Whether or not we are aware of it, each trip fills us with an imaginary album of feelings and sensations that we will never finish completing, but that imposes on us the insatiable desire to expand it over and over again. Novelist John Dos Passos expressed it very well when he said: "Traveling, like all drugs, requires a constant increase in dose." Although the best memories that one can bring back are their experiences, there are also material objects that can be kept in the suitcase to, after a time, relive what was lived. Souvenirs that do not have to be bought in a store.
The African Tree of Life
We left Harare (Zimbabwe) in the direction of the Mozambique jungle aboard a somewhat dilapidated light aircraft. After a couple of hours, and already at the limit of the autonomy of the twin-engine, the pilot seemed to finally see our destination. A tiny white line in the huge green vastness. We descend abruptly looking for the jungle clearing. Amid vibrations and mechanical clearing, we hit the ground in the middle of the narrow plain, but the plane does not seem able to stop. Only a few meters of track remain. The horizon turns a threatening green. Engines are revolutionized. Inside, silence. Since we cannot stop in time, the pilot ramps up, trying to fly again. We notice a strong jolt. The landing gear hits the tops of the trees. The apparatus loses its trajectory and hood falling towards the bottom of a deep ravine ... And that is our salvation. The 100 meters of free fall allows the pilot to control the apparatus and rise. The memory of this experience is twofold: the indelible sensation of the moment and a small branch recovered from the landing gear that I framed under the title "The Tree of Life".
The Tibetan Prayer Grinder
Despite the fact that in 1951 Tibet lost its autonomy to forcibly join the People's Republic of China, it continued to maintain its millennial character until in 2006 the train linked Lhasa with Beijing. Since then, with the massive demographic invasion of the Chinese, the Tibetans became an ethnic minority in their own kingdom and with this their identity began to dilute. But in 2005 everything was still almost as it had always been, and the pilgrims who arrived in Lhasa kept, in thousands, their promises to reach the Potala Palace and go round and round the Jokhang temple praying in silence. While praying, Tibetans usually spin grinders, generally metal and with a cylindrical structure, which have the mantra “Om mani padme hum” (Oh, jewel in the lotus) engraved on the outside or written on an inside parchment. As many times as the grinder is turned it is understood that the sentence is repeated. The memory I brought back were prayer grinders that I traded a Tibetan for a pair of boots.
The Jambiya Yemeni
Yemen is one of the most fascinating and unknown countries and until not long ago it was the most beautiful and almost intact sample of the Arab Middle Ages. Its souks immerse you in the remote and authentic world of the ancient guilds through its labyrinthine streets and haunting corners. Smells, colors, camels ..., with each blink everything seems to magically change. For historical, ethnic, religious and cultural reasons, the presence of tribal powers and conflicts are inherent in Yemen; hence this is the individually most armed nation in the world. The souvenir was precisely a weapon, a jambiya bought in the souk of the capital, Sanaa. It is a curved dagger that every Yemeni incorporates in its traditional outfit and that, depending on its importance and decorations, speaks of the social position of the wearer.
Shackleton's grave stone
In 2007, I had the opportunity to replicate Ernest Shackleton's odyssey trip in 1916. The famous explorer left the majority of the crew on Elephant Island with whom, for a year and a half, he had wandered the Antarctic deserts after his ship (the Endurance) was engulfed by ice and set sail for South Georgia, a lost island in the South Atlantic. The heroic voyage, more than 1,300 kilometers crossing the most turbulent and icy waters on the planet - the Scotia Sea - in a simple lifeboat, lasted 17 days. Due to its incomparable population of birds and marine mammals, South Georgia is considered one of the greatest natural settings in the world. On this island is Grytviken, which in the early 20th century was the most important whaling port in the southern seas. From here Shackleton left for Antarctica; there he returned after his epic, and to Grytviken he returned to organize his last expedition and finally die. In the local cemetery there is a simple tomb presided over by a monolith in which, next to its name, there is only one word: "Explorer". My memory was two small pebbles of the many that are in his grave. Granite stones of the same hardness as their character and indomitable toughness.
The disks of the mursis
The Mursis are one of more than 50 tribes that populate the banks of the Omo River, in southern Ethiopia. All of them live, or at least lived when I traveled to the area in 2005, in a striking primeval state. The mursis, for their part, are the most fond, especially women, to paint their faces and adorn their bodies with all kinds of ornaments. They stretch, even the most incredible deformation, their lips and earlobes to later insert in them spectacular clay discs decorated with engravings and colorful geometries. After negotiating hard with a couple of women from the tribe, I got them to sell me some of the records they carried.
The tokis of Easter Island
For more than 1,300 years, the only world known to the people of Rapa Nui was its small island. A triangle of just 24 kilometers long by 12 wide and 3,600 of the American continent. In this cosmos section, the Easter civilization created for centuries hundreds of colossal and mysterious figures with a hieratic face: the Moais. It is hard to believe that these huge works were sculpted in stone using only tokis , primitive obsidian or basalt tools with which 12 or 15 artisans worked the rock, over a year and a half, until the end of the moai. The souvenir from Easter Island was, of course, one of those tools.
The Karakorum Icon
In 2011 I had the opportunity to join what, according to connoisseurs, is the most spectacular and hard trekking that exists. It is the one carried out along the Baltoro glacier, in the Karakórum mountain range (Pakistan). Ten days of uninterrupted route, walking between 4,500 and 5,000 meters high, on an itinerary flanked by the highest concentration of high peaks on earth: infinity of seismiles; more than 20 thousand years; some of the most mythical mountains of universal mountaineering (the Torres del Trango or the Masherbrum), and 4 eight thousand, including the mountain of the mountains, the K2 (8,611 meters). Arriving at the base of Broad Peak (8,051 meters), on the way to the K2, the overwhelming and grandiose vision makes you speechless. And just being ecstatic in front of the white and perfect pyramid of the mythical mountain, I saw on the ground a stone that imitated, almost perfectly, its shape. A memory that I treasure of that singular experience.
Neither magnet nor keychain; there are other options
'Suiseki', China's landscape stones. A curious memory of a trip to China may be to bring back one of these stones that recalls some type of natural setting without having been manipulated (generally mountainous landscapes) and that, for centuries, Chinese and Japanese have become an authentic artistic manifestation. . Another curious option? A poster from Mao's Red Book .
'Scrimshaw', carved sperm whale tooth. On a visit to the Azores, it is surprising how the ancient whalers engraved the teeth of this cetacean with all kinds of scenes.
Tree toys. After meeting this tribe in southern Ethiopia, to remember it there is a rag ball and a cane photo camera.
A prayer disk from Iran. Another idea is to get hold of the piece used to support the forehead in Muslim prayers in mosques.
Stone flower of salt. A souvenir from Uyuni, in Bolivia, the largest salt desert (12,000 square kilometers).
And much more ... In Kenya, the ebony figures are rampaging, from the Jordanian desert of Wadi Rum some take sand or stones and in Madagascar the baobab fruit is sold.
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