The Indian Ocean beating at the foothills of the Himalayas with five beautiful little villages precariously tucked away somewhere above the waters. That is the closest parallel I could draw as I set foot on this beautiful land called the Cinque Terre in northern Italy.

After travelling through a dark tunnel with short patches of light appearing as the eye blinks the train slowly comes to a halt at a bright narrow open space carved out on a mountain cliff overlooking a vast turquoise sea. The train disappears into the tunnel ahead, leaving you behind completely mesmerised and you find yourself in an almost existential solitude between the hills and the sea, with no way out in sight except those two gigantic dark tunnel-holes on either side of the railway platform.

Welcome to Riomaggiore, the first of the five little villages of the Cinque Terre dotting this remote corner of north-west Italy, where high mountains halt the relentless, ever-rising waves of the Mediterranean. I follow fellow backpackers down the subway tunnel which leads to the point where Riomaggiore half-reveals itself. It is a slice from ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’, the enchanting memoir of the legendary Italian communist leader Carlo Levi’s days in exile during the Fascist regime. As you tread along the narrow paved winding street, you come across Italian mamas gossiping loudly on the threshold of their houses under a mild sun, tourists and backpackers bargaining with dormitory owners, idle wanderers walking the street aimlessly and nubile young things serving wine in restaurants.

The Cinque Terre or the Five Lands, was nowhere on the world tourist map till as late as the 1960s. Today it is one of the hot spots for tourists with an attitude, who don’t want to ‘do’ your regular destinations like Rome, Venice and Florence. The five villages – Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso – are the success story of a toiling people deeply rooted to their land and tradition. If Rome displays the grandeur of an era gone by, the Cinque Terre tells you at whose cost.

PEOPLES’ MAESTRO
The man who tells the story of the Cinque Terre through his brush is Silvio Benedetto, affectionately called the Maestro by the locals. You cannot miss the two awesome murals of working peasants painted in bright colours on the giant walls by the railway platform. The murals are the creation of Benedetto – a well-known painter, sculptor and theatre director, who came to the Cinque Terre from Argentina in the 1950s and decided to make it his home away from home. Benedetto’s murals tell the story of how the local peasants built the Cinque Terre with their sweat and toil creating high-stone walls and narrow terraces to save the land from deteriorating. He explains that his paintings are not for the market, hallowed art galleries or elite exhibitions.

The day-to-day life of the general hoi polloi is the recurring theme of Benedetto’s paintings and living with them, he says, is an essential part of his creative processes. To express his tribute to local people, Benedetto painted a huge mural of a peasant woman carrying a heavy basket of grapes and donated it to the local women’s cooperative where they make the famous Cinque Terre wine. Far removed from the connoisseur’s eye, the painting hangs on a dark wall of the winery. Pick up any bottle of the Cinque Terre red wine and have a close look at the label, you will find Benedetto’s painting printed on it.

A focaccia seller at Manarola village told me about Benedetto and his long association with the Cinque Terre. Thinking that he was talking about some legendry character from the past, I sought to know, “Is he still alive?” “Till last week he was. I saw him in the market”, replied the shopkeeper with a mischievous smile flickering across his face.

FOOD AND MORE FOOD
You can count thousand and one similarities between the Indian and Italian way of life and attitudes (including the mama’s boy syndrome, not to mention corruption at high places) but this one is unbeatable: Hospitality a la Rajasthan! And I am not talking about sweet smiles and welcoming gestures; it’s about wine and food and more wine and more food. If jeemna is a tradition in Rajasthan where you cannot get away without being overstuffed by your host at a daavat (and saying no to that would be taken as an insult), there is no respite in Italy either. A polite Englishman will never ask you twice for the second helping and a true-to-his-salt Italian will never let you get up from the table until he is fully satisfied that you have eaten. Our friend Silvio Benedetto literally does a padharo mhare des on me when we meet him over what he called “yum-yum”.

I am barely through with my plate of anchovies and there comes another plateful. I tell him about the tradition of force-feeding in Rajasthan. He has a belly laugh and says, “Think I am from Rajasthan” and goes on to order pasta with Genovese sauce and tomato bruschetta.

LA DOLCE VITA LAND
The best way to explore the Cinque Terre is to hit the Via dell’amore or the Lovers’ Trail that links all five villages. You begin from Riomeggiore and walk all the way through vineyards and olive orchards to Monterosso with its pretty shingled beach. Take a break here in the company of modern-day Venuses soaking the Mediterranean sun. On my way up I notice a helicopter ferrying a heavy object tied to a long dangling rope and I was reminded of that famous sequence from Frederico Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) in which he manages to take the shot of a similar helicopter carrying a huge statue of Jesus Christ from one corner to another, without losing out on his artistes performing down below. No wonder Italian life is depicted so beautifully and so artistically in Fellini’s cinema.

Looking for affordable accommodation in Riomaggiore, we were actually directed towards a dormitory called – what else? – La Dolce Vita! The walls of the office-cum-reception were plastered by black and white snaps from the actual shooting of the film, so what if it took place in far away Rome.

HELL OR HEAVEN?
In the end a piece of advice: Sharing a small dorm with bunk beds, occupied by gorgeous girls, can be a sweet but tortuous experience. Especially, when one of them happens to be your wife.

Not quite la dolce vita, I would say!