Holy Cow, I'm home

When is going back actually going forward?

There’s that old saying – take one step forward, then two back. But my questions is, is there really ever any going back if the backward steps is indeed to propel you forward to somewhere or something else?

OK, let me explain myself. I am home. I rocked up in Norwich, wearing Birkinstocks and a blanket, with my nose peirced and dragging 26k of back-pack behind me. My parents looked at me like I'd grown an extra head.

I confess I couldn’t wait to leave Delhi. India, by the end of the trip, got a bit too much. I got fed up dodging the sacred cows, the tuk tuk drivers and the monkeys, whilst being chased down the street my well meaning locals.

The bus from Leh to Manali nearly killed me – I’m not kidding. 20 hours of glacial mountain pass, -5 degree’s (wearing only a t-shirt... ok, not JUST a t-shirt) dark frozen fog, mud, landslides, falling rocks the size of space ships in a total, zero-vis' white-out will make anyone a bit twitchy. The landscape - from what I did see of it - was absolutely breath taking and utterly other worldly in places though.

Then there was the bus trip from Manali to Dharamsala. Only 10 hours this time - slightly less suicidal road - it poured with rain and that rain poured through the roof onto my chair and I ended up making the latter half of the journey, soaked, trying to sleep in the isle whilst I noisy Indian family talked over me and even noisier Israli’s got stoned. If I sound pissed off, it's because I was.

I had plenty of time yet to contemplate my home coming when my flight from Dharamsala to Delhi was cancelled and there was a quick scramble to try and organize a car, so I wasn’t stranded in the Himalayan foothills forever. This particular 14 hour journey was made all the better when the driver began falling asleep at the wheel and the steering failed, right when we were in the path of an oncoming truck. Upon arrival in Dehli we stopped at 5 diffferent places and circled the city at least 6 times whilst the driver tried to call a dozen friends on the his mobile phone the size of a brick, who each called a dozen friends and no-one knew where it was.

Rant.Done.

Anyway, that was all made up for when I boarded my London bound Boeing 474 and magically got upgraded to Business Class. How this happened I have no idea. The lady at the check in desk must have been blind as a bat or impartial to the style I had developed on the road - also known as 'Bohemian Yoga chic' OR 'I no longer own a mirror and am too cool/chilled out to care if my bright pinks pants don't go with my India print, green and blue, Ganesh t-shirt.' Maybe she took pity on me?

As I reclined in my flatbed, took advantage of the complimentary Sushi and let the flight attendant pour me yet another glass of vintage Dom Perignon I wondered how I would feel to be back on UK soil. Where I would end up and if things would be different. I was nervous and excited. By the time we flew into London airspace I could see the Thames snaking its way through the city I was slightly pissed and clapping my hands like a kid at Christmas.

But now, I am home. And pondering that age old question – what the fuck do I do now?

I love Norfolk. I want the country lifestyle - but do I want it now? I want to be a yoga teacher/therapist, etc., but do I have the skill and confidence I need and am I ready for that yet? Wouldn't I get bored?

My life was in London and I miss my life; I miss my friends and the big city lights.

I just have to make a decision and make a move - because you never know where the next move, even if it isn't the right one, will lead. Sometime we just need to leap - and somewhere, in free-fall, we grow wings.

So, what are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? Leap!!

Ladakh: Like no place on earth

Debating whether I should go to India had me wrapping myself in knots more than any yoga class ever could. I didn’t know what was holding me back. All I knew was that I didn’t feel particularly drawn to it either. Memories of the pungent smell of Delhi’s back streets and the overwhelming sense of overcrowding as the Mother Land bore down on me in all her glory didn’t evoke the type of feelings that made me want to pack my bag, kiss goodbye to the air conditioned comfort of 7/11 and Mango shakes, and wade in amongst the sacred cows and sadu’s.

So I decided. India was a no. After all I still had the sharp words of the Russian Psychic ringing violently in my ears – ‘Don’t go to India’ she said. Oh. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find that kind of warning particularly encouraging.

I couldn’t shake off this feeling that this wasn’t the case though. That indeed I should go. But try as I might I couldn’t picture myself in India. I just kept thinking of the Himalaya, of Tibet, those snow peaked mountains, epic and vast, their strength and their silence as awe inspiring as it is frightening and brilliant blue skies.

I had toyed with the idea of Ladakh, right from the get go, even before I left home. It sounded like some mythical, magical land, akin to Bhutan not only on account of it only having been open to tourists since around the 70’s, but because of its isolated existence tucked high into the mountains between the border of Kashmir and Tibet. For 90% of the year the roads are impassable and the places disappears until a blanket of snow. For this reason it didn’t occur to me that I somehow might be in the right place at the right time. Then two things happened - I had a conversation with someone, having mentioned none of this, who I was boring with my should I/shouldn’t I debate re: India. And the minute they said it – I’d go to Ladakh at this time of year, it’s the most incredible place on earth – it struck something deep inside, louder than a temple gong and I knew I had to go there. Then the next day, I was browsing through an old magazine in a coffee shop in Chaing Mai and the pages fell open on a double page spread about Leh, the capital of Ladakh. From corner to corner it was filled with images of breathtaking, open blue skies, snow capped mountains – just like the ones I have been day dreaming and dreaming about - and Tibetan monks in traditional dress. I could almost smell the Yak butter candles and toasty, aromatic Sampa flat bread.

I book a flight to Leh, without even thinking about it twice.

Two weeks later I am at Bangkok airport, boarding a flight to Delhi and it’s as if I’m already there. Men queue, nose to tail, all sporting impressive colonial mustaches, a beady eye and a crisp white collar shirt. Bursts of Hindi radiate from each and every one of them in some kind of disorganized exchange. Fast forward a few hours, a long flight, two curries and a night spent on the airport floor, I find myself soaring about the mountains that have filled my dreams. I feel like I have fallen down a wormhole into a far and distant land, untouched by common society and filled with magic and promise.

The sky is so startlingly blue and so stunningly infinite and intense I can’t quite believe I am here. What is it about this part of the world – this culture – that tugs on my heart strings like no other?

Down below I can see a tiny toy town, sheltered by raising mountains that utterly drown and encapsulate them. The tips of the planes wings are practically touching the peaks as we circle the airfield (the only flat surface for miles and it’s minimal at that) and prepare to land. How anyone ever found out this place is existed is almost beyond me. It is everything you would except and imagine from Shangri-La. Except this is real and it’s unfolding before me.

I start to spot small Stupas rising proudly, as if to greet me, and the old familiar site of Tibetan monasteries which have grown to mean so much and stir such longing in me. I am impossibly happy to be ‘home.’

Whilst I hold my breath, we touch down. It’s early. I’m jet lagged and utterly spun out from the altitude. I’ve just deposited myself about 3,500 metres above sea level after all. No steady assent when you fly in. The sun is up, but its easily only hovering above freezing. I jump in a little taxi and request to be taken to a little guesthouse a friend recommended, that isn’t in the bloody Lonely Planet. He drops me off, my jaw still nailed to the floor as I try to take in everything that this place is.

It turns out its full. I have no idea where I am, so start to wander in the direction of town, my pack weighing my down.

And that’s when it happens. I am walking down the street, happy, tired and disoriented - wondering where the devil I will find somewhere to stay, when I see him. Or maybe he see’s me. Either way, we walk over to one another, in a moment of instant recognition, despite having never met one another before.

Lassif is half French, half Kashmiri. He’s at least 40, has lived an interesting life, having ran away first to the Shivinanda Ashram before spending years learning with Osho in Pune, and now runs a modest jewellery shop on the edge of town. He is charming and full of charisma. We chat and he recommends somewhere for me to stay.

From this moment we are friends.

I know him, maybe from somewhere - another place, another time perhaps. Here, anything feels possible.
It may sound ridiculous, (in fact I have no doubt that it does) and that alone in this remote place I simply fell under the spell of a local, but it wasn’t like that. To put the recognition I felt into words even now is difficult, but I just had this overwhelming sense he was someone familiar. And the amount of peace I felt whilst in his presence was phenomenal, so much so that after an evening I spent in a tiny hut he’d erected on the side of his shop, mopping up rice with our fingers and sipping on spicy Kashmiri tea I started to avoid him, because all of this scared me.
It scared me that he knew me and it scared me that I had stumbled across this stranger, who seemed as if he was not a stranger at all.

At no point should this be misinterpreted for romantic love, because it wasn’t. I don’t’ know what it was, but it wasn’t that. The man had a child and a wife, who I liked equally, but with whom I didn’t not seem to share this unexplainable bond.

I keep trying to figure out why he came into my life like that – if there was some lesson to learn from him. But I’m not sure if it didn’t somehow pass me by.

One night I got very sick. I don’t know what caused it, if it was a stomach bug or the altitude or perhaps even the intense ritual I had just witnessed at a nearby Monastery during their annual mask festival, during which they danced to eradicate demons, but I returned to Leh feeling like I had one foot in reality and the other had slipped off somewhere. When I got back to my guesthouse I had a high fever and passed out for several hours, only to wake up so I could throw up.

I felt bad enough that I was frightened. I was beginning to think maybe I needed to go to hospital and that the Russian’s prophecy was being foretold. Someone in my guesthouse suggested I might have got Hepatitis from the water and there was talk of blood test with rusty needles if I did seek out local medical help.

There was no-one else nearby and no-one else I could trust, so I sought out Lassif. He closed his shop, brought me mint tea and came and gave me some kind of Reiki. Afterwards I fell into a deep, deep sleep and when I woke the next day I was fine.

When my time in Leh was drawing to a close, I could not bear the idea of leaving. There was something about this place that made me melt. Literally, the beauty of Ladakh and its people (with the exception of a monk who tried to feel me up on a bus!) became so overwhelming for my poor heart, conditioned to the western world and the western way, it was almost more than I could take.

The affect of being in such an open, friendly environment where everyone was so lovely to one another, where everyone said hello, where I could take little cups of ginger honey tea back to my guest house to fight the affects of the cold, as I curled up on a tiny straw mattress in a mud hut (with no heating), from a nearby Chaiwaller without having to pay for it really does something funny to you. This is a place where Buddists, Hindu’s, Sikh’s and Muslim’s live along side one another and carry a huge amount of respect for the faith of one another. It is a country flanked by trouble – Tibet, China, Kashmir/Jammu and Pakistan and yet no-one lives in fear and everyone is still smiling.

I have always been enchanted by Tibetan culture, but perhaps without the weighty influence of China there was something about this particular brand of spirituality/Buddism that was just more raw and more pure in its form.
It was not fake, colour coded or packaged up for the tourist trade, it just was what it was – a simple way of life, based upon compassion and community. It’s a real model for how society should and could be. Our lives may be richer and more convenient in so many ways, but for all the ‘progress’ we have made, we seem to have lost so much, become so disconnected and with it disheartened.

I can’t help but question if we’ll ever get that back and what the future if for somewhere like Ladakh, that is now starting to open its doors to tourism and with that, take on more western values which frankly just don’t fit or have a place here.

The day I met the Dalai Lama

I’m in the back of a Jeep, Shakira is blasting out of the stereo and I have tears streaming down my face. It’s not that I really have anything against Shakira – although I do think her music is bad – but I’m crying and laughing at the same time in sadness and in gratitude for the scenery that is unfolding before me and the past few days that I have spent in the Nubra Valley.

Just a few days early I was in the same Jeep, singing an all too different song. For 6 hours straight I solomly chant the Triumbyke mantra in Sankrit; a mantra that is said to omit fear and ensure safe travel. I’m not usually a nervous passenger, but then I don’t usually attempt to conquer the world’s highest motorble pass. It’s just short of 19,000 feet high to be exact.

We’re driving from Leh in Ladakh to the Nubra Valley, close to the Chinese border, to attend a series of teachings by the Dalai Lama. In order to get there we need to make a journey that will take us across some of the most impenetrable roads in the Himalaya. Although it’s only something like 60k’s, it will take hours and we have no choice but to just take it slow. The road is rocky and there is a very serious danger of falling rocks and landslides as the melting ice from the surrounding snowcapped mountains gushes towards lower land during the summer months.

We tell our driver Hosey to take it ‘slowly, slowly’ and he seems to understand. There are a few times we meet oncoming trucks, heading the opposite way and it’s a narrow squeeze and a test of our nerve whilst the two vehicles negotiate around one another and avoid the sheer drop on one side and the vertical cliff face on the other. I confess, there were a couple of moments when I stop chanting and hold my breath, which I really wouldn’t recommend at that altitude unless you want to turn blue. I promise myself if/when I get there AND, more importantly, back I’m buying the t-shirt. Luckily, the journey goes smoothly or as smoothly as is possible on choppy mountain passes and we make the ascent wailing along tunefully (?!!) to Panjabi techno, Bollywood hits and the occasional instrumental Ladakhi song. On the basis that the car is full of fellow yogi’s and meditaters, I figure we must have built up enough good karma to arrive at our destination safely. It really would be rather bad luck dying on the way to see His Holiness.

I confess to feeling rather privileged to be joining throngs of Tibetan, Ladahki and Indian Pilgrims on their way to see the ‘Dalai Lama-ji.’ If I’m honest, I actually don’t know what to expect. Although I was hoping to make it as far as Dharamsala to visit the small Himalayan, hillside village in which he took refuge and set up home when he was forced to flee Tibet I never quite anticipated I might be lucky enough to come face to face with him, let alone listen to him share some of his wisdom. But here I was, on my way.

To describe the scenery as breathtaking would be to do it a severe injustice. It is only when you’re amongst something so dramatically beautiful and so staggeringly enormous that you appreciate just how small we really are. Here, where the mountains are so high they touch the sky and the Grand Canyon-esq valleys are so deep they seem to penetrate the very core of the earth itself you simply cannot help but stare in wonder at all of this – and really question, why are we here, in this world that is so idyllically perfect without us?

Anyone who questions the existence of Creation, of the Divine, of the supreme consciousness…whatever label you wish to put on it… clearly hasn’t been to the Himalaya’s, for this is the very seat of God itself. As crazy as it sounds, and maybe you really had to be there to arrive at this conclusion, but as I stare, bewitched by these beautiful mountains and marvel at their sheer scale I somehow understand that they have been born from the same creative energy as me and in that sense I am part of these mountains, just as much as they are part of me.

You often hear people refer to feeling at one with themselves, with nature or with another. And we have all had moments of peace when we feel connected to something outside ourselves and this is what life is about. We are all interconnected. All interdependent – not independent (as we like to think in the West). We are all part of the same tapestry. If we could only remember and accept this; embrace it even, a lot of the world’s problems would be greatly reduced, because you cannot live in this knowledge and fail to treat others with respect and compassion.

We arrive in the tiny town of Disket, along with a multitude of other Jeeps, minivans and buses. The usually quiet main bazaar is overrun with local pilgrims, tourists, monks and nuns. The streets are awash with colour. Prayer flags flutter from every available window overhead, gangs of burgundy clad monks bustle about on their daily business, clutching their mala beads and softly murmuring ancient mantras, the smell of freshly baked Tibetan bread wafts from every doorway and local people in traditional dress turn prayer wheels as they spill out onto the street and chat noisily about the upcoming visit of their revered spiritual leader.

High on the hill above the town sits a shiney new Golden Buddha, which is approximately the size of your average multi-story car park. As far as India/China/Tibet is concerned the bigger, brighter and more shiney the deity, the better and this one is no exception. I understand it has been about 5 years in the making and now His Holiness will kick of the three day teaching program with a special blessing ceremony.

The following morning beneath brilliant blue skies, we make the 45 minute trek up to the big Buddha, together with about 50,000 Ladahki’s. This is a world in which I don’t belong, at least not in this body; not in this lifetime, yet one that welcomes me with open arms.
Both serenity and excitement fill the air as we pass Gompa’s, more prayer flags, pop-up campsites and gaggles of local people gossiping in anticipation or quietly reciting prayer. Everyone has a warm wave and a friendly smile. No-one makes us feel unwelcome or like we shouldn’t be there. I lose count of the amount of time I cry ‘Julay’ (Hello/Goodbye/Thank-you. In fact it just about passes or anything) as I make the climb. I stop briefly, fearing I may burst a lung (we are at altitude after all), to regain my oxygen starved breath and observe those in their hundreds scurry to be part of this local celebration. It’s incredible.

There is something of a festival atmosphere when the guttural chants of the monks begin the Puja (Prayer) ceremony. Their other-worldly song drifts across the Himalayan plains and seems to alter the very vibration of the entire valley.

No-one but Monks and the DL are allowed on the actual Buddha today, but provision has been made for us to sit in the lower grazing fields which have been kitted out with tents and thick canvas for sitting on. Groups of Pilgrims patiently group together, sitting in their full length, thick Ladahki coats in the blistering heat. I’m suffering in a simple t-shirt and seek shelter in one of the tents. We soon discover these have been set up for the Ladakhi women, who will be performing dance in the cultural display later, to get into costume, so we’re promptly ushered out, but not before they insist on sharing sweet bread and freshly picked apricots with us.

There’s a long wait between the blessing and opening ceremonies, so we have to hang around for several hours which provides the perfect opportunity for some people watching… and to get sun-stroke. The contrast between the local people and the foreigners and staggering and I confess to being really rather disgusted at ‘our’ behavior.

To my horror the Westerners have a special designated area, which is not only closest to the stage but filled with chairs too. But evidently this is not good enough. ‘We’ shuffle around impatiently, smoking (which is supposed to be prohibited as this is considered a sacred site), snogging and sticking our enormous telephoto lenses in startled Ladakhi’s faces without asking. To make matters worse, incredibly, food and chai is provided for the entire waiting audience. Talk about the feeding of the 5,000 – try 50,000. But instead of waiting our turn, in fear that the food will run out, everyone starts jumping up and climbing over one another to get a plate of rice. Meanwhile, the Ladahki’s just sit and wait for the food to come to them, happy in the knowledge that there will be enough or that they will simply share with their neighbor if supplies get short.

I don’t know what it is about the Western mind that is conditioned to hanker for more. To freak out and think that somehow we might get overlooked or left behind. From this little display it seemed obvious that we some kind of inbuilt function that has pre-programmed us to be dissatisfied with almost everything and really only look out for number one.

This is really a sad state of affairs, especially when you consider that these people are attending teachings about compassions – there was no compassion displayed when the DL finally made his way on stage and everyone started jostling and elbowing one another to get a better look, nor was there any compassion displayed when everyone tried to move their chairs 2 inches further forward just to be a little closer and then proceeded to stand on them, thus blocking the view of the Ladakhi’s seated on the floor behind. And there certainly wasn’t any compassion shown when I saw someone swipe an umbrella from a woman’s hand who was just trying to shelter from the sun. Perhaps they’d have been happier sitting on his lap, like visiting Santa in a Christmas Grotto.

All of this made me wonder how many of the Westerners here were just opportunists, looking for the photo-op that meant they could go home and brag to their friends they’d seen the Dalai Lama, rather than having a genuine interest in what he had to say on Buddhism. I really rather suspect that for the most part it is the former, sadly. But I suppose if they take on board just 1% of his teachings and go home and think about it, the message will spread.

In a way being in the Dalai Lama’s presence is a little like meeting the real Santa Claus. There is something really rather magical and mystical about him, even though he insists he is just a simple monk. Despite the hardship he has faced and the peaceful yet relentless campaign he makes for his freedom and the liberation of Tibet, his spirit it every bit as light as that of a new born baby. He radiates with love and compassion and a certain purity that is scarce. He giggles like a child and has the most extraordinary smile. At 75 years old he is amazing. His energy seems boundless and just being around him seems to make your heart sing. And to my delight, he sounded just like Yoda.

On day 2, I sit amongst the Ladakhi’s, cross legged on the floor. I am delirious from heat-stroke and just the joy of being here. I’m not even sure it’s real. We’re all huddle together under a sea of multi-coloured umbrellas, perched on top of a mountain, where the dry, clay coloured desert gives way to infinite blue skies speckled with fluffy white clouds. Mountain ranges extend in every direction, prayer flags flutter overhead and we’re surrounded by monks, listening intently to every syllable that passes from the lips of His Holiness. I watch in awe as everyone prostrates silently when he arrives. I understand nothing of the teachings itself, because he’s talking in Tibetan and its being translated into Hindi, but it doesn’t seems to matter one little bit, I’m happy just to simply soak up the atmosphere.

I could continue to rant about the behavior of the tourists, but what would be the point? Yes, we’re different, but perhaps this just one of the things I have to accept in this life time. Being somewhere like this makes you realise how much we have lost in the persuit of happiness through technological growth and economic prosperity, but you know what things will change, because this lifestyle that we have created for ourselves is not sustainable because it is too far removed from living harmoniously with the world and one another.

I can honestly say that attending these teaching days, high up amongst those mountains and eventually sitting just metres away, in a small audience with the Dalai Lama (an invitation which was extended to just 100 or so Western people) will always remain one of the most incredibly special experiences of my life. Finally I understand what a spiritual experience is.

Never under estimate a decent cup of tea

Its time to go home and shape this new life of mine. Stand on my own too feet and make happen what is meant to be. I pray for good people. I pray for health. I pray for happiness – all of this for myself and my family. And I pray for a little bit of stability. I thought before I came here I might want to spend a few years wandering, travelling from place to place, but actually I just want a place to call home for a while, where I can sit on a sofa and enjoy a decent cup of tea.

The tricky part is what the heck I do next?

Latest Loas tourist attraction - Electiricty Ladders

I have no idea why anyone would want to come to Vietiane. Like any captical city, there is a distinct sense of East meets West and all the construction that is going on here indicates that it won’t be long before in fact the West catches up.

The most recent addition to this city is an air conditioned shopping mall, which has become something of a tourist attraction for the surrounding villages. They specifically come to marvel at the ‘Electricity Ladders,’ commonly known as Escalators to you and me.

Temple living; not for me

Its time to resurrect the blog.

I have been writing, I just haven’t been publishing. I needed some time, alone. Alone in my own space and alone with my own thoughts. For a while there I needed to retreat into my own head and my own heart. Seek some silence and stop running.
This travelling, journey of self discovery thing isn’t easy. Everyone imagines that as you swam around exotic countries, conversing with exotic people and sampling exotic food you will feel fabulous. But actually, sometimes you don’t. With no-one else to rely on but yourself, you get to know yourself in an entirely different way – the good, the bad and the very, very ugly. Acknowledging and accepting all parts of yourself is not easy. I hope this doesn't make me sounds like a nutter ;)

Whether it’s a travelling thing or a yoga thing, you become very self aware. You see how your thoughts and your behavior is connected, the patterns in creates in your life and the outcome that these dictate. And just when you think you’re done they keep on coming, like layers of an onion that just keep on peeling.

Since the last post I went into the meditation retreat, only to run away after 3 days having broken all the rules (ie. texting, talking, checking to see if I could get a wifi conncetion in my cell, sleeping in, doing yoga… you name it I did it) because I realised that I had had enough of doing what I felt I ‘should’ be doing, enough of judging myself against what was expected of me (usually self imposed) and enough of sitting still and being quiet – dancing to someone elses tune, acting on what society or our parents or peers dictate? – so, I ran away. Packed my bags, gave back my white uniform and jumped on the next bus back to town. It felt good.

I thought it would be an incredibly spiritual experience, during which I’d feel liberated and enlighted. But I didn’t. There was a war raging inside my head and even living in a temple with monks and nuns, sleeping on hard floors, chanting and meditating for 18 hours a day (with the odd trip to the 7/11 for chocolate milk to break up the day) couldn’t calm the fire that burnt. And, it’s because I kept fueling it – where should I be? Do I want to be in this temple? Or should I be somewhere else? What did I want to do with my life? Where should I go next? This wasn’t really the ‘right’ kind of spiritual experience… I expected to feel more… I dunno, spiritual. If I cannot have a spiritual experience whilst living in a buddhist temple for goodness sake then I clearly I needed to reassess my expectations and have a strong chat with myself.

In short, expectations suck. They alter how you perceive everything. If you have an idealist view in your head about things should be, you’ll always going to be comparing how things are to how you thought things would be. And that creates a massive amount of conflict and duality within.

Clearly, this was something I needed to work on as it was starting to turn into a bit of a theme.
So, I said fuck it to expectation (from this point onwards I will practice the art of having non) and flew down to Koh Yoa Noi – just about the most remote island you could find and did a spot of rock climbing, just because it wasn’t a Vipassana meditation retreat and just because I could.
Then, I spent a very chilled birthday in Chiang Mai – my all time favourite place – and bit the bullet and ended up in India. But not just India – Ladakh.

Please, try and keep hold of your passport…

My heart is racing. I have just done a 90 second pre-dawn dash around Chiang Mai is search of my passport. The one thing I never let out of my sight. Usually it’s snuggled into the pouch of my leather utility belt, which not only stops my fisherman pants from falling down but looks good too, all tightly wrapped in a neat little functional package.

I have just completed a 15 hour bus journey from Vietiane and I think my absent mindedness was down to my excitement for being back in Thailand, my relief to be off a bus full of 19 year old Gap year students who would not stop talking for the entire journey, that is until the knocked themselves out with Valium, and general lack of sleep.

By the time I got to ‘my’ house, I leapt off the bus grabbed my backpack and waved off the Gap years. I was just falling asleep again when something triggered somewhere deep in my sleep deprived brain and I realized that I had I had been separated from my passport, complete with its shiney new 60 day Thai Visa. At that point I think I vomited a little in my own mouth and legged it down the road in search of a tuk tuk. My only thought was that I knew the bus was taking the giggling, sedated Gapper’s to a hostel and that my only hope was to catch it up. My phone was out of battery, but it didn’t matter because I had no way of getting in touch with the bus company anyway. The place where I booked the ticket didn’t have a name, the bus company was inevitably printed on my ticket but I had given that to the driver, obviously, so playing a game of cat and mouse with that bus was my only hope.

Naturally, at 5am in the morning there are very few tuk tuks about. Plenty of drunks, but no actual useful means of transport unless you count the Thai guy on a motorbike who offered to (and I quote) ‘rescue’ me.

I start running down the street, but don’t actually know where the hostel is. I flag down a Sangthaw, when one finally passes, but the driver doesn’t know where the hostel is either. My mind is racing. I am wondering what the process is for a lost passport and can’t help questioning if this is the universes way of trying to tell me that I need to stay in Thailand or indeed that I shouldn’t be embarking on a 21 day meditation retreat from Friday.

Eventually a tuk tuk shows up, charges me an extortionate amount to drive 5 minutes into town and I find the hostel. The Gap year kids are sprawled out across the floor, laying on each other and their packs, because the place isn’t open yet. No one has seen my belt or my passport. Gah. This is quite a wake up call. I would have settled for a nice coffee to bring me round slowly.

I mooch back towards home, half of me resigning to the fact the passport is long gone together with my camera and iPod and the other half tries to somehow manifest the bus driver seeing my forgotten belongings, realizing where they have come from and returning them too me. Ok, so a lost Passport is not the end of the world, but I’m angry at my own absentmindedness and stupidity. Having to go through all the red tape of obtaining a new one is an inconvenience I would have preferred to do without.

As I turn the corner down Moon Muang/Soi 9, my street of residence, I hear the low hum of a car engine. Only it’s not a car engine, it’s the minibus and the driver is looking for me my passport in hand.

I literally could have kissed the guy, but I figured that wouldt be culturally appropriate, so I settle for a Wai and multiple Cap Cun Ca’s instead until he got back behind the wheel and drove off, slightly bemused.

Finding Neverland

I’m in Laos, having finally wrenched myself out of Thailand – albeit temporarily.

All it took was one bone breaking journey on a local bus that was entirely unfamiliar with the concept of suspension across the border to Huay Xia and I’d arrived in Neverland. That is the only possible parallel I can draw to try and put Laos in context for you. You would not believe your eyes.

For two days as I sailed down the great Mekong River I felt like I was taking a magic carpet ride through the lush, fertile, jungle landscape; an infinite blanket of emerald green, enveloping mountain peak after breathtaking mountain peak, each giving rise to the next one after the other for as far as the eye can see. The Mekong has a glass like quality that reflects all that surround it, trapping me between perfect, mirrored worlds.

Life breaths from every nook, crook and cranny as we coast along, racing dragon flies as we go. We pass a few ‘beachside’ hill tribes, who I assume are Hmong, albino water buffalo and dozens of tiny longtail boats that look like toothpicks, floating amidst this vast scene, manned by young men and old, sporting those little pointed bamboo hats that you see in pictures of this part of the world. I don’t know the name of them, clearly.

We stop over at a couple of small border towns, drink some (illegal) herbal rice whiskey and dance in the street when it rains. It is worth saying here that we’re in Laos during the rainy season, so when it rains it really feels like the sky is falling. On account of the surrounding hillside the storms are thunderously threatening and it serves as a stark reminder of just how vulnerable we are to the elements when they turn on us. I can’t help wondering if when you’re so dependent and at the mercy of Mother Nature how this affects your perception of the Earth, this little planet we call home. If the local people are constantly reminded of how delicate the balance of life is, wouldn’t that affect their attitude towards how they work with their environment? I mean, they don’t recycle and they need to sort their emissions out, but they do seems to have a different relationship with Nature and I’m sure this influences the prevalence of Shamanism and Phi; a religion that believes everything has a spirit. – I feel like I’m not quite communicating my point here, so let me get back to you. Perhaps I’m trying to state the bleeding obvious.

Anyway, so here we are – we being, myself and the very beautiful David and Kippy; my state side travelling companions who I met in Chiang Mai. Already I am saying things like ‘pants’ instead of trousers and ‘that’s the bomb’ or ‘that’s so dope.’ In return they seems to be fast obtaining my thirst for afternoon tea and have adopted words like lovely, brilliant or wicked into their vocabulary. They’re not sure about loo though.

In Pac Bang, our half way stop over point, we wake up to candy floss covered mountains, as wispy clouds rise off up from the riverbank in the morning mist. I keep half expecting Peterpan or see a T-Rex stomp past to pop up, but so far nothing. Instead we feel inspired to do some yoga on the terrace, which is the perfect start to the day. Especially another day sat on a bench seat on a slow boat.

We finally arrive at our destination, Luang Prabang. Dubbed, amongst other things as ‘The Jewel of Asia, The Chiang Mai of Laos and the most romantic city you’ll ever visit.’ So expectations are high, but sadly quickly shattered.

Let’s get one thing straight, regardless of what the Lonely Planet might say, Luang Prabang is not, I repeat NOT any of the things described above. It’s not that I disliked Luang Prabang, but I didn’t much like it either. It seemed closed off to me. I didn’t feel welcome in this new place. The energy was off – and we all felt it – although we didn’t exactly get off on the right foot. We were hustled into a hotel we weren’t that keen on, got felt up by the reception staff, were hounded by street kids and made the discovery that despite rave reviews, the coffee was weak and watery (if you could find somewhere that didn’t serve Nescafe 3in1) and the baguettes were floury pockets of air, occasionally inhabited by maggots, that the Parisians would not even wipe their nose with.

The trouble is, I’ve been spoilt in Thailand and Laos is a different kettle of (muddy Mekong) fish altogether. First, you only have to flip back a couple of pages in the history books to appreciate the past of this place and neighbouring Cambodia hasn’t exactly been rosy. Then, consider its now low season so there are fewer tourists. Finally, it’s important to remember that in Laos tourism is a fairly recent phenomenon and people are still adjusting to having their space invaded and learning how to respond to Westerners and all the cultural differences that dance hand in hand with getting to grips with very different modes of behavior and beliefs. Greater still, they are getting used to the canyon size divide that having money and not causes. I am left with no doubt, taking all these things into account, that the people here are trying to figure out where they fit into the grand scheme of things.

They see us, fat and cash rich, and feel deprived. One little girl who was selling straw braclets, with boardroom cool and a winning smile, insisted on us buying two one day and a third the next. When we declined, she pouted ‘You have many money. Me no have money. Why you no buy?’ She was 10. Pretty and smart. Her job was to sell said bracelets to tourists, everyday. Just to deviate a moment, that’s one thing I have swiftly noticed in Laos. There are no children. There are babies and there are adults. And the babies turn into adults at around 8 years old. This country is hardcore.

I can’t help but question if we really have a right to be here. Was this town happier before we invaded and there wasn’t a mass grapple to get as much cash out of us as possible? Have we bred greed in a country like this? I think it’s still the third most deprived country in the world, so of course cash coming in can only be a good thing, but we really need to reconsider if we’re going about it in the right way sometimes.

I think you’re average backpacker is probably responsible enough to make effort to seek genuine cultural interaction and support local business, but I do confess to being rather objectional about flashbackers, holiday makers and Gap year teens riding the party train passing through. From what I saw I can’t help but feel they are not being that mindful about the impact they’re having on cross-cultural relations and forgot tha they are ambassadors for the West, paving the way for things to come.

If we keep waving our cash about, waggling our figures and yelling in some poor street sellers face (yes, I witnessed this) and throwing up in the alms bowl at sunrise, you can only imagine how the local people are going to perceive us and the subsequent attitude that will grow as a result.

I cannot claim that I am really any better, and please don’t think that I consider myself on higher moral ground than anyone else, because I seriously don’t have this figured out. I’m just recounting what I observed and my general pondering on how to be a responsible tourist in a poverty stricken country. The issue is, you want to help, but giving every street kid you see spare change only encourages them to ask every white Westerner for money, which in turn with affect the attitudes of those visiting Westerners.

I need to give this some more thought. Before I move on from my musing however, I’d like to close this badly communicated argument by saying that in the villages, where tourism is not rife, people are more cheerful. They may have it harder, but they are content with what they have and what is and here they’re always happy to greet you with a wave and a smile. What is it that has tinged people’s perceptions of us in hubs where tourist traffic is high? I leave you guys to consider this point.

I caveat this entire experience by saying that Luang Prabang did in fact have some redeeming features. It does have a certain architectural charm, if you’re into that kind of thing and I often felt like I might actually be somewhere in the Caribbean due to the colonial French influence, rather than Asia. The dusty streets, and tumble down, candy coloured houses and dinky roadsiade cafes were more reminiscent of St Lucia than anywhere I have previously travelled in this continent.

The street food was also exceptional. A huge plate of fresh stir fried vegi’s and some BBQ chicken (I am no longer vegan. Very anti-Ahimsa, but sometimes you’re body just needs meat) for less than a couple of quid and you can’t go wrong. And I just so happened to take a little trip up to the most spectacular waterfall, where I swam in infinite pools of, albeit it slightly chilly, lapaz blue water that cooled the mind and warmed the heart, under dense jungle that felt absolutely eons old; their twisted trunks, trailing vines and enormous leaves testimony to their wisdom. I half expected Tarzan to come swinging through the branches, and almost wished he would, but one thing I have learned now about expectation is – have none!

Despite a few things that have left a bitter taste me my mouth there are some rare delights to be found if you get off the beaten track, like the local bar we found down on the bank of the Namka River where we sunk a couple of chilled Beer Lao and listened to a fusion of Asian break beats and old American funk. We rose early one morning to give alms to an endless stream of golden robed monks, as they gathered what was offered to share with their temple for the day. This I expected (there I go again – it’s a tough habit to break) to be a more spiritual experience in itself, but I didn’t get time to drink it all in as we were ushered into position, kneeling on the floor and swiftly had to get busy rolling balls of sticky rice to give to all those that passed by. It was too early for my sleep fogged brain to catch up with my body and process this alien activity.

It was a great way to leave Luang Prabang behind, with good memories rather than bad.
Right now, I am crammed into the back of another bus, designed for people half my size. Having just passed through yet more stunning scenery we’re headed for the Laos capital Vietiene. We decided to skip Vang Vieng, although reputed for its beauty it’s also famed for ‘Tubing’ and quite frankly my only opinion on that is – why would you want to? Sure you probably wouldn’t want to float down the Thames, beer in hand, but still it doesn’t scream genuine cultural experience to me.
So Vietiane it is, to sort out Thai visa’s so we can re-enter the land of smiles. (Chiang Mai, how I miss you).

The original plan was to go to Cambodia, but right now I don’t want to go to another city built up around tourism, even though Angkor would be amazing. The more I travel the more I learn that the real magic happens between destinations at unexpected times in unexpected places and I anjoy staying in one place a while, so you can find the little café’s, befriend the food market vendors and really get under the skin of wherever it is you are. Right now Chiang Mai is home to me. And every time I leave I can’t wait to go back.

*Please be aware this post was written on a bus at the end of a 10 hour journey, so if it seems a little directionless and dull, its because I was feeling a little directionless and dull, and may account for more spelling mistakes and ill constructed points than usual. Forgive me.

Living the Lahu Loca….

I love this time of the evening; when the sun is beginning to set, marbling the fading sapphire sky with streaks of salmon pink and the dusk chorus launches into song by way of signally yet another day is done. As I sit her on the roof top of my house in Chiang Mai, swallows dance above my head and gecko’s slip out from under their hiding places beneath the plant pots to feast on the mosquito’s that inevitably hope to feast on me. It’s quiet.

After being in the Lahu village, the one place you might expect to find a little tranquility, Chiang Mai – even with its myriad of tuk tuks and taxi’s – by contrast is an oasis of calm.

You see whilst the village is about the size of a postage stamp and has less than 400 tribes people living in it altogether, who by the way are not Thai at all but migrated across the border from China, Tibet and Myanmar. Those people are vastly outnumbered by the following; stray (possibly rabid) dogs, chickens, cockerels, pigs, ducks, cats, rats, plus all their corresponding offspring. Throw into the mix the fact that village life concludes at sundown, when everyone returns from working the surrounding rice paddy fields, to have a rowdy and really rather raucous time of it at the local hose pipe as they wash off what they can of the dusty, dank red earth that makes pretty spectacular mud cakes and clings to just about any surface it touches, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, only to begin again with a complete din that is several decibels higher just before sunrise. And what a wake up call that is. In my disturbed slumber I could never really be sure in which order the morning ritual began, usually because all manor of the activities aforementioned below regularly continued through the night. First (I think) the blinking cockerels would start shrieking. This was swiftly proceeded by the pig and their piglets running around screaming. This would of course set all of the damn dogs, if in fact they weren’t already barking blue murder, which in turn would startle any remaining sleeping babe who would join the racket by howling. At this point half the village (that’s 200 hundred people) would be up and either a) singing or b) listening to Lahu music loudly depending on their preference of the day. Around 4am the village clock, which sounded exactly like an ice cream truck, would chime – sometimes ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’, sometimes ‘Celebrations’ which concluded the official start to the morning. The motorbikes would roar into action, as the local coffee began to brew, and everyone would be on their way. Although please note that motorbike engines were only specifically switched on to drive up the mountain side. In cases where you were only required to travel in a downwards direction the engine would not be switched on and you’d just coast.

Now there is one final thing I need to explain about the Lahu people to complete the picture. The men. For they most part were small, frail and a little feable – and this was exaggerated over time and with age. In complete contrast, the women were voluptuous, strong and actually rather ferocious. And this too became more exaggerated over time. For example, a couple of 25 years old seemed to be on fairly even footing. But, fast forward about 20 or 30 years and Mama looks like she could and would eat Papa for breakfast. The women have quite the temper on them too, so throughout the day – including at 4am in the morning – you would hear them literally screaming the same blue murder along with the dogs. Coincidently this was usually directed at the dogs.

So, let me back up a bit. I was living a tribe village – being all Bruce Parry and that other one… Palin – in order to learn Traditional Thai massage. I specifically say traditional because this is the technique based on ancient healing wisdom, which actually originated in India, opposed to the other kind of thai massage which is administered by lady-boys and comes with a happy ending. Just to be clear!

We make the two hour drive up into the hills (using the engine) from Chiang Mai, that’s 30 of us, packed like pigs going to slaughter in the back of a couple of trucks. If we didn’t know one another before we embarked on this journey, we sure did by the end of it. Imagine being on the London tube, only the tube carriage doesn’t have a roof, there are no seats and it’s about a third of the size. Ok, well we all know what the back of a truck looks like. My point is, that I used to think having my face in someones armpit was pretty intimate for the morning commute – I mean I hadn’t even had my triple shot latte yet - but there’s nothing quite like having to entangle yourself like human spaghetti with someone you just met and not being entirely sure if your foot is in their scrotum and if it’s their hand or the next guy/gal’s fingers digging into your inner thigh as you two-wheel it around a sharp bend. Everyone of course is lovely. That’s one thing you find with doing things like this, you find like minded people, all doing it for similar reasons you are, and for the most part everyone is just so God Damn nice and oh soooo open for a stiff-upper lipped Brit I constantly have to keep myself in check so not to come across aloof. And even then, I probably still do.

I’m kind of here by accident. I was feeling lost in Pai, which sounds like it should be nice, like drowning in Apple Crumble or swimming in Lemon Meringue, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t that I was without ideas, on no! it was that I lacked direction and no reason or criteria upon which to make a decision. But then totally out of the blue someone mentioned this massage course to me and on the basis it complimented yoga perfectly and would be an interesting experience I decided to apply. Afterall, I’d get to learn a new skill and hopefully be introduced to some interesting concepts and information regarding the energy channels of the body. Of course, I completely overlooked the fact that I would selflessly be allowing people to massage me for a large portion of the day.

As with all things that are meant to be, it came easily. Within a couple of days I had been accepted, travelled back to Chiang Mai, been thrown into the back of a truck along with 30 other tie-die wearing, ankle chain clad, dreadlocked ‘trainees’ (did anyone else hide the same dirty little secret they used to use hair straighteners and wear high heels at home I wondered!?) and been deposited in the middle of the Lahu village, amongst the mud and the pigs and the kids.

Accommodation and facilities would be basic, we were warned, but I confess I faltered when we initially arrived. It wasn’t that I was afraid of roughing it but this…, this was like something I had seen when I travelled in Tibet two years previously, but hardly believed to be real. At the time these novel little outposts were akin to remote movie sets borrowed from Robin Hood Prince of Theives and Gladiator, put there just for us, but shut down after we were gone. I mean, they just struck me as so old fashioned – not in the appealing way that vintage Burberry is old fashioned - old fashioned as in from an entirely different millennia. Out of this world. Somewhere with virtually no point of reference in the modern West. But here I was.

I wonder if I’ve wandered through the door to Narnia, only there’s no snow. In fact this is probably the total opposite to Naria, it’s dry, earthy, hot (and sadly no Mr Tumness) but you get what I mean. So far on my trip I had been pretty pampered, perhaps with the exception of that very random guest house in Chiang Rai with the pant wearing, carrier bag wielding, Chinese man (don’t ask, I will backdate this blog post soon, I promise). Shock and concern swiftly turned into delight however, so I need not have been anxious. Without the over stimulation of on-tap entertainment 24/7 and extremely limited options in terms of how and where to spend my time I slipped into village life pretty comfortably. There’s something about it that just feels natural and knocks on the door on memories of how we used to live. After all, it shouldn’t feel so alien. Most of the world lived in tribal set ups not dissimilar to this one, with a sense of community at its heart up until fairly recently. (Recently being considered in context to the history of the Universe and not last Wednesday).

Most people lived in bamboo huts nestled into the hillside in one concentrated clump, many of which housed families the size of a small army. There would be no furniture of course, just a fire in the middle upon which to cook and a couple of mattresses that were rolled out to sleep on. Many people had TV’s, but not everyone could get a signal. Every third house had a shop beneath it, kind of like finding a Starbucks on every block in the States, which usually didn’t sell a lot. There was one coffee shop. When I say shop I mean shack, but WOW was the coffee good. Grown locally on the surrounding hills (which replaced the Opium, when Thailand was forced to crack down on its cultivation) and roasted on site (i.e. in the backyard). The owner, Sombart, really knew how to charm his customers, hence the fact most of us were there morning, noon and night. Then there was the ceremony circle reserved for religious and Shamanic rituals, the meditation ‘garden’ on top of the hill (where I was supposed to go at 4.30am every day but didn’t), the massage practice platform where we spent the days camped out or passed out, and finally the kitchen and dining room where we ate rice three times a day, unless they changed the menu and served sticky rice just to mix things up a bit. I just want to pause here for a moment to elaborate on the term dining room, as this is lose in its description at best and frankly inaccurate. But words fail me as how else to sum it up. Attached to the ‘kitchen’ (also loose in its accuracy) was a bamboo terrace on stilts about a couple of metres wide. We’d look out at glorious views of the valleys and hills, chomping down our rice whilst one of the locals used to insist on setting up a daily stall selling the most random array of musical (again, please accept this description with a pinch of salt) instruments, that could in most cases only play one note, and a series of vicious looking knifes that unquestionably would raise an eyebrow or two from the customs officials at Heathrow.

The beauty of this terrace was because it was raised off the ground the pigs and the dogs, and the rats and cats, could all scrambled around below you whilst you ate, churning up the dust and reminding you they’re waiting for your scraps. Should you happen to drop a morsel of food down the gaps, all hell would break loose for about 30 minutes, whilst the animals had it out and someone eventually got their mits of my banana skin. I’m not sure if there are any rules about feeding banana skins to pigs/dogs/rats/ cats, etc., but I’m pretty certain that they’re indigestible for at least one of these specifies, because on occasions shortly after consumption the most fowl stench of animal fart would hang in the air as the culprit snorted, snaffled and shuffled around beneath us.

By now I hope to have in some vague way set the scene, so now on to the massage itself. Well, to be honest I basically drifted through those two weeks in the village in a haze of looking for someone’s energy lines, palming and pummeling their muscles and trying to make their joints crack. In return they did the same for me. Some sessions were blissfully, beautifully, healing. Others felt like my masseuse may have been poking me with sticks or engaging me in some secret torture ritual. Usually between massages, despite avoiding getting up at 4.30am to meditate I was so pooped I’d pass out and forgo another meal of sticky rice in favour of having a snooze. You see all this massage stuff is exhausting. For starters giving one is a full blown workout, but when you consider that receiving one can initiate some pretty radical shifts within the body that cause it to expel all its toxins and dump all of the emotional baggage and tension you’ve been very carefully stockpiling over the years quicker than you can say Hot Potato you find you constantly feel like you’ve just gone ten rounds in the Muay Thai ring.

There are days when I actually wished that no one would touch me, but by the time we work on the back – the place where we store most of your emotional rubbish – I have tears of gratitude spilling down my face in thanks for having been given the opportunity to stay here in this chaotic little corner of the world, the perfect sychronicity in which things seemed to be panning out and the staggering beauty of this place; a view of the hills stretches out in front of me, the sky hangs infinitely above it.

I had a conversation with a friend recently and I found myself giving it the usual spiel. I used to live in London, working in advertising, got tired of the bullshit, decided I wanted a change of plan and booked myself a one way ticket to Asia in the vague hope of steering my life in a different direction. After I described that I’d done so far I concluded with saying ‘We’ll see what happens.’ I always say ‘We’ll say what happens.’ He just looked at me and said one of the most profound things I’ve heard in the while. ‘Dude… its happening.’ And he’s right.

So far, I’ve taken a slightly passive view on what will in fact happen, because I think… no, I know… that I am being guided in a different direction to the one that I was on before, but all along I have continued to chirp ‘We’ll see what happens’ but that guy was right. It’s happening. I just need to embrace it and stop being so skeptical.

There are of course a multitude of other things that occurred in those two short weeks in the mountains that I could write about, but we’d be here for a month of Sundays. Instead I’ll try and fill in just a few of the gaps.

I went to a local Buddha Ceremony one night, only to find a handful of people stomping around a candle playing one of those instruments that can only play one note and the tribewomen chewing pan. I did actually get up at 4.30am once and trekked to the hill top to meditate, only to ‘wake up’ with a thousand fireflies dancing above my head. There were impromptu sing songs and a birthday party, complete with chocolate cake and balloons that made me feel like I was 7 again. We lived in a haunted house and woke every morning at 3.30pm to the sound of heavy breathing. I saw the local tribal elder slaughter a pig, in a ceremony to celebrate the local people who had been working so hard on the fields, and wasn’t grossed out. Not even when the blood squirted from its slashed throat. Not even when it screamed. OK, it wasn’t pleasant, but this was one pig being killed for purpose. Without the distribution channels and commercialism of the West it just seemed somewhat natural.

On the weekend we drove to the local waterfall and typically I stood there staring at the drop below for a good 15 minutes, watching everyone else fearlessly launch in, before I got angry and frustrated enough to give me the adrenaline boost I needed to do it for myself (lame!). Then we ate noodles and drank bamboo tea out of bamboo and the Latino arm of our contingent started up a raucous sing song right there on the river bank. I didn’t recognize any of the songs, until they realized the Brits felt left out and threw in a rendition of ‘We all Live in Yellow Submarine’ that would have made The Beetles weep and left me wondering what the hell was in the Bamboo tea.

To conclude I would simply like to say thank you to everyone on the course, to the teachers, to the special Lahu people, The Sunshine Network and Ilona who made the suggestion I do the course in the first place. That and – does anyone want a free massage when I get home? I need to practice!

Dear Dad, I'm going all Bruce Parry

I just found myself sending my dad this email...

After careful consideration I have decided NOT to do the Intrepid trip. There seemed like there was just one too many obsticles being put in my way - after the expensive flight into Cambodia I then discovered that I'd been to pre-arrange a Vietnam visa, which I don't really have time to do without major hassle. To be honest now I'm on the road, I realy don't think it owuld be that hard to make it there under my own steam and I didn't like the idea of trying to get somewhere for a particular day at the expense of cutting short my time in Loas - which I really want to explore. I'm quite enjoying just pleasing myself and deciding when it's time to move on. In the case of Pai its tomorrow - it's a bit touristy here, with lots of teenage backpackers just looking for the next party. I have managed to find some cool people amongst all of that, and even teach a yoga class but there really isn't much to do here unless you want to zoom about on a moped and glare at hillstribe people, which I don't.

Anyhoo, to cut a long story short just when I thought I was lost and had no idea what to do next a friend messaged me, we got chatting and she recommended a thai massage course that combines yoga and vipassana meditation, which is conducted in the tribal village of Lahu, where you live for the duration of the 12 day course. A couple of emails and a phone call later and I'm booked onto the next course starting on the 16th with a very accomplished teacher.

It feels like the thing I've been waiting for - combing the 3 things I've been thinking about lately and trying to chose between. Plus, it will be something different. I'm totally over the tourist trail and just want to go somewhere that isn't featured in the damn Lonely Planet.

So for the next 5 days I'm going to hang around Chaign Rai - and there is a chinese village not far outside of the city where you can go horse trekking, which I fancy.

Then I'll be living in a hut (probably with pigs), meditating, doing yoga and learning massage.

The link to the website is here: http://www.thaiyogamassage.infothai.com/

After that the intention will remain to head to Loas and Cambodia - then I'm undecided about after that. maybe Bali, but maybe Burma. I don't know! What's the point in planning, when your plans tend to turn on a sixpence.

So thats it. I'm going native. I'll call you before you go.

Mucho love. xxx

I know not what I am, but what I'm not...

I’m staring at myself in the mirror. Every travelers cliché stares back, sporting an attractive day-glow tattoo, neon devil horns and clutching the mandatory bucket that I’ve just bought from ‘Fuck it, lick it, suck my bucket' bar. (Sorry to any parents and grandparents who are reading). This isn’t me.

For 2 weeks I have settled into jungle life. I’ve dodged the local mafia who casually like to swing their sharpened machetes as they stroll down the beach, clambered over the rocky jungle trail to get to yoga practice on a platform set into the rock face, worked on my Marichyasana and Supta Kurmasana until I was blue in the face and flirted with the cute army doctor cum Thai boxer. But now I’ve reached one of those turning points when you catch sight of yourself and in that moment you know yourself better than you’ve ever known anyone, not because you can say without conviction that you know who you are but because you know who are you not.

For 2 weeks, I have done everything from Chakra Aqua aerobics (really, you don’t want to know), under gone past life regression, travelled to Penang (Malaysia) and back all in the name of visa extension, treaded the boardwalk (precariously made from bamboo and nailed to the rocks, above the ocean) from Had Thien to Had Yaun, eaten my own body weight in Pad Thai – or as my mum, who is quite incapable of grasping any foreign language, consistently calls it – Tad Pie, and gone to and then koh
avoided ‘Guy’s Bar.’ To elaborate, Guy’s bar redefines the concept of your average Jungle boogie. A well established Had Thien institution it pumps out party tunes for the party-hard from midnight Friday to way beyond sunrise on Saturday at a secluded bar in the middle of the jungle where you feel like you can just reach out and touch the stars. No friends are actually necessary; just your dancing shoes and a mushroom shake (if that’s your bag) is all that’s needed. Well, that and some ear plugs if you intend on getting any sleep at all. My personal preference was to party until 5am, go home, crash out, get up, have breakfast and carry on.

Anyway, now I find myself at Koh Phangans infamous Full Moon Party. This isn’t Thailand. This isn’t travelling. This is bullshit. As far as the eye can see there are (sadly) mostly, British tourist getting absolutely off their head on whatever they can get their hands on… and the music isn’t even good. I really fail to believe that these people are actually having a good time. From the guys who are trying to master the flaming skipping rope and getting their butt (and worse) burnt to the couple bitching at one another on the beach, I can’t seem to see anyone that is having genuine fun, although perhaps they think they are which I think makes the whole thing worse.

The Full Moon appears to be one of those things, that was good once. Maybe. But since the attractive tinkle of tourist dollars turned the whole affair into nothing more but a glorified beach barbeque its authenticity has declined.

I wonder if it’s my mindset or (God forbid) my age that is preventing me from having a good time. I mean I like to party and trust me, I’ve partied A LOT, but this really isn’t flicking my switch. On the contrary, I’ve completely short circuited.

Since arriving on Had Thien I have had this niggling feeling that I’ve been unable to put my finger on, but now it’s starting to make sense. Initially I dismissed it and put it down to my own restlessness and inability to live ‘in the flow.’ As someone who has always had a plan, the absence of a plan is like withdrawing a comfort blanket from an over tired child. I freak out. Without even the need to plan, I am utterly lost. This is the reason (well, amongst a couple of others) that I decided to stay on Koh Phangan longer than intended. If I’m always moving, how can I expect whatever it is I’m looking for to find me - if it’s forever playing catch up? Sometimes, you have to be still for the magic to happen.

But now, the urge to leave and leave fast was consuming me.

Honestly, I have indeed had some truly incredible moments on Had Thien that I shared with some awesome people. Sadly though, any tranquility I found was fleeting (and I see it now only in retrospect) because Koh Phangan tries too hard to be the real deal. It is superficially held together by the seedier side to Thailand; its mafia, the associated drug trade and the drippy, hippy, pseudo spiritual people that these little pockets of the world seem to attract. It didn’t feel right to me that a detox centre and those undergoing rigorous cleansing procedures were juxtaposed against a community of people, that (mostly) claimed to be ‘healers’ who sat smoking Opium all day, had an exceptionally high opinion of themselves simply because they think they’ve renounced the commercial world and now somehow think they’re special or different. People, I have news for you - you’ve chosen to eject yourself from society, because you can’t function within it and have created this little cushion around yourselves, to protect you from the outside, where you get to make the rules and feel good as a result… that is, when you’re not blitzing whatever brain cells you have left at this point, under the disillusion that drugs will bring you closer to yourself, or the ultimate truth or whatever it is you want to call it.

Of course, I’d just like to say that I do generalise, so please only take what I say with a pinch of salt. But I can honestly say, I don’t think I’ve found so much pretention amongst a bunch of people who are ‘supposed’ to support the exact opposite.

Before you begin thinking that I had an entirely bad time on Koh Phangan it was actually fantastic. It had a little of everything. I loved living in the jungle. I loved hanging out in the hammocks all day, watching eagles dive for fish in the brilliant blue water. I loved my little bungalow, including the cockroaches in the bathroom and the fact you never really know who you were going to meet.

There is more to this tale of course. There is always more, but talk is not cheap, even if you’re paying baht.

The day I left, I didn’t look back. I was ready to leave. I was ready for something new. For something authentic. Something that didn’t involve drinking anything from a bucket or opening your chakras. Although leaving wasn’t easy. I nearly got involved in a grapple with the absolute arsehole of a boatman, who thinking he was some kind of little Don with a tiger tattooed on his ass, insisted on charging me double to get off the beach and then took me to the wrong side of the Had Rin meaning I had walk to the ferry port in the roasting heat with my 21 kilo pack (yes, it gained a kilo - mostly in fisherman pants and Havana’s).

I was bound for Chiang Mai, in the hope of trading a beach full of tourists and drunks for temples and monks.

Sleeping with a lady boy does not count as a cultural experience

Since I left the Islands I have been hanging out in the coffee shops and markets of Chiang Mai, gazing over the rice paddy fields of Pai and hiding out from bizarre half naked Chinese men, toting carrier bags full crisps in Chiang Rai.

I arrived late into the Northern City and despite only seeing nothing more than a few dimly lit backstreets, I instantly fell in love with Chiang Mai. For reasons I cannot explain the place just made me smile. And, I mean really smile when you’re whole body seems to exhale.

My days here have been spent wandering the back streets and temples on offer, with very little agenda but to drift. This is place where it’s not unusual to see Monks on motorbikes looking oh so cool, Ray Bans on, mobile phone in hand.

Seriously, I love this place. I cannot tell you how much. And I cannot tell you why. It’s a city, but it feels cosy; blanketed by the surrounding mountains and the protective arm of an ancient city wall.

After indulging myself in an air conditioned café this morning, to get out of the 40 degree heat, I managed to stumble across a local market where nearby local tribes people come to sell their handicrafts. There is all manor of imported bits and pieces from across the neighbouring boarders of Myanmar and China. It drags up memories lost of something that feels like home.

As I stood there surveying the collection of prayer wheels, ornamental Buddha statues, singing prayer bowls, meditation gongs and vibrant prayer flags, I am transported to last time I was in Asia two years previously that inevitably inspired this trip and it makes me ache.

To date, I can’t help feeling like I haven’t found what I’m looking for on this trip. But, without knowing specifically what that is it’s hard to know where you might find it. It’s true that I long to be amongst the Himalayas again, but also know that the incredible experience I had last time could never be replaced and therefore no attempt should be made to recreate it.

Besides, this ‘journey’ is not about sight seeing. I’m not interesting in striking through item after item on a must see list. Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop me questioning if I’m in the right place sometimes though. And it prevents me from being present in the moment I’m always too busy pondering where to go next. It’s a nice problem to have, but one that usually leaves me locked in indecision, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights simply afraid of making the wrong choice. It doesn’t help when all the 20 something gap years are all tramping the same well-worn routes like sheep boasting about their conquests on the Southern Islands and bleating about going tubing in VangVien. Ok so you might not want to get tanked, riding an inflatable in the Thames but I have to confess I don’t really see the appeal. Sorry, but if all you want to do is get wasted on foreign shores you’d be better off to save your parents money and pop to the local pub. This is not a cultural experience unless you count sleeping with a ladyboy.

As you can probably tell, I am beginning to sound a little jaded but with all my being I just want a different kind of experience. Not one that is listed in the Lonely Planet. In fact, I would like to burn my Lonely Planet.

The challenge is, where to find this ‘different’ experience?

I know my anxiety is just the planner in me trying to organize things, trying to provide structure, trying to create some kind of itinerary and with it a purpose. What I need to remember though is that the actual purpose of this trip is to have NO purpose. To let go and put my faith in something greater than myself, that maybe is better placed to decide what is best for me. Because there are times when I sure as hell don’t know.

Chiang Mai teases me though. Here, I feel happy, genuinely happy for the first time in a while. Here, a little piece of my soul surrenders. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere I have felt so relaxed and at home. And that is a rare and precious thing. I cannot express how much I love this city. I want to carve it up into teeny, tiny little pieces and eat it all up. I don’t think I’ve ever felt cannibalistic about a place before.

Failure to blog warning...

I received a letter from the Sincere Travel Blogging society yesterday, asking me to close down my site on the grounds that the number of entries I have made since abandoning UK soil is, and I quote ‘outragous, if not downright offensive.’

They gave me 24 hours to write an update or they’d shut me down. So here we are. One installment of several, to better educate you on my escapades in Koh Phangan.

This may take a while.

In my defense I have been living in the jungle for the past 3 weeks, although it feels more like 3 years and therefore, predictably, have had little access to the internet. In fact, I’m not even certain they know what it is there.

Frozen in indecision, once I arrived on Koh Phangan’s Had Thien I seemed incapable of leaving. I have since decided that the energy of the place that makes you feel like you’ve just clawed your way free of a Sunday afternoon laundry spin cycle in fact sends out some kind of jamming signal to your brain, rendering you completely useless.

I spent the best part of the intial week trying to decided whether to stick with my Ashtanga practice – and frankly, who wouldn’t want to when it had so much going for it – clambering the jungle trail, over rocks to the next secluded bay of Wae Nam, I get to Salute the Sun, etc. etc. on a platform set right into the cliff, with views across the Gulf of Thailand. Not only this, but I have not just one but two highly qualified teachers on hand to offer some (much needed) assistance, across a group of a mere dozen and before I know it I’m practically binding solo in my nemesis Marichyasana D and get Kurmasana and Supta Kurmasana added in to.

The alternative is to go to Agama, for a month long course in Tibetan Tantra. Whilst there is an element of harnessing the sexual energy this shouldn’t be confused soley with Tantric Sex; Tantra was originally part of Buddism before it splintered off and shaped its only philosophy.

However, after a bit of asking around amongst the responses I get are – ‘Agama is a cult, the Swami is Sleazy and indeed everyone is having sex there, which sounds like a good thing but it isn’t.’

So after very little thought, I decide to hold back from putting myself in the firing line of some fat westerner, posing as a Guru trying to awaken my Kundalini. After all, I can get that for free on Had Rin beach on Full Moon Party night.

As I’m going nowhere in a hurry, I decide to upgrade my accommodation – sleeping on the floor of the dorm is all very well and good, but where’s a girl to put her shoes (that’s she doesn’t need to wear)?

Always one to romantically overlook practicality in favour of idealism, I opt for a bungalow right on the beach that has no fan, electricity and the shower could easily pass for a derelict greenhouse, simply because it has a cat on the porch. I’m not entirely sure why this was a selling point for me, because I’m allergic to cats but it seemed like a good idea at the time. However, after night one, with approximately zero hours sleep on account of the fact I’m just drifting off, the sea breeze cooling the air, when the cat and half a jungle zoo want to share my bed.
Un-amused, I flee the following morning and move into a cute little cottage style bungalow, that looks like it would be better placed on a prairie. It may not have a sea view, but I only have to share the bathroom with a couple of cockroaches who keep themselves to themselves, and get used to being greeted by a water buffalo when I stumble from my porch, yoga mat in tow at 8am every morning.

To be continued...

Sorry, been too busy sitting in a hammock to write.

Friends... Welcome to Speed Blogging... the latest craze to sweep the internet, developed by those who are traveling, with limited internet access, a slow connection and are frankly just far too busy sitting in a hammock all day to provide substantial, regular updates. (Although after this, I promise to try).

So, this is now my 7 week in Thailand and so far no blog post – what the hell have I been doing? Well, jokes aside, the truth is I have been too busy to even contemplate writing anything that wasn't a test paper, despite the fact that I originally created this space to discuss my journey into yoga.

Well, in short my life of late has gone a little something like this…

I left work. That was sad.
I packed up my flat in London and besides what I had in my backpack, left all my worldly possession in my parents loft (much to their delight). That was weird.

I flew out to Thailand, but not without encountering ‘the plane is broken, madam. Please be getting off isn’t it’ incident in Mumbai (where I was getting my flight to Bangkok), which lead to a comedy dash through Bangkok airport – 20 kilo pack on my back and all – to ensure I didn’t miss my connection to Samui. That, was not an experience I want to repeat.

So, finally I arrive. It’s breathtakingly beautiful in that stereotypical secluded way that Thailand is famous for. Despite the rest of Samui being a recess pit for the smoking, drinking (mostly) British public, Yoga Thailand is a haven.

The course itself is intense. And when I say intense I mean that on day one, I feel like I have never done yoga before. I discover the only thing worse than doing Ashtanga at speed is doing it painstakingly slowly.

Around a week goes by and by this time we’re into traditional Mysore style sessions. It takes me around 2 hours to get up to Navasana (boat pose) and not a day goes by that I don’t end up in tears. I can’t help thinking that I should feel better that my practise should be further; being in paradise, doing all that yoga. But I don’t.

Yoga, together with the Pranayama and Kriya’s (cleansing techniques) that we do every morning is powerful stuff – and all kinds off odd memories and sensations begin to arise, despite being long since forgotten and I realize that during the month here I will have to face a few demons. Not least my ego, which pokes fun at me during each and every practice, making me more and more frustrated with the poses that I can’t do.

After around 2 weeks, all I can think of it – why am I doing this? I mean I rise at 6am, just so I can down 2 litres of salt water only to vomit it back up (after the first day I ask if there is a tequila alternative… it would make asana practice more interesting… but there’s not), watch the sunrise whilst meditating on the beach (all very City of Angels), spend an hour doing breathing exercises (which make me cranky), sweat my arse off until it’s literally pouring into my eye balls (the sweat, not my arse – THAT would be a worry) during 2 hours of practice, only to have 2 hours free to eat brunch (not that I want anything, by now I just feel sick), before my afternoons are taken care of in a range of classes covering chanting, philosophy, asana study and anatomy. Then in the evening theres sing songs with Irish smooth talker jack Harrison, 'educational' DVD or more Kriya's.

But I stick with it and realise that it is of no business of my ego what my body does during asana practice, so I step aside and don’t let my mind get involved. When my body is ready I will progress. Ashtanga is an organic process, you have to let it evolve on its own. Besides, there is always, always going to be something I can't do. If I get the primary series down then there's the 2nd and the 3rd.... always more. After that, things seemed to improve.

Stress is mounting by the 3rd week and we’re all feeling like we simply can’t absorb anymore information and there is a lot of anxiety in the camp. It seems a little crazy to me that I’ve come half way across the world and PAID for an experience that I was being paid to do back home.

Clearly, we all need to brush up on our yoga sutra’s and practice what we preach.

As with all stories though, it has a happy ending. My Sanskrit oral, teaching practical and written philosophy exam goes really well. Although during my teaching session I was compared to a cruise missile. Apparently, if the army were looking for yoga teachers I would be perfect. I decided to take that as a compliment…

In between the yoga, there were always the girls (and guys) to hang out with – my yogini sisters, who came to mean so much, plenty of studying, walks along the beach, crazy Qi Gong sessions and ‘off the matt’ jump arounds that would rival any dance routine those Thai prisoners record and stick on You Tube!

Since leaving I have had some time to reflect on the whole experience and have to say that it was incredible. I have no doubt that is has deeply affected me and my practice in ways that are yet to be discovered. I met some incredible people and as cliché as it sounds, made some life long friends. Guya, if you're reading this, I love you.

After leaving Yoga Teacher, a qualified Ashtanga teacher (whoop) I was launched into Tourtistville hell – and forced to join the throngs of drinking and smoking holidaymakers so I could meet with my parents for my dads 60th birthday. Happily, we’re on a reasonably quiet beach, although it still comes with it’s fair share of ‘death by synthesizer’ style entertainment but we end up having an absolutely awesome time. I never knew my parents could be so adventurous. We dived off boats near Koh Toa and ended up swimming with sharks (well, one shark, but it was pretty sizeable, had big teeth and a blood thirsty glint in its beady eyes) and I watched Ma and Pa zoom off on a Jet Ski looking every bit James Bond and the sunkissed blonde.

Now, I am on Koh Phangan, which is a welcome break from the commercialism on Samui. For now, I am basically living on a beach, in what can only be described as a tree house, that can only be reached by boat, haven’t worn shoes for days and the only item of clothing I’ve unpacked from my backpack is a tie-die dress. I’ve definitely crossed over to the dark side!

There’s a hippy-ish vibe on this island, that I find inviting. And (this one's for you Amit) everyone talks frequently about how great the energy here is. I may stay a while. I have a few ideas of where I might go next, but no actual plans. I was going to do a course on Kundalini and Tantra, but keep hearing mixed reports and rumours that the organization is actually a cult and the Swami is super sleazy… uhm… and I have a volunteer job lined up in Dharamsala, but not until rainy season – so, I leave the British summer behind, so I can be in the rain in India? Really? Still, it would be charidy. For now I’m putting off making any kind of a decision, until the decision chooses me. I guess I’ll move on when I get bored of the hammocks.

I am the Caterpillar

I have just 3 weeks left living in Hampstead; the place, that for the last 2 years, I have called home. I cannot believe that, in less than 1 month I will have left all of this behind, lock, stock and barrel, and swapped the daily commute into Soho for the sandy shores of Koh Samui. I can’t wait. But there are moments when I am terrified.

I haven’t written much this year and to be honest I’ve been deliberating about what to say. I don’t feel like I’m capable of composing anything dynamic, entertaining or even remotely witty. My mind has become numb with waiting for something to happen.

Do you remember that game when you were a kid – stuck in the mud? You’d run around until you got tagged and then you just had to stand there – stuck – watching, while everyone else carried on with the fun. Well, that’s me. I’m caught completely and utterly in the land of limbo. I am nowhere. I am no-one. I am the Caterpillar, bound in a chrysalis of its own making, trapped, whilst a transformation takes place.

My world feels a little confused. I’m stood (stuck) here straddling the proverbial travel bug, with my left foot in the UK, my right in Asia, and my head somewhere in the clouds. As a consequence I am beginning to feel like I’m walking around in a life that simply doesn’t belong to me anymore.

The trouble is, I pretend to care, but the same level of enthusiasm just isn’t there. I’m having a complete identity crisis, suffering a total loss of confidence both in the office and on the mat, and God, am I bored. Bored of the saving and the staying in and trying to maintain discipline over my practice, when really I’m itching to let my hair down, stop worrying about every single transaction I make, get drunk on ludicrously expensive cocktails in a posh bar, wearing a posh dress and dance on, under and around frankly whatever I can get my hands on. There is only so much more Strictly come cook it on ice that I can take on a Saturday night.

Christmas was my milestone for plans getting underway and the real countdown commencing, but then January arrived and I remembered just how tedious it is. The weeks, along with the seasons snow, finally melted into the month of February and suddenly I don’t have so much time on my hands.

I have now ditched classes in favour of practicing Mysore style at Triyoga off Carnaby Street and there is something about rising at 6am and creeping through deepest darkest Soho at dawn, before most of London has even had the opportunity to reach for the snooze button, that makes me feel smug. At least that is until the guy on the mat next to me literally starts to levitate through his sun salutations and it puts my humble attempt at the primary series into perspective.

Nevertheless, whilst I may not be able to perform such incredible displays of strength, control and elegance in my postures I know that I’m not all bad either. I have a starting point from which to work. And, Ashtanga is a hard practice; something to be both mastered and marveled at. I do not feel that I will now progress too much further without the precise guidance of a teacher and a quieter setting.

You see it’s hard to break old habits and enforce an entirely new way of living in an environment to which doesn’t suit it. Not only does it comes across all wanky, Gwyneth Paltrow and no fucking fun at all, it’s actually quite challenging to focus internally in a city that vies for your attention and drains your energy in every possible way. Not to mention my flatmates penchant for (loud) war games at all hours of the night.

Occasionally, very occasionally, I have moments when I wonder what I’m doing this for. There is part of me, just a small part, that wants to reject the whole idea and let things go back to the way they were. After all, wouldn’t that just be so much easier?

Well, the answer is simple. Of course it would. But, there are also moments when yoga makes me feel like life is so damn beautiful it brings me to tears and gives me a sense of peace and of joy that I would go to the ends of the earth to explore. It’s as though someone has let me in on a wonderful secret and it makes me sad that its been shared with so few people.

Besides when did choosing the easy option ever make life interesting?

Rightly so, I do have to question my own sanity sometimes. It is true that I’m sitting in night after night, when I have one of the worlds most vibrant capitals right outside my door, so I can leave a good job, great flat, nice friends, wonderful family, etc., in favour of… well, who knows!

The reality of the situation is that I am sticking two fingers up at everything familiar and taking one massive, giant leap into the unknown. I’m running off with some vague notion that I want to study yoga, possibly even teach it, for reasons that are entirely unquantifiable and based on nothing more than pure instinct alone.

The truth is I’ve never been that content with the job/house/boyfriend package. Regardless of how good any one of them was at a given time – even when I happily had all three – I was always left somewhat selfishly thinking, is that is? I just don’t seem to be satisfied with what so many settle for. (I am aware of how self important that sounds, but bear with me.)

You see, it was a seemingly random chain of events that brought me here; delivered me to this path. Knocked me down and smacked me awake. It’s hard to explain without going into the some lengthy detail, but needless to say that there are no coincidences in this life and nothing is ever, ever random. Least of all this.

For that reason, I trust it. It sounds mad, but to me nothing has ever made any greater sense.

The day I realised what I had to do I cried because it suddenly seemed so obvious, like it had been staring at me, pulling a silly face all along, and I knew there was no-way I couldn’t pursue it. Yoga is the one thing that has suddenly made absolutely everything in my life fall into place. It became the connecting thread that tied everything together - all my hopes, dreams, desires, beliefs, experiences and perspective on life.

So here I am, with a plane ticket and no plan beyond spending my first month completing (I hope) my teacher training with Paul Dallaghan.

Those who know me know I am not in the habit of taking small steps, doing things slowly or listening to well-meaning advice from others, much to the despair of my long suffering parents. If I want something, I want it all and I want it now. Sometimes, my impatience gets me into trouble, but too many people walk through life scared to do anything, to even try. Surely it is better to try and fail then to never try at all?

Besides, isn’t it fun to take the odd risk and test yourself to see how far you can push the boundaries of your comfort zone?

They say the most rewarding things in life are often whose which pose the greatest challenge and there is nothing like being scared shitless to help you understand yourself a little more. Let us remember that it is not the challenges which face us, but the way we face our challenges that shapes us into who we are.

There is something about travelling which is condusive to creating chaos. And, I anticipate travelling and trying to get to grips Indian Philosophy, Sanskrit, Asana’s and more, all whilst on the road, will provide its fair share of testing trials too. Away from the expectations of those who know you and the routines which falsely define us, we discover sides to ourselves that we never knew existed.

I cannot wait to shake off the shackles of life in London and see where the tide takes me if, if I just drift. I am putting myself in the lap of the Gods and surrendering to the knowledge that there is a greater plan in play. Just no-one told me the rules yet.

Don’t get me wrong, it has been a blast, but I’ve always felt like I was killing time in the airport lounge of life here. My destination, unknown.

That’s probably why my patience is being tested so severely. Whilst I may have only been planning this trip for a matter of months, in many ways I have been waiting for this my whole life. I can’t explain it, but I feel like I’m going home.

Bring it.