Seeking Solitude in the Monasteries of Mt. Athos

Monasteries, regardless of religion, appeal to that side of my personality that is contemplative, bookish and escapist. I arrange for a room, choose worthy paperback roommates, load a camera and journey toward the silence.

I remember past monasteries: a rainy night’s climb to the Buddhist monastery on Adam’s Peak on Sri Lanka; the dusty ride to St. Catherine’s in the Sinai, the shattering of thin ice to wash my morning face at the Japanese monastery on Mt. Koya, Honshu Island.

The years passed and I found myself in Thessaloniki, shortened to Salonika, applying for permission from the Ministry of Northern Greece to go to Mt. Athos on the Chalcidice Peninsula below the plains of Macedonia.

Chalcidice, on a map, is like a turtle inching southeast toward Turkey. Mt. Athos is the northeastern arm of the turtle, a peninsula 30 miles long by 10 miles wide, ending in the 6,600-foot Holy Mountain itself.

From the peak of this mountain, one can gaze north over a landscape distinct in today’s world: a hilly, forested peninsula dotted with ancient, fortresslike monasteries.

Donkey Trains

The unpaved roads of its interior are walked by men in black leading donkey trains that wind slowly past chapels containing icons from the 10th Century. No cars, no electricity, no telephone poles.

On the western coast, over a pebble beach fronting a blue-green sea, stands the monastery of Xenophontos, founded in AD 520.

The promontory is physically part of the Greek mainland, but by custom and law it is quite removed. It’s an autonomous monastic state consisting of 20 large monasteries and hundreds of chapels and hermitages. Many caves remain for the ascetic who wants to remove himself from temptation.

You climb the rope ladder, pull it up after yourself and drop a basket down once a day for bread and water. For visitors less ascetically inclined, it is possible to spend a night or more at one of the monasteries. But the possibility is limited to men.

Sacred to Greeks

This has long been sacred soil to the Greeks, even before Christianity. Ruins of a temple to Poseidon were found at the base of Mt. Athos, the highest point in Chalcidice Province.

The monks who live and work around Mt. Athos are the sole monastic branch of the Greek Orthodox Church. These are monasteries of the earliest traditions--prayer and self-sufficiency, and were not intended for proselytizing. The monks grow what they eat, have no private property and are under supervision of an elected abbot.

There are restrictions for visitors: no women or small children, no short pants, no musical instruments, no pets or movie cameras.

Buses leave daily from Salonika to Ouranopolis, the town bordering the monastic territory.

Heaven City, as Ouranopolis translates, is aptly named. Women must wait for their men to come back, which makes it look like heaven to the pilgrim returning from a stay in a land for males only.

The ferries run daily from Ouranopolis to Daphne, the port of Athos. At Daphne, dock permits are inspected. The monks standing on the wharf cast trained eyes on each person who disembarks, in case a woman dressed in man’s clothing should be hidden among the passengers.

Spectacular Views

The one partially paved road and bus line goes from Daphne to Karyes, the capital of Athos, over a mountain range that provides the first of many spectacular views.

On the western side are monasteries built on stilt foundations and precariously overlooking the sea; on the eastern side is Karyes itself, along with the Prototos Church, a basilica from the 13th Century; Koutloumousiou Monastery, and surrounding vegetable gardens, fruit orchards and vineyards.

Along the roadside lie tangled blackberry bushes and ivy, obscuring approaches to the forests of poplar, pine and chestnut. Bells ring for services and black-robed monks slowly converge.

There are grocers, vegetable dealers, cooks, peddlers, street cleaners--all of them monks. You’ll see beards of all kinds: black, brown, gray, blond and snow-white; some pointed, some spread out like bell-shaped brooms, others thick, curly, impenetrable.

In Karyes, each visitor is taken to the office of Holy Supervision to purchase a card called a diamonitirion for 800 drachmas, about $5 U.S., which entitles one a visit to any of the monasteries plus room and board. It’s not haute cuisine , but it’s filling fare.

Cobblestone Roads

All roads from Karyes, other than the one to Daphne, are cobblestone or dirt, and they often narrow down to trails. You can walk or rent a mule for the inland monasteries or hire a small launch for the coastal ones. The monasteries are situated so that to get from one to the next is never more than a day’s hike, and often under two or three hours.

Koutloumousiou is a 20-minute walk from Karyes. An ecclesiastical mansion covered by ivy and grapevines gone wild, it appears to be succumbing to the lush vegetation around it. Koutloumousiou was founded in the 13th Century, and counts among its treasures the left leg of St. Anna and the left hand of St. Gregory Theologos. Originally designed for 100 monks, it now houses 10.

Only a few rooms on the upper two floors are in use; the rest are shuttered. Within the outer walls is a small chapel with gold and silver icons, ivory-inlaid prayer stools and an intricate, hand-carved wooden altar.

On request, a monk opened the chapel’s heavy door with a huge key hanging from his waist. The chapel is like a precious egg in a nest half-decayed, guarded by aged eagles. The monk demanded that our group stay close together and asked that I remove my hand from my pocket.

While others listened to his tour, I wondered what was wrong with my pocket. Was it something Freudian or merely the fact that these relics were literally worth millions of dollars and there wasn’t a cop within miles?

Disappearing Cat

Outside, in the courtyard, a cat--fat and talkative--rubbed gently against my ankle. I was bending over, stroking its back, when I heard a board creak. A frowning monk approached, wagging his finger at me. The cat disappeared into the shadows and I listened to a short lecture in modern Greek, which I couldn’t understand.

My four days were planned in a circle from Karyes, staying at three monasteries. After a night at Koutloumousiou, I walked to the Pantokratoros Monastery in the company of a Greek from Trieste and a German man with his two sons.

When the monastery first came into view, it looked like a Gothic fortress. On a wooden porch built out over the massive front entrance sat two monks. One of them rose and came to greet us. His gray hair was tied in a bun behind, and the beard fell below his chin. He showed us to our rooms and told us when and where we would eat.

It was as simple as that. There is no visitor’s timetable of events, tours or sermons.

The room I shared was in a large tower with a narrow archer’s window that looked over a cliff down to the waves pounding on rounded boulders. It was clean and comfortable, and the view, illuminated by a full moon, was spectacular.

Saints’ Calendar

For dinner we were taken to a small dining room at a corner of the tower, with views on two sides of the beach and cliffs. The long, wooden table was set for the 10 visitors, and a strong breeze from an opened window rustled the pages of a saints’ calendar.

One of the few young monks I saw brought our food. We had lentil soup, tomato salad, plates of small salty fish and home-baked bread washed down with fresh water.

The next morning we hiked to Vatopedi Monastery, where as recently as a hundred years ago 300 monks lived. Twenty-five remain today. Vatopedi is on the side of a hill where a valley opens to the sea and overlooks a harbor.

Grapes grow in profusion, the ground sometimes smelling like a winery. In AD 862, invaders burned the original monastery, killed the monks and took their treasures; the rebuilt monastery looks like a fortified medieval town.

Finger of a Saint

In the 19th Century, Robert Curzon, a British traveler, visited Vatopedi and was shown relics of St. John the Baptist. I didn’t see St. John, but a monk did show me the reliquary, laying several relics on one side of the chapel’s altar: the finger of one saint, the skull of St. Andrew encased in a gold and silver helmet with a hatch on top to view the bone, the belt of the Virgin Mary and a piece of the Cross.

Vatopedi takes several days to explore. Twenty minutes up the coast, I found a secluded sand beach where I could meditate, feet submerged in the cooling waters of the Aegean Sea.

I found myself spending less time in the dark halls of monasteries and more in surrounding gardens, observing scenes out of the Middle Ages: black-robed men hoeing the earth between lines of green beans and tomatoes, with the high crenelated walls towering behind, an arched stone aqueduct ending abruptly nowhere, the ruins of a Russian church open to the wind and two storks standing tall over a nest on a chapel roof at sunset.

And everywhere the sound and smell of the Aegean Sea.

To visit Mt. Athos, you must obtain a permit from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Churches, 3 Academias St., Athens, or at the Ministry of Northern Greece, Directorate of Civil Affairs, Platia Diikitiriou, Thessaloniki.

A letter of recommendation from an American consulate is necessary for the permit. The permit is exchanged at Karyes on Mt. Athos for a diamonitirion permit at a cost of 800 drachmas for a stay of up to four days. Included are room and board at the monastery.

A first-class hotel in Thessaloniki is the Macedonian Palace, which charges $110 U.S. for a double. In Ouranopolis, recommended hotels are the Eagles Palace Hotel and Bungalows (April through October, about $70 double, including two meals) and the Xenia Hotel (May through September, about $40 double, including two meals).

KLM flies direct from Los Angeles to Athens. The APEX fare, with 14-day minimum stay, is $1,087 starting in June. Olympic Airways flies from Athens to Salonika. Cost is $86 round trip. The round trip by train is about $30, but the pace is slow.

In Athens, the Greek National Tourist Organization office is at 2 Amerikis St. and at 34 Mitropoleos St., Salonika.

For more information, contact the Greek National Tourist Organization at 611 W. 6th St., Suite 1998, Los Angeles 90017, or call (213) 626-6696.