I’m afraid I missed the humour in your last post Slightly.  The mild allusion that I may be cretinous was not missed.  However, I will forgive and forget on the assumption you were overcome with the heat!  Hope you are enjoying your travels and I look forward to hearing more of your adventures.

Dodgy shorts, questionable stomach

Neil in St Pol

Bouledoux at St Ceb

The long and winding road to the beach

Poor Hannah. I hope that it’s an ironic thing being named after the smiling cretin from Steps. Also we will be in Goa in about a month, burning up in the sun. Your olds may just get a surprise from some friendly faces.

I suppose the monkeys are acustomed to travellers having loads of goodies in their bags. Hope Sasha is still ok.

The ever-looming prospect of bird flu is concerning me at the moment as it seems that the fogies are off to goa just before the chickens have to be slaughtered by decree of parliament, leaving the task to myself and H. Thankfully H is willing to snap their necks if I hold them!

No footy this week, which makes three whole weekends without exercise. Well, apart from some walking in Cornwall and a jolly game of golf today with solid and his friend Chris. We played a form of matchplay, where the winner of a hole gets 2 points and second gets 1 and last 0. We thought if might make things more interesting and competative but I’m not really sure it did!

Paul Twitchell, an ordinary looking, almost ominously clean-cut American, having learned the art of soul travel, claims he is able to meet, while in his soul body, the soul body of Sudar Singh, in the astral realm known as Sach Khand; he is also able to pay visits to a five hundred year old man in a hut high up in the Himalayas, without ever leaving his Connecticut home.

“After extensive exploration of Sach Khand (Fifth spiritual plane), Sudar Singh granted me permission to proceed on my own through the spiritual worlds. It was through Sudar Singh while travelling in the Soul body, that I met Rebazar Tarzs and intensified the study of the world called The Far Country, during a lengthy visit with him in the Himalayas above Darjeeling.

Later, with Gail, my wife, I came to know Rebazar Tarzs better. He talked several times to us. I began to leave the body at night and meet with him at his mud and brick hut in the Himalayas.

Rebazar Tarzs is a man who looks to be in his middle thirties, but many, including Yaubl Sacabi (another explorer of The Far Country), say that he is well over five hundred years old in his physical body.

Tarzs’ black hair is cropped closely, and is curly enough not to bother him in the fierce winds from the icy mountains. His beard is coal black and trimmed close. His eyes are shining coals of dark fire, his lips purple and his speech a clipped style as he barks words to emphasise points he is making. His flesh is dark, swarthy from the hot sun and winds. His feet are large, generally encased in sandals, but he often goes barefooted through the rocks and sand. They are as dark as walnut stain.

Rebazar Tarzs lives alone in his little, mud-brick hut high on a cliff above a torrential blue river, roaring out of the high glaciers across the valley into the plains to feed the teeming millions, six hundred miles to the south in the vast sweltering midlands.

Often leaving his physical body on the rude cot inside the hut, Rabazar Tarzs goes to the Tuza who needs his help, or to teach in one of the temples of the Far Country.”

Yesterday was supposed to be a beautiful day in which we made the pilgrimage to the top of Arunachala – the holy mountain where Shiva is said to have appeared as I plume of fire.

Unsurprisingly climbling 950 meters in 30-something degree heat isn’t very easy – and the climb was surprisingly steap. An English guy said that it would take about 1 hour and a half but it took us more like 3 and half hours. I was pretty amazed and impressed that Sasha had decided to come too at the last minute.

We eventually got to the top, sweat dripping profusely down my face and into my eyes because I was also carrying provisions and 2.5 litres of water (though Sasha took it for half an hour). We were exhausted and the top was covered in oil because they set fire to it every year for a festival- we both agreed it hadn’t been worth the effort. We sat down on two ledges next to each other on the side of the mountain – Sasha with the bag, when two monkies started to purposefully climb towards us from below. They headed straight for Sasha and the bag - I told her to watch out but she just froze and quick as a flash one of the monkeys approached and attacked her! It was grabbing at the bag and clawing at Sasha. I left over to her ledge and scared them away – she was fine but had suffered a two inch scratch on her back near her shoulder. It wasn’t deep and she wasn’t bleading but it had happened very quickly and she was quite shaken.

We made our way down and were advised by the ashram to go to see a doctor and get rabies vacinations for her just in case. Bites are worse then scratches and the monkies almost certainly weren’t rabid. We got an appointment at 6:30pm and Sasha was prescribed three antibiotics and the rabies vacination. The doctor said we had to buy them ourselves from a chemist. However none of the three pharmacists he recommended had the vacination and we were left wandering around the town in the dark between chemists trying to get directions from locals who spoke only slightlt more English than we spoke Tamil. Eventually the fifth chemist recommeded somewhere that thank goodness, when we got there actually had the shots we needed. Exhausted we went back to the doctor who administered the first injection and then to have dinner in a restaurant recommended by The Lonely Planet. Both out dishes turned out to consist of very spicey tomatoe puree, lots of oil and not much else – gross. After some hassle with a rickshaw driver we eventually got back to the ashram.

Bad dad. Although we’ve been here two weeks they seem to have been very eventful and it seems more like two months. Sasha is fine this morning – we are off to Auroville in an hour.