Soundscapes

 I was in the village the other day when the Angelus began to ring. The bell has a loud, brassy, slightly cracked timbre with a weird resonance; quite unlike the bell in the next village, which sounds flat and hollow, like a dustbin being whacked with a broom.

We tend to think of travel visually: Instagrammable views, architecture, light, bright turquoise skies or the virulent viridian of the Northern Lights. But with my eyes closed I can tell the difference between different soundscapes, and as Covid-19 is still putting a crimp in my wanderlust, I decided to daydream my way around the sounds of the world this morning.

• Early muezzin in Sur, Oman. A deep, warm bass voice in what, already, is not quite the silence of night.
• Duelling muezzins of Istanbul. I'll swear it's personal between the Sultanahmet Mosque and its nearest competitor. A very different kind of muezzin from the factual recitation of the Omanis; here, it's operatic, with fluent melismas, digressions, ornaments, stretching every breath out as far as it will go, and underneath the melody the incessant honking of taxis on the meidan.
• A valley in Uzbekistan where suddenly, every single donkey started to sing out and the valley resonated like a bowlful of braying.
• The plink, splash of icebergs slowly melting in an Icelandic lagoon. Every so often I'd hear one that had become top-heavy suddenly crash down into the water, and the ripples from its collapse, and then it would be back to the plink, plink in the vast midnight silence.
• The whistle of swans' wings as seven of them flew in arrowhead formation over my camp at Pensthorpe, Norfolk, in the early morning.
• Chai garam chai, chai garam chai, the song of the tea vendor on an Indian train. 
• "Ladies, get your husband a new tool here!" the cheeky stallholder at Brick Lane. His rudery only matched by the stout lady who sells new season white asparagus on the market at Ezy-sur-Eure.
• In Mirabai's temple at Chittorgarh, someone sings bhajans to a small harmonium. The melodic line never stops; note after note, meandering, wandering around itself, plaintive and unfulfilled.
• Ethiopian priests rattling their sistrums as they chant, and then the big drums coming out for prayers and hymns in a joyful shout.
• Staying in a guesthouse on the banks of the Chao Praya river in Ayutthaya, I hear the big barges going up and down the river all night. The low growl of the motors, and then as that dies down, the ripples of the wake hitting the pilings below the guesthouse, slap slap slap, and then again, silence, till the next boat.
• Explosions in the dark in Colombia. And then shouting and music. The start of the annual fiesta in Barichara - but we were worried for a moment!
• A zampogna playing its pastoral tune in front of a Christmas crib in Rome.
• A Catalan picnic, with a gralla player sitting on a car bonnet, his instrument emitting raucous squeals, and drum players each side rattling away - this apparently being a quite normal way to celebrate the weekend. (And later, back in Barcelona, I danced the sardana in the cathedral square to the sound of the band - clarinet-rich, but with a tiny strident whistle leading every tune.)
• Monsoon rain in Tamil Nadu, less weather than a 360 degree waterfall effect.
• If petrichor is the smell of earth after rain, there should be a word for the sound of motorcycle tyres hissing through rainslick just after a storm.
• Egrets and sacred ibises in a tree in Dire Dawa, squabbling and gossipping.
• The lapwings calling whee, whee on the uplands of the Drouais.
• Owls calling at night, the whoo-whoo of the little tawnies and the screech of the barn owl.
• Horns of Indian traffic, never silent, "Please be horning". Personalised horns like personalised ringtones only even more annoying.
• Ping ping PA-dum, the French railway announcement tone. SNCF appear to have the copyright as no other railway in the world uses it (or not to my knowledge. Maybe they do in Andorra. But then Andorra doesn't have any railways.)
• And the marvel that is Binche carnival, with its 26 brass band tunes. Though my favourite is the little morning tune played just on a single clarinet as the Gilles gather in the outlying villages and suburbs and start making their way into the town.

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

 So, in no particular order, because I'm bored today, and it's raining, and I wish I was able to travel somewhere, here are a few of my favourite things from a lifetime of wandering.

• Karkadeh - hibiscus tea. Rich, dark, red, with plenty of sugar in, it's like drinking an entire flowerbed. For me, it's the taste of Egypt. I've made it at home, but it's never quite the same.
• The sound of the early muezzin. In London, in Istanbul, in Delhi, Muscat, Fez, or Ethiopia, it's the same, and associated with the faintest touch of paler darkness on the horizon that says dawn is close. (Black mark for the muezzin in Casablanca who then decided he'd like to carry on singing a few songs for the next three quarters of an hour.)
• Fasting, in Ethiopia. Meat dishes are okay, but the fasting platter is exceptional; greens, pulses, a huge sour injeera as the plate and scoop (I'm never quite sure whether it's a bread or a pancake) - I could fast all year. When Christmas comes and everyone has meat again, it's just not the same.
• Mountain passes. Kardong La where from a nice warm morning in Leh you suddenly find yourself in snow, and finally looking down the other side to the Nubra Valley. The pass where after a day walking from Kyzart where suddenly you see Song Kul spread out below you, an almost circular lake surrounded by mountains. 
• Arcades. In the streets of Evora, in the palaces of Mandu, in cathedral or abbey cloisters, in the ancient covered markets of French bastides, arcades are wonderful things; they make a little self-contained world out of the glaring sun. Their rhythm is wonderful, too, whether the staggered, always changing, three-arches-at-a-time rhythm of Venetian or Portuguese vernacular, or the regular wave-forms of a Gothic cloister.
• Pineapple with sugar and red chilli from the street vendors in Bangkok.
• The comforting roll and clank of a night train. Eventually its soporific purring will let me sleep until it stops at yet another night-time station, which apart from having a name on the signboards is indistinguishable from any other station on the line, and where the train will stop for ten or twenty minutes before softly straining, juddering, and starting to roll onwards.
• The Big Tree. Sacred banyans in India and Thailand; trees planted by Sully or as Trees of Liberty in France; huge hollow yews that you can stand inside, a thousand years old; the great trees that dominate junctions in Gondar and Aksum, or that grow to shade Muslim shrines in Somaliland and Harar. 
• Old trains. There will never be a love like my first love, Mallard, but I have a lot of time for old trains - Soviet trains with huge cowcatchers in Tashkent, old French locomotives in Dire Dawa, the sparkling brass and splendid whistle of the little tourist train in the Baie de la Somme, the rusting hulk of a train at a disused station in Colombia (shades of Fitzcarraldo!). 

What are your favourite things?

In praise of the boring places

 "I'm bored with this town already," I heard from three different people in Luang Prabang. "There's nothing to do. Only one street and some temples."

Towns like this Luang Prabang are the kind I love. Because they're the kind of place you can slide into gently, take your time to feel your way around. In Luang Prabang I found myself celebrating Buddha's birthday with a family picnic in the local temple, I wandered the market in the early morning, I talked to the curator of a photographic exhibition who showed me a photo of himself as a young monk, and one day when I'd walked the other side of the Nam Khan river, I ended up at a wedding dancing with drunken dads and wicked old ladies.

(Lao sound systems are LOUD. It took me a while to get the ringing out of my ears after that. Or was it just the effect of the whisky? It certainly took me a lot longer to walk back than it had to get there...)

I spent a week in Hampi. Just walking, biking, climbing mountains, watching the elephants get their bath, seeing the landscape from different viewpoints. Sitting in the Virupaksha temple courtyard, watching pilgrims come to the temple.

I spent a month in Orchha. For most people it's a day trip, but I stayed, and took side trips, going to Gwalior, Chitrakut, Sonagiri, Datia. I walked around, I made friends, learned to play karrom, drunk ridiculous amounts of sweet milky chai all morning, made friends with a Korean who was learning to play violin, Indian style, and ran my own street gang of local urchins who showed me all the best stepwells.

I rather like Bishkek. There's not a lot to it, but people are friendly, there's a good market, a great craft beer bar, a women-run brewery, a German beer hall, it's all walkable. There are parks with odd sculptures, and a whole load of old grave marker steles outside the national museum.

I like Bari. Ages ago, I spent a week there, using the railway line to get to all the great Romanesque cathedrals of Apulia. I got a free lift to the amazing Castel del Monte, Frederick II's hunting lodge in the hills, because the hotel owner was visiting a friend there; we had the whole place to ourselves. I was even invited to go down to the harbour early morning to see the fish catch (and ate part of it later on). Maybe not top on everyone's list but I love it.

Mechelen, former capital of the Netherlands. Dire Dawa, described as no more than a transport hub by most guidebooks, where I saw the epiphany play, danced and sang hymns, ate the best Indian food in Africa, talked about New Delhi with my hotel owner, heard trains hoot in the night.

Girivi is nowheresville, Georgia. Go much further and you're in Russia. It's a rough grid of a couple of dozen compounds and guesthouses. But it has better wifi than the rest of Tusheti put together, lovely scenery, beautiful walks, a clear river tumbling over huge red pebbles. In the morning you can watch the sheep flowing out on to the mountainside like snow, and in the evening they come back, with the dark, thin, shy cows. I wish I'd had more time to hang out there.

True, some cities are just very boring. But more towns, particularly the smaller towns, have some charms, and have a life of their own. It's worth settling down for a bit. Difficult, perhaps, if you only have a couple of weeks - easier if you have three, easier still if you have a few months. But worth doing.

Because the restless whistlestop tour gets boring, after a while. And you see ten monuments, a market and a couple of airports, but you don't get a feel for the country. 

I can't recommend a boring town for you. But you'll know it when you find it. It's the place, or just a neighbourhood in a city, where you make a couple of friends, you stay an extra day; where someone tells you about a really nice place just up the road, or a quirky little place to visit, or you manage to find little places that aren't in any of the guidebooks, or you just spend all morning at the same little cafe peoplewatching.

It's the place where you just want to take life as it comes. It's the place where, instead of just visiting, and rattling around it like a pea in a big box, you actually find your place, a lifestyle just the right size for you to fit. You find a routine - a swim in the freezing river in the morning, a sunset walk every evening, playing karrom under the peepal tree or drinking craft beer in the same bar. 

These places are waiting for you. You just need to keep your mind open to them.

And keep your schedule open enough to take the opportunity.

Car boot sales and flea markets: a sense of place

 You can tell a lot about a culture from what gets sold in junk shops and at car boots (garage sales if you're from the US) and flea markets. Here's a sense of France, or to be very particular, a little slice of France in between the huge wheat fields of the Beauce, and the valley of the Seine, about an hour from Paris by not very fast train.

• Firemen's helmets. The Sapeurs Pompiers are something special. A lot of them are volunteers. There are old-fashioned helmets with a feather crest like a Roman centurion's moulded into the metal, and new shiny astronaut-like bubble helmets. You see a lot of these. (Army and police stuff? not so much.) Often, the same table holds a collection of model fire engines, too.
• Enamel coffee pots. Yes, this is vintage France. The little wooden-bodied cubical coffee grinders with a metal funnel and handle on top are also typically French. What I didn't know till I looked what that they used to be a major product for Peugeot - as did woodworking tools; Peugeot was a general foundry and at some point I suppose they decided they might as well make cars, too.
• Occasionally you see a collection of teapots. But they are either Berber fake-silver teapots (and Moroccan tea is a whole different thing) or they are collector's teapots. What you almost never see is the plain brown pottery teapot beloved of generations of Brits. Sorry, no PG Tips here.
• Le Creuset casseroles. I have a lovely collection of these now; casseroles, dishes, frying pans, ramekins... in the classic orange colour, in grey, yellow, red, and my favourite, lime green. But there are other brands, too - and often not enamelled but just big cast iron cauldrons. Never mind cooking the Christmas goose, I've seen one you could probably get a whole pig into. See this, and understand how French cooking ticks.
• Souvenirs from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - once part of the French colonies. Less often, lovely cloths from French-speaking West Africa. I've pretty much furnished one entire room with Tunisian blue and white carpets bought at car boots.
• Souvenirs from elsewhere in France - bright Quimper pottery, Eiffel towers (usually in ridiculous quantities: do people collect them?), dolls in French regional costumes. A car boot can be a miniature tour of the country if you want it to be.
• Glass jars. Why? Because there is a massive tradition of making your own conserves - not just jams, but chestnuts in syrup, potted meats, all kinds of stuff. (And I know there still is, because the supermarkets suddenly start selling preserving jars and industrial amounts of sugar the moment the jam-making season begins.)
• Agricultural equipment, because this is farming country; and riding kit, because this is horse country. Old pitchforks made entirely of wood, scythes, sickles, cast iron tractor seats, horsecollars, riding boots, and occasionally, a saddle so shiny and smelling of leather that it can only have been used once or twice (I wonder why).
• Old flutes, oboes, clarinets, and musical instrument making tools. And this is in our tiny little area between La Couture-Boussey and Ivry la Bataille and Ezy-sur-Eure, just a few kilometers. Why? Because there were musical instrument makers everywhere back in the nineteenth century. Today, Marigaux still makes oboes here, and there are businesses making accessories like reeds and the felt for key pads.
• The buvette usually sells a choice of chipo-frites or merguez-frites (regular or spicy sausage with chips). The barbecue is a solid iron affair, hand-made by some local with a bit of welding experience and some agricultural scrap. There's almost always a choice of wine, kir, and beer, as well as various canned drinks; Lipton's Ice Tea is still more popular than Coke around here. And someone has always cooked a tarte tatin, upside-down apple tart, at a euro a slice. 
• I mustn't forget; the set of corkscrew and wine thermometer, and the little metal wine-tasting cups. Even though we're on the borders of cider country here, wine is part of the nation. Liberty, equality, oenology.

But my favourite find is nineteenth century historical or satirical plates. The first one I found was de Lesseps drawing his plan of the Suez canal. Then I found the French lion-tamer who went to the Great Exhibition in London. Then the Exposition Universelle in Paris - which had pretty much the same idea as the London exhibition, a chance to show off the entire world and promote French commerce and industry.

Then I found 'Le Club des Femmes', a little piece of (anti-) feminist history. A chap wearing an apron sweeps the dust off his doorstep and promises to get dinner ready while his wife strides off to the Womens' Club saying 'Back later, be good'. And a plate celebrating Montgolfier's balloon. And an extravagant plate, part of  a set showing you how to do different dances - this one is the polka, and they're really enjoying themselves!

I don't think I've ever paid more than a euro for a plate. The ones I don't buy are the puzzle plates. There are loads of them; the turn-it-upside-down-and-it's-something-else plates, the rebus plates (like a tablecloth, water, and a lion spelling Nappe-Eau-Lion or Napoleon), the Ouere's-Ouallie plates (well, their nineteenth-century equivalent).  I don't quite get the humour and to be honest, most of the French people I've asked don't either.

And then of course all the stuff you'd get anywhere. The kids' clothes that kids have grown out of. Last year's fashions. The old cutlery and the old toys and the jigsaw with one piece missing. But it's the items I've mentioned that tell me yes, I'm in France. 

I wonder what German flea markets are like? or Spanish? do they have them in Japan? ... maybe some time I'll get the chance to find out.

#MeToo - sexism and tourism

 Two little vignettes from my journal of Egypt.

An English couple in one of the temples, I think it was Karnak. The man gave his partner his mobile phone and went to stand in front of a colonnade view.

"Take the picture then."

"I don't know how your phone works."

"It's very simple. The yellow button."

"I can't see a yellow button."

"On the screen."

"I can't see it."

Angrily, he walked over, grabbed the phone, showed her, shoved it back in her hand, went back to pose in front of the colonnade.

She frowned and squinted, trying to see the screen in the bright sun. The phone clicked.

He came to look.

"Well that's bloody useless, isn't it? You should have used the zoom. Look, you can hardly see me at all. Use the bloody zoom."

Back he went. I wondered if the next photograph would satisfy. It didn't.

"Look, you've got one more try. Then we've got to get back on the bus."

"But I haven't even..."

Her words were already directed at his back. She clicked. He came back, grabbed the phone, started off towards the entrance.

I thought: for God's sake, let him go. Just let the bugger go. You're better off without him.

But she followed, and I could see the droop of her shoulders. Just how many years of this had she had to take?

***

"That one is the Red Chapel," she said, looking at the plan in the guidebook. "That is the white chapel of Senwosret, and ... yes, that one is Hatshepsut's."

"Ah," he said. "It's pretty."

"And then, if we go here," she pushed a fingertip along a line in the book, "we can see the Rameses temple, the one we missed earlier, it has Osiride statues and a barque shrine."

"OK," he said, "we have time for it all?"

"Yes, it's hardly two, we have all afternoon."

I was amazed.

A man and a woman, and the woman is reading the guidebook.

And the man is listening!

I have travelled in India, Africa, Europe, the US, South America, the Middle East. I have travelled off the beaten track and I have seen the big sights. And here was something I had never, ever, seen before.

(They were French, by the way. Vive l'égalité.)

***

In a week that's seen domestic violence and sexual harrassment hit the headlines in France, and a woman murdered in the UK, I couldn't help my thoughts turning to these two little episodes. I'd like to think they are the way of the past and the way of the new generation. I'd like to hope so.

But it's a fairly slender hope. 

I'll never forget that poor woman's slumped shoulders as she followed her partner towards the exit.

Lockdown travel: the Photo Game

 This is a game I play with myself sometimes when I'm travelling, if I'm tired, if I'm stuck waiting for a bus or a train or a plane, if I'm eating out, particularly in street cafes. It's a great game for lockdown. Or just to give yourself a challenge.

Rule One : Your backside is glued to your chair. 

Rule Two: You must keep taking interesting photos. (Choose a camera with a good zoom lens or function.)

Rule Three: There is no rule three.

I can do it today as I sit at my computer. If I were going to take photos now:

• the sun falling across a little statue of Shiva I have on the windowsill
• the fish on my Vietnamese blue and white mug
• a bookshelf where all the books are leaning at twenty degrees
• the thin fanning of pages of a book I left half-open on my desk
• the texture of the plaster on the wall
• some very odd patterns made by reflections and the shadow of the blinds
• the furry texture of the top of my paintbrushes in their mug
• a whole landscape of dust on top of a writing box (really must get round to dusting)
• two horses going up the street outside
• the cat looking in at the window
• his tail disappearing
• a scatter of pencil shavings where I knocked my pencil sharpener over

Sometimes these photos are brilliant. Sometimes you look at them later and think "Why on earth did I take that?"

But the point is not the photos. It's the looking.

Oh actually, that's rule three. You have to see the photograph before you pick the camera up. You look with your eyes, not with the lens.

In fact, if you don't have a camera, you can still play the game.

Happy looking!

A place to sit

 I travel hard. I've walked up to 40 km in a day. I don't really do lunch. I quite often get up with the dawn.

But sometimes you just want a place to sit. And sometimes, those places come back to your mind as little places of peace and contentment.

I was at the Pechersky Lavra in Kyiv on a saint's day. It was busy; monks in dirty gabardine with ancient army surplus backpacks in from the country, women in bright floral patterned headscarves, VIPs in shiny suits and stiletto-wearing blondes, long queues to see some particular shrine, the odour in one of the churches of incense and candle wax and burning wicks and unwashed bodies. 

Glittering domes of gold. Chanting. Smoke trails rising from the candle racks. Golden icons shimmering in heat haze.

A huge cobbled ramp behind the main court leading down to the catacombs. Bearded patriarchs in their coffins, in velvet slippers and embroidered robes. A press of pilgrims in the tiny rock-cut chapels, kissing each glass case in turn.

After a while I was worn out. I wandered to a little church further south. It was closed. Outside was a cemetery with a rose garden. I sat; I can't remember whether there was a bench or whether I just sat on the wall. I just sat, and felt the breeze, and smelt the roses.

One time on the way to Santiago I found a rock that was shaped just right for the contours of my body, and on a cool December day, warmed by the sun. I lay on it and watched the sky, bright blue with white clouds, and felt myself almost falling into the sky at great velocity; and then I closed my eyes.

That day smelt of gorse and dry grass, and there were charms of goldfinches, but I remember the deep relaxation of that rock as if it cast a spell on me for the whole day.

There's a grove of huge cedars at Hemis Shupackchan in Ladakh - above the village, already some way out. In an arid, high-altitude desert where every field has to be built up over generations of fertilising - I'd passed women raking last year's composts out over the fields in the morning - there are no forests, and few trees, but here there were beautiful spreading trees and green turf under them. I spread myself out for half an hour in the warm shade. I've rarely felt so at peace.

And sometimes, in towns, you find your little place. In Orchha, for me, it was the tiny space next to the griddle of potato patty man. I watched pilgrims and tourists go by, and sometimes an ash-faced sadhu with long braided hair or a saffron robed sannyasi with the white and red marks of Vishnu on his forehead. Lunch was there most days, a 20-rupee potato patty, and it was one of my happy places.

Then there was Ram Babu's fruit stall. A little stool dragged out from underneath it, and I was ready to sit and wait for my juice. Sometimes goats came and tried to grab an orange or some greenery while his back was turned. Sometimes one of the local cows had to be dissuaded from sidling up to the stall and leaning on it. Once, Ram Babu treated someone for bad knee pain with his special iron knife - I hadn't realised he was the village magician. I met charming gents from Bhopal and Indore, other customers who came to Orccha every year. I learned to play karrom. That was my second happy place to sit.

And my third? I sat there only once, one bright morning, very early, when the old blind sadhu who lived in the Chaturbuj temple and the younger sadhu who looked after him were singing in the rising sun. The old man had a kind of tin can fiddle with one wire string which he played with a ring on his finger, and when they'd finished a bhajan they smoked their bong, offered me a toke, coughed plentifully, and started another bhajan; and as the sun rose, the stone warmed up, and we warmed ourselves, and the misty shapes of the town came into focus.

These memories come to me now, when because of covid I've not been more than forty kilometres from home for nearly a year. And they don't come as photographs, but as memories full of atmosphere, and smell, and coolness or warmth, and touch. 

That is why you travel. When you need your memories, they will come; and they're a form of sustenance.

"Don't go at the weekend"

 People will tell you not to go to places at the weekend. It's too crowded.

In some ways they're right. I like the Louvre on a rainy Thursday afternoon, for instance, or Venice early in the morning, half past six with the sun just rising out of the mists. I like Bermondsey Market when it's still nearly dark and the sizzling of bacon is only just beginning to make that meaty, salty aroma rise from the breakfast stand.

But visiting Jerash on a weekend was wonderful - apart from the fact that no one asked for my ticket going in. Jerash was full of Jordanian families enjoying themselves.

Little girls pelted across the great oval colonnaded entrance to the city playing football. Little boys tried to climb up every pile of rocks in sight. One climbed a pillar and jumped off, and then suddenly all his friends were doing it, flying, arms spread, for a brief moment before hitting the ground with the thump that pushed all the breath out of their lungs.

Men sat on tartan or tiger-striped picnic rugs smoking their shishas and looking over the ancient hippodrome towards Hadrian's gate. Young women posed for the camera in front of the Nyphaeum; a young man climbed as high as he could on the temple of Zeis, to the highest point of the city, and sat completely unafraid of the precipice below.

And through the whole city wandered flocks of goats and sheep with their herdsmen.

As the crowds died down I wandered towards the gate. The two men sharing a shisha were still there; we had a little chat. One little girl was left kicking a football, but her older brother grabbed it, and her, and off they went. It was a nice, low key, end to the day.

Or so I thought. But just outside the gate were the bright lights of a funfair; how could I resist? 

And to my great surprise, I heard my name being called. It was the younger of the two shisha smokers, and he wanted to show me his sister's new baby. I've never seen a prouder uncle, or a man more in love, even though there was, I'd guess, at least a 25 year difference in their ages. The whole family had their portraits taken, and then uncle was left, literally, holding the baby as sister and her husband decided to take a ride on one of the more sedate attractions. 

That's Jerash at the weekend. It was much more boring when I went back the next day.