In 1972/73 I went on my Big Trip, overland from Amsterdam/Holland to India and Nepal, in a Landrover. My travel companion was Saskia … we took about a year there and back.
In Europe we spent some time in Greece, then it was through Tukeye and Persia (that was just before the revolution, now it’s called Iran) and on to Afghanistan.
The pictures tell many stories … the gentleman admiring Saskia (picture 5) was the inn keeper. We stayed there for about two weeks; one evening he took me into a backroom with a big hubba-bubba water pipe. He invited me for a smoke and plied me with hashish and opium. I did keep my senses with me, though, realising there was an agenda. When he thought I was high enough he came to me with a proposition he thought I would not be able to resist: he wanted to buy Saskia. He offered US$2,000 in cash and any amount of hashish and/or opium I would want … delivered to Amsterdam. We left that very night, didn’t wait for breakfast.
In the picture below it (7) Saskia is sitting next to what we first thought was a hitch-hiker; he travelled with us – together with two soldiers – for a few days. He was there for our protection. A few days prior we had that incidence I describe below, under the picture with the boy and who I think is his grandfather.
Picture 8 shows a fire under the oil sump, to thaw the frozen oil. The engine wouldn’t start otherwise, what with the temperature some twenty degrees below zero at night. Truck drivers kept their diesel engine running, as they slept in the heated cab.
The soldiers came in handy too … at that stay in that guesthouse (pic 7) in Northern Afghanistan I needed to go to the toilet, which was an open area behind the building, where people would squat and do their business. The governor directed a soldier to come with me … I protested, I can go to the toilet all by myself, to no avail. I ordered the soldier to stay away, for some privacy.
Now, we had already been aware of dogs everywhere, of the wild kind … one could hardly tell if they were dogs or wolves. Well, as soon as I bared my bum one of those beasts came for it, teeth at the ready. The soldier was ready too and jumped into action: the dog copped a rifle butt in the snout. And I ordered the soldier to stand right next to me … I think I probably shat on his boot!
Afghanistan was a tricky place to travel through, for two reasons: it was winter and we travelled through the North, from Herat to Kabul via Mazari Sharif. In hindsight, a very dangerous – if not stupid – thing to have done … at one stage apparently we had entered Russia!
Our experiences in Afghanistan were amazing – remember also , this was years before the country decended into decades of war and before the Taliban.
This picture tells another story: it was this young man who told me what the four horsemen we had met during the day had been about: they had gone out to rob us. This was possible because our where-abouts and our movements were forwarded to each village by radio as we went on the road in the mornings. This was the reason why the governor accompanied us for a while.
Then through Pakistan to India, with all its amazing visuals, Below are pictures of ‘Saddhus’, holy men who have devoted their lives to being in the presence of their god … all along living on hand-outs.
Saskia enjoys the local wildlife … this is probably a good spot for me to mention a regrettable aspect of my “big trip”: I took remarkably few photos. I had a full contingent of Nikon equipment – lenses form 20mm to 1000mm (see the photo in Greece with Saskia looking through the 1000 mill, holding one eye closed, on the “family” page) – as well as 300 rolls of film, of which I used about thirty. The reason? I was young, 25/26 and totally overwhelmed by our trip … the experiences, the things we saw. Little time to take pictures.
Like for instance, Saskia and I once split up, she went South to Goa, I went North to Corbett National Park, where I experienced Elephants, Tigers etc in the wild … but I took no pictures at all!!!
At the top of this page, below that picture composite, is a German newspaper article about our trip, entitled “Mit them Landrover gelang Flucht vor wilden Elefanten” – with the Landrover he managed to escape from wild elephants. I drove in the park along a road when an elephant blocked my way. I stoppedd and waited for him to move on, which he did. When I came to the spot were he had been, I realised he had just walked into the woods and turned around. He was about four/five metres away from me, towering well above my car. I sped off as quick as I could … the elephant chasing me; after a while he gave up. I didn’t think much about it … when I got to the camp in the evening everybody sat around a fire and told stories about their day.
When I told my story the guides couldn’t believe what they heard … they knew the elephant well, he was an old bull, rather aggressive and wild. There was the story of a group on a large high-lookout for tigers, their Jeep parked below. Suddenly crashing sounds. That bull elephant trampled the Jeep to about a third of its size.
The Taj Mahal is made entirely from marble, all the intricate designs you see are inlays of precious stones. It took about 30 years to build, from 1628 to 1658 employing some 20,000 artisans. The artistry is amazing, beyond words.
Now-a-days – I hear – you can’t take your own photos inside the Taj Mahal anymore … they need to sell their brochures and postcards so as to raise money to be able to keep the place clean and tidy and regularly rejuvenated; a lot of work, I’m sure.
The large photo of the building with the lakes in front (also the interior photos) one probably would find rather hard to take these days … there are no people in the shots. Now …
Frankly – I need to use a cliché – one needs to see it to believe it.
From India we went North, to Nepal. The first lot of pictures are impressions in Kathmandu. Next eight pictures of a religious ceremony, held in the light of butter lamps in and around the many temples, like the Boudhanath Buddhist temple … to think that those magnificent temple buildings may have collapsed on to them in the 2015 earth quake.
From Kathmandu I drove west to Pokhara. The photos at the bottom are from a four week trek North into the mountains of the Annapurna range, which took me all the way to areas close to the Tibetan border.
