Tag Archives: travel

Celebrating my birthday in Kosovo

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My birthday is on VE Day (8th of May). In 1990, I celebrated it in the former Yugoslavia. That year, I was driving around Serbia in a rented car with my friend from Belgrade, Raša Raičević. His birthday was the day following mine. Before I rented the car, my friend Raša, a very wise fellow, advised me to rent a car from one particular company because its cars carried Slovenian registration plates, rather than Serbian. This proved to be sound advice.

On the seventh of May, Raša and I booked into the comfortable accommodation provided at the beautiful Prohor Pčinjski monastery in the hills of southern Serbia. We decided to stay there two nights in order to celebrate our birthdays.

My birthday wish was to drive into the autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija, which was populated by a high percentage of Albanians. Then as now, I was greatly interested in all matters connected with Albania and the Albanian diaspora. Both Raša and I had separately visited the area in the 1970s. We were both keen to see it again.

Old hammam in Prizren, Kosovo

Raša, a Serbian, had some reservations about driving into Kosovo, where there had been some unpleasant violent incidents between the Serbian and Albanian communities some months earlier. However, he decided that he would accompany me for two reasons. One was that our car bore Slovenian plates, not Serbian. The other related to his excellent command of the English language. He said he would only speak in English in Kosovo, not a word of Serbian.

We set off, driving through the relatively empty Serbian countryside. The boundary of Serbia and Kosovo was at the summit of a low mountain pass. As soon as we entered Kosovo, we discovered that, unlike the part of Serbia we had just left, the countryside of Kosovo was relatively crowded with people, by the road side and in the fields. The landscape was liberally dotted with recently constructed homes and other buildings. This was quite different from what we recalled of our earlier visits.

We drove into Priština (Prishtinë), the capital city of the autonomous region. The main road was filled with a sea of people. We inched forward. The crowds parted slowly to allow us to proceed. Raša advised, nay forbade, me to sound the car’s horn. He did not want to upset anyone. I had never before driven through such crowds. Four years later, I did it again, but in the central market area of Bangalore in India. There, I and other motorists sounded horns incessantly, but nobody paid the slightest notice to them.

We parked in the centre of the city in a car park that looked like it was the site of a large, demolished building.

I was keen to buy recordings of Kosovan Albanian music for my ever-growing collection of music from all over Yugoslavia.  The best supplier turned out to be a tiny kiosk that sold cigarettes, magazines, and newspapers. I bought about fifteen cassettes, the kiosk’s entire stock, but had no bag to carry my haul. The enterprising shop keeper saw my plight. He opened a couple of cartons that each contained twenty packs of cigarettes and emptied the packs onto his small counter. Then, he carefully packed my cassettes into the cartons.

After lunch in what seemed to be the grandest hotel in the city, we drove to see the beautiful Serbian Orthodox monastery at Gracanica.  Then we wended our way back towards Serbia, stopping for coffee at Gnjilane (Gjilan). There, I spotted a kebab shop that used a logo identical to the well-known McDonalds ‘M’. When I pointed this possible breach of ‘copyright’ to my friend, he shrugged his shoulders and said:

“This is Kosovo. Anything goes.”

We reached Prohor Pčinjski, where we ate a lavish and tasty dinner. The following day, Raša’s birthday trip was a drive through parts of Yugoslavian Macedonia. After passing some rice paddy fields, we were stopped by a policeman with a speed measuring device. He fined me the equivalent of £1 Sterling for speeding. My friend was fined half of that for not wearing a seatbelt. Otherwise, we had a good day, visiting an attractive small town, Kratovo, and the Roman ruins at Stobi by the River Vardar.

The following day, we drove back into Kosovo, stopping at the small town of Prizren. On both the 1990 and my 1975 visits, Prizren captured my heart more than any other place in Kosovo. Recently taken photographs I have seen show that it is still a delightful place.

From Prizren we drove to a dramatic pass that led from Kosovo into southeastern Montenegro.  We spent the night in Rozaje, a small Montenegrin market town. Thus ended a memorable double birthday celebration.

Soon after we visited Kosovo together, it was time for me to fly back to England. Raša accompanied me to Belgrade airport. Just before I entered the secure departure area, I waved to him and experienced a weird sensation. I felt that Raša knew that we would never meet again.

My sensation was not without basis. Soon after I left Yugoslavia, the country began its painful dismemberment. Visiting my friends in Belgrade and elsewhere in Yugoslavia became inadvisable.  Sadly, by the time that uneasy peace began to reign again in what was once Yugoslavia, Raša had passed away.

VE Day marked the end of hostilities between the Axis and Allied powers in Europe on the day that was to become my birthday a few years later. The imposition of socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe that followed did not put an end to festering sores that had been troubling the Balkans and elsewhere since the decline of the Ottoman and Austro Hungarian empires, which had already begun at the beginning of the twentieth century.  This was certainly the case in what was Yugoslavia. During the ‘reign’ of Marshal Tito, a semblance (or maybe more) of unity was achieved in his country. However, after his death, as if recovering from a general anaesthetic, old unresolved conflicts reawakened. President Milošević did little to resolve these, but instead helped to exacerbate them. Hailed by some Yugoslavs, mostly Serbs, as the new hero of Yugoslavia, this assessment was not shared by many, especially the Albanian folk in Kosovo.

All said and done, I cannot forget the warmth, hospitality, and friendship shown to me by ordinary people living in the former Yugoslavia, Serbians, Croatians, Bosnians, Albanians, and many others during the 1970s and 1980s. They did not deserve what befell them during  much of the 20th century.

Read more about Yugoslavia as it used to be in my book “SCRABBLE WITH SLIVOVITZ”, which is available from Amazon:

A few words on my new book about India

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It is difficult to summarise a 269 page book succinctly. So, here is something that captures the essence of my latest book.

India is a country whose vibrant contemporary life mingles intimately with its age-old traditions. My new book “ROAD TO HEAVEN – A PASSAGE THROUGH INDIA” explores the intimate interweaving of past and present in the life of modern India by describing a journey I made through western, central and southern parts of the country.

In addition to relating our travel experiences – places we saw and their histories, whom we met, what we ate, and how we travelled, I have included other topics. These include accounts of places we (my wife and I) visited written by earlier visitors, and a detailed insider’s view of the formerly British colonial clubs of India. These clubs used to be out-of-bounds to Indians, but since the country became independent, they are now part of the rich fabric of Indian social life.

And as for the Road to Heaven, this really exists, and I have described my journeys along it.

The book is NOW available from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HBN8BZG2

Tea and dining in Daman (India)

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YOU MIGHT WONDER why we spent a few days Daman in 2018.

Enclaves have always fascinated me. For many years before that, I had been interested in Daman, which had been until 1961 a tiny Portuguese possession, an enclave surrounded by Gujarat, on the west coast of India.

Even though my wife is of Gujarati heritage, neither she nor I had ever visited Gujarat before 2018, and Daman was one of the places on our itinerary.

The small district of Daman, now a part of the Union Territory of Daman and Diu (that also includes Dadra and Nagar Haveli) is surrounded by Gujarat and the Arabian Sea. The city of Daman lies on both sides of the mouth of the Daman Ganga River. From 1559 until 1961, when it became incorporated into the Republic of India, Daman was a Portuguese colony. The Portuguese captured Daman from the rulers of the Gujarat Sultanate. Daman was one of several Indian coastal colonies of Portugal. Other important colonies included (moving from north to south): Diu, Cambay, Bassein, Chaul, Goa, Anjediva Island, Cannanore, Calicut, Cochin, Quilon, and Galle (now in Sri Lanka). For a while, Portugal’s naval fleet used these bases not only for trade but also to regulate access of other nation’s boats to the valuable spices that could be obtained from the Indian subcontinent. The Portuguese in the 16th century wanted to create a monopoly of the spice trade. They imported spices via the Cape of Good Hope. Their Muslim rivals imported them via Egypt and Venice. So, to stifle this competition, the Portuguese established bases along the coast of East Africa and the Arabian Gulf (for a while they held Hormuz Island at the mouth of the Persian Gulf).

Daman city is divided by a river into two parts: Nani Daman and Moti Daman. Although in Gujarati ‘nani’ means small and ‘moti’ means large, Nani Daman is larger than Moti Daman.

Here is how we spent one of our evenings in Daman:

After visiting the fortress in Moti Daman, we headed back to Nani Daman. The sun was setting, and there was not much traffic. Eventually, an autorickshaw (‘auto’) already crammed full, with four passengers, stopped to pick us up. Two of the passengers moved to the front of the vehicle squatted hazardously on either side of the driver, and we squeezed onto the narrow passenger seat next to the other two passengers. After a short distance, the auto stopped. The two men squatting beside the driver disembarked and walked ahead of us. We drove on, weaving our way around a police check post, and then stopping again when we had passed out of sight of it. The two men, who had disembarked, retrieved their positions beside the driver, and we continued across the river to Nani daman. The driver explained to us, in Gujarati (which my wife understands), that the two men had to walk ahead of us past the check point in order that the auto would not be stopped because of being overloaded.

Later that afternoon, we returned to the bazaar in Nani Daman. We bought bananas and oranges from one of the many women squatting on the pavement surrounded by piles of neatly arranged fruit and vegetables. Amongst these, there were vendors with mountains of garlic bulbs and ginger roots, and others with tidy little mounds of fresh green chillies.

We took tea at two different tea-stalls near the bus stand (bus station). One served a strong tea favoured with ginger, lemon and cardamom. The other provided a very milky, sugary tea, whose taste resembled like caramel. Everywhere in Daman, and, we were to discover, all over Gujarat, tea is served in tiny cups, that can be finished in two or three swallows. It is invariably sugary. These minute cups provide ‘sugar bursts’ (as our daughter describes them) rather than quenching thirst. Often, two men will share a tiny cup of tea. Half of the tea is poured into a tiny saucer, and one of the men then slurps it noisily. The other man drinks the rest of the tea from the cup. Tea shared this way is known as ‘cutting chai’.

The tea provided at tea-stalls is prepared by vigorously boiling milk containing handfuls of tea leaves or tea powder, and usually much sugar. Grated ginger and/or powdered cardamom might also be added to this bubbling mixture. When the milky tea mixture has been boiled sufficiently, it is strained either through a fine (plastic) sieve or through a cloth. The damp residue in the cloth is then squeezed using the hinged metal handles of a ‘sansi’, which is a pair of hinged tongs (used for lifting heavy pots off the fire or cooker). Every tea-maker produces a differently tasting tea. Some of them have high reputations amongst local people for the tea they produce.

After our teas, we waited for Daman’s only newsagent to open his stall. Newspapers arrive in the evening, so there is no need for the newsagent to be open at other times during the day. We ate dinner at the Gurukripa Hotel. Even between the frequent power outages, the dining room was so dark that the waiters brought portable electric reading lamps so that guests can read the menu. We asked to keep ours throughout the meal so that we could see what we were eating. Both the service and the food were above average. When we left the hotel at 9.30 pm, the streets were deserted. An hour earlier, they had been as busy and bustling as in a large city.

Despite the late hour, quite a lot of shops and food stalls on wheeled barrows were still open. On our walk back to our hotel, we passed a parking area containing at least twelve Ambassador taxis, with black bodies and yellow roofs. Although they do not conform with current trends in car design and economic fuel consumption, these vehicles, which are ‘descendants’ of the British Morris Oxford (series III model), are ideally suited for rough terrain and the hazards of driving in India. They are, it seems, almost indestructible, but many taxi drivers are replacing them by newer, more fuel-efficient types of cars.

This is a short, adapted extract from my book “TRAVELS THROUGH GUJARAT, DAMAN, AND DIU”, which is available from Amazon. I hope to post other extracts from my book in the near future.

A taxi in Tirana (Albania) in 1984

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UNTIL EARLY IN THE 1990s, Albania, the small state on the western side of the Balkan peninsular, was at least as tightly sealed-off from the eyes of the outside world as is North Korea today. It was a maverick socialist state, which, under the leadership of its dictator Enver Hoxha, regarded first the USSR and then later the People’s Republic of China, as being too reactionary to be its allies. Few visited it, the only country in Europe where Stalin was publicly revered long after his death, and even fewer escaped from it. And, not many people shared my long fascination with the country.

Central Tirana in 1984

In 1984, when solo travel was forbidden in the country, I joined a group tour to Albania. 28 years later, I was chatting about my experiences on the trip with a dental patient who had migrated from his native land, Albania, to the UK. After telling him some of the strange things that had occurred during my fortnight in Stalinist Albania, he told me that what I had noticed was indeed the case during Hoxha’s dictatorship. He said to me that if he were to relate the conditions that prevailed, nobody would believe him. However, he said, that if I, an outsider, told what I had seen, I would more likely be believed. This conversation led to me writing and publishing an account of what I could recall of my brief sojourn in Albania. This book is called “Albania on my Mind”. It includes my 1984 travelogue as well as what made me become interested in that then almost impenetrable country from the age of about 15. When I published it in 2012, I thought that I had lost the many photographs I took in Hoxha’s Albania, and I illustrated the book with images from out-of-print literature. A few years later, I found the colour pictures I had taken on the trip. Maybe, one day I will bring out a new edition that incorporates my photographs rather than the other images.

During my 1984 trip, our group was watched carefully by our Albanian guides, the coach driver (a party member), and members of the Sigurimi – Albania’s highly effective secret police. And everything we were shown was carefully stage managed so that we were likely to regard Albania as a perfect Socialist paradise. One day, a group of us decided that we would like to hire a taxi in Tirana (the capital) to visit a local beauty spot, Mount Dajti. This is what I wrote about it in my book:–

After we had eaten lunch at the hotel, a group of us went into the square outside it. We saw a long line of taxis, which were waiting vacantly by a booking booth. We wondered how often these were hired and by whom; there was not a soul in sight taking the slightest interest in them.  One of us walked up to the booth and asked the man sitting inside whether we could hire a taxi to take us up to Mount Dajti, some way outside Tirana. Just when it seemed that we had succeeded in hiring a cab, another person inside the booth lifted a telephone receiver, listened for a moment, and then whispered something to the man with whom we had just negotiated. He beckoned to us, and pointed at the hotel. Somehow, he made it clear to us that we needed to book the taxi not from him, but from the hotel reception desk.

We trooped back into the hotel’s lobby and made a beeline for the reception desk. Two suited men, sitting on a sofa nearby, looked at us over the tops of their newspapers. As we reached the desk, I noticed that the doors of one of the hotel’s two lifts were opening. Our (Albanian guide) Eduart hurried through them and towards the receptionist, who was beginning to attend to us.

“What do you need?” Eduart asked us, out of breath.

“We want to hire a taxi.”

“Why?”

“We want to visit Mount Dajti?”

“Why should you do that?”

“We need some fresh country air. We’ve been in the city for too long.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Eduart protested. “You have already spent many days in the countryside.”

“But, that’s what we want, and we believe that the views from Mount Dajti are magnificent.”

“You cannot go.”

“Why ever not?” we asked.

“There is a lot of traffic. The roads are crowded.” We looked at Eduart disbelievingly. Traffic congestion was certainly not a problem in Albania in 1984.

“You know that there’s a big national cycle race on at the moment.”

“That was over long ago,” one of us objected. “We saw the posters announcing it along the roads.”

“You can visit Mother Albania, but no further.”

We had already visited the Mother Albania monument, which was located in the outskirts of the town. However, as we were determined to not to give in to our obstreperous guide, we agreed to his compromise.

“Alright,” we said.

Then, Eduart said menacingly:

“You may take the taxi to Mother Albania, but remember that if anything happens to you, we cannot take any responsibility for your safety. You will not be protected by your group visa.”

“We’ll risk it,” one of us said.

I did not like the threatening sound of Eduart’s voice, but followed the rest of our small group back to the taxi rank. When we arrived there no more that ten minutes after we had left it, we found that all of the taxis had disappeared, and also there was an extremely long line of people waiting in a queue outside the booth.

It seems that while we were arguing with Eduart, a queue had been hastily assembled next to the taxi rank, and it was long enough to put us off the idea of hiring a vehicle.

If you enjoyed this extract and want to read more, “Albania on My Mind” is available from Amazon:

.https://www.amazon.co.uk/Albania-My-Mind-Adam-Yamey/dp/1291111476

A peculiar mission in the wilds of Russia

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THE AUTHOR SOPHY Roberts made several quite arduous trips to various parts of Siberia. Her aim was to find pianofortes that had, in various ways and at different times in Russia’s history, found their way to cities and very remote places east of the Ural mountains, in Siberia. Her book, “The Lost Pianos of Siberia” describes her adventures and some of the pianos she found.

What made the book interesting for me was not so much the pianos themselves, but what Ms Roberts wrote about Siberia: its history; the people she met; and the landscape she saw. She also described early travel accounts of this vast often snowy part of Russia. Furthermore, she provided interesting insights into the Russian piano making industry that flourished both before and after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Illustrated with photographs and maps, this book is both fascinating and a compelling read

What do you thing of this proposed title for my book about India?

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AT PRESENT I AM WRITING another book about travels in India. It describes a journey we made through the following Indian states: Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. During this journey we travelled along a road in Gujarat called THE ROAD TO HEAVEN.

My working title for the book is “ROAD TO HEAVEN AND A PASSAGE THROUGH INDIA”.

Without having read the as yet unfinished book, is this a title that would make you consider reading it, OR CAN YOU SUGGEST A BETTER TITLE?

If I use your suggested title, I will, of course, acknowledge your help.

Never come to Holland again with this passport

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DURING THE 1980s, I used to drive from my home in Kent through Europe to Hungary and Yugoslavia. I used to take the car across the sea on the Olau Line that ran between Sheerness in Kent and Vlissingen in Holland. In those days, I held an old-style UK passport. With hard covers, it was dark blueish black. On the front cover, there was a coat of arms embossed in gold and words in gold lettering mentioning it was a British passport. There were two horizontal slots in the front cover. These were lined with white paper. On one of them, the passport holder’s name was written by hand, and on the other, the passport number.

I used to carry my passport in my trouser pocket. So with time, it gradually got a bit bent as it pressed against my leg. Another thing that happened was that the gold coat of arms and the gold lettering wore so thin that they were barely visible. Likewise, my name on the cover also began to become less distinct.

At various demanding frontiers, such as the borders to Communist countries such as Albania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, the tatty appearance of my passport was of no concern to the often-over-zealous border officials. However, it did cause trouble in a place where I least expected it.

On one occasion, after disembarking at Vlissingen, I handed my passport to the Dutch immigration official. He looked at it, and then wandered away with it. About 10 minutes later, he returned with it, holding it gingerly by one of its corners. As he handed it to me, he said:

“Next time you are coming in Holland, you must have a new passport.”

Clearly my passport’s appearance was not in harmony with the Dutch sense of tidiness and orderliness.

A friendly encounter in a cathedral in Pondicherry (India)

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Between late 2024 and early 2025, we spent 88 days travelling 4000 miles through India. I have published an account of this fascinating odyssey in my book, “88 DAYS IN INDIA: A JOURNEY OF MEMORY AND DISCOVERY”, which is available from Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FKTFBFM2). Here is a very brief excerpt from the book. It describes what happened when we were sitting in a cathedral in the formerly French colony of Pondicherry.

HERE IS THE EXCERPT:

“We sat inside the spacious cathedral’s cool interior within reach of the draught
coming from a fan attached to one of the pillars supporting the long nave’s high,
barrel-vaulted ceiling. As we were relaxing in the cooling breeze, a small group
of Indians entered, and went to the front pews, where they knelt and prayed in
front of the high altar. Amongst them was a young couple dressed in their finest.
Each of them had lavish flower garlands (malas) around their necks. As they
walked away from the front of the church towards where we were seated, we
asked them if they had just married. They told us that that was the case. They
had been married in another church and wanted to pray in the cathedral. These
friendly people invited us to join them in the church’s sunlit entrance while
photographs were being taken of them, of us, and of us with them. They asked
us for our blessing.

Opposite the cathedral on a corner plot, we entered a large bookstore. Tables
covered the floor. They were laden with books, mostly new, but not arranged in
any obvious order. Along one side of this vast hall, there were ...“

END OF EXCERPT

Read my book, and enjoy discovering the wonders of India without leaving home!

A busy market in a street in west London

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CROWDS OF TOURISTS swarm to west London’s Portobello Road Market, especially on weekends. But how many of these visitors from all over the world know anything about the history of the place?

Here is an excerpt from my book “BEYOND MARYLEBONE AND MAYFAIR: EXPLORING WEST LONDON”. Beginning with Kensington and Paddington, it describes London from west of Park Lane and the Edgware Road to (and including) Heathrow Airport, and from Wembley south to Chelsea.

Here is an extract from the chapter dealing with Portobello Road:

“Before the mid-19thcentury Portobello Lane, as it was then called, was to quote the historians Florence Gladstone and Ashley Barker (writing in1924):“‘… one of the most rural and pleasant walks in the summer in the vicinity of London’, and within living memory it led ‘through fields to Kensal Green… cornfields and meadow land on each side… ‘”

Well, Portobello Road is no longer bucolic. It is lined with buildings along its length. Currently, it begins with a short section that leads off Pembridge Villas. It is here that you can stop for a drink at the Sun in Splendour pub, which was built in the early 1850s.Afterrunning a few yards westwards, Portobello Road heads off in a north-westerly direction, which it maintains with barely any deviation for the rest of its length. Number 22 was the first London home of the writer George Orwell. He lived there as a lodger in the winter of 1927. After crossing Chepstow Villas, the road slopes downwards and soon after this the market area commences. On most weekdays, much of the market is dedicated to daily needs, mostly food. On Fridays and Saturdays, the number of stalls and the variety of goods on offer increases dramatically. In normal times (i.e., when there is no pandemic),Portobello Road is choked with crowds of people from all over the world on Saturdays. In the 1860s, the Metropolitan Line (now the ‘Hammersmith and City Line,) was built. It crosses Portobello Road …”

To discover more about London, from west of Park Lane and the Edgware Road to Heathrow Airport, buy a copy of my book/kindle from Amazon website, e.g..:

As experiences of India gradually become memories

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THE BOEING JET began moving away from the oddly designed new terminal at Bangalore’s International Airport. I watched the landscape slipping past ever more quickly as we accelerated along the runway before eventually becoming detached from the soil of India. As the aeroplane rose higher and higher, random things flashed through my mind such as: eating laal maas on a rooftop in Jaisalmer; a Dutch cemetery on the coromandel Coast; hawkers wandering up and down a railway carriage in West Bengal; riding through Bangalore in a Jesus autorickshaw; being asked to bless strangers, a newly married couple, in a church in Pondicherry; tasting nolen gur in Murshidabad; attending an aarti on the Ganges; and much more. After flying over the west coast of India, all of these experiences and a whole host of others that we had enjoyed during our 88 day stay in India became, like the coastline we crossed, distant memories, which I hope will remaine etched permanently in my mind.