Blogs from Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India, Asia - page 2

This time in India began for me 15 months ago. And now it's time to leave (already?). On May 2nd I will board a train from Bhubaneswar (where I have been living and working for a year) to Mumbai with Gladys (Royal Enfield Bullet), stay with my good friends Raj and Marg there, and fly out on May 7th. Not to Australia: to Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain. I will stay with Carolina in her house in Canet d'Adri (Girona). I decided that I just wanted to get out of the ever intensifying Indian summer and, of course, I had the huge desire to get back together with Carolina sooner rather than later. We have many plans for the next five months, including walking the Camino, visiting some friends in southern France and in Switzerland, and going to ... read more

This is the first of what one would hope would become an annual event of some repute. The awards for the best overloads in India. First let us start with the rules, the first of which is illustrated by my first picture: 1. You must break the rule about not overloading your vehicle! 2. Each overloaded vehicle must remain upright for the duration of the current journey, or else face disqualification. 3. The judge’s (that’s me) decisions are final – no correspondence will be entered into. 4. On the payment of 10,000 rupees, rule number 3 will be revised. Now let me say at the outset that this inaugural year’s competition has been very hard to judge – there have been so MANY entries. However, I should also add that there are a couple of non-entries. ... read more

Since the Chinese over-ran Tibet in 1959 after an abortive uprising by Tibetans against an earlier occupation, and started calling it their own, there have been more than 150,000 Tibetan refugees come across the border into India. Of course the most famous is the 14th Dalai Lama who set himself up with one community of Tibetans in Dharamsala – in the Himalayan foothills of Himachal Pradesh. Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Indian Prime Minister, agreed to provide all assistance to the Tibetan refugees to settle in India until their eventual return. 120,000 refugees remain in India today. The Dalai Lama maintains a government in exile in Himachal Pradesh, which coordinates political activities for Tibetans in India. There are now Tibetan settlements across India – and one such place is Chandigirri in Orissa, established in 1963. This place ... read more

It’s a simple story. It’s a story about contrast. It’s a story about the big city and the small city. So it’s a Tale of Two Cities then! It’s about what 250 rupees buys in two different places. But really it's a story masquerading as a story so that I can sneak in some more pics from my recent bike odyssey!! Is it an important story? Not really in the scheme of things. But I just thought it might be useful to note for anyone out there thinking of transporting their motorbike across India. And there are lots of you out there right? ! So here’s the deal. I wanted to take Gladys (that’s my Royal Enfield) to Delhi from Bhubaneswar so as to ride her on what I now call the Great Himalayan Bike Odyssey ... read more

OK before anyone panics - this is NOT a blog about my sudden conversion to Hinduism. If you know me (or have read my profile on Facebook) you would realize that I describe myself as an “Existentialist Buddhist Agnostic” (!) and I will stick to that for now thanks very much! What I am writing about here is how enamored I am with the ‘idea’ of Shiva mythology and iconography in Hinduism. And please - I am an ignorant ‘ferrangi’ (foreigner), so I am not pretending to have it all exactly correct and NOR am I wanting to insult Hindus by talking about ‘mythology’ in a sense of Shiva being fictitious or ‘not real’. That word is simply about the wealth of stories and sacred writings and beliefs that surround the Hindu God Shiva. There is ... read more