There + Back

Going home - A return to the regular universe

2006-02-18T15:35:00.000+11:00

The results are in. The best coffee was in Vienna, the cheapest beer in Slovakia. Hungary's 'Bull's Blood' red wine beats all comers, and in hindsight it was a mistake to buy wine from a Mongolian supermarket with horses tethered out the front. There is probably no better place in the world to drink tea than the corridor of a Trans-Siberian train, taking your time as you stare out at the Russian taiga, although the cafe underneath Cesky Krumlov's fairy tale castle comes close. And if there were two rules I've learned on this trip, it's that you shouldn't touch the dhal in Kolkata, and that you should wear a raincoat on Russian trains (lest your roommate takes a midnight whiz).

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about a seven month trip is that, for most of it, you think that it will never end. It stretches before you, a vast empty space of possibility, and you are so filled with excitement and anxiety about the days - no, hours - ahead that you never give a thought to the fact that it might end one day. And then, of course, it does. My feelings are mixed at the end of this trip - a wonder at what I've seen, a sadness that it has passed.

Seven months on, the possibilities have been replaced with memories which seem to fade more and more each day. Thankfully, the mundane is what you forget first. It seems unimportant to me now that our train into Lucknow was several hours late, that we unexpectedly had to spend the night in a mawkish hotel, and that our only meal of the day was a room service cheese sandwich which seemed to be missing its two main ingredients. And I'm not upset that I have forgotten the details of the uncountable hours of waiting that travel involves - staring at ceilings in airport lounges, swatting at mosquitoes on Indian train platforms. Even the bad experiences - battles with Russian bureaucrats, near-hypothermia on Sichuan buses - have lost their bite and reshaped themselves as pub stories ready for delivery when I get home.

So in the end what is left is a powerful sense of the joy and thrill of travel. It is, in a way, a parallel universe. At home life is grounded in a mostly welcome routine, and everyday life, from the breakfast on your table to the bed you sleep in, follows a largely expected path. But overseas it's different. There are three bedrooms a week, and whereas it was toast and eggs on Monday it's idli and sambar on Friday. You experience freedoms that you forget you don't have at home, like wandering out into the day without a care for where you end up, or snubbing your nose at obligation (the must-see museum/restaurant/market) to spend the afternoon with a good book. And then there is the way in which this parallel universe of travel seems to yield a more generous serving of the bizarre, from running into friends from home in cities of 12 million people, to bumping into the English cricket team at the poolside of India's most luxurious hotel.

There are people I have met on this trip who have been in this parallel universe for three, four, five years. But for me, it's time to return to earth. As thrilling as it is, it's a ride that has to end. I'll probably spend the rest of my days trying to recapture the feeling of standing in the middle of the Gobi desert, emptiness in all directions, but that's not a reason to go and live there. I miss muesli for breakfast, I miss getting excited and angry about Australian things, and I miss the people who make it home. So I'm going to pick up my bag of fading memories and take that Qantas plane out of Bangkok, back to the regular universe.

Photos of Kerala, Goa, Mumbai and Bangkok

Ché Guevara on moving on

2006-02-12T15:31:00.000+11:00

What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.

Ernesto 'Ché' Guevara

Go South young man - How to travel in India without really trying

2006-02-04T19:22:00.000+11:00

On my second day in Varkala in the southwestern state of Kerala, I narrowly escaped being hit by a falling coconut. There was a strange thrill in the near miss, for it was a hazard I hadn't encountered elsewhere in India. Runaway rickshaws, wily touts, poisonous dal - I had survived them all, but I had not thought to look out for falling fruit. As I was to learn in the coming days, Kerala is different. Not only are there coconut trees, there is sand, and sea, and you can go whole days without having an argument with anyone. At some point during the flight from Mumbai we seemed to have entered a parallel India that wasn't like India at all.

It took a while to settle in. Along with my luggage, I brought to Kerala a steeliness that I had cultivated during my time in the North. For months I had walked India's streets ready to dispose any number of weapons at a moment's notice: the withering glare, the barking rebuke,the efficient elbow. But all of this seemed a little out of place in the South. As we walked along the clifftop in Varkala, vendors called out to us to enter their shop, but it was half-hearted, as if they were glad to retreat to their stool in the shade. It was very different to the North, where touts would follow you home and marry your sister on the off-chance they could sell you a rug. In the end E and I had no option but to succumb - we shed our steeliness and decided to relax.

There were swims before breakfast, and again in the evening, the small waves gently massaging our tired bodies. In the day we escaped the sun, lying in hammocks under coconut trees and reading. And if we were in the mood we would head out for a cocktail before dinner, most often a pina colada, made with local fresh pineapple. We spent a day on a houseboat, and sat on the front deck as our personal staff punted us through the gorgeous Keralan Backwaters. Giant banana leaves swayed languidly in the breeze, as if telling us to take our time. In the the Western Ghats we forfeited an afternoon of sitting to have an Ayeurvedic massage, and lay back as masseurs rubbed oil over our suddenly slippery bodies. Against my will, I began to fret about what were appropriate thoughts on a massage table - I tried to concentrate on the feeling in my muscles, but soon I was thinking about dinner, and returning home, and I tensed as I thought I'd better come up with some better thoughts, and quickly. It occured to me later that my time in Kerala had left me in such an intense state of relaxation that my mind had begun to rebel against it.

The only cause for consternation came at meal times. Keralan cuisine is different from northern cuisine in two main respects: it is cooked in coconut oil, and it is far more spicy, for the very practical reason that, in the tropical Keralan climate, the chili cools you down. The only problem is, as Kerala's popularity as a tourist destination has grown, the more restaurants have rushed to cater for what they perceive as the blander tastes of Westerners. Kerala is marketed in Europe as a tropical holiday destination for middle-aged travellers who like eggs for breakfast, pasta for dinner, and if they must, "Indian food but not too spicy, please". And so it arrives on your table and you brace for disappointment - it's been made with curry powder, or it's served cold, or it looks like chicken nuggets. We've been telling any restaurant that listens that this is the worst Indian food we have ever tasted - in the world. Each night is a little tug of war with those travellers who bring their cardboard palletes and the restaurants that are afraid of turning them away.

On our houseboat, of course, we had a personal chef, and we told him at every opportunity that we liked our food spicy. And he did not disappoint. He served up a delicious spread of local food: fat Keralan rice, tasty sambar, and colourful dishes of fish and vegetables cooked with liberal doses of green chilies. Halfway through the meal our chef came to check on us. Sweat was dripping from our brows, our noses were running, my mouth was having trouble tasting the food, and we gave him the big thumbs up. And, magically, our bodies seemed to cool, as if the chili had dissipated the heat and humidity that had clung to our skin for days.

The chef had delivered the goods, and we gave him our last beer to say thanks. It was evident that he didn't share it with the crew, for a short time later he was red-faced and ten minutes into a runaway monologue about Kerala, linguistics, capital punishment, Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan. As he drew breath we politely told him that we needed a good night's sleep and had to get to bed - after all, there was no telling how much swimming, and reading, and daydreaming, that the 'morrow would bring.

Photos of Varanasi and the tropical South

"Gobi, aloo, matter!" - Memories of a month standing still

2006-01-18T21:54:00.000+11:00

Each morning in Lucknow I was woken up not by an alarm clock or a rooster, but by a vegetable wallah. "Gobi, aloo, matter (cauliflower, potato, peas)!" he would call out as he pushed his vegetable trolley down the street. Soon after others would join him: the milk wallah, the cream wallah, the bread wallah - this last one saved his voice and used a bell. Residents were saved a trip to the supermarket, simply wandering out onto the street each time they wanted to stock up on groceries. These cries would continue throughout the day, until they were replaced in the evening by the whistles of security guards. Not equipped with walkie-talkies, guards wandering the area would instead blow whistles to each other. If no whistle was blown in reply then something was wrong, and the guard would go running to find his mate.

A month in a place is not a long time, but it's amazing what you can absorb just by standing still. You benefit from the slow-drip of information about everyday life, and the release from travel's crazed daily attempts to go out and find 'India'. The grocery wallahs are just one example of the millions of Indians whose office is on the street and who work incredibly hard to make a living. Cycle rickshaw drivers ply the roads of Lucknow carrying a middle class cargo that sometimes amounts to a family of four, the driver hopping off on the steeper hills to manually pull the bike and its load. There are the streetside vendors, selling anything from chai, jewellery, flowers and clothing, whose jobs are relatively stable but include crushing hours. I lived in an middle class home, and grew accustomed to the amount of 'help' that visited the house daily - the laundry man, the dishwasher, the cleaners, the cook - with the vague task of 'supervision' being the only job left to the home owner.

But at the other end of the spectrum, working life is often measured out in cups of tea and lunch breaks. In an attempt to collect a parcel, I descended into the belly of Lucknow GPO and observed dozens of bureaucrats sitting at dusty, empty desks and doing nothing but reflecting on their rock solid job security. They were visibly perturbed that I had interrupted their collective daydream, and in the end it took two visits, an audience with the Deputy Postmaster and several arguments before anyone lifted a finger to give me my parcel - which, of course, had been sitting all along in a cabinet at the side of the room. The bureaucrats at the railway station have a similar work ethic, with the number of tea breaks increasing exponentially as you progress through the senior levels. Their twin expertises seemed to be in sitting and in doing as little as possible - more than enough to secure their paychecks.

Being in Lucknow also gave me time to reflect on the increasingly troubling problem of what to do about Indian men. E has attracted the stares of Indian men throughout the country, and Lucknow was no different. Some are simply curious, which is not surprising given that Lucknow is off the tourist trail and does not see many Westerners. But others are hostile, and while it is by no means all Indian men who engage in these stares, it is widespread enough to be a source of discomfort to E each time she went out in public. The lingering stares of men in their 20s, 30s and 40s exhibit the slack-jawed sexual immaturity of thirteen-year-olds gathered around a Playboy magazine, but it is of the sort that has grown sour and impatient over the years. The stares also seem to carry in them the perception that women are nothing more than objects and property. It is this sort of attitude that has seen E and many other Western women groped in public places, but women in India suffer far worse on a daily basis. Newspapers are filled with stories of horrific violence. Bandits boarding a train and gang raping a woman in the toilets while four police officers in close proximity did nothing. 'Dowry murders', where husbands pour kerosene on their wives and light a match when their attempts to extort money from her family are refused. Through our contact with a women's legal organisation we met a woman who was attacked by her husband because she went out to find employment. She is now trying to raise money for a third essential operation to ease the suffering caused by the acid burns he inflicted on her.

One of the struggles of travel in India is to absorb the stark inequality and frightening violence without writing off the entire country and everyone in it. In Lucknow I was fortunate to have experiences to help right the balance. I met passionate, feminist women who spend their working lives fighting to improve circumstances for women, and I met gentle, loving husbands who saw their wives as nothing other than equals. I was the beneficiary of touching generosity, as when I was invited to an Indian wedding, or when new friends took me by surprise and helped a homesick boy celebrate a wonderful birthday. I snuck beer into my room and was joined by my landlord's son - but only, he said, after he confessed to his mother that he was going upstairs for some boozing. Thanks to the people I met there, so much of daily life in Lucknow turned out to be a thrill, and the days of wandering city streets battling touts ("Sir-you-are-from-which-country?") seemed a distant memory.

I'm not sure if I'll end up 'missing' Lucknow, but there are memories that have burrowed into my head and are unlikely to leave. Like the familiar faces at the local auto-rickshaw rank who always offered me a fair price, and the more hard-edged drivers in the city who always bargained hard. The local internet cafe, which had a new surprise each time - power failures, faulty keyboards, broken printers - and the clerk who would always shake his head at me and smile, as if trying to work out what a white boy was doing in his shop. And I will think about the relief I felt in arriving back in Lucknow after a short trip to Kolkata, almost as if I were returning 'home'. It's funny how quickly you can fall into the rhythms of a place, how quickly you find local haunts and familiar faces. It all adds up to some sort of connection, and it would be wrong to say that there is no loss in letting that go.

Photos of Lucknow streets, birthday pics, and Kolkata

Rolf Potts on culturally sensitive travel

2006-01-18T21:45:00.000+11:00

Is the traveler who hikes into the jungle to interact with the natives having an authentic intercultural experience, or is he negatively interfering with the natives' lives by flaunting his modern, internationally mobile lifestyle? Is the traveler's unconditional respect for people's archaic lifestyles doing them any good if their life expectancy is 47 years, their infant morality rate is 15 percent and their literacy is nil? Furthermore, isn't temporary friendship a self-indulgent gesture when the people the traveler befriends will likely never see him again, and might have benefited more from a less personal but more tangible contribution to their economy? Aren't -- by literal standards of cultural sensitivity -- the best travelers actually the herd-like group tourists, who experience the country from the safety of their air-conditioned buses and don't disrupt anything that hasn't already been
disrupted?

Rolf Potts, 'Goodbye, Khao San Road'

Monday Night Fever - Stowing Away at an Indian Wedding

2005-12-31T21:24:00.000+11:00

Shivaji and Nikhil were getting married - and we were invited! It didn't matter that our relationship with the families could best be described as tenants-of-the-woman-whose-husband-was-good-friends-with-the-father-of-the-bride. Indian weddings commonly have upwards of 500 or 1000 guests, and we reasoned that stowaways like us are a big reason why.

This was a North Indian Hindu wedding – of the type seen in the movie Monsoon Wedding. In the South, weddings are quiet affairs, disposed of within a matter of minutes on warm afternoons. Not so in the North, where a whole range of ceremonies are carried out over several days and nights. We arrived at 8.30pm last Monday night, an hour-and-a-half late but apparently too early because not much was happening. No more than thirty people were there, standing in corners chatting and drinking the occasional bowl of soup or cup of coffee. It seemed hard to believe that Shivaji and Nikhil’s ‘big day’ was just ahead.

Then we received word that the groom’s procession was about to move off. We moved back outside and saw that a hundred or more people had gathered about 200 metres up the road, sandwiched into a space bordered by rope and tall men carrying bright, colourful lights. In the centre was a white horse in full wedding dress – it was waiting for its rider, but the groom was a bit nervous about saddling up. The groom’s family had gathered nearby, with the women dressed in saris of vibrant greens, oranges and blues. E instructed me to start taking photos, but it wasn’t an easy thing. I stepped backwards to avoid the chord of a video camera, only to find my ear inside a blaring trumpet. A rag-tag bunch of musicians were carrying around different brass instruments, belting out popular Bollywood tunes. And at my elbow was one of several drummers who were doing their best to smother the brass with a frenzied staccato drum beat. It was a messy cacophony of sounds, like something out of an Emir Kusturica film. And for a sizeable group of young men comprising the groom’s friends, it was inspiring their arms, hips and crotches to jerk and jolt in multiple and unpredictable directions.

The groom was finally persuaded to get on the horse, and the procession got moving. It was slow going, with frequent stops to allow for the increasingly adventurous gyrations of the groom’s friends. Traffic roared pas us just metres away, the odd car honking its horn to be part of the celebration. And then all of a sudden I was being dragged into the maelstrom, plonked in the center of the procession as people looked on – and wondering, I imagined, if this white boy could dance.

I learned later that the groom’s friends were drunk, that they had been sneaking nips from flasks concealed in jacket pockets. But at the time all I could think was that I had to match them. So I threw the arms up, kicked the feet out, and gyrated like I’ve never gyrated before. It is, admittedly, the dancing style I have long favoured, for it requires absolutely no skill or coordination. I soon felt like one of the boys, and we danced on as the music grew louder and the horse nudged us forward with its nose. Occasionally members of the procession came over and, holding wads of 10 rupee notes above their heads, dramatically threw them one-by-one into the crowd. Kids darted in from the road to grab the notes, but mostly the drummers benefited, reaching down with left hands to retrieve the money and somehow never missing a beat.

It took two hours for the procession to make its way down to the wedding venue. It stopped just inside the gate, waiting for the bride’s party to emerge and officially invite them in. The invitation was given, but the groom’s contingent took little interest in it, and danced on. And a man with a rifle joined the procession, firing into the air at random intervals to the noticeable consternation of the horse. As it didn’t’ look like the bride’s invitation was going to be accepted any time soon, we snuck away from the procession in search of some food.

It is customary at North Indian weddings for the guests to eat before the ceremony, and as it was nearly 11pm we were in full support of this custom. As is standard, the food was vegetarian and no alcohol was served. We wandered around the buffet, piling our plates high with daal, paneer tomato, kababs, stuffed tomato, dosa and roti. To wash it down there was hot badam, milk flavoured with saffron and almonds. We ate our meals standing with the other guests, devouring the delicious food and wondering whether the groom would ever arrive.

Just as we were finishing our meal, the groom made his entrance. By now most people had gathered in rows of seats facing a stage, and it was on this stage where the groom sat down and waited for the bride to arrive. After a few minutes she appeared, making her way to the stage with her entourage close behind. The wedding sari is notoriously heavy, and she moved slowly, weighed down by the intricate gold and silver embroidery. When she reached the stage, friends lifted both her and the groom on their shoulders and they embraced warmly. This, we had been told, was a ‘love-marriage’. Standing close by I could see the excitement on their faces, somehow shining through their obvious exhaustion after several days of non-stop celebrations.

By now a DJ had taken over from the brass and drums, and the groom’s friends moved over to the corner dance floor to keep strutting their stuff. The man with the rifle continued to fire rounds enthusiastically in the outdoor area. And, just as it looked like something official might be about to go ahead on stage, our landlord told us that it was time to go home. We were puzzled – we were going to leave before the actual wedding? ‘Oh, that’s only for the immediate family,’ she replied. ‘And it’s really really boring.’

So, just after midnight, we returned home. But the bride and groom were just getting started. The exchanging of vows wouldn’t start until 2am, and that in itself would go for two or three hours. And in the morning they would travel to Allahabad where, for the benefit of guests who could not make it to Lucknow, they would do it all again. And then, it would all be over bar the reception – which would be held on a separate night. Lying in bed that night, I wondered whether the bride’s father’s friend’s wife’s tenants would find themselves on the invitation list.

More photos of the wedding, and pics of Christmas celebrations and our photo shoot at Banda

Tailored Trackies - The Story of my Return to Domestic Life

2005-12-20T19:22:00.000+11:00

I told the store attendant that I wanted some tracksuit pants, and immediately three men surrounded me. What design would sir like? Half a dozen tracksuits were tossed onto the bench in front of me, each still wrapped in plastic packaging. Perhaps one of these? I shook my head. How about these ones? A man appeared from behind me, two more in hand. I pointed at one, and was ushered into the change room to try it on. I came out, and the three men tapped their index fingers on their chin as they considered the suitability of my fleece pants and top. I was getting as much attention as the man across the store being fitted for a suit jacket. 'The trousers are too long,' one of them said. 'Let us alter them for you and you can pick them up in a half hour.'

My trip to the men's clothing store was one of my first forays into my new domestic life in Lucknow, which will be our home for the next month. After five months of constant, dizzying motion, E and I suddenly find ourselves paying attention to the most mundane details, such as what brand of milk to buy, and how many coathangers to stick in the closet. We are living in the upstairs room of a house in the north of the city. Judging from the stares and open mouths we encounter when walking to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread, our suburb is not accustomed to the presence of Westerners. Lucknow itself is off the tourist trail, although there is much of interest here for those tourists who choose to stop by. The city is known for its Muslim Nawab architecture, and its tasty Nawab cuisine which is said to be so delicious that it just might pierce our vegetarianism. It was the site of a five month seige during the 1857 Indian Uprising, when 3000 people sought refuge in the British Residency, disease and bullets eventually claiming the lives of two-thirds. And Lucknow is also the capital of the province Uttar Pradesh, whose population of 176 million makes it the most populated sub-national entity in the world.

But these facts and figures form a distant backdrop to my new domestic life, which in its first week has involved getting acquainted with my home suburb. I have a local coffee shop, which lets me sit for hours over a black coffee, writing in my notebook and reading the local press. It is a trendy place, a spot for Lucknow's youth to chat, flirt, and watch television as Sachin Tendulkar, the man who carries India on his shoulders, takes on Sri Lanka in the home test series. Nearby is the supermarket, where E and I were double-teamed on our first visit - one man to find out what we wanted, the other to fetch it and put it in our basket. And across the road is a restaurant that serves wonderful masala dosai. My slim hopes for anonymity were ruined on my third visit when the staff started chatting with me about Australia, and a few days later I realised that a true connection had been forged when they changed the television channel to live coverage of the Australian test series.

And on the way home I wander past sights that, although quite common in India, have certainly not featured on any other 'walk home' that I've ever taken in Australia or elsewhere. In a stretch of two hundered metres I encounter a variety of shops that you would normally only find in a major shopping centre, each located in a patch of dirt at the side of the road. Among them there is a florist, a barber, a fruit seller, a tailor, a bicycle repair man, and several chai stalls serving up glass upon glass of the sweet, milky drink. If I want to cross the road I have to watch out, for the traffic is dense and wild, cars, motorbikes and auto-rickshaws screaming past without a thought for pedestrians. And sitting at the side of the road is the ubiquitous cow, relaxed as it chews on the odd bit of grass, unconcerned about the human traffic around it.

At nights we do much as we would at home - relax, read a book, or watch TV with the family downstairs. Last night my ears pricked up at the sound of some familiar music, and I looked up to see that 'Indian Idol' was on. Just a few nights earlier we had stayed up to watch the final of India's version of 'Dancing with the Stars'. It is much like the Australian version, except most of the stars are drawn from Bollywood-type productions and would put most of our professional dancers to shame. Just two couples were left in the final, and the hosts kept promising that the winner would be announced after the next commercial break. As I found myself falling asleep in my chair, I decided to head up to bed. I had to get up early the next day - there was, after all, no milk in the fridge, and we needed new towels for the bathroom. I fell into a deep sleep, exhausted by my return to domestic life.

Photos of Taj Mahal, monkeys, Marharani living and Lucknow

Jack Kerouac on meeting people

2005-12-20T19:16:00.000+11:00

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

The Tout in Sheep's Clothing - A Beginner's Guide to India

2005-12-08T21:51:00.000+11:00

The trip from Delhi airport to the hotel was supposed to be easy. We had arranged for a driver from our hotel to be at the arrivals gate - he was to be smiling broadly, holding a large piece of cardboard with my name on it and ready with a welcoming cup of chai. But as we have learned after a week here, India is the sort of country that will never have 53 different words for 'easy' or any concept that is associated with the undemanding, or effortless, or simple. Perhaps Hindi is still waiting for this concept to appear in the language. In any case, our driver wasn't there, so the first person we met in India was a tout. So was the second person, and the third. 'Where are you going, sir?' 'Taxi?' The fourth person was a kind man who offered to call the hotel for us. One in four - we would never see such good odds again.

To walk down a street in Delhi or Jaipur is to be alive, in the moment. There is colour, noise, activity. Cars, motorbikes, auto-rickshaws, people - even the odd cow - scream and honk their way down the cities' roads. Crossing the road against this chaotic parade is a supreme test of patience and nerve, like a game of pick-up-sticks but with the added thrill of playing with your life. Just walking in a straight line along the side of the road requires all your skill and attention. You are taking all of it in, noting the fruit seller up ahead and the motorbike on your rear and the child pulling at your trousers... and it's then that the tout approaches. "Scarf, sir?" "Bag, sir?" And if it's not a scarf or bag it's a shirt, or a pair of shoes, or a set of postcards, or a wooden elephant, or a fake beard. And it's all very cheap, and of very good quality.

An online dictionary gives a neat definition of the word tout: "One who solicits customers brazenly or persistently". They are part of what gives India its character, and almost by definition are incapable of appearing at a good time. There are many types of touts, but the ones we have had the most contact with are the auto-rickshaw drivers. These guys are very handy when you want to go some place - but less so when you don't. We have spent about 7 hours daily talking to these guys, usually as we are walking along the street trying to get across the road, or to that restaurant over there, or to some other place that will not involve a trip in a rickshaw. The conversations go something like this. "Sir, where are you going?" "I'm just walking, thanks." "Do you need a rickshaw?" "No, I'm fine, thank you." "Very cheap." "No, that's okay, I'll just walk." "Where are you from, sir?" "Australia." "Ah! Ricky Ponting country!" "Yes." "Very strong team." "Yes, thank you." "Sir, which hotel you stay at?" [No answer] "Sir, where are you going?" And so on. Each exchange takes about two minutes, and only come to an end after you decline the ride 17 times. And you walk on, and a minute later another driver approaches. "Sir, where are you going?"

It is exhausting. I call on all my reserves to be patient and polite. There is a reason, after all, that these guys hassle tourists so much - one driver told us that he earns just US$20/month, and we globetrotters are cashed up. But every so often my manners gauge hits empty, and I hear myself spraying lines like "I don't want a rickshaw! Did you hear me when I said 'no' the first time?! When I say 'no' I mean it, alright? Now go away!" And a pained look crosses their face, and they drive off, and I wish I'd handled it differently.

Not all the touts are so obvious - sometimes you might not even know that your custom is being solicited. On our first day in India we met a tout who was so smooth that it wasn't until later that we pinned him. E and I wandered into Banana Leaf retaurant on Connaught Place in Delhi, excited about our first Indian meal. Two Indian men sat down at the table next to us. Our thali arrived and as we hesitated slightly over how we should begin eating (with our cutlery? with our hands? with dishes eaten separately or all mushed together?), one of the men at the next table sniggered to himself. We glanced over and told Mr Tout that it was our first thali, and he laughed and chirpily walked us through how we should eat our meal. He worked in the area and often came to this restaurant to eat; we were from Australia, it was our first time in Delhi and yes, Australia does have a very strong cricket team. Over the next hour or so we talked easily about a range of topics, including Indian food, the importance of family and the sights around Delhi. My ears were only slightly pricked by a slow drip of information about how we might travel around the Golden Triangle (the very popular Delhi-Jaipur-Agra (Taj Mahal) route): it is much easier if you hire a driver, more comfortable than the train, you can stop whenever you like, and it doesn't cost that much when split between two people. But these details never got in the way of the rest of our conversation, which was easy and fun. Mr Tout made his mistake when, after gently offering his own recommendation for where we might hire a driver, he left the restaurant with us and ever so casually guided us in the direction of his recommended travel agency. He left us there and, as we sat inside talking with the agent about cars and drivers and 'quality service', we noted that this wasn't, as he had suggested, the official tourist office, and we reflected on our lunch companion's uncommon familiarity with travel guidebooks. And we remembered that just before we walked into the Banana Leaf restaurant, we had walked past this very agency and asked someone for directions to the restaurant... about five minutes before our friend had sat down at the table next to us. We reconstructed it in our minds, and discovered that Mr Tout had spent an hour with us with the sole purpose of presenting a genial character, gaining our trust, plugging his travel agency, accompanying us to the agency in person and, most critically, having the doorman sight him so that later in the day he could collect his commission.

It was a very smooth operation, and seemed to point to only one conclusion: trust people at your own peril! It's a safe starting point for us now, while we are still finding our feet, but we hope to abandon it soon. And it is a strange mystery that, at the end of a week of days that have left our heads and bones aching from the crippling effort required to do some very simple things, I am still intrigued and inspired by India, and will enthusiastically head out tomorrow to see what else the country will throw my way. Perhaps we are gradually coming to understand why so many travellers to India find that they love it and hate it almost in equal parts, but always feel compelled to return.

Photos of a mobbed Edwina at 'English corner', Hong Kong, Delhi and Jaipur

The Big Squeeze - Tourism in the New China

2005-11-27T22:58:00.000+11:00

A week or so ago E and I sat down for lunch at a cafe in Dali's 'Old Town', one of the hot tourist destinations in China's southwest province of Yunnan. As we picked up our chopsticks and dug into our pork and noodle dishes, an audience gathered. A Chinese tour group stopped following their guide for a moment as they pointed and whispered to each other about this strange species of people before them. There we were: Westernus Backpackerus. Some pulled out their cameras, and I thought about putting out a hat and asking for tips. We have encountered this sort of interest all over China, but this was different - it was almost as if we were a photo stop on this group's city tour. I had watched Chinese tour groups go snap-happy in front of Westerners elsewhere in Yunnan province. It was not always to their liking but there wasn't much they could do about it - when it comes to tourism in the New China, Westerners are completely outnumbered.

In China's growing economy, domestic tourism is booming. As disposable income increases, more and more Chinese spend their free time jetsetting to the country's hot spots. The numbers are staggering. In Dali, the owner of a cafe told us that in high season the town could expect up to 20,000 Chinese tourists coming through the town each day, compared to just 400 Westerners. And the numbers make themselves felt in all sorts of ways. Visitors to Dali can make the five hour trip to Lijiang in comfortable, modern coaches thanks to the demand provided by the Chinese middle class, whose bums are planted firmly on the seats. On the Li River, the stunning beauty of the unusual rock formations on either bank is is almost negated by the growl of large ships which transport one Chinese package tour after the other, bumper to bumper, leaving smaller tourist vessels caught in the swell. And in Yangshuo dozens of extra street stalls appear on Friday evenings to coincide with the arrival of the busloads of Chinese tourists who come to spend the weekend. And spend is probably the most appropriate word. The Chinese tour groups are known to be flush with cash, so much so that an inverted type of 'local price' applies at the riverside market: the price rockets to five times as much when the Chinese tourists arrive, and backpackers are warned to delay any shopping until they leave town.

Numbers, and money, change a place. In Lijiang the beautifully restored Old Town is nothing more than a mall - most of its streets are lines of stores selling the same wall hangings, t-shirts, jewellery and other knick knacks. It is the Rocks On Speed. In Dali's Old Town, teenage store attendants wear ill-fitting full traditional dress, apparently giving us a taste of Yunnan's cultural diversity. Lijiang and Dali's Old Towns are nothing if not packed with tourists, so other cities have taken the hint and are now constructing their own 'Old Towns'. You have to take yourself on a decent walk before you meet anyone who isn't directly engaged in the tourism industry. As a tourist, the idea that you can have a truly 'authentic' cultural experience is perhaps an illusion. But in places like Lijiang and Dali, you get that empty feeling that comes when you know that you aren't even close.

In some areas, the flood of tourists has taken a particularly heavy toll. Ten years ago, Tiger Leaping Gorge was a destination for the more adventurous traveller. It is one of the world's deepest gorges, and is the site of a stunning and sometimes precarious two-day hike up and done one side of the gorge. E and I spent a gorgeous few days walking this trail, staying the night at some of the friendly guesthouses along the way. But unlike ten years ago, our route was shadowed a hundred or so metres below by an asphalt road which brings in dozens of tour buses each day. Millions of tourists now visit the gorge each year; the fume-puking buses shed their passengers at intervals for photos stops, but otherwise just sputter their way along the winding road and add to the ambience in a way that only tour buses can. On major holidays, the road becomes so clogged that passengers have to abandon their vehicles and walk until the gridlock subsides. Ten years on, the Gorge is a changed place. Unfortunately, its sad story is not over - if the dam-happy Chinese government proceeds with plans to dam the Gorge, whole villages will lose their livelihood and face forced relocation.

Of course, Western tourism in China is not without its consequences (there is, after all, a Starbucks in the Forbidden City), but the numbers are too small to have the impact of Chinese holidaymakers. One of the more benign impacts of Western tourism is the flourishing of Western-style cafes throughout Yunnan. In places like Lijiang and Dali there are dozens of them, and you can be hard pressed finding an alternative place to eat if nothing on the menu takes your fancy. Luckily, they cook both Western food and Chinese food - but do neither particularly well. The Chinese food is adapted for Western palates and so is unimaginative and bland, leaving you in the peculiar situation of being unable to find authentic Chinese food in the country that invented it. And the Western food often amounts to valiant attempts at American diner fare such as burgers, burritos and pizzas. There are exceptions, but in most places there is just something not quite right about what emerges from the kitchen. My own personal theory is that a little known Sino-American treaty permits American recipes to be described once only, and on a crackly telephone line. So, for a banana pancake, the conversation might progress along the lines of "It's a sweet dish, so add lots of sugar, and put the bananas on the inside", which is relayed to Chinese kitchen staff as "Right, it's a savoury dish, so add lots of shallots, and put the bananas on top".

After just such a meal, I was wandering the streets of Yangshuo, cursing the stalls that had come out for the weekend and wondering how there could be a demand for such junk. Then up ahead I saw a DVD store with a sign advertising 'DVD player for rent'. In China a market springs up at the slightest hint of demand, and they had found my weakness. I took the shop up on its offer and spent a comfortable night in, all the while musing that, sometimes, giving the people what they want is not so bad.

Photos of Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yangshuo and Longji Rice Terraces

Charles Bukowski on beach holidays

2005-11-24T16:54:00.000+11:00

What was the fascination of the beach? Why did people like the beach? Didn't they have anything better to do? What chicken-brained fuckers they were.
Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye (1982)

Ganzi - A week in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture

2005-11-15T19:40:00.000+11:00

The Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is situated in western Sichuan province. More Tibetans live outside of Tibet than inside it, 800,000 in Ganzi alone. It is a gorgeous region to travel through - the bus curls its way around immense mountains from one snowy peak to the next, grinding its way up to 4870 metres and passing by Kangding's Gongga Shan, which at 7556m is the 11th tallest mountain in the world. As we negotiated each precarious mountain pass, I breathed a sigh of relief and gazed out at the large rock piles, Tibetan holy sites whose most striking feature is the brightly coloured flags that strangely resemble the streamers at used car yards.

People in Ganzi make their livelihood by herding yaks, sheep and goats on the mountain plateau grasslands. Increasingly, tourism is a source of income for those enterprising enough to take advantage of the growing trickle of foreigners making its way into the region. We were greeted at each bus terminal by women advertising rooms in their houses - it's a practice not authorised by the Chinese government, but seems to go on nonetheless. In Tagong we stayed at a beautiful Tibetan house owned by two generous and entertaining locals. We sat for a few hours after dinner giving each other language lessons. The words provide a strange road map to our conversation, which covered family, food and altitude sickness - for our hosts, pronunciation of 'student' was near impossible, 'yoghurt' less difficult, while 'vomit' seemed to come out naturally. In Tagong as in other stops in Ganzi, many shop fronts were tall doors of deep red, decorated in a range of motifs. If you stopped by one for a meal, you would more than likely be served one of two things: Tibetan soup, a type of vegetable soup with thick, doughy noodles; or yak meat. In Kangding, the restaurant owner helped us decipher the Chinese menu by making horn signs with her index fingers. Minutes later we were presented with a plate piled high with hunks of yak meat, along with individual knives and chopping boards to help us devour this surprisingly tasty animal. Customarily, all of this is washed down with yak butter tea, a heavy, milky drink that leaves the impression that you've just swallowed half a tub of Meadow Lea.

Without the language, we found it difficult to gain any great insight into the politics of being a Tibetan living in an autonomous prefecture in China. However, our host in Tagong did communicate to us the frustration of competing in a tourist market which the Chinese are seeking to infiltrate. She was visibly upset that her Chinese competitor up the road built her guesthouse with a Tibetan exterior, offered Tibetan food and ran tours of the region, all the while charging far more than was reasonable. This allegation of Chinese people exploiting the growing tourist interest in Tibetan culture reminded me of another type of Chinese infiltration into Tibet - the Beijing-Lhasa railway. The building of this railway is widely seen as an attempt by the Chinese government to encourage Chinese immigration into the region and further weaken Tibetan culture. Just a couple of weeks ago it underwent its first test run, and is expected to be open to the public in late 2006.

As we arrived in Xianggelila (formerly known as Zhongdian), the end of our sojourn into Ganzi, we were exhausted. The week offered up a range of experiences that were either interesting cultural insights or whinge-worthy irritations, depending on our mood at the time: sitting on buses with the crisp -7C air blowing through open windows, numbing faces and toes for hours at a time; encountering novel toilet designs that deliver your waste back to you; opium-addled men spitting out bus windows, misdirecting, and hitting us instead; waiting four hours for a bus at the Chinese equivalent of Royston Vasey and then never being entirely sure that we were heading in the right direction; sleeping in freezing rooms whose electric blankets tended to lose their utility in the hours-long blackouts. So it was with great relief that we arrived in Xianggelila and found the following: running water (after midday when the pipes unfreeze), cafes serving eggs on toast and decent coffee, and a DVD room in our hostel. Tonight will be our third night here. We haven't had break in several months of travelling, and we think we deserve a little time in a home-away-from-home.

Photos of giant pandas, Chengdu Peoples' Park, Tibetan cowboys and more...

[Note: The Chinese government blocks access to a huge range of websites, including BBC News and this blog. As a result I am kind of posting blind! So please let me know if my blog entries feature upside-down photos or, more likely, lengthy reports on how well the Chinese government is doing in combating bird flu.]

Underground Beijing

2005-11-07T20:40:00.000+11:00

Eighteen metres below the bustling streets of Beijing is a vast network of tunnels. Today they are nothing more than an amusing place to spend a half hour but they used to be serious business. In 1969 China was getting nervous about a possible nuclear war with Russia and Mao ordered the construction of this warren of bombproof tunnels. They took ten years to build, and included an arsenal, a hospital and a cinema. But had the Chinese government ever had cause to go underground, the level of comfort may have fallen short of expectations. For one thing, the complex is extremely damp, with a thin sludge lining the walls. And what's more, the level of protection provided by the tunnels was questionable - they were built far too shallow to be effective against a nuclear strike. The Ministry of Defence still owns the tunnels, and it provides an enthusiastic guide to show tourists around the tunnels, pointing out the underground routes to such above ground attractions as the Forbidden City and Summer Palace. He told us that there are tunnels under most major Chinese cities, and that their total combined length is greater than that of the Great Wall (which also falls into the category of ambitious, but ultimately useless, Chinese military projects). And every inch of it was dug by hand.

But there is more to the Beijing underground than tunnels. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing a visitor to Beijing is to legally purchase a DVD. The odds are against you - 90% of movies in China are pirated, and both the legitimate shops and the not-so-legitimate street sellers deal strictly in pirated movies. You might pay 20RMB (A$3.50) for a DVD in the shops, but this is extortionate. More reasonable prices can be obtained from vendors who spend their days shuffling down sidewalks and targeting tourists with conspiratorial whispers of 'DVD? DVD moo-fie?' These are the messenger boys, and if you take them up on their offer they will charge off at great pace across the street, up an alleyway, through a vegetable garden and across a river until they have led you to the main hub of business. One such business that I visited was run out of the back room of a restaurant. E and I were invited to sit down at a table and a huge spread of DVDs was laid in front of us - boxes of them, numbering in the hundreds. The range was startling, from the complete collection of Best Picture winners, to recent releases like 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', to a horror flick about necrophilia which did, admittedly, seem a little out of place. The going rate here was about 6RMB (A$1) a DVD. Business seemed solid - while we were there another Westerner also sorted through piles of discs, inserting his selections into his portable DVD player to check for quality. Overseeing all of this was a towering, broad-shouldered man in his thirties. He exuded the natural authority of Tony Soprano and would have had no trouble getting his preferred price out of snotty-nosed foreigners. And I'm sure that business is good amongst locals as well. I have read that Warner Bros is about to release a range of legitimate DVDs in China for 20RMB a pop. But they will be lucky if shops even stock them. The Chinese government has monthly crackdowns on pirated DVD sellers, but the backrooms simply close for a couple of days before reopening. This underground institution is already proving to be far more successful than Mao's tunnels.

And what of the underground subway? Well, it is perhaps the best way for the foreign visitor to get a full-body sense of what it is like to be in the most populous nation in the world. The figure '1.3 billion' is branded on your face, hips and buttocks as you alight from a train to the city centre. Put simply, the trains do not run frequently enough and, consistent with what might be called the new mantra of Western tourists in Beijing, "they had better fix it or 2008 will be a shambles". But only a fool would think Beijing won't be ready. The soundtrack of Beijing 2005 is the clang of the hammer and the scream of the power drill - construction work is proceeding at a frenetic pace all over the city, day and night. There are plans for new roads, new malls and, importantly, two new subway lines. On the marketing side, the Games are advertised everywhere, and official tshirts (of both the genuine and not-so-genuine variety) are widely available. China, it is clear, is gearing up for the Olympics in a big way, and will do whatever it takes to bring them in on time. And the Chinese, who once built hundreds of kilometres of underground tunnels by hand, may even do it early and without breaking a sweat.

Photos of Beijing and the Great Wall

Tarantino on travel

2005-11-07T17:34:00.000+11:00

VINCENT So if you're quitting the life, what'll you do?
JULES That's what I've been sitting here contemplating. First, I'm gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I'm gonna walk the earth.
VINCENT What do you mean, walk the earth?
JULES You know, like Caine in "Kung Fu." Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.
VINCENT So you decided to be a bum?
JULES I'll just be Jules, Vincent -- no more, no less.
VINCENT No Jules, you're gonna be like those pieces of shit out there who beg for change. They walk around like a bunch of fuckin' zombies, they sleep in garbage bins, they eat what I throw away, and dogs piss on 'em. They got a word for 'em, they're called bums. And without a job, residence, or legal tender, that's what you're gonna be -- a fuckin' bum.
Pulp Fiction

Throwing stones in the Gobi

2005-10-30T16:11:00.000+11:00

On the third morning of our 8-day trip to the Gobi desert, our van was struck by two flat tyres in fifteen minutes. Once the second tyre blew we realised how lucky we were that our driver was also a crack mechanic - unperturbed, he sat down to patch up the hole with a piece of inner tube. To pass the time I persuaded my Dutch travelling mate, Jochem, to take me on in a stone throwing contest. I had already goaded him with taunts about Ian Thorpe's superiority over 'Peter van Yoogen Boogen', and was convinced that I was a shoe-in. But in the end our best efforts to throw rocks as far as we could were swallowed up by the immense space of the Gobi. The distances our stones travelled were barely a blip in this vast land. There was a horizon in every direction, and nothing in between except the hard, stony ground of the desert. Throughout the rest of the trip the landscape went through subtle variations, but it was this emptiness, and the quiet, that stayed with me.

The Gobi is one of the least populated places on earth, averaging just 0.5 persons per square kilometre. Outside of small town centres, we would drive all day and be lucky to see five other cars on the road. Every now and then we would come across settlements of gers. These circular felt tents (also known as 'yurts' in the West) are the homes of about half the Mongolian population, and almost everybody in the Gobi. They are remarkably effective in keeping out the fierce desert winds, and are easily transportable which is ideal for the many Mongolians whose lives involve moving regularly (amazingly, a quarter of the population is truly nomadic and another quarter is semi-nomadic). We met a tour group which suggested that we would be "craving corners" after our eight days in the Gobi, but that wasn't exactly true. My group, compromising E, Jochem, Canadian Ashley (fellow survivor of 'the golden shower incident'), and Korean Jin Young, enjoyed our nights in the gers, gathering around the stove to warm ourselves up and putting off the inevitable dash to the outhouse through the chilling midnight wind.

There were, however, two things that I did crave throughout the trip. The first was paved roads. There are no roads in the Gobi - you simply drive along the tyre tracks left by the cars before you. The terrain is appallingly uneven - in the back of the van we were like Lotto balls, randomly thrown in every direction and unable to predict which direction our heads, arms or bums would be thrown next. It was almost as if we were the subject of a week-long advertisement for a new 4WD. On the few occasions that we came across a paved road in the towns, council workers were digging holes in them and it seemed within the realms of possibility that they were busy bringing them up to 'Mongolian standard'.

I also craved decent food. Mutton is the staple - although to describe it as such is slightly misleading because it implies the availability of food of the non-staple variety. Westerners tend to be offered one of two main dishes. The first is a type of flour noodle mixed in with pieces of mutton, mutton fat, and perhaps some potatoes and carrots. The second is like the first, but with hot water added to give it the texture of a soup. Eight days of such fare does test one's penchant for cultural experience, but the alternatives were unquestionably less appetising. Locals happily snack on bones holding nothing but mutton fat - the Western practice of trimming meat of its fat seems very peculiar to Mongolians. And we read that the most common dish in the Gobi remains mutton meat, bones, organs and skull all tossed together in a bucket, from which you choose your favoured part of the body. It probably doesn't need to be pointed out that Mongolians living in the Gobi are not spoiled for choice when it comes to food - vegetables other than potatoes, carrots and onions, for example, are hard to come across and in any case rarely feature in Mongolian meals. This limited diet may not score highly in terms of the five food groups but it appears to provide everything the locals need. Nonetheless, it is something that outsiders commonly find difficult to stomach.

Diet is just one example of the vast differences between my way of life in Canberra, Australia and those of the many people who make their homes in the Gobi. But the long reach of global corporations ensures there are some surprising similarities. Whether you're in the Gobi or downtown Sydney, you can travel to your nearest market and pick up a Snickers and a Coke. This, perhaps, wasn't such a shock. But one of the most startling sights in the Gobi is the occasional ger boasting its own satellite dish. Electricity and televisions seemed quite rare in the desert, let alone the capacity for satellite TV. It was strange to think that just as we Australians were catching up on 24-hour news coverage at home, BBC and CNN were beaming the same pictures into ger settlements in one of the least populated places on earth.

Perhaps too many photos of the Gobi - but we think they're worth it

Strangers on the train - or, The American who mistook my bed for a toilet

2005-10-11T22:13:00.000+10:00

The greatest variable on the Trans-Siberian trip is your travelling companions. Spending 40 hours in a confined space can be trying with best friends, let alone complete strangers. E and I have experienced a mix, from the heartening to the bizarre and slightly disturbing. Of the people we have met on the train, three groups stand out: the warm Siberians; the Russians bearing vodka; and the American who mistook my bed for a toilet.

The most enjoyable leg of our trip so far was the 19 hours we spent travelling 3rd class (platskartny) from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk. Travelling platskartny was a bit of an experiment. It is described in our guidebook as a "rolling dorm": 54 beds crammed into a carriage and very little privacy or opportunity for escape. The beds are shorter and thinner, the bathrooms stronger on the nose, and vast amounts of luggage are strewn throughout the carriage. The advantage is that there is little opportunity to crawl into your shell, and you almost certainly end up communicating with the people around you. We shared a space with two mild mannered Russian men from northern Siberia. After several attempts to engage them in conversation by offering up various treats from our snack bag, our chocolate chip biscuits finally proved the ice breaker and we spent an afternoon learning about each other's very different lives.

Alexander was from Norilsk, Zepitkhan from Dudinka. Alexander explained that the first snow had just fallen and that it would continue for the next nine months. We eagerly asked for more details on winter, and they obliged: -40C days, two metres of snow and 45 days of complete darkness each year. I naively asked if they ate lots of soup to keep warm, and they laughed and pointed at a bottle of vodka on the table. We asked about their jobs (computer programmer and lawyer) and their interests (home theatre and cars). They were very interested in our lifestyle in Australia, down to the number of bedrooms in our home and the size of our television screen. We showed them some photos of family and friends and the Australian landscape, and Zepitkhan took a particular interest in the marital status of my younger sister J and began asking questions about obtaining Australian citizenship. The remarkable thing about this afternoon of conversation was that we did not share one word of common language - the key to it all was a Russian-English/English-Russian dictionary which was passed back and forth. As the train approached our destination Alexander reached into his suitcase and pulled out a jar of Siberian honey and offered it to us as a gift. We reached into ours and gave both of them koala keyrings and Sydney Harbour Bridge pins. Zepitkhan then scrambled up onto his bed and rustled in his bag for a few minutes before producing a video advertising tourism in his home town, and a cured fish. The fish sat there on the table staring back at us and he explained that it was a staple for the indigenous people in his region, who fish for it by cutting a hole in the ice and throwing a line into the icy waters. It was chewy and salty and somewhat of an acquired taste, but we munched on it until the train pulled into the station and the time came to reach into the phrasebook for 'It was nice to meet you' and 'Goodbye'.

On the 34 hour trip from Yekaterinburg to Krasnoyarsk we shared our four berth compartment with a Russian soldier, Alexander, and a self-described '911 man', Victor. On the second night they offered Edwina and me some of their beer and, somewhat tentatively, I pulled out of my backpack a half litre bottle of Moscovskaya vodka (which is of mid-range quality and cost me all of $6). I was a little apprehensive because I had heard that nights spent drinking vodka with Russians can be endless and that it is very difficult to refuse a drink. As I poured out 50ml shots (the Russian standard, although many establishments serve 100ml quantities), another soldier, Andre, joined us. Alexander instructed me to make a toast, so I said something about new friends and we threw back our first drink. Soon after I was encouraged to refill the glasses, and when my bottle was finished Alexander produced his own. In between shots we ate small snacks - bread, salami, lemon - designed to soak up the alcohol. Again without a common language, we learned a little about each other. Alexander, for instance, had been posted to Khabarovsk in the far East and was leaving behind a wife and young son. And all three of them were into cars, and somehow even without a word of English they managed to figure out that Edwina knew more about cars than me, which was the cause of much amusement. Unfortunately, it all came to an abrupt end. One of the last things I remember clearly is Victor pointing to a page in my phrasebook which sets out how to say "I'm going to be sick". He was referring to Alexander, who had suddenly gone green and began to throw up on himself. But it was only the next morning that we worked out that it wasn't the vodka - it was the chicken, which they had provided and which had been sitting on the table with the other snacks. I was the only other person who had eaten it, and it wasn't long before the sudden, violent illness fell upon me. The rest of the night was a bit of a blackout, although E remembers it quite vividly as she tried to put me to bed and work out what was the matter. As an epilogue to this night, I was nursed back to health by a combination of E's care and the home remedies of the host of our Krasnoyarsk homestay. A babushka in her sixties, Galina insisted I drink her chicken soup and Siberian thin jelly, and the day after I was back on my feet.

We boarded our Irktusk to Ulaan Baatar leg to discover that our carriage was full of Westerners - foreigners had been put together to streamline the Russia-Mongolia border crossing. We packed away our phrasebook and dictionary, started chatting to the Canadian and American sharing our compartment, and sat back to enjoy what we thought would be one our easier legs. We were wrong. The American, K, stayed up longer than us, drinking beer and vodka with the people in the adjacent compartment. I woke up briefly when K came to bed, for he was very drunk and the provodnitsa was insisting on strapping him into his top bunk. I put it out of my mind and went back to sleep. A short while later, I awoke to the feeling of a warm liquid drizzling onto my back. I was disoriented at first, not sure whether it was all part of a dream, but sat up and saw K perched in a sitting position on his top bunk. Then E cried out as something warm drizzled onto her, and in the ensuing confusion we pushed K out into the corridor and into the bathroom. It was at that point that I recalled that, earlier in the evening, K had been telling us about a Mongolian man who, before going to sleep on the top bunk of his train, intentionally urinated on his wife in the bunk below. K had apparently decided to test out this local practice for himself.

We were furious, but it was a full train and there was nowhere for us to go. We got changed and threw our soiled bedding into the corridor. We bought new sheets and climbed back into bed, but there was little sleep to be had and I lay awake most of the night expecting another warm projectile to come my way. In the morning K apologised, but it was of the charm-soaked sort, full of phrases like "If there's anything I can do" and "If you want to shout at me, I understand". We had a full day and a night left on the train, and I planned to spend most of it far away from him. But then we reached the Russia-Mongolia border and we were instructed to stay in our compartments until immigration and customs checks had been completed (it is often quipped that it is harder to get out of Russia than into it). E, K, the Canadian and me sat in the compartment, waiting for the Russian officials to visit. The train had come to a complete stop, so the air circulation had been shut off. After two hours the smell of stale urine hung heavily in the air. After four hours I began to nuzzle my nose into my deoderised armpit, desperately seeking some relief. And still we waited for the immigration and customs officials. After five hours we were cleared and we proceed to the other side of the border, where we sat for another three hours. Thankfully the Mongolian officials were more efficient and after the formalities were completed we were allowed onto the platform for some fresh air. The train eventually got moving again, and I sat in the corridor for as long as I could before retiring to bed, where I spent a second night watching K.

We knew almost immediately that the incident would make for a good story, but there is little joy in the retelling. We worry now that we will approach each subsequent train journey with a suspicion of our travelling companions, half-expecting to be woken in the night by one of their less savoury personality quirks. And for K it is probably more serious, with a realisation that he has a problem with alcohol. We have one more leg of our Trans-Siberian journey left, and we have our fingers crossed that it will be of the sort that brings honey and fish, rather than dirty sheets and bad memories.

Loads of photos are now up, including pics of Krasnoyarsk, magical Lake Baikal and the train

Alain de Botton on staring out train windows

2005-10-04T21:00:00.000+10:00

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at time requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to so; the task can be as paralyzing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand. Thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks -- charged with listening to music, for example, or following a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for a time that nervous, censorious, practical part of the mind which is inclined to shut down when it notices something difficult emerging in consciousness, and which runs scared of memories, longings and introspective or original ideas, preferring instead the administrative and the impersonal.

--Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

Riding the big grand-daddy to Beijing

2005-10-01T18:30:00.000+10:00

The Trans-Siberian railway is the big grand-daddy of train trips. The train from Moscow to Beijing covers 7621 kilometres and takes six days. If you continue straight through to Vladivostok that's an extra couple of thousand kilometres. As a guidebook points out, once you've done the Trans-Siberian every other train trip is "once around the block with Thomas the Tank Engine". This trip has loomed large in my imagination for years, and it was a huge thrill to find myself on the platform at Kursk station in Moscow, waiting to board the first leg of my Trans-Siberian adventure.

The Trans-Siberian proper is the Number 2 train (the 'Rossiya') from Moscow to Vladivostok. Few Westerners take this route because of Vladivostok's remote locale and the difficulty of moving on from there. E and I are taking the more travelled route, 'the Trans-Mongolian', which passes through Mongolia and terminates in Beijing. Having said that, these are working trains and the likelihood of us bumping into other foreigners on the train is quite small. On our 34 hour trip from Yekaterinburg to Krasnoyarsk (our current location) we met three other tourists, but the rest of the carraige was a motley crue of babushkas, Russian soliders on their way to postings and Russian families moving house. The train attracts a wide variety of people simply because it is the cheapest and most efficient form of transport in Russia.

The story of the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway is as monumental as the mythology that has since been built around it. It took 25 years for the first line of track to be built, with it being completed finally in 1916 at a cost of 1000 million rubles. Most of it was built by men wielding nothing more than wooden shovels. The workers, most of them far from home, endured long, cold winters as well as summers that brought outbreaks of plague, cholera and other diseases. But this first line of track was built on the cheap, and there were frequent delays and derailments. Sometimes the train went so slowly that passengers got out to pick flowers and walked along beside it. Following the Revolution, Lenin remarked that "When the trains stop, that will be the end", and the trains continued to run through the Civil War. Later the Soviet Union undertook the repair of the Trans-Siberian line, a huge project which was largely built on the backs of prisoners in labour camps.

The modern traveller, however, need not concern themselves with the suffering behind this remarkable engineering feat. Three legs in, E and I agree: it is a tremendously comfortable ride. In 2nd class, there are four berths in each compartment and nine compartments in each carriage. The provodnitsa (conductor) is the lord of the manor. She (they are invariably women) decides when the toilets are open, when the carriage gets cleaned, and oversees provision of the samovar of boiling water at the end of the carriage. She can also decide to deprive passengers of these things - it is best to stay on the provodnitsa's good side. All except one of our provodnitsas so far have been lovely and extremely hard-working - although we have small Australian-themed gifts in our backpacks should the need arise to sweet talk a surly conductor.

Time passes pleasantly on the train. After we store our bags away and sort out our bedding, we make ourselves a cup of tea and gaze out the window at the landscape. This may take up two or three hours of our time, depending on the mood. Then we might reach for a book (E, Solzhenitsyn and me, far less highbrow, Robert Harris's thriller 'Archangel') and read till we're hungry. Then it's time for lunch. We might spend a bit more time over our black bread and salami because we know that we have nothing important or pressing to do for the next day or even next two days. The landscape seems to reflect this mood back at us. There are spots of striking beauty, particularly at this time of year when some trees are ablaze in the reds, oranges and yellows of autumn, but for the most part we are gazing out at clusters of yellow trees or vast stretches of grassland (the steppes). This goes on for hours. The landscape is in no hurry to change, to do anything new or different, and neither are we.

The train passes through dozens of towns, giving us the opportunity to get little snapshot glimpses into their histories. We passed through the village where the world's first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, perished in a plane crash; our guidebook warned off stopping in another town for its history of stockpiling dangerous chemicals; and we stopped off in Yekaterinburg, site of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and home town of Boris Yeltsin. Being on the train has helped me appreciate just how immense this country is, how many stories there are, and how little I can hope to comprehend on a 30-day visa. But, as I had hoped, it is a thrill to see the country unfold before me on this magnificent train as it rolls on gently towards Beijing.

A few more shots from the train

Lenin lives

2005-09-27T17:28:00.000+10:00

When Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, his wife made a special request that no memorials be created for him. It is probably an understatement to say that her wishes were ignored. As you wander around Moscow you see any number of statues, monuments and paintings of Lenin. The memorials to Stalin are gone, but Lenin somehow lives on. You can even get your photo with him, if you know where to look. Eighty years on he has made a home next to a lamp post just outside Red Square. One day he caught my eye and smiled - I think he suspected I was trying to get a photo of him without paying. And he would have been right, but it was only because he was sitting next to his friend, Karl Marx.

Looking decidedly less lifelike is the real Lenin, who has been interred in a Mausoleum on Red Square since 1930. It suited the political interests of Stalin and others to drum up a cult of personality, so Lenin's corpse was embalmed, dressed up in a dark suit and laid out on a slab for public viewing. During Soviet times people would queue for several hours to get a glimpse. When Stalin died he, too, was displayed in the Mausoleum, but upon being denounced by Khruschev he was buried out in the garden by the Kremlin walls. (An interesting aside is that Lenin's brain was placed in a specially-founded Institute of Lenin's Brain, where scientists subjected it to deep analysis in an attempt to discover the secret of his genius.)

I queued for about an hour to pay my respects to the real Lenin. After cloaking my bags, camera and checking for any disrespectful items ('Eat at McLenin's' tshirts are apparently barred), I was ushered into a small, dimly lit room. Glowing under a glass case was the preserved Lenin, arms by his side with right hand clenched in a fist. His skin did not look entirely healthy, giving off the kind of orange luminescence you might get if you placed a light bulb inside a child's doll. Someone behind me sniggered, and a guard gave out a firm librarian's 'shush'. Lenin's face is so distinctive and interesting that I would have liked to stay for longer, but I was moved along by another guard and hurried back into Red Square.

Outside, a small group of elderly socialists was staging a demonstration, but it was a tame affair and most people seemed to take no notice. Besides, I was hungry, and just across the Square was GUM (pronounced 'Goom'), a gigantic department store with any number of food options. And of course McDonald's was also a possibility, being just a short walk from Red Square and boasting internet access and listening stations alongside its burgers and fries. If there weren't so many tourists gawking at him all the time, I'd imagine Lenin might be turning in his grave.

Photos of St Petersburg, Moscow and first leg of Trans-Siberian

A visit to a Stasi prison

2005-09-15T19:56:00.000+10:00

The Stasi, or East German secret police, were the most important instrument for maintaining the communist dictatorship in the former GDR. They ensured blanket surveillance of the population - in the end, there numbered 91,000 full-time Stasi employees and 180,000 unofficial collaborators. The engine room of the Stasi operation was their headquarters in Berlin, which is now open to visitors. It contains a good collection of Stasi surveillance equipment, including cameras disguised as logs, stones and suitcases, and watches serving as voice recorders. The technology was impressive for its time, but now seems a little quaint, as if appearing in a rerun of a favourite Cold War movie. But across town there is a Stasi legacy that could never be mistaken as quaint. It is the building which housed the Stasi's main remand prison, and it serves as a powerful reminder of the terrible suffering that the Stasi inflicted on so many individuals and families across Germany.

The prison population consisted of people who had tried to flee the GDR or were considered to have offered resistance to the regime. Prisoners were held until they signed a confession and/or provided information useful to the regime, and the techniques employed by the Stasi ensured that pretty much everyone complied in the end. In the early days of the prison, the Stasi employed mostly physical methods - prisoners were held in damp, cold cells and subjected to various types of torture, including sleep deprivation, standing upright for several hours and water torture. From about 1960, however, the Stasi began employing psychological methods to break prisoners' resistance. The East German government was concerned about its international image, and it was preferable if information could be coerced from prisoners without leaving marks on their bodies.

The aim of this 'psycho-terror' was to evoke in the prisoners a feeling of complete helplessness, of losing control over thier lives and being at the mercy of an almighty authority. Instead of being crammed into a cell with 20 other people, prisoners now had their own cells and were isolated from the rest of the prison population. Attempts to communicate with the guards or other prisoners were severely punished. Very occasionally prisoners were held two to a cell, but often one of the pair was a spy tasked with gaining the other's trust and eliciting incriminating information. It was forbidden to lie on the bed during the day, so the only alternative was to walk up and down the cell or sit in a hard chair against the wall. The monotony of incarceration was broken only by interrogation. Prisoners were subjected to months of questioning by interrogators expertly trained in coercing incriminating statements. Even the drawing of a curtain during interrogation - giving the prisoner a rare but useless glimpse into the outside world - was a reminder of the power relations at play. If the Stasi had been spying on your family, they might leave copies of your brother's letters on the desk just to let you know that you were not the only one being watched. Or they might lie and tell you that your mother had committed suicide because she could not cope with having a child in prison. Everything, even the offering of a cup of coffee during interrogation, was deliberate, and expertly targeted at breaking your resistance.

Upon release into the community, many prisoners found it hard to describe the terror that had been inflicted upon them - after all, there were no scars on their body. And for many, their personal relationships were destroyed. It was impossible for others to relate to their suffering. And some left with the knowledge that it was friends or family that had landed them in prison. One prisoner discovered during interrogation that she was arrested only after her husband's betrayal. For so many prisoners, normal life could never be resumed. A number of prisoners have returned to the prison and now work as tour guides. For them, it is a form of emotional healing and is a way of passing on their experience to others. This is of no small importance - amazingly, some Germans who lived through the GDR still have no knowledge of the Stasi's activities.

Leaving the Stasi prison, I thought about the senior Stasi officials who, back at Stasi HQ, made the decisions that ruined so many people's lives. It seems almost bizarre that these terrible decisions were made in the mundane Stasi offices, in those yellow cushioned chairs that let off a musty smell and remind me of the furniture in my primary school staff room. How could these people inflict such harm on others? It's a question that has been running through my mind throughout Central Europe, a region that has suffered terribly at the hands of Nazi and communist dictatorships. In the 'House of Terror' museum in Budapest the curators have devoted one room to the 'Hall of Victimisers' - it names and shames the people who willingly played a part in oppressing the Hungarian people over almost half a century. I thought at the time that such a Hall might have a place in museums in dozens of countries across the world. And a good place to start might be Germany, where many former Stasi are still out in the community living ordinary, comfortable lives.

Lots of photos of Berlin

The miracle of Eger

2005-09-07T20:04:00.000+10:00

A short walk from the centre of Eger is 'The Valley of Beautiful Women'. Set in one of Hungary's principal wine growing regions, this is where you come for wine tasting on a shoestring - or, more accurately, on the smell of an oily rag. Visitors are invited to taste the wares of a number of cellars grouped together on a short horseshoe-shaped street. The cellars are built into a hill and walking into them is a bit like entering cosy little caves, except these are naturally chilled to just the right temperature for the storage of a large range of delicious wines. Different to wine tastings in Australia, the practice is to enter a cellar, randomly pick a type of wine and pay for a glass. At forty cents a pop, we were happy to oblige.

The pride of the Eger wine region is Egri Bikaver, or 'Bull's Blood' as it is widely known. The story goes that when the Turks were attacking Eger castle 1552, the soliders defending it were plied with large quantities of red wine. It wasn't long before their beards began to drip with the red liquid, and the rumour spread among the Turks that the opposing army gained their strength from drinking the blood of bulls. It must have worked - the castle was succesfully defended, and the Turks had to wait several decades before they got another crack at it.

It was a miracle that the the castle was defended but, as we were to learn, Eger had more miracles in store. It is true that, after six hours of wine tasting in the Valley, we did feel something akin to spiritual enlightenment. And it was in this heady state that I seized my 1500mL water bottle and presented it to the owner of my favourite cellar. Our eyes met briefly and as I mumbled 'Bull's Blood', I could tell she understood. I emerged two minutes later not with water, but with wine. And then J went to the cellar next door, and it happened again - in the native tongue, asvanyviz had been turned into bor. As we walked back into town, bottles in hand and rejoicing at what we had seen, we noticed that other pedestrians kept a wide berth - perhaps we just shone with the wild glow of having been touched by a miracle.

Photos of wine tasting, Budapest love parade, Slovakian sing-a-long and more...

Alain de Botton on the travelling mindset

2005-09-03T01:07:00.000+10:00

What, then, is a traveling mind-set? Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. Receptive, we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting. We irritate locals because we stand in traffic islands and narrow streets and admire what they take to be unremarkable small details. We risk getting run over because we are intrigued by the roof of a government building or an inscription on a wall. We find a supermarket or a hairdresser's shop unusually fascinating. We dwell at length on the layout of a menu or the clothes of the presenters on the evening news. We are alive to the layers of history beneath the present and take notes and photographs. Home, by contrast, finds us more settled in our expectations. We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about our neighborhood, primarily by virtue of our having lived there a long time. It seems inconceivable that there could be anything new to find in a place where we have been living for a decade or more. We have become habituated and therefore blind to it.
--Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (2002)

Cultural differences in Poland

2005-08-21T01:44:00.000+10:00

The true origins of vodka remain a matter of dispute. Russians, of course, consider it their national drink. But the Poles claim that it originated in their country... and whatever the truth of those claims, they certainly do take it seriously. Restaurant and pub menus boast long lists of vodkas, ranging from ordinary Smirnoff to the quirky and delicious. There is zotgdkova, which is easy on the stomach; wisniowka, which is cherry-flavoured; and my favourite, zubrowka (bison vodka), which is flavoured with grass from the Bialowieza forest on which bison feed. It lives up to its name by leaving a pleasantly grassy aftertaste - although, not having eaten grass recently, I may not be a reliable source.

Vodka in Poland is traditionally drunk neat, and in one gulp. If that intimidates you then beer is your best bet. There is no shortage of delicious piwo in Poland, and no shortage of ways to drink it. Just last night the woman in front of me ordered a glass of beer, and then watched approvingly as the bartender lifted a small pot and poured black tea into it. I also saw young men and women drinking beer through a straw, and was later informed that warm beer is often drunk through a straw, and that it is not uncommon to add jam for extra flavour. Many Poles also like to quench that hard-earned thirst by heating their beer in a microwave. Perhaps this last habit can be explained by the Polish climate, but jam and tea?? I left my comfortable home in Canberra expecting to be confronted with cultural differences, but this is surely beyond the pale.

The site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps is about two hours drive from Krakow. It is largely overrun by tourists, but the sheer horror of the place prevents it turning into a theme park. What really struck me was the size of the camps. Birkenau, just three kilometres from Auschwitz and also known as Auschwitz II, covered about 425 acres, far larger than Auschwitz. Birkenau held up to 100,000 prisoners, and for a period there 10,000 new prisoners arrived daily. New prisoners arrived by train, entering through the "Gate of Death" before being offloaded and examined by a doctor. The doctor sent most straight to the gas chambers, remains of which survive at the site. I was also struck by the clinical nature of the killing. The gas chambers held up to 2,000 people at a time, it would take about 10-15 minutes for the Zyklon B gas to kill them, and then a further period to burn the corpses in the crematoria. It was such an efficient operation, all worked out to the finest detail - mass murder by mathematics. After four or so hours at the site of the two camps there was really not much to say - the horror is so overwhelming that it had long ago worn me down. A memorable, moving day.

The British Experience

2005-08-12T00:14:00.000+10:00

The first thing I noticed after arriving in London was that someone had turned the volume down. Catching the subway in New York, my carriage companions were two extraordinarily round African American women who enthusiastically broadcast their conversation to anyone in the Lower 48 who cared to listen. On the London Tube, of course, no one even so much as sneezes lest it be mistaken for an invitation to exchange small talk. After a week of glorious, but voluble, New York, the relative reserve of London came somewhat as a relief.

There are many pleasures to be had in a short stay in London. There is tea in the afternoon - or morning, or evening, or whenever else it takes your fancy. The British, I have learned, are the largest per capita tea consumers in the world, and (spuriously or not) nothing could have communicated "Britain" to me so clearly as my afternoon spent sipping Earl Grey in a Fulham tea house. There is the predictably unreliable weather, which struggles to reach low-20's under grey skies in this, the warmest month of the year. For some reason it was a source of comfort to me each morning. There is the Tate Modern art gallery, housed in an old power station and containing thrilling thematically-arranged exhibitions of the gallery's permanent collection. The gallery sits across the River Thames from St Paul's Cathedral, designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1675 and one of the most enlightening church experiences a non-believer could hope to have.

Not many things are more British than Chicken Tikka Masala. It is rated as the most popular dish in Britain, and in 2001 the foreign secretary, the late Robin Cook, described it as "Britain's true national dish". One night E and I sought out some CTM in Brick Lane, a thin strip of road overflowing with Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants. Touts approach you from all directions, and the idea is to work up an appetite haggling before eventually sitting down to your meal. "Did next door offer 20% off? We can offer 25%, and a free bottle of wine." After fifteen minutes or so we were worn out and more or less chose the restaurant closest to our sore feet. I was determined to have a "British experience", so I ordered the CTM (mild, sweet and bright red) and the "lamb curry" (thin and watery). Whether or not the food was worth the exhaustive pre-dinner negotiations, it was far better than what Brick Lane diners were once accustomed to. One restaurant used to offer free curry, ladling it out from a large cauldron to Brick Lane's bravest customers. But on one particularly busy day, the curry supply went low and 30 people got food poisoning - it emerged that the restaurant had not been emptying the cauldron at the end of each day and the food at the bottom was somewhat aged.

We are now in Aberdeen. We are lucky to be here, as industrial action by the caterers and baggage handlers almost prevented us getting on a plane. According to our pilot, it was "all a bit of a shambles". He was quite forthcoming with all sorts of information, including hints on when we should look out the window to see points of interest, the type of aircraft ahead of us in the landing queue and, of course, the fact that our bags weren't going to be joining us in Aberdeen. But he said everything in such an endearing Scottish accent, and made such liberal use of the word 'wee', that we could hardly begrudge him the bad news.

Updated New York photos and incredibly cute photos of my nieces - London and Scotland to be posted soon

Dizzy in the Apple

2005-08-02T12:58:00.000+10:00

New York City has 5 boroughs, and in an 8-day visit the most you can hope for is a superficial acquaintance with one of them. E and I spent most of our time in Manhattan, blistering our feet and working through our meagre sock supplies as we hiked the length and breadth of the island. We made appearances in as many different neighbourhoods as possible. We sampled soul food in Harlem, stellar cupcakes in Greenwich Village and grunge chic in the Lower East Side. On one adventure we followed tangled streets deep into the belly of Chinatown and felt like we were in another world entirely. We ate a cheap and colourful dinner at an eccentric little place so different from anything we had encountered that it was almost a shock to emerge and discover we were still in NYC.

I've filled my head with a motley collection of observations over the past 8 days - here are a few. The serving sizes are massive! As I write this I am sipping coffee from a cup tall enough to get into most rides at Coney Island. But the buildings, of course, are much larger. I've spent a lifetime being looked down on by people, but nothing quite dwarfs you like an island of brick-and-mortar giants. It left me feeling off-kilter, and I was relieved to visit smaller-scale Brooklyn and feel the lifting of a strange dizziness brought on by Manhattan's huge structures. But if you'd like to own an apartment in one of these buildings, bring your chequebook - the average 2-bedroom Manhattan apartment costs US$1.5m, and $3.6m for 3 bedrooms. The recent boom in housing prices is making Manhattan inaccessible to all but the very wealthy, with the result that most people (and culture) are heading to the other boroughs. The smallish Manhattan apartments do not discourage New Yorkers from owning dogs, however - and lots of them. Owners (and paid dog-walkers) often take them for walks late at night, sometimes three or four on a leash, ranging from poodles to greyhounds. The dogs were probably doing much better than us at coping with the heat. NYC is renowned for its summer heat, and in Manhattan it's a little hotter because the heat gets absorbed by the concrete and asphalt. But it's the humidity that makes grown men cry, and in this respect the city proved generous.

New York lives up to its reputation as a melting pot. The mix of people (35% white, 25% black, 27% Latino, about 10% Asian/Pacific Islander) is obvious pretty much everywhere. The city seems mostly comfortable with this mix, but the odd exception arises. The day before we arrived, for instance, a tour bus employee reported that a group of "suspicious looking" men had boarded a city tour bus. Police halted the bus, then in the middle of Times Square, and ordered all passengers to put their hands in the air. They were taken off the bus one by one and asked to stand off to the side. All were released except for five "South Asian looking" men, who were handcuffed and ordered to kneel on the footpath. Dogs scoured the bus for any bombs they might have planted, but none were found. The five men were questioned and later released without charge. Later a spokesman for the tour company defended the employee's actions, saying something like: "And what if we hadn't reported it and something had happened? What would people have said then?" According to that logic, I guess any number of suspicious looking men could find themselves handcuffed on New York sidewalks.

Lots more photos here

My brush with Trump

2005-07-23T23:29:00.000+10:00

America isn't Australia. It's a simple truth I'm reminded of each time I come here. Australia shares its language, devours its television and gets into bed with Bush, but even after all that we're not the same. There's the tipping thing, the insistent politeness ('How are you today, sir?'), the spirited conversations on public transport... the details are small but they accumulate, and I'm reminded that getting along over here requries a goodly amount of cultural interpretation and sensitivity.

It's always a happy realisation. If I wanted home I would have stayed there. Here's something I can't do in Canberra: stand in front of a giant kidney bean and look at myself. This is the Cloud Gate monument in Chicago's Millennium Park. 'The Bean', as it's known to locals, was designed by Indian artist Anish Kopoor and is meant to resemble a drop of liquid mercury at the point of landing on the park's plaza. It is made of a highly polished reflective steel, and when I was there it was surrounded by curious locals and tourists intrigued by the distorted reflection of themselves and the city behind them.

I also dropped by to see how Bill Rancic was doing. Bill, as you'll recall, was the winner of the first series of the Apprentice, and for the last 12 months he has been hard at work in Chicago building Trump International Hotel and Tower. (Kelly, the winner of the second series, was not so fortunate - on last report he was head of sales for Trump Ice, a brand of bottled water.) If today was any indication, the construction of this building is going to take a while - but it's a Saturday, so we can forgive Bill a day off. Just tonight I discovered an advert for this development - it featured a comely blonde and the promise that the reader could 'discover the elite lifestyle known only to a select few worldwide'. Residential condos start at US$506,000.

And a special thanks to American Airlines, whose glacial check-in queues caused me to miss my LA-Chicago connection and afforded me the unexpected delight of 4 additional hours in LAX. Next time I'm bringing my push bike.

A couple more photos

Bill Bryson on arriving

2005-07-20T10:45:00.000+10:00

Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.
Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There (1992)