see PAGe 14 detAils WIN a 14-day exodus adventure for two through colombia for
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NEPALESE RIDER
Join the Himalayan bikie gang
CAVEMAN VACATIONS Solo in the Solomons
spSEeCciTaIOlN
ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK Thailand’s twilight haunts
DIGGING PERU
History 101: blood, sex and surfing
HIGH NOTES
Switzerland’s alpine jazz festival
ISSN 1449-3543
the
LOST ISLANDof the PhiliPPines Japan | Cambodia | oman | Hawaii | india
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SWITZERLAND
t h e sev en de a dly si ns of t r av el
NEPAL Swap trekking for two wheels on an epic Himalayan motorcycling adventure
Blowing Montreux’s trumpet at the annual jazz festival
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SOLOMON ISLANDS
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PERU
Be the talk of the town in the remote island community of Bellona
Discover an ancient culture that reigned longer than the Incas
PHILIPPINES Ignore the doomsayers and take your chances on forbidden Siquijor Island
Forget passing through the pearly gates – be tempted by our devilish shortlist of sinful sojourns
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NORTHERN TERRITORY Beat the troppo season blues and dare to have a dip in the Top End
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INDIA Pay tribute to one of the world’s great highways ahead of the dynamite
get in the know Almost 90 per cent of the world’s population (more than 6 billion people) have access to safe drinking water.
CONTENTS
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News & Views The globe uncovered Events What’s going down? Get Social Join in and win
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Places to Stay The weird and wonderful Top Trips The best breaks Top 10 Best airports for killing time Retro Travel Travel from yesteryear in Hungary
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You Wish Manta dreaming in Hawaii Get Packing Discover Oman with an instant itinerary After Dark Bangkok: cheese and sleaze and drinks that please
110 FOOD
120 MUSIC
112 PHOTOGRAPHY
122 RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL
116 TRAVEL JOB
124 REVIEWS
The hungry traveller in Japan
Expert travel photo tips
Surfing legend turns disciple of clean drinking water
118 TOP BARS
The world’s best watering holes
Cambodia in the groove
Mind your footprint – should you pay bribes?
Gadgets and other goodies
128 CONFESSIONS
Tristan Miller laments Russia’s missed film opportunity
get in the know The first Russian film was captured in 1896 by Lumière cameraman Camille Cerf who recorded the coronation of Nicholas II at the Kremlin.
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EXPOSURE
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fAkir sinks A knife into his eye As A meAns of mastering his body and becoming closer to God during a pilgrimage to Ajmer, India. The fakirs endure extreme selfflagellation with knives and needles to prove pain does not reach them as they focus on their faith. Each year they flock to Dargha, the tomb of the Sufi Muslim saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti for the Urs Festival, where they honour the death of the ‘Benefactor of the Poor’ and receive blessings in return. Hindus and Muslims alike revere the shine, which is a symbol of inter-communal harmony and one of the most important centres of pilgrimage in India. • Olympus E-PL5 • Olympus M.14-42mm f3.5-5.6 II R lens • ISO 800, f/4.5, 1/250 Photography by Boris Joseph
BANGKOK Once the sun has set, Thailand’s thumping pumping capital is no place for squares, says grandmaster Elspeth Callender as she takes us on a whirlwind series of moves through Bangkok’s best night sights. Photography by Elspeth Callender, John Borthwick & Belinda Jackson
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2 get in the know State Tower is South-East Asia’s largest building withgitk a total oortext areagitk of 300,000m . get in the know gitk text gitk text text flgitk text gitk text
The open-air ascent to Banyon Tree primes you for Vertigo.
get in the know The fortext the gitk city text of Bangkok 21text words long with 168 letters in total. gitk full textThai gitk name text gitk gitk textisgitk
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In the heart of picturesque Switzerland, Brian Johnston indulges his other senses in an auditory smorgasbord at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Photography by Brian Johnston
Partygoers enjoying an evening drink at quayside bars.
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get in the know In Montreux, the first weekend in September is Freddie Mercury Memorial Day.
SWITZERLAND
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’VE BEEN TOLD TO AVOID THE WEEKEND, but why? I like the crowds that stream downhill from the train station, and the partygoers perched like seagulls on rocks along the lakeshore, gabbing and jostling for space. In the Jazz Cafe, the evening audience sways, dense and sweaty. The elbow-to-elbow vibe is electric, but I still feel I’m the only one in the room as Anna Calvi moans into the microphone about the devil and desire. Her lips are a red slash, moody as her riffs. The British singer and guitarist – so good she’s been compared to Jimi Hendrix – is a brooding presence on the stage, even across an undulation of heads. She sings with blues seduction and Goth edginess, plus a hint of flamenco passion in the way she strums her guitar and moans in the back of her throat. Maybe it’s just the humid summer night, but I’m hot under the collar. Calvi has described her music as a mix of danger and exhilaration. Frankly, those aren’t adjectives that normally get an outing in the prim Swiss town of Montreux. Eleven months of the year, you could skip through it on a day trip with ‘pleasant’ your most intense description. The dukes of Savoy built a whopping castle just along Lake Geneva foreshore that’s now a prime tourist attraction, which brings most people here. Montreux got its start as a tourist spot in the 19th century, when it was favoured by the British and Russian nobility for their winter retreats. (A balmy climate allows palm trees and figs to flourish, bringing a touch of the Mediterranean to Switzerland.) Now wealthy tax-evaders skulk in big villas
Entertaining the crowds at a concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
A concert in the Stravinsky Auditorium.
get in the know Montreux was settled in the Bronze Age and was an important town in Roman times.
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get in the know The Royal Enfield was originally made in a factory that made rifles and weapons for the RAF; motto: ‘Made like a gun, goes like a bullet’.
NEPAL
Kelly Irving leaves the trekkers in their tracks and braves an epic motorcycle adventure through Nepal. Photography by Kelly Irving
Ready to ride in the Himalayas.
get in the know Nepal is home to over 20,000 Tibetans, many of whom fled Tibet after the 1959 invasion by China’s People’s Liberation Army.
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HEN IT’S RED YOU STOP; WHEN IT’S GREEN, YOU go,” explains my driver, Sunil, when I ask him about Nepal’s road rules. He revs the motorbike’s engine and I jolt backwards, clutching his leather jacket, as we pull into a stream of zigzagging tuk-tuks and two-wheel vehicles. Trucks and cars and bikes and buses and motorcycles scream towards us, along with an orchestra of horns and incessant beeping. “We’re not driving an airplane, you know,” he says, stroking the fuel tank like he’s taming a tiger. “This is just a little bike.” The first five minutes spent playing chicken with traffic in Nepal bursts any romantic bubble or Long Way Round fantasies you may have about crossing the country on the back of a motorbike. Reality check: it’s scary and loud, and the only wind in your hair is the dirty black plumes of smoke being emitted from every diesel and two-stroke engine that you pass. For the next 11 days, I’ll be circumnavigating this tiny mountainous nation, taking in a range of hand-picked highlights, with a new tour company called Himalayan Motorcycle Adventures. With experienced local guides in the drivers’ seats, and a support vehicle carrying most of our stuff, this trip gives intrepid travellers an in-your-face authentic experience of some of the globe’s most famous landmarks. We slalom along the four-lane highway, dodging the potholes and wandering animals that litter our route out of Kathmandu. Buffalos walk blindly into the road and goats bolt from side alleys. A truck passes closely and we swerve to avoid making a fresh corpse out of a cow. “You get fined if you hit one of those,” hollers Sunil from somewhere under his helmet, purple cap and Ray-Bans. As we ride into a winding, narrow laneway, a vehicle ahead of us hits its brakes hard and one of my six companions, John, a guy from Sydney who’s riding solo, veers to the left to miss it, landing sideways in a ditch. Although he’s not hurt, it’s a reminder that this is not your regular out-of-town excursion. The risks of ultimate freedom are real. The excitement can come at a cost.
A local villager weighed down with a heavy load.
in an arc are just there for decoration. Then I shuffle close to the edge, raise my arms level with my shoulders, dive forward and let the silence swallow me. The next morning, the rush in my body has subsided to a gentle buzz, and a heavy downfall of rain has brushed the valleys with a glossy sheen. We wave goodbye to our camp and say hello again to our choice of steed – the Royal Enfield Bullet.
towering pines and burnt orange spring hues make it easy for me to forget where I am – until a woman walks by heaving half a tree and a hamper of stones strapped to her forehead. Back on track, we finally replace big tokes of CO2 with large lungfuls of alpine air. The iconic emerald fields come into view, little huts the colour of dried biscuits spread out on the hillside. Pewter-grey boulders pepper the side of a rushing river that we follow all the way to our first official pit stop. The Last Resort is exactly that – the final place to get your kicks before hitting the Tibet border. Located three hours away from Nepal’s crowded capital, it’s a stunning spot with comfortable safaristyle tents set up along the water’s edge, and numerous hair-raising activities. Here you can run river rapids or go canyoning, mountain biking or hiking. Try canyon swinging, do a forest ropes course or brave one of the world’s highest bungee jumps (160 metres). As if to encourage – or deter – visitors from actually attempting the leap, the only thing connecting the road to the actual town and tents is the bungee bridge itself. Walking slowly towards the platform, my palms like ice and my guts in a mess, I pass pintsized men and women lugging baskets of rocks, bags of cement and a variety of vegetables. “How many times have you done this?” I ask the guy who is now shackling my feet. “You crazy?” he laughs. “Never. See how high this is?” I pray the multicoloured Tibetan flags stretched overhead #52 get lost ISSUE #37
A symbol of British and Indian manufacturing pride, the Enfield is one of the world’s oldest motorcycle brands still in production. The Indian police and army once used them to patrol the country’s borders, considering it the most suitable bike for the job thanks to its super-cushy seat. As we bounce along the ‘road’ – a painful 12km avalanche of rocks and pebbles (the Nepalese version of gravel), towards the border town of Kodari – tall, leafy trees give way to glorious Himalayan mountains, leathery faces grow rounder and pink cheeks more plump. On arrival we shuffle through hordes of Sherpas and people with packages containing undetected contraband (I’m told beer hidden underneath sleeping babies is popular) to the Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge, the link between Nepal and Tibet. On the far side of the thick white line in the middle of the crossing are 20 or so stone-faced Chinese guards in perfectly pressed attire, standing in front of a penitentiary-like compound. On the Nepalese side, there are a couple of guys milling about in shabby uniforms, next to a landslide of rubbish and a truck depot. A young man suddenly appears, waving a large umbrella at me (odd, seeing as the midday sun is cranking and there’s not a rain get in the know Only 21 Nepalese women have ever summited Everest.
NEPAL
Babas being babas at Kathmandu’s Pashupatinath Temple.
The Himalayan Motorcycle Adventures gang.
get in the know Milk Baba, a Nepalese sadhu who has undertaken many penances, spent 25 years living on just two litres of milk a day.
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Tom Perry travels to the tiny remote Solomons’ island of Bellona, where men are men, caves are hotels and crayfish are plentiful. Photography by Tom Perry
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get in the know The Bellonese word for warrior – Kaitu’u – literally means ‘eat standing because have time sit down for gitk a meal. get in up’, the know gitkwarriors text gitknever text gitk text gitktotext gitk text text
SOLOMON ISLANDS
Sea views, Bellona style.
get in the know The Melanesian population of the Solomon Islands speak 92 indigenous languages.
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The Bellona Airport welcoming committee.
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t’s the socIal event of the week and I can’t decIde if I’m the gatecrasher or the guest of honour.
Our twin-engine plane lurches its way to a stop on the tiny coral atoll of Bellona, the stairs come down and I step out onto the grass. I look ahead. It’s 7am, and there’s an entire village staring at me. I turn to my host, Joses Tuhanuku, who grew up on Mungiki – as Bellona is known in the language of its inhabitants – but now lives in the Solomon Islands’ capital, Honiara. “Why is everyone here?” I ask Joses, who has joined me to show me around his island home for a few days. He doesn’t answer. Joses is already deep in conversation with friends and family members. But there are no hugs, no big smiles or slaps on the back. Joses is a traditional chief here and was Bellona’s member of parliament for more than a decade. He and the men talk in discreet undertones, only interrupting their conversation to direct children to help collect the bags.
we really are. There are no cars here, only a few clunky pushbikes that are shared by everyone. Services are primitive, and Bellona is a 90-minute flight from Honiara. Flights are frequently cancelled or simply don’t show up at all. For most people, the best option to get to and from the capital is the more affordable overnight journey by ferry, which provides much of the island’s lifeline of food and other essentials. But even that hasn’t made the journey south in over a month. As far as Pacific islands go, Bellona is up there with the most remote. Even by Solomons’ standards – the country is famous for stories of head-hunting and brutal conflicts – the residents of Bellona have a pretty formidable reputation. As one of the few Polynesian islands in this predominantly Melanesian country, Bellonese people are staunchly protective of their culture and wary of domination by outsiders. The tattoo art from Bellona is considered some of the best in the Pacific, with many men
the 20 metre wide cave, complete with six beds and a naturally formed private grotto is like a secret bunker. this is seclusion the way nature intended it to be. Joses’ wife, Australian journalist Mary-Louise O’Callaghan, who lived here on Bellona with their four children for 18 months almost a decade ago, sees my confusion and laughs. “This is the social event of the week,” she tells me with a chuckle. “It’s when most of the island’s business happens.” She explains that with little electricity, and certainly no phone coverage, Bellona and its inhabitants exercise an unusual bush telegraph. If one of the islanders needs to get a message out, contact someone, or just find out the latest news, they come to the airport for the twice-weekly flight from Honiara – mostly because everyone else will be there too. “Sometimes you just want to know what’s happening in the community,” Mary-Louise says. “So you come to see the flight.” As we begin our walk down Bellona’s solitary road, the significance of the plane’s arrival makes me realise just how cut off #60 get lost ISSUE #37
decorating their whole chest and back, leaving only a clear line across the chest, known as taukuka, which is said to be a portal for communicating with the god Tehuaingabenga: the legendary warrior of the Avaiki people. On arrival at Mary-Louise and Joses’ Bellona home, a stone ovencooked meal of chicken, fish and vegetables is already sitting on the table, delivered by family members who’d heard we were on our way. It’s a pleasant example of the strength of the community here. With a full belly, I head for a quiet stroll along the island’s single road. I exchange nods with a few passers-by, and I watch kids with slingshots trying in vain to hit flying foxes, which are considered a delicacy around these parts. Strangely, however, no one seems particularly interested in me. And that’s not my damaged ego talking. It’s just that having lived in the Solomons for some time,
get in the know Bellona is home to coconut crabs, the world’s largest arthropod. Measuring up to 40cm long, they can open coconuts with their claws.
SOLOMON ISLANDS
Bellonese body art is considered some of the best in the Pacific.
Aotaha Cave Lodge, built into Bellona’s eastern cliffs.
Central Avenue, Bellona
get in the know Bellona’s sister island, Rennell, is the second-largest raised coral atoll in the world, and is home to Lake Te’Nggano, the South Pacific’s largest lake.
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Kirk Owers bypasses Peru’s well-trodden gringo trail to explore its northern desert and discovers an ancient civilisation known for its blood sacrifices and fancy for fellatio. Photography by Kirk Owers
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get in the know The Peruvian Hairless dog is not the world’s ugliest canine (the Chinese Crested takes that prize), but it sure ain’t handsome.
PERU
Peruvian paso riders skirt the foothills near the Temple of the Sun, Trujillo.
get in the know The world’s longest surfable wave is found in the North Peruvian desert at Chicama, where rides can last for well over a kilometre.
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get in the know The Spanish called Siquijor Isla del Fuego (Island of Fire), probably referring to its many fireflies, which can give the island an eerie glow.
PHILIPPINES
On the small and enigmatic island province of Siquijor in the Philippines, John Oates defies warnings about witchcraft and dives into a mysterious world where scenery, sorcery and sunsets rule supreme. Photography by John Oates and Tommy Schultz
Sunset on Paliton Beach. Picture: John Oates
get in the know The mythical Aswang is a vampire/werewolf combo. These creatures are said to eat the dead, replacing the cadaver with banana trunks.
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