Rrrrighty Ho!

The Scottish highlands reminded me a lot of the Sahyadris in Maharashtra, especially during the monsoon. Only it was colder here and very few people around. We went on a 3 day tour to the Isle of Skye conducted by Rabbies. The tour was excellent and we would highly recommend it and also make sure your tour guide happens to be Shelby. She was very good, with frequent “Rrrighty Ho!”s in a strong Scottish accent. We drove in a mini coach through the Scottish highlands to the Isle of Skye and Shelby kept us informed about the history of the place which was mostly about wars with England, Mary of Scots and all that kind of stuff. She also gave out the significance of various castles that are peppered around in the most scenic spots of the country. Mostly war and bloodshed and a love hate relationship with England where the love is to fight with them, at least as express by our guide.
Fortunately we had good weather and that would mean that mostly cloudy, on several occasions rain and on very few occasions sunshine. The point is that it is considered to be a fantastic day if it is not totally washed out. If sunshine is at a premium in England, you can just forget about it in Scotland. In any case the landscape looks better and the castles look more ominous under heavy cloud cover.
The Scottish language, Gaelic, is almost dead but there are efforts to revive it. With the new devolution of power to the Scottish parliament (a crazy building in Edinburrah) there is some optimism on that front. It sounds very different but most people, even our guide don’t know it.
We were in Skye for two nights and a full day. We went walking around in crazy wind and rain and loved every moment of it. With the mist, rain and wind the place looks magical. Of course what I suspected was finally confirmed. My supposed water proof Gore-Tex jacket from REI was not waterproof after all. To make things worse it just soaks up water and refuses to dry for a day! So now I am looking for a good rain jacket (I want to spend next monsoon in the Sahyadris!), any recommendations?

The highlight of this tour, for me, was the streams. Don’t forget to taste the water there. That peaty, smooth taste is what provides the whiskey from these places that distinctive flavor. Of course I did not miss the whisky tasting trip and also picked up a bottle of Lagavulin (my favourite) and another one of some Islay single malt distilled at Ardbeg in 1996 (recommended by the guy who with his kilt and all looked a serious whiskey drinker). So folks, be nice to me when I get back to Bangalore and we can have a quiet drink. I think they should also bottle the water from there. I would like to freeze that water and use them for Scotch on rocks. What say?
We did end up in going on a boat ride on Loch Ness. No monster sighting though. Our guide tried terribly hard to convince that there is something indeed lurking in those deep waters. Loch Ness is deeper than the North Sea. This is due to some crazy geological quirk – a fault between two plates creating a deep valley and then a glazier coming into it during ice age. The boat had a cool sonar equipment fitted into the boat to track Nessy (as the monster is affectionately called in these parts) but that made the ride far more informative. We got to know the shape of the lake floor as well as the shoals of fishes around. There was some salt water fishes which got trapped in the lake when the glacier melted and in a matter of 15000 years have adapted to fresh water conditions. Pretty cool huh? Will we humans be able to adapt to climate change?
I was quite curious as to why in spite of so much rain it was mostly open grasslands and only small forests here and there in the Scottish highlands. Was it because of the peaty surface I wondered? Well no. As I suspected it was just plain deforestation over millennia of human habitation. It was covered with 98% forests before. And this started and probably was completed well before industrial revolution. So it is not this modern age which has caused all this but traditional agricultural and grazing practices. The jholawala types would always try to convince that ALL problems are due to modern methods. But impartial analysis would clearly indicate environment change and degradation started long back, albeit the rate of change might have been slower then. Read Collapse by Jared Diamond for more on this.
Edinburrah is a fantastic city. The old stone buildings look ominous in the cloudy weather there. We spent a whole day roaming around the town. The castle dominates the old town. We did the walk recommended by Lonely Planet and it turned out quite interesting. We also went to an exhibition titled ‘Peoples story’ which had display about the life of regular folks of Edinburrah, not the Dukes and Kings. There was a whole underground town in which the poor folks lived. The pretty buildings sat on top of these. They generally lead a miserable life and it was particularly bad during the times of plague. There was an interesting piece about domestic help, about how all of them were woman from rural areas and about their difficulties in Edinburrah. This was in 1850. I guess these are issues that we are facing now in Bangalore. The world is indeed flat!