I lied. Forgive me. I told you I was going to hire a motorbike. I did not. I told you I was heading through Nepal’s eastern Terai. I did not. I told you I would now be in Darjeeling. I am not. I don’t know what came over me, it wasn’t intentional but I feel that I owe you all an explanation. I’m coming clean. I was in Kathmandu, right, yeah, when this huge-great-big dribbling monster came storming angrily through the narrow city streets, gobbling up everyone and everything in it’s path. As the cobbles shook loose beneath my feet, I drew breath, stood strong and stared up fifteen feet into his twenty-or-more burning red eyes. In a moment of inspiration I hurled a splintered rickshaw and it’s skinny rider up into the monsters rabid fangs. From that moment, of uncapped bravery on, I knew my path would lead me elsewhere, to where heroes walk the land. Honestly right, that monster had like fifty eyes and forty mouths and stood one hundred feet tall but I crushed twelve rickshaws up with my hands and sprayed him into submission with a cloud of pedals and spokes. Continue reading ‘Bl**d, Swe*t and B*rders!’
Archive for the 'Nepal' Category
A lingering cold. Perceptions. An Irish pair. Gore-tex. An English doublet. Love. Salmon Rushdie. An endless line. One Australian. Two Australians. A city in protest. A solo Swede. The Himalaya. The afterlife. A pondering sadhu. Shooting stars. A rickshaw ride. Vegetable moussaka. Expectations. An averted disaster. Central Asia. Spirited Away. Nepali Sherpas. A blazing sun. A brace of Kiwis. A pencil sharpener. Toothpaste tubes. Telex forms. Free Tibet. Conformity. Hot lemon. A lone Canadian. Yak wool. Israel. Down sleeping bags. Country capitals. Ambitions. Candlelight. An American duet. Banana lassi. Please. Take a breath. If the ingredients that made up our lives were a simple family of words filed neatly between a peppering of punctuation, then our lives would surely make no sense at all. Though the words maniacally cascading through to the foothills of these, my opening lines, carry with them the weekly silt of my Being’s physical exposure, from the citadel of it’s very existence. Continue reading ‘A Spring of Surprise’
‘Don’t try to out run it’. The message was clear. ‘Right, forward!’. A second, equally forceful instruction, delivered with intent. ‘Can you climb a tree?’. My heart now pounded with panic at my chest, pleading me to cease this needless onslaught. ‘Forward, together!’, boomed out, like a roll of thunder roaring through my head. ‘If one comes too close, huddle together and make a lot of noise’, my pupils dilated, flooding my senses with suspense. ‘Hold on! Hold ON!‘. No sooner than I had a received my raft guides outburst, than I was hurled violently into an explosion of white water and spun, forcefully in a tremendous grasp, while I gulped mouthfuls of icy water from the underbelly of the imperious, Kali Gandaki river. ‘It ran away, we’re safe’, came the soothing voice of my safari guide a few days later. No sooner than I’d absorbed his obvious relief, than I was struck with a bolt of disappointment. There was a rhino here, whom I wanted an audience with. Continue reading ‘A Rapid Realisation’
‘Look at that man cuddling the little chicken, all together now, aww…’. Cluck cluck, whoosh. Everywhere we looked in Kathmandu, animals were - quite literally - losing their heads. ‘Ahem’, I overlooked the mishap and calmly continued, ‘look at the fluffy sheep’. Baa baa, swoosh. ‘Hmmm, look at the goat’. Bleat, bleat. Slash. ‘Ohmigod, there’s a water buffalo in the square! Don’t look at the buffalo! Don’t look at the…’, thud. ‘Too late’. We’d arrived in Kathmandu amidst the biggest Nepali festival of the year, Dashain was flooding the streets with colour - a thick, lively red colour. Continue reading ‘The Kites of Kathmandu’
For these four, mind-blowing days it felt as if I were living within a high school English project. My former English teacher, Mr Zaidi would slowly sweep back his black, spiraling locks, knowingly adding to the tense finale of his class. He’d draw breath to fuel a husky, magnetic voice before swiftly declaring through a clearing in his goatee, ‘homework. I dunno, just invent a story about an overland journey between Tibet and Nepal’. I’d look at the lads, smirking painfully. ‘Oh’ he continued demon-like, ‘pop into Mount Everest on the way’. My head would slump to the table and my gaze would dribble over Palmer’s artistic acres of ‘I heart C.o’R‘, my consciousness cruelly restored by the rusty point of a compass, jabbed deep into my leg. The drill of the school bell would carry me to the bus, making sure to avoid the dreaded Gauntlet Runs on the fringes of the yard. So here’s my homework, Billy (that’s what we called him, ‘coz we woz kool’). Sorry it’s so late, my goldfish ate the first one. Continue reading ‘Himalayan Homework’
