Andalucia: Orgiva to Abla

Walking (for some time) is liberating in many ways. There’s a sudden very clear goal. It is a goal made by myself and even though it is deceptive one, it brings me incredible much joy. I have plenty of challenge and every second is new to my mind. I don’t know where I will sleep the night and to not know is pleasant. Worries arises in thin air because walls that bounces thoughts back and forth are not any longer there. Hot flashes are gone and excess energy get used up. I lack no social interaction and the balance between alone and adventurous input is just perfect. I have a loving partner to whom I can share my experiences, for social media I need not to switch on the roaming data. My social media are the people I talk to and Geo who is together with cat V.

Temperatures hoover around zero Celsius degree at night and 7 in the daytime. The mountain top with snow has come into view, much closer now. Colors at 1500 meter altitude give the whole a reminder of Iran. Silver whitish bark from the platan peels slowly away where views change dramatically with every turn I walk. Pine trees growing in the cold winter whiff strongly and I make a mental note: wool hat, wool buff and wool mittens.

Turning mountain sides gives a new perspective and often other weather too.

‘I don’t eat pig,’ telling the lady of a café. ‘Oh, and jamón then?’ she asks. She earlier screamed her lungs out to let everyone in the far surrounding know that I should have ordered two eggs instead of one when I want two eggs. Spanish women can scream and I wonder whether this is taught at an early age? I wonder too whether husbands like this yelping high pitched voices and if there’s a use for it, besides being highly annoying.

The villages remind me of those in Ladakh and Tibet. However, signs with ‘comida tipico’ are fries fried in old sunflower oil and pig meat. It is overly touristy and the lower part of town to be avoided if you are looking for authenticity.

My dinner will be chicken breasts fried in butter with plump dried prunes and rice. I have to prepare everything in one batch, keeping it in my bento box for later use. Cold temperatures serves as a fridge.

Pouch Riogordo, the piece of fabric you see me working on in the photo above, is ready to be send out. Named after the town Riogordo I walked through: here’s to the shop

After all the touristy villages of the high Alpujarra, for which Maria warned me, I leave the smelly dried hams behind me and settle besides a shepherds pen. I unwrap a frosty tent, start cooking while enjoying the sun. Hearing some shots earlier and wondering who was shooting in broad day light, I soon realize the shots are coming from a whip made out of thin ribbons fashioned from a car’s inner tube. Again, it reminds me of the whip I was holding in my hands while cycling through Iran. It was a whip made for men. Now a goat passes through my camp, followed by a whole herd. I didn’t expect this coming yet the real Trevélez is passing through my spacious set up camp. Wearing a dirty old jeans with a zipper not functioning, the man himself with a few teeth left, greasy hair, a dirty down jacket and friendly eyes indicating a hurry, for all his goats need to be fenced in again. The man is obviously working by procedure and rather shy, the look of hermits residing in his eyes. I need to have his consent, so rush over to him, asking in simple Spanish if it is okay that I camp a night? ‘Ah, even if you stay a year’, he replies with a hurried occupied manner and his long ribbons on a stick, he follows the flock. Gleeful leaving me behind.

One who looks good at the photos will see that I often focus on something. In seeing what I capture I often see more than what is visible. Here I see Ladakh and Ruta 40 pretty much in the same area.

I leave camp with a frozen towel, walk where quails are flapping their short wings, taking off without a soundless sputter. Strong wind and exquisite vistas where deep greens, soft yellows, ochres and putty blue mingle, the road as a shepherd’s whip winding through. I long to be off the road, however quiet it is. Yet I keep enjoying tremendously, to such a point it surprises myself.

Again, two very similar photos but in morning and evening light. Both equally beautifully, seen from where I camp.

With glorious morning and evening light anywhere in Spain, the higher altitudes beauty comes with toughness. Scrapes in nose, broken skin and painful finger tops. A rougher going in a harder climate that is automatically accompanied by discomfort. Then, when turning from one side of the mountain to the other, the sudden warmth and visible pleasing patterns of lower altitude comes always with a price. That of leaving the pristine and being back at easier space. Such was always the feelings I had traveling in the high Himalayas. From feeling tough and seasoned to the easy going atmosphere where crowds suddenly felt as such. Feelings fleeting back intensely are embraced. I am just in Spain, not in some far off corner in India.

I notice a full awareness when I wash myself in the morning, quietly in peace, essentially and slowly feeling awake, after a bothersome night. Being clean enough with the sun warming me, drying the tent and shining a stronger shimmer on the plastic greenhouse roofs far below me. I notice that walking long distances is not about walking but about keep walking: in tiredness, in disturbed sleep, in rain, in sunshine and warmth, when wanting to rest.

Tiny birds sing as soon as the sun is out, warming their feather light bodies, a bit bigger than the almond blossoms, which makes them hard to distinguish. The rubber soles of my shoes squeeze at each step, a sound I come to like.

The shoes I bought for this trip are buried in the trailer bag as they’ve fallen apart. Belenka shoes are not meant for walking!

Having chosen an off route road I soon walk old paths carved out into the mountain side, winding and curving, dipping to riverbeds and steep up again. Passing through whitewashed villages without services I eat dry bread gone hard in a cold and rainy weather. A blowing wind has me searching for close knit trees to protect me. In doing so I notice a building and in further inspecting I find a roof intact, firewood at hand and a seemingly flat surface to sleep on.

The view from the window is stunning. I can see where I will walk the coming day and into which valley I will arrive.

No one is about on a rainy day; no cyclists, no motor-homes and no motorbikes. And not even Cindy is out and about, instead warmly and secured by thick stone walls and a slate roof. Embers glowing, I think back of former days, where farmers used these buildings, cortijo, to find shelter. These small far-away cottages gave minimal shelter to sudden rainfall or it was here where the farmers could stay the night, close to their fields where undoubtedly massive amounts of work was awaiting them. I imagine the farmer sitting at a fire, eating simple yet unadulterated food. Utmost content, especially with the wife at home, the cat on her lap. A lovely thought.

Although I haven’t been cold for a moment, a fire keeps me really very warm and it’s pure indulgence. The old building material used for the barns is what I use to burn. The roof beams are bigger and twice as heavy as I am.

I decide to stay an extra night. My water and food are rationed, I can not wash myself, yet it is no price to pay for the views I have, if not the clouds make me feel stuck in a chimney now and then. Clouds swirl by at an altitude of nearly 1400 meter (4600 feet) where wild goats unexpectedly find an occupant in their midst. The way wild goats move remind me a bit of myself, sturdy and inelegant yet precise. I watch them as if I watch a television. I could be anywhere yet I am in Spain.

Warm, overeaten and realizing how short days are where nothing really happens I am reminded of being at home. Life passes by when your eyes see nothing new and your mind does not register anything fresh, anew, unseen before or long ago viewed. Traveling is essential to a mind like the one I am born with.

The ability to sleep well, to keep warm and reasonable clean and cover a distance while peeping out of a stealth camp is a feeling a thief might have. One of succession, smartness, luck. A fox when he not only got hold of an egg but of the entire chicken. To stand fresh on the dirt track is such a victory, every time again. It is an immediate success, sweet and small. I fall asleep with one of the roof beams crisping in the fire, slowly breaking down until it glows in the morning.

Walking over paths that I earlier saw placed below me or walking to a view I have looked at for some time feels unreal yet foreboding and therefor almost magical. To see ahead and to know you’ll get there, by steps made, not literally yet in a way, vertical. It surely scatters the monotony of trying this at a home that is a forest.

Upon reaching Láujar de Andarax I notice Spanish Broom bushes have entered the stage (they did already much earlier but somehow I didn’t notice) and I feel instantly coming closer to the desert of Tabernas. Also feeling the atmosphere of Arizona with many stray dogs jogging around. Big and tiny emotional support size dogs are grouped together. Some are very afraid and run off, their energy spilled, their emaciated bodies carrying them until they succumb to something a loved dog would not. It makes me sad.

While freezing a few degrees below zero I wash myself properly and rush to a post office that ought to be open. My hands dry as a fish skin, those who lay salted and smelly in the open air of a shop. Walking in the early morning, the snow shimmering on the hill tops, I reach town. There, I soon sit near a lady smoking and talking loud with a raspy voice. Red nails, hair done, make-up beyond the threshold of modest and heels 30 centimeter from the ground as her short legs bungle midair. Gold colored jewelry, bright against the fresh whitewashed walls. I always wonder how only one can talk so much while the others in her group hardly chime in. All sounds have become harsh to me: the tape of the post office closing the parcel, more than one voice. Spanish people shrieking, even if you stand right in front of them. This very lady opposite me while I have coffee; I better be moving.

Walking over a pass, usually a bit over 1000 meter and reaching the other side has my brain activated and surprised by great beauty. Such that I have to stop to gulp it in, as parched earth that is being watered. At the end of the 5 years cycling the world, I noticed the opposite effect taking place. Yet now, Spain is delivering big time!

Unexpectedly, passing a bridge, I hit upon a very new view, one that surprises so much I need to stop a lot longer. It is the beginning of the Desierto de Tabernas and to greet from this angle is magical, so utterly different than all I saw before. I feel I look into the basket of where the world began. To see the landscape changed slowly but clearly I now see where the earth split and formed a river, one side slowly subsiding upwards. Sequentially in little peaks, always higher. Images of former travel flashes in my mind. Atacama, of course, but also the Sahara. Stiff whipped cream, anthills carved into velvet blown by the wind.

A black and white image compared to a color. I was overwhelmed by what I saw. To me this is ultimate beauty!

The way the earth has moved make me realize that people do the same worldwide. The style of building in Ohanes is not much different than Dharamsala or Shigatse, the Himalaya in India and Tibet. Even the paint around the windowsills is similar and the roofs are covered in slates too. Thus my memory is pressed and I fling from places that made a deep impression. Multiple visions from back then float to the surface, layer upon layer, like a film on a roll that spools by. The dog bite (blood soiled the entire bed sheet), the smell of Dettol (with which I cleaned the wound that eventually began to rot), the fatty momo’s (fried dough filled with sheep meat), the friends I made (but always wanting to travel on solo), the uneasy breathing (from the high altitude), the hot communal showers (where Lhasa guys would sneak in to look at female nakedness), the black hairs in the shower drainage, my barren rooms, the notes stuffed somewhere (guys thought they could gain experience with Western girls)… All in one image, I am certainly not just in Spain. yet I am not dreaming either.

Murals that are well done always have my full attention. Again, always reminded of some place else too. This mural looks Islamic, a closer look reveals it is not, instead very artistically done.

Spain is in no way the Himalaya nor the Far East yet the positive mind sees Spain as a standstill where many places in the world are thriving to become modern, eager to shed their culture. Having accumulated much travel memories -the longer ago, the better, more authentic- it only adds to the now. Walking is being in nature, a trailer less than a backpack, but going literally through landscapes is quite spectacular. The slowness makes me aware of the change in growth and soil and rock substances. Doing so by car is watching television to me.

Choosing a route that climbs, as I have come to like climbing, is going away from places to stock up. All I want to do is going higher and more remote, but Spain being what it is means there’s always something soon. I really am not in the vastness I make myself believe I am in.

Most of the young people move out as soon as they can. Yet towns like Abla are of such a size that they can cater to everyone. That’s the town I will have to stock up on essentials (mostly unhealthy stuff and greenhouse fake yet butter, T-bone steak and onions are okay). The day toward Abla becomes a delirious experience starting off with a mild climb until I reach the closest view since the trip at the only desert in Europe. I look right into the pit of my desire and when the road swirls I walk with my neck cranked backwards so I can soak more in, I gulp every possible angle deeply into my brain. I actually wonder how I can swig it better, more, deeper? I don’t know. Only camping in it will satisfy this desire, that much I know.

My hearts swells at the beauty below me, the endless continuation of hills with low bushes and scrubs. It isn’t technically a desert but not a whole lot grows there either. There are no houses to be seen and being it a national park it truly delivers in terms of beauty when you can look at it from above. I put on music while I walk from one national park soon into the other. Simrit’s voice has me screaming aloud!

Certain moods are only reflected by others. When I feel tempered and impatient this will show most clear to my husband. Bubbling over-activity is noticed best by Geo too.´When I am outgoing this can only be seen when I am meeting others, even as short as a cashier. My perfect contentment is now mirrored back to me by a cyclist, I am sure in hindsight, who has heard me ‘singing’ out loud.

The cyclist on a racebike peddles up the steep hill that I move slowly down. I stop my singing well before he can hear me and the cyclist and I seem to be both so elated with what we are doing, outside, relying on our bodies, aligning our minds, that we greet with enormous smiles. Not just a smile but a recognition of each our own elation. I mumble ‘hola’ while Simrit sings. It needs another human being to see your own feelings boosted because I suddenly feel total adoration and exhilaration of where I am, what I feel, where I am. I thank the heavens the race-bicycle guy did not stop to talk because that would have killed my high!

Tears well up in my eyes because of the unimaginable width and depth I see. It is not to fathom. Lines, angles and shapes seem absurd in these vast open spaces. Mountain sides give way to flatness that angles against the towns that seem to float askew. There is no anchor to what is level any longer. I am floating. I am in full enjoy wonderment. Not one photo I made did justice to what I saw.

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The post that went before this is here: Walking Andalucia.

Always embroidering at the places I camp, evening and morning, has delivered quite a few pouches. The one below with a new technique for me: pulkari, a stitch from the Punjab. Here’s to drawstring pouch Alpujarra

In case you would like to keep updated about my creativity, check this out: Flourishing Spring Comes, a story behind the new pouches I made while walking.