A Cycle Tour of Southern Italy

After a chastening week in Montenegro, Albania, then Montenegro again, during which we saw the best and worst of the Balkans and were chased by wild dogs through piles of rubble, we were ready to head for the more familiar themes of Western Europe again.  We boarded a tired old ferry from Bar to Bari for a month-long tour of, we hoped, the best of Southern Italy. 

We weren't disappointed. Italy is, truly, beautiful in all senses. First you have the Italians themselves, whose instinct for the sartorial is something to behold. It's as if they come out of the womb wearing a perfectly matching pastel bonnet and blouse combination and go from strength to strength thereafter, moving effortlessly from their teenage gilet-wearing phase into the polo necks of adulthood, finally segueing into dignified, flowing old age - sporting a classic wool jumper and complementary chinos as they ride immaculate Vespas on their final journey toward oblivion.

A lively game of backgammon in a park in Bari. We thought they were going to come to blows, but then they all started embracing each other. Classic Italy. 

The town and city placement in Italy also puts aesthetics first and foremost, often to absurd lengths. In other parts of Europe, towns would be situated at strategic, lucrative or fertile points on the landscape; say, just before the point a river gets too narrow for seagoing vessels to dock, or on a fertile agricultural plain where food is plentiful and expansion is straightforward. The Italians see it differently. Defying all the normal rules of town planning, the first consideration in any Italian town planner's mind appears to be 'does it look beautiful?'; thus you have many cities clinging dramatically to the edge of a plunging escarpment, or shining atop a distant hill. Not so good for expansion or access, but fantastic for postcards. 

"Who cares if there is no water? Look at how beautiful it is!"

Not to be outdone, the countryside in southern Italy is varied and lovely, with windswept coasts giving way to rolling low hills; then the stony, wrinkled mountains and plunging ravines of the centre, whose lower slopes and valleys are covered in forests of cypress, pine, and golden oak.

Essentially, if you are looking for a perfect cycle tour, southern Italy would almost certainly deliver it. It has everything you need; loads of potential wild camping spots (as long as you're a bit creative and can stand spooky abandoned buildings), excellent fresh groceries (and cheap wine), beautiful countryside with well-surfaced side roads, and a wonderful clear and mild climate in autumn. Not to forget the charming locals, relatively easy language, and the ruins of an ancient civilisation wherever you look. 

It's all about the 1 euro litres of wine, though

PUGLIA 

We started our tour in the bustling ferry port of Bari, on the coast of Puglia. This city is known mostly as a major transport hub, but is actually a very handsome town in its own right. Wide pastel buildings frame straight avenues frequented by the eponymous Vespas and little Eurocars of the Italians. These open out into a series of handsome squares where you see many old men playing backgammon and gesticulating excitedly. The outer suburbs are grey, industrial and bleak, but they did contain a Decathlon, so they are at least useful. 

An afternoon in Bari and we started to cycle down the Adriatic coast, in the direction of Monopoli. Unlike the coast on the other side of the sea, this stretch of Puglian coast is flat and somewhat forlorn; mostly salt-sprayed cactus fields amidst listless beach towns and the crumbling remains of hotels. Our first camping spot was in a seaside field of dry grass, where I sampled a wild prickly pear and received a painful handful of thorns as a reward. It's a good thing these things are supposed to have health benefits, as they taste like flat cheap fizzy pop and have the texture of coarse gravel. 

Here's me committing a crime against Italian food with a fish-paste sandwich

Turning inland, we headed towards the hilltop town of Locorotondo. The salty coast quickly gave way to an more attractive undulating patchwork of pastures and stone-walled olive groves. Many of the cottages around here are built in the 'Truli' style; this is a kind of house which is completely unique to Puglia, comprising a series of low, cone-shaped dry stone roofs with whitewashed tips.

A typical Puglian Truli house

The hobbit-like Truli houses, along with the drowsy fields of sheep and sentimental Italian skies, gave us the sense of heading into some calm and surreal dreamscape.  Our reverie was only broken by the occasional angry buzzing of a farmer's three-wheeled Piaggio rickshaw, growing and diminishing as it struggled past us. Following roads which dipped and snaked through the fields, we approached the outskirts of Locorotondo, arrayed bright and proud atop a modest ridge. 

We thought we were in for a difficult night as we neared the town. Our searches for camping spots had thus far only uncovered a rubbish-strewn plateau by the side of the road, and night was closing in. Sarah suggested we try a dirt track off the main road; I was sceptical, but the gamble paid off handsomely. 

Apples! 

There, between a fenced off office building and a little cottage, stood an abandoned Truli house. Perfectly preserved and sitting within a sun-dappled olive grove, it even had its own apple tree and grape vine to pick at. After stuffing ourselves with apples and a plastic bottle of local wine, we set up our tent in the arched doorway and drifted off. It's times like these that make the anxiety and occasional squalor of wild camping absolutely worth it - a unique experience that no hotel or campsite could ever offer. 

Getting ready to camp

The house itself, incidentally, appeared to be full of nothing but enormous, dusty earthenware vases. I found the front door key as we were sweeping away some fallen whitewash, but only went and lost it again, along with my chance to own my very own Truli house in Puglia. Damn. We packed up and cycled the short uphill to Locorotondo. 

Locorotondo was one of our highlights of Puglia. Unlike its nearby sister, Alberobello, this one is reasonably free of American tourists. Not only does it command sweeping views of the surrounding landscape, its old centre is a soporific maze of blindingly white, hushed streets where the only sound is laundry flapping in the breeze. Even by Italian standards, that's pretty nice. We spent the greater part of a day in a park overlooking the land south of the town, taking advantage of the bright breezy weather to wash our clothes and drink some wine in the sun. 

The view from the park

A mellow old town indeed

Even the church was light, classy, and there was no wooden Jesus in sight

We packed up and headed the short 10km to Alberobello, featuring at its core a jumble of closely-packed Truli houses, the cone roofs jagged against sky now heavy and grey. It soon became apparent that this town is a honeypot for moneyed foreign visitors; the place had become a leeching set-up with little charm. Outside the old centre, the town is modern and nothing special, and we left late afternoon, camping in a rainy field on our way to the province of Basilicata. 

BASILICATA

Wilder and starker than the breadbasket of Puglia, Basilicata is red and gold, a landscape of yellow hills and twisted trees. Ruined cottages dot the hillsides, atop a few of which stand old fort towns, bright and magnificent. The traffic on our route was light, and the weather was clear and bright; warm in the sun and cool in the shade, with a pleasant chill at night. We would scope out a ruin as a camping spot and cook delicious meals of fresh Italian pasta with tomatoes, garlic and Parma ham, washed down with slightly steely Puglian red wine. The food, scenery, and pleasant drudgery of life on the road produced a contentedness in us. I can't remember how long we spent on the road here, as one glorious day tended to blend into another. 

Looking out over the faded fields of Puglia

Our first major stop in Basilicata was Matera, where we were to stay a couple of nights. This town really has to be seen to be believed - the older part of the town is the second-oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the world (after Aleppo). 

The oldest district, the "Sassi", is built down the sides of a plunging ravine, the stacked blank-windowed stone houses concealing an enormous lattice of caves and tunnels. Across the far side of a yawning gulch, the ravine is unsettled and the cliffs are dotted with a similar series of natural caves. Each turn you take along the town's completely nonsensical street network yields another staggering view of the city itself and its surroundings.

The Sassi

The town itself, incidentally, has an interesting history. Initially settled due to the natural defensive advantages offered by its caves and the fertility of the surrounding plateau, Matera's fortunes rose steadily over thousands of years and by the Middle Ages it was a picturesque, prosperous market town attracting immigrants from all over southern Italy. 

However, things took a dramatic turn for the worse when the provincial capital was moved to Potenza, some 80km or so north, along with many of the farms and jobs. This didn't stem the flow of poor rural Italians coming to the town to vainly search for labour, however, and by the early 20th century Matera was in a mess - a network of filthy subterranean hovels where malnourished people and animals competed for ever-decreasing amounts of space. Often, the marital bed would have the family donkey tethered behind the headboard with families sleeping wherever they could. 

An "authentic" interior of a Sassi house (minus the squalor)

Carlo Levi's damning 1930s memoir, "Christ Stopped at Eboli" described smoky, hellish caverns where dead-eyed people lay listless, barely bothering to bat the flies away from their eyes; the visceral account prompted a public outcry and calls for the Government to take action. 

After many abortive attempts to clean up the town and incentivise residents to move elsewhere, the government threw up its hands and evacuated Matera entirely in the 1950s, sticking most of the residents in a new town a few kilometres away and leaving the Sassi abandoned. There it stood, crumbling and forgotten, until film-makers rediscovered its potential and started using it as a backdrop for historical films, most notably standing in for Ancient Jerusalem in the Passion of the Christ. This sparked a resurgence of interest in Matera, and a new breed of residents - artists, mostly, plus a few far-sighted profiteers - started moving in, followed not long after by hordes of tourists. 

Matera's resurgence is now complete, and tourist-friendly slickness has replaced its former squalor. Like most tourist attractions in Italy, though, this does not detract from the charm and it's a fantastic experience. Especially the pizza place called Oi Mari (I've made an editorial decision not to describe every pizza we ate in loving detail, as this piece would quickly become about nothing else). 

After Matera, we headed for the Tyhrennian coast, following a winding route between del Pollino and Appenino national parks. This is a spectacular bit of Italy, a mountain range covered in long stretches of wilderness between hilltop towns. The wrinkled hills and valleys are covered in copses of majestic wild oak, which glow a soft gold as day turns into dusk - producing the kind of refined and warm Renaissance landscape that's so common in Italy and so rare anywhere else. We took advantage of more ruined farmhouses as camping spots, we ate a lot of cured meat and drank boxed wine, and the days continued to bring blue skies and warmth. The nights were beginning to get cold, though, and we needed all our warm weather gear once the sun disappeared. 

We camped here after descending from the Matera plateau

The land quickly rose again...

...And it was bloody cold at the top

There are loads of ruined cottages about

The landscape is beautiful and rugged

Picking blackberries

The valleys of oak forests turn to gold as the sun sets

Our home for a night

We reached Maratea on the opposite coast, after what I recall was about a week's cycling, but honestly this is just a wild guess. Indeed, I've found that on a long tour like this distances of time are chiefly measured in more immediate, practical metrics; like how long it was since you refilled your water, and how many hours until dusk. Concepts like the "weekend" become meaningless (until, of course, you make the enormous mistake of running out of groceries in Germany on a Sunday). 

Dubbed the 'pearl of the Tyhrennian', Maratea is built on the sides of a steep cove and is an altogether attractive and non-seedy coastal town (a rarity even in classy Italy). It's overlooked by an enormous white Cristo Redentor statue, and is generally a pretty typical Italian town, in the sense of being placed in an impracticable but utterly beautiful location. We'd booked an apartment here and had a nice couple of days which I won't describe in detail, because we were chiefly enjoying boring things like a soft bed, a flushing toilet, and so on. 

After a couple of days writing, eating the inevitable delicious pizza, and drinking in the Tyhrennian ambience, it was time to head north up the coast. 

The morning of our departure, waiting for a storm to clear, we camped out at a local café. Within a few minutes of us sitting down, a local began lustily singing rambunctious Italian folk tunes, accompanying himself vigorously on the piano. He was soon joined by a little kid, who seemed to know all the words, and the whole cafe was smiling and clapping along with this indefatigable duo for a couple of hours. It's almost disgustingly charming, isnt it? It would, indeed, have seemed trite and forced were it not for the effortless grace of the Italians. 

North of Maratea, the coast is a brooding mass of sheer hills and little towns clinging to steep cliffs. We had our first, and only, bad wild camping experience here, bedding down in the grounds of an abandoned beach bar only for an inebriated, vulgar couple to turn up at 11pm in their car. They didn't even ask us to leave, or indeed interact with us at all, save for parking their car inches from our tent and occasionally flashing their fog beams at us as the horrible woman cackled her witchy smoker's laugh.  This foul person also relieved herself against our tent with hoarse, animal grunts of satisfaction. Mercifully they left in the wee hours of the morning (no pun intended) and we were able to grab a few hours sleep until just before dawn, when a bunch of local pensioners parked up to begin a morning jog (all with cheery greetings of 'Bongiorno!') Lesson learned - never wild camp anywhere you can easily drive a car. 

CALABRIA

Further up the coast, things flattened out, and as seems to be the case with flat coastlines everywhere, the seedy, listless seaside towns returned with a vengeance. Before this trip I had assumed that the Mediterranean coast is an unbroken stretch of classy, sun-drenched medieval cities, but it turns out much of it, like much of the world's settled coastline, is just as windy, dull and desperate as anywhere. We cycled through a series of towns with ugly promenades and abandoned hotels alongside tired boardwalks and piers which reminded me of Blackpool (still a million times less depressing than Blackpool). 

Bored of the flat, endless coastal roads, we decided to turn inland again, working our way over the hump of hills that make up the western part of the Valle del Lucano national park, towards Agropoli. 

Waking up before dawn has its benefits

This is a thickly forested area with a lot of wilderness, and despite some tough climbs we spent a fun couple of days traversing it, followed by a heart-stoppingly steep descent down an incredibly narrow road towards Agropoli. We also had a genuine supernatural experience here whilst camping behind an abandoned house which looked like it had been boarded up in the middle of dinner, with the tableware and furniture spookily gathering a thick layer of dust. It's difficult to explain what happened here;  suffice to say here that we are still yet to come up with a logical explanation for the events that occurred during the night. I'll happily explain it all over a pint when I get back. 

Looking back towards the coast

A ruined fortress

Skirting round Agropoli, we headed along a pancake-flat, 50km stretch of awful coastline towards Salerno. We dubbed this place "Prostitute Alley", for reasons that will be obvious should you be unfortunate enough to visit. You might be aware that the staggering beauty of the Amalfi coast is just the other side of Salerno, which makes the pancake-flat Prostitute Alley's ugliness stick out even more. The only highlights were the enormous remains of an ancient Greek fort town we encountered along the way. But even that was just a big wall.

After the greater part of a day's cycling from the hills, we arrived in Salerno. This large-ish port city is somewhat shunned by visitors as it's outshined by Sorrento and the Amalfi coast to the west, but it's not a bad place, and the people are very forward and friendly. We had our bikes tuned up for free by Roberto, one of the owners of a local cycle café (shout out to Roberto, great work), visited the hodge-podge Duomo with its odd mix of medieval and Renaissance styles, and ate unbelievably good pizza and arancini at a little pizza kiosk opposite our accommodation. 

"I am in love with your bikes"

After Salerno, we grabbed a train to Pompeii, where we were to meet our buddy, good old Mr. Ferris. Fez was joining us for five days from his base in the Czech Republic. We had a few hours to kill before he arrived, so we went up to visit the ruins of Herculaneum for the afternoon. 

Unlike Pompeii, which was a bustling commercial centre, Herculaneum was an exclusive spa resort for rich Neapolitans looking to get away from it all. Like Pompeii, it was buried in a layer of ash following the eruption of Mt Vesuvius and lies almost perfectly preserved in a gulch amidst a down-at-heel suburb of the Naples conurbation. Indeed, we had heard that it was actually better than Pompeii, so arrived with high expectations. 

Sadly, unlike Pompeii, Herculaneum was a bit shit. 

The buildings themselves were well-preserved but completely empty, with all the plunder displayed in a museum in Naples (Why wouldn't you just leave the stuff in context, where it makes sense?). It's much smaller and there's nothing telling you what you're supposed to be looking at. The one potential highlight, the bath house, was closed. And worst of all, all the skeletons were just a pile of bones at the foot of the cliff - they hadn't even bothered to pose them in amusing domestic scenes. Disappointing. 

Such a missed opportunity

Looking down on Herculaneum

We got back to Pompeii and met up with Fez at our hostel, where we ate a 8.5/10 pizza and had a few bottles of chilled white wine. 

Fez had arrived, and we gravely embarked upon the scientific task of rating Italy's cheapest boxed wines

The next day, we cycled towards for the ancient Pompeii itself, which was definitely worth the trip. I won't go into a description of Pompeii here, as many of you may be familiar with it, but suffice to say it lives up to the hype. Don't bother joining the massive queue for the brothel, though, unless you're willing to wait half an hour to see a stone bed and a very faded naughty picture. I've heard you can find even naughtier stuff on the Internet these days. 

After Pompeii, we embarked on our cycle down the Amalfi Coast, with our first stop in Sorrento. Sorrento is a pretty and very commercialised seaside town which serves as the launching point for most Amalfi adventures; the only tourist attractions we went to were an old man's collection of vintage music-boxes, some of which he had made himself (a fantastic half-hour was spent there as he demonstrated them to us), and "The English Pub" where we got two pints of London Pride and a glass of lemonade for the outrageous sum of 17 euros. Please don't judge me. There's only so much Eurolager I can take before I'm pining desperately for a flat, warm English ale. 

We also met up with my family friends Karen, Kathy and Roddy, who happened to be holidaying in the Amalfi at the same time and took us out for a meal at Delfino's, a truly special fish restaurant in Sorrento's fishing village. This is still, perhaps, the best meal we had on our trip, although some food in India and elsewhere in Italy came close. Great work, gang, the meal is and was very much appreciated. 

The wonderful Karen

Next was the Amalfi Coast itself. There's a reason that this little stretch of rugged coast between Sorrento and Salerno is top of many itineraries - I have genuinely never seen anything like it. The lush coastal hills seem too stark to be credible and the little seaside towns nestled in its many bays are among the most aesthetic in Italy. It's great cycling, too - in autumn the roads were not too busy and the inclines are gentle enough to make the uphills doable and the downhills exciting but not scary. We drank a lot of San Crispino boxed wine, swam in the sea, and even managed to sneak in some wild camping, bivvying on the edge of a cliff overlooking the twinkling lights of a cove far below. 

Swimming in the oily waters of Sorrento harbour

It was no longer even remotely warm at night

The glorious Amalfi

We spent two days cycling the Amalfi, doing a large stretch of it twice over because it was so good, then arrived in Salerno again.  

THE FAILED CLIMB OF MOUNT VESUVIUS

Fez and I had concocted an ambitious plan to cycle to the top of Mount Vesuvius from here, but Sarah, perhaps sensibly, wasn't keen, so she grabbed a train to Naples whilst Fez and I set off to conquer the brooding volcano whose shattered peak dominates the bay of Naples. 

Could we climb it? 

I'll save you the suspense; we didn't make it. It took us around two hours to get to the base of the volcano, and when we got there we found the lower slopes gut-bustingly difficult; the road was not only extremely steep but cobbled and broken. With all the gear on the bike, it was slow and agonising progress. Upon reaching the gates of the volcano's "national park", on its lower slopes, we were told by a surly guard that the only way up was by bus (at 30 euros each!) and if we wanted to take our own transport we would have to "take it up with la polizia". Essentially, it appeared that access to the mountain is controlled by a private tour company with a monopoly. We had to turn back. 

Chastened, and with afternoon turning to dusk, we attempted to get a train to Naples, but the only trains with bike space departed the next day. We had no choice but to cycle all the way, so we duly steamed ahead and took in all the worst Neapolitan suburbs and satellite towns, arriving in Naples as dark was falling. We had cycled roughly 100km and entirely failed to achieve our one objective. Result. 

NAPLES

Many people come on a trip from Rome and unfavourably compare Naples to the grandeur of the capital, but I feel that's missing the point.  Naples is a dark, confusing maze of soot-blackened buildings and cheap restaurants, where grand cathedrals and porticos jostle with each other down narrow alleys. Rome is expansive, spectacular, with umbrella pines and clean shades of white and terracotta. If Rome is Heaven, Naples is Hell - but the cool kind of Hell, with leering stone gargoyles, pizza joints, and cheap alcohol. 

We ate at a pizza place where the pizzas were 4 euros and - amazingly - that was also the price for a litre of white wine. After, we went out into the dark shrieking jumble of the city for gelato, and the pineapple flavour was so spectacular that I went back in for seconds. We collapsed in our beds after a hugely full day and slept like the dead. 

We sadly took our leave of Fez at this point, who returned to the Czech Republic after being thoroughly introduced to the delights of San Crispino boxed wine. We moved on, taking the slow train to Rome, unable to cycle due to time constraints. 

ROME

I'm not going to go into great detail about all the sights we saw and food we ate in Rome. If you haven't been, it's more or less one of the only cities in the world that's impossible to overhype. 

You almost get the sense that it could actually do with fewer grand old buildings. On your way to anywhere in the centre, you will walk past a few thousand-year-old ruins and spectacular Renaissance cathedrals that don't even warrant a look because there is simply so much to see. If that wasn't enough, the food is unbelievably good. But you'll know this already if you've been. So I'll dispense with the details. 

Something worth saying, though, is that Rome is a great city to experience on a bicycle. Despite hysterical rumours, the traffic in the city is extremely orderly since a huge routing overhaul a few years ago. The centre of the city is compact enough that you can get between most sights in 10-15 minutes, and there is so much to see that those 15 minutes will be spent gawping at sight after sight. 

After three gluttonous days here, we cycled out past a procession of aging prostitutes (seemingly a fixture of Italian suburbs) to the slightly sad coastal town of Fiumicino. Fiumicino is an unremarkable town with an amazing pizza place -you buy the pizza for a kg there, and it's cheap as hell. The salmon pizza is a particular highlight.  

The next day, we wrapped our bikes in plastic and hopped on the plane to India. But that, of course, is another story.

Not Cycle Touring in India: Part One 

Health warning: This blog does not contain pictures. You will have to use the magic of imagination until we stumble upon Asia's only non-shit internet connection...

With a growing sense of dread, we looked at the blank plaque where a business should have been on the ground floor of the tumbledown apartment block in Cochin. Just a few hours in, it was already clear that doing business in India was going to be a more difficult prospect than in the clockwork predictability of Europe.

"No self-storage here, sir," a short, moustachioed Dravidian of about fifty told me, a large crowd of locals forming behind him. "This is a Hindu building. Your 'Thomas Abraham' is a Christian. We do not know him." I looked round despairingly at our taxi driver for some guidance on the situation, who returned my gaze impassively, adjusting his longyi with the air of a man expecting additional profit in the coming minutes.

We had been in Kerala for a matter of hours, and already we were getting our first taste of the frustrating, exhilarating, and strangely harmonious disorder that characterises life on the subcontinent. We had decided to fly the bikes over with us and put them in storage for a month, reasoning that trying to cycle any great distance through India's stifling heat and crush of humanity on a 30-day visa would put us on a hiding to nothing. Or, to put it another way, I had no interest in being flattened by an amphetamine-fuelled Tata lorry driver on a madcap venture that the majority of cycle tourists do not recommend.

It proved, eventually, to be an astute choice. But that wasn't the opinion as we stood in that obscure side street in Ernakulam, having followed very clear and explicit directions to a meticulously researched self-storage company that simply didn't exist. "How much would they charge you for the bicycles, sir?" our moustachioed ringleader said, gesturing to the enormous plastic-wrapped green mummies that we had stuffed into the taxi with great difficulty.

"1500 rupees for the month," I replied. Some quickfire Malayalam dialogue between the taxi driver, ringleader, and crowd of locals followed.

"Then that is OK sir. I will store them, in my shop, for 30 days," he said, "for 6000 rupees".

Even as a newcomer to India, my mouth fell open at such shameless profiteering. "No!" I blurted out. "Too expensive. We will find somewhere else."

Some exhausted haggling and more machine-gun Malayali later, the price had dropped to 3000 rupees. "Show me where you will store them," I said. This isn't what we need after a 12 hour flight, I thought. Who is this guy? Why didn't the storage place exist? Why is the taxi driver agreeing with everyone? What on earth is going on?

The suspicion must have showed on my face, for one of the locals laid a reassuring hand on my arm and told me that if I were to store my bicycles with this local personality, I would have a "full guarantee". "Full guarantee, sir," he repeated, with what I'm sure he imagined he was an encouraging smile. This did little to assuage my fears, however, instead prompting an unsettling flurry of thoughts on the current - and no doubt parlous - state of Indian consumer-protection law.

The "shop" turned out to be a local house in which two smiling saree-clad ladies assured me they would safely store my bikes just as soon as they had finished their cleaning, and eventually with Sarah's cautious assent we pulled away from the street, having potentially just paid a 2000-rupee advance for the privilege of having our expensive touring bikes and camping gear disappear without trace.

Our driver pulled away into the dripping metropolis of Ernakulam, dodging and weaving within the biblical tidal wave of traffic, and as I settled back into my seat, one thought kept returning to my mind:

Oh God, what have we just done?

KERALA

A prosperous, hot, irrepressably lush state in the south of India, Kerala is often sold as "India-lite"; that is, this is the state to visit if you want a  taste of the flavours and smells of the southern subcontinent but less of the grasping hands, plastic bottles, and rivers of foul-smelling ooze so prevalent elsewhere. This is still India, of course, so it's not as if these bits aren't still there - there's just somewhat less of it. Like Pondicherry, this slightly less scary reputation sees respectable golden oldies flock there in droves, as you can apparently have an entirely "normal" holiday here (that is, one where you never have to go through a hellish "sleeper train squat toilet" experience).

The first thing you notice in Kerala is the humidity, which is palpable; by which I mean that there is so much atmospheric wetness that it has ceased to be a meteorological concept and has become a real, physical thing, tasted on the tongue and observed with the naked eye. The sun shines dimly, obscured by a heavy white haze that never lifts. Your clothing sticks to your skin and walking around gives you a distinct impression of wading. No wonder the colonials spent all their time being fanned by natives and drinking gin and tonic.

Speaking of which, it turns out that Kerala is, sadly, a mostly dry state. Beer and wine can only be purchased from special government shops or five-star hotels, meaning you have a choice of drinking your (extremely pricey) booze in a squalid booth populated by hardcore alcoholics or as the only customer in a surgically lit dining room surrounded by bellboys at a loose end. It's a long way from the Italian dream of a litre of very drinkable red for a euro (more on that in another update).

We started our stay in Fort Cochin, on the Malabar coast. This is an old Dutch colonial settlement of boxy, crumbling 14th century houses being steadily reclaimed by luminous creeping vines, grasses and coconut palms. Goats wander the streets, unherded, serenely nibbling on bits of old poster tacked to walls rife with damp mould as crows flutter overhead. Its rubbish-strewn harbour is a particular draw, presenting a classic Indian juxtaposition; rickety wooden 14th century Chinese fishing nets stand still operational, in contrast to huge modern tankers advancing heavy and stately across the other side of the bay.

A few days' R&R followed, in which we did our best to not mention where our bikes might be, sampled the local posh tourist fare and took in our first taste of India. We witnessed a wrestling match between singlet-clad local children, gravely officiated by a referee and watched over by half the town, and learnt the art of rebuffing the slimy autorickshaw drivers, who will tell you that everything you were planning to do is wrong and only they, the selfless tuk-tuk man, can rescue your shattered itinerary through a very reasonably priced journey that definitely won't dump you outside a tourist shop.

On our second day we took a guided tour of the "backwaters", which ended up being a soporific six hours gliding around empty waterways east of Cochin. My chief memory of this excursion was the overwhelming feeling of being just another overfed Western chump, standing with the other Westerners on the trip and gawping at locals making rope. Recommended if you like feeling the full weight of your developed world privilege and falling asleep in a boat.

We also visited the hyper-modern LuLu Mall, a point of pride for Cochin residents. The mall is basically an air-conditioned Stratford Westfield so I don't have much to say about it apart from generic praise for its cleanliness and selection of fast food. However, the local bus journey we took to get there is definitely worth mentioning. For a mere 36 rupees, we had an hour-long glimpse into the harmonious chaos that is Indian local public transport, and it was definitely one of the most entertaining hours we spent on the trip.

Indian traffic rules appear completely disordered, but you soon work out that there is definitely a system in play; it's basically a Darwinian mini-society where the biggest, baddest vehicle has right of way and the tiddlers get out of the way or get crushed. Even the cacophony of car horns has a definite purpose to it - it's not just one collective howl of rage (as it first appears) but is in fact a complex system of signalling to other drivers the exact nature of the death-defying maneuver you are about to make. Our bus, being basically the largest vehicle on the road, sent autorickshaws and scooters swerving in all directions as it ploughed a glorious path between two lanes, letting out a near-constant stream of honks which defied interpretation but seemed to boil down to "OUT OF THE WAY, MOTHERFUCKERS!" The only vehicles we would alter our course for were lorries and other buses, which the driver would attempt to overtake apparently as a point of principle, even if it meant holding up a huge stream of traffic or becoming stuck behind another large vehicle.

A few nights later, Sarah's mum Julie flew out to spend a week's holiday with us. It was Julie's first time in India, too, and she brought with her an irrepressible optimism about every facet of the country. "I'm really glad we got to spend some time in a typical Indian supermarket," was a particularly memorable spirit-cheering comment, as we navigated through pokey aisles and tried to trace an unaccountable smell of burning plastic.

We headed straight from Cochin Airport to Alleppey, two hours' drive south, to spend a couple of nights in a homestay in Kerala's backwaters. The backwaters around Alleppey are far better than those around Cochin; around here, they are a scarcely believable network of glassy liquid highways where wooden canoes and houseboats ply quietly past islands of palms and rice fields, whilst locals wash, drink, play and swim in the waters. Aside from the combine harvesters, it really is like stepping two millenia back in time.

We were staying with the Thevercad family, Syrian Christian rice farmers who lived in a large river-front house with heavy varnished wood panelling and grounds surrounded by washy coconut palms and banana trees. I find it more difficult to write convincingly when I only have good things to say, so rather than descending into Lonely Planet-style cliche ("a feast for the senses" "serene riverfront tranquillity", "an authentic back-to-basics experience", etc), I'll just put down the bare facts.

- Food good
- Fishing at dusk good
- Backwater cruise good
- Beers on porch watching life go by good
- Rambling chats with the charming Thevercad children good

In summary, it was very good.

Next we headed back to Fort Cochin, this time staying with a Mr Walton in his restored Dutch colonial house in the centre of town. Fastidious and immaculately bearded, Mr Walton received us in his office surrounded by well-organised shelves of second-hand paperbacks donated by previous guests. (As an aside, you can really tell the type of guests a place has by the books they leave behind. Being a more up-market homestay, I counted at least four books on coping with divorce on one shelf alone, suggesting to me that this is a popular place for well-to-do recently single middle aged ladies seeking an Eat, Pray, Love experience). After commanding us to sit down, Mr Walton flipped through his tidy log book and took down an extremely thorough record of our personal details whilst I tried to shake off the distinct impression that we were naughty children called in front of the headmaster. "You are very organised, Mr Walton," said Julie. "Madam, I was a lawyer," came the immediate reply, delivered with a stern look over his reading glasses. "Organisation is the most important thing."

You might be reading this and thinking that Mr Walton was an unfriendly host, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Unlike many hosts in India, who have perfected the art of appearing like a cringing sycophant whilst ripping you off shamelessly, Mr Walton is a genuine bloke who tells it like it is. Whilst at one point he shooed Sarah out of his office for disturbing his work, at the end of our stay he presented us with a huge pile of incense and other gifts and gave us some quality advice on the rest of our trip. Basically, if you're acting like a tit, he won't be shy about telling you, but he will go to great lengths to ensure that you enjoy your stay with him and avoid getting ripped off by touts. Extremely refreshing.

After our second stint in Fort Cochin, during which we visited the surprisingly decent Dutch palace museum and shopped for Malabar spices in the down-at-heel district of Mattancherry, we headed east up into the Western Ghats. Up here, it is cooler, and huge tides of mist roll over steep hills covered in ragged spice farms and terraced tea plantations. The ubiquitous crows, goats and street dogs of the coast are gone, replaced by green parrots and families of grey macaques, who sit and watch you with wrinkled, solemn faces.

The colonials used to come up here for a break from the stifling heat of the coast, and whilst the promise of a mosquito-free environment turned out to be erroneous, it is gloriously cool. Living in Britain, you don't really appreciate the true value of mild weather; yes, it may rain and look miserable, but you never sweat through a shirt seconds after putting it on. It's easy to remedy cold weather with a roaring fire and a warming pint of ale, but you're stuffed if it's too hot, aren't you? You've just got to sit there and take it. Orwell wrote extensively about the phenomenon of the hard-drinking, insufferably boring and depressed colonial Anglo-Indian, and after a few days in the sticky heat you begin to appreciate how maddeningly uncomfortable it must have been here before the advent of fans and AC. It's still a good 20 degrees up in Munnar, but the air tastes like tea and mist, rather than petrol and cow dung. Delightful.

We did all the things you are supposed to do in Munnar. We visited a tea factory  on a tour presented by a well-spoken young gent in a blazer that was a few sizes too small; went on a ramble around a plantation and smelt the pervasive fresh smell of tea; and went to watch a traditional Kathikali dance, which was bizarre. Apparently it takes the performers something like 15 years' worth of training before they can properly play the characters - I presume that most of this is taken up learning how to waggle your eyebrows suggestively.

We had hired a driver for the day, and had agreed with his suggestion of a visit to a local village to see some traditional handicrafts (at least, that's what we thought he was suggesting). Sarah and her mum both inexplicably enjoy shopping, as a discrete activity in itself, rather than a chore to grit your teeth and endure. It's particularly bad in India, where a shop assistant constantly hovers around you, picking up items you're perfectly capable of examining yourself and asserting how well this badly stitched curtain or sandalwood elephant would go with your home in the UK. So a visit to a handicrafts village sounded like the perfect opportunity for that, whilst I could sneak off and play a bit of Pokemon.

However, as we turned into the village, we realised with mounting horror that this was no ordinary town; as the signs made clear, it was in fact some kind of boarding school for disabled orphans. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course, in fact it's laudable that such places exist, but we all thought we were about to be roped into the worst kind of car-crash tourism. There's a scene in the Netflix film Beasts of No Nation which sums it up perfectly; the African child soldiers are in the middle of a gruelling training exercise when a 4X4 speeds past filled with Western journalists who gawp and take pictures, leaving the kids to their fate. We thought we would have to tour the facility like the overpaid, overfed, privileged chumps that we were, taking pictures of disabled kids in grinding poverty for a few Facebook likes, then get guilt-tripped for a huge donation by the orphanage pimps at the end. Even Julie expressed discomfort at the prospect.

Luckily, it wasn't quite like that. The kids and young adults were working in handicrafts factories making tie-dyed shirts and recycled paper goods, as part of an initiative sponsored by the Indian manufacturing giant Tata. The workers were cheerily bantering with each other as we walked in and were happy to show off their work. Sarah and Julie bought a bunch of stuff, predictably, but it was a hassle- and guilt-free experience. And I got to play some Pokemon. Result.

Next time, tune in for India part 2 - I'll also disrupt the chronology of this blog by recounting our tutto bene time in Italy at some point.




  

Montenegro and Albania: Balking at the Balkans

MONTENEGRO

Reading the Lonely Planet summary, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Montenegro was a romantic, unspoiled earthly paradise, with incredible landscapes and beautiful towns set amidst lushly forested dark hills. Whilst the landscapes are, indeed, pretty spectacular, what Lonely Planet entirely fails to mention is that the towns and cities in the country are covered in piles of trash, seedy as hell, and on the whole, completely and utterly shit. 

Bloody hell, Podgorica

There is so much trash in this country that it has actually become part of the soil, with gaudy bits of plastic mixed in with the pebbles and humus. Only Albania was dirtier, but you know, you kind of expect it in Albania. Poor show, Montenegro.

Scrubby Croatian coastal country, heading towards the border

Border selfie! (We were quite sternly told off by the officer on duty for this)

After the border, towards Herceg Novi

We entered Montenegro via the congested and run-down border town of Herceg Novi, continuing into the Unesco World Heritage-listed - and utterly spectacular - bay of Kotor. The bay, kind of shaped like a jellyfish on the map, is framed by steep, jagged mountains dusted by patches of the thick, dark forest Montenegro is known for. After sitting out some dismal rain behind a cheesy municipal beach blasting out full-volume pop to precisely no-one until 2am, we continued to the town of Kotor itself, listed by every guidebook in existence as Montenegro's top attraction. And guess what, it's another walled medieval old town. Sadly, we arrived just as an enormous cruise ship about three times larger than the town itself dumped its load of American pensioners all over everything, turning the  potentially charming town into a sea of khaki shorts, pale gouty legs, and "oh my gawsh, Wade, it's so quaint!". We left after 20 minutes.

Small beach town, Bay of Kotor

Swimming in the bay

Kotor

"Can I park my enormous, ugly floating hotel right in the middle of your picturesque little bay?" "Sure!" 

The rest of the day was spent climbing one of the oldest roads in Montenegro, an enormous narrow serpentine winding up the sheer side of the bay to the ancient valley of Njegusi way above. The views were incredible, and we climbed so high that even the other mountains framing the bay had receded into a distant blue dimness by the time we completed our ascent.

Looking down over the bay of Kotor

Even higher up

Some well-deserved beer, sausages and chips at the very top

A beer with a view

On our way, we picked up a companion, a friendly, mangy dog that woke up from a nap in the shade and inexplicably decided to follow us all the way up the mountain, despite us refusing to touch or feed it ("Montenegro is HIGH RISK for rabies!" a text from my Dad had warned). We found a good wild camping spot near the town of Njegusi, and the dog promptly lay down between us and fell into a fitful sleep. It was then we realised that the dog was covered in weeping wounds and was panting and foaming at the mouth in a potentially alarming way. In retrospect, I'm sure he was harmless, but it was a muscular pitbull cross sort of a dog, and nightmare scenarios kept running through my head of the pooch turning rabid in the night and ripping our tent - and ourselves - to shreds. We decided we had best be rid of him, and a farcical chase followed as we pedalled furiously across the sun-dappled valley floor, desperately trying to lose the dog, which was sprinting down the road and trying to keep up with us. Some miles later we found a ruined cottage to hide behind and found we had blessedly lost him. I feel sorry for the bugger - he had a collar but was clearly abandoned, and despite his friendly demeanour is more likely to occasion fear rather than sympathy due to his huge jaws and powerful muscles. He's probably doomed to die alone and friendless. It's best not to think about it too much. Moving swiftly on.

"Faster! He's catching up!"

Next, after a cycle amongst spectacular hills and struggling through abandoned roads buried by rubble, was Montenegro's capital, Podgorica.

Woke to find a beetle bathing in my wine

Looking over the valley of Njegusi from our camping spot

Setting off on the road to Podgorica

The upland roads past Njegusi were almost traffic-free, and we enjoyed some magnificent cycling

Magnificent, I say

They've replaced the old road we were cycling on with a new one 100ft above. We soon discovered why

Typical Montenegrin hillside hamlet

A Soviet war memorial near Lake Skadar

Podgorica is optimistically described by Lonely Planet as "relaxed and unpretentious", which I assume are the only two compliments they could find about the place that weren't outright lies. It is perhaps the worst place I have ever been. Spread out over a vast plain like a dun spatter of urban vomit, it manages to be both over- and under-developed, with cramped Soviet-style tower blocks bunched together amidst inexplicably empty fields of rubble and trash. The "old town" is genuine in the same way that a slum is genuine, a cluster of rude dwellings and unpaved roads with more trash and rubble piled up in the streets. The empty foundations of long-unfinished houses act as crude landfills for the residents, as dirty children scrabble in heaps of refuse (presumably Podgorica's answer to play areas). It reminded me of the awful towns I used to make in Sim City on the PC before I had mastered the basics like zoning, running water and law enforcement.

The plus side to all this is that accommodation is cheap as chips, and we managed to get a fully-furnished apartment for 20 euros for the night. As we settled down to sleep at 11pm, the apartment exploded with garish noise - our stay had unfortunately coincided with a classic Wednesday night drug-fuelled party thrown by the residents below, which went on until the wee hours. Just as you imagine you might be somewhere else, Podgorica reasserts itself. That's the charm of the place.

The next day, after picking up supplies, we cycled out of Podgorica just as fast as our little legs could carry us. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be very far. Shortly after passing the 'you are leaving Podgorica' sign - past which we  celebrated madly - I realised I had left Trackimo  (the tiny tracking device I carry to assuage my mother's frantic worry) back at the apartment! We had no choice but to turn and cycle all the way back, where the confused host let us in to grab it. We left the city again, for good this time - or so we thought. The camping spot we had spied in a scrubby forest outside the city turned out to be patrolled by a large pack of wild dogs. Aggressive strays are the scourge of the southern Balkans and they all hate cycle tourists - we have been chased a number of times by livid, snapping little shites, most of whom turn miraculously cowardly the moment you step off the bike and square yourself up to them. We couldn't take the chance of an attack, and it was getting dark, so back we went to bloody Podgorica to sleep in a shabby hostel in the old town, our sleep interrupted again by a man coming in at midnight and sobbing drunkenly down the phone for three hours.

The next day, we finally managed to leave the town, sleep deprived and with our tempers frayed. It was time to cycle through the thorny wilderness, towards lake Skadar, and Albania.

I realise that what I've written about Podgorica is unremittingly negative, so Sarah has suggested putting in a few things we liked about the town too. Here goes:

- The hosts for our accommodation were friendly and helpful; 

- The women in Podgorica are all immaculately groomed; 

- We caught a bit of a Balkan folk festival outside the Mall of Montenegro, which had a jovial atmosphere and lots of people in peasant costume.

And that's about it.

Basically. the very north-western corner of Montenegro - what locals refer to as "old Montenegro" - encompasses the Bay of Kotor and Valley of Njegusi, and is very much worth a visit. Past that, in our view, you may as well turn back. 

ALBANIA

Albania is often described as the "final frontier" of Europe, and indeed you couldn't imagine a more different place from the placid, pristine, Lego-set environs of our starting country, Holland. Let me preface this section with a disclaimer: we only spent 48 hours in the flat far north of Albania, so our impressions are based on a tiny slice of what is a very varied country. Nevertheless, here they are.

The border crossing from Montenegro to Albania gave us a strong impression of what was to come. A herd of wild goats wandered in and out of the half-derelict checkpoint building, in which a solitary worker was stabbing away at a power outlet with a screwdriver. Disheveled men ambled about aimlessly as an unidentified foul-smelling yellow liquid oozed down the road next to us, mixing with the piles of asbestos and rubbish blowing about.  After a long time having our passports scrutinised by the border officer on duty, we were waved through without comment, and the officer checking the trucks gave us a wave and grin as we cycled past a wandering pig and into Albania proper.

Can you spot the goats?

Like Montenegro, Albania is supposed to have incredible natural beauty, but sadly we seemed to have come into the one part of the country that lacks it. Northern Albania around Lake Shkoder is flat as a pancake, with unbelievable amounts of refuse piled up in the roadside ditches. The rural houses, many abandoned and most half-finished, stand apart from each other amidst smallholdings which appear to be growing nothing but weeds, with skinny cows and donkeys miserably tethered and standing alone in fields.

Not a particularly pleasant sight, but Albania has a substantial redeeming factor - Albanians. We had read the Albanians were famously friendly, and found this to be absolutely the case. Everyone we passed turned to smile and wave, crying out greetings, whether they be workers in the fields, old men in three-piece suits riding bicycles (Albania has loads of these) or groups of boisterous schoolchildren. Memorably, one such child was bouncing up and down with a wide grin on his face, waving and yelling a repeated greeting that we could only discern as English as we passed. "Fuck you!!" he was shouting, joyously. "Fuck you, fuck you!!"

After a few hours' cycling a surprisingly well-surfaced road, we arrived at the town of Shkoder to check into a hotel. Accommodation in Albania is cheap indeed - almost Far East levels of cheap - and we had a presidential-style suite on the top floor of a newly-opened hotel on the outskirts of town for a mere 20 euros. We appeared to be the only guests, and Sarah tells me that the morose staff member that handled our check-in appeared to be on the point of topping himself. Hope you're OK, guys. There's more to life than Shkoder.

Shkoder's famous skyline

After an evening spent trip planning and quaffing a surprisingly decent bottle of local wine, we headed out of Shkoder towards the southern Montenegrin border crossing. Cycling through Shkoder was a real experience. The streets were a scene of amiable chaos, with drivers, cyclists and pedestrians weaving around wandering chickens, goats and dogs. Cars would frequently barrel down completely the wrong side of the road for no discernible reason, but there was a sort of general acceptance of this, with everyone maintaining a kind of devil-may-care good cheer towards the whole thing. 

As we headed towards the edge of town, I heard Sarah yell, followed by a loud bang. I turned around to see her laughing and pointing towards a dazed-looking pheasant running around in circles on the pavement, which had apparently jumped out in front of her only to be promptly smacked by a pick-up truck. Said truck continued to amble down the road without even slowing, suggesting that this was a pretty everyday Wednesday morning occurrence. Even the pheasant didn't look particularly chastened. 

It might seem like cycling through an Albanian town is a frightening or unenjoyable experience, but honestly we found it very amusing indeed, and it was one of the highlights of our trip. Highly recommended. 

We were heading back to Montenegro via the southern border crossing to visit the beach resort of Ulcinj. This detour was being taken on the advice of our host in Podgorica, who was effusive on the subject - "I don't recommend you go there, you understand - I recommend SIX BILLION people go there!" he had said. "Ulcinj is like the best of Dubrovnik, but with more nature, and a beautiful forest to the south! Ulcinj very, very beautiful!" We couldn't possibly have disregarded such advice, given as it was with much finger-stabbing of a dog-eared regional map, so off we went to see if Ulcinj was indeed the town that six billion people should have heard of. 

ULCINJ - THE SIX BILLION PEOPLE QUESTION

Did Ulcinj live up to its hype? Well, the accommodation was very, very cheap (we managed to snag an apartment for 13 euros), the food was similarly cheap, and there was indeed an old town and a beach. However, the hyperbolic comparisons to Dubrovnik were sadly unfounded. 

A taste of home!

Garish signs in the old town

River fishing shanties on the way to Velika Plaza

Ulcinj old town itself is like a miniature Dubrovnik, if Dubrovnik was plastered in garish laminated signs advertising cocktail nights and horrible food, and if its streets ended abruptly in piles of rubble and scaffolding. Basically, imagine if Dubrovnik and Zante had an ugly and disappointing child, which inherited Dubrovnik's crumbling walls but Zante's penchant for seedy nightclubs.

Is that hamburger tartare I see? And is there a subliminal message in the lemonade?

This is not to say it was all bad, but it suffered from the curse of a town with potential which is trying too hard to attract tourists and ends up losing all its charm in the process. Nowhere was this more present than along the Velika Plaza ("Long Beach") strip, a 13km stretch of black sandy beach bordered by wild pine forest. The strip behind the forest was lined with advertisements for beach bars, all of which were trying to piggyback off the fame of some more well-known location (e.g. "Cocktails on Copacabana beach", "Come to Miami Beach", or just "CALIFORNIA"). The overall effect was one of a location which is not confident enough to tout its own unique charm but has to don the mask of another in order to fit in. But, come on, Ulcinj! You have a potentially well-preserved old town and some real Eastern European black sand beaches - make that the selling point! And clean up the rubbish, it's everywhere! 

In conclusion, if six billion people came to Ulcinj, about 500 million people would leave mildly disappointed. Not hugely disappointed, you understand, just... slightly let down. The rest would quite enjoy it, I'm sure. Certainly the many Russians and Kosovans we saw were having a jolly good time. 

It was time to head to the final country in our three-month European tour, so we cycled along the coastal road north to reach the ferry port of Bar. We boarded a pretty awful, piss-smelling, rickety overnight ferry, heading towards Bari and the delights of southern Italy.

On the ferry to Italy