I returned to Thamel after ODing on the paneer and mushrooms I had bought for meals (they were family sized purchases and I hate throwing away food). Thamel was, unlike everywhere else, packed, and it was odd to see so many goras after a week or so in the suburbs. There were mandalas outside the […]
Nepali weekend
The Nepali weekend is Saturday, today. We have a new guest at the homestay, a young Israeli gentleman (whom I embarrassingly misidentified as Lebanese because of his coffee and his Arab sounding name). He used to live in Nepal and speaks some broken Nepali as well, and is on his way to India to learn […]
(Very) long way back
The bus left at around 7.20 though it didn’t actually pass through Dhunche (the entry point to the region and the national park) till over two hours later as there were many, many stops – reversing to let another truck or bus pass on the narrow mountain road, or to take on or let off […]
Rare delicacy
Today and yesterday I have been engrossed in what I can only call busy work, rather than the work I actually have to do and that is starting to worry me a little. Well, there it is! It occurred to me that very soon I will have left my AirBnb as the GF will have […]
Daily rituals
From yesterday work began and I have since started trying to get daily routines in place. It’s less easy than it was in Byblos where restaurant options were few but the flat was comfortable, there was a convenient daily sunset, and there was little or no risk of food poisoning. Here the risk of food […]
The Saarc advantage
We went around Patan’s Durbar Square and I was delighted to find one of the few benefits of belonging to a SAARC country is that one gets discounts on tourist admittance. I have taken to carrying my Pakistani ID card around for this reason, though to be honest they just look at my appearance and […]
Patan
We are in Kathmandu. Or rather, we are in Patan, one of the three royal cities in the valley. It is like and unlike home, and I think that made it it even more intense for me than I would have expected, because my mind was continually readjusting its expectations – to stupas and temples […]
The biggest stone in the world
In the morning we walked to what is known as the Roman quarry, though I believe it is pre-Roman, and possibly alien. This is about 10 minutes down the road, behind a derelict petrol station and some piles of rubbish, where an enormous hole is scooped out of the earth. Along the sides are small […]
Wassail
Today, our last weekend day in Lebanon, I decreed, would be a day of wassailing. It didn’t quite turn out like that, largely because in the afternoon we went in search of the Bird’s Nest, formerly an orphanage and now the Armenian Genocide Memorial. One does get overwhelmed, sometimes, by wave after wave of suffering […]
Trablous
On Friday, soon after I finished my work the prayer took place at the mosque across the road from the cafe. Soon after it ended the Gentleman Friend arrived, and we hailed a taxi to take us to Al Mina, the port city of Tripoli where we had booked a bed and breakfast in the […]