India

It has been a hectic year, 2008, with some 5 months abroad out of 12 and an impressive list of countries visited this year: Australia, New Zealand, Dubai, France, UK, Greece (i don't count the Netherlands and Luxembourg).
And to top it all of, there was a bit of a last minute request to go to India, New Delhi to be exact. I have never been to India and it is considered as one of the more special countries in the world.
So i was fairly exicted to go there, even though the timing wasn't really ideal (too close to xmas holidays for comfort, bit of a mellow mood, ...). My enthousiasm was tempered a bit by the problems i had with my flight: instead of a direct flight from Brussels to Delhi (which was cancelled due to techical problems), i flew to Chennay (with some delay), waited there 5 hours and then flew to Delhi. So i arrived almost 12 hours later and instead of walking in the city on sunday, i recuperated in my bed instead.
Now all things have a positive side: i did get the opportunity to watch plenty of movies:
Wall-E (finally saw it)
The Dark Knight (not bad, if you like to genre of course, and pretty grim movie)
Mummy 3 (wanted some no brain entertainment and that is what i got)
Hellboy II (also no brain, but the costumes and effects are very nicely done)
even the beginning of Wanted (not a specifically great movie so far, but hell, it features Angelina Jolie :-) )
These days it's the only way i get to see some movies.
And i met a few nice people along the way who were in the same predicament as i was.

I did walk around a bit in the neighbourhood of the hotel and just like the people from the hotel told me, it is very safe. The only thing people warned me about is the fact that you can get approached a lot by beggars (a colleague told me that she only left her hotel one time and made it to the middle of the road, where she was so sick of all the beggars and people trying to sell her useless stuff that she turned around and went back in). I walked around for i guess a bit more than half an hour (towards the Lotus temple to be exact, but couldn't get really to it since it was closed already, but at least saw it from afar, very beautifull building, the shape of a closed lotus flower), without a soul asking me anything. I felt right at home, aparently i must look like someone that hasn't got a lot of money either ;-)


The first thing, apart from the omnipresent dust, that got to me was how visible the poverty is. I have been around, saw quite a few third world countries, and still it seems a lot more in the face than other places. On the side of the road, you will find dwellings, made out of a few bricks, branches and some stuff they have found, where whole families (including some adorable children, always hard to see them in such deploring situation) run around in the dust, burning wood or whatever they could get their hands on (i was praying they knew not to burn anything made out of plastic since the fumes would be very bad for their health) to keep warm (it's winter here, even though the temperatures are nice for people from western euorpe, were there are freezing temperatures at the moment), wearing lumps for clothes, although sometimes i am suprised to discover lovely colours that are used, but difficult to see now, with the layers of filth that are clinging to it.

The next thing i would discover the next day on my way to work. I had underestimated the distances and had taken a room in a hotel in Delhi proper, instead of the satelite-city of Gurgaon where the site of Alcatel-Lucent is. So i spend one and a half hour in the taxi just to get there. Traffic is something to behold in India. The chaos is unbelievable. There are people everywhere! Okay that shouldn't surprise me since there are 1 billion people in India! Even though the amount of cars is not so spectecular, the traffic is a complete disaster. Mostly for two reasons: nobody seems to be obeying the rules (my taxi driver assured me there are plenty of traffic rules defined by law, but nobody seems to be following them and in the end nobody cares to ). Second, the roads are filled with: anything. There are of course cars, trucks and busses. But also motorised riksjas, three wheelers that are carrying anything from people (loads of them sometimes, so it seems a miracle that the small wheels do not collapse) to lumps, to pottery. In between you have bicycles that try to get through the traffic in one piece and a tremendous amount of motorbikes.


The food is definetly divers and nice. And what i personally like a lot is that vegetarian is really normal here. During the lunch break we go eating at the canteen, and there is simple no meat there. This is also not really a surprise, since the strict hindu believe normally prohibits the eating of meat. A lot of hindus are apparently strict vegetarians, some even veganists. In my class there were, apart from the customers, also two people from Alcatel-Lucent. Had good conversations with them and on friday evening we went walking around in Delhi city. One of them apparently belongs to the Brahman caste (as you know, India still has a very strict hiearachy of castes, of social layers, even though official the caste-system has be abolished several years ago). By the way, i heard that the familyname is an indication to which of the castes you belong, in other words, you are born into them. The Brahman caste is as far as i know the highest of all castes and sometimes called the 'priest-caste' so i had this mental image of all people belonging to it to priests. But religion is very important for that guy, even though he apparently had some doubts on the strict rules of the religion he was brought up into. And we had a very interesting conversation on religion and spirituality which inspired us both.

On saturday i went to Agra. The city best know for the world famous Taj Mahal (see picture at beginning). I visited three sites in total:
First of all the ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri, built by the Mugal Emperor Akbar, that combines both Hindu and Islam influences. The Mugal emperor himself also combined cultures, since he had 3 wives: one moslim, one hindu and one christian :-) The complex is completely built out of sand stone.
In the picture below you see a platform on a pond, where musicians came to play to entertain the wives of the emperor.

The detailed carvings that adorn the complex are beautiful.


Don't be alarmed by these carvings by the way, the swastika, is an ancient hindu symbol. It appears in to forms: counter-clockwise, which is the symbol of life and happiness and clockwise (just like the symbol adapted by the nazi's, although they rotated it over 45 degrees), which is the symbol of death and destruction (a fitting symbol for the nazi reich if you ask me).


After using it for a few years, they noted that their was not a steady watersupply so the whole site was abandoned. But still very impressive. Next to it a enormous mosque was built, which is still in use today. It had two gates, one for the emperor and one for the people. Remarkably the gate for the common poeple is huge (see picture below), the one for the emperor a lot more modest.
The mosque also houses the tomb of the great sufi saint Sheik Salim Chisti (see picutre below), who apparently made it possible for the mugal emporer to have an heir.


Inside the tomb, people still come to the sufi saint to pray and ask for blessings. One a request has been given (usually some money is involved), they place a little cotton thread inside the tomb. When they have received their blessing, they come back to remove their thread.


Second i went to the Taj Mahal. I suppose everyone knows the story, of how another Mugal emperor, was so grieve strucken by the death of his favorite wife, that he built an enormous tomb for her to show the world his love to her. The whole building is made out of white marble, set on a red sandstone platform. It stands next to the river and apparently on the other side, the emperor was to built his own tomb, out of black stone. But before the Taj Mahal was finished his own son overthrew him and emprisoned him. But he did allow the monument to be finished. But not the one for the emporer himself. They put an extra coffin in the Taj Mahal for him, which is the only non-symmetrical part of the whole complex.


In the white marble they created beautifull carvings, but by laying in other stone, with different colours in the marble. A very precise work that is still used today.


In the picture below you see both the carvings on the monument, but also pay attention to the top of the central dome. There you see a nice example of the mix of hindu and muslim symbols: the top of the dome is a reversed lotus flower (hindu symbol) and on top of that you see the crescent moon (muslim symbol).


The whole complex is very nicely made, with gardens around the Taj Mahal.The last place i visited that day was Agra Fort. A enormous fortress that is still used by the military today, so only a part could be visited.


It's also here that the emperor who built the Taj Mahal was imprisoned by his son and the fort was used by emperors (and the english occupiers later) as palace.
The first picture below is where the emperor addresses the people.


If you zoom in a bot just above the inner gate you see 2 stars of david, the jewish symbol. Symbols of all religions are seen throughout India and it proves that they are by default extremely tollerant to all religions.

Back towards Wales...

Only two weeks after Newport is was heading there again. I had spent one night in Luxemburg (the country, not the province of Belgium), but for the rest i was actually home for a while. Most important thing to do around that period was a lot of administration since i had just bought a house in Ghent.

Before i actually arrived in Newport, i planned to follow a 3-day course on Underwater Archeology, at Stoney Cove, Leicestershire, England. It is a quarry, rather a big one, maximum depth only 36 meters, but with great facilities. In 2000 a new diveshop annex classroom and swimming pool facility was built and it is magnificent! In the picture below, you can see the big building in the background where classrooms, swimming pool and shop were located. The picture was taken from the pub/restaurant Nemo's at the far end of the quarry, so it gives an idea of the size of the quarry (as compared to the ones in Belgium).


I went there together with Jan Bruggeman.
The course was organised by NAS : Nautical Archeological Society.

The main focus of the course was on 2D and 3D survey techniques. That included 3 dives in the quarry to actually do measurments and survey a archeological site. The site was of course put there by the people of NAS. The conditions in the quarry were good: 17 degrees water temperature and some 6 to 7 meters visibility. We didn't go deeper than 6 meters, which gave us excellent conditions for doing the survey. In the picture below you see me busy writing down measurements.


It was all in all an international group, with two guys from Spain present, one girl from Hawaii and the two belgian guys of course, believe me they will remember us, i think we made most of the suggestions, interruptions and posed most of the questions :-) Sue who co-presented the course with Ian made a remark when i said goodbye that i "really enlivened the course a lot" (i took it as a compliment :-) ).
Most of the people had a diving background, although there were some who approached it more from a pure archeological approach.
I hope to keep some contact with some of the people since they also possess a great knowledge and experience of diving in the UK.

I drove towards Newport a bit more coming form the North and went through an area that had suffered from the flooding that was going on during my stay in Stoney Cove (so that was were all that rain was going to!).

The week in Newport was quiet. But one special occasion should be added here. While sitting in an Italian restaurant in Cardiff, i decided to become a vegetarian. Not a full blown one from the beginning, but a pesco-vegetarian as they call it (still eating fish). Hope to first settle on a diet including fish, later i can still think about removing that from my diet as well, we'll see.

On the journey back, i didn't stop at any special places, since i was rather keen on seeing whether i would be going home on saturday. During my stay in Newport, there was a fire in the Chunnel, so there nobody getting through at that time. Luckely, everyone who had already booked with the Eurotunnel, got a ticket on the ferry. In the end, it was a nice experience. All and all it doesn't take that long from Dover to Calais. And seeing the white cliffs again was nice. And i was early on the main deck, rushed towards to bar at the front and took up seat with a nice view, enjoying the trip. In the tunnel, you don't exactly see a lot :-)

Newport here we come...

The first in a series of trips to Newport, in Wales, UK. Mostly internal people from Alcatel-Lucent UK that have to get an full ISAM operator course.
Even though i arrived on saturday 16th of August from my trip to Marseille, i had to leave the next day towards Great Britain. I had decided to go by means of my own car. I was curious to see the environment of southern England, that i had to pass through. And i wasn't dissapointed.

Started of early on sunday, driving from my hometown of Ghent towards Calais, where i took the Eurotunnel towards Folkstone. First time on the Chunnel, and i was amazed at how fast it went. I think you are only underground for 25 minutes, which means they must be going at an incredible speed.

The moment is started driving away from the eurotunnel terminal the beautiful, green and hilly landscape appeared. I was lucky, it was a sunny day.
From Folkstone i followed the coastline. I stopped to have a look at the
Sea Wall, built to protect against attacks from the mainland.
I stopped to have a look:And continued up to Hastings, where i found my way to the little villag called Battle (see picture below).

There, on the exact spot where king Harold died during the famous Battle of Hastings, in 1066, William The Conqueror built the Battle Abbey, which was to become one of the richest abbeys in the British Isles. The first picture shows the impressive gatehouse of the abbey. The whole abbey was protected by a stone wall, most of it has now dissapeared.


Most of the church has fallen into ruines because of bad management over the centuries (especially with the dissolution, when King Henry VIII gave large clerical properties to friends, among others Battle Abbey, who didn't always treat them with a lot of respect)

The Abbey still overlooks the battlefield where the Battle of Hastings was fought. In the first picture you see on the left side the main building, which was used as a private house after the dissolution, and was hence preserved and on the right side you see the ruines of the main church.

The second picture shows more how these two buildings overlook a big piece of land, where the actual battle was fought and which the abbey later used to grow crops, hold pigs and fish in the nearby lake. It is a great walk by the way (see also the picture at the beginning of this post).


From Battle i went up north, just until Sevenoaks, but instead of jumping on the M25 i followed it for a while via a little parallel road. Driving through the small towns I noticed that all have one or more Inns along the main road. And most of them have one of the following words in their name: King, Horse, Crown or Rose. These words appear in easily 75% of all the "Free Houses".
Then i did take the M25, to exit from it again onto the M3, which took me, using the A303 towards Stonehenge.
All in all Stonehenge was a bit of a dissapointment. Don't get me wrong, i am very happy to have seen it, since it was something that i was curious about for a long long time. But the fact that the monument is sandwiched between two roads and the fact it is visited en masse by busloads of tourists, does remove most of the mystical idea that surrounded it in my mind. So don't be mislead by the pictures above, it is hard to get a view of the monument without people or cars on it.

From there i passed through Bath. It's on the world heritage list, and you can see why when you pass through it, its houses in stone are absolutly beautifull and the hilly surroundings while you are driving stunning.
I joined the M4 to go the south Wales and passed the southern of the two impressive bridges over the Severn: toll needs to be payed, but only when you drive towards Wales, asking the group in my class why that was so, an English guy replied that most people are racing so fast to get out of Wales that you can't expect them to actually slow down and stop to pay the toll, which prompted one of the Welsh guys in the class to no longer wanting to talk to him, luckely all in good humour :-)

I spend the week in Newport at the Alcatel-Lucent University site. It is cosy there, enjoyable to be there.
Since i wasn't feeling very well (bit of stomach ache), i didn't really visit anything during the week.
On saturday morning is left again, back to Belgium.

I passed by the nearby Chepstow quarry, where a lot of (technical) diving is going on. The facilities look very nice. Price is a bit steeper than in the quarries of Belgium (15 pounds for the day), but it is hard to compare the two. For one thing the quarry in Chepstow is huge and very deep, up to 84m, and it is actually allowed to go that deep (provided you have to correct certificate, since you need to use trimix gas mixture for this kind of depth).


I then followed the banks of the Severn, instead of crossing it toward Celthenham and onwards via a lovely road towards Oxford.
Oxford itself is magnificient! Always wanted to go there, and was glad to spend 2 hours walking around (couldn't afford more, since i had to get home the same day). The buildings in the city centre are so beautiful.

The picuter below is outside Christ Church (no not the one in New Zealand, the original one :-), where among others theology is given)
After Oxford, i took the shortest route towards the M25 and went straight for Folkstone, where i was able to took a earlier train towards Calais. After an hour i was in Loppem where is stayed the night at my parents place.

Marseille

Back from Greece, the taxi didn't bring me back to my appartment in Ghent, but to Bruno's place in Schaarbeek (Brussels). I stayed there, since we had to take the train (high speed train called Thalys) to the south of France the next morning (9th of August). I arrived at his place around half past midnight and the train departed around 8 o'clock the next morning. The coffee saved my life i can tell you!

Small remark about the flight back from Athens: there were a lot of tourist on the plane coming back from Greece, and what always strikes me is that these people always applaud when the plane had landed. Don't get it, because is't it suppose to go that way: the plane lands, in one piece and you get to spend another they in your life? My personal theory is that most of these people basically are afraid of flying and when the plane has touched the ground there is an outburst of tightly held anxiety, a kind of jubelation that they are still breathing and not fleeing from the flames. Although, they should wait basically up untill the plane is actually come to a standstill, because they applaud the moment all the tires are on the ground. The plane is then trying to reduce from an incredible speed of several hunderds of kilometers an hour to standstill, before it runs out of airstrip. You can still very well come to some gruesome end. Oh well, maybe i spend to much time analyzing other people ;-)

Travelling to the south of France in a train is great! No hastle, once on board, you have no more worries, except creating some room for your breakfast (we were watching movies on Bruno's laptop). We had 1st class tickets, which we got for only 150 euro (go and return) because of some special offer (thank you Eva for spotting that, and booking the tickets by the way).
Main objective of the trip: diving (duh!)

My first time diving in the Mediteranean Sea. We had booked our accomodation and the dives with Atoll dive center in Marseille, Pointe Rouge to be exact (bit more to the east of Marseille).
Accomodation was basic (and the price of 33 euro a night a bit steep, considering we shared the room with 5 people) and included a breakfast. But the dives where great. Each trip, we were brought to the marina, closeby and went on a RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) to our dive spot. Most of the times there was a bit of a chop, which made the trip towards the dive spot in itself a great experience (reminded me of the NorthSea), although not everyone could appreciate that. The visibility was good, minimum of 10 meters, usually more. A lot of underwater life: see next pictures for my favorites, nudibranches!


But what was also very impressive were the underwater structures. We saw several arches, canyon, and even a tunnel. You can easily call the structures dramatic.


The temperature was a bit colder than i expected. First dives the water was (starting at 10m) some 16 degrees! And i had the great idea to actually dive in my wet suite for a change!

We did all our dives on Nitrox and the dive centre is also equiped for trimix dives and rebreathers! I took special note of that last feature of course, since i am expecting my little rebreather (Sentinel for those who care) in December :-)
The organisation was sometimes a bit chaotic, but in all we always got in the water and at the right spot. And the people were very nice.

We didn't dive all the time and also took some time exploring the surroundings. I had never been to the south of France, so was glad to be able to make a few nice walks in the beautiful Calanques, a series of fjord like structures, semi-mountaineous, which makes for great walks. It's these structures basically that are continued under water, which make for the splendid shapes. By the way, i think that you will see that the picture below does have some resemblance with the picture you will see if you follow the hyperlink hidden under the word 'Calanques' to Wikipedia.
At one spot we rested and enjoyed the beautfill surroundings. Only one of us was brave enough to jump into the cold waters: Eva. Respect!!
This is where we were resting:

And this is Eva in those waters:
The picture at the beginning of this post is taken during an afternoon hike in the nearby Calanque, where we had a magnificient view of Pointe Rouge and the sea beyond.

Also went for diner in the city centre, the old port neighbourhood. The entrance to the old port from the see was garded by two ancient fortresses.
The picture below really shows the kind of picture i always had in mind when i was reading 'The Count of Monte Christo' a typical adventure book for boys, that i simply adored was i was a child. It especially brings back to mind the scene where the old ship where Edmond worked on sails back into port after it was assumed lost.

From where we had diner we had a good view on the main cathedral of the city: "The Notre Dame de la Garde" , you have to admit, there are worst sights to have while you are having diner (below a detail of the Notre Dame):
And we found a very nice restaurant, not far from one were we stayed (only a ten minute walk, but that is an insider ;-) ), which was called "Au bord de l'eau" and looked over a small little harbour protected by a big stone wall from the sea beyond. It might be a good idea to book ahead, just ask at the Atoll Dive Center to call them, they know them very well.

To finish of some pictures of the diving centre and the conclusion that it was a great holiday:

Greece again

On sunday the 3rd of August 2008 i flew back to Athens.
Booked into the Crown Plaza, which turned out to be rather new again. So again not to many people. But the worst was the interior. Now i am not spectaculary picky on that, but damn, who was their interior decorator? I swear, when i came on my floor, with the dark red and black colours splashed around and the neon accents, i thought i was in some kind of brothel instead of a hotel. Unfortunatly i was dissapointed to see that my room was empty :-)

August in Athens, it is warm, no it's hot, dry and dusty. But ... there are fewer cars, a lot more quiet that last time, since almost everyone is on holiday.
All expect the poor souls who where attending my class :-) Most of them left the last day with a ferry or airplane to one of the many islands, also for the Greek a much appreciated holiday destination.

The class was okay, a nice group, people generally where very interested. Would have love to give them the Part 2 as well, but i am occupied during that week already.

During the week i didn't venture out too much, but i did have a lovely evening in a area i hadn't visited yet (just east of the Plaka). After a walk uphill through the neighbourhoud, i found a nice looking terras where i had a beer (think it was called 'Daily' or something). Okay, i had two, but what do you want: it looked peacefull, the weather was fine (warm but i was in the shade), people seemed generally content, the waitress was a cute girl that smiled at me each time she passed by, i was reading a nice book ('Notes from a Small Island' by Bill Bryson): what more does one need?
The diner in a nearby restaurant was less memorable, not bad, but simply nothing special for the price you paid.

The last day, just before i took the bus to the airport, one of the participants, Stelios, took me for a special tour through the Plaka, we stopped at a few historical place that i hadn't visited before. See pictures below. The first is the entrance to the Roman Agora.

the second one is from the old Athens agora, yes i know it doesn't look as impressive, but it is a lot older you know, and the area is huge!Anther thing that is so typical Greek: the churches. Greece is a very religious country. They are mostly orthodox christians and you will find loads of churches in Athens and i must admit some of them are really magnificent. I only include one picture here:
And this picture was a typical southern scene: these guys are loading an incredible amount of stuff in their van (they had a complete studio in there), blocking the road completely for like forever. After a while a guy on a motorbike, who couldn't pass either, stopped and started yelling. A typical mediteranean schouting contest issued, so instead of continuing loading up their stuff and getting out of there as soon as possible, they where just letting off steam. :-) Anyway, all in all we only waited there some 20 minutes :-)