“Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon”

August 1942: Cristóbal Colón departs West with its three ships/caravels- 'La Niña, La Pinta and La Santa María; under the orders of the Catholic King and Queen of Spain, aiming a shorter route to India in search of the spices, gold and pearls of the ‘mysterious subcontinent’. After a long and tiring journey, in October of that same year, Colón spots in the horizon what he had been dreaming all along: “Land”.

For his surprise though, he had not reached the ‘mysterious subcontinent', but instead: ‘The Americas’! From then on, the Spanish start claiming the lands as “theirs”; including 'your writer’s’ country: Guatemala…

Because if Cristobal Colón would have found India, his first scene would have probably been something like this: 

I mean who wants this?

OR this?

When you can have this:

Haha… many would probably disagree!

Unfortunately, for Guatemala an earthquake didn’t bring good news last week; and if I’m not wrong another one just happened in México. Uhhh, the world’s getting angry… the Mayas are playing with us - 2012! I’m just kidding. I’m just not in a good ‘state’ right now neither, because India has also managed to ‘creep the hell out of me’ in the past few days…

It was Diwali festival, the ‘festival of lights’, here in India this week. Unfortunately “happy Diwali” was “UNhappy Diwali” for me, as I had to change a 2 day trip to Mumbai for 5 days in bed and doctor visiting.

One thing you do NOT want to get when you are in India: A cold with a fever. Specially when you are ‘home alone’ and late at night! Yes. Two nights ago I had a night I don’t want to ever repeat. Never. Ever, again.

So, since I came back from the field around a month and 1/2 ago I got a ‘warning’ that if I had a fever I should immediately go to the doctor; basically because it was a place where there have been cases of malaria, I got ‘quite some few’ mosquito bites; and you should take your precautions with this disease.

The problem with malaria is that it is difficult to detect, as you get symptoms as if you were having a normal cold; but then the issue is that if it is not this ‘normal cold’, it can go ahead and put you in a comma or even worse. And who wants to play with that? The period of incubation is from a few days to several months, to even a year! Meaning that I am basically condemned going to a doctor every time I get a fever for a whole year. How fun is that!

It is good though that I got this ‘warning’, because I am the ‘doctor avoider # 1’…I really hate going to the doctor, you have no idea.

Whatever, after the ‘nightmare night’ my temperature was lowered. Next day I went to the doctor and everything was ok. Got medicine and now it seems as if everything’s alright; still looking like a ‘zombie' though, but the fever was gone pretty fast at least.

…Oh this little devils-

But this is a short post, with the purpose of letting you know the answer to the ‘clue’ I gave you during the last post. It was pretty easy c’mon!

So the question was- What happens when you ‘mix’ a kingdom, a thunder and a dragon?

Of course you get the “Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon”; beautiful Bhutan! “Earth’s last Shangri La”, that’s where we’ll be heading soon, just before having to leave India!  

But I’ll be writing more about this in a few days, because now I’ll be trying to not sneeze or cough my lungs out of my system!

Have a nice weekend dear readers and take care.

‘till next time,

your writer

Maria