Random Rambles

From Kerman, we continue up the road. In the village of Fahraj is one of the oldest mosques in Iran.

It has that plainness of most early-period religious buildings, before they turn into palaces.

Next stop is Meymand village, where people live in caves.

There is an underground mosque.

Reminds us of Matmata in Tunisia.

We have been traveling in Saeed’s car since Shiraz. Back on the road, we greet a truck full of friendly field workers.

Daily we are pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and welcoming attitude of Iranians. Good thing we have Saeed with us: everyone is curious about how we find Iran, but few people speak English.

Arriving at the Zeinodinn caravanserai, where we spend the night. Caravanserais were inns – located about 30 KMs apart – where travelers would spend the night.

It’s on the old Silk Road.

This is the corridor lined with rooms.

Next day, we arrive in the desert city of Yazd.

Like many desert places, it’s pretty conservative.

Zoroastrianism has a visible presence in Yazd. Zoroastrianism was the religion of all classical Persia before the arrival of Islam in the 7th century.

Inside is a fire said to have been burning since 470 AD. It was first lit in the time of the Sassanian Empire.

Close to town are two Towers of Silence, where Zoroastrians used to expose their dead.

From the top, you get a good view of Yazd.

We attend a session of zoorkhaneh, which is part sport, part exercise, part theatre, part religious ceremony.

Maria dons an obligatory chador when we visit the Shazdeh Fazel shrine.

We visit the water museum. Of course, water has always been a concern in the arid parts of Iran.

In the heat of the afternoon, the Dowlat Abad Gardens beckon.

The tower is a windcatcher. Many buildings in Yazd have them.

Next day, we stop in the town of Varzaneh to see the old bridge.

There’s also an ancient pigeon tower.

The interior is remarkable.

In days of yore, the dung was collected and used on the fields.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Across the street from our hotel in Yazd is a girl’s school.

It’s difficult to understand the motive for the startling difference between what men can wear (virtually anything) and what women and girls can wear (the more concealing, the better).

This is taken from an Iranian talk show on the TV in our room.

You can barely hear the poor woman’s mumbled responses.

After a day visiting Persepolis and Pasargadae, we stay in a small local place (the Ojagh e Seyyed Karim Inn) in the village of Saadat Shahr. It’s run by a family of friendly women.

We’re treated to an impromptu concert from Saeed and a fellow guide.

The next day, we drive to the Lut Desert.

On the way, we pass through Rafsanjan. Rafsanjan is a major centre for the production of pistachios.

We see some nomads along the road.

On arrival, we stay in an oasis.

The accommodation is in tents, but they’re pretty snazzy. And fully air-conditioned: this is one of the hottest places on Earth.

The village of Shahdad is the last village before the desert. We stop to check out its arg. This may sound like pirate-speak, but an arg is a fortress-like structure. There are many in Iran.

There are women selling crafts at the entrance. We purchase a beautifully-embroidered Tree of Life.

We continue into the desert and see these formations called kaluts.

We come across a pair of camels waiting patiently. No sign of their caretaker.

We love deserts. We can barely contain our enthusiasm.

Lots of wide open spaces as we drive to Kerman.

In Mahan, we go to the shrine of Shah Nematollah Vali, a 14th-century Sufi mystic.

People in Iran are so honest. When we are unsure of what things cost, we hand over our wallet and the merchant delicately extracts the exact amount and hands the wallet back. This is very different from India.

(Money can be confusing here: besides a lot of zeros, costs are sometimes in rials and sometimes in tomans.)

We have lunch at the lush and lovely Shazdeh Garden.

We make another stop in Reyan to explore the fortress there.

Notice my new hat – the fourth for this trip so far. I left my latest one on the plane to Calcutta.

The city is at least 1,000 years old. People were living in it up to 150 years ago.

It’s a great place to simply wander around.

Near Kerman, we pass through some very Australian-looking scenery.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We see this unlikely sight in the village of Shahdad.

Near the oasis that we stay at is this BAE jet aircraft incongruously parked – well, in the middle of nowhere. It looks like it just landed, but there are no runways around that we can see. We try to wrangle an explanation from locals. One says it was ‘landed here by a crazy pilot’.

In Tehran, Justin from New Zealand joins our little group. We take an overnight train to Shiraz.

The train is one of the most comfortable we’ve been on in a long time.

Early next morning, we arrive in Shiraz.

Saeed is happy because Shiraz is his home town – he gets to see his family.

We enjoy a breakfast of local bread and ‘ash‘ (pronounced ‘osh’ as in ‘OshKosh B’gosh’.

First stop is the Nasir-ol-molk mosque.

It’s famous for its stained-glass windows, which tourists love to photograph.

The unlit side is where the serious praying gets done

The streets are alive with commerce.

The Qavam House has a beautiful garden. Gardens are a Persian specialty.

The alleys provide shelter from the sun.

We go for a stroll in the the UNESCO-listed Eram Garden.

Shiraz is the home of our tour company, Pars Tourist Agency. We drop in to meet the people Maria has been in regular email contact with for two months.

We come across the Vakil Mosque.

The courtyard is burning hot.

But it’s refreshingly cool inside.

Most Iranian mosques are covered in colourful tiles. Easy to see where the carpet patterns come from. Or maybe it’s the other way around?

We visit the mausoleum of the poet Hafez, one of Shiraz’s most famous sons.

He would be disappointed by the absence of wine in modern-day Shiraz.

Sight or Insight of the Day

I’ve had a lifelong interest in visiting Persepolis. I can now cross that off my bucket list.

It’s constructed from house-trailer-sized blocks of stone.

Alexander the Great is supposed to have burnt it down in 330 BC. What remains brings to mind the poem Ozymandias.

The main gate has fascinating graffiti from the past.

Up the road at Pasargadae is the tomb of Cyrus the Great.

This pillar from his palace reminds us of the monolith in ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey‘.

Inscribed on the pillar is ‘I am Cyrus the king, an Achaemenid’ in Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian.

We board our Oman Air flight in Delhi for Tehran, via Muscat.

This is what Oman looks like from the air.

We are greeted by the jovial Saeed, our guide for the next three weeks. On the way into town from Imam Khomeini Airport, we pass the mausoleum and shrine of the great man himself.

Tehran looks like Manhattan in comparison to the post-nuclear apocalypse appearance of Indian cities.

There are street signs and clean sidewalks, well-kept boulevards, plentiful trees and parks. And lots of carpets.

Our hotel is near Ferdowsi Square. Ferdowsi is the Persian poet and author of the Shahnameh.

People in Iran are very welcoming and generous. While strolling through Laleh Park, we meet this friendly couple who offer us tea and sweets.

We discover that many people are like this here. Iranian honesty and openness is a refreshing change from the daily harassment and hustling we experience in the last few months.

We visit the National Museum of Iran.

This gold cup is interesting. Decorated with three lions in single file, the heads are riveted onto the body for a 3D effect. It’s from the Necropolis of Kalardasht, near the Caspian Sea.

We also drop in on Golestan Palace.

Tehran is an interesting blend of old and new.

There are many inspirational billboards throughout Tehran.

We go up the Milad Tower for a panoramic view of the city.

So that’s it – a quick roundup of our arrival in Iran.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We visit the former American embassy, now a museum since its liberation by Iranian students.

It’s interesting to see historical events from a different perspective.

And to think we once thought of Ken Taylor and his exploits as heroic!

The souvenir shop is full of improving literature.

From Varanasi, we take an overnight train to Khajuraho.

Khajuraho is famous for its collection of temples built by a relatively minor dynasty about a thousand years ago.

The surviving temples have some of the most skillful carvings we’ve seen on this trip so far.

Another appealing factor of Khajuraho is that it is a small town, deep in rural India and far from a main road. The surrounding villages are probably more representative of the way people live away from the grim cities.

The surrounding scenery is nice as well.

Like water buffalo the world over, these local ones love hanging out submerged in ponds and mud-pools.

As mentioned in an earlier entry, we spend my birthday here at the luxurious Lalit Temple View Hotel.

Here are some more views of the Khajuraho temples.

We admire the lotus-carved ceiling in a temple that features Shiva in the form of a boar.

We take the train to Bhopal. Our first stop is Bhopal’s incredible Madhya Pradesh Tribal Museum.

(We weren’t even aware that there were tribal people in this state. Of course, there’s a lot we don’t know about the country.

This is unlike any other museum we’ve seen in India. In fact, it’s unique. Often, museums about tribal people are not much more than dusty cases of bows and arrows, with a few woven baskets and fishnets.

This museum is different. Built in 2013, it explains the lifestyle and world view of the tribes using a riot of artistic exuberance.

The displays kind of… explode all around you.

Any of the exhibits here would be a hit at any museum in London or New York.

Bhopal itself a large and rather gritty city.

We hire a car and driver one afternoon and visit Sanchi.

Sanchi was built by King Ashoka to house some Buddhist relics.

The gates tell, among other things, tales from the life of Buddha.

The remains of one of Ashoka’s pillars.

Next day, we depart for Delhi on the train.

Then it’s off to Iran.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We visit the abandoned site of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. The deadly accident that takes place here in 1984 – long before many people were born, including 75% of Indians – is what places Bhopal on the map for much of the world.

This is what the plant looked like in 1984.

This is the main gate today. It’s not officially open to the public.

Being at ground zero of the world’s worst industrial accident is chilling.

An overgrown forest now stands where offices and administrative buildings once covered the grounds. We’re told to ‘be careful of snakes’.

From Calcutta, we plan to take an overnight train to Varanasi. However, the trains are booked solid. We fly instead.

We arrive at the Ganpati Guest House. Our room has a balcony overlooking the Ganges.

Every now and then, a dead cow floats by. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere.

Normally, the riverfront serves as a landmark (watermark?) by which to navigate the labyrinth of Varanasi lanes – you just follow the shoreline.

Because the water is so high at this time of year, we hire a guide to walk us through the alleys of old Varanasi. Otherwise we’d never find our way in the maze.

The laneways are constantly thronged with chanting people carrying the deceased down to the river for cremation.

This is one of the cremation ghats. Bodies are washed in the Ganges, then cremated, then the ashes are thrown in the river. This is a good thing if you’re a Hindu. It means immediate moksha.

Selling firewood for the cremation ghats is big business.

Strolling through town, we come across a school, where we take a rest in the entrance-way.

As mentioned, we hire a guide to walk us though the labyrinth of lanes in old Varanasi. When we go out on our own, we are lost within minutes.

This kid is leading his brick-laden mules through a part of town that is being razed (on dubious authority) and reclaimed by Indian real estate speculators. Look for an extremely ugly concrete hotel here in the near future.

It doesn’t take much space to run a business here. This paan-seller manages with a square metre or so.

Paan is the source of the solid encrustations of red spit that you see everywhere in India. It must be addictive, because men are always rolling it around in their palms, then stuffing it into their mouths. We seldom take a tuk-tuk ride where the driver doesn’t have to stop and buy some more from the ubiquitous paan shops.

In this temple, kids prepare plants that are sacred to Shiva.

We visit nearby Sarnath. This is where Buddha is supposed to have given his first sermon after his enlightenment.

His actual enlightenment took place beneath a tree in Bhodgaya, a few hundred kilometres from here.

We head down to the bathing ghats. There are many, many religious items for sale.

Bathing in the Ganges is a means of purification. Just look out for the dead cows.

Back in town, a man constructs artisanal lassis.

One day, we visit several temples. One is the Durga Temple.

It is some sort of auspicious day, so the temple is packed with worshipers. They don’t seem to mind the presence of our infidel selves.

We go to the Tulsi Manas temple next door, built to commemorate a 16th century translator of the Ramayana.

Goswami Tulsidas was a sort of St. Jerome of the Ramayana – he translated it from Sanskrit into a Hindi dialect so that it can be read by the common people.

We also visit the hanuman temple. This was established by the same Tulsidas.

With so many holy sites around, there are plenty of sadhus and fakirs.

Another place we visit is the Ramnagar Fort across the river.

It is much reduced from its glory days.

Sight or Insight of the Day

In Sarnath, we visit the Archaeological Museum. This contains an excellent example of a lion capital from the top of a Pillar of Ashoka.

Ashoka was a famous king of India in the third century B.C. After butchering 100,000 people in a war, he has a change of heart and embraces Buddhism.

He erects pillars throughout northern India, engraved with edicts and suggestions about living a good life.

These lion capitals have become the symbol of the modern Government of India. They’re featured on some of the banknotes.

The Wheel of Dharma beneath the lions is also a feature of the Indian flag.

We fly from the Andamans to Calcutta. It’s not as ghastly as we first fear. Considering that from 1772 to 1911, Calcutta was the capital of British India, it has a distinctive character. Some tree-lined streets, some interesting neighbourhoods.

We visit the nearby Indian Museum, a beautiful building that dates from 1875. Like most Indian museums, it’s sadly in need of upkeep.

The most stunning exhibit is the Bharhut Gallery. This features 2,000-year-old carved stone gates from an ancient Buddhist complex in Madhya Pradesh state. (Virtually nothing is left at the site today.) Photography is prohibited, and the photos on the website don’t do them justice, but the carved and polished sandstone pieces are some of the most beautiful objects we’ve seen in India so far.

There are better photos and descriptions here.

We like the fossil room, it’s wonderfully Victorian. Dusty wooden cabinets everywhere.

There are hundreds of schoolkids around. These girls insist on a group shot with Maria, because she’s so exotic.

While walking in town, we are caught in a torrential downpour. We take cover in a shop that sells fountain pens.

We then duck into a place for a samosa and a chai. These flavourful little beauties cost 30 cents each – Canadian! – served in a terra cotta container. Eat your hearts out, Starbucks patrons.

We come across the Tipu Sultan Mosque. We’ve been fans of Tipu Sultan for a long time.

I remember being mesmerized by Tipu’s Tiger the first time I visited the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in – well, let’s not mention the year. Then when Maria went to southern India for business a few years ago, we followed a sort of Tipu circuit – on rented bicycles – visiting Seringapatam, Tipu’s summer palace, and Tipu’s tomb.

We wonder why this mosque is in Calcutta, far from Tipu’s usual stomping grounds in Mysore. All is revealed here.

We visit the grandiose Victoria Memorial.

Our hotel is the Lindsay. It has a nice rooftop restaurant. You can see the Howrah Bridge from here. (But not from this direction.)

We’re across the street from the cavernous New Market.

Outside our door is a dynamic chai-wallah. There is a constant queue in front of his stall.

As mentioned, the British were here for a long time. The ghostly remains of their buildings are still around.

Many of these buildings would not be out of place in WC1.

Except for the fact they’re now a bit slummy.

We like the archaic old business signs outside many buildings.

Some buildings are definitely Indianesque.

This is a letter-writer in front of the post office.

A common sight in countries with high rates of ilitaracy illiteracy.

We visit the Marble Palace. It’s free, but you have to get a special permit. This, of course, turns out to be a Herculean challenge. Long story.

It reminds me a bit of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The display of works is, um, a little eccentric. And the house is falling to bits, but so is every building in Calcutta.

Sight or Insight of the Day

We make our way through interesting streets to the house of Rabindranath Tagore.

He was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. We’ve never read any of his stuff, but writer’s/artist’s houses are usually worth a visit. Interesting man. Interesting house.

We arrive in Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. Officially, it’s the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. We come here because we like islands.

We are here for nearly two weeks. Because it is monsoon season, it rains most of the time. Like, 80 per cent of the time. And not in occasional sprinkles, as we see elsewhere in India – the rain comes down in cataclysmic deluges. In gushing inundations. In cascading torrents. In cats and dogs and tigers. You get the idea.

But it’s all good. We have no illusions that we can expect anything else when traveling at this time of the year. It’s very relaxing. Especially because we are essentially cut off from the world: no internet or phone service.

The Andamans were in the news recently when a would-be American missionary was killed by the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island.

These islands are the home of many different tribal people, most of whom are now ‘assimilated’ to Indian rule to difference degrees.

One of our first stops is the Cellular Jail. A main reason for the British taking over the Andamans was as a warehouse for Indian political prisoners, beginning from the time of the Indian Mutiny. It’s an unusually solemn place for Indian visitors.

The prison gives many details of savage atrocities supposedly committed by the British. There is a suspicious shortage of documentation for this, outside of the usual stories of cruel hardship common to all contemporary prisons. For example, the linked Wikipedia article says this:

‘It is estimated that of the total 80,000 political prisoners the British Raj held at the Kalapani, a very few survived. ‘

Does this imply that, say, 79,937 political prisoners died in captivity? Proof, please. And not to indulge in ‘whatabout-ism‘, but modern-day India is not exactly known for the Scandinavian mildness of its prisons.

Port Blair from above.

‘Well, there we were stuck in Port Blair,
Where boats break and children stare…‘ – Jack Johnson, Holes to Heaven

This song is the only one in existence that I know of that mentions Port Blair. It’s a sort of hapax legomenon of popular music. (I believe the term came into use from Homeric studies, where a hapax legomenon is a word that is only used once in the body of Homer’s work.) I mention echidna as another one in an earlier blog entry.

On Havelock Island, which they say has some of the most beautiful beaches in Asia in the proper season, we venture further afield on the rare occasions that it is not raining.

This is our Robinson Crusoe-style hut that we live in for a week. It is VERY open to the elements. Maria surprises a small snake in our room one day.

On a morning when it’s not raining, we head for Radhanagar Beach on the west side of the island.

‘Wading’ is more accurate – very few people in India know how to swim.

There are salt-water crocodiles around, which is something else to consider.

Our waterlogged week is up. We wait for the ferry back to Port Blair.

On another day in Port Blair, we take a boat to nearby Ross Island.

This is where the original British settlement in the Andamans was located. These days, it’s like Angkor Wat, except the jungle is reclaiming Victorian English structures rather than Khmer ruins.

It was abandoned after an earthquake and the administrative centre moved to Port Blair.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Indians really hate the British. As reported, the chief tourist attraction in Port Blair is the cellular jail. Because it held political prisoners of India’s independence movement, it is a shrine-like destination for people from all over India.

Never mind that millions of South Asians took the first opportunity to move to the UK – the official line of the modern Government of India is that living under British Rule was no different than life under the brutal occupation of, say, Nazi Germany. Every museum we’ve been to makes this abundantly clear.

It’s understandable that India would be happy to see the backs of the British and to become maître chez eux. But to equate the rule of the British with the extermination campaigns of genocidal monsters is not true. And because it’s not true, it does a disservice to history as a science and a discipline, as opposed to history as the propagation of feel-good stories for the simple-minded. (A notable recent trend in the West is ‘history as the propagation of feel-bad stories for the simple-minded’.)

It seems ironic that the Moghul Era and centuries leading up to it – when marauders from central Asia swept into the subcontinent, imposing a foreign religion, burning cities, and razing temples – is often considered as the ‘Golden Age’ of India. While the railway-building, archeology-inclined British are officially reviled. (Even though they introduced cricket, a national obsession.)

It’s also ironic that with this attitude, India celebrates as one of the greatest heroes of her independence struggle Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, a man who in fact did spend his time in the company of actual genocidal monsters. Like Heinrich Himmler.

And here is Netaji Bose at the far right with his fellow-quislings flanking General Tojo.

Calcutta’s airport is renamed after Netaji. (We like its previous name – Dum Dum Airport.)

Point of interest: it’s not as if by gaining independence, India has escaped the shackles of misrule. A frankly incredible 43 per cent of Indian Members of Parliament have been charged with serious crimes. So in a final irony, the once-globe-straddling British can now scarcely govern their own small island. While the citizens of India are ruled by people who routinely rape, rob, and murder them with impunity.

We fly from Kochi back to Delhi to take care of some business. Our Air India flight has a female pilot. (For why this seems unusual, see below.) Our landing in Delhi is the smoothest we’ve ever experienced in hundreds of touchdowns. Just sayin’.

We need a break from India. So we fly to Singapore for a week.

We love Singapore. We’ve been here before on this trip. Twice. We could live here in a heartbeat.

It’s like Toronto, except with tropical weather, a superb metro system, and a nearby ocean. And no drug addicts, panhandlers, or homeless people. Come to think of it, it’s not like Toronto at all.

(People are often impressed by Hong Kong as a cosmopolitan, dynamic city-state. When we were there, we often found ourselves looking at each other and stating ‘Meh. It’s no Singapore’. Especially now that it’s obvious how vulnerable HK is to being crushed under the Chinese jackboot.)

We make another attempt at having a Singapore Sling in Raffles Hotel. (Last time we were here, it was closed for renovations.)

No luck: when we get to the Long Bar, there is a lengthy queue of tourists with the same plan. We abandon the idea.

Among the many pleasant aspects of being in Singapore is that there are a lot of women around everywhere you go.

Strange for a non-Muslim-majority country, there seems to be a huge preponderance of men around in India compared to women. An extremely non-objective, anecdotal observation: whenever I look up from my usual oblivious reverie in India, about 80 to 85 per cent of the people around are males. This makes for a too-many-dicks-on-the-dance-floor scenario. It’s kind of depressing.

We visit the excellent Asian Civilisations Museum. One of the finest exhibits is an entire room devoted to the artifacts from a Tang-era shipwreck.

We make a visit to the Jurong Bird Park, one of the world’s best.

I make another feathered friend.

Like the Singapore Zoo, you can interact with many of the creatures.

We take advantage of our time here to go to the beach a couple of times on Sentosa Island.

Through the palms, you can see some of the hundreds of ships that sit in Singapore’s harbour.

Then it’s back to Delhi.

Sight or Insight of the Day

Today is my birthday.

Don’t be fooled by ‘Singapore’ in the title – we are in fact in Khajuraho in north-central India at the moment.

Maria gifts me three days in a five-star hotel here. We are treated to a sumptuous al fresco birthday dinner.

Where does the time go? I feel like I just got here. In the world, that is.

When we were in Melbourne, my friend Philip produced an old photo from his archives. It’s 1980. In Pemberton, West Australia, a group of young fellow travelers rent bicycles on a sunny afternoon and visit a waterfall in the forest. The world is a good place. A Zen moment is captured on film.

(And yes, they had colour film ‘in those days’. It’s black & white for artistic reasons.)

To continue – we arrive in Kochi, in Kerala State, after an overnight train trip from Goa. Here’s a brief roundup.

Kochi is an interesting blend of Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial styles mixed in with a port that was an important spice trading centre on the west coast of India from the 14th century onward.

We like it. Lots of old buildings. It seems ‘mellower’ than places in the north.

We wander the area of the old spice market.

A symbol of Kochi are these so-called Chinese fishing nets.

Because it’s a port, there are vessels of all kinds. Like fishing boats

And freighters.

This is the Indian Navy Ship Sunayna, steaming into home port.

The venerable Dutch East India Company had a presence here.

We’ve seen VOC outposts all around Asia, as well as their buildings in different cities in the Netherlands.

This mural is a pretty good statement about the plight of the poor fish in the Arabian Sea.

We visit the Paradesi synagogue. Photography is prohibited inside, but you can use the wikipedia link for interior views.

Jewish cemetery

Sight or Insight of the Day

The media in India is full of news about India’s second moonshot, the Chandrayaan-2 mission. It’s not going well.

I cannot for the life of me imagine why a country where you can’t drink water out of the tap wastes its time, money, and resources looking for ‘possible water sources’ on the moon. To impress the world with its technical prowess? The world – not to mention the citizens of India – would be a lot more impressed if India could miraculously join the limited club of nations in which the tap water doesn’t kill you.