Sunday, October 21, 2018

TRAVEL SPECIAL..... Floating on the Moskva


Floating on the Moskva

Look at the 800-year-old Moscow city from the deck of a boat on a deliciously slow cruise

A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Winston Churchill’s famous quip about Russia could well define its capital Moscow, a byzantine, mystifying, yet exhilarating place.
As I scurry from one iconic landmark to another, boarding a metro, catching a tram and clocking kilometres on foot, the megalopolis’ size boggles my mind. Everything in Moscow, a city of 12 million people, is on an uber-scale. The houses are sprawling, parks are gargantuan, urban vistas stretch for miles and metro stations mimic subterranean mazes.
The scale is fitting, one reckons, for the capital of a nation that is the world’s largest at 17 million square kilometres, about twice the size of the United States, with less than half the American population, and spanning nine time zones.
After a giddy cultural trail, a cruise on the 100-km-long Moskva River is exceptional for the inactivity it induces. Cruise liners, called river trams, offer deliciously slow voyages. “Moscow grew during the 12th century along the river’s winding banks, so a cruise is the most scenic way to soak in its sites while avoiding the city’s rush and traffic snarls,”
guide Lyudmila explains as we amble towards Pushkinkaya Embankment that meanders along the atmospheric Olivkovy beach, Zeleny Theatre and the city’s most popular famous stretch of greens — Gorky Park. We are to board our two-hour cruise from the pier. While we are at the ticket window, the boat’s horn blares, signalling departure. Flustered, we grab our tickets and make a mad dash for it just as the wooden planks are being folded up. The two-tier, retrostyle boat is comfortable, with open as well as covered seating areas upstairs, and indoor seating and a modest cafe downstairs. We settle for alfresco corner seats that offer unobstructed views of the 800-year-old city. Most passengers cluster on decks, poised with cameras and smartphones to take photos.
The cruise fosters a kind of cultural detente among passengers. There’s an aura of collective wonderment as we together explore the beauty and dichotomy of a city that’s both modern and medieval, quaint and cosmopolitan, bleak and colourful, austere and ornate, juxtaposing 15th century tsarist monuments with vertiginous skyscrapers.
My gaze moves from the teal waters of the river to the shore. Buildings ornamented with fine facades glide past – a 16-storey-high monument to Peter the Great, the colossal, goldendomed Church of Christ the Saviour (demolished under Stalin, then rebuilt after the fall of communism) built in the late Muscovite Baroque style.
The ship crosses the beautiful Novodevichy Convent, the “wedding cake” Stalinist skyscraper of Moscow State University and the newly revamped Gorky Park. Riverside Towers — a cluster of hotels, civic buildings and apartment complexes built in neo-Gothic style —veers into view next. The whirr of cameras becomes distinctly louder as we approach The Kremlin, the beating heart of Moscow. The massive complex holds in its bowels four magnificent palaces and four cathedrals. “The Kremlin Armoury Museum,” Lyudmila explains, “is the oldest museum in Moscow and home to 10 beautiful Faberge eggs in addition to Russian imperial regalia and glittering treasures of gold and silver.” Behind the fortress lies the manicured Alexander’s Garden, populated by sauntering locals and ice cream-licking tourists.
A frisson of excitement runs through the crowd at the sight of Saint Basil’s Cathedral, the most recognised icon of Russia. Stirring and spectacular, the shrine is shaped like the flame of a bonfire leaping into the sky. Its splendid colours, fascinating shapes and patterns appear every bit as glorious as they do in photos.
Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, says the cathedral “is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design.”
After I disembark, the ship becomes a distant blur as Moscow’s noise and madness take over. But my mind still brims over with kaleidoscopic images of a truly great city. And a river cruise that had buffed its edges into sea glass.
Neeta Lal
The writer is a Delhi-based journalist. Follow her on Twitter: @neeta_com
ETM7OCT18

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