[Festive Pai - North Thailand]

Pai is a quaint little town in North Thailand. It has a bit of an artsy scene with great live bands playing in funky bars around town. Surrounded by hills and green pastures it has in just 2 years become a hit with the local tourists too. The place swells with Thai's over the weekend.

Great food, wine and even cheese cake. (how I missed this in India!) I will be here till well into the new year :-)






Pai by Day










Pai by Night

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[Bangkok - Sawasdee La]

Back in the dream land of Thailand. Reminds me just how dirty, smelly, noisy etc India can be after I arrived here.

Women outside (what more, in mini skirts:) no honking horns, the streets are clean, the air isnt reconstituted truck diesel fumes and the food, although odd looking at times, but this is important- does look safe. Its goooonna be a holiday!

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[Who Checked the Weather Forecast..? - North India]

Paul (from my last posting) and myself took a ride out to a quieter hill station called Dalhousie (the guide books call it second rate hill station), about a 4 hours ride from Mcloed Ganj.

Paul and I clicked well together, easily conversing on our favorite subjects including motorcycles, travelling, relationships and even energy physics. How ever he wasnt filling his shopping basket with my ideas on the great waste paper basket in the sky.

Any thing that is unexplainable, such as chance meetings, deja-vu etc I call it the great waste paper basket effect. Just like you have at the office, for all that unsorted paper work with which you dont know what to do with or store, you lump it all into one container (which is usually round and sitting on the floor). Some (and only some) people liken my waste paper basket concept with God, although I wouldnt recommend it...

From there Paul continued travelling on his Enfield to Amritsar whilst I came back home :-) (better know as Mcleod Ganj).

It looked so promising on our first day too... See the video for the full story.



Video

Who Checked the Weather Forecast?

Check out the
truck fumes..

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[Mountain Walks - North India]

Met Paul Read in Rewalsar, who has made the adventurous journey from England to India by motorcycle. (Not just any motorcycle, but on my dream bike, a Honda VFR 750 :)

Been showing Paul around the local paths here, which included the walk up the mountain. Click to see the

Video

Mountain Serenade Part 2

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[Rewalsar- A trip Away]

Just back from a delightful 3 day trip to a town called Rewalsar, a lake nestled amongst the mountains. Sunshine with cool mountain air all the way. And as a boyish bonus I even scrapped the motorcycle peg on one of the mountain corners, a first for me on this bike :-) Click for the Pics









Back to being a 'man of leisure' as I have finished volunteering. After nearly 5 months of part time English teaching I realise I would not like to do this as a full time job...as I thought I might do next year in Korea/Japan/Taiwan etc. Something else then...

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[Mountain Serenade- North India]

Just like I mentioned in my last post, I walked up to the saddle point called Triund again today.

Walking for 6 hours is also in a way like my own kind of active meditation.

Enjoy the View.


Video

Mountain Serenade

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[Mountain Views- North India]

After months of promises to myself, and now that the sun finally shines after monsoon; I took that walk to Triund (2975M), the green saddle point up and behind Mcleod Ganj (1700m). From here the Dhauladhar Range (5639m peak) really looms up at you.

Blue sky, warm sunshine, cool air and not a horn to be heard!- I will have to do it again :-) And like treks in Nepal there were regular chai shops on the way, a nice touch on a cool afternoon. Needless to say I slept well that night, after a 6 hour return journey. I let the pics speak further.

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[Hot Off the Press- Page 3]

Volunteer Tibet decided to create a monthly newsletter, and as part of the English teaching team I was interviewed. Click to read page 3!

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[Back in the Class Room - North India]

1 week after returning from Nepal I started English teaching again in Mcleod Ganj(volunteer). Students had a big tendency to drop in and out of classes at will, which made teaching highly frustrating and ineffective. As I knew I would be committing to a longer period I started taking roll attendance and asked students to leave class if their attendance record was poor. This and enforced homework discipline saw my class size shrink down from 25 to 10 :-)

A notable event over the last 7 weeks was when I gave a sex education class :) It wasnt something I planned to do but during one class I was rather concerned when we were discussing body organs (liver, kidney etc) and I simply asked what is an STD? (and not the local telephone booth- Subscriber Trunk Dialing :) Too many blank faces in the room, so when I tried condom, well, very few lights were flashing on.

Ofcourse, if you want to learn something, go and teach it; so I had to find out some facts for myself! Like where does that stork with the baby really come from...? Despite some very stressed monks in my class, I am glad I taught this subject. There were some serious misconceptions about HIV transmission and pregnancy risks. Good info never hurts I reckon...

Mcleod Ganj is the 2nd wettest part of India. This is my first full monsoon, and it can be rather tedious at times. Unfortunately there is no rhyme or reason for when it rains or for how long. (in some other monsoon areas it rains almost to the clock, say, every day at 3pm for an hour.) Couple this with constant gray skies and high humidity and I really start to miss some sunshine and a little upbeat weather cheer. 3 more weeks to go they say...

By a series of coincidences I have started to advertise my services here in Regression Therapy. So these days I am earning a little bit of pocket money too...

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