One for the Road

Christmas Fashion Bashin' in Milan

2011-12-15T22:08:00.000+01:00

As you may have figured out by now, I'm up for any kind of strange travel challenge. This time it turned out to be a short weekend escape to a major European city. So, I still would prefer a month roaming quiet trails and villages in some faraway land, but this was nice, too.

Our destination is a city that once upon a time was the capital of the Western Roman Empire and home of the Pope, which probably is the reason why the "one way" street signs look like this there:

Well, at least one of them does, anyway. If you read the title of this blog entry, you already know that we're in Milan.What do we know about Milan? Chiefly that it's a popular name for pizza restaurants. Or rather for take-away pizza places that have not yet been shut down for sanitary reasons. And then there's the capital of fashion thing, of course.

Were we right? Let's see.

The first thing we do is to turn on our GPS and use multi-billion dollar military defense satellites to hunt down small plastic boxes filled with trinkets and toys. We're going geocaching. Look it up at geocaching.com if you're interested.

While we won't find any proper treasures inside the geocaches, the places where they are hidden are often well worth the visit. Even in busy and noisy cities you'll often end up in a tranquil oasis, where suspicious and frantic searches for camouflaged Tupperware won't attract as much attention as it would have near an embassy or the parliament.

Our first stop is a charming park that until twenty years used to be a zoo where all the animals suffered in bad conditions. In this pond they may have kept their crocodiles and sea monsters, for all we know.

The next cache brings us to a forgotten shrine to celebrities. Outside an anonymous office building that used to house an Italian gossip magazine a number of famous people, mainly from the 1990's, have left their hand prints and signature in the concrete pavement. Now the magazine is no more, and most of the names here can also be found on headstones in cemeteries all over the world. At least I learned that I have larger hands than Shannen Doherty. Imagine that!

This is what the Milano Stock Exchange looks like. It's an impressive building, but all attention here is stolen by the large sculpture in the middle of the square. It's made by a famous Italian contemporary artist, who donated the sculpture to the city on one condition: The sculpture must be kept at exactly this location for a while. Does it symbolize that the people inside the stock exchange are flipping the finger to the rest of the world with all their financial wizardry? Not at all, says the artist smugly.

Midwinter Milan is often a fairly foggy spot. The days look grey and sad, but that just gives the evenings an opportunity to look particularly inviting under artificial lighting in the parks.

Enough about exploring Milan. Let's talk about what we didn't come for: SHOPPING!

This is what a typical Milan boutique looks like. There are few or none customers inside. The only people there are employees on watch, waiting for a brave soul to enter the premises. If someone should be unfortunate enough to do so, they will immediately be attacked by the sales people, and they won't release their victim until every piece of plastic he or she is carrying has been used to its limits.

To lure in customers, the most blingy products in the shop have been put on display as nicely as possible, and a small, hand-written note in the corner reveals the crazy prices of everything in the window. Except this Christmas tree, which isn't for sale. Actually, I'm not sure there's a Christmas tree there. It may well be just a huge pile of Christmas decorations. That's what it looks like close-up, at least.

Milan is famous for its cathedral. It's great in every way, but it just doesn't cut it when you compare the lavishness with what you find just next door, at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping center. You could easily walk your elephant here, even if it was carried on a shield by four giant turtles. You're looking at the center of the place, with an incredibly high ceiling, and one of four long arms of posh shops stretching out to the surrounding streets.

This year, Dolce Gabbane is trying out an alternative Christmas market. They've mixed their bling-bling purses and shoes with walnuts and dades. Strange idea. I don't see anyone buying anything here.

At Vivienne Westwood's, they're going for a more traditional style, making everything glittering and sparkly. I wonder what the label says about how this garment should be cleaned? Maybe you can just use baking soda and tooth paste, like you would do with your silverware?

Ah! At last, an honest shop owner. He couldn't be bothered to wait any longer for the customers who never appeared, so he went off to get a bit of an artificial tan. Lots of people in Milan do this. I kept meeting fake-tanned people with lots of make-up and wearing the weirdest of garments. First I thought it was just a guy that followed me around, but soon I realized that it was just a bunch of people living up to the exact same fashion ideals.

Of all places in the world, you would think that in the city of Leonardo da Vinci himself, they would manage to spell the name Mona Lisa correctly (the English name for his painting, La Gioconda/La Joconde), but they don't. What they are quite capable of, however, is to build a shop window that is really, really scary. I wouldn't want to meet this doll in a dark alley, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Oooh, a most feminine shoe store. I bet their customers love it, but it doesn't look very practical. "Could you get me that pink box up there?"

In the Marisa boutique they have figured out, correctly, that for a Christmas display, you need to add some snow or ice. Unfortunately, they could only get ice cream cones, with no ice. Oh well.

When a shop looks like this, you know that you should have saved up for a long, long time before you enter. It reminds me of an old science fiction TV series, although I'm not quite sure why, or if that was the intention of the genius behind this.

If you want to buy incredibly expensive clothes to your kids, that just maybe will last until next Christmas before they're too small to fit them any more, I heartily recommend Miss Blumarine. Here you can go broke forever in less than ten minutes!

Another scary Christmas scene from the fashion shops of Milan. With the price tag these garments carry, I should think that a large box of detergents is included in the price. That, or you must make sure that your children never actually wear these shockingly white children's clothes.

I'm not sure, but I think this dummy is trying to sell us a pair of gloves.

This one I get! It's what you'll look like if you buy these amazingly dorky glasses and hats and you still end up in a queue to get inside the after-ski disco in some god-forsaken remote valley where the rich choose to mix with the ski-hobos.

Another example of fashion with no brains. The socks are a bit long, I think, but apart from that, I'm sure lots of people would love to wear this when they go out this winter!

It's in the middle of the winter, and the fog will lie thick in the valley for the next few months, you say? Not to worry, this is an excellent time to sell sunglasses! They're sickly expensive, too. They cost almost more than you'll be charged to see a 3D movie at the cinema these days. On the other hand, they also almost look better than the glasses you'll need to wear to see that movie.

Here Prada attempts to move the attention away from the shocking price tag nearby, by putting a group of rock band trolls inside one of their croco-handbags. Maybe it works.

Enough fog and fashion, we declare as we head for the train station. An hour or so later we're in a different world. Lugano, just across the border to Switzerland, looks really, really good on a sunny Sunday in December. Our best day in Milan is the one where we leave the city on a day trip, that's for sure.

To put people in a wintery, Christmas-y mood, a small skating rink has been put up in the town square in Lugano. This old man hurt his thumb as he was building a new house for little Bardot. While waiting for his thumb to return to a functional state, they've gone down to the town square to dream about the good old days, when he, too, was young and an able skater.

In Lugano they have ice both in a rink and in cones. The latter they even do well. Which isn't surprising at all. Lugano is in the Ticino district, which is a part of Switzerland that is a lot more Italian than Swiss. You can speak German here, if you want to, but life here is lived in Italian.

Even if you can guess the nationality of this colourful tourist, there's still no price for you.

Walking along the waterfront in Lugano is a treat. The view of the lake is stunning and it's amusing to see all the escapees from Milan out walking and showing off their hilarious outfits.

The Swiss are quite eager to build enormous water fountains. I'm not sure what they're compensating for.

Ah, the luxury of walking surrounded by autumn colours as late as in early December. Lugano looks both Swiss-style well-kept and at the same time quite Italian. It's a mix that works well for me.

A swan couple practicing the art of forming a heart through the shape of their necks. They're getting there.

I don't blame the parents at this playground for turning a bit suspicious when two foreigners turn up carrying mysterious gadgets that they keep looking at while obviously searching for something in all kinds of strange places. We still avoid being arrested, this time.

When the sun sets, we get on the train back to Milan. When the train station here opened in 1931, it was the largest in the world, and it still feels like it's just a few numbers too large when you're in it. That's what you get when Mussolini decides that his brand new train station should match his ambitions for his fascist empire. The empire disappeared, fortunately, and the train station was left behind, also fortunately.

There's just time for another round of non-shopping in Milan before we leave. This is the ugliest snowman I could find.

And this is the ugliest earrings I could find. Who on Earth wants to walk around with golden skeletons dangling from their ears? I'm only guessing, but I think there's potentially a sad Christmas gift opening here.

I was not impressed by the range of hiking shoes for sale in Milan.

Great hat! It's perfect if you're going to the jungle and you want to see colibris up-close.

There's nothing like walking around with blue crystals on your toes. These should improve your odds for catching a dwarf on his night out, I'm sure!

You can always dream.

The clothes shops are apparently not the only robbers in Milan. But even the other kind of robbers are very fashionably dressed in this city.

I suppose we should add a photo of the cathedral, Duomo di Milano. It took them, after all, almost six hundred years to complete it. It would have gone faster if they had possessed as useful tools for building cathedrals with back then, as they have these days just to decorate the Christmas tree.

That's it. Now we can get on the plane enjoy the view of the Alps and Europe while we fly home to wait for our next departure.

Our next trip will be a quick dash across the water to Denmark, in order to survive the Norwegian butter crisis. But do not feel bad for me. Right after that I'm going to Northern Norway to celebrate Christmas and get fat, and right after that I'll head for Malaysia. Life is good.

Happy holidays, everyone! #8D)

Morsels from Morocco

2011-10-25T02:52:00.001+02:00

Oh dear. It has been almost six months since I returned from Morocco, and only now am I ready to put my photos from the trip on-line. "Well" done, Bjørn!

If you look through all the photos, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll discover lots of stuff you didn't know can be seen right on the doorstep to Europe. And it's all there, right now. You can just get on a cheap flight from anywhere in Europe to Agadir or Marrakesh and do it all on your own. There's no need to book anything ahead, and there's nothing in particular to worry about.

All you have to do is get off the plane and find your way to the nearest bus terminal. There you'll buy a ticket to Tafraoute, Tinerhir or Merzouga, depending on whether you prefer mountains, canyons or deserts. The buses are comfortable and the drivers and passengers agreeable. In all these three places it's easy to find somewhere to stay, something to eat and something strange to see.

I can't say I recommend the main cities of Morocco, however. They've got Kentucky Fried Chicken, but apart from that they hold little of interest to me.

The cities are all mainly about noise, hassle and a dirty mess wherever you go. And they're full of old mosques you can't enter unless you're a Muslim, and of crazy men on motorbikes driving through the narrow streets as if they were on their way from Paris to Dakar. And the shops! Oh, the shops... They're full of stuff at what may or may not be reasonable prices, but one thing is for sure; when upon returning home you pull out of your backpack something you acquired in Morocco, you will seriously start wondering what on Earth you were thinking when you bought it.

There's much I could say about Morocco, and much of that I have put in the captions I have provided for the photos. Maybe I'll add a few stories from my trip here later.

For now, though, my main message is that I can easily recommend Morocco to almost anyone. Knowing some French is an advantage, but not at all a requirement. Good thigh muscles is a plus, but most places these days you'll find toilets you can actually sit on.

There is no reason to book a guided tour to anything in Morocco. As long as you keep smiling, and as long as you can do that without getting dangerously drunk first, you'll have an excellent time in Morocco, where everything will just sort itself out.

Happy trails!

Bjørn

Something Tu valu!

2011-10-19T14:46:00.000+02:00

Hah! I received a mysterious package in the mail. From Australia, with a fairly significant customs duty to pay. I had not ordered anything from Australia, but I just had to pay up and find out what this was. It could be a marsupial. I've always wanted my own wombat. Unfortunately, the package contained no such thing. On the contrary, it was something to put in a pouch. Please welcome the new one dollar coin of Tuvalu, as seen from its royal side:

On the back it looks like this:

And this is where I enter the picture. When I was in Tasmania a couple of years ago, I took this photograph:

Behind the beautiful Dove Lake you see Cradle Mountain. I visited here when I hike The Overland Track, a super 100 kilometer trail that took me more or less from the north to the south of Tasmania. You still can't see the connection between me and the coin, you say? Well, take a look at this:

Do you see? My photo is on a Tuvalu monetary item!For reasons I shall never understand, the designer of this coin must have felt pretty sure that I would sooner or later discover that they have borrowed the peak of a mountain from one of 1700 photos I took while in Tasmania. Let me just be clear about this: I just took the photo. I did not build the mountain first. Oh well. Funny stuff. Despite the customs payable, it was really nice of the antipodeans to send me a silver coin as payment for my part of the job of bringing this coin to the world. It may sound like a small pay, but let me remind you of the mess that was unleashed upon the world for the price of just 30 silver coins! Which is just 29 silver coins more than I have now received. I'm quite pleased. And soon my Morocco photos are done. I promise!

Trophies from Troms

2011-10-03T16:59:00.000+02:00

Summer is long gone, especially in Northern Norway. It lives on only as memories and photographs. In July I spent ten days discovering a new national park and an old island society. Rohkunborri and Senja. That's right. Even in Norway there are places where even just their names make you want to go and see them for yourself.

The first part of the journey I did with my father. He wanted to revisit a number of mountains he last saw up-close fifty years ago, and he needed someone to go with him. "Someone" turned out to be me, and we accomplished everything we planned on. We made it to the top of Stor-Ala, we hiked the Sørdalen canyon all the way to Sweden and back, and we stood on the top of Istinden. I don't know if it was better in any way fifty years ago, but looking at my photos from this year's trip, I doubt it.

While my father stayed in his childhood town and showed off his blisters and bruises, I went by myself to the island of Senja, a mountainous place surrounded by the ice-cold Arctic sea. Although it's close to a statistic impossibility, I got two days in a row reaching more than 30 degrees Celsius there. It was so beautiful that I almost didn't let myself sleep. Day and night I explored the island, enchanted by the local nature. Crazy tooth-like mountain peaks, intensely green hillsides, porpoises playing in the sea, eagles just sitting around, smiling fishermen and locals that clearly were not used to tropical temperatures, dressing in military boots and underwear to go to the beach.

I couldn't get enough of it. I will have to go back and continue my trip eventually. Senja is just as mesmerizing as the more famous Lofoten islands, but it gets dramatically fewer tourists. Do give it a try if you ever get the chance. Bring a tent, so that you can sleep wherever you like and whenever you need it. It's quite easy to get there. Just fly to Tromsø or Bardufoss (cheap flights from Oslo), rent a car and get going!

All right. Done with Troms. Who's next?Oh, hi there, Morocco! (I'll be back shortly with more.)

One night in Oslo

2011-09-18T15:19:00.000+02:00

After months filled with travels and work, I now have six weeks in which I will try to catch up with the piles of photos I have gathered the last few months. They contain scenes from Merzouga and Nikosia, Rohkunborri and Okefenokee, Senja and Savannah, Belfast and Brønnøy, and lots of other places where pixels can be made.The results of this work will soon appear, but because I'm so stupid, the first thing I did when I finally was done at work for a while, was to go out and take more photos. This is what a long evening looked like to me, when Oslo decided to open all cultural doors to anyone, for free. Sometimes it's great to be a tourist in your own town as well.

The shortest route from my apartment to the city centre goes through the park surrounding The royal castle. The castle chapel was open, so I went in and had a look around. It's nice, but photography isn't allowed there, so instead here you have a group of uniformed men wandering through a forest where there are still insects hovering beneath the branches at sunset. Soon they will be gone, then the leaves will turn yellow and red, and then winter will come.

The parliament building, Stortinget, was also open for the public, but the line was too long for me. I wandered on, past this statue, which I'm pretty sure has had something added to it lately.

The autumn sun hung low, making life hard for anyone driving towards the west. Beautiful light, although it makes crossing the street an uncertain undertaking.

My first proper target for the evening was, of course, the Freia chocolate factory, where this stork waded in the rising shadow of a nearby roof. Those birds are amazingly good at standing absolutely still!

Ever since the factory was built, the management has tried to provide intellectual stimulation to the factory workers, usually in the shape of sculptures and paintings. I hope these two cats are not too involved with the chocolate production.

This is probably the most expensive bits of what Kraft Foods International Limited Unlimited Corporation got when they acquired the chocolate factory a few years ago; a large dining hall with enormous Edvard Munch paintings on the wall. It's art on par with what you can find at the Munch museum and the National Gallery, but here it's just something in the background when factory workers sit around and have their lunch. And yes, there were plates full of chocolate on every table.

After I filled my backpack with chocolate in the factory store (you get a LOT of chocolate for your money there!), I returned to the city centre. A crazy old man has collected minibottles in every shape and colour throughout his life, to the degree that he's in the Guinness' Book of World Records now. These are The seven dwarves as bottles, with surprisingly un-red noses.

In the less innocent corner, I found this Adolf Hitler bottle. A particularly strange thing among numerous just suitably strange things.

Recycling bottles can also be done through making lamps from them. Just as nice as crystal chandeliers, especially if your vision isn't very good.

At the mini bottle museum there's also a scary section. There I found this guy, who I suppose should have ordered a mop or something in addition to the vodka he's got in his hand.

In the utterly, utterly most seedy part of the museum, I found this bordello, where you have to touch a woman's breast to get in and a penis to get out again, this girl is in bed, trying to distract people from all sorts of red light thingies around her. She plays her part fairly well.

At the museum I also found the absolutely most scary thing I've ever exposed my private parts to. The old saying "Don't stick your dick in crazy" came to my mind. I quickly finished.

I visited the university's hall of ceremonies, where the Nobel Peace Price has been given out many times. I enjoyed a choir concert and a lecture about the paintings on the walls. These are works by Edvard Munch as well, and they will probably stay here, as they measure up to 55 square metres in surface area. The lecture was given by a women with screaming red hair and the inability to say the letter R. This guarantees she must be an art expert to me.

Nearby is the House of Artists, where a large exhibition was going on. They're not very modest, especially when you compare it to what was on display.

This is a typical piece of art from the exhibition. It looks like some kind of textile-based jellyfish, I think, and it carries no apparent message to the world. It's probably still for sale if you're interested.

The Oslo Opera House also had some lectures and performances to see, but like always it's the building that is the main attraction here.

The last thing I did before heading home was a fireworks display in the harbour. It was much more impressive than this photo conveys, but firework pictures has everything to do with luck, and this was the luckiest I got that night. Such is life.

After the fireworks, the air was filled with smoke for a while. If you look closely, you can see the Big Dipper. That's it. Awaiting me now is, hopefully, a few days with cold and lousy autumn weather, giving me ample opportunity to stay inside with hot cocoa, editing photos. Soon I'll be back with more visual thoughts. See you! #8D)Bjørn

CELEBRATION!

2011-08-24T16:29:00.002+02:00

Oops! Did I startle you? I know, I've been all quiet for a while. But today it's my birthday, and my gift to and from myself is a day off from work. Hence, I've got time to catch up with you guys.

I am 14244 days old today. This makes me almost twice as old as the World Wide Web, a young rascal of 7323 days. Not to mention Justin Bieber, a newcomer with only 6385 days to show for himself. Hm. Anyway, I'm quite satisfied with both my age and my condition, thank you very much.

Not related at all: An old wreck of a house I found this summer

Since my last blog entry, I've gone to Morocco and returned alive and with fairly clean underwear. It could have been different. Just before I walked off my bus from Casablanca to Marrakesh at the end of my trip, a suicide bomber decided to push the button in a restaurant on the famous Djemaa el-Fna city square. If I had taken an earlier bus, I would have been there or very close right then.

Mourning in the Maghreb
Walking around in a sad Marrakesh wasn't the best ending of an otherwise great trip through Morocco and West Sahara. Soon I can show you guys the highlights of that journey. I'm working on the photos right now.

To experience a distinct contrast from the cave people, shepherds and berbers, my next expedition became a two week stay in Walt Disney World. Not so much to do the rides as to observe Americans doing what they appear to prefer to spend their short vacations on. What is it that makes people in a society built on convenience gather in crowds so large that they typically end up standing in line for hours just to do something that is likely to make them throw up some of the 150 tons of popcorn sold and presumably eaten in the parks every year? I still don't know, but I figured it was worth giving understanding it a shot.

A few days of high-season Disney made me somewhat people-shy. My medicine was to go hiking in the vast mountains in the arctic north of Norway.

Previously a tree in Rohkunborri, now just a photo shoot

The last year I have been to many excellent places, but neither quiet mornings in the jungle in Tikal, a crossing of the Pyrenees under the autumn sun, exciting bugs hiding unsuccessfully from me in the Sahara, the Titanic shipyard in Belfast ("She was fine when she left here!") or a VIP passes in theme parks can compete with a midsummer spring in the north of Norway.

Okay, so there may have been some ice-cold fording of glacier streams, fist-fights with horseflies and a wee bit too many too steep hills, but that is all forgotten now. What's left are just the beautiful memories of enchanting days and nights with no sunsets.
A nocturnal lake on Senja island

The photos from these hikes are the next ones on their way into my gallery, so just you keep checking back. And even though the one day in the year when I turn older has come, rest assured that I'm still the same Bjørn. Which means, soon there will be more to read and see here.

Relevant photo: The small town of Celebration, built by Disney as a mini utopia

Please visit again soon, and have a great day, you too!

Bjørn

Orange you glad I'm leaving?

2011-04-09T08:34:00.002+02:00

That's about all I know about Morocco. They haves oranges. Lots of oranges. And sand. Even more sand than oranges. In 1956 they had 8 million citizens. Today there are at least 33 millions of them. Eating orange must be much like taking Viagra.

Now I'm off for three weeks in Morocco, where I will probably gather some new information about the Moroccans and their doings. For now I am content with having found out that the North African revolution quickly passed in Morocco. The king must be a fairly smart guy. After just a handful of self-immolations and some protests in the streets involving tens of thousands of people, he decided to promise them a new constitution. They'll have a referendum about it this summer and at least until then it should be perfectly safe to visit the country.

Especially if you stay away from the southern part of the country. Or, the southern part that Morocco thinks is Morocco, but which most other people considers to be a country on its own, Western Sahara, and presently occupied by Morocco. Only half a million people live there, giving them half a square kilometre of land each to thrive on. My own country, Norway, is really sparsely populated as well, but we only have a fifteenth of that much land each.

Which is good news. I'll be drinking a lot of water as I wander about, and sooner or later I'll need to pee. With all that area, I should be able to find a spot to do so without being disturbed. It doesn't even matter that I probably won't find a bush or tree to go behind. From what I imagine, I'll be seeing a lot of open, sand-filled scenery during the next three weeks. Fortunately that's something I love.

I'd also love to give you more interesting facts about Morocco, but since I've already told you everything I know, I'll have to get back to you later in my blog.

On this trip I'm planning to assassinate my camera. It's already half-dead, and I've decided which machine shall be my next travelmate. It's this beauty, a grandchild of my present camera. But let's keep this piece of information away from my trusty old camera for now, shall we?

What else has happened recently? Hmm... Oh, yes, the photo above, taken by me in Tasmania a couple of years ago, will later this year become the background of a new coin, official tender in Tuvalu! It's part of a series, where this is the previous coin, so I suppose "my" coin will be quite similar. I just hope that the eagle that will go in the foreground won't steal too much of the show. Whether it does or not, this is so cool, and so weird.

Anyway, I'll be going now. I'm already looking forward to going home. #8D)

Bjørn

PS: Remember to water my plants!

The Jaguar Express

2011-03-01T22:17:00.002+01:00

There's a lot you can do on a two week trip to Cancun. Especially if you just take a plane there and then escape from Cancun as quickly as possible. Incidentally, that's also the only sensible thing to do when going to Cancun.

Rarely have I encountered a worse traveler's hell than Cancun. The room rates are crazily much higher than what you'll pay for way better rooms just a few bus hours away. Restaurants and taxi drivers have adjusted their prices accordingly. The beaches are besieged by pasty, fat tourists who think the city is an American colony that has nothing to do with Mexico except climate-wise. Throughout major parts of the year there's nowhere you can turn without witnessing tequila and taco gushing out of mouths and noses of stupid people who just the night before encumbered themselves with tattoos on their foreheads.

Among the star attractions of the city I'd like to mention the tigers. They're kept in tiny cages and have had their teeth and claws pulled out. It must be that way so that tourists can cuddle the big cats in relative safety. Oh, and talking about predators; because the drug barons in the area have the habit of dumping bodies in the sea, the sharks of Cancun have learned to gastronomically love people.

The beaches of Cancun are lovely, but that fact is well hidden except right after a particularly bad hurricane has visited the region. Then the coastline returns to its pristine state, with picturesque, idyllic sandy coves framed by good-looking rocks. Then the city council puts everyone to work, covering it all up with insane amounts of sand trucked to there from a place that probably could use the sand a lot better than Cancun does. Why, oh why? Because that's how the Cancun hotel overlords thinks lazy and sun-craving tourists want their beaches.

So, what is the alternative to becoming a part of the problem that is collectively named Cancun? Well, the best you can do is to go somewhere else. In December 2010 that's exactly what I did, and here's my photo journal from my fairly successful escape from Cancun.

Just two-three hours to the south there's Tulum. Buses that probably are much more comfortable than anything found in your own country take you there, and when you arrive you'll find Mayan temples that weren't designed by Disney and beaches that are enchantingly pretty despite the fact that they have never been touched by a landscape architect. And they have dragons there! Tulum is so worth a thorough visit.

Keep going south for four hours or so, and you'll be in the border town of Chetumal. True, there's the unfortunately named Hotel Ucum, but apart from that it's a decent place to stop, with a brand new amazing Zoo and a real Mexican town feeling to it.

From there you can easily travel to Belize. It's a country that you may not have heard about, but you should go there anyway. From Chetumal there are inexpensive direct boats to the island paradises of Belize, located right next to the second largest barrier reef in the world, or you can just get on a direct bus to Belize City.

Belize isn't part of the actual Caribbean, but this fact has not been shared with the people living there. In Belize everything is done in slow-motion, people speak as if they all went to the same language course in Jamaica, and the strangest things can pop up anywhere with no warning at all. If someone tells you that Belize "is too dangerous", they've probably just misinterpreted some statistics. The country has only three hundred thousand or so citizens, which means that you don't need a whole lot of criminal action going on before it looks really bad per capita. Don't worry about it. Tourists are safe in Belize.

The islands are particularly safe. As long as you don't trip over a turtle or is hit by a playful dolphin you'll probably return to the mainland with no damage. Go for walks and snorkel the reef, observe strange birds and animals, talk to the locals. They're always short of gullible conversation partners, especially now that the Americans hardly can afford traveling abroad any more.

If you're still not convinced, the national motto of Belize should do it. "Sub Umbra Floreo". "I blossom in the shade". I'm not kidding, it's right there in their flag, just check it for yourself! And people live by the motto. It's in the shade beneath the trees you'll find the locals, and if there's something that is likely to make people agreeable and fun to talk to, it's gotta be lazing in the shade.

When you've had your doze of sun and sand, you can quickly move across to a different world entirely, namely Guatemala. Six hours by bus from Belize City will take you to Tikal, quite possibly the easiest place in the world to pretend you're Indiana Jones. Located right in the middle of the jungle it's an enormous Mayan city with no inhabitants. Unless you count the jaguars, the coatis, the howling monkeys, the toucans and the parrots, of course. There are lots of them in the abandoned and only partially excavated city of Tikal.

If you want to live and travel cheaply, Guatemala is the place for you. There are heaps of places to visit and lots of things to do. Not everything is handled professionally, but it's generally done charmingly. Compared to what you pay, it's always amazingly good value for money. Just make sure to do your own conservative estimates of how close you should go when a local wants to show you a crocodile, a snake or whatever else they may have around.

You should also appreciate being fascinated by people who wear traditional clothing simply because they have no other garments. A great place to observe and interact with them is by traveling with them, on the chicken buses, school buses from the USA that are so old that they cannot be legally used in North America any more, so they're sold to Guatemala.

After Tikal it was time for us to travel back towards Cancun. To avoid actually visiting the city, we decided to wait for our plane home in the old Mayan city of Chichen Itza, three hours away. The contrast to Tikal is enormous, despite the fact that the two places originally must have been quite similar. Chichen Itza was recently named one of "The New Seven Wonders of the World", even though Tikal is many times more magical and impressive.

The problem is that the "New Wonders" were chosen based on an open vote on the Internet. The winners in such cases will always be the one with most visitors. And Chichen Itza has a lot of visitors, all eager to say that they've visited a New Wonder. Most of those who go there are people who reckon they should experience "something cultural" before they go home, after having spent almost their entire vacation cuddling toothless tigers, burn in the sun and eat too many burgers and steaks. There are so many people like that, that Chichen Itza has degenerated into a weird mix of theme park and historical monument. The local Mayans can hardly wait for 2012 and Judgment Day to arrive.

Oh well. I really just wanted to tell you that the photos from my trip are now available. Have a look and decide for yourself whether a trip to Cancun without visiting Cancun maybe would be good for you, too. If so, go in December, January or February. The temperatures will be nice, allowing you to explore in comfort, and there will be no hurricanes getting in your way.

Happy trails!

Bjørn

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional

2011-01-22T19:46:00.002+01:00

At last I'm done with the most strenuous part of my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago; preparing my photos from my journey so that there's a chance you will enjoy browsing through them.

And I really mean that. Walking hundreds of kilometres may sound demanding, but when all the facilities are as super great and the trail is as easy to follow as the Way of Saint James is, it's a trivial thing. You want some proof? Try the many pilgrims in their 70's and 80's you're bound to meet on your way from France to Santiago de Compostela.

Have a look at these photos, and see if maybe they'll make you want to discover the wandering bug living inside you!

True, during the first few days I hurt in many places:
* A sunburn on my left side, which is the one that gets hit all the time when you walk towards the west.
* Sore corners of my mouth, a result of eating way too many crisp baguettes.
* As my toe nails kept falling off, the nerves from my feet complained a bit.
* A sore throat resulted from the sudden changes from chilly mornings to hot mid-days.

The good thing about having numerous issues with your body is that you can't be annoyed by the same problem for long at a time. And even better; all your pain will gradually decrease, until suddenly one day after a long walk you'll discover that nothing hurts anymore. The only thing stopping you from continuing the walk is that it's getting dark. By then your body will be a walking machine, and you will feel slightly super-human. It took me about a week to get there, and it was worth it.

Anyway, you don't have to walk the entire 800 kilometres in order to be a qualified pilgrim. A hundred kilometres by foot is the minimum requirement, and then your time and ability decides how much more you will add to that.

If you for some reason can't walk all the way, I think that you should at least not just walk the last 100 kilometres to Santiago. That part is more frustrating than suitable for getting you onto the VIP list for entrance to the Night club in the Sky. Unless you enjoy walking in a flock like a sheep, that is.

The scenically most rewarding day, to me, was the first one. It's a walk across the Pyrenees from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Roncesvalles in Spain. While the experience is highly dependent on the weather you get, there's nothing like this landscape and natural drama anywhere else than what you find here.

Following that there's a really nice hike through forests and along rivers all the way to Pamplona. The next 500 kilometres, though, to Ponferrada, can easily blur into a long, grey memory consisting of fields, villages and churches that may be hard for you to tell apart. I mean, it's certainly all nice enough, but it soon gets old, which is also what it all happens to be.

If you're lucky and socially able, you may find company and conversations that will carry you through this part. If not, you had better have lots of sins and problems at home to think about, or at least an MP3 player loaded to the brim with goodies.

I can recommend the roughly hundred kilometres between Ponferrada and Sarria, but after that you may want to check out Spain's public transportation, or find routes to walk that strays off from the official short and overcrowded pilgrim trail.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not dissatisfied with the final bit of El Camino de Santiago. All in all I was delighted by walking it. I met people along the way who I enjoyed getting to know. I saw varied and breath-taking landscapes as well as intriguing villages and churches. My Spanish was improved and I understand much more of the way Spain works than I did previously.

Still, to me, the by far best part of walking the Way was mastering the long days of walking, and the fact that they made me feel stronger than I have felt in years. For the better part of a decade I've had a problem with my knees. During this walk I must have rebuilt some supporting muscles, so that now I can again easily walk uphill for a whole day and not feel any pain in my knees at all. That result alone is worth twenty-three days of walking, I think.

Although it's not at all my favourite long walk, I'll happily recommend the Camino de Santiago if you want to try it for yourself. Let me know it if you need more information to get going.

Buen camino! #8D)

Bjørn

There He Goes Again

2010-12-12T01:06:00.002+01:00

As mentioned in my last post here, I've been walking. From France I walked 809 kilometres along the Camino de Santiago. It took 23 long days of walking. I logged the trip with GPS here, but as usual I'll also upload the more, I think, interesting views I had on the trip on-line.

Actually, the photos should have been available to you now. After all, I've been at home for about six weeks now. But they're not ready yet, and now I'm off again! I just told the tap in my bathroom, and this is the expression it made when it heard I was going to Cancún without finishing the gallery from my previous trip first:

If I had two more days before the plane leaves, I would have finished the gallery. Instead a few quick glances at the trail will have to do for now. The full gallery will show up here probably just a few days into 2011.

As I suspected, the pile of photos I gathered along the trail consists mainly of fields, forests and churches. It's really, really difficult to take photos that haven't been taken thousands of times before along the Camino. Here are some of my attempts:

The climb up from the French side of the Pyrenees offered the most stunning views along the entire trail. It's too bad, really, that the best bit of the trip is put right at the start of it. Fortunately, I did not know this, so I just enjoyed the views and figured it was a taste of what was to come. It wasn't, but to be fair, there were a few nice bits of scenery later as well.

Coming down from the mountains on the border between France and Spain I was met by this cozy forest. Just a few days before, hikers had to be rescued down from the cold and misty mountain by helicopter. Some of the evacuees may well have planned their trips for years. It's not fair that I, who had not planned anything at all, was given this great welcome by the Roncesvalles forest.

A 300 kilometres long boring bit is what awaits you after a few days of beautiful and exciting surroundings at the start of the trail. Here you will often be tortured by the view of several kilometres of trail ahead of you, with no signs of any shade, water, nice views or other refreshing elements at all. People with all kinds of handicaps walk the trail. If I had to walk it with a serious handicap, I think I would have walked as a blind person. Not seeing the trail may be a good thing.

A week or so before the finishing line, I found this group of cows grazing in an opening in a forest. Other animals than domestic ones are rarely seen. I saw some deer, rabbits, a fox and a dozen squirrels. That's all. There's no need to worry about being eaten by dangerous animals on this trail.

There's a real danger you'll overdose on churches and religious art on the Camino. If you're eager enough, apparently you can enjoy seeing about 1800 churches along the eight hundred kilometres or so of trail. That's less than 500 metres between the churches, on average. Crazy catholics! Anyway, some of them are really worth stopping for. I liked this one a lot. It's the Cathedral of Léon.

There are more pilgrims than pilgrim sculptures along the trail, but that's just with a narrow margin, I think. I photographed this one outside the Cathedral of Burgos an incredibly early morning with an intense sky above it. The clouds were menacing, making even the sculpture look sort of scary.

There you are. That's all I have for you now. In a month or so you'll get more. I'm pretty sure the final collection will include several insect close-ups, vineyards wearing autumn colours, ancient bridges, cobwebs at sunrise, a butt from a bordello, graffiti, mountains, more mountains and the valleys between them. You might as well preparing mentally for it now.

Until thne I'll be in Mexico most of the time. Or in Belize. Or maybe even in Guatemala. It'll be a great end of a most satisfying year of travel.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Bjørn

Shimlalaya Express

2010-09-09T23:52:00.003+02:00

Yay! Another round of India photos are ready, lookie here. After having been burnt and boiled thoroughly in Rajasthan during the first two weeks of the trip, the time had come to travel up into the mountains and cool down a bit. So I did, through one of the most dirty and depressing main bus terminals I know, Kashmiri Gate in New Delhi. You really have to look after your mind there, or you might well lose it.

Fortunately everything went fine there, and five hours later I was in Chandigarh, possibly the one and only well organized city in India. Even I can look like an ant if I'm far enough away from the observer. Indians, however, can look like ants even when you have them right next to you. They're experts at swarming and teeming about, creating an apparent chaos, but still getting things done in their very special way. And if you annoy them, they will pee on you. Or at least that's what the smell in many Indian cities hints of, I believe. But not in Chandi!

In Chandigarh everything is in perfect working order, chiefly because the city was planned and designed by the architect Le Corbusier, much like Brasilia. Even the garbage in the city has been used to build a park. 50 men have worked for 20 years to create art in many forms out of rocks, broken plates and toilets, power outlets and wires and bottle caps. Rumour has it that it's the second most visited tourist attraction in India, after Taj Mahal. This of course sounds crazy, but then again, apart from Taj Mahal, which major Indian tourist attractions can you name?

Anyway, I quickly moved on from Chandigarh and further up the mountains. Shimla was my goal. Partially because Shimla is a name to fall in love with, and secondly because on the buses taking you there, Hill Sickness Bag are distributed to the passengers. So now my travel sickness bag collection has been extended.

It's difficul to be completely prepared for arriving in Shimla. It probably looks different from all cities you've been to before. The central part of the city is located on the ridge of a mountain, many places with room for buildings on only one side of the street. Many places the city looks like it's full of skyscrapers where every floor has its own look, but when you look closer, you see that the terrain is just crazy steep, and the skyscrapers you saw at first, turn into houses with different designs just being located very close to each other horizontally, but often far from each other vertically.

I don't think I've ever seen a city of this large size with so many houses and so few streets. It's just not possible to fit in normal streets between many of the houses in Chandigarh. Yet there's lots and lots to see when walking around there, including real mountain monkeys. For more details, please see the captions I've given the photos.

So, now that I've finished India, can I rest? Not at all! Everything's ready for my next project, which is to run the semi-marathon here in Oslo on September 26. I'm not in a really good shape right now, but that's fine, except the next thing on my schedule is to get up really early on September 27 to get on the plane to Bordeaux, from where I'll get on a train to a place where I can walk almost 800 kilometres to get to Santiago de Compostela on the west coast of Spain...

Sometimes even I, myself, don't really understand how I'm thinking. But that's what it's been like for a long time, and it usually works out well. I'm sure that applies this time as well.

In the meantime, take care! #8D)

Bjørn

Indian Summer

2010-08-15T21:33:00.004+02:00

I may be wrong, but I think I went to India last April. Now I've finally decided to finish off the pile of photos I seem to have dragged with my home from there. I limited myself to taking only one photo per two million people in the country, but even that turned out to be a large number of image files. To help me get through it all, I've decided to split it into two batches, and now I'm done with the first part. Hooray! Look here to see the results.

I'm quite content with the photos, but I'm afraid I made few major new discoveries on this trip. The closest I got to something of the kind may have been when I during transportation glimpsed "Anu's Rear Parts Repair Shop" outside, but I fortunately never got around to taking any photos of whatever they did at that place.

The cheapest flight from Norway to India will take you to New Delhi, and when you get there, you typically leave ASAP for the city Agra to the south. Agra isn't much to look at either, but it does have the major draw called Taj Mahal. Any seasoned traveler must have been there at some stage, and now I have. It was nice enough, but the best part was walking around in it's vicinity and see all the strange sights available there.

Right next to Taj Mahal, but entrance-wise far away from it, I found a Hindu temple that appeared to be THE place to be burnt if you died anywhere around there. Indians aren't more shy about their way to say goodbye to their dead than we are, so I could observe the interesting ritual without feeling bad about it. After a while, unfortunately, there were more people there looking at me than following the burning of the corpse. That was a bit embarrassing, so I left.

The next mandatory stop in the region was Jaipur, yet another chaotic and filthy large city inhabited by several million too many people. Again I just walked around with big eyes and looked at everything. It was mainly modern misery, but also some ancient grandeur. Once upon a time the Indians really knew how to build palaces. One of them turned out to be a cinema with a well maintained interior from the 1950s. Apparently many go there because it's air-conditioned. It was quite chilly, but people kept warm by talking frantically into cell phones, letting their children roam freely about and by laughing heartily every time the movie contained anything resembling violence. Also, at the Raj Mandir Cinema they still have a break in the middle of the movie, in which you can go out and warm yourself and stock up on more popcorn.

While the city of Jaipur may not have that much to offer, you don't have to travel far from there to find some magnificense. Just outside the city you'll find Amber, a gigantic fortress stretching across several mountains and hills, looking almost like you've found the brother of The Wall of China. I was not at all prepared for that, so I was really, really happy to discover this on just an easy daytrip out of town by rickshaw.

By now I had had it with cities and culture. What I needed was calmness and nature. I found this in Ranthambhore National Park, right next to the town Sawai Madhopur. That's the place to go if you want to see a wild tiger or two, and an easy way to get there from Jaipur is by train. I traveled on crazy class. Fortunately the trip isn't too long, so the lady on the seat opposite mine had not managed to bury me higher than to my knees in empty peanut shells when it was time to get off the train.

Despite having the least enthusiastic guides I've ever met, we actually saw both tiger and leopard. This was also all they cared about. The landscape was breathtaking and there were lots of beautiful birds and lovely deer around, but the park rangers just did not pay any attention to them. Then again, if I had been leading a tour through a forest in which I was not on top of the food chain, I might have looked twice at any crows or daisies either.

Anyway, I've put up some photos on my Web site, and there will be more coming along soon!

I'll round off this post with my best line on this trip:

As usual I was wearing my stupid tourist hat, Indiana Jones style, to make sure people understand that I'm not one of them. Also, it makes people notice me, so that if I ever walk straight into a crocodile or something, the people sent out to look for me will not have too hard a time tracking my movements. Anyway, a young boy in the Taj Mahal came up to me and asked "Ha-ha, are you a cowboy?", to which I immediately replied "Yup. Are you an Indian?"

I received no reply. #8D)

Bjørn

My Epos From Cyprus

2010-06-29T16:08:00.002+02:00

I've been on a package holiday! It still turned out fairly well. I'm particularly satisfied with my timing. Just as this issue of a major Norwegian daily, in which I'm depicted as a rather lazy worker, came out, I sat down on a plane to Larnaca, Cyprus. A week later I returned, and by now this article should be forgotten by everyone.

(The article is in Norwegian. I gave an interview where I tried to explain that I prefer to "retire" every second month now instead of just retiring completely when I reach the age when that is a normal thing to do. The reason is that I think I have more options for what to do with that time now than when I'm 70.)

It's not a misleading article, mind you. The only error in it is that by now I'm a lot more tanned than on the photo in the newspaper, so there's no reason to complain.

I don't complain about Cyprus either. It's easy to spend a week there having a look at a strange, little country.

The most peculiar thing about it is obviously that the island is a bit of a war zone. The northern third of the island is occupied by Turkey, and in many areas there are enough checkpoints and soldiers around that you never forget it.

As a tourist the "war" is not a problem, but it's strange when you walk up the main pedestrian mall of the capital. Suddenly a man in uniform comes up to you, demands to see your passport and asks "I hope you are aware of the fact that Turkey is occupying parts of our island?". Then he lets you continue your walk. A hundred metres or so further up the street, beyond some barbed wire and skeletons of houses full of land mines, you arrive at a fairly normal-looking Turkish border control post, where you hand in your passport and fill out a form. With all formalities completed, there are now no signs or conversations in Greek around anymore.

Apart from that, it was impossible to be in Cyprus and not think that I was in Greece. Wherever I turned there were old churches, blue and white vistas, olive trees, old women with white hair and black clothes, mathematical symbols and new and old ruins.

I ended up walking lots and lots of kilometres on this trip as well. With a GPS in hand I managed to find more than twenty hidden treasures on the island, without disturbing too many snakes and spiders with my feeling around in dark holes in nature. It was a sweaty activity, fortunately mainly because it was so hot every day.

Among the pleasant surprises I enjoyed, I can mention that I did not end up in the city of Sin (Agia Napa), there was a salt lake with flamingos near my hotel in Larnaca, there was a pool on the roof and I wasn't at all burned by the sun.

Still, would I recommend anyone going there?

Nah. Not really. But maybe I'll serve up some more photos from there eventually. We'll see. First I'll be working in July, both for my employer and with my own photos from India this spring.

Bye for now!

Bjørn

A Petra Dish For You

2010-06-19T15:06:00.002+02:00

Hey! I'm almost up to date with my photos! At least I'm done with the pile from Jordan, so go ahead and have a look if you like.

The trip to Jordan turned out to be almost just Petra. I went in February, which turned out to be an especially good month to visit Jordan for people that enjoy making snowmen. My original plan was to have a look at some dunes and scorpions as well, but a blizzard closed all the roads I had wanted to travel on. So instead I spent a good deal of time in Petra, which was great, and some fairly bleak days in Aqaba, the grey "beach" town just east of the mine field that is also known as the border to Israel.

It took only about 10 hours to get from my kitchen to the gates of Petra. The flight is 5-6 hours long, and then there's a two hour taxi ride to the rocky delights. Mind you, the hours on the plane may turn out to feel a lot longer. Especially if you, like me, end up sharing a plane with ninety middle-aged, female, over-perfumed, slightly drunk cosmetics distributors on a company trip. I was fine, but next time I'll bring a jock strap or something.

Even though Saudi-Arabia is just next door, you can hardly say that Jordan is a Mekka for anything at all, and certainly not for tourism. Both when I arrived and when I left, the only planes I saw at Aqaba International Airport were the SAS planes I traveled with. Tourists to Jordan seemed mainly to consist of busloads of people coming in on express visits from beach hot-spots in Egypt. It's a long ride, so all they had time for when they arrived in the late morning was to have a quick look around at a couple of temples, before they had to leave and go back. I'm glad I had more time to see Petra properly.

I wasn't so happy, however, about the Jordanian hotel breakfasts. Lacking tourists and an understanding of what and how one should eat, and I suspect having too many people employed to do the dishes, the morning meal typically entered the table distributed across 15-20 tiny plates, all full of vaguely alien objects that may or may not have been for human consumption. Fortunately, there was always some cereal to rescue me. Mind you, the milk I was offered to pour onto the cereal was as a rule kept boiling hot. Oh dear.

Never mind. I had not come to Jordan to enjoy the food, but to explore the mountains that contain the treasure of Petra. Any further details regarding this can be found in the gallery I have just published. The short of it is that I liked it very much, and I recommend that you use at least 2-3 days exploring and experiencing Petra.

In other news, my travel sickness bag collection has opened at a museum in Hå in Norway. I was invited to attend the opening, which was a nice gesture. Except the opening was on June 12, and I received my invitation on June 15. I'm sure it was meant well. #8D)

At roughly the same time, the results from the voting for the Wikipedia/Wikimedia photo of the Year was completed. I did not win! But my iguana photo made it to a split tenth place, and this pleases me a lot. Thank you, Charlie, I could not have done it without you!

Now I'm stuck in the rain in Norway, considering whether I should escape somewhere for a week or so, or whether I should just stay home and do something useful. I'm tempted by both options. Does this mean I'm getting old?!

Bjørn

Moztly Harmless

2010-05-09T22:13:00.002+02:00

Phew! Only half a year has passed since I returned from Mosambique, my photos from the trip are ready to be scrutinized by your eyes. It wasn't supposed to take that long, but it did. And in the meantime I've visited Jordan and India fairly extensively, so now I have two more mountains of photos to conquer. It's a good think I rather enjoy editing photos.

This trip was more rushed than I usually prefer it to be, because I chose to join a typical (not too) organized overland truck tour. With a purpose-built vehicle and fairly seasoned guides, this part of Africa was all too easy to visit. I escaped from the rather dull program as often as I could, and most of these photos were taken on the "side trips" I made on my own.

We started out by driving from Johannesburg into Swaziland, the tiny country stuck between South Africa and Mozambique. Our camp was in Hlane National Park, known for its many predators. Supposedly we were safe there, as our camp was surrounded by an electric fence. This worried me slightly, since there was no electricity whatsoever available inside the camp. But we were fine nevertheless. And compared to the 120 or so members of the Johannesburg police force who were killed in 2009, we were absolutely fine.

I won't blog about the animals I found there. Look at the photos instead.

We continued into Mozambique, which made a noticeable difference. Strange sights kept popping up. In Maputo they were building a football stadium, paid for by money borrowed from the Chinese, as always eager to befriend countries with more natural resources than they can handle. Originally the stadium was meant to be used in connection with the 2010 World Cup tournament taking place in Southern Africa. I'm eager to find out in what decade it will be finished.

Mozambique has lots of unemployed people. The strategy seems to be that instead of having workers get things done, let's have time take care of business on its own. When it comes to camouflaging planes and helicopters, this works very well. By leaving the flying machines out in the open at an airbase just outside the capital, they've succeeded in hiding them all inside a wide selection of bushes and weeds. Well done, Mozambique Air Force!

Little work was done at the petrol stations as well. People were employed there, but they had precious little to sell. On a good day there would be petrol on offer, at other times the selection was limited to yoghurt, old bread, engine oil and soap. Which makes sense, since most of the petrol stations were owned by PetrolMoc, and I assume Moc is short for "Mock-up".

Mozambique is huge and the roads are horrible, so even with more than a week in the country, it wasn't possible to make our way more than about a quarter up along the coast. We camped on beaches and ate mostly food we had brought from South Africa. There's not much that can be easily and reliably bought in Mozambique. If you choose to eat what you can find there, chances are you'll have bananas and mangos for breakfast and grilled barracuda for lunch and dinner each and every day. Unless you become a meal, yourself, that is, which is quite possible, thanks to a healthy population of crocodiles.

My final verdict is that I found Mozambique to be a pleasant country to visit. However, if you're the kind of person who prefers a certain minimum of comfort and reliability, you might want to wait 5-10 years before you go there. There are many beautiful spots, but sort of difficult to get around unless you have your own transportation. Also, the country is haunted by cyclones, which may mean that anything of any size, up to and including small towns, can suddenly be gone. When you choose when to go, choose wisely!

The return to Johannesburg went via some days of safaris in the Kruger Park in South Africa. There's almost no way that can fail, unless you go there for the shopping and hiking in the mountains. What you'll find is a tranquile, savannah-like land, where easily driven roads takes you between a huge number of different species of animals. I had a great time, and I'd also like to recommend a visit to the Moholoholo Rehab Centre just outside the gates of the Kruger Park, where you can have close encounters with birds and animals desperately in need of some care, medical assistance and/or psychiatrists. Just make sure you don't play too wildly with the young rhino they have!

This is how thick your skin should be before you head for Mozambique.

Good luck, and happy trails!

Bjørn

Going easter than usual this Easter

2010-03-31T23:49:00.002+02:00

I'm about to thoroughly break a promise.

Once upon a time, towards the end of the last millennium, I promised myself never to return to New Delhi. Guess what? I'm soon on my way to that very city and Rajasthan again! And I don't even know what I'm going there fore. Turkish Airlines just waved a cheap ticket in front of me, and I willingly grabbed it. Oh well. It could be worse. I think.

The last time I was there, it was mainly the conditions at the airport that made me move on to Kathmandu rather quickly. True, I was less than a seasoned traveler back then. Today I would probably cope better (we'll see!), but looking back at my notes from my visit, I can see why I hated the place.

Take the toilets, for instance. It was the first time in my life that I had to use a lavatory with no door to hide behind while doing my business there. But if you have to, you have to, and I really, really had to.

It went fairly well, until I got to the part where one wipes one's ass. Inexperienced as I was, I had brought no toilet paper, and there certainly was none of the kind available inside my stall either. This was when the missing doors became a great feature. I waved my hand, and immediately some guy with a roll of toilet paper appeared. He sold me what I craved, at one rupee per wipe. Expensive, but well worth it, I thought.

I also remember that the toilets had muzak. You know those birthday cards that play something quite, but not entirely unlike a melody when you open them? Well, they had one of those hanging on the wall by the sinks there. It played the theme from Lambada. Six seconds long, over and over again. Which was quite fitting, as few people spent more than six seconds in the airport restrooms. Even though three men were hard at working changing batteries in the Lambada card and keeping the mirrors and sinks nice and shining, no one ever went anywhere near the toilets to clean them, apparently.

I saw few other passengers at the airport, but hundreds of people worked there, doing nothing. They just walked around, looking rather gloomy. Every now and then someone would come up to me and say "Don't worry, sahib Torrissen". This kind of freaked me out a little bit. First, why did they know my name, and second, what was there not to worry about? Did they pity me for being about to enter the accident-prone Indian air space? I still don't know.

Oh, and the food was awful. Golden Fried chicken turned out to taste decidedly fishy. And not smoked salmon-fishy. Not at all.

Fortunately, everything should be in perfect order there now. The last thing I did before leaving, was to put eight full pages of my best ideas for improving the airport into a suggestion box hanging on the wall there.

On my way to New Delhi I'll get to spend an evening and a morning rediscovering Istanbul. That's the price I have to pay to get a ticket to India at roughly the same price as a ticket to my hometown in Northern Norway would come to.

I'm looking forward to an alternative and extended Easter in Hindu-land, although this might turn into an a lot more hot experience than I normally would want.

I'll try to keep you posted here about my Indian early summer during the next few weeks.

See you later!

Good Heavens, Sort Of

2010-02-16T00:14:00.003+01:00

Time has behaved in strange ways lately. Since I returned from Africa in December I've been busy working, enduring Christmas, chatted about the cold weather and declining camel rides in Jordan, but now I've pulled myself together and finished the first photo journal from my time in the Drakensberg and Lesotho.

If you click your way through the photos, you'll join an African maths exam, you'll get to see how I get almost so lost that I need to be rescued and die of shame, you'll meet good olf Falkor and you get to see that blizzards can be encountered even in the middle of an African summer. Oh, and there are of course, like always, some fascinating bugs to see.

Maybe I'll post some stories from this trip here later, but the short of it is that the mountains of Southern Africa are well worth visiting.

Oh well. Now I just have to work my way through the piles of photos from Mozambique and the Middle East.

I'll be back.

Bjørn

Indiana Bjørn and the Last Crusade so far

2010-01-29T20:45:00.003+01:00

In the series "Bjørn goes to hot places only to freeze his butt off", it's now time for a trip to Jordan. Or Horrordan, as it apparently is known as to most people I have told about my fresh travel plans the last couple of days. At work I was instructed to write down in more detail than usual exactly what I've been working on lately, in case, eh..., someone else will have to finish it.

Let them worry. I'm confident I'll be fine. The only worry I have is that it seems as if I shall have to spend a few days at a five star hotel. This is not something I was designed for. What will I do if the mattresses are comfortable?! What if the cleaning people thinks my backpack is just a piece of garbage? What if I go for a hike in my room and I get lost? How embarrassing!

(Photo borrowed from the Creative Commons, by C. Chou)
Apart from that, Jordan will please me, I'm sure. I'm already thoroughly impressed by how the people there, being surrounded by Israelis, Irakis, Syrians and Saudi-Arabians, haven't been at war for several decades now. And the stuff I'm going there for, mainly mountains, looks just great!

Well, apart from the fact that they offer freezing temperatures at night during this part of the year, that is. That's okay. If it gets really cold, I can just stay inside and pretend I'm out exploring the country, by watching movies like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (sounds like a feel-good movie!), Red Planet and Mission to Mars (I suppose this means the landscape may be slightly alien?) and a large number of action movies that needed spectacular scenery to lead the attention away from a missing story.

Ground Zero of my journey will most likely be Petra, the mountain town that isn't a mountain town because it's located in the mountains, but because it's built INTO the mountains! You've probably seen photos of it already. If not, I can pretty much guarantee that when I return, I will force you to look at some.

Well, as soon as I've finished the pile of photos from Africa, that is. It's right her next to me as I write, only half done... I'm sorry. In the meantime, you can look at my Turkey photos one more time. Lots of Turkish people do! No less than nine of my photos from my time in Turkey last summer have been voted to be "Featured Photos" on the Turkish Wikipedia. Like the one above. How nice of them! #8D)

There you go. Now you know where you won't find me the next week or so.

Enjoy your February!

Bjørn

Sad stuff?

2009-12-31T18:47:00.004+01:00

We've spent another decade!

I'm not quite convinced that we spent it in an optimal and sensible way. I don't mean that we should always be sensible, but I really think that we, the people of the planet that I have now traveled at length, should have achieved more.

Granted, I could also have contributed a lot more than I did. I made some Web pages that I am quite happy with, and I'm sure they put a decent amount of money in the pockets of the shareholders of the company I work for. Also, I made a book that surprisingly many have thanked me for taking the time to write. Many of my photos have also made the world a tiny bit better, through making some people smile and by enlightening others, mainly on Wikipedia.

So that's something. It's enough, at least, to make me look forward to the 2010s! Maybe then we can get more done? Good things, I mean.

A good start in doing so may be to sit down and think some things through thoroughly. I won't be much inspiration for you, I'm afraid, but I've found some people that will! Here are some videos I really think you and your mind will benefit from watching. Enjoy!

(Some videos take some time to get to the point. Bear with them.)

1. It's okay to be weird, and it's okay to be fascinated by weirdness.
Here's a great example of that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8z7f7a2Pk

2. Smile to the world, and the world will smile back at you.
This goes in particular for certain people, like the guy in the middle here, wearing yellow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Y4keqTV6w

If you need proof, take a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iys86OcXPY8

3. Consider everything you've learnt in life, and use it before it's too late.
Try to make your wisdom available to others as well. Randy Pausch did. He got pancreatic cancer fairly early in life, but he managed to give a last lecture about life and dreams before he passed away. Watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

4. Help those who need it, as much as you can.
This will make both you and others happy. I dare you to not be moved by watching what happened to this guy who struggled with singing the national anthem before the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhcZRFcjbhw

5. Love something or someone.
If you're not already doing this, consider finding someone or something to care more for than anything else. It may end sooner or later, and then it's not much fun, but it will probably be worth the effort anyway. Just make sure you dedicate enough time to do it thoroughly. Here's a cute story with unbearably sad music, about a girl and her dog. Many questions and many answers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGQVX8iGbgk

6. Always end with style!
Here's a group of old people singing of joy even though they're going to die fairly soon. And the most beautiful voice comes from the guy that looks the least healthy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_n0zvoHlVk
(Backup link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asnQFYyZd8c)

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Bjørn

Back to Life - Back to Reality

2009-12-14T23:27:00.004+01:00

Yes, I know. It's been awfully quiet here. Although there has been plenty to report from my recent trip to Southern Africa, I simply couldn't find a practical way to keep in touch with you. Partially because I've been moving around a lot, but mainly because the Internet, as you know it, just hasn't found its way yet to those places I visited.

I'm back in Norway now, where I'm currently converting a great many pages of handwritten notes into captions and stories that you may want to read. As usual, the mountain of photos I have to conquer is a mighty one, so this may take a while. I'll enjoy every second of it.

For now, here's a brief summary of how I spent the last four weeks:

I flew to Johannesburg and immediately escaped to Pretoria, only to find that nowadays it's called Tshwane instead. Or maybe not. They haven't quite decided yet. I repeated a long walk from my last visit there, and I think things have improved, security-wise. I didn't shit myself even once this time around. The closest I got to being physically attacked was when the woman at the tourist information office requested "Will you tell me where you're from, please?", and I apparently, quite rude, responded with "No way!".

Moving on, I had some good days in the Drakensberg and Lesotho. I managed to nearly kill myself only once. I went hiking near Sani Pass in dense fog when suddenly and for a few hours I only knew that I was in Africa, but not quite where in Africa. It could have been worse. I could have been surrounded by a blizzard instead of just fog. Incidentally, that's exactly what I got a few days later, when I ventured into a remote part of Lesotho. Heavy snow wasn't exactly what I had expected from Lesotho. Then again, in hindsight I can safely say the same about pretty much everything I did and saw in Lesotho. It's a funny place.

After leaving behind all my warm clothes with the people of Lesotho, who need them a lot more than I did for the rest of my trip, I went back to Johannesburg. There I joined an overland tour to head into Mozambique, another funny place. I slept in a tent in the wilderness. The camp had no electricity, yet the only thing separating me from lions, elephants and whatnots there was a supposedly electrical fence. Hmmm...

We traveled up the coast, the beaches steadily increasing in beauty the further north we went. In Vilanculo I went on an epic journey to mail some postcards. I celebrated having completed that mission by sailing around the Basaruto Islands in a dhow. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), large crocodiles live on those islands. Some natives kept me safely away from those ravenous beasts, and I rewarded them richly for their services. (They now have enough party balloons to last them a decade, I swear.)

On my way back to reality I made a stop in the famous Kruger park in South Africa for a few days of safaris and game drives. Unfortunately I did not find any new species this time around. I did discover a couple of new rivers, though. They both ran with gusto through my tent during a most intense nocturnal thunderstorm.

That's it, although I now see that I left out a couple of highlights. Anyway, I'm still alive, and that's all I really wanted to say.

Oh, and since I've been gone, my photos have found their way into the annual report of the Gumala aboriginals (here), and there's a good chance my iguana photo ends up on an Iceland CD cover in the near future. I'm thrilled, obviously!

Bird of Passportage

2009-11-11T18:36:00.003+01:00

Norway isn't exactly at its best right now, so I decided to head south for a while. The best option that popped up was a ticket to Johannesburg (about €650 roundtrip). While I'm not too fond of that city, it's a great base for seeking out some interesting places.

So tomorrow I fly away, ready to experience South African scares, Lesotho's mountains and the whale sharks that are cruising up and down the coast of Mozambique. I'll give the Matekane airport a miss, though...

Photo from Wikipedia.
I haven't booked anything yet, but chances are that I will join a group of travelers in order to get more done in the four weeks I have. That's partially because it's simply safer that way. African predators of all kinds prefer to single out individuals as their victims. I'll make sure I'm neither the easiest prey nor the slowest runner among those I join.

Also, while I often choose hard rather than easy when I travel, that rule doesn't apply to my journeys in Africa. Traveling there is a different game from traveling anywhere else. There's hard, and then there's African hard. Crossing a border is not necessarily just a straight-forward procedure there. Public transportation is available, but there may be no schedule for it. You may sit around and wait for it to appear for long periods of time. And then you have to wait some more for it to continue.

Finally, Africa is huge, and the highlights usually have wide stretches of emptiness between them. You can go in a vehicle that goes straight there while almost certainly not breaking down on the way, or you can get there by getting on and off a number of minibuses that may or may not go in your intended direction, while possibly carrying a selection of new and exciting strains of viruses.

This time, I will confess to probably choosing easy. Mind you, that is African easy we're talking about.

Hopefully, I'll get to elaborate on that in future blog entries.

Sala kahle!

Quirky Turkey

2009-10-28T19:54:00.003+01:00

It's been a long and winding road to get here, but finally my Turkey photos are ready for you! Now, I have to apologize for there being as many as 152 of them, but let's just consider that an indication of how many different great experiences I had on this trip!

Being done with such a huge pile of photos and also having completed my paid work for this year, I'm left feeling kind of empty. Now what? Well, I'll probably dedicate a couple of days to improving some Turkey-related Wikipedia articles. Then I'll go for a walk in my neighbourhood and discover that winter has indeed forcefully arrived in Norway. If that doesn't put me on a plane to somewhere warmer, I shall be much surprised.

I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and that's a hummingbird hawk-moth. They're cool.

Bjørn

En Route to Nemrut

2009-10-19T23:37:00.002+02:00

Charmed by the fairy chimneys and cozy cliffs of Kappadokya, I was ready to take on more hostile mountains. I got on a night bus in Göreme, continuing to the east. The bus attendant served me tea and cookies, and everything was just great. Then the engine exploded.

The explosion threw me straight onto another bus, sort of. Apparently, as a foreigner I was too important to be left standing next to the road in the middle of the night. Another bus was waved down and convinced to let me get on it. I felt a bit bad, as the rest of the passengers on the Blown-up Express were left behind, but all in all I was quite happy to go.

Until we arrived in Malatya, that is. I don't know which worm-holes the new bus drove through, but we arrived at my destination a full three hours earlier than I had predicted, having taken all physical laws known to me into account. And let me tell you, Malatya at four in the morning is a quiet place! The only sound I heard at the bus station was my own silly chuckle when I saw the (sadly closed) ticket counter of the Findiklitoris tour company.

I could have slept there until dawn, I suppose, but I decided to just walk to the city centre instead. Surely it couldn't be far away.

An hour and a half later my walk had awoken many a Turk by activating the ever-present howling dogs on guard duty. But that was okay, as I had indeed found the centre of Malatya. It was still dark and quiet, though, so now I found a bench in a pavillion to get some sleep on.

After fifteen minutes of sweet dreams, someone woke me up by quite insistently shaking my shoulder around. No, it wasn't the police. In rural Turkey no crime goes on before morning prayer anyway, so there's no police around at night. Instead it was a man who somehow had spotted me arriving, who then had proceeded to make me a glass of tea, which he now offered to me. "It's much to cold to sleep on a bench in the park! Drink this and be warm!", he said.

Now, how is that for hospitality? True, I would rather sleep, but you can't really turn down a cup of tea offered in the middle of a cold night, can you? So I drank the tea, and it was good. Letting me pay a lira or two for his trouble was out of the question. After some non-sensical chatting I returned the empty glass and thanked him. The good Samaritan, or rather the good Malatian, disappeared into the night again.

And that was just the beginning! As the day came into being, I discovered that Malatya was full of friendly people. Apparently they don't get many visitors. As I walked around and watched the city come to life, I was pulled into ironmonger shops, shoe stores, hairdressers and fruit stalls. Wherever I came, I invariably was offered tea and apricots in a number of shapes and forms, including fresh, dried, jelly and cake. Maybe you wonder what will happen to a stomach when it's exposed to a diet like that? Well, I can inform you that apricots are probably capable of resolving any clogged up digestive system on this planet. I spent the latter part of the morning in the company of a toilet that I had to hose down properly before I could leave it.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah, yes. The people of Malatya were extremely kind to me. Even the woman in the supermarket where I stocked up for my journey into the mountains. I didn't expect her to say much, me being a man and all, but she did inquire at length about where I had come from and why. A growing line of customers just waited smiling and patiently for us to finish our conversation, and they all said "Welcome to Malatya" to me.

I can definitely recommend Malatya if you're into small-talk. Unfortunately there's not much to see or do in the city itself, so you're likely to soon leave for Mount Nemrut. Your easiest option is to start out by going to the VIP Cafe. Kemal, a man with a most striking and amusing appearance, will be there from early morning till late in the day. The part he plays in this world is to sell a package of Nemrut transportation, meals and accommodation to independent travelers. He's not very good at it, but since there are basically no other options, he's still succeeding fairly well.

So thanks to him, by midday I was in a mini-bus on my way south into deep valleys with winding roads leading up to what may be Central Turkey's greatest cultural and natural sight.

If you've never heard about Nemruth, don't feel bad. Neither had I before I went there. My expectations weren't high, but I suspected that I might be in for a treat. And boy, was I!

Just over 2000 years ago, crazy King Antiochus decided to impress the gods of the day by building an enormous tomb up there, probably for himself. A dozen or so huge statues of bearded gods, eagles, lions and more. Eager Muslim believers in iconoclasm have of course long ago done their duty and defaced the statues so as not to offend their god, so the heads and the bodies have been separated quite dramatically. The size of both bodies and heads are still impressive, and it's not hard to imagine what the place might have looked like originally.

More impressive still is that on the top of the mountain, between the two rows of giant statues, there's a man-made mountain! Roughly 50 metres tall and 150 metres in diameter, it's huge, especially for being a mountain. Sure, the pyramids of Egypt are taller, but there at least they didn't have to carry the rocks up a 2000 metres tall mountain before they could start building.

Despite the scale of everything, the place disappeared from common knowledge for a long time. Sure, local shepherds must have known it and just not thought it necessary to mention it to anyone, but to the rest of mankind, it just didn't exist until 1881. Then a German engineer on a mission to build a railway went up the mountain to have a look around. I can only imagine him running around up there shouting "Donnerwetter! Du scheisst mich an!" for a long time.

Not much has happened up there ever since. There's only one tiny motel up there, some 45 minutes of walk away. The roads are not bad, but they are so full of crazy turns that it'll take you a while to drive up there. During the winter the place can be completely inaccessible for weeks as the roads are covered in deep snow.

I really think you should go there if you ever have the chance. It comes with the same feeling I've had at places like Luxor in Egypt and Machu Picchu in Peru. It's ancient, it's enormous, it's hard to understand the efforts the people building it must have put into it. What were they thinking?!

If you're into hiking, don't just spend an afternoon and a morning here! That's what most visitors do; see the sunset and the sunrise and then move on. The mountains around Nemrut offer great views and an insight into what life is like for the people who live there throughout the year. The guys at Günes Motel will let you add another night or two at a good rate (40 liras for a single room in 2009), and that may include three decent meals per day, whether you want them or not.

The hiking here may be a bit rough, so bring really, really good hiking shoes! There are some trails you can follow, but thanks to the tall peaks around you, you won't get lost, so feel free to explore! The views you may stumble upon are breathtaking!

I'll soon be done with sorting my photos from Turkey this summer, so in a few days you can see some more of what's on offer in this area. I think you'll like what you're going to see!

Güle, güle!

Cappadocia Calling

2009-10-04T22:01:00.003+02:00

Today I'll blog about a place that some of you may actually have heard of! Five hours of pleasant landscape outside the bus windows took me from Ankara and into the most picturesque mountains of Central Turkey. I stayed in the village of Göreme in Cappadocia, and this was the view I came for:

"Matchless times!" seemed to be the slogan of a five star hotel nearby, and I agree with what they so eagerly are trying to say. (And I think they mean that the place can offer visitors a good time that will be hard to match, and certainly not that Göreme is a smoke-free zone. Far from it.)

Hiking in the many valleys and canyons and across the mountain plateaus of the area is a delight. Rocks here come in colours rarely seen by hikers. While the landscape is rugged, it still has a most feminine feel to it. There's a lot of pink, and there's a Rose Valley, a Red Valley, a Pigeon Valley and a Love Valley. Hello Kitty fans would adore the place!

And as it happens, that's exactly what they do. Following extensive coverage of Turkey in connection with a football match between Turkey and South Korea in the World Cup a few years ago, more than a hundred thousand Korean tourists visit Turkey every year. A great many of them are young women, donning cute t-shirts, giant Paris Hilton sun-glasses and facial expressions that leave little doubt that Göreme is something else than Seoul.

It's fascinating, really, how the South Koreans tourists outnumbered those of other nations (except for Turkey, obviously) almost anywhere I went on this trip. Both nations were occupied by the Mongols once upon a time, so I suppose they have some common history, but still, these are two countries FAR apart in almost every way other than that.

Anyway, hiking is the thing to do out of Göreme, and if you put a few hours of leg-work into it, you'll soon be on your own and out of the way of the masses of tourists. Your day *will* start with tourists all around you, though. You'll be awoken by burst of loud thunder, and if you look outside your window, you might see this:

One morning I counted about 30 hot-air balloons taking short-term visitors to Cappadocia to their heaven and back. This makes Göreme the most intense ballooning destionation in the world. I'd say you should save your balloon money for more solitary sunrise safaris in Kenya or South Africa instead. The best views of Cappadocia can be had on foot anyway!

Wherever you walk, you'll find interesting things to see. This area has been used by people for thousands of years now to hide away from the rest of the world and live peacefully and relatively well. They used to build their houses into the mountains, as the walls are hard, but inside it's very soft, almost sand-like rock.

There are churches, homes and pigeon holes everywhere you go. Sometimes you will find caves with great works of art on the walls, just there for you to admire. There's of course a museum for it as well, but it's much more interesting to explore and discover stuff on your own.

In addition to the ancient views, you can see a living community at work. Like here:

Sun-dried apricots is a local specialty, and in the right season you'll find them all over the place. There are also grapes, apples, citrons and a others of Natures delicacies found in small patches of farmland between the mountains and the "fairy chimneys" Cappadocia is so famous for.

I can't recommend doing any of the day tours running out of Göreme. They all seemed to be designed by some official government tourist bureau, offering exactly the same schedule. While the stops might be fairly interesting, since all the tours do the same stops at the same times, they're all full of tourists and desperate sellers of souvenirs. The rest of the day I suppose it's all quiet... Rent a car and do it on your own, starting a couple of hours before or after the tours!

In Göreme I met Kylie the Kiwi. She's a most energetic and positive woman on her way home to New Zealand from London. Going by bicycle! Next time someone calls me crazy for walking a few hundred kilometres from Oslo to Jotunheimen or whatever, I'll just point them towards Kylie and reclaim my own relative sanity!

Oh well. I've got just over a thousand photos from the trip left to edit (I started at about four thousand!), so I'd better get back to that.

You'll be hearing from me!

Killing time in Madrid

2009-09-24T00:06:00.003+02:00

I've been to Madrid a few times before, but only on short escapes from airports and train stations. Last week-end I finally got the chance to explore it more thoroughly. Here's a taste of what I saw.

I did enjoy my visit, and there *are* nice things to see there. Still, the feeling that walking the city left me with was mainly one of some kind of sadness. The unemployment rate of Spain in general is hovering near the 20 per cent mark, and it's supposedly even higher in Madrid. Even the most schizophrenic of persons can not walk through that city now and think that someone is following him. There's no one around! I may be exaggerating a little bit, but never before have I walked through the centre of a city of millions and seen so few people and so many closed shops. People have no money to spend, so they don't go shopping. Hence the outlets shut down, and even more people become unemployed.

It's a dangerous spiral. Spain has experienced higher unemployment rates before, but they have never seen it climb as fast as it has done these last few months.

Empty city streets are no fun. It's a good thing that there's a great park nearby, where you can walk around and suck in the nice atmosphere. Retiro Park, east of the city centre, is worth an hour or two of lazy walking. Pick a sunny morning after a night full of rain, and you will most likely come upon scenes like the one in the photo above.

If the city centre isn't depressing enough for you, get on the bus to nearby Chinchon. This village south-east of Madrid is traditional and a half. During the summer months the town square is used for bullfighting on Sundays. A few hundred locals, dozens of Madrileños and a few bewildered tourists sit down on the benches surround the ring in the square late in the afternoon. A decidedly amateurish marching band starts playing exactly at six in the evening, and soon thereafter you'll see tormented bulls chasing moustachiod men wearing tight and kitchy clothes. It's like a mix of Borat and Bruno, but it's no joke at all.

Every flower in the village have been stowed away, so that the feminine men will not inspire Ferdinand the Bull to become a pacifist towards the end of his life. One bull lasts about 15-20 minutes. The first five minutes it runs around with such enthusiasm that you almost suspect the animal is enjoying itself. Then two non-smiling men attach banderillas, long spears, into the sides of the bull, and the fun is definitely over. A heavy bleeding begins, and the bull's tongue appears from it's mouth. It's easy to see how the life of the bull escapes from the body.

Eventually a long sword finds its way into the back of the bull, aiming for the heart and the lungs. Soon the "fight" is over. The bull typically remains standing for a couple of minutes, coughing blood and seeming to understand nothing of what goes on. To quicken the arrival of death, the animal is provoked to move it's body this way and that, so that the sword in its body damages the internal organs more and more. The bull falls to its knees. Maybe it gets up again, but soon it falls over on it's side, and the game is over.

I wouldn't have seen this scene in a place where it's all for the tourists. But in a village where people do this because that's what they do and that's what they've always done, I don't think it is so bad. Or, well, it *is* bad, but it's not bad because of me. I think I have a point. Many a bull may disagree with me.

If the Mickey Mouse hat of the toreador does not give you enough of the Disney feeling, you can go to Segovia. The facade of the castle there supposedly inspired Walt Disney to build the central attration of his Magic Kingdom. I, however, prefer the interior of the place. A dozen armors in more or less humorous or awe-inspiring designs. Ceilings with incredibly detailed patterns. Gold, shiny stones and old kings and queens on display up above. And a view towards farmland that must have been just lying around like it does now for centuries, and an enormous aqueduct that has been carrying water into the city for even longer. The Romans knew their stuff. Until they forgot about it, that is.

That'll have to do as my Madrid memories for now. Maybe there will be more later. There certainly are more photos to choose from. But I'm serious about finishing my Turkey gallery before Christmas, so I shall return to them now.

You'll see me again here soon. I promise.

Bork Bork Turk

2009-09-05T19:51:00.006+02:00

After a few days in Turkey, I'm starting to get the language. I don't speak it, of course, but I'm an eager listener to it. It sounds possible to learn. The reason for this relative simplicity is mainly Kemal Ataturk, "the father of modern Turkey".

After World War I and various warish times in its aftermath, he pretty much defined the rules for Turkey has played by to this very day. One thing he did was to order a team of linguists to design a written Turkish language based on the Latin alphabet, and to make it a language easy to learn and to use. They did as told, and created a language so simple, that when young Turks now listen to recordings of old Ataturk's speeches, they can hardly understand any of it. Oh, the irony!

Still, the language is hard enough to learn that it has stopped me from uttering much of it this far. Give me a few more days, and I'll try for real. At least I'm not American. You know how they tend to insert "uhm..." every now and then when they speak and need time to think before they continue? Well, it turns out that this is not a good thing to do in Turkey. "Uhm" is the most vulgar way thinkable in which to say "female genitalia", or something to that order! So in Turkey, Americans are not only known for their stupidity and ignorance of other cultures, they're also known to suffer severely from Tourette's syndrome. Tough luck.

I don't swear like an American, of course. But I have to admit that the other day I was unable to resist from swearing by the beard of The Prophet. The occasion was that I was visiting the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, and there they actually have Muhammad's beard on display! Now, that is one sorry beard, I tell you. If I were to choose between making it an offense to draw cartoons of Muhammad or to put the rotting remains of his bodily production on display, I would certainly have chosen the latter. That beard will never see good days again.

In addition to the beard of The Prophet, they also have the tooth of The Prophet. I didn't see anyone swear by it. They have a cast of his footprint as well, making the Topkapi experience a little bit like going to a dinosaur museum. To lure in some Christians too, they also have on display the arm of John the Apostle, and parts of his surprisingly richly decorated cranium. Imagine, some people think that I am weird because I collect travel sickness bags. Then what can you say about the collecting habits of the Turks?!

I tried to blend in with a group of South Koreans in the palace to enjoy the work of their hard-working English-speaking guide. I don't know why they had one, as it was evident that they understood only one word of what he said; "Quran". And they didn't even understand that, as they seemed to think that what he said was "Korean". "Korea number one!" they replied, smiling. I quickly gave up on making any sense of the despairing guide.

Anyway, the fun in Istanbul couldn't last forever. So I moved on to Ankara, which isn't exactly designed for travelers. Quite the opposite, I would venture to say. The same goes for the small place where the bus out of Istanbul made a meal stop. Behind a petrol station I found a building with two doors. Signs on them read "BAY" and "BAYAN", which means "MEN" and "WOMEN". Hooray, I said to myself, finally I would be allowed to take a piss. As it happens, behind the doors there weren't toilets, but a mini mosque where needy Muslims can get some praying done! I should have taken the hint when I was ordered to take my shoes off before I could enter. A petrol station restroom is rarely a good place to walk around barefoot, in my experience.

Still, I made it to Ankara, the capital of Turkey. As one might expect, it's a fairly busy town. I found a cheap and decent place to stay, right next to Hit It Hotel, which I though was a bit funny until I realized it was Hitit Hotel, named for an ancient tribe from the region. The links between Ankara and Angora wool were evident. Under my bed some impressively long-haired dust monsters seemed to have a ball.

After the room inspection I walked up to the Old Town on a hill above the Ulus district. And when I say Old Town, I mean OLD Town. People have been living there for 5000 years, and if my street map of the place had been a thousand years old, I could still have used it to find my way around.

Unfortunately, I had no street map, old or new, so I kept getting lost there. That was fine, as there were lots of interesting things to see everywhere. I found a tall wall that clearly had been built out of whatever was at hand when they built it. There were Roman inscriptions, Greek letters, classical columns, the head of a statue and modern graffiti, all within a few metres of each other. An interesting mix, a proof that many different cultures have ruled and roamed this area.

The other thing to do in Ankara, apart from inhaling exhaust and pollution, is to visit Amit Kabir, the mausoleum of Kemal Ataturk. I went, together with hundreds of Turks that appeared much more serious about it than I was.

First we were given a lecture about how Ataturk single-handedly won World War I for Turkey. As a reward, he was allowed to hand off enormous tracts of land to other countries. This was a good thing, as the people in those lands for centuries had only been causing trouble for Turkey. Then we were allowed to see his car, his boat, his walking stick that has a gun built into it and his favourite dog (named Fox, I assume that back in Kemal's days it hand't been stuffed yet). Finally they let us enter the gift shop! Everything there was so cheap that I suspect that it is heavily subsidized by the government of Turkey. I now own an Ataturk prism!

Oh, and finally there's the bit where you're allowed into a huge stone building with golden letters on it, to see a big slab of stone which may or may not contain a dead ruler. It's impossible to tell for sure. The Turks seemed satisfied that there is one inside.

Next up: Göreme and Cappadocia!

Kebablogging

2009-08-27T22:45:00.005+02:00

Right. So, I went to Turkey, where I found myself too busy to blog in both Norwegian and English. Now I have returned, cursed with the task of preparing a selection of a decent number of see-worthy photos for you, from a pile of about four thousand.

I'll get it done, Imshallah, but it will take a while. To prevent you from forgetting all about me, I'll translate some of my blog entries into English and publish them here while you, Imshallah, wait for the photos. Here we go:

In Istanbul
I'm here! Right on the border between Europe and Asia, so far away from home that the keyboards don't even have commas on them, and there's a ç where the period is supposed to be. This will take some getting used to!

The flight here was just fıne. (Rats! I just noticed that where there should have been an i, there's an ı! What a country!) Turkish Airlines fortunately continues to have experienced only 13 major accidents in recent years. Even the food was fairly good, although the card that came with the meal worried me slightly:

"We hope that taste in your mouth will last after your journey."

I was eager to learn how they intended to attempt terminating my taste buds. But they didn't even try, as it turned out.

Another noteworthy moment during the flight was when a father who apparently never studied physics was challenged by his young son to explain how the plane would get airborne. "Well," he said, "the pilot makes the plane go really, really fast, and at the end of the runway there's a bump. When we hit it, we just fly upwards. When we need to get down again, the pilot will put on the brakes, and then we descend". Well done! Almost on par with the theory that birds of passage fly in formation to avoid shitting on each other. (Of course, everyone knows that they do it because their trip is a long one, so each bird can only remember part of the directions they have to follow. The bird in front at any time will be the one responsible for remembering the area they're flying through. Clever birds!)

I'm beginning to come to terms with the language. More and more obvious heritage from the Norwegian language appears. A small boat is called a "sharkı", just like at home. "Who?" is "kim?", like in Norway and in Portugal. Unfortunately, the Turks must have misunderstood when the Vikings who came here said "Ghastly!" when they first saw Persian rugs. "Güsel" actually means "nice" in Turkish.

Oh, yes, the Vikings used to go to Istanbul all the time. They called it "Miklagard", "Big city". You can still see their influence in Hagia Sophia, a massive rat's nest of a retired cathedral in the middle of the Old Town. "Halvdan something something did something" can be read in ancient Viking runes on a banister in the building. There's lots of other graffiti too, all between five minutes and 1500 years old. Quite impressive, really. They've preserved even that.

Anyway, I think that of all cities I have visited with more than ten million citizens, Istanbul may very well be the friendliest and the least busy one. The only sad sight I have encountered yet turned out to be just funny after all. As I wandered the quiet streets of the city last night, I came upon a policemen that appeared to be about to shoot a cat. Just as I realized this, I discovered that what was actually going on was that he was bored. To amuse himself, he played with the cat by using the laser sight on his gun to make it run around on and chase the light spot.

However, I'm already fed up with the shoe polishers in the streets here. I walk around wearing my Doctor Livingstone hat, so that everyone obviously considers me to be the most stupid and gullible tourist around. So when a shoe polisher passes me on the street, he will pretend that he drops one of his brushes without noticing it. Any polite tourist will of course pick it up and go after him and hand the brush back over to him. Then the guy will say, "Oh, isn't that kind of you! I shall give you a free shoeshine for that!", which after a while presumably turns into a job that you will pay for anyway, I suppose. So now I've started picking up the brush and throw it onto a nearby roof instead. That really pisses them off! No, of course I don't. But I have started hiding the brush in my backpack or under my t-shirt and pretend like nothing has happened. This puzzles them to no end, until finally I can't hold back my laughter, and I return the brush to the guy. Then he will also laugh, so I think it's okay.

I might hang around Istanbul for a couple of days, but I will soon have to find somewhere smaller. Preferable somewhere with great scenery and hiking nearby.

I'll see you there!

Bjørn

Superhero in Turkey

2009-07-22T10:39:00.002+02:00

As we say in Turkey: Merhaba!

To my great surprise I discovered that I was getting dangerously close to having nothing to do, and the weather forecast for the mountains in Norway where I'd like to go hiking wasn't looking good either. So there was only one thing to do, and I did it.

On Thursday I'll go to Istanbul, a major city, yet not the capital, in the homeland of Santa Claus. What I'm going to do there exactly is in the blue for now, but my travel philosophy is that what I don't know will probably benefit me. Maybe I'll just do a tour of places with intriguing names. If so, Batman in south-eastern Turkey is most likely to be on my itinerary!

The tourist-infested parts of Turkey are mighty warm right now, so to find a more accommodating climate I'll probably seek out elevated places. Turkey has mountains in all sizes up to and beyond 5000 metres of height, so I'm sure I'll find somewhere that suits me.

To prepare for my trip, which I have planned for hours now, I have learned not to draw cartoons, and I've made some feeble attempts at learning Turkish. It's not easy! The only word in that language that I have yet found to be anywhere near anything in other languages is "greyfurt". And even that's not very close to grapefruit, come to think of it.

Still, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine. If so, I'll be back in Norway by the end of August.

Güle güle!

Ayıgiller / Bear / Bjørn

Cold and sunny

2009-07-15T14:05:00.002+02:00

After having suffered through a long week with temperatures around 30 degrees centigrades, further amplified by having some Polish construction workers wrapping my house in some kind of tin foil, I decided to travel north at least until wearing a jumper would be necessary.

As it happens, a jumper was required just as I came to Brønnøysund, where I am fortunate enough to have parents I can visit. So I did. To keep them alive and healthy (although they may suspect otherwise), I forced them to go on hikes in the wild pretty much every day.

The result is a number of photos, mainly from the mountains of Northern Norway. These mountains are lower than they may look like in the photos. Trees don't climb very high up the hills of Northern Norway. But they do look nice!

I have a month of summer vacation left, but I still don't know what to spend it on. Turkey is high on my list, but so are the temperatures there and the price of flights to the country. I'm probably better off waiting a bit before going. And if there's anything I've got more than enough of, apart from chocolate, navel fluff (although not as bad as this guy), cat fur on the underside of my sofa, a clean conscience, money and vaccines, it's time!

Now I'll just have to find something useful and/or fun to do in the meantime...

On Long Walks

2009-06-23T00:19:00.010+02:00

Ok, ok, I confess that I spent most of my formative years sitting in front of a computer instead of exploring the outdoors. For the last decade or so, though, I have tried to make up for that. I have done several long hikes in Patagonia, Himalaya, Tasmania, back home in Norway and elsewhere. By now I feel qualified to offer you some advice regarding surviving a long walk in the woods. Sort of.

Oh, and before we continue: When I say "a long walk", I'm talking about multi-day walks with few or none man-made facilities around to help you. Well, apart from what you can carry on your own back and possibly a trail, that is.

Why on Earth?!
Most people are happy to walk a bit to see a particular place or to enjoy a great view. As long as the walk isn't too long, at least. All the recent fuzz about climate change and the need to be eco-friendly has made people want to return to Nature. They just don't necessarily want to do it on foot.

In principle there's no big difference between a short and a long walk in the wild. You get on the trail, you do your best to stay on it until you reach the end of it, and then you're done. In people's minds, however, there's something intimidating about long walks. They are perceived to carry a much larger risk than short walks, although you rarely get an explanation for why people feel that way.

Maybe the phenomenon can be explained like this: Say you take a nice, wide board and lay it down on the floor so that anyone easily can move back and forth on it. That's a short walk. Then you place the same board high up in the air between two towers. Now most people I know will be reluctant to go out on it. This is a long walk. The board is the same in both cases, but as the consequences of falling off the board become more dire, people's willingness to walk across the board decreases dramatically. This mental mechanism kicks in no matter how unlikely it is that you actually will fall off the board.

It's a bit like if you were invited to eat at a restaurant. "Yay!", you think at first. Then it turns out that the restaurant you're invited to is an Helvanian one. You've never been subject to Helvanian cuisine before, and the menu is printed in letters and a language you just cant't read. You know that you will be served food, but since you don't know exactly what you will be eating or how it has been prepared, you end up feeling a bit wary and insecure. Suddenly going for a Big Mac instead doesn't sound so bad, even though deep inside you know that if you just dare to go ahead with the Helvanian place, you'll probably end up with a nicer meal than at the American embassy beneath the golden arches.

Oh well. Enough metaphors. Let's establish a few good reasons for taking long walks.

For the view?
If you're into great scenery, long walks tend to offer a lot of that. In many cases you can enjoy splendid views from or very close to a parking lot, but to really appreciate a place, you should see it from more angles than the one you get from next to the souvenir stalls.

On the other hand, the quality of a scenic view often depends heavily on the weather. And what conditions you will experience when you arrive somewhere can rarely be guaranteed when you have to start walking days earlier.

I'd say that the view you may or may not enjoy on your trip should probably not be your main reason for taking a long walk.

For the vanity?
I once did an 11 day walk (the Jotunheimen Trail of about 350 kilometres), and I made a photojournal from the trip that I uploaded to my Web site. A few days later I logged a crazy number of Japanese visitors. It turned out that a Japanese weightloss Web site used my before-and-after self-portraits from the trip as "proof" that going for a walk is a good thing to do if you're a bit on the chubby side.

Now, I wasn't particularly flattered by that, but I was amused. #8D)

Anyway, going for a long walk will make you a slimmer person. When you walk all day, you can eat as much chocolate as you could possibly want without suffering from it weight-wise. More importantly, walking in the wild is what your genes want you to do. Unless you overdo it, there's a good chance that after a long walk you'll end up looking a lot healthier. (Never mind that when you return home you may prefer to carry a pillow with you to put between your boney ass and any hard seats.)

As long as you can avoid being eaten by animals and falling off cliffs, walking will benefit your health and your appearance. This is a good reason for going on long walks.

For the company?
On many long walks you will spend your evenings at designated camp sites, where you may or may not encounter other hikers. On other walks days may pass between each time you actually see another human being.

If you're on popular trails with designated camp sites, like the Overland Track in Tasmania, the Jotunheimen Trail in Norway and the Appalachian Trail in the USA, you'll probably see the same people again and again, throughout the day and at the camp sites in the evenings.

I'm not saying that these people are particularly interesting, but they are likely to have a lot in common with you. This will at least make them interesting to you, and vice versa. You'll be amazed by how quickly strangers can turn into good friends when you share the challenge of a long walk with them. They will help and motivate you, and you them. True, some of them will annoy you, and they will all be smelly. Still, all in all you'll appreciate having other people around, and you will learn something from having met them.

On the other hand, there are many long walks where you must be prepared to spend day after day without anyone at all to talk to or be helped by. This can be difficult to handle.

Make sure you're prepared for the situation that your walk is likely to bring, whether this means sharing a dorm with the German national snoring team, or having to spend a week or more without a single intellectually stimulating conversation. Life on the trail can be pretty hard either way.

For the lack of alternatives?
Sometimes there's just one way to get somewhere, and that's by walking, possibly for days and days before it gets really interesting. In particular this goes for mountain regions where roads just can't be built, and where sitting on a horse or a donkey would simply be too scary.

Clearly, unless you're ready to walk a long way, you will deny yourself some of the greatest scenery on Earth. I think you're better off treating yourself to some of those places.

For the enlightenment?
Few people know what they are capable of. They just assume that any strenuous activity that they have never tried or wanted to do is something they simply cannot do.

Every now and then the news media bring reports of people who have to flee their homes. In Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan and elsewhere, thousands of often undernourished refugees walk through deserts, jungles and generally the most hostile surroundings you can imagine, to reach relative safety.

Let's hope that you will never fully understand what these individuals experience. But one of the things their suffering can teach us is that the human body is one impressive machine. The same way you would take your imaginary sports car for a spin on a race course to see what it's good for, you should consider exploring the abilities of your own body. Chances are that you'll be pleasantly impressed. You'll probably discover that you can participate in a much wider range of activities than you previously thought possible.

Oh, and there's of course also some satisfaction to be had from having completed a walk that is so long that the route you followed can be pointed out from Outer Space. #8D)

As you may gather, I consider this to be a major reason for pushing yourself to do a long walk or two.

Preparing
Right, so you've decided you'll do a long walk. Then there's something you should know: In Nature there are no punishments or rewards, only consequences. So you have better prepare well for your walk, in order for you to harvest only desirable consequences.

I suggest that you seek inspiration in the first step that is taken by members of Alcoholics Anonymous when they try to resolve their situation: Admit to yourself that you have a problem! Do not belittle the challenge of getting through your walk alive. You have to take it very, very seriously.

Read all you can find about your walk, on-line and in magazines and books. Anything written by anyone who has done the walk is useful. The more recently they did it, the more valuable their information is likely to be to you. What will the weather be like and how does it affect walking the trail? Which parts of the walk are more difficult and for what reason? Is chocolate available somewhere along the way?

The same way you must know how to interpret the behaviour of your own mind and your own body, you need to know your opponent; the walk itself and the land it passes through.

Equipment
I'm not going to tell you what to bring. All I can say is that you must bring whatever you need in order to feel comfortable and safe on your hike. This clearly varies depending on where and when you're hiking and for how long you'll stay on the trail.

In my opinion, people tend to over-invest in new equipment when they're about to embark on long walks. Of course, if buying some new stuff is what it takes to make you feel safe enough to get going, then that's probably what you should do. But keep in mind that unless you're doing a really extreme hike, people managed to do "your walk" even before the invention of things like Gore-Tex, GPS and the steam engine...

Packing
When you've decided what you need to bring, put it all into your backpack. If it fits, great! If not, throw away stuff until it does. Now take the backpack for a test walk in terrain similar to what you will encounter on your trip. Don't forget to also carry as much water as you will have to on your real hike. Walk for two hours. Remove your backpack.

If this results in the notion that you should hold on to something in order not to float up into the air and disappear, your backpack is too heavy! (And it probably is.) In that case you will have to get rid of some things. Do not bring books (you'll be too tired to read them) and do not bring more than two changes of clothes. (It will all be filthy and smelly after a couple of days on the trail anyway.)

Do not begin your hike until you are confident that you will be able to carry your stuff all the way to your destination. Just don't. It's not like you have to remove your appendix or have your hair cut, but you have to make an effort to get rid of all weight that takes more than it gives.

Maps
Choose maps that cover your trip and not too much else. Maps have size and weight, too. Carry only exactly the maps you need, and make sure you know how to use them. In many areas a map is no good unless you also bring a compass. GPS devices are often useless on long walks, since there will be little or no electricity available along the way.

For most famous treks you can buy small booklets that contain just the maps and trail descriptions that you need. If not, you can make one yourself by cutting and pasting map fragments from maps you scan/photograph or find on the Internet. Print your new map with a high-resolution laser printer onto a semilarge (A3) piece of paper. Click on the image below to see an example of a 320km trail map made this way.

A detailed map is probably not something you really need in order to complete your walk. Long walks usually follow good, clearly visible paths. But every time you take a break and sit down, it is a great inspiration to have a glance at a map and see that you're actually getting closer to your destination.

Before you leave home, carefully study the maps you have, so that you understand the area you're hiking through. Look for sources of water and places to camp. Maybe there are sidetrips you should look into. It's impossible to know beforehand exactly how far you can walk per day. You should have several options for where to stop every day, with no more than 2-3 hours of walking between them. This way you can be flexible and get the most out of every day on the trail.

There's also a chance you will have to break off your journey, due to mishaps or simply because you're worn out. You should know where all the "emergency exits" are. Find out where you can leave the trail to return home or to seek help, and make sure that you know where you can fill up on supplies of food and equipment. If it's an option at all, try to figure out where there may be cell phone coverage, in case of emergencies or to acquire the latest weather forecast.

Other tips
I think we've touched upon the most important issues already, but I've suffered from a few things that I hope to help you avoid. #8D)

- Make sure you know how to use your equipment before you leave home, whether that be your tent, your stove or anything else. The entertainment value of figuring out exactly which hole the tent poles should be inserted into is not so high when you're simultaneously the target of an intense mosquito attack during the darker part of dusk.

- When you finally have decided on some food you can carry in sufficient amounts in your backpack, you'll probably discover that this trip will not be remembered for its many great meals. You should try living on this diet for a few days at home, so that you can learn how it affects you, both mentally and physically. Especially if you're walking with someone else. Some people turn incredibly grumpy when their daily rations of certain food ingredients disappear.

The food must be your friend on your long walk. You don't have to be delighted by it, but it must not turn you into a walking wreck either.

- Cut your toenails! If you do, you may have some of them left after your hike! While your shoes may be friendly towards the other parts of your feet, having your toenails continuously bump into the front of your shoes for hundreds of kilometres will turn the toenails black and eventually they will fall off. That's not sexy at all.

In Conclusion
You can do this. A little bit of planning is all it takes.

I recommend that you start out with getting used to carrying a fairly heavy backpack and that you spend a few days camping out in the woods near where you live. When you feel ready for something more, consider whether some of the trips listed below may be something for you. Good luck!

Some famous, long walks, in alphabetical order:

* Abel Tasman Coast Track
Location: South Island, New Zealand
Distance: 52km, 3-5 days
Booking: Required, *well* in advance!
More info

* Via Alpina / Alpine Pass Route
Location: Switzerland
Distance: 350km, 20 days
Booking: Not required
More info

* Annapurna Circuit
Location: Himalaya, Central/Eastern Nepal
Distance: 250km + sidetrips, 15-25 days
Booking: No, but trekking permit is required
More info

* Appalachian Trail
Location: Georgia to Maine, USA
Distance: Approximately 3500km
Booking: Not required
More info

* Bibbulmun Track
Location: Western Australia, Australia
Distance: 961km, 6-8 weeks
Booking: Not required at all.
More info

* Camino de Santiago / Way of Saint James
Location: France and Spain
Distance: Many starting points, 100 - 900km,
Booking: Not required.
More info

* Inca Trail
Location: Central Peru
Distance: 45km, 3-4 days (high altitude, not strenuous)
Booking: Very much required.
More info

* Jotunheimstien / Rondanestien
Location: Southern Norway, beginning in Oslo
Distance: 320km-420km, 12-25 days
Booking: Not required.
More info (and more)

* Kungsleden
Location: Northern Sweden
Distance: 440km, 3-4 weeks
Booking: Not required.
More info

* Land's End to John o' Groats
Location: The length of the United Kingdom
Distance: Approximately 1500-1900km
Booking: Not required
More info

* Mount Everest Base Camp Trek
Location: Himalaya, Eastern Nepal
Distance: Depends on starting point, 15 days is normal
Booking: No, but trekking permit is required.
More info

* Overland Track
Location: North-western Tasmania, Australia
Distance: 65-100km, depending on sidetrips, 5-7 days
Booking: Required between November and March.
More info

* Torres del Paine Circuit
Location: Patagonia, Southern Chile
Distance: 100km + sidetrips, 8-10 days
Booking: Only for cabins
More info

Do you need even more options? Look here.

Happy trails!

I'm turning 30!

2009-06-18T10:57:00.002+02:00

At last! I have finished preparing the last batch of photos from my trip to Australia half a year ago. The New South Wales gallery became my 30th photographic travel journal. Click the illustration to the right of this text to see them all.

I'm hoping to reach a 100 before it's time for me to be decomposed, so keep checking back here for more. #8D)

Anyway, I'm happy to be done with that. A couple of days ago I also gave a lecture for lots of mountain hikers here in Oslo, about my 320 kilometres on foot to the mountains of Jotunheimen last summer. It was pretty much a full house, and no one fell asleep! Now, who would have thought that I, the pale child that spent most of the 1980s in front of a Commodore64 home computer while being nagged about going out to get some fresh air, would end up lecturing avid hikers on the joys of the forest? I certainly didn't!

I'm glad it went well, and now that it's done, I have about two months before there's anything at all that I have to do! Yay!

I still don't know how I'll spend my summer. I'm considering the eastern parts of Turkey, so I read a lot about that. The mountains there are high enough that it doesn't matter much that it's "too hot" (whatever that means) down by the sea. But I might as well go to Japan or do another long hike somewhere in Norway. Or I may do something else entirely.

While I ponder upon that, feel free to follow in my foto steps through selected destinations in New South Wales, here.

There's something for everyone, I think. At least there is something for those of you who like dense forests, cute bugs and Australian culture and art. (Yes, there is such a thing, and it's only a little bit related to beer!)

Enjoy your summer, you too! #8D)

On Fernando de Noronha

2009-06-07T20:05:00.014+02:00

When a passenger plane tragically crashed into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere between Brazil and West Africa in June 2009, the tropical archipelago of Fernando de Noronha was mentioned in the news all over the world. This seems to have puzzled a lot of people, even seasoned travelers, as the existence of the spectacular Fernando is known by relatively few. Many people went on-line to learn more.
Tens of thousands of you eager travelers and geography nuts out there ended up on my photojournal from the island, and many of you sent me e-mails with all sorts of questions regarding visiting this natural wonder. I figure I'll save myself some time by doing a blog entry on the topic, so that I can refer people to this entry from now on. Keep in mind I visited in 2006. Although Fernando is a timeless place, things may have changed somewhat. Here goes.

Fernando is just a beautiful place to visit. Most of it is a protected maritime national park, so there are lots of restrictions to heed. Playing by the rules doesn't diminish your experiences, in fact the regulations on the island ensure that you will have a wonderful time both on land and in the sea just off the beaches.

First, regarding getting there, this is one of few places in Brazil where you have to plan ahead when you want to visit. If you have your own sailboat or your own plane, you can just go. If not, you have to book a flight. There aren't that many planes to choose from, and the seats on them fill quickly.

It appears that there are now three daily flights you can get on from the mainland. Varig flies from São Paulo and Trip Linhas Aéreas flies from Recife and Natal. None of these are cheap flights, and I did a few price searches on random dates in 2009 now in June. It seems that from São Paulo you can expect to pay between 2000 and 3500 reals roundtrip, and from Natal it may cost between 800 and 1200 reals. So spending a day and a night on the bus from São Paulo to Natal may save you some money!

You don't have to book accommodation in advance. There are literally a hundred options on the island, and since there are fewer flight seats available than beds, you'll find a place to stay when you get there.
Now, the first thing that happens when you arrive on Fernando is that you have to pay a conservation tax. They don't want people to stay too long (or explore too much, I guess), so a short visit is fairly cheap, while a long stay is just crazy expensive. Four days cost about 150 reals, staying a month carries a conservation tax of roughly 3000 reals! This can be prepaid on-line.

After having cleared the tax booth, you will be met by many people shoving brochures into your hands, eager to book you into accommodation and into activities. Now is a good time to look at your options, compare them and do a bit of haggling regarding accommodation. Save the activities booking for later, you'll probably get a good deal on that by booking through the owner of your accommodation.

Fernando is a small island, so you can stay pretty much anywhere and still be close to everything. However, if you want to be able to go out and eat and drink in the evenings, which you can do in the town centre, ask about walking distance from the accommodation offered to Vila dos Remedios, which is the centre. (It's pitch dark many places at night, so do bring a torch if you're planning on walking anywhere after sunset.)
There are all sorts of accommodation available, from really nice (and expensive) hotels that would be considered small anywhere else, to just a room or a cabin in the back of somebody's house. In my opinion, all you SHOULD do there is to sleep, so it doesn't matter much what facilities are available.

You'll probably be taken to your accommodation by the host you choose, but you can also get on the bus without accommodation and look around on your own. There's a bus leaving every 30 minutes or so, and it covers the whole island. It takes about ten minutes. #8D) The ticket costs just a few reals.
When you're settled, look through the brochures you received at the airport or get your fix of it from the reception/owner where you're staying. Most likely the best deal is to buy a 2 or 3 day packet of activities. Several companies offer these, and although they offer different prices, the tours are exactly the same. Even if you request tours with an English-speaking guide, don't expect there to actually be one. Don't worry. You'll be fine and see great things nevertheless!

A multi-day tour just means you'll be picked up to do activities and then be dropped off where you choose afterwards. The time between the activities you choose how to spend as you please. A three day tour typically contains the following:

* A boat trip along the north coast. You'll see dolphins and a beautiful view of the island. There's a real risk you may get seasick, so this is the one activity I don't recommend to everyone. You can have great, similar views just from walking the beaches and cliffs instead.
* The option to "aquasub", either as a separate thing or as part of the previously mentioned boat trip. What this means is that you'll wear snorkelling gear and hang onto a wing-like board behind the boat. It's like an inverted water-skiing thing. The boat moves at a comfortable velocity, so by pointing the "wing" downwards and upwards, you'll descend or ascend in the water. If the water is clear, and it often is, you'll have a good chance of seeing big fish, sharks, dolphins, large turtles and more. But you'll not have option to stop and look closer at anything, and you may find it difficult to equalize the pressure in your ears while you hang onto the board, so you may not go very deep... I find normal snorkeling on most of the beaches on the island was much nicer than the aquasubbing.
* A visit to Atalaia beach. It's a most pristine place on the island, a tidal pool on a beach, in which there is LOTS of great and colourful sealife to see. They only let about a hundred people go in per day, in groups of 25 people each and for 30 minutes only. You are NOT allowed in the water if you have put any sunscreen on. Wear a t-shirt instead to protect yourself against the intense sun.
* A walk along the sea around Morro do Frances, an area that is off-limits to anyone without an official guide. It's just a beautiful walk, and the guides can usually tell you a lot of interesting facts about what you see.

* A walk through the town centre, where you'll be told the story of the island. It can be fairly interesting, but unless you're able to communicate well with the guide, there's no point in doing it.

You can save quite a bit by buying a package instead of booking everything separately. I'm pretty sure they'll be happy to let you spread your activities across more than three days if that suits your plans better. It's just that most people seem to spend only three days (an extended weekend) on the island, so the packages are tailored to that.

There's also great fishing diving to be done from Fernando, of course. There are several companies offering all kinds of that, so just ask around when you get there.

If you want to explore on your own, you certainly can! Just check with the tourist office where you're not allowed to go, and stay away from there! You can leave your stuff on any beach, it will be there when you return. Anyone caught stealing anything on Fernando will be expelled from the island!

A few things you might want to do:

* Get up reeeeeally early in the morning and head for Baía dos Golfinhos. Around sunrise, hundreds of dolphins play and have their breakfast there before they head out into the ocean to hunt throughout the day.
* Go to Praia do Léao and enjoy the beach. Just walk as far as you need to have the whole world to yourself. Midway along the beach you'll pass a small island near land. I highly recommend the snorkeling in the stretch between the islands! If you're a good swimmer, you may also want to snorkel around the small island, but be aware of strong currents! There's an excellent chance of seeing sharks there. There has NEVER been recorded any shark attack on Fernando.

* Walk to the north-eastern end of the island. There's a cute little chapel there, some ruins and lots of colourful crabs on and under the rocks on the rough beach.
* Hike the north coast. The trail beneath Morro do Pico, the potent highest peak of the island, may have a sign that says the path is closed. Ignore that. If you're used to hiking, you'll be able to make your way through. There's a seemingly never-ending string of world-class beaches to be discovered as you make your way westwards from Vila dos Remedios. You'll be all alone on some of them.

* Enjoy a night out in the town centre. There's an excellent outdoor pizza place near the church, and there's a pleasant bar just next door, sometimes with live music. Just don't stay up too late, you DO want to make the most of your days on Fernando!

I think that'll do for now. Feel free to ask me questions in the comments, so that I can add more details or facts.

Another good source for updated and good official information regarding Fernando de Noronha is http://www.noronha.pe.gov.br (although it's mainly in Portuguese... An English version with less information may or may not be found here.)

If you spot any false information here, please notify me by commenting. I'll be happy to adjust my text. #8D)

Happy trails!

Azorted selection of photos

2009-05-21T16:51:00.002+02:00

It is done. I've gone through all the photos I took on São Miguel in the Azores. Most of them went in the bin, but those who made it through to the final can be found here.

As I visited only for a week, I am in no position to judge the Azores as a destination. Still, I have to say that I'd rather go back to Madeira for the third time than return to the Azores.

If you're planning on spending your vacation hiking, São Miguel can be a good choice. Early in the morning there are buses to every corner of the island from the main town, Ponta Delgada. Walk around there and return on the afternoon bus, or simply walk back to Ponta Delgada. The island is small enough that if you're a keen hiker, you can do that. Bring food for the whole day, as there are not many shops in the rural parts of the island.

Although São Miguel keep tempting you to walk around everywhere, you'll be better off staying on the country roads. There are few fences to see, but that's just because the Azoreans have perfected the art of planting thorny bushes to separate between the different meadows that the lucky local cows graze upon. I used all the band-aids I brought, to put it that way.

Apart from that, it was a nice trip! See photos for further comments. #8D)

Back from the A.Z.O.R

2009-05-02T20:48:00.002+02:00

I spent a week on São Miguel, the largest island of the Azores, a Portuguese (yet sort of autonomous) archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. Nice enough, but I would probably go back to Madeira a few times before I would choose to return to the Azores.

Anyway, it was nice enough. Except I really found use for all the clothes I had brought. All of them simultaneously, in fact. It's a fairly cold place. Which was good, as it meant that returning to Norway was a pleasant experience, climate-wise. #8D)

I found a decent place to stay in the old town in the island's "capital". Ponta Delgada a typical colonial town, with streets not built for car traffic, yet accommodating a lot of it. The sidewalks are on average just 25 centimetres wide/narrow, so walking around there is a Darwinian game of "Survival of the slimmest". You can leave your iPod at home, as you really need to hear any vehicle that may sneak up on you from behind, or it's game over for you.

If you're thinking of spending your honeymoon there, rethink! If that doesn't help, you'll be interested to know there's a hotel on the island catering especially for you. "Plus four square metres of bed to remember together for a life time!", they offer. It may not sound like much, but the island is so small that having more than four square metres to enjoy yourselves on is quite a treat!

If you plan on leaving your bed and the room, be aware of the need to bring warm clothing. Or you may end up like a guy on a bus I got on. He was almost kicked off the bus for repeatedly pressing the "STOP" button overhead, in a vain and desperate (unsuccessful) attempt at stopping the air conditioning that was harassing him.

My days were spent walking the island from end to end. There's a lot of greenery to see, some volcanic rocks, charming villages and ferocious dogs guarding every little herd of cows. And there are MANY cows on this island.

I'll get back to you with photos eventually.

Bjørn

Cote d'Azor

2009-04-22T23:35:00.002+02:00

Right, so after a LOT of work with my photos, I'm just ready for a break without computers. The most backward part of Europe I could get a cheap ticket for on short notice turned out to be the Azores, a slightly unfortunately named archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean.

(This photo happens to be from Madeira, which is same same, but different.)

I'll just be hiking and taking more photos (*sigh*, more photo editing coming up) and getting rid of a couple of kilograms of fresh Easter chocolate attachments to my body.

Rumour has it that the rest of the island will be dominated by elderly people and flower lovers, so I'm pretty sure you shouldn't envy me too much. On the other hand, my only alternative was Mallorca, so I'm really looking forward to this, relatively speaking.

So, I'll probably report back in a week or so, telling you all how pleasantly surprised I was by what I found in the middle of the ocean.

Enjoy your spring!

B.

Around The Female Moustache

2009-04-12T10:26:00.003+02:00

Hah! That's me getting back at all Australians for making fun of me when I didn't immediately understand that a noah is another word for "shark", because noah comes from Noah's Ark, which rhymes with shark. Anyway, "female moustache" is what you get if you translate "Hobart" to Norwegian. So there you have it.

Anyway, readers of this blog may recall that in December I went to Tasmania to see how many blisters I could cover my feet in just by hiking in the national parks there. It was a great success, and I have now put up a gallery with photos from my expedition.

What I found was square-shaped wombatshit, ice cubes on the beach (which turned out to be still potent fragments of stinging jellyfish crushed by the waves), wooden highways across the mountain plains, robots emptying the trash and a summery blizzard. Foreign parts is a strange place!

You can find the photos at the end of the rainbow, and here.

In related news, I'm fine and enjoying the Easter break in a fairly nice and warm Norway. There are just a thousand or so photos left to mess with (from New South Wales), after which I'll hopefully be free to move on with my life. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I have just 60 days of work left to do this year. This means I shall have to find a new project fairly soon.

It probably won't be a trip to Ibiza.

Many thanks to Tasmania for your cooperation!

Bjørn #8D)

Western Australia Greenery

2009-03-18T14:07:00.002+01:00

So, I'm still working my way through the photos I took in Australia recently. Almost 97 percent of them fell through in quality control, but what remains can safely be presented to you. I think.

Anyway, while Western Australia north of Perth turned out to be red, the regions south of Perth are definitely dominated by green. If you like big trees and smooth rock, I think you'll find a walk through this gallery worth your while.

And now... Tasmania... *Sigh* (This may take a while.)

Bjørn #8D)

99 Western Australia Moments

2009-03-09T12:52:00.005+01:00

Phew! I've gone through about a third of the photos I brought home from Australia recently. They cover the stretch between Perth and Broome, which is a trip on its own, therefore deserving a gallery on its own.

Unsurprisingly to those of you who follow my blog, these are mainly photos of wilderness and scenery. This part of my trip met all my expectations for a visit to the rugged parts of Australia. Red sand, strange animals and birds, mysterious tracks in the sand and lots of stuff only recently discovered by people.

You'll find the photos here.

Oh well. On to the rest of the photos from the southern part of Western Australia and some hikes in Tasmania... We'll see us again shortly! #8D)

Bjørn

Spent in Australia

2009-03-07T16:47:00.002+01:00

(Or: Why Australia's tourism is doomed.)

I'm about to publish photos and text from my recent ten-week trip to Australia. Whenever I do something like that, it quickly triggers a steady flow of e-mails with questions about the trip. Many of the questions will be about how much the trip cost me.

Usually I have to say I don't really know. I never prepare a budget for my trips, I just pay my way from one place and/or activity to another as I go. This time, however, I sort of felt that I spent more than usual, so today I went through my bank transactions from my time in Australia.

Oh boy, did I spend! I'm not complaining, obviously, as the trip brought lots of those moments of happiness that make me travel. But in hindsight, I certainly could have done a lot of exciting things in other parts of the world for the amount of cash I left behind in Australia!

So, to assist those of you considering a trip to Australia, here are some boring, but hopefully useful pieces of information about how much a trip like mine will cost you.

Mind you, I'm pretty much self-activated when I travel. Wherever I am, I will find something to do. Usually that is to just walk around and observe. I didn't do any skydiving, bungee-jumping, cruises, guided tours or participate in any of the infinite and often over-priced activities on offer everywhere in Australia.

You want an example of what I'm talking about? Well, go to Sydney and see the Harbour Bridge, and you're likely to think "Hey! I would really like to enjoy the view from the top of that bridge!" And guess what? You can! Only thing is that you have to book ahead and be ready to spend three and a half hours on it, including a "safety demonstration" and donning of special clothes. And the cost? 189 Australian dollars! (About 120 US dollars). To walk some stairs! Unless you want to do it around sunset, of course. Then it's 249 AUD (160 USD). Or why not do the climb at dawn? Because it costs AUD295 (190 USD), that's why! Oh, and I forgot to mention that you're not even allowed to bring a camera. You ARE, however, allowed to pay a stiff price for a copy of photos that your "Climb Leader" will take during your walk.

The most amazing thing about the bridge climb is not the price they charge for it, or the view from the top of the bridge, but the fact that two million people have done the walk since they started in 1998! Not bad for a bridge that cost just ten million Australian dollars to build (in 1932).

Even if you stay away from the cities, opting for hiking in some of the great scenery Australia offers, you can easily spend a fortune. A guided hike through Tasmania's wilderness for 5-7 days will typically set you back AUD 2000-2500 (USD 1300-1600). Granted, you may be staying at cabins with wine cellars and jacuzzis and you will not have to carry much, but this is still an insane rate for spending a few days surrounded in scenery that was originally provided by Mother Earth at no cost.

Being from Norway, I appreciate the fact that to maintain an elevated standard of living in a country, relatively high prices on everything is a necessity. However, while travelers on low budgets are smart enough to avoid Norway, it seems that just about everyone and her brother on their trips around the world spend half their budget on doing surprisingly little for a few weeks in Downunder. (Yes, New Zealand, I'm talking about you too!) They could have done SO much better, value-for-money-wise, by heading elsewhere.

Anyway, here are my key numbers, in Australian dollars to minimize the effect of changes in exchange rates:

My total expenses, including everything: About AUD 10000.
Average cost per day (70 days), including airfare from Norway: AUD 140.
Average cost per day excluding airfare from Norway: AUD 101.

Airfare
Shoulder/high season tickets, Oslo, Norway - Perth and Sydney - Oslo: AUD 2800. Just getting there contributes about a quarter of all costs. It therefore makes sense to stay for a while.

Accommodation
Including a number of nights in a tent in the wilderness: AUD 1100. In smaller towns I paid AUD20-25 per night, in cities AUD30-35. There are cheaper hostels in the cities, but I prefer places with good safety and relative silence after 11pm, and they cost a little bit extra (often YHA hostels).

Food
I'm not sure how much of my expenses went towards food and drinks, but a fast food meal was about AUD 10 (pizza, burger, kebab, chicken). A modest restaurant meal was about twice that. Cooking properly with groceries at the hostel will be cheaper than AUD 10 only if you share your meal with others. In Western Australian small towns you will find that groceries are MUCH more expensive than in large towns and the east coast. Shop ahead in chain stores if you can (there's usually a Coles, Woolworths or IGA around). To me, chocolate is an essential necessity. It's fairly expensive in Australia, but the chains regularly have good offers on some brand of chocolate, bringing a large bar (200-250 grams) down to AUD 3-4.

Transportation
Getting around is a major expense in rural Australia. The distances are vast and the competition is low. You can often fly relatively cheaply, but then you miss out on the scenery between your stops.

Greyhound is a good bus company, but their schedule is not good for traveling to smaller places. I went with a slightly more expensive option, Easyrider Tours, you can jump off and on the bus again when you like, and they make stops at interesting places on a schedule that means only traveling and arriving to places during daytime. (And we only broke down in the middle of nowhere once!) The ticket for seven days of travel from Perth and north towards Broome was AUD 750, and the ticket for a three day loop south of Perth via Albany was AUD 320.

My flights: Broome - Perth at AUD 165. Perth - Melbourne at AUD 120. Hobart - Melbourne at AUD 150.

I took the ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania, and I got a last minute special offer day ticket at AUD 45. The normal one-way rate was AUD 128, high-season AUD 179.

I used the train from Sydney to the Blue Mountains, a good deal at about AUD20. I also used the train from there to Port Macquarie and back, costing about AUD 70 each way. I also took a night bus from Melbourne to Sydney at AUD 75, with Firefly. Greyhound offer roughly the same service at the same price.

While traveling, I got the idea I wanted to do the Overland Track hike in Tasmania. I had to get a trekking permit at AUD 150 allowing me to spend as long on the walk as I wanted, as long as I started hiking on a specific day. To be allowed onto the track I had to be "properly equipped". Even though it was in the middle of summer, that meant I needed a decent tent and some warm wind- and rainproof clothing. I bought cheap, but good stuff at a chain store, All Goods, at AUD 275.

There you have it. Now, think twice before you head for Australia. It's a beautiful place, but so is most of the rest of the world, many parts of which can be had at significantly lower rates...

Happy trails!

Back in the hiber-nation

2009-02-08T14:44:00.005+01:00

I'm back, and I'm alive, as promised! Some of you have worried about the silence in this blog. Since it's common knowledge that most visitors to Australia end up in hospital or as some kind of animal fodder, I clearly should have announced my safe return before now. I'm sorry!

Incidentally, I DID end up in a hospital. Fortunately I was just visiting, and the reason I visited was that it was a koala hospital, where I was hoping to cheer up the poor, fluffy critters. Which I did, possibly. It's hard to tell whether a sleepy koala is satisfied or not. Anyway, I know for sure that one of them did not enjoy my visit too much, as I for all practical purposes pretty much killed it.

Before I went to the koala hospital, I took a walk in the forest nearby, in Port Macquarie, well north of Sydney. I had come there just to see koalas, and I wanted to see them in the wild. I found one, and I photographed it with much enthusiasm. Later on, I went to the koala hospital in town, and since I was quite proud to have found a wild koala (well, that's an oxymoron, obviously, but you know what I mean, one that lives in the forest on its own), I showed the photos I had taken of it to a koala doctor.

She had a good look at the photos, and then she declared that this was one sick koala I had found! I had thought that a runny bottom just might be a feature of koalas, not a bug, but apparently it is caused by koalic syphilis! I don't know where they find the energy to do anything that might cause sexually transmitted diseases to actually move from koala to koala, but they seem to do it somehow.

So what happened was that the animal was collected from its tree, and, per my directions, brought back to the hospital so that it couldn't infect any other sexy koalas. It was so sick that they were unable to cure it, so they would simply have to end its life. I'm sure they gave it a nice meal, and maybe a cigar, before they cuddled it to death. Still, I feel kinda bad for it. If not for me, it would have continued its forestial fornication, and I'm sure it would have enjoyed that very much. My only comfort is that what happened was certainly for the greater good.

That was just about the last thing I did in Australia. Before that I spent some days hiking in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, after some good, but cool days in and near Hobart, Tasmania. On my last day there I hiked up Mount Wellington, 1200 metres of impressive mountain with a view of the city.

It was right in the middle of the summer, but the weather was reluctant to accept the fact. It got colder as I ascended the mountain, and with about 200 vertical metres to go, it started snowing. I kept on walking, and the snow kept on getting more intense. As I arrived at the top, it was pretty much a blizzard going on around me.

I don't mind a bit of snow. What was much worse was the fact that when I finally came up there, I discovered that there is actually a road leading up there, and there were several cars parked next to a roofed viewing platform. From which there was absolutely nothing to see, apart from the usual white wall of a blizzard.

To cheer myself up while I waited for the weather to clear, I decided to build a snowman. Now, even with this being Tasmania, rough and cold weather like that is unusual. So a team from the local TV station came up there to report on the weird phenomenon of midsummer snow. And what could possibly be more intriguing than a story about a good-looking backpacker from the other side of the world building a snowman on the top of their mountain? Well, I'll tell you: A story about a local, cute little girl with blonde hair and wearing a pink dress building a snowman on the top of their mountain. She saw what I was doing, and copied the idea! She stole my thunder, or my blizzard, as it were!

Such is life, I guess.

Anyway, I had a good time the last couple of weeks in Australia, and eventually I will be able to prove it through my photos. When I copied them onto my computer at home, I learnt that there are 4443 photos I need to choose a few from to show you. I'll be working on that for a while...

As an appetizer, please have a look at the photos from my stop in Singapore on my way to Australia.

Bjørn, non-syphilitic

Catching up

2009-01-01T11:29:00.003+01:00

I've been unable to keep the blog going, but yes, I am still traveling. Since leaving you suspended in Walpole I've moved on through Albany, Perth and Melbourne to Tasmania. Here I've hiked quite a bit to while away Christmas, and I just witnessed New Year's Eve in Hobart, which by the way translates to "female moustache" in Norwegian. I'm not entirely sure it's a fair description of the city, but at least the hostel I'm staying at (The Pickled Frog) is fairly hairy.

From here I'll soon be moving back to the mainland and Sydney. For now I'm not quite sure what I should blog about. A lot of things are happening, and the imp inside my camera is working hard on documenting it all. I'll just briefly give you some vital information, not necessarily facts:

* Near Albany I witnessed giant waves hitting the cliffs on the Flinders Peninsula. These waves push all of Australia northwards at a pace of 5 centimeters per year. This means that in 80 million years, Australia will be back where it is now, having traveled around the world!

* Unlike ravens in the rest of the world, Australian ravens like to inhale helium from balloons, which makes them sound like Smurf-Ravens. It's a lot of fun listening to them whining.

* There's a brand of beer here called XXXX, because no one knew how to spell "beer" when they were to market their new brew.

* Hostels in the countryside are often empty, so I've spent a few nights having dorms all to myself. Hostels in the cities are full of Asians who spend the nights fornicating in the bathrooms. This is much unlike the situation ten years ago, when all Asians were traveling on their own and being very intellectual about it.

* The Overland Track, a hiking trip that comes to about 100 kilometers of walking if you include all sidetrips you should do, is limited to allowing only 60 or so walkers onto it per day. This is because the hike is very popular because it's got a cool name AND all the strenuous parts of it are outfitted with boardwalks. I'm pretty sure that if they had called it "The Aboriginal Track" instead, hardly any Australians at all would have walked it, and they would not have had to limit the number of walkers. It seems that anything that has something to do with Aboriginals is largely ignored by most of the people in Godzone.

* On the cold beaches of the southern part of Western Australia there is often a larger contingent of rescue team members than there is of swimmers and sunbathers. And they're not even being paid to be there, as they are volunteers. They don't have to do much, since the water is so cold that I'm surprised there weren't more penguins around.

* Tasmania is STILL full of criminals, it seems. Wherever I go, stuff I put in the communal fridge seems to disappear into thin air. Oh well, mustn't grumble...

* Hiking in Freycinet includes a lot of climbing of rocks. The park receives 300 000 visitors annually, of which many are NOT experienced hikers, but they hike anyway. Because of this, I am happy to report that underwear seems to be rarely used in this country. I've seen an awful lot of people in awkward positions negotiating steep hills in ways that shows off large areas of buttcrack. There's hardly any sign of anyone wearing undies at all!

* I'm still alive.

And I'll be back. I promise.

Oh, and Happy New Year, everyone!

Australia Number 1!

2008-12-08T12:02:00.003+01:00

The Downunders are competitive people. Now they have managed to become the number one polluting nation in the world (as in both hemispheres) per capita! Thanks to long distances that needs to be covered to move people and goods around, many a large town that is run not on power plants but on diesel aggregates, numerous heavily polluting mines and lots and lots of farting sheep, they're really running the planet down!

It seems they intend to keep this position. There's not much more they can do to become worse, but they sure try hard. Between Perth and the rest of the country there's both a road and a railroad. On the road there is no scheduled bus service. If you want to go by road, you'll have to buy a car and drive it across the Nullarbor plains. If you want to go by train, which presumably would hurt the environmental badness of Australia, you'll have to book your ticket well in advance. There's only ONE weekly train between Perth and Adelaide/Sydney, and on that train there are only about 124 sleeper seats!

The result? There are LOTS of flights, both cheap and expensive ones, to and from Perth, and people get on them. It seems that will have to be my option as well, although I really wanted to cross the Nullarbor by land. I've already seen the second longest straight stretch of land, near Coral Bay, so I don't think I'm missing out on much, but still...

What's more, Australia has managed the impressive feat of becoming the most obesive nation in the world! The US is really losing all their hegemonies these days. Food is not even particularly cheap here, they still eat and eat and eat, and leave most of the exercise to be done in Australia to their Olympic swimming team. Sustain-a-belly dwell-up-ment, they call it, I believe.

To make sure that nobody performs any slimming activities, the Australians have introduced tight limits on how many people are allowed to go on the most beautiful walks available in the country. On The Overland Track in Tasmania, for instance, only about 60 people are allowed onto the track per day. And a large portion of those who walk it are actually foreigners. Like me! I'll be going on December 24, yay! I still have to make my way to Tasmania in time for it, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

Right now I'm warming up for the Overland Track by walking sections on the Bibbulmun Track in the south of Western Australia. It's also a beautiful walk, with amazing, tall Karri trees. In a couple of months I'll show you the photos.

Nature Calls

2008-12-07T12:25:00.002+01:00

I just had the most intense cinema experience of my life, in the Sun Pictures outdoor movie theatre.

Since the wet season is starting, pretty much all tours and destinations north of Broome are closed down for the season. So, to get to see at least some of it, I went to see the movie "Australia", which was shot in the Kimberley region just north of Broome. Now, there's nothing special about the movie, but that movie and that cinema is just about the best combo I've come across ever since I tried putting potato chips on bread. You should try it once. Both the cinema and the chips.

The cinema is "the world's oldest picture gardens", which may be true, or maybe it's just something the Australians like to think, like they often do, and when they discover there's something older, better, faster, taller somewhere, they just add "in the Southern Hemisphere", and then they're usually right. Anyway, the place is from 1912 or so, and it hasn't changed much in the meantime. Everything is built in slightly termite-chewed wood, on the walls there are old movie posters, you sit in beach chairs on a lawn, and the popcorn tastes just perfect.

The movie, however, is brand new. Nicole Kidman is in it, but she is bare noticable compared to the main star of the movie, namely the landscape of the Kimberley. It's an easy plot. An English lady comes to Australia to see to her husband and her property. The husband dies, so that the lady can fall in love with a cowboy. WW2 begins, the Japanese are bad guys and the Aboriginals are good guys, and there's a happy ending. Fair enough.

While the movie is basic, watching it outdoors in Broome is fantastic, because:

* When the movie begins you discover that the screen has lots of geckos on it, running around and feasting on the flies that are attracted by the light from the movie. Some flies are caught by large bats instead, and the bats seem even larger when they're projected onto the screen as they fly in front of the light beam of the movie. And if that's not enough wildlife for you, you'll find that lizards and snakes wiggle their way through the grass just in front of you during the parts of the movie when the audience is quiet enough.

* It turns out that the cinema you're in also is IN the movie! Suddenly watching the movie is like looking into a mirror, except the people in the mirror are wearing 1942 clothing, and they look straight back at you. Surreal! (The movie was shot in the very same cinema.)

* The highlight of the movie was during a scene where Japanese war planes are on their way to bomb the town in the movie. I have no idea how they did it, but just then a large plane flew 50 meters above our heads, making a deafening sound! The cinema is right next to the local airport, so it could of course happening, but the timing was just unreal!

An evening to remember, for sure.

There's much more to tell, but the short story for now is that I flew back to Perth from Broome, and I am now doing the southern part of Western Australia. When I'm done with that I'll go to Tasmania. You see, I've managed to secure a place on the VERY limited access Overland Track there, starting on December 24. I am very excite!

I'll get back to you soon. If I don't fall down from the Bicentennial Tree tomorrow, that is. Google it. #8D)

Careless being carless in Karijini

2008-12-03T05:15:00.002+01:00

Wohey! I've just spent some days in the prettiest thing Australia has on offer now that the impressive buttocks of both Kylie and Elle seems to have gone missing.

First you drive for hours and hours and hours across flat land that from a distance looks so nice, green and lush that you have to wonder why the sheep standing along the road look so grumpy. Then you make a stop, to pee or to pull a rotting kangaroo corpse off the road, or both, and you see that between the green bushes there's plenty of red, infertile dirt, and the bushes themselves are armed with long, sharp, lethal needles that could outcompete any kind of porcupine. Poor sheep!

Every 300 kilometers or so there's a petrol station and a roadhouse, and you don't drive past it. You stop, and you fill your tank with petrol at a price two or three times what you might have had to pay for it in any of this continent's major cities. Or if you're twelve years old or so, maybe you just spend all your pocket money for the entire week on a can of Coke or something like that. Life is hard, and expensive, in the outback.

Maybe you drive through Marble Bar, a place that a few hundred souls calls home, and they're proud of the fact that they officially live in the hottest town in Australia. The title was won when they for 160 days in a row could observe the thermometer rise to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 37.8 degrees Celsius. That's actually true, just look here.

Then, right in the middle of the dry hell, you suddenly arrive in the Karijini National Park. It's still a hot place to visit, but you don't care. Down in the many gorges in the park the temperature is bearable, especially because there's a large number of places you can swim and cool down, natural pools that underground rivers fill up with fairly cool water. Besides, it's all just so stunningly beautiful that you forget about the heat.

I spent the last 4-5 days in the park, almost all on my own. During this time of the year the temperature is usually even higher than what it has been lately, and because of this, very few people plan to go there to enjoy themselves between December and March.

I had been warned that I would have to bring all the supplies I would need. But when I arrived, I found a lovely camp, Karijini Eco Retreat, supported by the aboriginal community, where I could get cold drinks, and where I could rent a nice tent with a bed in it. And I could zip off the outer walls of the tent, so that at night a cooling breeze could come in and help me sleep, and in the mornings I would lie in my bed and look out at brilliant sunsets, beautiful colours gradually filling the sky, creating the perfect backdrop for the silhouettes of acasia and eucalyptus trees. Now, THERE's a good way to start your day!

I went on a walkabout in the park. Or to be more exact, I got lost. I carried plenty of water, so it wasn't really a problem. Well, I survived, anyway. I found my way back to the camp, but before doing so, I found a tree that stood by itself, gushing out blood. "That's weird", I said to myself, and photographed it. Back in the camp I showed the photo to the people working there, and they were impressed.

Apparently I had found a pharmacy tree, and it was bleeding/producing medicine as if there was no tomorrow, which was rather unusual, I was told. I took some people back to the tree and we gathered crystallized chunks of the "blood" from the bloodwood tree. The stuff is supposed to be good for your heart, and dissolved in boiling water it becomes a drink that will cure a cold and stop your coughing. They let me try it, but since I did not have a cold the medicine must have become confused, and helped me produce copious amounts of gas instead. It's a good thing I had a tent for myself, and that there were no immediate neighbours of it either.

Supposedly I got off easy. I met someone else who also had tried drinking The Stuff, and she had just started ejecting the contents of her stomach both upwards and downwards. At least she had lost her cough! I'll bring some blood crystals back home with me, so that you, my friends, also can get to try it. It tastes horrible.

Anyway, I'm still alive, and I have now vroomed to Broome. I haven't done much here yet, but I have bought new shorts. The last ones were torn and ripped in dozens of places after too much rough climbing in the Karijini cliffsides. It was SO worth it!

Monkey Miarea

2008-11-21T13:52:00.003+01:00

You just know you're off the beaten path in Australia when fruit grown in the very same country costs more in the shops than they do in shops in Norway.

And as if I needed further clues, when I was at the local pub the other night, people introduced themselves to me as Rex, Shelz, Jimboy, Mugsy, Pep, Skeg and Wookie. And those were not even made-up names, they had the driver licenses to prove that these were their actual names!

I temporarily settled in Denham, the "capital" of the Shark Bay shire. People there seemed to lead nice lives, although there weren't that many of them. Some of them mainly drink beer, others have several other jobs as well. When I wanted to rent a car, I was told to go talk to the hairdresser, as he also was the local rental company. Oh, and I should go to him outside school hours, as he was also the principal of the school there. When I finally got hold of him, it was of little use to me. The rental car (he only has one) would not be available until sometime next month. Oh well...

Denham has existed for quite a while. I found a tombstone from 1905 at the local cemetary. It may be difficult to live in Denham, but it must be even harder to die there. During the 103 years that have passed since the first grave was dug, only 65 people or so have succeeded in ending their lives in or near the town. At least that's my conclusion after having counted the tombstones. I had to ask someone whether this low number was just because they didn't usually put up a tombstone when someone was eaten whole by one of the many sharks in the area. But no. The only thing coming even close to a shark attack that anyone had heard about, was when a large, old, stuffed fish in the "restaurant" fell down during a particularly lively evening there, and hit someone in the head, causing a concussion.

I spent a day exploring the area on foot. Many a time my heart stopped as something completely unexpected jumped out of a bush just a few meters away and ran off into the distance. My best shock of the day was when the escapist turned out to be some kind of strange lizard that ran using only its hind legs, much like a person. I wish all animals would do that!

I also discovered a strange spider, Golden or Yellow Orb Something. It's venomous, but not really dangerous. Much like this blog. When you carelessly walk straight into its web, it's like walking into a rope or a hard-strung wire, and you do that a lot. Someone else have of course discovered it before me, and not only have they done so, they even have taken some of the spider DNA and merged it with goat DNA. So now there are goats walking around that instead of producing milk can be "milked" for really sturdy rope. This material is used to make bulletproof vests, even more robust than Kevlar. Scientists ARE mad!

Near Denham is Monkey Mia, a world heritage area. It's well-known for being home to large herds of seacows and dolphins. So I have spent the last couple of days feeding dolphins by hand and tipping sleeping seacows. At least I've done some of that, you guess which.

My next stop is Coral Bay. Good luck in finding that on the map!

Kalbarri never hosted the Winter Olympics

2008-11-21T02:20:00.002+01:00

At last I managed to escape from Perth and the questionable "hostel" there. Now that I cannot be beaten up in a dark corner of the place anymore, I'll be happy to reveal that I'm talking about The Grand Backpacker Central in downtown Perth. I look forward to writing a report on the place, although I'm not sure whether I should submit it to www.hostels.com or to the local police!

My first stop out of Perth was The Pinnacles near Cervantes. It's just thousands and thousands of pointy rocks, possibly fossilized tree trunks, in the middle of a small, yellow desert. It's a great place to visit, especially if you're into vivid colours and phallic symbols in general.

When I left the place, my camera told me that during my stay I had taken on average two photographs per minute. I must have enjoyed seeing it very much. Poor me, who sooner or later will have to go through all my travel photos and pick some of them for the rest of the world to see...

I moved on to Kalbarri, a cute and picturesque little fisherman's village with about two thousand inhabitants. It's located some 600 kilometres north of Perth. Since there aren't really that many alternatives, this means that lots of Perthians drive up there for the weekend, easily doubling the number of people in town.

The coziness of the place is in the details; it's nigh on impossible to buy even something as simple as a bread or a roll without having to spend half an eternity discussing the weather with the baker's wife. Oh, and in the afternoon, hundreds of pink cockatoos or something fly in to eat grass from the lawns in the village, so that the locals don't have to do any mowing. Very practical!

The beaches are nice and the streets see little traffic. So this is the kind of place where parents can let their children be children and run freely around, knowing that the worst that can happen is that they will fall and get a scratch on the knee. Or they could step on a snake, be bitten and die. Or they can fall in the water and be swiftly carried off to Africa by rip currents. Or they can be eaten by sharks. Or be horrifyingly burnt by strange, jello-y creatures of the sea. Or be struck by any of the many other surprises that Australian nature has in store for people equally or less careful than the late Steve Irwin.

I went for a walk of about 20 kilometers along the coast just south of Kalbarri. It's a national park with tall cliffs and ample supplies of coastal bush. It took nine hours to complete! That's partially because I had a talk with a park ranger about venomous snakes before I started walking, but mainly because there was so much to see along the trail: A super-blue ocean, whales on the move south to Antarctica, dolphins hunting for fish, kangaroos looking goofy and/or jumping about, and last, but not least, scenic viewpoints near parking lots, where you can enjoy incredible numbers of skirts flying straight up as the strong winds from the sea do their best.

Kalbarri is a windy place. At night the wind howls so much that you can only barely hear the snoring in the hostel dorm!

Next up is Monkey Mia. Even just the name of the place makes me want to go there.

Hostel from Hell

2008-11-12T13:42:00.002+01:00

Tropical rain of the monsoon kind filled Singapore with dreary weather just as I arrived at the airport to leave for Perth, so I guess I was lucky with the weather. And with Singapore in general. When you go straight from there to Australia, there are some things you really notice and appreciate about Singapore.

Like everyone else, Australians are of the opinion that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. The difference is just that Australians seem to think that they are already on that other side of the fence. I'm not so sure that is completely the case.

As I sarcastically commented upon the price for transportation from the airport to downtown Perth, the driver mumbled something about that I should remember that Australia is a huge country, and that Perth is closer to the Moon than to Sydney.

I remain unconvinced that this was a relevant piece of information, or whether that is a fact or not. What IS a fact, though, is that Perth is located so far away from the rest of the world, that they seem to have no idea there's a world-wide financial meltdown going on. So here in Perth they still build skyscrapers and keep investing all the money they may or may not have. And to do this, they need lots of people to help them with construction work of all kinds. This means that backpackers from all over, desperate to make money on their Work Holiday Visa, are arriving in Perth like never before. And this, in turn, meant that I had a hard time finding anywhere to stay here. All the hostels were full, and I'm not really into five star hotels.

So, now I stay at the decidedly worst hole of a hostel I've ever encountered, except for that one time when I shared a room, and eventually a bed, with three rats in a little village on Java. And it's not even cheap! It IS dirty, however. And right in the middle of Perth. As flash as a rat with a gold tooth, as the Australians say.

We are few actual travelers staying there. I've met three so far, including myself. The rest are people who work long hours, and for the rest of the time sit in front of a TV, completely mentally gone. Oh, and there's a room full of Asians, more of them than there are square meters in the room, I think. They also pay way too much for the room, but in return they have not had to show their papers to the receptionist. Or tell anyone where they're actually from. Wherever that is, I am pretty sure that now they have more items in their beds than they ever owned at home. It's a complete mess.

We're not allowed to access the third floor. "It's too dangerous, the floors may collapse at any moment! If you go there, you will be evicted from the hostel!", the manager says. And then he goes up there. I'm just guessing, but could the floor house an urban marihuana farm, perhaps?

So now I'm doing all I can to get away from Perth, as supposedly it's easier to find a decent place to stay anywhere but here. I'll leave on a bus north to Kalbarri tomorrow morning, so I'm fine.

Yesterday I visited the Western Australian Museum and learned about the sand frog, which lives in the Great Sandy Desert, which sounds just about right. It's a fat frog, apparently, but 50 % of its body weight is "fairly dilute urine" housed inside one of the most impressive bladders of the whole animal kingdom. So, if you're lost in the desert and thirsty, just get yourself one of these, make a hole and squeeze out your frog juice! Yummy!

If there's anything else you'd like to know about survival in Australia, just wait for more blog entries and learn!

#8D)

Changeapore

2008-11-09T15:21:00.003+01:00

After I visited Singapore 11 years ago (!), I wrote that I would probably never return to this place. And right I was, because Singapore of today is not at all like what it was back then!

Not only have people bought themselves new cell phones, they have also gained a LOT of weight! Several times I've been sitting at the metro here and thought that the person next to me must have fallen asleep, when it turned out that they were simply so obese that they snore even when awake. Have you seen "The March of the Penguin"? You know, the movie where masses of penguins come waddling across the ice, walking from the coast where they have become fat by eating fish, while others had to stay on the ice and hatch the new batch of chicks? Well, the sidewalks in Singapore look much like that.

It struck me when I and the Singaporeans were about to walk across the street when the green man said so. Last time I visited I was very much impressed by the efficiency of the local walkers. Now they have forgotten everything about walking in a big city. They slowly amble along,seemingly at random, with no coordinated direction or pace. When the two groups meet in the middle of a road that needs to be crossed, it often ends in disaster. People crash into each other, and some will fall over, onto their back, unable to regain a standing position. Sometimes cranes have to be brought in to remedy the situation. It's a sad sight. The Burger King here sells four storey Whoppers. Now, if that's not a sign of a nation in decline, I don't know what is.

Oh, and that whole thing with waiting for a green man before you cross the street? That was something that people took seriously eleven years ago. Snipers on the rooftops would kill of anyone that walked on red back then. So people waited for the green man, even when the nearest car was somewhere on the other side of India. Now? They just walk if they feel like it. I have seen no police around to convince people to do otherwise, and there are no more signs around warning about ginormous fines for offences like that. A sad development, in deed.

But there's one street that is easy and safe to walk across. Not to brag, but I believe that the street where my hotel is located hosts the best prostitutes in all of Singapore. I can't tell by looking at THEM (they all look the same to me, try your luck at AllLookSame.com if you think you can do any better), but the constant still-standing traffic, consisting mainly of single, sad-looking men, tells me everything I need to know. They are there 24 hours a day.

There are lots of 24 hour things around. For instance 24 hour suits. At first I thought they might be good hotel rooms for prostitutes. They're not. That will be 3 hour suits. 24 hour suits are really cheep clothes for business men. By the looks of them, 24 hours is not how long it takes to make them, but how long they will last before they fall apart. But hey, they're cheap!

Did I mention that people in Singapore are poor walkers? They slowly glide down the sidewalks, often stopping completely, forcing me to walk straight into them. The only way they can get going again is by pushing a button inside their nostrils. It's true! Or maybe not, but the fact of the matter is that people here pick their noses a lot, particularly while walking outside. Which reminds me of a joke I heard recently: My wife said that picking nose is disgusting, so now I have to do it myself. Oh well, enough of that.

I've been to many strange sights during the last three days, but the National Museum of Art brought the weirdest experience. I was really sweaty and foul-smelling after a long day of walking, and had planned to just pop by the museum on my way back to the hotel. It turned out that there was an official reception there, because a new exhibition of Korean artists was opening. The ambassador of Korea greeted me eagerly and pulled me over to a table where he told me to help myself to some grilled pig testicles and a large ration of butterfly larvae that had not yet suffered their deaths. Apart from that there were lots of nice things to look at there, some of them wearing cocktail dresses.

Anyway, there's lots more to tell about Singapore. I may tell you later, but now I'm going to the hotel to pack, and tomorrow morning I'm off to Perth, Australia!

Singalong

2008-11-06T16:25:00.002+01:00

I've made it to Singapore, and so far everything has gone according to my non-existent plan. There has been only one minor obstacle, and that was this question on the immigration form to Singapore: "Have you ever been to Africa or South America during the last six days?"

Well, I "have been to South America and Africa ever" since the very first time I went to South America, a long time ago. Still, I decided to answer "No", since I figured that would increase my chances of being allowed entrance to Singapore. I have no idea why they would ask that question anyway. Maybe no one from Singapore have ever been there themselves, so if anyone could please tell them what it's like there, and whether maybe the Africans and South Americans would be interested in cheap electronics and plastics, they'd be very interested to hear about it? Maybe.

Yesterday was spent in London. I had eight hours to kill between the plane from Oslo and the plane to Singapore, so I took the underground to the city centre. A day pass on the entire underground network costs just 7 pounds, so it's a cheap option to waiting and eating at the airport.

Somehow I made my way to the Museum of Natural History. It's a charmingly dusty place, at least in the sections that aren't very new and/or popular. And the building itself is a gem. Lots of nooks and crannies for living spiders to hide in between their spider-web design sessions. And lots of interesting tidbits of information to discover on small signs all over the place. For instance, how do crabs go about reproducing, when the naughty bits of the female crab are hidden under a robust shell? Well, it turns out that the male crab will closely follow the female, often for several weeks, doing everything it can in order to make the female start ousting her shell. He's more than happy to help her out of her old shell, and when he finally succeeds, he'll be quick and do his business before the new shell hardens! In my experience, this is a fairly accurate description of how many men has to work in order to get their chosen women out of their pants!

I'll be off to work on my jetlag now, but I'm sure I'll be back with more interesting details about life in Singapore soon. For now, all I know is that there are many women in Singapore hanging around my hotel, and they have very little in common with crabs, it appears. (They may very well HAVE the crabs, though!) It's a real struggle to make my way into the hotel without at least one of them latching on to me. Some genius created this site to let you calculate how many five-year-olds you probably could survive a fight with. I reckon they should make a similar test regarding Singaporean prostitutes.

Bye for now!

Koalas and such

2008-10-27T14:46:00.004+01:00

Finally! I bought my plane ticket (Oslo - Singapore - Perth - Sydney - Oslo) and I got my visa to Australia. Now, if British Airways can just avoid bankruptcy for a few more weeks, I'll be happily traveling again. Hooray!

And it's a real trip, too. Ten weeks! I visited Australia briefly back in 1998, but that time I just stayed on the well-beaten backpacker trail. This time I hope to go slower and see a different kind of places, mainly in Western Australia and Tasmania. If you're a regular reader of this blog and you live somewhere interesting in Australia, this is your chance to let me sleep on your couch! #8D) I promise to behave and discuss only safe stuff like politics and religion, which I know you Ozzies couldn't care less about, while I'll specifically not say anything at all about more explosive matters, like sports and beers!

Here are some other rules I will live by in order to survive:

1. Never ever put my hand down any hole or opening whatsoever. Inside there will always be some fierce, lethally venomous creature with sharp, long teeth.

2. Never ever try to talk using Australian slang. Unless I feel like getting into a physical fight. I will only listen, not speak. Australians use weird words and expressions, and it's really easy to say something that will offend someone. But I look forward to being offended myself, in creative ways. "I wouldn't piss in your ear even if your brain was on fire!" Subtle, eh? Or "Your sense of humour is drier than a Pommie's (an Englishman's) towel!" Australians are more than happy to indicate that the English do not wash very often.

3. Never ever walk anywhere without bringing a good map. It can be days between each time I find someone to ask directions from. I'd be likely to soon end up in more trouble than a one-legged frog in a snake pit, as they say down-under.

So, this sounds promising, don't you think?

I reckon I will soon enough learn much more about this strange island/country/continent. Just keep reading this blog and I'll let you in on the secrets little by little. I'm particularly sure I'll discover fascinating details about Australian animals. They come in three categories: Venomous, strange and sheep. From among the many strange animals, today I'll tell you a few things about the koala. Or the koala bear, as the English say, because when they first saw this furry, arboreal marsupial, they just reckoned it had to be some kind of teddybear. They can't possibly have checked very carefully.

All I learned about koalas during my last visit to Australia, was that at least one of them did not at all enjoy having his back stroked tenderly, and it would signal this dislike by making sounds that I until then had only heard from freighter trains, and by slashing innocent bystanders bloody with its claws. That's all you need to know to understand that you should keep your distance from koalas. Nevertheless, here are some more facts about the physiology of koalas:

The male koala has a two-pronged penis! And that is not because it might come in handy to have a spare penis, but because the female koala has two vaginas, and female koalas are no less demanding than, say, Madonna. Food and sex is therefore all that is on a koala's mind, simply because there is not room for anything else. The brain of a koala constitutes only 0,2 percent of its body weight. This means that the brain of a typical, ten kilogram koala weighs in at only 20 grams! This ranks it somewhere between a squirrel and a cat, animals that of course are substantially smaller than a koala.

It also means that if we accept the estimate that the koala population on the planet right now is about 100 000 animals, there's only about two tons of koala brains left. The koalas may not be threatened by extinction anymore, but the outlook for any koala zombies isn't too good.

When a koala baby, a joey, is born, it is blind, has no ears and no fur. All it is capable of is to crawl into the pouch of its mother, where it finds a teat to entertain itself with for the next six months or so. During that time the joey develops eyes, ears and fur. Eventually it grows too large for the pouch.

The transition to life on the outside is a major one. Not only will the infant have to hold on for its life to its mother's back instead of being safely inside the pouch. There's no more milk to be had either. From now on the diet will be excrements from the mother! Or maybe it's not exactly excrements, but it sure comes from a section of the same factory. Somewhere inside the mother's caecum/appendix, pap, a strange substance full of bacteria is created, and as it leaves the mother's butt, it becomes food for the child. The young one must eat this stuff in order to acquire certain bacteria. You see, koalas eat eucalyptus leaves, but koalas can not themselves break down those leaves into energy. The bacterias do this job for them.

Appendicitis is not a welcome disorder among koalas, as you may imagine.

That will have to do as a foretaste of what incredible pieces of information that are to come this way. I don't know about you, but I am very much looking forward to this trip!

About Travel Writing

2008-09-20T17:54:00.005+02:00

Maybe modern day books like "One for the Road" can be called travel journals, but I'm not sure. Something has changed. The age of the classical travel journal seems to have passed.

Marco Polo had an easy job amazing his temporary Europeans with tales from the Far East. He mentions a place "so far to the North that the Polar star shines from the south", and he talks about a forest inhabited by myriads of unicorns. To us these claims are clearly just lies. Back in his time, however, although many doubted him, no one could prove him wrong.

Likewise, few questioned the "slightly biased" reports given by early jungle-bound Europeans who wrote home about the pure, godless evils of cannibals and head-hunters hiding deep in the green wilderness. Even our own grandparents willingly brag about the dangerous odysseys they went through just to get to school. Oh, the beauty of accounts that cannot be verified!

Today, however, a trip to remote regions is no longer just for reckless people who are willing to risk their lives to experience something different. Pretty much anyone with four weeks to spend can find out for themselves what life is like at the Mount Everest Base Camp. On any given day in January there are almost as many American and European retirees on the beaches of Antarctica as there are penguins. Even Outer Space receives its share of flabby, filthy rich tourists these days.

Hence, a travel journal today must do something more than to astound, to glorify and to mystify. Instead the writing must be both informative and entertaining, and it must just as much take the reader on a journey through the author's mind as through the locations he or she visits. If it leads to a more wide-spread understanding of the world still being a diverse and place full of problems that needs to be solved, that's excellent.

To achieve this understanding, the author must travel at a slow pace, much like the way young and well-off Europeans did when they sought out formative travel experiences a century or two ago. Their mission was to familiarize themselves with the foundations of their culture, and they did this by going to historical places around the Mediterranean Sea.

The difference between then and now is that we can and must do better. It is no longer enough to visit the places that shaped our civilization, to where the old Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, French, and British performed their art and fought their wars. To see, describe and realize what we could have become, if history had played out differently, that is the challenge for modern day travel writers.

I put forward that travel writing has turned into a branch of philosophy, or at least that modern day travel book authors should try to dig deeper into what he or she sees than what has typically been the case until now.

My travels have gradually become a way to create some distance to my life at home. It's a space that lets me compare my everyday concerns with real problems, problems on a scale rarely seen in my own country.

It's a wake-up call to see a boy on a skateboard not because he thinks it's great fun, but because he lost his feet when he stepped on a land mine, and there just is no wheelchair for him. You learn something from going to a shop where loudspeakers are installed not to play sales-inducing muzak, but because they need to be able to inform customers that the price of bread has risen again, for the third time that day. It is scary to visit a region where 35 percent is not the share of the population who can't be bothered to vote, but how many of those between 14 and 30 years of age who are infected by HIV. In surroundings like that, you may discover that your worries are not really problems at all.

To those of us who live in one of the sweet spots of planet Earth, it's all too easy to think that it's other people's faults and our own merits that have made some places good and other places not so good. After having traveled a bit, I think the most important lesson I've learnt is this: Nothing in the world is fair, and just because some of us have won the lottery, it doesn't mean we can allow ourselves to ignore all the problems we don't encounter at home.

Although I certainly prefer a cheery tone and funny observations to tales of doom and gloom, I hope that travel writers now and in the future will point out this unfairness of the world to their readers. The world is becoming a smaller village every day, and we need to understand what goes on around the increasingly closer corner.

Both travel writing and journeys we make on our own can and should help us improve this understanding.

The Jotunheimen Pixel Trail

2008-08-13T23:12:00.003+02:00

Hi to you all!

It took longer than usual to finish the photo set from the Jotunheimstien hike I did in July. You see, I've bought a new PC. And this PC is so fast that suddenly I find it worth the while to spend twice as long on tweaking every photo than what I did before. In addition to this, the new PC is so fast that it is more tempting to spend my days pretending to be a high-resolution rally car driver risking my virtual life on narrow roads, than it is to entertain the world with my vacation photos.

But finally the photos are here. Or more specifically, here. I'm not so sure that all of them are worth the 3-4 kilometres I on average had to walk to get them, but I supposed they will have to do. In many ways it was a nicer trip than I had expected it to be, and suddenly I'm in better shape than I've been in for a long time. Which is good, of course.

These days I'm working again, and I don't know neither when nor to where my next trip will take me. But I promise you one thing: Wherever I'll be going next, I'll go there by motorized means, and not on foot! #8D)

Mission accomplished!

2008-07-30T19:49:00.003+02:00

Somehow I seem to have completed my hike! I'm not sure how it happened, but after 11 walking days I found myself at Lake Gjende and the end of the looong trail. Hopefully more memories from this epic walk will come back to me as I go through the photos from the trip, but judging from the appearance of my feet, I think it's safe to say that it was a tough walk.

I was this happy to arrive:
Unfortunately, that's all I can show you here. It's so hot in Oslo now that I'm wearing an icebag on my head to survive. The combination of the amazingly long beard and the turban-like headwear makes me look like a, well, suspicious person, so since I may want to fly internationally again someday, I suppose it's best to not have that image of me floating around on the Internet. And I WILL fly internationally again. If this walk has taught me anything, it's that distances of more than 300 kilometers should not be walked!

I'll be back with some photos from the trip soon. I just wanted to tell you all that I'm alive. #8D)

See you!

Oh dear...

2008-07-22T00:35:00.002+02:00

Yup.

I've just grown a new layer of skin to replace the lost bits from my last hike, and if I kick my big toe against something hard, it's almost as if I've regained some of the feeling inside it. So I guess it's time to head for the woods again. Lots of path left to do before I reach the Jotunheimen National Park.

The weather forecast is excellent, so I hope to reach Kittilbua, a place just north of Lillehammer, by the weekend that comes. To increase my chances, I've filled my backpack more sensibly this time. I took out some of the biggest books from last time, and I'm packing food for just 4 days. (And chocolate for a week, of course.) And as if that wasn't enough, I've even trimmed my toenails, and I've been to the hairdresser and cut down a bit on the hair on and near the top of my head.

This means I won't be around to answer any e-mails the coming week. Google.com will try to fill in for me, so head over there if there's anything you wonder about.

See you in a hundred miles or so!

Bjørn

Travels in the Interior of Africa

2008-07-14T16:00:00.004+02:00

In 1799, Scottish explorer Mungo Park wrote a book with the same title. I read it before going to The Gambia in November 2007. Its description of the lack of resources in the country made me prepare for my trip by adding somewhat to my body mass. The book also offered some practical advice. I would apparently be wise to "bring lots of guns and ammunition", and I should avoid camping near the natives. Not an easy task in Africa's smallest country.

Of course, much has changed during the two centuries since Mr. Park visited, but if you want to leave the hotel strip on the coast, visiting The Gambia can be quite strenuous, even today. "Come and mostly enjoy our edible foods", reads a restaurant advertisement in Banjul, the Gambian capital. Well put, I have to say.

Banjul can be a scary place to visit, especially after dark. Not because of the crime rate. The man in absolute charge of the country for the last decade and a half, President Jammeh, knows that if people had weapons, they would use them on him. So as a tourist, there's not much reason to fear the people of Gambia. Unfortunately, due to poverty and a limited supply of electricity, after dark in Banjul really means in the dark. Add open sewers to that, and you get a city where walking around at night can be rather risky.

I decided to leave the capital and go up the river. There was no public transportation by boat available, so this meant I had to travel by car. I spent two full days doing so, although I wasn't actually moving for more than about six or seven hours. This took me just 120 kilometers inland, but it left me feeling as if I had crossed the continent. And I was a world away from the tourist beaches on the coast. The journey didn't cost much, apart from some blood, sweat and tears - and lots and lots of patience.

From Banjul, you first have to go to Bundung Garage in Serrekunda. There are no scheduled buses in The Gambia, hence there are no bus terminals either. Instead they have bush taxis. These vehicles are usually in a condition that makes it sensible to call the place where their passengers can find them, "Something Garage". You have to be there early in the morning because that's when the bush taxis leave. I wasn't going very far (by any non-Gambian standards), so I figured that leaving around noon would be suitable. I was wrong.

At the garage, I found a 30-seat vehicle waiting for more passengers. The driver needed an additional 25 before he would find it environmentally or, more probable, economically sensible to set off. One hour later we were still 25 short. I sort of gave up on getting anywhere that day, but I stayed put. In a poor country like The Gambia, you can't really comfortably walk around and look at how people live. But you can sit and wait for a bus that will never leave, and simultaneously look at how people live.

I was the only ghost face around, and the locals found much entertainment in me. They kept pointing at me and telling funny facts about foreigners to each other. The children would sneak up on me and caress the "fur" on my forearms. To many of them I must have been the first monkey man they could experiment with at such close range. I guess evolution long ago removed all heat-inducing mechanisms, including body hair, from the Gambian gene pool.

The driver spent the day sitting in the shadow of his car, chatting, drinking hot tea and smoking marijuana. His name was Sambo Dumbo, and I'm not even making that up!

Among my co-waiters were two old women who were coughing in a most tuberculous way. In the end I concluded that getting in that car would probably kill me one way or the other. So I didn't. Instead, I went back to the beach for a late afternoon swim, and I promised myself to get up earlier the next day.

This worked out well. When I returned at dawn, the car was still there, but the driver had been replaced with a more sober one. The two old women had probably died during the night. At least they were gone. At eight o'clock we had a full car and got going. That's when I discovered that the ticket was cheap enough that I could have bought all the tickets the day before and had the bus take off whenever I wanted to. Of course, demonstrating my relatively speaking insane economical powers like that, would not be to show good manners.

We drove for a full three minutes before the driver stopped at another garage. Our tires desperately needed more air. I'm not entirely sure why he couldn't have arranged that during the day and a half he had been waiting for passengers, but there may well have been a good reason for it. Maybe. Then we drove for another five minutes before we stopped for fuel. For the rest of the drive, we also stopped every thirty minutes or so, to fill up on water for the car radiator. I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm just saying that going by bush taxi in The Gambia isn't necessarily a quick way to get around.

In some countries, the traffic is so bad that your chances of survival are best if you sit in the back of any moving vehicle. In The Gambia, I figured I would be better off bribing the driver with a dollar or so to get the seat next to him. That's the only way I could have a good view of what went on outside. It was completely safe. The driving was so slow that there was no risk of a collision with anything bigger than a snail.

That said, we DID drive off the road more or less all the time. But that was just because ironically, the road conditions were most of the time better there than on the actual road. It's just ridiculous how bad the roads are in The Gambia. The only place a pedestrian there can feel safe is in the craters in the middle of the roads! Gambian stray dogs seemed to know this. They spent their days sleeping on the road, waiting for night to come, when they would wake up and start their tireless howling.

Anyway, I sat in the front where I could see what The Gambia was like. It's a flat country. All I saw was what was on or right next to the road, which wasn't much. At least I learned that most people appeared to spend their days sitting in the shadows of trees, scowling at the occasional passing car that showered them in a red cloud of dirt and sand. The locals weren't difficult to cheer up, though. All I had to do was look like a badly sunburned whitey and wave at them, and they would immediately beam their white teeth in a smile back at me.

The numerous police and roadside soldiers didn't smile much. Typically because it had been seventeen months or something like that since the President last paid them their salary. They did, of course, need some money to survive, so they cashed in on just about every vehicle that passed by. They didn't want much, but they took their time getting it. It seriously delayed our progress.

I had been warned about this, so I had brought some small notes to pay the various fines I was given. The crimes I committed ranged from sitting with my backpack in my lap to not being able to explain exactly which coastal village in northern Norway I had been born in. Soon I didn't bother with putting away my passport and my yellow fever vaccination card, as I was asked to show them at every stop we were forced to make.

I soon was taught not to photograph anyone wearing a uniform. They're not that photogenic anyway, but the main reason to refrain from doing so, the driver told me, was that I risked being arrested. Apparently, taking photographs of the police is what a spy will do. And although I can't imagine why a spy would photograph the slumbering, corrupt police of The Gambia, this would probably not keep me out of jail. And there are better ways to spend your time in The Gambia than in one of the local jail cells. On the other hand, there are certainly worse alternatives as well, but I'll save that for another story.

Briefly, a relatively short ride in a Gambian bush taxi can be quite eventful, in an extremely slow kind of way. I do recommend it, at least as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

If you want to see more photos and read about travelling in The Gambia and Senegal, please visit my West Africa gallery.

(This article is my own work, and it featured on the Boots'n All Web site in May 2008.)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Without a Backpack

2008-07-13T13:58:00.000+02:00

Ah! One week after returning from the first leg of my walk to the mountains, I still very much enjoy being at home. It's not quite as wonderful as the first few seconds after you take off your heavy backpack, when you positively feel that you need to hold on to something in order not to float up towards the sky and disappear. But it's really, _really_ nice to be home, where all kinds of everyday luxuries are within my grasp at any time.

Anyway, on the map to the right you can see how far I've made it:

So there's plenty of walking left to do, and I will do it as soon as the weather forecast promises at least five days in a row with no rain.

While I'm waiting, I'm working on some writing and I've prepared the photographs from the trip. Feel free to have a look. Please note how I'm transformed between photos 1 and 45, from being a walking deodorant commercial into a sweaty bastard with no will to live. Highly entertaining, in retrospect.

I hope you all enjoy your summer as much as I do!

Will I ever walk again?

2008-07-06T20:00:00.001+02:00

Like a normal human being, I mean. Or should I just resign to the fact that my theme song from now on will be Genesis' "I can't dance" ("I can't dance, I can't talk. Only thing about me is the way I walk.")? Here's how I've gotten around during the last couple of days:

1. From a sitting position on the ground, I put my feet together with the weight on the outside of my soles. Pushing hard with my hands I get into a crouching position, from where I whimper as I slowly straighten my body upwards.

2. Slowly, slowly, I distribute my weight across the full area of the soles of my feet. It hurts tremendously!

3. For about ten steps I stagger ahead like a very old man (I would say like an 80 years old man, but that would be an insult to the 81-year-old who swiftly walked past me in the woods two days ago) on his way towards his walking aid.

4. After ten seconds or so, some kind of internal painkiller system kicks in, and I can almost start walking like I used to, you know, back when I had not yet started on this hike. If I stop for a few seconds, though, the pain is back, after which I'm likely to start shouting bad words at the innocent trees around me.

Anyway, due to bad weather, a desperate need of a camera battery recharge, many lessons learned about efficient packing AND, I'll admit, some minor body malfunctions (see above), I've taken a break from my hike. At a spot about 120 kilometers into the 320 kilometer walk, I was just five kilometres away from public transportation that could take me back home. It was a most convenient place to take a break.

It's been a great hike this far, and I've learned a lot from it:

* Anyone voluntarily going on a hike like this must either be mad, in absolutely superb shape, or not at all have understood what lies ahead of them. Hundreds of miles/kilometers of walking through what is basically wilderness is durn hard work!

* Efficient packing is crucial when you have to carry on your back everything you need for a number of days. I'm still no expert, but I've learnt a thing or two by now. For instance, there's no point in carrying several bricks made of paper that you intend to read before you go to sleep in the evening. What happens as soon as you've put up your tent and eaten your dinner is that you collapse into unconsciousness inside your sleeping bag.

* July may not be the best month for multi-day hikes in the forests of southern Norway. Most of the snow in the mountains has melted already, and there's little rain. This means it can be difficult to find streams with potable water. It's fairly warm weather, so you may have to carry a LOT of water on your back. Or you have to resort to drinking Chateaux de Lemmingcorpse or Eau de Shit de Sheep, i.e. brownish marsh water. (Not recommended.)

* Usually when vampire bats attack in the middle of the Norwegian woods with a loud shriek, they're not really vampire bats at all, but just the mattress I carry on top of my backpack, scratching a branch that hangs across the path.

All this is valuable pieces of information that I will find great use of as soon as I return to my walk in the woods in a few days (hopefully).

Happy trails!

Bjørn

Does the Bear shit in the woods?

2008-06-30T20:57:00.000+02:00

Well, not right now but apparently I'm soon going to. (To any new readers; my name, Bjørn, translates to Bear in English. *Growl*)

Yep. I'll walk that thin, red line on the map. I'm not sure how far it is, but when a walk is visible on a map of that scale, you just know there will be some blisters involved. I'll begin in downtown Oslo, and if everything goes way better than expected, two weeks or so later I may be in Jotunheimen National Park, "The Realm of the Giants", in the mountainous middle of Norway.

The first half is basically a walk in the woods. Do read Bill Bryson's masterpiece from a similar journey to understand what I may experience there. Then there's a road to be crossed, and if I'm not run over by a car then, the second half will be a walk in the mountains. I expect to see more elks and reindeer than people during this trip. I also expect to smell more like an elk than like a human being by the end of the walk.

So, why would anyone in their right mind do something like this? Well, don't ask me! But personally I do it mainly for these reasons;

1. To figure out whether I actually can do it. If so, there's a number of similar walks in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Nepal and elsewhere I'd really like to put myself through.

2. To tremendously enjoy returning home afterwards. Being deprived of all kinds of luxuries that just don't fit into a backpack for a while, makes you appreciate them so much more when you regain access to them.

3. To eat at least five kilograms of chocolate in the month following my return, without experiencing any feelings of guilt whatsoever!

A complete lack of Internet access is only one of the many qualities of Norwegian wilderness I will enjoy while I'm out there. Hence there will be no blogging from the backwoods. I'll try to make up for it when I return. If I return.

Happy trails!

Bjørn

Ps: Here's a more detailed map, so you know where to look for me in the unlikely event that I decide to settle down somewhere along the route:

Maltastic!

2008-05-25T22:51:00.000+02:00

So, since my last blog entry, I've visited Malta. Which was nice, and I have the photos to prove it.
I'll post a full review of the trip sooner or later, but let me just say that Malta isn't the most exciting country I've visited. It's so tiny that I walked across it several times, sometimes not even on purpose. This is not a bad thing in itself, but when you add four hundred thousand inhabitants to it, it gets sort of crowded. Which is not good, in my book.

I figured it might be a Gibraltar-like place. You know, a distinctly British heritage, English spoken everywhere, a piece of Northern Europe, only with palm trees. But it isn't. Instead it's a strange mix of Arab and Italian culture, and the locals don't speak much English unless it is to give directions to a silly tourist. And the names of places are so far away from English as they possibly could.

You may very well finding yourself being a silly tourist asking a local how you can get to the corner of Ix-Xatt Ta'Xbiexi and Triq Gorg Borg Olivier. Oh, and there's a dot over the g's, which means they're not really g's either. Good luck. Fortunately the country is so small that even when you go to the wrong place, you'll be quite close to where you meant to be anyway.

I'll just add that if you go there: Beware of the Kinnie! Maybe I'll explain why later, but for now, enjoy the photos!

On going solo

2008-05-09T21:35:00.001+02:00

The following useful article is more or less an excerpt from my book One for the Road. It's a travel book intended to be read as a novel, although there's also lots of useful information for travelers in it.

Fate sometimes hands out a chance to carry out your travel dreams. Maybe you finish school and land a job set to begin a few months into the future. Or maybe you work in a company that struggles to survive, and suddenly one day you're offered financial compensation if you're willing to leave your job. Perhaps you inherit some money. No matter how it happens, suddenly you have the opportunity to leave home for a while, and you know that it's now or never.

Unfortunately, when opportunity knocks like that, it often does so only for you, and not for those of your friends who you might have preferred to share the experience with. So you have to choose. Are you going on your own, or will you stay at home and buy yourself a new couch instead?

There's an easy answer to that question. Especially if you ask others what they think you should do. Your friends envy you because you can do something they can't. Besides, they like to have you around, they don't want you to leave and be gone for a long time. And your family don't want you to end your days inside an anaconda or beheaded in a ditch somewhere in foreign parts where dangerous stuff like that probably happens all the time. Suspecting that you may regret this some day, not next week, but in ten years or so, you end up going to IKEA instead of to Guinea. And you will regret it.

Of course, in many ways it is better to travel with someone, I won't even bother with listing the arguments supporting that view. But before you cancel your travel plans just because you don't have anyone to go with, you should know that starting on a journey alone doesn't mean that you will stay alone while on the road. Backpackers are gregarious animals. They embark upon new friendships as soon as the opportunity presents itself. And it does. All the time.

Sleeping in dormitories automatically lead to conversations with those you share a room with. If you go on day trips organized by the hostel you stay at, before the day is over you will have as many new friends as there are seats in the minibus used for the trip. Or more.

Should you ever find yourself completely bewildered at a bus station in Syktyvkar, Pokhara, Cuzco, Cairns or Kampala, soon enough there will be two of you, and the most natural thing in the world for you both will be to start talking and help each other solve the mystery of the lost ticket office. It's more than likely that you're both heading in the same direction. If not, you will still meet again four weeks later with a hug on a street corner in Hanoi. This, in turn, will lead to annual Christmas cards and a free couch to stay on in London two years later. Maybe you marry the person. Nobody knows what putting a backpack on and traveling the world may lead to. As long as you stay on or near the backpacker highways, loneliness will simply not be an option.

Should you ever feel lonely, just get on a bus!

If one of your reasons for traveling is to meet new people, you should definitely travel alone. Maybe you're not the most extrovert person at home, where you have your friends, family and daily tasks to rely on. That doesn't mean much. When you travel on your own in foreign countries, you'll be surprised by how easily you start talking to strangers. Really. Because that's what humans are designed to do. You may just have to get away from your sheltered home to discover it.

Another bonus is all the time you save when you travel without company. Expect a significant decrease in the number of hours spent waiting for someone to finish in the bathroom, buying fridge magnets or new clothes. Those hours are instead yours to spend on doing exactly what you want to the most. Enjoy!

Your gender doesn't change any of this. Many countries and regions, actually most of them, are as safe to travel in as your home ground. You should take the same precautions everywhere, whether you're at home or traveling. Look after yourself and follow the advice you get from guidebooks and from everyone you meet on your way.
Sometimes, even when it's safe to travel alone, you may need someone to travel with to share the cost of hiring a car and a driver, or something like that. When this happens, just post a note on a hostel notice board. Write where and when you would like to go and include some information about who you are. Or you can simply get in touch with someone who already has put up a note.

If you want to be absolutely certain that you won't be traveling alone, there's a wide range of tour operators that are more than willing to help you. "Overland tours" and other expeditions by bus along popular backpacker routes can get you many places, and they will probably offer you more company than you really need. Still, too much is maybe better than nothing, so there you go.

These tour operators will let you spend weeks or months on tours with intriguing names like "The Great Andean Adventure", "Surf & Drink Australia" or "The Silk Road in a Pink Bus". You pay more than you would have if you traveled on your own, but in return you don't have to plan or arrange anything yourself. On the bus you meet lots of people. Some you will like, some you won't, and you will probably not have to be alone for a second throughout the whole trip.

If you're not quite brave enough to travel on your own, a trip like that can be an excellent way to get your life as a traveler started. You will see most of what the brochures promise, and there's no doubt that you will have some great experiences. What you don't get is the freedom to stay longer in the places you fall in love with. You will miss that freedom. Often. Still, if your alternatives are either to travel with a group like that or not to travel at all, go with the group!

On Snoring

2008-04-06T20:04:00.000+02:00

The following useful article is more or less an excerpt from my book One for the Road. It's a travel book intended to be read as a novel, although there's lots of useful information for travellers in it.

I consider myself a defender of all basic human rights. There's only one committable crime for which I support the use of capital punishment; No mercy can be given to those who choose to sleep in hostel dormitories despite knowing that they are world-class snoring champions! Serious snorers must at night be kept away from innocent and silent sleepers. Even when confined to single rooms, they should stick to a sleeping position that minimizes the noise. If it's bad enough, a snoring sound can easily penetrate a wall. The offender could for instance try sleeping with his or her head in water, preferably face-down.

Lacking laws to protect us, we must seek out other ways to deal with snoring people. Here are some techniques you can use:

1. Always, but always, carry ear plugs in a pocket or container you have easy access to. While some snoring can penetrate ear plugs and thus only worsen the situation, ear plugs will in many cases dampen the noise enough to let you sleep. Practice sleeping while wearing ear plugs at home, as you have to get used to sweaty auditory canals and the sound of your own heartbeat.

2. Go to bed before the snoring person and fall asleep as quickly as you can. It helps if you spend the day getting really tired, as it will make your sleep deeper. Sooner or later the snoring will wake you up, but in theory you are then close to rested anyway, so you can consider the nasal blares to be your nasty wake-up call.

3. Keep an arsenal of small objects in or near your bed. The objects must be suitable for being thrown at the offender without injuring him permanently. (Although offenders can be of any gender, men are generally the worst.) Suitable projectiles are rolled-up socks, loaves of soft bread, rolls of toilet paper, empty plastic bottles, newspapers and large beetles, preferably dead ones. In the middle of the night it is too much of an effort to get out of bed and walk over to the offender to physically stop the snoring. Throwing objects at him can often work just as well, and it may simultaneously reward you with some much needed satisfaction.

4. If you lack hand missiles, you can go to the offender's bed, wake him up and ask the offender to sleep on his stomach. This is likely to stop the snoring. If you're sleeping in a bunk bed, though, and the snoring person is above you, there is another option available.

When the snoring commences, you simply kick upwards into the bottom of the offender's mattress. Adjust the force of your kick to the size of the receiver. I once failed to do so, and sent a modest-sized, snoring Singaporean flying onto a concrete floor from an altitude of two metres. Luckily he never understood what had happened. It was not a pleasant situation. For him, I mean. Ideally you should kick just hard enough to make the offender change his position. Keep on kicking until the noise is reduced to an acceptable level.

5. For various reasons you may wish to avoid physical contact with the offender. If so, you can direct a fine sprinkle of flour or sugar into his open mouth. This will invariably lead to the offender licking his lips without waking him up. Maybe he will even close his mouth. Either way, the shape of his respiratory passage will be altered. Continue until the snoring ceases. (And stop before breathing ceases.)

6. I can only recommend this last option when you know in advance that someone will snore in the night. Characteristics to look out for are obesity, breathing with an open mouth even when awake, and having bruises on the forehead from thrown plastic bottles or similar items.

What you do is to put itching powder in the bed or inside the sleeping bag of the suspect. When he goes to bed, he will not fall asleep. Instead he will spend the night itching and scratching himself. Who does not sleep, does not sin by snoring. But you will sleep well. (Unless he spends the night swearing loudly. Consider the possibility before you act.)

Unfortunately, not even all these excellent pieces of advice can guarantee you a good night's sleep. If you have other (and better) methods for securing your dormitory sleep, please inform me by commenting on this article.

Happy sleepy trails,

Bjørn

Bebrazzled!

2008-04-01T22:57:00.000+02:00

Just a quick note to tell you that:

* I've just finished the Brazil gallery from my visit there last month. I'm quite pleased with it. If you like dead cows and graffiti (who doesn't?), you will probably easily waste five minutes having a look at the photographs.

* My book is doing rather well, considering my non-existent marketing budget. It took a couple of years to sell 500 copies of the Norwegian edition. It took only two weeks for a similar number of copies of the English edition to be downloaded! Judging from the number of e-mails I receive about the book, I think some of the free(down)loaders must have actually read the book as well!

* Funny guy and experienced travel book author Peter Moore was nice enough to link to and comment on the domain name of my travel book site.

There. That'll have to be enough good news for one posting! #8D)

Bjørn

Relating to malaria

2008-03-23T13:34:00.002+01:00

The following is more or less an excerpt from my book One for the Road. It's a travel book intended to be read as a novel, although there's lots of useful information for travellers in it.

This is my take on how to relate to malaria as a traveller. I am no doctor, and you should not seek out medical information on the Internet without discussing it with your physician. There's a lot of flawed information out there, even though it's usually posted in good faith. However, I live by these guidelines myself, and I do believe you should read and consider the following before you decide how you will avoid becoming a malaria victim.

Both malaria and malaria medication are at the same time scary and fascinating stuff. Malaria is an illness that affects half a billion people every year. It kills one, two or three million of them, depending on which source you believe. No other disease spreads more efficiently. We have tried many ways to stop it, but we just can't do it.

Exactly how and why malaria medicine works is still a mystery to science. Using it can to some people lead to psychedelic experiences recognizable only to the most eager flower children of 1968. Other users have been driven by the medicine to murder the person next to them on the bus, themselves or their families back home several years later. At least that's the claim of the rumours you constantly hear when you travel in tropical regions.

From Medieval Italian, "Mala aria" translates to "bad air". European explorers realized early on that there was a connection between the outbreak of the illness and staying in places with unmoving water and damp, moist air. These are of course places where mosquitos prosper. Still, as we all know, mosquitos don't limit themselves to pestering people near swamps and bogs. No, mosquitos are almost everywhere, and they're happy to attack not just humans. Apes, frogs, birds and large deer are some other favourite targets. If there's blood in a body they will go for it, whether they'll have to penetrate skin, feathers, fur or scales first.

The keenness of hunting mosquitos is possibly only eclipsed by the willingness of biologists to map the diversity of species on our planet. Somehow they have managed to identify more than three thousand different species of mosquitos! Some four hundred of the them belong to the anopheles branch of the mosquito family tree. These are the mosquitos who can carry the malaria parasites that make people sick. In some cases so sick that we die, other times only so sick that we wish we were dead. The risk of actually dying of malaria depends on which malaria parasite you are exposed to. There are four different kinds; vivax, malariae, ovale and falciparum. The last one is the one you really should worry about. It kills.

You may take slight comfort in the fact that to the mosquito, you are the carrier of the infection. In many ways it is just as correct to say that we infect the mosquitos with malaria as the other way around. Both human beings and mosquitos are slaves of the malaria parasite.

To outwit us in our attempts to eliminate them through the use of medicaments, the parasites use a complicated life cycle which begins and ends neither here nor there. To understand how it works, let's begin with a healthy, young and pregnant mosquito of the anopheles family. She, the poor thing, buzzes around in the air, desperately seeking just the tiniest amount of blood to ripen her eggs with. Sooner or later she finds what she seeks: A human. The person is probably sleeping, or maybe not. It doesn't matter. He won't see the mosquito anyway, as she sensibly hunts only in the dark.

The mosquito prepares its proboscis and plugs it into the human source of life-giving, thick, red liquid. Most often this is good for her. Other times, when the mosquito has picked a human that carries malaria, Miss Mosquito will leave its prey as an infected and soon to be sick insect.

Have you ever felt sorry for yourself after waking up in the morning with a pounding head and a dysfunctional stomach? Well, imagine how it would be to feel like that when your expected lifetime is about two weeks, and you know that you have to go to work today, no matter what. That's what it's like to be a mosquito with malaria.

The parasites acquired from the human blood stream find their way to the mosquito's stomach. If the temperature is at least 16 degrees Celsius both inside and outside the mosquito's body, the malaria parasites will start having massive orgies in there. As a result of all the passion, the rascals will melt together and fasten themselves as cysts to the walls of the stomach. We know precious little about what this feels like to the mosquito, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a triggering factor behind the suicidal behaviour often observed in mosquitos.

Sooner or later the cyst breaks, and the parasites again move through the fragile body of the mosquito. They meet up again near their host's salivary glands. The next time the mosquito strikes a human blood vessel, the parasites will accompany the chemicals that are injected into the human by the mosquito to keep the blood flowing. In a few seconds or minutes, the parasites will have reached the human liver.

There they calm down for at least eleven or twelve days. Some of them will remain dormant for a long time. Months and years can go by before they develop any further. Others will almost immediately start invading and destroying red blood cells as they spread through the human body and excrete poisons. The new carrier of the disease gets sick from the poisoning and must lie down, unable to defend him- or herself against the next bloodthirsty mosquito to come around. And there you are, the cycle is kept going, apparently forever and ever.

For obvious reasons, our battle against malaria has focused on eliminating only one of the two involved carriers of the parasite, namely the mosquito. Many methods are in use, everything from the universal, forceful pat on the mosquito's back, to mosquito nets, repellents, burning spirals and even extensive use of DDT in areas where they can't afford to stop using it. All these actions limit the spreading of malaria, but it's not at all enough to make neither mosquitos nor malaria parasites disappear from the planet. Unless we get rid of the mosquitos, we will not get rid of malaria. Therefore antimalarial drugs is something tropical travellers must relate to, whether they like it or not.

Fortunately there are many ways to avoid being infected by malaria. Sadly, the safest method is to stay in polar regions, preferably far away from any international airport. If you insist on going to the tropics, you will have to stay inside air-conditioned rooms and make sure that you keep your skin covered in a highly toxic liquid. This is hardly compatible with having memorable travel experiences.

If you want to go places where there's a real risk of meeting up with infected mosquitos, you can choose from a wide range of antimalarial drugs. This kind of medication will not stop malaria from entering your body. Instead it aims to prevent the parasites from developing the disease in your body. Sounds good? The problem is just that, well, actually there are several complicating factors.

The problem that should be of most interest to you, is that the medicine may not work at all. Every time we come up with a drug that kills malaria parasites, the parasites will sooner or later develop a strain that is resistant to our chemicals. If you read the small print that came with your medicine, you typically find that medicine X gives you seventy percent protection when travelling in area Y. Hmm. We're talking about life and death here. Your life. How many condoms would be sold if they were marketed like this: “With this thing on, only three out of ten women will become pregnant”? How popular would bungee-jumping be if the brochures on it said “Jump off this ridiculously tall bridge! (The bungee cord occasionally snaps)”? Not much, is my guess. But okay, if you know exactly where you're going and you have updated information on what strains of malaria parasites are at large there right now, you can find a drug that will give you decent protection.

Then comes the second problem, which is also the reason why we will never get rid of malaria completely. Medicine that actually works is expensive. To poor people they are prohibitively expensive, and even to a tourist on a long-lasting trip the cost can be harder to swallow than the pills themselves, as the medicine must be taken both before, during and after the duration of the trip. Two weeks of travelling may mean seven weeks on drugs. If you travel on a limited budget, you may end up spending more money on protecting yourself against malaria than on food or accommodation.

Some of the drugs, typically those that actually work, can only be used for a limited amount of time before to continue taking them becomes seriously harmful to your body. These medicines will of course never be an option for those who live permanently in malaria areas. And there are plenty who do, so the parasites will for a long time to come have lots of victims to attack.

The high price of the medicine may be related to the third problem, namely the many potential side effects. The pharmaceutical giants must pay good money to print the pamphlets that accompany the pill bottles, where all known side effects of the medicines are listed. In addition I guess the companies have to pay an army of lawyers for their assistance as new side effects present themselves.

The number of identified side effects from taking normal antimalarial drugs is vast. Your skin may become more sensitive to sun, which isn't really that dangerous, but neither is it desirable when the reason you take the pills is because you're going to the tropics. You may experience nausea and vomiting, cramps, rashes, loss of hair, an irregular heartbeat and dizziness. You lose your balance, and in return you just get paranoia and problems with sleeping, often due to frantic nightmares. If you're really unlucky, the medicine can give you anxiety attacks and psychotic reactions. That another side effect is depression can hardly come as a surprise. Tragically, it has also been documented that individuals have been driven to clinical madness and suicide after taking some of these drugs. Because the chemicals are active and stay in the blood for a long time, the side effects can be experienced for several months after you stop taking the pills.

Fortunately only a few people experience the most severe side effects. It's still easy to be scared off by the long list of worst case possibilities. Especially when at the same time you know that no one really understands why or how the medicine works. The chemicals used to make the drugs have been extracted from various rainforest plants. I can imagine how a witch doctor with a feather hat and an eerie wooden mask took a bearded white scientist into the jungle and pointed out the plants that his tribe had always used to cure malaria. The white man brought the plants back home, analysed them, scratched his head and did some testing on rats. Sure enough, they seemed to work. Granted, they had some side effects, but who cares about that? He certainly didn't. Now he's sitting somewhere by a swimming pool with lots of servants running around, hoping for the best while his bank account keeps filling up.

Before you choose to take the drugs, you must give them a test run at home. Maybe you'll discover that your trip probably will be better without the medicine after all. If you find the right medicine for your destination, at a price you're fine with and without you starting to see pink elephants the second you swallow the pills, there's still at least one key point to consider: Should you do what's best for you or what's best for the greater good, here represented by the lives of people living in the areas you visit?

Despite what you may think, malaria can in many cases easily be cured. If you get sick, one treatment consists of taking a large dose of the same drugs that are usually taken to prevent you from being infected with malaria in the first place. (Note that this cure is only an option if you have not already taken the medicine as a prophylatic, meaning to prevent you from getting malaria. If you take the medicine and still get infected, you have to go through a treatment that is much tougher on your body.) This is the cheapest cure, hence it is also the one that is usually offered to financially challenged locals in malaria areas. The only problem is that when people use medicine to prevent them from being infected, malaria strains will develop immunity to exactly that medicine. This will in turn lead to the medicine becoming useless as a cure for people living in malaria-prone areas. Tough luck for them, huh?

If you value other people's lives anywhere near as highly as your own, you should probably do what they do. Only use the drugs in the fairly unlikely case that you're actually infected with malaria. If you ask doctors back home what to do, they will probably tell you that for the sake of your own health you should take the pills. It's their job to say that, and you are free to listen to them. But you should at least investigate what strains of malaria actually exist where you're going. If the lethal one, falciparum, is among them, there's more sense to taking malaria pills than if it isn't.

All things considered, the most important thing is to take all necessary precautions to avoid being bitten by mosquitos at all. You know, put on mosquito repellent, wear long sleeves, don't fall asleep drunk in the jungle and just try to stay away from mosquitos, especially when it's dark. If you still get bitten, don't panic. Most likely there are no malaria parasites in the mosquitos that bite you. Just be aware of any symptoms of illness. Remember that it'll take almost two weeks before the malaria can be felt. If you know you've been to a region where malaria exists and you start feeling feverish and shivering cold in turns, immediately seek out a doctor. In places where malaria is common, medical personnel will quickly find out whether you're infected or not, and if necessary they will treat you in the best possible manner. Soon you'll be fine again and can move on.

It's not often you can make a choice that saves both other people's lives and your own money, plus you can avoid some nasty side effects! This is one such opportunity!

Please see the following links for more relevant information:

- Map and detailed information from the World Health Organization, including a list of health issues to consider for travellers. Here you can see that contrary to common belief, you probably don't need to take any antimalarial drugs when going to:

* The Caribbean, except for Haiti and Dominocan Republic
* Egypt
* India, as long as you stay in Goa or further south
* Mexico, as they don't have the strain that can kill you
* Morocco
* South Africa
* Thailand, except on the borders to neighbouring countries

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimalarial_drug
Extensive information from Wikipedia regarding various medicines you may be recommended to take by your physician.

- http://www.map.ox.ac.uk/data/
Up-to-date maps (country/continent) showing fairly recently observed spread of malaria. More information about the map data can be found at the Malaria Atlas Project, http://www.map.ox.ac.uk/.

Back from Brazil

2008-03-17T13:18:00.000+01:00

Ah... Two weeks on and along the beaches in the north-east of Brazil was nice.

I found a cheap flight from Oslo to Recife, €300 roundtrip! Arriving there, I discovered that Recife is one of those large (3.5 million people) and ugly Brazilian hives of crime (somewhere between 50 and 100 murders pr 100.000 people per year). Although I know it's not that difficult to stay in the city and still avoid becoming part of those statistics, I just don't feel good in places like that.

So, only an hour after arriving, I got on a plane to Fortaleza, further north. It came to about 200 reals, which is only slightly more than the 12-14 hour bus ride would have cost me. GOL has good deals sometimes!

Guess what? It turned out that Fortaleza was ALSO a large and ugly Brazilian city. By then I had spent more than 20 hours in airports and airplanes, so I just made my way to the peaceful haven of the local YHA-HI hostel on the beach near the city centre. Although the beach is nice, the water isn't. It's a good base, though. It's in a safe area, and there are several companies running daytrips and easy transportation to the lovely beaches within striking distance of Fortaleza from there. Never mind that the electrical water heater in the en-suite shower didn't produce any hot water. It did produce terrific electrical shocks, though!

Encouraged by the many smiling faces and large numbers of people out jogging, power-walking, playing football and volleyball on the beach, I did quite a bit of walking around in Fortaleza. I even asked at the tourist information whether it was as safe to walk on the beach as it seemed to be, which they eagerly confirmed. Now, I probably should have specified that I am Norwegian, and I like to walk, and when I start walking, I can keep going for quite a while. But I didn't, I just was happy to learn that I could walk as I pleased.

So I walked. And I walked. For a couple of hours east along the beach. Past the hotel area, past some port and industrial zone, towards something that was signposted as "The Old Lighthouse", which sounded like a nice place to go. I noticed that there were fewer people around, but there were no bullet holes to be seen. Then I noticed that people stared at me. When I stared back, they didn't smile. They "cut" their throat with their hands, and they pointed finger guns at me. Some just wagged a finger at me, indicating that whatever I thought I was doing, I was doing it in the wrong place. This got me slightly worried.

Fortunately, before I could be processed by the local mafia, a police car came to my rescue. With the lights and sirens on they drove right up to me and asked me what the hell I was doing there. Taking a walk, I answered. They let me know that I should really enjoy the walk then, as it was likely to be my last. I then enquired whether it would be possible for me to hitch a ride with them, but for some reason this was not possible unless I committed a serious crime first.

There were no unbroken windows around, so I had a hard time finding something illegal to do. So I just started carefully walking back the way I had come from, with the police following slowly, one meter behind. I felt really, really stupid. After a few minutes I finally found a taxi. The police interrogated him, and satisfied that he would probably not take me away to my death, they left. It cost 10 reals to be taken to "anywhere safe", so I must have walked for quite a while in unsafe neighbourhoods.

Anyway. My walk ended in safety, and I left Fortaleza the very next morning.

I'll recommend that you take a couple of days in the little beach town of Canoa Quebrada (2-3 hours southeast of Fortaleza) if you ever have the chance. But an even better place to go for some peace and quiet on the beach is Jericoacoara, Jeri for short. To get there you first go six hours in a bus to Gijoca. From there it's another hour in a vehicle, but since there is no real road to Jeri, you will do the trip by truck or by 4WD jeep/beach buggy. It's a long way, but it's worth it!

In Jeri you'll have ample access to beaches with noone else on them, mighty dunes with carcasses of cows and donkeys in them, plenty of hippies walking around selling useless stuff they have made, and after a day there you'll have seen it all and feel like you live there. While the heaps of sand are enormous, the dunes are separated by lush, green fields, wits lots of grazing animals and hunting birds. I spent my days just walking around and exploring the coast and the interior. The shifting sunlight made the scenery constantly change, it never got boring. Just wait a few days, and I'll put up the photos to prove it.

The last few days before going home I spent in Pipa, a somewhat larger beach town between Natal and Recife. It's a pleasant place with little to worry about, but you can't really walk around as you please. Much of the land has been bought by European developers, so there are bothersome fences and ferocious dogs in your way wherever you go. But the beaches are nice, with tall, picturesque cliffs bordering them.

I also spent a day in Olinda, the safe town just north of Recife, waiting for my flight home. That's where the government wants the tourists to stay, as signalled by an absolutely ludicrous density of police officers. I haven't seen anything like it outside of Guatemala! But that's okay. Olinda is nice, a very Portuguese colonial town with lots of cozy small streets, colourful houses and a vast number of galleries and workshops. It's one of those places where the artists of the nation gather, like Venice in Italy, Santa Fe in the USA, Paris in France and Visby in Sweden. It's easy to spend time there.

Anyway, I'm home and I have had a nice trip! Also, my book seems to be doing well. Lots of people download it, and some have even decided they want to pay for it! The online bookstores' systems still haven't received notice of my ISBN, so until that happens, I'm not really marketing the book. But to those of you who have made your way here anyway, I'm really happy to see you!

I'll be back with more details as soon as I've gone through the 1000+ photos I took in Brazil... See you!

We're on the Road!

2008-02-16T21:12:00.000+01:00

Guess what? I just received the first physical copy of my book, "One for the Road", and it looks so good that I've decided it's finished. Hooray! #8D)

In a few weeks it can be ordered from any major on-line bookshop, but already you can get it from me and from Lulu. Also, fairly soon you can download a digital copy of it for free, from the Web site that supplements the book. You're very welcome!

Now, when you have downloaded or bought the book and read it, please come back here and tell me and the world whether you liked it or not. And particularly if you do like it, I'd be much obliged if you would give it a review at Amazon and any other on-line bookshops that offer the possibility to do so.

I hope to add a possibility to give me comments on my own Web site, but until that happens, feel free to use commenting on this blog to tell me anything you want. Or you can just e-mail me.

Thank you!