Re: Favourite country?
Posted: 24 Nov 2014, 12:44am
For me, three countries stand out head and shoulders above the rest. One - Spain (and more specifically Andalucia) - I have visited often, mostly by bike, and will be going back. The second - Ghana - I visited once and will probably but unfortunately never go back. The third is India which I have never visited but feel a deep sense of longing for and connection with; I may go there, perhaps with a bike.
All three are hot. I love the heat but all three counties are challenging. All have music playing in my mind and tugging at my heart strings: flamenco in the case of Spain, the sitar of India and in the case of Ghana, the music of Jimmy Cliff (it was ubiquitous during my stay there in 1974 and I was often lulled to sleep in a hotel room by the gentle waves of reggae wafting up from the street below).
I think a country to be special must be like a lover: you must feel a sense of emotional attachment. It must retain some mystery, something you might never quite understand about it. And when you leave, you must feel torn in two and promise that one day you will return. A tear shed perhaps. I certainly felt that after hitch-hiking down to the south of Spain on my first trip and when I climbed aboard my plane home from Ghana in Accra.
Some of that mystery must be in the language - which rules out New Zealand - and the food (which rules out America). But I also think you must be affected physically: getting sunburnt in Spain or squeezing onto a hot and crowded bus in Ghana are physical memories not photographs.
More than anything I feel that a country has to allow us to explore ourselves and our differences with it. That may not be nowadays as possible as it once was but I am pretty sure that I wouldn't be complacent about India not challenging my senses to the core.
All three are hot. I love the heat but all three counties are challenging. All have music playing in my mind and tugging at my heart strings: flamenco in the case of Spain, the sitar of India and in the case of Ghana, the music of Jimmy Cliff (it was ubiquitous during my stay there in 1974 and I was often lulled to sleep in a hotel room by the gentle waves of reggae wafting up from the street below).
I think a country to be special must be like a lover: you must feel a sense of emotional attachment. It must retain some mystery, something you might never quite understand about it. And when you leave, you must feel torn in two and promise that one day you will return. A tear shed perhaps. I certainly felt that after hitch-hiking down to the south of Spain on my first trip and when I climbed aboard my plane home from Ghana in Accra.
Some of that mystery must be in the language - which rules out New Zealand - and the food (which rules out America). But I also think you must be affected physically: getting sunburnt in Spain or squeezing onto a hot and crowded bus in Ghana are physical memories not photographs.
More than anything I feel that a country has to allow us to explore ourselves and our differences with it. That may not be nowadays as possible as it once was but I am pretty sure that I wouldn't be complacent about India not challenging my senses to the core.
