An elderly man in naval uniform sits on a bench in the museum grounds. He is eighty years old and is employed by the museum as a guide, although his main duty is simply posing with tourists. To the visiting North Koreans this man is a national hero; while to the relatively few tourists from further afield he is simply an historical curiosity.
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What makes a place to stay special? Is it the location? The people? The building itself? Maybe in the best places it is all of these things, plus a small helping of ‘je ne sais quoi’.
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The year that has just past will remain long in all our memories, no doubt, and not for the best of reasons. A year ago the new coronavirus was just seeping into our consciousnesses and we had no idea how it would turn our lives upside down. We certainly know that now!
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Standing here you feel on top of the world. You are standing at a height of 2,000 metres above sea level. Below you see the road, little more than a track, that you are to follow, winding down through an almost other-worldly volcanic landscape.
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There is something about a tale of an abandoned city that tugs at the imagination, and this one is no different. Here among the remnants of an emperor’s glory you can still discover riches, and the sense of a world that existed only briefly and is long gone.
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A woman crouches beside the fast-flowing river, panning for gold. Hers is a simple life in a rural village, but success here could change it forever.
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A king and his queen are buried here, an unexpected sight in a country where much of ancient history has been forgotten, ignored, rewritten or even erased.
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In the Old Quarter of Hanoi life is lived on the street. Meals are cooked and eaten, food and other goods sold, games played by young and old alike. Shops spill out on to pavements, while rickshaws, cyclo-rickshaws, bicycles, scooters and motorbikes all weave amongst the shoppers and strolling tourists.
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Only in North Korea, I thought, could you have a day of sightseeing like this! It was the country’s National Day, marking the 71st anniversary of the founding of the DPRK, and our itinerary for the day had been carefully planned to allow us to see how Pyongyangites celebrated the occasion.
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‘The Palace of Bundi, even in broad daylight, is such a palace as men built for themselves in uneasy dreams, the work of goblins rather than of men.’ So said Rudyard Kipling of Bundi Palace. Also known as Garh Palace, it was home to the rulers of Bundi for centuries.
