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This week’s LISTENup travelcast revisits the Nepali capital of Kathmandu. A city I visited two years ago, and where I penned the original entry of The Kites of Kathmandu. Continue reading ‘The Kites of Kathmandu (Audio Podcast)’
I stare at the newspaper. It wasn’t me. I gawp at the television. It wasn’t me. I trawl through the internet. It wasn’t me! I listen to the radio, podcasts, and conversations on the bus. It WASN’T me! At least — I hope it wasn’t me? Continue reading ‘Trails of the Unexpected’
Kathmandu is not the dirtiest city I’ve ever been too. That award is divided between Naples, Marseille and pretty much every north Indian megalopolis. Marseille has some room for appeal, the binmen were on strike (it’s France, go figure). Naples suffered the same affliction, but for some reason I’m throwing their right to appeal out as I’m pretty sure the piles of garbage covered up greater evils. Like bodies. My life was threatened on several occasions. Well, twice – the remaining times were suicide plans incase I got stranded there. Continue reading ‘The Reprint: ‘The Daily Commute’’
If it’s true that you can judge a man by the company he keeps then I reckon I’m up for some sort of global award. Everywhere I go I’m surrounded by insanely loyal friends, and even for the enemies I hurl mental rocks at I hold some deep-rooted passion. This weeks Reprint is a demonstration of all things friends. Continue reading ‘The Reprint: ‘Friends’’
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!’
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’
I'm currently working my way through Wellington, New Zealand.
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