The holy light in the eyes of the young Russian monk and the quick, warm smile speaks of an inner peace I have rarely seen in anyone in close to 50 years of life; we are on our way by ferry to Mount Athos, but it is clear that all that place is, already lives within him.

There are hundreds of travellers’ tales about Mount Athos, and its unique characteristics are well-canvassed, most of all that admission is limited to men, and then only with a special visa secured long in advance. For the devout Orthodox Christian, it is a place of pilgrimage, perhaps on a plane with Jerusalem, but unlike that bustling, ever-troubled city, a place of pure serenity – and with no competition from the presence of other faiths.

Any account of a journey to Mount Athos must needs be personal, even for those of us who are anything but Orthodox Christian. I come not as a pilgrim, and nor for that matter as a tourist nor as a voyeur, but as a journalist – though, as ever, my own religious faith travels away with me.
 
Passports and ports
At the passport office in Ouranoupolis, receiving my visa – arranged in advance, through the good offices of the Greek National Tourism Organisation – is a two-step process.

At the first desk, I hand over my passport, and am asked my religion (though an expected question, it is briefly startling; no one has asked me that for years; it seems not only politically incorrect, but also rather personal, to be telling an official seated behind a computer).

At the second desk, as someone who is not Orthodox Christian, I pay a 30 euro fee, five more than those who are. My religion is recorded on the visa in Greek, the same language as the rest of the document, which serves doubly as visa and as ferry ticket.

Athos may technically be part of the Greek state, although its relations with Athens are handled through Greece’s foreign ministry, but it is the subject to a special clause in the European Union accession treaty, exempting its territory from the right of free movement of goods and persons. A Schengen visa on its own is not enough.

Stepping from the quay on to the ferry, the Agios Panteleimon, our passports and visas are checked, and we left our overnight bags up to find a seat somewhere in the two crowded staterooms, sheltered from the chilly April drizzle-specked sea breeze. The vessel has two common cabins, one large, one small. I seat myself in the smaller one, though I find out much later I was trespassing on a space reserved for monks and church hierarchs; neither I nor any of the other lay people were evicted.

Most of the men are travelling very lightly indeed. Some carry no more than a plastic bag, several have long wooden staffs, some crooked at the top like bishops’ crosiers. Not everyone comes for religious reasons; a few go to hike the slopes.

In the larger cabin, coffee, soft drinks, beer and snacks are on sale. Everywhere, considering that this is a gathering solely of men, at that mainly from Balkan countries, conversation is neither boisterous nor unduly subdued. Talk is in Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, here and there small scatterings of English.

Regularly, the ferry turns landward, to dock at the small harbours of the monasteries, the name announced in advance. At Daphne, the main port of Mount Athos, we disembark; our destination, the monastery of Agios Pavlos (St Paul) is towards the far south of the cape, and we must change ferries.

Daphne
The coming and going at Daphne is tumultuous. Small buses, taxis and 4x4s are at the quay, ready to transport monks and visitors. Mt Athos police are on alert for those who try to photograph those things that they should not, such as the police station itself.

Close to where the ferries dock, there is a tavern doing a roaring trade in Greek pastries, coffee and beer. Prices are reasonable and the young man behind the counter speaks fluent English. At a crude wooden table under a canopy outside, we are accosted by some of the many cats seeking morsels.

Photographing the monks is not allowed, a great pity from the selfish point of view of the photographer because their faces are stunning portraits in line and light. Fortunately, my consolation is that I love photographing cats.

Nearby, there are two souvenir shops, selling religious paraphernalia, hiking staffs as well as monk-made wine and tzipoura. Further away, I find a general dealer, whose many wares include five-litre jugs of olive oil, candles, tins of corned beef (presumably for visitors on this otherwise vegetarian enclave), detergents and shampoos, and even disposable razors, again probably for visitors to this land of the long-bearded.

I visit the toilet, which – redundantly – has the international stick-figure indicating that it is for men.

Forty-five minutes pass, and our onward ferry arrives, the Agia Anna (St Anna) and for the price of five euro paid onboard, we voyage towards Agios Pavlos. As with the first stage of the journey, every approach to a monastery is a cue for cameras to click; it is the privilege of men, given that the regular tourist cruises past Athos – on which women may journey – are subject to a sea-mile limit from the shore.
 
Prayer
The impressive pile of Agios Pavlos looms closer.

Dating back more than 1000 years, it has been destroyed many times – sometimes by wildfires, sometimes by human hand – and each time restored. The current central buildings date back about 200 years, the tower to the rear about five centuries.

Over the centuries, there has been funding from many sources, from Byzantium to old Serbia. Now the monastery is Greek Orthodox.

Thirty monks live there, of whom eight are Romanians. In their care they have close to 500 manuscripts and more than 12 000 books. Mount Athos, overall, is a rich repository of religious artworks, valuables and literature. It is said that the monastery holds the gifts that the three wise men/kings (as in, "of Orient are") brought to the baby Jesus.

Such is the collection of a millennium that no one is sure quite what and how many are the spiritual treasures kept here.

The greatest spiritual treasure is the faithful human heart in communion with the Divine. As we near our destination, two of the monks, seated at a table, lay their faces down in their folded arms, deep in intense, silent prayer. Perhaps, one of thanksgiving for passage from our secular world to this place of their sanctuary.
 
Agios Pavlos
At the quay, we are invited to board a bus upward, leaving our luggage to the care of an open-backed light delivery vehicle.

The journey is short; the gloomy weather notwithstanding, in retrospect I would prefer to have walked the final part of the way. I may not share their faith, but is not that what pilgrims do?

We are escorted upstairs to a dark first-floor spacious high-ceiled corridor (immediately, a sense of déjà vu about being a new boy at school) and are given a simple welcome of a tray of shot glasses of tzipoura and delicious chunks of lokum (much better than school, then). I have a raging head cold and discreetly but rapidly down three glasses of tzipoura, just for medical purposes, mind.

We are shown to our room, or technically I suppose, cell, we being a party of eight Bulgarian journalists. It is new, impeccably clean, with electric light and a wall socket, and eight black steel-framed double bunks. Of practice learnt in the army three decades ago, I move with lightning speed to claim an upper bunk next to the window.

Now we are left to our own devices. That is a crucial point about Athos. It is not a fanatical religious boot camp, where the visitor is pursued with bibles and zeal. The monks, understandably, appear incurious towards visitors and apart from polite but brief greetings, do not engage with us.

It is this that makes being there an individual experience. Without an internet connection, though mobile phones work, and with hours free, I am at a loose end for the first time in many months.

A handful of us agree to walk the slope to a church much higher up the slopes, but my cold having taken firm hold, I give up fairly quickly, instead going back to the main building of the monastery in search of a drinking glass for my soluble aspirin. Eventually, after badly pronouncing "πόσιμο γυαλί" to a succession of monks, I am rewarded and am left again to my own company.

Alone, on a ridge away from the main buildings, zipping up my windbreaker in the light rain, I feel that the best thing to do would be to pray. So I do, specifically for a Bulgarian friend of mine, a faithful Orthodox Christian, a simple prayer that he should one day be able to come here.
 
Grace
Evening, and it is time for Vespers. A cacophony of bells sounds the call to prayer.

At the church in the courtyard, a sign in five languages announces that anyone not an Orthodox Christian is not admitted to church services, so I stand respectfully and quietly outside, listening to the magnificent tones of the plainsong from within, leaning a little to glimpse the interior – lit solely by votive candles and candelabra – and watching the cats keeping their vigil by the kitchen door. One begins to befriend me, before realising the camera in my hand is not edible.

After about 40 minutes, the service is over, and there is a procession directly from the church door to the dining hall opposite.

Inside, the monks sit at the front end, which is dominated by a portrait of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her child; all along the walls and in an arch over the doorway, there are finely-crafted icons and depictions of saints and apostles. Eight columns, glossily painted in pale blue, march the length of the hall, to the end where the lay people are seated, eight to a table.

Before us, on metal crockery neatly accompanied by metal mugs, is the evening repast. Because today is a feast day, the pasta features calamari, a diversion from the vegetarian norm.

There are platters of thick, dense slices of bread, an orange at each place, two kinds of olives, water, and for each table, two carafes of a delicious, fruity and slightly sweet red wine, made at one of the other monasteries. I watch monks and visitors crossing themselves repeatedly as Grace is said.

Etiquette is to not speak during the meal, and to eat rapidly, while at a lectern, a senior monk reads from the Bible in Greek. At my table, a unique experience, a meal shared with Bulgarians, with no one saying a word. After perhaps 10 minutes, a bell sounds, all rise and a close-of-meal Grace is said. The business of eating is done. This is the monastic ethic of self-denial. Food is for sustenance, not pleasure. For all that, it is not only wholesome but very tasty too.

We proceed out of the hall, a monk by the doorway raising his hand in a gesture of blessing as we pass.

Outside, visitors gather at a wooden gazebo, to chat and smoke – the latter in spite of the written rule, also inscribed on the visa, that on Mount Athos, smoking is "generally not allowed". No monk objects to this profanity, however. Below, the view is of the slope and sea, untroubled in the evening by any ferries. Far across the sea twinkle the lights of a distant city of the secular world. I imagine traffic, hooting, shouting, nightclubs, the clink of glasses, the jingle of change. Here, all is quiet.

We roam along a narrow road above the monastery, admiring a stone chapel and, in the company of a Greek-speaking Romanian monk, examining the cave where, it is said, the St Paul for whom the monastery takes its name – not the former Saul but a son of a Byzantine emperor – first took shelter on his journey from Constantinople, bringing an icon of Mary.

By common consensus, we take to our bunks early and lights out is at about 9.30pm. We had been advised to expect the bells for Matins at 5am.
 
Dawn patrol
The thick comfort of my warm blanket does not exempt me from the cacophony of the bells sounding the call for the early morning liturgy.

However, I reason, if I am not supposed to go in, I am not going to stand outside in the long cold minutes before dawn, and so I huddle down, pausing only to watch the departure of my cell-mates, fully dressed and ready for prayers and plainsong – or at least, because I happen to know that whatever is written on their visas, not all of my fellow scribes are truly observant Orthodox – the hope of breakfast.

Some time before 7am, I dress and stroll in the direction of the church, thinking that I may have foregone breakfast and would be left with nothing to eat and drink, given that no such thing is for sale and the only refreshment is at the hall at mealtimes.

Happily, I was wrong. As I arrived outside the church door, the procession into the hall began and I fell into the ranks behind, this time sharing a table with a group of young Russians.

Breakfast is a delicious lentil stew in a perfectly adequate portion, boiled eggs (painted presumably because of the recent Easter), the same thick bread in doorstep slices, another orange, water and again the same delicious, low-alcohol wine. Even so, the champagne breakfasts of many years yore beside, I hasten to point out how odd it feels to be quaffing wine in a metal mug at breakfast time.

Some hours later, the weather promising a beautiful day and a hint of what a summer paradise the place must be, some of us walk down the slopes to meet our ferry. The water that meets the concrete harbour is crystal clear; from an environmental point of view, Athos is also fascinating from the point of view of being one of very few places in Europe where – barring the building of monasteries and some related infrastructure – the eco-system has been preserved untrammeled for so many years.

As we wait, a Romanian pilgrim tells us of the routine that he and his colleagues, all specialist doctors at a children’s hospital in Bucharest, have kept these recent years; of annual visits to Mount Athos, each visit spent at a succession of monasteries. Much later, I remember another doctor friend of mine, who worked at a children’s oncology hospital in London and had something of a breakdown after too often watching a young child ebb and die; I wonder if those Romanian doctors, who must face the same thing, find solace and strength on what in Greek is called the Holy Mountain.

And I remember a Bulgarian colleague telling me, after his third visit, that Mount Athos is a place that once visited, calls the visitor to return. I write these notes more than a week after my return; if what he said is true, I do not know

Getting there
Contact the Mount Athos offices in Thessaloniki (phone (+30) 2310 252578), from Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 2pm, on Saturday 10am to noon, to make a booking and receive a code number. This code number is necessary because the number of visitors is limited to 100 men a day.

Visitors can go by road (by private car or by bus) from Thessaloniki to Ierissos, Nea Roda or Ouranoupolis. The distance is about 140km. These towns cater for tourists, which means that there are plentiful shops, hotels and parking spaces for cars. Cars other than those of the monasteries and outside contractors are not allowed on Mount Athos.

The Diamonitiria permit must be collected from the offices of Mount Athos, at Ouranoupolis. Visitors must be there at least an hour before departure. In order to get the permit, visitors must show their passports and pay the required fee.

For more information on visiting Mount Athos:
http://www.inathos.gr/athos/en/VisitMountAthos.html
http://wikitravel.org/en/Mount_Athos