And now for new year resolutions! ahoy there 2011

I decided to make this list before the revelry of the 31st made me lose my judgment. After a few margaritas and some loud music one tends to make all kinds of resolutions that seem foolish the next morning. And then the guilt sets in. So this year I am starting early. In 2011 I resolve to:

1. Spend less time Twittering (I know I know – it is Tweeting) and more time reading. My stack of books is growing at an alarming rate and has been ignored for too long.

The best, the worst and the in-betweens! Adieu 2010

The year is racing to a finish, and it is time to look back at what went by, or rather whizzed by. I wish I could have read more, seen more films, traveled more places – and eaten less 😀

Films: There were some really good ones and there were some really bad ones, and then there was mostly a lot of stuff in between. After a hiatus from Bollywood I went back to watching a lot of BW films (mostly what released in theaters here), while picking my HW films with care and caution! Here is a HW list:

1. Inception – loved the film, the mind-bender that kept us thinking and discussing for days on end. Leo DiCaprio did not disappoint and Marion Cotillard was luminous.

This is not potty humor! From the Minoans to the Caliphate (part 2 of 3)

My travels in Turkey and Greece reminded me that I had NOT continued my series on toilets and bathrooms around the world!  So I paid special attention to these attractions this time around.  Surprisingly sophisticated facilities were found wherever I went, be it the Sultan’s harem at the Topkapi palace or the ruins of Ephesus.

At the entrance to Ephesus one is greeted by piles upon piles of clay pipes, a testimonial to the advanced drainage system the Greeks and Romans had.

Clay pipes at Ephesus

Walking down the royal highway past many monuments including the statue of Nike, the symbol of Caduceus, Hadrian’s temple, one rounds the bend and comes upon the most significant monument of Ephesus – the towering library of Celsus!

The Library of Celsus

One can imagine the noblemen riding their horses towards this imposing structure and past it to the gigantic coliseum. But these noblemen made a couple of stops along the way.

Ephesus latrines!

The first is a spectacle the like of which I have never seen anywhere. It dates from the 2nd century AD and is part of a big hamam complex.

Ephesus latrines II

We are told the slaves sat on the marble seats to warm them up before the masters used them. So many seats in such proximity suggests that many a serious matter was discussed in this “forum”!!

Ephesus Latrines III

The waste drainage area suggests running water below and there was a large open central area. We are also told a sojourn at the hamams was followed by a visit to the brothel street which was just down the road! Then came the library of Celsus. Only the facade of this monument is restored, but it is enough to suggest the magnificence of the whole!

The Library of Celsus

Finally they made their way to the gigantic coliseum the size and grandeur of which is best appreciated from afar!

The Coliseum at Ephesus

Chihuly in the garden!

Dale Chihuly, glass artist extraordinaire, and the Shaw gardens, otherwise known as the Missouri Botanical Gardens – amazing confluence of sinuous movement in glass and nature in all her glory!  Even before one enters the Ridgeway Visitor Center, a huge centerpiece of writhing glass, that resolves into almost calla lily like shapes at the top, can be seen from the outside.

This is not Potty humor! From the Minoans to the Caliphate (one of two parts)

My travels in Turkey and Greece reminded me that I had NOT continued my series on toilets and bathrooms around the world!  So I paid special attention to these attractions this time around.  Surprisingly sophisticated facilities were found wherever I went.  The earliest (historically speaking) site was the “palace” of Knossos, in Heraklion, Crete.  The palace dates back to about 1700 BC and was inhabited by King Minos – of the minotaur fame.  When Minos refused to sacrifice the white bull given to him by Poseidon, Aphrodite punished him by making his wife fall in love and mate with a bull, resulting in a half bull half human offspring, the Minotaur!  This ferocious being was kept in a labyrinth built under the palace at Knossos by Daedalus.  The excavations are massive, the renovations and reconstructions mercifully limited.

That’s the spirit for me!

I was in Dundee, Scotland and seized the opportunity to taste some fine single malts. 

The road to Nyaka!

It was early 2005, and I was trying to claw my way out of a personal abyss.  The time of disbelief had somehow run smack into the time to play catchup with everything that had been sitting around waiting.  Work was wonderful as a way to keep demons at bay, and total immersion let me pretend that nothing was really wrong.  I was functioning, wasn’t I?  It was around then that a good friend called me and asked if I would be willing to come to Kenya, and after work perhaps there would be a little time to play.  We would go to Uganda from Kenya, and after a stay at Queen Elizabeth Park, we would go on to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and if we got really really lucky maybe we would see some gorillas!  After Bwindi we would drive to the little village of Nyaka, and spend the night there, visiting with the parents of Jackson Kaguri (who was married to Beronda, someone we had known for about 5 years).  Jackson had started a little school in his village for children who were AIDS orphans.

QE Park

I thought Stonehenge would have been much more imposing

It is possibly the only monument that can be seen fully in a drive by sighting. Though paying the fees and entering gives one a wonderful guided audio tour.

Erected around 2500 BC, this prehistoric monument made of monolithic stones in a nearly circular formation that some wrongly speculated may have been used for ritual sacrifice. The site is surrounded by several hundred burial mounds and contains cremated remains dating to 3000 BC. Perhaps it is the location – amidst a vast undulating plain, that makes Stonehenge less imposing than one would imagine. Or maybe it is the fact the one is not allowed to get close enough to the monument to get a perspective on the size of the stones!

What blooms in Kristineberg!

Summer in Sweden means LONG days, and I am talking really really long. And all around, the hillsides and gardens bloom. What a wonderful time to visit the WEST (otherwise known as the BEST) coast of Sweden. The Gullmarsstrand Hotel in the little fishing village of Fiskebackskil is nice, clean, and right on the water. Waiting for the sun to set can be an experience – that night the sun flirted with clouds for ever while we waited and waited!

The paths were overgrown with Rosa rugosa and fat bumblebees foraged for pollen inside the flowers!

A rainy day in Berlin – museum time!

Day 2 – Berlin, forecast – rains and wind, agenda – stay warm and dry, plan – visit some monuments and museums! The day started out with trying to find a shop and purchase a raincoat! Next up was the Berlin Dom. An imposing edifice that sits at one end of the Museum island, the structure is relatively modern in history and antique in look!

The ornate interior boasts of a soaring ceiling with tiled art, a heavily carved pulpit and a magnificent organ.

“Ich bin ein Berliner” – I wish!

Is Germany on your list of places to visit? Then you must be male and either a beer or a soccer fanatic! But this belief of mine was shattered when I visited Berlin last month. After spending 3 glorious days in the city, I too wanted to be a Berliner. There are some peculiarities to getting into Berlin, the Tiegel airport is a strange one with security check points at individual isolated gates and not much by way of food or shopping. But at the this airport you can buy a ticket to ride, your pass to all that is Berlin. The Berlin pass allows free access to all forms of public transportation and is also good for reduced entry prices at most of the major museums in the city. The buses and subways (U-Bahn) and trains (S-Bahn) are very user friendly, clean, and generally on time. We stayed very close to the Alexander Platz and the Berlin Dom. The Alexander Platz houses a unique TV tower and a sublime Neptune fountain with the old Marion Church in the background.

This same plaza is also home to the statues of two of the greatest thinkers from the region, Marx and Engels!

Of course THE structure that means Berlin for many, is the now almost gone wall! A visit to the border between former East and West Berlin is still very interesting with Checkpoint Charlie. Some guys are no doubt paid to pose in uniform and give tourists some photo ops.

Walking with baby elephants! The David Sheldrick project

Henry Mancini composed the classic tune Baby Elephant Walk for the Howard Hawkes film Hatari (1962). Needless to say the baby elephants overshadowed Bwana Wayne and the wet young Martinelli.

In Nairobi I had the chance to visit the David Sheldrick project that shelters and raises orphaned animals.

sheldrik

We arrived just in time to observe the baby elephants being fed and at play!

The baby animals all had individual names and harrowing tales of how they lost their mothers or were abandoned by them. Baby elephants take over 3 years to mature and in that time have to be fed every three hours and need socializing. The biggest female generally becomes the herd leader by default.

After the baby elephants were fed and content and wandered away, the true star of the show raced in – he was a baby rhino, and you could see his double horns just beginning to develop. He was as fractious as a toddler and as frisky too! And he loved the company and did not want to leave and go back to his pen!

Once the animals are fully grown they are sent to a national park with a sizeable population of their species – the elephants usually go to Samburu National Park, the Rhino to Nairobi National park. Then they are kept in pens and often visited by their wild kin. Slowly they are released into the wild, and the program has been very successful at release and rehabilitation of these orphans.

Their one “failure” is Maxwell, a fully grown rhino. He can never be released into the wild as he was born blind!

After visiting the Sheldrick reserve we stopped at a local market and encountered this Masai warrior in full regalia!

masai

He allowed me to take his picture for 200 Kenyan schillings!

Flights of Pink and fights in the wilderness…. Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya

My recent trip to Kenya took me out of Nairobi and on the Nairobi Kampala road towards the Great Rift Valley. Traveling on the smooth highway in fast flowing traffic took us past many small towns with their unique street markets:

The road to the Rift Valley Lodge veered off the main highway and rapidly turned into the kind of dirt road where you do NOT want to be following any other vehicle. Along the way we saw a marked contrast of marginal land on one side and some obviously rich white large estate on the other (who knows – maybe even Lord Delamare’s estate? But more on him and his shenanigans in another post!). The Rift Valley Lodge is tucked up on the crest of a mountain and looks down into the valley:

Here you have all the comforts you do not usually have at home – great food (lots of meat for the carnivores and an Indian spread for the vegetarians), Glenlivet and other libations including Talisker, a nine hole golf course, tennis courts, and luxurious rooms. But the real reason to come to Naivasha is not the lodge but rather its proximity to Lake Nakuru National Park. Right upon entering into the park we were mobbed by a herd of monkeys – quite like the Indian langoor – ready to pounce on our picnic lunches and waiting for any open door or window to sneak in!

The real reason to come to Lake Nakuru is this:

The brine shrimp in the lake are the preferred feed for a large bird population, the most spectacular of which are birds you usually see in plastic in front gardens in urban America!! Pink flamingoes, thousand upon thousands, turn the shore of Lake Nakuru pink. They cohabit with pelicans (above), storks and other birds and provide a breathtaking spectacle!

Not much disturbs them and one can get quite close to the lake shore as the water recedes quite a bit in dry weather. But here I managed to capture a fight between zebras that did startle a bunch of the birds into taking off!

Lest you think zebras are cantankerous fighters, let me assure you that they are mostly peaceful, mate for life, and stay together like this couple!

Lake Nakuru Park offers a bounty of wildlife and what is there is NOT shy! One could almost go through a catalog and check the animals off. In my past visits to parks in Africa I have seen almost everything except getting a good look at rhinos. And Nakuru came through! They have white rhinos – mostly gray looking and extremely lethargic beasts. Here you can see one almost as though carved out of the mud he lies in, and in the background there are warthogs – the cutest (and most difficult to capture on film) animals!

Of course we saw lots of buffalo – one of the BIG 5 game you are supposed to look for in African parks, and a few giraffes! Giraffes walk with the two legs of the same side moving together – and are quite graceful for all their awkward height!

Atop a hill in the park – we stopped to picnic but were forced into our vehicle for fear of being mobbed by baboons, on the ready to steal any food they can. Also spotted an incredibly colorful gecko!

There were lots of animals in the deer family but my favorite are the waterbucks – they always favor wet regions in any park, have very furry skins and beautiful eyes.

By the evening we had seen almost everything except the big cats – and they were all hiding in the heat. We left Nakuru with this amazing vista indelibly stamped in our memories – a baboon silhouetted against the vast lake with the flamingoes all along the shore!

Tortured turquoise and white thunder! Glaciers of Alaska

Hundreds of years of snow flakes piled one upon the other, the pressure leading to compaction and melting and refreezing into ice caused the formation of glaciers. And the slow move of these glaciers led to erosion and the formation of U shaped valleys – a hallmark of glaciation activity. These valleys are very different from the V-shaped valleys carved out by flowing rivers. Somehow I had always imagined glaciers as rivers of snow, but when we did see them up close their jagged turquoise blue peaks blew me away! The first glacier we encountered was the Sawyer glacier in the Tracy arm:

The incredible turquoise at the core and the jagged peaks and fissures were a revelation. The ice shelf in front of the Sawyer glacier is the breeding ground for seals and we hung around for a while watching them flop about like slugs. It is amazing how graceful seals are in water and how gauche on solid surface.
Next stop was Juneau and we took a short trip to see the Mendelhall glacier:

Underwhelming, but part of the approach was cordoned off as migratory birds were nesting in the sand, so we spent some time looking at these – sadly no pocket guide for birds of Alaska, and no signs were posted. There is a nice walk, with several streams, that becomes an interesting nature+wild-life walk when the salmon are running, but we were 3 weeks off.
Instead we took a bus into the beginning of Yukon territory (where the Northern Gold rush began) and then took a train back to Juneau. Spectacular scenery along the way and the train was quaint and ancient with old-style bathrooms and a real wood stove to warm the coaches!


Next we cruised into Glacier Bay National Park and first saw the once majestic but now receding Grand Pacific glacier. All that was really visible was the moraine in front as the ice recedes further and further back. The park authorities told us that this glacier was once a tidal front one and has receded over a mile since the time John Muir visited it (in 1890 or thereabouts!).

As a glacier travels across the mountains it pulverizes rocks into fine particles and carries this powdered granite along with it, when the ice recedes it leaves this debris as a moraine.
We then swung around and encountered a real tide-water glacier – the Marjerie glacier.

The small pieces of ice all around us told us that parts of the Marjerie were unstable and prone to calving. The face of the Marjerie extends 2 miles or so and the crags are over 250 feet high! When the base of the glacier peaks get undercut by water the top becomes unstable and can come crashing down. This causes icebergs to form in the water and the crash itself is a spectacular event that the Tlingit people call “White Thunder”!! Depending on the size of the calved piece a tsunami like wave can arise. As we were being told all this we heard the boom and a big chunk of the Marjerie came crashing down!

As the wave from the Marjerie cause our ship to roll we stood humbled, the boom of white thunder still echoing in our ears. The ship slowly did an about turn and steered out of Glacier Bay after having brought us so close to the awesome majesty of nature.

The Last Frontier – Alaska, where land ends!

(FROM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alaska_Panhandle.png)
The inner passage of the Alaska panhandle consists of large land masses separated by fjords created by glacier activity. Cruising this passage begins in Vancouver. Most of the regions along the passageway are accessible by ships or seaplanes; a target of opportunity seen here – a Chevron gas-station in the middle of the bay at Vancouver:

Cruising was an experience in itself that I will save for a later post, ditto for the natural wonders of Alaska including some 20 story high glaciers! This post is reserved for the wild-life we saw along the way. First stop was along the Tracy arm with the Sawyer glacier in the background and ice along the edge of the glacier.

On this shelf of ice we saw hordes of seals – this is where they come to give birth and rear their young!

The Bald Eagle is the National bird, has pride of place in the center of the US Presidential seal, but is rarely spotted in the contiguous United States. However it reigns over Alaska and is an opportunist raptor that forages on salmon and steals from other nests! This thievery earned it the ire of Ben Franklin.

” After the end of the Revolutionary War, Benjamin Franklin wrote a famous letter from Paris in 1784, to his daughter, criticizing the choice and suggesting the Wild Turkey as a better representative of American qualities. He described the Bald Eagle as “a Bird of bad moral character,” who, “too lazy to fish for himself” survived by robbing the Osprey. He called the Bald Eagle “a rank Coward” easily driven from a perch by the much smaller kingbird. In the letter, Franklin wrote the Turkey is, “a much more respectable Bird,” which he described as “a little vain & silly [but] a Bird of Courage.” (WIKIPEDIA)
Who cares about the thievery if this bird can soar majestically and look so grand? We saw several nests with hatchlings being nursed, and many many adults with the white heads.

Then a boat cruise into Juneau bay will take one to the humpback whale habitat. These gentle giants give a first hint of their presence with a spout of water, then can make a huge splash and go under showing the signature tail fluke.


Of course these same waters are teeming with sea lions with their cute puppy dog faces!

In addition to all this, sightings through binoculars included bears, grizzlies, and even a moose running along a deserted remote beach. (note to self – get a better camera with a bigger zoom lens – wait, who will carry it?)
How could I end without mentioning the ubiquitous seagulls – they are everywhere, waiting to snatch a quick meal wherever they can find it.

Strangely enough the Rousseau-esque painting on the cruise ship was tropical in theme and showed animals more suited to an African safari!