Football in the mountains...

Playing football in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal, Macchapucchare's snowy peak in the background. Running in jeans with borrowed, ragged boots, 2 sizes too small, on a pitch that was more swamp than grass, thanks to the monsoon. At least they said i looked like Cantona, even if i obviously don't play like him. And we had to (illicitly, i suppose) climb down a large drain to get into the field - reminds me of those good old days in Malaysia =)

The Nepalis, like the Indonesians, like to "buang" (clear) the ball from defence, punting it up for their strikers, who seemed to have mastered the first touch, pushing the ball instantly past you at an awkward angle and then sprinting after it. And boy are they fast.

We lost - i think the score was 2-0, and i played terribly - after too many steak and wine evenings on Lakeside, i suppose, but everyone had fun, and it was good exercise prior to tackling the base camp trail. I really was in terrible shape - the "triathlon" with my Dutch friend up the World Peace Pagoda, just on the outskirts of the lake - a challenging row, climb, and (almost) swim (if we had flipped the leaky wooden boat...) approach left me stoned and half-dead on top of the hill - polishing off Shantaram, sharing a smoke and talking with a wizened old Nepali farmer, who it seems, had a brother in Malaysia - which instantly makes you their new best friend, like cool (or was it the smoke). And then us rushing back again before 3 - the official time when the skies open, punctually, and inundate everything in sheets of water. Its funny, one of the first question everyone asks when they first arrive in Nepal mid-monsoon is do you think it will rain tomorrow. The answer, invariably: Yes. 3 o'clock. Why? How do you know? Guy points to the sky, wobbles his head and smiles. And tomorrow, at quarter to 3, when you smile to yourself and think ah but he is wrong, (damn i wished i had went paragliding today) the sky empties. Without warning. No thunder, no lightning - just sheets and sheets of (alpine) water sweeping down over the town, over Pokhara, creating so many silvery ripples in the flat-mirror surface of the lake and falling leaves....

Long termers count the number of monsoons they have been through. My neighbour, the Russian (with his cute 2 year old daughter) is a 5 monsoon-er. I am now a one-monsoon guy. And i absolutely loved it, the rain, everything. It was magic.