Where Archives - Adventures Outside and In

The End

December 15, 2018December 15, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Iceland, USA, Where, Why

In the sharp night Icelandic sky, which had momentarily cleared of cloud and rain, hung the familiar Orion constellation. There was something about the congruity of that ever-recognisable belt. The new depth revealed by dark skies and shaky binoculars, always inspired me.

The nebula hidden just below was my own cosmological constant and anchor to the world to which I would soon return. A reminder that just as with the stars, wherever I travelled in the world, there I would be. Like Orion I’d always be hunting for something. Less like him I’d not always be sure what it was that I was hunting for.

Tonight though we were all certain. The elusive Northern Lights were our prey and we waited with breath held in anticipation or stolen by the icy, swirling wind. Of course, like with any hunt we had to be prepared to go home with empty mouths. An unslaked hunger to bear witness to the silent inner workings of our complex world.

A slow bus-ward trudge commenced as the cold continued to gather while time ticked away. I didn’t feel bad that I was not going to see the lights. Instead only proud of the distance I’d come and that I’d given myself this opportunity to feel so alive. I was sure there’d still be plenty of explosive moments yet to come.

Besides, if anywhere had taught me not to be so shackled to my expectations, then New York, which I had only just departed, was that place.

Big Christmas in the Big Apple

What I’d expected was snow covered streets melted only by traffic and coffee spilled while handling giant pizza slices. Happy faces skating frozen lakes. Windows lined with wooden toys. The glass steamed up by the chilly breath of hopeful children.

It was a fantastic city full of sights and buzz. But the only Christmas magic I felt, as a few flakes of snow drifted down atop the Rockefeller centre in miraculously still conditions, was quickly dispelled. “Is it normally so calm like this?” I asked, “You’re 800 feet in the air man what do you think?” came that typical surly New York reply.

Brooklyn however had been full of nice surprises. Views of that iconic jeweled skyline. Probably the world’s best cup of coffee (not the one in Elf, that place had closed). And what was truly the best of what travel had offered me: coincidence.

Coincidence

Drinking in a bar close to the brewery, trying to come to terms with being back on my own again after having only just made friends in San Francisco, another friend coincidentally appeared. This time an old friend. Twelve years we reckoned had passed since we last met. Whilst I posted a picture of the bar for distant friends to see, he was sat right around the corner reading it.

Of course we didn’t have nearly enough time to catch up on 12 years of our lives. But the time we spend on the paths we travel I realised, was less important than how and when those paths coincide. Making unique moments that made this trip my own.

The final surprise New York would have for me was not any of the great things my friend recommended for me. Not even the relaxing night off I gave myself cat sitting Stirling.

No, instead it was one of the most touristic things I could have chosen to see.

The Statue

Although smaller than I’d expected, again it was the unexpected that made her come to life for me. Stood inside the pedestal, Emma Lazarus’ words stamped in copper changed the meaning of the statue for me like they had been doing for others for over 115 years.

I’m sure my travel-weary body and barbwire-tattered trousers went some way to helping me see these words from the perspective of the trembling voices of the Ellis Island immigration museum. Their striking effects empower the meek, welcome the needy and cast out the pomp and unduly proud.

As these sick and tired bodies drifted through the sea-washed sunset gates, inspection, detention, freedom and happiness were all in equal play. Any of my own anxieties these past few months were far out-stripped by what they must have felt.

I wonder did her beacon-hand glow with world-wide welcome, easing their fears and kindling their hopes? Or would they be doomed to wash up like wretched refuse on the teeming shore.

A Flag in the Wind

Such conflicted thoughts of hope and helplessness bubbled up again for me in Iceland.

An acoustic guitar warms the air in Hlemmur Mathöll food hall. I sit against the radiator and plate glass that resolutely combine to reject the cloud-locked skies of Reykjavik’s odd December. Perhaps by the end of my Prince Polo chocolate bar, the low-lit blue sky will return. Or snow. Or thunder even. The weather here it seems is as changeable as my thoughts on returning home.

I am like the restless Icelandic flag whipped by the wind. A bright red cross, a flame of passion for all the words and pictures I created. Like the lava the cross represents, spilling forth to form new lands and with them new purpose. The flag also bears a white cross of ice. Like some hollow cavern, sometimes empty of promise or belonging in the world. Finally, surrounded all by the deep blue of the ocean. At times I felt strong and proud like these Nordic island borders. But sometimes still like an islander without a boat, helplessly adrift on the colossal tectonics of the world.

I wondered as those New York immigrants probably did. “Could I somehow bridge the seas and find a life to live?” Would I be warmed by that subterranean soul I’d found within my core? Or would I wonder icy caverns instead. A chill-stifled voice inaudible, the only sound the echoes of my own lost footsteps.

The Light

As I neared the bus door I was resigned to my wish of seeing the Northern Lights, remaining just that. The wind that ragged at coats and ponchos, sapped out heat even through my two layers of trousers. I was ready to give in.

That’s when I heard it. A hoot of excitement from the American contingent. I wheeled around like a wide-eyed prize fighter who’d been caught off guard with a celestial hay-maker.

There in the sky, hung an off-white glyph. A milky lizard tail laid lazily across the night. Like a sorcerer had stamped their ownership on the heavens above us. From it traced down neat ruled lines that gave the sky a depth no star could ever manage.

Like Fuji’s clouds the lights would slowly and imperceptibly change. The tail became two great beams. A ghost train from behind the cloud, ferrying beings in worlds we’d never know.

Bracing myself against the wind-shook bus was not enough to capture the moment. Merely enough to reveal the colour hidden to our naked eyes.

In a way I was glad. Too often would I have to force myself to put the camera down but now I was left with no choice but to stare up at this silent-lipped spectacle.

The End

This would be the punctuation point in my little trip once around the globe. A point by which I’d hoped to have become so changed by the world that I would no longer worry about the flaws in my character, concentrating only on my strengths.

I thought back to Bartholdi’s statue and how her mild eyes and silent lips command such power without aggression. Her meekness intertwined with her greatness.

Also her Liberty Green shell, when formed, created widespread worry among her carers and admirers. I know some words I’ve written appear like a creeping rust oxidizing over how I’ve previously been seen.

But that flaw now forms an essential part of the statue. It seals the thin copper from the harsher elements she faces. My own flaws give me my perspective and the passion for what I enjoy.

With all the wondrous and terrible things I’d seen in these past 100 days the world had changed me it’s true.

More than anything it merely changed the way I looked at the person I always was.

Henry Miller was right, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

I look out to the green haired rocks, gathered like petrified goblins awed by the abyssal falls. With my notebook only halfway filled, I’m ready to see in as many new ways as the world will let me.

My trip was at an end. My future was just beginning.

Embrace the Suck

November 30, 2018December 2, 2018 by ellrice, posted in USA, Where, Why

A butterfly flaps its wings in New York and causes a hurricane in China. You’ve probably heard of The Butterfly Effect and the various exaggerated examples of its power. I’m sure you’ve taken them with a pinch of salt too.

The closer you look at your own life however, the more you can trace it back to some seemingly insignificant moment that started you down this specific branch of the myriad of ways in which your life might have gone.

In Sacramento with the rain driving down, walking amidst the characterless concrete surrounding the Greyhound station, I wonder. Can any good come of tracing things back like this? Will it simply make you obsess over your “poor life choices” as my friend from the bus station limbo puts it? Or can it be seen both ways – a catalyst for the good, bad and just plain unexpected? Things that might be considered the real, but less glamorous adventure.

As Benji goes “full hobo” and climbs in to his sleeping bag on the cold station floor he turns and reminds me of a motto he learnt serving in the armed forces. “Embrace the suck man. Embrace the suck.” He laughs.

The Suck

Attributed to what I have termed my occasional “common sense blackouts” there was about 15 seconds in which I flapped those dreaded cotton wings and formed a hurricane in the path of my future. Perhaps through believing we’d entered a digital era, or perhaps just sheer dumb absent-mindedness, I removed my driver’s licence from my wallet thinking “I wont need it, I’ll probably just lose it”.

Despite my good friend posting it out to me in Vancouver, fate it seemed had other plans for me. As I left for Seattle on the bus I learnt my licence was stuck in a depot in Richmond due to unclear postal bloopers. It might eventually make it back to the UK. I didn’t care at this point. I had food poisoning, the start of a chest infection and my travel buddy had left. I’d never felt so alone.

A chain of events had been set in motion that would see me give up my dream of seeing Mount St Helens and Cannon Beach, fall off a bike in Portland, break my camera, pay for a room I would have no chance of staying in and taking the worst bus journey of my life.

Mount Hood from Pittlock Mansion, Portland

Two hours delay in departing and fourteen to Sacramento. As I write this the announcer brings news of snow, making our forecast lay over another six hours before we get the final three hour leg of our journey. In less time than this one bus journey I’d flown half way around the globe.

That’s plenty of time it turns out, to completely re-type this post after what seemed like an inevitable power cut and then as the power came back on a blue screen of death !

The Wake

Clearly, there were large tides of suck flowing in to my life. The moment I realised I’d booked the wrong accommodation back in Portland for example. About to tuck in to a bacon and blue cheese burger in the stylish Kelly’s Olympian, one such wave crashed over my thoughts creating an awful inception, ruining my lunch.

Beautiful shot of Portland suggested by a friendly passer-by

“Maybe I’m just a loser?” I thought. In truth this thought had bubbled up a few times in recent years. Underachievement, bad luck, mistakes and mishaps. In spite of all my gifts things would often not work out in one way or another. Could some people end up losing while others inexplicably land on their feet? Was I the unfortunate balance to the off-tilt scales of fate?

I know I can be very focused on the negative sometimes. This could just all be part of my own neurosis. So I forced myself to find the positive things that had arrived in the wake of these waves of suck. That’s when I started to realise that as much good had found its way into my path as bad. Some that I would never have seen on my original trajectory, some simply made better by the relative suck of the previous days. How many could I name I wonder?

Off the Itinerary

At least two places I loved were a direct result of my karmic debt being collected in full the day I left Japan. I’d had no travel mishaps so far so when the last Gyoza hit my stomach and the cramps begun I knew it was going to be a tough time. It was so bad that even after two days of not doing a whole lot in Vancouver we decided to retreat to the mountains in Squamish and splash out on our own apartment with hot tub, cinema room and mountain views. Without my stomach bug I’d maybe have never seen Squamish or Whistler. I’d almost certainly have not enjoyed a blissful Netflix and hot tub regime!

When I realised my licence was not going to find me in Canada, I needed an alternate itinerary quick. Portland had never been on my radar since I had been thinking of wilderness and camping. But this city was so much fun for me I told at least four people I would move there one day. I hiked and ran, saw mountains, and humming birds, watched live music and my first ice hockey game. This place was full of life and without the suck, I likely would have driven right past it.

Off the Wall

Staying in cities for extended lengths of time makes you seek out things you might not normally look for. Thanksgiving dinner in the hostel in Seattle was just such a thing for me. A large plate of small talk to go with my side of turkey would usually be a definite no. Instead I went for it, found a girl who really needed a friend and sipped Naughty Nellie while praising the notion of “to have loved and lost”. We watched the happy faces of the Macy’s parade the following morning and found ourselves smiling too.

A museum could never normally be considered “off the wall”. But I had a good feeling about Seattle’s Pinball museum from the moment I stepped through the door to be meet the resident greeter Buddy the Golden Retriever. There I found machines from 30 or 40 years ago as well as two of my all time favourites, Fun House and Arabian Nights. Who knew for $15 I would be playing on machines worth $10,000 and upwards.

Off the Chart

It’s every traveller’s hope that their dreams are fulfilled by the places they travel. To feel that elation that where they are in the world is exactly where they want to be. Turns out that feeling gets amplified when you’ve had such a run of bad luck. In Sacramento, in the 5th hour of delay, during the first power cut, coughing uncontrollably I was suffering an off the chart low. Within an hour of that moment we’d escaped in our own rental car and were cruising out into view of the San Francisco skyline. The rain had given way to a glorious sunset, the concrete swapped for sea, sky and painted houses. We both instantly hit off the chart happiness. This place would be special, made all the more so because of the lingering suck.

Back in BC, I couldn’t really see a future for this trip. I imagined being sat in some smokey city on my birthday resenting the obstacles that had prevented me getting out to places like Yosemite. In Portland I’d watched a film about a man climbing all 3000 feet of El Capitan without ropes.

If only I’d remembered my licence, if only it hadn’t been lost in the post. If only a million other things that made me lose this goal like all the others.

It’s my birthday in a few hours so I bought myself a present. A tour to Yosemite. Something I know I’ll appreciate just a little bit more because of the totally unplanned way it has come about.

The Fate of Falling Trees

November 27, 2018November 27, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Japan, Where

The trees on Mount Takao near Kyoto had somehow found a new kind of life, surpassing anything that I’d seen or heard before. Not only did their leaves burn brightly with a humanistic passion, but I also heard strange noises out there on my own. They sounded more like the deep voices of ancient beings, than just some aging timber, swaying in the breeze.

I loved this isolation. I was an hour out of civilised Japan and I was face to face with real nature in all its mystery and destructive power. It was my vindication for being such a lone wolf. Yet it was a place I found myself in, thanks to a tip from another traveller.

Japan it seemed would be another lesson in the value of good company, even if some of the best bits, like this, I’d ultimately experience alone.

The Roadblock

Adrenaline coursed my body on the bus ride out of Kyoto. It was my first solo hike in a foreign country. I felt again the fear I’d felt riding in to the Apennines with an emptying water bottle and failing phone signal. I’d nervously eyed the bus schedule. I’d read and re-read the comprehensive route guide. I’d packed enough gear to survive nuclear winter. But despite all the prep, my heart sank as the bus pulled away leaving me stranded. “Road Blocked” it read.

Google translate, among its usual red herrings, or in this case “Trees Percent Agent” showed me the word “Landslide”. This was the antonym of anything calming that my eyes had been desperately searching for.

It was simultaneously exactly what I’d been searching for. Adventure without the possibility to back out. I’d come this far, I only knew one way home and it was 4 hours past that roadblock.

The Calm Before the Storm

Fortunately the sign it seemed, like many in Japan, was placed there solely to worry and confuse. There had been a landslide, it was true. A house mere metres from the sign rested on a brand new cliff face, moments from disaster. But the steps down to the Kiyotaki-gawa river were still mostly visible. With big gulp and a bit of scrambling I was on my way on an adventure that walked so perfectly the lines of danger and reward.

The first stop was two temples. “Sigh,” I initially thought. That was until I saw them.

Even in the grips of a powerful temple fatigue as I clearly was, the peaceful Saimyo-ji and commanding Jingo-ji temples did not fail to impress. Their architecture cut like a samurai sword in to the soft autumnal surroundings.

“Perhaps spatter from those slicing arcs was what slowly stained the leaves from green to red”, I thought. Except that violence was wholly absent here.

When the sun back-lights those gorgeous colours your mind simply stops. The vibrancy bombards your senses and you feel locked-in. As if the trees have burning bright eyes and they’re staring right in to your soul.

The Valley of the Voices

After a brief stop to rid myself of bad karma in the form of three small ceramic Karawage discs, hurled into the valley below, it was my turn to venture in to that same valley. I took with me a hope that the peace might calm some of my anxious thoughts, and that also I wouldn’t get hit in the head by the next group’s Karawage.

The open arms of that valley held more than enough to deliver on that hope. The route was gentle and meanderous, with vermilion bridges and beautiful reflections from emerald pools. Great Catfish swam lazily against the current just to stay in place. Apparently they were as happy as the hikers with the scenery they found themselves in.

But soon such peace gives way to other signs of life and power. Pencil pines tower above as if the ground and sky were pulled apart by the two great hands we’d found on Ba Na Hill. The space between the trunks is haunted by the sound of creaking wood. Each one the sound of some ancient door pushed slowly ajar, revealing passages to mysterious worlds. The voices of those trees raised the hairs on my arms and made me swiften my pace. At the same time I felt so lucky to have heard them.

Pathways of Fate

Later on I found increasing signs of destruction from the same typhoon that had caused the road block. Kuya-no-Taki falls on my guide was marked by an impressive looking Torii shrine gate which now lay smashed and splintered. It struck me that all the fallen trees hanging precariously from telephone lines and strong branches were expressions of fate. Some statues had stood for hundreds of years until that storm. Some would stand for hundreds more. Fate would choose their start and ending.

Ducking under more silently suspended limbs of fate, I hurriedly made my way out of the storm damage and back to relative safety. Fate was on my side it seemed as it also left a travel companion in my path. Not only was this man friendly, and going my way, but we also had an eerie amount of things in common. We were doing the same route, using the same guide. We were both from the same country, had the same profession and it even turned out we were staying in the same hostel.

It was a nice reminder that although fate had inscribed the countless graves at Yaska Cemetery, it had also carved a path to my meeting of two lovely people. One who guided me out to the mountain, and one that led me home again.

Light and Darkness – The Spine of the World

November 18, 2018 by ellrice, posted in China, Where, Why

It was time to face the Great Wall and find out if it was a ruin like I found in Abhayagiri, tainted by the past or the future like in Xi’an, or something worse. What if it was a true wonder, choked by a ceaseless tourist torrent? Deluged by a wretched wave. Drowned of any possibility for enjoyment or appreciation.

I should, by now, have become accustomed to China making it all of these things at once and simultaneously none. Yin and Yang. Death and darkness. Light and beauty.

Foundations of Bone

There in the foundations of the wall lay the bones of a million slaves. Worked to death, their backs splintered like the heavy wooden joists that levered each stone block into place in this impossible jigsaw.

Yet there on the windswept peaks of Badaling, away from the tourist torrent, very little imagination is needed to see that jigsaw complete in your minds eye.

Before you the spine of the world is laid out, snaking at unbelievable angles, defiant to the forces of nature.

Invading Mongols, enthused by how easily they had traversed China’s mountains to the north then faced this. Such obstinance in the face of its surrounds must have given them pause.

Warning Song

Even now, at sunrise, 1100 metres up, the wall it seems, is not undefended. For a second I hear singing, as if a thousand men call to tempt their enemy’s courage. Perhaps it was some sound echoed from the mountains, or wind whipping up through the battlements. Or maybe those countless soldiers who served their seven year service for the rest of their lives, still patrol that ancient wall. They call to all as a warning, even the rising sun.

Now the wall falls silent again. The rising sun turns the higher towers a soft red rose colour. The trees already bare for the coming winter, leave nothing but these great bones as far as the eye can see. Its design is a mystery, engineering unfathomable, it fills you with wonder.

Greatness

I’m reminded about our guide Luna’s story at the bottom of the wall. Three things she said made the Great Wall great. At over 8000km for just the Ming dynasty sections, the wall is truly great in length. All the slaves and soldiers for which it is a tomb make it one of China’s greatest tragedies. Finally, with over 2000 years of construction it is a great example of the ingenuity of man.

For me though, none of these say what the Great Wall was and still is today. It is a great wonder, that – staring out over the misty peaks – is impossible not to feel. Like so much of China and indeed myself, it was not light nor dark. It was all things at once and through it all amazing to me. A reminder that not all the world is there to be understood, but sometimes just experienced instead.

The wind chilled my bones as the sun finally crested the peaks to the east. I picked up my bag and scrambled the steps back toward the coach. My time in China was at an end I realised, but I didn’t look back at the wall again. That I knew would be coming with me wherever I went in life from here.

Light and Darkness – Souls in the Clay

November 18, 2018November 18, 2018 by ellrice, posted in China, Where

China’s vein of paradox runs deep within its past just as in the present. Chairman Mao is still held in such high regard by some generations. His singular vision to bring progress to his country is recognised in statues and portraits everywhere we go.

Such unfaltering belief can be a dangerous thing, as we found from the stories of China’s ancient past. History made precious often because of Mao’s attempt to eradicate it during the cultural revolution. An enactment of his own unfaltering belief that to embrace the future one must first destroy the past.

History Reburied

In the late 60’s when farmers unearthed the first broken pieces of what would become one of China’s greatest discoveries, they reacted with fear and trepidation. The shattered soldiers likely seemed as if petrified by some cursed creature. If they dug any further would the same beast be uncovered and they too be smashed into the dusty earth?

This curse turned out to be a blessing. For the terracotta warriors, hastily reburied by the frightened farmers, would not be found again until 1974 – a time just after the destruction of the cultural revolution had subsided.

Now the modern Chinese government takes great care of this discovery. Even laws exist to prevent future excavations of the gargantuan tomb until such time as it can be safely preserved.

That Yin and Yang I’d seen elsewhere in China spins silently here. A site of peace and beauty, though dark and terrible at the same time.

Souls in the Clay

The warriors themselves stand motionless as they have for over 2000 years while all around them a buzz selfie sticks and shutter clicks.

The soldier’s neutral expressions and weaponless grasps bear none of the ferocity nor brutality of their story.

It all began with another great figure in Chinese history. The very first emperor of China: Qin Shi Huang.

By the time of the Terracotta warriors though, any great achievement had been shadowed by great tragedy. The emperor’s mercury addled mind was poisoned by a belief that the substance would preserve his soul in the afterlife. This was a world that consumed his every thought in the twilight of his life.

Originally, he had wanted the whole 20,000 strong army to be buried with him. This as well as a few hundred concubines, eunuchs and even children – their innocence a currency in his imagined world.

The Awful Alternative

The terracotta warriors were an awful alternative. Though each of their faces were unique, their cores were all hollowed to receive a soul. A doomed slave, killed and burnt in the very clay ovens that made each model.

Now countless rows stand in pointless formation, waiting for a day that will never arrive. Forever trapped in prisons smooth and serene. Those unique faces, epitaphs to undervalued lives.

Qin like Mao is still held in high regard. In less than 30 years the maps of seven kingdoms had indeed been unified, giving birth to the China we know today.

The cost I fear, in its people, language and culture, all burnt away in the name of unification, was too great. Twenty thousand lives turned to ash and remade to the emperor’s specification. A mass cleansing the likes of which would not be seen again until the whole world was at war with Hitler’s Germany.

Now the sun occasionally warms the patient faces of the warriors. Their souls are baked deep and safe from the horror of that time.

Breached Defences

Looking forward to the Great Wall I wondered if a similar tainted history would run like a foul cement through each stone block it was built with. After all, riding bikes on the Ming dynasty walls in Xi’an had already cast a long autumn shadow of doubt over the experience yet to come.

Just as in Vietnam, the bike ride had brought us all together, freeing us from the shackles of the buses and trains to which we’d become so familiar. The walls themselves however were set fast and very much part of the modern city now.

Height restrictions hardly stop the imposition of the modern buildings. Traffic flows in through several engineered breaches of the ancient defence – a sign of the arriving future.

In the evening light with crimson lanterns standing regiment, our guide Lei Lei gives a voluminous history, breathing some life in to the structure.

We lap the devious killing courtyard and ceremonial gates. As we pass the Samsung Galaxy Gatehouse however, I find it hard to believe Ming would approve. The kaleidoscopic projections are a substitute it seems, for something else that leached away. History sucked out from the same arches bringing the future to this city.

Light and Darkness – Meat and Claws

November 15, 2018November 18, 2018 by ellrice, posted in China, Where, Why

I’d gone to China with the hope to understand it. My feeling was that growing tensions in the West over a threat from a pariah nation in the East were somewhat exaggerated. I’d hoped to find a side to the story equal and opposite. A tale of an inherently good but complex people at conflict mostly because of history and bad politics.

Instead I found a paradoxical mix of light and dark. China’s famous Yin and Yang. The more I saw of China, the more I realised it exists inside ourselves as well as this place.

A Warning

Personally, I have a love for all things alive. I once rescued a fly from the sink and dried out its wings with cotton buds. So if you feel the same or similar, please beware. This post will be hard to read, just as it has been to write.

Meat

The hanging dogs bereft of their fur are completely motionless. Their jowls hooked and expressions fixed in rigor, each the same as the last. A cloned visage of their sudden ending.

Crates upon crates of live ducks and chickens form towers of clamor and panic. They stare out at me accusingly but I don’t help. I just walk right by them.

The concept of Yin and Yang make sense to me. No light without darkness, good without evil. If darkness is the absence of light and evil the ignorance of good, then one cannot exist without the other. They are merely the ends of single spectra, not atoms in their own right.

What’s harder to understand is that those two stark and separate extremes exist inside you simultaneously.

You are not good while some other person is evil. You are inherently both at the same time and that is somehow necessary to make you who you are.

This is what I’d started to realise as I’d begun to pass by the meat in the Yangshuo market. Those horrible images had not yet jarred me as I thought they would. And then one lone cat looked up at me from her cage.

Her kin already gone, she lay patiently in a classic feline curl. Her eyes however belied the comfort of her posture. One upwards glance, without the courage to lift her head, stopped me in my tracks.

It was not a look that begged for help, she somehow knew that was not coming. Instead her eyes asked just one question, “Is it my turn now?”

I knew that look would never leave me and that it made me good and her captors evil. But was I good to care for the cat or evil to care less for the ducks and chickens?

China’s rural poor have long suffered from lack of food. From problems of motivation to farm under extreme communist rule, to classic capitalist problems of a developing country’s rich leaving its poor behind.

So is it really wrong for a nation who will industriously use every morsel of an animal to save itself? Or is it wrong for a wasteful nation to select which life has value based on how cute or tame it is?

The answer I fear is both and neither. Throughout China I would find glimpses of its atomic parts. When viewed so close they could seem malignant. With context they might seem necessary. In reality I find them to be both at the same time.

The Iron Claw

In Chengdu, a city of some 17 million, I’d expected a dooming smog to smother a sea of sullen faces. Instead I’d found thriving markets feeding fresh food to happy people. The youth were enthused and individual. Beautiful creatures were sheltered and fed.

Yet still you might simply disappear if you were to protest against the building of a chemical plant near the city’s water supply. It was like a pearl in the grip of an iron claw. The blue sky could still be seen in between those powerful talons – mostly.

Did it in fact make the city safe from such calamity as the London protests in 2011? Is it better to defer opinion to your government to avoid things like Brexit? Or is it impossible to be free under such an unrelenting grasp?

The stories our guides had given about their own tangles with the iron claw had not given much of an answer. They themselves seem happy despite.

Only China’s future would give the answer. Looking back to the past only left me with more questions.

There are so many threads woven into the fabric of China that understanding it seemed just out of reach. Something, like us, that was both light and dark at the same time.

The Descending Dragon

October 15, 2018October 14, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Vietnam, Where

It is the serpentine undulations of its limestone karsts that earn Ha Long Bay its name. However, the magic at the heart of that “descending dragon” saturates the whole scene.

It even permeates the rusting hulls of the endless string of vessels on the water. Their age and size no match for the forces that shaped this place, they serve only to provide perspective to otherwise unbelieving eyes.

At times the layers seem painted on like a simple water colour with fading hues. Some kind of Sistine Chapel to nature, both beautiful and imagined at the same time.

When we approached the famous Fighting Cocks things came in to focus more. The boats would loom in with reckless disregard for the shape of their bows, and yet still I felt like we weren’t close enough.

When our guide had asked if we wanted to kayak today, all hands had gone up. I think they were banking on this to subsidise the delicious seafood meal we’d had on the journey.

Paddles propelled our school of brightly coloured kayaks through low hanging caves. That was when I realised what a safe bet it had been for them. “Who wouldn’t want to be as close to this place as possible?” I thought as I looked around.

What I saw was every face in every kayak eager to drink in every detail of the panoramic lagoon. Whether it was circling the water, matching the circling Kites above us. Stalking the elusive monkeys somewhere in the trees that clung impossibly to those steep cliffs. Or just floating there together marking the moment with a shutter click. Everyone found their moment there I think.

Later in the Thien Cung Caves we would see amazing formations thousands of years in the making. Every size and shape to be discovered, every past and future image imagined, like a fortune teller’s dream. For me though, it was those kayaks that finally made me connect with Ha Long Bay.

Effortlessly pushing the waters away in a world of a thousand islands, sunset turning the beige cliffs slowly rose. “You could visit them all this way in maybe 2 months” our guide suggests. If I lived here I’d certainly try, but I doubt I’d ever claim to have seen it all.

The Mist on the Mountain

October 14, 2018October 14, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Vietnam, Where

Weighty fish swim freely in the moat around beautifully constructed buildings. The sun shines brightly over impeccable gardens. The mountain awaits.

After much deliberation over the cost and authenticity of the Ba Na Hills Sunworld resort I was already glad I came. But less so the instant the cable car left the station.

“So this is what it feels like to be on the wrong side of the oven door!” I thought as we began our silent ascent to the mysterious mountain fun world.

With 1500 metres at its peak the oven dial inevitably turned slowly down and gasping for air gave way to gasping at the views instead.

The Mist

The throbbing in my head subsided leaving naught but the occasional rumble from the cable car as it crossed each stanchion, and a Jurassic-sounding jungle below. Behind us the vast panorama, before us a eerie wall of mist into which we would soon be enveloped.

It was hard not to be disappointed that we had already had our only glimpse of that sunlit vista. On the Golden Bridge especially, where great stone hands of might and magic support you, the view would be undoubtedly breathtaking.

But for everything the mist took away it also brought it’s own character. Like a soft focus lens blurring the hard edges of reality, the mist added something that may have been otherwise lacking in such a man-made place.

Though at times we could see no more than 30 or 40 metres in front of us, there was another kind of depth to this place.

The mountain’s breath

Getting lost in the monuments and temples, their shrouded architecture intermingled with the mountain’s past structures. There was a feeling of mystery to the place. As if we weren’t in the centre of five Mercure hotels, brimming with tourists.

A glimpse of a 30 foot Buddha we’d never even known was there. Imagining the unreal, lurking behind every corner, just behind that milky wall of mist. It was a pulse of nature still beating behind the fibreglass facades. A sign the mountain still drew a deep misty breath every now and then.

More pictures from Ba Na Hills

Oceanic Engines

September 30, 2018September 30, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Borneo, Where

Despite long, thick flippers heaving deep impressions in the sand, the metre-long Green Turtle before me, wheeled around like a great artillery gun. It was not this mother’s night to leave her young with the 1816 eggs laid on Seligan Island in just 12 hours.

The Mother

We finally reached the mother who had begun to lay. She was carefully protected from sighting us so as not to be worried, but something was not right. Like some automaton on a prehistory tour her Triassic design, her precise repetitions, the whole setup just did not seem real.

Seeing her face changed that. Her important work complete, we were allowed to see her at rest. The tears in her eyes, though we knew were her normal glands at work, brought her instantly to life. The ranger scrubbed the sand from her back and she looked at us without concern. Perhaps she would return again many years later, but tonight her job was done.

Chance Encounter

Earlier in the day I’d levered my sunburnt body off the driftwood lounger and made my way sleepily over the hot, pitted sand.

My foot was aiming for the last pit by a massive palm, but stopped suddenly when I spotted a tiny clockwork turtle. A boy I imagined because of sheer pigheaded determination to be out ahead of the 30 siblings behind him.

The years he spent carried by his mother had wound his spring so tight. The magnetic crystals inside her head had guided her home to where she herself had made this same dash maybe 30 years ago. Now with four flippers frantically spinning, her son would hurdle dunes and rocks twice his size to reach the alluring ocean.

A gentle wave engulfed him, his first taste of salt. A great blue expanse opened up and his flippers eased to a glide.

Only mothers would return here so for the islanders there was little left than to watch his little head bobbing up a few more times for air. To watch and to hope that before his spring wound down, the yolk in his belly dry, he’d find some safety like so few of them would.

Hope

We witnessed another 40 or 50 released by the rangers that night. Some got confused and headed landward. Some would feed other animals in the sea. Some would succumb to our plastic and our nets. One never left the beach.

But over 2000 eggs had hatched that night from 26 nests. Around 4500 nests had been rescued in the year so far on just one island. If just 1 or 2 percent of the eggs in those nests make it, that’s 3-6 thousand Green and Hawksbill turtles out there. Their thick leather-like flippers effortlessly impelling them toward a sedentary and peaceful life.

Looking Closer

September 18, 2018September 21, 2018 by ellrice, posted in Sri Lanka, Where

I’m sitting on the A/C bus from Dambulla, the hub of Sri Lanka, trying to cool down. A kind man from Kandy helps me with a hidden auxiliary seat and points the fan at me. Probably because I look like I’m about to liquefy.
We chat about my time in Sri Lanka and he reminds me that sometimes, like now, Sri Lanka finds you. But sometimes, like our time in Yala, you need to look a bit closer to see her.

Yala

It would be easy to be consumed by the fact the Safari had not brought us a Leopard or an Elephant. To feel cheated that nature did not perform for us on demand. So much so, that as we sat down for lunch deep within the 900 square kilometre park, we might have missed a pretty special place in the world.

By the lazily babbling river we ate an excellent curry and Daal cooked by our guide. It seemed like the water was the only sound there. But soon I realised that we ate to a captive audience of creatures of many sizes.

The smooth, warm rock between the tributaries was our table. The swarms of fist-sized fish ate our leftovers. The daring monkeys stole our bananas.

“This is a place you couldn’t come on your own.” Simon had said. Even with Bali our friendly 6-year veteran guide from the excellent Yala Safari Sri Lanka. I still needed thick layers of insect repellent, and gallons of water. When a tick landed on me as I tried to take a rest break I also needed a moment to silence that voice in my head telling me everything wanted to eat me.
It was all here in one small enclave. A true expression of creatures living in nature. Geckos creep between the cracks, giant cotton-winged butterflies circle you closely and still other unknown creatures bubble in the rock pools by your feet. Six humans are the novelty here. Guests in a home far removed from anything they know.
Later we saw at least some of those “big name” items on the safari checklist, but for me our lunch was the real experience.

Ella

Another place where Sri Lanka did not immediately reveal herself was Ella. I mean, you’d have to be blind not to notice the layers of tree or tea coated hills, ever reducing in shade from green to blue off into the infinite distance. But we’d arrived too late for a hike up Little Adam’s Peak so instead we watched the locals playing cricket from one of the crop of tourist bars popping up by the station.

The unending flow of tourists to this place soak the ground, pulling up the bars, shops and restaurants like some hardy grass not native to these lands. I don’t dislike the heady mix of friendly Sri Lankans, tasty food and familiar Western comforts. For example the 360° Ella’s acoustic legend who plays every night really made my night. However, none of this was what I came here to see and so in the morning we went searching for adventure down the railway line.

This, we found, was a totally different side to Ella. We had to dodge a train, and some tricky touts who have defaced the markings that used to show the way to Ella Rock. We had to use our gut and the excellent directions here. But with relatively little effort we arrived at the top of the world. A place where if you fell you might never reach the ground. A place to do little else, than look out and contemplate how small you are in the scheme of things. All this, hidden in a cutting we had to look a little closer to see.