Reminiscence from Persia- Part Two: Why Iran?

Iran, seemingly, was an odd choice for backpacking… but then a very few choices were available for choices.

Iran is often considered a hostile country… xenophobic, suspicious and overtly security conscious… add to it the western media portrayal… it runs a shiver down anybody’s spine… why would anybody dare to backpack such a dangerous country.

Iran, however, has a more humane dimension too… a heritage civilization… that has provided dynamism to the West and the East… to Islam, to Sufism, to India, to Central Asia, to Analtolia.

I weighed both the dimensions… did my own independent research on it… and decided that I wanted to go there… my decision was made even easier by many Kandaharis, who vouched for Iran and maintained that Iran was a sane and civilized country and all the western portrayal of it was either misinformation or disinformation.

Nevertheless I was still asked by many of my well-wishers… Why Iran?

Kandahar was poorly connected to the rest of the world… a weekly flight to India, UAE was all that it had to offer… and then, what was music to my ears… Iranian airlines Aesman Airways started a Mashhad-Kandahar flight. The choice- howsoever odd- therefore started sounding reasonable.

The other problem was visa… Kandahar has only 3 Consulates- Pakistan, India and Iran… for any other visa, I was required to send my passport to Kabul and wait for 15-20 days for getting visas affixed… and given the day-to-day changing scenario of Kandahar… I wasn’t prepared to part with my passport. Iran, in that sense, became even more sane a choice.

Iranian visa… nevertheless… is a difficult proposition. And I had to start building relations with the Iranian Consulate officials some 2-3 months in advance for a smooth visa procedure… it paid off and I got my Iranian visa in one day flat… and gratis. A luxury… for those who know- how difficult the visa process may be.

Armed with a visa and an air ticket… my first instinct was to buy some Iranian currency… Tomans/Rials/Khomeini.

Iranian currency is not only complicated… but also fairly deceptive… anyone who needs to travel to Iran… should master this deception. Rial is the basic unit of currency… but since the Islamic revolution, it got so very much devalued that you can get nothing – absolutely nothing- for a Rial. It is… for a purpose of comparison… a 5 paise of India… which technically exists but doesn’t buy you anything.

As the Rial devalued, Iranians found newer nomenclatures for their day to day used currencies. They invented Toman, which is equal to 10 Rials… So when they say 1 Toman… it means 10 Rials, 10 Tomans… it means 100 Rials.

The Iranian currency, however, didn’t stop its free fall… in years to come it got further and further devalued… and today, 1 US Dollar is equal to 12000 Rials… that is 1200 Tomans. And therefore Iranians had to devise something even more complicated to define their day-to-day monetary transaction…It was Khomeini… which is equal to 1000 Toman.

Khomeini was a political invention… it came into usage when 1 US Dollar became 10000 Rials (or 1000 Tomans)… it was Iranian way of showing to the world that a Khomeini was equal to a Dollar, a kind of political brawny point. So today 1 US Dollar is equal to 1.2 Khomeini.

This, however, complicated life for a traveler… people tend to speak in terms of either Tomans or Khomeinis… they seldom use Rials while transacting. In addition to this, many people tend to use Tomans in place of Khomeini… so while, 1 Khomeini is equal to 1000 Tomans… people may just say 1 Toman… assuming that thousand would be automatically added by the person in front.

So when I converted about 200 US Dollars… I was flooded with currency notes… of about 220000 Rials… I took some time out to make myself familiar with this confusing currency.

My next concern was getting some help at my port of arrival… I was told that the Iranian immigration, at times, is a pain. And the prospect of an Indian posted in Kandahar coming to Mashhad may be too much for the security consciousness of the Iranians. So if I had some help at Mashhad… my life would become easier.

India, however, did not have a diplomatic presence in Mashhad… but help was not more than a few phone calls away… the Afghan Consulate in Mashhad was very happy to arrange for protocol assistance at Mashhad. In fact, there officials invited me to visit the Consulate and have a lunch with them.

My drive to the Kandahar Airport was eventful… there were some IED explosions on the main Airport Highway… and therefore much of the traffic had been diverted… I was taken to the Airport by a dirt road – a dangerous option – but the only one at that point of time…

The dirt road took me through some old Kandahari village… far from the development… it was a time warp… of how Kandaharis used to live, say, a century or two ago. I took it as a good omen… my journey had started even before setting foot on Iranian soil.

At the airport… I realized that most of the passengers were Hazaras… Kandahar has a significant Hazara population… moreover… Uruzgan, province north to Kandahar, has again a huge Hazara population. Hazaras live a marginalized existence in the Pashtun lands… often being mistreated on daily basis… Iranian Consulate is a beacon of hope for them… it is their window to the outside world.

When the plane flew… there were religious chantings… Mashhad has a special place for Shiites… being Imam Reza Mausoleum.

Reviving my blog, yet again!

When would I resume writing the blog… someone asked me… it reminded me that though I think my blog is almost dead… some people still visit it to see if there is a new post posted.

And therefore I owe to restart the blog for them…

I of course have to finish the blog regarding Iran… of which, I have written the first part… and then I have to write a blog about my impressions of the kingdom… and yeah! A month ago… I undertook a memorable journey to Ethiopia, a place I dreamt to visit… so the blog, on resumption, gives a promising picture.

And like after many other interruptions… this time too I would deliver.

Amen!

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty Six and the last: The Musings by the river!

Coming back from Ani… I asked Jaleel to drop me at a convenient spot so that I may have a walk around… see the Kars museum and then the Kars Castle… he did.

I bid adieu to my fellow travelers. And walked up to the Kars museum… a decent museum… and though I am not into seeing museums a lot… but Kars museum was particularly informative. It got me hooked for a while…

Thereafter, I walked to the Kars Citadel… a castle on a hill-top, which gives magnificent views of Kars city… a rivulet flows right through the heart of the town of Kars… it looked enticing…

Atop the castle, there was a knee deep snow… I was alone… I couldn’t help the child-like instinct within… and played with snow for a while… trying to make a snowman… a Igloo… and generally making snowballs and tossing them in the air to fall on me and get strewn all over my body…

I walked down the castle… through another route… came across a Armenian church… closed… but still functional… as a mosque… there is a small enclosure in it, I was told, which allows it to function as a church as well… Kars has two Armenian families, and they strayed to this church once in a while till about a few years ago…

This cathedral has seen a tumultuous history… Initially a Armenian Church, made a Mosque… then under Russian regime made a Russian Orthodox Church… then after the Russian rule made Armenian Church… and now a mosque with a small Armenian Church enclosure… if only humans could realize that this is not what the Supreme Being wants from us.

I decided to walk along the river… it was getting dark now… and therefore I had to quickly do whatever I wanted to …

The Kars river looked beautiful at dusk… walking along it, I came across old dilapidated Turkish bath houses… and then the Kars University… the walk made me think of days gone by… the road was lonely… with occasional minibuses passing by … every time one passed… a head from inside popped out and looked at me… a foreign face in the desolate stretch.

Last few days have been an eye-opener… travels, if done without a purpose, are wanderings… therefore, one must travel for a purpose… of knowing the world around oneself in better light… Traveling should always have a purpose… an altruistic purpose… and once it has a purpose… the travels transform people. As I stand transformed today.

When I came to Turkey… I did not have much of an idea about it as a place… its history, geography, and polity… and today, in the last phase of this wandering… without even making an effort… I feel that I have known Turkey since its Pagan origins… I know what contemporary Turkey feels like…

Traveling makes you get into the skin of a place… automatically, without making an effort… for what else is history… but a collective conscience that pervades the people… and when you interact with them… you understand a part of it and partake in its making. History is more palpable to a traveler… and no wonder the medieval marvels of history… were all written by travelers, or travelers at heart.

These musings were no ordinary musings… these perhaps germinated the idea of writing a Islamic travelogue cum commentary in my mind for the first time… when I visited Syria, Jordan… it was out of sheer proximity to Egypt… but now Turkey and thereafter Iran… my travels have started following a pattern… of Islamic travels. I am getting equipped to write about the Islamic world… and one day I will...

It was growing dark and I had walked a long distance… much out of the town limits… so I retraced my steps… reached Kars… I was feeling famished… and went to a shop… therein three young people were sitting… I had some quick bite over there… befriended them… and promised to meet them again before I leave for Istanbul the day next.

I came to my hotel… and started going through my camera… all the photos that I had clicked while traveling in these distant land… the digital camera has become my companion… it helps me in trapping the fine nuances and memories… which otherwise have a tendency to evade human memories.

It has been a wonderful travel… the next day… I would be in Istanbul… and perhaps, may not come back to Turkey ever again… because of my thirst to travel to new and newer countries… but this place would have a special place in my heart… not because of Istanbul… not because of its tourist traps… but because of other places… which are off the beaten track… South East Turkey … a Diyarbakir, a Sanliurfa, a Hasankeyf and a Kars… and those wonderful people that I have met during these travels.

***

Sitting at Istanbul airport… I relished all the memories of Turkey… and soon my flight was announced… I went to the Afghan Ariana counter to check in… and could see a lot of Afghanis checking in… and though they were not my people… I felt a rush of emotions as a person feels when he sees familiar people after days of living in foreign land…

Afghans, after all, have become a part and parcel of my existence after these days spent over there…

The flight was comfortable… and I reached Kabul early morning… I had a day’s stay in Kabul… and was joined by my friends in Kabul over a lunch and then a dinner… the day next I had a flight to catch in early morning to Kandahar… where my home is.

The last two weeks were the best part of my life… I remembered the first time when I packed my back-pack… to tread the off-beat path in Konkan… and how I haven’t looked back ever since… And if at all… I owe my travels to that one decision to back-pack Konkan.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty Five: The poignant ruins!

The person, used to work at a point of time, in Marmaris… and there he had a co-worker from Bangladesh… an excellent friend… with whom he lost touch after a while.He was pleased to meet a person from Bangladesh, reminding him of his friend.

It set me thinking… we are three countries- India, Pakistan and Bangladesh… a lot of animosity… game of one-upmanship… and yet the world often views us as people of the same stock… same lineage… same history... we tend to cooperate in places where we are minorities… in places where we are threatened… and yet when we are in more accustomed climes, we become sworn enemies… a pack mentality takes over. Sad but true…

I purchased some supplies required for the Ani trip… when I was going, he hugged me and told me to meet before I head back to Istanbul and off from Turkey. I had seen this warmth many-a-times in this unknown land… it grew in intensity as I went off the beaten path… there is a lesson… in tourist traps, we see tourist places… off it, we see human touch… I can fore-go seeing the top 20 tourist places in the world for one of such wondrous human touch.

At around 7, Jaleel came to the hotel with his car… there were two people sitting inside it… a hippy-like Canadian and his girlfriend from Hong Kong. They had been staying in Kars for about a week… and were off to Erzurum from here… Erzurum is famous for its incredibly beautiful Seljuk architecture… a sight left for the next time, perhaps…

I sat on the pillion seat… leaving the rear seats for the couple, who didn’t mind cosying up even while having two strangers in the same car… it was an amusing sight.

I and Jaleel started talking… he was a well-known guide… and therefore well informed about the Kars, Ani and other places in the vicinity… while talking, I realized that he was an ethnic Turk and not a Kurd… and when he realized that I had been to Kurdish areas, before arriving at Ani, he asked me… what did the Kurds tell me… did they tell me that they are being treated badly by Turks… I nodded and said that they have some complaints… he broke into a diatribe… ha! The Kurds are nothing but bunch of smugglers… they trade in opium and narcotics… and when the Army acts… they start crying hoarsely…

There are some incidents indicating that Kurds have, in the past, and even now, dealt in Narcotics… but that, I am sure, is just a small part of truth… the problem is much more complex. However, conversation with Jaleel told me one thing… that the animosity is not one sided… it runs deeper.

The Canadian looked up… he couldn’t hold back… but Turks have had problems with the Armenians too… and now they try to deny it… hell broke loose… sending Jaleel into another diatribe… ha! You don’t know anything… it was the Armenians who started it all… and when we reacted, it was called an Armenian genocide… actually it was a Turkish genocide…

He took us to a place, where there is a small memorial for Turkish genocide… generations of Turks have been led to believe in this one-sided theory of Turkish genocide… propelled by Turkish Army… the present Islamist in power, however, are more open to talk about the possibility of an Armenian genocide.

We reached the Ani ruins… Jaleel told me that Ani ruins were initially Armenian… then changed hands to Seljuks… and the Armenian fortress was destroyed not during the so called “genocide” … but much before in history… he told me so, I guess, so that I don’t start blaming Ani ruins to Turks as well.

The Ani ruins are poignant… massive and beautiful churches lying in rubbles… some churches are in better shape than the others… some frescoes are still discernible… some engravings can still be read… the best, and most dramatic, however, the church of Christ the Redeemer… which was destroyed by lightening in such a way that half of it lies in rubble and half is intact. Another beautiful sight is Ani Cathedral… sprawling and particularly intact… it tells a story of a mighty kingdom in the yesteryears…

Interestingly at some places- like Ani Cathedral... the Ani masonry is quite similar to the Seljuk masonry… Ani uses black, white and red stones… while Seljuks used black and white stones for masonry… if one follows the Seljuk trail to Turkey… one would realize that the nomads of Central Asia swept over the entire Persian and Anatolian region in a matter of hundred years… they absorbed architectural influences from various sources… and Ani could be one of the sources.

While walking along the Ani walls… I realized that Ani in located bang adjacent to the much problematic Turkish-Armenian border… and a ravine of river Akhurian separates it from Armenia… the military deployment on Armenian side is not as massive as claimed by Turkey, and moreover Armenia does not possess military mighty... therefore, it made me think if the Armenian issue is being kept alive by Turks to justify a large Army and charge false patriotism among its people... Or may be its to counter-attack the allegations of an Armenian genocide.

Further ahead… one can see some caves in the ravines… they were, at one point of time, used by people of city to live… the lower class who didn’t find space in the city.

Ani ruins are impressive and need almost a day to explore… we did it in 4 hours… every nook and corner had a history to tell… and it was worth every bit of effort to have come over here to see this desolate and off the beaten track ruins…

While going back, I see a Swastik sign on one of the walls of the fort… I asked Jaleel about it… he said that Ani, before the Armenians, was an important Pagan center… and the Swastik sign tells that history…

From Pagan to Christianity and then to Islam… the middle east has a very convoluted history… and no country, more than Turkey, is a better witness of this complexity.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty Four: The city of Snow

Igdir is a small town… with a Kurdish majority… I had seen the center of gravity of the Kurdish fault-line in Diyarbakir… but never with the intensity with which I saw it in a smallish Igdir…

When I landed in Igdir… I saw a commotion… it was then I realized that a riot between the Kurds and police has broken out… the commotion grew and grew… till tear gas shells were lobbed at the crowd… and I, who was sandwiched between the two… had the taste of what tear gas was like… a severe stinging feeling the eyes… and then everything goes blind… luckily I got away that feeling in just one of the eyes… and had covered my other eye… I was helped by a local to get away from the scene… to a bus company office, wherein I purchased a 2 pm bus ticket to Kars…

Waiting for the bus to start… I looked at the road… the commotion continued… the police vans came rounded up a few local youth… and took them away… the police onslaught appeared to be brutal… the fault-line, I realized, runs much deeper than I thought it did.

Igdir, I realized, while sitting on the bus… is also home to a Turkish genocide memorial… before the Armenian genocide, it was home to a Armenian majority… who was butchered during the Armenian genocide… but the Turks deny the Armenian genocide… and insist that the Armenian-Turk riots broke out because the Armenians conducted a Turkish Genocide…

It is strange that the Armenian genocide was conducted largely by the Kurds, who took away the Armenian homes and started living over here… and today the same Kurds are facing the problem. I heard a old Kurds yelling… something… “They did it to Armenians and now they are coming to eliminate us”… this is what I could understand… in the maze of history the real story gets lost… who was the perpetrator… who was the victim.

I saw the Turkish genocide memorial at the horizon… while moving away from the town… this was going to be my last brush with the fault-line… and I was off to Kars… my final destination.

The bus follows a very picturesque route… with snow all around… the military check posts are all over… however… this time these military check posts mean serious business… we were driving along the Turkey-Armenia border… often dubbed as one of the most dangerous borders in the world.

Earlier, Armenia was a part of USSR… and Turkey the part of NATO… and therefore, even then, the border was heavily militarized. Today, when Armenia is free… it remains heavily militarized because of the mutual hatred and distrust… due to the baggage of Armenian genocide.

Igdir is at a strategic junction… close to borders with Armenia, Iran and Naxcivan Enclave of Azerbaijan… but it has no road to Iran… Armenian border is closed… and only a road to Azerbaijan… and therefore, what could have been a booming town… is sleepy backwater.

I reached Kars at around 5 pm… it was already dusk… I had to find a hotel to stay as it was getting cold… I chose a hotel called Kent (though pronounced as Chent by locals)… I went in there… negotiated a room for two nights… as I had to take a flight to Istanbul after two days from Kars… after a hard bargaining he gave me a room for two nights at 30 Liras.

The old man at the counter however was very helpful… he called up Jaleel and told him that I wanted to meet him. Jaleel promised me that he’d come in the evening… he said that if I go alone… I need to shell out 100 Lira… but if there are others to join me… the price will go down to 60 Liras per person. He said he’d find out if others are going to Ani as well.

I went out for a walk… Kars was at one point of time… a part of Soviet empire and therefore many of its building are Soviet styled… I checked at one of the place… the temperature was -3 degrees… it was very cold… Kars is often said to be the coldest place in Turkey… I had a problem walking on the sleet… it was very slippery.

I went to a restaurant… had some food… walked around… Kars is famous for its tasty honey… 3 Lira a kilogram… dirt cheap and very tasty… however; it was a problem to take it back… so I refrained from buying it.

In the night, I met Jaleel… Jaleel is a very famous person… his name is mentioned in the Lonely Planet… he said that right now it is a lean period… but I was lucky to have found companions for Ani trip a Canadian couple… couch-sharing in Kars… they’d give 100 Lira and I another 60 Lira… for the trip.

The plan for Ani was finalized… I could have had a good night sleep.

Last few days have been very hectic… but now the end of the trail was near… there was a sense of nostalgia… I wanted to go back… to Kandahar… which has been my home for quite some time… home is where the heart is…

That night… I could here winds roaring… I looked out of the window of my cosy room… there was a heavy snowfall… As Jaleel told me… that Kars is the coldest place along with Erzurum, near by… another good sight to visit.

I woke up the morning next… Jaleel was to come at 7 am… so I had some time to walk… and purchase water and fruits for Ani visit… there was snow all around… and only one shop was open… an old gentleman was brooming the alley outside the shop… he smiled at me… and said Banjladesh (sic!)…

I smiled back… Hindistan… he got confused… what is Hindistan… and repeated Banjladesh… I said yeah Banjladesh.

He invited me inside his shop.

From the Archives: My 250th Post

I wrote this two parts blog about Indian Railways about 4 years ago... I have rode a number of railways by now... and still maintain that Indian Railways is unique...

 Romancing with Indian Railways- Part One and Two.

I am yet to ride any other Railway… even in Egypt (I have lived over here for almost two years but haven't yet used the railways here, somehow ... Roads in Egypt are wonderful and so the road transport… even domestic flights are dirt cheap, so have used them instead)

Thus I will not be able to comment about the Railway systems in other countries… but I am sure that they will never be able to capture the magic of Indian Railways… not in the field of vanity… (For, of course, they will be miles ahead of it)- But in the field of the lively chaos and experiential uniqueness.

I grew up in a small town in the northern part of India… called Allahabad. My house was within walking distance of a small railway station called Prayag. It used to be an important railway station, connecting Allahabad to Lucknow, Varanasi and Gorakhpur. With time however an alternative route was developed for Varanasi and Prayag Railway Station lost its sheen, barring two otherwise non-descript trains of Ganga-Gomti Express that connected Allahabad to Lucknow and Nauchandi Express that connected Allahabad to Merrut through Lucknow. Many other important trains like Chauri-Chaura and Bundelkhand Express were diverted from this station. Today, for all practical purpose, Prayag Railway station is a ghost station… coming alive for few minutes with the passage of two or three trains in a day… barring them it remains a silent observer of some passenger trains that never seem to move….

I grew up seeing these trains… My father used to commute to Jhansi for work through this station (earlier he was also posted in a small town of Deoria, but the train for Deoria started from another station called Rambagh Station)… and I used to see him off, with tearful eyes every week. I didn’t see much of my father…during the childhood. Railways, in my childhood, meant an extreme emotion- one that snatched my father away from me every week… or the one that took me along with him to distant corners of my horizons- to Deoria, to Delhi, to Dehradun, to Bareilly, to Jhansi, to Lucknow, to Kanpur. I remember how Papa used to purchase a load of comic books during those journeys, and how we used to fight among ourselves to get hold of Phantom's comics (Yeah! the long forgotten creation of Lee Falk. Phantom is an amazing character. His family has been protecting the world since 21 generations and roughly 400 years… the present phantom is the 21st Phantom married to one Diana who works for UN, has two kids Kit and Heloise- one day Kit will become the 22nd Phantom, carrying on the mantle of his father…Phantom, till date remains my favourite character and represents one of the best examples of an open ended story-telling)

Of those small little remembrances that I have kept secured in the deep recesses of my existence, are - walking with my Papa along the rail track. And putting a 5 paisa coin on the rail track, to be pulverized by the coming train. I still preserve that coin with me. One day, I remember, a train with a circus troupe came over and stopped at Prayag Station… I dodged my Ma and went alone to see the train… among the crowds that gathered to see the circus animals, somebody shouted that the tiger has escaped from the cage- I rushed back home, forgetting my new slippers in the process. And had a nice roughing up by Ma, at home.

In the process of growing, Railways changed its meaning for me. I was alienated from it… it was a loss of innocence, for I realized that Railways is just a medium and is passive to affairs in our lives… It does not take away my father every week, but my father goes to work to another city. I stopped frequenting to the Prayag Railway Station. The small stretch of road that used to take us to it became longer and longer… till it was lost. However, upon insistence from a few friends of mine- who found a perfect refuge within the confines of a deserted Railway station- to have a cigarette, away from the watchful eyes of their parents… I used to go to the Railway station.

With life, I moved… came to the soul-less city of Kanpur, studied Engineering- moved ahead in life- arrived at Bombay for work- went to Jamnagar- came back to Bombay… life never gave me opportunity to feel the magic of the Railways…. Till one day, when everything changed.

During my stint at a B-School in Bombay, I got tired of the rat-race… of how people back-bite for getting Summers in a good company… and how your transient failures morph your entire lives… of how your grades define your employability and how your employability defines you as a success or a failure in life… and took the last outbound suburban train from Kanjurmarg to Karjat. (For those who do not understand what I am talking about, Bombay has an excellent public transport system of local trains… that connect the Bombay Business district areas to far flung suburbs. Thanks to this excellent network, millions of people come to Bombay City every day and leave at the day-end, covering some 75 kms in an hour at a meager cost of 25 cents)

When I arrived at Karjat, it was well past midnight and there was no place to go… Impulsively, I chose to wake up all night- sitting on a bench on the platforms of this deserted station- observing human activities around. I stayed awake for almost five hours of stay, after which I took the first train in the morning, going towards Bombay.

That night was eventful- I saw the dark underbelly of cosmopolitan Bombay, the poverty stricken people being intimidated by Goons… met a pimp who offered his services to me… and met an old couple who waited amongst this angst, for the morning train to Bombay, and who kindly enough offered me some food from their own share. I lived an entire life in those few hours of stay at Karjat. (Perhaps, that is why, I am so fond of Catcher in the Rye… having lived the character of Holden Caulfield many times over in my life)

There is something magical about nights… the dark hours of night have the ability to reveal a lot, that otherwise is lost in the cacophony of the daylight. But there is something more magical about a night on the platforms of a Railway Station.

And this was just the beginning of my exploration of this magic.

******

Day before yesterday, I was watching Gulzar's Classic "Ijaazat", a beautiful movie. It is story of Mahendra who loves an eccentric yet intense Maya… but circumstances force him to marry his childhood friend Sudha, a very mature and balanced human being. Mahendra is torn apart between them- he loves them both; he feels responsible towards both; And yet he has no idea as how to maturely handle both these relationships. His immaturity takes a toll of his marriage and Sudha leaves Mahendra, forever. Forever!!!! till they meet once again on a rainy night at a Railway station. When they realized that it was not they who failed the relationship, but the circumstances… but found out that it was too late to revive their relationship, once again.

Ijaazat will always remain one of the most sensitive movies I have ever seen. It would be blasphemous for some, to even compare it with Casablanca (the greatest movie ever made, by Hollywood)… but I felt the same intensity of emotions, same sense of loss- after watching it. The more important thing is that these two forlorn and estranged lovers met at a Railway station…

I am yet to forget the opening scene of "Dil Se" – a Shahrukh Khan starrer, in which he meets Manisha Koirala in a stormy night at a deserted North Eastern India's Railway station. Or the closing scene of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge… in which Kajol rushes towards Shahrukh Khan and joins him in a moving train. (Incidentally, when I used to work at a place called Patalganga- I came across a photo studio, where some impromptu photos of Shahrukh Khan and Kajol were displayed… I asked the photographer about them and was told that DDLJ's closing scene was shot at a place called Apta Railway station… some 6-7 kilometers from my workplace. The next day itself I went to see that place… and relished being there).

Bollywood therefore draws a very intense simile from the Indian Railways. You would never see it drawing similar such similies from a wonderfully endowed European train… (Barring an Aishwarya Rai starrer "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam", in which Aishwarya and her husband come close for the first time, while on an European train… and despite the fact that Aishwarya loved somebody else, she is drawn towards her husband). European trains draw an emotion of wonderment and desire… Indian trains draw an emotion of longing and a wish…. There is a difference between a desire and a wish.

One of the most intense emotions that I have ever felt was when I used to come from Kanpur to Allahabad… those were the days when I was deep in my first love… and she lived in Allahabad. I used to take Kalka Mail that left Kanpur at 2 in the afternoon and rush to Allahabad… and used to board the General compartment of the train sitting often at the foot board of the fast moving train… (Incidentally my favourite Hindi movie till date- Shahrukh Khan Starrer "Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa" has similar such scene in reverse, in which the heroine is coming back to her home town and the hero is rushing towards the railway station to receive her and singing along)

That night in Karjat… reopened the chapter of my experiences with Indian Railways… I started feeling the magic again… of even those moments bygone- when I was too alienated from it all and thus could never appreciate the magic.

For instance, going to Dehradun… in 1989, when the train passed through the deep forests of Rajaji National Park, there were many moments when I wished that the train stopped here and I just hop down and walk through the wilds…

Or when while coming to Allahabad from Kanpur by a night train, our train stopped in a non-descript railway station of Rasoolabad for an entire night… it was a chilly December night and ahead on the track an accident had occured … having nowhere to go, everybody huddled inside the train for the entire night… but a few daring among us went to the station started a bonfire and spent a night under open sky. I too did the same.

Or when in the summers of 1998, having graduated out of the Engineering college- I decided to pay a visit to all my good friends… before pushing off to the big bad world of earning a livelihood. I went to Dehradun, Muzaffarnagar, Bareilly, Ghaziabad and Lucknow during this journey. It was during an intense North Indian summers, while coming from Bareilly to Lucknow… I felt very very thirsty…. My water bottle had finished and even though I tried my best to procure a new water bottle- there was none available… finally, I decided and alighted at Hardoi Railway Station…. Searched for water and boarded the next train… to Lucknow, after 8 hours… for all this while I stayed and slept on the Railway platform.

Or when I traveled from Bombay to Allahabad in a general compartment sleeping on the floor… or when I took a passenger train from Allahabad to Lucknow, and covered 200 kilometers in 15 hours… and became very friendly with a school teacher, we exchanged our addresses to keep in touch and then forgot all about each other.

Or when I used to commute between Jamnagar and Bombay every other weekend to meet my friends in Bombay… stay back for a day in Bombay and then use to rush back… and then one day, I just said "to hell with it"…. Alighted at Surat, stayed there for a day… then went to Vadodara stayed there for another day, went to Ahemdabad… stayed there for another day, Rajkot another day and then reached Jamnagar and feigned an illness to save my skin (Hahahahaha)

Having visited Karjat, I could appreciate all these moments in retrospect…. They all were magical moments… they all touched my life in a special way… Indian Railways, I realized is not a passive mode of transport… but somehow, our entire lives have evolved around it. We always consider it as a part of our life…

I was now ready to experience the uniqueness of it all

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty Three: A princess and a Shepherd

As my journey approached the last leg… the pace of experiences became faster… last day, I had been more or less traveling for the entire day... and not doing any sight seeing… Today, it was going to be the same way…

The Dogubayazit stand was close to Aslan Hotel… The stand, a small plot of land… has various platforms… and on one of the platforms, there was a board announcing minibuses for Dogubayazit… another platform had a board announcing minibuses to Akdamar… I sighed and wished that I could had caught the 11 am bus from Hassankeyf to Van… then making it to Akdamar would not have been as big a problem.

The bus to Dogu left Van… and then meandered along the edges of Lake Van… the eastern edges… Lake Van looked serene bathed in the morning sunlight… in the backdrop one could see the snow-clad hillocks… the scenery was surreally beautiful… one could had just sat down along the edges… and stared at it for hours together… it reminded me of an equally surreal scenery at Egirdir a few days ago.

Dogu lies on the eastern border of Turkey… a few kilometers away from Iran… relations between Turkey and Iran are better understood through the prism of NATO-Iran relations… Turkey, it appears, has no big outstanding issue with Iran… and yet because of Iran’s animosity with the West… the Turkey-Iran border is decently militarized... In fact, Turkey and Iran may find more reasons to cooperate than fight, if left alone.

As we started approaching Dogubayazit… I could see a number of Military checkpoints… the locals were pulled out and checked more than me … I immediately gathered that these checks are more to do with current tensions between Turks and Kurds, than the border regions. The Kurdish fault-line runs larger than I previously thought.

I reached Dogu at around 10 am… and quickly enquired that Kars is poorly connected to Dogu… I have to first go to Igdir a small town midway between Dogu and Kars… and then take a connecting minibus from there… There was another problem… due to the ongoing riots between the Turks and Kurds… the minibuses to Igdir were suspended after 1 pm… so if I had to see the Dogu castle, I had to see it in a jiffy…and then move to Igdir. I wondered how to do that?

It was then I met this street urchin… Walat… presumably a tout… I have always maintained that touts after all are not such a bad proposition… they tend to fill a demand supply gap… if any. More than that, they provide customized service… if need be. It was time for such a customized service.

Walat approached me selling a hotel room… but I cajoled him to help me with seeing Dogu castle… and then get me boarded on a bus to Igdir… he understood my predicament… and hired a taxi for 20 Lira… to Dogu castle and back… to the Igdir taxi stand.

We started talking while on the taxi… he realized that I would be going to Kars from Igdir… and planned to see Ani ruins… he gave me the number of one Jaleel… a tour guide in Kars, who could give me a good deal in Kars… when we became pals, he confessed that 20 Liras is a high price for a taxi to Dogu castle and back… and he would get at least 5 out of it… or may be 10… considering the fact that Dogu borders Iran… and a lot of cheap Iranian “benzene” gets smuggled into Dogu… the Taxis make a huge profit in Dogu.

He chuckled… Dogu has more car-mechanic shops than petrol pumps… petrol pumps do not do any business because of smuggled Iranian benzene… and car mechanics do a roaring business because the smuggled Iranian benzene is adulterated... Iran has one of the cheapest gasoline in the world... and Turkey has one of the dearest gasoline in the world.

The Dogubayazit Castle is an amazing (though not so beautiful) expose of many different styles of architecture… a little bit of Indian, little of Iranian, little of Ottoman, little of Seljuk… all architectural forms are present in the castle… the mish-mash however is not so well done and the entire effect of the castle is just about OK… nothing great. However, it represents a fertile mind, which tried to capture all the beautiful architectural forms…

What sets Dogu castle apart however is  its dramatic setting… amidst snowcapped hills… beyond which the Iranian territory is located… At the backdrop one can see Mount Ararat… which, according to Jew-Christian traditions, is the place where the Noah Arc rested…

And then the story behind Dogu castle… also known as Ishak Pasha castle… legend has it that Ishak Pasha, who was a governor of Dogu area, had a beautiful daughter Gulbahar… who fell in love with Ahmed, a shepherd boy… Ishak Pasha was not ready to marry Gulbahar to Ahmed and therefore asked Ahmed to give a test… to climb up Mount Ararat… and light a fire atop it… and if the fire was seen… then he could come back and marry Gulbahar… Mount Ararat, till that time, was unscaled and had swallowed many who tried to scale it. But Ahmed goes atop it and lights a fire… but when he comes back… Ishak Pasha goes back on his words and gets him killed. However, Gulbahar doesn’t forget Ahmed and her father repented his deed. Thereafter, he constructed the palace for Gulbahar… so that she could live over there… and always see Mount Ararat, a severe test, which Ahmed passed just for her.

The legend of course is just a legend… however it is full of pathos… and when Walat told me about this legend… I could imagine Princess Gulbahar… sitting in the palace… crying for her lost love.

It was time to leave Dogu… Walat dropped me at Igdir minibus stand… I hugged him… Touts are not always after money… they sometimes make good friend… money becomes just an incidental. Walat had proved me right.

I tried to offer him 5 Liras… but he refused to take it… and smiled… you are a friend.

I was off to Igdir… I thought that I had seen enough of Kurdish fault line… now nothing else remains to be seen… I was wrong… the worst part of the fault line awaited me at Igdir.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty Two: Final countdown begins.

Bitlis was the highest altitude reached during the journey from Ziyaret to Van… thereafter the bus started descending… first to Tatvan… and then meandering along Lake Van to Van

Lake Van is the largest lake in Turkey… a saline lake… it has seen three different historical era…

The first under the Armenians, when it was an important center of Armenian empire… remnants of that era survive even today at Akdamar Island… a small island in the southern parts of the lake. The second and third under the Byzantine and Seljuks… when it was a mere eastern outpost of the empire…

Little more than a century ago, Van had a sizeable Armenian population, which migrated during the Armenian genocide era… Van and further north was the epicenter of the Armenian genocide… and little did I realize that after leaving the trails of Turk-Kurd hotspots in south East… I am headed towards another historical fault-line of Turkey’s national history… the Armenian genocide.

Today, Van is the largest city in eastern Turkey… has a sizeable military presence… purported for the Iranian and Armenian border, but actually comes in handy to be deployed in the Kurdish areas at a short notice. The city is a Turkish majority… amidst a largely Kurdish dominated hinterlands.

The bus from Bitlis to Van first goes to Tatvan… from where one can take ferries to Van… many of the travelers whom I met during my travels, spoke highly of this ferry journey… it starts in the wee hours of night and reaches Van in early morning hour, and the sunrise… as watched from the ferry is incredibly beautiful. However... the ferry journey takes almost 4 hours as against a 2 hours journey by bus.

Lake Van is famous for its incredible beauty… and Lake Van monster, which is a serpent like monster (somewhat like a dragon) which is believed to be residing in the depths of the lake. Thousands of people have claimed to have seen it, and recently a person also captured it on video… however, the video was proved to be a hoax… and an apparent attempt by the tourism lobby of the region to make Van a tourist hotspot.

From Tatvan… the bus snakes along the southern edges of Lake Van… passes through a place called Givech… which is the place from where one can get ferries to Akdamar Island… that houses an old Armenian monastery. I wanted to visit Akdamar… and therefore thought of getting down at Givech… but it was dark… almost 7 pm… and the bus driver wasn’t sure if I would be able to find any accommodation in the vicinity. I was told that there are a couple of restaurants which provide a place to sleep… but I didn’t want to take any risk… and more over I was dead tired. And then I argued that I am headed towards more interesting Armenian ruins… the Ani ruins… and therefore I may pass off Akdamar.

I reached Van at around 9 pm… checked my notes… somebody had suggested me a hotel called Hotel Aslan… the streets of Van were desolate… I checked a roadside temperature display… it was -2 degrees … I could feel the chill… I had to find the hotel at the earliest.

It took me some while and some help to find Hotel Aslan… a joint popular with locals but doesn’t see much of foreigners… the owner was initially skeptical about giving me a room… but then relented when he realized that I had no other place to go. However, he charged 30 Lira for a small room… not worth its price.

I had an unfinished business… I had to get some dinner… and book a flight back to Istanbul… from Kars.

My plans for next 2-3 days were more or less finalized… the day next, I wanted to leave Van and reach Dogubayazit… see the famed castle of Dogu… leave for Kars… rest there for a night… use the day next to explore the nearby Ani ruins… and the day next fly back to Istanbul to catch the flight back.

I realized that I am in the last phase of my incredible journey.

To my luck, I found a small tour agency open… I approached him and was lucky enough to find a seat in the evening flight from Kars to Istanbul… my flight back to Kabul was late in night and so the schedule suited me fine.

The next step was getting some food for my famished soul… the day had been long… and all along this tiring journey… I didn’t eat because of the fear of travel sickness… the journey was bumpy and I wasn’t feeling well all along it. Thus naturally, I was waiting for the first opportunity to gobble up as much as I can.

Van… I realized… is an expensive city… a Doner cost me 3 Lira… some rice another 4 Lira… But I couldn’t help myself… and after a sumptuous dinner, I was ready to crash on my bed.

The girl at the counter of the restaurant smiled at me… and asked as to where I came from… guessing “Pakistan”… I replied… “No… India”. She smiled back… “Shahrukh Khan”… Van, apparently, has a size-able Pakistani student population studying professional courses… they have introduced a wee bit of south Asian pop culture- especially Bollywood- in Van.

I went back to the hotel… it was really a pity that I could not see Akdamar Island… after coming this close… I wondered that if I was able to gather a wee bit of courage… I would had alighted at Givech and spent a night in a camping site over there… to see Akdamar in the morning. And then may be I could have left Van for Dogu. But then convinced myself that I was not feeling well… and it was not worth taking too much of a risk in such freezing cold climes.

In the middle of the night, somebody knocked my room four five times… asking for Mustafa… I was scared, given the shady nature of the hotel… I didn’t open the door… in the morning I asked the owner… he laughed and confessed that a person staying on the fourth floor… just above me… missed the floor… thought that my floor was the fourth… and was frantically searching for his room.

I smiled back… paid my bill and asked for directions to the Dolmus stand for Dogu.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty One: The first snowflakes

The next day… I didn’t realize would be the most eventful day of my Turkish sojourn.

I wake up early morning… went out for a walk before the break of dawn… walked for kilometers together along the river side… it was a time… when I was alone on the roads of Hasankeyf, besides river Tigris… it was a time to relish the virgin beauty of this place, which is likely to drown in a decade’s time. The sound of the river resonated within me… I had witnessed the Kurdish heartland… and today, when I leave this place for Van… my next stop… I would have closed a chapter of this journey.

When it was around 7 am… I reached the gates of citadel… it was lonely out there too… there were some closed shops selling knick-knacks… but nothing else… and therein I had another close encounter with the deadly Turkish dogs… a dog literally pounced at me… and I had to use the old trick of using my camera as a way to deter him… it went on well, yet again…

At around 7:30 a person came from nearby shop and opened the gates of Hasankeyf citadel… it was an arduous climb up the citadel… and I was alone…

Citadel comprises empty quarters… underground cellars… there was an eerie quality to the desolateness of the citadel… it was hard imagining that a few hundred years ago life thrived in this ramparts.

Atop the citadel… I could see some most scintillating views of the Hasankeyf town… the meanders of river Tigris… and the orange-hued hills all around. The beauty of the place was ethereal… and enchanting.

While coming back, I saw Selim and his wife coming up the citadel… I stopped to have final words with them… Selim took a few pictures of me with the backdrop of citadel… and then it was time to bid farewell. We promised that we would meet again… some day.

It was already 10 am… and I did not want to miss the 11 am bus… I had a quick breakfast at a local restaurant… packed up my bag… leaving some of my old clothes behind to be distributed to the poor, and paid my bills. The hotel manager told me that the bus would come any time now… and if it has seats, which it mostly has, I can stop it with a wave of my hand…

I realized that Hasankeyf is very poorly connected to the rest of the world… there is this one long-route bus to Van… and a couple of buses to Mardin and Batman… the closest towns of any significance. If I were to miss this bus… my only bet was going to Batman and trying to find another bus to Van.

The bus came… and didn’t stop despite my frantic waves… indicating that it had a full occupancy… I was stranded… the hotel owner told me that now my best chance was to catch a 12 noon bus to Batman and find a connecting bus to Van. And I did exactly that… the journey was full of discoveries.

I took the next bus to Batman… and reached Batman… the drive was scenic but my mind was pre-occupied with the chances of getting a bus to Van.

That bus took me to a small bus stand, where I could see a number of minibuses… I wondered that if any one of them could take me to Van… Van, after all, was still a couple of hundred kilometers from this place. I enquired… and found out that a few buses can take me to a place called Ziyaret… and from there I can find buses to Van. I took a minibus to Ziyaret and reached the place… where I was directed to a hotel, whose manager gave me a ticket for a bus to Van… at 4 pm.

This was a off the beaten track… from Batman to Ziyaret, a small non-descript town. What made Ziyaret special was a number of minibuses with Azeri sign plates…

In the north-east of Turkey lie Armenia and Azerbaijan… which have a bloody history… Azerbaijan and Armenia had been part of USSR, and when they gained freedom… they fought a bloody battle for Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia also shares a tense history with Turkey… and therefore Azerbaijan became a close friend of Turkey.

Azerbaijan is divided in two parts the main Azerbaijan and a Naxcivan enclave… Naxcivan enclave gives Azerbaijan a small land contact with Turkey… while the land between the two Azeri parts give Armenia a small contact with Iran… the arrangements serves both the land-locked countries well.

Naxcivan enclave, cut from the rest of Azerbaijan and its vibrant Baku city, derives its lifeline from Turkey… hundreds of Azeri vehicles ply on Turkish roads… providing civil supplies to the Naxcivan enclave… they use different routes… the one that goes through Ziyaret is mainly used for Haj vehicles… thus I could see a stream of Azeri vehicles returning from Haj… overland through Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

At 4 pm, I boarded the bus to Van… the bus took an extremely scenic route… along a meandering stream… to Bitlis… and then a hilly road from Bitlis to Tatvan… snaking along the Lake Van… to reach Van.

It was raining heavily along the route… and therefore the bus moved very slowly… Turkish government is building some massive tunnels connecting Van with Kurdish heartland, near Bitlis… These tunnels would connect Kurdish heartland to Van, a significant military station… and would provide logistics to Turkish army- if they wanted to move into Kurdish areas at a quick pace.

I saw these tunnels… still being constructed… they were massive… and being constructed in very inhospitable terrain.

When I reached Bitlis… it started snowing… the bus stopped for a while… I got down…and touched the falling snowflakes for the first time in my life.

Believe it or not… this pondering vagabond was seeing the snow fall for the very first time in his life.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Thirty: A tear drop on the cheek of time

Tajmahal is often referred to as… a tear drop on the cheek of time… depicting the pathos that lay beneath the beauty of Tajmahal… of love… of death… of defeat.

A teardrop on the cheek of time… I couldn’t have conjured up words more beautiful than these… for Hassankeyf- an ancient city made by Romans on the bank of River Tigris… it remained a small fort under them… changed hands to Arabs… to Artuqid Turks (one of the predecessors of Seljuks) and finally to Ayyubids.

Under Artuqids and Ayyubids… the small Roman fortress town flourished into a significantly big town… where traders used to come… the Ayyubids constructed a bridge over river Tigris… providing an alternative to already established silk routes… and for 100 years or so… the town saw its heydays… which did not last a long time. A Mongol invasion happened… which destroyed and razed the town completely… the bridge was broken… and then the town was lost into oblivion… kept changing hands from one to another… and finally rested with the Ottomans.

I have often wondered…why Mongols were so ruthless in their pursuits… destroying towns after towns… so cruelly that it was totally decimated, never to rise again.

Mongols perhaps were the first empire that used terror as political tactics… they were a tribal confederation… many tribes coming together (and that explains that they were never far-seeing and into empire building)… they merely wanted submission and booties… and for that they waged wars. But if we carefully careen through their history we would realize that they didn’t engage in as many wars as they are imagined to have had. They conquered swathes of kingdoms by sheer fear… kings after kings just laid prostrate once they heard Mongols were coming… and those who didn’t... had to pay a price with extreme form of plunder and massacre… that instilled fear and terror in the hearts of others.

One may look at their tactics with disgust… or may just look it as just another political tactics… after all, many others have used terror as tactics over limited time period and geographical space… like Hitler, Stalin, and more recently Milosevic … what differentiates Mongols is perhaps the amount of time they terrorized the world and the geographical expanse of their conquests…

Hassankeyf is marked by orange-hued hills on one side of the Tigris… and plains on the other… on top of one such hill lies the mighty citadel of Tigris… it was this marvelous position that must have inspired a garrison town in the yester-years… the Tigris meanders idyllically through the town… and upon one such bend… the Ayyubids once constructed a bridge… known as Roman bridge… it is said that initially a mud-brick bridge was there built by Romans… which gave way to a bigger and grander bridge by Ayyubids… today only the pillars of the bridge remain… marking the grandeur of the yester-years.

Adjacent to the new bridge, which connects Hassankeyf to the rest of the world, is a small inn… ambitiously called Hassankeyf hotel. It is very basic… all rooms having shared toilets… but all rooms have a balcony that over look the Tigris… and just for this sheer reason, one relishes staying over here.

I checked into a room… and found out that a Turk couple was staying in the room beside mine. I exchanged some casual greetings with him… he was Selim … a Kurdish photographer… with a Turk wife… we went together for a quick early dinner, where we spoke yet again about the Kurdish problem… Selim – a Kurd with a Turk wife… is no longer an exception… there are a lot of inter-marriages happening… and that, Selim thought, was the solution… the end of separate Kurdish identity and Turkish identity… which creates divisions.

We separated ways after that… Selim wanted to check out the citadel… whereas I wanted to go on the other side of the bridge… the plains side and check a few buildings here and there… some old dilapidated mosque… the ruins of the old bridge… and the banks of River Tigris…

The cliff side is the more interesting side though… dotted with citadel… and man-made caves on the cliff… and you get a beautiful panoramic view of the cliff side from the plain side… which is dotted with some interesting ruins… a grand mosque… and a madarassa… it appears that under Ayyubids… the town was much more than a small outpost… it went on to become a major learning center… something similar, if not comparable to Mardin (though Mardin developed much after Hassankeyf)…

After seeing it… I walked along the banks of Tigris… and saw a father son duo catching fish in an interesting way. They tied a small net in a pouch like shape to a string… dropping it in the water… letting it flow with the current and then when a fish entered it and was not able to go out through net… they felt a jerk and that is when they pulled it back slowly at first and then rapidly… I took their photograph… and they taught me this technique in return… and I could actually catch a fish using this technique, which seemed quite simple…

It was dusk… and dark… I came back to my hotel… asked for a net café… and was guided to a small little café… there were a few youngsters whiling there time over there… I went in to find a really friendly crowd… they surrounded me… checked my photographs… and offered me tea… and when I was done surfing… the owner didn’t take any money from me… he took me to his brother’s restaurant… and offered me a dinner.

It was not everyday that they saw a person coming from distant lands in Hassankeyf… the town may be dying but till it lives… they wanted that the traditions and reminiscence of the town lives in wandering hearts.

I came back to my hotel… the hotel owner… a very friendly person… helped me in drawing my further itinerary… I wanted to go to Van… and he told me that there is a 11 am bus to Van from Hassankeyf… he asked me to wake up at 5 am… do the site-seeing and get ready for that bus.

Reminiscence from Anatolia- Part Twenty Nine: Reaching Hassankeyf

But first thing first… I was very hungry… an early bus from Urfa, followed by a trip to Saffron Monastery… all on empty stomach.

When I travel… I keep some money on my out-pocket for incidental expense and some in the inner pocket in my boxer shorts. I spend from the out-pocket and when the money in it dwindles, I take out another small portion from my inner pocket to replace it. This way… I ensure that my money always remain secure… but a sine-qua-non of this practice in finding a toilet or confined area to do just that…

When I reached out for my pocket… to get some money to eat… I realized that I had precisely 2 Liras left… and I was amidst the hurly burly of market… so no chance of reaching out to my inner pocket for rescue.

I have come across such situation earlier too… and have realized that such situations make me innovate… reach out to untried things… like it did that day… I saw round ring shaped dough… on sale… for 0.50 Lira… called Simit… sprinkled with a heavy dose of white sesame seeds, they looked inviting… and I decided that today my frugal lunch would be done with it. I had two of them...

Satisfied with the frugal but tasty lunch… I ventured on the streets of Mardin. The streets of Mardin are magical… the more you travel on them… more you feel like lost in the maze of Arabian nights… a mosque here… a madarassa there… an old crumbling house… a caravanserai… a few playing children… a housewife… callously drying her recently washed clothes… dressed in Arabian gown… displaying the contours of her voluptuous body.

Mardin, I opine, is worth more than a few hours stay… it is a gem, uncut… like most of the places in Kurdish areas… lost in the maze of a political strife. Very few venture out here… very few stay back… and very few relish its tempting beauty… lying at the cross roads of Arab, Turk and Kurd identity… it waits for weary travelers, who would come and uncover the momentous history behind its dreary and mundane exteriors.

It was time to say good bye to this lovely little town… which has lived its historical utility and now awaits salvation from an un-needed and un-heeded existence amidst the modern socio-political realities.

It started drizzling… when I was walking back… I saw two very pretty school girls walking down the street… dressed in lovely colorful poncho… I smiled at them and they smiled back… I showed them my camera and gestured if I could take their photos… and they were so happy to get clicked… while going back they offered me a candy… Mardin has one specialty… lest I forget… It is famous for its sugar candies called leblebie or almond candies... the road-side shops sell them… Alas I had just 1 Lira in my out pocket and could not buy those candies.

I boarded the bus… it was a rickety… most of the buses in this part of Turkey are far cry from their smart cousins in Coastal Turkey… these buses depicted a story of neglect…

Strangely but expectedly… most of the bus-mates spoke Arabic… it was time when I realized that the Turkish and Kurdish veneer is just that… a veneer… Mardin is a predominantly Arab town… a frontier town… which has more in common with Syria than with Turkey… more Arab than Urfa, which has acquired a certain degree of cosmopolitanism over the years given its size and importance.

I was off to Hassankeyf… a few kilometers ahead I saw Midyat… it seemed that I have entered some portal and sucked into a small European parish… full of life… fashion… and gaiety… it was one of the last frontiers of Syrian Orthodox church in Turkey… I remembered someone telling me… the Syrian minority is a lost case… nobody talks about them anymore… they are forgotten amidst the big fight between the Turks and the Kurds… and Syrian Christians… actually don’t mind it… they have a fairly recent history of being targeted… the stories of atrocities reverberate in their communal anecdotes… if they remain invisible… the history might not get repeated.

Midyat is also home to some very interesting monasteries… the most famous of them is Mor Gabriel Monastery… which faces an uphill land dispute… encroachments from nearby Muslims…. It has seen a lot of litigation and support from European Union… People told me… it was a beautiful monastery… but alas… I had a journey to make… I had to reach Hassankeyf… which, according to some, was an epitome of poignancy… a whole town going to get submerged once the dam on Tigris comes up… drown along with its heritage, history and hopes.

Hassankeyf is a small… a very small town by the river Tigris… it wasn’t always like this… once, a few years ago, it was a vibrant trading town… but slowly the hydro-electric project came up… and population displacement started… now most of them are gone… a few remain just to keep the town functional… ten years from now… they too would be gone… and the town would be submerged forever.

Before seeing Hassankeyf… I was vociferously against the post-modernists who challenged high dams on grounds of saving indigenous population… a few tribals by the bank of Narmada… why should they hold a totem of development at ransom… Why indeed… I got my answers when I saw Hassankeyf…

Every small piece of land holds a heritage… and its gone forever when societies take selfish steps… I remember a Chinese diplomat defending Three Gorges… so what if we lose some of out historical legacies… we have plenty more… a loss of few doesn’t make a difference… it does… something unique is lost forever… when we had options of not losing it. It pains.

I alighted at the bus stop… the bus driver pointed out a small inn… that is the only option for travelers like me who venture in these unchartered areas.
I started walking towards the only hotel therein … Hotel Hassankeyf

Reviving the Blog

My last blog post was in October or November last year… after that I didn’t bother to post another blog…

Why? Someone asked…

I had time… and topics to write… I am still to finish my blog series on Anatolia… and start the blog series on Persia… and have the main pointers for content ready… then why didn’t I write.

There were, I guess, some internal factors and some external.

Firstly the external factors… I started blogging as a tool of self expression… it was a time, when blogging as an activity was raging on. Everybody had a blog of his or her own… and I thought I should also have a blog… so I did get one for myself as well.

Eventually I discovered that I can communicate my travel experience with the help of blogging and therefore started writing about my travels… it was a great experience… writing made me observe more… and the more I observed… the more pointers did I get to write.

But there was a change happening on the internet… called Twitter. Suddenly I saw the advent of what is called – micro-blogging… it changed the world of blogging… and most of the people who were into the former… moved to latter. From Blogging to Twittering.

There was another phenomenon which happened… Social Media… I had a Facebook account… and I started pasting my travel photos on that… and could write a running commentary about my travel with the help of photos and small commentary ala tweets. I thought that I was able to communicate about my travels through it. And I really was… but only to my FB friends, some of whom interested… and some not really interested.

The internal changes were about getting emotionally busy… I stopped writing blog in October/November… when my departure from Kandahar was imminent… and I developed a kind of fear… I wished that the last phase of my stay passes away peacefully… it was a very very strange phase… the large part of my journey was over… and only few days remained. Then, I came to India met my family… and tried to catch up with my kids… something that I had missed terribly. And then was the time to pack my wares and move to Saudi Arabia along with my family. The whole sequence of events left me emotionally void of any urge to write a blog.

But then in last few days… I have restarted feeling the urge to write… to connect with people… to connect with myself… and therefore, in days to come I would revive my blog for another stint…

Wish me luck…

Reminiscence from Persia- Part One: Qom-Mashhad bus!

I caught the bus in a funny manner… I was supposed to catch a 5 pm bus and arrived at Qom Bus station at 4 pm… I showed my ticket to one of the bus terminal employees… who boarded me on a 4 pm bus… I protested… My bus is due at 5pm… everybody- from the bus driver to the conductor- smiled… and said that it didn’t matter… and that 4 pm bus would ensure that I reach Mashhad early morning.

I got a seat in the rear end… beside a chubby gentleman… who turned out to be an Iraqi on Ziyarat (pilgrimage)… I was surrounded mostly by Iraqis and Hazaras… all on Ziyarat…

Qom and Mashhad are the two most sacred Shiite sights in Iran… Qom for its Fatimah al-Masumeh mosque and Jamkaran Mosque… and Mashhad for Imam Reza shrine… so naturally any bus plying between the two places is bound to be full of pilgrims. And so was my bus…

I struck conversation with the Iraqi gentleman… in Arabic… for last few days I had been speaking Persian… I am not a natural polyglot… and speaking in Arabic came with a lot of difficulty… I kept on forgetting pronouns, syntax, verb-conjugations… it is very difficult to imagine but Arabic and Persian are as different as chalk and cheese… and the only fact that binds them is Islam… due to which a lot of Arabic words have found place in Persian…

The Iraqi gentleman was accompanied by his aging mother and wife… they all were on pilgrimage… Iraq has about 40 percent of Shiite population… and till the American invasion; Shias lived under persecution… and have found a new voice only recently.

Shias despite their low numbers- have seen a kind of rejuvenation… power in Iraq and Lebanon to add to the already strengthened position in Syria… more say in Afghanistan and Bahrain… some say this is sponsored by aggressive policies of Iran.

The Iraqi gentleman was an extremely affable person… he offered me a portion from his lunch and was pleasantly surprised with the fact that I could speak a wee bit of Arabic… in fact while speaking to him- by and by- I could remember more and more of Arabic words and could speak to him even further.

I tried to find out if Iraqi Shias also revere Ayatollah Khomeini… and came to realize that Iraqis have their own Ayatollah Ali Sistani… there are a few subtle differences between the Iranian and Iraqi Shias… Iraqi Shias, as a matter of fact, are closer to Arabs living in Iran in South-West Region… places like Ahvoz etc…

One thing led to another and I realized that even in Iran… different places have different Ayatollahs… Shiraz, Mashhad and other places have their own Ayatollahs… and the structures of hierarchy are not as rigid as I expected them to be…

Iran has been an eye-opener in many other respects… some of which I already knew and therefore anticipated… and some which I didn’t know… and therefore was taken by surprise…

The Iraqi gentleman asked me if I was a Muslim… this, according to me, was an not-so-existential question in Iran… as it has been elsewhere in Islamic world… the majority of Iranians are relaxed about their religious identities and of the others… saying that one is a non-Muslim is never a big issue… no suggestions that a non-Muslim is wading his way in darkness… and is a qafir, a non-believer… it perhaps has something to do with the history of Iran… of having seen the first monotheistic religion… of seeing the first historically recorded prophet… Zoroastrianism and Zoroaster… the only thing which actually refrained it from becoming a religion of the books was- perhaps- lack of mention in the Quran… and had it been the case… it could have got elevated to the same status as of Judaism and Christianity…

Recorded history suggests that Iranian, though generally welcoming to the new religion of Islam, also tried their best to preserve their Zoroastrian heritage… the Zoroastrian kings were named as history-less kings in Juda-Islamic history… and therefore preserved.

Thus elsewhere I posed as a Hindu, Buddhist and sometimes as a Aatish-parast (a Zoroastrian)… at different occasions… somewhere at the back of my mind was the fact that Shia and Sunni are sworn enemies… and posing as a Muslim and then not passing off as a Shia (about which I knew very little) could be counter-productive… and mind you in Iran it does… like it does elsewhere in Sunni world, where many a times… Shias are considered not only non-Muslims but worse… a heretic sect.

This was my last chance to test the waters… I said I was a Muslim- not a Shia but a Sufi (which in many ways I am)… the Iraqi gentleman knew, henceforth, that I am not a Shia… something unknown for him… a Sufi… but not a Shia, nonetheless… but the warmth didn’t go… at the end of the journey… in Mashhad… he hugged me… and thanked me for helping him out at times…

The help… which I provided him… was something of an experience for me… an experience I am not likely to forget ever…

Iranians don’t know Arabic… and yet some of them know a few words here and there… to help the Arabs who visit Iran for pilgrimage… in fact when I first landed in Mashhad… I saw an aero plane of Saudi Airways… and met at the immigration counter hordes of Arabs from Dammam… the eastern Saudi Arabia, which is Shia-majority, though overall a marginalized minority in Saudi Arabia…

The Iraqi gentleman was having problems while communicating with the bus executive… he wanted to stop the vehicle because his wife was feeling nauseated… I came in and told the bus executive in Persian about the problem and the bus came to stop by a roadside mosque…

Later due to my language skill… I came much in demand… translating Arabic to broken Persian… and Persian to broken Arabic… from Arabs to the Iranians and Afghans… this was a numbing moment… a Hindu from India was a linking pin between Iranians and Arabs and Afghan… I am not likely to ever forget the experience…

I am also not likely to forget the surreal Salt Lake which one sees on the Qom-Mashhad road… miles and miles of it… it’s a beautiful sight.

Morning, I found myself in Mashhad… the place from where it all begun.