Friday 27 September 2013

Image of the day - Bishnoi life

As promised here's another couple of my favourite images, again from our trip to India back in in 2010 / 11.

We spent new year's day with the Bishnoi tribe in their desert home.

These pictures are of the tribal elder whose lined face shows the price that his hard life has taken. 

 The word Bishnoi is derived from bis (twenty) and nai (nine)

It is used to designate the followers of 29 principles given by Guru Jambheshwar who spread a very early eco frindly message to protect trees and wildlife around 540 years ago.

The tribes people adopt a very simple life, living in mud huts amongst their chickens, extended family and goats.



















The 29 Principles of Guru Jambheshwar
  1. Observe 30 days state of untouchability after child's birth
  2. Observe five days segregation while a woman is in her menses
  3. Bath early morning
  4. Obey the ideal rules of life: Modesty
  5. Obey the ideal rules of life: Patience or satisfactions
  6. Obey the ideal rules of life: Purifications
  7. Perform Sandhya two times a day (a religious ritual)
  8. Eulogise God, The Lord Vishnu in evening hours
  9. Perform Yajna every morning ( a ritual offering into a consecrated fire)
  10. Filter the water, milk and firewood
  11. Speak pure words in all sincerity
  12. Adopt the rule of forgiveness and pity
  13. Do not steal
  14. Do not condemn or criticise
  15. Do not lie
  16. Do not waste the time on argument
  17. Fasting on Amavashya and offer prayers to Lord Vishnu
  18. Have pity on all living beings and love them
  19. Do not cut the green trees, save environment
  20. Crush lust, anger, greed and attachment
  21. Accept food and water from our purified people only
  22. To provide a common shelter for male goat/sheep to avoid them being slaughtered in abattoirs
  23. Don't sterilise the ox
  24. Don't use opium (which our tribal elder must have forgotten!)
  25. Don't smoke
  26. Don't take bhang or hemp
  27. Don't take wine or any type of liquor
  28. Don't eat meat, remain always pure vegetarian
  29. Never use blue clothes

Thursday 26 September 2013

Image of the day

As I'm bang upto date with all my travel adventures and waiting eagerly to head off to Valencia, I thought I would take some time to highlight some of my favourite travels  photos from the past few years.

Some I have shared before, some I've dusted off and bought into the light for the first time. All of them evoke memories of amazing countries, incredible sights and a sense of adventure that reminds me of why I travel to begin with.

Today's photograph is one of my all time favourite snaps. Taken in the busy Sardar market in bustling, chaotic Jodhpur. We were on a whirlwind trip around Rajhasthan in North India, saturated in colour, noise, taste and humanity.

I had struggled to get any sharp shots of the shy women of the north, swathed in their jewel bright saris they would always look away or cover their faces.

Until I managed, or was allowed, to get this picture of one of the market stall women. It was only later at home that I actually got to appreciate the direct, frank gaze that she levelled on me!

It instantly takes me back to our first ever chaotic, polluted, dusty yet exhilarating visit to to India.

Thursday 19 September 2013

Trip advisor addict!!

It's official, I am addicted to the marvellous prosumer site Tripadvisor.

It seems impossible for me to stay in a hotel, visit an attraction, eat a meal or even look at a view, without getting on the laptop and tap tapping away at a review!

From local cafes and restaurants to wonders of the world, I've analysed, sized up, cogitated and commented on it.

These days I never book a hotel, trip or b and b without sizing it up on the great TA first. It generally works like this: 

1. pick the places we want to see,
2. decide how much we want to spend
3. check out the top rated accommodation on Tripadvisor.
4. gradually go down and down (and sometimes down again) the list until we find the best hotels that we can manage on our meagre budget.
5. Then it's onto various hotel booking sites to find the cheapest deal and hey presto - booked!

It's never failed me yet and I've yet to stay in a bad hotel thanks to my diligent research.

Obviously there's been a lot of talk about fake reviews, competitors leaving bad comments on their rival's sites and people threatening to leave bad reviews unless they get freebies / upgrades etc.

However it's usually easy enough to weed out the fakers, if there's 100s of brilliant reviews and then a couple of dire ones then I always take a look at the other reviews done by the people who are complaining.

Often there are no other reviews or they have only recently joined the site, whereas most genuine reviewers will have at least a few other contributions.

In-case you're interested, here's my contributions to date (316 so far!!) www.tripadvisor.co.uk/members-reviews/collymarps

Monday 9 September 2013

Leonard Cohen – Old Ideas Tour, Birmingham. September 8 2013

The smoothest pensioner in pop glides onto the stage and strikes a stance, legs apart, fedora tilted forward to hide his weathered, expressive face.

So begins the culmination of a lifetime's dream for me – to see the great man in person, to hear him perform songs that have haunted, sobered and uplifted me since I was old enough to hear them.
Part lecherous uncle, part evangelical preacher, the body may have aged but the wit, the pathos and the soul are as fresh as ever.
Watching him sink to his knees then shimmy around the stage like a fading Fred Astaire, we're captivated - just as surely as his infamous worm on a hook.
He solemnly addresses the crowd saying he knows that it's been a while as he didn't want to impose but then who knows when we'll meet again. A fleeting acknowledgement that, at his advanced age, this could well be his swan song tour - but boy what a swan song.
Seamlessly moving from tried and tested favourites such as Bird on a Wire, Suzanne and So Long Marianne to his later acerbic hits such as Darkness, Cohen has the audience in the palm of his hand from the get go.
At 79 while others are using a bus pass and reminiscing about lovers long gone, frisky ole Len still has a definite twinkle in his eye.

His cock of the walk soft shoe shuffle off stage left makes your heart throb far far more than an elderly man really should be able to manage.
His voice has aged, less like a fine wine and more like velvet covered gravel swirled in a vat of bourbon and then coated in ground glass. So low it reverberates in your feet, your heart and other places.
Sometimes a singer, sometimes a growling poet, crooning and seductive, plaintive and broken but always fascinating, riveting, mesmerising.
In the sarcastic words of Len himself “I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice.”
A voice and a talent that the world rarely sees, and which will, all too belately, be celebrated and lauded when it finally moves to the tower down the track.
Part way through the show he muses that next year - when he turns 80 - he's decided to take up smoking again and waxes lyrical about the nurse in sweet little white shoes that he'll get to offer him up a cigarette on a silver tray, whilst massaging the bubbles from his IV tube.
Musings on growing old disgracefully aside, other highlights of the show included a bitter sweet lament to his thieving former manager Kelley Lynch to whom he ruefully says “we were both guilty.”
There's a stunningly simple version of Alexandria Leaving sung solo by Sharon Robinson and a barnstorming version of First We Take Manhattan, complete with flashing backlights - the closest thing you'll get to upbeat with Cohen.

A subdued version of Hallelujah changes the mood again, with white light strafing the audience as the angelic harmonies of backing singers Charley and Hattie Webb interweave with his rumbling take on love and loss.

He's a whirlwind one minute and an oasis of still contemplation the next. Limitless in his energy and humility, he's a one-man masterclass in showing them how it's done.
There's no backing dancers, costume changes, lasers or pyrotechnics needed, this man is pure entertainment, a 79 years young craftsman who calls himself “a lazy bastard in a suit”.
And what a suit, looking dapper and slick as ever Cohen electrifies the stage with his presence whether he's dropping to the floor to tell us a man never got a woman back by begging on his knees, to standing, hat in hand like a mourner in New Orleans, as the organ virtuoso Neil Larsen plays gospel.
I for one hope that he has many many more years left to create albums more of his introspective, intimate, sweeping, desolate and glorious work.
With all the drive, energy, talent and sardonic wit that he has at his disposal, when that glorious, gravelly voice finally calls closing time, the world will be a colder, darker and far less humorous place without him.


If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

Leonard Cohen.

Sunday 1 September 2013

Valencia - an unexpected extra trip!!

Wasn't expecting to manage to squeeze another trip in before the BIG one in December but we've managed it!!

Found cheap flights to Valencia in Spain for October so off for five nights to celebrate our 7th anniversary.

Not sure what to expect or what to see, so waiting for the obligatory guide book to arrive.

I do know that there is the futuristic looking science museum (which looks like the best swimming pool ever).

Watch this space to hear my observations / ranty moaniness - you know you love it . . . . .
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