Mumbai, India
Apparently that's all you need to open a travel agency in Mumbai. This is a photo of the travel agency where I bought my ticket to Sri Lanka. I took it because it looked suspiciously like the travel agency where I was held up 3 years earlier - same room set up, same glass top table - same phone and calculator. Its funny the things you remember... But realistically, most all travel agencies in India are probably nothing more than a table with a phone and a calculator.
Which then got me thinking about Jan Chipchase. I read about him in this article a few months ago and now check his blog regularly. He works for Nokia and travels the world, studying people's habits to figure out how people are using their cell phones, and how that might change in the future. Its pretty fascinating stuff. Cell phones, in many parts of the world, have become much more than just a way to communicate. In uganda, houses are now identified by their phone number, not an address number. It's become an identity. And in villages across africa, people are buying phones primarily to be used as ATM machines and facilitate the transfer of cash from family members in the city to family in the village - in exchange for airtime! Phones as banks!
What an interesting job. And an Interesting guy.
Now, if these guys at the travel agency got one of those phones with a calculator built in, they could really save on costs.
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