10 – Homeward Bound

Canggu – Ao Nang – Chiang Mai

“The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry” – wrote Robert Burns, and it’s been up to us to adapt to the vagaries of travel and changes of circumstances.

Three things have resulted in us re-addressing our planning and deciding to return soon to China. The drowning of my Nikon D3x, my workhorse camera – arranging visas for prolonged stays, and  the launch of our new Website – www.whytake.net

From the moment we left Uluwatu on the 13th November, we’ve been slowly making our way home. Ages ago, we’d booked a week in a private villa in Canggu – a quiet retreat with a small pool, sharing it with the Belgian owner. Perfect except for an erratic and irregular internet connection, which played havoc with the launch of the web site on 11/11/11.

Once again we rented a small motorbike, the ubiquitous transport of the island, and would join seemingly hundreds of thousands of others on the congested roads every evening, making our way to one of the beaches for a touch of sunset and some night photography if the conditions allowed. And every night I would get back to our small room with a spine feeling like electrified steel! The ride back in the dark was always a grim affair – pot-holed roads, rats, toads, dogs, children, cats, cows and even snakes appearing on the road before my feeble headlight. Then the traffic – young lads overtaking texting on their mobile phones! That one takes some doing!

But, we always made it back, always safe and always unscathed. The best kind of adventures, ones with happy endings.

And all-too-soon we were in our last few hours of Bali-time. How appropriate to be spending them in a traffic jam, the taxi making glacial progress through the clogged streets. Tourist traps of steel and neon set among a rural landscape simply unprepared for this century. Once again, my eye is drawn to the conical volcano of Mount Agung – gazing over the island with thinly-veiled contempt.

Ao Nang is a little over 2 hours from Phuket airport on the west coast of the Thailand Peninsula. The landscape is one of limestone karsts and azure waters, really quite idyllic when you’re not sat in a room working online! It’s quiet by Thai resort standards, and seems largely unchanged from my first visit there in January 2000. We punctuate our hours working with walks along the beach – not as luxurious as the Phuket beaches of golden sand, but not too shabby either. A pack of dogs decides to circle me, snarling threateningly, but I keep them at bay wielding my tripod – thank you Gitzo.

But, even these walks are cancelled, millions of tiny, glass-clear crabs flee before our bare feet and avoiding crushing them is a stressful obsession! We make our way out of the crab zone and restrict our beach walking activities!

However, a remarkable twist of circumstance allows us to meet up with Spanish Nature Photographer Oscar Dominguez, who was passing through with his fiancé. We’d last seen each other a year ago at over 4000m below Ama Dablam near Everest in Nepal – so great to see them – and such a juxtaposition from our last meeting.

On Monday 28th November we made our last hop before home, returning to Chiang Mai to apply for my Chinese visa. On the 5th we fly back to Kunming, Yunnan and make our way home – Lijiang, at 2500m in the very eastern edge of the Himalaya. After spending most of the last year on beaches, cliffs and rock pools, planning my days by the tide, waves, wind and weather, the lure of the big mountains is screaming like a symphony in my head.

I can imagine the pinched breaths as we climb higher, that odd lethargy from fit legs. As I celebrate my 45th birthday next month, I am keen to exploit my still youthful spirit for some years more – the land of Yaks, the smell of ice in the air, deepest friendship with a Lama soon to be rekindled.

A smile touches my lips as I write these last few lines, my eyes drift to the window, giant banana leaves sway through the mosquito screen, the smell of barbecue, lemongrass and limes drifts up from the restaurant below. Tonight we’ll dine in the night bazaar with old friends who’re spending the winter here, escaping the worst of the Lhasa winter, with air so dry your nose bleeds. Soon enough, we’ll be there again, juniper smoke calling us home.