It starts with the tolling of the bells, plump yet sharp soundwaves wading through the yellowing fog. The prayers, incantations, and wailings follow shortly, winding around the dawn light, sliding down only to clamber up again...
I am sitting on the broad steps of a temple in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square and I am reading a book. The warm glow of the sun has turned the pages to butter, the words to ants, to barcodes. Hawkers and tourists stream around...
Kumari She is a Living Goddess, plucked from the innocence of childhood and placed amongst goats heads, severed and spurting. Thrust before the faithful and the faithless, worshipped, revered, in thick eye make-up she stares at...
In the sun, with a jagged peak emerging high above the horizon, the two of them flow together, undisturbed and liquid. The daughter brushes her mother’s long black hair which tumbles then shimmers like silk, tumbles then...
My legs are dragging. I am barely able to lift my feet. For the last four hours, I have been walking up a winding path towards a ridge that seems constantly to hover just one kilometre further. My only company has been cows and...
It was December and the sun was burning brightly above Kathmandu; dappling, illuminating, and stretching shadowy figures along dusty alleyways. It was warm in the sunlight too, you could tell from the relaxed faces of the...
I think my inner ear may be bleeding. There is, however, no way of telling as I cannot physically pry the earpieces from my ears. Why, you may ask, are my earphones lodged thus deep within my ears? It’s because of him. Him...
This is not an airport, this is a bus station from 1950s England. Just who is responsible for cruelly transposing it onto Nepal? It is a mean practical joke to play on a developing country and not in the least bit funny. It is...
Christmas, Beijing It feels like Christmas. The low-lying hutongs of the Gulag are shrouded in Dickensian mist, red lanterns line the streets blossoming through the fug, and there is enough of a chill in the air to make you yearn...
China Daily is a daily English-language newspaper in China. I know, the name gives it away. What the name doesn’t reveal though is that the paper is a mouthpiece for the Chinese government.As predictable as the...