Personal website
As I walked home through the back streets of Baluwatar, I felt someone watching me. He was tall and very handsome. Bright blue eyes, marble white skin, rosy cheeks. A westerner, dressed in Nepalese clothes. He fixed his eyes on me and his smile filled the grey autumn day with bright colours. The houses seemed …
I spent June in Kathmandu trying to recover from a difficult Kailash trip. I couldn’t really do much for about three weeks, just stayed in bed and read books to immerse myself in different dimensions of reality to ease the pain. One day I decided to leave my confinement and wandered aimlessly down Kanti Path, …
“This new bamboo shoot hangs over my neighbours wall – hasn’t yet learned about boundaries.” Satish Gupta Whenever I land in Delhi, the first thing I do is go to Connaught Place and walk around until I find a newspaper wallah to buy a copy of the First City. It is a monthly magazine with …
“You’re on the waiting list,” I heard from the other side of the check-in counter. “What the hell?” I thought, I bought the ticket online and it wasn’t a discounted ticket. “What’s going on here?” So many things had gone wrong recently that I wasn’t entirely surprised. I walked through the gleaming corridors of Vienna …
Hong Kong. I was really tired after finishing a trip that started in Beijing two weeks ago, but I had to spend most of the day on the computer to finish the administration. In the evening I was desperate to get some fresh air and have some fun, so I went to Temple Street to …
It has been raining all day, the damp winter chill creeping into my bones. I only landed in Delhi three hours ago. The best thing to do is watch TV in bed under the blanket, but when I turn it on it just hums and buzzes, the screen looks grey and misty like the weather …
I arrived in Kolkata yesterday morning. On the train I read The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh, an exciting book about malaria, delirium and nightmares, coincidence and synchronicity. As I began my rounds of the city, I met an Italian woman, a personal disciple of Osho. She was a naturopath who gave me an interesting …
I am back in Banaras after a trip to Tibet, but my mind is still there, trying to relive the moments, the smells, the colours, the sounds. There is one image that comes to mind often these days, the moment we were about to reach Nyalam (a Tibetan village near the Nepalese border). From the …
Today is the first day of the strike in Kathmandu. It was imposed by the Maoists. They said if anyone violates the strike rules, keeps his shop open, drives around, etc., they will ruin him and his business. People are scared, everything is closed, Thamel looks like a ghost town in a Thai horror film. …
The rickshaw wallah was an old madman. First he wanted me to buy him a new pair of shoes, then he had various ideas about visiting shops, it was really hard to convince him that I was serious about crossing the whole city just to visit a temple. He entertained me all the way from …