How to be a global traveller

By TOBY LICHTIG

What links Lisbon, Bodmin Moor, the Amazon, Satyajit Ray, the early Islamic caliphates and the living goddess tradition in the Nepalese Newari community? If you can answer this question then the chances are you were at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill on Tuesday night for the fascinating How To Travel and Explore evening, courtesy of the How To Academy.

What the different subjects lacked in cohesion they made up for in individual interest as six authors gave fifteen-minute lectures – rather like TED talks – on topics close to their hearts. The entry price of £25 may have been eye-watering to some, but compared to the price of the average Premier League match, the value was considerable: two intellectually stimulating halves of forty-five minutes each, broken up by a ten-minute interval. No pitch invasions, no queues to leave the venue, and no dreary post-match analysis. Apart from this blog.

First up was Philip Marsden, whose most recent book, Rising Ground, was described by the TLS's Marion Gibson as a “joyful perambulation through Cornwall, as well as through theories of space and place”. Marsden enthused about the bleakness of Bodmin Moor (“I’m not trying to sell it as a holiday destination, but rather as one of the best preserved examples in Europe of a ritual landscape”) and explained that his chief interest in neolithic stone formations was not as evidence of “functional structures” but as “works of art”. “These monuments are about reverence for the place they’re in”, Marsden commented. Many of the monuments on Bodmin Moor – ring cairns, bank cairns, view frames (in which boulders are triangulated to form a viewing aperture) – in some way point to Rough Tor, Cornwall’s second highest summit and a sacred site for the ancient architects. Marsden spoke of experiencing a similar reverence for the landscape. “I find it profoundly moving that what I feel on Bodmin Moor is in some way close to what was being felt 2–3,000 years ago.”

Ancient reverence and ritual were also at the heart of Isabella Tree’s talk – but this time in the setting of twenty-first-century Kathmandu. The “living goddess” (kumari) tradition involves the worshipping of a pre-pubescent girl selected from among the goldsmiths caste of the Newari community. The goddess (a Buddhist) is sacred to both Nepali Hindus and Buddhists. There are several of these goddesses living in Nepal at any one time and highest among them is the Royal Kumari, from whom the President of Nepal (formerly the King) must seek permission to rule by placing his head against her feet – an act of humility, said Tree, that most politicians would do well to consider.

Once these goddesses hit puberty, they are retired and replaced. Tree interviewed several of them in their later, mortal form. Most go on to live normal lives; one is now a software programmer. All spoke fondly of their former divine lives. Tree was non-judgemental, but it was hard to escape the feeling that the young goddesses are subjected to what might in a different light be considered child abuse. They are cooped up indoors all day. They must not smile, bleed or wear shoes; nor can their feet touch the outside ground. Running up and down polished floors in socks might sound like fun, but the lack of outdoor perambulation becomes a problem when post-celestial kumari have to adapt to the realities of Kathmandu’s pot-holed streets. One of Tree’s interviewees could barely walk for many months. The experience of becoming mortal again was “literally about finding her feet”.

Next, Andrew Robinson gave a diverting speech about the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray and his embrace of eastern and western culture: a celebration of multiculturalism advanced by Justin Marozzi after half-time, this time in relation to Baghdad. Marozzi reminded us that Baghdad was once a centre of cosmopolitanism, a home to Christians, Shia, Sunni and Jews, who made up 40 per cent of the city’s population less than a century ago. He used this past tolerance as the basis for a humorous tirade against “the homoerotic death cult” of Daesh (“Don’t use the term ‘Islamic state’: it’s reprehensible”) and the group's misconceptions about the real Islamic caliphates of the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. 

Unlike Daesh, the early caliphates were “progressive and intellectually inquisitive” and “enjoyed huge popular support”, said Marozzi, who went on to accuse Western media of shying away from satire about contemporary jihadism. This was a bold invocation in the light of the Charlie Hebdo killings, though Robinson’s favourite brand of humour is perhaps less pugnacious than that of the French cartoonists. Drawing on Monty Python’s Life of Brian, he finished with some words of advice to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: “You’re not the Caliph, you’re a very naughty boy”.

After the brutal misconceptions and wanton cruelties of Daesh, it was something of a relief to flap over to the rainforests of Brazil with Katherine Rundell, a Fellow of All Souls College and a devoted rooftop trespasser, who camped out in the Amazon as research for her latest book. There Rundell learned “never to assume that an animal is dead” and found new meaning in the expression “God is in the detail”. Having witnessed the sight of floating petrol stations, submerged forests and small children driving motor boats to school (“I’d never thought it was possible to be so intimidated by a five-year-old”), she considered her most treasured memory to be of a swallow perched on a tree. It wasn’t the bird itself but the confluence of bird and place. Rundell is a children’s author and the combination of swallow and Amazon was irresistible.

As a one-time resident of Lisbon, I can confirm that some of my own most treasured memories are of swallows swooping in their flocks by the banks of the Tagus at dusk – and it was Lisbon that captured the imagination of our final speaker, Jonathan Keates. According to the publicity posters, Portugal is “Europe’s best kept secret”, though for Keates this strapline used to be reversed: under Salazar, Europe was Portugal’s best kept secret. Keates, who first visited the country under the dictator, rhapsodized about the magic of a place that appears to be mediterranean but is actually buffeted by the “vast, cruel, relentless” Atlantic Ocean. A whistlestop tour of lisboeta history – from garum (fermented fish guts favoured by the Romans), trams, fado and persecuted Jewry to the city’s great authors: “Don’t tell Julian Barnes but I think [José Maria] de Eça de Queiroz is better than Flaubert” – ended with Keates’s conclusion that “the essence of Lisbon is that it’s en route to somewhere else”.

And capturing this essence is what travel writing does best: providing us with that sense of voyage, of passing through, of dipping – however briefly and haphazardly – into another world. Looked at this way, the evening seemed even better value. Six journeys in one night for £25? Easyjet couldn’t better that.