0430

A moment of morbidity at 4 in the morning prompted me to recount my travel near-deaths; well, thats pushing it, but you get the idea. The times when you feel that, hey i dont know if i can make it this time. Maybe its the end for me. The time when what separates life, and death is the thin line that becomes so clear to you in that instant.

Those times which, thankfully, are not too numerous to remember,

1. Angkor, Cambodia - climbing up one of those huge stone temples outside the main complex along the Grand Circuit, where almost vertical steps cut into the rock crumble and blend into each other, worn smooth by time. Ta Keo takes the cake for being the impossible-st temple to climb up to. A crazy, intimidating stone spire that rises from the centre of the complex, supposedly abandoned after it was struck by lightning. The uncompleted work, as if suddenly abandoned, cast an eerie pall over the temple, even in the midday sun.

2. Vang Vieng, Laos - getting lost in a cliffside cave somewhere in the karst mountains around town. Without a torch.

3. Luang Nam Tha, Laos - dumped by sawngthaew at night in an unnamed, dark and silent road out of town, with all the shops and residences closed, shutters down, and silence all round except for the howling of dogs, and cats screeching eerily.

4. India - the madman's tour of Mahabalipuram. Its a long story, worth a post on its own - ill get to that soon once i settle my exams. Yes, its that time of the year again, before i head off.

5. on the Annapurna Base Camp trail, Nepal - crossing a frozen waterfall horizontally hanging off the cliff side. Actually, that was nothing compared to going down into the South Annapurna glacier, an almost 90 degree, sheer rock face of thousands of millions of sharp, jagged rock fragments. And walking along the glacier on the Fang (mountain) approach march before, climbing back up again. The glacier was another world totally - underground caves and eerie, green unearthly pools of still water, and the rumble of distant rockfall and avalanches.

6. Chitrasali, Nepal - The worst of the lot. It nearly spelt the end of my academic life when due to time zone miscaluculations, guaranteed power outtages in the afternoon and crawling, sporadic internet in the Terai plains of Nepal, i very nearly, and i mean very nearly, missed my subject registration exercise for the new academic year.