The Travel Gods Must Be Crazy

by Sudha Mahalingam

  You go deep inside the Arab quarter and emerge into a clearing in which stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Christ is interred. It is as gorgeous as it is ancient; there are numerous altars dedicated to various denominations, much like our own ancient temples. There is a tomb-sized marble slab—the Stone of Unction—on the spot where Christ is believed to have been crucified and later resurrected. We’re there at evensong and are treated to a ceremonial spectacle where black-robed monks of the Greek Orthodox Church stand around the stone reciting hymns in chorus. The bishop offers incense and we’re struck by the similarity of all religious rituals, whatever the faith! It is a mesmerizing moment to be in one of the holiest of holy shrines in all of Christendom at official prayer time.

  Within just a few hundred yards, in the Jewish quarter, is a site considered to be the holiest of holy for both Jews and Muslims. But first you go through the Jewish bazaar that hawks kosher meat of every kind, its stalls slung about with sausages and piled high with seafood. Gradually, the Islamic fez gives way to Jewish skullcaps and you see more and more men in black long coats, top hats and sidelocks. They are usually the products of Jewish seminaries or midrashas, the equivalent of Islamic madrasas where they devote a part of or even their entire lives learning Jewish scriptures.

  Even as the Israelis have appropriated the holy places of other religions—Christianity and Islam—within their territory, they are subject to a taste of their own medicine. The holiest of holy Jewish shrine in the State of Israel is encased in a magnificent mosque that bars entry to all but Muslims. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem housed the original Jewish temple built by Solomon. It was destroyed by the Roman siege of Jerusalem and subsequently came under Muslim occupation. The Muslim kings built a most magnificent octagonal mosque, encasing the original rock of the Jewish shrine, towards the end of the seventh century. The Dome of the Rock or the Al Aqsa mosque is said to be the oldest standing Islamic structure in the world.

  Muslim quarter in Jerusalem

  We follow a steady stream of Jewish devotees through X-ray machines and body-searching cameras into the Wailing Wall complex. The 57-metre-high Western Wall abuts the Al Aqsa mosque and this is as far as devout Jews can get if they want to worship in their most sacred site. There are hundreds of worshippers, little book in hand, reciting prayers, pressing their heads to the Wall, bemoaning and wailing their inability to access the shrine. The Wailing Wall is indeed a microcosm of ethnic diversity. Jews of all nationalities and ethnicities come to worship here. The women’s section of the wall is separated from the men’s enclosure. The thousands of cracks in the wall worn by butting heads are stuck with little chits of paper recording the entreaties and petitions of the devout to their Maker.

  We make our way to the Dome of the Rock on the other side of the wall through another security barricade manned by Israeli soldiers. The golden dome that beckons to you from everywhere in Jerusalem sits on a gorgeous blue ceramic base, graceful in its perfect symmetry. Being in salwar-kameez, I thought I could enter the mosque if I covered my head and walked purposefully. I walk past the guards without glancing at them, but perhaps something in my demeanour alerts them. They stop me and ask for my name and promptly shoo me off the site. We then wander off to the Armenian quarter to check out their quaint squares and homes. We spot a Chabad House in one of the streets and I am reminded of our very own Chabad House in Mumbai, one of the targets of the 26/11 atrocities.

  Ancient town of Acre in Israel

  After a couple of days we take a ramshackle sheruth, the ubiquitous Arab minibus (in contrast to the swanky Israeli buses), to a border post reinforced with miles of steel and concrete and wrapped in copious quantities of barbed wire. We are shepherded through narrow steel cages that seem to run for miles. If you want to visit Bethlehem on the Palestinian side, you have to make your way through this cage and brave the security booths and reinforcements that would put Guantanamo to shame. While exiting Israel, the security doesn’t stop you. Once in Palestinian territory, you take a taxi to the Church of Nativity 6 km away. We spend the day in Palestine, visiting Ramallah and Jericho, besides the Church of Nativity.

  We encounter Israeli officialdom once again on the way back to the Israeli border post. The border security personnel are very much there, but we, some fifty of us, tourists as well as locals, are made to wait for a couple of hours in a narrow and dark enclosure leading to the locked and fortified gate with a festoon of electronic surveillance gadgetry. There are a couple of guards even on a rafter above, toting AK-47s and keeping a watchful vigil on the waiting line below. The waiting crowd is getting restive at the whimsical behaviour of the security personnel and there is a lot of heckling and catcalls to the uniformed Israeli guards manning the gate.

  Suddenly a voice looms out of the loudspeaker yelling something in a foreign language, presumably Arabic. We don’t comprehend and look up in confusion. The others in the queue are gesticulating wildly, asking us to do something. Then the voice switches to English: ‘Hey you, take off your cap, I want to see your face.’ We look up, but no sign of any human being anywhere. Then we see a CCTV camera above our heads just outside the fortified gate. The voice belongs to Israeli security and she is actually yelling at my eighteen-year-old son, asking him to take off his cap so that she can see his face. But even after he does that, she is not satisfied. ‘Where are you from and what is your business?’ calls out the disembodied voice. Terrified, I reply meekly. ‘We are from India.’ She is not satisfied. She barks again, asking us to hold out the first page of our passports to the CCTV camera. Which we do with alacrity just in case the finger on the trigger of the AK-47 on the rafter above got a bit itchy! And troop out hastily when the gate opens, thoroughly shaken, to mingle and disappear into the crowds on the Israeli side of the fence.

  Bagan: Stepping into a Bioscope

  The Mandalay–Bagan boat ride on the Irrawaddy is not for the faint-hearted, especially if you’re not travelling in a tour group herded by an ultra-efficient guide. You have to survive the trishaw ride to the boat jetty at 4 a.m., jostle for your space in the queue on a very wobbly gangplank, convince the inscrutable Myanmarese officialdom that you’re not a spy and, finally, after obtaining that much-sought-after ticket for $16, weave your way through a maze of backpacks of assorted sizes and shapes to claim your place under the sun—literally! The benches and seats on the deck are already taken, but you can claim your tiny share of real estate on the floor of the deck.

  Once you’ve colonized your corner with your belongings, prepare for the sunrise on the Irrawaddy—a truly magical experience. For a moment, there is awed silence as the eastern sky starts blushing. Soon, almost every passenger on board is treading on your toes and tripping over your backpack to get a vantage view of the fishing boats against the rising sun.

  The undulating surface of the river is slowly turning into a million shards of silver; yonder, fishing boats are silhouetted against the glowing fireball; the moment is almost magical. But then, the boat pitches and sways dangerously, threatening to capsize. If it does, you would be the first one off the deck. The awed silence of a moment ago is rent by shrieks and screams, and orders barked through the public address (PA) system by the captain urging you to get back to your seats. In the melee, the glorious sunrise goes unwatched, unappreciated and unphotographed.

  As the sun travels up the sky and the boat moves at a slow but steady clip, you notice an unusual phenomenon on the foredeck. Two young lads are seated clutching the bow, and dipping two poles into the water, drawing them out and examining them, wiping the mud off, and again plunging them into the water. Initially it looks like they are amusing themselves. No, they have been employed by the ferry company to gauge the level of water in the river. Irrawaddy’s sandbanks are legendary and so are the boats stuck in them. True to Asian jugaad, the captains have devised an ingenious system to take care of such eventualities. Why bother with sophisticated instruments for cattle ferries like this? Local boys are hired to si
t on the foredeck with their graduated sticks that measure the depth of water as the boat sails along. It merely takes a shout from them for the captain to steer his vessel clear of the sandbank and scramble to safer waters.

  The journey takes all of twelve languorous hours during which you loosen up completely. The only thing that is tightly wound up is your bladder, swelling to capacity and threatening to burst. The two toilets on the deck can put skunks to shame; they dare you to approach them, and naturally, you dare not.

  The boat reaches Bagan at the twilight hour. The region’s fabled payas (Burmese for ‘stupa’ or ‘pagoda’) line up in a parade of ceremonial welcome. I have no prior hotel bookings nor any fixed itinerary in Bagan, and this is February, peak tourist season. But fear not, trust your trishaw driver to take you to a hotel to suit your budget.

  In fact, no trip to Myanmar will be complete without a ride on that unique Burmese contraption called the trishaw. It is a bicycle with a sidecar attached and is designed for maximum discomfort, as much to the driver as to the passenger. But it comes in cheerful colours and with delightfully loquacious drivers who can regale you with local lore. The only catch is, your face is too close to the nether regions of the driver. With Burmese roads being what they are, frequent collisions of the risqué variety make the trishaw ride a tad spicy or dicey—depending on your preferences.

  Myanmar might put Paris to shame when it comes to al fresco dining. Street cafes are popular with the locals who seem to have mastered the art of balancing their butts on those tiny plastic stools in bright colours. In the evenings, the street stalls and food carts do brisk business. If you stroll along the by-lanes after sunset, your olfactory senses will be assailed by the aroma of roasted sparrows, fried insects and other unfamiliar fare that might have been swimming, crawling, creeping only minutes ago. The Burmese slurp with relish these lip-smacking delicacies piled on heaps of steaming noodles, all under the glare of lights from colourful paper lanterns slung from tree branches. If you’re brave enough to balance yourself on those stools, you might even relish the authentic Burmese fare provided you have not visited the local market. I had taken a stroll through the bazaar the previous evening and was struck by the live specimens of fish, fowl and all kinds of creepy-crawlies eyeing me warily from their glass cases; these seem tame in comparison with the glazed stare of disembowelled snakes with blood congealed on them, invitingly arranged in handwoven baskets.

  From May Kah Lar Guest House, you have a vantage view of life as it unfolds in Bagan. If you think you’re in some remote hinterland, think again. The streets are chaotic. Ancient buses straight out of the British Raj come bearing down on you, their horns blaring, their tyres pulling in opposite directions like a pair of feuding bullocks pulling a cart. If you manage to jump out of the way, you will find yourself in the arms of pink-clad women, a whole gang of them; actually, they are nuns going about collecting alms for the day. They cluck and fuss over your bruised skin and go their way.

  If you go looking for a Band-Aid, make sure you ask any shop, even those slung about with pots and pans. Myanmarese mom and pop stores must have been the forerunners of today’s departmental stores and supermarkets rolled into one. The merchandise hawked can range from children’s tricycles to medicines, groceries to utensils and everything in between.

  In Bagan, the distinction between businesses and homes seems to blur as shops double as lounges for whole families to spend time together: women cleaning rice or sewing, children doing homework by Petromax lamps, menfolk in sarongs smoking beedis. It is truly like stepping into a living, pulsating, yet sepia portrait.

  Thieves at the Equator

  ‘You have been selected!’ gushes the breathless airline attendant in her charming Spanish-accented English as I approach the boarding gate. Her English vocabulary exhausted, she then lapses into Spanish. I am mystified but also flattered about having been chosen for whatever it is. Visions of a free across-the-world trip for two as a gift from the airline race through my fevered mind. Meanwhile, she brings a colleague to enlighten me. He explains in unmistakable English that out of the 300-odd passengers bound from Quito to Miami on that flight, I have been singled out for reopening of my X-rayed and checked-in baggage, which had already entered the entrails of the aircraft. I am marched a mile to the aircraft by a uniformed attendant who even holds an umbrella to shield me from the drizzle. The suitcase is disgorged from the stationary plane’s belly and laid out on a bench under its wings. A menacing sniffer dog is curled up under the bench, and two beefy security men signal me to open the locks.

  I fumble for my keys in my cavernous handbag and manage to open my oversized suitcase overflowing with unwashed linen and the detritus of a three-week journey through the Galápagos Islands and the Amazon jungle. With gloved hands they patiently pull out each item of clothing, and all other debris squeezed into every inch of available space. Naturally, nothing suspicious is found—even the seashells I had smuggled out of Galápagos are ignored. Pushing toothpaste back into its tube is easier than putting all the stuff back into a suitcase. Eventually, we manage to close the yawning suitcase and lock it. I look up smugly at one of the security men and say, ‘You didn’t look into the false compartment at the bottom—I had hidden the cocaine packet there.’ My friend who had accompanied me for the inspection pipes up and says tongue-in-cheek, ‘They didn’t even locate the two live iguanas we had smuggled in from Galápagos.’ The security men blush and avert their eyes, and we get further emboldened. I pull out my camera and am about to shoot the whole scene. The security shoo us off back to the boarding gate.

  It must have been a routine check targeted at anyone with an unfamiliar name. The sight of the calm sniffer dog dozing off under the bench must have already convinced them that there was no contraband in the suitcase, but nevertheless they had to go through the motions.

  Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport has other surprises too. On another occasion, while we were waiting to board a flight to Guayaquil (pronounced ‘oyyakil’) there is some commotion as a few men in apple-green uniforms enter the boarding area. Everyone clambers to get a better view and cameras are out, flashes pop. At first we think these must be footballers; only they attract such adulation in Latin America. My journalist friend goes to investigate and finds it is Rafael Correa, the Ecuadorian President, no less. She sidles up to him, takes a selfie with him and tells him she had written about his policies in her newspaper. He is surprised but moves on after exchanging pleasantries. We found out that he was flying in his own presidential aircraft. After about ten minutes, a plainclothesman, obviously an intelligence official, approaches us and shepherds us to an anteroom where begins a long inquisition to find out exactly what we were doing in that country and even what we had written about his president. It was by no means a friendly inquisition. We emerge from this ordeal somewhat shaken.

  Quito never ceases to surprise you. In the historic old town, the moment you point your camera to shoot the city square or its gorgeous basilicas and churches, a cop in uniform materializes, asking you to put your camera back into your bag. No, he has no objection to photography, but he is worried that your camera will be snatched! Our hotel manager had warned us against carrying our passports or too much cash as we went sightseeing. Apparently, passport snatching is quite common, and photographs are morphed and the passports reused! Only in Quito can you witness the comic sight of foreign visitors hanging their backpacks on their front for fear of it being knifed if hung on the back. Quito’s streets are awash with cops; in fact, there are more cops than tourists in the old town.

  But we manage. In fact, more than manage. We take a public bus to the Equator Monument about an hour’s ride away. It is more crowded than a DTC bus at peak hour and we clutch our bags as if our lives depend on it. At Mitad del Mundo, we stand triumphantly with one foot on either side of the metallic line which is actually a good 400 metres off the equator if you believe your GPS.

  Quito is a quintessential Andean ci
ty, perched at a height of more than 9300 feet with a spectacular range running along its spine. It shares the distinction of being the highest capital in the world alongside Bolivia’s La Paz. Quito’s winding and sloping streets remind me of old town Leh. During different periods of history, Quito has been ruled by Colombians, Peruvians and others, but no one vandalized the local Quechua culture as much as the Spanish who colonized this part of the world in the sixteenth century. The imperialists went about systematically decimating and obliterating everything Ecuadorian. What remains today is only gilded Spanish churches plated with Inca gold and a hotchpotch culture of the Mestizos in the highlands. Not a single Inca structure remains. No wonder neighbouring Peru managed to tout Machu Picchu as one of the wonders of the world while all Ecuador can do is cling to its natural wonders—the Amazon jungle and the Galápagos Islands.

  Even if the Spanish had not destroyed Incan vestiges, the many volcanoes that overlook Quito might have. On a clear day, one can see the towering Cotopaxi, the world’s tallest live volcano, in its powdery snow crown. For some centuries it has remained dormant, but how long it will remain benign is a matter of speculation. Pichincha, the other volcano to which you can ride a téléphérique, erupted as late as August 2006. There are a few other minor fiery deities that had erupted sometime or the other in the past, some still smoking. In fact, the pan-American highway that leads south from Quito all the way to Patagonia is referred to as the Avenue of Volcanoes. Yet, Quiteños carry on stoically.

  Roman Holiday

  Rome is charmingly chaotic, if you know what I mean. The other European cities are orderly, disciplined, peaceful and predictably dull, but Rome, delightfully, is none of these. It is almost like home turf for us Indians. The traffic is unruly and wilful, the pedestrians nonchalant, tourists weave in and out of all those crumbling ruins taking photos as traffic snarls and honks. Rome’s familiarity has a way of making you unwind so completely that you lose all self-control.