Tag Archives: spices

A holiday spent doing elephant science: Part III (less science, more spices)

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So as it is with all good things, this one had come to an end. Need to catch up before reading on?

Thursday night: I landed in Cape Town at 9:30 at night, amid warnings that “the city isn’t safe” and “don’t walk alone” and, especially, “whatever you do, do not hike on Table Mountain alone. There are muggings.”

This last one bit me in the butt a little because one of the things I most wanted to do here in Cape Town was to hike up Table Mountain. So I spent the bulk of my return from Kariega wondering what I was going to do in Cape Town if exploring, hiking, or wandering aimlessly through the city wasn’t safe. I had 3 full days to fill, and I had only a short list of things to do and see.

Thing 1: Penguins. The only species of penguins in all of Africa resides on the southern end of the continent, with the bulk of them living on the Western Cape of South Africa. The African penguin sits squarely on the endangered list, with IUCN indicating that their numbers are in decline. The weird-looking critters were close enough to see, tourists be damned, so I was going to see them!

Thing 2: Table Mountain. Table Mountain and its foothills run like a rugged spine down the Cape, creating a dramatic backdrop. The unique formula of raging unemployment, governmental mis-management, and a drug problem of crisis proportions plus myriad tourists running around the city with giant dollar (euro, pound) signs emblazoned onto their foreheads has equaled a not-so-minor crime problem in this city. I’m of course (unironically) watering down the problem to a few key factors, which have exacerbated during the major drought in this part of the world these past few years. And so, even though there were too many reports of crime on the trails to ignore, I was determined to see the mountain somehow.

Thing 3: The southernmost point. To date, the most-southern point I’d ever been in the world was Kenton-on-Sea, in the Eastern Cape, where I had just come from. So to know that I was really, really close to the southwestern tip of the whole African continent, meant that I just had to try to get there over the next few days.

I have to note that during my 9:30pm ride from airport to guesthouse, I saw on the streets: Not. A. Soul. It was eerie, actually. The car stopped on the deserted street outside the guesthouse, and the Uber driver waited, wordlessly, out of the car, for me to get buzzed-in before he drove off. I was fried, a little sun-scorched, and missing the eles already. So I crashed – hard – and decided to figure out the next few days…tomorrow.

Friday. The easiest (and, as I was advised, safest) way to get around Cape Town is via an Uber. If I had enough days and fewer fears, I probably would have looked into the local train. And I frankly just avoided the “hop on-hop off” bus because I was really just looking for a less herd-like touristic experience. So, app in hand, I Ubered it down from Cape Town to the famous Boulders Beach and its resident population of penguins.

Truth be told, I’ll give the boardwalk out to see the penguins and Boulders a meh. After a hundred metres or so of wall-to-wall selfies with penguins, one can turn around and exit through the gift shop. The beach protection is needed, though, since there are fewer than 11,000 breeding pairs of these penguins remaining and the species could go extinct in the next decade or so. About 10% of the entire population lives right there. I didn’t do a count, but there were a lot of the strange little flightless waterbirds on the beach. 🐧

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It was nice to discover a longer path outside of the main area, off the beach and away from the crowd. This path wends its way through some protected penguin nesting areas, where it’s possible to observe the little nuggets without bothering them. It was a surprisingly noisy, yet peaceful, experience: penguins are louder than one might imagine, and there were few tourists down this way, so I’d call it a win. I even encountered what the locals call a dassie…the African hyrax!

Highlight of the afternoon: a stroll back along the path and up to another beach, this time sans tourists. Here, I found a smaller colony of penguins lounging and playing on the rocks and sand. Weird insight: I can now attest that neither penguin courtship nor sex is a quiet sport.

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The one thing that stuck with me that day was a conversation with the Uber driver. I had spent the morning with a migraine and got into the car slightly subdued and groggy from a nap. The driver was amiable enough, and so as he drove, we chatted, and he mentioned that he lived in a township just outside the city. I asked how it was, and he answered, “It’s poor but okay. I’m saving money for my family.” We talked about the expansive beaches, white sharks, the recent forest fires…as the subject changed from where do you stay to more touristic things, I thought little of the conversation until later the next day.

Saturday. It was About an hour into my day-long tour with an amazing local guide, Shafiek from In2Africa Tours (hint: if you are in Cape Town, please let me know and I’ll get you his contact info!), that he began to talk about the neighbourhoods and communities in and around Cape Town – and the social structures therein.

And so, I learnt a new definition I didn’t know I needed. Until that moment, I hadn’t realised that here, a “township” is no more than a favela or shantytown, remnants of worker housing encampments established during apartheid, now transformed into sprawling stretches of shacks and tin-roofed huts, interspersed with rubbish heaps, precariously spiderwebbed together by pirated electrical and cable lines. People live here because even though Apartheid ended 30 years ago this week, wage disparity, majority white land ownership, and rampant unemployment prevail.

It made me feel self-conscious, privileged, a little bit ashamed.

Having done a lot of work in affordable housing at home, it also struck me not for the first time this trip, that while where I was in South Africa didn’t really feel like Africa-Africa, its first-world façade hides the cracks underneath. Back home too. A clean, comfortable, safe place to live is a basic human necessity. Maslow, meet Cape Town.

Putting out of mind for the moment the things that were entirely out of my control, I focused on trying to muster excitement towards the day’s itinerary: another trip down the coast, but this time all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point via the Atlantic side, and a checklist of sights to see and things to do. My guide did an amazing job of creating an itinerary of less-touristy, nature-oriented attractions. The day went well: we wended our way through the different coastal towns, the cliffside homes looking precarious on the rocky slopes. A small boat ride took me to see a nearby harbour island called Seal Island, and its residents Arctocephalus pusillus, or Cape fur seals. The genus translates to “bear head”. Go figure.

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Back on shore, we weaved our way across the beautiful Chapman’s Peak Drive, which was built into the side of the mountain in the early 1900s, only to be closed nearly a century later due to rockslides for more than a decade. Three Ts helped it come back to life in its current iteration: technology, tourists, and tolls, giving better commutes to locals and better access to the geological and botanical wonders of the mountain to all (or at least all who wish to pay for the privilege). Apparently 2 species of Fynbos occur here on the Cape and nowhere else on earth.

Down the Cape we went, passing Simons Town again, and landing at the Cape of Good Hope, where I ventured up to the old Cape Point lighthouse (the new one is apparently lower and brighter, hence safer!) and then down again via the absolutely lovely Kaap die Goeie Hoop-voetpad overlooking Dias beach, leading down to the Cape of Good Hope proper.

Unexpected animal behaviour.

In this part of the Cape, ostriches and baboons and eland live by the sea. And while there are “caution: baboons” signs everywhere, the individuals I saw seemed almost introspective, meditative. This group of baboons has apparently evolved to eat fish and mussels. Snacks snatched from unsuspecting tourists serve as fillers. Luckily, The baboons I observed seemed much more concerned with the ocean than with my snacks. Which I dutifully left in the car.

A note in an exhibit in the visitor center sums it up nicely:

Since the beginning of our species, our survival has depended on our knowledge of nature, our original Mother. All early humans understood nature intimately, and saw other species as kin. With the environmental crisis looming, now more than ever, we need to draw on our ancestors’ wisdom. We have compromised our life support system, which is the biodiversity of our planet. We need to rebuild our threads to the wild, because ultimately our connection to nature will determine our survival.

We need to remember that we are nature, we are not separate.

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While it wasn’t the actual south-most point in Africa it was pretty darn close.

Animals, encountered; points, pinned; we headed back towards Cape Town on the False Bay side, stopping for photos in Muzienberg and some other scenic towns along the way before spending a few minutes wandering the early evening streets of Bo Kaap, the Muslim section of town, and grabbing some street food to bring back for dinner. With Ramadan in full swing and the shops closing early for iftar, the breaking of the fast, I had a plan for Monday morning before I headed to the airport: a visit to the much-renowned Atlas Spice Shop there.

Sunday arrived and I made a plan to see Table Mountain. I decided to take the cablecar up and down and do as much hiking at the top as I could. Sun shining, I crossed fingers against the potential for mid-afternoon fog that could envelop the mountaintop in minutes. After wandering around the close-to-base paths for a bit, I stumbled upon a trail snaking through the scrappy and rocky terrain and bounded by the Fynbos mentioned earlier. It felt like the moon, like being above treeline but here there are really no trees, regardless that it isn’t even that high (1,086 metres/3,563 feet), compared with highest peak in S. Africa at nearly 3x its height. Little black lizards darted around the rocks. I saw another couple of dassies. And some of the very alien-like king protea flowers! Few humans were on this section of trail, but I bumped into a small group of Brits and fell in with their local guide for a while. He was leading them to Maclear’s Beacon, the highest point of Table Mountain and used by cartographers as a triangulation station. The hike wasn’t terribly challenging, but checked the boxes next to “hike” and “views” for the day!

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As I was decidedly not done exploring, I decided to venture to the waterfront.

It felt like adjectives juxtaposed in close proximity: sketchy and industrial, shmancy and touristy. A stark illustration of what lies just a scratch beneath the surface. So I wandered around the wharf (deemed safe, as evidenced by the preponderance of armed guards), ogled the ginormous seals on the dock, then ducked into a Turkish restaurant and had a fantastic late lunch before getting out of dodge.

Monday. I spent my last morning spice-shopping, getting harassed by creepy men on the streets of Bo Kaap, chatting with the lovely owner of the guesthouse, skritching the head of the neighbour’s lab puppy through the gate, and gratefully transiting to the airport for my flight home.

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And like that the trip was at its end. This one felt too short: I wanted more time with nature, with the gentle giants back at Kariega, with the birds and the wild things. While I don’t feel any great need to go back to Cape Town, I have it in my heart to go back to Kariega and to work again with Bring the Elephant Home in the (foreseeable) future.

Just in case you don’t want to scroll all the way up to the top find the links to the earlier blogs from the trip:

And I’ve put loads of shots from this trip and beyond into my photography shop… you can order prints, cards and more of many of the pics in this post (and more). And use the code TGM-15 for a 15% discount.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Madagascar Finale, Part VI: Rhum arrangé, vanille, noix de cajou and gratitude

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A trip to Madagascar would not be complete without a seeing where its world-famous vanilla comes from. And so, on the way back from the north to Nosy Be, where I’d spend my last two nights, we stopped at a small locally-owned vanilla plantation. Here, the owner showed me his cacao trees – he opened a ripe pod, from which I tasted the surprisingly sour and custard apple-like fruit. He played the “guess the spice” game with me: peppercorns (red and black), cinnamon, lemongrass, and turmeric among others (I think I surprised him). I hadn’t ever seen any of these plants in their original state before, so it was fun to see where what I cook with comes from. And although I think this little show-and-tell was the smaller version of the larger spice sowing/growing/reaping enterprise, the experience at the vanilla farm felt a little more authentic than the one the French tourists were paying 50000 Ariary to enter just down the road. Needless to say, I left there with an armload of cocoa, vanilla, pepper and other spices, and felt like I was contributing to the livelihood of a local family.

Another curiosity on the road to the north: a certain section of the road is lined with tables. The tables are stacked with recycled tin cans. The cans are filled with roasted cashews. You go up to a stand, and for 5000 Ariary, you get roughly 250g of cashews, the equivalent of about $2 a pound here in the US (for the record, an unexpected amount of math went into writing that sentence!). We stopped at the house of a cashew guy my driver knows, and met his wife/sister/daughter who showed me how they roast and hull the cashews. Earlier in the week, we had found some cashews still on the tree. As with the spices, I had never seen a cashew in the wild, so it was another fun learning experience seeing it end-to-end. The amount of manual labor we take for granted here while consuming little luxuries crossed my mind.

Of note: raw cashew nuts contain urushiol, the same enzyme that makes poison ivy a terrible plant (or villain). This is why, even when we purchase raw cashews in those clean and tidy plastic packages back home, they are still roasted or boiled to remove the toxins. Also of note: freshly-roasted roadside cashews are about the best road snacks one could ever ask for (and if you know me, you know I like road snacks!).

I felt a little like cattle again, being shuttled from car to port to boat to island, and I was feeling sad to leave the mainland, to have left Bush Camp and the tsingy (ooh, that could be a great band name!). I landed back in Nosy Be hoping I could come back one day, but also knowing that going back to a place is never like experiencing it for the first time with beginner’s eyes.

Nevertheless, we dodged tuk tuks and people and bikes and road construction as the taxi wended its way through Hell-ville* and the other towns on Nosy Be en route to my final destination, a weird beach resort near the town of Madirokely. I would have 2 days here before flying back home.

*Hell-ville is the holdover French name for the main city on Nosy Be. Locally, it is called Andonay.

As perfectly-suited Bush Camp was to who I am, the cushy beach resort where I was booked for these two nights seemed like an ironic joke. This is no fault at all of the resort – it was lovely by resort standards: a salt water infinity pool overlooking the beach and the cove. An open-air restaurant overlooking the bay. A masseuse and a spa and a beauty salon. But on arrival I experienced a moment of sort-of culture shock, coming off a couple of weeks spent in nature and amongst much less-curated wildness.

So as I lay on a chaise lounge next to said saltwater pool and read a book while I waited for my room to be done up, I thought this for my final days: I wanted to see the town and also bring home some of the local rhum arrangé, I had planned to visit with Stella to hear about what the Madagascar Whale Shark Project is up to next, and I felt that some time to decompress a bit before transitioning back to the real world would be in order.

A rhum mission and the ugly side of paradise.

If you read only sensationalist reporting, you may hear that Madagascar is unsafe for foreigners, that human trafficking is rampant and that crime is pervasive. While I felt entirely safe during the whole of my stay, and I would recommend Madagascar as a destination 1000%, back in Nosy Be I wasn’t UNaware of the number of older European men in the company of very young local girls. I was to learn that prostitution is legal in Madagascar. According to Wikipedia, the prostitution here developed around the Japanese fishing industry; and as tourism flourished, so did sex travel and human trafficking. Because of this, Europeans, and mainly French and Italian men, are drawn to Nosy Be. During the day, they swim and snorkel and do the touristy things. By evening, they visit the bars and clubs and easily find companions. Many of the resorts here (including the one at which I was staying) have pledged against the sex trade, especially child sex trafficking which is apparently and unfortunately rampant here.

I mention this, and provide this link to the International Justice Mission, to say two things: if we don’t go to these places, these kinds of activities will continue to exist but only with fewer eyes on them. If we do go, and in the process bring practices of responsible tourism, and in doing so support local businesses that care about change, and give to charities such as the IJM, we can move the needle and help drive a better future for the girls who may have no other choices today.

I walked down the beach that afternoon, replaying the past couple of weeks in my head: the vibrant greens and blues and terracotta hues; the sea and land creatures that exist nowhere else on earth; the geologic marvels that seem to have been painted in place.

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Sharks discussed and rhum arranged, I wandered around the little town. The rhum shop looked like an apothecary of sorts, shelves lined bottles of amber liquid and myriad mystery objects suspended in each. It is a local tradition here to distill rum and infuse different fruits and spices. I watched the shop owner wrap the bottles of lychee, vanilla, and ginger rhum arrangé I bought, all the while hoping the tape on the tops would hold until they arrived at their final destination. It’s a bit sad, and possibly a tad judgey, but I couldn’t help to also wonder which of the single men at the various little beachy bars were there for nefarious purposes. I didn’t stick around to find out.

It was nice to have time on my own here, with no itinerary to keep to or particular sites to see. And so I followed my own advice: relax a little, let the trip sink in. I walked on the beach, dipping my toes into the last warm tropical water I’d see for a while. I read by the saltwater pool, doing my best to ignore the pompous loudmouth nearby filling up the air with his words. At dinner, I stayed a while to listen to the local music. At breakfast the next morning, I watched in amusement as a guy drove a herd of zebu across the beach. Later, I cheered on as local school kids played football on the same sand.

And like that I was in a taxi to Nosy Be airport, nearly 3 weeks flown by like I was about to. The trip back was uneventful, but included some highlights to help the trip end on a high note: A long stopover in Addis Ababa gave me time to enjoy some really great Ethiopian food and tej, their honey wine (airport food, no less!). A night in London made me grateful for decent tea and the luxury of indoor toilets (with seats!). An aisle seat in Premium on Virgin into Boston made me want to fly this way whenever possible.

The world is an amazing place and every time I return from a trip, I feel such reverence for the natural world and such disdain for those who want to pave it in the name of modernization or turn it into a theme park under the guise of tourism.

Here’s to all the heroes I met on this trip: those who are promoting sustainable tourism and working hard to save the natural treasures; to the ones doing small acts each day to reduce plastic and educate youth and reform outdated practices and bring wonder and joy to those who come to visit.

Thank you, Madagascar.

(OMG the little feet…I can’t even!)

A Tale of Tea…

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So in my lockdown state, I have been going through pots and pots of tea, reminiscing on each packet or loose leaves or spices that came from a faraway place. It is something of a tale of tea…

Yesterday morning I opened a packet of Royal Myanmar tea, one of only a few I’ve got left from my trip to Burma in December, and a flood of tea-related memories wafted up with the hints of spice in my cup.

It was in a tea shop in Split (Croatia), my head stuffed with a cold I’d acquired in Montenegro, that I found another link to my curiosity (read: obsession) with tea. I was looking for an herbal tea to remedy my congestion, and I noticed that the tea the lady gave me was called Bronhovit Čaj. (lit, Bronchial Tea). But my brain got caught on the čaj part… I started to formulate the Balkan phonemes so strange to my North American tongue, ch…a…y. Chai.

Croatian tea is chai, my brain excitedly chirped as it connected the dots. (Okay, not so much chirped in its present state, but rather snuffled excitedly in any case…)

Cha if by land; tea if by sea… I had read that adage some time ago. As it turns out, and not really so surprising, what a country calls this multi-cultural beverage steeps from how it got to them from China; arrival via land or sea was in different dialects as well as trade routes.

So tea landed in central to Northern Europe, the Americas, and West Africa as thé and Tee and tea and té and tii; and in Southern European countries, North and East Africa, and South Asia as chá and τσάι and çay and شاي and chai and chaī and chā. And, of course, čaj.

The reason? To some extent, chameaux. Camels. (chaimeaux?!)

Having drunk litres and litres of chai and its offspring all along the silk road, this linguistical brew makes sense to me. Perhaps the Silk Road should have been called Spice Strada, Tea Trail or the even the Chemin Chai… Each cup tells a story, and each memory is like its own ceremony, conjuring up markets and spices and street sounds and temple bells in each telling.

Morocco: I sat in a quiet early morning Jemaa el Fna, sipping delightful Moroccan Mint شاي, as I watched the vendors set up the day’s market. The tea would have perhaps made its way across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain and renamed té when it landed, only to be re-renamed by the French in the souks of Marrakech as thé, and re-re-renamed thé/tea/شاي as Morocco reclaimed its independence and opened up its doors to tourisme chameau from all corners of the globe.

Istanbul: Here, chā seems to be a verb as well as a noun. The warm welcomes in this electric city, where East really does meet West, are extended as more a demand (Tea? Çay? Please, come sit…), and the brewed black tea is served steaming, alongside lumps and lumps of sugar, in glass cups. It is sort of a boring tea if I’m honest; stark in comparison to the energy one feels in the streets and markets here. A crucial stop along the Silk Road, Constantinople was what they meant in those days: “all roads lead to (Eastern) Rome.” Come sit, have some tea, do some trade in carpets or spices or these luscious fabrics…it’s a city that gets into your blood, its warm, colourful tea running through your veins.

In Burma, I had just gotten off a dive boat, and made my first entry by sea into a foreign land. They dropped me on the Burmese side of the Thailand/Myanmar border, in this peculiar little town called Kawthaung, at the southernmost tip of the country. As I wandered around the town on a blazingly hot afternoon, I ran into one of the guys who worked on the dive boat; apparently it was his 2nd job as he had a day job in an office here somewhere. He was taking tea with some friends at a corner tea shop and they invited me in to share tea and stories. Through broken English, emphasized and punctuated with many hand gestures, and not withstanding a peck on the finger by a sassy minah bird, I came to know the warmth of Burmese culture in the span of an hour over tea.

India: In a market in a little town called Jojawar, tucked neatly between Jodhpur and the Aravalli hills, I met a chaiwallah who brewed possibly the best chai I’ve ever had. His secret? Hand-smashed fresh ginger in each pot. To this day, I smash ginger in a garlic press and crush spices with a mortar and pestle before adding them to my tea mélanges.

  • Jojawar

Thailand: ชา or chā is taken hot, and equally often iced, in something that pop culture has turned into an addictive artform: Thai tea; their version of the chai latte. It is essentially brewed tea with condensed milk; not only is it completely satisfying in the Thai heat, but also completely addictive! The beauty of Thai street food is that it is everywhere and also usually ridiculously good. So on a hot afternoon what’s better than street snacks and Thai tea while you wander around a market? My first time in Thailand, I can still remember with all my senses the scene as I sat in a little café in Ayutthaya, across from the ruins of the old capital of Siam, eating the best Tom yum goong soup I’ve ever tasted, drinking their “house special” Thai tea.

Home: if home is where the heart is, for me, what feels like home is where the tea is brewed. By hand. There is ritual and history and healing power and sensory explosion in a cup of tea, whether it is a few simple leaves of pu’erh, barely tinting the water a golden brown, or the medicinal notes of an herbal blend, its peppermints and earthy roots commingling into a liquid salve. It’s the process of selecting one’s ingredients and concocting a nourishing or soothing or energizing blend. It’s potion-making. It’s the moving meditation in watching tea leaves boil with cardamom pods and ginger in a pot of chai, the cinnamony notes wafting me back to noisy Udaipur streets. It’s a simple gunpowder green tea mixed with fresh mint and honey that echoes the call to prayer across a buzzing medina. It’s the steadiness and balance that comes with pouring from an iron teapot and holding a warm cup to your lips for the first sip that brings visions of piles of tea leaves and spices in one of the oodles of foreign markets I’ve had the privilege of wandering.

a snapshot of my tea shelf

Final Notes: As I type this, I’m drinking a pu’erh concoction with some botanicals added (dandelion root, licorice root, tulsi, ginger, turmeric, elderberries, burdock root, to name a few). But I am merely a student of the tea, and I learn little bits and pieces every time I travel or turn new pages (leaves, as it were). I like this word-nerd blog post on the history of the word Tea.

When the world opens up again, I hope to share the new blends I’m concocting, and I long to drink cups of tea from chaiwallahs in far-flung places. In the meantime, I wonder if it’s too late to be an Anthropologist when I grow up. ॐ 

Fernweh and a gypsy spirit

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I’ve posted this piece on my Medium page, as it crosses that fine line between travel writing and essay. But here’s a preview, linking some of the stuff that rambles through my brain on any given Wednesday morning to travel thoughts, life lessons and pre-liftoff considerations:

I’m drinking honey-sweetened green tea with mint, a taste for which I acquired in Morocco. The mint leaves, bought at a local farmstand and dried in my kitchen. The images of desert campfires and Sahara dunes come back when I drink this brew…

Click Here to read the rest of the essay!

Zanzibar Part III: Istanbul (?)

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[Zanzibar Part I: Pemba Magic]  |  [Zanzibar Part II: Stone Town]

Two days before I’m scheduled to depart for Africa, Turkish Airlines changes my return ticket so that instead of another couple of days in Zanzibar, I’ve got a 2-day layover in Istanbul. Turns out this isn’t as big a deal as I had envisioned… Stone Town is hot and dusty, and our one whirlwind day is plenty.

It also turns out that getting a Turkish e-Visa and finding a lovely little B&B just blocks from the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia while sitting in my kitchen some 5000 miles away was also a piece of cake. So like that, I had plans to spend a couple of days in a city I thought I’d never get to see during these convoluted political times.

I had left Boston a week earlier, feeling angry, disheartened, rebellious, frustrated, embarrassed and altogether disapproving of the US current administration. Wanderlust raging and fernweh in high gear, I felt like an alien amongst my fellow Americans. I needed to get OUT. The stream of propaganda emanating from my country’s gold house makes me sick to my stomach; the deeper their hole of hate and other-izing is dug, the more my stomach reels as it did in the meat market in Stone Town.

I went to Zanzibar, American passport in hand, for a diving holiday with a dear European friend. We were in the far-flung reaches of a place not many tourists go, let alone even know exists. Aside from a very small handful of other travellers and assorted Peace Corps or aid workers, there were no other white people visiting there; Pemba is roughly 99% Muslim, as is Istanbul in theory. At Ataturk Airport, I’m mulling the fact that it’s almost a relief to have been surrounded by others for whom aggressive white (read: Christian, American, ignorant…) nationalism is just not a Thing at present.

And so I arrive in Istanbul, sad at having just said goodbye to my co-adventurer, slightly anxious about this new stamp in my passport, and more than slightly squeamish about my nationality and what it represents in a country mine has so recently postured to hate. Paradoxically, my complexion belies my country of origin and from the first interactions I’m asked, “Argentina? France? Spain?” I figure that some of my rusty Español and a strategically-asserted “Canada” here and there will be invaluable.


Sultanahmet. 

This mind-chatter is still occupying space in my head as I step out of the taxi and into the adorable Hotel Empress Zoe B&B. The neighbourhood is called Sultanahmet, which contains both the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, sights I’ve been told are not-to-be-missed here. It is also the site of 2015 and 2016 suicide bombings. I’ve been warned of this as well. Of the school that lightning doesn’t usually strike in the same place (erm, 3 times), I’m slightly mollified by the presence of police with obvious machine guns and armoured vehicles at nearly every open space here. My room is fantastic. The greeting I receive by Layla is warm and welcoming. She arms me with a map and we orchestrate a sights-to-be-seen plan for my next 48 hours. The greeting I receive from the resident cats is equally as inviting.

Once I’m settled, the intention is to get the lay of the land and find some dinner. The first hot shower in a week is medicine for the chilly, damp gray air to which I’ve travelled; stark contrast to the prior week’s steamy East African days. I rebound and set off to explore.

Istanbul not Constantinople.

Bosphorous Bridge from the air, connecting Europe and Asia

Called Lygos, Byzantium, Constantinople and then Istanbul, this city is a perfect confluence of east-meeting-west. Quite literally, since Istanbul straddles the Bosphorus, the strait that separates the continents of Europe and Asia, and has been a key trade route for millennia, connecting Black and Aegean Seas, commingling humans, spices, slaves and customs from ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Byzantine empires before early Christian v. Muslim conflict delivered rule to the Ottoman Empire in the 15th Century.

Tourism is sparse. I’ve arrived to this normally teeming-with-tourists city in both a political maelstrom and the height of the low season. Glad that there are no lines to contend with at the major sights, I’m also a target for the desperate carpet-sellers that pop from nowhere to begin innocent chatter. “Hello, Argentina?” “Parlez-vous Français?” “Hablas español?” “Where are you from?” Learning from my first mistake, where a conversation with a friendly local turned into an introduction to his other “new friends from South America” and an invitation to the nearby rug shoppe. I declined the kind offer and deflect future propositions like these – of which there are many – with a firm “no,” as the promise “I’ll come by later” is clearly too naïve.

My first impression is that Istanbul is clean. People are chattering and smiling. Most, if not all, women are wearing a hijab. Men are dressed smartly, in tapered-leg suits. Even the street dogs are tagged and friendly-seeming. Like in India, some men hold hands in companionship. New York City seems more stressed-out to me than this place of recent turmoil and conflict.

It’s evening and the sun is preparing to set; we are between late-afternoon and evening adhans (calls to prayer), and I’ve set off to explore the plaza that sits between the Sultanahmet Mosque (dubbed ‘Blue Mosque’ for its elaborate inlaid tilework) and the Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya in Turkish), which mesmerises on first sight. Once a Greek Orthodox church and the world’s largest cathedral, Hagia Sophia’s pinkish stucco is transformed to a glowing architectural sculpture in the late-afternoon sun. I did not get a chance to go inside, but the domed structure itself is breathtaking.

I wander the Sultanahmet Square and note its peculiar mix of political metaphor: Greek and Egyptian obelisks and a German fountain dotting the plaza. Recalling the Istanbul scene in Dan Brown’s Inferno (which transpires roughly where I stand), I locate the entrance to the Basilica Cistern, which is where I’ll go first in the morning. I also find a gorgeous sweet shoppe, displaying the mounds of Turkish Delight that I’ll soon see is ubiquitous in this city. It reminds me of a Charleston Chew-meets-nougat-meets-gummy bear, only with pistachios and coconut. I’ve never had anything quite like it and I vow to find the best one in the city and buy some to take home with me (because clearly the 100g I’ve purchased won’t last the evening). Dinner is exquisite grilled calamari that rivals what I had in Sardinia, fresh bread with muhammara (a fantastic Turkish red pepper and walnut spread) and grilled sea bass, plucked from a pile of just-caught poissons on display in the lobby. My first quarter-day here is pas mal, if I do say so myself.

Monday: in which I do the tourist thing.

Olives and cheese and eggs for brekkie: I could get used to this. Well-sated and map in hand, I head out for a day of touristing. First stop: Basilica Cistern. Descending the 52 steps into this ancient cistern, an underground reservoir that filtered water for the grand Topkapi Palace, the first word in my head is WOW (and it’s the first word of those who enter just after me as well). Turkish music echoes. The ceiling is 9 metres high, its stone arches making it seem more cathedral-like than anything underground. Unfolding around me is a sea of carved marble columns radiating and reflecting the reddish light. The arches look medieval and Greek and Persian all at once. Towards the back of the cistern, a pathway leads to Medusa heads carved into column bases, supporting just two of the 336 columns in this magically eerie place. There are Doric and Ionic and Corinthian columns, and one which is called “Hen’s Eye” and is said to represent the tears shed by slaves who died building this place. I pause for a moment to connect the dots of horror from Zanzibar’s slave market, visited mere days before, to this grandeur. The music is haunting.

Medusa #1

My next stop is Topkapi Palace. Almost by accident, I’ve wandered through one of the grand, guarded, fairytale-arched entrances to the palace, following old stone walls as I walked along the tram route towards the Bosphorous. I’ve purchased a scarf at a local shop to ward off the chilly air. From the patient proprietor, while talking tourism (v. slow these days) and sales tactics (low-pressure wins more business), I learn where to find the best Turkish Delight in the city: Koska, a fact subsequently confirmed by more than one local (luckily, it’s mere blocks from stop #3, the Mısır Çarşısı or spice bazaar).

Meandering through the gardens and buildings of Topkapi Palace and taking in the architecture, I reflect on the way of life in a place like this: servants and slaves and someone to wait one’s every whim. Gilded rooms and accoutrements abound, I bristle at the present-day irony of what the commoners’ tax dollars supported in medieval times. I dare not reflect on what today’s aspiring western Sultans would do with the harem or their quarters.

Streets of Istanbul
Stone walls of the compound
Castle-like entry
Harem entertaining room
Harem entertaining room
Elaborate mosaics
Mesmerising ceilings
Harem hallways
Self-portrait

I consider the concept that I’m guided by spices as I continue walking, the narrower streets widening to a bustling downtown that reminds me of a cross between 34th Street in NYC and small villages like Jojawar in Rajasthan, the cobblestone streets and ancient stone mosques yielding only partially to modern commerce and city din, set on the banks of a strait dotted with Ottoman castles and mansions, the European-influenced Galata tower rising from the far European shore of what’s called the Golden Horn. I find the candy shop as well as the spice bazaar, not without getting turned around 6 or 7 times and stumbling upon a demonstration of sorts in the square just outside the market.

Galata Tower, across the golden horn
Streets of Istanbul
This man, selling flags at a rally
Inside the spice bazaar hall
Spice bazaar 1664

I wend my way back to my B&B with time to purchase some souvenir-worthy Turkish baklava, chat with more ever-so-friendly carpet sellers (I am mistaken for a Turkish woman from the back, with my new scarf tied apparently well enough to pass), partake in some local cuisine (for the record, my hummus is better!) and crumple into bed, exhausted, just after the last adhan sounds. Walk-weary legs having surely earned a pile of adventure points for the 17km I marched today.

Sultanahmet square
Blue Mosque
Sunny days…
Streets of Sultanahmet
Blue Mosque
Blue Mosque
Streets near the B&B
Streets near the B&B
Streets near the B&B

The next morning, I have time to visit the Blue Mosque (exterior more impressive than interior to this tourist), wander some more around the charming neighbourhood, and I find myself lost amidst narrow cobbled streets and old relics of a time when building was an artform in stone.

At the airport, my travel bubble is burst when I am subjected to a ridiculous succession of security checks and passport controls between the entrance and the gate, an apparent result of the new regulations passed whilst we were in Africa. I fleetingly contemplate ditching the flight to the US altogether and boarding a train to northern Europe. The roaring of distant dragons compels my return to finish projects-in-process back in the real world. Bleh.

Back home, as I succumb to the jet-lag and collapse into my own bed, I feel the irony of re-entry pulse through my every cell…head in East Africa, body in North America, heart in Europe. Demain est un autre jour, I promise myself. My last thoughts before sleep finally takes hold: soothing accents, a swirl of bright colours, azure sea and sky, a personal aquarium, the embrace of a dear heart, mounds of spices in a faraway bazaar, dreamy magic carpet-like music, the sun setting over the Indian Ocean and the germinating seedlings of what I’ve dubbed year of Africa.

[Zanzibar Part I: Pemba Magic]  |  [Zanzibar Part II: Stone Town]