Kampot, the sleepy town with sunsets to almost rival Cardigan bay in November

"You are a little rebel" said my grandmother, I liked the word, and enjoyed rolling it over my tongue because it sounded like pebble, and at the time I had a fascination with them.

Last night, gazing over the moonlit river at Kep, lying on a beanbag, and enjoying the local poison, I remembered the scene vividly - be careful what you say to little ones!

The Bodhi villa is as close to the perfect chillout spot as possible, and has a d1verse (divers)crowd, a number of whom have sold everything to travel, trusting in some force or organising principle was tending the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope the great Hunter Thompson was wrong to call it the mythic fallacy of the hippy movement, I'm still wearing my thai pants with pride, and practicing massage with anyone who sits still long enough!

While I still have a base in Swansea, it still a source of inspiration and some trepidation that thoughts that arise about the ugly lovely town have very little significance to the day here.

With that in mind I have been practicing daily ashtanga, my thanks go out to all the teachers and students I have met and encouraged me along this path.

The idea of the pilgrimage, seems a better description than the hero's quest my current travels. Two years since my last trip, this time in the company of a great friend from home, the experience is very different. In someways I feel previous adventures were an initiation. Less starry eyed, more compassionate the words from Auldous Huxley's Doors of perception, written about his own psychedelic fueled trip to that other side, come to mind:-

"The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend. "

Deep learning, of the type I have been hoping to achieve will always come at a price, and this trip too in carbon dioxide emissions, time, money and emotions seems a lot more effort than Huxley's 400g of mescaline. Self realization cannot be bought for 50c a tab, it is an ongoing process - but gradual steps through yoga, pranayama, and simply being present, are beginning to revive that feeling I first felt in India described by Blake as that state where:-

"every thing appears to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

Before anyone suggests this little hippy is going off on one - (What was the vedic term, Lyd?)this time my feet are solidly on the ground, thankyou to all who brought me back to this place, and supported my efforts even if they did not understand my motivations or methods.

Hope all are well, in what I hear is a real winter this time, here's hoping to a real summer on my return. Please do keep your emails coming, it is lovely to hear the details of your lives, you are all very much in my thoughts.

Jim x