Even in the high Himalaya, in the hands of monks, the mobile phone is still king of communication.

Called the Earth’s Third Pole by scientists because only the North and South poles hold more glacially stored freshwater, the Tibetan Plateau is undergoing climate change twice as fast as the rest of the world. Glacier meltdown across Tibet is disrupting downstream water supplies, threatening the sustainable livelihoods of Tibetan nomads and villages, and putting at risk more than one billion downstream peoples and communities across south and east Asia.

Since invading Tibet in 1949, China has implemented land-use policies that have brought on region-wide famine, caused desertification on the grasslands and acute and chronic flooding in eastern China from clear-cutting eastern Tibet’s forests, and poisoned river and groundwater through unregulated mining. China has degraded Tibet’s ecosystems, displaced and impoverished Tibetans, and threatened Asia’s regional security.

The young monk shot here in Sikkim,  is a rimpoche; a most revered lama with spiritual attributes respected by Tibetan people, yet destroyed by Chinese politics. When a five year old reincarnation of unlimited compassion points a toy gun at you, is he playing a childhood game?

They ran from the village with the coffin on shoulders. Twice during the frenzy the body fell out.

Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, funerals are profoundly important rituals — creative, colorful affairs that affirm the continent’s most powerful traditions and beliefs.

At funerals, children of the deceased are bestowed new parents and mourners hold long, passionate conversations with the dead. The poorest and most divided of families usually scratch together enough funds to provide a decent ceremony even if it buries them in debt.

It is not unusual for an African to attend more than one funeral over a weekend. Yet despite the pervasiveness of death — or perhaps because of it — funerals are anything but ordinary on this continent. Far from being morbid, funerals are seen as a celebration in many cultures.

Ghana is no exception. As I photographed the scene on a small Lomo, I was in the heart of a frenzy. Wild people necked spirits at dawn then danced through the jungle tracks towards the burial site – a crude cemetery outside the village of Jankufa.  Here, beside a small wooden cross, the spirit was strong.  Older women flicked the air with acacia branches, wailing and muttering in a local dialect. Youth, brother’s and friends of the boy fought and drank and danced and cried.

After he was buried.  The party in the village lasted for three days.   Speakers were rigged in the village and the dj mixed off two cassette decks. Afro funk, beats, hip hop, reggae.  We danced ourselves into the earth and drank til the sun of the day forced us to the floor again.  Taking passage with the dead to the other side.

Coxwain’s Hole is the name of the capital on Roatan Island, Honduras.  This is one of the poorest countries in central America. the borders are home to murderers, traffickers and the disaffected. the atmosphere is dark and desperate and it spreads to the Caribbean. In the west of the island, there are diving schools owned by North Americans. these places have clean sheets, three course meals, sport fishing and diving for all on the tropical reefs.  In Coxwain’s Hole, the houses are made of plywood, the roads are thick with mud. There is no electricity. The population are African, four hundred year descendents from the slave trade.  I can feel the atmosphere of this place as clear as the Caribbean sky. It is restless, displaced and angry.  I wander down to the docks to find a boat that will take me to the mainland. I have managed to travel for three months without spending any money, Somehow, I have made it this far, and this is as far as I will get. My journey south will finish here. There will be no Colombia, Peru or Argentina.. at least not for now.

The dock is calm but there is a boat there and a bar on the street, It is hard to remember the bar or who was inside, but I will try to paint a picture as best I can. The bar had sailors and I believe the captain was there. He was leaving in the morning. There was a black fela in there with a guitar and he sold it to me. So I had spent some money…. The deal was that I would collect the guitar later or some ganja. I can’t remember too clearly, but I think it was the guitar.

Night fell and the Hole was dark, people wandered the muddy streets in the warm Caribbean air. It’s hard to describe what happened next, but I was in the center of the shanty town, Men stood on corners lolling in the dark with machetes in their hands. It was 4am, the stillest time of the night, when the soul is at its most open.  On every corner men wandered with machetes in their hands. All black. What was I doing there?  We reached the house where the guitar was and I saw it through a window propped against a wall. Then I took the guitar and hung in the street with the guy who sold it to me.  Everything was cool, I was there looking for ganja I think, but tourists do not go to Coxwain’s Hole. It just doesn’t happen. I was out of place.

A dwarf about five feet high moved towards me, he was with two hookers dressed in shiny dresses, one silver and one red. They were also dwarf. Flids, twisted limbs, stunted growth as a result of am impoverishing disease I guess. The dwarf is high on crack cocaine and swinging his machete disturbingly. He fixes his eyes on me and engages. Some words are exchanged. The atmosphere is hostile, I am calm.  He sees a silver ring on my finger, one that my ex girlfriend had crafted for me in Liverpool.  I had found a piece of amber on a tree in the Rift Valley, Tanzania on acid and taken it home. It was this amber that formed the center jewel of the ring. “Where did you get that ring” the dwarf asks aggressively  “Africa” I reply naturally.     He gets agitated as if he does not know how to react. I am very concerned. He has a machete, I am unarmed.   He moves away for a minute and I shift up the track as fast as I can.

It was the weirdest night I can ever remember. Being so close to such darkness and suffering and coming away unscathed left me feeling like I was very lucky to be alive. I don’t now how to explain it. Go to Roatan Island Honduras and walk into the shanty town in the witching hour and maybe you will get my gist.

Nothing seems real. The moon and stars are shining in the sky, I am drenched in sweat, feverish, lying on a table in a remote African village. Looking up but my body cannot move. Some people lift me up. I don’t know who they are – Africans, strong, wild eyed. They put me in the back of a truck and it heads out of the village, some people watch. At the next village there is a clinic. It has dirt floors, no electricity. there is a drip rigged up to a wooden post in there. I m tripping now, but still coherent. The doctor is trying to bump up a vein in my forearm but they are all deflated. The malaria is rushing in my brain and the blood is heating up. He tries the other vein, but it too is deflated. the doctor has a tshirt with a character on it and says ‘hard knocks’. I point to my left hand. Jabbing the needle in, he gets some quinine into me.  My mind blurs. Someone holds my other hand. I pump it to keep concious. Then I am lying on a table again. Floating forward horizontal. the room is black but there is a fire at the end of the table through some doors. I am sliding slowly towards it, seeing my cremation.  Then I look up and the doctor is standing by the bed, he takes the top off a sprite and i grasp it.  This was the edge, if I hadn’t reached for that sprite I believe I would have slid into the fire.

I am in a hopsital in Ghana somewhere in Kumasi. They bring me food but I cannot eat it. I slip in and out of consiousness, tripping. I see the walls crawling with black babies and old man’s faces. I look out of the door and the world is primeval. Huge jungle plants are lit by erupting volcanoes and the sky is black.   This carries on for five days. The cerebral malaria growing in my brain. The quinine fighting a loosing battle.  I wake up on a cliff high above the jungle in a nest squawking and a huge bird flies down with a worm in it s beak for me.  My consiousness goes into the blood stream, racing along the channels of red blood cells as the malaria suffocates them, 3 percent blood domination now, working on the cerebella.  Then somehow it ends, and lies quiet for a while. I have just enough time to get out.

Coyote Sam looks north through the colonias to the the Mexico/US border.  We are due to cross by dark tonight at $500 a head. People were killed last night on the border and Sam is edgy. To Latin Americans who have got this far north, the border is the final frontier.

Most migrants will not make it across the border. For lack of money they construct shacks from what scraps they can find on the highway. The colonias are lawless. There is no plumbing or electricity.

Rio de ojo is the name of the Colonia where Sam lives. It is one of the intensely poor shanty towns which stretch along the Mexican frontier before dropping into the Pacific Ocean at Tijuana. The hills on the border are the Nino ( baby) mountains. It is here that Sam and other coyotes sneak migrants through the US border fortifications. Once on the other side, a prearranged driver will meet them in the desert and take them in country. For now we sit in the shade of Sam’s shack, hearing his tales of life in TJ. Being a lawless place, there is no tax to pay, there are no government links. Here people make their own rules. If a man wants to kill somebody he can pay off the police with a small bribe if they come to investigate. Caught drink driving and a $6 bribe should bail you out. ‘You know how we do here’ says Sam. Nobody cares for these migrants. Through the haze of the Pacific sunset and clouds of dust thrown up on the road, the extent of the border situation becomes startlingly apparent as mile upon mile of shanty towns drift by in front of my eyes.

After Christmas elusiveworld travelled to the nearest beach. Here we found a collection of cigarette lighters washed up and gathered at a shrine.  Sea life choked as they swooped above our throw away society, their stomachs filled with bottle tops and other non-biodegradable items. As we continue to burn they fall from the sky. We are living in a material world and we are a material swirl.

Plastic Doesn’t Break Down

For direct information, open the belly of Fred The Seagull. Fred may be found roosting above the shop to the left of Mr.Cheap…. That is…..  back and to the left…

A long time ago, a small group of people from the province of neighboring Tuva migrated to  modern-day Mongolia. Known as the Soyd Uriankhai, the Mongolians called them the Tsaatan, the reindeer people. Situated in the soums of Ulaan-Uul, Khankh,  Bayanzurkh, and Renchinlkhunbe in Khovsgol aimag, the Tsaatan live a nomadic lifestyle in the coniferous forest, the Taiga, following the reindeer they herd to the pastures the animals choose. A distinct culture within Mongolian society, the Tsaatan practice a shamanistic religion and speak old Uighur dialects with one another. Today, the Tsaatan attempt to preserve their traditional ways of life in the midst of globalization. They use their reindeer not only to carry their belongings, but also for meat, milk, and clothing from  animal hides. Some Tsaatan continue to live in yurts made of animal skin. In the past, the Tsaatan lived in yurts made primarily of birch bark that resembled the tepees of native-Americans in their appearance. A large yurt could be made of bark from up to 32 trees; a medium sized yurt from the bark of 23-25 trees.

An opening of 2-3 meters in height allows access into the yurt, where a bag that houses the guardian spirits of a shaman rests in the rear. On the right side of the yurt, the Tsaatan family will keep its hunting equipment, saddles, tools and utensils. A traditional Tsaatan yurt will not have a bed, but rather a skin covering on the ground, upon which the family sleeps. A stove sits in the middle of the yurt.

Tsaatan dress is characterized by hats in the style of the Halkh people, and wide deels (traditional Mongolian overcoats). They wear strong and warm boots fabricated from the hides and sinew of their reindeer. These boots are known for their quality and are very expensive.
To make it through the rugged winters, a family will slaughter two or three reindeer in order to store up food for the cold months. The food is hearty and delicious by most accounts.

The Tsaa, the Mongolian reindeer themselves, have dictated the Tsataan’s way of life.  Mongolian reindeer are a unique species located only in the northern latitudes of the world.  The length of a Mongolian reindeer ranges from 170 cm to 200cm, and the height (between the armpit and the hip) is between 120-140cm.  Their weight is between 100-200 kg.  Hair color becomes brown in the summer and a version of white or gray in the winter.  Tsaa are most famous for their elaborate, towering horns.  White moss is the preferred food, which grows abundantly in their habitat high in the Taiga Forest.  Mating season is between September and October, and after a seven-month gestation period, one or two calves are born.

Some families bring their reindeer to the shores of Lake Khovsgol each summer, to partake in the tourist industry.  However, this region is too warm for their animals and many become sick, or even die as a result.

Unfortunately, the Tsaatan and the Tsaa’s interconnected populations are dwindling due to climate change, the introduction of livestock which carry diseases, and the disappearance of the Tsaatan way of life.

Rudolph in Tsataan country seen after  Christmas deliveries were complete looking bruised but not broken.