I took these pictures of the ‘instructions’ they give you when you arrive, this is the first book, the main one. (The one below is additional information).

This is the second book, additional information, the main thing they point out in these booklets is to watch the mind, and label everything it does. So when you walk, label it like this “left foot, right foot” and you can do a very slow walk where you label it like this “lifting (left foot) moving, placing, lifting (right foot), moving placing” and when doing the sitting meditation you just watch abdomen “Raising, lowering”. Over and over, with the aim of increasing your concentration, and its this increase in concentration that delves into the almost infinite depths of your mind, to find realizations and inspirations as to the workings of the mind. They are worth reading though, these booklets, its quite insightful just to read the information in these, and it shows you how different a religion Buddhism really is.

There are many aspects to the retreat that are talking about in the above ‘instructions’, I can’t be bothered writing them all out but they are interesting, so read it if you like.

So I did learn that my mind is super runaway and fast, I see it as a gift and a curse, but I don’t think I would risk changing it for another mind if I had the chance, its super interesting to me. So I would be meditating and then suddenly i realized i had been indulging in some thought and wondering mind for 10 minutes or so before realizing to label it as what it was, a wondering mind, this is the whole point of it all, whatever goes on in the mind just label it, realize it as soon as possible. I was often are of this super fast searching just underneath my watching the breathing, my mind flicking through so many pictures, sometimes i gained a glimpse deeper into that, i got a glimpse of something wonderful, a knot of potential thoughts, a thousand potential things to think about, then something would rapidly leap out and block the view to its source. Once I even suddenly caught myself juggling in my head! Just juggling away, this i happily indulged watching my juggling in my head. It amused me greatly! It made me think about my juggling as something special. Not just my juggling, but all juggling, and all action for that matter, all automatic movement. When I juggle my arms move fast, and comparing it to the meditation walking i would find it very hard to watch each movement of the arms. So I was super keen to get out of the retreat and juggle and watch my mind when I was doing it! The speed of juggling is also interesting, i found that sometimes doing the walking meditation that i could concentrate for longer if i moved quicker than the very slow walk i was doing, i think its my quick mind, the speed of walking fast and juggling, it finds it relaxing, it ‘catches up’ if you like (Yesterday I had a great juggle, going as fast as I could, realizing that there was great peace to watch the body without really see what its doing, more like seeing all these rapid complicated movements as whole, I wonder what Buddha would have to say about this as a potential practice, watching complicated processes without getting involved, seeing them as a whole, using them to some conclusion like he did with this mindfulness, i kind of suspect it would lead to the same conclusions). Also whilst meditating i was presented with patterns that I wanted to draw, and drawing for me is a much slower process, very slow in fact, so its nice to have this balance in my interests. One fast and one slow. I know i’ll for sure never loose this vipasanna way of looking at the mind now when i do these personal things. I was doing it in way anyway, always curious to do something to my mind to see how it would react. Hence my love of traveling, wanting to put myself in new situations all the time.

I had some very tough times in the retreat, there were so many mosquito’s! Too many! One of the days it was so hot as well, very humid, i was dripping with sweat all over my body, and being eaten by mosquito’s everywhere I went, apart from sat under a net. In the hall however the electricity had gone off, so under the mosquito nets we al had for sitting meditation was like a sauna, with no fan to cool me down, i got very frustrated and went to my dorm, but there were mosquito’s in there! So i sat under the net in there and cried a bit out of frustration! Amazing that putting myself in this vipasanna situation caused this emotion to rise up so much, so much frustration at not being able to still my mind, but then after a while it passed and since I was constantly trying to stay with the frustratio, stay looking it at objectively, when it passed i realized rather profoundly the impermanence of these states of minds. A wonderful realization, this is what vipasanna helps to develop, the realization of the impermanence of all things. I had a wonderful few times meditating, where i got such strange feelings, stepping out of my body but still feeling it, yet not letting the pains accumulate. It made me realize with time all these feelings, pains, and emotions accumulate and cause more trouble than they are, this aspect permeates in many ways. For instance we accumulate predicatively reflectively. I’ll explain, we get a pain in our body from sitting, our mind then knows that if we move we can alleviate the pain, so we get a desire to move, our mind reflects on past experiences to predict a better future and then causes a desire for us to…well..desire! And its this desire which is the cause of all suffering, its so abstract and to actually see this is quite liberating (it leads me to ponder if a being is in pain from birth then would they ever actually be aware of the pain? if its one isolate pain that doesn’t subside, the body would know know different, i guess there wouldn’t be a pain then, pain it seems arises out of the contrast between two states). Anyway, Whilst in this strange state of mind I was in a very spacious zone where i could feel all the influences around my body, like i was in a wonderful art gallery glimpsing pieces in all directions, deciding which one to go and inspect, the vipasanna recommendation for this state of mind would be to watch the breathing whenever its the most predominant, and since I felt like I had full choice here I did eventually focus on the breathing, its tempting to just stay back though and try and focus on all things at once, but they recommend not to do this, I never found out why not, what would happen if you develop this state of mind, try and remain aware of all things at once, maybe if you develop ultra awareness for one thing long enough eventually you just become aware of all things rather neatly, this is actually one of the claimed skills the Buddha gained, not just awareness of all his mind objects, but omniscient awareness of everything, I remain skeptical about that sudden awareness of everything, like what does it mean? Was he aware for instance of the activity on a star some 100’s of millions of light years away? I think not. Anyway, this spacious zone state was a feeling that like had stepped to the side of time and was walking around a timeless zone, there was none of the accumulative nature that time has on the mind. Another similar feeling i had was ultra focused on the breathing, my main sensation was the pattern of my breathing, seeing the whole path it took as a shape that moved within its own time, a still shape in 4 dimensions i guess. It was so huge and that session of meditation passed very smoothly. A few other times I had these sensations of stepping out of my body, one time i had a weird feeling that I couldn’t seem to shake, it was a feeling that my right arm was on the left side and my left arm was on the right side! Weird hey! Another time I had a sensation that my eyes were just to the right of me, floating outside my body, very strange and unique and I couldn’t shake it, of course when I opened my eyes eventually it stopped.

Like the last retreat I went on there was a western monk who would give lectures, (along with a very peaceful female monk from Burma who spoke excellent English). I think he was Irish, he had a slight accent that could have come from England or America really, I couldn’t tell, but I do suspect Irish. I didn’t find out his western name but his Buddhist name was Vivekananda. When i first saw him, this western monk, I felt awe, respect and curiosity. But then a few things he said made me a bit skeptical, (I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t have this skeptical doubt within me). Once he talked about joy and happiness, and how all the meditator’s in there have the joy of the retreat, and sometimes one of them will have to go out for a visa extension or other such reason, how they have to deal with traffic and noise and so much stimulation in the cities. But then they have the joy of coming back to the retreat. But I like cities! I like all that noise and stimulation. To observe it all is wonderful, to be stuck in it can be hard I agree, but when you observe it without getting involved its wonderful for me! Its can be as wonderful as watching wildlife, whats the difference between us and nature anyway? We are perfectly natural, to think otherwise is a little bit self hating isn’t it? Another time Viv went on about effort, and how to increase your effort, thinking about the Buddha and his ways being a way to do this. Thinking about the omniscient powers he had, he said that since the Buddha was the only person to attain this type of Nirvana, where he gained these omniscient powers, he was therefore “The most special human that ever lived” he actually said this, but if your gonna believe in 2000 year old stories, what about good old J.C. superstar, walking on water! He talked about how he entered another monks dreams and gave him advice, and then he talked about this Indian holy man he came across near Burma. This guy he was told could do special things, one time he stopped the rain for a few weeks whilst the villagers built a damn, and sometimes when he meditates in-front of a bowl of water bubbles can appear in it, also when this guy walked in the jungle tigers don’t eat him. Well, sometimes it doesn’t rain, and sometimes bubbles do come in water, and quite often people don’t get eaten by tigers, and these are all just stories, and for sure I know how I can exaggerate things to make something appear more fantastic, and I know other people do so its hardly information that’s to be trusted, and certainly not believed without question, Viv never saw the guy do any miracle, but he did say that these were stories from the local people, allowing us to make up our own minds about them. To me this talk of miracles in certain contexts is cheap, like unneeded special effects in a movie. Already there are enough special effects going on in my mind and in life, I don’t need these tales really, I just need to stay aware of the uniqueness of it all as it stands (A wonderful quote from Douglas Adams is “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”). Viv also went on about people who do Vipasanna to just see what its all about, with no real dedication and understanding of the practice, people who lack effort and ultimately not enjoy the vipasanna and leave. This felt a bit like me, I did lack effort at times, and dreamed of the day I would leave a lot. And whats wrong with doing it just too see what its all about, he did say though that if someone is lacking effort, missing sessions and such this effects the other meditator’s which is fair enough, I see the truth in this, this aspect did make me put in more effort. He was curious to me though, this western monk, and obviously has a lot of wisdom and dedication and its to be admired and respected, but i think he is set in his ways, or more set in the ways of Buddhism, he is a monk after all! I wonder if he accpets that there are other equally enlightening path ways you can go on in life (he mentioned in another talk that there are people that have attained enlightenment without following Buddhism, yet these people cannot explain their enlightenment or teach it as well as the Buddha did), but then again Buddhism does totally kick the ass of any other religion (Hinduism coming a close second). My talking of Vivekananda in this way is a way to boost my own ego, I admit that, when we talk low of someone else and criticize them its to climb upon their shoulders within our minds, whatever elitism i’m accusing him of is reflected in me, however its not such big criticisms, it would be nice to talk to him about these issues I have, still, some things he said did clearly raise some questions about his mindfulness, and to say these things for an audience of learning meditator’s was a bit strange to me. I guess its the religious aspect of the whole thing which I do keep forgetting, Buddhism IS a religion. Even though its right near the edge of not being one. In my mind though this retreat pushed Buddhism a bit more towards religion than I thought it was. It is the most insightful one going though, its super good in many many ways. I wonder what Buddha would think of it all now? I suspect some aspects of it would give him cause for concern, seeing that he has enslaved some people as apposed to setting them free. I’m sure J.C. would be more let down by whats become of Christianity though. As for a fight between J.C. and Buddha, my money would be on J.C. he proved himself physically by casting out the money lenders from the temple. Buddha is all emaciated from all that meditation, this prediction however is nothing to do with me being from a Christian country, as I said before, Buddhism wins above other religions for me by a long shot. Its much more no nonsense and to the point, the way it talks about the mind is still very relevant today, and even more so what with our increasing scientific understanding of how the mind works. I think a culmination and joining of esoteric learning’s and neurological science could lead to some amazing insights, and ultimately ways to decrease suffering in the world.

The other meditator’s were curious. Its funny because everyone has such a serious concentrated look. And since we never really have half an opinion of someone, more like we instantly take whatever we see and it fills up the space for “One person” in our mind, i just saw everyone as struggling and kind of grumpy because this is all I saw when I looked on their faces! Either that or just a blank expression. I heard of few of the people speak when they were asking questions after a lecture and this was very interesting. All of a sudden they exploded into more fuller people in my mind. One woman from Belgium was very dedicated, she was planning on a 5 month retreat! I would love to experience that, maybe one day I will feel that curiosity strongly and i will have enough effort to be able to do it. Now though i’m way too interested and eager to do all these other things and follow all these thought pathways in my mind to conclusions. A friend of mine said she did this same retreat and when she did it there was a German girl who was there for 13 months! In the end she had to leave, but she didn’t want to. I’m not sure why she HAD to, seems a little like an addiction really. Vipasanna for me was/is a way to learn to understand and ultimately deal with my mind, not to run away from it, which she clearly was if she didn’t want to go back to the real world, because whats she running away from really? Surely its her mind! I wonder if she saw a goal with all the vipasanna? Was she really aiming for Nirvana? Still, I shouldn’t criticize, there is no way I could consider doing even a month there, so she has something that I don’t. Such concentration. I guess she has something special and she is learning how to control it, and vipasanna holds it together and enables her to control it nicely. I am more a being of chaos, the control is what causes suffering, like putting an animal in a cage I guess, let the animal go and learn from what it does i say, little touches and interactions here and there work well enough for me to gain more insight.

As I said it was super tough for me. But I feel great for it now, my mind is full of inspiration. And i am using the practice of watching the mind, and will continue to do so for as long as it appears useful. I have no doubts as to how useful it is to watch the mind like this. I believe some kind of mind watching technique should be taught to children, even it should be one of the first thing a child learns, show them that their mind will do things without them being aware of it and to improve this awareness leads to great things. We never teach anything like this in the west, to me this is a major travesty and we are letting down people by not sharing this insightful knowledge.

Any questions? (And Batty, Nope! I didn’t squeeze in any Squarepusher! The only thing I did which I shouldn’t was take a few pictures of some ants and spiders in my room )

So yeah, im in Nepal now, in a town called Lumbini, which is the birthplace of Buddha. I have come here to go and live in a monastery for 10 days or so. To do a meditation technique called Vipasanna, which is about watching the mind and being aware throughout the whole day. So you limit your stimulation’s and just watch, watching whilst walking, watching whilst meditating and watching whilst eating. Since I have done something similar in Thailand I know what im getting myself into and this time I feel more prepared and I’m very interested to see and feel what happens this time. I’m expecting powers of levitation and the power to read people’s minds after this, oh yeah, and Dhalsim style fireballs from Street Fighter 2 . So when I come out I will then start plans for world domination with my newly obtained powers.

Before I was here I sped from Leh to Manali, then from there to Delhi, then from there to beloved Varanasi, then from there to here! It was a great trip and on each stop I met some great people. My dad asked me why don’t I fly from Leh, but I really enjoy these big overland burns, it gives me a sense of the distance I am traveling.

In Leh for my last days I met up with some friends, new and old. Here they are as taken by a local girl (explains the lack of focus), Sarah the girl with the green shawl I met in Goa 7 months ago, so it was great to meet up with her again, and the other two, the guy on the left is from Portugal and the guy on the right is from Brazil. The children are local children. And thats my eye.

When I got to Delhi something strange was going on with the main bazar area I normally stay. It seems that the local people when they had their respective buildings built didn’t follow proper planning permisions, none of them! They all stole 1 meter or so extra land from the public pathway. Now the government realised this (or knew anyway) after some time and decided to make the people give the land back, so all the buildings were currently having a meter or so lopped off the front. Yep, that’s right, they just smashed a meter off the front of every building, very Indian thing to do to a building, structural integrity? Load bearing pillars? I’m sure they know what they were doing (a brick fell from the ragged edge of a building as I was walking past at one point, hit the ground less then a meter away from me). And to fill the gap I put in a picture I have been working on lately, its not finished yet.

This shop has all the latest electronic devices. And Mansion Polish! Indians can be so stupidly proud at times, so much so that they would buy something called mansion polish over normal polish even though im sure they don’t have a mansion. This guy was using it to clean his market stall, but of course its not meant for that so it didn’t do a very good job.

Some wildlife shots.

These haircuts are from barber shop in Varanasi, one of them is called “waved haircut” most of them are chocked full of wave though, the German cut is very Hitler, but then so is the French cut. I think they are all great haircuts. And this skull! I found it on the banks of the river in Varanasi. Since they just throw some bodies into the river sights like this arn’t uncommon. They throw children and babies in unburnt, and pregnant women. I think they do tie rocks to them so they sink and the fish get to eat them first. Some kids came around looking at this skull, one of them asked me what it was. I saw another kid walk near it, he didn’t see it at first, but then he looked down and leaped back, stared at it in confusion for a moment and then spat on it!

These grim looking pictures are from my toe. Whilst juggling I kind of pirouetted on my big toe and it dislodged this huge thick layer of skin! Luckily it didn’t break the surface, so for a few days I hobbled around on it careful not to bust it, as it was quite deep, as you can tell from the blood that filled it, not just clear liquid. It wasn’t that painful at all really, after a few days it went completely down and there was no pain at all. So with surgeons precision I sliced it off and cleaned it up. It looks terrible, but it wasn’t painful at all when I removed the skin.

For those that are interested this is all about the Vipassana im starting. Mostly its not so interesting, but some of it tells you information about the actual practice, and there at the top is the schedule I will be following. They recommend a minimum of 7 days, but then its up to you after that. I plan on staying in for 10 days.

So, tomorrow morning I will go to the monastery and I will be out in no less than 10 days. I could stay longer and I might so i’ll get to read all your comments when I get back.

I spent one night in Keylong, I had an amazing sleep after the long bus journey, it was such a comfy bed and it was cold outside yet there was two duvets in the room! So I used both. I awoke at 4am and went to the bus station to catch a bus to Manali. Different bus this time, one with reclining chairs and a tv! They played Hindi music videos with the volume on full, until that is, a Brazilian traveler couldn’t take it any more and turned it down.

6:13am And we’re off! First pictures a bit blury due to the low light. To my disapointment straight away we crossed to the other side of the valley we were in, which meant I lost the view for a while.

6:18am See, not much of a view. It improved quite quickly though, as you will see!

6:34am The sun takes a peek over the hills.

6:37am Here we are just about to speed off the edge and land safely on the road just below.

6:58am Moo

7:21am This is quite a common occurance on these roads, a river or stream spilling across the road, turning it to rubble over time. The road workers, over time are improving all these sections, where they can diverting the water under the road with pipes. You can see some of them though where its really eating into the road, notch up another nerve wracking moment on these roads.

7:32am Here the going is great, nice smooth and wide road, beautiful blue sky and lush grassland.

7:32am Nice bit of lens flare to accompany the valliant..no actually, heroic! workers repairing the road in the distant.

7:37am I just noticed a dried spattering of vomit on my window frame. If you look at the sides of all the busses you can always spot vomit down the sides, a lot of the local people don’t travel well. I’ve seen them vomit a lot on busses, i’ve seen it blow back along the bus and into an open window flecking someone else with vomit…..sorry to dwell on vomit. There was no vomit down the side of the bus, just on the edge, so they cleaned the side but not the top.

8:02am A very beautiful bit, its funny how its easier to waffle on about vomit than it is to waffle on about this beautiful bit. There’s a field, and some rocks. It looks a bit like the shire. And thats all I can say really, it is beautiful though.

8:06am Lovely……I’ve only now just noticed there’s a truck there thats fallen off. I didn’t see that when I was there, sheesh, lucky they fell off in a relativly safe place.

8:13am More water, and you can see what its doing to the road, dissolving it over time.

8:16am It was such a nice valley, easy to live in unlike the valleys I was in yesterday. Here the soil looks very good, ideal for growing things.

8:24am Such a quaint place with its simple telephone poles and its horses. You wouldn’t think its India if you didn’t know would you.

8:47am There was a relaxed competition in the sky, between blue sky and overcast. The winner was me as it made such interesting photographs.

9:13am Into the clouds we go! There’s a very distinct line between in the clouds, and out of them. I would have liked to have gone and put my head in the clouds, but the driver wouldn’t have any of it im sure.

9:14am These are all Indian tourists, who come to Manali for a holiday and for a experience of snow come all the way to the top of this pass and ski on these small patches. There are also people to push you around on sled for a price, and also I saw skidoo’s! You can navigate from patch to patch on a skidoo! They all really get prepared for it, hiring out big snow suits for the afternoon.

9:17am This bit is just after the snow patches, lots of cafe’s and places to buy new rolls of film and video tape. This area is called the Rohtang Pass, or Rohtang La which translates to “pile of bodies” since many people have died trying to cross this area in a less favorable season. I think its around 4000-4500 meters.

9:46am After the brief spell of level ground its back to life on the edge. For the last time though, since this is the start of the Kullu valley, where my destination lies, Manali.

9:47am A small traffic jam builds up as the the large vehicles cautiously pass.

10:08am Here we attempted to pass a truck and got caught under this overhang.

10:10am The driver took some time to decide what to do so I took another picture of that vomit. It preturbed me that I was sat so close to vomit, I was sure I was getting wiffs of it at times as well.

10:10am Eventually we conceeded and reversed, waiting for many cars to pass that had built up on the other side, then going for it when the road was clear.

10:43am I mentioned this place last time I came here, how the Indian tourist sat at tables that were in the water, as water lapped over their feet, I guess its a kind of special theme restaurant.

11:13am And here’s the start of the Kullu valley, the road is looping back on itself to get down to the bottom. Once we were at the bottom it was a straight run to Manali, no worries, not cliff edges, nice and warm. Journey all completed!

So all thats left for me now is to take a bus tonite to Delhi. Then its one night in Delhi, a train to Varanasi the next day, then a couple of nights in Varanasi, and a train to the Nepali border. All done!

Thankyouverymuch!

Herearesomephotos!!!!

9:17am I got the idea to take a photo pointing forward to show some of the bus, and I liked it so much thats all there is here! This first shot got me into it because the bus wasn’t on a road for a while, it was just driving towards a gap in the mountains on the other side of a desert. The best way I could get this across was by getting the bus in the shot as well.

10:52am These pillars are a common feature in the Himalayas. I would like to throw stones at the base of them to see if I could make them collapse, or maybe shoot a hand gun at the base.

11:07am The bus joins a river for a while. There are a lot of rivers, rivulets and streams all all the Himalayas, its amazing to think that they will eventually join the ocean 1000’s of kilometers away.

11:09am There’s some snow in the river

11:17am And there the river is completely covered in snow, a snow bridge, I wonder if its safe to walk on?

11:21am Onward into some harsh looking environment. I guess its around 4000m above sea level, not many plants and no trees around.

12:19pm You can be driving along with hardly any change in the environment, then turn a corner and be presented with a view like this. Never fails to grip you, you can hear the change in mood on the bus when this happens, conversations stop and there is a muffled shuffle as heads turn to look out of the window.

12:30pm 10 minutes later the view grows more feature rich and you are presented with more ‘down’ And see the layers on the mountain on the right, its great to see these and try and read some of the history of the world through them. Each layer placed down over many years, then pushed up to form nice curves and folds.

2:06pm (A whole hour and half passed since the last photo! What went on! We stopped for food at some community, but since I didn’t get a bus shot of it I didn’t want to put photo’s of it up here, it would ruin the continuity, i’ll put them up another time) It wasn’t the best weather for photo’s on this bus journey. Still, they do look nice in a gloomy forboding sort of way, but if the sun was out for sure the light would be so rich as to make the photo’s look unreal. I do have some of these brilliant coloured photo’s on a previous post when I did this journey the first time some 3 years ago.

2:12pm These tents belong to a camping site, I think it would be nice to stay here for a couple of days, walk up to the top of the ridge and see whats on the other side. I suspect a huge vista of mountains yet with no road, just the deep Himalayas, H.P. Lovecraft country.

2:26pm Them low tents on the right side of the road are for the road builders/repairers who live in the craziest places to work on the roads, Gawd bless ‘em.

2:28pm The road was quite busy, it opened quite late this year, which causes a few problems since Ladakh is isolated for many months in the year, so they patiently wait for things that they don’t produce themselves. So when the road did finally open there was a month or so backlog of deliveries to be made.

2:41pm One of many ’scrapes by’ This is an easy one since the drop off isn’t death inducing, and the bus is on the safe side. Some of the passings go very slowly and the bus is on the edge, as I talked about a few posts back.

2:50pm You just know this lake is super super cold. Lots of ice in it, what you could see of the water was on the edge of being ice itself, it had a lumpy look to it.

3:15pm This area was one of the reasons why the road was closed for so long. Many sheets of snow would be still covering the road if it wasn’t for bulldozers that came and shifted it (and in some cases came back to shift it again after unexpected snow storms filled it up again).

3:24pm Presented with even more snow.

3:25pm Even more snow, and you can see just in front of the bus how thick the snow was on the road. The first time I did this journey was earlier in the year and there was less snow. In fact there was mostly no snow that time around, a cloudless sky with UV rich sunlight pooring in through the thinner atmosphere at this height.

3:39pm And then there is even more snow cover. The air was super cold here, a good bite in it.

3:40pm Very deep snow here. What a job to clear this road of snow.

3:45pm And then there was very little ground without snow, and the snow over 1 meter deep all around.

3:48pm Its quite camoflaged but if you notice the bottom of the valley on the left of the bus is rather deep!

3:54pm For the most part the road just goes two way, backwards and forwards. There being no other place to the sides to go. Just over the top of the mountains are areas where seldom people go.

4:04pm Coming down now away from the snow plains. And there’s some small community in the distance. I think they moved there when the snows started to melt, for sure they can’t live there in the winter, the place is totally uninhabitable. I would really like to get a glimpse of this area in the winter. Shorter days, around -40c, and lots of snow. There are wild yaks around, and I saw some wild deer, so these guys eek out a living somehow, surely not in these high areas though, im sure they go to lower ground.

4:47pm A nice shapped mountain on the other side of the canyon, which is deathly deep as usual.

4:59pm Greenery! Life returns to the land as we go lower and the snow clears up.

5:09pm One of them death inducing drops again. This one had that 55 degree angle slope that led to a vertical drop into the canyon way below. At times like this I calmly went through how best to improve my chances of living should it fall off. I noted which windows were open so I could dive straight through one should it fall, I also was aware at all time the arrangement of my camera strap and camera case over my shoulder, so I could easily untangle myself if they caught on the window. I really did plan it! Some curiousity leads me to wonder how it would be. I’ll check some stats on the road see how many accidents there are every year. I do feel privalged to have done the road a few times now. I think i’m being overly dramatic about it though, many people do this journey many times each year.

5:15pm Again being suddenly presented with lots of distance and many features in this distance. Its surely one of the most amazing bus journeys in the world, if not the most amazing bus journey. I think there are some equally amazing and dangerous ones in the Andes in South America.

5:21pm Some of the road condition is perfect, some not so perfect. (you would think they would make the more dangerous areas more perfect, i guess though the problem is working on the most dangerous bits, its very hard to make the road any wider because there is nothing to build on).

5:59pm The mountains on the left look very lord of the rings hey, they even look computer generated.

6:03pm Some rubbly crappy road, not so high though, if the bus fell we would just get bruised and broken a bit, and cold from the water, unless of course my planning and cat like reflexes land me safely on the road as the bus takes a dip.

6:12pm As the sun goes behind the mountains we come closer to our destination.

6:12pm The area is very habitable now, lots of green, trees even. And some very fairytale looking villages in idilic places.

6:40pm Just up ahead is the village of Keylong, our destination. We made it safe and sound. No problems at all. The journey started off kinda slow for me, felt like the whole arduous day loomed ahead of me, but after the first hour things sped up for me and I was in constant wonder at what was going on outside the window.

I have one more day of this bus journey that I will do in the same style, with the times and everything. It was a shorter bus journey, only 7 hours, half the time of the first day. There are still some wonderful photo’s from it though.

I highly recomend this bus journey to anyone that feels bored with life and needs a shake up, its totally awe inspiring, you can’t help but feel something unique seeing these surroundings. The altitudes which you travel through are pretty mind altering as well, if you don’t exert yourself it all takes on a rather dream like quality. Then when the bus stops and you go to the toilet you are suddenly out of breath taking a small walk.

Look forward to all your comments

This is a Monastery, it can be seem throughout most of the city, so you never really get lost, because you just walk towards it if you do.

Some kids who demanded I take a picture of them.

And here are two extra special pictures. Last night I went back to the hill where I get the above shots from yesterday and I took these long exposure pictures. Yes its really night, thats the moon thats casting all that light, you can see its night from the stars in the sky and the fact that the ground is very dark. Pretty super pictures hey! If you go to my flickr you can see the full resolution pictures, ideal for desktops!

Here’s one more moonlight shot, this time with no moon. And an extra special bonus sheep picture because I don’t like to have a picture floating all on its own here.

So I’m still here in Leh. I don’t have much time left here though, I have to start making my way to Nepal which goes something like, Leh-Manali (2days) Manali-Delhi (12 hours) Delhi-Varanasi (12 hours) varanasi-Nepal (10 hours), So I think i’ll hot foot it to Varanasi and see how long I have to spare, and any days I can spare I’ll spend them in monsoon time Varanasi! I’ve never seen it in monsoon time, so that should be different.

Another HDR. This is the Shanti Stupa, which is a relatively new Stupa. A Stupa is a big lump with stuff buried inside them, Buddhist stuff.

This says “Om Mani Padme Hum” Which is the chant that the Tibetans say when they count their beads. People carve this into rocks and leave them at Stupa’s. Most Stupa’s I have seen are surrounded by these rocks.

I think these are kind of like mini Stupa’s. I have seen them all over India. And my friend Sasha said that the mountain people in Russia also make these. I wonder if there is a connection between these and the stacking that autistic people can sometimes do.

A Ladakhi style chimney. And some Tibetan prayer flags, they are everywhere! I heard someone say that they are a bit of a problem, and it could be true, i have seen huge masses of these things, wrapped around and around boulders in the middle of nowhere, like huge gay bee-hives (since the do look a bit like the gay flag hey?). Either way, I like to see them.

I liked the way the sun reflected on this fence. And that is Upper Changspa, the area I am staying in. Its the quiet corner of town.

And to prove im here, me! And that room on the far corner of that building is my room. Which is beautiful!

Its kinda brief, but why not hey.

My first two nights accommodation on the journey were in Srinagar, in a house boat on a lake. It was a lovely place and I did want to see more, but there was a strike in the town, and then the owners of the houseboat I was staying in turned out to be greedy and made my stay kinda horrible. They lied about the room, they then at breakfast got some friends over to show me jewelery and crystals that I might want to buy, then they went on about taking a tour in a jeep with them, and a tour of the lake on their boat. Then when I asked to be taken to a dhaba (cheap restaurant) they refused and served me food there which I new they would charge silly prices for (since we were on a lake I needed them to take me places on their boat). So I decided not to play their game and I stayed in my room and watched movies. I really couldn’t be bothered with all their pressure, they never talked about anything other than offering me something, its quite tiring. Then when I left they charged me 100rs for an omelet and they wanted 150 for a thali (should be 50ish) and then they wanted to charge me to leave because the would have to take me to the shore! I got them to throw that charge after some arguing. So yeah, It wasn’t so nice there. I did get told that there are a lot of greedy people and cheaters in Srinagar, and I came across them right away! You can see from the photos though that its a beautiful place, just not that many tourists go there! Not a surprise considering the way you get treated.

Then I caught the bus to Leh, the life affirming bus journey. These are my compadres on the journey.

Now, I’m not going to talk much about the journey, other than some comments under the photographs, more so I’m going to talk about what I thought about on the journey, whilst inter-dispersing it with pictures from the journey. I hope you can bear with me, and please, if you can’t follow it, or can’t relate to it then I would love it if you talked to me about this. Since I would see it as a failing on my behalf if I fail to communicate these thoughts to you. I feel like they are a part of everyone.

It was such an amazing experience, and it came at an interesting moment in my life. Lately I have been practicing a type of meditation where I watch my mind. I think it might help if I explain a common held view of the mind, in many practices (I think this is a very hard to disagree with view of how the mind works). For the most part, what we have inside our heads tends to be an inner dialog. A voice that drifts from the past to the future, dipping into the present briefly to check whats going on, then it relates it to the past, looks for some correlation, some incident that was similar, and then tries to predict the future, moment to moment, to, in essence survive from moment to moment. Its what makes humans so much different to animals, our capacity to compute in such an abstract way, our lives. Its very good at doing this, very very good, we don’t even realize that this is what its doing most of the time, but this is what it is doing. We feel like this inner dialog is us, but how can it be when it just carries on doing it especially in times when we would rather it didn’t. What is more us is this passenger that watches the dialog, and gets involved. We think its completely who we are, we let moments in our lives define how we will be in the future, and as happens a lot, it impedes us, we inevitably learn unhelpful responses. Going back to my bus journey, I’m sure that if I had to take that same bus journey again I would feel apprehensive, but because I am aware of this I feel like I have the upper hand. So back to “watching my mind” which I mentioned at the start of this paragraph. Its a kind of meditation, many times during my day I take a step back from my thoughts (its easier when I’m not feeling strong emotions, however the practice more and more helps with emotional swells), and I watch them without getting involved. If I’m worrying about something I step back and watch, its amazing how under a still gaze the worry seems to squirm, I can often loose what I was originally worrying about only to see it get replaced by something else, seeing this is very curious. I have noticed that my mind will go to negative when my body is tired, so to deal with this stress of the body, the mind quickly looks for a reason. Imagine a time when we were hunters and we were hunted. If our body was under stress our minds would quickly search its memory and try and think about what could go wrong with a stressed body, maybe we wouldn’t be able to avoid some serious danger, a sudden attack from a tiger! Or perhaps we wouldn’t have the strength to hunt and provide more energy for the body, so it makes sense that our mind would leap about trying to solve the current problem. In our lives though, there isn’t much real danger, we have social worries mainly, yet we apply all importance to these events, as if these events were a tiger going to jump out and eat us. Schizophrenia is a disease where the mind simply fails to not get involved completely with the past and future it dwells on. A sufferer will feel as though he or she is actually taking part in the events in their heads, in some cases so strongly that they see people. These people they see are merely extensions of what you and I see in our heads, for instance when we are thinking about going to see a friend, we muse over what we might say, for a schizophrenic sufferer they feel like they actually do have this conversation and their relationship with that person changes due to the content of the conversation. I think we are all schizophrenic at one time or another in our lives. So I have been watching my mind. During my traveling I have picked up a few moves from yoga, and learned the essence of what it is. Its primarily stretching while focusing on the feelings from the body, stretching to exercise muscles, which in turn improves blood flow to that area, also it moves around the organs and massages them if you like. In the past I have never much enjoyed it, it pained my body to do it, caused my blood to flow, my heart to beat faster and I felt quite perturbed by it all, if you like I got involved in my mind and decided that the extra stress on my body is no good, so I gave up. However, now doing yoga, or simple stretching, I close my eyes and watch my mind. The increased blood flow can make my head feel light, and then full or pressure and then light again. I can feel the heat rise in my body, I don’t get involved, I simply watch. If I feel pain when I try and touch my feet I focus on the pain, adjusting the part of the body where the most pain is, flexing it in various directions to see how it feels, watching watching all the time. I don’t hold any reason to doing it, other than to experiment with my mind and body, to see what they do when I watch my mind and manipulate my body. I tell you this yoga example as a way of showing how useful it can be to watch the mind when you carry out tasks. Don’t get involved, just watch.

And the second part of the journey started, going past gawping people (as usual), then it went into the mountains!

The bus went past some amazing scenery, like this glacier with a tunnel in it from the flowing water. And the glacier tunnel from higher up, this shows the flow of the road, looping back and going up up up.

In Bagsu I met an amazing guy from Italy. A guy called Sam (hi Sam if your reading this). We talked a lot about the mind, and all the things that it does. He has been a great inspiration to me, mainly he helped me see that I have been doing many different things in my mind for many years and that they can all be tied together within the world of “watching” it. One day whilst talking with Sam on the roof of our guesthouse, Viky the owner came to us with two necklaces that someone had left behind, and she gave them too us. They turned out to be meditation beads. A necklace of 108 beads that you count whilst repeating some phrase or mantra for each bead. In McLeod Ganj you can see Tibetan people carrying them all the time, they use them as a tool, and they are a very valuable and useful tool! The Tibetans repeat a Tibetan prayer, Sam however told me to just try and repeat the word “Om” on each bead. Breath in slowly as I take the first bead, and let out a low “Ommmmm” until all the air is expelled, and then repeat for the next bead. I decided to experiment with the sound, I have been trying a very low “Om” as deep in my throat as I can get it, I do this because the vibration that is caused by doing this sound is more the deeper I get it, and its this vibration which I have heard increases blood flow and can cause some interesting effects. The first time I did it, around the tenth bead I suddenly felt light headed, like I had stood up too fast. By simply repeating a sound I got an effect similar to what can be achieved through moving. By paying close attention to the mind in various situations you can get a real feel for what does what to the body. Anyway, I’m drifting from the point a bit so I’ll try and swing back to the bus journey.

Then things started to slow down, which made me slightly concerned, what was impeding the flow of traffic up ahead! Stopping and starting we slowly creeped forward.

This was the view, combined with the cautiously moving traffic that got me quite scared. I think that rock in the first picture is supposed to stop you if you fall off. The second picture was almost as close as we got, the closest we got caused me to get too scared to think about taking a picture.

And then I found out why we were going so slow. We had to drive through a glacier, and there was only enough room for single file traffic! This was both beautiful and relieving.

Back to that moment of fear, my mind stilled. It reached a point where thoughts were no longer needed, at least from its point of view. It was wonderful. Since I had been watching my mind a lot lately, It was like I had leaped off a metaphysical edge, and I went into free fall for a while, just watching the stillness. And then I didn’t hit the bottom, because there is no bottom, And I didn’t really jump off anything we are always falling, or flying, depending on which way you look at it. So then the bus trundled along, not falling off the edge, and more to my joy it moved away from the edge. Even though I did feel a sense of elation at what had just gone on I won’t lie, it was all born from intense fear. So of course there was relief when it moved from the edge. And from then on I mused a lot, I came up with some great ideas most of which focused around being a still point within the swirling mind, we watch where we will but it all exists in there, good times, bad times, we can look where we want to. If we focus on bad things though it gets easier to focus on them again and again, like we get a crick in our metaphysical neck and it hurts to move it. Or in the past I have used the analogy of our minds being like a canvas, and all our events are like colours being painted on it, yesterdays colours drive our colours for today, we should try and keep a blank canvas though, so when we want to paint something its easy to do so. Another analogy I came up with is concerning the shaping of who we are by the events around us and the decisions we make in these events. To compare what we do in our lives, the events we put ourselves in, to the tools an artist uses. The art that we are creating is who we are, and we chip away with metaphyisical hammer and chisel, creating something extremely complicated and abstract, full of meaning and colour, emotion, response, so much. How we craft IS up to us, be sure you know what your doing, be aware and watch every strike of the hammer. Don’t forget every aspect and thought in your mind is really just a tool to help get your body safely through life, its not who you are, you are the watcher.

And that was all my fear over with, I was elated with the beauty of the scenery from then on, even calmly watching sketchy bypasses like this (on the opposite side of our bus was a cliff).

After a nights sleep in a town called Kargil, we set off at 4.30am. The sun was just rising but was yet to touch us, being blocked by the constant panorama of mountains. The first thing of interest I saw was this red stream, whats going on! My guesses are iron or other mineral, blood, tomato ketchup or someone has been washing lots of red skittles just over the hill.

Here comes the sun! It was wonderful to see it break free from the mountains, casting many shadows as it skimmed the top of them all.

So, I think the main point I want to get across is that little voice that we call us, isn’t actually us. We are more than that. This voice is just the mind trying to help us, by predicting things while reflecting on the past. You don’t have to listen to it, or get involved with it. I find it amazing when I do focus my minds eye on the voice while not getting involved, what happens is the dialog quickly jumps, as your not getting involved in each train of thought, the mind presents another situation to see if that one is worth thinking about. As you remain still and don’t get involved another is presented. I can get into a state of mind where these thoughts speed up, as if my mind is quickly flicking through a file-o-fax, and then my mind starts to bring in pictures for my contemplation, to see if it can rouse interest. Its this state of mind that influences my drawings. I remember as a child I used to watch my mind while trying to get to sleep, it would often present me with patterns, and I enjoyed to watch and manipulate them. I think all children do this, they live inside their head and are constantly amazed and and at wonder at what the mind presents to them. We all have that capacity, to return to that amazement of the mind, just detach yourself from that voice and see what happens next.

So yeah, I thought along these lines on the first half of that journey. The next day was very peaceful and I felt very lucky to be there. Its a unique landscape and I was totally immersed in it, I imagined that over the top of each mountain there was more mountains, mountains and mysteries. It brought to mind the stories of H.P. Lovecraft who often wrote about the deep Himalayas, and ancient deserted cities buried deep within them. The mountains of madness he would call them.

Moments like this were great, the landscape is totally foreign, like Mars or the moon. It all felt rather special being there.

We sped past this temple so I had to race to get this picture. And some Muslim women waiting at one of the checkpoints. Since the road came very close to the Pakistan border there were many check points. At times in the past there have been disputes on this land. Crazy bastards.

Sand dunes and mountain peaks.

The bus made its merry way, it was so old, yet so strong, I felt very attached to its murmurings as it dragged itself up steep bits. We stopped a few times to toilet and eat. People would always stare in the places we stopped. There were a few more cliff edge bits of the journey, but they had to be done, so I just let them happen. The sun changed its position in the sky, altering shadows and the colours in my photographs.

A lot of the time we were driving alongside different rivers. And always you could see snow capped peaks in the distance.

You can’t help think about all the effort that’s gone into building the road, and its upkeeping. There is so much of it, I’m sure as well that you travel at least double the distance to your destination whilst driving through these mountains, always having to snake back on your self to get up the mountains.

The landscape changed quite a lot, cycling through variations that im sure all have names in many cultures.

This yak caught everyones attention on the bus, all alone in the middle of nowhere, whats it playing at? And I remember seeing many towers like the ones in the second picture my first time in the mountains. There is often a rock on top of each of these tower things, not so much here, but i’ve seen huge areas of these things, each with a big boulder on top. I think the rock helps create the tower, while all the surrounding land is being eroded the rock prevents the ground immediatly under it from errosion, and that starts the tower.

The guy in front was often looking out of the window, especially on the few times we had to wait for something up ahead. And there’s the guys hands as he kicks back for a while.

My whole journey consisted of a bus from Dharamsala to Jammu, which took about 6 hours. Then I immediatly got in a jeep that was going to Srinagar, this was for about 10 hours. Then I had two nights in Srinagar on the houseboat and I left in the morning to get a bus to Kargil which took about 11 hours. Then the next morning I got back on the same bus and it took me to Leh, which took another 11 hours or so. So as my journey came to the last day, with only a few hours to go I felt very elated. My ass was sore, so was one of my knees as it was always in contact with the seat in front. I had some mild sunburn on my face which was totally from reflection as I had been very careful about avoiding direct sunlight, its much stronger the higher you are. Despite the pains I felt great.

Even though it seems a long way still to go, considering the length of the whole journey it was nearly over.

Getting closer and closer to Leh the land flattened out, becoming much more desirable for city planners. Its amazing to see Leh when you get there, knowing how god damn remote the area is, and bang! There’s a town, and a decent sized one, with a dual carriageway, bank, internet and other such signs of modern habitation.

These workers were from Leh im guessing, out to improve the road, getting the orders for the evenings work. And the second picture is the start of the Indus valley according to the signs. Its calm river covers much flat ground and allows vegitation, which attracts animals and humans. Leh is here mainly because of this wonderful river.

And I arrived, I got a taxi to the top end (spatially speaking not affluently speaking) of the quite part of town, and walked a little to an area I remembered from last time. And took a lovely small room with a view of a vegetable patch and the sun in the evenings. I stayed in that room two nights before a large room on the other side of the house came free. That wast this morning. Two of my new rooms walls are almost completely windows. I’m very happy with this room with all its sunlight. I plan to stay here for 3 weeks, two of these weeks I think I will be alone and I will practise watching my mind, practice juggling, practise drawing and watch movies and relax, welcoming stillness into my mind.

I hope you have enjoyed this story and didn’t get put off by the drifting nature with which I told it. I guess if your reading this you made it through it all. I’m glad.

Well until next time, goodbye!

This is one of the words pictures I did, theres a few pictures squeezing in there.

Another words pictures, all words this time, and all animals!

I filled in the gaps with colours on photoshop, some would say kinda garish, but I have always liked to see lots of colours together like this.

After filling a few pages with words, and then squeezing in pictures in the gaps I noticed how satisfying it was to fill a whole page, and the overall effect was really good. So I put my mind to completely filling a page with as much detail as I could, I still enjoyed putting words in, so I included a few choice words. It took quite some time, but the overall effect was well worth it. It looks like a mammoth task, but each moment in the picture passed smoothly and enjoyably, to watch it grow was also very enjoyable. It just required patience and time.

I decided to draw a picture without words, just using abstract patterns, following simple rules and then to make it easier I repeated the pattern in quaters, so really I just had one fourth of an idea, much easier this way. I was very happy with the results and vowed to repeat this drawing style again.

So now I had quite a few nice pictures in my book, I could look to the first page and to the one I was currently drawing and see some kind of evolution. It was this improvement, this sense of acheivement which would drive me on to draw more. Its the sense of acheivment that we get from any aspect in life that encourages one to go onwards. I get a great sense of acheivement from computer games, specifically the ones where you improve something over times, for instance Role Playing Games like the Final Fantasy series, I really enjoy leveling up on that game. Also I enjoy Simcity and this type of game, building up something over times, big sense of achievement, it drives me on and on, its what drives us all on and on. So with my drawings in chronological order I gained a sense of improvement and achievement. I could also look back over what I had drawn for inspiration on what to draw next, since I already knew I could draw what I had already drawn!

If you look at the picture before the Mandala style picture you can see a small section at the top where its just dots, it kinda looks like stars, I thought that this looked very nice so I decided to repeat it and fill a whole page with dots. It took some time, but it the more dots I drew the more impressive the effect, nice sense of achivement so I pushed on. When people look through what I have drawn they often stop on this one, for me its not my favorite, but it does look impressive I know that much. I did get quite bored with it towards the end, even drawing completely other pictures before I added what I thought was the final dot.

I practise drawing everyday now, mainly I use ink, using a graphic design style pen, not a ballpoint. In Varanasi since my enjoyment in drawing was growing and growing I invested in some nice pens and I even bought some paint. I had a lovely room with a huge window, so I would spent my time sat under the window drawing and drawing. I did put my hand to drawing faces from photographs, I drew what I thought was a very acurate picture of myself from a photo I took. It took such a long time though, constantly erasing and redrawing the lines. Still though I tried other faces, and in one of my drawing books I have three faces I have drawn that for me look totally like what I was aiming for. With time and patience I feel like I can draw what I look at. However my prefered drawing style is more abstract, since im never really aiming for anything other than a nice shape, which means I can’t go wrong that much.

I started to play with paint after a while also, now this is a whole other world for me. More than just creating shapes you have to think about colour and how it works together, how to mix new colours and how to get the paint onto the paper, using a brush is an art in itself.

I started by just getting down colours I found appealing, and getting them down in an interesting shape, I then drew over the paint with ink for a nice effect.

Enjoying drawing more and more I decided to buy a professional pen, a Rotring Isograph, which is a refilable pen with a 0.1mm nib, for super detail. The first of these pens I bought I broke by drawing over paint! It blocked the pen and eventually after numerous cleaning a hair thin strand of metal came out of the end which was part of the valve to let the ink flood out, with that gone the ink either flooded out in an unctrolled way, or just didn’t come out at all. Since I wasn’t in the same town where I bought this beloved pen I ordered some and had them delivered to the post office of the town I was in! Extravagent but I have become quiet dedicated to drawing with this pen.

More of the ink over paint style, figuring out what works well. This is how I ruined the first Rotring pen I bought.

With the new ultra thin pen I bought I could cram more detail in, so I decided to do another Mandala style picture like the quatered picture up there. This time I decided to do it in 8ths. I was very happy with the way this picture turned out and it made me very enthusiastic to draw more like it.

So I drew more like it!

And more!

And even more, in fact I have so many of these now, and i’ve been giving them out as gifts, im very happy that people are very happy to recieve them, one friend even offered to pay me for one, but I couldn’t accept anything from a friend, since I feel that I could draw these things forever.

Whilst I was waiting for my new rotring pens to arrive I started to use these coloured pens, drawing lines and lines and lines. A very easy technique that required little skill just patience.

And thats some of what i’ve been up to of late. I have so many other drawings that I havn’t scanned in yet. When I get round to it ill be sure to post them on my Flickr account if not this site.

Truth is I really haven’t felt like writing, or editing photographs for ages, as I mentioned in my last post. I’m now in Bagsu in the Himalayas, where I have been two times before, it feels like home for me here. I am staying with the same family I did the other two times, and they were all very happy to see me. I have a wonderful room with two windows, one of them with a great view and a table next to it, which is where I am sat now on my computer. The view is of the town Daram Sala, which is about 1000m below me, and then beyond that stretches the rest of India. I feel like a sentinel up here, awaiting…..well, im not sure, just waiting and observing is enough, no expectations.

So, it was in March when me and Sasha were in Rishikesh. After Varanasi we were looking forward to cooler temperatures and a river we could swim in without fear of disease. We did find a clean river, but the temperature was no different to Varanasi it seemed, which im sure was into the 40’s at times (Celsius that is). Since we lived right next to the Ganges river though, the temperature was bearable and whilst bathing in the ice cold river the heat was lovely, in-get cold, out-get hot, in-get cold, out-get hot, perfect!

To get to Rishikesh we took a train to the nearest town, Haridwar. We thought we would arrive in the town, hop off the train and into a rickshaw right to our destination. So, we did arrive, at about 4am, and the street just outside the train station was full, full of people! We knew there was a festival on, a festival called Kumbah Mellah, which is rather quite important if your a Hindu. This festival happens once every 4 years (I think, correct me if you know different) and it cycles between different towns. The fact that it was in Haridwar this time was very important because of the River Ganges and how clean the river is in this town. So that explained all the people. There were thousands, in all directions. They were all heading to the river to bath, bathing is the focal point of the festival. Because of the vast number of people the roads had been closed to most vehicles, so that meant no rickshaws for us tourists. What to do! The town we wanted to be in was some double figure kilometers from where we were. We set off on foot to find the end of the crowds, in the hope that we could find a rickshaw, we were in India after all and most of the time you get the impression that there are too many rickshaws. We walked and walked, following the flow of people, we found a taxi that would take us to our destination for 10 times what it should cost, but since we had met with some other travelers on the train who were going to the same place, it wouldn’t bust our budgets too much to take this over priced taxi. So reluctantly and happily (since we had been walking with all our bags, confused for some time) we got in the taxi, he set off only to quickly find out that the road blocks stopped him from going anywhere, so we all got out and started walking around again. As always in India when asking for directions or advice we were pointed in all directions by many different people. Some people said take a bus, some said take a train, some said walk. Eventually after walking for almost 2 hours with all our bags we were back at the train station, to find out that there was a train going to where we wanted to go! And it was leaving in 30 mins! As it arrived at the station there was an insane rush to get on it, more people that would ever fit on it tried to get on it. Since we were tourists and stupid (at least thats what we played at being in the following decision), we opened the door to the conductors private little room, the Indian crowd saw us and joined us, after a while the room was full, but at least we were on the train. However the train conductor of course noticed this, and told everyone to get off, we told him that “someone” said we could get on here, and he let us stay, and only us! We had lots of space, we could dangle out of the train with the door open, we could lounge around in peace. It was perfect. After all the hours carrying our bags not knowing how we were going to get to our destination, willing to pay a silly price for a taxi, in the end we traveled in luxury for free! Hurrah!

This is Sasha smiling at the craziness of the whole situation that morning, and our new friend Alenka who wasn’t amused by what was going on. I think that me and Sasha finding it all rather amusing didn’t help her. Can’t blame her though, after a night sleeping on a train, getting woke at 4am, and walking for hours with many kilograms of stuff, not many would be willing to give a smile. I’m not saying im always cheery, but for some reason all of that didn’t seem to bother me that morning. The second picture is just of some building in Haridwar taken at a later date. Nice building I thought.

So we arrived in Rishikesh, our new friends had been there before and took us straight to a wonderful guesthouse. Not without incident though, because of the festival and the vast number of people and because the police were corrupt and the rickshaw drivers also were corrupt we couldn’t get a rickshaw to where we wanted to go. The driver did say he would take us where we wanted to go, but stopped a couple of kilometers from this place, saying that the police won’t let him, so we gave him 50rs less, he flipped a bit but he knew he couldn’t take us to where we wanted to go and he didn’t tell us to start with. Dishonesty doesn’t pay he needs to learn. So we walked and walked, up a hill, down a hill, across a bridge, and we all checked into one room, 4 of us, since there was only one room at the guesthouse, festival and all that! We didn’t care though, we were happy to be where we wanted to be, and we were promised another room as soon as one came free.

Sooooooooo…onto the festival! Its all about washing in the river, it lasted for a couple of months, and over these months there were a few set dates for washes, although people washed at all times. There were a few big washes and I think one main wash called the king wash. First of all, all the baba’s wash and then the normal people wash, believing that they are absorbing some of the holiness from the babas. We hung around in Rishikesh until there was a wash day, and then we headed out into Haridwar, the town we had only seen in the haze of the morning when we arrived. We got a local bus to the town, it was all quite easy when you knew how, none of the drama we had when we first arrived.

On the bus there these two guys gorped at us for a while and eventually introduced themselves, the one on the right told me he was a TV star, and he gave me a rather old and battered business card to prove it, it said his name and underneath, sure enough, it said TV star. And out of the window on the way I saw that impressive hill, out of context to the story im telling, but look at it! Looks like the ground has bust open recently but I doubt that it is a recent movement.

The festival changed the town for the duration that it was on. Whole extra neighborhoods of tents were erected, I saw temporary tent hospitals all over the place. Babas, gurus, and other such holy men from all over India came to become more holy and to teach you how to become holy as well. Check out all these billboards, they all tell of their respective gurus and I guess a short message from them with the hope that you will go “well im convinced, sign me up, here’s some dollar, my soul is yours” To me its mostly bullshit. Lets take a little look at each billboard individually.

First one, ok, nice big beards for both of them guys, nice smile from the second guy, and a rather lavish paint job on his forehead not too whorish in comparison to others I saw. Second one, well, he’s spiced up his holyness by adding some light spilling out from behind him, he’s got a nice paint job on his bonce as well, lots of orange and yellow, good Hindu colours, he’s got a baby Krishna and some other god on the other side. He does have a nice smile though, good and honest.

Billboards 2
First pic, well there’s a few pictures there, nothing too notable though, apart from the guy in the middle waving a fist with his chest out, appealing to the macho out there, of which India has many! Second one, mixed in with an advert for what looks like tea, that guy on the left seems to be appealing to the learned out there, he looks very scholary, not much room for me to make jokes though.

First pic, devoid of Hindu colours, i think this guy though isn’t really competing for your devotion like the other, he’s just offering you a welcome, there’s something about the upliftment of the disabled though, maybe he claims to be able to cure them, he wouldn’t be alone in his claims to be able to do miracles though, many of these gurus exist purely because of their ability to do tricks, believe me, not one of them can actually do a miracle. Second pic, hmm, nothing too note worthy either, nice hindu colours, fat chins, weak beard from the guy on the left.

First pic, come on man, terrible photograph, not even smiling, the photo of the guy on the right is distorted, the colours are all washed out, no hindu colours and whats with all the dots over the picture?? If I were to pick a guru he wouldn’t be the one, no sireee! Second pic, nice, nice hindu colour, nice bonce paintjob, lines of enlightenment emanating from behind him, nice smile, good age also, easier to accept his wisdom, lots of jewelry as well, and the beard is just super.

Billboards 5
First pic, nice contemplative stare he’s got going on there, it does look a little forced though. Good beard, discreet paint job on his bonce, at least compared to some of the others, lacking good hindu colours though. , nice bit of English though “know yourself” very wise. Second pic, wow, now were talking, this guy reeks of the divine, super smooth skin, loving gaze, hindu colours, no hair at all! Very eye catching, and nice photo in the back ground, sunset, nice nice. The second billboard looks a little like a bank advert.

I’ve saved the best two till last. First pic, he heheh, do I even need to say anything?? All them flowers! Totally whoring himself out there, and look at that dreamy far away look on his face! Sheesh. Second pic, this one totally blew me away, right so its obvious he’s riding on the whole environment to push his wares, he’s showing a few pictures of the damaged environment, top left its all dry and cracked, (which does happen naturally and quite without concern in someplaces, but i’ll let him off) top right, yep, cutting down tree’s is no good, (does happen in sustainable forests, but i’ll let that go again). bottom right, well, thin people sleeping on a dry river bed, thats no good all round, and that fish all dry, that aint good at all. And now we come to the bottom left panel, it shows an elephant at a safari park, a picture from Jaws, a polar bear begging, and an elephant picking someone up whilst being ridden by a guy. So I guess what these are trying to say is that nature is fighting back, the animals are coming to get us, but come on! Two of the pics are fabrications! The polar bear and the shark eating the lady. And elephant and the car probably happens all the time at safari parks, as for the elephant picking someone up, its not attacking him is it, its just picking him up, plus there’s a guy riding it. That gurus whole argument goes to pot with that last section of pictures, he’s just using the environment as an excuse to sucker people in, and you know what, im totally certain that there are many Indians who will see that and be totally sold, signing up to that guys lessons in fear of having a polar bear asking for spare change on the streets of Delhi. What a chump!

There were literally hundreds of these billboards all over the town, erected just because of this festival. Whilst walking around we came across these temporary tent towns that housed the Guru’s and Baba’s

Here’s what they looked like.

We went in for a small walk around, but didn’t stay long, it was all very hot. Many travelers I have met since say they stayed in these places with all the holymen, some of the more naive travelers told me of powers of these holy men, and stories of miracles often filter down to me, i’ve never actually met someone who has witnessed a miracle though, let alone someone who can perform them!. To me its all very interesting, some of them even amazing in their devotion, but as for them being somehow divine and living a higher existence to me, its just not true, they are people like you and me, they don’t posses any extra abilities or anything, other than being extremely limber and content, maybe they have renounced worldly goods and im sure many of them (none of the ones on the billboards mind you) have reached a level of contentment in life thats to be envied, but they are not divine or magic in anyway, they are humans like you and me. One guy here told me he was there and he saw this baba who as soon as he made eye contact with the western guy he took out a knife and plunged it right through his arm, I hear things like this a lot, extreme acts to prove their devotion, its nice that these fringe people have direction and a place in this country. In England any extreme mindsets are often demonized and outcast from society, and they often end up being homeless and ignored, here in India they are revered. None of it really matters in the long run of things though, life just us, we live and die, same as all other things alive, what we actually do makes no difference, with this in mind live a peaceful life and be nice to people, eat healthy, take regular walks, and brush your teeth twice a day.

We popped our heads into a couple of tents, in one we saw a guru giving spewing forth words of wisdom, and a respectable crowd listening. And in another we saw these painted girls, there was music and some teachings as well, also with a respectable crowd. I think because of the vast number of people in India whatever your teaching, you will find someone to listen. Who knows maybe i’ll give it a go one day.

So we walked around all the tents, grew very hot, and eventually we made our way to the river, where we found a nice quiet area, stripped to our pants and had a wash. Despite the hot day the cold river still made me shiver and eventually get too cold and want to get out. When we had done we were invited into a temple, where they fed us a wonderful meal. We felt so honored to receive this meal, at first we didn’t want to as I know there are many people far more hungry than me with no money, but they insisted and it seemed rude to turn them down. We ate with many poor local people, and after the meal the braman of the temple (the equivalent of a priest of vicar) gave me and Sasha 10rs each! (about 8 pence), whilst he did this someone took photo’s of the handing over of the money, I guess to show how amazingly godly and generous the guy is what with giving money to people who don’t even need it, we gave our money to poor children when he wasn’t looking.

This is the main crowd of devotees having a wash, we didn’t wash with them, finding a quiet area more peaceful.

So after our wash and our meal we had had enough of the crowds and the heat, we decided to leave Haridwar and head back to Rishikesh. We did this quiet uneventfully.

Still, in Rishikesh there was also an immense crowd, all flooding over from the festival, deciding to do some sightseeing, visit some famous temple there and generally clog up the streets.

See! So many people! This was on one of the wash days, the most busiest of days. We were staying in an area called Laxman Jula, which was on the other side of the river ganges, to get there we had to cross a foot bridge. And on busy days they designated this footbridge one way! The bridge going the other was was a couple of kilometers along the river, a massive inconvenience if you needed to get to the other side.

Here’s them bridges, one of them being guarded by a monkey.

We stayed right near a famous temple, which drew massive crowds, on one of the days I saw a enormous pile of shoes, sandals and flip flops outside, at first I thought someone was selling the, but then I realized that they were from the people inside the temple. It was crazy, since there was so many people on the streets the pile was rapidly being spread all over, yet still more shoes were being added from people going in the temple. Its like they didn’t notice or care that they could very well loose their shoes. Another example of the confusing mind set of the average Indian.

There’s Rishikesh from above, we stayed a little further along the river. And in that very river were many many giant fish! Since its illegal to fish in the holy river Ganges, the fish grow to wopping sizes, fed on little balls of crunchy matter sold by kids along the bridges. Sasha was all set on heading out one night and catching himself one of these fish for a tasty meal, he never did however, I would have loved to eat one of these holy beasts.

And thats it really, we did go and visit an Ashram that was designed and lived in by the beatles, but I didn’t take my camera since it was so hot and a chore to carry it around. Sasha got some pictures with my little camera, and I sang a beautiful rendition of “Hey Jude” inside this echoey meditation room. Its on video so maybe ill put it online at some point. The ashram was amazing, such a great design, but for some reason its abandoned now, one man lives there and you pay him 50rs to look around, its interesting since its over such a large area and the guy that lives there is very strict about not letting the average Indian in there, so its completely empty and overgrown. It was nice to think of the Beatles there, they stayed there for over a year I was told, meditating and learning.

So the rest of our stay in Rishikesh was spent wandering around, eating nice food and taking daily dips in the icy river.

This painted baba guy pestered me for ages as I was taking pictures of monkeys, eventually I very reluctantly gave him 10rs, he then looked disappointed and asked for 100rs! I took the 10 back and left him with nothing, he lives and learns like us.
I saw this beggar everyday, along a stretch of road that had many other beggars, all with odd disabilities, the guy has a wing! A small slice with a razor would sort that out wouldn’t it.

Monkeys! I love it when there are monkeys where im staying, they are so entertaining. That second one was great, giving us threatening looks from above, then taking a pee out of the tree, luckily I was out of the way by then.

More monkeys! If you look close you can see that monkey grooming the little monkey only has one hand, seems to be getting on alright without it, very lucky it survived the wound loosing a hand would cause. That second monkey is a different species, its refered to as the black faced monkey by other travelers, and is loved for its peaceful demeanor, unlike the other monkey which is quiet frankly, nuts.

Some nice looking (yet bland tasting, as is most of the fruit and veg in India) vegetables.

That painted man sat in front of a restaurant called Chotiwall, which means Small man, he sat there all day everyday, I never saw him leave his post, he would chat to the other workers in the restaurant and smile in an odd way at potential customers. And there’s a man selling wallnuts, lots and lots of wallnuts.

So in the end, sooner than we planned we left Rishikesh, mainly because of the heat, just too hot during the day to do anything. So we caught a bus to Shimla, stayed one night there, and then got a bus in the morning to Manali, both buses took about 12 hours, some of the hours went slow, some went fast. Im super used to long bus jouneys as you would expect so I have no real complaints about doing them, i just pop my headphones on and gawp out of the window.

Whilst the driver had a rest in a bus station I saw this bus, an Aryan bus, Hitler did take a lot of influence from India, its the same with the swastika, he stole it from India, filthying its use forever in the west. And there’s a load of Muslims I saw from the bus window, all men, women at home, not worthy to get involved with whatever they get up to inside the mosque.

As we went further and further into the mountains the view became more and more beautiful. This is a wonderful temple stuck on the side of a mountain. And on one of the many bus stops and rests was this beautiful town.

And here’s some shots of Sasha my sputnik (which is russian for traveling companion) for the last 2 months or so.

And there you go! Another post from me! Sorry I don’t put more up, I do feel guilty about not posting as much as I used too. But lately I also get a similar feeling I used to get when I didn’t do my homework when it comes to posting, it shouldn’t be like that though, I should enjoy writing and editing photographs. Anyways, I did enjoy writing this, and maybe i’ll get more into the frame of mind to write more. Fingers crossed for that hey. Maybe y’all can spur me on with witty heartfelt replies to this post.

Look forward to hearing from anyone!

I met my parents in Mumbai not long after the last time I did a proper post. It’s great to be with people on their first time in India, similar to the way its great to watch your favorite film with somone that hasn’t seen it, in the hope that you will be able to share something that you love. India hit my parents in typical way, the taxi had to change a flat tire, from a bald one to another bald one. The taxi driver scared my father with his wild and usual driving, and the filth caught both of my parents attention, but I think they both quickly got used to it, as they did with the beggars after seeing that despite looking very dirty they also mostly looked quite happy.

It was great to travel with my parents, and they handled it fine, absolutly no problems, I never really thought there would be, they had concerns but i’m sure they now admit that there was no need to be concerned. Traveling really is easy if you just take it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. What may seem like a big task or journey at first is easily tackled bit by bit, as are all things in life.

Me and my folks went for a tour around Mumbai, seeing the muslim market area, catching a boat to Elephanta island to see some old buddist temples, and on one day walking in a random direction and ending up having a great day filled with many sights. Including the docks where they bring the fish in, and then ending up in a poor part of town and finding out that despite being terribly poor they all seemed very happy with life. I think my parents really enjoyed Mumbai, its not surprising really, its an old city filled with much history from many cultures.

All these boats were just off the coast of Mumbai, the very same ocean that the terrorists sailed on in from the previous year and turned Mumbai into a war zone. We were heading to Elephanta island here, it was interesting to see the boats appear out of the fog (possibly just pollution). And that monkey was on Elephanta island. Most monkeys in tourist areas know the goodness to be had at the bottom of coke cans, and they know the joys to be found in plastic bags, grabbing them whenever they can.

This is the Chor Bazar area, which translates to Theives market, due to a story about Queen victoria rocking up in India with her fave violin only to end up getting it stolen and then it appeared for sale shortly after at this market. The market was great, a real sight to see, goats everwhere and many things for sale. Almost all the shops had their own goat at the front, not sure why really, its the muslim area and they eat goats so many they are all gonna be for eating.

The sunset across the bay from Chowpatty beach, the beach where the terrorists came in on.

That big building in the left photo is the Taj hotel, one of the main targets of the terrorists. And that big archway on the right is the gateway to India, where some royals from England came in for the first time. I wrote about this before if you check my other posts from India, from 3 years ago or something I think!

There’s my pops looking in an antique shop, and him saying no to a beggar. We did give to beggars, just its not possible to give to all, and there are arguments to not give to them at all, something about encouraging that type of lifestyle when they could go to the free schools and get an education and find a proper job.

So after Mumbai we caught the train to Karnataka, the state just below Goa. In Karnataka we headed for Gokarna, a very sleepy seaside village that is also a pilgramage sight for Hindu’s, due to the coast being the shape of a cows ear. I had been here before so I knew my way around, not that it was possible to get lost as its such a small place. We spent a few days in the main town and then moved to another beach called Om beach, there we stayed in very basic beach huts for a few days and swam in the sea everyday. I’m sure my parents had a great time there, its so picturesque and relaxing.

After Gokarna we went to Goa, the least Indian place we went to really. My parents noted that its all very false there, I think this is a feature of many holiday resort area’s. The tourists indirectly carve out little havens all over the world, having the locals cater to their tastes. This suits the locals and the tourists very well, and in many cases something new is created from the mixture of local and foriegn. In Arambol where we stayed in Goa there was a strong spiritual side to it all, and we landed right in the middle of it as soon as we got there. We were told that a place called Magic Park was a good place to stay, so we headed right there. The rooms were a little expensive, but they were nice rooms. However on looking around after checking in we realised it was a very spiritual place, lots of leaflets offering to save our souls in various ways, reiki, holisitic healing, crystals, meditation, yoga and so on. There was something going on every night. My parents wern’t to happy to be staying there, and nor was I. So we found another guesthouse with free rooms and then went to Magic Park and checked out even before we spent one night there, the owner, a nervy looking Austrian guy looked bothered but said he couldn’t do anything to stop us, he said it was highly iregular! I was very glad to get out of there. Im at odds with all that spiritual stuff, for a start its all business really, each particular miracle cure that promises to be able to save you from all negative feelings and turn your body into a power house that will carry you to greater and greater hights comes with a price, some of them really quite a hefty price. Only a few of them have a basis in science, namely Yoga and meditation. My advice is be wary of any trinkets, decoration or other props, including homeopathy. Crystals are very common. Most of the cures and things will instill a feeling of well being simply because someone is, at that time caring for you, offering you advice and telling you that you will feel ok, its the placebo effect which is well documented and does work! However the mention of the placebo effect to the purveyors of this spiritual mumbo jumbo illicts a look of disgust, a suspension of critical thinking ensues, it turns into mind games with no desire to get to the truth of the matter, us logical types get accused of always wanting to find answers and the truth, whats wrong with just believing im asked! I could go on and on with this subject but I wont, anyone wishing to discuss this topic though I will gladly hear what you have to say.

In Goa we ate steak, chicken, fish, shark, prawns and heinz beans, not together of course. My parents shopped a lot as they did everywhere, can’t blame them though, everything is so cheap and there are many beautiful things to buy in India. So after a week in Goa my parents left. I was with them for three weeks and really enjoyed showing them around, my only regret is not being able to show them more, I think if I were to choose what to show them I wouldn’t have gone to Goa, its nice and everything, but there are much more interesting places to show them in India. Maybe next time hey!

When my parents left I decided to stay in Goa, a friend of mine was already there and from already having one friend there I was introduced to many other people, and suddenly I was with a big circle of friends and I stayed in Goa for two months! Over Christmas and New year. I went to many parties and made many many new friends, many of whom I will see again soon. I also met a handful of people from Manchester who came to Goa for a holiday, some people I hadn’t seen in about 5 years, they all asked where did I go. I also met Johanna from Norway who I traveled with some months previous in Indonesia, it was great to see her again! Its always great to see people again that I traveled with. She has a blog, and its here , I didn’t read it in a while, she did say she mentions me in it a lot so maybe check it out.

I neglected photography in Goa, as you can tell by the lack of photos from Goa here, I did take a few, nothing special though really. My time in Goa was spent socializing mainly, something I hadn’t done in a long time, were talking a few years since I had such a large social life. I also started playing the guitar again, my friend in Goa saw that I had some skill and decided to loan me a spare one he had, im so greatful for this and I played it everyday, and now I would love to travel with a guitar. I also started drawing a lot, and I still do. Also I juggled everyday. So my attention was taken up by a lot of things. I will put some drawings on my site soon, also I may film some juggling and put that online also.

Eventually I left Goa, heading to familiar Varanasi, it was quite sad saying goodbye to all my friends there, but many of them were planning to leave soon so it made sense for me to leave. It was getting hot there also. In Varanasi I was to meet an old friend who I was with in Thailand 4 years ago or so, I was really looking forward to seeing her again. Also also I was to meet another friend in Varanasi, my old friend Kaye, who I see now and then in India only lately it seems.

I met all my friend in Varanasi and then I found myself with lots of time to myself when they had left. This was great, since I didn’t have time to myself in a long time. I juggled and started to learn to paint and draw more. Lots of peace ensued.

In Varanasi a festival called Holi passed me by, i had seen this festival before a few years earlier so I knew to avoid it. It involved the Indian men getting drunk and stoned and groping female tourist’s and displaying violence to the male tourist’s. Really they are supposed to just throw colour (as shown in the photo) at each other, im sure many do just do that, but the alchol fueled indian male is an idiot, as are most alcohol fueled males and they can’t help displaying their animosity towards the tourists under the influence.

This is the aftermath of Holi, lots of stained floors and walls.

Here I struggled to get these street kids to not look at the camera whilst I took pictures, the top kid didn’t quite get it and couldn’t resist looking, makes for a nice photo though.

Some typical ghat life in Varanasi.

Another common sight in Varanasi is washing drying on the floor next to the river.

Varanasi’s main charm is the little alleyways that are full of life, looking up in these alleyways shows you many interesting sights.

A common hobby in Varanasi is flying kites, sometimes these kites get caught on the many wires above the streets, and then pidgeons get stuck in the kite strings, its a common sight to see hanging dead pidgeons.

An open doorway on one of the many alleyways gave way to this store room, to me it looks like a sight from the past, nothing really from modern life in there (apart from a plastic bag at the back, god damn you plastic bag! ruining everything!)

One of my favorite things to do in Varanasi is to feed monkeys from my window, always monkeys come to your window looking for handouts.

Some religious trinket sellers, these are all over Varanasi, it amazes me that they manage to do business, but they do! People always need to buy offerings for the gods.

In the muslim areas you can find the meat sellers, visiting these gives you reasons not to eat meat in India.

Goat in a coat number two! And corner cow.

More animals on the streets of Varanasi, you really do feel like your in full nature in Varanasi, its such an old city that nature has found its way back in more and more, adapting to the way of life there.

More of the street life. I miss those streets a lot, its one of the reasons I keep going back to Varanasi.

Some sights from the ghats (the areas next to the river).

Your lucky to see photos of this area, since I was on a boat I decided to snap a few pictures from here. Its the part of town where they burn bodies, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you try and take a picture from the area itself you will get into trouble with the local people (understandable really, since it is someone elses funeral). Each one of them fires is a body burning away. And all them people crowded together is a family carrying the recently deceased to the river to dip it before setting it ablaze. I wathced a few bodies reduce to ash whilst I was in Varanasi, always interesting to see. Its common to see an arm or a leg raise out of the fire as the heat causes the muscles and tendons to shrink. Once I saw an arm slowely raise up and then rotate as if the dead person were checking the time on their watch, then the stomach bursed and a jet of boiling hot stomach juice squirted out of the fire.

Near Varanasi there is a town called Saranath, its of religious importance to Buddhists and Jains (a king of hinduism). Buddah himself was supposed to have come to this area and meditated, or maybe he had a picnic or something, im not sure. All sorts of Buddhist are represented there now, Thais, Cambodians, Tibetans and so on. You can see some of them walking around that large Stupa in the second picture. The first picture is from a Jain temple. its a revered Jain monk meditating.

After a short while in Varanasi I had made friends with a guy from Russia called Sasha. He was practising Yoga and meditation in Varanasi near where we were staying. His English isn’t too good but its not that bad that it stops communication, we can at least discuss belief and my lack of it and his abundance of it. Its interesting to note that despite our beliefs being polar we live our lives in a similar way. It seems to be only the words we use that are different. Me and Sasha had many adventures in Varanasi, always willing to go for big walks around the city and check many new things out.

Here is Sasha with a wonky look and a dreamy look.

Me and Sasha in a rickshaw, and Sasha taking a picture of one of the many dead pidgeons.

We came across this sugar cane juice seller with an albino rabbit. When he turned the cane pressing machine on the rabbits eyes bulged out with fear in the most comical way, he didn’t run though, just looked very concerned.

One thing I love about India is the painted adverts, even a lot of the big companies like vodaphone and coke have painted adverts, seems like its more easier than to get people to put up paper adverts. The second picture is from a busy corner I like the look of.

There are so many amazing buildings in Varanasi, it seems like the whole city should be listed, it really is one of the most amazing cities to visit in the whole world.

Indian version of a morning milk delivery. And one of the many many passageways in Varanasi.

A look along the ghats, and a shot of the steps to show how steep some of them are, and all of hard concrete. Some of the steps go up a long way, it would be an awful accident if someone were to fall down them.

Some poo drying, they eat it you know…..not really, they use it for fuel. And some interesting garbage. As I was taking this picture a man told me to stop and to take pictures of the buildings instead, he just didn’t see the asthetic beauty of the discarded chillies did he.

Some wall paintings. The first is from a kids school me and Sasha went to, we got told to leave shortly after! I guess its only right, we did just walk on into the grounds of the school.

A good distance out of the city we found an area with many bee’s nests in the trees. The texture on the nests is actually the bees, all crawing over and around each other, I didn’t believe it at first but after a good look I realised that it was the bees.

The owner of our guesthouse kept pidgeons, for what I don’t know, maybe just pets. He would let them fly around each morning, they didn’t seem to enthusiastic about leaving their cage, they would fly around in a circle and come right back, only to have a stick waved at them to encourage them to fly a little more. And that second picture caused me and Sasha to laugh a lot, such a sad looking animal, the only thing we could do was laugh at the poor thing.

Some river life.

A very tiny spider on my pants. And doesn’t that look like a man inside that tree in the second picture?

Getting electricity from one side of the river to the other. And then getting it all throughout the city.

Every night that vehicle goes around the streets where it fits and sprays insecticide to kill the mosquitos, children run and play in the plumes of suspicious vapour. And that bus in the second picture was happily chugging along when it crunched into that barrier right next to us ripping it out of the ground and nearly knocking it down. They reversed, changed the obstructions on the roof and then drover off.

Lots of temples in Varanasi, and lots of vegetable sellers.

After a while Johanna came to Varanasi, along with her friend Maya who I also met in Goa, they came with a friend of ours from Luxemburg also, a guy called Ivo, and his daughter Kiyo. Them lot, me and Sasha went for a big walk out of town and came to this village where we got mobbed by all the village children, I juggled for them to their amazement.

This is Maya and Johanna having a break from walking around in all the sun. And that second picture is from a house in the village.

More people from the village, and check out that radio the woman has in the second picture, very old looking thing.

And thats it for photos for now. I’m no longer in Varanasi, as it was getting too hot there, so me and Sasha left for Rishikesh, a town situated also next to the Ganga river, but with the added bonus of it being at the foothills of the himalayas so the river is clean enough to swim in (not that people didn’t swim in Varanasi). We stayed in that town for a week, actually planning to stay longer but it was so busy there and also very hot. We caught the bus to Manali, actually it was two busses with a stop over in Shimla for one night. So now I am staying Vashisht, which is just 10 mins outside Manali, i’ve been here before and enjoyed it last time so im happy to be back here. Its great to see the Himalayas again.

This all seems very brief considering its been 4 months since I last wrote, I have lots to say but just don’t know how to get it out. My mind has cycled through many feelings lately. I wish to get more out of life than what im getting, here I feel like im always sitting on the surface, Indians see me for the money I can potentially give to them and not as a way to learn more about life, im inhibited by my lack of Hindi, the most common Indian language besides English. I know I will enjoy my remaining time here though, and Im happy that at the way I feel about traveling here now, it means that I won’t miss it too much when I leave. My Visa for India is up in July, then I will head into Nepal, a new country for me, I think I will enjoy it there. Then after a month or two in Nepal I really don’t know where I will go next, I have some good money behind me still so thats not a worry. I have been toying with the idea of going to America, to the states, there I will hitch around I think, finding cheap ways to live there, I really don’t want to live in hotels there as it will suck my money away too quickly, and living on the cheap sounds like a good adventure there. If I do this I will leave most of my things behind, like my camera and my computer, i’ll be happy to travel with juggling balls and drawing book.

Anways, sorry for the lack of communication for the last 4 months, I promise more posts in the near future, as I have lots of stories and photos. Also my father sent me some of his stories from India so I’ll put them up soon.

Look forward to hearing from everyone that reads this!!

One of the first places I went to this time round in India was a quaint seaside town in the south called Mamalapuram, its about one or two hours outside Chennai. There are several points of interest in this town focused around the towns claim to fame, its stone works.

The two temples in the first picture are temples that have been carved out of one piece of rock each, there were a few others around this area all of which were carved out of one piece, I’d never seen anything like this before, however I didn’t notice this fact until someone pointed it out to me, so I could have missed similar things in the past. The second is a mural done in a similar style to the temples.

There were people all over carving and chipping away on their own huge boulders right down to people nicking away at tiny stones. The ancient temples seem to keep on inspiring people in this town to take hammer to stone over and over again.

A simple snap of a food cart, and one of my favorite carvings I saw in the town, its Ganesh the elephantman god of knowledge and learning, and he’s moving with the times! He got a laptop!

Classic! A cawing crow, these birds are full of character, they half walk and half double footed hop along, when they see you they tilt their head and look at you with a single beady eye. I remember when I first came to India, I was amazed at all the crows all over the place, in every city and town and village you see them, joining in with the free for all richness (possibly filth, albeit rich filth) of India.

Being back in India means spotting dead things, and I spotted them left right and centre as soon as I got here. Here is a dead puffer fish.

If this was in one of them new fangled crime forensic detective show programs they would say that the length of intestine that is coming out of the squashed dogs mouth means that there was a heavy impact most probably from behind, kind of like one of them party whistles where when you blow it a coil unravels as it fills with air. Strange thing though, if it was hit from behind then it means that the driver was on the wrong side of the road, or the dog was hit over to the other side of the road. The story unfurls, kind of like the intestine did.

I was lucky enough to arrive in India just before Duvali, a great festival where everyone throws fireworks into the streets all day and night. I saw many people casually lighting a firework and throwing it in the road over and over and over again, like it was a job, just getting it done, getting it out of the way. Me and Lee who I was with at the time joined in. We bought a big bag of colourful, exciting looking tubes and cones and a couple of what looked like balls of thick twine, which we got told were a bit dangerous. We spent some time setting them off in front of the camera and taking pics of them. The twine ball fireworks turned out to be small bombs really, just a single massive BOOM!

This is called “Krishna’s butter ball”, quite the wonder isn’t it. I tried to give it a push to no avail, probably for the best that it didn’t teeter a moment then start to roll, crashing through the fence at the bottom then onto smash at least 4 people’s homes to smithereens causing multiple casualties, yeah, probably for the best.

Captured the wave nicely there. Mamalapuram has a lot of fishermen, parts of it looked like the fishing village of Puri I went to a few years ago, its nice to get a feel of how places fit into the natural aspects of the area, I got a good feel of the fishing aspect by eating fish and lobsters. The second picture is great! I’ve had it a few times where children burst into tears upon seeing me, and its always funny for everyone around, silly babies. The girl running towards us in the background is great as well, a great picture.

Me and Lee rented a motorbike and took a ride around to some of the small villages just outside the town. I seem to enjoy seeing the life as it is now over going to look at ancient temples, feels a bit like prostituted history when you go to ancient temple after ancient temple, everyone trying to sell you guides or coke or trinkets. In the local villages no one seems to be prepared and the most I have been asked for is pens, which if I were carrying one I would happily give it out. The temple in the second picture is a modern one that is situated in one of the smaller villages.

So yeah, I met up with Lee again. I hadn’t seen her for a year and a half, so it was great to see her. When I met her it felt like we had just said goodbye the other week, this happens so much when I meet people I haven’t seen in ages, makes me feel closer to them, like being apart doesn’t really mean I’m forgetting people. We enjoyed being back in India together for a few days, then she had to go back to Israel.

The mighty mighty ambassador reduced to being a goats house. This car is one of the many things the British left behind in India, its the choice of car for taxis, police cars, government official’s cars and now a goats house.

Mamalapuram looks like this, dust roads with shops all around and people sharpening things at the side of the road.

I settled back into India quite nicely in Mamalapuram, resigned myself to bland food in comparison to the food of South East Asia, engaged my selective hearing when it comes to walking past shops (Sir, sir sir! (as if i didn’t hear them) sir! over here sir! You want cigarette? or toilet paper? SIR SIR! HELLO SIR!), and mentally logged the state of each number 2 toilet, waiting for the day when your struck with what appears to be a number 1 coming from where a number 2 should come from. Despite all these negative things I really do love it here! Difficult to explain why there is so much love for this places, however I know many many people that share this love, it seeps into you when your not even aware of it, and life in other countries can severely lack at times, and your never really sure why. When you try and work it out the best you can come up with is the filth and dirt of India, its so dirty, but that really can’t be the reason for all the love now can it!

Being back in India of course meant cows, and lots of em! At night, during the day, on main roads, down back alley ways. Cows all over the blinking place!

After Mamalapuram I went to meet my good friend Johan. I met him in Bangalore, which was about the halfway meeting point for both of us. He had just arrived back in India after a similar size break to me. It was great to see the crazy bastard again. Here is he is blending into a crowd and angry in an auto.

This is on the local bus from Mamalapuram to Chennai, it makes me think of how the Indian people think of the tourists, I really don’t know what they think of us! The second picture is of a guy in the drains in Bangalore, he was cleaning out a blockage in the sewage pipes, quite a grim job but I guess he just gets it done, no gloves, no shoes, no special clothes, just right into the human waste. If it doesn’t make him sick and he washes before he socializes or eats then whats the problem with it I guess.

In Bangalore me and Johan went to this high tech beer club, the promise of beer full of wires and LCD screens was too much to resist. The second picture is a random one to keep the photos in two’s (a touch of OCD maybe), anyway the second picture is of an electrical cigarette lighter next to a phone on the street, you push the button and the wire glows red and you can light your cigarette with it, very useful!

In the high tech beer club was this bollocks. Its utter nonsense isn’t it! Both of them! Absolute bollocks, we laughed for ages at that first one, such a surprise when you come up to the machine bit.

This is sister of the children receiving a double kiss from her brothers. And there’s my hat which my good friend Jonathon bought me for my birthday this year, makes a nice picture

There’s Johan drinking chai in an eatery. We went to this place a few times, the menu offered “lunch” from twelve till three thirty and the waiters didn’t wear shoes. And there’s me sitting outside a chai shop. I’ve been drinking a lot of chai lately, Johan was a demon for it last time he was here and I decided to indulge as well. Chai for people that don’t know is a shot of incredibly sweet and strong tea, made with mostly milk and with a dash of cardamom and ginger sometimes. You can see people preparing it all around, boiling the hell out of the milk to extract full flavor from the ingredients.

After a week or so in Bangalore we both decided that we really wanted to be back in Varanasi where we were together last time we were both in India. So we booked a train ticket, first stop however was Delhi to break up the massive journey. The first train journey was to be around 35 hours.

This is on that 35 or so hour journey from Bangalore to Delhi. These kids took quite a liking to us, they didn’t speak such good English but they were asking us many many things, they were so friendly. Quite the comparison to the swearing knife wielding maniac children of England.

So then we were In Delhi, we bought a train ticket on to Varanasi right away, I didn’t really want to see anything in Delhi, if you need to get things done its ok, or if you need something specific, but it holds nothing to hold you.

This first picture is from the Muslim area in Delhi. We went to this area to go and see the big Mosque there, which after finding it we found out that it was closed to foreigners from 7.30pm. After asking a couple of times if we could just have a quick look, and then someone saying its possible, a man came along who proceeded to scald us for being to late, asking what we have been doing all day! As if we had been wasting our time or something during the day, he blabbed on for some time telling us to wake up earlier the next day and plan the day better, he was kinda rude and obnoxious. He eventually told us to leave and that its not safe for us there, to play up to the stereotype of the violence bent Muslim is such a stupid thing, it made me think of the rude behavior I encountered in Jerusalem around the wailing wall, I guess I should come to expect it again if I ever decide to go to the Vatican. The obnoxious Muslim walked away, and as he turned around I noticed he had obviously been scratching his anus, his pants and long shirt were wedged firmly deep between his buttocks.

After a couple of days in Delhi we boarded another train and set off for a 12 hour journey to Varanasi, easy compared to 35 hours.

This time in Varanasi I stayed on the other side of the main ghat. It a bit different, less tourist shops and more religion since the best Temple for Hindu’s is there, the Golden temple. This market is very near where I’m staying, its beautiful how the market is squeezed into a small courtyard area along one of the many windy narrow paths that work their way through all the old city. These small pathways are one of my favorite things about Varanasi, so much life in these passages, cows, monkeys, goats, rats, mice, dogs, filth and of course people, oh yeah, and snakes as I recently found out.

I’m living very close to the burning ghats now, which is where they burn bodies openly 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The bodies are carried there ritually by the relatives through the windy streets. You know when one is near as they have a kind of funeral chant they all shout out, I don’t know how many there are a day, but the other day Johan witnessed a traffic jam caused by too many people carrying bodies. I don’t have any pictures of these as the local people are quite particular about the tourists not taking pictures of this scene.

Most guest houses here let you onto their roof, since life exists at all levels in Varanasi. Stepping up onto a good roof gives you a view of the river Ganges, the life blood of the city. Looking around in all directions you will see monkeys all around, being threatened off some roofs by brave Indians, jumping from roof to roof, climbing up temples, walking around the handy ledges that are around all the buildings here. On our roof we get a bit of a glimpse into an alleyway where I often spy bodies being carried with chants to be burned. The picture there is of two locals who I guess sleep on the roof when the weather is right, the grandfather of the family I live with often sleeps on the roof here, its nice to have that luxury. The second picture is of the kites, its a major passion for children here to fly these simple kites. They are hard to get up, nothing like the one I had as a kid, where you threw it up and it couldn’t help but shoot up up and up. These Indian ones require you to pull on the string as the kite is pointing in the right direction, it would then shoot up, but if it points down, which they often do, and you mistime a pull, then it shoots down! I have one kite left here, i will try and fly it again tomorrow. Since they only cost 2rs (about 3p) its no big loss if you loose them.

This is the government bhang shop, bhang is simply minced up marijuana leaves rolled into balls. They are eaten with yogurt for celebrating whenever a festival comes along. Me and Johan ate 1/4 of a ball each and celebrated like Hindus, with hindsight 1/8 of a ball would have been more than enough, there was some heavy confusion for a few hours from both of us, all recovered now though, one ball cost 5rs (about 7p).

I was well aware of the monkeys of Varanasi since last time I was here I had running with one as it spied me eating bananas. So this time around I keep my eye out for them whenever I’m on the roof here. I do have love for other monkeys I have met on my travels, however the monkeys of Varanasi are different, I don’t have much love for them is what I’m saying. One walked really casually into my room the other day, went to my bin as I was shouting and waving things at it, casually rooted through and walked out with a bag or banana skins. If you make eye contact with them they instantly give you this “COME ON!” gesture, opening their eyes wide and making their mouth into a tight O shape and jerking forward bluffing a leaping attack, when they first do this to you you turn around and walk away. However in my guest house here we all like to sit on the roof and don’t want to have to hide away from stealing, threatening monkeys, so we regularly take up sticks and chase the monkeys away, if you run at them with a stick they do run, and there is a small but brave dog here that scares them away a lot. Everyday though there is some monkey incident so the other day we tried a tactic that I almost felt a little bit ashamed for, but i’m thinking about trying it again, so not that ashamed. That monkey in the picture is eating banana mixed up with the remaining bhang ball that I had. I thought that there would be a few monkeys fighting for the celebratory mixture, but as it was one small monkey came along and at the lot, even picking up the pot and running like a human as he spied another monkey coming along, and then he walked out of sight, I don’t know what else happened in that monkeys life.

I really like goats, they have such funny long faces, and the way their jaws munch away is very funny. I feed them a lot on the streets, they have an odd smell that’s not all that bad really. I think that man owned that goat, and when I showed interest in it he wrestled it up.

‘nuther goat, and some puppies with their mother. There’s loads of puppies around now, very cute and pure looking, soon to be spoiled and roughed up by Varanasi life. The dogs here are very pleasant though. They show a lot of respect to the people, never really causing troubles for them, and they always come to you wagging their tails when you call them over. Another reason why walking around the streets of Varanasi is very pleasant.

This guy sells Chai! Pretty nice chai as well. The whole chai culture is great, you can stop off on all your walks for small breaks to drink a shot of chai. And that boat is a common sight on the Ganges, large boat unloading a large amount of Indians that have been for a river cruise.

This is Murnay, a street kid who has befriended me. I think for her its a good tactic, to make friends with the tourists first, then she doesn’t even have to ask for anything, people inevitably buy her meals and bring her fruit. She lives with her mother on the ghats, there are many people that live on the ghats (when i refer to the ghats like this it means the steps that lead down to the river, there is a wide stone path that runs all along), and I don’t think it is such a bad life, and they know it, they’re not unhappy, there is a large social life, and if you have something to offer you can make some good money there. Murnay sells post cards mainly, but as I said she is very friendly with lots of tourists. She can speak English, Hindu, Japanese and Spanish. She looks very healthy and doesn’t really fit in with the stereotype of a street kid, in a way she’s simply living on the ghats with her mother, a perfectly viable life in India.

A rather thought provoking juxtaposition with the vodafone advert above the homeless sleepers on the ghats. And another similar picture of cows sleeping in front of a modern looking shoe shops.

A baba and a bull and a bull and a baba (baba is a common term for an older guy ranging from chai baba to religious baba, i think its a term of respect, even implying somone with wisdom). The second baba guy with all the get up is a common sight. I see guys like this all over, covered in ash with all sorts of adornments. They come across a bit cheap to be honest, a bit over the top, almost like they are doing it for the tourists, im sure some are genuine but you just never know, some are very obvious frauds though, this guy im not sure about.

There’s a restaurant behind the moon star one that Johan was a regular of, so this last week I have been eating in there a lot as well, its very Indian and very cheap, sometimes its quite good, but mostly its a meal with sustinence. And the second picture is a seller of religious trinkets, things to enshrine the shrines with, shiny things for the shrines.

The first pic was taken as I was arriving into Varanasi, lone walker, mystery man walking along the tracks, a drifter, town to town carrying his ever growing story, or someone who’s a bit lost. The second picture is a tunnel just round the corner from where im staying, it leads down to the ghats.

And I think im pretty much up to date with stories now, I took that tunnel picture about two days ago. Johan has left Varanasi now, he went to Delhi, and then he leaves India after only a month here, he has a girlfriend back in Sweden and is going home to be with her. I will leave Varanasi for Mumbai in 2 days, there I will meet my folks and also meet the editor of an inflight magazine for an indian airline, with the intention of being able to write some stories about my travels for it.

I have a few more photographs I want to share that are from different times.

This is of a beautiful cat that stayed at the guesthouse I stayed at in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It was one of them cats that come running to you when you call them, very friendly and always smiling as you can see.

What looks like an earwig, I was always curious how the English ones would get you with their rear mounted pincers, this guy sure knows how to use his attatchments. And a marvelous chewing cow, as I was taking this he kept lowering his head trying to stab me with his horns, his huge long dangerous looking horns.

Some diet water for the weight watchers. And that sore is a bad case of flip flop foot. Always when old flip flops die and you get new ones you have to break them in, which always breaks your feet somewhat. I have recovered from this without getting an infection, my flip flops now fit perfectly.

These pictures are from way back! From Bali when I was with Richard and Lisa, my brother and his wife. The frog was spied from afar and I ran to collect it, we tortured it with a photoshoot before letting it go. I seem to have quite a few bat pictures now, getting lucky with them, they have to be one of the hardest things to shoot surely.

These are all from the sacred monkey forest in Bali (apart from the second to last, which is my bro and Lisa in their amazing hotel on Bali). The last picture warants some comment about the metaphorical term “monkey on your back”………Rick, you have a monkey on your back.

And thats it, im all done with this post. Life is good, new horizons are on the horizon (can there ever be more than one horizon?) in the form of potentially getting some writing work for this inflight magazine, could open up many new directions for me. Wish me luck.

Mum, Dad, see you next week.

Monkeys monkey monkeys!! We got caged scared monkeys comin’ outa our ears! Get em while they cower in fear at every unfamiliar sight and sound that comes by them!

Some kind of wild cat kitten, or a normal kitten that looks like a tiger cub! And these genetically altered baby chickens! Colour match your chuck to your car!

Heath Ledger watch out! Its batman minus the man part!!

You thought we had a lot of monkeys! Well check out the namesake for the market! BIRDS! 1000’s of caged birds! All different colours and sizes! 1000’s packed into each cage for your perusing and choosing!

More god damn birds! Birds looking up and funky looking owls!

Gotta feed your purchases? Get it all here also!

Meal worms! They’re called what they are!

Ok, despite the dry sarcasm it didn’t actually seem all that bad, yeah the monkeys were scared shitless and there were 10’s (not 1000’s) of birds in some cages the market was popular and the animals did sell, meaning they did at least get the chance to get to live in a better place. A bird in a cage singing happily is a common feature in many guesthouses and hotels in a lot of Indonesia, people like to be surrounded by bird song in their houses, and the birds don’t sing unless they are content. I even went to a house in Sumatra where they had a pet monkey, and it was cared for well. I feel like im coming across niave by making excuses for the market, but I couldn’t help seeing something good here as I saw the indonesian people looking in awe and excitement at the animals from the world around them, but sheesh them monkeys did look scared………..don’t know where im going with this so im gonna go…..IM IN INDIA AS I WRITE THIS!!! And its wonderful to be back here………Goodbye!!

The next morning I woke up at 5.30am, got ready and got in a minibus, like them really MINI minibuses! In that for nearly 2 hours, into a cafe, told to wait, ferry arrived, got on a ferry for, 4 hours, got off, got in a taxi for 1 hour, got out for 10 mins, got back in, stopped at the shore, waited for a boat, got on a small boat which took me to the largest of the Gili Islands, Gili Trawangan. It was amazing really, there was a main road going around the island, well it was a path really, but there were small horse and cart vehicles that sped around on it, making it very road like. The bussiest strip on this road was amazing, some of the rooms on there there super lush, as far as backpacking rooms go anway, they had flat scren tv’s air conditioning, mini bar, waiter, FRESH tap water (most places just had rather salty ground water coming out of the taps) and one of them bars in a swimming pool where you sit at a bar literally in the swimming pool, these rooms cost about US$50. Considering this is on some super pretty tiny far away paradise island it was kinda gobsmacking for me. I arrived there with 2 English guys and a girl from Denmark who I had got talking to on the journey here, we decided to pick somewhere together to stay since we all wanted the cheapest place on the island. After “checking in” I started to kick back and enjoy a slower life, something that I had not experienced in all of Java.

The first pic is from the first boat I caught to Gili Trawangan, and the next is the boat I caught from Gili Trawangan to Gili Air, notice the odd angle of the horizon in the second picture, the sea was rather choppy.

Wild life, as usual, amazed me on these islands, when I first saw the shore from the boat I imediatly saw a lion fish, indicating the life filled waters around these islands. Lots of shells used for decoration hinted at the strong connection between the local people and the ocean. Actually I jump ahead of myself, the first few days on these islands was spent drinking with the English guys, since I had partied in such a long time, especially with English guys who seem to be able to do it better than most. So yeah, two days later I left Gili Trawangan for the cheaper and quieter Gili Air, where, Wild life as usual, amazed me…..I saw so many things I had never seen before!

I had seen one of these crabs elsewhere, that elsewhere being another island in Indoensia. A key feature of this crab is its lack of violence, I had picked other, more violent crabs up before and have been punished for doing so. This crab however was comfortable with its armour and camoflage, thus it wasn’t violent.

Another non violent and well camoflaged crab. I was lucky to find this one since it blended in so well.

A blue starfish! There were many types of starfish in this area.

Another starfish, and the underside, I filmed the underside as all them clear protrusions were wriggling away, maybe i’ll upload it someday.

This isn’t strictly a starfish, but its closely related, I think its called a brittle fish, or maybe a brittle starfish, someone told me this.

Here’s one of them brittle thingies that has something odd going on with it, if I had to make a guess, I would say its full of eggs, if I was wrong and I was given another guess I would say its infected with a parasite, if my second guess was wrong and I was given one final try then I would say its a genetic anomoly.

More camoflaged crab action. And I don’t know what that green thing is, looked interesting though.

There were, along with all the crabs and starfish, many SEA URCHINS!! I was scared to swim in the waters really, as it was shallow for some distance, and the floor was full of them black sea urchins, spikey poisonous things.

More poisonous spikes. And them white tentacles belonged to some mystery creature underground, I touched them and it pulled them into the hole.

A cluster of sea Anenomone’s (spelling?), and a cluster of weird seaweed.

As you can see from up above photographs I had a lot of fun looking for wildlife, everytime I went out I found something new.

Some shots with a touch of creativity and style, maybe on the front of an in flight magazine (seem to have read quite a few of these mags lately).

A Tokay Geko, I know the name because when I lived near Bolton with my friend Kaye she bought one as a pet, angry little b’stards they are.

Had a break from juggling to try and photo some mid air juggling balls, and I did it!

The sky was so blue and the plants were so green it was hard not to take pictures of them all the time, but i’ll just put two up as they don’t get across the real beauty of the place.

Local people, the child and his younger sibling called at me to take a picture of them as I was walking around with my camera, then they did this cute pose for me, im not normally one for taking pictures of people so im quite proud of getting this one. And a pretty island girl in my hat.

On both islands I went to there were turtle conservation area’s. They would find the turtles nest and collect all of the eggs and hatch the lot of them, rear them all to a safe size and let them all go! Now, im no wildlife expert but I do know that naturally only a handful of possibly 100’s of baby turtles would make it to adulthood, so rearing ALL of them seems a little wreckless, such an abundance of turtles will surely have some knock on effect. A few days later I went scuba diving and saw an adult turtle chomping on coral! Breaking pieces off with its parrot like mouth and crunching it up before moving onto another piece. I guess at the end of the day though WE can eat turtles but we can’t eat coral…Anyway, they were great fun to play with in the conservation pool, I stopped by there at least once a day to watch them and play teenage mutant hero turtles.

The first picture is the biggest volcano on Bali, which you could see clearly when the sun was setting in the evening. The second I took as I was leaving the Gili Islands, it the large Island of Lombok which is next to Bali.

Some beautiful shots of the light from the sun.

The first is of local houses on Gili Air, and the second is the guesthouse i stayed in on this island, I stayed there for about one week.

An old wrecked boat on Gili Air, and a beautiful cow on Gili Air.

That first shot is from Lombok looking through the trees at Gili Air. And on Lombok a major sport is to hook up giant wooden skis onto two powerful buffalo’s, get them to run like mad and then hold on for dear life, Experience the wonder!

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And this is where I found most of the sea life, zoom out to see the Gili Islands themselves.

And thats my Gili island experience, mainly I was on my own, the two English guys only stayed for 2 days, I did get to know a few of my neighbors but I didn’t spent too much time socializing, I was more than happy and content to sleep in my hammock during the day, read, write, take pictures, juggle, eat and of course look for wildlife.

Also whilst I was on Gili Air the Muslim festival of Ramadan ended, which was a cause for big celebration for the Muslims. Ramadan is a month long festival where you do not eat, drink or smoke when the sun is up. So the Muslims would eat a massive breakfast before the sun comes up, and then eat a massive dinner when it went down. So when it ended people enjoyed sleeping pas the sunrise and then upon awaking they had a massive meal with all their friends, I was invited to a local house to enjoy this big breakfast, it all kinda reminded me of Christmas day the way people pop round to other people’s houses to wish them happiness and that. It was a happy day for all.

And thats it, I finally repeated the journey to get there but in reverse. I didn’t go back to Kuta on Bali, I went to a town called Ubud, which was very close to where my brother and Lisa (upgraded from girlfriend to wife now ) were staying. It was great to hook up with them, to see a familiar face, and to share my way of life with someone close to me, something I don’t get to do a lot. We saw monkeys, ate delicious food, drank beers and went for rides on mopeds. Bali came across rather charming in these days, it became clear to me that Kuta wasn’t really what Bali was all about.

Im outa here!

On the way to the path to the top of the volcano we came across this eagle, it seemed to be someones pet.

The walk to the top of the volcano wasn’t too exciting to start off with, and happy to do so, we took a taxi to the where the road started to an end. Most of the road that we opted to taxi along was aligned on both sides by high bushes, blocking the view completely. When we got out of the taxi we started the walking, quite steep and deteriorating tarmac to start with, we were all a little disapointed with the way it all looked, a distinct lack of volcano like features. Eventually we came to the end of the road and the way continued via a path into the wilderness. Before too long volcanic features started to present themselves, invisible features in the form of sulpherous smells and visible features on the ground, strange looking colours in the dirt, indicating interesting minerals spewed out from deep in the earth at some point in the past. All of a sudden the landscape looked pleasingly volcanic, we could see steam vents in the distance and everything was nice and rubbly and martian. Seeing it all made me think of what past civilisations must have thought of the area, we know what it is and how it came to be, but imagine if you didn’t know the reason for this definatly different landscape, and the smell, and of course the heat and steam spewing out of the earth, images of biblical hell come to mind.

Sulpher coated rocks, there were a few insects in amongst the yellow rocks that had obviously flown too close.

I walked a little higher up and found a pool of rapidly boiling mud.

More mud and a small steam vent.

We were told back in town that we could walk up one side and then walk down on the other side, so after admiring all the volcanic features we trecked on, around a corner and to what looked like a path down, so we started to walk along it.

The landscape on the top of the volcano.

Some sections of the path down the volcano

road down the volcano

The path took many strange turns, often just spreading out so the only option was just to head across the rubble in a downwards direction, and then onto narrow low foliage tunnels with many man made steps through a thickening forest. It just kept on going down and down and down, it was very tiring, as the steps were often just the lips of the steps, the rest of the step being a puddle or a pool of mud, obviously weather had washed away most of what was the step. So walking on these became an act of almost circus worthy antics, hopping and ballancing, hopping and ballancing.

Thats me on the top! Giving it a thumbs up. And on the way down I came across a giant milipede strolling across the path, I even gently picked it up, since I knew it wasn’t dangerous and the only threat from it came from a smelly defensive spray it would emit if threatened, so I let it walk onto my hand and then I was holding it. Its many legs felt great as they walked in waves.

Walking down down down down down, a few stumbles from the girls behind me, one of the English girls gave up walking in flip flops and opted for bare feet (not the best descision in the first place to go for a hike in flip flops, but she made it!). Eventually we came out onto a road, we turned around and saw how far we had walked. Around this area the hot springs from the volcano were being put to a few uses, one was creating electricity, the other was soothing bodies with hot smelly baths.

So thats where we walked to and from, the walk down took much longer, since it was a more windy road, and the way up was with a road and taxi for half of it. It took about an hour and a half to walk down, and maybe 1 hour to the top. The second picture is from the top down.

And thats my volcano story I was a little disapointed that there wasnt any lava, but boiling mud and sulpherous vents was pretty good.

Bungus is a seaside town, nothing like Blackpool or Southport. Bungus is a village really, im sure its very overlooked by most travelers, we didn’t see many at all. In our guesthouse there were a few groups from around the world, we had a french couple, our good friend Albert from Spain who we met in Bukutingi, an Australian guy who was currently driving around the world (he started in England and his car was with an English registration), there was a friend of his, and a small group of Australian guys not affiliated with the world driver. The guesthouse was called Losmen Carlos, everyone there was very happy, guests and staff alike. I was kept very content there by two kittens, and a beautiful male gibbon called Mona, there are pictures of Mona on a previous post. I would take Mona fruit and nuts somedays. Bungus was really just a road that followed the coast, any attempt to head inland mainly just ended up in ricefields, the road followed the coast all the way to the next town, there were none of the usual tourist touts you see in the more touristy places, the nearest ATM was some distance away in the city of Padang, always a good indication of how remote you are, its important to know these things beforehand for a traveler!

As I mentioned on a previous post we went on a boat trip around the islands just off the coast, where we saw real tropical paradise, immaculate wildlife yet with the more and more common sight of smashed coral.

The boat we took around the islands, and me and Nina sat under and beautiful jungle waterfall.

Photos taken from the boat as we were returning and the sun was setting.

Nina and Johanna smiling! And that guy in the other picture is Michael, one of the guys that worked at Losmen Carlos, a very chirpy happy chappy!

Nina taking some pictures on one of the small islands.

some more scenes from the boat.

Boats from our boat!

Towards the end of our time in Bungus things got a little sad, as Nina and Johanna were due to leave, we had been traveling with them for only two weeks, but as with a lot of relationships you make whilst traveling we had all gotten quite close, so it was sad to be leaving them, it was going to feel a bit strange without them. On their last day me Nina and Johanna walked through the jungle up to a waterfall and took a beautiful bath in the pool underneath it, and as you can see in the photo above, we sat under the fall itself and felt the full power of the water falling.

A giant woodlouse, or slater as my Australian friends call them

So they left, they got a lift to the airport with Christoff, the Australian guy who was driving around the world, and they were gone! Also Christoff left and took Albert with him to go and treck up a nearby volcano. So it was just me and Jules, since Jules arrived we had always had other company, so it was nice to just travel with Jules even though it was sad to say goodbye to friends.

Thats Albert juggling in the town centre in Bukuttinggi, he did this quite a bit and the local people even gave him money for doing it! And the next picture is Jules, Nina and Johanna on our guesthouse roof in Bukuttinggi.

So me and Jules were alone together, we kinda realised that the only place to be next was the north of Sumatra, we had two options to get there, take a 20 hour bus, or fly for a very similar price! So we flew! Bought a ticket the day before we left and we were away, changing the whole scene of things. We flew into the city of Medan in the north, first thing for me was I needed to hunt down some new sandals, my had bust one to many times, there’s only so much super glue repairing you can do. It took me ages to find some sandals, cos of my foot size. When I did find some after a day of wearing them I was left with blisters and slices inbetween my toes, nice (now though they are well broken in, my feet being much tougher for this).

We decided to head to a village called Bukit Lawang, this village was famous for its Orangutang rehabilitation centre, they would rescue Orangutangs and reintroduce them into the wild, giving them food whenever they wanted it, eventually they would learn how to live in the jungle from the other all wild Orangutangs. The name Bukit Lawang means something along the lines of Jungle river exit, because Bukit Lawang is situated in an idelic place, around a river as it leaves an incredibly lush jungle. This is the jungle that the orangutangs are reintroducted to, its a beautiful place. The road quickly fades out as the village goes towards the jungle, the village carries on roadless with small paths trailing along it till the village gives up to the jungle itself.

Me and Jules kicked back here for a few days, eating giant wonderful river fish, looking at also giant insects that were fresh from the jungle. One day we took a short walk to what was constantly refered to as the bat cave! Exciting or what! We didn’t really expect Bruce wayne, but still i had a glimmer of hope for this. It was a great cave even though it was sans Bruce. To get into the cave we had to traverse some crazy questionable crevice, we were near the bottom but the path was still kinda high and perilous. Once we were in the cave the ground became more expansive, yet still the word jutting comes to mind. Venturing into the cave rewarded us with a ceiling full of bats! Which were swathed in darkness unsurprisingly, I tried to get pictures, but since they required long exposure and they were moving, all I got was dark blobs on a static ceiling. I did however come across a couple of cave insects.

The aforementioned cave insects, wild things hey!

This cobweb was at the mouth of the cave, looking outwards. And this is the surrounding junlge.

The bats were beautiful, the insects suitably creapy and exciting, the cave amazing (despite no Bruce), Bukit Lawang was a rich place, rich in wonderful wildlife, one of the greatest riches, money can’t buy that richness, you can guy single animals and things, but no one can own such diversity.

As done many times before, I left the town, well, me and Jules left, same thing. We caught the bus back to Medan, and got a bus right away out of there to a town called Berestagi. Since I’ve been so slack with updating my site and the photos have built up like crazy, in gonna leave the photos of Berestagi and what we did there to another post…coming soon!!!

Leaving Berestagi we went to Lake Toba, and the island of Samosir on this lake. The island of Samosir is a similar size to Singapore, so the lake as you can imagine is a very very big lake! And like a lake I went to in the south (Lake Meningau) this one is also in a long ago exploded volcano. We got to the town of Parapet in the evening as it was going dark, and from here all that was left for us to catch was the ferry to Samosir, the quicker and more often passanger boats had finished earlier in the afternoon.

Parapet fish sellers.

So we waited and waited, ate some food and waited some more, and then the ferry turned up. It filled up with cars, motorbikes, trucks and us. It slowely ferried us to the island of Samosir, where we caught a bus to a randomly selected guesthouse we found in our trusty guide book. Its always funny arriving at night to a place, you have no idea what it looks like where you are, gives you a feeling of mystery as you look out into the darkness. From our room in the guesthouse, which was more like a spanish holiday apartment complex, we could hear the waters of the river lapping at the shores of Samosir island. So when there was sunlight I found out what was outside, it was a beautiful village called Tuk Tuk, situated on a small protrusion off Samosir island. The roads were windy and up and down in a charming way, what was obvious was the whole area was geared up for many tourists, yet there wern’t many tourists, and the people trying to make a living off the tourists had a desperate air about them.

These are looking out from Samosir island to the edge of Lake Toba.

After a few days in the apartment complext guesthouse we decided to move, on one of our excursions out we came across a beautiful guesthouse called Tuk Tuk Timble, it was down a crazy hill to the waters edge, like a really crazy hill, so so steep. We organised to be picked up on motorbikes by the people at the new guesthouse, they were more than happy to do this for free. Tuk Tuk Timble was ran by a nice Dutch lady, quite a surprise really, there were a few other guests including a couple of middle aged french guys, one who I think lived there permanently, I think he had married an Indonesian. Anyway, we moved to the new guesthouse, originally we had arranged to move into a apartment with one room and a bathroom, very clean and nice, but when we got there she offered us a traditional Batak house, Batak being the name of the people that lived in this area. The Batak house was amazing! Two floors and the same price as the other apartment, so we took it, very happy to do so.

The Batak house on the left is the one we lived in, the one on the right is another one on Samosir.

The Batak people were poached by Christians many years ago, before the Muslims poached the other people in the area, and they remained Christian when everyone else abandoned their anamistic views on the world for Islam. So there were churches all over, and a pleasant lack of the Muslim call to prayer at 5am. They seemed to be more party inclined as well, enjoying a drink now and then, and also dining on some very special mushrooms for special occasions, these mushrooms were sold completely legally all over the place on this island. These are the very same mushrooms that England made illegal with the same penalties as heroin in 2006, there were no signs of social degradation on the island of Samosir, or anything negative that could be associated with the consumption of funny mushrooms, so its a mystery why England banned them, in fact, as is the case in most of Asia, the people there seemed much happier than the people in England.

Two types of wasp I found on Samosir island.

Some crazy warrior cat on Samosir, he was alive and looked big, and healthy, despite the tore lip. And this bug was beautiful! It was so fast, this is the best picture I got, better than nothing though hey.

A few times on the island of Samosir me and Jules hired a motorbike and took a ride around, one of the days we both needed to find an ATM so we took a ride to the biggest town on the island to go to the ATM. We got there and it was bust, so cash was running low for both of us, but worse case scenario would be just go the Parapet, the coastal town, and then come back, no big deal. It was nice to ride on Samosir, the roads were good and there wasn’t a lot of traffic at all.

Some scenes from the town with the bust ATM.

Jules eventually had to leave, she had to go home, after one month traveling it was all over for her, for me as you know one month is not enough, so again I say goodbye, I went across on the boat with her to Parapet, where we both used the ATM filling our wallets with millions again. Luckily a friend of mine had just arrived on Samosir, a girl I was with in the Cameron highlands in Malaysia, her name is AC and she’s from Canada, the french area. She had hooked up with a great guy called James, from England. So we were three, we hired motorbikes and went for another ride around Samosir, this time planning something a bit more adventurous. We road right across the middle, the road went pretty off-roadish at times, but we were going in the direction we were pointed in so were weren’t worried (yeah right, to turn back or carry on, this type of anxiety is a killer, but we pressed on!). The road went right through jungle, worrying me quite a bit, but eventually it came to villages, nicer roads, and such scenic beauty it was totally all worth it. After a few hours we could see Lake Toba again, such relief as I knew we would get through the day alive! (I joke, it was never that bad). I had never rode a bike for such a long time on such crazy roads, so when we got to a town and decided to stop and eat, I took stock of my aches and pains, and sheesh, my wrists were sore from keeping the wheel pointing forward in mud, and my ass was so sore, but still I wasn’t tired of riding, I really love to ride a motorbike!

Some people we met in Medan and Jules’s toe, after a small motorbike mishap (nothing to do with me! All Johanna the Norwegians fault! sorry if your reading this Johanna).

A scene from Samosir to the shore again, and a closeup of lake Toba, such beautiful smooth water.

I can’t really recall how long I stayed on Samosir island, it was nearing two weeks im sure, so I was ready to leave, and so was AC and James. It was back to Bukuttingi for all of us! Which meant a 20 hour bus journey, not that it was far, its just Sumatra is a wild land where nature takes precidence over wide roads. So we did it, 20 hours, pfff it felt like no more than 10! Easy peasy for this wanderer. And then I was back in Bukuttingi.

Some beautiful scenery surrounding Bukuttingi.

Some kind of giant bee, I saw quite a few of these in Sumatra.

From a small village near Bukuttingi

Dentist art in Bukuttingi

So, back in Bukuttingi, it was nice to see it again, we took a room but decided to move the next day, keeping one room to store our bags, since we decided to go to a nearby valley for a few days. The valley is called Harrau valley and its another paradise in Sumatra.

This is Harau valley, both sides had amazing cliff faces like this. And the small river (or large stream) was right in front of the guesthosue we stayed in.

And steamy Harau, everyday presented us with kick ass scenes like this ^_^

AC left us by this point, she went to experience life with an Indonesian family, staying in their house, and me and James shared a room at Echo home stay in Harau valley. And as soon as we arrived who should come along but Albert! My Spanish friend who I last saw in Bungus, it was great to see him again, he had been in Harau valley for 5 days or so, really enjoying it. Our first evening there we went to the nearby town to eat. It was the month or Ramadan, which means muslims don’t eat when the sun is up, eating a big breakfast before it gets light, and a big meal when it gets dark, so the local market was selling food for people to break the fast, such amazing food! We went with the guy that ran our guesthouse to buy food, so he showed us around the market, we all bought a lot of food and took it to our new friends parents house to dig in. There was already a lot of food there! So we ate loads! Even though we didn’t fast all day with the muslism we were still ready for a big feed, was great food!

A couple of stalls from the market we went to.

Some random meals from other places to go with the foody tone of what im going on about.

After the meal we sat down with the family, which was 3 brothers, mother and father and grandma. Some knew some English, and some could speak it well, but all wanted to learn more and gladily stumbled through conversations, it was great, everyone was very happy. And they gave us Coco fruit to eat, id never eaten this before. Inside the big coco pod was a cluster of beans surrounded by a sweet soft thin layer of flesh, which you suck off, then spit the bean out, which was then sold for chocolate production. Chocolate isn’t native to Indonesia but the government encourages the farming of it as its sought after on the world market, so many people grow it, enjoy the soft fruit around the beans and then sell whats left. So this led me to realise that all chocolate beans that go to making all the chocolate we ate has been sucked beforehand! It made me smile.

As the evening went on we grew tired and decided to hop on our bikes and leave, our new friend showed us the way back to the valley via back streets past many happy muslims smoking away after having big feeds to end the fast for the day. We drove past rice fields in the dark for some time, winding around and around, eventually coming to the familiar entrance to Harau valley. We got home safely and slept very soundly in the peaceful surroundings.

The next morning we drove to a nearby waterfall to take a bath in the pool underneath, amazing to be able to do this. The pool was cold at first but grew beautiful after paddling around somewhat. It was exhilerating to swim under the fall itself, totally took my breath away and made he whoop in shock, wish I could bathe in it every morning.

This is the pool and waterfall we took a morning bath in.

This is another one, equally as beautiful and with a rainbow for added lovelyness.

A family of gibbons we spotted on the road to the waterfall. The spider on the lilly was spotted at night in the grounds of our guesthouse, I used a flash to make the drops stand out like this.

A monkey working its way up the steep walls of the valley, he just kept on going up and up and up.

We stayed for 2 nights in Harau Valley, I really would have stayed longer, and I think James would have too, but we had to leave, James had a flight, and both of us had rented motorbikes which needed to be taken back to Bukuttingi. So we hit the road, cutting it fine for James as he had his flight the day we left, kinda crazy, but he totally made it. Albert did stay, for another few days, it was that kind of place.

And then I was alone again. In Bukuttingi, I didn’t have much desire to see things in Bukuttingi, since I’d seen many many things, so mainly I stayed in my room and edited photo’s, watched movies and played on my Nintendo, it was nice to have all the time to myself again, it had been ages since id had that.

Some happy local people.

Jules and Albert talking and walking, and local children.


These are some shots from the zoo in Bukuttingi, it was sad to see this Orangutang, it was such a drab cage as well, poor beast. We fed him nuts and gave him fruit juice to drink.

A beautiful spread of food in Bukuttingi, and a rather strange collection of stickers from a market in Bukuttingi. I questioned the guy selling them about the dubious one, I don’t really think the people in this area know exactly what it means, if they did they would realise they are supporting a regime that would have them up against the wall and killed. I think some sick people are planting things like this into the area to turn them against a certain country in the middle east, but I just don’t know.

So I was all alone, and the next appointment I had was in Bali with my brother. I decided to fly first to Jakarta, I was going to travel to the south of Sumatra and then get the boat, but with flights so cheap nowadays, it was much much cheaper to fly than to get several buses, spend nights in halfway towns and then get a ferry. I was in Jakarta within two hours of taking off. Jakarta was just like I remember it, very hot, very very busy and hiding its charm in areas I obviously missed. I think if I had company I would have enjoyed it a bit more, but as it was it wore me down, and I quickly left.

A firework market in Jakarta. And a bridge over filthy water.

Some special monument thats meaning slipped by me, in Jakarta. And a Meningkabau house in Sumatra that needed to be put somewhere.

silly horse nasty monkey
Some silly horse and a nasty monkey.

So I left for Jogjakarta in the middle of Java, Jogjakarta is the cultural capital of Java, id been there before but I was looking forward to seeing it again.

And thats it, im done with writing for now, it wont be long before I post again as i quite enjoyed writing this, and I have lots of free time this next week, whilst waiting for my Indian visa here in Kuala Lumpur, and I have free wifi in my guesthouse! Super stuff!

Look forward to hearing from everyone.

I recently met an Australian who spent a lot of time in the area helping the people of Palestine all he could, taking part in blockades, blocking Israeli bulldozers that are destroying Palestinians homes, in the end however his positive actions were put to an end as he is no longer allowed to go into Israel, and therefore no longer allowed into Gaza or West Bank, what hope do the people there have, none really, only the hope in the rest of the world coming to their aid eventually, just like all the prisoners of the Nazi’s in world war 2, the only hope they had was that the rest of the world would come to their rescue, which they eventually did, this time though its taking a little bit longer, i’d say we are 60 years late.”

On you tube there are many more video’s one posted by both sides, both sides claim they are innocent and are just doing what they have to, yet still there is war and death there, so someone, if not both sides are lying.

A short movie after the link


Reminds you of them videos of all the prisoners in striped clothes being marched to the Nazi death camps doesn’t it.

Good times with new friends, who I met at the afore mentioned guesthouse.

So now I am in Jakarta, all alone for the first time in a long time, which gives me time to write about my travels. I’ll do a quick recap of the route I have taken to start with, last thing I wrote about was the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. So I’ll recap from there. First thing was I headed back to Kuala Lumpur, met my friend Jules at the airport, then met up with two Norwegian girls who decided to travel with us. First place we went to was Maleka on the coast of Malaysia, then we got a boat to Dumai in Indonesia, got stamped in met a guy called Claude from france who caught a 12 hour bus to Bukutingi with us, just south of the equator. Then from here we met up with a spanish guy called Albert, left Claude behind and left for Bungus a town on the coast just south of the city of Padang, then the Norwegians left us, so did Albert, so it was just me and Jules. We flew from Padang to a city in the north called Medan, got a local bus to a town called Bukit Lewang, saw some Orangutang’s, left for Medan and got a bus right away out for a town called Berestagi, 2 nights later we left this town for Lake Toba, after some days here Jules left to go home and I met up with a friend I made in Malaysia, a girl called AC from Canada, she had met up with a guy from England called James. All 3 of us left for Bukutingi again, on a bus that took 20 hours, AC left us and me and James went to Harau valley on rented motorbikes, we stayed here for 2 days, then rode back to Bukutingi, James left and I flew to Jakarta! Which gets the whole journey up to date! Now I’ll see if I can recall some stories to interest y’all.

Jules, Nina and Johanna having a sleep on a bus.

Meeting the two Norwegian girls was great, they were up for anything, hopping on boats, on bikes, on busses. what I found amazing about them was that they only came on holiday for two weeks and they didn’t mind traveling such long distances knowing they had to come back rather soon.

This is Nina and Johanna (and of course Jules in the first picture! More on Jules later). In the second picture they look a little sad, I think this is because they were nearing the end of their trip.

Norwegians and monkeys.

I have been re-treading a lot of ground these last weeks, since I came to Indonesia in 2003, it was great to see these places again, and mostly they hadn’t changed, only the price, which seems overall to have doubled, almost, its not so bad really, still incredibly cheap, allowing the freedom of travel that I love. This is a constant in my mind, how privalged I am to be able to travel like I do, I feel quite extravagent, at times I do feel guilty about this also, its just not fair that life is so unequal for different people, all because of where you are born, the world would be a radically different place if everyone lived like I did (for a start not much would get done). Anyway, im drifting, it has been nice to see these places again, and also I have met up with a friend I made last time I was in Bukutingi, a guy called Lala. For all the years I have been away from Sumatra I have realised over and over again just how special a place it is, the more countries I see, the more I think of how much there is too see in this one country, Indonesia, and even more so, just in Sumatra. Its a wild land where nature seems to be the leader, in the month I traveled around I didn’t see one highway, just winding country lanes everwhere. The land is highly rugged, and coated in dense rich jungle, with some of the most amazing wildlife that I have ever seen, it doesn’t take much exploring to see something amazing.

Lots of pictures of one of the biggest flowers in the world, the Rafalasia, and yep, its kinda smelly, have to get real close to get a wiff of it though.

So after arriving in Bukutingi, being dropped of next to a mosque in a unfamiliar area after a 12 hour bus journey, the mosque then started its call to prayer, at a volume that just seemed unnesesary, it was so loud we couldn’t hear each other talk. We walked past many bleary eyed muslims who were heading to the mosque for their morning prayers. We were all tired and carrying your bag for distances is never so much fun, so we found some local transport, a minivan that acts as a public bus/taxi hybrid, they are cheap and will deviate from their normal path if need be. Since it was so early and we were the only people around he took us right where we wanted to go, right into the familiar (for me) centre of Bukutingi, we checked into a guesthouse that was owned by a German guy, the sun hadn’t come up yet and everyone went to sleep right away, I didn’t feel tired though, more and more I seem to be able to get a good sleep sat upright on busses, good talent to have really. So as soon as the sun came up I went for a walk around the streets, right away I met up with my friend Lala from the last time I was there, I’m not one hundred percent sure that he recognized me, I explained that my hair was long when I first met him and then he said he remembered me, we went for a short ride around on a motorbike, looking at all the familiar streets and feeling very happy to be back there again. Its such a great town, a perfect size with many features around.

Some views from around Bukutingi, and a picture of us all enjoying food and a Sheesha with Lala, and a picture of Lala. (notice how im stacking the pictures up quite heavily, I have so many that I want to put online!)

Things to do around Bukutingi include going to see the above giant flower, going to see the nearby lake, lake Manninjau, going to look at the amazing market there, and lots more! Very quickly we all decided to go for a trip to a nearby village where we had just been told there was a Rafalasia flower that had just bloomed, so we hopped on some rented bikes and sped there, paid a guide to show us where it is, and gawped at the amazing flower. It really is unreal to see, it looks like it should be under the ocean, its just too brightly coloured to look natural, looks like plastic even, after getting back from the trip we got told numerous times after showing our photographs of it that it was a small one! Still, it may have been small but it was still amazing to see.

The next day we rented some motorbikes again and decided to ride to lake Manninjau, which was about an hour and a half away, down the canyon, cross the river over the bridge, follow the floor of the canyon, take a right at the only junction you come across and keep on going, eventually you come to the lip of a steep drop down, and down below you is the amazing Lake Meningow.

Big look at Lake Manninjau, the middle two pictures are HDR pictures (composites of 9 photographs taken at a range of speeds), the monkey was on the road going down to the lake, the last picture I slipped in for want of somewhere else to put it, its the valley leading to the jungle where we saw the Rafalasia flower.

Lake Manninjau is a lake inside the crater of a long ago erupted volcano, I guess its all good and safe now, there’s no volcanic activity at all, no rumblings or vents of steam, or bubbling mud pools, unlike many many other places in Indonesia.

One night in Bukutingi we were all in a cafe we enjoyed to frequent, and a bat flew in! Right past us, flapping around in mad circles, then it shot off into the bathroom. It was so surreal, as many people there didn’t seem to pay much attention to it, other travelers included, for me it was pretty exciting! I went into the bathroom and saw it flapping about banging into the walls and looking more and more tired. At points it just lay on the floor or next to the sink, then it would take off again flapping around wildly. I went out and got a towel from the bar, and armed with this I marched back in and caught it as gently as I could, when I came out I got a round of applause from the crowd that seemed not interested 5 minutes ago! Felt a bit silly as they clapped at me. I had never been so close to a bat, it was pretty cute as you can see below.

Awwww Lookaditslittleface!! When I think of bats I picture mice in mad panics flapping their way through the air, startled looks on their faces, amazed at what they are doing, silly little things! How can they be associated with evil like they are!

One thing about being back in Bukutingi, and I guess its about being back in a full Muslim country, is the call to prayer that I mentioned up there. They blert out their messages at incredible volumes about five times a day, in same places though it is sang in a beautiful way, the times I have heard it like this I have smiled at it, adding a beauty to wherever I am. However this is a rare thing, most of the time I have heard it its an angry, distorted with volume rant, it sounds very hatefilled and not peaceful in the slightest, spreading its message to everyone whether they want to hear it or not. Despite my hard opinion on religion I try not to be outright rude about it, only when faced with things that shock me or disgust me, well this call to prayer often disgusts me. There are people in Indonesia of chinese descent who arn’t muslims, also there are christians here, but the people manning the mosque megaphone don’t seem to care, they want everyone to hear their angry messages. And honestly, im not lying when I say that the messages are hatefilled, sometimes its unmistakable the anger in the voice of the speaker, its ignorant and stupid to think that firing anger across the land can help anyone solve anything. In my opinion Islam in Indonesia seems to be a very rude and obnoxious religion, at least Judaism keeps quite about its believes, unless of course it mistakes you for a Jew then finds out your not, at which point you are then shown a rude and arrogant side of it (this mistaken identity has happened to me twice). Religion rant over (abandon religion! athiests unite! Critical thinking can save us all!).

After Bukutingi we all headed to the coastal town of Bungus, quite a sleepy little town just south of the ugly sprawl of Padang. Here we stayed at a great guesthouse called Losmen Carlos, named after the owner, Carlos. Here we took a trip on a boat around some of the island just off the coast, some paradise tropical islands, one of them we walked around in 20 minutes, despite its small size it was full of jungle and many lizards we were told, we didn’t see any but I did see the tracks of them, claw scratches in the sand with a swooping down the centre from the tail draging behind it. Im guessing they were iguanas, as they are also good swimmers and can swim from island to island.

This is Mona, a male gibbon that was someones pet next door to Carlos’s guesthouse. He would sing and woop at the sky when it rained, making a gesture at the sky as if dragging something out of it. He was so tame and calm, he didn’t mind me looking at his hands and feet like this, I took him fruit and nuts everyday I was there.

I think im gonna leave my stories here for now, im rushing them because im on the internet now and I want to leave to go and buy a train ticket, I don’t really want to rush them, I feel like they are a bit souless to be honest, just recalling what I did without actually reliving the events. I have many more pictures I want to put, i’ll put some more under here. Look forward to your comments, hope you are all ok. Enjoy these random pictures!

Any questions about the pictures I’ll be happy to answer, some i feel warrant an explanation

Sorry for the bad grammar, and most probably spelling mistakes, running out of internet time and no time to do a spell check, any corrections that need doing tell me and ill get round to them! Cheers people! Oh also, since I aint got time to check, if you find a dead link on one of the pictures, let me know, i hope they all work fine!

Since I havn’t wrote in a while this post just contains pics from the Cameron highlands, the last few days I have fallen in love with photography all over again, and I have so many pictures I will put on in the next few weeks.

Around Tanah Rata, the rather grand looking building in the 3rd picture is an old Britsh military hospital, its now a catholic Convent and boarding school, the majestic building being worked on by a crane is a hotel.

Tanah Rata was a a great place to get some respite from the humidity, which was getting to be a bit of a chore, im getting used to it now, its mainly dealing with being sticky all the time, sticking to your clothes and having a layer of grease on your hands and face. Tanah Rata had none of this, nice and warm during the day, and cool enough at night to warrent a blanket. I had a very small room, with a small gap of floor at the side and foot of a single matress, sounds claustrophobic, but actually was nice and cosey. Also at my guesthouse was free Wifi! Well it wasn’t free, they said pay 10 ringet (about 2 pounds) for 24 hours, but they didn’t realise I could use it in my room, and they never changed the password, so I was on the internet everynight, socialising and what not.

Tanah Rata is famous rolling tea fields, large flower farms, stawberry farms and insect zoo’s. The tea fields were beautiful.

As you can see, beautiful.

Not long after I got to Tanah Rata I took a walk to the nearest tea fields, about 10km away. I had a very small blister already from walking around Kuala Lumpur, but it caused no problem and was pretty much healed, but after some walking on it, putting pressure on the bubble of liquid, it grew and grew! And another one developed! The first one ended up about 6 times larger than it was, and kinda sore to walk on. So after the first walk I was lamed, didn’t want to burst it, and didn’t want to walk on it incase it grew bigger. So I stayed local for a few days.

After a few days they felt healed underneath, so I popped them and cut the skin off, they were ok to walk on, a little tender but not sore.

Grew bored of Tanah Rata not being able to venture to far, my feet healed and healed, and my boredom was helped away by Elizabeth, a British lady 76 years young. She had been traveling for most of her adult life, spending many years in India. She would teach children and help out wherever help was needed. In Tanah Rata me and her walked a dog together on a few mornings, the local people thought this very strange, to walk a dog. It was such a small happy dog, not a problem at all, yet the local people would scramble out of the way when they saw us coming, I got the impression that they didn’t personify dogs as much as we did in the west, I totally don’t think we over personify though, dogs do have a very strong personality, the Malay people seem to totally miss this.

A local cat and boy who both came out to see us walking the dog, and there’s Elizabeth with the dog, Rocky.

Elizabeth would talk to all the travelers she saw, and encourage them all to come together, mainly at a cafe that was run by the daughter of the cook for the British High Commisioner, from the times when England had a strong presence in Malaysia. The food at this cafe was excellent, I never really ordered, I would just get a load of everything that had been cooked that morning or afternoon, lots of chicken, fish and curry. Whilst eating here I met people from Quebec, Japan, England, America, Holland and South Korea, and im sure more I can’t think of now. So far since traveling I have been more social than my whole time in Australia combined, if you care to try and think about a measure of socialality like this.

Lots of delicious fruit for sale, a massive pile of the famous Durian (which I have aquired a taste for despite its stink), a coconut chopping block and then a machine for pressing the cream out of the shredded coconut inards.

One dog walking morning we went to a building called the Old Smoke House, it was built by the British and was a place for gentle-folk to drink tea and eat spotted dick for extorsionate prices, and it remains this to this day. It was very pristine inside, a cup of tea would cost about 2 pounds, crazy considering in the town you get it for 20p or so. Strawberries and cream was also silly expensive. Elizabeth stayed here in the 60’s with an American boyfriend of hers, still, they were reluctant to let her see the room and look around the place she has 40 year old memories from. Needless to say they didn’t like me snooping around taking pictures, I got in under the pretense of looking for my friends who were in there somewhere.

In and around the smoke house, its a pretty spectacular building hey. Look at the little spirit house, also done in the same style, this is a Buddhist tradition, somewhere for the spirits to live so they don’t much about in the main house.

Classic red phone box, including BT instructions inside, this phone box accepts 1p and 1/2p.

My time in Tanah Rata was coming to an end, I been there for a week and a half, and not seen half as many things as I really should have done, mainly due to my blisters and partly due to lazyness inspired by free wifi in my room. On the day before I left I decided to walk to the top of the highest peak in Malaysia, although I didn’t know it was until I had failed to do it and arrived home just missing a massive storm. I set off on my own, which wasn’t the cleverest thing to do, I also set off in my flip flops, also not clever, and I set off on a day that looked like it was going to rain, and again it aint so clever. I was worried by the amasing clouds so I set of at a wild pace, leaping up and up and up. The reason for wanting to take this route was to see a part of the jungle was was reported to be very old, moss had grown all over the ground like a carpet, and up the trees also, in beautiful curves from the ground, not that I saw it due to the impending rain scaring me off. So yeah, I was bolting up and up and up, wondering when I would arrive at the mossy forest, all the time the sky was rumbling and looking more grey, each step forward I knew I had to take back, yet I could be close and not have wasted each step forward, knowing this pushed me on, the clouds made me want to turn back, my head kinda cycled round, building fear and anxiety, which was pumped quickly around my body by my whopping heart rate caused by my fear induced pace, round and round and round my mind went, faster and faster I ran through the jungle. I would have loved to have come across other treckers to disperse my worries, but I didn’t. In the end (well, not the END end, but the end of my wits more like) I decided to turn back, and ran back at an equal pace. To be caught in the jungle in the rain would be bad, to be caught in a jungle on a steep hill even more bad, to be caught in the jungle on a steep hill with 1000 pounds worth of camera stuff that doesn’t like water would just stink. So yeah, i bolted back to town, as soon as I made cover of town, a chinese restaurant, the sky opened up! I kid you not, as soon as I made cover! I sat down and ate the spiciest pork and rice i had ever eaten.

This was what the path ahead looked like most of the way, daunting. At some points though it looked promising, like that second picture, there was a brightness ahead.

Lots of mushrooms in the jungle, these are from various excursions I made into the jungles.

Some bug spied whilst taking the dog for a walk with Elizabeth one day.

Some more jungle sights.

Some very strange looking branches from the jungle.

And thats all really, can’t think of anything else I got up to in Tanah Rata, so i’ll finish up with some remaining photo’s.

Some dying insect I found lying around, I moved the millipede from concrete to a leaf for a more authentic look, the butterfly flapped off and crashed landed when I tried to move it.

Termite highway.

This is the house of a chinese lady that owned that beautiful dog that we took for a walk once, when we returned it she gave it a whollop on the head right away, like it had done something wrong, she didn’t let us take it for a walk again.

Zuchini bath
A bath full of Zuchini’s, the second picture is a HDR picture combining 5 pictures, the colours i think, are a little too much.

And some randon stuff in a glass house outside the smoke house, and a veg market in Tanah Rata.

And thats all for now! After much delaying feels good to write about where I was the last weeks. I am now in Indonesia! I arrived yesterday afternoon and caught a night bus to Bukutingi, where I was many years ago. It was quite a long mission to get here, so its great to be here. I have so many amazing pictures, I don’t know when I will get around to posting them, since im now traveling with Jules and 2 girls from Norway, so I will be being social most of the time, not having time to edit pictures and what not. Also our rooms here don’t have plug sockets, so soon my compter battery will run out.

Look forward to your comments.

Great to be back on the road!

Australia was a good country to work in, in fact i’d even say it was a great country to work in. The weather was always alright, even when it was winter, it was never really that bad, raining for a few days on end, but it didn’t have that bitter bite that England has in its bleakest winters, and working in the summer in Australia was great, waking up at 6am and the temperature was beautiful, very fresh mornings a relief from the temperature it was when you fell asleep, which still lingers on on your skin. I have so many pictures, and stories to go along with them from Australia, but since i’ve just spent the afternoon playing with some photo’s from Malaysia im going to post them first.

Recreating a pose I did about 7 years ago, same spot and everything.

The room with the disorganized queuing in for the tickets to go to the sky bridge, really was a whole load of hassle, and wasn't really worth it, but still glad i did it or i would be forever wondering what its like.

This is the skybridge, the bigged it up so much, going on about how amazing the construction is, and it was good, its just its only half way up!!

Looking down on the roof of the mall thats attatched to the bottom of the Petronas towers.

I met up with a guy from New Zeland when I was at the Indonesian embassy getting my visa, he was getting a visa as well, going there for surfing. He was there with a mate, so the next day we toured the city together, we decided to go to the sky bridge that joins the two Petronas tower, its free, but you have to queue up to get a ticket, the queuing starts at about 8.30am, and lasts till the afternoon, they give out about 1500 tickets. It wasn’t really worth it, it might have been more worth it if it hadn’t just started raining when we went up to the bridge.

But as it was, it was raining, it was a pretty murky day, so we couldn’t see so far over the city. Also the bridge is only half way up, they go on and on before you go up there about how the buildings are some of the tallest in the world, failing to point out the obvious that we are only going to go up halfway. Also the queuing up to get the tickets was a shambles, we didn’t know what was going on, people entering the queue from all angles.

Not too bad view of the city, but i really would have loved it if it was a clearer day.

Whilst waiting to go to the skybridge i got subjected to a rather large round of photographs by all the Malaysian tourists, so i got one for myself as well.

It was all good fun though, and we got an extra 15 minutes on the bridge, the ushers were hearding people up and down in 15 minute blocks, and they asked us all to be as efficient as possible, and we were slack as anything, when we got on the bridge we laughed around, looking all over, and the lady called us back, i figured id wait until she did a second call, and she never did! The next group leader saw that we were members of the green team, with green tags, and he said we should have left already and we will now have to wait until the next group goes down, bonus 15 minutes!

A HDR photo (made up from 3 sepearte pictures at different shutter speeds), experimenting with this method after ages neglecting it, its a little time consuming but can get some very good results.

Using the same three pictures i did another HDR using different software, just to see how it would turn out.

After a few more missions out and around Kuala lumpar, looking in all the electronic malls, and other shopping paradises, i decided id had enough for now, since i knew i would be coming back, so i looked at a map and picked a place at random to go to next. Turned out to be the old capital of Malaysia, called Kuala Selangor, with the promise of monkeys and fireflies I was sold.

It was a little dull when i actually got there, kinda sleepy, and nothing there apart from the nature park, a lighthouse on a hill and the fireflies at night next to the river. I went to see the fireflies and that was amazing, just like Christmas tree lights, which does belittle it, but to see it was amazing, they all blinked in unison as well, and there was literally 1000’s of them! They were quite strict about not taking pictures there, i don’t think you could picture them anyway, them being such low light, i think the reason for not taking pictures would be people flashing them, maybe it confuses them all, makes them all move away or something.

2 types of monkey in Kuala Selangor, this was the friendliest calmly taking food out your hand and eating it.

The other type of monkey, these guys didn't stick around to see if I had food.

I went to a nature park in Kuala Selangor as well, walked around for a few hours, saw many many mud-skippers in mangrove swamps there, also lots of little crabs, and some shells of horse shoe crabs, but no live horse shoe crab. After the nature park that was it really, i was done with Kuala Selangor, there wasn’t anything else to keep me there, and the choice of hotels was very limited, leaving me paying 10 pounds for a night, big stinger, no other option though, seemed to be the cheapest in town.

Mud Skipper!! Crazy things, very comical, looks like a fish, but hoiks itself out of water and skips around the mud.

Waited for ages crouched next to this hole for this crab to come out.

Sheesh, this post has taken me ages to write, i decided to rely on the image inserting tool that comes with the blogging software, normally id just use some HTML script, hence the different layout, its been so much hassle though. Think ill just stick to tried and tested method next time! I do have more pictures i wanted to put up today, but the editor keeps failing me and its taken too long already, so ill save em for next time. They’re not such special pictures anyway.

From the creator
“Radiohead held an online contest to remix “Nude” from their album – “In Rainbows” This was quite a difficult task for everybody that entered, as Nude is in 6/8 timing, and 63bpm. Most music that’s played in clubs is around 120bpm and usually 4/4 timing. It’s pretty difficult to seamlessly mix a waltz beat into a DJ set.

This resulted in lots of generic entries consisting of a typical 4/4 beat, but with arbitrary clips from “Nude” thrown in so that they qualified for the contest.

Thom Yorke joked at the ridiculousness of it in an interview for NPR radio, hinting that they set the competition to find out how people would approach such a challenging task.

I decided to take the piss a bit, as the contest seemed to be in that spirit.

Based on the lyric (and alternate title) “Big Ideas: Don’t get any” I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum – Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer – Drums
HP Scanjet 3c – Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array – Act as a collection of bad speakers – Vocals & FX”

I’ve been meaning to put this up for ages, I think im gonna be more keen with posting stuff in the near future. Expect some photo’s and stories from my travels soon!

(Press more to read the story that has really made my week possibly even made my month!)

This whole story starts when I was about 5 years old, and I started playing on my dads spectrum 48k computer, waiting patiently for games to load as the tape player that loads them spits out computer noise, I waited patiently and the noise sank in without a thought. When the game starts my little child mind lit up with beautiful fantasy worlds, built up from simple 8 colour graphics and odd bleepy sounds. It was the start of a beautiful relationship.

More games came along, in fact so many games came along, there seemed to be an unending supply of games, I was never waiting for a new game to come out there just seemed to be so many of them. And to this day I can remember, im pretty sure, almost all of the games I played on this beautiful little computer. You can even get an emulator and download the games for free now, which I have done many times over the years, whenever i fancy a blast of nostalgia.

So what im getting at with this recollection of the past is that I was a massive fan of the spectrum and many of its games, totally loved loads of them. So lets skip forward to….

1998! By this time my old Spectrum was pretty much obsolete, id been through the Amiga years as well (which despite feeding my gaming addiction massively don’t take part in this story, well other than feeding my gaming addiction), through the Super Nintendo years (no relevance again), and onto my N64 years, and to a game called Wetrix, which was made by a company called…….ZED TWO! (the story unfolds). This game totally blew my mind, it was kind of a Tetris clone, but involving water and fireballs, the idea is build walls on a 3d landscape with random falling tetris blocks, then water starts coming down, fill up the landscape and use extra blocks to stop the water leaking off (which is how your game ends) then fireballs come along and you evaporate the water for points. It was such an amazing concept, beautiful graphics, beautiful music and perfect sounds. I got totally hooked, one game for me would last easily over an hour and sometimes 2 or more hours, it got to the point where I would have to put some serious time aside to play it, that and get myself into a serious state of mind. Very quick thinking was needed and tactics were constantly changing and new ones evolving. It was such an amazing game, such depth, beautiful really.

And then, zoom forward tooo…

2001 (dum dum duuum!) The Fab Cafe in Manchester, Me and my mate Jay were supping beers there like we were doing a lot them days, and a bunch of guys sat near us were also supping beers, we all were having a nice time. The group of guys sat near us said hello, asked us how we are. We got chatting and they explained that they had all just finished work and were enjoying the friday night drinking beers. I asked them their job and they told me they made computer games!! I asked them what games and they said that I wouldn’t have heard of them, so I asked them the name of some of their games. They told me they were called Zed Two! And they made a game called Wetrix! They were blew away that I was a massive fan of this game, having spent many hours perfecting evaporating them little lakes, cultivating duck ponds for multipliers. We talked more and more and got on to their first games, again they said I wouldn’t have heard of these games for sure, the first game they mentioned…..Zub! (picture of it up there), i described in detail the game to them, they were amazed! It was a joyous occasion for all of us. They reeled off a list of loads of Spectrum games, pretty much all of them id played and loved, (glider rider was a massive favorite of me and my friends, so was Feud, Matt! these guys totally made Feud!). They then showed me a Gameboy Advance that they had just received from Nintendo, it had just come out in Japan so it was amazing it see it so early. It was a great night for all of us. All the spectrum games i put pictures of further up this post, these guys made them games!

I met a couple of these guys a few years later in a computer game writers meeting in a pub in manchester, i know i don’t write computer games, but i went along anyway and met some of them guys there.

Skip forward to 3 days ago, when i saw the name Zed Two again, i searched for their website but it had gone. But after a little searching I found their new website. They are still making games under the name Zee 3 check out their site (the Zee 3 is a clickable link for loads of stories and artwork from their back catalog of games, really interesting if like me, you played their games (I love the little story about the Zub character animation, how he drew in an animation that showed him flipping gun hand when he turned around, otherwise people would see that the character facing left and right was just a mirror image). Their names are Ste and John Pickford, they are brothers from Stockport! I emailed them and asked them if they remembered me from the fab cafe, Ste got back in touch and he totally remembered me! Said he remembered me well! And that has totally made my month for sure! Ste also has a flickr account with loads of beautiful doodles and comics, check these out for sure here

They are still making games, their most popular game to date is called Naked War, I downloaded it and I fancy playing it, I think all of you out there who know me and played games with me when we were young, we should get this Naked War game going on, as its a turn based 2 player war game that we email turns too, the graphics look very bold and beautiful. Keep an eye on the guys website as well, more games coming out and since I have loved quite a few of their games in the past im sure they are capable of greatness again. If Ste or John are reading this! Hello! Leave a comment why don’t you!

Here’s some stuff from their site

This is the house i live in now, seems Western Australia is more google street photo’d than Manchester.

I don’t ever recall England arming its kids in such a way, I even recall stories of sending kids away at war time, but over there in the middle east they don’t seem to give a shit! They’re all doomed, at least until that generation of kids is dead. I say put them in the battlefield now, get it out of the way, looks like they want it, their parents want it, and they are ready for it!

A thought has just occurred to me that this is evolution in action, survival of the fittest. The stupid kill themselves off, I have always seen religion to be pretty stupid, so here it is in action, people killing each other of magical make believe entities, stupid and leading to death, its absolutely beautiful, evolution in action! It does make sense doesn’t it!

“Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

*Update* its doing it again, its also doing the same thing with another computer in this house, and my friend in Portugal.

The most perfect and beautiful Amanita Muscaria I found, and pictured!

There are lots of myths and what not about this mushroom. It is often said to be deadly, whilst it does cause a fever, its not deadly, and it can be treated to strongly reduce the negative effects. There are two main chemicals in the mushroom, one called ibotenic acid, which causes a fever and nausea along with hallucinations and muscle twitches, and then another chemical called muscimol, which doesn’t have any of the undesirable effects of ibotenic acid, it causes drowsiness and a dreamlike state. Ibotenic acid will decarboxylate (A carboxyl (-COOH) group is broken off, forming carbon dioxide and i guess one hydrogen atom) into muscimol at about 80c, however at around 100c muscimol is broken down into simpler and effect-less chemicals. Its interesting that this mushroom induces a dream like state since with me it simply invades my dreams

A few interesting facts about it :-

In England in times gone by a certain upper class would harvest these mushrooms when they were in season, they would then treat them by simmering them in a stew. Then they would all binge on them with the intention of having some kind of group lucid dreaming session. Whenever they needed to pass urine throughout the night they would urinate into a trough which drained off outside their dwelling. Waiting for this golden river outside would be a lower class of people who would gladly drink the mushroom laced urine also becoming quite intoxicated from the muscimol in the urine!

In Finland and other northern European countries there is a rumor that you can get high from drinking reindeer’s urine, this is because reindeers enjoy to eat this mushroom, and quite usefully the ibotenic acid would decarboxylate to muscimol in its guts, the desirable muscimol coming out in the urine, which would then be ingested by the urine drinking fun time seekers, causing them to believe that the urine got them high.

Its gained its name “Fly Agaric” because it can be used as a fly deterrent. It is boiled in milk then left out in bowls. For some reason this is said to keep flies away.

This beautiful mushroom isn’t so innocent after all. There’s a reason why it crops up in so many ornaments and paintings, maybe its creeping into other people’s dreams just like its coming into mine.

There they are, beautiful, just beautiful, brings a tear to my eye.

me

Here is a the song that influenced this post, there’s nothing to see so don’t go anticipating anything, its just the song.

And here are the lyrics.

you are a member of society
you are a member of reality
do you think it’s time that you are called upon
do you think it’s time that you are seen to be you
you are real
you exist
you are sane
you’re alive
you are here
you are fine
you are you
because you’re real
you think a lot about the world today
you think a lot about what to say
everything you say, it should be listened to
everything you say, well, it should be understood
you are real
you exist
you are sane
you’re alive
you are dreaming
you’re a person
you are happy
because you’re real
please show me what it’s like to be real
please show me what it’s like to be you
everything that is including me
that’s how it is in reality
everything that is including you
that’s how it is in reality
you have an edge of satisfaction
you have an air of satisfaction
i want you to tell me that it’s what i love
i want you to tell me that i’m significant
you are real
you have feelings
you are modern
you have feelings
you are perfect
you have feelings
you’re really real
you have feelings
you are real
you exist
you are sane
you’re alive
you’re impressive
you’re important
you’re smoking
because you’re real

Click on more to see a list of my favorite pictures from the internet from 2008, some are pretty strange ones indeed, so be sure to have a look.(theres a lot of them!) And be sure to click on em! The full size versions show a lot more than the thumbnails most times.

Run for your lives!

Before we had horses

WWF

Millions of eyes wasted every year.

The Earth likes a smoke now and then.

An old woodcarving.

unexplainable

Excellent Idea

Its true.

Its beautiful!

Click on it too see before and after.

Occams razor is a thinking method.

The moon!

All we see of the moon (click it!)

:D

(same place as previous picture)

Naughty boy!

Kowloon, a real city in Hong Kong, if you ever played Shenmue 2 (Dreamcast) you will know it.

How to pose

Human Timeline (Very looooon picture)

Don't cross the streams!

He deserved it.

Fire up the BBQ!

Aint nothing to fear but fear itself, and here he is.

Goat in Coat

Fire up the BBQ!

Sharp

Ah hahaha! Brilliant!

Amazing!

Battle Mode Flipper, YES!!

He don't like it, ok?