tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86122582012-02-16T09:18:51.460+03:00Travel essaysPiers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.comBlogger141100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-63027808787911465922009-10-02T21:05:00.230+03:002010-07-26T21:31:26.177+03:00

A hundred years in this life span on earthtalent and destiny are apt to feud.You must go through a play of ebb and flowand watch such things as make you sick at heart.Is it so strange that losses balance gains? Blue Heaven's wont to strike arose from spite." —The Tale of KieuI'd changed my ideas about the region after

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-60844408863439478362008-05-10T12:36:00.095+03:002008-06-04T08:21:08.006+03:00

—‘A vile and ridiculous meditation’ Sunday TimesTranslated from the English by Rrose MuttEsmerelda does not necessarily believe everything I say when I describe the cities I have visited on my expeditions, but she does continue listening to me with greater attention and curiosity than she shows anyone else I know of, and with rather less derision than I am used to. I have observed her presenting

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-3195941876697446312007-10-11T12:39:00.000+03:002007-10-11T16:34:48.874+03:00

The Kodari checkpoint was a rallying-point for grubby kids and money-changers. We descended into a thicket of reaching hands. We had to be quick when the driver handed our bags down. Behind us, the monsoon was heavier, darker. It seemed to be hastening towards us. Our Nepali guide introduced us to his brother who would take us across the bridge. The brother stepped forward, turning on a smile of

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-18188940129174933412007-05-04T12:03:00.001+03:002008-06-23T16:42:02.801+03:00

The road from Amman followed a dry winding valley down from frigid rain-swept heights, sweeping round the southern edges in a slow-mo ear-popping plunge. There were caves in the hillsides, picturesquely sited between fluffy mimosa trees and ledges of orange sandstone. As I fell, I imagined tasteful minimalist interiors, where elegantly robed anchorites brewed herbal teas for tourists. Just for a

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1162564593855571612006-11-03T17:28:00.001+03:002009-10-24T16:49:02.602+03:00

Burning tyres block the main roads. Marchers stream out of Jyatha Street. Police and soldiers with bamboo riot-sticks and automatic rifles jump on and off trucks along Durbar Marg. A cow with shit-bespattered haunches wanders through the stalled and chafing traffic. Just off Durbar Square, the Living Goddess looks out of her casement, blessing the watchers below with her cunning kohl-framed

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1159362511145701302006-09-27T15:58:00.000+03:002007-05-09T17:24:50.438+03:00

If it were not for the eye-hurting polar light Muscat could have been a spa for the anciently rich and well-bred. It seemed to be made up entirely of white villas, each street faced by chalky stucco, broken at intervals by chocolate piping, purple bougainvillea blossom and bottle green eucalyptus leaves. A few areas looked whacked, or over-strained, as if all that painstaking gentility was on the

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1140184813796765252006-02-17T16:33:00.000+03:002006-10-08T13:24:08.810+03:00

27th May, 1986. Strand hotel, Rangoon, Burma. Cadaverous receptionist in shabby black suit. Flinches when I ask for a room. Rickety lift with steel lattice door and clanking pulleys. Clammy room decorated with geckos. Creaking propeller fan. Sagging mosquito net, heat-yellowed scotch tape at the joins. Toilet bowl comes with blood-red stains and broken flush. The lining of the curtains hangs down

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1137223641358302442006-01-14T10:15:00.001+03:002009-10-23T20:15:39.259+03:00

Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin School (SOAS) was three or four mildew-streaked buildings overlooking a concourse teeming with leering girls in figure-hugging blue skirts and scowling boys in songkoks and blurry charcoal moustaches. We lined up in front, smacking imaginary swagger-sticks into our palms. The children fell into regimental rows. The Brunei Darussalam state anthem blared from the speakers.

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1097160125633915272005-10-05T20:59:00.000+03:002005-10-05T21:44:20.203+03:00

Forster visited India twice during British rule, once in 1912-13 and once in 1922, the second visit lasting for 9 months. On each occasion, he went to the Indian state of Dewas Senior, the second time as private secretary to the maharajah, Saptasamasra Senapati Pratinidhi Shri Tikuji Rao Powar Bapusamis—or Tikuji for short. I visited India once, in August, 2004, staying for seven days. My

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1121411543279618562005-07-15T09:50:00.000+03:002005-09-16T18:26:24.503+03:00

Harold Dickson was British Political Agent to Kuwait from 1929 to 1936. During that time, he and his wife Violet lived in what had once been a merchant’s house overlooking the Arabian Gulf and its glassy wastes. The history of what is known as the Dickson house, or ‘Bayt Dickson,’ is sketched out in a Kuwait National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters brochure. The original building was a

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1113029387028746822005-04-09T09:25:00.008+03:002010-03-22T08:27:04.385+03:00

I do not know if anyone will ever go to Cambridge in search of the imprints which the teat-cleats on my soccer-boots have left in the black mud before a gaping goal or follow the shadow of my cap across the quadrangle to my tutor’s stairs; but I know that I thought of Milton, and Marvell, and Marlowe, with more than a tourist’s thrill as I passed beside the reverend walls.— Vladimir Nabokov,

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1106405100064553542005-01-23T17:15:00.001+03:002009-10-23T21:52:29.493+03:00

In 1936, in a letter to Romain Rolland, Sigmund Freud remembers how, three decades earlier, he'd visited Athens for the first and only time. It had been a childhood dream of his to visit Athens and to stand on the Acropolis. And yet, once there, once on the Acropolis, instead of experiencing delight or admiration, as he'd imagined, he was stricken by doubt and a feeling of unreality.Freud has

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1101491528024229912005-01-23T12:43:00.001+03:002009-11-14T16:22:23.917+03:00

These Dyaks have a distinct notion of a future state, which is often mentioned in their conversation. There are different stages before reaching it—some agreeable, and others the contrary—and their final abode, or as it appears dissolution, is a state of dew. Charles Brooke, 1866On its way to Kudat, in

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8612258.post-1100243241174985082004-11-12T09:56:00.000+03:002004-11-14T09:11:54.133+03:00

Our train was nearly empty. So was the landscape. Stooks (frail elderly-looking Xs), one or two houses with tomato-strewn gardens, hillsides like arboretums run wild, a river proceeding in slow crashes through woods. At one point, the river flattened out and lost its banks, becoming a field of wet stones; this scene was overlooked by an abandoned fairy-tale cottage, onto which sunlight fell in

Piers Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14931251795670775804noreply@blogger.com0