Kris10davis

2009-12-05T13:46:00.004+01:00

Been through the desert on a camel with no name...

Jaisalmer is an amazing town about 100km East of the Indo-Pakastani border in the Great Thar Desert, renowned for it's stunning hill top fort. Amongst the backpacker community however it's best known for camel safaris, and missing the peace and tranquility of the mountains I was in town looking for some quiet and calm and hoping to find some in the desert.

The heavy rainstorms that were hitting Mumbai and Gujarat brought cloudy skies to Jaisalmer as I squashed into a jeep with Amanda, (who i'd met on the train), Christine (who I met in Jodphur and turns out to be a neighbour in Paris!), and a couple from Oz & the UK. After a couple of hours of rough roads and a side-trip visit to a Jain temple we climbed aboard our camels and set off in a train across the barren desert.

Climbing aboard is much easier when they're sat down ;-)

Once I'd got used to being up so high, the sway of the camel's gait and their smell I started to relax and take in the scenery around me. Finally, there were no horns honking, traffic noise or pollution. Just huge skies and calm; that is until panic broke out at the rear of our camel train.

All our camels were roped together with the last camel being a young female in training and carrying all our food for the next 2-days. This young novice was now quite literally untrained having broken free of her rope and cockily trotting off across the desert, evading all attempts to be caught and deaf to the guides cries and whistles. The whole thing would have been quite comical had it not been for her precious cargo and it took a good 10-minutes to capture her and rope her securely back to the pack, where she spent the rest of the day stamping and snorting.

'Johnny' sets off at a trot to capture the rogue beast (and our supper)

Around midday we stopped and whilst the guides cooked up a lunch of veg curry, dahl and chapati and we stretched and snoozed, grateful that the sky was still overcast and we were spared the midday sun. Lunch over we hopped back aboard our desert ships and continued on, the scenery sometimes rocky, sometimes scrubby but always arid. Although this wasn't the great peaks and rugged hills of the Himalayas, as the hours past I slowly found that inner calm and space to think that I seek in the mountains, and, surprise suprise, I discovered my 'inner Bedouin' was just as at home in the desert as in the hills. Having tweaked America's lyrics to suit my situation, I had 'A camel with no name' on my 'inner ipod' as the day's soundtrack and despite the chaff of the saddle and aching inner thighs I was loving every minute of it!

Sleeping off lunch

Late afternoon we entered a region of soft undulating dunes and found ourselves in the deserts of Hollywood with the wind etching patterns in the sand. As the sun set we unloaded the camels and set up camp and the animals, hobbled with knotted ropes , lopped off across the dunes in search of scrub and trees to eat.

What most of the desert looks like

What we expect most of it to look like

The evening meal was pretty much the same as lunch, although accompanied with cold beer brought in by a jeep, along with a group of people who wanted to skip the saddle soars but bed down along side us under the stars. Despite the feeling of remoteness the beer delivery and distant lights indicated we were not that far away from civilisation, and the occasional fly-by from a military aircraft served as a reminder that we weren't that far from the Pakistani border either.

Dinner over, camel handlers transformed themselves from chefs into musicians and with one guy drumming on a plastic water container and another playing 'high-hat' on a tin plate the third started singing local songs in a high warbling voice; a haunting melody desert, a lulling tune to sing to a woman that's just given birth and a fast, funky number to play at weddings, the catchy chorus of which we were soon all joining in with.

Music proving once again it can fusion all of languages and cultures,
especially around a desert fire with a couple of beers ;-)

As the fire burnt down the temperature dropped and the padded blankets that had cushioned the camels back against the wooden saddles were unfolded to become mattresses and pillows on the sand. Although I'd mailed home my Gore-tex jackets and fleece I'd kept my down sleeping bag with me and was grateful it would now protect me from the chill air and the reek of camel! Cocooned in my bag with just my eyes and nose peeping out I remembered how much I loved camping like this, without a tent, without a ceiling, walls or floor, and watched the sky for a while, tracking the progress of the Seven Sisters,Orion and the Great Bear across the dark night before falling asleep.

The good life

I woke early the next morning to find our camp enshrouded in fog. The cold air confronting the warmth of the sand formed a thick blanket of mist that hid the camels legs so they looked like they were swimming and left everything about us damp. Once sunrise came though the brume quickly burnt off, and without yesterday's clouds to protect us we were soon at the mercy of the desert sun. Scarfs were wrapped around heads Lawrence of Arabia style and shirt sleeves were rolled down as just three of us (the rest having succumbed to saddle soars and hopped in the jeep) saddled up again and lopped off West for another day in the wilderness.

They really looked like 'ships of the desert' as they swam through the mist

Sunrise, with camel saddles

With the sun on our backs and a vast array of nothing in front of us I once again 'zoned out' and found the peace and solitude I seek when I travel, and before the day's end I'd promised my inner Bedouin we'd be back in a camel saddle and once again in the desert just as soon as I could make it happen.

At peace with my inner Bedouin ;-)

2009-12-01T18:16:00.005+01:00

The future, in the palm of my hand (no, this is not a post about iPhones...)

Those of you that know me well know that, despite growing up near Glastonbury, I don't subscribe to the 'hokey pokey' science of astrology. Ask me my star sign and I'll answer "Marmite", and if I've a dominating earth element I'd bet it's chocolate, so I'm the last person I expected to get my palm read during my stay in Jodphur.

Maybe it was because I'm expecting 2010 to be a year of change or maybe it was just that this particular palmist happened to carry a maharajah's accreditation (and in a country that attaches huge importance to such interpretations that's no small thing). Whatever the reason, at the end of my visit to the fort I skipped the gift shop and headed for the royal fortune teller's office, hoping the Rs350 clutched in my right hand would liberate whatever secrets the lines around it had to say

Giving the guy only my name, date of birth, place of birth and right hand I sat back, somewhat skeptical, somewhat scarred, and suddenly aware that maybe I didn't want to know my future!

First came my character analysis.

"You're highly adaptable, analytical and intuitive" he said, turning my palm over and peering at the back of my hand. OK, I thought, we're off to a good start. Not only is he coming up with positive traits but also, I feel, pretty accurate ones. I start to listen attentively, my confidence and curiosity replacing the earlier fear and anxiety. "But you prize accuracy so you'll use your analytical skills to validate your initiative before making a decision, even if it takes more time" he observed. Yep. That's true too. What next?

"You hate conflict and discord; you want to make everyone happy" and with this phrase he hit a chord. A trait I'm unsure whether to classify as negative or positive from a professional perspective and one i'm hoping to learn how to play to my advantage as part of my 'change strategy' in 2010. Needless to say he now had my full attention.

I'll not bore you with all the wisdom that was imparted to me that day, but despite popular belief I am apparently going to get married and have kid(s) and should come into either money or property (both?) around the age of 39 or 40. I'll believe the later, but not the former! Around 39-40 I will also have an important and positive career change - so i'm probably now the only woman on earth excited about turning forty :-)

I also apparently don't like spicy food (which is crap, based on my definition of spicy), am re-energised by being outdoors and amongst nature (aren't we all?) and will meet my soul mate, who'll share my passion for travel and adventure, later in life (a phrase which leaves plenty of room for interpretation).

So there you have it, my destiny in a nutshell, or rather, the palm of my hand!

'Que sera sera' remains my take on all this. RDV back here in 5 years though to see if that cash, property and career change have made an appearance as predicted :-)

2009-11-21T13:43:00.003+01:00

Cooking up a storm

Bonnie told me about the cookery course she did over dinner one evening in Varanasi and since then the idea had been playing on my mind. It's practically impossible to get decent Indian food in Paris and those of you that know me know I'm not that nifty in the kitchen so I only really eat Indian when I'm back in the UK, or rare visits to NY.

Bonnie told of how she'd had a 1-on-1 lesson in a family home and not only learnt to make a wide range of dishes but also got to see how a middle class family lives and of course the opportunity to converse with the mother. Needless to saying signing up for a lesson was the first thing I did when I got to Udaipur.

Encouraged to start giving lessons by her husband, Kamini has been welcoming curious cooks into her kitchen for 3 years now and has the knack of making you quickly feel at ease and able to learn. From a long list I chose 8 stock standard Indian dishes to learn that I hoped would give me a solid culinary base; masala chai, veg pakora, palak paneer (my favourite!), veg curry, jerra rice, veg raita, chapati & halva for desert.

Veggie pakora. Bad for the hips, great for the soul ;-)

The secrets in making a good paste...

Within minutes of walking through the door I was in the kitchen with Kamini was explaining how to blend the spices and flour to make pakora whilst the oil gently heated and her 7-yr old son popped in and out, curious to see who'd come to visit the house today. "Slip the slices in gently from the side" she explained, "it makes the batter even and stops you getting burnt" as the hot oil spluttered and the air filled with the smell of cumin and chili.

...and slipping in the pakora from the side of the pan.

The time flew by as we chopped and stirred and whilst I noted recipes and snapped photos Kamini took time to explain a little more about the spices, how they make pickles when the fruits are in season, grind their own flour and what dishes are eaten when for special occasions.

Palek Panner - the real thing made from scratch! Check out her pan handle/pliers!

I learnt that 'masala' actually means 'spice' and does not refer to a particular blend of spice, that 'jerra' means 'tumeric' and how to lightly press down and 'spin' a chapati whilst it's cooking to make it puff up!

Make the chiapatti flat and even

Then it'll puff up beautifull

Teaching and cooking both come naturally to Kamini and I think the most important thing I took away from my time with her was confidence to try these dishes at home. To buy and blend my own spices to make fresh curry paste rather than buying packets and how quick and easy it is to whip up a tasty dish with just a few simple ingredients, when you know how!

Halva - doesn't look like much at this stage but it'll be yummy later ;-)

The only regret I have is that the time passed so quickly. Having cooked up a storm and eaten most of what we prepared I left Kaimni's home on a culinary high and walked straight to the market to buy all I'd need to relive the experience back in Paris. No longer will I have to wait until I'm next in London or NY for great Indian food and I can now confidently invite you over for dinner sometime. Just let me know when you're free :-)

The end result! Bon app

Kamini - a truely wonderful teacher

2009-11-17T13:01:00.004+01:00

Perpetual Motion

I reluctantly left Varanasi in the evening time and loitered for as long as possible on a terrace cafe watching the colours change as the sun set and the hundreds of kites attached to hundreds of small boys on the surrounding rooftops.

After such a chilled out end to my stay it was with a harsh jolt that I got onto the night train to Jaipur that was full of loud drunk indian guys, each with their mobile phone playing music at full volume. Frankly though even if it had been a quiet train I don't think I, or the other 4 backpackers I was in the carriage with, would have got much sleep having been scared silly by the railway police before getting on the train. They made us each read a leaflet stating that the train was rife with criminals that would try and trick us or drug us in order to steal our bags and so they advised us not to eat or drink anything and to sleep in 'shifts' if possible so there was always someone on guard. Needless to say it was a long 20-hr train ride, but apart from the noise and lack of sleep, a totally uneventful one.

I'd visited Jaipur back in 2000 so got off the train and straight on to a bus to Ajmer, then another bus until eventually, 26-hrs after leaving Varanasi, I arrived in Pushkar where I went straight to bed. After the lush green hills of Nainital & Rishikesk, then the plains of Varanasi I was now in the landscape of the arid and rocky deserts of Rajasthan.

Pushkar is famous for it's lake, ghats and camel fair which happened about a week before I got there. It's also a place that quiet a few westerns seem to have trouble leaving and there are quite a few that have 'gone native' and are experimenting with various forms of dredlocks and facial hair.

Unfortunately I was sick for most of the 48-hrs I had there (bottle of bad mineral water I reckon) but what with it's lake being dry after the poor monsoon and the only other major activity being shopping the town had little that was of interest for me. Given that just a short while ago I was wondering what on earth i'd do for a month here if I wasn't going to trek I suddenly had only 2-weeks left and so much left still to do and see!

Where there should have been a lake... not very attractive is it!

Having already visited the 'Golden Triangle' (Delhi, Agra, Jaipur) back in 2000 i'd decided I was going to see the rest of Rajasthan and had put together a non-stop agenda for the next 2-weeks. The next morning at first light I hopped on a public bus to Jodphur and had myself a 'logistical planning' day in which I organised bus, train and an airplane ticket that would allow me to make the most of the time I had left, starting with an early train the next day to Jaisalmer. From here my Rajastani adventure would start!

Up with the sparrows to catch the first bus outta town

Finally the milkman arrives, now we can cook up that first cuppa chai...

2009-11-08T11:23:00.006+01:00

Varanasi

Apart from being a great place to hang out for a few days one of the advantages of being in Rishikesh was the abundance of other travelers in town making it easy to get tips and info on trains, buses, and hotel and restaurant recommendations.

Looking at the map of India my 3 previous visits have enabled me to see quite a bit of the country but there were some gaping 'holes' in my travels, the most noticeable of which was Varanasi.

Listed as one of India's oldest cities and an 'must see' in every guide book I'd never got around to working it into my itinerary for a number of reasons; it's in a region i've not visited or transited through and i'd heard some horror stories about how filthy it was and the constant hassle some travelers had experienced there. There was no doubt however that at some point i'd have to work it into my schedule, and that time had come. First though I had to get out of Rishikesh, and with a festival happening further down the road in Haridwar all trains out of town were booked solid. Two days later I climbed aboard the night train to Varanasi and settled down for the 20-hour journey.

I was traveling 3rd class sleeper which is about the lowest class you can take and involves sharing a compartment with seven other people. This is how I met Anu and her family who where making the trip to Varanasi to see a famous swami (holy man) speak.

Anu was bright, confident and spoke pretty good English so the time passed quickly as we played games, drew pictures and her parents quizzed me with Anu acting as the translator. The family bore all the traits of a middle class India family; the father and uncle were dressed in Western clothes, both had mobile phones and the Auntie, like so many other affluent Indians these days, was horribly obese; not surprising as she ate constantly throughout the journey.

I arrived in Varanasi after dark and took a rickshaw as close to the hotel i'd chose as possible, but with the streets of the old town becoming too narrow the final 200 metres had to be made on foot so I jumped down and followed the driver on foot.
From this point on I felt like Alice having fallen down the rabbit hole, snaking through the streets, twisting and turning left and right, having to squash past the occasional cow and tread gently not to trip over a sleeping dog. At times we'd pop out into a well lit bazaar, only to dive down another dark alley which finally led us to the guest house someone had scribbled the name of in my notebook. After checking in and taking a much needed shower I headed up to the rooftop restaurant and caught my first sight on the Ganga and town. The view was serene with the moonlight flickering off the river and small row boats appearing, then slipping away from view through the mist. With the absence of traffic and horns my first impression of Varanasi was bewitching.

So why does everyone come to Varanasi?
Consisting of more than 85 ghats (stone steps down to the river) in just a couple of hundred metres it's a great place to people watch and see life played out before you. Bathing, puja, a game of cricket, washing cows, meeting friends and of course, death, as Varanasi is the place to die and be cremated if you want to give your soul a chance of a better deal in your next life.
Being in Varanasi and not witnessing death is impossible with more than 350 cremations a day at the main ghat. Wondering the narrow streets you're often forced to squash to one-side as another body is carried down to the ghats on a bamboo stretchers, some wrapped in cloth and silks, others not.

The stretchers are carried by four male family members and when they arrive at the river the body is submerged then carried back up to the cremation ghat. Here the family buys 450kg of wood, sandalwood being the most expensive, required to burn the body and the pyre is built.
The body is then placed on top, more wood is stacked on, leaving the head uncovered and the oldest male, having shaved his head and dressed in a simple white robe walks around the pyre four times, followed by the 3 other members and a holy man, scattering sawdust and some kind of powdered fire starter as they go. As the fourth pass is completed the holy man thrusts a burning log beneath the feet and the flames spread quickly to consume the body. The women stand and watch from the steps above and whilst the ceremony is fascinating to watch it's painful to do so with their grief and pain so close and I quickly found myself avoiding the cremation ghats for this reason.
It takes about 3.5 hours for the body to be burn't at which point the oldest son fills an earthenware pot with water from the Ganges and throws it backwards over his head to extinguish the flames. The Ashes are swept into another pot whilst everything that was not consumed by the fire is swept down the bank where its first picked through by cows before being panned through by men of the lowest possible cast seeking gold teeth, bracelets and anything else of value. Needless to say the body is not always entirely burnt and it's best not to look to closely at what they're sifting through.

There are 5 types of bodies that cannot be burnt and receive a slightly different treatment.
Those that have died from cobra bites are placed on small bamboo rafts and floated downstream so the poison can seep slowly into the river. Children under the age of 5, pregnant women, along with holy men and smallpox victims are wrapped in cloth, have heavy stones attached and are sunk out in the middle of the river. I'd spent a good 5 minutes sat by the river until I realised the rock i'd seen earlier was moving downstream and as it turned in the current was obviously the head and shoulders of a body of an adult that had bobbed back up to the surface.

With it's labyrinth of narrow streets knee deep in rubbish and shit, and it's river a soup of effluent and corpses it was clear why Varanasi had the reputation of one of the filthiest cities in India, but as I'd come expecting the worst it failed to shock me and my initial impression of it being a bewitching city remains.

2009-11-06T14:39:00.007+01:00

Becoming a happy 'drop-out' in Rishikesh

Despite Nainital's beautiful suroundings I quickly tired of sitting by the lake and drinking chai, and having accepted i'd not being able to trek I was beginning to wonder just what I was going to do with my remaining 4-weeks in India.

I'd had the vague plan of spending 3-weeks in the Himalaya then a week in the state of Gujarat as my flight home leaves from Mumbai rather than Delhi. Now I had 4-weeks and a blank agenda in front of me so I started to explore the map and read up on some of the places around me.

When I was in Sikkim 2-years back I met, Daphna, an Israeli girl, who told me what a great time she'd had in Rishikesh. Looking at the map Rishikesh was 250km North West of Nainital, and if the Lonely Planet's description was correct it sounded like the perfect place to kick-back and relax for a while whilst I sorted out what to do with the rest of my trip.

Sunrise as I left Nainital

The local travel operators in Nainital we're all determined to send me back to Delhi (on their delux bus) to catch a train to Hardiwar that would enable me to bus to Rishikesh, but there was no way I was going to string the trip out to 24hrs or more when it really should be no more than 10 or 12. The next morning I got up at 4.30am and set off for the bus station. I caught a small bus down the hill to Haldwani, the regional transport hub, then wandered around the bus station shouting "Haridwar, Haridwar, Haridwar" and following the fingers of the people that pointed directions. After a couple of minutes I got to a bus with a man shouting "Haridwar, Haridwar, Haridwar" hanging out the door and I hopped on. After 20 minutes the bus was full, the driver jumped in and we set off.

I love traveling like this. The bus has no windows, the suspension gave up years ago, the seats are rock hard and there at twice s many people and bag as there is space, but it works! I know many of you think there's something seriously wrong with me for actually enjoying this but when you travel like this you get to meet people and have conversations that you'd not get traveling in a ' delux' bus with other westerners or affluent Indian's screaming into their mobile phones.

Riding the government buses

My first conversation was with a female lecturer from a local university. She asked me all the usual questions, Where was I from? Where was I going? Am I alone? Where is my husband? What is my job? and I asked her the same. During the 11-hour trip I met 5 or 6 different people, all of them curious and eager to share stories and tell me as much as possible about their home town or state. The time passes quickly and I learn a lot as I have the opportunity to ask questions about what i'm seeing around me, or about that strange food they were selling at the last place we stopped.

Having come down from Nainital at 2,200m and crossed the plains for a number of hours we finally crossed the Ganges river and for the first time I got to appreciate just how enormous it really is. The monsoon was poor and there is no snow melt at this time of the year so much of the river bed was dry but it was easily 0.5km wide, more in places, and you could see it snaking away for miles into the distance.

The mighty Ganga

Straddled across the Ganges a little higher up into the hills Rishikesh was put on the map back in the 1968 when the Beatles came to spend a month in an ashram here, the result of which was their White album. Since then its been a centre for yoga, meditation and healing, and also a common place to come and kick-back, relax and 'drop out' for a while, and this, I decided, was exactly what I was going to do.

Having found myself a great little guest house with some friendly neighbours and a great view I quickly settled into a routine of early breakfast with the English edition of the local papers, a wander down to town to people watch for a while, lunch somewhere quiet with my book dthen meeting up with Joy, James & Mike (my neighbours) for a stroll out of town to the 'beach' in the afternoon.

It's a tough life being a backpacker !

It was on one of these strolls that as a motorbike passed by us a voice called 'Kristen!' and I looked up to see Selina, a colleague from work! What on earth was Selina doing here! and what are the chances of us running into each other an a rather remote road somewhere North of Rishikesh?! I knew that Selina had taken a year sabbatical and at some point was going to be doing some volunteer work in Delhi but it was just by chance that she happened to be having a couple of days break and was staying at an ashram just outside of Rishikesk. How totally bizarre and wonderful to have run into her! It seems chance meetings were becoming a theme on this trip and honestly after running into Selina I would not have been surprised if i'd got back to my guesthouse to see Doug and Cama drinking chai in the garden or bumped into Matt, Katherine & Kaia wandering over the bridge or outside of a temple. How wonderful would that be. It is after all a very very small world.

Chance meeting with Selina (No matter how far you run you never escape the IHT!!)

2009-11-04T09:27:00.007+01:00

A couple of nights in Nainital

By the time we'd snaked our way up the mountain and arrived in Nainital it was 7.30am and the town was starting to wake. The cycle-rickshaw drivers were pulling their blankets around them as they hussled for customers at the bus station and the shared taxi drivers were co-ordinating people into clumps based on their final destination.

Like many Indian hill stations Nainital is home to quite a few boarding schools, the parents and pupils of which were now pouring back into town for the return to school after Divali. I'd sat next to a school boy on the journey up and managed to squeeze a few phrases out of him in English.

Where are you from? " Gujarat" he said, "It's a long way from here." I know it! I replied, I'm hoping to go there soon, hoping to use this as a springboard for a conversation about his home state but he shrugged and looked down.

How old are you? I tried. " I am 9-years old" came the replied in textbook English before he turned and looked out of the window gloomily. This wasn't an easy conversation.

Do you like school? I said. "No, I HATE IT!!" it replied loudly looking straight at his father sat in the seat in front of us. Hmm, no wonder he's not such a happy chappy. As we nearer Nainital fat tears rolled down his cheeks and the last I saw of him he'd put his blanket over his head and was refusing to get out of the bus. Poor kid.

Rather than taking a shared taxi to the other end of the lake I walked along the shore watching the changing light on the water and the early morning mist receed up the hills as the air warmed. Nainital was a beautiful town that was becoming more and more popular with middle-class Indian's on their honeymoon and it was easy to see why.

I found myself a guesthouse, threw down my pack and after a quick wash headed back down to the waters edge and found myself a chai stand and some breakfast. My original plan had been to hole up in Nainital for a couple of days in order to quiz as many other trekkers and guides as I could before deciding which of the two glacier treks to the North i'd set my sights on. Of course Chris' verdict was fresh in my mind and I was now going to have to decide whether to heed his advise or ignore it. I'd come here to trek, my backpack was full of gore-tex clothing, thermal underwear and the Himalaya where just beyond that ridge. If I didn't trek what the hell else was I going to do here?

In most towns there is a cafe, restaurant or bakery that becomes the regular backpacker hang-out. There's usually a noticeboard where folks post recommendations and information and sitting around here for an hour or so will guarantee you'll meet someone and be able to start up a conversation. These places are usually a good place to find fellow trekkers as they're either preparing for their trek (look for a group huddled around a map, splitting up food and equipment between their backpacks and buying all the cookies and chocolate they can get their hands on) or they're just back from a trek (in which case they'll be the grubby group looking tired yet elated who have ordered every item on the menu, twice already!) I hug around the most likely looking cafe for an hour and didn't see another westerner. Hmm, i'm not in the right place I thought and wandered down the road a little to bakery that smelt great. By now it was 9.30am and place should have been buzzing with folks like me ordering banana porridge and omlettes but with the expection of a couple of newly-weds the place was deserted. Hmm, I knew this was the end of the trekking season but the weather was still great and all roads North were still open according to the sign outside the police station. Where was everyone?

There are only so many cups of chai you can drink in a morning so I left the strip of cafes along the shore and wandered about the backstreets and lanes behind the main street. The place was a hive of activity at this time of the morning and I spent a good hour watching the trading of fruits, vegetables, meats and grains before I realised i'd not seen a fishmonger in town. How strange given that we're next to a giant lake thats obviously teaming with fish as you can see them below the water! Obviously there was either something wrong with the water or the lake was sacred and so the fish couldn't be eaten. I never did find out which it was but my money would be on the former rather than the later.

After a while I found the office of the mountain guides association that the Lonely Planet was recommending, and inside I met Rik, a yound but obviously knowledgeable guide who was able to answer all the questions about the two treks I'd read about, and even advise some interesting alternatives to the standard route in some place.

"So Rik, where are all the other trekkers?" I asked, having a sneaking feeling I'd know his response.

" It's after Divali now and the shepherds have come down from the hills so the season is pretty much over already" he replied.

With Divali being so early this year it seems the shephers had taken the opportunity to come down off the hills a couple of weeks earlier than expected. Especially as the monsoon had been poor and so the grazing on the hills was not great.

Rik assured me that if I really wanted to trek he'd organise a couple of mules, tents and food enough to enable us to do any of the treks I wasnted, but I didn't want to trek with him alone, not only from a safety perspetive but also from an enjoyment and cost perspective as its always better when you can share the experience and cost with a couple of others.

So, it seemed the odds were staked up against me doing any trekking on this trip and whether I liked it or not I was going to be following Chris' advise and resting up for a couple of days. Oh well, I thought. There could be worse places to spend a couple of days than Nainital I thought, sitting back in my chair, pulling out my book and ordering a hot masala chai as I looked out over the lake.

2009-11-02T09:55:00.005+01:00

Down, but not out.

About a month before I left for India I fell and hurt my ankle. Whilst ice was being packed around my foot I blubbed like a baby, not at the pain, but at the unthinkable thought that if my ankle was broken i'd have to postpone my trip. An x-ray showed that all the bones were intact and after a week or so of hobbling around on crutches and resting as much as possible I was pleased with the speed at which the swelling & bruising had gone, and how slowly, but surely, it was getting better.

The fortnight before my flight life was crazy though. At very short notice I had to find a new flat to rent which had Dad & I racing around Paris for a week, then I had to move and unpack, run around organising change of addresses etc and catch up and say goodbye to everyone before I left. All of this left little time for resting my leg or getting to a physiotherapists, but I felt confident I would be able to hike in a good pair of strong boots and with not too much weight on my back. I purposely packed the least amount of kit possible and was pleased when my pack weighed in at just over 8Kg at Charles de Gaulle. My first few days in Delhi however prooved me wrong.

Streets here in India are haphazard and crazy; not just with the mass of people, traffic and trading that' s going on but also the trash, animals and broken ground that are underfoot. Walking down a busy street requires you look up to make sure you don't run into anyone, simultaneously look left and right to ward off potential hagglers and keep and eye out for yummy street food, glance back from time to time to move over and let cows or motorbikes past and constantly look down so as to navigate the broken pavements, rubbish and sleeping dogs. It's an exhausting exercise until you get the hang of it, which usually takes a day or two.
As I slowly ' found my feet' on my first day in Delhi the less I had to concentrate on navigating the more I became aware of how I was walking over obstacles; unnaturally leading with my left leg putting me slightly off balance but 'saving' my right ankle from a potentially wobbly landing. Looking down I realised why. My right ankle had puffed up like a poppadom and was starting to hurt. Damn. This wasn't supposed to be happening, but still it was hot and humid, i'd spent all day yesterday immobile in an airplane and was now tramping around in flip-flops. Maybe it wasn't so surprising my ankle wasn't happy.

The next day I sent off in my hiking boots and walked a lot less, but when I pulled off my boots in the night train the result was the same as the day before. Giant swollen ankle starred back at me, inflamed and angry.

"Ouch, that looks nasty", said the westerner in the bunk across from me. "Let me take a look" said Chris, introducing himself as an orthopedic surgeon from Cambridge.
He agreed with the x-ray from Paris but frowned when I mentioned I was going to trek.
"Nothing major's broken" he said, "I'll take a look again in the morning when the swelling has gone down" and handed me some anti-inflammatories.
"Thanks!", I said, thinking how chance meetings had already had me run into Tathania in Delhi, now a drug-totting doctor on a train. My travel karma seemed to be functioning well at the moment!

As ever the night on the train was peaceful and I slept well. Traveling overnight on these old sleepers is something I always look forward to when I think of coming back to India and I often wish we had something similar in Europe.
" Chai, Chai, Chai!" yelled the tea-wallah as he made his way down through the carriage. I was wide awake and as Chris was still under his blanket I bought a couple of hot, sweet brews for the both of us. It'd didn't sweeten his verdict any though.
" You see how it's swollen at the back, and how it hurts you here when I press here". I yelped.
" That means some of the small bones in your ankle are probably broken or fractured and that's what's causing the pain and swelling. You need to rest this rather than trek if you don't want to do more damage" he said looking me squarely in the eye. " That's the only treatment there is. Rest." I tried to hide my disappointment but obviously didn't do it well. "Sorry" said Chris, looking down into his tea.

I thanked him, laced up my boots tightly, swung my pack over my shoulders and jumped down off the train trying to come to grips with what i'd just been told. My ankle sent a sharp pain up my leg as I landed as if to help hammer the point home and I trudged up the road from the station in the dark, looking for a jeep or bus on up the 36km to Nainital.

As the sun rose and we raced around the switchbacks up the hills my spirit soared at again being back in India. I love this part of arriving in the mountains and no bad news from Chris was going to change that. For now I'd found what I'd dreamed of and be scared of missing when I fell 6-weeks back- being back in the foothills of the Indian Himalaya. One of my favourite places on earth!

2009-10-31T08:53:00.010+01:00

The story so far...

So, when I said I had no plans that was not exactly true. My rucksac was packed with thermal underwear, a Gore-tex jacket and sub-zero sleeping bag with the intention of spending a fair amount of this trip somewhere amongst the Himalaya.

A couple of years back I spent a month in the North Eastern state of Sikkim and had a fantastic couple of weeks trekking with a truly spectacular backdrop of snow-capped mountains. As this ranks as one of my best trips i'd planned to try to recreate this in the North Western state of Uttarakhand, hence the contents of my backpack being geared to higher altitudes and colder climes.

My trip got off to a great start with Air France upgrading me to Business Class so I arrived in Delhi ready to hit the ground running. It was 9-years ago that I last visited the city and its changed quite a bit since then. There is a metro system now. It's still as noisy and crazy as ever but many of the cars now run on gas rather than petrol and the auto-rickshaws have been converted from 2-stoke to 4-stroke engines so the air pollution is a little better, and with the Comonwealth games coming to the city next year the place is being spruced up and building work seems to be going on everywhere.

Halfway through the first day, needing a break from the blaring horns, the dust and heat I slipped into a backpacker cafe for a chai and to start to plan my trip North when who should walk in, Tathania, a Columbian girl I trekked with in Sikkim 2-years back!

How strange to see a familiar face so far away, in time and distance from when we last met! Tathania was on her way up to Dharasalam and had also just arrived in town that day. In many ways you could say the chances of us meeting again where high in that we're both independent travelers who like the same kinds of places, but still it's a one in a million chance we'd be in Delhi in the same cafe at the same time and it was really great to see her again.

My next meeting was not so much of a chance as i'd emailed my friend Abi in NY who'd offered to put me in touch with his brother Saurabh who lives in Delhi.
A couple of emails and text messages were exchanged and a rendez-vous organised for the Rodeo bar in Connaught Circle. I got there a couple of minutes before Saurabh and couldn't help laughing at finding myself in a cowboy bar run by a band of Indians. Saurabh arrived and we had a great evening chatting about India, Europe and life over a couple of Kingfishers and him giving me a few travel tips for some of my potential destinations.

So, the next day, having spent a quiet couple of hours in Juntar Muntar I hopped on a night train North to Nainital. A hill-station set beside a beautiful lake and surrounded my deep green valleys which I'd decided would be my gateway into the mountains this time around.

Juntar Muntar. The beautiful solar & lunar obversatory just south of Connaught Circle.

2009-10-23T12:46:00.004+01:00

Hello again!

Its been a long time since I last blogged, over a year now in fact. That time has just flown by and in between times i've had plenty of blog-worthy experiences I could have shared with you.

Ethiopia for example is an amazing country with some outstanding landscapes, beautiful people and a fascinating history. It is also remote and under-developed however, with hardly any telephone, let alone internet connections, making ' real-time' travel updates impossible. Add to that that I had to medi-vac my feeble French ex-boyfriend, making the end of the trip premature, abrupt and very stressful and the result is no documentation of my time there, other than photos.

This annoys me for 2 reasons; Firstly its not a 'popular' destination, which is a shame as its a fantastically easy place to travel. If anyone is searching the web for feedback on Ethiopia I would have wanted them to be able to find my blog and to share my experiences with them - to encourage them to go. Secondly I use these posts as a journal and when i'm stuck at home/work with the urge to escape i'll often look back through them and come across a moment i'd forgotten and spend a happy 5 minutes daydreaming.

Ethiopia's not the only thing i've missed. There was a great week walking on Minorca with my friend Liz back in June. Then a fantastic weekend with Doug in Annecy where I had my first para-gliding experience. I can't blame lack on internet connections or flaky ex-boyfriend's for those missing posts. Simple that this past year has been a year in which much has changed for me, and change (whether expected or not) is often the catalyst for more change, which requires reflection, putting me in a more introverted mind-set and so not in the right frame of mind to blog.

That is why I need this trip now. After 9 years of happily ' coasting' along with my life in Paris I think 2010 is going to be a year of more change, but planned, coordinated change this time.
I might buy a place to live, go back to school, or change jobs, or all three! This may be the last ' long' trip i'm able to make for a while if I load up on debt or change employers so I have to make the most of it, whilst using it to buy some quiet time with myself and work out the plan for the next couple of years.

So, starting today and until 02h15 on 23Nov i've absolutely no commitments and only a handful of vague ideas as to where i'll end up. What I will do though is try to log-in every so often and tell you what i've been up to. At least then if my plans go wrong, or even right, and I end up debt-ridden and cramming for exams i'll have something to look back on.

2008-12-03T21:15:00.003+01:00

Ethiopia

Words are on their way, but in the meantime here are just some of the pictures.

x.

2008-09-18T15:08:00.005+01:00

$17,000 an hour...

Nicholas D. Kristof: $17,000 an hour. No success required.

By Nicholas D. Kristof

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? If so, then you may not be earning up to your full potential.

You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, the longtime chief of Lehman Brothers. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993 and 2007.

Last year, Fuld earned about $45 million, according to the calculations of Equilar, an executive pay research company. That amounts to roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you're willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers at (212) 526-7000.

Oh, nevermind.

I'm delighted to announce that Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings this week) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance. The award honors the pioneering achievements in this field of Eisner, the former Walt Disney chief.

This isn't a plaque that will simply gather dust in a closet. It's a shower curtain to commemorate the $6,000 one that the former CEO of Tyco purchased and billed to his shareholders.

So, Fuld, you'll be pleased to know that I've picked out a lovely green vinyl number for you. Only $14.99! Why, I saved you $5,985!

Perhaps it seems frivolous to be handing out shower curtains to chief executives when we're caught in a deepening economic crisis.

Well, it is.

But one of our broad national problems is rising inequality, and it is exacerbated by corporate executives helping themselves to shareholders' cash.

Three decades ago, CEOs typically earned 30 to 40 times the income of ordinary workers. Last year, CEOs of large public companies averaged 344 times the average pay of workers.

John McCain seems to think that the problem is that CEOs are greedy. Well, of course, they are. We're all greedy. The real failure is one of corporate governance, which provides only the flimsiest oversight to curb the greed of executives like Fuld.

"Compare the massive destruction of wealth for shareholders to what he gets at the end of the day," said Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School.

A central flaw of governance is that boards of directors frequently are ornamental and provide negligible oversight.

As Warren Buffett has said, "in judging whether corporate America is serious about reforming itself, CEO pay remains the acid test." It's a test that corporate America is failing.

These Brobdingnagian paychecks are partly the result of taxpayer subsidies. A study released a few weeks ago by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington found five major elements in the tax code that encourage overpaying executives. These cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.

That's enough money to deworm every child in the world, cut maternal mortality around the globe by two-thirds and also provide iodized salt to prevent tens of millions of children from suffering mild retardation or worse. Alternatively, it could pay for health care for most uninsured children in America.

Do we truly believe that CEOs like Fuld are more deserving of tax dollars than sick children?

Perhaps it's understandable that CEOs are paid heroically when they succeed, but why pay prodigious sums when they fail? E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, retired last year after driving the firm over a cliff, and he walked away with $161 million.

The problem isn't precisely paychecks that are huge. Baseball stars, investment bankers and hedge fund managers all earn obscene sums, but honestly - through arm's-length transactions. You and I may gasp, but that's the free market at work.

In contrast, boards pay CEOs after negotiations that are often more like pillow talk. Relationships are incestuous, and compensation consultants provide only a thin veneer of respectability by finding some "peer group" of companies so moribund that anybody shines in comparison.

The result is what critics call the Lake Wobegon effect, which miraculously leaves all CEOs above average. Indeed, one study of 1,500 companies found that two-thirds claimed to be outperforming their peer groups.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist, once explained: "The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself."

There are widely discussed technical solutions to CEOs overpaying themselves that we should move toward. We can also learn from Britain and Australia, which offer shareholders more rights than in America, redrawing the balance between shareholders and management and curbing pay in the process.

As for Fuld, unfortunately, he had no comment for this column. At $17,000 an hour, it probably wasn't worth his time.

2008-09-18T15:08:00.003+01:00

Back to the Kong...

Kinda feels like i've gone back in time to 2006. Same same, not different...

2008-06-22T22:15:00.009+01:00

Go fly a kite...

Last weekend, on a bit of a whim, my friend Laurent and I chucked the bare essentials and my kite into his car and headed for the coast.

The forecast was blustery showers, which would have made for perfect kite flying conditions, but once again the weather men were wrong and we arrived to find bright sunshine, clear skies and not a breath, not even a whisper of wind. Damn!

Luckily we had a plan B, and made our way through beautiful serene Normandy villages that just 60 years back were the backdrop for the D-day landings.

Its only when you grow up that you realise just how freaking pointless some of the hours you spent at school were. Of course maths is damn useful, as are the other 2 R's, and a good foundation of science, the arts and a language never hurt anyone. But why on earth did we spent weeks learning dead kings & queens, the Battle of Hastings and the Spanish crusaders when really none of that matters? Why did we breeze through the first & second world wars in a couple of wet afternoon classes with just crappy news clippings and a Robert Graves poem for backdrop when what happened then shaped our world and lives so significantly today?

My frustration stems from me now being old enough to appreciate the outcome and after effects of June 6th 1944. Unfortunately my crappy education left me none the wiser as to what really happened, either on that day or the events in the weeks and years beforehand.

Luckily the American Battle Monuments Commission have an incredibly little museum at the American Cemetery in Colleville sur Mer. It walks you through the 'highlights' of WWII with a series of displays that helped me understand the sheer enormity of what the allied forces did back then.

As a project manager I'm sensitive to the logistics and attention to detail required to pull something off well and the team work that's needed to make it all happen. Never had a I really stopped and thought about just how much work, planning, co-ordination and imagination went on back then. For example I never knew about 'Rupert'.

Standing about 4ft tall made from sacking and stuffed full of tiny 'fire-cracker' explosives, hundreds of self-destructing 'Ruperts' were parachuted behind enemy lines along the coast just days before the invasion. The men that landed with them were armed with flare guns and record players and their faux attacks caused panic and confusion, leading German forces away from the actual landing sites.
'Ruperts' were just one of the ways the allied forces out-foxed the enemy. Whole battalions of inflatable tanks were pitched out in fields along the British coast to intimidate the Luftwaffe spy planes and their sneaky photographers.

The ingenious of the tactics are captivating but the weight of what's beyond the museum helps put everything into perspective.

Rows upon rows upon rows of graves; small white crosses and stars of David stretch as far as the eye can see, perfectly tended with not a blade of grass or leaf out of place. Off to the right lies Omaha beach; peaceful, calm, flat, still. Its horribly surreal, horribly still.
Looking left you see Juno, in the distance is Gold, off right sits Sword, and shimmering in the distant heat is Utah. Many of the physical traces of what happened here have disappeared but the names have stuck. No one seems to remember what the beaches were called before.

Leaving Colleville with heavy hearts we continued West to 'Point du Hoc' where the physical scars of war remain.
The site sits 100ft (30m) up a sheer cliff face and was the home to some Nazi's heavy guns that were capable of doing some serious damage to the allied flotilla and landing forces. The 2nd Ranger's relentlessly scaled the cliff to take out the guns and of the 225+ that started out only 90 were still alive and fit to fight after 2 days. The assault on the whole was a bit of a blunder as the guns had been moved a mile away just days beforehand, but the story demonstrates well the selflessness and determination with which those guys fought and the hundreds of huge bomb holes around the site ensures you understand just how violent and relentless the battle was.

I didn't learn enough about what happened back then in my two days on the coast but I'm pretty sure i'll be going back again sometime and i'll start doing my homework so i'm better prepared next time. I did learn though that Laurent's grandfather fought in North Africa, like my grandfather, under Mountbatten. Unfortunately its not surprising that French and English neighbours grandfathers fought together thousands of miles away 60-odd years ago - everyone's grandfathers were fighting back then.

Sadly the weather never did deteriorate, the sun stayed out and the wind stayed away for the entire weekend. We made feeble attempts to get the kite up but failed, hanging out in the sunshine and eating hot dogs and sauerkraut instead! I'm not complaining though, like I said, I know i'll be going back.

x

2008-05-30T12:29:00.006+01:00

If only...

When will a software package offer me what i'm truely looking for?
This for example!

Ctrl+Y
Ctrl+Y
Crtl+Y

its not working!!!

2008-05-19T20:27:00.003+01:00

Circles 'round the sun

Finally I have an explanation as to that strange circle around the sun I spied in Sicily. (standby for nerdy content...)

Turns out its not an omen signalling Etna's eruption (although it could have been) but is instead a 22° Halo...

"A 22° halo is a rather frequently appearing halo, an optical phenomenon forming a circle 22° around the sun, or occasionally the Moon. It forms as sunlight is refracted in hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. As the light beam passes through two sides of the prism forming a 60° angle, the angle of minimum deviation is almost 22° (e.g. 21,84° in average; 21,54° for red and 22.37 for blue.) This wavelength-dependent variation in refraction causes the inner edge of the circle to be reddish while the outer edge is bluish. " Wikipedia

So there you have it!

x

2008-05-12T14:23:00.004+01:00

Sleeping beauty?

She was a sleepy snoozy giant when I left her, but it looks like all that jumping up and down and 'lava dancing' I did on Friday woke up old Etna...

More photos from my Sicilian roadtrip here. Unfortunately i'm unable to post tastes or flavours so you'll just have to imagine all the delicious coffee, pasta and gelato I munched my way through ;-)

x

2008-04-13T07:41:00.003+01:00

Try this headline: Black Hole Eats Earth...

Please stow your meal trays and put your seats backs in the upright position - Preparing for a big bang?

2008-04-12T15:31:00.006+01:00

Feeling funny...

Somethings not right. Its almost mid-April and i've only been on a handful of planes, haven't stepped off the continent and haven't been above 1,400m...

This time last year i'd clocked 7 weeks in HK, more than a month in S America and was getting ready for a road trip round Ireland. To date in 2008 i've been to Manchester, London, Bristol and if all goes well will go to Den Haag and Utrecht next weekend. My horizons are shrinking and i'm slowly slowly suffocating.

I need light... space... air... sky...
I need this:

more precisely, I need a very generous sponsor... any offers anyone?

x

2008-04-07T15:18:00.000+01:00

Is this what they call global warming...

bring your scarf and gloves if you're popping in for a cuppa anytime soon.

x

2008-03-28T18:46:00.004+01:00

New Game...

It used to be that when I was feeling blue i'd go online and check out how crap the weather was in London, or some other hell hole, and that would cheer me up.

Now I go online and convert the total of my hard earned Euro savings account into dollars, and suddenly I'm rich !

x

2008-03-21T12:58:00.001+01:00

Joyeuses Pâques!

2008-01-07T23:07:00.001+01:00

The things we forgot to remember

You can't teach an old dog new tricks - so the saying goes. But you can remind them of their old tricks!

Yesterday I went walking in the forest around Paris with my friend Liz, a fellow Brit and Radio 4 fan. 'I just listen to it on my computer' she said, and I kicked myself for not having thought of streaming it in sooner.

When I lived in the UK some 10 years ago I was an avid Radio 4 listener. Saturday mornings I would refuse to leave bed until 'Home Truths' with John Peel had finished and just about every night saw me dozing off to the sounds of "Viking & Dogger; 4, backing to 5 SSW; 6 miles; 1012 and rising. " Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I'm once again turned in and turned on by some of the UK's, nay the world's, best radio reporting.
(For the US readers out there, Radio 4 is the UK's equivalent of NPR. ie. Intelligent broadcasting.)

The spectrum of programs available is blinding. Just this evening i've heard:

An chilling episode from the radio play 'We need to talk about Kevin', taken from the 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, describing a fictional school massacre and the perspective of the murder's mother.
A news article announcing that potential British Army officers will be taken to theatre, arts and opera events to put them outside of their comfort zones and improve their powers of interpretation and perception.
A fascinating magazine program called 'Cross Continents' shedding light on Korea's 'Extreme Sports' and its star athletes, ie. Networked role playing computer games and those you and I would call 'Nerds' or addicts.
And a program by Michael Portillo (former politician, historian and now keen media commentator), 'The Things We Forgot To Remember'.

When I was walking with Liz yesterday she mentioned that UNESCO will be putting together a conference to commemorate the Holocaust on Jan 27th, International Holocaust Day. We discussed how this will be mostly a politically motivated event and how looking back at the events of 50 years ago appears to hold a higher priority than addressing the genocides going on in the world today.

It's estimated that 6 million European Jews were killed during the holocaust and any child in most developed country's could tell you at least the headline of history surrounding the event.
Yet how many of us have heard of the Bengal Famine that occurred during, and as a result of, WWII and killed almost as many people? I certainly hadn't.

If you only make time for one thing this week please click on the link above and stream/podcast/download what I consider to be an excellent radio documentary on an event no-one commemorates, few history books report and most of us remain ignorant of. Not only is it a fascinating piece articles but its beautifully presented too.

I warn you, now that i've remembered Radio 4, its not something i'm likely to let you forget. Standby for a host of blogs bullying you to tune in too.

K

2007-12-29T11:08:00.000+01:00

The highlights...

Traveling can often be totally overwhelming; the sights, sounds, smells that surround you and speeds at which everything moves are alien and it takes a couple of days to adapt and adjust to your new surroundings.

Likewise, after 5 weeks in India it takes 48 hrs or so to adjust back to Paris life - people smoking everywhere, not having to hold someone else's chicken or child on the bus and the lack of spices in the food. In fact I shouted at my taxi driver on the way home from the airport as I was truly terrified at the speed he was driving at.
'Mais Madame', he said, 'I am well within the speed limit!' and he was, but as I hadn't traveled faster than about 40kmh for the last month suddenly 120kmh felt like warp speed.

Its only after i've adapted back to our 'speed of light' Western lifestyle I can sit down and reflect on my trip, and after a month back in Paris there are many highlights that remain bright in my memory:

Bouncing around in the jeep convoy through the tea-plantations to Darjeeling

Crawling out of my sleeping bag to see sunrise on Kanchenjunga and Everest

Trekking with Tom and Rob down through the cardamom forests

Dawn over the Tibetan plateau, freezing, but in the company of warm friends!

Trekking to Pelling with Daphna and Arvi - the Khecheopalri Kids!

Having Jeroen fill an entire page of my notebook with book and music recommendations, then racing round Kolkata in taxis

Having out of trains with Arvi

Sunsets in Puri

and of course all the food!

As you'll notice from most of the photos, many of my highlights are moments i've shared with people i've met along the way, and theres a very good reason for this. The majority of people I meet traveling are open-minded, adventurous, fun loving, inquisitive, generous, spontaneous, cultured and eager to share everything - from travel tales, tips and warnings to their food and company for a few days.

Traveling to a foreign country is always a rich experience and my trip to India was made all the more so by the people I met there. So to all my travel companions in 2007 I say 'Thank you!' for helping make my journeys so much fun, and see you somewhere off the beaten track in 2008!

2007-12-22T17:31:00.000+01:00

Unwieldy Baggage Packers - take note!

Hell on wheels, By Seth Stevenson

IHT, Friday, December 21, 2007

ABOARD SEVEN SEAS MARINER, Pacific Ocean: You'd rather not think about it - and you never, ever talk about it - but you and I both know that you've run over feet.

You can rationalize. (The airport concourse was crowded. You were distracted, looking up at the departures board.) But come clean. You know it's happening. You can feel your rolling suitcase treating a stranger's ankle as a speed bump. You can hear the swallowed yelp of pain.

And do you apologize? You might mumble "sorry" over a shoulder.

But you never break stride. Instead, you steer into the Chili's restaurant next to your gate, your bag clipping a waitress' shin as you wheel to the bar. (Go ahead, drown your guilt in that frozen margarita. It won't cure her limp.)

Aboard the plane, the wanton destruction continues. For the central fallacy of the wheeled luggage trend is that your suitcase will roll smoothly up the aisle in coach. Lie!

Your bag lurches along, catching on seat handles, bumping knees and elbows. You pull harder when it gives resistance. You pull harder still. And you look back to see your bag scraping against the thigh of an obese seated passenger. His haunch has spilled into the aisle to meet the wrath of your ballistic nylon.

When you at last reach your seat, do you gracefully collapse your telescoping handle and lightly tuck your bag in the overhead compartment? No, your handle jams, holding up the line behind you. And your bag won't fit because all the other bags up there also have huge, jutting wheels.

Plus - particularly if you are a petite, elderly woman (a demographic I am in most cases quite fond of, I promise you) - you sometimes can't lift your bag at all. This is because those wheels have freed you from having to rely on your own muscle power, or a hired valet. You're encouraged to over-pack to such a degree that you can no longer move your bag without wheels. So you stagger weakly under its weight until (if I see you) I assist you with it or (if I don't) you drop it on my head - bludgeoning me with 70 pounds of toiletries.

People, you never need more clothes than you can comfortably carry in a shoulder bag. Soldiers in 'Nam got by with less gear than the average executive now packs for a two-day trip. Unless you are a deep-sea diver or, maybe, an iron-ore salesman, your luggage really shouldn't necessitate load-bearing wheels.

Also: aesthetics. Your dorky rolling bag doesn't say, "I'm embarking on a voyage." It says, "I'm going to a conference in Cleveland." And maybe you are, but you don't have to advertise it. The swashbuckling adventurer hoists a leather rucksack, or a battered canvas duffel. He doesn't tug his bag behind him on a leash like a stubborn and especially boring pet.

It's easy to see the appeal of wheeled luggage, of course. It eases our burdens and lifts the weight off our shoulders. It keeps our neatly pressed jackets un-mussed. But rolling bags are really functional only for the type of journey that goes taxi-airport-taxi-hotel-shuttle bus-convention center. Outside this comfortable circuit, they're often useless.

I've been traveling a lot recently, in countries ranging from developed to less developed to dear Lord, is that a monkey attacking a naked child? In harsher conditions, a dainty rolling bag is absurdly out of place. It's no fun rolling those wheels across a "street" that's just a rain-soaked blotch of mud. Or bouncing them up the stairs of a packed train station. Or dragging them through a marketplace where puddles are indeed full of fish and goat entrails. (Enjoy that pungent odor when your bag is back in your room.)

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not trying to eliminate rolling bags altogether. I'm just trying to halt their unchecked proliferation.

Perhaps we should regard them with the same mild disapproval that greets that fur coat your mom inherited. She won't throw it away, but she is a bit uneasy about wearing it in public.

This will all become moot, of course, with the advent of the levitating suitcase, an invention that can't be far off. When it arrives, we'll immediately go gaga for it. And soon after, I'm sure, your bag will be levitating swiftly and directly into my groin.

I await your mumbled apology.

Thanks Seth, you've said it all

2007-12-18T17:26:00.000+01:00

Where to next...?

Often when I get back from a trip one of the questions my friends and colleagues ask is "Where are you off to next?". They know i've a wish list of countries/regions as long as my arm (no, longer!) and its just a matter of getting more time off work before i'm heading off somewhere else. The question remains.... where?

Up until now various factors have determined my next destination; amount of time off work, the season, political situations and my bank account to name a few. Another factor is difficulty of travel, for example i've not been to many European cities or large swathes of the 'developed' world, simply because travel there is so much easier that I can visit them when i'm older and maybe less able. But just recently i've become more aware of other elements or risks I should include when deciding on my next destination.

The number of tourists traveling to Tibet has hit a record high, Chinese state media has reported.
Just over four million tourists will have visited Tibet in 2007, an official said, an increase of 64% year on year.
The official put the increase down to better marketing and improved transport links, including the controversial high-speed rail service to China. bbc.co.uk 17 Dec 07

For a long time i've dreamt of visiting Tibet - exploring its mountains and high desert plains - but have balked at the idea of going there whilst its under Chinese rule. However with tourism expanding fast that means the country, its people, culture and even landscape, is being exposed and altered by outside influences and if I want to see Tibet before Starbucks moves in i'd better get a move on!

Also much as I abhor the Chinese for their human rights records I admit to admiring their China-Tibet railway. The project they undertook was almost impossible given tracks had to be laid on shifting deserts, melting permafrost, in earthquake zones and much of the construction undertaken at high altitude in freezing conditions. Given my geeky fascination for feats of extreme engineering and passion for unexplored areas and train travel, Tibet and the Lhasa railway is now a dream journey, and it looks like i'm going to have to make it sooner rather than later.

And there are other human impacts that need to be factored in to my decision making...

DENNIS and STACIE WOODS choose their vacation destinations based on what they fear is fated to destruction.
This month it was a camping and kayaking trip around the Galápagos Islands. Last year, it was a stay at a remote lodge in the Amazon, and before that, an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.
The visit to the Amazon was “to try to see it in its natural state before it was turned into a cattle ranch or logged or burned to the ground,” Mr. Woods said. Kilimanjaro was about seeing the sunrise on the highest peak in Africa before the ice cap melts, as some forecasters say it will within the next dozen years.
Next on their list: the Arctic before the ice is gone. NY Times 16 Dec 2007

Hundreds, probably thousands, of vacation companies and expedition organisers are cashing in on this 'get there before its gone' logic, otherwise known as 'Doom Tourism'. Its pretty ironic in that in we're all busy burning carbon fuels in a rush to get to the places we're trying to see/save before they melt/flood/burn/die.

Its also hypocritical of me to want to be a tourist in Tibet whilst citing tourism as a reason for its changing face and landscape, however in my defense theres a big difference between being a low impact backpacker and demanding 5-star hotels with Western cafes, CNN & wifi in every room...

The questions I now need to ask myself when deciding 'where next' have changed. Like Mr & Mrs Woods, sunrise on Kilimanjaro is on my list, and as temperatures rise its ascends faster than ever up that list. When? for how long? under what political situations? and with what budget? are no longer priorities. These days I don't have to think about whether i'll be fit and able to travel to a destination when i'm older, but whether it will even exist anymore...

x

2007-12-17T20:53:00.000+01:00

Down down, deeper and down...

When I arrived India was gearing up for Diwali, the 'festival of light', a celebration involving gifts, sharing meals and exploding large amounts of firecrackers. But the firecrackers weren't the only thing exploding as Sensex, India's stock exchange, hit the 20,000 mark for the first time ever.

India's economy is booming and it has no problems justifying its position in the 'BRIC' (Brazil, Russia, India & China) group of future power nations, who are already muscling in on the traditional super economies. Yet I don't think the Sensex's record high made it on to many pages or websites around the world- perhaps because they're all too busy reporting on the continuing demise of the dollar...

This weekend's IHT ran a cover story on the difficulties faced by US expats in Europe and Asia who are dependent on dollar salaries, pensions or client bases and gave plenty of examples of belts being tightened or sticks upped and moved to countries where the living costs were lower. Whilst India and its BRIC allies become richer the dollar earning expats are significantly poorer now than they were a year ago, and at present there are few glimmers of hope on the horizon.

I noticed back in 2004 when I was last in India that Euros and Pounds were easier to change than dollars and saw further proof of the situation in S. America earlier this year when Euros, Pounds and even Swiss Francs were prefreable to dollars. For this latest trip I made the decision to travel only with Euros, a decision the Indian government backed up by refusing to accept dollar payments for entry to many of the countries tourist sites:

'The Ministry of Culture has begun insisting that tourists visiting the country’s monuments, including the Taj Mahal, pay the entrance fees in rupees rather than in dollars. Entrance to many sites for foreign tourists is priced in dollars and then converted to rupees, but the ministry has been losing tourism revenue as the dollar slid more than 12 percent this year against the rupee.' NY Times, 17 Nov 07

It's not just the Ministry of Culture that's refusing dollars... I heard a tale of beggar in Kolkata turning up their nose and walking away from a woman who offered her dollar bills!

As some Indian's and expats take all necessary measures to protect their revenues those earning Pounds and Euros are cashing in on their currencies strength and flexing their purchasing power by jetting off to the US to do their Christmas shopping:

'“Your money just keeps on going,” said Ms. Dragonette, awed at the buying power of her British pounds, each worth $2.03 at the time.
The dollar was so weak, said her cousin, a 27-year-old nurse, “We had trouble spending all our money.” Add a new superlative to New York’s long list: world’s most fabulous discount mall.
With the dollar near its lowest rate against the pound in 26 years, and its lowest rate against the euro ever, many Europeans are looking at the United States the way some Americans have long viewed Latin America and the Caribbean and, once upon a time, Europe — a cheap place to flex their strong currency. ' NY Times 15 Dec 07

At least the US hotel and retail economy would appear to be profiting from the dollars doldrums...

Who knows how long the dollar will continue to devalue... in the meantime if you're thinking of traveling to India, or anywhere else on earth for that matter, forget those greenbacks - they're not worth the paper they're printed on!

2007-12-14T16:46:00.001+01:00

Save the planet... strip!
(an aside from India)

Some people will go to all kinds of extremes to save the planet, Jean-Louis Borloo, France's Minister for the Environment being one of them!

On a recent trip to Bali to visit a coral regeneration scheme Jean-Louis stripped to his boxers, donned a mask and made an unscheduled dive to see the site for himself.

Good for him! He dropped his pants and raised awareness by ensuring his picture, and therefore the coral project, got plenty of media attention. What i'm curious about though his PR peoples motive behind this picture ...

Back in the summer I posted on the scandal caused by Paris Match air brushing out Sarkozy's lovehandles. Apparently Sarko's entourage felt those 'poignées d'amour' might not correspond with his dynamic, charismatic presidential profile and magicked them away.

Jean-Louis however doesn't seem to deserve the same attention as theres definitely some flab, blubber and even a touch of arse crack going on in this photo.

Do the French expect less of their lower members of government and therefore the PR people let these things slide? or is their aim to portray our Environmental minister as a 'no messy, straight to action' kind of man?

Maybe in revealing himself as a pretty typical middle-aged Frenchmen he'll inspire many other Frenchmen to take some impulsive action to help save our environment. Lets just hope they keep their trousers on in the process!

K

2007-11-28T14:57:00.000+01:00

Yumthang Valley

One of the things I wanted to do most in Sikkim was the 9-10 day Goeche-la trek, which would take me up to the base of Kachenjunga mountain and an altitude of 4940m, closer to its summit. However, as Northern Sikkim borders with Tibet, security in the area is very closely controlled and the only way to get into this area is as part of a group with a recognised guide and a permit. Usually I shy away from these organised trips but for a 10 day trek in this area you'd need a yak or two to carry kit and food, and a guide to get you in and out so I was prepared to sign up to a group and hand over the necessary cash for this part of my trip. The problem I found on arriving in Gangtok (Sikkim's capital) was that not many others where up for a 10 day hike now that the weather had turned really cold, and despite trawling around all the guest houses and trek organisers in town I didn't manage to find enough people up for the adventure in order to put together a minimum sized group of 4. There was rumour of a group heading out in 10 days time but I didn't have 10 days to hang around for a rumour so slunk back to my guesthouse to form another Sikkim plan.

Pouring over the old Lonely Planet I read about Yumthang Valley in North Eastern Sikkim which due to its location is off the beaten track of most tourists. Overnight my luck changed and I found a group of 3 Suisse and a Colombian (now living in America) who were also interested in going and had already started to organise a jeep. Yep, there was definitly room for me in the jeep and they were more than happy to have me join them so we set off early next morning for the long drive North.

Our days drive was broken by visits to a couple of stunning monasteries en route but we were all keen to get as far North as quickly as possible, knowing that the sooner we got there the more time we'd have to spend there. 'There' being Zero Point; the end of the road, quite literally where the tarmac stops and tips you out on to a snowy boulder field surrounded by steep mountains with the Tibetan Plateau stretching before you.

We pulled in at nightfall to an elaborate looking hotel that had been decorated at a temple and whilst waiting for dinner set off in search of 'Tongba' the local brew made from fermented millet. We eventually found some in the home of a local shop owner whose wife, dressed beautifully in Tibetan robes invited us through to their enormous kitchen/lounge/bedroom/bar. Filling up large bamboo handle less 'tankards' with millet she then poured on hot water and gave us bamboo straws with which to mash about the mixture. The taste is very bitter and acidic, like young wine, but it's warm and wet, which up here at 3,800m is very welcome on a cold dark night. We walked back to the hotel under some of the most beautiful night skies I've ever seen and with all that warm tongba inside me it wasn't long before I was fit for my bed.

Next morning we were up early and wrapped up against the bitter cold at 5am. Around 6am the sun rose over the mountains and the views around us became mesmerizing.

The jeep wound its way up literally hundreds of switchbacks and as we climbed the snow thickened and the rivers crossing our paths became more and more frozen. At just after 7am we could go no further, the end of the road! and there was a big sign to state the fact!

At this altitude (4,800m) and at this time of the morning it was bloody cold, but frankly that didn't register with me I was so overwhelmed by my surroundings. Along with the Swiss we took turns taking photos and playing in the snow and then I sat myself on a rock for a while to sit down and contemplate the view around me, letting my thoughts wander across that plateau to meet up with a future dream of a train trip to Lhasa.

On the way up that morning we'd picked up a Tibetan guy and girl who'd climbed up to the top of the jeep and bared the freezing temperatures on the drive up. I'd forgotten about them until one of them wandered over with a mug of boiling hot chai for me, making me realise also just how cold I was. The Swiss and the Columbian were huddled under a sheet of plastic masquerading as a tent and trying to keep warm when I found then and although I was pleased to be in the warm I really wanted to be outside with the mountains. I grabbed another mug then went back outside, where in the sunshine it really wasn't so bad. I'd just settled down with my tea in the sun when the guide came over to bundle me back in the jeep. "No!" I begged, " we cant go, we've just got here!" not wanting to leave the view. He pointed out we'd been there for nearly 2 hours, one of the Swiss girls was suffering with the altitude and the Columbian woman had turned into a popsicle so I relented and climbed back into the jeep for the long drive back to Gangtok.

Although somewhat pissed at not being able to do my planned trek and not having more time to spend at Zero Point this jaunt is so far without a doubt the highlight of my trip so far and for a short time has provided me with my mountain fix. I have the images of that Tibetan plateau fixed in my brain now and they'll stay there for a long time, at least until I get to see that view again.

xx

2007-11-24T13:21:00.000+01:00

Photos...

A random selection of some recent shots have just gone up on Flickr. I'll get around to adding descriptions/tags etc when I get a chance. In the meantime... enjoy!

xxx

2007-11-23T06:59:00.000+01:00

Poverty & Filth

For many people the first images that India conjures up are those of poverty & filth, and indeed these words are often come up in descriptions of the country and its people. Both exist here but it annoys me that the terms are used so readily in India's case and often put hand in hand with each other.

When I was growing up in the UK dropping litter was a heinous crime. The 'Keep Britain Tidy' logo was on every can and packet and bins plentiful in every park and street.

Filth is not a word that often comes to mind when thinking about London or many other British cities. However you don't have to go too far outside of many major UK cities in order to find poverty.

Paris is the same and if you glance out of the train window between Gard du Nord and the airport you'll see countless areas in which people are living in poverty, just miles away from some very affluent residential areas. These affluent areas are however often filthy, with dog shit strewn streets and cigarette buts and litter in the gutters. Its this needless litter that I define as filth.

In Indian cities many live in poverty and the litter is thrown into the street as there are very very few bins. However the rubbish is very often swept up and piled into a lorry in the morning, leaving the streets relatively clean. I therefore don't really think you can describe India's city streets as filthy. Unfortunately the countryside is.

With India's middle class growing ever more wealthy more and more families are traveling and vacationing in their country and during a recent 5 day trek we passed countless families ' trekking' with all their bags and trappings piled into a jeep. The jeep also contains mountains of sweets, chocolates and snacks wrapped in miles of plastic packaging, all of which gets tossed out of the windows and on to the paths, just as it would be in their hometown. Here though there is no rubbish lorry, or even a cow to munch up the mess and the paths are tracks are knee deep in plastic trash. In West Bengal's Singalia national park, in which I trekked with Rob and Tom, we paid Rs100 national park maintenance entrance fee each, and spent our entire time picking up litter. The India guide thought we were crazy and I have to admit after another jeep raced past leaving a confetti trail of sweet wrappers I was beginning to think he was right. When we reached a chai house on the trail we pushed all the collected litter into the bin, only to later watch the lady of the house chuck it over the edge of the hill into the collective rubbish pile. This is where poverty and filth meet. When there are no facilities to collect or deal with rubbish and the pollution and health hazards it creates multiples.

The tide of change is slowly turning though as India's poorer population realise that filth and pollution has to be brought under control. The state of Sikkim has come to the conclusion that by being more environmentally friendly (its banned plastic bags and many plastic containers) it can cash in on eco-tourism, which generates much needed revenue to help deal with waste. It's schemes are well organised and its policies based around education and health care so that it simultaneously attacks pollution and poverty issues. Of course not all of its schemes are positive and it has some quite controversial HEP projects but their communications and marketing campaigns are powerful and changing the collective mentality.

Lets hope that this change in mentality will spread to the ever growing mobile India middle class, so that as India continues to pull its way up the economic ladder away from poverty its countryside doesn't drown in the wave of filth most imagine littering its streets.

2007-11-23T06:43:00.000+01:00

Night Skies

There are many many reasons why I travel to some unusual places, one of them being that often I find myself far aware from dust, light and air pollution and in some really impressive places.

Often perched on top of a mountain or in the ocean of a desert you get the most magnificent night skies with millions, billions, countless stars spread out before you.

I'm just back from Northern Sikkim, a small region to the North East of India squashed between Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and Bangladesh where each night I would sit outdoors watching the stars track across the sky. Despite the freezing cold temperatures I couldn't drag myself away and for hours I gazed at satellites, planets and the Milky Way and every so often caught a streak of light as a star shot across my hemisphere.

Its only when you get to see the skies like this you realise how small we really are and how much we've fucked up our atmosphere and environment. I wish more of you could experience what an unpolluted version of our nights could look like.

xxx

2007-11-23T06:17:00.000+01:00

Bollywood

India wouldn't be India without the glitz, glamour, shimmying and shine of Bollywood, and for me no trip to India would be complete without a visit to the movies!

My vacation this time around couldn't have been better timed with 2 major new blockbusters being released simultaneously to coincide with Diwali (Hindu new years).

Indian cinema has come a long way since the days when males and females couldn't touch and the scene of a half eaten apple being passed between the lips of a male and female caused shock and outrage. These days theres no end of suggestive dancing and writhing around in wet clingy saris, all to a funked up Hindi soundtrack with hoards of backing dancers. And the competition between the movies is fierce.

This year, in the red corner we have 'Om Shanti Om', a parody of 70's Hindi cinema led by India's top male actor, Shah Rukh Khan, otherwise known as 'King Kahn'.

And in the blue corner, ' Saawariya' , directed by one of India's greatest, but with a debutant cast.

Not being able to understand the script does not take aware of the enjoyment of the 3 hour movies. The plots are always the same (forbidden love and/or good v. evil) and with more and more 'Hinglish' being worked into the dialogue the storylines are easy enough to follow. Anyway, you don't go to see a Bollywood film for the plot, but for the heckling and shouting at the screen, the singing and dancing, costume changes and chai intervals!

With its songs on permanent shuffle repeat in every taxi, cafe, station and downloaded to every mobile phone 'Om Shanti Om' definitely seems to be the strongest contender in this recent match and its without a doubt become the soundtrack for my trip. Despite its songs constantly buzzing around my brain nothing breaks the ice better in a jeep full of Indian's than knowing the songs playing on the radio and giving them enormous pleasure as I sing and sway along to the tracks!

xx

2007-11-12T12:53:00.000+01:00

A long list

Once upon a time I had time. Time to think, time to research, time to plan so that when I arrived in a country to travel I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go see and do. I don't know what happened to change all that but even finding time to choose which country I would travel to for this trip was a struggle, and its only now that I'm here I'm able to sit down, open the guide book and start to look at my options. Maybe that's not such a bad thing though as I find the most useful travel reference is other travellers, so yesterday, sat in the sun with a coffee I pulled out all the notes I've scribbled and started to string them together into a plan.

The problem is I've just spent the last 5 days trekking with Rob, who now in his early 50's is riding a Royal Enfield around India, and as hes been traveling since the age of 24 has literally hundreds of great travel tales and recommendations. My notes therefore stretch someway beyond India's borders and the list ends up looking like this (in no praticular order):

Trekking in Sikkim (where I arrived today)
Mountain treks in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir
Jungle treks in Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh
Orrisa
Loas, and back into Northern Vietnam
Qinghai–Tibet railway
Trekking in The Mountains of the Moon - Uganda
Bolivia
Equador
Colombia
Chile - Torres del Paines and back into El Chalten (Argentina)
River running in French Guyana (like Cama & Fion)

Tanzania

Ethiopia
Istanbul to Cairo overland

Norway

Japan

Trekking in Borneo

Trekking across Tasmania (I'm saving this one for when Jo & Gerry are back in Sydney)

New Zealand

Kazakhstan

Kyrgyzstan

Mongolia
Road trips, anywhere!

... and the list goes on.

As you can see the majority of the destinations revolve around trekking, mountains and my love of food (Ethiopia & Japan for example). When I'll get to do them though is in question, all I know is that I feel more comfortable now that I've drawn up a list so if I ever do get time I can start to research all these destinations, and potential travel buddies. If you fancy joining me on any of them drop me a line and we'll start some plans!

For now though I'm just planning 1 day at a time in the hope of finding some friends with which to do the 10 day Goecha-La trek here in Northern Sikkim, but given that it involves 9 nights in a tent and the night time temperatures are down below freezing I'm having trouble finding anyone crazy enough to join me ;-)

xxx

2007-11-11T11:30:00.000+01:00

Darjeeling
(photos are up on Flickr, go to 'My Photos' over to the right)

Greetings from Darjeeling, West Bengal's best known hill station!

The night train from Kolkata brought me 10 hours North to Siliguri which sits at the base of the Darjeeling hills. Tumbling out of my 2nd class bunk I crowded on to the platform and as is usually the case here was swept along in the crowds, over the footbridge to the bus and jeep stand.

In some countries public transport is pretty well organised with the bus for destination X always leaving from platform Y, at time Z. Indian road transport however is organised a little differently... Pouring out into the crowds the best thing seems to be to start shouting the name of your destination. Pretty soon you'll find someone else shouting the same destination, at which point you haggle over the price a bit then climb into their jeep. They then go off looking for other passengers until the jeep is full (or overfull) at which point its time to leave. This may not sound incredibly organised, and at times it feels a little haphazard but it works incredibly well, and so just minutes after leaving the station I was bundled into a jeep at heading for the hills.

Darjeeling is a pretty popular destination so we joined a convoy of jeeps racing up the S-bend slopes, skipping over rocks and spinning out on loose gravel. The drivers obviously know the roads well and given that their revenues depend on how many times they can make it up and down the hills in a day there is constant jostling and overtaking on the tight turns. Our driver was, I'm pleased to say, a fast yet capable driver so only 4 hours after leaving Siliguri we'd climbed up the 2000m through the fog and mist, past tea plantations and Darjeeling spread out across the ridge in front of us.

I'd chosen to come to this part of the world specifically as November is the season of clear skies and cool temperatures, therefore providing great conditions for trekking. Darjeeling however was shrouded in damp, clammy mist and my first impressions of the town were nothing to write home about. I'd not come to mooch round town but rather to trek and so I set out to find other travellers who might be interested in joining me for a few days. I'd just stuck a note on a hostel noticeboard when I met Tom. Fancy going on a 5-day trek I asked... "Uh, OK" he replied. Bingo, I had a trekking buddy. Later than night Rob who was staying in Tom's hotel joined our group.

The Singalia trek is one of the most popular in the area and seemed like a good warm up hike to get me started. I have to admit I was pretty nervous about my fitness level given that I've done zero sports in the last months and Rob was just back from a 1-month trek in Bhutan and Tom runs 1,000 miles races, for fun. We got started at a good pace and made our way up from Manebhanjang (2130m) to Sandakphu (3636m) over the course of 3 days. The going was easy and the route was speckled with chai stops and trekkers huts so it was pretty luxurious really although the weather was far from great with cloud, mist, the odd spots of rain and low temperatures at night. The route zig-zags over the India-Nepalese border and so we were regularly pulling out our passports at border controls and Indian military checkpoints, the majority of whom would have to stop their cricket match or card game to log our details.

On the 4th day we awoke at 0530h to our first clear morning, and there in the distance stood the mighty Kanchenjunga mountain. At 8598m its India's highest peak and dominates both the Darjeeling and Sikkim skyline. As the sun rose the frost melted and the mountain turned slowly pink then grey. In the distance, on the border between Tibet and Nepal, Lhotse (8516m) poked up through the clouds and next to it the summit of Everest caught the morning light.
I can't explain why but being in the mountains and being at altitude feels incredibly liberating and after 10 days of travel I sat down, took some deep breaths and finally realised I was on holiday.

The route back took us through some beautiful forests and as we followed the river down the flowers bloomed in the sunshine and we were finally blessed with those clear November skies we'd been promised.

Back in Darjeeling after 5 days of trekking a shower (hot!) and some clean clothes were high on the priority list, closely followed by tea and cake to make up for our meager chai and dal trekking diet. Our arrival back in town coincided with Hindi new years, Diwali's festival of light, and the city was alive with candles, fireworks and firecrackers. Since then the sun has shone and the forecast for the next couple of days looks good so I'm packing up my backpack tonight and heading further North to Sikkim tomorrow in the hope of getting closer (both vertically and geographically) to those beautiful peaks.

xxx

ps. For some better photos of Sandakphu and the mountains take a look here: http://www.sandakphu.com/

2007-11-02T13:47:00.000+01:00

Kolkata - show & tell

I've been lucky enough to get out and explore the city over the last couple of days so i'll share with you a little of what i've seen and learn't about the place...

Capital of West Bengal and considered by many the cultural capital of India, Kolkata played a key role in the British empire, acting primarily as its administrative centre.

If you read the English history books they will tell you the city was formed in 1698 when 3 villages were signed over to the British East India Company and merged to create a miniature London with wide boulevards, grand buildings, churches and museums. An Indian court has since ruled that the city in fact existed before the Brits arrived and so the Indian history books tell a somewhat more accurate story.

In 1756 an uprising of the poorer Indian classes recaptured the city and threw scores of the local aristocracy into a cramped, dark underground room below Fort William. Come morning 40 of them were dead, but the numbers in the news reports sent back to England seriously exaggerated the death toll and in usual UK tabloid manner the 'Black Hole of Calcutta' was born. Since then western media has continued to propagate the image with the 'Black hole' and Mother Theresa's struggle against filth and poverty being what most of us know of Kolkata today.

Serbian born, Mother Theresa dedicated her life to 'giving wholeheartedly to the poorest of the poor' and created a new order, Missionaries of Charity, in 1937 when she first arrived in India. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 she has been critised widely for accepting donations from corrupt businessmen and dictators, as well as for not addressing the root causes of poverty. For the most part, and certainly in Kolkata she is highly praised and loved.

The British left India and Kolkata many years ago but their influence remains in the architecture of the buildings and the city itself. Spread out along the great grey-green greasy banks of the Hoogley river the 2 halves of the city are connected by the impressive Howrah Bridge, which spans the river in a giant 450m single span and carrying more that 100,000 vehicles a day is probably one of the busiest bridges in the world.

Kolkata is also home to India's oldest and largest museum. Founded in 1841 and aptly named the Indian Museum the huge colonial building contains an impressively well organised collection of Indian art, sculpture, geological finds, anthropological exhibits and some rather gruesome aged stuffed beasts in the zoological department. Unfortunately photography within the museum is forbidden so you'll have to use your imagination.

I hadn't come to Kolkata with any preconceived ideas of the place but its vivacity, culture and energy is beyond what I could have imagined. Sure it has its downsides; filth, poverty, pollution (just like many other Asia and Western cities) but i'm pleased to have seen it with my own eyes and have something other than the image the media projects to attribute to the place.

2007-11-02T13:17:00.000+01:00

After crossing many mountains, many rivers...

my pack has finally joined me in Kolkata!

Given that its hovering around 30c with frequent heavy rainstorms the contents (90% of which is thermal underwear and a down sleeping bag) are of little use to me, but after more than 7 years of travels on 5 different continents i've become quite attached to it.

Actually being reunited with my pack was an adventure in itself... Indian Airlines called to say it would be arriving on a cargo flight from Delhi at 7pm, however due to a taxi strike (thought i'd left all that behind me in Paris...) I had to wait until the next morning before getting back out to the airport. To cut a very long story short I spent more than 5 hours bouncing between various offices and bureaucracies filling in countless forms before my pack was finally handed over to me (looking like it'd made the journey strapped to a donkey's arse).

It does however contain a few of the bare essentials that without which life has been tough the last couple of days; tongs (flip-flops) which are essential in shared bathrooms; tiger balm, the only stuff that really works on bug bites; a headtorch to deal with the frequent blackouts; and a sarong that doubles, or even triples, as a wrap, bedsheet and a towel.

Finally with my pack back I've changed hostels, changed clothes and can recommence my travels, starting with the overnight train to Darjeeling tonight.

2007-10-31T14:19:00.000+01:00

Greetings...
from the black hole formerly known as Calcutta!

Like everything in life the last couple of days have been a mixture of the sweet and the sour.

The Air France strike left me waiting for 6-hours on a standby list at Charles de Gaulle, only at the last minute to be handed a business class boarding pass and told to sprint for the plane. I make a bit of a habit of leaving boarding until the very last minute but this is the first time i've actually had to knock on the door of a 747 and ask them to open up.
I slipped back into the luxury of my flatbed seat safe in the knowledge that there was little hope of my bag having made it on to the same flight, and woke up 7 hours later in Dehli to find my suspicions confirmed.

Having filled in multiple 'wheres my luggage..?' forms at Delhi and randomly picked a hostel in Kolkata as a forwarding address for my pack I jumped on a Jet Airways flight and landed here bright and early Tuesday morning. Finding a taxi was a breeze, the ride into town was the usual scramble of bikes and buses, all accompanied by the clamour of horns, and I quickly felt like i'd slipped back into the India groove and was on vacation.

The Lonely Planet describes the hostel I randomly chose as 'cosy'. I'd describe it as a bug ridden flea pit, complete with wildlife in the form of roaches and a mice.

Heres what they left my right arm looking like. If you flip the image 180' you get a picture of my left arm... lets hope they don't scar.

Waking up with the call to prayer this morning I was aware of not having had a very good nights sleep, the reason possibly being the 60+ bug bites smattered all over my body and face. The owners promptly exploded a bug bomb in the room, rendering it a chemical war zone for the next week and upgraded me to a bigger room downstairs, again with the complimentary in room mouse. I'd happily have upped and moved off to a new hostel if this place wasn't the only link between me and my luggage.

Despite all this, today has been a good day. Its lashed with rain so i've sat in a cafe and, for the first time in a long time, had time to read the Economist from cover to cover.

I met a group of volunteers working at Mother Theresa's home for the poor and spent lunch learning about how the charity works and how they're involved. I've also scrambled around a few shops to pick up toothpaste, deodorant, a clean t-shirt etc etc and just a few minutes ago the hostel received a call saying my packs arriving on an Air India flight tomorrow morning! I wonder if its had as much fun as me in the last 3 days...

x

2007-10-28T17:25:00.000+01:00

"X" marks the spot!

Tickets are booked, visas stamped and backpack is packed...
Wish me luck!

x

2007-10-21T19:09:00.000+01:00

101 (whose counting?) totally useless yet curious things you don't need to know

In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb".

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"...and thus the word GOLF entered
into the English language.

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV was Fred and Wilma Flintstone

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

The first novel ever written on ! a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king in history:
Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs -Alexander, the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter "A"?
A. One thousand

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common?
A. All invented by women.

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?
A. Honey

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by
ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the
bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... "goodnight, sleep tight."

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England, when customers got unruly, ! the bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down." It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the
rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd
waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan
mnid aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and
lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a ! wlohe.

ps. I can lick my elbow!

2007-10-12T22:33:00.001+01:00

Doug's on the telly!

After months of getting up at horrible o'clock Doug's patience, persistence, diplomacy and dogged determination has finally got him out of the control room and into the limelight!

See him in all his glory here ... (scroll down a bit)

Its the first time i've ever seen him in a suit & tie! Anyhow, he looks like he's taking it all in his stride but tells me he was shitty bricks at the time, oh, and that the horrible o'clock bit doesn't change.

Nevermind. Well done Doug!

x

2007-10-12T19:01:00.000+01:00

From the BBC:

This makes me happy...

"Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. "

and this pisses me off...

"President George W Bush, was "happy" at the "important recognition" for his rival and the IPCC, a White House spokesman said. However, the president was not about to change his more sceptical stance on global warming, the spokesman said."

You can read the full article here

2007-10-10T20:15:00.000+01:00

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Today, Wednesday 10th October, a full 2 months prior to the event I saw this years first Christmas ad.

WTF

2007-09-27T18:29:00.001+01:00

Girl Power!

This year i'm lucky enough to be able to attend the annual WIN conference, being held for the 10th year, this time in Oslo.

I'll blog later a bit about what WIN (Women's International Networking) is all about and what i'm getting out of it but all you need to know for now is that more than 700 females from around the planet are gathered here this week to talk about global challenges, goals and ambitions.

The speakers so far have been amazing but the announcement that got the biggest round of applause; that the hotel and conference facility had designated all male toilets in the building unisex.

There are some very confused/bemused/scared men walking around this evening ;-)

x

2007-09-26T19:12:00.000+01:00

Ladies & Gentlemen...

I fly pretty frequently and its almost guaranteed that during every flight i'll hear the annoucement:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to enter a zone of turbulance and so for your safety the Captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign..."

then, almost immediately after the announcement, the plane starts to rattle and shake.

My question is this; turbulance is nothing more than angry air, and you can't see air, so how do they know we're about to hit turbulance?

Do pilots have a magical 'wind warning system' up there in the cockpit do they just make the announcement then jiggle the controls around to give us a bit of a bumpy ride?

Answers on a sick bag please.

x

2007-09-21T21:14:00.000+01:00

This makes me smile!

2007-09-12T22:25:00.000+01:00

HAPPY NEW YEARS !!

This post is dedicated to Ethiopia who today, Sept 12 2007, joins the 21st century!

I first became aware of Ethiopia back in 1984 when news reports brought images of starving children into our lounge. Bob Geldof rapidly mobilized the masses and Band Aid raised more than GBP 8 million, then it all went quiet again.

Twenty years later if you say 'Ethiopia' to me the word conjures up a very different image, namely large plates of delicious stews and salads served on 'injera' (large flat bread) and washed down with 'tej' (honey wine).

Not a pot-bellied infant in sight!

Ethiopia has made huge inroads into other areas of our day to day life recently. We're now all addicted to its Arabica beans and Broken Flowers brought Malatu Astatke, the father of Ethio-Jazz, on to our ipods.

Ethiopia's still a poor and troubled country. you only need to take a look at its infant mortality and HIV infection rates to see that but culturally and historically its rich, oh so rich; The queen of Sheba, Haile Selassie, Communism, Rastafaris, Haile Gebreselassie, Zion... need I go on?

Today, 12th September 2007, in honor of Ethiopia joining the 21st century pour yourself a mug of Ethiopia's finest and please make time to familiarize yourself a little more with their country and culture...

Link to Wikipedia , crack open the CIA factbook, download some Ethiopian tunes, and look up your nearest Ethiopian restaurant for dinner - you wont be disappointed!

x

2007-09-04T15:20:00.000+01:00

How green is your god?

Were Adam and Eve tree-huggers? The Book of Genesis says that in the beginning God placed man as guardian over the earth, but somewhere along the line he obviously let his responsibilities slip.

Last weekend the Vatican jumped on the environmental bandwagon and held its first eco-rally in which Benedict XVI (dressed suitably in green) called on global leaders to save the planet.

Of course the Vatican can do this with a clear conscious given its upcoming status as 'the world's only carbon neutral state'. For that it has to thank a Hungarian organisation thats donated 15 hectares of carbon hungry forest that will gobble up that Vatican nasty emmissions for years to come (read the online article here).

But I'm questioning just how seriously the Vatican takes saving our planet.

Surely if the environment really was a major concern for them and they want to carry out god's word and be guardians of the earth they would be encouraging pilgrims to take more environmentally friendly methods of transport rather than launching a new fossil fuel guzzling budget airline...

From where I sit it looks like Benedict's trying to boost god's popularity by aligning the church with a cause we've all been concerned about for a while now, whilst boosting god's coffers by entering directly into competition with RyanAir and other budget carriers flying those pilgrimage routes.

Theres no doubt about it. Religion truly is twisted

2007-09-02T21:39:00.000+01:00

In an ideal world

Every weekend you start like this..

Thanks to Cama and Fion for a great escape from the smoke.
Pictures are on Flickr

x

2007-08-28T22:39:00.000+01:00

More Flow Charts / Diagrams

I found a quirky little site on the web today...

Thanks to indexed

x

2007-08-23T11:11:00.000+01:00

Photos

Not from me this time, but from Douglas Gayeton, documenting his travels in Tuscany, and worth taking time to browse through.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gayeton/sets/512868/show/

x

2007-08-23T10:44:00.000+01:00

Essential Business tool

Thanks to BoingBoing for cutting through all the corporate crap and rendering decision-making so simple:

I'll never have to sit through a management training session again.

2007-08-23T08:26:00.000+01:00

It's a man's man's world...

Over the summer months its not unusual to see the press zooming in on the rich and famous vacationing; either looking stunning on the beaches or catching them at an inelegant bikini moment (insert any Paris Hilton photo here...).

Whilst most try to shirk the media's attention over their summer break President Putin bared all (well most) this week giving Russia something to oogle at...

Did Putin bare his 'vigorous torso', to boost his personal appeal to voters? or was he simply relaxing during his Siberian vacation? One thing's for sure is that Pres' pecs have set Russia ablaze.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia's nationwide daily newspaper who posted the photos on their website reported women visiting their site as "screaming with delight and showering (him) with compliments." And its not just the women he's turned on. Russia's gay chat rooms are equally abuzz.

Whilst Russia's media and the Kremlin speculate his motives its clear that Putin, who has a reputation as being a great skier and a black belt in judo, is not shy of his bod.

France, or at least the French celeb-mag 'Paris Match', it appears is not so proud of their leader this week as it becomes clear that they air-brushed out the President Sarkozy's 'poignées d'amour' (love handles).

Whilst Putin parades proud, the BBC reports Sarkozy as having 'scolded' US photographers who snapped him and his family during his summer vacation but it may be too late, the French blogosphere having picked up on the scandal and more unflattering images coming to light daily.

Like Putin, Sarkozy has a reputation as being a sportsman and a great jogger. Although lacking a judo belt those 'poignées' don't appear out of place in the sumo circuit.

Being President cannot be easy but for Russia's ruler its definitly a man's man's world. For Sarko however, it ain't nothing without a woman or a girl (preferably skilled in the art of Photoshop).

2007-08-19T17:43:00.001+01:00

Weapon of mass transport...

On a dark night about a month back the invasion started, and in a matter of weeks the streets of Paris were alive with Vélibs...

Bertrand Delanoe, Paris' left wing mayor, has put 10,700 public bicycles on the streets in the last month and with 1,451 parking stations roughly every 300m they've instantly become part of the fabric of the city.

Providing a 24/7 mode of transport the scheme is aimed equally at making it easier to get around the city and cutting greenhouse gases. But a distinct lack of cycle paths (and helmets) makes pedaling around the city a high adrenalin sport...

Not known for its compassionate drivers Paris has never been an incredibly cycle-friendly city, but with another 10,000 bikes being delivered before the end of the year manpower stands a better chance of overpowering motor in the very near future....

2007-08-15T09:36:00.000+01:00

Spotted!

Look who I found on a recent trip to Lyon....

It's Sixie, Mixie's 'purer than thou' twin from Macau.

It would appear that shes been hitting the Slimfast, strayed from the path of righteousness and got tangled up with those naughty Raelian people...

Still no word from Mixie though...

x

2007-08-01T19:14:00.000+01:00

Lyon Road Trip

With a full tank of gas and a dodgy collection of 80's music Doug and I hired a car a couple of weeks back and headed South to Lyon and Bourgogne.

Rather than boring you all with words i'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

x

2007-07-22T10:10:00.000+01:00

More flying visits...

2007-06-29T16:36:00.000+01:00

Flying visit

Its all very well being jet-set and international but there is always a schedule to meet and a budget to adhere to. Sometimes the former takes priority but mostly the latter, hence this trip to HK following a very roundabout route.

The direct Paris-HK flight prices were not only astronomical but there was zero availability for the dates we needed so Christophe (IT Director) and I are flying via Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur! It makes the journey hell but nearly cuts the cost in half and means we get to spend a day in KL and take in one or two sights...

Honestly, from the small amount i've seen, KL doesn't rock my world ( I doubt a nation governed by Islamic law ever will...) but just 20 mins by taxi outside of the city sits FRIM (the Malaysian Institute for Forest Research) which has some of the oldest rainforest in South East Asia in a peaceful and well preserved park.

After a week of solid concrete and giant tower blocks it was fantastic to be dwarfed by such beautiful trees and for a couple of hours to escape the noise, dirt and pollution of the city. I took literally hundreds of photos in an attempt to capture the beauty of the forest so if you're in need so some green check out the latest album on Flickr.

x

2007-06-25T17:22:00.000+01:00

Back in the Kong...

Just visiting for a couple of days to follow up on the project I worked on here and took my camera out with me for the day yesterday. For once the weather was behaving itself and the pollution joined in to give some stunning scenery at sunset...

More photos and news to follow when I ditch the jet lag.

x

2007-06-21T17:30:00.000+01:00

Two for the road

Just a quick post as I'm busy packing but rather than reading my ramblings I'd much rather you read the posts of Will Okun & Leana Wen, the two candidates who won the latest 'win a trip with Nick Kristof' competition.

They're currently traveling in Africa with Nick and my friend Naka posting some candid, enlightening, horrific and heartwarming observations and photos giving us all a much needed reminder of how much help is needed and how powerful hope can be.

Please do take time read and also check out their fantactis video posts.

x

2007-06-14T19:48:00.000+01:00

My Dad

Its Father's day in the UK this weekend; another commercialised celebration giving everyone the opportunity to consume goods they dont need and feed those materialistic desires cultivated by the media. Yep, as far as i'm concerned Father's day is up their along with Easter, Christmas, Halloween and Valentine's day in the top ten of marketing marvels, and it seems that each year theres another new 'day' to add to the list.

My Dad (much to his disappointment but probably not to his surprise) will not be getting a gift from me but I want to take this opportunity to let him know just how much he means to me and that frankly a new fangled fishing knife, a book or CD would be a pretty poor show of my appreciation.

Many of my traits I can trace back to my father; my passion for reading, my love of the Rolling Stones and my basic knowledge of plumbing and central heating systems. And for each similarity between us there is a difference; Marmite for starters, I dont have a watch, shoe or trailer fetish and if I go to the rubbish dump I come back empty handed. And as I get older I notice a few more of my Father's traits in myself; I run around turning the lights out, tidy up before the cleaning lady comes and look for the yellow discounted stickers in the supermarket.

Behaving more like my father doesn't scare me - quite the opposite in fact. He is someone I'm incredibly proud of and have enormous respect for. Although we've had our differences, looking back on my childhood and youth I cannot fault him, quite the opposite in fact. Right from the word go my dad chose a path that many other fathers would have shied away from and he stuck with that path through some pretty shitty circumstances.

Today despite being geographically distance I think we're probably closer than ever. Its ironic though as when I was younger he and Yvonne didn't always have much spare time (they were busy working hard to provide for me & Hayden), yet now their retired and its me that's working my arse off with little time to play. Although Hayden maybe jealous of my lifestyle I'm jealous that as he lives just around the corner from Dad & Yvonne and therefore gets to hang out with them much more often than I do.

I find it hard to show my emotions and therefore hard to tell my Dad face to face just how much he means to me. If a plasma TV, Bang & Oulfsen stereo, swanky watch or shiny new trailer would cut it then I'd be having them gift wrapped as I type but as I said, they wouldn't even come close. So Dad, don't be surprised and please don't be disappointed this weekend. Just know that I love you very very much.

xxx

2007-06-03T18:20:00.001+01:00

Good food...

Good friends...

(you know who you are...)

and some great music...

= perfect bank holiday weekend

merci

2007-05-19T16:29:00.000+01:00

What makes me tick?

Fishing around on my friend Pier-Andrea's blog the other day I found his visual DNA - a collection of images hes selected, which strung together represent his take on life. Its an interesting concept and if you scroll down past the labels and links you'll find my cluttered collection of x&y chromosomes represented in picture form. The whole thing got me thinking though about if I had to represent myself (not the me that goes to work every morning or the me that goes out with friends or curls up with a book but the real 'me') which images would I choose? And so my reflexions started.

This all kind of links in nicely with the fact that since i'm back from that little Irish jaunt i've had this niggling, gnawing feeling that something is missing, and after a weeks deliberation I think i've identified it. I'm craving the open road.

Let me be a little more precise. Its not just the road i'm craving, but the car, and the driving; the feeling of liberty and the spontaneity that comes with 4 wheels and a full tanks of fuel. Something that has been all too absent in my life the last couple of years.

I grew up in an area where a car was essential. From the aged of 7 I was saving frantically for my first car and have always loved driving, yet I haven't owned a car for the last 12 or 13 years and I now climb into a plane more often than I get into a car, let alone drive.

Driving and the open roads are however not the only thing that makes me 'me'. If I could choose where i'd want to be whenever I have time it would definitely be up a mountain.

I've been lucky enough to trek and hike in many beautiful places, two of which i've found truly awesome. Awesome in the true sense of the world in that i'm left dumb by the impact of the scenery; the vastness and strength of it. Trekking in the Annapurna region first did this to me in Nepal in 2000. I remember waking up early one morning, climbing on to the roof of my hut and watching Annapurna's silhouette slowly turn pink as the sun rose.

At that moment in time I left so small, so insignificant, and yet at the same time so young. Young because unlike us adults who simply recognise the environment around us and take little notice of the details I felt more like a child watching the world for the first time; noticing leaves, stones, wildlife and seeing how it all knitted together.
El Chalten in Argentina had the same effect on me. Faced with one of the most stunning vistas i've ever seen I took literally hundreds of photos of the same view, realising now that I wasn't trying to capture the image I saw but more the emotions I was feeling sat before that image.

Looking at the photos now its difficult to conjure up those same emotions, whats not difficult to materialise is the craving to relive those same or similar moments.

There is one other activity that I think totally liberates 'me' and gives me a similar childlike sensation and one that again I find myself doing very rarely; flying my kite.
I remember my first kite. I remember failed attempts at making kites during school holidays and I remember the sting and burn as the rope has run across the folds of my fingers on countless occasions but what I remember most of all is how I feel when I fly my kite. The Australian cartoonist 'Leunig' sums it up best...

Why does kite flying do this to me? Maybe because being able to fly properly involves being out in the country or on the coast, preferably without too many people around. Perhaps its because being up high helps where the wind is stronger and more fickle in its currents. I guess there are all kinds of analogies that could be drawn but honestly the reason is not important, its the sensation and emotion that counts for me, and hence kite flying is an integral part of who I am, even if I dont get to do it that often.

The psychologists and therapists amongst you are now probably all brimming with theories and facts that will enable you to compartmentalise me into one of your little boxes but although the images of my visual DNA described above may differ from those on the VisualDNA website i'll stick with their definition of my character type thanks.

If you get a chance do check out their site and do the test yourself. If you feel like sharing drop the code for your DNA or the images you'd choose to represent yourself into a comment. Lets see what makes everyone else out there tick.

2007-05-18T20:36:00.000+01:00

a lot to say...

There are so many topics I want to post on right now and i'm working on a few of them as we speak, in the meantime Doug fwded me this extract of Al Gore's new book that appeared in Time.

If you've the time its highly recommended reading, as are the comments that follow.

K

2007-05-09T20:29:00.000+01:00

On the road again...

I've made references to traveling companions in previous posts and the bonds formed with complete strangers when you find yourselves in bizarre situations or moments of extreme beauty in strange places. Thats where I met Mat (previously known as 'The American') as we bussed out of Beijing on a cold clear December morning towards the Great Wall of China.

The day we spent walking the wall was truely awesome. On countless occassions during the hike I had to remind myself I was in the middle of China standing on one of the wonders of the world in beautiful sunshine. Its an experience thats been hardcoded into my memory, and its a memory that Mat and I will always share.

Mat was in Paris when I was in Argentina but we'd promised to try to travel again together at somepoint and so dates were set and flights booked for an Irish roadtrip rendez-vous.

The last time I was in Belfast was back in 1995 when the Troubles were very much apparent. I remember driving up across the Newry checkpoint which resembled a war zone with armoured tanks and rocket launchers lining the road and I clearly remember the night I spent in the Stormont hotel looking out over the city as it burnt and wondering if the streets would be opened again by morning so that I could get to my meeting. Belfast was a broken city; divided and explosive with no sign of peace in sight.

When I arrived in Sarajevo back in 2001 SFOR were doing their best to keep the fragile peace but the tensions between the ethnic groups were all too tangiable and the violence bubbled up regularly in pockets around towns and on the borders. It felt like war and it felt all to famililar - it felt like Belfast. I've resisted the urge to go back to Sarajevo as i'm afraid nothing is going to have changed but since 1998 things have moved on in Belfast and the city I discovered was vibrant, booming and basking in good weather with students sunning themselves in the parks and sidewalk cafes spilling out into the streets.

There are still sparodic tensions (old habits die hard) and the wall that divided Catholics from Protestants is still in place and closed each night, but these days Belfast is celebrating its future whilst remembering its past and marketing its history in the form of black taxi tours - not to be proud of its Troubles but so as to learn and not to forget. The 90 min taxi tour that Mat and I took was truely a whistle stop tour of the history and geography of Ireland and Belfast, much of which is emblazoned on the buildings and walls in murals and it gave us a very broad and yet very real taste of what the city has been through, and how far its come in the last 12 years.

Next morning with the wind in our wheels we drove North to the Giant's Causeway and to explore the Northern Irish coast.

Back thousands of years ago when giants roamed the earth and the moon was made of cheese Fin McCool (the local Irish giant) built this causeway to Scotland so as to fight his Scottish nemisis, Benandonner. Since then some clever scientists have debunked this legend claiming that the huge hexagonal stones were formed when basaltic rock from volcanic eruptions cooled into these regular shapes. Either way, giants or volcanoes, the causeway definitly is cool and we had a great couple of hours clambering over the columns and up the stepped cliffs.

Although the main area was quite touristy armed with the Lonely Planet's 'Hiking in Ireland' guide book and picnics in our daypacks after only a short walk along the clifftops we pretty much had the place to ourselves and after lunch found the perfect place to snooze in the sunshine. This had become a bit of a habit; hike, picnic, snooze and if anyone from Lonely Planet is reading i'd be happy to contribute a couple of entries to the 'Napping in Ireland' guide book when its published.

The perfect spot for a snooze.

The other habit we feel into all to easily was that of frequenting Irish pubs...

Irish bars are legendary, quite literally the world over, for their hospitality and music, and none more so than in Ireland itself where going to the pub is almost a full body-contact sport when the band is playing and the place is jumping.

The good weather had left us and the usualy Irish showers and rain returned so next morning we jumped in the car, threw away the map, pulled out the compass and headed West until we hit the water.

This is the stuff that great road trips are made of; stunning scenery, good music, twisty winding lanes and nothing but the open road and the unexpected ahead.

What we'd certainly not expected was to find the small town of Ardara in which every pub and bar on the high street was hosting (inside and out) a band, group of fiddlers, flautists and whistler players for their weekend music festival.

It seems every kid in Ireland is born with an instrument tucked under their chin or in their mouth and even the most timid of 8-year olds in pink sweatshirts armed only with a junior sized accordian is capable of getting an entire pub up and jumping or singing. Like all good road trips our Irish jaunt needed a themesong and with 'Dirty old town', 'The gambler' and 'Molly Malone' being bashed out in every pub we set foot in we had plenty to choose from and hearing any of them ever again is sure to bring back the memories of that spectacular day.

Our final days were spent in Dublin wandering the town by day and the bars by night (cue 'Dirty old town'...) with some Irish friends Mat had made back in Thailand.

The next morning I picked up the headlines in the Irish Times to find that the country had completed its troubled journey and jumped into a new phase of peace with the end of control from London in Northern Ireland and power sharing agreed between two previous enemies, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness. History completes its cycle in Northern Ireland and I hope someday i'll see the same cycle run its course in Sarajevo. For now though our little roadtrip had run its course and Mat and I went our seperate ways at Dublin airport knowing our travels will probably cross again sometime, someplace now that we've some great Irish memories to tack up alongside those great wall moments.

2007-04-06T02:54:00.000+01:00

Life, Liberty, Egality?

There are many things in life that are precious to me, but if I had to draw up a list I know my friends, family and freedom would definitly be in the top 5.

Freedom for me is all about choice. For example when the weather was bad in Cordoba I had the freedom to jump on the next bus North where the weather was better. And when I turned up at the port in Buenos Aires only to find there were no economy class seats left on the next boat I was able to upgrade to first class rather than wait. I was able do both of these things because i'm affulent enough to be able to afford to choose. Hundreds of thousands however are not so lucky.

After the ecomony crashed here in 2001 it was the middle-class Argentinians who were hit the hardest. Whilst the rich had their property investments and US dollar savings the middle-class saw their savings become worthless overnight, and their salaries could no longer support the bare essentials needed to support their day to day life. The economy here is improving, but its unlikely the middle-class of today will see their standards of living improving in the near future.

Having left Cordoba 3 days earlier than I planned thanks to El Nino I decided to cross over in Uruguay for a while in order to check out the scene over there.
The 24 hour bus journey from Iguaza Falls down to BA, coupled with the 1-hour boat trip and 2.5 hour bus transfer into the capital,Montevideo, left me shattered so on my first day in town I took it easy, wandering about, enjoying the curious mix of architecture and checking out the old port. Although Uruguay's economy did not crash it too took a blow back in 2001 as much of the Southern coastline of the country is the weekend playground of Buenos Aires', and so when people couldn't afford to play any longer hard times befell the Uruguaians. You can see this clearly in Montevideo where areas that were once middle-class housing are now no more than slums and you dont have to look too far to find poverty.

In the hostel the night before i'd met a Swiss girl, Isabelle, and as i'd already explored the port the day before I agreed to go back there with her and show her the great cafes and galleries i'd found. The next morning a young American girl, Veronika, in our dorm asked if she could join us. OK, we said, and arranged a rendez-vous in town as we all had various chores to attend to.
At the designated time Isabelle and I showed up wearing standard backpacker gear (trousers, t-shirts, sneakers, daypacks) 15 mins later comes Veronika in short shorts, heels and swinging a handbag, apologising for her delay but she'd had a problem with the ATM and had by error withdrawn USD300 rather than 300 pesos (USD30). Right from that moment on I wanted to be shot of her.

We walked down through the city centre and out along the seafront , enjoying the sunshine and watching all the old guys line fishing off the harbour wall.
Its about midday now and its hot and as Veronika doesn't have either sunglasses or a hat shes suffering and so rather reluctantly we agree to cross over the 4 lane road and walk in the shadow of the container port. I didn't like this one bit and I could see Isabelle was just as uncomfortable. We had just both said as much when a guy with a broken bottle jumps out from between 2 containers and grabs the Veronika's handbag.
Isabelle runs out into the road (away from the guy and to stop a car). I grab the arm hes holding the bottle with so that he cannot harm Veronika and meantime Veronika screams and hands him her bag. I've still got hold of his arm and somehow manage to get a hand on the bag. He tried to run off so I set off with him and as a couple of cars had stopped I guess he took fright and let go, disappearing between 2 containers, leaving me holding the bag.
The whole thing took no more than 15 seconds and 15 seconds after that we'd pegged it back to the other side of the road, into the sunshine and safety. Both Isabelle and I were furious at Veronika. What the fuck did she think she was doing a) dressed like that, b) carrying a handbag and c) begging us to walk on the dark side of the road as she had neither hat or glasses. We were both also furious at ourselves. We should have ditched her the moment we saw her, or at least refused to have crossed the road. We'd all escaped though, unharmed and nothing was lost so I put that down to a positive experience rather than a negative one.

Isabelle and I dropped Veronika back at the hostel (she was a miserable shaking wreck by now) and continued our day at the port as planned both wondering just how someone like Veronika manages to get as far as Montevideo in the first place, and just how long it'll be before her luck really does run out (Darwin theory anyone?).

For that guy though Veronika's bag was possibly his chance at freedom. It's contents may have been enough for him to pay his rent, feed his family, buy a bus ticket somewhere to find work or maybe even simply just to have bought drugs enough for him to have escaped from poverty, if only mentally. Thats the thing about liberty, it comes with a large price tag and its only those of us with money that can afford choice, freedom. Its something i'm reminded of constantly on my travels and I think being reminded helps me appreciate just how lucky I am. I wish more people could get to see both sides of the picture and appreciate just how fortunate they are too.

xxx

2007-03-31T22:24:00.000+01:00

Road Fever

Often when I travel I find myself doing things I would never entertain the idea of at home; sharing a bathroom with 17 other people, living on a crap diet and travelling large distances by bus.

I´m currently half way through another 2-day road trip that started in the very far Northern tip of Argentina (on the border with Brasil), brought me here to Resistancia after 12 hours in a bus and will see me finishing up in Buenos Aires after another 13 hours on the road. From BA I´ll then head to Uruguay, by boat.

I estimate that by the time I get to BA i´ll have covered around 6000 Km by bus, taking almost 102 hours (mostly overnight). To add to this i´ve taken 3 internal flights since I got here which will probably bring the total distance covered closer to 10 000Km - thats the distance from Paris to Dakar, or Teheran!) Never before in any of my travels have I covered such huge distances.

Unless you can afford to fly between cities here (and tourists pay 2.5 times more for a flight than an Argentine resident...) then the bus is your only option.

Up here in the North buses and roads are both of an excellent quality. The roads are sealed and the buses come in two classes; ´semi-cama´ which reclines more than a usual chair, and ´cama´ which goes all the way back to an almost flatbed giving you a ride pretty close to Air France business class (only with crap food).

The further South you go though the service of both bus and roads deteriorate. To get from El Chalten to Bariloche in Patagonia Johan and I spent 2 days on a bus. The first day being broken with regular 15 min rest stops, both for us and the drivers as the road was nothing more than a dirt track. The second day was about 50% sealed roads, but the same driver drove almost continously (2 stops, 1 of 10 mins, 1 of 15 mins) for 14 hours straight. With about 7-hours remaining and with both my legs and bum numb I asked Johan the question, ´That El Chalten trek again in the wind, rain and snow or this bus journey?´ His response matched mine. We´d both gladly expose ourselves to the elements for a grueling 5-hours of shivering pain than sit coupped up in a bus for 2-days again.

Somehow though when you´re on holiday it all becomes part of the adventure, adds to the experience. If I come back to Argentina though i´m going to buy myself a car and have myself a real roadtrip. The most popular variety around here seems to be an old citreon, which I think will suit me quite nicely!

xxx

2007-03-31T12:12:00.000+01:00

I´m having a hard time trying to decide which I hate more; mosquitos or Isreali backpackers. Both seem to come in large groups, make a lot of noise, keep me awake at night and generally giant pains in the arse.

I dont remember when I first encountered mosquitos but I clearly remember the first time I came across a platoon of Israelis 7-years ago in Asia. In fact in Asia you often come across hostels, cafes or restaurants that have signs saying ´No dogs, No Isrealis´. Unfortunately my impression of them has changed little over the years.

Having just completed one or two years of obligatory military service it seems they then all set off on an obligatory ´round the world trip´ before continuing their education. There is nothing wrong with this, Gap years are incredibly popular and infact I think that getting out and seeing the world should be obligatory - the idea being to meet as many people as possible, interact with other cultures, learn new languages and broaden your horizons and experiences.

Isreali´s however always seem to travel (like mosquitos) in large groups, often 8 or 10 of them together at a time. They are reluctant to mingle (either with the culture their visiting or other travellers) and being faced with a dorm full of them the chances of them speaking to you is remote, so unless you´re fluent in Hebrew interacting with them is impossible, in face they´re downright intimidating.

The chances of them taking over the entire dorm with their baggage (escessive), leaving the bathroom in a total mess, hogging all the lockers and then stumbling in at 5am totally pissed, turning on all the lights and making as much noise as possible is however incredibly high, and it happened to me again, in Cordoba.

Having spent the previous 22hrs on a bus I was keen to get an early night and so sorted out my stuff and bumbled off to bed around midnight. It was stinking hot so the windows were open with the protective mozzie screens in place. At 4am I awoke to find I was the only person in our 8 bed dorm in bed. Strange... until at 5am the other 7 returned, drunk beyond belief and making as much noise as possible. One guy, I guess complaining about the heat, in an attempt to open the already open windows pushed out the mozzie screens (we were on the 3rd floor overlooking the street, I dont know what they landed on below, a car I guess).
Theres no point trying to reason with a pissed 23yr old Israeli surrounded by his mates so I stuck in my earplugs and did my best to sleep.

At 7am I woke and decided to grab a shower before the bathroom queues started.
I nearly didn´t recognise myself in the mirror. In total I had 44 mosquito bites. 6 of which were on my face.

I have reason to believe that there must the a giant Mozzie ´McDonalds´ sign above my head as they often seem to flock towards me for a quick snack and therefore I do my very best to avoid getting bitten. Not only does getting bitten increase the risk of malaria, and dengue fever (very common in this area) but each bite on me swells up, affecting an area at least a couple of square centimetres around it.

The girl on reception looked somewhat shocked when I went to check out. My face was swollen and my arms, neck and shoulders peppered with swollen red blisters. The lady at the pharmacy gave me a lecture on dengue fever and the lady at the bus station went as far as to give me a flyer warning of the dangers of mosquitos, dengue fever and how to avoid being bitten.

I wonder if they produce a flyer on Isreali backpackers and how to avoid them?

I hate to appear prejudice or to tar an entire nation with a single brush but I know that the experiences i´ve had and sentiments i´ve shared are common among backpackers. Its a shame as from time to time you do meet an Israeli travelling by themselves, and just like many of the other Israelis i´ve worked with they´re incredibly open, friendly and considerate people. Its sad really that after their obligatory national service they then travel the world doing a total disservice to their nation and culture as the worst possible international ambassadors.

xxx

2007-03-30T02:27:00.000+01:00

Missing In Action...

Friends, I have sad news.
Sunday night Mixie and I had ourselves a little crisis meeting. After 2 days stuck in Cordoba in continuous rain we decided to cut our loses, forgot those dreams of skydiving and landsurfing, and run for the border instead.
A quick check of the weather maps showed Puerto Iguazu, up North on the Brasilian & Paraguian border, to be basking in unbroken 30c sunshine and after 22hrs on a bus we were able to confirm this for ourselves.

Most people come this far north in Argentina for only one of two reasons; they´re skipping the country, or their visiting the amazing Iguazu falls and it was the second that made our itinerary.

The falls themselves are awesome and frankly i´ve no idea why i´d never heard of them before. Lets be honest, they kick Niagra´s arse and even though we saw them during low water their size and capacity was still stunning.
Whats even more amazing is the way the national park has been designed, with a series of catwalks and gangways that literally let you walk out over the lip of the fall, or within meters of the pounding water. Within the park you can also opt for either the ecologically sound tour (row boats, nature trails) or the ´Big fun´ pack involving the 4-wheel drive trucks and powerboats under the falls (guaranteed to come away drenched from head to toe).

On the bus on the way out there Mixie and I metTim, from NZ, and with whom we spent the day trekking. Tim had just entered Argentina from Brazil and Mixie was more than inqisitve about his travels in the rest of South America. Shes already dropped more than casual hints about Equador and Columbia being within spitting distance.

Anyway, to cut a long story short at somepoint during the afternoon I noticed it had been a little too quiet and on searching my backpack pocket (Mixie´s favourite hiding hole) I found her gone!
A quick rumage around in the pack confirmed that she´d not slunk off for a quiet nap or buried deep in order to raid the biscuit bag. yes dear friends, Mixie is officially MIA.

I believe there are a number of possible explanations for her absence:
The trail was rough and at somepoint she may have just bounced out or she may have turned stowaway and scuttled under a lifejacket to hide during one of our river crossings. There is however a 3rd rumour currently swepping the conspiracy theory message boards, that shes not MIA but more AWOL, having decided to make a break for the border and continue her South American adventures.

I grabbed my passport early this morning and crossed over into Brazil to make a quick sweep of the area from that side of the border but was able to pick up no scent of her trail. Mixie dear friends will therefore no longer be continuing this adventure with us, but i´m sure that somewhere out there shes starting her own adventure, and man is it going to rock!

Party on Mixie. We´ll miss you.

xxx

2007-03-24T20:56:00.000+01:00

Los Amigos

One of the things I love about solo travel is that you meet other like-minded travellers. Some you meet on the road (bus buddies) with whom you spend X hours sat side by side. Some you meet in hostel dorms or kitchens and some you meet out and about, trekking, at a museum, the possibilities are unlimited. All of these friends however seem to fall into one of two catagories; those whom you meet for a couple of hours/days and may never see again, and those with whom you travel for a while and become good friends.

Johan and I finally managed to get ourselves on a bus out of El Chalten for the arduous 2 day bus journey on the infamous Route 40 that follows the Andes North. Personally I would have liked to have spent more time in the mountains, especially now that the weather had improved but Johan had a rdv with a friend in Bolivia so after 10 days of travelling together we said our goodbye promising to keep in touch, knowing that our Laguna de les Tres adventure would always be a strong bond between us. I would have loved to have continued North with him but had an important rdv in Bariloche to arrange...

Back 7 years ago I landed in Hanoi on a cold dark wet February evening and over the next couple of days became friends with Martin from Holland. We hung out in Hanoi and then headed in different directions. Vietnam being a long thin country though a week or so later out paths crossed and for about 2 weeks, along with a Danish couple and two Brits, we travelled together. Those of you who remember my ramblings from way back then may remember ´The Night of a Thousand Badgers´- a night that i´ll never forget and an experience that cemented Martin and my friendship for life. Not put off by the ordeal Martin and I both continue to travel and keep in touch, and so it came to be that we´d organised a rdv in Bariloche (Argentina´s answer to Switerland, complete with chocolate and St Bernards...)

He and his girlfriend, Ingeborg, quit their jobs and have been bumbling around S. America for the last 6 months and it was truely awesome to see Martin again, re-live those Vietnam memories ( favourite quote from Martin: ´we should have died so many times on those motorbikes´, hes right!) and meet Ingeborg. Their plans are to keep travelling for quite a while longer (7-years were mentioned...) and i´m insanely jealous that their able to take their time and see more of the country. I would have loved to have stuck around and spent more time with them. I´m grateful that we managed to arrange our RDV though I didn´t take any photos-doh!- and hope that we dont have to wait another 7 years before we all meet up again (M&I - Les Alps are calling...).

Thats the difference between bus buddies and good friends. With good friends even after 7 years you´re able to pick up right where you left off. And one of the joys of these friendships is the element of serendipity. Of not knowing when your paths may cross again.
Imagine my surprise when 3 days later arriving in a hostel early morning in Mendoza i´m tapped on the shoulder and theres Johan again. Plans may change but good friends don´t.

xxx

ps. For those of you that answered ´West´ i´m sorry to report that you´ll not be continuing the adventure with us. With at least 56hrs of bus journey between here and Buenos Aires (to the East) heading further West doesn´t make sense, especially given that Chile is more expensive than Argentina and El Nino is screwing with the passes over the Andes. We´ll save Chile for another time.
At the risk of sounding like I have a plan the next 5-6 days are going to be spent in the Central Sierras before heading NorthEast up to the Brasilian border for Iguazu Falls. We´ll see...

2007-03-23T16:05:00.000+01:00

El Chalten

Having said goodbye to Alex in El Calafate Johan and I jumped on a bus NorthWest up a bumpy unpaved road to El Chalten, high up on the Chilean border.

Established in 1985 so as to claim the area as Argentinian the place has a very temporary feel about it. It lacks unpaved roads, has no banks or cash machines, no mobile phone connections and in fact all communications with the outside world rely on the satelitte links that allow phone calls and internet connections. What El Chalten lacks in technology it makes up for in natural beauty with the town being surrounded by fantastic hiking trails and the stunning Fitzroy peak towering at 3441m.

Arriving at night the first thing that struck me was the stars. Here in the Southern hemisphere there are just so many more stars (proximity to the milky way or something...) but high up in the mountains where there is zero light pollution the number of stars visible is awesome. Having been dump struck by the stars I was then quite literally swept off my feet my the wind. El Chalten has a bit of a reputation when it comes to blustery weather and what would be light rain anywhere else is transformed into a hail of bullets as the rain is driven horizontally at a rate of knots, and when it was not raining the wind will drive the dust at you with the same force.

The next morning the weather was a little better. It wasn´t raining but the wind was vicious. We set off none the less, wrapped up in Gore-tex and armed with the ubiquteous ham & cheese sandwichs and some cereal bars. Our route was the 8hr hike up to the Laguana de los Tres whch climbs up about 1200m. The first couple of hours were hard work thanks to the wind but nothing overly strenuous. The fun really started when the rain came on.

After about 3 hours of slight climb the last kilometer was at almost a 45º ascent on loose rocks and as we climbed that driving rain turned to driving snow so that when we reached the top visibility was seriously hampered, as was my ability to stay upright against the wind. This little hike had just turned seriously nasty. The tops of our bodies were somewhat warm and dry in Gore-tex but neither of us has waterproof bottoms on and so my trekking trousers and Johan´s jeans (!) were soaked. Stopping to admire the view or take a break at the top was not an option. I took a quick photo to capture the moment then we scrambled down that steep kilometer of loose rocks and an incredible speed, however with the wind in our faces the volume of water running off my jacket and down my legs was too much for my boots and for the first time ever my boots started to fill up giving me cold wet feet. Quickly I lost feeling in my toes making walking all that more difficult and dangerous.

The flash helps make the scene seem prettier than it was, I promise.

In the basecamp at the bottom there was, thanks to the trekking gods, a German couple who had just fired up their stove. We traded a bar of Milka for a couple of cups of tea but having stopped moving we were both quickly turning hypothermic. Johan rang out his jeans and we put our heads down for a quick march back into town against that bloody wind.

What should have taken us 8hrs took a little under 6hrs given that we practically jogged back to the hostel in order to keep warm, the only thing we stopped for being the supermarket to pick up mountains of pasta and a bottle of wine to sooth our aching limbs. We were still quite literally soaked, as was everything in our packs; money, passport, camera, maps. Even Mixie!

A hot shower, change of clothes, plate of pasta and couple of glasses of tinto later we could look back and laugh about the day, and also reflect on how lucky we´d been. If either of us had slipped or fallen on the climb or descent, or if that German couple hadn´t been their with their stove we´d not have faired so well, in fact things could have gone seriously wrong. Johan is a soldier in the Swedish army so when he says a hike is pretty hardcore I consider that relatively extreme.

Still we survived and over the next 2 days the wind dropped and the clouds evaporated giving us the most spectacular views of Fitzroy and some of the best hiking i´ve done in a long time. This is what I crave. Being in the wild, under enormous skies, in the mountains with high altitude sunburn being my only concern.

xxx

2007-03-21T02:15:00.000+01:00

East or West, which is best? You decide!

So, i´m currently in Mendoza and wondering which way to go. West over the Andes into Chile for a couple of days unplanned adventure in Santiago and on the coast, or East for high-jinx big-fun paragliding, skydiving and land yachting...

You tell me! post a comment below and we´ll let the votes decide

xxx

2007-03-21T01:46:00.000+01:00

Ice Ice Baby

Large swathes of Southern Chile and Argentina are in fact covered with glaciers and the area contains some of the most active glaciers in the world. Active unfortunately not just in that they advance and receed quickly, but that they're disappearing. Between '95-'00 the area experienced twice as much melt as it has for the last two decades.

Being one of Air France's favourite customers I have a carbon footprint the size of the Antarctic (thanks Jenko...) and so probably contribute considerably to the stat above so I thought i´d pop by the Perito Mereno glacier in order to apologise.

I´ve seen a few glaciers in my time but none quite as awesome as this. Its a 65ft high wall of ice, twisted into sharp towers with deep fissures and undulating through different shades of grey, blue, white and green. The photos really dont do it any justice, especially as you cannot hear the deep groans as the mass moves or the gunshot cracks as chunks break off and crash into the water below.

Many agencies in the area sell tickets to allow you to hike on the glacier, or if you´re skilled enough ice climb, however given that I was supposed to be paying my respects I decided to skip these and head for the ecologically sound walkways that have been constructed nearby.

It used to be that you could get a lot closer for the glacier face but since a couple of folks were killed by falling icebergs you´re now kept a safe 30m or so back, but thats plenty close enough to really appreciate how amazingly beautiful and powerful these things are. I´ve stolen the photo above from someone elses blog as it was kinda grey and rain the day I was there - punishment for my polluting now doubt...

2007-03-19T14:51:00.000+01:00

Pictures!

Yeah, finally in a town that has a real internet connection (ie not via satelitte) and a PC that has a USB socket.

Mixie, having always to be first has managed to get some photos up on her earlier posts (scroll down) but for the time being i´m putting everything up on Flickr. Click here to take a look.

Hope you´re all doing well

X

2007-03-18T02:42:00.000+01:00

Dont mention the war....

Pick up any Argentinian map and huddled just off the east coast, right down there at the bottom you´ll find Islas Malvinas, better known to the rest of the world as the Falkland Islands.

Easily mistaken for cake crumbs on the map they should be avoided in all conversations by Brits travelling in Argentina, and if you must talk about them dont for god´s sake call them The Falklands.

Back in 1976 in a bloodless coup the military took control and launched the ´Dirty War´ in which thousands (30,000 by some human rights group´s estimates) of Argentinians ´disappeared´. The wives, mothers, and children of the missing still parade every Thursday afternoon at 3pm in Buenos Aires in the hope of getting information of the fate of their loved ones or retribution for the crimes commited.

In 1981 public support for the military leader was fading fast so he played the nationalistic trump card and in 1982 General Galtieri invaded the Falkland Islands (sorry, Islas Malvinas).
A wave of national support and pride quickly swept through the country, then just as quickly disappeared when it became obvious that Galtieri had wildly underestimated the Iron Lady´s determintation not to lose an inch of British territory.

323 soldiers drowned on the Belgrano after it was torpedoed and every village town and city in the country has a public square, street or avenue named after the ship so that no one forgets. After just 74 days and with substantial losses, the Argentina forces, most of whom where no more than 20 years old, surrendered.

There is a happy end to this story though. All support for the military rule was quashed and in 1983 the civilian Alfonsin was elected President and the Dirty War ended once and for all. Those guilty of the crimes however have yet to be charged and the wives, sisters and children continue to parade each Thursday.

2007-03-18T02:15:00.000+01:00

Tastes, Sounds & Smells

As scratch and sniff blogs have yet to be invented with the help of my amazing discriptive powers and your wild imagination i´m going to try and help conjure up the sights, sounds and smells of Argentina for all you armchair/desktop voyagers out there.

First though we need to set the scene so pop open a new browser and find some Gotan Project out there on the web or click here and search them out.

Next you need to get yourself 3 tins of condensed milk, 2 jars of caramel and 1.5kg of sugar. Mix throughly and ´hola!´ you´ve just made Dolche du Leche, the nation´s favourite food. Spread throughly on everything you eat, squeeze it into sandwichs, bake it into cakes and mix it into drinks at every opportunity. The quantity outlined above should be sufficient for an adult for about 8 hrs. Mmmmmm feel that sugar rush :-)
So far i´ve managed to pretty much avoid the stuff given that i´d quite like to keep all my teeth and i´m living on a diet of purely ham and cheese sandwichs, about all my backpacker budget will allow.

It would not be fair to describe the Argentian´s as only eating Dulche du Leche (DDL). Meat figures heavily on the agenda with crucified lamb being a firm favourite.
Take 1 lamb, lop its head off (smear head with DDL and eat for breakfast - probably).
Crucify lamb on iron cross and lean it up against a fire. Bingo, dinners ready!

The preferred serving suggestion seems to be as part of a chinese all-you-can-eat buffet which, let me tell you, when you´ve been living on ham and cheese sandwichs is pretty damn good. Washing the whole lot down with a 1 litre bottle of Quillmes, the national brew should set you back no more than Eu4.

Bon app!

x

2007-03-18T01:57:00.000+01:00

Tierre del Fuego - Land of Fire

Sorry about the complete lack of photos on the blog but until I get to somewhere with decent internet service and reliable PC´s you´ll just have to use your imagination....

Looking back over my last entry I really didn´t say much about Ushuaia or Tierre del Fuego so here goes with an attempt to fill in the gaps.

Split unevenly between Chile & Argentina the area was named Land of Fire after the activities of the Yaghan tribes people that inhabited the area when Fitzoy first navigated the Beagle into the channel. These days the tribes and their fires are nearly extinct, replaced by the exploitation of the natural gas fields in the area.

Although the remaining tribes people are rare the region has abundant marine and wildlife. Even without really looking I saw penguins, sealions, guls, cormmorants, seals, albatross and a whale (ok, it´s hump) in the Beagle channel and whilst hiking in the national park came across foxes, woodpeckers, rabbits (hundreds of) and eagles, although the beavers and pumas remained elusive.

Despite being the Southern most city of earth with all the tourist trappings that the moniker brings Ushauaia remains remote. Its a damn long way to the nearest town and all communications with the outside world have to be transmitted via satelitte. These could be seen as inconveniences but coupled with the long daylight hours and stunning views they just add to its appeal.

2007-03-09T17:25:00.000+01:00

Mixie - Live from South America!

Trixie thinks shes got one up on me with her US trip and now HK but i´m going to whip her arse with this South America trip :-)
It took some persuading but I managed to find a Mixie sized hole in KD´s backpack and have hitched along for the ride. The flight over was cool and I made friends with a big group of Argentinian´s on the plane who were totally up for drinking and partying all night. I had hoped to stay in BA and rock the city for a couple of weeks but KD had booked flights to some tinpot town down South so I didn´t have much say in the matter. I made friends with the crew on the flight down to Ushuaia though so it wan´t so bad.

Much as I was grumpy about having to leave BA, Ushuaia was pretty cool. Here are a few snaps of me out and about in the snow, on a boat and with my new friends and some pengiuns.

We landed in El Calafate last night and are headed up to some glacier or something tomorrow, at least that seems to be the idea, I´m perplexed. At work KD´s like clockwork and I know exactly what to expect when but this backpacking lark is totally freestyle. Guess i´ll just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride!

I´ll post as often as I can and drop all my photos here

2007-03-09T16:59:00.000+01:00

Buenos Aires to Ushuaia

I thought i´d struck lucky on the plane when I persuade the check-in guy to give me an emergency isle seat but hadn´t bet on the Argentinian´s on the flight turning the galley area into an impromtu tapas bar and partying just feet away from me all night long. It didn´t really matter though as for the first time in a very long time I´M ON HOLIDAY!!!!

Having recently visited the Paris of the East (Shanghai) after 13hrs of flight I found myself in the Paris of South America - Buenos Aires, where it seems life revolves around the tango and steak.
Sunday the San Telmo area becomes a sprawling street market where at every intersection the cafes spill out on to the streets and dancers strut their stuff to any one of the numerous bands. The ambiance is relaxed but the passion is high and its almost impossible not to get intoxicated by it all.
Outside of the San Telmo area the city has a much more commerical feel and the pace quickens ensuring you know BA is where business is at and theres money to be made.

I´d arrived in BA sunday morning and had booked a flight down to Ushuaia for Monday afternoon but didn´t end up there until the wee hours of Tuesday morning thanks to El Nino. Yep, 2007 is El Nino year and the storms somewhere in central Argentina had knocked out the air traffic control & radar systems plunging the country back into the dark ages and leaving passengers stranded. I should count myself lucky at only being delayed 4 hours, some other passengers were going nowhere for the forseeable future.
El Nino had also brought early snow to Ushuaia so on my first morning I awoke to breathtaking blue skies and snow capped mountains. Ushuaia is sandwiched between these mountains and the Beagle channel and touts itself as the Southern most city on earth. In the hostel I met up with an English guy (Alex) and a Swede (Johan) and the 3 of us set off up the hills behind town to the nearby glacier.
I have to say the glacier was somewhat unimpressive but the views from the top and getting to lark about in the snow definitly made up for it.
I left Ushuaia yesterday having been blown away by the scenery on the Beagle channel and had a great couple of hours trekking in the Tierra Del Fuego national park. I´ll post photos once I get to a place with a fast enough connection to let me upload.

Leaving Ushuaia was tough in that I felt I could have easily spent another couple of days soaking up the scenery and that the radar and air traffic systems are still not fixed so the flight to El Calafate was delayed by 3 hours. I have to say it was one of the best delays i´ve had in a while as Alex, Johan and I sat on a grass verge outside the small terminal in the sunshine with a bottle of cheap Argentinan Shiraz and a glorious view of the mountains. Thats what backpackings all about, impromptu friends and no fixed agenda.

x

2007-03-03T17:45:00.000+01:00

Final Approach to Ushuaia

I had to call forementioned tin-pot airline the other day in order to pay for my ticket (their website didn;t support online payment) and after an enternity on hold got through to Miguel. He very kindly took my credit card details then explained that it was actually 2 flights from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, with a stop for refueling en route. OK, I thought, these are small planes so thats pretty normal.

'Where do we refuel?' I asked, curious to know which other town I might get to visit on the way. 'Please, one minute' he said and in the background I could hear him flipping pages in a book. 'Sorry, you have to refuel but it does not say where on the flight plan I have'. Great. What do they do? Just wait for the needle to hit zero then glide down to the nearest petrol station. Now I have images of that 'Alive' film flashing through my mind.

Part of me is thrilled by the unknown and the adventure of it all, the other part of me is somewhat less excited. Nervous may be the word i'm looking for.

In case I never make it to Ushuaia Doug very kindly found this clip on YouTube for me so I know what i'll have missed.

x

2007-02-26T22:06:00.000+01:00

To infinity! and beyond?

I've just spent the last 10 minutes on the phone with the Argentina air force trying to find space on one of their flights down to Ushuaia, the planets Southernmost city.
I emailed them on the weekend to enquire about a flight on Monday and got a somewhat confusing response:

'Hello from Buenos Aires! Sorry no possible Monday, we only fly on Monday and Friday. To pay your reservation please call number xxxxxx'

After 10 minutes on hold I finally got put through to a lovely lady who explained that the plane was broken (at least I think that was what she said). Apparently the plane wouldn't be fixed for another 5-10 days so I thanked her nicely and paid through the nose for a one way ticket on some tin-pot budget Argentinian airline. I'm hoping their areoplanes are as efficient as their online booking service, which worringly requires the name and phone number of your next of kin when you book a flight.

Its only now that I realise the 13hrs to Buenos Aires and further 2 flights to Ushuaia will take me the furtherest South i've ever been - almost to the end of the earth. Then i'll be able answer for myself that that has puzzled man for so long...

The Flat Earth Society:

'But why? Why do we say the Earth is flat, when the vast majority says otherwise? Because we know the truth.'

All sounds a bit Mulder & Skully to me

x

2007-02-22T21:41:00.000+01:00

SShhhhhhhhhh...

After a quick side trip to the UK, i'm now back in Paris where everything is just as I left it. Well almost...

Work is still work. Same people, same building, same quartier. Honestly it feels like I never went away.

My friends, thankfully, are all here, exactly where I left them; and like me a little older and none the wiser.

And my apartment is still here, same view, same crazy neighbour, only now theres 2 of us living here (well 3 including Mixie).

Given that i'm only in town for 2 weeks and both Doug and I are trying to save to by places of our own we've decided to 'co-habit' for a while. All in all its working out quite well, given that we hardly ever see each other. Doug is on the 'evil' shift at France 24 so each morning at 3am an alarm rings and he pootles off to work. In the evening when I come home hes tucked up in bed (which is why we're having to be extra quiet right now...).

We've taken the 'ships in the night' one step further and created 'blogs in the bathroom' (or 'blogs in the bog' as I prefer to call it). This new form of communication entails mindless scribblings and reminders from him stuck on the bathroom sink at some horrible hour in the morning and non-witty responses from me, complete with coffee and porridge breakfast stains which he picks up when he comes home mid-afternoon. Bizarre, but it works.

It's great to be at home but still effectively 'camping'. I sleep on the sofa, i'm living out of an old shipping trunk and everything feels very temporary. It doesn't really bother me and its all good practise for my future hobo aspirations.

x

2007-02-09T14:55:00.000+01:00

The end is in sight

With less than a week to go my stay in HK, and the project thats consumed my life for the last 4+ months, is almost over. And it seems that HK has been saving its best until last.

For the past week the weather has been stunning; 25c, clear blue skies, low humidity and even a slight breeze to move the pollution about a bit. I was hoping that I could start to wind things down a little this week and maybe take an hour or so each day to explore the island but work has been relentless, with everything ramping up to the final delivery date. So I was pretty frustrated to be still be in the office at 7pm on friday night, having still not had lunch and waiting for a couple of calls from Paris to come in. It was at this point that Randy, the MD for Asia, wandered in sporting a huge bottle of campagne and a big blue box.

'Have you read your email?' he asks.

There, in my inbox, squished between some spam, is a mail from the big cheese in Paris congratulating me on winning the IHT Publishers award.

Oooooo, i've won something. Cool!

My eyes catch the box in Randy's hand and for a split second I realise its blue, that special kind of duck egg blue that only means one thing - Tiffany's!

It was only a split second though, come on, this is the IHT. I count myself lucky if I get a free lunch so swanky Bling-Bling is definitly out of the question.

So I now have a large piece of perspex to prove that it is possible to survive extreme sleep deprevation and live to celebrate the fact.

I'll keep the blue box somewhere special though - maybe one day I get some Bling to put in it!

2007-02-05T12:25:00.000+01:00

Don't cry for me...

Its official...I'm off to Argentina for 5 weeks in March and April!
Mmmmmmmmm, can almost taste those steaks from here
x

2007-02-04T15:56:00.000+01:00

Shopping

Having promised not to buy anything I didn't really need it was obvious after the Shanghai trip that my camera was on its last legs and so knowing HK is the place to buy photographic equipment I managed to concinve myself I really did need a new camera. Et voila!

I've not played enough with it yet to be totally happy but here are a couple of shots from todays hike over the top of the island to Repulse bay.

I'll no doubt be boring you all with more snaps very soon. Consider yourselves warned.

x

2007-01-31T11:35:00.000+01:00

Miserable

Today is 31st Jan and i'm truely miserable. Just a few hours from now I should be climbing on board that Air France jet and bidding HK farewell, but the bags are not packed and i'm spending another night sat on my bed working.

When I accepted to come here I was clearly focused on the return date of 31st Jan. I knew that if I put in all my effort and pulled off the Call Centre launch successfully this date, or possibly an earlier one, would be obtainable. Now with the Call Centre launched and my job done i'm stuck here waiting for others to pull through on their part of the bargain. Its like having your jail sentence extended because of someone elses bad behaviour. Whats more, the longer i'm here the longer I have to wait before I can take vacation, and the less time i'm likely to be able to take which increase the chance of me losing vacation. I feel like i'm being penalised 3 or 4 times over for something I have no control over.

For more than 3 months now i'm effectively been camping here in this apartment. Wearing the same clothes, reading the same books and without the creature comforts that make a house a home (books, cds, clothes, photos, bath...). My new return date is only 16 days away and its going to be a very long 16 days. Roll on mid-feb and then roll on les vacances

x

2007-01-28T15:22:00.000+01:00

Paris of the East

It was only on my way back from Paris that I realised my visa for China was going to expire before the end of the month and so within a couple of days of landing back from Paris I was on a flight to the 'Paris of the East, otherwise known as Shanghai.

I came into town late at night and was overawed by the skyline. Shanghai was certainly a city of light with the whole Bund and Putong area alive with neon.

Beijing had been a bit of a backpacker weekend for me but i'd decided to lux it up a little for this trip and booked into the Peace Hotel on the Bund, a beautiful old Art Deco haunt of Hemmingway and Noel Coward. I had an enormous room (suite), with an even bigger tub and promised each night to treat myself to some of the best restaurants in town but during the day I planned to hit the city streets, walking and exploring as much as possible to see what the city really had to offer.

The difference between Shanghai and Beijing is stunning. Whilst Beijing has the Forbidden City, Ti'anaman and the Temple of Heaven everything else is being buldozed to make room for the Olympics. Shanghai in the meantime has gracefully morphed into a pulsating metropolis embracing both its past and future so whereas Beijing lacks soul, Shanghai has plenty of soul and character to go with it. Its possibly to be wandering through dark hutong alleys one minute and then pop out on to a teaming street lined with glass and steel skyscrapers the next. Its a city of contrast be it architecture, food, art, or fashion, Shanghai has some stunning examples of the best of the west and the east. At times I felt like I was in Berlin wandering through areas of old factories and storage sheds that had been converted into galleries and cafes. By night its was difficult not to imagine being somewhere in the US, Las Vegas perhaps thanks to all that neon, but then there are times that are most definitly Shanghai. Its difficult to describe but the city definitly has a vibe and you dont need to scrape too far beneath the surface to find it.

I'm going going to ramble on more but instead let the pictures speak for themselves. I'm not overly impressed with them (the grey weather didn't help) but I hope they'll give you a taste of this fantastic city. Slide down to the bottom of the screen for the link and take a look.

x

2007-01-17T16:19:00.000+01:00

Its getting hot in here...
Whilst ice storms knock off handfuls of people in the Southern US, and bits of the rest are crippled by massive snow storms the Alps remain green, folks flock to the Cote d'Azur for a quick dip and new islands emerge from beneath the retreating ice-caps. Global warming has officially arrived! Bring on that seasonal creep...

2007 is set to be the hottest year on record (something to do with El Niño and cow farts) and given that it was 15c in Paris last week i'd like to lobby for adding the long-armed wooly jumper and five-fingered mitten to the endangered species list.

As I sit here on the 15th floor looking out across the harbour its difficult to make out Kowloon a couple of hundred metres away for the fug in between as I we flew in from Paris I saw first hand one of those brown clouds high up in the atmosphere, chocked full of fossil feuls and various other crap someone somewhere had burnt. Hence my 'better late than never' new years resolution - be as green as possible.

Things got off to a great start. I cut down my shower time to reduce water, unplugged or turned off everything electrical that I didn't need then picked up my bag and ran to the supermarket. In Paris I was buying as many organic and green products as possible, but here its practially impossible. Asia might be a newly awoken tiger when it comes to business but its a beast that doesn't give a shit about the environment it lives in. Recycling is practically unheard of - I got a strange look when I asked where the recycle bins were in the building and the girl at the check out till look positively disgusted when I said I didn't need a plastic bag as i'd brought my daypack. I find it mind boggling that so many people here are infatuated with cleanliness; face masks in the metro, hand sanitisers in every building lobby (sometimes also in the lift); and yet there seems to be so little care for the environment. So, it looks like i'm just going to have to step up my efforts to make up for them. And if a single one of you makes a smart comment about the amount of air travel I do i'll recycle you ;-)

x

2007-01-17T15:53:00.000+01:00

Sejour bref...

Being in HK is a good experience, and one that might be great if I had time to get out an enjoy it, but being based here temporarily is awkward. I have a funky little apartment but it doesn't feel like home (no matter how many books I buy) and knowing my time is limited means i'm less motivated to go out and build up a social life.

Originally I was only supposed to be here until the end of Jan so when it became obvious that my stay would be extended I have to admit I was pissed. I miss my friends, I miss my bath, I miss my books and I miss the sky. Sometime I feel like I go whole days without seeing more than a couple of square inchs of the stuff here and although i'm not claustrophobic I certainly feel cramped in this concrete metropolis. Therefore having the opportunity to get back to Paris for a week was fantastic.

Paris hadn't changed a bit, although I have to say that after HK it looked somewhat poor & shabby. January remains grey, streaked with rain and that special flat light that only comes out in winter, the metro was dirty and crowded and both the number of homeless (sdf) and the amount of dog shit on the streets seemed to have doubled. I wouldn't have exchanged it for the world though.

In Paris I can walk from one side of the city to the other, without having to take a single skyway, tunnel or pass through a mall, the number of independant bars and cafes heavily outways the number of Starbucks, not all the shops are chain brands and there is sky everywhere.

On top of this theres the dining out. Cheese, cheese and more cheese. Oysters by the dozen (make that 2 dozen), great wines, huge hunks of meet and delicate deserts.

What really makes Paris home though is none of this, its my friends. Whether it was coffee on the terrace, quick lunch or full blown dinner every mealtime was an opportunity to catch up with my friends and I loved it. Thanks to all of you who made yourselves available at such short notice and Cama and Doug for putting me up, and sorry to those of you that I didn't spend enough time with. Dont worry though, HK has no hold on me and i'll be home again before you know it!

x

2006-12-26T15:32:00.000+01:00

HOLY CRAP - We just had a freaking earthquake!

TOKYO (Reuters) - A 3-foot-high tsunami was headed for the eastern coast of the
Philippines on Tuesday after an earthquake struck off the coast of Taiwan. The
quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.2, Japan's Meteorological Agency
reported.

Mixie, despite being balanced precariously on the edge of the shelf, managed to hold on as the room shook and the windows rattled here on the 15th floor.

We're both off out for a stiff drink now. We need it!

x

2006-12-26T15:14:00.000+01:00

The perfect Christmas

Everyone that knows me knows I cant stand Christmas. Whether you're talking about it from either a religious or commercial perspective as far as I'm concerned its one big farce.
What I do love about Christmas however is that its a great opportunity to get together with a group of friends and do something you'd not normally get up to. Last year was a prime example.

On Christmas eve when everyone was swarming to the stores I went to Musée d'Orsay with Doug & Steven. Usually you'd have to queue for an hour to get in an then jostle with others in order to see the art, but last year we strolled through the doors and had the place practically to ourselves for a couple of hours.
Christmas day was spent with a group of us at the cinema watching a marathon 3 films back to back with only a short pause for beers and burgers at lunchtime.

This year was a little bit different what with being stuck in HK. The benefit of being here is that rather than cold damp Parisian weather Christmas is bathed in blue skies and bright sunshine, although there is none of that horrid humidity or mist that usually dogs the island. Therefore Christmas was the perfect opportunity to get outside and get back to those hills.

On Sunday I met up with Ellen, a friend of a friend in Berlin, and we walked back over the route I did last week, tacking on to the tail of it the next leg of the HK Island trail which took us up to Jardine's Lookout (great views over the city) and then on to the summit of Mount Parker. Getting there was a good strenuous hike but it was the 589 steps down that killed me. Having hiked for a full 7 hours we ended the day in style, seeing in Christmas with big plates of sushi followed by swanky cocktails in the bar at the Mandarin Oriental.

Wanting to make the most of the day off on Christmas Day I met up with Emma and her girlfriend and we hiked the Dragon's Back trail out to Shek-O, ending up on the beach with just enough time for a quick paddle before the sunset. And to finish the day off, Thai green curry in a little roadside restaurant. That is my idea of a perfect Christmas.

For New Year's we're going to hike the New Territories and I cant wait!

2006-12-17T12:03:00.000+01:00

Head for the hills!

Sorry about that incredibly rude interruption. I've wrestled my blog back from Mixie and have shut her away in her box so that normal service can now continue.

It was such a beautiful morning this morning that I couldn't stand to be stuck in the concrete jungle for a second longer so grabbed my pack and set off to discover the other side of the island. HK is a small place with the developed area being squashed between the coastline and the sharp green hills that make up the spine of the island. From my place in Wan Chai I headed directly South, straight up practically and in 30 minutes had gone from sea level to 500m with amazing views over the city.

In the bright sunshine it was still fresh because of the cold Northern wind however once i'd made it over the crest of the spine there was not a breath of breeze and the temperature went up by a clear 10c. Often either mist or haze obscures the views here but today the views from the top over Aberdeen and out towards Lamma island were stunning (you could even see the power station!)

I stayed on the Southern side of the hills and trekked on for another couple of hours enjoying the fresh(er) air, calm and green, which is interrupted every so often by enormous power lines or the tops of skyscrapers from the other side of the island.

I'm not naturally a claustrophobic kind of person but living in one of the world's most densly populated cities is tough, but at least now I know there are little pockets of wild just an hours walk from my door that I can escape to.

x

2006-12-16T15:10:00.000+01:00

Mixie from Macao

Hi there, Mixie here! Kristen's been working too much recently which doesn't make for interesting blogging so i've decided to take over this part of the show.

As my friend Emma needed to leave HK in order to get her visa stamped I suggested we take a trip to Macao to see the sights, and also catch up with my older sister, Sixie who i've not seen in a couple of years. Sixie, and I aren't really very close, shes all religious and 'pure' so we dont share many common interests but still, its good to see her from time to time.

Macao being an old Portugese enclave its got a bit of a Catholic groove going on and has some famous old ruins. We'd arranged to meet Sixie at the steps of the Ruinas se Sao Paulo and there she was, with about 500 other people taking in the sight.

With the obligatory touristy photos out of the way we snuck down the alleys and side streets and found some great little places.

The architecture definitly has a European feel, and as there aren't many high rises and the population is less dense than HK it has a much slower feel to it. Macao also has something that HK doesn't.... sky! Yep, having been hemmed in by buildings i'd forgotten what an expanse of sky looked like!

Down one of the alleys Sixie showed us a temple she goes to an insisted that we meet her spiritual leader.
I don't really understand what his role is. I think hes her Yoda or something, either way he has a cool little house and seemed like a pretty laid back kinda guy.

After the religious dose I needed something a little more lively so we headed down towards the water and the islands famous casinos. As the sun was setting the town turned into Vegas with coloured neon flashing and blinking on every building. Sixie absolutely refused to come into a casino hall with me, refering to them as dens of crime and vice (yeah right) so we went our seperate ways outside - She no doubt had some important Hail Mary's to say or something...

They wont let you take photos inside the casino but the place was packed with people playing roulette, black jack and poker, some of whom looked like they'd been sat at the tables for hours on end.

I came home a couple of dollars up and Emma got her work permit stamped so all in all a very successful days trip. We'll no doubt be heading back there again soon!

2006-12-09T19:48:00.000+01:00

Wanderlust

Back in HK after my little Beijing jaunt and I find myself more restless than ever, itching to get out, do more travelling, have less of a routine and a lot more adventure.

HK is an incredibly materialistic place. Everything here is either about making money or spending it, neither of which interests me greatly and i'm in no doubt that this environment is fueling my desire to escape. However with my current volume of work leaving little or no time for recreational travel my only option is to escape digitally, which is why I find i'm spending a fair amount of my available time online researching potential next trips.

Of course if I was really saavy i'd be reasearching ways in which to become freelance and lead a subsistance lifestyle working only when necessary, or working from wherever I find myself. Unfortunately i'm not incredibly commercially minded and as such selling myself doesn't come naturally. I do still hope that one day someone somewhere will offer me good money for reviewing literature; new fiction, history, biography... I figured i'd just need an address to which they could mail the books, a small notebook and pencil to jot down comments and the odd remote beach or mountain hideaway with an internet connection on my route from which to submit my work. My level of freedom would be infinitly higher, whereas my stress levels and overheads considerably lower, enabling me to either work, or earn less. If theres anyone out there that can open up channels for me to get me moving in this direction i'm ready to pay for their services.

In the meantime I sit and plan, and for the first time ever I made a list of journeys yet to be made; Alaska, Peru, Uganda, Mongolia, Ethopia... Treks and train rides feature heavily, but I found that the more research I did the longer the list became. It was starting to look like my next job title would be 'World Traveller / Hobo' (interesting fact: there is a National Hobo Convention in the US each year), but I have decided instead to pick 1 country and aim for there (to start with).

And so I've targetted Argentina as my next stop.
Sandwiched between the Andes and the Atlantic with Beunos Aires as its captial in the North and the wilds of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego to the South and offering mountains, beachs, great hiking and dodgy train services it seems like a suitable place to make a start on South America.

All I have to do now is stay focused enough on this project in HK to see it to completion, pick up a visa and book a ticket. In the meantime those of you with Argentinian friends, families and experiences, or literally world contacts please post your comments below and we'll get this show on the road.

2006-12-04T13:54:00.000+01:00

Down and out in Beijing

So having been sick for most of last week with the help of Mixie-san I dragged myself on to a plane Thursday afternoon and jetted off to Beijing. I really could have done with some R&R however theres just so much to see and do that I felt obliged to cram in as much as possible, and besides, with the sub-zero temperatures and biting cold winds I had to keep moving in order to keep warm!

Friday was spent exploring the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing. Home to the Ming & Qing dynasty at a mere 720,000 sq metres is makes my Parisian pad look pokey and the wealth and beauty in which the Emporers and Dowagers lived is stunning. The architecture of the buildings (all 800 of them) is stunning, with the attention to detail really making the difference.

On leaving the Forbidden City and heading South you enter Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world and one that its impossible to mention without conjuring images of tanks rolling towards students back in 1989. An extract from the Thirty-Eighth Group Army 'Accomplish the mission, conscientiously complete the Martial Law task' report to the Central Military Commission in June 1989 states:

'Before they cleared the square the various movements of the group army's 10,800 officers and soliders and 45 armoured vehicles crushed the blazing arrogance of the riot elements, smashed their lines of defense on the west and struck fear into the hearts of the diehards who were entrenched in the square'

Today the square is calm although still a mass of people although now they're taking photos, flying sites, waiting for friends or queuing to see the body of Chairman Mao and whose photo overlooks the space. Personally I didn't want to be photographed with the man but Mixie saw this as a perfect opportunity and insisted...

Friday, much to Mixie's disgust, I dragged her out of bed at 6am and we bundled ourselves into a mini-bus headed NE out of the city. The Great Wall of China is only 110km away from the city however with the bad traffic conditions it takes over 4 hours to reach it but its definitly worth the trip. I was expecting the place to be pretty crowded with tourists however upon arriving there was practically no one there, in fact I was luck that there were an Italian and an American on the bus planning on walking the same section of the wall as me otherwise i'd have been all alone (Mixie can be distant at times).

The Wall truely is awesome. Its big, strong and very long and yes, can be seen from space. Try it, look on Google Earth! For me the thing that made the wall impressive was the surrounding scenery. The area is tree-less with hundreds of small hills and peaks, that like the wall go for as far as the eye can see. Along with the Italian and American we followed the wall on foot for about 20km, at times having to scramble and climb un steep steps or carefully tread over broken sections of lose stones. Building it truely was an enormous project and i'd question the logic behind it ('a wall is only as strong as the people that guard it' remarked Ghengis Khan...) however it is remarkable and even though parts of it are tumbledown the fact that so much is still standing demonstrates its brute force.

2006-11-26T11:22:00.000+01:00

Night out with Mixie-san

My Italian friend Trixie ( see her blog link off to the right) put me in touch with her friend and colleague Mixie who despite being of Japanese origins spends a fair amount of her time here in HK. I haven't had much time to get out and enjoy myself or see much of the town so when Mixie offered to show me around I jumped at the chance.

We meet up next to a small temple in Kowloon and I was a little shocked to see how timid and reserved she was, especially knowing Trixie, however as the evening went on I got to know the real Mixie a little better...

and it wasn't long before we were out on the town, hopping between restaurants and bars with me having trouble keeping up with her little legs.

And by the end of the night that shy, reserved demeanour had crumpled...

2006-11-24T18:09:00.000+01:00

Searching for..The sound of Silence...

So last weekend, with Arnaud in town, I took the opportunity to do something touristy and hopped on a ferry boat to Lamma, an island a half hour or so from HK, know for its tranquility, lush green vegetation and calm. Here I was hoping to find some peace and quiet, something thats rare in HK. I was also looking forward to the opportunity to see some green, maybe a few birds and some wildlife. Basically to escape the concrete jungle for a couple of hours. Instead I discovered a mass of people, pathed hiking paths (prefect for pushchairs) and an enormous electric power station....

I hadn't come with any intentions to go swimming and the sight of the Mr Burn's-esque power station would have quickly dissolved any I may have had but to some being able to bathe in the shadow of this monster seems a treat, I even think an attraction! Maybe its the amazingly warm water, or curious underwater plants and animals ...

Mind you, except swmimming there is very little you can do here if you follow the rules laid out on the public information boards.

Although there may be no silence and the scenary may leave much to be desired the seafood on the island is great, although check carefully the name of the restaurant before deciding where to dine.

2006-11-14T15:45:00.000+01:00

WORK...WORK...BOWL

Blah...Blah....Blah... yep, I know you're all skip of me banging on about the stupid amount of work there is to do here but you know some of that effort is starting to pay off - for example the team that we're training here is really starting to come up together.

Last Friday when we were all feeling worn out at the end of the week we decided to surprise them with the afternoon off. (This was sold to them as a reward for all their efforts, which in part was true, but was mainly due to the fact as trainers we'd not prepared anything special and weren't feeling either imaginative or motivated!)
To cut a long story short we overheard that rather than all squirreling off to their respective homes for the afternoon they were going to go bowling, so I decided to step in and pick up the tab (ie, charge it to the company).

I'm not going to tell you how crap I was at bowling but we did manage to get some good team photos... this ones my favourite.

Yep, everythings funky in HK, even the bowling shoes!

x

2006-11-13T01:02:00.000+01:00

Summertime, and the living is easy...

'Merry Christmas' blinks the building across the harbour each night, it's lights flashing out a series of festive messages into the warm evening air. It reminds me of my first christmas in Sydney with shops playing 'White Christmas' and 'Frosty the Snowman' tunes whilst outside the temperature topped 30c.
It seems to be that i'm having another of those 'perpetual summers' giving that its been summer since June for me now, and i'm really starting to crave some cooler weather.

Despite work being incredibly difficult the living here in HK is incredibly easy. My apartment is on top of a shopping arcade, with supermarket, bakery, chemist, bookstore, obligatory Starbucks etc etc. There is a gym on the 42nd floor of the apartment building, free to all residents. All the shops are open late at night, and all day Sunday and all you need to do is think about needing a taxi and there will be a string of them around the next corner. All this comes with a soft but dependable layer of customer service, for example the dry cleaning service picked my clothes up from my apartment Saturday afternoon, and delivered them right back to my door Sunday afternoon. I have a horrible feeling its going to be tough for me to adjust back to Paris in this respect.

Although the practicalities of daily life are easy actually having a life here is not, especially when work comsumes most of your waking and sleeping hours, and you know you're only there on a temporary basis, making potential friendships incredibly short term on a face to face basis. When I do get time to rest and relax its then that I miss my friends and Paris, where after 6 years of effort life now really is very good, very easy.

So instead of going out and making friends i'm tending to invest more time in myself. That incredibly expensive spa membership takes up a good couple of hours ever Saturday (and its worth every penny of it), i'm continuing to try to learn Cantonese, i've started using that gym on the 42nd floor as often as possible and i'm also spending time researching some of those countries that i've always wanted to travel to. This weekend I also finally managed to get my act together and book some flights for a long weekend in Beijing. Its going to be a flying visit given the amount of time I have and the sheer number of things to see, but it will at least give me a taste of China, and an opportunity to escape HK (and therefore work) for 72hrs. Lets face it, whilst my work-head and work-soul is firmly here in Hong Kong, my real mind, body and spirit is clearly with my friends back in Paris, or preparing to continue that perpetual summer in S America.

K

2006-11-05T16:01:00.000+01:00

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Having got out of bed horribly early I found myself on the MTR heading for Central with an entire army of knee-high Ninjas. Yep, it appears that every Sunday morning hundreds of 5-8 year old wanna-be Jackie Chan's head off to class, dressed in kung-foo pyjamas and armed with PS2s, fighting sticks and probably the odd throwing death star (or whatever those things are called). Since i've been here i've never once felt threatened or scared, however I have to admit that seeing those kids jabbing, killing and maiming anything that moved on their portable Nintendo and Playstation screens knowing they were all armed to the teeth was a little disconcerting...

Not only did I survive the train into Central but I also survived my first R&R session at the spa. Its an incredibly well organised and luxurious place with big fluffy dressing gowns & towels and plenty of free healthy foods & drinks whilst your waiting or for inbetween treatments. Today I opted for the Chinese deep tissue massage, designed to help ease tension & stress which I though would help my shoulder thats suffering from late nights sat up working in bed and long days carrying laptops and files. I've yet to decide if it has helped but all I know is that the massage woman knew exactly where it hurt and she focused her hands just so as to induce the maximum amount of pain. If I could have screamed 'Get your hands off me bitch' in fluent Cantonese I would have done so, but i've only reached chapter 1 in the 'teach yourself' book and we haven't covered that phrase yet.
All in all though it was a good couple of hours spent resting and completely locked away from the hustle bustle and noise of the city.

The weather here has been great the last couple of days, cooler than before (about 20-25c) and bright and clear, so I decided to wander around the quartier and find a quiet place to work outside. The light was cool and luckily I had my camera with me so I took a heap of snaps to give you an idea of the place:

(Big thanks to Emma for introducing me to Picasa to create the funky collage)

Best dash now, its back to the crazy work schedule tomorrow so I'm going to pack myself off to bed.

x