Travel News: 05/30/13

Thursday, May 30, 2013

The track less travelled

JOURNEYS: THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY: MARINA LEWYCKA
From:The Australian
December 08, 2012 12:00AM

Illustration: Sturt Krygsman Source: The Australian

IT is easy to get off the beaten track in Malawi. In fact, it can be difficult to stay on it, as we found early one evening in July three years ago, when we were driving up the lake road from Salima towards Nkhata Bay for a week's holiday, in my daughter's old low-slung Nissan Bluebird, her boyfriend at the wheel.

It was that dangerous twilight time when the roads are swarming with villagers, their children, chickens, runaway piglets, wayward goats, work-shy dogs, all dashing to get home before nightfall. For twilight is short in Malawi, and when night comes, the darkness is absolute.

By now it was obvious we weren't going to get to Nkhata Bay and we'd have to stop somewhere overnight. Suddenly, out of the dusk, a crooked handpainted wooden sign flickered across our headlights: Maia Beach Cafe Accommodashon (sic). We let out a cheer, executed a U-turn and set out down the sandy track signposted towards the beach.

After a kilometre or so, the track divided into a number of less distinct tracks. There was no light ahead; in fact, there was no light anywhere, apart from the stars, which hung so close and bright you felt you could almost reach up and pick them out of the sky.

From somewhere far away there was a sound of drumming, and we could smell wood smoke. There must be a village - but where? Then we heard voices, coming from somewhere beyond the bushes.

Two boys appeared, followed by an older man.

They greeted us, grinning. In fact, they might have been laughing at us. We didn't care. Greetings were exchanged. People are very polite in Malawi. My daughter had been living in Malawi for six years, and speaks Chichewa, though the dialect is different along the lakeshore; still, it didn't take many words to explain what had happened. The three of them and the boyfriend all got behind the car and started to shove, and slowly, slowly, the car inched on to firmer ground. We gave them some money and asked for directions to the Maia Beach resort. It had closed down last year, they said. But someone in a nearby village had a key.

We left the car on safe ground and followed them down a series of dark, winding tracks. I felt alternating waves of panic and resignation. At last we came to a small hamlet, half a dozen thatched mud-wall houses, all closed up for the night. They called and a man emerged from one of the houses; he was tall and blind in one eye. We asked whether we could stay at the Maia Beach accommodation. "You are welcomed," he smiled, apparently unsurprised by these three pale strangers who'd turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night. He fetched a bunch of keys and we followed him as he set off again down a winding track through the bushes.

After a while the bushes thinned out and I could see the soft starlit glimmer of Lake Malawi spread before us like a wide swath of grey silk. And there, along the shore, was a cluster of small bamboo huts. One was opened up for us. A torch was found. A price was agreed. Bedding was brought - three thin, stained pieces of foam and ancient and musty sheets that smelled as though they hadn't been washed since the last visitors, whoever they had been. The mosquito nets were full of holes, but I had a sewing kit, and the kindness of our hosts more than made up for any discomforts. After they had gone, we spread out our malodorous bedding, stitched up the biggest holes in the mosquito nets and fell into a deep sleep.

Bright sunlight woke us, needling through the cracks in the bamboo wall, and the sound of children's voices.

I pushed open the door of our hut and gasped at the sheer beauty of our surroundings. After all the trauma, we'd landed in paradise. There, just a few metres away, was a crescent of silver sand lapped by the crystal water of the lake. A couple of palm trees waved lazy branches against the sun. And, as in paradise, there were angels: a gaggle of ragged, smiling children had gathered at our door, chattering excitedly. As I stepped out into the sunshine, they fell silent for a moment, then burst into a chorus: "Good afternoon. Good morning. How are you? Do you speak English? What is your name? Manchester United! Give me money!"

I smiled back and chatted for a while. Gradually more and more children arrived. There must have been at least 20, staring curiously as I tried to wash and clean my teeth (the electric toothbrush drew squeals of delight) and following me to the hut which served as washroom and toilet.

"Please, that's enough. Go away now," I pleaded.

"Gowayno," they echoed, smiling angelically. In the end, we surrendered. We emerged from the hut in our swimming gear, ran down to the beach and into the water. Some little boys who could swim followed; others hung around the hut, peering curiously inside.

We played splashing games and beach football with them. They did somersault dives from the rocks, and brought us mangoes.

Later, fishermen came by with fish to sell, which we cooked on an open fire, thanking the good luck that had brought us to this place; others appeared with vegetables and fruit. Our good luck was also theirs - a few extra kwachas to boost the local economy.

The next day was exactly the same: sunlight, sand, water, heat, shade, fruit and fish, nightfall, starlight, sleep. And the day after. We gave up our other plans and decided to stay. Without electricity, the batteries on my toothbrush, phone and laptop gradually ran down, and I let the slow rhythm of the sun reorganise my workaday brain.

At last our money, our anti-malarials and drinking water were running out, and it was time to go. When we packed up our things in the car, I found my dog-eared copy of Middlemarch by George Eliot and the electric toothbrush were missing. Maybe some of the angels were not so angelic after all, but given the unimaginably huge disparities in income between them and us, it was a small price to pay. And I think George Eliot would have been rather pleased.

Recently I visited my daughter in Malawi again and we took our camping gear and drove up the lake road, thinking to spend a few nights at Maia Beach. We stopped some passing locals to get directions and asked at a couple of stores near where we'd first spotted the sign. "Maia Beach?" They shook their heads. "There is no such place around here."

Had we imagined the whole thing? I remembered the previous visit and my heart pounding with fear that the villagers would kidnap or rob us. That's when it occurred to me that maybe, in their own gentle way, they actually had.

Marina Lewycka's most recent novels are We Are All Made of Glue and Various Pets Alive and Dead. This is an edited extract from Better Than Fiction, edited by Don George (Lonely Planet, $24.99).

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One man and a boat

STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES
From:The Australian
January 19, 2013 12:00AM

The Thames, dotted with small boats, flows past Windsor Castle in Berkshire. Picture: www.britainonview.com Source: Supplied

THE rain was dying away as I headed towards my first major landmark: Teddington Weir and locks, where the upper Thames - the land of Victorian gents in straw boaters and stripy suits, the land of Jerome K. Jerome's famous Victorian comedy Three Men in a Boat, in which three middle-class loafers (not to mention a dog) become embroiled in a delightful series of little disasters involving mazes, frying pans and the dog - comes to an end.

Some things from Jerome's day are still the same: the pork pie will get trodden on, the lock will lead to embarrassment and the supplies will never fit in the boat.

Rowers skimmed past me as easily as water boatmen, their attendant launches following behind, sometimes with a man shouting plummy-sounding exhortations through a megaphone. As someone who takes to the water to escape orders, one-upmanship and the rat race of the world on land, I found their flimsy craft and competitiveness hard to understand.

Magic, to a sailor, is harnessing the wind - getting something for nothing - the surprise of a gust, the boon of a side wind and the trial of a headwind and, best of all, the moment when a change in direction means turning away from the head seas and wind and spray and running away from it in silence and warmth.

To a canoeist, the magic is gravity, the free ride, and harnessing every minute nuance of current to go where you want to. Rowing looks like a sport that cries out for flat, unanimated waters, like reservoirs and lakes - a sport that might best be practised in a swimming pool if only there were one big enough. My rule is sail when you can, motor when you can't and row when you must.

Along the banks, the years were peeled back like strata of time. Big white stuccoed Georgian riverside mansions sat by brick-built 1980s homes, playing fields, another disused power station and the towpaths that are older than the city. It was as though the river were cutting through a canyon of civilisation. By now I was on an easy run, straight before a light wind with just the mainsail up, held loosely by its rope (a sheet in nautical terminology) in my left hand, the tiller in my right, always ready to tack or change direction.

At Teddington Weir, the non-tidal Thames gives way to the tidal Thames, also known as the Port of London, the London River or, most dramatically, the tideway. Here, the Environment Agency relinquishes control of the river to the century-old Port of London Authority and little harbingers of doom started to appear. Little patches of floating rubbish washed downstream to swirl around above the locks. Later, a large, dead, silvery carp, bloated and torn by unseen teeth from below, floated on the surface. Perhaps then, this is where London begins.

At Teddington, the lock-keeper made his way towards me, filled with joie de vivre for the sun that had started to come out, the grass under his feet, the sight of a little dinghy filled with camping kit approaching, and he was quick to regale me with the tale of the lock's claim to fame as the set for Monty Python's Fish-Slapping Dance.

At Richmond, an hour's uneventful sail later, I dropped sail and, picking up a single oar and standing at the stern, paddled the boat into the first of the 25 locks I would encounter on the voyage, but not after a passenger ferry locked in to travel upstream, its dirty stern wave bubbling brown and frothy, the exhaust from its diesel mixing in like a warm, vaporous fart. The friendly lock-keeper told me to grab hold of one of the chains that hang down the walls and as I held on, we sank into a Victorian chasm of black, slimy brickwork. Little splashes of water fell on my face and arms and I wondered for a moment if the lock-keeper had produced a water pistol to take pot shots at me with.

A moment later the mystery was resolved: the lock wall harbours colonies of mussels, spitting the river out as the water leaves them temporarily high and dry when the lock is emptied.

Because I was late leaving, my ebb tide to take me to Brentford, where I'd planned to stop overnight, was slowing down as it reached low water. The wind had gone haywire, alternately still and gusting lustily from all angles, and the little outboard motor refused to start.

Rowing against the Thames would be impossible once the new flood tide started to gain pace and run from the North Sea back into town.

Soon I was in a completely deserted stretch of river, with just the dark green vastness of Richmond Park, a woodland big enough to be home to herds of deer, slipping by behind the gently sloping banks, with trees growing over them down to the high water line.

On a sunny day it would have been a beautiful place. Now it seemed bleak.

I longed to swim ashore, walk to the nearest tube and go home, but the Storm 15 was now a noose around my neck.

After frantically trying the motor time and time again, I tried talking to it, softly at first, with whispers of encouragement and flattery, then by challenging it to defy me.

I hissed at it furiously under my breath, then finally, in the strange relationship a man has with a motor (and this is a male thing, I think), I shouted at it with great passion and all the colourful encouragement I could muster, just as a middle-aged woman came into view walking a chocolate labrador on the bank.

This is an edited extract from Circle Line: Around London in a Small Boat by Steffan Meyric Hughes (Summersdale, $19.99, distributed by Peribo).

A leap of faith in Yunnan, China

PENNY HUNTER
From:The Australian
February 09, 2013 12:00AM

The Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan, China. Picture: Getty Images Source: Getty Images

A Naxi man on the "28 bends" trail with his mountain pony. Picture: Damian Haarsma Source: The Australian

ONE of the golden rules for hikers in the mountainous terrain of China is that should you encounter a yak, mule or other beast of burden on the trail, stand on the uphill side of the path to avoid being bumped off the mountain by an over-enthusiastic rump or hoof.

Warnings about the perils of over-enthusiastic children don't get a mention -- but they should. My seven-year-old son is determined to take the lead as we tackle the narrow and precipitous path down Tiger Leaping Gorge, in Yunnan province. Far below, a section of the mighty, muddy Yangtze known as the Jinsha River is powering through a series of rapids. Our goal is to see the rock that, legend has it, a tiger used as a stepping stone when it leaped across the river to escape a hunter.

Gusts of wind hurl dust in our eyes and it seems my whippet of a son could easily be blown over the edge. There's no safety railing, loose rocks slip under our feet and a rusty metal ladder is to be our only means of return. I begin a silent internal debate -- should we turn back?

It's a popular route for travellers seeking to escape the tour-group hordes that swarm over the picturesque old town of Lijiang, also a World Heritage site, 80km south. We have spent two nights in Lijiang. The town, with its shapely tiled roofs and red lanterns, is pretty, but too full of shops and pedlars.

In the gorge there are no trinket shops, no laser-lit nightclubs, no crowds. But there are mountains -- jagged grey peaks, some still dotted with the remains of winter's snow in May, just made for contemplation as the dusk light transforms their slopes.

Our family of four (the aforementioned son and our daughter, 8) starts the trek at the unremarkable town of Qiaotou, an almost four-hour bus ride from Lijiang. Just out of Qiaotou is a ticket office, where we pay 195 yuan ($31.70) to enter the gorge. We are off and, in the distance, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is already an enticing sight.

After two hours of climbing steadily, we arrive at the Naxi Family Guesthouse, in step with an older Australian couple our children have adopted en route. We are welcomed, with smiling faces and pots of tea, into a traditional courtyard house with a terrace offering views towards the mountains.

The Naxi are one of the main ethnic minorities of Yunnan and dominate the gorge, cultivating the steep hillsides with rice terraces and thriving vegetable patches. Dinner allows us to enjoy the fruits of their labour -- eggplant, mushrooms, leafy greens, all liberally doused with chilli, an essential ingredient in Yunnan cuisine.

As the sunlight fades, we sip cold Dali beer and discuss what lies ahead, for tomorrow we will tackle the famed "28 bends". It's an uphill slog that gains walkers much-needed altitude but at a price to calves and lungs.

Naxi men patrol the trail with their sturdy ponies, waiting for the moment that a hiker may crack and be tempted to climb into the saddle, but we're hoping the only pony we'll need will be shanks's.

The next morning, after hearty porridge (the real deal), banana pancakes (that resemble a local roofing material) and noodle soup (when in Rome . . .), we hit the trail and the children start counting. After an hour we have reached what we guess are 20 bends, drunk a litre of water between us and are debating exactly what constitutes a bend in the winding path when we reach an unmanned shack adorned with rows of empty Red Bull cans. On a wall are red letters in English and Chinese that read: "Gain energy to tackle the 28 bends." Our hearts sink. We haven't even started. The kids are crestfallen, but there's not a pony in sight so onwards and upwards we go.

For the next hour panting takes priority over counting until we look ahead and see our Australian friends from the guesthouse perched on rocks overlooking a stunning mountain vista. We've done it -- we have beaten the bends.

The remainder of the morning's hike is spent along a gently undulating trail as the temperature does the climbing for us. Our shoes kick up clouds of dust (it's been months without rain) and we are soon coated in an unsavoury mixture of sweat and dirt. Then suddenly our lunch stop, the Tea Horse Guesthouse, comes into view. The kids dine in cool shade on walnut and honey pancakes and a delicious Naxi version of apple pie (doughy bread filled with grated apple and fried) while we order local dishes. Refuelled and rehydrated, our young trekkers are ready to hit the road again.

Our goal for the evening, only two hours away, is the Halfway House, another Naxi establishment and the main overnight stop in the gorge. All day, the mountains have been a tantalising but distant presence. That changes at the Halfway House.

We enter its courtyard, wearily climb up to the terrace and our jaws drop. There are the peaks, so close it feels as if we could throw a stone and hit the scree slopes and fractured cliffs. More and more trekkers arrive, looking hot and tired, but all are drawn to the magnificent view. By nightfall the terrace is filled with travellers sipping beers and swapping stories under a sky thick with stars. Most move on after one night but we decide to stay two. The next day we trek down the gorge to another guesthouse, from where we can catch a bus back to Lijiang.

But before we board, we have to see the famous Tiger Leaping Rock. So here we are, my son forging recklessly down the narrow gorge track, my daughter slightly more cautious, and my husband and I wide-eyed with fear.

The kids have done so well, walking 17km across three days, but we grind to a halt. Suddenly it would not matter if there were a pack of tigers tap-dancing in bikinis down by the river's edge -- it is just too dangerous.

We turn around and, much to my son's disgust, begin retracing our steps.

We have come so far, within a tiger's whisker of our goal. The sense of defeat is probably like that of the hunter as he watched his quarry leap out of reach.

Checklist
World Expeditions has 10 per cent off its Yunnan Cycle and Tiger Leaping Gorge biking and hiking tours (from Kunming return) for bookings made by March 15. More: 1300 720 000;worldexpeditions.com.

Mary Rose Museum: Life on a 16th-century warship revealed

(CNN) -- Nit infestations, beer instead of water, a band for entertainment -- life on the Mary Rose, the flagship of King Henry VIII's fleet, which sank during battle in July 1545, wasn't all about crashing cannon fire and men being swept overboard, as novels and Hollywood like to depict.

The 16th-century warship sank on July 19, 1545, in the English Channel during a battle with the French.

Now, nearly 500 years later and 31 years after it was raised from the bottom of the English Channel, the ship will go on show in a museum in the same British dockyard where it was built.

Some 60 million people watched the Mary Rose emerge from the water on live television in 1982.

Today the secrets of life onboard can be seen in a new £27 million ($40 million) museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Other costs incurred in the salvage and conservation of the fragile ship take the total expenditure past £35 million.

The remains of the hull are displayed on one side, while hundreds of the objects found onboard are displayed opposite, organized by deck.

The museum tells the story of life onboard a 16th-century warship and is dedicated to the approximately 400 men who lost their lives on the ship.

The Mary Rose Museum opens on May 31. Tickets are available from www.historicdockyard.co.uk and cost £17 ($26). An all-attraction ticket that also includes entry to the dockyard's other attractions is £26.