Why I don't visit churches

I don't do cathedrals. 

For sure, they can be full of fantastic art and give us meaningful insight into the beliefs and ways of life of the past. That's all great. I might peek in one if I happen to stumble upon one and feel like some solemnity might be in order. But seriously, when you enter your fifth cathedral, do you still remember the first? When you've read the plate about the painter of the frescos, taken a picture of the altar and stepped back out into the sunshine, has any of it stuck with you?

I'm wary of museums, too. If I live in a place for a year, then, of course: I'll probably visit most of them. I'm profoundly interested in history, politics, art, design – all that stuff that museums are usually good at. But a museum run in the sense of a pub crawl is beyond the point. On this trip, as I've been constantly moving from place to place, I still haven't been inside one single museum.

You know, there are these guide books, "Lonely Planet" they are called, and they are awfully popular. You'll find them in the backpacks of almost every traveller in almost any hostel. At the tables of the hostel bar, the backpackers compare notes with each other and discuss which Lonely Planet recommended experience they have or haven't done yet.

One series of books the Lonely Planet Corporation has is called X on a Shoestring. It's for people for whom seeing a country or two isn't enough; they want to travel at least half a continent. Europe on a Shoestring. Southeast Asia on a Shoestring. The World on a Shoestring (coming up). The word shoestring is supposed to refer to cheap travel, but in my mind, it evokes an image of someone drawing a line from the main attraction to another onto a map with the help of a string and then sticking to it.

I used to own one of those books too, years back, and I know what great writers they have. All you have to do is to open one of them, any of them, and you'll feel like you're missing out on some great fun somewhere in the world. "Be sure not to miss the amazing experience of...", they'll write. "Ideally, you'll get to X the night before, do Y and Z, and then get up early the next morning to..."

And the readers do! They dash from rafting to horseback riding, from canopy tour to hot springs, from mountain biking to temple ruins, from bird-watching to swimming with the dolphins. And inside cities, from cathedrals to museums. Tick-tick-tick, they tick off to-do lists in their guidebooks, click-click-click, they snap the selfies with the temple ruin or the friendly dolphin, tap-tap-tap they post them for the world to see. At the end, they'll feel like they've seen everything there was in the country to see.

What I like to do is watch. I watch people, how they go about their life, what kind of work they do, where they go. I listen to the people on the streets and buses, see how they talk to their friends, partners, or strangers. I observe how mothers and fathers behave with their children, what children are allowed to do and what not, how the children play and how they talk to their parents. I look at what people eat and what they buy, what happens in situations of buying and selling, what kind of shops there are. 

I look at how people have decorated their houses or their yards. I watch celebrations of birthdays or other parties in the streets or in parks. I try to find places where I can hear people sing or see them dance. I go to places where local people go: bus stations, cinemas, educational institutions, vegetable markets. I visit parks and squares and observe how people spend their free time, and what kind of people seem to have free time. I look at how people laugh.

Whenever I get the chance, I talk with the locals and ask them questions, but I rarely approach complete strangers – as an intruding outsider, I feel I don't have the right. I like to remind myself that whenever I set my foot in some city, I'm stepping into other people's home, and none of that was made just so that I could have a great experience.

Before I arrive, or during the first days, I try to read or hear and understand as much of the local history as possible. After that, I just breathe in the way of life. There's so much of it, you don't have to worry about it running out anytime soon.

Las raíces

I walk behind a woman up the stone steps of the Choquechaka street. On her head she has the typical thick, wide-brimmed brown hat. Below the hat, two long braids come far down on her back and have been tied together at the end. She's wearing a thick jumper, an apron, a wide skirt – I'm assuming it's many skirts over on another – tights and a pair of simple shoes. In the mornings it can be very cold and the attire seems reasonable, but now, in the scorching late-afternoon air, I can't help being puzzled at the long sleeves and thick layers.

Over her body she's tied a large, square cloth. It's an aguayo, or a q'ipirina, and has a very colourful pattern. It's tied at the front with just a simple double knot, and inside it, on her back, she's carrying something sizeable and heavy. It could be fruit to sell, it could be vegetables to take home, it could be a baby; I can't see inside. Then I see the bundle wiggle a little. It must be a baby, tucked diagonally sideways into the warm safety of the cloth.

Or another woman, somewhat older: wearing jeans and a worn denim cap, but carrying her two-year-old in the same colourful q'ipirina, tied the same way with a knot at the front. The toddler's not hidden though, but sitting up, and is being stroked by the woman's older daughter who's walking at her side. One day, when the girl has her first child, she won't think twice about slipping her newborn inside the cloth and going on about her day.

Like it has been done here for thousands of years.

Walking always higher up on the narrow streets and slowly leaving the hustle of the city behind, I feel oddly rootless. I can understand how the people here have a stronger sense of identity, much like the Sami people in my own country. Here, history of the forefathers seems to be whispering its tales of various times from all sides.

The buildings in their entirety are some hundreds of years old at the longest, but their foundations have existed quite a lot longer. The large stones that form the first layer of the walls are ancient. I look at a white wall and try to see through it: what kind of a family sat here having breakfast a a hundred generations ago? What were their fears, their wishes, their songs? What kind of things did they keep secret from others?

Besides rootless, I feel oddly responsible for the Spanish Conquest over four hundred years ago. What would stand here now, had we Europeans been less greedy and selfish? Yet, it's staggering to see how much of the old customs, language and culture are still alive in the everyday life of the Andean people, despite the fact that they have begun to receive any governmental support only in the last decades. In the Cusco region, more than half of the people learn Quechua as their mother tongue. The religions of Christianity and Pachamama live side by side and overlap. Where else in the world has a subjugated culture been able to stick to their roots even that much?

I pass the last houses, walk through a small forest and across a field and arrive at what are nowadays called the Temple of the Monkey and the Temple of the Moon. No one can say for sure what they were originally called, for these places stem from times even before the Incas. There is not too much left of them; only a disorderly-looking collection of vast stones, and some caves that have been closed from the public. Still, it's possible to discern some things, such as the figures of important animals that have been carved into the crude stones. The sun is setting when I climb to the top of the Temple of the Moon and kneel down next to a specially shaped stone. It's carved on both sides into the shape of two steps, and it's what was used to tell the time a very long time ago.

I lay my hand on the stone and reach out to those people hundreds or thousands of years before this moment. Someone has touched the stone then just like I am now. Someone has been where I am, and has seen the last rays of sun disappear behind the mountains just like now.

So short is human life; so few sunrises and sunsets behind the mountains; so much we forget, so much is lost.

And the stone stands.