A Day in Narnia, a Night in Phang Nga September 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, Hotels, Tour, Trip , 3commentsOn the village green in front of the Chinese Bhuddist temple a fairground was being erected. The skeleton of a Ferris wheel loomed; shooting galleries and hoopla stalls were being knocked together.
The purpose of the structure immediately outside the temple was not so obvious. The men hammering it together had beckoned us, beaming, inviting inspection. A raised wooden runway, carpeted with the pin-sharp points of six-inch nails hammered through from the bottom, ran out 50ft and ended in a bed of nails laid on the grass. At the foot of the bed, guyed by wire ropes, a forty-rung ladder rose vertically. The rungs were steel knives, blades up. (more…)
The Drums of Nefta August 31, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, France, Hotels, Rail Pass, Tour, Trails, Trip , 6commentsIt is late evening and Marianne, Walter and I have just finished a large couscous washed down by several bottles of heady local wine. My companions start talking in Arabic again and I have the depressing sense of being a hick tourist fallen among real travellers. Wine- numbed and bloated, I lapse into silent recapitulation of what has brought us here.
I met Marianne on Jerba, an island claiming mythic status as the place where the Sirens held Ulysses. I too was becalmed, though the Sirens were inaudible. I would take bus trips from the island to towns in southern Tunisia but they never lasted longer than a day. Their chaos and squalor did not compare well with the pristine beauty of Jerba and, as a lone male out of season, I was prey to a horde of street hustlers. On Jerba I had made it clear that I was not in the market for anything and they left me alone. (more…)
The Pharaoh’s Curse August 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Hotels, The Nile, Tour , 5commentsMONDAY
The blastfurnace heat at Aswan jumps off the tarmac and hits us like a blow as I lead my group towards the terminal building. “Keeping the River rest to clean your teeth?” nudges Doctor Whistler, pointing to my depleted bottle of mineral water. SUDAN v “Aha, that’s right!” I smile, through gritted teeth. My head’s pounding like a sledgehammer, and my stomach feels frail. I touch my pocket for the reassuring packet of Diocalm. Tour Directors aren’t allowed the luxury of being ill. Away from Cairo HQ I’m in sole charge of ninety physicians and their wives on a pre-congress beano — four days of cruising the Nile and doing the sites. (more…)
European Costume Flip-flops, Women and Socks August 22, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, Hotels, Japan, London, Rail Pass, Restaurant, Tickets, Tokyo, Tour, Trip , 4commentsOnce Europeans had become accustomed to flip-flops, it wasn’t all that difficult to get used to mitten- shaped socks, each holding the big toe in its own little pocket and letting the other four doss down together. But the very first visitors to Japan assumed, from the local socks, that the Japanese had only two toes. And the Japanese, on the basis of the visitors’ socks, thought that Europeans had none. (more…)
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…)
Malta GGANTIJA Myth Temples August 3, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Beach Resorts, Sightseeing, Tour, Trails, Trip , 3commentsWORLD HERITAGE LIST NUMBER 185 ARCHAEOLOGY, EVOLVED, GEOMANCY
The GGANTIJA temples are situated near Xaghra on Gozo, a Mediterranean islanda few miles northwest of its larger neighbour, Malta. Although the combined surface area of these two islands adds up to merely 125 square miles (320 square km), the importance of the megalithic architecture which has survived there is ‘out of all proportion to the islands‘ size’.’ (more…)
The Road out of Pinjarra August 2, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Australia, England, Europe, Hotels, Melbourne, Sydney, Tour, Trails, Trip , 5commentsI am sitting in the shade of a gum tree, by the side of a dusty road in Pinjarra, Western Australia. It has taken me fifty lifts to reach Pinjarra; a name on the map you do not notice until fate holds you there.
After three months’ travelling in Australia, hitch-hiking has become an addiction; the stimulation of a new acquaintance, a frank exchange of views, and then back on to the roadside — a self-contained experience without any repercussions. (more…)
Mount Tai Shan, Five Peaks, one of the Nine Sacred Mountains of China continue… July 27, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Airlines, Cars, Destination, England, Greece, Hotels, Malaysia, Sightseeing, Sweden, Trails, Trip, Venezuela, Wales , 4commentsShortly after midnight, a monk with a lantern awoke them with the cry: ‘The Bodhisattva has appeared!’ They threw on their clothes, their teeth chattering with the cold, the excitement, or both, and they scrambled across the temple courtyard and mounted to the tower. As they entered they found themselves facing one of the windows looking out on the vastness of the space beyond. Everyone gasped in surprise — none of them was prepared for what they saw. Numerous orange spheres of light where floating ‘majestically’ through the darkness of the mountain night beyond the window. (more…)
Aboard the Trans—Siberian Express July 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : China, Embassy, England, Moscow, Rail Pass, Restaurant, Russia, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Travelling Bag, Trip , 3commentsShe started sobbing three hours before the border. The conductress tried to console her with a glass of sweet, strong tea but without much success. She remained in the long druggeted corridor, a crumpled figure in a pink dressing gown watching the forests spinning madly by. The tankard holding the glass depicted a Slavic swordsman defending a child and she held it tight as a keepsake.
It certainly was a crying matter. The birch forests of Siberia, so upright, so elegant in autumn, had been broken by this winter campaign. Brought into perfect arcs by wind and snow, the younger birches littered the track-side like ribs and tusks while the old and brittle, unable to bow before the onslaught, rose into the air like splintered spines. (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…)
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…)
Excited Spanish Travel, Rail Pass Matanza July 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Andorra, Europe, Rail Pass, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Trip , 4commentsSix-thirty am. I’m already dressed and out of the couchette as the train slows to a halt in the darkness. Outside, nothing but gravel and a road on one side: on the other, the small halt with its sign L’Hospitalet and the bus waiting to bear us on the long winding climb, leaving behind an ever-lengthening panorama pierced with points of light. The snow stands in cliffs on the uphill side of the road, cut by snowploughs only hours before.
In Old Andorra, Peter is waiting with his Santana Land-Rover, and greets me heartily. Has there been a matanza yet? I ask. “There was one at Margarita’s on Monday. I think there’s another tomorrow at Mestre’s,” he answers.
Our goal is fourteen dizzying kilometres up into the Spanish Pyrenees. A community still living in an almost cashless economy, to a pattern already set in the fourteenth century. One of the last outposts of a peasant culture which is rapidly passing from the world, governed entirely by the seasons and depending little on manufactured inputs. (more…)
Getting High in the Yemen Question: how can you see London, Paris and New York simultaneously while sitting in a Remote Corner of the Arabian Peninsula? July 9, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Africa, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Cars, Europe, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, London, Museum, Oceanarium, Round The World, Tour, USA , 3commentsAnswer: adopt the national pastime of North Yemen and devote the entire afternoon to chewing the narcotic qat leaf. Our host, his eyes dreamy and his cheeks bulging with the drug, rocks with laughter at his own joke.
We had landed that morning to find ourselves catapulted into a medieval Manhatten, a confusing world of centuries-old mud skyscrapers and lavish exteriors that make a mockery of the Middle Eastern practice of living behind blank facades. Resting in a secluded courtyard we watch a veiled face peer out from behind a half-opened shutter high up on a crumbling wall. A basket lowers itself to the ground from a distant rooftop. A train of three camels, loaded down with bundles of qat, squeezes through a tiny alleyway and lurches past the massive studded door of a mosque. (more…)
Hindu Trail Clutching my Libertarianism to my Bosom, Not Memsahib July 9, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, India, London, Rail Pass, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Travelling Bag, 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 shrieks 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…)
Five days in Guinea, Discovering World Wide Attractions, Traveling, Fun, Tour, Rail Passing July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Cash, Passport, Tour, Travellers Cheque , 5commentsDuring the night the rats stole my soap. A garrison of them lived beneath the floorboards and above the sagging, mildewed ceiling of my room. They swaggered about the place as though they owned it — which I suppose they did really: few people must have stayed in the old barrack-house since Nova Lamego was a beleaguered outpost of the Portuguese empire in Africa, surrounded by guerrilla-held bush, as the long war of liberation surged back and forth across the frontier with its neurotic Marxist neighbour, the People’s Republic of Guinea.
I rubbed the sleep of history from my eyes and stepped outside into the present: nowadays Nova Lamego is the peaceful market town of Gabu, in the east of independent Guinea-Bissau, and a couple of battered old civilian vehicles wheeze across that frontier each week.
Blinking in the unwashed light of dawn, I located the formidable old Russian lorry that came close to my idea of the archetypal truck. It had one headlight missing and was blind in the other; sported a complete set of bald tyres, and was incontinent on all counts: punctured exhaust, cracked radiator, and oozing a fuse of oil and petrol whenever it moved — which wasn’t for some time, as it took all morning to attract a full cargo of thirty passengers and their belongings. (more…)
Five days in Guinea, Discovering World Wide Attractions, Traveling, Fun, Tour, Rail Passing July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Cash, Passport, Tour, Travellers Cheque , 5commentsDuring the night the rats stole my soap. A garrison of them lived beneath the floorboards and above the sagging, mildewed ceiling of my room. They swaggered about the place as though they owned it — which I suppose they did really: few people must have stayed in the old barrack-house since Nova Lamego was a beleaguered outpost of the Portuguese empire in Africa, surrounded by guerrilla-held bush, as the long war of liberation surged back and forth across the frontier with its neurotic Marxist neighbour, the People’s Republic of Guinea.
I rubbed the sleep of history from my eyes and stepped outside into the present: nowadays Nova Lamego is the peaceful market town of Gabu, in the east of independent Guinea-Bissau, and a couple of battered old civilian vehicles wheeze across that frontier each week.
Blinking in the unwashed light of dawn, I located the formidable old Russian lorry that came close to my idea of the archetypal truck. It had one headlight missing and was blind in the other; sported a complete set of bald tyres, and was incontinent on all counts: punctured exhaust, cracked radiator, and oozing a fuse of oil and petrol whenever it moved — which wasn’t for some time, as it took all morning to attract a full cargo of thirty passengers and their belongings. (more…)
A Fair Show, happy Travelers Diaries July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Cars, Cash, China, Destination, Dolphinarium, Ireland, Library, Museum, Restaurant, Round The World, Tour , 3commentsThrough Leinster and Munster, along Connaught lanes and highways there’s a movement. Brazenly on verges, tucked behind hedges, parked in laybys there are caravans. Not tourists but the homes of the Irish Travellers, the Tinkers. Herds of their horses hold up the traffic. Greys, chestnuts, roans, bays and the especial pride, the batty mares: great coloured, patched horses, piebald and skewbald, hooves swathed in shaggy hair. They’re all heading along roads which lead to the nub, the October fair, Ballinasloe. A convergence for horses and horsemanship, dealing and drinking, exchanging news and the “crack”. “You’ll never see as many horses together as you will at Ballinasloe. Once Seamus McGinty rode down the high street at the head of sixty, his sons as outriders flanking their wealth.” (more…)
Villages, Boats, Boulevards, Bars, Break in France and Italy, Aegean Tour July 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Europe, France, Hotels, Museum, Oceanarium, Paris, Planetarium, Restaurant, USA , 3commentsNapeoleon greeted us when we arrived in the palm-fringed port of Ajaccio and disembarked onto the jetty. Corsica’s capital exhibits boulevards, bars and boats in honour of its most famous son. The white-glossed vessels glide out slowly with their cargoes of rich French and Italian mariners, perhaps south to Sardinia or Sicily before venturing upon Poseidon’s homeland in the depths of the Aegean.
We wound up into the mountains for three hours at the back of a stifling minibus, rucksacks on knees, to arrive at Petreto-Bicchisano to au-pair and keep shop for two months. The villages of bleached stone are perched on crags, almost indistinguishable in the dense green forests. Grey stones on distant, wispy mountaintops become crosses and tombstones as one ascends. Every village has its protective saint and little dark chapel. Children play in the street with its one-thousand-foot drop to the bronze river below. The old women in black do not shout warnings. It seems that one is born to Corsica with an instinct of its precariousness. (more…)
Traveling alone, Rail Journey triple alliance part 2 June 29, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cuzco, Germany, Hotels, VISA , 4commentsThe train pulled its way up onto the altiplano with its stunning emptiness and its snow-capped mountains beyond. Whatever pleasure one has in the newness of it all, the harshness soon becomes apparent. For the spectator the coruscating sodium light and the pounding of one’s temples from the 15,000-foot altitude are not conducive to appreciation. For the Indian there is a bleakness that their bright clothing cannot efface — dun-coloured landscapes, an absence of trees and shrubs, and a piercing wind setting up miniature whirlwinds which bob across the tableau. Three or four adobe houses cluster near the railway, where a dog may raise himself to give sporting chase to the train. In fixing such a picture in time, one had mood in plenty but no focal point — no dominant feature that would lead the eyes into the rest of the scene. Puno, a frontier town in both senses, on the shores of Lake Titicaca had both mood and focal point. (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…)
