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Never falling is not the greatest merit in life. The main thing is to get up every time

27/06/2022

The indigenous Australians few know!

As I stepped off the ferry onto Thursday Island's main wharf, a gust of wind nearly lifted my sunglasses into the deceptively idyllic Torres Strait – its notoriously shallow waters and razor-sharp reefs have claimed many a ship since Spaniard Luís Vaz de Torres became the first European to navigate this remote passage at Australia's northern tip in 1606.

"The south-east trade winds can get up to 40km per hour during winter, then we get the wild north-westerly winds in the summer that bring the storms," said local guide Sue Johns, as fellow ferry passengers filed onto her waiting tour bus. "That's 12 months of bad hair days," she joked as we rumbled off around the small, hilly isle.

The administrative capital of the Torres Strait Islands, Thursday Island (locally known as "TI") is one of more than 200 islands that once formed part of a land bridge between Queensland's Cape York Peninsula and modern-day Papua New Guinea. That changed around 8,000 years ago, when rising sea levels flooded the landscape at the end of the last Ice Age.

Home to around half of the Torres Strait's 6,000-odd residents, approximately 80% of whom identify as indigenous, TI is not your typical tropical island holiday destination. There are no backpacker hostels or family resorts. With saltwater crocodiles patrolling TI's beaches, it's too risky to take a dip. And then there's the relentless wind. But there's still a great reason to visit this faraway corner of Australia, some 2,700km north of Brisbane. And I'm not talking about the opportunity to drink a pint in Australia's northernmost pub, the Torres Hotel, alongside FIFO (fly in, fly out) workers, most of whom come to work in government jobs ranging from health to defence.

27/06/2022

The village once owned by England's first queen!

There are two immediate signs that Clovelly, located on the coast of Devon in South West England, isn't your usual seaside village. The first is that the only access is through the visitor centre, which charges £8.50 per adult for entrance (£4.95 for children). The second is the sledges. They stand at attention at the top of the cobbled walk that runs through the town's steep lanes of cottages and down to Clovelly's harbour, 120m below, ready for the next time a resident comes back from the shops and needs to lug their purchases home.

They might seem out of place to a first-time visitor. But both the visitor centre, opened in 1988, and the sledges, which largely replaced donkeys by the 1970s, are ways in which this 1,000-year-old community has adapted to modern times – while still preserving the rhythms of the past.

Even today, there are no cars in Clovelly. (It would be too steep for them to get access even if the town wanted them.) There are no chain stores, no traffic noises, no light pollution. Instead, there are cobbled lanes, whitewashed cottages, small boats bobbing in the 14th-Century stone quay, fat bees and butterflies feeding on flowers, and, almost everywhere, the sound, smells and sight of the Atlantic.

"Moving to a teeny tiny cottage on the edge of a cliff was something I never imagined," said Ellie Jarvis, who came from London to Clovelly for six months in 2007 to help run her family's silk workshop and never left. "But what is so beautiful and unique about Clovelly is not only the cobbles and all the obvious things that you see as a tourist. It's the fact that you're living with the past."

And that past extends a long way.

27/06/2022

The secret world of Granada’s Alhambra palace!

From underground tunnels that snake below the palace’s surface to enigmatic carvings that are just now being understood, is the Alhambra finally revealing its mysteries?

27/06/2022

The Spanish city where water defies gravity!

Water is everywhere in Granada's ornate and lavish Alhambra, a 13th-Century palatial complex that's one of the world's most iconic examples of Moorish architecture. It flows in channels that cool the buildings; spurts from fountains in grand rooms and charming courtyards; and sprays in such a way that, from certain angles, it perfectly frames majestic arched doorways. The same intricate system brings colour to the famed gardens of the Generalife, the former summer palace next door.

At the time, this was one of the most sophisticated hydraulic networks in the world, able to defy gravity and raise water from the river nearly a kilometre below.

The 1,000-year-old feat still impresses engineers today: in an essay on key moments in the history of water in civilisation, Unesco's International Hydrological Programme noted that "modern water technology is indebted to the legacy of [these] water gardens and bath houses", which were once only enjoyed by the wealthy and powerful, but today have made baths and private home gardens affordable and practical.

For millennia, major cities have sprouted on the banks of rivers, the shores of lakes and the coastlines of seas. This was true too of the great Kingdom of Granada, which developed along the Darro and Genil rivers in what would become Spain's autonomous community of Andalusia. To the Islamic rulers who controlled this and other parts of Spain for almost 800 years, water played an integral function in society, not only for survival, but for religious and aesthetic purposes too.

"In Islam, water is the origin of life, it's a symbol of purity and acts as a purifier of both the body and the soul; it is considered pious," said Rocío Díaz Jiménez, general director of the Board of Trustees of the Alhambra and Generalife.

Public fountains, decorated with ceramic tiles, were plentiful in the streets of Andalusian cities. They were installed next to mosques for ablutions, or near the city gates to quench the thirst of travellers. Even at home, water was the focus. "It was rare for an Andalusian patio not to have a central water feature, no matter how humble it was – whether it was a pool, a fountain or a basin," Díaz said. "Water is also part of the essence of the Alhambra – a fundamental element for its existence."

But that wasn't always the case. Historians believe the Alhambra was commissioned as a fortress in the 9th Century by a man named Sawwar ben Hamdun, during the wars between Muslims and Christians who converted to Islam. However, it wasn't until the 13th-Century arrival of Muhammad I, the first king of the Nasrid dynasty – which would rule from 1230 until the Spanish Catholic conquest of 1492 – that engineers overcame the challenge of the Alhambra's elevated location on 840m-high Sabika Hill and transformed it into a habitable, 26-acre palatine city with access to fresh running water.

27/06/2022

The ancient mummies older than Egypt's!

In Chile's Atacama Desert, the driest place on Earth, mummies have been found that pre-date the Egyptians' by 2,000 years. So while the Egyptians may be the most famous culture to mummify their dead, it turns out they weren't the first to do so.

"The Chinchorro are the very first people that inhabited the north of Chile and the south of Peru," said Bernardo Arriaza, a physical anthropologist with the University of Tarapacá. "They are the pioneers of the Atacama Desert." And, he added, they are also the first known culture in the world to mummify their dead, starting around 5,000 BCE.

The remains of hundreds of these marine hunter-gatherers – who lived on the Pacific Coast of the Atacama from approximately 5450 BCE to 890 BCE – have been found in the Arica and Parinacota regions. In 2021, these cemeteries were inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List for the immense archaeological value they provide. Not only do they reveal the detailed mortuary and funerary practices of the ancient culture, but they offer insight into the community's social and spiritual structures. For instance, mummification was not reserved for the upper class of society (like it was for the Egyptians) but was a ritual for all.

As Arriaza explained: "The Chinchorro [culture] is relevant in many aspects: They are the first funerary practitioners, the earliest in this region. And the bodies that we know today as Chinchorro, they are true pre-Hispanic works of art. They are the artistic expressions of the feelings, of the emotions of the ancient populations."

But even though Unesco's recognition only came recently, residents of Arica have known about the unique archaeological remains for much longer. That's because the bodies are buried very close to the surface. Indeed, the remains are literally part of the town's foundation. For example, Johnny Vásquez, who has lived in Arica for 60 years, remembered that when workers first dug sewer pipes for his neighbourhood, they found "layers and layers of mummies". And in 2004, when workers started to excavate for a hotel, they ran into bones less than 1m underground and instead turned the site into a museum.

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