Lisa Niver's Blog: We Said Go Travel, page 367

Fall Hiking around Park City

Photo: Utah Office of Tourism

Have you ever returned to a place from childhood and felt like it was bigger? Park City, Utah is a place that you can visit all year round and enjoy in every season. I am always happy to return and every time I make new discoveries of what to do and where to stay.

Since I was a little girl, I have been skiing. I learned to ski at Big Bear Mountain in California but spent most of my childhood vacations on the slopes at Park City Mountain in Utah. I did not take to skiing right away. It was cold. I know there was snow so it had to be cold but I had cold fingers and frozen toes and I just didn’t really like being cold. It also seemed that the skis, boots and poles were as heavy as me and I just could not figure out how to carry all that gear. Once on the mountain I was able to maneuver down the slopes but in my early years there were many tears as I tried to learn to traverse the trails.

I always wondered what would it be like without the snow? I went to Utah in the fall and discovered it is stunning! I loved taking the chairlift to the top of the mountain and wandering down the trails and stopping to smell the flowers! The views are just as magnificent and honestly I felt I could enjoy them more with my feet in shoes and not attached to skis and boots. I highly recommend a fall visit to Park City, Utah as the leaves are changing colors and the air smells so sweet.

You can also test out the golf courses, shopping and unbelievable mountain biking. If you want to learn more about the hiking trails, check out Mountain Trails which has taken care of non-motorized trails for over twenty years.

Make sure to make a stop at the Utah Olympic Park from the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. It is free to visit the park and the nearly 400 acres included competition venues for Nordic jumping as well as bobsled, luge and skeleton. You can watch athletes in training, take a guided tour or if you are over sixteen, you can go in the bobsled at up to 80mph with up to 5 G’s of force which is like a 40-story drop in less than a minute! Let me know how it is—I am not ready for that tour!

I plan to return for another Fall hiking vacation and hike at Deer Valley and Canyons. I ski at all three areas but have only hiked at Park City Mountain. I also highly recommend you visit the Mighty 5 in Utah: Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks. I have visited Arches, Bryce Canyon and Zion and I plan to return again as well as discover the others. Utah is filled with gorgeous scenery and adventure. My next trip I want to go hot air ballooning; what is on your list?

All photos courtesy of Utah Office of Tourism

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Home Through Her Heart in Singapore

I live in a country I love. A country that through it’s stringent laws, and perhaps suffocating tendencies, holds a place I call home.

Home is arguably one of the most common topics we talk about here in our tiny island. After all, it is difficult to find a sense of belonging in a land where your road is laid out on golden linen for you. When you’re so constrained to this place, never experiencing how the other half lives, you can never find freedom that comes with sheer happiness.

But over the years of writing essay after essay about Home, about it being where the heart is, or where you can close the door and feel like you’d opened one instead, I never found out what it truly was.

But not long ago, I did. Unfortunately, I paid the heaviest price for it – my grandmother. With her, I had travelled much of the globe. I watched a purple dinosaur dance on stage, and people drawing with sugar. She was always by my side, and when she left I guess I realised – that she was home because she let me be myself. She let me free and be free. I miss her so much; I miss her presence and her ability to allow me to talk about writing as if I was writing at the moment. I miss the fact that she brought me everywhere and with her I saw what passion for life meant.

Beside her was where I was free. But you need to see the world before you find out about that. You need to find yourself before you can let yourself free. Everyone finds freedom in different places, it could be with someone, or at the top of Mount Fuji. It could be under the Atlantic Ocean or in the oldest car on Earth.

I travelled to china and saw chefs wrap dumplings like they were folding precise origami, I travelled to Bangkok and saw dancers flow as if they were the wind, I travelled to Australia and saw sunsets that were only possible by God’s art. And they were all free. Although the chefs were in a cramped kitchen, and the dancers were on a broken stage, they were free. They were free because they were happy.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

I saw the world, and I saw her, in the places I’ve seen, people I’ve met and songs I’ve heard. Although she left, I will see the rest of the world for her.

I will see the vast oceans, amazing sun rises. The high mountains and the breath taking Northern Lights. I will see the beauty of the world and share the fascinating sight that is freedom. I will find myself and share the rawness of it with everyone I love. I will find a place where I can be as free as I was beside her. And one day, when I meet my grandmother again, I will share with her that I found beauty second only to Hers.

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‘The Valley Among The Rocks’, in the USA

In the winter silence Harry’s van bounces over the ice-encrusted, mud-rutted road like a wayward bobsled. Staring out the window into the gray dawn, I realize that this would be a journey into a place unlike any other that I have seen. All around, colossal shafts and spires and mesas of rock rise out of the gray fog like sleeping warrior giants glazed in mantles of stone. There is a pitiless almost violent hue to the landscape.

Over the next two days in Monument Valley, my mind would drift across interior boundaries, melding what exists with what is believed or imagined to exist. The experience would weave a more personal and liberating vision of nature that helped me forge a kinship with these ancient stone monoliths—something I implicitly felt but still do not fully understand. The lines of recorded history seem to dissolve into a vibrantly alive world rich in oral traditions about the spiritual significance of this special place to the Navajo People, both living and dead.

“The Navajo call the valley Tsé Bií Ndzisgaíí. It means ‘The Valley among the Rocks,’” says Harry Nez, our soft-spoken, middle-aged guide from Navajo Spirit Tours. Directly in front, towering above us, are the Mitten Buttes, surrounded by snow-splattered dunes of red earth and patches of scrub.

“It looks like a place where the dinosaurs once roamed as if still frozen in a time capsule of molten rock,” says my friend Dick, a retired park ranger and amateur geologist.

“Actually, the rocks are much older than the volcanoes,” says Harry. “Geologists say that the rock formations were formed from an ancient sea, but for us they represent the life of the five-fingered people.”

“On the left,” he says, pointing to the massive butte silhouetted black against the horizon, “you can see a woman’s head frozen in stone. The long narrow tower is her hand. On the right is a man’s head and hand. Their bodies are in the earth, representing where the First People, the holy beings, came from. They stand as a reminder that they will someday return.”

Over eons wind, rain, and rivers have carved the sandstone plateaus into a dazzling menagerie of towers and spires, some a thousand or more feet, massive buttes, tottering arches, and bizarre animal and human forms. They offer a sense of permanence and stability, a link to a vanished prehistoric world.

Over the course of the day, we visit Three Sisters, believed to be three holy people from the underworld who turned to stone; Totem Pole, said to be a frozen yë’íí or god held up by lightning, and Yei Bi Chei, the wind-sculpted monolith where fire dancers emerge from a hogan.

The creation stories are an integral part of a living oral tradition passed down from one generation to the next in the form of songs and chants performed at all Navajo social gatherings. The ‘sings,’ as they are known, not only reaffirm the ancient stories and remembered events, but also seek to instill a balance of harmony and beauty in the present world, which is rife with chaos and discord.

This becomes eminently clear to me in the late afternoon when we drive to Ear of the Wind, a tunnel-like vaulted rock arch that opens up to the sky, where echoes from the wind can be heard. In my mind, it resembles a cave where a giant once stayed to watch his kingdom.

A short distance away, Harry motions to Dick and me to sit beneath another arch called Big Hogan. He tells us that giants long ago came here to talk to the coyotes, rabbits, and other animals about what would be best for the world. While listening, I stare up at the vaulted sandstone walls stained with black streams of water called desert varnish. The rim of the narrow vent or hole at the top beams like a lantern of white light casting a golden glow across the walls.

Then, a long sonorous cry pierces the silence. Maybe fifty or sixty feet away, a young Navajo chanter is sitting on a rock ledge. He breathes deeply, then rocks his body back and forth as his high pitched voice echoes off the canyon walls.

I do not know what the chant signifies, except that it is harrowing, full of sadness, perhaps about the current drought, the worst in Navajo history, and then calming, perhaps reflecting the singer’s hope for a more harmonious existence with nature.

Harry follows with a ‘sing’ commemorating the sacrifice of U.S. soldiers and marines at the battle of Iwo Jima. In a calm, modulated voice, his chanting, “…e-wp, e-wal-ah, e-wo, e-wal-ah…” drifts up through the sky hole into the other world.

About the Author: Victor A. Walsh’s travel and feature stories and literary essays have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, San Antonio Express-News, Austin American Statesman, San Jose Mercury News, Arizona Daily Star, Literary Traveler, Rosebud, Coast To Coast, Desert Leaf, Irish America, Sunset, and VIA.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

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Water Between the Ice in Mexico

So today was pretty eventful. A black, female lawyer from Yale living in Paris told me who I am. Well. Sort of.

I have been in Mexico City for a week now and it’s not exactly been what I have expected. I had been eagerly awaiting the intense heat of a Mexican desert in summer. Instead I have landed into the dreary puddles of dirty, lukewarm puddles in cracked asphalt that reflect the grey sky overhead, filled to bursting with a blanket of clouds. It has rained every single day. Like winter. But the thing is, it’s June. Anyways, this morning has finally been relatively clear and warm so I decide to head out to El Bosque de Chapultepec, the enormous forest park nearby where I am to meet up with a group of expats for a picnic and a day in the sun. It certainly seems promising, however there was a slight snag in the clean, pressed sheets that are my plans for the day.

I got lost. Terribly, terribly lost.

As per usual. I just seem to get lost everywhere I go. Back in high school I took great pride in my knowledge of the streets of Northern California that I earned of countless excursions that ended several hours longer than they should have. In Japan I managed to get lost on group tours due to wandering off to follow some enchanting sound, some subtle hint of curious noise. I have even been so successful as to get lost a different way each day this past week on my way to work even though it is the exact same route.

So now I am wandering the small walkways of this enormous park in the middle of the most populated city on earth looking for a group of foreigners I have never met. And then it hits me, like the way a large stone drops into a lake with a deep thunk. I was listening to a podcast of NPR’s This American Life while wandering, happy as a clam. The particular episode was on Americans in Paris. In classic TAL fashion, Ira Glass was weaving wit, with honesty, authenticity and light humor while dabbing all the strands in the fantastic dyes of the storyteller to produce a textile of lives that one cannot help but smile as you hold it in your hands. He was interviewing Janet McDonald, a black woman from Brooklyn who graduated from Yale and was working as a lawyer in Paris, about her experiences. Janet said the following,

“I was always an outsider. And I feel most inside where I am now. Outside. Go figure”

Boom. Pause. Rewind. Listen again. Pause. Look up. Close eyes. Yes. Finally, someone had done the impossible; Janet had articulated to me a significant aspect of my identity I was never able to articulate to myself, like walking through a completely dark room looking for a small object when suddenly someone turns on the light for you and you see the object was directly by your foot the whole time. Well I picked it up. And it felt good.

Too white for the brown kids, too brown for the white kids. Too alternative for the smart kids, too smart for the alternative kids. I had spent 20 years being told that I was more Mexican than American because my skin embraces sunlight like an old friend. I finally arrived to the place where I was told I was supposed to belong, the promised land where I would fit it in. Yesterday I met a young woman who asked me if I was from Saudi Arabia.

Why is it I love to travel? Why do I relish being in places where I am undisputedly an outsider? Oh yeah. Because that is who I am, who I have always been and who I will always be.

Go figure.

About the Author: Tomas is a student at Brown University who constantly wonders why he ever left the warm caress of his native northern California. When he is not observing the world around him, he is listening to it.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

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A perfect day in the UK

Three friends in a small car, loaded to the roof with badly packed tents, folding chairs, sleeping bags, gas burners and clothes. We’d been volunteering at a music festival for six days enjoying endless music, fun and unusually hot weather for the UK in June. We were tired and happy but not yet ready to return to our everyday lives. The drive back to Yorkshire would be long, but it was only 7.30am and the cloudless blue sky and early morning sunshine promised yet another heatwave for the day ahead.

Harbouring a weak sense of direction between us, it slowly became apparent that we were heading in the opposite direction to home, but as we drove around narrow country lanes with hedges high and signposts pointing us towards places none of us had ever heard of, we had but one goal and wouldn’t stop until we got there – the sea. By mid-morning we arrived in Ilfracombe, a small and beautiful town on the North Devon coast, we parked the car and began to explore. The place was just beginning to come to life, and we passed tourists strolling towards the harbour and others sitting under sunshades outside coffee shops and quaint cafes, we however, were not even tempted to stay and continued on our way toward distant cliffs.

We came across a small beach inhabited by only few people but decided to carry on. After a short walk along a stony path and through overgrown bushes we stumbled out to find ourselves at the top of a cliff. There below us was a small but perfectly formed cove. Soft golden sand, clear blue sea and large flat rocks, the invitation was there and we didn’t hesitate to accept as we scrambled down.

Somewhere in the distance we could see the harbour and the place we’d left behind, but we were here and we were now, and we were alive! Time didn’t matter, while the sun was shining and we were playing and relaxing, freedom was ours. One friend was soon asleep on a rock, the long nights of festival dancing finally catching up with him, another friend was lying on the sand, eyes closed and listening to the only sound, the gentle lapping of the sea on the shore. As for me? I was swimming in the sea enjoying the cool water in the hot midday sun. Every so often our intermittent laughter and joyful conversation would break through the still, warm air as we moved around our cove feeling at peace with ourselves, each other and the world.

Nature is a powerful communicator and we understood that we were meant to leave as the tide crept closer then closer still, gently pushing us back, first to the rocks then to the top of the cliff. We looked down as the sea made sure we left no trace, however there was something it couldn’t submerge – the sun touched joy that filled our souls and shone through our faces. It was a day I would dare to call perfect.

About the Author: Nina lives in Yorkshire and is passionate about Fair Trade, coffee and wild swimming and has travelled extensively around the UK and the world in search of places and people that can deepen her understanding and offer new experiences of these things and more.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

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WSGT: One Quarter MILLION on YouTube

We Said Go Travel Channel on YouTube September 2, 2014

We Said Go Travel on YouTube is at 249,266 views nearly ONE QUARTER MILLION VIEWS! 
There are currently 498 subscribers. Will you be #500?


Enjoy my next Instagram photo essays in the Jewish Journal:


    My experiences at Taste of Los Angeles
    Dining at Bourbon Steakhouse in Glendale
    The media preview night at The NICE GUY


 My bio is on USA Today and my first three articles are LIVE!
10best lunch spots on Ventura Boulevard
10best salsa spots in Los Angeles
10best Peaceful Parks

Lisa Ellen Niver’s first three articles on USA Today

The Fall 2014 Gratitude Travel Writing Contest starts September 11, 2014! I hope you will share your story.

 

Thank you to True Nomads for including me on the Top 100 Travel Tweeters list!


SPECIAL THANKS to Tim Leffel for interviewing me and including me in his book: A Better Life for Half the Price. Click here to visit Al Centro Media.

Thank you for your support. Connect on  Facebook,  Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest,  SlideShare,  Twitter, and YouTube.

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 NEWSLETTERS ON WE SAID GO TRAVEL: see them all!

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Freedom to Practice in Rome, Italy

Although her eyes are full of tears, my mother smiles, waving me on and mouthing, Go!, as I walk away from them and into the security line. I really don’t know how to feel about a year studying abroad in Spain. Excitement, anxiety, uncertainty and a sense of disbelief all jump around in my stomach. My head is filled with questions as I walk toward my gate with my carry-on suitcase. Am I making the right decision? Will I get homesick? Do I know enough Spanish to get along in Santiago de Compostela? I shove all thoughts aside and go to grab something to eat while I wait to board.

Twelve hours later, my would-be roommates pick me up from the airport. I am to stay with one of their families prior to moving into our apartment in downtown Santiago. I inwardly curse my rash decision to come here for an entire year and live with people I don’t know. I must be crazy.

I spend almost two weeks with my new friends, exploring their rural Galician town before making our way into the city. After organizing my classes, I realize I don’t have any requirements – I finished all my graduation prerequisites back at home. This must be one of the perks of studying abroad as a final undergraduate year. My roommates don’t understand. If I’d already finished everything and wasn’t bothered about my classes, why was I here? To travel, I say. To learn.

It hits me now. If I came to travel, then travel I will. I book my first RyanAir flight for an impromptu trip to Murcia where I visit cousins on my father’s side. I hop on buses to Porto and Lisbon on exchange student weekend trips. I meet like-minded people and spend two nights with twelve other students in a single hostel room in Madrid. I find and take cheap flights to London, Zurich, and Barcelona.

The intensity of my freedom didn’t hit me until I begin planning my spring break trip. Rome. Florence. Pisa. Paris. I ask, Who wants to come? Nobody. They all want to go home for the week. It means I would be truly on my own for an entire week in the city of my dreams. It also means a week of selfies. My introverted personality blooms.

I scribble out a potential itinerary. Arrive on Sunday, Colosseum on Monday, Vatican on Tuesday, Florence and Pisa Wednesday, Paris on Thursday, back to Rome late Friday, Pantheon on Saturday. Easter Mass at the basilica on Sunday. Gelato every day.

I know immediately upon touchdown I am in the correct place at this time of my life. The independence I have is overwhelming and exciting. I don’t have to avoid certain restaurants because a companion is picky. I get a rush buying museum and tour tickets because I know I can do what I wanted and when. I never once feel lonely. I feel free.

Each night on my way back from my Roman excursion I stop at the pizza restaurant next to my hostel and pick up my favorite margherita pizza. I take it to my room and stuff my face with the entire thing as I upload pictures from my day onto my blog and call my family on Viber. I tell them I’m having the time of my life. They tell me they miss me. Just a little longer, I say.

I have things to do. Places to go. People to avoid. Freedom to practice.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

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#MinaMoments: Bourbon Steakhouse in Glendale

I was excited to be invited to Bourbon Steakhouse in Glendale which opened only five months ago. Chef Michael Mina and his collection of fine restaurants have won so many awards; I could not wait to see what it would be like. I enjoyed starting the evening with the special bubbly from White Horse which made the whole evening feel like a celebration!

As you enter, notice the Wall of 234 vintage spoons from all around the world. This restaurant has a travel theme for Glendale because it was where the first transcontinental flight took off.

Our wonderful server, Tony, brought us a trio of sauces with our trio of fries. He was extremely knowledgable about the restaurant and the food. He tempted me to try a different type of steak and our multitude of food issues were no problem at this establishment.

Wondering what to start with? Our Appetizers included Octopus a la plancha with romesco, fingerling potato, lemon, and almond; Roasted eggplant & avocado dip with the most incredible chickpea fries, and heirloom vegetables and my favorite: Heirloom tomatoes with garlic aioli, onion rings, lovage, cucumber. I could eat a whole dinner of chickpea fries.

Between the three of us, we ate a Rib cap 8oz, Bavette 8oz, and the special Wood grill fish of the day, ahi tuna. The bavette was excellent, the rib cap was out of this world and the ahi is fresh and seasoned really well. Additionally we added the Delta asparagus with 7 treasures and the baked potato with accompaniments. I love a good baked potato.

Chef Joseph Conrad moved from Seattle to open this restaurant and his modern steakhouse menu includes steak, fish, pasta and vegetarian options. Gluten free, or dairy free are available here just talk to your server. The meat is Domestic black angus and there is also three types wagyu beef available here: Japanese, Australian rib eye (1 in 4 restaurants in Los Angeles to offer this) and a Prime black angus with a one-foot long bone dinner for two! Chef also recommends the Maine lobster pot pie.

Dessert is decadent here:

Devil’s food cake: dark chocolate, peanut butter, chocolate cream, peanut butter powder and peanut butter ganache

Butterscotch toffee pudding: Macallan 12 toffee, with madeleines and

Michael Mina’s signature root beer float. Huckleberry and root beer sorbet are available.

What will you eat first? What do you want to try? Let me know your favorites!

A special thank you to my dining companions: Laura Koleniak and Betsy Flanagan as well as the marvelous team at Bourbon Steakhouse.

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History’s Tribute To Freedom in the USA

History’s Tribute To Freedom in the USA

My first morning in Gettysburg began with the boom of thunder overhead, and the patter of rain on tent canvas. As I stuffed my belongings into the back of the car, I could see the fronts colliding across the sky; the forces of hot and cold engaged in a battle of opposites, just as Gettysburg once did.

I’m not sure what I expected to see upon arriving in Gettysburg, the southernmost stop on a week long road trip from Boston, but it wasn’t the strange juxtaposition of the 19th and 21st centuries that I found. There were miniature soldiers and uniform reproductions in every store window, with one souvenir shop going so far as to sell “scents of the battlefield” candles. Even the campground was Civil War themed— entering cars were greeted by wooden cutouts of a Union and Confederate soldier doing a sort of fist chop.

Seeing all of this paraphernalia provoked a somewhat conflicted response in me. On the one hand, I love history, and finding a town that embraced it so openly was exciting. But only a few short years ago, I endured the wrenching experience of watching a loved one depart for war. My fiancé’s deployment ended safely, but there were many close calls and sleepless nights. When I looked at daguerreotypes of Civil War soldiers and their doe-eyed widows on display in the Gettysburg Visitor Center, I could see a little bit of us looking back. How would I feel if I knew gift shops would be selling “scents of Afghanistan” candles two-hundred years from now?

Curiosity, however, prevailed and I soon found myself joining my traveling companions on one of the many historic tours of Baltimore Street, a section of town that saw more fighting than any other. Our tour guide was a tidy man in his early forties who wore a waistcoat and a pocket watch and introduced himself as Steve. With a lantern clutched in his left hand, Steve directed us past buildings with cannon balls mounted into their facades. Some of the brick walls of homes and businesses were so pockmarked with old bullet holes, they looked like red lace.

At one point, a woman from Colorado asked Steve why he decided to become a tour guide.

“I love history,” he told her. “And I love sharing it. I’ve worked as a public teacher as well, but this helps keep the bacon on the table.”

As we trudged past the Shriver Civilian Experience Museum, we heard tales of townsfolk who accepted strangers into their homes for the duration of the three-day battle, and the young woman named Jennie Wade who risked her life to bring provisions to soldiers. Walking through the town, a visitor can’t help but be imbued with a sense of how the war trapped not only those fighting, but everyone who happened to fall in its wake, young and old, male and female. It made me realize how lucky I am to live in a time and place of relative peace, and to be able to freely stroll down a street that would have been extremely perilous in 1863.

I decided then that I didn’t mind the souvenir shops, or the ghost tours, or the “old tyme” photography studios. These were honest people trying to make a living, to support themselves and their families— exactly as many of the soldiers at Gettysburg were fighting for. My whole road trip was enlightening. I slept a stone’s throw away from the field where Jimi Hendrix once rocked out at the original Woodstock, and drove miles through the heart of Pennsylvania coal country. But I knew that when I looked back later, nothing would surpass my time in Gettysburg. Without the struggles of the past, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the warm summer air, walking over cobbled streets by the flickering glow of candlelight and fireflies. In that moment, I felt privileged to be so free.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

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Wishing upon a star in Iran

‘Where will you be at the end of your trip?’

‘If everything goes as planned, I’ll be watching the sun set over glorious Palangan.’

These were my thoughts two days before heading to Iran. I had shared them with one of my closest friends. I knew that I had a long way to go and I had doubts as to being able to reach the final point, which was also the pinnacle of my voyage. The period spanning between landing in Tehran and riding the taxi from Qom to Hamedan had been more colourful, adventurous, and amazing than I had hoped. I had gone through a theft, I had made new friends, I had met many kind people, I had experienced some of the most stunning sights of my life, I had had my first wow, but I was ready for more.

The night before the ride to Sanandaj felt like Christmas Eve and I was as eager to get the gift Santa had in store for me as a three-year-old. Following a bumpy start and no bus ride to the East, we managed to find a shared taxi and it ended up being the right choice. I had been offered the peace of mind to sit in the back of the car and rest my eyes on the surrounding mountains and hills. Kurdistan felt surreal, bright and it seemed that someone had been playing with watercolours all through the region. Middle East? How about Central Asia, for a change? Like the breathtaking heights and drops reassured us a few minutes before reaching the bus station. A Silk Road flavour, carried by the winds from up North, lingered on.

The dust of Central Asia was also present, amidst the negotiations underway. There was no way I could let go of one of my greatest travel dreams and miss out on Palangan. Marcel and I were so damn close. Money did no longer matter, not that it ever had. Hands were shaken, an advance was paid, and the ride was on. 4:00pm, which would have given us enough time to see it at sunset. The hours to the start time went by. I felt anxious and curious and excited and… I don’t know it anymore. I just know that it was all over too fast, like rafting down a waterfall you’ve been dreaming to your whole life. We ate strawberries and I had tears in my eyes all the way through. At a point, our driver stopped: we could see Palangan from there! I climbed to get a better view, faster than I had ever done it. I froze, switched on my phone camera and started to take pictures.

‘Watch out!’ I felt the strong arm of our driver grab me. And I realised that this aloof attitude of his was only a mask. He was not a bad person and he certainly was touched by my dedication for his native lands… I had tears flooding my eyes and I had not cried for or been touched like that by a place for a very long time. The winding road took us down, as we approached Palangan speedily. I had thought about this moment, arranged and rearranged the pieces, characters, times of the day in my mind. Yet it always felt remote and cosy.

The reality was different: on a Friday and a holiday, the village was apparently no longer unknown, at least not to locals. Two thousand of them. Smiling, bidding me welcome, taking pictures with me. All dressed in bright and pastel colours, relaxed, and laid-back. We watched the beautiful turquoise river practically inviting us to paddle down it someday while tasting some savoury Kurdish snacks. It may feel strange to say this about Iran, but I really felt incredibly free, not even minding the hijab. More pictures and conversations followed, as we waited and waited for the sun to set and for the lights to be turned on in the rocky terraced houses. 8:00pm was our curfew and we had to make a run for it.

The sun had definitely connived against us, this time around. Which leaves room for Part 2.

About the author:  Olivia-Petra Coman is a history postgraduate student and experienced traveller, always thirsty for adventure.

She travels the world to discover its hidden treasures, she dreams to get to the historical sites she’s only explored in books, and she hopes to make a difference through her work and vision of the world around her.

Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Independence Travel Writing competition and tell your story.

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