Wanderlust, Issue 223 (Oct/Nov22) Sampler

Taking The Road Less Travelled Since 1993

Incredible rail journeys across

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JAPAN

Latin America’s top trips Catalan Grand Tour The other Amazon river Cultural Kuwait Embracing Jamaica Coastal Maine Maldives eco-stays Taiwan

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Bali, Indonesia Photographers: Werner Forman & xPACIFICA Despite being just one of 17,000-plus islands in the region, an estimated 40% of travellers to Indonesia spend time in Bali. Over the years, life there has evolved to suit the needs of these visitors in countless different ways, even if the bars and beach resorts of Kuta are a far cry from the yoga studios of Ubud. Yet it’s this adaptability – to be many things simultaneously – that has seen the largely Hindu island manage to keep its culture from being lost. Bali’s spiritual side still exists everywhere here, from festivals such as Galungun (pictured left), a time of prayers and feasts, to the locals that fill the island’s water temples. Tirta Empul (right), founded in 926 AD, is the largest of the 2,000 or so pura (temples) on Bali, and the purification rituals witnessed in its pools offer a glimpse into one of few facets of life to remain untouched by the island’s popularity. © Werner Forman Archive/Heritage Images/Alamy & xPACIFICA/Alamy. Bali Mystique by Elora Hardy (£70; Assouline) is out now; eu.assouline.com

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JOURNAL Maldives

The Maldives goes green From solar-powered stays to marine conservation projects – discover the resorts making meaningful efforts to lighten their footprint on the islands Reviewed by Nicola Chilton

SONEVA FUSHI

There was a moment when it seemed like everyone on Instagram was sliding down Soneva Fushi’s waterslides, splashing into the pale turquoise waters of Baa Atoll UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Either that, or they were zooming into Flying Sauces, its treetop dining experience that sits 18 metres high in the air and is reached via a 200m-long zipline. But there’s more to this resort than Instagram likes. Soneva has long been an advocate of responsible tourism, banning plastic straws as far back as 1998 and filtering, mineralising and bottling their own water. That sense of sustainability extends to guest experiences as well. Alongside a rota of visiting experts that teach as much as they entertain, you can take night cruises with the resident astronomer or even book classes on glass-blowing using recycled bottles. Villas from £1,026pn, including breakfast; soneva.com

The island of small

TREASURES

Beyond Jamaica’s beach resorts is an island of locals and tiny communities doing incredible things – and it’s a world every bit as enticing and welcoming Words Lyn Hughes

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amaica has many personalities,” my guide, Lucre- She was married to Norman Manley, the first premier of tia, advised me as we rounded a bend in the road Jamaica, and is still a revered figure here.The country’s top art on the way to an unspoilt stretch of coast home to school is named after her and her name came up a lot over the fishermen and farmers. I tore my gaze momentar- following days as locals proudly told me of Jamaica’s creativity. ily from the car window, as farmland and glitterYet it’s the country’s music scene, not art, that is responsiing ocean spilled into the distance, and nodded in ble for Kingston’s UNESCO Creative City status. I found the agreement. By this time, I’d been on the island a two combining in an initiative aimed at regenerating the capifew days and I was starting to see what she meant. tal’s downtown, which has seen artists invited to create music Jamaica is often reduced to a string of cliches: there’s the Bob murals around Water Lane. As Janet Crick of Kingston Creative Marley tours, the all-inclusive resorts, the marijuana aficiona- explained: “There’s a stigma about downtown. Initiatives like dos. But between the beach parties and neverending skank beat this are trying to bring people in and change perceptions.” of daily life, you’ve got a world of people doing incredible things I was lucky to have another super guide, Christopher Creary, that go unseen. In my brief time here I’d met artists, conser- leading my tour. A musician himself, he had known many of vationists and locals proud of their communities and eager to the reggae greats and told captivating tales of Bunny Wailer, show them off. They’d opened my eyes to a side of the island Peter Tosh and Desmond Dekker. As he pointed to the murals, I hadn’t considered: a thoughtful, artistic place where even the he talked us through the history of Jamaican music, from its capital held unexpected treasures. humble origins of playing anything to Indeed, when I arrived here I had hand (even kitchen utensils) through to “Signposts pointed allowed a day to see Kingston, the folly its many genres, revealing that the word of which was soon revealed. This rest‘reggae’ was first popularised by a song to places with lessly creative city is intent on reinventby Toots & the Maytals, called ‘Do the disconcertingly ing itself and I had left little time to see its Reggay’. I left the city humming it with British names – Irish a note of regret for not having more time. progress. But in the downtown National Art Gallery, I found the perfect introTown, Newcastle, duction to the country, past and present.

THE MANGO QUESTION Clydesdale – as The museum’s collection extended I saw a different side of Jamaica the next up to and beyond Jamaica’s gaining of day as I headed up into the Blue Moungoats browsed the independence in 1962, as it severed tains. The winding road was flanked roadside“ by lush, tropical foliage and stands of 300 years of British rule. The museum’s Dwayne Lyttle steered me around bamboo. Signposts pointed to places early wooden carvings by the island’s indigenous Taino people with disconcertingly British names – Irish Town, Newcastle, (“of course, the most famous artefacts are in your British Clydesdale – and goats browsed the roadside indifferent to Museum”) and examples from the colonial years, when the traffic.“Stay there unless you want to be goat curry!” wealthy sugar and tobacco plantation owners commissioned driver Damien would mutter every so often.

The trees around us dripped with mangoes, prompting artists to capture their likenesses and riches.

Perhaps most interesting of all were the works of the nation- Lucretia to ask if I liked them. I nodded, and so began my alist movement that started with the arrival of an inspirational education in Mango 101, as she and Damien reeled off British-born artist and educator called Edna Manley in 1922. a litany of 20 varieties: Stringy, East India, Blackie, Julie, ⊲

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The city that sets the rhythm (this page; clockwise from top right) The varied murals of the Water Lane art district cover the history of Jamaica’s music, but also increasingly contemporary topics too; the majority of the artists are Jamaican and a high percentage are women; QR codes on some of the murals give a further VR experience; to really appreciate the area, take one of the guided tours, especially if Christopher Creary is leading it; (left page) Treasure Beach proudly declares its community spirit; (previous spread) a gnarled, lone tree grows on the edge of the beach where you’ll find Jack Sprat

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DISPATCHES

JOURNAL Kuwait

The art of (re)building history As Kuwait wrestles with old ghosts and lost traditions, a decades-long project remapping the country’s cultural landscape is starting to pay off Words & photographs George Kipouros

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The promise of the Amazon

Drifting Brazil’s Río Negro with an Indigenous guide reveals not just a hidden world of flooded forests, but the Amazon as seen through the eyes of the people who know it best Words & photographs Alex Robinson

All aboard! (this page, top to bottom) The Iara, one of Aracá Expeditions’ traditional wooden Amazon river cruisers, explores the waters in boutique comfort; the boat’s crew and travellers pose on the prow in Novo Airão village; (previous spread) Saro Munduruku, guide extraordinaire, points to a sloth high in the trees in the flooded forest of the Río Negro

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he evening was velvet dark. The air was sweet with the scent of night flowers and filled with an orchestra of cicadas and tree frogs.

Far off in the forest, I heard the whippoorwill-trill of a nightjar. Somewhere out there, close by, a jaguar was padding through the trees. She knew we were there. We’d seen her footprints in the mud, on the trail next to the river as we’d walked up; we’d smelt her acrid feline musk in the air. But jaguars steer clear of people, even on the flanks of Brazil’s Aracá, the wildest, remotest mountain in the tropics.

Here, untouched Amazon forest and river, lily-filled lakes, reed beds and swamps spread for hundreds of kilometres all around, unbroken by road or town. I wasn’t frightened, but my nerves were tingling. Tomorrow we would summit Aracá, a vast tabletop of cliffs and rock born when life on Earth was single-celled and the Amazon, Antarctica, Africa and Australia were all one continent. As we walked from the boat launch to the trailhead, its face looked as sheer and high as Ireland’s cliffs

RIO NEGRO, BRAZIL

of Moher; as lonely and wild as a Southern Ocean iceberg. My muscles were tired from the hike to the camp. I’d eaten well and I was as snug as a bug in my hammock, but how could I sleep? After two years trapped by COVID-19 lockdowns, I was in life-giving wilderness, on an adventure I had never imagined. My mind was racing with excitement.

My fellow travellers, Rob and Raphael, were awake too.

I could just about see their faces in the dying glow of our campfire, staring up through the forest canopy at the shimmering stars. They, too, felt a change. Since we’d arrived five days ago from a grey Heathrow, the weight of city life had been lifted from our spirits by the presence of seemingly endless nature, our bodies relieved of all tension by fragrant, oxygen-rich air and the world’s greatest flow of fresh water.

The first morning of our voyage, during one of the rainstorms that sweep across the northern Amazon, we’d put on our trunks, headed to the open area of the boat deck and opened our arms to fat drops of the pure water that fell like beads from the sky, before warming our bodies in the rich sunlight

that soon broke through the clouds. Perhaps it was then that we realised our journey along the Amazon’s Río Negro was no mere ‘jungle cruise’: it was a pilgrimage through nature; medicine for the soul. And like many such things, it had happened unexpectedly.

A PROMISE KEPT

“Our Amazon

This trip was all thanks to Saro. journey was no mere I looked across at him – the only one of ‘jungle cruise: it was us asleep, snoozing with an arm across his eyes, content and peaceful as ever. a pilgrimage through I’d met him years before, on a visit to nature; medicine an eco-lodge a few hours from Brazil’s Amazon capital, Manaus. As he guided for the soul“ our small group through creeks and along trails, I’d been struck by his deep knowledge of the forest and its animals, his effortless expertise and his charisma. Tall and strong, with long dark hair and deep, peaceful eyes, he radiated the quiet power that ⊲

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JAPAN

LIFE ON THE RAILS Japan often feels like it was made to be seen by train, but its networks can be daunting to newcomers and old hands alike. Here’s how to plan your perfect rail adventure…

Words Anna Udagawa

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ransferring from a 12-car Hokuriku bullet train (shinkansen) to a one-car sightseeing train, named Belles Montagnes et Mer, was like travelling back in time. Gone were the reclining seats and leg room; the hi-tech toilets and the smooth journey. These were replaced by beautiful Inami woodwork, ceiling fans, a Master of Ceremonies and an entertainer. Indeed, the interior and entertainment on many of Japan’s sightseeing trains – dubbed ‘Joyful Trains’ by one rail company – often reflect the crafts and traditional skills that go into them.

For travellers, it turns a simple train journey into a cultural experience.

I had booked late, so was sat at a table, but the prize seats were undoubtedly those that swivelled to face the window. My Japanese wasn’t good enough to understand every part of the journey that the MC described

during the 50-minute ride from Shin-Takaoka to Johana, but it didn’t matter. Just having an MC added to the fun of the experience. And for those who had ordered food, there was soon the distraction of bowls of sushi and glasses of sake being delivered to their seats. The entertainer even had a sasara (or bin-zasara), a percussion instrument used for folk songs and local dances, and played by moving it around like a wave.

On a shinkansen, most people read, sleep or look at their laptop, as they’re typically travelling too fast to enjoy the scenery. But I had no desire to do that here.There was always something to look at – even when stopping at stations, locals would sometimes wave at us. I will never forget my journey on a Japanese sightseeing train, but this is just one flavour of rail travel here. For anyone exploring Japan at large or making day trips from its cities, the skinkansen are invaluable. So, we’ve put together five itineraries that make the most of a country that practically lives on rails.

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A smooth operator (this page, clockwise from top) The interior of the Belles Montagnes et Mer sightseeing train shows a divide between the more coveted seats that swivel and those arranged around tables that require plenty of compensatory neck twisting; the train pulls into the station; one of the entertainers on board plays a traditional sasara; beautiful Inami woodcarving decorates the carriage; food and drink is delivered to your seat; (opposite page, left to right) the upper two floors of Kyoto’s Kinkaku-ji, which was formerly a retirement villa for a shogun until his death in 1408, are covered in gold leaf; the shinkansen has been a popular form of travel in Japan since the first Tokyo-Osaka line opened in 1964; (previous spread) wandering Yasaka-dori in Kyoto affords fantastic views of the pagoda at Hokan-ji temple

We pick our top trips in…

Latin America South, Central and North America reveal not just wild rainforest and bustling cities, but colonial and Indigenous histories every bit as dense and illuminating.

These trips capture all that and more…

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NEXT ISSUE On sale 24 November

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Your guide to exploring sustainable Spain Rediscovering ancient Diriyah Adventures in the Torres Strait Islands USA’s Great Lakes by boat Best alternative winter experiences

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