To India and Beyond....

[andy63]

Very enjoyable. Makes me want to head that way in mine...

Hmmm really..
I've been looking at the map and not sure what way I'd want to travel if my destination was India.. Or is it the hindu kush range.. Like all things maybe not as bad once you are actually there but I suspect Iran is out of the equation so it looks sort of iffy to me given the current climate

 

[mikeau]

To be given a wide berth I would say...

 

[andy63]

To be given a wide berth I would say...

iran??? definitely, but where does that leave you...a trip through Russia into countries I know nothing about and can't pronounce their names

 

[cappers]

I went overland to India in 1975, train through Europe to Istanbul then buses, coaches, trucks through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan to India.

I doubt whether Iran is an option currently (I think you need to be on an official tour group?) and Afghanistan is out unless you are very intrepid and like risks! If you do manage to go via Iran then you can drive SW down to Zahedan then to Quetta in Pakistan or north via the 'Stans. But I'm sure @Lancelot has this sussed!

Afghanistan (then) was one of my favourite places, wild, medieval and like stepping into a Conan comic! The people were friendly and we were offered mint tea and hashish wherever we went

Really enjoying your travelogue, brings back some memories

 

[Lancelot]

I went overland to India in 1975, train through Europe to Istanbul then buses, coaches, trucks through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan to India.

I doubt whether Iran is an option currently (I think you need to be on an official tour group?) and Afghanistan is out unless you are very intrepid and like risks! If you do manage to go via Iran then you can drive SW down to Zahedan then to Quetta in Pakistan or north via the 'Stans. But I'm sure @Lancelot has this sussed!

Afghanistan (then) was one of my favourite places, wild, medieval and like stepping into a Conan comic! The people were friendly and we were offered mint tea and hashish wherever we went

Really enjoying your travelogue, brings back some memories

Wow! I would love to have done that trip back then - family members did similar things, some never came back to reality!

I am lucky enough to have been to those crazy counties you mention although not as a single trip...Afghanistan has changed quite a bit since then (just think, the Russians followed you, then AQ, the Pakistani ISI, the Taliban, western forces and now the Taliban again!), although the route to Quetta is tried and tested, especially if you want to buy some "hardware". When I was last in Karachi it was referred to in our intelligence briefs as the "Taliban R&R Centre". How times have changed, quite dramatically and sadly, not for the better. Did you get to Bamiyan?

I will endeavour to keep the tales coming.

best wishes

T

 

[Lancelot]

Hmmm really..
I've been looking at the map and not sure what way I'd want to travel if my destination was India.. Or is it the hindu kush range.. Like all things maybe not as bad once you are actually there but I suspect Iran is out of the equation so it looks sort of iffy to me given the current climate

We have the maps out too...the Middle East flaring up like an attack of shingles (admittedly a very lethal attack) has put a large fly in our ointment. A ship may be involved to get us to Asia although we are definitely heading to Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan and then to a port (possibly coming backwards a little) to reach Asia.

 

[Lancelot]

Very enjoyable. Makes me want to head that way in mine...

Do it! I will send you a grid and we can RV on. dusty track somewhere in the Hindu Kush. It worked for Eric Newby!

 

[Lancelot]

Folks, thank you for the positive feed-back. You have had the historical bit about Ephesus, a little of the mechanical shenanigans, and received an insight into sharing your kitchen with a herd of cats (not all of them had worms ) next instalment will be from Ephesus with pictures!

Sleep tight.

Best

T

 

[cappers]

I am lucky enough to have been to those crazy counties you mention although not as a single trip...Afghanistan has changed quite a bit since then (just think, the Russians followed you, then AQ, the Pakistani ISI, the Taliban, western forces and now the Taliban again!),

It was quite a trip, sometimes scary, often mind boggling (good & bad!) but I was young and ready for anything! As you say it's much different now to 50 years ago which is a shame because there is so much history in Afghanistan (Greek, Buddhist, Persian, Mughal), the crossroad of empires, the old Khorasan of the Silk Road. And the Afghans were friendly and hospitable, they just don't like invaders and do like a fight

Did you get to Bamiyan?

Unfortunately not. At the time there was trouble in Mazar-i-Sharif en route to Bamiyan and we were advised not to go as we might be mistaken for Americans! Shame, I would have loved to have seen the Buddhas before the Talib blew them up. Classic examples of Greco-Buddhist art.

we are definitely heading to Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan

Had a short trip to Georgia...it was fantastic. Mountain scenery, great food and lovely wine, amazing place well worth exploring before it really does get discovered. The wine is very good too, did I mention that?!!

Keep up with the updates @Lancelot I'm enjoying every kilometre!

 

[Lancelot]

It was quite a trip, sometimes scary, often mind boggling (good & bad!) but I was young and ready for anything! As you say it's much different now to 50 years ago which is a shame because there is so much history in Afghanistan (Greek, Buddhist, Persian, Mughal), the crossroad of empires, the old Khorasan of the Silk Road. And the Afghans were friendly and hospitable, they just don't like invaders and do like a fight

Unfortunately not. At the time there was trouble in Mazar-i-Sharif en route to Bamiyan and we were advised not to go as we might be mistaken for Americans! Shame, I would have loved to have seen the Buddhas before the Talib blew them up. Classic examples of Greco-Buddhist art.

Had a short trip to Georgia...it was fantastic. Mountain scenery, great food and lovely wine, amazing place well worth exploring before it really does get discovered. The wine is very good too, did I mention that?!!

Keep up with the updates @Lancelot I'm enjoying every kilometre!

All of that history is quite incredible, usually unseen and often unnoticed. A twenty year old Marine on the receiving end of an RPG has an excuse to ignore the history at that moment, yet much of the history, some it recent, is what caused us to be there in the first place! I could forgive my troops in a firefight for ignoring Alexander the Great's progress through the land yet the behaviour of DFID under Claire Short's command was unforgivable on this front; watching bureaucrats and bright young things hoping to change the world by telling a mountain warlord (or one of his fighters) that his daughters had a right to attend university was painful. They certainly changed the world, but not in the way they expected.

I was fortunate to visit Bamiyan before the March 2001 destruction of the Buddhas on the orders of Mullah Omar for being "Tawhid" - superlatives would fail me in describing them, particularly when you are at an altitude of over 8,000 feet looking at a man-made object carved from stone that is over 120 feet high and at the time the largest image of Buddha in the world....and then a thousand years of staring out over the land we know today as Afghanistan ended in matter of days. The beautiful and intelligent half of the Lancelot World Tour Command Team has often mentioned on this trip how destructive Man is - my poor photographic representations barely show half of the "ground truth" that we have witnessed on the way - and I can only agree. That is part of the reason why this trip is so important, who knows what the future holds?

When I was in Kovalam, India in 1991 I knew that an international airport was being built at the former Cochin Royal Navy air-station (WW2 southern command and landing craft base - yes, Marines get everywhere, Per Mare Per Terram), what I did not realise or even think, as I sat next to a huge, snoring Californian pseudo-hippy, contemplating patrolling the streets of West Belfast over Christmas, was that the eight mile long beach I had run along only that week, was going to change quite so dramatically, but then how do you contemplate the effects on an Indian Ocean idyll of the construction of an airport which sees over ten million passengers a year through its gates? When eating up the miles in Lancelot I often refer to the line from the Eagles track The Last Resort "Call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye" particularly when we turn a mountain corner and see a concrete block house on an otherwise unspoilt cliff with rubbish cascading down a nearby ravine, old refrigerators at the bottom and mattresses mouldering. Man is destructive. Now to Ephesus!

 

[Lancelot]

Ephesus: Part One

Leaving Alp's mountain fastness we drove through manic streets of Selcuck and followed the serpentine road to the Ephesus visitor car park, passing through the Gendarme check point (Jandarma in Turkish) at the start of the fool-proof one way system...er... is that a bin lorry coming towards us? Directed to the minibus parking section (I could feel the insult smart with Lancelot, the steering stiffened a little and the engine coughed, only rallying as he remembered both maintaining standards and a sense of cheerfulness in the face of adversity), we were asked if we would like to take the nag and trap the two kilometres to the centre of the main site. Not only did the horse look like it needed a holiday but being fit and healthy we would not consider taking it anyway, forget the fact I am six foot five and built like a main battle tank...okay, in Jaipur once a cycle rickshaw driver did ask me to get out of his vehicle part way up a hill...

A UNESCO stamp is almost a death-knell and is seen by the Turks as a licence to print money at the turnstiles. We paid just shy of £100 for three humans and a distinctly eccentric Spanish Greyhound to enter for the day. Entry fees aside, the sun was shining and being out of season we had almost no others sharing the ancient roadways with us, in the morning at least; the first four hours were close to perfect.

When Alexander (need I include the cognomen Great?) defeated the Persian forces at the River Granicus in 334 BC, the Greek cities of Asia Minor were liberated. The pro-Persian tyrant Syrpax and his family were stoned to death, (they opposed the introduction of exorbitant entry fees), yet Alexander was greeted warmly when he entered Ephesus, in triumph. When Alexander saw that the temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders of the World), was not yet finished, he proposed to finance the construction, including the inscription of his name on the temple's front. The inhabitants of Ephesus demurred, claiming that it was not fitting for one god to build a temple to another, advice which is ignored in modern Turkey.

Once you leave behind the few shops, coin sellers and stray dogs on the carpark side of the gates, (oops, do not forget the tired horse) you are transported back thousands of years in only a few hundred steps. On your left hand side is an unprepossessing pile of columns and stones, marking the site of the Greek gymnasium, the mid-morning sun still shining on the athlete's warm-up area as it did over two thousand years ago.

 

[Lancelot]

The Gymnasium

The road to the port, now silted-up and land-locked.

A pile of rocks, catalogued but not moved in twenty years.

 

[Lancelot]

Turning the corner from the gymnasium is the Great Theatre...

The great theatre of Ephesus, built into Panayir Hill, opposite Harbour Street, is a surprisingly well preserved and impressive piece of Graeco-Roman building. Not having large elevations of stone it has remained largely intact, avoiding much of the damage caused by the earthquakes which have affected the rest of the city. Built of marble, the theatre has a width of 145 metres and its audience of 24,000 (yes, that is not a typing error) were able to look down upon the stage from 30 metres above it.
A picture, or two, paints a thousand words.

 

[Lancelot]

If the Great Theatre has not created sensory overload in the intrepid traveller then he or she must gird their loins for the Library of Celsus!

The building was commissioned in the year 110BC by Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, (try saying that after a few amphorae of wine), a Consul of the Roman Empire, as a funerary monument for his father Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaenaus, (also trips off the tongue easily) former Pro-Consul of Asia, but not completed until the reign of Emperor Hadrian after Aquila's death. Celsus, as he (perhaps not surprisingly) is known, was an ethnic Greek from Sardis, attaining the highest rank on the Cursus Honorum before retiring to Ephesus.

What a place to retire; even after the passage of two thousand years it is easy to appreciate what a wonderful place this must have been. The mountain backdrop, the perfect Roman layout town, surrounded by a bubble of peace and solitude solitude of the then, seaside town with its marble statues, places of learning and Agora that was the talk of Asia Minor would have satisfied any man who was able to take a well-earned breath after a life time of service to the Republic. A flat in Dawlish doesn't really compare does it?

Considered "an architectural marvel" (picture Brian Sewell presenting this on a BBC documentary, the only man who appeared at the Guard's Depot Caterham to report for his National Service with a violin in his essential hand baggage), and is one of the only remaining examples of the great libraries of the Ancient World, indeed it was the third-largest library in the Graeco-Roman world, after Alexandria and Pergamum (ibid), believed to have held around 12,000 scrolls. Celsus himself is buried in a crypt beneath the library in a decorated marble sarcophagus. The interior measured roughly 180 square metres (2,000 square feet).

The interior of the library and its contents were destroyed in a fire that resulted either from an earthquake or a Gothic invasion in 262 BC and the facade by an earthquake in the 10th or 11th century. It lay in ruins for centuries until the façade was reconstructed by Austrian archaeologists between 1970 and 1978.

 

[Lancelot]

Pictures painting words again..imagine Brian Sewell's voice-over for the full effect!

The work on these columns is staggering, thousands of them across the country and all perfectly carved to the same dimensions.

The Library itself looks like something from an Indiana Jones film doesn't it?

Even in its present state and with a few Japanese and Chinese tourists in their over-sized sunglasses, cotton flat caps and wind cheaters it is not difficult to imagine what an amazing building this must have been, the workmanship, visible in the construction from the brickwork to the stone-carving and even the guttering is quite exquisite.

 

[Lancelot]

Now that you have the image of Celsus slipping off his sandals, sipping a cup of his favourite Chianti, reading the latest Daily Telegraph scroll from Rome, (tales of Government gloom, high interest rates, drawings of the latest chariots by Carrozzeria Scaglietti and reports of test drives by Jeromius Clarksonius, an epidemic in the Black Sea settlements and asylum seekers and refugees from Persia flooding into the eastern edge of the Empire and undercutting the tradesmen with their lower costs...), we should look at his eponymous library in greater detail.

One of the guard dogs, somewhat tired after the night watch

The intricacy of the vaulting is incredible

This archway was restored with the help of a private donation

The view from the library towards the theatre, looking at the Agora

A statue of Artemis, hidden behind behind bars and tucked away in under a vaulted roof space...her breasts are considered offensive - er...probably!

Theatre masks

Also in the pokey dark space with Artemis this phenomenal bas-relief. Workmanship like this never ceases to amaze me; for all of man's destructive power some of us are really quite talented. I often think hmm...imagine if the chisel slipped on that last leg of the horse... A sculptor in England told me that those parts are where the artist begins.

The carvings of the archway, nothing is without the mark of craftsmen and the thoughts of the original designers, known only by the work they have left behind.

 

[Lancelot]

The columns on the lower level of the library frame four niches containing statues of female personifications of virtues: wisdom, knowledge, intelligence and excellence, not all of which were present in the designers of the Defender. The four statues we can see today are not originals, but were replaced with four random female statues!

These virtues allude to the dual purpose of the structure, built to function as a library and a mausoleum; their presence both implies that the man for whom it was built exemplified these four virtues, and that the visitor may cultivate these virtues in him or herself by taking advantage of the library's scrolls. Can you imagine "cultivating these virtues" being behind the thinking in the design of a modern library?

This type of façade with inset frames and niches for statues is similar to that of the skene found in Ancient Greek theatres and is thus characterised as "scenographic". The columns on the second level flank four podia paralleling the niches below, which originally will have held statues of Celsus and his son.

Look at that dome...no dodgy plasterwork there!

The view of the library ceiling, taken by lying down and looking straight up, not something one can do in the high season.

A couple of the "random" female statues, one of which is without its head.

 

[Redcoat]

Turning the corner from the gymnasium is the Great Theatre...

The great theatre of Ephesus, built into Panayir Hill, opposite Harbour Street, is a surprisingly well preserved and impressive piece of Graeco-Roman building. Not having large elevations of stone it has remained largely intact, avoiding much of the damage caused by the earthquakes which have affected the rest of the city. Built of marble, the theatre has a width of 145 metres and its audience of 24,000 (yes, that is not a typing error) were able to look down upon the stage from 30 metres above it.
A picture, or two, paints a thousand words.

Amazing ,make me wonder how they built such structures.

 

[Paul d]

Amazing ,make me wonder how they built such structures.

And still standing ,imagine them being built nowadays they would either fall down or be demolished to make way for new …

 

[Paul d]

The columns on the lower level of the library frame four niches containing statues of female personifications of virtues: wisdom, knowledge, intelligence and excellence, not all of which were present in the designers of the Defender. The four statues we can see today are not originals, but were replaced with four random female statues!

These virtues allude to the dual purpose of the structure, built to function as a library and a mausoleum; their presence both implies that the man for whom it was built exemplified these four virtues, and that the visitor may cultivate these virtues in him or herself by taking advantage of the library's scrolls. Can you imagine "cultivating these virtues" being behind the thinking in the design of a modern library?

This type of façade with inset frames and niches for statues is similar to that of the skene found in Ancient Greek theatres and is thus characterised as "scenographic". The columns on the second level flank four podia paralleling the niches below, which originally will have held statues of Celsus and his son.

Look at that dome...no dodgy plasterwork there!

The view of the library ceiling, taken by lying down and looking straight up, not something one can do in the high season.

A couple of the "random" female statues, one of which is without its head.

Some amazing pictures you have taken there .nice to log your travels like this .im a bit confused with some of the names and pronunciations but great information on these places ..