Friday 3 August 2007

Thumb twiddling

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

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

(in no order)

(off the top of my head).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xx

Wednesday 1 August 2007

Cultivate your garden...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was the setting for a wedding.

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