08 Thursday, October 30, 2008 www.thenational.ae The National arts&life travel

With magnificent scenery and character all of their own, the smaller Dodecanse islands offer opportunities to get off the tourist trail and experience a completely different side of Greece.John Zada for The National One island, two worlds

The northern and southern regions of Karpathos embody Greece’s past and present, writes John Zada

For the mind that revels in ist island” and was endowed with The great infrastructure of Greek existed in a time warp. Pirate raids dirt road, built over a decade ago and combines old with ­modern and ­indecision, there is no exercise quiet, unspoilt beaches and craggy shipping lines had not yet come into between the 7th and 10th centuries accessible only to 4x4s, ­connects touristy. There are shops in every more satisfyingly brain-racking mist-covered mountains. being, and only private boats could AD drove the north’s inhabitants both sides of the island. A daily ferry alleyway selling traditional textiles, than that of seeking out a Greek What made Karpathos particular- ferry people to the distant mainland high up into the mountains, where travelling between Pigadia and the embroidery and tourist bric-a-brac. ­island on which to spend one’s ly intriguing was that its northern and back. As a result of this and the they found safety in new villages. north’s smaller port of ­Diaphani Keeping guard over these shops ­precious ­holiday time. Look at any half was said to contain a handful ever-worsening farming condi- The largest of these communities also links north and south. and stands are older women clad detailed map of the Aegean and of ancient villages that had existed tions, Karpathians started leaving today, Olymbos, was built on the Because of the north’s prolonged in the traditional garb of the town Ionian seas and you will see why. in relative isolation from the rest the ­island in droves by the midcen- landward-facing side of the north- seclusion, few people in the south – embroidered jackets, scarves and Peppering that small expanse of of the island. So much so that in tury to start better lives in the United ern slope of Mount Profitis Ilias, know any northerners ­personally, pinafores, and long goatskin boots. blue is a near-infinite miscellany the case of one village, called Olym- States, Australia, and Canada. Since protecting it from view from the sea and speak of the area as though it These women, who incidentally do of weather-beaten rocks existing in bos, most of its inhabitants were then, the island has remained much below. Today the town spills over were an island apart. And in some all the work in the town (the men are their own worlds. The possibilities said to speak a forgotten dialect of the same. the ridge, giving it a commanding ways it is. The Olymbians, the south- nowhere to be found), can be seen seem endless. ancient Greek. “Karpathos is one of the few ­major view of the island’s west coast. A ­ erners told me, are more rugged and making bread using old-world tech- This search for an island, ­ironically, The southern side of the island, Greek islands that hasn’t seen much no-frills and dangerously narrow darker in complexion than they are. niques around communal ovens. becomes exponentially more daunt- Karpathos’s more visited and ­more change in the last 30 years,” says And many of them speak a surviving This is done from a genuine desire ing as one eliminates the places accessible half, houses the island’s Mike Frangos, the owner and head dialect of the old Dorian Greek. to keep alive the flame of tradition that magnetise the Greece-going tiny airport, built on a flat promon- chef at Glaros Studios in Arkasa. “I don’t understand anything as well as to ­impress the tourists. herd: Santorini with its honeymoon tory of low-lying land overlooking a “The population remains small, they’re saying,” said a restaurant Despite modernity’s unavoidable sunsets, Mykonos with its prefabri- small windsurfing colony. ­tourism is small-scale, and there are owner in the seaside village of Agios inroads (electricity first arrived in cated hedonism, and Rhodes with Descending onto the runway, no ­factories or industry. The ­island Nikolaos. This was the mantra so Olymbos in 1980), the town ­remains its package tourist compounds and the first impression of Karpathos is still pristine.” After the day trippers ­often used by southerners who I out of step with the rest of the ­island. poolside fitness instruction ses- is that it is not as beautiful and Today the island’s southern asked about the north. The Olymbians ­themselves, as the sions. self-­contained as its postcard-per- ­capital and port, Pigadia, once have left, the town of My interest piqued, I rented a 4x4 southerners had rightly claimed, What remains, after these and the fect Cycladic cousins. It is instead aptly ­described by British novel- Olymbos sinks into and resolved to make the three-hour seem a different race of people other usual-suspect islands have ­incongruous, spacious and wild. ist and Hellenophile Lawrence a silent stillness that drive to Olymbos from my base in Ar- – many of them being dark, stout been knocked out of the running, The island’s beauty is elemental, Durrell as being “pleasant but not kasa in the south. The gateway to the and weathered in appearance. A is a strange and unfamiliar constel- conveying at times a difficult-to- memorable”, offers the usual Greek harks back to another north is the town of Spoa, ­located at cluster of obsolete medieval wind- lation of rocks whose names evoke ­describe feeling of inhospitability. ­island tourist fare by ­summer. time the island’s midsection. Here the mills, archaeological wonders in few or no associations. Rugged and chronically windswept, More ­genuine and far truer to the main road ends abruptly, giving way their own right, crown the heights To non-Greeks, only a few are the island’s large pines are bent island’s character are its village- to an innocuous dirt path. The drive of the town. And in the afternoons, known, if at all, by their oversim- southward in the direction that the square ­gatherings that go late into ahead is slow, arduous and painful- after the day trippers from Piga- plified and sometimes inaccurate blustery “Meltemia” winds blow. the night. Here local and expatriate ly nerve-racking. Narrowing along dia have caught the afternoon ­epithets. There is the tiny island, The disarming scent of thyme and Greeks eat and drink, leaving their mountainsides, sections of the road boat back, the town sinks into a the uninteresting island, the sleepy wild sage belies the island’s implicit hordes of children to run wild while bring one ­within feet of plummeting silent stillness that harks back to island, the forgotten island, the tree- harshness. eager twentysomethings flit in and to a ­panoramic, action-movie death. another time. less island, the unvisited island, the Then again, Karpathos has nev- out of tiny tavernas. The winds here kick up ­unexpectedly But what vestiges remain of the hard-to-get-to island, the ­unliveable er been an easy place to live. As a This is one version of today’s Kar- and blow so fiercely that the vehicle past will likely not endure. The island, the Greek-tourist island, and ­natural bridge connecting Crete pathos. Venturing across the invisi- literally shakes, giving the terrifying treacherous dirt road connect- so on. Each island is obscure and is with Asia Minor, its history has ble line dividing the island, and into impression that you are about to be ing north and south is today ­being absolutely unique. been defined by war and conquest. the north, into the other Karpathos, blown off the side of the cliff. ­widened and paved. Slated for After endlessly weighing the pros Since antiquity the island has one enters a world existing largely Because of this daredevilling, completion in 2009, it will connect and cons of each destination, one been ­constantly under invasion by unto itself. My first hint of this place the moment of arrival in Olymbos ­Olymbos with the rest of Karpathos finally settles on an island. In my ­successive waves of Romans, Byzan- came by way of a taxi driver who felt took on a less climactic note. Com- – unifying the long-divided island case, it was the island of Karpathos, tines, Arabs, Genoans, Venetians, compelled to comment on my desire ing into view after one rounds a for the first time. the windy island. and Ottoman Turks. The Italians to travel to the north. ­mountainside, the town – an patch- Sitting in an empty cafe in the An elongated island in the took over the island from the Turks “Why you want go there for?” the work of white, beige, yellow, and blue late afternoon as the town dozed, ­Dodecanese chain, set between just prior to First World War, ­calling driver asked brusquely, glancing at homes all stacked upon each other I asked the proprietor, an introspec- the islands of Rhodes and Crete, it “Scarpanto”. In 1948, ­following me in his rear-view mirror beneath – although picturesque, ­appeared tive and stoic young woman, how ­Karpathos stood out from the others a post-Second World War British an old Borsolino cap. I replied, less ancient or ­dramatically forlorn she thought the new road to the by offering a little bit of ­everything, ­mandate over the island, Karpathos ­asking whether it was too far to visit. than others had depicted. Seeing it south would affect Olymbos. and not too much of anything. The joined with the rest of Greece. “Far? Why don’t you go to ­Milan in- for the first time was no quantum After much thought she replied, island seemed neither too large But this change was to have little stead? You’d get there much faster.” leap into the past. “More people will come and we will nor too small, remote but not immediate impact. Poor administra- The north was indeed be- However, Olymbos does straddle change. The same as when the world ­impossible to reach. It had its share tion and neglect by Athens ensured yond practical reach for most two distant epochs simultaneously, came with the pirate ships long ago of visitors (mostly expatriate Greeks that Karpathos remained isolated, ­southerners. More rugged, barren, giving it a strange hybrid nature seen and we were forced to change. It’s from the US) but was not a “tour- and not entirely able to fend for itself. and ­windswept, it has for centuries in few other Greek islands. The town not so different now.”