Global Travel Writers: Articles

The Jatilan horse-trance dance of Central Java

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:10:00 -0500

The night air is cool and filled with drumming and gamelan. One by one about a dozen men come into the arena with their horses. They prance and move in such a way you soon forget the horses are made of bamboo and have conch-shells for eyes. There is magic in the air. And dust. The riders have leather shin-guards covered in bells. Their colourful costumes add to the dizzying swirls of horse� tails and wild manes. Soon the whole place takes off like a firebomb. Another rider, who cracks his whip around, keeps the frenzied dancers at a distance. As the music reaches a climax, the dancers fall on their faces, exhausted. The horses� eyes seem to roll upwards, in distress. One by one, the riders are taken to the man with the whip that now holds his own black horse in the air and dips its head towards the unconscious rider.

TO ENQUIRE ABOUT THE FULL TEXT OF THIS STORY, PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR, MARIA VISCONTI

Eat, Pray, Love, Bali-style

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:58:00 -0500

Where else to Eat, Pray, (and) Love? Elizabeth Gilbert�s personal journey in search of self-fulfilment reached its conclusion (I hesitate to say climax) in Ubud, the spiritual heart of Bali. Narcissistic, navel-gazing? No, I didn�t hear that, nor did the thousands who snapped up this bestseller.

Don�t wait for the movie to reach a cinema near you� experience the reality now, with a spell of self-indulgence in a villa set amongst the emerald-green rice paddies around Ubud. In the village of Bentuyung one Australian couple owns Castello Jasper, a coolly-elegant four-bedroom villa boasting a 16-metre pool.

At Bentuyung, where the movie�s Balinese scenes were recently filmed, have pocketed the location fees and gone back to what they do best: rice farming and ritual. Your progress up the main street might be blocked by white-turbaned men and kebaya-clad women escorting the fearsome Barong into the temple.

Self-contained villa accommodation is leading Bali�s renaissance as a top-end destination. Spa treatments, shopping and fine dining all tempt visitors at a fraction of the costs back home, whilst villas provide privacy, exclusivity and independence. And those who would like to share a little love around, could consider supporting the stray dog refuge which has adopted the slogan Feed, Spay, Love. More images

Aground off the Pilbara coast

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:07:00 -0400

Living onboard a cruising yacht is a remarkably satisfying experience, offering the rare opportunity to be totally self-supporting. Daily life revolves around keeping the ship safe, the complex essential systems operating and the yacht moving towards its destination. Oh, and there�s plenty of sundowners on arrival, usually beneath an unashamedly scarlet sky as the sun disappears over the horizon. Arriving at an anchorage late afternoon, its not unusual to run into cruising buddies who we may not have seen for months, but who immediately invite us to join them on the beach to share a cold beer or two as soon as our anchor is down and secure.

But there is a frustratingly accurate saying amongst these same yachties: there are those who have run aground and those who soon will. As I found out just a few months into our Australian circumnavigation.....

Please contact Fiona Harper to commission this article or others along a yachting theme. Images are available.

Mount Wutai goes World Heritage

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:27:00 -0400

From Taiyuan, the capital of the Central China province of Shanxi, a spectacularly tortuous road winds north-east through the mountains, twisting and turning upon itself like a drunken snake. Farmers here still wear Mao-style caps and jackets, as though the reforms of the last twenty years havce never happened. Finally, our convoy reaches the South Peak of Wutai Shan Mount Wutai), from where a panoramic view of China�s greatest temple complex opens up in a far-off valley.

Mount Wutai, said to be home to the Bodhisattva Manjushri, is ranked the greatest of China�s Four Sacred Mountains. Stretching in a broad arc around the village of Taihuai there used to be over 200 temples, the first dating from around 630 AD. Now, some 108 still remain, of which 47 are open to visitors.

In June 2009, Mount Wutai was officially inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage register - a fitting tribute to a site of outstanding world significance, and a place that makes a huge impact on even the most blas� or blas�e of visitors.

Finding Dylan Thomas in Old South Wales

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:22:00 -0400

You don't have to go searching for Dylan Thomas in Old South Wales. Quite the contrary - Dylan Thomas will come looking for YOU. Through exhibitions, museums, festivals, statues, cafes, pubs, street names, paintings, posters and snatches of words still hanging in the salty air.

Good Celts them all, the Welsh share the Irish bent for tale telling and, around Swansea, so many of the best ones concern the man Hollywood legend Shelley Winters dubbed "The Horny Welshman'. In 1950 she took him home for dinner where he drank pitchers of gin martinis served up in milk bottles by flatmate Marilyn Monroe while singing Welsh songs; the sort of ditties he'd learned at The Mermaid and The Antelope, his Swansea pubs of choice when "this sea town was my world."

I came late to the Welsh bard. Before Under Milkwood and Do Not Go Gentle, at least for me, it was Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Thomas is there on the front cover of the 1967 Beatles album, in Peter Blake's esoteric collage above Marlon Brando, beside Aldous Huxley, nearly clipped by cowboy Tom Mix' hat. Blake has confirmed that John Lennon - who is said to have sometimes carried a battered volume of Thomas on his person during his Hamburg and Liverpool leather years - was insistent on the inclusion.

As I leave Swansea and wind around its bay to Mumbles and the Gower Peninsula, on the pilgrimage trail to the Dylan Thomas boathouse and writing shack at Loughnarne, there's a copy of his Selected Poems on the car seat beside me. The back cover blurb is the right length for a traffic light stop. "Most notable for his verbal inventiveness, image-making power and almost pagan metaphysics, Dylan Thomas celebrated the glorious particulars of inner and outer landscapes in the face of weakness, mortality and decay." Not hard to see why Lennon liked him.

The Buddha is alive and well in Central China

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:10:00 -0500

During China's infamous Cultural Revolution, anything smacking of religion was brutally suppressed. But now, things are very different. In Henan and Shanxi provinces, the country's rich Buddhist heritage is once more delighting and astonishing the world.

Discover the spectacular stone Buddha sculptures of the Longmen Grottoes and the Yungang Caves. Practice Kung Fu steps with the Shaolin monks. Climb the rickety steps of Sakyamuni Pagoda, the world's tallest wooden structure.

These are just a few of the delights that await on a cultural journey through central China.

Arabian Nights

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:25:00 -0500

A fervently religious country, Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed and of the religion he founded, Islam .

In fact, every year, thousands of religious pilgrims visit Mecca, pouring in from Muslim countries around the world to attend the Haj during the religious month of Ramadan. During this time, Muslims do not eat or drink from dawn till dusk and it is forbidden even for non-Muslim foreigners to eat or drink in public.

Foreigners are required to exercise discretion in dress while in Saudi, never more so than during this time. Women and girls over 10 must wear completely body covering clothing so as not to reveal any skin. Many resident foreigners even adopt the local black abbaya rather than suffer the penetrating glares of Saudi men and, if venturing out of the main cities, a head covering as well. Saudi women dress from top to toe in black. Apart from the abbaya, they also wear a full head veil with only their eyes showing through narrow slits.

Islands of Mystery

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:13:00 -0400

The sacred Marae Taputapuate'a, on the island of Raiatea in French Polynesia, is widely regarded as the birthplace of Polynesian culture. From here, warriors rowed their big war canoes as far as New Zealand. Today, Polynesians from across the Pacific gather every five yeras at the Marae to pay homage to their ancsetors.

Diu Island in Gujarat, India has a history going back even further. It is said that in the era of Satyuga (between two and three million years ago, a time when �the gods walked the earth�), a certain King Jalandhar ruled over the island. According to legend, he was a real bad dude, and accordingly was disposed of by the aforesaid gods.

In Estonia, the ancient culture of Hiiumaa Island was home to the �Mad Baron� von Ungern-Sternberg. He is said to have led troops in Mongolia, treating the Mongols with �unparalleled savagery�. Eventually, in 1921, Ungern-Sternberg was handed over to the Bolsheviks for execution. Even today teachers at Suurem�isa College (the baron's former manor) and electricians working on the manor house claim to have seen or heard his ghost.

What, if anything, do these three widely separated islands have in common?

Israel - Tiny but Treasure-filled

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:17:00 -0500

For all its historical strategic significance as a crossroads of the world, for all its spiritual importance to Jews, Christians, Muslims and other faiths, Israel is not much more than a geographic flyspeck. The absurdly tiny dimensions of this compact country, just a tad bigger than New Jersey, means that visitors from much vaster lands find, to their astonishment, that one can drive from the lush green of the Galilee to the arid brown of the stony Negev in an easy afternoon. Yet within those close (and continually disputed) borders lie treasures untold.

Journey from the walled city of St. John of Acre (Acco) near the Lebanese border to the north, down past the vital sea port of Haifa, the Crusader ruins of Caesarea and the aggressive cosmopolitan street cafe flair of Tel Aviv, over to the Eternal City of Jerusalem, the untamed Beersheba, and the symbolic majesty of Masada, and up to the New Testament centres of Nazareth, Tiberias and Capernaum and you will have taken in places of residence, worship, inspiration and activity which have been revered, reviled and, at the very least, read about by millions upon millions over centuries.

The Saffron Army

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:48:00 -0500

by Philip Game

The day begins early for those saffron-robed legionaries, the Buddhist monks of South East Asia, as they glide through the morning mists, alms bowls at the ready. Glimpses inside a Burmese monastery reveal the domestic life of the Sangha or community of ordained believers.