Portugal: From Spain back to Evora, Day 6 & 7.

Today the drive could’ve been as simple as just crossing over to Portugal and heading to Evora. Like I did, when entering Spain. However I had my travel tool with me, and even Tim today chose to listen to the book. Tim being my GPS voice for those who haven’t followed the earlier posts.

Lets say it started with breakfast and ended with it. Ok a little more detail …

I usually had my phone to wake me up, but not today the 25^th December, Christmas morning. I woke up to the sounds in my stomach, the sounds which were with me the entire night. Screaming. ‘give me food’.  I went down where a breakfast was laid, it was the best I had so far. From a thigh of pig kept to be picked to the fresh honey and cheese everything smelt nice. It was raining out and it felt moist in my mouth. I am talking about the first bite of the croissant. Is'nt it lovely? how beautiful the simplest of things taste when they are done perfect! Looking at the spread that morning, I thought I should eat it all. But the first bite of that croissant is really what I remember. So, with the breakfast done and the voices calmed down, I started my decent from the old town to the Portuguese border. 

The first town on the other side of the border was so white that the sun light reflecting  from the walls nearly blinded me. It looked beautiful however. My aim however was to visit the town of Monsaraz, where the population was 20, in words, twenty!! 

The road was much narrower and the drive much nicer, much like the road to Pinhao. It did’nt have the river for company, but the fields and the sheep grazing on them. It felt like spring in the middle of winter.  Unlike in Spain where all small towns have a by pass on the state highway, Portugal needs you to drive through them. That is the best part, coz on the way you see so many characteristic towns and if you are lucky then, even some people on the street. I don’t know if it was for Christmas or these towns always feel empty. Only in people I mean not ever in the way they make you feel.

If the towns on the way to Monsaraz felt empty, then Monsaraz felt like a ghost town. The book had suggested that the vehicles, be parked outside the town walls and the entrance was by foot through one of the five gates.  In old times there would be the guards to accompany the entrances, now too they were there but only in figures. As I entered and walked through the narrow pebbled streets, I saw the whole town was filled with figures. The book has said that once the town had a population of over 200, and now it had only 20, with the young going out to find jobs. I wondered later was this decoration really for Christmas or to make the old folks in the town feel that they have more faces to see than what they usually do.

It is true that tourism supports such towns but then not all want to be a part of tourism, so the young leave and the old are left behind, I would rather say they choose to be left alone, with their town. Very often when one takes pictures of a monument or a town square, you wait for the appropriate moment when it feels less crowded around or you have a clear view. In Monsaraz there was no obstruction, there was just me and the figures, the streets and the old church which stood there decorated and feeling rich for Christmas.

However as I roamed through the narrow streets there were some inquisitive dogs who spoke to me, till their sound was cut by sounds of plates being washed. It was a restaurant and I was hungry, only that the sheer beauty of the emptiness didn’t make me realize that. Ah, I said to myself, so this is where the town is. They were all having lunch. It seemed like this was the only restaurant in town and they were all having lunch there. But there were young people too! And then I realized they had come to see their parents for Christmas and then the parents took them out for a Christmas lunch, the town belonged to them after all.

                                                             The figures of Monsaraz

'Monsaraz' was a find, but it was for me. Coz I knew my senior citizens wont be able to do what the towns old folks did.

It was a similar fear, Guadalupe before Caceres and liking Guadalupe so much that Caceres just turned out to be a night stay. So,  I thought to myself on the way to Evora the Capital of Alentejo region in Portugal, ‘what if it disappoints me’ the big town feel turns out to be a spoiler at times. Evora was never on my group itinerary and I was only doing it as it was heavily recommended by the book, and this is the only hope I went in with. The Lonely Planet recommends it so it wont be that bad if not to my taste. But I forgot, I was in Portugal and here, as I later realized even Lisbon seems to be a small town.

Evora was good, well more than that. I was glad that with all the restaurants closed for Christmas I was not left with a 50 euro supplement on dinner in some fancy restaurant but was nicely catered to by the staff of my guest house. We spoke till they had to leave and I had to go to bed.

The breakfast next morning was the freshest I’ve ever had in my entire travel life. I wont say more ..

                                                                The breakfast in Evora 

I will not go to Monsaraz again or maybe even Evora. Because it won’t happen in my group tour. Why? Because I cant tell my people to walk so much, it’s a pity I know but then there are always some adjustments that can be made without compromising the integrity of the tour and being true to the country.

As I soon realized, the Atlantic coast would be the next thing to blow their mind in Portugal!

Each road, that pass through the vineyards in Portugal is called as the 'rota de vinho' (route of the wine). If you ask me to pick any road in the country I would name it 'rota de paraiso' (route of paradise). 

Atlantic was next. 

Portugal: In Spain for day 4 & 5

Spain?! What comes in your mind when you hear this word? Flamenco dancers, Tapas, Spanish guitar, bull fights .. Well I think it is much more than that though I have yet to see Spain, the way I want to, let alone feel it. I really believe that a country hits you instantly, and Spain hadn’t hit me in my first trip there in 2010. So this time I was a little biased when I crossed the border and entered Spain. The only comforting thing was Spanish, and that I could do more with it than to just get around with my limited knowledge of the language. On the first 2 days of driving I had taken the odd route and it paid at times. That day on the way to Salamanca, the capital of Castella & Mancha, I decided to simply listen to Tim, the voice on the GPS. I reached early and it immediately hurt that I did not have the ‘lonely planet’ to Spain. I knew the language but I did not know what to do in Salamanca. So I did what I had gone for. To search for hotels for my group to stay, following a map, which I had marked the hotels on. It was a small town and finding the hotels was easy, though not always going up to them. The medieval towns in Spain are more or less set on hills and Salamanca is no exception to that. We will just say that till the evening I had managed to select one hotel which was good with the feel, its distance from the main square and most importantly for my 60 yr + people, it had an easy access.

A job done with the hotels and the places to see could be dealt later when there would be a guide to show us around.  It was almost 6.30 pm and unlike the earlier evening in Coimbra, my appetite had only grown in Salamanca. When I travel alone, and it does get a little lonely at times, food is the only thing that I look forward to. So I set to search for a place that felt right. Its very important on your travels that you don’t enter the first place you see and eat a sandwich coz you are too hungry to wait and too scared to order anything else. Roam around a bit, take in the town and you will know when to enter a restaurant.

I took my chance and entered a place, which served only Tapas. Well I suddenly remembered that the only thing that I had really liked on my first visit to spain were the tapas. So tapas they were for lunch and for dinner. Spain being expensive than Portugal I overspent by around 10 euros on each meal. The day was good but it felt like a regular office day. You do your work and you eat your meal. You enjoy both but there still feels something missing. Or maybe it was just the standard’s were raised too much by Coimbra.

The second day however came as a surprise. Salamanca had to stay in my itinerary, unlike Coimbra, which had to be sacrificed for the sake of Pinhao. The question then was which Paradores to select out of the three medieval towns of Caceres, Trujillo and Guadalupe for my next stay. ‘Paradores’ are hotels owned by the state in Spain and are beautifully structured in an old palace or a villa. I wanted my people to stay in one of them to get the authentic feel of old world Spain.  On my drive to Caceres where I was booked in a Paradores myself, the town of Guadalupe came in first. The road was a little off track but then I thought what if it pays off like Pinhao? and what a view it was from a distance of 500 metres! A Church which looked like a castle rising high above the other structures as it rightly should, and the being surrounded by perfectly sculpted city walls.

. As I entered the tiny square I could hear people singing and it seemed that the walls sang with them. Straight out of a story book. No tourists, only locals drinking, eating and praising the patron saint of the village through music. I told myself I shall come to sit amongst them later, first the hotel to be chosen. There was no option here. Either the Paradores had to be too bad or it had to have a 500 step climb in order to be declined for the group. The town had really won me over and to my relief, the hotel was as charming as the town. Set in a convent around an orange orchard. The manager even said that I could get a bus to the steps and he would ask the town municipalty to arrange for a parking.

I wanted to ask the manager even before staying at the Paradores in Caceres which had a population of 60,000,  whether it would be possible that I shift my stay from there to Guadalupe. There is a thing about small towns everywhere, the people are generally nice and if you speak their language they are nicer. Its true that on that afternoon as I had my first sip of Spanish beer, it felt much better than I had felt after having beer ever.

The town of Caceres, later as I learnt was just a formality. A night was booked and I had to simply use it. My group would stay in Guadalupe and proceed to Seville in the south of Spain without even stopping at Caceres, forget staying there. However being a Paradores, my stay in Caceres was good, but it happened to be Christmas eve and that meant I have their 50 Euro meal or stay hungry, with all the restuarants closed. With my over spending the day earlier, I chose the later.

Next morning I woke up with excitement, I was heading back to Portugal!

Portugal: Day 1,2 and 3, to Coimbra and Duoro

Portugal: Day 1, 2 & 3, from Coimbra to the Duoro river and back.

Those familiar with the ‘Lonely Planet’ must know that the book divides the country into regions. I believe these regions are purely based on their geography and not so much the politics.  The first 3 days of my journey in Portugal drove me through the regions of Beira, and the Duoro river valley. Over the extent of these days it had dawned upon me, that a country as small as Portugal can be at times as diverse as India.

I reached Coimbra, the capital of the Beiras and what is aptly called the Oxford of Portugal. On my first night which happened to be a Friday night, I looked out for traces of students having a fun time on the road but found none. What I found was a restaurant, oh ya food again. Although I have no habit of noting down the events as they happen, I feel now I really should’ve noted the name of the restaurant where the menu is typed everyday on a typewriter, which is itself as old as its chef. With my little knowledge Spanish, and comparing the words with Portuguese, I was able to set my order right. It had an English menu but I simply chose to read from the typewritten one. It felt fresh to read the food items under a date. Soon I realized that the food was as fresh as the menu. I think it was fish on day one for me in Coimbra. Actually it was that more or less all through my journey.

Anyways so there I was, my eyes on the plate and the only sound to be heard of  was that of the people talking softly. Yes that is one thing about the Portuguese that I noticed immediately. They are softer than the Spanish. The words are much more rounded than their neighbors and so are their bodies. So, as I sat at my table all alone thinking about how to go about tomorrow, the long table next to me, which had the ‘reserved’ sign, started to fill. A few men in their late 50’s came, and drinks came with them. Then more men and more drinks, till I realized that this was some kind of a re union. There was one man whom I picked to ask at the end, ‘is this some kind of a birthday party or college reunion?’ and the man simply smiled and said ‘Its Christmas’

Well not only those men were soft with their party mood, although this was much before they got a little tipsy, I guess even their wives must be easy on them. This was my first rendezvous with the people, the men from Portugal and it looked like other than the grand old chef who insisted I have his best desert, there were a few in the group of men who didn’t mind me staying on till the end.

I had to get on the road early the next day and so I chose to leave. 

In the original plan about this region, I had 2 nights in Coimbra and to drive to Porto, the second biggest city in Portugal from where I would take the ‘tourist’ cruise with my people to Peso do regua, on the other side of the Duoro river. The cruises don’t operate in winter, so I thought to myself why don’t I simply drive to Peso do Regua rather than Porto.

The reason I chose to drive in this trip was that this is exactly how my people would travel. Public transport was fine and cheap but that would largely limit the places I travelled to. As I drove to the other side of the river, I learnt that the book spoke about a train station, further away from Peso and was a place not to be missed. So just to see the train station I went the 25 kms. Those 25 kms, my dear people were the best I had driven in the whole of Portugal(actually there were a lot more).

The river looked like a lake. The image of the surrounding mountains so clear that a vineyard dried up in the winter months could drink water from it.

The town of Pinhao .. population of 110. Imagine one wedding in this town and the whole town is empty, other than in mid-summer, when the tourists would account for multiples of at least 5.

Sometimes the journey is better than the destination is what I thought during those 25 kms. But here the destination Pinhao was as good as the journey itself. When I travelled with my dad in India and we would go to Hotels to negotiate the rates, I used to tell him, lets not, it looks expensive. He would then say, “lets see, they need us”. Well that’s what I thought when I went to see the rooms at the Vintage hotel in Pinhao. A hotel made out of an old warehouse for wine. It looked solid and when they said that they have special rates for the first week of may, that’s exactly when my people would come, I was happy. Not because of the rates but because this was the first time I had acted like a businessman on my trip and not just a traveler.

In the travel business, I have to deal with local travel agents who in turn deal with the hotels. But what if the local agents aren’t good enough, well yes then why will I work with them shall be your question. Well, good at arranging stuff, but not good at actually suggesting it. My job in this trip I had then learned was not only to get familiarized with the place I had decided to take my people to, but to question it first, and to see if there is anything that is better than that. After all I will come back for more, but my people will see Portugal only once.

And I want them to be as happy as I was with Portugal.

A stay in Pinhao, overlooking the river in the month of may, when the big hoards of tourists are still away will play a big role in letting Portugal talk for itself. That evening, when I drove back to Coimbra and ate at the same restaurant, I realized that I had not much of an appetite. I was already contended with Pinhao and finding it out for my tour.

On my way back from the restaurant that night, in a narrow lane in Coimbra I saw the students, then I saw more in subsequent lanes. It was as if the town had its arteries in the lanes. It was where it was alive. 

I had read about the traditional music of Portugal. It is known as Fado. The book spoke about Coimbra as a place where it was born and Lisbon was simply where it took off from. I usually don’t like sitting at places where the tourists sit and listen to music, or watch a dance specially set for them. But that night after the first 20 minutes of Fado I realized, that the singers who were in their late sixties were as enthusiastic about their singing that evening, as they would have been when they started. Who was I to think of this place as typical and the experience touristy.  When I got off from my chair, it was half past mid night!

Its true that Pinhao won over Coimbra in Natural beauty and the sheer appeal. But somewhere I felt that Coimbra was a place to feel and not to see. Much like the first night when all I did was saw the town and it felt empty. The second night I felt the pulse of the town, coming from its lanes from its students talking about their country or maybe their love life, from the music that played in that touristy café and later from the air that felt warm in +7 degrees. Or maybe it was just me who felt warm .. in Portugal!

Portugal - How it all began ?!

Spain Morocco and Portugal. Thats how my tour was planned in 2011. The itineary was purely on the basis of what people wanted from me and not what I knew about these countries. I was happy that the tour did not take off. Never once did I feel that i was right about the tour. 

In the mid 2012, I realized I had to separate Morocco out of the other two so that I could concentrate on it more. Later I realized after some ‘lonely planetting’ that Portugal begged for more. And so the whole idea of spending close to 10 days in a country, driving through its roads immerged. I thought I would do my research before coming to the country but till the time my flight was 20 mins from touch down in Lisbon, I was lets say too much engrossed in my Scandinavian tour.  So much so that on my way to the B&B from the airport, I even doubted my coming to Portugal. Well that was the last time ever there was any ‘doubt’ about the country.

The Plan

Drive through the cities and towns picked by me for the tour itinerary

The Objective

To not end up with my people as a complete stranger to the road

The carrier

A small sized ‘economy’ car, that’s what the rent a car website said

The budget

Stay cheap eat modest and spend only on fuel

It all seemed to be well in view until my first unplanned stop in a small town called Santarem on the way to Coimbra in the central region of Portugal. The attendant at the counter of my guest house in Lisbon had told me to visit Fatima on the way and to eat there, but Santarem a few Kms before had a ‘lonely planet’ top choice restaurant. Well close to the end of my 3^rd course and somewhere before the desert, I realized .. modest is only an adjective assigned to the way the restaurant was. The food was something I had no control on. I was coming from Norway and Portugal gave me the entries, first course, second course, desert , coffee and drinks for the price of a single plate in Norway. I was hungry and the chef too keen to show my lonely planet around to his locals. ‘estou es muito bem’ translated to ‘this is very good’. The book he meant, the food I did. I felt like staying till evening and then to stay back till dinner. But I realized there was more to come and this was just the start.

Portugal had made its mark. A little bit of Goa I thought at first when in the morning I had stared right up to the Atlantic ocean from the terrace of my guest house. Eating in that small eatery I realized that if not anything, I am going to have a blast with the food.

Its true ,the culture, language, people and the sights all came in big .. but they came in later! FOOD knocked me down first and then it was very easy for the rest of them to come all over and to make me say at the end of it all.

Can I really also take out Spain and just do a tour of Portugal ??!!

I am going to write about the next few days in Portugal in parts. Something that I have tried to do with Siberia but only managed a little. Much like they do in the book we all adore and respect so much. The ‘Lonely Planet’.

Up North in Scandinavian Winter !

The Scandinavian winter is behind me. I love every part of travelling in the Scandinavian Arctic’s in the winter as much as I do in the summer. But somehow the winter is more larger than life. The snow and the white magic it creates, makes you forget everything. At times even that you are in Scandinavia. However when you touch more than just the white flakes you know its Norway, Sweden or Finland. The people up north in these countries are called Sami. They share a common culture with the Russian cousins.  However they are a few decades ahead of them in technology. But the Russian sami’s have their own reason of sticking to their traditions. They believe that they can zoom around in a snow mobile but what about the fuel? How will they afford that? So they continue riding the reindeer. Unlike in Norway where the Sami herdsman travels ahead of his reindeer family in a snow mobile, sets his tent and comes back for them in the months of winter migration.

The Sami trade in reindeers. Its their currency. So when a child is born in the family, he gets a reindeer and then on each birthday he receives one more. When he has 20, he reserves the option to trade them for money or to become an active herdsman. And If he does choose to trade them, then even in Norway he could afford a nice apartment and a good life. Such is the value of reindeers.

For us however all that matters is to take a ride on the sledge and to feel the warm fur over its skin. Then, to sit in a Sami tent made of reindeer skin and to listen to the tales of the Sami, about his family and their way of life, as the reindeer stew cooks slowly over the central fire and his kids run wild in the snow outside in – 20 deg.

My winter tour to Scandinavia is titled the ‘Northern Lights, Scandinavia’. However even if the northern lights do show their full color it feels more contended, when people say, “there is much more to the winter here, than just the lights”.  Its true the culture in a place, the people the food can even make the nature take a back seat at times. However when both of them come together, the combined effect is a winning combination.

I am flying now to Lisbon and to + 17 deg. I knew even when I was freezing in – 20 and absolutely hating it, that I would miss the negative double figures on the mercury scale. I am already doing that as I enter the Portuguese airspace.

Winter or summer in Scandinavia. The northern lights or the mid night sun. The story of the fisherman in summer or that of the Sami in winter.  Everything about Scandinavia is simply Scandinavian!

White Riga - Latvia

I first came here, not with the intention of coming but just to avoid flying from Helsinki to the Finnish north. Not because I dislike the capital of Finland but just because I spend a lot of time in summer there and winter called for something different.

Riga is different, it’s a mix of St Petersburg, Prague and any west European city. The feel is medieval, the touch is modern, the people are friendly and even though it doesn’t always matter, they all speak English.

In the first year itself, the ‘Riga plan’ was appreciated by my people who had almost all been to Helsinki. For them, Riga offered a different take on the winter and white Christmas. It just proved to be the ideal stay, before flying off to the North of Finland where Santa has his abode, Rovaniemi.

Latvia is one of the three Baltic countries that were formed when the USSR went out of work. Estonia and Lithuania are the other two. The LATS, local currency here is stronger than the EU, perhaps the only country in the EU to have such a status. Economics has never been my strong point, so when I came to know that the financial crisis has not affected this country so much, I thought that the stronger Lats has something to do with this. However my guide made it very clear,  “we know how much to spend”. “ We earn one third of what they give in Greece and look where it is today”

Its true, even in the priciest of streets here, the people display modesty. The women too, can you believe it! Even the Burberry store on the corner looked simple. 

The food has distinct traces of Russia, and why not when half of its population still speaks Russian. Vodka, however is not a strong seller. The Balsam is, which happens to be a concussion of herbs and fine tuned to the fermentation process. I however stick to beer when I am here.

I always stay for a night and somehow don’t feel incomplete when I leave.  I just feel happy to have come here again. Riga doesn’t shout, it doesn’t need to do that. It just keeps quiet and lets you look at it, till you feel it under your skin.

As I said bye to my guide today, she just said, “See you next winter”.

I don’t know how I will feel if I ever come here in summer. There is an image this city holds, a feeling. For me Riga will always be cold with a warm inside.

East from North to South in TURKEY

‘Sutlaj’ is a desert people eat in Turkey. But like any country in the world, the best food item is highly localized and then its versions are available elsewhere in the country. The best Sutlaj is from the north east of the country from the mountains of Kackar. Here the air is clean and the milk from which it is made, rich. I love this desert and sometimes even eat it as a meal replacement when in the region.  The region of the North East of Turkey, which is the star attraction of my tour to Turkey and an addition we made just this year. I always smile with content when people who after experiencing the North East express their happiness in coming to this remote area of Turkey.

However I have never been so proud of it as I was today, when my local Turkish guide proudly said to a restaurant owner in Istanbul who asked her to taste his sutlaj “oh .. Do you know where I’ve been two days back, Rize and Hamsikoy!” The owner knew what she meant, and exclaimed that she had been to the Mecca of sutlaJ. He then asked her how the hell did she land up there. All she did was to point at me. The owner then looked at me and smiled. I smiled back .. I smiled with more content than I ever had before.

To follow is one thing and to discover is an entire different madness. And when that discovery goes well with whom it is intended for, it is sheer content. The Black sea, North East coast of Turkey and travelling through it made me fall in love with the country all over again. I now crave for more, to go further to the east and then the south following the borders of Georgia, Armenia and Iran. Places that the people here in Istanbul are inquisitive about and sometimes even scared to go to, because of the Kurdish problem there. A region where if you ask a local where you can find a hotel to stay, he would happily say, “why do you need a hotel? ,my house is just 50 mtrs from here”.

A land of snow capped mountains and still lakes, where to reach a top of a mountain there is no cable car like in the west, and so the tourists are less and less is beautiful. Naturally this is all before I have even been there. When I go there and ultimately start a tour, it will be what I would finally get my kick from.

On this trip to Turkey, I feel I’ve grown. Well, not in terms of the number of people in my group, coz I am still struggling to convince the people back home to spend 10 days in turkey, but in terms of knowing the country. And this I know has not just happened. The language and learning to speak it, making a conversation which extends just a ‘good day’ and ‘how are you’ has been the key.  In 2010 from having one frustrating hour of silent drinking with my driver who couldn’t speak a word of English and me a word of Turkish to now where still the silence exists but only when sipping the drink, I feel, I have come a long way in Turkey and Turkish.

In April this year I remember telling my agent, “I hope I don’t need to come to Turkey again”. Well what I actually meant, was that I needed more time to concentrate on my other tours.  But here I am again and it seems that what I said to my agent did not make any sense and probably never will.

Turkey just calls and who am I not to ans