An in between trips week in Kathmandu
I have been into KISC a couple times this week. I had to finish clearing the stuff from the art store that no longer exists. Some stuff seemed like it hadn’t been cleaned in years and I got rather black with dirt. I then also had to go shopping to get stuff for the art classes. I haven’t got much of the budget for this term left. I think I may speak to the VP about a wee bit more money (she said to do that if I needed some).
We had visitors for dinner last night which was fun. I like entertaining. Mostly this week has been in some way focused on Saturday (tomorrow) as we are going to TIBET!! We are all quite excited. I will leave this to write more about it when I have actually been there, seen the Potala Palace, tasted the disgusting salty, rancid buttery tea and hopefully not experienced altitude sickness!!
Friday, October 11, 2002
Six Days in Pokhara
We arrived in Pokhara on Friday afternoon. It was very nice to see the swimming pool shining very blue in the sunshine. Nice after a long bus journey and nice after six days of rain! I had a swim first thing! We made good use of the pool. I swam at least once a day and was proud of myself for doing at least 40 lengths each day. (Well I’m not exactly the fittest person in the world!!) The Barahi Hotel where we stayed was very nice. They also gave good rates for residents, which dad was able to book. It was NRs 600 a night for a double room which is about a fiver.
On Saturday morning mum and dad and I went to church up in Lamachaur, a small village on the edge of Pokhara where we used to live for about 10 years. We had lunch after church with our old landlady. That and Wednesday were supposed to be our only meals at old friends houses but we ended up back up in Lamachaur for Sunday lunch, Monday evening we ate an amazing dahl bhat at the house of the owner of the hotel we were staying in who we discovered used to teach in the school where dad taught too many years ago. Sunday afternoon we visited Hari who had worked for us, and nothing would do but that we go back for food on Tuesday evening. It was so good to see her. She is married now and has two boys. She is only about five years older than me and was more of my friend when she was working with us. Wednesday we went to visit the first didi who worked for us. I was only four when she finished working for us so wouldn’t have recognized her anyway, but mum and dad had a shock at how old she looked. She has had seven kids and a bit of a hard life, and it shows. It was good to see her too. Fortunately she didn’t have dahl bhat as she was wanting us to come back the next day but we were leaving. Fortunately because after her we went to a village called Hyenja to visit Putali didi who was our didi for longest and a good friend to mum. She cooked us dahl bhat and we had a nice few hours there.
As well as this we got to hang out a little bit by the lakeside, though a little less than anticipated. Leisurely breakfasts at the Boomerang garden restaurant that has views out over the lake, where they have a hammock and a swinging chair and an atmosphere very conducive to hanging out all day. Lunch there too. Dinner at any of a number of cafes with good food, nice rooftop restaurants or indoor tables seated on cushions on a raised floor, or at a table outside. A lot of them show videos starting at about 7pm so you can pick where to eat by the movie too. We went one night to a good place we returned to for mum and dad to see a bit of Shrek. A favourite with me I must say.
We went out on the lake for an hour. A funny familiar experience. How many times had we been out there before. A family day out, a day of growing up when my brothers and I were able to row mum and dad around by ourselves. Learning to swim between the steps on the island with the temple. The water level in the lake seems to have risen as the island is smaller. I took a few photos, they came out okay but it is hard to get those ‘great’ shots.
The mountains were visible for a while most mornings before the clouds came up over them. On the Tuesday morning they were completely misted over when I got up to check at 6am if we should go for our walk. By 7am they were absolutely clear the whole range across and stunning. We got a taxi and then walked for about 45 minutes up to a stupa on top of a hill on the other side of the lake. A good walk up and a slightly clouding over but still really good view of the mountains. They are awesome. Completely and utterly amazing!!
We arrived in Pokhara on Friday afternoon. It was very nice to see the swimming pool shining very blue in the sunshine. Nice after a long bus journey and nice after six days of rain! I had a swim first thing! We made good use of the pool. I swam at least once a day and was proud of myself for doing at least 40 lengths each day. (Well I’m not exactly the fittest person in the world!!) The Barahi Hotel where we stayed was very nice. They also gave good rates for residents, which dad was able to book. It was NRs 600 a night for a double room which is about a fiver.
On Saturday morning mum and dad and I went to church up in Lamachaur, a small village on the edge of Pokhara where we used to live for about 10 years. We had lunch after church with our old landlady. That and Wednesday were supposed to be our only meals at old friends houses but we ended up back up in Lamachaur for Sunday lunch, Monday evening we ate an amazing dahl bhat at the house of the owner of the hotel we were staying in who we discovered used to teach in the school where dad taught too many years ago. Sunday afternoon we visited Hari who had worked for us, and nothing would do but that we go back for food on Tuesday evening. It was so good to see her. She is married now and has two boys. She is only about five years older than me and was more of my friend when she was working with us. Wednesday we went to visit the first didi who worked for us. I was only four when she finished working for us so wouldn’t have recognized her anyway, but mum and dad had a shock at how old she looked. She has had seven kids and a bit of a hard life, and it shows. It was good to see her too. Fortunately she didn’t have dahl bhat as she was wanting us to come back the next day but we were leaving. Fortunately because after her we went to a village called Hyenja to visit Putali didi who was our didi for longest and a good friend to mum. She cooked us dahl bhat and we had a nice few hours there.
As well as this we got to hang out a little bit by the lakeside, though a little less than anticipated. Leisurely breakfasts at the Boomerang garden restaurant that has views out over the lake, where they have a hammock and a swinging chair and an atmosphere very conducive to hanging out all day. Lunch there too. Dinner at any of a number of cafes with good food, nice rooftop restaurants or indoor tables seated on cushions on a raised floor, or at a table outside. A lot of them show videos starting at about 7pm so you can pick where to eat by the movie too. We went one night to a good place we returned to for mum and dad to see a bit of Shrek. A favourite with me I must say.
We went out on the lake for an hour. A funny familiar experience. How many times had we been out there before. A family day out, a day of growing up when my brothers and I were able to row mum and dad around by ourselves. Learning to swim between the steps on the island with the temple. The water level in the lake seems to have risen as the island is smaller. I took a few photos, they came out okay but it is hard to get those ‘great’ shots.
The mountains were visible for a while most mornings before the clouds came up over them. On the Tuesday morning they were completely misted over when I got up to check at 6am if we should go for our walk. By 7am they were absolutely clear the whole range across and stunning. We got a taxi and then walked for about 45 minutes up to a stupa on top of a hill on the other side of the lake. A good walk up and a slightly clouding over but still really good view of the mountains. They are awesome. Completely and utterly amazing!!
The road
The road is part of my journey. It is going somewhere and taking me to a destination. All of us on the bus are passing through. We experience the length of the road, the turns and changes, the bumps, the valleys, the hairpin bends, the scenery. We are accompanied by the changing rivers, a presence along side us. We pass through towns and villages and take mental snapshots of the faces and scenes. The bathers, the vendors, the people breaking rocks, the men playing karam, the children going to school. Our experience of the road is moving, transitory and changing.
The people in the village experience the road as part of life. What does the road seem like to people who live in a village by the road but have never left it. The road is solid and a part of life, your children are born and live by it, they play on it, you walk to work or the fields along it, you cross it to get water, you sell your snacks to people who pass by on it, it is a central part of life in villages that straddle the tarmac. Yet it is also a fluid thing that brings people and changes and moves on. Passing through. Never static. Always busy and moving and changing and vibrant. Does the road have its own life? Does it call people to leave the village and move on, to where may not be clear, but onwards. A call to the unknown.
Maybe that is just me. Is a road okay just to be there? Does it beg to be travelled and explored? For me I think it does. I like to sit and watch the world go by, but after a while I want to be ‘the going by’, on my way to some new place. Seeing where the road takes me and what the road offers me. Onwards.
The road is part of my journey. It is going somewhere and taking me to a destination. All of us on the bus are passing through. We experience the length of the road, the turns and changes, the bumps, the valleys, the hairpin bends, the scenery. We are accompanied by the changing rivers, a presence along side us. We pass through towns and villages and take mental snapshots of the faces and scenes. The bathers, the vendors, the people breaking rocks, the men playing karam, the children going to school. Our experience of the road is moving, transitory and changing.
The people in the village experience the road as part of life. What does the road seem like to people who live in a village by the road but have never left it. The road is solid and a part of life, your children are born and live by it, they play on it, you walk to work or the fields along it, you cross it to get water, you sell your snacks to people who pass by on it, it is a central part of life in villages that straddle the tarmac. Yet it is also a fluid thing that brings people and changes and moves on. Passing through. Never static. Always busy and moving and changing and vibrant. Does the road have its own life? Does it call people to leave the village and move on, to where may not be clear, but onwards. A call to the unknown.
Maybe that is just me. Is a road okay just to be there? Does it beg to be travelled and explored? For me I think it does. I like to sit and watch the world go by, but after a while I want to be ‘the going by’, on my way to some new place. Seeing where the road takes me and what the road offers me. Onwards.
The Road Journey to Pokhara
We got to the Swiss bus at 6.45am. Plenty of time to be plied with snacks by vendors hoping for a sale before our departure at 7am. It was Friday morning (27th September) and we were heading to Pokhara for a few days. A girl called Lisa McIlhenny went with us. They were old family friends and her younger brother and my youngest brother were best friends as they grew up (ever since Andrew had knocked Stephen down the stairs with his round belly aged two). The Swiss bus had sold a lot of tickets so Lisa and I went on a different bus to mum and dad, though we took the same stops. The Swiss bus is a company running what is known as a ‘tourist bus’ though locals use it too. It is a little more pricey than local buses but reputedly has safer drivers. And it still only cost two pounds for an eight hour/200 km bus journey.
As we climbed out of the Kathmandu valley on the same road we had followed the weekend before I enjoyed observing the moments of daily life that you can see from a bus window and they look different. A passing screen. A moving story.
The backdrops of advertising were all around. Faded red and yellow paint flaking off the brick wall, tin billboards advertising in red and white ‘Servo Industrial Oils – World class engine oils’ and ‘Nepal’s No. 1 Toothpaste – CLOSEUP’. But I am told that Colgate provides ‘Maximum Decay Protection’. The war of the toothpastes.
It always seems to be washing time of day along the road and as we climb the road out of the valley a cute little girl in a navy school uniform is washing her face at the edge of her verandah over an open drain and giving herself a soap beard. It has been raining all week and in the middle of a stretch of mud by the road a girl is squatting in front of a green bucket of water with a tap seated on a chair and washing dishes.
A lady in a red sari with the end of it covering her head was taking time to stand and look at the sky with her pointing baby in her arms.
There are lots of shops lining the road ranging from rows of food sellers with piles of fresh samosas and syel roti to a one room building by the side of the road with piles of old truck tyres outside. While a lot of the buildings are now squarish cement building there are still the occasional more traditional buildings. We passed a couple that were reddish mud bricks with terracotta tiles (instead of the more traditional straw) roofs with rows of drying corn hanging under the eaves.
We passed a bus that had stopped in the middle of the road and there was no driver. Going past we saw some men out the front fighting, with sticks and all. A Nepali lady at the front of the bus called out to the army as we went past the checkpoint at the top of the valley to go and see the fight. Mum and dad past a few minutes later and saw a soldier with a man, beating him and making him do pressups in the mud. There is a lot of harshness here mixed in with the gentleness of the people. We passed through the welcome to Kathmandu gate which was two white square pillars with a metal frame across the top. Loads of red, blue, white, yellow and green prayer flags were strung from a tree up a bank across the road to all the houses in the small row at the other side.
Down the hill we passed a painted ‘Beware of Landslides’ sign. Around the corner we came upon the remnant of an old but large slide. The side of the hill was being built up and reinforced with rocks and blocks and what looked like giant chicken wire.
‘Obey Rules Stop Accident’ read a sensible sign. Much in the vein of the Kathmandu Valley traffic police initiative that ended traffic week with lots of drivers displaying stickers that proudly (and meaninglessly) proclaim “We love to obey traffic rules”.
Tower Hill Heaven Resort.
River Sound Lodge.
Hungry Feel Restaurant.
Blue Heaven Restaurant with a Peace & Heaven bus parked outside.
I’m not sure who stays in these places. They are very much on the road to somewhere rather than much of a destination in themselves. The restaurants would do a bit better, but the ones who don’t have a deal with a bus company must surely suffer.
‘Welcome to Nepal – The Biggest Netural Museum in the World.
Important Information for the Tourist’. Unfortunately I missed some of the important (and amusing) information.
Just before Mugling, the half way point where local buses still stop for their dahl bhat meal, we passed a number of buses all stopped with a crowd of people all standing looking over the side of the road. A bus had gone over. We didn’t stop but it was a very sobering sight. The bus had gone over the wrong side of the road. It was on a straight stretch so he may have just been a mad driver overtaking at a really bad place. We were glad of our steady Swiss bus drivers. Where they went over was one of the steepest cliffs along the whole road. It was at least a 200/300 ft drop straight down to the river. I didn’t imagine anyone could survive, but we later found out that quite a few did. However two Nepali members of UMN (United Mission to Nepal) who mum and dad work with were killed. It was very hard for everyone involved and quite a shock.
There were three men sitting at the side of the road in a village under the shadde of a tree and lying back into the road. They sat up to let us past and I’m sure lay down again. The road is a part of life.
Further west and getting closer to Pokhara the feel of the road changes. The bottom of the valley widens out, the river by the road is smaller and gentler and there is only a little slope to the river. The greens are brighter and we pass banana trees and fields of ripening rice whose fragrance is more pleasant than the fumes and dust that are the main fragrances of the road. The road has also narrowed to adequately fit only one vehicle and it is noticeably bumpier.
A beautiful blue kingfisher sits on an electric wire.
Down below the bridge we are crossing there are buses and people bathing together. I’m sure further upstream there are probably some buffalo too.
We pass through a large ‘gate’ and are given a “Heartly Welcome to Pokhara”.
We got to the Swiss bus at 6.45am. Plenty of time to be plied with snacks by vendors hoping for a sale before our departure at 7am. It was Friday morning (27th September) and we were heading to Pokhara for a few days. A girl called Lisa McIlhenny went with us. They were old family friends and her younger brother and my youngest brother were best friends as they grew up (ever since Andrew had knocked Stephen down the stairs with his round belly aged two). The Swiss bus had sold a lot of tickets so Lisa and I went on a different bus to mum and dad, though we took the same stops. The Swiss bus is a company running what is known as a ‘tourist bus’ though locals use it too. It is a little more pricey than local buses but reputedly has safer drivers. And it still only cost two pounds for an eight hour/200 km bus journey.
As we climbed out of the Kathmandu valley on the same road we had followed the weekend before I enjoyed observing the moments of daily life that you can see from a bus window and they look different. A passing screen. A moving story.
The backdrops of advertising were all around. Faded red and yellow paint flaking off the brick wall, tin billboards advertising in red and white ‘Servo Industrial Oils – World class engine oils’ and ‘Nepal’s No. 1 Toothpaste – CLOSEUP’. But I am told that Colgate provides ‘Maximum Decay Protection’. The war of the toothpastes.
It always seems to be washing time of day along the road and as we climb the road out of the valley a cute little girl in a navy school uniform is washing her face at the edge of her verandah over an open drain and giving herself a soap beard. It has been raining all week and in the middle of a stretch of mud by the road a girl is squatting in front of a green bucket of water with a tap seated on a chair and washing dishes.
A lady in a red sari with the end of it covering her head was taking time to stand and look at the sky with her pointing baby in her arms.
There are lots of shops lining the road ranging from rows of food sellers with piles of fresh samosas and syel roti to a one room building by the side of the road with piles of old truck tyres outside. While a lot of the buildings are now squarish cement building there are still the occasional more traditional buildings. We passed a couple that were reddish mud bricks with terracotta tiles (instead of the more traditional straw) roofs with rows of drying corn hanging under the eaves.
We passed a bus that had stopped in the middle of the road and there was no driver. Going past we saw some men out the front fighting, with sticks and all. A Nepali lady at the front of the bus called out to the army as we went past the checkpoint at the top of the valley to go and see the fight. Mum and dad past a few minutes later and saw a soldier with a man, beating him and making him do pressups in the mud. There is a lot of harshness here mixed in with the gentleness of the people. We passed through the welcome to Kathmandu gate which was two white square pillars with a metal frame across the top. Loads of red, blue, white, yellow and green prayer flags were strung from a tree up a bank across the road to all the houses in the small row at the other side.
Down the hill we passed a painted ‘Beware of Landslides’ sign. Around the corner we came upon the remnant of an old but large slide. The side of the hill was being built up and reinforced with rocks and blocks and what looked like giant chicken wire.
‘Obey Rules Stop Accident’ read a sensible sign. Much in the vein of the Kathmandu Valley traffic police initiative that ended traffic week with lots of drivers displaying stickers that proudly (and meaninglessly) proclaim “We love to obey traffic rules”.
Tower Hill Heaven Resort.
River Sound Lodge.
Hungry Feel Restaurant.
Blue Heaven Restaurant with a Peace & Heaven bus parked outside.
I’m not sure who stays in these places. They are very much on the road to somewhere rather than much of a destination in themselves. The restaurants would do a bit better, but the ones who don’t have a deal with a bus company must surely suffer.
‘Welcome to Nepal – The Biggest Netural Museum in the World.
Important Information for the Tourist’. Unfortunately I missed some of the important (and amusing) information.
Just before Mugling, the half way point where local buses still stop for their dahl bhat meal, we passed a number of buses all stopped with a crowd of people all standing looking over the side of the road. A bus had gone over. We didn’t stop but it was a very sobering sight. The bus had gone over the wrong side of the road. It was on a straight stretch so he may have just been a mad driver overtaking at a really bad place. We were glad of our steady Swiss bus drivers. Where they went over was one of the steepest cliffs along the whole road. It was at least a 200/300 ft drop straight down to the river. I didn’t imagine anyone could survive, but we later found out that quite a few did. However two Nepali members of UMN (United Mission to Nepal) who mum and dad work with were killed. It was very hard for everyone involved and quite a shock.
There were three men sitting at the side of the road in a village under the shadde of a tree and lying back into the road. They sat up to let us past and I’m sure lay down again. The road is a part of life.
Further west and getting closer to Pokhara the feel of the road changes. The bottom of the valley widens out, the river by the road is smaller and gentler and there is only a little slope to the river. The greens are brighter and we pass banana trees and fields of ripening rice whose fragrance is more pleasant than the fumes and dust that are the main fragrances of the road. The road has also narrowed to adequately fit only one vehicle and it is noticeably bumpier.
A beautiful blue kingfisher sits on an electric wire.
Down below the bridge we are crossing there are buses and people bathing together. I’m sure further upstream there are probably some buffalo too.
We pass through a large ‘gate’ and are given a “Heartly Welcome to Pokhara”.
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Last week was a busy week in Kathmandu as it was the week of the KISC musical performance of "The Witness". There were four performances in all, three with paying audiences that were full and suitably impressed. A good week for all involved and most especially for the young people. I was busy helping with that and also with clearing out the art store room, which is becoming the sixth form common room, and sorting out the art room. There is still a little bit of work to do and I will have to go in and do that next week during the holidays as I am in Pokhara this week and the week after will be in Tibet!!!!! Yes just slightly looking forward to that!!
I have enjoyed helping out at KISC (my old school) and now that I know I am staying to help teach next term ("Head of Art" - all of 'me') I am glad I didn't have to say goodbye to all the kids yet. I don't want to be a teacher - but really enjoy teaching/working with art and young people. There aer worse things I'm sure. I have spent quite a while this week sorting out what we are going to cover in the different classes next term. Trying to be organised as term starts two days after we get back from Tibet. (Oh yes did I mention I was going to Tibet?). It has been really good to be in Pokhara too, but I will write more about that soon.
I have enjoyed helping out at KISC (my old school) and now that I know I am staying to help teach next term ("Head of Art" - all of 'me') I am glad I didn't have to say goodbye to all the kids yet. I don't want to be a teacher - but really enjoy teaching/working with art and young people. There aer worse things I'm sure. I have spent quite a while this week sorting out what we are going to cover in the different classes next term. Trying to be organised as term starts two days after we get back from Tibet. (Oh yes did I mention I was going to Tibet?). It has been really good to be in Pokhara too, but I will write more about that soon.
Saturday, September 28, 2002
A weekend on the road to Besi Sahar
We got back last Sunday from a weekend overnighter to Lamjung district, 120km west and 40km north of Kathmandu. We went to a small town called Besi Sahar where a Dutch UMN doctor has been working for the past couple months so mum and Carolyn (an American lady) went to see her as a kind of pastoral visit. So there were five of us in the jeep (mum, dad, Richard, Carolyn and myself). The jeep was definitely the most appropriate form of transport though the roads were generally in relatively good shape.
We stayed in the Tukuche Peak Hotel which was a basic but nice and clean trekkers lodge. The staff were friendly, the food good and the beds hard but clean. We left Kathmandu at 7.30 on Saturday morning and had a slow start getting out of the valley off the ring road. There is one road out of Kathmandu for all traffic going west. It is a one lane each way road that has been dug up at the main junction off the ringroad where there is a small roundabout and a stressed out policeman. The queues of buses and trucks go way back down the road and the minibuses and vans and cars and taxis and motorbikes are all unhappy about being behind them and so try to overtake the larger vehicles. This creates a second and sometimes a third queue of traffic on the one side of the road. At times this even manages to block the oncoming lane as the vehicles are unable to get back in the queue and still want to get to the front. A very stupid minibus driver managed to keep driving and went into a vehicle coming the other way (well on his side of the road). This of course caused a line of traffic to back up the road as the problem was sorted out with some yelling at the stupid driver who then proceeded to try and overtake on up the road in exactly the same fashion. We were a small vehicle too and it was much quicker in that second ‘lane’!!
Friday was a warm sunny day. It got very sticky in the jeep where your back touched the seat. The open window let a pleasant breeze in along stretches of road that cut into steep hillsides that were worn into valleys by a clay grey river which meandered and raged along its varying stretches. Other times the heat of a closed window was preferable to the nauseating clouds of black smoke that belched out of the orange fronted Tata trucks ahead which were loaded down with stones or large logged trees; or to the dust which rose along short stretches of unsealed road that reduced visibility to a few metres.
The verdant greens of the end of the monsoon vegetation accompanied us the whole day. From terraces, evidence of agriculture on improbable slopes to low lying paddy fields of vibrant green highlighted by the red sari of the lady working in the field. By the hospital in Besi Sahar we walked by rice fields where the ripe basmati gave off a heady scent that was so strong we thought at first we were smelling rice cooking. It was very rich. Apparently there are places particularly in the west of Nepal where the rice has not been planted this year some places because the monsoon never arrived and others because people have been leaving through fear of the Maoists. The lack of rice will soon cause hunger where it is the staple for the whole population. It makes the fragrance of ripened rice all the sweeter.
Along by the road we passed small clusters of houses where all the village seemed to be involved in the physically demanding work of breaking stones. The trucks in the river below are filled with rocks from the river bed by men standing in the water that almost reaches the axle of the trucks. The large rocks are brought up to the river and road sides. Here people squat under makeshift shelters of blue plastic or natural matting erected on four wooden posts and break rocks all day for a pittance to pave the roads as they stretch towards the west.
Buses full of passengers lurch around blind corners passing slower trucks. We saw a couple close shaves. Though not all are reckless there are some bus drivers who appear to take their lives, and those of their passengers, lightly. Along the road there are a few broken down trucks. These are marked out with rocks to warn other vehicles to give them a wide berth. When fixed the trucks drive off leaving their grave like markings as a hazard to other users of the road. I remember many years ago going to Kathmandu on the back of my dad’s motorbike and we were victim to one of these rocks! A good story after the occasion.
The green hillsides are scarred with red gashes like giant cuts where monsoon logged swathes of land have uprooted all the green and tumbled into the river or valley below. The road has places where the clearing away of landslides is still in evidence. On our way back in the rain we saw a team and their bulldozer clearing the road of some earth. They are very quick now at reopening the road. A little way along the road to Besi Sahar, past police checks where police in blue uniforms sit and check red coloured little vehicle registration “blue books”; past women carrying bundles of foliage at least three times their size on their back with the weight taken by a strap around their forehead; past suspension bridges which provide contact for people isolated by white water possibly cutting hours or even days off access to the road; past shops selling plastic containers tied and lined up outside, blue, white, red, green and yellow, we drove by a little old woman who was sitting at the roadside in the middle of apparently nowhere with bunches of bananas laid neatly on a cloth as the vehicles belched their noisy way by. A checkpoint manned by bored soldiers held us up for about five minutes as a young soldier took the opportunity to relieve the boredom of four months checking vehicles on a small road.
We stopped in Mugling to buy some fruit. It marks the half way point between Kathmandu and Pokhara and its main trade comes from the passing trucks and buses. It is a long street lined with eating places furnished with tables and benches holding people feeding on pre-cooked dahl bhat served on stainless steel thalis with water served in stainless steel cups. There are shops with piles of samosas, jalebis, syel roti and other Indian sweets; stalls with bananas and guavas; boys carrying round trays of neatly sliced coconut washed in tap water; makeshift stalls selling packets of wai wai noodles and chewing gum; carts piled with chickpea snacks and peanuts sold in newspaper cones and measured out in blackened tin measuring cups. This visible town front backs onto a busy invisible town of brothels, typical of an arterial town on the main route to anywhere.
As we neared our overnight destination we passed a stretch of brightly coloured houses. They were all typical of those built by returning Gurkha soldiers who invest their money in building houses for their families. One particularly gaudy one was covered in tiles, each one coloured from white to pink. A pastel palace! There were also more attractive traditional mud houses with thatched roofs and mud washed red walls. In Besi Sahar itself we saw the hospital which is still under construction/renovation though still operational at the same time. It was very interesting to see.
Having anticipated the good views of the mountains we had glimpsed as we arrived and hoping for some good photos I was rather disappointed to wake up to it still raining. There was low lying cloud with misty wreaths decorating the lower levels of the hillsides, the tops being obscured by thick clouds. The mountains were just a memory. Despite the rain we were fortunate to make it home safely, the hardworking road maintenance men having cleared the road by the time we made it to the landslide. It was a short trip but well worth getting out of the Kathmandu valley and seeing a bit more of the country.
We got back last Sunday from a weekend overnighter to Lamjung district, 120km west and 40km north of Kathmandu. We went to a small town called Besi Sahar where a Dutch UMN doctor has been working for the past couple months so mum and Carolyn (an American lady) went to see her as a kind of pastoral visit. So there were five of us in the jeep (mum, dad, Richard, Carolyn and myself). The jeep was definitely the most appropriate form of transport though the roads were generally in relatively good shape.
We stayed in the Tukuche Peak Hotel which was a basic but nice and clean trekkers lodge. The staff were friendly, the food good and the beds hard but clean. We left Kathmandu at 7.30 on Saturday morning and had a slow start getting out of the valley off the ring road. There is one road out of Kathmandu for all traffic going west. It is a one lane each way road that has been dug up at the main junction off the ringroad where there is a small roundabout and a stressed out policeman. The queues of buses and trucks go way back down the road and the minibuses and vans and cars and taxis and motorbikes are all unhappy about being behind them and so try to overtake the larger vehicles. This creates a second and sometimes a third queue of traffic on the one side of the road. At times this even manages to block the oncoming lane as the vehicles are unable to get back in the queue and still want to get to the front. A very stupid minibus driver managed to keep driving and went into a vehicle coming the other way (well on his side of the road). This of course caused a line of traffic to back up the road as the problem was sorted out with some yelling at the stupid driver who then proceeded to try and overtake on up the road in exactly the same fashion. We were a small vehicle too and it was much quicker in that second ‘lane’!!
Friday was a warm sunny day. It got very sticky in the jeep where your back touched the seat. The open window let a pleasant breeze in along stretches of road that cut into steep hillsides that were worn into valleys by a clay grey river which meandered and raged along its varying stretches. Other times the heat of a closed window was preferable to the nauseating clouds of black smoke that belched out of the orange fronted Tata trucks ahead which were loaded down with stones or large logged trees; or to the dust which rose along short stretches of unsealed road that reduced visibility to a few metres.
The verdant greens of the end of the monsoon vegetation accompanied us the whole day. From terraces, evidence of agriculture on improbable slopes to low lying paddy fields of vibrant green highlighted by the red sari of the lady working in the field. By the hospital in Besi Sahar we walked by rice fields where the ripe basmati gave off a heady scent that was so strong we thought at first we were smelling rice cooking. It was very rich. Apparently there are places particularly in the west of Nepal where the rice has not been planted this year some places because the monsoon never arrived and others because people have been leaving through fear of the Maoists. The lack of rice will soon cause hunger where it is the staple for the whole population. It makes the fragrance of ripened rice all the sweeter.
Along by the road we passed small clusters of houses where all the village seemed to be involved in the physically demanding work of breaking stones. The trucks in the river below are filled with rocks from the river bed by men standing in the water that almost reaches the axle of the trucks. The large rocks are brought up to the river and road sides. Here people squat under makeshift shelters of blue plastic or natural matting erected on four wooden posts and break rocks all day for a pittance to pave the roads as they stretch towards the west.
Buses full of passengers lurch around blind corners passing slower trucks. We saw a couple close shaves. Though not all are reckless there are some bus drivers who appear to take their lives, and those of their passengers, lightly. Along the road there are a few broken down trucks. These are marked out with rocks to warn other vehicles to give them a wide berth. When fixed the trucks drive off leaving their grave like markings as a hazard to other users of the road. I remember many years ago going to Kathmandu on the back of my dad’s motorbike and we were victim to one of these rocks! A good story after the occasion.
The green hillsides are scarred with red gashes like giant cuts where monsoon logged swathes of land have uprooted all the green and tumbled into the river or valley below. The road has places where the clearing away of landslides is still in evidence. On our way back in the rain we saw a team and their bulldozer clearing the road of some earth. They are very quick now at reopening the road. A little way along the road to Besi Sahar, past police checks where police in blue uniforms sit and check red coloured little vehicle registration “blue books”; past women carrying bundles of foliage at least three times their size on their back with the weight taken by a strap around their forehead; past suspension bridges which provide contact for people isolated by white water possibly cutting hours or even days off access to the road; past shops selling plastic containers tied and lined up outside, blue, white, red, green and yellow, we drove by a little old woman who was sitting at the roadside in the middle of apparently nowhere with bunches of bananas laid neatly on a cloth as the vehicles belched their noisy way by. A checkpoint manned by bored soldiers held us up for about five minutes as a young soldier took the opportunity to relieve the boredom of four months checking vehicles on a small road.
We stopped in Mugling to buy some fruit. It marks the half way point between Kathmandu and Pokhara and its main trade comes from the passing trucks and buses. It is a long street lined with eating places furnished with tables and benches holding people feeding on pre-cooked dahl bhat served on stainless steel thalis with water served in stainless steel cups. There are shops with piles of samosas, jalebis, syel roti and other Indian sweets; stalls with bananas and guavas; boys carrying round trays of neatly sliced coconut washed in tap water; makeshift stalls selling packets of wai wai noodles and chewing gum; carts piled with chickpea snacks and peanuts sold in newspaper cones and measured out in blackened tin measuring cups. This visible town front backs onto a busy invisible town of brothels, typical of an arterial town on the main route to anywhere.
As we neared our overnight destination we passed a stretch of brightly coloured houses. They were all typical of those built by returning Gurkha soldiers who invest their money in building houses for their families. One particularly gaudy one was covered in tiles, each one coloured from white to pink. A pastel palace! There were also more attractive traditional mud houses with thatched roofs and mud washed red walls. In Besi Sahar itself we saw the hospital which is still under construction/renovation though still operational at the same time. It was very interesting to see.
Having anticipated the good views of the mountains we had glimpsed as we arrived and hoping for some good photos I was rather disappointed to wake up to it still raining. There was low lying cloud with misty wreaths decorating the lower levels of the hillsides, the tops being obscured by thick clouds. The mountains were just a memory. Despite the rain we were fortunate to make it home safely, the hardworking road maintenance men having cleared the road by the time we made it to the landslide. It was a short trip but well worth getting out of the Kathmandu valley and seeing a bit more of the country.
Sunday, September 15, 2002
We went to have a meal with a family who I am old friends with on Friday night. Frankie was a friend at school and the year above me. He is in Nepal for another couple of weeks so it has been good to see him a couple times. I got to see photos of their daughter Marilyn (one of my best friends through my teenage years) 's wedding. It was good to catch up a bit on old friends lives. Their mum Sangi was always kind of like another mum in that we were always at each others houses so it was good to see her again too.
On Thursday mum and I were both off so we went to a newish coffee shop called Jivin' Joes. There aren't many places like it in Kathmandu. After walking through a covered entrance you start climbing up these dark, narrow and dingy steps wondering what on earth will await you at the end. A very pleasant surprise to walk into a bright open space with terracota tiled floors, nice tables and chairs and even a few sofas. We passed a very pleasant afternoon there. We also met the manager who is a Nepali called Rajan who I knew (though don't have a good memory of) when we were about 7 in Pokhara and went to Sunday school! You never know who you will meet up with and where!!
I was asked to consider on Friday whether I would stay any longer to help out at KISC (my old school). I have been helping with the art for the older class. They have an art teacher in the pipeline but she is having trouble getting her visa, so I will just help out a bit next term, which means I will be in Nepal until mid - late December. I was open to my trip being flexible and expected things to change, I just didn't quite expect it to happen after 2 and a half weeks! I am quite looking forward to it, though it is slightly daunting too!
Better go, my dad is back and we are going to see a wee art gallery, try to find an art supply shop and then I am going into the school with a couple other teachers to paint a bit more of the scenery for the musical which starts in a week and a half!
On Thursday mum and I were both off so we went to a newish coffee shop called Jivin' Joes. There aren't many places like it in Kathmandu. After walking through a covered entrance you start climbing up these dark, narrow and dingy steps wondering what on earth will await you at the end. A very pleasant surprise to walk into a bright open space with terracota tiled floors, nice tables and chairs and even a few sofas. We passed a very pleasant afternoon there. We also met the manager who is a Nepali called Rajan who I knew (though don't have a good memory of) when we were about 7 in Pokhara and went to Sunday school! You never know who you will meet up with and where!!
I was asked to consider on Friday whether I would stay any longer to help out at KISC (my old school). I have been helping with the art for the older class. They have an art teacher in the pipeline but she is having trouble getting her visa, so I will just help out a bit next term, which means I will be in Nepal until mid - late December. I was open to my trip being flexible and expected things to change, I just didn't quite expect it to happen after 2 and a half weeks! I am quite looking forward to it, though it is slightly daunting too!
Better go, my dad is back and we are going to see a wee art gallery, try to find an art supply shop and then I am going into the school with a couple other teachers to paint a bit more of the scenery for the musical which starts in a week and a half!
Thursday, September 12, 2002
School Days
Back in 1987 I was the first student to be registered for a new school that was starting called KISC (Kathmandu International Study Centre). A guinea pig for a new idea where we were being educated through self-study supplemented and assisted with tutorials. 15 years later it has changed significantly but there are still some things that seem similar. It is now more like a regular school with classes most of the time and it has grown with over 80 students now. The building(s) are also bigger now. However as Frankie, a friend from when I was at KISC noticed the other day, they still use the original school bell. It also still has a nice atmosphere and that flavour of an international school.
My mum thought it would be a good idea for me to help with the painting of their set as they really needed some help so I went out last Tuesday (just over a week ago). It feels like I have been there longer than a week. As well as helping with the scenery I have ended up helping with the drama part of the musical they are putting on, as the teacher responsible for this had to suddenly go back to the UK for a while. Fortunately there are others helping too!! I am also teaching the AS level art classes as they only had a teacher for one period out of five. So all in all I’ve ended up quite involved and have one day a week that I don’t go in, as well as the weekend of course. It has been fun though and quite similar in a way to the work I was doing back at home. So much for being on holiday. However I am enjoying it, they need some help and term finishes in a couple weeks after which mum and dad and I are going to Pokhara. We are also eagerly anticipating our Tibet trip in October.
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
Jack Kerouac ‘On the Road’
Festival for Women
Monday was a day of reds and golds. It was Teej, the annual festival for women. They all dress up in beautiful deep reds and bold pinks with threads of gold weaving patterns through the soft folds and over the shoulder hanging ends of the saris. They look freshly scrubbed; their faces have been powdered and matching their lipstick is the line of red powder down the center parting of their neatly combed and well oiled braids. Many have fancy doree in; black or red cotton three standed hair adornments that are braided in through the hair and have fancy dangling decorations at the end. The women go and do puja at their local temples but many also go out to Pashupatinath, one of the big temples in Kathmandu to do puja. The vendors were out in force along the sides of the roads: there were men selling beautiful glass bracelets that sparkled in the sun on carts, there were some snacks, a man sat on the ground printing beautiful red patterns on hands and feet, there were some clothes on sale, there were lots of sheets of plastic laid out with stainless steel plates and pots of many shapes and sizes and there were gaudy poster sized framed pictures of gods and holy men. There were the requisite real holy men wandering around too wearing saffron yellow with artistically made up tikkas on their foreheads and their metal alms pot. Ever aware of the money making potential of a camera I am approached by a yellow robed holy man whose photo I take who sends another man away as I have already been ‘got’ by him. They are mostly there for the generosity of the women on festival day who will be in a good mood and wanting to notch up their merit by giving to the holy men.
As well as the religious aspect of the day the women are there for a good time. There are clusters of women standing around watching while those in the middle play the madal (a Nepali drum) and sing as one or two dancers move gracefully in the middle. At another group there is a number of men on the outside of the ring and a load of them on the nearby slope looking down with fascination at the women dancing, intrigued but yet still apart from this day where the women are central. It is really important in a culture where women are so restricted and still seen as second class citizens. It is also a day where women get to go home to their mothers. In Nepal when a woman is married she has to go to live with her husbands relations and often doesn’t get to see her family, maybe even from one year to the next, so this is an important festival. I remember as a child always enjoying Teej. We would walk up to Batulichar, the next village from where we lived, to where the women would all congregate on the village green to meet and dance and enjoy themselves. I loved the colours and the new clothes and especially I remember the hair ‘doree’ with their fancy decorations that I loved as a little girl. It was all so pretty.
Today I am off and taking the morning to catch up on some emails and read. This afternoon mum and I are going to head into town. That should be fun. I will just have to continue exercising restraint as I keep seeing lots of lovely, affordable things!! I will just have to enjoy using my new camera that I bought with the money I was given (for that purpose) from Oasis for my leaving present, to record all those lovely sights and things.
Back in 1987 I was the first student to be registered for a new school that was starting called KISC (Kathmandu International Study Centre). A guinea pig for a new idea where we were being educated through self-study supplemented and assisted with tutorials. 15 years later it has changed significantly but there are still some things that seem similar. It is now more like a regular school with classes most of the time and it has grown with over 80 students now. The building(s) are also bigger now. However as Frankie, a friend from when I was at KISC noticed the other day, they still use the original school bell. It also still has a nice atmosphere and that flavour of an international school.
My mum thought it would be a good idea for me to help with the painting of their set as they really needed some help so I went out last Tuesday (just over a week ago). It feels like I have been there longer than a week. As well as helping with the scenery I have ended up helping with the drama part of the musical they are putting on, as the teacher responsible for this had to suddenly go back to the UK for a while. Fortunately there are others helping too!! I am also teaching the AS level art classes as they only had a teacher for one period out of five. So all in all I’ve ended up quite involved and have one day a week that I don’t go in, as well as the weekend of course. It has been fun though and quite similar in a way to the work I was doing back at home. So much for being on holiday. However I am enjoying it, they need some help and term finishes in a couple weeks after which mum and dad and I are going to Pokhara. We are also eagerly anticipating our Tibet trip in October.
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
Jack Kerouac ‘On the Road’
Festival for Women
Monday was a day of reds and golds. It was Teej, the annual festival for women. They all dress up in beautiful deep reds and bold pinks with threads of gold weaving patterns through the soft folds and over the shoulder hanging ends of the saris. They look freshly scrubbed; their faces have been powdered and matching their lipstick is the line of red powder down the center parting of their neatly combed and well oiled braids. Many have fancy doree in; black or red cotton three standed hair adornments that are braided in through the hair and have fancy dangling decorations at the end. The women go and do puja at their local temples but many also go out to Pashupatinath, one of the big temples in Kathmandu to do puja. The vendors were out in force along the sides of the roads: there were men selling beautiful glass bracelets that sparkled in the sun on carts, there were some snacks, a man sat on the ground printing beautiful red patterns on hands and feet, there were some clothes on sale, there were lots of sheets of plastic laid out with stainless steel plates and pots of many shapes and sizes and there were gaudy poster sized framed pictures of gods and holy men. There were the requisite real holy men wandering around too wearing saffron yellow with artistically made up tikkas on their foreheads and their metal alms pot. Ever aware of the money making potential of a camera I am approached by a yellow robed holy man whose photo I take who sends another man away as I have already been ‘got’ by him. They are mostly there for the generosity of the women on festival day who will be in a good mood and wanting to notch up their merit by giving to the holy men.
As well as the religious aspect of the day the women are there for a good time. There are clusters of women standing around watching while those in the middle play the madal (a Nepali drum) and sing as one or two dancers move gracefully in the middle. At another group there is a number of men on the outside of the ring and a load of them on the nearby slope looking down with fascination at the women dancing, intrigued but yet still apart from this day where the women are central. It is really important in a culture where women are so restricted and still seen as second class citizens. It is also a day where women get to go home to their mothers. In Nepal when a woman is married she has to go to live with her husbands relations and often doesn’t get to see her family, maybe even from one year to the next, so this is an important festival. I remember as a child always enjoying Teej. We would walk up to Batulichar, the next village from where we lived, to where the women would all congregate on the village green to meet and dance and enjoy themselves. I loved the colours and the new clothes and especially I remember the hair ‘doree’ with their fancy decorations that I loved as a little girl. It was all so pretty.
Today I am off and taking the morning to catch up on some emails and read. This afternoon mum and I are going to head into town. That should be fun. I will just have to continue exercising restraint as I keep seeing lots of lovely, affordable things!! I will just have to enjoy using my new camera that I bought with the money I was given (for that purpose) from Oasis for my leaving present, to record all those lovely sights and things.
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Musings on hanging out in Kathmandu
The valley is surrounded by hazy blue hills that in N.Ireland would most certainly be called mountains. Here they form the rim of the smog filled basin that holds the city of Kathmandu. Even in early morning the snowy mountains are still hidden behind a low lying layer of white clouds. By mid afternoon the blue of the sky is mostly erased by the gathering dark clouds that bring the downpour which signifies the monsoon is not done yet. The nauseating fumes of the manic Kathmandu traffic mingle to provide a healthy ride home. You can almost feel the carbon monoxide poisoning seeping into your body. Caught out in one of the afternoon downpours we decide to give up on the shopping and get a taxi home. After a short journey in a breaking down tuktuk (we are convinced he just didn’t want to go all the way to where we were going) we got into a taxi as the previously chugging tuktuk sped off. The taxi had a very wet back seat that left me with a very wet backside. Due to the many new one way systems in Kathmandu we went down through narrow back streets along roads with shops selling clothes, or vegetables, or meat with heads beside it (to prove what the meat is). The tarmac long since broken up we bumped our way along streets that had turned into rushing rivers as the failing city drainage was overloaded with an hours rain.
In the back of the three-wheeler tempo buses, the new gas or electric run form of public transport there are ten people squashed onto two bench seats. A pretty face with fuscia lipstick on looks out of the small window on the side and an elderly man in a Nepali topi (hat) holds his bag on his knee as he looks out the back door. Hanging out of the front is the young conductor calling out their destination to passersby who are all potential custom. He looks like he should really be at school. At the recently installed traffic lights a man on a motorbike talks on his mobile phone before the lights change. Further up the road the traffic is directed by a policeman in a blue uniform with orange waterproofs over the top and with white gloves. As he changes shifts with another policeman he hands over the all-important gloves and takes off the orange hood that he has tied over the top of his peaked uniform cap. The new man gets the sequencing wrong much to the frustration of the waiting motorcyclist who starts angrily beeping his horn.
Shops seem to crop up in areas. There are the usual little corner shops and quite a few more larger mini supermarkets than there used to be. Others come in groups. You know where to go when you want to buy beads, or shoes, or light fittings or cameras. The bulk of the nice craft shops seem to be on the Pulchowk hill near where we are living, though a few can always be found elsewhere. A new phenomenon since I was last here are flower shops. These are still few however and seem fairly well dispersed. There is a proliferation of food shops or wee restaurants which range from a hole in the wall selling a few snacks to some quite fancy places with every variety in between. No shortage of food to try and a plethora of shops with neatly stacked mounds of tempting Indian sweets.
In Thamel, the main tourist area, we sit and have a light lunch. My vegetable momos are delicious and a nice treat for someone who has become vegetarian since I last had meat momos aged 15 and really wants to savour some familiar tastes. The streets of Thamel are familiar and lined with shops that may or may not have changed hands over the past 11 years. Some shops seem expanded, others have different signs and some may have new things to sell. Essentially though there are restaurants, quality postcards, cheap and tempting clothes (which I have to mostly resist and which make me think of several friends back home), well stocked second hand bookshops, Tibetan carpets, bags, Indian imported crafts and shops which sell a mixture of everything. We wander with only the usual minimal hassle of a tourist area where you are the hope of a sale. In a season where tourism should be entering its highest numbers there are only a reasonable amount of foreigners around. The local politics of Maoist insurrection and a political vacuum and the regional politics of unrest in India and Pakistan have all contributed to the general flow of tourism redirecting elsewhere. Coming from Belfast a few small bombs aren’t enough to make you too nervous. There are small reminders of Belfast a number of years ago as our bags are checked entering a shopping centre. However there is no specific threat and foreigners are not targets. The political situation in the country is very sad though. Corruption reigns supreme and along with the violence is bringing the country to its knees.
People are on the whole as friendly as ever. Being able to talk in even very rusty Nepali is a plus. How nice it is not to just be an ignorant foreigner who only speaks English (as I will be on the rest of my travels). The men are dressed mostly in trousers and shirts, but the while some women still wear saris, many now wear kurtas (or Punjabi outfits). These are long tops / dresses over baggy trousers. They are colourful and look very attractive and range from plain cotton to some quite elaborate embroidery and fabrics. The long scarf they wear that hangs over their shoulders and down their backs gives it a touch of elegance. I myself am on the look out for a beautiful sari.
The valley is surrounded by hazy blue hills that in N.Ireland would most certainly be called mountains. Here they form the rim of the smog filled basin that holds the city of Kathmandu. Even in early morning the snowy mountains are still hidden behind a low lying layer of white clouds. By mid afternoon the blue of the sky is mostly erased by the gathering dark clouds that bring the downpour which signifies the monsoon is not done yet. The nauseating fumes of the manic Kathmandu traffic mingle to provide a healthy ride home. You can almost feel the carbon monoxide poisoning seeping into your body. Caught out in one of the afternoon downpours we decide to give up on the shopping and get a taxi home. After a short journey in a breaking down tuktuk (we are convinced he just didn’t want to go all the way to where we were going) we got into a taxi as the previously chugging tuktuk sped off. The taxi had a very wet back seat that left me with a very wet backside. Due to the many new one way systems in Kathmandu we went down through narrow back streets along roads with shops selling clothes, or vegetables, or meat with heads beside it (to prove what the meat is). The tarmac long since broken up we bumped our way along streets that had turned into rushing rivers as the failing city drainage was overloaded with an hours rain.
In the back of the three-wheeler tempo buses, the new gas or electric run form of public transport there are ten people squashed onto two bench seats. A pretty face with fuscia lipstick on looks out of the small window on the side and an elderly man in a Nepali topi (hat) holds his bag on his knee as he looks out the back door. Hanging out of the front is the young conductor calling out their destination to passersby who are all potential custom. He looks like he should really be at school. At the recently installed traffic lights a man on a motorbike talks on his mobile phone before the lights change. Further up the road the traffic is directed by a policeman in a blue uniform with orange waterproofs over the top and with white gloves. As he changes shifts with another policeman he hands over the all-important gloves and takes off the orange hood that he has tied over the top of his peaked uniform cap. The new man gets the sequencing wrong much to the frustration of the waiting motorcyclist who starts angrily beeping his horn.
Shops seem to crop up in areas. There are the usual little corner shops and quite a few more larger mini supermarkets than there used to be. Others come in groups. You know where to go when you want to buy beads, or shoes, or light fittings or cameras. The bulk of the nice craft shops seem to be on the Pulchowk hill near where we are living, though a few can always be found elsewhere. A new phenomenon since I was last here are flower shops. These are still few however and seem fairly well dispersed. There is a proliferation of food shops or wee restaurants which range from a hole in the wall selling a few snacks to some quite fancy places with every variety in between. No shortage of food to try and a plethora of shops with neatly stacked mounds of tempting Indian sweets.
In Thamel, the main tourist area, we sit and have a light lunch. My vegetable momos are delicious and a nice treat for someone who has become vegetarian since I last had meat momos aged 15 and really wants to savour some familiar tastes. The streets of Thamel are familiar and lined with shops that may or may not have changed hands over the past 11 years. Some shops seem expanded, others have different signs and some may have new things to sell. Essentially though there are restaurants, quality postcards, cheap and tempting clothes (which I have to mostly resist and which make me think of several friends back home), well stocked second hand bookshops, Tibetan carpets, bags, Indian imported crafts and shops which sell a mixture of everything. We wander with only the usual minimal hassle of a tourist area where you are the hope of a sale. In a season where tourism should be entering its highest numbers there are only a reasonable amount of foreigners around. The local politics of Maoist insurrection and a political vacuum and the regional politics of unrest in India and Pakistan have all contributed to the general flow of tourism redirecting elsewhere. Coming from Belfast a few small bombs aren’t enough to make you too nervous. There are small reminders of Belfast a number of years ago as our bags are checked entering a shopping centre. However there is no specific threat and foreigners are not targets. The political situation in the country is very sad though. Corruption reigns supreme and along with the violence is bringing the country to its knees.
People are on the whole as friendly as ever. Being able to talk in even very rusty Nepali is a plus. How nice it is not to just be an ignorant foreigner who only speaks English (as I will be on the rest of my travels). The men are dressed mostly in trousers and shirts, but the while some women still wear saris, many now wear kurtas (or Punjabi outfits). These are long tops / dresses over baggy trousers. They are colourful and look very attractive and range from plain cotton to some quite elaborate embroidery and fabrics. The long scarf they wear that hangs over their shoulders and down their backs gives it a touch of elegance. I myself am on the look out for a beautiful sari.
Thursday, August 29, 2002
After a wonderful Greenbelt full of lots of old and new friends, good food, music, dancing, hedge diving, bundles, contemplation and late nights (or rather early mornings) I got to finish off the weekend with a lovely lunch with friends in Cheltenham. The staggered goodbyes having started the evening before, continuing with a Belfast friends chorus of Jayne McConkey to the tune of Danny Boy and the Hokey Kokey and several other hugs, tears, prayers and blessings. The last meal over and down to three we made it to Guildford in time for a five minute turn around, dropping Stevie to the train station en-route to Heathrow. Andy dropped us off and I got the say bye to Mark on Andy’s mobile (having said my emotional farewell to my own mobile earlier in the day). Then there was Nikki and I, and after getting out dollars and buying some leave-in conditioner (the important last minute details) we got to sit down and have half an hour of quality goodbye time before I had to go through the departure gates!
Qatar airways was fine. We got our own personal screens and I watched a movie as I ate my dinner, mostly I slept though. The manic-ness of the past month catching up on me a little. The food was fine, I was sitting next to a tall tanned teacher who was going back out to Dubai where she was starting her fourth year at a private British curriculum primary school. She loves trashy magazines where she keeps up on all the latest gossip on the ‘stars’. They are apparently very expensive in UAE so she had a wee stack of Hello and Heat. Mostly we slept. We arrived in Doha at 6.30am their time and it was 30 degrees already. Getting back on the plane at 8.30am it was hotter already. Midday must be unbelievable.
We circled over the approach to Kathmandu for an hour. A little frustrating though I kept dozing, but he told us on the second attempted approach that there was a red patch on his radar. So we kept circling. Caution was definitely preferable to speed. Especially after hearing upon landing that last Thursday a small plane had crashed killing all 18 on board including 13 Germans, a Brit and an American. There was also a bus knocked over a hillside killing 45 (the first rock came down and killed the driver, the second knocked the bus over), and another at least 50 or so were killed in a landslide that washed almost an entire village away. A bleak last Thursday that helps keep things like an hour delay in a lot more perspective.
Driving through Kathmandu from the airport we passed a lot of familiar places that are the same and also different. It is a strange experience to pass places that are a part of your past and yet somewhat unfamiliar at the same time. Traffic is as bad as ever. Dad apparently commented last week that it is so strange that Nepali’s who are so laid back in every other area of life, get behind the wheel of a vehicle and just have to get in front of the car ahead of them. The Japanese have recently introduced traffic lights. They work!
Mum and dad have a lovely wee flat. I get the guest room for the next couple of months. I certainly slept well there last night. I haven’t gone out yet today. I may just have a sleeping day, but it is good to be back in Nepal. I have a wee feeling of not being able to get around as well as I should. I imagine it will pass after a day or so. I did explain stuff to the visa man in Nepali as it was easier to communicate than in English. It should be a good couple of months!
I will no doubt blog some more soon. I shall head to have a water conserving shower (Kathmandu has water shortages though experiencing the worst monsoon for many years!) and get dressed. It is 2.30 in the afternoon!
Qatar airways was fine. We got our own personal screens and I watched a movie as I ate my dinner, mostly I slept though. The manic-ness of the past month catching up on me a little. The food was fine, I was sitting next to a tall tanned teacher who was going back out to Dubai where she was starting her fourth year at a private British curriculum primary school. She loves trashy magazines where she keeps up on all the latest gossip on the ‘stars’. They are apparently very expensive in UAE so she had a wee stack of Hello and Heat. Mostly we slept. We arrived in Doha at 6.30am their time and it was 30 degrees already. Getting back on the plane at 8.30am it was hotter already. Midday must be unbelievable.
We circled over the approach to Kathmandu for an hour. A little frustrating though I kept dozing, but he told us on the second attempted approach that there was a red patch on his radar. So we kept circling. Caution was definitely preferable to speed. Especially after hearing upon landing that last Thursday a small plane had crashed killing all 18 on board including 13 Germans, a Brit and an American. There was also a bus knocked over a hillside killing 45 (the first rock came down and killed the driver, the second knocked the bus over), and another at least 50 or so were killed in a landslide that washed almost an entire village away. A bleak last Thursday that helps keep things like an hour delay in a lot more perspective.
Driving through Kathmandu from the airport we passed a lot of familiar places that are the same and also different. It is a strange experience to pass places that are a part of your past and yet somewhat unfamiliar at the same time. Traffic is as bad as ever. Dad apparently commented last week that it is so strange that Nepali’s who are so laid back in every other area of life, get behind the wheel of a vehicle and just have to get in front of the car ahead of them. The Japanese have recently introduced traffic lights. They work!
Mum and dad have a lovely wee flat. I get the guest room for the next couple of months. I certainly slept well there last night. I haven’t gone out yet today. I may just have a sleeping day, but it is good to be back in Nepal. I have a wee feeling of not being able to get around as well as I should. I imagine it will pass after a day or so. I did explain stuff to the visa man in Nepali as it was easier to communicate than in English. It should be a good couple of months!
I will no doubt blog some more soon. I shall head to have a water conserving shower (Kathmandu has water shortages though experiencing the worst monsoon for many years!) and get dressed. It is 2.30 in the afternoon!
Monday, August 19, 2002
My days in Belfast are rapidly drawing to a close. Clearing out feels like it is the order of the day and I would like it to be done so I could enjoy my last couple days!! At this moment an unlikely prospect. I have yet to pack for going away but much is already sorted. I have had a very busy but also fun and fulfilling last four weeks. One week with 11-14s followed by two weeks with (75+) 6-11 year olds and then last week with the youth in Joel's Place. I had a really good week and enjoyed getting to hang out so much with the young people during my last week of work!
Many goodbyes. A few tears. Lots of kind words - treasured and unexpected. Blessings from close and unanticipated sources. Happiness and smiles tinged with endings and the unknown. Chapters merging.
Many goodbyes. A few tears. Lots of kind words - treasured and unexpected. Blessings from close and unanticipated sources. Happiness and smiles tinged with endings and the unknown. Chapters merging.
Friday, July 26, 2002
It’s Friday evening and we have just finished a week of summer scheme for 11-14 year olds. It went really well. A very high leader to young person ratio meant it was possible for the young people to have a lot of attention. The best way.
Last night I was driving a minibus of girls from the girls residential I was helping out at, to visit Kathy’s new house out in the country. On the way we passed a long line of tractors. A gathering of vintage tractor owners, and I imagine fanatics. The men riding them were mostly older with jaunty caps on and proud smiles on their faces. We beeped the horn and waved and were waved back at! A fun day out for them and for us travelling in the opposite direction, but for the long line of traffic queuing behind them a nightmare stuck behind not one tractor but fifty!
Kathy’s new place is fantastic. It has great potential as she says but is already amazing. We saw instalments of an amazing sunset that seemed to paint the sky for a couple of hours. A fabulous panoramic view over hills and fields with an evergreen treeline. We watched and chatted and went inside and came out and watched some more: the glowing skies and wide horizons where the sun metamorphosed from golden white to burning crimson as it sunk behind the trees. By standing on the fence around the sand school you could catch the descent of the star for longer. As it sank its rays caught on the ivy around the top of the chimney and caused a couple of the girls to run in and call us out to see the soft sunlight dancing like fairy lights on top of the house. The world was bathed in a golden glow that gradually crept higher up the trees, lazily chased away by the bluer shadows of twilight. The final pastel streamers of light hung across the horizon as we drove back towards Belfast. Cana and I drank in the view from the front of the minibus and agreed that sunsets definitely were good for the soul.
Last night I was driving a minibus of girls from the girls residential I was helping out at, to visit Kathy’s new house out in the country. On the way we passed a long line of tractors. A gathering of vintage tractor owners, and I imagine fanatics. The men riding them were mostly older with jaunty caps on and proud smiles on their faces. We beeped the horn and waved and were waved back at! A fun day out for them and for us travelling in the opposite direction, but for the long line of traffic queuing behind them a nightmare stuck behind not one tractor but fifty!
Kathy’s new place is fantastic. It has great potential as she says but is already amazing. We saw instalments of an amazing sunset that seemed to paint the sky for a couple of hours. A fabulous panoramic view over hills and fields with an evergreen treeline. We watched and chatted and went inside and came out and watched some more: the glowing skies and wide horizons where the sun metamorphosed from golden white to burning crimson as it sunk behind the trees. By standing on the fence around the sand school you could catch the descent of the star for longer. As it sank its rays caught on the ivy around the top of the chimney and caused a couple of the girls to run in and call us out to see the soft sunlight dancing like fairy lights on top of the house. The world was bathed in a golden glow that gradually crept higher up the trees, lazily chased away by the bluer shadows of twilight. The final pastel streamers of light hung across the horizon as we drove back towards Belfast. Cana and I drank in the view from the front of the minibus and agreed that sunsets definitely were good for the soul.
Friday, July 19, 2002
The weather was sunny yesterday. An uncommonly summery day for Belfast this July. I had a long over due car wash. The foam squirting from both sides cocooned me in a candyfloss pink, blue and yellow world. The hot wax ran quickly in serpentine charades down my windscreen. A coating of illusory protection. My car shone in the sunlight and my wing mirrors showed a very clear rear world.
I was in Dublin at the weekend. I stayed with a friend Treena and had my first experience of going to see people playing Cricket. Merv was 'playing' so we sat with him having a beer and chatting. We left when his team went out to field. Nice afternoon but I wasn't converted to what seems a long, slow game. Did I say the word 'boring'?
I sat in a small cafe early on Sunday afternoon. It was a very small cafe and I got a seat at a small two seat round metal table by the window with my back to the door. The cafe was painted aqua blue. The trimmings were modern and silver. A large silver framed mirror hung on the wall above the wall length bar table, and reflected the vase of white lilies, only one of which had opened yet. Outside there was a small square table with nine sachets of white sugar on it lying against each other. One of them had been neatly opened with a diagonal tear across the corner. The waiter cleared them and the coffee mug rings away when three middle aged men came and sat down outside in the sun to have coffee and brunch. Three blond girls in red t-shirts sat at the far wall by the mirror and had a coffee before heading out to drive past in their t-shirts red beetle promoting a local radion station. I sat and wrote in my beautiful journal from Trevor and Jenna (made by a very talented Andy Harding) and then read some of my book 'The Art of Travel', also from Trevor and Jenna.
I went and saw my Granny. She was at home for the afternoon, Ruth had brought her out of hospital. We celebrated her birthday. Presents, cake, banner and balloons. She was alert and in good form. Old age can be a very undignified process though. She has become completely dependant. At least she can eat herself at the moment. It made me think a little about what it will be like to be old.
Last night I had to collect a boiler and teapot that we had borrowed for camp. I ended up sitting outside Clements on Botanic Avenue with Jonny Cunningham drinking a smoothie and chatting. Carl came by on his bike to have a quiet read of his book. It was never opened but we had a great evening.
Random Acts of Kindness. Experiment One. Conducted 11.30pm 18th July 2002. Completed successfully from our side. We handed out the random encouragements. Whether the people we 'made contact' with passed them on we have no way of knowing. but... We had fun. We were creative. We acted in the moment. We lived, and hopefully let live, a little. Success.
I was in Dublin at the weekend. I stayed with a friend Treena and had my first experience of going to see people playing Cricket. Merv was 'playing' so we sat with him having a beer and chatting. We left when his team went out to field. Nice afternoon but I wasn't converted to what seems a long, slow game. Did I say the word 'boring'?
I sat in a small cafe early on Sunday afternoon. It was a very small cafe and I got a seat at a small two seat round metal table by the window with my back to the door. The cafe was painted aqua blue. The trimmings were modern and silver. A large silver framed mirror hung on the wall above the wall length bar table, and reflected the vase of white lilies, only one of which had opened yet. Outside there was a small square table with nine sachets of white sugar on it lying against each other. One of them had been neatly opened with a diagonal tear across the corner. The waiter cleared them and the coffee mug rings away when three middle aged men came and sat down outside in the sun to have coffee and brunch. Three blond girls in red t-shirts sat at the far wall by the mirror and had a coffee before heading out to drive past in their t-shirts red beetle promoting a local radion station. I sat and wrote in my beautiful journal from Trevor and Jenna (made by a very talented Andy Harding) and then read some of my book 'The Art of Travel', also from Trevor and Jenna.
I went and saw my Granny. She was at home for the afternoon, Ruth had brought her out of hospital. We celebrated her birthday. Presents, cake, banner and balloons. She was alert and in good form. Old age can be a very undignified process though. She has become completely dependant. At least she can eat herself at the moment. It made me think a little about what it will be like to be old.
Last night I had to collect a boiler and teapot that we had borrowed for camp. I ended up sitting outside Clements on Botanic Avenue with Jonny Cunningham drinking a smoothie and chatting. Carl came by on his bike to have a quiet read of his book. It was never opened but we had a great evening.
Random Acts of Kindness. Experiment One. Conducted 11.30pm 18th July 2002. Completed successfully from our side. We handed out the random encouragements. Whether the people we 'made contact' with passed them on we have no way of knowing. but... We had fun. We were creative. We acted in the moment. We lived, and hopefully let live, a little. Success.
Friday, July 12, 2002
Some thoughts from books I'm reading:
“Against the infinity if the cosmos and the silent depths of nature, the human face shines out as the icon of intimacy. It is here, in this icon of human presence, that divinity in creation comes nearest to itself. The human face is the icon of creation. Each person also has an inner face which is always sensed but never seen. The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self”.
John O’Donohue (Anam Cara)
“The anam-cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other. Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across the distance two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each others lives. With your anam-cara you awaken the eternal. In this soul-space there is no distance”.
John O’Donohue (Anam Cara)
“In the Sonoran desert there are ponds. You could be standing in the middle of one and not know it, because the ponds are usually dry. Nor would you know that inches below your feet, frogs are sleeping, their heartbeats down to once or twice per minute. They lie dormant and waiting, these mud frogs, for without water their lives are incomplete, they are not fully themselves. For many months they sleep like this within the earth. And then the rain comes. And a hundred pairs of eyes pop out of the mud, and at night a hundred voices call across the moonlit water.
It was wonderful to see, wonderful to be in the middle of we mud frogs awakening all around. We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life. For years the strangers amongst us had passed sullenly in the hallways; now we looked, we nodded, we smiled. If someone got an A, others celebrated, too. If someone sprained an ankle, others felt the pain. We discovered the color of each other’s eyes.
It was a rebellion she led, a rebellion for rather than against. For ourselves. For the dormant mud frogs we had been for so long”.
Jerry Spinelli (Stargirl)
“Nowhere is the appeal of the airport more concentrated than in the television screens which hang in rows from terminal ceilings announcing the departure and arrival of flights and whose absence of aesthetic self-consciousness, whose workmanlike casing and pedestrian typefaces, do nothing to disguise their emotional charge or imaginative allure. Tokyo, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Warsaw, Seattle, Rio. The screens bear all the poetic resonance of the last line of James Joyces ‘Ulysses’: at once a record of where the novel was written and, no less importantly, a symbol of the cosmopolitan spirit behind its composition: ‘Trieste, Zurich, Paris’. The constant calls of the screens, some accompanied by the impatient pulsing of a cursor, suggest with what ease our seemingly entrenched lives might be altered, were we to walk down a corridor and on to a craft that in a few hours would land us in a place of which we had no memories and where no one knew our names. How pleasant to hold in mind, through the crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon when lassitude and despair threaten, that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere, for Baudelaire’s ‘Anywhere! Anywhere!’: Trieste, Zurich, Paris”.
Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel)
“Against the infinity if the cosmos and the silent depths of nature, the human face shines out as the icon of intimacy. It is here, in this icon of human presence, that divinity in creation comes nearest to itself. The human face is the icon of creation. Each person also has an inner face which is always sensed but never seen. The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self”.
John O’Donohue (Anam Cara)
“The anam-cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other. Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across the distance two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each others lives. With your anam-cara you awaken the eternal. In this soul-space there is no distance”.
John O’Donohue (Anam Cara)
“In the Sonoran desert there are ponds. You could be standing in the middle of one and not know it, because the ponds are usually dry. Nor would you know that inches below your feet, frogs are sleeping, their heartbeats down to once or twice per minute. They lie dormant and waiting, these mud frogs, for without water their lives are incomplete, they are not fully themselves. For many months they sleep like this within the earth. And then the rain comes. And a hundred pairs of eyes pop out of the mud, and at night a hundred voices call across the moonlit water.
It was wonderful to see, wonderful to be in the middle of we mud frogs awakening all around. We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life. For years the strangers amongst us had passed sullenly in the hallways; now we looked, we nodded, we smiled. If someone got an A, others celebrated, too. If someone sprained an ankle, others felt the pain. We discovered the color of each other’s eyes.
It was a rebellion she led, a rebellion for rather than against. For ourselves. For the dormant mud frogs we had been for so long”.
Jerry Spinelli (Stargirl)
“Nowhere is the appeal of the airport more concentrated than in the television screens which hang in rows from terminal ceilings announcing the departure and arrival of flights and whose absence of aesthetic self-consciousness, whose workmanlike casing and pedestrian typefaces, do nothing to disguise their emotional charge or imaginative allure. Tokyo, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Warsaw, Seattle, Rio. The screens bear all the poetic resonance of the last line of James Joyces ‘Ulysses’: at once a record of where the novel was written and, no less importantly, a symbol of the cosmopolitan spirit behind its composition: ‘Trieste, Zurich, Paris’. The constant calls of the screens, some accompanied by the impatient pulsing of a cursor, suggest with what ease our seemingly entrenched lives might be altered, were we to walk down a corridor and on to a craft that in a few hours would land us in a place of which we had no memories and where no one knew our names. How pleasant to hold in mind, through the crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon when lassitude and despair threaten, that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere, for Baudelaire’s ‘Anywhere! Anywhere!’: Trieste, Zurich, Paris”.
Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel)
Thursday, July 11, 2002
27th June – 2 July (England)
28th June –1 July (A field in Wales)
Friday the 28th June. I turned 27. Flew into Heathrow on Thursday. The flight served mixed nuts and I had a glass of water with ice and lemon. I am a water baby anyway and all advice recommends against alcohol on flights. That didn’t stop the people sitting beside me. They got on well with the airhostess who slipped them a couple baby bottles of champagne as well as their beer's'. On the bus to Worcester Park there was a longhaired chatty guy handing out questionnaires for all passengers. He was looking forward to going back out on the road travelling and used my backpack as a good flirting starter. Very helpful though…can I free your hair from your backpack! (?!?)
Friday 8.30am, Nikki brought heated croissants birthday breakfast in bed. Nice. After lying in the sun on the roof we headed to Watford. I sat in Wimbledon station looking after the bags people watching. Had a classic movie experience of watching a couple sitting on a bench across on another platform. They were part of my scene. A train pulled in and when it pulled off they were gone! I scanned the crowd mildly frantically and found them getting on another train. How easy it would be for someone to completely disappear like that. Random thoughts of a people watcher!
After a jump start on George (Nik’s van) we finally headed off about 5pm to join the Friday rush hour traffic on the M25. Solid traffic for an hour and a half. The five of us in the back (Nikki, Debi, Jono, Rob and myself) passed the time laughing and munching on a bag of food from Sainsburys. The two in the front (Nik and Justin) got to have the pressure of the traffic and then several hours later the joy of navigating around 10 feet high hedged lanes that suit one vehicle and even then at times are a squeeze. At one am we found a farm with lights on. Not the farm we were looking for but the one waiting for us. We never looked for the other farm again. We had found a great field with a stream, sheep, a friendly farmer Rob and his dogs, a beautiful view of being surrounded by forested hills and good walks. A time of relaxation and friendship and celebrating Debi’s (and my) birthday around a camp fire and snug in a van with the rain pouring down outside; walking through a small village and on a Tolkien-esque hike up a beautiful hillside and through the forest. We were sustained on our walk by a well prepared Justin who at an opportune moment produced a bar of fairly traded chocolate and a bag of peanuts, raisins and chocolate chips. How to be popular.
Jono read my journal and then I got him and some of the others to write entries in my beautiful book. (extracts)
‘We’ve been here in a little field 2 nights now; we’ve had 2 vegetarian and 2 meat breakfasts. Last night we had trout steamed with chilli, lemon and apple juice. Jayne and Debi made little parcels of carrot, onion, mushrooms and peppers in cabbage leaves. Yum Yum. We had baked potatoes and they were very nice. Nik played his didgeridoo around the fire and Nikki and I sang together. I liked it. We went to Abergeveny yesterday and I couldn’t find a water pistol like the one I bought in Wales 14 years ago’.
‘Great Wind blowing; Great Earth rising beneath our feet, filling our eyes; Great Sun, warming our skin; Great Water flowing by, above and beneath. The life of the Creator, Spirit of the elements, animating and sustaining all things in this place! We have been enriched by the peace and solitude of this place, the enlightening nature of the river, the inspiration of the gnarled trees, wisdom of the ancient hills, and the amusement of our following fleecy friends. The company of friends, old, new and re-acquainted; lives shared around the fire, stories told, food cooked in the embers; talk of farming, music, food, travelling and fairies! We sang songs of freedom’.
‘Our birthday weekend. Pyrgad, South Wales – Rob’s field. It has been so beautiful to be amidst friends – such a wonderful walk today – likened to the scenes in ‘Lord of the Rings’; a fellowship of friends; a host of beautiful greens with the occasional magenta foxglove breaking up the hues’.
‘Rustling trees, the swish of rain,
The stream slips by, bobbing through the rocks,
A blanket surround of green and blue
Ripple of laughter blending with the silence
Holding friendship with an intimate embrace
White fluffy friends watch on and time pursues tomorrow
Hold back the time, drink in the now
Store life and love in memories, for future days to come’.
We stopped in Bristol on our way back to London. Walk by the water, drink in an art house cinema bar and then a lovely coffee from a Barista on a corner. Talk of everyone moving to Bristol in a couple of years. I may end up with friends in Bristol as part of an arts collective. How fun would that be?!
28th June –1 July (A field in Wales)
Friday the 28th June. I turned 27. Flew into Heathrow on Thursday. The flight served mixed nuts and I had a glass of water with ice and lemon. I am a water baby anyway and all advice recommends against alcohol on flights. That didn’t stop the people sitting beside me. They got on well with the airhostess who slipped them a couple baby bottles of champagne as well as their beer's'. On the bus to Worcester Park there was a longhaired chatty guy handing out questionnaires for all passengers. He was looking forward to going back out on the road travelling and used my backpack as a good flirting starter. Very helpful though…can I free your hair from your backpack! (?!?)
Friday 8.30am, Nikki brought heated croissants birthday breakfast in bed. Nice. After lying in the sun on the roof we headed to Watford. I sat in Wimbledon station looking after the bags people watching. Had a classic movie experience of watching a couple sitting on a bench across on another platform. They were part of my scene. A train pulled in and when it pulled off they were gone! I scanned the crowd mildly frantically and found them getting on another train. How easy it would be for someone to completely disappear like that. Random thoughts of a people watcher!
After a jump start on George (Nik’s van) we finally headed off about 5pm to join the Friday rush hour traffic on the M25. Solid traffic for an hour and a half. The five of us in the back (Nikki, Debi, Jono, Rob and myself) passed the time laughing and munching on a bag of food from Sainsburys. The two in the front (Nik and Justin) got to have the pressure of the traffic and then several hours later the joy of navigating around 10 feet high hedged lanes that suit one vehicle and even then at times are a squeeze. At one am we found a farm with lights on. Not the farm we were looking for but the one waiting for us. We never looked for the other farm again. We had found a great field with a stream, sheep, a friendly farmer Rob and his dogs, a beautiful view of being surrounded by forested hills and good walks. A time of relaxation and friendship and celebrating Debi’s (and my) birthday around a camp fire and snug in a van with the rain pouring down outside; walking through a small village and on a Tolkien-esque hike up a beautiful hillside and through the forest. We were sustained on our walk by a well prepared Justin who at an opportune moment produced a bar of fairly traded chocolate and a bag of peanuts, raisins and chocolate chips. How to be popular.
Jono read my journal and then I got him and some of the others to write entries in my beautiful book. (extracts)
‘We’ve been here in a little field 2 nights now; we’ve had 2 vegetarian and 2 meat breakfasts. Last night we had trout steamed with chilli, lemon and apple juice. Jayne and Debi made little parcels of carrot, onion, mushrooms and peppers in cabbage leaves. Yum Yum. We had baked potatoes and they were very nice. Nik played his didgeridoo around the fire and Nikki and I sang together. I liked it. We went to Abergeveny yesterday and I couldn’t find a water pistol like the one I bought in Wales 14 years ago’.
‘Great Wind blowing; Great Earth rising beneath our feet, filling our eyes; Great Sun, warming our skin; Great Water flowing by, above and beneath. The life of the Creator, Spirit of the elements, animating and sustaining all things in this place! We have been enriched by the peace and solitude of this place, the enlightening nature of the river, the inspiration of the gnarled trees, wisdom of the ancient hills, and the amusement of our following fleecy friends. The company of friends, old, new and re-acquainted; lives shared around the fire, stories told, food cooked in the embers; talk of farming, music, food, travelling and fairies! We sang songs of freedom’.
‘Our birthday weekend. Pyrgad, South Wales – Rob’s field. It has been so beautiful to be amidst friends – such a wonderful walk today – likened to the scenes in ‘Lord of the Rings’; a fellowship of friends; a host of beautiful greens with the occasional magenta foxglove breaking up the hues’.
‘Rustling trees, the swish of rain,
The stream slips by, bobbing through the rocks,
A blanket surround of green and blue
Ripple of laughter blending with the silence
Holding friendship with an intimate embrace
White fluffy friends watch on and time pursues tomorrow
Hold back the time, drink in the now
Store life and love in memories, for future days to come’.
We stopped in Bristol on our way back to London. Walk by the water, drink in an art house cinema bar and then a lovely coffee from a Barista on a corner. Talk of everyone moving to Bristol in a couple of years. I may end up with friends in Bristol as part of an arts collective. How fun would that be?!
Friday, June 21, 2002
I read this last night in Anam Cara by John O’Donohue. A book that is special to me and has inspired my painting, but I have never actually finished. I have restarted it and intend to finish it this time.
Beannacht
(for Josie)
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
Beannacht
(for Josie)
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
I am very excited today because I got my passport through the post. Having sent it off on Monday to get my Australian Working Holiday visa and having been told by the website that this took 4-5 weeks, I was worried I had sent something wrong! But NO! I am now the excited owner of an Australian Working Holiday Visa. Amazingly smooth! My passport will go back in the post today enroute to the New Zealand High Commission in London.
It's now definite. No... "If I get my visa" or "I'm hoping to..." Quite exciting really. It helps with the packing up and looking ahead well. But, back to focussing on our video project with the Probation guys tomorrow!!
It's now definite. No... "If I get my visa" or "I'm hoping to..." Quite exciting really. It helps with the packing up and looking ahead well. But, back to focussing on our video project with the Probation guys tomorrow!!
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Sunny Belfast
I seem to have brought a little of the weather back with me. It's not hot but after a lot of rain the sun has started to shine. It is good to be back. I mean that! I think that because I am working through the leaving process I appreciate the opportunity to see friends more after having had a pre-travel trip away.
I have decided that I am going to enjoy work this summer. The leaving factors are all pull rather than push (there's that GCSE geography). I really love my job and plan to enjoy it for the final few weeks. So a full and hopefully fun summer ahead. I got back to find one of our young people (Dee) has become a dad (at 18). He is very proud! A little (8lb, full head of hair, dimple and his ear!) girl. 'Destiny'. Another one of our young people (Abba) has broken his back! It's always good to be back in touch with the lives of the young people I work with. They can be difficult but I do love them all.
My mind is having to also work towards leaving and travel. There is a lot of sorting to do in the house. (Car boot sale this Saturday as a fundraiser for summer camp so I will take a £5 table and try to get rid of some stuff). I blame it on my artist self that I always have so much stuff. I find it hard to throw things that "I could make something with that!" Even when I know that a lot of it will never get made into whatever greater thing it could become. It is time to invoke the long-distance help of my mum and get ruthless! I also sent off my passport to get my Australian Working Holiday Visa. Once I get that things will feel very much on the move! It does take 4/5 weeks though!
In the meantime I will work, play, laugh and dream on.....
I seem to have brought a little of the weather back with me. It's not hot but after a lot of rain the sun has started to shine. It is good to be back. I mean that! I think that because I am working through the leaving process I appreciate the opportunity to see friends more after having had a pre-travel trip away.
I have decided that I am going to enjoy work this summer. The leaving factors are all pull rather than push (there's that GCSE geography). I really love my job and plan to enjoy it for the final few weeks. So a full and hopefully fun summer ahead. I got back to find one of our young people (Dee) has become a dad (at 18). He is very proud! A little (8lb, full head of hair, dimple and his ear!) girl. 'Destiny'. Another one of our young people (Abba) has broken his back! It's always good to be back in touch with the lives of the young people I work with. They can be difficult but I do love them all.
My mind is having to also work towards leaving and travel. There is a lot of sorting to do in the house. (Car boot sale this Saturday as a fundraiser for summer camp so I will take a £5 table and try to get rid of some stuff). I blame it on my artist self that I always have so much stuff. I find it hard to throw things that "I could make something with that!" Even when I know that a lot of it will never get made into whatever greater thing it could become. It is time to invoke the long-distance help of my mum and get ruthless! I also sent off my passport to get my Australian Working Holiday Visa. Once I get that things will feel very much on the move! It does take 4/5 weeks though!
In the meantime I will work, play, laugh and dream on.....
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