Widening The Gravel Road

The Galapagos Islands

2011-08-14T09:59:00.001-07:00

Day 1
At 10.10pm at the end of Day 1 I’m sitting below deck in the Sagitta, the place entirely to myself gathering my thoughts from our first day. The seas are reasonably choppy, sufficiently so for everyone to have scrambled for cover in bed immediately after dinner. Our ship’s beautiful - a technical description would be beyond me but it’s a three-masted sailing ship. All 10 rooms have air-con, private bathrooms and there's a library on the bottom deck. Right now we’re cutting through the water through engine rather than wind power. Today began at the airport waiting for the group to form, sitting around trying to predict what the average age of the group would be (it’s about 50) and picking out faces from the crowds swarming around wondering if we’d be sharing space with them on the seas for 6 days. Our tour company seem to have their shit together and quickly they’d rounded us up and shepherded us to a turtle conservation centre where we walked around in a field filled with giant turtles and learned, amongst other things, that they‘re still sexually active after 100 years - well for some.
Our group’s predominantly made up of Americans - think overstatements like “This is so once in a liftetime” - and a smattering of Europeans - think understatements like “Well I just happened to be in Ecuador so…”. First days in a group are the worst, figuring out who to talk to and who to avoid but in true Big Brother fashion, by the second or third day the picture will become a lot clearer. During dinner tonight I sat beside a guy from Washington DC whose day job is to serve as an environmental attorney and whose remit is to find ways to get bills enacted into laws in spite of the best attempts of the Republicans. He’s an amateur ornithologist and literally has a list of must see birds - Darwin’s finches are at the top of his list - which he hopes to accomplish before this trip is out. He’s very serious about his birds and so I fight back the Father Dougal-esque urge to ask him if he’s excited about seeing some boobies. This place is eerily quiet tonight - think the Marie Celeste - and we have an early start in the morning.

Day 2
It’s a 7am start for breakfast and then we’re aboard a dinghy and in the water. Almost as a sign of things to come, we’ve scarcely left the side of the ship when four dolphins surface nearby and we watch them from a distance. Our first landing is a dry one but before we make land we spot our first blue-footed boobies with their comically bright blue feet doing their funny little blue-footed shuffle in order to attract a mate. Right beside them is a flightless cormorant, unique to the Galapagos. We land and explore the vast lava fields of Isabela. There are 5 volcanoes on Isabela, all of them active. Our guide tells us of a team of 8 Ecuadorian marines who in the early 1980’s decided to cross 40km of this same terrain as part of a training exercise. 7 of them made it, albeit just about, their boots torn to shreds and the one who’d decided to turn back died from dehydration. Beautiful as this landscape is, it is a brutal place and, as Darwin noted, only the fittest survive here.
Of course studying the people on the cruise can be just as fascinating - we are all animals after all. Our American Democrat representative is almost unhealthily obsessed by birds - at one stage he runs across the island with his binoculars in hand like he’s just been told that Monica Lewinksky is going down on Sarah Palin on newly formed lava rock. He’s a bright guy though and can just as easily tell you how many vowels are in the Hawaiian alphabet or how many types of finches there are in the Galapagos as he could tell you what day it is today.
In the afternoon we hit the dinghies again for another visit on to the shores of Isabela. It’s incredible what you see all around you, all the time - dive-bombing blue-footed boobies searching for food, turtles swimming past the dinghy peeking their heads above the surface occasionally for air, flightless cormorants nesting beside solitary penguins, sea lions catching 40 winks in the branches of mangroves, manta rays gliding just below the surface, marine iguanas basking in the warmth of the late afternoon sun and scavenging frigate birds circling above at all times watching the ocean and the ship below. And that’s just in the space of a few minutes. It’s a never-ending cornucopia of wildlife, one species momentarily disappears and another one quickly pops up to take its place. We go snorkelling and swim beside gigantic marine turtles their elegance underwater in complete contrast to their lumbering forms on land. As first days on the water go, it’s been pretty much flawless.

Day 3
Perhaps we should get off the boat now because it’ll be pretty difficult to top today. This place is teeming with life and all creatures great and small revealed themselves during the course of the day. We began with a land walk on the western coast of Isabela in search of land iguanas. This being the Galapagos, creatures are anything but elusive and before long we’d spotted some monstrous types. Best of all though, we stumbled across two males pumped up with aggression and facing off in a territorial battle. Xavier, our guide, told us that this was an extremely rare event to witness so we watched at close quarters as the two creatures lumbered towards each other in slow motion, made some weird head and tail movements and proceeded to butt each other with their heads. As the drama unfolded I watched it all silently, like everyone else in the group, save for the David Attenborough voiceover in my mind which narrated each blow. I’ve been hearing a lot of those in the Galapagos. The standoff lasted about ten minutes without a punch being thrown and so we wandered off leaving them to renew hostilities after our departure.
We’d no sooner arrived back on the ship for lunch when a humpback whale began breaching to the side of the boat - Christ don‘t these creatures realise we have to eat. Truly, it’s never-ending here. In the afternoon we snorkelled in a bay filled with marine turtles - huge, elegant creatures - underwater at least - seemingly oblivious to the fact that there were 16 pasty tourists swimming on their patch. I’m fascinated by the turtles and the fact that they allow you to swim within touching distance. Another land trek took us Fernandina Island, the youngest in the archipelago and home to a vast population of marine iguanas. There they lie piled on top of each other perfectly blending with the rocks upon which they spend their day. Fernandina is also home to a healthy population of sea lions, again utterly immune to human presence and who lay sprawled on the sand bothered only by the flies which occasionally caused them to flee to the water.
There’s an easiness amongst the group now that wasn’t there on Days 1 or 2. Star of the show is Tim - American, gay as hell and possessing enough one-liners to rival Tommy Cooper. Tim’s everybody’s friend and his main goal in life now is to adopt a seal pup. Birdwatching Democrat Brett is already becoming a parody of himself, asking everyone for silence when he’s filming his birdie videos and impatiently requesting that we rotate those who sit at the front of the boat so that he can get better shots. It’s not as if his fucking lens isn’t big enough. It’s a good group though and the boat’s bloody wonderful so life is great. Quite how we’ll manage to continue to be amazed after today is something to look forward to I guess.

Day 4
It isn’t every day that you wake up in the southern hemisphere and go to sleep in the northern hemisphere but that’s the case today. Winter at dawn and summer by dusk. We crossed the equatorial divide at around 5pm and the occasion was marked with glasses of champagne - I have quickly accustomed myself to such things on this ship, accepting the champagne with the air of a man who would normally be having a glass at this time of the afternoon anyway. Today was an inevitable and predictable comedown after the highs of yesterday and yet any day in which you spot a blue whale surfacing - albeit from a distance - could scarcely been considered unremarkable. There’s also the fact that just one hour before we crossed the equator, we’d been snorkelling with penguins. Yes, penguins on the equator - who knew?
Each night on the ship we receive our briefing for the following day’s activities just after dinner. Tonight Xavier has informed us - somewhat cryptically - that tomorrow’s planned activities are slightly up in the air because of a warning issued to them by the marine authorities. He was a little vague with regard to what this means but explained that in case of high seas, for example, it may be impossible to disembark from the boat. Because of the lack of clarity this has led to inevitable speculation as to what this might mean - severe storm, tsunami etc. I have exactly 3 days of travel left in my trip and I’d rather not spend a third of that time stuck on a boat in stomach-churning seas within sight of the wildlife which is everywhere on this place.

Day 5
Well, no tsunami this morning then and, puzzlingly enough, no big swell either. Last night’s mystery announcement regarding this morning’s activities remained just that - a mystery. No waves but no activities this morning either and so we sailed around the coast of Santiago on to our snorkelling site at China Hat. With perfect visibility and a multitude of indifferent (to our presence that is) fish, an hour here passed in a blur. We also spotted a white-tipped shark, a couple of panicked and fast moving penguins and - bizarrely - what seemed like a chicken skeleton in our time there. Snorkelling’s been absolute highlight here - a slow moving 3-D cartoon, a smorgasbord of aquatic delights. The real world seems acutely pale once you’ve spent an hour peering into the depths around the Galapagos.
It’s hard to believe that it all ends tomorrow. I’d fretted a little in advance that the cruise might sniff of retirement home outing but everyone’s been fantastic. Tim continues to entertain though, organising classroom games - he’s a teacher - as much to give free rein his competitive side as to help the evenings on the boat to pass a little quicker. In the morning we visit North Seymour at 6am and then it’ll be over. Life on the road will come to an end. Christ. Am I ready for that?

Day 6
Last but not least North Seymour. We had less than an hour on the island due to the need to get us all to the airport on time but in its own way Seymour was one of the most spectacular islands we've visited. Each time we land on an island you're guaranteed to be greeted ashore by a posse of sea lions, mostly pups, waiting for their mothers to return with some fish from the sea. Before we'd even landed on Seymour this morning we saw a Galapagos shark swimming by the boat. North Seymour is home to an incredible variety of birds. As we walked we watched the strange blue-footed booby mating ritual. She honks and he whistles, shuffles off to do a dance and returns - repeat several times. We walked right beside some blue-footed booby females standing guard over their chicks and to our right was the only time we saw a male frigate bird with its incredible inflated pouch. Normally this is inflated only during mating season - April - but here was a frigate bird, pouch fully inflated, enormous wings fully extended (over 2 metres) squawking at passing females in the hope of getting laid.

And finally......The Galapagos

2011-08-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

So this is where it will end then. 13 months of travel have led me to the Galapagos Islands, a destination I wasn’t sure that I could afford to visit but those nights spent in shitty overnight buses, overcrowded Indian trains, that hideous Malian cuisine, the strange nuclear bunker I stayed in when in Burkina Faso amongst others have all helped to fund this visit. It took 27 hours in a bus from Lima to Guayaquil although this time I travelled with Cruz Del Sur which meant a little extra leg room, blankets and pillows, wi-fi (!) three meals and an overworked attendant keeping everyone happy by changing the DVD selection from one moronic Disney movie to the next. Still, it made a change from fucking Roxette.
It's a little ironic that my worst border crossing of all has been reserved till last as Ecuadorian border officials (the Peruvians were quick to have us on our way again) display Keystone Cops' incompetence at passing us through. Their computer system is down and there they sit pulling faces behind each other - no really - as they take calls whilst we stand for an hour in the heat waiting for someone to remember to plug the fucking computer in. On arrival in Baltra airport on Santa Cruz the officials are thorough but swift in checking that we're not bringing anything in here that may harm the fragile ecosystem.
Getting to the Galapagos is easy, choosing who you’ll do a cruise with is the hard part. For the past 6 weeks I’ve been sending emails enquiring as to prices/itineraries etc for a 6 or 8 day cruise and some of the agencies have been like a dog in heat constantly sniffing around my arse ever since. I lost count of the number of times the agent I was corresponding with told me that “I’ve just returned from a cruise on the Princess and it was magnificent.” Don’t these people work? Anyway, skirting around the bullshit is a challenge but you can generally see through most of the spin and then you just need to choose a ship which has an itinerary you like the sound of, is reasonably affordable (nothing’s cheap here but I‘m disposing of whatever money I have left before I return and have the Irish government do it for me) and which looks sufficiently buoyant for 6 days on the water. There are many different classes of boat to choose from - Economy, Tourist, Tourist Superior, First and Luxury - it all depends on how much you wish to splurge. Economy boats are a case of getting what you pay for i.e. fuck all. I paid $1,600 for a 6 day/5 night cruise on the Sagitta - a First Class sailing boat - but bearing in mind that this included return air fare from Ecuador ($400), all meals on board, a top class guide and an awesome itinerary alleviated the pain somewhat. All a far cry from DVT inducing rides in dust-filled 4WDs to Timbuktu. Travelling isn’t always about the pain.
Puerto Ayora is my base before the cruise begins on Monday (8th) and there are endless opportunities to explore some of the outlying islands on day tours and so I head off to neighbouring Isabela where we're promised sightings of penguins, sea lions, marine iguanas (they're everywhere), white-tipped sharks and flamingos. And this being The Galapagos, we see each and every one of them. We go snorkelling and get up close and personal with a fearless penguin and are joined for a swim by a sea lion - all apparently par for the course in these parts. As an introduction to life on the islands here it's wonderful. On our ramble across one of the islands we reach a sign which alerts us to the fact that white-tipped sharks may be resting nearby and there they are - exactly where the sign suggests they might well be found, about 8 of them. Hopefully, this is a sign of things to come.

Urban Peru: Cuzco to Lima

2011-08-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

There probably aren't many travellers who've made it their business to make their way across to Cuzco and decided to give Machu Picchu a miss but that's what's happened here. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to but a combination of time constraints and an aversion to the tourist scrum that would surely exist there especially now at the beginning of August given that it's the 100th anniversary of the 'discovery' of the place, it wasn't a place that I felt as if I had to see. Two days to see Cuzco then, itself a historical hotspot made me feel as if I wasn't completely turning my back on Inca culture. And yeah, Cuzco was fine - pretty, historic, truly impressive plaza, cobblestone streets, blah, blah, blah but at this stage most of this is washing over me in all honesty. Where I should be oohing and sighing, of late I've been looking at my watch a little too much, trying not to be but becoming someone who's making a mental checklist of what needs to be seen in a city, seeing what needs to be seen and then moving on. It makes for an emptier experience and Cuzco was pretty much that unfortunately.
Lima, by contrast to Cuzco is all hard edges. What the city needs more than anything though is a good press officer. Just a few days previous at the Cruz Del Condor I’d heard a loud American girl proclaim that Lima “was the most depressing fucking city I’ve ever been in.” I‘m assuming she's not a resident of Saint Louis. And she was merely the latest in a long line of travellers heading south from this nation's capital bearing tales of misery and woe from the streets of Lima. And as is often the case, it isn’t all that bad in reality though it does try. You know that sense of danger or menace you get around train stations in large cities? Well, Lima has that sense throughout the city, especially in and around the city centre. It's a city of two parts - there’s the historic centre with the Plaza de Armas and Plaza San Martin and there’s the more tourist ready region of Miraflores by the coast. Most travellers decamp to Miraflores to bed down only visiting the city centre to take some pictures by daylight before scurrying off to be lit up by Miraflores' magical McDonald's neon. I spend 3 days there - this is more out of necessity than choice as the earliest direct bus to Ecuador was some 3 days' wait - and not once during the 3 days is there even a beam of sunlight which doesn't exactly add to the feeling.
Peru is stuck in something of a musical timewarp though and who'd have guessed that it'd be a 1980's gay disco fixation. Erasure are everywhere here and for those of you who lost track of the band in the early 1990's, I can report that the band are alive and well and touring in Peru. And Andy Bell is still wearing that fucking white t-shirt and no doubt dances that very same way too. Ah, nostalgia. It doesn't end there either. There’s a Groundhog Day feeling to travelling by bus in Peru. Every single bus ride I take I hear 'It Must Have Been Love’ by Roxette at least 4 times. This situation is compounded by the fact that I then have to endure the aforementioned in Spanish, a Eurovision-esque taste of Roxette, just what you need when there's still another 16 hours to go until Lima. The ups and downs of life on the road.

On To Peru - Arequipa

2011-08-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

After two days lost in the Copacabana sideshow, Peru can’t come fast enough and, conveniently enough, the border is a mere 40 minute drive from the city. With two and a half weeks left I know that I can never do Peru justice and so I’ve decided to visit Arequipa, Cuzco and Lima on my way north to Ecuador. I’m going to Arequipa to climb a volcano, to Cuzco, well, because it’s Cuzco and to Lima - probably the most unpopular of all South American capitals - just because it’s the capital and because I can’t believe that it’s as bad as people say. Or it surely can’t be as bad as, say, Copacabana. Arequipa promises spectacular volcanoes, one of the deepest canyons in the world and Peru’s second largest city. The city is filled with beautiful colonial buildings built with volcanic rock. I’d half-expected the Peruvian equivalent of Dubrovnik, but a hundred years or so on from their construction, the glow from the rocks has dulled somewhat leaving the buildings looking a pasty grey rather than possessing a dazzling glow.
The city’s Plaza De Armas though is spectacular with its beautiful cathedral in the foreground and all 5,822m of El Misti to the background. It’s a classically shaped volcano and there are a harem - it’s the most appropriate collective noun - of tourist agencies around the city determined to sell you the opportunity to scale its peak. Most of the agencies have no idea what’s involved in climbing a volcano - few ask if I’m sufficiently acclimatised and one lady tells me that 2 litres of water will be more than enough for the two days it takes to climb to the top. In the end I decide to go with Vikinka Travel but they cancel on me the night before we’re due to climb. It proves impossible to find an agency with sufficient numbers to climb Misti, instead everyone wants to climb the nearby Chachani (6,075m) where you get dropped off at over 5,000m, climb to the top and come back having bagged an easy peak. And so I abandon the plan to climb the volcano and head out to Colca Canyon instead - at 3,191m, one of the world’s deepest.
There simply isn’t time enough to do an independent trek there and so I put my deeply held reservations to one side and join a trekking group for a 2 day/1 night tour to the canyon. The drive there is spectacular apparently but not that you’d notice as we drive by night to begin trekking in the early morning sun. We stop at a place called Cruz Del Condor where we join the throng to watch condors fly, unsurprisingly enough, around a cross at the top of the canyon. It’s a beautiful sight which is completely negated by the fact that you have to push or be pushed in order to find a prime spot from where to take photos. The canyon itself though is magnificent and our group of 8 begin a two hour descent to the bottom just as the day begins to warm up. As spectacular as it all is, I snap photos more out of habit than awe. We overnight in a hideous ‘village’ - constructed solely for tourists - at the bottom of the valley, the name of which translates as ‘Paradise Lost’. The following morning at 5.15am en punto and still under the cover of darkness, we begin the 1,100m climb back to the rim of the valley. It’s bloody hard work but it’s the best part of the entire trek. The road home passes though the altiplano where we spot llamas, alpacas and vicuñas aplenty and we drive over a 4,800m pass from where I can see perfect views of the volcano I didn’t get to climb.

Copacabana & Isla Del Sol

2011-07-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

You know that feeling when suddenly realise that the exams are just around the corner, you haven’t lifted a finger, there’s just a week left and you know that you’ll need to cram like hell? Well, that‘s pretty similar to the travelling conundrum I face right now. Where to next? What do I prioritize? What do I miss out on? Machu Picchu? Cuzco? Lima? I’ve been on the road now for more than a year and I have approximately 3 weeks left - allowing a day or two for a blockade in the interim - so now I need to choose where I go to next very carefully. In doing so, I immediately fuck up. Royally. Drawn to Copacabana because it sounds exotic and is found on the shores of Lake Titicaca - the highest altitude lake in the world - I figure on spending two nights there drinking in the ambience and character of this lake front bohemia.
But of course Copacabana is nothing of the sort. It’s one giant travel agency masquerading as a city and is populated almost exclusively by herds of shaggy, gap-year westerners who, having seemingly tired of seeking Nirvana in India or wherever, have set up camp in droves on the streets of Copacabana selling pointlessly tatty trinkets. Vile, vile place. The Lonely Planet describes it as “a little tourist-ready” when the truth is that the place has whored itself so completely to tourism that it’s difficult to believe that this place existed prior to the gringo trail. Even sunset is shit there, as if it too has smoked a big fat one and disappears limply below the horizon. It is against the law, it seems, to sell anything but rainbow trout freshly caught from Lake Titicaca in the innumerable lakefront restaurants who practically try to lasso you into their establishments. Oh, and the trout is shit too.
But I have, at least, the consolation of knowing that Copacabana is merely the gateway to the fabled Isla Del Sol, birthplace of the Inca civilization. I’m excited about visiting the island because I assume it’ll have many ruins to visit and it means that I won’t be in Copacabana anymore. It’s two and a half hours from the city in a boat and I’ve decided to spend one full day there as I have so little time left overall. And wouldn’t you know it - beautiful setting apart - Isla Del Sol is an island trekking exercise in monotony. A walk along the island’s 7km length involves passing through several “toll booths” where a fee must be paid for no other purpose than using a well-trodden trail which does nothing but lead to the next toll booth where you‘ll need to pay again. Truly, a walk down the M50 at midnight would have been just as enlightening. The ‘ruins’, such as they are, are about as impressive as a visit to Paddy Flanagan’s cow shed - there are a couple of dilapidated old buildings but nothing which marks them out as classically Incaesque. There’s a sacred rock at the northern end of the island where the Inca creation legend began but the truth is that I walked right past it without noticing, only recognising it later from a leaflet I was given at one of the toll booths. And that was it - my first Inca experience and most probably my last as I’m giving Machu Picchu a miss. Next up Peru. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Curva to Pelechuco trek

2011-07-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

It's nigh on impossible choosing a trek to do near La Paz such are the options available close to the city but I'm sold on the remoteness of trekking in the Apolobamba region and the thought of seeing more condors than I would trekkers. Curva is a bleak little village built at an altitude of almost 3,800m. The locals are shy, the plaza is populated by children only and on arrival there at 6pm the night before the trek begins there isn't another trekker in sight. July is perfect trekking season though - dry and clear - and we're up at dawn trying to haggle with our guide to try arrange us a guide/muleteer instead of one of both. We'll need a mule on the trek as we're going for 5 days and it's down to us to cook for our guide so we have a muchilla filled with food and snacks for 5 days and this is where the mule comes in.
Within half an hour of starting the trek though, in spite of promises made, it seems that there are 4 of us on the trek. There's our guide - who, it transpires is 19 - and our muleteer, lagging behind with the mules, who's a mere 15 years old and is our guide's brother. So that'll be another mouth to feed for the 5 days. We reach Camp 1 - in a stunning valley setting - in two and a half hours. Our guide tells us that we won't have time to make it to Camp 2 before nightfall and so we set up camp there. Well, we set our tent up - it turns out that our guide and his brother haven't been supplied with a tent and have to spend the next 3 nights in the freezing cold. It's ridiculous - we're 4,000m up and the temperature drops below freezing on night 1. We do what we can by supplying the 'kids' (as they become known) with warm fleeces and jackets but it's pretty criminal that they have to weather the elements, though they are experts at digging out shelters for themselves. They've brought along some blankets and a tarp to keep the rain out but nobody sleeps well on night 1.
We're up and off early on Day 2 - it's instant noodles for breakfast each morning but no-one's complaining as they're warm and filling. We're straight into a climb on Day 2 which brings us to about 4,400m and after another two and a half hour's trekking we reach Camp 2. It's not yet midday and so we decide to march on to Camp 3 before nightfall, heading immediately in to what looks like an almost vertical climb behind Camp 2. In spite of freezing their nuts off the previous night, the kids are in great cheer and race up the slope leaving us, panting and gasping behind, cursing yet another false summit. The views are magnificent all around - 6 and 7 house pueblitos, and hardy cholitas herding llamas. No condors yet though.
The cooking's going pretty well too, though by the time we arrive at camp each night there's only about an hour of light in which to pitch the tent and get the stove working. By this stage we've chatted to our guide and convinced him that we're perfectly capable of finishing the trek in 4 days which means one less night in the cold for the kids and more food for everyone. On Day 3 we climb to the highest point on the trek, the 5,100m Sunchulli Pass. Slow going but no ill effects from the altitude. We'd slept at 4,700m the previous night but the kids managed to light a fire with llama dung so it made us sleep easier because it was fucking cold outside.
Day 4 begins with a scramble to a 4,900m Pass and ends with a gentle amble downhill into Pelechuco but not before we've had one wonderful condor sighting, soaring just below us as we trek. We say goodbye to the kids and they make their way all the way back to Curva - it'll take them a mere 2 days. Meanwhile in Pelechuco, weirdness abounds. Fuck it's grim. I once attended a Dylan Moran gig where he talked about Sligo and how there's a factory there where they manufacture despair. Well, now I've found where we export it to. Two thirds of the adult male population are pleasantly pissed, moving obliviously through the mist which descends an hour after our arrival and which never lifts. Originally we were to spend the night here but mercifully there's a bus back to La Paz at 7pm. Only 7 hours to kill here then. An hour of this is spent watching a less than merry troupe of schoolkids marching into the village plaza rehearsing for an anniversary celebration - perhaps someone once escaped from here and they're marking the occasion. The kids are armed with drums and - frighteningly - pan pipes, easily the most evil musical invention in the history of man. Pan pipes were not made out of love, but revenge.

La Paz

2011-07-25T05:24:00.000-07:00

La Paz fairly takes the breath away and it’s not down to the fact that I’ve walked 10km through a blockade carrying 20kg+ of net backpack weight with me. Nor is it down to the fact that it’s at a jarring altitude of some 3,600m. No, it’s the city’s setting which causes a sharp intake of breath - houses everywhere dotted on the hills surrounding the city like hundreds and thousands sprinkled on a trifle. The city's altitude actually stretches from about 3,200m at its lowest (all the richer folk of the city live here as the air's better) to over 4,000m encompassing the city of El Alto ('The Heights'), home to most of Bolivia's poorer indigenous population, predominantly Aymaras.
It seems like the last place you’d choose to build a city of just over 800,000 people but here it is. Whilst you're more likely to see well-heeled fashionistas strolling the streets of Santiago than a member of the indigenous population of Chile, La Paz is a complete reversal. Bowler-hatted cholitas are legion, sitting by each and every street side selling everything for almost nothing. The streets are clogged with micros (minibuses), their windscreens emblazoned with glittered signs declaring “Jesús es mi pastor”. On the day I get to La Paz, the city is gearing up for their Independence Day celebrations on July 16th. So keen are they for the party to begin, they seem to collectively decide “Fuck it, let’s celebrate now” and so they start on the evening of July 15th instead and debauch themselves in a way that makes Saint Paddy’s Day seem the equivalent of a bunch of teenagers knackering some alcopops. Walking through the streets on this evening, it’s barely exaggerating things to say that everyone’s smashed on a delicious but dangerous liqueur that looks like Bailey's and comes from a blender. There are long tables dragged onto the streets for the sole purpose of downing glasses of the aforementioned brew - as if the altitude itself wouldn't give enough cause for headache.
But I’m not here to party, I’m here to trek and La Paz has innumerable top quality treks in the mountain ranges a stone’s throw (well, if Fionn McCumhaill threw a stone, say) from the city. Of course there are countless agencies promising to whisk you away and ensure you a ravishing time as you lose your Andean virginity but in the end, I decide to go on a 5 day/4 night trek in the Apolobamba region from the villages of Curva to Pelechuco. It’s a trek which features some 5,000m+ passes, many traditional villages, few other trekkers, potential condor sightings and, well, it’s the Andes isn’t it? What could possibly go wrong?

Back to Bolivia, blockades, bad movies and buses

2011-07-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Once in a lifetime trips out of the way, it’s time for more mundane matters such as negotiating the near 2,000km journey from Santiago north to La Paz via Arica. Bus journeys in Chile are a pleasure though, and I travel north with Pullman buses, and enjoy their idiosyncratic selection of movies ranging from a modern take on The Exorcist to the second half of Schindler’s List. The journey to Arica takes 30 hours but it passes in a blur of the aforementioned movies and endless quantities of saccharine heavy snacks. It’s never good to make snap judgements on cities or towns that you spend a mere two hours in whilst awaiting a connecting bus, but I specialise in snap judgements and so, based on this, Arica is a shithole. To me it’s like Blackpool on downers, all ugly seafront views and putrid ocean smells. The bus station also doubles as the meeting point for the city’s many panhandlers hustling you to change currency, buy weed or buy ludicrously overpriced bus tickets to La Paz. The fact that this is Chile means that ridiculously overpriced tickets are a given anyway and two hours after the 30 hour ride from Santiago, I’m off on the 9 hour journey back to Bolivia.
Apart from the fact that returning to Bolivia from Chile means that I automatically become relatively wealthy once more, it’s great to be back here again for many reasons. I’m returning to Bolivia and La Paz in order to trek and there are an abundance of trails in and around the city. But, this being Bolivia, getting there is the hardest part. What I haven’t made mention of as yet is Bolivia’s penchant for blockades. As Bolivian an experience as eating a salteña, you haven’t fully experienced life as it is in Bolivia unless you’ve sat in one of their many blockades. Simply put, when Bolivians get pissed off about something - and it’s almost always with the government - they simply decide to close off the roads, resulting in traffic chaos. So it is, one hour’s drive from La Paz our bus driver announces that there’s a blockade and what he wants from us more than anything is patience. I, in return, for a split second want to be back in blockade free Chile. His announcement is met with a collective shrug of the shoulders from the passengers - this is Bolivia after all, so this is an almost daily occurrence. The only frustration on show is when the driver shuts down the DVD - featuring Adam Sandler preparing for a prisoners vs guards footie match - in order to save battery power. For my part, I feel like applauding him but we might be here for a while so I sit quietly.
And we are there for a while. The hours pass and people start to walk towards the city which, we’re informed, is still 50km away. As it turns out, we spend the night on the bus about 4,000m up and it’s unsurprisingly Arctic. By the next morning, I too decide to make a move on foot as there are whispers of the blockade lasting days instead of hours more. It’s a community blockade - yes, they’re pissed with the government - and there are several mini blockades of piles of rocks scattered across the motorway, each of them proudly flying the Bolivian flag. If the intent is to cause maximum disruption then it’s an overwhelming success as there are people from all walks of life flocking towards the city on foot, with nary a sign of disgruntlement. I try to do the same until, blinded by my day pack to the front, I almost do a somersault over an infirm dog in the middle of the road. As ever when these things happen, I feign a smile whilst aiming an internalised Tourette’s stream of invective at the half dead pooch.

To the Bellybutton Of The World

2011-07-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Rapa Nui. Isla Pascua. The Navel Of The World. Easter Island. How many names can a place have? Easily the most remote spot of my trip - it's claimed that Easter Island is the most remote inhabited island in the world and it feels every bit of it. The island is 3,500km west of Chile which translates as 4 and a half hours in a plane. Though technically speaking it's part of Chile, it's more Polynesian than South American. Called 'Easter Island' due to the fact that it was 'discovered' on Easter Sunday back in 1722, the island is tiny - 25km in length and just over 12km in width at its widest point. It's eminently possible to walk the length and breadth of the island and this is what I do in my 6 days here.
If you've heard of Easter Island it's most likely because you've seen photos of those magnificent statues which litter the island. And that's why I'm here - to see as many of the maois as possible and to learn a lot more about their history. Turns out that the maois are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the history of the place and that this is a place with many stories to tell - there are caves, ahu, petroglyphs and a long tradition of wood carving. Of course the locals are only too happy to tell you that story, if only you could understand them. This may be Easter Island but it’s still part of Chile and attempting to converse with the locals means labouring under the same fog of incomprehension as you would with their counterparts on the mainland. The friendliness of the locals however is undeniable. They’re thrilled that someone has spent so much money - and it costs a hefty whack to get here - to come to their remote part of the world. All of my explorations on the island take place on foot but I lost count of the number of lifts I was offered to various historic sites. It appears that the recession is hitting hard here as many of the locals recounted tales of empty hotels and deserted restaurants.
That said, I thought that Chile was expensive, but it was a mere cornershop in comparison to the Harrod's that is Easter Island. You'll pay the same for a tomato here as you would a truffle. If you wanted a truffle that is. It is frighteningly expensive and so the only way to survive here is to bring supplies from the mainland and self-cater. I’ve also decided to camp here as, though it’s winter, the temperature rarely drops below 16 degrees at night, warm enough for the Irishman in me to want to run screaming to the beach, prostrating myself under the sun. Or the moon for that matter.
On arrival at midday on Day 1, I can’t wait to set off exploring in search of maois, and they’re easy to find. The first I see under an hour’s walk from the only settlement on the island, the town of Hanga Roa. They’re smaller than I’d imagined - varying from about 4 to 8m in height - and all are in various stages of disrepair. In fact many of them are exhibiting clear signs of cosmetic makeovers - The Swan for maois as it were. The island’s biggest draw, Ahu Tongariki, features 15 maois of various dimensions standing, their backs set to the ocean. Clearly a bad idea as back in 1960, in the aftermath of an earthquake, a tsunami skittled them. In 1992 they were placed back upon their original pedestal or ahu with the help of the Japanese.
Never thought that I'd ever write anything like this, but the island hums with an unseen energy. I feel unclean having written that but it's as indescribable as it is undeniable. 6 days here barely scratch the surface of what the island has to offer but it's a once in a lifetime trip and so I try and see as much as I can in that time. Most fascinating of all on the island is the quarry of Rano Raraku, once a volcano, from where the maois were chiseled. Each maoi took a team of 5 or 6 men a year to complete and the scale of the place is staggering. Many of the maois never made it from this 'factory' and lie there, many of them with the head only visible above the earth - it's completely surreal. Like the pyramids at Giza, much mystery surrounds the erection of the maois at various sites around the island. Ultimately though it's unimportant as just gazing at these monoliths with the sun setting behind is worth all of the time, energy and expense of getting here.

Valparaiso & Santiago

2011-07-10T15:11:00.001-07:00

Back to suburbia then, but not before a sobering reminder of just how fucking long Chile is by way of a 24 hour bus ride from San Pedro to Valparaiso. The bus ride, however, despite my misgivings due to the distance, was a joy. Roomy seats, perfectly heated during the cold winter night, a sane driver who’s forbidden to drive for more than 5 hours and occasional snack bags handed out during the journey make it feel more like a train journey. There’s also a little clock where you can see the speed of the bus and, if you notice the driver is travelling above the 100km/h limit, you’re helpfully provided with his name and driver number on the same screen and encouraged to rat on him. Bizarre. Lacking a suitable rail infrastructure - now, if they’d been colonised by the Brits - Chile takes the bus industry very seriously indeed. The landscape is bleak yet absolutely beautiful, particularly by the light of the late evening sun. It’s the kind of setting where my mind can easily imagine Bono dragging a grumbling U2 behind him saying “Lads, heads up, there has to be a fucking Joshua Tree here somewhere.”
24 hours later, nary a Joshua Tree in sight and I’m in the country’s second city. Valparaiso is wonderful, managing simultaneously to be Chile’s capital of culture and menace. The city is a living, breathing art gallery - urban art gallery that is. There's clearly something in the water here as there's scarcely a wall unadorned with some type of graffiti. Then there are the hundreds of multi-coloured houses, piled high as far as the eye can see like some poorly assembled Lego set. They’re built on hills in a seemingly haphazard fashion, piled atop one another high into the hills which pour down into the Pacific. It isn’t a pretty city but it has character in spades. On arrival, the lady at the hostal seems to spend as much time telling me where not to go at night than she does telling me where to go during the day. The graffiti, though, takes the breath away - it’s everywhere and it’s impeccable. Banksy could well be mayor here.
Santiago is a mere two hours away and on the day I’m due to go there I have to wade my way through protesting students, riot police and not a little tear gas. The students are up in arms in Chile because the high cost of university education renders it impossible for many of them to pursue further education. They’ve been on strike for the past 2 months but the government stubbornly refuses to buckle. The protest I witnessed was utterly peaceful, wonderfully well organised yet still ended with police intervention. Democracies eh?
Santiago lacks the rough edges of Valparaiso, or so it seems in the three days I spend there, but it’s the most European city I’ve seen to date in South America. Bolivian cities are too poor to be European, San Pedro is too shit to be European, Valparaiso is too cool to be European, so it’s left to Santiago and it does it effortlessly well. Typing this now, I’m trying to think of an angle to take on Santiago, or to recount something interesting or unusual that happened there, but my mind’s a blank. It’s just another city; a big, elegant and ultra-modern city for sure, but not one that will live long in the memory.
One thing that should be noted about Chile, however, is the impenetrability of the language they speak. Yes, it’s Spanish, but in name only. It’s slurred, incoherent and completely ignores the pronunciation of certain letters, rendering it impossible to understand even the most basic responses. It’s frustrating, sure, especially coming so soon after the Bolivian drawl which was slow enough to allow you to take out your dictionary mid-sentence to figure out what they were saying.

San Pedro De Atacama

2011-07-10T15:01:00.001-07:00

Moving on from Salar De Uyuni you’re left with that feeling you have when your hand scrambles around the box of Quality Streets late on Christmas Day, hoping to pull out a purple one but knowing that you’re probably going to snare a Turkish delight instead. Which probably does San Pedro De Atacama no justice whatsoever, but it's probably not far from the truth. There’s trouble getting here in the first place as we’re informed that our original route across the border is closed due to heavy snowfall. Javier, without pissing and moaning in the slightest, takes it upon himself to drive us to the border further north at Avaroa, convenient for us but ensuring a full day’s driving for him in a circuitous route back to Tupiza. Hugs and a heavy tip are exchanged as we wave goodbye at the Chilean border.
And the second we’re in Chile, everything’s different - impressive roads, not so impressive bus drivers, well-heeled folk strolling the streets with an insouciance absent in Bolivia and extortionate prices. Jesus wept. In short, take any item you’d find in Bolivia and in order to figure out the equivalent Chilean price, simply multiply it by four. Or five. Initially it’s impossible to get used to. After a month of eating copious amounts of food for absolutely nothing, it’s looking like the next three weeks will work in reverse. And the early signs are that it doesn’t look as if chicken is the staple food of the nation either which is nice, if you’re a vegetarian and you've just come from a month in Bolivia. Or a chicken of course.
The town of San Pedro De Atacama is built within an oasis - we’re up close and personal with the Atacama in these parts and the town was established by cattle herders driving their herds across the Andes. If they were to know what it would become they probably wouldn’t have been arsed. Though its setting is flawless - all volcanic lunar landscapes and snow-capped volcanoes - San Pedro itself is an IKEAn flat-pack town that’s been hastily assembled to cater to the hordes of tourists there to gorge themselves on the surreal and psychedelic landscape. On arrival by twilight, it seems as if the place is populated solely by the type of people who I imagine would attend the Burning Man festival, and who tuck the kids into bed before wandering off into the desert to drop some LSD and gaze at the skies. It’s a retirement home for dropouts from the Jim Rose circus. Yes, I’m a professional cynic but my heart is in it.
The purpose of San Pedro today, ironically, is to help people spend as little time there as possible which suits me fine. There are hiking trails aplenty nearby but if you wish to climb some of the 6,000m plus volcanoes in the vicinity you’ll have to join a group of about 25, be dropped off just below the summit, scale the 500m or so to the surface, have a quick lunch with your new friends and come back down again. Jesus, I hated San Pedro. I did spend one fantastic day though at the neighbouring lunar wonderland of Valle De La Luna. If apes bearing weapons, speaking English and sporting Star Trek like uniforms were to descend from the heights, I wouldn’t be slightly surprised - this is classic Planet of the Apes territory. I rent a bike for the day and cycle deep into the heart of it all. The furthest point from the entrance to the park is some 12km in at a rock formation called ‘Las Tres Marias’ and it’s there that my tyre decides to explode spectacularly. In short, this leaves me fucked and facing an 12km hike just to get to the entrance and a further 5km hike to San Pedro. But I’m not really expecting to have to walk all the way there - there’ll surely be several offers of lifts from friendly Chileanos seeing a guy down on his luck. With each passing car - and there were many - my faith in Chilean generosity fades. I meet the buses ferrying the tourist hordes eager to see the sun set in the park and I eat their dust as they ferry them back to San Pedro once more, leaving me and my bike limping home back into San Pedro long after darkness. It’s time to move south.

The Salar De Uyuni

2011-06-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

In a country blessed with an abundance of natural beauty, Bolivia’s southwest walks away with the plaudits for the most beautiful region in the country. The Salar De Uyuni which is the stellar attraction here is found in Bolivia's Altiplano region, a high plateau formed by uplift of the Andes mountains. (Thanks Wikipedia.) This entire region looks like a landscape that‘s been photoshopped in advance before you've taken your camera out of your pocket. Photographs can only diminish its beauty. It’s a wishlist of nature’s most stunning natural occurrences; volcanoes both active and dormant, impossible rock formations, spurting geysers, snow-capped peaks, multi-coloured lakes dotted with shocking pink flamingos, traditional Aymara rituals and celebrations, the glorious Salar De Uyuni, a cemetery for trains and overly excited camera toting Germans determined to get the best shot at your expense. Phew.
Getting there is easy but choosing the right company to do the trip with is the tricky part. There's little to choose between the tour companies with regard to price but it’s the service factor where your choice can leave you either helpless and shivering beside a rusted 4WD some 4,000m up or being driven around in comfort in a heated jeep by a driver/guide who knows where to lose the crowds. In the end I go with Tupiza Tours and on the morning of Day 1, our group (there’s a maximum of 5 per group) meet with Javier, our driver, and Celia, our chef and pile into the 4WD which will get us through the rugged landscape over the coming days. I’ve opted for 4 days and 3 nights, at the end of which I’ll be transferred to San Pedro De Atacama in Chile.
Day 1 is easily the least compelling of our 4 days and yet still offers up some incredible views as we make our way slowly, climbing all the way to the city of Uyuni. We pass by the scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s last hold-up and soon after, they met their maker in a neighbouring village. As the light drains from the day we make our last stop at Uyuni’s train cemetery, an oddly beautiful place where decades old steam engines lie to rust out their last days. We spend the night in a nowhere village, a tantalising 5km from the Salar.
Day 2 begins before sunrise and Javier drives us onto the Salar just in time for sunrise. As we make our way in the darkness we can already see the blinding whiteness of the Salar outside. At 10,500 sq km in area, finding a spot to ourselves is easy. Once the sun rises, the magnitude of the place becomes apparent but nothing prepares you for just how beautiful it is. Two colours dominate - the blinding white of the Salar with its hexagonal shaped salt crystal formations stretching as far as the eye can see where it meets the softer blue of the sky. Javier, it turns out, is not only our driver but also specialises in capturing those cheesy tourist photo moments on the Salar. His props include a toothbrush, cracked egg shells and us. Our two friends from Hong Kong willingly accede to each and every one of Javier’s photo requests.
I’m pretty certain that the Salar De Uyuni is the most beautiful place I’ve ever visited. Right in the heart of it there’s the Isla Del Pescado, home to gigantic cactii, incredible views of the Salar but otherwise uninhabited. In the early morning light the place is awash with epic vistas in all directions. Our luck’s in too as on the day we arrive on the day that the Aymara people are on the island’s highest point celebrating their New Year. As we make our way to the peak there’s a group of about 60 gathered together, two llamas lying to the side their throats cut offered up as a sacrifice. There’s no tiring of the views of the Salar even after 5 or 6 hours driving and stopping, emptying out of the jeep to take the same photos over and over again. Everything after this is bound to be an anti-climax.
Except it isn’t. Day 3 brings us higher, above the 4,000m mark to a region where still active volcanoes smoke and where the lava from previous eruptions has hardened into comically shaped rock formations. None moreso than the Arbole De Piedra - a tree shaped rock seen above - which is just one of several remnants of past volcanic eruptions combined with the effects of the elements this high up. From there we drive across the treeless landscape making our way to the Laguna Colorado but not before our first encounter with some of the region’s flamingos on one of the many other lagunas which litter the place. On arrival there’s a flock of about 15 but by the time we leave there are maybe 50 or more, tantalisingly out of reach for a decent photo on a shit camera.
Our last stop of the day is also the most breathtaking - the Laguna Colorado. It isn’t the size which beggars belief but the colour - huge bright red patches caused by the sun’s reflection on the algae which infest the place. It too is peppered with flamingos, the whole place a photographer’s wet dream. Normally picking the 5 photos Google allow me to use above each post is pretty straightforward but for this one I could have included 50. I think I took almost 200 photos on Day 2 and am finding it impossible to reduce that number. Not sure anything can top these 3 days for natural beauty.

Getting high in Potosí

2011-06-24T18:03:00.001-07:00

And so my travels have come to something of a sprint finish. With notions of dipping my toe into the waters of Chile, Peru and Ecuador before I depart for home, travelling has begun in earnest once more and having spent two days exploring Sucre, Potosí is next on the list. It’s a remarkable city in that it’s found at a lung-bursting 4,070m above sea level, quite a jump from Sucre’s more bearable 2,700m. From now on in Bolivia it’s all going to be about getting high. Potosí is probably most famous for its co-operative mine in which miners work in Victorian-era conditions; its gnarly ladders, unventilated shafts and wildly fluctuating temperatures adding up to a miserable existence to the hundreds who try to make a living there. There’s a tour to the mines which is aggressively sold but which I steer clear of mostly to avoid coming across as a day-tripping western coming to mix it amongst the filthy masses struggling daily to make a living in life-threatening conditions. The fact that I’m claustrophobic and afraid of the dark has absolutely nothing to do with. Whatsoever.
Besides, there’s much to see and do in and around Potosí. The city itself is as undersold as the miners’ tour is oversold. In common with Sucre it has an old world charm, a beautiful, if gaudy, central plaza and some of Bolivia’s finest budget accommodation in refurbished colonial-era houses. There’s also some wonderful trekking in the vicinity so I trek up to the Lagunas de Kari Kari, in themselves unspectacular, but set amongst the rolling hills above the city and offering perfect views of the urban sprawl below. The trek also gives me my first close encounter with llamas. Dublin zoo probably has some llamas but in common with most of the animals there, they were probably ‘asleep’ on the day I visited as a youngster. Llamas are weird, having all the characteristics necessary to be a sheep but it’s that downright weird fucking neck which makes them stand out. I take some photos, self-consciously peering over my shoulder as I do for fear that some locals will laugh at me for taking snaps of what are, after all, the South American equivalent of sheep.
During my time in Potosí I was also encouraged by none other than Hugo, my Spanish teacher, to visit the city’s National Mint museum which was reason enough to give it a miss but I decided to check it out regardless. There’s a tour in English which is ideal because unless our guide wants to repeat instructions about how to order a hotel room or how to buy a kilo of oranges in Spanish during the course of the hour the tour lasts then I’d be completely lost. She turns out to be Bolivia’s most cantankerous woman. Having shown us a display featuring some of Bolivia’s coins from the past and having encouraged us to ask questions if we had any, I meekly enquire as to why - as she previously had alluded to - Bolivia doesn’t mint its own coins any more, she curtly responds “Because it’s cheaper in Chile.” Right. Thanks for that.

To Sucre

2011-06-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

There’s official time and there’s Bolivian time. If, for example, you’re told that a bus journey will take 14 hours, you can safely assume that this means 18. Leaving Santa Cruz behind to move to Sucre, I’m informed that the overnight bus will be in Sucre (still the constitutional capital of Bolivia) by 7am so I anticipate a noon arrival. It’s a 17 hour journey and within an hour of being on the bus I’m being squeezed from the front and behind for good measure - the prick sitting in front of me has already reclined his seat fully and there’s a kid sitting on his Dad’s lap behind me and is kicking my seat with monotonous regularity. There’s not much that you can do on a 17 hour bus journey but grin and bear it. There are roughly three stages to a bus journey like this;
1. Stage I - The ‘Wow, it feels wonderful to be on the road again, getting the chance to see the countryside pass me by and seeing the locals go about their business on the charming villages which litter the route’ stage.
2. Stage II - The ‘Christ, I’ve only been on the bus for 7 hours, I can’t sleep even though everybody on the bus seems to be in a deep slumber except for the child behind me who is still kicking the back of my seat with the aforementioned monotonous regularity and when do we get to stop to take a piss?’ stage.
3. Stage III - The ‘Only 5am in the fucking morning - wasn’t it 4.30am three hours ago - driving through yet another tedious fucking village, 7 hours from our destination, neck and back no longer on speaking terms, unsure of whether I’d rather eat or vomit’ stage.
All of this and a road surface which must surely have been used for quality control testing of landmines mean that by the time I get to Sucre (not long before noon strangely enough), all I want to do is leave again. But Sucre is wonderful, a beautiful old city with magnificent colonial buildings, dazzling whitewashed facades and a little bit of history around every corner. In common with most Bolivian cities it also has a wonderful central plaza where the young and the beautiful sit around (and me too) eating ice-cream and sipping on freshly squeezed orange juice. There’s a fantastic market where you can sit and drink freshly squeezed juices for the day if you so wish.
Now that I’ve left the security of Santa Cruz, it’s sink or swim time with my Spanish. On arrival in Sucre, tired and grumpy I make my way to the hotel and will have to utter my first official words in Spanish without having someone there behind me to clarify that what I’ve just said was indeed Spanish. I’ve even visualised the scene a few times, strolling into the foyer, casually enquiring; “Tienen habitaciones libres para dos noches?” However, by the time I get there not even I understand what comes out of my mouth, yet somehow I’m understood and I leave the reception, key in hand feeling like the road to fluency will be a short one. I almost feel like going back to reception and engaging the receptionist in a breezy conversation but, hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Mañana, quizá mañana.

Lo Siento Pero No Hablo Espanol

2011-06-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

I have two and a half months of travelling left and all of that time will be spent in South America and at this stage I’m sick of surviving on a few words here and there in the local language. The aim is to develop my non-existent Spanish skills to a level beyond the usual ability to ask for a room or order some food. Of course I don’t expect to be able to discuss Aristotelian philosophy once August rolls around but to have developed some functional conversation skills should be achievable. So it was that decided to spend two weeks in Santa Cruz attending a language school where I would attend lessons for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. My teacher was Hugo whose motto, which he endlessly and irritatingly repeated, was “To love all and to serve all.” As part of this immersion in all things Spanish I spent two weeks living with a Spanish family, sharing meals with them and watching an unending stream of Mexican telenovellas.
Things started pretty encouragingly when Hugo had written the aims and objectives of the two week course on the board as I arrived on Day 1. Initially my enthusiasm was boundless and the first couple of days began with an introduction to the verbs in all their various forms. By Day 3 though it started to becomes clear that the aims and objectives of Day 1 were quickly forgotten and instead we’d spent relentlessly tedious hours reading over verbs and random articles in magazines that I couldn’t understand. I was at the Sesame Street stage of Spanish and Hugo was half expecting me to translate Ulysses. I can barely read the fucking thing in English. So it continued for the rest of the week. I’d explain my very basic language needs, Hugo would acknowledge them and then completely ignore them. His motto was rapidly becoming “To love all and to teach fuck all.”
Meanwhile over with the family, things were progressing pretty smoothly. I had my own room and three meals a day which offered the best chance of interaction with the family. Truth is that I couldn’t understand a word of what the mother or father were saying but fortunately their daughter understood that I was patently hopeless when it came to Spanish and spoke to me like I was Forrest Gump. This left things awkward at mealtimes as the family spoke less because there was a stranger in their midst and I spoke little because I didn’t know how to. Many times I’d begin a sentence only to be half way through and realise that I didn’t have the words to finish it. Everyone would stare, waiting to hear what I had to say but I’d give up and reach for the spoon and shovel some soup into my mouth. As the two weeks passed though I did develop the ability to sprinkle some banal sentences throughout mealtimes which made it seem like I was making an effort. In typical Irish fashion though, many of these were about the weather.
Back in the classroom with Hugo things didn’t improve. Hugo is from the school of teachers who believe that once something unknown is written down it automatically becomes known. The few things I felt that I had understood previously - use of direct and indirect objects for one - Hugo managed to unravel completely. We’d spend an hour each day watching a film in Spanish which would have been fine if there were some activities based on the film but no. So it was that I had to sit through ‘Love In The Time Of Cholera’ with Spanish subtitles. If you’ve seen the film you’ll feel my pain. Ironically enough, Spanish seems to be a relatively straightforward language to learn. Here’s a pretty good example of what I mean. Opening the English-Spanish dictionary under S, here’s five consecutive words and their Spanish translation;
soccer - futbol
sociable - sociable
social - social
socialism - socialismo
society - sociedad
At one stage I even looked up the translation of ‘bestseller’ to find the word ‘bestseller’. Magic. Who could not love a language like this? Who could not teach a language like this? Well, Hugo for one. By the end of the course, by accident or design I’ve managed to develop the ability to converse at a very basic level and have two more months left to work on that. I just hope Bolivians like to talk about the weather.

To South America

2011-06-14T19:24:00.003-07:00

Vegetarians, be afraid. Be very afraid. Welcome to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, the most carnivorous of all the cities I’ve visited to date on this trip. To be honest, I wasn’t aware of Santa Cruz’s existence until I found a cheap flight here from Frankfurt. It’s rarely mentioned in the same breath as Bolivia’s other urban heavy hitters such as La Paz, Sucre and Cochabamba and it‘s easy to see why. It’s quite the underwhelming place and under normal circumstances it would serve as an urban doormat, welcoming me to the country before I made my way to Bolivia‘s other urban jewels. I’m here for two weeks though and for one reason only - to learn Spanish. Having travelled through West Africa for 2 months and having added approximately 5 words of French to my vocabulary, I’ve decided that I’m sick of struggling with the local language and so I’m going back to school.
I find it impossible to write about my initial experience here in Bolivia without making reference to food. The streets of Santa Cruz are lined with street vendors. You can eat anything you want here, as long as it contains chicken in one of its multitudinous forms, and chips. Santa Cruz is the embodiment of the fat guy who says “I don’t have a problem with my weight. I eat, I get fatter. No problem.” The only living thing more worried than a vegetarian here in Santa Cruz is a chicken. If I was playing a word association game and the words Santa Cruz were uttered, my immediate response would be ‘CHICKEN’. Roasted. Broasted. Fried. Smoked. Grilled. Baked. Barbequed. Shit, if you wanted your chicken dressed in a tutu and smoking jacket, I‘m sure that even that wouldn‘t be a problem. As long as you ordered it with fries of course. I don’t know what the statistics are with regard to coronary disease in Bolivia but if Santa Cruz is anything to go by then I’m pretty certain that it’s one area in which Bolivia is a world leader.
I spend two weeks in one of Santa Cruz’s outlying neighbourhoods and it gives me a good chance to see life here up close. On my first day in the neighbourhood, wandering in search of a bottle of mineral water, I pass by shop after shop with metal bars across the entrances and so I walk on assuming they’re closed. It turns out that they’re not - the bars are in place as a type of security blanket for the shopkeepers, fearful of armed robbery. It takes some getting used to though, shouting your order in through the bars and waiting for it to be passed through the little hatch. It all leaves me feeling like saying “A Mars, a bottle of Coke and my conjugal rights please. Gracias.”
The bars are a symbol of the fear which is whipped up and served thick (with chicken and fries probably) on a daily basis by the endless number of lowest common denominator tabloid news programmes which are only outnumbered by the deluge of telenovelas from Mexico (and you thought The Young And The Restless was overcooked). It’s a wonder some folk leave their homes at all given what they witness on the likes of Uno, to name but one station. Genocide, pestilence, sexual assault, global warming, rioting - and all of this happening in the local supermarket - all form part of a daily dose of an around the clock onslaught of intimidation and fear. It’s like Eastenders, only real. Uno seems to have a team of reporters whose job it is not to seek out stories in the various neighbourhoods of Santa Cruz but to whip the locals into a frenzy which would explain how they never fail to be there on time to see a local gangster have his face rearranged by a kicking and spitting army of seething mujeres.

The Facts and Figures of West Africa

2011-05-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Number of countries visited: 6
Number of countries visited for under 24 hours but which have still been included in the above: 1
Number of meals eaten without looking at the food and swallowed without chewing: 240
Number of times “Only fucking rice again” muttered at meal times: 317
Number of snakes seen: 0
Number of hippos seen: 0
Number of any type of wildlife seen that might set the pulse racing: 0
Number of goats seen: 345,789,897,009,456,907,345
Irritating Rastas fended off: 29
Irritating Rastas fended off without recourse to ‘Would you just fuck off?’: 0
Official ticking offs from authorities: 2
Number of bribes asked for by border officials: 0
Number of mangoes eaten: Refer to ‘number of goats seen’
Words added to personal French vocabulary: 0
Most people squeezed into a sept-place: 14
Hours waited for a supposed trip on the Niger: 8
Number of trips taken on the Niger: 0
Number of saints in Timbuktu: 333
Number of meals eaten in Timbuktu that didn’t contain sand: 0
Reasons for a return visit to Timbuktu: 0
Number of guides encountered who wanted me to teach them gangster lingo: 1
And the ‘Our Father‘: 1
Oh, and ‘Hey Jude’ too: 1
Number of times hearing the ‘Our Father’ thereafter: 105
Number of farmyard animals that shat on me on public transport: 1
For everything else there’s Mastercard. Except there’s not, because Mastercard is fucking useless in West Africa.

The Language Barrier

2011-05-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

I’m in Gaoua now, right in the heart of Lobi country and within spitting distance of the borders of both Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana. It’s essential here to secure the services of a guide to explain the esoteric customs and traditions of the Lobi people in the surrounding villages. Trouble is that there are no English speaking guides here and so I‘m compelled to go with a French speaking guide and hope that I can make some sense of what I‘m being told. Oral communication, when you think about it, is as much about interpreting signs and understanding gestures as it is the physical act of talking and listening. Imagine for a moment that you’re speaking to a person from a different country and they’re using a language you don’t understand. Well, what you do understand is that language is about taking turns, giving and taking and, ultimately, understanding. So if you listen to someone from another country speak and they stop speaking then you’ll know it’s likely that either;
(a) they’ve just told you something and, probably,
(b) they’re waiting for you to respond in some way.
But today as my guide spoke I realised how, even with the most embarrassingly poor French vocabulary after two months spent in French speaking countries, most words that we use are window dressing i.e. I could understand almost completely what he was saying by throwing a mental lasso around the few words I did understand and use some common sense to figure out from his gestures and intonation what it was he was speaking about. It was an experience akin to watching a Latin American soap opera. Or Fair City. You don’t understand the language but you can figure things out pretty well.
Now when it comes to speaking the language, that’s an entirely different matter. No doubt my comprehension of the language has improved in the past two months but I’m still stuck in first gear when it comes to developing a conversation and it’s frustrating for all parties. I’ve generally avoided conversations with the natives because once my limited reserves of pidgin French have been used, I’m marooned. To compensate for my vocabulary deficit I’ve discovered a new technique which is completely useless but helps me feel a little more eloquent. When I don’t know the French for a word I simply use the English word, dress it up in a haughty French accent and continue unperturbed as if nothing unusual has happened. I’ll even attach an ‘un’ or ‘une’ to each word I’ve made up just to make it seem more authentic to me and make it sound even more casual. Perfect and it‘ll work well in South America too, simply by replacing ‘le‘ with ‘el‘. Useless for comprehension of course but it gives me the impression that I’m conversing like a native speaker. In turn it gives the native speaker the impression that they’re conversing with the village idiot. Take these two sentences by way of example;
“Pardon, il-y-a un stat-eee-on de petreule ici?”
“Merci beaucuop pour votre hos-pee-tal-ee-tay.”
I know it's stupid, the person who hears it definitely knows it's stupid but everyone's too polite to say that they've noticed anything.
When I’m listening to someone speak, rather than give the impression that I don’t understand them, I’ve learned how to buy time in any conversation. I've decided that I'm better off lying than stopping a conversation every two minutes saying that I don't understand. Whoever said that honesty is the best policy spoke French fluently. It might be a small word but ‘oui’ has become my best friend, the glue that holds my conversations together. There are many different ways of using ‘oui’ to prolong a conversation. To begin with you need to put several ‘ouis’ together - ’Ah, oui, oui, oui, oui, oui’ usually works well - and from there it all depends on your tone of voice. There are the profound ‘ouis’ uttered with a straight face and a nodding head when you think you’ve been told something of great historical relevance or of philosophical importance, the knowing ‘ouis’ said almost in a giggle when the speaker ends his sentence with a smile or the quick fire ‘ouis’ scattered throughout somebody’s sentence which, though you’re completely lost, the aim is that if you say ‘oui’ often enough, it might not be completely obvious to them and reduce the chances of you needing to respond when they‘ve finished speaking. There are questioning ‘ouis’, uttered with a tilt of the head and a furrowed brow, long winded ‘ouuuiiiiis’ which signify agreement and are accompanied by a knowing smile. By now, you get the point.
Finally, like the Guy Pearce character from Memento, I live exclusively in the present tense when I’m speaking French. I’ve long since forgotten the construction of the past and future tenses, which are pretty important in any language, but I camp myself stubbornly in the present tense, as if what I’ve already done is irrelevant and as if I couldn’t care less what I’m going to do, so why bother discussing it.

Chickenshit

2011-05-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

There are many things which can go awry when using local transport to get from place to place in West Africa. Ultimately, though, it’s the only way to go because of the fact that you’re mixing with the locals and it’s the best way to view West Africa at ground level. Christ, imagine driving from Mopti to Timbuktu without disembarking covered in red dust from head to toe. Well, that would mean that you were just there to visit Timbuktu and that would be stupid, wouldn’t it? Anyway, I digress. If it’s comfort, air-con, breathing space, odourless bodies and animal free environments that you’re after then local transport is not for you. And yet some of my best memories come from literally painful drives I took, for example, to the eastern Senegalese town of Tambacounda or the aforementioned endurance test to Timbuktu and back.
I actually thought that I’d finished with local transport when I arrived in Burkina as it’s top heavy with decent coaches to bring you to all parts of the countryside, but not so. The trip from Banfora to Gaoua takes some five to six hours along the reddest and dustiest track in all of Burkina. As ever on these trips as soon as someone is dropped off and you have momentary breathing space, there‘s another quickly along to fill the space vacated. A breathless woman arrived clutching a hen tied by its claws underneath her arm - this is the norm in these parts and many buses usually travel with at least a dozen tethered goats on the roof - in one swift moment she clambered on to the seat beside me, I happened to glance down at my shorts and notice a few dark brown splatters on my right leg, but before I could investigate any further she’d squeezed right in beside me.
‘The chicken's shat on me,’ I think to myself, quick on the uptake as ever, but as yet I’m unaware of just how much shit it is. As we’re driving along and before I’ve had a chance to investigate the damage further I’m wondering if it’s the Coke bottle effect - did she drop the fucking chicken as she ran to catch the bus and then, as she entered, it was all too much for the chicken who vigorously emptied her bowels having been shaken a little too much along the way. Before long the stench starts to spread throughout the bus but of course no-one has any idea where it’s coming from.
It’s only when I get out later to stretch my legs that I realise how bad it is - Jesus, what did that fucking chicken eat? If you took a cow turd, put it in a blender and squirted that on my leg then that would roughly correspond with what came out of the chicken‘s arse and landed on my thigh. Every time I got off the bus thereafter I self-consciously turned my body away from the bus hoping that no-one would notice. But there’s always at least one smart arse on every bus with eyes in the back of his head - this one unfortunately had the biggest mouth too. He sees the shit, points it out to me with a big stupid smile on his face - like, I hadn’t noticed it - and then the prick points it out to everyone else on the bus (I‘d have done the very same). Instant mirth ensues with everyone wondering if le blanc has shit himself. Is this what westerners do on long bus rides? I shrug my shoulders, pretending that I really couldn’t care less but the shit slowly oozing down my leg and my reddening features suggest otherwise - a clear case of protesting too much. The woman who owns the hen realises what’s happened, springs from the bus and spends five minutes wiping my shorts, me standing trying to look nonchalant with the eyes of the bus on us, the vehicle practically shaking with laughter by now.
A few stops later I get moved to the front of the bus - out of sympathy or due to complaints from the back it isn’t clear - beside the driver, and the guy who sits in next to me immediately produces a bottle of aftershave, sprays my shorts, sprays himself, the front of the bus and aims a few squirts into the back of the bus from where me and my shit sodden shorts have just emerged. Great, thanks. Happily, by the time we arrive in Gaoua there’s that much red dust on me and everyone else that the shit has become obscured. I’ll miss all of this of course.

Banfora and south west Burkina

2011-05-24T00:55:00.000-07:00

So then, just two weeks remaining in West Africa and there’s little point in racing around for one week in Burkina and the same for another week in Togo or Benin (tempting as it is) which would leave me understanding little of either. If you drew a diagonal line across Burkina from Gorom Gorom in the north east you’d cross Banfora in the very south west of the country. It’s a quiet place in the heart of some lush countryside and perfect to spend some days unwinding as there are three or four sights within easy reach. There’s also a hotel there with a dorm which, due to the fact that it’s low season, is ostensibly a single room with a different bed for me to sleep in each night that I stay there should I wish to do so. To explore the surrounding area I get myself on a scooter which is initially nerve-wracking as I haven’t sat on one since Vietnam. It isn’t difficult finding wheels especially when the guy who rents them follows me every millimetre of the 1.5km from the bus station to the hotel. Surprisingly I still haven’t worked out the French for ‘Fuck off’ but in this case I don’t think that it would have worked anyway.
Two of Banfora’s biggest attractions are the Karfiguéla waterfalls and the Domes de Fabedougou which sit conveniently side by side. There’s nothing convenient about getting to them though especially when the Lonely Planet directions there send you in completely the wrong direction leaving me to ask 20 people for directions - it was at least 20 - until I find what I’m looking for. The waterfalls are unspectacular as it’s the height of the dry season though you can easily see how stunning they might appear during the wet season. The beauty of the Domes however leave nothing to the imagination. The necessary geological terms elude me to describe them accurately so in layman‘s terms if you can imagine gigantic cow turds made of limestone scattered for miles around then you‘re almost there. Beautiful place.
Sindou Peaks however is where all the action is. On the day I visit I’ve got the place all to myself and I feel like a child who’s been left behind because they got the head count wrong at a play centre. Though the approach to the peaks is impressive it’s only once you clamber into the heart of the area that you appreciate how incredible the landscape is. There are peaks everywhere you look, many of them offering themselves up as challenging but achievable climbs and I spend three to four hours there walking around, giddily looking for the next scramble. I climb to one of the highest peaks around, enjoy a little picnic and ring my niece who’s worried she won’t get out on to the bouncy castle for her Communion day. You can walk for hours here deeper and deeper into the park area and climb for as long and as high as you wish. It’s a remarkable place. It is a 100km round trip there on the scooter - I’m standing as I type this - but Sindou, for me, is the jewel in Burkina’s crown.

Gorom Gorom

2011-05-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

One of the more remote outposts in a country filled with remote outposts is to the north east of Ouagadougou, to the town of Gorom Gorom deep in the heart of the Sahel. It’s a 6 hour bus ride to the town of Dori from Ouaga along a surprisingly good road and then a two hour wait for a minibus to fill to bring me further along a dirt road to Gorom Gorom. In spite of its abject poverty, Burkina has a phenomenal collection of bus companies to choose from - shit, one of them has air-con - all willing to bring you to the remotest parts of the country. In all of the countries that I’ve visited in West Africa to date, Burkina is by far the best served by public transport, not at all what I‘d expected. I am starting to miss the sept-place experience a little though.
The reason I’ve come this far is for Gorom Gorom’s famous Thursday market. These markets are an essential part of the lives of people in remote areas like this, offering them a chance to bring their produce from outlying villages and make enough money to buy whatever’s needed until the following week. It must be said though that what’s on sale is pretty disappointing - large amounts of plastic Chinese tat outnumber the traditional arts and crafts I’d hoped to see. The market though is a roll call for ethnic groups in this region, from the slightly sinister looking Tuareg males with their loose robes and prominent swords, to the Fulani herders with their conical hats to the Fulani women, famous for their beauty, bedecked in psychedelic dresses, their faces almost lost in the jewellery they wear. One of the best parts of the day is sitting and watching the traders arrive and depart from neighbouring villages on foot, moped, ass and cart and, for the Tuaregs, on camel back.
As with everywhere in Burkina Faso there are some pretty enduring images of poverty here. Eating becomes an almost uncomfortable experience as scores of ragged children lie in wait with their plastic buckets for anything you might leave for them when you’ve finished your meal. And there are children like this everywhere here, many of them AIDS orphans. Life expectancy in Burkina Faso is just over 51 and I’m tempted to believe that it’s below that here in the heart of The Sahel. There’s a running battle between the restaurant proprietors and the children, who stand wide-eyed and eager for an invitation to take what you don’t want to eat. I’ve never witnessed poverty on such a scale and I haven’t managed to finish a meal here yet, knowing that there are scores of hungry eyes waiting and watching.
There’s the constant dilemma - in my head at least - of whether or not to be taking photos here, feeling as if I’m just being the typically ignorant tourist taking pictures for the holiday slideshow at home - “Look, a poor black person” - whilst stepping across the beggars in the street and hoping the kids with their plastic buckets don‘t ruin the shot. I do feel as if there is something almost indecent about taking pictures of people mired in misery as many of these market traders and villagers are. That’s probably overstating it somewhat but, regardless, most of my images here are mental ones. There’s also the fact that the Fulani women in particular are fiercely reluctant to have their photo taken as a fellow Swiss-German traveller discovered much to her disappointment. I’ve long since stopped asking people if I can take their photo as I realise most of them are unwilling and those who oblige want payment.

Ouagadougou

2011-05-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

Ouagadougou. Wagga-doo-goo. Or quite simply ‘Ouaga’ as it’s commonly known. It sounds like what you'd end up with if you joined the name of a northern Queensland town to that of a Welsh village. Or a Cocteau Twins' B-side. Just brilliant. Anway, I’ve been here a week already and there are many things which separate Burkina from its West African counterparts. First off there’s the appalling poverty which is far more pronounced here than it had been in any of the other countries I’d visited. In spite of this, without any hesitation I’d say that the Burkinabé are the friendliest and most welcoming people of any country I've visited in West Africa. It’s overwhelming and humbling in equal measure. Remember that this is one the poorest nations in the world and yet I have been the recipient of countless offers of spontaneous generosity in my short time here. Most of these people earn less than $1 a day but they‘ll think nothing of buying you a sachet of water when you‘re sitting on the bus beside them. To put it into context, that’s about one eighteenth of the average daily wage here.
Because of the poverty, families tend to be of old Irish Catholic dimensions - the more children there are, the more workers there will be to provide for the family is the logic. Infant mortality rates are high though and under 25% of the population are literate. The children the many many children here are fascinated by the presence of a ‘blanc’ and are fearless in approaching me. Several times I have been walking down a back street, to hear children begin a chorus of ‘Tu vas ou?’, quickly followed by a child -usually the eldest, around 3 years old - rushing out to grab on to my finger as I walk past. This then sets in motion a blur of kids, each rushing out and all of them grabbing on to the 9 remaining fingers until their mother barks at them to stop hassling the foreigner. Either that or she’s told them not to bother, that he’s clearly a tightarse.
There’s also the honesty of the people. Very often in West Africa - Mali in particular - there’s an unofficial ’blanc’ tax which adds 10 or 20% to the price of your taxi, dinner or even a mango. Not so in Burkina Faso. Everything I buy is for the same price as the locals. In Mali, whenever I bought something and asked ’C’est combien?’, there was a discernible pause when you could see the person think ’How much can I add on and get away with here?’ Mali needs to get its shit together in terms of holding on to the few tourists it’s getting these days - Sarkozy, the pint sized fuckwit, certainly hasn’t helped things - and not milking them for everything they can, a bit like Ireland with the Americans, only the Americans have stopped coming in their droves now. Burkina is a much poorer country than Mali and the people are happy that you’re here so the emphasis is on welcoming you rather than ripping you off. Very refreshing and a credit to the Burkinabé.
Ouagadougou, in spite of its amusing name is, much like any other West African capital city, largely charmless. There’s little to see but it’s a hell of a lot more inviting than, say, Bamako or Dakar and certainly has a warmer atmosphere but, again, that‘s down to the people. It does have a strong tradition of sculpting and, surprisingly, film-making and it hosts one of Africa’s biggest film festivals - FESPACO - each year. A walk around Ouaga’s streets will involve several invitations to see an artist’s studio or workshop but there’s none of the hard sell encountered elsewhere. In many ways Burkina seems unique in West African terms and just one week in it’s rapidly becoming my favourite country in this part of the world.
Apparently there’s a curfew in operation in Ouaga at the moment from midnight to 6am, though not that you’d notice. Apparently there’s quite a bit of unrest here with the army and the police force both protesting because of their poor rates of pay. I spoke to a fellow traveller who on her first 3 days in the country wasn’t allowed out of her hotel once because the army had taken to the streets as a show of force and to demand higher pay. She described hearing explosions, breaking glass and sporadic gunfire - I have no idea who they might be shooting at - though I’ve witnessed none of this in my two separate visits here. The unrest here is nothing like what’s happening in Libya or Syria though, it’s more a case of chest thumping by the armed forces to better their collective lot.

Pays Dogon

2011-05-08T13:28:00.001-07:00

My last Malian port of call is to Pays Dogon, near to the border with Burkina Faso. Pays Dogon is home to the Dogon people, and it’s their strong tradition of animism and Pays Dogon’s spectacular setting which draws the crowds here, but this is April and only a fool would want to trek here at this time of year so this fool has most of Pays Dogon to himself. A guide here is essential, more for the avoidance of cultural faux pas and for ensuring a warm welcome, than as a navigator. Pays Dogon stretches some 150km along an escarpment known as the Falaise De Bandiagara (over 500m high in places) and along this stretch are the Dogon villages, many of which were built at the very base of the escarpment, though in recent years this tradition has died out. It’s immaculate trekking country as long as you choose your route carefully, preferably one which involves ascents and descents of the escarpment. As you trek north, to your left is the escarpment and to your right, the vast open Sahelian wilderness, dotted with hardy trees, which stretches all the way to Burkina Faso.
My guide for my 3 days here is Seck Dolo - I don’t think that I learned all that much from his insights into Dogon culture but he made for an entertaining sidekick. A daily highlight for me whilst I’m here is witnessing the greetings exchanged between people. A curt ‘ca va?’ will not suffice here, instead meeting someone on the trail means spending almost a minute enquiring as to the health and welfare of the other person’s family and extended family and then their extended family. Translated, it goes something like this;
‘Seck, how are you?’
‘Sewó’ (Great)
‘How’s the wife?’
‘Sewó’
‘And the children?’
‘Sewó’
‘The uncle with the bad back?’
‘Sewó’
‘And his wife with the funny walk?’
‘Sewó’
‘And their children?’
‘Sewó’
And on it goes until it’s the turn of the asked to enquire as to the health of the asker’s family. Walking with Seck over the course of the 3 days here I saw this ritual re-enacted again and again each day, and quite how no-one tires of it is beyond my comprehension.
As I’ve said, Seck is priceless company but he’s also pretty exhausting at times. Take for instance our first night in one of the villages, once the dinner plates have been cleared away, Seck declares his love of Christianity (he’s Muslim) and asks me if I know the words to the ‘Our Father’. Stupidly I say yes and so I’m supplied with a pen and paper and asked to write the words out and read them with Seck, as he wants to say it each night before he sleeps. Not only do I have to read them but explain them in great detail also. ’What is “Hallowed Be They Name?”’ etc. I feel like a benign latter-day Crusader seeking to reclaim some of the flock from the Islamic hordes but feel woefully underprepared for the barrage of questions he throws in my direction.
Not only is Seck interested in God but he also has a weakness for The Beatles. He hears ‘Hey Jude’ on my mp3 and he’s instantly smitten. Once again he insists on me writing out the lyrics - I tell him that he can write his own fucking na-na-na-na-na-nas though - and so the following day at the most random moments during our trek, the silence will be broken by a sudden enthusiastic burst of ‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’ or ‘Take a sad song and make it better’. Tiresome. He‘s determined to say all of the ‘Our Father’ too to prove to me what a good Christian he‘s going to be. I’m reminded about John Lennon’s quotes about The Beatles being bigger than Jesus. Well, in Pays Dogon he’ll have to settle for them being on a par with him.
Seck also wants to present himself in a more confident way. He tells me a story about a guy who’s been hassling his mother and he asks me to script some words to threaten the guy. He then begins suggesting scenarios, one of which is ‘Pretend that I’m a gangster’ and I have to put the words in his mouth once more. Again I do my best and so it is that night as I lie on the roof gazing at the stars, listening to the muted sounds of village life and drifting off to sleep, I hear the distant but threatening voice of my guide alone in the darkness at the dinner table repeating the words “I will hunt you down and I will fuck you up” in a range of different tones. Ah, desert life.
The further north you go, the more authentic it seems the villages are and so our first day is a pretty unremarkable trudge through the flat sandy trail walking through some pretty humdrum villages. Day 1 is remarkable only for my encounter with the village chief of Teli. Seck introduces me to a pretty unassuming guy who jumps to attention at the sight of a tourist. Clearly half-pissed on millet beer, he staggers off to throw on his hunting gear, fetch his rifle and within seconds he’s striking ‘hunting’ poses beside me - this is obviously a well worn routine. I have no choice in the matter. At one stage he hands me the rifle - I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it - and starts striking pose after pose a la Austin Powers. In fact if I’d asked him to put on a Marilyn Monroe dress and sing ‘Happy Birthday Mister President’ for me then I’m sure he’d have done that too. Naturally this theatre isn’t free and I’m asked to hand over 1,000 CFA when he’s done. He quickly slips back out of his robes and is back on the lash again as if I’d never appeared.
Day 2 though sees us trek to the village of Yaba-Talu from where we climb the escarpment - stunning trekking through a narrow gorge - and trek across to the fairy-tale villages of Indelu and Begnemato. Both villages make the entire 3 day trek worthwhile due to their setting high atop the escarpment but also because of the sense of disconnection from everything around them. Mud brick houses with witch hat roofs abound as do little children pleading for a cadeau. Begnemato in particular has a sublime location, hidden high up amongst gigantic rock formations which take on a different hue as the sun sets. If one moment could encapsulate my entire time in West Africa to date it would be arriving here and seeing the village for the first time as the sun set and listening to the distant sound of village life. Absolute perfection. The following morning we take a ‘trolley’ i.e. an ox and cart back to our starting point and trek back to the village of Djiguibombo. I haven’t actually learned all that much about the Dogon people or their animistic beliefs but for Day 2 alone and our trek up the escarpment, it’s been a worthwhile experience. I part company with Seck after he drops me back at Bandiagara - me to make my way to Burkina Faso, and him to hunt someone down and fuck them up.

Timbuktu

2011-05-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

A word of warning in advance - if you’d like to retain that intangible sense of romance and mystery which has been attached, for whatever reason, to the name ‘Timbuktu’, STOP READING NOW. If you don’t give a shit, let’s get down to the business of myth busting. I’d started to doubt its very existence myself due to various difficulties getting here, but finally, after 48 hours of strife and a lifetime’s supply of dust for my lungs I made it. Timbuktu as a name is certainly one of the more romantically evocative - suggesting an historic, far-flung, remote Saharan outpost, an Atlantis on land as it were - but allow me to take a sledgehammer to the myth; Timbuktu, the reality, is to romance what George W Bush is to Mensa. Bless its sandy little socks but, remoteness apart - and it is an oasis of sorts amongst the sand dunes which surround it - as cities go it lacks anything of note. Historically the oldest building here dates back to about the 14th century but even that’s been rebuilt several times since. No, the romance of Timbuktu exists solely in your mind and if you haven’t read this far, there it shall remain. Lucky you. For me Timbuktu was more about coming here than actually being here.
So, what’s it like then? First of all Timbuktu’s big in the sense that it sprawls over a wide area but there’s no discernible centre so you wander randomly through streets which are entirely under sand from the surrounding desert seeing the same shabby one and two-storey buildings throughout. There’s a palpable air of disinterest and apathy throughout though it’s probably the heat which, by midday, is insufferable for all. There’s a sign in the city which says (in French) ‘Welcome to Timbuktu, city of the 333 saints’ - to be sure, a number picked to give Irish people everywhere a difficult time of it. The other side of that is that I think that you’d have to be a saint to even consider living here which is why the number is so disproportionately high. Probably. I’m trying to think of something interesting to say about Timbuktu, damn it I’m trying to make things up about Timbuktu but it’s beyond me. If you ever happen to be in Mali and think ’Wow, Timbuktu, I’ll have to check that out.’ Don’t bother. I meet one other tourist here whose lifetime ambition it was to visit Timbuktu but he has that haunted look of a man who’s thinking ‘This can’t be it’. Be careful what you wish for.
Eating here is certainly a novel experience. Word is that there’s a secret spice used in all dishes served here in Timbuktu which certainly adds a bit of bite to your dish - it’s called sand. It’s in every single meal that I eat so it’s just a case of grit and bear it. If you learn nothing else from this post then at least you’ll know how Timbuktu got its name (if you already know this you have my respect and my pity - clearly you need to get out more). The city was originally established as a temporary encampment for nomadic Tuaregs and an old woman called Boctou was put in charge of it. Boctou means ‘large navel’ and the ‘Tim’ part simply means ‘well’ and when you put the two together you have ‘Timboctou’ which is ‘the well of the woman with the large navel’. The official local spelling is ‘Tomboctou’ which further complicates things but that’s the history. How big can a navel be?

The Road To Timbuktu

2011-04-26T14:17:00.001-07:00

The road to Timbuktu is a long one, both literally and metaphorically. If it’s not the beat up 4WDs or the pockmarked pistes that get ya, it’s the innate Moptian desire to bleed the few tourists that are in the country right now for every cent they can get. I know that I want to go to Timbuktu but I’m not exactly sure how I’ll get there and Mali tends to be wonderfully short of unbiased tourist information - “You want to go to Timbuktu? My brother’s got a friend whose cousin’s son has a pinasse which could take you there” etc. There are two options really; I can try to negotiate my way onto a cargo pinasse and sail for 3 or 4 days on the Niger or there’s the more prosaic route plied by the 4WD mafia on whatever days there’s a quorum for going that far north. I opted for the former because it immediately appealed as a more adventurous option and it just seemed like the right way to get to Timbuktu. Meeting someone who was willing to take me there was the easy part - agreeing on the terms and conditions is the very reason the phrase caveat emptor was coined. I meet a guy who introduces me to the ‘captain’ of a cargo pinasse, and who agrees to take me there for 16,500F but warns me that the accommodation is basic. This is what I’m expecting and so I don’t have a problem with it. I just want to get there and preferably via the river route.
I was shown the boat, told to be there at 10am the following morning and that it would set sail around 2pm. I also bought enough mineral water to last me the 4 days they said it would take to get there, and a straw sheet for sleeping on. The boat itself was indeed grim and home to the captain’s family of 5 children, one of whom, an infant of about 6 months spent the entire day bawling his eyes out, bless him, whilst I waited for the departure that never did actually come. I waited on board for 8 hours in total during which time I became the focus of attention of all the captain’s five children. I shared one meal with them which was served up in a giant basin - four of the kids and I sat self-consciously around the basin and dug our hands in for fistfuls of rice. No forks, no plates, just scoop and chew. The meal itself was rice with sauce and some fish heads thrown on top as meat and was cooked on the boat by one of the sons.
By 6pm it was becoming clear that the pinasse wasn’t leaving at all and so I disembarked with my bags and asked the captain for a refund figuring that I really don‘t have enough time in Mali to be waiting for a pinasse that might never depart. And there my problems began. I was told that it was leaving in under an hour - it didn’t - and that I needed to get back on - I didn’t. I was also told that there was no money to be refunded, that it had all been absorbed in the maintenance costs of the pinasse. Clearly this was bullshit but as the day grew darker, there was little or no budging until I was offered 10,000F - some 6,500F less than what I’d originally paid. In situations like this, if your haggling skills are failing you - no amount of haggling would have saved the day in this instance - all you can do is mention les gendarmes in passing. It’s the only back up plan I had and it felt like I‘d just threatened them with my mother. Their reaction - there were now 4 others hanging on every word of the discussion - switched from amusement to anger to incredulity and back to amusement again. The offer was raised to 13,000F which would leave me with a 3,500F loss. An expensive day but ultimately just about €6. All that was missing here was Noel Edmonds with a phone waiting to talk to the fucking banker.
It was completely dark at this stage, there were 5 very large Malian men around me by the river and I wondered how much assistance the Malian police force might be once I’d explained the story in my pitiful French. One of the 5 grabbed my stuff, demanded the money they’d given me back, told me to go to the cops and so, shamefully, I caved in and took the cash. Should I have called their bluff? Should I have haggled for more? Did I just get wiped out there? Yes, clearly. Lesson learned. Stupid tourist.
Wary of my experience from the previous day I walked over to where the 4WDs depart the following morning. The wait begins at 8.30am and at that time there are 4 people - 12 are needed as a minimum for departure. By 2pm there are 5 people and it’s looking unlikely we'll be going anywhere. All of a sudden there’s a huge screaming match which starts in front of me - I’m getting used to these and being involved in a few of them - but what it’s about I have no idea. Anyway once it blows itself out - it takes half an hour at least - my bag is taken and we’re away by 4pm. What they’d done - and the reason for the shouting match - was to reroute the 4WD to take the passengers going to Timbuktu and to some of the outlying towns - note that in this case an 'outlying town' means half a day's driving.
It’s a pretty regular 4WD and there are 14 passengers squeezed into it. Remarkably, 8 bodies - including yours truly - are squeezed into the 2 seats facing each other at the back. Welcome to the cheap seats. The first hour or so is pleasant as we wind our way beside the river but then once we move from the river the dust begins. Dust through the windows, dust through the doors and dust through the floors. It seems as if I’m the only one not wearing one of those Lawrence of Arabia head scarves and before long the entire bus is coated in red dust. This continues, unabated, for 8 hours and my lungs will probably never be the same again. Apparently between 1588 and 1853, 43 Europeans tried to make it to Timbuktu, 4 made it and only 3 lived to tell the tale. If it’s this difficult in 2011, fuck knows what it must have been like centuries ago. Not even Mungo Park himself would have survived the dust in the back of the 4WD.
We overnight in the town of Diré. The first I knew of this was when the engine was killed in the town centre, everyone rolled out the sleeping sheets, threw them to the ground beside the 4WD and slept - ‘Right, looks like we’re staying here then’ - and so I stretched myself out on the back seat of the 4WD and grabbed as much sleep as my mosquito companions would allow me. I should point out here that in West Africa, at least 70% of the time I have no idea what’s happening when it comes to getting from one place to another. No-one tells you that you need to switch buses or that there’s been a change of plans so I just follow the crowd most of the time. We abandon our 4WD in Diré, jump on another one - I have to point at it and say ‘Timbuktu?’ - and drive the last 5 hours to the city.

*Just as a footnote whilst I’m posting this; the journey home from Timbuktu which was supposed to take 8-10 hours maximum began at 3.30am, involved two hours of driving around Timbuktu and waking people up to take their places on the 4WD, 2 punctures, a 1 hour delay because the driver decided to take an alternative route and got lost, transfer to a baché at Douantze still some 200km from Mopti and then at least a dozen breakdowns (I stopped counting at 6) in between, the last of which involved the bus dying on the side of the road just 10km from our destination. Close but no cigar. All told, a journey of 15 and a half hours. You just have to love this shit.

Djenné

2011-04-20T13:09:00.001-07:00

And so to Djenné, one of West Africa’s oldest towns and one of the jewel's in Mali's crown, and I’m sitting here typing this whilst watching an orange headed lizard with a blue body - they own this place - do those strange little press ups lizards do, not five yards away from me. Djenné is one of those superlative exhausting places you probably haven’t heard of - I hadn’t - but should. It isn’t overly easy to get to - I had to get off the Bamako-Mopti bus at the carrefour de Djenné and wait two and half hours whilst the price for the shared taxi went up the darker it got, and then you have to take a ferry across the river, as Djenné is built on an island - but it’s absolutely worth all of the effort.
The centrepiece in this stunning place is its Grand Mosquée, the largest mud-built structure in the world apparently. The present incarnation was rebuilt entirely in 1907 but it was first built back in 1280 and it’s a beautiful construction when you consider that, well, it‘s made from mud. There are three front-facing turrets from which innumerable wooden spars jut and which give it its other-wordly appearance. Truly, it looks like some sort of prototype medieval African spaceship or an unusually shaped birthday cake from which several Flakes protrude. After the rainy season each year a team of volunteers gather to give the place its annual renovation and explains why, for a structure built over 100 years ago, it’s remarkably well preserved. Naturally, the interior is closed to non-Muslims but the exterior is more than spectacular enough to not feel bothered by that. It’s also unusual in that the call to prayer is done by a man who stands on a wall to the right of the mosque and belts it out at the top of his voice. This is a change from the deafening pre-recorded calls to prayer that have ruined many a lie-in in Muslim countries around the world. Hopefully this starts a trend.
The town of Djenné itself is every bit as magical as the mosque for which it gets its fame. You won’t find any touch screen interpretative centres anywhere here and for a UNESCO World Heritage Sight it’s managed to retain the timelessness that brought it to attention in the first place. This is probably the first town that I’ve visited in West Africa where I’ve truly felt that the way of life, the houses, the traditions and the customs haven’t changed remotely in half a millennium or more. There are few cars here and you’re just as likely to be shouted at for blocking the way of an advancing team of oxen and cart as you are being beeped at. India this is not. I befriend two locals who own a crafts shop and spend much time drinking tea and sheltering from the sun with them. One of them points out his girlfriend on the street one afternoon but he explains that he can’t marry her because he doesn’t have enough money. Women in Djenné, they stress, like lots of money.
They don’t like their bad spirits here and there’s a tomb of a young girl who was sacrificed back in the 9th century in the belief that it would banish the evil spirits from the town. There’s another tomb nearby where women who are having difficulty becoming pregnant come and throw something as an offering on the tomb. Perhaps this is the way to go as far as IVF treatment is concerned because there are children everywhere here and all of them want a cadeau or a bon bon from me.
On a wander around the town I drift out towards where the mud-brick houses thin out and find myself looking out over a vast plain through which a barely moving river flows - this is dry season. What’s special about it though is the fact that there are hundreds of people, mostly women, strewn along the banks of the river bathing children, washing pots and pans and doing the laundry. As unexpected and breathtaking sights go, it is absolutely cinematic in its beauty. I take some token photos hoping to capture some of the magic but as with all sights like this, I stare for ten minutes to preserve that mental picture.
I spend three nights here, all of them sleeping on the rooftop of Chez Baba and I have it all to myself - there are no other guests staying here right now because few are stupid enough to travel in Mali in April. For 3,000F you get a mattress on the roof and if you’re lucky there’s a full moon - there is - and you sleep under the stars with a wonderfully cooling nocturnal breeze. It remains about 25 degrees during the night but it is the most exquisite place to sleep and then you’re awake the next morning with the buzz from the town below. What I didn’t expect to find here amidst the chaos, dust and kids harassing me for sweets, in fact about the last thing anybody would expect to find here was a local kid wearing a Clare GAA jersey. Yes, Clare. So in my few days here; Barcelona? Check. Real Madrid? Check. Scummers? Check. Liverpool? Check. Clare? Er, check. No doubt there’ll be bonfires burning on the streets of Djenné for that next Munster Final victory. That's a line Marty Morrissey would love to use.
I arrive here the day before Djenné’s second biggest draw - its Grand Marchée, held every Monday. The population of the town doubles or triples as traders and buyers come from the surrounding villages, some covering huge distances, to get here early on Monday morning. The space in front of the Mosquée is utterly transformed as when I got here on Saturday night it was empty but by Sunday evening had already started to fill with some traders staking their claim to the best sites, pitching their stalls and sleeping there lest their prime site would be usurped. Even here it’s all about location, location, location. The Marchée has been happening, probably, since Biblical times and I imagine that it differs little from then today. The whole thing is enormous. By the time I wandered down there early on Monday morning it was transformed and by lunchtime there wasn’t a space left between the various traders. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s almost impossible to squeeze your way through the heaving bodies; women with their sleeping bambinos tied to their backs, scruffily dressed kids with buckets pleading for un cadeau, wandering pharmacists carrying buckets filled with a variety of pills, young boys selling putrid tomatoes and dried chillies, hungry babies breastfeeding everywhere, herdsmen leading their prize goats through the melee, tribal homeopaths with special threads to cure your backache, little girls running amok gazing up and shouting Tu vas ou? and men with trolleys, empty and full, desperately trying to make their through all of the aforementioned and me. In a word - special.
Though the environment surrounding Djenné is unforgiving there are many villages nearby and I prolonged my stay here by an extra day to visit the village of Sirimou, home to the wonderfully named Bozo people. It’s a 20 minute moped ride from Djenné and when you get there you have to wade across the river as it’s built on an island. It’s a beautiful place and they also have their own captivating mosque though on a much smaller scale than Djenné’s. As we cross the river we’re surrounded by naked kids swimming in the shallows with buckets tied to their waists looking for fish. They’ve caught several which they proudly show me but they’re barely of goldfish proportions. We visit the village primary school where children attend - and many don’t - between the ages of 7-14. Lessons are taught in French only and in the senior class there were 40 children. Yikes. I visit another village in which, amazingly, there’s a wedding ceremony. We can hear some incredible music before we get near the ceremony and there, in the centre of the village, is a stunning little celebration with beautiful Malian music and a dance performance by some village women. My presence there is noted and ignored as everyone’s too busy enjoying the dancing and the music. I am utterly entranced by this part of the world, moreso than anywhere to date in West Africa and watching ceremonies like this which aren’t deliberately staged for visitors makes it feel more special.

Into Mali and more trouble in Bamako

2011-04-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

Having made it to the Malian border post of Diboli from Tambacounda without any hassles I waited two hours for a bus which would take me direct to Bamako, Mali’s capital which was still some 700km and a 14 hour bus journey away. Even if I don’t allude to it in future posts, assume that intense heat is a constant from now on. It was 40 degrees the day I got here and it’s been high 30’s or low 40’s ever since. I googled temperatures in Mali yesterday and none of the cities registered anything under 40 degrees. This will be part of life for the next month and a half and is the main reason there are few, if any, other travellers in Mali right now. It does, however, mean that there are very few mosquitoes about.
Getting a green light to board a bus in this part of the world does not mean that the bus is actually leaving and so we wait for an hour or more for some bullshit reason in the midday heat on our unmoving, breeze-free bus. It’s heartening though to look around and see others perspire as much as I do because at times I feel like I am the source of the Niger.
We leave the border at about 2pm - it takes almost two hours to pass through a never-ending series of roadblocks close to the border - and arrive in Bamako just before 4am. I sit in the street across from my lodgings for 3 hours as it doesn’t open until 7am. I’m spending my days here in the good company of the nuns who run the Mission Catholique. For a mere 4,000F a night - in Bamako terms that’s unbeatable - you can sleep in their dormitory. It’s basic but it’s clean and, in a city that’s anything but, it’s very very peaceful. As I type a blog entry one day in the courtyard I stifle a chuckle at the fact that Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl plays.
The nuns are cheerful and non-intrusive and they leave their guests to themselves. There’s one nun there who insists on speaking French to me every day even though I’ve made it very clear to her that my French isn’t up to scratch. She talks to me for five or ten minutes every day - interminable when you don’t understand what the other person is saying - and probably sees me as a bit of a Forrest Gump, as all I can muster are the occasional uncertain ‘Ouis’, ’d’accords’ and ‘peut etres’ whenever I think they’re necessary.
Bamako is light on actual sights to see - it’s ugly to be honest - but it is the capital city and it broke up my journey nicely on my way across to the east where most of the main sights are to be found. It does have its Grand Marchée which is like any other huge market really and is notable only for its sprawl - the chaos, noise and legions of people you‘ll see in any major market anywhere. The fetish stalls near the Marchée Des Artisans are intriguing though. There you’ll find a cluster of stalls selling dried skins, fur, dessicated lizard, chameleon and monkey heads and a variety of limbs from animals I couldn’t begin to name. These heads and body parts are stacked on top of each other and so you have the chilling effect a whole host of pained expressions eyeballing you as you walk past. This place is amazon.com for witchdoctors.
Fascinated as I am by it all I decide to take a photo - there’s no sign saying that photos are prohibited - so I point my camera and as I’m checking my photo, my camera’s snatched from my hand. It’s the stall owner and he’s seriously pissed, as am I though because I have no idea what it is he’s pissed about and he‘s got my fucking camera in his hand. A shouting match ensues as he absolutely refuses to return my camera until, finally, we’re separated by a cop who orders us both over to his cabin.
‘Here we go again’ I think as we trudge over to the makeshift police cabin. There we meet the police chief who’s surely got better things to be doing but, regardless, the inquisition begins. The entire conversation is in French which places me at a distinct disadvantage but I know enough to say that I didn’t realise that I was causing offence blah blah bullshit blah. But it isn’t enough for the stallholder who - no pun intended - wants his pound of flesh, as if he didn‘t having enough on the bloody stall. Still the police chief has my camera even though, by now, the offending picture has been deleted. I’m asked to wait outside - real principal’s office stuff - while the stallholder remains inside. He emerges a couple of minutes later during which time he’s probably told “Look he’s just a stupid fucking tourist.” and still looks pissed as he emerges and storms past me. I’m handed back my camera, given a ticking off when it comes to the decorum involved in taking photos of dead monkeys, look sufficiently contrite and I’m allowed to wander off again. Jesus, secondary school was a breeze compared to West Africa.
There’s also the issue of change here, or, more accurately, the absence of it. Purchasing anything in any shop anywhere in Mali has suddenly become an ordeal. Why? Because Malians never ever have any change for you and, shit, this is the capital. When you go to an ATM (and you’ll usually spend two hours finding one that is , firstly, in service - a rarity - and, secondly, compatible with your Mastercard - almost non-existent) the smallest notes they dispense are 5,000F notes. There are 1,000F notes in circulation but clearly they’re been zealously guarded by some Malian Silas Marner somewhere because the shopkeepers certainly don’t have any.
Take this evening for example; I wanted to pay for my meal, took out a 5,000F note from my wallet and the owner immediately puffed out his cheeks, looked aghast, as if I’d just handed him a copy of Readers' Wives with his wife on the cover, and asked me if I had anything smaller. I didn’t. He told me to go and find some smaller change and to come back and pay for the meal then. I went next door to the corner shop, picked up something I didn’t really need but anything to break a note, handed it over, the woman puffed out her cheeks…..and you know the rest. She took the note, walked outside and went next door to the restaurant where I’d just eaten to ask if he had any change. She came back empty-handed of course, handed me the note and the can of Fanta and told me to come back when I’d found some small change. At this stage I’d had a free meal and a can of Fanta to wash it down with…..I could have lived here for years if this had continued. Eventually, two shops, a packet of gum and a bottle of water later I struck gold - the shopkeeper still puffed out his cheeks when he saw the 5,000F note though - and in The Twelve Days of Christmas style, I went back over each of the places I’d visited, settled my debts with each of them until my 5,000F was exhausted leaving me back at square one and another 5,000F note to break. This is West Africa.

Guinea-Bissau

2011-04-20T12:48:00.001-07:00

There’s much to be said for research, real research not cursory glances at a travel guide which makes reference to pirogue trips across to the islands without confirming on which days those trips occur etc. Bollocks to it, I’m in Bissau, capital of Guinea-Bissau and I’ll be here for less than 24 hours before returning to Ziguinchor tomorrow afternoon - that hardly counts does it? I’ve spent longer in some international airports. My plan was to visit Bissau for a couple of nights, take a trip across the visit the beautiful islands off the coast here but there are no island connections until Tuesday next. Today’s Saturday and accommodation here costs a small fortune and so I’m cutting my losses and retreating back to Senegal and heading off to Mali instead. Most of Guinea-Bissau’s sights are out of reach unless you have your own transport, in fact much of the same is true for everywhere in West Africa and so I’ll remain at the mercy of the bush taxi mafia and their haphazard routes and timetables for the coming weeks.
I’m in town long enough to see the scars of the civil war on the buildings in the old city - peace seems to interrupt the fighting in this particular part of the world. There’s an uneasy peace here right now though for how long it will last in a country notorious for military coups, political assassinations and increasing threats from South American drug barons who’ve taken advantage of the country’s non-existent coastal security to make Guinea-Bissau the number one entry port for South America’s endless cocaine supplies, is anyone’s guess. The former presidential residence sits proudly at the top of Avenue Amilcar Cabral but its façade is peppered with bullet holes and the roof has been blown off. I spend a Saturday here and it’s the most remarkably empty city I’ve ever been to and I've been to Canberra. Go on - see if you can find some people in the photos above. Few people, fewer cars and absolutely no atmosphere whatsoever even down by the docks. Christ, I imagine Sundays are a riot here but I won‘t be hanging around long enough to find out.

The Sept-Place Experience

2011-04-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

*Be forewarned that this entry contains the use of gratuitous language. But fuck it, don’t they all.

In a continent largely devoid of, let’s say, reliable public transport, something has to fill the void. Enter the sept-place - they could only exist here in Africa and whilst they do fill the void they‘re far from reliable. If you want to join the dots at all in in West Africa you cannot do so without putting yourself at the mercy of the sept-place experience. Technically speaking it’s a vehicle for seven people (this doesn‘t include the driver), hence the name, but in reality with young children on laps this can often, and usually does, reach double figures. And though they may not be your children, such is the inherent claustrophobia of being in the sept-place that you will be expected to do your share of the mothering too, offering a lap for a child who’s fascinated by the whiteness of your skin and wants nothing more than to sit on your lap and poke your eyes out.
It’s far more organised than I’d initially thought - ‘tickets’ are issued (essentially a piece of paper with the price and your all important seat number written on it), and the car does not move until full. You have the option of paying for a second seat if you wish to speed up departure but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a lot more room to manoeuvre when the journey is underway. Luggage fees are arbitrarily decided upon - if you look like someone who’d pay 2,000 CFA for two bags then that’s what you’ll be asked for. But it’s that seat number which should be your biggest concern - if it’s number 1 to 4 then your luck’s in as you’ll have some room to stretch your legs but if you’ve been handed 5 to 7, too bad, varicose veins will probably suit you. Tickets 5 to 7 thrust you right into the pit of the sept-place, a forgotten place where a seat has been inserted almost as an afterthought.
The first hour. During that first hour or so of the journey you’re thinking “You know this isn’t too bad. Besides I’m in West Africa and, hey, this is all part of the experience. I‘ve endured worse than this. This will make me stronger.” You’re too busy enjoying the countryside, the mud-brick huts, the straw roofs, the people strolling by the road - this is why you came to this part of the world. There’s a beautiful child on a mother’s lap in front of you who you wink at and who returns your winks with a smile which makes it all worthwhile. The roads may be bad but the driver is doing a great job of avoiding the worst of the holes, an encounter with one would surely result in a broken axle. There’s a gorgeous early morning breeze wafting in your direction from the open windows. There’s an unspoken camaraderie between the passengers who clearly understand that they’re all in this together. All is well. Life is beautiful.
The second hour. With nowhere whatsoever to stretch your legs, things start to get mildly frustrating as you experience the first jabbing pains which extend from your back right down to your heel. If you could just move your legs for five minutes then all would be well again. The little child who’d been staring at you is still staring and it‘s becoming annoying now. The person’s elbow beside you finds your rib cage once too often, in fact the person beside you has morphed into Bony Man all of a sudden and all of those bones are jutting into you. At this stage you still think that it may be unintentional. After one hour of staring at flatness and an unchanging, barren landscape, you’d like to change the channel but there isn’t anything else to look at - it’s all the same for miles around. This part of Senegal is the West African equivalent of Longford. It starts to stink too - seven people squeezed into a tin box in the middle of Senegal and moving away from the Atlantic coast approaching midday - it’s gonna get messy and it does. And you need to piss. Not badly but it’d be nice to pull over for just a couple of minutes. But still, you stoically think; “Phew, this isn’t pleasant but what a story I’ll have to tell at the end of this trip. I‘ll be glad when we get there though.”
The third hour. It gets ugly. The driver has clearly never consumed any liquids in his entire life. Neither have the other passengers. What’s wrong with these people - don’t Africans piss? And it’s approaching midday and that cold breeze which wafted all the way back to you at dawn has now become a furnace, wafting hot air, dust and sand in your direction. The children are crying now but they’re probably upset at the fact that your face has turned crimson - a combination of the oppressive heat, the ‘Jesus Christ let me out for a piss’ contortion and the fact that, as the blood has stopped flowing to your legs two hours ago, it has to go somewhere. Meanwhile thoughts have become a tad more negative; ”F**king bullshit. Squeezing all of these f**king people into a car this size. Who looks after these f**king roads anyway - Cavan County Council? Next year I’ll travel in f**king Germany instead. What in God’s name is that child staring at - did I grow an extra eye since I climbed into this f**king contraption? F**king hell man, my thigh is not a f**king arm rest.” Of course all of these thoughts are internalised, and though the inner fires are a-blazing, the exterior betrays little of this beyond the aforementioned crimson face and the neat little puddles of perspiration accumulating below you formed by rivers of sweat coursing down your arms. The farts which you’d politely stifled in the first couple of hours are now unleashed with as much vitriol as you can muster. It’s all you can do not to scream “Take that!” with the release of each successive fart. You’d say it too but you don’t know the French for it and shouting ‘Allez!‘ as you break wind just doesn’t seem right.
And then, oh sweet Jesus it‘s about f**king time…...the driver indicates, pulls over and everybody gets out for five minutes. And, of course, within two minutes of standing erect again, bladder emptied and stretches done, the dark spirits lift, the storm clouds clear and all is well with the world again. At least for an hour.

The Casamance

2011-04-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

In this whirlwind tour of Senegal I’m still equivocal about the country and if I was asked right now what I thought of Senegal, I’d sing the praises of Saint Louis loudly whilst advising people to give Dakar a miss, charmless hustler-filled dump that it is. And so the Casamance gets the casting vote in this. The Casamance region is home to the Diola, fiercely independent people for whom separatist struggles are what gets them out of bed in the morning. There’s much to admire about them; they completely rejected the notion of slavery which blighted (and in some cases - hello Mauritania - continues to blight) the histories of many a west African nation, and they gave a resounding two fingers to the French when the rest of Senegal fell into line and - let’s be honest here - don’t we all want to give the French the two fingers from time to time. Or is that just me?
Ziguinchor is the capital city of the region and, pardon me if I’ve used this description before, but it’s compact, crumbling, dusty, and if for some strange reason you‘ve come to the Casamance in search of bounteous mango supplies, this is the place for you. There really isn’t all that much to see in the city and unlike Saint Louis, say, once you’ve wandered through one area there’s little reason to retrace your footsteps again. And most surprisingly it’s devoid of any real atmosphere at all - even Dakar bristled with some sense of energy but here the vibe is soporific as if the zest has been devoured by the heat.
It also has a Guinea-Bissau consulate which is only open for business when you call the mobile number of the administrative officer who’s helpfully put his number on the door. I need a visa, it’s Friday afternoon and so I call him. I have enough French to tell him who I am, what I need and ask if I can have it but, as anyone who’s learned a language from a CD or textbook knows, you’re fucked when they say something that’s not on the CD or in the textbook. Humans eh? I keep asking him to repeat what he’s just said (and I feel like saying “But this wasn’t on the CD”) and eventually he starts to scream - I can’t say I blame him really, if the roles were reversed I’d be screaming too - and so I hand the phone to the waitress who not only calms him down but arranges for him to come and meet me to issue my visa on a Saturday morning.
It’s clearly not the man I spoke to on the phone who’s there to meet me at exactly 9am the following morning - instead I’m issued a visa within five minutes by a calm individual with fluent English and so it’s off to Guinea-Bissau I go where I’ll hopefully spend some time in the capital and wander over to the islands of Arquipélago Dos Bijagos. The best part of Ziguinchor for me have been the neighbourhoods off the map where you get to see the people as they are. I wander around the neighbourhoods twice, managing to get lost on both occasions, once long after dark on a Sunday night but never once feel as if I’ve strayed into a part of town that I really shouldn’t be in after dark. Here the roads are made of sand and the people congregate to watch the wrestling live from Dakar and in many houses there are garden parties where the neighbours gather to talk and dance.
My last days in Senegal are spent on the long road out east to Tambacounda, my last port of call here before I cross the border into Mali. The roads here are in various stages of disrepair and much of our time is spent swerving wildly from one side of the road to another to avoid ending up in one of these craters from which there is probably no escape - you might survive but your axle won‘t. The view from the sept-place is beautiful, quintessentially and classically African; beautiful straw huts with witch hat roofs which look like they’ve been transported from Bronze Age crannógs and always, somewhere off in the distance, African women wearing impossibly bright colours from head to toe striding through the fields carrying pitchers of water or some food from the fields on their heads . It’s these little views that flash past - like a freeze frame from a movie that burns itself on the memory - when I’m on the move that make this such a beautiful part of the world.

Welcome to The Gambia Take II

2011-04-15T09:36:00.001-07:00

You’d given up on me, hadn’t you? Well, I’m back and here I am - just about perhaps - in The Gambia, Africa’s smallest country. Geographically speaking The Gambia is ominously surrounded on all sides by neighbouring Senegal, and the country, already oddly pinched (it’s 300km long but it averages 35km from north to south), is further split into two by the Gambia river which courses through the centre. Just when you thought West Africa was all about dusty, pot-holed roads leading to faded colonial Francophile cities with a never-ending soundtrack of African music, along comes the stubbornly Anglophile bastion of The Gambia. There are dozens of ex-pats and holidaymakers here and the British influence is still very strong. Almost everybody speaks English which makes a pleasant change for me enduring a constant struggle with my French these past two weeks. Every radio you hear is tuned to BBC World Service and, bizarrely, the supermarkets stock the most un-African product lines imaginable - there’s Horlicks, McVitie’s and Tetley’s (make tea bags, make tea!) amongst many others. Jesus wept, this is West Africa - I want théboudienne - the taste of Senegal, I want benechin - the taste of The Gambia, not fucking Toffeepops and Jaffa Cakes - the taste of, I dunno, Grimsby?
The Gambia is predominantly famous for birds - it’s an ornithologist’s paradise apparently, as are many of the West African countries touching the Atlantic - and beaches. It also has a sitting President who has variously claimed to have found cures for HIV and asthma, all this whilst still having time to oppress journalists and crush freedom of speech, truly a multi-tasker. People’s voices dip noticeably to a whisper whenever the President is discussed - not a popular man. 90% of Gambians are Muslim though not that you’d notice. Theirs is a very moderate approach to their faith unlike, say, in Mauritania where people spontaneously prostrate themselves by the side of the motorway to pray.
This is also known as The Smiling Coast of Africa, a schmaltzy moniker that’s largely true unless you’re strolling down Bakau and accosted by one of the many hustlers who insist on shadowing your every move. If you tell them that you’d rather walk alone, the smile quickly turns to a frown and you’re accused of being all sorts, unfriendly being about the politest. Then there’s folk like Nuha who works around the clock at the Romana Hotel where I stay for my 5 days on the Atlantic coast, a soft-spoken, gentle and utterly charming giant of a man. Spend a little time talking to any Gambian and it’s very much the same story.
This being Africa, it’s easy to watch a football match and I get to see Madrid destroy the Spuds at the Bernebeau. For half-time entertainment, instead of listening to Bill, John and Eamonn discuss the finer parts of postmodernism in the modern game we get to enjoy some obituaries, presumably just to let you know in case any of your loved ones have inconveniently passed away during the first half. And then just as the second half gets underway, the generator gives out - the Minister for Energy must be a Nepali as power cuts are the norm - whilst someone pops off to the petrol station to get the fuel to get it started again. I wander off to watch the second half in the fish market with the fishermen who are too enthralled by the match to even comment on my presence amongst them. The generator remains frustratingly in operation however for the entire 90 minutes the following night when the sizable Chelsea contingent here watch their team come undone and even they wonder why Fernando Torres gets 90 minutes these days.
Then there’s the capital city of Banjul, population 35,000! Cute little city and it’s even got its own Albert Market, a busy place where if the smell of fish doesn’t drive you out then the attention of the bumsters will. I’ll leave you to work out for yourself what a bumster is. Banjul also has its own landmark, the 35 metre monstrosity that is Arch 22 which was constructed to celebrate the military coup of 1994. It’s ugly beyond belief - I’m guessing the President found the time in between finding a cure for cancer and ending world hunger to draw up the plans, most probably during a power cut - and in a city of such a tiny population in an impoverished country it seems ridiculously out of place.
I feel as if I haven’t given The Gambia a chance though - spending 5 days on its Atlantic coast is the equivalent of spending a stag weekend in Blackpool and claiming to have gained an understanding of English culture. There are trips to be taken upriver but they’re both expensive and time-consuming so time is the enemy and I have bigger fish to fry - Mali for one - and so it’s onward south to Ziguinchor next and the fiercely separatist Casamance region of Senegal.

Welcome to The Gambia

2011-04-07T05:40:00.000-07:00

Border crossings always make me edgy. You’re completely at the mercy of the officers manning the post and if they arbitrarily decide to make you wait for two hours, then wait you must. If they decide that there’s an ‘exit tax’ to be paid - not at all uncommon in these parts - then frequently you must pay it or face an endless wait for the return of your passport. Each different border crossing potentially brings with it new demands or challenges although having breezed through the Mauritanian border post - notorious for the intransigence of its officers and lazy attempts at procuring ’inducements’ - I was expecting entry to The Gambia to be similarly straightforward.

Exiting Senegal was easy and so I strode the 20 yards to the Gambian passport control post next door not anticipating any problems. I showed my passport, was asked the obligatory questions and allowed to be on my way. As I re-entered the hallway I noticed a guy emerging from a door behind me at the same time. “Hey man,” he said, “what’s up?” I mumbled a response but kept moving assuming he was trying to sell me some Gambian currency. Still he persisted; “Drugs police. I need to ask you a few questions.” I turned and had my first proper look at him and there before me was a dead ringer for Whittaker dressed as Chuck D - LA Lakers' shirt, baggy jeans, Nike trainers and a New York Yankees' baseball hat on his head. I kept going as, dressed like that, I assumed he was taking the piss for someone’s amusement. He advanced and grabbed my arm and showed me his card which I barely looked at as I still couldn’t take the guy seriously. “I don’t want to see your fucking card,” I said as I pulled away and headed for the sept-place taxis which would take me Barra and the ferry to Banjul. ‘No way he’s a cop,‘ I thought. Wrong.

As I discuss how much it’s going to cost me to get to Barra, I get tapped on the shoulder by an officer in uniform; “This officer needs to have a few words with you,” he says pointing at Snoop. I look at him again and realise that I’ve, er, made a slight miscalculation. As he leads me back to passport control he’s seething and I can hear him say “I’m gonna fuck you over. No fucking respect. I’m gonna teach you a fucking lesson.” He brings me to the unlit detention room but mercifully leaves the door ajar. He’s practically screaming at this stage and still I’m having trouble swallowing that he’s a cop. “Call your fucking embassy,” he spits, “I’m detaining you.” I try to tell him that as he wasn’t wearing a uniform I had no idea that he was a cop. He’s not buying it, telling me that he showed me his card. “I’m gonna fuck you up,” he keeps repeating. Enter Good Cop. For every Bad Cop there has to be a Good One, right? This one enters - not wearing a uniform either but definitely not looking like Snoop and is told the gory details. “Oh,” he exclaims upon hearing the expletive, like some fucking shocked Victorian parent “why did you use that word?” Again I explain that it’s all a misunderstanding and that I have apologised but Chuck D isn’t having any of my apology. In fact I think at one stage that he’s actually going to cry, but though the tears don’t run the tantrum continues. I have to empty my two packs item by item - damn it my bag needed to be repacked anyway! - just to prove that I’m not carrying any narcotics. At one stage it occurs to me that maybe they’ve planted something on me - yeah, complete paranoia but it feels bizarre that I’m even in this detention room because I’ve hurt someone’s feelings - but the investigation ends with the removal of the last item of clothing from my bag. Once I’ve repacked I await the inevitable lecture or at least a claim for some ‘compensation’ to soothe away the pain I’ve so clearly caused the traumatised officer but that’s it. I put on my packs, leave the detention room without a word and enter The Gambia.

I Like Moosic

2011-04-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Miss, but let me assure you of this, I like moosic, do ya like moosic?” Moosic is wonderfully unavoidable in Senegal. Throughout the cities of Saint Louis and Dakar, the neighbourhoods are tripping themselves up with musical festivals of all types of African music. The Senegalese have music and dancing in their DNA and part of the fun attending various concerts to date has been watching the audience reaction, incapable as they of suppressing the urge to dance, arms aloft, to what they’re hearing. I wouldn't know a kora from a kosika but I do know when something sounds wonderful and there have been many thrilling musical events - some impromptu and some not - in the first week of my time here.
Senegal's capital, Dakar, is almost the polar opposite of Saint Louis, totally lacking its charm and timeworn beauty. Home to 2.5 million Dakarians its streets are filled with hustlers pushing belts, t-shirts, bracelets and all sorts of cheap Afro-trash that no-one wants but someone has to sell. I get here just as they’re preparing for Independence Day and so the streets and buildings are being given a cosmetic touch up. There really isn’t all that much to see in Dakar - you can stroll up to Place D’Indépendance and look at the Gouvernance and the Chambre de Commerce but as a whole it’s entirely devoid of the spunk and character of Saint Louis.
There is though the saving grace of the traditional wrestling which takes place at the city stadium on the night I arrive here. There’s one large stand packed to the rafters looking down on the wrestlers ing themselves in the arena below. There’s a large square area marked out by sand bags where the bouts take place, three and four at a time. The idea is that the first man down is the vanquished and there are jubilant roars of approval when a particular manoeuvre is successfully completed. Those not wrestling - and there are many participants - plod menacingly beside the arena keeping themselves warm, clad in nothing more than a thong. The whole thing is utterly primal. As with attending a concert, there’s more entertainment watching the stands and the interaction amongst people. At one stage everyone stands as a man from a microphone works himself to oral orgasm, there’s a perceptible buzz inside the stadium as an overweight man in zebra-striped khakis shuffles around the racetrack surrounded by a posse of photographers, wrestlers and some beefed up security men - the man beside me tells me that this is 'The King' (clearly a retired wrestling superstar as Senegal, last time I checked, wasn't a monarchy) and his every wave is greeted with euphoria.

On the road to Senegal

2011-04-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

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In purely geographical terms the distance between Nouakchott, Mauritania and Saint Louis, Senegal is a mere 200km - in west African terms that's 12 hours. Welcome to west Africa. Through a combination of bush taxis, pirogues, endless waits on barely roadworthy buses and one double tyre blowout at about 120 km an hour, we do ultimately make our way to Senegal. I'd expected most of the delays to occur at the infamous border crossing of Rosso but we're ushered through quickly (and no exit taxes!), piled onto a pirogue to cross the river which separates Mauritania and Senegal. Entering Senegal from Mauritania is like going from mono to stereo, from black and white to colour and it's evident from the moment your land on Senegalese soil. There's a breeziness about the Senegalese which is intoxicating - shit even their money changers have it as well as good rates.
There are 5 of us making our way to Saint Louis; myself, two Italians and two Poles and we sit and wait for 3 hours for a bus to fill and make our way towards Saint Louis. The drive - just over 100km now - takes three and a half hours as it's mostly on a dirt track which runs parallel to the road which is under construction, not a rarity in these parts I'm sure. Saint Louis is a beautiful city though, its centre resting on an island in the midst of the Senegal river. Saint Louis was the first French settlement in Africa and there are some stunningly decrepit colonial buildings around every corner.
Arriving in Senegal also means that we can look forward to eating once more as Senegal is noted for its cuisine. There's thiéboudienne - rice cooked in tomato sauce and served with chunks of fish stuffed with garlic, carrots and herbs - or mafé - rice served with meat sauce with a peanut base. The appetite lost in Mauritania has been rediscovered. There's a wonderful traditional food market down by the river but there's a collective aversion to photography and so the cameras remain in our pockets for the duration of our visit there. I have found though that pointing your camera in almost any direction results in a pThere's also a remarkable amount of street art adorning many of the buildings in the old quarter adding to the character of the old place. And now that we're in Senegal there's music everywhere. Senegal, where have you been?

Pssst. Pssst. This is Nouakchott

2011-03-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

There is officially nothing to see in Nouakchott. It's over 500km from Nouadhibou and though this is flat treeless Sahara country, the drive is bewitchingly beautiful as the sun sets. There are approximately 15 checkpoints between the two cities and they're generally brief affairs, more of a nuisance than an inconvenience. Nouakchott though should really have a sign reading 'Thank you for spending some time resting here on your way to somewhere more interesting'. It's physically impossible - for me at least - to leave the auberge where I'm staying between midday and 4pm on the two days I spent there with the temperature hovering at 40 degrees or above. It is the most intense heat which makes you feel as if you've been out on the lash for a week. But, well, this is the Sahara eh? The streets of the city are filled with money changers who hiss at you to get your attention - 'Pssst, pssst' - and the roads are clogged with remarkable looking cars about 30 years past their best. When they inevitably break down, it isn't a mechanic they'll be calling but an archaeologist.
Nouakchott's biggest selling point - apart from the ease with which you can get a visa at the Malian embassy - is its fish market or Porte de Peche as the locals call it. It's a daily event and it's one of those wonderful places where you get to watch west Africa reveal itself. It's a fish market by the sea and at about 3pm each day the boats start to return with their catch and it's once they come onshore that the excitement begins. Each boat crashes ashore, held in place by a crew of helpers who unload the boat of its enormous catch as the boat is buffeted by crashing waves. Like little piranhas, there are scores of young kids with their own nets who feast on the many fish who spill from the boats. In fact it isn't just the children - by 6pm when I'm leaving there are adults hauling sacks filled with fish from the scene, a larceny no-one cares about - there's plenty to go around.
And so you have dozens of boats crashing ashore, excited children sprinting from boat to boat filling their nets to bursting point, men with waterproofs and plastic creels racing back and forth to put the fish in ice - quite how anyone keeps a trace of who's caught what is absolutely beyond me. It's bedlam, a technicolour snapshot of Mauritania far removed from its colourless sand drenched cities.

Nouadhibou

2011-03-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

Not exactly, as you'll gather from the photos above, the pearl of the Atlantic - Nouadhibou is little more than a large coastal town which sits precariously on the Cap Blanc peninsula. Aside from its rich fishing waters, Nouadhibou also attracts a high number of foreign vessels due to its lax regulations which have meant that the waters off its shores have become something of a shipping graveyard. There is but one main street in the city along which there are various clothes shops, grocers, banks, restaurants and, it seems, enough hairdressers to make this the coiffeur capital of Africa. There are no menus in the restaurants here - if they’re not serving fish with rice then, quite simply, they’re not serving. If you don’t like fish or rice, you’re in the wrong place. All of the shop fronts are of uniform size which lends the place the feel of a village rather than a town which is home to 80,000 Mauritanians. There are a couple of ATMs in the city but Visa is king here which is useless to me but I’d already stocked up at the border.
At every street corner sits a man wearing a full head scarf and overcoat and selling mobile phone top-up cards. Business never seems to be booming. The breeze which has blown hard for the two days I’ve been here is welcome in that it takes the oomph out of the heat but it carries with it the stinging sands of the Sahara - a headscarf will be a prudent investment for this part of the world. It’s a hard place to live buffeted as it is by those sands all day every day. The sand is literally everywhere but the main street upon which the Mercedes is king. At least 70% of the cars here are old Mercedes and it seems as if 50% of those have shattered windscreens. Most eye-catching of all as I walk down the street are the clothes worn by many of the males here - draa - long, flowing, blue or light blue robes worn predominantly, it must be said, by the older generation.
It is cheap here though. It costs me 50c to use the internet for an hour, 80c for dinner - yes, fish with rice - and a nights’ accommodation in an auberge sets me back just under €8. Ultimately, although this is a drab little place, I’ve had a childish sense of excitement since I arrived here yesterday which is mostly down to the fact that I’m in a part of the world not very often seen. I’ve been here 24 hours now and there isn’t another traveller in sight which is no doubt down to the security warnings regarding any travel in Mauritania right now. There have been warnings posted regarding the potential kidnapping of westerners but I figure that I’m pretty safe; How can you kidnap a native of a land whose leader’s name is Inda?
I also get a taste of Mauritanian hospitality on a walk around the town today. I meet a guy on the street who invites me back to his place; “Come in, come in,” his words as he leads me to his house where he prepares tea - the longest, most intensive and convoluted tea making process I’ve ever witnessed and all of that for what amounts to a half of a shot glass of tea. Nice tea, mind, but surely not worth that effort. His English, like my French, is in need of polishing and so we nod and smile at each other throughout the hour I’m with him. Geography seems to be his favourite subject and he lists the names of several European countries and asks “Which capital?” I’m unsure as to whether I’m being tested or he’s genuinely curious. He asks me which countries I’m visiting in Africa, which leads to the following exchange….
Me: Senegal
Him: Is no good.
Me: Mali
Him: Is no good.
Me: Burkina Faso
Him: Is no good
Me: Um, I might go to Niger
Him: Is no good
Nigeria, apparently, is the only country in Africa, other than Mauritania of course, that he’d recommend I visit. This continues in our discussion of Europe and the rest of the world. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Russia, Ukraine, England and many others are all dismissed as no good. The guy could have been a foreign affairs advisor to George W. Bush. But he does make a decent tea and he even offers to pay for a taxi to take me back to where I’m staying.

Finally...into Africa

2011-03-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

Ah, now this is Africa! I finally feel as if I’ve crossed continents having left Morocco and entered Mauritania. I still see Morocco essentially as the end of southern Europe so it feels wonderful to be here in Africa at long last. Crossing the border - something I’m expecting to be fraught with administrative difficulties throughout west Africa - was surprisingly straightforward. I arrived in the border village of Guergarat on the Moroccan side and made my way through with not a taxi in sight. I needn’t have worried though because as soon as I stepped into no man’s land there, waiting almost with open arms, was Arturo Frontero, the self-styled saviour of many a cowed backpacker entering the corridor of uncertainty that is no man’s land on the way to the Mauritanian border. We quickly agreed on a price and he brought me to the Mauritanian side where the hassles - due in no small part to the fact that Arturo was widely known by all of the border officials - were non-existent. No man’s land was a depressing drive - an unpaved stretch of some 7km that served as a graveyard for many dead cars and little else besides.
A mere 5 minutes spent in the company of the Mauritanian officials and I was officially in Mauritania and speeding my way to Nouadhibou with the window down listening to a selection of Artruro’s favourites which included fucking ‘Sacrifice’ by Elton John which will now always remind me of Mauritania. Bastard. The window on the passenger side of Arturo’s taxi was stuck and wouldn’t go back up which became a problem as we drove to Nouadhibou and yours truly was whipped by Saharan sands. Every so often we’d pass a sign warning of unexploded mines on all sides - a legacy of Mauritania’s not so distant troubled past. The landscape on either side seemed to go forever - flat sandy terrain as far as the eye could see - a reminder of the vastness of this country which is twice the size of France. 75% of it is desert and it’s expanding southward all the time. On our way to Nouadhibou we had to slow several times for both the camels who sauntered across in front of us and the road block officials who want nothing more than a ‘fiche’ containing my personal details from me. Quite why they want to know my occupation every time they speak to me is beyond me but I’m hoping to have built up the courage to utter the words ‘camel mechanic’ before I leave the country in a few days.

Dakhla

2011-03-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the twilight zone. Christ, this is Dakhla? The strangest and, in some ways, eeriest place I’ve been to in Morocco without question - I arrived here at 2pm on a Friday afternoon when you’d expect that the place would certainly betray some signs of life but Dakhla is curiously silent, strikingly so. As I strolled around the streets earlier looking for life, the only noise I heard came from the military air base built on the fringes of the town centre. Dakhla is 23 hours’ drive from Marrakesh and the drive probably wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated helped by the fact that the roads were impeccable all the way. Of course the reason for this is that because Western Sahara - the majority of which I’ve passed through now - is a disputed territory which Morocco is claiming for its own, the government is pouring millions into developing the roads and settlements in the region. There are grants and land available for those who are willing to be coaxed into living here. It’s like Morocco’s very own Gaeltacht.
The drive here almost had a very spectacular beginning as before we had even pulled out of the bus despot, the bus driver and a passenger had to be held apart and screamed obscenities at each other. Well, it was all in Arabic but it’s fair to say they were screaming obscenities at each other given their tone of voice and the fact that it was too early to compliment the driver on his driving. And it all blew out quickly as many of those ‘Hold me back, hold me back’ contretemps seem to do.
There’s nothing to see on the drive here however but sand flats on both sides and it's a 1,500km drive (the equivalent of a drive from Dublin to northern Italy for example). Upon leaving Marrakesh we did drive through the High Atlas mountains for some time but once we leave them behind it’s scrub desert all the way. The Moroccan military are everywhere to be seen along the road and our bus is stopped countless times by officials who clearly can’t be arsed mounting the bus to check on everyone’s passports and so we’re waved through more often that not. There’s a heavy military presence in every town and village throughout Western Sahara, each settlement appearing infrequently like a mirage on the horizon. This is flat country. It is quite beautiful to look at in a Blade Runner/Star Wars landscape way.
I’m not the only western on the bus though as I’m joined by a Dutch guy who’s cycling from north Africa down to the south if he can make it. Poor bastard though - he hadn’t done his research and was 40km out of Dakhla when he met some people who told him that the Mauritanian border officials had long since stopped handing out visas at the border and so he had to abandon his bike here in Dakhla and begin the relentlessly boring trip all the way back up to the Mauritanian embassy in Rabat, collect his visa and then jump on same bus right back down to Dakhla from where he’ll set off tomorrow. He doesn’t seem even slightly discomfited by this, as he put it himself “I have one year so there is no hurry”.
As is always the case whenever I’m sat upright be it on a train, bus or plane, there was no sleep whatsoever but I’ve found myself a cheap room in the Hotel Riad around the corner from the bus stop so it’ll be an early night. As Dakhla is about as interesting and as lively as Enniscrone in the depths of winter - Dakhla is also by the sea, a drab, nuclear looking sea mind you - I’ll be moving on tomorrow having figured out that there is indeed a bus to the border at 9am from where I’ll take a shared taxi to Nouadhibou. If all goes well then I should be in West Africa proper by this time tomorrow evening. I’ve been anticipating the iron-ore train now for some time but it looks unlikely as if it’ll come to pass now alas. Mauritania has, for some time, had a poor reputation where tourist safety is concerned and so any travel to the Adrar region - which is exactly where I would have been headed on board the train - is, at present, strongly discouraged. And so it now seems as if Mauritania will be a transit country only with a stop-off at Nouadhibou tomorrow and the capital Nouakchott a couple of days later before heading on to tangle with border officials at Rosso on the border with Senegal.

To Mauritania

2011-03-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Time to move again. Today I board a Supratours bus bound for Dakhla, a mere 25 hours from Marrakesh and into the land of no return of Western Sahara. Dakhla's as far as I can get on public transport and from there I'll try to hitch a lift with someone heading in the same direction south to Nouadhibou, my first point of entry into Mauritania. Dakhla is deep into the disputed territory of Western Sahara and as such there'll be many roadblocks along the way - whether this is to tighten security or to offer the guards who patrol these roadblocks ample opportunities to ask for bribes is open to debate. We'll see.
Marrakesh has been a fantastic base though. Walked around Djemaa El Fna (I've never seen two consecutively similar spellings of the place even here in Morocco) one last time last night and it occurred to me that this rowdy square with its vertically challenged violin players, open to all boxing bouts, freakish Berber storytellers and their dancing shemale assistants, chaotic Moroccan music ensembles, philosophical debates, snake charmers and a whole lot else besides - it's like you picked the weirdest characters from a David Lynch movie and let them run free. Quite the most wonderful place.
I've loaded my mp3 player with podcasts and, ahem, helped myself to some new albums - Elbow, Edwyn Collins, Low, PJ Harvey and Mogwai to help me while away the endless day that lies ahead. All good though.

Jebel Toubkal

2011-03-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Ah, now after a three week lull what better way to get into the swing of things than to trek to the summit of the tallest peak in the High Atlas mountain range? This is what makes Morocco such a wonderful country for me - within a two hour drive of Marrakesh you can find yourself at the foothills of Jebel Toubkal, at 4,167 metres North Africa's highest peak. I got back to Morocco on the 16th March - Paddy's Day is shit anyway - and had 8 days to kill before I could enter Mauritania so I decided to hit the hills again.
The base for trekking on JT is the village of Imlil which is about two hour drive in a grand taxi from Marrakesh. I spent the first night in a little réfuge in Imlil, the owner of which seemed a very agreeable woman upon arrival but quickly morphed into a cleanliness freak who, almost literally, followed me around the place rearranging anything I put my hand on. I sat on her couch and she emerged from a back room to rearrange the cushions I'd put behind my back as I sat there. She spoke no English and I speak whatever French Miss Dennedy drilled into me back in the day and so communication was limited to my shrugs and muted apologies and her sighs of frustration and not so muted exasperation at my presence there. Little wonder I was the only guest there.
I wandered around Imlil and venture into an mountaineering equipment sore to see if crampons would really be necessary for climbing Toubkal in March. I've never worn crampons before and was hoping that in mid-spring the going would be good enough to go without specialist equipment. But no, crampons were essential and I was given a swift demonstration of how to attach them to my boots. I feigned understanding reasoning that I'd tie them my own way when I needed them.
Spent the night chéz Miss Clean Freak and hit the trail the following morning having left as many crumbs on the floor following breakfast as possible. It surprised me that she wasn't there to catch each one as they fell. On the trail it was a pretty steady upward climb all the way to the village of Sidi Charmhamouch and from there it was snow all the way, though firm enough for me not to need the crampons just yet. The mountain réfuge was four and a half hours away, some 950 metres from the base of Toubkal and the place was surprisingly busy. The views everywhere were stunning - the réfuge is at 3,200m and there's snow in all directions.
I hit the trail the following morning at 6am, taking 20 minutes to properly strap on the crampons, one of which came loose after 10 minutes of trekking. I've never done a snow trek before and this was tough going but the rewards were in direct proportion to the effort required. It took just under three hours to reach the oddly shaped summit marker atop Toubkal and the views in all directions were majestic. By now I couldn't feel my toes or my fingers but I didn't care for the 15 minutes I spent gazing in all directions. Hard to believe as I stood there that I was just two hours from the chaos of Djemaa El Fna but such is the joy of Morocco.

Into Africa!

2011-03-05T02:14:00.001-08:00

Right now Morocco seems like the cleanest and most hygienic nation in the world. It isn’t of course but coming hot on the heels of India, so it seems. I love Morocco - I came here about 6 years ago visiting Fez, Marrakesh, Meknes and Chefchaouen - and the reason I’m here is twofold; I got a cheap flight from Mumbai to Casablanca and I have to go to Rabat to get my Mauritanian visa. Morocco, it seems, is the only north African country that isn’t kicking off right now. There have been demonstrations in Casablanca but Morocco is a pretty settled country and so the chances of, say, a Libyan or Egyptian situation arising here are pretty small. And everything here seems so remarkably easy now too - buying a train ticket without being taken from behind in a queue, finding a carriage on the train that doesn’t have 24 people where there should be 8, and walking around the streets seemingly invisible to the wider Moroccan population - I’m loving it.
Rabat, which I’d never been to, is a surprisingly lovely city. I’d steered clear on my last visit because it was the capital city and it didn’t have any of the allure of classic Moroccan cities like Fez or Marrakesh. But for the 3 days I’m here it’s beautiful. I stay at the HI hostel close to the medina and meet not just an Irishman but a Sligoman - from Ransboro of all places. The old city is charming and it’s easy to settle in with the locals in the cafés drinking thé a la menthe and munching on cous cous. I’m here though to get my Mauritanian visa and, again, this proves disarmingly easy, in fact the consular section opens early to hand out visa application forms. It takes 24 hours to process and I’m back the next day to collect what essentially will be a transit visa for me as Mauritania is somewhere that I have to travel through on my way to Senegal where a visa is not necessary.
Morocco is a very gentle introduction to Africa though - the rail and bus system here are of a western standard and, in general, it‘s a relatively wealthy country. The next step is to figure out exactly how I’m going to get down through Western Sahara and Mauritania and into Senegal. Time permitting I’ll take the iron ore train across to Choum and then travel down to Atar from where I can explore the Sahara. The train is 2.3km of carriages transporting iron ore and a solitary ‘passenger’ carriage at the rear. There are two benches and it’s first come, first serve for those - if you don’t get a place on the benches you sit on the floor or you stand. If you wish you can climb into the ore cars themselves and travel for free but this is for masochists only apparently. The whiff of adventure is in the air again.

In Transit

2011-02-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

If in the future they ever do put buildings on the moon then it‘ll look and feel just like Abu Dhabi airport - a lifeless, timeless and seemingly airless shithole filled with zombies like me trudging around in circles pensively and repeatedly glancing up at the departure board for confirmation that the end of their time here is nigh. Every time I’ve been here it’s always around 2am but time is irrelevant as it’s always halfway between where you were and where you want to be.
Being in India for a prolonged period can be a challenge, sure, but leaving it is almost fucking impossible. Mumbai airport has sphincter-tight security and they go about the business of making your life a misery with relish. Without a doubt, the queues between passport control and security are the slowest moving I’ve ever encountered but, hey, this is still India even if it does feel as if airports are autonomous states at times. The security guards check and double check everything - I’m half expecting them to wheel out fucking Liberace slipping a latex glove onto his hand to say “And I’ll be performing the cavity search.”
Somehow as I was boarding in Mumbai I was told that I’d been upgraded to business class - they didn’t explain and I didn’t ask. I’ve only travelled business class once before - again an upgrade - but that was on Aeroflot so it doesn’t count. Business class on Aeroflot makes Ryanair look like Etihad. Mumbai to Abu Dhabi was only a three hour flight but in my exhausted state I didn’t take advantage of my luxury at all. I can remember ordering a white wine and it being placed within reach before I passed out, waking only as we made our approach to Abu Dhabi.

India

2011-02-26T22:10:00.001-08:00

I’m in just about the best place right now to write my last entry from India. It’s 6.30am and having arrived from Jalgaon two hours ago I’ve made my way to the Gateway of India for a pre-dawn view and it’s beautiful here. There are a few other people about - what’s their excuse for being up at this hour on a Sunday? - but the sun’s coming up and all is very well indeed. I fly tonight from Mumbai International and by tomorrow morning - all going well - I’ll be in Africa, Morocco to be specific, in just about the only part of northern Africa that isn’t kicking off at this moment in time and which is, fortunately, one of the more stable countries in the region. This gets even better - as I’m sitting here waiting for the sun to rise, I have some chai-wallahs bringing me chai without having to move an inch. Two and a half months in India then, much ground covered and I’ve seen everything that I wanted to. Hard to pick out favourites - Udaipur was a beautiful city, the Sikh hospitality experience in Amritsar’s Golden Temple was unforgettable, Jaisalmer will be remembered for its fort and Christmas Day on a camel in the desert, the Taj Mahal, meeting some wonderful Tibetan folk in the beautiful surrounds of McLeod Ganj, Varanasi’s ghats, the freaky meditation course, Chandigarh’s trippy Rock Garden, chilling out in Pushkar with the hippies and crusties, the shipyards of Kutch……I could go on.

But Africa I hope will be a different rush - a travelling buzz, the hassles of crossing borders and getting from place to place. I have a vague itinerary which sees me begin in Morocco, make my way overland down through Western Sahara and Mauritania. There’s an iron ore train which you can jump on in northern Mauritania which is 2.5km in length and has one passenger carriage at the end which takes twelve hours to bring you to the next city in Mauritania. From there I’ll spend some time travelling around Senegal and then across to Mali where, time permitting I’ll get to Timbuktu (it isn‘t a name your parents made up when you were a kid) and trek in Dogon country amongst the Dogon tribes people and finish up in Burkina Faso. I have no idea if two months is long enough to do all of this - Africa, no doubt, will devour even the loosest of schedules but I’m very excited about getting there and giving it a go.

Well, the sun’s almost up here and the crowds have swelled. I remember writing a blog post a couple of months ago wondering why people called India an intense travelling experience and it’s a bit clearer to me now. I’ve travelled in countries before where any western is immediately the centre of attention but never have I felt it so intensely as I have in India. From morning to night there is no end to people’s fascination with westerners here - if you’re the paranoid type then India is not for you. Almost every Indian will have sufficient English to ask you the following, and in this exact order;

Which country?

You are here alone?

Are you married?

You have girlfriend?

Are you virgin?

You like India?

And so it goes. In fact you could bump up the virgin question closer to the top. On occasion it’s seemed as if the only reason an Indian guy has approached me is to ask me if I’m a virgin. Anyway, the sun’s about to rise and my time here is literally done.

Ajanta & Ellora caves

2011-02-25T22:35:00.001-08:00

Apologies in advance if this post is a bit distracted but I’m sitting here in the city of Jalgaon, beautiful day outside, in my hotel room with the television on in the background showing Ireland playing Bangladesh in the cricket World Cup. And we’ve skittled them for 205! Anyway, back on task here. So what should be some sort of lap of honour in my last few days in India has instead been a hectic rush from Mumbai around Maharashtra to check out the famous Ajanta and Ellora caves. Being honest here I’m pretty much tired of being the tourist right now. I’m not even remotely tired of travelling but going to see ’sights’, taking photos, marking off an other ’must see’ etc has become more of a chore than a joy and so it is with both of the cave complexes I visit. And it’s a shame because they’re both spectacular and worth the journey to get here.

It’s Ajanta’s setting which impresses me the most initially with the caves carved out in a remote horseshoe-shaped ravine. The earlier caves here date back to the second century BC and all of the caves were excavated by Buddhist monks as monasteries during a time when Buddhism flourished in India. Ajanta is most famous for its cave paintings which are in various stages of disrepair and which haven’t been helped by some pretty haphazard attempts at restoration. By the time I’ve seen about 5 caves though - there are 28 in total - it’s all becoming ‘different cave, same painting’ but, fuck it, I’ve come all this way and so I march around all 28 of them. (And the first wicket has fallen for 23!) The paintings really are difficult to make out and the caves are scarcely an attraction in themselves.

Ellora, located to the south of Ajanta, rose to prominence as Ajanta was abandoned, and in fact may well have been the reason that it was abandoned. (And the second wicket is down for 36.) Whereas the setting is not as spectacular as Ajanta, the caves themselves more than make up for it. Whereas the Ajanta experience is predominantly about its paintings, Ellora is all about the caves. There are 34 caves here - some Buddhist, Jain and Hindu - and as the years passed so the craftsmanship developed and became much more ambitious and as I walk from Cave 1 on this becomes perfectly obvious.

The centrepiece is the incredible Kailash temple, hewn from basalt rock and staggering in its architectural intricacies. Sight weary or no it is impossible not to be stunned by Kailash. It’s less a cave than a freestanding structure but it’s the first thing you see upon arrival at the site and I‘m still seeing it as I hurry around the other caves in order to see it again. It took over 100 years and four generations of kings to complete and it’s a monolithic masterpiece. It was conceived of as a replica of Tibet’s Mount Kailash and would make Petra’s sculptors blush.

Having spent half an hour wandering around Kailash - it is that big - my appetite for the remaining caves has disappeared. (Shit, Joyce out and three wickets down.)

Mumbai

2011-02-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

Of all the Indian cities, Mumbai is the one which has, let‘s call it previous. With an unforgiving reputation that could come and meet you off the train its sheer size, thronged streets, and sweltering temperatures mean that it’ll be the first true experience I’ll have of an Indian supercity as I’d imagined them to be. And for the 48 hours that I spend there I absolutely love it but it’s very much a city of two halves - the southern half of Colaba and Churchgate is where all of the heavy hitting sights are to be found and the further north you walk from there the narrower the streets become and the more classically Indian the city becomes. Mumbai is equally famous for its dearth of decent budget accommodation but following a recommendation from a guy I met in Bhuj I found a hotel room in Colaba for 350INR in what was the smallest room of the entire trip and there has been some serious competition for that accolade.

I have so little time left in India now that this next week will be a bit of a rush around Maharashtra to see Ellora and Ajanta caves and so it is with Mumbai. There’s much to see - too much - in both Colaba and Churchgate but some of the buildings here are magnificent, not least Victoria Terminus - a massive, imposing and very, very British train station. There’s the underwhelming Gateway of India - one of those commemorative constructions (the visit of King George V) that’s famous for being famous in the same way that Pete Doherty is. I walked into the Town Hall, another impressive architectural relic, and walking into the place with its dusted reading rooms, moth-eaten tomes and ancient bookcases makes it feel like it’s still 1920 in there. Southern Mumbai is the air-brushed or photo-shopped version of the city - shit, there’s even a Body Shop there - and so by the end of Day 1 I still feel as if I haven’t seen the real city.

Moving north on the second day I see a different side to Mumbai - poorer, noisier, narrower and a hell of a lot more claustrophobic with bazaars and mosques littered everywhere - this is Muslim Mumbai and the poverty immediately becomes more apparent. The northern part of the city is also home to the wonderful Towers of Silence. There are 7 of them in all and they’re where Mumbai’s Zoroastrian community (no, me either), eh, dispose of their dead. They believe that pollution of the four sacred elements - air, earth, water and fire - contradict their beliefs and so when members of their community die the bodies are laid out on top of the cylindrical towers where the bones are to be ‘cleaned‘ by vultures and the weather. And you thought cremation was unusual. In recent years the tradition has died out - sorry - due in no small part to the decline in the population of India’s vultures but, hey, what a way to go when you’re gone.

Kutch

2011-02-19T22:54:00.000-08:00

7 days left in India. 7 days! Genuinely no idea where that’s gone but it’s February and much of my time these days is consumed as much by thoughts of West Africa as it is wondering where I’ll spend tomorrow night in India. For now though I’ve made it to Gujarat, the 7^th state of my time here. Though no Rajasthan, Gujarat boasts enough attractions of its own to while away a few days before I move on to Maharashtra and Mumbai from where I fly out from on the 27^th. First stop in Gujarat after a 20 hour train ride was Ahmedabad; big, busy, dirty, polluted - yes, just your typical Indian city then. And not much to recommend it either. I genuinely don’t have much to write about Ahmedabad other than the fact that my guide book recommended that you don’t spend too long there because of the high levels of carbon monoxide in the old city and that probably sums the place up better than I ever could. Oh and they put fairy lights on the mosques there which managed to be both amusing and disturbing at the same time.

I abandoned my large pack in A’bad and took the train to the city of Bhuj, way out west on the Kutch peninsula and hemmed in by the wonderfully titled Rann of Kutch to the north and Little Rann of Kutch to the east (both are basically treeless marshes - bleak). Bhuj, and Kutch in general, is famous in India for its long tradition of craftsmanship particularly jewellery and clothing design. And Bhuj turns out to be a charming little city and an ideal base from where to explore Kutch. I stay in the City Guest House and everyone staying seems to be there for the textiles and as passionate for them and talking about them as an Indian about the cricket World Cup. It’s absolutely everywhere now and impossible to wander around without seeing Sachin Tendulkar’s face in every nook and cranny and there isn‘t a product on telly that he or his team mates are not endorsing. What they’ll do if they don’t win the World Cup I have no idea and this is a possibility that the Indians I’ve spoken to have not even remotely considered.

I take a day trip south to Mandvi which faces the Arabian Sea and is most famous for its dhow-building industry. The dhows are hand built ships which usually take about two years to build. The shipyard as you pull in on the bus to Mandvi is a stunning sight and you’re free to stroll around and watch the building in progress. The yard is like a Blue Peter studio with boats lying side by side in various advanced states of construction. On completion the dhows are usually purchased by Gulf Arabs for pleasure use for about half a million dollars. Another day trip takes me to Anjar and it turns into one of those ‘Why the fuck am I here?’ days. But Kutch is unique and well worth the week I spent there. Meanwhile back in A’bad, life goes on. The men seem to spend most of their time here drinking chai and dunking bread buns smothered with butter into their chai. And probably discussing how they’ll celebrate when India win the World Cup.

Chandigarh

2011-02-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

Chandigarh probably isn’t on many people’s Indian itineraries and, being honest here, it wasn’t originally on mine either, but with reports of snow and high winds - and a 12 hour bus ride to get there from McLeod Ganj - Manali suddenly became a bad idea and so, suddenly, Chandigarh seemed like a really good idea. Chandigarh’s main draw is its bizarre if quite intriguing Rock Garden but given what I’d read about the unusual nature of the city itself it was well worth a stop off on my way back south again.

Conceived of by Nehru who saw the construction of Chandigarh as a symbol of an India of the future, he handed the task of constructing this Utopian vision to a Swiss-French architect known as Le Cobusier. Beginning in 1952 Le Corbusier split the city into 29 sectors in a grid like form, each one of them measuring 800 by 1200 metres and sprinkled patches of green all around. It has since grown from the original 29 sectors to its present day 61. Le Corbusier’s original concept was to see the city as a human body with the Capital Complex in the east as the ‘head’, Sector 17, the shopping precinct, as the ‘heart’, with the green open spaces as the ‘lungs’. Finally Chandigarh’s wide network of roads were to be the ‘circulatory system’. All lofty, even laudable ideals, sure, but in India? Chandigarh is the urban equivalent of Dolly the sheep. It looks like a city, smells like a city, sounds like a city but it isn’t really a city at all. Futuristic designs like this belong in a city, they shouldn’t ever be the city. And certainly not in fucking India where the Indiafication of Le Corbusier’s vision is inevitable i.e. like Christmas presents on New Year’s Day, everything looks worn out and neglected. If Chandigarh is the representation of a human body, well in 2011 it has cellulite and sagging tits. Architecturally it’s like Gdansk on downers and has about as much character as you’d expect a large grid-like construction to have.

Chandigarh’s only saving grace for me is its Rock Garden, a truly surreal attraction of its own and said to be India’s second biggest tourist draw after the Taj Mahal. It began construction in 1965 - Chandigarh would have been a moody teenager by then so some light relief was obviously needed - and a man named Nek Chand (so the story goes) decided to build a small garden. By 1973 his small garden measured 12 acres and he was given a team of workers to help expand it. Today it covers 25 acres and a walk around reveals thousands of sculptures, plants and every conceivable type of junk you could imagine thrown together to create what amounts to a 25 acre LSD trip. You'll note that there aren't any photos of the city of Chandigarh above and that's no accident.

McLeod Ganj

2011-02-06T00:45:00.000-08:00

Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj - home to the world’s most famous squatter - is my next port of call in this north western tour of India. Set high in the hills it’s easy to forget that you’re still in India once you arrive and, at times, that’s no bad thing. McLeod Ganj is of course home to the Dalai Lama who was forced into exile here way back in 1959. The fact that he’s still here is as much a testament to enduring Indian hospitality as it is to an unchanging Chinese colonial mentality.
McLeod Ganj has become Little Tibet as thousands have followed him here, many risking - and many others losing - their lives in a hazardous crossing of high Himalayan passes in order to avoid Chinese border controls. There’s a simple but informative museum here which tells their story and shows daily films about the unchanging situation in Tibet.
Being here takes me right back to my visit to Tibet and that is a wonderful thing indeed. The key difference of course is that here in McLeod Ganj images of the Dalai Lama are everywhere - no home is without their little shrine - and people are free to discuss the illegal occupation of their homeland, something which would see them imprisoned, tortured and worse in their home country. In some ways it‘s become the Tibet the Chinese won‘t allow their homeland to become.
There’s a wonderfully mellow vibe here which isn’t tainted in the same way as Rishikesh is by New-Agers tripping over themselves selling you a new path for life. I enjoyed Rishikesh more for the people I met there than for its much vaunted spirituality which seems more than a little contrived. McLeod Ganj also offers the irresistible allure of mountain treks once more and so I visited the local mountaineering institute to find out information on local treks and grab some trail maps. Unfortunately the mountaineering institute here offers no maps and even less information about local treks, therefore I have no idea why the mountaineering institute exists. It’s easy to get around this ignorance when all of the guesthouse owners are all too willing to point you in the right direction of the trail. And it’s that friendliness which I encounter everywhere here that makes this such a special place. When I tell the locals that I’ve been to Tibet as recently as December their faces light up and they quiz me on how it’s changed, how it seems to an outsider and what cities and temples I‘ve visited, eager as they are to cling to anything from their homeland, even the recollections of a passing stranger.
My happiness here stems purely from the little things. Eating delicious thukpa and momos again. The beautiful neighbouring villages of Dharamkot and Bhagsu. Prayer flags and prayer wheels. Monks in every restaurant and café drinking copious amounts of chai giving the impression that they're bunking off monastic duties. Not being stared at as you walk down the street. Finding some wonderful bookshops throughout the town - I’ve just picked up a copy of The Rise And Fall Of The Stone Roses which makes me very happy indeed. Ah, the world was theirs.

Amritsar

2011-02-05T08:03:00.001-08:00

And so on to Punjab - home to the best beards and turbans in all of India. In contrast to the Rajasthani penchant for a traditional red turban, Punjabi men opt for the technicolour approach resulting in what resembles a street heaving with bobbing M & Ms. Amritsar was my base for 24 hours for a twin pronged assault on two of Punjab’s premier sights - the Golden Temple and the border closing ceremony at Wagha, some 30km from the city. I travelled from Ajmer to Amritsar aboard one of the draughtiest and noisiest trains (a combination of a stream of never-ending chai-wallahs, chattering Indian ladies and the inevitable snore’n’fart show) I’ve been on in my 2 months here. Amritsar has little to recommend it other than the Golden Temple but what a recommendation it is. The temple itself is magnificent and as large as the temple complex is, it‘s downright impossible to avert your gaze from the warm glow at the centre of the artificial lake in which it‘s constructed. But for me it’s the warmth of the Sikh welcome which is just as overwhelming. Visitors from every caste, creed and colour are invited to stay at the temple complex (a maximum of 3 nights) and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there and all for free. It’s a remarkably hospitable place and contrasts sharply with the truculence and unabashed greed I’ve encountered at many a mosque and cathedral over the years.

I arrived there with three Americans - Stevie, Ruby and Mike - and, upon arrival you’re asked to remove your shoes and bathe your feet before you enter the temple complex. After a cursory glance at the wonder that is the temple we make our way to check out our accommodation for the night which is to be in a pretty cramped dorm but there are warm blankets aplenty and literally hundreds of Sikh pilgrims lying out under the stars by night so no-one’s complaining. We try out the dinner experience if for nothing else than the novelty factor and I’m enchanted by it all. It’s run with military style efficiency - upon arrival you’re handed your plate, spoon and cup and directed to the main dining hall.

There you join the madding crowd on the floor, legs crossed sitting upon the carpet, looking across as the other pilgrims who, rest assured, are looking at you looking at them. Within seconds of sitting a man comes with a bucket of rice which he shovels on to your plate, followed by the dal, the curry and the chapatis. I hold out one hand to grab a chapati and he barks “TWO HANDS” at me. Dinner is not to be lingered over and almost before we’re up and away the floor is being dampened, the mops are out and the next serving is imminent. And so it goes 24 hours a day. Everything is done by pilgrim volunteers; the cooking, the food preparation, the serving, the washing up - it’s a remarkable show of community spirit.

After enjoying the delights of the temple we make our way out to the border closing ceremony at Wagha. None of us knew much about it in advance other than the fact that it was quite over the top. On arrival in the stands - yes, they’ve erected stands there which is remarkable in itself - our wandering eyes become fixed on a man dressed in a white tracksuit whom it’s impossible not to dislike and whose job it is - remarkably - to rally the crowds. He bears the demeanour of a man completely unused to failure and who probably trounces his kids at chess in order to teach them valuable lessons about life. He spends the entire hour, encouraging the crowd to cheer, and not just that, but to cheer VERY LOUDLY INDEED. On a couple of occasions when the din does not reach the decibel level he’s seeking, he goes forward to the crowd and barks instructions, quite clearly berating all and sundry for their paltry attempts. This isn’t so much a show of patriotism as barely concealed jingoism.

Once the ceremony is underway, the man in the tracksuit, after each cheer, looks immediately to his left across to the Pakistani border as if to say “Beat that motherfuckers”. And the ceremony itself? A quite ridiculous show of military pomp and preening, featuring soldiers wearing hats which would make Elton John blanch. There’s goose-stepping and high-kicking straight out of the Monty Python school of choreography.

As I watch I’m thinking that here we have two nuclear nations who, with Kashmir just a matter of hours away, are performing some bizarre and utterly futile pantomime for a partisan and sycophantic audience. I’m torn at the end of it all as to whether what I’ve just witnessed was amusing or downright depressing. The stands quickly empty and the man in the white tracksuit goes home to beat his kids at chess. Probably.

The Vipassana Experience Part III

2011-02-05T07:43:00.000-08:00

By the end of Day 6, I couldn’t honestly say that I felt changed or altered, or even more relaxed or whatever the hell it was I was supposed to be feeling - I had forgotten why it was I was here in the first place and thus it was difficult to evaluate whether or not my time had been well spent. On the morning of Day 7, if our minds weren’t focused enough then we were introduced to something which hadn’t been advertised that would, if nothing else, certainly help to shut out the outside world - the cell. Measuring 2m x 1m and containing nothing other than a meditation mat and a light switch, this was to be our refuge in times of outside distractions. Now of course it was entirely up to us whether or not we would choose to meditate here and given the fact that the sound of the constant farting, sniffing, sneezing and even snoring was, on occasion, cacophonous, it seemed like a good idea.

From a meditation point of view the focus has by now switched to the different parts of the body and concentrating on any sensations we might be feeling from our heads down to our toes. We focus on each part individually and in the exact same order - so we go from the scalp to the forehead, down the different parts of the face, both arms, upper torso, legs and down to the toes. And then in the reverse order again and again and again……..it’s every bit as monotonous as you might imagine.

At meal times my thoughts fluctuate between “Fuck this, I’m done with all this crap“, and the thought that it’s only 3 more days so I might as well sit it out. It’s the latter which wins out but the former which would have made more sense.

Regardless, the work continues and on Day 9 it’s suggested to us that we might be at the stage where not only can we experience sensations on our entire body, but inside our body. And - wait for it - feel our bodies dissolve into a miasma of sub-atomic particles. And, stop the presses, it doesn’t end there - that we might be able to swim into our spinal cords and notice any impurities that might exist there. Now this to me is the equivalent of strapping a 6 month old child in a nappy into a car and saying “And next to the brake is the clutch. Away you go.” Well I’m that 6 month old. I’m not even remotely suggesting that this feeling isn’t possible after much practice, but 9 fucking days?

But finally - finally - Day 10 arrives. Day 10 is known as Metta Day but the most important thing about Day 10 is that we have permission to talk from 10am, a prospect I have been anticipating as eagerly as Fernando Torres’ next hamstring injury. My first question to Floriaan, with whom I travelled to the centre - is “Are you cracking up too?” He’s not and neither is anyone else which leaves me alone with the growing feeling that I’ve missed the point entirely with the meditation and that I somehow feel more strung out now than I did when I began. There’s still a day left to go in the course but the meditation is over and a day of watching happy-clappy DVDs lies ahead and so I excuse myself from the final formalities. There’s a 3 hour walk back to Jaipur from the Vipassana centre but it is exactly what I need now that I have my music and my mind back.

The Vipassana Experience Part II

2011-02-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Day 1 begins, as promised, with the sounding of a bell at 4am, a sound which will become hatefully familiar over the coming days. It’s easy rising on the first morning, curious as we all are to see what lies ahead. We will spend almost all of our time in dhama hall number 3 where I’ve been allocated cushion number 14. There’s a split right down the middle - men on the left, women on the right - and everyone faces the stage where two teachers sit; the guruji facing the males and who does all of the talking and instructing and his female counterpart who seems to be there in case of emergency. It’s explained to us how we should sit and exactly how we should meditate. In fact all of the instructions are given to us by tape by a man whose voice comes to resemble Johnny Cash singing his entire catalogue backwards from beyond the grave having consumed one too many bottles of JD. It’s hard to concentrate on your breathing when each time you hear your instructor speak you‘re waiting for him to break into Ring Of Fire. Backwards.

On the first day we’re asked to focus our minds on the inhalation and exhalation of air through our nostrils. Nothing else. ‘Easy’, I think to myself. Wrong. Try it. Seriously, try it. Assume the classic meditation position, sit there and focus on your breathing and nothing else. See how long you last. I thought that I’d be good for a few minutes at least but after about ten seconds, my mind is racing elsewhere and this is to continue for the entire day - a Tom and Jerry mental battle between what I should be doing and what I am doing. And I have to face 10 fucking hours of this. And it’s only day 1. Christ, what have I signed up for?

But, little by little some progress is made. I manage, at most, 30 seconds of unbroken concentration by the end of the day and convince myself that this is progress. You’re actually too busy concentrating to realise that you’re bored. And if you start thinking that you’re bored then that means you’re not concentrating….inhale….exhale….inhale. Over the course of the following days the techniques fortunately get more specific and require even greater powers of concentration which, in theory, should be coming more naturally to me. By days 2 and 3 we’re asked to focus on the sensations in a triangular area framed by our nose and the area just above our upper lip. Now by the second day the only body part where I’m feeling really strong sensations is in my arse - if I could focus on the sensations in my rear end then I’d have reached Enlightenment in record time. Breathe in…breathe out…breathe in…..

Break and lunch times are bizarre, if for no other reason than we all walk around a reasonably confined space pretending that no-one else exists. As for the food, well, let’s just say that it could have been a lot worse but there are some hideous looking stew-type concoctions that not even Oliver Twist would have looked for second helpings of. It’s only on Day 5 that I realise that on the previous four days I’d been adding chilli powder to the Indian equivalent of Rice Krispies. On the day I discover this I try sugar instead but it tastes like shit and so I go back to the chilli powder on Day 6. This may all read like mundane stuff but, to me, this was as exciting as it got in there. In fact to pass the time each day menial tasks such as laundry, cleaning the room and brushing your teeth were lingered over and looked forward to - anything to kill the time.

It’s on Day 4 where we’re urged - some might say compelled - to sit unmoving for the three one hour group sittings we have each day. Now, my body was just not designed with the lotus position in mind. Generally I can last twenty minutes before my legs scream in protest and I have to move to revive them but as we’re asked to give it a go, I try. By the end of the week I manage 40 minutes which, to me, is an achievement. We’re told to ignore the inevitable pain that will occur, to understand that it’s our body rejecting the purity of dhama. Great, try telling that to my two legs who clearly couldn‘t give a shit about the purity of dhama, they just need regular blood flow again.

Sitting in the hall together for the 10 days we’re treated to a sound and light show of farting by the Indians around us. We westerners have a repressed attitude to farting, a concept which is clearly alien to those around us. One day as I return to the dhama hall, I stroll in just behind an Indian man who stops abruptly to stare at the floor. I stop out of respect - perhaps he’s having a mental epiphany - and he farts loudly in front of me and then casually and serenely moves on as if nothing happened. An anal epiphany.

There Goes The Fear? - The Vipassana Experience Part I

2011-01-28T05:48:00.000-08:00

Right then, I haven’t lost interest in blogging over the past fortnight, no, instead I’ve been sitting around on my arse for 10 hours spending all of my time thinking, doing absolutely nothing productive but trying to look really busy at the same time. No, I haven’t joined the civil service. Having survived the physical rigours of three weeks in the Himalayas on this trip, I decided that it was time to test my mental wellbeing by signing up for a 10 day meditation course, situated in a retreat just outside Jaipur - an Annapurna Circuit for the mind as it were. If you google the words ‘meditation course India’, one of the first results you’ll come across is ‘Vipassana’ and that was my first introduction to the term some months back before even entering India. The concept of meditation has always appealed, anything to help to shut off an overactive mind and just relax can only be a good thing. Signing up for a Vipassana course online is simple and within a couple of days I’d received confirmation of acceptance on a course beginning January 16th.
What also intrigued me about the Vipassana method was the rigorous, no bullshit approach they espouse. For the ten days you’re participating in the course you’re expect to maintain complete silence, 24 hours a day until 10am on the morning of the last day of the course. This is termed - rather grandly - ‘noble silence’. You’re discouraged from making eye contact and all contact with the outside world is forbidden - truly, a misanthrope's paradise. There is complete segregation of males and females lest the proximity of flesh prove too much for a focussed mind. Mobile phones, laptops, books, pens, even vibrators I’m sure are all deposited with management on enrolment day. Nothing is left to chance. It’s just you and your thoughts for 10 days. Quite why that seemed appealing to me at any stage is beyond me now. On top of all this, you’re very much thrown in at the deep end from a meditation point of view. From having never meditated for a millisecond in my life previously, I was now expected to jump headlong into a 10 hour a day shift for the 10 days that I would spend there.
The course participants - about 70 in total - were a pretty even split between Indians and westerners, like me keen to try out something new. Once we had registered we were shown to our rooms for the duration of the course - very basic but clean and with an attached bathroom. I considered asking if there was a wi-fi connection in my room but given the seriousness with which we were asked “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” upon arrival, I decided against it. One other thing about this course - there’s absolutely no charge for it. You spend ten days here being taught how to meditate, you’re given a bed, hot water and as much food (vegetarian of course) as you can eat. You’re welcome to give a donation once the course has been completed but no-one’s there with a begging bowl on the final day pressuring you into it.
The setting is wonderful and utterly conducive to the calm required for meditation. The centre is built in the hills to the west of Jaipur and we’re sharing the same space as the monkeys, peacocks and squirrels which inhabit the area. There are 5 precepts which we must keep during the entire duration of the course and they are as follows;

to abstain from killing any being (right, should manage that one if I really try)
to abstain from stealing (nothing left to steal - management has everything of value)
to abstain from all sexual activity (if only)
to abstain from telling lies
to abstain from all intoxicants

On the evening we arrive we gather in the dhama hall for our pre-course chat, none of which I recall other than a plea that we restrain from killing scorpions and snakes if we encounter them. That behaviour is apparently "frowned upon here". Other than that, we will begin the following morning at 4.30am. The timetable is as follows;

4:00 am		Morning wake-up bell
4:30-6:30 am		Meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30-8:00 am		Breakfast break
8:00-9:00 am		Group meditation in the hall
9:00-11:00 am		Meditate in the hall or in your room according to the teacher's instructions
11:00-12:00 noon		Lunch break
12noon-1:00 pm		Rest and interviews with the teacher
1:00-2:30 pm		Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30-3:30 pm		Group meditation in the hall
3:30-5:00 pm		Meditate in the hall or in your own room according to the teacher's instructions
5:00-6:00 pm		Tea break
6:00-7:00 pm		Group meditation in the hall
7:00-8:15 pm		Teacher's Discourse in the hall
8:15-9:00 pm		Group meditation in the hall
9:00-9:30 pm		Question time in the hall
9:30 pm		Retire to your own room--Lights out

Bird watching in Bharatpur

2011-01-13T01:45:00.001-08:00

Bharatpur is not on most people’s Rajasthani itineraries but it appeals to me for two reasons; it’ll serve as a base for exploring the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri, some 22km away, and it’s right beside the Keoladeo bird sanctuary. That’s right, birds. I have come to Bharatpur to be an ornithologist for a day or at least to pass myself off as one. Bird watching has to be up there with train spotting and stamp collecting in the nerd alert stakes and yet I‘m very excited about the day ahead which proves one of two things;

(a) Bird watching is not as nerdy as I had imagined or

(b) I am a nerd

I’ll go with (a). The best way around the park is by bike and there are several bikes for rent by the ticket desk. What you need above all when bird watching though are binoculars and, in a typically Indian twist, there are none to be had because of some form of contractual dispute between the suppliers and the park authorities. I’m assured at my guest house that I’ll be able to rent a pair from the guides but they aren’t having any of it as I don’t want to employ their services for the day. And so, binocularless, off I go into the park, feeling somewhat naked, a nerd amongst nerds.

One of the more fascinating species I immediately spot and have no problems recognising is the classic bird watching type - a bespectacled and pot-bellied Englishman in his mid to late 50’s with a plummy BBC voice (“And to the left you can see the black-necked stork who over-winter here on a 2,000km round journey from north eastern Siberia”) contemptuously disagreeing with an equally nerdy American counterpart over the identification of a stork they’ve spotted at a distance. He’s kitted out in full bird watching regalia; combat pants, fisherman’s vest, notebook and pencil and a pocket reference guide just to confirm that he’s right whenever he and the American disagree. The man is a walking cliché but he’s knowledgeable as hell and it’s from him I gather some idea of what it is I’m looking at. For much of the day though I feel like the guy at the Trekkie convention who asks “So which one’s Mr. Spock?”

Sure I could have employed the services of a guide - at least then I could name some of the birds I’m ignoring - but it’s 400 INR to get in and then 100 INR an hour for a guide’s services beyond that. One hour barely gets you inside the park and all of the avian heavy hitters lie much deeper inside the park and so I plan to follow the bird man of BBC for the day. Not really. In truth I can’t be arsed identifying the scores of different birds, it’s enough being in here amidst the occasional din of nesting storks and spotting the vivid multi-coloured plumage of what I assume aren‘t parrots. I’m just happy being here and cycling around having finally escaped from Delhi for the next month or so at least.

There’s a remarkable monument in the heart of the park which details the amount of birds killed in a day and the guns used to do so back in the days when the park was a duck shoot reserve. One number towers above all others - that of the venerable Viceroy Lord Linlithgow whose party bagged a staggering 4,273 birds on one day using a mere 39 guns. I have no idea how the bird man of BBC will feel about the actions of his fellow countryman but I enjoy the thought of the American bird watcher exacting some small measure of revenge by giving him a hard time over it.

And yet by the end of the day, in spite of any misgivings I may have about bird watching, it is a stunning park and I can’t help but be impressed and drawn in by what I see during the day. For instance I manage to see my first python which I had been happily cycling past until a passing local drew my attention to it. Shit, I love snakes, and so I stood transfixed until the snake grew bored of where he was and slithered away. Birds? Pah.

There are also nesting storks looking ridiculous high in the trees and two beautiful wading birds who’ve got everyone’s attention and all of the long lenses out. I stand there in the midst of them with my point and shoot camera and feel like the kid at school who showers with his underwear on. There are deer, cows, chital, nalgai, snakes, wild boar, monkeys and jackals to be seen at various stages throughout the day. There’s also a solitary tiger roaming in the park - great for hunting, not so good for reproduction - and there are signs warning the public to stay on the main roads once inside the park boundaries. I don’t see the tiger but he’s left his mark behind as I see a freshly killed cow’s carcass being eaten by wild boars whilst some equally hungry jackals lie in wait for the boars to have their fill.

Rajasthan

2011-01-13T01:38:00.000-08:00

And so I’ve completed my first month in India. Still alive, blood pressure hovering around normal and looking forward to the next two months before heading to pastures new. My first month here has been a best of Rajasthan package really, other than a visit to Varanasi and some days spent in Delhi, mainly using it as a base for further exploration. To date India’s been a breeze to travel through. Sure, there have been cancelled trains or trains delayed for so long that they should have been cancelled but getting around has been wonderfully easy. The people are great, the food is wonderful, I just wish that it was warmer. The other day as I returned to the capital from a 10 day tour around some of Rajasthan’s jewels, Delhi experienced its coldest day in 42 years. Great. Christ it was cold - bone deep rather than skin deep.

One disappointment so far was Jaipur which I found to be not at all like what it says on the tin. Didn’t work for me at all there. Sure, the Palace of the Winds was eye-catching and the City Palace was suitably palatial but dull. Udaipur, however, was an unexpected treasure. Perhaps it was the difference in expectation, perhaps it was the fact that Udaipur offered the best room in the nicest guesthouse (the owner was a greedy, charmless arsehole though) after a night without sleep, whatever, it is a beautiful city with its immaculate lake setting and its genuinely stunning lakeside palace.

Jodhpur was also worth the two days I spent there, if for nothing else than its stunning Meherangarh Fort which absolutely towers above the old city. Much is made of the city’s blue walled buildings but they’re scarcely noticeable once you’re there, many of them painted in a whitewash that might look blue if you stare at it long enough. The second reason to love Jodhpur though was that fact that it served up the greatest samosas I’ve ever tasted and which I practically lived on for my two days there.

Right now I'm in Bharatpur and feeling like something of a celebrity. Being stared at the by the greater Indian population is a given from time to time, even in bigger cities like Delhi but it takes on a life of its own here in Bharatpur when, as I strolled into the city the other day to check out the fort it seemed as if I brought the bloody place to a standstill. Depending on your mood this can either be disconcerting or bloody good fun and for me, most of the time it's the latter.

The hunt for tigers Part I

2011-01-13T01:34:00.000-08:00

The global tiger population is estimated to be somewhere between 1,200 and 1,800 and the word is that if you’re going to see a tiger anywhere in the wild in India, Ranthambore NP is the place it’s going to happen. Ranthambore’s tigers are famously indifferent to the tourists’ clicking cameras and the roar of the fleet of jeeps which carry tourists in and out of the park twice daily. The park’s reputation for being India’s premier tiger viewing park is in marked contrast to its neighbour, Sariska NP. In 2003 Sariska’s tiger population was estimated at 28 but a mere 2 years later they had all but vanished. Apparently a famed local taxidermist - clearly confusing himself with a toxicologist - operating in tandem with corrupt wardens orchestrated a mass poisoning, in the process completely eliminating the park’s tiger population. Unfortunately for India’s tiger population this seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

I have done many things on this trip that I’d never done before - diving, white water rafting and telling tuk-tuk drivers in 10 different countries exactly where they can shove their vehicles, to name but a few - but until Ranthambore I’d never been on a safari before and, in typically Indian style, it was a unique experience. In an unusual example of efficiency, it’s possible to book your seats on the jeep (6-seaters but impossible to secure a seat due to demand - they‘re smaller and quieter) or canters (noisy 20-seaters) online, when the website works that is. When I check there are only some seats left on the canters but whatever gets me in is good for me.

Pick-up in the morning is at the Department of Forestry which is some 300m from my hotel. On arrival there you’re supposed to register and pick up your boarding pass but, as ever, there’s no information on where you should queue and, once you’ve managed to figure that out, you have to go looking for your guide whose name is written on your pass. Not easy at 6.30am and in complete darkness. On top of this I’m told, once I’ve managed to find the guide, that our driver will not be reporting for work today. Eventually we do manage to find a driver somewhere and we’re away.

What I haven’t mentioned thus far and what was to be the main feature of the morning was the fog - “very unseasonal” our guide assured us but, regardless, unseasonal fog is as difficult to peer through as the seasonal variety. I imagine it’s difficult spotting tigers in a large national park in bright and clear conditions, but when the entire area is enveloped by a wicked freezing fog which has reduced visibility to about 5 metres, then the task becomes closer to impossible than the improbable I’d hoped for when I booked my trip here.

On entry into the park it’s immediately apparent that there’s about as much chance of seeing a tiger in these conditions as there is of our guide saying something informative or interesting. He spends the two hours we have in the park telling us whenever we near a herd of deer that “Here are some deer”. Nice work if you can get it. In short, we came, we looked, we saw fog and we went home. I could embellish this particular adventure with tales of what I saw along the way but I saw nothing but fog. Lots of fucking fog. By the morning’s conclusion I imagined the park’s tiger population peering down from the heights, toasting marshmallows and warming their claws on an open fire, laughing in Far Side-esque style at the freezing idiots lost in the fog in the jeeps below.

Agra = Dump

2011-01-13T01:31:00.000-08:00

Upon visiting the Taj Mahal I can’t help but think that if Shah Jahan had realised what an absolute shitheap of a city would in the future sprout up around his enduring monument to love, he’d have decided “Fuck this lads, let’s build a casino instead”. If the Taj Mahal is an embodiment of heaven on earth then, continuing the Biblical theme, it follows that the city which surrounds it is a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s a sprawling, polluted and overpopulated mess and it’s home to India’s most persistent and downright beligerent tuk-tuk drivers - the only bunch I‘ve encountered so far who either don‘t understand or choose to ignore the words “Fuck off, I‘m walking“.

Getting to Agra is the easy part, getting in to see the Taj is where the difficulties begin. 99% of the people who flock to see the Taj are Indian tourists and they flock there in very large numbers indeed. This doesn’t initially present a problem as there’s a ticket booth for foreigners, meaning that I have my golden ticket within seconds. The Indian queue, however, stretches quite literally for about a mile whilst I can walk to the head of the tourist queue unmolested. There’s a guy who loiters right beside where the tourist ticket booth is situated and who, upon your arrival, explains to you that you really should join the tourist queue because it would be quicker. Remarkably he expects a tip for this blindingly obvious information. I tell him that if we didn’t breathe then we’d die and therefore feel as if my debt of mutually useless information to him has been settled.

I imagine that I’ve done the hard work upon securing the entry ticket but of course it‘s not as easy as that. I join the queue for admission - alas this time there’s no line for foreigners - and begin the walk to the end of the line quickly realising that there are hundreds of people in this line and - in typically Indian style - there are only three people checking tickets and one of those works solely on the ladies queue. Fortunately there are three gates at which you can enter the site and I move around to the South Gate meaning that the queuing time is cut in half. Skipping the queue in this country is seen almost as a rite of passage but there’s a burly Indian two places behind me who’s not having any of it - if he‘s queuing then everyone else will queue too. Three guys decide to wriggle their way in front of me, hoping to be sheltered by the westerner but The Enforcer is on to them immediately, his meaty finger tapping them on the shoulder pointing to exactly where the queue begins.

It takes about half an hour of queuing but then I’m inside making my way towards the impossibly grand gate in front of the Taj and then……..there it is. Phew. It is every bit as beautiful as you’d imagine, almost surreal in its wedding cake-esque perfection. And it’s very fucking white. So now you know. There are people swooning and cooing everywhere, not that you’d notice as the Taj holds your attention completely for the first five minutes that you’re there.

Once you’ve taken all the money shots there’s also the chance to join a queue to get inside the Taj. Now, initially I’m of the opinion that I don’t need to get inside as I’m here to marvel at the exterior but the length of the queue suggests that I may be missing out on something special inside and so I reluctantly join. Big mistake. If you happen to have chanced upon this page because you’re thinking of visiting the Taj Mahal, a word of advice - under no circumstances do you want to or need to go inside. As with all Indian queues, the closer you get to the front, the further you seem to go back. All I remember about the inside of the Taj is the crush of bodies being hastily ushered to the exit by bearded, turbaned and whistle happy guards.

Of course no visit to Agra would be complete without a visit to its famous fort. Er, except, it would actually. Impressive as it surely is, Agra fort pales in comparison with the forts of Jaisalmer and Jodhpur, both of which tower over the cities in which they were constructed, which is, when you think about it, exactly what a fort should do. But not in Agra’s case. The fort is positioned at what could only be described as the bottom of a basin. Sure the building itself is impressive but with thoughts turning to an impending visit to the Taj just down the road, it doesn’t leave any lasting impression.

Happy New Year

2011-01-13T01:29:00.000-08:00

I’d love to recount a tale of how I saw out the old year and in the new in exotic style but I didn’t so I can’t. The march into 2011 this year was marked in Delhi, striding around the city in search of some festivities to mark the occasion - Hindus don‘t celebrate Christmas Day but there seemed to be much chatter about New Year‘s Eve. Connaught Square, we were assured, was the place to be when the clock struck twelve. Clearly it must have been 12 noon because with some thirty minutes to go to 2011, there was no crowd in spite of a heavy police presence who’d obviously turned up expecting a party as well.
Beer was also at a premium. Never the easiest commodity to lay your hands on in India, things were worse, much worse on NYE. The only wine and beer shop we were familiar with close to Pahar Ganj had its doors shut early. Strolling past a shop minutes later, somewhat miraculously we spotted some beer. I asked the shopkeeper if he had any beer and was told that he had copious amounts of alcohol in stock so I ordered myself four bottles of Kingfisher which our friendly shopkeeper seemed in too much of a haste to wrap up in newspaper and place lovingly into my bag for me. The price - 60 INR - also seemed a little too low, given the demand for booze on this most auspicious of nights and so I checked out the labels. Sure enough he put 4 bottles of what were hastily labelled ‘Kingfarmer’ into my bag, each of which had an alcohol content of exactly 0.0% and each of them bearing a passing resemblance to Kingfisher bottles. His weak reply of “But they taste good” didn’t wash and so we headed off, trying to convince ourselves that an alcohol free 2011 was the way to go.
Nothing happening in Connaught Square, we returned to Pahar Ganj with the clock ticking towards midnight. But not a celebration in sight. No fireworks. No crowds. No party. No countdown. We made our way into a café which was indeed selling genuine Kingfisher beer and we had our own little countdown into 2011. Happy New Year.

Christmas in the desert

2010-12-28T03:13:00.000-08:00

Leaving Delhi is no wrench - it’s big, bustling and whatever other overused adjective used to describe Indian cities you want to throw in there, they all fit - but it’s not a place destined to live in my memory. From Delhi I go west taking an 18 hour train from Delhi all the way to Jaisalmer near the Pakistani border and on the fringes of the Thar desert. Nights are cold, very cold in sleeper class and the fact that windows just won’t stay closed makes the problem worse. Worst of all though is the fact that, given the barracks-like nature of sleeping class carriages, you’re going to have a vast array of snorers, each with their own distinctive style. Together they seem to co-ordinate themselves so that you’re left with one long unbroken snore. Nights are very long on the train.

Jaisalmer train station is 2km from the city and so as you walk in you get to see the sandstone fort (well, this close to the desert it's unlikely to be made from granite) towering over the city and it’s a beautiful sight. All the guide books recommend that you opt not to stay in the fort because it’s crumbling at an alarming rate due to the overuse of water within the fort walls. Basically it’s a drainage issue - the overused water is leaking into the fort’s foundations causing them to crumble significantly in recent years. It’s now on the Most Endangered Sites list, nothing to boast about but the residents seem to be in denial. There are some 2,000 permanent residents - mostly Brahmins - inside operating guesthouses, restaurants, bookshops and all the usual souvenir shops so they‘re in the unfortunate position of needing people to stay at their guesthouse in the knowledge that this is damaging the very fort which attracts the guests in the first place.

In Jaisalmer I find the cheapest guesthouse of the entire trip - 80 INR - but at that price there has to be a snag and there is - the place is a dump, which, as snags go, is quite a significant one but I only need a bed for two nights so it’s good for me. Jaisalmer is the gateway to the Thar desert and most people who come do the tourist thing and get into the desert on a camel chasing that Lawrence of Arabia feeling. You can spend anything from a half-day to three weeks (strictly for those who don’t want children in the future) on safari and there are, as ever, operators on every street corner and everywhere in between offering to take the tourist to the non-touristed areas. Which then means that when they all go the non-touristed areas, everyone meets there hoping to avoid each other. I’m pretty sure this won’t be the case on Christmas Day.

The basic package includes your own camel (one hump, not two), food, water (handy in the desert) and desert style accommodation underneath a blanket of stars lying on the sand. Trotter’s office, where I book my safari, is plastered with alluring images of camels silhouetted on gigantic sand dunes and so I can’t wait to get going. Besides, there’ll be other people on the safari and no-one wants to spend Christmas Day on their own, right?

Except there aren’t any other people as, clearly, I’m the only one daft or sad enough to want to spend Christmas Day in the desert. My guide is Leeloo and my camel’s name is Khan which I’m not likely to forget as the words ‘MY NAME KHAN’ are written down the length of this neck. No doubt if he was a giraffe, Khan would have a longer name. Unsurprisingly I’ve never been on a camel before - though I was bitten by one once before in Australia - and so I have no idea what to expect. There are no instructions - camels don’t have a clutch - so I throw my leg over the saddle and Khan gets himself off the ground. Camels ascend and descend in four movements so getting up and down is akin to being on a bucking bronco - you just need to hold on tight. And then we’re off into the desert.

Now, when you think of the word ‘desert’, you probably get the same mental picture as I do which is not what the Thar desert is like at all. There are little or no Saharan dunes and lots and lots of flat, barren scrub. It is not pretty. It’s sort of like being promised Kerry and being taken to Longford instead. Well, maybe not quite that bad.

In the afternoon things perk up when I’m joined by two others who help to break the monotony - Penny and Alex from South Africa - who clearly have nothing else to do this Christmas Day either. We spend the night in ‘The Dunes’ - a solitary stretch of sand piled somewhat incongruously in the midst of the scrub. Within seconds of arriving there, the ‘Beer Man’ appears, mirage-like from the sands, a Balthasaresque figure bearing his gifts on this most auspicious of days. Beers cost 150 INR in the desert and the ‘Beer Man’ knows he has the market to himself and will not haggle. Still, what’s Christmas Day without a beer or two? Also, his beers are ice cold so what’s not to like? We sit around a campfire for the night, drinking our overpriced but precious beer and listening to our two guides sing traditional Rajasthani songs, and crash as soon as the wood we’ve plundered from the desert runs out. It turns out to have been a wonderful Christmas Day in the end. Really, who needs Quality Street and It’s A Wonderful Life when you can have camel flatulence and sand in your sleeping bag?

Merry Christmas y'all!

2010-12-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

Chose the above image because it's what I'll be doing for Christmas Day this year. I have no intentions of following any stars but I will be spending Xmas and Stephen's Day on camel back in the Thar desert somewhere far from civilisation. This is what they do in Jaisalmer and since there's bugger all else to do in the city tomorrow, I figure that I'm as well of in the sand being a proper tourist for once. I also get to sleep under the stars which will be cold but, as Christmas nights go, special. Special Christmas wishes to all the family at home who might be reading this tomorrow - they'd better be - and who have hopefully overindulged in everything today! Merry Christmas.

Personal Space

2010-12-24T05:51:00.000-08:00

There is no such thing as personal space in India. You’re sharing a country with over one billion people - deal with it. The all too literal bump and grind is part of what makes this country what it is. It’s fascinating for me though to watch how people can be so oblivious to granting one another - and, well, me - even the slightest space. Take queues in India for example (the word ’queue’ in India means an orderly line of people who will break ranks in a headlong rush at the last moment, the discipline involved in standing still for so long ultimately proving too much) - standing in the line at the train station for a ticket will definitely mean being dry humped from the rear by an Indian guy who’s climbing over your shoulder to get closer to the window. And he’s only behind you because there are barriers to either side to prevent him from strolling past you, oblivious to your presence.
Fortunately I’ve been blessed with peculiarly pointy elbows and I am not afraid to use them, so as I queue and there’s a guy behind practically panting like a dog in heat in my ear, it suddenly becomes urgent that I adjust the straps on my bag so that Fido behind me gets it in the solar plexus, which only deadens his ardour momentarily. And the closer you get to the ticket window, the more you resemble this with arms reaching over your shoulders and heads peeking through your arms and legs. That childlike excitement on Christmas Eve feeling overwhelms people here when the front of the queue is in sight.
The other thing about Indian queues is that if you’re supposed to be standing in line and there are no barriers there to guide where you should be standing, just forget about it. Westerners are clearly invisible to Indians, who stroll past you just as you’re about to buy your stamp or ask when the next train to Kolkata isn’t leaving. If you get annoyed at this and express your anger to the teller, it won’t make any difference because, unfortunately, you’re invisible to the teller too. It’s a double bind.
I went to the post office to buy some stamps today and there were four tellers behind the counters with not one other customer to be seen in the place. I stood before each of them in turn, making plenty of noise as I did, but all to no avail as they each ignored me. Finally a guy behind the counter who looked like he might be management shouted “What do you want?” in the same tone of voice you might expect from someone if they found you squatting on their toilet and reading the Indian Times.
But best of all are the queues at the metro. There, the cosmetic process of actually standing in a line happens - the queuing equivalent of the sawing a lady in half trick. So by the platform you’ll see wonderfully ordered lines of seemingly patient people waiting for their train to arrive. And then when the train arrives, just like a dropped Coke bottle, as soon as the doors of the train open, chaos reigns, the lines break and it’s every man, woman and child for themselves. Everyone piles into the train before the passengers disembarking have had a chance to extricate themselves. Yup, very amusing to watch but no fun to caught up in when you’ve got a backpack on and you’re the one trying to get off.