Backwaters of Kerala, India

We are home, so I had a chance to edit the video I took in the backwaters of Kerala. We left at dawn and the first thing we saw, in addition to the lovely sunrise was a head sticking out of the water and a long post. A woman was diving down, fishing for muscles, using the post to show boats not to pass there. Our boatman told us the family would eat the muscles, but then sell the shells to the cement factory. It was too dark to video!
It felt a little invasive to be floating by as people were just waking up, coming out of their houses to wash themselves, their dishes and their clothes in the canal. However, our boatman's daughter, who was already dressed and ready to go to school, followed us along the path after we had a cup of coffee at their home at the end of the canal. You will see a young couple fishing in a round boat and then hear Indian music being broadcast from a temple, calling people to worship. The peace and quiet evaporated once we hit the river where there was a virtual traffic jam of houseboats. The houseboats are the big tourist draw of the canals: most people rent them overnight to spend a night on the water in a 1-3 bedroom air conditioned houseboat made in the traditional Keralan way.
Towards the end of the video you will see two short sections. In one, a woman making paneer (the closest thing to cheese in India) outside her tiny hut on the edge of a canal. She has placed many rectangular shaped boxes filled with milk out to dry. In the other a woman is washing her clothes by beating them on a rock.

Goodbye, London!

Entrance to St. Olave's cemetery on Seething Lane. Dickens called it "Grizzly Grim" because of the skulls over the arch. It wasn't destroyed in WWII like most of the church.

St. Olave's ("Grizzly Grim") cemetery where our ancestor was buried.

We haven't had much down time since we left Greece. Leaving Greece was iffy. A strike was called that was supposed to include the metro AND air traffic controllers for the very day we were to leave. The first time we walked through the Syntagma Square in front of the parlament  (if you saw footage of the demonstrations, then you saw Syntagma Square), lots of people were camped out with big banners tied from tree to tree. The atmosphere was one of discussion, not violence. The second time we went there, we happened to arrive as union groups were parading - marching with banners and chanting. We only felt alarmed when a block away, out of sight of the square, we walked past lines of bullet proof vested police, sitting on their motorcycles, waiting. We removed ourselves rapidly!
Luckily, the air traffic controllers did NOT strike that day so we got to London as planned. But what a plan! Pick up a rental car and drive to Southampton. By the time we got our luggage, patiently endured a trainee at Europecar (everything she did had to be redone at least once) it was getting dark. No map with the car! We had directions, but when you are driving on the wrong side of the road on a freeway and everyone is going 80 in the pouring rain, you make mistakes. We went the wrong way and headed east. Warning: you must make no mistakes on the M25, the ring road around London. There are turn arounds about every 20 miles.
We did arrive in Southampton at our hosts' house but the last few blocks were with a Southampton police escort. They noticed the "way we were driving" and thought the driver was either enebriated or lost.
Our hosts, Stephen and Gwyneth gave us some very welcome guidance and a map book, so the next day we went to Stonehenge! T'was magnificent, even with the busloads of other visitors. Then we went on to Winchester cathedral and stood at the grave of Jane Austin. The next day at Salsbury Cathedral an annual flower show was happening so it was mobbed by older English women with cameras. Every now and then a priest would climb up into the elevated pulpit and say a prayer.
In Cornwall, we had arranged another stay through Educators Bed and Breakfast.We were very lucky to make the acquaintance of Maureen and Tony who wined and dined us in addition to making some killer English breakfasts and a traditional Sunday roast with yorkshire pudding. We ended up staying 4 days.
 I LOVE Cornwall!! Can't wait to go back. If you haven't heard of the Eden Project, check it out on line. One man's vision: he took one of the china clay pits (quarries where the raw material for making good china comes from) and turned it into an enormous fun, educational place with giant geodesic dome greenhouses with rainforest and mediterranean climates inside.
We drove to Land's End and Tintagel, a ruin of a castle on a crag which has some claim to the Arthurian Legend. It was misty, drizzly and blustery - perfect conditions for imagining times gone past.
I'm having to skip a lot. Today is the last day and we leave shortly for our nonstop to SFO.
However, the grand finale was going to St. Olave's on Seething Lane to find evidence of our ancestor, Bartolomeo Talliaferro - (turns out there were multiple spellings). Our ancestor, his grandson, came to Virginia in 1630's.
Time to go! It's been a fantastic unforgettable voyage!

Athens pictures

Kapnikarea Church: Greek Orthodox, 10th Century AD

a store where Orthodox priests buy their robes

"Socrates' cell" is a cave at the base of the Acropolis. Might also have been Roman Baths, but most recently was used during WWII to hide the Acropolis treasures. They covered it with a concrete wall (now gone).

Parthenon

The Temple of Zeus, built by Roman Emperor Hadrian (pic taken from acropolis)

Excavation under the Acropolis Museum

ATHENS

June 11, 2011
Full day yesterday! Set the alarm, but didn't get to the Parthenon as planned at 8 - closer to 9am. However, still it made a difference- not really too crowded and not too hot. I have run into someone I know on every trip I've ever taken and I was sure the Parthenon would be the place on this trip - nope. It was an international crowd plus bored looking Greek school kids on field trips all wearing the same color t-shirt.
The view from the Acropolis is astounding - those Mycenaeans (1400 BC) really knew military "feng shui." We just came from the Pelopponese where we saw several mountain top citadels, including Mycenae. Even the ancients could not figure out how the builders moved those megaton stones into place.
Anyway, nowadays you can still see far into the Aegean Sea from the Acropolis but directly below is the sprawl of Athens. One third of Greeks live here.
If most of the friezes and high relief sculptured figures were damaged by time, looting, and war fare, how is it that we know what the Parthenon looked like? Well, we can thank Pausanias, 2nd Century AD Greek tourist who wrote descriptions and TWO artists from the 1600's who drew them before they were destroyed. So, here's a toast to travel writers and artists!!Yamas!
We went for lunch at a little funky place behind the Acropolis Museum. We were having a Rick Steves day, reading his acropolis info on my Kindle. Following his advice, we went to a hole in the wall, which was "lacking in tourists." We loved it - there was a "broad" in charge: dressed in a tight black, knee-length dress which showed off her large belly. She put the cig down to cut us a sample piece of pork off the grill (we were hooked after that), but the rest of the time her cigarette was hanging from her lips. She was a no nonsense kind of person - no gratuitous smiles. good, cheap food, and a great view of the modern museum and the acropolis behind it.

The museum did not allow photos - so I can only tell you about the MOST amazing thing - the pediment of the OLD Parthenon (7th-6th century, BC) - the one that the Parthenon that we now see replaced. . ASTOUNDINGLY, it is still has paint on it so you can understand better what it looked like in those days: the scene of two lions attaching a black bull still has black and red paint. The Athenians buried the figures (which preserved the pigment) when they decided to build a new Parthenon @ 450 BC.

And the Acropolis museum gets BIG, BIG points for a few things:
- "Archeologist to the rescue!" (my term) If you have a question, ask any security guard and he will whisper into his lapel and, voila! An archeologist with a big red badge will come running.
- Glass floors through which you can see archeologists at work underneath the museum where (naturally) they discovered an entire ancient neighborhood when they broke ground for the modern museum.

I made spaghetti for dinner and then we walked up to the Amphitheater just a few blocks from here which hosts Greek Folk Dance performances 5 night a week. Great musicians, a blind singer with a melodious voice and a large troupe of young people decked out in lovely village costumes made the evening below the waxing moon very pleasant. Those villagers really knew how to dress! Although the dances were from all over Greece, there were certain similarities - line dancing, the use of the handkerchief, the male dancer bending low and kicking high.

After it was over, we walked back through Melina Mercuri square - a tiny square with a little fountain and greenery and benches on the inside perimeter. It is surrounded by tavernas, bars, snack bars, and on the square on the sidewalks (outside of the greenery perimeter) each establishment had placed tables. At first we arrived and noticed it was quiet but that all the benches were occupied with small groups of friends. We sat for a while and enjoyed watching a husky and a black spaniel play. Then we decided to get a drink - and walked around the square - NOT A SINGLE TABLE WAS FREE. Greeks of all ages from the neighborhood were at the square, quietly talking and having a late dinner or drink.

So, staying in a neighborhood instead of a hotel zone is so much more interesting. Right now, the sounds of accordion music and singing canaries are floating through our open windows. A truck with a loudspeaker is driving by - probably a produce vendor if Athens is like other places in Greece. We are next door to an Orthodox church which rings the bells at various times during the day.

 A few days ago we were starving and very tired after a long HOT day of walking around Athens. Our petite red-headed French landlady had told us about a restaurant close to the flat. It was poorly marked with a hand lettered sign, but we walked into a narrow passage way that opened into a courtyard filled with tables, bougavillea and wine barrels. It was empty - just one couple and an older woman who motioned for us to sit down. We sat for a good long time,getting the blatant cold shoulder from the elderly waitress. Finally, the woman (probably the owner) got up from her table and brought us a menu = it was Greek to me!! I CAN read Greek now, but like a 2nd grader, sounding out each letter, but that doesn't mean I recognize the words once I have sounded them out! You may find this hard to believe, but this is the first time we have eaten in a restaurant without a Greek/English menu. It was truly a humble, neighborhood taverna.
More time elapsed and finally, the young man enjoying dinner with his girlfriend reluctantly offered to help us. First, he explained that we were too early. It was 7:30 pm - they only open for dinner, i.e., 8:30 pm. Therefore, most items on the menu were not ready.  When the waitress realized we had not intentionally committed this OBVIOUS dinnertime faux pas, she put her apron on and suddenly got into character. She was all smiles and had two English words: thank you and OK. The rest was easy.

Naxos Island, Cyclades, GreeceN

Watching the world go by, worry beads in hand.

This is a MARBLE mountain! Contemporary quarry - Naxos

Larger than life Kouros (male statue) left in ancient marble quarry

Landscape and road of Naxos - can you see our scooter?

Sunset at the Portara, the only thing still standing of Temple of Apollo built in 530 BC. Naxos in background

Hora, the capital of  Naxos from the Portara after sunset. Population: 5000. Visitors: millions.

CORRECTION: Santorini volcano blew its top between1647 and 1628 BC, not AD!

I'm in love with blue and a snail's tale

Papermache snail made out of newspaper in 7 languages

Can you tell which one is on the outside of the net?

Typical Santorini church

5.29.2011
Surrounded by blue in the Aegean, I realize that I love every shade of blue. The sky, the sea, the swimming pools, the domes of Greek Orthodox churches, the trim on every white house kind of wakes you up and then makes you relax - so much beauty!

 Getting here by ferry from Crete was easy - just one little hitch worth writing about.  After a week of traveling the island, we returned  to the same hotel in Hiraklion, the Mirabello. It was like coming home. People remembered us, we knew how to get around town, where the supermarket was,etc. When the Mirabello owner, Kostas,  found out we were going to Santorini, he told us he knew someone with a place there and he could make arrangements for us. When he told us the reasonable price and that the hotel picks up from the ferry, we said sure!  (The Santorini port is at the base of a cliff, and you either walk 580 steps, get a donkey ride, take a cable car or a taxi.) He made the arrangements and told us not to worry -  the  driver would be waiting for us, holding a name card.

The next time I saw him he asked if I could carry a package for him. I raised my eyebrows and asked," What is it, a bomb?" Here was a man I barely knew asking me to carry a package to a total stranger. One of those no-no's drummed into us at airports: do not agree to carry packages for strangers.
"Oh, no, no, no!!" he replied. "Just  a kilo of snails.They are asleep. They won't bother you."
"Sleeping snails?" I responded incredulously.
"Yes, I want to send my friend, Popi, in Santorini some snails," he confirmed. I immediately pictured Popi as an older man, a buddy from Kostas' navy days.

There ensued a lengthy conversation about all the ways to cook snails, various methods to keep them off your plants, new medicinal uses of the slime, how they "sleep" and even how to prepare my garden snails back home for consumption.
That evening he greeted me with a large plastic bag. I peered inside to find an orange plastic net bag full of "sleeping" snails (they spent the night in our bathroom -  a little fishy smelling).

On the boat the next day, I looked into the bag to find that one snail had not only woken up but had figured its way out of the net and was making its way up the side of the bag. I felt great respect for its heroic attempt at freedom.
We disembarked from the ferry and began looking for our driver. There were 20 men waving cards trying to get my attention. I walked through them and could find no one with a sign that said JARDIM. Then I realized - the Mirabello owner had meant the sign would have the name of the HOTEL on it  - but he never told us the name of the place! So I started asking the other card waving guys for Popi's hotel (I knew the snails were for Popi). They asked what town - I had no idea. Word spread (they all knew each other) and finally a lanky man came forward and said, "Mirabello?"

We followed him to a van full of six recently graduated girls from Indiana who were on a whirlwind tour of Europe.  Ten hairpin turns later the van had climbed to the top of the cliff and we had a birds' eye view of the "caldera" - what is now a bay was once a volcano that blew its top in 1650 AD. The hotel was so lovely (great pool) we assumed the girls were getting dropped off and then we'd be taken to our hovel. But the Vila Manos is where we all got out. I explained I had a package for Popi and a lovely young woman came forward and said, "I'm Popi." When I handed her the snails, she exclaimed, "Oh! From my brother!"

YASAS, YAMAS and Droussolites

Today I uploaded pics below the blog so keep scrolling down after you read. I made a mistake - obviously, King Minos' throne is against the wall on the right (not the left) of the picture below!
YASAS! This is the greeting word in Greece every where we go (but I don't know how to spell it). I am studying the Greek alphabet (never too late) and I have the capitals down, but many lower case letters don't even look like the upper case letters!

The sun has risen on Agia Galini on the southern coast of Crete. It is an old town, perched on a hill that descends rapidly to the Libyan Sea. The town is quiet at this hour of the morning, except for the birds and the goats. Our tiny balcony faces a steep hillside rather than the sea, and so we have a good view of the activities of a small herd of goats.First, they were on the vertical hillside then they jumped onto the flat roof of the neighbors across the street.

Greece really is WHITE AND BLUE!! All the houses are white with blue doors and windows. Words fail me when I try to describe the blues of the waters around these islands. They are crystal clear! Which leads me to comment on how CLEAN Greece is. No old plastic bags in the water or on the streets!

YAMAS! After our first meal in a Cretan restaurant, we asked for the bill and they brought us shots of ouzo and plates of sweets. The guide book warned that Greek waiters bring food you did not ask for, so we were wary (but we drank the ouzo and ate the cake).  Now that we have been in Greece for two weeks we have discovered it is standard for restaurants to give you after-dinner treats on the house.  Usually when the waiter brings the ouzo, he says something like "medicine!" or "vitamin!" And we raise our tiny glasses and say YAMAS! 

The most extreme example of this hospitality was last week in Frangokastelo (see fortress below). We stayed and often ate at the Artemis Taverna. When we first arrived, the host brought ouzo for a toast between us and himself. After our first breakfast, he also brought us ouzo! Another time, when he brought ouzo before we even ordered our food, I asked him WHEN  one drinks ouzo, before or after the meal? He replied, "Before and after!" and duly brought us another set of ouzo glasses (and his to toast with us) when we were done.

Frangokastelo isn't even a town - it is a series of houses and tavernas surrounding the remnants of the 13th century Venetian fortress you see in the pics below. You can find reference to it in wikipedia and on youtube because of the Drossoulites, the ghosts of Greek rebels massacred on May 18, 1829. Every May, they march at dawn across the coastal plain and disappear into the sea near the fort. We arrived on May 17th and enjoyed the rise of a dramatic full moon over the castle next door. They say the occupying Germans in WWII actually fired at the Droussoulites, but none of the residents we spoke with had ever seen them. I got up at 5 am every day to see the Drousolites - to no avail.  

Our other main activity in Frangokastelo was vitamin D synthesis -  lying on the lovely deserted beach for 2-3 hrs. We are very toasty looking now. The water was very shallow, few waves. Tourist buses would stop around lunch time to visit the fort and walk on the beach and eat lunch but by 3 pm  it was virtually ours again.

One night,  (Saturday May 21st) shots were fired around midnight. It was the feast day for everyone named Kostantinos. We knew about the feast day because earlier that day we had gone next door to the Kali Kardia restaurant for some typical Greek food: spinach pie, gigantic white beans in a tomato sauce, and a Cretan salad (cuke, tomato, hard boiled egg, potato, croutons made from rusks of whole wheat Cretan bread, small green olives,green pepper, LOTS of feta cheese,dressed with olive oil). Before we left, the owner insisted we share our obligatory ouzo with his uncle, Kostantinos, who was celebrating his feast day. Kostantinos had spent 40 years in NYC making pizza. We drank to his health, the health of his children, Greece, America, etc. We learned  his adult children and wife were still in NYC and he would be attending his daughter's wedding there soon.
The next day there were quite a few cars in front of the Kali Kardia. We thought - yeah, everyone knows they have the best cook in town! We went inside for breakfast. It was apparent that Kostantino's feast day party went long and late as a long banquet table still had dirty cups and napkins on it. People stared at us with glazed eyes - the owner was a bit tongue tied - I figured it was all that ouzo from the night before. When we asked if we could have breakfast, he looked at us intently and blurted out - "Last night we had a terrible accident." In broken English laden with grief he explained -  his uncle, Kostantinos, whose health we toasted the day before, had fallen down the marble steps and hit his head. I asked if he was OK now, and he said, "No, he died."  The worse part of it was that no one realized it! They had just found him a little while before we arrived at the bottom of the stairs, lying on the Taverna patio covered with grapevines that looks out on the sea. They were waiting for the police, the coroner, the priest, etc.

We barely knew him, but we were strongly affected. How unpredictable life is! I always think of John Lennon's line, "Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans." So, CARPE DIEM, folks!!

Rhodes: Did you know the Nazi's came this far?

Left against the wall - King Minos' throne

Mural of cavorting bull, Knossos, Crete

 

Greek graffiti - can anyone tell me what it says?

Frangokastelo Venetian fort - from our hotel balcony

Venetian fort and odd apparition (Droussolite?) in water

Note telescope: "ONLY FOR MOON TO LOOK." So, only the moon can look, not you or me!

Aegean Odyssey

Hygeia, feeding snake

Mosaic of Triton, half-man, half-sea creature, made with pebbles

Sea sponges from the Aegean

On the deck of the Prevelis, between Rhodes and Crete (14 hr ferry ride)

Our last day in Rhodes, we spent the morning in the Archeological Museum and the Palace of the Grand Masters in the Old Town of Rhodes looking at Greek, Roman, The Knights of St. John (multi cultural group of Christian military/monastic order of Crusaders) and Italian artifacts.
In the photo of the statue of Hygeia, note that she has a snake wrapped around her right arm. It is drinking from a little plate she holds with her left. Hygeia is the daughter of Asklepios the healer (remember an Asklepion was the original hospital/spa/therapy institution in ancient Greece). This statue is from 2nd Century AD.

 The photo of the mosaic shows a Triton, half-man, half-sea creature. The mosaic is made with black, gray and white pebbles (not colored glass or clay tiles). It was found underneath a high school playground and is stylistically very dynamic.
****
At the end of the day, we allowed ourselves plenty of time to walk from our hotel to the port to catch our ferry to Crete. We left at 5:30 pm;  the boat was due to depart at 7 pm. We figured we would arrive 45 minutes early. The travel agent said there was no way of knowing which of the two ports the boat would leave from until the day of, but not to worry because the two ports were "right next to each other." 
So, We dragged our suitcases over cobble stoned streets, marble sidewalks and gravel driveways and at 6 pm discovered our ferry was NOT in the port that was closer to town. The security guard pointed to the left and said "It's right over there." Twenty minutes into this new leg of walking to the next port, one of the wheels on one of our wheelie bags broke off!! It is a major blow to us old foggies who don't want to have to carry our bags the way we used to.

At 6:30 pm we made it to the only large ship in the "Commercial Harbor." But since my Greek is in its infancy, I had read the name wrong, and it wasn't our ship. In fact, the sailors told us, "Oh, Prevelis, that ship, no go. Maybe tomorrow...." I pulled out our tickets which they read with amazement and waved us on to another dock. We dragged/carried our injured luggage another half mile to a completely empty water front with a very chilly breeze coming off the water. In the distance I could see a figure sitting in a little wooden kiosk with the name of the shipping company on it: ANEK (I could read that).  Philip stayed w/the luggage and I ran over as fast as I could imagining we were about to miss our boat (it was 6:50pm). An overweight, bleached blond, terrifically bored looking  ANEK employee glanced at the tickets and said casually, "Ship late. Coming 9:30." We looked around us - no waiting room, no benches, no cafe, just a windy and dusty parking lot . I asked if she would keep our luggage while we found a place out of the wind. She reluctantly agreed, so we walked back out of the harbor area to a commercial part of Rhodes with car parts, car garages, and no restaurants or cafes. Luckily, we found an automated video arcade with vending machines, and metal seats. We could sit there without the obligation to buy a coffee to have an excuse to sit there.
A few other ANEK ferry boat customers were already there. We got to know a lovely young Chinese-Brazilian couple on their honeymoon and two girls from UVA who  just finished a semester studying art in Florence. Our motley crew made its way back to the port 3 hrs later, but the 6 of us had to huddle behind the ticket kiosk in the dark to get out of the wind for another hour and a half.
When we finally got onto the ship around10:45 pm, we were taken to our cozy cabin with bunk beds and private bathroom. So the rest of the trip felt luxurious, much more pleasant than the sleeper car on an Indian train!! Here in Crete, the Greek response to our comments about the boat being so late has been, "Only 4 hrs?" Now we know to call before our next ferry ride!

My goal in Crete is to see all the amazing sites I learned about in Art History - I am so excited to see Knossos - the palace of King Minos!! It was Schliemann (German-American business man at turn of 19 C) who identified the location of the palace here. He was the first person in thousands of years to take the stories LITERALLY and piece together where they would have taken place!! He found Troy, but in Crete he did not receive permission to dig. Many years later a British archeologist with training bought property on Crete in the location Schliemann had identified and thereby had the right to dig. Today we looked at artefacts from 5000 years ago!! The cult images of priestess holding snakes predate the Greek.

Kapadokya

Fairy chimneys or castles made from volcanic ash (some still inhabited by locals)

Underground city meeting room, 9 storeys below ground.

The monastery from below

Patient camel, waiting for a rider

The church inside the monastery

 May 2-

  The main draw here in Kapadokya, central Turkey, are the peribacalar  or fairy chimneys formed when erosion wiped out the lava covering the consolidated ash shaped like pinnacles . They can reach 40 meters and are often capped by a cap of harder rock. Adapted from the Lonely Planet :

A great number of Christian cave churches and underground cities were built in the 4th to 11th centuries (AD) when Christianity flourished in the area. The first church we visited was off a dirt road by itself (the others are in clusters). We were dismayed to see a ticket taker approaching us even for this little chapel. I hesitated to go in and I said something about all the entrance fees and how expensive they were. He nodded his head and said, "OK, two for one. Then you come have tea." So we paid one ticket and got to see Nazar Church, a 10th century sacred space cut out of the inside of one of the odd conical rock formations that "populate" this area (see pics). Adem (Adam), our ticket taker/guide, had to identify the biblical stories in the frescos for us.  Some damage on the frescos was due to the moisture of the cave, but the scratching out of the eyes of the figures was intentional, done by muslims who conquered the area. Protecting oneself against the evil eye was and still is paramount in Turkey, so one theory is that they scratched out the eyes to protect themselves from the evil eye. The other is that Islam does not permit any art with human figures. If they did it for that reason, then we just have to be grateful that they only removed the eyes from the frescos. Adem insisted we sit outside his office (which was dug out of another cave, of course) and drink tea. We enjoyed his company and his generosity.

 Yesterday we visited an underground city that had 9 levels!! These tunnels, stairs, stables, living rooms, bedrooms, and churches were dug out of the rock in the same way as the cave churches above ground - by hand. Whole towns would descend into the earth when marauders would come through. They had ventilation vents and wells because sometimes they would have to live down there for months. Nowadays the hordes are tourists and it was WAY too crowded at 65 meters below!! Security guards  directed the "traffic" in the low, narrow tunnels. I'm very proud that my claustrophobia did not kick in!

you will also see two pics here of the monastery we hiked up to. There were kitchens, refectories, chapels. It must have been amazing in its heyday and impregnable.

 Almost every hotel is built into a pinnacle or cliff. Just a few examples of hotel names: Flintstones Cave, Elif Star Caves, Village Cave House,Legend Cave Hotel, etc. Our room is 2/3rds cave, 1/3 stone wall (manmade but from the same stone). I now feel a lot closer to my prehistoric relatives!

MERHABA!

Istanbul Tulips

Istanbul spice market

Philip is in the upper left window of this Trojan horse!

Turkish dancers and musicians at the Asklepion in Bergama

April 29 -
The only English channel we get in most hotels is BBC, so we are aware of one piece of very important news: the royal wedding is TODAY, April 29th. However, we won't be among the throngs of TV watchers as we
will be flying from Izmir (Aegean coast) to Cappadocia (central Turkey).

Today we went in the rain to Meryemana Doga, The House of the Virgin Mary. No way to prove anything, BUT Jesus did ask John to care for his mother as he was dying, so it is assumed that she came with him to Ephesus and was buried here. The shrine is a tiny stone chapel, attended to by an international group of nuns and just below it is what has been known as a sacred spring for over 2000 years. Philip and I threw caution to the wind and drank some!

In Istanbul blogspot was blocked. Google translated the big red block letters as:  "by court decision." However, it works in the rest of Turkey!

ISTANBUL- A gazillion tulips were in bloom in Istanbul!! The Turks are determined to make sure that everyone knows that tulips originated HERE, not in Holland. So now you know.
What an amazing skyline - the Hagia Sophia and all those mosques with their grayish blue domes and narrow minarets. Of course, the imans do not need to climb the narrow steps and chant live anymore - every minaret has loud speakers, so 5 times a day everyone can hear the recording very well. Today a Turkish, man told me he doesn't understand a word because it is always in Arabic. Apparently, there is a movement to change the chanting to Turkish, but he doubts it will happen.
Jesse and Cookie found us an apartment in a very dynamic neighborhood - cafes and restaurants crowded with people morning to night. Lots of young people were out strolling and (unfortunately) most of them smoking all the while. The majority of older men can be found at tea houses sipping from tiny hourglass shaped tea glasses and playing backgammon or cards. Women were dressed in everything from the latest fashion (short hair and skirts) to  salwar pants and headscarves. I just started reading Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk. It takes place in Istanbul in the '70's and through fiction addresses the complexities of the Westernization process on Turks.

CANAKALE - We planned well: got to the ferry landing two hours ahead of time and bought the tickets to get across the Sea of Marmara to visit TROY and GALLIPOLI. After about 30 minutes, a kind woman came up to us and told us the loud announcement we could not understand said our ferry had been canceled!! She helped Philip trade the tickets for the only other ferry which was leaving immediately but headed in a different direction. On our arrival at the other shore, she figured out which bus we needed to get on. Without her altruism we would have waited another 1.5 hrs. only to find out we were stuck for another 6 hrs!  We have learned one very important thing on this trip - there are more good, honest people in this world than any other kind.

We arrived at Troy on a lovely spring day in conjunction with a fleet of buses full of older Germans. Most treasures from Troy are in Berlin today .  We took much longer than they so we had TROY to ourselves from 1 pm on. One needs a strong visual imagination to try to picture all the Troys - there are 9 layers of them! What was clear was its strategic position - in ancient times it was situated on a bay right at the mouth of the Dardanelles. However, over time it silted over and now is several miles from the water.

BERGAMA - Ancient Pergamum was next, the location of one of the seven churches of Asia Minor. There were virtually NO tourists staying in town (except the Jardims and one Canadian from Alberta). To get to the Acropolis (which lives up to its name) one can take a funicular/gondola up.

Our most interesting moments were at the Asklepion. What, you don't know what an asklepion is?? They were the first Greek hospitals catering to both physical and psychological illnesses. They diagnosed illnesses by interpreting dreams, offered oil massage and hydrotherapy and used herbs. They also used leeches to let blood - not too common anymore, luckily! Galen, the father of western medicine was born, raised and trained at the Asklepion in Pergamum before becoming physician to emperors. A troupe of turkish dancers wearing the traditional folk dress (like old style soldiers) - swaggered onto the stage of the ancient amphitheater while we were sitting in the marble bleachers. Then several camera men, directors and musicians arrived. Finally, a suave man with longish hair, dashing scarf and an air of importance joined them. After lengthy mingling, talking, and positioning, the director commanded all the tourists in the ancient amphitheater to be quiet and the dancers began dancing to the clarinet and drum. We left before the singer joined in but it did not matter because we could hear him clear across a field of ruins! Those ancient folks knew a thing or two about acoustics!

scootering around paradise!

Hi tech decision making process

How did we get here? Well, back in Kerala, a German man suggested we visit this beach town, telling us about the beach huts and suggesting the one he stayed in. Before heading here, I looked online and saw a number of places, some nicer than others. I had a place in mind, but when I tried to call, my phone wasn't working. It is low season so we knew we'd find something.

Although we are on sabbatical, we are on teachers' salaries, so rather than take a taxi for $10 to get from the capital to this lovely spot, we got here by public bus for $3. That meant THREE bus stations and THREE buses with THREE suitcases. (Note on buses: the designated spot for luggage is big enough for only one bag so lugging the luggage up the steps into the bus and trying to shove it under seats is a pain because there is usually an old lady in back of you trying to get by.) I now know why public buses are overflowing with bodies. The ticket taker makes more money the more passengers there are! so he literally pushes people onto his bus. We were part of a tussle between two bus ticket takers on the second bus - another ticket taker told us HIS (much cleaner and newer) bus was leaving for our beach destination and to get on his bus. As got off the tattered bus we were on, the ticket taker blocked my path and reassured me OUR bus would leave soon.

 When we arrived here, we were dropped at an intersection and immediately surrounded by autorickshaw drivers who told us we shouldn't go to the place I had chosen online: "Too far!" "too expensive!" "Bad road!" We just stood there at an impasse.  Then one noticed our luggage tag. "JARDIM!! Oh,you are going to Jardim! Nice place! No need for rickshaw, just right around corner!"
We decided to go with the flow and Philip went off to find the place while I sat on the luggage. During my wait, they asked where we were from. "AH, USA!! OBAMA! O! BA! MA! " and they all laughed. ( BA means father and MA means mother, so OBAMA = Oh! Father! Mother!)

Jardim a Mar is one of the nicest places on the beach. Thanks to the rickshaw driver's mistaken idea that luggage tags show one's destination,  we found the perfect spot.

Hampi details

In my last entry I did not give you any historical info on the amazing temples and sculpture at Hampi, so here it is (with the help of our travel Bible, the Lonely Planet).
Hampi was mentioned in the Ramayana as the realm of the monkey gods.Some of the temples still have packs of monkeys but in town the villagers aren't real sweet on the monkeys - one restaurant owner kept his slingshot handy and whenever a monkey would swing down from a nearby tree onto his roof, he'd aim and shoot.

In 1336 prince Harihararaya made his new capital in Hampi and called in Vijayanagar - it grew into one of the largest Hindu empires in Indian history. This is a picture of the elephant stables which are part of the queen's zenana (enclosure) . I guess they are still in excellent condition after so many centuries because the builders had to keep in mind the strength of the elephants!! You may not be able to tell, but each of those archways leads to an elephant sized chamber. Each dome over the chamber adds the additional height necessary for an elephant to comfortably stand.


In 1565 a group of sultans razed the thriving metropolis and it fell into disuse and disarray. Now it is visited by large numbers of tourists, but don't think that means it is easy to get to!!

Hampi, Karnataka, India

(written on 3.25.11)
Hospet is a typical dusty, thriving, jostling, HOT town in south India. There were as many small water buffalo herds and ox carts as rickshaws as we drove into town from Hampi. In Hospet  we await our crack o'dawn train to Goa in a hotel just walking distance from the train station. Out my hotel window beyond the pervasive rubble/debris, is a series of rice paddies in which herons busily stalk whatever is living in the paddie water. Beyond the paddies is a large industrial complex spewing black smoke.

Hampi is the place we have been visiting. It is in a bowl shaped river valley surrounded by enormous boulders.  The river runs serenely through town and this morning the highlight of our day was witnessing the temple elephant, Lakshmi, having her joyous bath in the river. She was on the far side splashing herself with trunk loads of water.Then her trainers rode her across the river and much to my surprise she headed up the ghats that I was standing on so I was able to get some really nice photos (please note that she has red paint, like a large bindi on her forehead - she isn't injured). The rest of the day she will spend in the temple, picking rupees out of people's palms, handing them to her trainer and then "blessing" folks by bopping them on the head gently with her trunk, like the elephant (also named Lakshmi) in the Madurai temple .

Yesterday was our big day to visit the vast ruins of Hampi. We rented a scooter instead of hiring a rickshaw or walking (7 km). The roads were narrow, but what traffic there was consisted of men with large bundles of banana leaves, goat herds, and rickshaws with tourists. Our first stop was to the Vittala temple which has a chariot made out of stone! The wheels turn, but the chariot was once a boulder, so it is stationary. Inside one of the outstandingly carved temples, we finally greeted a Canadian couple. We first saw them two stops ago. They were at the same hotel,restaurant, etc. wherever we went. We politely gave each other wide berth until yesterday when we rounded the corner and came face to face. They are biologists and this is their third trip to India. We keep running into them because they are the only other couple of a certain age traveling by rail and peon bus.

At the Queen's bath, the Lotus Majal and the Elephant Stables, there was a distinct and recognizable "indo-sarasenic" style of architecture. No more human figures dancing in jewelry (only) and no terrorizing demons. Just elegant arches, domes, and floral decoration. Very soothing after all the overstimulation of the Hindu temples with more figures crammed in than the eye can absorb.

We had pushed on in the hottest part of the day because neither one of us was hungry and the breeze while on the scooter gave us the illusion that it wasn't hot as hell. When we finally emerged from the structures mentioned above, we discovered our scooter had a flat! We were far from anything but ruins in the very hottest part of the day. We were exhausted and hungry and thirsty. However, God is good! There were two young men, one from England, the other from Germany, who willingly gave us rides on their scooters into Hampi. The story was over for me - I went and took a shower. But Philip and scooter owner,Raju, went on another scooter back to the ruins to pick up ours. They had to pump up the tire 3 times just to make it back to Hampi (@2 km).Although the energy expenditure was great, the entire outlay for the all day rental, gas and flat came to $10.

What stays with me is how grateful we were to get a ride back to Hampi in the afternoon heat. For the young men, it was no big deal for us to jump on the backs of their bikes.They did not feel like heroes, but to us they were!!

Signs of Respect

Before entering a temple, a home and many businesses, people take off their shoes. There are shoe people in charge of watching the shoes outside temples. This sign of respect is REQUIRED. That is fine with me but not with my morton's neuroma. The most difficult part of going barefoot for a temple visit is that the STONE floors are oven hot. I've started wearing socks and although I have seen signs saying no shoes OR socks allowed, no one has called me on it yet. Hindu priests generally only wear their mundu (sarong) and a white string across their chests.
In the USA shirt and shoelessness is considered somewhat rude or crude. It isn't seen symbolic of  a direct primal connection with earth and God. Many US beach town businesses have signs that say "no shirt, no shoes = no business" or something to that effect.
Why do monkeys love temples? Tonight as we ate dinner on a rooftop restaurant with a close up view of the town temple (built in 1400's) and we could plainly see a troupe of monkeys crawling all over the illuminated temple. Sometimes there would be a squabble and they'd go scattering all over the surface, but quite high up! I am amazed at how comfortable I have become with packs of monkeys running around me and cows passing me on the street. I am still wary around elephants but more I meet, the more comfortable I have become.

Cultural programming

I woke up for no good reason last night and started pondering my reaction to something: the Indian head "bobble" or "wagging." Whatever you call it, it does NOT mean what I expect it to mean. In my life as an American, I have learned to interpret a sideways shifting of the head to imply ambiguousness, a kind of lukewarm reaction. For example, I ask a friend, "How was the movie?" My friend answers with a nonverbal tilting side to side of the head (maybe accompanied by a hand also wavering back and forth). This equals a "so-so" response.
However, the same movement in India means YES. In a restaurant, I will order a meal and the waiter will tilt his head back and forth. My immediate reaction is :  oh, I guess that's not a very good choice if the waiter is lukewarm about it. Then I remember, he is just "nodding" Indian style! No disapproval or ambiguity implied!!
I have now been in India for one month. What is fascinating is that although my head KNOWS people are saying YES when they move their heads that way, my gut is still caught up in a habitual response. I suppose that is OK, because I'd have to reprogram myself on my return to the US otherwise and start having novel communication problems back home.

Early morning nature walk in Periyar Preserve We had to cross a finger of the lake on an impossibly long bamboo raft. At the other end of the raft is a young couple from Austria/Germany with whom we shared the morning.

This is the wild gaur that came to graze morning and night at the youth hostel in Kodaikanal, the cool hill station we spent a few days in. This was taken from a balcony - a safe distance. In the evening we came face to face with him after dark as he had decided to climb the stairs to greener pastures. This is not a "street cow" like the ones that roam the streets here. This is a very large wild animal. Advice of locals: keep your distance, show no fear. It worked.

THE MOST AMAZING TEMPLE SO FAR (Madurai).

Madurai, Tamil Nadu. The Gandhi Memorial Museum. Here is one of his quotes. The museum had the cloth in which he was shot and the last pair of glasses he wore. It was very moving.

Western Ghats of Kerala

We are now in Kumily (or Tekkady) in the Western Ghats of the state of Kerala. As you approach this area you notice what look like neatly manicured hills. They are covered with tea plants. This mountanous region is one of several areas in India where tea and spices are grown. The town is full is spice shops and guest houses. It is a very popular place for Indian tourists.

Yesterday we took a tour of the Connemara Tea Plantation factory first. We discovered that most tea plantations have two crops - tea and pepper. Only women pick tea by hand or with a set of shears with a bag attached. (In the picture above you see two women heading out to pick tea with their bags folded on their heads.) Only men pick the pepper corns, also by hand. Pepper is a vine that grows up silver oaks (tall trees that provide shade for the tea plants) so the men scale the tree using a bamboo "ladder"- a single piece of bamboo with spikes for rungs.Above is a photo of two guys up near the top of a tree picking pepper. From now on, I will never take a tea leaf or a pepper corn for granted.
Back to tea - although tea (camelia family) was growing wild in India, it took a Brit to recognize the plant and start growing it for production (you were wondering about the Irish name of the tea company, right?). So, in fact the British introduced tea drinking to India.
It takes two days for tender new light green leaves to travel through what they call CTC: crushing, tearing and curling,to produce 8 grades of tea. However, all grades come from the same plant, folks!!

Next we went to Aroma Organic Spice Garden, run by Sebastian and his wife. That is Sebastian hugging Philip with the same enthusiasm that he explained the cultivation and use of every plant. He had us tasting and sniffing plant after plant. Philip got an A+ for plant identification. I had never seen nutmeg, cloves or cardamom growing on a plant before. Since our private tour took an hour and half, Sebastian's wife split a coconut for us and shredded some of the meat for a snack.


On a 3 hour walk through the Periyar Wildlife Preserve this morning we only ran into langurs, monkeys with a black body and "lion's mane."  There are quite a few wild elephants so we saw lots of elephant poop in varying degrees of decomposition. We also came upon the remains of a male elephant that had lost a fight with another male. The guide said every year the elephant's family comes to visit the bones and mourn the death. Also we saw some tribal people in the Preserve. They are the only ones who have the right to fish and hunt.

Thanks everyone for reading!

RUBBLE

I have to say that in my first four days in India, walking and riding around in two large cities, the word that comes to mind is RUBBLE. There seem to be piles of debris everywhere!! Sometimes it is brick and concrete, sometimes it is garbage. Therefore, it is amazing to me how NORMAL it seems to be that children and adults walk around barefoot in these circumstances.The rare sidewalks are very irregular and full of holes; most people walk in the street. Since there isn't literal interpretation of LINES and STOP LIGHTS, it is quite a challenge to cross 4 lanes of traffic (well, as I said, not LITERALLY lanes). In Chennai I watched an elderly gentleman with a staff wearing a short cloth and no shoes try to cross the street. I could tell he was very frightened - that is what drew my attention. No white canes for poor blind people in India I guess. By the time I realized he was blind, he had made it across one "lane" and was stuck, not knowing if he should go forward or not. I watched about 7 Indian people, men and women, walk around him and beside him without noticing his plight. I just couldn't take it anymore, so I walked him across (I wove him through is more like it).

Another disturbing incident that I witnessed was two elderly widows having a cat fight at the entrance of a Hindu temple in Chennai. There were three widows begging, two in front and one behind them. All of a sudden one of the women in front started clawing and pushing and shoving the woman in the rear. A few minutes later, we drove past and I noted that the one that lost the fight (the one in the rear) had moved away from the other two and was being comforted by someone. I imagine hunger makes one competitive. I felt very sad to see women that age have to scramble so desperately to stay alive.

In the food department, we're finally distinguishing a chapati from a dosa. We haven't been proficient at eating with our hands since we were toddlers, so we are still learning to bunch up the food with our fingers, give a twist & lift of the wrist, and get it into our mouths without dropping most of it.
Off to study yoga at an ashram near Trivandrum for a week! The first month of our trip has left me achy (lots of different beds), so I'm looking forward to it!

Bangkok tuk-tuk ride

The Jardims, on their first day in Bangkok, fell for almost every tuk-tuk ploy laid out in print in the Lonely Planet (should have read it first)!
Here they are:
A young man with a Tourist Police badge informs us:
Royal Palace is closed today until 4 pm!!! Let me help you go to some other very interesting places such as....
and then proceeds to mark up our map. He says only take yellow (gov't controlled) tuk-tuks! He calls one over and bargains the guy down from 50 to 40 Bahts for us (so far we think this guy is on our side...)
We tell him where we want to go and he nods and off we go zipping this way and that thru traffic (tuk-tuk is glorified motorcycle with a covered seat on the rear wheel). We arrive at an amazing structure with no other tourists although we are pretty sure it isn't where we asked to go. We DO go to see the white Buddha, and the only other person there is Andy - a guy from Singapore who lives in England and used to work in Silicone valley. he explains about how the tuk-tuks get free gas for going to export shops, so we shouldn't be upset about getting taken to a shop.
Sure enough, next stop was the Sapphire Jewelry Co.. Then the next stop was Chin Jewelry Co.(picture below is of our tuk-tuk in front of the Chin Jewelry Co.)  Then the NEXT stop was - guess what???? A tailor! After a brief hard sell from an Indian immigrant, Philip managed to get away without a $25 custom made shirt. Finally, with my patience running thin, we made it to .a large temple complex which was fascinating - LOTS and LOTS of Buddha statues from different cultures, time periods and  poses. When we emerged our tuk-tuk was nowhere to be found. He had dumped us!! We had taken so long in the temple that his shift was up. But also, he did not mind giving up our 40 Baht because he made 300 Baht worth of free gas at the export shops!!
We were approached by the only taxi driver parked in front of the temple who offered to take us to the skytrain for a set fee. We bargained him down and were relieved to get into his air conditioned cab. When we got back to the hotel we read in the the LP: Do not get into a taxi that quotes a flat rate price instead of using the meter.

Amazingly, we weren't upset at all. It is possible that we may have been conned out of $3. However, we had a great, if unexpected, day whizzing around Bangkok. And the next day - when we were faced with the more official-looking scammers, I held up three fingers and said "yesterday 3 export!" and they immediately backed off.

Tomorrow we head for India - wish us luck!