Wednesday, December 07, 2022

Journey around the world...


https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/#section-0

National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek is walking from Africa to the tip of South America. He is following the path our human ancestors took about 200,000 years ago. It took ancient humans around 50,000 years to migrate from Africa to South America, but Salopek estimates his journey, which he began in 2013, will take about ten years.

Met a colleague, who is about to visit her 100th country. Having travelled around, she says, UK would like to show a map with them in between and China a map with them in between. Russia is so close to US is we look at it in a way, but far, if we look at it the other way. 



Here is all the countries by size from her home. 


You can see all the pins - they are colour coordinated. Red is  “early years”, yellow with husband ( together for11 years), Lizard from Africa, whole flat is full of stuff from around the world


hats collected from around the world - in the dining room.

 Spend about 3 months in India / Pakistan / Nepal / Bhutan. 

 India in 2007 and went just from Delhi to Ranthmabore to see the tigress, 2008 and started in Mumbai and ended in Kathmandu a month laster - overland trip covering most of Rajasthan. Then up through the north bit (Rishikesh, McCloudganj, Daramasla,etc) and to Amritsa and into NE Pakistan

Was camping between Gilgit and the Chinese border, then into China to Kashgar, visited Bhutan at the same trip. To Nepal three times base camp of Everest, chinese side, and to Tibet from there - 2 weeks on jeep safari. 



Lake Karakol - it's on the Karakorum Highway, the Western part of China that links up with Pakistan. Stayed in a huge yurt (Turkish - huge round tent made of skin and portable).  It's near the NW of Pakistan. A beautiful area of the world. In NE Pakistan you get 3 ranges in different directions… Himalaya, Karakorum and Hindu Kush. The Karakoram mountain range runs along the borders between Pakistan, India, and China. It is part of the longer Himalayan mountain range, which is home to the highest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest. The highest peak in the Karakoram range is K2. K2, at 8,611 metres (28,251 ft) above sea level, is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest (at 8,849 metres (29,032 ft)). The Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) are the freshwater towers of South Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. Water originating from their snow, glaciers and rainfall feed the ten largest river systems in Asia.

Go on group trips - but on own. Overlanding with a company called Dragoman - all over the world for months at a time. They are not operating any more since Covid but it was a big truck, with coach seats, all the cooking equipment and camping stuff all on the truck.

One epic journey was from Xi'an in China, diving into Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, Turmenitstan. Also went to Kazakhstan for 2 weeks which was lovely (in 2018). 

Kyrgyzstan 2013, before heading south to Osh and the Fergana Valley. Also there is Pamir mountains is located at a junction with other notable mountains, namely the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and the Himalaya mountain ranges.

The Afghanistan trip was also to Tajikistan. Spent 2 weeks in Mongolia in 2012. Took a year off work in 2008/9.... and another 4 months off in 2013 !!

Went to Vietnam and Cambodia many years ago when  was married, went to Sri Lanka and Maldives in 2019 - just before Covid hit. Bangladesh is a pending dream. 

This was an amazing journey, all done. 



There is the gas crater in Turkmenistan, it's been burning since the 1970s. She went to Sumatra to see the oran otangs and to Komodo to see the dragons.... and of course Bali too

Have also been to all of South America (apart from Uruguay and Paraguay).......... over many many months, including Guyana, Surinam and French Guyana.

Had been to N America and did an epic road trip from Calgary to Vancouver with  husband in 2002. Have been to NY a few times, Boston and other places in Mass, then drove around Nevada / Utah / California a couple of times.

Spent about 3 months in Australia - drove from Darwin to Albany (far south)... been to Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney, Cairnes and Gt Barrier Reef....been to 18 countries in Africa and on safari about 20 times. have been to all of Southern Africa apart from Malawi and Mozambique

Have been to 98 countries , now isn't that an inspiration - Something to look forward to? You will find her wearing the viking mask from Sweden. 

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

Wonder Women


Parvathy Thiruvothu, Nitya Menen, Padmapriya, Nadiya Moidu, Archana Padmini, Sayonara Philip, Amrutha Subhash and Anjali Menon- that’s a lot of women in one frame. The full Wonder Women cast joined Dhanya Rajendran to have a fun conversation about the camaraderie, the movie and a little bit more.

The movie traces the journeys of six pregnant women who meet at a pre-natal care home. With Nadiya Moidu, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Padmapriya, Nithya Menen, Sayonara Philip, Archana Padmini, and Amrutha Subash In and As Wonder Women, the film seeks to explore friendship, maternity, and sisterhood.  They come to stay at 'Sumana', a prenatal class conducted by Nandita (Nadiya Moidu). She calls them as 'Real superheroes' as they get ready to embrace motherhood. One is a singe mother, one is in relationship but not married, one do not know any of their knowledge, one is controlled by MIL. In their quest to know the new life, they discover their true identity and the answers to their deep-rooted problems.

The movie is about sisterhood that upholds us, celebration of life - hope, bond, journey, refreshing lightness, being selfless, embracing, joy, connection, magic, comradery an another feel good movie from Anjali Menon; herself being a wonder women.  

All the actors including  have done a fabulous job. Amrutha Subhash as Jaya was an outstanding performance. Not many like it and have mentione that this could better be shown as a documentary and for some it personifies motherhood. I think it's a good start to spread awareness among those, who need. 



Final Over Day 4 - Leads & Funnels

 1) LEAD FLOW BRINGS CASH FLOW

We are going to work on multiple touch points with the customer.

Leads + Sales = cash flow

Mass personalization (eg.LIC)

2) Funnlytics

Stop pouring money into a leaky bucket

Funnelytics shows you exactly what’s happening across your website

With Funnelytics, you have the freedom of a whiteboard with the power of people centric analytics. Visualize where people come from, how they navigate your website and what actions they take in order to convert.

See what’s working — and what’s not.

Know exactly what to do next to optimize

Think and write beyond the 10 points  of Marketing srtergies and Mapping the same..

Dashboard for our M

Don't play in our staffs per hour value.

Learning :  The digital marketing is moving towards Mass Personalization along with giving better individual experience. 

Action item :  Explore the funnelytics tool videos in Youtube to understand it closer and get scheduled for a Demo based on observations.



We normally plan this for all clients we deal with in my agency. Learning : Funnelytics tool and how can we leverage our day today in that... Already seeing how it would help us. 

Action item: Explore the tool better try mapping your crm flow for employees. CEO:Spend more time on thinking about your business .

More Marketing efforts brings more lead’s to reach our top line growth…we are grouping all potential leads from different sources , evaluate and validate them to be Qualified lead with our product or service offered and then auto upload to CRM for the Sales team for further personalized engagement and Repeat buying. 

Also we will be able see the leakage in online marketing. Track and measure. 

To Summarise:

Entrepreneurs should invest more time for thinking. Simple ah, our IDEA Mani ah maranum - For that, we should become free from regular activities.

We should calculate our Per Hour Value - in order to know how potential we are and how to invest quality time

Funnelytics to design our marketing work flow and to measure the actions in numbers and to find the leakages

Writing down 20 different marketing ideas

Include 2 questions on lead generation form, in order to get quality leads and real interest people

Landing Page should have more realistic info / videos to enable the customers to take fast actions

https://funnelytics.io/

Final Over - Day 5 - Planned Approach

 Planned Approach for any Business/job/students

Plans not only in  writing with pen & paper, but should be workable with editable & customizing to your needs. Don't stop with Thinking alone. Make a digital planning of how to plan, execute, discuss and work using the tools like miro, mindmeister. You have also discussed on how to buy it with a great discount from a website thru 

  • Mind Mapping & 
  • Mind writing

Digital Tools name

  • MINDMEISTER - windows/Android
  • MINDNODE - Apple mac
  • 'MIRO' - Meetings & Workshops

many pré designed templates / filled Mindwritten maps - Edit & use & customize according to your needs

(Geography, Behavioural Psychography, Demography based) workings Get inspire by seeing these n create incorporate your ideas into it for your needs eg: sales, (with customer Avatar, more deep into detailing)

LVRG.it - a dashboard  to leverage purchase & availing discounts for business marketing like bulk emails,zoom meetings with bulk attendees, Zaapier contact emai lds given for more details USD 99 per year 

lvrg.freshdesk.com - Some more about IVRG

Please do explore with all above 3 Dital Tools to convert your Mind Making/ Mind Writing ideas digitally into workiable actions

14 Visuals About Psychology & Life - Grant Golestan-Parast



14 Powerful Visuals About Psychology & Life 👇  by Grant Golestan-Parast
















Fish Biryani

 


It was yummy and matter of pride to see my 11 year old nephew make such tasty biryani. 

Asked him how he made it, he said, it was done in three parts some simultaneously viz:

  • Cooking the fish & Making Gravy
  • Cooking the rice
  • Mixing both
Cooking Fish & Making gravy:

Cooking Fish:
  • King fish 5
  • Ginger Garlic paste
  • Lemon juice or vinager
  • Garam masala, salt, turmeric, chilli powder
  • Marrinate the fish, and fry - it should not become crispy - fry in slow flame. I should be cooked only 70%
  • Remove the fish and keep aside
Making gravy:
  • Grind 1 or 2 tomatos,
  • Same oil in which fish was fried, saute onion, put ginger garlic paste and green chilly. Put tomato paste and let it cook in high flame for 2-3 minutes. 
  • Add 3 table spoon curd, lemon, curry, corriender and Pudina leaf and , turmeric, greenchilli, masala powder, salt, and keep it close. 
Cook the rice:
  • Cook basmathi or kaima rice separate, after washing dry. 
  • Boil water, and when hot water is ready, add little salt, oil and spices,  
  • add rice when water is boiling. It will be ready in 9 to 10 minutes. 
  • Drain excess water 
Mix both:

Put the fish in the masala and cook for 2 minutes, 

By then rice would be ready. remove excess water. and put the rice above masala. On top put a little garam masala, dry grapes and coriander leaf and pudina leaf. 

Dhum it for 10 minutes, take the fish pieces out, mix the rice - keep little white colour here and there for good and colourful look. add ghee and mix well, and keep fish pieces above and keep the vessal closed until you serve. 


Goddess by Design Awakening - Puja Puneet

A workshop to overcome your problems in any situation & rejuvenate your life for happiness



Creating

Understand the 4 Avatars to become the Goddess.

  • What is the avatar “QUEEN”?
  • ​What is the avatar “ANGEL”?
  • ​What is the avatar “DIVINE FEMININE”?
  • ​What is the avatar “WARRIOR”?​

Healing

The soothing strategy to heal yourself

  • How to lose weight
  • ​How to build & grow your income stream
  • ​How to attract the right person
  • ​How to trust or forgive someone

Aligning

  • How to align with your goals & dreams
  • Create your Future by Design​
  • ​Get complete clarity on who you want to become
  • ​Learn to balance between different Avatars

Embodying

  • How to get your goals and dream into reality
  • How to set effective Rituals and Routines
  • ​The modern world Tools & Techniques for success
  • ​How to start living the life of your dreams confidently

Sunday, December 04, 2022

Final Over - Day 3 - Profitability

 1)When a business is not working in excel sheets, it won't  work in live marketplace.

 2)The reality is always thrice wide, deep, and strong in demands of effort, investments and surprises.

3)Audacious / Average / Bare minimum - self case study are the three dimensions to evaluate the business and self together.

4)The sales Forecast sheet will help to relate to any kind of business model. 

5)Flinto box - is good example to keep customers connect emotional with the product and keep their buying consistent.

6)If an entrepreneur have already related and verified every other term of the business, he can swim and succeed the marketplace safe.

7)First Order CPA / Selling price after discount / First order Profit /  Repeat order CPA /  Repeat order Ratio ( Total number of customers involved in Repeated buy vs Total number of customers )  / Repeat order Profit.

8)Month / Number of unit sold / First order revenue / First order profit / Monthly Ad spend ( First order CPA * number of Units sold ) 

9)Mindset & Marketing are the two M’s to establish good in the market. 

10)Micro understanding of all possible expenses involved will help in arriving the Exact profit on board and relatively easy forecast of success.

11)The numbers should be much closer to the best approximation what will happen or happening to have our business model in best shape.

12)Offers and packaging combo makes a huge differentiation in improving Repeat customer ratio. 

13)It is always good to work with industry costs involved and reverse work the numbers to have a clear idea.

14)An entrepreneur can achieve his desired business growth as much he his ready to invest and improve himself first. A business stands strong and safe only on the entreprenuers Attitude and knowledge. 

15)Eagle view and Ground reality view are two most important aspects that an entrepreneur should have to achieve best stability.


Saturday, December 03, 2022

Final Over - Day 2 - COGS & CAC

 1) Keep a data based approach over the business consistently / make sure the business is interpreted through numbers as closer as it could be. Understand COGS.

MRP - 4times COGS; 20% discount offer.

2)Less CAC ( Cost of acquisition of the customer - the lesser it is the better is the profit / it is a key area of focus and working to make profit grow exponentially )

3)Customer Retention program is a most critical area as keeping a customer Live in the business flow / repeated orders / up-selling / Cross-selling /  Less overall CAC and better and quality referrals.

4)The unit economics sheet has  more variables / working to bring them all to the next best less % will give a compounded effect on the over all profit or Net Realization.

5)Reframe the Discount portion as loyalty program , referral bonus back to the customers once they are on board and keep their relationship with us live. Value the buy they do in this wide market place. 

6)When the digital marketing strategy is planned inline with the service industry for any D2c brand - 65% profit. _ knowledge Quotient _ New ideas sharing with clients brings / retains / holds a customer better _ sustainability 

7)A loyal Customer is the face of our business - Always ensure keep smiling.

8)Right analysis/ Right product /Right packaging / Right costing / Right Positioning / Constant effort to keep every aspect of the business right is very important to stay live in the business. 

9)Keep a good eye on how good our product and strategy adds value to or customers - the more they experience it, they keep the business going and growing.

10) As much a customer is repeating his/ her orders with us / the Individual CAC of the customer and the overall average CAC of the business will go down and thus a profit momentum can be achieved.

Business Intelligence - PBI - D1

Learning Objective:

  • Data Analytics and Predictive Analytics
  • Convert Data into Knowledge
  • Cleaning, exploring, visualising data
  • Tools and versions

Data/Information/Knowledge

Data - In various forms. Visual, written, audio, video. Data is collection of raw facts and figures. Eg. 100% humidity in Chicago

Knowledge - Domain or derived (raining or going to rain. 24 hours after it rains in Chicago, it will rain in Delhi. ) Profit can be derived only from Knowledge - it is related to dollar, not data or information. - If it rains, sell raincoat and umbrella and make money out of it. 

Information - Processed Data is information. (It will rain in Delhi, so necessary arrangement)

Process - very cheap, - We need Domain knowledge and Tools. 

Tools - Power BI , Tableu are tools. 

Business Intelligence give Data Perspective 




Predective Analysis - What if.

What is BI or Business Intelligence?

  • Set of methods, processes, architecture, application and technology
  • that gathers and transform raw data into meaningful and useful information
  • Used to enable more effective strategic, tactical and operational insights and decision making
Three steps, three layer and three uses.

It can be done by tools, processes and visualisation.

  • Power BI is capable of processing the Data also. Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) capability and make report
  • In Tablue ETL capability is only 30% but Visualisation is great. - More useful for presentation and story telling. 
Why use Business Intelligence?
  • Accelerating and improving decision making
  • Optimizing internal business processes
  • Getting to know about business past, present and future
  • Increasing operational efficiency
  • Giving quicker responses to business related queries
  • No guess work
  • Meeting/Exceeding Manufacturing and Inventory goals
  • Gaining Valuable insights into customers behaviour. 

Case study - UPS - trucks take only right turns. - To come to this, understand present, have domain knowledge, by changing the process of route planning, they saved millions on fuel.

No more customer satisfaction but customer delight. Netflix - recommending clients what to see. 70% users follow their recommendation. 

Why not excel?
  • Excel is a tool for data gathering
  • Cant add data from different data source in excel and so cant optimise
  • Increase operational efficiency
Process:



  1. Access the data - using SQL , CSV, Excel, Web, Folders - Part 1
  2. Clean up the data - Part 2
  3. Mash Up the data - Part 2
  4. Explore the data - Part 3
  5. Visualize the data - Part 3
  6. Share the data - Part 4 - Like whats app, others too need to have for right usage. 
  7. Refresh the data -  Part 5
How companies use BI?


Machine learning and AI can be imbedded into it. 







Power BI





AR VR - Augmented Reality and Visual Reality



Tableu and sales force are now one


Power BI family



BI is a subject and Power BI is a tool.

Power BI:



We need to download the software. Link for Download: https://aka.ms/pbiSingleInstaller (kindly copy paste the URL in the browser)


This will be saved on your desk top, when you click this, you will find the green screen as below or an yellow screen, This has all tutorial and instructions. 





Top - Tools
RHS - Visualisation
LHS - Canvas/Data/Relationship
Bottom - Page number


1. How to access different kind and format of data.

Three ways to get data:

  • Home menue data tab - get data
  • from the screen
Go to home menu - select CSV file, connect -
  • three drop down - first two leave as it is - third, 
  • You can load data or transform data - Load when data is clean, transform when something need to be changed (power BI is not importing the data, it is only connecting)
  • Way of representing data in power BI - on the right hand side - Table - Numeric, timeline and blank.
  • On the LHS we have Report/Data/Model - You can select what you want - data (Is full data not review of data), base data is not changed. 
Data is connecting - extracting and representing here.  All text is left aligned and all numbers are right aligned. 

RHS- Report/Query - Transform Tool bar - (Power query Editor) - Its ETL tool - Separate tool of MS incorporated here. 

Its two different sheet now.

In the beginning of each cell, there is a set of three numbers and three alphabets, 



Method of Undo is not cntrl Z - we have to cross, what we had done. 

Load and apply.

80% of time go in cleaning the data. 

Close and Apply on top LHS. 

You will come out of ETL tab, back to one sheet.

Start working on what need to be done. - Here check Balance and Gender.


Note:

  • there is no way to zoom up/down the canvas area; you can drag your graph
  • Ctrl Z will reverse the last step here.
You can follow instruction on top when doing ETL

When you insert excel with multiple sheets - a navigator will open.

Transform - home - use first row as column. 

To create page, click on + below near page 1, you will get page 2

Import a folder - How and why import a folder? 
How - combine and load
Why - When you need to add, you will just need to insert the new file in the folder in the desktop and refresh powerBI.


Visualisation:

Ask questions before plotting anything, with basic concept of visualisation, give better plot. 

Ask 5 Why's.

There are four basic presentation types:
  • Comparisons - between countries or elements. 
  • Composition- How these two data points are contributing or helping each other - Pie chart - ratio of population of various countries
  • Distribution - Statistical - Sales and Profit.
  • Relationship - Growth of Population and growth of GDP



  • How many variable do you want to show in a singe chart - Number of columns
  • How many data points will you display for each variables - Number of rows
  • Will you display values over a period or among items or groups - time factor - change in population, GDP wrt time. 
If you try to accomodate all in one, it will not help.


Item, Variable and Category are important

If you want to compare between Sales, COGS and Unit Sold by country - which chart till be right?

Among item -) One variable per item -) Few Category -) Few Item so we select = Column Chart. 

Category is country and Item is COGS, Sales and Unit sold. 

Export to excel- table from three dots, and graph format - from file - to pdf

Numbers plotted will automatically come to Y axis. 

Pie chart will be good only upto 8 slices. If it is more than that go for tree map. You can do two level of categorisation there. - this is to see composition, so there will be no X and Y axis.

Slicer is embedder - filter in the chart. Alternatively you can use dropdown. slicer has an option to have All - from format. 

BI is different from Data Analytics - but a limited ability for analysis is available in power BI , which can help in some charts like line charts. 


For Predective analysis, you need to use Assure. - you can write a code of R and Python. 


5 am - Final Over for 2022 - BOAT - 1/2nd

 


Important:

1. The session begins at Sharp 5 am.

2. Only one device will have access to the webinar. Kindly plan accordingly.

3. No recordings will be shared - Remember friends, the agenda is to build consistency.

4. You will be getting daily reminders too. 

5. Remember this program is only for inner circle members (LT, HSP 2024, HSP 2022 ) and Final Over registered participants only.

Session over zoom, only through one devise allowed. 

Consistency - 5 break through.

Time is very important. 

Points covered:

  • Brand
  • Tool
  • Networking Strategy




Today every 3rd person in India use BOAT product.

Boat head - cool, confident and SASSY 

Selling not just product but aspiration. 

2 years to launch. Basic rep

Aman Gupta - CMO

Market research 

Trust

Lifestyle product

D2C product

Audacity to sell

Method to madness

Opportunity:

1. Adoption

2. Market - luxury, premium, mass affluent and mass unbranded

3. Differentiation - life style branding for young - fast fashion; good technology; pricing based on 4 markets; 

Tata Nano did not sell well here. - brand should connect to people today. Their taste.

4.channel - how distributed - 3 - ownwebsite; existing Market; own logistics. 

5.Celebraty vs non celebrity- choose people before people become famous . Celebraty charisma

4P - Product, place, price, promotion

Most imp. Create community. Content and community; run contest , desire to be czar.

Gaming, misfit - more than 200 brands

House of Brand - house.


Himalaya - A Human History : Ed Douglas

 Like the Mighty Himalaya's this book too is huge with 550+ pages and it ought to be; and as the name goes - its more about the human history - of the people living there, over a period of time, and people who have visited there, the politics, plants, mountaineers and personalities. Switching mostly between 18th to 20th Century, and covering places like Tibet, Nepal, Gharwal more - but at times covering the other time period, and places; by all means, the book is a Himalaya, with it's heights and valleys. 



Undoubtedly, a lot of research has gone into this book of History covering the Pilgrims, coming here; Tethys sea narrowing and disappearing over 10s of Millions of years, Everest being below the sea once upon a time. the early explorers and different religion, lost kingdoms, trade wars, forbidden city, mountaineers and among many other things, the history of even mapping the Himalaya's - connecting it to the history of other regions and countries as well which cannot be left in isolation for everything is connected. 

The book speaks on the fall of the East India Company and it being rescued, linked to the  Boston Tea Party and The American War of Independence. 

History of Nepal - Sherpas and Gorkhas, Fight for Bhaktapur, Katmandu and Patan - Rana Bahadur, Damodar Pande to Birendra being murdered by  Dipendra to the plights of Koirala and Tibet is covered extensively, including the appointment of various Dalai Lama building of Potala on the old site of Songtsen Gampos's palace by 5th Dalai Lama., subsequent ones had to flee Tibet a couple of times, and finally for ever. In due course light is thrown on China history as well. 

On example in the Chapter crossing borders is that of Milam the last village situated in Johar valley of Pithoragarh district in the state of Uttarakhand, India. It is now a ghost village with very few inhabitants. Before the Sino-Indian War of 1962, it used to be a trade center bustling with 500 families. As of now all trade with Tibet is stopped and the families have settled in Munsiyari and other places in the lower ranges as the border is closed. Being closer to Tibet, they had found trading with Tibet easier than comming down the mountains.  Its the Bhot pradesh of Uttarakhand. 

The Dalai Lama's regent Polhane was incredulous : "Kashmiri, Newari, Azara (meaning Indians), Chinese, Turkish, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and other peoples living in Tibet adhere to their own religions and are supported as much as possible and not harmed. But you have spoken evil of the Tibetan religion. If any of us were to go to your country and preach our religion to you in the same manner as you have done with us, would you punish him? Destroying other religions implies nobody may follow his own religion. We have to defend our religion as you are defending yours. You came here of your own accord, we did not call you; as a consequence it is up to you to decide where to go and what to do. "

According to Huc, a Hashmiri merchant in Lhasa told him how 'Pelings' , meaning the British,

are the most cunning of men. They are getting control of all parts of India, but it is always by trickery rather than by open force. Instead of overturning the authorities, they cleverly try to win them over to their side and share the spoils with them. In Kashmir there is a saying: "The world is Allah's, the land is the Pasha's, but the East India company rules.'

There were varying portraits of Tibet, mostly negative, Mahatma Koot Hoomi showed Blavatsky a very different Tibetan world:

For centuries we have had in Thibet a moral, pure hearted, simple people, unblest with civilization, hence - untained by its vices. For ages has been Thibet the last corner of the globe not so entirely corrupted as to preclude the mingling together  of the two atmospheres - the physical and the spiritual.

The myth of the 'forbidden' city of Lhasa and the fantasies invented around its 'secrets' would have dangerous consequences. As the Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya wrote:

The western perception of Tibet and the images that have clustered around Tibet have hampered the Tibetan political cause. The constant mythologisation of Tibet has obsured and confused the real nature of the Tibetan political struggle. 

It's interesting to know how himalayan flowers especially the blue poppy was taken to the west and tea cultivation began in large scale on the mountains, especially Assam and Darjeeling.

Great Himalayan View - Mountaineers : Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling, Nanda Devi and Trisul from Naini Tal and Nanga Parbat from the Murree hills. Karakoram was very vast; Siachen glacier, meaning 'abundance of roses' in K2, and ofcourse Chomolungma the local name of Eve - rest. Much credit to Alpine Club. 

In the story of Hillary and Tenzing climbing the Eve-rest,  how Tenzing born in tibet, spent time in Khumbu and living in Darjeeling was called by all as 'Our People' remind of Rishi Sunak. The fight for everest, the secret division of one side belonging to Nepal and other to China, and the on and off, allowing of tourisam and stopping is an ongoing phenomena. The Tibetan name is Chomolungma, which means “Mother Goddess of the World.” The Nepali name is Sagarmatha - means "Kissing the sky" 

Nun's like Ngawang Sangdrol and many of her companions had to go through hell lot for protesting against communist in Tibet; Maoism believed human nature is a blank slate. Tibetan minds could simply be scraped clean and the party's wishes written over the past. It did'nt work out like that. Though people knew that Tibet could transform under communist leadership and it does at a good speed; resistance to change was deeply entrenched. 

Indeed a real place with its own history and culture; that is our Himalaya. 


As I read - it's clear - Himalaya is one Unique stretch of land, with differences around, protecting and providing life but divided by Human; giving life among various things to number of rivers that help human survive.  But we pollute and divide it as well. Like Himalaya we are also one, Unique Human being, all related, but divided by thoughts and deeds, with unnecessary friction. 

Himalaya + Indu = Hindu.

Mountain+River = Human.