Not updated as regularly as news sites or Google, but a social document all the same, this village noticeboard is updated every Sunday morning. Amongst ads for local businesses, recent items have included a talking Quaker parrot (for sale), a stud (available for hire) in the form of an obliging terrier (no appointment required?) and Teddies for Tragedies - an appeal to knitters with soft hearts ... (image)

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No golf today, I'm afraid - but Marian and I had a good coffee and catch-up session at the club. My, how posh we sound, ho ho. She had a fantastic holiday and is now determined to visit Florence for longer than five minutes (they were on a cruise) - which is a sentiment I entirely agree with. Florence is of course one of the best cities in the world, along with Prague. I love them both for different reasons and can never decide which is my favourite. Both, probably. Though Florence has the best men. You can't go wrong with an Italian ...


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The Story of the Magic Yak


In August/September 2007 I undertook a trek starting in Pargham Kashmir and ending in Lama Yuru Zanskar. The trek took about 20 days in all and traversed nine passes all above 16,000ft. Now I’m hardly what one would describe as an athletic person and despite the advice I have often given my patients, I find exercise bone jarringly tiresome, painful and excruciating at best. Anyway some foolish whim rattled around my brain that it would be a good idea to exercise this tired old frame and get my tush up a few mountains.

The trek started with one day “excursions” in Kashmir with the knowledge of hot showers and a warm comfy bed to go back to at the end of an arduous day. Gradually these so called excursions graduated in difficulty until the, “comfy bed”, syndrome was completely discarded in favour of a lumpy rubber mat, sleeping under canvas scenario. For those of you who think this is romantic, think again, it’s hard, dusty, often cold, tiring and painful, yet the rewards of high mountain vista’s do compensate, a bit! Would I do it again, possibly, once the memories of sore muscles and relentless fatigue have diminished.

I am not relating the entire trek in this short narrative, but one event stood out amongst all others and it is this rather mystical experience, which I shall recount.
It was the 11th September, I had been trekking for what appeared to be a lifetime, so many passes, “you seen one mountain you seen ‘em all”, sprung to mind. I was tired, sore and my energy levels were at an all time low, and trust me if I had to climb one more pass I was on the verge of collapse. The day started with a pee at 4 am, I dragged myself from my warmish sleeping bag reluctantly, only because my bladder was distended to its maximum proportion. I exited the tent and tramped up a small hill, I felt something soft and cold falling from the sky. It was snowing, my mind attempted to assimilate the data, it was September and I was being snowed upon at 11,000 ft. Finishing my ablutions I rapidly headed back to the warmth of my sleeping bag hoping it was just a dream.

I awoke at about 6 am, stuck my head out of the tent to see a white winter wonderland as far as I could see. Breakfast came and went, then donning fleece, (my anorak was buried in my rucksack at this point and straddled across a pony) I trudged after my guide out of the camp. The sun was low on the horizon and it was still a little dark, but the crunching underfoot told me that the previous nights’ vision was not a hallucination, it had snowed and now the path was increasing its inclination. Up and up we went ever higher. After two hours we hit the slopes of Singhe-La a 17,000ft monster. Higher and higher we went, traversing small paths and negotiating rocks, boulders and shale. The snow started to fall even though the sun was now well above the horizon. The small delicate flakes gradually transformed into golf ball sized gobs of snow. I was soon shivering and covered in a good cover of white.

Eventually we arrived at the summit of Singhe-La. It was a complete white out and at least half a metre deep. Tibetan flags fluttered and the Stupa (half hidden by snow) marked the peak of the pass. I was beginning to think that this was it, I would freeze up here and be lost forever. Visions of “Cliffhanger”, Vertical Limit” sprang to mind. Pictures were taken as mementos of the traverse to the peak, I grinned bravely, my mind gradually weaving in and out of terror. Then the rest of the party arrived with ponies and my back pack with anorak. The porters seeing my shivering knees, unpacked my anorak and I put it on gratefully. Looking down the other side of the pass renewed the terror; there was no path to be seen, just a landscape of white escarpment with vicious chasms in all directions.

The porters and guides scratched their heads looking for the path down. No-one was moving and ponies looked bored. I sheepishly asked where the trail was, in usual Indian/Kashmiri fashion there were vague waves, much head wobbling and, much discussion, yet we were still not moving and it was still snowing hard.

As my heart sank a little deeper I happened to look through the snowfall to my left across the pass. There in stark contrast to the white snow there was a beast. The beast was huge, with massive horns, long back hair and a long tail. It was levitating, well at least it looked like it was levitating, its levitation being interspersed with occasional landings in a sort of manic hopping. This was a Yak, a huge black Yak, on spring loaded feet by all accounts. It was literally jumping vertically as if to attract attention. Then off it sped downhill at a tremendous pace. The guides, ponies and porters stared in amazement and then all shouting, head wobbling at once, they all followed the Yak on its downward mission. It created a path in its wake that we could all follow. Down, down, down we all went, the Yak still on a roll, continued to bounce like Tigger in Winnie the Pooh, “Yaks Bounth”, sprang to mind and I laughed as we trounced down the newly created path to safety.

Once we had reached the river bed the hyper-active Yak, as quickly as it had appeared, disappeared from sight. I was back from the abyss, safe and sound and grinning with delight. I had traversed the highest pass in Zanskar and thanks to the Magic Yak was heading to the next camp where hot Chai and chapattis and honey awaited.

I shall forever remember that yak, the yak that “bounthed”……..

© Michael Smith 2008

Yes. NON-fiction. Not something I mention on here very often - for all sorts of reasons, mostly because the majority of non-fiction I read is for research. Which is no bad thing, and I'm certainly not making excuses for it. It's just the way things are - I don't have the time to read anywhere near as many books as I'd like to (and I do read a lot).

Anyway. Back to the point.
I read The Ghost With Trembling Wings for pleasure. And I was hooked. I was glued to it. It is a wonderful book.

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AmazonClicks.com launched this project in September and already have writers from across the USA, Europe, India and Australasia.

We are still welcoming writers who wish to take part in the unique project to collaboratively write a Novel in one year starting January 2009.

Royalties from the finished book will be shared equally by the writing team and given the huge scale and international scope, major interest is expected when it is released.

Full details about the project including how to apply are available at www.AmazonClicks.com.

If you've got what it takes to work in collaboration, take a look and see how it will be accomplished!

Pete

Well, it has taken a little while but I now have pictures I feel I can actually use on my blog (thank you Yitz Wolf for the wonderful B&W pics!) so now I can reveal all.

I couldn't even begin to think about planning my book launch party until I knew I had enough books in the country to be able to sell them - it is interesting that I had to think of the launch as part-celebration, part mass-marketing opportunity, which was quite strange, pulling in two directions......

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This is my first book, I'd appreciate some objective reviews as I'm trying to get published.

TREKKING THE PATH

Michael Smith © 2008

Synopsis

This is the true story of a spiritual journey combined with a very real adventure across the Great Himalayas. A journey on foot that began in Dharamsala, Northern India, home of His Holiness Fourteenth Dalai Lama, as well as that of the author. The journey took the form of a 21 day trek across the Kashmir Valley and into the remote area of Zanskar, traversing nine passes all above 4000 metres and ending in the city of Leh, Ladakh. I undertook this journey accompanied by my girlfriend, two guides and several pack horses. The story describes the hardship of high altitude trekking and makes parallels with Buddhist philosophy, describing both the scenery and the mental and physical difficulties experienced over the duration of the trek. Experiences are also drawn from my earlier visits to India that provide the basic background that leads to this particular journey.
I retired from a successful business in the U.K in March 2006 to live in Dharamsala and study Buddhist philosophy. With hardly any trekking experience, and with some reluctance, I decided to undertake one of the most difficult and physically demanding treks in India. The story begins with a chance meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and interlaces experiences of Buddhist philosophy, a three month long meditation retreat along with the physical and mental demands of high altitude trekking in one of the most scenic and remote areas of the world. It is a unique journey of discovery and adventure including, exhaustion in a snow storm at 18,000 ft, meeting a wild Yak that literally rescued me and showed our party the way down from a high altitude pass through a snow storm, how we encountered a snow leopard, climbed a remote glacier and swam in a freezing high altitude lake.
Learning about Buddhist philosophy is one thing, applying it to every day life and especially the hardships of trekking is a completely different ball-game; this is the story of that ball-game.

Talking about Nathan Bransford's Worst Advice a friend - a published children's writer who lives in Europe and who's also an experienced bookseller - said this:

"I know certain people locally, who are writing children's books. Some of these people have got 4 blogs and websites each. But they don't have the published work to back it up. They put masses and masses of effort into networking and publicity but they treat the book itself as secondary. One of them had a bullet-pointed to-do list for the year which went something like: 'Approach agent. Get agent. Approach publisher. Get publisher. Get book translated. Sell European rights.' I've read her book and it needs an awful lot of work before she's close enough to send it out. These are also people who 'don't have time' to read children's books. I find this terribly depressing. It's as if they think they deserve publication just because they're so determined to get it - not because they've taken the time to make the actual book good, or because they've bothered to find out what they don't know about the publishing process (such as if you get an agent, they'll sell the rights for you) and fill in the gaps in the knowledge. Maybe they've had some bad advice in their time - I don't know."

I suspect they have had some bad advice, but I also suspect it's a cultural thing, which stems from the combination of the Protestant work ethic - that hard work is always rewarded - and the conviction that you don't get anywhere unless you set yourself a goal and then work towards it.


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Ah, you can always tell when Christmas (arrggh! The "C" word, so soon - many apologies indeed ...) is nearly upon us when we hear tell of the first of the Christmas hunk calendars - so here's to the lovely Toronto firefolk (see full post for links) who are A1 cute and also supporting a good cause, so get buying, people! I'm planning one for me and one for Mother ...

And my eyebrows were further raised today by the realisation that the good people at Macmillan Publishers paid a visit or two to my website yesterday. Well, goodness me indeed. It's not often I can put myself in the same sentence as a mainstream publisher, you know (well, never, actually ...) so I cannot pass on the opportunity to do so now. As you can see. And this year is turning out to be a record year, as I think from memory that Penguin visited in the summer. Gosh indeedy. I'm hoping I can make it into a bumper season and catch a third. Votes on Harper Collins anyone? What a triumvirate that would be! Mind you, as they're probably only popping in for lessons in how not to be (a) a proper author, or (b) a viable option, then perhaps I don't need to get my best dress out just yet ...




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As you can see from my fancy new blog logos, I am delighted to announce my Virtual Book Tour, part of Salt Publishing's new Cyclone programme.

The "Walking the White Road: flash, fiction and science" tour will kick off on October 28th on the Keeper of the Snails blog, and then wend it's away around the world, from the UK to the US, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, ending up at Thoughts from Botswana at the end of December. Much more than I could ever have done in person, without being exhausted and bankrupt! The idea is that each tour date will cover a different aspect - of writing, of my stories, of the writing life, of the fusion of science and art, etc...

Click on the image above to go to my Cyclone tour page for details of all the blogs and tour dates. More information on tour topics and the participating blogs very soon.

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