Dog Blogs Travel Trips

Walking around in Macleodganj , Dharamshala about 6 years ago, I turned a corner and saw a tiny door to a tiny shop.  Rogpa sells items made by Tibetan women, and serves to integrate the Tibetan community in exile. Their aim is to create a self sufficient Tibetan community while preserving their culture and identity. This bag from Rogpa is perfect for daily use, fits my wallet, keys, lip balm, smoke pouch and other stuff. Over the years with daily use, it's soft and faded, and started ripping in places. The little clippy buckle also broke in the humid climate here in Goa . I replaced that with two travel hooks, and started stitching in patches wherever it would rip. Most people tell me to just get a new bag. But I like this one. It's handmade, and helped people when I bought it. It's traveled the country with me, and has seen some super bizarre shit.    I'm also thinking of a few things here, every time I choose to repair my bag as opposed to buying...

The last few days had been surprisingly lonely. I found out that it’s kinda tough to be happy all the time! Gah! I’d imagined me-the-invincible could do it! It was made worse as some friends had been visiting from Delhi and after they left, I suddenly realised my life was completely wrapped up in office affairs. Not that I’m complaining, but I’d been going to work every day, hung out after work with colleagues, and then went to the house where I lived with colleagues. It began to feel like I had no life beyond Video Volunteers. I spent a few nights staring at the ‘starfield’ screensaver on my computer, listening to music, thinking of friends and family. I thought ‘profound’ thoughts about how each pinpoint of white in the screensaver is a dot of happiness in my horizon. I thought about rushing into the mad world without knowing what it has in store for me. Spending a few hours on the beach with Pinky-the-puppy strangely didn’t help much as I had to leave Pinky behind. Despite a liber...

One morning in cold cold Delhi I woke up and felt like I'd just hit a massive  block in my life.Bangla ma’am had a great way of expressing that feeling. Only, she used it to describe her frustration with my pathetic spellings – she called it “hotasha”. Complete and overwhelming despair! And she spent hours painstakingly going over the difference between all the random bangla “sho”s. And I spent hours painstakingly researching organisations which would take as far away from Delhi as possible. And before I knew it - I was hugging Jess in Goa . Yes, yes, I work in Goa . Yes, yes, the Goa . Yes, yes and yes - land of sun sand and sea. And clear skies. And navy nights. And stars carelessly scattered around. And the fireflies with their lit up bums, flitting around and lighting my way when I’m gingerly stepping over the broken stairway to my office at night. And that oh-so-fat moon and bathes the backyard with a strange silver glow. There’s Baga the bitch who quivers with pleasure whe...