Croatian Blues ..

I was 12 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic disintegrated and as far as I can remember back then on the limited news channels in India there was not much about it.  Three years later cable television came in India in a big way and suddenly the world and the events happening in it were louder.  In 1993 the loudest were the explosions heard in then, Yugoslavia. Words like Bosnia, Kosovo; Siberia, Croatia etc were spoken a lot on the news.

Some 10 years later ‘Lagaan’ an Indian film was nominated for the Oscar’s. Back home in India we all were vouching for it to win. But ‘No mans land’ a film made by a Bosnian director won the coveted best foreign language film award in 2002. 

Eight years later in 2010, I first came to Slovenia, and realized it had a past and was first to branch out of Ex Yugoslavia in a 10 day war with not much casualties.. The other country to do so was Croatia but for them however it was not that easy. It took 5 years and the lives of some twenty five thousand Croats before the war ended, and the borders of Croatia were recognized by the world.  My interest in this region I realized had grown enough to explore it.

The war is over and the tourism is booming. Places like Dubrovnik in Croatia attract close to 2 million visitors every year. But in my search of the real Croatia and the way it was before the war, I decided to move around this little Peninsula of Istria. The clear blue waters, lazy little towns with cafes on the sea front and a typical old town feel is what I had imagined every town of this Peninsula to be more or less. But, tourism, which supports the economy, also destroys the peace of a place. On my first evening I was very disappointed with Rabac which claimed to be smaller of the lot, but it left me wondering ‘if this is small, then !!’ It took me the next morning and a visit to a tiny family estate, which specializes in making a typical ham from this area to feel close to the real Croatia.

Fazana from the sea !

It was in these villages, where the impact of the war was only economic in nature. So the charm continues to live. The people smile but not like the front office manager in a 5 star hotel who when she smiles and says ‘its so nice to see you, have a nice day’ actually means ‘hey listen, fuck off I hate this job’. When I enter a restaurant and the menu doesn’t come to the table, not because the place is busy, but is at its own pace I know the food has more chances of being good. Just like the town itself, which lives at a similar pace.

This is where you should eat !

That’s what is going wrong in tourism. Places like Dubrovnik or any tourist town in Europe, which receives crazy amounts of tourists per day, have café’s, souvenir shops etc where the pace is like Mumbai, while the town has a pace 10 times slower. The result if you think deep and u should be lucky for it to occur to you, that you are only physically present in the place. Mentally it feels like the fast moving Tokyo.

I went today to a bookshop in Zagreb and asked for some movies by Croatian and Serbian directors. All of them had war scenes on their cover. I asked the salesman ‘all war movies?’. He said ‘offcourse’ .. it was more a statement about the war than the movies.  1995 is seventeen years old but no 17-year-old works in a book store. When you live through a war you don’t forget it.

Somehow it makes me think the war did change the people here for the good. I don’t know how and I can’t explain it. Maybe they were this friendly from the beginning.. Who knows!!

All I know is right now Croatia has just opened its window to me. The door I will knock in the time to come

The Soul of Slovenia

“The Euro Zone Crisis are for real. Greece was being talked about, now it’s the turn of Spain and soon it will be Italy, Slovenia and so on.  The Capitalists are taking on and till they completely turn Europe into Argentina of the 80’s .. enjoy a piece of it”.  My Slovenian friend told me this.

I don’t know what the future holds and I am a little worried but right now when I am at the most beautiful lake I’ve ever been to in Europe, the sound of the river coming out of it in the distance makes the  ‘sound of the crisis’ go away.

Slovenia, and I have written about it before so I will be stuck for words, especially after deleting an entire page written on Krakow.  But its true that Prague, Krakow and Budapest fall in one league of East European nations. Slovenia, Croatia are republics of  Ex Yugoslavia and feel different in everyway.  The more I travel to Slovenia the more I want to travel to its Interiors and I love that feeling. Turkey first gave me that feeling followed by Argentina and now its Slovenia. The reason, I don’t know. It just feels very personal. Like wanting to know a person more after you’ve meet him.. I am not saying Poland, Norway etc don’t give me the same. But there I don’t feel the hurry to know, here I feel it !

Usually I stay with my groups in the Lake Bled area. The high season and the tourists coaches flood the lunch hours and it feels a little lost, even the sheer beauty of the lake doesn’t sometime save the day. 18 kms inward and some beautiful Slovenian countryside scenery later is the lake of Bohinj. What can I say about it !! It takes a cable car to take you 1600 mtrs above to actually catch a complete glimpse of this beautiful stretch of water.  Its vast expanse is not merely in its length but the Triglav mountain range of the Julian Alps cast a spell on the blue waters and in its background lies the real glory of the lake.

They say the people in the town are rude. They don’t let any new hotels or restaurants come up and are anti tourists in their policy. I smile at them and ask them what could be more pro tourist than to not allow more resorts and plastic hotels spoil the place. I stuck onto just Bled for 18 months. I still love to sit at a traditional open air bar and have my beer in Bled. Eat good trout and a piece of the Bled cake. However when time is right to leave.. I would rather go home to Bohinj.

Beauty in its appearance is just for the initial pull .. the soul appeals to different people in different ways. I find the beauty of Slovenia in places like Bled, its soul I find in Bohinj.

This is a tour, and that means just 3 days is what I get to stay here for. Someday I will come here and stay longer and even then, I am sure it would still feel like just 3 days.

Slovenia !

"You are lucky to be in Kamchatka"

“You are lucky to be in Kamchatka” my trekking guide said. Who says that? Only someone who understands where he lives and what the place means and has meant to the few hundred foreign travelers that make it here every August, yes there is only one month that can be called as the right time to travel. As I write now a few minutes from boarding the flight back to civilization, I understand what the guide meant.

To photograph the Northern Lights in – 20 deg, I thought was difficult. As I transfer the pictures from my SD card now I realize and relive the moments on the volcano Mutnowsky. For many of my co travelers the trek though difficult wasn’t risky. For me with my city boots, made me realize how much of an importance good clothing and shoes can make when nature shows its form.  The rain, the fog and the climb in adverse weather conditions prevented even the avid photographers that day from taking any pictures of the Volcano. It was as if the volcano said, just leave and let me be.

The treks usually all start in a group unless you want to do it on your own and take on the extremes. Petropavlosky is the chief town in the Kamchatka peninsula and the way people are glad when they arrive here by flight, they are even more so when they leave the town in a 6 x 6 and go off road. Kamchatka is only connected by air with main land Russia and although it is not an island and just a peninsula it is impossible to get here by road through the high Volcanic mountains. By sea from Japan or by Air from Russia is the only thing to do. The used right hand driven cars come from Japan so as a lot of other Japanese products, thankfully not China.  The trucks however are specially constructed in Kamchatka for the worst of mountain roads or lets call it paths. There are several Volcanoes near the town only if the distance is measured in kilometers. However to get to the base camp you go at general speeds of 15 km / hr and once there the camp has to be set. 

Each one pitches his own tent, I had to take the help of my fellow experienced campers. The first night I realized how less prepared I was, with no sleeping mat, no sleeping bag atleast I had bought the mosquito net for the head and the repellent. The briefing is made during dinner, which is wholesomely cooked and neatly arranged by the enthusiastic cooks.  The guide commonly only speaks Russian as he is not a tourist guide, just a guy who loves to spread his legs under the open sky and move them on volcanic grounds. So the interpreter is always taken along. Its like listening to one of those world forum speeches where the president of Russia speaks in his tongue and the interpreter follows in English.

Bears are always lurking around the corner, but since at least 2 – 3 camps of 10 tents each are in close vicinity, the wild stay away. Food therefore is not supposed to be kept open and the kitchen is away from the main camp. The first night happened to be my first night in a tent ever, not considering the Sahara where I had firm ground and an experience guide to pitch my tent. The breeze blowing over high grass makes a weird sound, and it feels that a bear is scratching on the tent, imagination goes wild and ensures sometime has gone before you sleep. The next morning when I woke up and stepped out of the tent, the morning sky was maddening ! The guys with tripods and pro cam’s were already up and shooting. I however simply chose to breathe and look. I will edit the toilet part and how everyone avoids the temporary toilets in the tent full of bees and goes in search of a high ground with a shovel. After breakfast the trek begins. The truck took us to a point from where the first Glacier of the Mutnowsky volcano was visible. I thought that our path wont cross it, but then I could see some reds and black figures walking on it from a distance. This is much before the rain came calling. Somewhere halfway through the trek across, glaciers, streams and loose mud we realized that the weather isn’t getting any better. The faces of people returning from the peak were like, we made it but good luck to you. The ascend is easy, but the fog can sometimes give no clear view of the crater as it happened with us. The descent is and for me was the most overwhelming experience. I can only say that when I reached the base I was glad that the whole thing was over. 

The days on the Volcano are a mix bag, the weather is all controlling and if it decides to be kind you will have treat, if not the climb will treat you to an experience which you wont forget in a good and a bad way.

There are trips that can be done with the helicopter and then there is trekking after that. Or simply blow the money on the helicopter and reach the place directly. But its not adventurous enough for many and so the only frequent air trips are to the valley of the geysers. To view the bears is the other exciting thing people do, and sometimes spend 3 – 4 days camping and searching for that best photo shot. The rafting and fishing trips also can last for a week or more to get your rush.  The ultimate rush is always when you are in nature all by yourself. Like the Norwegian couple I met at the Kamchatka Airport.  Their bags each weighed 40 kgs and I later learnt that they had spent 12 days on the river, rafting and another 12 days waiting for someone to come and pick them up. I never wanted to ask them how it was, I just chose to imagine.

I know now what is the peak of adventure in this, or any land routed deep in wild nature. Some day I wish I could reach atleast the base of that peak !

Kamchatka, changed the way I look at travel in general. I always loved travelling, now I respect it. 

Siberia and Beyond - The Valley of Geysers, Kamchatka

There are only four active geysers in the world. In the order of their discovery, Iceland ,U.S, New Zealand and Kamchatka, Russia. A geyser is a hot spring that spurts water out after every few hours. Now imagine 5 -6 of them and boiling water coming out every 30 mins or so. The air has a mild scent of sulphur and as you try to capture the oozing water in you’re picture frame its gone, you try again until you leave the camera in your backpack and enjoy the geo thermal activity with your eyes only.

I asked my guide is that mountain a volcano too. She said, every mountain that you see has been a volcano in some point of time. Well, I saw it later from air on my way to the valley of geysers, when every mountain that passed had a shade of black, the volcanic ash.  The only way to reach the most attractive places in this peninsula is by a helicopter. The price’s are not very pocket friendly and a flight can set you back by around $ 800 to $ 900, however what you see on the other side of the flight will be every cent taken care of. Thanks to high prices, you are mostly on your own, one with nature.

Its easy to write about food and the people I meet, but about nature, words simply don’t make the justice.

Having seen the Volcanoes from the sky, the real assent will start tommorow, when after a 5 hour trip on a roadless terrain we drive in a 6 x 6 truck till we reach the base of the Volcano, where our tents will be set. There we stay for 2 nights and climb 2 volcanoes over a period of 2 days.

The flip side of a business cum leisure trip is that the business always carries more weight and so here I am looking at my co travelers taking the trip ahead to a lake where 40 – 50 bears feed on salmon swimming up stream. Then they get on a river and raft for 3 days, fishing for trout and get another chance to see the bears and at the end they sleep with families from a village which is the oldest in this Peninsula but have their houses heated by the underground heaters through an age old system.  And as they do all this, I will be in Mumbai. The good news however is I will come here again, the next time with my people. 

The volcanoes are so huge that they even make the ocean look small. The Pacific ocean hugs the landscape and lets it dominate. Nature rules supreme here, and the government does every bit to protect it. Tourism is important for the economy, but by the way of things and the Russian mentality, commercialization will be hard to come in the next 20 years atleast.

‘Kamchatka’ the far east of Russia goes far beyond your wildest of imagination.  To be here is just a privilege.

The Trans Siberian Railway - Circum Baikal

The train makes one more of its scenic stops, and there is an announcement in Russian, on decoding it I realize it’s a 90 min break and as soon as I start questioning the length of it, the 200 people on the train start moving in all directions. I later realized that the break was not enough to explore all the directions. That’s Circum Baikal for you !

A 140 km track laid 120 yrs back perfectly parallel to the shore of the lake dotted now with small villages, normally in deep slumber but buzzing with activity just as the tri weekly train makes its stop. Villages, where old women are eager to serve you the local version of  vodka and smoked Omul, a cousin of Salmon.  A meal you cant say no to, even after having your appetite done with the wholesome train lunch. Wholesome and more tasty than any flight menu I’ve ever had. The Russian train journey is an experience of its own and I can only imagine the whole length of the Trans Siberian railway of more than 7500 kms across Russia. Where do you get the train canteen stepping out and laying its products neatly on a table arranged by the railway track, or a guide talking continuosly for 6 hours in a language which you cant understand. I wont beat about the language now as I am getting comfortable with using the sign language and yes not to mention feeling quiet good about the Russian's.

Sometimes a journey or a travel don’t instantly hit you, and takes its own sweet time. This travel I know is like that ..

With Lake Baikal behind me ,I am now in Kamchatka, the reason that I travelled here for. The changing time zones, the night journey’s are insuring that I don’t have a fix time to eat. I eat when I get hungry and I sleep better in air or the road than on my bed.  Well its not as bad as it seems when you give yourself the time this place deserves. In my line of work that is never possible.

On one of the stations I saw the Moscow – Beijing train come in,  I didn’t know how many hours it had been on track and how many more there were to go. I don’t respect China as a country and I don’t intend to go to Beijing in future. But for that brief moment as I saw the engine leave, even I felt like jumping on the train to China.

Such is the magic of the Trans Siberian !

Siberia and beyond - Irkutsk ,Port Baikal

“Moscow is far and China near”. That’s what they say here.  This might be a republic in Russia but Eastern Siberia’s main city Irkutsk feels like any other populated city from Asia. A mixture of left hand driven European made and right hand driven Japanese made vehicles storm the busy roads here and although the don’t honk, sometimes you wish they would.

The gateway to the Lake Baikal, Irkutsk will not impress unless you move out of it and onto places like Listvyanka and Port Baikal.  I know I am sounding like the guy from the lonely planet guide book, but that’s what should be near when the land is distant and the language strange. Add to that a bunch of non-smiling straight faces. Yes, they don’t like to smile here. I know I’ve been here just 48 hrs but unless they have a few vodka shots and are in the mood, an average Russian just won’t smile. Be it at a restaurant or on the road. The only smiles that you get are the trained ones, in business hotels. I was told this by a co traveler on my flight from Istanbul to Moscow,” we will help you at the most but wont smile” she said.  Maybe that’s playing on my mind ..

Lake Baikal is huge .. It has the worlds 20% of fresh water and at its deepest it is 1720 mtrs. The river Angara which originates from the Russian Arctic’s has its mouth here in the lake. Listvyanka and Port Baikal are two villages on  the opposite side of the river overlooking the lake. The best part of the last 48 hrs came today when my stroll in the village of port Baikal took me to a construction site of a small wooden hostel where the owner opened the door straight away looked at me and said ‘2000 roubles per night’ .. that’s all he knew to say. All my attempts to talk to him were futile and he simply closed the door. Well the best part was not the man obviously but the walk I had to take to find his place. The guide book recommended a hotel close to it which I found was closed, the book even said that it had a hookah salon. You could say that I waited 1 hr in rain to cross the river on a ramshackle ferry, only to find a place where I could smoke. However, a village without a single tourist or a person to ask directions. With traditional Siberian cottages ,built in wood and surrounded by nearly a 5 foot fence, with inviting colors on windows but  an uninviting dog’s bark on the other end and with water flowing in small streams from the surrounding hills into the lake, made for a very peaceful walk. If not for the gap of 4 hrs between two ferries I would’ve loved to just be ..

On reaching Irkutsk’s chaotic bus station I wondered how would it be to take the shirtless big belly, cigarette smoking owner’s offer, in Port Baikal. 2000 rbls per night would be just what I would like, the surrounding I mean were far more worth it. And who knows instead of writing now I would be having a few rounds of vodka with him and finally would’ve even managed to get a Russian smiling!

Siberia and Beyond .. To Moscow first

When does your travel dawn on you ?

 With my group trips it does when I announce the date. With a rare trip with my family it does when I leave my home, and the rarest of them all ;-) when I travel all alone ,it surely does in the airport departure area,  if not when leaving home.

 I was sure last night at the Mumbai airport it would come ,the feeling of going to a place for the first time. But it didn’t. It took its time and just as I thought it would only come when I read the Russian characters on arrival in Moscow, it came ! Well, the Russian characters did the trick after all, but not on the information signs at the Moscow airport but on my Laptop screen at Istanbul Airport.

All my travels have been to countries where the style of writing has been more or less Latin. Starting tonight Moscow time it will be different. And with all that one hears about Russia and the failure of its citizens to speak or understand English, this trip promises to have its own share of ‘language adventure’ other than the obvious Siberian one, as I dont intend on wasting time in the west. 

Moscow has three international airports! Well not surprising considering that Russia has nine time zones. Travelling from the Far East to the west is crazy, you leave at noon and arrive at noon. Well, that has some time to go. Today however I travel to Moscow and then overnight to Irkutsk in the east. The regions main city. The region of Siberia.

Siberia! What does it bring to your mind? Cold winters ,frozen rivers ,huge mass of barren land and the Trans Siberian railway passing through. This is summer ,and according to the last weather check the coldest inhabited city in the world with a population of above hundred thousand, which goes to 60 deg below the freezing point is still at 20 deg above it in summer.

The weather is not a worry ,actually nothing is when I travel alone without having the thought of my tourists in my mind.

This happened out of the internet, was inspired by www.toehold.in . These guys are based in Bangalore, India and are doing some good work with photography and nature being their foundation. I obviously didn’t want to join a group and wanted to rough it out myself.. So here it goes  .. The real trip begins tonight!

Siberia and beyond ! (the ‘beyond’ is where all the fun is)