HOP SCOTCH!

Nivedita Choudhary got her fill of great Scottish produce and traversed its picturesque straths and lochs, but didn't get a glimpse of Nessie, alas!

HE SCOTTISH Highlands offer the best of all worlds. For peace and quiet, you can't beat the wide-open spaces of the Cairngorm National Park and Sutherland. If you want some action – be it retail or adventure – the capital city of Inverness offers shopping, dining and clubbing experiences to rival any of Scotland's major hubs. From ancient cairns, standing stones and iron-age fortresses to romantic castles, bloody battlefields and clan histories, there is something for all ages to marvel.
    We left our hotel in Edinburgh early in the morning and made our way to the office of our tour company on the High Street. I had earlier booked a five-day Highland expedition with the company. Most of the people who would be travelling with us had arrived and were raring to go. It was a motley group comprising people from Colombia, Hong Kong, Australia, Germany, Russia and even Wales! Our guide-cumdriver Donald was a cheerful and enthusiastic fellow who carted our heavy suitcases and loaded them at the back of the bus.
    The bus went past the beautiful buildings of Edinburgh and over the Forth Road Bridge, which spans the Firth of Forth and connects Edinburgh to Fife. Our first stop was Dunkeld, a lovely village of largely whitewashed shops, cottages and hotels near Perth. We made our way to the fine cathedral, which has a superb setting on the north bank of the River Tay and must surely be one of the most beautifully sited cathedrals in the country. Half of it is still in use as a church, the rest is in ruins. The oldest part of the original church is the choir, completed in 1350.
    In the turbulent history of Scotland, Dunkeld Cathedral suffered desecration and devastation twice. Following the Reformation in the 1560s, the Privy Council issued instructions to local lairds to destroy 'images of idolatry'. They interpreted this order as an excuse for widespread destruction and caused much damage to the cathedral. The structure was again burnt during the Battle of Dunkeld in 1689.
    The adjoining village of Birnam lies just across the bridge from Dunkeld. Birnam is best known for its Shakespearean associations where, in the play Macbeth, the moving of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, 12 miles to the south-east, heralded the death of Macbeth.
    The Cairngorms National Park is an outstanding location for exploring the rich fabric of the Highlands. The mountains that have shaped the people, culture, natural heritage, scenery and character of the area dominate the national park and give it its name. We were treated to breathtaking views of ancient pine forests, lochs, rivers and moorlands as the bus whizzed past some of the best wildlife habitats in the UK.
    Nestled in the straths and glens, tucked away in the forests or busy thoroughfares, the towns and villages in the area each have their own character and identity. There are traditional distilleries where we learnt the secrets of Scotland's national tipple and special centres where we got up close and personal with exotic creatures such as reindeer, snow monkeys and wolves. Whether we were indoors or outdoors, we were never be short of something to do!
    The Cairngorms is a natural larder. Fresh salmon and trout from the Spey and the Dee, venison from the many Red Deer that roam the hills and locally-reared lamb make it a paradise for foodies. Boats from the nearby Moray Firth deliver the freshest seafood – juicy scallops and fat mussels, lobster, langoustine, prawns and an impressive range of fish. The peaty soil produces peerless soft fruits – not just world-renowned Scottish raspberries, but strawberries, blackberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants!
    When eating out, we asked the restaurant staff where the food came from. By choosing local options where available, we not only got a real flavour of the Cairngorms but also supported local food producers.
    The clean, bracing Cairngorms air made us ravenous. We stopped for a quick bite at Loch Insh, which is popular with windsurfing and sailing enthusiasts. The restaurant was teeming with people and many of them had come on cycles. The national park has plenty of quiet country roads and there are opportunities for every kind of cycling – a gentle family ride or tough and punishing routes on tarmac, cycle path, tracks and trails.
    We then made our way to Loch Ness, famous the world over for its elusive resident. The loch itself is Scotland's largest and it is more than 600 ft deep for much of its 23-mile length. The reporting of something unexpected in the lake began to interest the world's media in the 1930s and it's been an attraction for tourists, explorers and Nessie hunters ever since.
    We stopped at Dores, a hamlet on the edge of the Loch. Dores boasts a pub, a few houses... and that's it. If you are looking for nightlife or even a shop, forget it. But sipping latte, we marvelled at our magnificent surroundings.
    Being in the centre of the Great Glen, Loch Ness and its camerashy monster draw their fair share of summer visitors, with the two main visitor centres being Urquhart Castle and the village of Drumnadrochit. However, we were glad that we had stopped at the quiet Dores instead of the more touristy Drumnadrochit.
    Our final destination was Inverness, where we halted for the night. Located at the top of the Great Glen, the city boasts a host of historic buildings in the Old Town to appreciate while we shopped. We enjoyed a pleasant stroll along the lovely riverside before returning to our delightful B&B. The owners were extremely friendly and helpful and we indulged in some craic – Gaelic for chat and light-hearted conversation.
    Few places in the world offer such a wealth and diversity of natural beauty and attractions as the Scottish Highlands. I was a long way off from my home in Leicester, but the combined rewards of beauty, peace and, above all, quiet, far outweighed any concerns over the length of the journey back home!

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WHITE RAJAHS’ LAND

Hugh & Colleen Gantzer discovered that Sarawak is an amazing example of enlightened rule by one British family

FROM the moment we first drove through green and watered Kuching, we felt it. Harmony, sufficiency, a palpable blitheness of spirit as if all the abrasive edges had been smoothed down and meshed together seamlessly. And when we looked down from the seventh floor window of our hotel, we saw the conical roof of a pagoda-like restaurant at the edge of the slow flow of the Sarawak river. On the other side, nestling among spreading Malaysian trees, was a fishing village. It was a very idyllic and serenely peaceful scene.
    But it had not always been so. Surging down that river, pouring out of those forested villages, marauders had once spread: pirates, headhunters, cannibals and warring tribes. Desperate, the beleaguered governor had turned to an Englishman, a young man trained by the East India Company: James Brooke.
    If Brooke could restore law and order in this fertile land called Sarawak, he would gift him a sizeable chunk of it. Brooke prevailed, the Governor kept his promise and, later, made Brooke a Rajah.
    The White Rajhas of Sarawak ruled their kingdom for three generations till Rajah Vyner Brooke felt that a personal Asian kingdom owned by an English family was an anachronism. He abdicated in 1946 and the tsunami of the great freedom movement swept over the land.
    But the Brookes' even-handed treatment of all communities has left a lasting impact on Sarawak. In a pedestrian Mall there is a polished brass plaque saying that Rajah Vyner had renamed it India Street because a large number of shops on it were owned by traders from the sub-continent. A spice merchant told us that he was a Malaysian Tamil. A young vendor cooked adaptations of Kerala's appams using Malaysia's popular peanut paste. The maternal grandfather of one of the Malay Muslim tourism officials was a Sikh wearing the five Ks.
    The tribal people, too, had been particularly happy with the Brookes. While curbing their more violent customs, the White Rajahs had allowed them to retain their customs and traditions. In the Sarakraf Pavilion we saw tribal artisans weaving, carving and offering native cuisine: tapioca, chicken and rice baked on an open fire in a hollowed out bamboo.
    We were even entertained by a man playing on a traditional guitar called a sape, during an evening cruise on the river. High-rises and fishing villages, the Brooke Dockyard, and the Brooke's Astana manor which is now the residence of the governor, co-existed as if such crosscultural nodes were natural partners in Kuching's tolerantly blurred timelines.
    The Brookes, however, had not frozen Sarawak in its tribal past. In the Sarawak Museum we learnt that they had persuaded Charles Darwin's colleague, Alfred Wallace, to set up his superbly-mounted exhibits. So, the Theory of Evolution and a knowledge of English came early to the people of Kuching. In the same museum we also learnt of another evolutionary development. One of the Brookes had persuaded a former shell collecting company to prospect for oil in Sarawak and that black-gold still flows out of its wells. The petrochemical giant, however, retained the emblem of its first venture: Shell.
    We had now begun to accept the effortless age-bridging culture of Kuching. In the superb Sarawak Cultural Village we visited the re-created homes of various ethnic communities in their authentic settings, became part of their traditional festivities, even learnt how to fire a blowpipe : it calls for a very slight puff of breath. Malaysian blow-pipes are considered to be such lethal weapons that their import into neighbouring Singapore is banned!
    Much of the happily tolerant, unityin-diversity ethos, could be sustained by a deep-seated well-spring of belief. We visited two temples rich with gold icons against striking, scarlet, backgrounds. These were shrines of a very ancient faith: Taoism. This religion seeks harmony in all things: a balance of darkness and light, good and evil, active and passive.
    Sheng Fui and I Ching are disciplines seeking to tap into this essential flow of harmony: or so a Taoist fellow guest in our hotel explained to us. And then he added: "Look at the cat. It moves effortlessly with the flow of nature. Even when it is angered, its body is like a battery drawing power: back arched, hairs erect, and then, quick as a wink, it leaps out of danger. "
    Some people said that the large cat statues in the roundabouts, and Kuching's Cat Museum, were Public Relations gambits. Possibly. But it could be more significant than that. There is so much pervasive harmony in Kuching that when we had to fly out, our hearts ached.
    Even now, sitting in our cottage in the high oak woods of the Himalayas, we feel nostalgic about the warmly reassuring, purring, contentment of Kuching.

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