A HARD DAY'S FRIGHT

Most travellers have hotel adventures, but few will have been frightened out of their wits by a couple climbing into bed with them in the middle of the night. This happened to me in Morocco when they mistook their room and I did the unthinkable—I forgot to lock my door.

A hotel is a home away from home for travellers and especially for travel writers. So I don't deny to being fussy about the standards. Will my room overlook the motorway or the market? Will I be over the kitchen, or under the discotheque? Will there be an Indian wedding in the garden or a buffet around the pool? IS THE HOTEL STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

Do you suffer from  xenodociophobia—a fear of foreign hotels?  An airline stewardess I know will never sleep on the ground floor after finding a snake in her room in Darwin while an interior decorator friend will not stay higher than the ninth floor in case fire traps him in his Calvin Klein’s. My London postmastman said his own particular dread was finding hard pillows on his annual holiday in Bournemouth.

Hard pillows, lumpy mattresses, slow room-service, no room-service—room-service banging in with breakfast—these are common complaints. 

 I always carry a personal pillow, but my own phobia is the colour orange drives me mad. Why does a sunburnt country like Australia have so many motels with a hot, orange décor? The same is true, I have discovered, of many hotels in the Arab world. After being out in the desert, I want the décor to be cool green. Or blue.

Do you agree that many hotel bathrooms leave much to be desired? Do you scald yourself under the mixer tap for instance?  Well, that's nothing. When I stayed in Hunza in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, the bearer-wallah brought me water to wash in a bucket filled from a dripping glacier.

I had many adventures while researching a book on Pakistan. At a canal rest-house in Dera Ghazi Khan, I awoke in the night to find the room had been invaded by saffron-coloured frogs. More than 40 were leaping about when I turned on my torch (there was no elecricity). Then in Balakot, in the Kagan Valley, I was disturbed by bush-mice chewing the orange flavoured vitamin C tablets in my wash-bag.

The service in some hotels can be truly disturbing as well. Leaving a hotel in Tangier recently, my bags were carried out to a taxi by the porter, smoking a cigarette. (who was angry that I requested he put it out).

In the 1980s when I was working in Khartoum, we had a power failure every night. On one occasion I was trapped for hours in an elevator with a 7ft tall Dinka man. Then in another hotel, this time in Port Sudan, I opened the window for a breath of air and the entire thing crashed into the courtyard.

Happily most places to stay have improved dramatically in the intervening years, but I’m sure all travellers have their tales of hotel holiday hell: what are yours?

 Images: www.copix.co.uk

LOST INNOCENCE OF ABBOTTABAD

It is inconceivable that Osama bin Laden lived in a compound in Abbottabad without knowledge of the ISI - the Pakistan intelligence agency. Or was OBL so clever as to figure that no one would suspect him of hiding in a town, so close to Islamabad, having the biggest presence of active, and retired, military personnel in the country. Either way, Pakistanis are justified in feeling humiliated, deceived and demoralised.

It is unfortunate that Abbottabad, a leafy garrison town founded by one Major John Abbott in 1847, is now associated with the name Bin Laden.

I visited it when I was writing a book on Pakistan. A friend in Rawalpindi had an auntie who lived there in a bungalow surrounded by climbing roses and we drove up for afternoon tea. Begum Viqar Noon, the late chairman of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, also had a residence in Abbottabad and were she alive today, I'm sure that she would be distressed to know of its link with the perpetrator of 9/11.

On a recent flight to Australia, a young Pakistani woman in full hijab seated next to me told me her father was a retired Major-general and the family home was in Abbottabad. ‘You must visit us when next you come to Pakistan,' she said.

'I would love to,' I told her - Abbottabad is one of my favourite places in Pakistan, but before we could exchange addresses, we lost each other in the chaotic baggage reclaim area at Sydney airport.

Abbottabad of course has lost its innocence and it is to be hoped that the Bin Laden house will be demolished leaving nothing for the curious to see.

MY BIRTHDAY FROM HELL

A young travel journalist was recently whining on his blog of how lonely he expected to be on a three week trip to America. In response, I felt like saying you don’t take your best pal to work do you? So if travel writing is your chosen metier, please fasten your safety belt and stop complaining.

In fact there is a huge gulf between travel writing and travel journalism. The former sees you away - often for months at a time - in an alien society with no infrastructure other than your wits. The reverse is a quick press-trip with colleagues to Majorca, or wherever, when you’ve barely closed the door and you’re back again.

Real travel writing by its nature, is a solitary occupation as the authors of great narratives will confirm. Missing home and dining alone are inevitable downsides and while grateful for a capacity to be alone, I find that spending your birthday without a companion exacerbates the sense of social isolation.

In a lifetime of travel writing I`ve awakened on 17th October in Sydney, London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Nairobi, Dublin, Tahiti, New York, Marrakesh, Muscat, Provincetown and Algiers. I`ve also seen out three birthdays in Pakistan: my 39th up the Khyber, my 40th in Islamabad and my 41st in Sukkur, an historic town on the river Indus in Sindh.

Knowing I’d be alone in Sukkur, I was determined not to let it get me down. I bought a big bag of sweets for local children that morning and normally skipping lunch, I opted to celebrate with a meal - albeit it in my room as it was Ramadan.

I’d ordered catfish masala, but since my air conditioning wasn’t working and the electric fan had stopped, I called reception to send up an electrician.

In a few moments a sharp knock heralded a short man in navy overalls holding a giant screw-driver. ‘Electric,’ he said and coming in, he switched the fan on, then off, spun the blades (its cage was missing) announced ‘fan heat,’ and picking it up out he marched out again.

A second knock had signalled a waiter with my lunch and taking the tray, I placed it carefully on the bed and pulled up a chair, but before I could take a mouthful, there was another rap on the door. No surprise that it was the electrician.

This time he kicked off his sandals and stepping over the tray, he stood on my pillow and placing a foot against the bed-head, he yanked the air conditioner off the wall, splitting its timber frame and showering my lunch with dust balls.

‘Check,’ he said and taking it into his arms, he had disappeared down the corridor.

Moments later he was back dragging the fan through the door which I had left ajar in anticipation.

‘Wire,’ he declared and kneeling down, he plunged his giant screw-driver into the wall socket.

‘Don't do that!’ I shouted, picturing an incinerated corpse.

‘Problem fix,’ he said and flicking a switch, the fan had started up like a turbo-jet, blowing my birthday curry all over the bedspread.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

My official press pass to visit Zambia in 1994.

Breakfast with Bedouin while researching my first book The Gulf States and Oman (1978).

With houseboat children on the Indus river in Sukkur on 17th October 1981.

17th OCTOBER IS INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ERADICATION OF POVERTY

WORLD HERITAGE SITE IN PAKISTAN THREATENED BY FLOODING

The celebrated Indus Valley site of Mohenjodaro in Pakistan was not merely an agrarian settlement, but a well planned city which had reached an advanced stage of learning long before the birth of Christ. The key to its past lies in deciphering the complex ‘Indus script’ but it seems likely that its inhabitants spoke Dravidian ---Mohenjodaro means ‘Mound of the Dravidians.’

Excavations have revealed the city was meticulously planned on a grid system, with three and four storey houses lining its long straight streets, a sophisticated drainage system, with wells and granaries constructed of baked bricks. While few clues exist of its rulers, the presence of a vast bath sunk in a spacious courtyard once lined with decorative columns, points to a purification ritual, possibly observed by a priestly sect.

Among artefacts found on the site are terra-cotta figurines of buxom women of a type of 'Mother Goddess'. The discovery of lingam stones also suggests worship of the phallus, still widely observed among Hindus in India. Terracotta chess sets and animal images including bulls, bears and dogs, indicate the Indus Valley citizens were skilled at making kiln-fired pottery.

Villagers continue to use a foot-driven wheel and drawn by a pair of animals, ox-carts no different to those in Mohenjodaro of 2500 years ago, still rumble along local roads on the banks of the river Indus.

Mohenjodaro was destroyed at least seven times by floods and rebuilt on the top of ruins each time. Tragic history could now be repeated as current floodwaters threaten to engulf the priceless site.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

PAKISTAN FLOODS: DON'T LOOK AWAY

Last night I listened to an OXFAM director saying the call to aid Pakistan flood victims has not received a good response, something I find hard to accept, even given the multiple world emergencies of recent times.

I have travelled the length and breadth of Pakistan, a rugged, vibrant country with spectacular scenery and some of the oldest sites in the civilised world and wherever I went - from Karachi to the Khyber Pass and the mountainous Northern Areas, I was well received although it is also true to say - not without a degree of curiosity!

I found the average person friendly, courteous and kind, especially the poor rural villagers of Sindh the southern province, my favourite part of Pakistan, facing inundation by the swollen Indus river.

Hospitality was a second nature, even if it was a family's last drop of lassi. And well I recall an occasion when my suitcase wouldn't close at Karachi Airport and an observant porter whipped out the rope supporting his trousers and strapped it around the lid.

Sindhis number the Indo-Aryan tribal peoples known as Jats and the Mohanas of the preceding blog, to the urban elite in Karachi, but your typical Sindhi is a hard-working peasant, usually mortgaged to a wealthy landowner, living in a mud-house with his animals - chickens and a few water buffalo - all now lost in the floods.

Can anyone watching the desperate images beamed nightly into their living room imagine what it must be like to have nothing? And be denied because you happen to be of Muslim persuasion with an odious government accused of supporting terrorism.

Those among you who have not dug into your pocket may answer somewhere deep, dark and guarded by Cerebrus, the three-headed guardian dog of the entrance to Hell.

An Insight and Guide by Christine Osborne (Longman Group) 1983.

WAITING FOR THE FLOOD

The Mohanas on the river Indus in Sindh have a novel way of fishing when bad weather prevents their boats putting out. They keep pet birds to do it for them.

The birds, mainly herons, cranes and cormorants, perch on a plank suspended from the gunwale. A length of string attached to one leg allows them to dive, but not to escape with a fish. When they break surface, they are robbed of their catch until the family has enough to eat. At this point the birds may swallow their prey and satisfy their own hunger.

Several hundred Mohana fishing families work the Indus where it flows past Sukkur, an historic town in upper Sindh province of Pakistan.

They live on bulky wooden houseboats, 60 feet long by 12 feet broad. The khasti`s most characteristic feature is a bluff prow to deflect the shock should a boat strike a submerged sandbank when it swivels around and gradually becomes dislodged by the current.

Kashtis are made locally. Craftsmen take special care in carving decorative motifs and inserting small tiles, shells and tiny mirrors in the pattern. Some older vessels may display rose-patterned crockery stacked neatly in the galley - china once used by British civil servants manning the Indus canal posts.

An average Mohana family numbers 6-8. All the relatives moor together in a group with their domestic stock- water buffaloes and chickens - kept beside them on the bank.

Women are responsible for the usual chores. One of their first tasks is to draw fresh water from the middle of the river, away from the banks where people defecate.

Mohana men fish from a smaller boat, paddled with a single oar, towed behind each kashti. Working together, in good weather they may net 30 kilos of fish a day, the Indus river catfish being greatly prized.

Meals are cooked over a small charcoal fire on the open deck with everyone sitting around the dish, digging into the fish and rice with their fingers.

Following this year’s monsoon which has devastated NW Pakistan, the Indus is running at an all-time high. But while Sindhi farmers are packing and leaving the riverbanks, the Mohanas can only sit on their boats as water levels rise.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

RIDING THE KHYBER MAIL

"......My introduction to this lawless part of Pakistan was in a Sydney cinema we called the `flea pit`. My father, a big fan of Lauren Bacall, had taken me to see her and Kenneth More in the adventure film North West Frontier with a poster depicting the stars above a picture of the Khyber Mail.

Twenty years on, I am about to catch the legendary Mail, which is scheduled to leave Peshawar Cantonment at nine o`clock and to arrive in Landi Kotal, on the Afghan border, three hours later.

My companion is Habib Afridi, a member of the Adam Khel clan within the formidable Afridi tribe whose territory includes the Khyber Agency. He is a lovely man, tall and softly spoken, and I find it hard to imagine the Afridis struck such terror in British soldiers stationed on the Frontier. But they did. Attacking Landi Kotal in 1897, they defeated the famous Khyber Rifles, and only a counter-attack by 35,000 British soldiers, was able to retake the strategic site.

For our day out, Habib is wearing a grey *shalwar kameez while I have teamed a floral shirt purchased at Galleries Lafayette in Paris with fawn trousers. And naturally I am wearing my hat. But we have not chosen a good day for our journey up the Khyber. It`s the start of Eid-ul-Adha and hundreds of tribesmen are travelling home to walled compounds in remote villages.

Boarding at Jamrud, the gateway to the Khyber, I am swept along in an arsenal of Pathans waving guns, and hawkers brandishing cigarettes, sugar-cane and hard-boiled eggs. Chickens, even a cow, are bundled on board as we pull out of the station, with me seated in the LADIES ONLY carriage pretending I`m Lauren Bacall, and Habib riding in the front locomotive.

Our five carriages are pulled and pushed by two 1920s steam engines; two, because unable to turn in the narrow gorge, the front engine must run back to gain momentum when the rear one acts as prop. In one place, the ascent is so steep that all the passengers leap off and scramble up the hillside, to re-board when we steam into the station above.

The train traverses 34 tunnels between Jamrud and Landi Kotal, the summit of the pass, and seated in total darkness, with soot pouring in the open windows, I reflect on other rail journeys I have made. The Chittagong Mail in Bangladesh, the Nairobi-Mombasa Night Express and the Indian Pacific crossing of the Nullabor are memorable, but none matches the Khyber Mail for excitement.

In the longest tunnel, a prankster pulls the emergency cord, no doubt to frighten me, the only woman on board, but as we grind to a halt, the joke`s on him; at the last stop, I have run along the track to join Habib, and we can see by glowing coals in the furnace.....

Excerpt from Chapter 6: Travels with my Hat

90,000 words and pictures, for publication autumn 2010.

WEEKEND OF ADVENTURE

The Adventure Travel Exhibition held Jan 29-31 in London attracted just as many middle-aged people as it did young ones. Good on you! What are you up for? It was all represented: rock climbing, scuba-diving, sea kayaking, desert tours, ballooning, white water rafting, mountain treks, bungee jumping, hang gliding. And more.

A wonderful lift out of reality, the ATEX was well enjoyed and hopefully some bookings were made with the sun-tanned tour operators.

I managed to speak to quite a few, including Rock and Sun who specialise in climbs in Spain, Sardinia, Morocco and Thailand. Was I too old to start climbing? Not at all I was assured. `It`s easy when you get to grips with it.` Well yes, I thought, getting a grip...

Water by Nature showed great videos of white-water rafting on the Zambesi which I could say I had done. Wahoo!

Geoff Hann of Hinterland Travel was rather off-hand that I hadn`t been to Iraq since 1981 since he`s running tours there. A very comprehensive 17 day programme covers everything from the river-port of Basra to the ancient Arab city of Hatra, north-west of Baghdad. Six departures in 2010.

I particularly enjoyed a chat with James Wilcox who runs Untamed Borders, visiting the spectacular Northern Areas of Pakistan. As some will know, I am author of a book on this vibrant country, a personal favourite and deserving the attention of adventure travellers seeking something special and unspoilt.

What I also found interesting was information on international volunteering which requires no special skills. Putting something back into a community, by helping villagers better their living conditions, is one of the fastest growing sections of the adventure holiday industry. The Habitat for Humanity website, is listed with others below.

The show covered everything. Educational advice was available on malaria and tick-bite. There were equipment stands, bookstalls and a variety of speakers including Aussie travel writer Peter Moore and Mr Travel himself, Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet.


www.coralcay.org
www.untamedborders.com
www.rockandsun.com
www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk
www.hinterlandtravel.com
www.nomadtravel.co.uk
www.traveltalktours.com
www.waterbynature.com
www.walksworldwide.com

c.Christine Osborne
Image: Canoeing on the Zambesi river
Image: Glacier walk, South Island of New Zealand
Source: www.copix.co.uk

OFF WITH HIS NOSE !

It does not improve Pakistan`s reputation for a judge in the historic city of Lahore to order the nose and ears chopped of two men who committed the same act on a woman who refused to marry one of them. But I have to say bravo!

The status of rural women remains low throughout Pakistan, emphatically in the North West Frontier Province, but also in Baluchistan and Sindh. And the saying ` a woman`s place belongs in the home` might even have been invented on the Frontier, the tribal homeland of some 10 million Pathans.

The 17th century Pathan warrior poet, Kushal Khan Khattak, summarises the local male attitude in the following lines:

`…Soft and beautiful on the outside

They are venomous serpents within.

Speak of them no more Kushal Khan;

It would be better if they had never been.`

The treatment of women in the NWFP and in the lawless Tribal Areas, is personified by the pseudo-religious concept of the burqa, the all-concealing garment women are forced to wear.

Here a woman is simply a possession like a table or a truck. She is totally controlled by her husband, and if he forbids her to go outside the family compound, that is her lot. A woman aged 42, whom I met in Chitral District, told me she had never been outside her garden.

Honour killings remain common in the NWFP and there was the recent horrific tribal punishment of gang raping for a woman accused of committing adultery. Less well known is the traffic in Sindhi girls, kidnapped and sent to a life of sexual slavery and domestic drudgery in villages, never to be heard of again.

Misogyny exists in most Muslim countries, but nowhere more so than in Pakistan and if the courts order a few more noses and ears to be chopped off male criminals, then so be it.

c.Christine Osborne

Images: Tim Gurney

Source: www.copix.co.uk

ASHURA: THE BLOODY FRENZY OF GRIEF

Ya! Ya! Husayn! Ya! Ya! Husayn!`

The procession approaches where Mehdi and I stand outside a bank which has its shutters down. Normally Bunder Road bustles with buses, cars and camel carts going to and from the harbour, but today the street is sealed off and is thronged with thousands of people, wearing black, the sign of mourning.

The occasion is Ashura, the tenth of Muharram (the first month in the Islamic calendar) when devout Shi`a Muslims remember the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet, at Kerbala, in AD 680. A tall, young doctor working at Karachi Eye Hospital, Mehdi has agreed to accompany me, but although a Shi`a Muslim, he does not participate in the frenzied manifestations.

As the shouting intensifies, a white stallion splashed with red dye and prancing like one of the famous Lipizzaner horses at the Spanish School in Vienna, appears at the head of the marchers. It symbolises Zuljana, Husayn`s trusted steed, which returned alone from the battleground on the banks of the Euphrates, after his master was slain: ( it is said those who found the horse swore it had tears rolling down its face).

`Ya! Ya! Husayn`!

Now I can see the first marchers slashing their backs with small finger knives attached to chains. Swish! Swish! The blades whistle through the air, but there are no cries of pain: this is the point, Husayn had suffered for Islam, so what`s a few slashes between true believers?

As the procession draws level, I watch in horror as the marchers whirl about lacerating their naked torsos. An intense youth rakes his back spattering my Armani shirt with spots of blood: his own baggy trousers are saturated.

Mehdi looks uncomfortable at the self inflicted wounds. For days the local press has urged people not to get too emotive, but the Red Crescent tents set up along Bunder Road are tending scores of walking wounded.

I manage to photograph dressers, stitching a nine inch gap in someone`s back, before soldiers hustle me away...

Excerpt from: Travels With My Hat: by Christine Osborne for publication in 2010

Images: www.worldreligions.co.uk

Photography: N.Roberts and C.Osborne

Muharram 2009 will begin on 18th December.

THE HELMAND CONUNDRUM

What`s to be done about British deployment in Afghanistan, following mistaken assumptions of al-Qaeda links to Iraq, post 9/11?

I visited Iraq twice under the regime of Saddam Hussein and while there is no question he was Evil, Iraq was one of the most advanced societies in the Arab world. Urban women were educated, oil and alcohol flowed - and certainly `Saddam` was as fearful of an al-Qaeda plot on home-soil as much as the Americans were paranoid about WMD.

Now we have Al-Qaeda operating from the ungovernable Tribal Agencies of Pakistan and criminal Taliban elements detonating British troops in Helmand province with their endless supply of home-made bombs.

Since time immemorial, Afghanistan and Pakistan-to-be, have known invasion - Persian, Greek, Hun, Arab, Mogul, British imperialists in the late nineteenth century, and ultimately the Russians, in 1979. None was successful in taming the feudal rockpile.

As I understand it, the original deployment in Helmand was aimed at ridding the south of Taliban and curbing the prodigious local poppy harvest. But the Taliban remain and the red flower flourishes, watered by the blood of brave, young soldiers.

Sending further air support is essential, but merely palliative without a contingency plan for backup on the ground and to be totally effective, the dismantling of archaic tribal systems based on the jirga and family honour. Although clearly, the latter will take generations.

The way forward, is to assist Afghanistan to help itself build the type of society it needs - and this might well not be Westminster-style democracy- it`s about winning hearts and minds (and a good start might be to see some of the warlords tried for crimes).

c. Christine Osborne

Image: Rural child and tank, Afghanistan

Source: Tim Gurney www.copix.co.uk