Monsoon, my old friend!

Hello monsoon, pleased to be acquainted with you once again. Thanks for marooning me in my favourite café, with nothing more to do than look out the window at you streaming down the road in great, fat clumps and sigh despairingly.



The roads, which are about as steep as roads get, have now turned into dangerous rivers. Clouds are floating past the café and jaunting off down the road, transforming the edge of the tarpaulin roof into Niagara Falls. Huge flashes of lightening are periodically illuminating the greyness, and the Gods are definitely moving house up there.

The music has been pumped up to top volume and you can still only just hear it and now there's talk of an apple wine monsoon party. BRING IT ON!

Faithful cloud which I am in, I salute you. No sarcasm intended, I’m genuinely thankful.

I no longer have a need to feel guilty for not walking through the forest, up a mountain, down a waterfall, or participating in some sort of mental beauty pageant (sorry Jannet Angel - this body aint getting out of this café for less than a million pounds).

Or here’s a thought - WE COULD WHITE-WATER RAFT DOWN THE ROAD? It must be at least grade 4. I might have to hire a dinghy just to get back to my room.

But for now my feet are up, I have coffee in one hand, a book in the other and no reason to be anywhere else for at least 5 weeks. It doesn't get much better than this.

Same same but different?

Help. My inspiration is being strangled by stinky dreadlocks and squished by idendikit hippies.

Today I ventured into Upper Bhagsu - I’d been advised by the Finnish dreadlocker who had shared my bus that this was the place to be. Her exact words went something like this: “Is nice, you will like it. Is more Westerners than Indians and you can buy falafel and choclolate cake!”

On my way up there I bumped into said girl, alongside her friend. Or hang on a second, was it her friend or was it her twin - OR HAD SHE BEEN DUPLICATED?

Long blonde dreadlocks: check. Nose ring: check. Baggy trousers with elasticated bottom - like Aladdin‘s!: check. Vest top, anklet and obligatory blasé facial expression: check.

For the record, she almost completely ignored me, despite the fact I had spent hours chatting with her a few days previously.

“Namaste madam,” she said, in a mock Indian accent and carried on her dreadlocked way, no doubt heading down the hill to bang some bongos and smoke some weed.

Upper Bhagsu wasn‘t so great. More dreadlocks and facial hair than an entire family of overgrown and unshaven Mr Twits.

But much more importantly, an Indian lady called Jannet Angel - real name? perhaps not - just invited me to take part in the Miss World Traveller beauty pageant that's taking place in Bhagsu tomorrow. Going by her bright pink lipstick and illuminous red hair, it should be an interesting affair.

I said yes, of course. Watch this space.

From Delhi to Dharamsala

Phew. Have now escaped the suffocating humidity of Delhi’s pre-Monsoon heat. It wasn’t an easy escape, mind.

I just spent 13 hours on a bus being periodically, and ever so covertly, touched up for the pleasure of this mountain air. Two tablets of valium and not a wink of sleep, due to a voracious wandering hand that kept ’accidentally’ falling off the armrest and onto my leg.

And it wasn’t even a dirty old man. It was a young university student from Pune, who had earlier been part of a conversation in which a Finnish girl and I were explaining in detail what we would like to do to men who can’t keep their hands to themselves.

Chop. Their. Dicks. Off.

Perhaps he misheard?

So now I’m in Dharamsala, the home of the great Dalai Lama. Also home to about a million travellers, a billion yoga and meditation centres, a thousand ayervedic health centres and a rapacious Tibetan-themed marketing ploy.

I’m staying in a place called Bhagsu, which is a few kilometres further north into the mountains, which is full of winding alleyways and crooked houses and cows in the most inappropriate places.

Have found a room with a big window and a view out into the Himalayas. Unfortunately I think it might also have bed bugs, if the string of red welts on my arm are anything to go by. But for £2 a night and some beautiful mountain views, who’s complaining?