Author: Stanfords

There are a lot of amazing festivals out there: Steve Davey should know, he has just finished a book detailing 500 of the best cultural celebrations around the world. 

You don’t have to head to the far flung and dusty regions of the world to find vibrant festivals and see the faithful displaying tremendous religious fervour. In the days leading up to the 24^th and 25th May the tiny seaside village of Saintes Maries de la Mer in the Camargue region fills up with caravans as Roma Gypsies gather for one of the most atmospheric festivals in Europe.

The Pélerinage des Gitans is a pilgrimage to honour the two Saint Maries who gave the village its name. Saint Marie-Jacobé and Saint Marie-Salomé were believed to have fled across the Mediterranean from the Holy Land following the crucifixion, bringing with them their maid Sara, who later became the patron saint of the Gypsies.

On the first day of the festival, great crowds flock to the massive stone fortified church for a mass. Statues of the two Saint Maries are lowered from the loft high in the roof of the church, and then processed around the town by hundreds of gypsies with an escort of the gardians: the cowboys of the Camargue who ride the famous white horses.

The lively procession is accompanied by musicians and eventually sweeps down the beach and into the sea, much to the surprise of the holidaymakers. The gardians follow them into the sea, their horses leaping around as the waves wash into their nether regions. Blessings are made before the dripping wet pilgrims carry the statues back to the church. Continue reading With Cowboys, Bulls and Gypsies

Jess Williams continues her blog series on India, travelling from Bodhgaya to the temples of Khajuraho, and on to Shimla, the old summer capital of the British Empire in India.

The next stop on our Great Indian Voyage was to Bohdgaya for all of a day. It’s not a big town but full of tourists and touts. However, there is a certain calm amidst it all. I guess that comes with Buddism, the serene stone face of the giant statue of Buddha (where we met a Burmese priest who was very excited to have his photo taken with us), and the sound of prayer wheels at the temple. This temple is the place where Buddha achieved enlightenment- I spent my time watching the fish. We’re on a similar level I think.

We were lucky enough to meet a young Nepali man who was visiting an orphanage he had helped set up. Mikku took us to meet the children of Elizabeth Children’s Home that evening. We were greeted by handshakes and a song. These kids have been taken in from the street and given an education and I felt very lucky to meet them. Mikku and his colleagues do such great work. To put it in the most clichéd way possible, I was humbled. Continue reading India: From Bohdgaya to Shimla

Author Charles Davis on the charms of walking in the mountains of Costa Blanca.

Read any good-life, back-to-basics, season-in-the-sun farm yarn about expats moving to Spain, and you can be fairly sure there will come a moment when the narrator takes to the mountains for a walk that proves to be a state-of-the-heart experience in which engagement with the landscape aspires to a quasi-spiritual empathy.

It’s a rite of passage, as vital to the format as encountering the crafty peasant with a heart of gold, losing your rag with the local building fraternity, having an amusing mishap with the domestic livestock, being duffed up by the elements, and displaying a comic ineptitude when confronted with the sort of quotidian challenges that generations of illiterate country dwellers have prevailed over with apparent insouciance.

Such clichés exist for a reason and it’s not simply because they happen to sell books. Like all clichés, they come of observable truths. Settle in Spain and you probably will bump into the wily old boy with a winning glint in his eye, be confronted by a belligerent chicken, and be battered about a bit by the big weather. For the most part, these experiences are the preserve of those who uproot themselves, but the mountains are something else. Continue reading Climbing into a cliché- a better Costa Blanca

Annabel Barber visits the beautiful area around Lake Garda, ‘the land where the lemon trees bloom’.

“Kennst du das Land, wo di Zitronen blüh’n?” asked Goethe breathlessly, in one of his most famous lyrics. “Do you know the land where the lemon trees bloom?” He was desperate to share his secret of where earthly bliss could be found. He believed he had discovered it, on Lake Garda. “I have exchanged the cold, clammy north for the radiant air of Italy!” he exclaimed in one of his elegies. He was thirty-seven years old and was finally escaping to sow his wild oats, fleeing the constraints of his job at the court of Weimar and the manacles of a “platonic” friendship with a demanding older woman. Lake Garda, for him, was a dream come true. And he had never seen lemon trees before. Continue reading Lake Garda

Iguassu Falls were confirmed as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature in 2012, so , Rachel Ricks went to check them out…

My visit to Iguassu Falls in Argentina was one of those highlights of a lifetime – and it turns out, not just for the spectacular waterfalls themselves – it was going to be an extraordinary opportunity to see wildlife close up, too.

Within just metres of entering the Iguassu National Park, I spotted a family of capuchin monkeys crossing through the trees at arm’s length beside the footpath. Then more and more appeared, even a mother with tiny baby clinging on, swinging through the foliage, simply going about their daily business. Indifferent to us close-range tourists that gathered to coo and watch, one bold little ape even sat low in a small tree choosing fruits by picking them off the tree, tapping them on the branches and if they seemed satisfactory, peeled them to consume, otherwise they were tossed to the ground. Continue reading Monkey business at Iguassu Falls