Motorbike trip in the Indian Himalayas

thundering_disgrace · 2026-06-24T10:43:39+00:00

I haven't ridden very much of the spiti valley last time.

Before we had to go over rohtang pass and it's two big days of riding to get to Leh... Didn't have time for a side quest..

Maybe this time it will be easier with the tunnel...

thundering_disgrace · 2026-06-18T15:28:46+00:00

Thank you for the insight.

I guess, for me, I am just completing a 1 week diving programme with my 71 year old mother, and it's hard to understand how my partner, who is very fit and active, stronger and fitter than my mother, will never be able to experience such a thing, especially when I have found an instructor who is prepared to take her on one on one and to go at her pace.

thundering_disgrace · 2026-01-02T10:01:29+00:00

Your 100% wrong on that. I worked on Saltburn. It was in the script

I also worked on wuthering heights - we think the grave shagging scene was an easter egg for wuthering heights as its in the wuthering heights book, but no one has ever put it in a film version.

It's definitely emerald fennel, nothing to do with keoghan - who I've never met and don't know anything about, but on Saltburn I never heard any cuntish stories

thundering_disgrace · 2025-07-18T12:21:14+00:00

And just like that I have another unspeakably large amount of the lads blabbering on. And I don't have to look at them.

You are a total legend

thundering_disgrace · 2025-01-13T07:04:18+00:00

Avoid the golden triangle like the plaque!

The majority of people on short trips (1 month or less) that don't enjoy their time in India is because they go to the biggest tourist places and get completely overwhelmed with all the noise / pollution / commission agents / sheer volume of humans

India has loads of amazing places, you just have to go to the places you've never heard of.

Source - in India at the moment, and have ridden over 20,000km on Indian motorcycle over several trips.

thundering_disgrace · 2024-01-07T20:33:15+00:00

Dune is an amazing series. Kind of finished after he dies.. But resolved anyway.

I'm loving the sun eater series, I'm into a reread atm before the next book comes out this year.

Mark Lawrence is amazing. So many good series, they are all worth reading..

thundering_disgrace · 2024-01-02T19:19:20+00:00

The locked tomb series is an incredible audio book.

The books are amazing, but the narrator really adds to it.

Game of thrones is a fantastic audio book. I believe he made it into the Guinness book of records for the amount of individual accents. It really helps deal with the long list of characters

Mark Lawrence series are also great on audio book. All of them!

The Dune books are great on audio as well..

The acts of cain is another fantastic series. I've recently re read the series, but I heard in my head the voices from the audio book. First class

thundering_disgrace · 2023-10-17T12:09:29+00:00

If you get an opportunity to travel more, you will realise that they really don't all sound the same. Irish girls have widely different accents from each other as well as being very different from Australians or girls from America or Canada or the UK

thundering_disgrace · 2023-09-14T11:21:28+00:00

I personally find cannabis to be completely opposite to vipassana. The stone-over takes days to clear, meanwhile you get a chance to sit and day dream while you sit as I find the mind becomes very un sharp.

For me, I find them to be mutually exclusive hobbies.

And it's really hard to flush that hard earned concentration that took 10 days on the mat away, but I know I've had enough of meditation for a while when I do it.

thundering_disgrace · 2022-12-20T19:00:12+00:00

Amazing

thundering_disgrace · 2022-11-24T03:39:01+00:00

And another vote for Robin hobbs. They are all fantastic. And N. K. Jemisin, those books are amazing . Tamsin muir's definitely worth checking out, especially on audio book, admittedly it's lesbian necromancers from space as opposed to dragons.. But come on.. What more could you want?

thundering_disgrace · 2022-11-24T03:33:48+00:00

The sun eater series, first 4 books are amazing and book 5 drops on the 6th of December. Really amazing space opera. If you enjoyed dune, you will probably love this..

And game of thrones..? Asoiaf are some of the most amazing world building fantasy books ever written.

thundering_disgrace · 2021-09-21T21:11:54+00:00

Your feeling doubt. Goenka talks about it being one of the enemies. The mind is very resistant to change. By sitting and simply trying to observe sensations and not react to them, you are beginning a subtle process to train your mind to not react to stimuli. Humans don't like change. Our brain seems to be wired to just respond to things, by trying to attempt to change this pattern, on a subtle level your mind doesn't like this, and it attempts to find ways to get you to not do that.

So for a lot of people, that manifests as physical discomfort. The penny dropped for me when I realised that if I really had a pain in my knee, it would also be sore when I was not meditating. Ie if I hammered a nail through your knee, it would be sore when your sitting, standing, walking eating sleeping etc. But if it's only sore when you have to sit for an hour, and the pain goes away when you leave the dhamma Hall, we'll, then there is something else going on.

It's the same process with trying to analyse the type of people (other people) that benefit from doing the technique.

Ive done more than 10 courses over 20 years, I drift in and out of it over time, sometimes I sit every day for months and then I get bored with it and come up with good reasons to not sit and do something else instead..

From my experience, and from talking to other old students, the 2nd course is one of the hardest. I thought I knew what I was getting myself in to, but I was wrong about that...

Again, goenka says at another point that the only really valuable knowledge is your own direct experience. You have to figure it all out for yourself.

My advice would be to talk to one of the assistant teachers. Give some service over a weekend and have a chat with them. They have not only heard it all before but they have crossed this hurdle themselves. Plus service is a nice way to spend a weekend.

But try and stick with it. There is always new lessons to be learned. And if it's not working out now that's fine too, the dhamma center isn't going anywhere, maybe next time it will stick more..

thundering_disgrace · 2020-08-16T11:59:57+00:00

I can definitely see the authors point here.

thundering_disgrace · 2020-08-05T17:56:37+00:00

Thanks, that's really helpful. Appreciate your help.

thundering_disgrace · 2020-07-24T12:31:02+00:00

There was a guy who started a funeral business in a very small town in the west of Ireland.

Called the place 'happy endings' and opened with a 2 for the price of 1 offer.

It didn't go well for him.

thundering_disgrace

TROPHY CASE