Categories: travels
Date: 26 September 2007 04:23:10
I don't normally write serious stuff but I had to blog this.
So I climbed up the peak of Hong Kong Island yesterday. It was sweltering and humid and took around an hour, it wasn't the biggest hill I've ever climbed but it was rather steep. When I got to the top I could see down into the city and across the bay into Kowloon but looking in the other direction I could see the sea for the first time since I left the Baltic states. All this time over thousands of miles I've been travelling overland. For a British person, not being near the sea is an unusual concept (given that we are never more than 70 miles from the sea at most). Suddenly in front of me is water, water with no visible shore in the distance. Something else happened too.
I have been feeling tired and not quite myself recently. All this travel feels like my soul has...eroded slightly. Maybe it's the Sherpa thing, when you travel you need to stop every now and again because your soul travels much slower than you do.
I stood looking at the sea and then I saw something small coming up off the sea. It's wings were static. It was a bird of prey (perhaps a falcon or an eagle - they were pretty big) lazily riding up the thermals of the mountain and then it was joined by two more and they reached the peak and hung in the air for a few minutes before plunging down the other side of the hill to be lost amongst the artificial canyons of the skyscrapers. Watching them made me feel a bit less tired and maybe a bit regretful to be going home...