A day in the life of an Arambolian

Well I'm back. 18 months, three continents, four lovers, five jobs, and one mumma of a breakup in between. How do I start to play catch ups with you all?

From this moment.

I am in Arambol, my healing place, in northern Goa. It was here last year I dragged my tattered heart and started to re-piece it. After seven years of planning to come to India, I had absolutely no intention of coming to Goa. But Arambol was my first stop and here I stayed, for two months from December to February 2009.

After five months total in India and another nine months of being back in Australia, I wasn't meant to return to Arambol. But here I am again, and again for two months.

You might long and long for India but eventually she will call you to her bosom when you least expect it and you have no chance but to acquiesce.

And rather than try to explain everything in this post, I'll just give you a snippet of my day. It might explain why I stay.

Today was quiet. The sea was calm from my balcony.

I woke up and went to play my hang at the Sweet Lake beach. Not another soul on the sand, not a dolphin in the sea (they've been notibly absent the last 10 days). It is Sunday. Many Indians like to come to the beach on Sunday. But it was early, so I was on my own. The sun is hot by 9:30 here now. It is March 1.

I went to the place under the stairs for fruit salad breakfast (papaya, strawberry, banana, chicoo and ginger). The power was off, so no juice. But I watched the movie screen of hippies old and young, enfields, cows, beggars, stall holders, go past. I chatted to some Russians about how big my breakfast was - enough for the three of us. Then I played with Chotti, the shop owners three year old daughter. She wanted to swing in a hammock we made from a red napkin.

Then an Swiss lady came. She is travelling with a Swiss Alp Horn. It's about three metres long, made of light wood, with a bulbous end piece that rests on the floor. On top of the end piece is painted the swiss flag with a bouquet of edelweiss. Apparently they used to blow this horn to send messages from alp to alp in Switzerland.

From hot India, this lady calls to her cold home and her ancestors in the mountains. And when she is in between mountains (or continents), she takes her horn apart - into three one metre pieces - and stashes it in her hand luggage to sneak past customs.

In the place under the stairs, she blew to her homeland. Her horn was as long as the shop floor, where we all sit on two benches opposite each other, our backs to the wall. Our knees would be no more than half a metre apart, facing each other. The call of the horn, as lonely as a monk, stopped the traffic outside.

When she finished, Chotti started blowing a horn through her hands.

Swiss Alp Horn in the dark, fruit and juice bar in Goa. I turned to the Aussie man next to me and said, "Imagine trying to explain this to your mates in Western Sydney."

My friends came around to my place with the seaside balcony and we laughed and ate Tibetan momos and Israeli humous. Anouk and I gave Lena a four hands, 20 minute massage. I played my hang some more, and Ed, the dutchman and my hang master (in secret, for he is contrary and wouldn't like it if I called him my teacher) came to say hullo after a few days in Hampi.

Then I put on my catsuit and my white feather earring and went to Double Dutch and ate three desserts, two with ginger compote.

This is a typical day in Arambol.

Thumb twiddling

I'm stuck in Kathmandu, thanks to a severe fu*k up (sorry mum, but it's deserved) on behalf of Thai Airways or Global Adventure Trekking or Flight Consultants or Osho World Travel or the fiddler's dog, who knows. The end result is that instead of being reunited with my boyfriend at the Edinburgh train station in a misty sepia-coloured photograph RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I am here with my daiquari. I'm turning into Ernest Hemingway.

To make pleasanter the 48 hour delay, I've been thinking through the highlights of this trip. Here's the top ten...

(in no order)

(off the top of my head).

1. Mytkyina to Mandalay boat ride, Myanmar
48 hours in the lungs of a ship: inter-mingling with Burmese people, sharing my books and camera and pictures; laughing with the boys running the kitchen that will live and work on the noisy rusty ferry for all their lives. Singing the 'Titanic' song with Heather whilst watching the sun set over palm fronds and water; it could almost have been the Thai islands.

2. Mt Kailash kora, Tibet
Such a beautiful place, a sacred place. One of the few places on the tourist trail that it's still an effort to get to (and not for long - again the Chinese are gonna destroy the thing they so revere by building an airport and a road around it) and an effort to climb... but for such reward.

3. Tibet in general
My first land-bound glipse of theTibetan mountains whilst on the road from the airport into Lhasa will always stay with me, as will first seeing the lovely lady pilgrims with their prayer wheels and patterned aprons walking the Barkhor... Butter tea; yak wax candles, spruice... such a special, special place.

4. Bagan, Myanmar
Having awesome travel companions in Germans, Gerd and Sarah, so I didn't have to think about the schedule for a minute! Watching the sunlight rise over the Bagan temples, thinking how it the pink light of dawn, it looked just like England.

5. Thamel, Kathmandu
There are few places to get over the remoteness - and lack of a good menu - of a trip like that to Kailash than Thamel. There can be too much of a good thing though... I do wish I wasn't still here.

6. Tiger Leaping Gorge, China
Like Bagan, this was a place that I'd longed to see from afar and had planned my trip around. It's such a vast gorge from north to south and unfortunately one that is soon to be diminished by the humans who mistakenly think they can tame the world. See below blog for more on China's plan to dam TLG.

7. Kids of Kathmandu
Many people have flocked to Kathmandu from the countryside over the last five years to escape the Maoist conflict, including many children who've run away or been pushed away from home. I had the good furtune to meet Bruce Moore of the American Himalaya Foundation and go to a shelter for street kids here. The shelter we visited caters for 600 kids, and provides shelter for 200 of them every night. There is a school and a clinic. If not for that place, many of those kids would have no option outside of the glue sniffing and intravenous drug use (that means HIV) that's prevalent in the homeless community. Please check out the Foundation's link(www.himalayan-foundation.org) because they do absolutely fantastic work for the Nepalese, Sherpas and Tibetans that have very little support to get outside the tragic cycle of displacement and poverty.

7. Chinese food
The Chinese make very bad humanitatian and environmental decisions but they cook like angels.

8. Lijang, China
This UNESCO town was like stepping back into the China of two hundred years ago. Imagine swinging lamps, water wheels, willows brushing the water of stone canals... stunning.

9. Missing Richie, everywhere
High vomit factor, I know. I don't think distance could make this heart grow fonder, but it has given me even more perspective on what's important. So I'll see you soon baby!

10. Edinburgh, Scotland
I'm not there yet but it'll be good. :)

xx

Cultivate your garden...

Kathmandu is perhaps one of the most romantic cities I've been too. Maybe it's the fact that I wake up to the patter of gentle rain on most mornings. Or that I'm staying at the Kathmandu Guest House, a historical colonial building and perhaps the most famous of guesthouses in this city. It's seen its fair share of intrepid adventurers.

Or maybe it's the fact that two of my most favourite people got engaged near here.

Or the fact that I can get lost in a rainbow frenzy of pashminas, and can think of Ben and Chris and Mia (because everytime I wear your shawl I feel like you are giving me a cuddle.)

Or that every bookstore has another version of the Karma Sutra - titillation for a girl who's missed her boy for the last two-and-a-bit months... oh la la!

And yet another surprise today: the Garden of Dreams. The Garden of Dreams is like something for Little Lord Faulteroy, a secret garden. It was commissioned more than 80 years ago by Keshar Shumsher Rama, the son of a Prime Minister of Nepal, a lover of art, architecture, history and gardens... many of the good things in life. He was inspired to develop his garden of the seasons after visiting an Edwardian garden in Britian. But it was forgotton after his death and became overgrown and untended. Only in 1996 did the Austrian government fund it's refurbishment and it's back to its former romantic glory.

This beautiful place, hidden by high walls, features six pavilions - one for each of the Nepalese seasons. A pair of irory-coloured elephants guard the entrance to the spring pavilion. A maple tree conceals a pond with lillies. Marigolds play sentinel to a moss pool, on which I wrote "Caz loves Richie" with twigs.

There are lovers seats set amongst long grass, like they have at the palace at Brighton. Plus, plaques around the garden feature inscriptions by poets and writers of times past; including a line by Voltaire... "cultivate your garden"... from Candide.

It was the setting for a wedding.

So, a little message for all of us.... cultivate your garden. Take care of the ones you love... and maybe one day you can show them how much you love them in the romantic city of Kathmandu.

Nepali tea is oh so good! Nepali rain sucks

I'm proud to call myself a quitter today. I failed my first test of Nepalese mountaineering; Everest is nowhere in my sights.


I did what every good backpacker does when they check into Kathmandu. I got myself a room in Thamel, I drank my way through several fabulous daiquaris to shake off the noodle aftertaste of Tibet and I, of course, booked myself into a trek. It was supposed to be just a baby one, four days only, to give myself a taste for the country life in Nepal.


But three-quarters of the way through, the rain got the better of me. Day one was five hours walk uphill, in the mud in the rain. Day two was nine hours walk uphill in the mud in the rain. Today was a sinch - just five hours through the mud but downhill in the rain. My fancy new Chinese made Goretex jacket didn't cut the grade so for the last 60 hours I've been damp. Cos it's wet inside the guesthouses as well, so nothing dries overnight. Oh, and did I mention the leeches?!


So when people tell you to wait out the monsoon in Nepal, believe 'em! Sit back in Thamel with your Nepali tea in the morning, your mango daiquari in the evening. Go to yoga, buy some pashminas.


So, with my mango daiquari and my now-dry, quitters feet, I toast to Thamel and I toast to foolhardy mountaineers who's boots I can't fill.

I'm gonna get HIIIIGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

Now that I've had my political rant, let me tell you what I've been up to.

Neither words nor pictures can express how awsome Tibet is because it is also a place of smells and sounds. Today was my last day in Lhasa, so I took the most sacred of holy walks, that being around the Jokhang Temple in the middle of the Tibetan town. It was a rainy morning, cold, so at 8am I was the only westerner with a flock of Tibetan pilgrams, equipped with their prayer wheels and hot flasks of yak wax to keep the candles burning. It was so smoky in the Jokhang that it was sometimes difficult to breathe, but listening to a fold of monks chanting the morning mantras, and lining up with the locals to pay my respects to the main buddha - Suryamuni - made up for the lack of air.

Yesterday I went to the beautiful Potala Palace, home of my main man the Dalai Lama. It was wonderful to be there just knowing the age of the place and that it is so special to Tibetans. Unfortunately you have to look past the terrible propaganda of how the Chinese liberated Tibetans from slavery blah blah, plus the very annoying Chinese tour groups that screech over the silence, to enjoy the place. I don't mean to be racist but again, they shouldn't be here. And it's ironic that these people are so enjoying a place that they have tried to tear down, enjoying the home of someone they won't recognise.

So my internet time is up - I'll leave it at that. I'm off to sacred Mt Kailash (7000m +) for 12 days tomorrow, then to Kathmandu. Here we come Nepal!

Quit work, come to beautiful Tibet.

Free Tibet bandwagon

So, all of you know how I love a good argument, and a political one at that. In my defence, all I knew of the political situation in Tibet before coming here was a few 'Free Tibet' signs being held up by dredlocked-wearing hippies at university open days all of 10 years ago.

But coming to Tibet, one cannot help getting caught up in the political - and emotional - situation here.

I can't read your comments, guys, because I think the Chinese government prevent blogspot from being viewed. But I guess (hope) that some of them from he most recent post express envy and good wishes for me being here. And if so, for wonderful reason. The scenery is spectacular; the people gorgeous - in looks and manner.

As you walk around, you cannot be more struck by how different the Tibetan culture is to the Chinese and therefore, how unjust the Chinese occupation. 1.2 million Tibetans have died - either through stavation brought about by Chinese communist methods, or by slaughter from the Red Guards - since the Chinese occupation 50 years ago. In a country of 4 million people, that's a lot.

There are small injustices. The fact that part of the walk at the Potala Palace now goes anti-clockwise - in strict opposition to the clockwise way of the Buddhist pilgrims; the fact that the holy stones at Namsto Lake have a Chinese building on the top; the fact that all the signs in Lhasa are written in Chinese bold script, the Tibetan words (if they appear at all) are smaller. There are no pictures of the Dalai Lama allowed in Tibet. The current Panchen Lama (second in charge) named by the Dalai, has been in custody for some countless years. And the Chinese have named a different Panchen in his place, hopefully to usurp the position of the Dalai. Pilgims at the Jokhang Temple in the centre of town are jostled by police as the walk through to pray and chapels are shut without reason.

The Dalai himself says the political situation here is complicated. I am no expert but from here in Lhasa, in my bones, it feels like this gorgeous place should be free to be its own. To be peaceful. Free Tibet.

Tibet: ouch you amazing place!

Hi guys

Nothing can do Tibet justice except to say - it is stunning, stunning, stunning! I am pinching myself I am here! I've been off the plane for a whole 9 hours but already it's clear to me why people flock to this place.

The 95 km journey from the airport unveiled sandy granite hills reflected in unpolluted, green / blue brooks; prayer flags dotted across bridges and streams, and a deep blue sky - like virgin ice - us being up at this altitude (Lhasa is 3700 metres above sea level said to be one of the highest cities in the world).

I've spent my last few hours getting bearings in the higgledy-piggledy backlanes around Barkhor Square, the old tibetan area around the Jokhang Temple. The people watching has been fantastic - withered old ladies carrying prayer wheels; worshipers prostrating in a parade around the main square; horsemen with skin like leather and matted hair, and all sorts of different ethic dress. Words fail me.

And the people are lovely - tonnes of smiles and I've made some local friends already. A little girl took some of the only pics of me I have on this tour and I met some sisters who are giving me a mini tour so they can practice their english.

And what a day to be in Lhasa, for it's the Dalai Lama's birthday I'm told. There won't be pomp and circumstance but I will make my pilgramage to the beautiful Potala Palace anyway. I'm pinching myself!

xx