Wandering

Although the Buddha says that we should not look for solutions in distant lands, but within our own hearts, regular readers here will know that I have a tendency to look to distant lands quite often! Not for solutions necessarily, but to feed my imagination - feed my heart, if you like - so perhaps it works out as amounting to the same thing?

At present, I am feeling that tingle in my wandering feet again and as well as my favourite locales - Japan, Europe - I am thinking too of India. I have been watching "The Jewel in the Crown" on one of the new digital channels here late every Sunday night and although I watched it with my parents when it was first released in the early 80s, I didn't really understand it then. Critics I'm sure could (and probably did) call it 'Brideshead in a Hot Cilmate' (with apologies to Nancy Mitford) since they were made at about the same time, but I am really enjoying it. I studied Indian history for a year as an undergrad at uni and so I am slowly recalling bits and pieces of long-forgotten facts as it goes along. As well as that, I have also just started reading E.M. Forster's A Passage to India which, although I have loved the film for some time, I dismissed the book as boring. I am now finding it to be really engaging and so vividly depicted. Has anyone else read it? I would have loved to put a clip of either "The Jewel in the Crown" or "A Passage to India" up here but there were no clips of the former to be found on You Tube and the latter's clips had been disabled. Huh. However, last but by no means least, I can bring you a gorgeous clip from "Monsoon Wedding", a lovely, lovely, lovely movie which you have to seek out if you haven't seen it already. And, needless to say, it presents a more modern view of India than the titles mentioned above! This song is one of my favourites from the soundtrack (the sound is a little subdued, so crank it up a little if you can). I defy you to not be cheered by it.

Has anyone been to India? What's it like?

And one last thing while on the topic of India (sort of), I have lately discovered a very nice little side dish which I have now had two nights running. It sort of reminds me of the cucumber dish which is generally served with pappadums at Indian restaurants. Combine sliced or diced cucumber with natural yoghurt and a little finely chopped or minced garlic. The proportions of each are to your own taste. Mmmm.

Little Oases

As I've said in a previous post, I love to travel. And while I have liked almost everywhere I've been to, some places I really, really love. Germany is one of those places, and so is Austria. But most recently, one of those places has been Japan. How I love Japan! And one of the things I love most of all about it is the attention to detail. This appeals both to my own love of detail (I take everything in) and a perhaps slightly less positive trait - a hankering for order. The giant waterlilly pads in a park in Ueno, Tokyo, pictured above are an example of the former. Even amongst the thriving (and I do mean thriving) metropolis of Tokyo, there was this nurturing oasis of green calm. And even in less organised ways, on street corners throughout the city, people had thought to arrange pot plants just so that there were some greenery amongst the concrete jungle.

I watched "Around the World in 80 Gardens" on TV the other night and the host's visit to a Zen garden in Japan and to a Japanese teahouse brought it all back to me. Although I realise it has far more cultural and historical significance than anything I, as a non-Japanese person, could perhaps hope to understand, I have to love a country that devotes a ceremony to drinking tea! The teahouse above - again in Tokyo - was apparently a favourite of the Emperor.

Away and here

I cannot tell you how much I enjoy being on holiday. I love it. In fact, I can honestly say, that I have never been anywhere that I didn't love. Some places, of course, I have loved more than others but there has never been anywhere that I have haboured an on-going dislike of. Even if that conclusion needs to be reached through rose-coloured glasses some years hence. I am always trepidatious about leaving behind the trappings and comforts of home before I go, but once I am there (wherever there may be) I am in my element. I love the very 'awayness' of being away. New things, things I have never seen before (and may well never see again), things which draw me out of myself and away from any problems which I have left behind and which may be waiting for me on my return. Strangely enough though, I always manage a disaster (thankfully minor so far) while I am away. There is a photograph of me amongst the April chill of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, an unbecoming woollen hat rammed onto my sinus-swollen head, my eyes puffy. I staggered around Japan with swollen ankles. There's evidence of this too - digitally captured I stand amongst the ordered and beautiful splendour of one of Kyoto's many temple gardens, one ungainly, elephantine foot swathed in bandage. In Germany, I thought it would be hot, so I took skirts and cheesecloth tops. It was so brisk that I had to buy jeans and a jumper at our first stop in Cologne. In Japan, I thought it would be cold, so I took my thickest jumpers, scarves and woollen hats. It was 28 degrees celsius most days and so I spent a considerable chunk of time hunting amongst the Japanese clothing shops for anything cooler which would fit my decidely non-Japanese frame. The more I think I am prepared, the more I try to cover every eventuality, the less prepared I seem to be. This is just one life-lesson which I have taken from traveling (if not quite thoroughly absorbed into my everyday life just yet) and it alone gives me all the more reason to love traveling so.