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All posts for the month December, 2017

New Delhi

Posted by Jim St. George on December 15, 2017
Posted in: Asia, India, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Leave a Comment

Mark at the entrance to Humayun’s Tomb

After 18 years we’re back in India. Mark & I – along with Mark’s dad – were in India back in 1999. I had been invited to participate in a Ford Foundation conference in Goa so we decided to make a vacation out of it, working our way down the southwestern coast. Simply put, we loved India. The intensity, the flavors, the utter uniqueness of everything enchanted us. To be clear, India is not an easy place to travel; the poverty and crowds and touts and, well, everything. But for us at least, enchanting.

So we finally made it back, with our first stop in New Delhi. And to be honest I’m not quite sure what to make of it. While neighboring Delhi is an ancient city – it has been occupied continuously since the sixth century BC – New Delhi was built by the British in the 20th century as a symbol of their imperial aspirations and inaugurated as the capital of India in 1931. And so while Delhi – or Old Delhi, as it is sometimes referred to – is an almost unimaginable warren of tiny streets clogged with every form of life you can imagine, New Delhi is all wide thoroughfares and open spaces.

One of Delhi’s crazy intense streets with Jama Masjid — the Friday Mosque — looming

That doesn’t mean, however, that New Delhi is somehow calm. Though we were staying in New Delhi, much of what we wanted to see was in Old Delhi. On our first morning we headed out to walk into the old town. Now, walking is apparently not something one does in New Delhi, at least by choice. But we find it the best way to get a real feel for a place and figure out how it all fits together. And first impressions were that this is one intense city; just the traffic and the horns and every tuktuk driver you see stopping to ask if we want a ride. After all, no one would walk just because they want to.

An odd aspect of our walk was that not too long after we set out we noticed a lot of armed guards along the side of the road. Then one of them motioned that we had to get off the sidewalk. Strange, but there was a parallel side street so we started walking down that. Then another armed guard started signaling to us that we had to get off that, too. He motioned us onto a small cross street that led to a police station, which seemed weird. There were a couple other people there, though, and one of them explained. The Prime Minister was coming by, you see. And for whatever reason pedestrians are not allowed on the street when he passes by. (It’s not just us; auto traffic, too, is stopped.) The problem, our new friend explained, is that sometimes they think he’s coming but then he gets delayed, and then you just have to sit and wait … and wait … and wait. In this case the motorcade raced by just a few minutes after we were stopped, so we were soon back on our way.

Our goal that morning was Delhi’s Red Fort, for 200 years the residence of the Mughal emperors who ruled northern India and today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This was a case where for us the journey really was the experience. First along the wide but congested boulevards of New Delhi and then through the narrow and equally congested winding streets of Old Delhi our walk took some three hours; by the time we got to the Fort we were too tired and hungry to take it on. Instead it was off to lunch and then back to the hotel. We did eventually make it back to the Red Fort, though, and it was worth knocking around in for a while.

Some shots from inside the Red Fort suggest the wealth and power of the old Mughal Empire

Another highlight was Humayun’s Tomb, built for one of the Mughal emperors in the mid-16th century and another World Heritage Site. At the time it was a major shift in Mughal architecture and ultimately was a model for the Taj Mahal, built by Humayun’s great-grandson Shah Jahan. As you tour both the Tomb and the Red Fort the remains today are stunning; you get a real sense of the incredible power and wealth of the empire some five hundred years ago.

For all the interest in that Mughal history, though, the real highlight of Delhi is just the city itself and the chaos and bustle in it. And I don’t say that all in a good way; I’m not sure I’m going to like India as much this time as I did 18 years ago when every step you take is accompanied by someone in your ear trying to get you to go over here or buy this or ride in that tuktuk or … something. And when every breath you take in is more polluted than anything you’ve ever experienced. I just keep coming back to the word “intense.” Even the food isn’t as good as we’d hoped or expected. It’s as though there are only two types of restaurants: crazy expensive international hotel type and scary local type.

Our long walk from New Delhi into the old city passed by this open area that somehow has become a big clothes-drying area. We passed by here a couple times and it always looked like this.

All of which is to say maybe I’ve gotten too old and fancy to enjoy India as much as I did when I was in my mid-forties. We have another six weeks in India, most of it in the state of Rajasthan, so we’ll have time to figure that out. Next stop, though, is Agra and the Taj Mahal.

Kids loved seeing us and waving to us, including this busload we encountered near the India Gate, a monument to the fallen heroes from World War I

And then there were these cute guys who wanted a picture with me

Another street seen from Old Delhi. Did I mention how intense this city is?

Our walk to the Red Fort went through a crazy busy street market where pretty much everything was for sale. Mark particularly wanted that Happy Hanukkah sweater but I talked him out of buying it.

We also went to Raj Ghat, a big park that marked the spot where Mohandas Gandhi was cremated after his assassination by a Hindu nationalist who thought Gandhi was too accepting of India’s Moslem minority. Just a reminder that anti-Moslem bigotry has a long history with sometimes unimaginable consequences.

The Gandhi logo – simple, elegant, and instantly recognizable – is common around Delhi

And finally one last picture of us outside the Red Fort

Oman

Posted by Jim St. George on December 11, 2017
Posted in: Asia, Oman. Leave a Comment

Our selfie along the Gulf of Oman in Muscat. That little white thing you see behind us is a giant incense burner, evocative of the time when Oman was the center of the Arabian frankincense trade. Seems appropriate as we enter the Christmas season!

Our last stop on the Arabian Peninsula was in Oman, out on the southeastern coast and far enough away from Yemen to be safe. We were in a Shangri La resort a little outside of Muscat, close enough so that going in for a day trip was easy but still definitely outside the city.

This was just five lazy days at a lovely and relaxing beach. Shangri La built essentially three separate properties out here and, not too surprisingly, we chose the child-free zone. So we had our own quiet pools (that we didn’t use much) and our own quiet beach on the Gulf of Oman that we used a great deal. Even our own restaurants that were blissfully adult and pleasant.

Entrance to the Shangri La’s pool, with the Gulf of Oman as a backdrop. Looks pretty relaxing, huh?

About the only excitement at the resort was the day when the ocean was rough enough that they had the red “No Swimming” flag out. Otherwise there was time for a lot of reading (I’m very much in a Russia phase this days, now on a new biography of Lenin), runs on the treadmill, and long walks out into the desert. Nothing to complain about.

We went into Muscat one day and it was pretty uneventful. A fish market, a souk, nice views of the gulf. Muscat should be an interesting place; it’s been a major trading port for centuries and well into the 19th century Oman was a major regional power. Today it is much less reliant on oil than other Gulf states and as a result has a much more normal – and successful – strategy for economic development. In fact, in 2010 the United Nations Development Program ranked Oman the most improved nation in the world in terms of economic development over the past 40 years. (Which, coincidentally or not, exactly coincides with the rule of Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, the world’s third-longest reigning monarch and the longest reigning leader in the Arab world. Did I mention that he became Sultan after overthrowing his father? I guess that still happens.) So it should be interesting but in honesty we didn’t experience it.

A genuine local fish market in Muscat

Hanging out around the resort, though, swimming a little in the Gulf, wasn’t such a bad option and in fact was a pleasant way to end our little swing across Arabia. Now it’s off to India, a pretty good place to avoid the North American winters.

The souk in Muscat seemed distinctly local, not at all aimed at the few tourists we saw

On our walk through Muscat we climbed up to a small defensive fort. If I’d had the time I could have spent a nice hour or two reading with that view.

Meanwhile, back at the resort, our nearly perfect little beach on the Gulf

Local art

The pool and Gulf as the sun was setting

Abu Dhabi

Posted by Jim St. George on December 8, 2017
Posted in: Asia, United Arab Emirates. 1 comment

The highlight of Abu Dhabi was the brand new Louvre: an interesting museum in a really great building

Our first experience on the Arabian Peninsula was Doha, capital of Qatar, and I was wide-eyed and excited with all the high-rises and lights and excitement. Second was Dubai, which was like Doha on steroids. Then, after our time in the desert, it was on to Abu Dhabi, the other big city on this stretch of Arabia.

Yawn.

Maybe if we’d come here first I’d have been more impressed but at this point we’ve seen better architecture, shopped in better malls, and swam in better beaches. It was OK, and again we had a beautiful hotel at a good price but the sparkle of the region has certainly worn off.

There’s one big must-do here, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, though since it only opened in November one wonders what we would have done if we’d come here earlier. But yes indeed the Louvre, that museum in Paris you’ve probably heard of, partnered with the UAE to build a new museum to celebrate the cultural achievements of mankind, from pre-history to modern art. Basically, in a couple of hours across 12 galleries ranging from The First Villages and The First Great Powers through Challenging Modernity and A Global Stage, the museum tries to tell the story of human culture.

Highlights from the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Clockwise from the upper left that’s one of the oldest statues known to man, from Jordan dating to about 6,500 BC; a Roman statue of Athena (fully clothed, of course) from the second century AD; a Van Gogh self-portrait; and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. I was surprised to stumble onto that one.

Human culture from the beginning of time is kind of a big topic and the museum doesn’t really succeed. It seemed to me that it suffered from something of a half-Noah’s-Ark problem: it had one of everything. From antiquity it had one beautiful Egyptian sarcophagus and one nearly perfect Greek vase. One statue of Athena and one bust of Augustus. Once you got up to the kind of paintings you’d expect in an art museum, again, one of everything: a Monet, a Warhol, a Van Gogh, a Da Vinci, a Picasso, a Rothko … one of everything.

On the other hand the good news was you got to see a little bit of everything. Well, not exactly everything; presumably respecting Arabian sensibilities you didn’t see any inappropriate body parts in any of the vases, statues, or paintings. You could almost see the censors standing over the collectors looking at that Greek vase saying “Yeah, we’re not showing that one here.”

One highly redeeming quality of the museum is the architecture. The building was designed by Jean Nouvel, the French architect who designed both the Institute of the Arab World in Paris and the Doha Tower, the bullet-shaped building we loved so much in Doha. (And then in reading about him I learned that he also designed the new, modern Guthrie Theater in my erstwhile home town of Minneapolis, another building I love.) The centerpiece of the complex is a huge dome-like structure that almost floats above the museum. It is made up of eight layers of metal with a total of 7,850 stars cut out in various sizes and angles. As the sun – intense in this part of the world most of the year – passes through the sky the light and shadows are filtered as though through massive palm trees. The museum is definitely worth a visit if for nothing more than to see the building.

This was fun. In the very modern gallery was this series called “Family Tree” by a Chinese artist named Zhang Huan. We saw this same piece in an exhibit in Canberra and I liked it so much then I included it in the blog. I still like it enough to include it!

It is worth noting that you really have to want to see it to get there. The museum seems to be the first entry in what Abu Dhabi intends to build as a cultural center well north of the main part of the city. The result is that even for inveterate walkers like us – we walk damn near everywhere we can – we had to take a taxi; more than just the distance, because of the bridges that connect the area to the main part of the city there is simply no pedestrian route out there. Otherwise, though, it is an impressive architectural achievement.

Once you’ve seen the Louvre, though, there’s really not much left. We spent a bit of time at the beach, though we’ve seen better. And I enjoyed walks and a morning run or two on the corniche that runs along the coast. One of the memories, oddly, was on the drive from Al Maha to Abu Dhabi, which passed Dubai in the distance. As you drove past you could see the Dubai skyline with lots of tall, impressive buildings. And soaring above all of them, far above all of them, was the Burj Khalifa, really a stunningly beautiful building. Odd that one of my favorite parts of traveling to Abu Dhabi was seeing Dubai off in the distance.

And that’s it for the Emirates. From here we have five days on the beach in Oman before we head off to India.

Abu Dhabi does have malls. On one long walk across Abu Dhabi we stopped into one and it really felt as though we were in Arabia.

Our visit to Abu Dhabi coincided with the 47th anniversary of their independence. Mark caught this shot of an air show from our hotel room.

Not only was it their Independence Day but they were also celebrating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad while we were there. That meant that even international hotels that are typically allowed to sell wine and alcohol were dry for the day. We showed them: we made cocktails in our room with our own booze and then ordered room service for dinner, perhaps the first time we’ve done that this entire adventure.