Calcutta

Calcutta. It's like New York City turned inside out, a vital metropolis wearing its heart, lungs, guts and bowels on its streets. And yet scraping the coal from its surface shows you the brilliant glimmer of its diamond quality underneath. People heave along its streets - a menagerie of humanity: paan-wallahs, chai wallahs, dosi stalls, juice stands and sweet shops cry out for business under the eaves of faded colonial facades. The passersby are mix of new rich businessmen, proud intelligentsia and the starving, begging masses dressed in rags with everything in-between.

    


Our first day we made a bee line for Queen Victoria. Her imposing statue is a Calcutta icon and local school children swarmed the monument. In some odd appropriation, Calcuttans take great pride and ownership of the image - perhaps commemorating as it does the time when Calcutta was capital of India, the largest of imperial cities and home to the flowering of Indian culture and national identity under men like Tagore and Roy. The Calcutta gallery in the museum  behind VM charts this rise to prominence with all the Positivism of a self assured city that was destined for greatness. It was here that we have found the most eager responses to being British, coupled with a chuckling reminder that India is no longer 'ours'. And yet the move of the capital to Delhi, and commerce to Mumbai, has left Calcutta reliant on its cultural superiority. Not that this claim is without merit - the work of Rabindranath Tagore, the quality of the Calcutta Telegraph, the scope of the Indian museum and the explosion of Durga Puja every October (for which we sadly saw only the earliest of preparations) are a tiny part of a city vibrant with the literary word, quality craftsmanship, and a heavy sense of its enlightened, educated status.

View of Calcutta Gallery from the Maidan, the massive field in the centre of Calcutta. Complete with man collecting grass, and wandering army truck.

Pav Bhaji Man

Our best experiences were with food however. Every street stall sold the freshest and tastiest food of our whole trip so far. I was converted to Pav Bhaji - a lime, spice and lentil fry over hot toasted bread. We repeatedly returned to the sweet shops for sugary samosas.

Best Sweet Shop in Calcutta. Seriously!

Our visit to the recommended Sidishwari Ashram was equally intense. Everything written in Bengali, with virtually no English spoken, we were kindly ushered into the kitchen to point at what we wanted. Small bowls of meat, fish and veg curries bubbled away on a hot plate, ready to be served up. As we pondered our choices, waiters dived in and out throwing curry, daal, rice and breads onto trays to be whisked into the eating hall. Having made our choice, we took a seat crowded with other eaters, mixing and eating their food with their right hand. A feast of food arrived for us, mercifully with forks, and we plowed in. The unctuous, deep flavours of the mutton curry stuck gummily to the insides of my mouth as a peppery heat started to rise with each succulent chew. At some point a waiter had come round and added a raw chilli and a raw red onion to our plates. Getting in the spirit we gamely shred them over our rice and daal. Ten minutes later we finished with bloated happy bellies. And the cost for two with free filtered water? 80 rupees; less than a quid. Our only regret is that with the multitude of Bengali eyes that watched us intently as we ate, we couldn't take any photos...



The rest of our time in Calcutta was spent wandering the streets and taking in the atmosphere. It was here that Mhairi got accosted by the snake charmer. We took a lovely beer (our first in over a month!) at a green garden terrace retreat. A quick tour around Rabindranath Tagore's house and visit to Kalighat temple rounded off our experience, but the real star of Calcutta is the life it plays out on the street everyday.

If you have anything handwritten, this man will TYPE IT UP on his AMAZING machine. You can even post it afterwards, as he is right next to the post box! Email any thing you need typed up...

Late-season Ladakh

If I'm honest it may well have been Shah Ruh Kahn who got me stuck on Laddakh. It's many years since I watched the late 90's masterpiece Dil Se but unless my memory is dramatising (quite probable), I'm sure there's an epic montage of some kind where he actually appears to walk most of the way (crossing altitudes of around 5,600 metres at some passes, you understand), blankets and silk scarves billowing across the screen, poetic tortured gazes, at the head of some sort of refugee camel train... yes I may well be imagining this in fact, I'll YouTube it. But. The landscapes and mountain vistas were mind-boggling and I've now had a hankering for over a decade - lunar terrains, jagged and inhospitable, not bleak but other-wordly and haunting.

View from Leh palace

And one of the main ogranising principles of our early itinerary was to make it it up north in time to to do the epic Manali-Leh highway approach (17 hours to 2 days depending on vehicle and willingness for drivers to sacrifice sleep) before the rapidly cooling climate makes the passes too calamitous and the road 'closes' for winter. Though in reality I'm sure there are plenty of crazy drivers willing to try and get you through way past the Autumn cut-off. However we'd remained a little unsure if jeeps and buses were still going even as we arrived in Manali. So after all that, Ladakh had a lot to live up to. And it did. I love it when that happens. It's so hit and miss with places you have a thing for and imaginatively over-invest in - even when you've travelled enough to temper your expectations and know nowhere's ever quite as you pictured it and that destinations deliver or not entirely on their own terms.

Leh was stunning in the late September light - icy at night and in the shade but a scorching sun beating down through almost cloudless blue skies most days. Why 'the season' was at its end we couldn't totally grasp, since flights continue to get in most of the year regardless of the two key road routes (from Manali to the south and Srinagar to the West). Town felt pretty quiet, with tour agencies, Kashmiri craft emporiums and tourist cafes half closed and agents and vendors in need of the last precious rupees before the winter cuts them off from much external income. Yet for all that economic necessity, Leh was utterly peaceful, with very little of the hustler shuffle that tends to follow the tourist pretty much ceaselessly elsewhere in India. In fact, Ladakh didn't feel entirely Indian - and people tend to joke to about heading 'to India' as they leave. It's sheer remoteness has tended to keep the predominantly Tibetan Buddhist region pretty separate from Hindu Jammu and Muslim Kashmir which make up the rest of the state. The contrast felt striking between the narrow and precipitous, occasionally suicidal, passes (the 'Rohtang La' just past Manali apparently means 'piles of corpses' in Hindi. Reassuring.) on the hair-raising 17 hour jeep ride, and the seemingly developed well-lit city outskirts of Leh.

Executive backpacking at Bon Appetit, Leh

The remoteness from the rest of India felt pretty palpable throughout our stay, with people referring to themseles as Ladakhi first and foremost. The region's mountains also don't see quite the trekking and climbing action that Nepal does and despite the other late-season visitors around, in our 8 or 9 day stay it still felt like we had the place to ourselves. After our first weekend acclimatising further to the altitude and exploring Leh - its Main Bazaar, formerly a hub on the central-Asian spice route, the craggy hilltop palace and gompa, calling Lhasa's Potala Palace to mind - and some pretty stunning but definitely off-budget chocolate momos (executive backpacking if you will) - we planned our side-trips.

Rugged manly hill walker

After the stunning Nubra Valley in T's last post, we ventured into the Indus Valley for a mild 3 day hike from Zinchin to Stok, just the two of us and a guide, a 16 year old boy called Tsepil (sweet and amiable enough but who gradually wore through my nerves as teenage boys inevitably will). It was a beautiful, if strangely paced couple of days walk, interspersed with homestays. Having thought the price very reasonably compared with other options, it did start to feel clear why this was on various counts but none that detracted from the experience. For example, this may make me a bad-tempered Orientalist old biddy but I'm not sure it's unreasonable for a guide sent by a tourist agency to have a rudimentary grasp of English in order to facilitate some, you know, guiding.... (as opposed to kind of, sort of, knowing the general direction and being able to ask passing shepherds for clarification). Or adapting to your ward's tempo a little: on day 3, a tough 8 hour climb up from Rambok to the peak of Stok Kangri before down and through the valley to our pick-up in Stok village, Tsepil would constantly gallop ahead and then stop and stare back until we caught up. 

Doesn't sound that annoying but believe me, it was a slow burn to my rapidly shortening fuse. It's like, dude, modify your pace. I've paid sizable money to soak up these views and and not rupture my ancient kneecaps galloping home so you can clock off by teatime. Grrrr. Ahem. Anyway, he was fine, bless him. And the views - particularly on the punishing Day 3 climb were unrelentingly stunning.

Top of Stok Kangri after a steep few hours climb

We stayed in homestays each night, the location of which dictated a slightly off-kilter 2hr/3hr/8hr walking programme over the 3 days - and arrived at both by lunchtime giving us the whole afternoon to relax, ready and wander about pointing at goats and 'dzos (improbable yak/cow hybrid). The scheme is pretty impressive, bringing extra income into rural agricultural households through the valleys and getting trekkers a more comfortable night's sleep and window into Ladakhi life. You do eat alot of chapattis thought. Chappati breakfast, chappati lunch, chappati at dinner. A whole world of chapatti if your gut is ready for it. Our second host Dolma, at Rambok, was a very bright and welcoming young woman with one of the most beautiful babies I've ever seen - a gorgeous little gnome in bright knitwear sat with perfect posture and a steady gaze. Her cosy kitchen even extended to viewing the India-Australia cricket match, followed intently by older male relatives and farmhands growing gradually more slurred over their watered down Indian whisky.

Goman gompa next to our guesthouse, Leh

We weren't sure how we'd cope with the bright lights, big city of Leh on our return for our final evening in Ladakh at the awesome Cafe Jeevan and our final sleep at the endlessly gracious and welcoming family-run Goman guesthouse who'd allowed us to come and go leaving our bags as necessary throughout the week.

I think I'll be back to Ladakh. It's easy to say that when there's a whole vast unexperienced world out there. But it's quite singular - understated, dignified and beguiling, sharing more with Tibet in many ways than India. And while we feared the risk of 'gompa-fatigue' as hill-top temple succeeded hill-top temple, it never really got old for me. Most perched precariously but nimbly to the cliff-faces like mountain goats, taking the breath away - Diskit, Sumur, Sankar, Tiske. The latter particularly noteworthy for its incredible Maitreya Buddha, a vast icon barely contained in a temple room, upper and lower halves accessed through two different levels  - one of the few buddhas to actually take my breath away (indeed they display a quote from the Dalai Lama to this effect - and I paraphrase - 'I've seen a lot of Buddhas in my time but this one takes the biscuit, well done guys'. But also for distracting us past the last bus back to Leh, stranded on the dusty roadside as night fell, our frankly rubbish hitch-hiking attempts only alleviated by a passing monk (never far away in Ladakh, as in Dharamsala) whoe bantering promises of guaranteed moksha secured in 2 minutes what might have taken us all night to achieve - a lift back to Leh, speeding off into the darkness towards its flickering lights with a couple of amiable chain-smoking, baseball cap wearing 30-somethings.

And flying out, just when you thought your jaw couldn't drop any further...

Flying overhead

In Manali (Vashisht) and a bit of Leh..

Arriving in Manali, we headed for the small town of Vashisht about 2km away. Vashisht is a smaller, more relaxing place than Manali and dedicates itself to the charas that the tourists smoke in many cafes. Some pleasant hot springs and a spot of yoga over the two day stay was enough for us. The view from our hotel was not so bad, but the cows on the ground floor were a little unnecessary...

The highlight was our trip out to Old Manali, which saw us visit the Hadimba temple - a dark, smokey wooden edifice built far up into the surrounding forest hills. Here the chanting and dim, thick atmosphere testified to religion being practised as a fully immersive experience. Everything seemed to sit as it had done for hundreds of years (not counting iPhones).

We left at 2am for one of the most epic drives in the world. 17 hours and 500km long, driving through passes over 5000m high. Altitudes headaches knocked all of us out as the long day wore on, with chai stops helping to combat the fatigue. Only the driver, mercifully, stayed awake and alert. the mountains were everywhere, at once thrusting jaggedly upwards while their sandy bases collapsed into meandering rivers.

 Time and again we'd double back on ourselves up the narrow zig-zagged roads of these slumbering giants to find some high pass that let us break through to the next valley. Finally, we reached Leh...

Epic Buddha (up-close)

I'm writing towards the end of our time in Ladakh (though by the time I post we've moved on to Kolkata/Calcutta) - with its leafy capital Leh and surrounding white-topped mountains, verdant valleys and snow-melt rivers. To the North in the Nubra Valley we saw some of the dramatic scale with which the province's nature comes together: grand valleys with huge mountains where the Ladakhis have founded some of their biggest monasteries. At Diskit, the mountain top monastery is itself dwarfed by a giant Buddha. 40ft of Maitreya Buddha raised on a massive dais that towers over the valley. The visual power and majesty of this totem to Ladakhi Buddhism was truly awe-inspiring.

Epic Buddha (from a distance)

As we pushed further into the valley, sand dunes started to undulate across the lower reaches of the plain. And what goes with sand dunes? Camels. The bactrian camels in Nubra are a legacy from the old silk route. Now it costs pennies to enter the Nubra dunes and a couple of quid will get you 15mins on an animal. So of course we did it. Illusions of my Lawrence of Arabia moment soon evaporated though, as my camel was tethered behind Mhairi's and we were led by the nose at walking pace over the sand. The novelty was enough though, and as my Alpha beast tried to push its way in front of my partner's, I clung to the humps and smiled with the ride...

The rest of the trip to Nubra was less eventful - some more hot springs and monasteries but not surpassing our previous encounters. The main feature was the passing over of Khardung-La, "the world's highest motorable pass" at 5600m. 

Here there is an icy wind despite the clear skies, and the Dalai Lama's voice booms out continuously from speakers festooned with prayer flags. Sickly sweet black tea is dished out to ward of the chill - 10 rupees for a tiny plastic cup, while a plaque on the wall extols the virtues of the infusion. It does its job though, and to the best of our ability we carry on over the bumpy roads back to Leh before the second half of our Ladakhi experience. We see wolves dash around our jeep: while on the road the army and road-builders fight it out with tourists and haulage trucks over priorities on the highway. Delays, chai stops and chat- but it all is becoming part of our travels. When we step into a vehicle it is part of our journey itself...  

Wolf:

Road Builder:

(My favourite) Army:

Nubra:

 

A Note on Buses!

Leaving for Manali, What Had We Done?

The bus is just a metal cage on wheels, no matter how many flowers and buddhas the driver has stuck to the dashboard. Vertiginous drops to our left all the way, and we squeeze past oncoming traffic by millimeters. Pedestrians, who of course walk on the road, manage to scramble out of our way. The ubiquitous Indian stray cow even manages to get its hide on the verge after some liberal horn honking by the driver. 

All the time the rain lashes down. Little rivers have have formed down each side of the road and they flow torridly under the weight of their ever increasing waters. Here and there a landslide has brought tons of rock and earth down across the road. The bare minimum has been done to clear the way and we bounce brutally over the remaining scree. I am grateful that we at least have cautious driver. He and the ticket collector both have an Indian Freddie Mercury thing going on, but they could look like Lady Gaga for all I care as they continue to pilot us safely along the road... ... ...

8hrs, currently going on 9 and we're still 50k out. When some less cautious drivers banged each other up on the road, we got stuck for over an hour waiting for the machines to be disentangled. To compensate, our driver has begun to accelerate around bends like a maniac. Indeed, maybe everybody is now late for Indian X Factor. The delay of the crash means that all cars are now hell for leather around the twisty roads with constant horn-honking and, from where I'm sitting, some eye-watering near misses at-speed. Ill as Mhairi is, she has shut her eyes long ago to get some rest. Indeed, it's time to close my eyes and dream of the slow-moving, congested roads of my homeland. Ah, for the traffic of England...

Leaving Dharamkot for a thali in Manali

As T kept repeating mantra-like in the run-up to our departure (though we’re struggling to make it work as well with other destinations – ‘a lassi in Varanasi’ is the closest competitor so far, answers on a postcard guys).

Morning chai stop in Dharamkot

So we finally upped sticks and left Dharamkot/McLeod on Tuesday morning and, getting attached quickly (will have to shake that off in the coming weeks), I felt sad to leave even after our 10 days. Which is more than long enough to establish your little routines and haunts: breakfast at Ajit’s chai stand at the head of Tipa road, watching the local children line up in the school yard and the old guys drink their morning chai watching the world go by, while rickshaws sporadically groan up the steep slope to drop off their charges of baggy-panted, dazed tourists fresh from the night buses; 10-1pm yoga for the second half of our stay, structured and serene in the Himalyan Iyengar Yoga Centre hall, a steep 5 minute climb down the hill from Paul House, our abode (no apostrophe nor, indeed, any eponymous manager); afternoons spent wandering down to McLeod or just relaxing around the villages. The mist-enveloped hike up to Triund, which put into stark relief exactly how unfit I am after a certain elevation. And the food… Malai kofta and Chilli capsicum paneer, Tibetan momos and thupka, miso and fried tofu, pizza in Dharamkot’s Trek and Dine when Tobes stopped tutting at me (as though we all sit around eating compulsory fish and chips and Sunday roasts at home in the name of authenticity?!)

So even after a short time I will miss all these things: monks on iPhones and iPads; rolling hills that look different at every time of day – mist and rainfalls that start and end in a second, now you see the mountains, now you don’t; random mix of resident and visiting (short or long-stay) Tibetans, Indians, Europeans, east Asians, north Americans, Antidpodeans – pretty much everyone on every kind of stay or way of life. And Trek and Dine in Dharmakot, Welcome Café in upper Bhagsu, Lung ta in McLeod.

The yoga was perfect, a good move and, aside from the quiet, my main reason for settling on Dharamkot rather than in town itself. 15 hours across 5 days, starting at a very civilized 10am, with the only laws outwith the studio itself that we – absolutely – eat at least 2 hours before class (varying success) and that we – try – to limit our consumption of alcohol, joints or any other intoxicants (easily achieved). Which seemed an odd way round for the stringency to work but I guess they work with their externalities, set just below traveller-occupied mountain villages.

The iyengar model was developed by the centre's founder Sharat, who evolved his method after decades working within his Pune BKS Iyengar training: with the fundamentals a strict focus on the feet and all postural alignment understood to stem from their correct positioning ('No local movements' as our teacher Pedro warned), together with an emphasis on keeping the trunk open and uncompressed. So if 2 centimetres is all you can tilit without restricting your breathing and compressing your torso, that's where you stay. And it was just what I'd hoped in terms of structure and discipline, to try and focus my distracted mind and kick off a regular practice while we're away.

Ultimately, though, it was not quite for me. Too stringent, almost no deviation from set sequences and asanas - generally a little puritanical. As Pedro admits 'All yogis are crazy... 5 hours of practice a day, you have to be'. He wanders among us cracking the proverbial whip as we groan through our 20 successive backbends; 'Man, I came here to find enlightenment,' he commiserates, 'and this guys keeps making me do all these things.' ('It's funny because it's true,' sniggers a long-suffering Israeli classmate). Pedro is a stern, distant kind of a guru, who like many with a natural authority and gravitas elicits mirth to the power of 10 whenever he does crack a grin and venture into whimsy. 'This is why you have eyes, not potatoes', is a favourite, lazy feet as 'dead fish' is another. He is also scathing on matters yogic and social networking: no one is to take pictures in the hall, 'Many tourists take pictures of themselves in the asanas and put them on Facebook - "oh look, I did a course, I am a big yog.i"' I try but cannot imagine Pedro on Facebook. It's like picturing Gandhi in a clown wig.

And maybe I have already been around the baggy-panted banana pancake crew too long but his lectures talks on consumption, credit and over-reliance on technology, delivered as we strain for 10 minutes in a contorted pose, are chiming. In that obvious but not always fully recognised way. The inability to be still without planning ahead or obsessing back, in particular. So that calm, focused room and its eternal entreaty to pay attention to our feet and find the meeting of our butts was just perfect. We will Pedro, we will.

To moving on. Having decided on the 6am public bus rather than the overnight tourist 'deluxe' - you know, to see the scenery and feel smug - we were in bed by 10 on Monday night. Sometime after midnight, through our Israeli-party-proof earplugs erupted a frenzied barking. An immense canine caterwauling backed by a ferocious thunderstorm, T eventually staggered up to peer out at 4 plus local dogs going mental on our side of the balcony. All local, well-fed dogs - used to rainy Dharamsala weather, no rabid pack - going thoroughly bonkers. 'I feel like it's an omen' he said. And as we rise at 4.30am, the din - somewhere between dogfight and storm-craziness - having continued right outside the door, that seemed correct. I discovered the Peace Cafe had given me raging food poisoning (less than 2 weeks in, the old Immodium and Dioralyte regime kicks in..), the continuing storm had us soaked to the skin by the bus stop, while delays turned a 9 hour bus journey into a 12 hour trip...

The journey picked for its scenery, street-life, people-watching therefore passed for me in an acutely uncomfortable haze, contorted and - ahem - clenching for life and dignity the first half; then head lolling like a stoned Alsation as a dehydration/hunger headache descended for the second. 'Manalimanalimanali' bellowed the ticket collector at every stop as we clattered past another town. An hour and a half passed just outside Mandi for an accident ahead, everyone bounding off then back on as the driver slammed his foot down to overtake 7 static trucks at a time, honking his horn down in a ceaseless 'Coming through, coming through, get the f*** out the way!' Once through, he took no prisoners to reach town by nightfall, and we crashed onwards, whistling round precipitous bends, pausing seldomly - once, understandably, for his whisky pick-up on the outskirts of Manali. It had been a long day all round.

Manali, which we reached just after dark in the pouring rain, besieged even as the bus was still moving - ''Leh ticket-saffron-charas-rickshaw??', was this morning, 2 days later, bleached with sun. The hills could be in Scotland, muted hues of greens, browns and greys, expectations of heather with every gaze. Stunning expanses of blue skies with snow-capped peaks are in stark relief and as freezing and drenched as we were our first night, we could burn in 10 minutes as we sit blissed out over breakfast on the rooftop of our guesthouse. It's pretty glorious and I could easily not move today. Set across a beautiful valley ringed by mountains, Manali is a mecca for trekking, paragliding, hiking, biking, rafting and lots of other exhausting worthy leisure pursuits. We could easily spend a week but our eyes are locked on Laddakh and by 2.30am tonight we'll be on our way.

McLeod Ganj/Dharamkot 2

Three little old ladies are painfully climbing the temple stairs, wrinkled and bent double with age, conquering their own Himalayan mountain to get to the Buddhist altar. Still at the top they chatter and cackle in their brightly patterned Tibetan dress. One fiddles with her hearing aid, damn technology. Given their age, it's likely these ladies crossed the high mountain passes to escape Chinese occupation of their homeland, along with over 100,000 other Tibetans. If I can manage stairs at their age, I will be a lucky man.
 
Inside the temple, the low chanting of the monks is mingled with the rustle-thump-rustle of prayer ablutions as the supplicants crouch, flop and slide to be belly down and prostrate before their gods. And their are many gods. 722. And many shrines to the many gods. Not forgetting the shrine to the Dalai Lama, laden with chocolate biscuits and fruit juice. Apparently, the Dalai Lama likes nothing more than a bourbon cream and some Tropicana after a heavy day's praying.
 
We spin the prayer wheels before descending to the courtyard where the disputation takes place. Animated debate as one stands, one sits. The standing one monologuing, while pointing, gesticulating and rocking - and always the clap! as he feels he lands a strong point. "And that's how the Buddha taught it!" Clap! The sitter nods or shakes their head, or asks a question or makes a small point. And the disputation continues under the weighty supervision of senior monks. 

Before we'll leave Mcleoad Ganj, we'll also visit the Tibetan museum which details how it is monks and nuns similar to these who have hung themselves, ritually stabbed themselves, or self-immolated in despair at Chinese rule.

 

The next day the cloud hangs low over the misty mountains. We head up to our local little chai stop for a quick breakfast. Then the ascent. Rocks slivered with metal crystal line the path up, the fatal drop to our right softened by its verdant hues and the multi-coloured prayer flags strung across the tops of trees: so high in the branches it seems only some  flying Buddha could have put them there. Approaching 3000m high, the waterfalls, the butterflies, the stunning view down the mountain cannot distract from our burning thighs and breathless chests. And at the top? Nothing. The mist encases us, and we can see only as far as a chai stand, where a sweet milky brew and some vegetable curry mixes with some traveller chat to pass the time. South African Ben sails the Caribbean in winter, the Med in summer, ferrying tourists on catamarans around the islands. But here he's building on his yoga. So we chat and descend together.
 
We strike up conversation with some locals half way down the descent (at another chai stand: they are everywhere. To be clear, there were four at the top of the mountain we climbed). To rub in how weak and flabby our Western bodies are, as we plan to leave together they wave us on. No, No, they say - you go on - we have to carry these! And what we thought were mounds of grass, are...  well, they're mounds of grass but each of the three will carry about 20kilos of grass on their backs down to the lower pastures. They take a last toke on their joint before loading up as we leave them behind.

As I write now, we have one full day left in Dharamkot/Mcleod Ganj. It's tough walking in epic countryside, with always the threat of mist rolling in and heavy downpours. A casual glance to the side and you may see an eagle swooping on some prey, or a monkey swinging from a tree. The Tibetan influence of peace does seem to have filtered through the land though: all the locals greet us as we walk past. And some people clearly lose themselves under the spell of a slow pace of life up here.

To finish though, I will leave you with some of the yoga teachings we have experienced. Lots of our time has been filled with yoga (three hours every morning). Pedro, our disciplinarian teacher, has been a harsh task master. He has also however demanded continuous and unrelenting attention to the ass. Yes, the meeting of our butts, awareness of our butts touching on the inside and squeezing of the cheeks is something I can now reliably tell you is very yogic.

I will also always remember his wise words: Look, look - use your eyes! That is why you have eyes and not potatoes!

And finally... a monk on a mobile: