A hard habit to break

I’m surprised to realise that during my time on Agion Oros (which means holy mountain), Athos’s proper title, I scarcely noticed their absence. The centre of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a peninsula of 400 square kilometres that has been inhabited only by men for the past 1,000 years, is a self-governing, virtually self-financing community of 20 monasteries and their dependent settlements. It has been the recipient of some breathtaking masterpieces of devotional art, and visitors and monks come here from all over the world.

There are far more weird and wonderful things to consider here than just the absence of women, but it happens that, at the time of my visit, that’s how Athos has been making the news.

For 20 days, I had been woken at five o’clock for matins in the church of the monastery in which I was staying - first by a polite knock on the dormitory door, then by the delicate clacking of a hammer on a wooden plank, which announces the start of a service, and then by a peal of hand-rung bells.

Tiptoeing into the church and slipping into one of the high-armed wooden seats at the back that are allocated for non-Orthodox visitors, I will sit for up to two hours, lulled almost back to sleep by the chanting of prayers in fourth-century Greek and overwhelmed by the yards of gold paint on the giant icon screen.

For the first week, until the Feast of the Falling Asleep of the Virgin (known further west as the Assumption), I have been following the monks’ fasting diet: fresh vegetables, olives, cheese, grapes and halva (a confection made from sesame seeds and honey), without any fish, wine or extra oil. But on the day before the night of the feast, several crates of fish arrive in time for the breaking of the fast. That evening, I hike to the monastery of Iviron, where the monks stay up all night chanting a 14-hour liturgy and laying out dinner and lunch for the 1,000 or so visitors who will turn up to attend the feast and then sleep in the grounds of the monastery.

When I get back to my base the next day, there are cream cakes and wine on the dinner table. During the evening meal, a monk standing in a corner reads aloud for 20 minutes, after which the Abbot rings a bell for him to stop, and everyone stands as the monks file out, singing. Talking to the monks in the evening, you can see them burping delicately after their hurried meal.

Each morning I help out with the work of clearing out derelict buildings and levelling weed-covered land, taking my instructions from a young monk - a former economics student - who drives the tractor and operates the chainsaws. I am also occasionally supervised by the Abbot, who wears a straw hat and black robes, and can lift vast beams of wood unaided. In the afternoons, I often sleep to avoid the heat, while the monks continue working, or sometimes I hike to other monasteries, where visitors are put up for free and are welcomed with shot glasses of tsipouro (a Greek aniseed liqueur) and plates of Turkish delight.

On the first weekend with the monks, before the work had started to exhaust me, I hiked up the holy mountain itself, equipped with sleeping bag, lumps of bread, feta cheese and medical supplies given to me by the monks. Congratulating myself on reaching the tiny church at the summit, I meet a Russian monk who has arrived before me. He says his prayers in the church before camping out for the night. I sleep on the floor of a mountain refuge, and can hear the tinkling of bells on the necks of the mules outside. The next morning, as I am stretching my aching legs, a monk in his 70s appears, stepping nimbly up the slope with a stick and backpack. It is only ten o’clock, and he has already climbed about 2,000 metres.

I wonder what it is in particular that makes this place feel so special. It may be the fresh air and the views across the wooded hills, or the sight and sound of the Aegean sea below the cliff-top monasteries, washing in a refreshing but tantalising kind of way - since it is forbidden to swim here. Or it may be the healthy diet combined with the physical work, and the intense spiritual focus that the peace and isolation of the place affords the monks.

At the vast monastery of Vatopedi, a smiling monk greets me at the gate and asks if I have been sent by the Prince of Wales, a regular visitor and friend of the monks here.

Two days after leaving Athos, I get back to Brussels and complete my re-entry into the pollutions and distractions of the world, consuming my first beer and meat and reading my first newspaper in more than a fortnight. Catching up with news on the internet (another thing I had almost forgotten existed), the irony of returning from Athos to Brussels, of all places, hits me.

Just prior to my return, the European Parliament passed a resolution on fundamental rights in the EU, in which it called for the second time this year for the ban on women visitors to Athos to be lifted - on grounds of gender discrimination.

I’ve listened to the debate on both sides, and it’s almost as exhausting as climbing the sharp rocks of the holy mountain itself. Before I had set off on my trip, Anna Karamanou, a Greek socialist MEP and campaigner for women’s rights, who is one of the most vocal opponents of the ban, had energetically talked me through her principled arguments against it.

"It is my strong belief that where the church and religion are very strong, the rights of women lag behind," she said. "This is very important in the symbolic sphere. Gay couples can go to Athos. A transsexual once went there and had to show an ID card. It’s just an issue of genitals, after all."

She claims the ban is illegal because it represents gender discrimination and a breach of freedom of movement. Seeing her efforts consistently resisted by the Greek government, she does not plan to give up fighting. But there is only so much pressure she can apply.

Karamanou was the only Greek MEP to vote in favour of lifting the ban. Human rights groups are still undecided on the issue, and the European women’s lobby has no position on it.

"The easiest way to lift the ban would be to violate the borders of Athos and have the case taken to court, and let the courts decide," says Karamanou, though she has no intention of doing this herself. There had been talk of a planned attempt to do it during the EU summit in Thessaloniki, in May, but nothing came of it.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that women have been to Athos. Intense curiosity surrounds the holy mountain because of the priceless cultural treasures - including centuries-old golden icons and saintly relics - housed in the churches there. You can see the forehead of St Andrew, the head of St John Chrysostom, and the holy horse-hair girdle supposedly worn by the Virgin Mary while she was carrying Jesus.

The Athos libraries contain tens of thousands of ancient texts, the fascination of which is heightened by the difficulty in gaining access to them. It is not surprising then that women have smuggled themselves in and donned disguises. But the monks are not visibly perturbed by any of this - partly because they know that the holy mountain’s right to autonomy is protected by the Greek constitution, and by a statement in the treaty governing Greece’s membership of the EU. In 1953, the landing of several women on Mount Athos led to the passing of a law decreeing prison terms for women who break the ban, though this can be commuted to a fine.

For the monks, Athos is also protected by higher powers. Cautionary tales are told to illustrate the divine authority behind the avaton (the Greek name for the ban), which is said to have been decreed by the Virgin Mary when she consecrated the area after being shipwrecked there.

An English monk tells the story of a female journalist who travelled around the peninsula in disguise, and who was eaten by a shark when she went swimming on her return to Ouranopolis. To make it clear that this was no freak occurrence, but divine retribution, he mentions other cases. A French woman is said to have visited Athos secretly, and then written a book that was critical of the monastic community. She is then said to have suffered "serious psychological problems", which were only alleviated after she wrote to one of the Abbots asking for his pardon for breaking the avaton. Then there were the communists who descended on the peninsula during the civil conflict in Greece that followed the end of the Second World War, the females dancing defiantly around the churches. "They suffered very much before their souls left their bodies," the monk says with chilling sincerity.

In the calmness of Mount Athos, such statements sound shocking to an outsider, but this is a place where moderation and fanaticism coexist. One guest at the monastery was asked to leave after smashing to pieces a camera belonging to another visitor, claiming that he had broken the rules by taking a photograph of the mountain. It wasn’t true - as the monks explained, they do not venerate mountains.

On my arrival at Great Lavra, the oldest monastery on Athos, which was founded by Saint Athanasios in the tenth century, I was welcomed by a monk who sat down and recited a prophecy made by an earlier resident here. He explained that in the future the whole of Europe would convert to Orthodoxy, emerging from a great war to be ruled from Constantinople by a new Orthodox patriarch called Ioannis. Germany will be the first country to convert. He gave cassettes of Orthodox prayers to a German visitor, encouraging him to start spreading the message to his friends when he got home. When an Italian visitor introduced himself, though, the monk calmly began rubbishing the Catholic church. There was an uneasy silence when he explained, through a translator, that Hitler had been working for the Pope. I didn’t ask him what he thought of the idea of lifting the avaton.

Another monk took the time to talk more moderately. "We are not against women," he explained, "any more than we are against meat by not eating it."

As a monk, one foregoes the pleasures of marriage - and meat - in order to focus on the monastic duty of praying for the world. "This is the service that we provide for the world as monks."

Those who seek to lift the ban, he continued, "will destroy what they wish to see". The buildings and fabulously decorated churches would be nothing more than a shell without the spiritual atmosphere that the monks seek to achieve through celibacy.

The legal tangle that results from weighing up the various ‘rights’ at stake here may yet take some thrashing out. The right to freedom of movement, and the right of everyone, as defined by the United Nations, "to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practise, worship and observance"; the duty of the Greek government to protect Athos’s autonomous status against that of EU member states to eliminate discrimination against women: it depends which treaty you prefer.

But as far as the monks are concerned, it is a very simple issue. While lay people, such as the Greek deputy foreign minister, Tassos Yiannitsis, have defended the ban with references in the media to tradition, what has not often been said is the simplest thing of all - that the reasons for the ban can only really be understood if looked at from the monks’ point of view. Celibacy was laid down by St Paul as one of the requirements of monastic life, and the monks of Athos are only able to worship in the way that they choose, and guarantee a life free from temptation, in the absence of women.

But none of this convinces Karamanou. "I respect cultures and traditions, but I have no respect for religious traditions that do not respect human rights and women’s rights. The monks do not even let their own mothers visit."

That, a monk would say, is what coming to Athos is all about. The monks I met came from as far away as Australia and Finland, and most sell all their property and cut off ties with their families when they come to Athos. Having personal wealth is regarded as a disadvantage, since it increases temptation and the possibility of leaving the order. They wear the black of mourning, because they consider themselves "dead to the world". But, as one monk explains, it is a joyful kind of mourning because they believe that they becoms newly alive to God.

The monks reply frankly to questions, but they do not want publicity. Visitors are asked to keep photography to a minimum, and they were very wary of having a journalist around - since one of them was once sent a copy of an article in a German newspaper with his picture in it. "You come here to get away from all that," is the simple explanation.

Back home, people are amazed to hear about the monks’ lack of showers and families, and it now seems a little unreal even to me. There is a lot about Mount Athos that is hard for an outsider to understand.