(Dunhuang, China; part 3 of 3)...In olden times, traders and travelers would stop at Dunhuang and stock up on supplies. They would also learn the gossip and get their travel permits authorized. After administrative duties were completed, everyone had a choice. Go northwest to the Yumenguan Pass or southwest to the Yangguan Pass. Neither was a better choice than the other. To Yumenguan, they would perhaps run into the warlike Hun (all uncivilized hordes to the north were given this name) or fry in the desert; go to Yangguan and they would perhaps come across cutthroat bandits or freeze in the mountains.
The drive to Yumenguan takes time, even though it is only 60 miles from Dunhuang, but the scenery is utterly captivating. Several hours will pass as you make your away over flat sand, with only the occasional building (for shepherds?) to break the horizon. At the pass is the Hecang Tower, built by the Han Dynasty. It is crumbling but still stands, and in front of it is a thick trickle of a river that feeds a small marsh of grass and low scrub. A Hen harrier flew over when I sat by it. Also here are the farthest western reaches of the Great Wall of China, but a section of it built by an earlier dynasty than that which built the more famous stretches close to Beijing. The Great Wall of China here is no more than 10 feet high, and it is broken into small patches, rather than being one continuous structure. The strands of hay that poked out of the ground fascinated me. These, too, were parts of the wall, although the specific pieces had crumbled and blown away almost to nothing.
Beyond this the traveler really is in a land of no return. I continued over the rutted road, swerving off it if the desert was firmer and smoother than the road, which often was the case. I crossed the Bei Shan Mountains. The next thing to see is a plain of desert dotted with curiously shaped rocks that local tourism officials have gone to some extent to pretend they resemble animals.

Here is a conversation I had:
Official: “This one looks like a peacock.”
Me: “It does?”
Official: “And this one looks like a lion.”
Me: “A little, I guess.”
Official: “Yes. Ha, ha, ha. Yes. Enjoy them all.”

I would rather make my own mind as to what they were shaped like, or not to have to consider that at all. It was a beautiful spot, with huge rock outcrops popping out of the smooth sand. This is the Sanlongsha Yardan Geopark, and it is spectacular for its quietness and solitude. It also has what must be the World’s Loneliest Restroom. Ten miles back at the visitor center is a small museum and a restaurant. This is where the photo of the TV watcher in the slide slow (see link above) was sitting. The visitor’s center is low to the ground and resembles the low sandstone bluffs of the area, which is all well and good, but behind this is a 300-foot-high telephone and TV transmitter.
The bus that took me to Sanlongsha Yardan stopped a mile and a half short of the provincial border of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region. This is the home of the Uigüir people, Muslim Chinese, who are occasionally a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. Travelers need additional visas to enter, although there are tour groups who take regular groups of travelers there, visiting the towns of Urümqi, the province’s capital, and Kashgar. I met a few people who had come from Kashgar, and they told me that it was like stepping back into the Middle Ages, a place that still has blacksmiths and leather tanners. Groups also visit the Kum Tagh Sand Dunes, in which still roam wild camels and Tibetan asses.
To reach the other pass, Yangguan, you have to go back to the junction that leads to Dunhuang and then, instead of going back to Dunhuang, drive in the other direction. The pass contains a larger fort than does Yumenguan, perhaps because it has been restored and now contains a large museum. A very polite intern conducted me around the museum, which gives an overview of the history of the site. At every exhibit—every exhibit—she preceded her explanation with “And now, valued visitor, I draw your attention to…” It was annoying at first, bearable later and very amusing by the time we finished 45 minutes later. (Just be warned, if this might not be to your liking.) She then led me outside and up to the guard tower and wall that looked little different to what travelers 600 years ago would have seen. This is the end of the Great Wall of China. A huge mound of earth, which was in fact mainly comprised of broken tiles dumped over hundreds of year, was pointed out. It was no huge leap of the imagination to picture trails of camels and wagons disappearing into the distance.
Very surprising to me was the existence of a grape-growing region between the two passes, the vine finding a way to grow in the middle of the desert. A little wine is produced (not as much as in the town of Turpan, farther to the west), but mainly the grapes’ use is restricted to raisins.

(Dunhuang, China, part 2 of 3)...One of the two major tourist sites is the Mogao Caves, also knowns as the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas. (A popular name, for also I have been to the Temple of One Thousand Buddhas on Kowloon Island, Hong Kong.) The road to them lies in between the city and the airport. The drive there does not look promising, until the car rounds a low bluff. Inside the cliffs are 492 caves with a staggering wealth of Buddhist art covering more than 1,000 years.
It was deemed an UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. The official UNESCO report that gave it such status included in its pages the following three statements:

i. “In the desert landscape of the extreme northwest of the province of Gansu are the cliffs of Magao, which form the eastern edge of Mount Mingsha. The cliffs rise above the Dachuan River, which is 25 kilometres southeast of the Dunhuang oasis. Within the cliffs are the 492 natural cells and rock sanctuaries extending over 3,000 metres that make up the famous Caves of a Thousand Buddhas (Qianfodong);
ii. The group at Mogao, so strongly linked with the history of China, also constitutes an anthology of Buddhist art with paintings and sculptures spanning a period of a thousand years;
iii. The paintings at Mogao bear exceptional witness to the civilisations of ancient China during the Sui dynasty (cave no. 302 contains one of the oldest and most vivid renderings of the Silk Route theme; the mural depicts a camel pulling a cart), the Tang dynsasty (workers in the field in acve no. 23 and a line of warriors in cave no. 156) and the Song dynasty (the celebrated landscape of Wutaishan in cave no. 61 is an incredible example of cartography, with its cavalier view of the region, where nothing has been left out—mountains, rivers, cities, temples, roads and caravans are all depicted).”

Monks worked in near darkness painting intricate scenes of both Buddha’s life anf their own, and the detail is stunning (photos of the buddhas and artifacts are not allowed, with visitors needing to deposit cameras at the entrance booth). Only about a dozen caves are open to tourists due to conservation efforts. (As there are not allowed cameras, to see some of what I describe, visit the wonderfully colourful website of the Friends of Dunhunag.)
It is incredible to conceive of these solitary monks, who started work here before Buddhism was granted religious status in China, painting while sitting on crudely constructed scaffolding inside each cave with only the light from oil-smeared wicks to work by. Some caves are small, others large.
What is most celebrated here are the gigantic buddhas. It has both the largest indoor standing Buddha and the largest indoor reclining Buddha (both are approximately 35 metres in length). In order to protect the paintings, the rooms are feebly lit, and the semi-darkness gives to the buddhas a hulking presence.
Buddhist monks lived here until 1930, although it was a Taoist (Daoist) monk—his name was Wang Yuan-lu, and there is a small exhibition about him at Mogao—who in 1900 discovered the caves’ most precious treasure, the Diamond Sutras, perhaps the world’s earliest printed document.
The world’s archaeologists and adventurers made a beeline for the place, and through one-sided deals and blatant thievery, much of the caves’ contents now can be seen in European cities.
British archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein, who died in and is buried in Kabul, Afghanistan, comes under particular admonishment from Mogao’s exhibition literature, and Wang himself was to subject to much ire, too, for the ease in which he handed over cartloads of precious objects to foreigners.
Dunhuang’s other great attraction is its gigantic Mingsha sand dunes, approximately five miles west of the center of the city. A good hotel is here is the Silk Road Dunhuang Hotel. The map of Dunhuang on its website is the best map I could find, but it is pathetic.
For good or for bad, visitors are free to clamber over any dune they want at Mingsha, except for the one that stops a small lake called the Lake of the Crescent Moon (for its shape; known as “Yueyaquan” in the local dialect) from getting silted up. Long lines of clamberers snake up the dunes’ ridges, and the Westerners present refuse to wear the plastic red garters handed out to protect one's footweat from the sands. It is a little comical to see a row of seven or eight people all wearing these garters as they slowly scale a peak.
After 10 minutes or so of vigorous exercise it is possible to be all on your own.
Supposedly, when the wind blows gently the dunes sing. If the wind blows a little more steadily, it is probably advisable to get back down into Dunhuang, although even just outside of town roads can soon become impassable.
That the dunes sing is what the tourism officials told me, but when I was there all I heard was the whopping of Europeans sliding down the dunes on plastic sleds.
It is a wonderful place.
The correct name for the dunes is Mingsha Shan, translated into English as “Echoing Sand Mountain,” so who am I to doubts its tonal attributes?
Camels and, less environmentally sound, motorbikes help some to the tops of the dunes
I was told the lake has not silted up for 1,000 years, something locals seemed very proud of (there, there’s that number again, 1,000. I assume they mean in historical memory, but 1,000 just sounds so much more impressive).
Beside the lake are small fishponds and crop fields, and more camels.

(Dunhuang, China; part 1 of 3)...I first saw the word Dunhuang, many years ago, at an exhibition in the British Museum in London. The museum has approximately 15,000 items from this Chinese city in its collection, and most likely all of them were whisked out of China during the United Kingdom’s empire-building adventures of the 19th century. Most of them came from Dunhuang’s Magao Caves, which house some of the world’s largest statues of Buddha. The city’s name stuck with me amid a whirl of fantastic stories of the legendary Silk Road, on which it lies. This is the 5,000-mile Silk Road of Marco Polo; the Syrian Assassins (where the word “hashish” comes from, by the way) loyal to the Old Man of the Mountains; the great trading cities of Bukhara, Tashkent and Samarkand; the great Arabic university cities of Baghdad and Damascus; The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (as it is correctly known as) by mad, bad, multilingual Richard Burton; and the terra cotta warriors of Xi’an. Try and go to Dunhuang and not feel part—an infinitesimally minute part—of all that history and folklore, sandwiched as you are between the Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, which is predominantly Muslim in culture and religion.
Sand is what you first notice. It creeps into the city’s small but modern airport, fills the eye holes of your shoes before you’ve even got comfortable in your taxi and lies in huge quantities to both sides of the road. At meal times, an occasional grain of it will crack in your teeth, an experience known, no doubt, to anyone eating sandwiches on the beach. To that extent, it is nothing short of miraculous that the streets of Dunhuang, announced by an imperial-style Chinese arch, seem mostly cleared of the stuff. Piles of vegetables, fruits and chilies survive being placed in stands in the market and residents do not need to cover their eyes and mouths with bandanas.
Dunhuang, approximately 1,500 miles west of Beijing, always has been an important stopping-off point for traders on the Silk Road, a place to stock up on provisions, hear the gossip from other traders and receive warnings of the dangers that might lurk ahead. Such places were known as caravanserai. One was needed at Dunhuang perhaps more than at other places for one reason: To the west lay the immense, dry, dangerous Gobi Desert, which is mainly a rocky expanse, rather than a sandy one. Next to the Gobi, and on the traders’ Silk Road route, is a sandy desert, called the Taklamakan. Its name sounds better in the local language, as its loose translation into English is “the desert from which no one returns.” If I saw that on my 13th-century map, I might be persuaded to spend a little more time in Dunhuang, too.
Dunhuang’s airport is nine miles east of the city, and the drive between the two already provides a notion of what the desert looks like. Mostly it is not the desert of Hollywood images of Lawrence of Arabia but an expansive, flat area of nothing—gray-yellow sand and small rocks. Once in a while a low ridge of sandstone cliffs breaks the beautiful monotony.
The first thing a visitor sees on driving beneath Dunhuang’s entrance arch is the 251-room Dunhuang Hotel, which has rooms to both sides of the road and a restaurant and conference space to the left. Upstairs is a theater in which dancing troupes perform regional dances of graceful choreography and synchronized movement. The Chinese restaurant is no different from the vast majority of restaurants in this country—noisy. (I was watching the TV broadcast a game of Ping Pong, which needs no language skills to be understood and followed, so it was a little bit of a mystery to me why a waiter smiled at me and changed channels to a news broadcast in Chinese. Maybe he just didn’t like me?)
A few hundred feet down the road is a statue comprising four camels—of the two-hump Bactrian species that has always lived in the area—that stands in front of the Dunhuang Museum. The museum feels a little institutionalized, but its exhibits are interesting enough, with artifacts chronicling the rise and fall of several Chinese dynasties, the people of which all, despite being forgotten in the mists of time, left evidence of their arrivals. Behind the museum, as the city begins to peter out in a series of dusty side roads, is a small park with another statue, this time of a fierce warrior. Around the park’s edge were Mongolian yurt tents. It looked like a temporary fair had set up shop, but this was not the case. These were homes and food stalls. The largest statue in the city is the one in the middle of its one traffic circle, a huge statue of a Chinese beauty playing a guitar behind her head, sort of like Jim Hendrix used to do, if you will excuse the crass analogy.
My favorite activity in Dunhuang was visiting the market. During the day, Muslim Chinese operate food stalls, while in the evening, things are lit up and stallholders sell an amazingly broad range of relative nontouristy knick-knacks. I found a small pot with a lid that dated to the early 20th century (or at least I was told this by someone at the hotel). They were made for mass consumption, and many (but not mine) depict erotic scenes. I searched all around the market for another example but found no other. The evening market, known as the Shazhou Night Market, stretches the whole length of one street. At one end are stalls selling delicious kebobs of grilled lamb, grapes and a single piece of lamb fat. All is rubbed in chili, and my mouth is watering now just writing about them.

(Salkimbagi , Turkey)…Someone explained to me in Diyarbakir that there was a road all the way from the Kurdish capital to the mysterious statues of Nemrut Dagi. “Yes. Straight road,” he said. “From here to there.” The road was soon beautiful, rising high into the thinner air to the northwest of Siverek. Teenagers wearing knitted caps, which I had not seen in all the other, warmer areas of Turkey I had travelled to, tended large flocks of sheep and goats. Round knots of bare rock peaked out of the stony soil, and I saw a small group of soldiers: This area often has seen activity from the outlawed Kurdish Partyiya Karkeren Kurdistan organisation.
Thus, it came as a surprise when the D360 road ended at Mezra, at the thinner north end of the lake known as Ataturk Baraji, named after the founder of modern Turkey. I wondered if I would have to do a 180-degree turn, but I decided against that when I saw the distance involved. I parked behind the one other vehicle already awaiting the ferry.
The ferry port consisted of a small building that was divided into a small room for sitting and making chai and a prayer area. Two women – perhaps a mother and daughter – sat outside wearing the traditional lilac-coloured headscarves that I had started seeing in Sanliurfa, Ceylanpinar and Mardin. As I waited, additional cars came and parked, although in no order. Pretty soon my car looked as though it would be the fifth car to get on the ferry, then the tenth, a worry that grew when I saw the size of the ferry. A ramp was thrown down onto a concrete slab emerging from the water, and after the cars on it departed the jigsaw puzzle began that resulted in every waiting car getting a space. It was a very impressive display of juggling, and I have to say I was impressed, too, by my ability to follow instructions, drive up the ramp and fit in. It took some effort to get out of the car once the ferry was off, such was the squeeze, but here was a wonderful, 20-minute journey, rich blue sky kissing bare lakeside hills and the sound of Kurdish being spoken among the passengers.
It was not the first potential delay that had turned into a fond memory. Almost 200 miles before in the River Tigris-side town of Hasankeyf – continually threatened by a planned hydroelectric dam, which will sink this amazing place of cave dwellings, towers and tombs if it goes ahead (help plan that it does not, although the last news is that the plan has been discarded) – some local children, after successfully relieving me of all my strawberries after finding out I had no pens, were responsible for laying down thumb tacks on the floor that luckily resulted in only two wheels being punctured. One of these was so slow to lose air I did not realize until hours before I returned the vehicle to the car agency. At the time I had parked the car to visit the startling blue tomb of Zeynel Bey, who was the eldest son of Uzun Hasan, who, in turn, was a 15th-century sultan of the Aq Qoyunlu dynasty of everyone’s favourite Orghuz people of the White Sheep Turkmen, who as all students know hardly ever got on with the rival Black Sheep Turkmen. I do not think Hasan ever came to Hasankeyf, despite the names, and Zeynel was killed in action in 1473, five years before his father died – amazingly peacefully, which is a word that cannot possibly describe the bloodshed that then took place between his remaining sons for his vacant throne.
Also amazingly was that opposite the tomb, which was being repaired, was a small mechanic's hut. After prayers, he fixed up the wheel, but on the next day as I drove some 10 miles away, I realised the wheel was unaligned and the steering therefore was faulty. Back I went. The mechanic, who was the nicest person, was frightfully apologetic.
After Lake Ataturk, the D360 continues. I was on the lookout for a turn to Karadut, which in turn led up increasingly smaller roads to one of the great archaeological finds of the late 19th Century – Nemrut Dagi. But before I reached it, I made a wrong turn, which is the reason I started to take some travel notes while in the minute village of Salkimbagi, snot-faced children (no thumb tacks … I was checking) tapping on the window.
Nemrut Dagi’s statues are on the top of a bare, somewhat forlorn, windswept, 7,000-foot-high mountain. The hillside also contains one of the loneliest WCs on the planet, although it cannot compare with the one I came across in the Gobi Desert a few miles west of the Great Wall of China’s final fort (from thereon in, medieval Silk Road travellers, you are on your own!) at Yangguan. A few people trickled up the steep, rocky hillside to Nemrut Dagi, the final and only marker of the long-forgotten Commagene people, this 1st Century BC tomb site honouring King Antiochus I. In fact it gives him far more honour than his life deeds merit, with statues of gods, including Hercules and Apollo, accompanying a 30-foot-high statue of himself. Standing around are other huge statues with pointy beards and cool headgear and representing eagles and other animals. His remains have never been located.
Today, Nemrut Dagi makes for an epic adventure, though, so I am not criticising Antiochus I’s ego one little bit – although what I find more amazing is how the German Charles Sester ever found these grey statues camouflaged perfectly amid thousands of square acres of identical rock and not – to my knowledge – even on the highest point hereabouts. “I’ll just have a wander, see what I see,” he might have muttered one afternoon before disappearing for a fortnight. That said, one thing I have learnt about travelling over all the years of good fortune I have had the opportunity to do so is that everywhere you think you have been, and only you have been, someone else has always got there before you – and usually a German!

(Lalibela, Ethiopia)...In January 2013, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church raised the entrance fee for the famed rock-hewn churches in Lalibela – Ethiopia’s most popular tourism destination – from $20 to $50. Just a tad over the rate of inflation! Not everyone is happy. While the priests (along with quite a few others I met while all over Ethiopia this March and April) believe tourists have unlimited supplies of dollars and Ethiopian birr, tourism guides and providers (who quickly realized most tourists do not) have seen their clients decide not to ditch the churches but to lessen additional costs by ditching them.
The news of the fee increase has swiftly reverberated. Guides are trying to organize crisis meetings with priests and their representatives, but pleas for commonsense or a compromise have fallen on deaf ears. I saw families of four or more buy just two tickets and then hand them over to those who remained outside when it came to their turn. Priests have countered with writing passport numbers on tickets, which do last for four days, and checking them against the passports of those inside the complex. On my second day there, I decided to do without a guide, and my ticket was checked every 200 yards. That’s annoying, too.
Recent developments might hurt the pocket, but it is hard to ignore the pull of these majestic, stunning churches and celebration of faith over labor. All 11 churches, referred to as monolithic, that is, carved from one piece of rock, are a sensory overload of swaying, chanting priests, sandstone passages – including one that leads from heaven to hell (certainly if you do not have a torch with you) – icons, carvings, pilgrims, penitents, carpets, illuminated manuscripts, white robes and reverence.
It is thought that most were built in the 12th and 13th centuries during and just after the reign of King Lalibela, who was inspired to construct them as the New Jerusalem following the original Jerusalem’s capture by Muslim forces in 1197. Legend also states that one church or more appeared after one night thanks to the help of angels. That the churches were aided spiritually does not appear to be an impossibility. In three clusters – Southeastern, Northwestern and the single church of Bet Gyorgis – the churches dominate the small town of Lalibela and could easily take up three days of your time. I found several spots in which to sit down and watch nuns separate wheat from chaff, priests ignorant of your presence flip through the pages of a bible written in the Ethiopian religious language of Ge’ez, young novices scuttle from church to church, small congregations of church elders murmur prayer and incantations and Mocking chats, Blue-breasted bee-eaters, Greater blue-eared glossy starlings and other birds make homes in sandy hollows. Lichen and moss color walls. Visitors smile in adoration of the mind-blowing architecture and of how this majesty was created and then wonder what is behind the curtains that in every church conceal the Holy of the Holies, icons, crosses and other religious paraphernalia permitted to be seen only by priests. Among the lucky is the church’s new patriarch, 71-year-old Abune Mathias, who had been enthroned in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa at the beginning of March. Aptly for the Lalibela legend, his former post was in Jerusalem.
At Lalibela, I noticed the lack of something I was previously warned of, and this was confirmed for me upon talking to other travelers. Before the fee increase, guides hassled tourists more, priests often stuck out a hand if it was obvious that they were the subject of a photo and other locals warned of dire consequences if they were not hired as shoe carriers (footwear is not allowed in the churches themselves), although all of Ethiopia is so polite and reverent, threats of any magnitude seem hardly believable. Now, though, these additional costs seem to have evaporated. It is though someone has said, yes, you can charge me $50, but the bucks stop there. This is the main concern of the guides, most of whom are worth the $15 to $18 they charge, for a former total of less than $40, two separate fees that at least spread the money around the town. One gripe is that the church spends very little if anything on the town. One bar worker I talked to said he earns 300 birr a month, about $17. Women might also gripe at the church of Bet Golgotha, attached to Bet Mikael, as it does not allow them in, the only church in Lalibela not to do so.
The $50 fee also is just for the churches in Lalibela. There are others worth visiting that charge an additional amount. High up on Abuna Yoseph mountain, the small church of Asheton Maryam has some marvelous crosses and manuscripts, dutifully shown to you by a scowling priest, and a passage hacked through the mountain that leads to steps falling down in the direction of Lalibela (beware of a scam half way down when locals appeal for money for a supposed Library Club). When the sun begins to set, white-robed believers slowly walk to the edges of the churches and listen to hidden priests recite mass and extend blessings. I sat with them (Lalibela is great for sitting) and again was spellbound by the belief, sounds and sights wafting around me. It reminded me very much of Jerusalem (more proof!) at sunset, when the sun drops behind the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the taped chants of muezzins across loudspeakers float up to the Mount of Olives – very often joined by snatches of Jewish klezmer music.
Christmas, Epiphany and Easter are very busy here, and finding out when they are is not so easy. Ethiopia has a different calendar, both for the year (it’s currently 2005, this year beginning last September 11) and the months (there are 13 in a year). It also abides by the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian one. After leaving Lalibela, I asked my driver-guide, Zawdu Hailu, when the relevant dates would be for 2014, and after eight days with him, he still could not be certain. Whenever these festivals are, travelers can expect higher hotel prices and full hotels but not necessarily sold-out flights. Lalibela is becoming popular, but it is far from being saturated. That said, recent changes have been profound.
Less than 10 years ago, there was not even a half-decent rocky road to get here, and the airport could not be used during the rainy season. A bus takes two days to get here from Addis Ababa; the plane takes 45 minutes, plus another 45 minutes on a bus from the airport. On one day I was there all the activity was at the church called Bet Gabriel. An all-day festival brought priests from other churches – they tend to be associated with one particular church but worship from time to time at the others – as well as a huge congregation. Colorful umbrellas shaded pilgrims from the sun as they, too, sat on every exposed rocky surface. Priests held out crosses for pilgrims to kiss and extended blessings. One blessed me, the difference being that he then expected a tip – 50 birr. Hotel development is developing fast in Lalibela, especially around the futuristic Ben Abeba, the design of which looks like the super slide of an aquatic theme park. More to my taste was the town’s oldest hotel, The Seven Olives, which in the off season charged $30 for a room facing its wealth of trees containing Variable, Olive and Marico sunbirds, Black-headed weavers and Red-billed hornbills and has the best restaurant hereabouts. This is a place for travelers to chill. It was also managed by the church, but I was told that this was no longer the case. Another great restaurant was the very basic Blue Nile (no website), along the road between the Northwestern Cluster to the Seven Olives. Food is cooked in a thatched area over a bare fire and to order. Unique (no website) on the road to Asheton Maryam is good for atmosphere and the owner’s character, but the food was basic – by this time into my trip, I decided that for every meal I could have eaten injera – Ethiopia’s spongy, flat bread – and wat – the meat- or vegetable-filled sauce, often spicy, that is tipped onto it and shared on huge plates.
One new development I loved was Lalibela Hudad, an eco-lodge also high on a mountain that faced the mountain on which sits Asheton Maryam. Its accommodation is four comfortable tukul huts spread very far from one another, with outside showers – order your warm water when you’re ready. There is a kitchen and lounge by the entrance, the passage to which is a narrow cleft between rocks that makes absolutely no concessions to the larger among us. Perhaps the unfit would struggle to make the two or three hours climb, despite mules (250-300 birr) handling luggage. In the evening, delicious food is served amid stars and quiet, foot massages (explained as typical Ethiopian hospitality) and songs, including one inspiring soldiers to be courageous – listening to these cries, it did not come as a surprise that Ethiopia was never colonized, if you ignore five Italian years between 1936 and 1941. During the day, the maximum of eight guests are joined by a pack of colorful Gelada baboons. The property is currently “unofficially open,” and it plans another three tukuls and a restaurant, but as there is no electricity or water supply, wonderfully, there will be a limit to how modern it can be made. It is memorable. Porridge with native honey and a cup of strong coffee while staring at distant hamlets and farms is a great way to start any day. On the way up, stop off at a farmer’s tukul for coffee and chat, while on the way back down, stop off at Asheton Maryam.

(Kanazawa, Japan)...The Continued Artistry of Post-Tsunami Japan: It is now a little more than two years since the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami devastated parts of Japan, but bathing in Houshi natural spa in its namesake hotel, which has welcomed guests since 719, I could be excused for thinking nothing was amiss. In the village of Awazu, sleeping on tatami mats in Zen peace, dressed in a yukata robe and eating sushi, life was good, a
nd my foremost concern was that it’d be very nice if the Japanese government weakened a little the yen, its currency.
Travelers often get scared by world news. When there are so many places to choose to travel to, this is understandable, but when our biggest concern might be security, Japan offers the perfect destination. Expense and fears of radiation (current advice is to stay at least 50 miles from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station, even though radiation levels are lowering to normal levels) ate to one side, Japan’s warm welcome, punctuality, organization and rich culture are on the other.
And it is its culture that is revamping Japan’s image in Westerners’ eyes. A short plane hop from Tokyo’s Haneda airport (as eclectic and wonderful as Narita, Tokyo’s international airport, is stark and dull) lies the Hokuriku region and the cities of Toyama, Fukui and Kanazawa. These western parts of Japan are where its art truly flourishes.
Kanazawa was the base for samurais (a note in one samurai’s house thanks a friend for bringing him the head of his enemy) but now is the country’s center for golf leaf, fitting considering that Kanazawa means “marsh of gold” in Japanese. I watched the delicate process of taking golf leaf from sheets and literally (and gently) blowing it onto varied surfaces at this small city’s Hakuza showroom-store, after seeing it lovingly applied to ceremonial, very tall, incredibly ornate carriages at the Ecchu Yatsuo Hikiyama Museum; amazingly, these priceless exhibits are slowly pulled around a suburb of Toyama every May. In Toyama, along a back street, the houses of which seem to be one after the other the repositories of painstakingly created crafts, Kamejiro Masuda showed us the process of producing world-class sake at the small Masuizumi brewery, while just down the road, Mitsuoko Motors makes hand-crafted sports and luxury cars, with a chief designer apologizing to me for being so young, in a country where old age is revered. Hundreds of other beautiful and interesting cars were displayed (in some kind of order, so its pamphlet believed) in the Motor Car Museum (Japan’s largest) in Komatsu and which also featured in the gents’ toilet, 15 or so differently shaped urinals (to be used) from around the world. Nearby, the Echizen bamboo gallery makes gallery-worthy sculpture and other crafts from the world’s tallest grass, bamboo.
Other sites spoke of peace, tranquillity, skill and patience. The Ohi Chozaemon Ware studio and museum, where delicate pottery (see photo) has been made for royalty and notables in Kanazawa (really, the capital of Japanese art) since 1666, makes a perfect physical counterpart to the cerebral, beautiful, grand Eiheiji monastery in Fukui where monks have quietly gone about their business since 1244.
Back then to sake, if you’ll allow me, for a last toast to Japanese art and the country’s post-tsunami comeback. Masuizumi means “fountain of happiness,” and what really came across on my visit was the never-compromising attention to artistic detail over the slow span of many centuries, in which no doubt numerous earthquakes and tsunamis have come and gone, none of which severely altered thousands of craftspersons’ state of sublime consciousness to their finished products.
My last stop was to the World Heritage site of Gokayama, a “lost” mountain village of thatched farmers’ cottages. The snow was 10-foot deep in February, but the warmth of this country shone through in a snug cottage by a central fire pit in which a Japanese tea ceremony was being prepared.
Japan is coming back, and in a country where Bullet Train cart-vendors turn around and bow at passengers when they reach the carriage’s electronic doors, the sooner travellers realize that this is a country to be marvelled at the better.
(Brooklyn native Evelyn Teploff-Mugui, who I met in Southside Coffee, Brooklyn,produces a newsletter and markets art for Kanazawa.)

(Parque Nacional de Tayrona, Colombia)…It was only a few years ago that this beautiful park on the northern coast of Colombia, close to Santa Marta, was utterly off limits. Even in the mid-part of the last decade, the park and jungle’s leafy valleys were the haunt for guerrilla movements, notably FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). The original residents, the Kogi, retreated high into their dominions in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria. They have come down to the beaches again, if only to keep an eye on the fledgling tourism developments, which thankfully here consist only of a park rangers' headquarters (see photo) with a basic restaurant and a shack selling water by the only beach not pummeled by Atlantic Ocean breakers.
This is the land of Nobel Prize for Literature winner Gabriel García Márquez, and the lengthy drive between the commercial capital hereabouts, Barranquilla, and the park are riddled with references and sign to and of him. The last time I visited Colombia (2000), it was considered too dangerous to visit Aracataca, his birthplace; this time around, I simply did not have time, but a hot soak after my Tayrona adventures brought me very close. Next time! The huge marsh of La Cienaga, which means "The Marsh" in Spanish, is his country, too, as is the desert promontory of La Guajira, home of the Wayúu Indians and the small city of Riohacha. I would fly out of Colombia from that place on a small plane headed to the near but totally different tourism experience of Aruba.
The walk through the Parque Nacional de Tayrona was easy and pleasant on the way to the beach. Small rivulets were crossed, and I caught glimpses of such wonderful birds as the Collared aracari, Lance-tailed manakin, rufous-and-white wrens and a type of hummingbird called a White-tailed starfrontlet. The sound of crashing in the jungle undergrowth could have been anything, most likely small rodents, such is the way sound is carried here. After a handful of miles, the path drops down to the type of beach film producers would crave for to represent the beginnings of the planet. Huge rocks reminded me of the opening lines of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude -- rocks that he wrote bordered the "bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs, [where] the world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.”
Waves crashed high, and a lone horseman with a dangling machete rode through a tidal pool to complete the scene. Eventually, the park headquarters building is reached, and it was here for lunch that the clear skies and large sun disappeared behind brooding cloud. As the rain came down, a Kogi child emerged from the jungle and sat down opposite us. I thought in clichés, of primordial swamps and our distant ancestors. A donkey shaded itself beneath a large red beach umbrella, and a white horse stuck its head out from huge palm fronds.
The rain did not cease and grew harder. We needed to head back, and it was with a little nervousness. Lightning hit the beach ahead of us, and I longed to get back into the forest. I picked my step up and started climbing to get around the series of rock boulders that came down to the sea in regularly spaced out formations. Eventually my group got back under cover, only for me to pause under a reed canopy and feel the hairy attention of an adult tarantula on my shoulder. I flicked it off, which I do not think I would have done if I had paused for another second to consider what it was. The small streams we had crossed on the way up were now raging torrents that crossed the path and had grown to eight or ten times their original size. More water sliced across the trail in the opposite direction. On the second torrent, all hope was lost to keep shoes and socks dry. T-shirts stuck to the skin. I was having a great time.
Shivering back at the bus we dried the best we could. One of our group of four had the keys to a rudimentary natural hot springs of a friend of his (he had never been) that was somewhere near to the hamlet of Orihueca, just the other side of the Aracataca rail line. It was dark, and we fumbled along in the car trying to find the entrance. At one stage the army appeared from nowhere – just like the white horse – and asked what we were doing. Explanations believed, they pointed to a dirt lane, and after opening some old gates, we turned on the headlamps and jumped into the warmth of the springs. Above us bats the size of dinner plates flew around, and an unseen train rattled along on its way to my Timbuktu of Aracataca, no more than 10 kilometres distant. I lent back in the silent pool and considered that what the train contained was not fruit but the dead bodies of the banana workers massacred in the famous scene in García Márquez's fictional town of Macondo.

(Ferrara and Comacchio, Italy)…The north eastern parts of Italy, just before the country takes a swing right towards Venice, were a revelation. Two towns stood out, Ferrara – cold in winter, baking and occasionally gusty in summer – and the lagoon-side Comacchio, famous for eels. Both were easily accessible from Bologna, which has direct air service from London.
The surroundings of Ferrara are quintessentially the Italy of fictional character Don Camillo, the erratic priest always at odds with his Po Valley town’s Communist mayor Giuseppe Bottazzi – a plot line that reminds me of the later Graham Greene novel Monsignor Quixote. Don Camillo country is best represented by being very flat and studded with tall, square church clock towers, which can be seen from miles around. We espied many both before we reached Ferrara and especially afterwards.
Ferrara in August was warm and still. Our steps were languorous along the very long Via Carlo Mayr, which revealed striking, tall town houses and ended at part of the city walls by a park. The centre of this university town has two large piazzas, one facing the cathedral and leading beneath a huge arch to a smaller square with a market, the other on another side of the cathedral, with outdoor restaurant tables and shops in arcades. As we sat dining, half the town seemed to be blowing away in the wind, which might be the same bora-type gales that can whip pedestrians off their feet in Trieste.

A first port of call was the Palazzodei Diamanti on the Corso Ercole I d’Este, along another hot, straight street where a crossing bicycle perhaps a quarter of a mile away disappeared and then popped back out again in the heat haze. The palace gets its name from the 8,500 diamond-shape, pinkish concrete knobs that speckle its exterior. Built in the 15th Century, it now houses an art gallery and university buildings, but it can be visited. It is pleasing to the eye, but perhaps I was more excited to find nearby a cash dispenser covered in cobwebs and specks of tree seeds that – if it had cash inside – would dispense Italian lire, not European euros (see photo above). What a find for 2012, 13 years after lire and its comical number of zeroes were consigned to the rubbish heap. But there it was, not dismantled or hidden behind new bricks.
The Castello Estense, or Castle of Saint Michele, sits in the middle of the city and a water-filled moat. It was the scene in 1385 in which the Ferrara locals – the Ferrarese – tore to bits the official they heard responsible for numerous years of nonstop, severe drought. Actually, the city rulers at the time, Niccolò I and Alberto, sensibly decided to sacrifice the first person below them they presumably would not miss, one Tommaso da Tortona, but this was child’s play compared with the public torture in the main square earlier that century of Giovanni d’Este, the bastard brother of the same Alberto, and the public burning of Costanza dei Quintavalli, who both were also accused of diverting normal weather patterns. No wonder the wind has not since ceased howling. The Po carries on flowing gently by, though.
The B-class road towards the Adriatic Sea curves around the marsh and rice fields of the Valli di Comacchio. A spot of pilgrimage for us on the way was the very small town of Anita, which supposedly was the place of death of Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro, the at-the-time pregnant wife of Italian hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was actually born in Nice in today’s France. Born in Brazil of Azorean heritage, Ana Maria, or Anita for short, probably succumbed a little farther around the lagoon, some five kilometres away, in Mandriole, but perhaps do not try telling that to the locals in Anita.
Comacchio came as a surprise. It has a touch of Venice about it, sans the 250,000 daily tourists. A wooden lookout looks over the lagoon and the occasional eeling boat, while behind are a couple of canals built by the Emperor Augustus in the century before Christ. The most notable bridge here spans three canals, the two-towered Trepponti constructed in 1638 by another Giovanni, Pietro de Lugano. This is where Ferrara’s River Po finally makes its way to salt water.
We wandered along several canals – it does go by the moniker Little Venice – to a number of small restaurants that serve that increasingly rare commodity, eels. Quite tasty, and we were told the biggest cardinal sin of cuisine here is to cook them in oil. Be warned! In October there is an eel festival that hopefully coincides with eels starting to make their journeys from the lagoon all the way to the Americas and the Sargasso Sea. An unusual sight is the Anders Lassen Statue, by the aforementioned lookout, which commemorates a Danish soldier who died here in the last days of World War II.