Heroically Out of Touch

I impressed myself with how out of touch with modern culture I am yesterday. I was having a chat with quite a respectable lady - it went something like this:
Me: So, what are you up to for New Year's?
Them: Going to a party in our village.
Me: Will that be a raucous one?
Them: Yeah, probably. There'll probably be a wee tournament.
Me: "A wee tournament"? That's more than raucous, that's off-the-chain mental.

And then it sinks in and I do some blushing.

Me (again): You meant Nintendo Wii, didn't you?

Happy New Year people, see you on the other side.

Pizza My Mind

I don't get Italian restaurants. I just don't understand them. What are they about? Really?

As a rule you get to choose between pasta (for those who don't know - small bits of slippery bread normally served in ketchup) or pizza (half a cheese sandwich sprinkled with leftovers). It's student food, people. Why would you go to a restaurant to eat student food. Nothing against either per se, both have their place, but why would you go to an Italian restaurant through choice when you can go to somewhere which sells real food for grown ups?

Ever since reading the Eat part of Eat Prey Love (turns out it was actually "Eat, Pray, Love" consequently I only read the "Eat" bit - I tried with the other bits - just didn't interest me, sorry) I've wanted to go to Da Michele in Naples and have the Margherita to see what all the fuss is about.

I was coerced into an Italian restaurant (a Napoli restaurant, no less, albeit a lot closer to Covent Garden than Campania) and there they were hyping the face off of their Margherita. Given that the rest of the menu offered absolutely nothing of interest and that this was supposed to be all authentic I figured I should give it a shot. One Napoli style Margherita. A food stuff so bland it's not worth describing with anything more than a shrug. This was your signature dish, restaurant, why would you do that to me? Why?

Tinsel-faced Nincompoop

Hello Christmas, you tinsel-faced nincompoop.

Belittling your omnipresence and querying why everyone changes their behaviour around you / because of you seems thoroughly grinch-esque, so I'm just gonna give you a courteous nod and keep on walking.

In other news and responding to my last two posts. I managed to sneak another one of those must do things - I saw me a Hamlet. The nuts one, set in an asylum called Denmark. Really good it was.

Something else that's really good is Let England Shake. Objectively, as a piece of art, it is the best new album I've heard this year. So I stand corrected. Apologies for casting aspersions / pre-judging etc.

Although it didn't make me smile as much as when I heard Kate Tempest guesting on the new Beans on Toast album.

Bucket Lists

I became aware of the Travel list challenge a couple of weeks ago - one of those facebook-showing-off-I-bet-you-haven't-been-to-the-great-mosque-of-cordoba-app-things (40 out of 100, since you ask). It send me into a spiral of wondering (I won't relate the full thought process but it ended up as) what bucket list stuff have I ticked off this year?

Now I don't mean to brag but I've ticked off a fair few of the things on the list in previous years (detailed at length in previous blogs, so no need to be tedious), but what about this year, what have I done that's new and exciting? Am I losing my edge?

Now I've done a couple of firsts that I'm quite proud of - fallen down a cliff; received my first letter from environmental health; had to dig a car out of a sand dune - but I'm not sure they're on everyone else's to-do lists. If you take things like that off the list then I'm not left with much. In fact I'm left with exactly three:

1. Worked abroad. I reckon this is quite a big one, probably something that every one should do. But then I'm not sure that I did it properly - shouldn't I really be living in an apartment, rather than hotel hopping?

2. Went up the world's tallest building. And that was mediocre. Nothing against the Burj Khalifa (it's tall and shiny) but the viewing platform called 'At The Top' is a bit of a misnomer - 'Halfway Up' would have been more appropriate, or even more appropriately 'Just taller than the one in Shanghai so that we can call it the highest viewing platform in the world.' I hope that that new clocktower in Mecca does have a viewing platform at the top so can blow raspberries all over Dubai's smugness. For the record - I think that that tower in Mecca is ace. It's really, really tall, but looks like a real building. Why's no one done that before?

3. Climbed a Himalayan Peak. A good solid Bucketlist item this one. But somewhat sullied by getting so sunburnt that my face leaked which, incidentally, is another first, and another item not on most people's lists.

So yeah, all the interesting bits of my year can be summed up in three paragraphs none of which were interesting. Please can you provide suggestions of what I should do in 2012, I'm gonna boxtick its face off.

Bored of Music

That's unfair, but there does seem to be a lot of dull music about. I've heard more things I like this year than I have most years recently - Tune Yards, OFWGKTA, Bert Miller and the Animal Folk, Azealia Banks, Beans on Toast, Africa Express Sound System - I'm just really disenchanted that PJ Harvey has dominated the PJ Harvey awards, pretty much a clean sweep of them. Last time I bought a PJ Harvey album because of the hype it was VERY boring. And I can't help but think that this one won't be any different. But it's won everything. And it's not like the people waiting in the wings are in anyway interesting: Gillian Welch, Kurt Vile, The Horrors; very very yawn.

I'd do a top five albums of the year but I don't think I've liked five albums that have been released this year. So in the interests of self indulgence, I shall present my top 5 live music things this year:

5. Snoop Dogg, Yas Arena - What a juxtaposition; gangsta rap in the UAE. It wasn't really number 5, I just wanted to look cool and I refuse to acknowledge that I really enjoyed seeing he-who-shall-not-be-named. Snoop was ace tho.

4. Gruff Rhys, Cadogan Hall - Yeah it was seated, but an inflatable palm tree goes a long way.

3. B Dolan, Scala - Not to be confused with B Dylan who is nowhere near as fun live. I wrote about this a post or so ago so shan't bang on.

2. Prince, Hop Farm - I probably don't need to justify this.

1. Sound of Rum, Standon Calling - A mid afternoon set by an almost unknown band at a tiny festival better than the Stooges? Better than Lou Reed? The Streets? Patti Smith? Arctic Monkeys? Yes yes yes and if you don't believe me I will fight you. And Balance was my favourite album. So if I was voting for the PJ Harvey awards Kate Tempest would have won and the world would be a far smilier place.

Running like Clockwork

When we walked into the services, Tim was about as muddy as it's possible to be. He was so muddy that a family got up and moved when we sat down. Or it could've been cos I was still wearing eye-liner. Who knows?

It was Hellrun this morning, and as they've been using pictures off us to advertise for the last few years, we thought it was about time to Hellrun again. There are two rules for cross-county races:

1. Wear fancy dress. This is a no-brainer. If you wear lycra and you're rubbish you look like a fool. If you wear fancy dress and do well you look like a hero.

2. If you're going to get muddy start as pristine as possible.

We went dressed as droogs. We beat more people than beat us.

Oi, people we beat. You were dressed in brand new waterproof ironman gubbins. I was wearing a 99p boiler suit and bowler hat. You belong to running clubs and did training and slurped energy gel; I ate a bacon sandwich for breakfast. Shame on you.

Didn't even see Batman

So, Gothenburg. That's not a place that's anywhere near as cool as the image of it I had in my head. I was thinking all gothic and artsy when really the whole town looks like it's come out of an Ikea catalogue. Being brutal, it seemed a little bit soulless.

The art gallery worked for me - who doesn't love a 6m tall, upside-down, rotating pole dancer? - and Haga had heart, but the rest of the town was just a constructionist patchwork of dreary straightline burbs and ugly industry. So today's top travellercliche tip - if you're going to Sweden, go to Stockholm.

In other news saw Scroobius Pip last week (sample line - 'a moustache is for life, not just for charity'). He was supported by B Dolan who I'd not heard of (despite him guesting on a Scroob song - I'm getting ignorant in my old age) but is really rather handy.

I Heart EG

Thought for the day: I Heart NY (and it's derivatives - of which I heart Beijing is obviously the best) and Che Guevara's face are probably the two most common t-shirts on the planet. Weird how they're just about opposites.

Two Cuddly Yetis and some Moisturiser, please

So, back from The Mystic Mountains Where People Find Themselves (TM) and what did we learn?

1. I didn't find myself. No surprise there as I'm not a hippy (they kind of expect all westerners that visit Nepal to be hippies - this was unfortunate as I had to beat a Buddhist to death with his flipflops to prove my punk credentials).

2. If needs must I can go without meat or alcohol for a week.

3. If I do go without meat for a week I can find places that will cook me steak for breakfast, even when cows are sacred.

4. If you're going to do eight days of trekking, don't do ten-hour days.

5. When you're flying economy Qatar Airways aren't the best airline in the world. They're not even the best airline beginning with Q. If you're going to do long, multi-lingual announcements, pause the in-flight entertainment - surely that's a no-brainer.

6. There's a gaping, yeti-shaped hole in the Kathmandu souvenir industry. I'm not a hippy. I don't want a tie-dyed, hemp kurta or a batik baby-sling. Get me a cuddly yak. Or a stuffed red panda.

And most importantly of all:

7. If you're going up a snowy mountain, wear suncream. No

excuses. None, not ever. Wear suncream. If it's snowing when you leave; wear suncream. If it's minus ten with windchill; wear suncream. If you're walking through a cloud which reduces visibility to less than five metres; wear suncream. Just do it kids, having a face that things fall off if you smile isn't big or clever. Wear it.

Happy New Year

It's Divali here in Kathmandu and everyone's gone new year crazy. Last night was the Festival of Light so everywhere had an offering to the Goddess of Wealth outside. Paintfoodandfire-tastic. Today was New Year's Day itself. We missed the main cow worshipping but saw the precession. That's precession, not carnival - it was more like the gang meet at the start of The Warriors.

The journey back to Kathmandu semed a lot tamer than the journey out. The girl next to me was sick on hour three of ten, which added a certain je ne sais quoi to the overall bouquet of the bus. Also I found out that falling down a cliff during a toilet stop is comedy gold in any language.

Facial update: I picked all my crone skin off during the bus journey so my face is all pink again. All except my lips which are still scaly - my mouth was stuck together when I woke up this morning. I reckon my face is due another peel, which should give me something to do on tomorrow's flight - the person next to me is on for a treat.

Just walking...

So that's the trekking bit done. Eight days from 2000m up to 5000, then back down again. Now I'm aware that writing about eight days where all I've done is walk could easily slip into the realms of uninteresting. I mean if you wanted to hear about a big fat walk you'd watch Lord of the Rings, and we both know you're not going to do that.

Anyway, eight days of trekking has just about broken me. My knees are shot, I don't seem to have full movement in my left ankle and I'm as sunburnt as I've ever been. Now that probably conjures up an image of day-glo pink skin that hurts if you breathe on it. Well that's how sunburnt my arms are. My face is a whole world more burnt than that. It started doing leaking. Which, in my limited experience of faces, isn't something they should be doing. I spent the first hour of yesterday picking crispy, yellow faceleak out of my beard. Even by my low standards of prettiness I looked positively leprous.

The burns evolved a bit since then though. I've now got "crone skin", somewhere between a sultana that you've found behind a cupboard and an over barbecued sausage. Definitely a healthy look for a ginger.

We've had a guide for the last week, Syangbo, he's come out with some great nuggets of wisdom - "why do you want to go to a base camp? That's rubbish. The clue's in the name. Base. It means bottom. Why would you walk to the bottom of something?" (fyi, that was the Learing Base Camp, he was way more scathing about Everest - "more of a queue than a trek"). Syangbo's been out to break us since we made him walk faster than he'd intended on the first couple of days. He ditched the itinerary and has been putting us through ten hours days so that we could see a glacier, climb a mountain and tease the Tibetan border guards.

We've also had a porter, Ultimate Mo, who's hardcore as. The first day he took our ergonomic backpacks, tied them together then tied them both to his head with a bit of sack. That's the way he rolls. I appreciate that having a porter makes me softcore, but I have had clean pants everyday.

Yak for Good

I'm in the mountains. In a tiny, tiny place that you'd struggle to call a hamlet. Four internet cafes. Is that progress? I'm not too sure.

We left Kathmandu yesterday, bumped our way north up a road paralysed by monsoon rock slides and passed out as we got here - oblivious to the fact that we could see Tibet from our room.

Started doing that walky stuff this morning, just getting into the swing of it but it seems to be shaking out all of yesterday's crampedness.

Oh, and I saw a man punch a donkey.

Eggy Style

Three things I've seen today which I wasn't expecting:

1. A monkey riding a goat
2. A dude dressed as a monkey god kicking a rat
3. Someone setting light to a human corpse.

You don't get that in Chelmsford, I tell you.

Kathmandu is ace. It hit just about every preconceived idea of it that I had. Monkeys. Flags. Temples. narrow windy streets. Children imprisoned as goddesses. Holy cows eating out of bins. "Eggy style?" as a legitimate question. Full on weird travelling.

Off into the mountains tomorrow, so maybe catch you in a week or so...

Sporadic blogging

Well, gonna do a soupcon of travelling so figured I'd lube up this blog in preparation.

I see my old travellercliche blog is still getting a heap of hits - to be fair it's mainly the last page where I listed everything I did (and by default, everything that everyone that travels does - that was the aim of the year and particularly the blog after all - so some of that's going to be googled; incidentally the last google hit that led to the blog was pirates and jesuits, which is a flavour of crisps which never caught on).

So, yeah, off to Kathmandu for a couple of weeks. Not convinced I'll be getting a great deal of internet access up in them there hills, so I'm not promising any regular postings, but if I get a few minutes online I'll tell you a tale or two.

Keep it gangsta.