Last night a dj broke my leg...

I have been hiding in Thailand for three weeks now, mostly on the island of Koh Tao with Matthew. We have left now on our way down to Borneo for more diving.

I was all set to live the dream on the island having borrowed a bouldering mat for the huge granite boulders dotted around the island, obtained the promise of cheap scuba lessons and even started thai kick boxing training. Then, in a fit of over excitement at all the potential, I went dancing and sprained my ankle, badly enough to need an x-ray on another island. The dream lay shattered in a pool of self pity and spilt vodka.

So in the week following the accident I realised that free diving was my best chance to get active, as my sprained ankle ruled out the use of fins needed in scuba (and bouldering and kick boxing and walking comfortably). Free diving is diving to depth without supplementary air, basically one long preparation-enriched breath at the surface and descend as deep as you can. That was my goal anyway. In the end I managed to go to 28 metres on a line, quite a surreal depth to descend to. I think its roughly equivalent to a 7 storey building and at the bottom your lungs have shrunk to almost a quarter of their surface size.

Training for all this involves a variety of techniques. Static apnea is basically holding your breath with the body at rest, which we practiced once in shallow water. Before whenever I tried holding my breath in a swimming pool I would last about a minute and come up bubbling. So I was not optimistic as I worked through the long warm up of structured breaths. But it seemed to work. The first two minutes were amazing. Your body is rich, almost doped, in oxygen. As you sink under the surface your senses are reduced to that lovely white noise of underwater sound, your eyes closed. The warm temperature of the water means your skin feels comfortably numb, the only sensation an occasional current rippling down the hairs on your legs.

My mind is empty. Floating there I have completely forgotten whats to come. After two minutes I start to feel uncomfortable, my body lying to me, wheedling, telling me I need to breath, seriously. I ignore it, a little peeved that the fun bit is over. After about another minute it starts to insist a little more persuasively. My diaphragm starts into contractions, slowly at first, kicking up into my lungs, trying to make me exhale. As the seconds tick by the contractions get more intense, my body physically jerking as the diaphragm starts getting a little desperate an I'm really fighting now. Finally I can hold it no longer and rise up from the water, aided by the instructor, and open my eyes, breathing in and out in controlled desperation. The world has gone white around the edges. A semi circle of 3 faces look back at me expectantly and then laugh as I sway drunkenly. Apparently my face is ghost white, my lips included. I have the air of someone who has just returned from somewhere narcotic. "Sheeeeeeit." 4 minutes on the clock. High five, I say and miss.



It would be remiss of me to pretend I was any good at it. I was technically the worst in my class (of 3) and have no aspirations as a free diver. But it all just impressed on me the hidden abilities and untold limits our bodies can attain if we know how to harness the power within.

Seriously.

The Orphan Help Centre

Just some of the reasons why the children tolerated a hairy stranger in their midst...

My phone, whoever invented the game Snake deserves some sort of medal.
My mp3 player.
My penknife.
My watch.
My torch.
My camera.
My bicycle.
My medical supplies.
My hat collection.
My hairy legs.
My beard ( known locally as my junga).


Just some of the reasons why I tolerated 6 am wake ups, 10 pm lock ins and eating dhal bhat every night for 5 weeks...


Playing the drums on buckets on the childrens heads as they danced to the beat.

One of the kids eating chewing gum and it falling from her mouth to the floor. Her quickly stepping on it, mashing it between her toes, transferring it discreetly to her hand and then back to her mouth, all in a heartbeat. I probably should have tutted but I nearly cheered.

Two little girls listening to my mp3 player and happily dancing to the tortured creations of Aphex Twin.

The persistent talk and (presence) of gassing.

Being obliged to eat with my fingers. Being told I reminded them of a 4 year old learning to eat, me not being sure who said it cos of the curry in my eyes.

Despite my protests, me getting my own seperate small bowl of chilli-less curry every night, thank you kindly Anti and Didi.

Watching the kids hunting dragonfly, stalking through the long grass until they spook one out and then their thrilled charging around after the unfortunate insect. Others content to just bumble around getting in the way of the earnest hunters and laughing off the resulting scowls and occasional thumps.

Taking the kids swimming for the first time. The look on their faces, the sheer laughing terror of them all, I felt privileged to be there to witness it.

Watching Nepali tv with the kids for half an hour every friday evening. Indescribable shite but they watched open mouthed, perched on the floor a foot from the screen for the thirty minutes.

Drawing henna tatoos on everyone including myself. "I Love My Mom. "

Being told matter of factly that I am a loser when playing karom ball, their staple game. I was a loser though, as bad on my last day as I was on my first. I took revenge on them by whipping all-comers at the card game Spit. "In your FACE loser" I would shout, victory dancing around teary eyed 8 year olds. (Revenge is a dish best served to someone you're pretty confident you can beat up.)

Nepal part II

It is difficult to write anything about politics here because I know so little but it is an unavoidable part of the country. There seem to be a host of armed groups operating here. The Maoists, despite there presence in the political arena, are still very active as a military group. Their youth wing seems to comprise of a large number of thugs which the Maoist leadership refuses to condemn for atrocities they carry out, showing a worrying lack of control over its own people. In the Terai, the southern, flat lowland half of the country, increasing numbers of splitter groups are carrying out attacks on officials and tit for tat raids on the Maoists. Some groups are demanding that any migrants from the hills return to the hills under threat of death, a threat which seems to be carried out on a daily basis. Hundreds of civil servants no longer turn up for work as their security cannot be guaranteed by the government.

The military may not be able to keep the civil servants safe in the Terai but in Kathmandu and surrounds it is impossible to escape them. Machine gun nests abound, sand bagged little bunkers guard the entrance to any buildings remotely connected to officialdom and gun toting patrols roam the streets. And these are not Indian police with their WWII colonial antiques, these lads tote some serious weaponry including sub machine guns and tear gas cannons. In addition the UN landrovers are everywhere, with the big aerials at the front, their blue and white logo looking particularly reassuring on the huge vehicles, and the people in the jeeps always looking strangely refined and detached from it all. In embassy alley, cycling past the American embassy, I get that childhood twinge of security, a throwback emotion to when the world was black and white and America were the good guys.

From what I could gather the Maoists have huge support and there seems to be a strong inclination to overlook any atrocities they carry out. Their cadres seem to control most of the labour unions and so have the power to paralyse the whole country. They call general strikes on a regular basis and the city shuts down, with nearly no vehicles on the streets. Some folk I talked to spoke about them with a childlike wonder in their voices. Most though are more realistic, shrugging and smiling, rueful of all thats gone before. A lot of students I talked to just want to get out, to go and work in Australia or America or England. Some saw my mere acquaintance as being maybe the first step to getting to Ireland.

One day wandering through Kathmandus narrow alleys and squares I was held up my a Maoist march. The participants seemed mild mannered, some had numbers pinned to their shirts like marathon runners, and the chants were half hearted, as if their demands had already been met. It was only when the march had passed through and the square erupted into the usual din of car horns and bicycle bells that I realised how subdued everyone had been while the march went past. Another day I was taking some of the kids to the library when we got caught up in a mob of red flag wielding youths, a bunch of whom took off at a sprint around the corner and out of sight. I found out afterwards that it was the kings birthday. The king is at this stage pretty much a prisoner in his own palace, his allowance has been severely reduced and he's been replaced in all his official duties by politicians. He is not well liked and for his birthday the Maoists were out in force in the hope of finding some royalists to roll. They were in luck and managed to hospitalise quite a few people. One of them was a badly beaten 84 year old man.Vive le revolution.

Ich bin ein Nippler...

Brother and sisters of Nepal, embrace me as one of your own! I have been here only a month but I feel your pain, I know your thoughts, we are the same you and I. I too eat with my hands, licking my fingers clean with relish and leaving the steel plate as clean as the day it was forged. I too eat dal bhat until I can taste the tasteless mush in my sleep. I too squat over hole in the ground toilets ignoring the screams from my thighs. I too use your roads like I was the only one on them, weaving and swearing and ringing my bell with great self importance. (That's me, on the local bike with the curved in handlebars, no foreign mountain bike for moi.) I too speak english very badly. I too walk in the rain without a jacket and pretend its only a shower as cars float by. I too drink chai and eat momos in little greasy spoons outside of the popular areas where the, pah, tourists go.





Yes my knobbly bare knees knock against my handlebars cos the bike frame is too small. Yes I use toilet paper (but only because the other way I kept getting my pants wet, given time and maybe some sort of pamphlet I will learn.) Yes I know only four words of Nepali, dal bhat, namaste, dhanyabad. Yes if there was a McDonalds I would go. Yes I say thank you too much. Yes I occasionally wear white linen shirts with shorts and sneakers. Yes I am as white as your snowcaps. But being Nepali is, like, totally a state of mind. Embrace me to your obscene Himalayan bosom, mother Nepal, thank you please.

Nagarkot

I haven't had a huge amount of time to do touristy stuff in Nepal so last weekend i stole a couple of days to myself to get out of the city and cycle up to a little village called Nagarkot. Nagarkot is famous here as a viewpoint where on a good day you can see the length of the Himalayan peaks. During the monsoon you don't get many good days and so travelling up to a viewpoint villlage was faintly ludicrous but I needed the break.



Kathmandu ends very suddenly, you're urban and then in the space of 100 feet you're rural, bouncing along through impossibly green paddy fields. Ahead of me I could see a wall of cloud and mist coming down to meet me, completely obscuring the ridges of the Kathmandu valley. In the paddy fields women stood up to watch me pass, laughing. These women were big women, fat in most cultures, but stooped in their fields they looked full of latent power, like sumo wrestlers at the off. Their faces worn, with wrinkles you could hide your change in. In the cloud bank and the rain they were all wearing bright coloured tarp anoraks, simple sacks slit open on one side. Kids wearing them looked like they were playing at superheroes in their hooded cloaks, stomping through the stalks.



I started getting those strange looks that I had missed from my time in Kathmandu. The locals watching me struggle up and down their little hills with smiles somewhere between welcome and ridicule.



I left the road and took to the mud track which my very general map told me would take me to the Nagarkot. I alternated between cycling and walking as the going got steeper and track got worse. The cloud cover was complete now, you could see little around you except windows of terraced hillsides and the occasional little village where kids would stare at me and ignore cheery greetings. There's nothing like people blanking a good old cheery greeting to make one feel like a knob. When I finally reached Nagarkot the visibility was even worse. Fittingly my hotel was called the Hotel at the End of the Universe. Exhausted and drownded, i crashed on my bed, me, my bike and my mist-wrapped little cabin, in a silence that made my ears ring.



After a couple of hours doze I felt obliged to go for a stroll, it felt like something People do. Down in the village was a little yellow information booth, visible even in the mist. Inside four lads maintained a fog of their own. I asked about the look-out tower where the view was supposed to be best. 'What view?' they asked, and I left them, their eyes glazed and giggling.



Everywhere in Nepal there are signs of the military. That is another days miserable writing. Here in the misty middle of nowhere it was no different. An army training camp sprawled out along the ridge with the road winding back and forth through the hillocks of assault courses and watch towers. I stopped to take photos of a watchtower silhouetted in the mist and was shouted at by men with guns. I did my cheery greeting routine, looked suitably ignorant and walked away with my camera intact.





I continued along the ridge, tending uphill, towards the look-out tower 4 km away hidden in the thick cloud. Things got eerier as i rose, and I realised it was the sun lighting up the mist. As I cycled the localised cloud lifted and beyond I could see the denser heavier clouds breaking up over the valley. And beyond them still was the sun, setting spectacularly behind its own ridge of cirrus clouds.













Apart from a tantalising glimpse of snow slopes disappearing up into thick cloud bands, I saw nothing of the majesty of the Himalayan peaks. I free wheeled down the ridge, the last sunlight strobing through the coils of razor wire on the roadside, and realised I didn't care. As the man said, I'll be back.