disco/ bondage elephants????

Poor elephants... what were they thinking with these costumes???

Two of the hundreds of elephants we saw parading through Colombo this evening, along with many singers and dancers and people in an incredible range of outfits - boys with "3 legs", men with fake beards, people dressed with grannie masks, traditional looking dancers, people twirling plates on sticks high in the air, people dressed as monkeys, people dressed as bears... twas incredible. Think the festival has something to do with Shiva... much like one I went to in Nepal on this day 4 years ago (where did that time go???)... but then that doesn't necessarily make a load of sense as the elephants all belonged to a very very rich Buddhist temple and they were followed by 4 large Buddhas on trucks... wikipedia has failed me on this one... but perhaps I need to search harder.

Happy Valentines day

Happy Valentines day!

The hotel where I am (ahem) working decided to decorate the beach for Valentines day... so almost every tree has a big wooden heart nailed to it. Hopefully the non-working clientele of mostly middle aged European tourists on valentines minibreaks will enjoy it!

dum de dum

I have been bad at updating this... indeed I have a file of photos to upload at some point... but I haven't yet got around to it yet.

Instead... here are a couple from today...

First it was oven of glory... now it is PAN of glory... we got this beauty in the sales... it's built to last... and is red (for some reason this meant it was cheap... perhaps red is so last year)... looking forward to many a good stew stewed in here. mmmmm


Finally sorted out an album for our wedding photos. Was all a bit annoying with the first version having splodges on thus needing to be returned and then the 2nd version getting delivered to the wrong store, and they didn't take any contact details and so just sat on it etc. etc.
Anyway, in honour of the fact that today is Tsagaan Sar (Mongolian New Year) the photo of the page below has our Mongolian Toast written on it... and photos of the toast itself... which reminds me to get out the Chinggis tonight.
Bunting by HRH the Nadj. Toast Courtesy of Munson Whites.


Indeed perhaps Tsagaan Sar deserves a blast from the past. So here is me -8 years, sitting in my ger, wearing a del, in front of my most wondrous fire that kept me varying degrees of toastyness all winter. Those were the days!