live your life...

Live life freely, you remain an institution and you are still an example and a dream as you used to be...yes still the other side of my comparisons and yes we were too young......I know and learned it's wrong just even the fact that I still think about it....traveling always helps, it does indeed, even if you try to control your temptations as I have done for the last few months......and now I am just at home, as if the last 140 days were not passed..
That's the first thing I thought as soon as I am settling back in my bedroom at home, surrounded by my travel memories and the art I brought back with me...
That's what I want you to know..and I wish I could tell you face to face one day......

if you...

Finding myself for the 5th day in a row in bed after 9 o'clock seems to mean soomething!!
Was I put under pressure from the situation in Nepal? Was I too amazed by Myanmar and Bangladesh before that? Was I waiting too much to get back to my "world"??
Only I know is that the pleasure to squeeze freshly picked oranges and lemons from the trees and peel loquats still warm from the sun at the best of their ripening and the rocky landscapes, and some local seafood dishes and extra palmeras (elephant ear pastries) are making my days quite enjoyable...
This is the pace I should be working on, but I know it won't happen easily knowing myself enough, I am working on finding my middle point, my real priorities and my real calling....
I smile by myself just writing this!!!
But hey, if you were to disappear soon in a new planet, and you could do only one thing, what would it be and what are you waiting for????
I kinda know what it would be, as odd as it re-sounds in my stubborn head, and what am I waiting for then??? I am waiting for time, as it's meant to heal, doesn't it!!! ...it doesn't really work this way!!
I know, I know..it actually makes no sense and it goes against the wise quote I have just presented!!!
I have to admit that is very true that time needs to take his course for us simple human being to realise certain lessons from life...see number 3 below!!!
I don't expect to solve things from the past, nor I believe is achievable, as I know it's unrealistic, but I want to make sure my feelings and emotions are fair and clear...

some of the rules of life, I happen to feel relieved reading this daily (if I find time!!)...

Mediterraneo

A great sunshine, a light summer sun and beautiful shades of sea colours....some taste of the traditional sobrasada and some local wine..the sea water is still cold for my standards, but not for the tourists that from central and northern europe enjoy a "too good to be true" place even out of season!!
I am in the middle of the mediterranean sea and I always enjoy the quality of life Spain can give and here in particular I think is quite "top"...yes, it's difficult to be a vegetarian and following a healthy diet is a bit of a complicated task, but I am working on that with a open minded flexibility....I guess I had enough of south eastern asian cuisine, I am glad to enjoy mediterranean flavours, they are more mine if I have to be honest..I feel and I am mediterranean, as much as I love my travels and my gypsying around...
I have been nearly perfect in managing my temptations and controlling my desires and keeping my weakness calm and tied in the last four months on the road in the east side of the world...
You only know that you love something or somebody when you let it go, and if you try to totally switch it off you get the deeper meaning of it, now I know, even if it's too late...it's not easy to delete things from your heart, maybe it will never happen, even if you try to keep your mind busy busy busy....
I find myself in that "self evolution" stage where things are getting clear and it's like understanding which is the right degrees for your reading glasses finally...
It's little weird to be here, yet very needed, my body is asking for relax and food!!!strange indeed...

view from the restaurant where I had lunch today...

stepping through Italy

In the repubblic of bananas everything is possible....I got back in my own home country...(and I am actually already out)..and today while in Milan I try to be a bit trouble around...
I happened to take part casually to an inauguration of a very interesting event based on bio and km 0 food, an educational weekend where people and kids can learn more about their diet and their future gardens..
In a strategical time for Italy that is hosting the Expo precisely in Milan with the pseudo/fake message of "feeding the planet, energy for life"...kindly sponsored by the two most unpronouceable sponsors from the US!!!
And that's where I couldn't refrain myself and ask them what was their feeling and reaction to that...
Obviously I just wanted to pinch them as I didn't expect a fair reply, it was me back in my country trying to put the spanner in the works here and there as I often do....
There must be a reason if I cannot live and spend long time in my own country, I see the potential of me getting in trouble or being unable to accept the game of the system...
It's good to see friends though and as I am not home yet I am positively taking my friend's energies for now.... after four full months away and my stubborn not social approach it results kinda little needed...

half way back...

It seemed quite obvious (to me..) that after four months spent in Asia my return in Europe would be in the city that is considered a shared city (maybe the only one in the world located in two continents..) in between...
It seemed quite obvious to me once in Istanbul to do as "istanbulls" do, and quite needed I would say, experience an hammam or turkish bath and get scrubbed and washed the local way after months on the road and months in some seriously unaccommodating accomodations..
I guess Istanbul was the obvious choice and I am pleasantly enjoying the mediterranean breeze already after so much polluted air.....
It was my first time in a real hammam and I chose as usual the least touristy I could and where the big guy was rougher than the hand scrub he used on me and the only english word in his vocabulary was "OK"!!! I let the experience captivate me and I seriously enjoyed..
The place was very vintage and has been used since 514 years for the purpose...
I have to admit that I openly accepted the tradition and laughed alot, being played as a puppet or better as a barbie played by a young girl...(I imagine already my parents being treated like this in two weeks when we are coming back to spend some family time together here in the turkish capital..)

a message from Kathmandu...so true..

A moral slap...

One of the things I started to appreciate in this journey, that is ending today, is getting a weekly (or whenever available) a massage, preferably from a blind person.
I had found a company also here in Kathmandu, but due to the earthquake their place has been closed since.
I have to admit that blindness is something that really touches me, I have noticed and learned it even more when in Thailand at the temple retreat I practiced some walking meditation with eyes closed!!
Please try yourself to do the most basic and simple thing that you do everyday with the eyes closed, it's test and see how you feel after just 60 seconds!!!
Today I managed to get in touch with the guys of the company as I hoped (no chance!) to get a last day massage, I asked instead if I could actually make a donation to them as I believe people with disabilitiy in events like disasters have harder time then everybody else...
The young man on the other side of the phone with a pleasant english and a bright voice replied me with a short and sharp sentence that I have been thinking all day about and that it adds up to the important quotes of my life from today...
He said: "We are just visually impaired, there are people that need more help than us!!"...We are JUST visually impaired!!! At first I have to admit that this sentence left me speechless, but after few hours I started to see the deeper meaning of it, a meaning that can be read also under a different way..(or at least I do!).
All of us are visually impaired in some ways, cause yes we can see with our eyes (or through glasses!) what surrounds us, the material things around us, but we cannot really fully see the reality, the energies and most likely the real meaning of what is actually just next to us even if we could describe it perfectly...
My way to help Nepal has been a little different and unusual in this last few days, I have decided to pour my money into the street people!
I believe that much of the suffering, in this cases, is also finding the strengh to restart from a cracked or damaged or collapsed house, the motivation to get back and live as normally as you would have just before the earthquake and just feel as if nothing happened..
Many of the people that live in and of the street, maybe a old lady selling a bunch of lady fingers, or few ginger roots, or the young kid helping his father to sell spices, or just the man selling fruit at the corner of the road..the tea stall owners or the public bus drivers, the rickshaw guys..
Nobody will go and help them, nobody will support their disappointment and the international aids won't care of the despair of the normal people that are luckily alive and able to continue living..
Mine has been a thought that considered also the "moving the economy", the getting back the enthusiasm for life and not giving up, as well as satisfying a whim or just being able to buy back something that the earthquake took away!!
Simply I have been just buying basic simple things of local life as a 10 rupees freshly made lemon soda, or a handful of peas (worth 20 rupees), or a pen or some street food and paying them to a fix price of 1000 rupees (10 US$)..
All things that the few tourists around won't dare to buy, or people they wouldn't even think to approach, a part of the society that lives a miserable life already without a major disaster...
I guess it's obvious that the funds collected on the this blog and from friends and acquaintances will go to the association of the visually impaired.

Adventur..ing Nepal

Power shortages, that are common in Nepal, seem normality now even for me that I haven't experienced the pre-earthquake country, I have met a Nepal that is not what it usually is and I am amazed to discover every day the curiosities and the odds of this country, that has the only non-quadrilateral national flag in the world! (did you know??)
Nepal that is debating from one side with India for the birthplace of Buddha and on the other sharing an incredible character and charisma with neighbour Tibet, and possibly nothing at all (at least for now!!) with China!!
Today I did something that I enjoy doing often when I am more than a limited time in a city, I jump on a random bus that goes somewhere and I see what happens...
The young assistant of the driver didn't even care where I wanted to go as long as he had a extra person to squeeze in his bus, though neither I did; I got off in Banepa that is the part of the country that has experienced an important number of the hundreas tiny aftershocks and in a part of the country that I was actually interested in visiting before coming and before my plans were reset..
After lunch, at 3pm, I made up to go by bus to the next village and from there hike till another one, that according to the three people I had asked was 45, 30 and 180 minutes walking time!!! I trusted the two out of three law of right and wrong!!
While a stray cow sits in the middle of the main road and four five stray dog start to bully her, three goats (not stray), are tied to a shutter trying to chew whatever the wind blows around them!!
A men on a motorbike just honks even if he is just standing still and has no car around and has not yet started his engine!!... but I guess you cannot ask an italian not to gesticulate, it's an habit, it's rooted in the culture..as well as spitting in Nepal...
I naively ventured on the packed bus heading up the hills, the bus stopped in a village for half an hour and then went back the same and only road dropping me off in the town I had initially asked to be dropped off and that we had passed on the way up and that was just one km away!!...mysteries of Nepal, I experienced the same yesterday, but I blame their lack of english and their poor foreigners handling!
My hike started at 16:28 as I was told by a bunch of local villagers in Nala that with a good walking speed I could get to Nagarkot, the town I had decided to reach and from where I could have got on a bus back to Kathmandu, in 2 hours!
They also promised that villagers on the way would have pointed out my way..
My compass was the sun that was already on his way down behind the hills on my left on side!
After only 30 minutes I come across a tiny village surrounded by cornfields on one side and layers of empty rice fields on the other..
It was tea time in Tukucha Nala and I decided to take a break as my walking was fairly fast..
A quarter of the village, maybe 8 people were sitting there and staring at me coming out of nowhere...few houses heavily damaged, a kid peeing on the side of the road down the ravine, a couple of chickens here and there while the other half of the village slowly flocked there at the tea house slash restaurant slash grocery store..
The comunication was in nepali language, so one side only with me smiling and namasteing when the crowd stopped talking!!
I managed to realise that from there it could have taken me 2 hours to my destination so I wondered if there was a vehicle that I could have jumped on to facilitate my goal before dusk...
A motorbike will take me to Nagarkot, 30 minutes of the bumpiest and most uncomfortable ride through few other villages, 3/4 crossroads with no people or houses around, few streams of water and a cool thick forest..obviously by walking it would have been impossible to make it in two hours by myself without getting lost...even the guy driving me was not sure at a certain point on which direction go!!the total distance is 13 km!!
I arrived in Nagarkot just on time to hear from a young boy that there were not buses leaving the village at that time as it was too late, so the only option was a taxi or the big truck that was happening to pass by..
A windy road on the back of a sturdy white truck carrying big plastic water tanks broken by the earthquake..volume super high of traditional nepali music, the assistant kept slapping on the side of the door to communicate with other vehicles on the road and on the dashboard to communicate with his own driver that kept honking no matter what...
I arrived in Kathmandu well past sunset time but slapped by a great unexpected serendipity day...

life (or show!!) must go on....

Do you have cold drinks? I ask....Whisky, beer?? the lady of the grocery store replies!!it's 4:30 pm and I am not even in the busiest street of Thamel (the tourist quartier of Kathmandu)..that at 7 pm is already back pumping loud music and live dance performances in the exclusive disco bars!!!
The breakfast at my hotel is very filling, for this reason I am asking to get the eggs boiled so I can take them with me and leave them around in town; I stopped a rickshaw man, as I have seen them sleeping in their "vehicle" at night and have a miserable life, and offered them to him...I am sure he didn't understand my intentions and he replied, "do you smoke? I have good ashish!!!" (ashish that in hindi language means blessing by the way!!!)
The capital is getting back to his usual life; israeli, and not only, tourists are slowly coming back or out of their hotels or cheap guesthouses and the game is on again..
Somewhere else in the country maybe somebody is still waiting to get a shelter above his/her head, but life is cruel and we should know it by now....
I have been visiting shyly and discreetly the two historical towns few kilometres out of the city of Kathmandu (Bhaktapur and Lalitpur) that were seriously hit, where some buildings are standing thanks to big wooden poles, sometimes with signs on it asking to drive slowly!!! A lot of destructions and a lot to rebuild, and the people cannot do much more than slowly return to their usual lives, with markets and shops slowly getting to normality, a normality that anyway was not as rosy even before the disaster!
It's easier to find food and pretty much whatever you need, everyday there is a new place re-opening, and I am pleased to have available the popular steamed momos as option for my meals. (momo is the tibetan-nepali for dumpling or raviolo).

locals relaxing just opposite the Durban square of Lalitpur

kids asking for chocolates (or posing for pictures!!)....

a lady proudly cooking Newari food in Bhaktapur

little bit of volunteering..

Our assigned task today was to scout an area in the eastern part of Nepal at 60km from the chinese border, to find out the situation in villages where help has not arrived yet...
Yes it might sound strange that two foreigners would do that, but me and Jonnhy, an enthusiastic and ambitious irish guy met at the hospital, have joined a group of local nepali, met at the hospital, that are trying to make things work instead of waiting for their corrupted government.
I am not giving up, I am trying to accept that it's not a easy situation to handle and I am promising to give my best even if it's a very difficult task right now; our team, illegally and disturbingly followed by a troupe of a indian TV, was a truck with food and plastic shelters and a car with volunteers..
The very badly damaged from the earthquake road took us after 3 hours to a town where two big rivers meet and that's where we were dropped off, with some medicinals in our backpacks and the mental strenght to get as much as we can out of the villagers, there was the option hiking to some of them but the heat and the mobile phone and the meeting of some helpful people stopped us..
What we found out is a country with a chicken without head organization and where the upset militars were apologising with us for it, a country that is receiving plenty of funds but that most likely will end up far from the necessities of the population, (at times) a little compassionate and little community minded society that it's not supporting the people that really require assistance right now.
Nepal as India has his casts and of course in events like this is where you see the real difference amongst them...the Sudra, the lowest cast people, though, are getting annoyed and aggressive...
Also because this is the majority of people I have been coming across in the hospital where I have been helping a little bit and where I have met the most tragic part of this catastrophe so far..
A lot of village people in their traditional outfits, mainly kids and elderly, some of them arrived a little too late to the hospital and maybe paying the price of poor education, have experienced amputation of arts just because they left their wounds or broken legs get infected...
Nepali young people are trying their best and I am here to sustain their will even if for a little time!

let's forget the past...

greetings from this cute young girl in Kathmandu old town...