Southern India’s Stunning Secret

By Shivya Nath

While Goa and Kerala have the most well known beaches and backwaters in India, today these palm-fringed lagoons teem with travellers – and honeymooners. But sandwiched between them on the country’s west coast, the neighbouring state of Karnataka rewards those who dare to drift from the typical tourist trail. Pristine backwaters lie untouched, dotted with sleepy hamlets, while the seaside beaches and fertile hill country remain equally undiscovered by the masses.

 

From Bangalore, Karnataka’s state capital, a six-hour, 250km journey sees the landscape transform from outlandish rock formations and lush rice paddies to dense wild forests and aromatic coffee, cardamom and pepper plantations – all signs of arrival in Kodagu, Karnataka’s hill country.

 

Better known by its anglicised name of Coorg, Kodagu, a part of the Western Ghats (a mountain range and Unesco World Heritage Site), has culture and cuisine that differs from anywhere else in India. The local Kodava people, believed to be descendants of Alexander the Great’s Indo-Greek soldiers who mingled with the natives, have a distinct warrior-like upbringing: instead of praying with the fires and chants common among Hindus, Kodava rituals have strong war-like elements, including the symbolic use of a sword to chop banana stems during weddings. Legend holds that back in the 1800s, young boys were fed tiger meat in the hope that they would grow up to be ferocious warriors – and men who were brave enough to kill a tiger were given the privilege of growing a unique curled moustache called a galle meesey. The local food is primarily meat-based, unlike in the rest of the country; signature dishes include pandi (pork curry), koli (chicken curry), and bembla (bamboo shoot). Apart from in the homes of locals, Coorg Cuisinette, located in the Stuart Hill area of Coorg’s administrative capital of Madikeri, is one of the few authentic restaurants with these delicacies. 

One of the most experiential ways to discover Kodagu’s culture is through home or farm stays, many of which are located on coffee plantations that were first planted by British colonials in the 18th and 19th Century. Kodagu’s Green Dreams, run by local coffee trader and connoisseur Narendra Habbar, is located on the banks of organic rice paddies and backdropped by the gentle hills of the Western Ghats. The farm stay offers accommodation in handcrafted huts built entirely with naturally and locally sourced materials such as fibreboard roofs, pumpkin lampshades and bamboo. Join Habbar for a plantation tour to track the journey of one of the finest cappuccinos you’ll ever taste, all the way from leaf to cup.

Far from the traffic of many major Indian towns, Kodagu’s terrain is ideal for hiking and cycling. Fields of coffee and pepper stretch all the way to the horizon, occasionally giving way to striking scenes of lush, undulating hills and waterfalls.

 

If the tranquillity of Kodagu’s countryside does not curb the longing for Goa’s beaches or Kerala’s backwaters, the coast of Karnataka, located 192km northwest, will; gentle backwaters serenade sleepy villages on one side, while the Arabian Sea roars fiercely on the other. Mangalore, Karnataka’s main port city, and Kaup (pronounced Kapu in the local Tulu language), one of Karnataka’s coastal towns, are unassuming gateways to the area’s virgin beaches and palm-fringed backwaters. Blue Matsya is a lone, self-catering beach house along an isolated stretch of soft golden sand – a personal beach paradise – with a fisherman’s family for hosts. Ram-anna, the caretaker, often ventures out with his fishing boat into these waters at dawn and returns home with fresh catch such as mackerel every evening, while his wife Sarsu-akka whips up gently spiced fish curries with seasonal veggies and locally grown red rice.

The local communities here depend largely on fishing for their livelihood, and tourism infrastructure is still in its infancy. Even so, the villagers exude hospitality, and despite a language barrier, will walk – or row – kilometres to give you a tour of their land. Hail a tuk-tuk to drive through a utopian stretch of the coast, smelling the aromas of wood fires and homemade curries. At the north end of Kaup beach, Kaup Lighthouse  – manned by generations of local guards since it was built in 1901 – offers panoramic views of the country’s west coast, giving a birds-eye view to Karnataka’s centuries-old traditions and raw natural beauty; a land that is undiscovered by the masses — for now.

Berlin as a Canvas Part 2

By Katie Hammel

El Bocho is one of the most well-known street artists currently working in Berlin. Originally from Frankfurt, he has several highly recognisable motifs around the city. One is Little Lucy, a cat-hating little girl inspired by a 1970s television series of the same name. Little Lucy can be seen all over Berlin, devising ever more inventive ways to kill her cat, including ripping him in two, carving him like a kebab and serving him in a sandwich, drowning him, boiling him in a pot and hanging him with a rope.

Here, Little Lucy has wrapped her cat up in a box, perhaps to give him away.

Little Lucy. (Katie Hammel)

Most of the Little Lucy art is done by paste-up, meaning the artist creates the piece on paper and then affixes it to a wall with paste. Some artists prefer to work this way as it allows them to create intricate works in a safe place and then quickly put it on the streets. The less time an artist has to spend putting his art in the public space, the less chance he’ll be caught by police. Additionally, paste-ups carry a lesser charge than other street art; it is considered littering and is punishable by a lesser fine than graffiti, which can range from 100 euros to two years of jail time.

The work of London-based, Australian-born artist James Cochran, also known as Jimmy C, looks almost impressionistic. His paintings, on canvas and on the street, are made of thousands of tiny dripping dots that – when viewed from farther away – create beautiful human portraits. His work can be seen around the city, but one of the most intriguing is his self-portrait, the Artist’s Tears (pictured). Originally painted on canvas in 2002, it was recreated as street art on Revaler Strasse in 2012 in the Friedrichshain neighbourhood.

The Artist’s Tears. (Katie Hammel)

Revaler Strasse is a popular place for street art. The street and surrounding area make up a former industrial site that built in 1867 as home to the Royal Prussian Railway Workshop (the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk, where German railway carriages went for repair). The neighbourhood was later used by the German Democratic Republic until 1989 as a site for industrial factories. When it was officially decommissioned in 1994, artists moved in and began using the empty buildings and crumbling blank walls as their canvas. The area is now home to the Skalitzers Contemporary Art gallery, which focuses its exhibitions on street art.  

Down the street from Skalitzers on Revaler Strasse, Spanish artist Rallito-X has left his mark with a mural of a grotesque multi-eyed monster with several legs (and a few other extra appendages), painted in 2012 (pictured). The message above the monster, “Greetings from Spain”, reveals the monster to possibly represent the EU financial crisis that began in 2009 when several European countries, including Ireland, Spain, Italy and Greece, hit hard by the global financial slump turned to the EU for bailouts.  

Greetings from Spain. (Katie Hammel)

Mein Lieber Prost’s work (pictured) is more enigmatic. It hides in doorways or high on walls; the faces and characters quietly point and laugh, possibly mocking the passerby who might not even notice. No one knows the Berlin-based artist’s identity, but his simple work, which began popping up as early as 2009, is now so ubiquitous and instantly recognisable that he often doesn’t even sign his name.  

Ubiquitous Prost. (Katie Hammel)

The work of another anonymous artist, Alias, is more complex, both in style and in meaning. Done with stencils, most of his pieces depict solo figures in black, white and grey, with deep reds and blues occasionally used for emphasis. A faceless teenager in a hooded sweatshirt sits cross-legged, another boy rests on a skateboard with his back turned to the viewer. In one of Alias’ recurring images, a small boy sits, looking dejected, on a bomb with a lit fuse. While Alias, who started in 2004, works mostly on the street, he also creates images on found objects like metal scraps and cardboard, some of which are sold at the Open Walls Gallery, a site that commands as much as 600 euros for a piece of graffiti.

Alias' boy. (Katie Hammel)

Over the last 30 years, street art has become a core part of Berlin, as synonymous with the city as the wall that once divided it. The images that decorate the city tell its stories – sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, sometimes controversial and, sometimes, beautiful.  

 

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the location of Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood. This has been fixed.

Berlin as a Canvas Part 1

By Katie Hammel 
 

Art in every corner, as shown here in a courtyard off Rosenthaler Strasse. (Katie Hammel)

The streets of Berlin – and the art that adorns them – have long had a story to tell. From murals that depict the trials of German reunification to paste-ups that comment on current events, the city's graffiti is a record of its history and its people. And many of Berlin’s finest international artists use streets, buildings and public spaces – not canvases – to host their masterpieces. But if you don't know where to look – or don't know what it is you're looking at – it's easy to miss the narratives being told.

When the city was divided between East and West Germany, early street artists like French artist Thierry Noir used the western side of the wall as a place to share political messages and commentary on Berlin and the world at large. Noir is known as one of the first and most prolific of the wall’s artists; he began painting graffiti on the wall in 1984 and now his work is now featured prominently in the East Side Gallery, a 1.3km section of the wall that displays more than 100 murals by artists from 21 countries. The paintings were done in 1990, a year after the city was reunited.

Today, however, the gallery is under threat of demolition to make way for luxury housing and a 14-storey hotel. A 6m stretch was temporarily removed during construction, and the hotel’s developer has asked for 20m of the wall to be removed permanently to accommodate a driveway. For now, however, the wall remains one of Berlin’s most evocative examples of artistic expression.

The East Side Gallery. (Katie Hammel)

After the fall of the wall, artists from West Germany moved to neighbourhoods like Friedrichshain in the former East Berlin, lured by cheaper rents and an abundance of untouched canvases. They covered buildings in political statements and popularised tagging – the art of signing one’s name and expressing one’s identity – after years of being forced to blend in as part of the Communist machine.

Today, street art in Berlin ranges from tiny tags to massive murals, and two of the city’s most famous pieces sit side by side on four-storey buildings along the river in Kreuzberg.

Both pieces were done by the Italian-born artist Blu. The first (pictured here), painted in 2007, has been called both Wall and Brothers. It shows two masked figures; one is upside down and forms an E with his fingers, the other is right side up and forming a W with his. The two men, making the signs for East and West, are trying to rip one another’s masks off. It’s a powerful symbol of the challenges faced by the people of the formerly divided city as they reunited after living side-by-side as strangers for more than 30 years.

Blu's social commentary. (Katie Hammel)

The other piece (also pictured), painted a year later, shows a headless man in a crisp shirt, straightening his tie. On his wrists, gold watches form the chains that shackle him. Painted in 2008, Blu’s commentary on a professional’s enslavement to time, money and materialism speaks to the conditions in Berlin today. Residents worry about rapid gentrification, as housing costs rose more than 30% from 2007 to 2013. Berlin is also fast becoming a major hub for innovation: by the beginning of 2014, there were more than 2,500 start-ups in the city, including the popular music-sharing platform, SoundCloud. 

Another mural by Blu, painted in 2007, encourages similar reflection. Located on the western side of the Oberbaumbrücke Bridge in Kreuzberg (recognisable from the 1998 movie Run, Lola, Run) a pink monster threatens to eat a tiny white figure (pictured here). The pink monster, with its white lifeless eyes, is actually made up of hundreds of tiny pink humans, perhaps illustrating that conformity creates an individuality-killing monster. In a city where residents were once forced to bend to the will of the majority, it’s a sobering reminder that individuality, for so long stifled, is now a freedom to be prized. 

The pink monster. (Katie Hammel)

Though street art remains illegal in Berlin, many building owners have chosen not to fight the inevitable. Rather than wait for their buildings to be tagged, owners sometimes pay artists 300 euros or more to create murals for their properties. Tagging over another artist’s work is considered a great insult, so commissioning a piece is a smart if counterintuitive way for owners to be sure that the art on their building will at least be art that they like.

Stephen King’s Hotel of Horrors Part 2

By Lindsey Galloway

 

Forget the film

Though a classic in its own right, the film adaptation of The Shining – directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson – has long been disparaged by King for not being true to his story’s characters.

The film does not feature any scenes from the Stanley; there was not enough snow in Estes Park at the time to recreate the snowed-in Overlook. The exterior shots instead show the Timberline Lodge in Mt Hood, Oregon. Even so, the Stanley plays the original movie on a constant loop for guests on its own channel 42. 

In 1997, King adapted his book into a mini-series. He shot it on-site at the Stanley Hotel as a tribute to his original muse.

True tragedy

In September 2013, King’ published Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited sequel to The Shining, which follows Jack Torrance’s son Danny, now in his 40s – all the way back to the site of the Overlook. The Stanley Hotel found itself in the spotlight once again.

But the excitement was overshadowed by the devastating floods that struck Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park that same September. The region received more rainfall over two days than it usually sees in an entire year; 11,000 people were evacuated and more than 1,500 homes destroyed. 

Thanks to its elevated location above the valley, the hotel itself suffered relatively minor damage. However, much of the US Highway 36, the main road between Boulder and Estes Park, was washed away, and with it went much of the tourism the town depends during its elk-showcasing fall months, when hundreds of elk descend from the mountains and make their mating calls near prime viewing areas (one of which is the Estes Park golf course).

The town of Estes Park has mostly recovered; most businesses have re-opened, though some have closed completely while others are still working to repair property damage. US Highway 36 also reopened in late November 2013, but construction is expected to continue throughout 2014, causing regular delays until its completion in 2015. The Colorado Department of Transportation has construction updates for those making the drive, and suggests visitors take the more northern US 

Highway 34 or Colorado Highway 7 entrances if possible.

Meanwhile, the Stanley, which is open year-round, has continued to draw visitors from around the country. As part of its effort to attract even more guests, the hotel is offering a special “Doctor Sleep Package” through the end of 2015, including copies of both The Shining and Doctor Sleep and possible upgrades to room 217 by request. Ghost sightings are not guaranteed – but in this hotel, and with one of King’s books in hand, a few scares certainly are.

A New Look For Old Montreal Part 2

By Emily Saladino

 

Fresh, youthful energy spread throughout the area. In 2012, historic square Place d’Armes, which was created as a town square in 1836 and is located two blocks from Rue Saint Paul Ouest, unveiled a C$15 million renovation. The sleekly redesigned plaza now has unadorned benches filled with lunch-breaking locals, 20-somethings on iPads and, of course, travellers – ducking into the Gothic Revival Notre Dame Basilica or taking selfies in front of the 1895 statue of Paul de Chomedey. 

Nouveau Vieux Montreal truly came into its own, though, with the June 2012 debut of arts institution Centre PHI. Located around the corner from Olive + Gourmondo, a few steps from Rue Saint Paul Ouest on Rue Saint Pierre, Centre PHI is a multimedia gallery and event space. It hosts free exhibitions by the likes of Canadian politico Gátean Nadeau and filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, as well as fashion shows, filmmaking master classes, children’s theatre workshops and neighbourhood parties with late-night DJ sets.

 

Now, young artists and entrepreneurs abound in Old Montreal’s sloping streets. Denis Gagnon, an award-winning Canadian fashion designer with a branded Lancôme beauty line, opened a flagship store on Old Montreal’s Rue Saint Paul in 2011. Swell Fellow, a hip boutique selling one-of-a-kind neckwear and carefully curated objects of art – including sculptures made from repurposed parking meters by painter Erik Furer – debuted a few blocks away in April 2013. Four months later Maison Christian Faure opened, bringing perfectly brewed espresso and haute French pastries like macaroons, Bordelais canelé (miniature cakes) and sugar-topped brioche – not to mention cooking classes in both French and English – to Place Royale, the former fur-trading square that dates back to 1892. Guide Vieux-Montreal, a free iPhone app created by SDC, helps locals and travellers alike keep track of the area’s activity. 

More is yet to come. Bonaventure Highway, an elevated eyesore that cuts between Old Montreal and its southwestern neighbour Griffintown, is currently being dismantled. A more bicycle- and pedestrian- friendly roadway will replace it within the next three to four years. Citywide initiatives include the C$8 million, Unesco-approved Promenade Smith project, which will transform a previously desolate area of Griffintown into a public park.

Artist Erik Furer lives in Griffintown now, but he plans to move to Old Montreal. “This is where my business is,” he said, gesturing around his shop. His atelier is one story upstairs. “I want to be here too.”

Stephen King’s Hotel of Horrors Part 1

By Lindsey Galloway

In 1974, famed US horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha lived for a year in Boulder, Colorado. In late October, they spent a night in the mountain resort town of Estes Park, 40 miles northwest of Boulder. They checked into the historic 155-room Stanley Hotel – and found that they were the only guests for one of the last nights of the hotel’s season.

King’s imagination went wild as he wandered the abandoned hallways, ate alone in the grand dining room and talked up the bartender. By the end of the night, he knew he had enough material to start writing his next book.

The Shining, published in 1977, quickly became a horror classic, in no small part due its scarily secluded setting: a snowed-in hotel with a haunted history, hidden away in the Rocky Mountains.

Ghosts of the past
Though King called the hotel in his book The Overlook, the fictional Overlook and the real-life Stanley not only look alike, with sprawling front porches and crisp Georgian architecture, but both were completed in 1909. Founder FO Stanley, who invented one of the era’s best selling steam-powered cars, The Stanley Steamer, in 1897, came to the Rocky Mountains from Massachusetts in 1903 to find treatment for his tuberculosis. He and his wife Flora fell in love with the region and founded the hotel six years later. During its early heyday, the resort hosted celebrities including former US president Theodore Roosevelt, Titanic survivor Molly Brown and Emperor Hirohito of Japan.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the Stanley has retained many of its original features, including the entrance’s sprawling veranda, its founder’s favourite billiard room and the grand staircase that graces the lobby.

The Stanley’s original MacGregor Ballroom, with its raised stage and large windows showcasing expansive mountain views, was reincarnated in the pages of The Shining. Late one night, main character and hotel caretaker Jack Torrance finds himself at a magnificent masked ball attended by 1940s-styled guests – even though he, his wife and son are the hotel’s only inhabitants, and all the roads to the hotel are blocked by snow. 

Apparitions are nothing new for the Stanley’s ballroom. People report seeing the keys on the room’s piano being pressed with no one there, and hearing music fill the space. Hotel historians believe the musician is Flora Stanley herself: she loved the piano and often played it for guests.

Room 217
“It was a perfectly ordinary door, no different from any other door on the first two floors of the hotel,” King wrote. “It was dark gray, halfway down a corridor that ran at right angles to the main second-floor hallway. The numbers on the door looked no different from the house numbers on the Boulder apartment building they had lived in. A 2, a 1, and a 7.”

In the book, the room beyond door 217 turns out to be far from ordinary – it is the site of a gruesome haunting. In real life, it was the room where King stayed.

Long before King’s stay, the room had a history. In 1917, the chief housekeeper Elizabeth Wilson was lighting the hotel’s acetylene lanterns during a storm in case the electricity went out. When she went to light the one in what is now room 217, the lantern exploded, blasting out the floor beneath her feet and sending her falling down to the storey below.

She survived (albeit with two broken ankles). Even so, guests of 217 report her spirit stops by on occasion – usually to tidy things up, sometimes putting stray items away or unpacking a suitcase.

The hauntings, both the fictional and the ostensibly real, hardly deter guests. In fact, room 217 is usually booked months in advance. That said, the fourth floor rooms receive the most reports of unusual activity, from the sounds of children playing in the halls to lights turning off to faces appearing in windows.

Embracing its reputation as one of the United States’ most haunted hotels, the Stanley offers regular 90-minute ghost tours of its most supernatural sites. The hotel even offers a five-hour paranormal investigation, complete with specialized ghost-hunting equipment like EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors, once a month for die-hard ghost hunters.

Lodges Robinson Crusoe Would Love Part 2

By Rooksana Hossenally

West of the Samaná Peninsula, about 200km from El Cabito, I stopped at Natura Cabana, an isolated beachside boutique hotel outside the lively surf town of Cabarete. Originally built as a home in 1996 by Chilean migrants Soledad Sumar and Pablo Garimani, the bungalows evolved into a lodge almost by accident. “My parents’ guests just never wanted to leave,” said Soleded “Lole” Sumar, one of Sumar and Garimani’s four daughters who today run Natura Cabana. “So eventually we made it bigger for them to stay or come back to, and then it slowly became our 10-bungalow hotel.” The stylish rooms are made of highly polished wood and exposed rock, all adorned with bright bedspreads of Indian silks and cottons, and there’s the added bonus of yoga classes every morning and evening, included in the cost of the room.

 

Casa Maravilla, located next door, is owned by Belgian immigrant Marc Bautil and his wife Elvira, who was born in the Philippines and grew up in the US. The highlight of Maravilla is the beautiful multi-storey wooden bohio (a shack made of straw or wood, whose main living area has open sides and a view of the beach), providing a real Robinson Crusoe feel. At night, guests fall asleep to the sound of the ocean waves. “We wanted to provide a different experience that was closer to nature,” Marc said.

 

My next stop was a small hotel in the small village of Tubagua, located about 33km west of Cabarete. Flanked by green, leafy hills and overlooking sugarcane fields toward the turquoise Atlantic, the Tubagua Plantation Eco-Lodge has spectacular views. It also had a charm – and a roster of delicious, home-cooked local food – that made me want to stay for another year, if not a lifetime. Owned by former Canadian journalist and Puerto Plata province’s current Canadian consul Tim Hall, the accommodation features rustic bungalows and one private cottage. Each bungalow room has its own open balcony and a mosquito net. The doors don’t lock (or even close properly), speaking to the safe, familial atmosphere of the bungalow and its openness to the natural world just outside.

Even with the recent boom of small, sustainability-minded hotels, many owners said that most visitors to the Dominican Republic continue to assume that the big resorts are the island’s only accommodation choice. Yet, according to Hall, these “impersonal” structures don’t represent the reality of Dominican. “The reality is so much better than that,” he said. After experiencing some of the country’s most beautiful views, delectable food and the local culture’s warmth, I had to agree.