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The more one travels, the more one realises there’s so much out there that one still needs to discover.To help our readers put together their 2020 travel bucket list, TNS reached out to travel experts and contributors to tell us about that one place they visited in 2019 that left a mark on them.
The end of the world tends to leave a lasting effect on you… and so does Chapursan Valley, far in the north of Pakistan’s Hunza region. Ethnically Wakhi, spanning the unforgiving Pakistani Pamir region, Chapursan’s locals prove the resilience of Pakistan’s people. Unlike other parts of Hunza, Chapursan is devoid of fruit trees, local vegetables, and other indigenous greenery that makes mountain living just a little bit easier. Despite the cold climate and harsh terrain, when I travelled Chapursan this April I found a community of warm, welcoming people. From cosy family homestays to invites to polo matches — and tea with the winning team after! — my friend and I found ourselves welcome every step of our way.
Though I’ve travelled to Pakistan multiple times, this year marked my first attempt to dive a bit deeper in the Hunza region; Chapursan was my first stop. It’s not as easy to reach as other more popular locations in Hunza, but its raw nature and unique Pamiri culture are firm reminders of why putting in extra effort to go off the beaten track usually go a long, long way.
The writer is a travel blogger who blogs at Lost With Purpose (https://www.lostwithpurpose.com/blog/page/4/)
By Adnan Rehmat
Of the many cities I traipsed off to this year, I enjoyed visiting Mandalay the most, fulfilling a long-gestating dream. I had been to Myanmar several times but not to the beautiful and now economically and politically influential second largest city in the northern centre. Why Mandalay? The magic of music! It is the sheer enigmatic reference to this verdant city in many singers and songs I have come across in my decades-long trajectory of obsession with an eclectic range of music that built a lush misty image of Mandalay in my imagination. The sadly short-lived trip-hop band Mandalay with its surreal albums Empathy and Instinct; the song Bomber’s Bay by indie band Echo and the Bunnymen, the ditty On the Road to Mandalay by Frank Sinatra, the lilting Heat is On by former Abba crooner Agnetha Faltskog, the slasher Way to Mandalay by guitar god Ritchie Blackmore’s band Rainbow, the wistful Let’s Take a Walk Around The Block by jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald and the slightly trashy Not Guilty by the evergreen Beatles. All reference the city, which I finally spent a dreamy day exploring on a sultry summer’s day in 2019. The soundtrack to my dreams – magical!
NAPLES
By Natasha Japanwala
In May, on the way to my best friend’s 12-person wedding in Positano, I spent a week in Naples. It had the inclines and viewpoints of Lisbon, the cobblestones-meets-seaside vibe of Barcelona. It was framed by a reputation for gritty crime and the quiet fury of Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet. But for a Karachi girl, it was a languid dream. The days were unexpectedly chilly: I had perpetual goosebumps in my summer dresses, and spilt out of bars, night after night, into midnight rain. The small apartment I found in the Quartieri Spangnoli was a short walk from markets where I bought heaps of fresh mozzarella and massive tomatoes for dinner, cream-kissed rum cakes and crisp sfogliatella for breakfast. There were museums where I got lost for hours, chapels that left me breathless. I climbed Vesuvius right to the top and eschewed Pompeii for an evening wandering an anonymous town along the bay. At the time, the trip was pure and purposeless pleasure — I was as foolish during it as I was indulgent. But I look back on it now as a clear transition between who I was at the start of this year, and who I am now at its end. I knew I was soon moving country, knew that an era was on its way to a close. It was the beginning of a long summer, and I understand now that it was a turning point, after which I started to transform.
– The writer is a freelance journalist and teacher. She tweets @NatJapanwala
By Kamil Chima
Among the many journeys I have been lucky to embark upon this last year, the one to France for a reunion with college friends certainly stands out. We all convened in the south of France in a small town called Aix-en-Provence, or simply Aix.
The old town-square houses an open-air market. Walking past a small hawker selling a rainbow of soaps was maybe the most aromatic stroll I have taken. The town is the birth-place of the artist Paul Cezanne. Stop by his atelier if you seek a quiet moment on your travels.
But the standout experience in Aix, for me, was a visit to the Chateau la Coste winery. Not only is the building structure a sight to behold, but the winery has a walking art trail in the woods. Every turn on the dirt path is lavished with a piece of art to excite the senses, but also a carefully curated experience to nudge, nay exalt, the conversation with your fellow travellers.
– The writer studied political theory at Harvard College. He can be reached at kamilchima@gmail.com.
By Usman Zubair
I travelled to the ancient land of the pharaohs, Egypt, in 2019. I explored Cairo, Luxor, the famous Red Sea paradise in the desert - Dahab and trekked to Jabel e Musa in the darkness of the night to witness one of the most beautiful sunrises in the mountains of Sinai. I travelled solo mostly, but in Cairo, I met local people through Instagram and explored the old city of Cairo with them to capture the essence of Cairo’s Islamic culture.
Travelling solo for the past 3 years, backpacking through some of the most beautiful places on Earth, it was in Egypt that I realised that a good companion makes your journey more memorable. You can learn a lot about yourself when you travel alone, and it helps you grow. Still, it doesn’t mean that you should not be open to a companion to give you company on your travels. There’s a charm in both- and this year, I discovered the joy, good company can bring.
The right people always make your journey more beautiful and infinitely more memorable, be it for a day, two or three.
– The writer is an international travel photographer. He can be reached @usman_zubair on Instagram.
By Areesha Khan
Despite having travelled to 35 countries till now, the one place which stole my heart in 2019 was our very own Bahawalpur. Popularly known as the city of Mahals and Nawabs, Bahawalpur has so much to offer. It is home to more than five palaces, popular ones being Noor Mahal, Darbar Mahal, Gulzar Mahal and Dera Nawab Sadiq Garh Palace. From Noor Mahal’s magical light show to Darbar Mahal’s exquisite architecture and the monumental Derawer Fort located in the middle of the Cholistan desert, it left me awestruck. What was more educational for me during this trip was the fact that Pakistan’s art, architecture and culture was definitely at par with the rest of the world’s. If you haven’t yet explored Bahawalpur, you know where to head first in 2020.
– The writer is a passionate traveller, photographer and artist. She can be reached @littlekhanswanderlust on Instagram.
By Mehjabeen Abidi-Habib
Ethiopia is a ‘point of origin’: where coffee and teff plants originate, where earliest Christianity still lives, where the ancient language of Ge’ez exists with its own script. Such places have mythological meaning for me. With time stolen from a work assignment, I set off on a short driving trip. But instead of me moving fast in a Landrover through a cross-section of Ethiopia culminating at Tiya, a UNESCO World Heritage site of great antiquity, I ended up sitting still and watching Ethiopia pass by me.
Initially with Mesfin my driver, we whizzed through Addis Ababa translating Amharic revolution songs on the car radio, spotting varied tribal faces, discussing cultural impacts of Chinese investment and smelling the Oud-scented coffee brewed in roadside enclosures.
Soon modern city turned to golden, grass highlands of gentle undulations under big, blue skies. On a single-lane tarmac road, we halted at a petrol pump, and that’s when my journey to stillness commenced.
After filling the jeep tank, Mesfin swung the vehicle around – the nozzle still burrowed inside the jeep! With a great clanging, the entire petrol pump dragged behind us as we lumbered out of the station: the stuff of childhood comedy movies.
Mesfin was quickly seized and dragged off to the local police station and I started a solo 5-hour vigil in a reed hut, waiting and watching out of an aperture. Along the road, I saw a little cluster of white cotton-wrapped women on their way to a Coptic church. I saw a bedraggled and reedy grandmother herding her cattle in second- hand clothes, and I watched a group of Italian day-trippers stop at the same petrol station, noisy like a band of mynas. Ethiopia’s highlands stilled into a timeless quietude, with only an occasional stir of dry equatorial breeze. Finally, Mesfin returned, licence confiscated, brow furrowed. With no choice but to return to Addis, Mesfin plugged in his memory stick to Ethiopian tajweed of the Quran. Like lilting Ethiopian music, far from the monoculture Saudi recitations, he said: “it is so calming, even though I am Christian, I listen when I’m afraid”.
– The writer is a Lahore-based ecologist.
By Ali Syed
For me, it would be Saudi Arabia, a country I have been visiting for over 30 years both professionally and personally (pilgrimages). This year my most palpable observation has been the impact of the mainstreaming of women in Saudi society.
From the meet and greet services and immigration counters at airports to hotel receptions to senior management of large corporations, Saudi women are omnipresent. Without exception, I found them to be courteous to a fault, diligent, hardworking and eager to perform as if to make a point after decades of isolation. They easily outshine their male counterparts with whom I have had years of ‘colourful’ interactions.
Despite all other issues the kingdom is facing, it is hard to miss the energy these changes have created in the youth of the nation. It will be interesting to see how the country will evolve when women also get involved in politics and policymaking.
Aside from the regular soundbites, if there is ever a practical case for benefits of full inclusion of women in society, then it’s the ongoing change in Saudi Arabia.
– The writer is a finance professional based in Dubai.
By AH Cemendtaur
The guide dropped me off at the parking area of the necropolis. The historical Konye-Urgench was in front of me and I was free to spend the next couple of hours roaming it.
As I worked my way from its end by the street to graves further inside, I travelled back in time, stopping at each tomb pegged to a unique historical reference. That I was in the famous Khwarazm area, I understood. That the area got settled because the Amu Darya provided fertile land to grow crops, I understood. That before this area was invaded by the Muslims, there was not much to the ‘Islamic civilization’ than sword and bloodshed, I understood. That the Mongols killed so many people here that the soil turned red, I understood. But all those historical perspectives aside there was something unique going on there, right at that time. At every mausoleum, there was a man with a skull cap. Local families in groups of two or three would approach him; the keeper of the tomb knew exactly what to recite so that the holy man buried there would act as a conduit of those prayers to the God and ultimately the requesting family would be showered with blessings. At the end of this religious exercise, the family would be asked to put some money in the offering box—the money, of course, was not for the man reciting the prayers; it was for the buried saint.
As the veil of communism lifted over Turkmenistan, people went back to the things that are more familiar to them: mysticism and esoteric beliefs.
Communism was one way of dealing with the relentless onslaught of the modern-day capitalism, believed to be social Darwinism by many: the weak, the misfits don’t deserve to live, only the ‘fittest’ are meant to survive. In a way communism was a rebellion to the idea of living scripted lives—the script handed over by the ‘capitalists’—dictated as a natural consequence to the industrial revolution: get born, get educated to get employed, get a job to pay the monthly bills, get a few toys along the way and take some time out to procreate, retire one day and look back at life to wonder where it all went, and then gradually fade off from the face of the world.
Mysticism too is a rebellion to the ‘script’, a coping mechanism employed by the ‘weak.’
Indulging in such thoughts I had reached the end of the historical area of the cemetery. Fresh graves started onwards: more dead people getting ready to start their useful lives.
