10 latest experiences http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian en-us It’s years ago now, but my experience of swimming with dolphins remains almost as vivid now as then and is still without doubt one of my all-time best travel experiences. And I’m not even a new-agey type. Zipped up into an ultra-thick wetsuit and bundled via a rusting bus (“can you hear the turbo kick in?” the driver quipped) to a more reliable-looking boat a small group of us were ferried into the bay beside Kaikoura to scan the waters for dolphins to swim with. The bay’s a great place to look, as in the winter (southern hemisphere-time) dusky dolphins – and lots of other sea mammels, including whales – congregate to take feast of the dense concentration of krill driven here by mid-winter ocean currents. Whale-watching didn’t appeal though. I wanted to see the whole thing, not just a fin and a hump, which was the reason I was standing on deck with snorkel and mask, shivering. Not for long though; it can’t have been ten minutes before our skipper hollered “youâ... Kaikoura, New Zealand Christian Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:39:50 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/313 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/313 To find that watercolour landscape of molar-like hills, lazy rivers and standing oarsman that hang on the walls of your local Chinese takeaway, go to the Li River. The river is at its most splendid around the city of Guilin – some 400km northeast of the Vietnamese border – where it’s inspired painters and poets for generations. The best way to enjoy the river is to take a cruise, past paddy fields, wallowing buffalo and cormorant fishermen – who train the birds to pluck fish out of the water for them. I did this, taking a boat to the easygoing market town and popular backpackers’ base of Yangshuo, before holing up there for a few days. It’s the kind of town that sucks you in with a great pedestrian strip full of traveller-friendly cafes, bars and restaurants and a laid-back feel. And there’s plenty to do during the day too – good mountain biking through nearby rural villages, limestone caverns to explore and splash around in and lots of good hikes around too. Be sur... Yangshuo, China Christian Wed, 27 Jun 2007 12:06:56 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/309 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/309 No trip to Beijing is complete without an excursion to the Great Wall of China just beyond the city’s fringes. But the sections of the wall in the immediate vicinity of the city are overrun with hawkers and kitsch, so it’s far better to take a organised bus trip (offered in most city hotels, guesthouses and hostels) to Simatai where the wall snakes over rolling hills through the desolate scrubland as shown on all the postcards. From Simatai you can do a five-hour hike along one of the best preserved/reconstructed sections of the wall to Jinshanling another major point along the wall. Neither place is more than a handful of buildings so the main attraction is the wall itself, where hawkers thin out over the first half-hour’s walk leaving you to appreciate the scenery and the satisfaction of plodding on stones that have heard the patter of footsteps since time immemorial. Some sections of the wall are really steep, with oversize step following oversized step, so you need to be ... Beijing, China Christian Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:17:02 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/308 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/308 Though a lot of travelers end up transiting through it, Delhi doesn’t have all that many attractions – unless you count the usual Indian chaos that’s writ as large as anywhere here. But good way to spend a few hours is to head to a couple of the city’s principle attractions: the huge Jama Masjid mosque and the sprawling Red Fort. Both touristy, of course, but well worth investigating. The seventeenth century mosque is the more impressive of the two since it still has a function and so more soul. Be sure to check out the signs at the entrances which tell you specifically what the entrance fee is and what times it’s closed for prayer – don’t buy any of the nonsense of the self-appointed guides that will try to force themselves on you for extortionate fees. And remember to wear long trousers or at least have something to wrap around any bare areas. Interesting history and inspiring architecture aside, wondering around the courtyard is enjoyable for people watching and... Delhi, India Christian Thu, 24 May 2007 16:27:29 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/89 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/89 The headline might have got you reading, but really this weekend was all about the third round of the 2007 Scottish Mountain Bike series in Fort William. I’ve raced before but not for years and years, so it was a matter of dusting off the old race bike and seeing how much the scene had progressed in my absence. Fort William might sound like an exotic place in a Highlander sort of way but in fact it’s a dismal and rather soulless transport centre made for a large part out of 1960s prefabs and with the sort of sweeping expanses that divide malls from motels and fast food outlets that you usually see in the USA. A place to be avoided, particularly on dreary rain days when the most cheerful thing (ironically) I could find was the graveyard, with its upbeat red fence – until a temporary halt in the downpours when a rainbow popped out. But you come to Fort William with the extraordinary surrounding great outdoors in their mind, and it was certainly the slopes of nearby Ben Nevis ... Fort William, United Kingdom Christian Tue, 22 May 2007 20:59:05 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/84 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/84 Berlin’s one of Europe’s most style-conscious cities – a city of museums, culture and solemn memorials – so there’s almost nothing more incongruous than publicly demeaning yourself in an orgy of drunkenness with a bunch other foreigners on an organized pub crawl. But if you can suspend your sensibilities it can also be a ton of fun and a great way of meeting other travellers – a bunch of us met on one and hung out for much of the rest of the week. But there’s no doubt the event has about the dignity of a Club 18-30 holiday as companies like New Berlin Tours (www.newberlintours.com??) drag you from bar to bar, creating feeding frenzies in between on the street when everyone’s plied with dreadful saccharine shots. It must have been about five bars we hit, with our forty-strong group looking as out of place in the low-lit 70s decor joints as a hooker in a convent. The night included fire-breathing dragons, swapping socks, acrobatics on subway handrails, photos in the l... Berlin, Germany Christian Thu, 17 May 2007 12:31:07 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/75 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/75 The only proper way to usher summer in, as any self-respecting pagan will tell you, is to get semi-naked, cover yourself in paint and play with drums and fire. That’s pretty much the sum of the Beltane, an ancient Celtic festival, as it’s celebrated on Edinburgh’s Carlton Hill in the town centre. Beltane’s been celebrated there since the late 1980s, but in recent years events the shindig on the last day of April have increasingly moved from party – just a lot of new agey types getting a skin-full on a hill – to performance with hundreds of active participants and thousands of camera toting passive ones – and a £5 entry fee. So it’s now amid the American twang, guttural German and noisy Spanish that you watch the spectacle unfurl. You’ll need a proper pagan to tell you relevance of the whole affair, all a fairly ignorant observer like me can tell you that it’s to the belting rhythm of drums and by the light of flaming torches that a May Queen parades around th... Edinburgh, United Kingdom Christian Thu, 17 May 2007 11:57:11 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/74 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/74 The Holocasust Memorial, or more fully the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, is Berlin’s latest major attraction; if you can use such a flippant term for something so grave. And grave’s the right word since the monument was inspired by the Jewish graveyard in Prague, though at the size of three football fields and containing thousands of car-sized concrete blocks it’s really a far cry. Some say it’s ugly, meaningless or surreal and irrelevant, yet the wander through its odd desolated and regimented spaces to the underground centre is certainly unsettling and thought-provoking. The centre relates unpleasant facts and figures relating to the holocaust and then a host of personal stories are tragically related. Even going around the absorbing exhibition is a creepy solemn affair – no-one says a word in there. It’s impossible not to be disgusted and appalled at inhumanity that humankind is capable of and deeply touched by all the personal tragedies. For more info see... Berlin, Germany Christian Thu, 17 May 2007 09:58:35 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/73 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/73 “A teardrop on the face of eternity” as one Indian poet described it, might be going a bit far, but certainly the Taj, reputedly built as a tomb for the beloved of a great Raja, is one of the World’s great buildings and a must-see global landmark. To make a day of it I hired a bike (haggled a deal of Rs100 or about US$2.50 for the day at a bike shop) and headed through a chaotic mix of cows, rickshaws, hapless pedestrians, spluttering buses and speeding cars to the other side of Yamuna river to take a look at the building from the same vantage point as the cowherds, peasants who work the land here. Great views and intriguing backdrop, if you don’t mind a steady pestering by urchins – one postcard? one rupee? take photo? etc – even though I’d missed the very best light, which must be around dawn from this angle. Pedaled back in the company of a Dutch girl who’d made the same trip but wanted male protection from local lads stone throwing stones at her (didn’t see a... Āgra, India Christian Thu, 17 May 2007 09:30:16 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/72 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/72 Churchill, Manitoba is a long way to go whichever way you cut it. Particularly if you go the way I did and took the train for a full two days through monotonous boreal forest and bleak tundra to get to this bedraggled and loveless transport hub on the southern edge of the Hudson Bay. But thankfully I wasn’t there for architectural sightseeing but to commune with polar bears. That I did, but not only that, there was also the unexpected chance to kayak with pods of beluga whales and even watch the northern lights for hours one night as they lit the night sky with their incandescent dance. A lot of highlights for a couple of nights – and this wasn’t even Churchill in peak season. The prime time to go is really the six weeks at the start of October, as temperatures drop below zero Celsius and winds gust to 40mph, when hundreds of polar bears converge on Churchill. The bears are really only passing through, killing time waiting for the ice to refreeze on the vast adjacent Hudson ... Churchill, Canada Christian Sat, 12 May 2007 11:00:18 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/christian/experience/62 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/62