Mexico: Tequila sunrise begins in the heart of the blue agave

Fearsomely spiky plants, fiendishly fiery liquor: Jeremy Atiyah takes a side trip to Jalisco in search of Mexico's national spirit

Published: 11 February 2002

I am on my way to an important little town in the Mexican state of Jalisco. It's called Tequila. So important is it that one of Mexico's last surviving train services runs here, twice weekly, from Guadalajara. I have chosen to take a bus tour, though, joining an English couple, John and Liz from the West Midlands, and a Mexican family from Oaxaca. We're on the scent of a certain liquor, distilled from the fermented juice of the blue agave plant. Like the town, it is called tequila.

We're driving through a sunny landscape of orchards and forests that looks as fruitful as Tuscany. Trees groan under the weight of avocados, birds of prey float over the Sierra Madre Occidental and snakes (I am sure of it), rustle in the dry grass. We pass into a country devoted to alcohol. Pale blue lines criss-cross the rich, red earth. Jalisco's valleys could be outside St Emilion, except that we are not talking about Cabernet Sauvignon. These are blue agave plants, 100 million of them.

As is often the case in Mexico, Tequila is an oasis of dust surrounded by a sea of fertility. It announces itself with a petrol station and a pile of scrapped cars. But then it's on to the souvenirs, the cobbled streets and the picturesque men in big hats. "If we can't get it through duty-free, shall we drink it here?" says John, pointing at barrels stacked outside shops. "Ooh, yes!" giggles Liz.

The Aztecs had developed a taste for the blue agave's sweet sap long before the conquistadors got here, says our guide. They made sweets from it, for holy purposes, and travelled great distances to collect it. "They also," he says, looking disdainfully at the English tourists, "used its leaves to torture their enemies."

The agave is a wide family of often woody plants, distributed throughout tropical, subtropical, and temperate areas of the world. Most have nasty, lance-shaped, fleshy or toothed leaves sticking up from their bases. The Yucca is one of them, though the house plant's sap is not distilled into liquor. Tequila doesn't come from any old agave, only from the blue agave,Agave tequilana Weber. And by law, it can only be distilled from agave grown in Jalisco, and in bits of four other states. Every tequila must contain at least 51 per cent agave juice (the remainder can be molasses, caramel or yeast).
Sauza, the company providing all this tequilan information, troops us through a plantation of shady fruit trees before a grand ranch house. The sun shines on the bananas and lemons. Our guide, Jose, explains that one man can propagate between 800 and 1,200 baby agave plants per day. The babiesappear around the base of the parent plants; they have to be dug out and replanted in neat rows with plenty of space between.

Thus it is that plantations of blue agave, from a distance, are as pretty as vineyards. But close-up, the plant resembles an explosion of swords projecting from the dry earth. It is not the kind of thing you would wish to encounter if you were wandering lost, at night, in a swimming costume.

And harvesting it is not like plucking apples or grapes either. No matter how much devotion you have lavished on your agave plants, over the requisite eight to 10 years, when it comes to harvesting, the whole plant is annihilated.

Jose begins to dig up a whole agave plant from the sun-baked ground, looking as if he is saving us from a dangerous wild animal. Luckily he has some formidable spades and machetes at his disposal. Then he chops the leaves off the plant, while avoiding the twin hazards of impaling himself on the spines, or cutting his foot off with the machete. Jose offers us the machete to try and the Oaxacan patriarch takes over. "Ladies, stand back," he commands, hacking for dear life.

Once the leaves have been chopped off, the heart of the blue agave, the piña, remains – a football-sized object that resembles a cross between a pineapple and a hand grenade. I can lift one, just. On average, I am told, three litres of tequila can be extracted from just one piña.

Next, we drive to the Sauza distillery. On its wall is a huge mural, in flamboyant Mexican style. I see sun gods, snakes breathing fire, maids in fields, conquistadors, slaves, drunkards, Bacchanalian revellers, nude dancing girls, and mules pulling grindstones and carrying piñas.

Inside, barrels of different sizes and ages are stacked like ingots. "Can't we just drink the stuff?" asks John. No, says a man in a helmet. This kill-joy tells us about the four varieties of tequila. The white, or silver, tequila is not aged, and has nothing added to it. The gold has had colour and caramel added. Thereposado ("rested") tequilas have been kept in casks for two months. The anejo has been stored in oak casks for a year. The straw colouring of some tequilas is often artificial colouring. So which is the best, someone asks? "All of them," interrupts the Oaxacan patriarch, at once. We laugh, thirstily.
To judge by the smart premises, tequila is big business. Sauza is one of the five biggest tequila companies. The Lafitte Rothschild of tequila? "Yes, the company is doing well," says one guide. "But poor Mr Sauza. One of his sons went to Brazil and died, while the other went to New York and became gay. Now he has only his daughter to run the factory for him."

It is time for a drink. We are hit by the sound of machinery and a smell of Christmas pudding, which turns out to be fermenting liquor. We are in the factory. At one end, a pile of agave piñas – at the other, fermenting agave juice. Here, conveyors carry piñas to ovens; there the piñas are crushed and shredded to extract the juice. Eventually, I find myself staring into a 500,000-litre fermentation vat full of syrup-coloured agave-juice, a liquid known as aquamiel, or honey-water.

Finally, we get to the tasting. We drink the liquor neat, with salt and lime only for emergencies. The flavour of some tequilas is similar to that of whiskies and brandies. I buy a bottle of straw-coloured reposado, John and Liz take a selection, and the Oaxacan patriarch settles for a barrel. All return to Guadalajara, profoundly happy.

Siberia: Curses, it's cold

Okay, Siberia is steel-splinteringly, mind-shatteringly cold. But supernaturally cold?

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 21 January 2002

What? The locals couldn't stand the cold? In Siberia? The news was enough, this time last year, to get me on the first plane to Irkutsk: destination, mid-winter. And it seemed to be true. This was no ordinary Siberian cold. From Novosibirsk to Vladivostok, last January, the talk was of nothing but unprecedented, steel-splintering cold. Of failing hot-water pumps, of destroyed machinery, of wolves in the streets, of men and women turning up as frozen meat in their own beds. It was as though this gentle but tortured land had not quite suffered enough already.

From Irkutsk, I was soon at Lake Baikal, the emotional heartland of Siberia. A sacred place, people said; sacred to the Buryats, the local indigenous people. I recall sitting in a giant quilted coat, with Russian friends, in the back of a van, heading through sunny snowfields in the direction of Olkhon island, asking the obvious question: "Why is it so bloody cold?" What kind of impiety had been committed (I might have added), to prompt Buryat gods to start freeze-drying an entire continent? A regal Russian friend called Natasha began to chuckle. "Well funny you should mention it ..."
Things did sound bad. Olkhon island, at the best of times, was parched, bitter and haunted by spirits of the past. It was surrounded by white shifting ice in winter, black storm-blasted waters in summer. Buryat shamans had regarded its rocks as holy since their formation, and geologically speaking, this meant something: at 25 million years old, Baikal was a thousand times older than the typical fresh-water lake. Old enough – I reckoned – to have spawned whole nations of fulminating spirits.
Natasha added: "The shamans wanted nothing built on Olkhon within sight of the shamanic rocks. So, of course, the Communists built the village of Khuzhir right there ..."

With our boxes of food and tins and bottles, we resembled hippies driving to an Arctic Glastonbury. In front sat Olga, a polar bear of a woman, who kept asking when I intended to pour my first vodka-libation to the gods of the lake, ie to have a drink. Beside me was Natasha who, along with her elf-like husband, Nikita, had taken on the responsibility (she laughed, sadly) of keeping Olkhon alive.

Which was another reason for me to be here. One of Natasha's big ideas was to bring in foreign tourists. "They can enjoy Siberian nature at its most beautiful. The island ... the lake ... the water ..."
"In this weather?"

"But the air on Olkhon is so pure. And when the temperature rises to minus 20, you know, it can feel like spring."

At petrol-pumps in the lakeside village of Yelantsy, talk, again, was of thermometers. The attendant, ear-flaps down, griped that his had registered 50 below in the morning. That sounded downright dangerous. In search of reassurance, before crossing the ice to the island, we dropped in at the home of the regional shaman: one Valentin Vladimirovich, locally celebrated for a birth-defect: an auspicious cleft thumb. What could he advise us of Siberia's current woes?

"Lots," Vladimir roared, stomping about his tiny home in giant boots. "See this thumb of mine? It means I am marked by the god! I can perform rituals! I help people who are in trouble with the spirits! If a family's sons have been drowned off Olkhon, it means they need to appease the spirits of the water! So I take them to Baikal, and offer milk and prayers ..."

Olkhon, I could already see, was a place that needed delicate handling. Directly to the east of the island, where the lake plunges to appalling depths, the waters are lashed by winds of 100mph or more. Buryat legend spoke of hostile gods residing there, whose sport was to drown fishermen. Foremost of these was Burkhan; then came Doshkin-noyon, god of storms, specialising in stealing the bodies of the dead ... Old superstitious nonsense, of course. Who really believed in shamanism these days, I asked?
"Everyone!" put in the shaman. "It is in our genes! We cannot imagine life without it! Hospitals need
rituals, schools need rituals, families need rituals. Otherwise we get trouble! And bad dreams!"

What about bad weather, I wondered? But suddenly Natasha leapt up in alarm. It was almost dark! We needed to get going if we were to cross Baikal's ice in safety.

It was by moonlight that our van finally creaked a slippery path across the frozen lake. Faults and fissures loomed up in the headlights. Olga had insisted that we drink vodka before crossing, offering one glass to Baikal as we did so. Natasha now admitted that she was afraid. "The god of the lake isn't always so friendly," she half-gasped. Burkhan sends two or three cars plunging through the ice each year.

By the time we reached the island, the moon and the stars were setting the snow aglitter. An hour later ­ at the village of Khuzhir ­ I found myself in a jumble of wooden cottages, each with its chimney, each set in its silver cloud of smoke. The thermometer on the door stood at -40C as I entered Natasha's candle-lit kitchen.

Dinner had a Baikal theme to it: fish soup, fish dumplings and fish cutlets, eaten in a witch's kitchen of smoking stoves, bubbling cauldrons and unidentified wenches with pink cheeks and ice on their lashes. The only interruption came from two men in dark hats who briefly appeared at the door without knocking. "They want to sell us 7,000 fish," sighed Natasha. "What can we do with 7,000 more fish?"
Later, I slept under a sooty ceiling, beside a stove the size of a house, while dogs, or wolves, howled at the moon outside.

Could I have guessed which century this was, when I finally awoke, the next day, to a pale pink dawn? Outside the kitchen window, cocoons of fur enveloped in steam were wandering past. I breakfasted on kasha (buckwheat porridge), while Olga, commanding the table in a fur hat, was using brute force to chop frozen fish.

Over sweet tea, Natasha murmured anxiously: "Rural life is like this everywhere, no? Even in England?" A cat popped up on her lap, knocking over a candle. The Communists built Khuzhir in an age that cared less for appeasing the spirits of nature, than for extracting fish on an industrial scale. Now the village, like much of Siberia, has been marooned by history. Villagers comb hair from their dogs to spin into wool from which to knit their gloves. They have no phones and no running water. Electricity comes every second day only, for a few hours. But right now, full of porridge, I strolled out into bright sunshine, having forgotten, briefly, about the temperature. Within minutes, my hat and scarf were white with hoarfrost and my Italian walking boots had become £100 blocks of ice. I sprinted back to cadge a pair of £3 valenki, the huge Siberian boots of felt. Now I would look like a bear, but my feet were warm.

With mangy, fur-frosted dogs at my heels ("They can smell the good life," Natasha told me later), I walked to a perfect circular bay, defined on both sides by soaring crags. One of these was the shamanic rock: a holy spot for Buryat people since the beginning of time; the spot defiled by the building of Khujir. From beside a solitary pine tree, I stared out across the vastness of Baikal. For a few short weeks in summer, people would lie here on sandy beaches. Now, as I stepped onto the lake's frozen surface, a mysterious underwater twanging reached my ears: the voice of Burkhan, suggesting ­ I fancied ­ prudence.

It was hard to avoid the conclusion, at that place, that Siberia was dead or dying. Baikal, this divinity of such awesome power, seemed to have been caught in a sudden cataclysm. Its waves had been stilled in mid-motion. Its cliffs were clad in thick milky white ice, draped like rows of colossal teeth. A scientist. arriving from another planet, would declare that, yes, life had once existed here ­ millions of years ago.

I supposed it was this threat of extinction that kept Natasha dreaming. She wanted to save her community from petrification. "Yes, we distribute money locally on behalf of charities," she explained, as we crunched through the frost-stricken village later, in search of friends. "We try to create work here for the villagers, by bringing tourists. But it is difficult to change mentalities here. We have to supervise everything. Things always get a little bit lost, a little bit forgotten, a little bit broken. People are born pessimistic in these villages."

To me this urbane young mother with her self-deprecating laugh, towering over the village girls, resembled an old-fashioned aristocrat, giving cookery lessons to her villagers. Together we dropped in on a pretty, cheerful woman called Natalia, to taste her preserved mushrooms.

Natalia promptly showed me an underground cellar packed floor-to-ceiling with jars. "Since moving to Olkhon I've had time on my hands," she began gabbling. "So my daughter and I have joined a movement! It is a mix of science and religion. We don't drink, don't eat meat, don't smoke! But we swim in cold water! It's great! We live in harmony with the universe."

There she sat, smiling in her dressing gown, over mushrooms, quibbling with her daughter on theology: a perfect example of end-of-world, Olkhon-induced, spiritual otherness. "Will you come swimming with us tomorrow?" she now asked. "In a hole in the ice? It will help purify your soul."
There were some strange people in this village, but strangest of all were the normal ones. Natasha later led me to the house of the director of the local school, a quiet man with thick, silver hair, named Ivan Ivanovich. In darkness, over home-cooked doughnuts, he told me that the school at Khuzhir had no fewer than 300 pupils. Did these children know, I wondered, that they lived in the coldest inhabited place on earth? "We have no new books, no furniture, no equipment," said Ivan Ivanovich, in a gloomy voice. "The temperature in the sports hall sometimes drops to minus 20. Our electricity supply comes from the fish factory's generator. If that fails then the school pipes will burst and the damage will not be repaired."

Ivan Ivanovich was an educated man, but to survive he still had to go to the mountains to collect hay in summer, to feed his cows, to obtain milk for the children. "You see, if you can survive here," smiled Natasha, "you can survive anywhere."

But were people surviving? I was still not convinced. For the ultimate test, I set out the next morning over the ice of Baikal, in search of Olkhon's lifeblood: fish. Three local teenage boys would guide me. Having just spent 30 minutes on his back in impacted snow to fix his father's truck's radiator, the oldest, Sergei, looked as though he had escaped from the battle for Stalingrad, with uncombed hair and cheeks streaked with grease.

An hour later, standing on ghostly transparent ice beside the truck, miles from shore, I felt scared. A fearful wind was getting up. Burkhan was restless. How could this be safe? But now two of the boys were digging a one-metre-deep hole in the ice. Another was erecting a canvas tent, with what looked like a chimney attached. And yes, minutes later, we were all seated inside the tent, around a glowing, steaming blue hole in the ice, next to a roaring stove. What was more, we were soon pulling up netted omul (the local equivalent to trout) by the dozen. "All hungry?" shouted Sergei, cutting open a fish and sprinkling it with salt and pepper. I anticipated a fry-up.

Wrong! Sergei now threw the fish outside the tent, onto the ice. We would eat it raw - frozen solid - with vodka. The Russians called it raskalotka; I called it Siberian ice-cream. It was pure bounty, granted by the beneficence of the lake.

"For raskalotka, the colder the better," cackled Sergei. His schoolboy eyes refocused on the net, and, with a lump in my throat, I felt that I had glimpsed the true meaning of human resilience. Siberia, even in a winter like this one, would always survive with little heroes like these.


The Facts

Getting there
Jeremy Atiyah flew from Britain to Moscow as a guest of Austrian Airlines (0845 6010948; www.aua.com). Irkutsk is linked by both the Trans-Siberian railway (88 hours) and direct flights (four hours) to Moscow. Return flights from Moscow to Irkutsk with Aeroflot (020-7491 1764; www.aeroflot.com) cost about £120 each way, if booked in the UK, less if booked in Russia. Return air fares from the UK right through to Irkutsk via Moscow usually cost between £450 and £500.


Olkhon Island is about 350km (200 miles), and a five-hour drive, north of the city of Irkutsk. There is no regular transport but lifts can be arranged easily to and from the island. In winter, vehicles drive across the ice; in summer they go on a ferry. For short periods in spring and autumn, when the ice is too thin to carry cars but too thick to permit the ferry, the island is inaccessible.

In Irkutsk, ask about staying with Nikita and Natasha, through the Aqua-Eco travel agency (00 7 3952 201000; aqua@ angara.ru). Nikita and Natasha also have an email which they check two or three times a month (Nikita@ olkhon.irkutsk.ru).

The Seychelles: My honeymoon hell

Picture an idyllic island, full of couples. Now add a single man, Jeremy Atiyah. All he has on his pillow is an orchid. Sad? You bet

Published: 29 September 2001

Help! This is the Seychelles, and I'm surrounded by honeymooning couples. I've never seen so many newly-weds in one place before. All these tax-paying Euro citizens, stretched out quietly on deckchairs. It could be Frankfurt or Strasburg, except for the black kids playing barefoot soccer on the beach at sunset.

No chance of a single man scoring here, though. I'm the only unattached tourist in this whole country, other than a guy called Toby, who's got long hair and a goatee beard, and claims to be researching an article for You and Your Wedding.

"You mean that woman's magazine?" I say.
He looks at me strangely. "It's for people who are planning their honeymoons."
First I've heard of it. Anyway, tonight we are both staying at a hotel called the Archipel on the island of Praslin, and all we can see are rock-solid young couples in fashionable swimsuits. None of them has even brought children. That's because everyone is just married (except for Toby and I, who just never had kids).

While Toby is checking the facilities (Jacuzzi in bathroom? Orchid on pillow?), all I want to know is whether the Seychelles is a place where a single man might enjoy himself. What's winding me up is that every time I ask for a drink, the waiter asks if my lady is indisposed, or coming later.
"What lady?" I ask.

In fact I'm feeling right off honeymoons. Falling in love can seem so soppy. How about work and business, I want to say. Huh? How about money, then? Not that these islands are a place where you would invest your pension. The local currency is falling into a black hole. The Seychellois economy runs at the speed of a giant tortoise. The two main islands Mahe and Praslin, with their forested hills, look a bit like Hong Kong, circa 1800 (ie, with no people and no money).

So what am I doing here? It's not even as if I am lusting after anyone else's woman at the moment, except possibly for chocolate-coloured Patrizia, from Sicily, who is on her honeymoon with a Milanese banker called Andrea. Most of the people here seem to be Italians. These two look barely 25 years old.

"Patrizia's just married," Toby points out.
"I know, I know," I retort.
In fact we have observed that Patrizia changes her outfit at least three times a day. Honeymooners! You have to ask yourself – from beside the pool at sunset, over your gin and tonic – whether they are particularly happy people. None of them is talking to (let alone copping off with) anyone except for their own partner. As for the hotel, Toby needs to be reminded that he is supposed to be reviewing it for the readers of You and Your Wedding.

"My room is romantic," I inform him. "Walking along a hillside path, overlooking the moonlit sea, beside endlessly pink, flowering Mozanda trees, I tread on several large copulating snails per night..."
"You sound bitter."
"... then when I get inside my mosquito net, under the spotlights, brushing aside the scattered petals, I get the feeling that a scene from The Joy of Sex is about to be filmed..."

If anyone is bitter round here, it's Toby. He has got the bridal suite, supposedly for professional reasons, though he has no chance of test-driving the facilities, no matter how frequently he walks behind Anita's deckchair during the daylight hours. "But the scattered petals are a nice touch," he says.
"I'm sure."
In short, it doesn't take us long to get bored with places such as this. Which is one good thing about our schedule: it keeps whisking us off to new islands.

But the next morning, from the moment we arrive on sunny Cousine in a private helicopter, I start getting depressed again. It's the same story. This place is going to be too good for me. The whole island of Cousine is being reconverted to the original island habitat, and contains just one extremely luxurious hotel with only four rooms. A five-night stay here – for you and your angel – will cost several thousand pounds.

We meet a South African called Peter, who runs the conservation project.
"We got rid of the foreign species, such as rats and rabbits, in order to re-introduce the original endemic species," he tells us. He is friends with skinks and lesser noddies, and likes Cousine because he can't handle the urban maelstrom of Praslin (population: 6,000).

Lizards are walking over our sandals, and pretty birds called Fairy Terns are flying around our heads. Peter shouts: "I'd take one of those as a wife." It turns out that each Fairy Tern, like a honeymooning Italian, is glued to its partner.

"Yep. There's no music here, no diving, noactivities. Just people doing nothing. It's a place to get out of the fast lane for a while."
"Why are you looking so pissed off?" Toby asks me, later, as we set off on a walk around the island, to inspect the four villas, each with its own huge private garden and private stretch of wild beach. Doves are cooing ostentatiously in the branches. My problem is that I have just conceived a crippling urge to get into the fastest of all fast lanes, in order to marry a trophy wife and bring her to Cousine for a honeymoon.

"But we don't have honeymoon specials here," interrupts Peter, needlessly. "It's a honeymoon for everyone by the time they leave."

Later, I'm relieved to hear that not everyone likes this place. Some customers have said there were too many Fairy Terns. One guy complained of constant bonking on the part of the resident giant tortoises (I don't think he liked the idea of being outclassed by 200-year-old reptiles).

This may be the desert island of your dreams, but the rooms do have CNN and international direct dialling and modems for hooking up your laptop. That's for when you feel the tug of the fast lane.
But Peter is oblivious to all that. He's more interested in a particularly large millipede dropping that he has just found on the step. Oh! And there's a magpie robin, one of the 10 rarest birds in the world. We watch as it attempts to peck the ground, only to be scared away by the threat of a tiny lizard.

So the week goes on. We jump from island to island, looking for paradisiacal happiness. Toby interviews people who have just sworn each other eternal love, and takes notes on their experiences. What else are we supposed to do?

One of the only high moments comes a few days later, after we bump into blonde Larissa and bald Dmitri from Moscow. Oh my God. Larissa has got the best body I have ever seen, while Dmitri, whose neck is very red, has got one of the worst.

"No questions," says Dmitri, thuggishly, pushing Toby out of the way, when asked if the Seychelles is living up to its reputation as the dream honeymoon destination. "We come private trip."

Toby isn't interested in Russian adulterers though, because at that moment a real, live wedding couple are walking up from the beach, sweating and panting in a frock coat and white dress respectively. Their names are Antonio and Maria. Frangipani petals seem to have been scattered over the bride's tresses.

"We're from Bologna," puffs Maria, after Toby has offered them his insincerest congratulations. "No, we don't mind answering questions. We wanted to get married here because... well...". Speechless, they both turn and gesture towards the turquoise sea.
"Because what?"
"Because... e molto romantica," she pants.

Toby is writing all this down, as though he's got the scoop of the century. Oh yes, I say? What's the big deal then? Maria takes a deep breath, before suggesting that we only need see a beach called Anse Lazio on the northern shore of Praslin to find out. I suspect she likes it because its name sounds like a region of Italy.

But off we go, the next morning, in search of the truth. On the map, Anse Lazio doesn't look far, so we hire bikes. But the bikes have sea-salt-encrusted chains, and no gears. The road gets hilly, and we are unfit. Finally there, we are both on the verge of heat-stroke.

"Seems to be lunchtime," I grumble. All the continental honeymooners, who have driven here in expensive rented jeeps, are now packing a beach-side café, eating grilled fish, drinking Coca-Cola and staring into each others' eyes.

We, meanwhile, sit ourselves down on the sand under a casuarina tree, squinting at a number of attractive women bouncing in and out of the surf, which is an electric blue. For some reason, we are both wearing trousers, shirts and uncomfortable hats, while everyone else is in a swimsuit.

"Nice beach," says Toby, biting on a ham sandwich and brushing an ant out of his hair.
"Not bad," I say, looking round the perfectly framed bay. Crabs on high alert are scuttling past my feet. But I have not failed to notice that for every woman in the water, there is exactly one Milanese banker on the beach, sitting beside an empty towel. I'm sorry ­ I now have to say ­ but Anse Lazio really isn't going to do it for me.


Travellers' Guide


Getting there: solo travellers can get to the Seychelles on Air Seychelles or British Airways, with fares for around £600 through discount agents. Jeremy Atiyah travelled as a guest of Elite Vacations (020-8864 9818), which can tailor-make any package to the Seychelles. Prices start from £758 per person, based on two sharing, for five nights at the small, family-owned hotel of Lazare Picault. This includes flights, transfers and accommodation but no meals. The same holiday on Cousine Island starts at £3,147 per person, full-board.

A trip called "Millionaire's Salad" comprises one night on Anonyme, half board, followed by three nights on Alphonse, three nights on Denis and five nights on Fregate, all full board. Apart from the Mahe-Alphonse-Mahe flights, all the rest of the island transfers are by helicopter. Price including flights and transfers, starts from £7,352 per person.

Russia: Yo heave ho on the Volga

What can a man do when his love is unrequited? Take a boat down the Volga. After all, what is a Russian river for but escaping heartache?

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 28 August 2001

It was fleeting summertime by the Volga river, and I was in love with Maria. I was also in Kostroma. It was hard to believe that I had spent a whole week in this old Tsarist town, traipsing overgrown pavements, perspiring under giant skies. And wasn't all this grass growing at a preternatural rate? Perhaps speed was in the nature of Russian herbage, given the certainty that frosts would kill it all within weeks.

The whole of Kostroma, with its ancient, off-colour trading arcades, seemed to have exploded in undergrowth. There beside the brown waters of the Volga, I expected to find horses being saddled up for journeys into Tartary.

Instead, here was Maria, pale and serious. "Of course, I am not planning to spend the rest of my life in this dull little place," she told me. Nor, apparently, was she impressed by the fact that the dynasty of the Romanov Tsars had originated here.

Later she pointed at a low concrete wall overlooking the river. "This is where we usually sit," she sighed. And we sat. There was nothing else to do. So what now? Where could this possibly lead, beyond days, and more days, waking up in an old hotel room with peeling wallpaper, while receptionists downstairs knitted socks and waitresses in the breakfast hall looked affronted when asked to bring coffee? I was in Kostroma. I was in love. But right now I could only hold my head in my hands, listening to thunder and incessant rain, beside a dank skyline of unkempt trees and storm-stained tower blocks.

Maria, too, was losing heart. When I called her the next morning, she gave me several plausible reasons why we could not meet that day. "The Ipatevsky monastery?" she yawned. "Isn't that your kind of thing? Can't you go by yourself? The frescoes are startling." I imagined her hands dropping effortlessly at her side. Her eyes would close in a sceptical smile. She was the most startling thing in Kostroma. Other than suicide. In other words, I only had one choice: to get on to that river, and out of this town, fast.

What was a Russian river for, after all, if not for escaping hopeless loves?

According to Chekhov, the Volga put gloom into people's souls. "Whoever is born on the Volga carries her image through life," added Trotsky. Perhaps, then, the Volga would continue to lash me with images of the beautiful, unobtainable Maria, no matter how far down its length I travelled. I hoped so.

Every day, one saw the boats drifting past, southbound for Astrakhan and Rostov, or northbound for Moscow. And at Kostroma's dilapidated boat station, one afternoon, I found a vessel for Kazan.
"You do whatever you want," said Maria with a fixed smile, her lashes glittering in the sun. "Yes, I'll do whatever I want," I replied, handing my fare to a drunken sailor, securing for myself a private cabin, with a sink and a window. After all: what more than this (I now asked myself) could a man want from life? I would travel to the south, down Europe's longest river. I would submerge my emotional heart within that of Russia itself. Turgenev or Pushkin would have done the same. Probably.

Only later, on deck – after I had watched Maria, clutching her skirts, disappear in a shimmer of gold up the bank and into the trees – did I realise that the atmosphere on the Yakov Sverdlov might be stretching my penance a little too far. Turning round, I got the feeling that I had blundered into a Soviet sanatorium.

Here we were, floating away from the station with a sinister, disembodied voice crackling from the bridge. A mournful silence was about to descend. Just a few old men and women with sandals on their feet and mushrooms of silver hair on their heads were shuffling about. One minute we were in farmland scattered with shacks and rickety wooden houses; the next we would be in forest-choked wilderness stretching to distant green horizons.

Only the safety instructions, pinned to a wall below deck, featuring a man with tousled hair and a stiff upturned collar like a romantic poet, looked interesting. Otherwise, there was nothing to do, except pace the narrow decks, or gloomy corridors occupied by cleaners in turquoise aprons and peroxided hair.

Even the bar was closed, which shocked me. At dinner a polite waitress asked if I wanted tea or coffee with my meal. It was as though we were here to escape, not into drunkenness, but from it. "Please," I begged. "Give me vodka."

So I ate and drank alone, while oil-smooth waters fanned out in silence behind us. The white cupolas of a lonely monastery came gliding by. A tiny rowing boat passed in front. I saw those sandy banks turn golden in the evening sunlight.

Were we, or were we not, sailing through the ruins of a dead empire? From time to time, empty factories came in and out of view, surrounded by cranes rusted into immobility. And yet here on board, pedantic old rules still operated. One announcement spluttered at 8am, telling us to get up. Then came another at 11pm, when the sky was still streaked with polar light, telling us to go to bed.

One morning, from a wooden chair on deck, I tried asking a man in a tracksuit and plastic sandals if he had done this trip before. "Seventeen times," he mumbled, as the boat pulled into one of the locks built along the river. Huge machinery began towering up around us, including weed-clogged ladders and slabs of concrete so mighty that only Soviet Man could have built them. On shore, men stood beside motorcycles with sidecars of Second World War vintage. One old woman in a headscarf with a sickle over one shoulder was walking along the towpath. She was so close she could have stepped on to the boat. "Morning," she said. The old man beside me suddenly sprang into life. "What's the name of this place?" he burst out from his deck chair. "It's been a pleasure!" we all called out, when the lock doors finally opened and the boat began to inch forward.


Kazan, a few hours later, was quietly frying in the sun when the Yakov Sverdlov arrived. I seemed to be the only passenger disembarking. The sultriness of Kostroma, here, had been replaced by a desert heat. I no longer knew where I was. Could a city, 500 miles east of Moscow, be considered a part of Europe? But perhaps it was. Grand 19th-century buildings, with towers and slate roofs, stood on street corners. At night, young people began walking the streets, listening to live music and drinking beer – but the Russian winter would smother even these slight pleasures in a few weeks' time.

Five more days on a boat, or two on a train: that was the choice I faced when considering the next leg of my journey down the river, to Volgograd. Thinking back to the sanatorium, I chose the train.

On board, the next day, I promptly found myself in a compartment with a huge, blond, military man, who was only 23 years old, but wore a loaded gun in a halter strapped round his shoulders.

"Don't worry, I'm an off-duty body-guard," he told me. He was from Ulyanovsk, of all places, now renamed Simbirsk: Lenin's home town, a few more stops down the river. He had been in special forces in the Russian army. "How can I help you?" he kept asking. "You want the window open? You need tea?"

But when the window stuck in its frame, and when the movement of the train had slowed to a gentle bounce, his blond features sagged grey with anxiety. "You see, I was born in Lenin's home town," he kept sighing. "And what can I do about that?" It was as if he were talking about a wayward uncle who had taken to crime. Lenin, for him, was still slightly bigger than Russia. And now, whether Lenin stayed in Red Square, or got buried, or suffered anything else, was a great worry and a responsibility.
No matter. The next day, a family from Dagestan moved in. There was dad (friendly), his 17-year-old daughter Fareeda (attractive) and 15-year-old son Tamerlane (smart). There was also a swarthy man from Azerbaijan who had fallen in love with Fareeda, and who later explained to me how he felt about her. "What do you reckon about that empty compartment down there?" he asked.
"Are you crazy?"

Everyone, it transpired, had spent the previous eight months working in the frozen oilfields of northern Siberia, and now wanted to enjoy a hot summer in the Caucasus. "My sister has set fire to him," Tamerlane explained, as if in sympathy for the Azerbaijani's condition.

We sat around for hours, drinking tea. People kept buying me pieces of cake. We picnicked on strawberries. Tamerlane gave me old Soviet coins in exchange for English ones. Fareeda spent three hours making up her eyelashes and looking dark and beautiful. This was the Russian south.

Rolling across the steppe into Volgograd at dusk, I glimpsed the gigantic statue of Mother Russia from the train, marking the point of the German surrender at Stalingrad on 31 January 1943. We seemed to have entered another, stranger, world. I disembarked under a hot night sky and soon found myself in a magnificent hotel room, a Stalinist palace, with parquet flooring, a ceiling 6m high, and a balcony overlooking the city's central square.

But the strangest thing was to have the place completely to myself. Walking the corridors I met no one. All I could hear from the square, far below, were outbreaks of funereal music. Events unspeakably terrible had once happened in this city. Now it felt as though the Soviet regime lived on; as if this whole hotel ­ or maybe this whole city ­ was no more than a ghost. One could only suppose that my journey down the Volga was coming to some kind of meaningful conclusion.

To Astrakhan there remained another 24 hours, by boat. From deck, on that last day, I would see wide sandbanks and cliffs of loamy soil crumbling into the water. In this heat, it would not have surprised me to see water buffalo breaking the surface. Surely I was coming to the end of Europe now? So it seemed. Astrakhan, to judge by its name and proximity to the Caucasus, promised oriental costumes and a mêlée of peoples and tongues. And on my first night in town, I could almost believe it, to judge by the people carousing, late, by the shores of the Volga. A Middle-Eastern spin had entered the pop music. The local mobsters sat over shashlik and tea under trellises.

From my room, I called Maria in Kostroma, to tell her that I had reached the end of the Volga. "You mean you are still in Russia?" She sounded very far away.
"Of course."
"What have you been doing?"
I told her how I had come 2,000 miles along the river that protected Muscovy, that nourished and inspired the nation, that saved it from fascism...

"I'm glad you are enjoying it," interrupted Maria, with the voice of one who did not intend to be so easily defined. And suddenly, on that hot night, a presentiment of Russian winter came blowing through my heart.

Nafplio: Where the Greeks go to get away from us all

Jeremy Atiyah follows discerning Athenians to escape the hordes in the ancient and elegant port of Nafplio

by Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 13 May 2001

With its faded mansions and balconies covered in flowers, Nafplio (also written Nauplion) is one of the most beautiful towns in mainland Greece: well-to-do Athenians, who come here for weekend breaks, say it themselves. Without the traffic of the capital or the islands' barbarian tourist hordes, this compact, historic port on the north-eastern side of the Peloponnesian peninsula is a classy place to sample Greece in a hurry.

Why go?
Just three hours from Athens by train, bus or car, Nafplio can feasibly be reached within a day from the UK. It is not a beach resort (though it has one small beach, and the beach resorts of Tolo and Kastraki are easily accessible as day trips), which accounts for the relatively up-market nature of the tourists who fill its waterside cafés and shady restaurants.
As the first capital of Greece, for a short time after independence from the Ottomans in the 1820s, it was the seat not only of the parliament but also of the first king of Greece, and it is still dotted with forts, churches and converted mosques. And just a few miles out of town are such stunning sites as ancient Mycenae, and the still-used outdoor ancient theatre of Epidavros. For much of the year day trips by boat are available to islands including Spetses and Idhra.

Why now?
The period before the height of summer ­ when the wild flowers are still blooming on the hillsides but before the waiters have become impossibly tetchy ­ is ideal. June is particularly good ­ the fabulous ancient theatre productions of Epidavros have commenced, and the weather is sunny, but not yet stiflingly hot.

The Mission
Apart from sitting in cafés under giant plane trees and admiring the views over lunch, or walking around the seafront below the cliffs, the delight of Nafplio is that there is little to do.
What you can do, however, is visit the magnificent fortresses of the town. According to Nikos Kazantzakis, in his book Travels in Greece, the Greek fortress "reminds us of that fortified point that we never want to surrender, the last refuge of conscience, self-respect and courage". With this in mind, first catch a boat to the offshore islet in the harbour, from which the Bourtzi fort rises. And then, before sunset, make the epic climb up the 900-odd steps to the top of the Palamidhi Fortress, which commands views for miles over the bay on one side, and the mountains of Arcadia on the other.
Finally, as a morning outing, visit the ruins of the ancient city of Mycenae, with its famous lion-gate, where Clytemnestra slew her husband Agamemnon on his return from Troy. The site, on a high bluff overlooking miles of beautiful fruit orchards, is one of the most striking in Greece. You can get here by catching the 10am bus out from Nafplio (which drops you at the car park directly opposite the entrance to the site), heading back at 1pm.

Remember this
In the summer you must not miss the sensational outdoor performances at the Epidavros theatre, less than an hour from town. Despite being 2,400 years old, the theatre provides near-perfect acoustics for the works of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides, which are performed on Friday and Saturday nights from June to the end of August. You may not know your Agamemnon from your Oedipus, but the atmosphere is unbeatable. Theatre trips are available from agencies in Nafplio.

Where to stay
Numerous hotels fill the streets of the town, nearly all of the characterful family run variety (as opposed to the corporate monstrosities). Prices are not low by Greek standards, but neither are they outrageous considering the quality on offer. Excellent places to stay include the King Othon, at 2 Farmakopoulou (tel: 0752 27585), where comfortable rooms in a grand little setting cost about £40 per night for a double, and the gorgeous Hotel Byron, at 2 Platonos (tel: 0752 22351, email: byronhotel@otenet.gr), which has views and a delightful terrace, and where a double is about £35 per night. I paid £20 a night for a single room at the clean but undistinguished Hotel Acropol, 9 Vas Olgas (tel: 0752 27796).
The cheapest accommodation is available from a group of pensions called Acronafplia, based at 6 Ayiou Spyridhonos (tel: 0752 24481), where some rooms cost just £12.

What to buy
The usual kitsch. Statues of Greek gods, replica ancient urns, replica icons and CDs featuring "best-loved" Greek traditional songs.

Eating out
As you walk the streets of this town, they seem at times to be one continuous mass of tavernas and bars with outdoor seating, especially around the central square, Platia Syndagmatos, and the main street, Staikopoulo. But given the fact that the majority of the tourists in Nafplio are Athenians, the food is a cut above the moussaka-and-chips of the standard Greek holiday resort. There are distinct areas: for a trendier and more sophisticated ambience, try any of the cafés on the seafront street Bouboulinas.
Inland, the tavernas are cheaper and more rustic: try Mikra on Vas Olgas next to the Hotel Acropol, where the stuffed peppers and fried calamares are excellent, or Byzantio, on 15 Vas Alexandrou, billing itself as a Serbian taverna. The only place I could find without an English menu (a sure sign of quality) was Epi Skinis, at 19 Amalias, where an excellent meal in a thespian atmosphere cost me £5.

Getting about
In town you need only to walk. For exploring the countryside round Nafplio, you can either rent a car (there is a competitive car-rental market in the town), or you can rely on local trains, or the easy-to-find buses. Mycenae and Epidavros are about an hour away.

Getting there
Prices for the flight between the UK and Athens vary according to season. I paid £101 for a ticket from Luton with easyJet (tel: 0870 600 0000, www. easyjet.com). Several airlines operate scheduled flights between the UK and Athens, including British Airways (tel: 0345 222111) and Olympic Airways (tel: 020-7409 3400). Although these do not attempt to challenge easyJet on price, they can usually offer better availability. Charter flights also operate into Athens from all the major UK airports. Off-season occasionally produces fares of less than £100; in peak season (mid-July to the end of August), you are unlikely to pay much less than £200.
For transport from Athens to Nafplio, you can take the very comfortable and scenic train ride from the Stathmos Peloponnissou. There are just two direct departures daily, it takes three hours and, at £3 a ticket, is an absurd bargain. Buses (also taking three hours) depart from the Kifissou terminal in Athens (bus 51 from Omonia).

Further information
I took the Rough Guide to Greece, the longest-standing guide of that series. The local tourist office in town at 25 March St (tel: 0752 24444) is reasonably helpful. In the UK, Greece has an official tourist office at 4 Conduit St, London W1R 0DJ (tel: 020-7734 5997).

Visas from Russia with luck

by Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 12 May 2001

Just seen a cheap, last-minute airfare advertised for Moscow or St Petersburg? Fancy a bit of impromptu driving in the Russian outback? Stopping off, maybe, at some of those more obscure places that nobody ever seems to go to?

Good idea. Apart, that is, from the fact that you'll need a tourist visa. Which is where the obstacles begin to arise. Because before you risk spending all that money on your ticket, you'll have to find an organisation (a hotel, say, or a tour operator) inside the country that can sponsor your presence there. And to get this so-called "visa-support", you'll need to book and pay for your accommodation ­ for every night ­ in advance.

To get that tourist visa you'll now need to take the evidence of your confirmed bookings to the Consulate in Notting Hill, west London, and probably stand in a long queue (unless you can get there by 9am sharp, on a day which isn't a Wednesday or a holiday in Russia).

By which time, that last-minute flight will probably have sold out long ago. And anyway, you'll still have another five days to wait before you can collect your visa. Well, either that, or pay some exorbitant amount, upwards of £100, to have it issued on the same day.

So you'll probably go to Istanbul instead, and Russia will lose another tourist.
How do you get round the rules? Can you travel independently in Russia without sticking to a pre-planned itinerary, and if so, how?

I recently went to some lengths to find out if it could be done (experiencing nearly three months of Siberian winter in the process), and am pleased to report that independent travel in Russia is ­ just about ­ beginning to take off.

Whichever way you plan to go, you'll still need to get your "visa support", and to take this to your local Russian consulate. But the good news is that this visa support is getting easier to obtain. Evidence of confirmed bookings is not required. I found a Moscow travel agency over the internet offering visa support for $70 (less than £50), which I paid by credit card. This agency obtained official approval from the relevant government ministry, and telexed it to the Russian Consulate in London. To my amazement, I was promptly issued with a three-month visa valid for the entire country.

The key was to have applied for a "business" visa. Tourist visas require evidence of prior bookings. Business visas (which can last up to a year) do not.

What you will want to know is whether this is illegal. Is pretending to be a businessman or woman a crime in Russia? Are you liable to be fined or arrested upon entry into the country? According to people like Neil McGowan, a Moscow resident and founder of specialist tour company The Russia Experience, these business visas are indeed of dubious legality.

"The agencies tell the ministry that they have taken care of your accommodation and travel for the duration of your stay, which they have not," he told me. "I've known people chucked out for using fake paperwork, though normally the application is blocked at the visa-issue stage. The comeback is more serious for the issuing company than for the recipient."

But according to an organisation called Visa to Russia (020 7229 1412), based in London, which specialises in issuing visa-support to travellers (for large fees), the Russians themselves don't know if it is illegal or not.

The important thing, the company explained, is that you can be construed as a potential businessman or woman. That is to say, in travelling through the country (even as a tourist), you are effectively, if unwittingly, scouring Russia for business opportunities. Other companies issuing "visa support" from inside Russia told me that the limit of their responsibility was to be liable for any trouble that the travellers (whom they had sponsored) might cause while in the country.

In my case, at no time during the visa application process or during my stay, did anyone ask me the nature of my "business" in Russia. While there I bought my own train tickets, booked my own flights, turned up unannounced at hotels, even rented a flat ­ in short, I did all the things that travellers or tourists might do in any normal country in the world.

Which is not to say Russia is or will be a "normal" country for tourism any time soon. Travellers in most out-of-the-way cities are still rarer than rhododendrons. In many ways it is hard to think of a less tourist-friendly country: for towns other than Moscow and St Petersburg (which are easy to visit on packages), I found guidebooks were inadequate, local information was impossible to come by and very little English was spoken. Hotels could be of abysmal value, flight schedules were sparse, and the food in restaurants across much of the country was revolting.

But set these off against the thrill of being among the first to travel independently in the world's largest and least-explored country, and you will find they are pretty minor inconveniences.

All visitors to Russia require a visa. If booking a package through an operator, you are strongly advised to leave visa formalities with them to deal with. Travelling independently, "visa support" is required from an organisation inside Russia. Jeremy Atiyah used the Maria Agency (maritour@ online.ru) based in Moscow. He paid US$70 for "support" for a three-month double-entry business visa. After your visa support has been sent from Russia to the Consulate in London, you can apply in person at 5 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 4QX. Two photos, a completed application form and £30 is required for five-day processing.

Iran: Beyond the cotton fields and unruly goats

Jeremy Atiyah takes a taxi along the river Euphrates in Syria to the Iraq border

Published: 26 March 2001

How do you find a cab driver willing to take you down the Euphrates? Easy. Go to the Baron Hotel in Aleppo. Hang around next to the wall-map entitled "Antiquités de Syrie". Pay attention to the drawing of the Valley of the Euphrates marked in bold black ink with diagrams of Hittite lions and Roman temples. Then wait to be ambushed by a globular hotel attendant called Abdu.

It worked for me, anyway. "I'm a taxi driver on my days off," was Abdu's gambit. "I've got an icebox in my car." He could recite the names of the sites along the river with such confidence that I accepted without hesitation his proposal to drive me to the Iraqi border for $200 (£140).

Setting off the next morning, Abdu was irrepressible. "Great to get out among the real Bedouin again," he kept exclaiming. "No tourists here!" In an hour we had exchanged the travel agents and lingerie shops of Aleppo for flat desert with houses the colour of dirt and a sun so hot that even the dry mud gleamed. The only things around were sheep and melons. "There you are," said Abdu as we drove past a great crowd of parked scooters and bundled up sheep. "Good people, simple people."
But when we stopped, he soon began calling them cheats and con artists. "And you call these melons ripe!" he was huffing. I suggested that they had raised their prices for the benefit of the foreigner. "My friend," Abdu explained disdainfully, "I am the one they want to cheat. I come from the city, it is plain for all to see."

As the sun climbed we came to the chalky, turquoise waters of Lake Assad, where the Arab citadel of Qalaa'at Al-Jabba sits alone on an outcrop. "You go up," urged Abdu. "I'll mind the car." And he insisted on staying below under a shady vine drinking ice-cold water while I dutifully picked about the hot stones by myself.

There was to be a lot more of that. The next stop, rearing up in the middle of a bare desert, was Rasafah, the ruins of a summer palace once belonging to the Omayyad caliph Hisham. Abdu made a big issue of dropping me at one end of the site, declaring his intention to pick me up later at the other end. "How long do you want? Three hours? Four hours?"

After I had negotiated Abdu down to one hour, I watched him drive off with sudden enthusiasm to a remote tent in the desert, for what I later understood to be some rest and relaxation with the Bedouin girls: leaving me, a speck of living flesh, to survive the white-hot stones of Rasafah alone. When I emerged, frazzled, an hour later, I noticed a small white Peugeot rolling up. A tourist got out. "Hello, I'm Jeremy," I said dourly. An unsmiling man in dark glasses walked forward and shook my hand. "I'm French," he said, and walked off.

Abdu eventually reappeared, and on we drove: on past the irrigated cotton fields, the dead dogs, the unruly goats, the dust clouds, the men sitting in shadows, the brown children splashing in brown canals. And past all the Bedouin hitch-hikers.

The rules concerning hitch-hikers are as follows. If it's a man, accelerate past with annoyance. If a woman, screech to a halt and reverse at great speed to pick her up. "We're from the city," Abdu would boast into the rear-view mirror, gesturing between himself and the foreigner. And the women would laugh coyly as they rearranged their veils.

Later, at the site of the ancient fortress of Halabiyya, built by Queen Zenobia, who once ruled Palmyra, we stopped for tea with a Bedouin family right on the river front, with the sun disappearing behind craggy hills to the west. Women squatted about, wringing out clothes, kneading dough and brewing tea, while Abdu lounged regally on a mat, making pronouncements about cars and money and big-city affairs. It transpired afterwards that he had been discussing ­ for purely academic purposes ­ the price for a Bedouin girl's hand in marriage: $4,000.

Away from the family, Halabiyya was a sinister place. Boulders with long angular shadows leered down on the river front; two fortified walls climbed up in giant steps to a desolate citadel at the top of the hill. I was scrabbling my way up the rocky slope when what should I behold down below but a white Peugeot. I scrabbled faster. The shy Frenchman, having caught sight of our car, drove off at speed.

At dusk we finally arrived at Deir es Zur. Minuscule donkeys trotted past in fast motion, some disguised as huge panniers of mint on legs, others loaded with large ladies in purple cotton, riding side-saddle. When we arrived at the very dark little town centre, there seemed to be only one hotel and one restaurant, both of which the Frenchman had already bagged.

The next morning it was on to the Iraqi frontier. We forked away from the irrigated area, and found ourselves in a featureless desert. But there, on a cliff-top, overlooking the river, was the vast site of Doura Europus, now guarded by one gloomy Bedouin with a motor-scooter and a shotgun. As Abdu noted with piteous contempt, the ancient shotgun looked as though it had been discarded by Lawrence of Arabia.

Behind me was crumbling desert; before me, 90ft below, were blue sparkly waters, green islands, sand banks, wheeling birds and grasses rippling in the breeze. Only one noise could have distracted me from the beautiful Euphrates at that moment: the whirr of an approaching white Peugeot. When I heard it, I nodded to Abdu. It was time to get moving again. Next stop: the Iraqi border.