Actress Jessica Hynes adores China and India, but is saving Ibiza until she's 50
'PEOPLE ASK if I'm like my characters: slightly goofy, a bit
seat-of-the-pants. Maybe - but I prefer to think of that as
a good thing. I'm relaxed about spontaneity, let's say.
I've always gone off on adventures, and I always travel light.
I did that in Hong Kong, on my big Chinese trip 10 years ago.
I went by rail right down the coast from Beijing, searching for
the place where my grandparents met before the war. I'd wash
my smalls on the train each night and put them out in the
carriage with clothes pegs. Great way to bond with the locals.
I'm a complete Chinaphile, and Beijing is my second favourite city
in the world, after London. Both of them are spider webs, gothic
in personality: you ramble all over, never quite knowing what will
turn up next. I wandered from Tiananmen Square to the Forbidden City
at daybreak, and sneaked in all alone. The sheer scale of that
place, the weight of 7,000 years of civilisation, is mind-bending- way beyond the sophistication of anything we've created in the West.
It's a very safe country to get lost in. In Shanghai, I went looking
for somewhere to stay - the authorities want you to pay £50 a night
for a tourist hotel, but I knew you could get a “local” place for
a fiver. I ended up in this tiny alleyway, lost in the dark, and a
girl and her father jumped out of a house and insisted on escorting
me back to the city centre. We walked miles together, with the little
girl translating. Next day, I took them a cake to say thanks.
I think my wanderlust comes from my childhood in Brighton. Mum was
a 1970s boho, and we took in foreign students and jazz musicians.
I'd sit watching Top of the Pops with Mohammed from Afghanistan and
Faroukh from Turkey. I often wonder what happened to those people.
It's harder to holiday impulsively now, with a family, but Adam is
pretty intrepid too, so we don't let it stop us. When Gabriel, our
oldest, was two, we went to Goa. I get fed up when snooty types say
it's not the real India. Why not? Because it's got decent roads? Get over it.
Anyway, we heard the Hindu pilgrimage of Kumbh Mela was
happening in Allahabad, and decided we had to see it. We
hired a car and set off into the night, 16 hours across
Uttar Pradesh, stopping at Agra for the Taj Mahal.
It was the first mela of the millennium. We hired one of the
Bedouin-style tents they set up for tourists, and woke in the
middle of this epic spectacle: thousands of people, total sensory
overload. I was literally and emotionally swept along by it - the
feeling of warmth and love is so overwhelming. We ended up on a
barge, surrounded by candles and flowers, being submerged head to
toe in the holy river. We had to take turns, of course, because
Gabriel was on the bank, looking a bit confused.
Our holiday hunches don't always work out. When our daughter Bea
was tiny, we decided to combine a wedding in Italy with visiting
friends in Montenegro - and to do the whole lot by road. So that's
two weeks, driving across the Alps, with a four-year-old and a
breast-feeding baby. Harrowing doesn't begin to describe it.
We've three children now, so I'm trying to cure myself of these
mad trips and settle for a weekend in the tent at Womad, or on
the Isle of Wight. I like the Isle of Wight: you have to catch
the ferry, so it feels like a proper holiday - not to a different
country, to a different century. This summer was Ventnor: very
nostalgic, with sand castles and the pier.
It's no good, though: my wanderlust is kicking in again.
We're planning Australia next - I can't wait to see Uluru,
and decide if it got there as a meteor or by some kind of magic.
And maybe, in a few years' time, as an empty-nester, I'll go off and
make a fool of myself in Ibiza. I love dancing - I still sometimes
sneak off to the End, in Bloomsbury, on Wednesday nights for a bit
of drum'n'bass. My dance moves are a little “experimental”, but I like
to think I'll have more decorum when I'm 50. Within five minutes of
getting to Ibiza, though, I'd probably be topless in the pool, me and my whistle ...?
Taken from
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk