I asked a friend to send me a photo from his library that I could use for this post. I said, ‘I’m off to India tomorrow, have you got something apt, an image that says travel, something I can use to tell my readers that I’m on the road and may not be posting that much for the next 3 weeks.’

He sent me this hippie shirt — drying on a line. I mean, am I a hippie?

Our permit stuff-up

I’m finally heading to India after a few false starts and some troubles with a permit. The permit, a Protected Area Permit (PAP) is required by the Indian Government in order to stay in the Tibetan Settlement of Bylakuppe, which is in South India, near Mysore.

My wife was going there to teach English and geography for a couple of months and I was staying with her and then travelling up north to do some work with Buddha’s Smile School.

Anyway, we sent all the necessary documents to Delhi more than 4 months ago. They were sent via His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s office in Australia, so we know the Indian Government got them. However, we are still yet to see hide or hair of the permits.

One might say, if one wasn’t being very Zen and cool about it all: ‘What a complete and utter stuff-up, guys!!’

Forget that we offered this as a freebie. Forget the waisted money spent on air tickets and a hotel and the time we spent finding/buying teaching aids, etc. Forget all that because I am being very Zen about it all. Like hell I am.

One of my obsessions over the past few years has been to try and reduce my travel technology down to a couple of items — namely a smart phone (Treo 680) and a digital camera (Panasonic FZ5).

The Treo 680 contains all my travel information and contact details and on the road I also use it to browse the Internet and to send and receive emails. I also write stuff and send it out in MSWord format with the help of Documents to Go and my Palm Wireless Keyboard.

With a program called CallRec I can record anything from a phone conversation to the sound of a Indian Sitar. And with an 8GB SD-card full of ebooks and music and a video or two it also helps keep me occupied.

I’ve found my Treo to be so versatile I rarely need to travel with a laptop any more.

If you look around this blog you’ll notice that I’ve been a frequent traveller to India over the past few years. I really enjoy the place (I also hate it sometimes), but mostly I’ve been travelling there to work with a school for underprivileged children (Buddha’s Smile School) in Sarnath which is a suburb of Varanasi and spend time with my new found friend Sukhdev Singh (a great cook) and owner of the Sarnath Cafe and his wife Rajan who runs Buddha’s Smile School.

I’m currently in the process of packing for a 3-week trip and I thought I might share some of my packing decisions.

Travelling Light

I’m used to packing light — been doing it for years and so the thought of taking more than a few days clothes doesn’t really come into consideration for me. Other thoughts like: I don’t have any functions to attend. It’s coolish in Varanasi at the moment. It’s unlikely to rain much. These are more the sort of things that help me decide what I’m taking. This trip I reckon on:

4 short sleeve cotton t-shirts
2 long sleeve cotton t-shirts
2 long sleeved cotton shirts
2 pair of cargo pants
5 pair of socks
5 pair of undies
1 warm waistcoat
1 Kashmiri shawl
2 pair shoes
1 Rain/warmth jacket
1 money belt
1 small first-aid kit
1 torch
1 digital camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ5)
1 mobile phone (Treo 680)
1 Mac PowerBook Ti/G4 15″

I decided I really didn’t need my laptop. I can do almost everything I need to do (read, email, write, listen to music and surf occasionally) on my Treo 680.

I’m also packing various medical and toiletries stuff — tissues, soap, toothbrush, comb, ear buds, shampoo, hand cream (no laughing), stuff for diarrhoea, a saline nose spray and some panadol.

Originally, I though I’d get everything into a day bag (my name for a smallish rucksack) but I also have a few presents and some books to deliver so I’ll probably also take a small sports bag that I’ll check-in. I’ll use the day bag for my laptop and camera a change of clothes in Singapore and while I’m there I’ll use it as my, well ‘day bag’.

I’ve just bought this very cool Bluetooth stereo headset (Sony Ericsson HBH-DS980) and a smart piece of software called Softick Audio Gateway, a fast 8GB SD card and stuck it all on my Treo 680. Now I have heaps of music (pTunes) and a few audio books I can listen to (Audible) and some videos (TCPMP) I can watch while I’m on the road — and what’s more — it all just seems to work. Very cool!

Oh! I almost forgot — if you decide to call me while I’m bopping to the Beatles, then with this setup I can also answer your call using the headset. The music (and my bopping) will stop automatically and when I hang-up it all starts again, also automatically.

Lucky the Treo doesn’t have video conferencing — dancing is the sort of thing I only do in private these days — nuf said!

Pittwater Council just love signs. In fact, the more the merrier. Here’s one I really love telling you that rocks might fall from a cliff. The path where the sign is leads to Bilgola Beach pool and along with the car parking, no dogs, no swimming here, no surf boarding there, the Council erected this and other signs to warn you that rocks might fall on your head from the cliff above — a bit hard to believe since they wrapped the whole dam cliff in wire mesh a few years ago

Sometimes life turns so fast that you’re left wondering if it’s for real. Like one minute you’re all organized and packed and going to India on Sunday and the next minute you’re not. I don’t mind change. It keeps me on my toes.