Scratch the surface of a landscape colonised by nature and you might find the mysterious remnants of human civilisation just beneath. The wild cliffs and scraggy green fields of the Pembrokeshire hide ditches that once sheltered mine trains, a perfect azure pool that was once a quarry, heavy stones heaved into situ by ancient undertakers, and neolithic-looking brick dens which turn out to be lime kilns, Industrialists ovens for burning rocks.
One of many picture-perfect bays, near Lydstep.
I wandered among this gently beguiling landscape in October 2020. It was a strange point in time: after a spring frozen by pandemic, the comparatively free summer told us things were getting better. The growing creep of lockdowns still felt like blips on an inevitable path back to normality.
I took the Wales Coastal Path, and specifically its westernmost spur: walking from the village of Penally clockwise to Fishguard. It was the first time I’d visited the area, Pembrokeshire being just a little too far for a Londoner on a short trip. The journey was a full, masked, morning; changing trains in locked-down Swansea I lurked uneasily just outside the station, the sense of danger reminding me of a Tunisian bus station I had been warned not to wander away from. At Carmarthen the passengers trooped over the rails to the train waiting opposite, which pulled out the way we had come and carried on to the colourful houses of Tenby, before trundling a couple of miles down the coast to Penally, and its military range.
I had come to Wales in mid-October fully expecting rain. Previous midsummer walking in other Celtic extremities of the British Isles – County Kerry to Kinlochewe – had taught me to expect little moral support from the elements, but rather to treat each minute of sunlight as a bonus. But I was spoiled in Wales, and after a single torrential downpour on day two I enjoyed largely uninterrupted sun. There’s a meditative simplicity to following a well-signed coastal path, on which you can never really get lost, and so stepping out Penally station I simply started walking, and didn’t really stop for ten days.
On the path I encountered a lot of gorgeous vistas and not a lot of people. I found smooth sandy beaches, which it seemed a waste to tramp across in my muddy boots, looked across high stretches of green fields well watered by autumn’s rains, and followed miles of high, jagged cliffs. Often there was an exuberant sea far beneath, sometimes a deserted white sandy beach, or a rocky one, and often a muddy little stream, meaning I had to climb down to cross, before climbing straight back up. (I got into the habit of stopping at the bottom to touch my toes for thirty seconds, to give my knees some respite.) At the most dramatic points – rounding St Anne’s Head or St David’s Head – I was surrounded on all sides by sea, surging against gaping cliffs topped with light grass, fingers of headland reaching out to explore the water, topped by joyous dog-walkers, and the occasional brooding decommissioned bunker. On the clearest days I saw across to the north coast of Devon, and I passed islands with alluring names – Skomer, Skokholm -, jet-speed currents flowing through the sounds between them and the mainland. I shared the environment with harvest mice, scurrying as they do across the way in front of me; at Martin’s Haven I met a seal pup plopped practically on top of the path leading up from the beach. Thereafter I saw the occasional distant seal, until on my final day, around Strumble Head, I saw a colony of over twenty, lying on rocks far below the cliff-top path, lazing, awkwardly pulling themselves around by the flippers, crying out, oblivious and totally unbothered by any humans walking above them.
Old structures crumbling in the rock near Porthgain, Pembrokeshire
One pleasure of a long point-to-point to walk is that it necessarily includes variety – the conventionally beautiful as well as the less disarming views. Walking out of the picturesque village of Angle on my third day, having slept within spitting distance of a fourteenth-century Pele Tower, I was confronted by the much higher towers of Pembroke Oil Refinery; along with nearby power station, it dominated the landscape over the next three days. At the same time, the scenery became flatter and muddier as I entered the Daugleddau Estuary, the high cliffs of the sea coast retreating; Pembroke Dock and Milford Haven were the largest towns I passed through on my walk, and even a charming, Victorian hilltop park looked across the water to the refinery. Industrial works in the late twentieth century displaced the villages of Rhoscrowther and Pwllcrochan, now preserved on Ordnance Survey maps and borne witness by their churches. Tucked away in a wood, I passed Pwyllcrochan’s fourteenth-century church and cemetery, now owned by the refinery, its noticeboard emblazoned with the Valero logo. But this is not to make a judgement, and I sensed no local resentment against the industrial complex: the refinery and power stations are the biggest employer in the area.
Indeed, the area around has long been busy with comings and goings. Well over a century before Texaco shipped Trinidadian oil into Pembrokeshire, slate and granite were shipped out from the bustling docks of Porthgain, now a bustling seaside hamlet, noteworthy to me for having not one but two pubs on the water’s edge – a choice! – where I had my first, delicious, portion of bara brith, a local fruit cake. Porthgain’s narrow natural harbour is further sheltered by two looping breakwaters, and the path passed towering red-brick buildings pushed into the cliff that once housed hoppers, machines crushing granite for export.
St. Bride’s Bay. To keep my Mum happy.
Pembrokeshire’s relative proximity to France and Ireland, and the easy access inland along the Cleddau river, long gave it strategic importance. Excited notice boards at Carreg Wastad pointed out the site of the last – French – invasion of Britain; it seems it was a fairly drunken and unplanned attempt, led by an American, and that the hero in putting it down was local woman Jemima Nicholas, who was armed with a pitchfork. In the 1800s more effort went into building defences, and walking towards Pembroke Dock it seemed that every island going had a Victorian fort on it. I was even able to spend the night at Dale Fort, which holds a youth hostel (one of very few that was open mid-pandemic) and had the vibe of a geography field trip – while clearly maintaining the layout, architecture, and fortifications of a military defence.
Within an hour of leaving Dale Fort, I passed by the unassuming and sheltered Mill Bay; this, I learnt, was where Henry Tudor landed after his exile in Brittany, keeping out of the way of what was then Dale Castle. Just a few weeks later Henry, whose Tudor ancestors originated from Anglesey, defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and became Henry VII. I had already seen where, in Pembroke Castle, where he was said to have been born – an unassuming tower room with figurines set up much like a nativity. The affection that Henry received in Pembrokeshire in the 15th century, when he was welcomed and defended on his return from France, seems to have lingered a bit, and I later walked past a Welsh-language school called Harri Tudor.
Long before the Tudors, Pembrokeshire was a place of pilgrimage. St David, patron saint of Wales, was born at St Non’s, now the ancient remains of a chapel in a verdant field perched above a rocky bay, not far from where Pembrokeshire tips furthest west into the ocean. St Non was St David’s mother, and the site also contained a sacred spring. I enjoyed this evidence of how a pre-Christian holy site had been taken up and developed into the birth-story of the local saint. However, an information sign told me I was wrong: the holy spring wasn’t pre-Christian at all, but had in fact miraculously appeared precisely at the moment of St David’s birth.
St Non’s is a stop on the old pilgrimage route to Britain’s smallest city, St David’s, while lies a couple of miles inland. I reached it via the exhilarating coast of St David’s Head, probably the most dramatic part of my walk, and one of the few places where I suddenly found myself surrounded by lots of other walkers. I couldn’t help but take a detour to scramble up Carn Lidl, the highest hill in the area, giving me wide views across the coast and out to Ramsey Island beyond. After losing the path on the descent I took evasive action (think backpack thrown down to help preserve balance); I wandered into St David’s in the late afternoon. The city is very much the size of a village, with one main road, one supermarket, no sprawl, and a population just under 2,000. The complex around the cathedral – which provides city-status – is not much smaller than the town-centre. An arch through an imposing, if pocket-sized, guard tower leads to a grassy hill cradling the cathedral, and beyond it the 14th-century ruined bishop’s palace, more or less the same size as its holier neighbour. I returned for evensong, a favourite activity of mine, as it’s a chance to enjoy any cathedral serving the purpose it was designed for. Here, the bishop led the service in a soothing mix of English and Welsh, and instead of a choir, a socially distant cantor sang preces and responses alongside the organist. St David’s doesn’t feel at all far from the more numerous spires of Oxford at such times. I put my head back and lost myself in the criss-crossed vaulting of the wooden ceiling.
Most ancient of all, if we discount the hills themselves, are the pagan sites that decorate Pembrokeshire’s landscape – reminding me of end-of-the-world stone circles in Atlantic Ireland. I passed the most impressive, Carreg Samson, on my final day: after leaving the delightful, temporarily deserted, clifftop village of Trefin, I wandered along quiet lanes, turned right at a farmhouse, and found it in the middle of a field, one massive horizontal rock balancing one top of six enormous upright ones. I find such monuments peaceful: they are profoundly unbothered by my presence, or by the farm, fields, cows, or civilisations that pass them by.
Carreg Samson
There was an elemental wind that day and I kept further than usual from the cliffside edge, seeing not a single person until I rounded the headland into Fishguard Bay, its piers, upper and lower towns, sealife centre, and train station opening up beneath me. The Coast Path casually transformed into a perfectly suburban street named Harbour Village, and beneath me the A40 appeared, ex nihilo, ready to flow all the way from Fishguard Harbour to St Paul’s Cathedral.
I instead took the train back to the metropolis, and onwards into lockdown, and haven’t really left either since. As I sit and wait, ever so slightly cooped up, it’s reassuring to know that, hopefully not too far in the future, a few hours on the rails will plunge me back to the opposite coast of this island, a historic land, where I can wander and forget it all.
Salaam from Tehran, where my trip in Iran is drawing to a close, and I’m mentally preparing for the long trek home (five days via Istanbul, Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, Munich, Stuttgart, and Paris).
Arch here, arch there, at the ruins of Persepolis.
When I last wrote, from the city of Shiraz, I had seen the beautiful mosques and palaces of Esfahan, met lots of friendly Iranians, and started to understand some of the country’s apparent contradictions. Since then I have been fortunate to meet people from a wider range of backgrounds and ethnicities – as well as visiting far more different landscapes than I had expected to find in Iran, sandy deserts to green mountains.
From Shiraz I visited the ruins of Persepolis, ceremonial capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. It is a large site outside the city, on the edge of the mountains, and contains beautiful carvings: winged sphinxes guarding the entrances, and reliefs of scores of life-size soldiers guarding its stairways. I saw the graves of several ancient Persian kings, including Xerxes I, Darius I and II, and Artaxerxes I. It was a heady experience to see graves of kings whose names, at least, I know so well from my studies (the Hebrew part) and even classical music – and who our culture vaguely connects with an idea of the romance of the Orient. Unfortunately, one major notable at Persepolis was the graffiti on the most impressive statues guarding the entrances. The most extensive graffiti was from Victorians: they had not left hasty scrawls, but rather had painstakingly engraved the insignia of their battalions and their commanders’s names. It was shocking that even with the time to think about it, anyone could vandalise ancient statues in this way, and the fact that it was Brits that had done it left me feeling rather humiliated.
Someone really, really took their time signing their name.
In Shiraz I further visited an English-Iranian friend’s aunt, Azadeh Khalili, who lives in West London but spends a month each summer attending to the affairs of her family estate, where she is a trustee. The house is antique and grand, and it was enlightening to have an insight into the real-life difficulties of running a viable business, given today’s huge inflation and other economic difficulties – how to deal with staff, and explain to tenants that rents will have to increase. The property also contains a garden, the Bage-e Khalili, which was started by Azadeh’s grandfather but today is one of few such remaining in the city. It is extensive, landscaped, and varied, with fig-trees and pomegranates, ponds and fountains, climbing flowers, and tall cypress trees. I’ve visited a few UNESCO-listed Persian Gardens here, but this visit was the most enjoyable – it was a real privilege to be shown around by the owner of such a fantastic, lived-in garden.
From Shiraz, and travelling with an excellent new Belgian friend called Ebe, I had arranged to visit a nomadic family’s tents. To our excellent fortune, our guide, Bahman, further invited us to a nomadic wedding the evening before our visit. These nomads are Qashqai, a Turkic ethnic group: they speak a Turkic language and have different, more colourful clothes than Iranians in nearby cities. We heard that weddings in the countryside can have 2000 guests, but this was in a Qashqai village on the edge of Shiraz and merely had 100 or so. When we arrived, the women were already dancing to traditional music, slowly stepping round in a large circle and holding brightly dyed scarves where they held hands. There were hours of Qashqai music, with some Kurdish and Iranian music mixed in. The dancing was briefly interrupted as the bride and groom arrived, to shotgun-fire, but otherwise carried on until the early hours. I was able to join in and earned some approving smiles from chubby Qashqai grannies – it was memorable indeed to be able to dance the night away amongst the women’s huge, colourful dresses, the blaring music, and the twirling scarves.
Bahman puts up the start of a fence, in the Zagros Mountains
After a night in a nomads’ tent with Bahman’s family, I moved on to Yazd, an old mud-brick desert city and a centre of Zoroastrianism. It has huge, and very old, Towers of Silence, a little distance outsider the town. Towers of Silence are where the Zoroastrian dead are traditionally left, for their remains to be eaten by vultures. These were very atmospheric, as I have found these towers to be in the past as well (for example in the Wakhan Corridor in Tajikistan); I think this is down to their great age, simple design, and often to their inspiring location: these were on the edge of the mountains and had an impressive view over the town. At the bottom of the towers there were the remains of several mud-buildings, where families would have stayed while they waited for the remains of the deceased to be picked clean – this struck me as a bleak, yet perhaps effective, kind of enforced mourning-period.
Via a fun exploration of a crumbling Sassanid fort at Saryazd – in Europe you don’t often get an a castle to yourself, with broken staircases to scramble up and ancient amphorae luring behind broken walls – I spent a night in the desert. I walked amongst sand dunes that trick the sense of perspective crazily, under an amazingly full moon that cast amazingly defined shadows and almost enough light to read by.
I mention the desert by way of contrast to the Alamut Valley, in the north of the country, where I was the next day. For a couple of days I walked in high, cool, mountains, with sunflowers, paddy fields, and waterfalls. I met several groups of middle-class Tehranis who come up here to escape the summer city-heat, and it was nice to meet them in such relaxed circumstances; this social class usually speaks English as well.
Happily, my Farsi is also now at a level that I can have relatively meaningful conversations with a lot of people I meet – and taxi-driver conversation is definitely in hand. In Yazd, a Baluchi man (Baluchistan is the border region between Iran and Pakistan – drug-smuggling land) who gave me a lift on his motorbike invited me into his home, one of the old houses that sit behind mysterious mud-brick doors on narrow alleys in the old city: inside it was spacious, with two grand, decrepit courtyards. He was extremely friendly, and offered me water-pipe and fresh figs. He’d converted to Christianity – itself a capital crime – and asked me whether I could bring a Farsi bible next time I come to Iran, as he can’t get one here himself. I tried to explain the potential legal difficulties, but, my police issues aside, this was a seemingly minor yet pertinent demonstration of what a lack of religious freedom means: a kind and generous man isn’t allowed to access his holy book.
Now I’m back in Tehran, and on Monday I’ll take the bus to Istanbul. This morning I was lucky enough to go to synagogue here: Iran has an ancient Jewish community, and Tehran alone has 5,000 – 10,000 Jews. I’d made contact before I came, which was a good thing, as I don’t imagine that foreign visitors are common – no American or Israeli Jews coming here. I’d written to a man called Arash, who prays at a small synagogue to help ensure they get ten men (ten are needed to say certain prayers – in liberal communities women are also counted). The synagogue was welcoming, and the service largely familiar, with just some intriguing differences: there were rugs on the floor so I went barefoot, the prayer-books had a fascinating (if unsurprising) mixture of Hebrew and Farsi, and kiddush was served during the service (after Shacharit) and consisted of tea and dates. I was fortunate to be given a couple of honours during the service, including my first Hagbah, something I’ll remember, although all of these are otherwise auctioned off during the service to members of the community. I’ve heard that Iranian Jews also tend to speak a dialect like Middle Persian, and sometimes write poetry in Farsi Khoot: Farsi written in Hebrew characters.
As always, I imagine the full worth of this trip won’t become clear until I’m home and have a chance to revisit my observations in the context of everyday life. However, while I go home with the best impressions of Iran, as expected, I also have much more appreciation of the contrasts to be found amongst its people and landscapes, and some of the everyday challenges faced by people here. As before I can only recommend visiting Iran – other than a fair few Dutch, Belgians, Italians and Spanish, there are few tourists here. You’ll have a very warm welcome.
Khoda hafez from Teheran!
And how have my observations developed with the fullness of time? When I think of Iran now, I no longer think of it as a romantic Orient, a wonderful land to the east. For one thing, it’s harder to maintain as much notion of romance when I keep in touch with the locals I met on Facebook Messenger. More importantly, I now see that Iran’s not an adjunct to a Eurocentric world but rather the centre of its own, and has been for millennia. That fact looks obvious now I write it – but it’s social shifts in the past few years which have helped me understand more deeply the equivalence of different cultures across the world. I’ve also been thinking about the nature of travel in general, and unfortunately I no longer see how medium or long-distance travel is sustainable for an exponentially growing middle-class. So I recommend a visit to Iran, but not if you need to fly. The sums don’t add up. But that’s a thought for another blog.
Back in the days when pandemics belonged to history, I took a long string of crowded trains, buses, and boats overland to Iran. My correspondence home is preserved not in a handsome leather-lined davenport but in an unwieldy gmail thread. This, then, is an opportunity to rehouse it in a slightly more appealing archive. I’m keeping the original text – an email despatch – rather than re-writing it; I like the idea of having contrasting styles on this blog, and the original has a kind immediacy. It’s also far enough in the past that it’s starting to feel like an insight into an earlier version of myself.
Whatever the house prices say, Tabatabei House in Kashan beats Hampstead.
In the summer of 2013 I wrote:
Salaam from Shiraz, garden-city of southwest Iran. It’s home to one of Iran’s holiest Shi’ite shrines and other beautiful mosques, even if nowadays its vineyards are no longer allowed to produce any wine locally.
2013 has finally, and by the skin of my teeth, seen me make it to Iran. Finally, because I first wanted to come here five years ago, and a succession of reasons prevented me. By the skin of my teeth due to visa worries, which you’re fairly likely to have heard about, as I’ve moaned about them in most of my conversations for the past three months. I should say, by way of balance, that my worries are nothing like those of Iranians who want to come to Britain – they have to go to Ankara or Dubai – no embassy in Tehran – and hang around for three weeks, while the British hold their passport, and they have to live in hotels.
As before, I’ve come overland, as I’ve stopped flying for environmental reasons. My route took me by train: London-Paris-Munich-Zagreb-Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul, by ferry over the Bosphorus, and then to Ankara, where I spent three nights waiting for a visa. In Ankara I stayed with a great guy called Uğur, who I met through a website called Couchsurfing; its basic premise is that you stay at people’s homes for free, and let other people stay at your home for free – it’s always worked very well for me. Having a host was really great, as I suspect Ankara may be a better city to live in than to visit. That’s not to say that it’s not got some great sights: I visited Anıttepe, Atatürk’s Mausoleum, which is fascinating architecturally and sociologically. The site is on top of a hill near the city centre (in a heavily-guarded park) and has a 200m walkway, with Hittite-style lions at the side, leading to huge square, with what comes across as a columned, neo-classical, temple, with the mausoleum itself inside. I couldn’t avoid thinking that so much excess would be ridiculed if it were for a dictator, who wasn’t generally respected. The re-claiming of so many cultural idioms as Turkish was also a little bizarre: “those lions reliefs aren’t Hittite, they’re ancient Turkish…”
Fascist-chic? Of course not, this is for Atatürk.
From Ankara I schlepped as quickly as I could to Tehran: a night-bus to Erzurum, a day-bus to Doğubayazit, and a minibus to the border – the latter was particularly fine, as I rode with Mt Ararat to my left, Anatolia behind me, and the excitement of Iran in front. I walked by foot over the border; straightaway everyone in Iran was friendly, although the customs official became a little sterner when I paused a moment to think about whether or not I really had made sure to get rid of all my alcohol. He proceeded to search my backpack. However, when he came to a little carrier bag and unwrapped it to find inside a book of poems by Rumi (a classical Iranian poet), he simply smiled broadly: ‘welcome to Iran!’.
Tehran is what you might expect, inasmuch as it is a busy, and polluted metropolis, with veiled women. Yet the Alborz Mountains are always visible to the north, giving a sense – perhaps deceptive – through any smog, of space. As for veils: a large amount of these are slung loosely over the middle or the back of hairdos, which themselves often have highlights peeping through, with St. Tropez-style sunglasses sitting on top. While I have seen plenty of all-encompassing chadors, there have also been many mantos, long (and supposedly loose) coats, which have in fact been figure-hugging, with strategically placed belts. And make-up is also a norm.
Teheran Bazaar
My first few days in Iran were also the end of Ramadan. In Ankara, life absolutely went on as normal during Ramadan, apart from extra-crowded restaurants, as secular Turks took advantage of special deals for Iftar, the breaking of the fast. I think it was the same for most people here too, but not many people openly ate or drank in the street; instead they huddled in corners, or bent over their sandwiches in parks, or stand at the back of bakeries. It’s quite a bizarre phenomenon: I saw one man secretly trying to eat spaghetti with sauce on the street – a patently bad choice, you might think.
I think it’s a while since I’ve been in a country with quite so many fantastic sights as Iran – in Tehran I saw the shahs’s Golestan palace, the Jewel Museum (comparable to our Crown Jewels), and plenty more. At most of these, there have been barely any western tourists – especially notable considering that these are the very top sights in the country. There are, however, plenty of domestic tourists – the Iranian currency is very weak at the moment, and Iranian passports aren’t so much use, so staying nearby makes a lot of sense.
Dardar Dead End Street, Tehran
I’ve come to Shiraz via Kashan and Esfahan, once described as as nesf-e jahan, ‘half the world’, because of its splendour. The central square, the city’s mosques, and its palaces, are extremely beautiful. My favourite was Lotfullah Mosque – smaller and more intimate than some of the others, but architecturally near to perfection. By going near to closing time I was lucky enough to have the whole mosque to myself – really unbelievable, and something I couldn’t imagine happening in Europe. I really enjoy the geometric patterns of Islamic architecture – I find them very restrained and love how they turn mathematical precision into such great beauty. This evening I’ll be going to Persepolis, capital of the Achaemenid empire, the nearby burial place of Darius I and Xerxes I.
One thing I’ve not mentioned is the safety situation, which is because it’s so far from my mind, and from the minds of all the other westerners that I’ve met in Iran. This has felt just like any other country I’ve travelled in, and safer than lots of them: the people are incredibly welcoming, trustworthy, and helpful, and, believe it or not, the policemen and mullahs return a smile as well. I don’t feel at risk of attack or theft and I’m sure the most important precaution I’m taking is to use a seat-belt. So, I can only recommend a visit here – Iran is beautiful.
Andrew Irvine and George Mallory disappeared on the North Face of Mount Everest in the summer of 1924, within touching distance of the summit. Their Oxford University expedition took place three decades before Tenzin Norgay and Edmund Hillary finally made the first official ascent in 1953, and while Mallory’s body was located in 1999, that of Irvine – just 22 years old at the time – remains lost.
The mystery of how they died, and whether they ever reached the summit, is mountaineering folklore. And Irvine lives on not just in legend but in the AC Irvine Travel Fund set up in his memory, which makes travel grants for Oxford Undergraduates. Back in 2007 I received a generous grant towards trekking in Tajikistan, and afterwards I had to write up a report. That is what this post contains: my first ever piece of travel-writing.
Trekking in the Ghunt Valley, near Yashil-Kul
Re-reading now, I’m wryly amused by how I seem vaguely to have taken on the tone of a Victorian gentleman explorer. Content-wise, I imagine that the way of life in Tajikistan is less untouched nowadays than when I wrote, and that several of the nomads we met have since got smartphones. However, change is not necessarily something to fear, and besides, this is why we write – to preserve a set of experiences in time and place. This trip was absolutely one worth remembering.
It is not without reason that the Pamiris call the mountains in which they live Bam-i-Dunya, the Roof of the World. This mighty knot of 6000m peaks in the heart of Central Asia is after all the convergence of four great mountain ranges: the Hindu Kush, the Tien Shan, the Kunlun, and the Karakoram. It is a hard country of narrow valleys, high plateaux, and was once host to the biggest mountains and glaciers of the USSR. Today it is mostly contained within the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) of Tajikistan: the poorest province in the most struggling of the former SSRs. After a few decades of Soviet exploration, its peaks and passes are once more untrodden, and its roads are slowly being worn down by Lada 4x4s and 22-wheeler Chinese trucks, as well as snow, rockfalls and earthquakes. It was therefore with great excitement, but no little appreciation of the challenges ahead, that I started making plans for a trekking expedition to what is certainly one of the more remote corners of the planet.
It was a little difficult to know quite where to start my preparations. In contrast to the Himalayas, which seem ever more accessible what with the reporting of Michael Palin and the photography of the Föllmi brothers, it is not since Frances Younghusband and the murky final years of the Great Game that Central Asia has truly been in the British consciousness. Only one reliable modern map, at a scale of 1 : 500000, is available, (although that is the excellent work of Swiss cartographer Marcus Hauser). The dearth of literature on the area meant that it was largely online that I could contact people with experience of mountaineering in the area. In this way I could get some idea of the problems we would likely face – mainly due to the region’s remoteness and the contorted bureaucracy to be overcome – but also of the expansive and challenging mountains that would be the reward. As I started to look into which routes we might explore, I also began to sort out some of the numerous documents I had to get hold of. Tajik visas for myself and my travelling companion, Conrad von Stempel, had to be sent for along with expensive GBAO permits – from the Viennese embassy – as well as visas for Kyrgyzstan, to where the oblast’s only road exits. My overland route to the country also required Russian, Kazakhstani, and Uzbekstani visas, making for a very hectic few weeks commuting between London embassies.
We overcame these problems, and a few weeks later I finally met Conrad at Dushanbe Airport, early on the morning of 9 August. It had already been a long journey for me. I had travelled by air, train, road, and cattle-truck, over fields, steppe and desert, via the ruined Aral Sea and magnificent Silk Road cities. Dushanbe itself was however a sleepy city; it kept us only long enough to register with the relevant authorities (amusingly always referred to as the KGB) and organise transport, before moving onto to Khorog, administrative capital of the GBAO.
A view into the GBAO at the Kyrgyz border
We travelled in the back of a jeep stuffed very full of large Tajik women; 20-hours on an impossibly pot-holed road took us from deserts stretching back to the Caspian Sea along the rocky Pyanj Valley and the border with Afghanistan – across which we saw only donkeys on a dust path. However, when we arrived in the middle of a dark night in Khorog, to a friendly welcome at the Pamir Lodge guesthouse, we felt relieved and excited finally to be within striking distance of the peaks of the Pamirs.
What differentiates the Pamirs from the hundreds of miles of mountains extending away from them is primarily the culture of its inhabitants, the Pamiris. They are not a numerous people, living mainly in villages scattered along the river valleys of the region, and leading a way of life largely unchanged over centuries. In summer, shepherds move up to high pastures, grazing flocks on the grass and shrubs that grow only a few months each year.
The Pamiris definitely see themselves as a being of a different ethnicity from the neighbouring Tajiks – in 1992, during the Civil War, the GBAO went so far as to briefly declare independence. Despite ancient roots in Zoroastrianism, Pamiris adhere to Ismailism, a branch of Shi’a Islam. They revere as their spiritual leader the Swiss-born, multi-millionaire, fourth Aga Khan, and his image inspires respect akin to that of the Dalai Lama among Tibetan Buddhists. However, he is not a removed figure, but rather vital to the lives of many Pamiris; he provides money, and gives a great deal of assistance in feeding the population and improving the quality of life of the Pamiris.
A local lady near Yashil-Kul
It is noteworthy that great linguistic diversity is to be found amongst the Pamiri people. (Their languages are regarded by a consensus of linguists as being separate to Tajik, further explaining their separate identity to their fellow Tajikstanis in Dushanbe.) Mutually unintelligible languages are spoken in the different valleys of the Pamirs: the Shugni speakers of Khorog cannot understand the Wakhi of their neighbours 100km down the road in Ishkashim (let alone the Kyrgyz spoken a couple of hundred miles further on).
However, the characteristic of the Pamiris which without doubt left the deepest impression upon me was their unbelievable hospitality. For the entirety of the month we spent in the area we were made to feel not like explorers or travellers, certainly not tourists, but guests. It is hard to know whether this was due to the influence of Ismailism, our own novelty as Westerners, or human nature as yet unaffected by a globalising world. Yet we were repeatedly invited into homes, from relatively comfortable traditional Pamiri houses to the most basic of huts; without any payment expected we would be offered at least tea, more often than not bread or biscuits, and on plenty of occasions a meal and overnight lodgings. What struck me was how this welcome was absolutely natural: homes were opened to us without a moment’s consideration, and we felt totally at ease.
Thus Conrad and I found ourselves looked after in the guesthouse in Khorog. Once just a village nestling in a side-valley of the Pyanj, with a view of Afghanistan, this town grew abruptly when the Soviets made it the GBAO’s capital. It is a place of little interest – the world’s second highest botanical gardens notwithstanding – yet we found there a comfortable base to return to; after a couple of days of acclimatisation we filled our bags with supplies from the bazaar and set off on our first trek.
Wanting a simple route the first time we were going to be at altitude, we elected to cross the pass from Khidorjev in the Roshtkala Valley to Nishusp in the Ishkashim Valley. We had been recommended the path’s beautiful scenery, and had been told that we might not be too late in the season to find a family of shepherds staying below the pass. A short taxi-ride from Khorog took us to Khidorjev. We were sorry to turn down an old lady’s invitation to tea, before starting up the mountain, delighted that we were at last trekking in this mighty range.
The walk up was relatively straightforward, taking us through a narrow green valley containing a surprisingly fast-flowing little stream. In such a rarely visited valley, we just had to make sure not to lose our often-invisible path, as we had no intention of getting ourselves in a position where we would need to ford the stream. As the pass was hidden by the valley’s many bends, it was hard to gauge our progress, and so we pressed on at quite a pace; around 4:00 pm we were surprised to see people below us, and realised that we had actually climbed a little above the home of the shepherds, who were beckoning us down to them. After the briefest of greetings we were being helped to take off out bags and rushed into their house.
On the track near Rivak
We were straightaway presented with bread and delicious freshly made butter – appreciated after our first day of walking with somewhat poorly packed bags, which were heavier than they might have been. Before long, bowls had appeared with a whole variety of milk products from the herds of sheep and goats: yoghurt, curd, and a kind of buttercream. We spent some time chatting in some very broken Russian – theirs was hardly better than ours – and a very few words of Shugni which we had picked up in Khorog. As they returned from the day’s work we met the family’s four children and their parents, whose sun burnt faces looked too old for their toddler’s ages.
After a little while we were offered seer choi, a kind of milk tea that is a Pamiri speciality. Although at first pleased to see our first milk tea since England, it was quite hard to stomach the weak tea, heavily flavoured with pungent sheep’s milk, usually mixed with gelatinous ghee, and sometimes even with stale bread… (It bore quite a resemblance to Tibetan butter tea in its flavour and the way that cups were refilled without one noticing – apart from the fact the while the Tibetans drink their tea in quite small cups, the Pamiris use big bowls!)
We did wonder at how the shepherds managed on such a poor diet of bread and dairy products, with vegetables and meat added only occasionally, after a trip to the village or the death of an animal. Sitting in their home we also appreciated how poor the really were. The house was built of rocks, mud and dried manure, contained only two rooms, some ripped plastic sheeting served as a roof. We sat on worn wool carpets and were lit only by a gas lamp; in this context, the hospitality that was received was all the more overwhelming. We did not know how best to repay the shepherds – they were most unwilling to accept money, and it almost seemed to undermine the selfless nature of their generosity. The best compromise that we could find was to give them a recent photo of the Aga Khan – they were thrilled to receive this, straightaway kissing it and putting it on their wall: practically the only decoration in the room. Eventually we left the house to set up our camp; just before we went to sleep we were amazed to see the parents of the family walking across to us, bringing us yet more bowls of butter and cream, a totally unexpected and incredible gesture.
In the morning we were once again treated to our hosts’ hospitality. Over more seer choi we discussed the route we should take over the pass to Nishusp. The father explained that we could go either to the left or the right of the nearby hill. We chose the former option, which was apparently slightly easier, and set off, saying a grateful goodbye to the shepherds. Having already climbed 1500m from Khidorjev, itself at 2200m, the pass was still 500m above us, and the higher altitude made the going a little harder. Our start had been later than we would have liked and we found ourselves rushing for the pass; unfortunately we ended up not going to the left or right of the hill, but rather straight over it!
The shepherd who guided us over the pass
After a couple of ridges which revealed not the Ishkashim valley below but more climbing to be done, we found ourselves in sight of what we were quite sure was the pass, but on a field of rather unstable, refrigerator-sized rocks. We edged cautiously across this for nearly half an hour, before a shepherd we had seen in the valley below shouted to us to come down off the scree. In our efforts not to lose any height en route to the pass we had in fact cost ourselves time and energy, as well as putting ourselves at unnecessary risk on the boulders. However, once we reached the friendly shepherd – and were treated to some fresh milk – he took us up what was now a simple route to the top. It was a pleasure to cross the long and wide pass, with a strong and cooling wind in the intense sun, views of Lake Shiva across in Afghanistan, and accompanied by our Pamiri guide.
Having come to the end of the pass we said goodbye to the shepherd and started our descent. It was by now afternoon; although we had decided to aim not for Nishusp but the more nearby village of Push we still had approximately 2000 vertical metres to cover. Around 2:30 we had tea with a shepherd called Sultan, a slower undertaking than we had anticipated, as he had to stoke a fire for his kettle. We asked Sultan how long the walk to Pish would take; he answered that for him it was three hours, but that for us, with our bags and smaller lungs it would take five – maybe six! Now we continued down at a much faster pace, with just enough time to enjoy the green valley and views of Afghanistan. Come 6:00 we were pleased – and surprised – to find ourselves coming around a bend in the stream, and suddenly back on the main Pyanj Valley. We had reached the road back to Khorog, and the conclusion to a fine first trek.
We rested for a couple of days in Khorog, enjoying hospitality which had in fact begun even while we were trying to flag down a lift back from Pish: we were kindly gifted a bag of fragrant fresh apricots by a lady who lived nearby. Back in Pamir Lodge we set about selecting the next route to tackle. We were looking for something longer and more challenging, and decided on the route from Rivak, a village in the Ghunt Valley, to Nimoth, in the Roshtkala Valley. This would take us through varied scenery, past a high-altitude lake, and over a challenging pass. Hiring a guide because of the remoteness and potential difficulty of the trek, we set off early one morning for Rivak.
The valley near Rivak Kul
Our first day’s walking took us along a Russian jeep track, unfortunately fallen into a state of disrepair. We made steady progress, and passed on our way springs of iron-rich, curiously fizzy water. In the afternoon we walked through a village set in fertile fields, and were happy to be treated by picnicking locals to a share of their tea and juicy watermelon! We camped at a lovely spot where a deep stream emerged from the hillside, and the next day continued up the valley.
We were aiming for a point beneath the lake, where there was a shepherds’ camp that we reached by early afternoon. Once again we were straightaway afforded amazing hospitality without question. We were encouraged throughout the afternoon and evening to share all the food and drink that the two families living there had to offer. Again we were able to show a degree of our thanks with a photo of the Aga Khan – received with the same delight. (We also had a go at churning milk by hand – a surprisingly hard task at which both Conrad and I were easily out-muscled by the shepherdesses!) Having set up camp we were able to scramble over the terminal moraine just above the shepherds’ home for a swim and wash in the glacial Rivak-Kul Lake that lay just beyond. Not everybody is a fan of swimming in water at 10°C, but I find it very refreshing!
I particularly remember our atmospheric meal that evening in the shepherds’ house. we sat together, talking and joking, with the starry sky visible outside; we drank delicious hot milk, before retiring for the night. The next morning we were delighted to be able to pay the shepherds, with money and excess supplies, for some dried milk cakes we received from them (definitely one of the least pleasant things either of us had ever tasted) and once more said a fond goodbye, joking that we hoped not to be seeing them again on this particular trip!
The shepherds that hosted us in the Rivak Valley
This, our third day walking, was more challenging. Having passed above the lake in the morning, our progress started to slow, as the path climbed and became hard to follow – our guide did not know the route nearly as well as he had led us to believe – and we had to cross many unstable and tricky boulder-fields, demanding both for our concentration and on our ankles. Also, the valley here was wide and straight, so that by the end of quite a long and tough day, we were frustratingly still in sight of the lake. Furthermore, our guide had been telling us for the past couple of days about the (immeasurable) danger of nocturnal bears. Not being sure whether or not he was being reasonable, we chose to err on the side of caution, and found ourselves following his recommendation to get up in rotation throughout the night, to tend an anti-bear fire.
After the rigours of the previous day and an interrupted night’s sleep, we were not 100% fresh the next morning. We had always envisaged the fourth day as being the longest and hardest – we aimed to climb up and over the pass, and to continue a good part of the distance on to Nimoth. And so we were walking by 6:45, making fast progress along the banks of the river. After a couple of hours we could see the head of the valley in front of us, an impressive sight: there was a massive ridge, about 2km across, covered in snow, save some sharp protruding rocks. We did not know which side of the ridge to try and tackle – our map was not very clear, but seemed to favour the right-hand approach, while our guide vaguely favoured the left-hand side. However, as the right-hand side appeared both the least steep and the least snowy, we headed in that direction.
Taking a dip in Rivak Kul
We spent several hours on an increasingly difficult climb. We were now above several tongues of ice and as we approached 5000m were ever more aware of the lack of oxygen – whilst on the far side of the valley a serac spewed forth intermittent small avalanches, with an ominous rumble. We were also walking almost exclusively on boulder-fields; in contrast to the secure rocks in the riverbed down-valley, these car-sized monsters were very finely balanced and quite ready to clunk over to one side if we stepped on them in the wrong way.
After what seemed like an age we neared what must be the final ridge, perhaps 100m away at the top of a difficult scree. It took us some 25 minutes to climb it; our guide meanwhile peered through what we thought could be the pass – we were disappointed to hear that it led back to the valley we had come up. With the sun high in the sky – causing one or two more avalanches across the way – and having walked some six hours already that day, we were now tired. We were also no longer sure whether we would in fact find a way down to the Roshtkala Valley at all.
A brief rest during our ascent of the Rivak Valley
While Conrad and the guide rested a little, I scouted out a possible route over a rocky promontory. This did indeed offer a way of into the next valley, but I was dismayed to see that the other side was covered in thick snow and ice, terrain that we simply did not have the equipment or experience to cross. Conrad and our guide next set off across a small patch of snow to investigate another possible way. While they were out of earshot and I considered what best to do, the serac that had been slowly crumbling for hours totally collapsed. It caused a huge avalanche, a frightening sight to behold. This acted for me as a confirmation of the fact that although in our current position we still felt safe – and I believe that we were – it would have been all too easy to put ourselves into a potentially very dangerous position.
When the other two returned, Conrad having had an alarming slip in the snow, we had no great difficulty in deciding to give up on the pass and turn back on ourselves – despite our guide’s protestations that we could continue on to Nimoth without problem, and would in fact be foolish not to do so. Although certainly not disappointed in ourselves for making this decision, we were a little dejected as we headed back the way we came, aware that we still needed to cover a large distance in order to reach a suitable campsite. As we were also worn out, we had to go especially carefully as we descended such an unstable route: on several occasions we had to warn one another of rocks we had sent tumbling down the slope. That night we camped higher than the previous night – having hoped by that time to be approaching Nimoth.
In turning back we had accepted that we would almost certainly be on our trek for an extra day, and as we rose on our fifth day, after another night interrupted by bear-fires, I thought we should probably spend the night at the shepherds’ once more, before returning to Rivak the next day. However, after breakfast and another 7:00 start, we were soon in sight of the lake again. Reaching it within a couple of hours we met one of the shepherds and his daughters, looking for a lost cow. They were surprised and perhaps a little amused to see us again, but accompanied us back to their home, where we were once more treated with just the same hospitality. Nonetheless, after lunch it was still only 1:00, so we decided no to overnight there, but rather to push on down the valley.
We were no longer at altitude, and were now descending on easier terrain. With the much greener scenery of the lower valley, our spirits were raised once more. Around 4:00 we reached our first campsite, and on realising that we could in fact reach Rivak that day resolved absolutely to do so. We returned quickly, our spirits really lifted as the town and road came into view. During our final hour’s approach we were amazed to receive no fewer than 12 invites to tea, which really came from every single person we encountered. We finally reached the village with feelings of great satisfaction and relief, for despite not completing our planned route, we had made a great effort and enjoyed a fantastic trek. We were also glad that we had made the correct decision regarding the pass: not to play with fire at 5000m.
Khakha Fort, Wakhan Valley
After this trek we wanted a good physical and mental rest. After a little time relaxing in Khorog we spent some days exploring the Tajik side of the superbly remote Wakhan Valley, shared with Afghanistan. This visit was a delight; we enjoyed beautiful views of the Hindu Kush, stunning hot springs, Zoroastrian shrines, Silk Road forts and even a brief foray over the border to the weekly Afghan market!
Yet soon the mountains were calling once more, and so we set about preparing for a third and final trek. Wanting a more reliable path we chose to follow the Alichur Valley past Yashil-Kul, the Green Lake – definitely going without a guide. Saying a warm farewell to our hosts in Khorog, we rode along the Pamir Highway as far as the village of Alichur, from where we in fact planned to trek back in the direction of Khorog, before continuing along the highway east to Kyrgyzstan. En route to Alichur we crossed the Ak-Baital Pass into the ethnically Kyrgyz Murghab region of the GBAO, and even from the little time we spent in Alichur the cultural change was quite apparent. Faces looked more east Asian, the language spoken was of course Kyrgyz, and – perhaps most noticeably – all the men wore not skullcaps, but towering white-felt Kyrgyz caps.
A Kyrgyz-style tea break
After a night spent in the home of the town’s English teacher, we started walking west, following the windings of the River Alichur. This was a beautiful route, in very different scenery to that of our previous treks – we were now on the expansive, almost lunar landscape of the Murghab Plateau, with panoramas reaching as far as Muztagh Ata in Xinjiang. On approaching a small hill that we had to cross, we suddenly saw our first Kyrgyz yurt, somehow camouflaged against the rock. The owners were just as willing to welcome us as the Pamiris, and we were once again treated to effusive hospitality – we received tea, bread, butter, and on this occasion also had noodles cooked in our honour. We were extremely fortunate to be invited into such a home: a traditional yurt, which is a portable yet sturdy and well-insulated dwelling. Its interior was beautiful, with trellis wooden walls, while a decorated hole in the roof allowed convection currents to regulate the heat, and tens of colourful felt carpets were strewn from the walls. Frustratingly these people spoke almost no Russian, and certainly no Shugni, and so our conversation was limited; it was however fascinating to meet them, and when we left the father of the house absolutely refused any payment.
That evening, having made good progress and knowing that we were near the lake, we found a tranquil spot near the river to camp. Setting up camp and cooking dinner we enjoyed our wonderful solitude, travelling alone and wholly independent, carrying everything we needed on our backs. We were out in an enchanting landscape under an unlit sky, and in absolute silence save for the flow of the river.
The River Alichur’s lazy meanders
By now we had happily settled into the advantageous routine of sleeping and waking with the light – we were generally in bed by 7:30, so that we could rise by 6:00 and be walking an hour later. It was therefore early the next morning that we passed the ruins of a 12th century caravanserai. This was testament to the fact that this gentle valley was for hundreds of years the main route through the region, until it was bypassed in 1934 by the construction of the Pamir Highway over the Ak-Baital Pass. We spent most of the day walking above the beautiful Yashil-Kul, fording a couple of its tributaries, and taking the opportunity to go for a swim – again an enlivening experience! The day’s trek was glorious but some 35km, and we were a little tired by the time we had to climb a few hundred metres to cross the lake’s natural dam. Descending once more we camped in a grassy spot by the bank of the river, now called the Ghunt, and much deeper and faster after its exit from the lake. We knew we had to cross it at some point soon, and had heard tell of an old Russian cage crossing, but we could not see it and elected to solve the problem in the morning.
After a good sleep we set off to find the cage, in fact hidden a little way upstream; the river here was about 15m wide, a metre deep, and rather fast flowing. Suspended over it were two metal cables, and hanging in the middle of these was our cage – rickety, rusting, and floating right over the middle of the river. Although I was not sure quite what to make of this, I must pay tribute to Conrad: without hesitation he stripped down to his underwear, jumped up onto the cables, and pulled himself across the cables to the cage; he then jumped on to the frame and manoeuvred it back to the bank, an impressive effort!
Conrad swings out to the cage over the River Ghunt
We decided to send our bags over first; we attached them with bungee cords, straps, and shoelaces (having first tightened the many loose screws on the contraption) before Conrad took them over the river. I was to cross with him last of all, and the cage’s un-reinforced joints seemed under great strain as it carried our combined weight over the river – yet it held, in fact serving our purpose very well.
We continued for several hours along this high river valley; the scenery became ever greener, and we were lucky to spot Lammergeier vultures flying above us before we reached Batchor, a picturesque village set amidst fields of potatoes and grazing livestock. The first house we reached was in traditional Pamiri style – for we had now crossed back out of Murghab and its Kyrgyz culture – resplendent with a conical haystack on its roof. The owner invited us straight in for tea, and as we had been aiming to spend the night here we happily accepted. Our hostess, a woman called Dulsultan, was perhaps the most impossibly caring and welcoming of everyone we met during our trip. She looked after us constantly, always ensuring that we had enough tea and bread, were sitting comfortably, and she was not even at all offended at our refusal of her proffered seer choi. We were happy to give her one our last remaining photos of the Aga Khan, and she was elated to add it to the ten-year old photo that she had on display. We were invited to stay the night and pleased to accept. Dulsultan’s home seemed like a kind of communal centre, with neighbours constantly popping in and out – this chance to meet so many locals was fascinating and enjoyable; we also enjoyed joining in with a village volleyball game!
Dulsultan, probably the ultimate hostess
However, when we re-entered the house for dinner we were struck by how absolutely basic a lodging it really was. Batchor is only some 25km from the Pamir Highway, the main road from one end of Tajikistan to the other, yet the house was built just of stone, mud, and wooden pillars, with a single lifeless electric bulb replaced by the wood- and manure-burning stove. I asked myself what the arrival of the twenty-first century could mean to Dulsultan and her family, living as they were in a medieval house in the year 2007. One of the younger villagers who we talked with over dinner seemed to be scorning such an old-fashioned existence – he was dressed in what was for him the epitome of cool: fake designer labels imported from nearby China by the truckload. However, we were heartened and touched by Dulsultan’s simple welcome, and hoped that modernising change, when it comes, need not alter such wonderful human nature.
The next day we set off on the final day of our trek, hiring a pack-pony from Dulsultan’s son to carry our bags to Shahzud, (we could therefore happily pay both for this and for our stay) from where we would continue by road. After bidding a fond goodbye we followed a jeep-track with our guide and horse, gradually nearing the main road and the long arm of modern civilisation.
Near Ak Baital Pass, on the Pamir Highway from Tajikistan into Kyrgyzstan
Despite its physically less demanding nature, it was on this trek that we had in a way travelled the farthest from our world. As well as yet more stunning scenery, we had experienced hospitality which just is not to be found in our own society; it was as if we had travelled to another world and back again.
From Shahzud we would travel the stunning Pamir Highway, eventually taking us to Osh, a city with ancient roots but a rather ugly modern face. Finally we would reach the Communist blocks and 21st century buildings of Bishkek, from where we would return the long distance to a grey and rainy England, and the continuation of everyday life.
My time in the Pamirs was unforgettable. We were very fortunate to see first-hand the pristine beauty of this wonderful corner of the earth. I also experienced the amazing emotions of independence, excitement and freedom that being in the mountains makes possible. Most of all I felt thankful to the Pamiri people – for their ceaseless sometimes humbling welcome – and privileged to have the opportunity to witness their way of life, so removed from the modern world, high in the majestic mountains of Central Asia.
In parts one and two I wrote about my environmental and moral decision to stop flying. After spending the best part of a decade without getting in a plane, I’m now trying a different approach, which I’m more confident I’ll be able to maintain long-term: taking occasional flights in a conscious way, initially every two years.
I tried out my first biennial flight this year, when I flew to Indonesia on holiday. (My travel blog is here). It was a difficult decision to book a flight again – but I gained new insights as soon as I re-entered a plane for the first time after so long.
Jakarta. Making such a conscious decision to go there made it more special.
To begin with, how amazing aeroplanes are at all: the first time my Airbus A380 accelerated down the runway, and then simply lifted into the air, I was struck all over again by the human ingenuity that makes it possible, and how fortunate we are even to have access to such incredible technology.
Less positively, I saw with an outsider’s eye how intimately flights are tied up with a globalised system of excessive consumption. It may be unremarkable to a regular flyer, but I was amazed afresh at the 200,000 passengers funnelled through Heathrow’s duty free shops daily, and the 85,000 people passing through Dubai Airport’s kilometre-long strip of shops – all with the purpose of selling as many goods (mostly unneeded) as possible.
But yet, this whole experience started to seem normal to me alarmingly quickly: so much so that I found myself taking an internal flight within Indonesia, from Surabaya to Makassar (albeit with a lot of internal strife). I re-experienced for myself the convenience of flights. Suddenly I had the possibility of crossing the vast Indonesian archipelago within hours, saving days in comparison to the flight-free route.
But I also realised how much of the travel experience I was missing out on by taking a plane. When I arrived in Makassar, the largest city on the island of Sulawesi, I expected to be able to feel how far I had travelled – the shift from Javan culture to a Makassar-Bugis mix, the change in climate and timezone, as well as the sheer distance. This is the experience I have had when travelling from London to, say, southern Spain, as rainy northern France gives way first to lush Mediterranean coast and eventually to the almost Moroccan palm-trees and sand dunes of Alicante. But instead, my arrival in Makassar was unremarkable. I had simply stepped from one busy Indonesian metropolis into another. I missed the gradual, fascinating transformation that I would have witnessed from a train carriage or a ship berth.
Makassar. Looks a bit like Surabaya.
It is the environmental urgency which makes it vital that we take moral responsibility and wean ourselves off flying. It’s the convenience of quick hops – which I learned about anew in Indonesia – which makes it hard to kick the habit. But as I also realised when I took that short flight to Makassar, other modes of transport don’t just mean a more hassle-free journey – they offer a much richer travel experience, one that doesn’t just whisk us to our destination but shows us what lies in between.
As part of encouraging people to fly less, I believe it’s vital to stress the rich and positive experience we can have when travelling overland. There’s a comparison to be made to the recent success of the vegan movement: over 500,000 British people have given up animal products, having become convinced it is the right thing to do from a moral perspective. They have changed their lifestyle, accepting the associated difficulties, in part because they feel that a vegan lifestyle offers benefits in and of itself – the potential for better health, and tasty, if different, food. Similarly, avoiding a flight is not just a loss, but allows us a different kind of travel experience.
Beauty lies in the places in between.
We must address our travel habits in the same way as we’ve started to address our eating habits – and to come back to the data, the need to fly less is as pressing as the need to end our carnivory, if not more so. The urgency of reducing global emissions is overwhelming, and we all need to take action: we are not exonerated simply because society does not publicly judge us. But happily, reducing how much we fly does not mean we can never go on holiday again: even taking one less flight each year has a large effect.
Choosing to enjoy the view from the train, over the crowds and queue of the airport, offers a different experience. It’s time we got back in touch with the land we travel through, not just the cities we arrive in.
I’ve previously written about my journey to realising that international plane-trips were not compatible with seeing myself as an environmentalist. I resolved to put my money where my mouth was, and start weaning myself off flight.
First, I stopped flying in Europe: I took trains to Vienna and Brussels, and the occasional coach to Paris. As I learned to navigate the Deutsche Bahn website (in the days before loco2) and grew to love seat61.com, it turned out that it wasn’t such a big thing after all. European trains are enjoyable, not that much slower (especially factoring in many hours of getting to and queueing up in airports) and, with a little planning, perfectly affordable.
Western European trains: fast, smooth, beautiful.
It was a bigger step, a couple of years later, to cut out international flights as well, which I did for six years. Without doubt, I had some of my best travel experiences in that time, including holidays in Mongolia, Iran, Kurdistan, and Algeria. Without flying, a lot of destinations were effectively ruled out, but I saw that as a price I was willing to pay.
I would go far as to say that we have a moral obligation to substantially reduce our carbon footprint. If you live in a developed economy, the chances are – unless you don’t have access to media or choose to disregard mainstream scientific opinion – that you understand the perils of catastrophic climate change. Yet we continue to pollute enormously.
I sometimes compare the situation to a corrupt economy, where police officers, petty officials, and even politicians regularly benefit financially from their immoral actions. If you are a corrupt police officer, you know that the bribes you take are not fair to the person paying them, and that they are seriously detrimental to your country’s long-term future. Yet because everyone behaves the same way, there is no pressure on you to change your ways and you continue unperturbed. But that’s not how your actions look to us in the UK, where we do not regularly bribe public officials – we would rightly condemn corrupt police officers, even when they act as part of a culture of impunity. As with corrupt officials, so with us: we may know that our individual environmental actions are not the right thing to do, that they are deeply harmful and imperil future generations, but we continue to fly and pollute, in part because society doesn’t judge us.
Trains further afield: less smooth, less beautiful.
But the fact that our environmental misdeeds are not recognised by society for what they are should not take away our individual moral responsibility. Just as the corrupt police officer remains culpable, in spite of operating within an immoral environment, so too do we have a responsibility to treat the planet in a moral and responsible way, even if the short-term cost to us (e.g. a train ticket) is higher.
Hanging over my case so far is the question of practicality. Total abstention from flying is possible, but it is unlikely to work for all but the most committed, and so will not make the environmental difference that the planet needs. My own response has been to try out flying every two years: something I think I will be able to maintain in the long term without giving up. It also models for my friends and acquaintances what I see as the important principle of making conscious decisions about how much we fly – cutting down on flying is much better than doing nothing. In my next blog I talk about how taking only occasional flights is working for me – and the strange experience of returning to the air.
My Viennese grandparents inspired my love of travelling. My earliest memories are dotted with recollections of receiving oversized t-shirts From Russia, With Love, postcards etched by my grandfather and signed “Gran’ma”, and black-and-white photographic portraits of Papuan locals and Californian cousins. I had always wanted to follow in their footsteps, and when long university holidays gave me the time I began to jet off to India, Pakistan, Central Asia, Ethiopia, broadening my horizons and having a wonderful time.
My first awareness of the environment, and its fragility, also dates back to my early childhood. For term when I was eight, my class studied the rainforest in geography. The back wall of the classroom became the rainforest, covered in hand-drawn lemurs and lianas, while we learnt how that same rainforest was being cut down, the area of a football pitch each second. It became logical to me that destroying the planet wasn’t OK, and so I grew up with a value set that included a concept of humankind’s stewardship of the earth.
That old rainforest. From https://bit.ly/2Hhw2Gd
But it turned out that incorporating a love for jaunty trees and animals into my life was not as straightforward as it was to realise my desire to see the Himalayas and the Pamirs. I didn’t want to destroy the rainforest, but it’s difficult to trace the origin of the trees in your printer paper or the palm oil in your peanut butter. Moreover, it gradually became clearer to me that the most urgent environmental problem today – the one which has the potential to push millions of humans into famine and homelessness, and to wipe out more animals than any logging plantation – is climate change caused by human emissions. With a handful of years left to prevent runaway global warming, climate change is what we need to worry about today.
I continued to think of myself as an environmentalist, someone who cared about doing the right thing. As I left home, I decided to cycle, rather than drive; I became vegetarian, to avoid the large carbon emissions associated with producing meat; I recycled assiduously. I even made a half-hearted attempt to avoid flying, taking the train one summer holiday from Moscow to Uzbekistan (although this was undermined by returning home from Kyrgyzstan by plane).
A transatlantic flight cancels out twice the environmental effect of being vegetarian for a year.
But with time, I started to realise the moral hypocrisy of my position. I was an ‘environmentalist’, but my flying habits put me in the upper percentiles of emitters worldwide: one short-haul haul flight cancels out the environmental effect of being vegetarian for a year, while a transatlantic flight is twice as bad. I decided I couldn’t deal with that level of inconsistency: saying one thing while doing another, feeling smug about the environment while jet-setting. It was that realisation that led me to what was probably the defining decision of my past decade: the choice to give up flying.
Apparently the age of the internet café is over, ended by near-ubiquitous smartphones and data coverage. And so my search for somewhere in North Sulawesi to write this blog took me from Tomohon to the regional capital Manado, via a barbershop and a car stuck in a hole, and now to a dark and smoky room of teenage boys playing violent online games.
I’m five weeks into travelling in Indonesia, during which I’ve seen much of the islands of Java and Sulawesi, but even that has meant leaving huge swathes of this enormous archipelago for another time. To get so far I had to fly, of which more in another blog; suffice to say for now that I’ve decided to fly once every two years (rather than never), hoping that this approach will be more sustainable for me at a personal level, and that the idea of taking fewer flights rather than none will be easier for others to replicate.
After my first flight in four years, then, I arrived in Jakarta, where I was hosted by Anton, who I met through Couchsurfing. Anton is part of the large Chinese community in Jakarta, and has set up an eponymous college which prepares students for maths exams for international universities. as well as coaching Indonesia’s international maths olympiad team. As ever, I appreciated having a local host to introduce me to a rather formidable city (11 million and counting); by myself I would not have found a massage parlour overlooking a darkened hall containing 74 foot reflexologists doing their work, nor would I have drunk fresh melon juice at the top of a downtown skyscraper.
Borobudur temple, Java.
Jakarta was also where I made my first forays into Bahasa Indonesia, thenational language, which rightly has a reputation for being easy to learn – with no plurals, conjugations, or declensions. I had learnt a little in advance, and was bizarrely complimented on my accent as early as the airport bus. I’ve carried on learning vocabulary since then – particularly when I’ve had English-speaking acquaintances – and now speak it here most of the time. It’s made life easier, and has of course allowed me to get to know people better than when I usually travel. I think I’ve been more sympathetic towards Indonesians than I would otherwise have been – it’s harder mentally to ‘other’ people when you can understand what they are saying. Regardless of language, practically everyone I’ve met in the country has been exceedingly friendly: smiles and offers of help all round.
From Jakarta I travelled east through Java to Yogyakarta (known as Jogja), Surakarta (aka Solo), Malang, and the wealth of truly stunning historic sites surrounding them, such as 9th-century Buddhist Borobudur or Hindu temple complex Prambanan. To describe them all would take at least another blog post, but I can make two general impressions. Firstly, how much of a minority I represented as a foreign tourist, clamoured around by Indonesian visitors looking for selfies (partly down to visiting in the middle of the rainy season). Secondly, how these ancient sites often seemed like sanitised havens plonked in the middle of busy, noisy, modern towns. Part of me wanted them to feel more connected their environs, like an English village church might be. But that’s not how Indonesia is; a tiger economy that’s raced to World Bank middle-income status necessarily sees rapid and sometimes ugly change, and accepting all the faces of Indonesia has been part of my travel experience.
Prambanan temple, near Yogyakarta.
It was also in Java that I became cognizant of quite what an effect Dutch colonisation had on Indonesia, and indeed in creating it in the first place. The country has scores of cultures across a huge region that need never otherwise have been brought together. Jakarta, for example, only really became significant as the first Dutch capital. Even Bahasa Indonesia is a form of Malay that was introduced by the Dutch as a lingua franca. All around the country, the grandest buildings, ancient monuments aside, tend to be colonial – they are still often emblazoned in orange, as are post offices. And when locals saw me as a foreigner walking through their rural villages, they would often simply call out ‘Belanda’. or ‘Dutch’. Becoming more aware of the ongoing importance the colonial period has on every aspect of Indonesia was shocking. This of course is the way of colonisation all over the world, and will be no news to a lot of people. However, for some reason (speaking the language, or perhaps just life experience) I’ve understood its effects in Indonesia more than before.
Another unavoidable aspect of Java is its volcanoes: they loom up on all sides of its cities and its fertile rice paddies, from Krakatoa in the west, to Bromo in the centre, to Ijen in the east. Climbing Gunung Ijen (‘Lonely Mountain’) was particularly memorable; I left my guest-house at 1am in order to descend into the crater at night, and see the ‘blue fire’, a huge sulphur vent that is constantly alight with an indigo flame. A couple of hours later the sun rose over the crater lake, an body of intense turquoise-green stretching towards jagged peaks in the distance. Ijen is also remarkable for a more sobering reason: the 50-odd miners that haul huge loads of sulphur out of the crater. They are at the same time hugely impressive – they make two runs a day, carrying up to 120kg on their backs – and horrifically exploited: the Chinese company that employs them pays around 5p per kilo, doesn’t pay for their transport, and leaves them to live in unheated huts on the slopes of the mountain. I haven’t otherwise seen a lot of absolute poverty in Indonesia, but the miners’ lifestyle was a long, long way from the prosperity of the cities.
Sulphur miners, Mt Ijen. The tourists used gas masks – not so these hardy fellows.
From Java I travelled to Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes). I can’t help mentioning that it is a particularly crazily shaped island whose geography has always fascinated this cartophile.
On Sulawesi I first spent a week in Tana Toraja, in the southern highlands. As well as being situated in beautiful wooded mountains rolling from one valley to the next, Toraja is home to a remarkable culture that places a big emphasis on death. Funerals are bigger celebrations than weddings, and can take a year or more to plan; the one I visited lasted five days, and I saw twenty pigs being slaughtered, with an unfortunate buffalo and deer to follow the next day. Well-off people can be buried in vaults dug into rocks (costing £10,000 or more), and the largest rocks might contain twenty graves. Toraja was animist until recently, and while it is now staunchly Christian, buffalo horns and wooden buffalo heads, are still put on the sides of houses, graves, and even the occasional church altar.
Rock graves, Tana Toraja: they’ll set you back a pretty penny.
I took the opportunity to do some trekking in the hills of Toraja, walking first from Tandiallo (in nearby Mamasa) to Bittuang, and later from Baruppu to Batutumonga. For both walks I passed through many wonderfully situated villages, with lots of traditional Toraja houses, with their high. boat-shaped, sloped roofs, and intricate carvings. In both trips I was invited to stay in local homes, which were shared with up to around 20 extended family members, and had the chance to spend time with my hosts, whether playing volleyball, teaching games from Jewish youth groups days, or chatting over freshly-ground coffee they had grown on their own plots. There were however some long, hot days walking, and the locals’ sense of ‘jauh’ (far) and ‘dekat’ (close) was sometime frustratingly changeable: the village of Bittuang, over approximately half-hour intervals, was 10km away, then still 10km, then 3km, then 6km, and finally 2km.
On the road (read: jungle path) near Kelama village, Mamasa. I partly knew where I was going.
It was rather depressing to see that in most of the villagers’ houses I visited, the centre of attention, which everyone usually sat to face, mesmerised, was the television – even when it was showing adverts and had the volume turned so low as to be unintelligible. Something similar seems to occur to a lesser extent in the cities, where Indonesians of all ages spend huge amounts of time poring over their smartphones, often checking Facebook or WhatsApp. I am very much aware that it’s easy for me as an outsider to be judgemental, but I think the tech addiction is stronger here than in the UK. I’d posit that could be a result of so much technology having appeared in a much shorter amount of time than in the west, where we’ve had decades to adapt to its temptations. At times it seems as if most people in countries in Indonesia have been dealt the shitty bits of western-led globalisation: foreign-made but poor-quality clothes; pop music in a western idiom which often doesn’t move beyond three chords; single-portion plastic sachets of Nescafé that clog up the waterways. In my less optimistic moments I wonder what the continuation of this modernising trajectory looks like, and whether it’s a dystopian future in which billions of people around the world stare rigidly at Facebook, all the time.
Bajau fishing village, Malenge Island.
In part to escape the reach of the network, I headed from Toraja three days north, to the Togean Islands, which lie in the gulf between Sulawesi’s east and north arms, which don’t yet have (much) phone coverage – and which also happen to be beautiful tropical islands. This was a conscious departure for me: I usually go for mountains and walking over sea and beaches, but wanted to try something different. I reached the islands by public ferry from the town of Ampana: a wonderful six-hour journey that was a liberation not just from phone signal for also from the heat of the mainland and the ugliness of urban sprawl. I spent three days on the island of Malenge, and three on Una Una (an active volcano). Both fit the tropical paradise box, but I was most amazed by the snorkelling: as a tropical reef-virgin I was blown away by the quantity, colour, and richness of the Attenborgisch corals and fish. I did veer on the side of boredom on the islands, but was grateful for the reminder that even a tropical paradise isn’t always exciting and perfect: I know I’ll miss it in a couple of months, but it also showed me how much I also miss about life at home.
Malenge Island. There’s your tropical paradise.
So the grass is often greener on the other side. Although not, to strain a metaphor, for the animals of North Sulawesi. I visited the market in Tomohon, where, alongside all parts of pigs, one can buy butchered snake, bat (wings pre-detached) and dog. Fortunately for one pescatarian, the grilled fish options are also tasty.
I’ll soon be back in Jakarta, ready to return home. My six weeks here have been a fascinating insight into the huge spectrum of cultures that form this composite nation, if more of a reminder than I expected of the ways in which Indonesian culture has moved towards our own. For all that, after spending over a month on two of the world’s biggest islands world, it still feels like I’ve only scratched the surface of this remarkable country.
In summer 2011 I had just completed a post-graduate diploma at the Royal College of Music. After deciding not to be a pianist, I needed a holiday that would be quick to compose, and so I jumped on a coach to Belgrade, and then on a train to Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey, from where I explored Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan. That was a broadly peaceful time: unrests remained, but the region’s prospects seemed to be on the up. A stark contrast to six years later.
Iraqi Kurds modestly claim that the ancient citadel of Erbil is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, having spent some eight thousand years baking in the desert sun. Full of winding streets and yellowish brick houses, standing on a mound of thousands of years of rubble and remains, it looms above the centre of the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, which locals call not Erbil but Hewler. In contrast to the citadel it surrounds, Hewler is a city not only of winding streets, but also of good roads, jam-packed with shining white four-by-fours, with western-style steel-and-glass erections shooting up around its outskirts. It is the economic capital of the greater region of Kurdistan, which stretches beyond Iraq to Turkey, Syria and Iran. Kurds have experienced centuries of discrimination and violence in all four countries, but in Iraq the US invasion finally put an end to the suffering, enshrining Kurdish autonomy in the new constitution. Now, George W Bush is a local hero and America pours investment dollars into Kurdistan, the shining light of post-conflict Iraq, keen to paint a success story out of the war.
The River Khabur meanders along the Turkish-Iraqi border on its way to the Tigris, and an impatient taxi driver drove me over it as I entered Kurdistan from Turkey. I was greeted by the only Iraqi flag I would see there; next to it, the first of many Kurdish flags flapped high above in the breeze. I had previously been in remote Hakkari province, a fiercely proud Kurdish region of Turkey, where the lustre and power of Istanbul really felt one thousand miles away, with roads falling to pieces beyond the state highway. Just over the border in the bustling city of Dohuk, I found life moving at a faster pace; the pavements thronged confidently with pedestrians, black burqas also among the mix, colourful juice stands vying for attention, so that I as a Westerner was not of too much interest. As elsewhere in Iraqi Kurdistan, Dohuk is an old city which looks new – the destruction brought by Saddam means that little physical history remains.
Dohuk was my base for a visit to one of Kurdistan’s most ancient and remarkable sights: the Yazidi temple complex at Lalish. Yazidism is one of the worlds’ oldest religions, apparently emerging from Ancient Near Eastern traditions comparable to Judaism and Islam – with monotheistic beliefs and a version of the Adam and Eve story – and possibly pre-dating both. Travel even to such a renowned sight was challenging, as there is not yet any tourist infrastructure in Iraq: I hitched the final leg of the journey with a local, who was amused to help out in my curious endeavours.
Lalish is Yazidism’s holiest site, containing tombs sheltering Yazidi saints. The tombs are topped by highly distinctive grooved cones: the base of each cone represents the sun, thirty vertical grooves represent the lunar month, and two spheres atop represent the sun and moon once more. Two snake motifs mark the intricately carved stone door to the tombs, next to which I found a priest sitting on carpets folded up on the ground, all wizened beard and black turban – ready to take my entrance fee. Inside the tomb, colourful fabrics left by worshippers draped the walls like drying towels, while nearby hundreds of metal pots had once held oil for a sacred flame.
Don’t forget to pay.
Lalish is a beautiful and tranquil place, sheltered by a narrow tree-filled valley, with streams running all around and even passing through the tombs. With few return transport options, I was moderately stranded, and quickly invited for chai by locals visiting the temple. As always in Kurdistan, scalding cups of syrupy tea emerged from a hidden room while I sat outside and made friendly but halting conversation. Local Yazidis have a great fondness for Lalish, coming to spend long hot summer days there, so that within time I was befriended by two brothers my own age, guided around the tombs for a second time, and eventually invited for lunch at the shrine. Ten men shared a carcass of blubbery mutton, while the severe priest, now fully robed in black, made a reappearance to enjoy the prize portion – yet he did not look as if he was truly enjoying his food as he dug into the sheep’s scrawny head.
From Lalish I set my compass for Hewler, eager to see Kurdistan’s mountain landscapes during my journey. I rode with a lovable old Arab man in salwar kameez, who had taken pity on me as I waited at a checkpoint, where the police stopped each passing car to ask for a lift on my behalf. My driver steered his battered old estate through the tree-specked hills with dedication – winning numerous games of chicken with lorries – but was apparently illiterate, and so relied on me to read the roadsigns.
A shared taxi took me the last stretch of the way to Hewler, and the part of the city in which I made my home was the new version: that of foreign investment, skyscrapers, and commercial possibilities. I was kindly being hosted by two entrepreneurial American brothers who were selling imported medical supplies. Friendly but dull expat gathering parties featuring beer – a rare commodity – gave me a glimpse of what investment in a distant country feels like on the ground, when family is far away and any enterprise is a wager on an unpredictable economy. Where I saw a liberated culture they saw opportunity – ‘why else would anyone come to this sandbox?’
While I disagreed with this sentiment, the meteorological comment was accurate. As I gravitated towards the mass of Hewler’s ancient citadel, I cowered away from leaving the shade of the office buildings opposite for a plunge into 50°C sunlight. After I eventually did climb the ramp to its gate, I was greeted once more by a guard of the nationalist Peshmerga guard, Iraqi Kurdistan’s modern muscle taking care of its ancient might. Recently the citadel has been emptied for restoration (one family remaining to keep the streak of constant inhabitation) but when I visited work had yet to start, so there was little footfall. Other than two lonely handicraft shops, the only source of life was the Mullah Effendi Mosque. I was greeted by its effervescent custodian, Mullah Mohammed, who left me time to look around the simple prayer hall with its requisite mass-produced prayer rugs, before pouring forth a stream of questions about me and my background. He was particularly excited to hear that I was Jewish – something that I felt safe enough to admit freely throughout Kurdistan, where a large Aramaic-speaking Jewish community lived for hundreds of years before emigrating en masse, mainly to Israel.
The long haired Mullah invited me for chai, and told me about himself and the Sufism to which he adheres. He is a khalifa, the successor to his father, who himself led the same mosque some 50 years ago. He talked excitedly about life in Kurdistan, and communicated the confidence that the region now feels. Our tea and biscuits and mutual photo-shoot were only cut short when the time came to turn on the loudspeaker and sing the call to prayer. As a handful of worshippers emerged from the abandoned building nearby, I started to take my leave. It was as we said goodbye that Mullah Mohammed returned once more to the subject of my own religion. He had never before met a Jew, he told me, but had heard of them from his father, who had spoken of them with great fondness. He became emotional as he spoke: meeting me had stirred up nostalgia for an idealised time before Kurdistan’s recent devastation, when Muslims, Christian, and Jews lived together tolerably for hundreds of years. The memory reminded him of his father, whose mantle he had now inherited by leading daily prayers in the same old building – even though I as an Ashkenazi Jew was so different the Kurdish Jews of yesteryear.
There is also a contrast to historic precedent in how Kurdish culture exists within today’s Iraq: they are not the state’s bullied victim, but its star pupil. The ideas of Kurdish nationalism are being realised for the first time, and the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq is a success of security, economy, and national pride. Hewler’s venerable fortress continues to stand firm, and Iraqi Kurds are forging ahead into a future that is no longer so uncertain.
My wanderlust naturally pulls me eastwards. Without flying, it’s been in the direction of the rising sun that I’ve looked to see what deserts, mountains, and palaces I can reach by train. Maybe this oriental tug is down to my own cultural interest, or even to familial roots pulling me back to Mitteleuropa and beyond; or I might, just about, still hazard that we Brits are an outward-looking nation, naturally harking back to our internationalist past. That said, and least prosaically, it might simply be that we’re almost on the westernmost point of Eurasia ourselves: when you start by train from St Pancras, All Roads Really Do Lead To Paris, or at least Brussels.
But, European outliers thought we may be, it turns out we’re not the ones living on the tip of Europe after all. That would be the Irish, our closest neighbours, both culturally and geographically. This is blindingly obvious; yet I know I’m not the only one of my circle who’s needed three decades or more finally to set my compass towards Dublin. This summer, I finally got there: my aim was the Beara Peninsula in the southwest of Ireland, and specifically the dramatic walking route that circumnavigates it, the Beara Way.
No-one was in. I checked.
I was happy to find that reaching Ireland by train and boat was quick, and cheap. A single ticket (£41) took me from Euston to Holyhead and by ferry to Dublin. From the offset, Ireland was familiar: post-boxes disguised in green paint, and traffic on the right (lefthand) side of the road. None of the charming biscuit-tin gables you get travelling across Germany, but rather hardy, red-brick terraces evoking northern English mill-towns. The Irish people were, per stereotype, spectacularly friendly: each new encounter was like meeting an English person I already knew, and liked to boot.
I travelled by train from Dublin Heuston onwards to County Kerry and my walk’s starting point in Kenmare. I allowed eight days for the 160-odd miles, lugging my trusted backpack and camping and cooking gear. (I carried my own food too: dehydrated meals boil-in-the-bag lasagne were light and unbelievably delicious, but cereal bars were a waste of weight: Mars bars will always be king.)
From Kenmare, I travelled west along the north coast of the Beara Peninsula, quickly leaving behind towns and infrastructure, although even after they had receded into memory, there were nearly always ranging, expansive farmhouses dotted across the landscape. Within a couple of hours I was climbing steep high meadows, with the deep blue loughs of Gleninchiquin on my left, and verdure – the bright green of grass, the darker green of rushes, the forest green mosaic of trees – all around. The west coast of Ireland is the first place that rains arrive off the Atlantic, 200 days of the year, and it teems with moisture.
The path took me to villages with names like evocative names like Tuosist, Bunane, Eyeries, and Allihies. As I progressed further toward the end of the spit of land, so the scenery and my campsites grew wilder and more beautiful. From my first campsite in a dusty, peaceful forest, I camped on a headland raised up over the Atlantic, looking out across a foaming bay. After three days’ walking I was camped as west as you can go, on Dursey Island, the farthest that Europe dares poke out into the ocean, and the last place on the continent that the sun goes down.
Transport solutions from the year of the moon landings.
Dursey is only accessible via a six-person cable-car, built in 1969 and incongruously harking back to 1990s French skiing holidays. Arriving at evening I didn’t share the island with any day-trippers, but instead pitched my tent next to a ruined medieval church and roamed its length. As I passed the deserted villages of Ballyleary and Ballycrispin, only the old schoolhouse on the hill still puffed smoke; I met just a single other person, a rounded, jolly, almost Tolkienesque farmer with near impenetrable accent and differently coloured eyes. According to the info at the cable-car office, he would have been one of just three permanent residents remaining on Dursey. From the high ridge at the centre of the island I could see to the peninsulas north and south, to the Skellig Islands with their hermitages, and out beyond to the blue-grey ocean. A day of driving rain relaxed as evening drew, wisps of blue appeared in the overcast sky, and, past ten o’clock, the sea and its islands glowed with the golden light of dusk.
If Dursey Island was the climax of my time in Beara, and the return along the mainland peninsula took me away from such craggy rocks, such empty coastlines, tiny villages, and so many Irish-speaking pubs, yet the scenery still continued to amaze further inland. Perhaps I felt less pressure to have my breath taken away without having half traversed the world to see a view. Or perhaps I didn’t expect such beauty from mountains so close to home.
Bere Island.
My last big effort was an ascent of Hungry Hill, the highest point on Beara, sat 685m high off the path to Adrigole. My task was made easier by a local called Aidan, who I’d met in Castletown and who offered to take my backpack by car, leaving me just a daysack. The approach to the hill took me through fields, crossing fences with the local version of stile that was more like step-ladder, until the mass of the hill reared up directly ahead, its flattish top covered by slow-moving cloud. I climbed up a gully as far as I could, hopping either side of a non-threatening stream and scrambling up rocks; when the gully spat me out I curved to the left, and tried to keep my path straight as possible as I climbed higher.
What looked like a straightforward, if rocky approach turned out to be an awkward, to-and-fro route, tiring me out before I eventually reached the ridge at the top, just after I had entered into the cloud. Without seeing much, I followed contours to the peak and the cairn on its top. Resting on sharp rocks I took awkward shelter from the wind and damp, leaving stones on the ground to remind myself which way to return. Made wet and blind by the cloud, my descent was necessarily slow and patient, and it was only a couple of hundred metres down, emerging into daylight, that I once more saw the broad vista across green fields to the sea, and the Sheep’s Head Peninsula beyond.
It strikes me that most the exhilaration, frustration, challenge, and fear I feel on top of a mountain in the cloud stays the same, whatever side of whichever landmass I might be on at the time. There was some familiarity even as I clambered around in the cold cloud on top of Hungry Hill. And so, my trip to Ireland and Beara was indeed entirely new for me, yet it was also somewhere that felt close and known. I’m heartened to have explored another part of my home isles, and found so much remote beauty. It seems you can find a whole different travel experience by travelling in the other direction, once in a while.
10pm on Dursey Island and out comes the sun. I waited long enough.
