Paris by night

Paris (France) – The taxi speeds through the empty streets.  It’s a typically mild but humid night, with a bright moon bearing down on the sleeping city.  The street lights drop circles at their dark bases like lime lights.

Oumar has been driving all night. I can see his dark, chubby face reflected in the rear-view mirror; there are heavy bags under his eyes. On his stereo he plays Malian wassoulou music on loop and taps his fingers in time on the steering wheel.  Another few hours – some airport runs, drops to the major television and radio stations, a shift worker or two – and he’ll be home.

We pass the big bars on the Boulevard de Clichy.  The red-neon sails of the Moulin Rouge are still turning but the doors are shuttered and balled-up flyers promising ‘an unforgettable night out’ litter the footpath out front.  Next door, the Irish bar’s terrace is still full.   It’s Tuesday night and sunrise isn’t too far off, but tanned, young tourists in casual shorts and sandals are still working through pints of pale beer, at ease in the world of backpacking where the days of the week and time of night never matter.

Past the bars and fast food restaurants we drive into the quieter residential areas.  The shutters are drawn and the homeless are taking advantage of the lull in foot traffic to bed down in the doorways.  One man in a thick, mottled winter coat leans on a shopping trolley piled with coloured plastic containers, shopping bags and tins he salvaged from the rubbish bins.  In the whole street only the windows of the boulangerie glow orange.  A baker in white overalls is pulling fresh pastries from a tower of trays, and stacking baguettes into the baskets behind the counter.

The lights change, we drive on, drawing parallel with a night bus.  Two men in suits with red faces and loosened ties are locked in a fit of laughter.  The rest of the passengers, a collection of weary party-goers and bleary eyed blue-collar workers in uniform – watch them absently.

Finally, we round the corner and the taxi draws up outside Maison de la Radio.  The avenue is deserted and there is a full row of Velibs lined up across the road.  Inside, the broadcasters’ day has already begun.  Soon Paris will be waking up, hungry for information.  While the city slept and the young partied there will have been bomb attacks, rebellions, murders and stock market fluctuations.  Soon we’ll clear our throat, take the mike and patiently watch the clock tick to the top of the hour, to smile: “It’s four hours universal time, six am here in Paris.  Good morning.”

Je défends – Standing up for Parisians

Paris (France) – “Aïe! Touch my dog and I’ll show you!”

The woman’s threat comes hurling across the quays over the din of morning rush hour.  There are dozens of honking cars arranged in crooked lines, vying for a spot in one of only two lanes, with two-wheelers and pedestrians weaving brazenly around them.

In the midst of this noise and aggression, a big, black Labrador had preempted the green light and trotted straight into the path of my bicycle.

“Zut!”

That cry was mine.

I clamp down sharply on the breaks, swerve and with the owner shouting the kind of profanities that should leave her begging onlookers to excuse her French, keep on cycling.  Just another weekday morning.

Steve and I have been living in Paris for almost three months and swapping stories of Parisian flare-ups is part of our daily routine.  There’s the time a man in a tweed suit chased a cyclist who brushed against his Union Jack-crowned mini.  “But you broke the red light!” cried the cyclist, peddling for his life.  There are the scribbled notes in the lift of my friends’ apartment building reminding the occupants of the studio on the fifth floor to take off their shoes before walking across the floorboards on a Sunday morning.  And the man who snapped: “do I look like your personal map reader?” at another friend asking for directions.

“Paris would be just perfect if it wasn’t for the French,” one American tourist said to me. “People say New Yorkers are rude, but they’re just under pressure.” She had wandered into the boutique I ran for the first two months of our stay in the city.  It’s the kind of shop where the handbags on display have more breathing space than the average Parisian toddler.

“Parisians are under pressure too,” I wanted to argue.  But I didn’t, knowing that those who think life in Paris is easy are just as likely to think the city is flat.  Walking the broad boulevards of the Champs Elysées and the Rue de Rivoli, admiring the 16 km of exhibition space in the Louvre, or gazing up through the hollow frame of the Eiffel Tower, you don’t see how little room Parisians have.

Peak hour, Paris Metro (France)

There are over 2.2 million people crammed into the urban centre’s 105 km2, placing it firmly among the most densely populated areas in the world.  The capital of the Philippines, Manila, at the top of the list, has 43,079 people per square kilometre.  Another famously crowded city,  New Delhi in India, has 29,155.  And Paris?  In the city of lights and love 20,807 people live in each square kilometre.  Consider also that the suburbs of Levallois-Perret and Vincennes are even more densely populated, and that a huge number of their inhabitants travel into Paris for at least 35 hours each week.  Add to that over 15 million annual tourists (Paris is the world’s most visited city) and you begin to understand why Parisians treat so many exchanges as invasions of their precious, personal space.

Too many people and too little space mean higher rents.  Accommodation is advertised by the square-metre: 9 m2 for the former maids’ quarters favoured by thrifty students, 25 m2 for a basic studio, upwards of 50 m2 for a two-bed and 600 m2 if you’re the disgraced ex-finance minister, Hervé Gaymard.  But, that’s another story.  Every additional metre counts and Parisians expect to sacrifice anywhere from a third to over half of their salary for the added luxury of a separate kitchen-living area or a balcony the size of a window box.  Then there are charges communes to pay, lengthy contracts to negotiate . . .

. . . And usually a significant commute to your workplace/friend’s house/occasional dinner date.  Cue hours spent in traffic or in the metro, shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of other strangers who would rather not be several metres underground in stuffy carriages.   Getting from A to B takes too much time, and additional obstacles – indecisive tourists, pram-pushers, sidewalk cyclists – spark frustration and worse.  There is one surprising bonus, however.  Blatant traffic offenses, queue-jumping and disruptive, mass protests are more likely to be met with empathy than anger by the general population and the police.

These inconveniences don’t put people off and in the last twelve months over 10,000 people  joined us in moving to Paris.  It has a reputation as a centre for arts and fashion and has attracted the world’s biggest multinationals.  But, the competition for each job is tough and we have met more than one university graduate working in hospitality or retail simply because the market in their area of expertise is saturated with over-qualified, young hopefuls and, as a result, the pay as a waiter or shop assistant is better.

All of this leaves little time or disposable income for the pleasures most of us associate with Paris: croissants in the morning, café terraces and museums.   Visitors will say the Parisians are rude or arrogant, perhaps they’re just épuisés.

As for the newspaper vendor who balled up the receipt, threw it in my face and shouted: ‘what?  You can’t put it in the bin yourself?’ . . . I don’t know what his excuse is.

Portugal in pictures

Street performer in downtown Lisbon (Portugal)

Another tiled building in Lisbon's Alfama district (Portugal)

Lobster nets in the seaside town Caiscais (Portugal)

Lisbon (Portugal)

City of Lights, City of Death, City of Gods

Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh (India) – For India’s 800 million Hindus this is where everything begins and ends: Varanasi.

It is believed that the city was built on the exact point on the Ganges River where gods and goddesses can cross into our world, and where dead and dying mortals can cleanse their sins and be released into the next life.  For thousands of years pilgrims have come in their millions to bathe in the sacred waters.

Still today the city heaves with religious importance.  It’s heavy with the emotion of repenting sinners and mourners, and battles to preserve centuries of tradition from the trappings of tourism and touting.  On the broad steps or ghats leading down to the river these two mortal worlds collide.

Candlelit offerings on the Ganges, Varanasi (India)

“Sir, sir.  Boat ride, boat ride?” sings an eager salesman bounding up the steps.   He extends his hand and leans over a sleeping family waiting for the trembling sun to come over the horizon so they can begin their ablutions.   The mother’s thin, withered leg peeks out from the thin blanket that’s covering two tiny children and a shopping bag of luggage.

From somewhere else a young girl proffers a selection of postcards: “Hello! You like postcard? . . . No? Look this then.  Henna.”

Another man reaches for pale-skinned hands to demonstrate his aptitude for traditional massages.

Just behind him a scrawny teenager with a stack of clay cups and a teapot strapped to a cylinder. He raises an eyebrow hopefully: “Chai?”

And weaving between them, turning away from the zoom lens of the curious onlookers in linen pants and sun hats, are the pilgrims.   They chant and clap in small processions, wading into the thick, murky waters.  They cup their hands and drink thirstily, rubbing the water vigorously into their skin and hair.  After they emerge in dripping saris and lungyis they scrub and beat their clothes clean, and line up to have their heads shaved by the barbers squatting in the few spots cleared of the sludge of washed-up offerings, glittering garments and cow dung.

Varanasi (India)

A group of men with a shrouded corpse on a stretcher hoisted above their heads emerges from a narrow alleyway, heading towards one Varanasi’s handful of burning ghats.  A funeral pyre is being lit and the flames climb quickly up the stack of wood to lick at the body on top.   The family members are crowded together, occasionally distracted from their grief by the tourists filing past.

For the outsiders the scene is unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.  Everywhere there is colour, noise, religious icons and layers of people.  There are the signs of insurmountable poverty, new wealth, of religious devotion and of so many cultures, beliefs and customs clashing together.  It’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen before, but yet this, the outsiders agree, this is India.

From Teashop to Teashop: Ten days on Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit

Manang (Nepal) – The water pipes have frozen again and there are thick chunks of ice in the buckets beneath them. Somewhere down the hall the first group of trekkers is stirring and the heavy thud of their hiking boots travels up the guesthouse’s wooden floorboards.

“Pas d’eau,” one of them grumbles. No water, in French.

Through the walls as thin as packing crates there is the sound of sleeping bags being forced into their pouches, of down jackets being zipped up and the clinking of walking poles. Backpacks are unpacked, re-packed and stacked in the courtyard for the porters and guides – a motley crew of city teenagers in trendy runners and seasoned Sherpas with telltale stoops.

Approaching the Thorung-La pass (Nepal)

We’re several days into Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit. In the peak season, mainly October and November, as many as 200 walkers begin the trek every day, making it Nepal’s most popular ‘teashop trek’. The appeal lies partly in the breathtaking scenery, but equally in the fact that at the crest of every climb is a welcoming guesthouse, a bakery or, at the very least, a smiling Nepali with a jar of expensive, imported confectionary and a bubbling teapot.

We started walking several days ago and somewhere along the way the gently undulating (by Nepalese standards), dry hills gave way to steeper ascents and the kilometres-tall peaks of the Annapurna ranges became our foreground. Now, their snow-covered slopes are just across the valley, almost at eyelevel. Shorts and t-shirts have been swapped for fleece hats and thermals, and the thinned air has reduced our quick strides to a heavy trudge.

We move from village to village juggling figures: three hours until the next settlement, 500 metres up, another 3 kilometres distance. Day by day we carefully note the increase in altitude: 890 metres the first night, then 1,314 metres, 2,670 metres, 3,351 metres. Every day we are closer to Thorong-La; at 5,146 metres it’s one of the highest passes in the world.

The anticipation among the trekkers is palpable. Every night, huddled over tin buckets of glowing embers, notes are compared. How long to get to the pass? Eight days? Ten? Or a leisurely 15? Any signs of altitude sickness? Rest or push through? And what of crossing the pass? Start before sunrise and take it slow or go later but faster to avoid the sub-zero temperatures?

Trekkers on the Annapurna Circuit (Nepal)

It’s a long way up to the pass from the base camps. Three hours at least. The water freezes in the trekkers’ water bottles on the way up and is still thawing when the Tibetan prayer flags marking the highest point come flapping into view. Across the threshold, the weary walker gets his reward: an uninterrupted, panoramic view of the range’s hidden peaks; snow-covered, jagged, imposing. And the good news: from there it’s all downhill.

A few more cups of milk tea, another round of cards, the next chapter read and it’s time to crawl into the sleeping bags. With a long day’s walking done and another day’s walking ahead we turn the lights out on another day trekking the Annapurna Circuit. It’s 8.30pm.

Holi War – The festival of colours

Pokhara (Nepal) – It’s just after 10am on 19 March and chaos is about to prevail in the normally tranquil streets of Pokhara’s Lakeside tourist district.

“Happy Holi!”

SPLAT! A water balloon exploding on someone’s back.  SMACK!  A sharp slap of powdered dye across the crown.

“Don’t worry! Just enjoy. It’s Holi!”

SMACK!

The Hindu festival Holi is a North Indian celebration marking the beginning of Spring, but the mock battle that’s part of the festivities has been enthusiastically adopted by children and teenagers across Nepal.  ‘Players’ load up on water balloons and sachets of brightly-coloured dye and tear down the streets anointing each other and innocent passers-by.

We dig frayed, t-shirts and shorts from the bottom of our backpacks, and rub the first streaks of colour into our cheeks “so people know you play”. Then, it’s time to brave the streets.

For two hours we chase and get chased by local children tourists, getting fistful after fistful of powder smattered on our cheeks, in our hair, along our arms.  Our clothes are covered first in bright handprints, and later in a mess of pinks, greens and purples.  From the restaurant balconies, non-players throw buckets of water onto the warring factions below, and somewhere in the midst of it all, a traditional, tamborine-tapping parade of middle-aged men in white tunics add bags of deep, red dye to the mix as they sing and dance through the crowds.

Pokharas main street during the Holi festival (Nepal)

Exhausted, we collapse in a cafe away from the action and order some lunch. A Japanese couple passing by explodes in laughter when they see us. “Please,” they giggle. “Can we take a picture of you sitting there like nothing happened?” We clink our finger-printed tea cups and bear our blindingly white teeth through the mess of paint covering every inch of our face and neck.

At the back of the restaurant the owner’s young son intercepts me. One cheek is decorated with a tidy, pink streak, and he holds up an unopened packet of dye. “You play Holi with me,” he grins and lets me carefully tear open the plastic. He dips his small hand into the powder, and pats the dye gently into my matted mess of multi-coloured hair. “Happy Holi!” he shrieks in delight and bows his head to let me return the honour and sprinkle him with the powder.

Later in the day, scrubbed clean except for a few tell-tale streaks of pink around our finger nails and hairlines, we make our way back into town. Groups of heavily-painted players are still roaming the streets, stepping over coloured rivers and piles of discarded powder bags and water bottles.

As we settle into a restaurant, the waiter claps his hands and chuckles, motioning to our pink foreheads: “Good Holi, yes?” We nod and smile. “Holi is good, no? But tomorrow, small headache. The powder is eh . . . not so good.” He glances at our anxious faces. “No, no problem. Small headache. No problem . . . Two mojito?”

Swapping generators for candles

Bandipur (Nepal) – It took five hours of travelling on shuddering buses with collapsed seats to get our first break from the dust that had been burning our nostrils since we arrived in Kathmandu five days earlier. Finally, clinging onto the roof rack of a jeep, wedged between our backpacks and someone else’s shopping, we found ourselves riding above the dust cloud and breathed in the fresh mountain air.

It took 40 minutes to climb the last seven vertical kilometres to the Himalayan village of Bandipur.   Suddenly freed from the myopia imposed by Kathmandu’s pollution, we greedily took in the view before us:  layers of rolling green hills sliced by glowing, green terraces; a strip of clear, blue sky and, rising above the clouds, a half-dozen jagged, snow-covered peaks.

In Kathmandu we had grown accustomed to never seeing more than a few metres ahead.  Walking through the chaotic network of narrow streets, we kept our eyes fixed on the motorcycles and bicycles rickshaws that swerved carelessly around pedestrians.   We expected the twice-daily blackouts, and learned to navigate our hotel room by torchlight until the owner fired up the spluttering generator.  We knew that even by hiking up to the city’s highest viewpoints the surrounding valley would be shrouded in an impenetrable grey haze, and our eyes would reach only to the flat rooftops of the nearest suburb.

Children play with spinning tops in Bandipur's streets (Nepal)

In contrast, Bandipur was a visual feast.  The sun was setting when the jeep rolled to a stop at the edge of the village, and the main street was bathed in the day’s last rays of sunshine.  Low-ceilinged, mud-brick buildings with wooden balconies and shuttered windows leaned into the paved main street.  Between them, steep, dirt tracks dropped off into the valley and down to the cottages below.   Villagers, dressed in the colourful caps and clothes of the Newari people, leaned in doorways, observing the day coming to an end.

“Namaste! You need a room?” A grubby, little figure with faded jeans that barely reach her ankles bounces out of the shadows.  “You need a room?”  she asks again, and eases into bargaining mode.  She’s no more than 11-year-old but converses comfortably in English.  “Ok, the room is 500, but for you, sister, 400.  Attached bathroom . . . Hot water?   No hot water in Bandipur, sister.  Only buckets.”

This girl, it emerges, is one of the more persistent members of Bandipur’s pint-sized workforce.  For many centuries Bandipur was an important stop-off point for traders ferrying goods between India and Tibet. Tourism and the need for English is relatively new to the village.  As a result, the restaurant and guesthouse owners have come to rely on a staff of teenagers and schoolkids to deal with the questions of the increasing number of tourists that pass through.

Storekeeper in Bandipur watches cartoons (Nepal)

We leave our new friend and start the search for a cheaper room.  Just a few paces down the road, we come across another guesthouse.  A young boy with gelled hair is sitting behind the counter.  His homework is spread out in front of him and the cartoons playing on a television set flicker across his face.

“Do you have a room?” we ask, jolting him into action.  He nods and beckons us to follow him through a low door.  We scale a short, wooden ladder and pass his stooped, raisin-eyed grandmother peeling vegetables on the beaten dirt of the kitchen floor.  Another ladder takes us to a dark landing, and he opens a wooden door into a small room with two, thin-mattressed beds, a pew-like bench, and a shuttered window opening out onto the street.  His mother, wrapped in her schoolteacher’s sari, supervises the bargaining from a distance.  He knows the routine and, once the price is agreed, reminds us that the family also has a restaurant and tells us that should we want food or anything else, to come find him.

 

Ganesh Shrine, Bandipur town square (Nepal)

Outside the darkness has thickened and the villagers are pulling their shutters across for the night.  The young workers fold their exercise books closed and store them under the counters.  Somewhere in the distance a radio fades out; floor boards creak as families roll out mattresses to sleep and suddenly Bandipur, its valleys and mountains, are completely still . . . and no generator kicks in.