Rishikesh, India 31.12.2017

On arrival on the last day of December, the hillside retreat burst at the seams as a vein-ey overly ripe grenadilla. I thought, ‘grief this must be a bankie of tree-hugging hippies readying themselves for a New Years do’. but as the sun set, *poof* the crowds dissipated. Lonely Planet informed me it was the fire lantern ceremony that attracted attention. And I missed it. Meh.

Sifting through the

deck of directional signage boards, following the red arrow to the Swiss Hill Top hotel, I arrived at my elevated residence. My room sat perched high with a scintillating view of the Ganga River and its cavernous banks. The night sky sparkled as the figure- hugging sequinned cocktail dress of the striking Liz Hurley. The icey biting cold of northern hemisphere December draped the town, pinching my cheeks red, and scouring my hands dry. The moment was surely sublime.
Familiarising myself with the town I walked a small distance, treated myself to fruity juicey naartjies and bent bananas, went back to my room, sat on the swing on the wooded deck, and with a twist of the bottle cap, sucked on my bev, and stared outwards as New Year’s eve tolled.

With the weather stiffening my toes, I headed inside. There a shaggy furry duvet lay. Having seen a lot in my short time, I knew that duvet had too. Fearing an STD if I touched its stiff hairs, I lay down on the bed’s edge as a cadaver in riga mortis with my beach towel covering me, barely. Keeping my hands close to my body and my eyes fixated on the glowing filament above, the long hour sent me to sleep.
If hotel duvets could talk.

The morning shed a bright light on all I couldn’t see the previous night. I wanted to see the Ganga.
The Ganga flows a deep dipped cerulean blue, cutting wide the ascendant Rishikesh in two halves, knotted together by two rickety swaying suspension bridges, their steel ropes tied taut as an angel’s harp strumming the hum of a gentle breeze. The organic grain of the river runs rapidly wide whispering its tranquil riverine composition.
The fine edge of the wandering sprawling river are hemmed in by the terraced ghats activated by the pious, the contemplater’s, the utilitarian, by the drifting cows, the westerner love birds.

Rishikesh is a hive of ashrams. The Beatles came, I think the Stones too. There they called The Maharishi their guru, practiced transcendental meditation and wrote albums, became their best thems.
I’m no Beatle, no song writer, but some seven years ago I practiced TM. I’m still trying to be my best me.

Chandigarh, India 28.12.2017

I’ve never forgotten what Chris Leung said to me one day in 2006 in YRM’s office in Kings Cross in London. “be aware dan, that the architecture of Italy, of Rome will  highlight your inadequacies. The greatness of the buildings will demonstrate to you the many years you have before you come in to your own.’ I had no idea what his ramblings meant. So I hitched on my backpack, slipped into my stove pipe jeans, popped my collar, and flew for 18 quid to Rome. Veni Vidi Vici. That year, I came I, saw, got drunk in a hostel on cheap Italian beer, and chowed gelato.

Fast forward 12 years.I arrived in Chandigarh, the modern-ist, and one of a select example of pre planned cities in all of India, if not the world. Chandigarh designed by Le Corbusier the French master architect  was constructed at the time of partition between India and Pakistan in the 1950’s. The then Capital city of the Punjab, Lahore was incorporated into Pakistan. The Punjab required now a new city in India. Chandigarh was to be their new home. The city was to be a modern Indian city Barry Peppered with works by the hands of Le Corb, and his assistants, Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew.
It was for this reason I was in India.

Dropping into 5^th gear, the engine roared as we began leaving the mountainous region of Dharamshala. We’d begun our descent. With the altitudic plummet, the air sloshing around my lungs began to thicken up like whisked egg yolk. Cells sucked on life giving oxygen staving off cerebral aedema and my brain activity reverted to some sense of functionality. Staring into the rear view mirror the mountains shrunk behind me and all of a sudden I thought, ‘wow, I could climb those’.

We arrived in this northern city and on first greeting, its grided-ness offered some sense of orderly-ness.  Its orthogonal structure read as a balanced balance sheet.  The one two tree lined boulevards were meticulous, turning circles were round , and the traffic lights communicated red means stop, green means go and yellow means slow.

The hotel I unpacked in, sat inside a night club. That night, the clocked tolled 10, as I lay my head peacefully upon the white firm pillow eager for renewal, the heaving bass of the downstairs night club slowly began seeping, percolating through the concrete walls of my room getting louder and louder as the dj turned the dial from off to high. As the night darkened the thick heavy grooves and grinds got louder. The clinks of vodka-filled glasses and the rockin rollin of whiskey tumblers penetrated the feathered buffer of my cushion. The Indian Banghra was banging on inside my room. With my pillow crushed tightly against my head and cotton wool jammed stuck in my ears, serving no purpose, I tried to cry. Sleep was a distance away. As 7am struck, the sun came hurtling crashing through my hotel window like a fiery space shuttle breaching earth’s atmosphere, I could finally sleep…..and then my alarm clock kicked in, doo doo do doo doodo.

Wakey wakey.

I didn’t come to India to seek self, or to dig deep into bunny chow. I didn’t come to meet the love guru or lose myself. I didn’t come to drop the suspension on my car, or install a LED halo beneath my car’s chassis. Flicking the furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror, I shouted, ‘let’s do this. I didn’t travel this far to ride shot gun’, amping myself, this pilgrimage had begun.

The only way to view Le Corb’s Government Complex, is via a two hour guided tour.
Ready Player One.

Beginning the walk through the tightly tree lined path way towards the access gates into the complex, our tour group  burst through the brush into the open piazza on which 4 iconic edifices  rest. With the sun bouncing off the concrete plaza my eyes squinted. Disorientated, stumbling as a pummelled heavy weight brawler, catching myself, righting myself, i came to stood stiff in front of a most recognisable of Le Corbusier’s buildings, the High Court. Stood before this I’ve-seen-this-before-in-countless-books building, my eyes came crashed closed sending a tsunamic ripple across the pool of tears harboured in an indent of my skull, causing a wake of salty swell to gather heavily, gathering enough weight to come hurtling down my face.
Here i was before the greatest. I cried and I cried and I cried.

The High Court and the Legislative Assembly building are set upon a vast table cloth of concrete a very far distance apart. Facing each other.  She at one end and he at the other.  When you’re an architectural god, and space isn’t a constraint, you have the opportunity to write your own Genesis. With concrete the DNA of his magnus opus, Le Corb in his round black rimmed glasses makes the heavy material that is concrete moulding melding in to what is now iconic.
The High Court is presented as a large portal, a gate way. It sits in isolation, on a pedestal.  It’s the way the architecture god wishes us all to see and experience it. It’s presented as one dimensional.
The building with its definitive trio of powerful giant coloured walls jumps forth towards you forcing necks to crane, asserting authority. Their monolith is played in contrast to the adjacent human-scaled egg crate brise soleil pocked in De Stijl red, yellow and blue softening the brutal concrete, keeping the eyes flicking, dancing, breaking the suns harsh light.

Herded border-collie-like to The Open Hand Monument, we ran up and down stairs into the sunken amphitheatre shooting the giant Hand wind vane silhouetted against the bottle-water blue sky. Shooting, sketching, running. With time short it was a feeding frenzy. Piranha’s tearing at hunks of meat.
Moonwalking along the super flat surface we arrived at The Legislative Assembly. Heavy set, a point of authority. It dwarfs us humans, only the front door, designed and painted by Le Corbusier softens its handshake. It’s giant heavy roof sitting on narrow ‘columns’. A gargantuan cone bursts from the roof, a definitive beacon on the landscape-a skylight experienced only from within the legislative chamber.

As the day set to end I took in my first breath. My emotions spilled, shattered on the floor. Humbled. 12 years after Chris’ comments, I ‘got him’.

Dharmsala, India 27.12.2017

It was special to leave city smog behind and head into the spearmint fresh mountains. The telling traverse towards the mountainous north was in itself an eye opener. Snaking up to altitude, narrow roads hug the contours of ascending mountains. As a fly fisherman launches his gutted rod, tempting the lurking fish, the roads flick flack back and forth opening vistas across valleys or closing views through dense forest.  As dispersed beads on a necklace, small villages pop up, clearing forest. Their tightly clustered stores hug the rapidly rushing roads edge clamouring for passer-by-attention falling over themselves like frenzied fans at a Michael Jackson concert. As large rivers cut through the landscape, tight-rope lean bridges straddle the plummet. 

I stayed about 13km from Dharamshala in a wee town called Kangar. Outside the back door rose the steep, giant charcoal-black Himalayas. At their feet terraced landscaping lapped at my motel door. The oxygen-thin altitude and the snow-dusted peaks chilled the blue-gray air.  A cold bite gnawed at my body sending a gooseberry-bump harvest racing across my exposed skin. My legs weary from inaction, needed to be walked. Throwing on my stove pipe stiff jeans and a red-riding hoodie, we tumbled down the steepness to come to a stop in a teeny tiny town. Jingle jangle, i dug into my pants, offloaded some Indian rupees for a beer, hiked back up the incline, saw the sun got sank by the eight ball, cracked open a Kingfisher ale, controlled remotely the telly, lay heavily on the bouncy bed and soon drifted as a golden yellow falling New England autumnal leaf into a deep dooz.

Mcleaod Ghanj with its curio-shop lined streets, harbours the Dalai Lama who escaped the Chinese demolition of Tibet. I didn’t get to meet the Cheshire-cat toothy pint-sized wine-red robed spiritual leader but I got to see his influence in the Tibetan Indian village. His and the Tibetan influence clings to the town like the fresh lavender scent of a just laundered jumper. It’s peaceful and it is respite-ful.
The wee little hillside city hugs the mountains edge, holding  baby-bear tightly fearing letting go, for the ravine below is not a way away. A multitude of macaroon-pastel coloured buildings anchor themselves on the valley-facing aspect of the conifer-tree spotted mountain. Roads and narrow slope-y shop-lined streets that don’t follow contour rise and fall clawing their way up and down the mountain like a cats scratch. The Tibetan complex, the temple, the prayer spaces and the Mani Prayer Wheel withdrew thoughts of the past from my memory bank-those sunny Sunday mornings, a sweat towel, and us kids sitting backseat on an adventure to yoga practice. Hari Ohm, Ohm Tatsat. Spiritual upliftment and a marshmallow-soft coffee sweet for the road home.

Walking to the video store on a Sunday afternoon with my sibling. There we’d hover like drifting ghosts through the labyrinthine white towering shelves filled high with video cassettes. We’d drag our hands across the face of the movie covers as if our hands decided on the movie the day demanded. On this day I chose Bud Spence &Terence Hill, and my older brother who was already reading and understanding Time magazine, chose Brad Pitt’s 7 Years in Tibet. Only one movie we were allowed. Ching chong cha wouldnt resolve it. Only age, maturity and a mightier fist would do.  
Since that day of being glued stuck to the tube watching Brad Pitt clamouring through Tibet, i’ve held hostage a desire to glimpse the mighty Himalayas. What a blessing to have seen this gargantuan hulk pulled from the earth like whisked eggs whites stiff. To have travelled so darn far, to have beaten death while traversing the country’s roads, there they stood lurking high before me.

Amritsar, India 27.12.2017

Leaving behind the tourist riddled Golden Triangle, I caught a jet plane for Amritsar.

Amritsar is a siiick city, it so happens to be a Sikh city too.

Amritsar punched a few divisions above its weight. It offered the extra-ordinary.
With the sun managing, just, to clear its way through the dusted air, a new morning was able

to reveal itself. 

We parked in a brutalist concrete parkade along a tarred and dirtied road.

Walking a few steps beyond the parkade a riverine red-paved boulevard gushed pacily past us heaving with tens and tens of tourists and touts. With a bout of trepidation, I gingerly dipped a toe into the raging turmoil. Cringing, I pulled back rapidly. Attempting the double dip, my body acclimatised. ‘On your marks, get set, go’. Diving in, head first, I caught current to be swept along like spawning salmon. In the fast flowing deluge, there i was, being tossed about, helter skelter. Disorientated, necks craning for a gasp of air, managing to gleen a glimpse of a beautifully dynamic bronze sculpture, low rise polished buildings and trinket shops that hugged the ‘rivers’ edge. As the boulevard hurtled to a curve, nearing the bend, there in the distance above the heads of many, I caught sight of the starch white temple complex. Slowly, surely the frenetic flow of people began to retreat, the people power began to wane gently lapping against the short rise to the temple plaza, the pre amble to the Temple Complex. There we jumped aside for some serenity and a sigh of safety and a free cup of warm Sikh milk for driver Gajendar.

Gajendar, having ‘got milk’, licking his lips, pointed to a scale that sat upon the floor.
Stepping on it, weighing in the early 70’s, he raised a guiding hand encouraging me to do same. Expecting an exchange of rupees I said , ‘no thanks’, to which Gajendar replied, ‘no worry, I’ll pay’. With nerve, stepping on the scale, and expecting feather-weight lightness given my stapled diet, my blister burst. With the needle flicking back and forth around the 85kg mark, the blood in my amigdala began to drain. Stunned, muted, ashamed, limp, and light headed, I zeroed in on Gajendar. “Don’t worry Mr Dan, you have a nice personality”. Sucking on my cheek, I stepped off that scale, bruised, and hurried scurried us towards the Golden Temple.

Barefoot is how you enter the temple.  Handing  over my boots and socks, I received an identity token and a bout of a dreaded foot disease.

The cold yet smooth of the white marble, the cold water moat surrounding the temple for cleaning ones feet, the soft red carpet soaked by the hundreds of wetted feet , standing knee deep in the halloed water surrounding the temple, the circular circuit we followed circumventing the Temple all engaged my tactile sense.
The morning sun glinting off the rippling water, the reflective shine of the white marble, the golden jewel sparkle of the Temple, the full colour-wheel of garb and the sheer awesomeness of the sight engaged my visual sense.

Like a Liquorice All Sort, the Temple is layered. A third, its base, is of stone, and the upper  two thirds are golden yellow. The surrounding buildings are stark white-a pristine backdrop to its shimmery shine. The Golden Temple sits in the middle of a man-made lake. The water is given holiness and worshippers arrive to take a dip in the spirited waters.  With worshippers circling the temple in a clockwise direction a vortex of spirituality is created. Coming full circle we headed for the exit.
 
Slipping socks back on and tying boots back up, we drove towards the extremities of the city to the border gate between Pakistan and India.
Both India and Pakistan have a change of guard. It happens every day, and every day some 20000 people turn up to view this spectacle.  The Indian Freddie Mercury-like jester riles his compatriots encouraging them to cry war. The one legged clown on the Pakistan side pirouettes  to have his countrymen, more placid, cheer and jeer.  Football-field sized flags flutter on either side of the border. Indian pop music beats through its speakers, Pakistani music leaps through its speakers. Patriotism is vigorous. Entertaining are the guards goose stepping, jousting. It is fierce, and it is determined.  No cricket team scored more runs than the other, no hockey team scored more goals than the other, we screamed at them and they screamed at us. We left after the two hour ‘spectacle’ having achieved very little. What an oddity.

Jaipur 22.12.2017

Arriving in the city of Jaipur, the dusk of the day enhances the branded neon signs of Western aspirational labels and brings the onset of stop -start after-work traffic. The little-bit-bigger-than-small buildings and the control and order that a green, yellow,and red traffic light has on the people hints at a developing city. Driving, driving, driving, seemingly to the outskirts, I eventually arrive at the hotel. The oversized, detailed, metal door creaking open, the emerald green marble and golden edge trim, the paintings of the British in hunter hats atop elephants , or on bended knee aside the pelt and head of a punctured tiger signal my arrival ,seemingly, on the set of a Wes Anderson movie. The bell boys in mandarin collars appearing Beetle-like clutching golden baggage trolleys are at my service. Dropping my bags on my bed, I head out for a night time stroll to grab a look and cop a feel of this city, returning soon after with dust-caked nostrils, sweaty pit stains and unnecessary clutter within my memory bank.

As morning unzips itself to reveal the rising sun, I awake.

Fueled by bananas, boiled eggs and americanos, i do a day of frustration walking and viewing Jaipur as a controlled, experimental rat.
The Wind Palace is the fluted facade of a palace building. It has intrigue for its concave convex face is unique giving the ladies of the palace of times gone by a daily view of the bustling happenings of the streets below.  It’s impenetrable. It’s an ants nest of tourists. I don’t engage it. I can’t. I simply fire off a few rounds and leave bound for the Amber Fort according to the day’s programming.
The road to the Fort snakes beyond the modern city’s boundaries into the rural. As we swoop through the crevice in the mountain that’s given way to the road, I ask to jump out, to picture the Fort with perspective. As it happens I’m stood next to turbin-clad guy. At his knees there is a basket and inside that basket is the black-scaled liquorice-rope of a snake, a cobra. I like snakes, but to see this machine like creation coiled in captivity, it pulverised my emotion. ‘Take a photo’, he said. ‘No’, I said. ‘Take a photo’, he said. Defiant, I said, ‘not a chance’, lurched back into the car, threw my arm back,then flung it forward as a trout fisher man casting his hook, indicating the driver to drive.
On arrival at the Amber, I walked the rampart while others mount placid, beastless elephants in their ascent. The amber-coloured Fort presented some interesting architecture, and glaring photo opportunities. But never raised my pulse.

The next cell on the excel spreadsheet of my itinerary was the Jantar Mantar an Astronomical Observatory. With its giant sundials interesting me, the blip on the are-you-dead-or-alive machine showed there was still life in me. With the checklist complete, I had driver guy drop me in the Pink City to walk and stare and experience. Here I was exposed to the humdrum of an experience-packed, labyrinthine old city where ones needs and desires are fulfilled in a concentrated square kilometre. The plethora of goods and services offered from the medical ‘suites’ and surgeries clustered alongside the bike repair drag which was not far from the jewellery and fabric area which was tucked alongside the crockery and cutlery node which rubbed shoulders with fried foods is the epitome of a people-centric, green city.

It was, though time to get out.
Jaipur was my journeys struggle for it identified me as a tourist. Jaipur managed to extinguish much of the fire of my journey up till now. When my alarm clock rung for my wake up call I pulled the rip chord open, to release me from the confines of a dreaded city.

The Road to Jaipur 21.12.2017

Journeying between cities was an exhaustive process. The needle on the speedometer constantly flips through the half round 50 60 70, back down 50 60 70 an hour, as we negotiate ebbing and flowing traffic, squeezing between cars, screeching to slow behind John Deeres, or halting in the slow lane as my driver licks his lips at a Punjabi fest offering free chai and an oil-drowned roti.

When the road opens, the Indian landscape, its fields of rice and plantations of corn, orchards of trees, baths of water, clusters of cattle, cradles of kids and lazing old timers brush-stroke past as I stare sponge-like out the window of the Suzuki. The green hues of the wet soaked land and the crayola crayon coloured garb of the Indian woman punch a vibrancy through my blackened pupil. All scuttle past me hinting at a snapshot in the day of a life of one person of a billion.

Time in India follows no defined increment. On this cheese wedge of a continent, one hour takes two hours, ‘nearly there’ takes 3 hours and ‘close’ is the duration of a Led Zeppelin album.
We regularly pull over for a quick chai taking 45 minutes. But the warm, milky, sugary, cinamony, gingery beverage tastes so good as it cloaks your teeth in sweet and your gullet in white, that time dissolves effervescently. The chai is so good, it’s probably bad for you, Tim.

After a couple of hours drive, the landscape seems to pass much more slowly, I hear the indicator click clickity clicking. Where once our tracks were incognito, now onto dirt roads where our tracks are a story teller our car swoops. The tyres crunch the dirt leaving a dragon-puff of dust in our wake as we detour for the wonder-like Chand Baori, an ancient step-well.

Blase about the Baori, i flop out the back door dragging my knuckles gorilla-like along the red earth.  Rising a step, I pierce the stone cold entrance.  A glassless portal frames a view of a colonnade across the way. The sight hooks my eyes pulling me in its direction. Being only a visual connection my symmetrical stroll comes to a halt and I’m forced into a perpendicular bend where i’m led to the stepwell’s entrance door. Down steps I find myself in a vast square open space, surrounded by the stone colonnade. Gazing across the open courtyard it’s the gaping, yawning opening of the pit before me that now consumes my attention. Gingerly stepping towards the pit’s edge, i bend my yogic body from the hips, dropping my head, my brain draining to the bottom of my skull, squishing my marshmallow eyeballs against their sockets. The earth plunges rapidly downwards in concentric squares towards the bowels of the earth, leaving a telescopic wake of perfect geometry. Settled still at the bottom of this is the luminous green standing water, the informant to water collection of days gone by. The staircases lining the terraces snakering and laddering their ways down, their ways up and their ways side to the watery pit are the aesthetic , the beautiful architecture of this upside down inside out creation.
Now it’s a set for Blockbuster Bats.
For an architect accustomed to gazing upwards at edifices, this upside down ziggurat flipped the inside of the box outside spawning special.

Leaving behind the stepped geometry of the well behind, heading back towards the car, i see my driver chatting a tall lanky, ankle-length pants-and-moccasin-wearing bloke, greasier than John Travolta. My driver introduces me to the guy and says he wants to show me his weaved wares. I’m thinking ‘this can’t actually be happening to me’. Happy at my recent architectural experience, I go with the flow. I follow the gent.
He introduces his wife who is sat bent over a weaving machine and his three daughters labouring over ropes of jute. I can’t help but wonder if they’re all props in this guy’s production. Having a discussion with myself, I agree that I won’t be making any purchases.
As he starts unshelving Lego-coloured rug after rug, i question my other self and one of me decides he likes what he’s seeing. I enquire at the amount and the bidding begins. Its aggressive, and the blood is bubbling.
With no agreement between seller and buyer, the stubborn bull in me drags the other me by the nose ring to exit. Small moments go by. Puffing and panting, the sounds of a desperate seller come arunning.
A triple word score with all seven letters plus the use of the ‘x’ see me in the pound seats.
I bag a rug and 3 tote bags. One of me’s is The greatest Buyer in the World.
Bleeting our way out, we follow the signs to Jaipur.

Agra and the Taj Mahal 20.12.2017

the guide books told me that Agra is a public porta-loo that’s just entertained 50 000 drunken debauched rubgy supporters after a bachanalian binge. It was indeed that. But I liked it. Alot.
The dirty dusty streets harbour no pretense, they present no glamour, glory, pop or fizz. They lack lustre, polish or shine. They’re quotidian. And they’re in stark contrast to the building by which this city grabbed all the glory.
Arriving in glamour-less Agra, one of the acute angles in the tourist-defined Golden Triangle, on entering my hotel room seeing the western flushing toilet, the power shower, those wee sachets of coffee, the colour teevee blazing sporting highlights, I thought I’d just swallowed on an LSD strip in ‘70’s London. Grabbing a couple of local Indian beverages, I sucked on them while flipping through the myriad cricket channels until my eyeballs sunk into the corner pockets of the billiard table of my brain. Here’s to Agraphoria

The first stop was the Red Fort. A massive fort. It’s red and it’s big. It’s full of people, stone, marble, colonnades and green parrots. The security guard turned a grimace when he found my dry wors stashed in my ruck sack. On being patted down, he grabbed my pocket, for the contents were hard. ‘that’s my phone’, I said. Pulling my Blackberry out, stunned, he said, ‘that’s small’. Entering the Fort I did the quick cover flow of my surroundings and bounded for the exit.

Next on Gajendar’s agenda was the Taj Mahal. Frustrated at forking out another hot wad of rupees for seeing sights of antiquity-entrance to the Taj being a whopping one thousand rupees, I put foot down. Flummoxed and frothing at the mouth I belched out to the driver, ‘i’m throwing my chips in and leaving this table’. ‘But Mr Dan’, said my understanding driver. ‘you’ve travelled so far, millions of people come to India to see the Taj Mahal. Let me take you to the back side of the building, across the river Yumna to a park from where you will have a full frontal centre page view of the Taj’. And so for 250 rupees I bought back in.
With my shoulders slumped like a defeated back street brawler, my irritation evident in the finger marks in the car seat covers, I dragged myself by the scruff of the neck into the gardens. Indifferent and undesiring, I walked past green hedgerows, over yellowed grass and ill-kept flower beds, past the giant garden hose leaking litres of liquid and past clusters of trees. All the while my view stunted. None of the labyrinthine foliage hinting to Alice at what lay beyond.

Then. In a moment, seeing tourists gawping westward, I grabbed their cue, rotating on the axis of my spine. With my body aligned, my eyes began trotting through the brush, rising beyond the tree line, gathering speed, cresting the horizon, finally sticking glued to the mighty behemoth before them. With my body left stiff, only my lips could move blurting out an impulsive expletive and a stunned, ‘sweet gsus’. There, amidst the pantone greys of the afternoon fog, stood stuck the ghost white, massive monolith, the Taj Mahal.
Appearing exceptionally light and transient, and with the heavy fog smoothing out its fine detail this apparition-like edifice was mesmerising.
The Taj Mahal sat eerily, dominating its stark setting. Other than the suppressed light of the sun, no thing rose to a height greater than it, no thing surrounding it competed with its gargantuan scale. It commanded its space paling all in its vicinity. It’s spires scraped the sky puncturing the atmosphere and the flight of birds above.

Its symmetry, unambiguous. Its white marbly lightness, its bulbous, bubbly domes and the creeping fog metamorphosed this absolute beauty and harmony into an alien-like being. As I sat on the remnants of a stone wall staring, glaring at this treasure, my minds gymnastics envisioned it sitting up, shifting shape, and moving on to a further location. Inking my thoughts on paper, I established that it’s imperative that I get close up to the building.

The next morning the grey-toned fog hung heavy over the city embalming life and everything in it.
All enveloped by its gooey wake moved in slow motion. Light from cars you could see spread like red juice concentrate in bubbly soda water.
Depressurizing the cabin of the Suzuki, I jumped out and made the slow lunar walk down to the Mausoleum complex where the Taj sat. I handed over the manhandled rupee, grabbed my complimentary bottle of bottled water and breached the supposed silence and peace in which the Mahal sits.

The people chaos is its reality. The flashes of Nikons and Samsungs burn through the retinas of my sky blue eyes. I try my best to avoid the air space of the clicking multitudes. I’m now in a thousand facebook photos and I’ve been instagrammed a bazillion times. ‘Like’ me. All clamour for the pristine shot, but, really, no one gets to see it like Lady Di. The guide that guided me through the history and the craft of the building, had to shoot from the Clint Eastwoodian hip to get me alone with the building. I think he got it.

Seeing the Taj Mahal from two different distances at one, gave me the fat koki perspective, and at the other the finest of the craftsman’s workmanship and detail. Never being on any of my lists to see or do, I have a sense of gratitude to have left Waverley, Johannesburg, South Africa, Africa to land in India, I..N..D..I..A to be standing alongside one of the Seven Wonders of The World. Here’s to Agraphoria.

Delhi Delivered 18.12.2017

Travelling to India was far off of my radar. It wasn’t even on my radar. The thought of travelling to the 3^rd World just didn’t have the trigger to ignite my happiness.
The slickness of Western Europe with its efficient transport, pleasant public environments, order, cleanliness and only the one poor guy and his dog at the bottom of the stairs of the subway begging for beans, tickles my cheese. America. America for its boldness, its slice of pie, its pace, its romance, its passion, its A&F store, its fast paced street action, its black and white cop cars and its jelly donut reality, now that flips my pancake.

With a renewed vigour for architecture and seeing and experiencing the great buildings of the world, I’d decided on exploring the work of Le Corbusier, a French giant of architecture, and possibly the greatest Modernist to have sketched on a serviette.
This exploration, this pilgrimage would take me to a city called Chandigarh-A city in no other place on this planet other than the ‘I’ in Brics. India.

I flew into Delhi on a triple 7 Dreamliner having eaten my last prepared meal-a pre-heated, coagulated, nutrient deficient clump that had been stamped to expire only in the year 2019. For two weeks, my fill, tuna, lots of tuna, oats, nuts and biltong, given my dietary requirements would have to suffice.
You can call me Freddy Mercury.

Before arriving in the East, the imperialist, colonialist that i’m said to be, ordered a driver and a car to zoot me from monument to monument, hotel to hotel and city to city. At the airport I was greeted by my placard-holding driver Gajendar. Looking like a cookie-cutter replica of The Simpson’s Apu, with his tiny moustache and side parting, his aviator style starch white shirt with shoulder beret holders and navy blue pants, he lassooed me with an orange flower necklace and embraced me. How cheesy.
Gajendar was there to open the door for me and to pack my bags into the car, he was there to play his Michael Jackson cd and his Taylor Swift one too, he was there to tell me whether id spent too much on curios, or that my Blackberry wasn’t suited to ‘royalty’. I’ll be giving him a good rating on Trip Advisor.

Once id been dropped off at my hotel which sat behind the main drag, offering some respite from the tumult just off it’s doorstep I needed to shot blast myself to the sights and sounds of a convulsing megalopolis.
 The street is where i’d experience the convulsing energy of Delhi. Seeing its people on ground level, experiencing what they were experiencing is where I’d get my opinion. With the day-light dampened by the setting sun, the blanketing fog and the swirling dust, I doubled knotted my hiking boot straps,  hitched my camera to my side and stepped out of the peaceful, shiny reflective hotel lobby into a sensory Big Bang.

Delhi is a total epileptic fit, convulsing and heaving. It’s a Jackson Pollock in its drip, splat and fling chaos. Skipping from street edge to pavement regularly dodging dogs and detritus I breathed in the spirit of the city. I swivelled and pivoted in leaps and bounds, avoiding bumping into people, bikes and ghostly, shepherd-less bovine. I walked the tightrope between helmetless motorcycle riders and green three-wheeled tuk tuks hurtling through the city’s streets like wood borers unconstrained. I sucked my tummy in, turned sideways, making me skinnier than a Wimpy Kid avoiding the pronged piercing of horned bulls and the bumps of horse-drawn carts. As I smiled on, I responded ‘hello’ to the Indian, his oil-slick black hair, cut, styled and coiffed, looking Bollywood primed drinking chai, selling wares, leaning Jimmy-Dean style against his wartime-looking Royal Enfield. I went on bended knee, camera in firing position to shoot two shop owners requesting their moment in time. I flik-flakked over the upright antenna-like tails of dogs, triple-piked over the gas burning chai brewers and naan bread bakers, sniffing the curry-ied air of street food makers, his goods oil fried his shirt certainly not tie-dyed.

Heading back to my hotel district, the now set sun leaving a black canvas for the neon glows of hotel signage to punch the night’s sky, i kicked my dustied heels against the hotel lobby mat, and left a day behind.

With exhaustion pummelling my body i flicked the light, tossed my pit stained shirt to ground, set the shower to warm, washed away the days residue, then laid myself to rest for the sun will rise again.
Sun-up, a godly greeting, two minutes for oats, 5 minutes for coffee and the Suzuki sedan pulled up perpendicular to greet me. Look up, look down, quick camera shot, head pivots on neck tearing back to see through the rear view mirror, ‘that’s  the Red-hued Fort’. The car rolls up to stop before the Jama Masjid, a mosque neighbouring old Delhi. I unsheath my feet as required and gingerly strolled its grounds, my toes standing upright poking the morning sky avoiding making contact with the pigeon-turd pummeled earth. My camera in loaded position seeking  the classical cliché shot of Indian woman in traditional, pulsingly, bright sari sitting alone, in the vastness of space. I get it.

With it, i leave it, but surely with athletes foot. Calculating, poring over my G-shok,i shoot a glance driver-side. Give me an hour. Unhinged from my driver, I plug my eyes in, and hit the record button. There in the Chandni Chowk Market, my blue orbs record the arms-length narrow streets, the countless tuk-tuks hovering around the tourist centres jostling for space like racing steeds penned before the gun, crumbling colonial buildings of a foregone empire, electric cables strung as tree vines in an urban jungle and moments of Indian lives. I blink, and download what i’ve just seen to the memory bank of my brain.

Tick Tock the hour’s gone. Click, bang, i shut the back door, im sat back in the pleather covered passenger seat slip sliding from left side of car to right side of car, as the driver bobs and weaves his way to Humayun’s Tomb, a precursor to the Taj Mahal. The tomb, i’m there to tick the boxes, I’m not so enthused by monument hopping but I give in to the process and super soak the experience.
The school kids on a school trip run riot. They see this milk white bra from SA. We pose. Rip, flip, zoom, click. Compose message, attach photo.post to Twitter.

The day but later, I’m Indy-five-Hundreded to the Qutub Minar, the tallest brick tower in India. Hand over my cash card, swish, 500 rupees in the red, labelled an ‘high paying individual’, a free piddle at the urinal and i’m shuffled to the express queue. Boom.
My digital camera on automatic, I shoot the whole 9 yards, rat-a-tat-tat. My head cocked at 45 degrees beaming skyward like a dish seeking satellites. Indians their arms extended upwards, phones in hand, and cheap poses abound, selfied themselves to social media eternity.

A run and a dash and ive got the India Gate in pocket. And there, there in the distance,at the end of the straightest line India ever saw sits The Presidents House and her nestled Parliamentary buildings.
The South African connection is glaring. A bow to the Union Buildings Mr Lutyens.

With the days viewing done, I put horizontal right hand over perpendicular left hand and called ‘time out’.

With a life time of footage, we beat a path back to the hotel leaving behind in the background the bleeting horns of cars. Setting my phone alarm to ring at the stroke of ‘new day’, I put my head to recharge on the puffy cushion, my body in its jammies and i flip the light switch.
The Delhi cut a deep gash into my mug, that’s no Joker, that’s a smile on my face.

The Lobe of Auricle 04.06.2017

This is a clichéd example of triumph over adversity. It just is that. You may want to read on, or you may wish to walk out.

It was going to be a struggle.I’d come in injured and had a 3 week layoff before the race. Having not finished a marathon in under 4 hours that season, seeded in ‘F’ batch the odds were against me and as a result had very little confidence in the day. As I stared at the runners ahead of me, to the side of me, sucking up the grotesque body odours belching from bodies , i wondered what on heavens earth I was doing there.

30km in, with a sudden jolt to my shin as my foot reached land fall, the thought of it all ending shot straight to the forefront of my cerebellum. Earlier on, my mind had disengaged from the task. I worked myself to the periphery of the road and looked across my shoulder to the masses pouring along like cake batter from a bowl.  Like a universal planet complete with numerously orbiting moons so felt my head and its thought on race day. An injury that plagued me a month prior plagued me now. I’d decided I would bail.

 Approaching the medical rescue vehicle I stood alongside the medic man. ‘What are you looking for?, he enquired. ‘I want to get into the van’, I responded. Scanning me up and down, he grimaced and said, ‘no you aren’t, you look fine’. Stunned by his response, with not much else to do but run, rabbit, run, I ran, still dis-connected, still dejected. At halfway in 5:50 I was a fox’s pelt on the bareback of a Russian Bear hunter. Icing my shin throughout the race bore me some pain relief, but it didn’t turn back the clock.

With 23km to go, i pulled over to the side of the road where Brett stood. With my Jekyll speaking to my Hyde i’d decided i’d be comfortable without a finish. We embraced. “Chaido, you’re going to make it in 11:56”. Thinking some wonderous app had predicted my time, I raised an eye. Maybe there was hope. Being reinvigorated by the news, I clucked the sticky peanut butter sarmie off of my palette and set off. I came across an informal bus of 6 or 7, piloted by a young black woman confident in her stride supported by her co pilot with tambourine in hand. This cluster, i thought,  was to be my motivation. I held on tight. With baseless confidence i figured that if I sat with them my chances could be golden. With 20 to go, i bit my lip... hard.  The energy id unconsciously conserved in the first half was finding its way to my heart, lungs n legs.
And then given the elevation on Polly’s, I lost them. A spectator on the road shouted as I walked past, ‘if you get to the top of Polly’s in the next ten minutes, you’ll finish.’
And with a strength I never knew I had, I put nose to grind stone and pushed hard rising, rising up Polly Shortts.  Hitting the red timing mat, I crested her within those 10 minutes of the Polly’s Cut-off. I now had 55 minutes for the last 7km. And then, there in the fading light i saw my bus. I cast my hook and reeled them in, never losing them again. The pilot gave consistency, and tambourine man gave us rhythm. Coming into the race course, an unfamiliar sight, i was in awe. My relief, I could feel. We crossed the line with 4 minutes to spare. 11:56
I have no idea how i achieved this finish. It was the hardest fought day of all my Comrades, and now my most rewarding medal to date.
I subsequently asked Brett whether the Comrades app had predicted my finish time. ‘No app’, he said, ‘just a figure i’d come up with’.

The Year 1996 sometime in 1996

The year 1996. The Matric Dance.

The mid nineties weren’t all Oasis, Manchester United  and strolls along Muizenberg beach.
A face once bursting with pusy zits that only two doses of the nuclear warhead that is roacutan could obliterate; teeth growing to all sides of my mouth like aloe cactus that only iron roped braces could straighten; a voice that wouldn’t crack and hair straighter than Tom Jones. I was an awkward kid. And to boot it all, I was a Latin scholar.

With this fine shiny armoury, it was Matric dance time and I couldn’t go it alone.
 Tuesday nights were student night at the Doors night club, Marshal town, Johannesburg.
The Doors was a dark dingy episode. The now furry walls had seen it all, the buns of a body, the spill of a drink, the back street brawl and some footloose dance moves. Dragging your hands along those walls you could feel the pulse of the club, you could hear them talk.
The dj platform rose from the dance floor pit and a cat ladder lassooed the periphery. Intermittently jellie vodka shots would come raining down on us as we sweated our moves, grinded our crotches and mimed the rock tunes that came crashing through the booming speakers.
That school night I saw her. Dribbling that Black label beer , the cheapest beer for the leanest pocket ,down my chin, she was the girl that turned my legs to tagliatelle and she was the one that would accompany me on Dance Night. fingers crossed

The next day at school in maths class, looking cooler than Boy George in my spit shined Doc Martens and rolled up short sleeve white button shirt, tie and gray brooks with the iron seemed down the side, i leaned on Leanne’s flip top desk , on it scratched LD heart GS. ‘Leanne, babe, sooo, the girl I saw you with last night, well, I wana take her to the dance, what do you think?’ ‘Uhm, oh yea, Narissa?, hmm let me ask her’. ‘Great, thanks, let me know’. With that conversation and inches closer to my dream, I shot her a wink and made two ‘gun fingers’ as I Michael Jackson Moonwalked away to my desk in relief.
I set aside the time between Carte Blanche and the 8oclock flik for the phone call to Miss Hot-entot.
Finger dialling on the cream-coloured round, rotund family dog n bone of yesteryear, I waited for the ring, i waited for the pick up, waited for the ‘hello’, proceeded to asked her mom if i could chat her and then waited as her footsteps echoed in the background as her mom hollered for her. More nervous than an impala in big lion country, i heard her pick up the phone. With my tongue stuck to the receiver, she said ‘yes’. ofcourse she did, they always seem to.

My dad had a beast of a car. His real love, it was an Alfa Giulietta. It was aged-white and had rusted fringes, a truncated rear and a bulbous front end. It was a car constructed by a black smith, beaten into shape. It was an iron horse this thing. Caramale coloured leather interior, a giant disco ball for a gear lever and a hula hoop steering wheel. It was a sieve, for the wind howled through its cavernous interior. There was a radio and a tape deck that hovered below the dash board and the incremental lines on the station dial meant the car was of antiquity. but he loved his Italian marque.
 It embarrassed the blood out of me.

On date night my dad drove us in his Italian tar killer. First we’d pick up this cherry, and my assumption was that  id go into her house and sip champers with her parents and reminisce about the 60’s; we’d have photos in the garden of the greatest night of our lives and be all smiles at the upcoming event. But alas, as we arrived, there she stood with the front door shut surely behind her. Having opened the car door for her, we sat back seat. It was only the sounds of Crowded House that cut through the awkwardness of the drive. I really wanted to tip-ex myself out of sight at that point in time.
The dance was a horror show being sat with her and her chums, and the after party saw me leave alone. With that night going down in the anals of history  as the worst night of my life, i’m glad its behind me. To all the geeks out there, those latin scholars, those wearing braces and those with pigeon toes, The Russian Bear Hunter stands with you.

Bear Hunting Season 10.03.2012

There was this girl I once loved. Jessica was her name. She was a real peach you know. She was so hot she could turn you to blister and though id met her, I felt it most difficult to make first contact. For if I called her, I anticipated she’d say, ‘dan, who?’ and if I messaged her, id figured she’d hit ‘delete’.  So I master minded that I’d send her a postcard expressing my deep love for her, expressing how we could act as mall rats on a Sunday, licking two scoops and holding hands, expressing how we could sit on a park bench and watch as the burning sun dipped below the horizon like a dunked Marie biscuit, or how we could lie in waiting at the airport to watch giant jumbos fly over head sipping ice cold coca colas. I heave a massive sigh.
Time passed, and finally the SA postal services delivered. Pre- polyphonic ringtones I received a text message on my black on white Nokia 5610. She’d received it, loved it and had placed it on her ceiling so she could read it each night before she went to bed. Radical rim shot. I’d nailed a double word score with all 7 letters.
Fast forward on the ol’ VHS machine.
We did one date night. I stared into her eyes to see me reflected in them. Mesmerizing.
It wasn’t all about me, i tell you, but I did let her in on my massive vinyl record collection, and that I was off to Cape Town to a wedding. “you have to visit my uncle’s record store while you’re there’, she said. ‘It’s called Mabu Vinyl’. Odd name I thought but to score some pointage with her and to grab me some super slick black gold, I vouched to visit.

My choina Steff was in the Cape as I was and a day out in Long street sipping overly, unnecessarily expensive craft beer was a sure thing. After rehydration we together stepped into Mabu Vinyl.
The search for a new record was an Indiana Jone-sian experience, with nothing licking my fancy.
The one owner with his long range locks and hipster t-shirt offered me a viewing of ‘the good sh*t’ at Stephen’s house. Who the F is Stephen? Anyways Steff and I, in his yellow-banana-coloured jam jar 2^nd geared it up the hills of Oranjezicht to Stephens house where we were met with a calmly casual guy in his khaki threads, short sleeve button shirt and flip flops. ‘be careful of the stairs, they’re slippery’ he cautioned, as the Cape rain splattered down like a Delhi’d belly.
Under the house was the musty mildew-ey dungeon with walls that had breathed, seeped and stained every part per million of THC they could absorb. Bending our heads we entered through the wooden stable door to be greeted by plumes of bellowing smoke and heaps of records. Records in blue trunks, records along shelving, records on the floor. I wanted some record. With my Led Zepp Code paper-bag wrapped record in hand we bolted.

6 months later in 2012. Cruising down the freeway in an Infinity down to Atlantic City outside of New York for a weekend rendezvous, my cousin reminded me of the legendary Album Cold Fact, of the weathered Rodrigues and this new mega hit, Searching for Sugarman. The world stopped. I sat for a moment in silence, the hairs on my arms stiffened as a teen in a popsicle store. My eyes watching the other 5 lanes of the highway zip by in slow motion, and a cotton-balled silence blanketed the cockpit. Noooo frikkin waaaay, i bellowed

I tried my darndest, the hardest effort id ever given to one chuckle berry (cherry) but sadly my dreams of being with this dear girl faded like the print on a well worn tee shirt, my spirit shot down plummeting like a lead zeppelin. The journey did though lead me to the now famed record store and to the wonderfully mellowed Stephen ‘Sugarman’ Seger man-The man that sought Sixto

Knees, Bees and Honey Trees 03.10.2016

An Ennio Morricone-composed soundtrack would have been far more fitting an interlude to my medical experience. When the doc said I’d need an MRI, that seemed a bit more than having an ingrown hair removed. I met my radiologist in the swampy holy city Benoni.
Waiting nervously for my slot, I read already-thumbed magazines and watched the off-the-shelf clock tick tack till my appointed time.
The nurse arrived motioning me to the MRI room. Emptying my pockets and unchecking the box that said ‘have you any metal plates in your head?’, i was led to stand alongside this gargantuan off-yellow barrel-like machine. Laying in the coffin-like capsule, my arms tucked in, a pair of ear phones hooked around my head, the missus covered my head in this hockey mask like grill. She then pushed ‘on’ and the machine clunked me inwards to the bowels of the ‘cave’. The nurse had told me they’d need to inject me with a dye in order that the machine could pick up colour hot spots. The thought of a robotic needle puncturing my neck plagued me and i awaited that science-fiction movie moment. It didn’t arrive after she gently took my hand and needled me to have the aforementioned dye race rapidly through my blood system.
For a machine as sophisticated as an MRI it sounded pretty agrarian. The John Deere sounding engine barrelled around my head. And then she hit play. And none other than Josh Groban came over the ear phones. My hands clawed into my stomach and my eyeballs rolled around my sockets like a ball on roulette table in absolute distaste. No-where to run, no-where to control the volume, i endured the Guantanamous Grobian torture.
After about 30 minutes I was all MRI’d but riddled with the songs and sounds of the curly Josh Groban.
The x-men had one looksee at the x-rays to find nothing but everything normal.
It’s lekker being regular. So go on and order Regular.

The Oliphants Backpacking Trail 17.07.2016

I tell them all ‘I’m off’, for nature calls. I slowly run a small distance from the camp site kicking dust as I speed, trampling twigs along the way. The crack of the dry brush echo loud, reverberating.  The silence is deathly, but the environment is very much alive. My disruptive footprints, erasing  any trace of beast that went before me, are embedded in the dry of the parched earth. One small step for man...Behind a tree far from anyone, I choose my place. Carefully, I scan my surrounds. With our shoddy human eyesight and our marshmallow-stuffed-in-ear hearing that human-kind have been gifted, I do my best to observe, to be aware. I see a kudu in the distance, but it scuttles on before it even sees me. Doing a final scan of the immediate shrubbery for any movement, I clutch the spade and begin digging a hole. The unzipping of the teeth of my trousers is clear, and the ruffle of my pants as they drop to my ankles is crisp. My shoes, I take off and eventually my trousers too. I’m totally exposed. I squat. My knees cracking. I am at my most vulnerable now to the teeth of a lion. I have a giggle to myself. If I could only see me.

We’re in The Kruger National Park, on a 4 day hike out of our place and in the kingdom of beasts.

The Toyota Landcruiser with its nobbly tyres and kangaroo-like suspension dropped us out of sight of any humans, any hint of civilisation.
We humans are a destructive force. By our ablutions and our clumsy foot fall, by our packaged treats we leave a trail of our presence.
By day we walked in silence in single file in hope of a sight of one of the Kruger’s inhabitants. Only the ruffle of our bags, or the distinctive shrill call of the fish eagle are the sounds of other. We hug the Oliphants River following in its sweeping, gently gushing, lively path as it snakes downwards. Every so often we see the death that drought brings-the largesse of an hippo slumped on the river’s banks exposed to the swirl of vultures above.

The hot sun begins its plummet. We settle upon the bank of the river and begin pitching our new age Space –worthy tents. Our four colourful tents bruise the earthy colours representing the landscape. Taking the cool plunge into the clear running water of the river we rinse the caked sweat off of our bodies, and the salted residue off of our lips. The sun has dipped beyond the earth’s edge, and the cold of night sweeps the landscape announcing its arrival. The moon replaces the golden cut-out left by the plummeting sun. The moon in its full glow hints at its creaky surface. The sequened night is ball-gown beautiful. Darkness has arrived. Only the light of the bulbously full-moon gives us any sight, until we don our light-sabering night-piercing  headlamps.

Our live-wire fire is an island of heat - it’s our water cooler for conversation. We chat and nibble biltong, sip a whisky and then call it a night...until our ranger spots a pride eyeing us out. The excitement drags us by our scruffs and we ogle them as they size us. We feel alive.

To rise at first light. To see the moon over in the western sky and to witness the sun break over the mountainous edge is a wonderment.  Slowly like a ghostly death the cold air rushes away as the giant sun presents itself, presenting the hint of a new day. The earliest up ignite the gas burner. On the bubbly boil we stir up our instant and dip our ouma.
We rise, the Kingdom rises. A new day has dawned in the Kingdom of Beasts.

Comrades marathon 2016 - The Ultimate Human Challenge

 A 7:30pm dash to Pietermaritzburg from Umhlanga on Saturday eve at the back of an Uber. 3 of us sausaged in, buckled up, looping up and down the rolling hills of the jaunt between the two towns.
The light of a phone screen bouncing off the dash. The flicker of the indicator. Silence pervades.
 Pietermaritzburg is only ever seen in the dark of night, or the dirty hours of dusk.
As a blind human caressing walls, feeling materials to get a ‘sight’, so our Uber drive hugged the curves, embraced the downs, geared for the ups, coaster’d the hills and beat the bends. We could ‘read’ the book presented on race day, 29 May 2016

The hapless Uber driver confused by Google maps eventually delivers me. I reach my destination where i’ll barely get some shut eye. I eat aggressively by fuelling my body for the onslaught. I’m relaxed, I’m calm. I’ve seen. I’ve been through this before. I’m out there to enjoy it.  And that’s all.
3:30 am Tolls. I bounce out of bed. I’m excited. I don my green kit, arm myself with chafe lubricant, nipple plasters, gums and goo’s, all for a great adventure. I punish two boiled eggs and an avocado pear. I am ready.

No moment I experience like the one stood standing at the start of the Ultimate Human Race-The Comrades Marathon. As Chariots of Fire plays, for those 2 minutes, the present world halts and my mind rushes a gushing storm drain. The thumping of the keys in the intro is a catalyst for my eyeballs to drain, and my emotion to rise. The past year of my life flips rapidly through my mind like an Ipod’s album cover shuffle. The glowing moments piquing my emotion-My time in Israel, my rapid marriage, the staccato life of marriage and it’s extra-ordinary ending, our time in Jerusalem, my career at a junction, the fling of my Copper product business, my running.  As the tears cross down my face through the crevicing and valleys of my skin, dripping off the edge of my chin, free falling down the length of my body, plummeting to a splash, the red square digits rearrange from a 5:29:59 to an even 5:30, simultaneously the cock crows and the cannon thunders.
We’re out of our first gear and we’re off on the start of the 2016 Comrades Marathon.

Doctor Doctor there's a fly in my soup 28.04.2016

The winter cold is upon us. As I breathe a sigh of relief that the heat has dissipated, my warm breath on an icy pane, fogs it. Clearing away the dirt, I peer outwards, looking at my life from beyond the fish bowl.
The travel bug isn’t a bug, it’s inherent in the endeavouring human. A bug can be cured. The desire to adventure is a yearning for experience, for chance meetings and off-the-wall episodes.
I’m not travelling at the moment but still the extra ordinary finds me.
Thrilled by the unknown, thrilled by the opportunity to tell a story, this is the Bear Hunters life.
This could end in disaster and it could end in relief, but either way, I have a story to tell.

Waking up to an ear muffled, with only the hum of white noise, no amount of ear-budding or digging was dislodging the problem. It was inevitable that I’d have to visit an ENT.
With the aromatic scent of brewed coffee filling the entrance, the fresh air and daylight flooding the hospitals innards and the de-clinicalised environment, the unhospital like hospital at Linksfield Clinic welcomed me. To here, I wasn’t a fearful visitor.

Having probed and tapped and buzzed and bee-bopped, the doc suggested the MRI scan.
‘Gsus, can’t you just give me a pill, and let me be on my way?’I thought. In conversation with my own brain, I continued to think, “whoa, I’ve only ever come ‘in contact’ with the MRI on a colour teevee show”.
Now I’m told I need to undergo one.
Heading down stairs to radiology, I asked how much this’d cost. In silence, she scrawled on the lined paper, R16 400.00. Blurting out an expletive, chocking back the tears in disbelief, I said ‘but I, I, I’m only on a Hospital Plan’.
 I was caught between Iraq and a hard place.(well, not really, I didn’t have a spare R16k lying around)

The adventure began when the doctor said, ‘National Geographic (name of health company changed for purposes) won’t allow you to be booked in for an MRI, but what we could do is have you come to Edenvale Hospital where I locum. Expect to spend the morning waiting for you’ll see how the other half live’. ‘hehehe’, I nervously giggled.
I arrived at Edenvale Hospital in my private-owned car, and parked in the empty, potholed lot.
I entered through the emergency room doors. Greeted by the wails of a poor girl strapped to a wheely bed bawling her eyes out and the heaviness of the trauma room, I sought ‘reception’.
The receptionist, his finger directed me to the ENT department.  Like a yolk-yellow canary I stood out in a sea of gray scale.
With a private education, a tertiary degree, a life of overseas journeying, and country club membership, I was simply another citizen seeking medical care at the expense of the State. Though I’ve spent everything on a private medical aid, I’m lead to believe it’s given me nothing. Ordered to pull a file, ordered to state my monthly income, my air time expenditure, food and clothing spend, ordered to be seated, ordered to linger for my name to be called, the waiting game began. Me,  the brown grey of the prison guards, the horror-orange of the imprisoned- shackled and sounding like loose change, the Sari’d Indian, the Asterix comic-reading engelsman and the poverty stricken masses, they sat seated waiting for a doctor.
Not far from soft suburbia, I was exposing myself to a harsh new world.

Now, with my referral letter to Johannesburg General, I headed there the next day. Johannesburg General Hospital, a monolith, a brutalist edifice sitting atop its perch, it’s beacon the red and white stripped chimney announcing it’s purpose. Parked, I did in the cold exposed lot-the ‘grand’ entrance to the hospital. The wide hallways and coloured ‘block’ indicators, the stream of people, pyjama- laden inmates attached to IV’s morbidly hovering along the crème linoleum floors, doctors in scrubs and flip charts, this was extra-planetary.

Finding the ENT department I booked in. 3 Doctors check-up patients in one room. There is no oak table or early century drawers, there’s no air-con or views onto golf courses. There’s no lollipop jar or human anatomy pop-up books, but there was thorough assistance, exemplary care. The doctor ordered me an audiogram, not for R600, but as part of my tax-paying right, she ordered me a host of blood tests, and then sent me to radiology to set up a time for the into-the-future MRI scan.

The radiology division bunkered in tons of heavy concrete, has its low slung ceiling and dimmed fluorescent tube lighting affecting a harrowing, dramatic experience. Natural delight, natural light is left outside behind these 13 inch walls. The tepid blue palette and the misery of people isn’t even a scene from a horror movie. It’s a reality. As I stood waited at the MRI department a sad blimey, pasty, unscrubbed man in pin-stripe jammies, frail to death with flexi tube plugging up his nostril waited patiently with head in hands for his scan. I was approached to book my time. Flipping through the over-used crinkly diary, the assistant appointed me a time in January, yes, in January.  In 8 months time.  Our ‘world class’ African city and its hospital has one single MRI machine. ONE flipping MRI machine.

Having studied, and having visited the Paimio Sanitorium, a convalescence hospital for the war wounded just outside Turku in Finland designed by the great Fin Alvar Aalto, I recognise we are worlds away from being first world. Great, we have shiny glass buildings, and Zara, but do we have efficient, democratic public transport, do we have health care, do we have social security, do we have a city free from crime, do we have more than one MRI machine?. That, would be World Class.

Aalto’s design ensures that natural daylight is necessary for recovery of patients, the design offers outdoor recover areas, landscaping, and vibrant colour palettes. It offers basins that help in reducing water splashing noises, and lighting fixtures that avoid directly pulverising the resting patient.
The Johannesburg General Hospital  ain’t no architectural masterpiece, nor will it appear in a glossy architectural magazine, but the people labouring there, the human resource taking care of the wounded, thoroughly investigating, were exemplary.
Doctors and nurses. Changing worlds, effecting lives. Thank G-d for community service.

For some unknown reason I bring adventure upon me, getting into the crevices of life. May I continue to do so in safety and health. From the roar of the Russian Bear Hunter, argh grr raaahh