Travel

Straight to God's Ear

Dogs howling at the moon. I roll over and from bed I look up to eighteen thousand feet of snow-covered peaks, shimmering in the moonlight. Shit, I gotta catch a plane! I throw on my clothes and race down the stairs, grab my last pair of underwear off the clothes line, stuff them in my pocket, throw my bag on my head, stumble through the turnip patch and onto the trail. I drink in the vista one last time. Fields of blooming mustard greens tint the valley a hazy yellow, tall poplar trees line the paths, and every little house sports a well tended vegetable garden.

The stream that winds its way through Leh and past the giant prayer wheel nurtures it all. In this remotest corner of India, one spin of the wheel and your prayers go straight into Gods ear. Beyond the village, as the stream peters out, the view is a vast barren moonscape of chocolate mountains, where not so much as a blade of grass grows. In the distance on all sides, the biggest platinum mountains I’ve ever seen. I lope through the village at dawn, past the monastery and the stark grey palace carved out of the hillside in the center of town. The air is thin, the bag is heavy and I’m out of breath. I flash a smile at my taxi driver and he waits while I duck into the bakery to grab a cup of Ladakhi tea, brewed from toasted barley and fermented yak butter. Its hot and salty, and it feels good on my dry lips.

If you ford a river with the crowd, the crocodile cannot eat you.
         –Malagasy proverb

My husband, Bill Rollnick, and I were part of an American Red Cross team traveling to Madagascar to help implement the global Measles and Malaria Preventive Initiative. In October, our team was part of a joint partnership led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, UNICEF, CDC, WHO and the Malagasy government in which millions of Malagasy children, ages 9 months to 5 years, received measles vaccine, Vitamin A, de-worming medicine and insecticide-treated mosquito nets.

Last weekend I did one of those things that’s really not fair to do to your boyfriend. I told him I wanted to do something extra fun and that I wanted him to plan it. I do this to him a lot and we often end up happily watching a movie and eating take-out instead, so I didn’t think anything of it when I canceled on him last-minute. He waited until I got home from dinner to tell me that he had actually come up with a plan, “What is it??” “It’s no big deal.” “What is it??” “We can do it another night.” “What is it?!” So he told me that he was going to ask me if I didn’t mind not sleeping at either of our houses.  Where would we have slept?…A fancy hotel in Santa Barbara? …His parents’ beach house in Ventura? …Paris??,

“Morongo Casino.” Morongo Casino???? Was he serious? That wasn’t romantic! But he told me that he was going to take me to the fancy restaurant on the top floor and that he’d show me the rooms online and even I’d think they were pretty nice. And when he brought it up again at breakfast the next day, I could see that he really wanted to go and maybe I should just suck it up and go. And anyway, we could stop at Hadley’s for date shakes on the way back.  And he thought maybe I could wear that green dress I wore the night we met because it was lucky. And where else would he fit in with that ridiculous moustache he’d recently grown?

Ischia, the biggest of the three islands in the Gulf of Naples, isn’t big.  You can circle its rocky, 34-kilometer perimeter by boat in less than an hour. 

And while you’re doing that, may I suggest you pause, as everyone does, to leap into the Tyrrhenian Sea, where you’ll encounter (1) volcanic thermal waters, and (2) the fish you’ll be eating later that evening.

Ischia differs from its more famous neighbor, Capri, in ways that are readily apparent.  You can feel it’s more laid back.  You can see there are far fewer yachts anchored in its bays. You can walk down every one of its cobblestone streets and never pass a Prada, Ferragamo, or Dolce & Gabbana shop.

Instead, it has terme – spas – rich with rejuvenating mineral salts from underground hot springs.  Most of the bigger hotels have at least one pool filled with these healing waters.  And then there are places like Giardini di Poseidon, a kind of elaborate therapeutic theme park set down along the beach of Citara, where every 'ride' – and there are 22 of them – is a plunge into a thermal pool of a different temperature.