I'll have to go into some detail at some point, but this place is so...much?incredible?..will have a real problem describing it. For now I can just tell stories of the ghats, and little Galis (lanes). This is my home. I'm not sure what that can mean to you, or if it's understandable, but this is where I am at home. Other places are for making money, or enjoying friends, or chasing birds, but this is where I shine. That's what I want to say. I am myself here, who I want to be, quiet, contemplative, mischevious, funny, relaxed, wild, generous with [View Full Entry]

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A few odds and ends from the last couple of days. Had a long bus journey to reach a train I'd booked, so split it in two. A morning chai and a read of the Sunday Times of India, which sadly only takes about 10 minute if you skip the matrimonials. But they are good for a laugh sometimes. It seems there are no dark skinned or black people in India. Wheaten complecition is popular, fair, pale, light also very popular. Black as the ace of spades or muddy brown just doesn't win many prospective partners I guess. TV ads are [View Full Entry]

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I have alluded to it before, but I think it's time to come clean and admit the truth. I am here to see birds. I am a birder. Birdwatcher is a bit passive, we birders prefer birder. We seek out find, identify and record. Not to be confused with twitchers, who are also birders, but will travel to see specific rare birds. This is pretty much a British phenomenom, where distances are not too great, and birders have seen all the native species. I have been on a twitch or two, and its quite a thing. Two hundred middle-aged men-it's almost [View Full Entry]

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Life on the road in India can be pretty tough sometimes. Long dusty bus trips, hardly bearable heat, dodgy food and dodgier hotel rooms. And yet, if you asked me, these are the very things I enjoy about it. I choose not to travel first class, eat on the roadside and sleep in very simple lodgings. So am I a masochist or what? I think I'm always looking for the "real" India, a memory of a simpler time, before tourism became a fashion, when guys like Burton or Youngblood or even Marco Polo travelled around. Maybe even trying to re-create my [View Full Entry]

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On my way to birding locations in Gujarat, and a few around here, but a nasty cough and fever has kept me in my room mainly, and plans must change. Unfortunately, Green Avadavat and White-naped Tit may have to wait for another trip, but in the early hours before the body really complains. I've had some good walks on the far side of the lake, no villages or tourists, just a few farmers on tiny patches, and plenty of birds, about 60 species in 2 walks. Fortunately, paracetemol and cough syrup combine to give me a good night's sleep, about 10 [View Full Entry]

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Been here three weeks and finally had something other than dal-bhat ( dal and rice). In the hills that was pretty much all that was available, and then in Macleod Ganj I had a choice of some tourist restaurants, but the choice overwhelmed me, and I found a dhaba instead, dal-bhat again. Fortunately I lke it. To be truthful, sometimes it's dal-roti, and when the rotis are fresh and hot, nothing better. In Delhi, or now, in Udaipur (Rajasthan), there are a variety of places to choose from, but I feel funny in tourist places and try to avoid them usually. [View Full Entry]

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I've been thinking about getting a tattoo.In Macleod Ganj there were a couple of Tibetan artists who would ink you for about 1000 rupees. Tigers have some significance to me so maybe one of those. Kind of a poor man's mid-life crisis, can't afford a Harley and a mistress, so a biker tattoo instead and a weekend at Osho Leela. Crisis over. Well, I couldn't find the tattoo boys, nobody home, but I did find a jeweller doing piercings, so checked it out. A few minutes later I emerge from his back room with two extra holes in my left ear, [View Full Entry]

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Some Zen master or another suggested it is better to travel than arrive, but he did not have the day I did. A day after reading about a horrible crash of an overcrowded bus in Kangra where I had just been, I found myself on a bus with 120 fellow sardines, the conductor always willing to stop for more. I stopped worrying about holding on, as there was no where my body could go. I did worry about my ribs being crushed, but like nuts in a jar, with the shaking of the bus coming down the bumpy mountain road, some [View Full Entry]

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India loves the mobile phone. Everywhere I go go I hear ringing, usually some Bollywood hit song, and lots of Hun Ji, or Hello, hello, hello. It used to be that when I heard hello, hello, I thought "Here we go, someone wants something from me". No longer, and I kind of miss that. My last trip I first saw Sadhus with mobile phones. This time, a beggar. I'm not joking, maybe he was calling his broker, or like the guy on the ashram road in Poona, his wife to come pick him up after a hard day's begging. If you've [View Full Entry]

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