title-1211669

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:31:36 +0200

Hi there

Hope 2006 has been brilliant. I started my year in Verbier - as usual- staying with my sis and skiing and dancing. We had so much fun I decided not to winter in India but come skiing every other week. I spent 36 days in Verbier, which was stunning. It was brilliant fun to go with my school friend Susie as well.
mant and I NYEFarm clubsleddingoutside fer a chevalgroup pic the sledders

Throughout the winter I worked trying to put together a documentary on Jesus - which was very interesting but bit of a pipe dream. So I also looked to do corporate well being until I realised I actually disliked that!

After the ski season I thought long and hard and took myself off to Cannes Film Fest to see what was going on in general.
We had a week of parties and I was promised some money for my docco!

From Cannes I popped down to Rome to see my parents and sister to celebrate my mother's birthday. We had stunning weather .

As luck would have it my friend Trish called me to produce a docco in Kenya - what an amazing trip - we went to look at poverty housing issues. We shot in the slum, Kibera and at a school for slum kids - the children come to school at 6:30 because usually the school has water and space. We met the dinner lady, Lorna, who too u to her home in the slum. It was actually quite shocking. We also filmed in the country side and went on a beautiful Safari in the Masai Mara. We stayed in a luxury tented lodge, which was truly lovely
Lohna's house for 9 peopleinside Lohna and her two daughtersKiberaKiberaKid in schoolMother and cubTrish and I in Kenya and Tanzania respectively

It was a great trip with amazing highs and gut wrenching sights

I came home for four days and went out to India to shoot my Jesus. i figured if I didn't do it I never would swo off I went. My theory is that Jesus lived in India during two distinct periods duiring his Lost Years between 14-30 and post crucifixion - Acts tells us he ascended bodily into heaven. This was written 300 years later.none of the gospels - neither apocryphal nor synoptic mention this astnishing ascent, so it might just have been added to explain why there was no body anywhere. Except that there is a tomb in Kashmir and there is also an area where his influence was enormous. In Harwan, north of Srinagar, there is the site of the 4th coucil of Buddhism where Jesus is meant to have presided over the beginnings of Mahayana Buddhism - the one practised by the Dalai Lama.

Prof Fida Hassnain, Holger Kersten and I, Kashmir

Holger ,who wrote a bestselling book on the suject, and I travelled in Pakistan together. It was an amazing trip, fron which sadly my 300 pics were corrupted so I have none. I loved Pak - lots of picnic spots and boating lakes. I learnt how to shoot there!!

AFter Kashmir - which really is gorgeous - go if you can it is the only way they will ever have a decent life, if tourists go back, I then went to Chennai via Delhi. I( was chasing the story of St Thomas, who is my fave disciple. There is a pole he planted that he said no water would ever come beyond. in fact the priest told me that he watched the tsunami split open three times at the level of the pole thereby saving 5000 people. I would not have believed it had I not seen the water mark myself.

KB and I in DelhiSt Thomas PoleDawn over chennai

I came home and popped over to celebrate Samantha's birthday in France withe the family and since have been editing... I am hoping this will open new doors...

So that is me - hoping to sell Jesus, wanting to go back to film - it was so much fun being back on set.

Hope you are well let me know what you are up to

ALl my love

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title-387625

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:03:00 +0100

Hello there

Hope you are well and that 2005 has been a good year for you. Hope 06 will be even better!

This year has been a mixed bag of goodies for me – it started out beautifully, quaffing champagne in the Farm in Verbier, crawling home as people were wandering up to the lifts, skis on shoulders…

After a busy January at work, I flew off to Koh Samui, Thailand to detox – 8 days with no food and loads of irrigation. It was fab, I felt light and clean and so very focussed. Suddenly the day was so long: 16 hours to fill. I read five books, swam, did yoga. I also took a motorbike out to the internal part of the island that when I was there in the early 90’s had not been cleared and had been inaccessible jungle. It was so beautiful and a change from the chaos of Lamai. My God there is Starbucks at Chaweng – a far cry from a sleepy village on stilts with one reggae bar, that I knew when I went there on my year off. They even have a Tesco Lotus. The words “rampant growth” crossed my mind, as we drove from the manicured lawn of the airport, we passed a mountain of trash that could prop up a small HK island….
>
From Thailand I flew to Delhi and went back to Rishikesh to my teacher and did a couple of months of yoga, 5 to 7 hours a day. It was – as usual – splendid. I love that place. I actually feel complete there. I have a joyous routine of yoga, chai, swimming, yoga , chess and chat. At night I fall asleep and wake up refreshed.

We had a heat wave after Holi, that lasted a month. Everything was dusty and hot, so when I heard there was rain in Uttarkashi – almost the very source of the Ganges – I braved the seven hours of hairpin bends and took myself up there. I treated myself to a shared jeep, convinced it would be more comfortable than a local bus – and perhaps might have a little tread on its wheels. All was well – there were nine of us in a six seater – until two skinny saddhus joined us with their Shiva tridents that for some reason they refused to tie to the top of the car. So we crammed in with two men who smelt like they lived in a cave, risking eyeballs as the pitchforks flew around the car as we twisted around the hairpin bends. We stop – Hallelujah someone’s getting out - only to pick up a mother and kids. With a Shiva spear aimed at my eye, two infants on my knees and my practical (not) wheelie bag in between my knees, squashed up between 13 adults and four kids, no tread on the wheels, I sat praying for no rain. We got out the car and the heavens opened with an almighty crack of lighting. I stood in the middle of the road head upturned towards the sky and got drenched. It was magical. Everyone else ran for cover except for the two saddhus standing like lightning conductors in the middle of the road, reciting mantras. I love India!

Uttarkashi is really beautiful. It is nestled between verdant mountains; donkeys carry twigs and bricks to and fro across rickety wood bridges with several planks missing. Below the Ganges trickles downstream, not even a hint of the massive river she will eventually become. Kids wave hello as they sit on verandas where the women weave; cattle is tethered in the back yard. There are two tea shops with melted chocolate éclairs in a tin and three day old biscuits covered in young flies. I thought it was perfect – and it rained…

I came home via Paris – CDG is always a nasty shock – and decided this year I would travel as much as possible, so took off to Rome for a bit to see my parents. I came back and two weeks later went to Estonia, which was a riot. A group of about 55 Londoners – 48 men, 7 very brave women, went to a midsummer’s party in Tallinn. It was a brilliant break.

Tallinn is a very pretty little city with red tiled conical rooves and whitewashed houses perched between impressive spires and turrets.
Kirsty and I rented a flat near the old town. We went sailing, dancing, partying – did anything but sleep.

It was so weird to be in daylight the whole night. I have an aversion to sleeping in the light so we stayed up.

It was great the only bad thing is the stag nighters all over the place…

I thought I had seen the back of foul stag parties when I left Prague … poor Tallinn, it all awaits.

I came home and designed a course of yoga for kids. I loved teaching kids; they are a challenge and one I enjoyed. I have carried on with my programmes for cancer patients, stroke rehabilitation and general yoga therapy as well as desk yoga.

I designed a course for teachers, which was televised for Sky TV. I also started working more one to one – which has been a joy. I am currently working on a series for publication on yoga in the workplace.
I really feel privileged to have had these two years to explore this whole yoga thing. I feel that I have grown and leant more than I have since my last year at school. I have learnt more about myself and how my body and mind work. It has been an amazing journey and I have met some really weird and wonderful people on the way.

Being freelance also allows me to take my three months off to do yoga – and to travel. I had a great spring/summer. After Tallinn, I came home for two weeks and then went to Antibes for my friend Jane’s wedding. I saw Juliet one of my dearest friends and my godson on his third birthday, which was brilliant as I never see them as they live in Singapore.

I came back and went off to Croatia and Montenegro. What a stunning coastline. I would love to go back. It was eerie to see the bullet splayed edifices of abandoned buildings and the cross high up in the hills of Dubrovnik.

As we drove to Montenegro, we saw the tracks of the tanks, permanent scars on the asphalt, reminders of bloodshed and pain. It was so strange to think such ugliness could spring up in a place so blessed with natural beauty. We went to a beautiful place called Kotor, Montenegro

– a little fortress and monastery town with a synagogue, a cathedral and an orthodox church all within spitting distance of one another. It was so European – green shutters and town squares. We also went to Budvar where the fashion seemed to be shaved heads, tats and tashes and 70’s Speedos for the men, big red lips, bleached blonde hair, nano-minis and patent stilettos on the beach for ladies.

In this pretty fortress town, loud raggaton booms out competing with the paraskier and jet skis. It was such a din, like a conspiracy against a moment’s silence. Samantha and I took refuge in the beauty parlour! We emerged waxed and buffed to a rather sunburnt Matt, who had been grumpily waiting in the sunshine and noise…

We missed going into Bosnia to see Mostar as the day we were going to go it hit 49 degrees. I left. I heard there was rain in England and I don’t do anything above 43 degrees. Silly me.

I have spent five months in the cool and rain of England apart from a weekend in Zurich to celebrate my parents’ 40 wedding anniversary. Wow. It was so beautiful to see a couple so much together. I watched them holding hands as they walked along the road – there is something quite humbling about true love…

September rolled along and to be frank I have had better autumns. By the end of October I had had enough, so I booked myself a trip to Cuba with Kirsty and we ignored hurricane warnings and took off. If you have not been – go.

Cuba is about the only long haul place I have ever been to apart from India and HK that I feel it would be criminal not to go back to. It is an interesting social experiment – I am glad I am not in the control group, but there are far worse regimes to live under and much to recommend it. Health care, education – pretty much everything except the freedom to come and go, express oneself and food distribution was a bit of a problem. Personally I would rather be a Cubana than a circumcised woman in Siwa or in some other repressive country . But it really depends on how much importance one puts on freedom. We seem happy to relinquish our freedoms without a bah – which is scary as it is a matter of degree- the right to protest once it is gone is gone, whatever Tony might say about his 1 mile exclusion zone, and it is a matter of time before thoughts become subversive. Doom and gloom in a Xmas card? Oops sorry. Still, Cuba is physically stunning – it has mountains and beaches and music pours out from everywhere – in small town squares we heard music I would have gladly paid to hear at the South Bank and everyone dances so well, it is enough to make you giddy and knock-kneed…

Anyway, here we are in December I cannot wait to get home and see my parents and spend some time in Rome. My father has just been rushed to hospital with heart problems, which is a big worry hence my mass email of Xmas cards. I am flying out tomorrow to see him. Poor Daddy. I will be there until New year when I return to Verbier. In 06, I will probably move to Rome for a bit to wind down my father’s company and carry on trying to raise funds for a documentary on the historical (non Christian) references to Jesus. I think it is fascinating, so I am hoping that will keep me very busy next year. I want to go to Kashmir next spring to meet a professor who claims to have found Jesus’ grave… all exciting stuff. It seems like the end of the line for yoga for a bit, but I am sure I will be back soon enough doing what I love. I am running a workshop in Feb so I will be back for that at any rate.

What are you up to? Would love to hear from you – hope you have a fabulous Xmas and a happy New Year and hope to see you very soon. I wish you all the very best,

Lots of Love

Vanessaxx

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