حكايات الفيلسوف

From Palenque to Merida

faylasoof — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:22:52 +0000

After San Cristobal de las Casas, the travel winds were pointing at Palenque..

Palenque is basically two “Palenque”s:

A travel book will tell you that Palenque the town is just a hopping place for Palenque the ruins, and that’s what the plan was: use the town to hop to the ruins, stay one night and then leave.

After half a day at the ruins, I was done with ruins for the rest of the trip, and decided to skip Chichen Itza (was planned for a few days later)… Some pictures came out of this:

Palenque "Inscriptions Temple"

So the afternoon turned into a relaxed sit-down at a local cafe in Palenque the town, first watching domino players battle each other, and then deciding to venture into asking to play a game or two (ended up 4th of 4 in the first game, and 3rd of 4 in the second). The whole thing cost me 2 coffees for the 2 winners.. An excellent experience overall, and a good practice of the Spanish language for anyone who feels like they need it.

Domino Miguel

Domino table... the winner watches the losers battle

Later in the evening, I got to learn the meaning of the word “la caminera” — that’s the drink that you get after deciding to leave, and end up staying for one more (in my case, it was of course a Michelada)

I also tried convincing a Dutch “beer purist” to have one of those excellent mexican confections that include a spicy sauce, lime juice, salt, ice and beer.. You guess who ended up drinking it..

Sweaty Palenque had 6 more hours in store.. Had to rent a dormitory bed to shower before taking the 11pm overnight bus to Merida. After a few nights in posadas and buses, it’s time for a hotel.. Gran Hotel is the choice.. After all, Fidel Castro stayed there

Merida is a whole different experience.. First, it’s no longer Chiapas… it’s the Yucatan. Merida is a city of more than a million people, yet has the charm of a purely Mexican place (except for one Burger King). I really liked Merida at night and got to take a few photos that illustrate my experience there..

The Dance Practice - Merida at night

The waiting waiter

"Face to face" - These seats are all over the Yucatan state :)

Last but not least.. a big “Thank you” to the Mercedes Benz workers and engineers that contributed to making those wonderful buses.

If you haven’t been on a Mexican “First Class” bus, here’s a quick summary:

- Excellent seat comfort and recline angle.

- Dubbed (or subtitled) movies playing really loud (On the trip from San Cristobal to Palenque, it was the french movie “Wasabi”

Next stop: Valladolid

Mexico: Chiapas, a unique place

faylasoof — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:20:28 +0000

Arriving in San Cristobal after 3 flights and a bus from Tuxtla Gutierrez was definitely a relief. The night hour was hiding the beauty of the mountains that surround this unique place. Here’s a view from the Posada (small hotel-like place that feels more like a home) where my room was located: (Click for larger images)

San Cristobal - Templo de los Mexicanos

When you wake up on a Sunday in San Cristobal, first make sure you can speak Spanish, then go to the San Francisco church square to get fresh tamales (Breakfast-Lunch item deliciously cooked inside a corn leaf, and seems to be only good when still hot), then try to take a trip up to the neighboring pueblos that host large communities of Tzotzil and Tzeltal indigenous Mexicans.

Taking photos in those pueblos is really frowned upon so the portfolio is limited.

Posh is the local alcohol, and the religion is “Traditional Catholicism”, which seems to allow for polygamy. Banished indigenous people who have changed their religion live in San Cristobal, usually selling hand-made crafts.

Some fun facts (and some photos):

- On August 8, fireworks start at 6 a.m. to celebrate Emiliano Zapata’s birthday

- In the main square, there seems to be a permanent set-up for the local socialist party …

FNLS Sitting

- … and local bars are themed after revolutionary and Zapatista feelings

Revolucion

- Mole is not really a chocolate sauce, but more of a “stew” way of preparing food

Mole -- Delicious!!

- Many street have dates as names. Examples include “20 de Noviembre”, “28 de Agosto”, and “5 de Mayo”

- Walls in San Cristobal are alive with the colored paint:

- Lighting fireworks is really spread out activity in Zinacantan, such as before mass on Sunday, where people dress in colorful traditional clothes.

Zinacantan Fireworks

Zinacantan Sunday clothing

- Hand-made wool items are usually rectangular, due to the process used

Wool

- Corn comes in more than just a few colors

4 Corn Cobs

The 2 days and 2 nights in San Cristobal de las Casas were overall an excellent experience of a very unique place.. Next stop was Palenque (The ruins, and Palenque the town)… TBC

A rendez-vous with Sand and Silence

faylasoof — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 01:04:21 +0000

A long-awaited meeting with absolute silence. That’s what I was after. I drove out from L.A. on a Monday morning, probably beating morning traffic by just a few minutes, and 3 hours later, arrived to my destination: Joshua Tree National Park. My companions this time were my camera, tent and backpack (and of course some water,food and clothing).

My original plan was to hike in the back-country for a few hours, set up tent, spend the night with the wind, and continue hiking, return to the car, and drive back in time for my flight Tuesday night. The Park Ranger warned me that the winds will be gushing that night at 30 mph, 40 degree temperature… I didn’t want to mind that, but I took a mental note… After all, he said HE wouldn’t do it (where it = camp in the back-country)… he recommended I set up tent at a campground.

With this idea still brewing, I parked the car in the “Pinto Basin”, and started hiking toward the top of Pinto Mountain… The scenery looked like this:

Pinto Basin

So I kept hiking and hiking… For those of you who have not yet hiked in the desert sand, believe me it’s not sweet for the heels or the calves… Let’s however leave the physical endurance out of this, and focus on the feeling of being so close with the Sun, the Wind and the Earth.. The only element missing from the scenery is water, as you probably guessed.. The hike became both more pleasant and more strenuous as I started to hike up the rocky mountain one hour later.

Accidents happen, so I broke the screen of my GPS device as I was sitting down to take a break, and rendered it useless, and reduced my hopes of setting up tent on the mountain (basic instinct of survival there). Here’s a view from around that spot:

Pinto Basin from Mt. Pinto

I continued the hike up but then had to turn around and get back to the car in time to go to the campground, get some sleep, and do some trail hiking the next morning.

And then at night, when there was supposedly nothing to see, and only the wind to listen to, I get out of my tent and see all of them. All the stars that one could see in a single sky were there. No city lights to hide behind, they were just out there, like a carpet of white dots hanging above. With the strong winds, the camera wouldn’t sit still to take a long exposure of the sky, but I managed to get a post-sunset view of a few trees:

Desert Sunset - Joshua Trees

Overall, a great place to be and spend some quality time with silence. This is what it felt like:

A shadow in the Sun

Bangalore the city

faylasoof — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:47:04 +0000

This past weekend I decided to go around Bangalore city, since I spent most of last weekend on the road to Mysore… I was told to go to the “Majestic” bus station, the railway station and city market. As I get out of the hotel, one stray dog adopted me as his owner and followed all of 3 blocks, waiting for me when I pause, and attracting the attention of other dogs, who looked and behaved a lot more aggressively than my newly acquired pet.

Anyway, one rickshaw ride later (and I did learn how to make the drivers use the fare meter and not try to abuse my foreignness..). I also figured out what the greatest contributor to stress in the city is: Horns! Car horns, rickshaw horns, bike horns, truck horns, bus horns. And as if they needed encouragement, the backs of trucks have “Sound Horn” printed in big capital letters on them..

Note: This post is supposed to be illustrated, but with my limited computing facilities here at the hotel, I will just post a new album on facebook for now.. Here’s a link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=470582&id=880525482&l=7918acc419

Anyway, the railway station was surprisingly quiet, and the trains were as long as I imagined them to be..

The bus station has the largest number of buses one will ever see in the same view.

City market, as the name suggests, is a very busy and not very maintained kind of place. Stores of the same feather stick together. The plumbing stores, then the electronics stores, then the paper stores, then the vegetable stands, etc etc etc. That was really a new face of the city.

I also went back to Lalbagh garden, where I was able to find peace last weekend, but this time, since it was independence day, the park was full of students from all kinds of schools, and they all wanted to strike a conversation with the bald stranger who looks like he hasn’t been in this place very long..

If I get to visit India again, I need to make sure that I have time to go around and discover more, since this trip seems to have been a bit too short to go outside the city and discover the rest of the country. A few days remain, but nothing fancy to expect, so this is probably my last post about India from this trip..

The road to Mysore

faylasoof — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:43:32 +0000

Saturday, I took a bus from Bangalore to Mysore, with stops along the way to see palaces, temples and such other buildings. As you can probably guess, the most interesting sights were on the road, at least for me.

The bus driver was in a hurry for something, and made sure he honked at every moving thing we passed (or were trying to pass), from dogs to cows, to ox carts, rickshaws, cars, trucks, other buses, and so on… At the same time, the announcer in the bus qualified everything he talked about as “the very famous”. Some examples include the “very famous Tipu Sultan summer palace”, the “very famous statue of the daemon”, the “very famous zoo”, and the list goes on, and includes various levels of fame.

Anyway, I will stop writing, and let the pictures say the rest…

Kid on bike

The man and the white shirt

Working harder than the beast

Carting at dawn

The wooden elephant

faylasoof — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:38:18 +0000

I’ve been here in Bangalore for 3-4 days, and it’s starting to get familiar. The smells of the city and the aroma of incense alternating as I walk down the street, the stray dogs, the rickshaws and the motorbikes that I try to avoid, the churches, the mosques and the temples that keep appearing at each street corner. While the landscape, the people and the whole atmosphere is becoming familiar to me, I am still looked at as a stranger (less so now that I don’t keep looking all over the place, but mind my own business). One entertaining incident happened as I was walking down the street, and a guy insisted so much that I cross the street with him to visit a store, that I agreed. Here is what happened next:

I go into the store (allegedly having a 50% sale on jewelry), but I have no interest in buying or even looking at jewelry, so I turn to the other side of the store, where they have all kinds of souvenirs and pashminas. The salesman is from Cashmere, and is convinced that I’m from Iran, and keeps throwing those persian words to get on my good side. At some point, I had to tell him I am not persian, and told him I would buy something today if he guesed where I was from. Clearly enough, he did not guess, since I managed to leave the store without spending even 1 Rupee! But that guy was definitely the most insisting person I’ve met in a long time. He kept explaining the meaning of every little statue in his store, and wanted to convince me that a plain 30-cm wooden elephant is very well priced at 16,000 Rupees. For those not familiar with the local economy, you can have lunch for about 100 Rupees, and rent a room in the best hotel in town for 7,000. At this rate, one would think you’ll get a live elephant for 16,000.

Speaking of live elephants, I am hoping to encounter a few of those this weekend, once I leave the city to discover the surrounding areas.

There are lots of people in India, and they make good food!

faylasoof — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:57:56 +0000

Okay here it goes. My first day and a half in India, compressed to a few lines of text:

I have not yet taken my camera out to take photos, and the reason is that I am not yet comfortable doing that on a street with 500 thousand people walking, riding bikes, motorbikes, driving rickshaws, cars, buses and trucks in all directions… and I mean in all directions. This place is booming with life and there is so much going on at all times of the day. I will skip speaking about the occasional cow walking the street, or the guy driving on the wrong side of the road, and honking at others for being in his way. I thought Lebanon had crazy drivers and chaos on the streets… until today.

I am overwhelmed with all that’s going on around me, and this is just the first of 16 days. I am looking forward for the reminder of this trip.

The food

Indian food in India tastes at least 1 million times better than Indian food anywhere else. The spices are heavenly and eating with my hand comes very naturally. By the end of each meal, the right hand looks and smells like it’s part of your food, and the left hand is still untouched. Great system! Also, to clean your right hand, you are sometimes presented with a bowl of hot water and a slice of lemon. Believe me, it does the trick. Forget Purell! More food experiences to come. After the Dosa breakfast, the Biryani lunch and the Tandoori dinner, there is so much more to come. Stay posted for some stories and pictures in future posts here.

I am having a great time so far, and I think I’m over the jet-lag. Let’s see what the coming 2 weeks have in store for me..

Next time: Maurice the foreigner

Faces and trees of North Lebanon

faylasoof — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:43:46 +0000

I thought that I would have to search a lot to find the people, sights and animals that I describe here. I was wrong. Driving from Jounieh towards the North, I made a right right before Jubayl (Byblos) and started my ascent towards the mountains of northern Mount Lebanon. less than half an hour later, I find myself in on a 1-lane-each-way winding road through the mountains. Each mountain flank I pass exposes another town. For example, here’s a sight of the famous Douma and its red brick roofs:

Douma and its red brick roofs

Far in the distance are the snowy summits of the 10,000-foot high mountains. As I continue my drive towards the Cedars forest in Bcharre, I made a few encounters. Many of the villagers I spoke with invited me to their houses for a coffee. Very welcoming people, genuine and full of smiles. Here’s a gallery of a few friendly faces: (Click on any photo for a high-resolution version)

Man from the Jubayl mountains

Gentleman from Douma

Farmer with a Pepsi bottle

That day, I was lucky to encounter a goat herder with his herd. After I took their photos (such as the goat portraits below), the herder asks me if I was going to send the photos to LBC (local TV station) so that they would display them as “photo of the day” at the end of the daily news :)

Goat One

Goat Two

Goat Three

Goat Four

Upon arrival to the Cedars forest, I was surprised that this winter has been so warm so far that it hadn’t yet snowed on the forest, but just above it. A few photos of the scenery were a must before I started the drive back down towards the coast:

Cedar view

I decided to drive down through the olive-covered hills of Koura. The air had an excellent fragrance in the groves, and the sunset added to the magic.

Olive road

Sunset olive tree

This was another great road trip. A mind-emptying experience that brings you closer to your own self. The trees, the fresh air, the imposing mountains, the friendly people. What was the world like a few hundred years ago, before the urban crawls, before industrialization, when people took the time to live without having to “catch up”?

View This Poll

Drive over the mountains and through the valley

faylasoof — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:27:06 +0000

I wanted to go on a few road trips around Lebanon during my last visit (winter break 2009-2010).

Tuesday morning, I woke up after 11 a.m. and decided to drive to the Beqaa through the less-commonly chosen road of “Faraya – 3youn el Siman” (instead of Dahr el Baidar). Chance wanted that this day be one of the foggiest days, so as I got up to the high altitudes, visibility was getting really low. I snapped some photos of the natural bridge in Faqra. Here’s one of them (Click to see larger photos):

Faqra Natural bridge

But that was all I was able to do that day (other than strike a conversation with some villagers in Faraya about how their winter is late and the ski season is short this year… They blamed Al Gore for the whole thing.)

Crossing sheep

Bikers on the mountain

Unloading the apples

So I drove back down and attempted the same trip again the next morning. That was a beautiful sunny day. Along the road, I had a few distractions (which are really the main reason why I take such trips).

Some of them: Sheep taking up the main lanes on the road, a farmer unloading his donkey, two bikers crossing the mountain range (I took very quick shots of them, and was lucky enough to see them again at the bottom of the valley on the other side of the mountain to get their

information and send them the photos).

Across the Beqaa

From the top (~10000ft altitude), I could see the whole Beqaa valley with and the “Anti-Liban” mountain range all the way in the east. [[Geography note: The Beqaa valley is technically situated between the "Mont-Liban" in the west and the "Anti-Liban" in the east.

The decision of whether to continue to Baalbek or to take the Zahle road back towards Beirut was a relatively easy one, especially after some locals told me that Baalbek was less than 1 hour away (which would allow me to get there and back to Beirut before sunset that day).

When I got to the ruins, shopkeepers tried selling me over-priced souvenirs, until they learned that I was Lebanese. I tried to take some interesting photographs in Baalbek, mostly of the stones, but also of people. Here's a small selection:

Tree and Temple

The temple is on the other side

Roman architecture

Baby tourist in Baalbek

Contre-Jupiter

At the end of the day, I came back home thinking about where to go tomorrow…

A selection of Alaska photos

faylasoof — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:06:18 +0000

This is a follow-up on my previous post “Alaska: A place of constant renewal“.

Out of the 800 photos, I have made a selection of about 100 that may be worth sharing. I grouped them along 4 themes:

1- Landscapes

2- Hiking

3- Wildlife

4- Other

I will be sharing these photos in various locations including subsequent posts on this blog, my flickr account, and facebook.

Facebook album link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=278038&id=880525482&l=38babf92c0

I am starting today by posting the “Hiking”, “Wildlife” and “Other” pictures onto a facebook album, since this is where most my friends will see them.

The landscapes as well as a selection of “Other” and “Wildlife” photos will be used to illustrate the hikes where they were taken (2 or 3 hikes will be the subjects of upcoming notes).

For now, I suggest you check out the facebook album, and stay tuned for detailed hiking stories over the upcoming 2 weeks. Hopefully, looking at the pictures will make you curious as to where they were taken, which I will write about in the future.