A mother and son came into the store I work in yesterday. They were buying kit for an Adventure Week organized by private school the young man attended. It sounded fantastic; the school owned its own outdoor activities centre in the Brecon Beacons and the boys would spend the week hill walking, canoeing, walking behind waterfalls and much else.
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Despite all this a number of boys said they wouldn't go and the reason they gave was that they be allowed to have their phones for a week. Maybe these young teenagers are already running their own businesses but I imagine that their messages are rather more mundane than that, although at that age I'm sure are equally important. Rather sad though, if in the future if there’s no reception or you can’t take your phone, will anybody go there? 

Easyjet is 20 years old this year; I know this as they sent me an email to celebrate the fact. The launch of this new upstart airline went un noticed by me at the time, as I was living in Hong Kong then but when I returned to the UK in 1998 it seemed a low price air war had broken out over Europe, with Ryanair and others all competing for this new market. Even ‘regular’ airlines like British Airways had a ‘cheap’ offshoot called ‘Go’. Many like ‘Go’, went down the tubes, but Ryanair and Easyjet have powered on and built extensive networks and so used have Europeans become too cheap flights, that the prosperity of many cities and regions is based entirely on the tourists that fly in, particularly at weekends.

I was a slow adopter of this new world of European travel, still preferring to walk the hills of Britain on my weekends. My Easyjet birthday email tells me that my first easyjet flight wasn’t until March 2001, to Barcelona, a city I’ve returned to many times since. Lonely Planet always liked to think that they were ‘budget travellers’ still, so while working there I used Easyjet and it’s rivals very often. While no longer a business traveller I still travel a lot and Easyjet is usually my first choice. It flies from Luton, which I live close to and unlike Ryanair has always treated its customers with respect. No incomprehensible websites filled with extra payment traps.
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According to Easyjet I have now flown 28544 km with them, half way around the world, but all in nice short hops. Long may it continue, a company that really has changed the lives of millions, for the better.

In the course of my work I often meet young people setting off on their first adventures, their Gap Year trip or what has become the standard Australia trip with some time in South East Asia along the way. Very often the parents are in attendance forking out for insect repellent and complaining about the cost of all the jabs; all to keep their offspring ‘safe’. I usually point out that bugs and bites are not where the risk is, the real danger is in simply travelling about.

This is illustrated in an article in the Economist magazine (Oct 24/30th 2015) on world road accidents. Globally, road accidents are the leading cause of death amongst 15 – 29 –year olds. Travelling anywhere on the road in the developing world carries a risk, usually far more than a traveller would face from catching any kind of disease. The World’s deadliest roads are in Africa, with forty of the top fifty most dangerous countries, where traffic often kills more people than malaria. That is why exploring the continent using organized tours or truck trips is always going to be infinitely safer than going it alone on public transport, which is always a nail biting experience, even in daylight.

The real surprise is that right at the top of the most dangerous list is the supposedly ‘safe’ country of Thailand. It’s no surprise to me; anyone who has ever taken a long distance bus at night in Thailand cannot forget the crazy overtaking, absurd speeding and the general recklessness with which the buses are thrown around. In the past, Thai bus stations used to display police pictures of all the crashes and carnage; unpleasantly graphic, this no longer seems to happen, and I was never sure whether it was to deter passengers from getting on the buses in the first place or just to fully acquaint them with the true risk.

Everyone needs to get about and I always recommend to travellers that they always travel in daylight as this does cut some of the risk, and in some countries you are less likely to be robbed as well. If you can, don’t travel by road, I’ve travelled all around Thailand by train, it’s a small network but you can get to most of the big cities using it and compared to the bus it’s like travelling wrapped in cotton wool. India is another country where going by train should be the first option.
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With the modern obsession with safety, I feel that people, especially young people seem to think that because they have had the jabs/taken the pills that they are invincible, immune to all disease. Road traffic deaths have become increasingly rare in the UK, the number has halved in the last ten years, but elsewhere, in places where we like to travel, dying on the roads have become the new plague. The causes - drunk drivers, bald tyres, corrupt police, bad roads, nonexistent maintenance, greed, speeding, overloading and so on....

Unfortunately, you can’t take a pill to guard against that lot. 

See also: Colombia, the real risk. 

My annual trip to escape the depths of winter by heading to the Canary Islands and for me the ‘new’ island of Lanzarote.

 Having been to quite a few of the islands now it’s interesting to see how they differ, Tenerife and Gran Canary in many ways very lush and green while the southern end of Lanzarote and it’s close neighbour Fuerteventura have a stark volcanic environment. This does mean there is some good trekking though and armed with the new Cicerone guide, I set off from the resort of Playa Blanca where I was staying, out into the surrounding countryside.

One route took me along the promenade of Playa, clearly it had once been little more than a small fishing village but the seaboard was now line after line of upmarket hotels catering for Northern Europeans. Behind them are huge estates of cookie cutter houses to cater for those how want to make a more permanent home here. The route goes out to the most southern point of the island where there is now a new lighthouse before turning north again. This is a wild coastline; where the black basalt of ancient lava flows meets the full swell of the Atlantic. As the town is left behind there are a few isolated houses then just a rough path that makes its way through the thin vegetation. A low rock wall, built for no apparent reason crosses the plain.

Soon there comes into view a large blot on the landscape, something that says alot about the way the Spanish economy was running out of control before the financial crash. The blot is ‘Atlante del Sol’ a huge derelict hotel, which for some reason somebody decided it would a good idea to build – here. A more desolate spot you couldn’t imagine, there is nothing here, no beach, no water, no other buildings or houses; it is quite literally the middle of nowhere but with a howling wind straight off the sea. I’d seen hotels like this before just a short distance away across the sea in Fuerteventura; where there are alot of developments like this that just ran out of money. I’ve never seen one in such an isolated spot though, how anyone with any commercial sense could have thought that this was a worthwhile investment is beyond me.

Amazingly, some people have moved into the concrete cubicles that would have been hotel rooms and blocked the entrances with cardboard and rocks to provide shelter and some privacy. With no sanitation or water, and the nearest shop or facilities miles of walking away this really can only be the choice of the really desperate. I turn at this point and head back to the comforts of Playa Blanca leaving this huge folly to the wind and its sad inhabitants. 

My trip took me into Montenegro and around the Boca Kotorska, the mouth, which is major inlet that is connected to the sea by a passage. Surrounded by high mountains the inlet curves around the mountains which run parallel with the sea, forming what must by one the safest anchorages on earth. Our journey took us all around the inlet to the town of Kotor on its furthest and safest point, a place of strategic importance for centuries. In many ways a sort of Dubrovnik in miniature, an old city heavily defended by city walls and fortifications that stretched up high up the mountainside. Again another car free city that’s great to wander about despite having to share it with passengers from a cruise ship, which makes it feel very crowded.

There are subtle differences between Croatia and Montenegro, things are not as well maintained, the roads are narrower and it’s a bit shabby in parts. The Cyrillic alphabet is used for some notices and signs, and some cars have Serbian plates. In Kotor, there are Orthodox churches filled with incense and icons and decorated with the Serbian flag next to baroque Catholic churches. Despite Montenegro not being in the EU, it uses the Euro as its national currency.

We drive onto the seaside resort of Budva which looks a prosperous place with lots of buildings going up; mostly apartments aimed at the Serbian/Russian market and a large shopping mall. On the seashore the beach is packed with good looking young men and women all having a good time; if you’re young it looks like a great place to go for a holiday. On the way back we cross the Boca’s mouth on a ferry that crosses at the narrowest part, for the short drive into Croatia. 

The part of Croatia I visited is a thin slither of territory that hugs the coast, bordered by Bosnia Herzegovina to the north and Montenegro to the south. This was land that was fought over during the Yugoslav wars, where Cavtat, where I stayed was occupied by Serb and Montenegrin forces who moved up the coast to besiege the city of Dubrovnik. I didn’t follow the war in any great detail but one of my clearest memories is watching dun shells bounce off the great walls of Dubrovnik on the nine o’clock news. The Croatians fought bravely to defend the city and to liberate the land to the south.
 I went to Dubrovnik as a day trip and it is truly a wonderful city and one of the great sights of Europe. Enclosed by its medieval walls you can really imagine it as it was when it was a great trading port. Almost inaccessible to cars it’s a great place to wander around, with lots of small alleys, courtyards and fine churches. Walking around the city walls which were built to withstand a siege its astonishing to imagine that twenty three years ago, this town was besieged, only this time the attackers were firing high explosive shells. Even though the town roofscape looks old, a closer look reveals that most of the tiles are modern because a large numbers of houses took direct hits from shells fired from the hills above, which took their roofs off. At the entrance to the city is a map showing the damage to the city, only 1% of houses were completely destroyed but 55% were damaged in some way. Ironically, when in past invaders like Napoleon came to take Dubrovnik not a shot was fired, such was the respect for this unique city, yet we sat back and let it be bombarded in modern times. 

When the Croatians forced the Serbs and Montegrians out, they looted everything they could, all down the coast even taking equipment from the airport. Luckily, they couldn't and didn't take this gem of a city. 

In recent years I have taken to escaping the winter weather in the UK by heading to the Canary Islands. They have enormous appeal to northern Europeans, being warm throughout the winter, are Spanish territory so a good standard of living and are not that far away, only four to five hours by air. Everywhere else that’s warm at this time of year is either a long way away, like Argentina, or dodgy, like most of Africa including Egypt now, or dull, Dubai and Australia. So the Canary’s fit the bill and the islands economy and existence has been built on the tourists that swarm here in their thousands.

Of course, people don’t only come here for holidays; many have stayed and bought homes. Tenerife was particularly German, Fuerteventura very British and Gran Canaria just about everybody but it seems to be a particular favourite of the Scandinavians.

This trip was very different for me, as apart from some high end packages to inaccessible places, I’d never been on a package holiday before. The flight was routine but a pretty Swedish girl was waiting at the airport to tell me which bus to get on, which then took me to the hotel. No haggling for taxis or waiting for the airport bus. Then onto the world of mass tourism, huge hotel complexes have been built on almost every inlet or cove which has a beach. The hotels are massive concrete structures that climb up the sides of the hills, each floor only having the depth of one room before hitting bedrock, but this ensures that every balcony had a sea view. Some of the hotels are miles inland where you’d need a telescope to see the beach. Not all of these have been a success, due to Spain’s financial crisis when the property boom went bust, many workers just walked out leaving half completed shells which will probably be left to decay.

Luckily, my hotel was close to the beach which had black volcanic sand. It was warm enough to swim in and due to protection of the cove not too choppy. On most of the islands the Atlantic breakers make swimming something of a trial.  

My fellow holiday makers were all somewhat older than me but I was staying in a ‘child free’ hotel. A mix of nationalities, British, Norwegian, German, even Spanish. Some people clearly never left the hotel but ‘hung out’ around the pool all day. This was an all inclusive hotel, where food was continually available for fourteen hours a day, and booze for even longer, just help yourself.

Of course I did go out, several times to the nearby town of Puerto de Morgan which still retained a village feel; and to Morgan itself, a hill village higher up the valley from the coast, few tourists made it up here. Beyond Morgan the road rose up and climbed up to the high mountains. On one day I did hire a car and made the gear grinding trip up, switch back after switch back to the top of the valley then onto the rolling plateau area at the top. The hills are covered with pine forests and a few people still scratch a living up here with goats and fruit trees. Also here are the reservoirs that supply the coast that keep the whole society/ economy going. At this time of year there was very little in them, I looked for one as a feature to calculate where I was but soon realized that what should have been a large lake was no more than small pond in the middle. The money, probably EU money that has been spent on roads is phenomenal. A motorway runs almost all around the island, and even the road into the mountains was new and well maintained, all you need is a head for heights.

The walking trails on the hillsides are well marked and maintained and as you have to be fairly determined to get this high, not far off 2000m, you will meet very few people. The coastal fringe is a world of mass tourism and in winter very much geared towards older people but just inland is another world, with very few people and a very natural landscape. Probably the nicest Canary Island that I’ve been to, and with much more to discover I shall probably go back.

I was in the Royal Albert Hall on Monday for the Proms, Mahler’s 5th Symphony performed by the Bamburg Symphony Orchestra. A hot sultry night but a very fine performance. Looking around the auditorium  I thought back to some memorable occasions when I’ve been at the Royal Albert Hall before (RAH) which go back too thirty years ago

In the late seventies I was a Roadie for the 'James Last Orchestra' on a couple of occasions when he played at the RAH usually at Easter time, a job I got from the local Manpower office which was my usual source of extra money when I was a student. When he played the RAH on Thursday 3rd April 1980 it also happened to be my twenty-first birthday and I was on duty. So I was there during the day helping the band get their kit set up and when the gig finished I had to work and manage the other helpers to get everything packed away again. This took until about 0300 in the morning. The next day was Good Friday the Easter Weekend and I was due to get the train from Paddington back to Wiltshire and my home town to spend the weekend with my family and friends. As it was so late I decided to bed down with my bag in one of the ‘boxes’ at the Albert Hall and I managed to get a couple of decent hours sleep. I was woken up by cleaners moving across the floor of the hall with brooms at about 0600, so I got up and walked out of the hall and across Hyde Park to Paddington Station where I got the train back home. A very different way to spend one’s twenty first.

I’d also been in the Hall the year before when I was part of a Royal Guard of Honour for the Queen Mother who was there to hand out degrees to London University students. We had spent quite a few weekends drilling for this big occasion and we were all in our Number 2 uniforms, boots shined to perfection with borrowed chromed shiny bayonets on the ends of our rifles. We stood at attention in the entrance hall, for quite a long time as Her Majesty was delayed. As happens when men have been standing in the same position for a long period, the blood doesn’t reach the brain. I was in the second rank and as I stood at attention I saw the man in front of me, a guy called Jim Storr start to waver; he then fell like a plank, face down onto the marble floor with a loud crash. The Queen Mum still hadn’t arrived, but nobody moved, the protocol being that if you fainted, you just lay there on the floor until the event had finished, as the Royals were used to seeing soldiers flat out. Storr then started to wake up and realize where he was; he slowly picked himself up and staggered over to the side of the hall, rifle in hand, looking as white as a sheet, and pulling at his collar and tie to get some circulation going. This is just when the Queen Mum arrived and started walking down the front rank; she walked past the gap in the line and turned to see a very ill looking Jim Storr struggling to stand up. She gave a sort of grimace but carried on, passing me in a wave of perfume. Not surprisingly, Storr never lived down but it was a huge relief for us all that the whole occasion was over, and back at the mess we all got very, very hammered.

Kohima is a place I’d wanted to visit for a very long time, ever since I learnt about the epic siege that took place in the Second World War. The town is in Nagaland, on the border of Burma and due to political problems here was one of the North East States that you needed special permission to travel to, and that was only given to organized groups. In 2011 that restriction was removed and travellers could go to the area without an ‘inner line permit’ as it was called.

Groups had visited in the past to visit the Commonwealth War Cemetery which is in the center of the town and which has been laid out on the site of some of the fiercest fighting during the siege of the Kohima in April 1944; most of the rest of the battlefield has now been built over.

Kohima has expanded out onto the neighbouring hills and there is now a population of over a quarter of million. The built up area is spread over the top of the steep hills and the jungle below laps up against the houses. Looking east towards Burma, the mountainous country is still covered in thick forest. Most of the people in Kohima are Nagas, the ethnic group of tribes people that lived in villages in the surrounding jungle but who now live mainly in towns. They look very different from the few Indians who live here, being quite small, with Chinese\Burmese features and darker skins.

The ethnic difference has been a problem since the war, as although the Nagas were fairly content under British rule and helped them in the fight against the Japanese; when India gained independence, the Nagas wanted their own independence as well. This has led to a long running insurgency which continues to this day. One’s first impressions of Nagaland are that it’s an area under military occupation. The town has armed soldiers continually patrolling it, and they are in addition to the numerous police on the streets. There’s no curfew but after dark, the businesses shut up quickly and by the early evening the only people moving on the streets are groups of soldiers. There are always lots of Army Lorries on the move, and often the cars of senior officers, surrounded by jeeps full of soldiers force their way through the traffic with sirens blaring. The unit in residence at the moment are the ‘Assam Rifles’, motto “Friends of the Hill People”, who were one of the Indian Army units who defended the town against the Japanese; generations later, they’re still there.

The large scale insurgency has ended, although there is a war memorial in the centre of the town which commemorates Indian soldiers killed in recent operations. Certainly it’s quiet enough for tourists to be let in, although I had to register at the police station, ‘for my security’ but this is not a place to visit if you are nervous around firearms.

The Nagas are also very different from the few plains Indians that live in town in that they are Christians. The British suppressed Headhunting but otherwise didn’t interfere with the Naga way of life and they restricted outside access to the area and that included access by missionaries. With independence America missionaries moved in on soul saving missions and now most of the population are one brand of Baptist or another; the Nagas had always believed in one Supreme Being so making the transition wasn’t too difficult for them. There are huge number of churches in the town as well as boy and girls hostels, bible study centres, church halls and even a ‘Billy Graham’ Road. On Sundays nearly everything is shut and families walk together to church clutching their bibles, usually heavily thumbed leather bound or ‘Good News’ editions. Everyone is dressed in their Sunday best with the women and girls in some fantastic outfits. Walking around throughout the day, it’s always possible to hear hymns and inspirational songs being belted out somewhere in the town.

On Sunday the Naga shawls and waistcoats also appear, probably the only time Naga culture is on display. Apart from a few ‘ceremonial’ entrances made from corrugated iron the traditional way of building has been replaced by poured concrete, and there almost no signs of the Nagas former way of life to be seen anywhere.  A ‘made for tourists’ Naga village has been constructed outside Kohima, and this has an arena where the annual Hornbill festival is held each December. Even though this has always been a traditional Naga festival, the fact that there lots of other events going on at the same time, like the Hornbill Half Marathon, the Hornbill Car Rally and weeklong series of Rock concerts (Heavy Metal is very popular in the North East), I imagine most of the population will be doing other things, and not watching traditional dancing.

Anyone going to Kohima expecting a cultural experience are going to be disappointed, the main reason to go there is to see the site of one of the great feats of courage and endurance in the history of the British Army, but that is another story. (more to follow)

I arrived in Imphal only a day ago, a place I wanted to see but which was right at the ‘end of the road’ so to speak so if I didn’t get there it wouldn’t matter. The infrastructure in this part of India hasn’t been improved since the British built it in the 1930’s, basically there’s one road that connects it with the outside world, which runs along the Kohima ridge to the town of Kohima and then down to the Diampur, which has the railhead. I thought I was being very clever when I booked a flight from Guwhati to Imphal, thinking that by getting to the furthest point I would not have to double back on my route and save many hours on Indian buses.

This wonderful plan started to go wrong as soon as I arrived at Imphal airport. There was a collection of ‘Foreigner Registration’ people waiting for me so that lots of forms could be filled in. One person filled in the forms and three of four people watched him do it. I was asked my next destination and I said I was going to travel to Kohima by road. Out of the question I was told, the day before yesterday a group had blockaded the road and nothing could get in or out – the town was cut off. The only way out of Imphal was to fly. I went straight to the Indian Airways office, where a man was attempting to repair the ribbon on an ancient dot matrix printer. After a few minutes of trail and effort he told me that he couldn’t get his printer to work, so couldn’t issue any tickets so the office was now – closed, and he put a board up against the window.

I then looked around for some transport to town and a group of businessmen in a car offered me a lift. They worked for TATA chemicals; one was the local agent, his friend and the guys boss who had just arrived on the plane. As we drove along they filled me in on the situation. I was aware that the road had been blocked earlier in the year and apparently that ‘blockade’ had lasted ninety days, and this was another group with some grievances’.

 There were about twenty eight groups in the area the local agent said and they all want something, particularly pay offs from local business people like himself, extortion and threats were part of normal life. “I carry a gun” he said passing a large revolver over the backseat to his friend. “Don’t worry” he said, “its’ registered.” I could see the Indian government crest on the stock and the rounds in the chambers. “I have to carry that, just so they know there’s only so far they can go”.

They were very enthusiastic about the prospect of Myanmar opening up and the proposal for a new road to be built from Yunnan in China, through Myanmar and then into India, which they thought would really help the prosperity of the area, and boost the governments ‘Look East’ policy.  Building a road through Myanmar could well be the easy bit compared to building a road in India and then keeping it open.
As we arrived in town they pointed out the fortifications around the Public Works Department and the long queue outside a petrol station. “Petrol is already rationed, and things will only get worse.” As we stopped by a hotel and I got my pack out of the boot I noticed that my new friend openly carried his gun in a holster on his belt. Imphal is not a normal place.

As it turned out the hotel was full and I walked around for a couple of hours before finding a room which is unusual for India. On my trek around the centre I’d passed a group of heavily armed soldiers, seen armoured cars go by and seen several large queues outside ATM’s as people took out their money, before the cash ran out. This looked like a town under siege.

I was now very concerned about being stuck here, if the flights were all full there was no way to leave and I might not have be able to access any money either. So first call was to a travel agent, where I managed to get a flight to Guwahati for today. This morning I had a whistle stop look around the town and then headed for the airport. The countryside around the town looked wonderful and I’d been looking forward to my journey along the Kohima Ridge; but sometimes the only thing to do is to cut and run.