Ticino is Terrific

A most wonderful trip with friends in southern Switzerland
By Tom Cook, with John Henderson

Europe for Americans often means a mix of the familiar and the fairy tale. We recognize most foods, architecture, religion, and landscapes here, but somehow at the source they feel slightly dreamlike. We savor experiences as if we had tasted them once as appetizers in the U.S., and now have the chance to indulge in the whole meal. 

The “menu” on this trip included the cleanliness and order of the Swiss, alongside the style and Catholicism of Italy. This is Ticino, the southernmost of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, and the only one where Italian is the official language. The region includes clear streams, gorgeous lakes, steep hills, and snow-topped mountains.

We had local hosts. This arrangement often produces the best of all possible travel results. Going where you know people means eating at the hidden-away café, taking the road with no English sign, or understanding the invisible nuance. In our case, Arnoldo and Elena, who live in the little valley of Maggia, near Locarno, choose hiking trails and bike paths for us.

A special highlight was exploring historic stone houses in the mountains. We poked around restored villages that perfectly reflect the place they occupy, being made of the same rock that defines the alps behind them. Some nights we slept at high elevation in stone cabins known as “rifugio” or “rustico.”

Since the late 18th century, generations of Elena’s family used these tight, tidy structures while grazing cows and making cheese at more than 2,000 meters above sea level.

Recently a village and state effort converted some of the cabins to huts for hikers. After long days of ridge walking with backpacks, we enjoyed hot showers and solar-powered lighting, marveling at the European priorities suggested by this proud act of preservation.

Pleasure seemed especially abundant on this trip because all of us are old friends who have shared much in life. By now both good and bad events are sources of easy conversation. We discussed work, children, purpose, and even the end of life. For whatever reason, a happy, transcendent mood blossomed and our hearts were full.

Lingering over long breakfasts of fresh bread, jams, cheese, fruit, yogurt, and good coffee, we solved in our minds many of the world’s issues. Bicycling and walking gave us time to consider our views, both outer and inner.

We ate our best dinners in what locals call grottos—small, outdoor restaurants that serve traditional meals of gnocchi or polenta. In one, the chef came out in mock protest at our ordering a cheese plate before dinner, and not after. “This is a catastrophe,” he joked about this American habit. None of us felt that the backwards appetizer took anything away from the very fresh trout, pasta, and wonderful sauces that followed.

One day we took a boat to Isole di Brissago, an ideally sited small island in Lake Maggiore that was developed as a private botanical garden in the late 19th century. Now it is a public park with a diverse and showy collection of plants from around the world, including some special hydrangea, cypress knees, and a shady fern and pine tree collection.

Another time, three of us walked down a nearby road to a grand viewpoint. Along the way we saw a painted crest and a plaque dated 1942. Later we learned that this road, along with several other paths, were built by Polish refugees. Thinking about the war spurred us to ask our hosts many questions. Some still have no answers. People here in neutral Switzerland, said Arnoldo, wondered about sealed boxcars coming up from Italy in the middle of the night. These trains passed through the Gotthard Rail tunnel on their way to Germany. Sometimes moans could be heard from inside the cars.

During the final three days of our stay we conquered a three-day trek that ranks among our most breathtaking and challenging walks ever. The trail is known in Italian as the “Via Alta.” Its first section, traveling north, follows a ridge line from above Locarno. Our day began early, parking Arnoldo’s car at a friends’ office, crossing the street, getting on a funicular, transferring to a high-altitude tram and then chair lift, and finally hiking off into mountains. Where else in the world but Switzerland can you do that?

We climbed up, down, and around four peaks, taking in gorgeous views that stretched to the south end of Lake Maggiore in Italy, Monte Rosa to the west, and the Finsteraarhorn above Bern. Nine kilometers took us nine hours. The altitude was lower than other parts of the Alps, or the mountains of the Western US, but we felt it.

Near the end of that day our focus was sharpened by several no-kidding clambers. Swifts buzzed past us and threads of river flowed way below us, either side of the knife edge. It was a relief to finally arrive at Refugio Alpe Masnèe, where we could dream about our good fortune as the Swiss and Ticinese flags flapped in the night wind.

We descended. There was a mountain lake, countless striking outlooks, and even glimpses of helicopters delivering building materials to other cabins under renovation. Arnoldo described the pilots’ ability to place a beam or a picnic table within inches of where they were needed. As we approached their town, the well-used path became a marvel of stone steps that must have been constructed hundreds of years ago.

On the hillside a few hundred meters above their house sat a small chapel. We took in a final set of views. Throughout the hike we had been intrigued to find giant crosses on mountaintops, and several kinds of religious images in unlikely places. Here we found a trinity of faces, sharing four eyes, that seemed to us particularly odd.

We were sad to leave Ticino. This lovely corner of the world had stretched and delighted us. For everything that contributed to this wonderful week, from the perfect weather to the generous hosts to the grappa di pino after dinner, we felt grateful, grateful, grateful!

Mrauk U is Pretty Coo

Way west of Yangon, way up a river, way high on the ridges are planted hundreds of gorgeous pagodas that comprise what’s left of the proud Rakhine Empire. Mrauk U, the ancient capital, lorded over a wide area between the 15^th to 18^th centuries. The port city was one of Asia’s richest, receiving many foreign traders.

This past weekend three of us checked out the remains. We knew it was probably a good time to go to Mrauk U but we didn’t know how good. May Day and a full moon meant several festivals were going on. Carnivals! Boat races! Wrestling matches!

Even en route we could see we had done the right thing. We chugged upstream from Sittwe for five hours along an increasingly enchanted waterway. As the light dimmed and the river narrowed, new colors and subtle movements emerged. Our mental baggage fell overboard.

One friend brought enough camera equipment for all three of us. In fact we needed all three to schlep it up the nearest ridge for our first sunrise. We climbed in the half daylight without knowing exactly what we would find on top, but feeling confident that at that hour anything we saw would be dazzling.

All morning the kingdom’s former grandeur trumpeted from the hilltops. Spires and golden umbrellas atop the stupas glanced down at the town to remind foreign tourists and local shoppers alike of Mrauk U’s gone-by splendor.

Later, a horse cart driver took us to the town’s outskirts to see some larger temples, including the one known as the Temple of 90,000 Buddha Images. Only serious kingdoms build on that scale. At its height the empire controlled half of today's Bangladesh, and half of lower Myanmar, including all of Rakhine (aka Arakan) State.

Now the Rakhine people are waiting for their turn to come around again. It may be a while. Where the former palace stood are several square blocks of vacant ground. We knew some of the history but you can never know enough in a place where past glories conflict with present politics. It was fun to make up our own theories and then try them out on the locals, who are famous for wanting to quarrel. Nobody could agree. It’s a good thing they schedule wrestling matches from time to time.

These grappling contests differed most from anything we had seen elsewhere. Competitors scrap in a large outdoor circle until the red-robed referee calls the match. Then they circulate among the crowd, collecting tips in the form of different colored coupons that members of the audience are encouraged to buy as part of their entrance fee.

We slowly understood that such festivals and other commonplace rhythms in Mrauk U are what separates this attraction from a place like Bagan, where workaday life doesn’t really take place. Here, farmers and plumbers and goat herders all mix casually below and between the ancient structures.

Not that things look today anything like the way they looked five centuries ago. Crude archeological restoration has left some of the ruins looking more like fortresses than religious structures. And small Christmas-tree-like decorations on top of many of the temples told us they had been “Burmanized”—a quasi-colonial calling card

from Myanmar’s currently dominant culture that can be found in many of the country’s ethnic areas.

Most of the temples seemed undervisited, giving us the chance to park and focus and make pictures. The best images here were captured by Charlotte O’Sullivan. She has a small photography business in Yangon.

For the moment Mrauk U tourism will likely remain quiet. Ethnic conflict and a long boat ride remain big obstacles to luring visitors away from Myanmar's more well-known sites. Plans for an airport are on the drawing board but likely years away. We thought our timing was great.

Luang Prabang is an Old Pal

Luang Prabang greets you like an old pal. It’s a calming welcome. The notion of “dispelling fear” is even built in to the city’s name.

This visit was my third to Laos’ former capital. I went mostly to see two old pals who had just moved there after 24 years in Phnom Penh. They didn’t know many people yet. One guy I knew there from a previous trip met us for coffee one morning; it was funny to be the outsider, introducing two neighbors.

We talked about recent changes to the town. On the surface there weren’t many. But of course the surface is protected by UNESCO World Heritage Site rules. Among the criteria for Luang Prabang’s 1995 designation as a heritage site was its “exceptional fusion of Lao traditional architecture and 19th and 20th century European colonial style buildings.” Buildings must be painted certain colors; new construction must conform to certain styles, heights, and techniques; and signage must be chiefly written in Lao.

This last regulation appears to have been diluted in the case of “FOR SALE” signs, which show up more frequently than I recall from previous visits. Such ads generally are dominated by Chinese or Vietnamese script.

A Lao guy struck up a conversation as we were walking around town. I asked him if he had ever traveled. He said his only journey outside Laos happened when he was in high school and was selected for a government-sponsored trip to Budapest. “Never to China?” I asked. “Vietnam?”

“I don’t have to go to those places,” he answered. “Those places are coming to me.”

Kayah State is a Land Like None You Know About

Kipling spent a total of only three days in this country but it left a long impression. After first entering Rangoon in 1889 he wrote that “a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon,… a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire…. The golden dome said: "This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about."

Our small group of bicyclists felt something similar this past week on a lovely trip upcountry to Kayah State. None of us had ever been to this smallest of Myanmar’s seven ethnic states that lies along the country’s eastern border. Only recently has the government lifted its formerly strict restrictions about foreigners going there. The area has seen a good deal of fighting during the past several decades.

We began in Shan State and rode south through a fertile valley along a mostly-paved road that was wide enough for one truck. Mysteries upheaved themselves on the horizon. Every few miles, for instance, the people seemed to change costume. Were these the Palaung? The Pa’O? Perhaps the Karenni (who, like many of the groups here, go by more than one name)? Everyone was bundled up like we were—cold morning temperatures meant we started riding each day in long sleeves and full-fingered gloves. Their headgear came in as many different colors as our helmets, depending on tribe or marriage or probably many categories that would never occur to me.

Limestone bulged out of the valley in bunches the size of several trees. Towns seemed to form around the oddest-shaped rock pitches, many of which were topped with small pagodas whose temple bells tinkled and flashed at sunset. When we learned that our first night’s hotel only switched on the electricity after 7pm, we climbed to the rooftop and delighted in the shapes surrounding us that were “neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire.”

The next morning, we were greeted as we walked around town by another fine shrine, captured in this great photo by Lisa O’Donnell. Later, as we rode from Shan State to Kayah State, Roman Catholic churches began to pop up. Italian priests in the 19th century had converted many animists. Not long after passing a massive cathedral, we came across a small patch of open ground that was peppered with tall poles. In this spot, those who worship natural objects hold their annual reading-the-chicken-bones ritual. I wondered how many of the local people hedged their bets and showed up at both venues.

A local fellow explained these ceremonies to us. We had noticed him following us on a motorcycle

throughout the third day. He hung back, always in view but never passing. By this time we had reached Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State. Our presence had been noted as we circled the city and followed the old railroad line that carries a four-car passenger train once a day in each direction between Kayah State and Shan State. It felt a little strange to have a minder, but we had heard that the local police were still a bit wary of outsiders. After a while we forgot about our escort. He seemed harmless enough to us, and we must have seemed the same to him, because when we stopped to look at the poles, he caught up and more or less became our guide.

Altogether we rode about 200 miles, to and around Loikaw. Not many roads lead there, so we had to go back the way we came, eventually joining up with the road that goes to Mandalay. It felt a shame to leave. As Kipling wrote, "If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."