louiseinlimbo

My Mum really is not well, mostly from long-term conditions (including Multiple Sclerosis, Ankylosing Spondylitis and Rheumatoid Arthritis), her 40+ years of anorexia, a gastric ulcer – and more recently with dementia.   She does not enjoy her life, but as we don’t have an ‘off switch’ she continues to wake up each morning to suffer yet another day of physical pain and mental distress.   She loves my visits but does not want me to stay at her place – far too stressful (I might put things back in the wrong place…), and my presence will lead to her using more electricity and gas which will increase her expenses.   So I booked myself into my usual hostel, with the understanding that I would take day trips out to my Mum’s house. Visiting her is stressful.   She doesn't stop talking but often starts sentences then can’t remember what she was trying to say.   She has frequent panics about where she put her purse/keys/some important piece of paper.   She struggl...

My organised tour ended with a flight to Delhi, and I knew it was the time to find a dentist, to look at one of my teeth from which a big chunk had fallen off on the flight into the country three weeks earlier – thankfully I hadn’t suffered any pain, even though the hole was large.  I went to a dentist in a chain that had been recommended to me by several people, and they dealt with me professionally, filling the hole.  However, they told me that the reason for the damage was that the tooth was next to an unfilled gap I’ve had for many years (decades?) – apparently the bone slowly recedes, which causes the neighbouring teeth to slowly move.  They told me that if I didn’t fill the gap, I would get more problems with these teeth, probably eventually losing them.  Apparently I needed a crown. I’ve never had a crown before so do not know whether this is the standard procedure, but I went back the next day for them to drill a hole in the gum and then screw in a titanium s...

  After the festival, we had a couple of days driving through the Zanskar Valley, from Leh to Padum and on from there to Kargil.  They were long drives, but very enjoyable ones as the scenery was absolutely stunning – harsh, rocky mountains, snowy peaks, and the occasional glacier.  We did also visit some more monasteries, including the Karsha Monastery where as well as the usual colourful paintings on all the walls, they have this icon in the photo, made partly from mummified human remains!  The hostile relationship with neighbouring Pakistan became more apparent here, from the Kargil War Memorial to the used Pakistani shell decorating our hotel.  & we started to see the army presence along the roads, with armed soldiers stationed every half mile or so.  It didn’t feel dangerous though – or at least not in that sense.  Natural disasters such as rock falls feel like a far greater threat, and it was quite shocking to see some houses near a recent la...

  Per the tour group literature, one of the high points of this trip was the Hemis Tsechu (festival), held annually for the last 300 years or so at Hemis Gompa (the largest Buddhist monastery in Ladakh) to honour the birth of Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism.   It didn’t figure particularly highly in my reasons for selecting this particular tour, but I have to admit that it was pretty impressive! Over the course of this the second (main) day of the festival, there are some ten different sets of masked performers doing their dances in the central courtyard, accompanied by musicians playing a few different musical instruments, particularly various trumpet/bugle-type things – some of them also masked.  I did buy a guidebook to the festival, which enabled me to label my photos, but really … this is a sample extract describing the first set of mask dancers: “The thirteen black hats’ or evil terminators’ dance represents the Nagpa tradition of Vajrayana practition...