Mick Canning's Blog, page 44

A Limo in Lima…

…something that ought to be a cautionary tale.

It was a long time ago, now, but I am sure these things still happen. I was sent by the company I then worked for, to Lima, Peru. My role there was to carry out some training of half a dozen local men who had been recruited to operate the computers in our branch office.

Now, I have never been what could be described as a ‘snappy dresser’. I incline towards what can best be described as a ‘casual’ look, although I have at times been unfairly described as a ‘scruffy bugger’, and no one looks their best after a journey of over 24 hours, with a couple of flight changes and a certain amount of time spent hanging around in airports.

And thus it was I emerged into South America haggard and unshaven, sporting a pair of old jeans and a tee shirt, picked up my battered rucksack from the carousel, then looked around for whoever was meeting me.

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We’ll blend in. No one will us notice us in our big, clean, shiny black limo.

I was accosted by a smart suit and tie which was housing a short man who looked like a mafia boss, but who was affable and friendly and directed me to my transport.

A huge, black, limousine.

Now, in some other circumstances I might have quite enjoyed the ride, since it was an experience I had never had before (or since, as it happens), but we then proceeded to drive through massive slum areas where most of the ‘housing’ appeared to lack even a roof. The road was pitted with potholes, most of the traffic consisted of battered busses, lorries and cars, and poverty seeped out of everything that could be seen.

I have never been so embarrassed,

Every time the car stopped, I wondered whether we would get attacked and robbed – we certainly attracted a lot of attention, all of it the wrong kind as far as I was concerned. And after I was dropped off at the hotel where I would be staying, I was left wondering just who the hell that was meant to impress?

Me? If so it failed abysmally. My (already somewhat low) opinion of the company I worked for simply plummeted further.

The locals? If that was the case, then God forgive the b*stards that thought of it.

Can anyone enlighten me as to the thinking behind that?

In Which Bob’s Wife Goes on Holiday for a Week.

Bob phoned me up.

‘Gina’s gone off on holiday and left me to look after Duncan.’ Duncan is not their pet, although you might assume that from the way he said it, but their son. Now, when I heard that, several questions popped up in my mind. Namely, why had Gina gone off without Bob? Why had she left Duncan with Bob? But mainly, how on earth was Bob going to survive a week looking after himself and Duncan?

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Some celeriac. Very nice but totally irrelevant.

There are husbands who are less capable than Bob, but there are not many of them. At least, I think there are.

‘That’s fine, Bob,’ I said, my voice oozing false conviction. ‘You two can have a great time bonding over boy things.’

‘Bonding?’ he wailed. ‘He’s already said he wants me to take him to the football! And he’s hungry!’

Well, Bob does not like football. Basically, he does not understand football. But rather than pursue that line at that point, I said ‘Uh, hungry? When did Gina go?’

‘Monday morning.’ It was now Wednesday.

‘Monday?’ I asked, in genuine surprise. ‘What have you been eating?’

‘Well, we found enough stuff in the larder for lunch – you know, bread and stuff – and we ordered pizzas for supper. I had cereal this morning for breakfast, Duncan wouldn’t eat anything.’

‘Why not? What’s wrong with toast?’ There was a brief silence.

‘Well, actually, the toaster…um…you know…caught fire.’

‘Oh.’ A thought struck me. ‘And yesterday?’

‘Er, cereal, and, er, sandwiches…’

‘And supper?’

‘Oh, we both fancied pizza again, you know. Really fancied it. Um, they’re very good, those ones…’

‘Bob…’

‘Yes?’

‘Would you like one of us to go shopping with you?’

In the end, we both went round. The kitchen looked as though it belonged in a student squat. The draining board was temporary home to four pizza boxes, several bowls and plates and a host of dirty knives, forks and spoons. There were also three pieces of burnt toast and two pieces of very burnt toast.

The toaster was sticking out of the top of the bin, and the air was perfumed with the delicate scent of smoke.

There was no sign of Duncan.

For some reason, my wife never really seems to have taken to Bob. She narrowed her eyes and fixed him with what I can only describe as displeasure, and suggested that if he would like any help at all with the bloody shopping list, then he might clear up his bloody kitchen immediately, a tactic that actually proved most effective.

He had finished that, and the shopping list had been compiled (No, you can’t possibly live on pizza for a week!), when Duncan walked into the kitchen.

‘Oh, hi!’ he said to us, in a friendly, distracted way, before looking at Bob. Duncan is a perfectly affable fifteen year old, who unfortunately takes more after his father than his mother. He had an instruction book in his hand.

‘I’ve got it Dad, look!’ he said, pointing to the open page. ‘You can do toast under the grill – it’s that thing at the top. I’ve seen Mum using it for something or other – cheese on toast, I think.’

‘Well done!’ said Bob. ‘How does it work?’

‘Um…’ Duncan stared at the page for a moment, turned it over and looked at the other side, and then turned back. ‘Not sure. You’d better take a look.’

We slipped silently out of the house while they studied the booklet.

That week, Bob seemed to drop by our house an unusual amount, generally just for a chat – just to pass the time of day – but there was always an odd question somewhere in the conversation.

‘Where has Gina gone, Bob?’

‘She’s staying in Oxford. Wants to see lots of the churches around there, apparently.’

‘Pity about the weather.’ Outside it was bucketing down. ‘The forecast is for more of this all week.’

‘I know. I’m surprised she didn’t take her waterproofs. They’re still hanging up under the stairs.’

‘Perhaps she forgot.’

‘I expect so. Er, if you were Gina, where would you put spare batteries?’

The day before Gina was due to return, Bob decided to clear up the house. To be fair to him, we didn’t prompt him this time. I think it might have had a little more to do with fear of what Gina might say when she returned to something that resembled a municipal rubbish tip under her own roof. But it all seemed to go well and when he nervously asked us to have a look, clearly worried he might have missed something, we were surprised to see the house had even been vacuumed.

‘That was Duncan.’ The boy went up in my estimation.

‘The only thing that didn’t go right was the washing,’ Bob said reluctantly.

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I put the wash on (he seemed proud of having mastered the terminology), but something went wrong.’ There was a washing basket in the corner, the floor was covered in water, and the clothes it contained were clearly still soaking wet. My wife picked out a shirt and held it up.

Not only was it still dripping with water, but appeared to be for a small child.

‘How did you manage that? Those clothes are completely ruined!’ He looked hurt.

‘Don’t blame me, it was the damned washing machine! I left it on whatever setting it was that Gina last used, put the clothes and a washing tablet inside, and just switched it on.’ He pointed at the offending appliance.

‘Even I know that’s the dishwasher, Bob.’ I said. Inexplicably, he looked relieved.

‘Oh, that’s okay, then. I was worried it might have been on the wrong setting.’

Gina came back in the evening. Despite the week of heavy rain, it must be said that she had somehow managed to pick up a most impressive suntan.

An Author Page, a Relaunch, and, well, Other Things.

…what’s not to like?

Um, I meant that as a rhetorical question, and I’m rather hoping I won’t get any answers to that!

But, as promised a few weeks back, I have got around to creating my Author Page on Facebook. You can find it here and if you are on Facebook, please feel free to nip over and follow it.

I was going to put up a screenshot of the page, but I really can’t work out how to do it and almost lost the will to live trying.

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Totally irrelevant picture of wild boar hoof prints in Portugal instead

The point of creating an Author Page is so that I can separate out my writing and blogging posts from my personal ones on Facebook. I shall still send posts from this blog to both accounts, but the Author Page will also get a number of updates on my writing progress and other posts that my personal one won’t.

I will probably put up an album of my paintings.

It is even possible that Bob might be persuaded to make a guest appearance, just so long as he can find his way there.

The relaunch? I have put together extracts from a few of the very kind reviews I have received for my novel Making Friends with the Crocodile, which is available on Amazon by clicking on the picture below. Since I have taken the rather huge liberty of writing the novel in the first person, as an Indian woman, I am especially delighted with some very complimentary reviews which have come from Indian women.

The extracts read:

‘Mick Canning depicts quiet lives of ordinary desperation, in an Indian context. Although the “million mutinies” of which Naipaul writes have rescued India from famine and penury, it now needs a million more to deliver it from social, sexual and religious prejudices like those which bedevil the life of the narrator and her family.

Canning is an acute observer of nature as well as human nature, and his prose flows.’

 

‘This beautifully written story, set in a village in Bihar, draws you in from its first page. We see the household through the eyes of Siddiqa, wife of Maajid, mother of two school-age girls and her son Tariq, who is married to Naira. We are drawn into the rivalry between Siddiqa and Naira, in a society where the men are the only wage earners and the women’s lives must, by tradition, revolve around their wishes. Small incidents pile up, one after another, as the underlying harmony of the household is fractured by the resentment and self-loathing of Naira. The family is Moslem, the village is a mix of Moslem and Hindu, and one incident threatens the uneasy cohabitation of the two communities. The police, seen as a hostile force in the village, get involved with an unpredictable outcome to the novel.’

 

‘In his debut novel Mick Canning weaves a brilliant story of the tragic life of a young bride in rural India – a story that is synonymous with many women, who continue to suffer oppression and victimization at the hands of men.

The characters are depicted with obvious respect for a culture that is both beautiful and at times shocking. By the novels finale, though tragic, we are left with a very thought provoking and memorable story.’

‘In an understated tone, the story presents the lives of people in an average Indian village in Bihar, and highlights the conditions that not only dissuade a woman from reporting an assault but also subjugate her further by holding her responsible for it.

Mick has delved into the mind of a middle- aged woman living in rural Bihar and has beautifully sketched the love – hate relationship she shares with her daughter in law. The book gives a lot of perspective on the mind-set and predispositions that prevail in the rural north Indian society (which apply, at large to many other parts as well).

Siddiqa, the protagonist character gets as real as she can be. The manner in which, the author connects the social issue with the system and institutions is very authentic and shows his deep understanding of the culture and milieu.

Go for it, if you like to read serious stuff that deals with real thought provoking issues.’

 And how is the writing going? I’m so glad you asked. I’m working hard on the new novel, and occasionally putting in some time on the older one that just seems to keep changing its mind on what it wants to be. *sigh* It’s like living with teenagers.

I’ll put up a proper update on all that soon.

Welcome to my Crisis!

I’ve been hiding from the internet.

No, I didn’t go away, unfortunately, although a holiday was what I both have been and am still craving. I made a rash promise some weeks ago to put up a Facebook Author page, to do a minor relaunch of my novel, and to serialise a bawdy Elizabethan detective story. Really, I should know myself better than that.

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I think it was the short story that finally broke me.

Writing, for me, is a pleasure, comparable to painting. It is all about crafting the finished product, taking my time and eventually producing the best I can. When all goes well, the process is immensely satisfying from beginning to end.

Within that process, of course, there are times of writer’s block, false starts and finishes, wrong turnings, and many other things to go wrong. And the editing can be an infuriating process. But overall, there needs to be a flow.

Making Friends with the Crocodile worked for me at the length it was (45,000 words), since I wrote it almost as a stream of consciousness as the story unfolded in my mind. It came out in a rush partly because of its importance to me, and partly because I found I could visualise the characters, the story and the setting clearly. Once I had reached the end, I knew that was the end.

Obviously, many stories take a lot more coaxing to get down on paper. I’ve struggled with ones that need to be forced, certainly in places, partly because at that point they are not ‘me’ at the heart of them; I have lost that flow. But sometimes because of the length.

One reason I stopped entering short story competitions is I write a lot of long short stories. I am perfectly aware of the dictum that whatever you write can be edited down to the required length and that, indeed, they should be edited down.

But I also strongly believe that when a story presents itself to be written, that story has an internal length that needs to be respected, even after editing. Some require a few hundred words, some a lot more. But to attempt to turn Making Friends with the Crocodile into a 120,000 word novel or a 5.000 word short story, I am sure would have meant a lesser read. It would have been padded out for the sake of it, or stripped down to bare bones that would have meant that the characters could not have been drawn as strongly as I wanted them to be, and therefore encouraged less empathy from the reader.

Where is all this leading?

I began the short story / serial. It was working quite well, and I had a good few chuckles to myself as I was writing it and then, suddenly, it was almost 10,000 words long and nowhere near finished.

Oh dear.

So I attempted to cram and trim and edit and get it down to a suitable length for serialisation, but I was not happy with the result. Oh no. And I had one of my minor panic-I-can’t-cope-stress attacks and decided the only way to deal with it was to hide.

So, I’m not going to serialise it after all. I will finish it, but the attempt to condense it into a few instalments simply wasn’t working, and what I ended up with felt completely wrong. I will return to it at some point in the future, and finish it as the novella that it clearly is.

There is another strand to all this:

I made the Facebook Author page. That was the easy bit, and I’ll show you where it is next time. And I put together the re-launch promotion piece by the simple expedient of gathering together extracts from lots of the kind reviews the book has had.

But I am in a state of recurring panic, once again, over this huge need to self-promote to sell books. Of course, we all want to, but we are forever urged to use this or that platform, accept this or that offer, etc. Now, we are told that we ‘must’ have a YouTube channel. Really? And a presence on all sorts of social media. Are we not ‘serious’ writers if we are not prepared to move heaven and earth to sell a couple of extra books? That we should ‘invest’ a hundred or five hundred dollars here and there to advertise ourselves?

I have sold a few, and what is really important to me is the tremendous feedback that I’ve had.

Blowing my own trumpet is anathema to me, as I have written in the past. I just can’t do the selling and marketing the way that seems to be presented as essential. It’s an aspect of life that I hate, and a reason I have never gone into ‘business’. Everything around the promotion and marketing just seems relentless and is something that I cannot cope with.

Fortunately, I am not interested in fame. The idea frightens me.

And I really struggle with social media. I have had two goes at being on Facebook, and cope with it at the moment by not going on it very much. I spent ages trying to see the use of Linkedin, and have solved that one by closing my account last week. I really see no use for it.

And I am not doing Twatter.

So here I am back on WordPress, which is a platform I do enjoy. I’ll dip in and out of it a bit over the next few weeks or months, I suspect, since I still feel a bit panicky, but I will be there.

Thank you for your patience!

A Little Break

I am going offline for a while.

Ciao.

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Danger! Natural Selection at Work!

Bob has a new mobile phone.

Do you remember Bob?

Some of you may remember him from when he and I went on a mighty expedition together. The report can be found here. And, as an update to that report, I can now reveal that Bob eventually found his way back home, much to his wife’s chagrin as she had already cashed in his life insurance and taken up with a new man.

But that’s another story.

Anyway, Bob has a new mobile phone. And, being Bob, he was insistent that it be the latest, most up-to-date, all-singing and all-dancing mobile phone, with more apps (whatever they are) than…something that has lots of apps.

He has an app for everything; an app for navigation when he is out in the countryside (naturally!), an app to help him choose whatever he is going to buy if he needs to go shopping, an app that gives him a weather forecast. He even has an app that tells him when he needs to eat or go to the toilet.

Heaven only knows how he managed to cope with life before the phone.

But, there is a downside to all this.

We went for a walk and, sure, we didn’t get lost. This was because Bob had his head over the phone the whole time. We didn’t get lost, but Bob bumped into twenty seven trees, fell in two streams, had an altercation with a herd of cows, tripped over almost fifty tree roots and finally walked into the bus stop.

And he had no idea of where we had been or what sort of countryside we had passed through. Rather a waste of time, really.

Now, Bob is not unique in this, oh, God, no.

The sidewalks in our town have become dangerous places since these phones became popular. I’m beginning to get seriously cross with the number of pedestrians who march towards me, head over their phones, and not even walking in a straight line, so it becomes quite difficult to avoid them. And should I have the temerity to perhaps cough discretely to let them know I’m there, or even to feebly call ‘look out!’ or ‘excuse me!’ I invariably get a glare and perhaps a few muttered words about not looking where I’m going.

And it appears to be an almost universal phenomenon now.

We get more and more news items about these people walking into the paths of vehicles, or off the edge of cliffs, or finding other similarly stupid ways to get killed.

Perhaps it’s a modern form of natural selection? I don’t know. Large numbers of idiots seem to kill themselves the same way taking ‘selfies’ (what a f*cking irritating word that is!), so perhaps there is something in that.

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Jaipur – a random photo. Don’t try it here! 

I first became aware of the truly frightening potential for these sort of incidents a few years ago in India. Some of the driving on the switchback roads in the Himalaya is notoriously terrifying in any case, but to then see these fellows also using their phones while driving just made it even more frightening.

And then there was the girl I saw with a mobile phone ‘doing a Bob’ across an extremely busy Calcutta street.

Yet, she survived.

If there is anything in the theory of natural selection, then the future belongs to her!

A Nice Surprise

This was a nice surprise.

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Sunny Interval, Edale, Derbyshire, England

I’m sure some of you have noticed that I have some photos for sale on Picfair.

They recently announced a competition on Facebook for photos in the category ‘Best of England’, so I submitted one of mine. This morning I noticed I had been placed in the top ten, so Yay for that!

I also sold a copy yesterday, which I guess was on the strength of that.

If you would care to mosey over to have a look at all the winners, the link is Here

My photo is of the Edale Valley, in the Peak District.

 

A Bit of a Hiatus…

Well, blimey. Another of those passages of time when I’ve been just so stupidly busy, that I’ve hardly had time to take breath, never mind look at blogs or think about doing any writing myself. And…it’s going to be quite busy for another couple of weeks.

Yet, here I am grabbing an hour to write something and, hopefully, catch up with one or two other blogs. And I have no idea what to write about! I usually have a few ideas mulling over before I sit down at the keyboard, and one or two half-finished posts on the computer that I can draw on. Today, though, zilch. I have one finished post that is on a somewhat contentious subject, which I’m going to leave a few weeks so I have time to properly respond to any comments it generates (who knows, though, perhaps there won’t be any?), and a couple of partly begun travel posts. I need more time than I can spare at the moment to sort out photos for those.

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Random and totally irrelevant photo of the week.

Yet…a blog is a personal thing. We’re not journalists, with deadlines to meet and news stories to tackle before they go cold. We’re not being paid to produce highly detailed technical notes on a particular subject. So my personal blog, today, is simply about my progress, or lack of, with my writing.

So, yes, nothing for the last couple of days. But I promised that I would produce an Author’s page on Facebook by the middle of the month – I will!  – and that I had a bawdy, riotous, Elizabethan short story to post in a couple of instalments at the same time. That one is a bit more interesting! Having promised I would do that (primarily to give me the impetus to write it), I got stuck in and by the end of last week I already had over 8,000 words done.

Far too long for a couple of posts, which I feel should be limited to around a thousand words. Certainly, I almost never read posts that are much longer than that. I don’t have the time, unfortunately. So I have a bit of an editing job to do on that.

When that is out of the way, I am going to collate some of my longer short stories together to publish as an e-book and, perhaps, a POD paperback. I won’t have the novel ready this year, so the short stories will be this year’s publishing project. I hope I have enough decent ones to be able to produce a themed collection.

And then? Back to the novel!

Tally ho!

The Admirable Jim Webster Presents…

I am delighted to host a guest post from Jim Webster today, since he…well, perhaps I’ll let him explain.

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Hi everybody, Mick kindly allowed me to drop in as part of a ‘blog tour.’

Given that Mick discovered my writing at Tallis Steelyard’s blog, I thought

I’d let Tallis, poet and raconteur from the city of Port Naain, tell you why

I’m here. Over to you Tallis.

I assume you are aware of the situation. You are summoned to the office of

some petty functionary and on arriving you find you are expected to join the

queue.

Or you need to visit a physician or tooth puller and arrive to discover that

even the city’s most glamorous courtesans cannot hope to find themselves as

sort after as the practitioners of these professions.

To be trapped in a queue is one thing, but in all these places where one has

to wait in line, they employ one whose task is to act as guardian of the

queue. These people are the ones who, with attitudes of supreme disinterest,

ignore the fact that you have an appointment for a certain hour and merely

gesture to the back of the line. So there you sit, secure in the knowledge

that to the minor functionary in charge, your time is of no value. They sit

there, blithely apathetic to the fact that there are people you need to see,

places you have to go, work that has to be done.

So what to do? How do I, Tallis Steelyard, cope?

It is an interesting question. I have tried using the time profitably.

Unfortunately the troll lurking behind the reception desk took umbrage at me

spreading my papers across her desk and borrowing her ink to make a fine

copy of some of my poems. I felt this was extremely petty of her. After all,

not only had she not paid for the ink herself, but I could not see why she

could not merely glare contemptuously at us from a different chair. There

was nothing that she was doing which demanded her sole unrestricted access

to the desk.

On the other hand, one of my finest hours came when I was faced with a room

full of dour and miserable people for whom time appeared to have stopped,

leaving us trapped in some grim limbo from which there was no escape. I

recalled a comic tale that had amused me when I heard it and decided to tell

it. I stood up, faced my audience, and started to recount it to the best of

my ability. I gave a fine performance. Any of my patrons would have

considered that Tallis was pulling his weight to get their party going with

a swing. I was especially pleased when one man at the head of the queue

voluntarily gave up his place to another, so that he could catch the ending.

The monster in charge of us was most put out. She tutted audibly, she even

tried to interrupt with the words, “Really Master Steelyard.” To my delight

she was shushed into silence by a young woman nursing a baby.

But normally, in all candour, I just take a good book with me. I take my

place without protest, make myself comfortable and start to read. Between

ourselves I feel that bursting into spontaneous laughter as you read is well

worth doing. It cuts your tormentor to the quick, forcing them to admit to

themselves that they are no longer in charge. They can no longer deny you

life’s pleasures.

To be really successful, you have to adopt the correct mental attitude. It

is rare that one has a legitimate reason for sitting and reading during the

working day. Far too often you are left feeling that you are indulging

yourself in a guilty pleasure. But in a queue you can indulge to your hearts

desire.

So remember, when you take your seat, wear that expression which tells the

world that you are not some put-upon victim, trapped against your will. This

is not an imposition, it is a window of liberty to be seized and enjoyed to

the full.

Trusting you all keep well.

Tallis

Ah well, Jim here. That went as well as can be expected I suppose.

Basically, what Tallis was supposed to tell you but somehow forgot was that

I have just published the sixth in the Port Naain Intelligencer collection.

(They’re a collection because you can read them in any order.) This one is

called ‘Keeping body and soul together,’ These novellas chronicle the antics

of Benor the Cartographer when he was staying in Port Naain. They do feature

Tallis, just not perhaps as much as he’d like.

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Rescuing random strangers on a whim may be the good deed for the day, but
will Benor survive the blood feud he has unwittingly become part of. More
importantly can he buy back the victim’s soul?

And me? I’m married with a wife and three daughters, dabbling in farming,

writing and journalism. I lead a quiet life in the north of England.

My blog is at

https://jandbvwebster.wordpress.com/

The blog of Tallis Steelyard can be seen at

https://tallissteelyard.wordpress.com/

I am on Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/jim.webster.10297

And there is even a facebook page for the books!

https://www.facebook.com/Land-of-the-Three-Seas-426394067386022/

If the few kind words Tallis did write have stirred your compassion and you

feel the urge to support a starving artist, (me not him) then a quick look

at Amazon will let you see what I’ve written

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jim-Webster/e/B009UT450I/

There is a lot of it, all reasonably priced.

Oh yes, and the book,

It’s at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XRKQBLQ/

Ladakh (2)

Long ago in the misty depths of time – that’s last year, actually, I posted a piece about Ladakh (you can find it here if you’d like to read it.)

This, then, is another mixture of photographs and entries from my journal of my 2005 trip to India, which included a couple of weeks spent in Ladakh. I went comparatively early in the year, when the nights are still extremely cold and very few visitors have made their way up from the plains.

 Just the way I like it!

Ladakh is high. If you fly in from Delhi (the only way to enter Ladakh for 8 months of the year), you travel from around sea level to 3500m in no time at all. Ladakh means ‘The Land of High Passes’, and is aptly named. Leh, the capital, at 3500m, is one of the lower areas of Ladakh. It’s all uphill from there. Winters are incredibly harsh and the summer growing season brief, yet the Ladakhis traditionally are self-sufficient in everything they need – food, clothing and shelter – and have only recently collided with the western consumer society. In contrast with most of the rest of India, the religion and culture of the majority of the people there is Tibetan Buddhism.

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The Roof of the World – View across the Indus valley at 3500m, Thikse, Ladakh.

 Friday 8th April 2005

I’m in Ladakh and, hey, wow!

At the airport for 4.30am, to find the flight postponed until 8am, due to weather conditions. It all looked ominous, but just after 7am we were told to check in and after numerous baggage checks, body checks, baggage identifications, etc, we were away at 8.30.

I’ve heard the flight described as one of the most spectacular in the world. I’ve also heard it described as jaw-dropping. I can imagine that it could be bowel-dropping. As we approached the Himalaya, clouds steadily built up and we flew through with tantalising glimpses of great snow-covered ranges below, through the occasional gaps in the cloud. After a while the turbulence built up and we were buffeted quite considerably. Then as we began to near Leh, we slowly lost height, the turbulence increased and we got more views of peaks at under-carriage height. Once we had dropped out of the clouds and the whole valley lay spread into the distance surrounded by snow-swept mountains, it was indeed jaw-dropping.

Then into land after three slow circles around the airstrip. The outside temperature was 2C, we were told, but it certainly didn’t seem that cold.

Once we’d gone through the formalities of registration and baggage reclaim with the refreshingly friendly ground staff, I walked out into the front of the airport and found a taxi. Yousef charged me RS 100/- to go to my choice of guesthouse (The Ti-Sei) and left me his mobile number. He also gave me all the usual (sensible) advice about taking it easy for a day or so.

I’m now sitting in a splendid light and airy room, looking out across the vegetable garden (covered in this morning’s snowstorm) to lines of bare poplars, traditional houses and some splendid mountains, also covered in snow.

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Cairn at top of mountain north of Leh.

After a Ladakhi lunch of apricots, apple juice and water, headed north past the Shanti Stupa towards the first line of hills. Reached there at 1.15pm and stopped there for a breather. Silence. Apart from the pounding of the blood in my head. Absolute silence. After a few minutes the call of the muezzin drifts up from Leh, from the Jama Masjid. Then a few bird calls from the crags. Perfect peace. A perfect desert landscape, with pockets of snow. I’m sitting on a boulder, warmed by the sun, my feet in patches of fresh snow.

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Gompa just below Leh Palace, Leh, ladakh.

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Man spinning prayer wheel, Leh. To Ladakhis, their religion is not somehow separate from their daily life, but an essential part of it.

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Leh Palace. Very similar to the Potala in Lhasa, although smaller, this was the home of Ladakh’s royal family from the 17th century, when it was built, until the mid 19th century when they moved to the palace at Stok, on the other side of the Indus Valley, as a result of an invasion by Kashmiri forces.

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Gateway to Gompa at Leh Palace.

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Old buildings on the outskirts of Leh, ladakh. Traditional Ladakhi buildings closely resemble those of Tibet. In fact, there are so many similarities between the two areas, that Ladakh is often referred to as ‘Little Tibet’.

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Temple Door at the Monastery at Thikse, Ladakh.

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Statue of Maitreya, the Future Buddha, at Thikse Gompa. This statue, 2 stories high (15 metres) in it’s own temple was completed in 1981.