The events in Mumbai would be hard to digest in the most detached of circumstances, but empathy and worry for Lori, who has to digest them as events of her own country, combined with concern for any impact the events may develop to have on my own travel plans, and therefore on my rare opportunity to see my girlfriend, make them impossible to digest ( Read more... )

First block of fourth year is finished. I’d been dreading it all summer, now it has whizzed by uneventfully in a mundane, time consuming rhythm. Each morning I’d get up somewhere in between 6:30 and 7:00 depending on how touch sensitive the snooze button on my mobile is feeling, scramble across the room until my lenseless eyes are inches from my ( Read more... )

As a medical student, I should really have known better than to start smoking. On top of the generally accepted wisdom that smoking is an addiction to the pursuit of all things cancerous, I have had the countless other diseases it increases the chances of and decreases the survival of drilled into my skull as a weapon to drill into others skulls. ( Read more... )

Along with peanuts, soft drinks, hard drinks, lip stuck smiles, strangely satisfyingly packed food and futile emergency plans, planes have a habit of hurling at you heaps of useless information as to your exact location. It's a nice touch as it grants an inane grasp of your surroundings as the plane hurls you into (half the time) complete ( Read more... )

If Bangalore blew my brains with it's sheer intensity, the few places I have been since are picking at the leftovers with their sheer variety. I feel like a speechless child gobsmacked by the ultimate theme park where every corner hides a new world completely at odds to the last. Just as Pondicherry saved us from the inescapable busyness of ( Read more... )

Our month of volunteering now complete, we chose Pondicherry, an old French colony on the east coast, as our first stop on our travels round India, in the hope of finding some fireworks for Bastille day. Unfortunately, while a sense of Frenchness persists in the language, food, tourist population,lazy afternoon business hours, street names and ( Read more... )

I had decided to only write in this diary once a week, to collect all my thoughts, organise them and present them in a way that characterises the whole week, rather than splattering random details onto pages whenever i get the chance ( Read more... )

A damsal in distress finally finds a train to take her home. Her savior sits on top of a carriage of hay, the train’s cargo. She sits on top of the next hay mound, and as her captor asks her name she is disturbed to the core by the noise of the trains rickety wheels on the track, impossibly whispering ‘Hump between the stations, hump between the ( Read more... )

im having a brilliant time in india ( Read more... )

Sometimes I get an idea which excites me. My heart races, my fingers tremble and my coordination fails me as I relish the thought of turning it into a reality. After the initial excitement I'm left with a feeling of well being and contentment which can carry me through the rest of the day. Soon the idea becomes a distant memory that I no longer ( Read more... )