Cronies

Old manali, early evening.

And thoughts about age, how here the weight and strain of years of subsistence is written, or is it carved, upon the faces. In some ways I think upon photos of hebridean faces taken a hundred years or so ago. The same sense of weathering, the same ridged landscapes of weather and experience. and a hundred years pass, the world moves on and yet, here, life still strains to the exertions of mountain life, to the echoes of times past: in one romantic train of thought where the people and the landscape are no longer separable...

And so the next morning begins with the mow too typical intestinal rumbling and explosions...and sunshine. A day to gamble upon reaching a destination...

Maybe it's in part life at 2200m and in particular the giardia but these last days have been spent doing little other than sitting watching the world go by. Am staggered by the scale of the place, there are places just to drop out and watch the clouds as they pass their shadows upon snow, as the river tumbles. Places where traffic seems more suggestion than fact. And it becomes so easy to stay, no rush, no worries... But...it's still that corner, that horizon; places heard of and unseen...and if that means Russian roulette with toilets upon the way....

But it's 0839, if I go I need five minutes to pack, to arrange bill...or I could climb back up to yesterday's place and watch the mountains erode in the slow winds....But I think...