Olympics Massacre: Munich - The real story; With the release of Steven Spielberg's controversial film 'Munich', Simon Reeve revisits the events of 1972 - and reveals how they shaped the terror age - article here
Travel articles:
Sunday Times - The joys of travelling in Gabon
Sunday Times - Small hairy orange muggers in Borneo
Observer - Surfing a giant wave after crossing the Amazon basin
A journey through Somaliland and unrecognised countries
Sunday Telegraph Travel section: Central Asia - a journey around an extraordinary region
Central Asia - the highs and lows
Unrecognised countries - states of confusion
Somaliland's missing identity
Current affairs:
The 'War on Terror' - five years on
Iraq: What have we done?
Iraq: A long hard guerrilla war is inevitable
Terror: bin laden and Saddam were never friends
Iraq: the war will provoke terrorism
Torture and Guantanamo
Syndicated interview before Iraq War
Munich 1972: the German way with terror
Ramzi Yousef: the most dangerous terrorist in the world
_________________________________________________________________
The Sunday Times Travel Section
August 20, 2006
Drunks with trunks - Alcoholic elephants, naked
cyclists, lethal kites and £1,000-a-day car hire:
getting to grips with Gabon isn't easy, but it's worth
it
AS AN excuse for a late train, it was certainly more
imaginative than blaming leaves on the line.
A herd of drunken elephants had wandered in front of
the train heading towards Lopé, in the middle of the
Gabonese jungle. Four of the elephants had been killed,
and the engine and two carriages had been derailed. The
line was completely blocked.
The stationmaster sweated profusely in the equatorial
heat as he explained the problem to our small group
waiting on the Lopé station platform. “It’s
the iboga fruit they keep eating,” he grumbled,
apparently annoyed at the herd’s failure to obey
railway regulations. “They get intoxicated and
stagger around on our lines.”
I had been in Gabon with a BBC film crew for less than
a week, at the beginning of a journey around the
equator. We were all expecting endless problems while
traversing the warm waistband of the planet. After all,
the equatorial zone is home not only to the greatest
natural biodiversity, but also perhaps the greatest
human suffering.
Beyond Gabon, months of travel would take me through
the Democratic Republic of Congo, scene of extreme
violence, then across Uganda and Kenya to the lawless
border with anarchic Somalia. Religious conflicts in
Indonesia, fighting fishermen in the Galapagos,
Colombia’s interminable civil war and the vast
Amazon all beckoned ahead.
But thanks to the drunken elephants and a brush with a
nasty disease, I nearly didn’t make it out of the
starting blocks.
The trip had begun promisingly enough. French soldiers
have helped keep Gabon relatively stable, while oil has
made a few well-connected locals extremely rich. At one
point in the 1980s, Gabon had the highest per-capita
consumption of champagne, and the capital, Libreville,
boasts casinos, musty hotels, busy beaches and a
handful of handsome seafront buildings with a passing
resemblance to those of Miami’s South Beach.
But the party is coming to an end. Supplies of black
gold are dwindling, and Gabon’s President Bongo
has decided to tap tourist dollars by exploiting other
national assets. With gorillas, chimpanzees, hippos
splashing in the sea, pristine rainforest and nearly
700 species of birds, Gabon is a paradise for
naturalists.
Bongo has ruled Gabon since 1967, and Castro’s
death will make him the world’s longest-serving
leader. Absolute power clearly speeds decision-making.
The president recently ordered that 11% of Gabon should
be converted into national parks — almost
overnight. It was a bold move: voilà! — Gabon is
now being touted and promoted as the “Costa Rica
of Africa”, an unspoilt high-end destination for
wealthy ecotourists.
But Costa Rica has been welcoming visitors for years,
and has been carefully building hotels and a tourism
infrastructure. Gabon has a long way to go before it
can claim to be African competition.
It’s not the basic tourist facilities that are
the problem. Authentic travel experiences have their
own charm. The main problem with Gabon — if my
experience is anything to go by — is that
visitors to the country risk endless bad luck.
I was desperate to get into the fabled Gabonese
rainforest and find some gorillas for an Attenborough
moment, but events continually conspired against me.
My troubles began before I even left Libreville. My
phone, which had seen faithful service in the most
demanding countries in the world, packed up. So did my
producer's. One of our cameras and our backup phone
went haywire. Money disappeared. I had a comedy moment
stuck in a dilapidated hotel lift while metal groaned
in a way I didn’t think possible outside
Hollywood movies (how I laughed).
After two days in Gabon, I wandered out of my beachside
hotel and a battered Citroën suddenly turned sharply
and slammed into the thick wall right next to me,
demolishing the front of the car — and the wall.
The driver slid out of his seat, dusted himself off
with a dramatic flourish and calmly walked into the
hotel. “I’m fine, thank you, there is
nothing to worry about,” he said.
I gave the car a wide berth as it began to smoulder,
and hailed a taxi. We drove 40 metres before clipping
another car. My driver had been distracted by a
completely naked man carrying a bicycle into a shop. A
kite-flyer later managed virtually to garrotte me as I
strolled along the beach. I hope you get the picture.
Weird things can happen in Gabon. Or, at least, they
did to me.
I was relieved when we finally left Libreville and
headed east, parallel with the equator, on the
Transgabonais railway towards Lopé National Park, home
to a large population of mandrills and several thousand
western lowland gorillas. Surely my luck would improve.
After leaving the train at Lopé, we clambered into 4WDs
for a journey into the rainforest, but were then turfed
out and abandoned in the jungle when we refused to pay
an extra £1,000 a day. Travellers in Africa are never
immune to corruption or outright blackmail, but we
naively believed a car-hire firm connected to the
presidential family would be slightly more reliable.
Shrugging off another setback, we tried to view our
resulting trek to the Mikongo camp, deep in the Lopé
forest, as a bracing stroll. Researchers based at
Mikongo are habituating lowland gorillas with the help
of funding from visiting tourists. Finally, it was my
chance to get into the jungle. We plunged into the
forest, led by wiry tracker Donald Ndongo, and began to
explore.
Lowland gorillas can wander several miles a day, so, in
the dense forest, the odds of a sighting are not great.
I didn’t even see their droppings. Between June
and November, more than a thousand mandrills can
congregate in the jungle, the largest non-human
gatherings of primates anywhere. Unfortunately, we were
there in April.
Gabon clearly offers both more and less than a standard
safari. More, in the sense that, after trekking and
sweating through the rainforest, there is the chance of
genuine and spontaneous wildlife discoveries. Compare
that with a traditional safari in South or East Africa,
where you watch a bored cheetah on the open savannah,
while sitting in a 4WD with honeymooners from Texas and
Bavaria.
And Gabon offers less, in that most of the country is
thick, green jungle, and you might only catch an
arse-end glimpse of a mandrill or a gorilla heading in
the wrong direction. In the rainforest there are no
wildlife guarantees.
But tracking in the jungle is endless fun. Donald was a
mine of information on trees that bled red, and plants
used for fighting fever, while he clucked away noisily
to alert gorillas to our presence. Pushing through the
jungle was a challenge, but when we finally spotted and
followed putty-nosed monkeys, it made the reward only
sweeter.
Donald, whose father was a proud hunter (“Never a
poacher,” he added quickly), explained how life
was changing since the president decided to target
wealthy tourists. Villagers who live in and around
national parks have suddenly been banned from hunting
in the forests. “It’s been a big shock for
them,” he said. “We try to explain that
it’s for the benefit of the country, but they
need to eat, so they need to see the benefits of
tourism quickly.”
Donald took us to the village of Makoghé, on the
outskirts of the forest, where Jean Jacques, the
energetic headman, has been struggling to hold his
village together since the hunting ban. Jean Jacques
has started organising traditional dances for paying
foreigners and is appealing for tourists to visit. His
message is clear: if you want us to stop hunting the
wildlife, someone needs to provide us with an
alternative means of putting food on the table. We paid
a modest sum and thoroughly enjoyed their fourth
performance.
After watching the dancing, I wanted to head back into
the rainforest in search of wildlife, but I started to
feel a little unwell and we decided to aim for the
capital. The returning train was derailed by the
drunken pachyderms, and by the time the line was
cleared and we arrived back in the capital, I was
feeling spectacularly rough.
Perhaps I’ve watched too many episodes of
Casualty, but when I awoke during the night with a
temperature of 40C and started vomiting blood, I
suspected something was wrong. Diagnosed with malaria,
I was treated with medicine derived from Vietnamese
sweet wormwood, and was forced to halt my journey to
recover.
I felt lucky to make it out of the country alive and
would rather boil my testicles than risk returning. But
Jean Jacques wants you to visit.
So go to the Costa Rica of Africa: trek, sweat and,
with luck, you will spot some extraordinary wildlife
before spending your money in the villages. Don’t
let my bad luck put you off. After all, the people of
Makoghé need you.
The author and broadcaster Simon Reeve presents
Equator, a three-part journey around the world,
starting on August 27 on BBC2 at 9pm
TRAVEL
DETAILS: Gabon is best attempted with a specialist tour
operator. Wildlife Worldwide (0845 130 6982,
www.wildlifeworldwide.com) has a 19-day Best of Gabon
tour, for about £4,395pp, ticking off Libreville, Lopé
and Loango National Park. The price includes flights,
accommodation, meals, guiding and all transport and
transfers. It can also tailor-make shorter trips. Or
try World Primate Safaris (020 8740 3350,
www.worldprimatesafaris.com) or Green Tours (01298
83563,
www.greentours.co.uk).
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The Sunday Times Travel Section
August
27, 2006
Tough monkey love in Borneo
They’re fearsomely strong, endlessly gentle
— and they’re kleptomaniacs. Borneo’s
endangered orang-utans will steal your lunch, your
canoe... and your heart, says Simon Reeve
The mugger was short, agile and covered in thick red
hair. As he sidled towards my guide, Zacky, and me in
the depths of the Tanjung Puting National Park, in
southern Borneo, I realised we were about to become the
latest hapless victims of a mischievous orang-utan
called Pan.
“Don’t worry,” said Zacky, a
zoologist with the Orangutan Foundation International,
“I can handle him. You go on.” With his
arms outstretched, Zacky valiantly tried to shield me
from Pan as he passed us by, but our assailant was too
fast. Pan lunged to nab my bag of supplies, and I
watched in awe as he sat down, examined the contents
and took a long drink of my water. Then he let out a
satisfied burp, had a quick pick of his nose and
wandered off towards the river in search of more loot.
Pan had heard us coming. The wily local often hangs
around near the 200-metre iron boardwalk that runs
between a river landing jetty and the Camp Leakey
research and conservation centre in the park. When a
boat arrives, he heads down to the river to see if the
new arrivals have anything worth pinching. Pan was not,
I was soon to discover, the only orang-utan in Tanjung
Puting with a streak of kleptomania.
The mugging was an unexpected but refreshing welcome to
the park, a vast expanse of forest and coastal swamp
stuffed with wildlife. I was visiting the Indonesian
region of southern Borneo, on the second leg of a trip
around the equator with a series of crack BBC film
crews, and we had feared that a close encounter with
wild primates would require hours of fruitless tracking
through thick rainforest.
But Tanjung Puting has become the best place in the
world to see wild orang-utans, the largest arboreal
animals on earth and the only great apes found outside
Africa. The chances of a meeting are high simply
because most of their habitat outside the park has been
destroyed, and thousands of threatened orang-utans are
now crammed inside the protected sanctuary.
Destruction is everywhere in southern Borneo. After
arriving on the island by plane, I drove for six hours
in the direction of Tanjung Puting without seeing much
more than a small copse. The area used to be a verdant
paradise and one of the most biodiverse regions of the
planet. While there are just over 30 native species of
trees in the UK, Borneo has at least 5,000. But vast
tracts of forest have completely vanished. Over the
past few decades, Indonesia as a whole has lost about
80% of its original forest habitat.
Illegal logging for lumber is still partly to blame,
but expanding plantations producing palm oil, a wonder
crop found in 1 in 10 western consumer goods, are now
the main culprits. Roads across Borneo are lined by the
remnants of once mighty rainforests. By the time the
BBC crew and I arrived for an overnight stop in the
town of Pangkalan Bun, close to the national park, the
devastation had become thoroughly depressing.
FORTUNATELY, there was some light relief in the bar of
the Blue Kecubung hotel, where the local singer —
nicknamed Camp Freddy — gave a stellar
performance that raised our spirits. Stroking his thin
moustache and strutting the stage in leather trousers,
Freddy gave a unique Indonesian interpretation of
Queen’s greatest hits. I doubt Simon Cowell would
have been impressed, but what Freddy lacked in talent,
he compensated for with bags of enthusiasm.
The next morning, Zacky whisked us towards Tanjung
Puting in a couple of speedboats, and we skirted the
park boundary on the Sungai Sekonyer river. On our
right was the protected national park, with thick
forest containing some 220 bird species, 17 kinds of
reptile and 29 types of mammal, including orang-utans
and proboscis monkeys with six-inch bulbous hooters. On
the left was a 20- to 50-metre patch of trees, then
endless acres of deforested land.
Zacky had assured us that we would see orang-utans
inside the park, and we were not disappointed. After
watching Pan disappearing towards the river, we walked
to the research centre at Camp Leakey as the rainforest
on either side squawked and screeched.
“You’re in luck,” said Zacky.
“The King is here!”
The King, a huge dominant male orang-utan called
Kusasi, was sprawled on the grass within the Camp,
fiddling with his dark cheek pads and watching to see
if workers would leave the kitchen door open long
enough for him to grab a free lunch. As we slipped
inside the kitchen hut for a welcome chat and bowl of
rice, Kusasi leapt towards the closing door, trapping
us in the kitchen while his black leathery fingers
curled through the mesh over the windows. But there was
no sense of aggression. The King was just trying his
luck.
Doors to the large huts that comprise Camp Leakey have
a series of ingenious latches and locks designed to
prevent burglary by inquisitive orang-utans. The
primates will pinch almost anything not nailed to the
ground. Watches have been snatched from wrists and
pockets have been picked. Pan uses his speed, Kusasi
uses his size and strength, and Princess, another local
resident, uses her brains, pinching boats at Camp
Leakey and paddling downriver to get to her favourite
riverbank foods. When workers submerge canoes to
discourage joyrides, Princess works with other
orang-utans to tip the water out and right the boats.
Solitary, thoughtful and immensely strong, orang-utans
are quite simply some of the most extraordinary animals
roaming the planet. Their declining numbers are a
tragedy, caused largely by our desire for palm oil and
consumer goods. A large tree from the Borneo rainforest
can be worth more than £5,000 in finished products when
shipped to China and converted into venetian blinds or
a sofa frame. Some of the loggers are villagers using a
shared chain saw, others are international firms with
vast factories, expensive machinery and better
road-building equipment than the government.
Adult orang-utans who get in their way are usually
trapped and clubbed, shot, stabbed or burnt to death,
while baby orang-utans are kept and sold as pets. The
Orangutan Foundation now cares for about 120 young
orphans rescued from villages and animal-traffickers.
ZACKY WAS rightly proud of the large, spotless
orphanage. The residents are given love and plenty of
food, but they clearly long for their parents. As we
went on a short tour, arms were thrust out of cages in
a hunt for the touch and warmth of another mammal.
So I was delighted to help Zacky and workers from the
orphanage carry a group of the young orangs on a
training trip into the rainforest. Without their
parents, orangs can find the rainforest intimidating,
and need to be taught how to forage in preparation for
eventual release into the wild. Osbourne, a hefty young
infant, grabbed me around the neck, while his feet
gripped me tightly around the waist. As we plunged into
the forest, he was restless and glanced around
nervously.
“He’s scared,” I said to Zacky, who
was struggling with two other youngsters, “what
should I do?”
“Try stroking his head,” came the response.
“He’s pretty similar to a human
baby.”
The advice worked. When I stroked his head, Osbourne
became calmer, and at one point even started scratching
my chin. Just as I was getting broody, it was time for
him to climb into the forest canopy and start
practising a few essential life skills. I introduced
him to a likely tree and lifted him onto the lower
branches. But the poor thing didn’t want to go,
and climbed back into my arms. I tried again, lifting
him onto a branch, patting the tree and making
encouraging noises, as if taking the stabilisers off
his bicycle. Osbourne looked up at the tree, looked
back at me for reassurance, and began to climb. It was
food for the soul.
Conservationists have battled bravely on behalf of
Osbourne and his friends, but some experts believe
orang-utan numbers have fallen by two-thirds since
1990. Wild females have a birthing interval of roughly
eight years, the longest of any animal, which dims
their chances of survival, and a palm-oil plantation
half the size of the Isle of Wight is now encroaching
on Tanjung Puting.
As their habitat vanishes, many orangs are unable to
find enough fruit. Zacky took us on a rainforest walk
to a feeding platform and cupped his hands to his mouth
to call hungry locals. There were crashing noises in
the forest as 20 mouths came swinging down from the
trees. I felt a strong, sticky hand grabbing my arm,
and looked down into a young pair of mournful eyes that
melted my heart.
Borneo is a spectacular destination, but much of the
rainforest has already been logged, and the sound of
chain saws may soon be heard inside the national park.
Visit before the forest disappears, but don’t
complain if an orang-utan pinches your backpack. After
all, humans have been stealing their land for years,
and it’s about time they got their own back.
Simon Reeve’s series Equator starts tonight on
BBC2 at 9pm. His journey across Indonesia will be shown
at 8pm on September 3
TRAVEL BRIEF
Spotting orang-utans is best organised with a
specialist tour operator such as World Primate Safaris
(0870 850 9092, www.worldprimatesafaris.com).
A tailor-made five-day tour of the Tanjung Puting
National Park starts at about £1,300pp, including
flights from Jakarta, accommodation and transfers, but
not international flights. Expect to pay about £450 for
flights from Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester to
Jakarta, through Airline Network (0870 700 0543,
www.airline-network.co.uk), or Trailfinders (0845 058
5858, www.trailfinders.com). For more information on
the Tanjung Puting National Park and the work of the
Orangutan Foundation International, visit
www.orangutan.org.
FOR GUARANTEED up-close orang-utan encounters, there
are four other rehabilitation centres in the region:
Wanariset (also in Kalimantan); Semenggok (near
Kuching) and Sepilok (near Sandakan), both in Malaysian
Borneo; and the Bohorok Centre, a couple of
hours’ drive from Medan in Sumatra, which sees
huge numbers of tourists.
The most affordable and accessible all-round experience
is the Sepilok Centre: there are direct flights from
Malaysian Borneo’s regional hub, Kota Kinabalu,
and you get the chance to see wild orang-utans in the
nearby forests. With Naturetrek (01962 733051,
www.naturetrek.co.uk), an 11-day tour, visiting the
Sepilok Centre and the Danum Valley Conservation Area,
starts at £2,195pp. Accommodation is at the Sukau
Rainforest Lodge (www.sukau.com) and the Borneo
Rainforest Lodge (www.borneorainforestlodge.com), and
the price includes flights from Heathrow, local
connecting flights and transfers.
Other operators include Wildlife Worldwide (0845 130
6982, www.wildlifeworldwide.com), Explore Worldwide
(0870 333 4001, www.explore.co.uk), Audley Travel
(01869 276360, www.audleytravel.com) and Cox &
Kings (020 7873 5000,
www.coxandkings.com).
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The Observer - Face to face with a monster from the
deep
Filming around the globe for his BBC series Equator,
Simon Reeve survived malaria, jungle guerrillas and
tarantulas in the boat. But nothing prepared him for
the grand finale: attempting to surf an Amazonian tidal
wave
Sunday September 3, 2006
By Simon Reeve
As the tidal wall of water surged and boiled behind our
small boat, I began to have serious doubts about the
planned finale to my journey across the Amazon basin:
surfing one of the longest waves in the world.
For a start, the tidal wave, known locally as the
pororoca, was hurtling up the Amazon tributary at 20mph
and a height of around four metres, tearing at the
riverbanks and sweeping all manner of dangerous
wildlife along in the current. I had also just been
told one of the world's best surfers had broken his
back trying to ride the tidal bore. Most important, my
earlier enthusiasm for the challenge could not mask the
crucial fact that I was a complete novice who had never
stood on a surfboard.
'Just start by holding tight to the board, grip it with
both hands,' said my guide Stanley, an experienced
pororoca surfer. Perhaps I could try to bodyboard for a
moment before struggling on to my knees. With my heart
in my mouth, I leapt out of our speedboat into the
river in front of the wave and the roaring pororoca
raced towards me.
Damn those Brazilian beers. I would never have
volunteered to be in the firing line if Stanley hadn't
produced bottle after bottle as we chatted on our hired
riverboat the previous night. At the time, attempting
to ride the pororoca, on Brazil's Atlantic Coast, had
seemed like a fitting climax to months of travel on a
long, hot trip around the world. With a series of BBC
TV crews, I had followed the equator across Africa,
Indonesia and finally Latin America. Pursuing the
imaginary line had taken us through the area of the
world with the greatest concentration of both natural
biodiversity and human suffering.
On the final leg, with producer Steven Grandison and
cameraman Guillermo Galdos, I had entered the Amazon
basin in southern Colombia and headed for La Paya
National Park, home to woolly and red howler monkeys,
giant anteaters and hundreds of bird species.
Freshwater river dolphins, idly searching for food,
popped their heads out of the water to keep an eye on
the strange two-legged mammals invading their home.
The park was idyllic, but there was no escaping the
political troubles of Colombia. More than 250,000
people have died in the country during decades of
fighting between the government, left-wing guerrillas,
right-wing paramilitaries and drug barons. As we put up
our hammocks and prepared to go fishing for piranha
directly on the equator, our Colombian guide Carlos,
the head warden of La Paya, told us fighters from the
Farc organisation were active in large areas of the
park. Guerrillas in the jungle and piranhas in the
water were soon joined by crocodiles on the riverbank,
and tarantulas crawling around inside our little boat.
The Colombian rainforest was a risky place to be.
From La Paya we headed east into Brazil, travelling on
small boats along the Uapes river through remote areas
of the Amazon rainforest. While much of the equatorial
environment has endured extensive deforestation, the
rainforest on the equator in north eastern Brazil was
untouched. Verdant fauna was clinging to every patch of
land, right down to the waterline; loggers had not yet
reached this pristine wilderness.
As we left the remoter reaches, we passed tiny
indigenous communities living in fragile riverbank
huts. We stopped in several villages and discovered
most of the younger adults had left, lured to small
jungle towns in search of work, leaving grandparents
behind to look after scattered groups of children.
None of the kids had ever seen foreigners before, let
alone a sweaty television technical crew loaded down
with shiny gadgets. To avoid infecting isolated
communities with dangerous Western viruses, we had been
carefully tested and inoculated, so felt safe allowing
the little bundles of fun to pull our hair and tug at
our cameras.
The presence of tiny Catholic churches along the
riverbanks showed the tribes were not completely
isolated from the Western world. Yet the greatest
threat from the outside world to life in this part of
Brazil is from alcohol. Although booze is banned
throughout indigenous communities, it is available
around the clock in towns like Sao Gabriel, causing
endless social problems and rampant alcoholism among
the indigenous population.
Eventually, we reached the north-eastern city of
Macapa, where we attempted to dance the samba at a
carnival stadium built on the equator, then went in
search of a boat that would take us to see the
pororoca.
Captain Albert's cattle boat was empty below decks when
we boarded it at a village port on a tributary of the
Amazon, four bone-juddering hours by 4x4 from Macapa,
but there was still a lingering earthy smell of
livestock. Stanley and his hyperactive surfer buddy
Edjiman managed to ignore the stink. I tied my hammock
to two posts on the exposed upper deck and hoped the
river breeze would provide fumigation. We made good
progress as we headed down the Rio Araguari towards the
Atlantic. Stanley had brought enough beer to supply a
rugby team, so as evening fell we moored up, opened a
few bottles and discussed his love of the wave.
Tidal bores occur across the world, with a spectacular
example happening more than 250 times a year on the
river Severn. The largest, the Qiantang river tidal
bore in China, known locally as the Silver Dragon, can
reach a height of nine metres. But the pororoca in
Brazil, which happens once a day at certain times of
the year, is fast becoming the tidal bore of choice for
surfers. 'They come here from all over the world,'
Stanley told me. 'While on the sea, a wave will last a
maximum of 15 seconds. With the pororoca wave you can
surf for about 30 minutes. That's why it's considered
the longest wave in the world.'
Stanley and Edjiman explained that as the wave hurtles
back up the river, it rakes the riverbank, carrying
wild animals, snakes, anacondas and alligators in the
water, while sharks lurk behind the main wave ready to
snack on anything or anyone pulled into the surf.
As if that were not bad enough, surfers are also at
risk from the nasty little candiru, also known as the
Brazilian vampire fish, a tiny translucent parasite
that swims into fish gills, anchors itself with a spike
and feeds on the blood of its host. Human bathers risk
having the candiru swim right up their urethras; not
surprisingly, this can be more than mildly
uncomfortable.
Early the next morning we all climbed into two small
speedboats and raced towards the mouth of the river,
ready to meet the pororoca at dawn.
Our boat skimmed along choppy waves, the river
broadened and eventually we cleared a bend to see the
riverbanks disappearing in the far distance and the
Atlantic beyond. After thousands of miles of travel, it
was an exhilarating feeling to be approaching the end
of our long journey. But between us and home was a wild
wave.
Edjiman spotted it first. The slight blur on the
horizon sharpened and widened and the low growl of the
pororoca gradually became a roar. From one side of the
river to the other, across more than a kilometre of
water, a wave of wild horses, between three and five
metres high, was clawing its way up the river. It was
one of the most extraordinary natural phenomena I have
ever witnessed. Our small boats let the torrent draw
close, then just as we were about to be swallowed, we
turned tail and the boiling, seething mass of water
gave chase.
As they prepared to jump into the water, Stanley and
Edjiman seemed surprisingly calm. 'All or nothing,'
said Edjiman, 'if you miss it the dream is over.' Both
surfers gripped their boards, leapt out of each boat
and began to paddle away from the wave. Within seconds
the surf had caught and swallowed them whole, but then
I spotted Edjiman's head at the base of the wave,
clinging desperately to his surfboard as the wave raged
around him. Then Stanley appeared 50 metres away, also
wrapped around his board as it rocketed along. The two
of them were clinging on for dear life. They couldn't
get to their knees on the boards, let alone on to their
feet.
Edjiman held on bravely for five minutes before
vanishing into the surf. Despite the force of the
water, Stanley skilfully moved his board to a calmer
patch of wave and then clambered to his feet. We
cheered and hollered as Stanley made a few flash moves,
then slipped backwards off his board to be devoured by
the wave. Then it was my turn. After leaping into the
water I turned away from the wave, then tried to paddle
quickly to build up some speed. But I was too slow: I
glanced over my shoulder to see the huge wave engulfing
me from behind. As I took a deep breath and kicked my
legs hard, the muddy wave roared over the top of me and
sucked me backwards into darkness. I rolled over and
over in the water, something hit me on the leg, then
the angry wave ejected me and I floated to the surface.
'Congratulations, you surfed the pororoca!' said
Stanley, after hauling me into the rescue boat. I
looked at him in amazement. How could anyone describe
my moment in the water as 'surfing'? But when Edjiman
was rescued by our other boat, after being whacked on
the head by a branch and pushed towards crocodiles on
the riverbank, he was also given a hero's reception. I
realised surfing the pororoca was less about standing
up, and more about being prepared to surrender control
to a vicious wave and take a chance in the dark waters
of the Araguari.
That night I was happy to sink a few more ropey
Brazilian beers and celebrate the end of our equator
adventure. But as bottles clinked, one of the crew
leapt to his feet and ran to the back of the boat,
pulling at the anchor rope. 'What's happening?' I said
to Stanley. There was confusion as Albert raced to the
wheelhouse. 'The pororoca is coming again!' someone
shouted.
Suddenly a giant hand picked the boat out of the water
and turned it on its side. We had all forgotten the
pororoca happens once during the day and once at night.
I grabbed a pole running overhead as my feet left the
floor and plates and glasses smashed to the side. The
dark river water beckoned, then the giant wave passed
and the boat steadied.
Steve, our producer, trod on some broken glass, and a
few bags and Stanley's inflatable mattress went
overboard, but nobody drowned. It was our final night
of adventure. We had been swallowed by the pororoca,
but we had survived the equator.
· Simon Reeve presents 'Equator' on Sunday nights on
BBC2. His journey across Asia is screened tonight and
Latin America on 17 September (see
www.bbc.co.uk/equator for details)
Take the easy, surf-free option
Watch river life unfold from the comfort of your
whirlpool on the deck of the Amazon Clipper, which has
16 air-conditioned cabins with private bathrooms. The
three-night cruise forms part of a 13-night tour with
Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000; www.coxandkings.co.uk).
Prices from £3,395 include flights from London Heathrow
and a helicopter ride over Rio.
Sleep in hammocks, tents, hostels and hotels during a
27-night trip through the heart of Brazil with overland
adventure specialist Dragoman (01728 861133;
www.dragoman.com). Seven days are spent on boats
exploring the Amazon and its tributaries during the
tour, which begins from either Rio or Manaus. From
£945pp.
Journey Latin America (020 8622 8491;
www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk) offers a seven-night
Amazon cruise as part of a 10-night trip also taking in
Rio and Sao Paulo. Make morning forays into the
rainforest and spend evenings looking for caymans -
South American alligators - by torchlight. Prices from
£2,198pp including flights.
Great
river journeys of the world
Mekong
The Mekong river is the longest in south east Asia, and
flows through China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. See it
from the small, converted rice barge Wat Phou on a
two-night trip which begins in Pakse in southern Laos
and includes visits to Si Phan Don, or Four Thousand
Islands, and a trip to Khong Pha Peng waterfall, 'the
Niagara of the East', close to the Cambodian border. A
two-week holiday in Laos featuring the trip on the
12-cabin barge starts from £1,950 per person including
international flights with Audley Travel (01869 276222,
www.audleytravel.com).
Colorado, USA
Whitewater rafting down the 280-mile-long Colorado
river is the perfect way to see the USA's most famous
natural attraction - the Grand Canyon. Ride ominously
named rapids such as Satan's Gut and Little Niagara in
Cataract Canyon where you can also visit ancient Indian
sites and go hiking. Sleep under the stars amid the
roar of the rapids. Most trips last between three to 15
days and run April to October, although if you want the
whitest of white-knuckle rides, the best time is June.
American Round-Up (01798 865946;
www.americanroundup.com) offers five-day trips down
Cataract and Westwater Canyons from £730.
Danube
If you want cultural diversity, this is the river for
you. Starting in the mountains of the Black Forest in
Germany, the 1,767-mile-long Danube spans 10 countries
including Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and
Romania, ending its journey in the Black Sea. En route
you can visit medieval towns, romantic castles and
forests, but bear in mind that most cruises operate
only between March and October. Explore some of the
most scenic parts of the river visiting Budapest,
Bratislava and Vienna during a seven-night cruise with
Great Rail Journeys (01904 521980;
www.greatrail.co.uk). Prices start from £1,990pp and
include rail travel from London and five nights'
half-board accommodation.
Murray River, South Australia
Before roads and railways crossed Australia, the Murray
River - the world's third longest navigable river - was
an antipodean Mississippi with paddle steamers carrying
supplies to and carting wool from remote sheep stations
and homesteads. Today you can visit historic aboriginal
sites and view lots of wildlife from the comfort of the
Odyssey, a boat sleeping eight people. You can also
pretend you're roughing it by having campfires on the
riverbank. Prices start from £611pp based on two
sharing and include all meals and shore excursions.
Bridge & Wickers (020 7483 6555;
www.bridgeandwickers.com).
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7 October 2006
AND YOU CALL THIS WINNING, MR PRESIDENT?
WAR ON TERROR FIVE YEARS ON 50,000 civilians dead... 3,
092 UK and US forces killed.. 25,000 more Taliban
heading to Afghanistan.. 2,625 bombs in one month in
Iraq.. £445bn spent..
By Simon Reeve
FIVE years ago today, President Bush went on television
to tell America and the watching world that US and
British bombs had just started falling on Afghanistan.
The rubble of the World Trade Center was still
smouldering in New York, and America was hitting back
against the terrorists responsible for an extraordinary
atrocity.
It was the beginning of the so-called "war on terror".
The American military were leading strikes on the
terror training camps of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and
the fanatical Taliban regime which was sheltering them.
At the time, America had the backing of most of the
world against the Islamist terrorists.
"We will not waiver, we will not tire, we will not
falter, and we will not fail," President Bush reassured
his people.
But half a decade and £445billion later, when tens of
thousands have been killed, and tens of millions more
have been directly affected, where are we now?
It used to be easy for the Bush administration to stick
to a simple script when asked how the war on terror was
going. Look at our successes, the White House would
say.
With the help of Britain and a few other countries, the
American military had quickly destroyed al-Qaeda's
camps and toppled the Taliban.
Hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects had been captured and
imprisoned. In Iraq, the coalition forces kicked out
Saddam Hussein's regime and put the mass murderer on
trial.
More importantly for American voters, there has been no
major al-Qaeda terror attack on US soil since 9/11.
Speaking in the past few weeks, President Bush stated
that: "America is safer, and America is winning the war
on terror," the enemies of freedom defeated by
"American vigilance, determination and courage."
YET even the most fanatical Bush supporter can't help
noticing the war on terror is not now going entirely to
plan.
Outside of America, al-Qaeda or its supporters have
launched 30 major attacks since 9/11. The few positive
victories against militants have been overshadowed by a
series of extraordinary mistakes, poor leadership and
utter incompetence.
The global toll has been devastating. In the past five
years at least 50,000 civilians (probably many more)
have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of
thousands have been badly maimed.
In July alone in Iraq, 2,625 bombs brought incalculable
suffering.
America started its war on terror in Afghanistan, where
the Taliban were driven from power within weeks.
Bush said they had been defeated - but tell that to the
British troops who have been fighting wave after wave
of fresh Taliban recruits in the south of Afghanistan.
Far from being annihilated, the Taliban simply melted
away to regroup.
Large areas of Afghanistan have again fallen under
their control, and it is not impossible to imagine them
retaking the country.
The reason for this is a series of colossal failings by
the Bush administration and its Western allies. The
main screw-ups include a pathetic unwillingness to
provide funds for reconstruction and development for
Afghanistan after the Taliban were kicked out.
The West has tried to transform Afghanistan on the
cheap, giving far less money (the equivalent of £35 per
Afghan) than to other countries where the international
community has helped build new governments, such as
Bosnia (£130 per Bosnian).
America and its allies also left huge areas of the
country empty of coalition soldiers, and Taliban
fighters flooded in.
The result is deteriorating security, which in turn
makes it extremely dangerous for international aid
agencies to work there.
The West has also failed to control opium production in
Afghanistan, which supplies 90 per cent of the heroin
in Europe.
The 2006 harvest is up an incredible 40 per cent on
2005.
Now the Taliban have started refining heroin
themselves, and are using the earnings to buy bigger,
better weapons.
They also pay their recruits £3 a day - twice what the
30,000 soldiers in the Afghan army earn - and
compensate the families of suicide bombers.
Furthermore, the West has been unable to prevent border
regions in neighbouring Pakistan from becoming
sanctuaries for both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaeda.
Sources in Pakistani intelligence say that in recent
months al-Qaeda and the Taliban have established new
camps, providing terror training to hundreds of young
recruits. The sources claim more than 25,000 Taliban
militants will be sent to fight in Afghanistan from
next spring.
President Bush insists that many of the most
significant al-Qaeda members have been captured or
killed...
But what the US government cannot grasp is that there
is not a single brigade of, say, 10,000 al-Qaeda
terrorists that it needs to hunt down and eliminate.
Instead, the numbers are growing daily, every fatality
replaced by a new fanatic.
American foreign policies - and decisions that have
been taken by the US government since 9/11 - encourage
ever more young men to join al-Qaeda and other militant
groups.
This denial of the connection between US foreign
policies and terrorism is perhaps the single greatest
failing of the war on terror.
Nowhere is the mistake more obvious than in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's downfall is to be welcomed, but the
complete failure of the US to plan for the aftermath
was criminally incompetent.
President Bush's interest in what would happen after
the invasion is limited to a question he asked his
adviser Condoleezza Rice in January, 2003...
"A humanitarian army is going to follow our army into
Iraq, right?"
But there was no humanitarian army and instead the US
stupidly decided to purge Iraq of Saddam's junior
officials and sack hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
soldiers. Without officials, there was anarchy. Many of
the unemployed soldiers promptly joined guerrilla
groups, crime gangs or death squads.
The result has been slaughter. Tens of thousands of
Iraqi civilians have been killed, stuck in the middle
between fanatics hell-bent on massacring shoppers and
school-kids, and scared US soldiers who shoot first and
often don't even bother to ask questions later.
At least 3,000 civilians are now dying in Iraq every
month in an extraordinary flood of suicide bombings.
By July this year there were roughly 1,000 attacks - of
all types - each week in Iraq. At 3,092, more US and UK
military personnel have died in Iraq than civilians on
9/11.
A Pentagon report notes: "The proportion of those
attacks directed against civilians has increased
substantially... death squads and terrorists are locked
in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife."
The security situation in Iraq is getting worse and the
country is descending into civil war.
Apart from the extraordinary loss of life inside Iraq,
the carnage has huge consequences for the wider "war on
terror".
The crisis has become the main global engine driving
young Muslims into the arms of Islamic groups and the
pool of militants outraged at Western foreign policies
keeps growing.
Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, another huge mistake has
been the decision by the Bush administration to tell
the world that we all had to choose a side in the war
on terror: You are either with the US, or against the
US.
So anyone who does not regularly raise a glass of
Coca-Cola to the Stars & Stripes is, in the eyes of
the Bush administration, with the enemy. Combined with
the Iraq war, the recent Western-backed Israeli attacks
on Lebanon and the huge failings by Muslim leaders are
all driving a wedge between the Christian world and the
Islamic world.
Anger at America, Britain and the West in the Islamic
world is now running at greater levels than ever.
The Bush administration has helped to push the West and
Islam further apart and made a long, slow, bitter,
global conflict between the two sides far more likely.
During the first five years of the war on terror, the
US government has made a series of bad decisions
costing countless lives.
The result of the carnage, and the mistakes made by the
Bush administration, is a growing political catastrophe
that will affect the lives of most people on the planet
for decades to come.
SIMON Reeve is the author of the first book on
al-Qaeda, the New York Times bestseller The New
Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden And The Future
Of Terrorism.
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The Sunday Telegraph
May 1st 2005
By Simon Reeve
SOMALILAND’S government Minister for Tourism was
elated he finally had a rare foreign visitor he could
take to see his country’s national treasures.
“Don’t worry!” said the enthusiastic
Minister, as I reluctantly agreed to accompany him to
some rock etchings recently discovered at Laas Ga'al
outside Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. “The
drawings are beautiful, and it will just be a small
detour from the road!”
After bumping along potholed dirt tracks through the
parched African bush for long enough for my bones to
separate, I started to think my scepticism was
justified. But we crested a hill, dodged wiry bushes on
a wide plain, and scrambled over vast boulders to find
exquisite rock paintings dating back thousands of
years.
Even under the scorching sun, the paintings had strong,
vibrant colours and stark outlines, showing the ancient
inhabitants of the area worshipping cattle and
venerating a pregnant cow. In a low cave further up the
hill I found human figures dancing along the rock.
Laas Ga'al is probably the most significant Neolithic
rock painting site in the whole of Africa, and for a
brief moment I felt like an explorer finding hidden
treasures, at a time when the entire world seems easy
to reach on package holidays.
But there are still areas of the world off the beaten
track which can excite and amaze. Somaliland is not on
many tourist maps. In fact, it is not on any maps at
all. According to the international community,
Somaliland does not even exist.
Although there are almost 200 official countries in the
world there are also dozens more unrecognised states
like Somaliland which are determined to be separate and
independent. These countries are home to millions of
people, they have their own rulers, armies, police
forces, and issue passports and even postage stamps,
but they are not officially recognised as proper
countries by the rest of the world.
I wanted to highlight the risks of leaving unrecognised
countries isolated, and was visiting Somaliland as part
of a journey to and through a group of these unofficial
states for the five-part BBC2 series ‘Places That
Don’t Exist’, which starts on Wednesday.
It was a chance to visit some of the most obscure and
forgotten parts of the world. A series of trips took me
to Somaliland, Transniestria (between Moldova and
Ukraine), Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, and three
regions of Georgia which broke away after the collapse
of the Soviet Union.
Lack of recognition is not limited to poor nations. No
major power recognises Taiwan as a proper country. It
has one of the largest economies in the world but no
seat at the UN.
Taiwan was welcoming, but visiting other unrecognised
nations was often tricky. Getting in was difficult, and
there were no foreign embassies to turn to in an
emergency. But the very fact most are isolated and
untouched by tourism made them intriguing places to
visit.
All of the unrecognised nations on my list declared
independence after bloody conflicts with a neighbouring
state, which I also wanted to visit. In the case of
Somaliland, that’s Somalia. So with a BBC
film-crew I began several months of travel by flying
into a dusty airstrip just outside Mogadishu, the
Somali capital, on a tiny UN flight from Nairobi.
Years of fighting have destroyed once-beautiful
Mogadishu, which is now the most dangerous city on the
planet for foreigners. The BBC crew and I had to pay a
dozen gunmen to keep us alive. Corpses lie in the
streets for days, and locals eke out a living in a
state of utter chaos. I went to the main market and
bought myself a Somali passport from a man called Mr
Big Beard.
Despite the chaos, and although Somalia has no real
government, the rest of the world recognises it as an
official country. By contrast Somaliland, in the north
of Somalia, has a government, police, democracy and
traffic lights, but no recognition, making it extremely
difficult for the country to attract aid, investment,
or visitors.
A UN cargo flight stopped briefly in Mogadishu to lift
us out of chaos and take us north. The chirpy Afrikaans
pilot casually warned the flight might be a bit rough.
As the plane was battered I closed my eyes and gripped
the armrests, while my producer Iain calmly cooked
himself a bean curry.
The flight was so bad I could have kissed the ground
after landing in Somaliland. A smartly-dressed
immigration official stamped our passports. His
presence and uniform were an immediate sign of order.
Britain is the former colonial power in Somaliland, an
overwhelmingly Muslim nation. Locals went to
Britain’s aid during the Second World War, and
Somalilanders still feel a strong attachment to
Britain. They struggle to understand why the UK has not
recognised their country and politely quiz visitors
about the reasons.
As we drove into the sweltering capital Hargeisa, Yusuf
Abdi Gabobe, my towering local guide, explained
Somaliland voluntarily joined with Somalia after
independence from Britain, but when the relationship
soured in the 1980s Somalilanders fought a war for
independence.
Visiting Somaliland is to receive a humbling lesson in
survival and self-determination. Hargeisa, where 50,000
died during the conflict, is being rebuilt with little
help from the outside world, and refugees are returning
from camps in Ethiopia. A Somali MiG jet which bombed
the city sits atop a poignant war memorial.
Outside Hargeisa there are ancient rock paintings and
stunning journeys into the mountains and up to the port
of Berbera, home to a runway once hired by NASA as an
emergency space shuttle landing strip. Tracks run along
the coast west from Berbera towards Djibouti, and
mangroves, gorgeous islands and coral reef.
But Somaliland’s main attraction is its
determined and inspirational people. Without aid or
loans and largely ignored by the world, they are
building a state from scratch and seemed determined to
keep their independence.
I was sad to leave, but we headed back to the edge of
Europe, to Transniestria, a nation of 700,000 people
which split from Moldova to become an extraordinary
Soviet-era theme park. The hammer and sickle of the
Soviet Union still adorns many buildings, while Lenin
looms over the streets and stands proud outside the
House of Soviets in the capital Tiraspol.
Our route to Transniestria took us through Moldova, the
poorest country in Europe. Ruritanian-style villages
were empty of all but children and the elderly.
Everyone else had fled abroad in search of work. I met
a villager who sold a kidney to buy a cow, and the
hospitable President kindly taught me to fish, got me
drunk, and claimed Transniestria is a black-hole for
arms-smuggling and crime.
Moldovans had warned me hungry armed men roam the
streets of Transniestria, but although the border is
tense, the leafy lanes of Tiraspol were full of cafes
and restaurants. Fighting talk was limited to thoughts
on political strife in neighbouring Ukraine and the
impact on the price of salo, pig fat, a major Ukrainian
export. Transniestrians eat it covered with chocolate,
which is as unappetising as it sounds.
Transniestrians celebrated their National Independence
Day while we visited, an event which bore a striking
resemblance to old Soviet May Day parades. The army
goose-stepped past a platform of officers awarded
medals by the kilo. Having always wanted to visit Red
Russia, I watched goggle-eyed. They still have the KGB
in Transniestria, a fact we discovered when they
detained us for spying. It was tense in their cells,
but after a while the KGB agents softened, gave us KGB
cap-badges as souvenirs, and allowed us to leave.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was the cue for a
number of smaller regions to declare independence. In
the Caucuses, never the most stable part of the world,
I visited Nagorno-Karabakh and three breakaway regions
of Georgia: Ajaria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Karabakh sits high in snowy mountains, which locals
believe gives them the highest rate of longevity in the
world. The scenery and churches were impressive, but it
is difficult to visit without asking awkward questions.
Before Karabakh declared independence from Azerbaijan
its population was evenly split between Azeris and
Armenians. After a bloody war only a handful of Azeris
remain.
To the north, Georgia gave the world a Golden Fleece
and Stalin, who they commemorate with a museum. When
guides vanished I sat on Stalin’s personal toilet
and struck my own small blow against the veneration of
a murdering madman.
Georgia rarely failed to impress. There were ancient
monasteries to explore, old sulphur baths, trendy new
bars in the capital Tbilisi, and a population which
delights in drinking more toasts than eating mouthfuls.
We headed towards South Ossetia, and crossed yet
another tense border to be told the government would
only allow us to linger for a few hours. It was time
enough to learn the people are Ossetes, who speak a
different language to Georgians, share birthday toasts
with young Ossetian soldiers, and realise the locals
are prepared to fight and die for their independence.
But it was an uncomfortable visit, and we were shadowed
everywhere by the secret police.
Heading west across Georgia an overnight train took us
to Ajaria, a summer paradise with beaches that
attracted tourists from across the former Soviet Union.
Ajaria was formerly a breakaway region headed by a
strongman whose son closed roads to race a Lambourghini
along the seafront. Strangely this did not go down well
with locals (average monthly wage £20). They kicked-out
the strongman and were welcomed back into Georgia.
Further north, the government of Abkhazia reneged on an
offer of entry, so we left the Caucuses and headed east
to Taiwan. When Mao’s Communists defeated Chinese
Nationalists they fled to Taiwan and took over. China
says it wants Taiwan back, and will use force if
necessary.
For decades Nationalists in Taiwan claimed they were
the rightful rulers of China and wallowed in heritage,
protecting buildings the Chinese destroyed during their
economic boom. There are ancient temples and chic
hotels nestling beside mountain lakes. In the capital
Taipei visitors can trek to the top of Taipei 101, the
tallest building in the world, to watch as planes fly
beneath them.
But of all the unofficial and official countries I was
lucky enough to visit while filming Places That
Don’t Exist Somaliland had the greatest impact.
War between Somalia and Somaliland could erupt again,
but there is also a much more optimistic future for the
country. Perhaps one day Somaliland will have its own
seat at the United Nations, and tourists will flock to
its stunning beaches to swim at the mouth of the Red
Sea. It is nothing less than Somalilanders deserve.
Copyright Simon Reeve 2005
Simon Reeve is the author of the New York Times
bestseller, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin
Laden and the future of terrorism, and the writer and
presenter of the five-part series Places That
Don’t Exist, which starts on BBC2 on Wednesday
May 4th at 7.30pm with a journey to and through
Somaliland. More information is at
www.shootandscribble.com
Fact
Box:
Flights
to Somaliland are available from Dallo airlines
(www.daallo.com) via Djibouti. Several airlines fly to
Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, from where buses and
taxis will happily take visitors to Transniestria, or
at least the border, where more taxis wait on the other
side.
Major airlines also fly to Tiblisi in Georgia, from
where visitors can take a train to Ajaria (tickets are
around £5). Entry to Abkhazia and South Ossetia is more
difficult, but is best attempted via Russia. BA flies
to Yerevan in Armenia, from where you can take the long
road south-east to Nagorno-Karabakh inside Azerbaijan.
Check the Internet before travel, and make sure
relevant permissions are obtained. Remember the Foreign
Office advises against travelling to many unrecognised
nations, so most personal travel insurance policies
will be invalid.
Hotels:
Although Taiwan has plenty of good-quality hotels,
tourist facilities in most unrecognised nations are not
of conventional Western standards. Hargeisa, the
capital of Somaliland, has a couple of surprisingly
good hotels, including the Ambassador
(www.ambassadorhotelhargeisa.com), which has
comfortable rooms and friendly staff. Outside Hargeisa
locals are so pleased anyone is visiting Somaliland
they make up for poor facilities with a warm welcome.
When to go:
Climates vary widely. Taiwan is good from spring to
summer. Nagorno-Karabkh and the breakaway areas of
Georgia are shockingly cold in winter. Transniestria
has a warmer climate than the UK. Somaliland is warm in
winter and among the hottest parts of the world in
summer. Check guidebooks.
Food:
Taiwan can boast excellent food, but beware amphetamine
betel nuts sold by the side of the road by
scantily-clad women. In Transniestria it helps to have
a local speaking guide who knows the restaurants and
can book your meal several hours before you arrive. I
repeatedly waited literally hours for food to arrive at
restaurants in the Transniestrian capital, by which
time my stomach had started consuming my internal
organs. Good hearty organic produce is plentiful in
Nagorno-Karabkh, otherwise why does everyone there live
so long?
Reading:
Lonely
Planet produces an excellent Taiwan guidebook (£12.99),
and guides to several of the countries from which
breakaway states have split (Romania & Moldova
£10.99; Georgia, Armenia & Azerbaijan £14.99),
although they only mention the breakaway countries I
visited in passing. The Stone Garden Guide to Armenia
& Karabagh [sic] is a celebratory tome produced by
Armenian-Americans and sold for $24.95. The otherwise
excellent Lonely Planet guide Africa on a Shoestring
(£19.99) has just a brief mention of Somalia, basically
telling people not to go there, and just a few
paragraphs on Somaliland.
Security
update:
Unless
war breaks-out with China, Taiwan is and will be safe.
I cannot encourage anyone to visit Mogadishu in
Somalia, but by contrast Somaliland is relatively safe,
although visitors must always remember they are a long
way from a Western embassy. Likewise Transniestria,
South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh also fall
into a diplomatic no-mans land: Western governments
don’t recognise the existence of these breakaway
nations, so it will be harder for them to help if you
get into trouble.
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The
Sunday Telegraph
by Simon Reeve
THE two armed Kazakh policemen on the train were
curious. “So what is your impression of Central
Asia, and is it what you expected?” they asked,
surprised to see a Westerner making the slow journey
across the endless flat steppes of Kazakhstan.
The previous day I had missed the train heading east
from Aktobe, in the far north-west of Kazakhstan, to
Almaty, the main city, when it left half an hour early.
Now I was on a train which did not appear on any
official rail timetable. I only managed to get a ticket
when Bayan, my tenacious Kazakh guide, ejected the
local mayor from his bed and forced him to call on the
rail commissar while wearing his pyjamas.
I stumbled a reply to my new friends, unsure how to
tell them I was already finding Central Asia
wonderfully eccentric. So instead we swapped stories
about growing-up on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain,
and I settled back on the first leg of a trip I was
taking through ‘the Stans’ (Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) with a BBC
television crew for the documentary series ‘Meet
the Stans’.
Since writing a book on al Qaeda in the late 1990s, I
have been fascinated by this forgotten corner of the
world, which I fear could be a potential future
flashpoint in the ‘war on terror’. But
Central Asia, a vast region bigger than Western Europe,
has much more to offer than a problem with Islamic
militancy.
Apart from some of the finest Islamic architecture in
the world, the ancient Silk Road wound its way through
the Stans, lending an extra air of mystery to magical
cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand. Nature also
blesses the region with spectacular scenery untouched
by tourism or development.
Nowhere is this more true than the Charyn Canyon, a few
hours east of Almaty, which I finally reached after
travelling by plane, train, horse and helicopter across
Kazakhstan.
Marat, our driver, a former Soviet police Captain and
winner of the Kazakh ‘Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?’ TV show, took us to the floor of
the canyon in his 4WD, past mansion-sized chunks of
rock perched so precariously over the track I held my
breath as we passed. Second only to the Grand Canyon in
scale, I found Charyn infinitely more impressive due to
the absence of other visitors.
The Canyon is a perfect metaphor for the entire region:
vast, unspoilt and completely unknown. Before 1991 the
Stans were a backwater of the Soviet Union, and the
Canyon’s proximity to the Chinese border rendered
it off-limits even to Kazakhs. It did not appear on
maps, and many Kazakhs still remain unaware it even
exists.
Our plan was to head south from the Canyon, but the
road took us back to Almaty, and a night on the tiles
which again confounded expectations. Late dinner was
followed by a bar called Heaven, which shared the
design aesthetics of a counterpart in London or New
York, but was empty when I arrived at 11.30 with the
BBC’s Will Daws and Dimitri Collingridge. The
only other foreigners were a couple of young
Australians in town to sell tennis nets, and together
we bemoaned the $10 entry fee, a month’s wage for
most in Central Asia, until the upstairs dance-floor
opened at midnight, and the club began to fill with a
collection of the most glamorous women (and men) I have
ever seen.
With sore heads we took the road south from Almaty into
Kyrgyzstan, a land of gorgeous meadows and jagged
peaks. The Kyrgyz government hopes to attract adventure
tourists seeking whitewater rafting and mountain
trekking, but the country has barely a notion of a
tourist infrastructure.
At Lake Issy-Kul, the second largest and highest
mountain lake after Latin America’s Lake
Titicaca, a scattering of resort hotels which used to
cater for Soviet leaders have plenty of spare rooms.
“Who comes here now?” I asked one manager.
“Diplomats, VIPs, and beezneez elite,” he
replied.
“What exactly does business elite mean?” I
asked naively.
“Beezneez elite…means… beezneez
elite,” he replied with a euphemistic smile.
Organised crime is certainly a problem in Central Asia,
but not for visitors. Local criminals are more
interested in the rich pickings garnered from shipping
heroin from Afghanistan through Central Asia to Russia
and Europe.
We drove to Bishkek, the sleepy Kyrgyz capital, and a
Hyatt hotel full of American Special Forces on leave
from Afghanistan. While they lounged in the
hotel’s day-glo casino, we headed for the
national museum, an eccentric celebration of the Soviet
past.
The casino now happily accepts the US dollar, but
murals in the museum portrayed evil Americans, one of
whom bore more than a passing resemblance to George
Bush, sitting astride nuclear missiles and laying waste
to legions of defenceless women and children. Outside
teenagers asked me in English if I liked ganja and
roller-bladed around the base of a statue of Lenin,
still standing proudly in the main square.
“We’re quite tolerant of Soviet
history,” said Kadyr, my young guide. “Many
people think life was better under Communism.”
It was easy to understand why when I headed south
again, and crossed into Tajikistan, Afghanistan’s
mountainous northern neighbour, on a donkey cart. Now
the poorest and most lawless of the countries in
Central Asia, Tajikistan’s economy is still
reeling after civil war in the 1990s killed up to
150,000. At least 80 per cent of the population live in
poverty and wages are as low as $5 a month. Burned-out
Soviet factories litter the landscape, and gasoline is
sold in jars by the side of the road. “Life was
never this bad under the Soviets,” was a constant
refrain.
The bizniz elite were much in evidence on the streets
of Dushanbe, the capital, where former warlords,
corrupt politicians and mafia bosses drive around in
expensive Western cars. An 800 mile border with
Afghanistan, the source of 90 per cent of European
heroin, has made Tajikistan a major drug transit route.
Tourism is virtually non-existent in Tajikistan. The
only foreigners I saw were aid workers or businessmen
investing in high-risk ventures. But the country is
getting back on its feet, and streets that resounded
with gunfire just a few years ago now host outdoor
cafes and promenading couples. Tajikistan has a long
way to go, but personally I loved the place. The Tajiks
were friendly, generous, hospitable and devoid of
obvious envy, even when a couple of them debating our
salaries asked us, wide-eyed, whether we earned more
than $10,000 a day.
Of course for tourists seeking an entirely different
cultural experience, the isolation of Central Asia is
part of the appeal. Almaty and Tashkent, the capital of
Uzbekistan, now host a few Western shops, but the rest
of the region has been forgotten by Western businesses.
Yet we ignore Central Asia at our peril. Economic
growth would be a useful bulwark against growing
political discontent and emerging militant groups which
agitate against both the authoritarian regimes in the
Stans and the West for supporting their oppressive
leaders.
Geographically the Stans are closer to India and the
east, to which they look for cultural leadership just
as much as they look to Mother Russia or the West. At a
celebration of the end of the civil war in Dushanbe,
teenagers queued to take photographs with ancient
cameras next to cardboard cut-outs of Bollywood stars,
not the icons of Hollywood.
Music is also largely free of Western influences in the
Stans, and most people seem to prefer traditional
songs. In Dushanbe, Gurminj Zawkibekov, a wizened
former Soviet actor who tops the Tajik charts, gave me
a recital of the haunting sounds of the remote Pamir
region. His band has seen record sales soar since the
Soviet Union collapsed and Tajiks began to rediscover
their heritage.
With Gurminj’s CD playing in my ears, we drove
south through glorious countryside to the Afghan
border, a route best avoided unless accompanied by an
armed Colonel from the Tajik Secret Police and a
detachment of border guards. The border is still bandit
country. We lingered briefly, before heading west into
Uzbekistan.
Since throwing his lot in with the US ‘war on
terror’, Islam Karimov, the despotic ruler of
Uzbekistan, has been embraced by the West. But there
was a nasty feeling of oppression in Uzbekistan. People
disappear, and we were careful who we spoke to and what
questions we asked, more for their security than ours.
Yet Uzbekistan understands the benefits of tourism and
has the biggest attractions in the whole of Central
Asia: the legendary cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.
Samarkand, graced by the breathtaking Registan, a
three-sided square which is perhaps the finest built
space in the Islamic world, was a joy. We bribed a
policeman and climbed a secret passage hidden behind a
carpet store to the top of one of the famous minarets.
But for years I had longed to visit the Silk Road city
of Bukhara. I was excited as we drew close to the
ancient city, but the motion of our 4WD bumping along
the road sent me to sleep. The sound of a huge wooden
door creaking open finally roused me as we parked, late
at night, outside a guest-house in Bukhara.
I picked myself off the floor of the van, where half my
body appeared to have slumped, rather unedifyingly, as
I slept, rubbed my bleary eyes, and peered out of the
back of the van window, at one of the most powerfully
evocative sights I have ever seen.
The guest-house was next to the glowing domes of the
majestic 16th
century Mir-i-Arab Madrassa, an Islamic college. Light
streamed from tiny windows sparkling along its colossal
wall like portholes in a ship, and danced over striking
blue tiles thought to derive their unique colour from a
mix of human blood.
To the side of the madrassa was the chubby base of the
legendary Kalon minaret, an elegant mosque tower built
in 1187 to call the faithful to prayer, and for
centuries lit by fires to guide camel trains travelling
through the night. Although Genghis Khan destroyed
Bukhara in 1220, he gazed in awe at the Kalon minaret
and ordered it spared, enabling recent rulers to
execute victims and criminals by throwing them off the
top.
An ethereal golden glow from oil lamps and elegant
lights played over the brickwork as my eyes widened and
traced the minaret 160ft into the dark sky, just as the
haunting sound of an Islamic prayer rehearsal drifted
from the madrassa towards our hotel. I was nearing the
end of my journey through this wonderful region, and I
scrambled out of the van to gasp at the mediaeval
vision. It was so beautiful that even as I remember the
sight now a lump rises in my throat and, one day, I
hope to return.
Simon Reeve, 2003.
Simon Reeve is the author of The New Jackals: Ramzi
Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism,
and the presenter of ‘Meet the Stans’, to
be broadcast on BBC4 on September 29th and 30th at 9pm,
and on BBC2 later this year.
Fact Box:
The
easiest way to travel through Central Asia is with a
tour group.
Regent Holidays (0117 921 1711,
www.regent-holidays.co.uk, offer a Kyrgyz Explorer trip
for 9 days, a 14 day Uzbekistan Encounter and a Kazak
Explorer (8 days); prices between £591 and £989 exc.
international flights.
Dragoman (01728 861133, www.dragoman.com) offers a
variety of overland trips through Central Asia.
Silk Steps (01454 888850, www.silksteps.co.uk) runs
tours to the region, while Explore Worldwide (01252
760100, www.explore-worldwide.com) has a 10-day Golden
Road to Samarkand tour (also visiting Tashkent, Bukhara
and Khiva) starting from £1,025 including flights.
Hotels:
There are good Western hotels in the main cities in
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Tajikistan is
sorely lacking in decent hotels and any real tourist
infrastructure. Rooms on the top floor of the Hotel
Tajikistan in Dushanbe are passable, but often reserved
for diplomats and drug lords.
When
to go:
May to early June, and September to early November. At
other times, the region is too hot or too cold.
Food:
Be wary. Most of it is fresh, organic and healthy, but
meat is often left lying around. If given the option
again I would avoid fermenting camel’s milk,
particularly when drunk under the watchful eye of a
hairy camel breeder early in the morning, and sour
yoghurt balls made from goats milk, which I loathed.
Reading:
Lonely
Planet's Central Asia (£14.99) is the best guide to the
region.
Beyond the Oxus: The Central Asians by Monica Whitlock,
published by John Murray, £19.99, is a fascinating
account by a journalist who truly knows and loves the
region. Individual country guides are Kyrgyzstan,
Odyssey Guides, £14.99; Uzbekistan, Odyssey Guides,
£13.50;
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Biography
The Guardian
April
30, 2005
LENGTH: 1350 words
HEADLINE: The Guide: States of confusion: They have
armies, governments, passports and stamps, but these
breakaway nations are not recognised as countries by
the rest of the world. Simon Reeve reaches for his map
By Simon Reeve
The detention cells in the KGB secret police
headquarters in Transdniestria, a country between
Moldova and Ukraine, are not the ideal place to spend a
Saturday night. Perhaps I have seen too many cold-war
thrillers, but after being detained by the
Transdniestrian KGB for spying last autumn, I had
visions of being held for years in a dark cell and
having to write escape plans in blood using my toenails
for nibs. Fortunately, the KGB dispelled these fears by
offering me a tasty salad, giving me a KGB cap-badge as
a souvenir of my incarceration, and eventually setting
me free.
It was a strange experience. But then Transdniestria is
a fairly strange country. Stuck in a Soviet time warp,
it is not actually a "real" country at all. According
to the international community and most maps of the
region, Transdniestria does not e