Ripcord Adventure Journal #5

RAJ 2.1

Volume 2 | Number 1 | March 2016

Image (c) Kate Leeming Backyard kitchen. It is what goes on within its walls that keeps DjennĂŠ alive.

A Letter from the Editor Welcome to Ripcord Adventure Journal.

This, our fifth issue of Ripcord Adventure Journal has been quite a while in gestation, but I feel the labour has been worth it and our Journal is gradually developing its own unique character.

Where do we begin? A fast track literally, to Germany where a sports car and our journalist are tested to the limits and left begging for more. Following the exploits of a legendary aviator from continent to continent, our Journal proceeds to venture across Mali, cycling the route to a fabled city of gold and encountering a festival of mud which annually repairs what must be one of the "newest" old buildings in the world.

Our next journey explores the concept of adventure on board a luxury cruise ship as it rounds the infamous Horn, can Shangri-la really exist at sea? This leads us thoughtfully to the colourful Monlam Cham festival of Tibet as it is explored by two friends in search of Marco Polo and inner calm, we then journey forward to an encounter with a personal hero, visit eleven architectural gems on the road less traveled and complete our whirlwind travels in the land of the Midnight Sun. We aim to be the home of authentic, adventurous travel, which serves as a starting point for personal reflection, study and new journeys.

On behalf of the editorial, writing and design team I wish to thank our sponsors Redpoint Resolutions (particularly Thomas Bochnowski, Ted Muhlner and Martha Marin), the World Explorers Bureau USA (Charlotte Baker-Weinert) for their continued support.

Tim Lavery General Editor, Ripcord Adventure Journal www.ripcordadventurejournal.com

Ripcord Adventure Journal Copyright Š March 2016 by Redpoint Resolutions & World Explorers Bureau. All articles and images Copyright Š 2016 of the respective Authors and photographers.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, general enquiries or sponsorship opportunities, contact the publisher: Ripcord Adventure Journal: info@ripcordadventurejournal.com

Supporting the following Organisation

"Adventures do occur, but not punctually."

E.M. Forster "A Passage to India"

RIPCORD ADVENTURE JOURNAL 2.1

Editorial Team Shane Dallas Tim Lavery John W. Lavery Sophie Ibbotson Paul Devaney

Featuring Jim Clash Kate Leeming Tor Torkildson Lindie Naughton Francis O'Donnell Siffy Torkildson Caroline Stone

Publishers Redpoint Resolutions & World Explorers Bureau

WWW.RIPCORDADVENTUREJOURNAL.COM

Contents Guest Editorial: Pedal to the metal at one-third the speed of sound Jim Clash

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Lady Icarus Lindie Naughton

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Mali's lifeline: SĂŠgou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

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Shangri-la at sea Siffy Torkildson

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O'Donnell

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Encounters: Lonnie Dupre Tor Torkildson

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Images from the road less traveled Shane Dallas

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Ibn Fadlan and the midnight sun Caroline Stone

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Book review: White Lightning: How the Scots and Irish created a Canadian Nation 82 Contributors and credits Image opposite: Entrance to the DjennĂŠ Library.

Photo by Kate Leeming

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Guest Editorial Pedal to the metal at onethird the speed of sound

Jim Clash Image: Jim Clash driving the Bugatti Veyron at 253 mph at Ehra2

Lessien, the secretive Volkswagen test complex near Wolfsburg, Germany

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Guest Editorial: Pedal to the metal at one-third the speed of sound Jim Clash

My goal was simple: To take the world's fastest production car, the Bugatti Veyron, to its top speed north of 250 mph. After much planning with the Bugatti staff, I finally was to get my chance.

I’ve driven a formula Indy racecar, RUF Porsches, Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Mercedes above 200 mph, without incident, in my career as an adventure journalist. But 200 is one thing; 250 mph is an entirely different, and mind-blowing, proposition. At that speed, you travel the length of one and a quarter soccer fields per second.

Even if you secure the use of a Veyron, which retails for around $2.5 million, it is difficult to try this because of the multiple miles required to reach top speed. Most private tracks aren’t big enough.

The 7.8-mile circular Nard proving ground in southern Italy is too bumpy, too windy and has banking that scrubs precious miles per hour. The German Autobahn, without speed limits on large chunks, doesn’t have a length of unobstructed straight road long enough to safely attain 250 mph unless – gulp – you try at night, when there’s no traffic.

American superspeedways such as Indianapolis and Talladega, where race cars routinely surpass 200 mph, are less than three miles in length, with straightaways nowhere near long enough for the Veyron to reach 250 mph. Even if they were, their operators probably wouldn’t be interested in taking a chance on potential lawsuits from a fatal crash. Formula Indy cars and stock cars are built to safeguard drivers in a high-speed collision; a production sports car like the Veyron, no matter how well built, is not.

I met the Bugatti staff at Ehra-Lessien, the secretive Volkswagen test complex near Wolfsburg, Germany. It is not only big – 13 miles around – but highly banked in the corners. Most important, Ehra is the only track that Bugatti uses for top-speed tests. A support crew of a dozen was on hand, including in-house racer Pierre-Henri Raphanel.

The weather forecast for Ehra the morning of my test was

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Guest Editorial: Pedal to the metal at one-third the speed of sound Jim Clash

foreboding. You need a dry track to run top speed, and showers were predicted. When I looked out the window of my hotel, Wolfsburg’s Ritz-Carlton, at 6:30 a.m., the sky was overcast, but there was no wind – and no precipitation – yet.

Once at Ehra, I signed a number of liability release forms, was briefed on track procedure and given a fitted driving suit including fireproof long underwear, shoes, gloves and a helmet. All of the paraphernalia looked impressive and made for nice pictures, but we all knew that if anything catastrophic happened, none of it would do me much good!

After a few practice laps, accompanied by Raphanel and reaching no more than 185 mph, I was ready for my big test. The clouds hung heavy, but still there was no rain.

I climbed into the white supercar alone; there would be nobody in the passenger seat for the top-speed run. This unsettled me. For past 200-mph tests (except in the formula Indy car), I had a pro along for the ride. But at 250 mph, the risk was too great to unnecessarily expose another person.

Complicating matters, I was to travel clockwise around the track, unusual for me. On ovals in the U.S., the preferred direction of travel is counterclockwise. That may not seem like a big deal, but when you try something this extreme, every little variation adds to your nervousness – especially when you’re trying to stay calm.

I strapped on my helmet and buckled in. A slight fog had gathered on my glasses from heavy breathing and the humidity. As I inserted a special key to put the Veyron into top-speed mode – lowering the wing and dropping the body to within a couple inches of the asphalt – Raphanel reviewed the procedure we had just practiced. I needed to paddle-shift up to seventh gear at 125 mph, en route to the north corner, set the cruise control, then make my way into the outside lane.

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Guest Editorial: Pedal to the metal at one-third the speed of sound Jim Clash

In the corner, I would perform a series of downshifts at cones placed strategically on the track, still maintaining 125 mph. Once in fourth gear, I would wait for two cones near the end of the corner and, once there, floor it and hang on while the transmission automatically shifted back up to seventh.

To say I felt anxious at this point is an understatement. But part of the experience is exactly that feeling – that of the unknown.

Exploration is curiosity in action. What would 250 mph feel like compared with, say, 200? How would the Bugatti handle, or for that matter, how would I handle it?

Once I gave it full throttle, the car lurched like a pent-up racehorse.

The steering, smooth up to that point, became stiff; I had to muscle it to get onto the main straightaway and into the center of three lanes. Once I did, everything smoothed out quickly.

After a few seconds, I glanced at the speedometer and, shockingly, it already was edging above 200 mph. Wow. I kept my eyes fixed on what seemed to be a narrowing road ahead and, after some more seconds, glanced down again. 240 mph. I’d never been anywhere near that speed in a car in my life, but this thing was somehow still accelerating!

A kind of tunnel vision took over. I stared so intently at the road that nothing registered peripherally. For an instant, I thought about what would happen if one of the tires blew – or if an animal bolted in front of me from the surrounding woods. There was a rumor that the Germans had been hunting at the track during the days preceding my arrival, to reduce that very possibility. Earlier, I’d thought this was funny. Now, at 250 mph, it suddenly wasn’t.

Up ahead, I saw the overpass and south parking lot where the photographers and the Bugatti crew were. I knew I must be near top speed, burning fuel at the rate of a gallon every 2.3 miles. But I didn’t dare look again at the speedometer, just kept my eyes fixed forward. The car was incredibly stable, and it was relatively quiet

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Image opposite: Jim Clash in the Bugatti Veyron prior to his 253mph test lap.

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Guest Editorial: Pedal to the metal at one-third the speed of sound Jim Clash

inside – like driving in a silent movie speeded up ridiculously. I had to suspend my disbelief that I was traveling so fast in such a surprisingly peaceful cockpit.

After flashing by the parking area, I kept my foot on it for a few more seconds to enjoy the sensation and then, as instructed, backed off the throttle and tapped the brakes to take the Veyron out of topspeed mode. The wing came up, the car slowed and I felt, well, numb. I loosened my death grip on the steering wheel.

Back in the parking area, everyone was smiles. As I exited the car, Raphanel hugged me. My top speed was determined to be 407.5 kph – or 253.2 mph. Like an excited child, I asked the crew members to sign my driving suit.

This March at the Geneva Auto Show, Bugatti announced its latest super-car – the “Chiron.” With a top speed north of 260 mph, the 1,500-hp machine will be the world’s new fastest production car when it is available in the fall. It goes without saying I want to test that monster as well!

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Lady Icarus The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath

Lindie Naughton 8 8

Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

On a chilly May afternoon in 1928, three small planes came into view above Croydon Aerodrome in south London. Two were DH Moths, but the focus of attention was the Avro Avian biplane made of timber, wire and cloth they were escorting.

Soon the Avro's pilot was visible in the open cockpit and, in an exuberant greeting, looped-the-loop before coming in for a perfect landing. No sooner had the plane taxied to a halt than it was surrounded by hundreds of men and women, including journalists, photographers and dignitaries, who had waited hours for this occasion.

After a few moments, a tall figure wrapped in a fur coat and wearing a cloche hat stepped carefully from the cockpit in her high-heeled shoes. Lady Mary Heath had just flown the final leg of a gruelling 9,000-mile journey from Cape Town. It had taken her three long months.

From the moment she set off from Cape Town, Lady Mary had known that she could not afford to make mistakes: “I realised I would have many more difficulties to face than the ordinary male pilot, especially in the event of a forced landing in jungle or swamp, or among hostile natives.”

With only the most elementary of maps available, the logistics of flying over unknown, uncharted and possibly hostile territory would have deterred most pilots, male or female. After she set off, the authorities in the various countries repeatedly placed obstacles in her way. She rarely flew more than 1,600 kilometres without confronting officials determined to keep her on the ground.

Before she set off, the South African newspapers had reported on her preparations. “I am taking with me one set of clothes, two changes of blouse and a pair of mosquito boots for when I have to spend a night at a landing place,” she told them.

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Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

To protect her further, she would carry a long length of mosquito netting: “By draping the netting over the cockpit, I will have a sleeping place.” Later she revealed that “in case or for fear,” she also carried a tube of morphine: ‘It occurred to me before I started that I might crash in one of Africa’s dark forests and have my leg broken or something worse. I believe all aviators make some such provision.’

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For keeping the aeroplane in tune, she would carry a set of tools, including a hacksaw, a jack-knife and plenty of spare parts. She expected to spend most of her non-flying time overhauling the engine and “clearing the tappets” believing that prevention was better than cure.

From Sir Julius Jeppe, of the Rand Daily Mail, she had received the gift of a gun for her protection; she might also use it to kill game.

She would carry a few luxuries: ‘My luggage in addition will include some pounds of chocolate, a tennis racquet and an evening dress.’

She also planned to carry a Bible and a few novels.

Lady Mary was expected to fly between 480 and 640 kilometres at a time and had already negotiated the first lap of her journey when she flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg, collecting over £1,000 for several light-aeroplane clubs by giving “flips” and helping with flying days.

In one respect, she had no problems. Fearing that she would not find fuel, she negotiated with Sir Charles Wakefield, founder of Castrol Oils, to have a supply of fuel placed at various points along the way. This proved an unnecessary precaution, since motor spirit was available all over Africa for about 5s 6d (30 cent) per gallon.

After landing at Johannesburg, she had her plane adapted, making room for a second fuel tank in the passenger seat. At last, it was time to leave South Africa. On the morning of 25 February 1928, the overloaded Avian wobbled unsteadily into the air from Robert’s Fields, after taking 150 metres to lift off. For the 640 kilometres trip

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Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

to Bulawayo, Lady Mary was carrying 191 litres of fuel and Sir Pierre van Rynveld, the pioneer of South African aviation, who accompanied her for the first hour, had bet her that she wouldn’t get off the ground. She proved him wrong.

Her trip was still publicly linked with a motor expedition from the Cape to Cairo, which earlier that week had managed to cross the Limpopo river only with the help of fourteen donkeys. ‘In contrast to the days of weary travel which the land expedition spent in their journey to Bulawayo, Lady Heath, who came to Johannesburg last evening to say good-bye to many friends in the Rand, speaks gaily of being in Bulawayo by noon today,’ reported the Rand Daily Mail.

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The distance from Cape Town to Croydon in South London is between 12,800 and 14,400 kilometres. Lady Mary would fly about 16,000 kilometres, like the motor expedition deviating from the direct route to visit Nairobi and going the long way along the North African coast because of her fear of flying over water. She had told her husband that the journey would take three weeks. As it turned out, she did not get back to England for much longer, enjoying the parties in her honour and the chances to play tennis or even hunt.

She was exhilarated to be in the air after all the “vicissitudes” and reckoned the first day out of Pretoria ranked second only to her first solo flight as the best adventure of her life. Once on her own, she was entranced by a breath-taking vista of craggy hills, fleecy clouds, and settlements of tiny houses. It was warm and bright and she was wearing just her flying helmet, with her head and neck unprotected from the blazing equatorial sun. Six hours into her flight, she had passed the meandering Limpopo and was soon flying over the great quartz hills of Matobo in Zimbabwe, then called Southern Rhodesia, where Sir Cecil Rhodes, the British explorer who had done so much to open up Africa, lay buried.

Thinking idly of how unpleasant it would be to crash land, she

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Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

became aware of growing pain in her head, neck and shoulders.

Having suffered from sunstroke twice before, she knew the signs.

Ominously, in her most recent experience, she had passed out, not an experience she wished to repeat especially when flying several hundred metres above hard, unforgiving ground. Desperately, she twisted and turned in her tiny seat, trying unsuccessfully to retrieve the special topee, or pith helmet, packed in the back locker of her machine. When the pain in her head and neck got worse and she started to see black blobs dancing in front of her eyes, she pulled off part of her underclothing and wrapped it around her head and shoulders.

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With the black blobs turning into waving black feathers, she saw Fort Usher straight ahead. The last thing she remembered was aiming the plane north-east to some clear ground. When she recovered consciousness, she found herself under some thorn bushes with three native girls “in various stages of scanty undress, sitting back on their haunches and laughing at me.”

They had removed her fur coat and placed it under her, then steeped two of her handkerchiefs in milk and put them on her head. Her hair was clotted with milk and there was a gourd of milk beside her.

Leaning up woozily on one elbow, she was relieved to see that her plane was intact although one wing was drooping. With the help of the girls, who seemed to understand Swahili, although this was not their language, she staggered to the plane to discover the time. She had been unconscious for about four hours.

So little damaged was the machine that, had she been at all well, she could have flown it away. There was no chance of that: she could hardly see straight and the effort of walking to the plane made her sick again: “So I sat on the ground and told the girls to collect stones and earth for my sandbags to secure the machine for the night…They thought

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Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

it a tremendous joke and in spite of feeling as ill as I did, I could not help seeing the amusing side of it too. A great silver bird comes out of the sky and lands beside their huts and a strange white woman is found in it unconscious, and flops to the ground even after she has come to!”

Lady Mary had landed or as she put it, the plane landed itself, since she remembered nothing of it just ten miles short of Bulawayo and her expertise as a pilot had undoubtedly saved her life, since she had headed the plane into the wind and not hit any of the trees or thorn bushes dotting the veldt. After helping her to their hut about a quarter of a mile away, one of her new friends, Makula, who spoke a little English, told Lady Mary that in her delirium she had written a note to be delivered to white people and had asked for milk. Of this she had absolutely no recollection and when she saw the note a few days later, she realised why no help had come: “It was a confused scrawl of what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics and I was unable to read it myself!”

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Lying on her fur coat with a “tiny silver fitted dressing case which the Johannesburg Light Aeroplane had given me” as a pillow, Lady Mary realised she was in a harem hut and that the owner of the kraal had five wives. They looked after her in an entirely matter-of-fact way, feeding her gourds of milk and a whole boiled chicken, complete with innards: “At dusk, they lit the fire close to my head and, with their youngest children, undressed entirely and covered themselves with blankets.” The small, round hut was swarming with mosquitoes and flies and, although still in a state of coma, Lady Mary stirred occasionally because she had been badly bitten, despite covering herself with mosquito netting.

The next morning, after Makula had washed her, a white woman, Mrs Pat Fletcher, was motoring past the encampment with her husband in search of grass for their cattle. To her astonishment, she found an emotional Lady Mary, still feeling dizzy and ill, though the pains in her head and back had eased off. She immediately

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Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

bundled her into the car and drove back to their farm, where the patient “weeping like a kid” was put to bed. In the evening, Captain Douglas Mail of the Rhodesian Aviation Syndicate agreed to rescue Lady Mary’s machine. Reporting back, he told her that there was not too much damage, although the machine was bone dry of oil and “owing to a bend in the undercarriage fitting, the port forward flying wire was loose.”

Her disappearance had made front-page headlines in the South African press. “The absence of any news in any of the newspapers published on Saturday night and Sunday morning of the arrival in Bulawayo of Lady Heath, who set out in her Avro Avian from Pretoria on Saturday morning, caused intense excitement throughout the union,” said the Rand Daily Mail. The newspaper had received hundreds of calls from concerned members of the public. Prominent members of the South African air force had been planning to start a search.

They speculated that she might have been blown off course. Air force members had escorted her as far as Warmbaths, along a route that followed the railway line. From this point, she had left the railway and would have been relying entirely on compass bearings.

There was a strong wind blowing from the northwest, which meant that she could have drifted several degrees to the east and been forced to land in an unknown part of the veldt. As it happens, she was not far off her course when forced to land.

When it left Pretoria a day earlier, the Avro Avian was carrying enough petrol for over ten hours’ flying, the consumption of the engine being 20.4 litres per hour and the average cruising speed 128 kph. Lady Mary had passed Warmbaths at 8.45 am and should have appeared in Bulawayo at 2pm or soon after. News that she was safe came though at 7.30pm the following day from the newspaper’s Bulawayo correspondent. After she had spent the night in a native hut, a party of motorists had discovered an exhausted Lady Heath earlier that day, he reported, adding that oil trouble appeared to have been the cause of the forced landing.

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Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

The Avian was now in Bulawayo and, when she awoke from a long sleep, Lady Mary was flown there by Captain Mail in his own DH Moth and taken to Sister Rigby’s Maternity Home because all the nursing homes were full. In a bed with a tiny white cot at its foot, she slept for a further eighteen hours. A few days later, her temperature was back to normal. She could continue with her adventure.

There was more drama to come – she was robbed in Nairobi and had to call on her friend Captain Dick Bentley to escort her over the notorious Sudd in the Sudan, where a local British office had been murdered. Bentley and his new wife Dorys were taking a leisurely trip back to London from the Cape in their DH Moth at around the same time. Bentley agreed to escort Lady Heath as far as Khartoum.

In Khartoum, the trio met Lady Bailey, the other celebrated Irish aviator, who was travelling in the opposite direction and was also experiencing problems with the authorities. While Lady Heath flew on to Cairo, Bentley turned around and escorted Lady Bailey southwards.

In Cairo, the authorities refused to give Lady Mary permission to fly over the Mediterranean and locked away her aeroplane at the Heliopolis aerodrome. In desperation, she telegraphed Mussolini asking for an Italian flying boat escort. As she flew along the north coast of Africa to rendezvous with the Italians at Sollum, she was shot at although she did not realise this until she landed at Tunis.

There was more drama when one of the Italian seaplanes went missing; fortunately, it was found again and Lady Heath gave the captain a silver cigarette box in gratitude.

Thanks to her fear of water, she slept little the night before taking off from Tunis for Sicily and devised her own version of a lifebelt: “I had obtained a couple of motor-cycle tyres, and having blown them up, had wrapped them round my waist as a life-belt if I came down in the sea.” This was a tale she was to relate many times, with the number of tyres increasingly from two to six over the years.

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Lady Icarus: The life of Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton

To increase her chances of reaching land in case of trouble, she ascended as high as she could: “the higher I went the safer I felt.”

As she reached 2,100 metres, the tyres burst with a loud pop in the thin air and she was left with shreds of rubber hanging around her neck: “My heart was thumping and bumping. The blue sea looked frightfully wet and deep. Shreds of red rubber may have looked decorative, bizarre. But they lacked buoyancy.”

Flying even higher at three kilometres above the earth and with excellent visibility, she was able to see both Europe and Africa.

Indeed, Europe was now within gliding range and knowing that while she could still crash, there was little possibility of her drowning, she could relax and enjoy the extraordinary views.

Ahead, Mount Etna pierced the clouds, making a perfect landmark on the way to the aerodrome at Catania.

After a few days in Rome, she then flew over France before finally making it back to England.

“The last lap was, as the papers say, without incident, except for a storm in the Channel that blew me up to Deal. I was so annoyed by this, and so cold, that I landed at Lympne to have a cup of tea before going on to Croydon.”

“I had not expected anyone to come out to Croydon to meet me, and I was so surprised and pleased to find two aeroplanes circling round me as I approached the aerodrome, that I could not help risking things a little and doing a loop over the aerodrome, although I had been warned that my tail might fall off if I did.”

Her achievement, allied with considerable charm, turned her into one of the best-known women of her time – and probably the best known Irishwoman ever after a certain Countess Markievicz. But that’s a story for another day.

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"Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self- motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white."

Mark Jenkins "The Ghost Road"

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Mali's Lifeline SĂŠgou to Timbuktu

Kate Leeming 18

Image: Stern of pinnace to which our pirogue was attached. The River Niger carves a life-sustaining path through the semi-desert NiafunkĂŠ

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Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

Around the time I was developing and organising this expedition, I had acquired a taste for Ali Farka Touré’s music. He used a mix of traditional instruments such as a single-stringed violin, the njarka, and the ngoni, a Malian lute with more standard instruments like the guitar. The ambience of his music fired my imagination as to what it might be like to travel through his home territory, the realms of the River Niger between Ségou and Timbuktu. Ali Farka Touré is internationally known as the “King of the Saharan Blues”, a genre from which all blues music derive their origin – via the slave trade.

The waters of the River Niger, the essence of Ali Farka Touré’s heartland, spring from the Fouta Djallon in Guinea, the same highlands as the Senegal and Gambia rivers originate in. West Africa’s largest river carves a 4200km path from the tropics through the savannah and Sahel, kissing the Sahara at Timbuktu before arching south through Niger, forming a border with Benin and finally through Nigeria to empty itself in the Atlantic Ocean.

The largest portion of the river, crosses Mali, including what some cultures refer to as the Camel’s Hump. Just as the hump of a camel provides sustenance for the animal in times of hardship, the Camel’s Hump of the Niger River is a vital source of life for the twenty or so cultures living in its dry hinterland. And just as the camel itself is a mode of transport bringing trade and culture to desert regions, the Niger does the same.

The unusual crescent shape of the river baffled European and North African geographers for some two millennia. They could not understand why the waters flowed north from its source, 240km from the Atlantic Ocean, to the desert before bending east at Timbuktu. Early explorers such as Ibn Battuta, who passed through Oualata on the way to the region, had the Niger drawn in as the Western Nile. The first Europeans who explored the African west coast thought it was connected to the Senegal River. It wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that Mungo Park solved the riddle of the river’s course (outside of local knowledge).

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Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

After his first expedition, park reported on the hospitable nature of the people of the Bambara Kingdom and was astonished at the opulence and extent of the cultivation he found everywhere. Ségou, the Bambara capital, had a population of around 30,000 at the time and the countryside around was beautiful, intersected on all sides by rivulets. A positive legacy of Park’s explorations was that he was one of the first Europeans to “humanise” Africans at a time when the overwhelming perception of them was one of savage, primitive creatures. Writings of his first expedition influenced thinking that would eventually lead to the abolition of the European slave trade.

Almost 500 years earlier, during the height of the Mali Empire, Ibn Battuta wrote that he found the territory safe to travel through without fear of robbery or violence and that the Mande people of the same region were of a kind and gentle nature.

We set off early from Ségou towards the ancient town of Djenné, passing through the regional centres of Bla and San. For the first time on the expedition I felt like we were starting to find a good rhythm and cover the distances to which I am accustomed. Even with a constant north-easterly wind we were clocking up 130-140km consistently. Extended lunch breaks had literally been “eating” in to the daily distances, and this began to bug me. Initially we took longer breaks to avoid the heat of the day but now it was cooler (still up to mid-30s), we could make better use of the day.

The main asphalt road we were following to Djenné skirts the Niger River floodplain. The terrain was so flat that perhaps the highest landmarks were the giant termite mounds! Waiting for the ferry to transport us across the Bani River, the Niger’s principal tributary, it was obvious that we were heading towards the country’s premier tourist attraction. Sellers crowded around their captive audience in the hope of flogging trinkets, jewellery, carvings, masks and clothing. They wanted to trade everything, the bicycles, my sunglasses, even the shirt off my back. We were to be travelling for the best part of a year, carrying only what we needed to continue our journey across Africa, so we declined all offers.

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Image: DjennĂŠ mosque: one minaret had collapsed 22 after seasonal rains

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Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

Djenné, built on the floodplain between the Niger and Bani rivers at the southern end of the Inner Niger Delta, is Mali’s oldest town.

“Modern” Djenné is a walled city, settled approximately one thousand years ago, but archaeological excavations indicate that the Iron Age civilisation at Djenné-jéno, a couple of kilometres from the city, was first settled around 200 BC. Often referred to as Timbuktu’s sister city, Djenné’s raison detre was its location at the head of an ancient Saharan trade route.

Merchants would travel from the tropics of Guinea to trade gold for salt (and many other items) with those arriving from Timbuktu and beyond. Arabs brought their religion with them and Islam infused in to the melting pot of Djenné’s culture. The city became prosperous through trading with all corners of the vast Kingdom of Mali while avoiding being captured by the Kingdom of Mali’s armed forces (the military reportedly tried ninety-nine time to capture the city but to no avail).

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A dusty, winding thoroughfare led us past an unusual array of double-storey adobe residences towards the main attraction, the Grande Mosque, the world’s largest mud building. Our reason for making good time to Djenné was to arrive in readiness for the famous Monday market, where traders still travel from as far away as Bamako, Ségou and Mopti. We were all up early the following day, hoping to experience and capture the scenes as they evolved, however, we had not realised that the National Holiday on Saturday extended to Monday and the hoped-for bustling market never took place. All was not lost as our guide, Amadou, was able to show us around his town and the mosque, enlightening us about its colourful history.

The first mosque was built in 1240 by the sultan Koi Kunboro, who converted to Islam and turned his palace into a place of worship. By the mid-nineteenth century the palace had deteriorated beyond saving (mud buildings need constant maintenance). The Grande, or Kunboro Mosque as it is often called, was rebuilt in 1906 in the 24

Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

same architectural style as the earlier one.

The Grande Mosque, which sits on an enormous raised plinth of dried mud bricks, is constantly being renovated. During recent floods, one of the three minarets of the front façade collapsed and preparations were underway for its repair. Before the start of the Wet Season, the whole community gathers together to repair the walls, adding a layer of fine mud render where required. Amadou told us that this has become an annual festival with a real carnival style atmosphere.

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Year after year of adding to the thickness of the walls eventually means they become too thick, absorb too much water after the rains and the added weight causes collapses in places. So, while some of the building is having mud added, other parts are having their walls reduced. Mud for the render is mixed with rice husks to make a smooth surface, while mud for the core walls, usually about 30-40cm thick, is combined with straw. The palm-wood beams are built into the walls to strengthen and to act as scaffolding to make the annual renovations easier. Positioned atop each spire, like the decorations of a giant cake, ostrich eggs symbolise fertility and purity.

Like Oualata and Timbuktu, Djenné has a strong tradition of education with twenty-two Qur’anic schools, many madrasas and now government schools. A library houses ancient manuscripts of similar vintage to those of its sister towns.

Despite the national holiday some vendors eventually showed up, mostly the poorest, to sell their produce. The market these days is based around agricultural trade rather than gold. Some Fulani women we spoke to had carried firewood for many miles to sell at the market. In the main market I noted spices, salt, soap, onions, dried fish and a pungent kind of fish stock, dried meat, groundnuts, chillies and live chickens. There were the usual omelettes and dough balls, music and clothing stalls. Mothers worked with babies 25

Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

strapped to their backs and there were children and goats everywhere.

Superficially, the beautiful mud buildings of Djenné, with influences from Morocco, Egypt and Ethiopia, could resemble a theme park.

In reality though, the architectural beauty is very fragile and it is the day to day activities which are carried on around the town which give Djenné its character and identity. The trading post which fed off the gold and opulence of the Mali Empire no longer possesses such wealth.

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When people were unable to feed themselves as happened in the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, the buildings are let go. Artisans drift to the cities and the ancient walls “melt” with the first rains.

Fortunately, the masons, whose family lines stretch back half a millennium, did not leave and the community revived after the droughts, albeit with some outside assistance. The masons still mix clay dug from the surrounding plains with water from the Bani River, then, drawing on knowledge passed down through generations, they create and maintain an architecture that attracts visitors from all over the world.

Back on the road, a positive nyama (a local Mande belief that there is a source of energy or power behind every task or movement) between pedal and foot, backside and saddle needed to be created to get me through the next part of our journey. Leaving Sévaré, the next main village north, my powers were further boosted by the special breakfast served at Mac’s Refuge accommodation. My metabolism had suitably cranked up to process the vast amounts of food needed for the challenge ahead. To start the day on the road I would normally put away four or five ladles of porridge. Rather than eating from a standard plastic plate like my teammates, I ate out of a large mixing bowl which we affectionately dubbed the “dog bowl”. At Mac’s I felt obliged to make the most of the variety of food offered. After consuming two huge buckwheat pancakes (made from millet flour) soaked in honey, numerous pieces of French 26

Image opposite: A Fulani girl on market day.

Photo by Daniel Harman.

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Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

toast, a large bowl of homemade muesli, two helpings of fruit salad, juice and coffee, moving at all was a challenge!

I cycled the 400km from Sévaré to Timbuktu alone. I quite enjoyed cycling on my own but for the first day and a half, from Sévaré to Douentza, I was never by myself for long. Beside the road an almost continuous procession of nomadic herders moved their stock, usually goats, sheep or cattle. The Fulani men would be dressed traditionally, some wearing conical straw hats, others turbans. Here, donkeys are real beasts of burden, often dwarfed by their loads.

Firewood, grain, salt, goats, people – they haluded just about anything. On my journey through Africa so far I had witnessed donkeys receiving some of the cruellest treatment. I decided that anyone who returns to this world in another life as a Malian or Mauritanian mule must have done something pretty horrific to deserve such punishment.

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From about 50 kilometres before Douentza, the landscape transformed gradually into open savannah and the distant range of weathering buttes which form the northern end of the Falaise de Bandiagara made increasingly imposing and spectacular views. It was one of those inspiring mornings when I simply had to keep stopping to photograph what I was seeing. Fanning north-east from Douentza, a dramatic table top mountain range with sheer cliff faces rising over 600m above the plains must be a rock climber’s paradise.

To ensure our safety through this region, John had reconnected with Cheikh Ag Baye, the head of a Tuareg organisation from Kidal in the north east, with whom he had worked on a previous expedition. The desert and its margins across Mauritania, Mali and Niger are all classified as red zones, areas of extreme danger, on Western government websites. Before the journey I had been negotiating with Cheikh and his people to accompany us through the region if required. But after checking out the situation, Cheikh’s advice to John was that our route was safe enough without their Image opposite: The better road to Timbuktu. Photo by John Davidson.

Image opposite top: Restoring a village granary.

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Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

help.

As I turned off the bitumen and on to the gravel my mind was prepared for a battle with the road which our Sahara Desert 4WD guide book described as an horrific sand trap on which motorbikes struggled. Locals in Douentza told us that the first section was good but that there would be sand after Bambara-Maounde, the village at the halfway point, so we stocked up with extra supplies in case the 200km took three or four days.

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The mountain range not only served as a picture-postcard backdrop, it also shielded me from a strong north-easterly crosswind. As I headed the escarpments and entered the nondescript Sahel scrubland, the wind picked up; gusting into my face, it slowed me down to 13km an hour at times. The road had been recently made and true to the locals’ information, was excellent for the first 40km. By the end of the day, however, it had deteriorated into a rough washboard surface. Assuming that this would be the standard for the next 140km or so, I tried to just go stead and conserve energy.

John took care to find a well concealed campsite, perhaps a kilometre off the road. We were aware that this was still a potentially dodgy region and that traffickers frequent the road at night. They are known to use routes such as this to smuggle people, arms and drugs. The best line of defence for us was to ensure that they didn’t know we were there. At night, we turned off all lights each time we heard a vehicle hurtling along the road.

Most of the road was corrugated. Cycling along it took full concentration as I constantly scanned the path in front of my wheel, searching for the smoothest looking option. I removed all but one rear pannier which made for a rougher ride but reduced the risk of broken equipment. Travelling over these surfaces, the wear and tear on everything, body and bike, is immense. My whole body, but particularly my legs, works much harder to take weight off the seat, 30

Image opposite: Reaching the River Niger crossing to Koulikoro.

Image opposite top: The landscape as I approached Douentza.

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Mali's Lifeline: Ségou to Timbuktu Kate Leeming

absorb the shocks and maintain balance over the bumpy and often soft surface. The team set up for a lunch break about 100 metres off the road and about 30km north of Bambara-Maounde but I was in such complete concentration rattling over the corrugations that I didn’t see or hear the others shouting at me to stop. I cycled straight past and John had to drive a couple of kilometres down the road to catch up with me.

That evening we stayed beside a farmer’s encampment for protection, again well out of sight of the road. Life for the farmer and his family was simple but obviously harsh: they lived in a semipermanent tents and mostly tended to their animals. Their sandy, infertile soil supported little more than scrubby thorn trees and doublegee-infested grass; growing anything of nutritional value here would have been a challenge. The farmer insisted on providing us with an open-sided tent for shelter, swept the vicinity and collected wood to make a fire. Before leaving the next morning, in return for his hospitality we gave them some food – basics they probably didn’t have much of, such as sugar, potatoes, onions, rice and some tinned food. We were going to make it easily to Timbuktu, now only 60km away, where we could restock. The gifts were much appreciated.

Our final push to Timbuktu I did have a tussle with the sand, but unlike in Mauritania, I had changed over to my wider “Expedition” tyres which I had brought for the job. This made a noticeable difference and I was able to power through most of the sandy patches, even if doing so did sap the last of my energy.

I was amazed at the width of the Niger River here at the apex of the Camel’s Hump. We took the barge across what I estimated to be about 2km of water. From the other shore it was a simple 18km ride along a eucalypt-lined paved road to the Sahara’s fabled “city of gold”. The route from Douentza had been in better condition than we expected and I was pleased to have cycled it in two days.

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"Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.

It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you.

Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

Anthony Bourdain "No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach"

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Shangri-la at Sea

Siffy Torkildson 34

Image: Celebrity Infinity bound for Cape Horn

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

Teetering on an opera house-like stage in the fifteen foot seas of the south Atlantic, I am giving a lecture on a cruise ship about the 19th century explorer, Annie Peck. A week into the cruise, that began in the colorful seaside port of Valparaiso, Chile, we had rounded Cape Horn, a mythical place for a geographer and oceanographer.

John Turk writes in Cold Oceans:

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“The earth comes alive when the forces of nature collide. Hurricanes and tornadoes arise when hot and cold air masses smash into one another. The steepest, most dangerous waves develop along the boundaries between opposing currents. When two tectonic plates grind into one another, the earth buckles to form lofty mountain ranges. There are a few places, called triple junctions, where three opposing influences, such as three different currents, wind systems or tectonic plates, collide. There is only one place on earth- Cape Hornwhere three triple junctions meet at the same point. Three oceans, the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Antarctic converge at Cape Horn; each one ruled by a different current.”

We have the rare opportunity to cruise around Cape Horn Island the tip of South America. The previous cruise ship was not able to visit this historical point due to the prevalent high seas. Yet, three hours past this landmark, in the Atlantic Ocean, the seas become wild. I am reminded of the times I was seasick on my university’s oceanographic research vessel in the Pacific Ocean, once with 30 foot swells. But this time I am not seasick, although a few people look green as they leave the theatre. It is as if I have crossed a threshold to the other side, after we round the cape.

I imagine Ferdinand Magellan, the cartographer, navigator from Portugal, as he set out in 1519 (ultimately to circumnavigate the globe via South America) in order to find a quicker route to the Spice Islands for the Spanish government. He died in the Philippines, but one of his ships returned to Spain in 1522.

I gaze up at his statue in the plaza of Punta Arenas and wonder

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

what he was thinking back in 1520, nearly 500 years ago. It took his expedition a month to navigate through this region.

Our galaxy’s neighbor satellite galaxies, only seen from the southern hemisphere, were named after him - the large and small Magellanic Clouds. As an avid astronomer, I go up on deck every clear night with my binoculars. I look at Orion upside down, Crux the southern cross, Alpha Centauri the closest star after our sun, and the various star clusters not visible from the northern hemisphere.

The ship’s lights interfere with my star gazing, yet; I am in one of the darkest places on earth. Recently, the country of Chile designated the first international dark sky sanctuary down here meaning it is one of the rarest and most fragile dark places left on earth.

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It is said that if a sailor in the old days rounded The Horn he could dine with the Queen with his boots on the table. I heard that the sailor would switch his golden hoop earring to the other ear as he rounded the Cape. My husband Tor, who is also lecturing on board (about our trek in Nepal, what we consider a ‘real adventure,’) is a former U.S. Navy sailor but I can’t imagine him wearing a hooped earring, however; I can see him with his feet up on the Queen’s table, given half a chance.

Sir Francis Drake, a pirate and slave trader, was employed by the English government to find a route to the Spice Islands in 1577 and spy on the Spanish. He was the first Englishman to sail around Cape Horn and the world. In 1616, a Dutch expedition realised that Cape Horn (named for Hoorn, a Dutch city) was an island and did not connect with Antarctica, as many had thought. No longer a major shipping route these days, since the Panama Canal was completed in 1916, the Horn is still a feat of endurance for adventurous sailboats and yachts.

This is my first trip to South America, and I am thrilled to be speaking about my mentor Annie Peck, whom I wrote my thesis about for my M.A. degree. This is her continent, and she traveled by

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

steamship to South America, as well as between cities, including to Punta Arenas, the southern-most ‘city’ in the world.

Peck wrote the first guide book to South America, the South American Tour, published in 1913, as well as Industrial and Commercial South America published in 1922 and reprinted as late as the 1970s.

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Peck, who never married, was one of the first female archaeologists (in Greece) and a mountaineer, spending much of her climbing career in Peru, with first ascents of Mount Huascaran and Mount Coropuna, when she was over 50 years old. She taught Latin in college and then quit her teaching career at age 47 to become a writer and lecturer full-time in North and South America. She was a late bloomer, like me. Interested in aviation and in order to promote tourism, Annie was the first person to fly around South America as a passenger, at age 80 in 1930.

And… I am speaking on a cruise ship, in South America, just like Annie did. She lectured all around the continent promoting tourism and trade throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Her first trip to South America (Peru and Bolivia) was in 1903 on a mountaineering expedition when she fell in love with the continent.

Today, I am living her legacy by sailing on a cruise ship and traveling to South America by jet airplane. Annie traveled to Europe three times, always by steamship, and to South America, from New York City where she lived, by ship. It took her nine days to travel to Panama and then she crossed the Canal Zone by rail and took mail/cargo ships south to other ports.

Steamships were replaced by cruise-ships in the 1950s and 60s when long-distance airplanes succeeded ship travel. Instead, the ships became leisure lines. Peck wrote “Montevideo deserves a longer visit than many tourists make, who, remaining but a few hours, take a hurried drive about the city while the steamer lies in port.” The same is true today. We only had a few hours during which we visited the

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Image opposite: Leaving port.

Image opposite top: Seals and their pups

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

art museum of Joaquín Torres García and I wonder if Annie knew him, as he was back and forth to New York City where she lived during the same era. We ate fish and beef, with the common empanadas for appetizers, in a stall in the busy covered port market.

My husband Tor and I had been invited to lecture on a cruise ship at the last minute. Both of us had never considered a cruise ship as a way to spend our time. It was outside our realm of what we thought was an ‘adventurous or cultural’ experience. Yet, how could we resist a trip around the mythical Horn!

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Another day at sea, I assist Tor with his talk, In Search of ShangriLa, about our trek in the Tsum Valley (valley of happiness) in the Himalaya of Nepal. People come up to us throughout the voyage with questions and comments about our presentations.

Each night we ventured to the Trellis restaurant for the night’s surprise dinner. Maria, from Russia, greeted us with her perfect babushka-like smile and asked us how our day was going. She never forgot our room number, or to smile. Every night she asked us, “Would you like a table with a sea view?”

A waiter from Indonesia, Ukraine, Peru, India, Philippines, or some other far-flung country would greet us with a smile and a menu.

There was an array of succulent appetizers to choose from, and eight main courses. Olga or Rudy would explain each dish. Once our decision was made, a sommelier would advise us on our wine selection. We usually indulged in the dessert offerings, including crème brûlée and tiramisu.

“Siffy and Tor, how was your day, was it relaxing? The Chilean Sea Bass is fresh, and the Argentine lamb chops are the chef’s recommendation. How about the lobster? Can I entice you with one of our appetizers? Perhaps a bottle of Cabernet from the vineyards of Mendoza?”

Tor and I would banter with the waiters, asking all sorts of questions, with Tor sharing his experiences in their home countries,

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

as he has lived in and visited numerous countries. The menu was a true culinary adventure, as was the food we tasted on our shore explorations, such as spider crab stew and parilla cooked beef, as well as indigenous mate tea (the gourds for drinking mate, and metal ‘straws’ could be found for sale throughout Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile).

Tor was surprised that several of the ship’s sommeliers came from the Philippines.

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“I never had a glass of wine, or even was offered one for that matter, in the Philippines. What an adventure for them!”

Each night we are seated beside a different couple or group of cruise guests. One night we sat next to a father and son from France; another evening, two girlfriends from Brazil, and on yet another day, a Chilean couple celebrating twenty years of marriage; and several American and Canadian couples. Invariably, we would end up in conversation with our neighbors, and the discussion was always enjoyable. In fact, the vast majority of the cruisers were interested in everything and were good listeners. Our cruise was a bit off the beaten path; the ship “Celebrity Infinity” was not for the sunshine craved crowd who want to sit poolside and indulge in fancy umbrella drinks, rather, these cruisers wanted to experience something new.

This was a more ‘adventurous’ and older crowd than I imagine is on, say a Caribbean Cruise. Patagonia is cold and rainy. Punta Arenas and Cape Horn is difficult and expensive to reach. Many people I met had come just to see the infamous Cape Horn, including a Swedish couple, former Peace Corps volunteers (like myself) and a former Navy sailor (like Tor). Although some people were on their first cruise just to see the Cape, many others made it a life-style and had been on numerous cruises.

The 2000 passengers and 1000 staff were all so friendly and happy; everyone was always smiling, said hello, and were chatty even on

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

the elevators. Was I in Utopia? I wondered.

Luigi, our ship’s activity manager was a burst of energy. “If you are bored, you are boring!” he announced one morning on the ship’s television station.

“Where are you from?” A common question from staff and passengers. Seventy percent of the cruisers were either from the United States or Canada, but I also met French, German, English, Indian, Chinese, Chilean, Argentinian, Australian and Swedish passengers.

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Most of the cruisers were over 65 years old and the majority of the staff were under 30 years old. Employees came from all over the world: from Indonesia to Africa, India and South America. We learned about the world through the eyes of the employees.

Annie Peck would have been so happy to see the international diversity on our ship. She believed that trade and tourism led to peace between nations. Her last trip was around the world, but she came home after her visit to Athens, Greece, where she had studied in her thirties, as her health was failing at age 84. I feel fortunate that I can go places Annie could not, and do things she could not, a flight to South America from Europe takes less than a day, in her time it would take over a week by ship to arrive in Chile. And I have been fortunate enough to travel to the Himalaya and Alaska, two places she wanted to visit but never did.

We had been assigned a stateroom with a small portal in the employee section of the ship on the second level (of 11). I was excited to have a window and often peeked out to watch the ocean or landscape pass by. Our housekeeper, Winnie, from Africa, always had a cheery attitude, cleaned the room to perfection. She told us, “I clean your room twice a day.” Although I tried to tell her even once a day was too much, she continued to clean it twice a day. Every evening we would open our door to chocolates on our pillow. One thing I could not bring myself to do was to pay $3.00 for a piece of Image opposite: Swarthy Gauchos!

Image opposite top: Fair winds and following seas. Cruising through the fjords of Patagonia.

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

laundry to be washed. Winnie probably smiled, on reflection, when she saw undies, shirts and socks hanging all over our small room from time to time.

One morning my husband and I rose at 4 a.m. and went out on deck in the dark. A handful of dedicated nature photographers paced around the ship with professional camera gear and a lens for every occasion. We had entered Beagle channel and we felt the ‘presence’ of the landscape around us. Slowly, the darkness transitioned into ridgeline silhouettes and dark blue hues. As the sun creeped over the Patagonian horizon, shades of pastel colors washed the scene before us.

Glaciers hung like white fingers dipping into the sea, and daylight presented a magical world of towering mountains, glaciers, waterfalls, the sea and sky. It was one of those rare moments in life, when a landscape etches itself into your soul, and offers a refuge later in life.

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Because cruising is outside our box of what we would normally do, it was indeed an adventure for us, and learning about the ‘cruising culture’ was a whole new world. We met people above our social status, and those that saved money for years to see the mythical Cape Horn. I feel like Annie, who wined and dined with diplomats and South American presidents, yet she was always struggling to save money to come back to South America. It took her four years of saving before she went on her first trip to Bolivia and Peru.

Many adventures could be had without even leaving the ship, from learning about gemstones and wines, to cake decorating, Tango classes, cooking, movies, art shows, and nature talks. I was surprised that the Infinity has a full-time naturalist on board. He travels with the ship which cruises in the South Pacific, as well as from Antarctica to Alaska. Milos gave popular talks on the animals of Patagonia, the weather, climate and astronomy. I was impressed by the way he could explain basic science concepts for the average person without sounding condescending, and his use of humor to

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Shangri-La at Sea Siffy Torkildson

captivate the audience. He talked about climate change and overpopulation, and stressed that women’s rights leads to better economic conditions everywhere. He spoke non-apologetically and with infectious enthusiasm.

A dog whisperer, Gary Kramer, gave a presentation about animal behavior, and a geography professor, Larry Herzog, taught the cruisers about the countries we were visiting. Entertainment included a disco production by the staff troupe, Russian acrobats, Alan and Yulia Reva, and a flamenco guitarist, Greg Reiter. The spa offered acupuncture, many types of massages, an analysis of one’s stance, as well as classes from yoga to Zumba, all with a view out the front of the ship. I had a Thai massage by a woman from Thailand; acupuncture by a Brazilian, a South African worked the desk. A Romanian man taught classes on caring for your feet and back.

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In ports, various excursions were available, from kayaking to trekking, 4x4 off-roading, cultural tours, or do your own thing. The port calls were a great way for us to make reconnaissance of areas we would like to visit in the future.

Puerto Montt really intrigued us, with its Fuji-like volcano, Osorno, standing across Lake Llanquihue; as did the town of Ushuaia, surrounded by glaciers and where we hiked in the rain through the lush beech tree forest. At Puerto Madryn we visited a sea lion colony, in Punta del Este we admired a lighthouse and hung out with locals at the beach. We rode horses, ate slabs of meat with gauchos, and attended a traditional dance production in Argentina.

We only took two of the ship ‘excursions’ and preferred to do more independent travel.

In Buenos Aires, I visited the address of Annie’s hotel where she had always stayed, the Grand Hotel. Although the building is no longer a hotel, it is still there (apartments now) and the first floor is a Burger King. Annie always promoted industry and trade with South America, and how ironic that the Burger King was at the

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bottom of her building now, with a Starbucks across the street.

Annie was the first person to suggest banks from the United States set up branches in South America.

We visited the gravesite of Eva Perón in La Recoleta cemetery. I found myself looking at the death dates on various tombs, noting if they were after 1930, when Annie had last visited the cemetery.

Elaborate rooms, with altars, statues and carvings, honored the dead.

We sipped coffee in the famous Café Tortoni, opened by a French immigrant in the 1880s. It was not far from Annie’s hotel and I am sure she must have had coffee there. The ambiance was old world, with antique Tiffany lamps, tables and historical photos of former patrons, as well as busts of various famous Argentinians. The ancient indigenous ombú trees (banyan tree look-alikes) dot the city landscape with their crazy root-like structures and were especially appreciated on the 80-degree sunny day.

Our last night of our trip, Tor’s birthday, we spent in the Moreno Hotel, a historic building constructed in the 1920s by an architect family, in the intellectually influenced neighborhood of San Telmo.

We ate a delicious French meal in a jazz club and enjoyed a view of the city from the rooftop terrace. Afterwards, at Café La Poesía, which opened in 1982, we relish the intellectual ambiance with a cognac and flan.

After two weeks on the cruise, with several port calls, we watch ourselves with amusement on the ship’s television channel (all the lectures are televised, we were indeed celebrities)! During the cruise, we ate like royalty, slept better than we had in years, and felt refreshed. We were fortunate to see a unique slice of society, the cruising crowd, and the mythical Patagonia and Cape Horn.

The Infinity truly was a floating global village where people of all ages, nations, and social status got along. There was such an abundance of peace and happiness. Had we finally found our Shangri-La on a cruise ship?

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"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

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Monlam Cham Festival

Francis O'Donnell 8 48

Top: A masked dancer bares a fearsome countenance to scare away evil spirits.

Middle: A group of monks watch while their comrades practice.

Bottom: The "Monlam Cham" dance, held in front of the monastery Photos (c) Denis Belliveau 49

Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

Like many 'Timeless Travel' adventures this one started between the pages of a dusty old book long forgotten, 'The Travels of Marco Polo'. My mother had given me the volume. It sat on my shelf for years until one day it ignited a dream to retrace the Venetian explorer’s entire route along the legendary Silk Road. Our expedition's name was 'The Return to Venice'.

Now, after many arduous months, our caravan had survived a series of rock slides and avalanches. We had climbed through snowy mountain passes, to reach the seemingly endless Tibetan highlands.

Its people are nomadic and roam this plateau with their sundry beasts, wild and free as the wind. We had been told by fellow travelers that there is a rich Gompa called Labrang which is a very sacred Monastery to the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism and is the repository of great knowledge and wealth.

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In Marco Polo’s time, hundreds of Monks were said to live there, it was founded in 1709 by the first Jamyang Zhépa, Ngawang Tsöndrü. It is to be found in a blessed mountain valley named Sangke, hidden like a gem in a lotus flower, surrounded by 108 sacred peaks with names like, Eternal Bliss, Tolerance and Compassion, Radiance and Harmony, Dragon and Phoenix, Everlasting Life and Tian Shan, which equates to the Mountain of Heaven.

It sounded like romantic hyperbole, but I was hopeful. We had risked this sidetrack because a great festival was about to take place and thousands of pilgrims from all over Tibet would be enjoining.

It was our intention to witness and document the festivities, seek out trade goods like coral, amber, silver, gold, and other precious gems, which decorated their “women and idols,” as Marco Polo said in his account of the region 700 years prior. As we approached our destination, the larger the gathering became, an ever increasing stream of pilgrims could be seen on the horizon, little specks focused on one heading.

My guess was there were at least thirty thousand supplicants filling

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

the small town and camping in the surrounding valleys. We were invited to stay in one such camp with an extended family. It was hard for me to tell the difference between clans, the diversity of customs and dress was dizzying. One thing was standard, the friendly open nature in which everyone greeted us. Most would stop momentarily, bow slightly, and while smiling, stick out their tongue and say, “Dimo Dimo.” The way Westerners might shake hands the Tibetans stick out their tongues! At first, I was taken aback, not knowing what it meant. I have to say that the novelty of sticking your tongue out, as a greeting, wears off quickly. After a few dozen greetings it can be quite tiring, causing your tongue to swell, making it hard to eat.

I first had the honor of drinking salted yak butter tea some years ago and had grown to like, even enjoy, its thick and oily, rancid taste. Our hosts had a few new twists they introduced me to. Aside from all the yak fat, odd chunks of meat, hair, sinew, and cartilage, they added a grain called tsampa into their tea which makes it more of a porridge. This is how it's done. You leave a little buttered tea in the bottom of your bowl and put a big dollop of this tsampa meal on top. You then stir gently with the forefinger, kneading it by hand, meanwhile, twisting your bowl ‘round and round’ until you finish up with a large dumping like object which you ingest, and wash down with more tea.

The whole operation demands a high degree of manual dexterity and practice before you can judge correctly how much tsampa goes with how much tea. Unless you get the proportions right you either end up with a lump of desiccated dough or a semi liquid paste sticking to your fingers. Tibetans have many names for themselves, one is, “The Tsampa Eaters.” This term promotes a unified Tibetan identity. Tsampa meal constitutes a substantial part of the Tibetan diet and is used in sacred rituals. According to Polo’s account, “There are Holy Men here who live lives of great austerity and all their lives they eat nothing but this bran.”

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

So, there we sat, smiling, sticking our tongues out and sucking down hot buttery balls of tsampa bran, and trying to communicate.

Neither, my colleague, photographer, Denis, or I knew many words of Tibetan, so we communicated in our very limited Chinese, but mostly, with smiles and pantomime.

When the vodka was finished they broke out the Chang a Tibetan beer. Chang is also made of tsampa bran and has a rich, deep, tangy, bubbly taste. We all became highly inebriated and sang ourselves to sleep in a mixed chorus of the old standards, 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' and 'Old Susanna' and some Tibetan tunes that we tried hard to mimic. When I rose the next morning the nearby campsites had packed up and were gone. Our hosts, too, had vanished. How could we have slept through that? Wow, I am never drinking again, that is it for Chang!

We rode on in anticipation. Soon in the distance we could see the golden rooftops and whitewashed walls of the great Labrange Gompa peeking out from behind the trees. The smell of pine and cedar was everywhere as breakfast fires filled the air. Even at this early hour the path was packed with thousands of Tibetan pilgrims performing parikrama as they paraded proudly past. Dressed, as they were, in their Sunday-going-to-festival-best. The spectacle was spectacular.

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Families, tall and proud, walked hand-in-hand toward the town.

Fathers wearing fox fur hats of great height, bodies wrapped in inverted sheepskin cloaks, tied tight at the waist, with colorful silken sashes, fastened with gem encrusted broaches. A mighty pommel in his hand, dagger sheathed, he led his Clan, a patriarch's parental swagger, he did sway, as the growing crowd parted way.

Mother and children bringing up the rear with happy grins from ear-to-ear. Their frost bitten cheeks were here to share in this Festival of Losar which happens only once a year.

The thousands of pilgrims in attendance believe that their mere presence increases their Karma. By obeying Dharma and

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

commemorating Guatama's spiritual victory over the forces of ignorance, greed, fear, and anger they can accrue good fortune for themselves in the New Year. So, it is a kind of renewal. This act, too, may help one attain merit on their path to enlightenment.

After months of making our way through the Silk Roads deserts, dry and bleak, every hue of brown did I see. Tawny was the sky, at night, five shades of beige, sand our constant delight. When the shadows of dusk were finally cast, dark brown, sienna, and umber came out at last. The color flowing into this town could astound.

Red, yellow, and blue were just a few there to be found. There were secondaries, too, a kaleidoscopic mix of all, a majestic vision to behold. The primaries were in force, in the form of coral, amber, and turquoise, of course. Precious stones held in place with facets of silver and golden lace.

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Fortunes attached to headdresses, heavy and long, with tails that hung behind beautiful maiden's derrieres. Rings and bracelets, for men and boys, items that not only the women did enjoy. Paupers, peasants, and princes all stopped at crowded market stalls, that had sprung up along the way, to separate pilgrims from their pay. There was a magic in the air. The tension of anticipation without despair, the past was the past, for soon New Year's day would be here.

Riders, at breakneck speed, parted the human tide. Birds of prey swooped down with the swiftness of a whirlwind. Warrior Monks, whose wings were of crimson cloaks, flew through the crowding sky, as they took flight to roost amongst the monasteries main flock.

Quarters of the Lampo Lama and home of the living Buddha.

We came to stay at a chamber run by the monastery. Our cell was small and dark with shutters shut, a profusion of oil lamps lit the space. It was freezing cold, in what was once Amdo Provence, in late January. The coal burning stove was just being lit by one of the monks that oversees the residences. We threw our packs down on the horse hair mattress. The bed consisted of several planks of wood nailed together and stretched across chairs at either end.

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

Exhausted we collapsed, our coma seemed to last forever. Shivering terribly, my teeth were chattering as I awoke, it was only 11 pm and our fire was out. It was going to be a long night.

Up with the sun, over the next few days, we explored the town and made ourselves known. With still two weeks before the main festivities we had a chance to make friends with many of the monks, from the novices to the higher-ups. We spent time with them kicking a soccer ball around in front of the main temple, or cut in line joining the never ending stream of pilgrams who walked the circuit around the sacred percinct and spun the many thousands of prayer wheels which lined the way. We too chant “Om Mani..,” “The Jewel is in the Lotus.”

We spent simple moments, like sharing pictures of home and teaching each other words of our respective languages. It was bucolic in its nature, pure and unpretentious. Like two alien beings from different solar systems, coming together, truly interested in one another's planets.

Labrange Gompa is a renowned center for Buddhist thought and Tibetan cultural heritage. It contains eighteen prayer halls, six institutes of higher learning. The great library houses nearly sixty thousand prayer books and an area for theological debate, as well as, books on medicines, art, and music. They have a large collection of Buddha statues and murals.

The central house of prayer contains a golden statue of the Buddha, more than fifty feet high, and in the main courtyard there is a golden stupa with a relic of the lord Buddha contained within. The main purpose of the Great Prayer Festival or Monlam Chenmo is to pray for the long life of holy Gurus of all traditions, for the survival and spreading of the Dharma in the minds of all sentient beings, and for world peace. The communal prayers, ceremonies, and rituals that will take place are believed to help overcome obstacles to peace and generate optimum conditions for everyone to live in harmony.

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Top Left: A Lama prepares to join the debates.

Top Right: A monk shares yak butter tea with the pilgrims.

Bottom Left: The great "Thangka" painting being unfurled on a hillside.

Bottom Right: A magnificent coral headpiece.

Photos (c) Denis Belliveau

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Top Left: A pilgrim rests and enjoys the moment.

Top Right: Monks practice their routine for the upcoming Monlam Cham dance.

Bottom Left: A fine example of Tibetan wealth, silver, coral and amber held in decorative attire.

Bottom Right: A young pilgrim who has walked many miles.

Photos (c) Denis Belliveau

Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

The Monks have much to do during this period and we sat in as they did so. Each student is required to study the canon of Buddhist scriptures at the Mayjung Tosamling Academy. During Monlam they must participate in examinations for advanced degrees and debate. These debates kickoff the activities, next comes the Cham dance itself, followed by the revealing of a huge sacred Thangka painting.

Closing with the ritual offering and burning of the Tormas cake and elaborate butter sculptures. Lastly, there is the circumambulation of the entire Gompa complex one hundred and eight times. They carry images of the Lord Buddha with them in prayer.

The festival grounds where the debates were to take place were frozen when we got there and packed with thousands of crimson clad monks assembled before an open shrine housing a gilded statue of Shakyamuni. In unison they recited scriptures and prayers.

They in turn were surrounded by thousands more, pilgrims, who squeezed into and packed every spot possible.

On the platform of the shrine sat senior monks, teachers, and overseers donning huge amber colored crescent shaped bonnets.

They would lead the rituals and debates. A chorus of monks seated at the base of the shrine blew giant horns thirty feet long, whose voices were so deep and strong it shook the very bones inside your frame. Others then blew high pitched and squeaky horns, drummers beat drums and clashed symbols while all hummed and chanted a foreboding tune. Next these overseers rose to their feet and conjured spells and incantations.

Then their leader began to bless and throw pinches of tsampa into the air. Throwing tsampa as an offering is used as a petition to request protection from the gods. It is a mark of joy and celebration used on occasions, such as marriages and birthdays.

Then the debate began in earnest for hour upon hour. Teams of three and four monks would debate each other in some point of doctrine and theology.

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

When a Monk felt he had gained the upper hand or won a point of rhetoric they would slap their hands together, straight out in front of themselves as if proving a point or putting an exclamation point on it. The whole of the crowd was very well behaved and seemed enthralled by the event, but I found it quite boring.

I never did like attending church much. Standing here looking across the field, I thought how similar the lives of these Monks are to Christian Monks. They live austere lives in religious Monastic communities, dedicated to worship and prayer, they dress in priestly vestments and tonsure their heads.

Then across a sea of bobbing heads and faces, I saw Denis' mug making his way in my direction. I had a strange moment of dislocation. Here, amongst the natives, I felt at home and of no difference. Now, seeing my friend coming towards me, I knew just how out of place I really was. “Good to see you, what brings you to the debate?” I said facetiously, “Nothing Franny, just thought you might want to find something to eat?”, “Sure let's go”, was my reply as I threw my arm around his shoulder, inquiring if he thought he had captured any good images that morning and thought to myself, you gotta love this guy. The weight of the expedition put a lot of pressure on our friendship and often we would take it out on one another. Xiahe, as the town is known in Chinese, softened this tension, letting us slow down and appreciate things, life, and one another, anew.

We found ourselves at one of the few ‘Dining establishments’, the Tashi Delek Momo Palace. We had to wait in line outside for about a half an hour, so, we munched on grilled wild hare on a stick from a street vendor out front.

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Once seated we just pointed to dishes that looked good, as they passed, and told the waiter to bring them to us. Specialties like gyuma, blood sausage, and braised boar tongue, dressed in a unique sweet and spicy chili sauce, which came out first. The room was full of diners slurping away. We ordered Thenthuk, a brothy shaved

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

noodle soup, liberally spiced with garlic and onions, and studded with different mystery meats and leafy mountain herbs.

A giant pile of steaming hot Momos hit the table, big fat greasy dumplings, filled with minced spiced goat meat. When you bit into one it would explode gushing unctuous fat that would drip down your chin and all over your chest. My favorite dish was the huge slab of char-grilled yak steak slathered with garlic sauce, washed down with the ubiquitous salted butter tea.

The big day had arrived, at sunrise supplicants started to venture toward the main plaza. Now, a few days into the festivities, the Monlam Cham Dance would take place in front of the Gompa main temple. For months prior, monks from the College of Tantric Kalachakra spend every spare moment practicing their special part in the dance. The discipline of Kalachakra is one of perfect selfcontrol over each and every movement of the body. Each bend, twist, and curve of a hand, wrist or finger contains profound meaning. The placement of a foot, the act of spinning and jumping through the air tells a story, in a language that only those who understand can decipher.

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The morning had come and gone. We had great seats right up front sitting in and amongst the monks who had befriended us. The thousands waiting did so patiently. There was a special seating section, a loge built just below the roof line of the monastery.

Among the dignitaries I could see several of the Gompas spiritual leaders.

Sitting with them was the monastery's living Buddha, who I was shocked to see was just a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve. A living Buddha is a fully realized being, one who has attained the spiritual level needed to reach Buddha consciousness and nirvana but has chosen to stay in the world to help all sentient beings on their path to enlightenment, a Bodhisattva.

Finally, the dancers who had donned majestic silken robes, and

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Monlam Cham Festival Francis O' Donnell

wore the most demonic masks ever to be seen, slowly and methodically emerged from behind a hidden screen. One at first crouching and bending, swirling, and shaking, waving his arms about casting incantations with sacred amulets and symbols of Karmic powers. He called forth his cousins, who gladly appeared, scowling devils with faces twin to his. All joined his evil romp, stomping around together, hallowing this sacred ground. With fierce countenance so profound as to scare the sources of bad luck and evil away from the town. Now, in a more frenzied fashion they did move, faster, and faster until coming to completion, full saturation. Their secret message sent again, and again, and again, on, and on it went, until every soul present was spent.

Hour after hour we endured the mesmerizing haunt of drums and bones. Horns in repetition blew, the thunderous symbol clashed, too. Upon their demon heads they wore a crown of skulls, grinning at the hypnotized crowd, lost in meditation, each and everyone of us, proud to have been witness to this sacred troupe's operatic ballet. Insuring happiness and good fortune throughout the land.

Happy Losar to one and all.

The time had come, our fantasy over, soon we would catch the bus, our real 'Caravan' for the four hour ride back to Lanzhou the capital of Gansu Province. We stood on a hillside overlooking the monastery, nestled in the Daxia river valley below, as the last pilgrims melted back into the steppe. Smoke rose up to the heavens and we could hear the soul stirring song of nomadic tribesmen echoing on the wind and off the surrounding mountains. We communicated in silence, each understanding the profound experience we had and knowing we had been changed. Not daring to speak so as not to break the spell, a tear rolled down my cheek at having to leave. This was my 'Lost Horizon' and it extends on forever.

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"The people have a language of their own, and they are called Tibet."

Marco Polo

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Ripcord Encounters Lonnie Dupre

Tor Torkildson 8 62

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Encounters often happen when you least expect them. You might meet someone unexpectedly, witness a scene in nature that leaves you stunned, read a book that turns your life around or have a raven appear to guide you down a mountain. Encounters can touch you in many different ways and have the potential, in the blink of an eye, to fundamentally change the course of your life forever.

I recently discussed this with explorer Lonnie Dupre. I asked Lonnie to share a significant encounter in his long and distinguished career in the arctic and the mountains. Lonnie shared the following experience with me: In 1991, while crossing the Northwest Passage, west to east, with Malcolm Vance, I encountered a presence that has never left me.

One day, in the middle of winter in the McKenzie Delta, we stopped to give the dogs a rest and stretch our legs. We hadn’t seen the sun for weeks and it was -40 degrees Fahrenheit.

As I was walking to the front of my sled towards Malcolm I suddenly felt as if someone was walking besides me. I quickly turned Image above: Lonnie Dupre, Polar explorer

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Ripcord Encounters: Lonnie Dupre Tor Torkildson

to look at my new companion. There was no one next to me yet I felt a definite “presence” at my side.

I wondered if there was a bear in the area. I felt completely energized! I waited for a hand to reach out and touch my face. I kept walking towards Malcolm, and the presence stayed at my side.

When I reached Malcolm I asked him if he saw or felt anything strange. He said that he didn’t.

A few days later, on the longest day of winter, we came to an old abandoned cabin with a makeshift cemetery in the yard. One of the graves was dated 21 Dec 1919. It made me wonder about the presence that I had experienced. Since that day I have been waiting for the presence to return to me. It has been as if someone has been traveling with me all these years and one day I will get to meet them.

Shackleton, Richard Weber, and Wally Herbert have had similar experiences. Often polar explorers spend extended periods in total isolation; this in-turn, leads to elevated senses, a sort of sixth sense.

During these periods it is not uncommon to encounter a “Third Person.”

Lonnie’s encounter stirred something deep inside of me. I have known Lonnie for a long time and his reflection rang true and I was grateful that he had shared this encounter with me.

Lonnie is well known in the expedition world for his many arctic feats. He was the first person to traverse the Northwest Passage by dog sled, circumnavigate Greenland by dog sled and kayak, cross the polar cap in the summer, and summit Denali solo in January.

Lonnie eats cold for breakfast. He has published two books and recently produced the film “Cold Love.”

Lonnie has a great sense of humor, is a master carpenter, great cook, steadfast friend, and a steward of the environment. In fact, he is one of my great Encounters in life.

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"For the born traveller, traveling is a besetting vice. Like other vices, it is imperious, demanding its victim's time, money, energy and the sacrifice of comfort."

Aldous Huxley "Along the Road"

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Architecture Through The Ages From the road less traveled

Shane Dallas 8 66

The history of the world is told by the many buildings and monuments found across the globe. During my extensive travels, there are some sites that remain in my memory long after my visit is concluded.

Above: Afghanistan – A disused fort sits in the village of Qala e-Panja in the Wakhan Valley in North Eastern Afghanistan near the border of Tajikistan. It lies in one of the most remote regions on earth.

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Top: China – The Forbidden City in Beijing is one of the grandest palaces in the world containing nearly 10,000 rooms. For nearly 500 years it was home to emperors of feudal China.

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Above: Yemen – Dawn over the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Old City of Sana’a in Yemen. With its distinctive architecture, a visit to the Old City is like visiting the setting of an Arabian fairytale.

Top: Ethiopia – The Bole Medhane Alem Cathedral in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is one of the largest churches in Africa. This is dawn on Genna (Ethiopia Orthodox Christmas) where parishioners stay all night and pray every hour on the hour for twelve hours.

Above: North Korea – The Pyongyang metro in North Korea is one of the most intriguing metro stations you will see. Buried deep underground its most unusual feature is the total absence of any advertising.

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Myanmar – The plain of Bagan in Myanmar is home to more than 2,500 Buddhist temples, stupas and monasteries. A visit here is one of the highlights of Myanmar, especially when watching a magical 7171 dawn.

Top: Zimbabwe – The Great Enclosure of Great Zimbabwe is one of the greatest archaeological sites south of the Sahara in Africa. The nation of Zimbabwe derived its name from this site that was occupied from the 11th to the 15th centuries.

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Above: Russia – The Kremlin and Red Square is one of the world's most iconic urban scenes. Its most famous building is Pokrovski Cathedral (Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed) otherwise known as St Basil's that can be seen on the left of the picture.

Top: Syria – Arguably the world's finest Crusader castle is Krak des Chevaliers in Syria. With blocks, halls and rooms on an imposing scale, this 900 year old castle once housed 4000 soldiers.

Above: UAE – One of the most spectacular buildings constructed in the past decade, the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, was opened in 2007. This is one of the world’s largest mosques and it can hold more than 40,000 worshippers.

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Above: Egypt – The Temple of Hathor in Dendara is one of the best preserved temples in all of Egypt. One can even climb onto the roof or explore the catacombs of this 2000 year old temple.

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Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun

Caroline Stone 8 76

Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun Caroline Cross

“On ...going back to my house, I looked at my beard. It was a single lump of ice and I had to thaw it in front of the fire.”

Early in A.D. 920, the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir received a letter from the king of the Slavs, who ruled in an area of Russia north of today's Kazan. The king asked the caliph to send someone to instruct him in the True Faith, to teach him the laws of Islam, and to build him a mosque. As the Slavic lands in those days were both distant and unknown, the caliph pondered the request for more than a year. At last, however, he decided to grant it and on June 21, the next year, the caliph's ambassador Nadhir al-Harami and his retinue set out from Baghdad. Not much is known about the results of the mission; the ambassador's official report has not survived.

But the expedition did produce one fascinating document: a detailed chronicle of the 2,500-mile trip written by the ambassador's secretary, Ibn Fadlan.

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This account is one of the first since Roman times to provide a description of the harsh and arid steppes of Russia. It includes, as Ibn Fadlan himself said, “all that I witnessed in the countries of the Turks, the Khazars, the Rus, the Slavs, the Bashkirs and others, regarding their religious beliefs, their kings, and the general state of their affairs.” He also described the personal experiences of the trip, particularly the extremes of weather - astonishing to a man from the hot lowlands of Baghdad.

After leaving Bukhara, now in the Soviet Union, Ibn Fadlan was hardly able to believe the cold as they headed north - some 400 miles - and spent three months in ‘al-Jurjaniya’ near modern Kungrad just south of the Aral Sea. "I was told that two men had set out with a dozen camels intending to load them with wood in the forest, but they forgot to take flint and steel with them. They had to spend the night without fire and by morning they and their camels were dead from the violence of the cold. I saw how much the intense cold makes itself felt in this country...the streets and markets are empty and one can walk almost anywhere without meeting a soul. On leaving the hammam and going back to my house, I looked at my beard. It was a single lump 77

Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun Caroline Cross

of ice and I had to thaw it in front of the fire. I slept...wrapped in clothes and furs, but in spite of that my cheek stuck to my pillow. In this country I saw...the earth split and great crevices form through the intensity of the cold, and I saw a huge tree split into two halves for the same reason."

At last, in February the Amu-Darya River began to thaw and Ibn Fadlan's party made preparations to set out north-eastwards. They bought shaggy Bactrian camels and huge quantities of food and, despite the warnings of the locals, who said they would never return, set out again. They soon found, Ibn Fadlan admits, that the locals had not exaggerated. When they reached the area north of the Caspian Sea they found that the cold of the journey made the previous months seem “like the days of summer.” They also found that they had to dress more warmly: “Each of us had on a tunic and over that a kaftan and over that a sheepskin robe and over that a felt cloak and over that a burnoose - after which only our two eyes showed. We also wore a pair of ordinary trousers and a pair of fur lined ones, slippers, light boots, and over those boots more boots, so that each of us on mounting his camel found he could hardly move because of all the clothes.”

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So they travelled until they came into the land of the Oghuz Turks, between the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains. The Oghuz, Ibn Fadlan said, “were nomads, possessors of tents of hair, who move from place to place. Their tents are to be seen now here, now there, as is the way of nomads, depending on their wanderings. They live in the greatest poverty...”

On the other hand, Ibn Fadlan noticed, the Oghuz owned vast herds of animals. “I saw people who owned 10,000 horses and 100,000 sheep,” he wrote. Ibn Fadlan was also distressed to learn that the Oghuz knew little of Islam and attempted to Bead them the Koran and explain the rudiments of the faith to them. Later, when he reached the tents of Etrek, the Oghuz general, Ibn Fadlan presented letters urging Etrek to convert to Islam; the letters were from Nadhir al-Harami, who was traveling by another route.

Etrek's response was not very satisfactory. He said to the interpreter: “I don't want to say anything until your return journey 78

Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun Caroline Cross

when I will write to the caliph and tell him what I have decided to do.” It isn't known what he eventually decided, but the final outcome was satisfactory. About 100 years later the Oghuz embraced Islam and became one of the most staunchly Muslim of the Turkish tribes.

Moving northwest into the area between the Ural and the Volga rivers, Ibn Fadlan came into the territory of the Pechenegs, another Turkish tribe, and eventually, on May 12, 922, after nearly 11 months of travel, reached the tents of the king of the Slavs and presented the caliphs letter. He also distributed gifts, including “scents, cloth and pearls intended for his wife.”

During the following days, the Baghdad mission discussed religion and money. The king wanted the caliph to give him money for a fortress as well as for a mosque. Ibn Fadlan pointed out that the country was rich. The king countered that money which was given him by the caliph would be blessed and the castle built with it would be sure of victory. They agreed to disagree.

During this period, Ibn Fadlan also observed and explored the surroundings, and obviously believed in finding explanations for phenomena new to him. He was very much impressed by the Northern Lights, for example, and asked the king about them. “He maintained that his ancestors used to say: ‘They are the believing jinns and the infidel jinns; every night they fight and have done so since the Creation.’”

In this land of the midnight sun, Ibn Fadlan was struck by the short Arctic nights - and the impact this had on the Muslim need to pray five times a day.

“One day I went to my tent in order to talk with the king’s tailor, who was originally from Baghdad. We talked for less time than it takes to read a seventh of the Koran, while we waited for the call to evening prayer. Suddenly we heard the call and went out of the tent; day was breaking.”

I said to the muezzin: “What prayer did you call?”

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Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun Caroline Cross

“The dawn prayer”, he said.

“And the evening prayer?”

“We say it with the sunset one.”

“And during the night?”

“The night is as you see. It has been even shorter than tonight, for it has already begun to lengthen.”

Ibn Fadlan goes on to give a great deal more interesting information on the country its flora and fauna, its social customs, the food and drink and dress of the various tribes and so on. His descriptions are extremely lively and his accuracy wherever it can be checked, amazing. Unlike later medieval travelers, whose accounts tend to run riot with implausible detail, Ibn Fadlan mentions only one marvel: the bones of a ‘giant’ - possibly the remains of a mammoth.

But the most interesting sections of his chronicle deal with another people who traded with the Slavs: ‘the Rus’ - probably one of the Scandinavian tribes and in any case a tribe later involved in the founding of the city-states of Novgorod and Kiev, the heartland of Old Russia. The most famous of these tribes were the Vikings, who at that time were terrorizing the coasts of England and Ireland and even raiding as far as North Africa and the Mediterranean.

By the time of Ibn Fadlans journey the Vikings were also trading fur, amber and other goods over a huge area of Europe. It is reasonably sure too that they were already sailing the Atlantic to the New World by 922; just last year, an amateur archaeologist, a British historian and a British numismatist identified a coin found in Maine in 1961 as an 11th-century Viking penny. By then too the Vikings had established themselves in Normandy - from where, as the Normans, they would invade England again in 1066 and, not much later, conquer Sicily and parts of Spain and Italy. Ibn Fadlans description of the Rus, however, is one of the few that treats them as traders rather than bloodthirsty raiders and was written just before the time of their greatest expansion.

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Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun Caroline Cross

“I saw the Rus who had come to trade. I have never seen men with bodies as beautiful as theirs - they were like palm trees. They are fair and their skin white and red. They wear neither tunics nor kaftans, but the men have a garment which covers one side of their bodies and leaves one hand free. Each of them has an axe, a broadsword and a knife, and they are never without these things... Their swords have very broad blades, grooved, like the Frankish broadswords.

From the tips of their fingers to their necks they are tattooed in green with trees, figures, and so on. "All of the women wear on their bosom a kind of box [perhaps the enormous embossed brooches which secured their dresses and cloaks] of iron, silver, copper, gold, or wood, depending upon the wealth of their husband and their social position. In each box is a circle to which a knife is attached, which hangs at their breast.”

Like other writers after him, Ibn Fadlan was fascinated by Viking funerals and describes at length a dead chieftain who was laid in his longship, his sword at his side and all his worldly goods beside him; how his dogs, cattle, horses, and slave girls were sacrificed to keep him company; and finally how the boat and its contents were set on fire. When only ashes were left, they built a barrow “like a round hill, and in the center they set up a great tablet of wood with the name of the man and that of the king of the Rus; and then they went away.”

Ibn Fadlans observant account agrees very well with other evidence about the Northmen but is much more vivid and detailed. As with the rest of his chronicle, his story recreates the barbarous splendour of life 1,000 years ago as seen through the eyes of a sophisticated diplomat from Baghdad - a man whose reactions were in many ways just like our own.

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Book Review White Lightning

How the Scots and Irish created a Canadian Nation written by Ken McGoogan

John W. Lavery 8 82

Book Review: White Lightning - Ken McGoogan

Ken McGoogan’s latest book follows a run of superb titles from his restless pen or perhaps one should now use the phrase “restless laptop”. Titles such as, 50 Canadians who changed the world, How the Scots Invented Canada, Race to the Polar Sea, Ancient Mariner, Fatal Passage, Canada's Undeclared War, and the unforgettable Lady Franklin's Revenge.

The subject of this book is close to home and still closer to his heart, published in 2015 it grabbed my attention from the get go with the thought provoking title of White Lightning/ How the Scots and the Irish created a Canadian Nation.

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It's a fascinating book in which he brings together the common ancestry of the Scottish and Irish peoples. Tracing personal stories to people who lived in County Kerry, Kintyre, Aran Islands, Isle of Skye and a myriad of other places throughout Ireland and Scotland.

He explains his thesis, it begins with the double Diaspora and the two waves of immigration that arose as the result of Scotland's Highland clearances and Ireland's great Potato Famine, when as many as 2.5 million Irish souls left for America. Between the 1700s and the 1900s some 2 million Scots left their country for America.

During this wave of immigration some 400,000 Scots went on to settle in Canada and Irish immigrants numbering 450,000 also making it their new home.

He makes the point that these large numbers of Irish and Scottish immigrants arriving relatively early in the country's 'modern' history must have strongly influenced the shaping of the multidimensional Canada. Furthermore, he asserts that the ancestors of more than a quarter of the present population of Canada now at 35 million, brought with them a collective cultural baggage, a mixture of history, values and a vision to the future.

According to Canada's 2011 census he writes there are 4.7 million Canadians (14.3%) who claim Scottish ancestry, and 4.5 million who claim their Irish roots (13.7%). The Scottish and Irish Ancestry

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Book Review: White Lightning - Ken McGoogan

together make up the largest minority of Canadians coming it at 28%.

It is from this background that the author takes on a most unique approach by which we should look into the great ancestral figures i.e. the men and woman who shaped Ireland's and Scotland's history. He skillfully blends the two strands of history, Scottish and Irish and achieves this by dividing the book into five parts each dealing a specific theme; Independence, Democracy, Pluralism, Audacity and Perseverance.

In each he presents a limited biography of the most influential figures from Scottish and Irish history. Personally I loved the inclusion of Grace O'Malley better known as Granuaile 1530-1603, an Irish Pirate Queen, an amazing woman in a man's world in the Elizabethan era, a woman known for her audacity and perseverance.

The figures that follow are a who's who in the history of Ireland and Scotland; Robert the Bruce, Theobald Wolfe Tone, Flora MacDonald, Robert Burns, Jonathan Swift, James Boswell, Walter Scott, Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean, Michael Collins, James Joyce, Maria Edgeworth.

Throughout the book I enjoyed the inclusion of black and white photographs of the areas in Ireland and Scotland which the author and his wife Sheena visited while writing this book, pictures which brought to life the history he writes of, and puts flesh on the bone.

Overall a great read, where history past molds our present. It is very well researched and expresses Ken McGoogan's theory at a level that is easily grasped and hugely entertaining. If, as I do, you like to revisit certain books after you have read them, then this one is a keeper and one you will want to dip into again and again.

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"Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey."

Pat Conroy

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Contributors

Credits: All articles and images are the copyright of the their respective authors. Ripcord Adventure Journal is grateful to all our writers and photographers for permission to publish their work.

Caroline Stone's essay "Ibn Fadlan and the Midnight Sun", appeared on pages 2-3 of the March/April 1979 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

Kate Leeming, "Mali's Lifeline: SĂŠgou to Timbuktu", is excerpted from Kate's most recent book, "Njinga", available from the author's website, www.kateleeming.com

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Editorial Editorial Team Team

Shane Dallas is a professional adventurer, travel blogger and speaker with an unquenchable passion for travel.

Tim Lavery is the Director of the World Explorers Bureau, the global organisation for adventurers and explorers.

John W. Lavery is an award winning songwriter, historian and entomologist. He co-founded Country Watch Ireland, the longest established entomological organisation in Ireland and has been published widely.

Sophie Ibbotson is an orientalist by training, and an entrepreneur and writer by profession, Sophie broke the world altitude record for auto rickshaws in 2008 when she drove over the 15,397' Khunjerab Pass between Pakistan and China. Sophie is the Editor of Ripcord's Gear Guide edition Dr. Terry Sharrer is the Editor of Tagline (Medical Automation) and a former Curator at the Smithsonian.

Paul Devaney's professional background is aerospace, he has climbed 6 of the "Seven Summits" and received the first Charles Howard Bury Award on the recommendation of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins for his climbing efforts and his contribution to humanitarian relief in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake.

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Featured writer

Jim Clash

Jim Clash has given talks literally at both ends of the Earth – the Amundsen-Scott Station on the South Pole and a nuclear icebreaker at the North Pole. The seasoned Forbes adventure and business journalist speaks on motivation and risk assessment through his own exotic experiences.

Clash is a long-time Fellow and Director at The Explorers Club.

His adventures include a MiG-25 ride at Mach 2.6 to the edge of space; driving formula (Indy) race cars above 200 mph; climbing the Matterhorn and virgin peaks in Greenland and Antarctica; two visits to the North Pole (one included a swim without a wet suit); skiing to the South Pole; weightlessness training in an IL-76 over Russia; bull fighting with the PBR; bobsledding with the U.S. Olympic team; taking a bullet point-blank for a story on ballistics' clothing; high G-force flights with the Breitling Jet Team to prepare for his Virgin Galactic space ride.

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Clash has interviewed the late Neil Armstrong, Reinhold Messner, Chuck Yeager, Sir Roger Bannister, Buzz Aldrin, John Glenn, Elon Musk and Sir Edmund Hillary, among many other explorers.

Featured writer

Kate Leeming As an explorer/adventurer Kate has cycled the equivalent distance of twice around the world at the Equator. Her greatest achievements to date include: Breaking the Cycle Expedition – a ten month, 22,040km journey across Africa from Point des Almadies, Senegal to Cape Hafun, Puntland, Somalia in a continuous line. The article in this issue of RAJ comes from this expedition and is excerpted here from Kate's book "Njinga" which can be ordered from www.kateleeming.com The 25,000km Great Australian Cycle Expedition (The nine month journey included 7000km off-road on remote desert tracks. The most arduous part of this expedition was the first bicycle crossing of the Canning Stock Route (CSR) by a woman. The CSR is 1800km long with approximately 1000 sand dunes).

The 13,400km Trans-Siberian Cycle Expedition. The aim of the five month 1993 expedition from St Petersburg to Vladivostok was to aid the children of Chernobyl (This is also believed to be the first unsupported bicycle crossing of the ‘new’ Russia by a woman).

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Publishers Ripcord is the adventure travel arm of Redpoint Resolutions, a travel risk and crisis response company specializing in comprehensive global travel solutions. They serve government agencies, corporations and organizations that require employees to travel or live abroad. The company is owned and operated by special operations veterans and physicians who practice wilderness medicine and understand the challenges of medical and security emergencies in remote environments.

Ripcord’s global intelligence, evacuation services, essential benefits and 24/7 operations center has your back no matter where your adventures takes you.

The World Explorers Bureau (WEB) is a speakers agency that represents 70+ explorers and extreme adventurers, men and women who have lived with cannibals, dived the deepest seas, rowed the oceans, cycled the globe, lived underwater, climbed the highest mountains, explored unmapped caves, walked, skied and cycled to the Poles, walked in space and continue to explore the unexplored.

WEB Speakers inspire audiences around the world with captivating tales of their adventures encapsulating themes which include pushing boundaries, leadership, teamwork and motivation.

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“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out.

Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.

Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.�

Edward Abbey "Joy, Shipmates, Joy!"

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Published by Redpoint Resolutions & World Explorers Bureau www.ripcordadventurejournal.com