Traveller's Tales
The American Mid West: Native American Country.
John Power.
Apart from a school trip as a teenager I'd never been out of the British Isles until I was 40. With the expense that goes with having young kids, holidays tended to be the bucket and spade variety. But when my father, Ted, married again at the age of 73 and moved to the U.S. a new chapter began in my life. My parents had long separated and after my mother died five years later my father was technically free to marry again. He didn't intend to do that but aged 72 he was contacted by an old girlfriend from before World War II who he had lost contact with during the time of conflict. Alice had married a G.I. after the war and gone first to New York with her husband, and gradually moved West to a place called Colorado Springs, 60 miles South-West of Denver, the State Capital of Colorado. At a time when she came to England to visit relatives she had outlived two husbands, wrote to Ted's employers from wartime and they traced him for her through pension records. So she got in touch, Ted visited her in London, then went to the States, came back, settled up his business and went back to live in in Colorado.
As they were both retired and I was still working, at first they visited over here, but as what could have been a fairytale began to turn into a nightmare, it was me who had to do the travelling. The altitude of the Rocky Mountains did not agree with Ted's lifestyle change as the air is thinner there. Denver is known as Mile High City as that is how far above sea level it is. At first he got emphasema and then, with less oxygen to feed his brain, Altzeimer's disease began to take hold. Fortunately, as I was working as an Art teacher the school summer holidays provided a good opportunity for family visits. But it did begin with an initiation by fire when it came to airlines: my first [ever] flight was coming in from Germany to Heathrow and running four hours late. So when it arrived in New York it was even later and I'd missed my connecting flight to Denver. The airline did put myself and fellow passengers with the same problem up in a hotel: the Hilton, which was not as grand as the name suggests, except for the $50 charge to connect the phone to the room [balance refundable.] At first I rang Colorado Springs, and found myself talking to a workman fixing Alice's roof. He said she had gone to Denver to meet her step-son off of a plane [me], but although she was stopping at my step brother Mike's family home, he didn't know the phone number. The next bright idea was to ring England where I had two lodgers stopping in my house, and where I thought Alice and Ted might ring. After a while they rang back to say that they had rung Denver Airport. The airport wouldn't announce the messsage about the onward flight details over the P.A. But did use it to ask for Alice and Ted to go to an office where the message was given to them.
So after scant sleep in the City That Never Sleeps, and breakfast, I found myself with other passengers in the Kennedy Airport Hilton minibus, complete with bullet holes in side panels, en route to La Guardia Airport where the re-arranged flight was leaving from. The journey was certainly an eye-opener: not the high-rise heaven that tourists see but rather the sort of neighbourhoods that T.V. cop chases speed through after criminals at break neck speed. The most open air apartment I saw was under a flyover, over a roundabout by a second hand furniture warehouse. Next to the warehouse was a dump of unsaleable furniture, and an enterprising hobo had taken from it a carpet and a three-piece-suite to the roundabout and arranged it like a living room, and lay asleep on the settee at 10am as we drove past. As he was doing no harm, and maybe even was a tourist attraction, the police hadn't bothered to annoy him with vagrancy charges.. The second leg of the flight journey managed to go without any further hitches and to my amazement I found Alice and Ted waiting to greet me at the gate at Denver Airport that afternoon.
Mike and his wife, Lynne lived in suburb of Denver called Lakewood, big enough to have its own postal town status, in a bungelow half above ground and half at cellar level for heat considerations, with a decent size garden. So there was plenty of room for me as well as Ted and Alice. After dinner Mike drove me up into the mountains to discuss Ted's future. Mike had the idea of getting him back to England so that he could benefit from all the NHS contributions he had paid into the system. When I returned to England to research such matters I found that Mangaret Thatcher had counterwise been inspired by the American private medicine system and set up a system that expected people to spend their savings and assets to a low level before getting any benefit from their contributions, and only when all was spent did full benefits kick in. [Its got worse since]. As he had not paid into U.S. health insurance Ted was between stools. Mike had failed to discus his ideas with Alice and she had no intention of letting him return to England, and would instead prefer to spend their savings and pensions for his support.. The car that Mike and I were in had come to a stop at Buffalo Bill's grave as the Sun was setting and lights came on all over Denver, as far as the eye could see, horizon to horizon of the plains. I asked Mike where Denver stood in the league of city sizes in the States and he said “About 15th”!
The following day when Alice drove Ted and myself to Colorado Springs we passed the equivalent to West Point Military Academy as we drove into town: the USAF Airforce Academy on the plains and up to the mountains, which also boasted the words higest cog railway up Pike's Peak, named after old time soldier Zebulon Pike. The town had grown up as a military town near the airbase. Most noticeable in this connection were the aerial masts on top of the ironically named Cheyanne Mountain, which no Native American would be proud of: a hollowed out peak with all the spy monitors of the Cold War along with many of the misslies to be launched in the event of nuclear war. Mrs. Thatcher visited the complex while I was on my first visit. Newshounds found an Englishman to interview about this for local T.V. He said”I came all this way to get away from her and she follows me here.” I knew how he felt.
Alice's bungelow was a similar layout to Mike's with two levels, but more old Western style with ample land waiting to be gobbled up by developers, and plenty of room for me as well as her and Ted. In the mountains above the town was Ute Pass, an old 'Indian' trail that the Ute Indians had established as they followed the buffalo's migrations from the plains up into the mountains and on to Utah, that bears the Indian name. Cheyanne, Arapaho and Commanche roamed the local plains too, whilst Lakota Sioux tribes, who took on and defeated General Custer when he attacked a far bigger settlement than he expected at Greasy Grass, or the Little Bighorn as the white incomers called it, Blackfeet, Crow, Pawnee and other tribes roamed farther north in Dakota and Wyoming. The sites of the largest one-time Indian reservations are South of Colorado and neighbouring States of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah., mainly Pueblo tribes like the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and Apache, with the Utes mostly in Utah, and some in Southern Colorado. All have been forced into farming on poor desert soil since their freedom to roam and hunt has been lost. It was the Plains Indians who suffered most in the clash of cultures that ruined their way of life as greed for mineral wealth and enclosure of land enforced by the army created the holocaust of 100,000,000 native lives lost, that even the Nazis did not surpass. There is a wealth of Rock Dwelling remains on the fringes of the mountains from what are called the Anaszsi, the Ancient Ones, in the area as rock is a longer lasting building material that the portable teepees, wikiups and mud brick buildings. Often these were in cliff overhangs for defensive purposes. As my interests were not Micky Mouse or hambugers there was plenty to explore.... but more of that in part 2.
Part II.
John Power.
The Native Americans only language apart from the spoken word to relate tales and tribal legends was pictograms: symbols that never evolved to the point where individual sounds were represented by letters forming an alphabet. Migratory tribes that dwelt in mobile constructions like teepees would use such symbols to decorate them as well as their clothing, but Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Nevada are States rich in mountains and rocks, which bear the oldest records of the Anazasi, the native name for the Old Ones, where the petroglyphs [pictographs] have been carved. Rocky overhangs also provided easily fortified places to build more permanent dwellings. A small site of this kind is found near Colorado Springs and just called Rock Dwellings, where Indian dances are performed by Apaches in the summer for tourists. But further south in Colorado, in what is now a National Park, is a whole complex surrounding stone built dwellings in a huge overhang at Mesa Verde. The Navajo, Tonto and Canyon DeChelly monuments in Arizona are similar. 'Montezuma Castle', Casa Grande, 'Aztec', and Watuki monuments are smaller sites also in Arizona. Their names speak of migrations from the south. In New Mexico, what was once an enormous city built in stone reaches across Chaco Canyon, and is home to the oldest known Sundial clock in the Americas. That State is also home to El Morro National Monument with clifftop stone pueblos built by Zuni Indians, and similar to the Hovenweep National Monument that straddles the Utah-Colorado State line. Pecos National Monument is a combination of stone and the less durable mud brick used for more contemporary pueblos. It was built by the Pecos Indians of New Mexico. Taos Pueblo, in the north of that State is the finest surviving mud brick pueblo dwelling, and attracted such Westerners as D.H.Lawrence searching for a lost paradise and Carl Jung, looking for evidence to support his theories about psychological archetypes that informed ritual and art worldwide.
My adoptive family of Alice, Mike, Paul, Janet and their families didn't expect my visits to just be watching an old man die, but were active in taking me to see the sights and many of the sites that I have mentioned. Mesa Verde came first, but we also took Mike's family motor-caravan south into New Mexico and Arizona, touching on Utah too. In New Mexico, with my son Joe along for the ride that year we visited Taos Pueblo and continued on to Chaco Canyon, now in a desert of unbearable midday heat. It is thought that drought and associated climate change caused the complex to be abandoned by the Anazasi. Many places in this area owe their names to Spanish invaders, but linguistic traces put the languages of some of the southern tribes in an Aztec category and show migations from south of Mexico. DNA samples on the other hand, also show Mongollian traces from migrations from Canada and the north from Asia over ice bridges that existed at times over the Bearing Straits.
Pueblos is a name given not only to the mud brick dwellings, but also to tribes that inhabited the region such as the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and Apache and many smaller bands that have been given Spanish names. Pueblos were originally built with no entry doors but accessed by retractable ladders and roof entries, that served to keep wild animals and enemy tribes outside. The Navajo also build round, wood and clay dwellings called hogans, with roofs that slant from a central chimney. Beehive shaped makeshift shelters called wikiups used by mobile tribes like Geromino's Chiricaowa Apache as they fought their running battle with vast numbers of the U.S. Army, and who could have held out indefinately with their superior knowledge of the terrain and innate climatisation. When he did seek terms of surrender all the Chiricaoa were sent to military detention in Florida; all being unjustly punished for the acts of the few of the raiding parties. That lasted about 15 years before they were split into three reservation in their native lands, or Oklamoma, where Geromimo died of exposure after falling off of a wagon while drunk on White Man's whisky. The Utes [which just means 'the people']of Colorado were teepee dwellers like most Plains Indians who followed the buffalo and other game.
Treaties were seldom honored by Whites if mineral weath was found in lands mentioned in the treaties. Reservations usually consisted of land least suitable to white farmers and then shrank if gold or silver was found. Predominantly the arid lands of of the south are where most reservations are to be found. Oklahoma was designated as 'Indian Country', but Arizona is where the largest reservations are: the Navajo and Hopi largest of these, which overlap State lines into Utah and New Mexico. San Carlos [Apache], and Papago reservations cover half as much land, and five smaller parcels of land make up the rest. Zuni land joins the Navajo land in New Mexico, south of Farmington. The Apache were split into three: Jicarillo Apache in the north, Mescalero Apache near Roswell and Chiricauhas mainly at San Carlos with four smaller parcels of land. The Mountain Ute are in South Colorado and Uintah and Ouray Utes in the north of Utah. The Goshute straddle the the Utah-Nevada State line. Nevada has four small reservations and Oklahoma only has four small ones left. California has 24 very small reservations. Two of the Oklahoma reservations were intended for Cheyanne and Arapaho Coloradans, but the Cheyenne staged a marathon walk back to their ancestral territory. Natives have not been confined to resevations for many years but many choose to stay on them to avoid contact with Whites.
Reservations were an anathema to tribes who previously knew no boundaries and followed the game's seasonal migrations and a death to away of life they had known. U.S rations were poor, manipulated by agents and health suffered to the point of starvation at times. White mans whisky was an addictive poison for many. Schools were run by missionaries, who cut hair, introduced uniforms, taught by means of punishment not encouragement and banned native dances, ritual and even language, for fifty years before legislation began to recognise native rights, especially as Indians were asked to fight for the country but didn't have the vote. However the education did work ultimately in their favour as now they can fight with lawyers instead of guns and bows. And fight they must to this day as water supplies are threatened by corporate might enforced with private armies that wants to put oil pipelines across Dakota in 2016.
Apart from meagre arable land used mostly to graze livestock, especially sheep, the Native Americans of the South West do make a good living from their craft skills, which are highly collectable: pottery, jewellery, especially silver and tuquoise work, basketry, woven rugs and clothing, either woven or from animal skins. Rugs and painted adaptions of traditional designs received from, and used to invoke, spirits in ephemeral sand paintings, now glued sand collages, are all higly prized. The Navajo especially are skilled craftspeople.
Native traditional beliefs and associated practices which Jung found to support his ideas on archetypes while amongst the natives were reflected in the arts and also in their way of live. The multi symmetrical patterns which he found worldwide and called mandalas, of psychic wholeness, after their Tibetan, manifestations, not only appeared in the art but their life orientation to the five directions of the compass, as well as above, the four seasons, and times of day, are reflected in their dwellings: the entrance is always in the East to greet the rising Sun and seating places within relate to the directions, whether they be in a teepee, wikiups, hogans, or sweat lodges for purification related to Swedish saunas through Eurasian shamanic practices. Sun dances held by Plains Indians to test bravery and stamina revolve around a central poles around which braves dance while skewered with bones through the chest muscles attached by leather thongs to the pole, starting in the East and continuing until the flesh tears free. Pueblo Indians line those of Taos, the Hopi and Zuni all conduct their rituals in a subterranian circular pits called Kivas with the same orientation. Above ground Pueblo Indians dress in the costumes of their spirits to dance dances given to them by the spirits and make dolls of them too, both are called Katchinas. All to the sound of the drum, whistle and rattle. Solitary vision quests are a rite of passage for young warriors to be granted a vision of their life destiny, and include fasting. Medicine Menare those that have been identified by their visions and not only preserve herb lore but advise on health and destiny. Medicine has a different meaning to that used in Europe and is more akin to good fortune, which is often tested by gambling. The sacred pipe, smoked on ceremonial occasions, and filled with inner willow bark, tobacco, kinnicinnik, and sweet grass, are the centre of the Circle of the nation. A big pow-wow of many local tribes takes place every year at the Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs.
Mountain men were Whites who learned from the natives and served as guides for settlers and army and often as fur traders. Every year in the hills above Denver there is a Mountain Man Festival, which my other step-brother, Paul and his wife Mary took me to once. Its a bit like the re-enactment societies in England that have sprung up over recent years, and folk wander between tents and teepees dressed in buckskin or other period clothing, Paul and Mary included, but not Joe and I, selling crafts and indulging Old Time pastimes. Paul's old four wheel drive got stuck in mud on the way home and we thought we might have to share an abandoned shack with a grizzly bear that night but did manage to get enough wood under the wheels for grip and the engine firing at the right time to get going before a search party was sent out. Mike did have to come and rescue me and Alice after a collision up in the mountains after visiting an old mining town. That left Alice in a neck brace in a mountain clinic all afternoon waiting for Mike, and the car was a write off. There is a Hollywood Western town left after filming up near the Black Canyon, which from a bridge, the Royal Bridge, looking down looks like a cartoon one, where characters droop endlessly until they create a tiny splash in the river, that looks like a stream at the bottom a half a mile below. In the town they now stage 'gunfights' and 'hangings' for tourists. I've been driven in the motor caravan in raging storms with cracking lightning beside mountain pass rivers about to burst their banks and as the lightning cracked and asked Mike “Is this safe?”, only to be told “Yeah, rubber tires!”.......and lived to tell the tale!
My father died at Pikes Peak Hospice in 1993 while I was there. That was my last visit.
PICS ABOVE:
Taos Pueblo
Mesa Verde
Kachina Doll
Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs
'Trading Post' near Canyon City, film set Cowboy Town.
Traveller's Tales: INDIA. John Power.
Having had my appetite for world travel whetted in the American Mid-West and also having teamed up with a new partner who also enjoyed travelling the world it seemed, by 1997, time to consolidate the connection I had had with India for nearly 30 years. When many of my contemporaries had hit the overland Hippie trail to India in the '60s and '70s I was personally embroiled in a world of nappies and divorce, which dominated finances for years to come. I had established instead a correspondence with two British ex-pats living in India, initially by subscribing to a magazine produced by one, a Scot called John Spiers, who lived in Kerala, South India. Apart from the philosophical content of the magazine, John also taught me serious [as opposed to tabloid] astrology. One of the magazine's contributors was a Londoner, known to the locals in Gujarat, North West India, where he lived, and was known as Dadaji Mahendranath. He eventually went on to teach me the techniques of Tantrik yoga. By the time of our first Indian trip both John and Dadaji were dead, so visiting either part of the sub-continent wasn't going to yield a meeting with either person. I had in any event met Dadaji in London when he returned for a few months about ten years before he died. I had painted portraits of both characters and so our mission on the trip was to deliver the one of John to the Narayana Guru Ashram where he had lived in Kerala.
Any first visit to India is bound to yield a fair degree of culture shock to travellers. The first experience of that will be Indian roads, where the law is that the largest prevails. That usually means trucks, but you are equally likely to encounter elephants. Both are given great respect as elephants are holy animals to Hindus. That is also the case with cows, which are free to roam between the already chaotic and very overcrowded roads. Cars are of limited designs, usually old English makes by firms who have sold the jigs for their making to Indian companies. The Morris Oxford is most common. Three-wheeled tuk-tuks are common as taxis or as small commercial vehicles. Scooters and motorbikes are plentiful and whole families can be seen on them: man driving, woman on pillion, kiddy between them and often dogs on footplates of scooters. The concept of overloading other goods seems completely absent on push bikes and most other vehicles. For a Westerner the impression is that you are taking your life into your own hands when travelling these roads. These remarks are especially true on coastal roads servicing ports, but much less hair-raising once you get up into the picturesque hills. At least the lorries are highly decorated unlike our plain functional variety, and all part of the colourful outlook of Indians. The belief in re-incarnation generally seems to make Indians less worried about the safety of their lives. Another example is bamboo poles, lashed with rope, which they use as scaffolding. Health and Safety has made few inroads into Indian working practices.
The capital of Kerala State is Trivandranum, or to give it its full name Thiruvanthapurnam, Anglicised for obvious reasons. The capital is not what you would expect to go with such a title, as stone buildings, due to climate and resulting algae, soon become patchy black in discolouration. Bamboo and improvised shacks fill the gaps between the more pemanent looking buildings as dwellings for the population. The dominant building is that of the God, Lord Siva, built in the Dravidian style of sharply rising heavily sculpted pyramids, which vary from the Northerly Aryan style. The algae discolouration makes the temple look run down but sculptural repairs make it clear it is well maintained. The bamboo scaffold climbing masons must feel like mountaineers. In all liklihood it was all colourfully painted once, as is the norm, but monsoons and tropical storms have long since weathered this away. The gatehouse bears a central image of Ganesh, Siva's elephant-headed son and the whole edifice is richly painted, at a height that does not require scaffold monkey tricks to put on new coats of paint. In the courtyard craftsmen carve souvenir size sculptures and trinket sellers ply their wares. In the evening we were treated to a performance by a quartet of sitar and tabla drum musicians in the hotel restaurant.
During a day dominated by jet lag we were given an excursion to Periyar Wildlife Park, the centre of which is an artificial lake used as a reservoir, so numerous dead trees rose up out of the water. The ferries used to take visitors along the lake to view wild elephants, including their young, wild boar, and a variety of bird life, had seen better days, and the familiar feeling of taking our lives into our hands returned. Jet lag soon overtook me as I fell asleep and ceased to think about drowning.
The following day saw us heading for the railway station en route to the spice growing regions of the Cardomon Hills [we'd call them mountains]. On the Eastern side, in Tamil Nadu, they are known as the Niligiri Hills. We were told that we were in First Class, but no Westerner would recognise this dignification, with hard seats and worn décor. Hawkers wandered through carriages offering Indian snacks to those brave enough to face the hygiene regime and threat of Delhi belly. The views of cottages nestled in semi jungle or open paddy fields were picturesque. On arrival at the station we boarded a mini bus with a few others and with relief found the roads less busy as we headed into the hills.
We were heading for a town called Munnar, but en route stopped for lunch, again to musical accompaniment, this time by flute, Krishna's favourite instrument, before carrying on to a tree house hotel. Young children were coming out of school and all asked us for biros for school work, a request often made as we travelled. So if you're planing a trip, go prepared with these as gifts. We also enountered migrant workers from Tamil Nadu who walked many miles to do picking and back again at night. The following day we saw fruit, spice, cocoa and rubber taping plantations. As we went higher we were surrounded by tea plantations of bushes that stretched for miles while ladies toiled all day as music was blared across the fields to lessen their leaf picking labours. While stopping for a tea break we saw a young couple building a new house. The guide said the ground had to be exorcised as the previous dwelling was lived in by an old witch.
In Munnar it was a very colourful time, as a festival was in progress. Hindus need little excuse to have a festival. This one centred on a hilltop temple dedicated to Morugan, second son of Siva and the Goddess Parvati. We investigated the temple the following day, through shutters, as the edifice was locked, with no priest in residence, but we could clearly see a vast array of mythological murals. In the evening we realised we were running short of money, and were told that there was a hotel elsewhere in town which would cash travellers cheques, so set of in the dark amidst the crowds milling around, presumably for the festival. No luck finding the hotel, but we provided the curious locals with entertainment wondering why we were wandering about at that hour. The nearer the equator you get the more equal day and night are, so its usually dark by 7 pm, with no street lighting. Our own hotel overlooked tin shacks that were people's homes, and that gave us an uncomfortable feeling about the stark contrasts created by the caste system, even though it is supposedly illegal now. The following day we pushed further up into the hills to another wildlife sanctuary, home to a tiny species of deer, called the Niligiri thar, and did manage to spot one through binoculars. Near the top of the hills we could see a freak of nature in the distance, called Elephant Mountain, where a huge natural image of the front view an elephant can amazingly be discerned.
From Munnar our route, after a visit to a bank, was back down more quiet mountain roads through picturesque scenery to the coast, and to the again crazy roads that led to the ancient port of Cochin, which has been the centre of international spice trade since before the Romans. Enormous ancient wooden cantilevers operating fishing nets fill one side of the dock and are the legacy of Chinese engineering of a bygone age. The port is also home to a group of surprising immigrants, or rather refugees, from biblical times. A Jewish quarter was established by those fleeing one of their enslavements: that by King Nebucadrezzar of Babylon. There is also a church dedicated to apostle St. Peter who was said to have gone there to evangelise after the crucifixtion, and established what is now known as Thomas Christianity. Later churches were built by the Portuguese during their colonial occupation, which included Goa, further to the north on this west coast. On our first evening we were treated to the costume dance and drama of a Kathakali performance.
Further manic roads took us next Alleppy, on the edge of the lagoons and canals where rice boats once plied their trade. The same boats have more recently been taken over for tourists to hire, along with a pilot and chef. We only took a sort trip to an island resort, to find there was no bar on the island without another walk in the dark, without made up roads. The scenery and native homes were spectacular, but the lack of cold lager was an omission of some import, as was the lack of air conditioning in the ornate teak cabins that made it impossible to sleep because of the heat, and us too weary to appreciate the further wildlife of the area in the morning haze.
The following day we split from friends who chose to go to the beach resort of Varkala, which is fast becoming a Hippie hangout like Goa, while we and a few others headed for the beaches of Kovalam, further south.
At the hotel in Kovalam another culture shock awaited us, in the shape of Marxist posters opposite the building. Kerala is an elected Communist State; one of two in India. If we tired of the hotel food there was plenty more choice in the numerous beach bars, which again mimic Goa's beaches. They could be better for lighting too, being equipped with lamps and bottled gas cookers. Mains electricity was rationed and often the hotel was plunged into darkness for an hour or so and had to depend on lamps and candles too. The hotel pool had a submarinal bar on the customers side and provided a good way of keeping cool, sitting on a stool up to your waist in water drinking cold lager. The beach was functional too, lined with long dug-out boats, as tiny children, well accustomed to the gigantic waves from the Arabian Sea swam fearlessly. Lighthouse Beach, named for obvious reasons, was a more built-up resort with souvenir shops and plumbed-in cafes and bars, just the other side of a rocky outcrop, but easily accessible for more variety of choice as we wandered the area, where we also found the post office to post John Spiers portrait to the ashram. We could hear explosions as we walked, which turned out to be rock blasting. Lorries brought the rock to the roadside, where men with sledge hammers reduced the pieces to smaller rocks, while ladies under woven palm leaf shades used hammers to reduce them to shingle to surface the road. Brenda worked as a Road Traffic Engineer at that time. The ladies seemed to sense a certain inequity to there kind of road engineering and a western one that enabled flights to far of beach resorts! Our walks made us miss an excursion to Cape Cormorin, India's most southerly tip before Sri Lanka to go to another festival, but there was everywhere much of interest, so we didn't feel we'd missed out, before we had to face the crazy roads again to Trivandranum Airport. Things may have changed there since 1997 but with my observations of rural India, I doubt it.
Travellers Tales: NEPAL. John Power
National boundaries are man made and when considering a visit to North India and matching it to a long held desire to visit neighbouring Nepal in the foothills of the Himalayas, we decided that there would be little difference between the two and so chose Nepal. Gautama Buddha, although often thought of as Indian, was born just over the border in Nepal. So in 2001, long before the devastating earthquake of 2014, we boarded another long haul flight to the capital, Kathmandu, via one change at an Arab airport that escapes my memory.
Kathmandu is still well behind the West in curbing pollutant car exhausts, and its roads are crowded, but not to the extent of those we experiencd in South India. Fortunately the historic centres are all pedestrian precincts. It does exhibit a peaceful co-existence of Hindus and Buddhists, also found throughout the country, since many Buddhist refugees fled there in the 1950s at the time of the Communist invasion of Chairman Mao's Red Army. Tibetan Vayrayana Buddhism is historically linked to Hinduism. It feels like you are getting two cultures for the price of one. Oddly the only ideological conflict is along the border with China where Marxist terrorists have given police and army trouble in their intention to bring an end to the Nepalese monarchy, which ultimately they did contribute to, although not to the point of Nepal becoming a Communist State.
The city of Kathmandu is really the ammalgamation of two towns: itself to the north of the Bagmati River and Lalitpur, or Patan to the south of the river. Both have royal palaces, Durbar Squares, and a host of temples dedicated to a variety of Gods, Goddesses and religious figures. Without the dogma of monotheism people are left to relate to the deity as befits their own nature. Lalitpur is the artistic centre, producing pottery and sculpture for tourists and to export, although thanka [religious icon] painters can be seen working in shop windows throughout the city. Originally this work would have been done by monks. The pottery quarter is an amazing feat of low-tech activity. Old lorry wheels are mounted on their sides and made to spin by putting a large stick in beween their cast iron 'spokes' and turning the wheel up to a speed when lumps of clay can be stuck in the middle and worked quickly before the wheel loses speed. The kilns are open sheds with little more that open fires bricked into them. When we were there roofs had collapsed owing to the heat on the brick pillars supporting them. Out of control fires were quite common apparently.
Pagodas were actually first built in Nepal, but then imported into China where they became better known because of the country's position as a terminus of the Silk Road routes. The city is resplendant with many of these, temples, and other ornate buildings with lavish stone and wood carvings, often erotic in nature as this was never a cause for prudery in the culture, but rather of fertility, or yogic techniques. Bodnath Buddhist temple to the North of town is similarly large, but consists of a large canvas looking dome construction painted with an all-encompassing lotus design. It was built by Tibetan refugees and is the main centre of their community. We visited their craft workshops nearby. Pilgrims can be seen circling the construction for three revolutions, some prostrating themselves as they do it, while others whirl prayer wheels. At the other extreme there is temple dedicated to Bhadra Kali which still practices animal sacrifice, or did in 2001. But one resident, a big black goat refused to submit to the priest's plans and lives on there as a pet. In Durbar Square a temple is dedicated to the virgin Goddess Kumari, who is embodied by a sucession of young girls that only leave the building once every year for their procession, until they reach menstruation and are replaced by another girl from the goldsmith's clan. Gorksnath, who largely invented hatha yoga as a monastic health regime, is the patron, a deified human who's statues are found at many locations covered in red powder placed there by cermonial respect.
Further north of the city lies Pashupatinath [Siva, Lord of the animals] Temple. Which is the country's largest Hindu temple. It stands on the banks of the Bagmati River, which is a tributary of the Ganges. Between the temple and river are the cremation ghats where all local Hindus are reduced to ashes before being cast into the river as it flows to the Ganges. We witnessed the cremation of a young woman when we were there. Even the Royal family meet such an end there. Inside the temple is a huge stone phallic symbol called a Siva Linga, which only Hindus are allowed to visit and pay respect to. On the other bank of the river is a large building which is an occasional, or sometimes long time, home of rest for travelling Sadhus, the holy dropouts with matted hair, and little else in the way of belongings, who wander in spiritual contemplation, often aided by smoking copious amounts of ganga [Indian Hemp.]
Swayambunath Temple complex stands on the north-west outskirts of Kathmandu on what is said to once have been an island. It certainly towers over the surrounding landscape. Although now reachable by road one entrance has a veritable mountain of steps to be climbed to reach the top plateau, where Buddhist and Hindu temples co-exist happily. These include a Monkey Temple, residence of a host of our near evolutionary relatives. Feeding them is pretty much obligatory.
When we had soaked up the sights and sounds of Kathmandu and Lalitpur our route took us east to Bhaktapur and to the foothills that gave a view of Mount Everest, on a good day. We only saw clouds in front of where the famously highest mountain stands. Bhaktapur is also an ancient, well established town, somewhat smaller than the capital, due to an earthquake in 1934. But many grand buildings survive including a Siva temple, a Dattreya temple, a Tree temple, a Naga pool: devoted to water spirits, and its own Royal Square. Shree Padma School has to be amongst the most elaborately decorated school in the world, as its function changed from a former use, leaving ornate carvings around the exterior. Nagacot is an outpost of the town up in the mountains where we experienced the celebrations for Nepalese New Year, at an unlikely time not related to Western or Chinese New Year, although presumably based on a lunar calendar as it certainly wasn't the solar equinox. Dhulikiel was another mountain resort famous for views of Everest, where we only saw clouds. But we were repaid by dazzling panoramic views of the Kathmandu Valley. It was the closest we got to Tibet, where roads pass through deep gorges like that of San Koshi and where friendly trade with China passes through.
From Dhulikiel we turned back west with a destination of Pokora where the Annapurna range of mountains were clearly visible, including a forked peak mountain know as Fishtail mountain. The road took us back through the outskirts of Katmandu and then on to long and twisting roads often overlooking sheer drops into valleys beside the road. Added to this, for the last third of the journey we found ouselves in a torrentially blinding rainstorm, which the driver took in his stride, even if we didn't, until we reached our lakeside hotel. From there we took several excursions locally, like one to Devi falls, a spectacular ravine favoured by locals for suicides as self sacrifice to the Goddess. On another mountain ride we were again caught in a torrential downpour, this time walking, but luckily near a house where the locals offered us shelter and food, for which they expected no payment, that we gave to younger membersof the family instead. A similar mountain ride took us to a village which revealed the unexpected sight of a prison as we alked around. The buildings were mainly made of corrugated iron and must have made the incarceration even more unpleasant in the hot seasons. Whilst in the area we made the mistake of asking what the locals drunk, and found it was home-made rice beer, which one kind soul produced for us to try, but in glasses and a jug that looked like they hadn't been washed in a long time, and sure enough, the following day we were laid low with bad cases of food poisoning. Fortunately in Pokara town, which we had already visited, they had a chemist able to sell antibiotics without a prescription, which is the system in Nepal. However the return journey to Katmandu did still involve several 'comfort stops'. Nevertheless the deep ravine side that the road ran along, near to the Buddha's birthplace, did provide much more stunning scenery, and included the swaying rope footbridges across the ravine that one of the Indiana Jones films featured. Then it was an overnight stay in the capital and the return flight.
A few days after our return to England we were stunned to hear the news that most of the Royal family had been gunned down by the drunken crown prince because the King and Queen would not let him marry the bride of his choice. He had then turned the gun on himself and died a day or two later. The old King had been well loved but the crown wound up passing to someone who had previously been about 15th in line, and who proved to be very unpopular, so the monarchy was eventually dissolved, to some extent in response to the communist activites designed to encourage the abolishion, which became popular to counteract the King's unpopularity. The country is now a republic.
Travellers Tales: Egypt. John Power
Our two visits to Egypt were not both planned. The first came about on the spur of the moment when we were visiting Cyprus. Larnaca is the only airport on the island, and from there we bused to Paphos, a more sedate part of the island for old codgers like us, and booked into the Roman Hotel, complete with its own sculptor, who had chiselled away at large blocks of stone to create centurians and other Roman figures to decorate the the front and garden of the hotel. Nearby were the 'Tombs of the Kings', actually native aristocrats, not kings, also carved from solid rock, but underground, dating back to the 4th century B.C.E. and hence through the era of the Roman Empire, but once housing the remains of local nobels from the area in subterranean edifices the size of large rooms that would have kept masons busy for long periods of time. We also visited an artist's colony in the Trudos mountains, once the hideout of Greek freedom fighters in the Independence struggle of the 1950s and subsequent disputes with Turkish Cypriots after Independence in 1960. Since those colonial times and those of post colonial conflicts, until early in the 21st century, the island became divided into a Turkish North, and Greek South where we were, before the border was finally abandoned to free movement. While in Paphos we saw adverts for overnight cruises to the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and thought we could make two holidays out of one.
So, having booked places on one of the ships, we set off again to the south coast, to the port of Limassol and checked on to the vessel. The overnight journeys to and fro began with evening cabarets. After these we found our way into the bowels of the hull and the cheapest communal bunk areas, amid the rather incredulous workmen from Greece and Egypt. In the morning we awoke in Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, and after breakfast, disembarked past the souvenir hawkers to a rather shabby coach to go south across the Egyptian Western Desert with a jeep and its machine gun escort. These were still unsettled times after conflict with Israel, and several tourists had also been shot the previous year at Queen Hetshepsut's temple by Islamic extremists.
Once in Cairo we went directly to Giza, after negotiating the manic road traffic and admiring the scenery of part finished houses around the outskirts. Loans are forbidden by Islamic law, so families have to save up and build homes one room at a time. So ample scaffold and palm leaves are a common decoration.. All the tourist literature and screen ads always shows the pyramids and sphynx against a backdrop of the desert, but if the cameras swivelled in the opposite direction they would show the outskirts of Cairo, and the Sphynx is, after thousands of years, staring at a Pizza Hut restaurant! We wandered around the Sphynx complex which was relatively enclosed and free of hawkers. The Sphynx's age is far older than the Pyramids, themselves from 5000 years old, and it may once have had a different face, that one of the Pharoahs had chiselled into his image. It later lost its nose to Napoleon's army using it for target practice. Once visitors get beyond the Sphynx complex and move towards the Pyramids hawkers are constant pests, offering souvenirs, photos with, or rides on, camels, in a very persistent manner as is the Egyptian attitude to selling, which often proves counter-productive with Westerners. The Great Pyramid is said to have been built for Pharoah Cheops, while the medium size one, with a few remaining stone facing slabs remaining, after others were used to help build Cairo, was built for Pharoah Chephren, and the smallest for Mykerinos. They are thought to reflect the positions of the three most northerly stars of the Orian constellation. They are surrounded by smaller pyramids for Queen Consorts, and even an excavated boat. It is still a matter of debate as to whether any of the structures were built as mausaleums or for ritual and astronomical purposes. We didn't have enough time to explore far into the Great Pyramid, which was a pity, but the coach wanted us all back by a certain time in order to visit the Cairo Museum and an outlet for replicas of papyrus paintings. It would be impossible to do justice to the contents of the museum in a few words, but obviously for anyone with an interest in ancient history it is a magnificent feast for the eyes, written in stone, heiroglyphs and and grave goods for mummies. Several were later stollen during the unrest that accompanied the 'Arab Spring' uprising. The papyrus factory was purely a commmercial outlet, but informative about how Nile reeds have been soaked, woven, crushed and pressed into some of the world's earliest paper, painted with coloured minerals. Then back across the desert, the return cruise, Paphos, Larnica airport, and back to blighty.
EGYPT 2: The Nile Cruise:
Having had our appetites whetted for the glories that were once Ancient Europe, a couple of years later, in 2009, we booked up for another cruise, but in a different smaller craft: one of the great fleet that ferry tourists south from Luxor down the Nile to the Aswan High Dam, built to create a reservoir, upstream to control irregation and supply hydro-electric power since the 1950s. In so doing it cut off the annual innundation to the more northerly reaches of the Nile that had been brought about by the flood waters of the African rainy season washing down the fertile soil to the river banks that created the civilisation inside the surrounding desert. Since the building of the dam it is controlled irregation that keeps the fertile foreshores as arable land.
The plane arrived at Luxor on the Eastern shore of the Nile, just over halfway between the Mediterranean Sea and the dam. That places it near the old capital of Thebes and its enormous complex of temples, dedicated to the God Amoun, [as in the ending of the so-called Lord's Prayer, which was originally the State Prayer to Amoun]. A long avenue of sculpted ram-headed sphynxes leads into it. We didn't visit the complex before the cruise began but visited once we had returned to Luxor. Also before, rather than after, the boat journey we were bused to the to the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in the mountains on the western shore. There lies Tutankhamun, although his gilded coffin and grave goods are in the Cairo Museum. 60 other kings so far found, were also buried there, mostly identified but some still to be named. The tombs date back to from 1600 B.C.E. up to the Greek and Roman occupations. The subterranean edifices are as huge and baffling to science as the Pyramids, supposedly chiselled by hand with nothing more than frequently sharpened copper chisels. We visited three or four of these empty but highly decorated human made caves. I can only remember the name of one, that was Rameses IV. There is a smaller Valley of the Queens over the crest of the hill to the south west, but we didn't visit that. We did, however visit the extensive mauseleum and temple of probably the most powerful queen that Egypt knew, that of Hatshepsut, that she had built just south of Thebes on the east bank around 1515 B.C.E. The temple is dedicated to Hathor, the cow Goddess, representing female power, with human face but cow's ears. As regent for her young son she dressed as a man, complete with false beard, and continued to dominate affairs even when her son was grown.
Obviously the ship was not a full sized steamer but a smaller craft suited to the river, otherwise mainly populated with traditional dao sailing boats. It probably held about three dozen people including crew and staff as well as an archaeologist guide to temples and heiroglyphs, with two levels on top including a deck with pool and loungers, and with berths below. Staff included fine cooks and waiters as well as sailors and put on entertainments when moored up in the evenings. We first went to Esna on the west bank to visit a temple dedicated to Khumn, a Ram God, patron of potters. Only the hyperstyle hall remains of the ancient building. Beside it is a smaller water barrier than the Aswan Dam, and we had to navigate a lock to pass through it. The next stop was at the well preserved Temple of Horus at Edfu, about 25 miles futher south on the same shore. Horus is a Hawk God and two giant hawk statues guard the entrance to the inner chambers of the temple under huge columns, while relief carvings decorate the walls with mythological scenes. Next, Kom Ombo on the east bank is a sanctuary from the time of Tuthmoses, [the era of biblical Moses], but which was rebuilt in the times of Greco-Roman occupation. Only stumps of columns remain. The route then took us another 35miles past Elephantine Island, a more modern retreat for latterday nobility, opposite a mauseleum for the last Aga Khan, head of the Ismaili Islamic sect, 15 miles before the Aswan Dam. The travellers had been warned to observe local dress prohibitions but when we docked on the opposite shore for a town visit, one woman went ashore alone in a blouse and shorts and was surprised that she had to fend off advances from young locals and return to the ship quickly. Exits from sites of interest usually had souvenir and clothe stores, and with the customary persistant salesmen, and disrespect for women, at another stop Brenda was coerced to the point of argument just for browsing, causing two men to have to hold back their abusive co-salesman, as she too had to make her escape.
At the Aswan Dam we went ashore nearby in order to explore the Temple of Isis at Philae, on its own island by the east bank, which was in an amazingly good state of repair for such an ancient building, with 16 columns still supporting the massive cross beams that had held the roof, surrounded by huge plants and walkways. Isis was accepted into the Roman pantheon of deities and this may explain how the structure survived so well. The dam was an impressive structure, but marked the point of return for our journey, after a day with an optional day trip to visit the colossal statues of Rameses II, originally at Abu Simbel, but moved to escape the dam's flood waters.
The return voyage could be best described as plain sailing, as we made no further stops until nearing Luxor. The time was devoted to sunbathing, dips in the pool and enjoying the lush riverside scenery. The last stop was just north of where we began the cruise on the west bank, at the Temple of Denderah, again dedicated to the cow Goddess, Hathor. It was in good repair with pillars of Goddess images still standing in front of an intact building. One ceiling had once contained a carved relief of an elaborate zodiac, itself a later edition, but replaced by a casting of the original, after that had been plundered by those legal tomb robbers that are agents for museums. At least that is more than English looter Lord Elgin or the British Museum did for Greece after they removed the marble staues that faced the front of the Parthenon's roof in Athens. Once we were ashore finally the most impressive temple complex was saved for last: the Temples of Karnak from the era when Thebes was capital of the New Kingdom [1567-1085 B.C.E.] The entrance way is lined with an avenue of ram sphynxs leading to the 'City of Palaces', as invading Arabs called it, most of which survive in a variety of states of repair. Most roofs have gone but the giant columns that supported them are too numerous to count.. Huge sculptures of Rameses II, with his Queen, Nefertari, or commemorating his battle with the Hittites, of what is now Turkey, stand guard at multiple locations. There were needles like the one called 'Cleopatra's Needle' [which it never was] in London, originally including a pair, but one of those was shipped to the State Capital in Washington, U.S.A. Temples in the complex, and beyond, even stretching to the other shore of the Nile include one begun by Amenhotep; the Ramasseum, also commemorating the Battle of Quadesh against the Hittites; one for Amenhotep III with remains including the Collosi of Memnon, which are two enormous but well weathered seated figures.
We saw the Collosi of Memnon close up en route to one last surprise that Brenda organised on our last day in Luxor, that of a hot air balloon ride. A minibus took us past them on the west bank. The balloons utilise the hot air currents rising from the desert in the morning heat to glide over the Valley of the Queens giving a panoramic view over the whole Theban complex, Luxor and the lush riverbank surrroundings. The pilot was proud to show us his Blue Peter badge, which he was given when his ballon featured in that Children's T.V. Programme! The next time we took to the air it was from Luxor Airport.
