look familiar since we watched season one not too awful long ago. The crimes depicted in these two series are exceptionally vicious.

Wikipedia has a page.

Samode Haveli

Samode Haveli
280 piece jigsaw puzzle

Samode Haveli is a 19th Century palace in Jaipur, India, about 150 miles southwest of New Delhi. Jaipur has some very fancy buildings.