Someone has stolen my rock

I won't describe putting the bike on the train in torrential tropical rain.
I won't describe arriving at 5.20am in a crush of tourists and a swarm of bus drivers and bike drivers and tour operators and tea ladies and coffee ladies and the plain hopeful trying to sell knickknacks and trinkets and playing cards with modestly naked worn on the reverse side.



I won't describe in detail the joyous trip up the mountain in the fresh morning, to the scent of damp earth and pine trees and water dripping over mossy rock, to the sight of my beloved rice terraces and waterfalls and mountain tops playing hide and seek behind morning mist and cloud.











And the Yao woman I gave a lift to, who kept me warm on the final twelve or so kilometres when it becomes decidedly chilly on a bike, she was lovely and so grateful not to have to walk all that way uphill, on a visit to her sisters in Sa Pa.



But the trip up the road to the top of the valley cut short because I was so bereft - that I will describe. See, there is - was - this spot, the one particular spot where I would stop, the same stop where, on and off over for nearly 14 years, where I would go to sit, look at the mountain, listen to the distant echo of the river far below, and just sit, staring at the mountain, doing nothing but sitting.

And now, ten months since I last saw my spreading comfortable, about the size of a baby elephant rock, is this.






Someone stole my rock and I am bereft.