Greece Delphi: the Sacred Centre, the Navel of the World continue… August 8, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Airlines, Cars, Europe, France, Hotels, Motel, Museum, Rail Pass, Tickets, Trails, Travelling Bag, USA , 3commentsThe village of Kastri was built over the site of the sanctuary and this proved a problem in the nineteenth century when archaeologists wanted to examine the famous oracle site. International rivalry developed over the excavation rights. France won, but at the expense of rehousing all the villagers of Kastri at another site, New Kastri (now the modern Delphi), just over 1/2 mile (1km) to the west. French archaeological investigation has gone on to a greater or lesser degree ever since. (more…)
A Slice of Big Apple August 2, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Cars, Destination, Hotels, Italy, Motel, New York, Restaurant, Travel Clinic, Travelling Bag , 6commentsSix gritty months of fumbling with biros and over-read text books in a level tedium were wiped out. Wiped out by a five-hour flight to a city where riding the subway is an act of hedonism, and where the pollution on the streets works on the brain like speed, driving people scrambling to the summits of New York City’s towers of granite and power. (more…)
Mount Tai Shan, Five Peaks, one of the Nine Sacred Mountains of China July 27, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Asia, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Motel, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Travel Gear, Trip , 4commentsMount Tai Shan (WU T’AI SHAN) is oneof the Nine Sacred Mountains of China. It is situated some hundred miles southwest of Beijing. It has five main peaks which rise over a central plateau, itself about 8,000 feet (2,440m) above the North China Plain: the name Wu T’ai means Five Peaks or Terraces.
It is one of the relatively few World Heritage sites that is both a place of natural significance and a cultural site, for scattered across the plateau, perched on ridges and high up the five peaks themselves, are some 300 temples. Wu T’ai is, or was, sacred not only to the Chinese but also to the Tibetans and Mongolians. The temples originated from all three traditions of Buddhism and also Taoism, coloured with hints of earlier nature religions and their deities. The culmination of the journey for many of the pilgrims was to offer homage as they walked 1,080 times around the chorten on the mountain supposedly containing a relic of the Buddha. (It may just be an interesting coincidence, but 1,080 is one of the key numbers of various ancient, arcane traditions of numerological knowledge.) (more…)
Boating in Eire Dolmens and Blarney, feeling of plunging Water, eXhilaration Adventure July 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Hotels, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant , 3commentsIt was a bright, clear spring morning when the boat docked in Rosslare and I disembarked in Eire.
Finding the roads almost traffic free, I decided to push on as quickly as possible towards the harsh and romantic west coast.
I was making good time when my eye was caught by a small, wooden sign, on which was written, “Harristown Dolmen“. I pulled up opposite, wound down the window and stared. At this point I might as well confess to being what is called in the trade a “megalithomaniac”. Any stone, no matter how small, if it has the tag “megalithic”, then I’m hooked. (more…)
River Journey up the Zaire July 23, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Canada, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Hotels, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Trip , 4comments“Into the eighth day and I really feel I’ve had enough. I’d like to be transported to a bathroom in the Ritz and then to a dry Martini in the bar.”
Eighth day, Zaire River. We often lost each other on the seven barges being pushed a thousand miles up the Zaire River, once Conrad’s Congo.
I found my son Joseph, aged seven, in one of the five bars with Sammy, a young soldier. to-dot puzzle. Sammy was concentrating on Joseph’s dot-to-dot puzzle.
“He’s very good at them,” said Joseph. “He never misses a dot.” “Where’s Daddy?”
“Gone for a pee at the back.”
It was all right for men, they could go over the side. Women had to cope with the dark, smelly “cabinets” and first invite the rats to leave through the crumbling rusty holes. These were the boats left at the Belgian Congo’s independence. (more…)
Please to make a Hotel Reservation July 23, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Destination, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, India, Lodges, Motel, Passport, Tickets, Tour , 3comments“Excuse me, do you speak English?” “Oh yes, certainly.”
“I want to reserve three seats on a train from Calcutta to Patna.” “Please?”
“I want to reserve . . .”
“Where are you wanting to go?” “Patna.”
“Have you a reservation?”
“No. That is what I want.” “Please you wait over there.”
“I want to go during the day so that we can all see the countryside.” (more…)
The EXhilaration Adventure, real Hiking Mountain Trail, Kebnekaise Mountain Station continue… July 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Cars, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, Motel, Restaurant, Sweden, Switzerland, Wellington , 2commentsIt was soon clear that the man had no idea what he was doing. He shouldn’t have been in the mountains. I asked him where his gear was. “Over there,” he said, pointing to the corner of the room. There was a tiny rucksack, a summer sleeping bag and a pair of Wellington boots. “Is that all?” I asked.
“Shit man, I didn‘t expect this. I came straight down the path from Abisko. It was beautiful the first two days. Which way did you come?”
“Over the mountains through Lapporten.”
“What was it like up there?”
“Cold and too much snow.”
“Where are you going?” (more…)
The EXhilaration Adventure, real Hiking Mountain Trail, Kebnekaise Mountain Station July 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, Motel, Museum, Norway, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, Sweden, Trip , 2commentsThree of us got off the train at Abisko in the mountains of Swedish Lapland: two men and a dog. I sat on my rucksack while the dog and his friend strolled over to the station building. When they were out of sight I stood up, glanced at my map and took a compass reading. It’s difficult to look confident in the mountains, so I always check map readings when there’s no-one to question my judgment.
I was going to walk south through Lapporten to Kebnekaise — Sweden’s highest mountain, 7,000 feet above sea level — and on to Nikkaluotka, a Lapp settlement by a beautiful ribbon lake. If the weather was good, it would take about a week. If not, I told myself that ten days would do. (more…)
In Pursuit of the American Dream July 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Motel, Museum, Paris, Tour, USA , 5comments“Kis mah grits,” said the waitress, conversing with a regular customer as she served me up a 99-cent breakfast in the diner at Orlando Airport.
I was frequently to hear Americans exhorted to kiss each other’s fried porridge, in a parody that seems to be the last legacy of the Southerner who occupied the White House in the dark days before Ronald Reagan. Kissing grits has supplanted the fashion for kissing ass, which is surprising in an upwardly mobile society.
An hour later I was drinking (what else?) Florida orange-juice beside a motel swimming pool while the early-morning sun gently warmed away jet-lag. The lady on a nearby lounger ordered the waiter to put a slug in her juice. (more…)
Not Memsahib July 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Cars, Destination, Europe, Flight Schedule, Hotels, India, Lodges, London, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Rail Pass, Restaurant, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Trip , 3commentsEvery time I heard the word memsahib I wanted to take an ice-pick to the user. I’d gone on the Hindu trail clutching my libertarianism to my bosom, a cosy cocoon from which I could rationalise and contain the INDIAshrieks from the inferno — not that Dante, I’m sure, ever went to Calcutta. Very right-on. Very arm’s-length. But keep your liberal sensibilities Gandhi-pure? Emerge unscathed? Forget it.
Sympathy, empathy, had long since given way to simmering hysteria, cringing shame and a seething, at times uncontrollable rage which was generalised in its target but oh so localised in its pain. It wasn’t even a consolingly righteous anger at the pulverising poverty, the callousness of caste or the stalinisation of women — more a deep-seated disgust and hatred welling up from deep down and spewing out over all humanity, most of all myself . . . Well, OK, you try and make sense of the matchstick people of Madhya Pradesh, the execrable excrement of Bombay and Dehli, the obscene opulence of Jaipur jewellers, the blinding, vivid hues of Rajasthani women’s skirts — and all of it sinking in one great ubiquitous quicksand of suffocating, strangulating bureaucracy. (more…)
Villages, Boats, Boulevards, Bars, Break in France and Italy, Aegean Tour continue… July 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Africa, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Europe, France, Hotels, Library, Motel, Museum, New York, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant , 3commentsFabienne wakes us. She is pretty in a New York Jewish sort of way — cracked nose, olive skin, beautiful drooping eyes with lot’s of kohl, smoker’s teeth and bitten nails. Wrapped in a peasant blanket she talks of “le business” in Soho and Piccadilly — prostitution to pay for her drug addiction. Her arms are scars, dead veins with hanging skin which will take no more abuse, and so her ankles have become the focal point of her masochism. Corsica is vacation after hospitalisation in Amsterdam and, more importantly from her point of view, stamping ground of many Moroccans who come from the hash crops of North Africa to supply France from this paradise isle. (more…)
Indian Tour; as a Traveler, I went Across Indian Crazy Kumbh, it could happen only in India July 3, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Cars, Destination, Europe, Flight Schedule, Hotels, India, Motel , 4commentsIt is the largest gathering of people in the world, it happens every twelve years and it could happen only in India. They come by train, they come by bus, they come on foot. But they come. They come to bathe in the Holy Mother Ganga. This year four million come to be in one place at one time. The place is Hardwar, the time is eight minutes past two on the morning of April 14th. It is unbelievable. It is unique. It is the great Kumbh Mela.
The Hindus love a good legend and the mythological beginnings of this unparalleled religious spectacle are no exception. Many moons ago, the son of Indra, king of the Gods, managed to retrieve (not unlike some sort of celestial “Repo Man”) a kumbh (pitcher) filled with the elixir of immortality that some demons had stolen from the bottom of the ocean. (more…)
Climbing, Riding, Sightseeing Midnight on Mont Blanc continue… July 2, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Cars, Europe, Germany, Greece, Hostels, London, Memorial, Mexico, Motel, New York, Travel Insurance, Travelling Bag, USA , 3commentsBernie pulled on the rope and cursed me for stopping; I plodded on. My feet hurt.
Four days later, the train heaved its way out of the valley towards the end of the Bionnassay Glacier. Through the glass I stared at the pine trees and the brilliant meadow flowers. The carriage filled with the perfume of tourists, up for the day, and the sweat of climbers, rucksacks balanced on their knees, all heading for the Blanc. When the track wound alongside a cliff the small girl sitting opposite looked out in disbelief as the trees gave way to nothing. She pulled her eyes away in fear and looked around the train — the view there was worse, rucksacks, hairy knees, ice-axes, unshaven climbers lost in contemplation of the weather.
We arrived at the top station and the train disgorged. Tourists wandered slowly across to the cafe or to the viewing platform from which they could look up at the great bleak sweep of the mountain opposite. Down the valley the world became more sane, as the stone desert below the glacier gave way to meadows and woodland. (more…)
Climbing, Riding, Sightseeing Midnight on Mont Blanc July 2, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Motel, Museum, Restaurant, Round The World , 3commentsDepression lurked over me like a Lakeland storm-sky: oppressive, inevitable and apparently unending. “What you need,” said Bernie over the top of his beer, “is to take your mind off it; get out onto the hill. Let’s go and climb Mont Blanc. We can drive down on your bike.”
The suggestion seemed suitably absurd — neither of us had done any serious climbing for a decade and I had never done any work on snow and ice. So we went. Friends took the heavy gear in a car. (I had failed to accommodate two full sets of climbing equipment, a tent, books and spare clothes in the panniers of my new BMW and felt slightly cheated.) On the open roads, the apparently deserted French péages, I relished the lack of baggage and flew south. (more…)
Holiday Break, Adventure Boating Hidden Rivers part 1 June 30, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Beach Resorts, London, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium , 4commentsAs I climbed up out of the station the street stretched away uphill, shining under the lights like an old trouser seat. There were houses everywhere and scraggy trees, but I couldn’t see a pub anywhere. Thin drizzle peppered the thirsty pavements and I realised this was a hopeful start; I’d found a real, if repellent, suburb in an elusive city. I was standing in Salusbury Road, in Queen’s Park, in London.
Some of the shadowy nature of London is that one feels it ought to be well known. Anyone who can read can know London; from Dick Whittington to witty Dickens and beyond, every view is veiled with reference. (more…)
Traveling alone, Rail Journey triple alliance part 1 June 29, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, Motel, Pacific, Peru , 4commentsI do not recall how much my memories of that night-time journey were the creation of fitful dreams or the stuff of actuality. The blackness of the night and my own fears were real enough as the lights of the bus probed the landscape, revealing steep escarpments and the outlines of vertical cliffs. Sometimes, peering over the side of the bus, I caught sight of the ghostly white caps of Pacific rollers coming to spit their fury at a continent. The bus swept down the hills and then ground its way up another hilltop through a succession of sandy switchbacks. I kept thinking of the drunken Cary Grant in North by Northwest, as he strove to bring his car under control. Was our driver chewing coca leaves, as so many long distance drivers did in Peru, to ease the burdens of an eight-hour journey? I looked around the bus at the crumpled figures managing some sleep. Two rows in front of me a Japanese man slumped against a girl with a shock of auburn curls. A strange couple, I thought. (more…)
“In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia on the trail of the Lonesome Pine . . .” continue… June 28, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Beach Resorts, Cars, China, Destination, Europe, Georgia, Motel, New York, Turkey , add a commentI walk in the forest all day without seeing or hearing a soul. Now the going is flat; now I am scrambling over large rocks, across streams, up steep slopes. The forest is wide awake and I hear the continual muted plop of falling acorns, the piping squeaks of the chipmunks, the whistling of jays, the raucous bark of the slope-soaring ravens. Sound carries in the mountains. Now and again a heavier thud denotes the falling of dead wood, perhaps close by, perhaps way over on the opposite slope — the forest sheds twenty-five tons an acre every year. When I sit quite still, for several minutes, the wood mice emerge to explore me. The chipmunks, jaw pouches grotesquely distended with freshly garnered acorns, scamper stiff-legged and tail erect to where I watch; but they never look me in the eye. Water-thrush sit in the ninebark by my head. Bear, deer, bobcat and the emblematic wild turkey, are lurking in these forests unseen. (more…)
“In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia on the trail of the Lonesome Pine . . .” June 28, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Cars, Europe, Georgia, Hotels, Motel, New York, Round The World, Turkey , add a commentThe Blue Ridge Mountains are the first ridge of the Appalachians as you cross the coastal plains from the Atlantic and step up off the Piedmont plateau. Famed in the Laurel and Hardy theme song, they rise fold on rounded fold of thick hardwood forest, to some 6,000 feet.
Three hours’ drive from the steaming sauna which is Washington in the summer, and 3,800feet up in the clear air of the Blue Ridge Mountains, lies the Wintergreen Mountain Resort. Perched a few miles west of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the University of Virginia which he founded, the resort is stamped by a distinctive feature. The facilities are owned and controlled by the property owners, who have bought sites and built second homes within the Wintergreen area. The owners underwrite a management company for the resort, securing it against insensitive over-development and downmarket pressures with a degree of success which has made them keenly studied and imitated by leisure resorts elsewhere. (more…)
The Quirinal: The most venerable of the palaces in this city of palaces May 16, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Egypt, Flight Schedule, Gymnasium, Hostels, Hotels, Italy, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Motel, Museum, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, USA , add a commentThe Immense Complex of the Quirinal Palace was the summer residence of the Popes until 1870 when it was seized by Vittorio Emmanuele. He died there in 1878 after receiving a message of pardon from the Pontiff he had outraged. The palace remained the home of the kings of Italy until 1946 and is now occupied by the President of the Italian Republic. Although the Savoyards endeavoured to remove the traces of the former occupants of the Quirinal, replacing the papal arms wherever possible with their own, the palace is essentially a monument to the taste of its builders, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Paul V and, to a lesser degree, Alexander VII and Clement XII. With its great irregular piazza it is among the noblest examples of that union of the baroque and the antique upon which the character of Rome so largely depends. (more…)
The Royal Palace: The former residence of the kings of Sardina and of Italy May 12, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Cars, Destination, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Italy, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Motel, Museum, Paris, Restaurant, USA , add a commentIf it were not for the chimerical dome of the Cappella della Santa Sindone rising up so strangely to the left of the Royal Palace, nobody would suspect that this sober front concealed an exuberance of gilded, carved, inlaid, painted and looking-glass decoration surpassing the highest flights of fancy. But that exciting outline, combining the undulations of a pagoda with the zigzag step effects of a Mexican extravagance prepares the mind for the shock of the contrast between the incredibly rich interior and the flat, reticent exterior of the palace, so close in spirit to neo-classicism that it is difficult to believe in its seventeenth- century date. (more…)