Tag Archive for ‘Tourism’ at Asian Window

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Tag Archive for 'Tourism'

Kashmir — the ultimate skiing destination

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on February 1, 2010

in India and Travel

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Tom Robbins in The Observer:

Then suddenly we pop out, back into the sunlight on an open slope which Nick calls Snow Leopard Couloir because of the animal’s tracks he’s seen in the snow there. (We never manage to spot one, but we do encounter its more common relative, the Himalayan Leopard – two of them skinned on the walls of the Highlands Park, one alive, seen by some of our group in the lights of a taxi at night.)

The snow in the couloir is a delight, turned sugary because it has sat untouched on the hill for so long, and we whoop as we ski down it, stopping occasionally to take photos, before we eventually reach a snow-covered road in a forgotten side valley. It’s a military track off-limits to the public, used by soldiers heading for their border look-out posts. As we take off our skis to begin the hour-long walk back to town, there’s a distant rumbling and a khaki truck lumbers around the corner, the three soldiers in the cab looking bemused at the skiers standing in the road before them. It’s as if a wormhole has opened up between the frivolous slopes of Courchevel and this troubled corner of Asia, which Bill Clinton once dubbed “the most dangerous place in the world”. More:

Nepal’s rhinos and tigers and bears

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on January 13, 2010

in India, Nepal, Travel and Wildlife

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From the Wall Street Journal:

Nepal is known for its Himalayan mountain trekking and India for its historic sites and teeming cities. But both countries offer inexpensive safaris in several national parks that, considering how chaotic life in Nepal and India can be in other respects, are surprisingly professional and well organized, though their ideas of protecting visitors may not be yours.

I didn’t think I was in Africa, where vast herds of many species surround you. But from the back of a Nepalese elephant I saw two crocodiles, a peacock, lots of deer and, most importantly, two rhinos. In the world of safaris, viewing a one-horned Indian rhinoceros is a real accomplishment. There are only about 2,500 left in the world, almost all of them in Chitwan and Kaziranga National Park in northeast India.

The rhinos seemingly had no fear of elephants; they let us get right next to them. The tourists climb a special mounting platform and sit on the elephant’s back, protected by wooden rails. The ride took us through beautiful forests, lakes and, appropriately, plains of 10-foot-high elephant grass. All-inclusive, the South African safari I took two years ago cost more than $500 a night, but in Nepal, there was no way I could have spent $500 in a week. More:

In the hills of Sri Lanka, Kandy is ready for tourists

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on December 7, 2009

in Sri Lanka and Travel

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Robert Schroeder in the Wall Street Journal:

The temple, the city’s star architectural attraction, takes its name from the relic it houses: a tooth of the Buddha, kept in a stupa-shaped gold casket. Crowds of Sri Lankan devotees jostle past, carrying offerings of jasmine, lilies or lotus flowers. The tooth is also the focus of Kandy’s famed perahera, or procession, held for 10 days in the month of Esala (which runs from July into August). The perahera features Kandyan dancing and drumming, and this year drew about 500,000 people on its final day — more than in previous years.

The dates of next year’s Esala Perahera haven’t been set. But there is ample opportunity to hear Kandyan drumming and watch local dance — Kandyan dancers and drummers are some of Sri Lanka’s emblematic symbols — at any time. At the Kandyan Art Association and Cultural Center, a quick walk from the tooth temple on the lake’s northeast shore, the sound of a conch shell welcomes visitors to a show. Bare-chested men emerge in blue- and red-fringed white sarongs, with diamond-shaped headgear, beating geta bera with their hands. Women dancers pay graceful tribute to guardian deities and to their gurus. Before the evening is over, the dancers will enact the taming of a cobra and move like peacocks. More:

20 fabulous boutique hotels in India

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on September 27, 2009

in India and Travel

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The publisher of the Special Places to Stay guidebooks selects 20 extraordinary hideaways in India. From the Observor:

The Manor, New Delhi

The Manor, New Delhi

Casa Susegad, Goa

Casa Susegad, Goa

The Manor, Friends Colony West, Delhi
Shanti Home, Janakpuri, Delhi
Tikli Bottom, Gairatpur Bas, Haryana
Panchavatti, Corjuem Island, Goa
Casa Susegad, Loutolim, Goa

Click here for the full list:

Maldives’ dilemma

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on September 26, 2009

in Climate change, The Maldives and environment

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It cannot be carbon neutral without killing tourism. From the Times:

In the 1960s a United Nations report warned the Maldives that, sadly, it was unlikely to attract tourists.

Not much grows on lumps of coral in the Indian Ocean apart from coconuts and fish, the report pointed out: the Maldives is largely dependent on imports and the nearest ports are hundreds of miles away. Few of its 1,000-odd scattered islands even had electricity. Yet within ten years, the Maldives had established the reputation it has now, as a holiday paradise for honeymooners, scuba divers and the super-rich.

On Tuesday, the tiny country of 350,000 people once again showed it can punch above its weight. The Maldivian President, Mohamed Nasheed, shared a billing with Barack Obama and Hu Jintao at the United Nations General Assembly, where he pleaded the cause of small island states at risk from climate change. In many news outlets, it was Nasheed who made the headlines.

In many respects the Maldives has always been the little nation that could. Despite its minuscule population and strategic location, it has never been colonised (it peacefully dismissed the British, who had made it a protectorate, in 1965). It has retained its unique language and script, and hung on to its cultural identity while incorporating Islam, elements from African religions, black magic, Indian cooking and the occasional British naval tradition. In 2008 it made a peaceful transition to democracy and was hailed as an example to other, more troubled Muslim nations. More:

And they didn’t return

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on August 23, 2009

in India and Travel

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India’s Kullu valley, also known as the valley of the gods, is a favourite with backpackers and trekkers. But over the last few years several foreign tourists have mysteriously disappeared or have been found dead. From the Indian Express:

On July 21 this year, Amichai Steinmetz checked out of the guesthouse in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, where he had been staying. Amichai, who holds both US and Israeli passports, and his Israeli friend were to go trekking from Khirganga, a hamlet in Parvati valley of Kullu, to the forests of Bunbuni. According to Amichai’s friend, they separated soon after they began, agreeing to reach Bunbuni from different routes, and planned to meet again in Khirganga the same evening. Amichai never returned. His friend says he didn’t meet him at Bunbuni either.

On Monday, August 17, a US Embassy team arrived from New Delhi to meet K.K. Indoria, Superintendent of Police, Kullu. The team, which included an officer of the diplomatic security service of the US Department of State, had come to inquire about the Amichai case.

Twenty-four-year-old Amichai is the 19th foreign tourist to have gone missing in Kullu (mostly from Parvati valley) since 1992. That’s an unsettling statistic for a tourist haven that is called the ‘Valley of Gods’, whose valleys and ridges offer a favourite setting for trekkers and tourists. Apart from the list of missing foreigners, official government records say 57 foreigners have died in the region between 1998 and 2009. Most of these deaths are attributed to accidents or drug overdose. But there have been murders too. Like that of Martin Young, a British national who died in a murderous assault in 2000. Similarly, Alessandra Verdi’s death in 2001 was described as murder. The Italian tourist’s body was recovered from the Parvati river bank. More:

[Image: Fabrice/Travellerspoint]

Kashmir: Paradise once again?

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on July 1, 2009

in India, Politics and Travel

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Dal Lake, Srinagar. Photo: shahbasharat / cc

Dal Lake, Srinagar. Photo: shahbasharat / cc

The beauty of Kashmir has been shunned by tourists in fear of terrorism, and kidnapping. But that may be about to change. Andrew Buncombe in the Independent:

At Kashmir’s Royal Springs golf course, Javed Ahmed looked through the large glass windows of the clubhouse on to the manicured fairways.

The official was understandably proud; the course has been voted the best in India and one of the finest in the region. The fifth hole, which looks out across lakes to the mosques of the Srinagar’s old quarter, is especially famed. Part of his job is to promote the course to the world, to show there’s another side to the Kashmir of newspaper headlines. “We are trying to get the tourists to come,” said Mr Ahmed. “This is one of the top 10 golf courses in the world. We want them to come and enjoy themselves.”

Barely an hour earlier, in a graveyard shaded by walnut trees, the body of Firdous Ali Dar was laid to rest. According to the police, Mr Dar had been making a bomb when it exploded, fatally injuring him. His body was wrapped in a white winding sheet before being covered in a red blanket. Blood seeped from his head.

Kashmir, long fought over by India, Pakistan, and Kashmiri “nationalists”, may be at a cross-roads. Twenty years after the start of a separatist insurgency and a subsequent military operation that has killed at least 70,000 people and turned this once-peaceful valley of fruit trees and farmland into one of the most militarised regions in the world, Kashmir may be poised to turn a corner in its battle between the Kashmir of old and the Kashmir of limitless potential. More:

Water and Sand in Rajasthan

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on March 15, 2009

in Heritage, India and Travel

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In the Great Indian Desert - the most inhabited in the world - development efforts to bring in clean water and spur tourism are resulting in the erosion of historic sandstone Jaisalmer Fort. From Seed:

Photo: Peter Davis / Flickr

Photo: Peter Davis / Flickr

Before sunset, we reach the extraordinary Jaisalmer Fort, a sand castle finer than anything Disney could conceive, perched high atop Trikuta Hill. The golden sandstone fort was built in 1156 on the lucrative camel-train spice route linking India to Central Asia, and it’s still home to 5,000 people, making it one of only two living forts in India. Jaisalmer is also believed to be the oldest continuously lived-in fort in the world. And yet the structure is sodden and crumbling. Three of its 99 bastions have collapsed since the 1990s, earning it the dubious distinction of being one of the 100 most endangered sites on the World Monuments Watch list.

While the relatively new water infrastructure has allowed both crops and tourism to flourish, more than 120 liters of water per person pass through the fort’s decrepit sewer system on a weekly basis, 12 times its intended capacity. The result? Sewage courses down the honey-colored walls, creating huge cracks in the sandstone.

Goa’s tourism subdued as police move in

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on December 25, 2008

in India, Terrorism and Travel

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From Financial Times:

Under the palms near the Fort Aguada Beach Resort, a luxury hotel built inside the crumbling ramparts of what was once Goa’s most formidable Portuguese castle, police have set up a sand-bagged observation post.

The post is one of a series of “bunkers” being built along the Goan coast to help fortify it against seaborne terrorist attacks of the kind that brought Mumbai to a halt last month.

“Soon this fortress will be a bastion of armed guards,” says an official at the Fort Aguada resort, a sister property of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower that was attacked in Mumbai.

Malaise de Goa?

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on November 16, 2008

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Beneath the idyll of a paradise called Goa, a grim, gritty picture of a state scorched by corruption and apathy. Sudeep Chakravarti with photographer Satish Bate in Hindustan Times:

On a cool evening in mid-October, a hundred or so people, mostly Goan – teachers, writers, painters, journalists, businesspersons, fashion designers and lawyers – stood near one of Atanassio Monserrate’s two large villas near Panjim.

They held candles; an emphatic circle of light. I was there too, wax from a temperamental candle blistering my fingers.

It seemed a small price to pay. After all, I didn’t join in the singing of we-shall-overcome, or impassioned speech-making.

My fingers had not been severed with a chopper, as happened to a Goan lawyer the previous night. Nor had I been severely beaten about the head, as had a young Goan professor of history, as he dined on chicken xacuti with this lawyer friend at a modest Panjim restaurant. It’s why we had all gathered in civil outrage.

More:

Paradise almost lost: Maldives seek to buy a new homeland

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on November 11, 2008

in The Maldives and environment

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Randeep Ramesh from Male, the Maldives, in the Guardian:

The highest land point on the Maldives is only 2.4 metres above sea level.

The highest land point on the Maldives is only 2.4 metres above sea level.

The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has told the Guardian.

Mohamed Nasheed, who takes power officially tomorrow in the island’s capital, Male, said the chain of 1,200 island and coral atolls dotted 500 miles from the tip of India is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels.

But where on earth can they go?

Also in the Guardian, Jon Henley explores the Maldives’ options:

It is an intriguing, if deeply depressing idea: the first nation on earth to be forced to abandon its homeland because of the impact of global warming and steadily rising sea levels. Nasheed is basically talking about relocating the Maldives’ 300,000-strong population to nearby India, or Sri Lanka or, possibly, Australia. But even if you accept the neccessity of such a grim scenario, is it actually feasible? Could an entire people simply move to a new country, set up home there and pick up their lives again as if nothing bar the unfortunate disappearance of their old base had actually happened?

The current consensus seems to be that it is not. “It would be very difficult for a state, as such, to move,” says Dr Graham Price, head of the Asia programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. “There can be ad-hoc migration, of course, even of quite large numbers. But there are big jurisdictional issues here, issues of sovereignty. That said, it is a real problem, and one we’re going to have to get used to. Nasheed is saying to the rest of the world, we really have to think about this. We want to stay together, we don’t want to lose our culture, and this isn’t our fault.”

Democracy for Maldives

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on November 2, 2008

in The Maldives

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For many Westerners, the Maldives represents the peak of aspirational tourism but lurking behind the paradisiacal façade is a grim story of poverty and exploitation. From New Statesman:

The statistics do jar. A number of tiny, uninhabited islands are auctioned every year, fetching around £30m each. A survey conducted by the Tourism Employees Association of the Maldives (TEAM) showed that basic workers’ pay was between $80-$120 per month, although even the very lowest end resorts had an annual income of $3-4million. Fishing stocks are hugely depleted and fresh fruit and vegetables bypass local residents, going directly to tourist islands. The UN recently found that over 30 per cent of Maldivian children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition.

Barnett notes the lack of international awareness. “Gayoom’s regime was so repressive that it is very hard to get information out…”

Previously in AW: Ex-prisoner defeats ‘dictator’ president of Maldives

Cashing in on old world charm

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on July 20, 2008

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There is a flood of investors in Rajasthan, looking for royal homes that can now be turned into boutique hotels. From The Indian Express:

Artisans restoring an old haveli in Rajasthan

Artisans restoring an old haveli in Rajasthan

A six hour drive from Delhi, on a picturesque winding road off the Jaipur highway lies the Shekawati belt dotted with old, forgotten havelis and crumbling forts. Right alongside, in glaring contrast are several new buildings and the occasional Pepsi hoarding. Though most of the colourful frescoes and arches on the old houses are peeling off, a closer look shows the attention to detail in the painted mythological themes on the walls. One such haveli in the main bazaar of Nawalgarh was in wretched disrepair when it was bought by Kamal Morarka, a Mumbai-based industrialist. “I grew up in Mumbai but my roots are here,” says Morarka, 60, who then hired an archeologist from Archeological Survey of India, ASI to restore it. He also runs a non-profit foundation in organic farming to help farmers in this region.

Like Morarka, there are a surprising number of outsiders, Indians and foreigners, who are investing in Rajasthan, captivated by its arid beauty and magnificent architecture. And of course, the romantic notion of living in a 200 year-old structure that’s witnessed history and once belonged to Indian nobility.

The march of tourism (and a threat to the Maldives)

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on July 17, 2008

in The Maldives

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Beset by rising sea levels and a £90m budget shortfall, the Maldives government has set its sights on leasing 31 uninhabited islands for new resorts. Now the Tourism Minister has quit over the threat to the islands’ fragile ecology. Andrew Buncombe in The Independent:

They have become the short-hand for a tropical paradise. A nation of islands off the southern tip of India, the Maldives are the home of cobalt-blue seas and white-sand beaches. Every year the country attracts up to half-a-million tourists in search of a picture-perfect getaway.

But how much is too much? For a country that depends so heavily on tourists lured by the prospect of pristine beauty, at what point does that flood of tourists start to threaten the very environment that attracted them in the first place?

Tourism subsidy roils India’s upscale waters

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on June 10, 2008

in India and Travel

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Bruce Stanley from Port Blair, The Andamans Islands, in The Wall Street Journal [From Mint]:

A cultural collision between working-class visitors and the local stewards of high-end tourism at this idyllic archipelago has raised temperatures here, laying bare prejudices and at times exciting a measure of greed on both sides.

The Asian tsunami in 2004 swamped this Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal and took some 20,000 lives. It also left hoteliers and tour operators grappling with the economic aftershocks, as spooked tourists stayed away. So, several months after the disaster, the Indian government began offering free plane tickets to civil servants and employees of big state companies to treat their families to an Andamans vacation.

Holiday in India — without the Taj

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on April 9, 2008

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By Daniel Sorid, Associated Press:

Many tourists report being treated like gobs of tourist putty in the hands of Agra’s masterful touts, cajoled into unwanted side trips to trinket shops or pressed to hire an unauthorized tour guide.

In a survey published in 2006, the government of India found that 63 percent of foreign tourists complained of being cheated or harassed “in many tourist destinations like Agra,” as well as Delhi, India’s capital.

But there are endless alternatives for a holiday in India without the Taj, and even first-time visitors to the country might choose one of these circuits – provided they can stand up to friends back home boggled by the idea of visiting India without seeing the fabled monument.

Kashmir seeks tourism revival on the putting green

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on April 1, 2008

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Amelia Gentleman from Srinagar in International Herald Tribune:

Naeem Akhtar has an improbable role in the Indian government’s drive to revitalize Kashmir after 18 years of militant violence. His task: rebrand this heavily militarized Himalayan region as a global golfing destination.

Akhtar, who is permanent secretary to the government tourist department, the most senior bureaucrat in charge of tourism in Kashmir, readily admits that the challenge is “very difficult.”

“We face a lot of uncomfortable questions,” he said, overlooking the empty fairways of Srinagar’s Royal Spring Golf Course. “Tourists travel to relax. A tourist doesn’t want to come to a place that creates apprehension in his mind.”

As Tibet erupted, China wavered

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on March 24, 2008

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Witnesses say Chinese security forces melted away as unrest boiled over in the Tibetan capital on March 14. Jim Yardley from Beijing in The New York Times:

In the chaotic hours after Lhasa erupted March 14, Tibetans rampaged through the city’s old quarter, waving steel scabbards and burning or looting Chinese shops. Clothes, souvenirs and other tourist trinkets were dumped outside and set afire as thick gray smoke darkened the midday sky. Tibetan fury, uncorked, boiled over.

Foreigners and Lhasa residents who witnessed the violence were stunned by what they saw, and by what they did not see: the police. Riot police officers fled after an initial skirmish and then were often nowhere to be found. Some Chinese shopkeepers begged for protection.

“The whole day I didn’t see a single police officer or soldier,” said an American woman who spent hours navigating the riot scene. “The Tibetans were just running free.”

And in Nepal…

From Nepali Times:

In scenes not witnessed since April 2006, police brutally put down rallies and candlelit vigils by monks in Kathmandu. This young monk (above) was hit on his head with a bamboo stick wielded by riot police outside the United Nations office in Pulchok on Monday.

The UN’s human rights office in Kathmandu condemned what it said was the “excessive use of force” by Nepal’s police to disperse the demonstrations.

The protests have been part of an international campaign by Tibetans in exile and their supporters to highlight Chinese crackdowns in Lhasa and elsewhere. The rallies came in the run-up to the Olympics in Beijing in August. The unrest in Tibet has already hurt Nepal’s tourism industry since Kathmandu is the jump off point for Lhasa. Hundreds of Sherpas are also employed by expeditions climbing the Himalaya from the north.

I was naive but I wasn’t negligent, says Scarlett Keeling’s mother Fiona MacKeown

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on March 16, 2008

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In The Sunday Times, UK, Dean Nelson meets Fiona MacKeown:

It is hard to classify MacKeown. Her children’s names – including Merlin, Kisangel, Isis Celeste and Trinity Willow – suggest mellow hippiedom. But she defines herself as a gypsy; when she sought planning permission to put caravans on her land she was backed by the Romany council. She is unconventional but when she says she was naive rather than negligent, I believe her. Those who have seen her with her children were struck by how bright, well mannered and affectionate they are.

With her brood of children, MacKeown would receive about £25,000 a year in benefits. In order to pay for the Goan holiday she told me she had saved £200 a week for months by living frugally – buying only rice to supplement the family’s home-grown vegetables and buying clothes for the children only from charity shops. Eventually they had about £7,000 for the trip, topped up by selling a pony for £1,000. It was a tiny budget for a six-month holiday once the flights for nine had been paid for.

Goa: A creaky paradise

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on March 14, 2008

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“Forty years ago, Goa was a trip. Now it’s also a business, a disease,” writes Sudeep Chakravarti in Hindustan Times. Chakravarti’s novel, Once Upon a Time in Aparanta, set in present-day Goa, will be published later this year.

Two days ago, a friend and I were breakfasting at a chic café in Baga, a bizarre Goan confluence of the digital hippie, Indian yuppie and those whom I simply call Charter Jack and Charter Jane – “Oi, mate!” and chips with everything. A French couple, replete with tattoos, wearing worn clothes, BO, and a girl of about six came and sat by us, burnt some charas, rolled a joint, and began to fumigate the vicinity. My friend, a Goan preparing to adopt a girl, was outraged at the couple’s nonchalance in doing something so openly in Goa that would land them in jail in their own country, besides possibly placing their daughter under State care.

“I can’t believe these guys,” she spat. “They should be whipped. And this Scarlette,” she continued, “how could her mother leave a 15-year-old girl by herself in this day and age, in an area known to be unsafe, known for drugs and raves and what not and go away on her travels? Would she do that in England? No. But this is Goa, right? So now the girl is dead.”

Scarlette Eden Keeling, flower-child of a flower-parent, is dead, after allegedly being on an extended trip of substance abuse, after allegedly being raped by a manager of a shack at Anjuna beach. Less than an hour’s drive north of where I live, in Panjim, Anjuna was once the eastern extremity of Woodstock.

Mothers and monsters

In the media’s hands, Scarlett Keeting’s mother Fiona MacKeown has become a scapegoat for the middle classes. Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian, UK:

Compassion is not a response the media seem able to sustain. That small window that affords a degree of respect for the grief of the bereaved seems to shrink ever more, but even so the treatment of Fiona MacKeown, the mother of the 15-year-old murdered on a Goa beach, has plumbed new depths of harsh judgmentalism.

While MacKeown struggles to get the police to take on the case of her daughter’s killing, she has a second child lying in hospital in the UK with a broken neck from a car accident that happened shortly before her daughter’s death. This goes well beyond the platitude of a mother’s worst nightmare. Yet even such circumstances have not inhibited the torrent of criticism and contempt that has poured down on this woman’s head. Open season has been declared on every part of her family life, her parenting style and even her appearance. She is blamed for abandoning her daughter in a resort while continuing her travels; accused of a recklessly indulgent style of parenting; and criticised for her mode of grieving. Almost every article refers to her hair – it is “lank”, a “curtain” and, most unforgivably, grey.

Previously on Asian Window:

It’s a mud, mud world

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on March 13, 2008

in Sri Lanka and Travel

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A hut made of mud and coconut leaves? Dea Birkett sacrifices modern comforts for spectacular wildlife and top class service in Sri Lanka. In The Guardian, UK:

We were lost, very lost. Our driver couldn’t find the track and there were no signs. We were deep in the jungle, it was getting dark, and we were getting worried. Then we heard a strange sound. It was laughter. Not just ordinary laughter, but deep and continuous, more like an animal’s call than a human sound. But human it was – someone was very, very happy. Then that someone appeared, a short, stocky man in shorts and camouflaged beany hat, a paraffin lamp swinging in his hand. And that’s how we met Kumar, owner and manager of the Mudhouse. “Everything okay?” he beamed, followed quickly by, “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

The Mudhouse is in the central western jungle, far from Sri Lanka’s beach resorts and heaving Buddhist temples. The nearest town is Anamaduwa, a place not mentioned in a single guidebook. Kumar wants it that way; he’s refused to put up any signs to help people navigate miles of dirt paths. When the rains are heavy, he has to bring guests up from the local village on a tractor.

Scarlett Keeling: What her mother had to see

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on March 12, 2008

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Andrew Buncombe, The Independent’s Asia correspondent, on his blog Asian (con)Fusion:

Last week, at a cafe in Anjuna Beach that specialises in organic food, the mother of Scarlett Keeling showed me some photographs that I didn’t really want to see.

The photographs were taken during the first post-mortem tests carried out on Scarlett and unlike the written report itself, the photographs revealed the true extent of the teenager’s injuries. The pictures showed a huge bruise above one eye, a series of bruises on her legs and shins, red marks around the genital area and, most shocking of all, a picture of Scarlett’s face.

Because police claimed they did know who she was when her body was found, the pathologists had cut open her face to enable access to her teeth and to take a dental imprint to obtain her identity. They had then crudely sewn it back up. What was left looked like an horrendous, clown-like smile stitched across the teenager’s face.

A kingdom in the mountains shares its secrets

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on February 25, 2008

in Art, Bhutan and Travel

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Susan Emerling in The New York Times:

When American curators arrived one spring morning at Norbugang Yu Lhakang, a Buddhist temple in a remote village in western Bhutan, they found a group of monks sitting on the floor in bright robes, chanting. They had been there since 6 a.m., intent on creating the right ambience for a divination ceremony.

The question before them was whether a small 18th-century gilt bronze sculpture – a female personification of supreme Buddhist wisdom – could make its way to the United States for a traveling exhibition of Bhutanese art.

It fell to the sculpture’s owner, a Bhutanese businessman whose family had had the piece for generations, to roll the divination dice. Tremulously, he rolled a two, a six and a nine.

The guide to Bhutan

Bhutan has always been beautiful, but now it is beautiful and luxurious. Tom Fordyce in The Times, UK:

It was a disturbing scene. Three half-naked men, all wearing hideous carved masks, were running towards me, brandishing wooden phalluses the size of monkey wrenches. On my right, a shaven-headed monk mumbled a monotone mantra while striking a pair of discordant cymbals.

Overhead circled a large flock of ravens, getting closer with every lap. From the ancient monastery to my left came another man, wearing what appeared to be a welder’s mask, a sheen of oil and not much else.

The Maldives: Sea, sun and jihad

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on February 15, 2008

in The Maldives

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From The Economist:

A record number of tourists, some 650,000, visited the Maldives’ upmarket and otherwise uninhabited island resorts last year. But from the populated parts of the Indian Ocean archipelago the news is more worrying. On a January visit to one of its 1,200 white sand and coral islands, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was rescued from a knife attack by a boy scout. The would-be assassin’s shout of “Allahu Akbar!” was the latest evidence of growing Islamic extremism in the 350,000-strong nation of Sunni Muslims.

Last September terrorists detonated a bomb in the capital Male’s Sultan Park, injuring 12 tourists. Foreign concern mounted in November when a video posted on an al Qaeda-linked website called for more attacks. The almost simultaneous police revelation that the “masterminds” of the Sultan Park attack had received training in Pakistan heightened fears. But the Maldives government insists there is no evidence that international terror networks have infiltrated the country.