holi
Category: India
kathmandu
I love a big Asian city… well love and hate, you know how it is!
of course yoga on the beach, meditating in an ashram, climbing in the lofty himalayas, these are all blissful, transcendent aspects of travelling
but its only really in the gritty metropoli that you get a measure, a grasp on how most folk live
a glimpse of narrative tableau, people going about their lives.
throng
step onto the street, risk of life and limb, hurtled at by Rickshaws, scooters appear from every direction… all is squalour and hubbub… the notion of pavement is almost preposterous
its all about surfing the overwhelm, constantly pummelled by sensory stimulus
an exercise in focus and intention… i am going here, this, precisely, is how i will get there
sieve through what is pertinent, this can kill me, that, as joyce would have it, that is just a ‘shout in the street’
cubist consciousness, fractured, life unravels in a different rhythm
world gulped in glimpses
having said that Kathmandu, despite its usual hurly burly, is well blessed with civic spaces
I loved the little stupa square near my hotel, its that mix of the sacred and the mundane
amongst huge clamour, Kids hurtle, chucking water bombs, it’s the cusp of holi… 2 small girls skip to create a crescendo swirl of pigeons
Bells are rung, the noodle stall in the corner does a roaring trade, motorbikes are parked everywhere, askant and akimbo
Kids strum a guitar
Old men with walking sticks and traditional hats (Dhaka Topi) chat on the steps
it’s like a small Spanish towns Plaza Mayor but with a Newari Buddhist twist
Prayer flags flutter, eyes of Buddha atop the stupa serenely observe
a nearly full moon, pollution peach, drifts across the sky above
A 7 year old boy encouraged by the guitar players does impersonations of football players goal celebrations..
he runs, a Ronaldo jump, spin and pout… We all go ‘siuuuu’…
They shout ‘Mbappe’, arms crossed and a cheeky scowl! By request Messi and Neymar follow
global. joyful
3 sisters in pink, the oldest is pushed over to chat to me, she is mbe 13, the others hanging onto her coat 10 and 6… The usual questions and answers: ‘engLAND’ , ‘alone’, ‘2 children boy 26, girl 22’
… my tie dye pink t shirt matches their clobber… I want to take their photo, they want to take mine… But neither of us are like that… Shy smiles mingled with playful waves as they leave
a nothingness of trivial interaction, tho there is a powerful warm glow to it, the questions irrelevant, i can tell they are in from the subburbs, their parents, a little way away speak no english
we are all buoyed by our mutual curiosity
Another day I am sitting near the edge of the central Durbar square, on the steps of a pagoda, next to an ancient statue, comically adorned with lipstick
I am tucked out of the way, observing, a telly in standby mode!
A kid blows soapy bubbles streaming into the air
The cloth merchant begins to neatly fold her nylon saris, gives up, flings them in a heap
A family of four on a scooter… The rag bedraggled homeless man, bare cracked feet, snores asleep on the steps of the temple
people passing people passing
There is a young woman in beige trousers a pattern of dogs, cats and rabbit faces, she has a shiva trident in vermilion powder etched on her third eye…
A Mum wears a bright red smurf bobble hat, straight up, adding half a foot to her stature, daughter has opted for a rainbow sun hat with a feather
garb of exoticism
a shop owner comes over, introduces himself, ‘Ratna’
we smoke cigarettes as he shows a clutch of well thumbed photos from which he beams out youthful
when he first set up in 1980, how he learned english on the street
his wedding, to a Newari budhist despite him being Hindu
Adventures in Hong Kong
he is 61, I tell him of my first trip to Nepal in 1986… 2 oldish men talking proudly of days of yore
he is soon to be a grandad
he knows everybody in these parts
I see him once more 2 days later during the bedlam of the holi celebrations, a crush of people between us, but he smiles and waves
he is standing on the edge of the stage, helping direct people around to safety
responsibility, a man embedded in his own community
I get the sense of a life well lived
Annapurna
A week trekking up to the Annapurna Sanctuary and back… it’s the bobbins!
Waking up at Base Camp after a night of heavy snow… a clear and divine morning… at 4000m, surrounded on all sides by peaks.
Annapurna and her siblings, spin all the way around to Macchu Pichurre (Fish tail), each mountain towering 7000 or 8000m high
brain slightly doolally, oxygen deprived, realm of the sacred, theres a reason hermits head to the mountains for spiritual insight
Annapurna goddess of nourishment, the nectar of plenty flowing endlessly from her lap
bask in wonder and exhaustion, content with my insignificance, rumbling along, with the humble and the glorious
The day up to the Sanctuary was epic, a climb of 1000m, trekking alone i was blessed to be adopted by 3 Kathmandu lads in the lodge the night before… BK, Nikki and Muni… ‘We go together!’… they were all around Finn, my sons, age and in truth had never much been in the mountains before… they were like ‘Respect Uncle!’… seemingly bewildered that someone so ancient as i could be up there… their own parents at home, comfortably, sensibly, ensconced in front of the telly
Up we trudged, crawling past the avalanche zone, over fast flowing ice streams, reaching Macchu Pichurre Base Camp, then dog legging left… a bleak, empty wilderness… an hour from the camp the weather closed in, white out from fog, then the snow started.
Once we got to the lodge, relief, a huge plate of dhal bhat stodge, a hot lemon ginger honey and watching out the window as stragglers made it home… a huge snow storm into the night, mostly the rumble of thunder, interspersed with the occasional distant sound of an avalanche! crikey!
back track slightly… tho the peaks are jaw dropping, much of the pleasure of trekking is in its cheerful simplicity
wake up in the morning and follow the path, up, then down, then up and up…. i meandered higher and higher, easily the slowest on the mountain ‘no hurry, no worry’
when your tired stop for chai, or mid afternoon find a comfortable lodge to hunker down for the night… 2 quid for a bed. bargain
the lower stretches were pleasantly rural, water buffalo, terraced fields of crops, cabbages and wild hemp, rickety hay stacks, locals just grokking as the world passes their front door… shire-esque! have always felt that tolkein vibe since I came to Nepal first back in 1986
After this it was 3 days of Sal and Rhoddedendron forest, interspersed with Bamboo… occasionally a posse of porters would surge past, many with music blaring out… a bit of nepali hip hop? else the syruppy-ness of a romantic duet!… each porter carrying up to 60 Kg supported from a band around their forehead. respect. a tough life… else a bamboo cutter with his basket and poles would appear from nowhere…. grey langurs, eagles and even vultures!!!
Lodge life was fun and sociable, still low season, so but few folk on the mountain… grab a handful of spare blankets and wrap up in down jacket and wooly hat… always a friendly dawg and chatty lodge keeper… each night was like being marooned in a submarine, a motley selection of people, random and frequently hilarious gabble!
who knows what nonsense you’d be talking about
of the tourists there was a healthy smattering of europeans, americans, dutch, south africans etc… as they all travelled faster than me i saw them all again as i was trudging up and they coming back down… companions! long lost friends!
by far the largest contingent of trekkers were young Nepalis from Kathmandu, more affluent, middle class english speakers… a real generational change, lovely to see them out exploring their own country
oh and of course there were the groups! ha! with guides and porters, i particularly enjoyed a gang of 20 malay chinese, their porters were carrying hair dryers up into the mountains?!… they were great tho, we leapfrogged each other for a couple of days… every time i’d stagger up, they’d all jump to their feet and clap ‘Wichard! Wichard!’… a wonderful nourishing way to be greeted
……. goodness i’m waffling on this morning… a glut of words and pictures… won’t fare well with the social media algorithm!
…… hmm what else to say?
my stick! dropped off by the bus in jhinnu, the first adventure was to cross the longest, the highest, the creakiest suspension bridge! i’m terrified of heights so a baptism of fire… sunset… as i got to the other side there were 2 sticks propped against the wall… perfect! one of bamboo and a beautiful one of ooh mbe sturdy cherry?… i snatched the latter up and off i went… i love a good stick, won’t bore you with my camino tale now, the perfect companion, this one supported me all the up and all the way back down again… a week later i left it at the exact same spot… for the next traveller… a beautiful symmetry
did make me ponder about my choice… we are so conditioned by our heritage, our history… i never even for a second even considered the bamboo?! …. i was explaining this to one of the young malay women… in response she arched her beautiful eyebrows and in despair at my folly mournfully uttered ‘ Bambuuuuuuuuu’
on the way up the mountain i stopped at a sacred place in the woods, ‘a powerful god’, there was a shiva shrine, prayer flags, teeter totter stones and a more buddhist pagoda… ‘powerful god’ is about right, for whatever the quibble about the name of the divinity, it surely comes from an ancient animist site.
sitting by the pagoda, looking into the gorge, a waterfall gabbling down the far cliff
i closed my eyes and intoned three deep ‘aummmmms’… a curious audio quality, there was the sound of the waterfall, then a deeper rumble from the river gorge, but the sound of my om somewhow resonated with the sound scape… it was like being lifted up, the whirring and fluttering of great wings…. beyond that, beyond that…. stillness
i stopped there again on the way down… just to give thanks… speak a few simple, obvious, words into the roar of the waterfall… i cried
………..
may all beings be well, may all beings be happy, may all beings be free from suffering… om mane padme hum x
Typewriters
Street of Typewriters. Street of Scribes. Mysore
Typewriters! The rhythmic cheerful metallic rat a tat tat audible even above all the street sounds…
mostly the persistent smog whirr and hurtle honk of circling rickshaws
there is something curiously satisfying about redundant technology … these mechanical contraptions of yore …
a collaboration of type set metal, set on sticks… then the reams of blueBlack ink and smudge carbon paper
these typists were down a side street near Mysore palace, towered over by Raj era, slightly pompous indo saracenic (sarcastic?!) buildings, likewise relics of a bygone epoch
Not the best photo, indeed, just a snap in passing… I half remember(?) exactly the same scene from when I first came here back in the 80s
I loved the way the customer, he with the scooter helmet, mobile phone at his side, was animatedly explaining what he wanted, whilst the typist alternated between earnest attention and that faraway stare, almost rapt, as he typed away
composition as collaboration
Fascinated, the next day I returned to chat with Ramesh… balding, gentle natured, a mild beige shirt, seemingly old, but in truth probably 10 years younger than I… He proudly told me he had been working here 25 years, his only ever job.
I blurted out the obvious ‘but but computers!!!’ he explained that 15% of Indian written communication was still done in this way! people preffered it… mostly the job was translating official-esque documents from Kannadian (language of Karnataka, with its beautiful curly wurly alphabet) into English… depositions, legalese pleas… and yet, and yet, I am sure he would sometimes turn his skills to writing the occasional purple prose of a love letter… wringing emotions into ink, codifying the heart… it was ever thus for scribes
I think, in another life, I would have happily been a scribe, mbe at the court of Tipu Sultan, the late 18th century, with a beautiful coloured turban, sniffing a Rose (a frequent motif), gnawing on a florid ink besmirched feather quill, concocting love letters for a customer… like something from Orhan Pamuks ‘My Name is Red’
Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple
Sri Ranganatha Swamy Temple, Srirangapatana, Karnataka
quite the clickety clack tongue twister for my anglo saxon mutter utterance
I love to be at an ancient South Indian temple just before sunset
enter through the gate under the majestic gopuram,
pass through the halls, each pillar uniquely carved, centuries before, with a flower, animal, dancer or god…
black stone daubed with splahes of colour… pink, red, saffron… slick with ghee, the bright blooms of offerings of flowers
richly sensual
ONWARD, DEEPER, a bell is rung, onward, deeper, following the swish of sari, onward, deeper, following the swish of moustache, onward deeper, plumes of incense, ONWARD, DEEPER
finally coming to the inner sanctum, before the shrine itself, here Vishnu reclining with a five headed snake (Sheshnag) forming a potective canopy over his head, dreaming the world into being
it is not my religion, i have no real notion what is going on… but just stand quietly, feel whatever it is that there is there for you to feel, heart open, as source bubbles to surface…
spirit is spirit, wherever you find it… be it in the astonishing beauty of nature… a country church in winter at dusk… the shrine of a sufi saint… else somewhere like here… where people have chanted together down the centuries
the old warmth, yearn, the pull of beyond… a solemn exuberant place
no photos obvs
this temple dedicated to Vishnu on the banks of the Kaveri river is at least 1000 years old, a pleasant stumble upon after visiting Tipu Sultans Summer Palace, it didn’t even make the Lonely Planet(!), a major Vaishnava pilgrimage centre
one of the many treats of india, the minute you amble but a nano hair off the beaten track is the air of minor celebrity acquired
everybody wants to chat and have their photo taken with you… as a lover of natter and selfies this suits me right down to the ground
i always ask them to take one for me, photos of people are my fave and this way i’m not intrusively shoving a camea in a strangers face
these youngsters , Rashika and Arun, were paricularly sweet, the baby was at that teeter topple toddle phase lurching cheerfully hither and thither, practicing waving (bye bye / ta ta) … i’d just had an amusing exchange with a couple of smartly saried , very posh, biddies ‘my son he lives in california, he has a succesful health food company, maybe you know it?’, after that selfie they too came over for a snap and a chat… afterwards, waving goodbye, they disappeared around the corner, then retuned a minute later bringing me some prasad, sweet treats blessed by the shrine, to tell me that it was Rashikas birthday… cue ‘Happy Birthday toooo youuu’
i also like the fact that the brahmin priest, bare chest, paunch and slightly balding, he wafts the flame, takes the donations, moves those overtly fervent along… yet in quieter time, boredly flicks through his mobile phone… we all do… what i’m doing just now, you too? where does he keep the phone tho, a mystery, in his lunghi?
lucy: Heading there in around 1 week 
Namaste! Hullo… Been enjoying your photos… If your there deffo recommend the temple around sunset… Doesn’t have the size and extraordinary vibe of some of the Tamil Nadu ones (Madurai, Tiruvannamalai) but nearby… And a human scale… India without cars, everyone in a cheerful mood! xx
gaaandhi
crikey, only a year ago, yet with all the yawn of lockdown glumness and isolation, feels like several lifetimes
i look so fresh faced and youthful!… well in contrast to gandhi anyway… better hair too, yeah ping pong ball head… there not be many folk i can say that to!
on my way to the giddy throng, the hubbub hullabaloo of sunset in the great shiva fire temple
tiruvannamalai, tamil nadu, i first learnt to pronounce the city by practising with tiramisu and timbuctu (too)
on this day i had loitered amongst the serenity of the Sri Ramana ashram… then followed the trail barefoot (no shoes holy mountain!) to his meditation cave perched part way up Arunachala…
when i got to the temple, no entry in shorts, so had the giggle of buying pyjama troosers in an indian department store, 10 amused staff at my beck and call… masala dosa with basha and some absurdly ornate ornamental goldfish
then finally to the inner sanctum… not much tops the thrill of a southern indian temple city!
today tho, a jaunt up the cliffs, all is mild and muchly waterlogged… birds starting to sing… they believe in the spring?
India 2020
Mahaballipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Pondycherry, Auroville
Goa, Varkala
Munnar, Madurai, Mysore
india blah 1
just back from a walk up the cliffs, sometimes there is a softness to grey, coaxing colour from the landscape, the lull of early spring birdsong… today tho, but a grim grey bludgeon, scalpel rain and a wind that would gouge yer eyes out! welcome home
the gorse tho was defiant in all its custard finery
here then are a glut of the rest of my holiday snaps… such a blessing to have been away for a month… sunshine! adventure! overnight trains and buses! fabulous grub! beach sunsets!… loved pretty much every jot of it!
for the curious (and to jog my memory!) places visited:
Mahabalipuram – 1500 year old sculptures, pool, republic day
Tiruvannamalai – Shiva fire mountain, huge ancient temple, Sri Ramana ashram
Auroville/Pondicherry – going inside the matrimandir!! scooting about the old colonial town and along the beach promenade
Patnem, Goa – hanging with May and the gang, beach sunsets, yoga
Alleppey – Luca, Snehar, Johnson, tourist boat drig/fting thru the backwaters
Ammas Ashram – Super full power hug, Hannah and Al
Varkala – beach galore, Alix and Tim
Munnar – Malabar Giant Black Squirrel, tea plantations
Madurai – Sri Meenakash, gorgeous carvings, mad rituals, Mahashivarahti
Mysore – grand palace, deveraj market
the 3 most sacred places i visited, in no particular order, inside the matrimandir, ammas ashram, sri meenakash… all were happily no photo zones
albums of course gain no traction on here… no matter, i am, as ever, happily solipsistic x
madurai… southern tamil nadu… it’s one of the smaller gopurams (gateways) to the sri meenakash temple… ancient place, riddled with the most astonishing sacred carvings… all day long there are pujas and rituals, it’s a living temple so no snaps inside
i first came here when i was 23, was overwhelmed by its energy then… not much has changed x
india selfie
Aw last of my selfies with locals posts, as waiting in Bengaluru airport for flight home, after a sensational (sense sating?) cram chock full month of bedlam and adventure! Wonderful!
A group of affable and affluent students from Bengaluru, outside the Grand Palace in Mysore. ‘what is there to see if I go to Bengaluru?’, collectively they shrug ‘eh nothing?’… I’d met them inside, they were fab, the most snap and photo opportunity obsessed group imaginable… I was hunting for the Holy Grail .. me taking a selfie of an Indian secretly taking a selfie of me!
Bog standard snap, but also, possibly, indicative of change… Most of them are women… equality in India is a complex beast… yet in 6 trips here across 30 years, I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of casual conversations I’ve had with local women (not business based natters, or people born in the diaspora obvs)… It’s just not done. Not important in itself, natch, but somewhat indicative of the broader, weird disparities in opportunities here. Family. Religion. The astonishing, enduring power of customs and the straight jacket of social mores… Oops don’t want to over indulge in secular, soap box sermonising! A huge diverse land. What do I know.
The boy approached me first, yet the girl was but a nano second whisker behind… They both spoke excellent English (many many Indians do… And a greater number don’t!), these two were knowledgeable about my country, curious to know more, and proudly told me lots I didn’t know about theirs. Travel innit. Smile, chat about stuff, laugh! Warmth. Buoyed up by our beautiful shared humanity X
cheese
Say ‘cheese’, say ‘squee-ee-ze’… India partakes in its daily attempt to set a new world record for number of sentient beings in a confined space (ala 1970s Blue Peter phone boxes and minis!)… this time as we wend our way around hair pin bends, tumbling down through the Tamil Nadu foothills of the Western Ghats (think Alp sized mountains, without the cable cars, neglected due to continental proximity to the humongous himalayas)… on every bend, there is a collective flabbergasted ‘oof’ of crushed torsos, overlaid with the higher trill of women’s voices… I one of the the lucky ones… with a seat, through dint of having been stuck on the bus, forever, since it and seemingly times beginning… India has a knack of making you feel like a speck amongst a billion, whisper it, soto voce, Kerala and most of the western states, do not have the sense of the high tempo madness… the numinous of the Nadu…. for all the senses the dial turned to 11… ego bamboozled midst a soup of sensation… pounding bollywood tunes, pong of armpits, a bird of paradise blur of colourful saris
a day of contrasts: dawn amongst the tea plantations of munnar, awash with myriad green… watching the malabar giant black squirrels somersault amongst the top of the highest trees… fighting off the equally black crows… truly giants, the size of a monkey, kali black with the fiercest of red trimmings!… a loooong bus journey, 6 hours when it should have been 3… to end guzlling masala dosa, lawks the flavours, just outside the majestic gopurams (gateways) of the Sri Meenakesh temple in Madurai…. proper cream crackered. g’night, snooze good x
