The Enchanting Valley

When you close your eyes, you can smell the crisp freshness in the air and when you open them, you can be a witness to how Mother Earth appears, when she changes in green, from top to toe. That is the vibe that the enchanting valley of the river Duoro, in Portugal, emanates in you.

The travel enthusiast decides where she wants to go and then, she makes it happen. Such is the case of my visit to the Duoro valley. I came across its natural beauty, while looking up the wine producing regions of the world, a few years back. Since then I have watched few traveler videos and had it on the top of my wish-list, of places to visit. Not wanting to visit big cities like Porto and Lisbon, I decided to combine Duoro valley, on the trip to Catalonia and Castille in Spain.

It was a long day, with an early morning train from Barcelona to Madrid and then a drive via Segovia in Spain (another place on my to-go list) to the valley. While driving onward from Segovia, the road is endlessly semi-arid, and in some stretches, almost desert-like.  As the Portugal border was approaching, the scenery got even worse, probably a product of wild fires. There wasn’t much distance left, for the destination. My mind was in trepidation, about where we would end up, all at my direction. 

First Glimpses of the Duoro Valley

However, no sooner was the Portuguese border crossed, the landscape suddenly changed. It was like entering Pennsylvania, from no matter which direction. The roads suddenly become winding and hilly and beautiful, like they know one has entered the state. It was the same experience. Many rios (rivers) started making their appearance and greenery kept wiping out the aridness, until the turn into to valley approached. It was then, that Mother Earth had changed, completely into green.

For miles on end, the Duoro Valley is covered in undulating hills, which in turn are covered by vineyards dotted with olive groves. It was interesting to see how the terraced cultivation is patterned with both horizontal and vertical lines, in order to prevent soil erosion. The olive trees too serve towards that end, other than adding to the delectable cuisine.

View from Quinta De La Rosa

Quinta De La Rosa, Pinhao - Portugal

Lamego from a hill top

View of Pinhao from Quinta De La Rosa

Through this rural landscape, graciously flows the beautiful Duoro river, sustaining all the greenery. The area is spotted by three small white-washed Portuguese towns, Regua, Lamego and Pinhao. The vineyards are owned by different wine estates called Quintas, which also offer accommodation to the tourists, who visit the region. Each has a board in the hills, marking its cultivation. Most of the tourists who visit, come from Porto, via river cruises. These are folks looking for respite from the conundrum of the cities, for a date with nature, for as long as their lives can afford.

We stayed at Quinta De La Rosa in Pinhao and visited the other town named Lamego. Here there is an old church named Santuario Nossa Senhora dos Remedios or Sanctuary of Our Lady of Remedies. Erected in 1705, the church has a climb of 686 steps through a hill, to get to the shrine. It is a local belief that the virgin Mary seated there, provides a cure for ailments and pilgrims make the climb to get her blessings. We climbed most of the stairs and so did the four-year old Mahika, without complaining and having fun. For two flights we did take the detour that was available only on them, with a walking path on the side. It was worth the climb to visit the shrine, which was having mass then and it sounded like the voice of Enigma. The views of the city of Lamego from the shrine, were formidable.

Shrine of Nossa Senhora Dos Remedios

View of Lamego from the shrine

Needless to say, the Duoro Valley, more than lived up to its expectations and I left with a profound experience and a complacent heart!

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La Boqueria

I have a Reader’s Digest coffee table book, featuring 100 most awe-inspiring places in the world, that I loosely browse through, every time the thought of travel comes to my mind. While some of the places are off limits, because of rigor or safety concerns, a lot of them are ones that I aspire to visit someday. In the past, the book has taken me to places like the fortressed town of San Gimignano in Tuscany, over spending more time in the famous but crowded Italian cities.

I had been planning a trip to Spain, one of the top-most visited countries of the world, for a while, but it was yet to happen. When I opened the two-paged contents of the book, to see what featured in it, as worth visiting in Spain, I was surprised. Towards the top, of the alphabetical contents, was the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in the Spanish region of Andalucia, in the south. As I went down the list, there was only one other place in Spain, that featured in the top hundred – Boqueria Market in Barcelona. I wondered why out of so many famous places in Spain, it was a market that featured in the list, other than the Alhambra.

After checking some routes and even making an initial booking, I decided to skip the Alhambra during this trip and waited to see what Boqueria Market had to offer.

Spice store inside La Boqueria

And Lo Behold!! Situated on the most famous road in  Barcelona, the Las Ramblas, I realized as soon as I stepped in La Boqueria,  the reason behind the featuring in the top 100 Best places to visit. The market is a visual paradise of gastronomic offerings of varied colors, textures, tastes and a lot more, in very aesthetically decorated storefronts. The welcoming facade, greets visitors with a rainbow spread of marzipan in delightful shapes, followed by candy, fruits, fruit juices, a variety of snacks, vegetables, fishes, meats – everything that one may want to eat and all standing such, as if only meant for decoration. I for sure enjoyed my fresh fruits and tomato-mozzarella-basil empanada. My daughter was thrilled by the chips made of rolling a potato in a skewer, with a special cutter, that cuts it in a continuous roll of chips, without slicing individual pieces apart. The visual feel of La Boqueria, is hard to do justice to in words, so I am sharing a few pictures to showcase some of the delightful shops.

 

 

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The Bend On The Road Home

My trip to Shillong, was happening after five years. I was finally going to breathe the fresh mountain air that had given me life and sustained my childhood again. I was also going to see some of my college friends, after a long time. However, the fact that excited me the most, is that, it would be my daughter’s maiden trip to that beautiful land.

The plan was to meet my friends in the picturesque higher altitudes of the hill town known as Upper Shillong, but I was going to try my best to squeeze in a few moments in downtown Shillong and make a round of Ward’s lake, although with the standstill traffic into Shillong, I had to abandon the latter.

We started in the morning, along the singular road from Guwahati to Shillong, crossing the familiar landmarks, some of which stood there forever and some that were newer, but had made their mark. We crossed the Sai Baba temple and the famous Ganesha temple in Jorabat.

With a prayer on my lips and coin in hand, I bowed as the driver reduced the speed, so I could fling it on the temple’s terrace. It had changed a bit since my childhood days with many extensions. I must have crossed it innumerable times, while traveling back and forth, but never had the fortune of stopping and praying inside. It is one of those simple things in life that never gets realized, just because we don’t do it, even if we can, even if we want to.  In the same manner this temple has always been a drive-through shrine for myself and many others. I distantly remember visiting it in dreams. 

In Cherrapunjee, with a local roadside vendor, 'Kong' selling fire roasted corn

Soon after the temple, comes a few deep bends in the road, winding through the edges of the mountains. It is at this point, that you really feel like you are going to Shillong. The air suddenly starts to feel crisper and fresher. When we were younger and lived there, these were the much-awaited turns, that brought respite from the Guwahati heat. They were what we waited for, to cross, to feel like ourselves again.

This time, as I crossed them, completely unexpectedly, my heart froze. I longed for my home. The home into which my parents always welcomed me back with a warm embrace, while  the Shillong floors felt cold under my feet. The home that had all the books in the world, in every direction you could look. The home that had the Kissan orange squash glass bottle, long stripped off its wrapper, filled with chilled soft Shillong water, that could be the most refreshing drink ever, in the kitchen.

It hadn’t hit me until then, that none of that existed in there anymore. I hadn’t realized how much I would miss them. Shillong and home were synonymous and now they were separated. My mom had moved out of the town, after my dad passed away in 2015 and with that the Shillong saga had ended. I wondered how she must have felt coming down the hills, the same slopes, after having spent her entire life there.

I had left Shillong when I was eighteen to pursue college education in Guwahati. But I had always felt a sense of belonging because my parents lived there and now I was stripped of that feeling. I was just a visitor. I was just visiting

When I was a little, we traveled back and forth from Shillong in government transportation run buses. Few years later, fancier private buses, with a higher fare, had started plying. The latter had more comfortable seats and played '90s Bollywood music for much of the trip. Even amidst the noise, those were some of my moments of silence and reflection as an adolescent. At that age, I was somehow deeply convinced, that I would live in those hills and valleys, we crossed along the way, when I grew up. I couldn’t think of it being any other way. I wanted to be of and in Nature. It was only more fired up by movies (and songs that played in the background) which showed the protagonists, the lovers,  running away from their families and living in the woods.

Why were we all in such a rush to leave a land we so loved? I haven’t met people from any other place who reminisce their hometown as much as Shillong’ites do. There is something about it that is blissfully nostalgic, despite the disturbed situation back then.

Even now and with great frequency, I have certain places in Shillong emerge in my memory, out of nowhere at the most unthinkable times of the day. At such times, I am living and breathing in it for that moment.

Why do we get separated from what we love and then long for them for the rest of our lives? Maybe, it's all an illusion, after all!

Bakwaas (Utter Nonsense)

A bee sat on my chest

Bee as no one could be

Charting in a row

Darting like an arrow from Cupid’s bow 

Emerging like a rainbow

Fun in full flight

Godly was its sight

Heavens seemed to be calling 

Iridescent was its twinkling 

Jealousy was its plight

Kissing every vacuum 

Loving every wound

Meditating on its target 

Never turning around 

Opened up the souls gate

Pain was sometimes mighty

Queerness in sobriety 

Rage raveling in the almighty 

Such was its beauty 

Time was bound by sobriety 

Under the spell of the tide

Vanity brushed aside

Wandering in the night 

X-mas lights in sight

Yours truly bee was to keep 

Zindagi slept complete 

Bakwaas written on a sleeplesly sleepy morning before going back to bed using a Writers’ Digest prompt to write a poem of 26 lines with each line starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet 

The Young Man And The Mama Crab !!

Mahika and I were spending our last evening in Montego Bay on the pier, taking in the breeze, singing together and watching a little baby crab, sitting on a tiny water puddle, on the rock below. As we looked at it, it kept batting its eyelids open and shut. “What a cute existence”, I thought.

The two other people on the pier had left and we sang to ourselves in joyful abandon,our voices cresting and falling through the roar of the tidal waves. In that environment, I was semiconscious of  a young man who had stepped on the pier and was prostrated, trying to catch something from the waters below. 

At one point Mahika asked, first to me and then to the man himself, about what he was doing. To which he replied that, he was trying to catch some crabs.He had a short length of line with some bait at the end and a small plastic bucket with a lid, to store the crabs in.

He said that they kept taking his bait, but fell back into the waters, as he tried to get them on the pier. Mahika in her innocence, was prompt to tell him that, there was a crab sitting on the rock. The one that we were watching, a little while ago and he rushed to the spot and exclaimed “Oh, that’s a baby” .

However, by then a bigger crab had also climbed on the rock and he said “ Let me get the Mama” . I was mortified that we would be the cause of its death , yet I couldn’t interfere with the young man’s business. The man was successful in getting the crab on to the pier and was trying to get him closer to his bucket.

My insides were thumping, both with a prayer for and a plea to the crab to run for its life, to not get trapped, not then, to not die. It was only a matter of seconds, but felt much longer. The crab went down the side of the pier and the man held his bucket underneath and my heart sank.

When he raised the bucket, he sighed, “It escaped! I had got it up here on the pier you know” . I said “Yeah, I saw” like I was sorry for his miss while my insides were rejoicing. 

As Mahika and I walked back from the pier soon after, I told her how glad I was that the crab escaped followed by answering several of her “Why’s “ while she tried to understand the ways of the world and life and death. 

The next morning before leaving for the airport, I visited the pier again and saw the crabs darting on the rocks, looking for food and eating what was probably tiny fragments of sea weeds. So I picked a generous helping from the beach where they were plenty and strew them across the rocks. Soon enough a couple of them made way to the weeds and tore them with their claws and ate them. What a bright and sunny day it was!!

The Old Man (Autumn) & The Sea!!

On the beaches of Montego Bay in Jamaica, I have forgotten that it’s December. While I read Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, which is about his early days in Paris, following World War I, the balmy tropical weather, the pitter patter of the waves and the aqua sea, take the mind to a sleepy lull, where nothing else exists,but calmness.

The autumn that I so loved, just a few days back, exists only in traces, in the pumpkin flavored delicacies, that my Caribbean hosts are trying to infuse into their spread, to entertain their American guests. In sharp contrast to their endeavors, I believe nobody visiting from that part, wants to be reminded, that they have to return to winter and harsh weather. Everything else is tropical, from mangoes to star fruit to custard apples to jerk everything.

Why does my heart, that beats with every leaf of autumn, coloring up with them,swirling through the winds with them, not miss it? I wonder?

To people who know me professionally, I am a numbers and percentages, facts and figures kind of girl. But lo behold, my home is filled with books,  that are filled with dry leaves, from every autumn, since I stepped into the beautiful continent. Pull one out and you will have an entire fall of your own. Spring and Summer are great, but it is Autumn that steals your heart. Everyone’s heart, unless one is heartless, I guess. Every fall, as the many colors throb through the veins of the leaves, my heart throbs into variegated colors with them. And it breaks with them, every time each one severes itself from its source of sustenance, the tree. How did the creator make something so beautiful?How could he break it? But only to revive again? I wonder! After all,I guess I miss them!!

Moments

Lamhe nikalte nahin, 

Sadiyaan beet jaati hai,

Aakhen tak ti rehti hai,

Nazaare badal jaate hai.

Moments stand still,

The years fly,

The eyes keep staring,

While the landscape bids goodbye.

#WordsUnwritten