Creme caramel amidst the rickshaws

There is a corner of India which will be forever France. Jeremy Atiyah joined the hippies and sadhus in Pondicherry

JEREMY ATIYAH

  

SUNDAY 12 APRIL 1998

THE FRENCH only controlled one town in India, but what a town. They call it Pondichery, we call it Pondicherry. Either way, you would (rightly) expect it to be a steamy, sleepy Tamil place of dropping petals and bananas, populated by soft-treading, barefoot women with flowers in their hair, boney intellectuals on slow-mo bicycles, ash-smeared sadhus, lepers and hippies from Croydon.

But you would not expect these people to be obsessed with a 19th-century Cambridge intellectual and a self-appointed foreign messiah.

A deliberate travesty, but I am trying to make a point. The Cambridge intellectual was none other than Sri Aurobindo, who took a first in classics, and then became guru to India's best known ashram.

At least Sri Aurobindo was Indian. The self-appointed messiah was French. This was the woman known as the "Mother", whose kindly face stares down from the walls of every shop, restaurant and hotel room in town; and who, until her death aged 97 in 1973, had taken responsibility not only for running the ashram, but also for founding the nearby "international" city of Auroville.

But was there not just a little irony in a town full of Indians being so deferential to a member of the former imperial power?

"You are too immature," a bearded ashramite told me over an unpretentious communal lunch of brown rice, yoghurt, vegetable curry and bananas. "The Sri Aurobindo ashram is independent of these old-fashioned concepts. We do not think of nationality or religion. We are finding a new spirituality for the next millennium."

To my eyes, an ashram was a place where people went to learn wisdom from a guru, a monastic retreat involving yoga, meditation, and maybe a touch of hippyism?

"This ashram is about the virtues of work," came the stern reply. "The Mother taught us that everybody should seek enlightenment through work. We all have to be productive. We are not hippies." Oops.

As well as owning large swathes of Pondicherry, the ashram also employs half its citizens in cottage industries, producing goods ranging from perfumes to fabrics to paper. It even runs a number of guesthouses, including the Seaside Guest house, where I stayed: pounds 6 per night for a gigantic air- conditioned double room in a former colonial mansion. The fact that the Sri Aurobindo ashram is all about work does not stop people taking their holidays there. A lot of the guest house residents are visitors from Delhi and Bombay seeking temporary respite from their stressful lives.

As for meals - the ashram enables several thousand people to eat three large, wholesome meals a day in the former governor's residence, paying about 30 pence per head per day. If you are staying in an ashram guesthouse, you can share in this absurd bargain.

But was it the French who set the people of Pondicherry on their path to spirituality? Certainly the policemen carry bayonets, wear red kepis and are proud of it. And India's best mineral water is bottled here. At Le Club restaurant on the Rue Dumas - all whicker chairs and starched tablecloths - I went for a mid-morning fruit juice and was informed, with Parisian disdain, that drinks comprised "70 per cent juice and 30 per cent pure, chilled Pondicherry mineral water, Monsieur." The result was delicious.

And Pondicherry does not stop at fruit juice. Beer is served cheaper and colder here than anywhere in India. The new town contains off-licenses selling "genuine" Napoleon brandy. And the rooftop restaurants serving French food are excellent. Dishes range from approximations (the creme caramel in the Rendezvous) to the spot-on (the coq au vin in the Satsanga).

Of course Pondicherry is not all French. In the east of town, the traffic comprises bullocks, rickshaws, scooters and high-slung Ambassadors, trundling along streets where advertised services range from urology to advocacy to computer training to "shirtings and suitings" - a typical Indian high street, in fact.

But it was hard to deny that France had done something for the place. Tamil Nadu is not the Cote d'Azur, but Pondicherry makes more use of the sea than all other Indian towns put together. Of an evening, for example, romantic couples in Pondicherry come to canoodle in the Place de la Republique. Other improbable locations in the area include the Bazaar Saint Laurent and the Grand Hotel d'Europe, as well as the war memorial for the "French Indians" who died for France.

Basically, the French occupied the whole seaward side of town. Some of their old villas are now collapsing into mouldy piles of plasterwork; others, though, have been magnificently restored, with gleaming fluted columns and white ornamental balustrades running up to verandas overhung with banyan trees.

In the Church of Our Lady of the Angels, I found a troop of schoolgirl nuns and crows hopping between the neon strips. Outside, sleepy rickshaw drivers lounged under their own awnings and a builder with a tray of cement on his head whispered: "Bonjour, monsieur."

Or did he? It can be so hard for western visitors not to turn imperialist in India. Pondicherry was doing things to me the Mother may not have liked. Clearly the time had come for me to do her bidding - and make the pilgrimage to the city that was free of nationality and religion, Auroville itself.

That afternoon I joined a local group tour. On the bus from Pondicherry was an American lady whose desire to come to this place had arisen after meeting a "God Realised" woman in San Fransisco.

"Really?" asked a bearded German in sandals. "But what do you mean exactly by God Realised?"

"That woman just had no life. She'd sleep two or three hours, then spent the whole day, you know, giving darshen."

Indians in the group were also engaged in the task of understanding each other.

"From which city you are hailing, sir?" a Bengali gentleman was asking a Keralan. "The Tamils' command of Hindi is terribly poor!" an Assamese was exclaiming.

Such multi-culturalism was perfect for a visit to the future city of the world. On the way we had passed orchards, banana-fronde huts and bullock carts; now in the visitor's centre we were looking down on a scale plan of the completed city as it is designed to look some time in the next millennium.

"The shape is of a galaxy, with cement arms lined by corridors of greenery swirling around a hub," explained our guide. "The four arms of the galaxy represent the industrial, international, residential and educational areas of the city. At the hub is the Matrimandir Temple."

For those who care, Auroville does not look likely ever to be finished. Given that its foundation stone was laid on 28 February 1968, I saw remarkably little evidence of any construction at all. We were told that only 45 per cent of the necessary land had so far been bought - efforts are still being made to acquire the rest.

We peered about dirt tracks, trees and lots of flowering shrubs with names like "progress" and "psychological perfection". A building site? Some half-constructed public buildings emerged from the trees like Aztec ruins - the conference hall we were informed ("Can you hear the acoustics?").

The one building in Auroville that might have been worth writing home about was the Matrimandir Temple itself. There in the heart of it all, the temple was approaching completion.

To reach it, we began passing checkpoints manned by Auroville volunteers. Walk here! Stand there! Remove shoes! No bags or cameras! No talking please! Single file!

Even without this reduction of our scraggly tour group to the level of the Mother's school children, the first glimpse of the temple, a great golf ball dome filling the horizon, would have been quite impressive. Eventually, we were told, it would even be covered in fibre-glass gold- plated disks.

Stepping inside the dome, we saw ramps flying off in all directions above our heads, with teams of ant-like workers apparently at work. A perfect James Bond set. We proceeded, like prisoners, along a circular spiralling walkway that took us slowly to the top, passing signs reminding us that no "dampness, dirt or dust" would be allowed into the innermost chamber.

And finally there it was, a momentary glimpse through a doorway of the innermost sanctum itself, a high enclosed room of unadorned white marble, housing nothing but a huge glass crystal, catching mystical light from a hole in the ceiling. The heart! The key, the essence, the innermost truth - of Auroville!

I shuddered to imagine any community at all, let alone a "world city", basing itself around such a corny architectural concept. Blame it all on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, I told myself, as we drove back to the bananas, the petals, the rickshaws, the smells, the beer and the delightful Eurasian chaos of Pondicherry.

pondicherry fact file

Getting there and around

The author flew to India as a guest of Gulf Air (0171-408 1717), who fly to Madras (now known as Chennai) from London on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The fare is pounds 481 plus around pounds 27 taxes. Pondicherry is 160 miles south of Madras. Fly to Madras and take a prepaid taxi, booked inside the airport, to Pondicherry. The cost will be less than pounds 15. Otherwise, hot, crowded buses from Madras cost 50p.

For internal flights, the author used the excellent Indian airline Jet Airways (UK reservations: 0181 970 1525). A 15-day pass for circular or same-direction routings costs $550 (pounds 338). Sample one-way fares include Bombay-Madras ($154) and Delhi-Madras ($235).

Where to stay

The author stayed at the Seaside Guesthouse on the seafront (14 Goubert Avenue), where huge air-conditioned doubles are available for around pounds 6. The ashram also owns several other guesthouses in town. If you wish to dine in the ashram, tickets covering breakfast lunch and dinner can be obtained from the guesthouse for around 30p per day.

Visas

All British passport holders require visas in order to visit India. Contact India House, Aldwych, London WC2B 4NA (            0891 444544       for recorded information, calls cost 50p/minute).

A mystical magical tour

For the best views of north Wales, says Jeremy Atiyah, put the coast behind you and head for the bleak hills

Jeremy Atiyah 

Saturday, 4 April 1998

North Wales: what a daft place to put a seaside resort. Llandudno is the kind of town where the first wisp of cloud in a clear blue sky introduces a torrential downpour.

Only when you look back on the esplanade from the Great Orme hills just west of town, do you begin to understand. Those perfect, curving stucco terraces were built in an age when the Costa del Sol was not an option. Llandudno is a place where people kept their ankles covered.

And outside the warmest months of the year, it still is. I saw more sheep on the pavements than people. The resort waits until April to begin getting its kit off. The pier, the highlight of any British seaside resort, has been closed for repairs over the winter but is due to reopen at Easter; the century-old Great Orme tramway, which trundles up the hills overlooking the town, opened for the season last weekend, while the cable car that glides up into those same hills is still thinking about it.

But, sadly, the wind will continue to blow cold off the sea until June at least and, personally, I advise trippers to north Wales to turn their backs on the shore. Get on the train instead, and try out the following easy circuit, arriving in England at the end of the day. Well, you'll arrive if you can work out the timetables. Welsh trains are so small and local that not many people know whether (or where) they run. The Conwy valley line, from Llandudno through Snowdonia to Blaenau? A clerk at Llandudno had no idea. A call to National Rail Enquiries tentatively cleared up the matter: I went to catch the train at 10.17am.

It turned out that on Sundays they run a substitute bus. "Not too many passengers Sundays," remarked the driver as I boarded. The two of us - the driver and I - were soon chugging alongside Conwy Bay, through heather- bound valleys under glowering skies. Edward I's monstrous Conwy Castle came and went, and we began climbing into the wild heart of Snowdonia. The main stop in the middle of the park was Llanrwst, a dripping-wet village surrounded by ferns and bracken and rushing streams, and the launch pad for 1,000 Snowdon treks.

Finally, we came down through the remote pastures of the Lledr valley to Blaenau. The barren, heaped-up rubble from a century and a half of slate-quarrying entirely surrounds this benighted town. I think it would look a lot better under snow. Cottages in the high street go for pounds 35,000.

What Blaenau does have, though, is a scenic railway. As well as being the terminus of the Conwy valley line, it is the jumping-on point for the narrow-gauge Blaenau-Ffestiniog line. Opened in 1836 to lug all that slate down to the sea, this descends the 640ft to Porthmadog in just 13 miles. These days it's a steam-engine job, having been restored for the benefit of tourists in 1982. Me? I took the bus (the train cost pounds 12 one way) but I did have the pleasure of seeing the steam engine in a siding, with men in frock coats and toppers clambering over the engine.

The bus to Porthmadog incidentally also went via Portmeirion, a bizarre Italianate village built in the Twenties by the architect Clough Williams- Ellis. If you get off, you can see what Wales would have looked like had we remained a Roman colony. It is a one-hour downhill walk from here through trees to Porthmadog, where the first thing I heard was a pair of school kids abusing each other in Welsh. Later I found bus drivers trying and failing to express themselves in English. This was Wales all right. Having admired the boats in the harbour and the views over Snowdon, I set off on the next leg of my journey - along the Cambrian Line, down the west coast. It was then that I discovered just how unspoilt is the Cambrian coast. My nomination for the remotest station in Britain goes to Dovey Junction - a mere platform in the middle of nowhere.

The only trouble with doing the journey in this direction is that the wild coasts and magical valleys of Wales are soon replaced by the West Midlands. Go too fast, and before you know it you're in Birmingham. No danger of that for me. The day I travelled, a bewildering succession of substitute buses had been laid on to cope with a familiar Welsh problem - torrential rain had led to flooding on the line.

Notes from the Welsh Overground

On days when the trains are running, eight narrow-gauge railway networks gather together under the banner of "The Great Little Trains of Wales". A Wanderer ticket is valid for unlimited travel on any four days out of eight, price pounds 28, or eight days out of 15, pounds 38.

The line that Jeremy Atiyah missed out on performs a useful function as the missing link between the Mid and North Wales rail networks. The 13-mile Ffestiniog Railway (01766 512340) runs from the grown-up station at Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog; the best place to change trains to rejoin BR is Minffordd. A one-way ticket is pounds 6.40. On Sundays, it is impossible to complete the loop to or from the north coast because no trains run between Blaenau Ffestiniog and Llandudno.

Wales & West Railways operates most of the standard-gauge trains in Wales. It has rail pass deals, such as the Mid Wales Day Ranger, covering the lines from Wolverhampton to Pwllheli and Chester to Shrewsbury.

Notes from the Welsh underground

It's not as easy as it was to scratch beneath the surface of Wales, since a couple of mines closed to the public. The world's biggest slate mine in Blaenau Ffestiniog is no longer open to visitors; neither is the Gwynfynydd gold mine, the main source of Welsh gold, where visitors used to pan for the precious metal and keep what they found.

There are still a couple of opportunities for going underground. In the Rhondda valley, the Big Pit Mining Museum in Blaenafon (01495 790311) describes the story of the coal industry in Wales in the days when the country had one. It opens daily at 10am, with the last tour at 3.30pm: pounds 5.50 adults, pounds 3.75 for children (who must be at least five).

The Sygun copper mine in Beddgelert (01766 510100) describes the history and geology of mining the metal. It is located beside the A498 in Snowdonia, and opens daily from 10.30am to 4pm. Adults pounds 4.50, children pounds 3.

Simon Calder

The world's favourite destination: a guide

France receives more visitors from both Britain and the rest of the world than any other country. Here, in the first of our three-page special report on our nearest and (dare we say it, dearest) neighbour, Jeremy Atiyah offers a region-by-region appreciation

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 1 March 1998

If a country can be judged by the number of visitors it receives, then France is a big winner. Not only does it receive more foreign visitors annually than any other country, but it also receives the most British visitors - over 10 million. But where do they all go? Unlike Spain, where millions of tourists end up concentrated into the same resorts, France is able to absorb visitors throughout its length and breadth. From the flat mining lands of Nord-pas-de-Calais to the glittering promenades of the Cote d'Azure there is no region without its legion of British devotees. But for those who still can't make up their minds, here is a region-by-region guide, based on the nine most popular regions according to numbers of British tourists.

1/ Paris ile-de-France

So Paris is our favourite city in our favourite country. But given that Paris is not a place to spend a fortnight in high summer, you will probably be looking at a long weekend break. The best way to go is on Eurostar (0345 881881) direct to the Gare du Nord and then find a creaky old hotel with the help of your Rough Guide.

If you are looking for deals though, Paris Travel Service (01992 456000) has some pretty cheap ones, especially departing from the London area in the coming month. Flying from London Gatwick you can spend three nights for pounds 109 including taxes (but not including transfers), or pounds 112 if you travel by Eurostar. Travelling from elsewhere in Britain, VFB Holidays (01242 240300) offers packages with scheduled flights from almost any regional airport - with quite hefty supplements.

Another excellent idea is to combine the urban delights of inner Paris with a spot of rustic country living, by renting a gite in the ile-de- France. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can bring your kids. The main operator dealing with gites in Britain is now Brittany Ferries (0990 360360). For a family of four a gite in the Paris area in mid-summer will cost about pounds 500-pounds 600 including ferry crossings for you and your car.

2/ Brittany

At number two in our hit-list of favourite French regions comes the French equivalent to Cornwall. Brittany is the western extremity of France, its Celtic fringe - it even has its own Land's End (Finisterre). It is also but a single ferry journey away, with regular crossings linking Portsmouth and Poole with St Malo, and Plymouth with Roscoff (Call Brittany Ferries on 0990 360360).

With wonderful beaches, craggy cliffs and off-shore islands, this is a wild and beautiful region. It may not produce wine but the food is superb - come for moules marinieres and soupe de poissons.

A good-value holiday in Brittany is offered by Eurocamp (01565 626262), which provides house-like tents, swimming pools and a cheery atmosphere. Most people just come in the car and rent a gite, but you can take a tour. How about a high-brow study-tour of the megaliths of Brittany in July with Andante Travel (01980 610555)?

3/ Normandy

Even closer to Britain's southern shores than Brittany, Normandy is only marginally less popular. In addition to seaside towns, including the fantastic attraction of Mont-St-Michel, this is the region for visiting the D-Day beaches of the Second World War - Caen for example, which is also a jumping off point for ferries from Portsmouth. Paris is only two hours away by car. If you want a gite in the area try Normandie Vacances (01922 721901), or Thomson's Country Cottages (01282 445511).

4/ Aquitaine

The huge southwestern region of Aquitaine is often referred to by the British in a general way as "the Dordogne", though in fact it includes the city of Bordeaux and the fabulous Atlantic beaches of Arcachon, and extends right down to the Pyrenees and the Spanish border (including the French Basque country). The principal attractions of the area are the world-famous traditions of food and wine and the best people to take you around the vineyards are Arblaster and Clarke Wine Tours (01730 893344). I also rather fancy something called a Gastronomic Cycling Tour run by Headwater (01606 813367) which takes you from superb restaurant to superb restaurant - reckon on about pounds 400 per person half-board, if four people travel together by car. Meanwhile every inland village seems to have its discreetly resident English families; to rent a nice villa of your own try Meon Villas on 01730 268411.

5/ Rhone Alps

The figures for this huge region bordering onto the Swiss and Italian Alps are mainly accounted for by the floods of winter skiers. Not that snow is the only attraction. Lyon is known throughout France as a city of style and superb cuisine. The lake-side cities of Annecy and Aix-les- Bains, as well as Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva, are delightful places to take the water. These days the high-speed TGV trains connect Lyon to Paris in only two hours which means you can leave London early morning and be there by lunch-time (book your ticket to Lyon through Eurostar).

6/ Provence

After Peter Mayle, what more can be said? The red roofs, the scent of bitter thyme, the harsh light and balmy air have been attracting artists and vagabonds for centuries. Ancient fortified cities such as Avignon and Aix-en-Provence compete for attention with the great port city of Marseilles. I suggest tailor-made independent walks or bike rides with Inntravel (01653 628862), who will carry your luggage while you amble (or cycle) from hotel to hotel. Reckon on pounds 500-pounds 600 for a six-night trip, including breakfast, picnic lunch and dinner.

7/ Nord-Pas-de-Calais

Eurostar has provided a boost to British tourism in this area. A few years ago nobody used to stop between Paris and Calais. Now we are getting used to the gastronomic and architectural delights of Lille, which is nearer by train to London than Liverpool or Manchester. For Lille short breaks, call Classic Breakaway on 01492 532532. Otherwise, if you fancy a long weekend in a real rural auberge only three hours drive from London, try Inntravel (01653 628862).

8/ Picardy

Picardy is the area between Calais and Normandy, of which the big attraction once again is proximity. The First World War battlefields are attracting more and more visitors. Holts' Tours (01304 612248) arranges expertly guided trips to the Somme and other battle sites.

On a different note, Picardy might also be a good place to try the French equivalent to Center Parks, that is to say purpose-built holiday villages with self-catering studios and villas, alongside a (covered) swimming pool area and other sporting facilities. Call EuroVillages on 01606 734400.

9/ Cote d'Azure

Our ninth favourite region is that little playground of princesses and film-stars down in the far south-eastern corner of France. In the last century the British colonised Nice as an antidote to the northern winter blues. These days we prefer the Canary Islands and the Caribbean mainly because - in towns like Cannes, Antibes, Juan-les-Pins and Monaco - the British are afraid of being shown up by their sexier French counterparts. If you have the nerve, try easyJet (01582 702900) with its pounds 49 plus-tax fare; if you prefer true Cote d'Azure style, how about a villa/chateau with swimming pools and tennis courts? Available from Dominique's Villas (0171 738 8772).

Thrifty ways to treat your lover - and some expensive ones, too

JEREMY ATIYAH

 SUNDAY 01 FEBRUARY 1998

IT MAY SEEM contrary to the spirit of romance to worry about how much things cost ("yeah, what about the humming-bird-feather duvet and the penthouse suite full of rose petals?") but some tour operators still seem to think that Valentine's Day is an occasion on which people are looking for bargain breaks.

I would be extremely wary of any lover who proposed taking me to the Far East this Valentine's Day - a part of the world where holiday prices are, once again, hitting all-time lows. For example, nobody on earth is going to seduce me by offering a seven-night package in Bali for pounds 545 with Qantas Holidays (0990 673464), departing on 11 February. Would that not be a case of gross penny-pinching or what?

No. To do our lovers justice, what we need to do on Valentine's Day is to spend money wastefully, not economically. A bit more like it is the "Romeo and Juliet" Package being offered by the Hyatt Carlton Tower in London (0171 235 1234), where, for pounds 399, two people get to spend a single night in the hotel, plus dinner for two in a posh restaurant and a bit of massage/facial treatment thrown in on the side. If that isn't a splurge that you are going to regret the next time your bank statement arrives, then I don't know what is.

Anything to do with Concorde would make equally promising material for Valentine's Day. How about a two-night break in New York for pounds 1,542 with Bridge Travel Service (01992 456171), with one leg flown on Concorde? What gives this its delightfully gratuitous edge is that you have to fly to Paris in order to board your Concorde, thus nullifying the time advantage (and missing the whole point of travelling by Concorde).

In fact, people who believe in these things are facing a hell of a week. This year, the day before Valentine's Day happens to be Friday 13th, which might be an argument in favour of financial caution in the days leading up to your romantic break.

One way to avoid causing offence to your Valentine is to wait until after 14 February, when even cheaper deals will become available. How about four nights in Hong Kong, with flights on British Airways, for just pounds 299 (call Kuoni on 01306 740500)? Or 14 nights in Sri Lanka for pounds 419 per person (call The Holiday Place on 0171 431 0670)?

For the stingiest Valentine's Day offer of all, however, I suggest Kosmar Holidays, which offers "six lucky couples the chance to win a romantic night out whilst on holiday" on condition that they book the holiday with Kosmar on 14 February. In other words, even if you book your holiday on Valentine's Day, all you'll get is the chance of a free dinner. That doesn't sound like the brilliant project that I want to be whispering into the ear of my prospective sweetheart on Friday 13th.

IN THIS AGE of communication, it is always a pleasure to find that some of the old ways still prevail. A good two weeks after the close of the Millennium competition (which we ran in these pages), I am still cowering under a deluge of late entries - from India.

It transpires that, unknown to us, the Times of India ran a version of our competition, asking readers to write in to the Independent on Sunday in England to receive their prize. The snag was that they only did this five days before the closing date for entries, leaving an improbably short time in which to get a postcard from India to Britain.

I do hope that if the Times of India decide to reproduce this column they will convey my apologies to those people whose entries were doomed to heroic failure before they were even sent.

Not that electronic communication would necessarily have been any faster. A couple of days ago, this travel desk received an e-mail that I had sent in from Northern Cyprus last July. We calculate that a person on foot carrying my message in their hand would have arrived at about the same time.

You try Cornwall, we'll try Bolivia

Atlantis fever is gripping the world of exploration. Jeremy Atiyah on the rival expeditions seeking out Plato's city under the sea

Jeremy Atiyah 

Sunday, 11 January 1998

THIS is Atlantis season again. Now that the Russians are losing their ability to fund space exploration they have decided to search for mythical lost cities instead - in unexpected places. The remains of the city of Atlantis, they predict, will be found a hundred miles off Land's End.

That at least is the view of theMoscow Institute of Metahistory, an organisation formed last year with the intention of proving that conventional ideas about human history are wrong. Their application for permission to dive is currently circulating Whitehall departments.

"An operation such as this is probably going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds," said a spokesman for the Maritime department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. "Presumably someone in Russia thinks the project is worth funding."

Their director, Professor Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev plans to lead his Cornish expedition in the summer. He has applied to explore in the area of the Celtic Shelf, an underwater hill in the north Atlantic which, he claims, sank permanently below sea-level during catastrophic floods after the last ice-age.

Oddly enough, at the very moment that Professor Koudriavtsev heads for Cornwall, another explorer, the very British Colonel "Blashers" Blashford- Snell, Chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society, is planning an even less probable Atlantis search: in Bolivia.

Colonel Blashford-Snell is not particularly impressed by his Russian rivals though he is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

"You have to keep an open mind on these things," he says of his own expedition. "I am going to investigate a possible lost city, which may or may not turn out to be Atlantis. Our Bolivian site has about 50 factors which happen to fit Plato's description - for example that it's a rectangular plain of the right dimensions, flat and level and of high altitude. Most interesting of all is an apparent canal - exactly as described by Plato - running down to the inland Bolivian sea of Lake Poopo."

But surely South America was unknown to the ancient Mediterranean?

"So we suppose. But the discovery of cocaine as part of the mummification process used by the ancient Egyptians raises interesting questions. There is an ocean current running from Montevideo to Cape Town and quite primitive rafts could cross that gap. In fact, investigating the possibility of contact between South America and Africa in ancient times is really the serious part of our project. Not Atlantis."

Which is not, of course, how most people would like to see it. We want Atlantis. Ever since the middle of the last century, when the hero of Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea stepped into its sunken ruins, Atlantis theories have grown progressively wilder. In addition to Bolivia and Cornwall, other suggested sites have been the north coast of Libya, ancient Wessex, Antarctica and (from the Japanese) the South Pacific.

These days, lost "secrets" from the dawn of civilisation evoke no end of extra-terrestrial trumpery. Mysterious technologies such as "cosmic crystals" have been dreamt up by mystics and attributed to Atlantis. Latter-day Platos have even claimed that it was misuse of "crystal-power" that caused the destruction of their civilisation, and (to choruses of ethereal angels) have come to see the search for Atlantis as synonymous with the search for the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

But why? Was not the Atlantis story just a standard allegory, rustled up to illustrate the dangers of a society corrupting itself? A story of a once virtuous city, now so eaten up by debauchery that Zeus had no option but to send in the tidal waves?

This is hard to dispute. Take another look at Noah and his flood, the Tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, or Irem in the Koran. (A lesser Atlantis, Irem, also has its followers, who search in the sands of the Arabian peninsular.)

Except - and this is where our psychological need for The Big Quest kicks in - the detail makes us hesitate. Plato's descriptions are packed with circumstantial evidence. He describes an island continent "circled by mountains". He talks of a "rectangular plain in the centre of the continent measuring 3,000 by 2,000 stades" with a drainage canal running round its perimeter. He talks of a strange Atlantean metal, orichalcum, which "sparkled like red fire".

Such is the detail that keeps the Atlantis-busters out in force. Blashford- Snell himself, half-Indiana-Jones half-Victorian-explorer, has been keeping his eye on Atlantis for years. In 1978 he discovered the lost city of Acla in the jungles of Panama, with the eminent archeologist Dr Mark Horton. He has also successfully demolished other people's Atlantis theories, including the persistent idea that the vanished land was near the island of Bimini in the Bahamas.

"I was asked to dive the area by an American society who had invested a lot of money in proving that this was Atlantis. In fact I shot the whole thing down. They weren't happy but in the end they accepted my verdict."

Theories spring up with the regularity of pulsating stars. In 1995 a British archeologist, Peter James, published his theory that Atlantis was actually a city called Tantalis in the interior of Turkey, which had been destroyed by flooding in 1400BC. Meanwhile a German scholar, Dr Zangger, has plausibly claimed that Plato's description of Atlantis was based on Homeric Troy, also in Turkey.

Considering that Plato located the islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules (today's Straits of Gibraltar) practically any island or land-mass in the Atlantic becomes a possible candidate. Central America and Mexico are considered promising sites by some.

Most scholars, however, suppose that echoes from a lost civilisation - if that is what Plato's story was - must have come from within the Mediterranean. Minoan Crete was one such lost civilisation: it had abruptly disappeared 1,000 years before Plato, leaving behind sketchy memories in the form of legends of the Labyrinth and its resident Minotaur.

According to Plato, the Kings of Atlantis hunted bulls for sport, and the excavation of Knossos (the Minoan capital) has uncovered pictures of bulls and people at play. To cap it all, the demise of Minoan Crete seems to have been triggered by the Mediterranean's worst ever natural catastrophe: the explosion of the volcanic island of Thera (today's Santorini), blasting four cubic miles of rock into the atmosphere, reducing the island to a fraction of its former size and causing massive tidal waves throughout Greece.

A solution to the mystery? No one can say, and in the mean time we await the upcoming expeditions. If Atlantis turns out to be Cornish, the cost of the search will surely look like the greatest investment ever made by a Russian.