Preview of NGTI May 2014

M AY 2 0 1 4 • ` 1 2 0 • VO L . 2

ISSUE 11

INDIA’S BEST TRAVEL MAGAZINE TRIPADVISOR TRAVELLERS’ CHOICE AWARD 2014

THE

JOURNEY WITHIN Tales of Spiritual Awakening

WHALE-WATCHING IN SRI LANKA | BREAKTHROUGH IN BODH GAYA | THE MONKS OF JIRI-SAN

May 2014 N A T I O N A L

IN FOCUS

62

A STRETCH IN TIME

Yoga classes, ocean dips, and fresh juice facilitate a long overdue conversation in Goa

66

STAIRWAY TO PARADISE

The vexing appeal of Sri Lanka’s most famous peak

73

ON THE MOUNTAIN OF EXQUISITE WISDOM

The sound of one hand clapping and other immersive questions at a monastery in South Korea

G E O G R A P H I C

VOL. 2 ISSUE 11

T R A V E L L E R

94

WORKS LIKE A CHARM Protective souvenirs that connect locals and travellers to the more ethereal aspects of a culture

96

THE RIDE TO NIRVANA

Lured by a motorcycle and The White Album by the Beatles, a yoga sceptic with a bad back retreats to Rishikesh

I N D I A

JOURNEYS

112

INTO THE BLUE

Sperm whales and dolphins off the Sri Lankan coast

116

IN TIGER TERRITORY

Seeking the spirit of Tipu Sultan in Srirangapatna

106

BREAKTHROUGH IN BODH GAYA

A hyper-connected techie has a date with fate at the holiest of Buddhist pilgrimage sites

86

WITHIN AND WITHOUT

VINAY PANJWANI

The lure of Varanasi—and what it’s really like to take a dip in the Ganga

66 Adam’s Peak, Sri Lanka.

8 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

On The Cover IndIa’s Best ne travel magazI . 2 0 • VO L 14 • `12 m ay 2 0

trIpadvIsor’s choIce traveller’s award 2014

1 ISSUE 1

the

ney urhin Jowit l Awakening tales of Spiritua

In whaLE-watchIng

SrI Lanka

|

In brEakthrOUgh

bOdh gaya

| thE mOnkS

Of jIrI-San

Photographer Simon Bond took this picture at the Hwaeom-sa monastery on Jiri-san mountain, South Korea. After travelling through Asia for seven years, Bond has made South Korea his home.

www.natgeotraveller.in www.facebook.com/ natgeotraveller.india

14 Editor’s Note | 138 Inspire

VOICES 18 Tread Softly Seafood lovers, the ocean needs you

22 Guest Column Bright eyed in the Galápagos

124 42 National Park Hornbills and feline predators at the Anshi-Dandeli Tiger Reserve

NAVIGATE

48 Geo Tourism Japan’s tree-hugging princess and her moss-covered island

24 The Concept A museum that aims to displease

50 The Trend Cape Town’s design capers

28 Book Extract National Geographic photographer Steve Winter’s new book Tigers Forever

52 The Icon Beyond the palaces of Gwalior Fort lies a turbulent past

32 48 Hours Despite its cyber-sheen, Hyderabad holds many secrets

54 Travel Butler Make the most of low-cost airline deals

40 Local Flavour Falooda, weird but wonderful

60 Cinema Scope The real grand hotels of Budapest

40 Go Now Catch Mumbai’s flamingo parade

GET GOING 124 Road Trip Discovering the rolling fields and rocky beaches of the Welsh countryside

40

32 Stay 134 White water rafting and campfires in Uttarakhand 135 Travel back in time at Nagaur’s Ahhichatragarh Fort

INTERACTIVE

128 Adventure The best snorkelling spots in the Great Barrier Reef

136 Photo Contest The best of readers’ photos

SHORT BREAKS

LAST PAGE

130 From Bengaluru Despite a surfeit of tourists, Gokarna has aged well

144 Dire Straits Even with UNESCO recognition, Champaner-Pavagadh faces neglect

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 9

FLPA/WAYNE HUTCHINSON/DINODIA (SHEEP), DBIMAGES/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (FALOODA), PARIKSHIT RAO (ROCK CLIMBING), SIMON BOND (COVER)

20 Far Corners Unravelling a lifelong fascination with aviation

EDITOR’S NOTE Niloufer Venkatraman

D

“When we are no longer able to change a situation—we are challenged to change ourselves”

uring a particularly trying personal time a few months ago I re-read words by the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, about how humans can make something positive of even the hardest situations and circumstances. “Difficult external situations allow one to grow spiritually beyond the self,” he wrote.

It was on a trip to Poland some years ago that I first became acquainted with the writings of Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor whose book about life in the concentration camps of World War II is not just a story of his struggle for survival, but of the triumph of hope.

My husband and I were in the Polish town of Krakow. After much debate the previous evening we had decided we would visit O wi cim, about 62 km away. The deliberation the previous night was about the ethics of visiting a place of mass murder, for O wi cim is Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp where some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust occurred.

Upon entering the camp, we first saw a documentary film and walked through a small, simple museum. It was one of the most gutwrenching history lessons I have ever been taught. To this day, whenever I recall the photographs of emaciated men and women on the walls, or the mountains of confiscated spectacles, suitcases, hair, and shoes kept at the location exactly as they were found, it makes my hair stand on end.

No matter how many Hollywood movies you’ve seen recreating the scenes, when you’re at Auschwitz the scene is jarring. As we moved from the camp at Auschwitz I to the one at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) that day, a light, cold drizzle picked up, accompanied by ominous grey clouds. It made the setting even more bleak. In that stark, barren landscape, staring at the barracks, walking through the gas chamber where thousands of prisoners—mostly Jews, but also other political prisoners, gypsies, and homosexuals—had died, was a mentally chilling experience.

Travel isn’t always about fun and play. It can also

14 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

be about bringing reality to history, making us ask deeper questions, or feel deeply for strangers and those beyond our immediate circle. The lessons from that trip were numerous. The message at Auschwitz is clearly that one must never forget or allow such hatred to gain control of society, and naturally I left there with a sense of anger, sadness, horror, and shame. In stark contrast to those feelings, I found myself also taken in by Viktor Frankl’s discussion on how one can “make victory of bad experiences, turn life into triumph”.

So recently, when coping with loss, I found myself thinking about this trip and seeking out the old writings of Frankl. Not because it is about death and despair but quite the contrary. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a deeply inspiring book about how he managed to find meaning in the worst moments of life in a concentration camp, in the most extreme physical circumstances.

He says: “We who lived, in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I don’t claim to have mastered the attitude that Frankl talks about, but I try to reflect and act on it as often as I can. In trying times, in times of loss or difficulty, of irritation and anger, when I read about his spiritual journey in the death camps of Europe, I cannot but go deeper within myself. To see if there’s a way to make something positive of a tough situation, to change my attitude to an upbeat one, and find value in the grimmest experience. In a nutshell, the lesson is to find strength within, he said: “When we are no longer able to change a situation—we are challenged to change ourselves.” n

MERIEL JANE WAISSMAN/ISTOCK VECTORS/GETTY IMAGES

INWARD BOUND

VOICES Far Corners

TWO ILL-FATED AIRCRAFT UNRAVEL A LIFELONG FASCINATION WITH AVIATION

I

’ve been in love with aeroplanes for almost as long as I can remember. It was not an unusual affliction for little boys of my generation. I was lucky enough to enjoy my first flight at the impressionable age of six—on a Lufthansa 707 from Delhi to Athens. The swoon of synaesthetic bliss that experience charged me with still softens the tedium of air travel as an adult.

I immediately started collecting airline ephemera: sachets of refreshment tissues, the airliner postcards they used to carry on board in those days, the airline badges they handed out to kids, pilfered toiletries, an assortment of plastic cutlery, and even a few crisp air sickness bags.

My parents indulged the obsession with the refuse of their own air travel but mostly with books. I still have one thumper (it must weigh 5 kg), an illustrated history of aviation called The Lore of Flight. But they also had

The more you dig for information, the more connections you’re likely to find

christopher kai friese elliott

their fun at my expense, assuring me that if I worked hard and got a job someday I would be able to save up the `1,000 they said were needed to buy one of the disused Douglas DC-3 Dakotas parked forlornly on the apron of Delhi’s Safdarjung airstrip. I would gaze at the planes from a window of my school bus every day as we sped down Aurobindo Marg. And they waited patiently, with that distinctive, nose-up stance, like expectant puppies.

But the Dakotas and I had been cruelly deceived. Long before I could raise the promised sum, another Dakota, operated

by JamAir (for Jamnagar, not Jamaica), suffered engine failure on take-off from Safdarjung and came down across the road, behind INA Market. This was in December 1970. My father took me to see the wreckage which, miraculously, given the metallic carnage on the ground, 11 of the plane’s 16 occupants had survived.

Shortly after that crash Safdarjung airport was closed to commercial aviation.

One day my fleet of Dakotas vanished from their hangar and I slowly began to outgrow my fixation with flying machines. In later years I came to see my childish mania as a subset of the fascination with the West and all the sensuous blandishments of “foreign” that marked so many Indian kids of my generation and class.

It was only decades later, when I was all grown up, a hard-working and foreignreturned salaried man, that my obsession came back to haunt me. It was on one of my first travel assignments, to the Mishmi hills in Arunachal Pradesh, a lush and somewhat wild border region still covered in dense forests and speckled with small clusters of long-huts where many Mishmi communities preserved a material culture of bamboo and grass, of forests and wild meat. It was changing of course, which is why I could motor around. But I was entranced enough to leave the road and trek up to a secluded

Kai Friese is a writer, editor, and translator who likes to travel but not on holiday.

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 21

KAI FRIESE

Lost Horizon

hamlet where an old man told me about this plane that crashed in the heights of the nearby Klong valley in 1943…

It took me many visits, over several years, to find my way to it, sprawled on a barren hilltop high above the jungles. And it’s taken me at least as long to unravel my own motivation, the thrill it gave me to get there and see the shards of a wing and a tailfin, two engines and the debris of civilisation scattered on the cruel stones. I even went to America to meet the ancient pilot of the doomed aeroplane, CNAC 58, which had turned out to be a Douglas C-47, the cargo version of the Dakota. For a while I blamed my obsession on Tintin in Tibet and Hergé’s beautiful frame of a demolished Dakota on a snowy Himalayan mountaintop. As it happened I had nicknamed my young friend Jogin, who accompanied me to the wreckage, “Tintin”.

And noting my decrepitude and fondness for whiskey he promptly dubbed me “Captain Haddock”.

Later, when I delved into the manufacturing history of the plane, I discovered that it was from the same batch of 1943-vintage C-47s as the JamAir wreck I had seen as a boy in INA market. And, as comics aficionados may recall, even Safdarjung airport makes an appearance in Tintin in Tibet.

At first I thought all this was uncanny.

But the more you dig for information about anything, the more connections you’re likely to find. And I know now that I’m not alone in my fascination with the abrupt tragedies of aviation, when people like us, cocooned in fine machines of technology, comfort, and speed, vanish into the jaws of indifferent nature. It is astonishing.

CNAC-58 at least, was a small tragedy.

There was only one fatality, the radio operator Y.T. Wong, whose body was never recovered. The plane’s two pilots were saved by the kindness of one of those small Mishmi communities from that world of bamboo and wood. Looking back now, I can’t help but think that it wasn’t so much a plane that had come to grief. That was just a small incident in a crash of civilisations that is still rumbling on, drawing the hills and forests and the Mishmi who once husbanded them, into the world I wanted to fly away to when I was a boy. n

Breath of Fresh Air A TRIP TO THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS HERALDS CHANGE AND A NEW APPRECIATION OF THE NATURAL WORLD

Biju Sukumaran

I

’ve just set foot on the sandy beach of Mosquera Island, my first excursion in the Galápagos archipelago, but already the wildlife is eyeing me suspiciously.

A frisky sea lion pup stares as I hesitantly attempt to take a picture. He snorts and charges playfully, coming to a stop less than a foot away. A perfect photo, but as I set up to take it, he snorts into the camera.

I jerk back, but he’s already running off to the protective custody of his mother.

In these Enchanted Isles, as the Galápagos are known, the national park rules are strict. Only a certain number of visitors are allowed in each day, and Mosquera is no exception. It is my first stop on an eight-day cruise through the archipelago and my first real encounter with the wildlife.

Right after disembarking, our guide Roberto Plaza told us not to surround the wildlife and stay at least six feet away at all times. Someone should have informed the animals, because throughout the journey they seemed completely unafraid, and more than willing to approach visitors. Charles Darwin’s voyage to the islands on the H.M.S. Beagle in 1835, during which he collected samples that led to his theory of evolution, cemented this destination’s standing as a treasure trove of nature. Darwin commented

22 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

on how the animals, so isolated from mankind, displayed a startling lack of fear. Since then, scientists from around the world have come to the Galápagos to study everything from geology to ecology.

At numerous points along the journey, we stopped to snorkel. Giant sea turtles gracefully swam within feet of us on their own journeys. Seals played tag, touching us then darting away, lazily corkscrewing on the water’s surface in the sun, a vision of contentment.

As I soaked all this in, I sensed a growing change within me. I listened to our guides talk and their passion slowly bled into all of us. I used to be fascinated with the outdoors as a child, but time had dulled the feeling, burying it under more pressing concerns and changing interests. But seeing our guides pause, hunch down, and point out exotic birds in voices suffused with enthusiasm, stirred old memories.

We spent the hours between visiting the islands on the ship’s observation deck, looking for signs of whales. Though we never did catch sight of one, the search was fraught with potential and built-up excitement, punctuated by false positives.

When we did see other creatures, exotic or not, the wait became worthwhile; especially with our experienced guides whispering their knowledge to us.

The next island adventure was at Genovesa, also known as Tower Island.

It was mating season, and the magnificent frigate birds were out in force. While the females filled the sky searching for a mate, the males made nests and puffed up their brilliant red

throat sacks to attract them. We walked within a few feet of a group that ignored us entirely as they spread out their wings to win over a female bird that was flying past. Not distracted by these brilliant birds, our guides paid as much attention to the smaller, less colourful ones around.

They identified different kinds of hawks and sparrows, and at one point we spent over an hour with the binoculars trying to detect a perfectly camouflaged shorteared owl. Our guides had spotted it with their naked eyes while walking amongst the rocks.

Almost a year has passed since that trip, and I’ve realised how much the experience affected me. Where I used to walk unconcerned with the flickers of motion in the sky, I am now compelled to pay attention. Even in my hometown, where the birds are far less exotic, I crane and squint, as though my guides were there, their voices strained with an urgency that is now in my own voice too.

I’m not an expert, but like wine appreciation, appreciating nature is something you learn in the doing. I’ve noticed that my recent holidays have tended to lean towards the outdoors, as I stop to increasingly taste, savour, and understand the natural world. I look back on my trip to those truly Enchanted Isles, and particularly remember one night when we stayed in tree houses at a campsite amidst giant tortoise migrations.

We had gathered to eat and afterwards our guides sang songs: the cook played the guitar, the kitchen staff kept time and sang backup. My Spanish was rusty, but I picked up the words of a song about a lover’s hair, the wind, birds, and the air.

Was it an ode to the outdoors?

Much has been said about how much we humans have affected the Galápagos.

Important questions are raised about how to curtail pollution, prevent the introduction of new species, and preserve the pristine island habitats. These are all very important subjects. But as the music washed over me, I thought of Darwin, whose life was changed by these islands.

I looked around and saw my fellow visitors, their eyes bright in anticipation of a new day of swimming, hiking, and looking for new species. And I wondered if we talk enough about how much these isles have affected us. n Biju Sukumaran is a travel writer currently based in Florianópolis, Brazil.

MATT MOYER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES

VOICES Guest Column

NAVIGATE The Concept

Shock Treatment AN UNDERGROUND MUSEUM THAT AIMS TO DISPLEASE

By NATASHA SAHGAL

Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art is known for its unusual exhibits. Among them is “When my Heart Stops Beating”, a multimedia installation made from broken vinyl records, accompanied by written stories, and voice recordings of people saying “I love you”.

it a “subversive adult Disneyland”. How could I resist?

My journey began with a walk down three flights of steep stairs to a dungeonlike level where I met my personal guide: a modified iPod that detects the closest piece of art and provides information and audio clips. At the end of the day, the device even emailed me a map with details about my museum experience. Here’s a round-up of the exhibits that had the greatest impact on me. Naturally, they were among the weirdest the museum offers.

examine otherwise hard-to-see parts of their own bodies. There’s even a pair of binoculars available, in case you want a closer look.

BIT.FALL

THE TOILET

Artist Julius Popp’s Bit.Fall is a waterfall with a vocabulary: the droplets of water spell out words like “police,” “iPhone,” and “Obama”—random words from the Internet—each of which is visible for a second before the droplets fall and touch the ground. Bit.Fall represents the everchanging stimuli we are exposed to every second, without much time to process what we see or read.

The toilet is actually a functional lavatory, but with a difference. It is fitted with several well-positioned mirrors that force visitors to

Touch a little piece of Japan’s painful

HIROSHIMA IN TASMANIA

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 25

MARK KOLBE/GETTY IMAGES

T

he Museum of Old and New Art is designed to shock and fascinate. Pet project of mathematician and gambler David Walsh, the museum in Hobart, Tasmania, is known for its outlandish—often provocative—pieces. Consider for instance, the Poop Machine.

Defecation is rarely seen as an art form, but hundreds of visitors file into a room in MONA to watch a pile of fresh poop being excreted by a machine. It’s only one of the many exhibits that Walsh says is intended to elicit a strong response from viewers and force them to question their morals, ethics, even contemplate life. Other installations include a spelling waterfall, a mirrored toilet, and explicit video clips decoding the female orgasm. Walsh calls

NAVIGATE The Concept

The Late Show The European Night of Museums celebrates Europe’s cultural heritage

Lantern Tower in La Rochelle, France.

history with a collection of stone blocks that were part of the Ujina Railway Station in Hiroshima. The station was destroyed by the atomic bomb of 1945 but several strong rocks survived. Years later, Japanese artist Masao Okabe created 4,000 pieces of art by rubbing pencils and mud on paper placed on the textured rocks. This technique is called frottage. Visitors are invited to create their own works using the rocks from Ujina.

vessels that simulate the workings of the human stomach and intestines, complete with gastric enzymes and hormones. At 11 a.m. every day, the machine is fed a meal that is slowly digested over the next few hours. At 2 p.m. sharp, visitors gather to watch the Cloaca expel solid excreta. And yes, it comes very close to the real thing, in shape, texture, and smell.

BLUTCLIP AND PICKELPORNO

The Pulse Room allows visitors to see their hearts beat. The interactive art installation captures the pulse of a participant and sets a light bulb flashing at the exact rhythm.

When I walked in, my heartbeat was picked up by one of 108 flashing bulbs on the ceiling. As each new visitor entered, my beat pattern kept moving to the next bulb in line, resulting in a hypnotic display. But because this is the MONA, the background score to this uplifting installation is an unconnected sound exhibit called “Suspended perpetual funeral choirs from the future”.

Open Wed-Mon 10 a.m.-6 p.m. from OctMay, and until 5 p.m. from May-October (winter). Visit mona.net.au for details. n

PULSE ROOM

Don’t get too comfortable on the soft beanie beds on the floor. They’re seats to two disturbing movies that are projected on the museum’s ceiling. Blutclip features gory images of bloody body parts while Pickelporno is an explicit work about the female body and orgasm. Both are difficult to sit through without feeling extremely queasy.

HEAVEN OR HELL?

Among the museum’s most unsettling exhibits is a sculpture of the remnants of an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber.

Most of his body parts are missing, his innards are splattered around, but his face is unharmed and has an extremely peaceful expression. It’s made of pure chocolate.

CLOACA PROFESSIONAL

By the time I got to this exhibit I was immune to being grossed out. I managed to set aside my gag reflex and really appreciate the scientific installation popularly called the Poop Machine. Cloaca Professional is made of a series of glass 26 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

O

n a windy spring evening in La Rochelle, a town on France’s Atlantic coast, I set out for a night at the museums.

I just couldn’t resist the spirit of La Nuit Européenne des Musées. I’d heard about The European Night of Museums event from friends, and seen it in the city guide.

Usually held on the Saturday closest to International Museum Day (May 18), it is a one-night-only event when museums and heritage sites stay open until around 1 a.m.

In addition, the entry fee is discounted, if not waived altogether. It’s meant to encourage youngsters to visit cultural sites, and also includes concerts, themed guided tours, and other special events.

It seemed as if half of La Rochelle was participating in the event. As I discovered, queues at the more popular museums and monuments can be long. It took me half an hour to enter the Lantern Tower, which was a lighthouse, watchtower, and prison.

The wait, though, was worth it, particularly for the centuries-old graffiti etched on the tower’s walls by its Dutch, English, and French prisoners.

The Night of Museums is also a great time to explore smaller institutions, which are often less crowded but just as captivating. At the La Rochelle Museum of Protestant History, I saw letters, documents, and engravings that offered a fascinating glimpse of the town’s past as a 16th-century Protestant stronghold in Catholic France. It was a novel and inexpensive way to soak in the city.

The Night of Museums is on 17 May (www. nuitdesmusees.culture.fr). U.K.’s Museums at Night is from 15-17 May (www.culture24. org.uk/places-to-go/museums-at-night). n

—Sankar Radhakrishnan

NATASHA SAHGAL (CAR AND CAT), COLIN WESTON/GETTY IMAGES (BUILDING)

The museum places old art like the “Head of a Mummified Cat” (bottom) next to contemporary works like Erwin Wurm’s “Fat Car” (top), which symbolises the human race’s gluttonous consumerism.

NAVIGATE Local Flavour

Sugar Rush

Go Now

In the Pink

By NEHA SUMITRAN

On Mumbai’s streets, falooda is often sold in plastic bags (above). At restaurants, the multicoloured drink is served like milkshake, in tall glasses.

E

ven die-hard fans of falooda agree it is a ridiculous concoction. The milkshake-meets-dessert is an olfactory riot: slippery vermicelli noodles and ice cream layered with crushed ice, jelly, vanilla essence, soaked tukmaria (basil seeds), nuts, and rani pink rose syrup.

And yet, it works.

In Mumbai, falooda is served at nononsense Udupi restaurants, ice-cream parlours, juice centres, and even five-star establishments like the InterContinental Hotel. The drink’s introduction to the city is a little hazy, but many believe it was brought here by the Iranis in the 1940s, when they set up a string of cafés in Bombay. Versions of the drink are also popular in other parts of India, as well as Pakistan, Mauritius, Burma, and the Middle East. Faloodeh, a popular dessert in Persia, combined chilled vermicelli, with grated ice and rose water.

The updated version is slurpier: a cheap, cheerful concoction that offers respite from the heat and is heavy enough to count as a meal.

For a classic falooda, slip by the

charming Kyani and Co., an old Irani café in Dhobi Talao. Here, twinkle-eyed children and wobbly grandpas slurp up the drink on marble table-tops while watching the world go by. Badshah Cold Drink House in Crawford Market has built its reputation around falooda. Supposedly the best in the city, Badshah ups the ante with scoops of ice cream in all sorts of flavours.

It’s a pop artist’s dream. Swirls of pink (rose syrup), green (khus flavouring), and yellow ( just for colour) fill glasses that are topped with pistachio. Some, like the chocolate-flavoured falooda, add cream and too-sweet chocolate sauce to the mix—the classic kulfi is a tamer, but safer bet.

You’ll see it on the streets too. In neighbourhoods like Bhendi Bazaar and at beachside stalls in Juhu and Chowpatty, hawkers sell plastic packets of falooda chilled in Thermocol iceboxes.

Take them home, or simply stick a straw in for an instant brainfreeze and sugar hit. So loved is the Bombay falooda, that it has been immortalised in local lexicon: “Izzat ka falooda ban gaya” means to have one’s reputation shredded to bits (like the vermicelli). n

lamingoes get their pink hue from the pigment in the brine shrimp and blue-green algae they feed on. The dainty birds seemed to be on a non-stop binge at Mumbai’s Sewri jetty in early April. Over 15,000 greater and lesser flamingoes migrate here to feed at the mudflats.

Sewri has all the bleakness of an industrial hub, but the city fades away at the jetty’s edge. We saw thousands of flamingoes stretching as far as the eye can see. The mudflats are flanked by mangroves inhabited by the black-headed ibis, purple heron, and wriggling eels.

The muggy air cleared as the tide came in, urging a rosy fleet to take flight, wings beating hypnotically. Other flamingoes waded towards the mangroves, carefully picking their way like high-heeled ladies at a rain-soaked garden party. We climbed aboard a rickety barge anchored on the shore for a better view, in the company of photographers, families, and cops.

The 10-sq km-habitat has survived industrial spillage, but the migrations may be curbed by upcoming projects like the Trans-Harbour Link.

Bombay Natural History Society hosts flamingo walks where volunteers share facts, binoculars and spotting scopes (see bnhs.org for details).

WHERE Sewri Jetty, Mumbai WHEN Two to four hours before high tide sets in. Visit www. tides.mobilegeographics. com/calendar/year/658.html for the tidal calendar. From Nov to end-May. GETTING THERE The jetty is a 20-minute walk from Sewri railway station on the Harbour line. Take the Sewri-Koliwada Road opposite the station on the east side, then the first left, and continue until you reach a T-junction, where the right turn leads to the jetty. The now-shuttered Colgate Palmolive factory to the left of the T-junction is a handy landmark on Google maps. If you are taking a train, ensure the Central Railway’s routine maintenance work isn’t in progress.

Harbour Line services may be suspended at this time. n —Saumya Ancheri

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 41

DBIMAGES/ALAMY/INDIAPICTURE (PACKETS), DINODIA (WAITER), KULDEEP CHAUDHARI (BIRDS)

F

MUMBAI’S FALOODA IS AS WEIRD AS IT IS WONDERFUL

IN FOCUS Spiritual Journeys

Breakthrough in

BODH GAYA

106 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

Bihar

O

n the evening of day five of my meditation course, I felt I had made good progress in the Vipassana technique I had come to Igatpuri to learn. Earlier that day, the teacher had said we would experience a “free flow of sensations” from head to toe as we advanced. Soon after, I had a moment when something magical seemed to have happened—I had felt my entire body glowing from the inside. I took this as a mark of accomplishment, and smugly went to my room to retire for the night.

After years of seeking calm from chaos, a hyper-connected urban techie has a date with fate at the holiest of Buddhist pilgrimage sites

By Shubhadeep Bhattacharya | Art by Syed Ali Arif

I was 22 years old and though I had only been in the workforce as a software engineer for two years, I was already deeply stressed.

I decided to find a quiet place to escape Mumbai’s chaos. I was hoping to gain selfcontrol, and deal with my anger and frustration better. Intrigued at the prospect of being in an environment of complete silence, cut off from the world and all its problems, I had come to take a break at this meditation centre.

That night, as I lay in bed trying to sleep, I felt a strange sensation. A strong light seemed to be pouring onto the top of my head. I opened my eyes to find the room completely dark. The moment I shut my eyes, I sensed the beam of light again. I began to have even stranger visions. It was like I was MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 107

IN FOCUS Spiritual Journeys

108 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

Bihar at the movies: Scene after scene of unfamiliar landscapes and people flashed by vividly.

But I had an eerie feeling the people I was seeing were dying, and that these were their last moments alive. Part of me was in awe and terribly curious about what I was seeing, but another part was paralysed with fright and shock at what was happening. Nothing had prepared me for such an experience.

I had imagined the Vipassana course would be an escape, but my world and all its problems were still with me, as were new ones generated by the visions I was experiencing.

I had no option but to face them. I left my room and walked out for some air. The beautifully landscaped gardens of the Dhamma Tapovana meditation centre were still. I walked to the ashram’s golden pagoda and sat in the garden feeling eerily on edge; even a passing cat startled me.

There was no one to talk to. In any case, I wasn’t allowed to talk: The Vipassana meditation technique requires participants to maintain complete silence for 10 days. I still had five days to go. I went back to my room and tried to sleep but the visions continued, and I didn’t catch a wink.

At 4 a.m., I heard the wake-up bell and as soon as I could, I sought out the assistant teacher to tell him what I had experienced.

He asked me to ignore it and focus instead on the meditation technique I had come there to learn. His nonchalant dismissal of my dramatic experience left me a little annoyed.

I had expected more empathy. I wanted answers. What was I going through? More importantly, how could I make it stop?

Miffed at the teacher’s attitude, and probably feeling sleep- and food-deprived as well, I gave up making any serious effort in my meditation from day seven. I figured that not meditating was the only way to prevent these experiences. I wanted it to be over, and waited for the course to end. I was angry. This was not what I had travelled from home for. I had sought peace, not more agitation. When I spoke to my course mates after the programme was over, none had anything similar to report. Everyone was happy about how peaceful and powerful it was for them.

I vowed never to go back to Vipassana.

In a dramatic blow, the ten-day retreat had dispelled my shallow idea that meditation was about escape from the commotion of the real world. In its own way, the course had revealed to me a deep and rich inner journey that left me both shocked and awestruck.

Putting the Igatpuri experience behind me, I returned to normal life disappointed. But the seed had been sown.

Part of me was in awe and terribly curious about what I was seeing, but another part was paralysed with fright and shock at what was happening

A few years later, I decided to take the course again. Like most plugged-in urban men, my life was driven 24X7 by technology and gadgets. I hoped this time I would have as normal a meditation experience as everyone else. But that wasn’t to be. Again, I had all kinds of visions, like I was having a paranormal experience. Although I persisted, I could not make any progress with the Vipassana technique. Once again the objective of the course was sadly defeated.

But something in me wasn’t ready to accept this eventuality. So in 2008, I signed up again, this time at the Dhamma Bodhi Vipassana centre in Bodh Gaya, Bihar. After two courses in Igatpuri I was hoping a new venue would bring me something different.

And it did.

Help came in the form of a remarkable assistant teacher who perceived that I was going through a problem. He helped me through it with empathy and patience. Once I allowed the lights, visions, astral travel, strange apparitions and extraordinary experiences to exist without resistance, as he advised, they suddenly became benign. It was like being inside a fantasy video game, clearing levels and challenges. I realised then that my visions in the previous years were never frightening in themselves, but my reaction and preconceptions had made me believe they were. Once I let go my aversion to them, I was able to feel true equanimity. Great knots of accumulated internal tension came undone. Layers of conditioning were swiftly removed by surrendering and letting life happen. Suddenly I was able to devote myself to the philosophy, technique,

and practice of Vipassana—of self-purification by self-observation. A surge of joy and gratitude suffused me and persisted through the course and for months after.

Vipassana is a Pali word that means “to observe objectively”—that is, to view things as they really are. It is a meditation technique that Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, is believed to have discovered and prescribed, as a means to attaining liberation from suffering. The fact that I had my personal breakthrough with Vipassana in Bodh Gaya, where Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment 2,500 years ago, made it all the more special. After the course, I spent a few hours at the Mahabodhi Temple and sat in meditation under the banyan tree in the temple complex. There couldn’t have been a better culmination to this magical experience.

I have done a total of five Vipassana courses in the last 12 years, at centres in Igatpuri, Bodh Gaya, Dharamsala, and Chennai. After Bodh Gaya, my experiences have been relatively mellow and less dramatic, but they’ve helped me deepen my practice and inner journey.

Regular Vipassana practice helps free the mind of its unconscious habits. It is about accepting that everything, both pleasant and unpleasant, is impermanent. Its real benefit comes from daily application in everyday life.

That’s where I’ve faltered. Often skipping sessions or meditating in the car during the commute to and from work, I find myself slipping into old behaviour patterns about six months after a course. Still, insights from the technique have helped me through various life challenges I’ve encountered. Though I do lose self-control and react aggressively on occasion, I find there is a background of peace that is accessible to me whenever I’m agitated. I have a sense of grace, a trust in life, a lightness and joy that I don’t think I would otherwise have found. I believe it’s made me a happier person, and has transformed my view of life.

Vipassana is not the idyllic escape I imagined it was at 22. It’s seriously hard work, but it has brought me a deep sense of serenity. I find that the programme provides a necessary break from today’s 24X7 hyper-connected world. It’s the downtime required to bring balance back to my life. On a spiritual level, it humbles and makes the practitioner grateful.

Judging by how agitated I was at work just yesterday, I suspect a detox trip to Bodh Gaya is already overdue. n Shubhadeep Bhattacharya is the digital business head at a Mumbai media company

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 109

IN FOCUS Spiritual Journeys

THE GUIDE

Stay and eat Basic but comfortable accommodation is provided in the form of single- and double-occupancy rooms at the centres. Laundry service is available. Simple wholesome vegetarian food is provided.

Students who have finished at least one ten-day course get only breakfast and lunch.

New students also get a tea snack, usually kurmura and tea. There’s no dinner.

Cost The course and all facilities are free.

Part­i­ci­pants can make a donation if they want to.

What to expect The course requires serious hard work.

There are three steps to the training.

1) Follow a simple code of moral conduct that serves to calm the mind, which is otherwise too agitated to perform the task of selfobservation. 2) Develop some mastery over the mind by learning to fix one’s attention on the flow of breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. 3) By the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana.

Vipassana does not allow any contact with the world outside the camp. No books, news, music, gadgets, or distractions are permitted.

Participants cannot talk to each other, or make any other form of contact, during the course.

• •

•

“

Vipassana is not the idyllic escape I imagined it was at 22. It’s seriously hard work, but it has brought me a deep sense of serenity

”

At Igatpuri and other Vipassana centres, the pagoda has many cells where individuals can retreat for meditation.

IP-BLACK/INDIAPICTURE

About Vipassana The meditation tradition was practised in Myanmar (Burma) and re-intro­duced in India in 1969 by S.N.Goenka.

Vipassana meditation is taught at ten-day residential courses. The principal objective of the technique is to help the practitioner develop an equanimous and non-reactive mind, free from suffering.

There are many Vipassana centres around India and the world where one can learn the technique and continue one’s practice (www.dhamma.org).

South Korea

on the Mountain of Exquisite Wisdom

The sound of one hand clapping and other immersive questions at a monastery in South Korea

By Zachary Bushnell Photographs By Simon Bond

IN FOCUS Spiritual Journeys

What did your original face look like before your mother and father were born?

Birojana-bhul, the Buddha of Infinite Cosmic Light, is shown in postures of past, present, and future, at Yeon-gi-am’s main prayer hall. Opening page: Ornate paintings of Bodhisattvas and historically important people hang in the halls of Hwaeom-sa monastery.

This work adorns Yeon-gi-am, a hermitage dedicated to the missionary monk who brought Buddhism from India to Korea.

E

very culture has its axis mundi, the point at which heaven and earth meet. These world navels are often represented by a mountain: Meru, Olympus, Shasta. In South Korea that point is Jiri-san, the “Mountain of Exquisite Wisdom” which has 12 ancient Buddhist temples. Amidst its pine-studded plenitude sits Hwaeomsa, Jiri’s crown jewel monastery.

My ostensible reason for being in the area was to teach English to overworked youth. Brutal competition for employment later in life means that Korea’s young are forced early into a system of cram schools to help them get ahead. They are shuttled from one afterschool centre to another, for maths, language, science, computer, and music tuitions. The stigma attached to flunking tests and the rigours of the workplace are so great that suicide is not uncommon.

I lived in a small city called Suncheon on the country’s southernmost coast, a four-hour train journey from the capital Seoul—calmer, for sure, but still rigidly focused on education. What actually brought me to the lower half of the Hermit Kingdom was a bit of trivia: The oldest extant text printed with movable metallic type was produced by a South Korean temple in 1377. The document, known as the Jikji, is an anthology of Buddhist teaching. I wanted to imbibe the atmosphere of the land that birthed the first mechanical print, as well as 74 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

some of the teachings that may have been included in it.

Midway through my tenure, I befriended a monk from Hwaeom-sa who liked me for my English tongue and practical company. It was as his guest and tutor—though the tutelage was mutual—that I began a sort of temple residency: three nights in, four out. His name was Wu Mun, which roughly translates into “stupid door” or “useless gate”.

When they join the monastic community, many Korean Buddhist monks are given names that incorporate Wu, which suggests something like “non”, or “nothing”, or “not have”, a concept central to the practice of Seon, ancestor to Japan’s Zen. Seon represents the largest sect of Korean Buddhism. When Buddhism arrived to Korea in the late fourth century, it was able to gain followers only by incorporating aspects of a pre-existing faith: a Confucius-infused animistic shamanism called Muism. Viewing the various imported doctrines of Buddhism as inconsistent, Korean scholars sought to synthesise these traditions and nullify the disparities, producing Tonbulgyo (“interpenetrated Buddhism”).

The influence of Muism is still visible in the mountain spirit shrine (sanshin-gak) held in each temple. Korean Buddhist temples are almost exclusively built in mountainous or rural areas. In an increasingly urbanised and industrialised nation however, this makes the

South Korea

Hwaeom-sa is the most distinguished of the 12 monasteries on Jiri-san, South Korea’s tallest mainland mountain.

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 75

IN FOCUS Spiritual Journeys

belief less attractive for a constituency that lives in housing towers and frequents shopping complexes. Enter Christianity to provide succour to the urban elite. The Church was able to take religion to the heart of the cities. In outward form more faith factory than house of worship, these bleak efficient buildings actually host much gospel spirit, including full bands and choirs.

Nine neon red crosses were visible from the eighth floor balcony of the motel I was living in. It is nothing short of brute irony that the hotel was a well-trod nexus of the city’s red light district, those crucifixes ever glowing overhead. At night, bass thumped my little room. Against swollen weekend traffic I fled to the hills, deposited by a bus at the big toe of Jiri-san, one tree- and stream-lined kilometre from the gates of Hwaeom-sa. The climb is meant to clear the mind of worldly clutter; mundane thoughts like leaves on mountain runoff, business clogging valley gutters. For arriving and departing pilgrims, restaurants at the base of the path serve replenishing samgyetang: ginseng chicken soup.

“What is the path?”

“Everyday life is the path.”

“Can it be studied?”

“If you try to study, you will be far away from it.”

“If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?”

“The path does not belong to the perception world, neither does it belong to the nonperception world.

Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless.

If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky.

You name it neither good nor not-good.”

There are three gates. The first has two simple, wooden pillars that represent duality. By passing between them, visitors express their adherence to the middle way, a sort of pledge of wuwei (non-action), to saying neither “good” nor “not-good”. By the time I reach these, my mind is free of the stuff of the week. I nod to the ornaments of the kings of the four directions and Bodhisattvas at the latter two gates, the pilgrim’s true hosts.

Once inside, dragons and turtles abound: as pedestals, clouds, fountains and water troughs. Dragons often represent both the beneficent and terrible aspects of ego, a force most monks and visitors are there to tame, for it is also a vehicle if harnessed. Turtles inhabit the ocean with ease, denizens of the depths of consciousness. They also traverse the land, and carry the earth on their backs.

The temple’s prayer halls and shrines circumscribe an open stone courtyard, which contains a rare five-storey pagoda with the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac engraved around its base. Below this dais are the monks’ quarters, one of which I occupy. They are long bare rooms separated into sitting and sleeping areas by folding rice-paper dividers, warmed in the winters by pipes circulating hot water beneath the floor. Meals are communal and vegetarian, consisting of soup, rice (usually with steamed beans mixed in), cooked vegetables, seaweed, and kimchi—with basically the same items for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only thing really prepared in the chambers is tea. Some incumbents dry persimmons on the porch in season.

76 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

Monks line up outside the main hall before each prayer session (top). Inside, they form three rows and perform synchronised bows and turns as part of the service; Monks are issued the clothing they wear at the monastery, including shoes (left); Fresh mountain spring water flows continuously from fountains with sculpted dragons and turtles (right).

South Korea

In spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest moon; In the summer, a refreshing breeze; in winter, snow will accompany you.

If useless things do not hang in your mind, Any season is a good season for you.

Named for the Flower Garland Sutra, one of the most important scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism, Hwaeom-sa was founded in 544 by a missionary monk named Yeon-gi-josa. The legend goes that Yeon-gi-josa flew from India to Korea on a dragon-turtle, carrying the seeds of the Great Vehicle’s teachings, and set up shop on the slopes of Jiri-san. This conception myth is commemorated by a statue 108 steps up from the temple’s main prayer hall. Four lions—displaying the four cardinal human emotions of anger, joy, sorrow, and serene love—hold up a three-storey stone pagoda. Beneath the pagoda stands the sculpture of a monk, probably Yeon-gi-josa. Higher, and to the north lies a hermitage called Yon-gi-am that is dedicated to him.

Hwaeom-sa was greatly expanded by Master Uisang in the 600s. During his time there, Uisang composed a pivotal Korean Buddhist text, the Hwaeom-ilseung-beopgye-do (Diagram of the One Vehicle Flower Garland Dharma Realm), and effectively pre-empted Einstein’s theory of special relativity by writing, “A thought of an instant is for eternity.” The temple was further refurbished in the 800s

by Doseon-daesa, who was a master of meditation and feng shui. The inner stone walls of the first main prayer hall were inscribed with the entire Flower Garland Sutra. But only traces of that structure remain since the original compound was razed by Japanese forces in 1593, at the start of the Seven Year War. Thereafter the temple was rebuilt, burnt, and rebuilt several times, testament to Korea’s exhaustive history of occupation.

The place contrasts starkly with the architecture of recent cities.

Older towns still bear slate-roofed low houses, but for the most part it’s all high-rise apartments and malls. After so many wars and periods of external control, much of the country’s traditional culture has been cleansed, or replaced by transplants. Even the cherry blossom was imported from Japan during a period of occupation. Thus for Koreans, the iconic early spring pink that arises overnight and makes several weeks a pastel dream, is bittersweet.

That perspective of the cherry blossom is illustrative of a sentiment that suffuses the country and its culture. It is especially palpable in the hills, along temple roads, amid the last vestiges of traditional architecture and dress, and its name is as ubiquitous as its presence: Han. In Korean, Korea is called Hanguk; the written language, Hangul.

Han is heavy in bars, where people down bottle after green post-work bottle of soju, which, when poured into beer becomes sobaek; where frivolous drinking games abound, the purpose of which is to put one as cognitively far as possible from the oppression of the pre- and succeeding days.

But that’s just one interpretation—the most dense. Han is all-pervasive. It is what blooms as much as what shakes petals loose; fish and water, fire and fodder, both and each. The likeliest English analogue might be the “blues”: helplessness infused with hope; acknowledgement that the situation’s rough, but with a chorus of “we shall overcome”. It is what Wu Mun means when, on one of our walks, he points MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 77

GET GOING Road Trip

Getting it Right, the Welsh Way Nothing quite beats the delight of walking around Wales.

Except for driving around it | Text & Photographs by RISHAD SAAM MEHTA

O

n my first roadtrip in the United Kingdom, I made a monumental mistake. I didn’t have a GPS device and used driving direc­ tions printed out from the Automobile Association website. The printer’s margins were set incorrectly, and I ended up driving west from London on the M4, instead of north on the M40. I drove many kilometres before realising my mistake.

The region I was driving through was stunning. The smooth tarmac wound past rolling green fields, stone houses, and imaginatively-named pubs like The Bull & Spectacles. When I stopped at one of those pubs to pore over my map, an old-timer told me that I had made a fortunate mistake.

“You’re in Wales. That’s jolly good, what!”

Now seven years later I am back in Wales—driving 360 kilometres from London’s Heathrow airport to the seaside town of Saundersfoot in West Wales, from where my real trip will begin. After years of being sternly directed by Guideshwari, my GPS, I’ve decided to shut her up and explore the old-fashioned way, with a detailed map.

My first stop after leaving Saundersfoot the next morning is the Stackpole Estate in Pembrokeshire Coastal National Park in South West Wales. The circular walk that starts here takes in about 13 kilometres of coast, meandering past two idyllic beaches (Barfundle Bay and Broad Haven) and craggy surf-battered cliff tops. A bracing breeze comes in over the Atlantic, and the sea breaks into a furious froth as it crashes into the cliffs on the coast.

Wales is wonderful for walking. In 2012, the Wales Coastal Path was completed, making this the only country in the world whose entire circumference can be walked. The path practically hugs the coast throughout its 1,392-kilometre length from the outskirts of Chester in the north to Chepstow in the south.

After Stackpole, I am keen to drive six kilometres to Stack Rocks, to walk to St. Govan’s Chapel, which is wedged into a cliff. I also want to visit the Green Bridge of Wales, the country’s largest natural arch. But the area is one of NATO’s most important artillery training fields in Europe and the guns are pounding away today.

124 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2014

Since I don’t want my little red Mini to become a target for an eager soldier, I give this a miss. It’s a pity, because I’ve read that the coast around here is rugged, with weird rock formations that have names like Moody Nose, Bullslaughter, and Huntsman’s Leap.

MOVIE SETS

Instead, I drive along the coast on the B4319 and, five kilometres later, arrive at a beach called Freshwater West. Its wild and desolate beauty made it the ideal spot to shoot the beach battles in Ridley Scott’s 2010 movie Robin Hood. It is also the place where the house-elf Dobby is buried in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Fresh West, as the locals call it, is wide open to big Atlantic rollers and is Wales’ best surf beach. Its sandy flats are ideal to lounge on, but the powerful underwater rips make it very dangerous to swim. I have lunch at the refreshment van run by a cheery girl called Ann, who makes me a beach burger with black Welsh beef and Welshman’s caviar, which is actually laver seaweed, dried and toasted to bring out its flavour.

Wales

Passenger trains to the reconstructed Rhyd Ddu station (left) started in 2003, 67 years after they were closed. The walking path starting at the station is one of the easiest ways up to Mt. Snowdon; Surfing competitions are frequently held at Freshwater West beach, one of Wales’ top surfing spots (middle). The beach has become a popular spot among Harry Potter fans ever since sections of the final film were shot here; Besides being a pilgrimage spot, well known for its cathedral, St. Davids (right) is also a base for many walking trails and water sports.

I head further north, driving on secluded B roads rather than the faster A Roads. About 55 kilometres of beautiful countryside later, I arrive at St. Davids—the smallest city in Britain. Surrounded by the sea on three sides and decorated with colourful traffic islands, this is where the patron saint of Wales was born and buried.

It’s been a place of pilgrimage for 1,500 years, as well as a place of plunder by “those pesky Vikings”, as the city’s baker calls them when I go to his store for a snack and some information.

In most Western cities I’ve visited, the cathedral is the focal point of the landscape, visible from almost everywhere. But at St. Davids, it was intentionally situated in a valley and hidden in a hollow in the hope of escaping the attention of marauding Viking boats. Regardless, it was ransacked at least seven times. The interiors are magnificent, if a bit skewed by the 1248 earthquake. In the area where the cannon sit, the misericords— small projections under hinged seats that give the worshipper support when the seat is turned up—have carvings under them.

Obviously, one of the carvers had a sense of humour because under the misericord marked Arch d Brecon, the carving shows a boatful of people, with one being miserably seasick over the side.

COASTAL DELIGHTS

The second night’s halt is at Aberaeron, just 88 kilometres from St. Davids on the A487, but with plenty of interesting stops along the way. The first of these halts is the imposing Strumble Head Lighthouse on St. Michael’s Island, an islet to the west of the village of Fishguard. The lighthouse is dramatic, but the 20-minute drive to it, veering off the A487 to travel 10 kilo­ metres on narrow country lanes, is even more scenic.

Back on the highway after my detour, I drive through the little village of Newport, which is huddled around a Norman castle.

The region is called the Preseli Hills, and it was apparently quite a popular spot in the prehistoric era. There are Iron Age forts, standing stones, and burial chambers scattered all over. In fact, the giant bluestones at Stonehenge, 230 km to the east, were obtained from here. How they got so far away, though, remains a puzzle.

Two kilometres past Newport, I turn on to a narrow road that leads to Pentre Ifan.

The ancient manor contains the largest and best preserved dolmen in Wales. The 16-tonne capstone of the megalithic tomb is so delicately poised atop three upright bluestones that it is hard to believe it has been perched there for 5,000 years. It’s

the middle of the day and the sun is harsh.

It would have been better to stand by this mystifying man-made structure during the soft light of dusk or dawn.

I continue down the A487, driving past Cardigan, before turning onto the A486 on a small diversion to New Quay. The town is crammed with ice-cream parlours and seafood cafés overlooking a pretty harbour.

I can see the smooth surface of the sea occasionally broken by frolicking dolphins.

Dolphin-watching boats scurry to and from the harbour.

Returning to the A487, I make my way to Aberaeron, my last night halt on the coast. The town is famous for honey vanilla ice cream that has been made by the local Holgate family for the last 35 years. It has won many awards and after having a scoop I know why. The village itself is a fishing community with pastel-coloured Georgian houses. The menus at most restaurants feature lobster, caught fresh by the fishing boats I can see docked in the harbour.

There’s a heat wave on, and the locals are out enjoying the warm evening sun. Just outside the Harbour Master Hotel, where I am staying, a group of school teachers are boisterously celebrating the end of term with dewy glasses of chilled Chardonnay.

Teenagers nonchalantly ignore the sign

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 125

GET GOING Road Trip

Stackpole Circular path takes in the best features of Pembrokshire: striking coastline, beaches, and man-made freshwater lakes linked by bridges.

that says “No Jumping from the Harbour Walls” and somersault into the cool blue water. The local constable, hot under his starched collar, has probably decided to turn a Nelson’s eye just for today.

MOUNTAIN CONNECTIONS

I turn away from the coast and head north on the A487, past the university town of Aberystwyth, to the ancient town of Machynlleth (known locally as Mach).

It is market day, as it has been on every Wednesday since 1291. There are stalls selling everything from coffee mugs to home-made fudge, speciality cheeses and breads, and even Mysore masala and chilli paneer dosas. The chef, who is half Indian, laments that she cannot source desiccated coconut to make the accompanying green chutney.

Once I cross Mach, I experience the roads that have earned Wales a reputation as a fantastic driving

destination. Featuring in National Geographic’s Drives of a Lifetime, the stretch of A487 from Mach to Dolgellau and thereafter the A496 to Porthmadog has me smiling at the wheel of my hot hatch. The roads are perfectly cambered with a mix of lazy bends, hard right and left handers, and S-turns that you can straight-line through. My mind is heady with glee.

I am now deep inside Snowdonia National Park and the next morning I take a break from driving and ride the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway to Rhyd Ddu (pronounced Rhid-Dee). It’s a lovely experience, chugging through the highlands, hearing the rhythmic hiss of steam, and smelling the coal and water vapour rise from the steam engine. The trail from Rhyd Ddu takes me to Mount Snowdon (3,560 ft). It starts from the railway platform and the round trip takes about four hours. The views are stunning. On the way down I meet Sarah, a dogwalker from Porthmadog, who climbs the mountain once a week “because it’s there”. She’s echoing George Mallory’s famous words from 1924, when he was

asked why he wanted to climb Everest.

When I recognise the quote, she suggests I continue north from Porthmadog on the A498, past the pretty village of Beddgelert, which is known for its riverside walks, and stop at the junction where the A498 meets the A4085. There I will find an unlikely connection, she promises.

I follow her directions. At the inter­ section of these two mouth-watering drivers’ roads through Snowdonia, I find the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel. It turns out that the crumpled and creased topography surrounding the hotel served as the training ground for the 1953 Everest Team led by John Hunt, which included Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. The duo returned here for a reunion five years after their ascent. The team’s signatures are still visible on the ceiling of the pub, and the handmade leather boots they wore on Everest hang in another room.

Sitting under their soles, I realise that there is no more soul-satisfying way to explore mountains than on foot. Then I look out of the window and see my soupedup little red car and think that driving through them comes a very close second. n

Wales THE GUIDE ORIENTATION Wales is a part of the United Kingdom, along with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Its capital Cardiff is 220 km­/ 2.5 hours west of London.

Saundersfoot, which is the gateway to the Pembrokeshire Coast is 140 km/2 hours west of Cardiff.

RENTING A CAR The best deals for car rentals are usually available online or at Heathrow airport. Popular car rental companies include Hertz, Avis, Thrifty, and Budget.

The cars cost from GBP 106/`10,594 a week for an economy car like a Ford Fiesta to GBP 258/`25,800 for a fun car like the BMW 320i or something similar.

An Indian driving licence works as long as it is a smart card. But having an International Driving Permit as back up is a good idea. You’ll also need a credit card at the time of taking the car.

GPS units are available at extra cost, but the roads in Wales are not very complicated.

Pick up a map (well-known brands are the AA, Collins, and Philips) at service stops on the motorway.

STAY SAUNDERSFOOT Malin House Hotel is a comfort­ able, home-run bed and breakfast (+44-1834-812344;

The village of Beddgelert, meaning Gelert’s Grave, is named after a legendary hound that died saving its owner’s baby from a wolf. www.malinhousehotel.co.uk; from GBP 28/`2,902 per person).

St. Brides Hotel overlooks the Saundersfoot harbour and beach. It features a lovely infinity pool (+44-1834-812304; www.stbridesspahotel.com; doubles from GBP 150/`15,554).

ST. DAVIDS Warpool Court Hotel is located in an old house that has fabulous views of the sea and lovely manicured gardens (+44-1437-720300; warpoolcourthotel.com; from GBP 55/`5,702 per person).

The Coach House is a simple guest house located in the heart of the city (+44-1437-720632;

www.thecoachhouse.biz; doubles from GBP 80/`8,293).

ABERAERON The Harbour Master Hotel was actually the harbour master’s house. It is metropolitan chic with seven stylish en-suite rooms (+44-1545-570755; www. harbour-master.com; doubles from GBP 110/`11,406).

Feathers Royal was originally an 18th-century inn for coach travellers (+44-1545-571740; www.feathersroyal.co.uk; doubles GBP 120/`12,440).

PORTHMADOG The Royal Sportsman is right on High Street and walking distance from the railway station (+44-1766-512015; www.royalsportsman.co.uk; GBP 45/`4,664 per person).

Castle Cottage, Harlech is 32 km from Porthmadog. This restaurant has superb food and cosy rooms for lodging (+44-1766-780479; www. castlecottageharlech.co.uk; doubles GBP 200/`20,734).

SUGGESTED ITINERARY

Machynlleth is a historic town that is sometimes claimed as the ancient capital of Wales. Its popular market day has taken place every Wednesday for nearly 700 years.

Day 1 Explore Cardiff. There’s plenty to see and do in the city.

Day 2 Cardiff to Saundersfoot (145 km/3 hours) Saundersfoot is an easy-going

seaside town, where you can go mackerel fishing.

Day 3 Saundersfoot to St. Davids (100 km/2 hours) Drive via Stackpole Estate, Stack Rocks, and Freshwater West. There are many lovely walks along this route; a list is available at www.visitwales. com/things-to-do/activities/ walking-hiking/pembrokeshirecoast-path.

Day 4 St. Davids to Aberaeron (90 km/2 hours) There are plenty of turn offs to explore along the way. Don’t miss the secluded Strumble Head Lighthouse. Stop at New Quay for lunch or a dolphinwatching cruise.

Day 5 Aberaeron to Porthmadog (120 km/3 hours) Try to do this on a Wednesday, so you can visit the delightful street market at Machynlleth.

The town marks the entrance into Snowdonia and serious fun at the wheel begins.

Day 6 Explore Porthmadog (about 100 km/spend the day) Go for a train ride, climb Mount Snowdon, or drive through the region. There is plenty to satisfy the adrenaline junkie.

Day 7 Porthmadog to London (400 km/ 5 hours) Take the M1 via Birmingham.

MAY 2014 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 127