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Rachel

~ following the white rabbit…

Rachel

Tag Archives: Love India

Kanyakumari, India: photographs

28 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by Rachel in India, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Colours of India, Incredible India, India, Indian houses, Kanyakumari, Love India, Travel, travel blogging, Travel memoir, Travel writing, Traveling, Travelling

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Here is a link to my blog post about Kanyakumari from July last year

Thank you for visiting

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

Update

14 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by Rachel in Narrowboat, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Incredible India, India, Life on a narrowboat, Love India, Narrowboat living, Pushkar, Rajasthan, Solo travel, spiritual memoir, Travel memoir, Travel writing, writing

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Look who’s back!

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We haven’t seen this family for a few weeks so I was very happy to see them this morning.

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They do not want to share feeding time with the ducks though…

Life on the boat

It’s wet wet wet here (in the middle of England in ‘the summer’) and so being on a boat feels like the place to be.  No leaks, and we are warm and cosy indoors.

Life outside the boat

We have both got jobs, my husband will probably start in July and me in August.  Both as Bank Health Care Workers, the ‘Bank’ bit means as and when to give flexibilty.

Writing

So I’m still on Step One of ‘How to get an agent and get published’ which is ‘Write a wonderful book.’  I am, however, getting there.  I hope to have the draft finished in around a month and the corrections finished a couple of months after that, around the end of September.

India

I have my tickets to go back!!!  Jan-Feb 2020, a five week solo trip.  Let’s see how I am alone…  I’m planning a fairly straightforward trip, fly to Delhi, night bus to Pushkar same day if I can/want to, if not stay a night in Main Bazar.  Book a week in Pushkar, base myself there for the duration but go off for trips of a few days to Jaipur and Udaipur by train.  That will all probably seem plenty adventurous enough.  I may end up just spending the whole month in Pushkar, if I do, that’s fine too.  But if I spend the whole time holed up in Main Bazar not daring to go out then I will need a telling off.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

‘No Drugs, No Prostitutes, No Weapons:’ Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Part Two

02 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by Rachel in Cambodia, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

awareness, Cambodia, guesthouses, hostels, Incredible India, Love India, Phnom Penh, spiritual enlightenment, spiritual memoir, Travel memoir, Traveling, Travelling, writing

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Draft chapter for book about our time in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in January

‘No Drugs, No Prostitutes, No Weapons:’ Phnom Penh, Cambodia

I got my laundry ready the first day, but forgot to take it out with us, and after dinner it was closed.  Even getting it ready was enough.  Likewise with shopping, I had tried to do it all on the first day.  I bought a few things, they didn’t have everything, at a friendly shop on our road near the laundries, but didn’t make it to the 7/11 style supermarket until the next day.  We flew with low weight and needed to buy shampoo etc on arrival.  The first day and night was enough stimulation- I was over stimulated, walking through the bar street I felt tired.  Noticing my tendency to overdo and crash.  Don’t have to do everything all at once.

The next day we found a real stationers, an entire shop selling stationery, I bought a really nice notebook, and gel pens!!!   I had brought enough for the trip, given away some in thanks for my monkey tablet rescue in Hampi, and so had just run out.  And at the ‘7/11’ there was soya milk, face cream, body moisturiser, Vaseline, Nivea, makes, luxury four blade razors, and all kinds of biscuits!  Almost all cream was whitening again like in Thailand. and Japan and sunblock went up to Factor 100.  I bought big thick sunscreen; I had slacked in India and let my skin go chicken skin-ish.  Never mind, they are the tiger stripes or stretch marks of the experience.  Simple pleasures; stocking up on necessary items such as soap etc, and also nuts, and getting our laundry back, done in washing machines, with little tickets when you took it in, felt so good.

Mobile rickshaw or motorbike stalls often had a phrase on a loop coming out of a speaker; we’d hear a vehicle going past with a repetitive, monotonous announcement, it sounded so serious to us.  In India it would have been politics trucks, here it was someone selling snacks or corn on the cob or coconuts; the coconuts in Cambodia were the biggest I’d ever seen.  There were handcarts with bells, and noisy kids’ toys like in Thailand.  Again, I noticed the difference in noise tolerance between South East Asian countries and the UK.  One day a bicycle with a loudspeaker blaring out a repeated an announcement just parked in the street near our guesthouse selling filled baguettes.  It would have driven me insane but the stall person and the passersby seemed unperturbed.

We mostly ate at a pavement cafe on the front, there was free iced tea, we risked it the first time; later we looked up about ice.  If it is big chunks with a hole in, which this was- chunky cylinders with a hole through the middle like very large beads- that’s good, that’s for drinks.  Otherwise it could just be from packing- we saw great slabs of ice on trolleys, beautiful like glaciers with air bubbles and fractures and the light shining through it.  We might have been more nervous about eating there but we saw a Westerner there who looked like a regular.  Normal sized plastic tables and chairs that spilled onto the pavement, the cooking was mainly done out the back, with some barbecue meat inside and out the front.  Inside the restaurant was a glass fronted wooden cabinet full of nail polishes, as if someone had a sideline doing nails.

On the way to the restaurants, we passed a glorious gold and red temple, so shiny as if it had just been built.  We saw a rickshaw with Astroturf over the roof and down to the top of the window, and at the front over the wheel.  There were lots of barbers set up on the street who kept asking Anthony to come and have his hair cut.  Before we left he did go to them and was given a typical Khmer haircut, a little too short at the sides for him.  But except for the barbers and a man outside a restaurant who asked us a couple of times if we wanted to eat there, that was it.  Compared to Varkala Cliff, Kerala, India where there was a strip of ten or so restaurants and twenty or so stalls, with everyone practically begging us to eat or shop at their place every time we walked past.  In India tourists can feel permanently pulled and guilty and buy to support not because they need or want anything.  At Bangkok airport we met a man who was just returning to the UK after a holiday in Goa, India.  ‘I’ve bought so many shorts and t shirts and I didn’t even want them!’

We went to the night market and saw Marilyn Monroe style silver lurex and red velvet plunging neckline dresses.  There were lots of bright colour designs printed on t shirts and shirts.  I saw a woman wearing a shirt, so bright and with two big faces on the front, one on each side.  In the evenings women often wore pyjamas in the street, usually button through shirts and three quarter length trousers; one evening a woman walked towards us wearing pink shiny pyjamas which were luminous in the dark.

But… it soon didn’t seem enough, after India it seemed too tame, too touristy, not authentic enough and no engagement.  It wasn’t like India in Pushkar  or Chennai.  No cosmic recognition, we didn’t meet any of the young tourists, families or ex pats around us.  And after all our complaining towards the end of India about selfie takers, I missed the attention.  Not because I liked feeling like a celebrity (okay maybe a little…) but because it was positive interaction with the people of the country.

We missed India.  All the things we had been annoyed about, we missed.  Really like a love affair, you may be annoyed by your wife doing xxx or your husband doing xxx but when they’re gone, oh you miss those things.

I drank coffee French press good strong coffee and wrote downstairs in the restaurant.  Sometimes it was hard to concentrate, with families and other guests talking and playing guitar.  The coffee was great for writing, not so good for sleep; I caught myself out a couple of times having coffee too late in the afternoon and then wondering why I couldn’t sleep at night.

It was whirring around my head so I wrote it down, the What’s Next, and then the word document disappeared.  I had emailed it to myself as back up so I could’ve found it in my emails, but would that really be best?  Is it beneficial to live in the future?  No.  Was losing my What’s Next? ideas a ‘coincidence?’  There’s no such thing as coincidences.  What’s another word then, synchronicity?  Serendipity?  Signs you are on the right track?  Assistance for staying on track?

Rather than trying to plan for or worrying about The Future, it came to me that a useful self support system could be to make spiritual enlightenment or awareness the goal or guiding aim or principle of one’s life rather than anything else.  That way you’ll always be okay because you can do that whatever, wherever, and anything can help.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

 

Picking up the things of beauty:

24 Friday May 2019

Posted by Rachel in Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

beauty, Blogging, Incredible India, Indian hospitality, Love India, meditation, mindfulness, Self realisation, serendipity, spiritual memoir, Travel, Travel memoir, Travel writing

Picking up the things of beauty:  Delhi before Nepal (October 2018) Draft chapter for book

On the train from Pushkar to Delhi, two young men gave us advice about a better Delhi station to get off at, closer to the airport where we were staying.  It was also their stop, and near the taxis they even looked for us to check we were okay.  ‘You are guests in our country,’ they said, when we thanked them.

A French woman we met in Pushkar said she usually brings her daughter each year to India, one year her daughter aged six had got very ill in Delhi, they had to go to multiple doctors and she lost a lot of weight before getting treatment that was effective.  Since then, the woman said she only eats at one particular hotel when she is in Delhi.  Even though guidebooks direct western tourists to Main Bazar (Paharganj), and all the shops there are geared to tourists, tourists seem to often get sick there, and middle class Indians told us they wouldn’t eat there and don’t understand why tourists go there…  So, having got sick both the previous times we’d stayed in Main Bazar, we took a leaf out of the French woman’s book and booked a hotel near the airport, for the one night and one day between Pushkar and Nepal.

Our taxi driver struggled to find our hotel and after driving around and asking directions he dropped us off and rushed away.  It was the wrong hotel.  It was late in the evening, we were tired and fed up, but as we began to walk, people came to help and give us directions; people actually ran after us to offer help.  This happened again and again in India, people went out of their way to help us.  Thank you so much.

We finally found our hotel, it was the slowest check in ever, we were tired and impatient, but managed not to show it.  Our intention always was to spend most of the time in the hotel room and eat hotel room service, this time the Delhi air quality was just ‘unhealthy’ rather than ‘hazardous,’ as it had been last time.

The hotel staff didn’t speak much English, breakfast was included but we struggled to order it when they phoned to ask what we wanted; one meal came first then we ordered the other when they brought the first.  Anthony had an omelette and I had milky coffee like children’s coffee, with four slices of toast which I dipped in, which was actually really nice.  For the other meals the staff came into the room and copied our order with us showing them the item on the menu.  We had finger chips, and veg sandwiches with thin cut cucumber and tiny amounts of shredded lettuce, which were also very nice, and milky tea in a pot.  We got what we got, we were hungry, the food was actually fine, and it didn’t make us sick.

Anthony wasn’t feeling well and stayed in the whole time but I did go out for a little walk.  We were on the fourth floor, I used the stairs for a bit of exercise.  There were unusual wall designs in that hotel in brown tiles and shiny brown wallpaper, on the stairs one side a mosaic design, on the other side giant pebbles, elsewhere there were even giant buttons.  There was a round window to outside, I looked through; the wall opposite had a hole in, like where a fitting had been removed, making a messy circle.  Inside the hole were a pair of pigeons huddled up together.  I thought it looked like one bird’s wing was out of position, but when I came back upstairs, it had gone and the other was still there, sitting all fluffed up.  Beyond the wall, on the roof of another building, I could see a terracotta saucer with a bird at it, someone had put water out.

I was nervous about getting lost, but on my own I was able to look and needed to really look; an OYO sign, a hotel sign at the end of our road.  A tiny shop, a crossroads, side streets; the road was broken and bits of it were flooded a little.  Men’s groomers, two juice stalls, more tiny shops and street stalls.  On the way back I bought water.  Looking back at the crossroads, there was a momo stall, 15 rupees for half, 30 rupees for full.  I could see a room behind the street stall.  To one side was the little shop where I had bought the water, to the other the road.  Above the shop and across the road was a perfect bird’s nest of wires.  Down the road was a sign saying Health and Hygiene Institute.  To the left of the road was a block of faded flats.  A little girl stood on a balcony holding a red balloon or was that my imagination?  Definitely there was washing out.  The little girl on the balcony, the washing, the Health and Hygiene Institute, the bird’s nest wires, the little shop, the momos stall.  I tried to take a picture in my mind.

On my way out I’d made a point of saying Namaste and Good Morning (even though it was the afternoon) to the man on the hotel door.  I got back to the hotel then decided to go on past it a little way.  There came a man and a dog which I thought was on a lead, but then I felt its wet nose in my palm.  It was quite a big dog, with a collar, but not on a lead and not with the man.  The dog started being super friendly and started to hump my leg, I tried to shoo it, but I didn’t want to be too forceful in case I made it angry.  I quickly walked back to the hotel and asked the doorman for help, he opened the door and shooed the dog away.  ‘Friend,’ he said.  ‘Too friendly,’ I said.  I was on my period, the dog’s attention was embarrassing.

The area was made up of faded buildings interspersed with hotels.  From the window by the pigeons, looking sideways and above I could see two flashier buildings.  I could see washing hung out but otherwise it was a really non India view, and the view from our room even more so, ‘Our least India view,’ as my husband said, it could have been a faded area of any city.

I fed bits of the previous day’s train journey samosas to sweet little birds on the windowsill, poking the pieces through the bars.  I thought, Give me a song (in return) then immediately chastised myself for thinking that- but then they did!  Asking for more?  I gave them more, and later pigeons came too.

I wanted, needed, to see the strange giant button design again; sometimes I look at something but I don’t stop long enough to feel I’ve soaked it in or made the most of it and then I regret it.  Am I a pleasure denier?  And then I realised that the same wall covering design was in a corner of our bathroom!

I told Anthony about the t-shirt I saw when I went out for a walk, then later I spent a while sitting on the floor, going through all my papers and notebooks, chucking out and decluttering to get the weight of my bag down, and what did I see, the very same phrase:  ‘Fortune favours the brave’ that I’d noted down from a billboard on a journey at another time weeks or months ago…

Can it be like this in future, just picking up the things of beauty as I go without on purpose seeking any more?  ‘No more temples.’  And just putting in the blog?  So as to keep current; not like now, in Delhi and writing about Kerala, but maybe I should just accept that this is my job.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Pushkar Part One

26 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by Rachel in India, Uncategorized

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Bhang Lassi, Incredible India, India, Indian culture, Indian culture and customs, Indian customs, Indian temples, Love India, Pushkar, Rajasthan, spirituality

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I loved Pushkar, home to Babas, gorgeous looking cows, and fun monkeys.

Chapter extract about our time in Pushkar, Rajasthan, India, Oct-Nov 2018:

The Varanasi guesthouse had a rooftop area with amazing views, but here the rooftop was a restaurant and they had also done it up.  Indian parasols and quirky light shades hung down from the ceiling, the walls were decorated with Indian print bedspreads and round fabric rings in different colours like chunky padded bracelets, used to put between the head and the basket when carrying things on the head.

At the rooftop restaurant there were wicker tables and chairs and also day beds to sit or lounge comfortably on.  These doubled as beds for the kitchen staff.  During the day heavy blinds were lowered to keep the sun out, it came in through gaps at the edges and was anyway still too hot to hang around for too long up there in the middle of the day.  We’d go up and eat or have a drink, at least once most days:  Sprite, aloo jeera (perfectly done spiced potato), dal and rice; mushroom, olive and tomato toasted sandwiches; home made finger chips, and banana pancakes.

As in Varanassi, Bhang Lassis (a kind of weed milkshake) were legal and available everywhere, it was fun watching stoned people lounging on the beds and eating banana and Nutella pancakes one after the other…

The owner wasn’t there all the time, but most days he’d come up and talk to us for a bit.  We had an open and surprisingly easy conversation about periods, him talking about cooking, and explaining how in his house he cooks, as for five days the women don’t do any cooking.  ‘You know, on period,’ he said, in case I hadn’t understood.  ‘Good idea, I said, we should do that.’  He said to me and my husband, ‘Yes you should do in the UK in your home!’.

One evening he cooked for all the guests who were around, huge pots of food and round balls of bread cooked in tin foil in a cow dung fire, all of us sitting on floor outside, eating with our fingers, ‘My first time,’ a young Western man said, ‘I just did my best.’

One day the owner pointed out across to a small temple.  It was hard for me to see at first, there was a red shiny temple, a Hare Krishna temple nearby, two mountains with temples, and other decorative buildings all around amongst the houses.  This was a small peachy orange and white temple.  He told us that his late father had built that temple; at the time his wife and children were not happy, especially his wife, as it cost a lot of money.  But the father went ahead and did it anyway.  On his deathbed he called his son to him and said, ‘You wanted to know why I built that temple, I shall tell you.  When I die and you have the guesthouse, you are going to make a lot of money.  You may be tempted to spend it on women, gambling…  If you get tempted, you look out there and see the temple that your father built.’

The owner told us how to reach it and we went one evening.  Along the way we passed several camels pulling carts with lots of people.  I felt bad for the camels, I didn’t want to look and turned away.  ‘Don’t turn your back on them,’ my husband said, ‘They need your support.  You can give them some love, show them that you acknowledge their pain.’

Up close the temple was much bigger than we’d expected, and was painted in a similar style to the guesthouse; multi coloured, some of the paint was slightly faded which had turned the colours into delicate pastels, with arches and small shrines with Gods. It was almost completely dark by the time we got there, and the crescent moon was beautifully framed by the outside arches.

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The staff were not supposed to smoke marijuana at work, one day the owner appeared, like many bosses, quiet, like cat.  I tried to distract him by asking what he’d got in his bag; he’d arrived with bag of what looked like baby lemons.  I described what I’d seen in Varanasi; a tiny lemon and green beans hung from a doorway of a house.  ‘How to explain,’ he said, ‘Say someone jealous of you and Anthony’s relationship…’  ‘Like evil eye,’ I said, ‘Yes!’ he said, high-fiving me.  In Kerala we had seen black masks with scary faces for sale in shops and hung outside properties.  We had asked the man we bought lungis and bananas from what they were for, he said, ‘Someone break in, they break leg.’

One of the guesthouse staff said that in his village they still grind their own oil from seed using a bull, they grow the seed themselves and they give the residue of the oil to the bull.  People give seed to the pigeons; he described how each day one hundred pigeons go to his house to eat, then the next house, then the next.  ‘If you get God’s gifts, extra grain, seed, you give a big percentage to birds, pigeons, cows.’

In his village, if someone commits a crime or ‘makes a mistake,’ the police are not involved, instead everyone talks, together with both families.  They decide which family is in the wrong and they make restitution, offering x kilos of grass for cows, seed for pigeons.  ‘Pigeons are not very clever,’ he said, ‘If a cat comes, they shut their eyes and think the cat has gone away.’  ‘Pigeons are loved in India.  Not cats.  But I know tourists like cats, especially British, love cats, love animals.’  The pigeon as well as the cow are holy- hence the pigeon feeding station on Chennai beach, I realised.

April 2019, Northamptonshire:  About a week ago we went to our local town to pick up some shopping (and go to Greggs for vegan sausage rolls, of course).  In the town car park was a sign forbidding people to feed the birds.  I felt sad, and momentarily confused.  It’s all conditioning; This is acceptable here, This isn’t.  I get it, but still, I’d rather be somewhere where all the animals are fed.   

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Recently arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Italian Baba

24 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Rachel in India, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anything is possible, Baba Cesare, escape the matrix, Hampi, Incredible India, India, Italian Baba, Love India, Travel, Traveling, Travelling

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In Hampi in India (for blogs about Hampi with pictures see here, here and here) we went to a chai stall on the temple side of the river; out of the main village, past the Rama temple.  Twenty years ago my husband had visited this chai stall and met Hanuman and his wife and was surprised and pleased to find that they were still there!

We visited most days for chai and coconuts, we chatted with them, fussed their pregnant cat and watched the monkeys in the tree nearby.
Hanuman told us about an ‘Italian Baba’ who lived opposite, on the other side of the river.  They said he had built an ashram there that had been going for forty years.

Hanuman explained how to get there and a couple of days later we set out to visit.  We had to walk beyond Hanuman’s chai stall, we went wrong once and had to go back and be redirected, but we got to a place where there is a man who takes people across the river in a coracle.

We explained we were going to see Italian Baba.  The coracle man told us that he had died the day before from heart problems; he had been taken to the government hospital but the doctors were unable to save him.  He said it was still okay to go to the ashram and pay our respects.

The coracle was beautifully made, there was just the two of us and the man rowing us across.  The water and the scenery surrounding it looked absolutely magical.

The man showed us where to go, and handed our money to the man on the other side, his boss.  We paused at a little temple first, we hesitated, unsure if we were allowed in.  An Indian family beckoned us, and showed us the way; we followed them down a stone corridor, at the end was a shrine with a very old Baba there.  We followed the family, gave some money and had a blessing.

The man who had rowed us was still outside and pointed the way through scrub and old garden to the ashram.  I had imagined lots of mourning devotees and was unsure if it was even appropriate to go, but there was no one about.  The ashram looked as though it hadn’t been active for a few years.

We met an Italian woman who had come especially to see him, she was very moved to have arrived the day after he died, and we all had a hug.  A caretaker was there, but no other residents.  An Indian man who spoke good English showed us around.  He showed us the Baba’s bed and a picture of him on the wall and we took photographs.  He asked to take a photograph of all of us together in front of the Baba’s picture, ‘To remember this day.’

He explained that he had grown up knowing the Baba, who had come to India as a young man in the 1960s and stayed, at first he had lived in nearby caves.  For the past four years the Baba had been living between Goa and Italy and hadn’t been to the ashram, as he was very old.  He had decided to visit the ashram and look around and do some tidying in the garden.

He had travelled from Goa to Hampi, which is quite a journey along bumpy roads; he was staying in a guesthouse in Hampi not at the ashram as he needed somewhere more comfortable with a fan.  When he arrived in Hampi he began to feel unwell.  His wife and children were with him.  He didn’t get to the ashram but he did get back to Hampi.

I asked the Italian woman if the Baba was famous in Italy.  She said not exactly famous, but known because of a book that had been written about him by a fellow Italian.  She said the title translates as ‘Barefoot on the Earth.’

After Hampi we left India and went to Cambodia.  We spent a few days in Phnom Penh and then went to Otres Village near Sihanoukville.  There we met a Spanish woman who speaks and reads Italian.  She had borrowed a book off another guest to read… guess what it was?!  Yes, the book about Baba Cesare the Italian Baba.  We took a picture of the actual book, above.  Below, the river and coracle and the ashram.

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Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Just arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

‘At home wherever you go’*

Featured

Posted by Rachel in Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Anything is possible, Cambodia, Incredible India, India, Love India, Narrowboat, Nepal, Thailand, Tokyo, Travel, Traveling, Travelling, Vietnam

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All the places we’ve stayed… in chronological order… with links to relevant blog posts

We had a budget per night of £10 (or US$13 or IDR1,000, roughly).  We stayed in private rooms, except for me in Tokyo.  We kept well within budget most of the time, often staying in rooms which cost half that amount.  We blew the budget in Tokyo (£20 per night), and went over once in Delhi and once in Bangalore, and towards the end of our Pushkar stay when prices went up due to an event.

* from an article in an old magazine about the benefits of meditation, read in a cafe in Pondicherry, India

Delhi, India (Hotel) pictured above Arrival meltdown and First sickness

Our first stop.  That spot is special to me, I did my yoga there, ‘I’m doing yoga, in India!’ and I lay there in the hall on the cool floor next to the bathroom the night I was sick.

Train Delhi to Goa

Colva (Hostel/Guesthouse) Colva (Hotel)

Agonda (first Beach hut)

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Agonda (second Beach hut) pictured above

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Hampi ‘the other side of the river’/ ‘hippie island’ (Guesthouse) pictured above

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Hampi temple side of the river (guesthouse) pictured above

Anjuna (guesthouse)

Arambol (guesthouse)

Panaji (guesthouse)

Varkala (bungalow)

Varkala (guesthouse) Meeting our people

Kovalam (hotel)

Varkala (hotel) Everyday enlightenment

Kanyakumari (hotel)

Kochi (homestay),

Night train to Chennai

Chennai (hotel)

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Chennai (guesthouse) pictured above A piece of my heart is still in Chennai and Broadlands Guesthouse

Pondicherry (guesthouse)

Bangkok, Thailand (guesthouse)

Night train to Surat Thani

Haad Rin (bungalow)

Thong Sala (bungalow)

Sri Thanu (bungalow)

Night train to Bangkok

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Tokyo Japan (capsule hostel) pictured above

(My husband went to Cambodia while I was in Tokyo, he stayed in two different guesthouse rooms.  He also did a trip to and from Bangkok with his daughter, and so had an extra overnight train journey, and three nights in three different hotels, so he wins on numbers!)

Kolkata India (guesthouse)

Night train to Varanasi

Varanasi (guesthouse)

Varanasi (guesthouse) 3 hours (unbearable due to building work)

Delhi (hotel)

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Sleeper bus to Pushkar pictured above

Pushkar (guesthouse) first room

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Pushkar (guesthouse) second room pictured above

We were there for a month and felt like part of the family.  They upgraded us for our last few days!  I loved Pushkar, home to Babas, gorgeous looking cows, and fun monkeys.

Delhi (hotel)

Kathmandu, Nepal (homestay)

Nagarkot, Nepal (wooden chalet)

Varkala, India (guesthouse)

Hampi (guesthouse) first room, second room So many things to love in Hampi…  and our second room

Bangalore (hotel)

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (guesthouse)

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Koh Rong, Cambodia (tent) pictured above (travel update Cambodia)

Otres Village, Cambodia (bungalow) Writing and contemplation

Siem Reap, Cambodia (hotel) A little bit of luxury

Hanoi, Vietnam (apartment)

Hanoi, Vietnam (guesthouse)

Sapa,Vietnam (hostel)

Hanoi, Vietnam (hotel)

Night train to Dong Hoi, Vietnam

Dong Hoi, Vietnam (pub/hostel)

Hue, Vietnam (hotel)

Nha Trang, Vietnam (hotel)

Nha Trang, Vietnam (hotel) next door

Dalat, Vietnam

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Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, pictured above, our last room in SE Asia

As this posts we will be waking up in a Travelodge in London, before getting a train to Northampton, then a bus, to begin our new lives living on a narrowboat in the Northamptonshire countryside!

Thank you very much for reading

The Burning Ghats, Varanasi

03 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Rachel in India, Travel, Uncategorized, Varanasi

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Incredible India, India, Love India, The Burning Ghats, Varanasi

20181008_103929

The Burning Ghats, Varanasi

Draft book extract

The Ganga was high and so we had to walk the long way through the busy part of town, rather than walk along the river to the Burning Ghats, where cremations take place.

It was a really awful walk, with the heat and the pollution. We stopped at a stall and bought scarves to put over our faces.

The walk was hard but I saw faded red stairs inside a house, pale pink walls, and above the open door a tiny lemon on a string with green beans threaded horizontally above and below making a decoration or a talisman.

As we got near, people called out, ‘Dead body burning?’ and told us which way to go. It seemed so inappropriate to treat this as a tourist attraction, even though that’s what we and other people were doing. We do it, but we don’t want to be open about it. But people in India are direct and things in India are out in the open, especially death.

An man came up to us and took us around. He took us into the burning room where the bodies of Brahmins (the priest caste) are cremated. In metal frames raised off the ground were piles of fire almost out. We were very close, it felt very weird.

The burning takes several hours and the family stays for the duration. We saw a family, it felt intrusive although our guide appeared relaxed about it.

The room was up high; from one side we looked down and saw piles of firewood, from the other he showed us where everyone else was burned, on the ground level. Amongst the ash were gold pieces that looked like foil decorations.

The man showed us a small fire smouldering, ‘The Shiva fire,’ which never goes out.

He told us that he was a social worker at the hospice in the building next door, doing massage and caring for the dying.

At the end of the tour he asked for donations for poor people’s cremations. He told us how many kilos of wood it takes to burn a body, and how much the wood cost per kilo. ‘How many kilos are you going to buy?’ he asked. ‘Is that all?’ We both left feeling guilt tripped about our contribution being too little.

On the way back we saw a body being carried through the streets on a simple stretcher of fabric and sticks with a blanket over; the person’s body was so thin, so flat.

It was an overwhelming walk back again with the heat and pollution.
It was so good to be back in our alleyways; the old town is not so polluted.

We stopped at the nearest of our regular cafes and ordered fizzy drinks. I went to the sink and washed my hands. With a bottle of Sprite in hand I immediately better, before even drinking it; just by being back there, in the land of the living.

I still felt a bit strange from the emotional impact of it all. ‘Tea and cake’ was required. I bought biscuits from a little shop, and we went to a coffee shop. The coffee shop was small, with wooden benches and tables. Sitting near us were an Indian man and a Western woman. There was a long wait for coffee, and they struck up a friendly conversation with us.

He was from another state, travelling, trying to find something different to do, she was from Europe. She said it was her second time in India, but her first time in Varanasi. She said couldn’t do Varanasi the first time, it was too intense.

We spoke about being tired, and about the heat. He said, ‘Do stuff before ten am or after ten pm;’ the implication being, in between do nothing.

They ordered more chai. They said, ‘How many chai have we had now? Four or five? We’ve had one every half an hour since ten thirty this morning.’

They bought us tea. The coffee shop encounter and chat, the biscuits, provided me with the comfort I needed.
Anthony said, ‘There’s always something, for every bad experience, there’s a good one.’

We got back and told our guesthouse manager where we had been. He said, ‘People say they are social worker,’ ‘Yes,’ we said, ‘And they do massage, care for the people, and need money for wood.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘There’s no hospice there. That building is a place for families to stay. The family pays for wood, if they are a poor person, the community supplies the wood.’ I told him how many kilos for each body, how much per kilo. He shook his head. ‘How many kilos did you buy?’ His face was a picture. ‘You should have asked me first,’ he said.

I felt much better though, finding out we’d been scammed was better than feeling guilty about not giving enough money for wood for a poor person’s cremation. We paid for the man’s time and for the experience, we probably would have not had so much access without a guide, it was an ok amount, and any lies are on him.

On our last morning we woke up early and went up to the rooftop. The sun was just risen, an orange ball above The Ganga. People had put chapattis out on the roof terraces, squirrels were eating them. Some birds, like swallows, were making a huge noise.

There were monkeys all around, lots of babies, even a baby monkey sliding down a pole like a fire station pole.

People were already up, sweeping, doing exercises and prayers. People get up early and rest in afternoon, work around the heat. Women were making breakfast in caged off roof rooms, and hanging up laundry outside on the open rooftops, protected with sticks.

A black and white dog chained up watched the monkeys and barked when they went past. Another fluffy orange dog was loose and chased them, there was a near miss once.

We watched a monkey pick up a kite and just destroy it piece by piece, picking it up, looking at it as if interested, eating a bit, then tearing it to bits.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Currently in Vietnam.  Returning to the UK in two weeks to live on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Mountains are meant to be quiet: Varanasi

01 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by Rachel in India, Travel, Uncategorized, Varanasi

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Incredible India, India, Love India, Travel, Varanasi

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Mountains are meant to be quiet
Varanasi

Extracts of draft chapter for book

As we got closer to Varanasi, we saw red brick buildings, it seemed strange to see red brick again.  At first glance they looked like ordinary red brick buildings like in the UK, on closer look each individual brick had a pattern carved into it.  Some of the buildings were square shaped with turret shaped top walls, like unfinished castles.  They were pretty, and reminded me of Morocco.

The palm trees here were tall, thin and spiky; pure Dr Zeus.  As we came closer to Varanasi, two yellow butterflies landed on the outside of the window.

The guesthouse had said they would send a rickshaw to meet us.  We wondered for a moment how they would find us, before realising we were the only Westerners at the station.

I saw a little exchange take place at a corner, a near miss between a scooter and a bicycle.  It was the cyclist’s fault, he had gone out in front of the scooter, causing the scooter to stop sharp.  The rider of the scooter looked about fourteen, with a boy of maybe nine or ten standing up at the front of the scooter, the stop made a mild jolt and jerked the younger boy forwards.  Both riders stopped, made eye contact, there was a pause; the moped rider gave a head wobble that seemed to serve both as chastisement and to acknowledge acceptance of the cyclist’s apology, and off they all went with no words exchanged.

Our rickshaw driver went as far as he could then parked up and led us on foot through the narrow alleyways where the rickshaw couldn’t go; we had to walk fast to follow him through all the twists and turns, with him only occasionally turning around to check we were still there.  I was excited to see monkeys again in the alleyways, up high, jumping from side to side, but there was no time to stop and look.

The guesthouse was painted shiny mustard yellow.  The manager said people move to Varanasi, swelling its population; hence all the pollution, because it is believed that if you are living within its boundary when you die you go straight to Nirvana, guaranteed.

He said, ‘The weather is changing all around, because humans have interfered with nature.’  ‘Too many cars, I said.  ‘Yes, and too much chopping down of trees, and interfering with mountains.’  ‘Mountains are meant to be quiet,’ he said, ‘They are not for picnics.’

He asked what I liked about India, I said as always, the colour.  He said ‘Yes, I watch the news reports for Europe, there is no colour, there are no shining faces.  Even the poor have shining faces in India.  Even people living on the street smile.’

My husband had his answer, ‘Because in India you feel free.’  ‘Yes,’ the manager said, ‘Even the animals in India are free.’  He and I bemoaned the problem of cows eating plastic.  ‘People are lazy,’ he said.  ‘When I was a boy, every house had a cow that would come, and you would give it the food waste.  Now people put it in plastic bags.’

‘The animals have suffered since plastic came to India.  You see, they don’t have hands,’ he said.

At the top of the guesthouse was a roof terrace.  The rooftop provided a panoramic view of roof tops and buildings.  The view was incredible.  So many buildings cram packed; the rooftops different heights, some brick, many grey with age and dust but some colour with faded paint; white, cream, pale blue, pink, red, yellow and blue-green, and the washing hung out.

There were lots of mosques, mainly white.

Out to one side was The Ganga, huge and beautiful, with colourful wooden boats carrying pilgrims and tourists.

And so many monkeys.  Effortlessly jumping from building to building.  Tiny babies, medium babies, some on their mum, hanging under her tummy, or sitting on her back.  The highest building in near vicinity was painted pale pink and dark pink, with a wrought iron decorative balustrade.  At the top of the building there was an adult monkey sitting on the top of the wall, looking around, on top of the world.

There were boys and young men on different rooftops, flying kites made out of wood and paper, maroon and purple coloured.

So much detail to take in.  I imagined what it would be like to paint a picture of it or do a jigsaw puzzle of it; like those impossible baked bean ones.

We were staying in the old town where narrow alleyways criss crossed and went down to the ghats, the steps at the side of The Ganga.  Hole in wall shops sold tobacco, cigarettes, water, toiletries and so on.  Stalls sold hippy clothes, scarfs, thin trousers, silk, jewellery and ornaments for the tourists.  The stallholders offered as we went past but were not really pushy.  We bought loose cotton trousers and tops, feeling more relaxed already.

The narrow alleyways were plagued with bikes, which was annoying, noisy and polluting, and meant you always had to be moving out of the way.  I was surprised to see cows up high in raised porch doorways, so funny, filling up the space in front of people’s houses.  Dogs were curled up asleep in the alcoves of porches.

People born here seemed happy like the people born in Hampi.  When we asked the man from the clothes shop how he was, he answered, ‘Everything is perfect.’ So positive!

We met a sadhu, and went to his house for an astrological reading.  How genuine, who knows, but we entered into the spirit of it and of course embraced the bits we liked or rang true.  He told me I was a very spiritual person, that I have good intuition, but that I overthink things; he said that I get close, almost to my mission, to enlightenment, and then fall back.

He said, ‘Past is bullshit, Future is bullshit, Mind is bullshit!’

He gave us a blessing as a couple and told us to stay together until death.  ‘If he get angry, you be quiet, if she angry, you quiet,’ he said.

We got a little network going, people to chat to, two good food places and a chai stall. A man on the main street with a shop tried to sell us silk, every day we had a good humoured exchange as he tried to persuade us and we came up with different excuses.

We bumped into the man from the banana stall every day.  He wore the same red t-shirt every day.  One day at a time, it said.  He told us he used to be a Brahmin, but because when he was younger he was addicted to heroin he has spoiled that and is no longer a Brahmin, despite being clean for many years.

At the chai stall a man chatted to us and showed us pictures of his two girlfriends, one in Nepal.  ‘Do they know about each other?’ I asked.  ‘Are you crazy, if you had a boyfriend would you tell Anthony about him?!’ he said to me.

As well as the ceremonies which were held each evening, the ghats and the side of the river were wonderful to walk about.  Bells clanged at temple time.  Incredible looking sadhus, some naked and covered in ash, sat on high stone platforms beside the river.  A man offered to sell us opium.  ‘Why not, it’s Sunday?’ he said when we said no thank you.

One evening we bought a selection of delicious homemade Indian sweets from a little shop between our guesthouse and The Ganga.  We sat on the steps at the ghats and looked at the river, and the boats.

We watched a dog going from little rowing boat to little rowing boat, three tied up parallel to the shore, the closest, then the next, then the furthest, looking under the seats, in, out, to all then back to the bank.  I thought at first they were looking for a place to sleep, but maybe they were looking for food.

A smartly dressed man with a plastic carrier bag came down the steps.  He took a big picture in a frame out of the carrier bag and threw the picture in its frame into The Ganga.

In front of us was a red boat, it matched the red scarf Anthony was wearing.  ‘We’re a long way from Harleston,’ he said.  Yet at the same time, we’re only a visa and a plane ticket away, the same amount of money some people will spend on a sofa and new carpets.

Another man came down with a red bucket and tipped out mushy food for the dogs.  He tipped one pile, the dogs all fought over it, he moved along, tipped out another pile, all the dogs went to that one, he tipped another pile, the same thing happened again; before one dog eventually went back to the first pile where there were no other dogs.  In spite of the initial squabbling, six dogs all got fed.

‘Hello, Namaste.’  The man called to us.  ‘You are a good man.’  I said.
‘I try to be a good man,’ he answered.

On the way back, on the floor of the stone steps were red, orange, and yellow smudges of powder from the ceremonies.

I fed the rest of the sweets to a dog with puppies; I thought I was being kind but behind us we heard lots of angry barking as if I had caused a family argument.

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Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Currently in Vietnam.  Returning to the UK in two weeks to live on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Kolkata to Varanasi by train

22 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by Rachel in India, India blogs November 2018 onwards, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Bojack Horseman, happiness, Incredible India, India, Indian train journeys, Kolkata, Love India, mindfulness, Netflix, Safety, Travel

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Draft book chapter

We got a taxi to the train station which gave us a view of Kolkata whilst being insulated inside our ac car.  We passed steel shops full of pipes and sheets of steel, lots of small trade or industrial units, like the auto parts area of Chennai.

There was the odd newly painted or well maintained building that stood out amongst the grey.  Pavement stalls sold basic provisions; I saw a stallholder sitting on the floor measuring out handfuls of rice or flour with his hand into newspaper packets.

We saw a big metal bridge, and huge grand colonial buildings, one big and red, they seemed to be mainly banks.

Kolkata train station was busy outside and in.  There was a big board with all the trains on, we were early and there was nothing about our train yet.  We went into a food place, it had a quieter seating area upstairs that was calm.  The manager came up to us and shook my husband’s hand, and asked us for our order; he looked a little crestfallen when we only ordered veg fried rice, a safe staple for travelling.

‘See, there’s always someone,’ my husband said.  Always in India there seemed to be someone who offered help or came to befriend or talk to us.

The station master told us which platform.  Our train was called The Doon Express, which sounded like something from Harry Potter.

The station wasn’t really that bad after all.  I’d been preparing myself, having watched the film Lion, but actually, after having food and then going back down and hanging about, it wasn’t as hectic as I’d thought.

There were a few dogs lying down, just sleeping right in the middle amongst where people walked.  There were lots of people on blankets, not sleeping rough, just encamped waiting for trains.

The colours of Kolkata station seemed to be navy blue.  A woman in a navy blue kurta and blue leggings, another woman dressed all in navy blue with a white scarf; a Sikh man wearing a navy blue velvet turban.

On the platform itself, it was dirty and dusty.  The train was delayed so we had a bit of a wait.  A man hung around us and stared at us a lot, in the end my husband shouted at him to go.  I felt uncomfortable, but it seemed like he was after money rather than being a threat.  There was an Indian man standing near us, and I felt as if he would have helped had we needed.  Another Indian man asked my husband about the train; although we were at the correct platform, we’d been advised to keep listening to the announcements as platforms can be changed at any time, which meant no one was 100% certain.  It meant we made a connection with someone on the platform.  I bought water from the platform kiosk and the man was super friendly which further reassured me.

There was a big queue for the regular class, people with big plastic drums, I didn’t know what of, food stuff, containers of possessions, goods?

We saw a fellow tourist and thought we were probably in the same class, and walked up the platform in the same direction as him.

Anthony the waiter had booked our tickets before we started booking our own.  We were in three tier, which is a step down from two, with shabby looking chains and no curtains.

A family got on, they seemed really hesitant to sit down, I wondered if it was because the women and girls didn’t want to sit next to my husband; he moved, we tried to offer to move places, us to move to the two side beds, allowing them the whole bay with the set of four beds, but we weren’t able to communicate with each other.

Just before the train left most of their party got off anyway as they were just saying goodbye, and some of the others went off to seats elsewhere.

A grandmother from a different family with a baby came to see us, ‘Say hi,’ she said to the baby.  She gave me the baby to hold, nonchalantly.  The baby’s parents came to chat.  They explained that they were a party of eight on a thirty-six hour journey to visit a Hindu pilgrimage site.  A family with a tiny baby, on a thirty six hour train journey, that’s how important their religion is.

We showed the family pictures of where we had stayed in Kolkata, the Grandmother’s face was a picture; they didn’t share our enchantment with the old buildings.

The baby was after the mum’s glasses.  The Grandmother tried to encourage the baby to take my husband’s glasses when he wasn’t looking.  She called us Grandfather and Grandmother to the baby.  ‘Not Auntie and Uncle?’ I asked, ‘No no, Grandfather, Grandmother,’ she said firmly.  Fair enough, okay, we’re old enough.

The woman, the baby’s mum, pointed at my Om pendant and asked me if I knew what it meant.  I gave a solid explanation and she nodded and seemed satisfied.  ‘Why are you going to Varanasi?’ she asked.  Indian people can be very direct.  My husband answered that one.  ‘India is one of the holiest countries in the world, and Varanasi is one of the holiest places in India, and the feeling you get from being in such a place is something we really appreciate, even though we aren’t Hindus.’

The family chatted to us for ages then left.  It was so sweet of them.  ‘Do you think they all just decided to come and talk to us? That they said to each other, let’s go and talk to them?’  My husband said.  We were the only foreigners we could see in our carriage.  Often when travelling on the train it was the same; we often wondered how the foreigners got to places.

I finished my blog and then we watched Netflix.  Like reading people’s blogs, Netflix provided a continuity, a thread that held me, wherever we were.

The comfort of watching BoJack Horseman together on my husband’s tablet.  As the silky intro music came on, languid with a sound like bubbles popping, I felt a wave of emotion and my eyes almost filled up.

‘Wherever you go, that’s where you are.’*  That’s true.  My white room in Harleston, my husband had gone out, I had stayed in feeling ill with a cold, and was cosy and happy watching endless BoJack; that music, the colours…  Every hotel room, every place.  The only thing I’m homesick for, is here.

I brushed my teeth and got into bed, my husband checked the chains to reassure me before I climbed up.  There was a clean white cotton sheet and a thick heavy charcoal woollen blanket.  I folded my scarf lengthwise and hung it over the chains which were covered in vinyl sleeves.

I lay there, I felt the train, lots of shaking and movement, and relaxed.  I felt myself come back into India, and India come back into me.  Moving, clanking, like gears, like a chiropractor, like my body assimilating into India again, adjusting.  I felt safe, and I slept.

At four am the half of the family that were seated elsewhere came to the half that were near us, started chatting with each other and woke us up.  At five am they got off and more people got on, people just talking normally with no concession to people sleeping.  ‘This is India,’ we had to tell ourselves.

At six am I gave up trying to go back to sleep up and got up.  I went to the loo and afterwards I stood looking out of the door- at least one of the doors are usually wide open on the trains.

Outside there was miles and miles of green.  There were derelict buildings, some being used as dwellings.  In the middle of the expanse of green there was a little gold temple.  I felt India say to me, ‘I got you.’  I wasn’t afraid anymore, and all the love was back.

Thank you very much for reading

*Jon Kabat-Zinn

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Currently in Vietnam.  Returning to the UK in three weeks to live on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

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