Showing posts with label Adventure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adventure. Show all posts
Without the Window, It's Not Worthwhile
Without the window it’s not worthwhile. To think of the
exorbitant rates of plane tickets, how soon the journey is over, clearly the
most valuable item up for grabs is the view. Consequently, it is entirely
unsatisfactory to slum it in the aisle or worse, squashed between unwelcome
strangers in the middle seat, especially when the price is the same. Those
other seats are simply a rip off for people who know no better, who cannot have
enjoyed a window seat previously. Without a window seat it’s not worth flying.
It’s perfectly reasonable not to board the plane.
These are not my words. While I tend to prefer the window I
would not refuse to fly; nor would I expend so many words explaining my
preference. For Iqbal, silence was a negative waiting to be filled. His tips
and stories came like a flash flood, bowled you over with barely time to
recover before the next flood began.
Farsi is a language of exquisite beauty. It’s the language
of great literature, of poets like Hafez and Saadi and simply to hear the
language spoken is like a melody from heaven. The phrases used even for
everyday speech are poetic and enlightening. Of course Iqbal couldn’t
appreciate the entirety of it, but from his Urdu he could glean enough. He was
Pakistani and it was a dreadful loss for my Australian friend Lachlan and me to
be in Iran
surrounded by the sweetest language unable to comprehend a single word.
Farsi is beautiful. I would say we might have told Iqbal we
had Farsi lessons and were more than beginners, but it’s not easy to spit into
a raging torrent. And yet, Iqbal was very likeable.
We were on the same flight from Bandar Abbas to Chah Bahar
in eastern Iran , in Iran ’s
Baluchestan. Flights were very cheap in Iran with one way fares as low as
ten dollars due to the appalling, for the Iranians, exchange rate. I don’t
think we met on the plane, as Iqbal found the window seat in front of mine –
but as we needed transport from the airport into Chah Bahar town, we shared a
taxi.
It’s unacceptable to use somebody else’s bathroom. If one
needs to use the bathroom they should certainly do it before leaving home,
before arriving at another person’s home as a valued guest. Children should be
instructed same. There is nothing worse than visiting another man’s bathroom –
it will leave the host wondering if it was them you came to see or if you only
came to use the plumbing.
No comment from me.
Chah Bahar has its Baluchi ways that were significantly
different to most of Iran .
Baluchis were mostly Sunni and their clothes harked more to the subcontinent
than to the country’s west. The only difficulty, common to all port cities in Iran , hotels
for foreigners were expensive. As Iqbal really was a nice guy, the three of us
agreed to share a room, with two single beds and a mat on the floor for me, in
between.
It was in that small period between the turning off the
light and the sleep arriving, with the very last of the day’s chat winding
down, when I heard one of the strangest sentences ever. We were finally asking
Iqbal why he was in Iran .
Through the darkness I heard him say, “I lost my jeans. I’ve come to find
them.”
Politeness says a small reply is in order, something along
the lines of “oh, that’s nice” or “I hope you find them.” I don’t recall if I
managed to squeeze something out, but I was entirely grateful for the darkness
– nobody could see me biting hard on my lip to prevent laughter from bursting
out. It was helpful that I couldn’t see Lachlan ’s
face at that stage, because I knew he would be having great difficulty holding
his own laughter back. But the silence – it was no longer a negative waiting to
be filled – it was substantial, unbearably heavy and with the force of a category
five cyclone. That silence couldn’t be resisted.
I heard the first busts from Lachlan ’s
closed mouth – and then we roared laughing, both of us – unseemly, rude and for
several minutes, unstoppable. Iqbal didn’t understand what was humorous.
There were some obvious questions – why would a man lose a pair
of jeans in a neighbouring country – had he been there before or were they
somehow smuggled over the border? How regularly is it that people travel abroad
in search of missing trousers?
When the laughter eased and we sought explanation it became
apparent we’d misunderstood. It wasn’t his jeans he’d lost but his jinns. He’d
sent them to Iran
and they’d not returned. Of course, the concept of losing one’s jinns also
raises some obvious questions – but it was better not to ask. It was time to
sleep.
We took the plane on to Zahedan, the capital of Iran ’s Sistan and Baluchestan province and not
very far from the border with Afghanistan .
Iqbal was with us – he was going the same way – and he was still a rather good
and likeable guy. So we stayed at the same hotel.
If you ever happen to get shot in the leg, it’s certainly no
excuse for interrupting a dinner party. Particularly if it’s a family birthday
party and others are in high spirits in the hope of an entertaining night over
a meal, then it’s better not to mention the shooting. As for the blood that’s
dripping on the floor under the table, a fistful of napkins can help, and if
it’s done discretely nobody need know. Then, once the meal is completed, it
will possible to drive the wife and children home before quietly continuing on
to check into a hospital.
It was the first moments in Zahedan that I started to
consider that Iqbal might indeed have some kind of superpower. Lachlan and I had gone to buy water and I was discussing
Iqbal’s flourishing communicativeness. I said, “He can talk on any topic. He
could talk for an hour about his socks!” Socks was random; yet minutes later,
back at the hotel when we went to find Iqbal to go sightseeing, he was just
putting on his socks.
The best socks are made with thicker wool by Afghans. You
can buy them at the Afghan market and other socks simply won’t compete – Afghan
socks are warmer and more comfortable and never get holes in them because they
are hand knitted. Once you’ve worn Afghan socks you’ll never wear others. If
it’s not Afghan the socks aren’t worth buying.
Zahedan is picturesque with its backdrop of jet black hills.
We took to the city’s photogenic suburbs with their mud brick houses. It was
inevitable that in the mix of buildings we’d end up standing on somebody’s
roof. What was unexpected was that the householder came rushing out and asked
us not to stand there because it might collapse. Instead, he invited us to come
in for tea.
We chatted with the Zahedani and he was rather impressed by
our Farsi. For some reason, maybe his accent, we could understand him well
while Iqbal struggled. “These two have come from the other side of the world,”
said the Zahedani, “and their Farsi is good, but you come from a neighbouring
country and you can’t understand.”
Yet he really was nice guy, Iqbal. So what did it matter if
he’d lost his jinns? It could happen to anybody.
The story of apparel cannot be told by jeans and socks alone... There'd need to be...
Was There Any Chance of Wolves?
Anonymity is a blessing in the short term. It’s true that it
means you’re far from family and friends, but it also means never having to be
anywhere at a particular time and doing exactly what you wish without
consultation; it’s a bit like growing up and no longer being answerable to
parents. Anonymity is a key component to the traveller’s freedom, the treasure
of the road.
It was the first trip to Latvia , one week, and the day arrived
for that fateful tour to Bauska. I’d taken up residence with newly met locals
Dzintra and her daughters, Antra and Anta. Bauska was the plan for while they
were busy with school, university and work.
The largely flat Latvian countryside has something in common
with Bangladesh : there are a
good number of palaces from the lord-and-peasant past, what in Bangladesh
would be called a rajbari. Near
Bauska is one such place, Rundales Pils, a baroque palace built for the Dukes
of Courland from 1736. It was the goal.
Indeed the journey was completed easily and the palace was
impressive. It was on the way home again to Riga when things went wrong.
With the blessing of anonymity there was nobody to ask
whether it was a good idea to take a little walk in the countryside in the
belief it would not be difficult to find a different way back to Bauska town
for the bus. Besides, there was a footbridge over a small river made of oil
drums tied together, floating and with planks on top, which really needed to be
crossed.
Entirely without care I found myself of a picturesque
stretch of dirt road, entirely straight, walking merrily. But it was a strange
phenomenon for the road seemed to lengthen with each step. An hour passed, then
two, and all the while there were open fields without a single house in sight.
Could such a scene exist in a country as small as Latvia ? More disturbingly, not a
single car had passed by.
 |
| There are Latvian rivers with fishermen. I just didn't find any. |
There comes that point when you wonder if turning back
wouldn’t be more sensible, but the oil drum bridge already seemed distant and
surely it wasn’t really possible to be lost in Latvia .
The road continued and so did I.
The road continued and so did I.
Early evening arrived and with the sun my confidence in
direction gradually set. That point comes: ‘what’s the worst that could
happen?’ I started to contemplate sleeping in a field and waiting for morning.
Was it dangerous to sleep in a Latvian field? It’s true the country was called
the wild east back then, but surely that meant human society, in the cities.
Was there any chance of wolves?
Okay: worst scenario, Latvian field, one night. I kept
walking.
At about the stage where my legs felt they might refuse to
go on, something exciting happened. I came to a road junction. There was no
house or car, and only more fields, but for the first time in several hours I
had a choice: left, right or straight ahead? On my first day in Latvia I’d made
a choice for the left; this time I chose right. And I walked.
 |
| There are houses in Latvian villages. I just didn't see any. |
A few minutes later something more exciting happened. It was a sound: the oil and metal rumble of a car. Sure enough, it came along kicking up dust: a kind of red sports car. Normally it’d be courteous to stand to the side and politely flag down the vehicle, with acknowledgement it was a favour if they stopped. But the situation was not normal.
I stood road centre, hands out in a kind of ‘halt’, like a
dacoit or a police officer. The car had no choice.
Inside was a couple. It was strange because when he decided
to stop rather than run me down, she was rather angry about it. I’m not sure
which language it was they spoke, but it sounded like Russian and there was
clearly some kind of domestic dispute going on. ‘What are you stopping for you
idiot!’ I imagined her yelling. She really was screaming at him.
‘What do you expect me to do, leave him here?’ I imagined
him replying, marginally more calmly.
‘You never spend enough time with me! You are always with
your wife!’ Or perhaps she was the wife. Whatever the specifics I was sure of
one thing: I was getting in that car, whether the lady liked it or not. It’s
not that I’m in the habit of interfering in other people’s domestic upheavals.
It’s just that, at a minimum they could take me to a main road, wherever that
might be, hopefully still in Latvia . I could only say ‘Riga ’.
Laugh if you will but after all that walking and after all
her screaming the main road was but a few hundred yards further. It was a very short ride indeed. She was pleased I got out; the guy was nice
about it. ‘Paldies,’ I said, Dzintra-taught, ‘Thanks.’
It was dark when I stood on the side of the highway. There were cars but nobody was stopping; who
could blame them? So I walked a bit, and
I’d been sure to get the sports car driver to indicate the Riga-direction of
the road when he’d dropped me off. After
some time there was a bus shelter and I thought, ‘Would it be safe to stay one
night in a Latvian bus shelter?’ It seemed unlikely anybody would stop before
morning. Personally I would’ve favoured
the field with whatever risk of wolves there was.
Well fortunately there’s this little thing called public
transport, and fortunately the international express services between Riga and Lithuania
used that route. They don’t officially
stop except in major towns, except that, fortunately and like in Bangladesh ,
they do. They will pick up the odd stray like me for a small fee. A bus stopped
and I was saved. I was so relieved that
I’d be making it back to the city that from my pocket I pulled out a few coins
at random and proudly presented them to the driver.
 |
| This would have been a better road to get lost on, on account of the passerby and the house. |
The bus driver was a good fellow, for I hadn’t even counted
what I’d dumped into his hand, so grateful I was at having been saved. There’d
been a few too many tiny brown coins involved; he gave some back.
 |
| If the moss grows on the north side, Lithuania is to the south. |
It was funny, that first week in Latvia . It was odd to be far from
home, where I should have enjoyed the full benefit of anonymity, to have had
that plaguing thought the whole time: Dzintra would be worried. By the time I reached the apartment it was approaching
midnight. I rang the bell.
Well, the door swung open and there was an enormous hug. ‘I
was so worried about you!’ she said, ‘If something happened… I don’t even know
your surname! What would I tell your family and how would I find them?’ After
that, I wrote my full name and address on a piece of paper. Needed. Multiple Lives. Latvia gets one.
Post Latvian apartment, you can take accommodation in a construction site, an Arctic cupboard or alternatively, set up your own guest house...
For the start of the Latvian story, you'll need to visit The Latvian National Academy of Science
Or follow the Baltic Way, along the sea on a trail of amber...
This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Was There Any Chance of Wolves?
The Latvian National Academy of Science
Be free. Align yourself with the rhythm of the world to go
far. Be as the jajabor, the nomad.
Arrive somewhere from the soul, due to the appealing curl of its name or
because it feels right or because we know nothing. Go because the time has
arrived, sense it.
The Baltic States beckoned
in such a way. I went because the idea surfaced. I went because it was there. Other
than that, the reason for the journey was left to present itself as a
revelation of yes – that must be why I came. Intuition would make the
arrangements.
Due to the circumstances that had led to the meeting of a
Latvian folk musician on an Estonian road, I had a private apartment in Riga , the Latvian
capital, from the first evening. My pocket had keys. It gave perhaps a stronger
sense that the brand new city
was mine to explore; but it wasn’t the being somewhere new that brought meaning
– it was a basic decision between old and older.
On that first morning, I’d locked the door of the apartment
I was unexpectedly borrowing. I set off on foot down the busy street that
judging by the traffic must lead somewhere; and it wasn’t long until the distinctive
roofs and church towers caught sight of me. The famed old town was away to the mercantile
right. Yet to the left a different type of building caught my eye: a stark, stalwart
tower in brown, which seemed the very essence of the Soviet
Union days. It was intriguing.
I knew I would see both pasts. I had the time. The question
was which to go to first and on the thought that at the top of the tower I
could take photographs over the old town I was inclined towards the left. In
this way the communists won the moment. Yet, as it turned out, it was a
decision that would bring me right to my sentimental Latvia .
I heaved those enormous doors, of the heavy wooden kind, and
inside was an enormous Spartan lobby with proletariat looking lifts to the front,
and to the left was a functional-looking booth with a sign that read ‘Enquiries
Counter.’ In it was an equally functional-looking Russian woman, elderly and overweight.
It was as though I had walked into one of those Hollywood films designed to
promote a view of life in the Soviet Union
that made one pleased to live in the ‘free world’. It was behind-the-iron-curtain
in a clichéd way and I was excited.
I imagined Soviet citizens in the film, stooping to speak
through the slot at the window of the booth, to make enquiries that ended in an
inevitably firm ‘Nyet!’ I thought to try it out.
‘Excuse me, what is this building?’ I asked as prelude to my
planned request to reach the roof.
‘Sprechen Zie Deutsch?’ she said, do you speak German?
‘Nein,’ I replied, in German, and for some unknown reason
tried again in English.
‘Sprechen Zie Deutsch?’
‘Still Nein.’
We stood smiling at each other, at a loss, and she certainly
seemed too friendly to play the role of Soviet receptionist in the movie. She would
have been very helpful to a German.
With a dash of disappointment I headed back across the lobby
to those gargantuan doors. I heaved one of them open again, wondering if the
inevitable door-people in the Soviet era had developed shoulder injuries from
the task. I was thinking I might never know what that building was, when a
woman came in the door I’d just opened. On the off chance…
‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’
‘A little,’ she said in an accent delightful enough to
flavour ice cream. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked.
‘Australia .’
‘It’s my favourite country,’ she said, ‘I lived in Melbourne for six months!’
We stood chatting in the doorway for a minute or two. The
building was the Latvian National Academy of Science, her name was Dzintra and
she worked there as secretary to a senior official.
I didn’t know then about the strength of her intuition. Nor
was it clear I had met a Latvian jajabor;
and yet the initial connection seemed unusually strong.
‘I finish work at seven,’ she said, ‘I want to show you some
nice buildings in Riga
that you won’t find on your own. Come back then.’
We must have spoken seven sentences but it felt as though
we’d known each other for seven months. Latvian time was speedy, I was learning,
Dzintra was teaching me. She continued into the building and I went out; and as
I walked up the street I felt certain it was for that moment in the doorway
that life’s course had brought me to the Baltic. I’d come to meet her.
On the Daugava River not long before it reaches the sea, the Latvian
capital is the big city of the Baltic States .
Of course its old town is well-endowed with cobblestone squares, churches and
secret laneways; with faces, with golden roosters four floors up watching the
sky; and a black cat, back arched in protest at being left out there on the
peak of a roof. Of course there are streams through parks and on the railings
of the little bridges are the permanent padlocks the Russians affix as a symbol
of binding love; there’s a small castle and crowds on the streets, hopping on
and off the sky blue trams that cross the Daugava bridge like scuttling
insects.
After a few hours with the usual trappings of Rigan life,
wandering around, I made my way back towards the Academy. I was early by two
hours and thought it’d be a bit boring to wait, although there was the
Soviet-style market to look through, on the left side of things, where they
still sold milk scooped up by apron wearing women, with ladles from big
metallic urns. Nor was I entirely sure where my apartment was, so to go and
wait there would have been a gamble. I only hoped I’d find it later. I had the
keys.
I met Dzintra before I got to the Academy, under the railway
bridge. ‘I left work early,’ she said. I suppose she’d felt I was on my way, I
can say now. It was our second chance meeting.
True to her word she showed me beautiful streets of grand
old buildings that I wouldn’t have found, up around Elizabetes iela to the
north of the old town.
Now, when she tells people how we met they say, ‘You
shouldn’t have done that! It might be dangerous!’ I’ve told her I agree and she
shouldn’t do it again. But what people don’t properly imagine is how well we
knew each other by then. If the first seven sentences were seven months, by the
time we’d seen the best of the buildings at least three years had passed in
speedy Latvian time. We were not strangers when she issued the invitation to
stay at her house, as long as I didn’t mind if it was small and Soviet and
featured a marginally malfunctioning bathroom.
It was a tempting offer but I had keys in my pocket and it’s
not every day a private apartment for ‘whenever you are in Riga ’ finds you. It was not something I
wanted to quit, so I said ‘No’.
But of course, if you let it the world has ways to correct
the decisions you get wrong. Wilful interference of the human-brain kind can
only destroy the far better plans. Especially in Latvia, let the season take
you by the hand.
This story continues here: Potato and Toothpaste Travel
The meeting at the Latvian National Academy of Science can be a nice precursor to finding memories in a waterfall, sort of eating dog due to a lack of fishing net casting skills, or meeting the Chittagonian whistler.
This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Latvian National Academy of Science
Do Horses Bite?
Shhh! Do you hear it? Barely
audible? Wait… Yes, the thurram-thurram-thurram, that terrible sound, is
growing, coming, gaining ground. Onto the horses! The thunder of hooves is
ricocheting off the canyon walls. Lightning speed: they’re coming to catch us;
no time to lose!
Did you ever imagine how it would be, in
the American Wild West, in the movies? I did. Robbing a bank or a stage coach,
flying away on horseback in a hail of bullets, red-check handkerchief over the
mouth, disappearing in a cloud of desert dust? And if the trail ever became too
hot, if the sheriff was too close or the Pinkerton Detective Agency too diligent
in their hunt for the stolen loot, for the thieves and the bounty for capture,
one could always do as the infamous bank robbers Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid did in 1901, and escape to South America.
What better way to experience Tupiza,
where Butch and Sundance finally met their ends, than to hire a horse and
gallop like a train, fly like the wind, through a desert canyon, past a cactus
or two? Thurram-thurram-thurram: that was the idea.
Helpful hint: of course it would be
better to know beforehand how to ride a horse.
It was just yesterday, several years
later, I was remembering that afternoon on horseback, how it had been. It was a
world away from Bolivia ,
with the steamy, monsoon Mekong idling by,
beyond the cabana. Tourists gathered to chat and sip on drinks, to take the
edge off the Thai afternoon humidity. Across the river were the distant houses
and tiny motor cars of Laos
Come to think of it, Tupiza, my first
full day in Bolivia
Still, I clambered boulders at the edge
of town, followed a goat trail past the Stations of the Cross to a hilltop. The
mountains are thousand-pleated like the inside of lung, ironic given the
altitude’s shortness of breath. To the south, three red rock houses with little
stone goat yards clung to a canyon wall; to the east, a cemetery of white
crosses, artificial flowers and tinsel. To the west, traffic uninterested in
Tupiza’s bridge drove instead along the dry riverbed.
I followed a veinlike gully that
zigzagged into the hills, in parts so narrow you could touch both walls at
once. The rocks were pebble-filled, the olive green willows lit by the shard of
late afternoon sky contrasted with rock red. Shadows climbed canyon walls. The
air was still.
There was a stand-off in that canyon, but
it wasn’t a pistol-toting Pinkerton detective that found me; rather a Doberman that
suddenly appeared from around a bend, barking ferociously and running wildly in
my direction. The canyon walls too steep to climb, I tried to recall all I knew
of dogs and did the only thing worth doing. I stood still.
Fortunately, seconds short of my leg
entering its mouth and needing several rabies shots, the dog baulked. My bluff
worked. Soon its human arrived, yelling, managing to ward it off. Did they have
wild Dobermans in the Wild Wild West?
Like me, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid started their South American adventures in Argentina Bolivia
At San Vicente outside Tupiza in 1908 came
the showdown. Trapped in a house, three soldiers of the Abaroa Regiment of the
Bolivian Army’s cavalry, the police chief and local officials sought to arrest
the fugitives. The bandits opened fire. There was a gunfight until, at 2 a.m.,
from inside the house two shots were heard, minutes apart. Two dead,
bullet-ridden bodies were later found. It appeared that one had shot the other,
who was probably already mortally wounded, before turning the gun on himself.
Tupiza: there should at least be a bit of
galloping.
Like
Butch and Sundance we were two: there was another Australian tourist, Richard. The
hostel offered a lazy triathlon: a first leg by bicycle, all downhill, the
second on horseback and the third by jeep, along a dirt road far up into the
mountains.
I had
only one question. ‘Do they have a really docile, placid horse available?’ I’d
barely ridden before. They said they did: a dirty-white horse with a kindly
disposition and his name was Sanchez.
We were
led into empty country, from a stretch by the railway into just the kind of
dry, rocky terrain where an American movie about the Wild West could be filmed.
It was picture perfect for galloping, flying off in a trail of dust. But of
course, there’s a difference between how things are imagined and reality.
Thurram-thurram-thurram,
imagined, is not always how it turns out.
Sanchez
was quite good but it wasn’t without trepidation that I sat up there on his
back. I was pretty strong on the reins, thinking he should know I was in
charge, and far short of galloping, if Sanchez even attempted a light trot,
much less a canter, I became nervous and pulled him back. In the country of
Butch and Sundance, there was a lot of slow walking that went on. On that day,
Sanchez may as well have been a donkey.
Yet
there was something more worrisome about his behaviour. He kept trying to twist
his head around towards my leg. I didn’t mind if he only wanted to sniff it but
I couldn’t be sure of his intentions so I pulled his head back to the front
with the reins, just in case. If Sanchez is the placid horse, I’d hate to try
the other ones.
‘Do
horses bite?’ I wondered.
It’s not
often that one needs to consult a horse expert. They’re not like doctors or
hairdressers that everyday people visit time to time. Even the tom-tom owning
Dhakaiyas probably know enough about horses not to spend much time consulting
experts. Indeed, should I require a horse expert I wouldn’t know how to go
about finding one.
So it
was odd that as I was re-considering Sanchez and the day in Tupiza, Annie sat
beside me. She was a British horse-riding instructor living in Hong Kong , where she taught at a riding school. She was
on holidays in Thailand
She was
polite enough not to laugh when I explained the afternoon I spent onboard
Sanchez. ‘Horses do sometimes bite,’ she said, ‘but it’s usually when you’re
standing in front. It’s very hard for a horse to twist its neck to bite when
you’re sitting on it. Maybe you were pulling on the reins too hard?’
Of
course there are rumours about Butch and Sundance. It’s said they didn’t actually
die in San Vicente. There are people who said they met them, years later,
living discreetly back in the United
States
Travel by...
or camel...
Not Bengali, but Love Lungi
Link to my article on BDNews24.com about me, Baridhara and the humble lungi....
Not Bengali, But Love Lungi
In Search of the Zoobr
 |
| November Afternoon in Kamenjuki, Belarus |
I have indeed, praise be to God, attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the Earth, and I have attained this honour.
-
Ibn Battuta.
…and in the modern world, where lengthy journeys to previously
unheard of lands are no longer possible, we lesser travellers have to make do.
In the 4.30 p.m. November twilight, the surface of the
Mukhavets, a little river in western Belarus , had become a varnished
brown strip of reflection. Birch,
twisted willow and spongy rotting leaves were imaged upon its surface. I wonder: do you think the great explorers of
ages past found a quiet place to partake of contemplation, before their setting
out?
Of Europe’s largest mammal I knew little and being in the city
of Brest there
seemed nothing for it, but to find out.
To the north, I’d read, was the wilderness which straddled the Polish
border and in it, in small numbers, was what the locals called the zoobr.
Ibn Battuta’s first journey in 1325 lasted twenty-one
years. Marco Polo travelled with his
father and his uncle for twenty-four years from 1271 and the Muslim Hui
navigator Zheng He, from Yunnan ,
accomplished his seven voyages within twenty-eight years from 1405. It might be that I had just a day in hand to
find the zoobr, but there’d need to be, surely, an expedition.
The river spread its arms around the small green island
which might not normally have stood out but it was once the centre of Brest , a bustling trade
town dating from around 1000 C.E. The
city’s oldest church is still there, with the rest of the town having been
moved in 1838 to allow for the construction of a fort.
It is a place of reverence for Belarusians. The fort is where two Soviet regiments stood
their ground when the Nazis attacked in 1941.
They faced five hundred canons, six hundred bombs and lasted a month
before the fort was lost, at the start of an occupation that would claim one in
four Belarusian lives.
At the island’s centre an eternal flame burns, surrounded by
hundreds of Soviet graves watched over by a massive stone head sculpture called
‘Valour.’ In the south of the island
bullet holes in the red brick buildings can still be seen. It’s in the east of Europe
that the scale of sacrifice and devastation that marked the Second World War is
most acutely felt.
Zheng He was well-prepared.
It is said he had over three hundred ships and a crew of almost
30,000. By contrast, the following day,
in search of the zoobr, I would follow the example of Ibn Battuta, who left his
Moroccan home, alone. Do you think the
great explorers of ages past went to bed early on the night before their
departures?
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| 'Valour', Brest, Belarus |
A model Soviet city, Brest had wide, clean boulevards with older painted stone cottages and towering unsightly blocks. It was in one of the latter I was staying, a monumental hotel of sparse décor. I found some simple, canteen fare for dinner.
On the morning of the grand expedition the preparations were tiring and endless, or at least they would have been, perhaps, had it been several hundred years earlier. In the twenty-first century I could not match the magnitude of Marco Polo’s preparations, no doubt, when he set off for China . But I did pack my things and check out of the hotel, before walking to the bus station wholly unaided.
And just as Marco Polo once met the various tribes of Central Asia so I met a taxi tout who sought a hefty fee for a private voyage to the forest. Zheng He might have had his fleet but Ibn Battuta went largely under his own steam and that was what I wanted to do. Yet, the taxi driver could help me. I was having trouble making the bus ticket seller on the other side of the glass window from understanding my intended destination, the village by the forest called Kamenjuki. I was able to seize the taxi driver’s enthusiasm for my plan. He pronounced it for me. Do you think the great explorers overcame various difficulties with the help of locals? I’d say they did.
But then, looking at my ticket, I noticed that it said Kamyanyets, in Cyrillic. It was the second dilemma of the expedition: to hope I was not going somewhere entirely different. Yet, there was nobody to fill in the gaps on the maps for Zheng He, surely, on his way to Bengal ’s Sonargaon. So I took the bus.
An hour on my imaginarily blistered and sore feet later I burst from the vehicle, spent and flailing: or I would have been, had I rather travelled on foot and by camel. Indeed it was Kamyanyets but fortunately Kamenjuki was a short bus ride further, about eighteen kilometres. I could almost smell the zoobr from there, Marco Polo’s China .
A good explorer half-hour later I’d arrived in the village of Kamenjuki
It was icy and cold. I had to negotiate a snowy bridge over a frozen stream, but I persevered, adjusting my scarf on the way. If the cold got in, I knew, all might be lost.
I entered the forest, Belavezhskaja Puscha: 1300 square kilometres of primeval, virgin forest, the last such stand in Europe . Pine and birch, the canopy closed around me. I relied on my natural instincts to hold my direction, watching the sun, feeling the wind, noting the way moss grew on the tree trunks. And following the road.
Suddenly something stirred ahead. Could it be the ferocious, mysterious zoobrs I had set out for? I clutched my camera and trod carefully. The pine needles were damp and quietened my stride. But no, it was only a family of wild boar.
It would be another good ten minutes of arduous hiking before the first zoobr set eyes on me. In fact it was a small herd led by a large male. He was enormous, easily as big as ten miniature horses, with horns like the devil himself, a rugged woolly brown coat, legs as thick as saplings, and huge flaring nostrils.
I wonder what Zheng He thought when he reached Africa and saw his first giraffe. He captured one and took it back to China where it was believed to be an example of the mythical creature called a qilin, evidence of heavenly blessing on the Emperor of the day. I thought not to capture a zoobr, except on film.
Zheng He too was said to walk like a tiger. He didn’t stray from violence when he was threatened. Faced with a zoobr flaring its nostrils, there was nothing to do but flare my nostrils right back. One shouldn’t let large wild animals sense one’s fear, or so it might be. The leader of the beasts took four lumbering steps towards me, through the middle of a mud clearing. We stood eye to eye now, and if he charged, what would have happened?
When Marco Polo crossed the Pamirs he came across a mountain sheep which ultimately took his name: the Marco Polo sheep was described in 1271. But the zoobr had its name, in Russian, and in English where it is called the European bison or wisent.
It could have crushed me without a second thought. But I held my ground, given that I’ve never heard of anyone suffering death by zoobr and am rarely first at anything; and given that the danger was somewhat reduced by the well-constructed wire fence between us. Well, there was no point randomly scouring the forest when a few zoobrs had been confined to a pen for easy observation. Okay, so it wasn’t quite like the great explorers but in the twenty-first century, one has to make do.
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| The zoobr: legs as thick as saplings and huge flaring nostrils |
Also in the small zoo were other examples of local wildlife: moose, deer, wolves, bears and wild horses. The eyes of the Mona Lisa owl followed me as I passed.
The expedition successful, zoobr sighted, I returned late afternoon to the bus station, really more of a bus shed. I pushed open the old green doors. The interior was empty apart from three fellow zoobr-hunters sitting on a bench. Not a pretty sight considering I had to be three hundred kilometres away in Minsk to find my pre-paid hotel bed.
One man asked where I was going. "Brest ," I replied, and then Minsk ". I wanted to see his reaction. He didn't burst out laughing, that had to be good. May be it was realistic.
We introduced ourselves. It’s how I became 'Onjay' for the afternoon. Still, they did better than me. All I knew was that one of them had a name that started with G and the other two didn't. G kept saying "and you have no wars in Australia ?" After Brest fortress one could only say no. Certainly nothing compared to Belarus .
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| G. and the Not-Gs., Kamenjuki, Belarus |
One of the Not-Gs was swearing about the bus timetable, which was nearly a blank A4 sheet of paper. "This is an extremely dire and frustrating circumstance in which we find ourselves," he was saying using four-letter Russian words. "Yeah, but the zoobrs were cool," I replied, and they were. Only 54 zoobrs existed after World War One; by 2002 there were 3200 of them.
Eventually the bus did come. The four of us: Onjay, G and the Not-Gs, made it safely back to Brest ; and me to Minsk . I didn’t take back the riches that Marco Polo and Zheng He did, from their journeys, or even the spiritual fulfilment and new wisdom that Ibn Battuta must’ve found, but it had been a nice day.
And at the least I didn’t suffer Marco Polo’s fate. Upon his return he found Venice at war with Genoa . He was captured and narrated the tales of his journey to a fellow inmate, in jail. But I have the luxury of writing this on a laptop, at home.
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| Zoobrs |
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| Detail from Brest Fort monument |
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| The Eternal Flame, Brest Fort |
From Belarus it's not impossible to head south to Kyiv or to take a bus to Riga to meet a secretary to a scientist.
This article also published in Star Magazine, here: In Search of the Zoobr
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