Where to go?

Stanley – Thursday

Mette and I are on the road again.  This time to visit friends in Malawi, which was called Nyasaland by the colonising Brits.  Sitting on an airplane is always an opportunity to ponder.

Not having travelled much before I left South Africa in my mid-twenties, I’ve been very fortunate to make up for that since, partly through work and partly because I have itchy feet.

As a result, I am frequently asked where I suggest as a destination.  Of course, the answer depends on who is asking.  One answer certainly doesn’t fit all.  However, over the years, I have developed a shortlist of places that I think everyone should see.

Before I tell you what’s on the list, I should clarify the two criteria for making the list.

1.         The place has to be astonishing. 

2.         It has to make you shake your head in wonder.

The implication of these two criteria is that the place doesn’t have to be beautiful, although it can be.

Number 1:

My number one must-see destination is Egypt, both as a whole, and more specifically Luxor, hundreds of kilometres up the Nile from Cairo.

In Cairo, of course there are the pyramids, astonishing in size and construction – structures that made me seriously consider that aliens could have been part of our history.  More astonishing is the Museum of Cairo – not the gussied-up places such as the British Museum or the various Smithsonians, but rather a large, ho-hum building with amazing artifacts.  Set aside several days just for it.

Most astonishing in Egypt is Luxor, home of the Temple of Karnak, Temple of Luxor, Valley of the Kings, and Valley of the Queens.

Construction of the Temple of Karnak was begun about four thousand years ago and lasted for several thousand years.  It is astonishing that the obelisks there, weighing over 300 tonnes, were cut from quarries nearly two hundred kilometres farther upstream.  The Egyptians of the time figured out that slinging these huge stones under barges made transporting them much easier (fifteen hundred years before Archimedes).  These huge slabs were then taken from the barges, moved some distance to where were to be erected, then rotated into their vertical position.  The plinths of some of the tall columns weight 70 tonnes.  How did they get them up there?

On the other side of the Nile, the treasures of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens defy my ability to describe them adequately.  You have all seen the photographs of the various amazing artifacts.

To experience this must-see place, it is absolutely worth putting up with the never-ending assault by kids and other street vendors.

Number 2:

From the remarkable man-made (or alien-made) structures of Egypt to the natural beauty of the Okavango Delta in Botswana.

Rising in central Angola, the Kavango River flows south towards Namibia, then turns east into Botswana.  When it reaches the area around the small town of Shakawe, the river fans out into a delta of islands and crystal-clear water covering about 15,000 sq. km, before evaporating or disappearing into the desert.

Satellite photo of the Okavango

Michael and me in a Mokoro (in the 1980's)

The Delta is a haven for wildlife, including the ones you’d expect to see in an African game reserve – lions, elephants, leopards, hippos, crocodiles – as well as some amazing antelope, such as the sitatunga and Lechwe.  Even more so, it is a paradise for birds.  Michael, some friends and I were camping in the Delta once and recorded about 130 different species in twenty-four hours.  The prize for birders is Pels Fishing Owl – rarely seen.  Shakawe is the only place I have ever suffered from bird overload – more species in greater numbers than my mind could take in.

There is nothing more magical than being punted silently through the numerous channels of the Delta in a Mokoro – a dugout, usually from a Sausage tree.  The sights and sounds are food for the soul.

Number 3:

Jerusalem.  I am not religious, but the confluence of three major religions, with all the ramifications, historic and contemporary, filled me with wonder.  So much of so many cultures has ties to this city that I was in a constant state of awe. 

Temple Mount - holiest site in Judaism 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre - some believe Jesus was crucified here

al-Aqsa Mosque, where Muslims believe Muhammad ascended into heaven

Excavations in the area show human settlement over seven thousand years ago, and in that time, the city has been destroyed twice, besieged numerous times, recaptured numerous times, and always a city of turmoil.  

I didn’t find it a particularly attractive place visually, but rather was amazed at the extent that historic old was embedded in the bustling new – existing side by side, within each other.  It felt perfectly natural that an electronics shop could be neighbours with a place mentioned in the bible.

It was also a place that embodied what I find so incongruous in so many religions – peaceful philosophies surrounded by men with automatic weapons, trying to change the beliefs of others.  Not much acceptance of difference here.

Number 4:

Most people baulk at my next recommendation, exclaiming that it is not beautiful and that it embodies everything that is bad about human nature.  I always agree, because that it is exactly why Las Vegas is also on my list of places everyone should see.  It is an astonishing place that makes me shake my head in wonder.

It is a place with no redeeming features.  It is the ultimate shrine to crassness and greed.  And it is no accident that a town that grew out of the nothingness of the desert is where everyone wants something for nothing.

The Strip

It is so awful that I like to go there every four or five years.

I like to see the gazillion lights beaming invitations to people who fantasise about winning fortunes at the tables or hitting the jackpot on the slots.  I love watching men, past their prime, ogling the scantily-dressed women, also often past their prime.  And the more drinks the men have, the more they ogle and the worse they behave, and the more money they lose.  And since many drinks are free, the they drink even more.  And so on ad nauseam.  I love the sight.

And I love the tackiness dressed up in tuxedos.

Of course, the real reason Vegas is weird may lie in the fact that the US military conducted many atmospheric tests nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Mushroom cloud near Vegas

And number 5:

There is nothing like seeing tens of thousands, nay hundreds of thousands, of migrating animals on the Serengeti (and Maasai Mara in Kenya).  There is no place on the planet that rivals this in terms of sheer numbers.  And of course, there is the accompanying hunting – by lions, by leopards, by cheetah, and crocodiles.

Uncountable wildebeest

The famous river crossing

Other countries, such as Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa have wonderful wildlife, but for sheer spectacle there is nothing to compare with the Serengeti migration.  Add to that a trip to the Ngorongoro crater, and a visit to Tanzania is a must.

So that’s my list of must-see places.  All astonishing.  All fill me with wonder.

Do you have such a list?  If so, what’s on it?

Wishing you all a very healthy, happy, and boring New Year. 

Guest Author, Keith Raffel: Under Jerusalem

Keith Raffel calls himself a Silicon Valley Guy. He is and more. Besides working in tech, Keith was a former US Senate aide and political candidate. And Keith, not only my friend and of many, has an insatiable curiosity. A good thing for a writer. He's written four novels - his first Dot.Dead one of my faves and has come out with a very cool thriller A Fine and Dangerous Season dealing with a 'What if' scenario based on JFK's brief sojourn at Stanford. I strong-armed him the other night to blog for us about his experiences in a tunnel in Israel. Thank you Keith and welcome! —­—Cara

I grew up reading Cold War thrillers like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and A Funeral in Berlin. The tectonic plates of East and West, Communism and Democracy, rubbed against each in Berlin. But the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Thriller writers have been looking for a replacement for Cold War Berlin ever since.

So I wondered where are two civilizations colliding today? Where might the next world war start? What is the most dangerous place on the planet? Jerusalem has to be the answer. And just as in Berlin, a wall divides the two sides. So I took off with my son, the child I affectionately call #4, and started looking for a story.

There had to be a story there, right? I didn’t know whether inspiration would come, but going to Israel was bound to increase the odds. Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, had helped out Homer, the first thriller writer. Why not me? (Or is that sacrilege to appeal to a figure from paganism in the land where Judaism and Christianity both got their start?)

Before getting to Jerusalem, #4 and I traipsed up and down the country. We went up to the Golan Heights. Through binoculars, we watched Hezbollah riflemen across the border in Lebanon and saw them looking back at us through their own binoculars.

But that was no story. We went to Tel Aviv and saw where David ben Gurion declared Israel’s independence as approved by the United Nations on May 14, 1948. Six countries greeted the announcement, approved by vote of the United Nations, by invading the brand new nation. Leon Uris’s Exodus, which had made such a huge impression on me in eighth grade, tells that story. I really couldn’t find anything left for a thriller.

Finally we got to Jerusalem.

We started our explorations at King Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Hezekiah of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Judea reputedly had it dug in the 8^th century B.C.E. to insure a water supply in case of an Assyrian siege. So anyway, #4 and I piled into the tunnel with hundreds of others. The passageway is dark, most of it was about five feet high and no wider than my shoulders. Water swished around my calves. A couple hundred yards into the tunnel, I walked into the person in front of me -- #4 was up ahead with some kids. In a chain collision, the person behind me ran smack into my back. So I was crouched over, my shoulders scraping the side of the tunnel, cold water swirling around my legs, and unable to move. All I had for illumination was the feeble glow of a light stick. I had not known till that moment that I was claustrophobic. Seconds ticked off. The writer in me floated over my head and whispered, “So this is what panic feels like. Remember and you can use it.”

Eventually, the group of evangelicals who’d stopped ahead to sing hymns got moving again and I made it out the other end. I asked #4 if he had any problems. He had a great time. And I had something to use – being stuck in a tunnel under Jerusalem. But that was only an episode, not a plot.

Two days later, we visited the Western Wall. It’s known as the holiest spot in Judaism, even though not part of either of the ancient temples. It’s just a retaining wall built by King Herod to support the Temple Mount, the raised tabletop hill, where the Second Temple stood in his time two millennia ago.

In recent years Israeli archeologists have dug a tunnel parallel to and underneath the West Wall. Claustrophobia or no, I went down along with #4.

This tunnel was wider than Hezekiah’s, and, thank God, the guards limited the number of people who were in it at any one time. I had room to breathe. We passed a nook in the wall where women were praying with fervor. I asked why. Our guide told us that this might be the point closest to the ancient Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the First Temple built by King Solomon where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.  (There’s an irony there. Above, at the Western Wall, there are restrictions on women praying. Here, at a point even closer to the most sacred room of Solomon’s Temple, only women were praying.)

Walking along that tunnel, I noticed a circle of concrete among the huge stones. I discovered authorities had plugged a hole that Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, had secretly been drilling there in 1983. What had he been up to? He believed the Lost Ark was down there in a spot directly under that Holy of Holies where it had been hidden 2700 years ago to keep it away from the conquering Babylonians.

BINGO!

What if the Ark had indeed hidden been away under the Temple Mount? (Not in the Army warehouse where Indiana Jones left it at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.) And what if our hero’s grandfather had been digging down there with Rabbi Goren? What if on his deathbed, he asked our hero to go back and find it?

Thank you, Calliope. I was off and writing.

Keith for Cara—Tuesday

Keith Raffel’s latest thriller, A Fine and Dangerous Season, is published by Thomas and Mercer, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. He expects his next book called (unsurprisingly) Temple Mount to be published in 2014 and you can find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/keithraffelauthor