Bad luck in Berlin takes us on a flashback to southern India.We set off to cross Berlin by bicycle yesterday. A few blocks into our journey, my back tire exploded. Literally.  It sounded like a gunshot.

A few minutes later, at a nearby bike repair shop, we met a fellow customer named Rajiv. He’d come to our rescue with a little German translation and haggling help. Originally from the IT-famed southern Indian city of Bangalore, Rajiv now calls Berlin his home.

We asked him where to find the best Indian food in Berlin. “London,” he joked.

Later that evening, Audrey and I returned to reminiscing, well beyond food, about the time we spent in southern India.  These were the images and experiences – some from a guidebook, others from grace – that we turned over in our memories.

1.  Kathikali Dancing – Kochi (Fort Cochin)
Audrey’s relationship with Kathikali dancers goes way back. Growing up, her family had a Kathikali dancer doll with one of those wobbling heads; it always spooked her.

Although we can be skeptical of ethnic dances served up exclusively to tourists, we enjoyed the Kathikali performance put on by Kerala Kathikali Centre in Fort Cochin.  Proceeds from their performances go toward training new dancers and keeping the tradition alive.  Go early so you can catch the elaborate make-up and pre-show.

2.  Street Cricket – Kochi (Fort Cochin)
The only way to find this: seek out the most unlikely alleyways in the city.  When you hear kids squealing in a courtyard, poke your head in and you may just be invited to a game of street cricket.

Ask for help on how to hold the bat properly. (You can see it did me no good.)3.  Kerala Backwaters Boat Trip – Alleppey
We did not opt for the traditional Kerala Backwater live aboard houseboat tour.  Instead, we arranged a day tour from our guest house in Fort Cochin one day and opted to hire a man with a dugout canoe in Alleppey on another.Our favorite:  the day-trip in a dugout canoe outside of Alleppey. Since we were in a tiny boat, we could get into small canals and get up close to homes and villages along the way. Our canoe captain introduced us to his family.  The mangroves and lilies were so thick that we even got stuck.  To give you a sense of how dire our circumstances, my manpower was required to extricate us from the mangroves and water lilies that had engulfed our boat.

4.  Biryani Festival – Kollam
After emerging from one of the most incredible masala dosas in all of India (Sree Suprabatham Restaurant), we stumbled upon a group of men in a parking lot (isn’t all of India a parking lot?) stirring an enormous tin pot of biryani.

From what we could make out (not a lot of English was spoken here), it was a Muslim holiday and the men were handing out free vegetable biryani to anyone and everyone. They insisted we take a bag.  Tasty and unusual, it featured hints of coconut, star anise and mint.If you don’t happen to be in Kollam on a Muslim holiday that includes free biryani, have no fear, an experience still awaits.  Just head towards the market.  It’s terrific and winding, and the people are outrageously friendly and colorful.

5.  Flower Market – Madurai
In Madurai, the Sri Meenakshi temple gets much of the attention (and rightly so).  In case you wonder where all the flowers and garlands in and around the temple come from, check the flower market on the outskirts of town. Flowers play an important role as offerings in Hindu pujas (prayers) and ceremonies.

Wipe those images of Dutch flower markets from your head.  The Madurai flower market is the antithesis –sensory overload, sweet flowers, trash heaps. Vendors stack flowers, everyone’s negotiating.  It’s fascinating and beautiful in that inimitable Indian fashion.The flower market was actually listed in our Lonely Planet guide, but it has moved to “middle of nowhere outskirts” (yup, that’s it’s official address) Madurai. It took a small village of friendly locals and bus drivers to get us there. So, ask at your guest house or ask early and often how to get there.

6.  Momos and Pav Bhaji in Kodai (Kodaikanal)
Tibetan food and Bombay chaat (snacks) in a southern small Indian hill town? Kodaikanal’s cosmopolitan culinary selection is thanks to the diversity of the student population at the Kodaikanal International School; restaurants know that students like a taste from home.We were in town to check out the town where Audrey’s mother went to elementary school.  Unfortunately, it rained buckets the whole time, so hikes and boat rides were out and eating round-the-clock was in.  We chowed down on momos (Tibetan dumplings) and Bombay street snacks like pav bhaji and sev puri.

7.  Elephant Blessing in Tiruchirappalli (Trichy)
Here’s the great thing about India: if you walk around enough and keep your eyes open, you are quite likely to run into an elephant at some point. (Actually, you could keep your eyes closed and run into an elephant, too.)

We not only found an elephant at the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple, but he was offering blessings to boot! (A few rupees to his owner for the privilege, of course).  It was fun to be blessed, but even more fun to watch kids like these being tickled by the trunk of an elephant.8.  Cows Licking Their Chops in Puducherry (Pondicherry)
It is well known that cows are sacred in India.  What you may not know, however, is that there is often a system at work of shopkeepers and vendors feeding random samosas and food bits to these sacred cows. It’s as if the cows have a routine; they know which vendors have the best snacks and hit them up first. For the vendors, it must be good karma to give food to a sacred animal.So when we ran into cows in Pondicherry licking their chops, we began to wonder who’d just fed them.

9.  Entertain a school group – Mahabalipuram (Mamallapuram)
What do you do when you meet a group of school kids on a trip to the rathas (rock-cut temples) in Mahabalipuram.Pull out the camera and have some fun.  (Truth is you pull out the camera wherever you meet a group of schoolkids in India.).  While the engravings and Krishna’s Butter Ball are worth a quick look, the kids on the field trip stole the show.

10) George Town market – Chennai (Madras)
Audrey lived in Chennai until she was two years old, so her memories of the city are, shall we say, a little vague.

So we paused our temple hopping and paid a visit to the George Town market (behind Fort St. George) and we asked around there to see if anyone remembered her.Unfortunately, no one remembered Audrey, but that didn’t prevent them from offering a smile.

And if you happen to embark on your own scavenger hunt to southern India, we’ll be curious to know what you find.

More than five weeks in Bangladesh? Is there really enough to do there?

– A typical response when we shared our Bangladesh travel plans.

Let’s face it. Reliable independent travel information about Bangladesh doesn’t flow quite as freely as it does for some other nearby countries in Asia.And even when you get in country, information can be hard to come by: ask five people a question and you’re likely to get ten answers.

But persevere and show your curiosity and you’ll find that Bangladesh actually offers more diversity in sights and experiences that you might first expect, from UNESCO pre-Moghul mosques to cycling through tea estates to tracking tigers in mangrove forests. But perhaps more distinct are the human interactions that make visiting Bangladesh such a unique experience.

A dye-drenched rickshaw driver in Dhaka after a wrong turn during the Hindu celebration of Holi.

Next time you wonder what there is to do and see in Bangladesh, take a look at the list below for inspiration. Seek it out, understand that things don’t always go as planned, and enjoy the journey.

Cox’s Bazar Spoiler: We’re prepared for flak from Bangladeshis regarding the fact that Cox’s Bazar does not appear on our list. Cox’s Bazar, home of the longest continuous stretch of beach in the world didn’t make the cut during our visit. We’d spent plenty of time on beaches in Thailand before visiting Bangladesh, and frankly we were having too much fun in the Bangladesh countryside to up and make our way to the beach.

Make your way to old town Dhaka (Puran Dhaka) and Shakari Bazaar for interaction with some of the friendliest and most energetic people in the world. Go early in the morning or on a holiday so that you have a chance to see it all and engage with the crowds before things become too hot or busy. Take a rickshaw ride through the narrow old town streets. Wild, fun, human. Our favorite part of Dhaka by far.

Also recommended is the walking tour of old Dhaka by the Urban Study Group working to protect Dhaka’s historical buildings (ask for Taimur). Our tour happened to coincide with the Hindu holiday of Holi so our walks through the Hindu parts of town were in full festival and color mode. A fulfilling, educational experience all around.

Kids in full color during the Hindu holiday of Holi.

The easiest way to get to the old town is by CNG (compressed natural gas auto rickshaw ) – ask to use the meter. Traffic in Dhaka is horrible, so plan your way around the city wisely or risk spending hours stuck in traffic that may leave you never wanting to exit your hotel again.

Other things to see in Dhaka: hiring a boat at Sadar Ghat boat terminal, Khan Md Mirdha Mosque and Lalbagh Fort, Louis Khan’s Bangladesh parliament building and government complex.
More photos: Dhaka Photo Essay

While the rocket steamer may not be one of the fastest ways to travel, but it is one of the most pleasant. Bangladesh is a country of rivers; you have to travel them to get a feel for the country. The Rocket Steamer is a great way to do this.

The Rocket Steamer: an ironic name for this slow-moving boat.

Although we’re usually cheapskates when it comes to transport, we do recommend splurging for an overnight first class cabin (around $25 total for the two of us). On the route from Dhaka to Khulna, this allowed us access to the front of the boat along with a handful – as opposed to hundreds – of other people. Pull up a chair outside and watch Dhaka disappear in the rear view as the river opens wide with fishermen, villages and the occasional brickfield (brick-making operation). We will never forget drinking tea after sunset on the front deck as we exited Dhaka’s orbit and made our way into wider, more silent waterways. Epic and soothing.

Life on the river, as we make our way to southern Bangladesh.

Because water levels were low, we chose to exit the boat at Pirojpur. From there, we took a bus the remainder of the way to Khulna (about 2 hours). In Khulna, we met up with our Sundarban tour boat the following day.

A note on safety: You might be asking, “Is it really safe to take a boat in Bangladesh? I keep hearing reports of boats sinking.” The Rocket Steamer does indeed have a good safety record. However, be aware that other public river ferry transport options may not be as safe due to overcrowding and spotty maintenance.

The scene on shore at Dhaka’s Sadarghat.

Buying tickets: The Rocket Steamer departs around 6 PM from Sadarghat in old Dhaka. Although touts may suggest otherwise, you cannot buy tickets for the Rocket Steamer at Sadarghat in Dhaka. We advise going directly to the BIWTC (Bangladesh Inland Water Transport) office at 5 Dilkusha. Call ahead to confirm that boats are running. Schedules are subject to change based on water levels and repairs: +88-02-9559779. You can also buy Rocket Steamer tickets through local travel agent for a fee that will include a commission.
More Photos: Rocket Steamer from Dhaka

The Sundarbans, the largest tidal mangrove forests in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a big attraction in Bangladesh. A Sundarbans tour is usually among the first items on a visitor’s Bangladesh travel itinerary. The Sundarbans feature mangrove forests, visits to the Bay of Bengal, and an often unsuccessful search for tigers.

Fresh tiger print in the mud. Found on one of our treks through the Sundarbans.

Most journeys to the Sundarbans depart from Khulna and travel south and east along various rivers and streams towards the Bay of Bengal. Within a few hours of leaving Khulna, industry, towns, fishermen and villages fade in favor of virtually uninhabited mangrove forests. Birds, deer, crocodiles, and wild boar become your new companions. Oh, and tigers — whether or not you get a chance to see them, they will likely see you.

Sundarban tours include a few landings to walk through the thick mud of the mangrove forests in search of the shy Bengal tiger. Although it’s unlikely you’ll actually see a tiger (there’s an estimated 400 of them remaining in this vast land mass), this is still a recommended trip to get yourself into the middle mangrove forests, see some different animals, and just enjoy nature and its silence.

Sunrise in the Sundarbans

Booking a Sundarbans Tour: We went with Bengal Tours. The boat, food, and staff were all great. A standard tour for two nights/three days is around $150. If we had known in advance, we would have better timed our visit to coincide with the honey harvest season (April) and booked a “honey-hunting tour.” Honey-hunting tiger tours run at the very end of the Sundarbans tour season, as the dry season becomes full-blown. This special tour follows villagers in the northwest reaches of the Sundarbans and includes as they harvest honey, a rather dangerous undertaking because of the apparent relative profusion of curious tigers in the area.

The Guide Tours also runs Sundarbans tours. Although we didn’t travel with them, one of our close friends did and he recommended them.
Rupantar Eco-Tourism, was also recommended to us, but there were no tours running at the time of our visit.
More Photos: Sundarbans Photos

If you’re a “find the most obscurse UNESCO sites” type of person, then Shait Gumbad Mosque (60-Domed Mosque) is definitely for you. The mosque’s interior is impressive with its dozens of columns, pre-Moghul architecture, and faded wall decor wiped out by heavy-handed plastering. However, what we enjoyed most was that the mosque is not a museum, but is still actively used by the local community. Like all their Bangladeshi countrymen and women, they are a curious and friendly lot and will pay you oodles of attention, as this site currently does not get many foreign visitors.

Fisheye view of the interior of the Sixty-Domed Mosque

If you have more time, take a rickshaw to Khan Jahan Ali Mazar where you’ll find a pond full of well-fed crocodiles and the Nine-Domed Mosque a short walk away. Keep an eye out for this friendly Imam who will take you around the 15th century building.

Join the kids for a game of cricket at the Nine-Domed Mosque

There isn’t really a place to sleep here, so visiting Bagerhat is best done as a day trip from Khulna. For a taste of beautiful peaceful brick-lined village lanes, a visit here is an absolute must.
Khulna Hotel: We enjoyed staying at Hotel Jalico on #77 Lower Jessore Road. Around $14 for a double room with A/C, including breakfast served in your room. Request a local breakfast – the “western breakfast” includes soggy eggs and toast.More Photos: Bagerhat Photos

Take the early morning train from Khulna to Rajshahi for one of the most pleasant rides in the country through villages and rice fields. Besides offering an absolutely beautiful journey, this train seems to run on time. Purchasing a ticket at the Khulna train station is fairly easy. Foreigners will likely be directed around the back of the building to make their visit even easier. 1st class cabin tickets run about $3-$4/piece. Among the world’s greatest train ticket values.

Views from the train trip from Khulna to Rajshahi

At dusk, go down to the Ganges/Patma river front: kids play cricket, families gather around food carts, and boats carry people back and forth towards the Indian border. You’ll soon be surrounded by Rajshahi’s students; curious, outgoing, and sporting good English. A good sign if these are the future leaders of their country.

Nearby Puthia is worth a stop to walk around, see the Hindu temples, and chat with the temple caretakers and other locals. You can see the town’s former prominence in the Hindu Temples and Palace. We particularly enjoyed the Govinda Temple with its exterior of carved terracotta tiles.

Govinda Hindu Temple in Puthia
Note that the representative from the Puthia archeological association can be a bit overbearing and ultimately hijack your visit and your sanity, so be firm in expressing your wishes.

More reading: Dollywood Rickshaw Art in Bangladesh
More Photos: Rajshahi and Puthia Photos

Another UNESCO World Heritage site in Bangladesh: the 8th century Paharpur Monastery in northwestern Bangladesh is one of the largest Buddhist monasteries south of the Himalayas. Today, much of the site is in ruins but it’s still worth a visit. Fascinating to imagine how this university-style “dorms” where Buddhism and Buddhist monks thrived for several centuries under in what was once Buddhist Bangladesh.

Paharpur Buddhist Monastery

If you visit Paharpur, we recommend spending the night in Joypurhat and taking an electric or auto rickshaw to the the site.
Paharpur Hotel: We stayed in a great guest room at an NGO called DMSS for around $11/double room. Our host, Aburpa, was wonderful and the money from your stay goes to support DMSS’ work with indigenous people in the region. He can also arrange a rickshaw to the ruins. Contact the organization in advance to see if they have availability. A great place to stay.
More Photos: Paharpur Buddhist Monastery

Bangladesh’s cities are busy, harried and full of people, traffic and commotion. From our perspective, an absolute must in Bangladesh: spending time in rural Bangladesh to get a completely different perspective. One of the highlights of our trip was a two-day village homestay in the village of Hatiandha outside of the city of Natore.

Bangladeshi kids, everywhere in the village.

In the village, we stayed with a local family for two nights and enjoyed delicious home-cooked Bangladeshi food. We also had an opportunity to visit rural schools, walk around the village and fields to learn about agriculture, see a pottery village, various aspects of harvesting, puffing rice with hot sand and enjoying the pace of Bangladesh village life.

Arranging a Bangladesh home stay: The home stay program we used is a new initiative from Eco Connexion, the rural tourism arm of the NGO ESDO.
More Reading: Bangladesh Village Homestay: Becoming One of the Family
More Photos: Bangladesh Village Homestay

From our perspectives, another must see during a visit to Bangladesh. The aim: to get out of town and enjoy the countryside; tea estates, ethnic villages, national parks, lakes and greenery. You can hire a car, or as we did, rent bicycles and cycle your way through the teaberry flavored air of tea plantations, take up a local or two on their invitation for tea (or a birthday party). Go, enjoy the outdoors and let your days unfold by themselves.

Cycling through tea estates from Srimongal to Madhabpur Lake and back.

Our suggestion: rent bikes and head out to Madhabpur Lake, not so much to see the actual lake but for the adventure on the way there and back. Beautiful scenery, villages and people. The fragrance of tea bushes in the fresh air of early morning is like nothing you’ll experience in life.

The tea gardens surrounding Srimongal are remnants from the British Empire; workers were brought from other parts of the country and also from India. Today, this area is home to several different ethnic groups. Although working conditions are exceptionally difficult for the tea pickers, we found them incredibly friendly and welcoming.

Friendly tea picker at Finlay Tea Estates near Srimongal

It’s possible to arrange visits to indigenous Garo, Manipuri, and Khashia villages. Our suggestion is to go with a guide who is from that indigenous group and village so that you have a more personal experience. You can contact Nishorgo or Community EcoTour to arrange village visits. Don’t miss a visit to Nilkantha for a taste of 7-layer tea. There’s also an unassuming stand that serves up puchka. Makes for a perfect late-afternoon snack.

To rent bikes, contact Sablu at Classic Tours and Travels in Srimongal. He’s a really nice guy who can arrange other tours. He also knows where to find a get a good shave.

More Reading: The Destination Is Everything, The Destination Is Nothing
More Photos: Srimongal Tea Estates, Villages, Makets and Bike Ride

This little sliver of land in the southeastern corner of the country can be a bit tricky to get to, but it’s all worth the effort. More than a dozen ethnic groups share this region; it’s like a journey through Southeast and South Asia in one swoop.

A group of girls in Rangamati show the diversity of the region

Try to plan your visit around the weekly market in Bandarban and Rangamati on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Also highly recommended is hiring a guide for half a day in Bandarban to go through villages and take a boat ride down Shangu river. We arranged for this through Guide Tours Bandarban Hill Resort (about $8-$10) and it was a fantastic experience. Our guide, Royel, was a Baum man from the surrounding villages and knew everyone, everything.

A group of girls in Rangamati show the diversity of the region

Try to plan your visit around the weekly market in Bandarban and Rangamati on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Also highly recommended is hiring a guide for half a day in Bandarban to go through villages and take a boat ride down Shangu river. We arranged for this through Guide Tours Bandarban Hill Resort (about $8-$10) and it was a fantastic experience. Our guide, Royel, was a Baum man from the surrounding villages and knew everyone, everything.

Of course, there is much more to do in Bangladesh than what is on this list. Our aim is to provide you a starting point to inspire your thinking, planning, and preparation for Bangladesh. Independent travel in Bangladesh is intense, so be sure to plan in enough down time; try to get out of the big cities. Once you do, you are sure to set yourself up for some unforgettably unique experiences.

This is a story about two different visits to Istanbul, the utter pointlessness of posing as a Canadian when you’re American, and the secret to experiencing Istanbul without being offered a carpet.

“Were you sold a carpet?”

“No, not even once.”

After our most recent visit to Istanbul, I’m surprised both by the number of times I’ve been asked that question and how pleased I am to offer my answer. When buying carpet is not your focus, but discovering the people and neighborhoods of Istanbul is, there’s an art to making it work and choosing strategically where and how you stay.

This time we did it. And we’ll tell you how, but not before we tell you about our first visit to Istanbul when Dan and I attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to pull off being Canadian.
“Don’t Go!”: The First Visit to Istanbul That Almost Wasn’t

It was late 2000. Dan and I had been backpacking around Europe. We’d just poked around Romania and were hanging around Sofia, Bulgaria. Next up: Istanbul and three weeks in Turkey.

Then an email arrived from my mother. She was worried and she asked us to reconsider our visit. The second intifada had just begun in the Palestinian Territories and demonstrations were taking place outside the American Embassy in the Turkish capital of Ankara as the U.S. Congress considered a resolution officially recognizing the killing of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 as genocide.

Conventional wisdom said all of this did not bode well for Americans visiting the region. We hemmed and hawed. But on our final morning in Sofia, we picked up an International Herald Tribune to find news that Congress dropped the resolution.

It’s a sign!!, we thought. In fact, it was just the excuse we needed.

We’re going to Turkey!

I informed my mother of our decision and assured her we’d be careful. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll pretend we’re Canadian.”
Staying in Sultanahmet

After arriving in Istanbul from Sofia via a wheezing 17-hour train, we followed the advice of our guidebook and bee-lined it over to Sultanahmet to find a hostel.

We settled down near the Hagia Sophia. Over the next several days, we’d wake at 5:00 A.M. to a howling call to prayer, struggle to fall back asleep, and head out early to consume Istanbul’s must-see sights.

Our few days in Istanbul were consumed with the Hagia Sofia (or Aya Sofya if you like), Grand Bazaar, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and the Egyptian spice market. We hung out with fishermen on the Galata bridge, rode along the Bosphorus, and visited Uskudar for a taste of the “Asian side” — and mixed it all with great bits of Turkish food and topped it off with a scrub-down at a Turkish bath. Dan insists to this day that his Turkish massage at the baths remains the most satisfying beating he’s ever received.

Oh, and I almost forgot: the carpet salesmen.
We have nothing against carpets, really. They’re often works of art, and for many they serve as mementos that last a lifetime. (Yes, I realize I just sounded like a carpet salesman right there. This shows how effective repetition can be.) But when walkabouts in and around the touristy areas of Sultanahmet become an endless echo of “My friend. Where are you from? Do you want to buy a carpet?”, it’s possible to begin bearing a grudge.

“Maybe later.” That was our mantra. Talk about empty promises.

Carpet salesmen can monopolize your visit if you let them. They are friendly enough, they’ll give you lots of tea, their stories can be great — they may even feed you — but their ultimate goal may just get in the way of your experiencing the real Istanbul.
How NOT to Pretend to Be Canadian

Speaking of carpet salesmen, a lesson. One day as we walked down the street minding our own business, a Turkish guy flanked by two westerners approached us.

The Turkish guy jabbed himself into our conversation: “Where are you from?”

“Canada,” Dan replied.

“Where in Canada?”

“Toronto.”

“Really?! I used to live there. Which part?” (At this point, the Turkish guy rattled off a bunch of Toronto neighborhoods.)

Shit. The one guy on the street we decide to lie to just happens to have lived in our Canadian cover city. Insult to injury, we weren’t even swift enough to do our research beforehand to come up with a viable answer.

Dan mumbled something lame like, “The eastern part.”

The Turkish guy pressed on with more questions, pulling our proverbial lying pants down to our ankles. Finally, he exploded, “You’re not from Canada, you’re American!! Why are you lying to me?!!”

“Americans! Liars!” he yelled at full lung capacity in the middle of the street.

In retrospect, we should have moved on as if he were loony. (He was.) But his display was mesmerizing; it paralyzed us. I considered the irony. Had we only been honest about being American, we could have avoided all this.

As we came to and began walking away — the Turkish guy was still ranting — one of the foreigners asked in a feeble voice, “Well, wait. Don’t you want to buy a carpet?”

The Turkish guy then broke stride and followed up: “I’ve got some great deals. I can even ship it home for you.”

Insane. So this whole display — a ranting Turkish guy and his two flunky backpacker sidekicks — was all about selling us a freakin’ carpet??

Next time, we’re from Labrador.

Since then, we never again suggested that we’re from Canada. (Aside: A big shout out to our Canadian friends. We love you and your country and we are often mistaken as Canadian, but we learned early that faking Canuck-ery doesn’t suit us and that we should stick to being who we are. For those of you following our current journey around the world, you’ll know that we embrace being American and view our travels as a form of citizen diplomacy.)
Istanbul, Take Two

Eleven years later, almost to the day, we returned to Istanbul.

We had changed as travelers. So had the goals of our visit. Instead of revisiting all the big sights, we were in Istanbul to apply for our Iranian visa, pick up some appropriate clothes for Iran, explore some different parts of town and discover more local foods.

Our accommodation this time was a 9 Flats apartment on a side street in Beyoğlu, just down the hill from Taksim Square and Istiklal Caddesi.

As we wandered our street and the surrounding neighborhood, we noticed very few foreigners, only a guest house or two, and absolutely no souvenir stands. People were friendly and life seemed very real. Not to take away from the beauty of Sultanahmet, but this was a different view of Istanbul. One that suggests: this is what life would be like if you lived here. It was immersive. We loved it.

Just up the hill, Istiklal Caddesi was flush with hip Turkish kids sporting the latest fashion trends and traditional women wearing the hijab (Islamic dress). Endless cafes, brands and shops, bustling and modern.

Is this where Istanbul is headed?

Perhaps, but turn off on any side street and you’ve found where Istanbul has come from, and in many ways remains. Local fish vendors and seafood restaurants, turn-of-the-century covered passageways, and simple family-run shops. The mix was eclectic and reflected all the fascinating layers of modern day Turkey.

Some mornings we would take the tram — just down the street — over to Sultanahmet to run errands (e.g., headscarf shopping) or to catch a few sights we’d missed last time (like the New Mosque).

But then we’d welcome a retreat to our neighborhood in the late afternoon, where the routines of ordinary people ruled the streets.

We began to feel at home. We knew the guy on the corner pressing fresh pomegranate juice, the sons who’d taken over their father’s kebab and Turkish pizza (lahmacun) shop, the friendly ciğ köfte master who knew just the right amount of spice and lemon to add to a mountain of raw meat, and the soft-spoken man around the corner who made sure to pile our plates with ample servings and fresh herbs.

We’d quickly developed our own routine, so much so that when we departed a week later, we made our rounds to say goodbye to our neighbors and the places where we’d become regulars.

We left Istanbul this time feeling like we had a better grasp of its living history as well as a hint of the direction its headed.

And to think, we were never once offered a carpet. Maybe next time.

“Thank You” will take you pretty much anywhere in the world.

Not just because your mother told you so.

It’s a basic travel rule and it really works. I’ve never really counted, but I’m sure that I’ve uttered “thank you” in at least 50 different languages around the world. I’ve since forgotten how to say it in Khmer or Setswana or Aymara, but while I was in those places, I spoke it as much as I could. In my book, “thank you” is the only travel essential, right up there with your passport and toothbrush. We may think we sound lousy as we butcher the local dialect but I’m convinced it’s the most sincere noise we can make as travelers.

Australia’s official language is Australian, which means that “thank you” generally works, but so does “ta!” or “cheers, mate” answered with a shoulder-shrugging “no worries!” Pretty easy–until you begin to inquire about the Aboriginal languages, of which there are hundreds. This is not an exaggeration–in Central Australia, I found myself driving twenty or thirty miles only to discover a whole new language group completely separate from the one I just left behind. I know nowhere else like it in the world–a whole continent covered in a kaleidoscope of idiosyncratic languages. In Northern Territory, there are over 200 Aboriginal languages still spoken today, most of them totally different from one another. Some are more widespread than others but a few are doomed to disappear, with only have a handful of surviving speakers still left in the world.

Dying languages mean dying knowledge and forever locking the doors to a lost world. As a language fanatic, I find the idea completely tragic. I am always amazed by how much we spend on protecting and preserving rare endangered species while overlooking the critically endangered languages that are dying off all around us.

Travelers play a role in this–wherever we go, we carry our dominant language with us, deepening the ruts of English worldwide. As a lingua franca, English facilitates global travel hugely, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most meaningful, especially when applied to a foreign landscape.

“Stories” are essential to aboriginal life and culture, although I’m not sure that the aboriginal “story” means the same as “whitefella story.” After chatting with a few aboriginal people, I get the sense that they are stuck with the English word “story” as an umbrella description for a range of things like hymn, prayer, ancestry, song, lessons, scripture, knowledge, history, folktales and even science.

Above all, aboriginal “stories” relay the Dreaming (or dreamtime)–the creation of the earth and all that is in it. This is a concept most foreign to us whitefellas but filled with its own poetry. So much so that earnest academics have devoted their work to putting down some of these Dreamtime stories and translating them into English, even in rhyme. I admire such attempts but feel that they miss the mark hugely. My brief time in Aboriginal Australia gives me the sense that after centuries of troubled interaction, there is still no bridge across the massive gap of cultural misunderstanding that lies between modern Australia and native Aboriginals. There are too many stories lost, too many untold.

What cheered me up was flipping through a local dictionary and discovering Pitjantjatjara words like wiltjanyina, which translates as, “the time of year that you first start to sit in the shade of a tree.” There is a whole story in that one word–I love that!
It is the reason I love learning new languages, even if it’s just “thank you.” Local language offers a kind of story about each particular place–Geography gives birth to new words everywhere. For example, in Ukrainian, the word for November is Listopad which means “falling leaves”. Like wiltjanyina, it describes a very specific time and place in the world.

I arrived at Uluru well past the season of Wiltjanyina. Aboriginal people took up their spots in the shadows very early in the day, moving slowly within the cool shade as it slowly circled the tree. I visited the astounding red rock that rises up like a temple in the middle of Australia. At first, I struggled to describe the brilliant color of Uluru until I discovered there is already a very good word for it in Pitjantjatjara: tjitin-tjitin, or “glowing red”.

Pitjantjatjara is but one of the hundreds of native languages spoken in Australia, but it’s the one they speak near Uluru–it is one of the old languages born from this desert geography. The rest of the world knows Ayers Rock for the great explorer–and that will never change–but another people call it Uluru. Those people are the Anangu, a name that simply means “People” in their own language.

Now, I think all cultures are ethnocentric. I think it’s the only way a tribe can survive in spite of the swarm of conflicting tribes and cultures in today’s world. China in Chinese is “Middle Kingdom”, spelled with a character that denotes the center of it all. In Greenlandic, Greenland is Kalaallit Nunaat or “Land of the People”. And we Americans defined our newfound identity in three words: “We the People.”

To learn a language is to travel–to step outside our own band of people and to vocally acknowledge another people. Not to hand them our words to describe their land, but to learn from their words and remember their land in those words.

The word Uluru has no specific meaning in Pitjantjatjara–it’s merely the name of a place, although the place itself holds special meaning for the Anangu.

I was told that only around 4,000 native speakers of Pitjantjatjara remain. That seems shockingly small–around 4,000 people live on my street back in Washington, D.C.–and yet Pitjantjatjara is one of the larger, more substantial indigenous language groups left in Australia, today.

If we ever lose that language, we lose that place. It doesn’t matter how many pictures I take of the rock, or how many postcards get sent out by the 250,000 tourists who visit each year, or even that the UNESCO recognizes Uluru as a World Heritage site. When an Aboriginal language dies, a piece of Australia goes with it.

There is no word for “Australia” in Pitjantjatjara, there is simply ngura–the land. Now that I’ve been, I can tell you that it is a beautiful land–mostly red, and forever changing. At one moment, the sky is cobalt and the rock a shade of maroon, the next Uluru turns pink and the sky lights up with fantastic lightning. What’s more, out here in the desert you smell everything–the rain freshens the air and washes away the lingering dust. The trees offer a bouquet of scents, and even the stones have a particular mineral smell.

My brief time at Uluru was filled with great memories and I left the rock with a strong sense of gratitude. I will never speak Pitjantjatjatjara fluently, but I did learn how to say thank you–Palya.