Travel – Page 4 – Poems, Pictures & Prose by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee

Istanbul in 6 Hours

This post was written in October of 2012. Visa processes may have changed since then.

I’m posting this seven days after the fact. More on our time in New York to follow.

If you’re flying Turkish Airlines with a transfer in Istanbul on the same carrier and have more than ten hours of in-transit time ahead of you, you’re eligible for a free city tour. Our exploration of this iconic settlement straddling Europe and Asia began with a two hour appraisal of its airport as we shuffled from information desk to information desk to queue to security check. Jet lag must have garbled the gutterals of our South African accents to unintelligible levels, as ground staff dismissed our queries as the pipe dreams of the travel-weary. We traversed over stock granite tiles in Arrivals to dark-grey wood laminate that updated the ambiance in Duty-Free, bowed over by our backpacks and the lament; Oh Istanbul, is this it? Eventually, one savvy desk clerk saved her city for us.

This is what you do to get onto a free tour of Istanbul (provided you are more than ten hours in transit and are flying Turkish Airlines for both nodes of your journey):

South Africans proceed to Passport Control 2. A free visa will be entered into your passport and you’re good to go.
Follow the exit signs and make your way towards the Hotel Desk (located across Starbucks). Show them your boarding pass and they’ll put you on a time-appropriate tour. There are baggage lockers right next to the Hotel Desk, it cost us 30 Turkish Lira to check two backpacks.

The tour includes a light breakfast and lunch and covers the Blue Mosque, Hippodrome and surrounds, Hagia Sophia and the Spice Bazaar. It’s a quick scratch over the city and you get a bit of free time in each area to soak up some vibe.

Down in G’town – Days 4 and 5 – Quick Pics

The course supervisors continued their readings and seminars on Thursday while Friday gave us our first lick of the peer-review/critique-circle experience.

It was not the evisceration I expected but a valuable series of inputs and comments on the way we structured and conveyed meaning through our work.

I’ve been looking for this grade of sand-paper all my life.

Here are the last in my series of photos taken in and around the Rhodes University campus:

Down in G’town – Days 2 and 3 – Quick Pics

Day 2:

We spent most of Tuesday on a farm belonging to Robert Berold, one of the course supervisors. It is a generous space and when we weren’t being embraced by the heartening hospitality of our hosts, we filled our time sitting under the trees free-writing.

We left the farm early enough for me to still have a bit of time to walk through Grahamstown and take a few close-up pictures of the Cathedral.

There’s also a metal sculpture on campus that makes me feel like an unbound traveller, cycling into the Anywhere.

Day 3:

It was our first full day of readings and seminars, and as per my twitter/facebook updates, I couldn’t help but fizz with fangirl-adulation.

In this “The City of Saints”, the most interesting buildings to photograph often happen to be religious structures. The following pictures are of the Rhodes University Chapel of St Mary and All the Angels.

Down in G’town – Day 1 – Quick Pics

Registration at Rhodes was fairly painless. My Rhodent status is now confirmed by the requisite unflattering likeness fused onto plastic.
The day’s welcomes and introductions left me a with a bit of daylight to take a short photo-walk down Somerset Road.

Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA) on St Peters Campus, Rhodes University, and home of the MA Creative Writing programme.

When the Grahamstown gaol closed in 1975, it had been the oldest functioning prison in the Republic of South Africa.

Down High Street, towards the St. Michael and St. George Cathedral.

My mother’s city

I’m in Cape Town this week, visiting my mum for the first time since she’s moved to the Mother City.

There have been more pictures than words of late, and I’d have turned this entire space into a photo blog yonks ago if it didn’t mean I would be giving my procrastination djinn the rope to strangle my muse. But for now, while Table Mountain mellows and irons out my thinking, pictures will have to make do.

Looking towards Cape Town from Milnerton beach

Cape Town Stadium about to be hailed back to its mothership

The Turkish bulk carrier Seli 1 ran aground on Table View beach in September, 2009

Click here to read my 2006 Capsule Cape Town account.

Photowalk: Fietas and surrounds

Naeem and I spent last Saturday morning footing in Fietas with Darren Smith and Gus Silber for a photowalk through one of Johannesburg’s most interesting and textured areas.

I used to live in a commune not far from where we were shooting.

Krause street and De la Rey were part of my daily commute and even though I was taken by the decaying facades admired through anti-smash&grab car-window tinting, I just didn’t gather enough fortitude at the time to see these structures up close.

But there’s always guts in numbers.

The four of us started off at the 23rd Street mosque, walked down towards the De la Rey street subway linking Pageview to Fordsburg and ended at the in desuetude Jajbhay Memorial school.

The De la Rey street subway mural is a recent installation and tells the story of a community who were uprooted yet who also celebrated, worshiped and hoped for a time when the spectre of Apartheid would shrink away.