Wednesday 12 January 2022

Travel by ear: soundscapes

Travel magazines love to hook us with a picture. Turquoise skies, white snowy mountains, the bright colours of Indian saris or the houses of Bogota. 

But they never hook us with sounds.

Still, when I think of some of the places I've been, the soundscapes are a big part of the memory. Mumbai for instance: the honking and traffic noise is almost a stereotype of India, but I also hear the tip-tip-tip of a metal beater's hammer and the clinking wheel of a sugar cane crusher, and a crow perched on a gutter screaming.

In a Burmese temple I hear little kids running, their bare feet slapping the marble; and in a back room somewhere, someone is hitting a little brass meditation gong softly, creating a rich hum; and a cat meows at a passer-by who hasn't paid it any attention. (If you love gongs... you'll love the video.)

In Ethiopia, the rattle of sistra, the sound of a trumpet playing a single phrase over and over again at a funeral, the wailing and ululating mourners, and the repetitive scratch and swish of a metal spatula in a metal pan as one of the family roasted the coffee beans, and all this at eight in the morning.

Sometimes things don't quite match. Westminster Cathedral always sounds like a railway station, where the faint noise of individual feet adds up to a subdued pedestrian roar, and people are reading newspapers (or maybe hymn books) with a stiff rattle or soft rustle of pages turning, and mass being said in a side chapel punctuates the busy non-quite-silence with announcements - "and at 1032 he took bread and broke it... 1155 lamb of God departing from altar number five"... It doesn't sound cathedral-like at all.


Finally scrambling my way to the top of a pass in Ladakh, and hearing the prayer flags in the wind. Or another Himalayan memory, the rain pelting down at Khecheopalri Lake, hissing across the lake, then thudding on the umbrella held by a better-prepared traveller like a toy drum. 

Sometimes you need to open your ears a bit wider to get past the immediate sound. In a tent at a Berber market in Morocco we were serenaded by a fiddle player; but there were other sounds to remember besides that pungent, gut-strung music. There was the hiss of the knife through a side of meat, the crackle of the fire and loud spurts and crunches as fat dripped on the burning logs; people chatting, shouting for service or to hail friends, and outside the tent there were goats and sheep bleating and the occasional horse whickering or snorting, and the snap of horseshoes on tarmac.

It's odd though. When I dream of places, they're always silent. But when I'm awake and I remember them, I can always remember the noises. 

Saturday 1 January 2022

What to see in 2022

As always with a New Year, the lists will be coming out.

"Must-see destinations of 2022."

"New destinations for the New Year."

"2022's top new attractions."

Probably there will be a mix of places that are already tourist magnets par excellence, like Paris or San Francisco or Angkor Wat, with places that are currently unspoilt and wild, so that thousands of tourists will immediately rush there and spoil them. You can almost read some of the articles as "Rush to see Klongpongtiwamchang before all the other readers of this article get there first".

 Or Staryborodinogradski, or Saint-Cul de Merda, or Santiago de las Grandes Botegas, or wherever.

So I'm going to offer a slightly different take on what to see in 2022.

  • Covid probably means your options are limited, anyway. So discover your own back yard. Literally, if you have a back garden; lie down on the grass and smell it, look for insects, watch birds, hide in the shrubbery, experience your garden as you never have before. Keep a journal, or record a short trip round the garden every single day. Spend a night under the stars (make sure you have a comfortable sleeping pad, though). Discover your back yard as if you were a child again, all the strangeness and amazement of it. (Eating dirt is optional.)
  • Walk the streets round your home. Never take the same way twice. Find things to look at - that old post box, the overgrown garden full of butterflies, tiny acts of subversion like the garden where Buddhas oversee the garden gnomes, a cat looking out of a window at you. Former government adviser Alastair Campbell runs a 'tree of the day' photo spot on Twitter - find something you care about (manhole cover of the day? peeling paint of the day? front door of the day?) and do the same.
  • I also suggest walking because let's face it, some of us are, right now, a bit anxious about taking public transport. Or get a bicycle. 
  • That gallery you always meant to go to, and never have? Go! The church you never went into? if the door's open, go in: there might be a Romanesque madonna inside, or a fascinating epitaph, or a lot of stacking plastic chairs. You never know.
  • Think about trips you've taken that you really enjoyed, and why. You may never have realised you were interested in a particular thing. I have just realised that I am fascinated by temple food - prasad in Indian temples, the langar in a Sikh gurdwara, Korean Buddhist monasteries with their highly ritual meals. So once things get freed up, I'm going to see if I can work in some of these communities. I may even go back to Mount Girnar, if the little kitchen there will let me stay. 
  • Give yourself a 'stretch' aspiration, whether that's your first solo trip, a long trek, a tough summit, a trip to a different culture or back to your long distant roots. (Norwegian Americans, take note!) For me, it will be a really long hike through Zanskar, Lahaul and Spiti, and finally getting to visit the Abbot of Stakna. My first long hike since I got my arthritis diagnosis. Of course you could also get a pedometer or a fitbit and "climb Everest" up and down a local hill, or "hike the Appalachian Trail" from your front door to the park and back every day. Or your aspiration could be learn Japanese in lockdown ready for a trip when we all ope up again.
  • Vow to go somewhere just because it's there. Like Manchester. Or Birmingham, Alabama. Or just take a road or a railway because it's there. Nowhere scenic. Find the interest in the everyday.
And stay safe, everyone. The sooner we get the coronavirus banished, the sooner we can get back to the freedom of travelling just anywhere we want.