Author: basgallop

This year I helped out with the Steiner school kids Parade,

the theme for the parade was ‘Childrens games’ and the Steiners were doing ‘Capture the Castle’, on the very sensible premise, that this would allow the kids to run hooligan wise up and down the streets shrieking. high spirits and anarchic exuberance. hurrah!

Breakfast in the Amma Ashram, you’d always have to be on your guard against the eagle. His preen of plumage, a red muddy brown, his head was white.
The dining hall/café was a roof supported on pillars, open on all sides to the elements.
The westerners would queue for morning coffee, a bleary natter.
There were always the clean up squad of crows. They’d loudly dispute the fate of leftovers. Bovver boy squabbling over the scraps. In India, in the curious absence of seagulls, they burlied into the same evolutionary niche. Cantankerous Scavengers!

The eagle made his breakfast time perch atop the pillars.
From here he’d regally peer down. A glance of disdain for rice, iddli and samba. Yet he was rather partial to omelettes and cheese sandwiches. A glutton for protein.
Down he’d swoop. A full stretch talon snatch.
The startled shriek from his victim, the tumult of oohs and aahs from his appreciative audience echoing around, and back down from the roof
away he’d be with his omlette booty, a reel around, a couple of lazy feathered flaps and back to his perch
Woe betide the unwary. Those not on their guard for a predator strike.
He’d grab from a plate, else more in yer face spectacularly, pluck from your fingertips. Marine, my French friend had her omlette snatched whilst I was sitting next to her. Swift, precise, immediate and feathered there. Nobody argues with an Eagle.

I strolled over the hill to Rottingdene to the cottage where the kids and Pam now live, in order to help with the setting up of the new trampoline.
A beast of a thing, full 12 feet across.
Much head scratching from me, the holding the plans upside down, then, the traditional neurosis, a bout of flat pack panic!
Jousting poles, screws, tarpaulin, star washers and a zillion silver springs
A few huge burly heave hos, to get it into position, some fiddly threading, a lot of dratt and double dratting, spring tightening, a dose of soothing herbal tea and hey presto! 3 hours later I’d done it! a ramshackle assembly but the thing was up and in bounce fine fettle.
The kids major contribution was to bound onto it at every stage of it’s construction, ‘is it ready?’, else to squabble over who got to hold exactly which bit.

On they leapt! What fun. Twang prang colliding in mid air like flying sumo wrestlers, before belly flopping to the floor.
I stood back to admire the trampoline, it’s huge, nearly the size of the Millennium Dome.
Nope not that, but exactly the size of Stone Henge, did you know that the circumference of the dome of St Pauls is precisely the size of Stone Henge.. and that, on Salisbury Plain, graffiti scored chisel deep into the stones says “Christopher Wren woz ‘ere”. Fact. Hmm Giant space astrological super computer, Poppycock, ‘tis blatantly the holding structure for some sort of prehistoric trampoline!

I join the kids on the mat, we leap and giggle and holler.
Exuberant Tellytubbies. Hurrah!
Finn shows me how to do a somersault landing on his back.
I practice a few mighty boings, the kids stand still and the earthquake rumble of my landing skittles them to the floor.
Jelly baby wobble knees.
It really is brilliant, my dreads bounce with me, flapping up, then flopping back down
Jon Bon Jovi, Lenny kravitz, eat yer heart out!
I can see up and over the garden fence, to the next garden and then the next, there a really rather beautiful woman is hanging out the washing. mmm
I smile and on my next up surge manage to salute.

It is impossible to be unhappy on a trampoline.
Reach for the stars!
1 – 2- 3, higher and higher …. higher … and higher, from up there I can see away, away, down the hill, above the village and there .. beyond.
The turquoise majesty of the Ocean.

Trekking to Mukhtinath

ok time finally to at least start writing about the trek
mug hot swelter here in Bangkok, cannae believe i was ever cold
The Khao San road is just dreary with tourists, fun in it’s own way, but I can’t believe I went a week without seeing any other tourists!
Contrary contrasts. all doolally

quick bit of background, I did the Jomsom trek, which broadly speaking is hiking up the course of the Kali Khandaki river valley, then back down again to get out!
Coming back I yomped doing 2 guidebook days in a day! Loneliness is an incredible spur even to one as lazy as me, 10 days walking in total
The Kali Khandaki is the deepest valley in the world, as most of the time your trekking at about 2000m high, on one side you’ve got Dhaulghiri, and on the other side Nhilghiri, both of which are about 8000m, the cosequence of this being that whichever way you look half the sky is full of these immense white caps. Huge, awesome f***k off mountains
The trek is part of the Anapurna circuit, which is about a 20 day walk.
As It was January nobody could do the whole Anapurna circuit at that time of year, as the Thorung la, the high pass, was shut with snow
Not totally shut as i did meet one couple.. and a family! who had managed to get through, thanks to one of the locals on the other side helping, guiding them over.

My trek ended at Mukhtinath, up at about 4000m, which is higher than any mountain in Europe! Mukhtinath is both a Hindu and Buddhist spiritual place,
on account of there being a combination of a natural gas flame and a stream, like in the six pointed star, the sacred combination of the upward pointing fire triangle (male) and the downward pointing water triangle (female), or is that me hippy babbling?

The trek is justly famous for it’s variety of terrain and vegetation, from lush semi tropical banana and orange trees around Tatopani, through to the wind sculpted, bone dry desert of the Mustang region, furthermore theres a wide range of nepalli tribal types, a real patchwork of cultures too!
The reason the trek was so gawdamm deserted was partly that it was off season, partly that the pass was shut, but also that the plane which flies to Jomsom, to take tourists up there didn’t fly for ten days, on account of the bad weather.
Broadly the only way to get there was to walk in. proper hard slog stylee.

… and to end this preamble, I have a personal history of this trek, when i was 20 on my first ever trip to India, callow youth that i was I came up here with a Canadian called Alan,
I’d met him at heathrow, i guess, i was mostly tagging along with him, on account of being utterly bewildered by india and never having travelled on my own!
the trek was 2 days longer back then as they hadn’t built any of the road yet.
That time I’d fallen ill at Naudanda, Alan had gone on without me, and I remember staying the night in this local hovel, retching and puking and mewling and just completely convincing myself that I had mountain sickness. I remember trying to get out of bed so that I could stagger down the mountain, but luckily was too ill to move, as when I did finally go down the mountain, the route was perilous treacherous, in the dark I’d have been scuppered, a plummet tumble off a mountain in the gloom!
Oh I also remember being sick in a bag and throwing it out the window, only for the next day to find the hens pecking up my puke… yeuchh
…………
….in the nature of endless shaggy dog stories, that puts me in the mind of one new years eve, mixing far too many rainbow hued cocktails, the following day Kathy and I went to Richmond, we were sitting on a bench, down by the riverside, grumbling cheerfully to each other, then the Thames tide began to come in… and in. cars were swamped by the tide
somehow we were stranded on the bench. maroooned! Robinson Barley Water Crusoe.
An audience had gathered to watch. About now, ever the stage fright drama queen i decided to be violently sick. bleagggh.
The worst bit being that the Ducks came over and pecked it up.
groan!
memory may well decieve me, but I like to believe that we were rescued by a Rastafarian in a rowboat…. Adventures do so often end that way
…………
errr back in Nepal when I was 20, I eventually staggered on to Poon hill, which is a fantastic Mountain view top and there met a fabbo ozzie, called Gail.

also, when I was 22 I did most of the Jomsom trek, this time I got as far as Kag Beni, the little Buddhist Monastery town
One days climb beneath Mukhtinath.
I had a truly brilliant time.
On the way I met up with Mic (Thug), Rebecca, Ralph the punk, Dawn and Hugh, we must have been the slowest most stoned bunch of trekkers ever.
this ones for you guys, wherever you may well be, hope it’s a good feeling. thanks!
Oh and from this trek, to both my gentleman Korean pal…. and the Chinese femme fatale…. and the cheeky boy

the rest of this, well, just dithering ramble from my diary, mostly so i don’t forget

Day 1

acch they say that every journey begins with a single step, but this one with a local bus, then taxi to naya pul, a real dirt track of a road, so the bus leaped and bounded, and pounded my backside as we went
at one point there was a big old bang and we came to a halt, the tyre had burst. everyone hopped off and stood around. much gesticulation, hubbub huddle and pointing, in these situations every man instantly becomes a mechanic, off with the wheel, then they bundled a new one on in no time and away we went.
After this it was a taxi ride, 5 nepallis bundled in the back, me with all the leg room, sprawl relaxed up front, still i was paying 3 times as much as everybody else so didn’t feel so bad about it.
a pig pen grey cloud of dust around us
the driver had a tape loop droning on the stereo. Hindii melodramatic! much fun. I think thats probably why i love world music so much, reminds me of journeys like this
you can sit strangled bored in an office and a few notes of trundled accordion from Santa Cachon and i’m away in the bejungled foothills of columbia!

hopped out at naya pul, a real arm pit of a place, dirt and the sadness of poverty, this is what the road will bring. From here I crossed the bridge and passed the ACAP (Annapurna conservation area) checkpoint to Bierthanthi

Bierthanthi, ha the first encounter with my 20 year old self, i remember so well sitting around here watching the river swirl and fast flow around the rocks. gush, babble and turmoil
them huge big boulders
I wonder how much these rocks have erroded in the last 20 years?
At the time i was somewhat prone to pseudo mystical revelations, not much changes, back then it was something along the lines of the ‘river flows through me, but i am not of the river’, how we are not the flow of thoughts, our bodies or even the passage of time.
bless! i was a naive young chappie, rather lost, but i kinda like teh young me!

This first few hours, up to Tikhedunga is a beautiful stretch, the trail ambles along by the riverside, gently uphill, a flowerful stretch, past small farms.
There was one point with a landslide and a small shiva shine next to it
The shrines are always marked out by the shiva trident and a rope strung about with simple dried flowers
I later learned that the landslip had wiped out 2 houses and killed a whole family of 8, incredibly sad.
A harsh land
A new path clambers onwards

………..
I got myself a stick. hurrah!
last time i did the trek, when i was 23, i caught a ride on a chinese truck all the way to the end of the road, the truck driver was helping build the road. As I hopped out he grunted and handed me a big Bamboo cane staff. Perfect. I carried it all the way to Kag Beni
You just can’t beat a proper stick!
This time i saw a similiar staff, lying by the side of the river, i dragged it out. hmmm rather long
but luckily. Thanks Finn! I had Finns penknife, so out with the mini saw part of it and a few mins of frenzied hacking it became the shoulder high pilgrims staff i required. A crowd of kids gathered around to chortle and stand bemused by my antics.
One of the gurkhas with their huge f***k off kukuri nights would have gone through it with one blow! made me think of trying to open a coconut in parque tyrona, colombia. with my little pen knife took pretty much all day.
Yet one of the machette wielding locals could hack through it in 2 shakes, which they often did to impress the girls
curiously the cocnut was a bit looked down upon in such parts. just too ubiquitous!
……………………
the trudge up the hill was heavy going, i quickly came to curse every single miligram of excess baggage in my backpack, first day so every single step was hard work. light weight.

I met a tibetan looking young woman (Thakali tribe?). She was very sweet and friendly, she’d was on her way back from Pokhara, where she’d gone to get some medicine for a crook stomach. She worked in a lodge in Tikhedunga and was naturally, business being business quite keen i stay there.
I knew of nowhere better and liked her, so readily agreed
At one point she had to hop off the road into one of the terraced fields, clutching a bog roll, poor thing, whilst i kept watch, sentry guard, back on the main trail
thinking about it maybe not that wise to stay in a lodge where the cooks got dysentry, but still, if a stomach lurgy is going to get you, it sure will.
When we got to the village she waved me on. The reason, probably 2 fold, in that with so many lodges on the trail all in cooperation and competition, hanging around on the path and poncing for customers is probably greatly frowned upon
Furthermore i think an attractive young woman, unmarried, hanging out with westerners would be a disgrace, quite a restrictive culture. Very Jane Austen
When I got there the guest house was pretty good, i grabbed a coffee, i love the way with the milk, the skin quickly forms and gets stuck to your moustache, all a bit plate techtonics, the drift of continents aross the surface
The manager was a burmese looking fellow, he was very soft, effeminate, much in the way of these people, he was married and had 2 children away at school, Finn and Sherbaileys age, back in his home village, somewhere in the Terrai, near Chitwan
His job was pretty much, standing on the doorstep, saying Nahmaste to all the trekkers going up… and all the trekkers coming down. Trying to coax them in, naturally he was a smidgin bored.
The other guests were a lebanese and a united arab emirate guy (all dark hair, tache a bristle) and their guide
the guide was of maoist sympathies, talk turned to politics and he was seething at the way the king had stolen billions upon billions of rupees from the country 6 billion he said), he was pleased with the changes thus far, as 2 years ago he wouldn’t have been able to voice such an opinion, but now he could. far to go
Everybody was expecting near civil war after the elections (10th April, if they went ahead)
If the maoists won there would be trouble, likewise if they lost.
Everyday there were power cuts, there was an indefinite banda (strike) down in the teraii and the bolshie partys there were preventing fuel trucks getting through. Nepal is teetering.

The arab guys were hilarious, they were exhausted from the 2 hour walk, and had pretended to get down on hands and knees, then crawl into the village!
that night we ate together, they were great friends, they relished telling me the plot of the latest Mr Bean movie, which sounded a hoot, in one scene the queen was asked to sign a document for the terrorists, she refused. they picked up a corgi and threatened to shoot, the arabs mimicked her voice ‘yes, yes right away’.
Normally I wouldn’t go for mr bean, but when recounted by a lebanese fellow, half way up a mountain in Nepal, it does sound funny
suddenly the world is a long way away and a strange place. I love travelling.

slept well, incredible full flush of stars above, the gentle gabble of the stream below.
In the visitors book ‘the love we take is equal to the love we make’
indeed. what song is that from

day 2
she’ll be coming around the mountains when she comes,
she’ll be coming around the mountains when she comes,
she’ll be wearing pink pyjamas when she comes

mules! They be on the trail everywhere, obviously they’re sterile, and a mix of a horse and a donkey, but whose the daddy? had i ever thought about it i would have assumed that the father was the horse and the mother a donkey. but apparently not, the babe then would be too large for the mother donkeys womb.
Rather ’tis vice versa and they have to build a pit for the horse to stand in and for the donkey to be in position. what next? step ladders step mothers and giraffes
for some reason i am put in mind of peter sellers and his affair with sophia loren, or pablo picasso and anyone
back to the mules tho’ they heavy laden have to lug everything up the hills, it’s horrible to see the deep rubbed raw sores on their backs, the toil, the near drunken gait as they stagger onwards and upwards.
what do they carry? mineral water, beer, huge sacks of rice, the kitchen sink. Often they are lumbered with twin gas cannisters, an incredible weight.
puts me in mind of a nepalli suicide bomber, just strike a match babe, start anew, it’s all over now baby blue.
osama bin down laden?

the mules have colourful embroidered head bands and each with a bell around it’s neck, the bells are of apparently random size, some with a tinkle, others with a deep throated dong, do the bells get selected on the basis of their personality? or does character follow as a result of the bell?
a bit like which chicken from the flock is selected for slaughter each night, definitely and literally pot luck
Regardless the continual crankle tong would swiftly drive me insane, how do the muleteers cope?
ah now i know, one of them passed me wearing an ipod, the modern world creeps even into the heart of the mountains, wonder what he’s listening to? music for mule traders?
they have a distinctive ulullating shout for the mules and are deadly shots with a hard hoiked stone.

anyway todays route was up, up, up, climbed over 1000 metres during the day, the first section was the stone staircase to Ulleri
crossing the first of many suspension bridges i held my cane out before me, like a quarter staff, feeling very much like Little John and Robin Hood, Finn would have loved to be here
At other times with my floppy sun hat and head high staff, i felt like Gandalf the Grey… I guess that he’d have to be grey, coz such be the dirt, even persil wouldn’t wash whiter than white.
I was thinking well, i’ve done this trek when i was 20, 40… maybe i’ll come back when i’m 60, with Finn and Sherbailey, i’d need a porter by then… and what if, god willing, i came back when i’m 80, ha i’d need a stannah stair lift to Mukhtinath by then.

finally after much plodding reached Ullerri, a very stoney village, the landscape becoming harsh, a real eagles eyrie of a place

….. to be cont’d (eventually)

Bodhnath (again)
i just love this place so much that i had to come back again on my last day in nepal.
 
One of the many meditational gestures the buddha uses is like an ok sign (hey whats next. Buddha giving the thumbs up!). Actually it’s more like 2 interlinked ok signs and actually indicates Buddha turning the Dharma wheel of life. That’s pretty much what we’re all doing at Bodhnath, around and around the stupa we go, it’s quite a long way 500m round(?), a slow perambulate, circumnavigate. Sunwise. turning, turning the Wheel of Life
A bit like being on a Roundabout!
I’ve got the hurdy gurdy carousel Magic Roundabout tune in my head.
I don’t think i’ve ever felt more spiritually connected with a building, awesome. From the moment I arrived there, gazed up at the Buddha eyes on top of the Stupa, the whole top all glowing golden in the subtle sinking sunlight.
 
I climbed up with some of the other devotees, above the base of the Stupa, just wave after wave of feeling heart happiness, I sent Warmth and thanks to all the people I love, holding you all, one by one, for a moment, in my heart
Looking up at the prayer flags as they furl and unfurl in the breeze. They were strung out like washing. A long, long line, 50 metres from where i stood, up to be tethered right at the pinnacle. Actually the Stupa looks like a big old be-tentacled Octopus!
 Their colors. Red, White, Green and Blue.
 
I stayed at one point where the flagswere lowest and densest, they brushed against my brow and i felt happy. Gazing up through them as the sway, sometimes hiding, sometimes revealing the Buddha eyes. Peekaboo.
Have you ever seen footage of a Forest of Kelp, somewhere off the coast of California, On attenboroughs Planet Earth, I believe. Long, Long ropes of vegetation, coiling and uncoiling, eerie glades of submarine sunlight. it was just like  that!
Before I get too carried away with my proesie, for the tibetans it’s half religious ritual half social event
feet firmly back on the ground, on i went, saying ‘Om Mane padme Hum’ actually feeling the words reverberate in my breast (think KoyanaSquaatsiii. ho ho), twirling the prayer wheels
yet also keeping a smile and a look for the gaggles of girls, they’d always be in threes, skipping around, holding hands, cheerful.
little kids giving each other piggyback. One legged hopalong cassady beggars
Next a pick up truck full of crimson robed monks goes past. beep beep. Everyone chases it!
Finally the truck comes to rest and the monks start giving out bags full of biscuits. bundle! he monks were near lost neath the heave and scrummage of bodies. greedy grasp of hands. Hilarious.
Next they opened one of the shrine images. A Silver mekong type buddha, volutously robed
 
Before him was a space for offerings, quickly there grew up a huge pile of Rice, biscuits and apples, later to be given away to the poor and orphans
It was all gloriously medieval and modern and just joyful
brill
 
the taxi driver on the way over was a very interesting fellow……
……………………

My other big friend Kely is an ozzie, 28, very attractive, one time life guard, she’d spent the last year and a half working in London and was now dawdling slowly home.
She’s always worked in the cosmetics business, something for Estee Lauder, I haven’t yet asked her what she makes of my moisturiser free, sun ravaged visage. ha the cracks are beginning to show, i’d be better off investing in polyfilla.
her home town is Coffs Harbour and she lived in Sydney for years, both places i know quite well
Her boyfriend is also called Kelly! freaky narcissism! I thought it was Oedipally bad enough that both my mum and pam are both called pam (they look nothing like each other i hasten to add)
she met boyfriend Kelly in Africa, apparently he’s a kiwi and a hunky brickie. He keeps on sending her texts saying ‘What are yer wearing?’, apparently this is a common text topic from blokes. me and coz have been adding suggestions as to how she should respond.
I think we all got a bit carried away as he texted back from a family bbq with an agonised ‘please stop’. ho ho
She’s down here in Bangkok now, so it’s been good meeting up with her in the evening and comparing adventures
she looked at the room i’m staying in and rejected it with a ‘her on earth would stay in this!’. the answer me, well yes indeed it is an airles shoe cupboard. Just a fan and a flophouse mattress, but it’s cheap… and the cafe downstairs is great .. and i’m going to have to get used to sleeping in the stifling heat soon.
Mostly tho’ it’s because i went to 5 other places and they were all full and i couldn’t be bothered hoiking my backpack on my shoulders anymore!
Kelly is staying in a slightly more salugbrious air con pad. natch
Anyway confusing myself, so much still to tell about nepal, which was just a blast! missing the cool and the absence of tourists already
Kelly was working in an orphanage in Pokhara (‘cept for when her mum came out and they went off trekking together!)
Sounds like all the kids were snot nosed but lovely.. and really appreciated all the attention, neither her or coz were particularly impressed by any of the organisations involved.
the guy who ran the orphanage was a christian bod, his own children were in the orphanage too and got preferential treatment, the previous volunteer had brought all the kids socks before she left, but the owner had confiscated them! they were only to be worn for best, which rather defeats the point of the gift!
Kely had got them all clean knickers before she left, but was continually concocting plans as to how to smuggle them onto the kids. life shouldn’t be so hard
Makes me think of how lucky my kids are and for that matter how we all are in the west
We all moan and grumble about debt, about being unhappy, but really are just billionaires, I am one of the most privileged people in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, at the wealthiest time in history. It’s nothing profound, just stating the bleeding obvious, i, and all of us just should find someway to just be happy.
Healthcare in Nepal is fairly rudimentary. If someone gets run over (and they all drive like demons possessed. ‘Slow Down’ ‘Chill Out’ I find myself shrieking at the fume spouting traffic, 10 times a day!), if someone gets runover and is injured, the driver who caused the accident has to pay compensation to them for the rest of their life.
Grimly, if somebody is runover by a truck, it’s not uncommon for the truck driver to reverse back over them, to finish them off.

Back to the more mundane grumbles of the volunteers, the guesthouse they were staying in was undergoing building works, had a 9pm curfew, no common area, was noisy, away from lakeside, no garden and was costing them 300rps a night (nearly what i was paying)
ust by chance Mike the head of the volunteer organisation POD was over staying that week, he hadn’t visited in 4 years, a bit of a show down meal followed
Mik was a pleasant enough fellow. Very Public School, properly spoken, upright posture and an ex army officer. A nice bloke, but not really one to drink with till dawn.
Broadly speaking i’d say the volunteer organisation was trying to do the right thing, heart in the right place, the volunteers had to pay quite a lot of dosh to work in the placements, but where the money broke down was interesting, firstly the salaries and infrastructure back in the UK, then there were the huge fees to teh tibetan bloke who organised the volunteers locally
In a nutshell none of the cash actually got through to the poor people who needed it
Despite all the good intentions in the world. money just finds money. sad really.

Kathmandu – Durbar square
the courting couples tuck themselves away around the corner of each temple
The roof supports for each of the pagodas are lewdly carved in the evocative postures of the kama sutra, they wink, wink, nudge, oogle down encouragingly on the youngsters
for some reason i have the squeeze song ‘pulling muscles from a shell’ revolving about my noggin. ha

Nearby there is a shrine with a banyan tree growing straight out of it, the Banyan, so fully grown now, that the shrine is near shattered

There is some palaver at the Royal Palace, into earshot comes that dreadful Tibetan Din!
A mish mash of drums and cymbals, with the occasional ominous bellow of horns, a real awful oompa pa pah rumpus…. oh and ornamental umbrellas … as along comes the procession, no clue what it is about, but, pleasantly, involves a lot of colourful parasols, everybody is done up to the nines in traditional garb, solemn but smiley
I always used to travel with one of those brollies on a spring, georgii markov, push the button and out it zonks, very business man james bond, ‘cept mine was green and red.
i went up mount sinaii with it up, in the desert it doubled as a very useful parasol!
………………………..

the bus ride to Pokhara

peering out the window, the road sweepers use reed brushes to sweep the dust from the pavement to the road, then pleasingly from the road bact to the pavement, cyclically karmic
the rivers are just clogged up with rubbish, plastic just never goes away.

I’m playing my mp3 player, the songs on it are just the ones i borrowed from the library before the cd drive on our old computer packed up. Mostly world music and folk, but also even Stephen Fry, reading a few chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
I tried to get some more music from my brov, the day before i left i popped down to see him in his office at the Marina, it’s in one of those little yellow and white sheds, on a pontoon, right out amongst the yachts. When the waves are up, and the tide a swell, the entire office bobs up and down in a queasy fashion!
The problem being that my cheapo, 34 squid mp3 player, dang near bust my brothers posh mac! ooops that would have been a disaster, all his Scott of the Antartic scripts lorst in the Antartic wilderness!
I have decided that as i have 628 songs i may just as well play them all once through consecutively, then again. mostly because i cannae be arsed learning how the pesky thing works, but also pleasantly passive and once more round and round karmic wheel of life. giddy. is 628 a lucky buddhist number? hope so

another bus passes us, beep, beep, honkety honk, this one is called the ‘open heart bus company’, ha, reckon i’d like to be on that bus!
i’ve worked out why theres just so much horn parping, the trucks, all crudely cartoon painted with shiva, buddha or some other useful road demons god, also have a big ‘please honk’ on their derriere
The system is when you wish to overtake you honk, the truck checks whether it’s clear, honks to say it is, you overtake, honk your thanks, then the truck driver honks once more, well just because he can! Generally this works well, ‘cept our driver, like most, seems to reckon it’s a good idea to overtake, uphill, with a fully laden bus, wellying the acellerator, is a bit like flogging a dead horse. we slow motion skiddaddle by, emotion blurr
Natch it’s always a blind bend and a steep plummet away to the bottom of the valley. Fun really, hair pin bends give a great view to the plush green countryside. terraces, they are kind of visible contour lines?

…………………

A stroll to the peace pagoda in pokhara

The first step is to hire a rowboat from down by the ghat, my ‘driver’ is a young burly water boatman, a cheery fellow, he enquires if i wish to have a row, nah think i’ll conserve my strength for the hike, so instead i dandle my hand in the cool water, feeling the pull and plunge of the cool water at our passing, lolling about like the lady of shallot!
It’s a big old, deep lake, on a clear day the entire Annapurna range reflected in it’s placid depths.
I’m not a huge fan of lakes, like in the Auden Poem (“praise of Limestone’?) i feel that the spirits and demons of lakes are spiteful and capricious, like the swiss really!!
I wonder if theres a Loch Ness Monster in here? Asleep if she is… Nessum Dorma?
Nessum Korma?
Gone Fishing? Yetti Netty Nessy?

… Anyway, there really is a tiger in the hills hereabouts, i’ve now heard so from at least 3 people, one dog i met, a sturdy mastiff, as they mostly seem to be, was called tiger, the reason being that his mother had been taken by the tiger.
apparently they have quite a taste for dog meat, so, not safe at all to go roaming with your trusty hound!
the Tigers make some sound, a strangled screech, which is neither a cough, nor a roar.

Once to the other side of the lake, it’s a steep steep climb up to the pagoda (nothing compared to the hills to come!), not much there, but the walk back down through the forest is a delight, all glades and dappled sunlight. dragonflies hover and bathe in the sunshine, then zzzip away to the next patch of light.Butterflies meanwhile, oh gaudy melodrama, they erratic flap, then tragic flop. lovely colours!
Somewhere down below the path a couple of water buffalo burly rustle through the undergrowth. For some reason i am reminded of Obelix and his wild boar.
Birds tweet tootfully in the canopy, near invisible but to all but the most resolute Bill Oddie, not quite sure how, the one i spotted had a red breast and was much like a bull finch but brighter!
I stop at one place and all ’tis mellow, it’s like a spirit point, i just visualise, in turn all the people i love and see what happens. I’ve been doing it a lot this holiday, the best times are like now out amongst nature, else when transfixed in front of one of the shrines, or failing that in the time when your mind is calm and you are just slipping away to sleep. Something about the brain wave patterns? Any roads, if you just empty your heart, it is amazing how beautiful the things are that come to fill it. Hope the people i’m sending too can in some way feel it? Hope also you know who you are. keep safe. Spirit peace. Love
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getting ready for my trek, i relaxed with a day in which my mission was to mostly further grow my beard! It’s coming on well. bushy Grizzly Adams, with a lot of grey!
oh and i also had to buy 2 hats, you can do anything with 2 hats, one was a daytime sun hat, plain and beige, with a big floppy brim, to keep the suns rays off my noggin. halfway twixt a pilgrims hat and a cowboy hat, slightly too small, so i had to ram it down over my dreads.
Hmm now i’m remembering when i used to go swimming in Prince Regents at Brighton, lengths, making a wake, up and down, splish splash, to and fro. toiling nowhere. My swim hat was one of those rubbery plastic ones, green, i had to really pull and polythene stretch it over my head. My bunched up dreads bulged out beneath it, it looked liek a giant brain tumour… or maybe an extra from Star Trek
accch now i’m remembering my swim hat at the hot springs pool in Karlovy vary, Czech Republic, we all poodled about amidst the primeval steam, swim hats, beflowered and smartie bright colours. very beautiful!
Oh and the other hat i managed to buy, back in the here, was a pink and purple big knit wooly number, perfect for keeping my ears toasty at night, up above the snow line.
It’s got tassels. result!
Much to my own suprise, I also purchased a Down sleeping bag and a big thick down jacket in dark green, which i like very much. stylish and very puff pastry
I was only going to rent them for the trek, but a bargain at under 30 pounds for the pair, prob being now, to get them home, i’ll have to lug them all through the swelter bucket tropics. rats!
i have never mastered the ethos of travelling light, a naturally cluttered and burdened personality.
I shall be bowed ‘neath the weight of me own belongings
mini the minimalist

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well I know i need to gabble on about the trek, but it’s a big thing, so i’ll just tread water with a waffle about the people, friends i made in Pokhara, so far my diary spew has been a bit short of people!
My best mate so far has been Coz, he’s been a total superstar and literally a lifesave. cheers buddy. When i had those 7 nights on the trek when i didn’t bump into anybody, the only thing that salvaged my sanity was that getting back to pokhara, i knew he’d be there for a beer and a gossip.
I met him straight off the plane in kathmandu, in the visa hall, whilst we were both puzzling through the bureaucracy.
He’d been on my plane all the way from London, but i didn’t notice him till Bahrain. apparently i aimlessly bumbled up to the departure gate. ha. but that was because, of all places, i had a mystical experience, feeling, revelation in the airport there! really powerful
We were united by fancying the Dutch women, but as there were 5 of them and beautiful, they were near impossible to approach.
Coz gave me a lift into town and we stayed in the Hotel Excelsior. His room had no hot water, wheras mine always did, a bit culture shocked we both went out drinking together the first couple of nights in Kathmandu.
He was over here to be a volunteer and was off to Pokhara to help the kids in an orphanage, he had a big passion for sports and had bought a huge kit bag full of footballs and cricket gear to entertain the little ones with.
Lifestyle wise you’d think we had little in common, his favourite topic of conversation was filth and smut. as a country boy, from Warminster (Stone henge, longleat way, off the A303!) he also had a passion for guns and broadly speaking blasting small animals to buggery kingdom come.
He loved boxing and had spent his childhood in trouble fighting, left school with 2 gcse’s at 16, a lifelong spurs fan, a substance abuser, a potential suicide
His dad was in the SAS and afterwards had a stab making Wiltshire amateur porn videos.
Coz is tho’ a quality geezer, really good bloke, always with an interesting tale or too, and yet ever interested to listen to whatever tale i was telling.
he’d learnt a lot from the free party scene around where he grew up in the ’90’s and was a big fan of dj’ing and the hip hop vibe, into his mushies and hash.. oh and his mum was a mystic horoscope type.
Quite a contrasting individual.

His life had though just fallen apart spectacularly, even more dramatically than mine
He’d been going out with Anna, a cop for 5 years, they had a house together and he worked as a computer programmer, fair set for a placid middle age.
Then she’d dumped him, he went off the rails, crashed a car whilst drunk in the woods, lost his licence, lost his job, his mod security clearance. Had to go to therapy for various substance abuse and then come out here as a volunteer!
In reality he seemed completely, utterly sane.

After hanging out in Kathmandu, we then met up again when i got to Pokhara, he’d got friendly with another volunteer Kelly from oz (more on her later, i hope) and also with Prasang, a sweet, quite western Tibetan fellow, Prasang looked a bit like Tin Tin and supported Manchester United.

No room at the orphanage, so Coz had just started teaching at ‘Mother of Compassion’ Tibetan school. Apparently on the first day he’d been warned by the head lama (who built the school), the head teacher and the volunteer supervisor, that under no circumstances was he to sleep with any of the female teachers. Obviously a big cultural No No!
One of the female nepalli teachers was always coming on to him, but not a good idea, they would have chopped his todger off!
On his first day Coz had used all the balloons he’d bought over and the other props and after that just had to wing it!
Coz would say that the tibetans are like jews at the end of the Nineteenth century, in a way there are similarities, the Tibetan community are keen not to integrate, they all live in various large refugee camps (4 around pokhara) and are keen to preserve their culture.
theocratic in outlook, this is coming under threat from western influence, gangs and related problems are starting in the camps. Tibetans are also quite remarkably good at making money and also at generating quite a lot of funds from western donors. On the whole there a grand bunch with a mischievious humour

One day after I’d come back from trekking his school was having it’s annual concert. all teh kids from his classes had been practicing their dancing and singing for months! The concert was in the town hall and was in an exposition of Mustang culture (the Tibetans in the school were all from the Mustang province), there was quite a big police presence as Nepal has forbidden Tibetans to gather in numbers, except for cultural events like these.
Coz and Kelly were worried that the event might be like the party for Losar, the Tibetan New year, from a few days before apparently 10 hours of turgid dancing and Dahl Bhatt, culminating in the fabled yak dance, which was 2 blokes in a pantomime horse costume!
This concert got off to a slow start, the crown prince of mustang was there, so he had to be thanked 12 times, then the chief donors of the school, an elderly, wealthy swiss couple had to be thanked and presented with the largest Rosettes on the planet.
then the school Lama made a very serious speech, another made a speech, these were obviously quite political in nature, i was reminded of the political seriousness i encountered when i first went to live in Prague.
The place was packed out, crammed to teh rafters, the entire Tibetan community was out, on the whole a dowdy and poor bunch, yet all in high humour, kids spilling out of every seat, folk hanging off the balcony above. Flicking peanuts at each other and us (and Kelly claims in one case bogies!) A big social event all round.
finally the music started, on the whole it was brilliant.
The main performer was Ani Cheung, a Tibetan Nun, she had obviously lived some years in Canada and sung these tibetan chants and ballards, she had a phenommenal voice, the songs i loved were the acapello buddhist chants, one of them sent me into a trance, visualising once more the folk i love, the songs i wasn’t so keen on were any of those with a musical accompaniment, all came over as a bit twee!

Next act up were Shambala, a rock band with a funky tibetan instrument slant, all of their songs started interestingly, then seemingly went nowhere! Most of the problem were the audience, they all listened in respectful silence, but not an infectious bunch prone to head nodding and leaping uncontrollably about!
For a while i was standing by the side of the stage and was very tempted to do a bit of stage diving or a Talking Heads ‘Stop making Sense’ style boogie. Felt i should be respectful too, just for once.

when the kids came on though, a totally different atmosphere, whooping and hollering, everyone was related to one of them in some way!
The boys, as is the way of teenagers seemed so much younger than the girls, the boys all wore furry hats and had painted on tashes and beards, the girls, no beards, but beautiful traditional garb
All of them had these long, long sleeves, which they wafted in the air chinese silk ribbon style
some of it was quite mustang region line dancing, but on the whole it was just great, everyone loved it!
My favourite bit was when one of the boys fell over and lay on the floor for 3 minutes, one of his mates went over to help him up, very sweet, everybody cheered.
Apparently the boy who made the pratt fall is both the class clown and quite camp, apparently he fell over whilst playing heads and volleys and lay there writhing and clutching his groin for 5 minutes, telling everyone, that he’d ‘twisted his pen’ ha. now theres a euphemism
his nickname is ‘Prime Minister of the Donkeys’, as apparently he admitted to riding a Donkey once, this caused great hilarity amongst the Tibetans, Mustang men they are proud of their horse manship and their famous steeeds.

ooops me times up, it was agreat concert and a good day out, back to moondance for our supper afterwards!