The Peak Everest school in Bhital

Posted on May 30, 2019 by user29464

During our recent stay in Nepal we visited the Peak Everest primary school in the village of Dhital, in the Machhapuchhre Rural Municipality, 16km from Pokhara. The school is set in a stunning location, with the Annapurna range behind it.

Somnath Poudel, the Principal, showed us round the classrooms. The school has eight classes and 120 students. The rooms were small and dark and while the early years had carpets the older children did not. The classroom walls were bare. There was no glass in the windows and in winter it must get cold.

Some classes are taught in English at the request of parents. There are four 45 minute classes in the morning and four in the afternoon. Subjects included social studies, mathematics and Nepali. Somnath’s commitment, passion and sense of mission were striking. He has a clear vision of what he can do to help his community, and the energy and enthusiasm to confront the many difficulties he encounters. Inspirational indeed.

We also met students walking to or from school for books (it was the new year holiday) who said they enjoyed school. Most of the students are from low caste, Dalit or Hill Dalit families – some are orphans living with their relatives. Many students are from low income family backgrounds and cannot afford the necessary things such as stationery materials, clothes etc.

Some teachers lived in the local villages but others in Pokhara – a 2 hour journey, by bus and on foot. After the school we stopped for a while at the bus stop – as local people arrived it became apparent that the bus itself stopped on the road 400 metres below us, and that this was a resting point before or after the steep climb down or down.

It was all a million miles from our own local primary schools in Cambridge – the school was very short of resources like pencils and we thought we would see if we could find some way to support the dedicated people working there. In my subsequent correspondence with the Principal, he explained that the school’s most pressing need is to provide school lunches. He comments that some students arrive at school without lunch, or with junk food, and that this leads to problems of nutrition >and concentration.

We have made an initial contribution to the lunch programme, which the Principal comments has allowed them to buy a cooking stove, gas canisters, and some cooking and eating utensils. We hope to make further contributions ourselves, and possibly in addition by fund-raising and/or a benefit concert. I attach the school’s Lunch program proposal – if you would like to help in some way please message me.

Lunch program proposal

Community homestay in Panauti, Nepal

Posted on May 9, 2019 by user29464

One of the things we most wanted to do during our travels in India and Nepal was to meet and spend time with local people. So when we came across the Community Homestay initiative in Panauti – a small rural town a two-hour bus ride east of Kathmandu – this sounded like an ideal opportunity to stay with a family. We took the local bus which in itself was an experience – I quickly lost count of how many people could squeeze into the small bus, and as we made our way out of the pollution of the city the conductor leant out of the open door to shout out the destinations.

Our Community Homestay hosts were Biju and her two daughters Aayusha and Nirusha. Upon our arrival they made us most welcome with masala tea and a delicious lunch of dal bhat, the staple Nepali meal.

In the late afternoon Aayusha showed us some of the village monuments – Panauti is a historic town with some beautiful temples. She then took us up a nearby hill to look at the Buddhist temple and enjoy the views over the town and the valley where the fields were green with the potato crop.

In the evening Biju showed us how to make potato curry and chapatis, and we looked through photo albums of the daughters’ weddings and of all the guests who had stayed with them.

On our second morning we walked along the path running north through the nearby hills towards Dhulikel. We climbed up to the Shree Sharada Devi Temple, the highest point of the path, where a local man put flower petals in our hair and took us to a viewpoint from where we could see Dhulikel, Banepa, Panauti and Namobuddha.

In the late afternoon Nirusha took us to a local café where they had found a guitar, and asked me to sing a few songs. When we returned home, Nirusha dressed Isabelle in a Nepali sari. We ended the day with a fabulous Newari dinner with 9 different dishes and a glass of home-made rice wine.

Our stay in Panauti with Biju and her daughters, not to mention Grandma and adorable 14-month old Neepun, was very special. There is a world of difference between their home and ours in Cambridge – Biju’s home is very basic with no glass in the windows, a very wet bathroom with cold water, and steep ladder-like stairs. But the welcome they gave us was beyond compare – human warmth and kindness know no boundaries and we were made to feel very much at home. It was a privilege to meet them and our stay was most memorable.

On our last day in Nepal we met Bikal, one of the Community Homestay organisers – he had very kindly brought some glasses we had left in Panauti and asked us for feedback on our stay there. We asked for more detail about how the financial side works – the central office takes 15% of a booking and 20% of the rest goes to the local community. The host receives the rest – around two thirds of the booking fee. Given that our stay there was rather more expensive than the other places we stayed, it was good to know that the hosts would receive a reasonable proportion of this.

Bikal also explained that he had considered going to the US as apparently many educated Nepalis do, but decided he could be more helpful by staying in the country. He spoke inspirationally about Community Homestay, about how it has given a purpose to his life, how it aims to empower the women who act as hosts, and how it can support local communities in more remote areas of Nepal by bringing income from tourists.

India And Nepal

Posted on April 25, 2019 by user29464

We are just back from spending three and a half weeks in India and Nepal and it has been good to experience once more the highs and lows of travelling. In their different ways – and they have been very different – India and Nepal have been exciting, eye opening, challenging and rewarding. We experienced a fair degree of culture shock, though overall much less than I had expected and more than counterbalanced by the many positive experiences.

The warmth and friendliness of the people we met has been outstanding. Apart from our time with our son and his partner – which was of course was a real treat and the initial motivation for our trip – we spent very little time with westerners and a lot with local people who welcomed us into their lives. All our hosts made us feel at home, and in particular Vinita and Pradesh in Delhi and Biju, Aayusha and Nirusha in Panauti, who have become friends. Then there were the friends of friends – Antara and Saurabh in India and Julia in Nepal who gave up their valuable time to show us round, respectively, the dargah of Nizamuddin, the Taj Mahal and the courtyards of Patan.

On top of that we met many very special people, often quite unexpectedly – Baiku and Bai who invited two total strangers to their home in Kathmandu; Julia’s brother who shared his profound knowledge and enthusiasm for Newari culture; Bikal who went out of his way to bring us a pair of glasses we had left in Panauti and who spoke eloquently about the Community Homestay project; the principal of the government school in Bhital who shared his inspirational hopes for education; the poet Pushkar, the sarod player Suresh and the tuk-tuk driver in Agra who commented that if you show people respect you are likely to gain respect in turn. It was a privilege to meet them all.

The architectural and natural beauty of the two countries was breathtaking. The Taj Mahal really was as good as we had hoped – a quite staggering achievement. But then so were the Qutub Minar, the carvings in the royal palace of Patan, the gorgeous gardens of Humuyum’s tomb, and the local treasures of Green Park in Delhi and Panauti.

Then all this fell sharply into perspective when we woke one morning to watch the first rays of the sun fall on the Annapurna mountains. And some of the birdlife has been every bit as
beautiful – the sparkling blue of the verditer flycatcher, the vibrant purple of the delightful sunbirds or the brilliant red of the long-tailed minavets.

The food was excellent, and we have never been anywhere before that was as easy for vegetarians. All our hosts provided local breakfasts – the aloo parathas in Delhi were particularly special – and several offered delicious home cooking in the evening as well – Biju went as far as to teach us how to cook potato curry and chapatis. When that was not available good restaurants were not far away, notably in New Delhi and Pokhara.

Musically our trip was rewarding also. On our first evening Antara took us to hear Sufi music in the dargah (shrine) of Nizamuddin. The music was magical. A couple of days later in the Sikh temple Sis Ganj in Old Delhi, we sat again enthralled by sacred music. I was asked to sing as well, firstly by our hosts in Delhi, and Panauti. And in Patan we joined sarod player Suresh Raj Bajracharya, who was practising the Sarod in Julia’s gallery, with his student, a former living goddess. They played ragas and I sang Rainbow – I have never sung to a divinity before!

I could go on – about the colours, the sounds, the packed streets, the contrasts and the surprises – but I’ll spare you all that, for now at least. Our travels seem to have had a positive impact on my creativity – I am at long last emerging from a long period of songwriting drought and a new song is working its way into the light. Thankyou, India and Nepal.

Here is Suresh playing the Sarod:

Andalucia and Santa Maria

Posted on October 9, 2016 by user29464

This year it is 40 years since my love affair with Andalucia and its music began. In the summer of 1976 my friend Gordon and I spent six weeks in and around Granada, camping in the Alpujaras and in Motril on the coast, trekking across the Sierra Nevada and exploring the city that was to become one of my very favourite places. I then spent a couple of weeks travelling around Andalucia with another friend, Mike, before I set off alone to cross North Africa and return through Italy. A few years later I returned with Isabelle and we met a flamenco troupe who introduced us to the music of Camarón de la Isla, and notably his remarkable album La Leyenda del Tiempo, generally regarded as a turning point for flamenco and a key moment in reclaiming the music from Franco’s regime.

Since then we have returned on several occasions, most recently two years ago when we visited El Puerto de Santa Maria on the Bahia de Cadiz (staying with our friends Magi and John, alias Zig and Zag), Sevilla (where we caught up with Miguel whose flamenco guitar playing on ‘Andalucia’ is stunning), Cordoba and of course Granada.

My song, Andalucia, was produced by Miguel Moreno who also added additional guitars.:

The video was filmed by John Meed and Isabelle Fournier, including a live performance at the fringe of Folk on the Pier in Cromer in 2016, as well as footage of the Mezquita in Córdoba (right)…

…and the Alhambra in Granada (below).

Our stay in El Puerto resulted in my song Santa Maria and I have now been able to combine film by Roger Murfitt of a live performance of the song with some of the photos and videos of the town that Magi kindly gave me. Here is the the resulting video:

Two minutes in there is an example of the wonderful flamenco baile (dance), we believe from Cadiz-born bailora Begoña Arce, filmed at the peña Tomás el Nitri in El Puerto. The song loosely uses the rhythm of the flamenco tangos – rather different from the Argentinan dance. There’s a more authentic tangos from Camarón himself here (also about the Bahia de Cadiz with a mention of El Puerto towards the end).

Walking in the Hills of Arran

Posted on October 7, 2015 by user29464

Where no-one was was where my world was stilled
Into hills that hung behind the lasting water (Alastair Reid, ‘Isle of Arran’)

The Hills of Arran is the title track of my next album, due for release on December 5th with a launch event at CB2 in Cambridge that evening. We needed a photo shoot for the cover and some film for the video. We had never been to Arran, and it came with high recommendations, especially from my grandparents. All good reasons to visit the island that is described as ‘Scotland in miniature’.

Our ferry had brought us into Lochranza the day before, and we had stayed just outside Blackwaterfoot on the western coast.

The weather forecast for our first full day was poor, so we decided on a valley walk up Glenrosa rather than risking rain and strong winds on the hills. In the event the rain held off for the morning and we rambled up a classic glacial valley with Goatfell, Arran’s highest peak, on our right.

Half way up the valley, the first of two remarkable encounters with wild Arran took place. Two golden eagles soared into view and one came quite close to us as three buzzards also appeared. For a while they soared just under Goatfell together, and then suddenly the eagle tumbled earthwards and seized one of the buzzards by the talons. The buzzard managed to fly off a couple of times but each time the eagle went for it again. The two went to ground and as neither bird flew off again we could only assume that a young and very inexperienced buzzard had become the eagle’s lunch.

After our own rather more vegetarian picnic the rain began, the hills did indeed ‘hang behind the lasting water’ and we turned back, well wet by the time we reached the car, but satisfied to be back in the Scottish hills. That evening we watched the rain pile in across Kilbrannan Sound from Kintyre.

The next day we walked along the beach out towards Drumadoon Point, scattering oystercatchers as yet more showers built over the mainland. We continued on to the remarkable stone circles of Machrie Moor – Stonehenge without the crowds, the fences or the A303 and all the more magical for that.

For our final day the weather at last settled down a little. We set off from Thundergay up the hillside towards the delightful Coire Fhionn Lochan.

About half way to the lochan a group of red deer hinds were silhouetted against the distant Sound of Bute.

Clouds still hung around the hilltops as we reached the lake, and it would be some time before the sun timidly appeared. Inspired, we set off up the steep slope of Meall Biorach, reaching the first summit just as the mist rolled away from the surrounding hills. As the sun steadily grew in strength, we carried on up Meall Donn, to be treated to magnificent views across the Arran hills and the surrounding mainland.

An eagle flew past us, hugging the ground as it reached a nearby pass before descending into Glen Catacol towards Loch Tanna.

Heading down towards the other side of the lake we heard a red deer stag roaring and watched as his herd moved up the hill opposite. The early evening light showed the lochan in its full glory.

We were taking a short break walking back down from the lochan when our second remarkable encounter with wild Arran took place. A young meadow pipit flew under our legs and a moment later there was a rush of wind as a female merlin aborted her dive on the pipit. The pipit fluttered out two or three times and each time the merlin attacked again. Eventually another walker went by and the pipit flew off using him as cover. I saw the merlin fly off, apparently with empty talons. We appeared to have saved the pipit but left the merlin hungry.

The following morning we left Arran with heavy hearts. The filming was successful, though, and I’ll post a link to the video as soon as it is available!

Thesalonika

Posted on June 16, 2013 by user29464

Retired policeman: ‘How do you find our country now?’
Zoe: ‘It’s not “our” country, but my country – you were with the Nazis.’

In the days and weeks leading up to the Athens Olympics in 2004 Greece was filled with bands of wandering journalists waiting for the games to start and searching out other stories to fill their time. Daniel Vernet of Le Monde was one of them and he met Zoe Kaltaki, who had fought in the resistance against the nazis in the Kilkis mountains to the north of Thessaloniki. Her story somehow summed up the turbulent twentieth century, and inspired me to write ‘Thesalonika’.

At age 12, Zoe followed her father into the resistance. She refused to lay down her gun after the liberation, and joined the communists who were fighting the right (who were supported by the English and Americans, worried that Greece might follow other Balkan countries into soviet Russia’s influence). She was injured several times and ended up in a hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria. A million people were displaced by the civil war, and 100,000 found exile in Eastern Europe. Zoe herself found a new home in Czechoslovakia, where she made paper flowers for funeral wreaths, married another Greek exile and had four children.

Zoe returned to Greece in 1982 after an official amnesty, to live in Volos with her daughter Olga. Asked whether she regretted her return to her country, she summed up her mixed feelings by saying ‘Wherever I feel at home, that is my country’. Olga added that in Czechoslovakia ‘I didn’t know what stress was. There you just had to work – here you have to fight.’ Zoe had returned several times to the Kilkis mountains, and on one of these visits met an old acquaintance, the retired policeman quoted earlier.

Thessaloniki is a remarkable city. It was home to many of the sephardic jews expelled from Spain in 1492. For several centuries under the Ottoman empire it was one of the great European multicultural cities, home not just to the Jews and Greeks, but also to many Muslims, including the family of one of our friends. As late as 1912 Thessaloniki was 40% Jewish, 30% Greek orthodox and 25% Muslim.

However, following the end of the empire and the population exchange of 1923 when some 1.5 million people in the region were forcibly uprooted, all the Thesalonican Muslims were expelled, and 100,000 refugees arrived in the city from Turkey. Twenty years later the Nazi occupiers deported 95% of the the city’s jews to Auschwitz in 1943 – the majority died in gas chambers within hours of their arrival. By 1945 the population was almost entirely Greek.

We visited Thessaloniki in 2007 and I even managed to borrow a bazouki to play the song in a restaurant in the market. The city never seemed to sleep – the bars along the waterfront were throbbing with music into the small hours. Although a very modern city, it still drips with history – across the bay is Mount Olympus, home of the gods of ancient Greece, and inland is the cave where Aristotle taught the young Alexander the Great.

Thessaloniki is some way from the mass tourist attractions of Greece, and in consequence people seemed delighted, even surprised, that we had made the effort to visit. In the countryside outside the city people stopped and insisted on giving us lifts. The curator of the Aristotle school called us a taxi and ensured that we were given a private tour of a Macedonian tomb on our way to the station. On the bus to the airport on our day of departure we were even given presents by our fellow passengers, who included a retired teacher of French from the university.

‘Thesalonika’ is about home and exile, about how what binds us together as Europeans and as people is more important than what separates us, and two years ago I had the privilege of singing the song with a French choir in a Welsh chapel.

While in Greece we also visited Volos without realising that it was Zoe’s new home. I would have liked to to meet her and play her her song. Above all, I would have liked her to know that her story had touched a chord with people across the continent.

Where can I go?
Where can I call home?
Oh, my Thesalonika
Where are you now?

If anyone reading this blog can share it with her or her family, please do – and thankyou, Zoe, for the inspiration.

I played the song some time ago at Cambridge Folk Club with Tara Westover, and there is a video of it here:

The exchange and the civil war is captured memorably in Theo Angelopoulis’s film The weeping meadow.

A 2010 Europa project Thessaloniki and the European memory explored the memory of the population exchange and the holocaust in Thessaloniki, and you can download their short and highly readable report. The authors are historians Sheer Ganor, Constanze Kolbe, Ozgur Yildrim and Sára Zorándy.

Finally, Victoria Hislop’s novel The thread is set in the city from 1923.

John Meed

Writer, researcher and musician

Category Archives: Travel