Gokarna

Pussy

Local cat, outside the general store, Gokarna. I used the zoom lens for this one. It wasn't best pleased.

Nirvana

The temple town of Gokarna has long been a place of retreat for me. Here I find my piece of perfect India. It is an intimate town, full of colour and noise and a place for Hindu pilgrims to pay their respects to Lord Shiva and to the ancient idol of one of the most loveable of all the Hindu gods - Ganesha. Gokarna people are just beautiful, full of warmth, graciousness and kindhearted smiles. They've been surprisingly tolerant of the endless parade of freaks (myself included) which have trickled in and out of their space over the past few years. Gokarna has long been a kind of nirvana for the old Goa crowd who showed up here several years ago when Goa started to become just that little bit overcrowded. The four beaches are Kudle Beach, Om Beach, Half Moon and Paradise. The number of tourists here has slowly increased, but it still retains a charm and an ambience I've yet to find anywhere else in India.

I recently took a boat to Paradise, the most remote beach, to spend a few idyllic days. Paradise it is. It's a tiny place with three small coves of white sand, a coconut grove, and a smattering of bamboo huts. The huts themselves have no electricity and no running water - just a simple mattress on a hard stone floor. Almost immediately I begin to make new friends among the small community of local people, blissed out hippies, old-timers and a few Israelis. Israelis, by the way, are an absolute fixture on the pancake trail of India wherever you travel, almost as much as the chai wallahs, the business-savvy gurus, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With the Israelis I partook in the traditional Friday night dinner - on this occasion dahl, rice, roti and alu gobi - followed by a small fire on the beach which was then taken away unexpectedly by a sudden wave. Kingfisher beers were appreciatively consumed, a few games of cards were played by a flickering candlelight, and conversation went on until the small hours. How could I not be in my element? Paradise though has its drawbacks, and there's little one can do about the annoyance of mosquitos when one forgets to pack ones fucking mosquito net. Still, you can't have it all. Endless games of frisbee were played at the beach during daytime, broken by regular dips into the Arabian Sea; clear, cool and forgiving.

For some reason I never seem to be able to hang on to sandals. I must've bought at least twelve pairs over the past three years, all of them lost or stolen. Typically, the latest pair of sandals were left behind on the fishing boat which took me out to Paradise.

So there I was yesterday, walking barefoot through Gokarna town, with dirt on my feet, my hair matted with saltwater and sand, with my skin ravaged by the glorious and nourishing Indian sunshine. I dodged the sacred cows, wandered past the half-naked sadhus, through the snaking crowds of pilgrims, with the endless sound of mantras and ragas and temple bells ringing in my ears. On days like this when I wonder where the hell I am, I realise I am exactly where I always wanted to be.

Bombay, India

So I escaped the winter blues of England and hopped over to my beautiful India. No rest for the wicked. My mates Mirco and Shiran are with me. I spent good times with them in Cambodia and China. They met me at the airport, looking emaciated. That's what India does to you. Mirco is German and Shiran is Israeli - I adore them both and I'm dead chuffed they're here. They have a few issues with India, not least with the great contrasts of the place, with the pushing and the shoving, with the stares and the grabbing, and so on. China is still in their hearts but I'm determined to show them the positive side of this magnificent place. I've been in Bombay for a few days now, staying at the apartment of friends Saurabh and Bhaphna. They've been excellent hosts, the best in fact, giving us the run of their place, taking us to the finest restaurants in town, and just generally taking care of us
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Goodbye, Donald Rumsfeld

"If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond, cleverly."

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." –on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

"We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead."

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

"Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
–on looting in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, adding "stuff happens"

"[Osama Bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive."

"I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work." -asked to estimate the number of Iraqi insurgents while testifying before Congress.

"I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said."

"Needless to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said."

"as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

"If I said yes, that would then suggest that that might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate, necessarily accurate. It might also not be inaccurate, but I'm disinclined to mislead anyone."

"There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist." -on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction

"It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." -in Feb. 2003

"Learn to say 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be often."

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know."

"I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty."

"I don't do diplomacy."

"I don't do foreign policy."

(Donald Rumsfeld, 21st Secretary of Defence under President George W Bush, 2001-2006. With gratitude to Daniel Kurtzman at Political Humor.)