“You that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended. And no voice out of that darkness shall conjure me to make a spell against magic.”
— Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland’s Daughter
DeparturesIn my mind’s eye, there is an image. I cannot forget it. I am on a train, gazing out the window at a vast green landscape crossed by rivers, with mountains on the horizon. I am a wistful onlooker, distanced and immune. But even as I realise this, the train turns and thunders into that landscape, bearing me with it. You cannot be an onlooker when you travel.
The creative act of writing about a journey is as much a journey of discovery as making the original journey. From a jumble of memories, emails, papers, books, photographs, scars and souvenirs you reassemble what happened; but what emerges from the jumble is not what went into it. You are standing on a height, gazing back with a powerful telescope at the landscape you laboured across earlier in the day. You can see your mistakes, their outcomes, and the places where painful realisations came to you. You can see where you paused for lunch, and you now know what was going on just out of sight while you ate. You can see the significance of things that seemed unimportant at the time. You can see the easy way around that huge boulder that barked your shin as you clambered over it.
It’s even more difficult because you are no longer the person who traversed that terrain. You have been changed by the experience and you know things you did not know then. You watch yourself take the wrong turning and you think, you stupid ass. It is hard to place yourself back at the fork in the trail and, suppressing all knowledge of what came after, replicate what was going on in your head, in your body and around you: the things that, together, convinced you to turn the wrong way. So you gloss over it. You invent reasons. You line the story up and march it out in a fashion that makes you sound like an antique adding machine: click, click, click, ergo crunch, and out shoots the total beneath an itemised list. Life is rarely simple and orderly. Life is not rational, we rationalise it.
You lose things, as well. The minute-by-minute details fade. You forget the birdcalls and falling leaves, and the moments when you stepped off the path to water the trees, as if they never happened; but they did happen. Each event affected the outcome, whether you remember it or not. Memory is a strange thing. More than once when writing this account, I found myself puzzling over some part of a day, sometimes in the middle of a critical event, when things just wouldn’t fall together. I would remember things one way, but my camera another. Then I would discover a tattered, faded little receipt recording some insignificant purchase. Suddenly the entire day would leap into high relief and I could fit the memory into its proper place. But sometimes I didn’t have that receipt and the memory never found its home.
Great power flows from this act of re-creation. You may not appreciate what happened to you until you sit down to tell others about it, sometimes many months or years later. The process of thinking about it so that you can compose coherent sentences out of crowding images imposes an order on events. You begin thinking strategically instead of tactically, this caused that instead of how I did that.
The hardest part is deciding where to start your tale. I have decided to start at the beginning.
I was conceived before the space age and I was born at its dawn. Sputnik 1 rose and fell while I was in the womb; but Sputnik 2, bearing the body of the dog Laika, was still aloft when I came into the world.
I was born and raised in New Zealand — a little country at the end of the world, yet one well supplied with foreign news. The world was on the verge of great things. In my lifetime, anything might become possible. I blessed my luck, to be born at such a time and to have the opportunity to watch it all unfold and to be part of it.
I was so-so at school and so-so at life. I was mostly able to keep a roof over my head. From time to time, someone shared my bed. I was nobody special.
I had one particular unspoken dream: I had promised myself a holiday on the moon in the year 2000. It seemed reasonable. In 1969 it seemed reasonable. That dream failed.
I could see that it was going to fail, long before it did. It was one more failure in a life that was failing. My days were spent working for a corporation in return for money. My nights were spent alone, working on one inconsequential self-assigned project or another.
I became a hermit. It became a cycle. I didn’t go out where I could meet people, so I met nobody. With nobody to go out with, I stayed home.
I once liked my own company. I’d always been a loner by choice, but now it was no longer a choice. I now disliked people. I disliked myself even more. I had enough money to travel somewhere every year; but travel merely addressed the symptom. For one month in each year, I was happy. For the other eleven, I was bored and jaded.
My half century approached. I looked about me and wondered where the magic had gone. Technical marvels abounded, but they were of such everyday sorts: computers, networks, MP3 players, mobile phones. Where were the miracles? There were no star ships — almost no spaceships. Cancer and other diseases slew millions and yet the world population had topped six billion. This was less than expected, but India and China had exceeded their population predictions and should have been poor and starving. Instead they were hailed as the economic marvels of the age. The Soviet Union had fallen, but the world peace we had been promised was unfulfilled. The USA, champion of democracy and freedom, was running a gulag in Cuba.
By this I knew that I had gone blind.
This is the story of my quest for magic.
>EXAMINE FLAT
The flat has white walls and beige carpet. The walls have a few scuffs on them. There is no furniture except an ancient typist’s chair and a set of movable wooden shelves. There is a bulging travel pack, some boxes and a small red porter’s trolley. There is a pair of ghetto blaster speakers and a small MP3 player — playing “Solid Ground” by some Australian band.
You sit with your back propped against the wall beside the phone jack. You have a small white laptop in your lap.
>EXAMINE LAPTOP
The laptop is connected to the internet. You are logged onto GMail, composing the first in what will probably be an excessively long series of emails to your friends.
>QUIT
You can’t quit now. You’re committed. You have to move out of the flat tomorrow and go into town to stay in a backpacker hostel. It’s still two weeks until your plane takes off and you’re still working, but tomorrow is the jump-off.
Your adventure starts here. Say goodbye to your comfortable, boring lifestyle, sucker!
Table of ContentsDenizens of the Trans-Siberian
In the land of beautiful horses
High Place of sacrifice and Al-Deir
Wadi Muthlim to the Sacred Hall
Naqsh-e Rajab and Naqsh-e Rostam
Note on currencies: in this trip report, I’ve chosen to use Latin rather than unicode for some currencies. “$” on its own is always the Australian dollar (aud), while the US dollar (usd) is “us$”. For the rest, in the rough order in which they are encountered,
¥ = Chinese Yuan (cny).
₽ = Russian Ruble (rub).
₴ = Ukraine Hryvnia (uah).
Ft = Hungarian Forint (huf).
kn = Croatian Kuna (hrk).
€ = Euro (eur).
₺ = Turkish Lira (try).
£S = Syrian Pound (syp).
JD = Jordanian Dinar (jod).
LL = Lebanese Lira (lbp).
﷼ = Iranian Rial (irr).
₨ = Pakistan Rupee (pkr).
₹ = Indian Rupee (inr).
रु. = Nepalese Rupee (npr).
Unless noted otherwise, any exchange rate is the rate applying at that time in 2007–2008.
I am a child of the West, and I take my world with me in my head. When my physical environment most closely resembles that world, I relax. Yesterday I saw Dahab-the-West and I relaxed: today I see Dahab-the-East and I find no rest here. Yesterday the staff here were strangers in a familiar land: today I know that this is their land and that I am the stranger.
I can’t stay here amongst the lotus-eaters.
— 12th April 2006.
Beijing BoogalooBeijing Airport was bustling and impersonal, but it was also efficient and polite. My pack came off the carousel promptly. I found my way to the bus stop without incident, ignoring the inevitable cab tout who claimed there was no bus. The bus was clean and did not break down. What was going on? This wasn’t how trips were supposed to start!
The view from the bus window was tidy and orderly. Even the air was clearer than I’d expected. Apart from the unusual number of Chinese in every view, the only thing that told me this wasn’t Australia or Europe was the skyline full of buildings topped by pagoda roofs. The fact that most of the signs were also in Chinese was irrelevant — I’m used to not being able to read the signs when I travel. I don’t even try any more, unless I’m lost.
The universe came back into balance when the bus dropped me off near the Beijing train station. I looked around and couldn’t see a subway entrance. A rickshaw pulled up beside me. Surprise, he spoke English.
“Hotel?”
“No. Subway. Metro.”
“Ahh, subway very far. That way. I take you, twenty Yuan.”
Three dollars wasn’t very much by Western standards and it seemed better than getting lost; but it was quite a bit of money by local standards, and those are the standards to use when travelling. It’s often worth haggling over a few dollars, because doing so discourages demands for extortionate amounts of money for trifling services. In this case the moderate asking price told me that the subway had to be nearby and easy to find.
I declined the offer and headed in the opposite direction to the one the rickshaw driver had indicated. Sure enough, the subway was right around the corner, just 200 metres from the bus stop. I later calculated that his so-reasonable price worked out to $15 per kilometre! The guy would probably have taken me around the block or to the next station to make the fare look better, but it was still a rip-off.
The Beijing subway turned out to be easy to negotiate. Although it had several lines, all the places I wanted to go to were on the same loop. No matter which train I caught, I would end up where I wanted to go: it would just take a few minutes longer if I picked one going the wrong way around the loop — as happened one day.
The walk from the subway to my hostel gave me the opportunity to examine the area. The street was wide, with broad footpaths. I was astonished by the size of a parking area for bikes. I was to be even more astonished that evening when I found it filled to overflowing. Most of the bike handlebars had heavy gloves hanging from them, an indication of how cold it must get here in winter. It was also an indication of a low incidence of crime, as many of the gloves looked alike and could be easily removed and fitted to a thief’s bike.
Many of the buildings in the main street were offices or institutional, but here and there side streets intersected; and on the corners there were small shops selling an assortment of goods, usually packaged in tiny quantities.
Beijing Feiying International Youth Hotel was a big grey lump facing onto the street. I found the entrance and booked in. My dormitory bed cost me less than a quarter of the price I’d been paying for similar facilities in Melbourne. I decided I was going to like China!
There was already one guy in the dormitory, Chinese, but he spoke no English. We exchanged polite greetings — such things transcend language — but there was no prospect that we would ever open our hearts to each other. This seemed to trouble him.
It was still not even 9:00. I dumped my gear and headed out to explore the city.
My first stop, of all places, was a McDonalds, for a Big Breakfast — with tea. I make no apologies. I was tired and ill, and it was sinking in, now, that I really was launched upon a ten-month Odyssey into the unknown. What had I been thinking?
My fatigue was mostly jet lag. True, I was only two hours away from Melbourne time, but in Melbourne it was already nearly lunch time. My stomach hadn’t caught up. Blood sugar restored, I went back to the subway. Feiying was three stops from Qianmen, the stop at the southern end of Tiananmen Square. ¥3 later, I was there.
I made my way around to, then through, the monumental “Front Gate” and entered the Square.
The whole area was in the midst of a facelift in preparation for the Olympic Games, and like a diva’s face the morning before the concert it was not a pretty sight. Mao’s Mausoleum was closed for refurbishment so there was not even a chance of shuffling past the not-so-dear departed. I had to be satisfied with gawking my way across the immense courts around it.
A “student” fell into step with me as I walked around the side of the Mausoleum. He spoke excellent English. His agenda was to persuade me to go to an exhibition of paintings in the Forbidden City. I said, “maybe I’ll look in later” and peeled him off as gently as possible. Compared to the persistent touts of Egypt and Turkey, so far, the Chinese were amateurs.
It might be the biggest square in the world, but except for Mao’s rock collection it was mostly just a big expanse of open ground beneath hordes of Chinese. My first look at modern China in the mass was both a relief and a disappointment. There were few “Mao suits” to be seen. Most of the people would have been inconspicuous if dropped into the Bourke Street Mall. There was no flag-waving, no barking loudspeakers or mini-Mao’s with red armbands. Bicycles were forbidden. People just walked around, gathered in groups, and flew kites.
At the far end of the Square was a sight familiar to everyone: a big red wall, topped by an ornamental roof, with a big painting of Mao hung upon it. Tiananmen, Gate of Heavenly Peace. I set course for it across the boundless expanse of concrete — and eventually discovered that the concrete was not boundless. It was bounded by a traffic-thronged thoroughfare of astonishing breadth. Fortunately, there was a pedestrian subway.
The Gate of Heavenly Peace is not part of the Forbidden City, which is another ten minutes’ walk beyond it. After examining the gate from several directions, I joined the flood of people squirting through it. Beyond it was another huge courtyard (Duanmen) and another gate. Beyond that was the entrance of the Forbidden City — familiar to anyone who has seen The Last Emperor.
There was an impressive collection of muzzle-loading cannon outside the gate. Unfortunately, they were corralled inside a steel fence, which made it rather difficult to read the neat metal plaques that described the history of each gun. This is a common problem the world over. Having spent large sums of public money setting up an exhibit and labelling it informatively, the powers-that-be then lock it away from the people who are actually paying money to see it. Only exalted freeloaders — VIPs and tourism officials — are ushered into the forbidden areas by fawning guardians.
The Forbidden City was my first “Must” of the trip. Exulting, I passed through the Meridian Gate. I was really there!
Exultation turned to dismay when I paused to take a photo. My spectacles fell off. More than that, they fell apart. My nose started bleeding. My audio guide didn’t seem to be working.
Staunching my nose with a tissue, I salvaged the pieces of my glasses. Two screws holding one arm had come loose. One, the one that held the lens in place, was still in its hole: the other, which held the arm on, must be nearby. I spent several minutes scanning the ground for the loose screw, but it had vanished. Instead I found some stiff wire just the right size for the hole. I snapped off a length and used it to secure the errant arm.
This was merely the first engagement in what became an ongoing war with this pair of spectacles. Throughout the trip they lost screws, threatened to lose screws, or got bent out of shape. Scratches accumulated on their plastic lenses. The war was finally lost in India, where one arm snapped off completely. I was reduced to my spare pair — the pair, ironically, which the new glasses had replaced. They too had suffered many indignities, but they survived.
Curious Chinese had gathered around me. Nobody offered to help. When I triumphantly donned the repaired spectacles, I gave them a big smile. Then I pushed between them and walked away, wiping the remaining blood from my moustache.
As I crossed the bridges, my audio-guide burst into life.
The first thing I noticed was that the Taihe Gate (Gate of Supreme Harmony) was wrapped in scaffolding and closed for repairs. I thought it was the Hall of Supreme Harmony and cursed my luck. My curse was not wasted — it turned out that the Taihe Hall was also scaffolded and closed. This grand throne room and ceremonial hall, which featured prominently in The Last Emperor, had been high on my list of things-to-see.
I pushed on, admiring the soaring roof lines and detail work that transformed buildings that would otherwise be heavy and unattractive into things of beauty. The saddest thing about many modern buildings was the absence of decorative motifs. Viewed close up, a building that looks fine from a distance turns into an ugly mass of concrete and rough seams. There was no such danger here.
Even the flooring was often beautifully carved and finished — where it hadn’t already been replaced by concrete. The surviving carved slabs were often roped off to prevent them being ground to dust by tourist feet. The largest was over sixteen metres long by almost two wide, featuring mountains, clouds and dragons. Dragons were a very common motif.
Eventually I found a throne hall that was open — the Zhonghe Hall (Hall of Middle Harmony). I had to push my way through a crowd to get a brief glimpse of the yellow throne over a sea of bobbing black hair.
As I started to work my way out of the mob, someone pushed roughly past me into the gap I had made. The contact felt odd, and I instinctively grabbed the guy’s arm to stop him leaving while I worked out what had happened. There had been a blow against my wallet, which I keep in my right pants pocket (not my hip pocket). Now the pocket felt light. I patted it. Sure enough, my wallet was gone.
I pushed the guy against a wall. “Where is it?” I demanded. He had a heavy face, thick lipped, with a rather sullen expression — not an honest line in it. He didn’t respond to my question. I frisked him. He didn’t struggle, although he had to know he’d been caught dead to rights. Eventually I found my wallet, hidden in a fold of the jacket he held beneath his arm. I held the wallet up in front of him and matched him glower for glower.
I looked around for a policeman. Inevitably, there were none nearby. I started to drag the thief in a likely direction, but then had second thoughts. I spoke no Chinese, so I would be at a disadvantage explaining my errand. There would be paperwork. If the cop was crooked, I could even find the situation twisted against me! The thief might have accomplices. I could get stabbed or beaten up. I let go and stepped away, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. “Bugger off.” No doubt he would simply find another victim; but trying to turn him in simply wasn’t worth the risk.
This incident was the closest I had ever come to losing my wallet to a pickpocket. Nobody else, so far, had even managed to get it out of my pocket. Not that it mattered. After paying for entry to the Forbidden City and a deposit on the audio-guide, my wallet held just ¥43 and nothing else of any value. I never carry large sums in my wallet when travelling.
Skipping the clock museum, I found the Gallery of Treasures, which featured a famous tiled wall with nine Imperial dragons. One dragon’s belly had been repaired with painted wood, now showing its age.
I wandered through the Ning Shou Palace and then I got lost. I had bought a map of the Forbidden City, but I took a wrong turning at some point and suddenly nothing I saw matched up with the map! I stumbled on the Pavilion of Cheerful Melodies (Chang Yin Ge), a three-storied theatre with stages on each floor which I believe featured in The Last Emperor, but although the map remarked on this lovely spot, I couldn’t tell where it was. I later identified it on the map — but at the time I was still lost.
I found a palace housing a large collection of jade. I was most impressed by a mountain, shaped from a single huge jade boulder, covered in intricate detail of trees and peasants and miners. Here I bought a souvenir imitation antique jade pendant carved with a dragon.
I also came across the “art exhibition” touted by the “student” I’d met in the Square. It turned out to be less an exhibition than an art shop. Some of the work was good, but overpriced. I gave them a Singaporean 20¢ piece as a donation and made my escape.
I found a rock garden, the Garden of the Palace of Peace and Longevity (Ning Shou Gong Hua Yuan) in the northeast corner of the City. It was so enchanting that I wandered through it for several minutes before I even unlimbered my camera. I was amused to find a little pebble mosaic, very similar to some I’d seen in Greece. Later, near the north gate of the City, I found the imperial Garden, which featured trees that had been forced to grow together, forming a single twined trunk standing on two “legs”. Some of the trees had died but had not been replaced — a pity.
I left the Forbidden City through the Gate of Spiritual Valour (Shenwu) and climbed up through Jingshan Park, a hill built from earth excavated in the construction of the moat. The views were stunning, with the trees bursting into blossom and the Forbidden City stretching away into the distance below me. I had spent three hours down there and had barely scratched the surface! I was tempted to go back down and explore further, although it would cost another entry fee, but my feet were sore. There was no wind down in the Forbidden City; but up here there was a ferocious northerly and I could see rain clouds coming.
The Park featured a Buddhist shrine with a huge statue of Buddha. Looking at him, I realised that he was Chinese. Still, with all the Italian, French and Greek Christs hanging around in the museums of Europe, who was I to argue?
I leaned against the balcony and enjoyed the moment. I was free in the world, with a shiny new Passport, a plush bank account, and a guaranteed job waiting for me back in Australia. For ten months, I could go anywhere and do anything, and the aching everyday emptiness of my life would be filled by constant adventures and discoveries. I might even, who knew, find magic.
Well satisfied with my first day, I made my way back to Qianmen, walking beside the western walls of the Forbidden City and the western edge of Tiananmen, and caught the subway back to the hostel.
Later, fortified against the evening chill, I set forth again, this time to explore the area around the hostel. I got pleasantly lost in a maze of little alleyways, brazenly sightseeing, peering through open doorways into secluded courtyards, poking through miniature shops, browsing tables of books and vegetables. I bought a pirate edition of the novel Forrest Gump, some groceries for breakfast and munchies and some extra-large Band-Aid knock offs to supplement my skimpy first aid kit.
Miniscule size was a feature of many Chinese goods. I bought half a dozen tiny rolls of toilet paper, perhaps 75 squares per roll with no cardboard core. But the paper was soft and durable, and a roll was just the right size to carry in my day pack for emergencies.
Back at the hostel, my Chinese room-mate had found himself a translator. I didn’t catch her name, but she taught Politics. Mr Xei was a Geography “professor”. They were endlessly curious about where I was from, what things were like there, what I thought of China, and so on. They seemed to have no problem understanding my answers, but when I asked questions about China … we encountered minor problems of translation. Still, it was a pleasant (if not especially informative) way to end the evening.
Next morning Mr Xei left, and I had the dormitory to myself, but the cold some unkind stranger had slipped me just before I left Melbourne now had me coughing and spluttering. Rather than inflict my disease on other innocent travellers I decided to upgrade to a room of my own.
My new digs had a small table and chairs by a sunny window with a view into the alley behind the hostel. However, the key was damaged — it would turn the room’s power on, but it wouldn’t actually open the door. Whenever I went out, I needed to get the floor guardian to let me back into my room. The room itself was a repository of dead facilities: a dead TV, dead lights except for one over the bed, dead air conditioning. Hardly a bargain! Still, it was pleasant enough.
At the Train station I tried to find the “Foreigner Ticket Office” mentioned in my guidebook. There turned out to be no such animal. I was directed back to the main ticket hall, a huge barn with thousands of Chinese standing patiently in queues. There someone finally pointed me to window 4. In the (mercifully short) queue I scribbled down the key points of my request: “HARBIN 2007-04-05 Z15”. This turned out to be wise, as I was unable to pronounce “Harbin” intelligibly.
When asked what class, I mimed sleeping. I ended up with a ticket for soft sleeper. My budget actually called for the cheaper hard sleeper, but with the knocking about my body was taking from the cold I could use some comparative luxury for the first overnight train journey of the trip.
They couldn’t help me with a ticket from Harbin to Suifenhe. They told me to get it in Harbin.
After dinner I explored more alleyways — which I finally realised must be some of the famous hutongs. They were certainly places where people lived, replete with tiny shops and cottage industries and rundown old houses, as opposed to places they went to just sleep, relax or work.
The typical hutong wandered between two major streets, intersecting here and there with other alleys. It was dotted with small shops and workshops and street vendors. Some houses opened directly on the alley, but many neighbours co-operated to create meandering private access-ways between their houses, that could be closed off from the alley by a door or gate. It was delightfully picturesque, but not beautiful. Actually, it reminded me of backstreet Egypt, except that it wasn’t so broken-down. Things were often patchwork, but usually functional, in China — the Chinese lived in slums, not ruins. The worst feature was the public toilets, which could be identified by nose at many paces. There were a lot of them.
Next day was mostly spent in my room, watching life in the alleyway and trying to shake the cold.
One man appeared to be intellectually disabled. He kept up a yawping moan all day, walking around with his fly open. At one point he got into an altercation with a passer-by, who picked up a twig and lashed him with it. The man yelped and floundered about helplessly until his attacker threw down the twig and walked away. Nobody paid any attention — except me. That night there was a party. A woman came out and gave the man — who was by now almost naked, for some reason — a piece of cake.
In the afternoon, I felt energetic. I walked down to Tiananmen Square and watched the sun set at the Gate of Heavenly Peace. A hawker caught me in a vulnerable moment, and I paid out ¥100 for a copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. The price printed in the back — probably correct 30 years ago — was 6 jiao. At least the guy threw in some postcards to sweeten the deal. Still, I’d wanted a copy of the Little Red Book and now I had one, purchased in the very shadow of Mao’s mausoleum.
“If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.”
Wow, he really did say “running dogs”! But if this book was the concentrated, tippy-top best of Mao, what a tedious chap he must have been.
“We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”
Then again —
“Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’”
Aside from such scarce gems the book was 590 pages of half-baked platitudes, lame truisms, and reheated campaign directives. Even-numbered pages were in Chinese, odd pages were in English.
I felt better in the morning and decided it was time to have my Great Wall Experience. I took the subway to Jishuitan (five stops clockwise on the Circle Line) and walked five minutes east along the Second Ring Road, then caught Bus 919 to Badaling. By 7:15 I was walking across the empty car park to the deserted entrance — alone. Braced for the Great Wall’s legendary crowds, I could barely believe my luck. I was in sole possession of the Great Wall of China! Finding it deserted was a gift beyond my wildest dreams.
The site comprises two segments of wall that join high up on the hillsides, forming a continuous loop. Visitors with the time and the energy — me — can start at the entrance and walk the entire loop, ending up back at the entrance.
I climbed some stairs and found myself astride the wall. Chuffed, I photographed myself.
The Wall seemed to be thrown almost casually across the landscape, but its route was chosen to make the maximum use of the ridgelines. No spot overlooked the Wall unless it was itself overlooked by another part of the Wall or was too far from the Wall to be useful to an attacker. The wall continued across the river that flowed through the bottom of the valley, except for a short and heavily fortified bridge section. The chutes beneath the bridge were designed to prevent anything but water passing through them.
The various structures on the wall had ornamental rooves and were brightly painted, but maintenance was obviously a little haphazard as the paint was peeling. Some of the structures were guardhouses, while others, heavily fortified, were armouries and strongpoints.
Here and there I encountered ancient cannon, pointing south. Why south?
After a while the wall went vertically up the hillside — “West Mountain Great Wall”. I passed a temple (Mashen Temple) then came out on a big terrace. I stopped to photograph myself again, with the next section of the Great Wall visible behind me.
Here the Wall was “manned” by reproductions from the Terracotta Army found in Shaanxi. There were also some reproductions of their weapons. Alas, many of the soldiers were not in good nick, having lost an arm or two, so their ability to repel modern-day invaders was in some doubt. A closer look also showed that most were clones of just two or three originals.
I came across a section of battlement strung with chains, to which clung hundreds of cheap padlocks with red (occasionally blue or green) tape or twine tied around them. Presumably this was from lovers pledging that their love for each other would be as strong and lasting as the Great Wall.
Onwards and upwards. I came across a working party repairing the steps. One of them told me that they did this all the time. The tourist traffic along the wall was so heavy that they never ran out of worn steps that needed repair.
Halfway up, a shop sold drinks, ice cream, and certificates declaring that you had climbed the Great Wall. I looked down into the valley, then up at the unclimbed battlements ahead, then back to the shopkeeper. The guy gave me a lopsided grin. Most people, it seems, gave up their ascent here.
I bought a certificate from him, of course — a metal plaque engraved with my name declaring that I had climbed the Wall — but then I resumed my assault upon the Wall. I was determined to earn that Certificate!
At one point I was startled to see some heavy bundles pass me on the other side of the battlements. Looking over, I saw a dirt path leading up the hill. This was how places like the shop were supplied — presumably to save wear and tear on the Wall. I stood there, puffing, and watched a couple of scrawny little guys walk away from me up the path. Bent beneath huge sacks of goods, they weren’t even breathing hard.
A watchtower was now occupied by a souvenir shop. The goods were delivered here. One of the bundles had been torn open. It contained t-shirts. How could I resist? ¥40 changed hands and I acquired a “Great Wall” t-shirt. Sized XL, according to the tag; but when I tried it on later, I decided that China must have a smaller definition of “extra-large”.
More steps, and suddenly the descending segment of wall appeared beside me. Beyond the next tower was nothing but sky. I stamped up the last steps two at a time and stood atop a knife-edged ridge. Below me the Wall sank into foundations, into rubble, and vanished. It had taken me an hour and a half, but most of that time was spent sightseeing, so I was satisfied.
Still, I wasted no time at the top. It was time to descend. When I reached the place where the Wall divided, I took the left arm.
I soon came to a place where verminous visitors had left their graffiti. Normally I resist, but today was not a day for half measures. Bending low, I wrote my name and the date in red ink. My inscription would fade soon enough, probably long before I visited China again.
I started to meet other tourists now, climbing sluggishly up. Most of them were half my age but they were making heavier work of the ascent than I had. Perhaps I hadn’t done so badly after all.
Just over two hours into my climb, I crossed above the road. I had descended the wall in half an hour. Below me a platoon of clay soldiers was assembled in a courtyard. One slacker in the back row was leaning casually against the wall, shielded from the sight of his NCO by the ranks in front of him.
I came to another temple, Zhen Wu, built in the Fifteenth Century and restored in 1997. I wandered about inside, admiring the gods, goddesses and Immortals gathered there, then continued across the river and started the climb up the other side, watched by clay soldiers. This climb was easy and in less than half an hour I was again staring out at foundations trailing off where the reconstructed Wall ended.
Down again, and I came across a Buddhist shrine. Outside, Buddha meditated beneath a Bodhi tree, well festooned with red tape. Inside, beautiful murals met the eye on every side. One misty landscape, a lake with a broad waterfall, made me wish to dive into it. Elsewhere, princes slew demons and a servant carried a tea service to some ladies across a cloudscape. I lingered …
The site entrance appeared. In four hours, I’d done the entire loop. It was time for lunch.
Earlier I had seen a coffee shop. I went back there, now, and bought the best cappuccino I could remember. It had to be good — it cost ¥20! I was so startled that I bought a second cappuccino, just to be sure. Yep, the second one tasted as good as the first one had. And cost just as much.
I climbed up to the Museum, which had been included in the price of entry to the Wall. It was mostly about the reconstruction, but the “before” and “after” images were informative. The reconstruction was quite true to the original. It also had displays of armour and weapons, and some nice pieces of stonework salvaged from here and there.
I succumbed to one last souvenir, my name written calligraphically in Chinese characters.
Getting back to Beijing was problematical. It seemed that not all buses picked up at the car park. The next pickup was an hour and a half away. This information came from a taxi driver, who hardly seemed a disinterested source, but when I saw a bus tootle blithely past headed towards Beijing, I decided to believe her and engaged her to drop me off at nearby Yankou, where I caught a 919 bus back to Beijing.
My plans for Beijing had been disrupted by illness, but I had allowed for that. My train did not leave until evening the next day, so I still had a day in hand to tick off my remaining “must see”, the Summer Palace.
I got off to a slow start, kicking around in my room until checkout time. But I had forgotten I’d paid ¥100 key deposit, so the refund felt like free money and it galvanised me. I dropped my pack off at the train station, then took the Circle line back to Xizhimen, where there were supposed to be buses and minibuses to the Summer Palace. I couldn’t find any until, in desperation, I grabbed a taxi. Then I saw plenty of them.
I entered by the New Palace Gate near the bus stops. Almost the first thing I saw when I entered was the big bronze ox placed beside the lake by Emperor Qianlong in 1755 “to control floods”. It had a startled expression, and I decided after a moment that if somebody had branded me on my flank with an inscription in Chinese, I’d look startled too.
From there I walked across the seventeen-arched bridge to the South Lake Island. This had several pretty temples on it, including the Temple of Timely Rains and Extensive Moisture and the Hall of Embracing the Universe. No modesty about these names.
I walked south to the Western Causeway, a string of islands connected by bridges. The colours were all pastel and harmonious except for the bright green grass and tree leaves and the bright human obstructions. It was lovely, and the views across the lake were spectacular.
I was quite taken by some ancient willows, fenced around and bound in iron to prevent their disintegration.
I would’ve liked to look around the Marble Boat, but there was no access to it. Understandable — the trampling feet of massed tourists would grind it to sand. Other popular parts of the Palace were made of cheaper, more easily replaced materials.
Some things within reach of long-armed or agile visitors couldn’t be replaced easily, however. Some eaves had long ago been depleted of their anti-demon defences by unscrupulous individuals chasing that “special” souvenir. I was neither long-armed nor agile.
The Tower of the Fragrance of the Buddha towered above the Palace and looked impressive, but the gilded Buddha statue inside had seen better days and didn’t look too happy about it. The views from around the Tower were still superb.
I stumbled across Suzhou Street and thought, how charming. It was very pretty and filled with music. Then I saw people in period costume and realised that I had walked into a tourist trap. Too late. I held tight to my wallet and was pleased with myself until I encountered the guy making the music. He had woven such a nice spell that I finally acquired one souvenir, a wooden flute (because I thought he deserved the trade). The flute was too big to carry, really, and I wasn’t sure about posting it home. I eventually gave it away.
I stayed at the Palace long enough to watch the sunset over the lake and came away utterly enchanted.
Back in Beijing I bought a McDonalds meal in an attempt to get a clean western toilet, only to discover the place only had squat toilets. Desperate, I went across to the train station — and got lucky. I accidentally went into the Ladies and found that the “handicapped” loo was a clean throne. So, I managed to squeak through another toilet moment.
The Z15 train was quite modern and clean. I was in a four-berth compartment which had sheets on the beds and a lockable door. One of the toilets in the carriage was a throne. I had a second dinner on the train — the guy from berth 8 invited me and when he started ordering, I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d already eaten. We chatted while we ate, although his English was poor. He worked in telephone sales of some sort, perhaps mobiles. At the end he insisted on paying for the meal, despite its expense.
I never learned much about the two old ladies in the lower berths. They turned in early and never spoke. When I rolled over, I fell asleep instantly.
North through ManchuriaIn the morning, we were in Harbin. I dropped my pack at Left Luggage and queued up to buy my next train ticket — a hard sleeper berth on that night’s train to Suifenhe on the Russian border, leaving me free to spend the day seeing Harbin.
I had one chore to do, which was to sort out my hotel in Vladivostok. I couldn’t just give them my credit card details over the phone — they demanded a faxed, signed form, with front-and-back images of my credit card. This involved some photocopying and cut-and-paste work, but I found a place with the appropriate facilities and managed the trick.
Harbin was a large place. Neither the map in the Lonely Planet nor a map I bought in Harbin proved very useful for navigating the city, but eventually I found my way down to the waterfront. On the way I was fascinated by the dirty grey foam I saw lying about everywhere there was some shade. It was icy cold. I must have been wearing my stupid hat, because I never figured out what it was. Someone had to tell me. Where I come from, we don’t have slabs of snow lying about the streets in the spring. Not even in winter.
Many of the older buildings were large and blocky. The Russians built much of Harbin, when it was a major stop on their railway line to Dalian (Port Arthur) and Vladivostok. They were probably responsible for a lot of the “Grecian” artwork that was scattered about. I saw more than one statue with a mannish body and stick-on boob job that looked like she was wearing balloons on her chest. I’ve been told that ancient artists often used male models, and I’m inclined to believe it. There’s less excuse for modern sculptors,
Here and there I found street art, and on one occasion, drawn by the sound of drums, I found a group of street musicians dressed in colourful Manchurian costumes.
A guy latched onto me. He was very friendly, spoke understandable English, and wanted to show me around and help me buy souvenirs. I may have been “slow” that day, but it didn’t take a brain surgeon to spot a tout. I scraped him off gently. Twice, because he turned up again later. I had nothing against him, I simply didn’t need his services. He was the most persistent tout I had so far encountered on this trip, but if he was set down in India or the Middle East he’d starve.
The hard sleeper was not nearly as comfortable as the soft sleeper had been. There were six berths in the compartment, plus what looked like a seat in the corridor (it became two beds later), and no door. But it wasn’t uncomfortable, and after one night on the go I don’t expect I smelt any better than the bodies around me. My sheets tended to slither around on the plastic mattress. This may have had an important consequence, which I’ll get to later.
Suifenhe emerged in the dawn when the trees and snowbanks beside the track gave way to a large red-roofed settlement. unfortunately, I had no street map and when I burst from the train station at 6:00 into a barking throng of taxi drivers, I found nobody who could understand my request for a ride to the “Rossiya” border.
Finally, one informal taxi more or less hijacked me and took me on a tour of the town’s hotels. I managed to get him to take me back to the station, where a real taxi pulled up and seemed to understand. But he hadn’t. I got another tour of the town.
I managed to find “border” in my Chinese phrasebook. That got me a close-up tour of the Russian border but didn’t immediately get me to the crossing point. Eventually we straightened that out and, ¥30 lighter after my rides, I trudged up to a big building that loomed by the fence.
Getting stamped out of China was relatively straight-forward, except that someone had to go fetch me an exit card. They didn’t keep stocks where people will stumble across them. Most of the traffic was Chinese traders and Russians on shopping jaunts. These regulars tended to organise themselves better than drop-ins like me.
However, it was here that I first noticed that peculiar helpfulness that I was to meet at borders everywhere during this journey. At each border either the guards themselves or else some friendly locals would take me under their wing and help shuffle me through the arcane set of rituals peculiar to entry or exit from each country.
Here I was befriended by a couple of Russians who had a little English, Victor and Alana. Alana gave me a photo of herself taken in Vladivostok, with her address on the back. I gathered she was single, and that Victor was her brother. But their advice helped smooth my way. It was Victor who fetched the exit card and pointed me towards the green lane. Warned by a note in my guidebooks about a nasty currency scam that used to operate at the western borders or Russia, I had wanted to go through the red lane so as to declare my dollars and Euros.
“No need!” laughed Victor, “is no longer —” and he shrugged. And he was right, or I was lucky, for when I exited to Ukraine nobody was interested in my money, only my registration slip.
Victor and Alana were laden down with Chinese plunder. As I zipped through the deserted green lane, they joined the long queue waiting to be shaken down by grim-faced Chinese customs officials.
Getting from the China border post to the Russian post was more troublesome. They wouldn’t let me walk. It was actually some distance to the Russian post, and much further to the first Russian town, but at the time I didn’t know this, and it annoyed me. They wanted me to buy a bus ticket for ¥131, but after paying out for the taxis I was down to ¥125 and some jiao. Then they “generously” suggested that US$30 would be acceptable instead. ¥220 — I’ll bet it would do! Lacking adequate Yuan, I had to pay up. They wouldn’t accept ¥125 plus $5.
My US$ notes got scrutinised with care. The $20 notes in my ready-use supply were deemed unsatisfactory, so I had to dig into my stash of pristine notes. I also decided to get rid of my remaining Chinese currency. The coffee shop — mysteriously not accessible until after I had paid my fare — operated as an informal currency exchange. I got ₽416 (416 rubles) for my ¥125, which was close enough to a fair rate for such small sums at a border. The jiao became souvenirs: nobody wanted them.
I went out and joined the bus mob in a waiting area, but my money fun was not over. They came out waving one of my ¥50 notes. Counterfeit! No problem — except that they took back ₽200, far more than the ¥50 was worth. This incident reduced me from ₽416 to ₽216 and came back to haunt me later. I did get to keep the dud note as a souvenir. It was a good fake and might have passed, except that I’d torn off a corner in extracting it from my wallet. The paper didn’t look right where it had torn. The torn corner also proved it was my note, because it matched the piece left in my wallet.
The Russians were all lugging huge bags full of the purchases from their shopping trip, bags capable of filling two bus seats each, although they made the seats go further by stacking several bags on top of one another. More than one bag toppled over the seat back and crushed the people in front as the bus jolted out of the compound.
At the Russian post, there were no Entry cards. I had to wait while they fetched one. A woman helped me fill it out. My Passport was examined and mulled and thumbed over for a while before eventually, almost grudgingly, the guy stamped me in. I’m not sure he’d ever heard of New Zealand.
Customs was a doddle. My relatively trim baggage — pack, day pack, and an almost empty overflow bag for food — was waved through. The officers had bigger fish to fry. They were figuring how much they could sting over-exuberant Russian shoppers.
We piled onto the bus until it groaned, and then, after one last on-board Passport check, pulled out through a gate onto Russian ground. It was still early by Chinese time, but past noon Vladivostok time. Most of the delay was waiting for the Russians to get through customs, for the bus was not allowed to depart until it was full.
We immediately pulled off the road into a field, where most of the shoppers jumped off and shoehorned themselves and their loot into a series of minibuses, cars and vans. These would take them directly home, whereas the bus had to go to the bus station at the nearest town.
Relieved of most of the weight, it bounced into a dusty border town about twenty minutes further on and wheezed to a halt. This was Pogranichny, also known as Grodekovo. Getting information about my next move was difficult. The ticket window didn’t want to tell me anything. Eventually I managed to extract an admission from them that there was a bus to Vladivostok at about 15:00. The fare would be ₽250.
As mentioned earlier, I had only ₽216 after the discovery of my counterfeit ¥50. I now had two hours in which to find an additional ₽34.
I wandered around the area, saying “Bank?” to everyone who would stop to listen. Most looked at me blankly, but finally the woman from the ticket office gave me a sketch map on a piece of paper. Clutching this vital document, I set off.
The town was not a pretty sight, with dirt everywhere and piles of dirty snow. There was no grass yet and the trees had not broken their buds. Rubbish that had been frozen all winter was thawing. Pungent odours tickled my nose from random directions even though my cold had deadened my sense of smell.
Eventually I was standing more or less where the map said there should be a bank. I looked around — and spotted a Western Union sign. That might be the place. It was, and I quickly changed US$100 into ₽2,520. Suddenly I was wealthy!
I noticed that the change board was scattered with tiny silver coins left behind by previous customers. One Kopeck pieces, worth about a twentieth of a cent, which made them worthless even to the penurious Russians. I lusted after them, for they would make dandy souvenirs, but I decided that scrabbling for them would probably just get me talked about.
Back at the bus station, I bought my ticket. I also bought a map of Vladivostok, and some jellies to eat on the bus. Things were looking up.
Eventually the bus appeared, my baggage was hoisted aboard, and I was on my way again. We passed through Ussurisk about 15:40 and reached Vladivostok about 18:00.
Outside the bus station, piratical taxis lurked. I knew that bus and trolley services ran into town, but not where to find them. The taxis, true to their calling, were adamant that the buses weren’t running. It was cold, I was cold, and my cold was showing signs of resurgence. My resistance crumbled and I forked out ₽300 (about $15) for a taxi to the Hotel Gavan. I consoled myself with the thought that at least I was getting a decent run for my money, and I was saving myself the effort of searching for my hotel.
Hotel Gavan was a big pile of masonry down the peninsula, two kilometres south of the city centre. Contrary to my expectations, the Reception was brisk and courteous. I was instantly greeted and booked in, and within about 10 minutes I was up in my room.
The room, a twin, had double glazed windows and a glass enclosed balcony. It was pleasant, although the view — of a block of apartments across the way — was negligible.
Lord of the EastThe setting was lovely. Mountains loomed above the horizon, the Pacific Ocean lapped the shore, and the city seemed exotic. The thaw was far advanced, with just a few stubborn banks of ice hanging on in shady spots. The buds were swelling on the trees, though here too they had not yet burst.
But Vladivostok was not lovely. It was decrepit and potholed, and an aura of despondency hung over it. I got used to this aura, as it accompanied me everywhere in Russia and Ukraine and only lifted when I reached Hungary. But Vladivostok was where I first felt it, and it irretrievably coloured my impressions of this city I had wanted so long to see.
When I was a child, my home town of Wanganui in New Zealand was an entry port for shipments of potash fertilizer from the USSR. I lived in the port suburb of Castlecliff. The “Russian ships” would dock and the sailors, dark-faced men wearing rough brown trousers and woollen jumpers, would come ashore for an evening of R&R. This was an opportunity for the local kids. We would be waiting and would direct them up the hill to the local pub. They gave us small tips in return for this miniscule service — nothing valuable, just delicious dark chocolate and strange coins. I still have some of those coins — 1, 3, 5, 10 and 15 Kopeck pieces minted between 1961 and 1971, with the emblem of the Soviet Union on the back.
The ships were nothing special, just rusty tramp steamers with unpronounceable names, but they were all registered to a place called “Vladivostok”. This name came to represent exotic mystery to me.
It was these ships, the chocolate, and the coins that first roused my travelling urge. I wanted to see where the ships came from. I wanted more of that rich dark chocolate, so superior to the pallid milk chocolate that was all that NZ offered at the time. I wanted to see a place that minted such odd coins.
Later I became discouraged. Russia was difficult and expensive to visit, and Vladivostok was closed to foreigners. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, its currency imploded, and Vladivostok opened up. All things became possible. Now I was there!
Next morning was cold and overcast, but after all these years I was finally in Vladivostok! I had a fire in me and forced myself to go out. I changed money at a nearby bureau, pulled some cash from an ATM (mainly to prove to myself that my cards worked) then caught a bus up the peninsula.
Vladivostok was a city of contradictions. Shabby buildings and shabby streets coexisted almost side by side with more upmarket, better maintained ones. And it wasn’t cheap. While shopping I noticed that grocery prices were comparable with those in Melbourne! How was this possible, given the disparity in average incomes between Russia and Australia? Cars were mostly newish looking, and there were a lot of them. Where was the money coming from?
No matter how decrepit a building might be, the young women stepping out of it were always immaculate; their hair was carefully groomed, and clothes were smart and fashionable. Only when they reached middle age did their standards suddenly slip, the snappy duds replaced by headscarves, sensible overcoats and flat shoes.
I looked more closely at the shops. The cheaper goods were made in China. I remembered the train from Harbin, filled with businessmen on their way to Russia and Russian shoppers on their way back from China. I remembered reading Tony Barrell’s The Real Far East, which made the point that ultimately the destiny of the Russian Far East may lie with China.
In most of Russia at this time, the days of the Soviet Union were looked back on as we all sometimes remember our childhoods — a simpler time, when higher powers controlled what we could and could not have. The Soviet era was a pleasant time in some ways (though very unpleasant in others) but restricted in scope. In many places the people now looked forward to the days when they would exercise real control over their own destinies, scary as that may be. In the Russian Far East, the Soviet era was still the good old days.
Under the Soviets, money and people were pumped in here, but under Yeltzin and Putin that gravy train stopped running. Today it was a land under siege, for over its western and southern horizons seethed China, hungry for the resources that Russia could no longer exploit properly and eager to open new markets for its own goods. The population of the Russian Far East was declining, its economy was stagnant. The population and economy of China were growing. The local Russians already found it cheaper to make shopping trips into China than to buy expensive Russian goods in their own shops. They sold some of their booty to other Russians when they got back. This trend had only one possible end. Unless things changed, someday the Russian Far East would face economic domination by China — perhaps this was already happening — and this would lead, almost inevitably, to some form of overt or covert political domination.
The time might come, perhaps even in my lifetime, when for its own perceived good the Russian Far East would choose to leave the Russian Federation and move into a closer association with its neighbour to the south. If this happened, all hell was likely to break loose as Russia was unlikely to release its Far East possession willingly.
A day or two spent walking around Vladivostok as a tourist was no substitute for real research, but in my time there I saw nothing to suggest that Barrell was wrong. Yet there had been many reversals of power in this area, times when the Russians had been strong and the Chinese weak, followed by times when the Chinese had been weak and the Russians strong. As the world’s non-renewable resources ran low in the coming decades, anything might happen.
The Vladivostok train station was a flamboyant structure with lots of gingerbread. I lusted to photograph it, but the one time I got my camera out to do so, I noticed a policeman looking my way. Unnerved, I pointed the camera at a statue of Lenin instead.
I already had my Trans-Siberian ticket, so I didn’t have to brave the ticket counters here. I did snoop around, trying to get a feel for the place. This was an even-numbered day so Train #001, the “Rossiya”, was standing at the platform waiting for evening. In two days, I would be aboard its next service. I wandered along the platform, looking the train over. Everything about it was big and massively built. It exuded confident power.
Just north of the station I found the White House, residence of the governor, and beyond that Revolution Plaza. There was some sort of religious event under way in the Plaza, but I admired the Monument to the Fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East. The fallen double-headed eagle insignia was a nice touch — especially now that the eagle had risen again, albeit without the Tsar’s coat of arms on its chest.
I made my way further north, exploring the town centre. I stopped off in a flashy café to have some coffee and a cake and to get out of the rain. In the end the rain won. I curtailed my sight-seeing and went back to the hotel to try and shake off the cold, which was now back in full force.
But there was a problem. My credit card and spare ATM card were missing! I’d had them in Harbin when I booked this hotel. That was the last time I remembered seeing them. They had been together in a small plastic sleeve. I recalled putting them in my pocket, meaning to return them to my money belt later. I forgot. Somewhere between Harbin and Vladivostok they slipped away, probably while I was slithering around in the sheets on the train to Suifenhe, or perhaps when I pulled my wallet out to buy something. Either way, they were gone.
I wanted to go to bed, but this took priority. I had a phone number in Australia that I could supposedly call reverse-charges, but reverse-charge calling was not possible from Russia. I bit the bullet and dialled direct from my hotel room, an exercise that eventually added significantly to my hotel bill despite the brevity of the call. I cancelled both cards and arranged for the replacements to be sent to the accommodation I had booked in St Petersburg. I had my doubts over this, but it was the best I could arrange at the time. I would be in Moscow too soon, and I had yet to book any accommodation beyond St Petersburg. (My doubts nearly proved accurate.)
No bogus transactions ever turned up on the lost cards, so they were lost rather than stolen. A thief would have wanted to use the cards before they could be cancelled.
Fortunately, I was carrying a second credit card, a debit card, two “travel cards”, some travellers cheques, and plenty of cash in US$ and Euros. The lost cards were a nuisance, not a disaster. I moved some recurring charges to the surviving credit card. This was a lesson learned. Never use your primary credit card for recurring payments! If you have a second credit card, put them on that instead and leave it at home or never take it out of your money belt.
I spent most of the next day indoors, trying to kick the new cold before it settled in. I succeeded, but it was such a lovely sunny day that I regretted not being able to get out and enjoy it.
I arranged my hotels in Volgograd and Rostov-na-donu, using the Gavan’s Business Centre. The printing and faxing proved expensive, but at least the day was not totally wasted. I ventured out briefly to local shops to buy some expensive flu tablets and an inexpensive pizza. That was it for that day.
Came the dawn and I had to move whether I liked it or not. I was due to board the Trans-Siberian that evening. Fortunately, my cold had abated, and my energy was almost back to normal. I checked out of the Gavan and took the bus to the station. I dropped my pack at Left Luggage and then caught a bus back to the hotel. I had forgotten to get a copy of the new version registration slip for my stay. After a little discussion the hotel agreed to give me the slip. They dug it out of a waste paper basket! I had a sudden vision of a scene in a book, Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. A soul in Hell must complete a form in multiple copies using a blunt pencil stub. One of the copies is marked “Destroy”. Sure enough, that copy simply gets tossed into the nearest wastepaper basket where it burns to ashes. The hotel had faxed the form to the authorities and saw no need to keep the original.
The sky was blue, with a few fluffy white clouds. It was a perfect day for seeing some more of Vladivostok. I took the bus downtown again, and after lunch I headed up to Sportivnaya Harbour for a walk along the Esplanade. This was probably a mistake — I should have headed east around the harbour and up the hill for a panoramic view. Never mind, it was a pleasant though unexceptional walk. I was taken with a fountain in the harbour, shaped like a mermaid. I’m not sure what she represented. The local seagulls liked perching on her head.
I bought some candyfloss and gave some rubles to a little girl who had no feet. It was just that sort of day. Later I went to the Post Office near the train station and spent a couple of hours on the internet. It would be a week before I would have another opportunity.
A certain pressure exerted itself and I was in a quandary. Hold on until I could use the toilets on the train, or go now? But boarding was over an hour away and the toilets aboard would be locked until the train was out of the station. The matter became urgent. Reluctantly, I went across to the train station and paid for the privilege of hanging my buttocks above a grubby hole in the floor. I had not, despite past visits to squat countries, become accustomed to squat toilets. I could never balance right. I came perilously close to disgracing my clothing when, inevitably, at the crucial instant, I toppled over backwards.
Flying the KupeBoarding time. I retrieved my pack and made my way to the platform, wandering down the line of carriages with my ticket in my hand. My Provodnik was standing at the carriage door. I showed him my ticket and he showed me to my compartment. This was a concession to the foreigner — most passengers were left to find their own berths.
The compartment held four beds, arranged in the manner of double bunks and stretching across the width of the carriage. The beds were covered with fabric. The lower bunks (odd numbers) had cushions fitted to the wall behind them, making them usable as seats. The upper bunks (even numbers) were piled with mattresses and blankets. There was enough room between the upper and lower bunks for a tall person to sit comfortably. There were ventilators — heaters, really — beneath the window.
Each bed had a light at the window end and a small basket between the wall cushions that could be used to hold stuff. There was a small table fixed between the beds beneath the window. The window had curtains, and there was a small rug on the floor. The double-glazed window was a bit smeary. The smudges were on the outside, where I couldn’t reach. If I wanted any good photos from the train, I would have to find a better window.
The compartment had a sliding door that could be locked, and either side of the door were hooks for hanging clothes. And that was it — my home for the next week!
Outside the compartment a passageway ran the length of the carriage. To the right (forward) was one Kupe compartment (Beds 1-4) and the two small compartments occupied by the Provodniks. Outside one Provodnik compartment was a complicated apparatus that had to be the famous samovar. At the front of the carriage was the Western-style toilet. A door closed off the passage, and beyond the door was a vestibule that ran across the width of the train, connecting the left- and right-hand entry doors. The door windows were single-glazed and clean. This vestibule, despite its chill, became my photo platform. Other passengers used it for smoking. There was a door between carriages, but I never explored that way. The train kept gaining and losing carriages in front of us. Perhaps they were the Platskartny (Third Class) carriages.
To the left (rearward) came the rest of the carriage — seven more compartments, then another toilet (a squat), a door, and other vestibule connecting the rear entry doors. A door between the carriages led to more Kupe carriages, to the Dining Car, and to Spalny Vagon (First Class). I only went that way once.
The train pulled out right on time at 20:15, to a flourish of music — I can’t remember what it was now. Even though this train left every other day it seemed appropriate to the commencement of a 9,000-kilometre voyage.
I was still alone in my compartment. Was I going to have it all to myself? Nope. When the train pulled in at a suburban station, an old guy crashed in and took Bed 7.
The Provodnik distributed packages of bed linen. After watching what my travelling companion did, I assembled my bed — getting a mattress and pillow off the upper bunk, wrapping the mattress in a sheet, laying it on the bed, covering it with another sheet, and laying a blanket on top. The pillow went into a pillowcase and then I laid it down on my day pack, both to make a better headrest and for security.
There was nothing to see, nothing to do. Drowsiness overcame me. I rolled over and slept. I woke briefly just after 05:00 when the train stopped somewhere (Bikin, I learned later) and my companion lurched off. He was instantly replaced by another guy who dropped into the vacated bunk fully clothed and went to sleep. It was still dark. I went back to sleep.
That was the pattern for the next few days. The clock became an irrelevancy, except that it told me roughly where we were and when the next station was due. More important was the location of the sun. Soon after nightfall, we slept. Soon after sunrise, we woke. In between we ate, looked out the window, visited, read, and (for most of the Russians) drank.
Each morning I locked myself into the Western toilet (the other one was preferred by the Russians) and gave myself a wipe-down bath using my facecloth and plenty of’ soap and water. Some travellers contrive showers in these toilets, but I preferred not to make that much mess. I was carrying enough underwear, shirts and t-shirts to change my clothes every day, although when my wardrobe ran low towards the end, I had to make hasty repairs to my Great Wall souvenir t-shirt, which had already started coming apart at the seams.
There were only two of us in the compartment all the way from Bikin to Moscow, which made things more comfortable than they could have been. Bed 7 was occupied by Ilya, recently discharged from his compulsory stint in the army. I had lucked out — he was one of very few people on the train with a useful smattering of English. He wasn’t proficient enough for a real conversation, but his halting translations and interpretations of what was going on made my time aboard the Trans-Siberian much richer. While I was still trying to puzzle out the name on the station-house, Ilya would glance out the window and tell me where we were. He helped communicate with the other passengers. He told me about omul and about his time as a border guard near Ussurisk watching for Chinese smugglers. He usually drank only moderately instead of getting roaring drunk.
The language barrier was a problem. I wanted to learn more about these people, but I spoke no Russian (except a parrot word or two) and most of them spoke no English (except a parrot word or two). With only my Russian-English dictionary and Ilya’s limited English as tools, most communication had to be through smiles, body language and show-and-tell. Thus, there were no deep philosophical bull sessions for me to lay bare the Russian psyche. The only fluent English speakers I found on the train were a British mother and son, and I didn’t even find out about them until I ran into them on the platform at Nizhni Novgorod. They were travelling Spalny Vagon, 10 carriages away. Still, an astonishing amount of information can be conveyed when you have a week to do it in and nothing else to do anyway.
My Provodniks I called Leonid and Josef (for his moustache) — I never learned their real names. I had little to do with them until the last day, when Leonid caught me alone and asked me if I wanted to buy a “souvenir”. I was unable to figure out what he meant. When Ilya came back, Leonid got coy. In fact, he was trying to sell me a souvenir Russian Trains mug made of pewter and glass.
If nothing else, Leonid and Josef kept the toilets in our car reasonably clean. In fact, they were quite fastidious about cleaning, vacuuming and dusting daily and keeping the samovar stoked.
I got to know a number of other passengers, such as Sasha, our most frequent visitor, who looked like Gromyko but without the grimness, and his wife Natalya. Sasha was an older edition of Ilya — they had both been guards on the Chinese border. Sasha had been in the Caucasus, but he wouldn’t talk about that. He and Ilya spent quite a lot of time reminiscing about their army days, with Ilya occasionally translating the better bits for my benefit. Military life was boring, with the main excitement being their battles with the elements and the wildlife (notably ticks and bedbugs). Sasha had a hair-raising encounter with a brown bear — I never quite grasped the details — and Ilya had seen a tiger. Occasionally they would capture Chinese smugglers attempting to bypass Russia’s high duties. Sometimes the smugglers were armed, and shots were exchanged, but usually they just held up their hands and went quietly.
One afternoon Ilya and Sasha made an occasion of it, getting stuck into vodka and “Tourist’s Breakfast”. They worked at their binge with single-minded intensity. No opened bottle could be left unfinished. One toast required another toast. Ilya eventually became quite ill and after a few toilet visits — and a stern dressing-down from a Provodnik due to the mess in the toilet — he gave up. He spent the evening sleeping it off — with a few more toilet stops. Sasha showed no ill effects at the time but looked decidedly seedy the next morning.
A father and his young son, Vova (Bob) and Pasha, were on their way to visit relatives in Yekaterinburg. Vova gave me his phone number in case I was ever in town, but I wasn’t going back there. Genadi was from Sakhalin, twenty years in the army as a driver. After he was discharged, he went right on driving. It was his life. He gave me one of his medals, a Soviet-era medal for good management of troops. I was touched and gave him a couple of plastic tikis for luck.
Others popped in from time to time, whose names I never caught. As soon as they heard that there was a foreigner in the carriage, everyone wanted to drop by and say hello. They usually brought food and drink with them. I accepted the food but refused the alcohol.
I was not normally teetotal, but I had decided not to drink on the Trans-Siberian. Russians have traditions with Vodka that ensured that most of the passengers got drunk soon after the journey started and stayed drunk until they got off the train. Once you started a drinking session it was rude to drop out before the bottle was empty, and everyone wanted me to have a drink with them. It was better not to start. I pleaded the excuse of a weak heart (not entirely a lie, but not the whole truth).
I had come aboard well supplied with food. At a supermarket near the train station in Vladivostok I had spent over ₽1,000 on groceries. Added to the purchases of previous days I had coffee, instant soup, orange juice, UHT milk, milk powder, corn flakes, sugar, bread, peanut butter, honey, Nutella, instant noodles, sausage chubs, salami, Mars Bars, Snickers Bars, a slab of the richest, darkest Russian chocolate I could find, packets of biscuits and crackers. Most precious of all, an irreplaceable and dwindling treasure, I had a small tube of Vegemite brought with me from Australia. Some of these things (the Vegemite) I ate myself; others, especially the chocolate, biscuits and crackers, I gave away in return for the gifts of nuts, bacon, Passover cake, and lemony stuff to grate into tea, that other travellers forced on me. I supplemented these supplies with strategic purchases from the platform vendors — cooked meat such as sausage rolls and mince patties, ham, grape juice, orange juice, apples, cucumbers, tomatoes, once a bag of greens, fresh bread, a bag of lollies, and even an expensive box of chocolates.
Ilya’s diet was reasonably healthy, except for one odd item. He had cans and cans of stuff called “Tourist’s Breakfast” (Zavtrak Turisti) that had attractive pictures of vegetables and meat on the side but looked and smelt exactly like cat food. It was vile, but he loved it. Otherwise he drank green tea and ate bread, vegetables and fruit. When we stopped at Sludyanka he dashed out on the platform with the rest of the train, purchasing bags of omul at ₽25 a bag. From Sludyanka to Moscow, the train stank of smoked fish.
One night, I ate in the Dining Car. I was in Carriage 1, it was Carriage 9. I made my way there through the carriages, sneaking peeks through the doors as I went. The dining car was clean and tidy, and although I had a little trouble selecting a main that wasn’t swimming in grease, for ₽341 I had a good meal of crumbed chicken schnitzel with chips and salad. While I was eating, we pulled into Belegorst for a half hour stop, so after I finished my meal I climbed down and walked back to my carriage along the platform through the bracing evening air. It was a good experience, but too expensive for me to repeat it.
My dining experience contrasts oddly with that of Paul Theroux (Ghost Train to the Eastern Star), who made the journey a few months before me. His grubby, run-down Dining Car was run by a smelly slob with black-rimmed fingernails whose wife spent her time rolling serviettes. With trains departing every other day and taking seven days to complete the trip, there’s obviously more than one Dining Car. Perhaps I was lucky.
That was life aboard the train. But the Trans-Siberian was a mobile hostel, trundling its collection of dormitories more than 9,000 kilometres across the largest country in the world. There was more to it than the little community on board — there was a continuous documentary screening beyond the windows.
I saw little of the northward leg to Khabarovsk (Kilometre 8521). We were less than an hour on our way before the sun set and I spent that time settling in. I woke the next morning while we were stopped in Khabarovsk, but I wasn’t really alert until we crossed the Amur (Kilometre 8515), just before 10:00 local time. After that I passed the morning getting to know Ilya and watching the fleeting countryside.
The centres of larger towns were dominated by huge apartment blocks, their communal chimneys fuming against the sky. Despite the apartments and the trees scattered around them, these towns were ugly and utilitarian and looked more like industrial estates rather than places where people would actually choose to live. The outskirts always featured a spreading skirt of small farms that Ilya identified as dachas, small country cottages with large gardens. Most people owned a dacha. In the hard times after the fall of the Soviet Union, many townspeople would have starved but for the food they were able to grow on their dacha. Wages and pensions, their rates frozen, were paid late if at all, and the collapse of the ruble made a mockery of them. The people fell back on barter. Many spent more time tending their gardens than working at their ostensible jobs because they couldn’t live on their wages. Surplus food could be traded for things others had — pilfered wire and fertiliser, mechanical repairs, and so forth. Dachas varied from large attractive houses to tiny rundown shacks, but their gardens were always well tended.
Smaller towns were made of low wooden buildings, often unpainted. The wood was usually very dark, and I suddenly recognised the tint. My grandfather used to make his own planks from raw wood that he acquired very cheaply. He would then “paint” the planks with runny tar to preserve them against rot, insects and water. The tar would penetrate deep into the grain, staining the wood a dirty brownish black. It was an effective treatment and even today the odour of tar will bring back memories of chopping wood and kindling for my grandmother’s wood-fired cooking range in a wood-shed my grandfather built from such planks. Perhaps the Russians used the same technique.
Most of the buildings had smoking chimneys.
The settlements tended to be surrounded by rubble left over from the building of the railway, and since the trees had not yet bloomed or the grass recovered from the winter snow, they were all eyesores.
Just after 14:30 we pulled in to Obluchye (Kilometre 8198) and I had my first experience of the platform vendors. These micro-entrepreneurs are an essential part of the Trans-Siberian system. They sell food, drink, and all those other little incidentals that travellers need — soap, toothpaste, batteries. I soon realised that I had hopelessly overspent on supplies for the journey. I could have halved my shopping bill by buying my food from the platform vendors en route instead of from the supermarket in Vladivostok. All I really needed was enough to last me until the train reached the next large station.
Obluchye was the last stop in the Jewish Autonomous Region. Soon we entered the Amur Administrative Region (Amurskaya Oblast) and the local time jogged backward an hour. We were now only 6 hours ahead of Moscow. The sun set about 20:10.
Sunrise the next day (Day 3) was about 7:30. I had my first glimpse of taiga, a variegated terrain made up of copses of birch trees surrounded by flat grassland. It looked open, but you soon realised that in fact you couldn’t see very far before the trees got in the way. It would be easy to get lost. This was to be the typical landscape for the next few days. The sun set over the taiga. When the sun rose, there was the taiga still rolling past.
The grass was white with frost each morning, and snow banks still lay in shady spots. Spring was advancing, but winter had not yet lost its grip. Although large rivers such as the Amur had broken their ice, smaller rivers were still frozen. Here and there I saw men fishing through holes cut in the ice.
Just after 10:00 we pulled into the small town of Amazar (Kilometre 7010). We had now crossed into the Chita Administrative Region, and therefore into Siberia. Just before 11:00 we reached the larger town of Mogocha (Kilometre 6906), its wooden suburbs scattered across a hillside in the distance.
I noticed a war memorial just outside Mogocha, dedicated to those locals who died in WW II. “1941-1945”, it said. For the Soviets, World War II did not start in 1939 when Russia and Germany carved up Poland and England and France declared war on Germany, but in 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia. From 1939 to 1941 Russia, despite taking the opportunity to gobble up some of its neighbours, was neutral and had a non-aggression pact with the Germans. For those of us raised on the Anglo-French view of the war, this is a lesson in relativism. Other cases can easily be found — for example, when did the Vietnam War begin? A war is always immediate and important to those already under attack. Those not yet involved tend to take a more detached view. World War II ran from 1939 to 1945: but the Great Patriotic War ran from 1941 to 1945.
A less generous interpretation is also possible. If the Russians counted the war from 1939 then their gains in Poland and the Baltic states would have to be considered as part of any final settlement and might reduce their moral claim to some of the territory, they had overrun later. But if the war started in 1941, those earlier land grabs would be out of scope of any war settlement and Russia would be entitled to keep a larger share of the spoils. The Soviets could retain their expanded western border and generously compensate Poland by giving it part of Germany.
Past Chernyshevsk-Zabaikalsky (Kilometre 6593) we reached more rugged terrain. The patchwork pattern of the taiga was especially plain on the hillsides.
Nearing Priskovaya (Kilometre 6496), I noticed a tall building standing alone in the landscape. It resembled a church. It puzzled Ilya, too. Perhaps there had once been a town there, or perhaps the church was a small monastery.
Next day (Day 4), we lost another hour when we crossed into the Buryat Republic. Just before noon, we reached the shores of Lake Baikal. It was still frozen — a plain of ice stretching away beyond the horizon. For the next two and a half hours the scenery piled up. I was glued to the vestibule windows. After the taiga, where hours could pass without anything noteworthy coming by, suddenly everything was happening at once. There were men fishing in the lake. Graffiti littered the lakeshore. Tiny wooden settlements dotted the shore, some stockaded. Snow-capped mountains overlooked the scene.
Lake Baikal dominated everything. The ice sheet was ridged and furrowed by pressure waves, scored by wheel tracks, peppered with fishermen, and spread with small pools of water. Here and there were black smudges where people had built campfires. The south end of the lake looked like a huge enclosed bay, and it stretched beyond the horizon northwards.
Baikal is said to hold nearly a fifth of the world’s fresh water. Today it looked like the world’s biggest Popsicle.
Sludyanka (Kilometre 5312) was nominally a five-minute stop, but in that time an enormous amount of buying went on. Here and at Irkutsk was the place to buy omul, and the Russians made the most of it. We pulled out late. Normally the doors were closed before the train pulled away from a station, but at Sludyanka people were still leaning down and exchanging rubles for fish as we left the platform behind. Ilya managed to get two plastic bags full, enough to last him till Moscow and still have some left over as gifts for his family. I was tempted but decided not to enter the scrum.
At 17:00 we rattled across a bridge and entered Irkutsk (Kilometre 5185). I had originally planned to break my journey here, but eventually decided that getting the full Trans-Siberian experience demanded I do the whole trip in one leap. Time and money argued the same way, as did the season — Baikal would be better when it was liquid. If I ever go back, I will spend more time. I want very much to explore the area around the lake.
Just after 10:20 the next day (Day 5), after losing another hour on the clock, we reached Krasnoyarsk (Kilometre 4098). Ilya snapped a picture of me standing in front of a memorial steam engine there, looking tired and scruffy but happy. Around Krasnoyarsk the landscape was dotted with dachas. These tended to be more upmarket than the ones in the Russian Far East. Many had small hothouses for winter cultivation. It’s fairly obvious that Krasnoyarsk Territory has managed to hang onto more of its wealth than regions further east.
At 12:22 I finally managed to photograph a kilometre post. It claimed we were exactly 4,000 kilometres from Moscow. That meant we had already covered almost 5,300 kilometres. At 15:22 I spotted Kilometre 3800, so we had crossed the intervening 200 kilometres in three hours, an average of 67 kph, including a couple of two-minute stops. The “Rossiya” actually averages about 62 kph across its 7-day journey.
Just after 19:00 we reached Tayga (Kilometre 3570). Considering the landscape that we had been passing through all day, the origin of the name was easy to guess. At about 20:30 we crossed the Tom River (about Kilometre 3495), which prompted another time zone change and then, at 21:30, the Ob (Kilometre 3332), on the outskirts of Novosiborsk.
Next day (Day 6) we reached Tyumen (Kilometre 2144) at about 10:30. After another time zone change, we were now only two hours ahead of Moscow. Two blocky octagonal towers overlooked the station — possibly watchtowers. After this I watched carefully and managed to get a photo as we shot past some graves beside the track. At Yushala (Kilometre 2064, 80 kilometres on from Tyumen), the sailors from the very famous battleship Potemkin were shot. They were subsequently buried at Kamyshlov Station (Kilometre 1955) so the graves I saw were not those occupied by the sailors, but I had wanted to see the spot.
The Potemkin was an armoured warship of the Black Sea fleet that mutinied in Odessa in 1905 as part of a pattern of riots and disturbances that forced Tsar Nicholas to make many reforms to his realm. The sailors had won their point, but they had rebelled while under naval discipline so of course they had to be punished. The Potemkin found a place in Russian folklore as a metaphor for quixotic lost causes.
The Potemkin had been named after Grigory Potemkin, adviser to Catherine the Great, who built “Potemkin villages”, pretty façades populated by dressed-up peasants, along the line of a tour of inspection by his monarch, giving an alternative meaning to the term “Potemkin”.
Later, at 18:47, we shot past Kilometre 1777. There was no missing this one, as it was marked by a huge white obelisk with one black arrow pointing east labelled “Asia” and another pointing west labelled “Europe”. I had crossed from one continent to another by land. Earlier, at Yekaterinburg (Kilometre 1816) about 17:00, I had descended from the train and bought a box of expensive chocolates (₽200). After we passed the obelisk, I handed these out along the carriage to all and sundry in celebration of the occasion. Handing out the chocolates also allowed me to take a census of the carriage. It had 36 beds but there were only about 21 passengers. Most were two to a compartment, one three, a couple four. One compartment was empty — its occupants got off at an earlier stop and had not been replaced.
Two quick time zone changes in the night brought us onto Moscow time. My chocolates, however, had triggered a flurry of visitors from the other compartments and I barely remember getting down at Nizhniy Novgorod a.k.a. Gorky (Kilometre 442). The crowd did not clear until we reached Vladimir (Kilometre 191), about 14:00. I was impressed by its tall white churches with blue rooves. I meant to come back out on a day trip and visit these beautiful towns of the so-called “Golden Ring” but as so often happens, intention never got translated into action.
Suddenly I saw Kilometre 100 flash by. The journey was almost over! Where had the time gone?
At 17:00 we entered the outskirts of Moscow. It looked like the western outskirts of Melbourne. For the next fifty minutes we slowed down, trundled, stopped. Started, trundled, stopped. Started, trundled. Then we were gliding along a platform. We stopped.
We were at Moscow.
Working MoscowThe Trans-Siberian terminates at Moskva Yaroslavsky Vokzal and the nearest Metro station is Komsomolskaya. Heaving my pack onto my back, I squinted my way through the station looking for the big red M sign. I don’t remember much about this process — there was so much going on around me that after seven days in the sheltered environment of the train I was feeling dazed and confused. I should have stopped, gathered my faculties and waited for clarity. Instead I ploughed on regardless.
I had booked a dorm bed at the “Home From Home” hostel in Arbat Street. The map I was using was hopeless — it made the hostel out to be somewhere north of the Kremlin. I got out near enough to the right stop, Arbatskaya — actually called Biblioteka Imeni Lenina on this line. The instructions said I needed Smolenskaya but getting there involved a change of trains. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have spotted nearby Ulitsa Arbat on my Lonely Planet map. If I’d been thinking at all I would’ve wondered why I was getting out here instead of at Ploschad Revolyutsii. But because I was sure I knew where the hostel was, I turned east instead of west.
For the next two hours I floundered around central Moscow in search of a phantom. I crossed plazas; I walked up and down steps. I even asked people where Arbat Street was. Most didn’t know, although a couple did say “Gee, I think it’s over that way somewhere” and gestured west. Their answer made no sense — how could it be over there? I walked through shopping malls, crossed incredibly wide streets, and even spent a while staring at a statue of Karl Marx hoping for inspiration. Nothing helped. My pack dragged at me. No sensible traveller likes being lost in a strange city with their every possession on their back.
It gradually dawned on me that I must be looking in the wrong place. This was the monumental heart of Moscow — it was hardly likely to harbour a cheap hostel.
I dug out my guidebook and looked at the area around Arbatskaya, and there was Arbat Street. I still didn’t know where the hostel was in Arbat Street, but now I knew where the street was, and I had the street number. I dived down the escalator to Ploschad Revolyutsii and emerged back at Arbatskaya.
I walked down Arbat Street looking for No. 49 and soon found it. I walked around the back, got lost, found my way to the right place (with a little help from passers-by) and buzzed. No answer. I waited, and someone opened the door. But he wasn’t answering my ring — he was a hosteller on his way out. We instantly recognised each other as fellow backpackers and he grasped my need. He sent me on upstairs to wait.
Sitting in the hostel’s common room, I idly flicked through the “Moscow” files on my Pocket PC and found a downloaded copy of the original hostel booking web page. The instructions were perfectly clear, and it even had a small aerial view showing exactly where the hostel was. I was obviously not at my brilliant best that day. It was the snow banks in Harbin all over again.
“What’s this cold grey foamy stuff that’s lying around everywhere?”
“It’s snow.”
The guy who had let me in was Angus, an extroverted red-headed Irishman. A group of us were sitting around in the common room that evening when he claimed to know where there was an Irish pub in Arbat Street. The general consensus was “rubbish”, but he gathered up two girls, Jasmin and Frances, and the four of us headed out to find his pub. We soon found the place and it did indeed proclaim that it was an Irish Pub — but of course, it wasn’t, it was a night club with a high cover charge and expensive beer. No Guinness. We went in, but a night on the town at these prices was out of the question. We glumly sank our beers and, after scouting around in vain for some place cheaper, slunk back to the hostel. Moscow can be wondrous by night, but to make the most of it you need deep pockets or a local contact willing to show you where the ordinary people go. We had neither.
Next morning a businesslike hostel manager bustled in and extracted ₽500 from me to pay for the registration of my visa. This happened to be about the same as the cost of one night’s stay at “Home From Home”, so since I was staying four nights it increased the cost of my Moscow accommodation by 25% at a stroke. This charge was levied every time my visa was registered in a new town, although when I stayed at a hotel it was invisibly folded into the “foreigner” room rate. I didn’t blame the hostels and hotels for this. They had little choice about it — the charge was a mandatory government fee that was levied on them. Even if they didn’t get the money from me, they would still have to pay the government for each visa they presented for registration. If they were caught failing to register visitor’s visas they could be closed down and prosecuted. And they almost certainly would be caught — part of the fees collected went to pay for a large network of plainclothes spies and informers whose duties included but extended far beyond monitoring visa registration. Yes indeed, part of the reason they charge so much for registration is to cover the cost of making people register. The alternative, that if they didn’t make people register the costs would go away entirely, gains no traction. After all, as just noted, the spies and informers are useful for other things, and getting foreigners to pay for them is icing on the cake.
I went down into Arbat Street and headed east. I ran into Angus at Nikitsky and was able to repay his kindness by pointing out to him that “Home From Home” was a pleasant 20 minutes’ walk from the Kremlin, less if you hurried. He had been paying Metro fares each day to get there and back, and due to the change at Arbatskaya the subway took about 20 minutes to get him from Smolenskaya to Ploschad Revolyutsii. It hadn’t occurred to him that it was such a short distance. I felt better after that — I wasn’t the only one capable of doing silly things!
Arbat Street was the heart of the old Bohemian Arbat (“Labour”) quarter of Moscow, similar to Pimlico in London. Like Pimlico, its raffish glory days were long past, and the tourists had moved in. All the artists in Arbat were now street buskers that would draw a portrait or a caricature of you, for a fee. The musicians were all buskers. The funky little stores had been replaced by kerbside stalls selling tacky t-shirts and fake Red Army uniforms, and by upmarket chain stores (Esprit) and shopping malls. The tiny café bars and smoky blues bars had been replaced by upmarket versions geared toward the rich tourist rather than the poor intellectual. It even had a page of its own in the Lonely Planet guidebook. The 1960s poet Bulat Okudjava (there was a statue of him in Arbat Street) must be turning in his grave.
St Basil’s is probably the iconic Russian sight. The walls of the Kremlin are not very interesting to look at, and the Soviets were leery of cameras peering in, so in Soviet times many news references to “the Kremlin” were illustrated by photos of St Basil’s. I can still remember my shock when I first learned that the flamboyant building with the turnip domes was not the fortress of the Tsar. Russia had always won points with me for having such an over-the-top capitol.
This was the high point of my visit so far, and my fourth “must see” in Russia (the earlier three were Vladivostok, the Trans-Siberian and the Kremlin). I wandered around the building in a happy daze, admiring it from every angle. I was amused to come across a dry fountain liberally sprinkled with coins.
To buy my ticket to St Petersburg I used a method described in the Trans-Siberian Handbook. I had already researched the available trains on the web. I wrote the essential details down in Cyrillic on a piece of paper and handed this, the money and my Passport through the ticket window. She took them, read the paper, checked the requested service and found it satisfactory, counted the money, and issued the ticket. This became my standard method of buying tickets in Russia and Ukraine.
At the entrance to Gorky Park, probably in imitation of the Painted Stoa that once stood in the Agora at Athens, was a huge porch with reproduction artwork by old European masters on the back wall, dating from 1955 — the period after Stalin’s death but before Khrushchev took full control.
The park was dotted with sculptures, and featured fun-fair rides and facilities such as a go-kart circuit and children’s playgrounds. Some of the sculpture, such as a gymnast on a beam and a ballerina, was very good. A lot of it, alas, obviously inspired by the old Soviet school, was rubbish.
At the north of Gorky Park, technically in Iskussty Park was the Sculpture Park, graveyard of Soviet monuments.
In the Sculpture Park I got to meet the old crew — Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev. They shared their space with images of heroic Workers and with newer sculptures, mostly awful. I was interested in one group of bronzes that seemed to be nude renditions of the same slender, small-busted woman, life-like right down to her knife-edged hip bones and the beginning ripples of cellulite below her buttocks. One group of Workers featured a tall Russian bloke stretching out his hand to you, flanked by shorter African and Chinese workers. It was just plain racist. There was also a shed containing stacked stone heads held in place by rusty steel rods, shades of the Killing Field ins Cambodia.
Over by the river north of Iskussty towered a huge structure — a sailing ship bearing a huge male figure. This was supposed to represent Peter the Great, but the artist was suspected of recycling a rejected image of Christopher Columbus. Either way, it was incredibly ugly and obtrusive.
Back at Red Square, the queue for Lenin’s Tomb was short. The preserved body of the great man lay behind glass in a huge stone room, surrounded by unsmiling guards. There was no talking, and the guards ensured that you didn’t stop. The line shuffled up, past the display, and out. Lenin looked like a waxwork dummy. There was nothing about him to suggest that this had ever been a living man.
I went into the GUM and wandered around. I bought some expensive underwear. Came out, looked at the fountains again. Just drifting.
I sat down and hauled my soul out to have a look at it. I had started this journey with the intention of changing myself. Three weeks in, nothing had happened. It had been fun, but I was still carving the same groove. No revelations, no insights. I had hoped being cooped up for a week on the Trans-Siberian would kick-start something, but that had turned out to be so much fun that the week flew by with hardly an introspective moment.
Was the trip going to be a bust? Was it too late to break the mould?
I gave up. Introspection is hard work. But something had changed within me. Empty sightseeing had lost its savour. I had lost my taste for spectacle. I wanted to see things that meant something to me. Lenin — had once meant something to others. The Soviet rubble in Sculpture Park — had once meant something. Museums — meant nothing. The seeds of change had been sown.
Saint PetersburgI stumbled out into the cold pre-dawn air. Fortunately, it wasn’t far to the Metro. I took an escalator down to the Ploschad Vosstaniya subway station, bought a jeton, and took Line 1 to the Technology Institute (Teknologichesky Institut). There I changed to Line 2 and rode it to Park Pobody, about 7 kilometres south of the city centre.
I was booked into the “All Seasons” hostel, chosen because it was out of the city centre near a park, and because it was the cheapest bed on offer. This penny pinching was a mistake.
I came up out of the subway after dawn, but the morning was overcast, and everything was still dim and grey. The subway was on the edge of the park, about half a kilometre south of the hostel. I walked north through the park because I could see well enough to feel safe, and it looked more interesting than the street, Moskovskiy Prospekt, which ran beside the park.
There had been little revisionism here. The park was still well supplied with Soviet-era statuary. At the north edge of the park I made my way between the hulking five-storey apartment blocks until I found one that had the “Hostelling International” symbol on one end. Apart from the sign there was nothing to differentiate it from the buildings around it.
I found my way in through a rotting double door and stomped up a rubbish-strewn staircase to the 4th Floor. Someone had shat in the stairwell, and the walls bore evidence of use as a urinal. I rang the bell at a steel-faced door. There was no response, but after a few minutes the door opened, and some men came out. They weren’t answering the bell, they were coming out to have a smoke; but I pushed inside anyway.
The reception area was grim and utilitarian. There were some seats and a small office window. I went up to the window. There was no bell, but I knocked. Nobody responded. The office seemed to be empty. Whatever. I dropped my pack and set out to kill time by reading the notices on the walls.
“Declaration of Quality” said one:
“It is our policy to serve customers the best we can and aim for the highest possible customer satisfaction … Every member of the team / employee of the organisation is involved and knows the objectives …”
The hostel dormitories were laid out either side of a long passage that ran down the centre of the building. A girl came out of the passageway and rapped loudly on the desk of the office window. She called out something. After a few seconds there was a stir behind a large partition that almost cut the office in half and a stone-faced, troll-like woman appeared. The girl asked for something, paid for it, and headed outside for a cigarette. The troll, ignoring me, went back behind her partition.
I went up to the window, rapped loudly on the desk and called out “Hello!”
The troll emerged again and shuffled up to the window. I identified myself and explained that I had a reservation and would like to book in.
“You are too early.”
“You can’t book me in now?”
“You must come back at noon.”
I had half expected that. Most hostels will cheerfully book you in early if there is room and you have a booking, but perhaps “All Seasons” had been full last night and had to wait for people to check out to see what was available. “What about my pack?”
“The porter will take care of it for you.”
“Where is the porter?”
“His office is there.” She pointed to her left, past the hostel entrance.
I went in the indicated direction and found a singleted man in a room off a corridor. He did not admit to any English, but when I held up my pack, he picked up a set of keys and led the way to a storage room.
When I got back to the hostel later, the troll grudgingly booked me in for two nights instead of four. I have rarely been happier to shorten my planned stay anywhere! I didn’t like the feel of the hostel. The rooms were OK, but it was full of strange types — creepy strange, not just odd — and shrieking kids. It was obvious that the place was being used as long-term accommodation by poor people who were not travellers. One of my roommates, who appeared to have been staying for some time, obviously felt put out by the arrival of a stranger — and a foreigner at that — in “his” room. But he forgave me somewhat when I let him turn the light off early.
The next day was cold and wet, with sleet driving along Nevsky Prospekt. I took shelter in a café and drank two cappuccinos and ate a quiche to warm up while waiting for the weather to abate. When the chance came, I practically sprinted the remaining distance to the Hermitage.
Although I had decided I was “over” museums, the Hermitage, like the Louvre in Paris, is one of those icons that can’t easily be skipped. I still had enough of the tourist in me so that I couldn’t resist its lure.
It was superb. I spent well over six hours there. I admired the Roman statues, the images of royalty, the furniture and the fine paintings by great European artists. The building itself was grand. I released my inner tourist and let him run rampant.
On the way back, I spent a while leaning on a fence watching a wedding down by the riverside. The couple were well matched in size, and the bride was vivacious. I stayed until the climax, when the happy couple released a pair of white doves. The high spirits of this group were infectious. I went on my way with a lighter heart.
There was a new person on duty when I arrived back at the hostel. When I asked for my room key, she snapped her fingers and said there was mail for me. She handed me some envelopes. In one of them was my replacement credit card. It had arrived the previous Tuesday. The troll had not bothered to mention it!
On the Volgograd train I found that I was sharing my compartment with a young woman named Galya and her beautiful grey Persian cat, Crosseyes. They were on their way to a show in Volgograd. At first, I thought Galya’s friend Olga was coming too; but she was just seeing Galya off. Pity — Olga was a cutie.
Galya bred cats. She gave me her card. Crosseyes was one of her favourites and had won awards at shows. Despite his lambent golden eyes, he was shy. He would only come out of his travelling cage if Galya arranged a corral behind which he could hide.
In this fashion the two nights of the journey flitted by. I quickly settled into the rhythm. A sleeper is a guilt-free rest stop. You rest, you talk, you sleep, and when you wake up, you’re someplace else. Simple! As a veteran of the Trans-Siberian, I was easily able to manage such things as a daily wash in the toilet and the purchase of supplies from the platforms.
StalingradA few minutes after my arrival in Volgograd, I was trudging across an overpass, headed in the wrong direction as usual, when a fat wad of greasy US dollars slapped the pavement beside me. The guy who dropped them kept on walking, apparently oblivious. A guy walking in the opposite direction (the same direction as me) scooped up the valuta almost in the moment it hit the ground, demonstrating a very practised arm motion. We strolled on, elbow to elbow, while he pondered the wad. Then he turned to me and raised his eyebrows. I just laughed and told him, “Don’t even think about it!” I’d read about this scam in my guidebook and online. A minute later a policeman walked by and the whole setup clicked together in my mind’s eye.
The wad-scooper offers to split the wad, but while you’re negotiating, the wad-dropper returns and things go downhill for you from there. In the classical sting some money is missing from the wad and you’re the one on the spot. The scammers then join forces to extract the “missing” cash from you. This is risky for them as you might have some martial arts. But in the Volgograd version I’d guess that while everyone is arguing about the missing dosh, along comes Mr Plod. As a “neutral” umpire, to resolve the impasse he “impounds” both the wad and whatever foreign currency you happen to have on you. He might even issue a “receipt”. Naturally when you turn up at the Police Station or wherever he tells you to go, nobody has ever heard of him — or your money. Or he might “arrest” you and allow himself to be “bribed” to release you. There are lots of ways they could work it, all bad for you. I blessed my good sense in avoiding the trap and walked on jauntily.
After a while I realised that I was headed in the wrong direction and reversed course. This is a common problem for me when travelling. I have a bump of direction that is fairly reliable in southern latitudes, but it plays me false north of the equator.
At my chosen hotel, the “Volgograd”, my last-minute booking request had not gone through but there was a room available, so I took it and paid cash. It was noticeably cheaper than the internet price but still double the price in my guidebook.
I quickly redubbed “Hotel Volgograd” to “Hostile Vulgargrad”. The place suffered from Stalinist notions of customer service, but they had learned the “user pays” concept very well. Every service or facility beyond the room itself seemed to come with a hefty price tag. The notion of volunteering assistance or advice was alien to them. I don’t recall seeing any of the staff smile at a customer.
Unfortunately, the way the online booking system worked meant that I had already paid for my remaining nights. Unlike Western booking systems, which generally only charge you if you don’t show up (and then only for the first night), here my credit card had been slugged several days ago for the complete balance of my intended days in Volgograd. Changing hotels was not really an option as I simply wasn’t up to the hassle of arguing for a refund. Without a refund the place was too expensive to simply walk away and write the money off to experience.
Fortunately, the room was pleasant enough. If you have to make the best of a bad lot, it helps if the best is comfortable.
The hotel was on one corner of Alleya Geroyev (Avenue of Heroes). To the north, across the Avenue, I could see the former GUM, one-time headquarters of the German general Paulus. To the west I could see Ploschad Pavshikh Bortsov (Fallen Warriors Square), the western end of the former Red Square. When the German Sixth Army staff surrendered in 1943, the hotel site was on the southern front line of their pocket. The pocket extended east to the river, north of the railway station, and was very roughly circular. There was another pocket not far to the north west and one around the factories well to the north.
In the Avenue was the Eternal Flame, guarded by a pair of soldiers. The memory of the Battle of Stalingrad has never been allowed to become dim in the city that suffered so grievously during it. Memorials and plaques were everywhere.
I headed east down the Avenue to the Volga. The city centre was built on a flat plateau high above the river. From the edge of the plateau there were panoramic views across the river, which was at least a kilometre wide here. Monumental steps descended to the River Station — people arriving from Moscow by boat would finish their journey there.
I walked down the steps and stood there looking across the river. Volgograd owes its existence to the proximity of the Don River. Before the construction of the canals, goods could easily be transferred overland the short distance between the Don and the Volga Rivers. Volgograd was founded as a fortress on a now-vanished island in that river to secure this portage. Its first name was Tsaritsyn, which had nothing to do with the Tsar and everything to do with the colour of the soil. Later it moved to the high bank and for four centuries this riverbank was Tsaritsyn. Later still Stalin named it after himself, possibly as a balance to Leningrad in the north, possibly because he fought here against the White Army, but I think also because its original name reminded people of the Tsar. After the fall of Stalin, after the Soviets were gone, it was renamed Volgograd. Of the three names, one offers longevity, one offers fame, and the last offers nothing. The Volga washes past many cities. “Volgograd” is an empty gurgle, a sonorous eructation.
I had little interest in Tsaritsyn, which is dead, or Volgograd, which is boring. I was here to see Stalingrad.
I took the street that ran along the lip of the plateau, Sovetskaya Ulitsa, then cut inland to the main drag, Prospekt Lenina. Trams rattled past — not the streetcars of Melbourne but chains of cars, more like a train than a tram.
After a while I saw what I was looking for in the distance: a statuesque woman holding a sword. This was Mother Russia, a 72-metre tall statue built atop Mamaev Kurgan, one of the key Stalingrad battlefields. I had seen this statue from the train as I came into town. It is Volgograd’s most distinctive landmark.
The Soviets practically invented the Big Lie, and this statue of Mother Russia is one of the biggest. I wasn’t here to remember the war, I was here to witness hypocrisy.
People fight in wars for many reasons. But in Soviet Russia, only one reason was really acceptable to the Party, and that was to fight for the sake of the State. But few people would willingly give their lives for the inhuman, brutal Soviet State. A statue of an apparatchik waving Form 235 (d) V Part 6 would find no useful response in the human heart. The Soviets clothed their war in an appeal to home and hearth, and the statue they built afterwards reflects that appeal. Then around that statue they built a memorial that glorified the State. Only a few touches of softness crept in on the edges — such as a mother mourning her son. For the rest it was heroic peasant soldiers rallying around Lenin or striking attitudes of Heroic Resistance.
As I walked up Mamaev Kurgan, an idea was trying to come to me. It was something about the gap between private motivations and public statements. But it was not yet ready. The scaffolding was still too flimsy to support the premise. I set it aside.
I walked into the Pantheon, a circular memorial that holds the Eternal Flame and endless plaques immortalising the soldiers who died in the battle. And the women and children? Many thousands of civilians died in the battle, gun or knife in hand. Enemy combatants … but their side had won, and anyway, they were fighting on behalf of the recognised government of a recognised nation-state, so they wouldn’t have been enemy combatants. What made me think of that here? It fitted in with my earlier half-formed thought, but I couldn’t see how. Put it aside for later …
A slow, steady set of sharp percussions, like rifle shots, brought me into the main chamber, where a hand held the torch and white-gloved guards stood watch. Whose hand was the model, I wondered.
I walked up the spiral ramp and emerged at the feet of Mother Russia. She loomed like a mountain, lightning rods in her hair. The cold winds of war forced her dress against her, outlining her breasts. If I crawled up inside her — she was hollow — I could fit into her outstretched thumb.
Young! This Mother Russia was young! She should be older, stockier, with care lines in her face. This was a Valkyrie, not a Mother. Her very name was a lie.
A pretty teenaged Russian girl stood near me, pointing out something across the river to her companions. Her sandy hair blew in the breeze, her perfect complexion was set off by cheeks flushed with excitement. She wore a jacket, a cardigan and a t-shirt. The t-shirt was emblazoned with the number “90” — a sports reference of some sort. A small American flag connected the two numerals. But she wasn’t American and had probably never been there. She was true, but her clothes lied.
On the way down the hill, I noticed that the buds on some trees had opened. Had I found Spring?
Next morning, I dutifully packed up my things, lugged them down to the lobby, checked out, checked in again under my original booking, and then lugged my stuff right back up to the very room I’d left just ten minutes earlier. I don’t know what purpose was served by this ritual, but customer service wasn’t in the running. I had checked earlier and been explicitly told I needed to vacate my room; it wasn’t enough just to check out and check back in on paper. Why not, if they were just going to put me back into the same room?
I decided I would visit one museum, the drum-shaped Museum and Panorama of the Defence of Stalingrad. It was superb. It had little English content but was so well laid out that anyone with a little reading background on the Battle of Stalingrad could make sense of it.
I was especially taken with models of the city during the Battle. With little red lights flickering here and there like fires, they gave a marvellous impression of the embattled city. Here and there I could even identify a building I had seen while walking the modern city, such as the repaired GUM building. Such buildings were rare, however — it was obvious that in most cases it was easier to run a bulldozer through the ruins and build something new.
I was allowed upstairs to see the Panorama that made this museum unique. It was drawn from the viewpoint of the hilltop that Mother Russia now stood on, the diorama laid out the battle for Hill 102, Mamaev Kurgan. The background was a mural, but it was cleverly integrated with models in the foreground. It was sometimes difficult to separate the models from the mural. Apart from the problem of clutter that it shared with all static displays — everything had to happen at once, so every centimetre of it had something going on — it too was superb.
Next day I walked around some of the major locations of the centre of town including Pavlov’s House and the Flour Mill. I also walked through the City Gardens, a park created by the demolition of ruined buildings after the Battle of Stalingrad.
I was taken by one fountain. A boy and a girl danced around the nozzle of the central jet. The composition was light and graceful — you could feel the joy. But although there was water in the basin, the fountain was not running.
My room had BBC World on cable, so I would turn the TV on and listen to the news while reading in bed. That night Russia protested the removal of a Soviet war memorial in Estonia. The topic of the Baltic States had come up from time to time in my conversations with Russians. They always seemed puzzled by the “anti-Russian” stance of the Balts, who were always “causing trouble”. They seemed unable to connect this attitude with the forcible occupation, annexation and colonisation of those states by Russia. Actually, most of them had only a vague notion that such things even happened. Faced with the fact of an indigenous non-Russian population — they were at least aware that Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were not ethnically Russian — they were unable to account for its presence on Russian soil. And they couldn’t understand why these people disliked Russians.
Suddenly the idea I’d been playing with clicked.
The rationale of history can be stated: we are misunderstood, you are misguided, they are evil. Generations of children in the British Empire and the later Commonwealth were brought up with the paternalistic notion that Britain was essentially well-meaning (if a little bumbling) but its good intentions were simply misunderstood by the lucky recipients of that largesse. I was taught this in New Zealand, the farthest-flung spatter of British colonial froth, in the latter half of the 20th century. (I’m not sure if current generations of New Zealanders are still taught it. Probably.)
In 1995 James Loewen produced a book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, in which he observed that for generations, children in the United States had been taught much the same thing. American interventions in Central America, the Caribbean and other places, even if admitted, were done with the best of intentions, for the locals’ own good. In fact, Loewen observed, most of America’s interventions were in its own perceived best interest, or the interest of some American organisation, with the interests of the locals coming a distant second if they were considered at all.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with setting your own interests first. The wrong thing lies in pretending that you’re being altruistic when in fact you’re not.
For generations America has posed as the champion of freedom and democracy in the world. But in fact, “freedom” and “democracy” are narrowly defined to suit American views on such things, and time and time again it has become obvious that the only interests America serves are its own. It has propped up undemocratic and unjust regimes whose help it needed and has toppled freely elected ones whose views it disagreed with. If faced with a contradiction between word and deed, the response often takes the form “well, who d’ya prefer — us or the (name the enemy)”.
This is a gross generalisation, of course. It pretends the United States is monolithic, which it is not. But I was grasping towards a principle. For my purposes America was all the things it contained.
This attitude is not unique to the English-speaking world. On the contrary, it’s universal. West, east; first world, third world: we are misunderstood, you are misguided, they are evil. Soviet Russia had brought it to an apotheosis.
And yet for all the flaws and failings of its individual parts, the grab-bag of nations loosely labelled “the West” has offered the world something it sorely needed and had never had before. Something people instinctively recognised and respected it even while decrying aggressive actions against them.
That was as far as I could take my thought then. It held no revelations, even for me. And it was peripheral to the real point of whatever concept my mind was groping towards.
Dancing on the DonAt Rostov I climbed down from the train and looked around. There was no pixelated finger pointing “this way to the Hotel Rostov”, so I hitched my pack to a more comfortable position and began walking. Naturally, I got lost.
The day was grey and drizzly, occasionally quickening to showers, forcing me to take shelter and lose my orientation. Rostov was sadly short of street signs. But the main culprit was my tendency to walk up beckoning side streets as an alternative to sticking to the main streets. As a result, I was never quite sure of my location — but I enjoyed the walk, at least as much as you can while carrying a heavy pack through an unknown city in the rain.
Eventually I found myself looking at a large building with a big sign on top: ГОСТИНИЦА РОСТОВ. I spelt the letters out in my head. Gostinitsa Rostov. That had to be the place — and so it was.
The price had more than doubled since the last edition of the guidebook, but the staff was friendly and helpful, and the room was homey and functional. After my time at Hostile Vulgargrad, this was a relief.
Next day was May Day, the official first day of Spring, which in Russia is a two-day event, International Labour Day followed by the Spring Festival. Rostov took its celebrations seriously. Ulitsa Bolshaya Sadovaya was closed to most traffic and cheerful crowds replaced the normal cars and trucks. The cafés and restaurants did a roaring trade. I mingled with the throng.
By now I had acquired a decent map of the city and I was picking up the trick of spotting the street signs. I still got lost from time to time, but never for long. From Budyonovsky Prospekt to Park Oksyabrskoy Revolyutsii (October Revolution Park) was almost three kilometres; but I romped up and down the street joyously, soaking up the vibe, until my feet threatened mutiny. Then I went back to the hotel for a siesta before emerging to spend the afternoon exploring south of Sadovar.
Most of the festivities were centred on a plaza at October Revolution Park, where there was a stage with performances, but events spilled down Sadovaya all the way to Gorky Park. There were soccer games, a fun run, fun fair rides, and a parade. When it all got too much, I took a quiet wander among the trees in October revolution Park. Although I was carrying food and drink, I stopped in a little café on the corner of Kerovsky Prospekt opposite the music hall for cappuccino and a little bowl of fruit in jelly, just to enjoy the atmosphere.
The mean streets south of Sadovaya were my favourite free sight in Rostov. The buildings were run-down but mostly not ruinous, and they were still being used by real people to live in and to conduct small business from. There was some renovation creeping out from the market area, but even that was authentic local development with no faux-antique gloss.
In a small park tucked away in the corner of Budenovskaya and Varfolomeeva (Bartholomew?) — Park V. Mayachovkozo — I found a memorial to those killed in wars, purges and relocations between 1917 and 1947. Three million here, six million there, the figures added up. One of the smaller but more chilling figures was the purge of the intelligentsia from 1917-1923: 160,000 academics, professors, students, and the like; a stunning blow at the mind of the nation. Then 2,000,000 people were killed in the “ТЕРРОР НКВД” between 1923 and 1930. From 1933 to 1937 the NKVD claimed another 1,600,000 lives. From 1921 to 1922, 6,000,000 people were starved (“ПЕРВЫЙ ГОЛОД”). From 1930 to 1933, another 7,000,000 starved (“ВТОРОЙ ГОЛОД”). In the Great War, 3,000,000 died. In WWII, nine times as many — 27,000,000. The grand total inscribed on the monument is 67,558,000. There was no English translation, so I had to muddle through with limited resources, but these are numbing figures. The memorial also had maps showing where the victims came from, and diagrams showing how they were treated.
I don’t know whether the figures included the victims of Stalin’s 1932-33 artificial famine in Ukraine. That 7,000,000 figure for 1930-33 seemed a little light. There may have been a separate stele detailing these. This memorial was one of the most confronting sights I encountered in Russia. A reminder of the good old days!
In 1983, the actor Peter Ustinov published a book titled My Russia. It was basically a barefaced apology for the Soviet Union that paid good attention to the external influences on the country — i.e. what others did to it — but skipped lightly over what it did to itself. There was little hint in the book that tens of millions of people were killed in the restructuring of the country. Indeed,
“A new hierarchy was rapidly developing … not based on heredity of any sort, but … purely a matter of merit, and acceptance of the prevalent grey discipline.”
“Merit” is one of those buzzwords that get undeservedly good press. Advancement based on merit is regarded as a Good Thing. But the assessment of merit is not entirely objective. One of the considerations is how well the individual fits an organisation’s opinion of itself. The free thinker is rarely preferred ahead of people who “fit in”. In an aristocracy, coming from a good family is meritorious. In America, associating with the “right” sort of people helps. In the Soviet Union, you got ahead if you toed the Party line — if you weren’t “in” with the Party, you had to be awesome at your job or you got nowhere. This last point is probably what Ustinov had in mind by “acceptance of the prevalent grey discipline”.
Advancement through merit is not the same as advancement through demonstrated ability. On the other hand, Stalin was certainly “able” so perhaps I shouldn’t push that point too far.
Into UkraineI was concerned about what might happen at the Ukraine border. Russians and Ukrainians zipped freely between the two. What if nobody stamped me out of Russia? What if nobody stamped me into Ukraine?
But I needn’t have worried. Just after 8 pm we pulled up at the border. Ukraine entry cards were handed out – a two-part affair similar to the one I had made out when entering Russia. After a half-hour wait we pulled in to Customs. This involved a fair amount of banging around in the luggage compartments under the bus. My locked pack was not opened, so I don’t know how serious they were about the baggage check.
We moved on a few metres. A Russian guard boarded and collected Passports and supporting documents from everyone. Out of my wad of visa registration slips, she took only the one from Rostov. After a while she came back and returned the stamped Passports.
We moved on a few more metres, and back in time by an hour. A Ukrainian guard boarded and collected Passports and supporting documents. After a while the driver appeared and returned the Passports, duly stamped, including the “departure” half of my Ukrainian immigration form.
We moved ahead and Ukrainian Customs had their turn poking around beneath the bus. They were a little more thorough than the Russians, as two burly armed guards also boarded the bus and wandered down the aisle casting suspicious glances at all the cabin baggage. But they didn’t open anything.
All in all, including the half hour initial wait and ignoring the time zone change, it took about two hours to clear the border, mostly spent waiting. The hardest thing about it was holding my bladder. I had neglected to go earlier, and the bus had no toilet. By the time we reached the first rest stop past the border, I was desperate. The toilet was a filthy, stinking squat, but by that time it was also the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Conferencing YaltaThe new hotel complex “Yalta” is situated by the famous Massandra park which is one of the most picturesque spots of the South Coast of the Crimea. The hotel can accommodate 2,616 guests at a time. Every room offers a nice view of the sea coast and the Crimean mountains.
— Intourist map of Yalta, 1986
Simferopol was an optional get-off point, but at 05:08 it simply felt too early. I had no idea whether the trolleys were running yet. I might as well take the scenic route via Sevastopol. By then things would definitely be running.
At Sevastopol I was decanted from the bus without a map, without a bean of local money and without a clue where to find the bus to Yalta. As usual, my first action was to shoulder my pack and march boldly off in the wrong direction. I headed west along the waterfront for ten minutes until it occurred to me that the best place to find a bus was at the bus station. Perhaps I should go back and look around?
On the way back I came across a providential ATM that gave me the Ukrainian ₴ (hryvnia) I needed to buy a bus ticket. I arrived back at the bus station to find a minibus labelled “Yalta” waiting outside the ticket office, engine running. I even had time to admire an enormous railway gun that had been turned into a war memorial. Some higher power was obviously at work here, for after 11 hours on the bus from Rostov-na-donu during which I had been wedged upright in my seat and unable to sleep, I was simply too groggy to have planned things so neatly.
At the Yalta bus station, still without a map and too tired to wander around in search of my hotel, I engaged a taxi. The taxi was a wise choice. The hotel turned out to be on the far side of town – about half an hour’s walk from the bus station, 20 minutes from the town centre. For once chance was working in my favour!
By 9:00 I was booked in at the Hotel Yalta – a huge place. My room, 1538, was on the 15th floor.
At the hotel I made sure I immediately acquired the best maps money could not buy – an ancient Intourist map in English from 1986, and a more recent tourist map in Cyrillic. Both were free.
Hotel Yalta was a 30-year-old Intourist pile, an enormous mountain of concrete dedicated to tourism. It squatted on the green landscape like a toad. But my room had a breathtaking view — and, being in the hotel, I mostly didn’t have to look at it. The room was only costing me US$35 per night, which was peanuts for a large room with balcony, TV, aircon, phone, shower and toilet; and the staff were efficient and helpful.
Maps in hand, I set out on foot for town to see what Yalta had to offer.
Yalta was set in trees, with mountains behind. The mountains still had patches of snow, but down here it was already warm enough for short sleeves by day. The town centre was pretty, well equipped with shops and a somewhat labyrinthine marketplace.
I was amused by one sculpture, 50 metres from the local McDonalds. A bronze mermaid, blowing a kiss. Most of the composition was greenish and dull, but the mermaid’s boobs and lap were bright and well polished, as was her arm just where it provided a convenient handhold.
The local statue of Lenin reflected the laid back vibe. He wasn’t holding out his arm or presenting his palm to you in a “look what I have made for you” manner; he was just standing there admiring the scenery, with a rolled-up scroll clutched in one hand and his jacket lapel in the other, as if he was contemplating removing the heavy garment.
I bought a few groceries and returned to the hotel to rest up from the bus ordeal.
The next day was mostly spent on an excursion to Simferopol to buy a train ticket to Kiev. It was a case of progressive revelation. The travel agency in the hotel told me they handled only air tickets. They gave me directions to the Intourist office in town, but when I got there I found it was closed on the weekend. The bus station did not sell train tickets, and didn’t think I could get them in Sevastopol – but they could sell me a bus ticket to Simferopol where I could buy a ticket at the train station. So that’s what I did.
If I’d been smarter, I would have hired a taxi for a few hours to “see the monuments”, coincidentally stopping in Simferopol to buy my ticket “since we’re here”. It would have cost more than the bus but at least I would’ve been able to chalk the day up to sightseeing. Score another home goal for 20/20 hindsight!
That night there were fireworks over the town. I wasn’t expecting them so I wasn’t down there, but from my hotel room I had a superb “long view” of the display.
I spent my last full day in Yalta walking a dozen kilometres out to the “Swallow’s Nest”, taking in the sights along the way. The walk was exhausting and occasionally confusing, but I had a lot of fun. My maps were very little use, as most of the parks I walked through weren’t on them, or weren’t labelled. The day was a bit overcast and cool, disappointing after the two sunny days I’d already wasted, but that was no bad thing as I always overheat when walking.
Livadia was a splendid site, rather spoilt by a confusing set of restrictive tickets. The Italian Garden, an integral location of the Yalta Conference, was on a separate ticket to the main palace even though several doors from the Palace opened directly into it. If they had offered a “combined ticket”, good for everything, preferably with at least a small discount, I would probably have gone for that. But they didn’t offer such a thing and the two tickets seemed overly expensive, so I settled for the main palace.
It was never clear which rooms were open to the public, as they weren’t marked, were often closed, and could often be distinguished only because they were not quite completely shut. More than once I passed a closed door, only to look around a few metres on and see people coming out. I probably missed several rooms that nobody happened to come out of while I had the door in sight.
In fact I almost missed most of the palace as the attendants were fussing with the windows in that corner, totally blocking access to the (closed) exit door. I only spotted it on the rebound, when it occurred to me that four or five rooms do not make a “palace”, leaving my ticket looking a bit over-priced. I returned to the relevant room just in time to see a group being ushered through by their guide, and attached myself to the rear of the group.
Swallow’s Nest, aka Lastochkino Gnezdo, was a pure tourist trap, as I should have expected after the write-up it got in tourist brochures, all agog to sell you a return boat ride. After the boat trip, for those choosing that route, there were men waiting at the top of the stairs to extract another ₴3 for the privilege of entering an area filled with stalls selling tourist tat. I didn’t enquire about prices at the castle-restaurant itself: there was no need. They would be stratospheric and the food and service mediocre. But there were some good vantage points for photos of the coastline and the castle, and no charge for climbing up to them – just a minor risk of slipping on rocks polished by the boots of generations of sightseers.
The castle visit effectively cost me nothing. Since I was on foot the man at the gate had no idea what to charge me for parking, and let me through free. Since I came from the land side, the “taxi” bandits at the sea gate could not make me pay their toll. Since I did not eat at the restaurant or buy any souvenirs, I paid nothing for that.
The ride back to town cost me ₴3.50 – a bargain. The cute blonde in the well filled jersey who got on clutching her Lonely Planet Ukraine paid ₴4, and since she got out at Livadia, she’d paid at least double what she should have.
I ended the day in a café beside the grey pebble beach below the Hotel Yalta. The beach was typical of those I saw that day. When the guidebook said the beaches weren’t “all that much” they had their tongue firmly embedded in their cheek! After the sandy black, silver and gold crescents of New Zealand and Australia these beaches barely deserved the name.
But when the local tourist pamphlets compared Yalta with the French Riviera it wasn’t entirely inappropriate, as the beaches on the Riviera also run to pebbles and aren’t “all that much”. But behind the Riviera is France, and next door is Italy. In the end there was no real comparison. The Black Sea beaches were doomed to inconsequence because those seeking mediocrity can find it closer to home – or in more convenient places to get to, which is much the same thing.
In lieu of a proper tour of the Crimean battlefields, I elected to see just the area around Balaklava by taxi, on my way to Simferopol to catch my train.
After negotiation with a taxi driver, we agreed to a price for the tour. Of course, the price board inside the taxi (artfully concealed until I got in) suggested that I was rooked, but I consoled myself with the notion that it made him easy-going and eager to communicate and the extra ten bucks wasn’t going to break me.
Unfortunately I had skimped on my pre-trip Crimean War research and although my general knowledge was okay, my notions of where to start my one-man tour bus were deficient. Fortunately I remembered seeing, from the bus, signposts outside Balaklava pointing the way to a “Diorama”, so I decided to go there first and afterwards wing things on the way into Balaklava.
The Diorama turned out to be a complete memorial park, with monuments, museum and military exhibits. I elected not to go into the “Diorama” proper – a museum – which was probably a mistake; but I had a good look around at the rest of what was on offer.
I went back to the taxi and woke the driver, and we headed off towards Balaclava, looking at the memorials and fortifications along the way. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of my English-born ancestors fought in the Crimean War before being paid out in New Zealand. His Regiment, the 57th, was stationed near Balaklava. If I’d known of this family connection I might have made an effort to find the spot. Then again, I still wasn’t particularly interested in my ancestry at this time. I’m glad now that at least I made the effort to see Balaklava.
Modern Balaklava turned out to be a busy little place, quite pretty, overlooked by large fortifications left over from the Crimean War. Some were under repair; presumably with a view to tourism since they were clearly obsolete militarily.
I was in Simferopol by early afternoon. With hours to kill, I went and sat in a park that was popular with backpackers. When I saw all the packs I originally thought that they must be fellow Westerners, but it turned out they were Russians, Ukrainians and the like. They were about the right age to be taking a gap year. The police clearly thought they were no-goodniks. They hassled the backpackers far more often than anyone else.
The police who’d stopped me two days ago when I came here to buy my ticket seemed taken aback by the foreign passport – this fish was too big for them, and they were almost embarrassingly eager to return my Passport once they’d examined the visa.
Unlike Yalta, beggars and peddlers abounded here. I would respond to each new importunity with a torrent of high-velocity ’Strine, calculated to confuse even those that spoke some English.
When I boarded my train I found that I was sharing a compartment with two women and another man, and a mattress that smelled like someone had peed in it. Someone probably had.
I compared tickets with the older woman. She paid ₴126, I paid ₴140. Difference ₴14 – about $3.30. She thought perhaps “pastil” (a separate linen charge, normally collected by the provodnik) was included in my ticket. However, when linen was handed out nobody was obviously asked for pastil, nor apparently paid any, so that theory was dead in the water.
Victory in KievWhen I checked into my hotel in Kiev, I soon realised that I had lucked out — not because Hotel Ukraine was wonderful, for it wasn’t. No, it was because my chilly little room, 518, had a grandstand view of Vulitsa Kreshchatyk and Maydan Nezalezhnosti and tomorrow was 9th May — known locally as Victory Day, when Ukraine celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory in the Great Patriotic War, otherwise known as World War II. The weather report looked dicey, so this could prove useful.
A monument in the Square (30º31’30”E, 50º27’01”N) gave distances to other places. I forgot to note the distance to Melbourne — it would have been on the order of 14,800 kilometres — but Wellington was listed at 17,106 kilometres. I was a long way from home, geographically and culturally.
I found what I hadn’t seen in Rostov — a record of Stalin’s contrived 1932-1933 Ukraine famine. The exact number of people who died was never published but in 1988 an international commission tried to calculate the effect of the famine.
The memorial unfortunately, tried to fudge its claims:
“If you exclude the number of people who were resettled from the Russian Federation and factor in the decreases in the birth rate resulting from the famine-genocide, then Ukraine lost no fewer than ten million people”.
Although I am sympathetic to the trauma suffered by Ukraine, I dislike arguments based on non-existent children. Hunger and poverty generally don’t reduce birth rates. If anything, the birth rate usually increases. The argument about resettlement from Russia was more convincing but the number of immigrants (and their subsequent birth rate) was not provided, making a rational assessment of immigration’s effect on numbers impossible. I therefore reserved judgement on this extended claim.
Even with this reservation, the figures provided were damning. Between 1926 and 1939 the overall population of the USSR increased by 16%, the Russian Federation by 28% (despite the number of Russians allegedly resettled in Ukraine) and Belarus by 11%. Between 1926 and 1939 Ukraine’s population decreased by 9% (3 million). If Ukraine had enjoyed just the same rate of increase as Belarus, which was still well below the average for the Soviet Union, the effective loss was more than 6 million people (almost 20%) before considering any net effects of immigration and emigration.
Breakfast was included in the bill, so I decided I might as well eat it. After the robust buffets at the much cheaper Hotel Yalta, it was disappointing. It was a “set” breakfast, served in the Restaurant — which probably partially explained it. Restaurants are not well suited to the varied requirements of a traveller’s breakfast. The portions were small, and cereal was not part of the menu.
After breakfast I went for a walk in the park overlooking the river. Getting away from the hotel was awkward. Police and plainclothes men lined the streets around the Square. Access to the Square was restricted to authorised people, so my plan to walk through and snoop on the preparations and maybe pick up a programme was nipped in the bud. They had even set up a couple of security scanners. Apart from the black border of the road, empty-handed men in denim or leather jackets loitered elaborately everywhere. They massively outnumbered the real civilians. I was forced to detour around the edges of all this.
In the park I found a water information centre and a bridge festooned with paper and fragments of plastic bags and even a few padlocks. The bridge’s metalwork was covered with graffiti, mostly the generic “Ivan and Tatiana, together forever” sort of thing. A friendly dog attached himself to me for a while, but he wasn’t much for conversation.
Back at the Square, they had turned on the sound system and were playing what I guessed were patriotic tunes. Just after I got back to my room a mouthy, chesty guy broke into the music to declaim pompously. I spoke no Ukrainian and the words were gobbledygook to me, but I needed no translation for this. He was obviously declaiming about Ukraine’s glorious victory in the Great Patriotic War. The speech sounded like it was probably written during the Soviet era and had merely been revised a little to replace “Soviet Union” with “Ukraine”.
Standing looking down at the Square, I discovered why my room was so cold. The window didn’t quite seal along the top and right edges, allowing a breeze in. I wedged my scarf into the gap, after which the room warmed up a bit.
This had to qualify as the most comfortable parade-watch of my life — sitting in a cushiony chair, shoes off and TV on to give me close-ups of the action I was watching through my window. The day was spitting with rain, but for once that was only a detail. I watched the parade march into the square, watched the bigwigs in their grandstands, and admired the way the freezing wind made the flags and banners snap briskly. I stood politely when they played the national anthem.
That afternoon when the Square had returned to normal, I ventured out. Vulitsa Kreshchatyk was closed to wheeled traffic and the locals had turned out in force to enjoy it. The shops were open. I returned from my walk with a nice pair of lightweight fleecy track pants for my summer wardrobe.
That evening I watched the fireworks from my by now snug little aerie.
When I woke up, I thought there must be a howling storm outside, but when I pulled the curtains it was fine — black clouds hanging a little low and the hotel’s flags whipping in the wind, but nothing serious. It was just the wind singing around the obstacle presented by the shape of the hotel.
Today I wanted to knock off two big sights — the Caves Monastery and the Chernobyl Museum. The latter was in the north of the city — I should have gone there the day I arrived. Oh, well, live and learn — or in my case, repeat my mistakes.
The Monastery was a fair walk, but I made it. But first I went further south, where there was big Soviet war memorial park and museum. When a shower came over, I went to one of the kiosks there and tried to buy some munchies and coffee, to sit the rain out under the big umbrellas. It was 9:47 and they informed me that they weren’t open yet. Just then the shower lost its puff. “Your loss”, I told them and walked off, determined that it would be a cold day in Hell before they ever saw a cent from me.
The memorial park was full of Great Patriotic War machinery and was crowned by a huge aluminium statue, “Rodina Mat”, a burly woman holding aloft a sword and a shield. The shield displayed the emblem of the Soviet Union. Many of the memorials didn’t even have huge size to recommend them, but a few of the more humane and less overtly patriotic were smothered in flowers.
I couldn’t identify the Monastery’s tourist entrance at first, so I stopped off in a little coffee-bar rotunda and knocked off an absurdly expensive cappuccino while a shower passed over.
When it was safe, I ventured out and this time found my way into the Monastery. The highlight was the Micro-miniatures Gallery. Photos being forbidden, I was forced to take notes of my favourites:
This was a really first-rate exhibition.
Dedicated to everyone’s favourite nuclear “accident”. Reading the exhibits, the astonishing thing was that this crapulent piece of Soviet mal-engineering had lasted as long as it did. And it was the gift that went on giving, as the sarcophagus built to contain the ruin was itself crumbling. I was tempted to take a tour out to see the wasteland that now surrounds the reactor but doing so would mean staying in Ukraine another day. This I was reluctant to do, even though Kiev was proving so interesting.
That night’s TV was actually an early morning quiz show, totally incomprehensible to me, which I encountered only because I woke up too early and had trouble getting back to sleep. A busty compeer fielded phone calls and romped around the screen while the prize money kept climbing. I had no idea what was going on, but she was pretty and vivacious, and I watched until I dozed off.
“Scrambled eggs, omelette, or meat?”
“Omelette.”
I got scrambled eggs.
No matter: I only said omelette because it was not the first thing on the list. The Hotel Ukraine’s breakfasts were a joke.
I took the Metro to the train station, arriving early. When climbed aboard, I discovered they’d put me in Spalny Vagon, not Kupe. There appeared to be no 2nd Class berths to Budapest.
I didn’t scoop the pool by getting a compartment to myself all the way: a guy clambered aboard at the last minute, headed for some place that sounded like “Minisk”. Minsk? But that was off in another direction entirely. It turned out to be Khmelnytsky, less than half-way to the border, so I had the compartment to myself for most of the trip.
I spent a while figuring out the route — and, with the help of a timetable in the corridor, the border. We would get to Chop about 2:34 am and sit for 129 minutes, presumably for Ukraine customs and immigration and a bogy change. We would then cross the border, winding the clock back an hour, and stop in Zahony at 3:58 am for 47 minutes, presumably for Hungarian customs and immigration. I decided I’d better spend the afternoon snoozing, as the night would obviously be broken up by rude interruptions.
Since the compartment had a power supply, I made copious notes. I’ll let my notes tell you about the next few hours.
What a different set of experiences for the locals and the travellers. For the locals, a tedious necessity, the only economical means of crossing the vast distances within their country. For the travellers, a sensory delight, laid on for their pleasure, to be savoured and remembered.
Rolling through groves of flowering trees with the mild, scented breeze of our passage ruffling my hair, at peace. Stillness within motion. Nothing needs doing — and it is being done. These are the moments I treasure. These are the moments I want to remember, years from now and far from here.
I see broad green fields and a mysterious, hazy horizon over there. The train rounds a bend and rumbles into them.
20:10. Lviv. Men watering the carriages and tapping the wheels and a soldier wandering down the corridor checking papers. Incomprehensible Ukrainian from him. Blank look from me — I must be wearing my stupid head, as it is obvious what he wants.
“Passport.”
I dig it out. Riffle, riffle. He examines my photo, examines my Immigration Card.
“Where are you going?”
“Budapest.”
He hands me back my Passport and moves on.
02:36. Chop. I’m not sure of the procedures here. It’s a long stop, 129 minutes, but I’m not sure what happens apart from, obviously, Ukrainian Customs & Immigration. The stop on the Hungarian side is only 47 minutes — by the timetable posted in the carriage. Bogy change? I guess I’ll find out.
02:44. Passport control — a female guard accompanied by an armed male guard came through and collected Passports, asking questions as she felt necessary — in my case to clarify where I’d been.
03:05. Bogy change.
Customs was a guy asking where from, how I entered Ukraine, how much Euro/USD, any antiquities, open my bag — the first time anyone’s bothered with that on this trip. He wasn’t particularly interested in rooting around in it.
Bogy changing involves a lot of discussion and shouting and shunting to line the cars up with some big tower jacks, then lifting them off the old bogies. There’s one outside my window so I’ve been able to get a good look. The jacks look like mechanical screw types rather than hydraulic. We’re being lifted now.
03:22. We’re being lowered now. I didn’t actually hear the bogies being moved — or didn’t recognise the sound — but the old ones must have been rolled away and new ones moved into position.
03:27. Ah. There’s a big mobile gantry whose function I didn’t understand before. It lifts wheels and axles — not whole bogies — in and out sideways, one by one. I saw the new wheels waiting on a parallel stretch of track earlier but didn’t understand. They must be able to adjust the brakes and other fittings on the bogies to match the new gauge but can’t change the rigid axle lengths.
04:57. I have my Passport back, duly stamped, but we’re still hanging around the Ukrainian side of the border while guards do a last check — opening panels, looking behind curtains — I guess making sure there are no stowaways.
05:02. Moving.
05:29. Stamped into Hungary. The guard had to ask a colleague whether New Zealanders needed a visa. Which reminds me …
04:32. It’s now an hour earlier.
Looking into the corridor, I can see a crescent moon in the window. Waning, according to CityTime.
05:08. Customs.
“Cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Alcohol?”
“No.”
05:35. And finally I got my toilet break!
I got more than that. After seven weeks in Mordor, I was back in the West. A load I didn’t even know was there had just been lifted from my spirit. I was reminded of the story about the guy who kept hitting himself on the head with a hammer. Asked why, he replied, because it felt so good when he stopped. Suddenly I just felt good all over. I looked down: I had a raging erection, the first since China. All revved up and no place to go.
The Pest in BudapestThe signs outside were all in the Latin alphabet. It was a wonderful thing to be able to read a sign without having to puzzle out the letters one by one. They were mostly in Magyar, of course, so I still couldn’t understand them all, but at least I now knew instantly what they said.
I used the change booth in the station. I gave them €150 and got back about €120 in Forint. Their Australian Dollar to Forint rate had looked okay, but their Euro to Forint rate was much lower. I didn’t even realise how badly I’d been burned until I balanced things up later. Then I swore. Stupid, stupid, stupid! A day’s budget down the gurgler because I was a little too eager to get my hands on local money. If I’d just walked out of the station, I would’ve found a much better rate immediately.
I came back later and checked their rate board. Their rates were OK — bank rate less about 1.5%, pretty much the standard for booths around the city — except for Euros and US dollars. Their rate for Euros was the worst, Ft196 to the Euro, whereas at change booths elsewhere in Budapest the going rate was Ft240 to the Euro, or Ft230 for very small trades.
It was a plain and simple rip-off, aimed at tired tourists arriving in Budapest without local currency. The only excuses I could find for getting suckered was that I was muzzy from broken sleep and feeling relaxed and happy about being out of Russia and Ukraine. This is the great danger about relaxing when travelling. You’re safest when you’re alert and paranoid. It’s when you’re feeling relaxed and safe that you’re most at risk.
So far, my losses on this trip had been insignificant — leaving something small behind or being a little short-changed or overcharged. Occasionally I’d been at risk of a bigger loss — leaving my day pack behind in a coffee bar in Kiev or leaving my money belt hanging on the back of the toilet door in the Trans-Siberian after a wash — but so far good luck and the basic honesty of most people had saved such incidents from turning into stunning losses.
Luck is unreliable. I resolved to mend my casual ways. (This resolution lasted about as long as you’d expect it to.)
On the bright side, I now had an epithet that I could utter whenever I realised that I was being ripped off. “Oh, what a Pest,” I could say out loud, mildly and with a smile, even as I tried to figure out some means of retribution.
Anger over being bilked overshadowed my time in Budapest. I became mean and penny-pinching, clawing back my loss Forint by reluctant Forint, skipping museums and the hot baths and avoiding the outdoor coffee joints. I came in under budget for the country, actually spending less in Budapest than I would have if the exchange booth had offered a fair rate. The exchange booth’s excessive profit was paid back piece by bloody piece from the losses of the people who ran the museums and other facilities I avoided.
That day I walked over to Buda, climbing both hills, although tiredness and sore feet turned me back from a more northerly exploration.
Mysterious statues were everywhere. One bronze nude wore a simper and had her hand out, palm up. It looked like every bird in Pest had relieved itself upon her. A robed woman with one breast bared held a couple of fish. A nude boy stood thoughtfully in a fountain, the polished tip of his dainty penis shining in the sun.
Crossing the Danube was a buzz. When planning the trip, I had originally planned to cross it in Romania. No matter, here it was. I stood on the bridges and watched the water go by. I was tempted to play Pooh-sticks, dropping twigs on the upriver side and dashing across to see how long it took them to emerge downriver, but a close encounter with a truck changed my mind.
I already knew the Danube wasn’t really blue. In fact, like large rivers everywhere it was brown with suspended mud. But looking down on it as I climbed Citadel Hill, it was blue beneath the sky.
At a corner in the path, some men were playing a game involving three cards, dealt face down. Money was changing hands rapidly. I looked around for the sucker and couldn’t see him, so I quickly moved on.
Up in the Palace, people were getting married everywhere. It seemed to be the season. Every time I found a nice spot to rest and make notes while enjoying the sun and the views, along came another wedding group. I decided enough was enough and — moved on. I seemed to be doing a lot of moving on today.
For the first time on this trip, I was also encountering an appreciable number of tourists. They were readily recognisable — marching along with their heads buried in their guide books and maps, oblivious to the ancient masonry that towered overhead and the dog poo beneath their feet, intent on getting to the next must-see sight. I, of course, was no longer a tourist. I had graduated. I was a traveller. After taking a moment to shake dog poo from my shoe, I moved on.
I used my second day in Budapest to do some laundry and, the weather still being sunny and warm, to visit the City Park. This was a big green space in the east of the city. By walking there and back I combined exercise with an opportunity to see the city.
The park bulged at the seams. Half of Hungary seemed to have turned out. I sat in several places and people-watched. I finally found a peaceful spot to eat my picnic lunch, only to discover that although the spot was peaceful, the residents — small aggressive ants with a bite — were not. They finally drove me away. Yep, there are ants at every picnic!
Back near the point where I entered the park, a faux-American Indian band was playing near the weir. They were dressed as plains tribesmen, with lots of “heya-heya” chanting but also with an Andean flute effect that the plains Indians would likely never have heard, let alone used.
Compared to this place, Melbourne’s parks were silent and deserted.
On my way home, I wandered across a huge square with monuments, to the baths. I was amused by a fountain with a centaur holding a sprite aloft with one hand and a triton with the other. The sprite was peeing on him and the triton was spewing water. For some reason the centaur had a thick patch of pubic hair between his forelegs.
I broke my no-café resolution at Café Kara near the park, where the waitress was strikingly pretty, ash-blonde and friendly.
That evening I made a little progress in befriending the white cat next door but made no breakthroughs. It was very skittish with strangers. Given another day I could probably break through its reserve; but I didn’t have another day here.
Zagreb was merely a change of trains. I bought my onward ticket, then walked up one side of a huge avenue, past hordes of tourists and locals drinking coffee and enjoying the sunny day. I pulled a wad of Kuna out of a convenient ATM and enjoyed a cappuccino before walking back to the station and boarding my train.
Zagreb looked like a nice place — I must visit it someday.
The new train looked pretty flash, but the seats didn’t recline and had no footrests. Nevertheless, I went into a trance until the steward came offering coffee. I had already seen coffee listed on the service card — at kn8 for a small cup. Dazed, I hesitated too long over refusing it, and ended up with a plastic cup of hot water, a plastic stirrer, and a stick of “Nescafé 3 in 1 Classic” on my tray table.
The coffee broke the spell. My muscles stiffened and my head began to ache. It was impossible to find a comfortable position. My throat was raw and my eyes watered. To distract myself, I watched the scenery.
As we rumbled along a river bank, I saw a couple of canoes floating placidly beneath trees on the grassy far bank. Oh, to be there, I thought to myself as I adjusted my sore bum and stretched my aching legs.
The train rocketed up into green hills. Half of the buildings by the track were bullet-pocked, the rest had been blown apart. It was obvious that the war had been here. Signs of new construction were everywhere. The views were splendid, vast sweeps of hillside curving away to meet the next crest. Sniper heaven.
As the sun descended, I too came down, from the green mountains to the blue sea. On the shores of the Adriatic, I found Summer waiting for me.
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero,
Pulsanda tellus. *
— Horace, Odes
* Now is for drinking, now feet are freed, beating the ground.
Time to SplitAll my plans about accommodation in Split revolved around a Therouxesque fantasy: I would descend from my train, bus or boat and a little old lady would be there waving a “Room to Let” sign in my face. Of course, I knew it wouldn’t really be like that. But I figured I’d find something.
I descended from the train and even before my feet reached the ground, a little old lady practically shoved a “Room to Let” sign up my nose. Actually, the sign was in several languages — “Soba”, “Camera”. But she was a genuine little old lady, frail and bird-like and perhaps five feet tall.
She spoke no English except a few rote words, but her husband was there, and he spoke more. They wanted kn150 for the room, which was by the north-west tower. My guide book said kn100 was standard, but I decided inflation and Croatia’s reviving tourist industry might have inflated that, and I wanted the room to myself. Still, I countered with “100” and they came down to 130. I was aching in every bone and had been travelling for more than 12 hours, so I accepted the price and followed the little old lady.
She set a cracking pace at first. Burdened with my baggage I was pressed to keep up. But soon her burst of energy faded, and the rest of the walk was a succession of rest stops for her while I admired the walls of the Palace. From personal experience I recognised her symptoms as angina and didn’t hurry her.
The place was a third storey apartment in an old building, cobbled together by knocking down the walls between separate residences. It was a labyrinth of rooms with worn-out locks — my windowless double room would lock but, once locked, wouldn’t unlock with my key, only with her key. So I didn’t lock it.
My room was also something of a thoroughfare, as it had a door that opened on the landing outside and some of the other guests had keys to that door instead of the apartment’s main door. It was also the access point for another room — with a window and double bed.
Rather than stifle I had to use the sole power point to run the standard fan that was one of several electrical gadgets scattered around the room. With only one power point, putting so many gadgets in the room — including no less than two lamps — was a little pointless, though perhaps some people liked having a choice. Maybe they travelled with power boards.
Split was founded inside the mammoth ruins of the palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian. The town ultimately overflowed the palace whose walls had protected it, and modern Split was large and unlovely except for the portion still nestled within Diocletian’s walls.
I walked down the eastern walls to the docks past a line of tourist stalls. It was a Babel of sales pitches in whatever language each vendor thought I might understand. I was uninterested in their tourist tat, but I did buy a small bottle of chocolate milk and a large bottle of water.
I sat by the water’s edge in the dusk and looked out at the Adriatic and watched the ferries, while I sucked on my milk.
In 2004, I threw a coin in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Three years ago, now. It had taken six weeks overland instead of a day by air, but here I was at last. Italy waited just over that horizon, and in a few days, I would be back in Rome.
Somehow the thought did not cheer me. My body ached and my head ached and my mind ached and nothing seemed worthwhile. I was 16,000 kilometres from home — but “home” was merely a storage locker in Melbourne, crammed with the debris of nearly fifty years of existing. I had arrived here by my own design, but it felt like an accident. No navigator I. More than ever I felt like flotsam spinning on a turbulent sea, sometimes exhilarated by the dizzy speed of my passage, alternately nauseated by the centripetal force of my rotation.
Couples walked past. Short, tall, fat, thin, handsome and ugly: two by two. I sat alone and watched them resentfully. Not for the first time, I longed for a companion. Someone to share the miseries and triumphs of the journey. Someone who would admire me when I was clever and console me when I was not. I’d always been a loner — but now I wanted a companion, so why was I still alone? What was my flaw? Was it the lack of magic?
My milk was finished. I threw the empty bottle in a bin and went back to toss and turn in my stifling, windowless room.
I had lunch in a park at the north end of the Palace. My sandwiches were made from dry bread probably intended for breadcrumbs for baking — a minor error when buying the makings. Still, the bread was dried, not stale so my sandwiches were actually crisp and crumbly as opposed to limp and crumby.
By the walls the statue of Gregorius of Nin stood arrogantly in mid-sermon, finger raised as he made his point. He looked like Merlin the Magician about to turn someone into a toad.
I came down to the Adriatic to find Summer, and I had found it — with a vengeance! On the Black Sea the days were warm, but the nights were still cold. Here the nights were mild, with t-shirts and thin tops standard in the town last night. The average age in the Palace area was half mine, although there was also a big population of blue-rinsers. But most of the latter had that indefinable tour-bus look.
The street running down from my room to the Palace seemed especially young — late teens.
I spent a disturbed night. Twice people came in through the external door of my room, on their way to destinations deeper in the Labyrinth. The fan rocked and rattled, puffing gusts of warm stagnant air over me. I woke with bleary eyes, runny nose and sore throat. At least some of my dis-ease was now explained: some person in Budapest had given me their used cold. I could only hope it would not last.
I spent the morning trotting through Diocletian’s Palace, playing the dutiful tourist. I discovered the basement and spent a happy hour as a troglodyte, hunting curios from room to room and enjoying the cooler underground air. The people running the place didn’t seem quite sure what to do with it. They had turned one section into a gallery for modern art, hanging banal images on walls that had stood bare for 1700 years.
I returned to the upper world and to the Palace by way of its grand entrance hall, through souvenir stands run by pretty girls.
At a coffee bar I asked for black coffee and got espresso. Took it up with the waiter and met a blank wall — they made espresso, they made coffee with milk. The notion of the “long black”, an ordinary-sized cup of black coffee, was alien to them. I guess I could have ordered a “Nescaffe” without milk but those were double the price and the name suggested the primary ingredient.
Inspiration came and I added water from my bottle to the coffee, doubling the volume — voilà! Black coffee. It was a little weak, a little small, a little cool, but for the price of an espresso.
After finishing my DIY long black, I ambled over to a bookshop that advertised “free internet” for customers. They had a good English-language selection — second-hand, of course. I dredged through and came up with a couple of books, one of which was Dreamsnake by Lucy Sussex, published 1994. Since I knew Lucy years ago in Melbourne, it was like meeting up with an old friend.
When I returned “home” I found I’d changed rooms. Instead of a room with a double bed, no windows and one power point, I was now in a room with two single beds, a window, and a double power point. The room had been occupied by another guy last night, one of the people who’d come in late using the alternate entry to the apartment through my former room. The lock riddle was also solved. My room key, which would lock but not unlock the other room, locked and unlocked this room nicely!
My new room came with advantages and disadvantages. I soon found one of the disadvantages when a series of monstrous articulated buses thundered past, their engines shaking the walls. An advantage was that I could sit in the window, resting my cold and having a siesta while watching Split walk by.
I soon realised why the population in the vicinity of this place was even younger than the average around the Palace — the building across the road was a “Student Centre”. I watched the ebb and flow of the students. I could see in some of the windows, where people lectured to groups, or friends met to chew the fat.
Checking out of the soba was as simple as handing the keys back. Since I didn’t get a receipt from the little old lady for the money I’d given her, I had been a little concerned about being stood over for more, but they were honest.
Later I sat alone on the aft platform of deck 6, watching the lights of the Croatian shore fade. A chapter of my journey was closing, and what had I learned? Here I sat in grand isolation while a few metres away through the bar door people were sitting in circles and chattering. Okay, they brought their groups aboard with them, for they were from tour buses or were travelling in couples and families. Still, the old pattern was acting out. I could go in, buy a drink, and sit on the edge of a group until someone gave me an entry line. I could.
The social high point of my journey so far had been that brief night out in Moscow, and it took an extroverted Irishman and two pretty Swiss girls to get me into that.
Partly it was the single room cycle. It’s so easy to retreat into solitary ways when you have a room to yourself. The few hostels I’d stayed at had been good for what ailed me but had been interspersed with too many solitary nights. Well, I was into the hostelling leg of the trip now: make or break. The East was behind me; the West must be better.
Despite my introspection, I was happier than I had been in Melbourne, as I’d noticed in the mirror while having my haircut. The care lines had left my face and my natural smile was back. I looked like the me of 30 years earlier — minus some hair and with grey in my beard, but the same boy. Hopefully I was a little wiser, although my recent activities suggested otherwise. This was my grand adventure, long dreamed, now being realised, though not the way I ever imagined it. This was no miserly month’s holiday snatched between aeons of mundane work, this was a true wanderjahr, my first in decades. I was a lightning rod, open to the storms of the world. Anything could happen.
00:15. Croatia has gone down into the sea. A new day has ticked over. Greetings, Italy — what do you have for me?
00:56. Lightning flashes off the port beam and towards the bow. About every minute or so. Let’s hope it’s nothing more — Italy is over there!
The wake streams away like an intricate tattered shawl cast upon the ebony waves. Lines of buoys gleam out in the night. Ever and anon there is a moment of deep light on the horizon, pink and brown and bronze highlights on the clouds around it. The storm is beyond the horizon, 10 or 15 kilometres away at least. At present.
01:17. There is another ship out there, too, now directly between us and the storm. A moment ago, twin flashes bracketed it in a nest of bronze fire. But the storm is far beyond that ship, too. And now the flashes are directly abeam, even a little aft, so we are passing by the storm and not sailing into it. But what a lovely display for a moonless night.
05:11. Getting near dawn. Italian lights — cities and flashing beacons — to port.
05:32. Hoped for a good sunrise but there’s an opaque cloud band squatting on the eastern horizon, probably rain clouds.
Eternal RomeThe Ancona taxis had a nice little scam going. They flatly refused to turn on the meter, claiming that there was a fixed €12 rate for the five-minute journey from the ferry to the train station 1.5 km away. There was no card, just a figure jotted on the back of a receipt book. The time frame for catching the train to Rome was so tight that even if a tourist recognised the scam, he was probably not going to argue it out. What a Pest!
I wouldn’t have been stuck if I didn’t have to get to Rome today due to my hostel booking. I could have walked, nosing out the location of the train station, and taken the first available train elsewhere. Getting to the Ancona train station cost me almost as much as the fare from Ancona to Rome.
At Rome I made my way through the familiar streets around Termini to my hostel. It was a set of rooms with basic toilets and showers, run by a coffee shop two streets over and several blocks down. My first night, the room was filled with strange American boys. They acted doped and probably were. Far out, man. The next three nights I shared with four girls travelling together — three American and one English/French. They were fun, though demure. I would almost have preferred the woman they told me about whom they ran into at another hostel — the one who insisted on doing things totally nude in a mixed dorm. Yeah, baby! On my last night two American girls, a Finnish guy, and an Australian guy replaced them.
I was feeling seedy, so I crawled into bed. Then I crawled out again. I was on my last change of clothes. My first day back in the eternal city was spent getting my eternal laundry done.
Sunday was earmarked for a stroll along the Via Appia Antica. The reason for doing the walk on Sunday was that cars were banned from Via Appia Antica on that day, except for local traffic by its residents. On other days of the week the sections nearest Rome were a dangerous, smog-ridden traffic jam.
I have made this excursion on every visit to Rome. The first two times I walked out from Rome until I got tired, once to the 3rd Milestone and then to near the 5th Milestone. This time I wanted to do the complete course to the 11th Mile, including the Aqueduct Park. Repeating my previous walks would leave me 15 kilometres out of Rome, with the tedium of getting back by public transport, so I decided to start at the outer end. I would then have Rome pulling me towards it all the way, with every incentive to complete the walk all the way to the Circus Maximus, where there was a subway station. And that is what I did.
Finding the starting point was easier said than done. In the end I found it, marked by a sign and a section of polygonal Roman paving. The walk began in the 11th Mile, as the 11th Milestone lay beyond it. Within minutes of starting I had reached a tomb at a spot called “Frattocchie”, which may once have marked the location of a town named Bovillae. The tomb was a crumbling mass of Imperial-era Roman masonry topped by a small tower that was added in the 1800s for making trigonometric measurements of the Appian Way. This was the most distant landmark mentioned in the handout from the Parco Regionale dell’Appia Antica that I was using as a guidebook.
This first section looked much as it must have been in Roman times, bordered by trees and villas and grave monuments. The biggest thrill here was walking over a crest to discover Rome straddling the hills in the distance, just as travellers would have seen it two thousand years ago. Yes, I thought, giving myself a mental high-five, this is just how it must have been!
The route of the Appian Way had not been entirely excavated. In places, grass grew across the road. Cross-streets intervened and here and there I was forced to make to make minor detours, never more than a few metres. But always the Roman paving would eventually reappear, often with ancient wheel ruts. The obstacles, if anything, were a positive force because they discouraged people from driving down it in cars.
After the Frattocchie the next instantly recognisable ruin was Gallieno’s Tomb. In the 9th Mile, this was built in 268 ad to bury the Emperor Gallieno. There was a guy sunbathing here. Despite his pallor I doubted he was Gallieno’s ghost.
Next was the Priest’s Cap, dating to around 500 ad. Tiny as it was, in the Middle Ages someone made it into a church, dedicated to Mary. Immediately after that I reached an Aedicule Tomb traditionally but apparently erroneously attributed to one Quintus Veranius, Consul in 49 ad. In fact, it dated from the 2nd Century ad.
Some of the ruins had the look of rest stops. In the mood of the moment I took a refreshment stop of my own opposite the Temple of Hercules, which was probably not the temple built by Domitian, but a late-Republican colonnaded courtyard surrounded by shops. At the 8th Milestone, it was an easy morning’s walk from the walls.
After the Quintili Aqueduct, a small spur of the Anio Novus that was built to supply Villa dei Quintili, the next notable find was a marble slab that once adorned a tumulus. It read:
hospes.resiste.et.hoc.ad.grvmvm.ad.laevam.aspice.vbei
continentvr.ossa.hominvs.boni.misericordis.amatis
pavperis.rogo.te.viator.monvmento.hvic.nil.male.feceris
c.ateilius.serrani.l.evhodvs.margaritarivs.de.sacra
via.in.hoc.monvmento.conditvs.est.viator.vale
ex.testamento.in.hoc.monvmento.neminem.inferri.neqve
condi.licet.nisi.eos.lib.qvibvs.hoc.testamento.dedi.tribviqve
Freely translated, this was a late Republican epigraph inviting the traveller to pause to see on the left and not damage the mound containing the bones of a good, compassionate, loving and poor man, Euhodus, a freedman by C. Atilius Serrano, dealer in pearls on the Via Sacra. Traveller, farewell. Some lawyer type appended, “By his will, only he to whom this is tomb is dedicated may be buried here.” He may have been good, compassionate and loving, but poor?
Beyond this was a temple tomb with a pair of marble griffins.
Past the 6th Milestone I came to the Casal Rotondo, dating from the time of Augustus. It was a huge circular tomb, 35 metres in diameter, with a modern house built into it. Somebody had attached all sorts of carved fragments to the outside of the tomb. More fragments were on a wall nearby.
Ten minutes further on was a ruined bathhouse formerly belonging to a 1st Century villa and probably provided for the convenience of travellers.
Nearing the 5th Milestone I came to Villa dei Quintilii. I found an open gate that allowed entry from Via Appia Antica and saved me a tedious walk around to Via Appia Nuova. Entry was free today!
Villa dei Quintilii was an impressive ruin. It was well labelled, with information panels showing where you were and what you were looking at. Visitors could walk through the bath-house with its polychrome mosaic floors then on to the main building, past a Middle Ages lime kiln set up to burn marble salvaged from the villa. Despite the loss of an unknown quantity of marble fixtures, the site yielded up an impressive array of marble statues, some in excellent condition, which were displayed in a museum in the main building. I was amused by one statue of Zeus that had the face of the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 ad). The Quintilius brothers, Condianus and Valerius, were Consuls in 151 ad and subsequently served in the East as officials under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. In 182 ad the Emperor Commodus had them executed and grabbed the property.
Having already deviated from the Appian Way, I decided to continue the detour and to have lunch at the Aqueduct Park. This was a public space crossed by several Roman aqueducts. In 539 ad Vitiges, King of the Goths, made a fortified camp by closing off the arches of the Claudius and Marcius aqueducts. At the same time the Goths permanently cut Rome’s ancient water supply. The sackings of the previous 60 years had probably already done much to depopulate a city which had once held well over a million people. Left without adequate clean water, Rome would not recover until modern times.
There were actually seven aqueducts in the vicinity — Aqua Claudius, Anio Novus, Aqua Mariana Ditch, Aqua Felice, Aqua Marcius, and Anio Vetus. I had my lunch in a shady spot beside a massive arch of the Aqua Claudius.
After lunch I returned to the Via Appia Antica and quickly reached the graves of the Orazi (Horataii). Ten minutes later I was gazing at the graves of the Curiazi (Curiatii) in the 5th Mile, the very spot where I had finished my 2005 walk. The Curiazi (for Alba Longa) and the Orazi (for Rome) fought near here in the time of Tullus Hostillius, a battle that brought Alba Longa under Roman control.
It was a satisfying moment. Even if something now prevented me from completing the walk to Rome, I could legitimately claim to have walked every step between the 11th Milestone and Rome.
This also marked the beginning of the better-known stretch of the Appian Way. From this point I began meeting more and more walkers. The road verges were packed with tombs and monuments, many sporting carved likenesses of their one-time occupants. Rows of stone faces watched me walk by, discussing my outlandish appearance or scowling sternly down at me.
From a surviving Roman milestone, the 3rd Milestone, in the shadow of the Tomb of Caecilia Metellus, I was on doubly familiar ground, having been here twice before. I passed the Circus of Maxentius (he who lost to Constantine at the Milvian Bridge), the Temple of Romulus, the Catacombs, and the Church of Domine Quo Vadis almost in a daze. Even though they were probably free today, I had visited them in past years. The 1st Milestone, just outside the walls of Rome, came as a surprise.
I wasn’t quite finished with the walk, however. The Appian Way was older than the Aurelian Walls. I passed in through the San Sebastian gate, the one-time Portus Appius, and down what was now known as Via di Porta San Sebastiano. At the corner I turned into Viale della Terme Caracalla, passing the Baths of the same name, until I reached Piazza di Porta Capena. A piece of ancient wall stood here, marked “Inizio della via Appia”. When the Appian Way was constructed, it began here at Portus Capena.
Now I had finished the walk.
A couple of nights later I celebrated my 54th day on the road with a dinner on Via del Seminario. Good red wine and good Mediterranean food and plenty of time to examine my navel. Bad combination!
I could feel that I was changing. I was relaxing and not taking setbacks so bitterly. A long trip is quite a different thing to a holiday: it’s a lifestyle. There was no need to beat myself up if I spent a day relaxing instead of sightseeing. That was silly. Chill, man. There was always another day.
The internal change was like the creaking of an overloaded dam. I still had no idea whether the eventual release would come as a torrent or a trickle. All I knew was that the change felt inevitable, irresistible — and necessary. I was no longer the corporate drone that left Australia, but I wasn’t yet free of him. I could sense the magic around me, but I could not yet see it. There was still a lot of rebuilding ahead.
At least the dull loneliness that had overwhelmed me in Split had receded. Rome always had that effect on me. I was still alone? So what! I was in my favourite European city, free to do whatever amused me, to be whoever pleased me.
I relaxed and sipped my wine, watching the tourists go by.
Staples in NaplesMy right ear throbbed, totally blocked. Periodically a wave of sharp pangs from it would bring me to a wincing halt. Pressing on it then caused alarming squelches and gurgles but also gave temporary relief. Squeezed by swollen sinuses, my eyes felt like they were bulging from my head.
The sun soared above the platform roof and screamed triumphantly into my eyes just as a down train pulled in. Blinded, eyes streaming, I stumbled up the steps and hung desperately from a strap, easy prey for any pickpocket that wanted me.
I got out at Cavour and walked gently downhill to the port, trying not to jar my head. Coming here in this condition had been a mistake. Too late to go back now.
There was no shade. The sun baked the top of my head. When I rubbed my hair, it smelt scorched. Sweat ran down my sides and soaked my money belt. It lay in sheets on my forearms.
The main ferry office was a big building by the water. People surged around it, jostling me, hurting me. My fragments of Italian had deserted me: the signs might as well have been in Sanskrit. If only the damned ear would give up. I couldn’t think.
INFORMATION
The word leapt out at me. I scrambled to the window like the last man leaving the Titanic.
Where could I buy a ticket for Catania? The man looked blank, then fired a high-velocity stream of Italian into the office behind him. A voice drawled a reply. The man translated. Not here, I needed TTT Lines, and they had a separate ticket office, down there. A wave of the hand towards an enormous parking lot.
The next supplicant roughly pushed his way in front of me, and the window receded from me like a dream. Had it been a dream?
I looked around for the promised ticket office. A woman swayed past, bra cinched so high that her breasts floated like raw eggs. As she walked her aureoles came and went, sunrise and sunset across the valley between them. Beyond her the bay danced like spittle on a white-hot plate. It should have looked cool, but coolness had no place here.
As I crawled across the car park the street noise became a drum beating time with my heart — no, that was my heartbeat, pounding in my blocked ear. Waves of traffic rolled past, dividing islands of sweltering pedestrians. The sky glared. Impaled by the light, grim Neapolitan faces squinted behind their pigeon-struck windscreens. It was a nightmare torn from delirium. Naples simmered beneath a crust of pain.
There. A small building buried in the parking lot. Unpromising at first glance, it bore a magical word on its brow: Catania. The door resisted me but then surrendered, and I stumbled through the gap into air-conditioned luxury.
Here all was quiet and well ordered. A pretty girl stood at a counter, looking at me. Momentarily, I regained possession of my faculties.
“Buongiorno, signorina. Dove compro i biglietti per la nave di Catania?”
My pre-prepared little question rolled out of me. It was the wrong question, of course; this was what I’d wanted to ask back at the Information counter. Now I wanted to know when and how much. How did I ask how much? Something quanto costana. Uh, prego, io vorrei uno biglietto quanto costana, something like that? How did I ask when? Hang on, io vorrei was “I’d like”. “I’d like one ticket how much” made no sense.
“We sell the tickets to Catania here”, she said, in perfect, only slightly accented English, answering the only question I had voiced.
An hour after sunset we cruised out of Naples, its grime transformed into magic by darkness. Vesuvius crouched beyond the city lights, its outline traced by a drift of cloud.
For the first time, my “Deck” class ticket turned out to be literally that. There were no seats, no lifebelt boxes. I had to lay my sleeping bag out on the bare deck, which was no longer so bare: it was building up a sticky rime of salt.
In the bar, immaculate stewards were serving drinks and munchies to a crowd of well-dressed Italians. The servers were slow to note my presence and when peremptorily summoned, served me with a disdainful air, as though soiling themselves. I ignored their attitude and extracted an overpriced cup of something liquid that they called a “cappuccino” and something solid that they called a “Salumeria”. I took my prizes to a corner where I could consume them in peace.
The Italian passengers, despite their expensive clothes, were not a high-brow group. Fights — not rough and tumble but flapping and slapping and grappling, puffed-out chests butting — were frequent. Their voices were jeering and aggressive. They had the flat-eyed, blue-chinned arrogance of Mafia hit men — or of Sicilian peasant businessmen, which may not be so different. The few women looked like well-dressed trollops. Although I am sure that smoking in the bar was forbidden, my memory is inseparably entwined with a murky reek of stale smoke. I chose not to linger in this unpleasant place.
There were two other deck passengers, Helmut and Konstantin from Germany. They were university students who’d been driving and camping around south Italy. Later they disappeared: more enterprising than I, they snuck into the “airline seats” compartment and camped behind the back row of seats, where they spent a comfortable night, overlooked by the stewards.
They slept better than I did but they missed the sublime experience of scudding through the Strait of Messina at dawn like Odysseus, with Scylla on one hand and Charybdis on the other. We may even have passed above Charybdis, who was obviously sleeping off a banquet and failed to swallow us. The sunrise was extraordinary, Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn”, the exquisite amber light picking out every detail of the landscape and every ripple in the sea. I stood beside the rail and breathed it all in. It was a glorious morning to be alive and bound on a grand adventure, sailing upon a sea torn from the depths of time. My metal steed snorted beneath me, plunging headlong through the waves, bearing me to an ancient new land.
There is an oddity in The Odyssey. In Robert Fagles’ translation of Homer, Scylla’s west-facing cave is to starboard and Charybdis to port. Wherever that passage may actually be, Odysseus is clearly heading north through it. If he’s in the Strait of Messina, then he’s headed away from Ithaca.
He then puts in at the Island of the Sun and is forced to stay there by the “South” and “South-east” Winds. Obviously, he now wants to go back south, since ships of the day couldn’t sail too close to the wind. If he wanted to go east or west a southerly or south-easterly would allow him to sail east to Italy or west around Sicily. But with Italy to his east and southeast and Sicily stretching away to his southwest, the only way south is back through the Strait of Messina, past Scylla and Charybdis!
When Odysseus does set sail, Zeus hits him with the West Wind then the South Wind, blowing him back on his course to be wrecked by Charybdis. Is Homer’s “South Wind” actually what we would call a northerly? Apparently not, for the “West Wind” screams in out of the west, as we would expect.
In summary, the best fit to the text is that Odysseus sailed north past the monsters, then somehow south avoiding them, finally being blown back east and north to be wrecked by them. But if there was a route that avoided them, why go past them in the first place?
The geography simply makes no sense. Was it the fault of Homer, or of Fagles?
And what about the Clashing Rocks, the deadly alternative passage Circe mentioned? If Scylla and Charybdis flanked the Strait of Messina (which today is rather more than an arrowshot wide), where is this alternative route?
I’m sure scholars of Homer have answers to all these questions. Probably the answers lie in Homer’s recycling of material from Jason’s eastern voyages to Odysseus’ western ones.
The Strait was behind us now and Etna was approaching like a juggernaut. The shoreline was dotted with white houses and festooned with vegetation. Behind it were green and gold foothills, cliffs that soared like the walls of an embattled city. Serene above them rose the author of this landscape, trailing a wisp of cloud eastward to the sea.
SiciliaI walked ashore at Catania and up to the bus station, hoping to catch a €4 AST bus up Etna to Nicolosi. Alas, by the time I got there around 09:30, the last morning one had departed. Instead, rapacious taxi drivers lurked around the station. The drivers were adamant that there was no other bus till Monday, but their motives — and their advice — were suspect. Fortunately the greedy bastards thought my €30 top offer was a bluff, and refused to go lower than €40. But I wasn’t bluffing. I took a €0.80 bus to Barriere del Bosco, then walked the remaining dozen kilometres, arriving in Nicolosi to find the hostel closed. If I had caught the 9:00 bus, I would still have arrived at the hostel after it closed for the day (nominally 13:30 but they usually seemed to close by 09:00) and I would have been stranded until it opened at 16:00 anyway.
I was so buggered I literally crashed out once I booked in, had a shower, and munched the last of my goodies. Next thing I knew it was 20:30. I got up, opened the window, and crashed again, waking again around 01:00 and dozing on and off after that until I slept again sometime around dawn and finally woke up around 07:00.
The hostel, Etna Garden Park, had a serious attitude problem. The staff were snootier than the quality of their establishment merited. Completely bushed, I had been on the verge of upgrading to a single room (€35/night versus €20) — but then I realised these guys were looking down on me because I was sweaty and grimy and not neatly dressed after 32 hours of ship, bus and road. Bad idea, guys — your attitude cost you (and saved me) €60! My own attitude, arguably, cost me some comfort and maybe some respect — but the value to me of having the respect of two guys running a 3rd-rate hotel is next to zero, and, until some other hosteller arrived, the room I got put in (a double) was basically a single anyway.
I was originally thinking Syracuse for the next day, but a slow start after yesterday’s exertions ran me a little late for such an itinerary, and the bus up the mountain was due through around 9:05. I had a capucchino near the stop to kill the time. The bus was late. Return fare €3.60, exact change please. I had paid for my capucchino in coin — did I still have enough shrapnel? I did — thanks to a couple of ten cent coins found lying in the road yesterday.
By 10:00 the bus was at the Rifugio Sapienza. After minimal agonising, I shelled out €48 for the cable car-minibus (Finuvia dell’Etna) up to Torre del Filósofo and back.
The Views from the cable car were grand, and Etna was sending up a big fume ahead as we climbed, and hiding its peaks in the clouds. Looking below me, I could see people climbing the slope the hard way. When I was younger, that would have been me. Soon we were soaring over patches of snow. Then we entered the clouds.
At the top of the cable car, anyone wanting to go higher was required to board a tour bus. The cost was built into the cable car fare. Freedom walking was forbidden, for reasons of safety. It was about a 15-minute run before we were allowed out of the vehicles.
The ground here was warm and smoking, although I think the smoke was steam. Here and there were fumeroles and, more chillingly, the remnants of buildings destroyed by recent eruptions. And then the clouds blew away and the view went out forever.
By 11:00 I was standing on the edge of a crater. A few minutes later, after a walk along a ridge, I reached the end of the permitted walk. It was time to descend. By 11:35 I was back at the top of the cable car.
Lunch at the Rifugio Sapienza. When I walked out afterwards, the peak of Etna was crisp and clear in the distance.
I walked over to Silvestri Crater, surrounded by red scoria fields. From the far side I had a grand view of the Refuge. Nearby I found a building half-buried in lava, with a sign: “The LAVA of the year 2001 arrived this far.” People had set up a small shrine and left small offerings.
Got back to the hostel around 17:45 and found one of the guys mopping the stairs. He stopped me going up — “two minutes” — while his work dried. I waited. When his two minutes were up, I beckoned him. When did the hostel close in the morning? When did it open in the afternoon? What was the time now? Why was he mopping the stairs now when customers would be using them? He said that they had painted the stairwell (I noticed them doing it — as I left this morning), was there a problem? I said, yes, when they inconvenience customers for their own convenience, there’s a problem. His response to that was, you’re not being forced to stay here, you can always leave.
I was strongly tempted — but I’d paid for four nights up-front and I suspected I’d have trouble getting a refund out of them if I choose to leave early. I dubbed the place “Attitude Garden Hostile” (AGH). They would not be getting recommended by me to other hostellers. I considered leaving in the morning anyway. I might be better off in a backpacker’s charging the same, or less, for the usual hostel amenities. Rated as a hostel rather than a hotel, the place was actually inferior to the typical backpacker’s. The nicer, smaller rooms didn’t compensate for the missing amenities such as internet, cheap phone, laundry and people contact. The 9-16 lockout also counted against it, although since my itinerary kept me away all day that was a minor point.
Next day I wanted to see Catania and do some preparation for excursions. Easier said than done, and even the Nicolosi locals seemed to be at a loss how to accomplish it. A bus came through without a destination showing. People shouted destinations at him. None were his. He drove off without confessing where he was going — which was probably Acrireale, as another bus came through a few minutes later and took the other people waiting. But not me; the Catania-bound buses came out of a side street, where the returning Etna service stopped last night. I would have been quite happy to ride along with the earlier bus and pay an extra fare, and categorise it as sightseeing, but how to explain that in five seconds in a foreign language while hanging from the steps of the bus?
In the end I managed, though not intentionally, to get from Nicolosi to Catania for free. Unlike the Etna service, they didn’t sell fares on the Catania bus. You must buy a ticket before boarding and, theoretically, validate it. Few locals validated, so I presumed they all had weekly, monthly or seasonal tickets. Which left the question begging, where would I find a ticket office in Nicolosi for tomorrow? At any rate, the driver refused my money and, when I tried again on arrival in Catania, shook my hand and sent me on my way.
I had a good wander around central Catania, admiring the statuary including one large and ornate fountain, looking at the ancient ampitheatre and a faux-Bernini Elephant, locating the bus stops and timetables for Piazza Armerini, and the train to Syracuse. I also bought a ticket back to Nicolosi and learned where I could buy tickets for Catania in Nicolosi.
All in all, a moderately successful day.
I felt lazy, so I decided to sleep in a little and take the 8:00 bus to Catania. I would miss the 7:50 Syracuse train, but the 9:10 was a faster service. The 8:00 bus would get me there in plenty of time.
Wrong. Rush-hour traffic meant the 8:00 bus didn’t get to Catania until almost 9:30. Worse, when I got to the station, the next two Syracuse trains were “ritardo” — the 10:02 express by a massive 90 minutes. That sort of delay usually means the service will simply evaporate. Sure enough, the earliest ticket they offered me was for 12:45.
So I bussed it. If I had rushed straight for the buses when I arrived in Catania I would have been just in time to miss the 9:30 Syracuse bus. The next was 10:30 — and that was the one I caught. So much for “half-hourly” services. I hate buses, but it was preferable to waiting three hours for a train. That would kill the day.
13:26 Moored to a table on the port waterfront for a capucchino. I’ve had a nice walk, most of the way around Ortygia. I should’ve based myself here for a couple of days — it’s a pretty town, with lots of interesting back streets. Maybe I can come back someday and give it the time it deserves. But I could say that about Sicily in general. I’m giving it a week: it deserves a month.
A second capucchino, I think.
Packs of teens roam the waterfront, chattering loudly. My clogged ears make their animated Italian chatter sound like weird electronic modulations. One group goes past. The leader brandishes his mobile phone in “photo-taking” manner. Three of his followers are absorbed in separate phone conversations, in the group but not of it. From behind, the group presents a composite view of dimpled brown female hips and baggy male jeans with shirts out. They try so desparately to be individuals, but they’re wearing a uniform.
At the next table, a family, two girls and their parents. One girl is at the colt stage, all pipestem arms and legs, wearing a floating cotton smock that makes her appear weightless. They’ve left now, going over to a boat that performs harbour tours. Tempting — it is an admittedly beautiful day and an admittedly beautiful harbour. But I’m content to stay on the land.
And now a tour bus has vomited up its breakfast. The tour group is boarding the tour boat. I’m glad I’d already decided to give the cruise a miss — I’d hate to have decided to go, only to change my mind.
I finally moved on around the harbour, then out of town towards some intriguing cliffs, passing some well-carved but moss-grown stone foundations and the ancient Teatro Greco. On the lip above the theatre was a tall, narrow multi-storey bulding that might once have been a windmill.
Beyond the theatre, I found the Latomia del Paradiso, marble catacombs and quarries where 7,000 Athenian prisoners of war were held in 413 bc. Further on I came to the deep and massive caves where the Athenian prisoners were worked to death. Nearby, the overgrown remains of a formal garden provided contrast.
By 16:40 I was waiting on a shady step for the 17:00 bus. I missed the 16:00 bus by zigging when I should’ve zagged — I saw it go past on the far side of the road and stop briefly further up, where I had been several minutes earlier. Oh, well.
So much for Syracuse. Was the brief visit worth the effort? I thought so. I was satisfied with what I did, though with hindsight I could have arranged it better and achieved more for about the same effort, e.g. by getting off the bus earlier and hitting the Museum, then the Theatres, then Ortigia. As it was I missed out on the Museum and walked extra distance getting back into Ortigia. But that’s hindsight — 20/20 rear vision.
Although my pack got a little grubby on the ride down the mountain — and my hands got a little grubby dusting off the oily dirt — the morning started out OK. I treated myself to chocolate gelato and a capucchino in a shady alley with a breeze, beside the ticket office. I needed the morale boost. That may sound odd, but too often on this trip the sense that things were going well preceded a minor disaster. If someone handed me a laurel, I would shake it, most carefully, to get rid of the snake!
Still, I was learning. The rapacious taxi drivers hanging out around the bus station had got nothing from me despite being the jaws in as sweet a trap as could have been devised to separate tourists from their money. €50, €40 to Nicolosi on Sunday? €70 to take you up to the Rifugio? Weep, you greedy bastards, because you didn’t get rich off me!
My ears were definitely better. My hearing was almost back to normal.
As the bus twisted its way across Sicily towards Piazza Armerina, I watched Etna recede. The mountain stood out boldly in the sunshine, effortlessly dominating the horizon. It was a huge swelling lump of rock, streaked near the top with snow. A plume of cloud ran downwind from it like a giant pennant. When I zoomed my camera, it loomed like those famous views of Kilimanjaro. Now I was lost in the endless landscape I had seen from Torre del Filósofo a few days earlier.
I had a little trouble finding the way down from Piazza Armerina to the Villa Romana del Casale on foot, but managed the trick without getting lost. The walk was pleasant, along a road well shaded by trees. When I began to encounter empty tour buses parked on the verges, I knew I must be getting close.
The plan of the site made it all look simple. Here were the hunting scenes, there were the bikini girls, there was the erotic scene. Unfortunately, the structures erected to conserve the mosaic floors from tourist feet detracted from the experience, as you could not wander from room to room in the natural way but had to make your way circuitously, along raised ramps that ran around the edges. There was no plan that showed where the ramps led, and no single route that took in everything, so finding your way to the things you particularly wanted to see was difficult. The glass roof allowed immoderate light that tended to wash out the colours, and the struts holding the glass cast dark lines that made it hard to see a mosaic as a whole work and ruined attempts at photography. I had enjoyed the sunshine earlier but now I began to wish the day was not quite so bright and sunny. A bit of overcast to wash out the contrasts, that was what was needed …
Work was in progress everywhere. The Baths were closed for restoration. In several places, women were painstakingly prising up mosaic tiles and then mortaring them back in place. Men were bustling about in the Peristyle, engaged in some activity that required a lot of shouting and arm waving but didn’t seem to be producing much result.
In one room I found Odysseus offering a bowl of wine to Polyphemus. The Cyclops was depicted with three eyes, one of them in his forehead. In the next room I found an affectionate couple embracing. At first glance, it was quite chaste — her back was turned, and she was even still wearing her strophium, the Roman bra, a strap of soft leather beneath the breasts. But her round, sweet bottom was bare and her male companion’s clothing was disarrayed where his hips met hers in a way that suggested that rather more was going on than met the eye.
There were hunting and sporting scenes. A dark-haired man used a spear to ward off a slavering boar that had already gashed his blonde companion. Elsewhere, two men carried a boar home bound in a net. Horsemen chased deer into another net. Nilotic scenes featured cherubs and pygmies fishing.
And there were the famous gymnasts, the bikini babes, tossing a leather ball, awarding each other crowns and laurel branches, training with weights, and holding footraces.
On my way back into town I passed a villa whose monumental porch resembled a Doric temple. The place could have been ripped straight from antiquity.
I also passed a series of murals beside the road, depicting the seasons. Winter carried snow-covered branches and peeked from within an ice-blue robe. Spring wore red flowers and a white robe. Blonde Summer also wore white and was almost lost within a profusion of flowers. Brunette Autumn wore a rainbow gown and sat within a storm of golden leaves.
My original plan called for a bus to Enna, where there were connections to Agrigento. That was thrown into doubt when a local told me there were no buses to Enna, and besides, catching the Caltanissetta would save me having to manhandle my pack four kilometres down a steep hill.
While I was having a cappuccino in the Agip Café, a bevy of SAIS buses rumbled boisterously into the square. I went to investigate and got distracted by a bird flying into my hand — one bus was bound for Enna. So I took it. As we pulled out of the square at 7:40, we passed a white bus that had pulled in quietly over the other side while I was trying to get answers from the SAIS drivers — the 7:45 Caltanissetta bus. Grrr.
No matter, I was aboard a bus that would get me where I wanted to go. My only problem was figuring out whom to pay my fare to. The driver wasn’t interested. In the end I got the ride for free.
In Enna I looked for a taxi, saw none with a driver, saw no obvious bus waiting to go to the train station, and decided to walk. Encumbered by my pack, but downhill. It was a pretty walk, with good views. The road shoulders were mostly wide enough to let me enjoy the views without worrying about being skittled by traffic, and there were plenty of shade trees.
A cleaner at the train station told me that tickets were sold on the train, but I never saw the conductor and so I got the train ride for free, too. Sicily seemed very casual about fare collection. There was — this once — a certain grim fascination in seeing whether they would ever ask for a fare or for my ticket, but it was the sort of thrill that eventually gets you into trouble if indulged. I was brought up honest and couldn’t enjoy these illicit free rides as much as I’d have liked.
At Agrigento, I wandered through the town, pricing places, and eventually settled on a place called “Camera del Sud”. I wasted no time there but dumped my pack and headed downhill. I could see the Valle dei Templei below me, its temples strung like beads on a necklace.
At about the time of Marathon and Thermopylae, the Sicilian town Akragas reputedly had a population of 200,000. It had been founded a century earlier by colonists from Gela. During the 5th and 6th Centuries bc the locals, obviously wealthy, built a series of enormous Doric temples along a ridge at the edge of town. Much later, early Christians built tombs into the rock that once supported the southern walls of Akragas. Later the town fell on hard times and the survivors withdrew to the more defensible site of modern Agrigento (Roman Agrigentum)
This account is in danger of becoming a guide book, so I’ll slide gracefully over the next few hours. I dutifully toiled my way along the ridge, admiring and photographing the ruins. I was particularly impressed by several ancient olive trees, rotten and holy, long past their fruiting years but still capable of covering themselves with a good crop of leaves.
I tried hard to talk myself into a sunset stroll in the modern town of Agrigento, but by then I was feeling very lethargic and lying down felt wonderfully decadent after my exertions. I had everything I needed right at hand — there was no need to go out. I decided against moving on to Selinunte in the morning.
It was another moderately successful day. I did everything I set out to do, and did it in style. Reduced to “moderate” only because it turned out easier than I’d expected. The only challenges were finding the Villa road — it was not marked and led out of the Piazza at an unexpected angle — and finding the bus back to town. I eventually found the road, never did find the bus. I know what it should have looked like because I saw one in town, but never saw one like it waiting at the site. Not worried, as the only result was an extra bit of unplanned but pleasant exercise. And walking saved me a little money. Which I squandered on a gelati. I made a note to myself to stop buying those — each one undid the weightloss from hours of exercise!
I woke to the sound of rain. I lay in bed and enjoyed a deliciously slow wake-up, listening to the rain falling — my first real lie-in since Kiev.
All that exercise and rise-and-shine was having its effect, too. I’d been looking at myself in the mirror and I was definitely shaping up. My pants were hanging better — for the first time in years I had a waistline that let them hang from my hips. But I still had a long way to go.
I spent the day drinking coffee and reading on the terraces that overlooked Akragas. If the rain looked like easing off for a while, I might have made a run for the Museum, which I had missed the day before, but it all seemed unimportant. The burst of sightseeing energy that had entered me at Rome had dissipated. I was content to just be someplace exotic.
I did some shopping. Looking ahead to Crete and Karpathos had me thinking about swimming. I had a pair of togs, but I wanted something more flexible. A shop-front had a pair of swimming shorts I liked. They came with built-in netting underwear, but a pair of scissors soon fixed that. They now had a tendency to make wedgies, but I could also wear them as regular shorts.
Later I went back to my room and watched TV, scanning for weather reports. Footage from Palermo showed wet pavement and grey skies. The weather report, when it came, was bad news for tourism. All of Sicily was under clouds, and all the west end was raining. Bingo! If I’d tried for Selinunte, I’d be wet and grim instead of dry and smug.
I finished the day with a glass of wine and a focaccia. Not the most pretentious of dinners, but then, it hadn’t been a day for pretension. The clouds never cleared, and the rain kept coming back.
I decided I would skip Selinunte and go to Palermo, and then back to Naples where, with a little luck, my new bank cards, with PIN numbers, would be waiting. It was time that weakness in my finances was fixed once and for all, because one of my travel money cards had just died on me and needed replacement.
Return to NaplesI went to Palermo, where the weather was a little better than expected. It even had patches of blue sky. I admired the Fontana Pretoria, a large and distinctly odd fountain surrounded by antique buildings, and Quattro Canti, a decided impressive square. I consumed a huge fruit salad boat, watched some just-marrieds, and admired huge hanging walls of artificial fruit, from a local industry. I took a walk in a park with painted stoas and grotesque statues and fountains, and in another park with lilies, overgrown fig trees, and cacti. Then the rain set in again and I decided to take the 20:40 overnight train to Naples.
This turned into an epic, as I tried to save some money by buying a seat, not a bed. I ended up turfed from the train for the ferry ride, then left at the station on the other side as the train that continued from Station “Villa S.G.” had no seats, just sleepers. I had to pay to upgrade to a sleeper or be stuck on a cold platform for many hours. What a neat little gotcha!
My bank cards and replacement travel money cards were waiting for me in Naples, and a couple of phone calls the next day put an end to two months of expensive hassle.
I went down to Stazione Centrale and enquired about the cost of an excursion to see the ruins at Paestum. The guy in the ticket booth was very helpful. We discussed my plans. I needed to take the train to Salerno then catch a bus to Paestum. The Unico Campagna tickets he sold me for the train were €3.20 each, and I gave him €10. He dextrously zipped the tickets and change across to me then turned around to check the departures board for what service to board. When he turned back my hand was still outstretched, showing the sad paucity of the change. Apologetically he discovered and passed over a €2 coin that had somehow slipped to one side, just out of my line of sight. Not at all, I murmured sympathetically; I was sure it happened all the time.
He then made amends by writing my train details on a notepad — 8:22, binario 17. I was expecting the 8:28 Regionale, because I knew from interrogating a ticket machine earlier that the 8:22 was an express service that demanded reservations. I was becoming sensitive to such nuances. But I smiled and thanked him nicely and then, just for laughs and because I had plenty of time in hand, I went down to binario 17 and showed my Unico Campagna ticket to a conductor, gesturing at the express train standing there. He shook his head. I wasn’t getting on that train with that ticket! My ticket was indeed valid for Salerno, but I must take the 8:28 Regionale from binario 25 — as I had expected all along.
Imagine the ghastly scene if I had boarded the express without checking my ticket’s validity. I would have been forced to buy another ticket, perhaps even pay a fine. I was sure the man at the ticket window would have been most apologetic when he heard about it. What a Pest!
At Salerno I bought a ticket for the bus to Paestum.
Paestum is another of those gigantic, dead Greek cities, like Akragas, and it was founded about the same time as Akragas. War and malaria ultimately laid it low in Byzantine times, leaving some massive Greek temples and impressive Roman ruins.
The site began in an understated way, just some walls and rubble beside the road. As you penetrated deeper the town became more and more impressive.
At each of the three great temples, somebody had pilfered the stone from the walls of the cellas (the sanctuary or body of a temple, surrounded by solid walls) but had left the columns in place. The columns had perhaps never even fallen, since the entablature was still in place and, being made of squared blocks, would surely have been pilfered if it had ever lain on the ground. The cella-less Doric temples of Athena (also known as the Temple of Ceres), Neptune and Hera, with the sky visible between the columns, now had a grace they had probably originally lacked.
The sheer size of the temples was hard to grasp unless somebody was standing beside them to give scale. The column bases were wider than I was tall. The columns of the temples of Athena and Hera were six metres tall, those of the Temple of Neptune nine metres.
But the best part, for me, was the residential neighbourhoods. I always feel closest to the ancient Romans when strolling through their houses or along their residential streets. The houses here were built on the classical plan, with vestibule, cubicle-lined atrium, tablinum and peristilium in sequence. A group of students was busy cleaning and tidying the area. Their activity gave a feeling of life that the temples lacked. It didn’t hurt that many of the female students were pretty and buxom and had stripped down to shorts and string tops in the heat.
Returning to Salerno took me a while, but eventually I managed to flag down a bus.
“You have a ticket?” The bus didn’t sell tickets. They had to be pre-purchased.
“No … wait!”
I dug out the unused Unico Campania. He accepted it and I zapped it in the machine. I suspected that he had probably stretched a point only because the face value of the ticket exceeded the bus fare. But now the clock was ticking on that ticket, so I had only two hours to get onto a train back to Naples or I’d be out another fare. After spending an hour and a quarter in the heat and dust of the roadside, futilely trying to wave down a Salerno-bound bus, I figured I’d worry about that when the time came. In the end I walked straight off the bus and onto a train at Salerno, so that time never came.
Although I had been as far as Sorrento before and had now been to Salerno, I had never rounded the Sorrento Peninsula — the famous Amalfi Coast. High time to correct that.
At Sorrento I walked over to the bus stand. “Stand” it was — people were standing around discussing the absence of the scheduled bus. Was this the right place? A bus roared in on the other side of the square and a rumour spread that it was the Amalfi service. Half the queue headed off that way. While they were gone, another bus pulled in quietly just past us. The driver hopped down and walked off briskly, closing the door behind him. But I had spotted the destination as it went by: Amalfi.
Casually, as if I was just looking for some shade, I walked down and stationed myself near the bus door. When the driver came back from his toilet break, I was first on the bus and bagged myself a prime seat, from which I was able to observe the developing scrum as the rest of the queue realised what was up. At the height of the confusion, the people who had trotted off chasing a mirage earlier returned and added their elbows to the fray. Most educational.
My fellow passengers were not locals; they were all tourists. You could almost read their nationalities by their technique. The Brits tried to queue in an orderly fashion, squawking loudly when less orderly nationalities pushed in, then gave up and joined in the general “moshing”. The French pushed arrogantly to the front by ones and twos then beckoned any late-arriving friends to join them. The Germans pushed through in flying wedge formations, shoulder to shoulder. The Australians and Kiwis and Irish just surged back and forth merrily in the ebb and flow, laughing as if it was the most fun they’d had all day, but somehow, by ones and twos, getting aboard. Everyone made way for the nun — perhaps they thought she might come in handy on the winding peninsular roads.
When the seats were overflowing and the aisle was packed, the bus pulled away, leaving the losers to surge towards the next bus, which had just pulled in behind.
The drive was glorious, if occasionally vertiginous. The driver rarely used his brakes, preferring to ride the gears. The way was often closed in by low stone walls topped with flowering shrubs. Then one wall would drop away to the sea far below, and the other would become a vertical cliff.
Whether because the driver was skilful, because the nun interceded for us, or simply because we were lucky, we made it to Positano, where I climbed out at the upper bus stop. I had no firm plans for the day, just a notion that I might walk down to the port, have lunch somewhere along the way, and see what happened. I might find a ferry, or I might walk up to the lower bus stop and continue by bus. I would cast my fate upon the winds of serendipity and go wherever they blew me.
Positano reminded me of the towns of the Cinque Terre, but with traffic. From the cramped little port, houses ran up the slopes of a great natural amphitheatre, only petering out when they reached vertical cliff faces at the top. Even then, the occasional athlete had managed to perch an eyrie on some miniscule ledge, reachable only by a precipitous foot track.
There was a broad beach, laid out with white stripes like a parking lot. Closer inspection revealed that the stripes were flagged paths across the frying back sand, allowing even the bare of foot relatively painless access to the eateries behind the beach.
By and by I stopped for lunch while I was still high enough to have a good view. Crisp lettuce, tomato, capsicum and cucumber, thick slabs of goat cheese, fat Kalamata olives, slices of ham, half a sectioned baguette and a cappuccino. They called it a “Salada Mistra”, perhaps after Mystras in Greece.
After lunch I continued down to the port. Just as I got there, an Amalfi-bound ferry was revving its engines. I scrambled aboard just as the ramp was being raised.
From the sea, the cliffs were even more spectacular. Camera in hand, I relaxed amidst beauty. The sun was warm, the sea breeze cooling, the air was laden with the fragrance of flowers and the tang of the sea. I had nothing to do, and plenty of time in which to do it, a phrase I’ve used before and will use again.
My time in Amalfi was short. I came off the ferry and saw a bus, and on impulse I boarded it. It turned out to be the bus back to Sorrento, and I accepted what chance had brought with good grace. I had ridden my luck to good purpose so far today and saw no reason to complain if the ride was destined to be brief. It had been one of those perfect little gem days that come along from time to time: why spoil it by pushing chance beyond its limits?
Back at the hostel, a guy who was in the same room as me last time had just booked in — and had been placed in the same room as me again. It was just like old times.
I loved Italy, as always, but my budget did not allow me to linger there. It was time to begin the eastward leg of my journey. Fortunately, the first step was merely from Italy to a land I loved equally well, Greece. But to get there I had to get to Bari in time to catch a ferry.
My train, inevitably, ran late. The foot passengers ran from the train to the bus and, somehow, we all mashed aboard. Then I outsmarted myself by getting off early, at a travel agent listed in my guidebook, thinking I could beat the queue. But they didn’t sell the tickets I wanted. I wound up at the back of the scrum in the ferry building, watching the clock tick down towards the ferry departure time.
My original plan had been to take a ferry to Corfu, but it turned out that no ferries went there from Bari this early in the season. They stopped at Igoumenitsa on the mainland. No matter, I knew there were plenty of ferries from Igoumenitsa to Kerkira.
I got my ticket for Igoumenitsa. I needn’t have been so worried: I had plenty of time. I boarded the ferry with whole minutes to spare.
The Blue Horizon was a step up from the Spartan ferry to Catania. The weather deck was well supplied with places to sit and even had a snack counter. Without even entering the ship’s bar I was able to buy an inexpensive but quite substantial souvlaki dinner. I added some sandwiches, several crumbling biscuits, an apple, a handful of peanuts and sultanas; washing it all down with canned orange juice.
The toilets even had showers. I could have a shower before bedtime, go to sleep with morale restored, and start the new day fresh. The showers were technically only for people who had paid for the more expensive “Pullman” or “airline” seats — but nobody was checking tickets. I got my shower.
I had an attack of what-the-hell and bought a bottle of Limoncé from the gift shop. The price was competitive, and I was curious, not having tasted it before. It was very lemony and sweet enough to pull fillings. 11.1% alcohol gave it the same punch as a similar quantity of wine. I didn’t finish it off that night. Since the bottle was glass, I poured the leftover Limoncé into a plastic water bottle. Now it looked just like lemon cordial.
Even the deck I slept on was better than expected. The deck was indoors, a big empty area next to the Pullman couches. Seats had been there but had been removed at some time in the past. The floor was already spotted by the sleeping bags of backpackers staking their claim for the night. I quickly found a spot against one wall.
In fact, it was a better sleeping arrangement than paying for one of the seats, because although it was a harder “mattress”, I got to be completely horizontal and was free to roll over.
I slept on, not in my sleeping bag — the room was too warm. I kept my clothes on and shimmied into my silk sleeping sheet.
Clean me, clean underwear, clean t-shirt, clean socks, and clean feet to put in them in the morning. A warm room with carpet on the floor. Could it get any better than this?
In the morning, there was Greece — a dingy coastline that contrasted poorly with the lights of other ferries around us. We all seemed to be sailing in convoy.
Igoumenitsa was a concrete concourse and an unlovely collection of port buildings beneath crouching hills, all backed by a fiery dawn.
I got off the ferry at about 5:15. In the ferry building, I asked about boats to Corfu and was told “the old port” with a gesture northward. Outside, I could see a big ferry in the distance, so that’s where I headed.
At the old ferry terminal, I walked along the row of ticket booths until I found one that had an open window and someone inside.
“Do you sell tickets to Corfu?”
“Yes. One?”
“Yes. Is it that ferry?” I pointed to the one at the dock.
“Yes.” Thus simply I became a deck passenger on the Pantokrator, departing (according to my ticket) at 7:30. I checked my watch. It wasn’t quite 6:00 yet. Why, I still had time in hand for a leisurely breakfast!
At 6:30 the ship departed — with me aboard. Just as I was starting towards town looking for food and coffee, I had seen some Canadian guys from the Bari ferry arrive and walk aboard the Pantokrator. Some impulse led me to follow them aboard. If I hadn’t done this I would have been, to recycle Paul Theroux’s term for it, “Duffilled”.
I had forgotten the time difference. I was still running on Italian time. The ferry had departed promptly at 7:30 as promised, Greek time.
Breakthrough in CorfuAt Kerkira I charged ashore, head down, intent on finding accommodation. I stormed right past a pick-up bus and people waving signs for the “Pink Palace”, a name which was unfamiliar to me but had to be a backpacker joint. I was so set on finding my intended hotel that I ignored the opportunity serendipity placed before me and marched off, following my plan.
I didn’t know it then, but the “Pink Palace” was a legendary backpacker dive on the far side of the island, graphically described by Taras Grescoe in The End of Everywhere. “It was like walking into a frat house after a frosh-night keg explosion.” Not my kettle of fish! Even if it had been, I preferred places within walking distance of town.
Quickly lost, I wandered the back streets for a while. After a few false starts I realised that nothing I saw looked anything like my map. That usually means I’m not on the map. So I headed towards the centre of town and after a few hundred metres found a sign pointing to the hotel.
As I got there a busty backpacker with red hair and an amazing crop of freckles came out, wearing an odd expression on her face. “Goody, a vacancy!” I thought to myself, neglecting the possibility that she was leaving because they were full. The toad-faced woman at reception grudgingly admitted that they had a vacant room. Cautiously I asked to see it. “It is not clean,” she said. I said I didn’t care, I just wanted to see if the room would meet my needs, but no key was forthcoming. Rather than haggle over a room of unknown quality, I left. I figured I’d look at a few of the other possibilities and maybe come back here if they didn’t work out.
Down at the corner I ran into the freckled backpacker. She was Beatrice, from Austria. She’d been staying outside of Kerkira and had come into town to be ready to fly out tomorrow. She’d actually taken the room at the hotel, but an unpleasant incident had changed her mind. Did I know of other places?
I did and we went off to look at the next possibility on my list. It turned out to be far too expensive. We went to a domatia that Beatrice had heard of, but the room had been taken. After that we gradually ticked off the list of hotels in my guidebook. Some were too pricy, one was closed for renovation, and one had closed down.
By this time we had formed a partnership and while one person — usually me — watched the bags, the other went to investigate options or used a mobile phone to contact more distant places. When we ran out of inspiration we stopped for coffee. Beatrice suggested that instead of trying for two rooms we split a double room in the cheapest nearby hotel.
The arrangement with the “Astron” was quickly made: we would have a room in their annex for the two of us for one night at the single occupancy rate, and then they had a vacancy in the main part of the hotel that I could have for two more nights alone at the same rate. Beatrice even managed to squeeze a last-moment discount out of them. She was an excellent negotiator.
We went out for more coffee — which turned out to be retsina for me and beer for Beatrice — outside the “Stretto”, and I found myself talking my head off. She was easy to talk to, and she talked back. We spent the whole day together.
Beatrice told me about her hotel experience. The room was OK, but while unpacking she had happened to glance out the window. A few minutes later, a sleazy-looking man had knocked at her door. He was convinced she had given him a come-on. “You looked at me,” he told her, attempting to push his way into the room. She yelled at him and managed to close the door until he went away, but the experience unsettled her. When she went down and complained to the woman at the desk, all she got was an indifferent shrug. She had immediately gone back upstairs, thrown all her stuff back in her pack and checked out.
She told me about her week on the island, staying at an old villa down south and putting about the island on a rented moped. She wasn’t here for the beaches or the sights or the lifestyle. She had enjoyed riding the pretty, winding roads and being able to pull in for coffee or a meal at one or another of the myriad hilltop and beachside eateries. It was a style of holiday I was beginning to think might be pleasant.
She told me about the circumstances of her trip to Corfu — which is her story to tell, not mine.
I drained many of my own old, stagnant wounds, telling my yarns as entertainingly as possible but with therapeutic effect.
That evening I dressed in my nattiest gear — none too flash but good enough for Corfu — and we went out to explore the town and find dinner. Beatrice had a set of strict guidelines that eliminated almost all of the tavernae and restaurants in Corfu. She didn’t want to sit down in an expensive restaurant. She didn’t want to eat at one of the tourist-spawned places near the cricket ground. She wanted a view. She didn’t want seafood. Eventually we met all the criteria by buying takeaway pizza from “Le Tavola Calda” and eating it sitting on the sea wall, gazing across to the old fortress.
After that she wanted to buy a souvenir for a friend whose sprained ankle gave her the trip. She had been looking while we looked for restaurants, and during dinner had decided on a set of worry beads. So we set off again, interrupted by a musical interlude when we came across a local band practicing.
It was a martial score, sounding like it belonged at a bullfight. In fact, I believe it was used in Pride and the Passion, the cinematic version of C.S. Forrester’s The Gun. We sat on a bench nearby until the practice was over.
After that Beatrice still found what she was after. It was an impressive demonstration of trusting to chance. Watching Beatrice at work was educational and inspirational: she carried it off with grace and style.
The music gave me an epiphany. I remembered an earlier trip and another warm night in another Greek town — Nafplio — when I followed music while looking for a place to have dinner and enjoyed a free impromptu concert. Deep within me something tight and knotted, a scab I’d borne for years, finally creaked and burst, releasing a flood of contradictory emotions.
Beatrice leaned over the bands in the pool of light from my torch. She fingered a few of them.
“But they are so even, as if made by a machine,” she said.
I hitched myself up and stuck out a leg, hooked the loop over my toe and tied a few knots to show her how it was done. From the pile of bands, I picked out the one I had seen her fingers linger on the longest. She had picked her own band without knowing it.
“This is for you,” I said.
She took it and tried to tie it to her right wrist. She hadn’t the knack. “You’ll have to tie it on for me.”
Of course I had to tie it on. I’d always intended to and had ensured it would be so by giving it to her unprepared. I ran the braided cord at one end through the eyelet I’d made at the other, then looped it around the eyelet and under itself. It was a perfect fit. Before letting go of the knot I passed on the lore of the friendship band to her.
“You must make a wish. The wish will not come true until the band wears out and falls off, so don’t wish for something you need now. If you take the band off the wish is broken and will not come true, even if you put the band back on.” I waited till she said she had chosen her wish, squeezed the band for luck, and let go of her wrist.
I didn’t tell her that I had been startled by which friendship band she had chosen. It was one I called Rage and Frustration, a very special band indeed.
I make three types of bands: ordinary, special, and very special. Ordinary bands are the normal ones: I just pick some nice colours and make a band with them. They have no special meaning and I hand them out like candy to anyone who likes them. Special bands are custom-made for specific individuals: the colours and pattern are chosen for or even by the person I am making them for. Very special bands, however, are different again. Their colours and patterns pick themselves, and I can sense that I am making a special band for someone without knowing who that person is.
I had brought three very special bands with me on the trip: a complex rose and coral pink device in a woman’s size that reeked of sexuality, a simple forest-brown and brook-blue one that looked made for a small woman or a child, and the one Beatrice had chosen: a band like a clotted bruise, passionate crimson and throbbing purple in a complex diamond pattern in a woman’s size. Beatrice saw the purple as power and freedom: I recognised the reference. The early suffragette movement had favoured purple. Beatrice had been into politics and feminism when she was younger.
Of the three very special bands, two had been made over a decade earlier. I might never know whom I made them for — a decade, surely, was rather a long time for such things to stay in abeyance. But Beatrice’s band had been designed and made in March, at a backpacker hostel in Melbourne while waiting to start this trip. I was sorting out the colours I wanted to bring with me, and these colours had grouped themselves. So I made a band of them.
Beatrice had merely turned over the other bands in the pile, but this one she had picked up and stroked thoughtfully: this was the band she identified with. Out of all the people in the world it had found the one it had been made for.
It was 4:00 and Beatrice had to get up at 5:30 to get ready to go to the airport. We should both have been asleep — we had certainly tried to tire ourselves out! But we were both awake, and in the darkness, we probed each other.
I told her my one lie of our time together.
“Why can’t you sleep?” she had asked. And I told her I didn’t know. Actually I did know but I thought the reason was unworthy. And when I asked her the same question, she explained things about her life that she had not mentioned before. Things that had her grinding her teeth in rage and frustration. Things that made her chosen band uniquely appropriate to her.
Days later, I came up with a worthy reason for my wakefulness. We can rationalise anything into nobility if we try hard enough.
Consider. If I had slept, I would not have remembered that I had meant to show her the bands and to let her pick one. If I had slept, the band made for her would have gone begging.
Mystical though it sounds, I now speculated that I could not sleep because of the undelivered wristband. And I decided I had walked past the “Pink Palace” meet-and-greeters because if I went with them, I would not have met Beatrice. Not being religious doesn’t stop one from feeling that there’s more to the world than what you can see, hear or touch.
And that gave me pause, because I had two more very special bands to deliver. Bands that designed themselves a decade ago for people I still hadn’t met. Who could they be? Would I meet them on this trip?
I rolled over, sleeping soundly until Beatrice had to go. She packed, we hugged, cheek, cheek, and she left. Once she was gone, I took the ancient remedy for loneliness. I missed her already. And yet …
Our brief relationship was never intended to last. She had my email address, but I had not pressed her for hers. I did not expect to hear from her again. Although she had given me no material thing, she left me with a mighty gift, worth far more to me than any friendship band. She was a catalyst. She helped me change, and that change informed and altered the entire focus of my journey. It was magic! The artist, the mystic and the poet within me had all been loosed from a decade’s chains.
I made a pilgrimage to the former Durrell haunts. As a child I had enjoyed the books of Gerald Durrell, particularly when he wrote about his family in Corfu, and I had long nursed a desire to see the places he wrote about.
I had lunch at Kalami, the White House — an excellent Greek salad and a swirled-cream cappuccino. I could see why they loved this bay. The Durrells actually lived at three places on Corfu, and I wasn’t sure whether any of Gerald Durrell’s family yarns were set at the White House, but it certainly helped bring the stories to life. I later learned that the White House was actually one of Lawrence Durrell’s residences, so it probably never figured in his brother’s engaging yarns about life in pre-war Corfu. Damn.
The vista was expansive — Albania in the distance across the water — yet neatly enclosed by headlands and an island. The rocky shore invited exploration, as did all those mysterious bays and headlands. The bay had been spoilt a little by a rash of ugly villas, but children still dived from the rocks near the White House. Ancient olive trees still dotted the hillsides. The water and the sky were blue, the hillsides green, that green peculiar to the Mediterranean, blended from olive trees and cypresses and pines, and it burst above the shoreline, overhanging the bay. The shore was rocks, spotted with bathers.
Every now and then I found myself staring into the middle distance with a sappy smile. The interlude with Beatrice had left my morale sky high, but it had also left me even more dissatisfied with solo travel. To explore something myself was marvellous. To watch someone else see that something come to life would seem miraculous.
It was odd, because already on this journey I had gone out with dozens of people, had adventures with them, shared rooms and drinks with them, and not one of them had made such a distinct impression on me.
That morning I schlepped my pack up to the top floor of the “Astron” and found that my new room was in a sort of penthouse on top, with the rooftop forming a terrace. I had a small table and chair beside my door. It was rough but it was private — only the hotel staff and the few other residents of the roof came here.
That evening I sat on the terrace watching the sun set. I wished we’d known about this spot last night, as the only thing better than sitting here that warm evening with a drink and takeaway food, watching the sun turn to a red cinder and sink into the hills, would be doing the same thing with Beatrice.
There were no mosquitoes yet. The swifts were flying, busily eating bugs. The water out in the bay reflected the colours of the sky in shades of pastel. The water was almost as calm as a mill-pond, with just a few ripples to stop it from being completely boring. And then the fishing boats started to putter out for their night’s work. In the square in front of the hotel children were playing football. A woman walked past, her hair a flowing mane that reached her legs. The New Fortress crouched beyond the square like a sleepy lion, watching for invaders.
A ferry came in, lights ablaze. More fishing boats chugged out of the Old Port. The birds went to bed and the mosquitoes finally began to appear. The children left, shouting and kicking their ball along the coastal road towards the Old Fortress. But people were still laughing and talking down at the cafes.
I’d have loved to sit in down in that square and drink and talk for days on end, but unfortunately, I hadn’t found a new companion and I wasn’t even in the mood to start looking. Sitting, drinking and talking to myself would not be as much fun as talking to someone else.
And now my drink was finished — the last of the Limoncé. The food was finished, too. There was a bright star high in the west — Venus, perhaps. It was not a falling star but a setting one, yet I made a wish upon it for Beatrice. Perhaps the wish wouldn’t work, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
I was blasted awake by a ship’s horn. I hooked back my curtain and looked out. An enormous red Minoan Lines ferry was coming in, the dark plumes from its funnels making an ugly stain on the sky.
Apart from the smoke of the monstrous ferry the morning was perfect, cloudless and still. The swifts were back at work, darting everywhere. Pigeons were flying past, headed down to the square, where someone was presumably feeding them.
Grudgingly, I dug myself out of bed and had breakfast on the terrace. Then I made my way across town to the bus stop, around a shoulder of the New Fortress.
The Achilleion was built for Elizabeth, Empress of Austria around 1891 as a retreat from the court of the Hapsburgs. Few people had found much to praise in the building itself, but its grounds were lovely and had been adorned with statuary, some good, some remarkably ordinary, some simply remarkable. I found one bronze chap with an outstretched foot. His toes were bright: the rest of him was dark.
Beatrice had been dismissive of the Achilleion, but I enjoyed it. The marble statues could have done with a wash — they were still covered with at least one winter’s accumulation of moss — but with the sun shining and the birds singing, it was a cheerful place — as long as you stayed outside.
Inside the palace, things were less cheerful despite the twee cupids and other plaster art deco stuck to the walls. The decoration mixed heavy faux-Roman with airy Renaissance, to the advantage of neither. I dutifully trotted through the rooms in ten minutes then fled back into the gardens.
The place was notable for two statues of Achilles. One, commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm II, was a 15-metre monster showing the hero dressed anachronistically as a hoplite. It gazed arrogantly eastwards towards Troy. The other was heroically nude, sprawled on the ground attempting to draw an arrow from its ankle. Its tortured eyes were rolled up in its head.
In a porch I found busts of noted Greeks — Demosthenes, Sophocles and Plato among others. But Shakespeare was also there, looking remarkably Greek. Leda was there, showing considerably more than her bust and wearing a sappy expression while a god-swan nibbled at her neck.
Elizabeth also stood in her garden. Disappointingly, she was fully clothed, only her hands and head emerging from a prim dress.
I would have liked to walk down the hill through the shady “forest”, but that section was closed. I settled for lingering in a flower-hung arbour where a profusion of scents mingled in a heady cloud.
The views were magnificent. I could see Corfu town in the distance, with its two-humped Old Fortress. The Albanian hills rose from the water beyond it.
Impatient of waiting for the next bus, I walked back to town, down through streets that grew gradually less attractive. At first the way was lined with flowers and trees and the buildings were set back behind walls. Nearer town the shrubbery diminished, and the buildings began to loom over the street. Traffic boomed and tooted. There’s a lesson there.
I commandeered a table in the square near my hotel and spent a cheerful hour or so working my way through half a litre of retsina. When not working on my diary, I people-watched. As you do, in Corfu.
A girl walked past — waddled, really — wearing the briefest and tightest of cutaway short jeans, reduced almost to hot pants. She showed a prominent camel’s foot, but it was her gait that caught my eye. A few steps further on she stopped to adjust her pants in the classic “I must pee” position.
I watched couples walking past and I felt jealous. Two days ago, those couples were me!
A horse-faced and resplendently-bangled woman regaled her companion about her mishap the night before with an unexpectedly hirsute Corfiot. “My dear, it was ghastly!”
My wine was finished. It was time to see about the Old Fortress.
The Venetian Old Fortress was built in the middle of the 16th Century, on top of Byzantine foundations. Today it’s a picturesque ruin except for the Church of St George. The Church was built by the British in 1840 and looked like a bastardised Greco-Roman temple surmounted by a cross. It was simply ugly. Inside it had a notable iconostasis, well decorated with icons, but now it was mostly used as an art gallery.
I had fun poking around the Fortress. I found a mosaic of mating chickens and some Byzantine frescoes. A cannon recycled for use in protecting the end of a stone wall from careless drivers provided a momentary diversion, and I watched an enormous ferry go out. That would be me tomorrow.
Back at the hotel I did some washing, and while hanging it out I got an eyeful of a pair of brown buttocks and breasts sunning themselves just a few metres away. One of the girls from the next room, topless and with her bikini bottom well wedged to catch maximal sun. She was fast asleep. To save both of us embarrassment, I finished my work quietly and crept back to my room for my siesta.
After my siesta, I went out to check out the ferries, do some internet, and grocery shop. The wind slammed my door behind me. As I crossed the terrace the sun-lover was sitting bolt upright with her bikini top clapped over her breasts. I guess she’d been trying to get the front tanned too. I gave her a cheery wave on my way to the elevator.
I bought my ferry ticket, although on Monday only one ferry ran to Patra, and that left at 14:45. So much for my early start — it looked like I would be stopping in Patra tomorrow, since by the time the ferry got there nothing except throwing lots of money around would get me to Olympia that night. Not really an option.
Another night, another sunset, with even less cloud than yesterday. But my mood had turned black. I lay in bed watching the ball descend on another empty evening. I remembered Santorini sunsets in 2005, perched on the rim of the caldera — they were grand, but I saw only the first one alone. The others I shared with the other Kiwis and Australians the manager had put in the rooms around me. Wine and beer and conversation. Here, yesterday was a novelty and the memory of Beatrice was strong. Today she was more distant, less real.
She had awakened a hunger in me. But it was a hunger of the mind, not of the body. The value of a partner now seemed beyond price. I wanted a companion to share the journey. Preferably a woman, because that was the way my tastes ran, but I would take anyone interesting. Chance of finding such a companion? Negligible. I had never been one to walk into a group of strangers and make them into friends. It’s one thing to know how I could change a situation, quite another to make myself do what was necessary.
If Beatrice had not spoken up two days ago when we met in the street, I would have nodded hello and walked on by. Look what I would have lost! It’s hard for a man to broach such a topic with a woman, because he knows she’s asking herself, is he hitting on me? I hated doing such things, no matter how pure my motives.
I thought about some of the people I had met on this trip. Ilya on the “Rossiya”, Sean in Moscow, the girls in the hostel in Rome, and Pam, who chatted me up in Mergellina. All special in their own way. All bound upon their own errands, as I was on mine.
Next morning was spent at the Liston, facing the cricket ground. The coffee was mediocre, but it was a rite of Corfu and I had a morning to kill. I had errands to run, but there was no rush.
Last night was one of black depression. In the warmth and the light of morning I recovered my optimism. I was changing. The cage I built for myself had crumbled. I was beginning to become a participant again. I still had months to go, and two very special wristbands to give. And one of the bands was rose coral, the colour of desire. That band, surely, was for my lover. I no longer doubted that she was there, somewhere down the road. And the other band? The forest brown and brook? It was a small band, for a woman or a child, uncomplicated.
I would meet the people for whom I made those bands, or I would not. The designs were over a decade old, but if I chose to dabble in predestination there was no point in stopping halfway. That’s how magic works. There is no use-by date on something predestined. Normally a rationalist, I must confess to a streak of mysticism. I may have shaken off my parents’ religion but when something is pounded into you that young, you never really get free of it. I was a bag of disjointed beliefs, things encountered in my journey from the womb to this Corfu street corner that had somehow “stuck”. There was little point in trying to reconcile the pieces, for they all belonged to different puzzles.
A woman stood in the intersection, henna hair, tube top, short skirt, sandals with straps wound around her ankles. She was poised — even posed. She was striking and she knew it. She was looking for something. And now she was moving, weaving between tables and chairs onto the cricket ground, where she flung herself against a man and wound her arms around his neck. Here was a reunion of lovers. How long had they been apart? Probably no more than a few hours.
Two groups went by, four guys, four girls. Were they all together? The guys clowned with the guys, the girls giggled with the girls: the groups did not interact with each other.
I went downtown and looked for souvenirs. I found a silver pendant shaped like the famous Phaestos Disc. It was designed to snap in two, like those “heart” pendants lovers seem to like. In my room, later, I retired the 3-Kopeck coin I had been wearing around my neck and replaced it with the disc. It was a more appropriate talisman for my new hopes.
The ferry thrummed and hummed across the blue waters, effortlessly carrying its cargo and passengers with it. The waters should be wine-dark, but this was not a day for Homeric pretensions. The sea sparkled in the sun.
In a sunny corner of the weather deck, half a dozen pretty women gradually formed a colourful group, chattering in Russian. As the group grew it accreted a halo of attentive men.
One woman arrived wearing a transparent black, red and orange sarong over a black designer bikini. She looked like she was wreathed in fire and electricity. She was slim, blonde and elegant, with a dancer’s gait. Male vertebrae across the deck popped when she strutted to her place. She apparently liked the effect, because she immediately found cause to return to her cabin and then repeat the entrance before settling down in a seat.
Bored, I pulled out my current wristband, blue on blue, the colours of Greek waters, and went to work on it. Making a wristband is a quiet occupation but it involves a lot of arm waving. It caught the attention of the ladies. Over the course of an hour they migrated my way. In the end, two were camped on the seat across from me — one with her long brown legs stretched out centimetres from my ankles — and the others were in the adjacent bay, lined up along the back of the seat like ducks at a carnival.
They chattered away among themselves, but it was more than half a farce. I caught them out looking, often enough to know what they were really up to. They were mesmerised by the growth of the band. Their eyes devoured it. The fascination was palpable.
But it was the band that interested them. I was nothing, merely the matrix upon which this exotic flower was blooming. I waited, but none of them spoke to me. And I was in a fey mood. I refused to be the ice breaker in this Russian frieze. I didn’t really want anything from them. They were eye-candy, already married to fat, balding Greek men.
The ferry finished negotiating a passage between islands and turned towards Patra. The sun was sinking, and the turn brought the sunlight crashing into my lap like a furnace. I gathered my things and moved several bays forward.
A few minutes later I looked up. The group had dispersed, except for the dancer and a friend. Even then they stood and left, passing me a metre away with scarcely a glance. I couldn’t help myself: I watched the dancer recede. She was elegant from any angle.
The boat docked and passengers surged down several flights of stairs to reach the exit. She of the dancer’s walk was wrestling an enormous case, a gazelle carrying a hippo. She was causing a traffic jam. In a random act of kindness, I took it from her and carried it down to the exit level. And she thanked me, most sincerely, in heavily accented English. Up close and in the warmth of that smile I nearly repented of my fey mood. At the bottom of the stairs I deposited the case, smiled, and walked away forever.
If only they’d known how easy it would be to have a band of their own! If they had spoken to me, I would have shown them my cache of completed bands and let them select from it. For the mere asking, they could even have had the one they had watched me make. I finished it before the ferry docked. And it would be a fair trade: they had admired the band and I had admired them.
We live in a mercenary era. Perhaps they thought I would demand money. Perhaps it just never occurred to them to ask. Whatever their reason, they missed out on something good. And so, perhaps, did I.
But they were the greater losers — for they took away nothing, but I took away a valuable lesson. Asking is free. Ask freely. You may be refused, but then, what have you lost?
Methoni daysI was up early in order to catch the first bus to Pyrgos. At Pyrgos, I had just time to buy a ticket for the Olympia bus. And so, five years later, I found myself back in Olympia.
In 2002 it had rained on me here. It had rained with a dreary persistence that washed all pleasure from the business of seeing Olympia.
It was different in the warmth and bright sunshine; smaller, somehow, even though I could see more of it at once. Perhaps it was because there was so much more to see?
I hit the high notes: the temple of Zeus, the Stadium, the workshops. Later I went to the Museum. But without the rain to make it challenging, it was actually pretty boring. I soon found myself sitting on a battered block of stone, more interested in the activity around me than the ruins.
On every side herds of tourists grazed, shepherded by their guides. The guides expounded at length, attempting to build a coherent picture of ancient Olympia in the incoherent minds of their charges.
A nearby stub of column, topped by a broken ionic capital, got far more than its share of attention. The tourists loved photographing each other standing beside it.
But not all the dead bulbs were in the tour groups. A couple of Americans ambled past the Philippeion, a tholos dating back to Phillip II. “I guess it’s kind of circular,” observed one. His friend eyed the ruin and nodded. They were standing next to an information board about the building but neither guy so much as glanced at it.
Faced with the reality of my internal changes, I was rethinking my route. I had planned to go back to Sparta and Kalamata. Neither now held much interest for me. So how about making a run for Kyparissia tomorrow and spending a week on the coast? Pylos again, or Methoni. I could start working on my tan.
If I went to Methoni instead of Pylos I could potentially save money by using a local beach most days instead of bussing out to the beaches around the bay.
Methoni seemed the best bet in order to meet people. I needed to talk to people. Not only as an aid to self-improvement but because now I wanted to. Pylos was about sitting in the square drinking — but people were often more open to new contacts on the beach, and sunshine was cheaper than wine.
I had been happy poking around alone in ruins before Beatrice showed me how much fun even everyday things can be, in the right company.
That was the rub, of course: finding the right people. I was unlikely to find a travelling companion, but by staying in one place for a few days and drinking and going to the beach, I would have a chance of meeting people heading in roughly the same direction who I might meet again further down the road. Familiar faces in strange places. I’d hoped to get this working in Italy but my course there was too eclectic. I had to loop back to Naples before I met up with any previous acquaintances.
Age was an issue. It was possible to make friends with an intelligent person half my age or less, but they were so energetic and — too often — shallow, so that no matter how intelligent, such relationships were unsatisfying. Although a decade younger than me, Beatrice had a well of personal experience that was effectively deeper than my own because of her greater social engagement. I wanted more of that.
It was settled. Whether I went to Pylos or Methoni, the sun-seeking relaxation leg of my trip started here.
On the Kyparissia bus I met Joe from Idaho and Cliff from Philadelphia. We chatted the trip away. Joe was an archaeology student who had worked several weeks at the Hora Museum on some 20,000 fresco fragments stored in the basement. They teamed up in Rome and were hiring a car in Kalamata to pick up Joe’s pack in Pylos then head towards Athens where they’d fly to İstanbul. I told them about the dramatic mountain road to Sparta.
Talking to them did remind me that my plan to build a circle of friends to meet up with down the road faced one hurdle, namely rate of travel. By the time I reached İstanbul Joe and Cliff would be long gone home.
Because I had the time, my own progress on this trip was relatively glacial. Most people had only a few weeks and were either moving much faster than me or were not moving at all. The movers left me far behind, although in the short term I might catch up with some.
But I would hopefully also run into people taking the whole summer, which would put them on a similar time footing even though I would be continuing into autumn and winter.
At Pylos I changed for Methoni. Methoni, when I got there, was an endless main street baking in the sun. I walked down it, looking for a nice place in my price range. I finally found one that was just a little expensive, but which gave me a substantial discount when I mentioned I was planning on staying a week. Methoni was still at the very beginning of its season, so a longish stay was worth quite a lot to them.
When I went down to the beach it was everything I dreamed of, except for the lack of people. A few families. A couple of pretty girls in string bikinis doing dry-land surfing near the campground who may have been backpackers. An overweight woman wearing a “bikini” made from a black lace bra and horrid white panties slouching on a lump of concrete and smoking. A couple of old men in lumpy speedos. It might get crowded in summer, but this obviously doesn’t qualify as summer yet!
The beach itself was a curve of white sand. At one end was a ruinous castle. The other end petered out in houses and cliffs.
Back in my room for my siesta, I lay there looking at the ceiling. “Something to read would be nice. But I doubt there’s an English-language page for sale anywhere here,” I wrote in my diary.
Later I went out to look over the town. I bought sunscreen and insect repellent. I found an absurdly colourful towel, displaying a doleful dog wearing a top hat and spectacles. Behind this vision a spotted dog bounced after a soccer ball. The towel was long and wide, not too heavy, and was cheap. I could use it for my beach days in Greece and Turkey and toss it away when those days were over.
Best of all, punch me in the snout and call me Popeye — the newsagent sold English language books and papers! I bought Michael Crichton’s Timeline. Now I would have something to read while lying on my absurd towel waiting for interesting people to stroll by.
What to do about the contents of my money belt? I couldn’t wear the belt in the water and daren’t leave it in my bag on the beach, but no hotel room is a haven for valuables. The landlady held my Passport but entrusting her with my money and cards too would be foolish.
In the end I cut up an opaque plastic bag and enclosed bundles of money in two separate packages. These I taped to the backs of separate drawers in the cupboard unit. Someone pulling drawers all the way out would find one bundle but might also stop there, thinking they had the lot. I put my clothes in the drawers and arranged my “kitchen” gear on the shelf above. It was the best security I could contrive.
My rule was, nothing went to the beach that couldn’t be readily replaced. I carried only enough money for each day.
Later I wandered back down to the beach and followed it away from the castle. I came to some rocks that poked out into the bay. Standing on the rocks, far from human ears, I spoke my position to the sea. I was tired of being alone. I needed a lover, a partner, a companion. But where could I find one? It was too late. Or was it? I wasn’t dead yet. I could change. It was just hard. And frightening.
There was no answer, just the rush of the sea. Who was I speaking to anyway?
Walking back, I passed a pub where backpacker-looking types were hanging out. I didn’t go in, but I earmarked it for tomorrow night.
In the morning I made my way down to the beach and selected a nice spot, near a couple of trees that would give shade later. My towel I arranged bright side down. I slathered sunscreen on the parts of me that hadn’t had much sun until now. I had my MP3 player, my book, and my current friendship band to keep me entertained. I had water and sandwiches to keep me from hunger and thirst. I had an old pair of jandals to protect my feet from the sand. I had everything I needed. The rest was in the lap of the gods.
People wandered by: local kids, old couples. A woman in a blue bikini appeared and set up camp nearby, but nearer to the water. A family took over the patch near the shower, settling down in a practiced way that suggested they had already been here several days.
And so the day passed. I finished the friendship band and decided it was time to make an extra wide one for myself — 14 strands. I selected the colours, knotted the end, and began. I worked at it slowly and carefully. There was no hurry about this. I wanted it to be perfect.
I didn’t want to get too badly sunburned, so I didn’t stay in the sun long. I wanted to stay on the beach but when I sought shade, I found that the trees had ants and twigs around their bases; so at lunchtime I went back to my room for an early siesta instead.
My first thought was to check my money caches. I pulled out the drawers. The caches were gone!
I checked the drawer underneath. Nothing.
Desperate now, I pulled all the drawers out. There were the missing caches. Whew! They had dropped off their perches and fallen all the way to the floor.
I reattached them — using staples this time.
In the evening I sought out a nice taverna. Greek salad and retsina — my favourite meal. Cheap, healthy and tasty.
There was an old British couple at the next table, and we chatted amiably. Alan told me there was internet in the pub. So now I had another reason to go there. Alan and his wife had spent five weeks here and were going home on Sunday. They wanted to see New Zealand. I gave them the best advice I could about seeing NZ with a campervan, their preferred mode of transport.
After my walk, I checked out the pub and there was indeed internet there, a couple of shaky old computers with a slow connection. Enough for email.
The pub was run by Hercules and Monika, who between them shared two golden hearts. Hercules was a gentle giant with a shaven head, Monika a ravishing blonde with a smile that would melt Greenland. Their open-hearted and open-handed welcome turned a mere watering hole into a home away from home. After that first visit for the internet, I went to the pub every night for the atmosphere. Most of the clientele was local kids, interspersed with backpackers, almost all of who were also young. Sometimes I talked to people at the next table, but mostly I sat and watched and listened. I stretched out my drinks, a couple of bottles of Mythos, or else a Mythos and a couple of glasses of orange juice, per night. From time to time Monika would bring me a free drink for no obvious reason.
That became the pattern of my days. In the morning I would go to what quickly became “my” spot on the beach. As my tan developed, I spent longer and longer there. Soon I was able to stay until the shade of the trees reached me, after which I could stay as long as I liked.
In the afternoon I would go back to the coolness of my room for a siesta. Then I would find a place to eat. Then I would walk. Then I would go to the pub.
The beach and its denizens were the core of my existence during this time. I had my favourites.
I found myself admiring one woman who passed majestically along the shore like a ship under full sail, walking with a stately dignity rarely seen in youth. She had to be at least sixty, unless her hubby had married a much younger woman. But she looked good, full-figured rather than overblown — broad hips, narrow waist, pot belly and deep breasts. Her dignified carriage was the best thing of all — it was a simple pleasure watching her walk by. All her mass moved in harmony.
I was also impressed by the tall, slender blonde who decided her orange bikini bottom was not right. She picked up a black G-string in one hand, hooked thumbs over the waist of the bikini, and — sat down. Somewhere in that motion the bikini came off, because as she touched down, she dropped an orange rag. In the same instant the G-string went up her legs. With a wriggle she stood up, wearing the G-string as if it had been there all day beneath the bikini. If I hadn’t been watching at the instant that she sat down I wouldn’t have seen a thing.
I was particularly attracted by what I took to be a local woman shepherding two kids. I thought they were hers at first, but the elder boy kept calling her “Katerina”, so I thought she was babysitting her sister’s kids.
After a day or so I broke the ice with her. Pietro, the younger boy, was being a baby about going into the water again, which gave me the chance to interject a humorous remark. She smiled and responded kindly, though I kept the conversation short. She spoke excellent English! Her voice was well modulated except when she raised it to squawk at her two charges. She was Italian and not a local after all. Pietro was her own child. Although she was sweet, the interest clearly wasn’t reciprocal, so I didn’t make a nuisance of myself.
The local kids were often out in force. The girls were nice to watch and didn’t cause a nuisance, but the boys’ soccer games were annoying as they intruded where people — me, damnit! — were trying to sunbathe instead of where there was nobody to disturb.
Every now and then I gave away a friendship band. People couldn’t believe I was giving them away for free. One German woman came close to offending me by trying to insist on paying for hers. She couldn’t believe that the band was free and that I simply wasn’t going to accept any money for it. I told her as I told them all, if you want to pay for the band, then somewhere down the road, do someone a favour. And I meant it. I had thought my soul was badly off, but how sad it must be to be unable even to gracefully accept a freely given gift. The bands meant little to me. I’d had my fun from them while making them, and I took pleasure in giving them away to people who wanted them. To accept money would soil that experience.
I wasn’t being altruistic. Apart from refusing monetary payment, I was firm on two other points: I gave one band to a customer, and I gave it to them personally. By giving the band to them I got to enjoy their pleasure, and that was in itself a very satisfactory form of payment.
Viewed pragmatically, the bands made a handy ice-breaker, and that was how I used them.
Nobody showed any interest in the two “special” bands.
One day when the afternoon was breezy and not too hot for once, I had a look around Methoni Castle. It was value for money, since it was free, but it was also a splendid place to wander. I crossed paths with a German couple. Carrying a child on one hip, she was still making better time than him — his eye was glued to a video camera. “I’ll see it when we get home” seemed to be his motto.
Each morning I woke and saw the same room I saw yesterday and would see again tomorrow. It was bliss after so many weeks in motion.
I finished my new personal wristband. Making a wish is pointless with a self-made band, but I felt I should do something significant when tying it on. Perhaps an oath to last while the band lasted, something like “Be honest, be brave, be true to yourself, and be true to others.” Trite, but it encapsulated what I was trying to do and to become. Then I’d be reminded of my goals each time I looked at the band. And that is just what I did.
Saturday night in Methoni. Not exactly a wild and crazy place or a big city. So many local kids dressed to the nines — many stunning — where are they all going? To visit friends, by the look of it. They use the pub as a meeting point then head off. Perhaps they’re partying. I remember being that age. So long ago! Who was that kid?
But I was never at ease at parties. Or pubs. I went to be with friends — or people I wanted to be friends with. Wrong reason. The only good reason to do anything is because it’s what you want to be doing at that moment. Of course, there are often compelling reasons to do other things, such as work or laundry. Hedonism is empty. Unless done for the right reasons [raises mug] cheers!
Tonight, I am alone but not lonely. Perhaps I am pissed. [Ponders.] Definitely pissed.
Mosquito on the table — 1.5 cm long and massive to match — a real monster of mozzie kind. No wonder they hurt when they get you!
Where is the loo?
Greek dancing on the TV — the ladies in full traditional dress, impeccably turned out; and then the men arrive in white shirts and assorted types of trousers — from black to grey to jeans.
Travellers at the next table — two Swedish girls with an American accent, and four Canadian guys. I recognise the girls — they came upstairs and used another PC while I was doing my email. Conversation shallow, lots of giggling, but they all seem to be enjoying it.
I should talk to them. But we have so little in common.
Another free beer. Looks like a late night. But the usual problem presents itself — where is the loo? Can I go look for it without losing my drink? Such is the deep issue that is gradually taking possession of me.
The conversation at the next table is languishing a bit — the boys have lost a lot of their more boisterous edge and the conversation is becoming a little more serious — discussion of places to go and things to do.
Have I lost it? I listened for an entry point in the conversation but never found one. Perhaps if the boys had more neurons or the girls had voices with more than one string? I am used to women who have learned to modulate their voices. These girls have thin voices, sweet enough but with no depth.
The next night the group was there again, and I did speak to them. We had nothing in common.
The old lady wasn’t around when I was ready to check out, but after a certain amount of discussion with the old man camped in a chair outside, and with translation help through a woman from the shop across the way, I paid and got my Passport out of hock. In the end I got to the bus stop about a minute before the bus arrived. But I was on my way.
My decision as to how I was going to get to Crete was made at Pylos. I got there just in time to buy a ticket on an Athens bus. I‘d originally planned to take a ferry from Kalamata to Kissamos, but those ferries weren’t running.
Trite philosophical musings on the bus:
Communication is life. Death is an unsent letter, an unread poem, or silent lips.
Live and Love are but one letter apart. Marrying the lingam of life to the yoni of love creates happiness.
The bus pulled in for lunch at an eatery right on the edge of the Corinth Canal, so I had time to walk out on a bridge and have a good look at the Canal. I had wanted to do this while in Corinth in 2005 but didn’t get around to it.
At Athens there was still plenty of the day left, so I bought my ferry ticket and a map and set forth to explore the Hill of Wolves, which I had never managed to get around to on previous trips to Athens.
For some reason I carried my pack on my back instead of finding a kindly place to watch over it. It did make for a more challenging climb, as Lykovikkos was not a large eminence as such things go. But I made it to the top, where there were grand views over Athens. The day was clear by the standards of modern Athens. I could see all the way down to the bay of Phaleron, with Piraeus hulking hazily to its right.
I wanted to celebrate with a coffee at the top but couldn’t get the attention of the waiters at the overpriced café there. Discussion of this phenomenon with the only other customers, a family a sitting couple of tables away, revealed that they had similar problems getting served by the seriously under-worked waiters. They had been forced to practically hijack one of them, cornering him so he couldn’t bustle away. Their orders then took a long time to arrive. I decided that at the prices this place charged for its coffee, it wasn’t worth the effort, and I departed with thirst unslaked and wallet intact.
I galloped off the ferry at Souda and quickly found a bus to take me into Hania. I walked down through the town towards the fortress. In Theotokopoulou I was hailed by a woman sitting outside a domatia. Apartment with kitchen, huge beds, balcony — done! No sea view — or rather, a glimpse at the end of the street, but the value of a sea view was overrated anyway. I liked the view to the street — ideal for people-watching. That balcony would get used!
I went for a walk to find breakfast. I met four young Americans I’d talked to on the ferry as I came down the waterfront. They were running with a mob, chasing rumours of places with vacancies. They shouldn’t have any trouble getting something if rooms like mine were going at half price.
Later I got bored with exploring and window shopping and went down to the crowded New Town beach. I filtered through the forest of umbrellas to the only sizeable patch of empty sand. Good people-watching and there was a sandy bottom under the waterline. I spread my towel and settled in to mentally kick my own bum.
I pondered what went wrong with the Americans. They were young and shallow but nice enough. When I ran into them this morning, I had meant to pass on my view of the room for rent market to them — being positive and helpful — but instead I went into a performance about the amazing deal I’d found. Where did that come from? Smart. Now instead of four casual acquaintances in Hania I had four people who would probably cross the street to avoid me.
I had meant to say, “I found a cheap room; I think the season is slow — bargain hard and you’ll probably get something good for a song.” What came out was a gloating “€25 apartment, wow!” and an operatic gnawing of my knuckle — to people who still hadn’t found their own rooms. What an arsehole!
It was an automatic defence mechanism, honed through years of rejecting others before they could reject me. See, you can’t hurt me if I’ve already rejected you.
I needed to dismantle that defence. That frightened me, because without it I would most assuredly get hurt. But it was already hurting me more than it helped, so it must go. If I didn’t risk getting hurt, I would never have the opportunity to be loved.
If I ran into the Americans again, I owed them an apology.
I decided I must start saying kalimera or yasas to the people at tavernae and restaurants. I normally said “yes” to start anyway — surely it wouldn’t be hard to change this to “yasas”.
Later, sitting on a bench by the port I had an odd sense of expectation, as if something was going to happen. But what? Almost certainly nothing. It was the wine and the beauty. It was all the couples, while I was alone.
Yes, alone. Not solo. What was their secret? Was it just that they were better human beings? Then I must become a better human being. Fifty years of dead weight held me back.
Two girls wandered past. One cuddled a puppy. Embarrassed, they exchanged a shy “yasas” with the maître d’ of the nearest restaurant. Lesson? None that I could see, but it was a sweet moment amidst all this dreary musing
I must change. I must cast off a persona that I had worn for decades. I must become someone else. Not the semblance of someone else. Not acting like someone else. The change must be internal and real. It took me 20 years to become a dead end. It might take as long to discard that persona, but it must be done. Never mind the difficulty of the task. It was the hardest task, the greatest challenge that I had ever faced. But I could not afford to fail. Failure meant dying alone, years before I needed to, unloved, unmourned, and unmissed.
There was someone out there. I could sense her. I had to assume I would meet her. But the me that had left Australia would reject her. He must not meet her, nor her meet him
But he was logical, coherent and whole. He developed organically across decades. He had no future, but he would fight to survive. It’s one thing to acknowledge the need to change, quite another thing to initiate and carry through that change against determined resistance.
Resistance was death. Failure was death. And change was a sort of death, for the old me must perish if I was to change.
I thought I would sit out on my balcony. But the balconies I could see were all occupied by other sad, solitary males. They were a dour lot. I might be a sad, solitary male but did I want to place myself in such company? I didn’t think so! So I went indoors.
And my premonition? My sense of expectation? Nothing happened.
Satisfied in SfakiaThe bus dropped us at the top of the Xyloscalo at 8:40. It looked just as it had in 2002. Gingilos still smiled across the valley. The trees may have been taller. The other walkers seemed younger, but that was probably because I was older.
I said goodbye to Wu Yu Ting, the pretty Chinese girl who had been next to me on the bus. She had flashed a big smile when she claimed her seat, then sat there in demure silence until I broke the ice. She was a student in computer engineering studying in Switzerland and was taking every opportunity to go off and see Europe. She was only walking partway down the Gorge and would return to Hania on a later bus.
From here to the sea was 18 kilometres and I was going to walk it carrying all my gear. Fortunately, the walk was mostly downhill. I didn’t anticipate any problems.
The first part of the walk was down the switch-backing Xyloscalo, a steep and unrelenting slope with a cliff face on one side and a lot of empty air on the other. I bounded down in huge strides. My toes quickly packed themselves into the inadequate space in the front of my shoes and began to complain, but I ignored them.
The first designated Rest Area, Neroutsika, came too soon to be worth a stop. Further on, Riza Sikias was clogged by a tour group that was milling around, so I kept going. Fifty minutes into the walk I reached a rocky area which in 2002 had been dominated by hundreds of little rock cairns. There were only a few here now, but it was still early in the season. They would accumulate all summer, and sometime during winter all would be toppled. At any rate, this marked the end of the Xyloskalo and relief for my poor crushed toes. At Agios Nikolaos I stopped for a five-minute breather, an hour from the start.
Vrisi was next, then another descent. Two hours into the walk I came to the former village of Samaria, Osia Maria, Egyptian Mary. There was a church near here from which the Gorge took its name. This was my planned lunch spot. Although I had only been walking for two hours, it was five hours since I’d eaten breakfast.
There were many walkers at the village: eating, drinking, soaking their feet, talking about the walk. Today a goat was wandering around looking for trash. There was much consulting of guidebooks and “kri-kri,” was the common conclusion. I looked at the animal carefully. The coat was marked correctly but I couldn’t see the horns well. Still, if it wasn’t a kri-kri it was a close relative.
Two hours and fifty minutes into the walk I passed through Perdika without pausing. The walls began to close in. I was now entering the narrow section of the Gorge. An hour later the Gorge opened up again near Cristos. This was the last rest area. Four hours in, the cliffs reared up and closed tight around me and I came to the throat of the Gorge, the Iron Gates, three metres wide and a hundred tall. Wooden ramps crossed the tiny stream. There had been more water here in 2002.
Half an hour later I reached the official end of the Gorge, the exit booth where walkers must surrender the stubs of their passes. Just past the gate I found the same table with the same souvenir t-shirts that I had seen in 2002. In fact, I was wearing my 2002 souvenir, now rather the worse for wear. I was tempted to buy a replacement, but, foolishly, I didn’t.
Fifteen minutes more, and a blue line appeared beneath the blue sky. The sea. A fork in the path, each branch claiming to lead to the ferry. Both claims were correct. I turned right, the shorter route to the ferry office. Just on five hours after getting off the bus from Hania, I stood on the beach at Agia Roumeli.
Agia Roumeli was a pebble beach. Forty years ago the caves at one end were a hippy hangout. The town had since surrendered to commercialism, pandering to the hordes that walk the Gorge. Most people arrive by ferry to walk up to the Iron Gates — doing the Gorge the “Easy Way”.
I bought my ferry ticket, rented a sun bed, ordered a retsina and settled in to wait.
When I pulled off my shoes and socks, the nails of my big toes were solid blue bruises. Shocked, I probed them. They felt squishy, but not loose, and they didn’t hurt. Still, the walk had obviously taken its toll. I tied my shoes to my pack and pulled out my jandals. I consoled myself with the thought that I wouldn’t need my shoes for the next week or so.
In 2002, the sea off Crete was dark as iron, Homer’s wine-dark sea; but today it was copper sulphate. The same big brown hills rolled down into the sea. The ferry cruised along the coast, stopping briefly at Loutro before pulling into Hora Sfakion, one of Crete’s under-discovered places.
There is a significant difference between “undiscovered” and “under-discovered”. An undiscovered place is little frequented because few people know about it. An under-discovered place may be very well known but is little-frequented because few people know — or few people care — about its attractions.
Hora Sfakion wanted desperately to be more “discovered” — it even had a website (www.sfakia-crete.com) — but although hundreds of people poured through every day, few stayed longer than it took to find a bus to take them elsewhere. There was nothing (as they saw it) to keep them here. They wanted to spend their limited time seeing Crete’s stunning array of major attractions — Minoan ruins, Greek ruins, Roman ruins, Samaria Gorge, the Dikteon Cave, Mount Ida — or partying in one of the resorts on the north coast where the major attractions were more easily accessible. Most were here on day trips.
Sfakia had its attractions — walks in lesser gorges, hills to climb, several beaches within easy walking distance — and almost anywhere else in the world they would have assured it of an abundant supply of visitors. But not on Crete. The town had nothing to offer the average tourist that they couldn’t get elsewhere — they thought. It received the run-off from Samaria Gorge and had to be content with that.
But for my purposes it was ideal. Two of the nearby beaches were nudist beaches, where I could pursue the perfect tan. The daily torrents of transients meant that there were a lot of eateries with a lot of competition between them, keeping prices down. The comparative dearth of people staying in town meant that even in high season there were always plenty of vacant rooms, making bargains easy to find. And except when a ferry was “in”, the town was quiet and uncrowded.
Seen from the sea, Hora Sfakion was a sparse cascade of white concrete blocks spilling diagonally down a hillside. The town beach was a white hairline beneath a low cliff at left. The port and harbour hid behind breakwaters at centre. A ruined castle crowned a modest headland above the port at right, barely recognisable as the work of man rather than nature. More houses trailed off along the hills that rose above the castle. The town itself was a cluster of sugar cubes behind the harbour.
The harbour was split by the ferry dock. One half was the port where boats were taken in and out. It had ramps and its crane was new and powerful. The other half was a bowl rimmed by restaurants. Its main purpose was to be picturesque. It had no ramps and the crane was antique.
The ferry docked and dropped its ramp. Just as they had five years ago, the passengers spilled off the boat and poured up the hill looking for the buses. I watched them go. I was in no rush. This time I was staying here.
I walked up through the town to Stavris Rooms, with whom I had made an internet reservation. Stavris was an ugly white concrete block with blue trimmings. My corner room with en suite, balcony and sea view was inexpensive. It had a genuine double bed, unusual in these parts where a “double” room usually meant two single beds pushed together — alas that the extra capacity would probably go unused unless I got lucky. This was an Eden and I wanted to be the snake, but I suspected I was destined to be disappointed. The room’s big drawback was that it had no air conditioning, forcing me to invite the world in for a look if I wanted to get enough of a breeze to make it tolerable.
The balcony was easily accessible from nearby rooftops, causing me some concern about security, but as it turned out my stay was untroubled by roof crawlers.
I dumped my bags and went back down into the town. A broad alley led down to the waterfront. There was a small but diversely stocked supermarket at the bottom of the hill. Down on the waterfront, a row of little shops sold pretty much everything that a sun seeker might desire.
Opposite the shops was a ragged array of tables and chairs stretching for a hundred metres along a low wall overlooking the harbour. This was the main outdoors dining area. There were other places to eat in town, but the action centred on the waterfront. Apart from the pretty view across the harbour, it was conveniently sited to catch the rumbling tummies walking off the ferries.
I captured a table and ordered a cappuccino. I was “home” for the next week, with an optional additional week if I liked the place. Over dinner, I worked on my diary.
I’m pissed. A bottle of retsina at the end of the long walk through Samaria Gorge, another bottle with dinner, and then about 200mL of fiery raki to wash dinner down — if I don’t wake up with a hangover it will prove there is no God, for surely, I have sinned.
In the meantime I feel very cheerful. For I have watched a mysterious, solemn, solitary blonde woman in a long black dress wander the ramparts of the port. I have watched an explosion of fish learning to fly in order to avoid a sea otter. I have been attended by three cats attempting to cadge a bite of my salad.
I have descended through an astonishingly beautiful gorge to an astonishingly banal beach to catch a ferry to get here. At the beach I was amused by a girl with perfect complexion who had inexplicably lost her bikini top — alas, to steal from Robert Heinlein, she was “still a boy”. I have walked through stores that a shoplifter would adore, but when the venue for my evening meal apologetically returned an extra 10¢ change because they had no 10¢ piece, I could not resist providing them with the missing coin. This is an honest town. There aren’t even any beggars.
I paid for the retsina, but the glass of raki was an after-dinner gift from the establishment.
Mercifully, I had no hangover when I set out along the road to explore the beaches west of town. I found a shortcut from the town up to the road, but after that there was no option but to walk the edge of the road. There was little traffic and I always had plenty of warning of an approaching car or truck. I had also started early enough so that there were still pools of shade here and there, though they were shrinking rapidly. The road itself was rough and dusty, its surface torn up preparatory to a widening program. On my left it met a slope cascading down to the sea. On my right it was often cut away into a ragged cliff, other times a mere continuation of the slope up from the sea.
I looked down on the town beach, Vrisi Beach, as I passed. It was a short arc of grey pebbles with a row of sun beds nestling beneath umbrellas. It looked cosy and inviting.
Here and there small flocks of goats sat in the shade by the road or browsed the scrappy vegetation on the hillsides and verges. Some sat calmly and watched me pass: others scrambled nervously out of my way. One flock went at a clopping run down an apparently vertical slope before clustering unharmed on a ledge fifty metres below me. How do they do that?
A big curve inland heralded access to Ilingas Beach. I looked down on the white hotel and a grey stone beach and decided to keep walking to see what was further along.
The first ferry of the day went by, bound for Hora Sfakion. It looked almost empty — at this time of day, there had been no time for people to complete the walk down Samaria Gorge.
Rounding a bend, I caught my first glimpse of Sweetwater Beach, a long white curve with what looked like a moored boat at the far end. A little further on, I found access via a rough stone path leading down along a cliff face. In fact it was part of the E4 walking track that ran the length of Crete. The route actually passed along Sweetwater beach then crossed the cliff-tops to Loutro.
I started down the path, but I was wearing jandals, and the first few metres of the E4 proved too much for the ancient contraptions. The inside thong of the right jandal came loose. I retreated to the road, where I improvised a temporary repair using a big safety pin from my wristband kit, but it was obviously not going to hold if I tried to continue down the trail. This ended today’s expedition. I turned back to town.
I met half a dozen cheerful English girls at the Ilingas turnoff on the way back. They were headed for the beach there. I had been tempted to salvage something from the wreck of my day by stopping there myself. But by the time I finished talking to them I thought it would look “suss” if I decided to invite myself down to the beach. I decided to settle for the town beach.
In town I found a replacement pair of jandals — €4, not a budget buster.
I was not game to lie on the pebbles at the town beach, so I rented a beach chair — actually two beach chairs and an umbrella — for the day. There was a family next door and beyond them more families and couples, so there was no shortage of opportunities to people watch. Further down the beach several women had formed a topless sunbathing colony.
I pondered the spare chair beside me and wondered if I could sublet it if the beach filled up. The beach concessions were run by the Three Brothers Restaurant atop the cliff behind me. They wouldn’t know.
I had a good day despite my early failure. The population of the beach changed regularly and there was always new eye candy to avert boredom. I read, listened to music, and worked on a wristband.
There were plastic kayaks available for rent, and I hired one for an hour to explore the bay. In the lower reaches of the cliffs was a metre-thick layer of coarse conglomerate that looked almost artificial, like Roman opus reticularum. Above that was lava. Here and there local collapses had created sea caves, but I was mindful of the mass of crumbling rock above them and didn’t approach too closely despite the low risk that they might fall just when I was there.
That night was sultry, and no trace of a breeze reached my room. I went back down to the beach to moon-bathe, the most effective way to cool down. I had the place to myself, although people were laughing and talking at the restaurant above me. A dunk in the water cooled me, and while lying on my towel drying, I stayed cool. The downside was some sort of insect with a fiery bite. Not many, but eventually they drove me off the beach. I realised much later that they were probably sand fleas, which stayed deep in the pebbles by day but came up at night to feast.
Car lights kept coming down the road above the cliffs. They would flare, then they would dim when the car was no longer pointing directly at me and would suddenly cut off when the car went behind the cliff line. More illumination came from the three quarters moon.
Pebbles rattled in the small waves. Gulls screamed. The dim sea stretched out towards Africa beyond the horizon. I laughed with contentment. I was where I needed to be, with nothing I needed to do.
I decided to wear my shoes to explore the path to Sweetwater beach. The path was easier after the first rough section that had slain my fragile footwear the day before. I came over the last hump and found Sweetwater stretching away in front of me.
It was a pebble beach, of course, about a kilometre long and curving gently around its bay until it lost itself in a jumble of huge boulders at the far end. The E4 went up the hill just before the boulders. Near that was the structure I had thought looked like a boat the day before. It was actually a small taverna, run by a local guy named George who came out on the boat each day. It was built out over the water on a concrete platform.
George also ran a small sun bed concession.
Some tamarisk trees huddled against the cliffs provided shade. They had been planted by George, taking advantage of Sweetwater Beach’s greatest feature, a table of fresh water that flowed down between the limestone layers in the hills and came up through the pebbles on the beach. The water was delicious and clean and ready to drink, requiring no filtering or treatment. Someone had dug a well beside a boulder, with a removable netting lid to prevent the goats from soiling it.
A few tents completed the picture. A small green tent was surrounded by a protecting wall. Beyond it was a large white tent. Further along was an orange tent occupied by a round-faced blonde woman who reminded me (in a good way) of those broad-buttocked, pendulous-breasted stone “mother goddesses” that may be found in some European museums. She was from Germany and came here for a month at about the same time every year, departing when the weather became oppressively hot.
I spent the day at Sweetwater. The white triangles I had acquired at Methoni turned pink, though not as pink as I’d hoped because I spent too much time under a shady tree. But it was a good day — and a good place, with plenty of room between the bodies and a balance of genders.
Every so often a group of E4 walkers would trudge along the beach, laden with gear. Some stopped and joined the sun worshippers. Some set up tents to camp here for the night
The beach population was mostly nude, but the taverna end always sported a few shy bodies. Everybody covered up when they went to the taverna to eat. Yes, people literally dressed for dinner, although the clothing was often no more than togs, bikini or sarong.
That evening in Hora Sfakion was a repeat of my first. I had salad with retsina, chased by raki. At the next table, a French group — Mum, Dad, two daughters, a boyfriend, a girl friend — sang sentimental songs. Behind me sat two Greek guys, probably locals, discussing something, eyes darting. Further away an old English couple chatted to the manager, who was seated at a table with more English tourists. The conversation was measured, considered, and slow-paced — which was not to say it was deep.
I had seen the sources of the voices that floated up over the balcony and although the French girls were attractive, together they formed a daunting group. There was nobody here for me. And so I must compose myself for another hot, lonely night. Perhaps another moon-bath?
In the warm darkness on the town beach I sought answers from the pregnant moon — without success. This night held no answers, it merely was. I should not be alone here — this moment was made for two.
Beatrice set me free, but Beatrice was not here, and would never be here. Who would carry on the work she started? Anybody? Nobody? Please let it be somebody.
Things bit me in the darkness, but tonight I didn’t care.
Now that I had seen Sweetwater and found it good, further exploration seemed unnecessary, but there was another nudist beach out to the east, so I resolved to find it. I climbed up past the castle then joined the road up to the cliff tops. The road on this side of town was more level and had not been torn up. Eventually I reached a sign advertising the naturist resort of Vritomartis and turned off down the access road. Where the road divided, the right branch going down to the gate of the resort, I took the branch that led off to the left and looped around its walls.
Filaki Beach was a beauty. It was smaller than Sweetwater but with a cliff and caves at one end (all-day shade), with waves on the beach at that end, a rock ledge in the middle, and a calm cove at the other end.
There was a taverna behind the beach and a sliding scale for rental of sun beds and umbrellas — days up to weeks. It was cheapest to rent your sun bed by the week.
At lunch time the waitress had spent five minutes chatting to an old couple, finally breaking off to bring out some completed dishes. I was still waiting to be asked for my order. In short, the service sucked. The waitress never said a word to me. Eventually I gave my order to the manager.
I later realised the true nature of the problem: I was a blow-in. Although it was open to all, the taverna was owned and run by Vritomartis, and they preferred to discourage riff-raff who weren’t staying at the resort. Filaki Beach was public so they couldn’t refuse access to it, but they did their best to make the place unwelcoming to strangers.
There was this to be said for lunch in a taverna above a nude beach — you can look up from your retsina to see a nude and spectacularly shaped woman climb from the foamy waves like Aphrodite and pick her way across wind-swept rocks.
I managed a few words with people on the beach, but they were overwhelmingly middle-aged German couples who had brought their cultural matrix with them. We had little in common and there was negligible chance of finding a travelling companion, or even someone just to fill my time in Sfakia.
I went back to the town beach the next day and thought of moving on. The nude beaches were good, but were just too hard to get to on foot in the heat. I was also tired of pebbles — not that I was likely to find any deserted sandy beaches here. I had talked to a few people, but had found little common ground.
Lying in bed in the heat that night, trying to muster the energy to pack, I realised that I really don’t want to leave yet. My tan was not complete. I was enervated from so many nights of broken sleep. I still needed more time for my bruised toes to finish healing, although the pebbles didn’t help that process. It would just be plain nice just to stay in one place for another week.
For several days I made no decision, which in itself was a decision of sorts. The days continued unseasonably hot and I decided to upgrade to an air-conditioned room. I lost my view, but gained a decent night’s sleep, which improved my temper if nothing else.
Each day I went to the town beach. The population changed as the day passed. In the morning were the tourists, flabby white bodies and red patches of sunburn. In the afternoon came the local school children, slender girls in flimsy bikinis and bony boys in beach shorts.
The town beach was not clothing-optional and its sun beds were expensive, and I didn’t like the attitude at Filaki; and so I ended up back on Sweetwater. The tents were still there, but the blonde German had been replaced by a brunette German and her daughters.
I found a tree — nearer the taverna than my last one — and settled into a routine. Walk out to the beach early, while the road had shade. Claim my tree. Read a book, listen to music, work on a wristband, and talk to my neighbours until lunch. Take lunch at George’s taverna, sometimes in company with whoever I’d just been talking to. Repeat the morning activities until the worst heat of the day was past. Return to Hora Sfakion in time for a rest before dinner. Have dinner above the harbour. Enjoy a restful sleep in my air-conditioned haven. Repeat until satiated.
One day I had lunch and conversation with a sweet Italian girl named Veronique. She had set up shop in front of me on the beach, so I had to pass her sun bed whenever I went down to cool off. I made a remark about how the water was just about perfect, she responded invitingly, and things went from there. She normally went to Filaki and had just come to Sweetwater for the day, so I settled for an afternoon of her company. I gave her a friendship band. I told her it was made on a beach in Melbourne. Actually, thinking about it later in the coolness of my room, I realised it was probably only started in Melbourne, and was actually completed at Methoni. Ah, well, I found out later that she’d fibbed to me too.
My nearest neighbours were two Austrian women, Ellie and Erika, who were also staying at Stavris. They drove out each day and re-erected a shelter that they collapsed each evening and ballasted with rocks to prevent it blowing away. They were about my age, chubby, grandmothers, hearty and friendly. Some days we formed a group for lunch. I gave them friendship bands.
The green tent with the stone wall around it was occupied by Kurt, German, lean, somewhat of a loner — like me. He had been everywhere. He hadn’t built the wall: nobody remembered who had. It was just there. Each year someone repaired it and camped in it. For it to survive the winter, presumably someone also used it then — which made sense as the winter winds could be biting even here, so close to Africa.
The German family were Angelika from Cologne and her daughters Djamila and Sheherazade. Sheherazade, in her mid-teens, had Downs Syndrome but Djamila, three years younger, was bright enough for both of them. Angelika was in her forties. I liked her very much and sensed a kindred spirit behind the language barrier — her English was workable but very limited. A divorcee, she wasn’t overly fond of Germany and recounted as an anecdote a remark made by Djamila one day when they were setting off on a holiday. The best thing about Germany, according to Djamila, was the airport as they were leaving. They travelled to various places, but Sweetwater was their favourite. Angelika picked a friendship band I had once made for myself.
A lean, white-haired guy started turning up on the boat every other day. He was too old to enjoy camping and too poor to come out on the boat every day. He claimed the next tree and so became my nearest neighbour. He was Bob, a Canadian from Ottawa, an old timer and something of a legend at Sweetwater. Once he had been the water hole guru, but now was content to just be. He had not come here for many years but, now in his 80s, he was back to see how it was keeping. He was full of yarns about the Sweetwater of long ago. I gave him a friendship band.
Then there was French Maureen and her husband. They were staying in Loutro and came out each day. I never learned her husband’s name: he was a cipher, a silent presence. Maureen made up for it. In her 70s, she looked like 60. She had an imperious air and many affected mannerisms, but she was genuine and honest for all of that. Maureen claimed one of my special bands — in fact she picked the passionate coralline one that I had thought might be for a lover. So much for mystic predestination.
Helle, Danish, arrived late. She was hearty and cynical by degrees, a few years younger than me, and she had no qualms about chatting me up in the taverna on her first day. She was camping on the beach and made a something of a point of looking me in the eye when mentioning the bottles of retsina she planned to bring back and chill in her newly-dug waterhole-fridge. “So tomorrow night could be interesting,” I told my diary.
These were the regulars, apart from George in the taverna. The rest of the people on the beach were a floating population of day-trippers, and most of them never got past being bodies and faces in the background of the experience.
There’s a bay somewhere, beneath a summer sun, backed by cliffs, embracing the sea, erupting with trees, spotted with wells. Shingle banks march into the waves. Sand drifts between the shingles. Blue chairs wait along the shore …
A little taverna rides the waves like a boat. Rickety tables and corded chairs huddle upon its deck. It’s quiet now, but in a few hours, it will bustle again with friends meeting, eating, laughing, and drinking. I remember being there — with you. It was only yesterday, but already it seems so long ago.
Down by the water your chair stands forlorn beneath its wilted umbrella. Water wells from the gravel around it like the tears from my eyes — sweet water, salt tears. You’re not here! You’ve gone to some other beach. What will you find? — A place beautiful but hollow and full of strangers.
Will you remember Sweetwater? Or is it just another beach in your collection, a place where you idled away a few hours and then left forever. A boy will catch your eye, a castle on a hill top, a deep and secret valley, and you will forget.
But Sweetwater remembers. Memory lies deep here. Minoans, Greeks and Romans all drank from these wells. Deep water, a shelving shore, sheltering cliffs — a secret haven, beyond price. Sweetwater remembers you — and so do I.
On Sunday there was no Sweetwater boat so many of the regulars wouldn’t be there — but lots of Greeks would be, with their boats. Filaki looked like the lesser evil.
I chose a nice sun bed near the water but had to move back a rank as it turned out the umbrellas nearest the water were reserved for the weekly rentals. Weekly rental was really only feasible for Vritomartis patrons, so this was just another way Vritomartis attempted to discriminate against the blow-ins.
Lunch was the usual circus at the taverna. The retsina was warm — again, and the service was slack — again. But they remembered that last time I emptied half the ice from the jug and put the bottle in it and this time they brought me half a jug of ice, so they weren’t totally hopeless.
A butterfly tried to drink my retsina — clinging to the edge of the glass and waving its proboscis over the rim. I wonder what it would have made of the liquid if it had actually managed to drink some.
A fly did get into the bottle. It drowned. How sad. With luck, the alcohol sanitised the corpse.
I gave myself a graphic demonstration of how fit I was becoming. I was lying full-length on the ground and decided to get up and go for a dip to cool off. I raised my shoulders, curled my back, planted a foot, and found myself standing. That was a stunt I used to pull without thinking 30 years ago. Then it got harder, even painful, and finally I stopped doing it. Now I pulled it off without thought and without effort, as if I was twenty and not approaching fifty.
I wouldn’t recover everything I had lost in the last thirty years — too many years, too much damage, and I didn’t have those youthful hormone levels driving me — but my body was remembering skills learned back then, and I was recovering the strength required to use those skills. For the rest I’d have to substitute new skills. It was comforting to see my body responding to the challenges this journey was throwing at it.
Sitting on a ledge above a terminal beach, watching the waves wash in, wash in, wash in, moving the pebbles but never changing the situation. There must be a lesson here for me, but I am too blind, or too blind drunk, to see it.
And so, in pastels and the soft susurrus of small waves, the end of another day in Paradise.
Lunch at Sweetwater. Was looking at the water below the taverna and wondering why a patch looked different. There’s a welling that must be a fountain of fresh water coming up through the seabed. If I went down there and stood in it, I could probably feel the force of it.
“One more week …”
… I said, and they brought me another beer! Oh, well, I guess I worked hard enough this afternoon to pay off the calories.
Pleased with my fitness, I decided to help it along. Each year Angelika and her family dug a small pool to rinse off in after swimming. I volunteered to help dig it. I hated useless exercise, but here was something that would be useful and would provide pleasure to some people I liked. As for me, I would get plenty of healthy exercise out of it.
It seemed that I was the first man on the beach ever to voluntarily get his hands dirty — the rest would just come up and try to supervise. One tried it on with me after I had dug a temporary drainage channel to lower the water level in the pool, telling us that if the sea got into the pool it would make the whole littoral salty. Faced with this nonsense, I tossed him my shovel and told him if he wanted to have a say in what we were doing, he should work at it. He had no answer to that. He didn’t help, but he did go away.
The whole edge of the beach got swamped by a slosh-over from a change of air pressure one day. The next morning the pools were all fresh and clean again — the fresh water forcing its way up had flushed them out. So much for our all-knowing would-be adviser.
I spent several days at the digging, working carefully, moving the excavated pebbles towards the water to protect the pool against big waves, creating a drainage canal — filled in with big pebbles to prevent waves from washing up it without hindering the outflow of water — and lining the edge of the pool with big rocks leaning outwards and against each other for strength. I made the pool large enough for three people to lie in it full length — the largest rinsing-off pool the Germans had ever seen, just out the reach of the waves at high water.
The tools for all this came from the big white tent, which belonged to a guy who had done a lot of work on the beach. I never saw him. There was no problem with borrowing the shovels and picks.
Later I dug a small drinking water hole a bit further up the beach, carefully bringing in very large rocks and burying them deeply. I ran a run-off drain to the rinsing-off pool. The result was a neat little well, but it was too shallow. The water never really stayed cool enough or fresh enough. It would do, at a pinch, but never really repaid the effort.
Bob watched all this activity critically. He pointed out that a big low-pressure system, which can arrive at any time of year, would bring the water right up the beach, swamp the pool and fill it with pebbles. The pool should be smaller, deeper and higher on the beach.
I razzed him. He never quite grasped the purpose of the pool, which had to be near the sea if it was to be convenient for rinsing off. It could certainly be swamped, and probably would be sooner or later. If it happened while I was here, well, I would just dig it out again when the sea receded. After I left — that was somebody else’s problem!
One afternoon early on was spent in reworking the pool to cope with the tides and the waves — the sea had carried away some of the shingle. Waves kept washing into the pool. I sacrificed almost a metre of the seaward edge to make a parapet — an outer wall (the original pool lining), an inner wall and a filling made up by digging the pool deeper and dumping the refuse between the walls. This stopped the erosion and also effectively moved the pool a metre further from the sea.
When I had completed the rough work, Djamila moved in to line the bottom with flat pebbles. The family used larger pebbles to make a spur from the pebble path that already led from their campsite to the sea.
I did my work well. Although the sea did indeed rise and flood the beach just after I left, photos on Flickr suggest that the pool survived the flood and was still in use at the end of July.
One night when I was wandering through town thinking uffish thoughts, I noticed an elegantly-dressed woman staring at me as I walked past her. She stared again later when I walked back, so I took the bull by the horns, walked up to her table and asked, “do I know you?”
She gave me a sickly smile and shook her head. Meanwhile I’d been studying her face. “No, I don’t think I do,” I said and walked away. People-watchers need to be a little discreet. This woman was downright clumsy.
I had been tempted to invite myself to sit down and say to her “so — tell me your life story” but just then I wasn’t in the mood for such games. Maybe I should have. Another time, maybe I would have.
Another evening I sat under the tamarisks at Stavris with the hotel manager Giorgios and a bottle of raki to say farewell to Elly and Erika on their last night. The locals distilled their own raki, and it was fierce stuff. The grandmothers popped up next morning chipper as ever for their drive to Iraklio. I rose rather later. Yes, I was out-drunk by a pair of grandmothers. I excused myself because I spotted them a bottle of retsina and four raki’s to their one beer each.
The German family went to town every few days. Once they stayed there longer than usual. Sheherazade had not been eating for three days, so she had been admitted to the hospital for observation. Fortunately, she responded to treatment. This was when I was finishing the pool.
When they returned, the family was delighted with their pool — except for Sheherazade, who squatted outside and screamed at it. But the pool was christened anyway, with a vengeance.
At Sweetwater or in Sfakia town, the sunsets were beautiful — lavender to the east, rose to the west, against a pastel blue sea and dark headlands. The sea grumbled and splashed in the rocks.
Several times during such sunsets I experienced those perfect moments when I was where I needed to be, when I needed to be there, with nothing left to do — except, inevitably, the laundry.
The beach was different without Ellie and Erika, but to balance that, I made closer contacts with other people on the beach. I sat one day with the German family and taught them how to make friendship bands.
I hadn’t any camping gear, but I felt that my Sweetwater experience would not be complete unless I spent at least a couple of nights on the beach. So towards the end of my time there I brought my sleeping bag and some food and did it. After dark I would carry one of the sun beds up the beach (out of reach of the sea) and sleep there. In the morning I would carry the sun bed back down to its normal position.
Sleeping on the pebbles was not an option, not only because they were hard but because of the sand fleas. Most people staying on the beach had tents with fly screens that zipped up at night and protected them from bloodthirsty crustaceans. Sleeping on the sun bed raised me out of their reach.
An email captures the mood of the moment.
I have come to a complete halt, dead in the water, drifting with the tide. Each day is Sweetwater Beach. Each night is Hora Sfakion. My tan is as near perfect as it is likely to get, but still I hit the pebbles each morning.
What happened?
Helle had her eye on me from the start. She was hearty and in her 40’s and looked good to me. She was a little shorter than me, which is always good. Her face looked a bit heavy and solemn until she smiled, which was like the sun bursting through. She smiled a lot. Her voice was rich and full, which always wins points with me. She had picked me up on her first day on the beach, inviting me to lunch, and we hit it off.
Her boyfriend, a superman by her descriptions of him, was back in Athens. She would re-join him in a week or so and they would go back to soggy Denmark where she had left her two children.
I helped her dig a small water hole for use as a fridge. We kept the alcohol there. We spent part of the day talking and sat together after dinner and got tipsy on the retsina she brought from town. I made the expected proposition, leaving her room for a graceful refusal, received just that, and after that our relationship went from strength to strength.
My instinct, honed by Australia’s blistering summers, was to lie in the shade of a tree; which helped Helle not at all, as to talk to me she would come and sit in the shade. She needed direct sun for her psoriasis. So we would borrow the German family’s inflatable water beds and paddle them out to a small mooring buoy, then float around the buoy for hours, using it as an anchor. My tan advanced by leaps and bounds. Much nonsense was talked during these sessions, while the sun bored its inexorable way into our brains. The water splashed over us and kept us cool until sunstroke threatened and our fingers were wrinkled like prunes. Then we would have lunch.
In the afternoons I would lie under my tree and talk to Bob, or whoever else was nearby if he wasn’t there that day. As the sun moved, I would move to stay with the shade. Sometimes Helle would come over and sit in the sun nearby.
I gave Helle her free choice of my remaining friendship bands and she took the third special band, the forest brook one that I thought would go to a friend. I agreed: it suited her. So — two out of those three special bands went to special people. Angelika had chosen a band I had made for myself, which was also special in its way. Three out of four?
No doubt people on the beach thought Helle and I were deep in sin, but there was both more and less here than met the eye. We each had something the other needed, and we traded it gladly and freely. The time we had together may have been brief, but it was gratifying.
I hope I helped make her time on the beach better. She certainly said so to me very sincerely on the last night when I was leaving the beach, and her body language had always said “welcome,” never “oh, all right.”
Within me, wounds healed up that had been raw and bleeding for decades. I was becoming whole again. Beatrice precipitated the crisis and Helle completed it. I became more assertive, less defensive. Breaking the ice with strangers became easier.
My last day on the beach was a day for hugs and farewells. I had stayed much longer than I had originally intended — three unforgettable weeks in which I did little and saw less. One day I’d walked to Loutro along the E4, but otherwise those three weeks were spent within a range two kilometres each side of Hora Sfakion, marked at one end by Filaki and at the other by Sweetwater.
Geographically minute, it was the emotional high point of my trip. The me who left Sfakia was not the me who arrived. That sad, lonely man had been swept away. I was still alone, still in search of a travelling companion, but I was no longer lonely.
But a bitter anger burned within me that I did not yet recognise. I would soon be brought face to face with it.
Around 9:30 the next morning I realised that the boat to Sweetwater would be leaving soon. I had no intention of taking it, but it was possible that Helle had come into town for provisions. If so, I might run into her. I had to go out sooner or later to buy breakfast and try to extract some money from the ATM, so it might as well be sooner rather than later.
I pulled some clothes on and wandered down to the waterfront. The Delfini was already at its mooring, but empty. Disconsolate, I headed up towards the ATM. The supermarket had some “subs” for sale outside and I decided one of those would make a good breakfast. I took my selection into the supermarket — and there was Helle.
So I got what I thought was one last walk with her, looking for rooms to let for tomorrow night, and we had coffee on the terrace outside the Stavris. Then I walked her down to the boat and clambered out on the rocks to finish my sub and watch the big ferry that had just docked — and to wave goodbye when the Delfini went by. George from the taverna at Sweetwater also caught my wave to Helle and clowned his own exuberant response. And so the Sweetwater chapter closed, as the Delfini foamed its way down the coast and vehicles rumbled off the big ferry.
Already I missed her. Not like Beatrice, not the burning need; but an absence of something, like a lost tooth. I’d needed Beatrice, I wanted Helle. My desire for companionship had only been confirmed by Helle, not assuaged — but I was also feeling more confident about approaching interesting-looking people.
I would also miss the sense of community, of belonging, that I found at Sweetwater. Few beaches had that. The place certainly brought things out in people that might otherwise go unseen.
Although she wasn’t due to leave until the day after tomorrow, today Helle had talked vaguely about maybe coming into town a night early. I gathered she was having issues with someone still on the beach. I had made a joke to her that if she did happen to come to town, I would be waiting by the dock with a bottle of retsina ready. We laughed.
Joke or not, late that afternoon I sat at the “O Faros” café bar waiting for the boat to come in, just in case. The place was too expensive, but the location was perfect and the retsina was cold.
The boat came and I didn’t see Helle, so I had wasted €5. Well, not exactly wasted. I could drink the expensive retsina.
And then Helle came! When she saw me, her smile came out, she trotted over eagerly, and it was just like before. We had dinner at the Three Brothers, then sweets afterward down by the waterfront. It was a splendid evening. The waning moon set, the merest sliver, lost in the gathering sunset. It was an evening for goodbyes. We looked up at the stars and tried to count them.
Around 8:30 on the morning of my departure, I sat on the terrace thinking of breakfast. I’d decided not to try to catch the 7:00 bus — the 11:00 service would be fine. I was awake in time for the early bus but just couldn’t face packing that early.
I used the time to try to clarify my feelings. Helle’s happiness had become important to me. I’d found myself humming Paul Kelly’s “From St Kilda to King’s Cross” while packing, before telling myself not to be silly. My feelings ran deeper than I wanted to admit, even to myself.
Helle saw me to the bus and waited till it departed. My last sight of her was a small sturdy figure musing upon an unfinished house beside the bus stop. Once again, I had lost someone who had become a comfortable part of me, a lens for my experiences and a companion in adventure.
The scenery from Sfakia to Vryses was spectacular, with the clouds kissing the peaks and the mountain flanks falling almost sheerly into deep valleys. We had several near misses with oncoming traffic. But I hardly noticed. My mind was filled with a somewhat sad face and a sober mouth that would suddenly blossom into a huge, infectious grin.
Island droppingThe sea was rough, and I didn’t sleep well. Sometime early in the morning, earlier than expected, the loudspeaker blurted something indistinct that sounded to me like “Karpathos”. Groggy, I gathered my baggage and stumbled off the bucking ferry, walking across a broad concrete apron. Waves were breaking right across the neck where it met the shore. The ferry completed loading. It departed.
I found a sign on the harbour building.
ΚΑΣΟΣ
Kasos? I got off at the wrong island!
It was not a total disaster. Although Kasos didn’t see a ferry every day, today it would see two. The LANE ferry would be along this afternoon. But my plans for the day were in tatters. Now I would have to cool my heels here for 12 hours, the first several of which would be spent waiting for things to open.
I found a niche away from the waterfront where there was less wind. Staring across from my original wooden perch to the welcoming sign of the Hotel Anagennisis was becoming a torment. I didn’t need a hotel. It would be wasted money, just a place to hide for a few hours.
I wish I could say I met this setback with equanimity, but the truth is, once I verified the LANE ferry times in my notes, I cursed and swore and kicked my pack, and then I broke down and I cried. I had left Sweetwater, Sfakia, and Helle to strand myself on a windblown backwater that offered me nothing of interest! Dumb, dumb, dumb!
It did no good to remind myself that I’d had enough of Sweetwater and Sfakia and that Helle was leaving Sfakia today anyway. The child in my head only knew that this time yesterday I was in a comfortable room that had been my home for weeks, and I had a friend at hand with whom I could discuss anything at all. Today I was huddled in a forsaken, grubby corner with no place to call home and no friends within reach. I was intolerably lonely and miserable.
A café opened, while I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself. I scurried inside and ordered a cappuccino. But I was still not happy. The Kasiot peasant at the next table had the bad habit of “tching” to himself, sucking his lips and staring at my Pocket PC. It was rude, distracting and irritating. But the place was a step up from the grubby alcove, and my morale improved a little. I made the coffee last. Things improved more once the lip-sucker left.
I was tempted to cut out my planned stay in Karpathos and run for Rhodes. The weather was definitely unpleasant for beach-going. I doubted the beaches of southern Karpathos, a dozen kilometres away, were any better off than the Kasos waterfront. The waves were still breaking halfway across the dock.
I tried to preserve a little optimism. If it got any worse the ferry might be unable to dock, and I might even be stuck here. That would be bad.
I caved in and went over to the Anagennisis to ask how much for a single room. Twenty minutes later I gave up waiting at the unattended desk and left, returning to my original niche to think things through.
If I went to Karpathos, I would be stuck there at least three nights. I would arrive in Rhodes after sunset for one night and then go through Marmaris the next day, to Pamukkale.
If I went to Rhodes today, I’d be there late tonight and could go through to Marmaris tomorrow. I’d be just five days behind my original itinerary. Tempting.
When the ticket office opened, I bought a deck class ticket to Rhodes. Karpathos was just beaches to me. I’d already spent two weeks longer than planned in Sfakia. I’d had enough of beaches.
Helle was diminishing to a pleasant ache in my heart — becoming a source of wistful smiles, not tears. Instead I flung myself into the excitement of being on the move again. Over the course of several hours I began to feel much more positive.
I found an internet place. I had advertised on a web site for travel companions, age unspecified, gender unspecified. I found two replies, both from women; but neither seemed likely to work out as our timetables didn’t match well. One sounded interesting but she had only one week. Maybe another year, if she was still interested.
The ferry arrived late. It took two tries before the vessel achieved an acceptable docking, with a horrible grinding of its ramp against the concrete each time. It looked OK the first time, but then the boat shifted, and the ramp moved — perhaps an anchor had dragged. They cast off, manoeuvred, and tried again, dropping the anchors wider apart.
Half the population of the town was on hand to watch. Every time a vehicle got off safely — some grinding their bumpers and chassis on the ramp — they applauded. Each time foot passengers — relatives and friends — appeared, they surged forward to meet them, ignoring the shouts of “pericolo!” from the controllers.
I was afraid I would miss the boat when it gave up on the first docking attempt, and then when nobody was being allowed to board. Then I was afraid it would cast off, raise the ramp and sail, stranding me on Kasos for the next three days. But I managed to make myself hang back until boarding was allowed. Several Greeks had already flung themselves aboard in the lulls between vehicles. Mostly they soon reappeared, clutching parcels and boxes and bags presumably containing priceless artefacts and life-saving medical supplies, as surely only such things could justify the risk to life and limb.
Once aboard, I asked Reception how much to upgrade from deck class to an “air seat” (Pullman). “Take it, it’s free!” So I took one.
We were very late in to Rhodes. I got off the boat about 03:20 and walked into town. The only things open were what you’d expect at that time of the morning, with the possible exception of a little hole-in-the-wall packed with locals. In the end I brought nothing back from my walk except a last wad of Euros extracted from an ATM. I now had everything I needed from Rhodes — except a ticket to Turkey, and I hoped to get that in a couple of hours. If not, I’d get one to Kos instead.
But I was bone-weary and depressed. I had travelled far and hard since saying goodbye to Helle, and I still had a long way to go to reach Pamukkale. Loneliness was starting to set in with a vengeance. I was about to say farewell to the West. Western Turkey wasn’t so bad but after that things would just get stranger.
It already seemed long ago that I had breakfast with Helle on the terrace at the Stavris, beneath the tamarisk, at a table I selected to catch the breeze. I looked at the photo I took then, and it seemed to come from a dreamtime. Helle had her lips pursed — she was about to say something tart about my desire for her photo. She would be at home with her children by now. Was she still wearing the wristband I gave her? How did she explain it to her boyfriend? Had she been thinking of me or had she packed my memory away? She had her two weeks at the beach in Denmark with her boys to look forward to.
I was a mess. I put far too much into these casual relationships and got too obsessed by them once they were over. I needed to learn to let go of the relationship when it ended. Time would heal me of Helle as it healed me of Beatrice. A new relationship would be ideal, though I had no idea where or when one might appear. A relationship would cure me of both Helle and the loneliness, though it might lead me to a new addiction.
I looked for a toilet at the port, found it crowded with smelly sleeping bodies — more of the scruffy young guys who were sitting in the eatery earlier. Who were they? They had no luggage. But there was no way I would use that toilet; the seats must be filthy.
The ticket office opened, and I acquired a boarding pass for the Marmaris ferry. The doors opened and I passed through. Five hours after arriving in Rhodes, I left Greece and the West behind.
As you pass from the tender years of youth into harsh and embittered manhood, make sure you take with you on your journey all the human emotions! Don’t leave them on the road, for you will not pick them up afterwards!
— Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
The stone placeThe trip to Marmaris lasted an hour and a half. I romped ashore and grabbed a taxi to the otogar. There I walked aboard a dolmuş to Muğla. I was still spending Euros — I hadn’t even stopped to change money.
At the otogar I bought a ticket on the next bus to Denizli, and then finally I had time to stop and get myself organised. I found an ATM near the otogar and withdrew a wad of Turkish ₺. I went into a toilet and tucked my remaining Euro notes away in my money belt. I had 90 cents left over in coin. I walked out into the lobby and ordered tea and a kebab with my new Turkish money. After my meal I gave the leftover Euro coins to a pretty French girl reading her guidebook. She gazed after me in confusion as I walked away.
So there I was, kicking along on the Denizli express in a new old country and a strange road in a familiar land. I had a pocketful of local currency and everything was going so smoothly that I’d started looking for the joker. Since it was high season and I had no reservation in Pamukkale it would probably be the accommodation.
For the first time in two days, I was wearing a happy smile. I’d left the last one with Helle.
At the Denizli otogar I boarded a minibus for Pamukkale. At Pamukkale I was met by a motor scooter from the very place I had been thinking to stay at, the Allgau Hotel — which puzzled me as they shouldn’t have known I was coming. I had made no booking. But I had been chatted up by a tout at the otogar and although I didn’t tell him my hotel plans, he obviously owed the Allgau a favour, because he called them and told them there was a Kiwi for the Allgau on the bus.
The Allgau proved satisfactory and so I came to rest. I left Sfakia on the 11:00 bus one day and finally stopped moving around 15:30 two nights later, in Pamukkale. That evening, I locked myself in my room and slept like one dead for more than a dozen hours.
Pamukkale was famous for its travertine terraces, very similar to the pink & white terraces that New Zealand boasted before Mt Tarawera erupted and wiped them away. Atop the terraces was the ancient city of Hierapolis.
From the town the terraces looked like a bank of snow lying on a plateau. There was a direct route up from town across the terraces, but I chose the long way round and came to Hierapolis via its southern entrance. The day was hot, and the footpath was often overgrown, but once up there the only other climb I faced was when I walked up to the theatre for the views. Splashing my way down through the travertine terraces afterwards was bliss for my hot and tired feet.
A new Visitor’s Information Centre was being built at the south entrance. It looked expensive, but felt gimcrack. The heavy roof above it seemed designed purely for show — the shade it provided was pathetic for such a massive piece of construction.
The so-called “Antique Pools” were a perve’s paradise. Some of the swimming costumes “barely” qualified. String tops that were skin-tight and see-through, thongs that were clinging, backless and practically frontless. Most of the women wearing such costumes hadn’t the body for it and definitely should have thought better, but some of them shone. In their defence, however, I found that the souvenir shops in the Pool area actually sold just such skimpy gear. The guys mostly wore Speedos.
The pools were expensive. Entry to the pools plus a security box for my valuables cost ₺20. For comparison, entry to Hierapolis itself had only cost ₺5.
Once inside, access to the pools was via some steps, with an attendant checking tickets and making sure that prospective bathers removed their footwear and walked through an antiseptic foot bath.
The pools formed a connected series with water flowing in at several points. The main pool, the one that featured in all the guidebooks and promotional pamphlets was decorated with column drums and other fragments of ancient masonry. The footing was thus often rather tricky, although there were some sandy areas. The edges of the pool were deepest, often too deep to stand in, and were lined with ropes to which bathers clung.
Beyond this to the left, beneath a bridge and over a weir, was a tank that formed a natural spa. Bubbles came up through the bottom. The bubbles tended to cling to your skin and the tickling and tingling sensation was very pleasant and relaxing.
Over to the right was a long passage lined with sluices that you could stand under for a shower. At the end was another pool with more sluices.
The whole area was surrounded by trees and flowering bushes. To one side was a broad patio where you could buy refreshments and souvenirs and rest in the shade. Seats and tables extended around the pools.
The only nuisance was that when you entered the pool, your ticket was taken from you. When you left the pool, your swim was over, unless (like me) you managed to bulldoze the guardian into letting you back in.
From the Pools I walked up to the Theatre. I soon noticed that many people didn’t bother getting dressed after their swims. A lot of the visitors were wandering around in their bathers. This had a practical side — after all, they still had to walk back down the terraces — but I got the impression practicality wasn’t the issue. They just didn’t think about it.
This casual approach even extended to walking around the village below in bathers, probably much to the distress of the more conservative locals. Pamukkale was the only inland town in Turkey where I found such a tolerant attitude to displays of flesh in the streets, and in fact it was the last Middle Eastern place that I visited where such displays were tolerated. I would soon be in places where even shorts and bare shoulders were frowned on and a woman walking around town in a bikini might be stoned.
Apart from the Pools and the Theatre, the rest of Hierapolis was barely worth the effort. Even the Theatre was really only worth it for the views. The star attraction was the terraces.
Although many of the terraces and pools were closed to the public — look, don’t touch — most people entered and left Hierapolis by way of an open sequence that stretched from the crest of the hill down to the town. Bare feet, bathing suits and bikinis were the order of the day here. The milky water of the pools swarmed with excited bathers. People waved cameras of every description. The scent of a hundred brands of sunscreen filled the air, overlaid upon the tang of hot stone, perspiration and baking feet. A thousand excited voices babbled non-stop in a hundred languages, punctuated by the endless tlock, tlock, tlock of digital cameras playing their antique shutter sounds.
Still without a guidebook, I decided to play safe and pay for the expensive day trip to Aphrodisias instead of trying to save money by doing it on my own. It took two hours to get there and two hours to get back, so in the end I got only about two and a half hours at the site — but it was enough. The areas open to tourists were quite compact and easily scouted.
My companions on the tour were a Spanish couple, a Swiss guy, and three Spanish girls. There was no guide. At the site we split up and all did our own thing until it was time to go home.
Although Aphrodisias dated back 7,000 years the majority of the surviving ruins were Roman.
Many of the statues in the Museum were in poor condition, but a lot of them were local personalities, which made them more interesting than an equal number of poor Roman copies of gods, goddesses and emperors. A number of the heads had hairstyles that would now be called “afro”. Some had pitted chins and jaws that probably represented the ancient equivalent of the “three-day growth”. The variety of facial features was impressive, demonstrating how much of a melting pot this part of Anatolia had been.
The public access portions of the site were arranged in a loop around the two Agoras. From the Museum you walked counter-clockwise, passing a gate, the Stadium, the Temple of Aphrodite, the “Council House” (which seemed to me more likely to be an Odeion), the Hadrianic Baths, the Basilica, the Agoras and the Theatre. I didn’t follow the sequence, preferring to make my own way around.
In the South Agora I found game boards scratched on the paving stones. Just like in the Forums at Rome, people had gathered here to pass the time and to gamble. I tried to imagine how these games had worked, but although one board suggested a Go-like game, others were obscure and there was no way now to tell whether the counters would have been placed on the spaces or the vertices.
Back in Pamukkale, I hid in my room with the air conditioning on, even though I had been invited out by the Spanish couple and had hit it off well with the Spanish girls. Reaction was setting in. The hermit in me was running rampant. I wanted Helle.
I could go find the Spaniards. I could go hang out in an eatery nursing a çay or two and see what happened. Either option was better than this. Instead I trimmed my beard and felt sorry for myself.
Three silhouettes glided past my window: the Spanish girls. Were they going out, or just down for tea or dinner? I followed them, and the evening became good.
İstanbulRefusing to submit to our rule, you call yourself lord and sovereign. You seize and distribute our treasure, you deceive our servants. You never cease to annoy us with your bands of brigands. Have I not destroyed you Greeks? You say that you trust in God; why then has he not delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, Alexandria? … could I not also destroy Constantinople?
— Chosroes, to Heraclius
At İstanbul I finally got to cross the Conqueror’s Bridge above Rumeli Hisarı. Once again, I was on familiar ground. From the otogar I took the Metro to Zeytinburnu and from there the tram to Sultanahmet. In Divan Yolu I bought a set of guidebooks at a shop I remembered from 2005.
Thus fortified, I walked through the Hippodrome and down into the backpacker ghetto where the Great palace once stood.
I had no accommodation bookings. My original notion had been to go to the İstanbul Hostel, where there would be a lot of backpackers and a correspondingly greater chance of finding a travelling companion. But in the end, I walked past it and booked into the nicer but smaller Mavi Guesthouse. Although there were fewer hostellers there, the more intimate atmosphere might work in my favour. Big busy places still tended to intimidate me.
Mavi was set in an old building in Kutlugün Street. It was a bit cramped, but welcoming and convenient. Tables and chairs in the street were the focus of the social activity.
I went for a look around. Sultanahmet was no longer the bargain it had been. Prices in the eateries now averaged higher than elsewhere. The tourist population had changed, too, better dressed and obviously wealthier. But eventually, far down the hill, I found a place that had not yet become too expensive.
That night I went out with Bindy from Brisbane, now on her way home from a year working in London, and Jeani from Korea, a schoolteacher on holiday. We went forth in search of dinner and adventure. We found both. We found a cheap, good eatery where my companions were given lily flowers. We then had fun playing with our cameras outside the Blue Mosque — the fruits of this include an incriminating shot of Bindy with her lily clenched between her teeth. Finally, we tracked down a dervish performance nearby.
It had been well over a month since I ran into my last antipodean, and Bindy’s ’Strine was music to my ears. Poor Jeani! Bindy and I were talking ten to the dozen and Jeani later admitted she was catching only about 50% of what we said. This was probably a polite exaggeration — quite likely it was less than one word in three. The Australian and NZ accents are hard for people taught English by American or British teachers. When we remembered, we slowed down to include her in the conversation.
“You lucky man, have two such lovely ladies,” called a passer-by.
“Nonsense,” I called back, “They are lucky — they have me!”
It was a great night out. And to think, I could have spent the evening lying in my bed staring at the mattress above me.
But it is the way of travellers that they move on. Bindy and Jeani had both finished their time in İstanbul and after they left late the next afternoon … I was alone again.
I had breakfast with Jeani, and with Evelyn from China. They were going to the Princes Islands. I was going to the Syrian Consulate. My stay in İstanbul was not entirely for pleasure. I needed to get the visa treadmill rolling.
Bindy introduced me to a Dutch guy, Lutyen. In his fifties, he had been to a lot of the same places as me and we had fun that night trading tall tales and true about our adventures and disasters before an audience of round-eyed greenhorns for whom İstanbul was the most exotic place they had been.
Bindy was also my link to a Canadian woman, Hilary — late thirties, living in Sweden, had just spent three months away, mostly on an archaeological dig in Syria. Her advice on coping with Syria’s multitudinous hassles and scams proved invaluable. She gave me her leftover insect repellent, complete with a Syrian mosquito she had somehow crushed in the thread of the cap. Since my supply of Aerogard was getting low and the local brands I’d tried seemed ineffective, this came in handy. Despite the evidence of the crushed insect, it did prove effective in repelling unwanted nocturnal visitors.
But with Bindy and Jeani gone, and Lutyen and Hilary both leaving tomorrow, I still needed to find new friends.
On my own initiative I broke the ice with the American girl who was in the bed above me — but just as our conversation started to flow, they came in and moved her to another room. The hostel was filling up and they were creating separate girls’ and boys’ dorms.
It was a conspiracy! Every time I found someone I might like, they were yanked away from me!
I ate dinner alone, just to unwind, at a nice little terrace restaurant that offered a real Greek salad — with olives and olive oil and balsamic — at a realistic price. It was a happy place. A woman was having a birthday and they brought her out a cake, with many effusive happy birthdays, and the evening became good.
On Saturday morning I found myself sharing a breakfast table with Evelyn, the young Chinese girl whom I’d met through Jeani the day before. She and Jeani had gone to the Princes Islands together, returning just in time for Jeani to catch her bus. When I swapped email addresses with Jeani, Evelyn had impulsively added her own email on the back of the slip of paper, but she was still just what I thought of as an “RFC” — a “Random Friendly Contact”, someone you meet briefly and like, but have no particular reason to hang out with. RFCs are common in hostels and I don’t expect anything from them as a rule.
In her late twenties, Evelyn was very pretty, which made me feel a little shy and reticent. But we started talking and I soon found her to be approachable, interesting and adventurous. She had two days left in İstanbul, had a lot of big sights left to see and was having trouble deciding what she could fit in. We started discussing her interests and soon hammered out a list that ticked her boxes but which I thought was achievable in one day. I’d already decided to take a Bosphorus cruise that day, but instead I heard myself offering to accompany her to help make the itinerary happen. She said yes.
In the end we spent the day sightseeing together — twelve hours on the hoof. I got blisters.
We started with the Palace, since the entrance was just up the hill. Armed with memories and a Blue Guide İstanbul — it was seven years old, but still the best resource when it came to seeking out obscure Byzantine stuff — we stormed the gates. I signed us up for the first Harem tour and took Evelyn through the kitchens while we waited. Then we saw the Harem, substantially the same tour as I’d done in 2002.
After the Harem tour we finished off the Palace and moved on to the Archaeological Museums. I showed her the Medusa’s head column capital in the courtyard, twin to the ones in the Basilica Cistern, so the Cistern had to be our next stop. It was always one of my favourite sights and Evelyn had fun trotting up and down the ramps and hopping over any inconvenient ropes.
We walked down to Atatürk Bridge and popped into the New Mosque, then continued up the hill to the Suleymaniye Mosque. We had dinner at my new favourite restaurant and finished off by watching the sunset from Atatürk Bridge and taking a ferry ride across to Asia and back.
I found that I enjoyed Evelyn’s company very much. She was openly enthusiastic about each new sight and not afraid of walking. I had not intended to see a lot of the sights in İstanbul this time. I’d seen most of them on previous visits and, still engrossed in my internal changes, I felt no need to repeat the experience. But going with someone else was different. It gave me a stereo view. Watching her reactions gave me new insights on each of the places we visited. I began to understand, a little, why so many tourists hung out in groups.
We decided to do it again on Sunday. This time we started with Ayasofya, where I hunted down the locations used in the Bond film From Russia With Love. We looked in on the Blue Mosque and then it was time to catch the boat up the Bosphorus. The castle above Anadolu Kavagi was a hit with her, especially after she ran into some other mainland Chinese and so had a chance to have a yack in something other than English. We walked around the walls of the castle for the best views. We ate at Evelyn’s favourite restaurant and finished the day sitting on the rocks that line the Marmara shore. So I got my Bosphorus cruise after all, and more, and all in pleasant company.
On Monday morning, she left. Her holiday was over. Although she had picked up a stomach bug, we went for a walk in Gulhane Park and then she climbed aboard an airport shuttle and was gone. And then? I went and did my laundry. I was on my last change of clothes.
In those two days, her great gift to me, Evelyn washed my heart clean. Helle was a closed chapter — a fond one, but finished. And missing Evelyn? I was a little melancholy that night, but I woke up feeling fine. Finally, a hangover-free relationship!
Perhaps I was so easy about it because I knew I would hear from her again, whereas Beatrice and Helle had made no promises.
Still, the hostel felt emptier without Evelyn — a cheery, friendly presence had departed, and the absence was noticeable. Room 7 was now just another room full of strangers and near-strangers. If I knocked on the door, no smiling face would answer. In the morning no small body would erupt from the hostel and fling itself into the seat opposite, brush back a raven wing of unruly hair and smile across at me, ready for the day’s adventures.
At dinner that night a group of half a dozen local kids came by while I was working on a wristband. They gave me their names but of them I only remember Shamira, who wasn’t the leader but seemed to be the glue that bound the group together, and Öz, a smaller boy who seemed a little picked on. They were fascinated by the wristbands. Only Shamira had any English at all, and that was confined to the simplest questions. But they were sweet kids and well behaved, and I was able to spot a couple of jokes about me and turn them back on the jokers. They asked how old I was and looked astonished by the answer. I was older than their parents. Not surprising — Shamira was 11 or 12, and she was the eldest in the group, so her mother was probably only in her thirties. But parents always seem older than God when you’re young.
The maître d’ asked where my Chinese girl was. I explained that she was flying back to China, then added brashly “but I’ll find another — and bring her here”. It wasn’t till he said “Insha’Allah” that I realised how over-confident I must have sounded. And he was right. In my remaining time in İstanbul, I found nobody to replace Evelyn. Although I sat outside the Mavi and chatted as sociably as before to various RFCs, I gradually retreated back into my shell.
I watched the guy I’d nicknamed Mephistopheles play games — checkers and towers — with the child of the Irish woman. I admired his easy manner with people, but I couldn’t emulate it.
Tuesday was consulate day. Several hours in the blazing sun were eventually rewarded with a Syrian visa. Double-entry, where I’d wanted multiple-entry; but no matter, I would crash that border when I came to it.
The next day I lodged my Iranian visa application. They told me “ten days”. That didn’t mean I would get a visa in ten days, it just meant I might, perhaps, maybe, get a visa or a knock-back then. So now I had ten more days to kill.
It was time to go to Cappadocia.
On my last afternoon, five of us were sitting around the table — Isabelle, Joe, Sean, Franco, and I. Isabelle had a shopping list of things she needed to buy before she left tomorrow, including a scarf. She was fond of scarves and always wore one around her neck. I wanted to research embroidery cotton as my stocks had been depleted by all the bands I’d made. Joe wanted to be near Isabelle. The others claimed that they were just bored. So we all went shopping with Isabelle — mother duck and four ducklings.
We spent hours wandering through the alleys on the edge of the Covered Market, following rumour and supposition.
I didn’t buy any cotton, but by the end of the day I knew where to find it. I eventually left the group to go pick up my laundry and have a shower before the bus came. But Isabelle didn’t find her scarf. The others drifted away one by one, still bored. Only Sean (not Joe) got what he wanted — he wanted dinner with Isabelle.
In the land of beautiful horsesThe bus had no air conditioning, and I was wedged in by the stolid Turkish brick sitting next to me. I got no sleep. At Nevşehir I was decanted onto a Göreme service.
Göreme was a long hill and a strange horizon that went up and down in a series of sharp peaks. I walked through the village looking for the Köse Pansiyon, one of the longest-running backpacker dives. It took a while to find it, as the map in my guidebook was not very good. When I found it, it was a homey and friendly family-run place.
Dorms here were little more than half what I’d paid in İstanbul. Tired of dormitory life, I promptly upgraded to a single room. It wasn’t exactly a luxury suite — I could stretch out my arms and easily touch the two opposing walls at the same time — but it was all mine.
In the morning I spent an hour or two wandering around town and up to the lookout on the road into town, then made for the Köse’s swimming pool. This became a habit. My chief memory of my time at Köse was the afternoons spent sitting by the pool. The pool was sparklingly clean and well supplied with chairs and shade, people to talk to, pretty girls sunning themselves, children playing, birds coming to drink, and a friendly dog to pat. The hostel was at hand and sold everything from water and tea to beer and wine, at reasonable prices. The place even had free Wi-Fi, so I could sit by the pool and surf the internet or write email on my Pocket PC. This was five-star luxury priced for a backpacker’s budget!
The pool was a luxury under threat, due to a drought that saw even Köse’s private well drying up. Between that and power cuts — “load shedding” — life was never predictable.
The evening was the social time. hostellers gradually accumulated wherever there was a table and a breeze. Conversations were unhurried and could last for hours, interspersed with dinner and drinks. Plans were drawn and redrawn, news swapped, friendships built, and alliances made and broken. It was all very pleasant.
People … first and always there was Dawn, originally from Britain. This was very much her pansiyon — her Turkish hubby spent most of his time out on their farm. Dawn had a number of staff to do the donkey work, and two teenage daughters, Sabeena and Leyla, who also helped. She also had a Dennis the Menace son, Ali. Then there were the children’s friends — an assorted group of local teens who hung out around the pool.
The hostellers came and went. I spent time with some Americans — Eric and Megan, Eric and Margaret, who’d encountered some really nasty stomach bug on their way here and spent their first few days recovering. There was Andy from England, who borrowed my alarm clock and forgot to return it. There were Sophie and Kristiana from Denmark. Sophie had cheekbones to die for, but the two were leaving for İstanbul later the same night. Fadi was a Canadian of Lebanese parents, small, wiry, with curly close-cropped hair and olive skin. Alex came from Britain and was blonde, buxom and pretty. I rather fancied her, but she was only there for a couple of days with her son Jude. Martin and Marin came from Holland. Malcolm the engineer from Britain, whom I’d already run into in İstanbul. Aysha, a British-born Muslim convert of 26 years. Caterina and Vincenzio were economics students from Milan. Some Italians, a Belgian couple with daughters.
The combinations changed, but the average quality was high.
One morning Fadi and I walked to Zelve for the great landscape views. It was seven or eight kilometres each way, but we took water and there were places to get cold drinks along the way.
We had quite different approaches to photography. I belonged to the see it, snap it before it gets away school. Fadi would expend great efforts stalking his subject, finding just the right angle and frame before taking his shot. Each to his own. I was happy to be sightseeing in stereo again.
Fadi had spent time in Korea and spoke fluent Korean. When we got to Zelve it was overrun with Korean tourists and he was in his element. He was a popular boy that day. Finding someone who spoke their language was a novelty for the Koreans, and they all wanted their friends to photograph them standing next to him.
The Köse idyll had to end. I had to go back to İstanbul and find out whether I had an Iranian visa or whether my plans would need to be redrawn. But as so often on the European leg of the trip, I’d found a little home away from home and I didn’t want to leave!
Dislocation was an intentional part of my journey, to keep me slightly off balance and to stop me from falling back into bad old habits. I’d gathered too much moss in Melbourne — it was time for this stone to roll.
Departing Köse was anticlimactic. No hugs, no emotion. Just a couple of Köse cards from Dawn and a ciao from Caterina. “My” crowd had all moved on the night before and I hadn’t replaced them.
In İstanbul I checked back into the Mavi Guesthouse.
My Iranian worries came to nothing. I went to the Embassy. They took my Passport and told me to come back before 11:30. I did, and just like that I had my visa.
The next evening, I was on the Kadiköy ferry, leaving İstanbul for the last time on this trip. Would I ever see it again? The future was clouded. Bursts of fireworks filled the sky as my ferry bore me inexorably from the European shore.
At the Hayderpaşa train station, I boarded the Ankara Express — First Class! I had purchased the ticket earlier that day using dumb show — saying “Ankara” then resting my head on my hands. The man raised a finger and I had nodded, yes, one person or one way, whatever. But he was asking what class. I had been spending too much time on classless buses. It was only about ₺20 more than Second Class, so I had no complaint.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Paul Theroux passed this way a year earlier on his Ghost Train to the Eastern Star journey. He might have been in this very compartment, except that this appeared to be a two-person cabin even though I had it to myself. It had plush green seats along one wall, with a ledge back that folded down to become the lower bed. Toilet facilities were in the corner beside the door. But I wasn’t fooled. This was Turkey’s top train. It was international standard in every way, but it was the single outstanding exception to a very mediocre rule.
Farewell to Europe. I rumbled over the Urals into it on the 15th of April and my first footstep on European soil was at some grimy Russian station platform west of there the same day. My last contact with it was stepping off a grimy Turkish dock onto a grimy Turkish boarding ramp tonight, the 4th of August. For the rest of this trip, I was committed to Asia.
What had Europe brought me? I’d had excitement and despair, change and discovery. I was not the repressed man I was on that Russian train. Was I happier? It was hard to tell. The highs had been utterly wonderful, but the lows had been utterly terrible. And I was still alone.
I was now headed away from the main tourist trails. Unless my internet negotiations paid off, opportunities to score a travelling companion would be fewer.
I looked out my window. Headscarves and all-concealing black gowns. Better get used to them!
I dozed off as the train rocked its way through Anatolia. I was warm — too warm, really — and cushioned in crisp white sheets. This was the life! I had forgotten just how much better than buses trains could be.
BoğazkaleThe taxi drivers at the Sungurlu otogar were persistent. One kept shoving a mobile phone at me, wanting me to contact a guide in Boğazkale to make arrangements for me. An English-speaking woman translated for me to tell him that I didn’t need a taxi, I was just waiting for the servis to town, where I would take a dolmuş to Boğazkale. I thought that ended it, but a few minutes later the guy was shoving the phone in my face again. He obscured my view of the anonymous white minibus that had just pulled in behind his broad back and towards which my fellow servis-users were now swarming. All he managed to do was to break my stride so that instead of being in the middle of the pack with a chance at getting aboard, I was at the back and had to watch the overloaded servis leave without me. I had to wait until it returned. But this time I knew what to look for and I was in the first wave of boarders.
When we pulled up in Sungurlu I carefully said “Dolmuş, Boğazkale, Hattuşa,” to the driver. Amazingly, he understood — I guess I must have managed to pronounce one of the words intelligibly. He pointed me down a side street, indicating an empty spot some way down with some people loitering nearby. I went there and repeated my three-word mantra, and they rolled their heads and made the basketball-bouncing gesture that means, “Siddown and take a chill pill” throughout the Middle East. Sure enough, a minibus pulled up a few minutes later.
Boğazkale was the town that grew up next door to the ancient Hittite capital of Hattuşa. It was a rambling, dusty place, bone dry at this time of year. The dolmuş pulled up right outside the only hotel in town.
Hotel Baykal was a pink three-storey building with three triple windows along the front of each of the two upper storeys and plate glass windows in the ground floor. This street frontage held the cheaper rooms, the Hattuşas Pansiyon. The hotel section was a newer block overlooking the courtyard behind.
My room in the pension was eminently liveable, with a kilim on the back wall for interest. There was a shared toilet and shower in separate rooms nearby. I was dismayed by the squat WC, but then I found the throne in the shower.
My three windows overlooked the main square. Most of the traffic through the square was tractors, which said a lot about the town. The road to Sungurlu, its central divider painted in lollipop red and white dashes, went north past the Museum. At the south end of the square were a bakery and the bus stop.
The bank was a modest white-painted red-roofed building across the square, with a red banner sign along it. In fact, modest size, white walls and a red tile roof were the obvious features of most of the buildings.
The PTT, shops and bakery were out of sight to my right, ranked alongside the hotel and up a side street.
There was a mosque somewhere behind the hotel, but just to make sure I didn’t miss any nuance of the five times daily chorus, there was another one peering at me over the rooftops across the square. Hattuşa was over there, beyond the mosque’s flaring loudspeaker horns.
The road to Hattuşa went away from the square near the bank. I followed it. Beyond the buildings was a broad empty space and then a section of reconstructed wall. The site entrance was beside this imposing pile of masonry.
Entry was casual. A guy appeared and extracted the fee, gave me a ticket and disappeared again. I walked on to where a rubbish bin was burning. Just then the man came back with a bucket full of water. He upended the bucket into the bin, watched for a moment to be sure the fire was out, then vanished again.
That was my last sight of officialdom that day.
Hattuşa was a huge site, enclosed by the remains of its walls and dotted with excavated foundations. There was very little left above ground, but the location itself was amazing — huge hillsides dotted with crags, some of which still had ancient stonework clinging to them. The panoramas were awesome. And almost no tourists! I saw one tour bus in the whole day.
I walked uphill to the Great temple dedicated to the weather god Teshub and the sun goddess Hebut. The Temple was part of a complex a couple of hundred metres across. A lot of what we know now about the functioning of the Hittite kingdom is based on clay tablets found in some storerooms on the northeast side of the Temple (nearest the city wall, furthest from the temple entrance). These rooms appeared to have served as the temple library or archives.
Entry to the temple proper was by way of a monumental doorway. A broad corridor ran back through the building from the doorway.
From a knoll beside the Temple I got a better view of the ruins, and also a glimpse of Boğazkale. I could even see the hotel.
I didn’t go back to the main road but cut across country towards a huge rock that looked like it had a notch carved through it. The closer I got, the more singular the notch became. It was a rough cutting, but the hand of man had definitely assisted it. In the middle of the notch was a cave, overgrown and impenetrable now but possibly a chthonic sanctuary of some sort once. This might be a spot marked on the hotel’s sketch map as Kizlarkaya, a word I’m unfamiliar with but which may be something like “Maiden’s Rock”. The rock had once been extensively built upon. Only the scars where rock was cut away to make footings remained now.
I found a gate, not marked on my maps, and near it another large rock cut away for foundations. Near this I found Cyclopean walls.
People wonder where the Mycenaean Greeks found the inspiration for their huge walls, for they had no prior history of megalithic construction on that scale. Their wall-building skills just appeared, apparently fully developed, late in their history and not even at all their palaces. Pylos, for example, was much more lightly walled. Why could they not have picked up the notion from the Hittites? We now know the two civilisations had lines of diplomatic communication. Any Greek seeing Hattuşa would have been impressed and might have picked up the notion that this was how the capital of a great power should look.
Beneath the huge rock that once held the Yellow Fort (Sarıkale) there was an archaeological dig in progress. It was lost in the immense grass-grown expanse below the fort. So much more must still be hidden in the ground waiting to be found!
At the ridgeline the wall was much more complete, and here I found the famous Lion Gate. Two huge-maned lions once stood here, snarling out at the visitor. The gate, like all Hattuşa’s gates, was made of four huge rocks, two pairs, with the rock in each pair arcing up to meet its partner and form a parabolic archway. The space between the pairs was then walled with rock to form a passage.
The lions were a sad sight now, toothless and broken, but the painstaking detail carved into their manes remained visible.
From the gate the New Fort (Yenıcekale) and Yellow Fort lined up and there was a panoramic view down the length of the city to the reconstructed piece of wall. I could see where the Büyükkaya Deresi (Big Rock Stream) ran through the lower city, beneath the boulder that gave it its name.
I walked across to the New Fort. Some stones were still in place here.
Back at the wall I walked up towards the peak of the hill. I found a small postern gate, shaped much like the other gates but with only two rocks in its archway.
At the top was Yer Kapı (the Earth Gate), which formed a corbelled tunnel with a triangular cross-section that let out beneath Sfenksli Kapı (the Sphinx Gate). Looking back up at these fortifications from outside, I recognised the view (aside from the Lion gate) that everyone has seen of Hattuşa, if they have seen any at all. There were massive sloping stone works on the hill face. They weren’t defensive because a fit man could run up them. But the wall ran across the top to stop any invaders. I pondered why there were two gates here, one of them so unusual, and why such monumental stonework. Looking down into the valley, I could see some interesting ruins. I suspect that there was a shrine or holy place of some sort down there and that all this showy stonework was designed to set it off on ceremonial occasions. The tunnel provided convenient access beneath the wall without compromising security.
If the Lions were worn and damaged, the surviving Sphinx of the Sphinx Gate was unrecognisable. The gate itself had once been embedded in a huge tower.
Inside the city below the Earth Gate were the foundations of several large temples. I walked along the wall past them, and down to the Krai Kapı (King’s Gate). Here the warrior that once adorned it had been removed and replaced by a concrete replica. This grand gate opened on a ramp, similar to that of Tiryns in Greece. Lined by more great stonework the ramp led away around the hill towards the ruins I had seen below the Earth Gate, perhaps providing a processional way from the Palace to the shrine.
The footings that the gate pins once swung on were still visible.
Walking down from the King’s Gate, I ran out of water, but then I came across a spring — a stone spout dribbling clear sweet water into a concrete horse trough. The water in the trough was green but the water from the spout looked OK. There was no obvious source of contamination uphill, although that meant little. But I needed water now, so I refilled my bottles from the spout. This had repercussions the next day when my bowels turned liquid and I started burping sulphur. Whoops! Fortunately, I shook this bug quickly. The water was delicious, even if the aftermath was unpleasant.
I came to the Yellow Fort over rocks from the east and looked down on the archaeological dig. They had uncovered several buildings of unknown purpose. One might have been a house, another a medium-sized temple. From here the lower city was laid out like a map.
Nearby at Nişantas I found an inscription believed to tell the deeds of Suppiluliuma, last known king of Hattuşa in the time of the invasions of the Sea People. It may be a memorial to him (in which case he might not have been king when Hattuşa was sacked, unless he had been preparing his memorial while he was still alive) or to his father Tudhaliya.
Nearby in the Güney Kale (Southern Fort) was the so-called Hieroglyphic Chamber, a cult cyst whose back wall featured what looked like a guy wearing a headdress and carrying a winged phallus.
Beyond was the Büyükkale, the Big Fort, otherwise the Royal Palace. In a building on the south side of the main courtyard was found the royal archive, primary Anatolian source of our knowledge of Hittite diplomacy. Thousands of tablets came out of this building. Thousands more came out of a building to the northeast, including the Hittite rendition of the Kadesh Treaty between Ramses II and Hattusili III in 1258 bc.
The Palace area was, unfortunately, built over by Phrygians in the 6th and 7th Centuries bc. The archaeologists also reburied a lot of the site to preserve it when they had finished. It was a little hard to conjure the ghosts of the Hittite kings. But it had a grand view of the Great temple, laid out like a map. I could also see how the walls crossed the Big Rock Stream and then climbed the Big Rock itself. The Hittites had carved wall footings into the bedrock. There would have been a massive rampart crossing the stream. No entry!
On my way out, I went down to the stream. There was just a pathetic trickle of water in it. Was this the city’s main water supply? The spring I had used to fill my bottles was clearly not going to provide much water if an enemy captured the lower city, blocked the stream or if the stream dried up completely. On the other hand, a spring so high on a hill implied an artesian source of some strength. Perhaps they dug wells.
I decided to walk out to the carvings at the Yazilikaya (Inscribed Rock) shrine. It was late when I got there but the gate was open, so I went in. One of the carvings here looked a lot like the guy I’d seen in the Hieroglyphic Chamber. It may have been Tudhalia IV, in which case perhaps the Hieroglyphic Chamber was dedicated to a royal cult.
The next morning — in fact the whole next day — was spent attempting to get from Boğazkale to Ihlara. Appetite whetted by a day tour I had taken while at Köse, I had decided to attempt to walk the whole valley.
I took the dolmuş to Sungurlu where, after eventually evading a voracious flock of taxi drivers who were determined that I must go with them to Yozgat, I hopped a bus to Kirrikale. At Kirrikale the bus dropped me in town, and I had to catch a dolmuş out to the otogar. This whole process took four hours and may have been a mistake. At Kirrikale the next bus to Nevşehir was two and a half hours away and there were no direct buses to Aksaray. There were fewer services than I had expected — perhaps some buses bypassed Kirrikale and I would have been better off going all the way back to Ankara. But one fact was inescapable: I wasn’t going to get to Ihlara today. Not only that, I felt strange — feverish and queasy.
I eventually caught the Nevşehir bus. At Nevşehir I took a dolmuş to Göreme. Köse’s welcome was as warm as ever. My former room was occupied, but they fitted me into a triple room alone at the dorm rate.
I woke in the night when the full consequences of drinking the Hattuşa water came upon me. I was not a happy camper. I had suspected it yesterday and now I had the proof.
Incapable of going far lest my master called me, I sat by the pool. I didn’t dare even swim, lest I infect the water. But I had a long, entertaining conversation with Joy, a Canadian primary teacher, working in London. Long blonde hair, very nice smile, sweet personality. She wasn’t staying at Köse and was leaving Göreme today anyway, but she gave me a nice kiss on the cheek as she left. A cameo.
Something SyriousDeparting Antakya, I walked up to Kurtulus Caddesi and flagged down an inbound dolmuş to get to the dolmuş otogar. From there I caught the dolmuş to YaylaDağı. There my plan changed, because just after I started walking, I found a shared taxi that offered me a ride all the way to Lattakia for 500 Syrian pounds. I decided to take it.
At the border, my driver handed me over to another taxi — “no money” — and claimed his S£500. It remained to be seen how much this “no money” arrangement would cost me.
The border arrangements were somewhat anarchic. The place was a chaos of trucks, cars and pedestrians all mixed together, hubbing and bubbing and banging elbows.
On the Turkish side, we drove more or less unhindered through Customs. At Passport Control people from a crowded outer office squeezed one by one through a doorway to the two officers who were seated behind desks on the other side. It was surprisingly orderly, except for the inevitable queue-jumpers — such as me. I got shoved to the front by those already waiting. The guy almost went nuts thumbing through my Passport trying to find my Turkish visa — he didn’t realise New Zealanders didn’t need one for short stays. Fortunately, his chum put him right or things might have turned serious.
On the Syrian side there was a counter, besieged by frantic people waving Passports. Again, I was pushed to the front by those around me. My New Zealand Passport seemed to confuse the officer, and it sat on the desk for a while until he finally picked it up and casually tapped my Father’s name and my occupation into the computer, then stamped me into Syria. My “white card” (Immigration Card) was green. Some were identical to mine but orange. They didn’t keep any part of it, just handed the whole thing over to me. Obviously, I needed to keep it until I exited Syria.
Outside, more immigration officers waited to check that I’d been properly processed, and then a customs officer fingered briefly through my day pack, ignoring the main pack entirely.
I would have to go through this rigmarole five more times. How tedious. But how much more tedious it must have been for the poor chaps who didn’t get ushered to the front of the queue. It was an example of the instinctive courtesy extended to strangers by the people of the Middle East. Many of these men would not have hesitated to extravagantly overcharge me or even simply rip me off if I walked into their shop or taxi, but here they saw me as their guest, as if I were visiting their home. When you see me gripe about the repressed, rapacious East, remember this other side to the culture.
At Lattakia the taxi dropped its load off at the bus station. And as I had been promised, there was “no money”. Not even a request for baksheesh.
I walked through sunny Lattakia for a timeless period, while my brain boiled and my clothes steamed. Ultimately, I found Hotel Safwan, which for some reason was now calling itself Hotel Sarweb. But they had no vacant rooms, and I ended up on the roof where there was a row of foam mattresses beneath canvas awnings. At $3.50 per night, it was not exactly a budget buster. In fact, it was the cheapest bed I’d found so far on the trip. It made up for the extra cost and hassle of getting here.
I shared the roof with a couple of Korean girls, a Swiss girl and her Lebanese boyfriend, and a swag of Tin-Tin books.
The manager doted on Tin-Tin. I recognised only one of the books, which I knew as On a Marché sur la Lune, or Walking on the Moon, from a battered volume my parents had acquired somewhere. That copy was in French, but this one was in English. I finally got to understand some of the more obscure bits of the story. Such as it was. I read through several Tin-Tin books while staying at the Safwan.
I had only one full day for sightseeing in Lattakia. I decided to concentrate on the ancient city of Ugarit, alleged home of the first alphabet.
The oldest known writing is Sumerian pictographs. The oldest surviving samples of this, from about 3400 bc, are roughly cotemporaneous with separately developing Egyptian hieroglyphs; but by then the system was already fully developed and was probably centuries old. These pictographs were exported to the Indus valley well before 2000 bc and eventually evolved into cuneiform script in their Mesopotamian homeland.
But around 1600 bc somebody, perhaps in Ugarit, certainly nearby, transformed some signs from Egyptian hieroglyphs into a fully syllabic alphabet, sometimes called Proto-Canaanite. All modern Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindu and South East Asian scripts are ultimately based on this ancient original. (Claims of Hindu patriots to the contrary, the Indus Valley scripts essentially died with their civilisation. Sanskrit shows influence from the Indus Valley but is mainly an adaptation of Proto-Canaanite.) Of the major modern scripts, only Chinese script can claim a separate foundation.
Although not one of the very oldest towns, Ugarit was founded before 6000 bc and was later important in the development of the Phoenician civilisation.
My first glimpse of Ugarit was a sea of low walls, some built from surprisingly regular stone blocks. This was a very substantial survival, considering it was destroyed by the Sea People at about the same as Hattuşa. It had surprisingly well-defined streets and drains, and the streets were in places well paved. They tended to curve, but that was common and may have been deliberate, helping to break the wind and the blaze of the sun.
Outside the “main gate” (probably the main gate of the Palace) I noticed small posts similar to some that once stood outside the gates of Troy. At Troy such posts supported images and fetishes of the local gods. They probably did the same here. It was a reminder that no matter how primitive we now think those times were, their communities were not isolated but were part of a civilised continuum that stretched across Asia. Troy and Ugarit were both aligned to the Hittite Empire.
Here and there I found stone well heads, some carved from single boulders and displaying holes obviously designed to hold the upright posts of a wooden superstructure that probably made it easier to pull up the full “pigs” of water. They also displayed lips designed to allow them to be sealed with a snug lid when not in use. Later Greek and Roman wells were more primitive than this.
Here and there were pillar bases. They resembled Minoan and Mycenaean pillar bases, but it would probably be a stretch to imagine that the design of the pillars would be identical. Similar roles simply generate similar designs.
Many buildings were multi-story, as shown by the staircases everywhere, now leading nowhere. Some stairs were inside houses, but others opened on the street, suggesting apartment-style blocks having no internal communication with each other.
In one place I found a huge stone vase with an inscription on the side. What was its purpose? What did the inscription say? I had no idea.
Some houses, such as the “House of Rapanou” had well-defined basements entered by sturdy steps. The corbelled walls suggested crypts, but perhaps it was simply for strength, avoiding unsupported spans of stone in the ceiling.
The temples all followed the same basic ground plan, a big hall with a small sanctuary behind. Some had wells.
I kept being struck by how modern everything looked. Perhaps the place had been re-occupied sometime after the sack of 1200 bc. Many walls were built from uniformly-sized stone bricks, well-shaped and fitted. Others were the more conventional grab-bag of shapes and sizes, and a few were made of irregular rubble, but the good walls stood out.
Back at the hotel, new people had booked in and had been put on the roof. Last night I had strung my travelling clothes line across a spare corner and now they had spread their own clothes loosely along it, pushing my now-dry clothes into a bunch at one end. I didn’t mind, them using it as long as there was room left for my stuff. I asked them politely to make some room for my newly washed t-shirt.
They weren’t very gracious about sharing. One of them even complained that the line was in their way. With a whole roof top to choose from, they had decided to set up house beneath my clothes line. They hadn’t had a problem with it while it held only their clothes! So I moved my line and restrung it above my own bed. Now I had plenty of room to dry my t-shirt. As the shared clothes line was full, the new people were reduced to laying out their washing on the parapet. Some of it blew away.
All the cars on the Aleppo train were airless and sticky. The train chugged through rugged brown and green patchwork landscape that seemed to be the hallmark of the Levant. Cypress, pine and olive dotted the hillsides. Where there were no trees, the land was parched and brown except where large irrigation systems sprayed water exuberantly about. The air was hazy.
Aleppo announced itself with rubble and satellite dishes. Buildings that looked like ancient and abandoned ruins sprouted half a dozen satellite dishes to prove that they were far from abandoned. The dishes looked like exotic black mushrooms, all tilted the same way to catch the same satellite signal. Rooflines bristled with them.
Many buildings seemed to be arranged into compounds surrounded by walls. Some walls were made of brick, some stone, many were simply a series of large concrete slabs with metal hoops at the corners by which they had been hoisted into place.
Aleppo’s train station was in the north of the city. Ignoring the waving arms of the taxi drivers, I headed south to Sharia al-Ayybi then followed that street until it ran out. I crossed a busy place and took a street on the other side that kept on in the same direction. I finally emerged at Sharia Bal al-Faraj, where the new Sheraton hotel and the clock tower were useful landmarks.
Oriented now, I made my way through some side-streets to the Hotel al-Gawaher. My room had a shared toilet and shower, and here at last I was confronted by the squat toilet that I had dreaded so long. But thanks in part to the shower it was clean, and I found that I could use it, after a fashion. It doubled as a smoking room. The smokers were not always good about using the ventilation provided — some mornings the light was on, but the fan was off, and the place reeked of smoke.
I spent a lazy day sitting in my room, feeling frustrated and lonely. I’d hoped to arrange for a companion here, but the hotel was not well arranged for guests who wished to socialise. If my internet negotiations had borne fruit that wouldn’t have mattered, but they had not. I was on my own.
I had also stalled in my internal redevelopment. The heady times when it seemed that every day brought a new revelation were behind me now as I left the familiar West and plunged into the Eastern maelstrom. The hassle of arranging day-to-day business using the strange mechanisms of the East overwhelmed any notions of trying something new. Surrounded by alien sounds, smells and customs, I now clung to familiar ways because they provided an anchor in a shifting world.
Perhaps I’d been on the run too long. Today marked 14 days in a row of one- and two-night whistle stops. I planned to be here for four days, but as this was only the first day, it was still just another new city combined with the plunge into a strange new country.
I was also not eating right. I had made the mistake of buying bread-and-spreads in Lattakia, so now I was locked into eating the stuff until the bread at least was used up. In Italy this made sense — and saved a significant amount of money. Here it saved nothing, as the spreads were expensive when compared with local restaurant prices. Worse, instead of going out to eat and becoming acclimatised I squatted in my room and munched bread and spreads, so it was psychologically unsound too. Carrying snack food made sense: carrying home picnics did not.
Don’t do it again, I told myself.
Looking around my miserable room, I decided it was also time to upgrade my accommodation choices. At these prices, I could afford a private toilet.
In the morning I kicked myself along until I fled the room just to get some peace. I was in the mysterious East. I might never be here again. I should be out there savouring every minute!
Oh, shut up, I told myself. But I went.
I wandered south through the Old City, through the souqs and mosques, ending up beside the Citadel.
I claimed a seat at a café in Sharia al-Qala’a, just a big patch of tables and portable air conditioning units beneath a sea of sun umbrellas facing the Citadel and backed by Souq ash-Shouna. I asked for a cappuccino and got a 1.5L bottle of water and a glass. Sent them away and repeated my request for a cappuccino. This got me an English-speaking waiter who seemed to understand what I wanted. He brought my cappuccino — in a glass, crusted with chocolate and with five sugar cubes.
Except that the “chocolate” was actually undissolved instant coffee, as my tongue instantly realised when I licked the spoon. Oh, well.
Who was I trying to kid? There was nothing mysterious about this place. It was exotic, but comprehensible. It was cryptic because I couldn’t read the road signs, but navigable. Snap out of it!
I finished my coffee and made my way up into the Citadel.
A stonework scroll above a doorway looked vaguely Celtic. Two snakes with a doglike head at each end wound around their own bodies. It was the only comprehensible decoration in a richly inscribed wall.
A passage led up into the fortress proper. At a bend in the passage was a tomb, covered by a green cloth, wrapped in plastic.
The technology of the Citadel was surprisingly sophisticated, with glazed clay pipes penetrating many walls to provide air circulation. There was a constant draft, warm air from above cooling and becoming heavier as it fell downwards through the network of rooms and pipes until it flowed out the bottom, creating a vacuum that sucked more air in from above. The heavy walls created the reverse of conventional wisdom, which is that warm air is pushed up by cooler air below. The rooms were kept pleasantly fresh and cool, without becoming cold or damp. Automatic, silent and effective in the summer heat. Did it ever get cold enough here for such ventilation to become a liability?
The views from the Citadel were magnificent, detracted from only by the difficulty of being sure what I was looking at. The city spread out towards the horizon, a sea of white concrete cubes punctuated by needles and the occasional modern tower block. Three million people lived within eyeshot of this spot.
The Citadel itself was largely ruined, although a mosque with a massive square tower beside it had been extensively repaired. Inside, there was some nice stained glass around the base of the dome.
The amphitheatre was being prepared for a concert of some sort. Plastic chairs were arranged on the ancient seats. Huge speakers were being set up around the stage.
I found a toilet. The place was grim and filthy despite the expensive cover price. However the attendant spent her time, it obviously wasn’t invested in cleaning her charge.
I left the Citadel and headed west through the souqs. Pictures of Bashir al-Assad hung from the arches. Here and there a faded picture of his father Hafez still clung to a wall. The stalls exploded with goods, but the stall-holders seemed casual about their business. There were no hordes of avid salesmen tugging at my elbow and saying “Sir, Sir, come, I have what you are looking for.” Canalised by my experience of Turkish markets, I tried to avoid showing too much interest in anything, but I needn’t have been concerned. The few times I stopped to examine something, the shopkeeper was content to wait until I looked at him before speaking up. Most spoke no English, although several tried French.
Bab Antakya was a grim pile of stone. I passed through and turned north to find the National Museum.
The Museum was an empty, echoing place on two floors. There were some interesting odds and ends from the ancient sites around the city and a few exhibits from further afield, but on the whole, I came away little enlightened by the experience. Labelling was every bit as bad as the guidebook suggested it would be.
By now it was getting hot, so I looked for an internet place where I would be out of the sun for a while. I found one and spent a couple of hours there.
I decided to make lunch my main meal of the day from now on, and to think was to act. I found my way to the Al-Koummah Restaurant and had a very satisfactory meal.
I also resolved to have a cereal breakfast in my room (using bottled water to make up milk from powder). I would buy a substantial lunch from a reputable-looking restaurant and would have just a snack for dinner. It worked well for several days until I broke the guideline about a reputable restaurant. But that still lay in the future.
That night I was …
Tormented for hours by a mosquito, a malign evil presence that appeared from nowhere and eluded my slaps. It was obviously zeroing in on me from somewhere because there was no questing about, it would just zoom in headed for a landing zone. But I couldn’t see where its roost was, until I spotted it on the curtain. This time I didn’t miss it — and the smear of blood proved its guilt beyond doubt. Thus to all tormenters!
I went to seek Qala’at Samaan, the Basilica of St Simeon Stylites.
I got to the servis yard about 9:00; the vehicle pulled out about 9:30 and got to Daret’ Azza about 10:15, and I reached the Basilica just after 11:00. But I cheated. After half an hour of walking, turning down several offers of rides, I gave in and accepted a lift on a tractor trailer that dropped me at the bottom of the hill.
Apart from the omnipresent smell of manure from the fields, it had been a pleasant walk, mostly through well-tended, if dry, farmland. The mephitic odour took some getting used to. It smelt like human ordure, not animal.
When I found what I thought was the Octagonal Yard where the saint had his column, I thought the place monumental but a little disappointing. The saint’s column had apparently not been re-erected but lay in pieces around the yard.
I rested in a breezy, shady spot on an old balcony until I felt refreshed enough to continue. Soon I found the real Octagonal Yard. It was grander than my earlier find, with the column base in place and a single huge drum atop it, worn into shapelessness by centuries of tourists climbing it. But it was still a little disappointing. There was only one column drum lying around that was big enough to come from the pillar. The thing had been eighteen metres tall — where was the rest?
It was too slick for me to climb unaided, so I settled for photographing myself leaning casually against it with a curled upper lip, as if I visited such things every day and found it all such a bore. But in fact, I enjoyed the visit very much.
I walked back to Daret’ Azza, climbed straight into a run-down servis (“Seerveess? Hghaleb?”) and was on my way back to town.
We passed a car wreck on the way. It had obviously turned over a couple of times and burned. There was no clue about the fate of the occupants, but it wasn’t promising. Until then I hadn’t realised that my servis was speeding. After all, it was going the same speed as everything else. But it would be very easy to become another such burned-out wreck.
The next day was a planned rest day. The most important thing I did that day was to eat lunch. Instead of eating at my regular place, I bought a cheap kebab from a hole-in-the-wall stall. I normally avoided sauce on my kebabs, but the guy squirted it on while I wasn’t looking. The sauce tasted a little odd, and that night I was given good reason to believe that it was “off”, because so was I — off on a week-long illness. For several days I barely had the energy to get out of bed to go to the toilet. Name a symptom and I demonstrated it.
That night I also discovered that the preparations I’d seen in the amphitheatre at the Citadel were for a loud disco night that went until 4:00. The sound blanketed the city.
I was supposed to be on a bus to Hama at 6:30. I was in no fit state to go. I’d be lucky just to get on the bus without pooing my pants. I wrote off my bus fare and booked another night at al-Gomarea.
Just walking down to the bus station in the afternoon to book a new seat almost finished me. I had to take a taxi back to the hotel when a certain urgency suddenly presented itself. I decided I’d take a taxi to the bus station in the morning. It might cost a little more for night rate, but I didn’t fancy schlepping my pack any distance while recovering from this bug.
However, my luck was not all bad. When I showered, I always took my money belt with me and hung it on a hook on the back of the (bolted) door of the bathroom. That evening, already ill, I was distracted. As I had done once before on the Trans-Siberian, I left the belt hanging on the hook!
That could have been the end of my trip. Anybody finding the belt could have walked away with it, Scot free. It held my Passport and most of my money and bank cards. I had a cache containing emergency cash and a debit card hidden in my pack, but there was only enough there to keep a roof over my head until I could buy a ticket home on a temporary Passport. Losing the belt would have been a disaster too big to recover from without going back to Australia.
But now the providence that had seemed to watch over me throughout this trip stepped in again: the belt was found by an honest man! This Swedish traveller (may he live forever) knocked on the nearest doors until he found me. Nothing was missing from the belt.
I woke at 6:10. Shit! I packed madly but when I woke the night man, he couldn’t make change on my S£1000 note. I found a 500 but he still couldn’t break it. I finally decided I’d rather drop S£200 (less than $5) than wait for my change and miss my bus. I didn’t even think of grabbing the fifty or so Pounds that the guy had managed to scrabble together.
I found a taxi out on the main street and took it, still too ill to haggle, just happy that he turned on his meter when I prompted him.
His taximeter now did an amazing thing, somehow jumping to 98 pounds by the time we got to the bus station, most of it in a few hundred metres while I was distractedly fossicking in my pack. What a Pest!
I couldn’t stop to argue. I snarled at the thief and flung him S£100, cleaning out my small change, then sprinted into the bus station. My bus was revving its engine when I climbed aboard dead on 6:30.
But the bus didn’t actually leave the yard until 6:45. I could have got my change from the hotel — if I’d known that the bus would be late.
On the bright side, I felt much better this morning. Not well, but better. So far, so good.
At Hama I took a taxi to Sharia Soukri al-Quwatli. Normally I would have walked the distance. At first, he’d wanted to take me a “clean hotel, very cheap”. Then he wanted to drop me at the door of my chosen hotel. I declined.
I walked to the Riad Hotel, climbed the stairs, and stood waiting in a reception that smelled like a toilet. After five minutes when nobody showed up, I gave up and went on down the street to the Cairo Hotel. The Cairo had fewer stairs, didn’t smell, and there was someone at reception. Best of all they had an air-con room with en suite Western toilet.
The latter feature soon proved its worth, as my early morning burst of health faded once I ate breakfast. At least I didn’t need to dress for company any more: I could just get up and do my thing whenever necessary. I started to look forward to a luxurious day in bed.
It was not to be. I had told the manager I was interested in an excursion to see Crac des Chevaliers. Sometime after noon he turned up at the door. Another guy also wanted to see the Crac.
What the heck. Half an hour later I was on my way to the Crac in a taxi with driver, spare, and a young American named Will who was on his 9th of 11 days in Syria, bound for Jordan.
It was a good decision. Crac des Chevaliers was magnificent and although it was a close-run thing, I managed to hold my horses until we got back.
With the topic already on my mind, one of the things I particularly remember was finding a pair of medieval long-drop toilets hanging over the battlements, cleverly designed so that anyone trying to get an eye on something to put an arrow in was likely to get something in his eye instead.
My next few days were unforgettable, to my regret. After tossing and turning feverishly, I would fall into an easily disturbed sleep. When a thoughtless moron down the hall turned up his TV full volume at 1:00 — obviously he couldn’t hear it over the silence — I felt close to homicide.
Provided I ate no dinner, I would wake in the morning feeling quite fit and healthy. This burst of false health would last until I had breakfast, after which the bug would reassert itself. Dry food was best. Anything oily or sugared would get it excited. Once I had the opportunity to time my digestion: I ate some tomatoes. It took them less than eight hours to roll through me. I had been anxiously checking for blood in the stool, and the red spots caused me some concern until I realised their nature.
I spent most of my time in bed. I read. I wrote, although what I wrote was remarkably monotonous in its subject matter. I played games on my Pocket PC. I had a Pocket PC edition of Age of Empires. I played that until the touchpad wore out.
I decided to stay in Hama an extra night in hopes that I’d finally be well enough to at least see the norias (water wheels).
My sparse diet was saving me a lot of money, but my expensive room was sucking it all right back. I paid the bill, plus the extra night, and resolved to leave in the morning no matter what.
I had a successful morning’s sightseeing. I saw the norias and the Citadel — the latter now just a park on top of the mound, filled with Arabic muzak and with noisy children accompanied by their cowled mothers. The Museum had no change for my S£500 note, and I just left rather than accept their assurance that they would get change while I looked around. My experience had been that such assurances were rarely worth the tobacco-tainted breath they were made with. They’d already had all morning to get change — they were leaning on the counter chatting when I arrived. Why reward such sloth? They charged tourists ten times as much as locals, so of course they were going to get big notes. The least they could do was be prepared for them.
So much for Hama. Goodbye, expensive room; I loved you when I arrived, but you became hateful, a sump of bad memories.
I hadn’t definitely decided my next destination. I just wanted to escape Hama and be on the move again. I thought I might go to Palmyra, but woke too late to catch the early bus to Homs. In the end I found myself aboard an Al-Aliyah bus bound for Damascus.
In Damascus I had a stroke of luck, an honest taxi driver who was willing to use his taximeter and didn’t have a magic zapper to make it go faster. He even dropped me off at Sharia Bahsa, just where I had asked to be taken, although it turned out that my maps were seriously inadequate and it took me a while to get oriented.
I eventually found Hotel Al-Haramain and was assigned to a poky box whose only window opened into the neighbouring triple room. It had no electrical socket of its own — even the fan plugged in outside! But there was a lounge outside that allowed me to use the fan’s socket in relative comfort. There was also a “traveller’s Hints” book in the lounge. It was full, but I wrote an entry on a sheet of my own paper and glued it in.
I went down the street to a pharmacy and explained my symptoms. The pharmacist briskly piled four lots of pills in front of me and carefully explained the doses. Take so many of these, so many of those, so many times per day until finished. I thanked her and commenced treatment immediately.
With my bowels in a holding pattern, I headed south towards the old City.
Old Damascus, the town within the walls, was not much larger than Pompeii. It was egg shaped, about 1.6 kilometres long by 1 wide, whereas Pompeii was about 1.2 kilometres long by 800 metres wide.
The walls at Souq el-Hamidiyya looked remarkably well preserved. Obviously, they had been reconstructed. The souq itself looked less well maintained. It was Friday, so everything was closed. The main drag was a long alley bordered by closed shutters. Overhead was an arched tin roof, with many holes in it.
At the far end was the Umayyad Mosque. Some Roman columns still stood between the souq and the mosque. The mosque was in use, so I just walked around it.
Attracted by the sound of drums, I found a large number of young people drumming in a colonnaded yard up a side street. It wasn’t till I noticed their neck scarves that I realised they were Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. How odd to encounter Scouting here!
I made my way to the street that is called Straight. Although most of my youthful Bible study had evaporated, this stray phrase stuck with me. It was such an odd yet precise way of referring to Straight Street (the Roman Via Rectis) that I remembered it, though not much else about it. It was not especially straight by modern standards, but unusually straight for an ancient city. Of course, it had certainly been widened since the old days, and widening usually took out kinks. I’d had the impression it would be some little lane somewhere, but when I first saw a map of Damascus it became obvious that it was actually the major decumanus of the Roman town. It ran east-west from Bab el-Sharqi to Bab el-Jabiye, with the Jewish quarter to the south-east and the Christian quarter to the north-east. Of course, Christianity was still a Jewish sub-cult back then.
That night, a miracle happened, and I slept through without waking for the first time in seven nights.
On Saturday I woke “dry”, with not even a gurgle, just a little gas. I cautiously ate breakfast, with no worse to show for it. Marvellous!
Worried about my visa running out, I spent a frustrating morning chasing a Central Immigration Office that retreated like a mirage. Two hours tramping the same turf west of Baramke Garage convinced me that, if it was there, it inexplicably had no English-language caption on its sign. I found the Criminal Security Bureau, Baath HQ, all sorts of military compounds — no CIO. So no visa extension for me; across the border I must go on Monday.
But I did manage to see the National Museum, a much better place than the dump in Aleppo. Upstairs they had an art gallery for modern artists.
Restored to health, I lost my focus. My diary reflected encroaching nihilism.
Adrift, I take stock.
Health — the bug has been routed and I am considering starting to eat properly again.
Money — my budget is in excellent condition. I have the funds to do whatever I want.
Itinerary — I haven’t missed anything major except Palmyra. With luck I can pick that up on my way north. Otherwise I’m on track and have Jordan to look forward to.
So why the feeling of futility? Why am I starting to drift?
The heat is bugging me. It is relentless. This is the wrong time of year to be here! And it will be worse in Jordan, although September is almost here.
Everything worth seeing seems to require an expensive excursion to get to it.
I am alone. I have made no lasting human contact in Syria. I can only blame myself — although the bug has not helped.
I took another walk in old Damascus. I found some relative peace of mind in the Christian quarter but lost it again while hassling through the souqs and the modern city on the way back.
My psyche was not at home here. I was a child of the West. I felt like a hermit crab torn from its borrowed shell and thrust into something that didn’t fit right, didn’t look right, that left the wrong parts of me exposed. Just being in Russia, Egypt or Syria was stressful to me! My mind attempted to overlook the irritant, but the irritant was bigger than I was. Only by hiding in my room, really nothing more than a larger shell, could I reduce the scale of this foreign place and pretend for a little while that things were still “normal”.
But things wouldn’t be normal again, not for me, not until I finished this trip — or abandoned it. I was plunging ever deeper into strangeness. The stranger and more repulsive my surroundings, the more pressure I was under. The greater the pressure, the more I withdrew from it.
Perhaps it was just the aftermath of my illness? I thought not.
I had spent a week being ill, a whole week hoping it would “go away”. Then the pills I bought in Damascus cured me in a day. There were pharmacies in Aleppo, there were pharmacies in Hama, but I had wallowed in misery. Crac des Chevaliers and the norias were not triumphs of spirit over weak flesh, they were spasms of guilt by a weak spirit. My real illness had been a failure of nerve. It was easier to blame bodily illness than to face my own cowardice.
This, then, was my next challenge. Forget loneliness. I must embrace the strangeness, I must become the strangeness, until it no longer repelled me. I must understand these lands as I understood my own. Surely if I understood all I would forgive all, if such glib sentiments meant anything at all.
I thought back to my time at Kosë. I was sitting one day beside the pool talking to Aysha. British, tall and slender, she was near to my age and had converted to Islam 26 years ago. She migrated between Britain and Turkey. She was “sunbathing” in full length robes that covered her without adding bulk or weight but never allowed more than a hint of her figure to show.
She didn’t like Britain, it was soulless and materialistic. People had comfortable, wealthy, but empty lives. I felt a prick at that. You’re talking about me again.
“But Islam discriminates against women. Even here in Turkey you’re treated as second rate. Down south it’s even worse.”
She treated that notion with scorn. I thought Britain was better? It wasn’t safe! In her home town she daren’t go down the street alone at night. Women got beaten up, raped, and killed. Here as long as she dressed respectably and behaved respectably, she got treated with respect.
She walked down to the shallow end of the pool and waded into the water, then sank forward and slowly swam a few lengths, robes flowing around her, concealing everything. She had to swim slowly: the drag of all that cloth must have been terrific.
She pulled herself out and went back to her sun lounge, carefully arranging herself on it, flapping out her robes to dry in the sun.
“Muslim women aren’t as repressed as you think. They have rights. They run the home. A woman can survive without a man. A man without a woman is nothing.”
That hit home too, although I recalled something somebody had told me about the common fate of a divorcee or widow under Islam.
I remembered Egypt in 2006, on the Eclipse tour, talking to Nerma, one of our guides. Nerma’s opinion was more extreme than Aysha’s; she considered that women had much the better deal under Islam. I hadn’t been too sure about some of her claims. But Aysha was making many of the same claims.
Western countries were soulless in Aysha’s opinion, tottering on the edge of a precipice. People spent their meaningless lives chasing comfort and the ownership of more and more things. Worthless trash.
What was important, she said, were family and God.
I had to disagree with her. But my arguments lacked force in my own mind. I hadn’t properly researched my case. I had seen the West, but I had not seen the East. Could I be wrong?
To raise my spirits, that night in Damascus I went to Neutron Restaurant for dinner — just soup, salad and some wine, chased with a cappuccino, in beautiful surroundings. Not a big meal, but my biggest and most expensive evening in many days.
All in all I’d rather have been in Göreme. Instead, I climbed on a bus and went to Jordan.
JordanAt Aqaba I made my way through crushing heat towards the sea until I found the Nairoukh Hotel. It cost more than I liked, but it had working air conditioning. My room was a delicious haven. Down in the hotel lobby it was 33°. I didn’t know how hot it was outside, but it felt like Melbourne does when it tops 40°C. Just sitting around in it was an ordeal, while walking was torture and any real exertion was unthinkable.
Near a flagpole above the beach I found some good gulf views, but it was too hot to enjoy them. Even sitting quietly in the sea breeze and the shade of a tree was an effort!
I looked along the shore. People were bathing in the warm waters of the Gulf. I decided to go and join them. It all looked normal and pleasant as I walked along the promenade behind the beach, until I realised that, without exception, the bathers were all male. A few women were scattered around the tea houses on the beach, but every one of them was covered from the top of her head to the tips of her toes despite the heat. I remembered Aysha’s flowing swimming robes. Even those modest coverings would be too daring for this place.
The men and boys in the water looked like Arabs. The men mostly kept their shirts on, wading solemnly with rolled up trousers. A few were in singlets. Some of the boys were more daring, stripping right down to shorts. A very few people wore bathers or long shorts, and actually swam.
The tables of the tea houses went right down the waterline. Some chairs even stood in the water. Men and a solitary woman sat in these, paddling their toes. The woman must have removed her shoes — surely — but was otherwise fully clothed.
This close, it looked cluttered and dreary. Behind rose the disapproving minarets of the mosques, peering over the trees, loudspeakers blaring the afternoon call to prayer.
I thought of Australian beaches. Bronzed men in board shorts or togs. Topless women in G-strings or skimpy bikini bottoms. Wrinkly old men in G-strings, with flaccid buttocks. Plump matrons in one-piece suits or bikinis. Naked shouting children. Surfies in boardies and netting t-shirts and cut-off wetsuits. Vast expanses of sand, with maybe an esplanade behind them where the cafés and restaurants and bars clustered. Room to move, room to breathe, and if Mrs Grundy grumbled, you could practically — not quite — ignore her.
And behind the esplanades lay Australia. Cities that spread far beyond the horizon, with just a small core of high-rises. Broad forests and prairies, broader deserts. A land where people talked about being the Lucky Country and a shrimp on the barbie and thought of themselves as laid-back and lazy, even those who worked up to sixty hours a week at jobs they hated.
I looked out over the Gulf. Somewhere over that horizon was Sinai, and on the Red Sea coast of Sinai was Dahab. The beach there was packed with sunbathers, men in shorts, women in bikinis. They even wore their swimsuits when they went for coffee at one of the cafés beside the beach. The buildings were European, and the signs mostly in English, French or German. Dahab was packed with Westerners. The only Egyptians to be seen were the people serving the food and working the cash registers. It was a little bit of the West inserted into the East.
But if you walked a few metres from the shore, you would find yourself in a different world; ramshackle, dusty and alien, where the signs were Arabic squiggles and the women wore headscarves. Where the notion of a forty, fifty or sixty-hour working week was preposterous because if you stopped working for a waking minute your family might go hungry that night. The mosques were there too, tucked away from the shore, convenient for residents but where their wailing would not disturb the tourists.
Dahab was an illusion. Aqaba was real. This was what it was to be Islamic. Beaches where people were ashamed to show skin. A neurotic, compulsive modesty that was more exhibitionistic than any nudity. An oppressive, overbearing paternalism that was as empty as anything in the West, but which concealed the void by an obsessive concern with performative ritual.
Sorry, Aysha.
In the morning I explored the ancient sights. Ayla, the Islamic town was established in 650 ad adjacent to an existing Byzantine town. All that really remained was the fort, perhaps 150 metres by 200 metres. But at that it had fared better than the Byzantine town, Aliana, 300 years older, which was now just a few scattered pieces of rubble, a church foundation, and a fragment of wall.
The Arabs came here as conquerors and had grown like a strangler fig, at first leaning on their ex-Byzantine hosts but gradually growing up around them, displacing them, until they were gone. Even the descendants of the original population, if any remained, were Arabs now. It was the story of the Middle East in miniature.
The Movenpick Resort was nearby. It boasted a private beach, and I was tempted to go there to see how it differed from the public beach I’d already seen. But access to the private beaches was not free, and I decided I wasn’t curious enough to pay their prices just to see a miniature version of Dahab. I had no desire to hit the beach myself; I’d already had my beach holiday, in the infinitely more pleasant environment of south Crete.
At the front desk of my hotel, I cross-checked the options I’d found for moving on. They were as expected. Unless I wanted to hang around until 11:00, I needed to catch the 6:30 minibus. Another horribly early start! I missed the alarm clock I had s0 casually lent in Göreme.
Perhaps the 4:30 muezzin call would finally come in handy.
I was dropped off at the new Visitors Reception Centre, an initially confusing pile of buildings several kilometres north of Rum Village. I eventually found my way into the right office, where a clerk explained my options. They were all expensive by my standards, but Wadi Rum was a personal must-see and I was resolved to spend what it took to do it right. So I signed up for an all-day customised tour of the Protected Area. What this meant was that I got a driver and a 4WD and the right to determine where to go. We would go where I wanted, stop where I wanted. In practice, of course, I simply let the driver choose a route that took in all the major sites. I had no preference for route, I wanted to concentrate on enjoying the scenery.
I was taken outside to where the drivers were milling around. A discussion ensued. There were several gleaming vehicles standing about here, but it seemed that none of them was mine. After a while a grinning young chap in camouflage fatigues came over and introduced himself as Mahmoud. He spoke practically no English, but I was made to understand that he was my driver. We climbed into an old utility wagon and drove south to Rum Village, where I was dropped off at the Rest House while Mahmoud and his mate went off to fetch our steed.
I took the opportunity to make arrangements for the night. I was already down for an expensive tour, and I decided I didn’t really need to include an expensive night at a Bedouin camp. So I signed up for a tent behind the Rest House, bed and breakfast.
Mahmoud reappeared driving a huge sand-coloured Toyota 4WD. I climbed in, and just like that we were off.
The film Lawrence of Arabia was mostly shot in Wadi Rum. The real Lawrence spent a lot of time in Rum during WW I, so today was an authentic “in the footprints of” experience. But the film didn’t do full justice to the scale of the place.
Our first stop was Lawrence’s Spring. In the movie, this was where Lawrence first met Auda abu Tayi, after making the passage of the desert. In truth (Seven Pillars of Wisdom), Feisal had been negotiating with Auda for some time and Lawrence actually first met him far south of here at Al Wejh on the coast, about half-way to Medina, where Auda had come to seal his agreement with Feisal.
It was a well and a trough and a square enclosure, with a few camels milling around it. In the distance was a broad Bedouin tent. This tent was our next stop, but it was just a brief one to say hello to a cousin.
In the distance I could see Khazali, which became our next destination. We penetrated Khazali Canyon. There were Nabbatean inscriptions here. They were probably just travellers’ graffiti, left by the caravans — the ancient equivalent of “Joe was here”, hallowed only by their antiquity.
The patterns and colours of the rock fascinated me. Millennia of wind, water, heat and cold had been at work.
Nearby was another tent, another cousin of Mahmoud’s. This time I was invited in for tea and a hard sell. I ended up with some Bedouin headgear I didn’t really want (in fact it got dumped a few days later) but it made Ahmed happy — he certainly received a commission on the sale. He would have been even happier if I’d bought one of the saddles we lounged upon and which was offered to me, but although a little loosening of the wallet would keep the guide sweet and hopeful, that would have been extravagant. I could not carry it with me, so it would cost a fortune to ship to Australia. I didn’t mind buying the headgear; I had wanted to have a taste of lounging around in one of these tents and it was worth a minor indulgence to prolong the experience.
We passed a rock bridge high overhead, probably the Little Bridge, then curved off to some massive sand dunes piled against the cliffs. I trudged up one of them, just to get the feel of it.
We curved around down to Lawrence’s House, now just a ruin. The walls looked impressive from outside, squared blocks of stone, but inside you could see how rubble had been used to line them and square them up. This rough inner surface would probably have been hidden behind carpets.
We came to rock faces covered by drawings of camels, probably the Alameleh Inscriptions. Here we had to stop for a while, as the 4WD was overheating in the sun. While the car sat in the shade, I scrambled around the area and found a carving of a man with a spear and shield. In places around here the rock looked like it had melted.
We pulled in to visit more of Mahmoud’s relatives and sat around a while drinking tea. I shared out some date rolls I’d bought that morning, and they went over very well.
At Burrah Siq we stopped for lunch. The place was desolate and magnificent but with some very persistent flies. I had tea, an old sheepskin to lie on, and the remains of the bread I bought this morning. Mahmoud had some cheese triangles. Tea, bread and cheese seemed very appropriate to the setting.
After lunch, I felt like crap. Sorry, I felt like having a crap. Was I coming down with another dose of the traveller’s complaint? But I felt perfectly healthy otherwise. I’d even been feeling a little constipated.
We eventually moved on, then had to stop in a shady spot to let the car cool down again. Perhaps Mahmoud simply wanted a post-prandial siesta. I trotted around the area, finding dozens of rose-coloured quartz pebbles. Where did they come from? I examined the cliffs and found the walls studded with the things. They were harder than the sandstone they were embedded in. As the rock wore away, they accumulated on the ground at the foot of the cliffs.
We passed another high rock bridge and then reached a large one, low enough for an adventurous climber to reach. Others had beaten us here and were adventurous. I set out to climb it but decided I wasn’t up to this challenge and came down again.
That was pretty well it. We returned to the Rest House. I wasn’t interested in the sunset, so I gave Mahmoud a big tip and said goodbye.
We had left the Rest House at about 8:30 and returned just after 16:30, so my tour had lasted about eight hours. I was exhausted. I stumbled into the Rest House and ordered a beer.
Later I had solid evidence (so to speak) that my bowels were on the mend.
Just had the best crap I can remember — I thought it would never stop coming! No wonder I felt the urge: several days’ worth of stool was banked up waiting for release. It took a bit of effort — my nose started bleeding — but I relieved the pressure. Oh, the relief! Oh, the blessed solidity!
An army may march on its stomach, but it sits on its arse.
Just after 20:00 I went to my tent, totally exhausted, utterly happy. I zipped the flap for the slight extra security, despite the warmth of the night. Besides, I figured it would cool off fast outside, and I was right. I slept like a log.
Petra-fried!I was up before the Sun, for another blissful encounter with the toilet. The Moon was just setting behind Jebel Rum. By the time the sun burst over Um Ishrin, I had eaten breakfast and was on my way to find a Nabbatean temple that was somewhere west of the rest House.
After a round-about trek I eventually found it – a rock platform, some low walls with half-columns engaged, and a couple of larger columns in the porch. One of the broken column had a Nabbatean inscription on it. From the porch I could see the Rest House in the distance – if I had known where to go, I could have walked up here in half the time it actually took me.
I went down to the Rest House and waited for the Petra minibus. When it turned up, there were only four passengers – Brett, Menolly, Tone and me. The “conductor” made out that he was thinking of cancelling the run because there weren’t enough people. He wanted JD7 a head instead of the regular JD3. In the end we caved in to this blatant blackmail and paid JD5 apiece. We didn’t know if the bus would really be cancelled, but none of us wanted to be stuck waiting for the 16:00 service. In fact when we got to Petra we were dropped at the gate of the site (or my intended hotel in my case) instead of the bus station in Wadi Musa, so we got a little value for our money, since the local taxis charged a dinar to take people between site and bus station.
I had chosen the Hotel Petra Moon because it was convenient to the site. It cost more than I liked, but I was getting used to that. It turned out to be the right choice, for once. My nice blue room was cool and quiet, although the “SUPER BOMB” brand on my TV gave me pause.
I didn’t hang around in my nice room, but dumped my baggage and headed out to start seeing the main event.
It was further to the entrance than I expected, through car parks and souvenir stands. A three day pass cost me JD31, which was a bit steep but gave me flexibility in how I tackled the site. I would be able to explore it in stages, instead of exhausting myself by trying to do everything in one hit.
The first hurdle was the horse and camel riders. Fortunately they were busy with more willing victims, so I slipped past them unnoticed.
I walked down a long path, divided down the middle. One side was smooth, for walkers, the other rougher, for horses and camels.
The first sights were some tombs, The four-peaked Obelisk Tomb on the left and the so-called Djinn Blocks on the right. The Obelisk Tomb was cut into a rock face on two levels. The lower level had once possessed a beautiful façade but was now worn and battered. The Djinn Blocks were free-standing, the cliff face being cut back to achieve this effect. Although the effect was admirable, I couldn’t help but suspect that it would have been easier to build a conventional building instead.
The rock faces in the distance held more tombs, one of them still displaying a grand and lofty façade, others mere holes in the cliff face.
Then came the Siq, a natural crack in the mountain more than a kilometre long which the Nabbateans seized upon and embellished with water channels and rock-cut shrines. The Romans paved it, and some of the paving had survived.
At the end of the Siq came the Indiana Jones moment, when the so-called Treasury appeared. This tomb featured in The Last crusade as the resting place of the Holy Grail. One of the grandest and certainly the best-preserved of the Nabbatean rock tombs, it formed a dramatic introduction to the “rose-red” city of Petra. But there was no booby-trapped passage and no ancient Crusader knight waiting behind the facade of the Treasury, it was just a big plain room with some blind alcoves. In fact, surprise, a tomb.
The best thing about the city was the way the rock had weathered and corroded into beautiful colours and patterns. I had admired the natural colours and textures in the rock in Wadi Rum – the same sort of rock, come to think of it – but here the grain of the rock was set off by the angular details carved into it by the hand of man. I had seen statues such as Modesty in museums in Italy, where the artist had carved the stone so that the features of his subject seemed to glow through a gauzy veil. Here, nature had done the same thing: the doors and their carved surrounds seemed to flow out of the rock.
Coming out of the Treasury and looking right, the way seemed closed. Piled rock, haggled as though it had been used as a quarry – which it probably had been. Therefore, I turned left.
Past the Treasury and deeper in, I reached the Street of Façade, lined, as its name suggests, by more rock-cut tombs. Some were, like the Obelisk Tomb and the Treasury, cut into the cliff-face. Others were like the Djinn Blocks, freestanding cubes carved from the natural stone.
Several tombs shared one odd feature: their rooflines sported little pyramids, of about four steps. I first noticed this feature on a carved façade beyond the Siq (though that as in a few other examples had five steps), then on a freestanding tomb in the Street of Façades, and finally on the array of tombs in the cliff on the far side. It tickled my memory, and then I had it: Hattuşa, the restored segment of wall. The crenellations there had been smooth rhomboids. And before that, reconstructions of Troy; the same. And … yes, in a museum in Damascus I had seen a reconstructed gate with jagged little pyramids on the towers, six steps high.
Where the street widened beyond the first tombs, the stalls started. Tea stalls, books stalls, souvenir stalls. I contained my irritation: the Nabbateans undoubtedly had shops here, too. In the background the tombs of lesser citizens crowded, shoulder to shoulder, on a cliff face.
Continuing down, I reached the Theatre. Seven thousand citizens could crowd in there. Behind it were more tombs. Perhaps for dead theatre-lovers. Above it was the so-called High Place of Sacrifice, which I thought might be worth a climb tomorrow.
On the other side of the street were the Royal Tombs. I marked them for later exploration as well, and continued down, turning into the main street. In Roman times this had been the Cardo Maximus (what the Nabbateans called it seems to be lost), and the Romans had built a colonnade down either side. I wished somebody would re-erect that! It was now nearly noon and the Sun was beating down. The rock faces gathered the heat and retained it. I had brought enough water with me to last the day, which was just as well because in a neat display of supply and demand, an ordinary can of Coke was selling for JD1 at the Treasury and up to JD1.20 down near the Monastery, four to five times the going rate elsewhere.
Cardo Maximus was lined with monumental buildings. A marketplace, the Temple of the Winged Lions, the Great Temple. At the end, a monumental gateway opened on a wide space, perhaps a forum, overlooked by the Qasr al-Bint, another big temple.
Up the hills at the back was the Museum (scarcely worth the climb) and a Crusader Fort – which I couldn’t find, although I had fun trying. There were more tombs there. The locals used them for corralling their goats.
Apart from this central area the city was hard to comprehend. Most of the free-standing buildings fell down in earthquakes and had since been carted away stone by stone. What survived was mostly the tombs of the rich people and the ruins of a few of the major civic buildings. The houses of the ordinary people had all disappeared – presumably they were mostly made from wattle-and-daub and had simply dissolved in the occasional rains. A shame. What was left was broad hillsides covered in potsherds.
I made an early start the next morning, wanting to beat both the heat and the tour groups. I reached the Treasury at 07:00, to find it deserted except for a single camel resting picturesquely in front. If I was going to hop the barrier and sneak into the Treasury, this was the moment. Naturally, I didn’t do any such thing.
(The doors only lead to empty chambers, by the way. Also, the barrier has splinters.)
In the Street of Façades I found steps leading up. The way was a little rough for the first few metres, but then I reached the steps and became to climb in earnest. The way ran into a crack. In places it was almost level, then another flight of steps would go up steeply.
I passed souvenir stalls, but they were all vacant. I had beaten the Bedouin, who obviously couldn’t be bothered getting up early but preferred to wait until the tour groups got going.
Above me I saw an obelisk peeking over the rim, with the setting Moon poised above it. Looking down, I saw that other early-birds were now on their way up, but there was no way they would catch up with me before I’d had a good look at the High Place of Sacrifice.
There were several obelisks, as it turned out, and I soon discovered that they lined up roughly with the Moon – and therefore, presumably, the Sun. Obviously they were an astronomical instrument of some sort, probably used to determine the date of some religious observance. The one I had seen from below perched on the edge of a cliff at the eastern edge of the plateau, so it seemed likely that they were designed to spot the rising Sun, Moon or star – probably the Sun.
I stood in the High Place of Sacrifice in the full light of the morning and grasped for the edges of ancient power, and found nothing. The place was as devoid of a core as a rotten apple. It was silence, and ruins, and foolish gawkers. What had been here, if anything had ever been here, had departed long ago.
I remembered visiting Delphi, on a past trip to Greece. I had stood in the Temple of Apollo and at the Rock of the Sibyl and felt nothing. But down the hill, in the rubble of the Old temple of Athena at the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, something was still radiating awe. I could feel it beating on my brow as I circled the ruin. Probably it was imagination. But the experience stayed with me.
From the High Place, a clear path led me down the other side of the hill. I passed what looked like a tomb but may have been a memorial, and saw more tombs below me. In a worn patch of rock, people had left pebbles in natural pigeonholes. What the heck – I added a pebble to a vacant hole, not sure why but feeling it was appropriate.
Further down I encountered a lion carved in the rock face. It had lost its head, which may have been a separate piece of rock. A gutter ran down the rock and looked like it was designed to channel water out of the lion’s mouth.
The local cats spotted me as I came down a neatly carved stair that looked like it had once had a colonnaded roof. The first cat to arrive was gaunt. She just sat beside me and purred loudly. Unfortunately I had no food for her. I knew her gender because her nipples were swollen and she was followed up the rock face by several kittens.
Moving on found more memorials – the so-called “Coloured triclinium”, the Garden Tomb, and the Soldier’s Tomb. The dust outside was deep and puffy, suggesting that the breeze never got into this place.
In the hills above the city centre, I found the scanty remains of some Roman houses and even an earlier Nabbatean house. So something had survived. Obviously this was the high-rent district as the poor could not have afforded such buildings, the views were superb, and the spot caught the breeze on hot days.
I finally reached the old trade route, where the so-called Pharoun Column marked the site of an ancient sanctuary. This marked the end of my High Place of Sacrifice foray.
I kept on across the valley, past the Museum turnoff, then up the hill towards the Monastery (Al-Deir). I first came to the Lion Biclinium, another tomb (surprise!). The door was flanked by carved lions.
From there the way got harder, until I saw a carved knob appear over the rim of the canyon. Eventually I came out upon a small plateau, with a tea room at one side and the so-called Monastery on the other. It was similar to the Treasury but even larger, though not as well preserved, and it stood taller than the cliff that held it. The niches that must once have held statues were now empty. Inside, the huge niche at the back of the main hall was also empty. A sign suggested it had been used for ceremonies of some sort, and noted that it had later been used as a church.
I was back at the hotel by lunchtime, feeling very pleased with myself for a good morning’s work. I now had the whole afternoon free. I walked up the hill to a supermarket and bought some food, and followed that up with a Greek Salad with Onion Soup at an eatery near the shop. I had a long, deli-cious siesta and then spent the rest of the day watching TV. What I watched I don’t remember, but it was probably CNN or BBC World.
Another early start got me to the Obelisk Tomb by 7:00. This time I explored it. One room was a triclinium. The Nabbateans were obviously big on feasting the dear departed. Unless, of course, the Romans had played a naughty trick.
Today at Bab al-Siq, the entrance to the Siq, instead of proceeding down the Siq I turned right and headed down Wadi Muthlim.
The first landmark was a tunnel 88 metres long, designed to take water channelled away from the Siq. After that I was in a narrow crack, not as dramatic as the Siq but impressive enough.
About half an hour in, I came to a place where it was easy enough to climb down, but for a short-arse like me, not so easy to get back up. From this point I was committed to walking the length of the wadi.
The walls closed in and the footing became slick and cramped. In places I had to crawl under boulders that had fallen from above and been trapped by the narrowing crevice. Elsewhere I crawled over other boulders that had not been stopped. In one place I had to hang by my fingertips to get a foot-hold below, then slither down to the lower level. Getting back up there would be impossible for me.
I came to niches carved by the Nabbateans, presumably shrines to gods or ancestors or guardian spirits. Most were crude holes in the rock, but some were still well preserved and had designs at the back of them. Perhaps the poor people carved them, who could not afford a full sized tomb.
Fifty minutes in, the walls drew back. I was through! A stone wall was at my left: the rock faces across the way held rock-cut tombs. I found the house of Dorotheus and the Tomb of Sextius Florentinus, Governor of the Province of Arabia for the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 127 AD. It had an illegible inscription above the door.
I had now completed Wadi Muthlim. I found steps going up and began the climb to the Sacred Hall. The stairway was in good condition. Here and there were niches. There were grand views across Petra and down to the Theatre.
The Sacred Hall was merely a rock-cut sanctuary of some sort. Just beyond it I reached the edge and found myself looking down on the Treasury. Although the time was 9:00, it was still half in shadow – perhaps I should have waited a couple more hours to let the Sun get higher.
I could have jumped off the cliff and flattened a camel standing below me. But I didn’t jump. It wouldn’t have been fair on the camel.
I descended, and finished off with the Royal Tombs. It was not even 11:00. In three days, about 15 hours if you count only time on site, I had covered Petra and had neither ridden a horse or camel nor bought an over-priced souvenir. Excellent!
To celebrate, I treated myself to an expensive beer and a cappuccino in the Cave Bar, a converted tomb outside the site; a much better use for the money I had saved.
For lunch I made my way up to Wadi Musa and ate a shwarma from the Al-Arabi joint near the roundabout. It was no great shakes as gyros go, but at one Dinar the price was right. I found an internet joint and spent a couple of hours online. Then I got the munchies and demolished two more shwarmas. It still didn’t exactly blow a hole in the budget.
That afternoon I practiced my Arabic with the staff in the hotel lobby. An la ahtam bil diin — religion isn’t important to me. An la ahtam bil siasa — politics isn’t important to me. I had a feeling these phrases were going to come in handy.
I’d already had discussions with several people about politics in the last few days. Arabs and Israelis, I found, were very good at explaining how blowing up their neighbours today was amply justified by a soup bone that Mohammigg had thrown at Ishmaook fifteen thousand years ago. Ishmaook had promptly poked Mohammigg in the eye with the bone and Mohammigg had naturally responded by kneecapping Ishmaook’s camel, and it had all grown from there. It may have been something like that: I lost track. Ishmaook may have thrown the first bone. Then Mohammigg may have poked Ishmaooks wife, not Ishmaook’s eye, and he may not have used a bone but something with an ahh on the end.
The problem was that I only ever got half the story. Each could quote chapter and verse on what had been done to them but were a little vague when it came to figuring out why the other was being so mean to them. I had to put the pieces together myself. And if understanding Arab and Israeli rela-tions was difficult, figuring out their family squabbles was impossible.
Since I wasn’t going to Israel on this trip I was obviously doomed to hearing only the Arab side of things. This seemed inequitable. Therefore it was better to avoid the topic of Arab versus Jew entirely, which meant I was not going to be able to solve the problems of the Middle East just yet. Sorry, guys.
Amman and aroundPetra settled, I took a taxi to the bus station and a minibus to Amman. This time I was more cautious about finding a place to stay. I had settled on the Sydney Hostel — a good, homely name, and cheap. At the price, I didn’t expect much, and I didn’t get much — a room on the ground floor, peering out into an alleyway occupied by a family of cats. But it was on the edge of Downtown, on the side towards the Jett terminal and thus moderately convenient for both destinations. Plus, cats, albeit on the other side of a window that I couldn’t open.
In the morning I went downstairs and found a guy snoozing on a chair. He was my taxi driver for the day. I had agreed with the hotel that I would pay JD30 for the day, but the instant we set off the driver popped on the meter. I decided to say silent and see what happened. I figured if it started looking dodgy, I could always cancel and take a minibus back to Amman.
Our first stop was St George’s Church at Madaba, which had a magnificent mosaic map on its floor and a lovely wooden iconostasis. Then we went up to Mt Nebo, where Moses got his single glimpse of the Promised Land. I stood there and strained my eyes, but the landscape faded into haze short of the Jordan River. To one side I could just make out the Dead Sea, a darker patch just before the haze got too thick.
Like Moses, I was unable to enter Israel. I knew how to work the Bridge border dance on paper, but I didn’t want to risk getting an Israeli stamp in my Passport, which would have bollixed my visit to Iran and prevented me getting back into Syria.
There was a museum, of sorts. I found a Roman milestone, the 6th Milestone of the Esbous-Livias road:
imp.caesar.m.avr.antoninvs.pivs.felix.avg.
parthic.max.britannic.max.pontifex.max.
trib.pot.xvi.imp.ii.cos.iii.p.p.proc.
vias.et.pontes.restitvit.
ahesb.mvi.atto.ecb
Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius, by grace Augustus, Chief over Parthia, Chief over Britain, Chief Bridge-builder, power of the Tribunes sixteen times, Imperator twice, Consul three times, father of his country, proconsul, repaired these roads and bridges. The last two words were unfamiliar and looked Greek (ΑPΟ ΕSΒ perhaps). About 140 ad.
I also found a rolling stone shaped like a man-hole cover, the Abu Badd, similar to those I’d seen in an underground city in Turkey, the type used to seal a passage against an enemy.
From the mountain we descended below sea level, to the Amman Beach Tourist Resort, where I paid an absurd amount for the right to bob around in the Dead Sea. No matter, I had promised myself this experience, so I had to pay. I befriended a British couple and they took my photo. The water felt a little soapy but not otherwise much different to ordinary seawater. I found that if I stood upright in the water and held my arms out, the water just lapped my armpits. But it took a bit of effort to stay upright for long. If I stopped “walking” on the water it tended to push my feet out from under me, at which point buoyancy quickly took over and I would topple.
I went up the hill and paddled around in a big swimming pool to wash off the salt and to relax. This was the last stop in my Dead Sea itinerary, so I might as well enjoy it. Meanwhile I could see my driver sitting inside among a bunch of other taxi drivers and drinking tea — presumably the resort had a cosy deal with drivers who delivered tourists to its gate. I padlocked my day pack with my money in it to a chair well away from any occupied tables.
Even here, the swimmers were mostly male. The few females were either tourists (like one of my British friends) or prepubescent.
I noticed a guy getting a bit too close to my day pack and heaved myself out of the water just in case, but he walked past it without a glance. Still, my instincts had been aroused. I’d had a nice dip. It was time to leave. I changed back into my clothes, signed to my driver, and headed back to the taxi.
Back at the hotel, the meter read JD25.41. The driver didn’t even ask for a tip. I gave him JD30, since that was what I had agreed to pay. I considered it money well spent.
That afternoon, I found an Iran guidebook in a bookshop before the heat drove me indoors. It was time to start thinking about Iran.
I wandered around Amman a bit and stumbled upon the National Archaeological Museum, one of whose drawcards was some copper scrolls from about 100 ad recovered from Qumran beside the Dead Sea. They displayed the originals in a case beneath a shiny facsimile. They even had the very table and bench upon which the scrolls had been written. These scrolls were not exactly Biblical: in fact, they were descriptions of troves of buried treasure. But the Qumran cache did also include a lot of Biblical scrolls and fragments.
The Museum also had a duplicate of the Mesha Stele, found in Dhiban in 1868 and recording a defeat of King Omri (878-871 bc) of Israel by King Mesha of Moab, capturing Nebo and Ataroth (using Dhiban as a base) and forcing the Israelites to retreat from Jahaz. The stele was supposedly erected around 850 bc, but Israel is supposed to have gained control of Moab during Omri’s reign. The Bible story is that Mesha later rebelled against Jehoram (849–842). How should we read this? The stele was made at the time: the Bible was compiled much later. Both accounts could be true — from a certain point of view. Spin is not new.
I also found some chain mail. The links had been individually riveted.
PalmyraGetting out of Jordan was easier than I expected. My visa had not in fact expired and they simply stamped me back into Syria using the second entry.
But did I have 15 days left or just the 6 days that would bring me up to a full month from my initial entry? I decided that it didn’t matter. All that remained for me in Syria was Palmyra. After that I would head for Lebanon.
The screw securing the left lens of my glasses fell out on the bus. I managed to find the screw but was unable to get it back into place. Then I dropped it while fiddling with it in a restaurant in Damascus, but fortunately found it by crawling around on the floor with a torch. The hole had no seating — the screw needed to be screwed in from the start. I normally travelled with a miniature screwdriver for just such emergencies, but I had forgotten to pack it. I simply didn’t have the right tools. I needed to find an optician with a loupe and miniature screwdriver.
This time in Damascus I managed to get into Ghazal House — I took a single room that was half of a little shack on the roof, complete with air conditioning, fan, and en suite.
Next morning started with a hassle. Every taxi I asked wanted S£100 to take me to Haraste, which sounded excessive considering the fare had been S£40 on the meter when I first arrived. Unsurprisingly, not one of these thieves was willing to use the meter. Then I found a friendly fellow that wanted “20”. It sounded too good to be true, but I got in anyway — perhaps he was going off shift and was going past Haraste, I thought. I resolved to be fair and give him 50, which would be approximately correct since by now I was nearly at Baramke, where I’d planned to look for something like yesterday’s cheapo microbus.
Of course, it wasn’t 20. He wanted S£200, as he finally made very clear at Haraste. Oh, what a Pest! In the end I laid 100 on the seat and walked away from the thief. I conceded the extra 50 because it was my own greed that led me to climb into his car, not because he’d earned it. He’d felt dodgy but I’d ignored my inner warnings. So instead of a minibus ride for S£10 from Baramke I got a hassle and paid S£100. I just never seemed to learn!
I arrived in Palmyra just after 10:30 and took a taxi to town. At my chosen hotel, New Afqa, I was informed that they had no rooms available now, but that they would have rooms after noon, when people had checked out. No problem. I let them take down my details, then rather than sit around waiting I went to see the Museum.
This was quite interesting, but photography was forbidden. I did my best to memorise a reconstruction of the ancient site’s premier attraction, the massive Temple of Bel.
The grave sculptures were mostly rather humdrum — nothing like the haunting Fayoum portraits. A few had traces of personality but for the most part they looked alike, just big-nosed, big-jawed, emotionless zombies. It may well have been a convention, but it looked like the sculptors simply weren’t very creative.
A Neanderthal skull was reconstructed in one case, the only problem being that the reconstruction was made from a piece of bone the size of my palm, located near the back of the skull. This was like painting a face based on the back of the head! I suspected the accuracy of this reconstruction.
I had lunch, just a roll and tea from a place on the corner, then went back to New Afqa. Still nothing. I kicked around their lobby for half an hour. Noon passed and I asked again. Nobody knew anything about a room. So I decided to see the ruins.
Tadmor, now known as Palmyra, was a superb site, on a par with Ephesus in Turkey though more ruined. In fact, since most of the surviving ruins dated from Roman times, the two sites complemented each other in giving a picture of a late-Roman town. I loved it even more when I found that access to most of the site was free! Only the Temple of Bel had an entry fee, and you could get a look at that without going in. Better still, there were very few tourists around. There had been a couple of tour buses earlier, but they had gone, and the archaeological site was mine alone.
The way to the site was along a curving road bordered by ratty palm trees that gave neither shade nor ornament. They had been wrapped in Hessian, perhaps to protect the bases of the fronds from wind-blown sand.
On the way to the Temple of Bel I passed the massive arches of the appropriately-named Monumental Arch, with its view west along the Great Colonnade to the Tetrapylon that stood at the main crossroads of the town, near to the Agora, Senate and Theatre.
Despite its outrageous double price, I did try to get into the Temple, but it was closed “for lunch”. So I settled for what was open and free. If I’d known that just a few years later, ISIS would tear it apart, I might have tried harder.
I walked around the outside of the Temple. It showed signs of late repairs apparently designed to make it into a fortress — column drums built into the walls, massive chunks of marble used to patch a battlement, and bricked-up gates. Some sagging walls had been buttressed by stacks of mortared stone. Around the back, a local guy greeted me effusively and tried to persuade me to visit his tea house in the oasis; but I begged off. The day was already blisteringly hot and was going to get hotter before I finished. I wanted to see the site, then have a siesta in a nice cool hotel room.
I ended up back at the Monumental Arch and set off along the long colonnaded street. This ultimately ran uphill to near the camp built by the Romans after they sacked the town. Along the way the walls of the Agora had survived, and a few other structures, particularly in the camp. Most of the town had been reduced to its foundations, but I could still trace the streets and mentally reconstruct what might have been there before. The city walls still enclosed it all, and from a small hill above the Roman camp I picked out the entire peanut shape of the town.
Outside the Theatre, a camel driver turned up and tried to interest me in a ride. I turned him down and was a little startled when he didn’t hang around the way most do. I found out why when I reached the Tetrapylon, where he was waiting to try again. This time he was more persistent when I turned him down again, cantering around trying to place himself in the frame of my snapshots, perhaps with the notion of demanding baksheesh if by chance I happened to take a photo that had him in it.
The Tetrapylon, as its name suggests, was an arrangement of four tall gazeboes, each made of four tall columns topped by a massive stone entablature. In the middle of each gazebo was a block of stone that once supported a statue.
Where the street turned south was a temple of some sort, described in my guidebook as a 3rd Century ad “funerary temple”. Interestingly, it had a small service door at the rear. Having such a door made perfect sense, but I was still tickled by an incongruous vision of a duty priest arriving in his litter each morning and solemnly unlocking the door, dusting the statues then getting out a broom and sweeping the hall before going up front to throw open the main doors.
West of the street was the camp built in the ruins by the Romans after they finally crushed Zenobia’s empire in 272 ad. It was believed to be the site of Zenobia’s palace.
Beyond the Camp the city walls climbed a mound, from which there were grand views of the entire city and the funerary towers of the ancient Tadmorans. Sitting there on a convenient chunk of the city wall, I understood a great lesson about history that I had already read about but now finally saw in person.
Our attention is drawn to wars and rulers, but often these are not the defining events in the life and death of cultures.
In a moment of turbulence this city had once challenged Rome for control of the eastern end of its empire. At its peak, Tadmor controlled everything from Ankara to Egypt. How many people had lived here then — 100,000? At least that. And now there were none.
The glory days had lasted less than 15 years, from 260 to 272 ad. A child born here at the onset would not quite have reached maturity when avenging Roman soldiers burst in to sack the place, possibly in 273 ad, when it revolted again after its initial surrender in 272.
Once the area within these walls would have been a cubist’s delight, with the thousands of flat-topped or red-tiled rooves of the stone and mud-brick buildings clustering tightly together, run through with straight but narrow streets. Now it was mostly flat and desolate, except for the grand monuments and civic structures, and here and there a miniscule column that probably once graced a small temple or the atrium or peristyle of some wealthy family’s house. Dusty paths wandered here and there, showing the short-cuts taken by locals and lazy tourists.
And yet, Roman armies had not killed this city. In fact it was its acquisition by the Romans in 30 ad that had started its rise to power. Its sack dealt it a crippling blow from which it never really recovered, but other cities had suffered worse and recovered. What really killed Tadmor was shifting trade routes between 300 and 800 ad. In Rome, they erected statues to politicians. Here they honoured merchants.
In Zenobia’s time, Tadmor was on the caravan trade route to India and Persia. Goods from Ctesiphon were routed via Tadmor to Antioch or to Damascus and Petra for shipment west. This cosy arrangement may already have been under strain in the late 3rd Century as alternate trade routes, formerly closed by war or bandits, became safe to use. Odenathus and Zenobia may have been acting less from ambition than from a desire to protect their realm’s now-traditional prosperity.
With the changes flowing from Constantine’s establishment of Constantinople, some trade routes shifted north. When the Arabs took the area, Ctesiphon was ruined and Tadmor’s few remaining trade routes dried up. The surviving Roman routes ran through Aleppo and Edessa. The new Arab routes mostly ran through Bosra and Damascus to shorten the trade routes to Egypt. No trade, no prosperity, and the few remaining people just drifted away in a vicious cycle that finally left the city to the sand.
It must have been a sad sight even by the time the Arabs arrived. It was plain looking at the ruins that little new construction had taken place after 273 ad. Anyone that needed a building either patched up an existing structure or built a shack using stone pinched from the ruins.
I walked back along the walls, examining the defensive works. The city appeared to have shrunk in upon the Roman camp. The later walls built by Diocletian and Justinian probably simply subdivided the city. The Arabs built their shantytown in the ruins of the Temple of Baal, which had probably long ago been pressed into use as a caravanserai for the relatively few travellers overland between Antioch and Damascus. Most trade would have been along the coast, by ship.
I got back to the New Afqa at about 14:15 and immediately asked the man idling at the counter how the room was coming along. The guy looked startled and went away. After fifteen minutes, he came back. They had nothing yet.
I was all out of patience with the New Afqa. There was another hotel nearby listed in my guidebook, the Citadel. I walked across the square and asked. I was immediately given a choice of room with fan or air conditioning. I chose the latter, gave the guy my Passport and walked back to New Afqa to get my pack.
The guy behind the desk had the same blank look as always on his face while I crossed the room. When I bent to pick up my pack, he suddenly came to life, apparently realising that I was leaving.
“OK, you have a room!”
I said, “Too late. Cancel it.” I took my pack, shook their dust from my shoes, and left. What were they thinking?
I had arrived before check-out time. OK, fine, I appreciated that, and I was willing to wait a reasonable time. But check-out was 12:00. By 14:30 I had waited almost four hours for that mirage-room and still had no idea whether they really had a room for me.
I’d had plenty of time to observe them while cooling my heels in their reception. They knew I was waiting for a room but seemed indifferent. They had time to drink tea and watch TV but no time to keep up on things that guests might think important … such as finding out which rooms were now vacant and assigning one to me. I doubted the room had suddenly become vacant in the ten minutes it took me to make my arrangements with the Citadel.
Over at the Citadel minutes later, I was washing the dust off in the shower attached to a gloriously cool, dim room equipped with a comfortable bed that I anticipated occupying shortly for a well-earned siesta.
That evening I walked up to Qala’at Ibn Maat, a large Arab castle on a hilltop, to watch the sunset. I fell in with a French girl, Agathè, along the way. The sunset was a little disappointing after all the build-up from other travellers and from my guidebook, but the views were superb as the shadows crept across the ruins and the lights came on, and Agathè spoke excellent English. We filled in the spaces with conversation, discussing what we’d seen in Syria. She had been to Lebanon but not Jordan, so I was able to swap hints on Jordan for hints on Lebanon. We were moving in opposite directions, so this encounter was merely a RFC. I walked her back to town for her own safety in the dark.
At Damascus I thought I knew the ropes. The bus arrived at the Haraste bus station, and I needed to get to the Somarea bus station. It had previously cost me S£40 on the meter to get from Haraste to the centre, and S£66 from there to Somarea. Flag fall was about S£4, so I knew that S£100 to S£120 would be a fair price. I was naive to think it would be that simple.
I found a taxi driver who said his meter was “broken” but eventually agreed to “one hundred”. Great! I was sure of my ground when the taxi passed my former drop-off and pick-up spots on the way. But when we got to Somarea, behold, he wanted S£400! I refused to pay and called over a nearby policeman to adjudicate, at which point the driver suddenly whipped a concealing rag off his “broken” taxi meter to show a fare of S£292 on it. The policeman took his side and I was forced to hand over S£300, which I did with ill grace, telling the driver he was a thief. This man will not go to heaven. What a Pest!
The sum involved wasn’t really much — about $4 more than I’d counted on paying — but over time these petty extortions added up to real money. It was hard enough bargaining with people who would keep their end of a deal. When you knew they probably wouldn’t, it became intolerable. The resulting equation was Syrian Taxi = THIEF.
After this and with memories of my experiences in Egypt in 2006, I’d had enough of taxi-thieves. I now always assumed that I was being ripped off unless the quoted fare was close enough to one from an independent authority such as my guidebook. If not, I divided the fare in half — and later in four once I realised that the fares being quoted to me were often a lot more than double the fair rate — and haggled like a fishwife. Often the price would then come down. If I still didn’t like it, I walked. I usually walked anyway, if I knew the direction and had enough time to get there.
Once a price was agreed, that’s the most I paid no matter what demands or sob stories I heard. It was the driver’s job to know the traffic patterns and it was not my problem if he got lost or had to go the long way round. I always checked the meter (if there was one) when I got in and kept an eye on it during the journey and questioned the driver or got out if the meter looked odd or did anything strange.
I went into the international terminal and bought a ticket to Beirut. I sat on my pack and chatted with a couple of American kids, Shahim and Megan, who were also going to Beirut. They were intelligent and sincere, and the time passed easily and interestingly.
PhoeniciaThe Syrian-Lebanon border was totally choked when we got there. It took two and a half hours to get through it. In fact, Shahim almost didn’t get through as he was travelling on an Iranian Passport (dual citizenship) but didn’t have a Lebanese visa in it. Iranians don’t qualify to buy visas at the border. He wanted to use his US Passport to get into Lebanon, but the Syrians didn’t like that and wanted to turn him back. The nearest place he could get a Lebanese visa would be Turkey or Jordan — Syria didn’t sell them. He pleaded with the officer and eventually they let him through, but it was such close call that he was forced to run after the bus to catch it. In the end Lebanon had no problem stamping him in on his US Passport.
We foreigners had been kicked off the bus when it pulled in on the Syrian side of the border post and a spare body had been deputised to sheepdog us through the ruck. He disappeared at some point while Shahim was still arguing and without him I had some trouble finding our bus in the confusion. Once we were all stamped out of Syria and back aboard, the bus pulled up a short distance and the process was repeated for Lebanon.
The road from the border to Beirut was totally jammed. The traffic was bumper to bumper all the way. It was an eerie and compelling sight. The sun had set while we were still working our way through Customs. Now the bus ground its way down a vast hillside in the dark, probably descending into the Bekaa Valley. Behind us was a searchlight glare as pairs of headlights popped over the rim of the hill and joined the crawling procession. Ahead of us the road was a pulsating red and white snake of light winding down the hill and off into the distance, where a glow of city light against the sky marked Beirut.
Here and there flashing blue and red lights marked waiting emergency vehicles, ready to haul away any vehicle that proved itself unable to complete the course under its own power. Massive bulks beside the road became tanks when the headlights flashed over them. Soldiers standing behind their machine guns in the open turrets leaned on casually folded arms and watched us pass.
Other soldiers, carrying light machine guns, stood beside sandbagged checkpoints and security posts. There was nothing casual about these men: they were alert and irritable. Whenever one soldier stepped up to a vehicle that was causing a nuisance, another was always standing a few yards away with a cocked weapon in case of trouble.
We made our way up another long climb and as we topped the crest, Beirut appeared in the distance, a sea of light. Vehicles turned off north and south to bypass the city, the traffic jam finally began to dissolve, and we picked up speed.
We finally reached an intersection somewhere in Beirut around 22:00. The bus was bound for Sidon, so we — Shahim, Megan, several Lebanese and I — had to get out.
The problem was, where were we and where could we find a hotel? But it turned out we were all looking for the same places, a couple of cheapies near the Charles Helou bus station. So we flagged down a taxi and, with the help of a Lebanese woman from the bus who conducted the negotiations in Arabic and got the fare reduced to a sane amount, we gave it the address of one of the cheapies.
Looking at my budget spreadsheet I seem to have got the taxi ride for free. I’m not sure what happened there. However, a few days later I found a discrepancy when balancing my budget, so that discrepancy was probably my share of the fare.
The first hotel we tried was full, so we dragged our baggage around the corner to another cheap place nearby, Pension al-Nazih. They had no vacant single or double rooms, but they did have a five-person room available. We looked at each other and the deal was done, a marriage of convenience that saved us all money. We made sure it was clear to the hotel that it was not a dorm: nobody else would be put in with us. The hotel agreed, provided we paid for several days in advance in the morning. Deal.
Up in the room, the Americans revealed a small hitch — they did not have enough cash in hand to pay their share of the room until they could cash some traveller’s cheques. It sounds trusting I know, but I had talked to these kids all day and I was pretty sure they were on the level. Next morning I paid for the room for the six nights I planned to be there. They were as good as their word and a day or so later they paid me their share.
My roommates and I had different priorities. They wanted to kick around Beirut for a few days and get into the local scene a bit before exploring more widely. Although it was tempting to kick around Beirut in pleasant company, I wanted to see the ancient Phoenician sites and take in such parts of modern Lebanon as might come my way in the process. So we all did our own thing, comparing notes in the evenings if we all happened to be awake at the same time. I was learning, but the lessons had not yet settled in my bones!
I spent my first day in the centre, just to see some of the city and to get oriented. I had breakfast at a nearby place called “Le Chef” that was recommended by my guidebook, and I quickly decided to eat there every morning. This was a Christian area, and Le Chef was run by Christians, so the looming start of Ramadan was not a concern.
The scars of the war had been largely papered over, but here and there I ran into reminders, such as the red car that had been parked beside a bombed building. The building was now rubble. One side of the car had been crushed flat by falling masonry. I wasn’t able to find out why the car had not been towed — or rather trucked — away.
Some standing buildings still displayed bullet pocks and shell holes.
I found older ruins too, mostly Roman vintage. Beirut started as a Caananite/Phoenician city, but it was not a large city back then and the Phoenician remains are scanty.
The city centre was all shiny new buildings, or refurbished ones. But large sections were cordoned off, with access only at specified points where bags and waists were checked for explosives.
I got into trouble at St George’s Church. I hadn’t really thought about the tents I saw scattered around the street in front of it. It was a Hezbollah camp, of course. Somebody saw me take a picture of the church and seconds later two men in street clothes zipped up on a motorbike, one of them casually holding an Uzi, which he didn’t point at me. Not quite.
Who was I? What was I doing? Why was I taking pictures of their camp? I looked as apologetic and innocent as possible and explained I was a tourist and that I was just taking a picture of the Cathedral. They looked at me a while, stone-faced, weighing me up, then briskly told me to move along and not to take any more photos. I hastened to obey.
I resolved to take no more pictures with tents in them.
The road south was punctuated by sandbagged security posts occupied by uniformed soldiers. Tanks and armoured cars lurked at camouflaged command posts. The soldiers were relaxed and casual as long as the traffic kept its distance, but they sprang to the alert immediately if a vehicle got too close. Not surprising, as I was walking down the famous Green Line between the Christian and Muslim areas.
The next day was spent in an excursion to Jbeil — ancient Byblos. Reading my guidebook, it looked like unless I wanted to pay a large sum for a taxi ride, I would need to catch a minibus from Charles Helou to the Dawra transport hub and another bus or minibus from there. After trying to find a Minibus to Dawra in the bus station itself I climbed up to Avenue Charles Helou and flagged down a random eastbound minibus hoping it would be going to Dawra. It wasn’t going to Dawra but was going to Byblos!
Phoenician Gebal was a famed exporter of Egyptian papyrus (Greek bublos) to Greece. Once Alexander placed the town under new management the Greeks renamed it Byblos in recognition of this trade, as if it was the town’s defining feature. The locals continued to call it what they had always called it, softened to Jbeil today.
If Beirut was a minor Phoenician centre, Byblos, founded around 6,000 bc, was a metropolis. In the second millennium bc it may have been the busiest early port in the Levant, overshadowing even Ugarit.
The minibus dropped me in Rue Jbeil. My immediate observation was that everything looked refreshingly “normal”. Men wore short sleeves and women wore string tops and tight pants and light, short dresses. There was scarcely a headscarf in sight. Signs were in French first and only secondarily in Arabic. Perhaps not surprising, as Jbeil was in a part of Lebanon still dominated by Maronite Christians, and they seemed determined to differentiate themselves from their Muslim neighbours.
The archaeological site of Byblos was down a side street that paralleled a medieval wall that once looped around the Old Port. The site was south of the town and the wall and was a jumble of remains from all periods.
The floors of Neolithic houses dating from nearly 6,000 bc had been found. The early hovels had been replaced by single-roomed houses with superb pebble floors covered by polished limestone plaster. Later buildings had beaten earth floors, suggesting a change of landlords.
This was no great surprise. The history of the Middle East was a froth of cultural and racial change, and few of today’s occupants could honestly claim that their ancestors had been here from the beginning, although modern research was revealing that probably few of the past conquests had led to radical changes in the composition of the population. Many of today’s “Arabs” were descendants of the people who were here before the coming of Islam. They gradually changed their language to fit in with the new top dogs. Most eventually changed their religion too, but some had not even done that, the Maronites being one example. Even some genetic Arabs were Christian, descended from mercenaries hired by the Byzantines. In Syria, in Lebanon and in Israel, substantial populations of Christian Arabs remained for centuries, though they were now shrinking rapidly through emigration to the West.
Part of my reading for this trip had been William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain, an “in the footsteps” yarn following a pilgrimage by a Byzantine monk from Athos to Egypt just before 600 ad. Ten years on from Dalrymple’s trip I had seen nothing in Turkey and the Middle East to challenge his observations.
In Byblos some of the later houses were rectangular; others later still were tiny circular things. The walls of the circular houses seemed to have been built of piled stone, then mortared inside like the floors of the older houses. In places the stones were gone but a rim of mortar remained, like an eggshell, outlining the shape of the house.
I came across a third millennium bc temple (the Great or L-Shaped Temple, 2700 to 2100 bc) with a row of “basins”. They looked more like the broken bases of amphorae, embedded in limestone plaster. They were set in a low ledge, not even knee-high, beside a doorway to another room. The two outer rooms here had apparently yielded signs of the manufacture of jewellery, weapons and figurines, although that activity may have dated from a late stage when the temple had already lost its original function.
This temple had faced a sacred lake with that of Balata Gebal, so its god was obviously quite important, but today there was nothing to tell who was worshipped here. Perhaps it was a sort of Pantheon. Sometime after it was burned down (along with much of the rest of the city) a new temple, the Obelisk Temple, similar in size but inferior to the L-Shaped Temple architecturally, was built upon the ruins. Yet another change of landlords would be the logical deduction.
By the second millennium bc (the period of the Obelisk Tomb) the culture was recognisably Phoenician. In this period the alphabet was being invented (and Byblos was apparently one conduit by which it reached Greece) and the Hittite and Egyptian Empires were clashing for control of the area. Further on I found tombs also dating from this period, including the one that gave up the sarcophagus of King Ahiram. Even his name, apart from the value of the inscriptions on his casket, was suitably Phoenician (remember Hiram, king of Tyre at a later date).
After 1200 bc, Byblos declined and got tossed around by the Assyrians for a few centuries. Nothing here dated from that period, when Sidon was the major Phoenician power.
The Persians came along and four Phoenician cities — Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and Arwad — became the basis for Persian sea power. Arwad was north of Byblos, about halfway to Ugarit, near modern Tartus in Syria. I didn’t go there, but I had been to Ugarit.
The Persians built a massive fortress, which I found uninspiring except for a block of stone carved to resemble the head and front paws of a lion. Garlanded with dead vegetation, it now resembled a gopher peering from its hole.
The Greeks left little mark on this area, so the next era I found was Roman, in the form of a colonnade, a small theatre and a nymphaeum. Of the three the theatre had fared best, although like the Obelisk Temple it had been moved in order to allow the strata beneath it to be excavated. The colonnade was adjacent to the theatre. Theatre and colonnade appeared to have been designed to provide sea views, although this may be misleading as in Roman times the schema of the theatre probably obscured the view and it had originally been located some metres further from the sea. As for the Nymphaeum, it was an unrecognisable lump of stone unless compared carefully with the artist’s impression on an information board nearby.
Islam left no mark but nearly the last stage in the development of the site was a large Crusader castle that dominated the area and today provided superb bird’s eye views. The castle also housed the site museum, with a good collection of finds plus displays explaining the historical relevance of the site.
The last thing built on the site and still surviving was an Ottoman-era house. Its odd elevation atop an unexcavated section of the mound showed how much the ground had risen since ancient times.
My progress around the site was nothing like as tidy as this account suggests. In fact one of my fondest memories is of resting for twenty minutes or so under a tree in the prehistoric quarter, breathing in the heat, listening to the surf on the rocks below me and trying to conjure the ghost of what had once been here. Did any of its swarming inhabitants ever wonder about the lives of the people whose fine limestone-plastered floors lay just a metre or two below their own beaten-earth or stone-flagged ones?
At one spot I found some battered statues crumbling in the sun. Only the legs survived. Forgotten Gods and past notables, broken and cast out of their temples to dissolve beneath the pitiless assault of the elements.
I went back to Jbeil for lunch, wandering around a bit to try to understand it a bit better. My first impressions stood up surprisingly well. The group at the next table included a blonde woman in a low-cut form-fitting dress. She was stunning — although she was accompanied by a child who was obviously her son. The women here averaged more beautiful than those elsewhere in Lebanon, although the men, oddly, did not. But perhaps it was merely the fact that they were dressed like women in Australia and New Zealand that made them unusually attractive to me. After weeks in the Middle East it was likely that my perceptions were being affected by the different dress code that applied to most women.
The town felt very French, and not just from the signs. It was in the way the people moved, the way they spoke, and the way they used their faces. It was in the evident prosperity on the street, although all these small, impoverished countries are filled with new, expensive-looking cars and motorbikes. There was little here that shouted, “Middle East”. It was like walking through a time capsule.
At one stage I wanted to photograph my lunch, a common habit I have; but there was a problem. No camera!
After a moment I realised that I must have left it on the step where I sat down earlier to put a big bottle of apple juice into my bag. Not really expecting to find it, I hurried back and found it still there, much to my relief. Would it still have been there in France, or Australia? Open to doubt.
My ride back to Beirut curved around past the National Museum, so I got off there. It was supposed to be good, according to my guidebook. I remember nothing from my visit except bag searches and metal detectors. No cameras allowed! Don’t touch! Glares, scowls and suspicious glances.
I walked home along the Green Line. Once that would have got me shot.
Ramadan began on Wednesday 12th September. I had been dreading this moment. Although Ramadan was a Muslim event and there was nothing to stop me eating whenever I pleased, it would obviously be rude to stuff my face in front of a street full of fasting Muslims. Also, with so much of the population fasting during the day, many eateries closed for the duration while others only opened after sunset. Those that stayed open tended to obscure their windows and doors so that passers-by would not inadvertently be offended by the sight of someone eating.
But the real issue was health. It was hard enough maintaining intestinal hygiene when I could pick and choose where I ate. Ramadan limited my choice. Unfamiliar with the best cheap eating places in each new town I came to, I was more likely to pick the wrong place in which to eat. Aleppo had thrown a scare into me. It was not an experience I cared to repeat.
Breakfast, at least, was easy. I was already a known face at Le Chef, and it was in a Christian street. While I was staying in Beirut, I was safe enough.
That day I went to Sidon and Tyre, after a lot of detours and wrong steps. First, I had to make my way to the Cola transport hub in the south of Beirut. I tried to take a microbus, but my luck was “out”, and it headed the wrong way. I ended up walking down Rue Selim Salam until I reached Cola.
Next, I had to find the microbus to Sidon. I asked a group of lounging taxi drivers. Inevitably they told me that there weren’t any. I ignored them and instead asked microbus drivers until one pointed me to the right spot — more or less. The bus I got on wasn’t going to Sidon, only to a turnoff. There I had to get out and catch another microbus into Sidon.
I had a shortish look around Sidon, but the ancient remains were few and unsatisfying, so I took another microbus ride further south to Tyre, Phoenician Sur (“Rock”), modern Sour. The town had been founded on an island, later expanding by means of landfill to include a second, smaller island
The bus dropped me in a square at the north-east corner of the Al-Bass Refugee Camp. I walked south to the entrance of the Al-Bass Archaeological Site along the edge of the camp, careful to take no photos. It looked a lot more substantial than the term “camp” implies. Some of its buildings were large and well built. Others were less so. The people did not look particularly depressed or angry. In fact despite my obvious Western-ness the few who noticed me smiled and waved, and I copped a fair number of “Salaam aleikums” from passers-by.
A little boy ran up and said “Hello!” in that way they have. But he didn’t ask me for anything, just shook my hand with a big smile and then ran off, bent on his own errands.
All the men wore long sleeves. Nearly every woman wore a headscarf and either trousers or a long skirt. I was back in the Middle East.
The archaeological site was essentially a section of the main Roman road beyond the city gates, a bit more than 1.5 kilometres long and including the Hippodrome and a monumental arch.
There were no signs, and my guidebook was inadequate, but many of the tombs were in good shape and it gave me an insight on how the tombs on the Appian Way outside Rome might once have looked.
The Hippodrome was largely decayed, just a flat patch of ground with only a couple of stands of seats remaining, a couple of arches at the far end, and part of the spina which included a single red granite obelisk and the meta at the turn.
An aqueduct ran down one side of the street, most noticeable at the Hippodrome.
The western end was less well preserved. The aqueduct decayed into lumps of masonry, the road was overgrown, and the paving eventually gave way to dirt. I kept walking, hoping that there would be a western entrance, but at the west end the site just stopped at a wire mesh fence. Would I have to walk all that way back then around the edge of the camp? I climbed up a rubble slope to the fence to get a long view back along the road — and discovered a hole in the wire mesh. Ha-hah!
Purchasing provisions from a convenient store, I continued west through town to the Al-Mina Archaeological Site. They were selling copies of an English-language guide to archaeological Tyre written by one Ali Khalil Badawi. It was money well spent. His office was actually in the Al-Mina site. I tracked him down and got him to sign the book for me.
Reading my new guidebook I realised I’d missed quite a bit of interesting stuff at Al-Bass, but I decided there was nothing there that was worth going all the way back for. If I had any energy left at the end of the day, I could use that convenient hole in the fence to get back in.
Al-Mina was the real Tyre, located on the former island. The moles built by Alexander and Nebuchadnezzar had silted up and the island had become attached to the shore. Modern Sour was built on the new land.
Not that Hiram would have recognised his old town. Most of the visible remains were Roman. The water reservoirs were ancient but had probably been re-lined. Also, part of the town around the Phoenician Harbour was submerged in an earthquake in the sixth century ad. Today the wall that had bounded it took the form of a reef that locals climbed out on to go fishing. Fallen columns could be seen lying on the shallow sea floor. The best remaining bits of Phoenician Tyre were probably out there, under the water.
The famous mosaic Road was badly fragmented. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to stabilise what was left, but the best bits were missing.
Down by the Palaestra there were supposed to be traces of the Phoenician walls, but I couldn’t spot them. I did spot the glass furnaces; but of course the murex processing facilities for “Tyrean purple” were long gone.
Up the hill was another archaeological area, supposedly closed but the gates were open, so I walked through it. It held the ruins of a “Crusader Cathedral”. This was supposedly built upon the site of the Temple of Melquart that Alexander had wanted to worship at. But wasn’t that formerly on the small island, whose joining with the larger island had formed the Sidonian Harbour? This Cathedral was squarely in the middle of ancient Tyre.
I continued into the medieval “old town” that clustered around Tyre’s second harbour, probably the former Sidonian Harbour, now the fishing port, at the other end of the island. I had some coffee at a small café beside the harbour.
After the magnificent site at Byblos yesterday I felt a little let down, even though I’d already known that there was little left of ancient Sidon and Tyre. It was impossible to conjure the ghost of Hiram’s city from these late-Roman fragments. In the tenth century bc this had been the foremost Phoenician city. It had sent out the colonists who founded ancient Carthage. It had held up Alexander the Great for months. It had helped David build his palace. Solomon had petitioned for its aid in building his temple. Its dye workers were so famous that the red colour made from the murex shellfish was known as “Tyrean Purple”.
Now there was no trace of any of this. The Roman remains were interesting, but they were simply too recent. Tyre was gone, and only Sour remained.
Tired and soured, I turned for home.
I walked back past the northern edge of the Al-Bass camp. As before, I received nothing but smiles and friendly greetings.
That night I ate dinner at Le Chef, with a bottle of wine to drown my sorrows. Their dinners were as tasty as their breakfasts.
It was time to see Baalbek, Mark Twain’s “magnificent ruin”. Once I finished breakfast, practiced in navigating Beirut by now, I simply walked from Le Chef to Cola in forty minutes instead of wasting twice that time trying to find transport.
The morning was not yet too hot, and I got to watch Beirut setting up for the day around me as I walked. The way led past the little camp outside St George’s Church, where by now the denizens were getting used to me. One even gave me a wave as I went by, though others still looked suspicious. I was careful to keep my camera out of sight.
At Baalbek there was no doubt about the direction of the ruins. They stood out in the distance. I walked down past the Temple of Venus and the Muses, pausing briefly to make the acquaintance of a horse attempting to rest her hooves two by two in the meagre shade provided by a wire mesh fence. All the hair had been rubbed off her back, and she was scarred all over. She looked resigned and exhausted even though it was not yet midday. Twain would have recognised her at once.
Baalbek was Lebanon’s prime tourist attraction, and it came with a price tag to suit. But I had come here to see it, so in I went.
Much of the structure was an enormous ceremonial forecourt for the Temple of Jupiter. The court had apses and exedras around its perimeter and its centre appeared to have held a huge altar.
It was hard to get used to the scale. The six remaining columns of the temple of Jupiter looked light and graceful. But when I stood next to a fallen column, it was nearly as thick as I was tall.
The fallen columns had been broken in sections. I thought perhaps they had broken in their fall, but they showed pock marks around the circumference that suggested that some of the damage was deliberate. Someone had been trying to cut them into convenient chunks.
At one point I came across a square block with a square basin cut into it diamond-fashion. Each edge of the diamond had what looked like a seat cut into it. What looked like a drain had been carved across from the basin to the nearest edge of the block. A bath? A baptismal font?
Fragments of fallen entablature showed incredible detail in the carving. Considering the height of the columns, the detail of the entablatures on the surviving columns was almost invisible from the ground. No effort had been spared in the effort to please Jupiter!
Looking at the pattern carved in one section of the entablature I realised that it formed a series of swastikas. Deliberate? The swastika was an original Indo-European symbol that was well known in the ancient world.
In the roof of the smaller temple, the so-called Temple of Bacchus (actually of Venus) I noticed busts of men and women — or of gods and goddesses — peering down. The detail here, too, was magnificent — except that they had no faces. At some stage someone had painstakingly worked along the porch, obliterating each one.
Inside, the Temple of Bacchus was more complete and therefore more satisfying, but I was unable to enjoy it to the full — some guys were running through interminable re-shootings of some sort of documentary spiel, monopolising the internal space and filling it with the banal measured droning of a professional presenter.
Vermin of other sorts had been at work in the past, too. The stone had darkened to a golden hue over the centuries. In the late 19th century, tourists had taken advantage of this to scrape their forgettable names into the ancient surfaces.
But it was indeed a magnificent site and a magnificent ruin. What must it have been like in its heyday?
That night the local Phalangists made a parade around the area of my hotel in jeeps and on motorbikes, waving flags and placards, playing music and tooting their horns.
I had one last “must see” to tick off. The cedars, symbol of Lebanon and source of Phoenician wealth and power. Once they had covered the mountains, but now only scattered trees and one last uncut grove remained. On the bright side, the grove was located in a spectacular part of the country near Bcharré, birthplace of Kahlil Gibran and of the Phalangists. History, poets, scenery and trees: all in one neat package.
The first part was easy. Connex ran a bus service to Tripoli, Lebanon’s second biggest city. This had been the scene of recent trouble, but when I got there, I found everything calm and peaceful. There was a heavy military presence, tanks on the roads out of town, checkpoints manned and more alert than in Beirut, but not much more so than elsewhere in Lebanon. I only stayed long enough for a quick look around before catching a minibus up to Bcharré. In that time I was approached by several would-be guides, one of them in a taxi (“Where are you go my friend … Bcharré very dangerous, I take you safe way”); two guys selling antiques and three guys selling Rolexes and Chanel #5 (interesting combination); and a couple of miscellaneous “hello my friend” types whose game I couldn’t pick but who offered their help and seemed to be angling for commission. One of these was persistent. After I told him I didn’t need help he disappeared, only to reappear and chat to the shopkeeper whenever I entered a shop. No prizes for guessing what he was saying. I bought nothing in those shops.
The minibus ride up to Bcharré was unforgettable, a winding road along mountainsides with immense vistas across vast gulfs to green peaks and precipitous cliffs. A distant peak would disappear for a minute, then reappear transformed by the new angle.
Bcharré turned out to be a pleasant ski resort and not at all dangerous, although the ride up the mountain had certainly been thrilling with near misses from drivers cutting blind curves.
Discussion with local shopkeepers revealed that the minibus up to the Cedars wasn’t running today — it survived on ferrying soldiers to and from a nearby camp, but today was Friday. However, the local taxi was willing to carry me up and back and wait for me. I considered the offer. My guidebook said it was four kilometres along a torturous road. In Beirut two similar rides would cost a bit more than half what he wanted, but then there was the waiting time. It sounded fair enough, so off we went.
The hillsides above Bcharré were mostly bare, with just patches of trees and scrub. Finally one hillside appeared with a heavier than usual coating of green. The cedar grove, usually called “The Cedars”.
There was no admission fee — just a “donation” that amounted to the same thing. I walked down from the gate into the trees. The paths were dirt, often softened by a mat of fallen needles.
As is so often the case with groves of big trees, the cedar grove held its own vision of space and time. This was a place apart, on the earth but not strictly of it. This was what I had sought in church and mosque and holy place but had not found in any of them. I wandered freely, sitting awhile on benches now and then to absorb the sense of the place.
They stood still and looked at the forest
They beheld the height of the cedar …
The cedar uplifted its fulness before the mountain
Fair was its shade and full of delight.
I had been fascinated by the Gilgamesh Epic * some years earlier. In one adventure, Gilgamesh and Enkidu came to a great cedar forest, walled and gated. There they encountered the roaring demon Humbaba, whom they slew, cutting off his head. Sitting in The Cedars now, I had a Gilgamesh moment. The place was surrounded by a wall and a gate. The paths were marked off by ropes — the clear message was, no straying. But the roaring sound I could hear was a truck on the road, not Humbaba, I had no Enkidu with me, and perhaps most salient of all, I was no Gilgamesh; merely a short, pudgy wanderer with a too-active imagination.
As a child I enjoyed the scent of the cedar wood used in furniture. It seemed exotic, a fragment of some distant place and time captured forever in this prosaic form, like a fly in amber. That child woke up now and breathed in the scent of the trees.
Not that the cedars around me were particularly grand. They were not, by and large, the tall spreading Christmas trees that featured on the Lebanese flag and on so many postcards. Many had broken limbs, were spindly or bent, or leaned dangerously. Some were dead. There were many seedlings and young trees. But so what? This was a mature forest (albeit small) with succession of generations. The young trees were a sign of health. Some grizzled ancients had trunks wider than I was tall.
The saddest thing I encountered was a hideous monument of rough stone and wood to which every two-bit politician and stuffed shirt had attached a plaque immortalising their ephemeral visit to this place. It was awful.
The rides down the mountain were even more thrilling than the rides up. Now the vehicles were not held back by gravity but were drawn forward by it. We plunged recklessly, cutting corners rather than slowing to take them at a safe speed. Several times on the minibus to Dawra I looked down to see our wheels rumbling across dirt at the edge of a precipice.
The road was well watched by strong-points and emplacements. Most were deserted now, but presumably they would be quickly manned in time of need to block the road against an enemy. It was easy to see why the Maronites, harassed by other sects, some of which had the backing of the Byzantine Emperor, had retreated into these mountains. There was a potential Thermopylae at every corner and a Horatius at every bridge.
One entrenchment was not military. A church perched atop a knoll. The cliff face below it was hollow with square caves, presumably crypts. Most were wide open, although a couple were bricked up — had the rest originally been sealed?
* The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels by Alexander Heidel, University of Chicago Press, Second Edition, 1949.
Kurds and waysWe were spinning merrily through Syria when the bus gave a sickening lurch and started to scream. The vehicle wobbled back and forth across the width of the road a couple of times while the driver fought for control and the people in the front rows tried to scramble toward the back, then we screeched to a safe halt on the right side of the road.
We all piled out and inspected the damage. A broken front axle. It was a miracle that the bus had not crashed into oncoming traffic or overturned! Ganesh, protector of travellers, was surely doing overtime today.
The broken axle delayed us about two hours waiting for a replacement bus to come out from Damascus, and we finally arrived in Aleppo after 18:00, 9 hours out from Damascus. I had started in Beirut and intended to keep moving and get into Turkey today, but fate had other notions.
I used a different hotel this time — Al-Gawaher had too many unhappy memories attached to it. Hotel Syria was a few minutes nearer the bus station. I took care to choose a reliable restaurant for dinner — the last thing I wanted was a repetition of my gastric woes.
Next morning, I crossed into Turkey in a shared taxi, because the next bus would miss the best connections. This time there were no emergencies. I left Aleppo at 8:50, reached Antakya about 11:20, caught a 13:30 bus to Sanlıurfa, and arrived there about 20:00.
At Sanlıurfa the otogar was about a kilometre west of town. I walked in the dark across a barren stretch, then found a road that wound through a Muslim cemetery. It was all very pretty, but a bit spooky. The map told me the cemetery could only be a couple of hundred metres across, but it seemed to go on interminably until I came around a curve and saw the lights of a hotel ahead of me. Best of all, the hotel turned out to be the “Bakay”, the very place I had been aiming for.
Alas, my brief stay in Aleppo had not been without consequences. Despite all my precautions, I picked up another stomach bug, though not the same one as before. My first stop in the morning was a pharmacy, where I bought a course of pills that soon fixed me up.
Defying my bowels, I wandered through Sanlıurfa, which was a pretty town with mainly Islamic-period buildings. The remains of Greco-Byzantine Edessa were few and far between, as even places that had existed back then had been extensively rebuilt since. Evidence of ancient Ursu was even scantier.
I made my way south to the carp pools at Golbasi, Birket Ibrahim and Birket Zulha. These pools were ancient, predating Christianity and Islam and probably dating back into the second millennium bc — to Abraham’s time and earlier. They were sacred to Attargatis, a fertility goddess. Carp never stop growing, they just get bigger and bigger until they die, making them a very suitable adjunct to a goddess of fertility whose domain lay in water. Even in later times, people would swim out to an altar in the largest pool to perform fertility rites before the goddess, presumably picking up sexy vibes from the fish on the way.
The Greeks of the Hellenic period seem to have been laissez-faire towards Attargatis and her sacred carp, preferring to live and let live. When Christianity arrived, Attargatis obviously had to go; but as happened with pagan survivals elsewhere (such as the festivals around the Spring solstice, and Easter eggs) somehow her carp remained sacred. But they couldn’t be pagan. It seems likely that since Abraham was known to have lived for a while at Harran, forty kilometres away, he was co-opted in order to change the origin of the sacred carp from a pagan goddess to a more acceptable Hebrew prophet. When Islam arrived, the Muslims simply accepted the Abrahamic fable and embroidered upon it.
There seems to have been nothing exceptional about Abraham when he lived at Harran. When Yahweh eventually sent him forth, he went south to Canaan, not north to Urfa. But his father stayed and ultimately died in Harran and, according to the Bible, lived another 60 years after Abraham left; and his relatives presumably remained after that. So perhaps Abraham came back to visit the relo’s occasionally, although the Bible doesn’t record that — or the carp.
Although it was Monday, the locals were out in force, crowding in and out of the mosques and clustering on the paths to chat and admire each other’s babies. I got bumped and hindered.
But the pools were pretty, and if the people were forbidden to eat due to Ramadan, they were happy to feed the carp. There was always someone standing by the poolside throwing food in the water. The pool would erupt in great flurries of fish, all gaping mouths and snapping jaws. The fish might be sacred to God, but they were not sacred to each other: I saw more than one unfortunate minnow get snapped up when it swam too close to a feeding frenzy. The smarter babies congregated in large schools as far away from the big fish as possible.
I sat down in a shady tea garden, to have a cup of çay and write down my impressions and update my diary; but the tea garden’s under-worked waiter came over and disturbed my thoughts.
“Where from?”
I decided not to complicate my origin. “Australia.”
He smiled. “Ahhh, welcome, welcome!” The conversation foundered for a moment before he found a topic. He gestured at the big pool nearby. “This holy fish. Prophet Ibrahim fish.”
“Yes, I know.” I tapped my guidebook.
He indicated my Pocket PC. “Telefon?”
“No. Computer.”
“Ahhh?” I handed it to him, keeping the stylus. He squinted at it, then handed it back, none the wiser.
Some sources — including the Islamic — try to identify Abraham’s “Ur of the Chaldees” with Urfa. There was actually some basis for this in the descriptions in Genesis, but not quite enough to persuade me. The site of Abraham’s alleged birthplace in Urfa was marked by a big mosque east of the park, but I already knew that this could not be so. So I skipped it.
I headed up to the Citadel. It was mostly ruin and rubble, just the walls, a few arched foundations and a couple of columns known locally as Nimrod’s Throne. One story claimed Nimrod catapulted Abraham from here, but the columns were definitely too recent to have anything to do with Abraham. They appeared to be Roman or Byzantine, with Corinthian capitals. They were unfinished — the upper column drums still had their handling projections on them — and covered with graffiti. Perhaps they had been intended for a porch served by a colonnade coming from the ruins behind me. My guidebook told me that the columns dated from the 2nd or 3rd Century ad and that some of the graffiti was a dedication to a Queen Shalmath, which would date them to the Roman period.
The view was certainly splendid. Sanlıurfa spread away beneath me, all blocky buildings and minarets, until in the distance all suddenly turned to dust and brown hills. I could pick out the otogar and the cemetery I had walked through.
Sanlıurfa also claims Job as one of its sons. Although nobody knows for sure where the Land of Uz lay, elsewhere in the Bible it was named in proximity to Edom and Moab; so Job’s home was only possibly around here. I made my way out to the site anyway. There was, inevitably, a big mosque there now, with all the important locations clearly marked in its courtyard. Here was his cave, there the well that sprang up when he stamped his foot — “Stamp with thy foot, this is a cool washing-place and a drink.” — although it took Mohammed to provide us with the details.
But I felt no holiness here, as I had felt none south of here. Islam, like Christianity, was proving to be an empty drum, beating out a loud and driving march but in truth as hollow and meaningless inside as it claimed the West to be, infatuated with symbols and fetishes even as it derided Christianity for its icons and relics. I drank some of Job’s water, for the ease of my bowels, and left.
Walking back into town, I came across a shed. Purpose? Unknown. But on three walls it had cartoon murals, and on the fourth two doors. The mural on the back wall was a lakeside scene with mountains and a sailing boat and a clever brown path leading up to a shed with roller-door that was the real back window. Another wall featured Bugs Bunny lounging in a hammock on an island with palm trees and mushrooms. And the last wall had Mickey Mouse and Fred Flintstone with cherries, grapes and an apple. Charmingly, and utterly, trivial.
Next day I set off for Nemrut Dağı (Mount Nimrod). I wasn’t sure how I was going to see it, but I figured that if I took a minibus to the town of Kahta, something would present itself. At worst I would go to Karadut and stay a couple of nights, walking around the mountain. I decided to make a few enquiries around Kahta while I was there. As it happened the manager of the Kommagene Hotel was lying in ambush with an offer I could refuse — but didn’t. He offered a “sunset” tour up the mountain including all the usual stops and sights and all park fees, plus a night in his establishment. It was a little more costly than my original plan but left me perfectly positioned for moving on in the morning, hassle-free. Although the pills yesterday (or was it the water from Job’s well) had dried me up, I was all for reducing hassle.
The most thrilling event of the morning was crossing the Euphrates River, a broad placid sheet of water near the new Atatürk Dam. I had always wanted to see the sites of ancient Sumeria, but they lay in southern Iraq and it never seemed to be the right time to go there. I had a moment of hope when Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003, but it proved illusory. Today Iraq was more dangerous than ever, and I had regretfully crossed it off my list of destinations for this trip. The small Kurdish enclave held nothing of interest to me. But at least now I had seen one of the two rivers of Mesopotamia, albeit far away from Sumeria. Tomorrow I might see the other.
That afternoon the tour left Kahta and headed around the lake. Our first stop was Karakuş Tümülüs, the 36 bc burial place of some female relatives of Mithridates II. The Romans later used it as a quarry but there were still some tubby columns standing, displaying an eagle and a couple of lions.
The next stop was Cendere, where the Romans used the pilfered stone to build a bridge that was still standing. Three columns still stood at the approaches, clearly re-carved from drums from Karakuş. Supposedly a fourth pillar was removed by caracalla after he assassinated his brother Geta, although why he would bother wasn’t explained.
We came to a castle built atop a crag; Yenı Kale, the New Fort. At one point we crossed a small bridge across a ravine, built in the same style, without the columns, as at Cendere. My guidebook warned that tours out of Kahta might not stop at Yenı Kale, and mine didn’t. Nobody felt like insisting.
At Eski kale, the Old Fort, however, we did stop. This was once Arsameia, the capital of the former Kingdom of Commagenes. There wasn’t much left — some steles, a couple of cave temples, and some tumbled ruins. A stele showing what appeared to be Mithra shaking the hand of a heroically naked Antiochus was the star attraction. There was also a long inscription in Greek outside one of the caves.
Now we started the ascent of Nemrut Dağı, windng our way up a well-maintained road until we reached a car park. The top of the mountain, seen from below, was a smoothly rounded cone, quite different in texture to the coarser slopes below it. This was the tumulus of the proud Antiochus Epiphanes (63-32 bc).
A stone path led up from the carpark. It was made of flat rubble from the mountainside, cleverly fitted together but probably of recent manufacture. At the base of the tumulus the path forked left, but I continued straight ahead, around the south side towards the east.
This close the tumulus lost its smooth texture and became fist-sized rocks, millions of them, a heap about 50 metres high by 150 across. Somewhere in there, supposedly, was the tomb of Antiochus. It had not been found.
A terrace facing east held one of the two rows of statues whose heads, toppled and lying on the ground, were now one of Turkey’s signature sights. My guidebook claimed that the statues here, south to north, ran Lion, Eagle, Hercules, Apollo, Zeus, Tyche or Antiochus, Eagle, Lion. Clearly, not all the heads had survived, and the heads were not arranged in the same order as the statues they had come from. Apollo was at the south end, next to Tyche. I was unable to figure out which bearded head was Zeus and which Hercules, but one of them came next, then Antiochus, then the other beard. I wasn’t even totally sure I had distinguished Antiochus from Apollo.
The deities weren’t strictly Greek. Apparently, Zeus was also Ahuramazda and Apollo was also Mithra and Helios.
Around the mound to the north was another terrace, with rows of what looked like stone sarcophagi whose lids had all been pushed off. These had apparently once told Antiochus’ genealogy.
On the west terrace were more statues and more heads, supposedly in the same order south to north as on the east terrace. The heads were also in jumbled order. At the south end of the terrace was a row of fallen steles, supposedly showing the same figures as the statues. I couldn’t tell.
Walking on the mound was forbidden, although beaten tracks showed that it was common. I would probably have climbed it but with fifty or sixty tourists wandering around the place I could never get the necessary few unobserved minutes. I didn’t quite have the gall to climb it while others were watching: it would certainly have precipitated a stampede that couldn’t have been overlooked.
Gradually the tours all accumulated on the west side of the mound, not only because that was where the sun was setting but because it was already the only spot of relative warmth left on the mountain.
While waiting for the sunset I had plenty of time to sit, rest, and think, and to take in the exhilarating view. Except for the voices of the tourists and the odd fly, there was an uncanny silence.
The actual sunset was disappointing after the build-up, but it was interesting watching dusk creep over the landscape below and seeing the lights come on. Even a mediocre sunset gains much when viewed from a high place.
Flathead-shaped Diyarbakır, ancient Amida (Amedros) was now a modern Turkish city embedded in ancient grey walls. I made my way in through the Haput Gate and chose the Aslan Palas (Lion Palace) Hotel as my home for the next couple of nights. How could any reader of C.S. Lewis not be tempted to stay in Aslan’s Palace?
I didn’t see much of modern Diyarbakır — the old city within the walls was more than enough to fill my brief time there. The walls did not live up to the guidebook’s billing but were impressive. On my first day there, I decided to walk around a portion of them — from the Mardin to the Urfa Gates — which would also give me a good look at a big slice of the old city.
The town itself was decorated with Turkish flags and pictures of Atatürk. The powers that be seemed determined to make a show of nationhood here in a town still dominated by the Kurds who just a few years back were so determined not to be part of Turkey. I was mostly ignored, but whenever I took my camera out somehow people were aware of it. A number promptly ducked their heads or hid behind a bag or hand or turned away. Others stared at the camera, not aggressively but warily, taking my measure, a look that said, “what’s his game?”
One thing I didn’t see was any sign of Armenians — not that I was particularly skilled at picking Christian from Muslim. But elsewhere in Turkey I had occasionally picked out something, usually a hand gesture or even a tiny dangling crucifix, which said “Christian”. Here I saw nothing at all. Once the third major component of the local population, they had, to my eyes, been eliminated.
Outside the walls on the south was a slum area. Rubbish and rubble were piled against the ancient stones. I was not walking on the wall but on some stone ridges, the rooves and walls of old buildings, that kept me above the ground. I found myself walking above shanties, often no more than a rudely walled-off patch of ground with corrugated iron or plastic sheeting propped up around the edges to ward off rain. People lived there, cooked there, ate there, and dried their washing there. They usually didn’t even bother looking up: they were used to people walking by overhead. I was walking on their byway.
The next day I went to the old citadel at the east end of the city. It was still partially used by the military, but large parts had been opened to the public. It was atmospheric and interesting, its walls showing the patchwork of centuries of rough repairs. Here and there people had built houses into the walls, knocking out walls and doors, building steps. Someone had taken over an entire tower and grown a small orchard on the roof.
But the prize was to go to the highest point of the fort for the view. The city spread out to the west and south; east and north was the Tigris.
I walked down from the walls and stood leaning on the parapet of the bridge that crossed the Tigris River. The Euphrates had been a broad stretch of placid water, still chastened by the Atatürk Dam just upstream, flowing through barren hills, merely glimpsed from a window as my bus careered across a bridge. A disappointment. But the Tigris was brown and lusty, gurgling between flood banks and bubbling through crude dikes, surrounded by broad green belts and small farms, overlooked by ancient city walls. I even saw a farmer using a shovel to improve his irrigation canal. This was Mesopotamia as I dreamed it should be, just transported far upstream!
Why was I surprised? These were Assyrian lands once, and old ways have the knack of surviving.
It was one of those “just think” moments. The names Tigris and Euphrates are magical for anyone interested in ancient civilisations. Where they come together, far downstream, one of the earliest civilisations sprang up — the Sumerians. Elements of that civilisation were incorporated by succeeding civilisations and have even come down to us. Sixty seconds, sixty minutes, 360 degrees. They also bequeathed us the earliest recorded novel, the Gilgamesh epic. The Sumerians are the ultimate wellspring of the West, although they could not by even the broadest stretching of cases be described as “Western”.
Later civilisations down south included the Babylonians and the Assyrians. The Persians, Sasanians and Arabs arrived and built glorious cities. Later still the Americans bombed the cities to rubble.
If I climbed into a boat below this very bridge, I could set out to float downriver all the way to Baghdad! I wouldn’t get there, of course — someone would stop me, or shoot me. But even as I leaned upon the parapet at Diyarbakır, in my mind I sailed down past Nineveh, founded more than 8,000 years ago; past Assur, capital of the Assyrians; past Baghdad of the 1001 Nights, not today’s putrid mess; and Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital. I passed near Babylon (miraculously restored to the Euphrates riverbank) and then by choosing the right channel I made my way through the marshes to come near Gilgamesh’s city of Uruk, and to Ur of the huge ziggurat, where Abraham was born; and Eridu, the Sumerian holy city, barely younger than Nineveh; and thence out into the Gulf, so much nearer then than the modern coastline. It was a moment of glorious fantasy.
One of my reference books at home contained an evocative passage about Eridu where:
In the 1940s, excavators working their way through layer after layer of occupation eventually found a small ‘chapel’ built of sun-dried brick on a base of undisturbed sand. It was dated, incredibly, to 4900 bc. *
What they came across was probably little more than the foundations of the chapel, but when I read that passage, I had an instantaneous vision of the sun beating down on a little mud-brick temple in the midst of a village on a sandy riverbank, rows of mud houses forming ramshackle streets populated by bustling, shaven-headed, long-nosed, brown-skinned people in long frilly skirts.
The Sumerians were Arab-looking Indo-Europeans who initially seemed to come out of nowhere. Today their cultural origins, at least, have been linked to the indigenous Ubaid culture of Mesopotamia (5900-4300 bc), which stretched in an arc from Ugarit north to include this very region where I stood, and down to the Gulf. The ancient sun-baked chapel was thus technically Ubaid, not Sumerian. By the time a distinct Sumerian culture emerged the chapel was already buried beneath layers of ancient brick beneath a towering ziggurat, and Eridu had become the Sumerian holy city.
But the Ubaid culture was not a civilisation as we understand it. It was a patchwork of independent towns and cultures with a shared set of technologies. Perhaps it was like a pool of super-cooled liquid, requiring just a single crystal of ice in one place to precipitate a change of phase across the whole pool.
“Cities” then were not large — a few hundred to a couple of thousand people. They were just small towns by our standards. Even so, the typical town may have been a collection of clans, with no concept of a polis. Perhaps that was the Sumerian difference. Perhaps inspired by observation of the organised priesthood, they developed the notion of a civil ruler, backed by the gods and a council of clan elders, for the whole town. Such a place could then be described as a city. The Sumerians went on to develop writing, law, medicine, and timekeeping.
Regardless of the nominal king, the early Sumerian civilisation seems to have been dominated by Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh, which may have had a population of 10,000 in the fourth millennium bc and an astonishing 50,000 by 2700 bc. No wonder the hero of the Gilgamesh Epic was a king of Uruk!
The ripples from Sumer spread out and out forever, crossing and criss-crossing on the tides of history. Even civilisations that developed quite separately shared in that heritage. The Egyptians from about 3100 bc and the Indus Valley civilisation from about 2600 bc both had Sumerian elements.
The scene before me, with the bubbling chocolate-brown river and the bright green trees and the little fields where farmers were using shovels to repair their irrigation ditches, and the ancient walls overlooking it all, was so much like my vision of ancient Mesopotamia that for a few minutes I was there and then. And now a car ground its way across the bridge towards me, clashing its gears, and the vision faded, and I was back in modern Turkey.
* Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilisations of the Ancient Mediterranean by Charles Freeman, Oxford Press, Second Edition, 2004.
I took a half-day excursion on Lake Van. Akhtamar Island held one of the few Armenian survivals, a monastery and church (the Church of the Holy Cross) with fanciful carvings and some poorly preserved frescoes. The interior of the church appeared to have been painted over at some stage. Traces still clung to the walls.
Outside were images of saints and soldiers, raised from the stone in flat relief. The most famous of these were a somewhat potbellied Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Their faces had been vandalised in recent years, particularly Eve’s.
I climbed to the top of the island, a fairly warm exercise that was rewarded by wide views across Lake Van. The lake was blue and lovely in the sunshine, streaked with lighter swirls here and there and dotted with smaller islands. In the distance I could see Nemrut Dağı — another Mount Nimrod. How that man got around! And we don’t even know if he really existed or whether he was merely a compilation of other men.
Nimrod was a great-grandson of Noah, whereas Abraham was an 8th great-grandson — and yet, assuming Nimrod was born about 2300 bc and lived 450 years (about average for the Patriarchs of his generation according to the Bible) then he could indeed have been around as late as 1850 bc, even outliving Abraham. According to the Bible, Noah himself only died about 2000 bc — perhaps he was even killed in the Elamite invasion of Ur, although surely the Bible would have mentioned that — and Shem would have outlasted all of them, dying only in 1845 bc, when Jacob was aleady 50 years old. What changes these oldsters would have seen!
I actually thought no such things on that fine sunny day atop Akhtamar. My mind was on the beauty of the scene, and the voices of the Korean girls climbing the slopes below me. I moved around to a snug spot, wedged myself in, and ate my lunch in sublime peace, surrounded by space. For the moment there was no other place I needed to be and nothing else I needed to do. It was one of those perfect moments that come all too rarely.
The Road to EcbatanaI was becalmed at the Van otogar. Once the 9:00 Best Van Tur bus to Orumiyeh had departed, my 9:30 Van Golu bus evaporated like a mirage. When I checked in at 8:40 they must already have known they didn’t have enough passengers. They could have put me on the BVT service. Instead they took my ticket away and made some sort of arrangement with a Van Ercis bus driver, leaving God knew when — the driver and his offsider were still having a leisurely meal.
As it happened, God made the departure 10:00. It turned out to be a comfortable switcheroo onto a tour bus that was running home empty. I had an excellent view of Hoşap Castle, 50 km from Van, as we zoomed by it. Then we hit the roadworks, and the zoom went away. But we made it to Orumiyeh, and I had time to wander round the centre a bit before everything closed.
I changed some money, 1.35 million rials for us$145, and spread the bounty out on the bed, trying to adjust my mind to yet another devalued currency. I roughed it out as about ﷼ 10,000 to $1.20. My hotel that night cost me ﷼ 140,000, or $16.80, which was double the price in my guidebook but still quite affordable. The only gotcha was the toman, which was then usually 10 rials for reasons having to do with an old denomination called the qiran, but which was being mooted as a replacement for the rial at 10,000 to 1.
I left Orumiyeh early, catching a succession of minibuses and savaris (shared taxis) to Takab. The journey was long and expensive, and I had reason to suspect I paid well above the odds; but I gritted my teeth and powered through. The alternative was to trudge through strange towns and risk getting stuck there.
The landscape was brown and dry, with rolling hills on some of which villages perched. Some villages had walls around them.
I had the first in a long series of “how can I get to Australia” conversations with my fellow passengers. These conversations featured in almost every savari trip and I can’t be bothered trying to put together a representative specimen. My new friends all seemed to be convinced that, somehow, I could wave a magic wand and get them a visa, and that, somehow, on the basis of a half hour acquaintance crammed too close together in the back seat of an old car, I would be interested in waving that wand for them. They wouldn’t believe me when I said that I couldn’t help. They seemed to feel I didn’t want to — in which they were uncomfortably close to the truth. But I really couldn’t help, as my right of residence in Australia wouldn’t rub off on them even if I tried.
Takab itself was nothing, but from Takab minibuses ran to Takht-e Soleiman, once the major place of Zoroastrian worship. This was a personal “must”, so I was out early again, shivering in the early chill.
Lacking a map of Takab, I wasn’t sure how to find the station for the minibus to Takht-e Soleiman. I asked a local bus driver, and although he spoke no English, he understood my quest and beckoned me aboard his vehicle. He took me down some streets, which I strained to commit to memory for the return journey and dropped me off beside a mini-mart where there was already a bus waiting. He waved aside a fare, but I forced a token thousand Rials upon him anyway.
My spectacles, true to form, threw another screw just where a providential piece of stiff wire lay ready to hand for a temporary repair. This time it was the screw holding the left lens in place, which would probably have been fatal for the lens had it been made of glass instead of plastic. The errant sliver gained some scratches when it bounced on the stones but was otherwise undamaged.
The bus that was waiting was not for Takht-e Soleiman, but when I asked, the driver made the familiar patting-the-air gesture, as if bouncing an invisible basketball. The bus pulled away and was promptly replaced by another one, which was mine.
We wound up into the hills above Takab, grinding along in low gear, stopping in small villages to pick up or drop off passengers and freight. Eventually I saw a pimple on the horizon. This was Zendan-e Soleiman, the Prison of Solomon, a small volcanic cone that was once also a Zoroastrian fire temple. But it was not our destination.
In a huge bowl in the hills there was a volcanic vent, partially occupied by a pretty but undrinkable lake welling up from below. The Zoroastrians had built a fire temple here. This was Takht-e Soleiman, the Throne of Solomon. The bus driver dropped me off at the turn-off about 8:40, a favour to the foreigner as strictly speaking his run ended at the nearby village. I walked up the track towards the site beneath rough, ancient, unreconstructed walls and startlingly reconstructed walls. There was an empty parking lot and an unfinished ticket office. A couple of men were fitting tiles on the roof. They waved me up the hill.
I walked up a ramp to a gate in the wall. A cascade of water came down beside the ramp. I dipped a hand in it. It felt slightly soapy.
There was nobody at the gate, but a hut proved to be the ticket office, with an information board nearby.
The site was egg-shaped, about 300 by 500 metres. I had entered at the fat south-south-east end of the egg. The yolk of the egg, set slightly towards this end of the egg, was a lake about 50 metres wide by 100 long, its axis pointing more or less north and south. The lake had two outlets, one at each end. On the board the southern outlet divided in two, one branch running out the gate where I entered, which appeared to have been made in the Mongol period, and the other running out a south-eastern gate dating from the Sasanian period. On the map guide the second branch did not exist. I had seen the south-eastern gate on the way up the ramp and there did not seem to be any water running out of it, so I presume the map guide was the more recent.
The shell of the egg was a wall, common to both the Sasanian and Mongol periods. The wall was well studded with defensive towers and as the whole complex was raised above the surrounding land, it would have been formidably defensible
The main entrance in the Sasanian period was at the north end. There was a set of buildings built inside it that probably related to defence — barracks, guard houses, and the like — and then the square main complex stretching south to the lake. The later Mongol rulers had made a hole in the wall at the south end and built their own complex oriented on that line, joining a colonnade that boxed in the lake from west, south and east with the fire temple forming the northern wall. Thus the structures north of the lake (plus an annex on the northwest) were mostly Sasanian, the rest mostly Mongol, although the Mongols sometimes built atop Sasanian foundations.
Though the existing remains date at best from the Sasanian period, they were built upon Parthian foundations. The Byzantines under Heraclius sacked it in 624 ad. They knew it as Gazka, from the local name Ganzak. The name “Takht-e Soleiman” was coined when the Arabs arrived. Islam revered Solomon. In order to persuade the Muslims not to destroy the complex, the priests pretended that Solomon had once lived here. Later the Mongols found it a convenient location for a summer palace. It was only finally abandoned in the Seventeenth Century.
In Sasanian times it was the main temple of Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism had an oddly Christian history, in that it was initially a personal religion proposed by a rather Christ-like (but human) figure, Zarathustra, whose teachings were subsequently hijacked by priests who kludged on all sorts of rituals and subsidiary beliefs. In his book Marathon, Alan Lloyd makes the pertinent observation that “While prophets tend to look out through clear windows, priests have commonly had a preference for stained glass — it may obscure the view, but it throws glorious colours on their own role.” The fire temples were part of the extraneous nonsense added by the priests. Thus transformed, Zoroastrianism became the state religion of first the Persians, then the Parthians, then the Sasanians.
Not that the priests need to take all the blame. People seem to enjoy mixing ritual into their religion. Raw belief never seems to get far. Perhaps people think “it can’t be that simple”. Or perhaps performative worship is better for business and social reasons — they want to be able to demonstrate their belief. Whatever the reason for the demand, the Zoroastrian priests, like all priests, supplied what was demanded.
Nobody knows for sure when or where Zarathustra lived. The traditional date is about 600 bc, which sounds rather late as the religion was fully formed by Cyrus’ day; but some people claim dates as early as 1700 bc, which would predate the Hindu Rig-Vedas and sounds way too early. The language used in the Gathas of the Zoroastrian Avestas suggested he was more or less coeval with the authors of the Vedas and not too far removed from them geographically. I’m no expert but a date of 1000-1200 bc sounds reasonable to me.
Zarathustra was an Aryan. The Aryan homeland may have been in the Pamir Ranges, in an area that is now part of Tajikistan. The Avestas called it “Airyana Vaeja”, and some Zoroastrians equated it with “Arya Varta” in the Rig-Vedas. It was the root from which “Iran” was derived.
Zoroastrianism may be the oldest monotheistic religion. In its original version it glorified Ahura Mazda as paramount and presented the world as a struggle between Truth and Lies. It featured the concepts of creation, existence and free will. The Zoroastrian supported Truth by good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Later teaching diminished Ahura Mazda to Ormazd and enhanced Angra Mainya to Ahriman and opposed the two as the diametrically opposed principles of Truth and Lies — or, simplistically, of Good and Evil. Zoroastrianism directly affected the development of both Judaism and Christianity. Perhaps the split of the original Aryans was along religious lines, with the group that became Hindus moving east and the one that became Zoroastrians moving west.
The Sasanian fire temple was aligned on an axis from the north gate to the lake. A ceremonial way led from the gate to a large courtyard north of the main temple. East from the courtyard was the Temple of Anahita. South was the Ashargoshnasb Fire Temple, which also gave access to the lake via a southern “Coronation Gallery”. East from the temple was the real heart of the complex, the site of the Eternal Flame. West of the courtyard and temple was a royal complex of dining and reception halls and, presumably, accommodation. South-west of the main complex was the “Western Gallery”, which was a large hall opening towards the east and the lake, perhaps used for dawn ceremonies of some sort, or by royalty watching ceremonies at the lake shore. There may have been a matching “Eastern Gallery” that was demolished and built over by the Mongols in constructing their colonnade.
The chamber of the Eternal Flame had entrances from the west (the temple) and the south (through a large chamber towards the lake, although there seemed to be no direct route south to the lake shore).
The Mongols, as mentioned, had added or renovated a colonnade around the lake. Most of their structures were in the west part of the egg. The most imposing of all was the “Council Hall”, now the site museum, which had been a hunting hall in Mongol times. The museum contained a number of interesting items including sketch maps made by the archaeologists, Mongol period tiles, and pottery pipes which may have conveyed the gas for the Eternal Flame. The Mongols had also added a pair of octagonal towers to the west end of the “Western Gallery”.
The whole place was in ruins, as you would expect after centuries of neglect and pillage, but many rooms still had their roofs, and in many places, there were traces of plaster mouldings and even of paint. The walls of the buildings still towered. The place was also busy with workmen engaged in excavation and reconstruction, probably stabilisation work to prevent further decay.
The lake itself was contained by a stone shell that seemed to be natural, perhaps by deposition from the green, poisonous, mineral-laden water. Here and there were traces of ancient natural outlets that had been closed off by masonry. The modern outlets were artificial.
The north gate was locked, but I could see that there were excavations outside it. So after I finished with the site inside the walls I returned to the entrance and walked west then north outside the walls. I found a huge crater with a stone shell that may once have held another mineral lake. In the distance I could see the village of Nosratabad, and beyond that Zendan-e Soleiman.
Here and there the archaeologists had driven trenches against the walls to find out what was below the ground. In one place the wall itself was indented, a feature that didn’t show on my map although it did on the sketch maps in the Museum. However, the indentation may have been an illusion due to damage to the defensive towers. The north gate turned out to be less interesting than expected, although the excavators had unearthed remains of the paved road that once led up to the gate.
Despite the overwhelming dominance of Islam, there were still a few Zoroastrians in Iran today. I later visited their Ateshkadeh Temple in Yazd. But great Ganzak was now occupied only by spiders, lizards and a small green-eyed owl who watched me curiously from a hole above a doorway though a ruined wall.
The spider serves as gate-keeper in Khusrau’s hall,
The owl plays his music in the palace of Afrasiyab. *
* Attributed to the Persian poet Firdausi. The couplet alludes to the transience of worldly glory. I have been unable to find the ultimate source of this quotation. It is best known from the words of Mehmet II, conqueror of Constantinople, who substituted “Caesar” for “Khusrau”. Khusrau or Khosro is Cyrus, founder of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire. In Persian legend (see Firdausi’s Shahnama) he fought and killed his maternal grandfather Afrasi(y)ab. Afrasiab is also the name of a serpent incarnation of Angra Mainya or Ahriman, the principle of Lies.
I walked back past Nosratabad, a dusty brown place with haystacks on the roofs. Presumably this practice had a double use: insulating the rooms below against the cold, and keeping the fodder out of reach of animals, thieves, and snowbanks. It was incredibly picturesque. I made a mental note to come back for a proper look around later, but I never did.
I climbed Zendan-e Suleiman. The views from the top were gob-smacking. I had brought lunch with me — salami, bread, some fruit, some biscuits, water — and I sat in a shady niche, high above the plain, eating my simple fare and absorbing the peace and the silence and the awesome view. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go; it was just me and the sky and the hills, and a small brown lizard bobbing his head at me from a nearby rock. It was perfect.
The place was a volcanic crater, a pimple on the landscape. The ruins of the fire temple encrusted the southern slopes. The caldera had once boasted a lake, but it had dried up. My guidebook said the rim had fractured, but that didn’t explain why the floor of the crater was empty. Perhaps an earthquake broke some dam deep down below and drained the water away. In that case you’d expect there to be some trace of the water around the mountain, but there was nothing.
I was very careful while clambering around on the rim. The rock was crumbling, it overhung the edge, and it was a long way down inside. Even if I somehow survived a fall, getting out would be impossible on my own and it might be some time before anyone found me.
The caldera was a base of tuff surmounted by layers of lava. The lava had flowed over the rim and down the sides in vast, writhing deposits. Wind and weather had carved the lava into ledges and crags and crevices.
I tried to identify the salient features of the fire temple, but it was too fragmentary, reduced to foundations at best. Earthquake and razing had destroyed it. Here and there I thought to trace the processional way that must once have led up to the south-east and north-east lips of the crater, but I could have been deluding myself. The lava created natural terraces, which had been exploited by the Zoroastrians for use as wall footings. The plan of the site on my map was of little use.
I descended the mountain and walked across the road to investigate some craters. They looked to be the remains of more lakes. I was even able to identify the natural outflows. I was literally at pains in this investigation — the ground was covered by prickles and nettles and it seemed that every time I raised my eyes to get an idea of where I was, my toes were ambushed by another stinging nuisance. Raising my foot carefully, I would crush the wretched vegetable for its impudence, which did neither of us any good but improved my mood a little.
A bus went past towards Nosratabad. I trotted out of the field of nettles and waited beside the road, arriving just in time to catch it as it returned. I flagged it down and climbed aboard.
“Takab?”
“Mashallah.”
Rather, it was the will of the bus company. But I paid over my 3,000 Rials and wedged myself into a seat, feeling a thrill of pleasant exhaustion running up my legs. What a perfect day! And the whole expedition had cost me only about $2, plus food.
To the recorded wailing of some mullah we descended to Takab, where I successfully retraced my morning route to my hotel.
That night I felt sociable, so I came down into the lobby to find a young Iranian student practicing his English with a couple of Dutch girls and a German couple. He immediately transferred his attention to me, the native English speaker. He might have done better to stick with the Germans, who at least had an American intonation learned from their own English teacher. My Antipodean accent caused him some trouble.
He was attending a local institute of some sort and would often come to the hotel looking for foreigners to try out his English. He had been frustrated tonight because his English was probably better than that of the other foreigners (although he was too polite to put it that way — rather, he just conceded that the conversation had been “difficult”). He had heard there was an English-speaker staying here and had hoped I would put in an appearance.
So we talked. Inevitably, the topic of religion came up.
“And what is your religion?” he asked.
“An la ahtam bil diin,” I said. I obviously didn’t say it right, because he looked blank. “Religion isn’t important to me. I try to ignore it.”
This threw him. “But surely you do believe in God?”
“Not really. Not since I was a child.”
“Here everyone believes in God.”
Unlikely, I thought cynically. In fact I had been lying on every form I filled out in Iran. They all had a field marked “Religion”, which I dutifully filled with “Christian”. A truly honest answer would have been “None”, but I had heard that giving this answer could be a problem, and “Christian” at least described my upbringing. Now I was seeing why at first hand: it was simply inconceivable to him that I could have no religion at all.
Part of his schooling was religious studies. From the slant of his remarks I soon gathered that what was really studied was Islam. Other religions were mentioned in passing simply as an example of errors corrected by Mohammed. He was 18, intelligent and well educated; but his religious comprehension, though he knew large chunks of the Koran and the Bible by rote, which was more than I could claim, was about the level of what I had learned in Sunday School. He had absorbed it and he thoroughly believed it, but he had never thought critically about what he had been taught. He had been discouraged from doing so. He knew the rationale of the holy texts in detail and could argue them in extensio — beyond my own poor abilities, as I had forgotten most of my Sunday School learning and had, of course, never been taught the Koran. But he had never been allowed to suspect that the fundamental assumptions of this lore might be open to doubt.
I tripped him up on one of the simplest of Biblical injustices — Isaiah cursing little boys to be torn apart by bears for teasing him about his bald head. I asked how a merciful and compassionate God could curse people for the actions of their great-grandparents. I asked how the prophet Noah could curse his son’s children for something his son did.
I brought up Hindu cosmology, which envisaged a universe hundreds of billions of years old and had two million gods all of whom were incarnations of one god and contrasted that with the 6,000 years of the Bible.
I gave him sections of Māori mythology, the strangely Egyptian story about the creation of the world in which Earth and Sky had lain together and had been forced apart. I gave him the legend of Kupe and his fish.
It was eye-opening stuff for him.
I had a moment of doubt at this point. It occurred to me that I was getting awfully close to the sort of heresy that could get me arrested in Iran. He was not a police plant: his beliefs were sincere, but he was not fanatical. Still, I was careful to present each case simply as an example of what others believed, endorsing none, making each a personal statement intended to explain my position. I decided to skip Zoroastrianism.
I resolved more firmly than before that as far as the Iranians were concerned, while I was in Iran, an la ahtam bil diin. The discussion had been welcome, as it allowed me to put words to some of the things I had been thinking about, to see how they sounded when I said them aloud. He gave me good insights on the people I was travelling among, which helped me see them more as people and less as aliens. It had been worthwhile — but it had been risky.
We got onto politics. If he was conformist in his religion, he was definitely not conformist in his politics. The Islamist government was finished — not now, but in a few years, when the old men died off. He was looking forward to those days, to the wealth that would come when Iran was no longer penned in by international embargoes and everyone would be rich, and the tariffs would be dropped. He wanted to own a new car, maybe a BMW.
How much was such a car? I asked him. Almost twenty million toman, he told me. Over US$20,000. I had to tell him gently that in a freer economy he should expect that price to increase; it must be heavily discounted. When wages in Iran rose, the law of supply and demand would kick in and the price would rise even if tariffs dropped. Actually I couldn’t understand how an imported German car could sell for US$20,000 when in Australia the price was more like US$30,000. I cross-questioned him but he was adamant that a new BMW was twenty million toman.
I initially thought he was using Rials, which would have made the price just US$2,000! There still had to be a misunderstanding here, because I later checked on the internet and found that due to tariffs a BMW should if anything be more expensive in Iran than in Australia. Some other, cheaper brands of foreign cars were indeed US$20,000. Locally manufactured cars started at about US$6,500 new.
It seemed to me then and does now that when the Islamic Republic of Iran inevitably collapses, and the secular world of the unbelievers crashes back in on them, that many Iranians raised to a simple view of faith are going to be very confused and angry. They are also going to be startled and angered by the consequences of a freer economy, for inevitably a rise in nominal wages will be soaked up by rising prices for imports and the collapse of previously sheltered local industries. They will probably be better off but they won’t feel better off.
ShushAt 5:05, at an intersection, I was precipitated from my chariot to walk into Shush, ancient Susa; once capital of the Elamites, then a Persian capital.
The way was dim and quiet. But as I walked along, I saw that people were on the move in the twilight, making their way to prayers. The entire area between town and the main highway was built up. Then I came to a traffic circle.
I was looking for the Apadana Hotel, supposedly the only place to stay in this town of 67,000 people. I had no idea where it was, so I just followed my nose down the neon-lit divider on the other side of the circle, and somehow the faux-Achaemenid palace on the other side of the river just had to be it!
The hotel played second fiddle to its restaurant, as it closed up when the restaurant did. It was not yet open, so I sat down in a chair to wait. As the stagnant canal on the far side of the river had suggested it might, the spot had a lot of mosquitoes. They were vicious brutes — I was bitten on my back right through my t-shirt where it was pressed against the chair. I was forced to put my jacket on to armour myself. I’d thought I might need the jacket for the walk, as the nights had been chilly where I’d been, but in fact it was quite warm and humid here.
After a while a guy happened to look out of the restaurant. He disappeared, but a moment later he opened the hotel door and beckoned me in. He spoke little English, but he brought out a clipboard and signed me into the hotel. Two nights cost me 300,000 Rials — plus 20,000 for his shirt pocket. He tapped his lower eyelid knowingly and showed me up to my room.
The archaeological site of Susa was supposed to be open from dawn to dusk. Worried by the warm and humid night, I wanted to see it early, before the day warmed up. But it was not open at dawn, and it was not open at 7:20 when I gave up waiting and went back to the hotel to lie down for a bit. The “bit” turned out to be more than four hours, but I guess I needed the rest.
I went back and this time I saw the place — though the presence of the guardians was unnecessarily obtrusive, offensive and domineering and interfered with my concentration. It was distracting to have a motorbike blatting along twenty metres behind me or (when I threatened to stray too far) swinging out like a sheepdog. The distant parts of the site were not obviously off limits, but the staff warned that they were “dangerous”. Actually they might be — for a fasting Muslim on a hot, humid day during Ramazan. I could cheerfully stop and have a drink whenever I was briefly unobserved, but they could not. If I headed for the horizon they must follow, leaving the shade behind them. I was tempted — but it was hot, and I saw no reason to suffer myself while making them suffer. I was already seeing the best parts. So after seeing whatever had attracted me, I’d turn back — and grin to myself as the motorcyclist hurried gratefully back to his shade.
I found an information panel with an interesting timetable of local events.
A short history of civilisations in Shush (Susa)
1. (From 5000 to 4000 B.C.) Setting up primary villages and developing the artistic pottery civilization.
2. (3300—3000 B.C.) Establishing the first urban civilization by the Elamites in Susa. Simultaneously writing was invented.
3. (2000—1100 B.C.) The Elamite Seimashi kings conquerred [sic] Sumer and then the Sucalmus Kingdom was started and Babylon was conquerred too. The fifteenth city and the Elamite temples were built in Shush. The Ziggourat [sic] of Chogha-Zanbil was constructed in Haft-Tappeh.
4. (640—629 B.C.) The Assyrians destroyed Elam and Susa. The Achaemenians took the Elamites’ plac [sic].
5. (522—465 B.C.) Dariush lays the foundation of the Apadana Palace in Susa.
6. (In 323 B.C.) Alexander conquerred the Achaemenian emperorand soon after that the Celeucians [sic] took the reign.
7. (250 B.C—624 A.D.) The Arsacian (Parthian) dynasty came to power.
8. (224 A.D.) The Sassanids built the Ivan-e-Kharkha and Jondi-Shapour.
9. (In 624 A.D.) Iranians were honoured by accepting Islam.
10. (Lst. C. 7th. C. A.H.) The Islamic civilization was flourishing in Shush. A mosque was built on the ruins of the Artisans City in Shush.
11. (By late 7th. C. A.H.) Shush was evacuated because of the Mongulian [sic] attacks.
I was amused by #9. Apart from getting the date wrong, they omitted observing that Iran “accepted” Islam initially from the end of a spear. The defining event of the 700 years from the 1st to the 7th Centuries After Hegira was the building of a mosque? How were the mighty fallen!
Ancient Susa was a huge field of ancient mounds and rubble, overlooked by a castle, Chateau de Morgan, dating from the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The most recognisable ancient remain was the excavated foundations of Darius’ Palace and Apadana. Here and there elsewhere was a wall or a well or a cistern, even a section of pavement, but without a plan of the site I was walking in the dark. I found what had to be a temple and I found some segments of wall that must once have boasted reliefs — perhaps removed by the archaeologists. Nothing else.
The Palace was a huge place, unfortunately signed only in Persian. Entrances at each short end led into a series of courtyards surrounded by complexes of rooms. One whole side appeared to be a row of apartments. The other side was the Apadana, a square complex peppered with pillar bases — rows of round bases two deep by six long on each of three sides, and a six-by-six arrangement of square bases in the main room. Smaller square rooms without columns were at each corner, possibly towers. The fourth side faced the palace.
Downtown Shush was a wasteland of closed doors and hungry Iranians. But at one spot in the main street there were several cheap kebab joints. For lunch I had a kebab at a cheerful place with paper on its windows and a curtain on the door, run by a guy called Amir.
I got back to the hotel around 14:00, turned on the air conditioner, showered, lay down to siesta — and at 14:30, while the room was still too warm, the power went off for three hours. Load shedding!
Determined not to be caught out again tomorrow, I examined the air conditioner. The hotel had removed the thermostat knob, but my pliers could fix that. In the morning I would use the air conditioning to reduce the room to glacial coolness, then return the setting to normal before I went out. With luck it would still be somewhat cool when I returned, and the hotel would be none the wiser.
When the power came back on, I turned the conditioner up a little immediately. The notions of hotel managements about what constituted a comfortable temperature were often several degrees warmer (or, in winter, cooler) than the notions of the customer. If I was sweating while lying naked on the bed, despite listening to a jet engine roaring beside my ear, it was definitely going to be too hot to sleep and I wasn’t getting what I’d paid for.
The next day I chartered a taxi to take me out of town to Choqa Zanbil, the best surviving example of an Elamite ziggurat. If I couldn’t get to Ur to see the great ziggurat there, at least I could see this smaller one.
Our first stop was Haft Teppeh, where there was an excellent little museum with finds from the sites of Haft Teppeh and Choqa Zanbil and, best of all, models of the ziggurat and some ancient tombs. It even allowed photography, so I snapped the model from several angles to help myself understand what I was looking at when I got to the ziggurat.
The archaeological site at Haft Teppeh was a dig in progress and not inspirational, so I wasted no time on it.
Soon I saw the ziggurat, a low hump rising from the sand. This mound, about 100 metres on a side, dated from about 1250 bc and had been destroyed around 640 bc. Unlike the Sumerian-Babylonian model, it had stairs on all four sides. It was surrounded by a round inner wall and a square middle wall. Beyond that, there was an outer wall around the whole area, perhaps marking out an ancient town.
The ziggurat was in good shape, still rising several stories. The upper stories, exposed to the storms of centuries, had been pulverised but the lower sections had been quickly buried in the sand and had survived relatively unscathed. It was oriented with corners north and south. The car park and modern entry was from the southeast. Leading up to the south-east stair to my right as I passed the inner wall was a stumpy processional way, the Gate of Untash Tal, flanked each side by a row of column stumps. Beyond that was an archway leading to a tomb actually built on the lowest stage of the ziggurat, a high honour indeed.
I walked around it, trying to understand the logic and failing. There was a layer of bricks impressed with cuneiform inscriptions running around the lowest storey about head height that might have helped if I could read cuneiform.
Perhaps the most startling feature of the ziggurat was the use of true arches above the staircases. What date the archways belonged to, I couldn’t be sure, but even if they were added in the last years before the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal sacked this place in 640 bc, they would prove that the keystone arch was in use in Elam more than 2600 years ago and probably much earlier. They are more likely to be an artefact of the modern reconstruction.
There was a rope around the ziggurat proper so at first, I couldn’t get too close without paying baksheesh to one of the workmen; but in the end friendliness proved adequate compensation and I was allowed across the rope on the interesting south-west side, where there was a large sundial.
One touching feature here was the footprint of a child, impressed into a brick 3,000 years ago. The heel was deeply pressed, the toes less so: the child had been walking, not running, and was perhaps carrying something heavy. Why they used the defective brick I don’t know; but there it was, a small human grace-note almost lost in the grand pomp of a vanished religion.
Temples and tombs were scattered around the ziggurat. Obviously, everyone who was anyone wanted to sleep near the gods. I explored them, using my hired driver to run me out to the more distant objectives. Much of the site had been encased in protective wattle-and-daub, which gave it a curious aspect, at once more comprehensible because the walls were restored to their original bulk, and yet inaccessible, because the layers of modern dirt softened the vision of the past.
Here and there were more prosaic notes, such as storerooms, recognisable by their comb-like structure, the teeth marking the bays. In some of the bays even fine details such as the props that had probably supported amphorae could still be made out.
The southern end of the outer enclosure held palaces and “palaces with tombs” — although the latter, at least, may have been mortuary temples after the Egyptian model. On the other hand the people of neighbouring Sumeria often buried their dead beneath their houses, so I thought I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the notion. The tombs were located beneath corridors and long, thin rooms. The buildings were well equipped with drains.
I did a “walk-through” of one “palace with tombs” to try to understand it. Although there were two doorways in the outer wall, both located at the southern (really the south-eastern) end, both ultimately led into the same vestibule which contained the only door with access to the main part of the “palace”. Strange palace, with only one entrance! The existence of two doors was explained because one of them also gave access to a complex of rooms that replicated the “palace” in miniature but did not provide access to the rest of the “palace”. The inner door from this complex that accessed the vestibule may have been bricked up later.
The vestibule opened into a huge room, the largest in the “palace”. It may actually have been a courtyard. There was what appeared to be an altar of some sort near the middle. A long narrow room opened off it to the south. Three doors opened west into a very long room that may have been planned as a corridor for the later extension of the “palace”. East there was another complex of rooms that replicated the palace in miniature, with vestibule and courtyard surrounded by long, narrow rooms. To the north three doors opened into one long corridor that showed signs of use as a storeroom, with a long room at its east end and a single door opening into another long corridor further north that had tombs beneath its floor. This corridor gave access to seven long rooms: five directly, and two through other rooms.
This place was not a palace. It was ludicrously badly designed for use by the living, but it was very well designed for the reception and storage of the dead. It was clearly a mortuary tomb, designed to hold several generations of a family or dynasty. The body would have been brought into the main courtyard for the funeral ceremony, then taken to its tomb for interment. The storeroom would have held the necessary implements and consumables for funerals and memorial services.
(There was an information board outside that might have told me all this — but it was in Persian and, except for the numbers, was totally unintelligible to me.)
The heat was now blistering, and I was feeling faint, so I decided to call it a day even though I still had plenty of time in hand. I got the driver to drop me off at my friendly kebab joint then I went back to my hotel, turned the air conditioner on full blast, and enjoyed a good long siesta, barely rousing enough to roll over when the power went off again at 14:30.
I had hit it off with the locals at the kebab joint the day before, and at lunch today I had accepted an invitation from the manager to stay overnight his family at nearby Dezful and to visit his English class at a school there the next day. Till now I had not been interested in invitations to dinner and to visit because I was travelling hard, but the buses to Shiraz passed through neighbouring towns in the late afternoon, so now I had a day to spare. I had been planning it as a rest day, but this seemed a better use for it. I was blowing an already-paid-for night in an air-conditioned hotel room for the opportunity to sleep on a futon on a living room floor, but it seemed worth the sacrifice.
Amir saw his vocation as a school teacher, but it was part-time and didn’t really pay enough to live on, so he ran the kebab joint in Shush in the afternoons and evenings. Delighted by his coup in snaring a real foreigner for his English students, he refused to let me pay for my kebab.
He and his sister were not married and still lived with their parents in Dezful. Their house was clean and tidy, although sparsely furnished by Western standards. At night the living room became the men’s dorm and the women slept in the back part of the house. The living room had mats and cushions for sitting on. In one corner there was an entertainment unit with stereo and TV. In the next corner to the left was the front door. In the middle of the wall to the left again was a door into a room used as a study, with a computer. In the next wall was the door into the back of the house. I didn’t see much of that, but there was a shower to the right through that door that I was allowed to use the next morning.
Out the front door, in a corner of the driveway, was an outdoors dunny. It was a squat, but fortunately my bowels were on their best behaviour, so this wasn’t a problem.
Amir’s father, white-haired and dignified, watched TV most of the evening. He didn’t speak any English. Amir’s sister had gone out for the evening and came in later, a smiling face in impeccable hejab. Amir’s mother also wore hejab but was noticeably more casual about it.
In the morning Amir drove to his school, where I met his workmates and then his smiling students. I had bought a couple of dozen pens to give out to them but to my embarrassment I had underestimated the size of the class, and I ran out of pens before they ran out of students. Oops. But I gave them a brief geographical yarn about New Zealand and answered their conventional and almost painfully carefully-pronounced questions. It went off so well that he took me into another class where there were some younger children, not so advanced in their studies — barely past “Hello”, in fact. Most of my spiel about New Zealand probably went over their heads, but from Amir’s viewpoint the purpose was less to give them practice in speaking English as to show them that there was a value in learning it.
The school gave me thank-you a gift — a hand-painted ice cream bowl and spoon set! My heart sank. There were six bowls and six spoons. It was heavy and fragile and there was no way that I could hope to carry it with me. I couldn’t politely refuse it, so I accepted it gracefully. In the car later I made a present of it to Amir, thanking him profusely for the school’s gesture and explaining the predicament it placed me in.
Amir drove me around Dezful, commenting on his hometown, which had a bridge that it claimed was the oldest in the world. Technically, it claimed to have built the first bridge, but the locals all claimed the current “old bridge” to be the very artefact. As this venerable structure had Islamic arches, I rather doubted its claimed age; but I politely smiled and didn’t contradict them. The riverbanks were also peppered with caves that had been used as dwellings in ages past — and quite likely as bomb shelters in the more recent Iran-Iraq war.
Amir finally dropped me at the Andimeshk bus terminal, where I grabbed the last seat in a savari to Andimeshk. There I bought a bus ticket to Shiraz.
On the modern air-conditioned bus, I had two seats to myself, while vegetables — some sort of loose-leafed cabbages — occupied the seats across the aisle. They made quiet neighbours and didn’t object when I leant over them to photograph the sunset.
I skipped the roadside dinner again that night — I made sure I had a good lunch in Andimeshk, and I had topped up my munchies. I was now resigned to the apparent rule that buses never stopped at places with edible food.
Late that night I found myself in William Hope Hodgson’s “Night Land”. The horizon was aglow with flaming plumes from oil rigs and refineries burning off, and mysterious glowing white lights; all casting reflections upon the clouds which then picked out the dark ridges of the surrounding hills. Ahead reached the Vale of red Fire, a stream of red sparks flying ahead of us into the night. Great monsters with glaring eyes rushed silently by in the opposite direction, each carrying a freight of lost human souls. Here and there were strange houses, now silent, their spires sometimes still lit up in green neon, where earlier my fellow travellers had gone to make obeisance to their unseen master.
Caught up in the moment, I found myself pondering my personal beliefs and philosophy again. But what came from that pondering my diary sayeth not, and memory recalleth not. No matter, for I know that it was a continuation of my thinking in Takab, modified by my experiences in Shush and Dezful, and that I dropped off to sleep without reaching a conclusion.
A Whine in ShirazAnd so to Shiraz, launching pad for the biggest sight in Iran – Persepolis! It was a pleasant town despite the lack of its famous beverage, and after a bit of haggling I got my room at Hotel Esteghlal quite cheaply. All in all I found myself feeling pretty chirpy, despite fatigue from too many late nights, overnight buses, and general hard travelling. Due to the fatigue I declared my first day in Shiraz to be a rest day.
Some rest. I walked my legs off!
I wandered through town for a while looking for someplace nice to chill out, but I found the Fortress first. I noticed that the battlements had small, well separated pyramidal crenellations – effete versions of some I’d seen further west.
“In the name of God
“KARIM-KHAN’S CITADEL
“The exalted stature of the Karim-Khan’s Citadel, amuses every new traveller for a long time, who arrives in Shiraz.”
Actually they’re more amused by the language of this information panel. You want some more? OK.
“The four reached high to sky ramparts and towers, which are impossible to be conquered, was Karim-Khan Zand’s house.
“… The four ramparts and towers (form deifications) with a ditch which was dug up and surrounded the Citadel acted on defensive.
“… Regarding to the importance and speciality of this gorgeous billowing, after finishing the reconstructions, it will be opened to all the art lovers as the Museum of Fars Province.”
While they were speaking in the name of God (were they forming deifications?) they should have had their text gone over by someone less exalted but more familiar with English usages before billowing it so gorgeously in our faces. Their spelling was spot on and my computer likes their grammar more than some of mine, but computer spelling and grammar checking was never designed to cope with such wonderful nonsense. I was minded of Jabberwocky.
Back in 1887, Rudyard Kipling observed that Lewis Carroll’s famous rhyme seemed to be the work of a demented compositor. Kipling had just come upon the immortal corruption, “The Poligs of the Oern Vent in dugard to the Brounincinl Coutrick is the colic of the unscrifulouse Gawler.” *
Picking holes in signs written by people whose first language is not English is an amusing but limited entertainment. As Lazarus Long put it, “Don’t praggle me, boy; I’ll quang you proper.” ** Let’s move on.
The Fortress stuck in my mind for three things. First there was a model of the area, and second there was a photograph in the photo gallery, and third there were the wooden columns.
After the Indian mutiny in 1857, the British “fired” some of the rebels by spread-eagling them across the mouths of cannon, a brutal form of execution that always troubled me. It didn’t seem right. The photograph that caught my eye here was an identical picture labelled “To fire the guilty people (Qajar era)”. The Qajars ruled Persia from 1795 to 1921 (after the Zands and before the Pahlavis) and were regarded as something of a disaster. It turned out that “firing” malefactors was actually quite common throughout the region. After a struggle rife with terrible atrocities the British had acted in a manner uncharacteristic for them but not for Asia.
This photo showed a tall, gaunt man already fastened across the bore and clearly seconds from death. He was gazing out of the picture with a hopeless expression and his arms were blurred, as if he had just flapped them in a helpless shrug. What was his crime? Who was he? The photo did not say. But the camera caught him in an instant of poignant humanity that surely would have moved a stone. This doomed man was more real to me than the stolid ranks of onlookers in the background who would get to eat dinner that evening.
A lot of work had gone into the Fortress. It was peaceful and attractive, although they needed to do some work on the signage. It wasn’t always clear what was open and what was not. After a while I just took to poking my nose into everything and, if nobody told me to buzz off, following my nose in.
After the Fortress, I continued my walk through Shiraz. Part of Zand Boulevard had been turned into a pedestrian precinct, spotted with small fountains. Here and there people were selling books from makeshift tables, but to my loss, the books were nearly all in Persian or Arabic.
In some of the back streets near the Vakil Baths I found badgirs, wind towers – my first encounter with an architecture that was soon to become familiar to me.
* Oh, all right. “The policy of the Government in regard to the Provincial Contract is the policy of the unscrupulous lawyer.” As for Carroll, the good Reverend himself gave us a translation of the first verse of his rhyme, placing it in the mouth of humpty-dumpty. You will find it in Chapter Six of Through the Looking Glass.
** Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinein.
Persepolis was jaw-dropping, even in its ruin, and on the ground it made more sense than it ever did on the maps. There was little sign of multistorey construction, so what I saw was where they ate and slept, the floors I walked were the same ones they walked. It brought the past very close.
I started my day by taking a minibus to Mirvashd. Not being able to find a minibus to Persepolis there – it turned out that they left from the far end of town – I negotiated with a taxi for the remaining distance. The driver initially demanded 70,000 Rials, which was so absurd that I nearly walked away. I countered with an offer of 20,000, which sounded reasonable to me for the distance; and we settled on 30,000, which turned out to be exactly 50% more than a fair fare. My instinct had been spot on – the correct fare at the time was about 20,000, and even that allowed for the cab’s risk of being forced to drive back empty; which was a very low risk from Persepolis. I should have offered him 15,000 and allowed myself to be beaten up to 20,000. Taxi drivers. Always such a Pest!
My hotel had offered me a full day trip to Persepolis, Naqsh-e Rostam, Naqsh-e Rajab and Pasargadae for a mere half million Rials ($60) but I suspected this was so inflated that I could never have negotiated it down to a sane price. In the end, despite being grossly overcharged by the taxis, I spent only 100,000 Rials on my day although admittedly I skipped Pasargadae when the heat got too much for me.
Persepolis was a broad flag-stoned avenue leading away towards a level platform in the distance. If tourism ever picked up again in Iran, the infrastructure was in place. All they lacked was the tourists.
As I got closer, the platform became spiky with columns and gateways, each standing in isolation but forming arrays that picked out the skeletons of the ancient buildings whose roofs they once supported. Where had the curtain walls gone? Perhaps they were largely mud-brick and had simply dissolved in the rains of 2,300 years, to be removed as rubbish by Herzfeld 80 years ago.
At the end of the avenue, staircases led up to left and right. The steps were broad and shallow, designed to allow people in ground-sweeping robes to ascend without losing their dignity. A modern wooden superstructure prevented tourist feet from wearing away the ancient stones, although the pounding of the wooden struts couldn’t have been good for the steps they rested on.
At the top of the steps was the monumental entrance to Persepolis, Xerxes’ “Gate of All nations” with its huge human-headed bulls and fancy columns. The two bulls facing the stairs had lost their faces – surely restoration was possible? The bulls at the other end still had recognisable faces that could have been used as a pattern. But even those faces were damaged about the eyes, nose and mouth in a manner that showed that iconoclasts had been at work.
In lands further west, Byzantine iconoclasts were often blamed for similar damage to ancient faces. If so, it could be only be because they got there first. This damage had to date from Islamic times. In Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox half-blamed the Greeks for this; but many damaged faces in the reliefs were hard to reach from floor level and the faces of ranks below them, on grey stone that had obviously been buried from Alexander’s until Herzfeld’s time, were not damaged. The damaged faces were the ones that had remained above the rubble.
Beyond this gate was the so-called Garrison or Army Street, lined with niches where supposedly soldiers once stood, and flanked by columns with the famous gryphon capitals. At the end was the “Unfinished Gate”, with its bull-headed capitals lying on the ground. The processional way took a right turn here to head down to the “Hundred Columned Hall” or “Palace of 100 Columns”, its gateways heralded by more bulls, bull-headed ones this time, their faces undamaged because nonhuman.
The most recognisable feature of this palace was its doorways. In 1933 Robert Byron came to Persepolis to photograph these doorways, a story told in The Road to Oxiana. He had a tussle with the archaeologist Herzfeld over the right to do this. Herzfeld had been burned by people taking photographs and publishing them, claiming his work for their own. Persia at the time had no Copyright laws to protect his rights.
Byron believed that unlike other architectural features, doorways “only exist[ed] in relation to the human figure”. Fair enough, and yet, confronted with the high narrow frames of the doors of the Hundred Columns, I found myself doubting his thesis. Far from inviting a “perpetual to and fro”, the deep portals caused me to dally, to run a finger along the shallow reliefs of kings slaying demons that decorated them. But perhaps it was just the chance to linger in a spot of shade.
Much of the artwork had an oddly Indian flavour, in the shapes of the frilly capitals of the ornamental half-columns supporting Darius’ throne. At the same time, the human figures present an Egyptian aspect, their legs side on, chests front-on, faces in profile but with fully drawn eyes. Many of the figures were in pristine condition except for their chiselled and battered faces.
Looking across from a doorway to the “Central Palace” (the Tripylon), I noticed the crenellations mentioned by Byron. Very like the four-stepped ones I had seen at Petra and elsewhere. But these had an additional detail, a rectangular indentation that resembled a doorway. They were apparently intended to recall Zoroastrian fire temples. But which came first, the fire temple or the architectural feature?
I found reliefs of lions attacking bulls. The carving of the lions’ manes was identical with the surviving detail of the manes of the lions at the Lion Gate of Hattuşa.
I walked up into the Tripylon Palace. The pylons held reliefs of the king, probably Darius. He was either walking accompanied by servants holding umbrellas, or sitting on a throne with a servant standing behind him. The banisters of the staircases were painstakingly carved with figures and topped by the pyramidal crenellations. The figures, as observed by so many before me, were detailed but lifeless, even where they were interacting with each other. The sickly smiles on the faces of a pair of rams showed more animation than the faces of their shepherds. The purpose was no doubt formulaic, but it gave the whole thing a repulsive sameness.
Down at the south of the Palace were the royal apartments. Many were simply a single large room, presumably a bedroom, with a narrow room opening off it, presumably a storeroom.
I found an inscription where Darius asked the gods to protect his palace from “famine, lies and earthquakes”. Alas, he neglected to mention fire and drunken Macedonians.
His son Xerxes was less specific. In the Museum I found inscriptions from foundation slabs (here slightly smoothed to make the English flow better):
Great is Ahura Mazda, who created this world, who created the sky above, who created mankind, who created happiness for man; who made Xerxes the King, one King of many, one Lord of many.
I am Xerxes, the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries con-taining all types of man, King far and wide, son of King Darius the Achaemenid.
Says Xerxes the King: my father was Darius; Darius’ father was Hy-taspes by name; Hytaspes’ father was Arsames by name. Although Hy-taspes and Arsames were both living at that time, yet by the desire of Ahura Mazda, Darius my father was made King in this world. When Da-rius became King, he built many excellent constructions.
Says Xerxes the King: Darius had other sons but by the desire of Ahura Mazda Darius my father made me the greatest after himself. When my father Darius passed away from the throne, by the will of Ahura Maz-da I became King on my father’s throne. When I became King I built many excellent constructions. What had been built by my father, that I protected; and other buildings I added. Moreover, what I built and what my father built, we built by the favour of Ahura Mazda.
Says Xerxes the King: may Ahura Mazda protect me, and my kingdom, and what was built by me; and what was built by my father, that also may Ahura Mazda protect.
There was another inscription in which Xerxes described his many virtues, attributes and skills, but I’ll spare you that one.
The Museum was small but well put together, with cylinder seals, inscriptions, the glass eyes from statues, bits of marble crockery, iron staples used to hold masonry together, bronze bridles, and spools and statuettes, trumpets, and even fragments of burnt fabric; all labelled in Persian and English with their provenance.
From the Museum I climbed the “Mountain of Mercy” to the tombs of Artaxerxes II and III, intending to jot down some notes and to use the vantage to grasp the logic of the site; but this was no Takht-e Soleiman. Persepolis was visited by practically every tour group that came to Iran, and they were out in force today. I no sooner settled in a shady spot and started to compose than a tour group arrived, talking loudly and clogging up the landscape. I shifted along the hillside to another tomb, only to be chased out of that one by the din of another tour group arriving.
Tomb of Artaxerxes II – some Germans arrived and spoilt the mood at Artaxerxes III’s tomb.
And here comes someone here, too. It seems I am not fated to enjoy these places of shade and coolness in peace. Or maybe it’s just the breeze rattling the scaffolding?
Nope, voices. It’s a tour group.
Behind them, more tours were climbing the slopes. Admittedly, the views were superb and the tombs were interesting, but why did the groups have to be so noisy? The tombs were set back in bays in the rock, creating an echo chamber. The tourists shouted until the echo rang shrill. I didn’t need German to translate their jabber. I could fill it in from their actions and from recent experience of similar groups of Anglophones.
I could see excavations south of the platform. Separate buildings with columns, including one laid out like a small Apadana. Near it was a large square building divided into several independent parts, each having a vestibule, then a large room (probably a courtyard) with a couple of square pillars, leading into another large room with a couple of smaller rooms off it. By counting pairs of pillars I identified a least six apartments. One much larger than the rest occupied a third of the building in the south-west corner. The next largest occupied the east and the south-east corner and squashed a smaller apartment into the north-east corner. Three small apartments side by side occupied the remaining third of the building. The building entrance was at the south-west, and a long corridor struck off going south.
I went back down the hillside. There was a massive wall just above and behind the platform. It wasn’t purely defensive, as anyone further up the hill would have been able see and shoot over it. The main line of defence was up on the crest of the hill. This wall was probably there to control access to the platform. A gateway with a stairway led down onto the platform.
In a small shelter in the east side of the Treasury was a famous relief showing a Medean official offering proskynesis to Xerxes. This was one of two panels apparently removed from the Apadana to the Treasury by Artaxerxes in favour of panels memorialising his own reign. The panels were placed in the southern and eastern walls of a so-called “Court of Reception” in the Treasury. This one was the eastern panel, left where it was found: the southern one was now in a museum in Tehran.
Supposedly there was just one entrance to the Treasury, located at its north-east corner, but the ruins showed several doors to the outside. The answer seemed to be that the Treasury was built in several stages and completion of each was accompanied by a redirection of traffic and bricking up of unwanted doors. The bricks were noted and removed during excavation, leaving the doorways open again. The long northern hall of 100 columns in five rows, and the square western hall with 99 columns in an eleven by nine grid would have been two of the principal treasure rooms. Much of the rest of the complex would have been administrative and military. The modern arrangement of doorways on the ground conflicted with a 1937 map made by the archaeologists. That showed a doorway allowing a west turn north of the “Court of Reception” whereas now the passage continued down the east wall of the Court and only turned west at its south wall. The ground plan also contradicted most of the maps of Persepolis I found on the web.
In the southeast of the Court the archaeologists found a small room containing clay seals and charred cloth: it may have held documents. North of the Court was a largish room with ten columns. This was apparently an archive room and the “Court of Reception” (as in royal reception) may simply have been the central administrative area, although there was a similar, slightly larger court in the southern section of the Treasury. Some documents mentioned that the Treasury was lit by two “skylights”. Perhaps they meant these courtyards.
The Treasury contents were worth an inconceivable-to-me 120,000 talents of silver. The talent, which represented the convenient load that an average man could lift and carry for a reasonable distance and time, weighed between 25 and 37 kilograms depending on the system used. At the lower 25 kg to the talent, 120,000 talents would be equivalent to 3,000,000 kg (3000 tonnes) of silver. At 37 kg to the talent, it would be 4,440 tonnes.
Alexander brought in thousands of camels and other draft animals to carry away the wealth of Persia, although not all of these would have been available at Persepolis. It reputedly took 3,000 camels to remove the hoard of Persepolis, although the Roman historian Diodorus also mentions mules.
A camel can carry up to about 450 kg, but not for any great distance. 150 kg is a more reasonable maximum load for a journey of more than a few days. The treasure’s immediate destination, Susa, was further than that, so 3000 tonnes represents about 20,000 camels. To require “only” 3,000 camels, the total weight would be “only” 450 tonnes. Therefore a lot of the treasure’s value must have been in gold, jewels, spices, fabrics, and artefacts, things that are worth considerably more than their weight in silver.
Bulk is harder to estimate. Darius III reportedly had a gold-embroidered ceremonial robe worth 12,000 talents. In terms of weight and bulk, if a man could wear it, a single camel could carry it away. At a modern silver-gold conversion of about 70:1, 120,000 talents of silver would represent 43 tonnes of gold (just 286 camels), so this robe is a clear outlier. But it does suggest how valuable some light, bulky things might have been. The Biblical magi did not bring tonnes of silver but “gold, frankincense and myrrh”. A camel can carry an incredible bulk.
It would have taken a long time to carry it all out through one doorway, especially since the access was through a long passage. Perhaps the Greeks broke down walls or some of the bricked-up doorways to speed things up.
Interestingly, the Treasury may not have been built like our image of a modern bank vault, with armour on all sides. The columns in the treasure rooms were made of wood covered with brightly painted plaster. They simply couldn’t have supported a massive roof. The roof obviously had to be waterproof to protect the contents against rain, but it was probably quite lightly built and there may even have been windows high up in some walls to provide light and air, not forgetting the two “courtyards”. The main defence of the Treasury against looters must have been active, not passive: guards and dogs on the walls and in the streets around the building, and trusted guards patrolling the corridors inside, with bureaucrats checking everyone in and out, possibly with a body search if the visitor had been allowed into the treasure rooms.
The arrangement of the treasure was of course now unknowable. The archaeologists found various fragments and oversights that gave clues, although these could have been dropped far from their original place of storage. A room off the archive room contained hundreds of arrowheads, and more were found in the archives room, perhaps dropped there. More arrowheads were found in the big treasure rooms north and west of the “Court of Reception”. Presumably the bronze and iron remains were left because they weighed too much to be worth carrying, implying that even the reported 3,000 camels were not actually sufficient for the whole task. If Persepolis had not been burned, the leftovers would probably have been taken away eventually by later caravans.
Common sense could help. Things like cloth perish if not stored just right. The fabrics would have been kept in cool dry rooms, off the floor, in chests designed to resist rodents and moths. Bullion would have been stacked, coins and jewels bagged or boxed, perfumes and oils bottled in jars and amphorae. Spices would have been boxed or bottled to keep out bugs, air and moisture. Fancy armour – some gold-plated scales were found – would have been kept on appropriate forms. Weapons would have been stored in racks and boxes or hung from the walls and pillars.
Based on the finds, the treasure rooms were not particularly specialised. Most probably contained a mixture of items, stored by the caravan load just as they had arrived, in whichever room was most convenient.
My next targets were Naqsh-e Rostam and Naqsh-e Rajab, several kilometres further on. Due to the heat, rather than walk it I chartered another taxi, getting overcharged again – at least I figured I’d get my money’s worth out of this guy in sweat as he waited for me in his dusty white paykan beneath the blazing sun while I crawled around in shady rocks.
Naqsh-e Rajab was named after a bloke that once ran a tea-room on the site. The site was Sasanian, from the time of Ardeshir I and Shapur. It was noted for four uninspiring reliefs. The least boring showed Ardeshir being invested by Ahura Mazda. Behind him stood his son Shapur and a servant with a fly whisk. Ardeshir appeared to be bald. Shapur had his left sleeve pulled down hiding his hand, supposedly a gesture of obedience. He appeared to be biffing himself in the nose with the other hand but perhaps he was giving a the “gesture of reverence”, raising a bent forefinger. Ahura Mazda’s face was quite differently-shaped to those of the Sasanians: clearly there must have been a “tradition” governing representations of the prime god.
Around the curve of the rock to their left was another relief, newer, showing a pudgy, big-jawed man making the “gesture of reverence” – which if this image was reliable, also curled the little finger, rather like a limp ancient “horns” or modern “phone me” gesture. This was supposed to be the great priest of the end of the Third Century AD named Kartir.
To the right of Ardeshir’s investiture was an equestrian relief of Shapur being invested by Ahura Mazda. It was damaged, particularly the faces; and the horses looked like balloon dummies. Shapur’s crown showed the characteristic stepped profile of a fire temple and seemed to be filled with Brussels sprouts.
My next stop, Naqsh-e Rostam, was the very famous set of tombs believed to be for (left to right) Darius II, Artaxerxes I, Darius I (all facing south-east), and Xerxes (facing south-west). Nearby was the so-called Tomb (Ka’aba) of Zoroaster which, since there was a similar structure at Pasargadae, must have been fairly important. But it lacked the profile of a fire temple (unless the jagged little pyramids had been removed at some stage). Which came first, the temple or the tombs?
I learned after my return to Australia that in 2006, the similar structure at Pasargadae had been identified as the tomb of Cambyses, successor to Cyrus. So who was buried in Zoroaster’s Tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam?
The tombs were a bit disappointing, since they were out of reach by climbing and looked just like all the photographs of them. They were all on the same plan, a cross set in the cliff face. The lower part was blank. The middle portion represented a wall with four inset columns supporting an entablature, with a doorway between them. The top part had two rows of figures representing the various types of soldiers of the kingdom, holding up a dais on which the king stood to the left, with a farohar at centre, and an altar at right. Figures representing priests or nobles were carved at the framing edges three high, the lower two beside the rows of soldiers, the other above them. One tomb – that of Darius I – had an inscription in cuneiform between the columns. Perhaps his successors thought themselves famous enough to need no inscriptions, or perhaps their inscriptions were painted on. The archaeologists found traces of pigment which indicated that the tombs were once brightly painted.
Below the tombs were Sasanian inscriptions of no great merit, the least boring being that of Shapur triumphing over two Romans, probably representing Valerian and Philip the Arab.
The area was fortified in Sasanian times by a wall that arched out from the cliff west of Darius II, curved around Zoroaster’s Tomb, and returned to the cliff east of Xerxes. Since it could not have withstood much of an assault, presumably this was simply to hinder intrusion by bandits and robbers.
It was still not even 14:00 and I toyed with the notion of continuing north to Pasargadae, but the heat was now murderous and the notion had no appeal. I went back to my taxi and renegotiated my fare to be back to Marvashdt instead of back to Persepolis. I was to regret leaving Pasargadae for tomorrow.
After a pit stop at my hotel I felt cooler and decided to take another walk around Shiraz. I could always call it off if the heat got too much for me.
I wandered uphill a bit until I found the Tomb of Hafiz, one of Iran’s most popular poets. It was a peaceful spot, and I sat in a corner to take it in while working on my diary. Unfortunately half the other visitors to the place could find no more interesting thing to do here than to come over and spend a minute or two practice their English on the foreigner. Of course, it was only a minute or two each for them, but for me it was a twenty minute speed-dating marathon.
They were all very polite and pleasant, and some of the conversations could have turned interesting, but far too many were of the awkwardly banal “practicing your English skills” type and too many people wanted to talk to me. They drove me away. When I came to try to put things down later, all the faces blurred together, which was regrettable. Was it Kasim’s pretty girlfriend or another girl who picked up my copy of The Divan of Hafiz and asked me if Chaucer was an “Anglish” poet or an English one? I didn’t understand the question at the time. I discovered, much later, that the very term “Persian” as referring to the language (Parsi) was under attack by the term “Farsi”, an Arabicised version – Arabic had no “P” but Parsi did – being pushed by the Iranian government and religious institutions. I had been proud of “correctly” referring to Hafiz as writing in “Farsi” rather than “Persian”. This woman would have been worth talking to! What a shame I was so slow to realise my “Farsical” mistake.
Iran, land of the oblique reproach.
I guess it was inevitable that I would run into this controversy here. Shiraz was the modern capital of Fars (Pars) Province, once the kingdom of Parsa. This was the land that produced Cyrus the Great, whose conquests nailed the name of his homeland forever upon the mighty empire that he built. How would we feel if some politically correct git wanted to rename Britain (good old Roman Britannia) “Prittain” simply because his language lacked a “B”?
I had cooled down enough in the shade of Hafiz’s garden so that I was up for one more sight. I walked downhill and then uphill to the Koran Gateway. According to my guidebook it was an old Persian tradition for a traveller setting out to pass beneath a Koran. So a devout man built this monumental gateway and housed a Koran in it. The book wasn’t there any more. Nor was the gateway, for several years, until “outraged” local businessmen rebuilt it. Hmm, was its loss bad for business? The new edition carried no through traffic. It was a park now.
The park was overlooked by a monstrous hotel on the crest of a hill across the road. If those outraged businessmen were alive today I knew where I’d be pointing their anger now.
I had one last thing to see before I moved on, and that was Cyrus’ Tomb at Pasargadae. I saved money and hassle by buying a bus ticket for a place called Abadeh, the nearest destination for which they would sell me a ticket. I asked the driver to drop me at the “Pasargad” turnoff. Since the bus didn’t stop in Pasargadae, which was 5 kilometres down a side road, I had to draw him a diagram. I drew a “T” shape with Shiraz at one end of the cross-bar and Abadeh at the other, and Pasargad at the bottom of the ascender. As I scribbled a blob on each point I said the name of the place. Then I circled the junction, tapped it with my pen saying “Pasargad” and walked my fingers down the T. He got it, and dropped me off just where I’d asked.
It was still relatively cool, and the road was shaded by trees. It was a very pleasant walk through the farming community of Pasargad. Everyone waved Hello, there were little shops to buy refreshments, and it was all new and interesting while being oddly familiar.
I was almost disappointed when I saw the shape of Cyrus’ Tomb appear at the end of the road. I was quite disappointed when I discovered that the place was closed today! Heat or no heat, I should’ve come here yesterday. Pasargadae wasn’t important enough on its own to tempt me to stay another day to pick it up, but missing out on it hurt a little.
My introduction to this tomb was a picture in a history book. The place looked like a little stone cottage on top of a few steps, hardly fitting for the final resting place of the first really grand conqueror of history. The apparent modesty impressed me favourably. Cyrus held the title “The Great” fair and square for two hundred years until Alexander came along; and Alexander initially built his empire by overrunning the one Cyrus and his dynasty had already built up. Alexander conquered more territory than Cyrus, but except for Greece and part of northern India, he conquered very little that the Persians hadn’t previously softened up. The empire of Cyrus survived the death of its founder: Alexander’s did not. Alexander was an astounding general, but that was the only score on which he exceeded Cyrus.
It was only much later that I learned just how big Cyrus’ “modest stone cottage” really was. Today, looking at it looming across a kilometre of distance, I felt my youthful admiration for Cyrus’ modesty finally pop. It wasn’t a pyramid and it was not even in the same league as the Mausoleum, but as grand tombs go it was grand enough. Cyrus had himself buried in the best style he could contrive.
The inscription on it was destroyed by the Arabs and the historians disagree on what was said. According to Strabo (the one with the briefest version) it ran:
Passer-by, I am Cyrus, who gave the Persians an empire, and was king of Asia. Grudge me not therefore this monument.
The photos always made his tomb look like it stood in a wilderness. In fact I could see now that a modern street ran right up to it. It was also surrounded by scaffolding that detracted somewhat from the spectacle. Early photos also showed it surrounded by column stumps – these now seemed to have disappeared and modern reconstructions omitted them.
Alexander found the tomb intact. Presumably he opened it, as the contents were described. There was a gold sarcophagus, with a bed and table beside it. The furniture was draped in a cloak, and displayed Cyrus’ weapons and ornaments and clothes and maybe some other things. When Alexander returned from India, the tomb had been plundered, apparently by bandits, and only the skeleton of Cyrus and his damaged sarcophagus remained. Alexander made good the damage and resealed the tomb, but it was probably plundered again soon after his death.
Esfahan during RamazanI got off to a slower start than planned. I’d intended to go to Yazd, but when I got to the terminal, I learned that the morning bus had already gone and the next one was tonight. I knew that an Esfahan bus would leave shortly (the same one I had taken to Pasargadae yesterday) so rather than hang about, I went to Esfahan. By such trifles was my course now being decided!
It was a shame to go to Esfahan during Ramazan, as it was a planned rest stop. The way to take Esfahan was to cruise from tea shop to tea shop, people-watching and seeing the sights along the way as it were. But all the tea shops were closed! The place felt like a façade, beautiful but a little soulless. I tried to fill up my days with sight-seeing but, as pretty as Esfahan was, it simply didn’t have enough sights to keep me going for four days under these conditions.
The territory between Shiraz and Esfahan was dry and mostly flat, although bounded by mountains. Here and there green patches heralded the qanats, underground aqueducts designed to carry water to where it was needed with minimal loss or contamination. We also passed the ruins of ancient caravanserai, now long crumbled to rubble but still recognisable. These were spaced a day’s march apart, but the speed of modern transport made a mockery of them.
Next morning I made my way down to Imam Square, only a few minutes’ walk. But when I got there it was being decked out for a Friday rally in favour of the Palestinian cause, and I didn’t want to hang around for that. So I walked down to the bridges and saw some of the Armenian quarter instead. With Ramazan dragging tiresomely on, this was not nearly as much fun as if I could have stopped beneath a bridge for a cuppa.
I hired a peddle-boat and cruised the Zayandeh River near the Si-o-seh (“Thirty and three”, or “33”, for the number of arches) Bridge.
In Ecbatana I had seen some street art — roughly welded iron plates forming a bespectacled old man, followed at a modest distance by his bescarfed old wife. Here in Esfahan I found a mother — in scarf — rubbing the toes of a child; title “Mother’s Affection”. These two answered for most of the statuary in Iran when it came to women. They must wear the scarf and they must fit Islamic notions of “female” roles. Men, on the other hand, apart from a tendency to be clerics, were also pigeonholed into appropriate roles, but the range was much wider.
My few conversations with unaccompanied women in Iran were all brief, all in public places, and not one ever took place while there was even a single other man in sight, although sometimes there were other women around.
What did they get out of it? Did they all just want to practice in their English? Their manner was always half furtive, half gleeful. I think they were rebelling.
I also made the acquaintance of the local magpies, or as much as I wanted to. In Australia and New Zealand, magpies were slim, attractive birds with glossy black and white plumage and a set of surprisingly sweet calls. Not so in Iran: the magpies were larger, burlier and much uglier, with scruffy dirty grey plumage, a heavy beak and a black, beady eye. I never heard one utter a sound.
Next morning it was Saturday, so I went looking for the Jameh (Friday) Mosque. It led me quite a chase. I could see its domes across the rooftops, but the streets always seemed to veer away from it as I approached. Finally I found a wall that seemed to belong to the mosque and followed it clockwise until I found a signpost beside an entrance that confirmed my guess.
Given my druthers, I usually avoided mosques. But Esfahan’s Jameh Mosque was special for several reasons. It was established on the site of a Zoroastrian temple. It was very old: parts of it dated back before 1100 ad. The architecture was praised by my guidebook. It was also the largest mosque in Iran.
It was indeed impressive. With its huge central courtyard it was quite different to the enormous domed edifices of İstanbul, whose courtyards were mere appendages to the building proper. Here the courtyard was the focus.
It was understandable. The great Turkish mosques were influenced by Byzantine churches. Here the Arabian influence was stronger. The columns showed it especially. There were no fancy capitals. The columns sprang out of the floor and the roof arched down to rest on top of the columns, with maybe a pad of bricks. It was somewhat disconcerting, like someone wearing shiny black evening pumps without socks, or a dinner jacket and tie without a shirt.
It had its charming features. In one place I found a brick with a dog’s footprint in it — some ancient mutt had taken a trot across the drying bricks. The small Taj al-Molk dome, which I had seen from the outside on my way to the mosque, was as pleasing in its proportions as promised.
I made my way down to Imam Square, stopping in a small bazaar along the way. The sandals I bought in Antakya two months ago were breaking in two where the sole flexed, so I stopped in a market to buy a new pair. I was a little sad to part with the old pair, which had been very comfortable and had stamped their little “Gezer” trademark across so many places. The new pair was less comfortable, but their thick soles promised to last better.
The first thing I saw as I came in the Qasariah Portal of the Square was the mountain on the horizon. It took the shape of a fat-bellied woman lying on her back. The breast was perfect. Perhaps this was the Kuh-i-Sufi “shaped like Punch’s hump” mentioned by Robert Byron.
They were still breaking down the scaffolding from yesterday, so I postponed seeing the Square till tomorrow. Instead I went down towards the river and found a restaurant without street frontage where I could have a square meal instead.
Sunday, it was finally time to see the big square.
My guidebook rhapsodised about the two big mosques here. Even Robert Byron had conceded admiration for the Sheikh Lotfallah Mosque. My expectations were high.
The Jameh Mosque was old and patched and mostly bare of ornament and I had enjoyed it very much. Not so the Imam and Sheikh Lotfallah Mosques. Both were covered in intricately patterned tiles, but in fact this was the problem. Their ornamentation did not scale up. The buildings made beautiful shapes when admired from a distance and the tiles merged into lovely blue and aquamarine tints. The tiles were beautiful close up, where their clever squiggles could be followed. But there was no medium scale. The tiles did not combine into beautiful compositions when viewed at a short distance. Instead the detail was lost before the masses they were stuck to became visible.
Oh, the tiles were arranged in panels and some places showed symmetry and order, but that was simply expedience and the result was not beautiful to me. My eyes very quickly became tired of this pointless abstract intricacy. My mind tried to find intermediate levels of arrangement and found none worth mentioning.
Christianity probably stayed too close to idolatry for its own good, religiously speaking. Icons and statues were often worshipped almost in their own right at times in the past (and still are today). The iconoclast movement tried to correct this. Still, churches and cathedrals were often amazingly beautiful, with detail that scaled from the very small to the very large by a series of intermediate transitions. Islam went too far the other way. It tried to avoid all figurative art. The result, for me, was sterile and unrewarding. The great mosques of Imam Square in Esfahan were boring.
The great dome of the Sheikh Lotfallah Mosque, for example, did have an intermediate pattern, a set of blue lozenges separated by cream tiles. It reminded me of chicken wire, and at the top where something good might still have been attempted, the pattern was abandoned for a mass of intricate swirling detail.
Some of the patterns were supposed to be inspired by vines and trees, but they were a few steps too removed from the figurative to be credible.
I finished off with Ali Qapu Palace, notable for containing a model of Imam Square. This secular structure did have a number of figurative frescoes — maidens and princes in medieval garb. Some were mediocre, some badly damaged, but a couple were superb, particularly one of a woman in a red gown. It also had a fanciful porch with cut-out patterns of bottles of various shapes and sizes. An archway had a composition of trees.
Unfortunately, in some places in the palace and also in the mosques, the repairs or renovations were badly done. On a staircase in the palace it was obvious that the tiles weren’t designed for the steps. There was a lot of such shonky work, where the vision of the caretakers fell short of that of the builders.
I decided to get away from the centre of the city for the afternoon, and caught a bus out toward Manar Jomban, the “Shaking Minarets”. I wasn’t sure how far it was and spent the journey craning out the window. A guy in a green t-shirt noticed my anxiety and asked what I was looking for. I told him. He smiled and said that was where he was going — all I had to do was get off where he did.
He was a student. He was on his way to pay his respects to “Amoo Abdollah Garladani”, the occupant of the tomb, who was his ancestor. Since the good dervish died about 700 years ago, I was not sure how to take this. I certainly wasn’t about to argue the point with him! At the time the oldest ancestor of mine that I knew of was born in 1820. Later, after spending most of 2008 chasing the dead, I managed to push that date back to about 1570 (at best) but given something like a “family Bible” (a “family Koran”?) what he claimed would be feasible. The real improbability was that I had stumbled upon a descendent of Abu Abdollah on his way out to the tomb.
Whoever he was, he paid my way into Manar Jomban — 5,000 Rials, or about 60 cents. I protested that it wasn’t necessary. The money was nothing to me: it would be a significant expense for a young Iranian. But he insisted I was his guest. I protested again, he insisted again, and I conceded the point with professions of gratitude.
There was, alas, no access to the two famous shaking minarets today, so they remain unshaken — at least by me. But the mausoleum was an attractive brick building with just a tasteful fringe of tiled decoration. After the ornate, overbearing mosques of Imam Square it was a relaxing, human-scaled affair.
I walked back to the road and jumped another bus, headed for the Ateshkaeh-ye Esfahan, a Sassanian fire temple. I could see it in the distance, but for 3 cents in the heat of the afternoon I was willing to forego the 25-minute walk.
The temple was atop a mound, and many of the building retained their walls and shape, making the temple uniquely accessible. The views from the top were splendid. I could see the whole city stretching along the horizon. The big domes around Imam Square wriggled in the heat haze. At my feet was a small park with a fountain in a pool. Men were painting the fence.
At the very top of the mound was a small round structure, a pergola in mud brick. Above the arched windows were small alcoves. The ledges were worn by generations of idle bums. The columns bore centuries of graffiti. Whether it was part of the temple or was a later addition I couldn’t tell; but it was a charming spot to rest after the exertion of climbing the hill. It provided shade without blocking what breeze there was. I sat there and read some Hafiz.
The temple now was mainly used by young couples looking for some time alone. There were several scattered around the mound, wherever there was shade, sitting very close together, talking and looking at the views. All very demure by Western standards: no kissing, no embracing. Out of respect for their privacy I didn’t get close enough to tell if they were even holding hands. But after the repressive strictures of the city it was pleasant to see these ordinary human interactions.
A terrible time in TehranFrom Esfahan I took an overnight bus to Tehran to get my Pakistan visa. My notes for the next nine days are sparse and often cryptic. Some days I made no record. I do have some 230 photos, but they cluster around a few major sites and don’t illustrate my wanderings. My budget reports little more. I initially elided this section, but let's see what can be salvaged.
My last photo in Esfahan was a signpost for “GHODS.SQ” at 20:32 on the 8th (Sunday). My next was Tehran through the windscreen of a taxi at 10:00 on the 10th (Monday), 37.5 hours later! I do recall being dropped in Tehran on the morning of the 9th and walking into town up a long street, then past an enormous telecommunications tower with dishes on top (the “Telephone Office“).
By reconstruction, I was probably dropped at the South Terminal, walked up Khayyam St, turned right, walked through Topkhaneh (Imam Kohomeini) Square, then up Amir Kabir to Vaqfi, where I booked into the Khayyam Hotel. I’m not quite sure now why I walked, I may have just wanted to get a feel for the city. That was basically it for the day; I bought only water, orange juice, milk, some grapes, and newspapers, so I was probably living off provisions bought in Esfahan, and I holed up for the day to recover from the bus journey.
The next day, Wednesday, was one of expensive frustration. My only achievement was acquiring a Pakistan Letter of Introduction from the NZ Embassy — for a breezy 360k riyals ($43). The 10:00 taxi photo mentioned above was been taken while I was zooming from the NZ Embassy to the Pakistan Embassy in a futile effort to make up time. My late start meant I was too late to use it to apply for a Pakistan visa. Now I must wait till Monday — according to the guy at the Pakistan Embassy. When I went on to the Indian Embassy, the guy told me they only issued visas for arrival by air — in accordance with “a regulation”. Since thousands of people crossed the border by land each year this was patent nonsense, but I was not exactly in a position to call his bluff, even assuming it really was bullshit. With India this sort of bureaucratic crap cropped up all the time, so there might in fact have been some sort of regulation that embassies without a land border could not issue land visas. His only suggestion was to apply in Lahore.
So I was out 472k for the day — the taxi to Nz/Pak Embassies cost 110k and the metro to the Indian Embassy cost 2k — had yet to apply for any visa, and faced a five day delay before I could do so. To say that my mood was dour would be understatement. I bought toilet paper, shampoo, biscuits, bread, and went out for dinner, and that was my evening. My diary entry for Thursday illustrates the point:
“A walk on the wild side
“It started the previous evening, when I discovered that the restaurant recommended in my Lonely Planet had put up its prices — and had gone to the dogs. My “boneless chicken kebab” had bone and gristle, and was burnt. The accompanying plate of rice was too dry. The separate salad I ordered was tiny and soaked in mayonnaise. However, the tea was okay. The price, 65,000 riyals, was absurd by Iranian standards — mostly because they charged the plate of rice separately to the kebab (11,000 riyals, and the kebab was 35,000); most restaurants include a plate of rice with the kebab in the kebab price. This place included a 10% service charge, too — no tip for them!
“Something I ate there, or earlier that day, disagreed with me today. Not traveller’s trots, but wind — gales of it. We’re talking farts here, two or three in a burst, some of then lasting several seconds and resonating like a bass trombone. I’d felt sluggish and bloated, and in consequence I’d squatted in my room all day, my mood souring wih the air.
“This evening, my mood was still dour. My walks in Tehran had turned up endless stores selling electronics, clothes, car accessories and parts — no tempting eateries. That’s why I had turned to the guidebook. But the hotel told me where there were two decent esateries nearby. I set out grimly to find them.
“I found one immediately. It looked like a greasy spoon joint. There were only a few tables and each of them had an Iranian or two sitting at it. This sort of local patronage is actually a good sign (the food is probably good), but many Iranians hide their golden hearts behind faces that shout “mugger”. This lot averaged on the unsavoury side and were exclusively male. Not unusual in Iran, but I was raised to a different tradition. So I walked on down towards Imam Khomeni Square looking for the other place. No sign of it.
“I walked around the square, dodging traffic.” [… rest lost to corruption. I do recall walking down an alley populated by guys in black uniforms, past big murals condemning the US; probably the former US Embassy, often now called the Den of Espionage. A half hour’s walk on an empty stomach, plagued by gas. ’Nuff said.]
There is no dinner entry for Thursday, nor any photos. I bought just a kebab and Pepsi (probably lunch), orange juice, biscuits, and three apples.
Friday’s highlight was Park-e Shahr. Bought snacks, ate dinner. Discovered I’d lost or spent ﷼ 11,000 somewhere.
On Saturday I ticked Golestan Palace and the National Museum off my short list of Things to See In Tehran. The Jewels Museum was closed. Enjoyed a felafel by daylight in public in a street of clothing shops nearby. Yay, no more Ramazan!
I decided to try the Pakistan Embassy on Sunday, bearing in mind the guy said it would be closed. It was. But I enjoyed a nice walk in Laleh Park. I also got annoyed with myself. I could have bought the subcontinent visas in Zahedan! But did I want to spend five days in Zahedan waiting for an Indian visa?
A week in Tehran is exactly seven days too long. What a dump. Or maybe it’s just because I’m treading water waiting for the embassies to open. Let’s be fair, the Golestan Palace was worth seeing, and the National Museum, though small, had a good selection of interesting stuff. But for the rest, it’s traffic-ridden and noisy and polluted …
I arrived in good time to get my applications in, but then frittered the time away feeling sorry for myself. Then Ramazan ended and the embassies decided to have a long weekend to celebrate. They reopen tomorrow, so hopefully I can get out of here soon. I’ll need to extend my visa in Yazd, though, as I didn’t count on spending so long here.
Came Monday and I submitted my Pakistani visa application, did an interview, and was told to call them tomorrow to check progress. “With luck I could be on my way tomorrow afternoon (Kashan, by bus) or evening (Yazd, by train),” I told myself optimistically. It was not a cheap day — us$95 (﷼ 886,000).
Tuesday. “My visa has been approved. I must go in tomorrow to pick it up.”
I spent a while wandering a covered market, then some downtown streets. I changed more money, including finally getting rid of ₴200 I had been stuck with since Ukraine. It netted me ﷼ 260,000, a 30% discount, and I considered it a fair deal.
Wednesday. I arrived at the Pakistan Embassy at the specified time, and waited. The man served several people who arrived after me, stared down his nose at me, then told me I had to come back at 16:00. I went and sat in Laleh Park to wait, a cloud of smoke slowly fizzing from my ears and collecting above my head. It had been made very plain to me that I was an irritant in his day, something nasty stuck to the bottom of his sandal.
I went back at 16:00 and, after more waiting, received back my passport with the vital visa in it. Huzzah! Freedom at last! I narrowly resisted the urge to moon the guy on my way out.
On the Kashan bus, passing through flat brown land interspersed by mounds of raddled, scarred earth. Natural or man-made I cannot tell. But the devastated territories are of such extent that their ruin would be the work of many years. For what?
Beyond the mounds the land stretches away and down, until far away in the haze it meets mountains. An ugly, but stupendous, vista.
Although my visa runs short, I decided to visit Kashan anyway. It breaks the journey to Yazd, and yet gets me there almost as soon as taking the overnight train. The train would leave Tehran tonight and deliver me tomorrow, leaving me with the problem of filling in a day in Tehran without a room to hide in. But although I have not exhausted Tehran’s potential, it is hateful to me after being trapped there for nine unwanted days.
How marvellous it is to be moving again. The way is now open to me as far as the Indian border! No doubt the euphoria will fade as the days go by, but for now I will wallow in the joy of motion. Though onerous, those nine days in one place were unexpectedly welcome. It’s a pity they had to be in Tehran, but the break has refreshed my interest in travel.
I checked in at Golestan Inn and immediately went out to get lost in the ancient backstreets of this mud-brick town. I visited the Covered Market, then saw Ameriha Traditional House, named after the governor who’d lived there, Borujerdi Traditional House, a mausoleum, and Abbasin House. It wasn’t all good; there was plenty of squalor to balance the beauty, but when had that not been true? My morale was sky-high and today nothing could go wrong.
My plan called for me to continue from Kashan to Yazd the next day, but just like the last time I set off for Yazd, I ended up in Esfahan.
Due to Ramadan, I hadn’t really seen Esfahan at its best last time. Perhaps now I would have an opportunity to see the café life it was famous for. Besides, it was supposed to be the best place in Iran to get a visa extension, something that was now urgent.
I decided not to go back to my previous hotel. Instead I checked into the Amir Kabir, which was half the price.
After a leisurely lunch I set out to Chele Sotun Palace, which I had managed to miss on my previous visit. Richly adorned with figurative mosaics and murals, it was a visual feast. The current buildings date from about 1700, although the palace is older. Many of the murals are frescoes illustrating idealised court life. A couple of them are even mildly risqué. In one, a topless women (her hat and blouses are on the ground nearby), twists a strand of her hair while a moutachio’d horseman passing by licks his finger in indecision. In another, a dancer in white translucent top, transparent skirt and red leggings is being urged to eat, while one man has his arms around her waist, and another kneels down and kisses her slipper. According to my guide book the revolutionaries wanted to destroy these murals and only the strenuous objections of the curators saved the lewd images. One small victory for sanity.
The next day was VE-Day — the day set aside to get my visa renewed. It almost came unstuck, because the office for visa extensions in Esfahan had moved from the location listed in my guidebook and there were no signs showing the new location.
Confused by the absence of signs I wandered around the area looking for the office, asking random passers-by. Eventually I asked the guard outside an official-looking place. He called out a guy called Hamid, who spoke a little English. After a couple of mobile phone calls Hamid discovered the facts and even drew me a sketch map showing the new location. Then he looked at the map, looked at me — and told me to wait.
He briefly disappeared back into his workplace before reappearing at the wheel of a Paykan, beckoning me to get in. We drove north.
The Department of Foreign Affairs Office was now located in Roodaki Avenue, off Vahid Avenue. The Roodaki/Vahid intersection was about 1 km south along Vahid from the nearest river bridge, a motor bridge a couple of hundred metres west of Marnan Bridge. There was a mosque with an odd cone-shaped dome on the south-west corner of the intersection. The Passports/visa office was on the north side of the street about 300 metres west of the mosque, well signed, in English, above the entrance. Hamid dropped me off outside and absolutely refused any payment (which I offered three times, per protocol), telling me I was his guest. May his shadow never grow less!
Inside they took my camera and placed it in a locker, giving me the key. I went through into the yard and up some stairs to the first floor. After a few minutes of confusion I was redirected back downstairs to the back of the guard room, where there was a visa window labelled something like “Visa extension & passport reception”. Let’s call this desk A. At desk A I explained what I wanted. The man at the desk told me to go see another man — call him Mr X — on the first floor.
Mr X was a uniformed officer who looked me over, looked my Passport over, and asked me a few simple questions about where I had been and where I wanted to go. I must have passed muster, because he told me to go back to Desk A and ask for the forms and information in order to pay the bank.
Desk A didn’t actually have the forms. He gave me a tatty pink piece of paper with a list of instructions telling me the things I needed to collect in order to get my extension. It included the bank account number. He sent me over to a port-a-shed in the far corner of the yard to get the forms.
At the port-a-shed I told the man what I needed. He asked me for 6,000 Rials and gave me a pink folder with two identical blank application forms in it. The folder had a place on the back for me to write my name and father’s name.
Just across the road, the south side of the street was lined with places willing to photocopy the relevant pages from my Passport — the information page and current visa page — for about 1,000 Rials.
Desk A gave me the impression that the Melli Bank branch was also just across the road. In fact it was some distance away. I had to go back to the mosque on the corner and turn right, walk until I reached a big junction and follow the road around to the right. I went up to the teller nearest the door. I gave him the pink slip, 100,000 Rials, and my Passport. He didn’t seem surprised, and in a couple of minutes he gave me back the pink slip, my Passport, and a receipt.
On the way back, I stopped in a shady spot, filled out the forms and added the required two Passport-style photos. Under “reason for renewal” I greasily entered “I need time to see more of your beautiful country”. For my address, I listed my hotel.
Back at Desk A the man collated everything, stapled it together, gave it all back (I had been worried about this as everyone else was leaving their application and Passport with him and being given a reference number for later) and told me to go see Mrs Y on the first floor. Mrs Y was in the room labelled with the same sign as Desk A. (Mr X was in the room to the right of this room, through an office manned by uniformed guards.)
Mrs Y took my application and told me to wait outside — it would take about half an hour.
She also noticed my Iran guidebook. They were obviously aware that the info in it was out of date, as she specifically asked to see the Esfahan listing with the old address. My guidebook got taken away for a private consultation between Mrs Y and someone more senior in the depths of the building. I wasn’t invited along. In less than half an hour, I had my Passport back with the one-month extension I’d asked for. I also got my guidebook back, although it was now prone to give itself airs and to namedrop shamelessly. I had to slap it about a few times to remind it who was the boss.
Despite the rigmarole, compared to the protracted nightmare of my Pakistan visa application in Tehran it was smooth, quick and hassle-free.
YazdTwo weeks after I first set out for Yazd, I finally got there. I took a taxi through the new town to near the Jameh Mosque, and in the shadow of its ornate entrance I found the Silk Road Hotel, possibly the best accommodation choice I made in Iran.
The Silk Road was an old house, arranged around a garden courtyard. It wasn’t in the same architectural class as the old houses in Kashan, but unlike them it had furniture — plenty of comfortable sofas to stretch out on, tables to eat at, and benches to sit on. One end was shaded by a tatty plastic sheet.
It also had cats — including an enormous Persian with arrogant golden eyes who was pestered half to death by a pride of small kittens, some of whom wore coats bearing a suspicious resemblance to his* own. His lordship would find a sunny spot by the pool and settle himself luxuriously, only to have one of these bumptious nuisances bounce over and start using him as trampoline. Or he would start towards a snack tossed to him by a guest, only to have a kitten rush past him and steal the titbit from beneath his nose. His ponderous dignity — and his forbearance — were awesome.
With Ramazan over, all the eateries were open. I sought out Baharestan Restaurant for a no-nonsense lunch. After all the nonsense I’d been through since I first set out for Yazd, a down-to-Earth experience seemed appropriate.
After lunch, morale much restored, I went to visit the Water Museum, where the high point was the displays about the construction and maintenance of the qanats, underground aqueducts that conveyed water wherever it was needed. The qanats and the badgirs, the wind towers, marked the defining features of the Yazd area: heat and drought.
The Museum building itself was one of the attractions, with beautifully carved doors, engraved walls and stained-glass windows.
From the Museum I dived into the back streets — and left the 21st Century behind me. Yazd was Kashan, writ large. The alleys ran on and on, through archways and past wind towers. I passed through crumbling arcades haunted by women dressed like nuns. I peered through ramshackle shutters at ancient shops now used to store dusty, rusty bicycle parts. Domes with occuli let the sun into covered intersections. I would turn a corner to see men pushing handcarts of antique design loaded with brick-a-brack of every description. At one point I emerged from the maze to find myself outside the Jameh Mosque again. I came across graffiti-covered doors with his and hers knockers. On one door (28 some street) the graffiti were all numbers — 89191, 55679, 679, 690.
In a square there was an odd sunken structure with steps and stumpy pillars, overlooked by a pair of mammoth wind towers. It was now a children’s playground but had clearly once had a different purpose. It looked like it had once been a house.
There was also a reservoir, a huge squat dome surrounded by four wind towers. Maybe the sunken structure had also been a reservoir, of a different design.
I stumbled upon Alexander’s Prison, a defunct 15th century school with an ancient well in the courtyard that supposedly dated back to Alexander’s time. I was unconvinced: there was nothing there that smacked of Greece. I was more interested by a model of the area around the Jameh Mosque, using it to plan a visit.
Nearby I found the Tomb of the 12 Imams, a once grand structure now far gone in decrepitude.
Around sunset I had a quick look around the Jameh Mosque.
* It amused me to think of him (her) as the father rather than the mother, as was more likely, of the kittens.
The next two days were rest days. I kicked around the Silk Road or wandered the alleyways nearby. I had no plan, no objectives, except rest.
One day I decided it was time to seek out the Ateshkadeh, a Zoroastrian temple whose flame was said to have been burning continuously for over 1500 years. Not in the same place, mind you: it had been transferred more than once. It had been in its current location for less than 75 years. Since Zoroastrian was now a minority religion in Iran, the front gates were shut tight: access to the grounds was via a small gate in a side street. Only mosques could risk having large, wide open front entrances.
The temple itself was an attractive tan coloured building set amidst trees and rose gardens, with a circular pool set in the forecourt. The front doors of the building, at least, were open, providing access to a room of moderate size that felt more like a museum or library than a temple.
The flame itself burned in a dim room secured behind thick glass, and if any visitors were allowed back there, they would be VIPs far more important than this tatty backpacker. But I entertained myself by circling the public room, reading the neatly printed inspirational verses from the Avestas that dotted the walls and admiring the artist’s impressions of Zarathustra.
I reject the authority of the Daevas, the wicked, no-good, lawless, evil-knowing, the most druj-like of beings, the foulest of beings, the most damaging of beings. I reject the Daevas and their comrades, I reject the demons (yatu) and their comrades; I reject any who harm beings. I reject them with my thoughts, words, and deeds. I reject them publicly.
In Hinduism, the Devas are gods (Agni, Indra, Soma & Ushas). As the Devil is the personification of evil in other monotheisms, Zoroastrianism’s relationship to them seems obvious enough. Is there a connection between Agni and Angra Mainyu?
Later I went across the road to an internet café on the first floor, from which I had a splendid view of the Ateshkadeh.
My bus to Bam was due to leave at 12:15 by my ticket, but to say that my time and method of departure from Yazd was a mystery to me would be an understatement. I had difficulty finding my bus, for starters. After wandering around a bit I bought some biscuits and a litre of Apple & Banana juice — an interesting combination — to consume on the bus.
Eventually I showed my ticket to a pair of vapid-looking men in uniform, and they turned out to be my drivers. Although we had barely a word in common, they promptly adopted me, and went a long way towards completely freaking me out. They acted drunk — or doped — and kept talking about marijuana and hashish. Were they on dope, or did they think I was?
They showed me the bus I would be on. Not new but in good condition, its seats uniformly draped in covers labelled “TITANIC”. For some reason this did not calm the jitters my drivers had raised in me.
However, in due course people arrived from all directions, the bus filled, and just like that, we were on our way.
The journey was like all the others, racing across broad brown plains. As the sun dropped, we passed fields where children played soccer. The sun sank into clouds, the sunset colours instantly quenched by the billowing grey banks. A gibbous moon leered through breaks in the clouds. Then the mosques by the roadside turned on their green lights and the bus pulled in for a prayer stop. My fellow passengers filed off and did their business by the roadside. For some the business was prayer, facing back toward Mecca; for others, crouching and facing away from the bus, the business was not prayer.
Bam to the borderBam, four years after the quake, was still mostly a muddy, tumbled heap, although rebuilding was starting to make inroads. The Arg-e Bam exemplified the whole city — patches of rebuilt structures and some surviving walls interspersed in a sea of devastation.
But I’m ahead of my tale. We crawled into Bam in the dark and I set off on a hopeless quest for the hostels mentioned in my 2004 guidebook. I was unable to find them. I reached the spot where one of them should have been, but there was (literally) no sign of it. I couldn’t even find the street that the other was supposed to be in.
Eventually it dawned on me that I was wandering around, lost, at night, in a strange town — and not a particularly safe-feeling or well-lit one at that — and that on my body and my back I was carrying what was by Iranian standards a thieves’ ransom of plunder. Stupid! I decided to head back to the well-lit main road and make a fresh plan.
Just then a car pulled up, driven by a rough-looking guy with a bristling moustache. He gestured me over. Despite appearances, I trusted my feelings in a Luke Skywalkerish sort of way and went over to him. He spoke a little English and I explained to him what I was trying to do. He had never heard of either of the hostels, and nor had his companion. He suggested I get in the car and he would take me to the location of the other hostel.
Yeah, right. Two rough-looking guys, at night, solo foreign backpacker. Only an idiot would get into that car with them!
They drove me to the other location. There was no hostel there. But they knew where there was a hotel that was open. So did I, as it turned out — it was the only other place mentioned in the guidebook, and I had wanted to avoid it because it was a couple of kilometres out of town and was rather expensive.
So I wound up staying at the expensive Azadi hotel. It hadn’t got any cheaper and it wasn’t memorable, except in that unless you arrived or departed by car or taxi, the Police would escort you to and from the gate. They were disdainful of my tatty appearance and were inventive in the taxes and charges they added to the bill.
One of several things that didn’t work well was their air conditioning; I spent a sweaty night. They also did not offer baggage storage, meaning that tomorrow I would have to carry my pack around with me all day.
In the morning, everything was different in the sunshine. I splurged on a taxi to take my backpack and me to see the Arg-e Bam. The guys at the ticket office checked my daypack to make sure I wasn’t carrying in a bomb, but made no arguments about watching my main pack for me. They didn’t charge me for entry, either, even though I offered money.
I was buttonholed by a Japanese journalist who was doing a backgrounder on a kidnapped Japanese tourist. The tourist had been snatched a few days earlier by drug smugglers, who wanted to trade his freedom in return for freeing the son of their leader. The poor guy would remain a hostage until the end of the year.
Bam, both city and site, was still under reconstruction. Had been for years, would be for many years to come. The very entrance was an extravagant latticework of yellow scaffolding. More scaffolding held temporary rain shelters above towers and buttresses that had lost their rainproofing and would have dissolved into mud in the first heavy rain.
The earthquake crumbled and tumbled everything. The site was a shadow of what it must have been. Yet it was still impressive. I could pick out the outlines of the citadel and there were steps that let me make my way right to the top, but the most interesting stuff was in the less damaged areas down below. Whole sections were partially or fully repaired, or little-damaged.
Many areas were roped off, but there was no real method to the ropes — I wandered randomly, never crossed a rope, never went past a “don’t go there” sign, and still found myself on the wrong side of the rope at the end! Nobody seemed to care, though, as I was obviously “just looking”, not touching and not walking over places I really shouldn’t. The workmen were cheerful and friendly and took pleasure in showing me their handiwork. Many of them were clearly skilled craftsmen. Apart from being new and sharp-edged, their philological repairs were of a piece with the centuries-old surviving fragments around them.
The site was in some ways more informative now than ever before, because the secrets of its construction, formerly tucked away inside the mud walls, were now out in the open. I could see how palm trunks had been used to “spring” arches and layers of palm leaves had given flexibility to the walls. In several places I came across rooms full of battered and blackened old palm stumps drawn from the rubble and waiting reuse or disposal — it was hard to tell which. Some longer sticks had been pressed into service as props to hold up weakened ceilings.
The town itself was a contradiction. In some areas I could swear there was never a quake. Then I’d turn a corner and the whole block ahead would be in ruins. On the whole the quake was still very much with Bam, and for me walking around the town trying to put it together in my mind’s eye was actually more thought-provoking and interesting even than the Arg.
I would have liked to stay longer, but I had no desire to spend another night in the Azadi. By mid-afternoon I was on my way to Zahedan.
I was now well into Baluchi territory, where the central government’s grip was weak. The countryside was punctuated by small round towers, built by the Iranian military to help control the restive locals. The towers were wide spread, placed so that each could see a vast area of desert.
Toward sunset, the full moon hauled itself slowly above the hills that now rose on either side of the savari. In the back seat, the other three passengers dozed and missed it.
I’d like to say something about Zahedan, but the truth is, it made no impression upon me. I have a couple of photos taken at dawn showing a broken-down police box and a remarkably unremarkable street. It was very much a whistle-stop, just a break in the journey between Bam and the border. A night at Hotel Abozar cost me just 1/8 as much as the night at the Azadi.
I hit the border by taking a shared taxi from Zahedan. I also hit it off with the Pakistanis sharing the cab, and they took me under their wing, helping me make sense of the rather confusing maze that was the border.
With their help, leaving Iran was a perfunctory business — I don’t even remember it, but there’s the stamp in my Passport, “Mirjaveh Border”. In no man’s land we galloped up to a tin shed with a long, long queue. There was no “Western tourist” foreigner service here. However, the queue moved quickly and soon I was smiling into a webcam while a smiling Pakistani official whacked a large and colourful entry stamp onto an empty page of my Passport.
Everything went quite smoothly until, as we were walking into Pakistan, I was gestured over into an office. After sitting ten or fifteen minutes while a flabby-arsed officer totally ignored me, I got to write myself down in a register and — leave. The guy seemed to be waiting for something — namely a bribe — but I was in no hurry and he didn’t get one.
By now my friends had disappeared. Thrown on my own resources, I inevitably made a mistake. Just beside the border I saw a bus with “Quetta” on the front, so I bought a ticket. It wasn’t much of a bus, but the other bus nearby was worse. I levered my pack up onto the roof rack — and then I found the bus wouldn’t leave for four hours! This information was passed to me by a grimy mechanic who was doing his best to ensure that the wretched thing would leave. The shiny paintwork was a sham: mechanically, the thing was a wreck.
So I walked across a dusty wasteland into the border town of Taftan, just sight-seeing, to kill the time. Sight-seeing in Taftan didn’t take long and was not a pleasant experience. Fortunately, being autumn, the temperature was bearable, but the town was an eyesore at any time of year — very much a wild-west tumbleweed affair, with long-eared goats in the main street and an abrupt transition from built up area to desert beyond the thin line of shops. It survived simply because of the border.
Nominally Pakistani, Taftan was much closer culturally to Zahedan, the two being predominantly Baluchi. Part of the trouble in that part of the world is that the Baluchs would prefer to be joined in a single Baluchistan than ruled from either Tehran or Islamabad. For one thing it would remove an awkward border that does nothing except complicate their day to day lives. Naturally neither Iran nor Pakistan much favours this ambition. Across the border, the Taliban feverishly egg the Baluchs on and so the destructive cycle continues.
I saw a bunch of much nicer-looking buses parked around the town square and kicked myself for buying a ticket for the spavined mule by the border.
Halfway down the main street I was hailed from the back of a shoe shop — my Pakistani friends were there, sitting around drinking tea and chewing the fat. We compared notes. I showed them my bus ticket. They looked dubious.
“It’s not a good bus?” I said. They said no, it was not a good bus — in tones that suggested it was very much not a good bus! So I asked them to recommend a bus. They showed me their tickets for the “Wali Coach”, one of the shiny buses I had seen in the square.
“This is a good bus?” I asked. They affirmed that the Wali Coach was a very good bus. So when the call to prayer sounded, they went to pray, and I went to buy a ticket on the Wali Coach — and to fetch my pack from its roost on the roof of the un-good bus.
I heaved my pack aboard the Wali Coach, then had a brainstorm and bought a ticket for the seat beside me. I had a feeling I might be wanting a little space by and by.
I wandered back down the main street. The proprietor of the shoe shop spoke fair English and was only too willing to expound his opinions about Baluchistan. “It will happen, you will see.” My Pakistani friends nodded — to a man they were Baluchs first and Pakistanis second.
The Wali Coach turned out to be a very good bus indeed, but not for the reason you may expect. The fittings were ratty and the air-con either didn’t work, or wasn’t on. Some seats were the worse for wear. There was no attempt at steward service. No, what made the Wali Coach good was that it was FAST. Most coaches take between 14 and 20 hours to get from Taftan to Quetta. The Wali Coach did it in 11! It rumbled arrogantly along the road, passing other buses contemptuously, air-horns blaring, strobe lights flashing. This was a top bus and it wanted you to know it — and to get out of its way!
We left Taftan about 16:40, heading out in a chorus of air horns. Nobody even bothered to look — it was just another bus. They all did that.
The road was smooth at first and the bus roared down the middle, forcing trucks and cars to make way. When I discovered that the air-con didn’t work, I resigned myself to a hot trip: but somehow the temperature remained tolerable. As the sun descended, the bus even became cool. When the sun set the, driver turned on the strobe lights that rimmed the windshield, and kept the accelerator pinned to the floor.
The landscape was monotonous and soon I found myself falling into a doze. My doze ended abruptly when the road turned to gravel and I bounced from my comfy semi-lying position into an intimate juxtaposition with the seat arm. I clawed my way upright and waited or the bus to slow down, but it didn’t.
We stopped briefly at Nok Kundi for a prayer break. “Musselman business” said my friends as they piled off the bus. I spent the time admiring the trucks parked nearby. Startling enough by day, by night they glowed in headlights or camera flash.
Prayers done, we pressed on, stopping again for dinner in Dalbandin around 22:00. Then it was back on board and the hell ride continued. I fell into a doze, only to wake again at some point — I neglected to look at my watch — caught in the borderland between sleep and awareness.
The moonlight fell on the land like delicate blue gauze. It caught on the mountain peaks, draping the saddles in light and picking out the tanks that squatted on their flanks like ticks. Buildings were dim bulks outlined by the silvery rays.
Trucks stormed towards us like intricate beetles, each tricked out in a dazzling array of fluorescent paint and cunningly angled reflectors. I would see a patch of light appear suddenly in the distance, watch it swell rapidly, taking on definition only in the last second before it swerved aside and flashed past and everything went dark. The bus would shake and there would be a rattle of gravel, and then the next truck would appear in the distance. Sometimes a truck clung to the centre line until it seemed that it must collide with the bus, but the driver always lost his nerve at the last moment, sometimes working his horn in humiliation, answered by a derisive klaxon chorus from the bus.
I drifted back into my doze, not quite asleep, not quite aware.
— Meh
Time on the IndusPakistan. Polluted, impoverished, smelly and noisy.
It has some sublime locations, but the parts with the most people in them are by and large not pleasant. Rivers that smell like sewers, sewers that smell indescribably bad. In the cities, the air is so foul that it hazes buildings 100 metres away and claws the back of the throat like acid. Rubbish is cleared from the main streets by shuffling it up the back streets, where it lies in drifts fifty metres long and knee deep to the horses and other animals browsing on the food waste buried in the drifts.
And the noise! Horns, two-stroke rickshaw engines, unmuffled cars — the racket starts at dawn and continues until midnight.
— The Author
We arrived in Quetta after 3:00, which sounds a bad time. Was covering the distance in 11 hours’ worth it if I had to pootle around dangerous Quetta in the dark of morning? They had the answer. Those with places to go, went. The rest of us claimed our baggage, and two seats each in the bus, and slept. There had been no real sleep on the journey, as the road was simply too rough. I was astonished that I had been able to doze as much as I had. My every bone ached, and every muscle had bruises. The couple of hours of real sleep I achieved in the bus yard were bliss.
Eventually it got light out. There was no toilet in the yard, but someone had thoughtfully broken through the cap of a drain in one corner of the yard and contrived a noisesome little hole and shack that served the purpose — if you were desperate enough. I was desperate enough, but only just.
I crawled out through the gate of the yard, wondering where I was in Quetta. The streets were empty and bore no relation to the inadequate map in my guidebook. Since it was downhill toward the sunrise, I guessed we were in the south or west of the city, so I set out to the east. After fifteen minutes, I was still not on the map. A taxi came by and I asked him the way to Jinnah Road. He didn’t admit to speaking any English, just waved me into the back seat. Dazed and confused, I climbed in.
This was a mistake anywhere in the Subcontinent, and it was a mistake of colossal proportions here. The driver whipped around a couple of corners, up and down a few side streets, and deposited me in Jinnah Road. Then he demanded ₨300 ($5.60) for his five minutes work. As I hadn’t agreed on a price before I climbed in, my bargaining position was poor. For comparison, a seat on the Wali Coach or the no-good bus cost ₨350, and my hotel was ₨500 per night.
I brightened. I was now in the middle of my guidebook’s map, a short walk from a cluster of cheap hotels. I was no longer lost in the backblocks.
The first hotel I came to was closed. Banging on the shutter aroused no interest. The drowsy night manager at the next told me he was full — come back later to see if anyone had checked out. However, the manager of the third place was awake and admitted he had a vacancy.
I checked in, paid for two nights in advance, went upstairs, showered briefly but luxuriously in lukewarm water, turned on the fan, and cast myself upon the bed. That was it for the next five hours.
I took the train to Larkana, stayed overnight, then a taxi to Moen-jo-daro, my first big sight in Pakistan. This ancient city of the “Indus Valley Civilisation” flourished from 2500 bc to 1500 bc. Its glory and most conspicuous feature was its water and drainage system. Most streets here had drains and most houses had wells, 4500 years ago! The place reminded me strongly of the Minoan cities on Crete and Thera (2000 bc to 1400 bc). I’m convinced there has to be a connection. The Minoans didn’t go in for wells, but they had excellent drains at a similar level of technology and a similar — only 500 years more recent — age. The excavations were sympathetic and the rehabilitation work that was still going on used the same materials — brick and wattle-and-daub — used in the original construction. In some places, it was hard to tell what was old and what was new — the new bricks were the same size and appearance as the old, though they were stamped to make them distinct.
Bricks were the dominant impression of Moen-jo-daro. Bricks were everywhere, a thousand years of brickwork left to crumble when the river changed its course and invaders came.
I walked around Moen-jo-daro in three hours. I would have liked to linger in some places but after my late start, I needed to beat the heat. I did explore a few places and I had a sit-down after the “HR” area while emptying my camera card. It was a stellar site, superbly approachable and intelligible.
Back at the Resthouse, I cooled off with a Coke then lay down in the relative coolness of my room, with the windows open for a breeze. The power was off again — load shedding, they said.
The gatekeeper came up and extracted another ₨200 for a second day. They were really cutting their own throats, as the foreigner rate was already 20 times the local price of entry. All they were doing was discouraging foreigners from taking a longer look at Moen-jo-daro. Yesterday I saw four Japanese tourists headed up to the Citadel. That, and maybe the Museum, was all they saw. They were the only foreigners since I arrived. The area was beautiful and restful. By offering a discounted 2- or 3-day ticket (say, ₨300 for two days, ₨350 or ₨400 for three days or more) they could encourage people to stay overnight, also gaining extra revenue from food and accommodation and giving themselves more time to sell the visitors souvenirs.
Even so, the place was not expensive. Two good lunches, a huge dinner and a Coke cost me ₨255. Five bucks! This reckless extravagance dizzied me. The room was ₨500 a night — less than ten bucks — but I could have taken a downstairs room for ₨200 (four bucks) if I wanted to save money.
Musings in the ruins. The best construction here is also the oldest. Technologically, the city declined between 2500 and 1500 bc, but the population grew. The population apparently peaked just when the amenities were at their nadir. There may have been half a million people packed into a space that held a tenth that number when the city was at its cultural zenith. There’s nothing conclusive in this observation, as other places (Troy) have shown similar trends. Elsewhere it’s a brief phase due to war or natural disaster: here it appears to be long-drawn-out, suggesting a societal trend. Why?
Amenities such as rubbish bins suggest that someone was engaged in carrying away the rubbish. Such jobs would not be desirable careers. In cities such as Rome, these tasks fell to slaves. The Indus cities appear to have been inward looking and relatively peaceful. There would not be enough slaves. Drawing from observation of more recent Indian cultures, they probably had a caste system that provided the necessary strong backs. It was not necessarily the same system used in India, but the Hindu caste system could have evolved from the system of the Indus Valley, possibly carried there by refugees of the fall. Hindu comes from the same Aryan root word as Indus.
A caste system is rigid — people are defined by the caste they are born into and the boundaries are regarded as definitive. Maintaining the system is an imperative for the higher castes, for who any change can only mean loss of comfort and prestige and potential revolt by the more numerous lower castes. Innovation would be supressed. At the same time, fertility would have been highly regarded, leading to rising populations when food was plentiful. Without innovation, the supply of food, water and luxuries could not expand as fast as the population. The higher castes would not voluntarily reduce their own standard of living, so they would force the teeming lower castes to make do with a diminishing slice of the pie.
Such a situation is unstable, but similar societies elsewhere have survived a long time with such instability. Sparta. The Mycenaeans, perhaps. China. India. The trigger for change — or destruction — comes from outside. In this case the arrival of the Aryans. The Aryans would have been few compared to the teeming populations of the riverine cultures they invaded. Good odds their task was aided by revolts in the cities as the lower castes suddenly saw a chance to improve their lot. Their own miserable state and the victories of the invaders might suggest that the gods had deserted their own people. Their revolt would not have profited them immediately, for without the administrative structure provided by the cities the infrastructure that supported those massive populations would have decayed, leading to the irremediable collapse of the Indus civilisations, similar to what happened when the Mongols destroyed the irrigation system in Mesopotamia. The survivors would scatter into the countryside to seek places where they could grow enough food to survive. The cities would be considered cursed, due to the plagues and pestilences that would rage there once the garbage collectors and drain cleaners were gone. A remnant might hang on for a few years, scavenging the ruins for things to sell, but this need not be so if the new Aryan masters interdicted the cursed cities to cement their rule.
It was a depressing end for such a grand civilisation — but what a gorgeous, exotic setting for an end-of-the-world-as-they-knew-it novel!
I watched the sunset at the Citadel — from beside the Stupa and from the nearest “DK” area, though the site nominally closed half an hour before sunset. The Citadel attendant was helpful, showing me a couple of things I would have overlooked — a skull buried in a wall and the jewellery and pottery workshops (including finding some flint tools, some shell artefacts, and some corroded copper beads). He refused a tip for this but then sold me a couple of knickknacks at three times the legitimate price.
To leave, I took the bus from the main road 100 metres from the entrance. The bus was packed to the gunnels, so I climbed up and rode the roof. My attempt to walk through Larkana to the Railway Station was, after a good start, firmly vetoed by busybody Police. I was forced to take an auto-rickshaw the rest of the way — and when I got to the station a couple of policemen were waiting, to see that I stayed out of mischief and caught my train.
They charged me a ₨30 (50¢) 2nd class fare and consigned me to the depths of the Rohri Junction service’s mail car. It stank of fish — which were in a couple of leaky bags in the middle of the floor. My sandals reeked for days.
At Rohri Junction, I transferred to a Sahiwal service, eventually upgrading from an Economy seat to Aircon Lower.
I jumped off the train at Sahiwal, 22 km from Harappa. The taxis demanded absurd fares to Harappa so instead I walked down Railway St into town, crossing a bridge. At the first major intersection, I started waving down buses, shouting “Hurrrup-pah” to the drivers. The second bus I tried wasn’t going to Harappa, but it took me aboard and dropped me at a village bazaar, indicating that I should wait there. A few minutes later, after an Indiana Jones episode with a fantastically-dressed beggar (I gave him ₨5 after shooting him down), another bus arrived and delivered me to a turnoff about a 1 km walk from the site.
It was Friday. Graveyards and mosques thoroughly infiltrated the Harappa site, and locals had dressed up and turned out in droves. The Resthouse was booked for the daytime but had vacancies for the night. Only one grade of room was available — roughly equivalent to the upstairs rooms at Moen-jo-daro, but cheaper and lacking hot water.
The friendly site policeman made a point of stopping by and warning me against wandering around the site or over to Harappa village after dark — it was too dangerous.
Harappa was less satisfactory than Moen-jo-daro because the locals — and, infamously, the British railway builders — were delighted by this apparently inexhaustible trove of first-rate bricks. Their plundering made the site harder to understand, although the archaeologists did an excellent job with what little remained.
Getting back to Sahiwal involved walking back to the turnoff and flagging down the first vehicle that came along — a packed microbus — which delivered me near the Station Rd turnoff.
Lahore was just an overnight stop, because I didn’t feel like another overnight train journey. It turned out to be a mistake, not only because the hotel I chose was grossly overpriced, but because while I was in Lahore, the President declared a State of Emergency. I would have been better off on the overnight train to Rawalpindi.
This visit was a blur. I saw the gun, Zam-zamma, and the New Museum. I saw Lahore Fort, including Naulakha. I saw the 450-metre-long Pictured Wall dating from 1631, although alas, the frescoes had been allowed to decay.
I left Lahore on the best train available, but it was a miserable journey. The cabin seemed stuffy and freezing by degrees as the aircon came off and went on. But my reaction to the temperature changes was out of proportion. In fact, I was running a fever, and by the feeling in the pit of my stomach, some mischief was about to break loose in my bowels. I also had a runny nose and a sore throat. But I had to move on. I needed to get on the treadmill for my Indian visa.
Windy in RawalpindiAt Rawalpindi, I finally managed to break even with a greedy taxi driver, who tried to extort ₨200 from me for a 1-kilometre journey that should cost ₨20. I gave him ₨20.
Pleased with my petty triumph, I took a corner room with balcony, fan and en suite, but only cold water and a squat toilet.
After I got upstairs, I collapsed. Overnight my fears were realised, with fever and chills, vomiting and the trots. I spent the next day in bed, except when I had to drag myself out to visit the bathroom. This felt much worse than what I had in Aleppo!
I forced myself to go into Islamabad and apply for my Indian visa. This was a saga in itself due to the rigmarole involved in getting into the Diplomatic Enclave. Then I went back to bed and stayed there several days, gradually regaining my strength.
I often complain about Melbourne’s air, but Melbourne on its worst day is a country breeze compared to Rawalpindi! Buildings a few hundred metres away were hazed. The brickwork was crumbling under the assault.
I identified the occasions when a local driver would honk his horn:
I couldn’t swear by the exact reading for #6, but that was my interpretation of the red-faced man haranguing the white-faced woman beside him as he pounded the steering wheel with his fist. He certainly wasn’t responding to the traffic. Most vehicles trailed give-away blue plumes, suggesting they were never tuned. I couldn’t swear that all had functional brakes — I saw too many dodgy encounters. Many didn’t have lights —
But they ALL had working horns!
Sitting on my balcony, watching the sunset. The sun is dropping through the smog like a great golden egg, gradually turning orange as it disappears below the rooftops. On those rooftops, housewives hang out and take in their washing. Birds — swifts perhaps, but large as magpies — dart across the sky, seeking insects. Above them, larger birds of prey — hawks, falcons, I don’t know.
The air is thick with cooking smoke.
Rush-hour traffic crowds the street below. Every car has a horn and every horn is in use. Men clad in shalwar kameez — white, dirt-white, grey and tan — mingle with a few women, whose scarves sparkle like flowers amid the drab garb of their fellows. Despite illness, I am at peace.
I don’t know what the bug was. The symptoms were fever, chills, diarrhoea, sore throat, a cough, sniffles, pain in the joints; above all, lassitude. My first full day in Pindi was spent abed. But it is passing. My spirits are reviving, though I have no stamina as yet. An hour walking earlier today brought me to exhaustion.
If I must be ill, this is a good time and place for it, with nothing to do until my Indian visa is complete. There are few sights here to tempt me. I might as well relax, kick back and take the down time that has been dealt to me.
My time loose in the world is down to two figures — just 99 days left — and I have learnt nothing. Nothing! My mind is enshrouded by routine. The clarity of my time in Greece and Turkey eludes me. The questions so clearly before me then, so crystalline in nature, have become smirched and muddled. I lie in a dingy room with tattered drapes and uncertain linen, and wonder if it’s going to be for nothing?
I met a woman named Ann, of Sydney and South Africa. She and her husband could have provided company; but I arrived here ill, giardised and flu’d, and was unable to take up the offer. Flagyl is fixing the giardia but the cough is hanging on, and Ann has gone to Peshawar — whence I should very much have liked to go. I fritter away the days in bed, playing Civilization. It passes the time but is old-me behaviour. What would new-me do?
If my bowels seemed to be under control, I’d probably take a picnic lunch up to the lookout near Zero Point!
My mind is in turmoil. Evelyn wants to meet up for Christmas in Kathmandu! I am excited, but nervous. We had magic in İstanbul: will it be there in Kathmandu?
After eight days I crawled out of bed, assessed my health, and grudgingly assigned myself a passing grade. Yay!
The next day I picked up my Passport, with Indian visa.
The planned meet-up with Evelyn in Kathmandu eventually fell through — Evelyn couldn’t get the time away — but it was a real morale-booster to me in my sickbed.
Although I wanted to escape the State of Emergency, I made time for a quick two-night trip up to Peshawar, with a full day in the Khyber Pass — a long-held dream. Foreigners could not enter Afghanistan from here, but I went up to the last checkpoint. As part of the deal, I was forced to pay for a bodyguard for the day. He carried a big gun and considerable gravitas, but he was even shorter than me!
Once again Lahore was a blur, not helped by another shot from the bowels, but I caught up with things I had missed earlier: the spot where the gun, Zam-zamma, had been, and the actual old Wonder House building (Tollinton Market).
And thence to India. I don’t remember crossing the border at all. My budget shows I threw ₨500 at a taxi driver to get there.
To IndiaThe sudden delicacy of my health worried me, as I had never been so prone to it. I decided to blame the weekly anti-malarial pills I was taking, as I always seemed to suffer nausea the evening after I took them. I decided to ditch the pills. I also decided to cut down my Indian plans, spending more time in each place and not trying to cover so much ground. I cut Rajasthan, where I had intended to see four cities in eleven days, and the tip of the subcontinent — Rameswaram and Kanyakumari. I didn’t settle on a timetable for the rest, but I wouldn’t bust a gut trying to see everything.
I could see it was going to be a game of pass-the-parcel with banknotes in India. The banks buried notes too damaged to spend inside wads too thick to check at the counter.
I expected much of India to be similar to Pakistan. Amritsar was certainly noisy enough, but somehow it was different. There was a more vibrant buzz in the air. It was more positive, less self-deprecating. It felt more balanced and normal to my Western sensibilities. There were quite a few women on the streets, driving motorbikes, shopping, and working. Women were much scarcer in Pakistan, except when packed into the back of a truck. The male-dominated streets of the Islamic countries had become tedious to my eye.
The best thing of all about India was, no more call to prayer! I had finally left the Muslim lands and their interminably droning loudspeakers behind me. How I had come to hate that sound. The muezzin’s unaided call may have sounded romantic when drifting thinly down from a minaret, but amplified and blasted out by banked speakers, all romance was lost.
Pakistan was depressing. It was a land with great capacity to achieve but was badly governed and was drifting onto shoals. It had spots of great beauty and interest — Moen-jo-daro and the northern areas — but they were lost in a sea of decay and despair. Pakistanis revered Jinnah: they should revile him as the betrayer of their heritage. In the name of a Muslim homeland, he condemned hundreds of millions of Muslims to be a small minority in India. Muslims would have been better off in a united India where they would be a much larger minority, big enough to force concessions from the otherwise Hindu-dominated government. They would also be able to spend their wealth on making more wealth. Instead, they were sinking it in that most expensive luxury: a second-best military.
There was also a lot of tension in Pakistan. It had been steadily increasing during the State of Emergency. I expected to see more and more demonstrations and riots, especially nearer the elections. I was very glad to be out of that.
Amritsar showed how easily Pakistan could turn things around. The streets were noisy and dingy but were mostly swept and clean compared to their cousins just fifty kilometres to the west. There was an optimism in the air that was absent in Pakistan. My spirits lifted overnight. I liked Amritsar.
Not that it was heaven. The rivers and sewers smelt just as bad and the beggars were, if anything, more tenacious. Things cost more. Where greetings in the street were usually genuine in Pakistan, in Amritsar they were often the prelude to an invitation to buy something.
By day I would go to see sights like Sri Durgiana Temple or the Golden Temple. In the afternoon I would grab a table in the hotel garden and drink beer — Kingfisher Strong, for preference.
I went to the border-closing ceremony one night. It was high camp! Without disputing the sincere patriotism of the soldiers, I wondered how they managed to keep a straight face during some of the evolutions they went through. Apparently, there was a lot of after-hours fraternisation between the personnel of the two border forces. Alas, with so much blood under the bridges since Partition, I couldn’t see that border going away.
The HillsI escaped the heat of the plains for a while by going up to Dharamsala and Shimla. Shimla, one-time summer capital of the British Raj, was a pre-planned rest break.
McLeod Ganj. Black coffee and tomato soup for a snack at Namgyal Cafe in the temple complex. The quiet and the peace are lovely after the bustle of the plains. The air is clean, with just a hint of woodsmoke. It’s crisp, not cold, barely cool enough to encourage me to wear my jacket. Walking in the sunshine I get a little too warm.
What a beautiful place! The hills spread all around, covered in deodars and other lush green mountain foliage, marching away rank upon rank into the hazy distance — except to the north, where the peaks of the Himalayas stood, brilliantly white, against the sky. At 2200 metres above sea level, Shimla was half a kilometre higher than McLeod Ganj. This was the highest place I’d stayed on this trip. I could feel that the air was thinner. It was certainly cooler. The temperature topped out at about 16 degrees Celsius. The sun shone most of every day, only occasionally dimmed by a few high clouds.
The centre of town was almost car-free, the only vehicular traffic being an occasional peremptory convoy of white official cars escorted by white Police 4WDs. It was a marvellous place for walking. It was jumping with shops and facilities, and things to see. Shimlans loved to walk along the Mall — it was always packed with people.
The only fly in the ointment (and it was only a very minor nuisance) was the resurgence of the cough that I suffered from in Rawalpindi and which I thought I had put down. Since the air was clear, the cough was obviously not due to pollution. I kept my throat wrapped in a scarf and, except when indoors and too warm, I wore my jacket. I hoped to be 100% by the time I went to Kathmandu for Christmas — except that it was good odds that some spluttering bastard would bequeath me a new cold sometime between now and then.
My days fell into a delightful routine — a late rising, a brisk walk through the crisp air up to the shops on the Mall where I would pick out a place for a leisurely breakfast (usually built around an omelette and coffee — very, very bad for me but so delicious). I’d do shopping, sightseeing, internet or other activities until early to mid-afternoon, when I’d pick out a good place for a long lunch. More walking until sunset, when I’d wander back to my cold hotel room. Tucked up in bed I’d have a snack (an apple or an orange), read or play computer games or whatever took my fancy until 9-ish, when I’d roll over and go to sleep. It was a harsh regimen, but I suffered it gladly! Soon enough I would plunge back into the “move on, see, move on” pattern. For now, I was a stone gathering moss.
My only itinerary for Shimla was to try to identify locations used in Rudyard Kipling’s book, Kim. That took all of two days. I was unable positively to identify such spots as Lurgan Sahib’s shop or the room rented by Mahbub Ali; but then, I didn’t really expect to — better Kipplers than I had tried and failed! The places had probably been pulled down, if they ever existed. My objective was to find places that fitted the descriptions in the book. It’s easier to fill in details in your mind’s eye when you have an actual building before you, even if it is not quite the same one Kipling had in mind.
I took long walks along the roads leading out from Shimla, enjoying startling views wherever I reached a break in the ranks of the trees. I climbed up to the monkey temple, carrying a stick.
Due to India’s offensive dual-pricing system, I visited few places that required an entry fee. Some places charged foreigners 20 times or more what they charged Indians. Regardless of the objective cost, this policy was grossly offensive to me and I refused to play their game. Any time foreigners paid more than about five times what an Indian paid, I asked myself how much I wanted to see this thing. Usually the answer was, “not that much”. If the difference in price was zero or less than five times (rare) I’d pay up. The result was a net loss to the Indian government. Instead of getting some money out of me, as they would have if they priced fairly, they got nothing.
There were things down in the plains that I wanted to see strongly enough to swallow my outrage and pay the absurd foreigner price. They were few.
Of course, this conscientious objection somewhat diminished the value of my visit to me because I didn’t see many otherwise worthwhile things, but there were more cheap or free things to do than I had time in the day for. I was not twiddling my thumbs.
When it came time to leave Shimla, a familiar sensation in the nether regions warned me that, despite all care, I had once again swallowed something dodgy. No matter — I toughed it out and arrived in Mussoorie after a 12-hour bus odyssey feeling like death warmed over. I decided to opt for comfort instead of budget, shelling out for a midrange hotel that my guidebook said had heating. It had no heating. In fact, due to a dearth of pressure in the hot water system, it practically had no hot shower either! The room was very pretty, with a fresco on the wall, but I would’ve traded it all for plumbing that worked and a bit of warmth! I would’ve done better to stay at a cheapie.
I purchased medication. I had to choose between a bacterial and an amoebic cause. I chose the more probable bacterial agent, but the bug failed to respond to this. The symptoms now suggested amoebic dysentery. I was due to embark upon a 24-hour journey to Agra using two buses and two trains. There was no way I could manage that in my condition!
Staying another night in that cold, waterless, expensive hotel was out of the question, and I wanted to move on from Mussoorie anyway. I calculated that getting from Mussoorie to Rishikesh would take about four hours. This was doable. I did it — and found myself sitting on the banks of the Ganges, where otherwise I would not have gone.
My new hotel was much plainer than my last one, and the shower only had cold water, but I could douse myself with hottish water from the hot tap. It was clean and well maintained. It cost a seventh as much as the place in Mussoorie.
I went to see the remains of the ashram where the Beatles sought enlightenment. They may not have found it, but they came away with an album’s worth of songs they wrote there.
I watched a nice sunset over the Ganges.
I didn’t bathe in the Ganges. That water was COLD — and not being Hindu, I suspected my sins would not wash away so easily! This was definitely the safest place to take a dip. Downstream a hundred million people contributed their … well, let’s call it sin, but 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100cc suggested a less exalted source for the pollution at Varanasi. I kept running into an old story that marvelled over the “fact” that although all its tributaries were filthy, although it was used as a general sewer by every town within a long cooee of its banks, somehow the Ganges itself was clean. Contradicted by every independent test result for half a century, this old saw was still making the rounds.
Rishikesh felt more New Age than Hindu. It was holy to Hindus, but they had surrendered Rishikesh to the hordes of Westerners who came here seeking spiritual awakening, retreating to holier places elsewhere — Haridwar, perhaps. There were a couple of guys in the restaurant one night, earnestly discussing something technical in the tones that rev-heads use when talking bikes or cars and that surfers use when discussing the best way to ride a wave. I couldn’t quite pick up their topic, until one guy stood up and demonstrated his point. They were discussing yoga positions.
Yoga, meditation, ashrams, and drugs: the whole hippy experience was here along with these modern hippies. There was a beggar or a sadhu leaning against the wall every few metres. Sacred cattle — and their by-product — littered every street. I bought some oranges and took them into a shop. When I tried to leave, there was a cow blocking the door, sniffing eagerly.
If I felt better, I could get a nice ayurvedic massage. I found some anti-amoebic pills in Swarg Ashram. They were expensive but the guy selling them assured me they are were just the thing I needed. With such a guarantee, how could I lose? A hundred pills for just ₹200!
The pills were red and about the size and shape of a Smartie. In fact, the shell was candy. Astonishingly, they even appeared to work. I felt better the next day. I wasn’t game to risk a long hop, but Haridwar was only an hour away by half-hourly buses. If my energy ran low, I could stop there for the night. If I felt good when it came time to catch the overnight train to Delhi, I could move on.
I arrived early in the afternoon, with a whole afternoon to wander around in and catch the sights. To avoid overstraining myself, I decided to restrict myself to central Haridwar, Mansa Devi Temple, and Har-Ki-Pairi Ghat.
I took the “ropeway” up the hill. The views were good, though hazy. The Ganges split at Haridwar, creating an island. A canal led the river past the ghats. The main channel was further away. It was like looking down on a map.
I went in. A priest promptly put a red dot on my forehead and demanded ₹50 donation. The next one in line grabbed me, put a hand on my head and muttered an incantation, and gave me a red rose. He wanted ₹50 too, but eventually settled for ₹10. These priests didn’t work cheap!
I didn’t make much sense of the temple, which seemed to be a series of small shrines to different deities, each attended by a priest with a pile of money beside him. People would make an offering, kneel and pray, receive a blessing from the priest, pay him — especially if they bought the offering from him — and move on. Having already paid two priests, I decided not to dispose of my rose at these shrines — the priest would probably just sell it to a later pilgrim. Eventually I found a large room with a female statue at the back and just a few roses arranged at her feet. There was no priest. I snuck in, reverently laid my rose beside the others, wished the goddess the best, whoever she was, and left the temple.
I went down to the ghats, where people were bathing in the Ganges to wash away their sins. Haridwar was the point at which the Ganges left the mountains and entered the plain, and it was exceptionally sacred to Hindus. Priests wanted to help me — for a suitable financial contribution, certainly, as they too had piles of money beside them — but I explained that I already gave at the office. The ghat was cold and damp on my bare feet, so I didn’t linger. I made for the island and stayed there for the sunset, which was magical, what with chanting from the temples, the scent of incense, people bathing and launching little leaf boats with candles, and so on.
I launched a leaf boat with two candles, but didn’t wish for anything — I just wanted some photographs. This was probably a mistake. First one candle went out, then the other, and then the boat fell apart. Whichever deity was watching me was clearly unimpressed by my attitude. I later figured out what was wrong. I had bought a boat with too big a cargo of flowers. When it hit the rough water, the weight of the flowers bouncing up and down broke the boat. I was tempted to try again with a lighter payload but decided that might tempt divine wrath.
While I was launching my boat, a woman rushed past me carrying her sick child. She plunged headlong into the Ganges with him, weeping and repeatedly dunking him in the water. A huge crowd immediately gathered to watch. I had to squeeze my way through the bystanders in order to follow the fortunes of my boat with my camera. It never occurred to me to stay and gawk with the rest at the human drama that had almost trampled me.
Paying through the noseThe train journey … was a train journey. The air-con carriages were booked out, so I wound up in Sleeper class. I snuggled down in my sleeping bag and dozed on and off until Delhi.
Enjoying my newfound health, I scorned the crowding auto-rickshaw wallahs and walked the three kilometres between Old Delhi Station, where I arrived, and New Delhi Station, where I departed. It was an interesting walk, with lots of people-watching opportunities. The Old City was just opening up for business. People were making paper bags from old newspapers, having their morning wash in the street, laying out fruit and vegetables and other goods — all the minutiae of daily street life. I bought some oranges to take the edge off my hunger.
At the station, I found the reverse situation of my previous train: Sleeper was full but Air-con had vacancies. I really only wanted a seat, but as I was unwilling to join the scrum for unreserved seating and there were no reserved seats, I had to shell out for a place in AC3. My upper berth didn’t even let me enjoy the views from the train. It was to be a boring seven-hour journey.
The train wasn’t due to leave for a while, so I wandered down through the nearby backpacker ghetto to pick up breakfast and scope out the hotel scene. I eventually ate a massive breakfast and had a good chat with a Canadian couple at the next table.
I arrived after dark, coming from Jhansi by auto-rickshaw. Delhi had been crowded and noisy, choking beneath a smog pall that smudged out all sight within a few hundred metres. Yuck! By contrast, central Orchha was minute and the only haze was the omnipresent wood smoke — except that it smelt different to the smoke in the hill stations: probably due to cowpats.
Orchha had joined the long list of absurdly dual-priced Indian sites. If I had known, I wouldn’t have undertaken the 32-hour bus and train odyssey to get here from Rishikesh.
My guidebook, then current, said prices were Indians ₹5, foreigners ₹50, camera/video ₹20/₹50. Indian entry had now doubled, but the foreigner price had quintupled — and a video camera, pretty much the domain of the foreigner, had quadrupled. (The modest rise in camera fee, by the way, from ₹20 to ₹25, probably reflected the fact that most Indians who can afford to travel to places like Orchha can afford a camera.) If I’d known, I would have skipped Orccha completely, saving myself not just the entry fee but also the expense and effort of getting there.
Since I was here, I grudgingly forked over ₹275 and gave the site a whole day. I have about 180 photos, but I remember almost nothing and am not now inspired to attempt to squeeze life from the ghost.
Jain Temples Rd was just a 10-minute walk from the bus station. The cycle rickshaw drivers at the bus station started by demanding ₹20 or more, but when I started walking in the right direction the price quickly came down to ₹10 — presumably to save them cycling back to town empty.
I had been looking forward to Khajuraho. It was one site where I paid the foreigner rate with just a token grumble. The temples were impressive piles of stone, with the sort of detail-work that I like — meaningful at every zoom level. My main complaint about Islamic detail work was that it often wasn’t scalable and had no real overall framework. It just covered every surface. The temples at Khajuraho had meaningful patterns from the macro to the miniature, from the whole temple right down to the tiny cartouches smaller than my palm. And, well, OK, many of them displayed carvings of people getting it on.
The erotic carvings were a minority of the images but, predictably, got all the press. When I told people I was going to Khajuraho I would get either blank looks (those who hadn’t heard of the place) or knowing smiles (those who had). But my interest went beyond that. These were superbly approachable samples of old Hindu religious buildings. Modern Hindu buildings were often just bland concrete blocks.
I spent two full days wandering around the area, seeing almost every old temple of any note. The main blockbusters were fenced into the “western” group and this was the area that charged foreigners 25 times more than Indians. But there were other temples and museums, the “eastern” and “southern” groups, which were free to visit or charged Indians and foreigners the same, and which contained some of the best work — albeit often somewhat damaged.
It was easy enough to walk the eastern and southern temples in a few hours, and the walk was pleasant once I left the vendors, touts and rickshaws behind.
Chausath Yogini was easy to find. Lalguan Mahadev was a little harder. From just past the entrance to Chausath Yogini, paths turned left along the western side of Chausath Yogini, ran straight ahead, and veered right. I took the straight-ahead path towards a little cluster of buildings, climbed over the broken-down barbed-wire fence (as the locals did), and jumped the stone wall. Straight ahead on the beaten track along the edge of a field and I eventually saw it ahead of me.
Once I identified Narora Sagar (a big flat area, with water in it depending on the season), the eastern group of temples fell into place. I managed to miss Ghantai initially because I retraced my steps to the Bypass Road instead of going through the Old Village, but I picked it up easily enough on my return from the southern group. The Jain Art Museum was quiet, shady, and gave me an opportunity to get close enough to carvings pick out some details (such as the patterns on the “cloth” of the leggings) that were easily missed when looking up from below.
The unsealed road south to Duladeo was easy enough to find. After Duladeo, I crossed a bridge. At the fork just south of the bridge I took the right branch. After five minutes, I came to a small village. The village was worth the walk in itself — a slice of rural India, untouristy and filled with genuine friendly greetings. Some of the villagers exhibited the same wide mouth and flaring jawline that I saw on the temple carvings. Eventually I came out on a sealed road just before signs pointing to Chaturbhaja and Bijamandala. From the centre of town to the bridge was a leisurely half hour’s walk: from the bridge to Bijamandala, another.
At the Archaeological Museum, my enjoyment was diminished by a laughing, joking group of staff who didn’t see a Museum rule prohibiting loud talking or excessive noise as applying to themselves. I later had an altercation with one of these same noisemakers who objected, under the no-photography rule, to my taking a photo of the outside of the Museum! I couldn’t be bothered confronting him with his own hypocrisy; I just walked out to the road, turned, zoomed in, took my shot anyway from safely beyond his jurisdiction, then gave him a stiff finger.
Ever the outsider, I ate in town at Bella Italiano and watched the people. That evening I sat in the rooftop terrace restaurant of my hotel watching a gentle drizzle fall on Khajuraho. The trees were alive with birds. I snuffed the dampness.
I remembered: the woman by the water pump; her face could have been the model for a temple carving. Old women in the fields, wearing saris without blouses, with their long breasts hanging out. The little boy with no trousers, running through the village. The naked boy running away from his cold bath at the pump, chased by his father. Irritatingly persistent little boys practicing their English. Their older brothers looking for a way to make some commission out of me. A tailless squirrel seen in the street. The ancient, dusty landscape, so little changed, really, from the days of the temple builders. The solemn, stony, ancient temples and the whitewashed, flag-draped modern ones. Touts, vendors and rickshaw-wallahs tugging at my sleeve. The eagle that watched me walk by, just before it was startled by a dog and flapped heavily into the air. Glimpses through the open doorways of houses, into the hall or into the yard. Clay jars stored in alcoves beneath a stairway. So many small memories.
Death and ReligionKipling’s Benares was a rough bus ride and none too comfortable train ride from Khajuraho, but I got there and chose a hotel that had a superb location just a stone’s throw from the major ghats and a superb view from its terrace restaurant. My room opened right onto the best part of that terrace, a balcony perched above the river. I rarely got to enjoy “my” balcony because it was also accessible from the main terrace and others noticed its virtues. The tables would be occupied from dawn to dusk. I usually only managed to get a seat by lurking in my room until I saw people leaving, at which point I would rush out and claim the vacated table. Sitting there at sunset with the kites flying and the chanting coming from the ghats and the Ganges rolling below was sublime. When it got cold and the mosquitoes came out, my room was just a dozen steps away, offering a warm bed and a hot shower. The windows were screened against both mosquitoes and monkeys.
Varanasi vies for the title of India’s holiest Hindu city. People talk about dying to go to some places, but people go to Varanasi to die. Dying and getting your body burned in Varanasi pretty much guarantees you freedom from the wheel of life. Even if you aren’t on death’s door, bathing in the Ganges there frees you of your sins. It is a popular place for pilgrims, but I wonder about the locals, who can bathe in the Ganges every day and should therefore be sin-free. They aren’t — and often rather noticeably. Perhaps the ability to wash away your sins in the morning leaves you free to commit more sins in the afternoon?
The streets leading down to the ghats were crowded with people, cattle and goats. Their combined rubbish created a stench that cannot be described, only experienced. The combined rubbish had other undesirable side effects: I saw a cow busily munching its way through a green plastic bag and predicted that in the near future the local cow population would be reduced by one. Hindus revere certain cattle, but also totally neglect them. The beasts often died horribly.
Fruit salad and ice cream above the Ganges, after a leisurely meal at the Dolphin. Whiffs of incense on the air. Bells, drums and chanting from the big ghat. Strings of lotus candles floating down the river towards the burning ghats — which were out of sight, but in my mind, I saw the flames leaping high in the darkness. There was a young crescent moon earlier in the evening, but it had dropped from sight — chasing the sun. But the sun would pull ahead as the moon fattened, until a full moon wobbled up just as the sun set.
These were the moments to live for.
I meant to give Bodhgaya at least a couple of days, but it turned out that there was a big prayer meeting on there and most of the cheap accommodation was booked solid. Faced with paying over the odds for an inferior room that none of the devout visitors wanted, I shortened my visit to one night. I went to the Mahabodhi Temple in the afternoon, but the next morning I was on the road again. Still, it was a worthwhile visit. I always wondered what it was about Bodhgaya that attracted Siddharta. I still don’t know, but if the temple builders did not change the site too much, I could understand why he sat beneath the Bodhi tree. It was down in a hollow, dry and warm by day, moderate by night. There was no distracting horizon, just the surrounding hilltops. It was a superb spot for serious meditation.
Except for the mosquitoes, that is. These cruised around in swarms looking for victims. My room had no protection, and already harboured a dozen large specimens when I booked in. I hunted them down, but since more were certain to invite themselves in, I resorted to a mosquito coil to ensure an unbroken night’s sleep. As a local put it, they like tourists because tourists have “sweet blood” — meaning the mosquitoes pester the visitors and leave the locals alone.
“better sweet than sour”, I retorted.
While it isn’t the Indian word for “tea”, Darjeeling would probably like it to be.
On the train from Gaya to New Jalpaiguri, my bowels announced that once again I had encountered a bug that they were unable to cope with. This wasn’t so bad on the regular train, but when I got to New Jalpaiguri I was faced with a nine-hour train ride up to Darjeeling on the “toy train”. I could use squat toilets at need, but not with my bowels in this state. The toy train only had a squat. At Ghoom, a frantic search turned up a pay toilet — that was closed. I simply had to hold it, and I barely made it. Technically, I didn’t make it. Internal pressure finally forced me to take a room at a hotel 500 metres short of my planned destination.
I paid over the odds for a room with no upper sheets and a bathroom with no shower and no hot water. I tore the key out of the manager’s hands, locked the door, and teleported into the bathroom. Relieving the pressure was orgasmic, in the sense that an exceptionally unpleasant sensation was replaced by its absence, just short of the ultimate unpleasantness of doing it in my pants!
Next morning I completed the walk uphill to my preferred hotel, one with Himalayan views and a hot shower. I wanted to stay for a couple of days before I headed for Kathmandu. I bought pills to kill off the nasty little flagellants, and the pills worked miracles. I also bought some “stopper” pills to use in case I got caught out again further down the road.
Kickin’ Back In KathmanduI had deliberately simplified and reduced my Indian itinerary after Pakistan. The breakneck pace of move, see, sleep, move, was wearing me down. But even this new, more relaxed rate of travel was becoming wearying. I had been 9 months on the road with no break longer than 10 days anywhere. The most recent break, Islamabad, was no break at all really but an enforced halt due to illness and bureaucracy. Tehran had been a nightmare. My last real “holiday” was İstanbul!
Christmas in Kathmandu was looking good.
Rooftop Restaurant. Booked into the Manaki International, out of curiosity — and because the “5 hour” ride from Kakarbhitta turned out to be a 7.5-hour marathon on vinyl bench seats in a crowded bus. It was much more authentic and interesting and, I suppose I must say it, more fun, than 5 hours in an aircon 2x2 would have been; but my bum took the brunt — it’s sore! And I still face a longer, rougher ride tomorrow in a bus of as yet unknown type. Some of the buses from Kakarbhitta to Kathmandu had velour Pullman seats. I doubt I’ll be so lucky, starting from here. Janakpur is a relatively small place 20 km off the highway, at the end of a horribly degraded road. No company with any sense will run a decent bus through here, no matter how many pilgrim-passengers might use it!
From Darjeeling I zoomed to the border, a relatively short trip, crossed into Nepal and stopped for the night in the border town of Kakarbhitta. I tried to send email from there, but already, just 300 metres from India, I was a million kilometres from anywhere and my creation was swallowed by the ether.
Janakpur was a major Hindu pilgrimage site due to its connection with the Hindu epic, the “Ramayana” — it was the birthplace of Sita, wife of Rama, and was the place where Rama and Sita got married. Of course, the town mythologised in the Ramayana was long gone — it flourished until about 700 bc, but then the jungle took it. A new town was built on the site, but the Moghuls came through and flattened that about 1400 ad. Undiscouraged, the survivors built again, but it was hard to conjure the ghost of the Ramayana from the modern town.
The place was unabashed in its attempts to extract maximum money from the pilgrims. They were awed by the opportunity to fleece a Western tourist, but unfortunately, their experience with mere Indian pilgrims was inadequate to overcome my travel-hardened reflexes. I “won” every bargain, grinding them down to the local price.
Not that I saved much money — I was too busy gobbling my way through the good food and imported beer on offer at the best places in town!
Kathmandu looked likely to be 10 to 14 hours of rough roads, overnight and over mountains, but serendipity saved me. I went looking for the private bus company offices, to book the best express bus I could, to at least minimise the discomfort, but managed to walk right past them without seeing them. I ended up in a travel agency that sold me an air ticket instead.
I managed to get a seat on the right side of the plane and saw the Himalayas from above the fumes that blanketed the ground. I watched the almost-full moon rising over the Himalayas. It’s possible that I saw it rising above Everest.
Sitting, enjoying a glass of wine in the atmospheric courtyard restaurant outside the Kathmandu Guesthouse, after a real pizza and a hot rum punch.
This was a celebratory blowout. I have reached a snug harbour where I can vegetate — or not, as I please — for the next 10 days cum fortnight.
I didn’t manage to visit a tea estate in Darjeeling, but I did come away with a couple of packets of Darjeeling tea, packaged at the source: Orange Pekoe and the even more expensive “Prime Tips”. Ensconced in my expensive Garden View room at the Kathmandu Guesthouse, I quickly acquired the necessary equipment — a teapot and kettle — then sat on my room’s own personal chair on the veranda. It was a perfect spot to take tea while admiring the garden below me.
Kathmandu was as I expected: flooded with Western tourists (young Americans on their summer break). The shops catered for the tourists. There were few bargains around Thamel — the American college set had more money than brains or time and had been driving up prices and honing the bargaining reflexes of the shopkeepers for more than 40 years. But if it wasn’t cheap, it was supremely comfortable for a Westerner arriving here after almost 10 months in alien lands.
My sightseeing was leisurely and casual, and confined to the city. I found Freak Street and various temples. I watched religious festivals. I cruised the markets, buying very little. For once I was stopping just to relax, not waiting for health or for the Byzantine unwinding of some bureaucratic time trap. It ended too soon. I arrived on the 23rd, allowed Christmas and the New Year to slide by me, and left on the 3rd.
I left Kathmandu with my energies recharged, which was just as well. With only a month left in India, I still had a lot to do and see.
An overnight bus got me to Birganj, just inside the Nepalese border, early in the morning; but I had made an oversight. I was still carrying too much Nepalese money and the exchange booth would not open for hours! I decided to stay the night, continuing early the next morning.
Birganj was not an exciting place, even only overnight. I tried to do some email, but the connection was slow and then the electricity died. I did have a good walk around, though.
Kolkata to BangaloreNext day I slipped over the border and discovered that compared to Raxaul, Birganj was paradise. I had been unable to secure a train berth in advance due to the internet hassles, and when I got to Raxaul there were no berths to be had on that day’s train. There was no way I was going to waste a night in Raxaul after already wasting one in Birganj, so a few hours later I bumped my way south in a beat-up “luxury” bus headed for Patna.
The road was bad. Where there was tar seal, there were more potholes than seal, and where the surface was dirt the corrugations shook the flesh from my bones. It was not a pleasant journey. But it got me to Patna, where I was able to score a berth on an overnight train to Kolkata.
Kolkata was an interesting but very polluted city. Worse, I had banged my Achilles tendon on the bus or the train and for my first two days in Kolkata I was reduced to hobbling around at a crabbing limp. All I achieved the first day was a look at the area around the hotel. On the second, I made it to the train reservations offices. I got my preferred service out of Kolkata, but through trains from Bhubaneswar to Bangalore were waitlisted 100 names deep for days. Instead of being able to make up some time by staying at Konarak just two nights, I now had four nights to kill there.
On my last day in Kolkata I made it to the Indian Museum, the Queen Victoria Monument, and points between. So it wasn’t a dead loss, as these had been the only sights I really wanted to see anyway.
What can I say? Another huge ruined temple covered in erotic artwork. Unlike Khajuraho, where the erotic carvings got the press but are really only a small part of the whole, here something like half the carvings on the main temple were erotic. Most of the rest were mythological beasties. But the temple scored full points for size and detail — it was hard to come to terms with the thing. Even so, it was not as impressive as it had been. The last fragment of the towering sanctuary collapsed in the 19th century. The sanctuary was 50% taller than the porch still standing today. I spent hours around the temple and left feeling impressed.
I was disgusted by the antics of some of the Indian visitors, whose casual attitude towards the ruins bordered on vandalism. They crawled all over the carvings in hordes to pose for photos, completely ignoring the signs prohibiting this, and the whistle-toting guards did nothing. One of the “justifications” for charging foreigners 25 times the Indian price was that the extra ₹240 went towards the “preservation” of such monuments. Yet Indian visitors, who paid just ₹10 to get in, appeared to be the major modern threat to the carvings. They also had the bad habit of sitting around several deep on the steps by doorways, blocking easy access for others.
The local beach at Konarak was strange. As I approached it, my heart sank — the shoreline was wall-to-wall people, shoulder to shoulder, four deep, the front rank standing gingerly in the water with their saris and trousers hitched up. But when I got closer, I realised that all these people were packed into a 50-metre section of shoreline. To the left, the beach was almost empty all the way to a fishing village in the distance. To the right, it was empty as far as the eye could see.
The deserted sections of the beach looked pretty much like Australian beaches, except for the dead turtles that had washed up and were desiccating in the sun. Most had some sort of code daubed on their shells in white paint. I was not sure whether the tagging was done when they were alive, but the one turtle without paint was also the one most recently washed up — it still had its eyes. So maybe someone was keeping track of turtle fatalities, marking them with white paint to show they’d been counted.
I tried beachcombing to find a free souvenir, but there was nothing but trash — anything of interest was probably grabbed each morning by people to recycle or sell.
My remaining itinerary was Goa, Mumbai and Delhi. Agra had dropped off the list. I had wanted to see it for years, but as its foreigner price was more than 37 times the local one, I felt less regret at missing it than I expected.
My room in Bangalore was a shoebox a couple of blocks off MG Road. Apart from a nonworking phone, it had en suite bathroom with Western loo, hot water and a TV. The TV had Australian ABC’s Asian channel. It was barely larger than the compartment on the train and had neither external windows nor top sheet on the bed. Still, it wasn’t a bad deal by Bangalore standards.
I made my long-anticipated flying visit to my employer’s Bangalore premises, where I met for the first time some workmates that I’d known a long time. Those included Dhiraj and Amresh, the guys I’d had the most to do with in the months leading up to my break.
Getting out to the site was an adventure. It was simple in theory: just hire an Auto-rickshaw for the 5 km journey from MG Road to the Inner Ring Road. Auto-rickshaws in Bangalore had meters and were supposed to use them. Predictably, Theory and Practice diverged.
“It is an outer suburb,” said one driver, “we cannot use the meter for this journey. It will cost you eighty Rupees.”
“Sixty Rupees,” said another. When I specified, “on the meter”, he responded, “To use the meter, twenty Rupees extra.”
I finally found a driver who agreed to use the meter without tacking on spurious charges. But I congratulated myself too soon. My destination was east of MG Road. My driver went west, ducking through side streets to the street that runs down from St Mark’s Cathedral. He followed this south to Residency Rd, where he finally turned east. Then he stopped at a petrol station, joining an immense queue of auto-rickshaws waiting to fill up. The meter read ₹16, and I was no closer to the premises than I had been when I climbed aboard!
I decided to cut my losses. I paid him his unearned fare and went out into the road to try to find an honest Auto-rickshaw. Three more bouts of negotiation found me still afoot, unwilling to pay ₹80 for a journey that should cost no more than about ₹40. In the end I walked it, waving away every Auto-rickshaw that crawled up beside me.
Walking had one useful benefit: I finally arrived at the place around lunchtime. Dhiraj and Amresh took me under their wing and we spent the next couple of hours eating, talking and walking. It was fun, though all too brief.
The return journey to MG Rd in an Auto-rickshaw I picked at random in the Ring Road cost me ₹40 Rupees — more or less on the meter. We were stuck in traffic a couple of blocks short of my destination with the meter showing ₹33. I figured the meter would probably rack up several more Rupees in time and distance charges before we got to the Auto-rickshaw stand, so I just handed the guy ₹40 and walked from there.
This walk was serendipitous. I had been looking for a nice statue of the Hindu god Ganesh, remover of obstacles. I’d admired a superb wooden Ganesh in my office in Melbourne, and I had more or less jokingly recruited Ganesh as my patron for the trip. I wanted my own similar wooden statue as a souvenir, but most statues were crappy. Bangalore was noted for its excellent wooden images, so I was hoping to find what I was after here. There was a Government handicrafts shop just where I reached MG Rd and I found something better: a large, beautifully detailed papier-maché Ganesh, about 70 cm high, perfect for a corner of the living room. I snapped it up without allowing myself to ask, “How are you going to get this bulky thing home?” (The answer is, “in pieces”. I packed it as best I could and paid the price of it over in international postage, but it did not survive the journey.)
Hollow Ganesh in hand I walked on down MG Road. My eye was caught by the “Cauvery Emporium”. Forgetting my own advice (“once you’ve bought your souvenir, stop shopping”) I walked in — and kicked myself, for the place was crawling with statues very similar to the one I had so admired in Melbourne! This was almost certainly where that statue was bought. But I had already made my purchase. It took a lot of will power to walk out without lumbering myself with another statue.
I took my Ganesh down to the Post Office, where it was sewn in linen and despatched to Australia via sea mail. Alas, although it arrived, it was, as mentioned, pulverised en route.
Meantime I surrendered to temptation and went back to the Cauvery. I was due to meet up with Dhiraj and Amresh for drinks later, so it seemed a good way to fill in time until then. But while I was still drooling over the selection, who should pop up but my friends — who had read an email I sent that mentioned my big Ganesh and had decided to buy me a wooden Ganesh as a surprise gift. Whoops! I now had another absurdly large box to carry.
In Bangalore I had a relaxing beer, salad and coffee at Ebony (a slightly upmarket place in a tower building overlooking MG Rd), coffee and chips at the Indian Coffee House and bought a city map book and some other books.
This part of Bangalore looked and felt remarkably like a city in Australia, the US or Europe. Clean streets, street-side cafes, proper-sized shops, the lot. I passed through more typically Indian parts of town on the way from the train station, so I had no illusion that this was typical of Bangalore! There was that fondness for blowing their horns that marked the traffic apart from Australia. That and the street-side hawkers who were so determined that I needed a small wooden chess set that they wouldn’t take a polite “no, thank you”, or even an abrupt “NO!” for an answer, but instead pursued me down the street, pouring out their unwanted spiel in my wake.
A beer at Koshy’s. Expensive!
The west coast
Goa gave me five days of glorious loafing on white sandy beaches — watching the waves and sunsets, drinking cheap beer, and leering at bikini-clad sunbathers. I stayed in a place that fronted right onto Benaulim Beach, a good spot to chill out. My room had a hot water shower but no air-con.
I missed the Saturday Night Market but managed to get to the Wednesday Flea Market at Anjuna, where I loaded my pack down with more souvenirs — wooden dice in a box, a lightweight shirt, and a wonderfully tacky flashing plastic Ganesh that I planned to install on top of my computer monitor to gross out my workmates. These on top of the prayer beads, brass prayer wheel, odds and ends of jewellery, books, etc. that were already threatening to make my baggage overweight. On the bus to the flea market I picked up — or was picked up by depending on your viewpoint — two young Dutch girls, in India as part of their anthropology training, who were pleasant company and helped keep me interested in browsing the stalls long after my attention would otherwise have wandered toward the nearby beach. And at Benaulim I made the acquaintance of Linda, British, living in Switzerland, whose ability to sustain a conversation (saving me the need to do much more than hold up my end), was awesome. Other people wandered in and out of my time but as is often the way of it, apart from Linda’s friend Ashley (an Indian dentist), their names (even if I remembered to ask) came in one ear and out the other.
I did learn that Goa can’t be done in five days. I’m going to have to go back some day and give it at least a fortnight.
In Mumbai, I ticked off the last of my personal musts for this trip — I went to see the Gateway of India first thing after booking into my hotel. Not difficult, as I was only a few minutes’ walk. I was tempted to stay in a hotel that even had a view of it, but their cheapest available room was more than I cared to pay. So I went for a cheaper hotel with “bucket” hot water and no view. At least the room had a private bathroom and a window overlooking a garden.
The flight home. Ugh. So close. After ten months on the road I’m now into my last week on the loose. Next Friday I not only turn 50 but I land back in Australia. From that point I have 17 days before I return to work. In those days I need to find a flat (should be fun as I don’t have a current payslip to show) and furnish it, and move my stuff from storage to the flat, buy some new clothes (although far from slim, I’ve lost enough weight now so that my old work clothes would hang on me like sheets), and so on. I have no doubt that even before I land in Melbourne, I’ll be wishing I was already leaving again.
Coffee at “Guilty Pleasures”, a Barista member. Beer and Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries in Alps, a bar just down a side street from Leopolds. The beer was cheap, and the young Che was interesting. But my mind kept wandering ahead of “now”.
Although I was still surrounded by India, Australia was growing on my mind as flame devours a log. The trip was ending, and I wished it were not, but in truth I welcomed the end of this road and found myself looking forward to stopping. A week, a month, a year under the same roof and in the same bed? Heaven!
And yet I had changed. I looked forward to that time of, not rest, just a halt from wandering. But I knew I would soon long for the road again. Melbourne could not keep me. I felt that there was more I needed to do. I had found the magic again, but it was not enough. I was still alone, still looking, and still a child of the West.
“They kept to the road, this stubborn father and his son nearing six, and it was then that the little boy fixed in his mind the image which would live with him for the rest of his life, a cabin secure in the wilderness, a light shining from the window, refuge from the lonely, shadow-filled road.”
Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries
Mumbai was a haze. I mostly wandered around at random. Whenever I felt hungry or thirsty, I stopped in at a bar or cafe to address the need. When I felt tired, I went back to my hotel and rested. I visited no museums (the only one that tempted me was ₹10 for Indians, an absurd 30 times as much for foreigners) but I saw a lot of the city. It was worth seeing — an architectural delight on every corner!
DelhiDelhi, and my self-promised breakfast at the Kitchen Café on the terrace of the Shelton. The train got in right on time, I got a fair rate from a rickshaw on the third try, and I scored a room at the first hotel I tried.
That afternoon I had a celebratory drink at the Gem. When I got back to my room it finally sank in that after ten months on the road, I’D MADE IT! I didn’t count the outward leg from Melbourne, and I wouldn’t count the return leg either. Delhi was always going to be the end of the road, and here I was. So this was it. This was The End.
Delhi was fun. Realising it was all ending, I went sightseeing every day — Old Delhi and the Red Fort one day, Central Delhi and India Gate the next. I hung out at the Gem restaurant in Paharganj — cheap beer, and there was always someone interesting to talk to: a Welsh/Australian couple, a couple of Brits, a German, four loud guys from … somewhere in Britain, I forget. Hmm, lots of Poms it seems. But the beer was good, and the food was safe and from inside the bar you couldn’t see the street. I made sure I got good and blotto on my last night in Delhi, and all the company helped me accomplish that.
My last night in India, and in fact my last night on the road — not counting the flight back. Have decided to go out on the town and spend some of the Rupees I have left. I’ve actually done a pretty good job of spending my leftover Rupees — I’m almost worried about running out and having to change more money if my ticket doesn’t include departure tax. I can check that by going online but have decided to save that for tomorrow — I don’t want to use up my evening staring at a computer.
Late breakfast. After the last night, the last day — and I wasn’t sure how best to spend it. I needed to find a good internet place, but after that — or before it — what? It seemed a shame to waste the trip’s last daylight hours on the internet, but I didn’t want to get all sweated up before my flight, meaning anything strenuous was out of the question.
So I walked out to Raj Ghat and visited the Gandhi Museum. Thought-provoking and informative, despite the relentless one-sidedness of the argument. Opponents were never quoted except when wrong or agreeing with Gandhi, and Gandhi emerged triumphant from every episode. The composers of the photo wall had to skate very lightly across events in some cases to manage this. Gandhi’s philosophies were explained but no analytical spotlight was turned on them that might expose their weaknesses. Still, I was impressed by the whole thing and came away very satisfied with the use of my last sightseeing hours.
After admiring the samples displayed in various windows and eateries, I bought a piece of batik with a Ganesh printed on it.
I departed Delhi at 23:15 and my left my forties behind me just 45 minutes later. Spending your 50th birthday 11 kilometres high is a good way of avoiding brooding about it.
“Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
— Lewis Grizzard.
Adrift in MelbourneJust like that, it was over. I was 50, and back in Oz.
Let’s see … clean, wide streets, no hawkers? Most people are white? The guys are all wearing dorky long shorts and the girls are all wearing short black skirts that start at mid-chest and end at mid-thigh, but nobody notices — except me? Everything has a marked price, even the taxis — which have a meter and use it without an argument? Yep, must be Australia!
I have been to the storage locker and have cached my souvenirs and retrieved my laptop. The rest of my gear looks to be in good shape, though the mass of my belongings is much greater than I remember it. Ten months of living out of a backpack has altered my perception of property. I winnowed my stuff before storing it but now I look forward to discarding even more unnecessary stuff.
So here I am at a Backpacker hangout in central Melbourne, sitting in the back of the room with my laptop in front of me … the very image that caused me to leave the laptop behind! But it’s OK now, because the trip is accomplished, and I need to do as much work on the photos as possible while I have all this “free” time. And I have changed — which, after all, was the essential point of the trip. I broke from the hermit mould. I’m not just sitting here staring at the screen, I am simultaneously participating in a conversation with the people at the next table.
Tomorrow I start flat-hunting. But I still don’t know where I want to live — whether I should go back to Richmond or branch out and try to find … something different.
