A travelling book

Today I set a book on a journey.

All I had to do was register it over at BookCrossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com/), label it and leave it somewhere for someone to pick up and read – and share with the next person. And maybe, just maybe, someone will report back on the website and I’ll get to follow the adventure.

The book I chose was ‘Tennyson’s Gift’ by Lynne Truss. It’s a farce that throws together some well- and lesser-known Victorians – the poet Lord Alfred Tennyson, the writer Lewis Carroll, the painter G. F. Watts and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron amongst others – on the Isle of Wight one rollicking summer. I thought it was fun and funny, a book to stretch out in the sun with...

Choosing just where to leave it (on a sunny bench up on campus) took some deciding and checking on the website I was delighted to see how many books have already been left at spots all around Cape Town – including Lion’s Head, Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak. Now I wish I’d thought of that..!

I’ll have to choose a good title next time I go climbing... ‘Wuthering Heights’ maybe?

Taking off

Growing up, my brother and I both had BMX Raleigh Burners. They came out in the early Eighties and were bright and tough – they may be old school now but they were the latest and so popular back then!

We didn’t race or know any tricks but my brother had a go and set up a few stunts in our back garden. My favourite was a ramp at the side of our Portapool. We didn’t have a big garden but would pedal as fast as we could from the front garden to the pool at the back – up and fly off the top of the ramp – and, for just a moment, seem to hang in the air, before dropping and hitting the water, and slowly, slowly – so we pedalled all the more furiously, pushing against the weight of the water – sinking to the bottom. Then we’d pull our bikes out and race back to the far side of the garden to do it all over again...

And it was all the more fun because it was summer so we’d get back from after-school sport and take off still in our P.T. shorts and t-shirts, laughing all the way back in our clingy clothes.

Here’s a photo of my cousin Roz, and my brother Rich and I on our BMXs. We were visiting my cousins on holiday.

This year my brother has been hard at work building a house for his family. And this week my cousin and her three year old daughter are flying out to Malaysia to set up home with her husband there. She’s lived in the UK for – what? fifteen years now? – so this move is very exciting and, I think, a little scary.

But, I also think, so many of the best and most fun adventurers simply start out with a bike...

Give a girl a bicycle and she can go anywhere. Or believe she can – and that’s a start and what counts.

Scrambling up and up

A week ago I climbed up Table Mountain with friends. We took the India Venster route as it’s not as well known – or as crowded – as the route up through Platteklip Gorge. The path runs up under the cableway most of the way up, then passes around the mountain above Camps Bay and finally ends at the top of Platteklip Gorge.

The ravine through which the route runs apparently looks like the shape of India when viewed from below – though I couldn’t see any resemblance myself..! And the venster (‘window’ in Afrikaans) is formed by some of the rocks in the ravine and frames a great view of the surrounding mountains.

It was an exciting climb but far more strenuous than I was expecting. I suppose I’ve always viewed Table Mountain pretty much as a postcard – or a dramatic backdrop. Until now...

I soon discovered that setting off on no more than a cup of coffee was not a good start..! Although we began climbing by 8.30, it was very hot by then already and quite still on the lower slopes. I think my blood sugar level must have been too low because I’d only been climbing about twenty minutes when I felt so dizzy that I crumpled into a little heap on the steps leading up from the lower cableway station. Those last steps I could only do munching on my apple – and that, incredibly, got me most of the way up..! (Well, an apple, plenty of water and a whole lot of stubborn determination not to miss out on any of it...).

We made it up in about three hours, stopping just below the upper cableway station to eat our sandwiches and watch the cable cars whizzing by overhead.

Taking the cable car back down felt far too easy but, as a very inexperienced rock climber, I wouldn’t climb down India Venster (this can be dangerous if you don’t know the route) – I have far too much respect for the mountain to attempt that – just yet.

Slogging up those steps...

Beginning to climb

Scrambling up

Hanging on

Cape Town and Table Bay in the distance

At India Venster

Through the venster

A glimpse of Devil's Peak

A cable car whizzing by overhead

Going around the mountain

Naomi and I very nearly, almost, there...

(Thanks, Brahm, for the great climbing photos!)

Mama and me in India

Around this time, three years ago, my mom and I travelled to India together. It was a first for both of us – and it was also the first time my mom had travelled anywhere on her own.

I had friends from Kerala: a couple who were also teachers and living in South Africa, and some of the teachers I was working with at the time.

As I was living and working in the UAE, I met my mom in Dubai and we travelled on together from there. She did well to get to Dubai, despite a very last-minute hiccough with her visa that had been her travel agent’s mistake, and arrived looking just a little proud of herself and quite ready for our adventure.

And what an adventure it was... Before we’d even arrived, I had got sick so arrived very early in the morning, eyes and nose streaming, to find our guesthouse in Kochi (Cochin) not at all how it had been described – there was of course no mention of the smell, the noise or the mosquitoes on its website! Well, things could only get better... and they did – so much better!

We moved to a small hotel in Ernakulam and took the ferry across to explore Fort Cochin where we wandered through the narrow streets, stopping along the way at the markets and some of the historic buildings, and to watch the fishermen at the huge and striking Chinese fishing nets along the northern shore.

We hired a car and a driver (which was more expensive than taking the bus but still within our budget and a lot more comfortable and convenient) to take us up to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats. It’s a green and hilly region filled with cardamom, tea and rubber-tree plantations. We stayed in Kumily and from there visited a spice garden where we climbed up to a viewpoint in the trees, rode an elephant through the forests at Elephant Junction (another first for us both and very brave of my mom!), spotted elephants in the wild around Periyar Lake and went on a short but quite strenuous walk through the forests around the lake, rafting across at one point – and hiding in the bushes when we heard something come crashing through the trees up ahead (– I’m still not too sure what that was..!).

We also took a day tour of the backwaters south of Kochi and some of the villages around. This was perhaps the best day of our holiday as it was such a leisurely trip and such a serene and beautiful part of Kerala.

And we met many friendly and helpful people, found much to laugh about (including, albeit affectionately, some of our more hippy fellow travellers) and so much to see and do. At the end of the holiday, we joked that we would go back one day in a far more hippy wardrobe ourselves. Maybe we will...

My mom’s motto for the trip: ‘Have daughter, will travel.’

At Jumeirah Beach, Dubai

At the fish market in Kochi (Cochin)

Stepping off the ferry at the Customs Jetty (Fort Cochin)

The higgledy-piggledy architecture of Ambadi in Kumily (http://www.hotelambadi.com)

A baby elephant at Elephant Junction near Kumily (http://www.elephantjunction.com)

At a spice garden near Kumily

On the backwaters south of Kochi

Mama and me..?

Summer in Hokkaido

At the end of my two years’ teaching in Japan I decided to travel up to Hokkaido before I flew home. None of my friends could make it so I went on my own. The cheapest ticket up there was a Seishun 18 Kippu but that meant that all my travel had to be on local or rapid trains (no express or bullet trains!). But I had a few books, my iPod, phone, camera, snacks... I caught the earliest train from Niigata at about five in the morning and finally got to Hakodate more than 24 hours later..! It’s still the longest journey I’ve ever made – made longer however by having to catch a bus for a stretch because the tracks had been damaged by heavy rain.

By the time I got to Aomori that evening I was dead tired, bored with my own company and music – and out of snacks! But I got talking to a sweet, intelligent and thoughtful boy – he was in senior high, had just come back from an exchange at a school in the UK and had been backpacking around Japan in his summer break, even sleeping rough in a park with some of the homeless in Tokyo along the way. He said he’d been a problem kid but he was good company and I guess, with my own backpack and cheap ticket, I seemed more like a student than a teacher myself. His mom was coming to pick him up to drive him the last stretch back home to Hakodate and he insisted that I go with them, and I gratefully accepted the offer.

I met some really nice people in Hokkaido – some a little overly protective when they found out I was travelling on my own – but all so friendly, generous and helpful. And Hokkaido was just beautiful – the most unspoiled bit of Japan I visited...

I’d love to go back – and next time I’ll take my sketchbook...

One of Hakodate's western-style buildings

Hakodate: famous for ika (squid)

At the Botanic Garden, Sapporo

Cycling near Furano

On my bike

At the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum (the ainu are an indigenous group in Hokkaido)

If you'd like to find out more about the Seishun 18 Kippu: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2362.html