Saturday 24 March 2007

Itchy Feet

I'm getting the travel bug again. It's *so* long since I've been anywhere - nearly a year, last trip was to Mexico - and I can feel a need and a longing rising in me. Chums have recently been to San Francisco and New York, another is (even as I type) somewhere on a cruise-boat between Luxor and Aswan on the Nile and another has just booked a holiday to Cuba. Me? I've booked to see 'On The Town' at the Coliseum in May.

I like travelling and have seen and done some wonderful things around the world, including some special memories:

# snowballs in Central Park, New York, on my birthday,

# floating on the Ganges at dawn at Varanasi seeing the water turn orange as the sun rose and people came down to the riverbanks to worship and float candles out onto the water to lighten Mother Ganga,

# the wierdness and wonder of Gaudi in Barcelona, with the waterdragon and the Wibbley-Wobbley building,

# seeing the sun rise over the Himalayas and Kathmandu, gradually creeping across the city at dawn and seeing it come to life,

# the Eifel Tower lit up at night, all golden and glowing with grey rainclouds as a backdrop in the City of Light,

# Borobodur temple in Java with smoking volcanoes on the horizon, the massive structure rising up out of a jungle clearing, built with black magma from the volcanoes with hundreds of beheaded Buddha images on the walls,

# the oval tomb of Tuthmosis III in the Valley of the Kings, and the thrill of seeing a magnicent statue of him in Luxor museum, one of the most beautiful images in creation,

# not seeing a zebra a matter of yards away in the Tsavo game park in Kenya and being astonished at seeing lion cubs frisking in the parched grass with their mother a few yards away

# puja in the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, one of my favourite places, with little old women pushing and shoving to get close to the sacred casket with their offerings of flowers and oil for the lamps, you can almost feel the belief as puja climaxes with drums rolling, cymbals clashing and the pipes wailing,

# seeing "42nd Street" on 42nd Street,

# getting blessed by an old Buddhist monk at Wat Chayamankalaram by being splashed with water and chanted over,

# getting lost in the souks of Marrakech and wondering if I'll ever see my home again,

# the huge and mysterious temples in the jungles of northern Cambodia and the strange smiling faces of gods or kings at Angkor Thom,

# orang-utan wandering round after food in Borneo, great lumbering creatures ignoring the tourists as they walk past looking for bananas and mash,

# shades dancing in the halls of Karnak and seeing it though someone else's eyes

# walking through snowy Belleville in Ontario after seeing Buffy Sainte-Marie in concert surrounded by multiphonic powwow and having the honour of meeting her

# walking on the floor of the Caribbean with fish swimming around me, walking in slow motion and itching to open the pirate treasure chest,

# greeting the Pig in Florence ...

... all this and more. I want to see it all. I want to see wonders.

I want to travel by train from Mumbai to Chenai (Bombay to Madras) by train, or do it the other way. Both are on opposite coasts in mid/southern India, so it would mean travelling a thousand miles or so (probably more) by train, stopping off everyday in a different town or city to explore their wonders and then getting back on a train a day or two later. Three weeks should do it, I think, but more would be better. Explore Hindu temples and cave grottos, Mughal palaces and Raj residences, formal gardens and mad markets, with all the sights, sounds and smells it's difficult to imagine if you haven't been there.

Temples in southern India are quite different to those in the north, more colourful and exuberant, exploding with the lives of the gods, shrines everywhere and gods perched on rooftops looking grand and gaudy, with the smell of incense everywhere. Northern temples seem more austere to me, despite their beauty as the houses of the gods.

I need to do some proper research and planning - and lose some weight (best to be fighting fit for travelling in India) - so, taking into account the heat and monsoons, it might not be this year. India can have very different climates/seasons on different coasts since it's such a vast country.

I ought to hunt out my photos of India when I went there in the '90s and scan some into my digital files. None of the photos above are of India, but a selection to illustrate some of my memories. Sigh.

2 comments:

gdpreston said...

It all sounds very tiring!

G.

chrisv said...

Sigh...

I wonder if my passport is still up to date?