EXPEDITION ACCOUNTS

PERU: IN THE CRADLE OF HUMANITY

Peru aches with age. It is ancient enough to be considered as one of the seven cradles of humanity - along with Mesopotamia, Egypt, india, China, Greece and Mesoamerica. We traversed the country, from north to South, over twelve days and our eyes are weary of staring at a wilderness of pyramids and sacrificial altars, acres of artistic reliefs, a profusion of dusty mummies, mounds of bones and heaps of ceramics vessels of exquisite workmanship and as fresh as the day they were moulded - all dating before the son of god walked this earth - that attest the country's hoary antiquity.

Crossing into Peru from Ecuador, we spent a night at the insignificant frontier town of Tumbes. As we walked its gloomy streets after breakfast, trying to find a worthwhile subject to photograph, two policemen firmly asked us to return to our hotel if we wanted to see the sun again. At the bus station, we were locked behind iron gates and two armed policemen stood guard over the passengers and their belongings. Leaving behind the cheerless town, we drove through miles and miles of banana plantations punctuated by paddy fields. Soon the road hugged the blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean, providing us engaging views of its limitless beaches packed with tiny fishing boats. To our left was an equally bewitching scenery of an arid moonscape fringed by bald mountains, the western cordillera of the Andes, a coastal desert, a region agriculturally a pauper but flushed with oil and gas.

From Chiclayo we called on the commodious tomb of the Lord of Sipan, where the pre-Inca Moche (100 BC to 700 AD) noble lay buried in peace for over 1,600 years with his wife, concubines, servants and pets - until he was discovered in 1987 and stripped for inspection. In 2002 his tomb was opened for public viewing and 160,000 visitors descend upon it every year to disturb the lord's tranquility. In terms of gold, jewellery and artefacts discovered, the tomb equals that of the Egyptian King Tut. All these curiosities are now comfortably lodged in the Royal Tombs Museum of Sipan in Lambayeque, separated from the site by about 20km of sugarcane plantations. The site itself has been taken over by Burrowing Owls, Black Vultures, archaeologists and other such necrophillics.

Thirty minutes north of Lambayeque lies Tucume where the Chimu people, who took over from the Moche, built their sprawling capital with 26 useless pyramids. Under a blistering sun we walked through a bird-filled glade of carob trees and past craggy sandhills that are actually the remnants of the pyramids. These structures were made of mud bricks that, over the centuries, were battered by rain into their present sandhill form, leaving no semblance of the original form. Gasping, we climbed up one of these hills and looked down on the sandy mounds, trying to imagine how this decayed and forlorn place could have been glowing and wealthy a thousand years ago.

Guiding us through Chiclayo was Señor Elver Orlando Leyva Morales, in his mid-20s and a Bollywood buff. His interest grew in Hindi movies due to a girl he was trying to pursue. She was addicted to Hindi films. To woo her, he built up a knowledge base of Indian actors, singers, producers and directors - and knew who was related to who, all their scandalous affairs and break-ups, the names of their pets and other trivial details that put us to shame. He has five stacks of Hindi movie CDs and his inquisitive mother has also developed a taste for them. The mother's favourite is "Kabhi Khooshi Kabhi Gum". Orlando's personal favourite is the flopped Biloo Barber. The girlfriend loves to shed tears watching "Veer Zara". Together, they have watched it seven times and the girlfriend, rewarding him for his patience, has now become his fiancée.

Chiclayo's Witch's Market has available all kinds of hallucinogenic cacti, herbs, animal skulls, skins, bones, magic lotions and other essentials required for black magic and shamanic healing. We made a whirlwind tour of the market as we were told it had an over-supply of thieves, snatchers and pick-pockets.

A 205km night drive south brought us to Trujillo, famous for its Moche ruins of their most scared temples of the sun and moon. The artefacts that we saw in the site museum and the beautiful reliefs on the remnants of the mudbrick temple walls speak of a superior culture that, after it's collapse in the 8th century, was taken over and absorbed by the Chimu.

Five km west of Trujillo, close to the Pacific coast, the Chimo built, around 850 AD, their imperial city of Chan Chan - that lasted until its conquest by the Inca in 1470 AD. At its peak, Chan Chan was the largest city in all of Americas. Our guide, an elderly man from the Andean highlands, had worked at this archaeological site as a labour, digging the grounds. Later, he made sketches of the sites and of the artefacts found. Pushing himself, he got a university degree in archaeology. He was full of venom for the Spanish for having ruthlessly looted their sacred sites and felt that the indigenous population is now taking greater pride in its past - as more and more historically significant sites are being discovered in Peru, pushing its cultural, political and economic evolution even further back in time. Besides the mainstream native population, Peru still has 15 uncontacted tribes living in its Amazon rainforests.

We drove overnight 560 km from Trujillo to Lima and on arriving in the capital in the morning began straightaway the business of sight-seeing. In Love Park, on the ocean front, is a sculpture El Beso, the kiss, showing the sculptor, Victor Delfin, kissing a woman, presumably his wife. Every year the mayor of Lima hosts mass weddings at this site. At the end of the ceremony, a kissing competition is held and the longest kiss gets the award. The current record for the longest kiss at this venue is 6.5 hours. A few steps from this sculpture is the Suicide Bridge from where jilted lovers jumped to death. Due to its popularity with suiciders, the bridge had to be covered. Close by, up the hill, is another bridge - the Bridge of Sighs - where lovers congregate after sunset. The bridge is an elevated walkway bordered by bars, restaurants and lovely houses. According to the legend, "a wealthy man’s daughter living in one of these grand houses fell in love with a lowly sweeper. Her father forbade the union, and she lived out her days as a spinster, waiting at her window for a glimpse of her beloved. Those who walked across the bridge could hear her plaint sighs".

The rest of Lima with its its imposing colonial structures, and lively plazas is romantic too. But according to climate change scare-mongers this romance is not going to last. With global warming and rising sea, Lima, along with other coastal cities around the world, will go the way of Atlantis. In Peru, rising temperatures have already reduced 22% of the surface area of Its glaciers in the last thirty years.

Taking the scenic coastal route we got to Nazca and flew over the mysterious lines the next morning in a five-seater Cessna 207. These gigantic geoglyphs are etched over a boundless arid landscape that slopes gently away from the mountains and is streaked with deeply worn traces of the winding courses of thousands of streams that once flowed down this land during the wet season. They lines can only be seen from the air. The best minds of the world have put their heads together and have come up with countless theories on how these gargantuan figures were made or what they represent. Some say the lines are an astronomical calendar. Others say they were beacons to guide extra-terrestrial beings for landing their spacecrafts. Every theory is as unbelievable as the other. I propose to add to the list.

Driving in darkness, our bus climbed higher and higher into the Andes and when the sun rose we were over 14,000 feet amongst snow-clad mountains that fringed an outlandish medieval world on their slopes and narrow valleys. Deeply wrinkled natives attired in their traditional dresses went about their work ploughing and planting their fields that yield bountiful harvests of quinoa, a food grain consumed here since thousands of year and now gaining popularity in America and Europe for its nutritious qualities. Women wrapped in layers of colourful handwoven skirts, their bright blouses covered by embroidered shoulder cloth, and another finely worked cloth strapped to their back to carry babies and produce, trudged alongside the road balancing their montera hats. Every curve of the winding road offered fascinating spectacles. Spellbound, we descended to 11,200 feet to Cusco, the capital of the great Inca empire.

Without resting from our 14-hour journey, we left immediately to see the grand churches left behind by the Spanish conquerors. Built on ruins of Inca temples demolished by the Spaniards, the natives still flock to them to buy salvation. The Inca empire spread fro Cusco southwards to parts of Northern Chile and Argentina and northwards to Peru, Ecuador and Southern Colombia. Outside Cusco we saw their terraced fields and rest houses, temples and palaces made of huge boulders transported from great distances and shaped for a perfect fit. The Inca empire lasted for about 170 years, peaking between 1438 to 1533 when the Spanish liquidated them with only 168 soldiers, 27 horses and one canon - and plenty of treachery.

Next day we drove to the Sacred Valley through which flows the Urubamba River. The valley is more divine in beauty than anything else. It's mountainsides are covered with terraced fields of Inca period and at one end of the valley is a small settlement of Inca leadership called Ollantaytambo (9,120 feet) - again comprising of masses of rocks hauled from neighbouring mountains. The architecture speaks more of brawn than brains. Here we boarded the train for Machu Picchu. The track ran along the rushing Urubamba River and through a very narrow valley hemmed by towering peaks, some of them still topped with glaciers and snow.

Climate change is said to be altering the weather cycle of El Niño, the periodic warming and cooling of the surface water of the Pacific Ocean, causing increasing incidents of floods, droughts and wildfires. In January of 2010, torrential rain, attributed to El Niño, swelled the Urubamba River by 39,000 cubic feet per second, instantly flooding the Sacred Valley, killing 26 people, destroying villages and farmlands, inundating 28km of the rail line to Machu Picchu, stranding 3,900 tourists, cutting off the archaeological site, laying off thousands of people working in the tourism industry, and causing a loss of a million dollars a day from tourist revenues. Global warming is expected to increase the intensity of the El Niño phenomenon - making natural catastrophes more frequent - more so in Peru.

Machu Picchu, the Inca site the world craves to see, is idyllically located. The visual effect is stunning. That's about all. It does not speak of a high civilisation. The Inca had an eye for beauty but were technologically challenged. I can relate to them. Again, they had hauled up rocks from long distances, up steep slopes and immaculately pieced them together, without using mortar, to house their useful leaders in comfort. Any Himalayan cattle and sheep herder can do that. Architecturally, the Inca structures are no better than the basic shelters made by the nomadic Gaddis. Machu Picchu was built around 1450! The cut-and-paste construction technology of the Inca was way behind the Egyptians who built their exquisite temples in Luxor 3,300 years earlier; the Greeks who had built the stately Parthenon 1,900 years before them;  the beautiful Roman temples that predate them by 2,000 years; the flawlessly sculptured Konarak Sun Temple and the Qutub Minar in India that were constructed 200-300 years earlier - as was the splendid Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The Inca (rather the Inca historians) give credit to the empire for their contribution to astronomy, ceramics, etc. However, we have seen that the cultures preceding them in the Americas - the Moches, Chimo, Mayans and others in between had perfected that science and arts much before them. The Inca seem to have had an effective, efficient organisational ability through which they, from insignificance, subjugated other cultural groups and expanded their empire to become the largest ever in South America. Only the royals, nobles, generals  and high priests were considered as Inca - not the common people, serfs and soldiers.

Crossing the La Raya pass (14,150ft) between Cusco and Puno, we entered the Andean Altiplano, the second highest plateau (average attitude 12,300 ft) in the world - after Tibet. From Southern Peru the Altiplano continues into Western Bolivia and Northern Chile and Argentina. It is here that the ranges of the Andes are at their widest. Though you are a touching distance from the clouds, it's seems you are driving in the safety of the plains with no possibility of rolling down any slope. Yet, as the memorial crosses at short intervals on the roadside indicate, fatal accidents are common. The vast expanse of grasslands was occupied by grazing cattle, sheep and llamas. The snow-capped peaks, winding rivers, rushing streams and the elegant costumes of the natives added charm to the grand panorama.

Just before Puno the northern end of Lake Titicaca came into view. With a surface area of 8,372 sq km it is the largest lake in Latin America and the highest (12,507 ft) navigable lake in the world. We left next morning on a motorised boat for Uros, a group of 44 man-made floating islands first woven together using every part of the totora reed by the Aymara people to escape from the Inca invaders. Every aspect of the islands is alluring and enchanting. We spent hours with the islanders, listening to their stories and songs, prying into their living quarters, seeing off their kids to the school boat, familiarising ourselves with the omnipotent totora reed and learning the construction technique utilising every part it, buying their handicrafts made in their free time, riding their reed gondolas, and not using their toilets (three minutes away by boat). After experiencing al the thrills of these curious islands, we sailed for two-and-half hours, dropping anchor off the 6 sq km Taquile Island. In the company of local inhabitants lugging heavy loads, we climbed 1,100 feet, past terraced fields, to the top of the village. These islanders still abide by the pre-Inca moral code: do not be lazy; do not lie; do not steal - and dress in their traditional attire that is different from clothes worn elsewhere in Peru or South America. Their weaves  and handiwork are regarded of such high quality that UNESCO has declared them as "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity". While women spin yarn and weave, knitting is done exclusively by men. I tried to reform the men but failed. From the top of the island we could see the snow peaks on the Bolivian side of the lake. Smuggling from Bolivia into Peru though the lake route is rampant. Though Peruvians complain about it, their lakeside towns are thriving because of the illegal trade.

Leaving Puno for La Paz, the road skirted the shores of the lake for endless miles. In recent years the waters of the lake have receded due to the shortened rainy season and lower glacial melts. The exposed land has been taken over by new settlers who, using oxen power, were busy ploughing and preparing fields for cultivation and building their humble mudbrick houses. New settlements are mushrooming on the widened lakeshore and land, for good measure, has already been earmarked and fenced for churches and cemeteries.

In spite of the usual fears of erratic and mercurial immigration officers, the entry into Bolivia was glitch-free. From the lakeshore border town of Copacabana we drove for three hours up and down barren mountains that contrasted sharply with the lake's sweeping expanse of blue water. At the lake's narrowest point, the 800-metre Strait of Tiquina, we made a ferry crossing and then continued on the high plateau, the lake slowly fading from view, driving along a continuous range of snow mountains till we got to La Paz, the chaotic capital of Bolivia and the largest city of the Andean Altiplano.