A couple of nights in Nainital

By the time we'd snaked our way up the mountain and arrived in Nainital it was 7.30am and the town was starting to wake. The cycle-rickshaw drivers were pulling their blankets around them as they hussled for customers at the bus station and the shared taxi drivers were co-ordinating people into clumps based on their final destination.

Like many Indian hill stations Nainital is home to quite a few boarding schools, the parents and pupils of which were now pouring back into town for the return to school after Divali. I'd sat next to a school boy on the journey up and managed to squeeze a few phrases out of him in English.

Where are you from? " Gujarat" he said, "It's a long way from here." I know it! I replied, I'm hoping to go there soon, hoping to use this as a springboard for a conversation about his home state but he shrugged and looked down.

How old are you? I tried. " I am 9-years old" came the replied in textbook English before he turned and looked out of the window gloomily. This wasn't an easy conversation.

Do you like school? I said. "No, I HATE IT!!" it replied loudly looking straight at his father sat in the seat in front of us. Hmm, no wonder he's not such a happy chappy. As we nearer Nainital fat tears rolled down his cheeks and the last I saw of him he'd put his blanket over his head and was refusing to get out of the bus. Poor kid.

Rather than taking a shared taxi to the other end of the lake I walked along the shore watching the changing light on the water and the early morning mist receed up the hills as the air warmed. Nainital was a beautiful town that was becoming more and more popular with middle-class Indian's on their honeymoon and it was easy to see why.

I found myself a guesthouse, threw down my pack and after a quick wash headed back down to the waters edge and found myself a chai stand and some breakfast. My original plan had been to hole up in Nainital for a couple of days in order to quiz as many other trekkers and guides as I could before deciding which of the two glacier treks to the North i'd set my sights on. Of course Chris' verdict was fresh in my mind and I was now going to have to decide whether to heed his advise or ignore it. I'd come here to trek, my backpack was full of gore-tex clothing, thermal underwear and the Himalaya where just beyond that ridge. If I didn't trek what the hell else was I going to do here?

In most towns there is a cafe, restaurant or bakery that becomes the regular backpacker hang-out. There's usually a noticeboard where folks post recommendations and information and sitting around here for an hour or so will guarantee you'll meet someone and be able to start up a conversation. These places are usually a good place to find fellow trekkers as they're either preparing for their trek (look for a group huddled around a map, splitting up food and equipment between their backpacks and buying all the cookies and chocolate they can get their hands on) or they're just back from a trek (in which case they'll be the grubby group looking tired yet elated who have ordered every item on the menu, twice already!) I hug around the most likely looking cafe for an hour and didn't see another westerner. Hmm, i'm not in the right place I thought and wandered down the road a little to bakery that smelt great. By now it was 9.30am and place should have been buzzing with folks like me ordering banana porridge and omlettes but with the expection of a couple of newly-weds the place was deserted. Hmm, I knew this was the end of the trekking season but the weather was still great and all roads North were still open according to the sign outside the police station. Where was everyone?

There are only so many cups of chai you can drink in a morning so I left the strip of cafes along the shore and wandered about the backstreets and lanes behind the main street. The place was a hive of activity at this time of the morning and I spent a good hour watching the trading of fruits, vegetables, meats and grains before I realised i'd not seen a fishmonger in town. How strange given that we're next to a giant lake thats obviously teaming with fish as you can see them below the water! Obviously there was either something wrong with the water or the lake was sacred and so the fish couldn't be eaten. I never did find out which it was but my money would be on the former rather than the later.

After a while I found the office of the mountain guides association that the Lonely Planet was recommending, and inside I met Rik, a yound but obviously knowledgeable guide who was able to answer all the questions about the two treks I'd read about, and even advise some interesting alternatives to the standard route in some place.

"So Rik, where are all the other trekkers?" I asked, having a sneaking feeling I'd know his response.

" It's after Divali now and the shepherds have come down from the hills so the season is pretty much over already" he replied.

With Divali being so early this year it seems the shephers had taken the opportunity to come down off the hills a couple of weeks earlier than expected. Especially as the monsoon had been poor and so the grazing on the hills was not great.

Rik assured me that if I really wanted to trek he'd organise a couple of mules, tents and food enough to enable us to do any of the treks I wasnted, but I didn't want to trek with him alone, not only from a safety perspetive but also from an enjoyment and cost perspective as its always better when you can share the experience and cost with a couple of others.

So, it seemed the odds were staked up against me doing any trekking on this trip and whether I liked it or not I was going to be following Chris' advise and resting up for a couple of days. Oh well, I thought. There could be worse places to spend a couple of days than Nainital I thought, sitting back in my chair, pulling out my book and ordering a hot masala chai as I looked out over the lake.

Down, but not out.

About a month before I left for India I fell and hurt my ankle. Whilst ice was being packed around my foot I blubbed like a baby, not at the pain, but at the unthinkable thought that if my ankle was broken i'd have to postpone my trip. An x-ray showed that all the bones were intact and after a week or so of hobbling around on crutches and resting as much as possible I was pleased with the speed at which the swelling & bruising had gone, and how slowly, but surely, it was getting better.

The fortnight before my flight life was crazy though. At very short notice I had to find a new flat to rent which had Dad & I racing around Paris for a week, then I had to move and unpack, run around organising change of addresses etc and catch up and say goodbye to everyone before I left. All of this left little time for resting my leg or getting to a physiotherapists, but I felt confident I would be able to hike in a good pair of strong boots and with not too much weight on my back. I purposely packed the least amount of kit possible and was pleased when my pack weighed in at just over 8Kg at Charles de Gaulle. My first few days in Delhi however prooved me wrong.

Streets here in India are haphazard and crazy; not just with the mass of people, traffic and trading that' s going on but also the trash, animals and broken ground that are underfoot. Walking down a busy street requires you look up to make sure you don't run into anyone, simultaneously look left and right to ward off potential hagglers and keep and eye out for yummy street food, glance back from time to time to move over and let cows or motorbikes past and constantly look down so as to navigate the broken pavements, rubbish and sleeping dogs. It's an exhausting exercise until you get the hang of it, which usually takes a day or two.
As I slowly ' found my feet' on my first day in Delhi the less I had to concentrate on navigating the more I became aware of how I was walking over obstacles; unnaturally leading with my left leg putting me slightly off balance but 'saving' my right ankle from a potentially wobbly landing. Looking down I realised why. My right ankle had puffed up like a poppadom and was starting to hurt. Damn. This wasn't supposed to be happening, but still it was hot and humid, i'd spent all day yesterday immobile in an airplane and was now tramping around in flip-flops. Maybe it wasn't so surprising my ankle wasn't happy.

The next day I sent off in my hiking boots and walked a lot less, but when I pulled off my boots in the night train the result was the same as the day before. Giant swollen ankle starred back at me, inflamed and angry.

"Ouch, that looks nasty", said the westerner in the bunk across from me. "Let me take a look" said Chris, introducing himself as an orthopedic surgeon from Cambridge.
He agreed with the x-ray from Paris but frowned when I mentioned I was going to trek.
"Nothing major's broken" he said, "I'll take a look again in the morning when the swelling has gone down" and handed me some anti-inflammatories.
"Thanks!", I said, thinking how chance meetings had already had me run into Tathania in Delhi, now a drug-totting doctor on a train. My travel karma seemed to be functioning well at the moment!

As ever the night on the train was peaceful and I slept well. Traveling overnight on these old sleepers is something I always look forward to when I think of coming back to India and I often wish we had something similar in Europe.
" Chai, Chai, Chai!" yelled the tea-wallah as he made his way down through the carriage. I was wide awake and as Chris was still under his blanket I bought a couple of hot, sweet brews for the both of us. It'd didn't sweeten his verdict any though.
" You see how it's swollen at the back, and how it hurts you here when I press here". I yelped.
" That means some of the small bones in your ankle are probably broken or fractured and that's what's causing the pain and swelling. You need to rest this rather than trek if you don't want to do more damage" he said looking me squarely in the eye. " That's the only treatment there is. Rest." I tried to hide my disappointment but obviously didn't do it well. "Sorry" said Chris, looking down into his tea.

I thanked him, laced up my boots tightly, swung my pack over my shoulders and jumped down off the train trying to come to grips with what i'd just been told. My ankle sent a sharp pain up my leg as I landed as if to help hammer the point home and I trudged up the road from the station in the dark, looking for a jeep or bus on up the 36km to Nainital.

As the sun rose and we raced around the switchbacks up the hills my spirit soared at again being back in India. I love this part of arriving in the mountains and no bad news from Chris was going to change that. For now I'd found what I'd dreamed of and be scared of missing when I fell 6-weeks back- being back in the foothills of the Indian Himalaya. One of my favourite places on earth!

The story so far...

So, when I said I had no plans that was not exactly true. My rucksac was packed with thermal underwear, a Gore-tex jacket and sub-zero sleeping bag with the intention of spending a fair amount of this trip somewhere amongst the Himalaya.

A couple of years back I spent a month in the North Eastern state of Sikkim and had a fantastic couple of weeks trekking with a truly spectacular backdrop of snow-capped mountains. As this ranks as one of my best trips i'd planned to try to recreate this in the North Western state of Uttarakhand, hence the contents of my backpack being geared to higher altitudes and colder climes.

My trip got off to a great start with Air France upgrading me to Business Class so I arrived in Delhi ready to hit the ground running. It was 9-years ago that I last visited the city and its changed quite a bit since then. There is a metro system now. It's still as noisy and crazy as ever but many of the cars now run on gas rather than petrol and the auto-rickshaws have been converted from 2-stoke to 4-stroke engines so the air pollution is a little better, and with the Comonwealth games coming to the city next year the place is being spruced up and building work seems to be going on everywhere.

Halfway through the first day, needing a break from the blaring horns, the dust and heat I slipped into a backpacker cafe for a chai and to start to plan my trip North when who should walk in, Tathania, a Columbian girl I trekked with in Sikkim 2-years back!

How strange to see a familiar face so far away, in time and distance from when we last met! Tathania was on her way up to Dharasalam and had also just arrived in town that day. In many ways you could say the chances of us meeting again where high in that we're both independent travelers who like the same kinds of places, but still it's a one in a million chance we'd be in Delhi in the same cafe at the same time and it was really great to see her again.

My next meeting was not so much of a chance as i'd emailed my friend Abi in NY who'd offered to put me in touch with his brother Saurabh who lives in Delhi.
A couple of emails and text messages were exchanged and a rendez-vous organised for the Rodeo bar in Connaught Circle. I got there a couple of minutes before Saurabh and couldn't help laughing at finding myself in a cowboy bar run by a band of Indians. Saurabh arrived and we had a great evening chatting about India, Europe and life over a couple of Kingfishers and him giving me a few travel tips for some of my potential destinations.

So, the next day, having spent a quiet couple of hours in Juntar Muntar I hopped on a night train North to Nainital. A hill-station set beside a beautiful lake and surrounded my deep green valleys which I'd decided would be my gateway into the mountains this time around.

Juntar Muntar. The beautiful solar & lunar obversatory just south of Connaught Circle.

Hello again!

Its been a long time since I last blogged, over a year now in fact. That time has just flown by and in between times i've had plenty of blog-worthy experiences I could have shared with you.

Ethiopia for example is an amazing country with some outstanding landscapes, beautiful people and a fascinating history. It is also remote and under-developed however, with hardly any telephone, let alone internet connections, making ' real-time' travel updates impossible. Add to that that I had to medi-vac my feeble French ex-boyfriend, making the end of the trip premature, abrupt and very stressful and the result is no documentation of my time there, other than photos.

This annoys me for 2 reasons; Firstly its not a 'popular' destination, which is a shame as its a fantastically easy place to travel. If anyone is searching the web for feedback on Ethiopia I would have wanted them to be able to find my blog and to share my experiences with them - to encourage them to go. Secondly I use these posts as a journal and when i'm stuck at home/work with the urge to escape i'll often look back through them and come across a moment i'd forgotten and spend a happy 5 minutes daydreaming.

Ethiopia's not the only thing i've missed. There was a great week walking on Minorca with my friend Liz back in June. Then a fantastic weekend with Doug in Annecy where I had my first para-gliding experience. I can't blame lack on internet connections or flaky ex-boyfriend's for those missing posts. Simple that this past year has been a year in which much has changed for me, and change (whether expected or not) is often the catalyst for more change, which requires reflection, putting me in a more introverted mind-set and so not in the right frame of mind to blog.

That is why I need this trip now. After 9 years of happily ' coasting' along with my life in Paris I think 2010 is going to be a year of more change, but planned, coordinated change this time.
I might buy a place to live, go back to school, or change jobs, or all three! This may be the last ' long' trip i'm able to make for a while if I load up on debt or change employers so I have to make the most of it, whilst using it to buy some quiet time with myself and work out the plan for the next couple of years.

So, starting today and until 02h15 on 23Nov i've absolutely no commitments and only a handful of vague ideas as to where i'll end up. What I will do though is try to log-in every so often and tell you what i've been up to. At least then if my plans go wrong, or even right, and I end up debt-ridden and cramming for exams i'll have something to look back on.

Ethiopia



Words are on their way, but in the meantime here are just some of the pictures.

x.

$17,000 an hour...

Nicholas D. Kristof: $17,000 an hour. No success required.

By Nicholas D. Kristof

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? If so, then you may not be earning up to your full potential.

You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, the longtime chief of Lehman Brothers. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993 and 2007.

Last year, Fuld earned about $45 million, according to the calculations of Equilar, an executive pay research company. That amounts to roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you're willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers at (212) 526-7000.

Oh, nevermind.

I'm delighted to announce that Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings this week) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance. The award honors the pioneering achievements in this field of Eisner, the former Walt Disney chief.

This isn't a plaque that will simply gather dust in a closet. It's a shower curtain to commemorate the $6,000 one that the former CEO of Tyco purchased and billed to his shareholders.

So, Fuld, you'll be pleased to know that I've picked out a lovely green vinyl number for you. Only $14.99! Why, I saved you $5,985!

Perhaps it seems frivolous to be handing out shower curtains to chief executives when we're caught in a deepening economic crisis.

Well, it is.

But one of our broad national problems is rising inequality, and it is exacerbated by corporate executives helping themselves to shareholders' cash.

Three decades ago, CEOs typically earned 30 to 40 times the income of ordinary workers. Last year, CEOs of large public companies averaged 344 times the average pay of workers.

John McCain seems to think that the problem is that CEOs are greedy. Well, of course, they are. We're all greedy. The real failure is one of corporate governance, which provides only the flimsiest oversight to curb the greed of executives like Fuld.

"Compare the massive destruction of wealth for shareholders to what he gets at the end of the day," said Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School.

A central flaw of governance is that boards of directors frequently are ornamental and provide negligible oversight.

As Warren Buffett has said, "in judging whether corporate America is serious about reforming itself, CEO pay remains the acid test." It's a test that corporate America is failing.

These Brobdingnagian paychecks are partly the result of taxpayer subsidies. A study released a few weeks ago by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington found five major elements in the tax code that encourage overpaying executives. These cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.

That's enough money to deworm every child in the world, cut maternal mortality around the globe by two-thirds and also provide iodized salt to prevent tens of millions of children from suffering mild retardation or worse. Alternatively, it could pay for health care for most uninsured children in America.

Do we truly believe that CEOs like Fuld are more deserving of tax dollars than sick children?

Perhaps it's understandable that CEOs are paid heroically when they succeed, but why pay prodigious sums when they fail? E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, retired last year after driving the firm over a cliff, and he walked away with $161 million.

The problem isn't precisely paychecks that are huge. Baseball stars, investment bankers and hedge fund managers all earn obscene sums, but honestly - through arm's-length transactions. You and I may gasp, but that's the free market at work.

In contrast, boards pay CEOs after negotiations that are often more like pillow talk. Relationships are incestuous, and compensation consultants provide only a thin veneer of respectability by finding some "peer group" of companies so moribund that anybody shines in comparison.

The result is what critics call the Lake Wobegon effect, which miraculously leaves all CEOs above average. Indeed, one study of 1,500 companies found that two-thirds claimed to be outperforming their peer groups.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist, once explained: "The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself."

There are widely discussed technical solutions to CEOs overpaying themselves that we should move toward. We can also learn from Britain and Australia, which offer shareholders more rights than in America, redrawing the balance between shareholders and management and curbing pay in the process.

As for Fuld, unfortunately, he had no comment for this column. At $17,000 an hour, it probably wasn't worth his time.

Back to the Kong...




Kinda feels like i've gone back in time to 2006. Same same, not different...

Go fly a kite...


Last weekend, on a bit of a whim, my friend Laurent and I chucked the bare essentials and my kite into his car and headed for the coast.

The forecast was blustery showers, which would have made for perfect kite flying conditions, but once again the weather men were wrong and we arrived to find bright sunshine, clear skies and not a breath, not even a whisper of wind. Damn!



Luckily we had a plan B, and made our way through beautiful serene Normandy villages that just 60 years back were the backdrop for the D-day landings.

Its only when you grow up that you realise just how freaking pointless some of the hours you spent at school were. Of course maths is damn useful, as are the other 2 R's, and a good foundation of science, the arts and a language never hurt anyone. But why on earth did we spent weeks learning dead kings & queens, the Battle of Hastings and the Spanish crusaders when really none of that matters? Why did we breeze through the first & second world wars in a couple of wet afternoon classes with just crappy news clippings and a Robert Graves poem for backdrop when what happened then shaped our world and lives so significantly today?

My frustration stems from me now being old enough to appreciate the outcome and after effects of June 6th 1944. Unfortunately my crappy education left me none the wiser as to what really happened, either on that day or the events in the weeks and years beforehand.



Luckily the American Battle Monuments Commission have an incredibly little museum at the American Cemetery in Colleville sur Mer. It walks you through the 'highlights' of WWII with a series of displays that helped me understand the sheer enormity of what the allied forces did back then.

As a project manager I'm sensitive to the logistics and attention to detail required to pull something off well and the team work that's needed to make it all happen. Never had a I really stopped and thought about just how much work, planning, co-ordination and imagination went on back then. For example I never knew about 'Rupert'.



Standing about 4ft tall made from sacking and stuffed full of tiny 'fire-cracker' explosives, hundreds of self-destructing 'Ruperts' were parachuted behind enemy lines along the coast just days before the invasion. The men that landed with them were armed with flare guns and record players and their faux attacks caused panic and confusion, leading German forces away from the actual landing sites.
'Ruperts' were just one of the ways the allied forces out-foxed the enemy. Whole battalions of inflatable tanks were pitched out in fields along the British coast to intimidate the Luftwaffe spy planes and their sneaky photographers.

The ingenious of the tactics are captivating but the weight of what's beyond the museum helps put everything into perspective.




Rows upon rows upon rows of graves; small white crosses and stars of David stretch as far as the eye can see, perfectly tended with not a blade of grass or leaf out of place. Off to the right lies Omaha beach; peaceful, calm, flat, still. Its horribly surreal, horribly still.
Looking left you see Juno, in the distance is Gold, off right sits Sword, and shimmering in the distant heat is Utah. Many of the physical traces of what happened here have disappeared but the names have stuck. No one seems to remember what the beaches were called before.



Leaving Colleville with heavy hearts we continued West to 'Point du Hoc' where the physical scars of war remain.
The site sits 100ft (30m) up a sheer cliff face and was the home to some Nazi's heavy guns that were capable of doing some serious damage to the allied flotilla and landing forces. The 2nd Ranger's relentlessly scaled the cliff to take out the guns and of the 225+ that started out only 90 were still alive and fit to fight after 2 days. The assault on the whole was a bit of a blunder as the guns had been moved a mile away just days beforehand, but the story demonstrates well the selflessness and determination with which those guys fought and the hundreds of huge bomb holes around the site ensures you understand just how violent and relentless the battle was.



I didn't learn enough about what happened back then in my two days on the coast but I'm pretty sure i'll be going back again sometime and i'll start doing my homework so i'm better prepared next time. I did learn though that Laurent's grandfather fought in North Africa, like my grandfather, under Mountbatten. Unfortunately its not surprising that French and English neighbours grandfathers fought together thousands of miles away 60-odd years ago - everyone's grandfathers were fighting back then.

Sadly the weather never did deteriorate, the sun stayed out and the wind stayed away for the entire weekend. We made feeble attempts to get the kite up but failed, hanging out in the sunshine and eating hot dogs and sauerkraut instead! I'm not complaining though, like I said, I know i'll be going back.





x

If only...


When will a software package offer me what i'm truely looking for?
This for example!

Ctrl+Y
Ctrl+Y
Crtl+Y

its not working!!!

Circles 'round the sun




Finally I have an explanation as to that strange circle around the sun I spied in Sicily. (standby for nerdy content...)

Turns out its not an omen signalling Etna's eruption (although it could have been) but is instead a 22° Halo...

"A 22° halo is a rather frequently appearing halo, an optical phenomenon forming a circle 22° around the sun, or occasionally the Moon. It forms as sunlight is refracted in hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. As the light beam passes through two sides of the prism forming a 60° angle, the angle of minimum deviation is almost 22° (e.g. 21,84° in average; 21,54° for red and 22.37 for blue.) This wavelength-dependent variation in refraction causes the inner edge of the circle to be reddish while the outer edge is bluish. " Wikipedia

So there you have it!

x

Sleeping beauty?





She was a sleepy snoozy giant when I left her, but it looks like all that jumping up and down and 'lava dancing' I did on Friday woke up old Etna...



More photos from my Sicilian roadtrip here. Unfortunately i'm unable to post tastes or flavours so you'll just have to imagine all the delicious coffee, pasta and gelato I munched my way through ;-)

x

Try this headline: Black Hole Eats Earth...


Please stow your meal trays and put your seats backs in the upright position - Preparing for a big bang?

Feeling funny...

Somethings not right. Its almost mid-April and i've only been on a handful of planes, haven't stepped off the continent and haven't been above 1,400m...

This time last year i'd clocked 7 weeks in HK, more than a month in S America and was getting ready for a road trip round Ireland. To date in 2008 i've been to Manchester, London, Bristol and if all goes well will go to Den Haag and Utrecht next weekend. My horizons are shrinking and i'm slowly slowly suffocating.

I need light... space... air... sky...
I need this:





more precisely, I need a very generous sponsor... any offers anyone?

x

Is this what they call global warming...


bring your scarf and gloves if you're popping in for a cuppa anytime soon.

x

New Game...



It used to be that when I was feeling blue i'd go online and check out how crap the weather was in London, or some other hell hole, and that would cheer me up.

Now I go online and convert the total of my hard earned Euro savings account into dollars, and suddenly I'm rich !





x

Joyeuses Pâques!

The things we forgot to remember

You can't teach an old dog new tricks - so the saying goes. But you can remind them of their old tricks!

Yesterday I went walking in the forest around Paris with my friend Liz, a fellow Brit and Radio 4 fan. 'I just listen to it on my computer' she said, and I kicked myself for not having thought of streaming it in sooner.

When I lived in the UK some 10 years ago I was an avid Radio 4 listener. Saturday mornings I would refuse to leave bed until 'Home Truths' with John Peel had finished and just about every night saw me dozing off to the sounds of "Viking & Dogger; 4, backing to 5 SSW; 6 miles; 1012 and rising. " Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I'm once again turned in and turned on by some of the UK's, nay the world's, best radio reporting.
(For the US readers out there, Radio 4 is the UK's equivalent of NPR. ie. Intelligent broadcasting.)


The spectrum of programs available is blinding. Just this evening i've heard:

• An chilling episode from the radio play 'We need to talk about Kevin', taken from the 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, describing a fictional school massacre and the perspective of the murder's mother.
• A news article announcing that potential British Army officers will be taken to theatre, arts and opera events to put them outside of their comfort zones and improve their powers of interpretation and perception.
• A fascinating magazine program called 'Cross Continents' shedding light on Korea's 'Extreme Sports' and its star athletes, ie. Networked role playing computer games and those you and I would call 'Nerds' or addicts.
• And a program by Michael Portillo (former politician, historian and now keen media commentator), 'The Things We Forgot To Remember'.

When I was walking with Liz yesterday she mentioned that UNESCO will be putting together a conference to commemorate the Holocaust on Jan 27th, International Holocaust Day. We discussed how this will be mostly a politically motivated event and how looking back at the events of 50 years ago appears to hold a higher priority than addressing the genocides going on in the world today.

It's estimated that 6 million European Jews were killed during the holocaust and any child in most developed country's could tell you at least the headline of history surrounding the event.
Yet how many of us have heard of the Bengal Famine that occurred during, and as a result of, WWII and killed almost as many people? I certainly hadn't.

If you only make time for one thing this week please click on the link above and stream/podcast/download what I consider to be an excellent radio documentary on an event no-one commemorates, few history books report and most of us remain ignorant of. Not only is it a fascinating piece articles but its beautifully presented too.

I warn you, now that i've remembered Radio 4, its not something i'm likely to let you forget. Standby for a host of blogs bullying you to tune in too.

K

The highlights...

Traveling can often be totally overwhelming; the sights, sounds, smells that surround you and speeds at which everything moves are alien and it takes a couple of days to adapt and adjust to your new surroundings.

Likewise, after 5 weeks in India it takes 48 hrs or so to adjust back to Paris life - people smoking everywhere, not having to hold someone else's chicken or child on the bus and the lack of spices in the food. In fact I shouted at my taxi driver on the way home from the airport as I was truly terrified at the speed he was driving at.
'Mais Madame', he said, 'I am well within the speed limit!' and he was, but as I hadn't traveled faster than about 40kmh for the last month suddenly 120kmh felt like warp speed.

Its only after i've adapted back to our 'speed of light' Western lifestyle I can sit down and reflect on my trip, and after a month back in Paris there are many highlights that remain bright in my memory:

Bouncing around in the jeep convoy through the tea-plantations to Darjeeling

Crawling out of my sleeping bag to see sunrise on Kanchenjunga and Everest

Trekking with Tom and Rob down through the cardamom forests

Dawn over the Tibetan plateau, freezing, but in the company of warm friends!

Trekking to Pelling with Daphna and Arvi - the Khecheopalri Kids!

Having Jeroen fill an entire page of my notebook with book and music recommendations, then racing round Kolkata in taxis

Having out of trains with Arvi

Sunsets in Puri

and of course all the food!

As you'll notice from most of the photos, many of my highlights are moments i've shared with people i've met along the way, and theres a very good reason for this. The majority of people I meet traveling are open-minded, adventurous, fun loving, inquisitive, generous, spontaneous, cultured and eager to share everything - from travel tales, tips and warnings to their food and company for a few days.

Traveling to a foreign country is always a rich experience and my trip to India was made all the more so by the people I met there. So to all my travel companions in 2007 I say 'Thank you!' for helping make my journeys so much fun, and see you somewhere off the beaten track in 2008!

x

Unwieldy Baggage Packers - take note!

Hell on wheels, By Seth Stevenson

IHT, Friday, December 21, 2007

ABOARD SEVEN SEAS MARINER, Pacific Ocean: You'd rather not think about it - and you never, ever talk about it - but you and I both know that you've run over feet.

You can rationalize. (The airport concourse was crowded. You were distracted, looking up at the departures board.) But come clean. You know it's happening. You can feel your rolling suitcase treating a stranger's ankle as a speed bump. You can hear the swallowed yelp of pain.

And do you apologize? You might mumble "sorry" over a shoulder.

But you never break stride. Instead, you steer into the Chili's restaurant next to your gate, your bag clipping a waitress' shin as you wheel to the bar. (Go ahead, drown your guilt in that frozen margarita. It won't cure her limp.)

Aboard the plane, the wanton destruction continues. For the central fallacy of the wheeled luggage trend is that your suitcase will roll smoothly up the aisle in coach. Lie!

Your bag lurches along, catching on seat handles, bumping knees and elbows. You pull harder when it gives resistance. You pull harder still. And you look back to see your bag scraping against the thigh of an obese seated passenger. His haunch has spilled into the aisle to meet the wrath of your ballistic nylon.

When you at last reach your seat, do you gracefully collapse your telescoping handle and lightly tuck your bag in the overhead compartment? No, your handle jams, holding up the line behind you. And your bag won't fit because all the other bags up there also have huge, jutting wheels.

Plus - particularly if you are a petite, elderly woman (a demographic I am in most cases quite fond of, I promise you) - you sometimes can't lift your bag at all. This is because those wheels have freed you from having to rely on your own muscle power, or a hired valet. You're encouraged to over-pack to such a degree that you can no longer move your bag without wheels. So you stagger weakly under its weight until (if I see you) I assist you with it or (if I don't) you drop it on my head - bludgeoning me with 70 pounds of toiletries.

People, you never need more clothes than you can comfortably carry in a shoulder bag. Soldiers in 'Nam got by with less gear than the average executive now packs for a two-day trip. Unless you are a deep-sea diver or, maybe, an iron-ore salesman, your luggage really shouldn't necessitate load-bearing wheels.

Also: aesthetics. Your dorky rolling bag doesn't say, "I'm embarking on a voyage." It says, "I'm going to a conference in Cleveland." And maybe you are, but you don't have to advertise it. The swashbuckling adventurer hoists a leather rucksack, or a battered canvas duffel. He doesn't tug his bag behind him on a leash like a stubborn and especially boring pet.

It's easy to see the appeal of wheeled luggage, of course. It eases our burdens and lifts the weight off our shoulders. It keeps our neatly pressed jackets un-mussed. But rolling bags are really functional only for the type of journey that goes taxi-airport-taxi-hotel-shuttle bus-convention center. Outside this comfortable circuit, they're often useless.

I've been traveling a lot recently, in countries ranging from developed to less developed to dear Lord, is that a monkey attacking a naked child? In harsher conditions, a dainty rolling bag is absurdly out of place. It's no fun rolling those wheels across a "street" that's just a rain-soaked blotch of mud. Or bouncing them up the stairs of a packed train station. Or dragging them through a marketplace where puddles are indeed full of fish and goat entrails. (Enjoy that pungent odor when your bag is back in your room.)

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not trying to eliminate rolling bags altogether. I'm just trying to halt their unchecked proliferation.

Perhaps we should regard them with the same mild disapproval that greets that fur coat your mom inherited. She won't throw it away, but she is a bit uneasy about wearing it in public.

This will all become moot, of course, with the advent of the levitating suitcase, an invention that can't be far off. When it arrives, we'll immediately go gaga for it. And soon after, I'm sure, your bag will be levitating swiftly and directly into my groin.

I await your mumbled apology.

Thanks Seth, you've said it all

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Where to next...?


Often when I get back from a trip one of the questions my friends and colleagues ask is "Where are you off to next?". They know i've a wish list of countries/regions as long as my arm (no, longer!) and its just a matter of getting more time off work before i'm heading off somewhere else. The question remains.... where?

Up until now various factors have determined my next destination; amount of time off work, the season, political situations and my bank account to name a few. Another factor is difficulty of travel, for example i've not been to many European cities or large swathes of the 'developed' world, simply because travel there is so much easier that I can visit them when i'm older and maybe less able. But just recently i've become more aware of other elements or risks I should include when deciding on my next destination.

The number of tourists traveling to Tibet has hit a record high, Chinese state media has reported.
Just over four million tourists will have visited Tibet in 2007, an official said, an increase of 64% year on year.
The official put the increase down to better marketing and improved transport links, including the controversial high-speed rail service to China. bbc.co.uk 17 Dec 07

For a long time i've dreamt of visiting Tibet - exploring its mountains and high desert plains - but have balked at the idea of going there whilst its under Chinese rule. However with tourism expanding fast that means the country, its people, culture and even landscape, is being exposed and altered by outside influences and if I want to see Tibet before Starbucks moves in i'd better get a move on!

Also much as I abhor the Chinese for their human rights records I admit to admiring their China-Tibet railway. The project they undertook was almost impossible given tracks had to be laid on shifting deserts, melting permafrost, in earthquake zones and much of the construction undertaken at high altitude in freezing conditions. Given my geeky fascination for feats of extreme engineering and passion for unexplored areas and train travel, Tibet and the Lhasa railway is now a dream journey, and it looks like i'm going to have to make it sooner rather than later.

And there are other human impacts that need to be factored in to my decision making...

DENNIS and STACIE WOODS choose their vacation destinations based on what they fear is fated to destruction.

This month it was a camping and kayaking trip around the Galápagos Islands. Last year, it was a stay at a remote lodge in the Amazon, and before that, an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The visit to the Amazon was “to try to see it in its natural state before it was turned into a cattle ranch or logged or burned to the ground,” Mr. Woods said. Kilimanjaro was about seeing the sunrise on the highest peak in Africa before the ice cap melts, as some forecasters say it will within the next dozen years.

Next on their list: the Arctic before the ice is gone. NY Times 16 Dec 2007

Hundreds, probably thousands, of vacation companies and expedition organisers are cashing in on this 'get there before its gone' logic, otherwise known as 'Doom Tourism'. Its pretty ironic in that in we're all busy burning carbon fuels in a rush to get to the places we're trying to see/save before they melt/flood/burn/die.

Its also hypocritical of me to want to be a tourist in Tibet whilst citing tourism as a reason for its changing face and landscape, however in my defense theres a big difference between being a low impact backpacker and demanding 5-star hotels with Western cafes, CNN & wifi in every room...

The questions I now need to ask myself when deciding 'where next' have changed. Like Mr & Mrs Woods, sunrise on Kilimanjaro is on my list, and as temperatures rise its ascends faster than ever up that list. When? for how long? under what political situations? and with what budget? are no longer priorities. These days I don't have to think about whether i'll be fit and able to travel to a destination when i'm older, but whether it will even exist anymore...

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