Apologies for a mixed entry - this text works with both Bodhgaya photos! It was the night before Christmas Eve after all. Quite appropriate to be knocking on inn doors looking for a room. We didn’t have straw on the floor, the donkey stayed on the street and the adoring multitudes were gathering at Mahabodhi. A sea of maroon and saffron robes. All converging to participate in the 27th Kagyu Monlam festival of prayer. Accommodation being generally full we were paying top dollar for a mediocre room. Security was obviously a top priority with the air conditioner hole in the wall sealed with a piece of newspaper! We couldn't strike lucky with everything but we had enjoyed an early morning ride with the secretary of the Mahabodhi Temple Committee's wife who was travelling down to visit ... read more

Blow horn. Horn please. Inscriptions on the back of lorries implore every driver. They are not slow to respond. How my father would love the cacophony, he who complains at a second long salutation, an accompaniment to a farewell. Luke, on the other hand, would be in his element, dodging, weaving and blasting the horn. The horns play different tunes at varying decibel rates, vying for first place in splitting your ear-drums. In Delhi recently, schoolchildren embarked on a scheme to paint out Horn Please signs in an effort to combat noise pollution. I don’t like their chances! The roads, poorly surfaced and greatly potholed, they stretch their dusty way connecting villages and towns. Bullocks, cows, pigs, goats followed by kids, dogs and puppies, pedestrians usually balancing precarious loads, cyclists, bullock carts, cycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, ... read more

Next stop, the overnight train to the hills. Reliving the school journey my mother used to make to escape the heat of Kolkata, even further up by toy train to Kurseong. School memories should be stronger; memories become the reality, but would today’s reality live up to the sweetened past? Like condensed milk drunk from the can the cloying memories trickled down my mother’s throat. Wayside, now a Heritage Property in Kurseong, fondly remembered, glimpsed through the mist, of tears or cloud, came into view as we trundled down the steep drive and swept around to the front door. My mother was overawed as she climbed the stairs into the living room. Large rooms opened off this but without the warm welcome of the caretaker’s family we would have been shivering. Airy and cool in ... read more

So this was really it. All I had heard and more. Manic taxi rides Traffic so close you can touch the next car or lorry People saying yes they understand and taking you somewhere else for a different amount than the agreed fare Noise. Lots of noise, blaring car horns, shouting, talking and the ever present traffic Crumbled remnants of a decadent past. Buildings sprouting trees, rusted, peeling, cracked, mildewed, dirty and dusty. People everywhere; bathing on the street, cooking on the street, washing clothes on the street, sleeping on the street. Rickshaw wallahs with skinny, leathery legs asking for business Hawking and spitting, anywhere, anytime Oases of calm and gentility amidst squalor and mayhem ... read more

5/12/09 I could call this the longest day but I think there will be others which are more so and with more reason. Suffice it to say we had a late start with Winnie’s alarm making her nearly late for work and us late for a pre-journey spiritual acclimatisation of a yoga and yoga nidra session. The trip anxiety having built to a crescendo and needing the assurance that all would be well. Fifi the chicken gave me goodbye kisses on my cherry red toes. Not sure whether this was a sentimental goodbye or a new form of sadism. Sitting comfortably at the gate checked in we watched girls surely suffering with altitude sickness from the height of their heels and young male Hong Kongers in a competition for best shoes, the bright blue and silver ... read more