I miss the Greek soul...

I miss the Greek soul...

It is the endless openness and readiness to suffer, the strength to stand tall on the edge of an uncertain moment and mock the fates that would conspire to lock you out of experience; it is hurling yourself with the laughter of a lion into the ocean of the moment only because you refuse to stoop to a limit that you yourself have not striven to reach; and it is defiance and daring even as the enemy is bearing down, bent on your utter annihilation, the refusal ever to bend your neck to a hostile will.

There is wisdom in this, the wisdom of selflessness, of openness, of impulse, wit and cunning; and the kind of extravagant poetry which no page can contain.

Some observations on the tourist trail in South East Asia...

When I first started travelling in my early 20s, I quickly received the impression that I was somehow out of step with my fellow travellers. While the majority of my peers were following a prescribed route, connecting up the top ten sights by the most efficient means possible, I often found myself going against the grain of the human traffic: heading north when most were heading south, beginning in the middle of the tourist trail only to double back or skipping whole sections altogether with a series of long and tiresome bus rides through dusty provincial towns.

Naturally this often made life on the road extremely uncomfortable for me, but on balance, I felt that I was getting the better deal. Unlike most of my fellow travellers, my itinerary was always put together on the basis of what I felt I wanted to see and do rather than what was generally seen and done. More to the point, it was flexible enough to reflect the simple truth that the experience of travelling changes you, instilling in you new goals and interests that you would never have been able to anticipate only hours before.

But perhaps the greatest advantage of this ad hoc approach is that it allows, or perhaps requires, you to create your own narrative. Step outside of the route prescribed by your guidebook and sanctioned by the masses of earnest young men and women all moving in unison, and you soon experience the exhilirating yet terrifying truth that you are free to choose whatever bold and onward path you like. At times your mood alone will carry you forward in confidence. But far from the madding crowd, when every decision carries the weight of personal responsibility, you would do well to construct an ongoing story to provide permanent sanction to the path you have taken. For through the alchemy of storytelling, even the most haphazard and disastrous sequence of events is retroactively configured into a coherent, necessary and inevitable tale. Your present circumstances are justified as the only possible outcome, and even as you sleep you are already oriented toward tomorrow's goals. ln short, narrative has a momentum, purpose and internal logic that make it a tool well-suited to those who are forging their own path. And of course, when you eventually reach your journey's end you will emerge with a polished tale never before told.

The tourist trail in South East Asia goes something like this. Bangkok is your point of entry to the region, and from there most travellers head to northern Thailand, then east into northern Laos. From Houay Xai at the extreme north western point of Laos, you take either a bus or boat ride down the Mekong to the temple city of Luang Prabang. That box ticked, you bus down to Vang Vieng to go tubing and drink a skinful, before pitching up at the capital Ventiane where you catch a cheap flight or overnight bus to Hanoi in northern Vietnam. There, the adventurous can buy a motorbike to assist them in traversing the country north to south, or simply bus it all the way down to Ho Chi Minh city. Either way, your next destination is Cambodia and a long westward tramp through that country taking in at least Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville and Angkor Wat. After that, and if you have any money or stamina left, you can relax on Thaliand's southern islands -- but only after either a long hot bus ride or an expensive flight.

On the road in South East Asia I met so many gap year students who were undertaking just this route. Through the accumulated pressure of numerous encounters, I began to notice their most salient characteristics: early twenties, soft-skinned or bearded, vested, logoed, accessorised, loud, sociable, optimistic, but with an unfortunate tendency to talk in cliches as if these were the most poignant and original of insights. In short, they were young, wealthy and well-adjusted as I was not. And while my better half understood that their platitudes were only the result of a life lived without suffering, all that was evil in me could not help but wish them a healthy dose of what they were missing.

You might think this judgement harsh, and clearly I have written to raise a smile as much as an eyebrow. But consider for a moment how these conspicuous kids of privilege must appear in the eyes of the bus driver, the chambermaid or the waiting staff of the rural towns through which they pass en masse. How odd must it appear to them that by far the greatest number of tourists to their region have not yet drawn a salary, nevermind accumulated the personal savings necessary for long-term intercontinental travel? And in any case, is there not something unsavoury about middle-aged men and women struggling to make ends meet in a developing nation by providing tube rides to groups of footloose and well-groomed western students?

Suffice it to say that my aims in visiting South East Asia differed from the standard demographic. Having spent one month in the Himalayas, I now wanted to get intimate with the jungle, and in particular the culture and practices of some of the hill tribes still living in the remoter parts of northern Laos. Besides this, I was also interested to see those three sights of Cambodia already mentioned. The temples of Angkor are of course a must for any visitor to the region. As for Sihanoukville, my interest here lay in finding out how Cambodia was managing its potential for beach-side tourism along the lines of the Thai model, particularly in terms of the tension between short-term profiteering and long-term sustainability. With Phnom Penh my intentions were rather more idiosyncratic. Yes I wished to reflect upon the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge regime, but I also wanted to visit the city which gave birth to South East Asia's 60s surf pop scene, recently revived by one of my favourite bands, Dengue Fever.

How on earth I managed to wrap a story around such a mix, you will soon find out...

Two nights in Bangkok make a tired man humble

My experience of most Asian cities follows an established pattern. At first there is the thrill of expectation: all that humanity and culture cooking under the pressure of intense cohabitation in the heat of the tropical sun. Even on the airport shuttle bus, I still feel ready and willing to embrace the hellish traffic, the constantly unreliable public transport and the cryptic dance of bartering as a sign that here in this land, it is still possible to lead the simple, the authentic, the deregulated life.

Sooner or later though the grain of my nature asserts itself, and I am faced with the incontrovertible truth that cities drain all my energy. Naturally inclined towards observation, reflection and empathy, I sorely need downtime to process the torrent of new impressions which cities present. Without this, each looming face on a potholed pavement, each motorcycle horn or hawker's cry falls like a hammer blow on already bruised and broken skin, and slowly but surely I am beaten down into a numb and ragged stupor.

...which is pretty much how I felt when I left Kathmandu, in desperate need of some downtime among the jungled karsts and lazy rivers of northern Laos. But international airports are seldom located in sparsely populated areas of outstanding natural beauty and so my only real option was to connect from one maddening metropolis to another. Like it or not, I was headed for a layover in Bangkok and felt duty bound in spite of my city fatigue to explore its sights.

Two days is not enough to get a handle on a city and its occupants, especially if you are already battling fatigue and wading through the broiling heat and thick humidity of the early rainy season. No. The best one can do in such circumstances is to plunge into the torrent of impressions with eyes wide open in the hope that some few encounters, by virtue of their gravity, will linger long enough to aid reflection.

For my part, whenever I think of those days in Bangkok, one encounter in particular stands out as a kind of metonym affording some modest insight into Thai culture. Whether my conclusions are accurate or not, I will leave to the judgement of those who have a more profound understanding of the country and its people.

Day one in Bangkok began early with the search for some sunglasses to replace the sorry fragments of cracked plastic and super glue that my current pair had become. En route to the Golden Mount, I spy a rack of sunglasses outside a shop and cross the road to spin the display stand. As usual, my only criterion was to find a pair that were cheap enough for me to bear their loss when I eventually stood on them, as I inevitably would, yet of sufficient quality not to fall apart in a high wind.

Soon enough I found some that would do and entered the shop to pay. As I did so, two things instantly struck me, the first being the welcome embrace of the near omnipresent Bangkok air con -- ruthlessly efficient and instantly refreshing. Less welcome however was the realisation that the only other merchandise on offer here was the tackier end of the Hello Kitty range. From floor to ceiling the orange walls were full of shelves stacking the kind of kitsch and lurid polyurethane accessories that would make even the most girlie of Japanese schoolgirls wince.

There followed a moment's hesitation in which my masculinity seemed to deflate like some Hindenburg wrecked upon the thorns of Kitty's rose garden. Puffing myself up, I approached the teenage girl behind the counter who was already flashing me a mouthful of expensive corrective dental work in place of a smile. The sunglasses, she informed me, were actually on sale and 100 baht cheaper than the advertised price -- a most welcome little victory for my pocket given the countless times I had been overcharged in the past month. Sadly however I was not able fully to savour this triumph, for now that I had increased my proximity to those elaborately caged teeth I found myself staring into a set of milky blue eyes, the peculiar lustre of which seemed to suggest an origin beyond our solar system.

'Contact lenses', it suddenly dawned on me as I unfroze and handed over the note. 'Of course: nothing in this shop is real, but a comic-book homage to all that is cute and kitsch.'

But just then when I thought I had her pegged, she goes and changes shape. Raising her hands in response to my khop khun krap, she clasps them together in prayer front of her face, closes her eyes, and bows with such consummate grace and gravity that I am genuinely moved by the gesture.

Frequent visitors to Thailand will no doubt be able to state this in far better terms, but it seems to me that wrapped up in the heart of this simple encounter lies a kernel of truth about Thai culture. Time and again I saw grace and gravity cheek by jowl with a wacky exuberance and certain fondness for all things kitsch. Turn on a TV or radio at any moment in Thailand and you stand a good chance of catching either a solemn rendition of the national anthem, during which you are expected to drop what you are doing and stand to attention, or an advert in which the familiar narrative of problem - solution is punctuated by kitschy cartoon jingles. Seriously, adverts in Thailand are all muted trumpet and bugle fanfares. And if anyone should fall victim to a banana skin, you can be sure their fall from grace will be marked with a glissando upon one of those sliding whistles.

My purchase complete, I continued on my way to the Golden Mount, using my GPS to guide me through delightful old-style Bangkok neighbourhoods -- all alleyways and canals. More than once I was led to question the onward path as the device blithely urged me onward through latched iron gates and into narrow concrete canyons in which sleeping Thais lay strewn around on hammocks and mattresses, their limbs contorted as if dropped from a great height. But in the end it was a journey worth making, if only for the the sight that greeted me as I made my final approach to the temple. Near the entrance at street level, a group of kids were dressed to the nines in traditional Thai costume, even though they were karaoke-busking to what sounded like the losing entries to Latvia's quest for a song for Europe. After the events of my morning, I saw something familiar in this curious prospect, and so joined the thin crowd of listless onlookers to marvel at the wondrous juxtapositions... In the background a teenage girl in emerald Buddha green was performing a slow and elegant swan neck gesture while out in front, a fat little boy in a golden jacket bounced around the stage screaming flatly into a cheap microphone.

An encounter in my book worth more than a thousand golden Buddhas.

Nepal Travelog: On the Kindness of Monks and Children

And so goodbye for now Nepal. Waking on a Kathmandu morning, unable to breathe for all the diesel soot, dryness and dust hanging in the air, I will not miss... but as well as your mountains, your rivers, your moonlit hillsides and all the friends I have made inside your borders, your smiles will surely call me back.

On my birthday drive out to that desolate and windswept mountain peak, I stopped at Boudhanath, site of the world's largest Buddhist stoupa and a thriving centre for Tibetan Buddhism. As I entered the square, I could make out the maroon of monks' robes between the dark wooden slats of a gompa sitting right in front of the gleaming stoupa. A ritual was taking place, and I was suddenly and powerfully overwhelmed by the chanting, the crashing of cymbals, the juniper incense and the sonorous tones of the dungchen.

I mean it. I had to sit down, so sought out the only shade available in that square at 12 pm, which just happened to be the bamboo awning of a coffee kiosk in the corner. As I ordered, and fumbled around for some small change, I caught the eye of a passing monk, and gave him one of those no-holds-barred smiles that have become so indicative of my experience of this country. This it seems arrested him from whatever business he had in crossing that square, for as well as beaming back at me, he approached me slowly with both arms outstretched, took my face in his hands and rested his forehead against my own. After a few moments we drew away from each other, and he motioned for me to return the gesture, placing my hands upon his cheeks, and bowing slightly so that our foreheads might touch.

When we separated, we were both still beaming, though my eyes were filling with tears, and I had a lump in my throat through which I was struggling to breathe.

The next day as I drove back down the mountain, I passed a wedding party at which a fully uniformed brass band was making the most dynamic contribution. Normally I associate these bands with military parades or pavilions on the village green, but here in Nepal, they had taken the pomp and circumstance of the old colonial West, and married it with their own native rhythms and melodies. For a moment, I enjoyed reading the potential for irony in that band's performance, the mockery that mimickry, particularly of one's colonial forebearers, can always suggest. But in truth, the whole scene was more Kusturica than Python, and soon I was struggling with a powerful urge to drink and dance.

Plumbing and democracy aside, sometimes the East does the West very well, revitalising even our most painful cliches.

Emboldened perhaps by the evident admiration written into my gaze, a group of children eventually approached me after a great deal of coy and tentative hovering. Although most of the boys were in jeans and t-shirt, a couple of young girls were clearly playing a more central role in the day's events and wore white dresses trimmed with white netting and pink ribbon. All of them, boys as well as girls, wore gold earrings and black eyeliner.

The oldest among them, a girl of about 12, was such a gentle, modest and open-hearted young kid. When we first set about chatting, she insisted she knew no English, though it quickly became clear that her level of proficiency allowed her to express herself quite eloquently. When I bought them some candy from the local store, she apologised on behalf of the shopkeeper, who had overcharged me by 20 rupees, about 15 pence, and invited me to her family's house in a nearby field. There she poured me some water and gave me a tour of her and her brothers' rooms, their faded posters, dog-eared books and battered toys. She was opening up her little life to me with an innocence and trust that only children have and I was both grateful and touched. And then she asked me for some photos of my family, and I took out my tablet to show her all the images, the maps and the videos that it contained, teaching the kids how to tap, swipe and pinch zoom the images. Of course, this they loved, and I was quickly at the centre of a tight knot of eager reaching hands and craning faces. But still, I couldn't help feeling a certain shame, a revulsion even for the source of this excitement. Here in this simple home, such an expensive consumer device seemed terribly decadent and made me despise the fetishistic value that we in the West bestow upon such possessions. 

For a moment, my eyes glazed and I was no longer in the room. Overcome with my own hypocrisy, I was slouching off to some dark corner of my head where I didn't have to look myself in the eye. Then in some lull to all the excitement happening far away I heard her voice. 

  "We are friends now, yes?".   

I looked up to see this 12 year old girl dressed like a little angel and beaming at me with what seemed like all the love in the world. 

And once more I fought back my rising tears and struggled with the lump in my throat. 

One of the messages that I most want to get out with this blog is the importance of these brave gestures, of openness, trust and empathy. Recently I re-took the Myers Briggs personality test and confirmed that I am still very much an INFP type. Naturally inclined to intimacy, I guess I am sucker for the kindness of strangers, and always return it with interest. But it seems to me that in the triumph of consumer capitalism, we sorely need the check and balance of empathy if we are to avoid the unintended consequences that always come when we let a system regulate our affairs. Ours is a society where self-interest and the competitive instinct will always be rewarded with wealth and comfort, as well as the power and privilege of preserving and drafting legislation. Whilst this arrangement has obvious benefits in terms of stimulating innovation and economic growth, without intervention we run the risk of creating ever more selfish societies, further alienating and undervaluing those who would pursue the more caring and nurturing professions. 

Something to ponder as you dwell on these encounters...

Nepal Travelog: Getting intimate with the Kali Gandaki

The Kali Gandaki river begins its long journey to the Ganges from the glaciated heights of the Tibetan-Nepali border. If you ever hike the Annapurna Circuit, it is the river that flows down the west side of the massif, at first wide and shallow through the dusty Mustang badlands, then funnelled into a frenzy as it passes through its eponymous gorge. By some estimates, this is the world's deepest canyon, and certainly the river predates the Himalayas, having cut down through successive geological strata as the flanking bulk of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges were levered upward under tectonic pressure. As a result, the river is a prime site for fossil hunters, the devout among whom have long revered the image of Cretaceous era ammonites as a non-living form of Vishnu.

Back in Pokhara, my Indian friends and I spent exactly one morning and one afternoon indulging in the facilities of this vaguely Italian looking lakeside town before signing up for a rafting trip on the Kali Gandaki. In the office of the operator, I again sat back and tried to copy the body language of my Indian friends, who looked and spoke like they went rafting every weekend. I by contrast had no idea what to expect, save that the vessel would not look much like the Kon-Tiki. And this was all to the good, since I know very well the things that I know - travelling in Greece, hiking in the European mountain ranges, teaching English as a foreign language and all things pertaining to the Victorian man of letters, Samuel Butler. It is what I don't know that I now feel a great need to learn.

The next morning we all piled into a cramped minibus designed for Asian frames and rattled off once more along the potholed and twisting roads of Nepal, taking in the truly surreal prospect of the Annapurna range rising fully 7,000 metres above the height of the town. For a while I played camera keekaboo with the soaring pinnacle of Machapuchere as it intermittently revealed itself between the concrete canyons and sagging power cables of the city outskirts. Then I simply downed my camera and let the fleeting pleasure of the mountain's image fall past my eyes like water through an open hand - and old lesson, learned afresh in Nepal.

Two hours of sleep deprivation later, and we finally stopped by a bend in the Kali Gandaki to kit up, inflate the rafts and get some instruction on just what the next two days would involve. Our instructor as it turned out was of Thai parentage, and built like an Asian Kuros, a charming blend of modesty, power and grace. Again, I tried to copy the Indians, as they nodded in appreciative agreement with each of his instructions, though I was having more difficulty finding a convincing way of completing his hanging sentences.

And so, we pushed off, and began that long process of trial, error, observation and adjustment which I guess all crews pulling together have to go through -- though we in particular had to look smart about it. Within 20 minutes we were paddling into the throat of the most challenging rapid of the entire route. A grade fiver by the name of 'big brother', it spun us around toward an overhanging rock which I only narrowly missed on a well-timed command from all hands to duck. All great fun, and certainly a tasty appetizer for what was to come.

At midday, we stopped on a sandbank for lunch. The canyon walls were high, with narrow trails zipping off through the foliage flanking the sands. Afterwards, as the crew were washing and packing up, I strolled down one these as far as an overgrown and thoroughly romantic statue of a Hindu deity, which I proudly identified as Shiva on account of his trident prop. 15 Roupees and some marigolds lay under a stone at his feet.

Soon after hitting the river again, the weather turned sultry, with thick cloud and a sharp drop in atmospheric pressure which you could feel as a tingling in your finger tips. Somewhere close, an electrical storm was pounding the hillside. We entered calm water and drifted under oppressive skies past tumbling waterfalls with monkeys silently eyeing us from overhanging foliage. 'This feels a lot like Apocalypse Now', I remarked to my fellow paddlers, though of course we were hopefully headed away from any heart of darkness.

I cannot remember what the rapid was called, but I do remember the pilot later admitting that it had dunked both him and his entire crew only days before. We got off more lightly, with only three of our number getting intimate with the Kali Gandaki. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to tell you how it all happened, but thanks to an occupant's helmet camera, it is now a scene that I have literally replayed time and time again.

As we approached the rapid, the pilot steered us into a funnel of churning water just before a huge boulder. As we hit it this, we were all paddling hard, and unable to anchor ourselves to the vessel with anything other than the tips of our toes wedged under the seat in front. And then we bounced, as if striking an underwater boulder, and the raft at first crashed back onto the river before rolling violently to the left, the side at which I was sitting. And then all was foam and shadows for what seemed like a very long time indeed.

Before setting off, we were told to grab hold of the runner ropes in the event that we should fall in. Somehow, I remembered this and reached up, groping with my right hand until at last I found them and was able to pull myself up and out of the foaming water. A true white knuckle experience.

In the video at this point, you get a great shot of me, both arms thrown over the side of the raft, breathing hard and unable quite to focus, while in the background, the pilot, who also got dunked, and who was tossed much further from the raft than any of us, elegantly and swiftly freestyles himself back and onto the vessel. Somehow, this snapped me out of my daze and convinced me that I could do the same, though I quickly realised just how difficult it is to extract oneself from churning rapids in the direction of a drifting raft. And so my Indian friend with the helmet camera hauls me up by both straps of my life jacket, and I flop onto the raft like a landed fish.

As he continues to look at me, I slowly crawl to the side of the raft, now drifting through calmer water, wipe the water off my face and break into huge fits of laughter.

Normally, we avoid risk and uncertainty, and mostly this is the correct and sensible thing to do. But there is an equal and opposite risk for some of us that we become so accustomed to the familiar that our senses become dulled, and we can no longer take an elemental pleasure in the sensuality of the world:

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

Viktor Shklovsky, a Soviet literary critic, called this gradual dulling of the senses 'habitualisation' and describes it as if it were a ravenous monster ''devouring work, clothes, furniture, one's wife'' and even ''the fear of war''. For Shklovsky, the redeeming power of art was that it allowed one to ''recover the sensation of life'' by imparting ''the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known''. ''Art exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony'', Shklovsky famously stated.

For me, there is a clear parallel between risk and adventure on the one hand and the rejuvenating power of art on the other. Whenever I climb to the top of a mountain, even on a dull day, I look around and see the world as if presented in the form of a novel hypothesis.

Now is the right time to take risks, to explore the unfamiliar and to get far enough from my habits and routines to feel the pressure and pleasure of the elements of the world... even if it means getting intimate with the Kali Gandaki.

Nepal Travelog: How I hiked in total darkness across a leech infested hillside in good company

On reaching the Annapurna base camp, I had already spent three weeks trekking in the snow, ice and ethereal light of the Himalayan ranges. As usual, I could have spent that time again, and longer, in my beloved mountains. But I also knew that if I were to be true to my aim of breaking with past habits, I would have to get intimate with a new element. With this in mind, I teamed up with a couple of Indians I had met on the trail and together we descended 3,400 metres down to the lakeside town of Pokhara to join a rafting expedition on the mighty Kali Gandaki river.

The descent itself took place over two days, with the last day stretching out way into the darkness of evening on account of the Indians' fondness for cigarettes, tea and moving very slowly. But what they lacked in fitness and motivation they more than made up for in terms of their intelligence, sense of humour and the obvious love which nearly all Nepalis had for them and their country.

As dusk decended on that final evening, we were walking through thick sub-tropical foliage high above a raging torrent swollen by the melting snows of a few days before, and still we were around two and a half hours from the nearest road. Suddenly we rounded a bend and stumbled across a shack on the hillside where some Nepalis were selling tea, and our progress was halted once again. Now fully resigned to the fact that we were going to have to walk in the dark anyway, I ordered a black masala tea, tried to mimic the Indians relaxed body posture and looked on as they chattered away in Hindi with our Nepali host. Like so many tea sellers, guides or porters that we met on the trail, our proprietor had spent time in India and had nothing but praise for the land and people. Indeed, so enamoured was he with my companions that he went out of his way to describe our onward route and ring ahead for a jeep to be waiting for us at the trail head in order that we might reach the hot showers, laundry facilities and restaurants of Pokhara that night. With many handshakes and showers of thanks and good wishes, we took our leave, switched on our head torches and stepped out into the gloomy and tangled hillside.

Within five minutes, we were unsure if we had taken the right turn. After another ten minutes, we began ascending and the path got incredibly thin and slight, as if walking on animal tracks, though it was hard to tell in the now inky blackness. Down below us we could see and hear locals with torches walking on a lower track.

And then the full moon rose from behind the hills on the other side of the valley, at first a deep golden colour, and all tangled up in the vapour which crowned the ridge. Then as it rose higher, it freed itself and beamed ever more silver, lighting up the onward path just enough to reveal a string of villages up ahead.

Entering these villages in the dead of night, we must have made for an odd sight, but the locals seemed sanguine enough, and greeted us as if we were just another group of dayhikers. On the contrary, it was I who was more fascinated in them. The doors of their shacks were flung open and lit within to reveal their normally private life, a life of evening classrooms and late night card games around a glowing fire.

After an hour or more, we left the villages and descended to a steel suspension bridge across a canyon, whose depth even the full moon could not reach. Here we paused and speculated about how long we had to go. Half an hour? An hour and a half? The villagers estimates had fluctuated wildly. Then through the sound of the rushing river, there came the clanging and creaking sound of footsteps across the bridge, a couple of teenage boys going who knows where on this wild and gloomy hillside.

  'How long till Syauli?', we asked once again. The boys pointed to the lights on the other side of the canyon.
  'Just over there'.

In twenty minutes we were loading our bags into the jeep. And in another hour and a half, we had checked into a hotel in central Pokhara and were rushing to catch a meal at the last place to close in early-to-bed Nepal. And we would have made it too, had I not noticed my left foot bleeding uncontrollably in the shower. It seems that in all the drama of our evening hike, I had somehow picked up a leech which had been steadily feeding on me for God knows how long.

Nepal Travelog: Snow storms, avalanches, heatstroke and Himalayan dawn ascents.

Today is my birthday, and I am spending it all alone. In fact, having spent all day on a motorcycle out of Kathmandu, I have found myself in a very desolate place indeed. My abode for the night is a cabin on the peak of a windswept and pine-scented mountain, part of a facility aptly named 'The Hotel at the End of the Universe'. The sun is just going down, burning up the dusty atmosphere and lightening the silhouetted bulk of each successive range until the most distant merges with the pale lilac sky. To my right by the window, two waiters play chess, one quietly humming a folk tune as his partner contemplates his next move; to my left, the cook sprawls on Moroccan style cushions, absolutely horizontal and absolutely silent save from the odd atavistic and self-satisfied yawn.

And all the while the wind howls through the stooping pines. 

Desolate it may be, but this is exactly what I craved all afternoon as I battled with the madness of the Kathmandu traffic, the sickening stench of the Bagmati river, the potholes, the dust and the scorching sun, all the way that is until I turned off from the highway at Bhaktapur, and fell into the cool, scented embrace of these rising hillsides.

Just the right place to say goodbye to Nepal.

For with the exception of the last few nites in Kathmandu, I have got very intimate with the elements of this country. On a three day climb up to the Annapurna base camp, I ascended viewless through relentless mist and drizzle, unable to see past the rhododenron forests of the lower slopes. On the final day as I passed 3000 metres, I entered thick cloud and the rain simultaneously turned to heavy snow. As the white out thickened, many were turning back, and a steady stream of defeated walkers loomed out of the void, skidding around like dogs on rollerskates, and full of incredulity that I was pushing ahead.

I told each one my secret: that I had strapped on a pair of instep crampons and was both firm and fleet of foot. And I needed to be. As the steep mountains sides closed in around me, constant avalanches thundered down the slopes behind the veil of cloud. From a chance meeting with a guide a few days before, I knew that this was normal given the fresh snowfall, and I was in no danger. But still, it is difficult to rein in your pulse when you are alone and a cloud's thickness away from something so powerful and so utterly indifferent to human life.

But the crowning glory to all this drama just had to be the appearance of the sun as I reached the end of my journey. Annapurna base camp is situated at the back of glacial valley, cradled on three sides by 8000 m peaks. Already as I passed through the avalanche zone, the cloud was becoming thinner and no air was moving in the throat of the canyon. All the solar radiation that could make it through the cloud was trapped between the gleaming white snow walls and the clouds themselves. I felt my face burning first and exchanged a fleece beanie for a sun hat. Then, when I could stand it no more, I stopped to remove my thermal underlayers which had been so essential in the freezing hours of the early morning. At the same time, I removed my thermometer keyring from my belt loop and swung it for a while in the free air. After a 5 minutes it registered 28 degrees, which I thought impossible until I reached the base camp and found Nepalis in t-shirts, lounging in the first bursts of sunlight I had seen in three days.

And it held. That night, the thin mountain air was spangled with a canopy of stars, and at five o'clock, as the gray fingers of dawn were just beginning to reach out across the sky, I teamed up with a lovely Chilean guy to climb a minor peak and watch the sunrise over the most spectacular mountain scenery I have ever seen.