Back in the land
I’m hap-hap-happy to say that after a fantastic ~27 weeks away, the last of 11 flights brought me full circle back to Heathrow.
Needless to say a great deal has changed in the mean time, namely with the economy seeing some very dark days and the US undergoing regime change (or has it?).
It was a tumultuous time to be in some of these countries, too:
- Central and northern India in the grip of Islamist terror attacks that culminated in the horrifying slaughter of foreign nationals around the very spots of southern Mumbai that my friends and I had sat in just weeks before wearing the passports and speaking the language that would have got us selected and gunned down in the attack
- China in the aftermath of the hugely acclaimed Beijing Olympic Games, during National Golden Week that saw hundreds of millions of adoring and proud Chinese migrate to the capital to bask in the reflected glory and generally held optimism at China’s rising importance and respectability in the world – with just Tibet, a tainted milk scandal and a reasonably sharp regression to pre-Olympics press freedoms to sour the mood
- Japan as pressure was mounting on the latest prime minister to step down, as the world seemed to us to be gripped by Obamamania
- Thailand in the throes of political upheaval amidst a gigantic royal funerary procession for a long-dead relative of the royal family: a revered, almost godlike king thought to be on his deathbed; a judicial process that wiped out the ruling party and left the country rudderless for the few days leading up to our flight out; the main airport shut down by riotous, fascism-demanding PAD flashmobs;
By comparison, Australia, New Zealand and South America (Peru-Chile-Argentina-Brazil) all seemed to me to be rather docile!
The next few weeks will be interesting and particularly challenging for me, with work, accommodation and a general direction in life all on the “To Find” list…
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