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| Lebanon |
Monday, 15 March 2010
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Message in a bottle
Here I am now to explain the reason for my silence, since people complained about it (you can never have enough of me, can you?!). The fact is that after days, weeks and months of travelling, one reaches the point of no-return.
I am not sure when it hit me (it may have been on the beach of Hikkaduwa in Sri Lanka, where on my first day of “surfing” I was reminded of the fourth law of hydrodynamics: never keep a surfing board perpendicular to your body or it will unequivocally end up coming back with increased weight on your face), BUT IT DID HIT ME! And so I find myself generally waking up with a big foolish smile on my face, going around greeting people on the road (it’s the Asian influence, I wonder what effect it will have on London’s indigenous population when I’m back, if.), spending long periods of time day-dreaming and thinking about the next destination. And so on and so forth. Now, you can imagine how, in this state of mind, writing about our travels becomes an issue: first, because I do not want to see my days as part of something so ephemeral as a trip and I prefer thinking of it as a constant way of life (denial!); second, because I became unquestionably lazy.
Anyway anyhow, we are now in Thailand, land of pleasures and wonders. After three days in Bangkok, which brought out the city-boyness and –girlyness in us, we headed towards Chang May, a lovely little town some many hundreds Km north of BK. Here we visited the many temples the city hosts and also had conversations with young Buddhist monks about theory and practice of their religion. I intended to go on a three days intense no-speak meditation retreat, but in the end we didn’t organise ourselves well enough (and maybe for the better). We dedicated today, instead, to the art of cooking: we went to the market and found our way through unpronounceable veggies and ridiculously ferocious chillies and then we started a four-hours session of cooking and eating that we will not easily forget (in particular, Sam’s intestine is not very prone to forget at the moment..!). Now we are on our way to the beach via Bangkok by train: Thai’s sleeper trains are incredibly comfortable, it’s basically better to sleep on a train that in a room!
My attention span is now over (bzzzzzz), I’m going back dilly-dallying, Roger Roger.
Friday, 22 January 2010
Indian summer
Dearest followers! Let me begin by offering my (our) sincerest apologies. It has been brought to my attention, that which we knew already really - that we have been neglecting you! Oh laziest of beach-bum travellers we have become. While we have been basking under a hot sun, moving from one beach-side paradise to another, taking in the best, the worst and everything else in between of the incredible sub-continent, you have been suffering; plunged deep into a north European winter, bereft of knowledge of the whereabouts or activities of your two favourite backpackers and the ray of sunshine their updates bring into your lives. Why, I cannot really say. I (we) can only apologise again and endeavour to do better. Here’s a little something to plug the gap...
We have been in India for almost one-and-a-half months now, in fact as I write this we are on our way out. We arrived in Delhi on December 2 and quickly learnt a valuable lesson – never agree to anything on an empty stomach especially when you are tired or jet lagged; and with that under our belts we set off on a whistle-stop, 10-day, 4-city, 1 national park, private-driver tour of Rajasthan. Our driver ‘Lucky’ (depending on your point of view) skilfully (but, we realised, quite slowly ‘to get the mileage’) negotiated man, motor and beast, ferrying us from site to site ¬¬(even letting me drive) around the kingdom of the Maharajas. Of the cities we visited Udaipur was probably the nicest, the town dominated by an artificial lake created at the whim of one of the previous rulers. The lake and island palaces (the setting for the James Bond film Octopussy) provide magnificent rooftop-restaurant views and a serene, romantic escape from the intense sensory assault that is characteristic of northern India. Rajasthan is, as billed, a vibrant and colourful place; women wear reds, oranges, greens of the brightest hue, the trucks on the road could be entered into the Notting Hill carnival, and entire cities are painted blue or pink. Equally intense is the olfactory assault that one is continually subjected to: open sewers, rivers of animal shit, people defecating in the narrow lanes, throwing their waste in the street, left for the cows, buffalo and goats to feed on; not to mention the abject poverty in which people live. Contrast this with the majesty of the Taj Mahal (even on a hefty gin hangover, not as early as you intended, and full of people) and you wonder what how all this can co-exist.
Saying goodbye to Lucky in Agra we took our first overnight train journey (first class) to the holy city of Varanasi, where we had our first anti-India attack. Staying in the oldest part of perhaps the oldest city in the world, we started to wonder what we were doing there, unable to get the stench of human and animal effluent out of our nostrils or move freely in the already very narrow medieval lanes and alleys for cows and buffalo. Looking for relief, we took a rowing boat at dawn out on the Ganga, one of the best ways to witness the morning bathing and swimming activities of the locals, which left us feeling a bit voyeuristic as we butted in on peoples’ bath time. What left a greater impression on us though was finding the blue, bloated corpse of a new-born child floating in the river. While we witnessed and undoubtedly breathed in the ashes of countless cremations taking place riverside, complete with stray arms/legs sticking out of the funeral pyres, without too much thought, seeing a child’s body abandoned to the water like that put us in contemplative moods. We cured ourselves by finding new digs further removed from the action, found refuge among the Buddhists in Sarnath and eventually moved on to Kolkata.
Ironically, the city that spawned the famous ‘black hole’ provided a refreshing change of scene. A modern commercial centre where you can get hold of ok European-style coffee, we enjoyed hanging out in the large British designed parks around the Victoria monument, had a laugh at the almost incomprehensible show at the planetarium (do the Indians have different constellations, or did they just make them up?) and went to watch Avatar at the local multiplex. You can take the boy out of the city...
Next we hopped down to Chennai and spent a couple of days at Mamalapuram (I claim artistic licence over spelling). Chennai doesn’t have much to offer and actually neither does Mamalapuram, apart from the fact that you are at the beach and not in Chennai – but we had finally made it to the beach! We paddled in the strong currents of the Indian ocean and strolled fairly deserted Indian-clean beaches, hoping that the turtles washed up on the beaches would not be the only ones we saw. But all this proved merely the poor hors d’oeuvre to a spectacular main course, making us wonder why we didn’t just go straight there in the first place.
On xmas eve, after an arduous journey involving a bus, a tuk-tuk (finally losing my rag at the driver who ripped us off – never trust a stationary rickshaw driver) a plane, a boat and a taxi, we finally arrived at the place that made everything seem alright – the Andaman Islands. I am actually a bit loathed to spill the beans about this place. I want to say it is a shit-ridden filth hole, full of low-life scummers, bad food, an island set adrift on a toxic sea. But it is not. It is perhaps the most perfect holiday destination I can imagine: crystal clear waters of blue and green shades lap deserted, pristine, wild beaches of fine white sand. The food is great, the people are honest, the police ineffective, and you get to ride around on mopeds drunk. The snorkelling is so good you do not really need to go diving; we saw umpteen different types of fish and even turtles swimming among the kaleidoscopic coral. Other than that, there is very little to do than string up a hammock and listen to the sound of the waves lapping the shore as you nod slowly off to sleep.... New Year’s Eve came round and we managed to purloin some very cheap whiskey, despite it being the official holiday for the only legal booze shop on Havelock Island. We spent the night cruising the strip for parties and saw in 2010 on the beach (where else?).
Very reluctantly we left the Andaman Islands. Flights were pre-booked and had to be met, but we were gutted when we realised that we would have to spend a night on the main Andaman island, Port Blair, in order to catch our flight back to the mainland. While nothing like mainland India, it was still a harsh reality check to step out of the airport to traffic and horns and normal life. We skipped through Chennai (making another visit to the cinema this time to see a crap American film made far more interesting by the reactions of the Indian audience – complete with booing the bad guy, cheering the best lines and laughing at jokes that weren’t) and caught the train for Bangalore. This time we fully discovered the delights of Indian train food – relatively high quality and dirt cheap, so i filled my boots for about 5 hours. Bangalore was just another quick stop as we waited for an overnight train to the small northern Karnataka ‘city’ of Hublis. It has to be said that this train journey was the worst ever, such that I was almost motivated to write about it, but got overtaken by events...
We have been in India for almost one-and-a-half months now, in fact as I write this we are on our way out. We arrived in Delhi on December 2 and quickly learnt a valuable lesson – never agree to anything on an empty stomach especially when you are tired or jet lagged; and with that under our belts we set off on a whistle-stop, 10-day, 4-city, 1 national park, private-driver tour of Rajasthan. Our driver ‘Lucky’ (depending on your point of view) skilfully (but, we realised, quite slowly ‘to get the mileage’) negotiated man, motor and beast, ferrying us from site to site ¬¬(even letting me drive) around the kingdom of the Maharajas. Of the cities we visited Udaipur was probably the nicest, the town dominated by an artificial lake created at the whim of one of the previous rulers. The lake and island palaces (the setting for the James Bond film Octopussy) provide magnificent rooftop-restaurant views and a serene, romantic escape from the intense sensory assault that is characteristic of northern India. Rajasthan is, as billed, a vibrant and colourful place; women wear reds, oranges, greens of the brightest hue, the trucks on the road could be entered into the Notting Hill carnival, and entire cities are painted blue or pink. Equally intense is the olfactory assault that one is continually subjected to: open sewers, rivers of animal shit, people defecating in the narrow lanes, throwing their waste in the street, left for the cows, buffalo and goats to feed on; not to mention the abject poverty in which people live. Contrast this with the majesty of the Taj Mahal (even on a hefty gin hangover, not as early as you intended, and full of people) and you wonder what how all this can co-exist.
Saying goodbye to Lucky in Agra we took our first overnight train journey (first class) to the holy city of Varanasi, where we had our first anti-India attack. Staying in the oldest part of perhaps the oldest city in the world, we started to wonder what we were doing there, unable to get the stench of human and animal effluent out of our nostrils or move freely in the already very narrow medieval lanes and alleys for cows and buffalo. Looking for relief, we took a rowing boat at dawn out on the Ganga, one of the best ways to witness the morning bathing and swimming activities of the locals, which left us feeling a bit voyeuristic as we butted in on peoples’ bath time. What left a greater impression on us though was finding the blue, bloated corpse of a new-born child floating in the river. While we witnessed and undoubtedly breathed in the ashes of countless cremations taking place riverside, complete with stray arms/legs sticking out of the funeral pyres, without too much thought, seeing a child’s body abandoned to the water like that put us in contemplative moods. We cured ourselves by finding new digs further removed from the action, found refuge among the Buddhists in Sarnath and eventually moved on to Kolkata.
Ironically, the city that spawned the famous ‘black hole’ provided a refreshing change of scene. A modern commercial centre where you can get hold of ok European-style coffee, we enjoyed hanging out in the large British designed parks around the Victoria monument, had a laugh at the almost incomprehensible show at the planetarium (do the Indians have different constellations, or did they just make them up?) and went to watch Avatar at the local multiplex. You can take the boy out of the city...
Next we hopped down to Chennai and spent a couple of days at Mamalapuram (I claim artistic licence over spelling). Chennai doesn’t have much to offer and actually neither does Mamalapuram, apart from the fact that you are at the beach and not in Chennai – but we had finally made it to the beach! We paddled in the strong currents of the Indian ocean and strolled fairly deserted Indian-clean beaches, hoping that the turtles washed up on the beaches would not be the only ones we saw. But all this proved merely the poor hors d’oeuvre to a spectacular main course, making us wonder why we didn’t just go straight there in the first place.
On xmas eve, after an arduous journey involving a bus, a tuk-tuk (finally losing my rag at the driver who ripped us off – never trust a stationary rickshaw driver) a plane, a boat and a taxi, we finally arrived at the place that made everything seem alright – the Andaman Islands. I am actually a bit loathed to spill the beans about this place. I want to say it is a shit-ridden filth hole, full of low-life scummers, bad food, an island set adrift on a toxic sea. But it is not. It is perhaps the most perfect holiday destination I can imagine: crystal clear waters of blue and green shades lap deserted, pristine, wild beaches of fine white sand. The food is great, the people are honest, the police ineffective, and you get to ride around on mopeds drunk. The snorkelling is so good you do not really need to go diving; we saw umpteen different types of fish and even turtles swimming among the kaleidoscopic coral. Other than that, there is very little to do than string up a hammock and listen to the sound of the waves lapping the shore as you nod slowly off to sleep.... New Year’s Eve came round and we managed to purloin some very cheap whiskey, despite it being the official holiday for the only legal booze shop on Havelock Island. We spent the night cruising the strip for parties and saw in 2010 on the beach (where else?).
Very reluctantly we left the Andaman Islands. Flights were pre-booked and had to be met, but we were gutted when we realised that we would have to spend a night on the main Andaman island, Port Blair, in order to catch our flight back to the mainland. While nothing like mainland India, it was still a harsh reality check to step out of the airport to traffic and horns and normal life. We skipped through Chennai (making another visit to the cinema this time to see a crap American film made far more interesting by the reactions of the Indian audience – complete with booing the bad guy, cheering the best lines and laughing at jokes that weren’t) and caught the train for Bangalore. This time we fully discovered the delights of Indian train food – relatively high quality and dirt cheap, so i filled my boots for about 5 hours. Bangalore was just another quick stop as we waited for an overnight train to the small northern Karnataka ‘city’ of Hublis. It has to be said that this train journey was the worst ever, such that I was almost motivated to write about it, but got overtaken by events...
Friday, 4 December 2009
Blowing horns in Incredible India
Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen: your favourite heroes (finally) made it to...INDIA!!
We arrived in Delhi very early the morning of the second of December (I will now light a candle on this date every year) and after a quick nap we left the hotel armed with a small hindi vocabulary ("no thanks", "no" and "thanks") and still sleepy/jetlagged/confused/amazed and the like. As soon as we try to consult THE book (for the pagans: the lonely planet guide), a very nice man approaches us and advises us to go to the Tourist Information Centre. And so we find ourselves, as guided by a power bigger than ourselves, in a Tuc-Tuc in the middle of Delhi's traffic, and it is here that we have a glimpse of what we will recognise later on as a complete new set of rules in terms of driving.
Our visit to the Tourist office, which was supposed to provide us with some vague information about the city, restaurants, ways to travel through india, etc., made instead sure that we would leave for Rajastan the day after with a full package far ten days (and then booked trains and flights for later on till christmas). We are still pazzled about how exactly that happened, and we also read that Indian people can be pushy, but still...I remember getting angry and trying to stop the inevitable process, not wanting to take out my card...i sincerely don't know! The sure thing is that the morning of the 3rd our personal driver Lucky was waiting for us outside the hotel and we left for Rajastan!
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Leeds is nothing like Lebanon
Hey, sorry for the radio silence, but we have been charging round northern India (actually fairly slowly) but have been disinclined to blog while we absorb the sub-continent madness. But just to polish off the ME while it is still fresh(ish) in my mind...
After crossing the border with Syria we travelled to Baalbek in the beautiful Bekaa valley, Lebanon's wine growing region. As well as housing perhaps the most impressive set of Roman/Greek ruins in the ME, the area is also famous for being the home of Hezbollah. The first impression of Lebanon we got was of tanks, heavily armed soldiers and checkpoints. That remains throughout a lot of the country, particularly in Beirut where you have to be careful where you point your camera. Lebanon is very different from Syria. There is tight security, but people are free to speak their minds and exercise democratic choice. From architecture to language, there is a heavy French influence in Lebanon, with which much of the Christian population associates so as to distinguish itself from the Arabic culture, so it was refreshing for us to be able to communicate beyond our usual (pitiful) attempts in Arabic.
In stark contrast to the close security pressures of the country, the people we met were open, generous and extremely hospitable. We were lucky enough to be taken in by one such family when we found ourselves unexpectedly spending a night in a town called Zahle on our way to Beirut. An enquiry as the whereabouts of somewhere for lunch turned into us spending 2 nights with the Bilezikjian family on our way into and out of the capital. Generous to a fault, we really enjoyed being able to talk to Joelle and family beyond our usual bar-room conversations. We were made to feel very much at home and part of the family for the duration of our brief visit.
We went on to visit Laura down in Saida in Southern Lebanon and spent a few nights in Beirut. The streets of Beirut throb to the sound of techno and house music, packed in the evenings with young people out to enjoy themselves in a very hedonistic euro-style party. In the end, we were left with the impression of a country under a false calm. People told us of their fear of resumption of war with Israel, and in Beirut you gain a sense of the fragility of the peace that exists. But the people of Lebanon do not seem willing to succumb to the threats of violence and go about their lives determined to make the most of their circumstances, enjoying the lifestyle of a unique corner of the region.
After crossing the border with Syria we travelled to Baalbek in the beautiful Bekaa valley, Lebanon's wine growing region. As well as housing perhaps the most impressive set of Roman/Greek ruins in the ME, the area is also famous for being the home of Hezbollah. The first impression of Lebanon we got was of tanks, heavily armed soldiers and checkpoints. That remains throughout a lot of the country, particularly in Beirut where you have to be careful where you point your camera. Lebanon is very different from Syria. There is tight security, but people are free to speak their minds and exercise democratic choice. From architecture to language, there is a heavy French influence in Lebanon, with which much of the Christian population associates so as to distinguish itself from the Arabic culture, so it was refreshing for us to be able to communicate beyond our usual (pitiful) attempts in Arabic.
In stark contrast to the close security pressures of the country, the people we met were open, generous and extremely hospitable. We were lucky enough to be taken in by one such family when we found ourselves unexpectedly spending a night in a town called Zahle on our way to Beirut. An enquiry as the whereabouts of somewhere for lunch turned into us spending 2 nights with the Bilezikjian family on our way into and out of the capital. Generous to a fault, we really enjoyed being able to talk to Joelle and family beyond our usual bar-room conversations. We were made to feel very much at home and part of the family for the duration of our brief visit.
We went on to visit Laura down in Saida in Southern Lebanon and spent a few nights in Beirut. The streets of Beirut throb to the sound of techno and house music, packed in the evenings with young people out to enjoy themselves in a very hedonistic euro-style party. In the end, we were left with the impression of a country under a false calm. People told us of their fear of resumption of war with Israel, and in Beirut you gain a sense of the fragility of the peace that exists. But the people of Lebanon do not seem willing to succumb to the threats of violence and go about their lives determined to make the most of their circumstances, enjoying the lifestyle of a unique corner of the region.
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