Reymond Page's Blog - Posts Tagged "travel"
First things first
My name is actually Reymond Pagé, but that's an impossible search request, so we will go with Reymond Page for now. It's not like it's anything new, I've been doing that all my life, smoothing over the French heritage to make things easier for everyone, especially when it comes to phone conversations. Besides, people have a hard enough time with the 'e' in Reymond, I figured I'd just cut everyone a break.
So on to more important things. What, you've written a book?
Why yes, I have, but if you're not into travel, humour, frustration, or wonder, you probably won't really enjoy it. If you ever thought to yourself, "I'm so happy this travel book doesn't have any pictures in it. That would just ruin the mood." then you might as well move on, because this book is crammed full of photographs. And artwork. And anything else I could find lying around. Or is that laying around?
That's maybe another warning, if you're looking for grammatically perfect (or is that perfectly grammatical) English writing, this may be your only chance to just walk on by.
Never mind. Disregard everything I just wrote.
The Great Year - India Edition is a wonderfully honest read, about my family's seventy six days in India. This was part of a larger, two hundred and seventy five day trip around the world with my wife and ten and twelve year old children. As such, I brought one hundred and thirty-nine days of baggage with me into India, and despite having spent only seventy-six days there, I probably left with an additional two hundred. All that being said, of the eleven countries visited on that trip, India would be the first place to which I would go back.
This is a different kind of love story.
So on to more important things. What, you've written a book?
Why yes, I have, but if you're not into travel, humour, frustration, or wonder, you probably won't really enjoy it. If you ever thought to yourself, "I'm so happy this travel book doesn't have any pictures in it. That would just ruin the mood." then you might as well move on, because this book is crammed full of photographs. And artwork. And anything else I could find lying around. Or is that laying around?
That's maybe another warning, if you're looking for grammatically perfect (or is that perfectly grammatical) English writing, this may be your only chance to just walk on by.
Never mind. Disregard everything I just wrote.
The Great Year - India Edition is a wonderfully honest read, about my family's seventy six days in India. This was part of a larger, two hundred and seventy five day trip around the world with my wife and ten and twelve year old children. As such, I brought one hundred and thirty-nine days of baggage with me into India, and despite having spent only seventy-six days there, I probably left with an additional two hundred. All that being said, of the eleven countries visited on that trip, India would be the first place to which I would go back.
This is a different kind of love story.
Excerpt from The Great Year - India Edition
The main street on the way to the old city is very busy, dirty, and the sidewalks are crumbling or nonexistent, so the walk is not the most pleasant one, but once in the old city, the road is....busy, dirty and the sidewalks are crumbling or nonexistent. It’s not a fun walk and I am beginning to look at my watch to see if three days have passed. No such luck. Motorbikes literally cover any space which might be suitable for a person to walk safely. We turn a couple corners off the main street and the mood is more relaxed, without all the hard sell guys trying to get you into their shop. Children race past us, smiling and calling out to one another. Men share some water cooler chatter over a cup of chai. Shop owners work their inventory, adjusting their displays to make them as inviting as possible. One poor guy shows us more than a dozen tablecloths, and the colour combinations just get more garish and revolting the deeper he digs into his shelves. Please stop! He seems surprised when we don’t want to buy even one. It’s cheap he says. Yes, but depressingly ugly and cheap are not exactly what I had in mind for my dining room table. Some screws are coming loose and I’m fearing that these thoughts are going to start leaving my lips involuntarily. Yes, obviously export quality, I say. Laura gives everyone the high sign and out we go.
On the next corner a middle aged man engages us in conversation. Just a regular conversation, until he invites us upstairs to his second floor shop. It’s mostly an empty room, with a few boxes on the dusty floor. My location is suitable? he asks. He hands me a business card and solicits an opinion on those as well. The encounter reminds me that people are people everywhere we go. Some are curious, some are uncertain, others friendly, or indifferent. No two people are alike, and yet half way around the world, we are all the same.
Back out on the main street, we come face to face with the part of humanity that gets under my skin. We walk a gauntlet of shopkeepers who are in our space pretty aggressively, almost demanding that we go in their shops...the pit of my stomach is heating up again, but for different reasons. Laura gets behind me and pushes me along before I say anything that she will regret.
Jonas and Matthew point out the forty foot metal poles on the back of a three wheeled bike and I’m mildly sedated, until we’re set upon by two guys selling drums who won’t take no for an answer. I don’t care if it’s free, I don’t want a drum, I say. They follow along for some time and we can’t stop anywhere without them sticking a drum in our faces, so we have to carry on. We walk single file along a winding path as the sidewalks are crowded with people and cows and boxes and debris. At a spot where a lane crosses the street, I stop hard, and the guy crashes into me because he is following so closely. There is a crumbling cement post on my left, heaps of boxes on my right. He cannot pass me, and I don’t move. I turn and give him the look that I continue to work on....and wait. I am starting to feel like part of me is being let out of a cage. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good. When I see a vehicle turning into the lane I wait until the last second and then cross in front of it so that I leave the drummers behind. It’s enough of a break that they manage to find someone else to latch on to.
Now, keep in mind, there are literally hundreds of shops lining all of these streets we walk along. These are not shops like we have back home, with fifty foot frontage, bright blinking signs, and uninterested staff. These guys have five to ten feet at most, so we are passing a lot of shops, and most people are friendly, smile, and say hello and little more, or sometimes don’t even take notice of us. It’s not everybody, but it is a significant minority who spoil the experience.
But there is so much beauty here, so many wonderful people who are genuinely curious and kind, it is fascinating to watch life unfold. Breathe. In, out. Repeat. Continue.
I’m over it now.
Okay. Jaipur is crazy, but it is fun. And most certainly not boring.
There’s a chaos in India that I find invigorating because it’s a communal chaos: everyone is taking part. It’s not the chaos of mayhem and unpredictability, but a pre-evolutionary chaos of formless matter that has its own order despite my best efforts to qualify it all. It’s a chaos that begs us to come inside, letting go of our egos and instinctive responses, and be a part of that formlessness. As someone who at one point in his life thought he might be a civil engineer, well, that’s a lot for me and my brain to accept.
But India has me on the ropes.
As we pass a man in his car, he calls out. Hey moostash! He rubs his chin and nods approvingly at my goatee.
On the next corner a middle aged man engages us in conversation. Just a regular conversation, until he invites us upstairs to his second floor shop. It’s mostly an empty room, with a few boxes on the dusty floor. My location is suitable? he asks. He hands me a business card and solicits an opinion on those as well. The encounter reminds me that people are people everywhere we go. Some are curious, some are uncertain, others friendly, or indifferent. No two people are alike, and yet half way around the world, we are all the same.
Back out on the main street, we come face to face with the part of humanity that gets under my skin. We walk a gauntlet of shopkeepers who are in our space pretty aggressively, almost demanding that we go in their shops...the pit of my stomach is heating up again, but for different reasons. Laura gets behind me and pushes me along before I say anything that she will regret.
Jonas and Matthew point out the forty foot metal poles on the back of a three wheeled bike and I’m mildly sedated, until we’re set upon by two guys selling drums who won’t take no for an answer. I don’t care if it’s free, I don’t want a drum, I say. They follow along for some time and we can’t stop anywhere without them sticking a drum in our faces, so we have to carry on. We walk single file along a winding path as the sidewalks are crowded with people and cows and boxes and debris. At a spot where a lane crosses the street, I stop hard, and the guy crashes into me because he is following so closely. There is a crumbling cement post on my left, heaps of boxes on my right. He cannot pass me, and I don’t move. I turn and give him the look that I continue to work on....and wait. I am starting to feel like part of me is being let out of a cage. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good. When I see a vehicle turning into the lane I wait until the last second and then cross in front of it so that I leave the drummers behind. It’s enough of a break that they manage to find someone else to latch on to.
Now, keep in mind, there are literally hundreds of shops lining all of these streets we walk along. These are not shops like we have back home, with fifty foot frontage, bright blinking signs, and uninterested staff. These guys have five to ten feet at most, so we are passing a lot of shops, and most people are friendly, smile, and say hello and little more, or sometimes don’t even take notice of us. It’s not everybody, but it is a significant minority who spoil the experience.
But there is so much beauty here, so many wonderful people who are genuinely curious and kind, it is fascinating to watch life unfold. Breathe. In, out. Repeat. Continue.
I’m over it now.
Okay. Jaipur is crazy, but it is fun. And most certainly not boring.
There’s a chaos in India that I find invigorating because it’s a communal chaos: everyone is taking part. It’s not the chaos of mayhem and unpredictability, but a pre-evolutionary chaos of formless matter that has its own order despite my best efforts to qualify it all. It’s a chaos that begs us to come inside, letting go of our egos and instinctive responses, and be a part of that formlessness. As someone who at one point in his life thought he might be a civil engineer, well, that’s a lot for me and my brain to accept.
But India has me on the ropes.
As we pass a man in his car, he calls out. Hey moostash! He rubs his chin and nods approvingly at my goatee.
Excerpt from A Change of View
Beginning on page 42:
MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 2007
Figs and Fishes
At what point do you let your child decide he has had enough cantaloupe for breakfast, especially when you want to be sure everyone’s getting enough fruits and vegetables after all those ham sandwiches? Apparently, one piece earlier than I did.
The drive to Matera was a long and winding one. You know the kind, where the road turns sharply to the left and right, uphill and right back down before your stomach has time to realize it’s supposed to be going down with the rest of your body. Usually that sort of thing is kind of fun, but today we got what marketing people might call a “value added bonus” along that scenic drive.
So, that cantaloupe.
Matthew started making some noise about not feeling well, but managed to keep things under control for about fifteen minutes. Eventually though, the roads wore him down, and that cantaloupe needed release.
As soon as Matthew lurched forward, Jonas looked like he was trying to escape a house on fire, using all four limbs to propel himself out of the car, despite the fact that the car was still moving. All I could say was, Yup, pull over. As soon as possible please. And I reached back and put my hand under Matthew’s mouth. I have no idea why or what I hoped to accomplish. As soon as Matthew was done, he took a deep breath, one of those chest-expanding breaths that makes you purse your lips and exhale like Dizzy Gillespie blowing on his trumpet. That feels better, he said.
We (Yes! Laura!) pulled into what looked like a cross between a cafe and a repair shop, with two old fellas sitting on lawn chairs out front. Drinking beer. It was 9:30 in the morning. Laura helped Matthew get cleaned up while I stood with my (clean) hand on my chin, pondering what to do next as I looked at the floor of the car. The men rested their beers on their laps, and leaned forward slightly, curious as to what we were up to.
I figured the first thing I needed to do was deal with the sheer volume, pulsating on the floor where there should have been a rubber mat. I knelt down, and used my hand and forearm like a squeegee, pulling a surprisingly large quantity of breakfast over the lip and out the door, which landed on the ground with an impressive splat. At that point, the beer drinkers pretended to be looking nonchalantly in the other direction.
I cleaned my arm off with the remains of a kleenex, and ran across the street to the grocery store to get cleaning supplies. We did our best to clean out the car, and used a half-dozen air fresheners to deal with what remained.
Back in the car and on the road again, Jonas eyed Matthew like a hawk, wary of any suspicious movements or sounds. But with the foul cantaloupe eradicated, Matthew was happy as could be. I told him that when he is a teenager, any time he is annoyed with me, he must remember this precise moment, when he was throwing up in the rental car in Italy, and I was holding out my hand in a way that only a father could at a time like that.
That is love, Laura told him.
To be honest, Matera was a bit anti-climactic after our morning adventure (not true, but almost...?). Standing at a railing with a view over most of the city, a man in his mid-fifties started chatting with us about what to see, what path to take. Okay, thanks, I said, and we started off. “Okay, I will take you,” he said. Uh, how much? “Is free. I want to be guide, but need to pass my English test first, then will be allowed. You correct my English when I make mistake, and you not pay.” Really? “Yes.” Franco told us that if the police show up, we must say that we got lost, and he is helping us find our way. No problem.
Franco took us through homes and restaurants, stables and churches, some with remarkable frescoes. Many have built-up facades, but inside are carved deeply into the soft rock, making for deceptively large interior spaces. Franco was born here, and he showed us the cave home he lived in, until he was four years old. At that point, in the late forties, the rest of Italy discovered Matera’s desperate level of poverty, and the government conceived a plan to relocate everyone to new housing projects. It remained a ghost town for some years, before people began to re-appreciate its ancient, simple beauty. It is becoming one of the destination points for tourists in south Italy, and it wasn’t hard to see why. The contrast with the glitz of the remains of Rome’s majestic era, or the splendour of Florence’s Renaissance revival, is stark. It was immediately apparent that those things just did not happen here, as though Matera hid in her own caves and let history pass her by.
Franco pointed out a fig tree beyond a fence. “Do you like figs?” Uh, can’t really say, we’ve never tried one. His face registered a bit of shock, and he jumped the fence, and brought us two kinds, green and purple. “Do you like them?” Just like a Fig Newton, I thought to myself, knowing before I opened my mouth that that’s one of those things you shouldn’t say out loud lest ye be thought a fool. Yes, they are very good, we all say. He smiles broadly and fills his shirt with several dozen figs. I help him back over the fence, and he pulls out my shirt and dumps all the figs in. Well, they’re not that good. For the rest of the tour, Jonas and I are dropping figs every chance we get - behind a wall, over a fence, down the valley, whenever Franco turned to point something out, we would jettison a few more. When he turned back, we puffed out our cheeks and held half a fig, smiled and nodded our heads. We would have had another incident on the way home had we tried to finish them all.
POSTED BY REY AT 10:50 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 2007
Figs and Fishes
At what point do you let your child decide he has had enough cantaloupe for breakfast, especially when you want to be sure everyone’s getting enough fruits and vegetables after all those ham sandwiches? Apparently, one piece earlier than I did.
The drive to Matera was a long and winding one. You know the kind, where the road turns sharply to the left and right, uphill and right back down before your stomach has time to realize it’s supposed to be going down with the rest of your body. Usually that sort of thing is kind of fun, but today we got what marketing people might call a “value added bonus” along that scenic drive.
So, that cantaloupe.
Matthew started making some noise about not feeling well, but managed to keep things under control for about fifteen minutes. Eventually though, the roads wore him down, and that cantaloupe needed release.
As soon as Matthew lurched forward, Jonas looked like he was trying to escape a house on fire, using all four limbs to propel himself out of the car, despite the fact that the car was still moving. All I could say was, Yup, pull over. As soon as possible please. And I reached back and put my hand under Matthew’s mouth. I have no idea why or what I hoped to accomplish. As soon as Matthew was done, he took a deep breath, one of those chest-expanding breaths that makes you purse your lips and exhale like Dizzy Gillespie blowing on his trumpet. That feels better, he said.
We (Yes! Laura!) pulled into what looked like a cross between a cafe and a repair shop, with two old fellas sitting on lawn chairs out front. Drinking beer. It was 9:30 in the morning. Laura helped Matthew get cleaned up while I stood with my (clean) hand on my chin, pondering what to do next as I looked at the floor of the car. The men rested their beers on their laps, and leaned forward slightly, curious as to what we were up to.
I figured the first thing I needed to do was deal with the sheer volume, pulsating on the floor where there should have been a rubber mat. I knelt down, and used my hand and forearm like a squeegee, pulling a surprisingly large quantity of breakfast over the lip and out the door, which landed on the ground with an impressive splat. At that point, the beer drinkers pretended to be looking nonchalantly in the other direction.
I cleaned my arm off with the remains of a kleenex, and ran across the street to the grocery store to get cleaning supplies. We did our best to clean out the car, and used a half-dozen air fresheners to deal with what remained.
Back in the car and on the road again, Jonas eyed Matthew like a hawk, wary of any suspicious movements or sounds. But with the foul cantaloupe eradicated, Matthew was happy as could be. I told him that when he is a teenager, any time he is annoyed with me, he must remember this precise moment, when he was throwing up in the rental car in Italy, and I was holding out my hand in a way that only a father could at a time like that.
That is love, Laura told him.
To be honest, Matera was a bit anti-climactic after our morning adventure (not true, but almost...?). Standing at a railing with a view over most of the city, a man in his mid-fifties started chatting with us about what to see, what path to take. Okay, thanks, I said, and we started off. “Okay, I will take you,” he said. Uh, how much? “Is free. I want to be guide, but need to pass my English test first, then will be allowed. You correct my English when I make mistake, and you not pay.” Really? “Yes.” Franco told us that if the police show up, we must say that we got lost, and he is helping us find our way. No problem.
Franco took us through homes and restaurants, stables and churches, some with remarkable frescoes. Many have built-up facades, but inside are carved deeply into the soft rock, making for deceptively large interior spaces. Franco was born here, and he showed us the cave home he lived in, until he was four years old. At that point, in the late forties, the rest of Italy discovered Matera’s desperate level of poverty, and the government conceived a plan to relocate everyone to new housing projects. It remained a ghost town for some years, before people began to re-appreciate its ancient, simple beauty. It is becoming one of the destination points for tourists in south Italy, and it wasn’t hard to see why. The contrast with the glitz of the remains of Rome’s majestic era, or the splendour of Florence’s Renaissance revival, is stark. It was immediately apparent that those things just did not happen here, as though Matera hid in her own caves and let history pass her by.
Franco pointed out a fig tree beyond a fence. “Do you like figs?” Uh, can’t really say, we’ve never tried one. His face registered a bit of shock, and he jumped the fence, and brought us two kinds, green and purple. “Do you like them?” Just like a Fig Newton, I thought to myself, knowing before I opened my mouth that that’s one of those things you shouldn’t say out loud lest ye be thought a fool. Yes, they are very good, we all say. He smiles broadly and fills his shirt with several dozen figs. I help him back over the fence, and he pulls out my shirt and dumps all the figs in. Well, they’re not that good. For the rest of the tour, Jonas and I are dropping figs every chance we get - behind a wall, over a fence, down the valley, whenever Franco turned to point something out, we would jettison a few more. When he turned back, we puffed out our cheeks and held half a fig, smiled and nodded our heads. We would have had another incident on the way home had we tried to finish them all.
POSTED BY REY AT 10:50 PM
