The Road to Zagora

by Richard Collins

  In the real world 1984 was the year that Margaret Thatcher took on the miners and won. It was also the year that Jim O’Shaughnessy and I went to the Pickwick Fete. We turned up on bicycles and walked around with expressions of amusement and mild disbelief on our faces. Here was a posh garden fete in the grounds of a seriously grand house and here was our friend Flic, who, we now knew, was brought up in this house. Ex-STRORD-inary. I don’t suppose I could have imagined then that 1984 was to be such an important year for me; the year that Flic and I started a life together.

  I met Jim recently at Pickwick and reminded him of our first time there. He told me about his memory parcels. Jim has his own take on landscape and memory. He stores up memories of particularly special places and times so that he can return to them in moments of difficulty. Psychic reservoirs of good feeling that he calls memory parcels. I think they have got him through some rough times.

  There is a wonderful book called Landscape and Memory by the historian Simon Schama. It is a history of Western society’s relationship with place and an assertion that our response to landscape and the natural world is culturally determined. That is to say that when I or you are moved by a particular place or landscape it is because we were brought up that way. I was strongly resistant to this idea when I read it.

  Then I was in the Ystwyth Valley, here in Wales, doing a botanical survey of an old meadow surrounded by conifer plantations. Conifers, as we all know, are bad news; they are alien species of little value to native wildlife. The plantations are monocultures, completely lacking in biodiversity and a blight on the landscape. A man who was, I guess, on holiday came along and talked about how lovely it was there. It reminded him of pictures he had seen of wild places in Canada. I looked up at the scene; the little River Ystwyth flowing down past the meadow, the tree-clad slopes on either side, and suddenly it was beautiful. In a moment my idea of that place had been changed. And I understood a little about how our perceptions of places are constructed, not as instinctive as I had imagined.

  Flic and I spent a few hours walking along the cliffs between Borth and Aberystwyth recently. The sky was fairly clear and the sea was a deep dark blue, not mud coloured near the coast and grey further out as it can be so often in Cardigan Bay. I hoped to see seals or maybe otters in the water and perhaps six members of the crow family flying by (yes: rooks, crows, magpies, jackdaws, ravens and choughs are common enough along this coastline and the last three are a pleasure to watch being aerial acrobats). But it was not what we saw but our ways of seeing that left an impression on me.

  It started when we decided to have a spell of deliberate silence rather than intermittent chatter and see how it felt. We often walk a little way in silence but this slightly more prolonged spell of not talking and not even thinking of talking had an interesting effect. It was as if a switch had been thrown somewhere in my brain and the flow of information redirected. Quite suddenly I could see much more. On the water there were cloud shadows and cloud reflections, patterns made by the wind, changes of colour, and the lines of waves refracting as they met the shore. The sky was pale against the horizon. There were grasses and flowers along the clifftop that I hadn’t noticed before. Then I had another change of perception.

  There was one spot where a valley came down to the shore and the hillsides folded against each other in a handsome pattern. I reached into my pocket and got out my camera, framed a well composed view and pressed the button. A message came up on the screen; no memory card. I put the thing back in my pocket, irritated that my son had borrowed the card and not put it back. Now I became aware of how in recent years I have got into the habit of looking for photographs, framing views in my head. It has become my way of looking at landscape. And now, in the absence of memory-card, I began to see differently.

  I wondered if Flic, as an artist, found herself looking at the landscape for paintings. As if on cue she looked up at a patch of woodland on the edge of a hill and said if I was painting that wood I think I’d... and so forth, something about painting a dark colour underneath a light one and scratching through to it. It was turning out that both of us had constructed ways of seeing.

  We carried on with our walk, talking now and pointing things out to each other as we went along, something we’ve always done. Did I say always? No, there have been times when this is impossible. When we were in India there was just too much to see. Whatever fascinating things I noticed as we walked down the street there were an equivalent number catching Flic’s eye at the same time and it was impossible to share them all. India is sensory overload. And we have been to plenty of other places where the beauty and interest in our surroundings is too much to take in and too much to point out. That’s what I like about travelling in foreign places. You live intensely in the present, in a landscape untouched by memory and where everything is brand new.

  K is for Kathmandu (Nepal)

  Hotel Nature, where we stayed in Kathmandu, is in the tourist area of Thamel. But go through a little alleyway at the end of the street and you come onto a busy road in an ordinary (read extraordinary) part of town. Some of the lorries that passed up and down the road were beautifully hand painted. The bicycle rickshaws were decorated with bouquets of plastic flowers. A barber shop sign there included the words New Barbar Shop. Hair Caurley, Facial Bliching.

  And it was a short distance down that road that we saw a little band play at a wedding celebration. There was an outsized rhythm section beating on various drums; an oom-pah-pah brass section playing really out of time; and a handsome, charismatic leader improvising over the top on clarinet. He was the only one whose clothes fitted. As the crowd gathered to watch I moved to the back where I could see over people’s heads and not get in anybody’s way. Did I just say that? Yes, I’m a tall man in Kathmandu. Flic was given a chair to sit on and a random baby to hold. We were both happy.

  12

  Travel, India, a Short Guide

  It is December 2008 and we are on the second of our big trips. We have finished making friends with elephants in lowland Nepal and fly from Kathmandu back to Delhi. We have spent only twenty-four hours in India so far. Now the fun begins.

  Delhi is a city of great contrasts. We visited the Lodi Gardens, a public park with a formal layout of exotic (to us) trees and lawns dotted with handsome stone mausoleums dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was a quiet place in which a few amiable stray dogs, green parakeets, and middle class locals hung out. Some people engaged in a peculiarly Indian form of mock exercise: an ostentatiously brisk walk punctuated with spells of heavy breathing and arm waving. No-one attempted anything as vigorous as jogging. But there was yoga, as Flic observed: one man made me jump when he leaned over, stuck out his tongue and roared, other people sit in the lotus position and meditate, or lie with their legs in the air.

  In another part of town we passed by a camel market. I say passed because a young guy came up to us with a mildly threatening manner as if encouraging us not to hang around. The market was situated in an open space among the rubble of demolished buildings and surrounded by other derelict and ruinous buildings. There was rubbish everywhere; there were pushcarts and cycle rickshaws and lots of young men coming and going; and there were the camels, decorated with coloured sashes and tinsel and strange seemingly hieroglyphic patterns drawn or painted on their sides.

  Flic saw: people sleeping on the pavements, and pushcarts full of oranges, papaya, bread, boxes, cows walking alone in the traffic, ox carts being driven. Masses of clothes hung in the middle of the road and in trees drying. We walked down Chadni Chouk, a busy street, people selling food, fruit and veg stalls, jewellery, clothes, women with babies begging, bicycle rickshaw drivers ask us over and over again if we want a ride.

  On our second day we visited a large mosque where we were allowed, if we paid a small fee and took our shoes off, to climb a minaret and look down through the smog-filled air to the dirty streets. Then: we walked from the mosque to the old railway station down more narrow
er crowded streets stepping over piles of rubbish and pools of black water past sparkling jewellery shops. We made it to the station crossing a great road. We tried to use a pedestrian crossing bridge but when we went up we could see the other half had fallen away so we came down again.

  In the station I queued to buy railway tickets for the next day. We loved Delhi for a whole morning but now, a day later, we were ready to move on. I was constantly jostled by the man behind me and was ready to turn and confront him. But I looked across to the next queue and saw that everybody stood not just close but actually physically touching. Physically touching! I can sense my Western distaste for close contact with strangers coming through. But this was India and if you weren’t pressed up against the person in front somebody would push in.

  On the way back to our hotel I saw a large billboard advert with the words Keep Delhi Young – Exercise Daily. On the street below there were two skinny men pushing a very heavy barrow of bricks up a slope. They may not have been able to read but they were on the job.

  Before we leave Delhi here’s Flic’s description of what turned out to be typical Indian street food: On the corner of the road is what I first thought was a bakers but it’s more like a fryers, there’s a huge vat of bubbling boiling oil and a man stirring it and everybody’s buying fried battered pakoras samosas poori. Opposite is a fruit shop with custard apples and pomegranates and coconuts, pineapples and all kinds of luscious fruit. I ate a persimmon and a custard apple.

  The next morning we went to the station to get our train to Jaipur, in Rajasthan. We were very early as we were advised to be. A helpful man looked at our tickets and said that there was a problem. He took us across the road to a travel agent. Now I had read about scams at railway stations and so I was sceptical but we went along with it more out of interest than anything if I remember correctly. In the office a man shook his head at the letter W on one of our tickets. He said it was for waiting and only valid if someone else cancelled. He made a show of looking at the computer and then made a phone call. He said the train was full but he would sell us tickets for the one at five in the afternoon. I had lost interest by now and we went back to the station and got on our train. I had the ticket with W on it and very much enjoyed the view from the window seat.

  In India they have the caste system and a much stratified society and it’s no surprise that the railways have ten classes of railway travel, if you include the various sleeper classes. We travelled AC chair car, with AC standing for air conditioning. It didn’t cost much and we were surprised to be given a free English language newspaper and a cup of tea soon after we set off and then, also in the price, a substantial breakfast at eight o’clock. The windows were dirty but it was fine to open the carriage door and stand in the doorway watching the world go past. Flic saw: semi-desert with big sand dunes and thorny looking trees. Wells with people collecting water in bright saris, people ploughing the land with mattocks, some camels pulling carts, flat roofs with men in white clothes.

  We arrived in Jaipur and found ourselves choosing to travel in a tuk tuk driven by a very handsome young man dressed in white robes and hat. He introduced himself as Imran and strode off across the car park with his head held high while we struggled behind with our rucksacks. When we told him we were from Wales he laughed and said, in his strong Indian accent, very funny people Wales people, they talk very funny. He took us to our unpleasant hotel and we arranged to see him later for a tour of the city.

  Jaipur, the pink city, is painted a foul orange colour, is unbelievably dirty and busy, and looks like it has been hit by an earthquake – it hasn’t, it’s just in an advanced and ongoing state of decrepitude. Imran took us through the old city and on to a promenade by a shallow lake complete with seemingly floating palaces. We walked for a bit and Flic, when I was looking the other way, was on the receiving end of quite a few male stares.

  The city turned out to be foul and fascinating and in our few days there we saw palaces and forts and colourful birds and glimpses of ordinary life too. The most amazing of the historical buildings was the Jantar Mantar Observatory. It consists of a number of weird abstract architectural forms that were once used to chart the movements of the sun, moon, stars and planets for astrological purposes. There is, for instance, a huge sundial with a pointer about twenty-five feet high. It’s built of stone, as are most of the bizarre structures there, and has a staircase running up to the top.

  Stepping out from the observatory into the street again we were met by half a dozen forceful vendors of guide books. The charming expression in yer face gives a fair idea of how these guys operate and how stressful it is to deal with them again and again. Tourist touts, rickshaw drivers, shoeshine boys and beggars young and old and a whole lot of vendors of things you don’t want are in yer face in large numbers in some parts of north India. It’s really stressful.

  How do you deal with them? In the worst places you keep moving and don’t look at them – in fact in the very worst places don’t engage with anybody, just move on. My theory is that these guys are forceful and rude because they are desperate. I don’t know their circumstances but I imagine they have families to feed at home and are struggling to make any money at all. So here’s another strategy – be firm, by all means, but be sympathetic. If you are aware of how tough these men’s lives are it makes them more bearable and it comes over in your body language I think. They are less confrontational.

  Being on the street in some parts of Rajasthan is hard work. As Flic said: it feels sometimes as if I’ve been dropped into a parallel universe or other world or a game where I don’t understand the rules. I keep making mistakes and almost being hit by motor bikes, bicycles, being butted by cows with painted horns, treading in cow dung. Flic never quite got the idea that cows in India require a certain amount of respect and will take a swipe at you with their horns if you pass by too close.

  But being on the street is what it’s all about. For instance: we saw an amazing wedding procession. A tuk tuk with a generator providing power for tall lanterns held on peoples shoulders, a band playing and dancers followed by two horses wearing silver and gold drapery, children dressed up on their backs and fireworks exploding regularly.

  I remember seeing an elephant or two dressed up for ceremonial reasons – perhaps that was for a wedding too. As well as the occasional elephant or horse there were many other animals playing a part in daily life in Jaipur. In one part of town there were herds of small black pigs rooting around in the piles of rubbish. We found out later that they weren’t feral but owned by people, members of the sweeper caste. There were cows, of course, wandering everywhere, making their way through the heaviest traffic. Some people kept goats. There were camels for riding or for towing carts and donkeys as beasts of burden. There were monkeys on the rooftops and swinging from electricity cables. And there were rats coming out of the sewers onto the street in broad daylight.

  Before we left Jaipur we spent a few hours pottering about by the lake and saw lots of wonderful birdlife. Our little bird book gives the names. There were lily-trotters, stilt legs, red-vented bulbuls, mynah birds, golden-backed woodpeckers, feral peacocks and, best of all, the hoopoes that have the habit of raising their crests when they landed. And they were easy to see, much tamer than birds in Europe.

  My son, Peter, is in India as I write this (as noted earlier). He emailed me recently asking about staying in hotels. I found myself emailing back, under the heading Travel, India, a Short Guide, the following message:

  There are 3 types of hotels in India: the cheap ones that Indians stay in (glitzy, modern, lots of tinted glass and cockroaches – at 3 am some guy starts shouting for his mother-in-law, she’s a heavy sleeper but one of the grand children wakes up and starts shouting back, the grandchild’s mum starts telling it off and that sets off next door’s dog, that wakes the couple next door and she says “it’s all your fault, I should never have married you” to her husband several times over until he wakes up, at which point you realis
e that the sound like that of a barking seal was him snoring, it’s now stopped and at last you can go to sleep – or can you?); the cheap ones that Europeans stay in (not glitzy, quieter, much much quieter); and expensive ones for both Indians and Europeans. Some towns that don’t get foreign visitors only have the expensive and the seal barking ones. Indians are, of course, wonderful people but they don’t have the be-quiet-you’ll-wake-up-the-neighbours thing in their culture. Good luck.

  What I should also have said is that he should take the hotel with the best rooftop view in town. When we arrived in Pushkar this is exactly what we did, though not on purpose. The bus was met by a number of men with pushcarts ready to help people with their luggage and find them somewhere to stay. Here the atmosphere seemed relaxed and amiable, quite different from the aggressive hustling of Jaipur. And so it was easy to allow ourselves to be led to Hotel Everest with its wonderful rooftop.

  You’ve no doubt got the idea now that life on the street is hard work for a visitor to north India. There is so much to see and so much to bump into and sometimes a lot of hassle. But up on the roof you can relax. You are still in India but it’s down there, at arm’s length instead of in yer face. And there is the view.

  From the roof of Hotel Everest we could see much of the town and some of the surrounding countryside. One of the disappointing things about north India as we experienced it is the quality of the light. We had spent twenty-eight days walking in the Himalayas where, in late autumn, the sky is an amazing deep blue, the air is very clear and everything is sharply defined. Here, in India, it was always hazy, with moisture or pollution in the air. But in the early mornings the low sunlight gave, for a while, a dreamy beauty to the landscape.