Of course I had heard of it. Who hasn’t? Like most people, I thought highly of Silicon Valley as the centre of all new things in computer technology. Regarded it as the crucible of innovation and venture capital. The lively eco-system of Stanford University. What else? Yes, the scenic part of the US that doesn’t get cold in winter: God’s Own Country and then some! So when the chance to do a fellowship at Stanford came my way – I had no hesitation in uprooting myself from London to experience what I considered the most happening place on the planet.

There is something about the lived experience however, that is at once better than and worse than the imagined. It transcends photos and television screens with giant unpixellated joy. It dwarfs printed words and jumps out of pages with audacious audibility. How can a google map ever tell you, what a cheeky college junior locking his bike outside the Main Quad on my first day at Stanford did: “Google Maps knows every building at Stanford because the founders studied here.” He was right: Google actually maps out Stanford, building by building, almost classroom by classroom, and is better than the official map/app of Stanford called The Tree.

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In fact, Palo Alto, the town that is home to Stanford University, means “Tall Tree’ in Spanish. It is said a tall Redwood tree on the banks of the San Francisquito creek used to guide early Spanish explorers. Quite appropriately then, the Stanford unofficial mascot is ‘The Tree’. It is played by a student who wears the costume and appears as a member of the Leland Stanford Junior Marching Band at football games, basketball games and other events where the band plays. There are hotly contested annual Tree costume designing competitions and recently the person who plays the Tree got suspended from his duties for walking out during a game carrying a banner which said ‘Stanford hates Fun.’

Only about 100 years ago, Silicon Valley or the region around Santa Clara county, San Mateo county and Alameda was known as the Valley of the Heart’s Delight; a bucolic paradise famous for its orchards and fruit canning industry. There were as many as 39 fruit canning plants at its height and canned fruit brands like Del Monte were exported to the rest of the world.

From apples to Apple… the journey has been a fascinating one. Apricots are still cultivated here, but today Silicon valley is known as the home of technology companies like Apple, Google, Tesla, HP and Dell. The annual profit in 2022 stood at $275 billion (almost the size of Finland’s economy) and the average salary ($174,000) and educational qualifications of local residents were the highest in the US. Unfortunately for the people working here, so is the price of real estate. A 4- bed house in Palo Alto can set you back by at least $3 million. This is the reason many people commute long distances and the traffic jams are notorious – the Bay Area is beaten into second place only by the even slower LA crawl.

It is ironical that the valley developed rapidly in the 1990s due to its inexpensive real estate advantage. With its location near Stanford and cheaper (at the time) rent, Silicon Valley was close enough to San Francisco to pull talent, but far enough to not be priced out for cost-conscious startups. Say that to a software engineer who cannot afford a home near his workplace now and he is sure to laugh as he prepares to join long queues of cars on the road or heads for his motorhome. Yes, people do live in motorhomes here because houses are so expensive! It is a workable solution provided they are not parked in the company car park – there are strict rules prohibiting that. So you can ‘live’ in the office and many start-ups with punishingly long office hours demand that, but you cannot park your motor home in the office car park.

So, life – even in God’s own country – does have its problems. Power cuts are another one. I am not joking. This drought-ridden part of the world has had two power cuts right where I live, since I arrived about three months ago. Each lasted several hours. The reasons range from transformer failures to circuit breakers when storms cause trees to fall and cables to come down dangerously low. Yes, many of the electric cables here are over-ground!

And while we are on the subject, let me vent about the Wifi which is patchy. And while that may be the case for Wifi in other parts of the world too, one expects just a bit more in Silicon Valley. However, they keep it real in these parts. Parity with the rest of the world seems to be the rule.

There are some amazing tech innovations however that I have never seen anywhere else. There are traffic signals where one can just wave at a box that says ‘Cross’ instead of pressing a button and the system registers the pedestrian’s wish. This could have been a Covid innovation, but it is useful and deserves wider usage.

At Stanford as well, the use of QR codes to take attendance instead of a paper register seems to be a legacy of the pandemic. And Zoom is now used widely for classes, especially Continuing Education classes, so people can join from many parts of the country.

The history of Stanford University is just as full of surprises as the valley surrounding it. Founded in 1891, the University was built to commemorate the memory of Leland Stanford Junior – the only child of Leland and Jane Stanford. Sadly, he contracted typhoid and died just short of his 16th birthday in 1884. His wealthy parents, Jane and Leland Stanford could not think of a more fitting memorial to their son than a gift to the young people of California. 550 students were admitted in the first fall quarter of the University. No tuition was charged at the time.

The Stanford family donated land and cash totalling $20 million to build the campus. The sandstone used to build was brought by wagon from Almaden and then by railroad when Southern Pacific ran a spur into Almaden. The landscape architect who created the sprawling 8000-acre campus centred around the nondenominational church was Frederick Olmstead – who also designed Central Park in New York. Today, buildings named after famous people in tech and industry stand next to each other – as though lining up for an honour roll. Hewlett and Packard, partners in business and both Stanford alumni still stand side by side in the Science and Engineering quad as institutions of higher learning: The William R Hewlett teaching centre and the David Packard Electrical Engineering building.

Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki have donated the centre of Energy and Environment (popularly known as Y2E2) – the most sustainable building on campus. Indian philanthropy is represented by the Shriram Centre for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering named after early Google investor Ram Shriram.

Meanwhile more than 17,000 students (graduate and undergraduate) cycle and skateboard to classes, 2,288 faculty members set homework deadlines, 22 Nobel prize winners enjoy a concert at Bing, four Pulitzer prize winners lock their bikes, 10 National Medal of Science Winners have coffee at Coupa Café, 26 Olympic medallists train at Arrillaga gym. It is all just another day at Stanford and Silicon Valley.

(The writer is currently in 2020 2DCI fellow at Stamford University USA. She lives in London and is the author of East or West: An NRI Mum’s Manul on Bringing up Desi Children Overseas.)