Back in Kathmandu, Nepal
Yes, I've had 3 cups of coffee and they have been SPECTACULAR! After a month and a half of tea and more tea (and more tea, and some more tea, and yes, even more tea, and oh, yes, tea please, and even a few "What? $16.00 for a pot of tea? I'll stick with my cold, Steri-penned liquid germs for now.") - so after swimming in tea for 6 weeks I succumbed to the call of the coffee. I'll admit I was skeptical - the only coffee I'd had since leaving the States was on Dragonair from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Kathmandu - it did not resemble coffee in the slightest and was so bizarre tasting (euphemism for putrid) that even if I was dying of thirst in the Sahara and came upon a lake of this coffee, I'd drink the sand instead (and not because I didn't know the difference - anyone remember that line from The American President - one of the best, understated, cutting remarks about our fine citizenry in moviedom - but I digress...). Anyway - so in Lukla (the little place with the tiny airstrip) - last day of our trek, there is a "Starbucks" - not a "real" one, but it looks pretty darned good (early in our trekking, when we were fresh faced and energetic, we swore we'd never go to such a "Western" place, but months go by, priorities change...) - the Starbucks logo, designed by the owner - it's Ama Dablam with stars overhead (rather than that Starbuck person) - it's stunning! And the coffee - WOW - let's just say, after all that hiking and tea drinking and yak dodging and too little air to breathe - it was absolutely PERFECT! Sometimes you just need some decadence!
So, enough about coffee! Yes, here we are, back in Kathmandu. Since we were last here in mid-October, Kathmandu has gotten colder, calmer, and cryptically less crowded. Okay, maybe just colder. As for the rest, I think we've just gotten used to the chaos, though I probably still say "Watch out!" about 40 times an hour to Raiona and Marc as we walk the narrow streets full of honking cars, zooming and beeping motorcycles, ding-a-linging bicycle rickshaws, people and more people. Definitely less tourists than in October. Marc regularly gets asked if he wants to buy hashish (and this is after shaving and cleaning up, too!). We are targeted by every shopkeeper wanting to sell to the few tourists (one guy followed us, shouting prices which kept falling like a torrent over a cliff, his price dropping about 10 fold because "you're the only tourists here!" - it worked, we bought).
It's been a bizarre week here, because the day after we flew in, there was a total strike (called by the Maoists, the Communist Party of Nepal who have disrupted things quite a bit in the past, violence notwithstanding - we met several trekkers who were stopped by Maoists collecting "donations." Thankfully, we had no such encounters...) - so the strike - no vehicles running, no shops open - nothing. We went out walking - easy to do because you didn't have to didge all the traffic - there were lots of people (Nepalis) out, but not a single vehicle anywhere. (Westerners who had to get to the airport were taken on a government supplied bus.) There was supposed to be another strike yesterday and today, but they postponed it due to public protest and the fact that yesterday was an auspicious day for weddings!
Today we walked up to the famous "Monkey Temple" (Swayambhu Nath Stupa). It's on a hill so you get a big view of the surrounding area, but there is so much pollution you can hardly see any distance at all. Crossing a river on the way, so much garbage it's unbelievable - truly sickening and disheartening - on the other hand, we passed people carving intricate designs in stone, a man pounding out beautiful brass bowls, women stringing bright orange flower leis, we've seen amazingly ornate beaded and embroidered fabrics, intricate paintings that take 14, 20, 25 days of painstaking work, golden painted statues and intricately carved building fascias - it's bizarre to have such beauty in some respects, and such utter degredation and filth in other respects - I don't know how people reconcile these things.
So, here's some details from the last week or so:
Hydro at Cheplung - So, 2nd to last day of hiking (Dec. 3), it's getting late and we're looking for a lodge - everything's CLOSED! (end of trekking season), so we keep going and going, and we're tired, it's close to dark, it's getting later and colder, and some of us may be getting just a bit crabby, and when are we ever going to find a place to stay (on the way in this section was a parade of trekkers, now there's nobody but us!). Finally - a lodge! Open? No - but her sister's lodge is, just 5 minutes up the trail. She has this guy accompany us there - he offers to take my pack but I have him take Raina's - and we ZOOM up the trail - this guy is going fast - we're smack in the middle of a yak train and he's jumping up on the side of the trail, speeding past these 2000 pound beasts who don't even know you exist, but we have to keep up with Raina's pack (Marc's not so lucky and gets stuck way behind the herd). Finally ahead of the yaks - where is that lodge? Finally there, and we learn the name of our helper (Ang Dawa) and learn that he is a cook for this lodge. We are the only guests, there are no lights, it's COLD, the toilet is way outside (so in the middle of the night I have to go downstairs, through the dining area where someone is sleeping, through the kitchen where someone is sleeping, unbar the door, through the gate, around back. Whew!) - BUT, we have a place to sleep, we have TEA (of course) and incredibly good dal bhat for dinner, and the family is incredibly NICE! AND the man really wants to show us their hydroelectric plant! (Who can resist?) So next morning we follow the guy down, down, and down some more, almost running along a rocky, muddy, steep path through the forest, till finally we come to a small stone building, about 6X6 feet, with a DANGER (in Nepali) sign on the door. Inside was a wheel in a shroud (6" wheel maybe?), a pulley to an induction motor/generator, wires going out of the building nailed to trees. And that's about it!
It makes 2 Kw (yes, you Utility nerds, that's TWO kilowatts - and more info for you Utility wanna-bes - the head pressure was just 20 PSI. Has a 5" penstock.) It serves 54 homes/lodges (that's roughly 200-250 people - so that's, like, 7 watts per person). It provides one or two lightbulbs (compact flourescents) per customer. People pay 200 rupees (a little under $3.00) per light bulb per month. The load shed happens because below a certain voltage the lightbulbs dono't work, so if there's too much load - the lightbulbs go out (thus shedding load) and the voltage goes back up.
That's probably more than most of you cared to know - but hey, it was really quite exciting (including the trail down to it), so we really felt we lucked into a fantastic situation!
Flying out of Lukla - Dec. 5. So, the airstrip at Lukla - fist of all, there are police (in riot gear) ALL over the place - we learn that the prime minister and cabinet had a meeting at Everest Base Camp (on global warming in the Himalayas) the day before, so now the police were ending their "field trip" to Lukla by taking group pictures in all their gear - there were still a lot of media around - they even interviewed Marc for the TV news! We did a lot of waiting around wondering when it would be our turn to get into one of the little 14 seat planes that kept flying in, spewing luggage and passengers, inhaling the next bunch, and zooming out again. Finally our turn - I'm in the from seat looking right into the cockpit (as the guy outside the plane is offwering the pilos tea and cookies through the window). Take-off - the runway is quite shore, so the planes turn at the very ultimate end of the strip, put on the brakes, rev up the engines (the little plane had propellers, just like the ones we put on the bus at Holden for our Easter flight to Bali/Koinonia last year), let go the brakes, blast down the 12-degree slope of the runway, take off, veer left before hitting the mountainside just ahead! "Adventure, Tyler!" (See the movie Never Cry Wolf for an explanation of that comment.) We flew quite low over the entire route that it took us 12 days of hiking and a 10-hour bus ride from Kathmandu - we could even see some of the lodges we'd stayed at! Circled Kathmandu a number of times, and were soon having tea (what else?) and snacks on the terrace of our Thamel hotel!
Power - the power in our area of Kathmandu goes off every night for several hours, and sometimes in the morning too. I think they need some consultations with Holden Utilities!
Eating - Dec. 7. So we have been eating our way through Kathmandu. Let's see, today we had breakfast at our hotel (eggs, toast, fried potatoes, tea), then bought 2 cinnamon rolls at a bakery (ate them), then bought samosas and doughnut things on the streets (5 samosa, 5 doughnuts, ate them), then had lunch at a momo (dumpling) place. Then we bought a loaf of bread and a giant nut cookie tart thing (ate them). Then had dinner at a vegetarian Indian restaurant. Then bought half-priced (after 8 p.m.) bakery goodies (2 pretzels, a cinnamon bun, ate them). So I think we are finally getting fillled up! Bilbo would be proud!
Philip's orphanage - Dec. 8. Some of you may remember Philip who volunteered at Holden in the summer of 2006 and again for a short time in 2007. He runs an orphanage in Kathmandu, so we had the chance to visit! Just getting there was quite the adventure - Philip says there are no traffic rules - then amends it to say there are, but only on paper. Took about 40 minutes in a taxi to go 4 kilometers. Anyway, we met a number of the kids - all in their blue school uniforms. Philip's mom served us the best dal bhat we've had in Nepal. Philip is doing such a good thing for these children - saving their lives really. He also had a number of copies of Holden's Fall Newsletter, so he gave us one. As we were looking through it, we found both Raina's and my picture in the paper (Raina in the Shakespeare play, me hiking across the avalanche debris). It was such a weird, but exciting connection, looking at the Holden newsletter, seeing our pictures, while hanging out at Philip's orphanage house in Kathmandu! They were all so very gracious. We feel lucky to have been able to visit.
So TOMORROW - we fly to Bangkok, Thailand! Last night here in Kathmandu! It's been quite a trip, hard to believe all that has happened. And now on to the tropics, and fresh fruit and vegetables!
My time is up (as usual) on this computer. I'll try to proofread this later, but for now, please excuse the mistakes. We'll be volunteering at the elephant sanctuary in Northern Thailand from December 14 - 27. So if I don't get back on the computer before then, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! I think we'll decorate an elephant on Christmas Eve!
Anyway, many thanks for all of you who read this. It really makes us feel connected! Feel free to leave comments. I read them all! Thanks for being our extended community. We miss you!
Much love from us!
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The Mountains Go Ever On and On...
Namche, elev. 11,300 ft.
So, WOW, these mountains: Everest, Ama Dablam, Cholatse, Pumori, Lhotse, Nuptse, Cho Oyu (affectionately known - by us - as Cho YoYoYo), Makalu... I love these names - expecially Cho YoYoYo - say it 10 times fast!
So, yes, these mountains - sheer, immense, icy, wind blasted, pure, ancient, breathtaking (literally).
At one point, standing at the base of Lhotse, the sheer south face, 10,000 feet straight up, wind careening over and along it in a distant, constant ROAR - it was a sound I couldn't fathom, more of a sense than a sound, suffusing time and space with an otherworldliness, especially since where we were standing was not especially windy. But this ROAR... Anyone ever see that TV show "Roar"? About some Celtic legend where the "ROAR" was basically the heartbeat of the universe - well, I think we've been living, breathing, hearing, feleling that roar. And it's made us stronger, and I hope, wiser (not to mention somewhat skinnier and tired!).
So now we've made it back to Namche, in the "lowlands" at 11,300 ft (amazing how your perspective changes) where the air is THICK, the yaks are STILL good looking, and our appetites are way above average. It seems a little surreal, now, that we've been hiking around these mountains for a month and a half, that we've been living the last four weeks at elevations between 14,000 and 18,500 ft (I think the altitude's addled our brains). We look up-valley, at the sculpted perfect profile of Ama Dablam in the distance, and it's almost dreamlike to realize we've been to its base and all the way around the other side, to the base of Everest, and up and up into the thin air, so many miles and meters and days from here.
But now, with just two more days of hiking left (then we FLY back to Kathmandeu from the tiny Lukla airstrip that slopes downhill at an angle of 12 degrees - don't worry Mom and Dad, it will be MUCH SAFER than a repeat of that bus ride we had at the start of the trip) - now at the end of our trek, we are, how should I put it? TIRED? Yes! Hungry? Yes! (We could eat a yak - except that we're vegetarians and we would NEVER eat one of those cute furry guys!) Ready for the tropics? Yes! (Beaches that aren't frozen!) Grateful? Yes! Planning to eat our way through Kathmandu? Yes! (Breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, supper, and dinner, with snacks in between - trying to get our Hobbit habits back!) Anyway, I could go on and on with what we are...suffice it to say - healthy happy Hobbits heading homeward (which I guess is toward Kathmandu at the moment...)
We've seen incredible sights, had amazing experiences, hiked to sacred lakes and up high mountains, met friendly people, had no showers for 6 weeks (and STILL the people are friendly), started buying food specifically for caloric content (though I balk at eating chunks of yak butter), breathed a lot of yak dung smoke (we can smell a yak dung fire a mile away - wait a minute, maybe it's that our clothes have been steeped in it for weeks), caught the stomach bug, got over the stomach bug (thank you antibiotics!), seen Himalayan tahr (goats), snowcocks (huge high altitude grouse-like birds that seem to like to chase each other around for no apparent reason), one Himalayan pika (!), hiked and hiked some more, and lived in the land of VERTICAL.
Here's a few details, comments, useless trivia, etc. in no particular order:
Itinerary - For those of you interested in such things, get out your map and follow the bouncing ball... We started out 43 days ago (or so) in Shivalaya - hiked 12 days to Lukla (where the little airstrip is) - you can read details in the last blog. Then on up the Imja Khola, through Namche, Tengboche, Dingboche, to spend a week at Chhukung (15,600 ft elevation), hiking up Chhukung Ri (3X), and to Island Peak Base Camp (2X), and various people getting sick for a few days. Then on up the Khumbu Khola to Gorak Shep (elev 17,000 ft) for 4 days of hiking to Everest Base Camp and up Kala Pathar (2X, elev 18,500 ft). Then backk down and down some more and around to Phortse and up the Gokyo Valley to Gokyo (15,700 ft) and the sacred lakes and the Renjo La (Pass). The down, down, down.
Snow - "Yak bells ring, are you listening, on the trail, snow is glistening, a beautiful sigtht, we're stranded tonight, sitting in this Himalayan hut... later on we'll play Yahtzee, as we dream of Starbucks Coffee...." We've had spectacular weather, sunny but very very cold, clear sparkling skies, clouds settling daily in the valleys below, and when there were no valleys below (i.e. we're up in the ether), crystalline landscapes reflecting intense sun with no heat, tinkling sounds of ice, squeaky dry snow. We did have snowfall on several occasions. In Lobuche (elev 16,250 ft) on November 17, we awoke to 3 inches on the ground and more falling. Actually, it wasn't so much falling as blasting horizontally, flattening tents and anything else not riveted to the ground (except yaks, who didn't seem to notice anything unusual). Being the intrepid explorers that we are (!), we decided to take a 20-minute hike up-valley to the "Italian Pyramid," a high altitude research station (at 16,650 ft) staffed year round. We were milling about outside in the blizzard when one of the technicians invited us in and showed us all around. It was facinating, a big glass pyramid all run on solar (12 Kw for you Utility folks!) where they study and gather data on weather, climate, glaciers, high altitude effects on humans, and more. Then we skedaddled back down the slippery slope to the tearoom of our lodge, sipped hot chocolate, and sang Christmas songs (like the one at the beginning of this section). Every time the wind gusted, it blew a fine dusting of powdery snow through the walls onto our heads and our Yahtzee game!
Yaks - These guys have got to be some of the cutest, and largest (they must weigh a ton each) animals on earth. We realize that what we saw on the first part of the trek, lower down, were not yaks, but dzos and dsopkyos (crossbreeds between cows and yaks). Anyway. The yaks are incredibly furry (hair down to their knees, fuzzy long tail), they all wear a bell around their necks (which you can hear for miles - a very pleasant sound as it means you'll soon be seeing these cute creatures) - many have "earrings" - red wool tassels, and sometiomes a pink ribbon in their tails. So - incredibly cute, incredibly huge, with large sharp horns. And they seem so docile. They just pad up and down and up and down with all these loads, even up and down the 45-degree stairs of Cirith Ungol! They could easily have a yak uprising and take over the portering business, make their milions, and retire to the beraches of Thailand. Though they'd probably prefer the beaches of Iceland!
Mt. Wanahockalugi must be the patron saint of the Himalaya. If you understood that comment (see "Finding Nemo"?)...it's a wonder that everyone's not sick everywhere because there's so much hacking and coughing and spitting - and very little attention to where these hacks and coughs go. Also, lots of people with all sorts of bugs and stomach/intestinal ills, throwing up everywhere. Pleasant huh? No bed bugs though! Too cold! And while we're on the subject of "yuck," Raina discovered the most disgusting toilet on THE FACE OF THE EARTH at the Sagaarmatha Visitor Center (just outside Namche), a dilapidated place but interesting (and dilapidated) displays. NO details to follow.
Housing - Here's the way it works in a lodge (tea-house). You get a room, generally plywood walls, ceiling, floor, with cracks to see into the next room and to let the frest night air in, beds usually a piece of foam on top of boards. Some lodges higher up provide fuzzy quilts (with cute cartoon characters on them) of varying degees of cleanliness (you carry your own sleeping bag). Bathroom is usually a Nepali toilet (squat over a hole) also of varying degrees of cleanliness. Usually NO sink or place to wash hands or brush teeth (where would we be without good old Purell?!). Then there is the tea-room - benches around the outside covered with Tibetan carpets, low tables in front of the benches, very beautiful in some lodges - where you spend most of your time because it gets the sun in the afternoon, and they build a fire in the stove for the few hours around dinnertime (of course, this does not mean that it stays lit). You are required to eat in your lodge's tea-room (it's not cheap - that's where they make their money). The menus look extensive, but you realize quickly enough that they are all variations of a few ingredients - potatoes, noodles, rice. In the smaller lodges, you may be eating in the family's kitchen, next to the fire. We ate dal bhat (rice and a thin lentil soup that you pour over it, with curried vegies) for much of the trip, but the higher we got, the worse and less plentiful (per plate)it became, so we've been trying everything on the menu - fried potatoes with yak cheese, fried noodles with yak cheese, fried rice with yak cheese - you get the idea. We have dinner, play a few games of Yahtzee, or re-read our 3 books that we've already read several times each - Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiesen, and Lost Horizon, then hit the sleeping bags around 7:30 or 8 (when the yak dung fire goes out) for a good 11 hours or so! We, who are night owls, can only dream of one day STAYING UP LATE again!!
Everest Base Camp. November 20. 17,600 ft. Yea Everest Base Camp! We made it! AND we had it all to ourselves!! AND the weather was SPECTACULAR! Sunny and calm! (There is so much icy wind up here.) Truly truly amazing. The Khumbu glacier is just astounding - like a frozen ocean of whipped up waves, hundreds of feet high. You walk across it and mostly you're on rocks, but suddenly - solid glassy ice - you want to look through it into the depths of the glacier ("through the looking glass") - ice cliffs and ice sculptures - massive amounts of broken ice, pinnacles of smooth translucent ice with boulders balancing on top - the whole of it flowing down the huge valley as far as you can see. And the Khumbu Icefall - again, incredible - snaking its way up the Western Cwm (pronounded "koom"), trying to imagine climbers gingerly crawling up that way as Jon Krakauer describes - as we walked through the glacier among the debris of climbers (a group had just pulled out that day leaving behind a pile of rotten cucumbers and green peppers which the birds were enjoying, and a full toilet thing, which nobody will ever enjoy), there were flat spots for tents and wind breaks and many many prayer shrines with tattered prayer flags flapping in the breeze - as we walked through the glacier, you could hear falling rocks, running water, cracking, groaning ice, thundering avalanches from across the way. We celebrated by eating a giant chocolate bar carried all the way from Holden Village! The next day we hiked (I should say crawled) our way up Kala Pathar (18,500 ft) for stupendous views of Everest, Lhotse, Nuptse, and all those other mountains.
Thanksgiving - We hiked into Gokyo (15,700 ft) on this day. It is situated in a beautiful spot on an emerald lake, with a view up valley to Cho Oyu (I mean Cho YoYoYo). We stayed in a small lodge right on the lakeshore. After meeting only 2 other Americans in the past 5 weeks, we ran into three American couples that night at the lodge (all independent trekkers), even a couple from Seattle! So it was good to yak away in English to English speakers for a change! And we treated ourselves to a Thanksgiving Feast - we shared a vegie thing in dough, some noodles with yak cheese, some fried dumpling things, and some tasteless boiled cabbage with a few sprigs of carrot. But the piece de resistance was the dessert we shared - a bowl of "rice pudding" - rice with hot milk - we dumped on lots of sugar, salt, and cinnamon for a pretty darned tasty treat!
Being the detail oriented guy that he is, Marc figured out our total hiking ascents and descents - SO - we hiked UP over 54,600 feet, and DOWN over 50,800 feet! Hey, with all that, how come we only ended up at Everest BASE camp?
Pheriche - On our way down from EBC (Everest Base Camp) we stayed in Pheriche for a couple of nights at the cleanest, nicest lodge we've seen. The rooms were the typical boxes - but we felt we were in total luxury because there was a SINK available for washing hands, a mirror in the room (YIKES!), the first toilet clean enough to sit on (or that you COULD sit on) in a month. There were HOOKS on the wall, the light worked. AND they had a "library" of books donated by trekkers. Raina buried her nose in the 7th Harry Potter. Pheriche is also where the Himalayan Rescue Association runs a clinic. They do AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) talks every day for trekkers. They have volunteer doctors and they provide services for both trekkers and locals. AMS is a big problem up here. Thankfully, we went very slowly and acclimatized well, so never even got a headache! Living at high altitude, though, is hard on your body - colds and coughs don'ot go away - just breathing is a chore...
Pringles are everywhere. As is Coke and Everest Beer (for $4.50 a can). We did try the Everest beer in Kathmandu when our hotel owner gave us a bottle fort the festival Diwali - it was putrid but Marc dutifully drank it. We may try a can when we bet back, just to see if it varies from bottle to bottle.
We carried what amounted to weekend overnight packs (though sometimes they felt much heavier that that). Though we didn't have to carry food (except snacks), we had sleeping bags, lots of warm clothes, a humungo medical/fist aid kit, books, notebooks, steri pen (water purification), back-up water purification, extra batteries, solar charger, emergency equipment, cameras, toiletries.
The local seem to like that we're a family traveling together. They also seem to like that Raina and I wear skirts (with legging underneath for warmth) - one day, chatting with 2 young army/police guys who were standing by the trail - they liked practicing their English - they liked our skirts - said it was "like Nepali girls" - they though we'd bought them in Kathmandu and were impressed that we could buy such things in the States. One of them also asked Marc if Raina was married, and he couldn't believe she wasn't yet!
Ice, ice, ice. Ice is everywhere - huge caps of it on the mountains, valleys full of glacial ice, ice waterfalls even low down.
The following is the opinion of the author and does not reflect the management - Here, there are basically two types of trekkers - the independent trekkers, like us, and those who either go in a guided group or those who hire their own guides/porters. We have found by far that the friendliest, most environmentally minded, most culturally minded, have been the independent trekkers. The groups and those who come in with their retinue of servants generally ignore us independents. It's a whole weird scene - they have a lot of money (much of which goes to the middle men in Kathmandu rather than the locals) and there is a definite caste system. The Westerner is treated as a rich demi-god, but also as a poor, imbecilic, physically and mentally inept creature that needs to be coddled and catered to every step of the way ( in fact, many in groups ignore the signs of AMS and keep going higher until they keel over). Ah, judgements, judgements. We're full of them. Happy to discuss these opinions and any others with you anytime!!!
Well, my fingers are frozen and hitting lots and lots of wrong keys. Not sure I'll have time for proofreading (again) so please excuse the mess! We've so many stories and ideas and opinions that it's hard to give an accurate picture of what's been happening. Hope you get a little idea of our trip. Hope you are all enjoying yourselves too! Bye for now. Lot of love from us!
So, WOW, these mountains: Everest, Ama Dablam, Cholatse, Pumori, Lhotse, Nuptse, Cho Oyu (affectionately known - by us - as Cho YoYoYo), Makalu... I love these names - expecially Cho YoYoYo - say it 10 times fast!
So, yes, these mountains - sheer, immense, icy, wind blasted, pure, ancient, breathtaking (literally).
At one point, standing at the base of Lhotse, the sheer south face, 10,000 feet straight up, wind careening over and along it in a distant, constant ROAR - it was a sound I couldn't fathom, more of a sense than a sound, suffusing time and space with an otherworldliness, especially since where we were standing was not especially windy. But this ROAR... Anyone ever see that TV show "Roar"? About some Celtic legend where the "ROAR" was basically the heartbeat of the universe - well, I think we've been living, breathing, hearing, feleling that roar. And it's made us stronger, and I hope, wiser (not to mention somewhat skinnier and tired!).
So now we've made it back to Namche, in the "lowlands" at 11,300 ft (amazing how your perspective changes) where the air is THICK, the yaks are STILL good looking, and our appetites are way above average. It seems a little surreal, now, that we've been hiking around these mountains for a month and a half, that we've been living the last four weeks at elevations between 14,000 and 18,500 ft (I think the altitude's addled our brains). We look up-valley, at the sculpted perfect profile of Ama Dablam in the distance, and it's almost dreamlike to realize we've been to its base and all the way around the other side, to the base of Everest, and up and up into the thin air, so many miles and meters and days from here.
But now, with just two more days of hiking left (then we FLY back to Kathmandeu from the tiny Lukla airstrip that slopes downhill at an angle of 12 degrees - don't worry Mom and Dad, it will be MUCH SAFER than a repeat of that bus ride we had at the start of the trip) - now at the end of our trek, we are, how should I put it? TIRED? Yes! Hungry? Yes! (We could eat a yak - except that we're vegetarians and we would NEVER eat one of those cute furry guys!) Ready for the tropics? Yes! (Beaches that aren't frozen!) Grateful? Yes! Planning to eat our way through Kathmandu? Yes! (Breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, supper, and dinner, with snacks in between - trying to get our Hobbit habits back!) Anyway, I could go on and on with what we are...suffice it to say - healthy happy Hobbits heading homeward (which I guess is toward Kathmandu at the moment...)
We've seen incredible sights, had amazing experiences, hiked to sacred lakes and up high mountains, met friendly people, had no showers for 6 weeks (and STILL the people are friendly), started buying food specifically for caloric content (though I balk at eating chunks of yak butter), breathed a lot of yak dung smoke (we can smell a yak dung fire a mile away - wait a minute, maybe it's that our clothes have been steeped in it for weeks), caught the stomach bug, got over the stomach bug (thank you antibiotics!), seen Himalayan tahr (goats), snowcocks (huge high altitude grouse-like birds that seem to like to chase each other around for no apparent reason), one Himalayan pika (!), hiked and hiked some more, and lived in the land of VERTICAL.
Here's a few details, comments, useless trivia, etc. in no particular order:
Itinerary - For those of you interested in such things, get out your map and follow the bouncing ball... We started out 43 days ago (or so) in Shivalaya - hiked 12 days to Lukla (where the little airstrip is) - you can read details in the last blog. Then on up the Imja Khola, through Namche, Tengboche, Dingboche, to spend a week at Chhukung (15,600 ft elevation), hiking up Chhukung Ri (3X), and to Island Peak Base Camp (2X), and various people getting sick for a few days. Then on up the Khumbu Khola to Gorak Shep (elev 17,000 ft) for 4 days of hiking to Everest Base Camp and up Kala Pathar (2X, elev 18,500 ft). Then backk down and down some more and around to Phortse and up the Gokyo Valley to Gokyo (15,700 ft) and the sacred lakes and the Renjo La (Pass). The down, down, down.
Snow - "Yak bells ring, are you listening, on the trail, snow is glistening, a beautiful sigtht, we're stranded tonight, sitting in this Himalayan hut... later on we'll play Yahtzee, as we dream of Starbucks Coffee...." We've had spectacular weather, sunny but very very cold, clear sparkling skies, clouds settling daily in the valleys below, and when there were no valleys below (i.e. we're up in the ether), crystalline landscapes reflecting intense sun with no heat, tinkling sounds of ice, squeaky dry snow. We did have snowfall on several occasions. In Lobuche (elev 16,250 ft) on November 17, we awoke to 3 inches on the ground and more falling. Actually, it wasn't so much falling as blasting horizontally, flattening tents and anything else not riveted to the ground (except yaks, who didn't seem to notice anything unusual). Being the intrepid explorers that we are (!), we decided to take a 20-minute hike up-valley to the "Italian Pyramid," a high altitude research station (at 16,650 ft) staffed year round. We were milling about outside in the blizzard when one of the technicians invited us in and showed us all around. It was facinating, a big glass pyramid all run on solar (12 Kw for you Utility folks!) where they study and gather data on weather, climate, glaciers, high altitude effects on humans, and more. Then we skedaddled back down the slippery slope to the tearoom of our lodge, sipped hot chocolate, and sang Christmas songs (like the one at the beginning of this section). Every time the wind gusted, it blew a fine dusting of powdery snow through the walls onto our heads and our Yahtzee game!
Yaks - These guys have got to be some of the cutest, and largest (they must weigh a ton each) animals on earth. We realize that what we saw on the first part of the trek, lower down, were not yaks, but dzos and dsopkyos (crossbreeds between cows and yaks). Anyway. The yaks are incredibly furry (hair down to their knees, fuzzy long tail), they all wear a bell around their necks (which you can hear for miles - a very pleasant sound as it means you'll soon be seeing these cute creatures) - many have "earrings" - red wool tassels, and sometiomes a pink ribbon in their tails. So - incredibly cute, incredibly huge, with large sharp horns. And they seem so docile. They just pad up and down and up and down with all these loads, even up and down the 45-degree stairs of Cirith Ungol! They could easily have a yak uprising and take over the portering business, make their milions, and retire to the beraches of Thailand. Though they'd probably prefer the beaches of Iceland!
Mt. Wanahockalugi must be the patron saint of the Himalaya. If you understood that comment (see "Finding Nemo"?)...it's a wonder that everyone's not sick everywhere because there's so much hacking and coughing and spitting - and very little attention to where these hacks and coughs go. Also, lots of people with all sorts of bugs and stomach/intestinal ills, throwing up everywhere. Pleasant huh? No bed bugs though! Too cold! And while we're on the subject of "yuck," Raina discovered the most disgusting toilet on THE FACE OF THE EARTH at the Sagaarmatha Visitor Center (just outside Namche), a dilapidated place but interesting (and dilapidated) displays. NO details to follow.
Housing - Here's the way it works in a lodge (tea-house). You get a room, generally plywood walls, ceiling, floor, with cracks to see into the next room and to let the frest night air in, beds usually a piece of foam on top of boards. Some lodges higher up provide fuzzy quilts (with cute cartoon characters on them) of varying degees of cleanliness (you carry your own sleeping bag). Bathroom is usually a Nepali toilet (squat over a hole) also of varying degrees of cleanliness. Usually NO sink or place to wash hands or brush teeth (where would we be without good old Purell?!). Then there is the tea-room - benches around the outside covered with Tibetan carpets, low tables in front of the benches, very beautiful in some lodges - where you spend most of your time because it gets the sun in the afternoon, and they build a fire in the stove for the few hours around dinnertime (of course, this does not mean that it stays lit). You are required to eat in your lodge's tea-room (it's not cheap - that's where they make their money). The menus look extensive, but you realize quickly enough that they are all variations of a few ingredients - potatoes, noodles, rice. In the smaller lodges, you may be eating in the family's kitchen, next to the fire. We ate dal bhat (rice and a thin lentil soup that you pour over it, with curried vegies) for much of the trip, but the higher we got, the worse and less plentiful (per plate)it became, so we've been trying everything on the menu - fried potatoes with yak cheese, fried noodles with yak cheese, fried rice with yak cheese - you get the idea. We have dinner, play a few games of Yahtzee, or re-read our 3 books that we've already read several times each - Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiesen, and Lost Horizon, then hit the sleeping bags around 7:30 or 8 (when the yak dung fire goes out) for a good 11 hours or so! We, who are night owls, can only dream of one day STAYING UP LATE again!!
Everest Base Camp. November 20. 17,600 ft. Yea Everest Base Camp! We made it! AND we had it all to ourselves!! AND the weather was SPECTACULAR! Sunny and calm! (There is so much icy wind up here.) Truly truly amazing. The Khumbu glacier is just astounding - like a frozen ocean of whipped up waves, hundreds of feet high. You walk across it and mostly you're on rocks, but suddenly - solid glassy ice - you want to look through it into the depths of the glacier ("through the looking glass") - ice cliffs and ice sculptures - massive amounts of broken ice, pinnacles of smooth translucent ice with boulders balancing on top - the whole of it flowing down the huge valley as far as you can see. And the Khumbu Icefall - again, incredible - snaking its way up the Western Cwm (pronounded "koom"), trying to imagine climbers gingerly crawling up that way as Jon Krakauer describes - as we walked through the glacier among the debris of climbers (a group had just pulled out that day leaving behind a pile of rotten cucumbers and green peppers which the birds were enjoying, and a full toilet thing, which nobody will ever enjoy), there were flat spots for tents and wind breaks and many many prayer shrines with tattered prayer flags flapping in the breeze - as we walked through the glacier, you could hear falling rocks, running water, cracking, groaning ice, thundering avalanches from across the way. We celebrated by eating a giant chocolate bar carried all the way from Holden Village! The next day we hiked (I should say crawled) our way up Kala Pathar (18,500 ft) for stupendous views of Everest, Lhotse, Nuptse, and all those other mountains.
Thanksgiving - We hiked into Gokyo (15,700 ft) on this day. It is situated in a beautiful spot on an emerald lake, with a view up valley to Cho Oyu (I mean Cho YoYoYo). We stayed in a small lodge right on the lakeshore. After meeting only 2 other Americans in the past 5 weeks, we ran into three American couples that night at the lodge (all independent trekkers), even a couple from Seattle! So it was good to yak away in English to English speakers for a change! And we treated ourselves to a Thanksgiving Feast - we shared a vegie thing in dough, some noodles with yak cheese, some fried dumpling things, and some tasteless boiled cabbage with a few sprigs of carrot. But the piece de resistance was the dessert we shared - a bowl of "rice pudding" - rice with hot milk - we dumped on lots of sugar, salt, and cinnamon for a pretty darned tasty treat!
Being the detail oriented guy that he is, Marc figured out our total hiking ascents and descents - SO - we hiked UP over 54,600 feet, and DOWN over 50,800 feet! Hey, with all that, how come we only ended up at Everest BASE camp?
Pheriche - On our way down from EBC (Everest Base Camp) we stayed in Pheriche for a couple of nights at the cleanest, nicest lodge we've seen. The rooms were the typical boxes - but we felt we were in total luxury because there was a SINK available for washing hands, a mirror in the room (YIKES!), the first toilet clean enough to sit on (or that you COULD sit on) in a month. There were HOOKS on the wall, the light worked. AND they had a "library" of books donated by trekkers. Raina buried her nose in the 7th Harry Potter. Pheriche is also where the Himalayan Rescue Association runs a clinic. They do AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) talks every day for trekkers. They have volunteer doctors and they provide services for both trekkers and locals. AMS is a big problem up here. Thankfully, we went very slowly and acclimatized well, so never even got a headache! Living at high altitude, though, is hard on your body - colds and coughs don'ot go away - just breathing is a chore...
Pringles are everywhere. As is Coke and Everest Beer (for $4.50 a can). We did try the Everest beer in Kathmandu when our hotel owner gave us a bottle fort the festival Diwali - it was putrid but Marc dutifully drank it. We may try a can when we bet back, just to see if it varies from bottle to bottle.
We carried what amounted to weekend overnight packs (though sometimes they felt much heavier that that). Though we didn't have to carry food (except snacks), we had sleeping bags, lots of warm clothes, a humungo medical/fist aid kit, books, notebooks, steri pen (water purification), back-up water purification, extra batteries, solar charger, emergency equipment, cameras, toiletries.
The local seem to like that we're a family traveling together. They also seem to like that Raina and I wear skirts (with legging underneath for warmth) - one day, chatting with 2 young army/police guys who were standing by the trail - they liked practicing their English - they liked our skirts - said it was "like Nepali girls" - they though we'd bought them in Kathmandu and were impressed that we could buy such things in the States. One of them also asked Marc if Raina was married, and he couldn't believe she wasn't yet!
Ice, ice, ice. Ice is everywhere - huge caps of it on the mountains, valleys full of glacial ice, ice waterfalls even low down.
The following is the opinion of the author and does not reflect the management - Here, there are basically two types of trekkers - the independent trekkers, like us, and those who either go in a guided group or those who hire their own guides/porters. We have found by far that the friendliest, most environmentally minded, most culturally minded, have been the independent trekkers. The groups and those who come in with their retinue of servants generally ignore us independents. It's a whole weird scene - they have a lot of money (much of which goes to the middle men in Kathmandu rather than the locals) and there is a definite caste system. The Westerner is treated as a rich demi-god, but also as a poor, imbecilic, physically and mentally inept creature that needs to be coddled and catered to every step of the way ( in fact, many in groups ignore the signs of AMS and keep going higher until they keel over). Ah, judgements, judgements. We're full of them. Happy to discuss these opinions and any others with you anytime!!!
Well, my fingers are frozen and hitting lots and lots of wrong keys. Not sure I'll have time for proofreading (again) so please excuse the mess! We've so many stories and ideas and opinions that it's hard to give an accurate picture of what's been happening. Hope you get a little idea of our trip. Hope you are all enjoying yourselves too! Bye for now. Lot of love from us!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
300 Cups of Tea...and counting
A quick hello from Namche Bazar, where the air is thin, the yaks are good looking, and the mountains are all above average - WELL above! We saw our first view of Chomlungma (Sherpa name)/Sagarmatha (Nepali name)/Everest (tourist name) today. And Lhotse and Ama Dablam! Though they really have nothing on the North Cascades (what could pssibly be better?) I will say one thing: They are huge. Really huge. Really, really, really huge! Beautiful, yes. Cold, yes. Amazing, yes. Okay, that's saying more than one thing, but really, seeing them in person is pretty darned impressive. These mountains are STEEPand SHEER. We've climbed the stairs of Cirith Ungol multiple times ("come on hobbitses, up, up, up the stairs we go") only to descend them again on the other side - so far we've hiked UP more than 26,600 feet, and DOWN mre than 21,300 feet! (Namche is at 11,300 feet.)
We're staying in an incredible spot in Namche (Sherpa trading and trekking hub, two dadys walk from Lukla, 15 days walk from where we started). We asked for a room for three, and since there were no triples, we ended up in their private prayer room (Sherpas traditionally follow Tibetan Buddhism) for thge same rate as the cell-like rooms that are everywhere. This is an incredible room - large, ornately decorated with Tibetan and Buddhist artifacts, tapistries, paintins - it's like being in a mini monastery - we sleep on the benches around the edge of the room that are covered in Tibetan carpets - there was an oil candle burning in a little shrine, there are windows on two sides overlooking Namche and out to soaring peaks. Last night the moonlight on the snowy peaks was ethereal, and the stars sparkled above. We feel pretty darned lucky. Most accomodations are quite basic, and always cold (this one is cold too, but so beautiful, and there are soft quilts to bundle up in!).
So, hiking for 15 days or so - the first 12 days on the "old" section of the route to Everest Base Camp (most folks now fly into the tiny airstrip at Lukla). On that section we felt we'd been transported back in time a thousand years - plwing with yak/cows with wooden plows, threshing grain by hand, many houses without chimneys - the smoke just finds its way out through the eaves. We ran into only a few Westerners each day, if any, and it seems the Sherpa village life went on as it had for years, and we just passes through it, whereas nw, on the main route, life revolves around the hoards of trekkers - it's quite the amazing contrast. We're really glad to have experience the quieter, slower paced life of the first section, even though we felt quuite foreign and often out of our element, and had to regularly ask directions to find our way. But we managed and had somoe amzaing experiences.
Some random thoughts:
Busride - We tok the "super-express" bus frojmn Kathmandu to Shivalay, where we started hiking - people and luggage piled inside and more peop0le and luggage on tp, 10 hours of bouncing and jolting along a road that makes Holden's road book like a 4-lane highway through Iowwa, people throuwinhg up out the window (when you're lucky), in the aisle or your lap (when you're not so lucky), constant stopp9ingand starting, Nepali music blasting at deafening decibles from the bus speakers, but NO BREAKDOWNS! It was quite t6hye experience and one we've decided not to repeat, so we'll be flying back to Kathmandu from Lukla on Decembe 5!
Cheese Factory - We were staying at a guesthouse on an 11,500 foot pass, and went exploring to find Nepal's first cheese factory (built by the Swiss in the 1950's). We got lst and ended up0 at a monastery school ("Uh, this isn't the cheese factory is it?"). One of the teachers showed us all around, introduced us to his students, took us inside the monastery building - beautiful tapestries, beautiful everything - showed us pictures of the Rinpoche (3rd incarnation) and someone olse who was on his something like 35th incarnation. Then he sent the kids to show us the way to the cheese factory. On the way, a bunch of them stopped to sled down the steep grassy slope on sleds made of boards. They were havingh a blast, flying down the hill in their maroon monks robes. Finally, we got to the cheese factory - small, medieval type place - copper kettle boiling over a wood fire - looked like something out of Pillars of the Earth (11th century). We tasted the cheese - incredibly yummy - it's Nak cheese not Yak cheese (Naks are female yaks).
Dal bhat for dinner, tsampa prridge for breakfast. Dal bhat for dinner, tsampa porridge for breakffast. Milk tea, and more tea, and more tea. We're staying healthy!
Lamjura Pass - We stayed in a tiny guesthouse - they invited us in to sit by their kitchen fire, the stove is a clay thing, with holes where the flames come out and pots sit on top. The family (mom, dad, 6 year old daughter) were so very friendly and generous - kept bringing more tea and rice and lentils and tsampa porridge with yak milk (I mean Nak milk!). When we left in the morning the little girl came running out with 3 apples for us - not easy to come by at 11,000 feet. What a gift!
One day we hiked up to a large monastery above the village where we were staying. We got to go in to where there were over a hundred monks sitting crosslegged in rows on cushions, chanting. First however we had to be blessed - sprayed with water, then water was poured from a beautiful ornate teapot into our hands which we slurpped (hoping not to get sick from it, but hey, you've gotta take a few chances with germs when you've got this kind of opportuhnity). Anyway, we sat in the back. It was like something out of the movie "7 Years in Tibet." Down the middle aisle were the long horns, drum, cymbals, short horns - the noise from them is so foreign, so different - nothing like that sound, cacophony really, in the Western world. Then monks went up and down the aisles with snacks - cookies, candies, fruit pieces - the monks in the back kept turnbing aroujhnd and smiling and offering us treats! Anyway - it went on and on - monks chanbting,, blaring horns, chanting some more,, smiling at us.
If all this souns ideal -
Everything smells like dung. Dung is everywhere. We are pretty stinky too (I imagine) but i doesn't matter because everything is stinky. We're being very careful not to get dysentary. So far so good!
Anyway, gotta go - really. Internet is rather expensive here and not too reliable, the o key sticks (so you may have to decipher some of what I've written, excuse the mistakes, no time to proofread), so we won't be checking our emails until we're back in Kathmandu in early December. Meanwhile, things are going great, we have a million stories, we miss you all, and we'll see you later! Pictures yet to come (when back in Kathmandu).
That's it for now.
We're staying in an incredible spot in Namche (Sherpa trading and trekking hub, two dadys walk from Lukla, 15 days walk from where we started). We asked for a room for three, and since there were no triples, we ended up in their private prayer room (Sherpas traditionally follow Tibetan Buddhism) for thge same rate as the cell-like rooms that are everywhere. This is an incredible room - large, ornately decorated with Tibetan and Buddhist artifacts, tapistries, paintins - it's like being in a mini monastery - we sleep on the benches around the edge of the room that are covered in Tibetan carpets - there was an oil candle burning in a little shrine, there are windows on two sides overlooking Namche and out to soaring peaks. Last night the moonlight on the snowy peaks was ethereal, and the stars sparkled above. We feel pretty darned lucky. Most accomodations are quite basic, and always cold (this one is cold too, but so beautiful, and there are soft quilts to bundle up in!).
So, hiking for 15 days or so - the first 12 days on the "old" section of the route to Everest Base Camp (most folks now fly into the tiny airstrip at Lukla). On that section we felt we'd been transported back in time a thousand years - plwing with yak/cows with wooden plows, threshing grain by hand, many houses without chimneys - the smoke just finds its way out through the eaves. We ran into only a few Westerners each day, if any, and it seems the Sherpa village life went on as it had for years, and we just passes through it, whereas nw, on the main route, life revolves around the hoards of trekkers - it's quite the amazing contrast. We're really glad to have experience the quieter, slower paced life of the first section, even though we felt quuite foreign and often out of our element, and had to regularly ask directions to find our way. But we managed and had somoe amzaing experiences.
Some random thoughts:
Busride - We tok the "super-express" bus frojmn Kathmandu to Shivalay, where we started hiking - people and luggage piled inside and more peop0le and luggage on tp, 10 hours of bouncing and jolting along a road that makes Holden's road book like a 4-lane highway through Iowwa, people throuwinhg up out the window (when you're lucky), in the aisle or your lap (when you're not so lucky), constant stopp9ingand starting, Nepali music blasting at deafening decibles from the bus speakers, but NO BREAKDOWNS! It was quite t6hye experience and one we've decided not to repeat, so we'll be flying back to Kathmandu from Lukla on Decembe 5!
Cheese Factory - We were staying at a guesthouse on an 11,500 foot pass, and went exploring to find Nepal's first cheese factory (built by the Swiss in the 1950's). We got lst and ended up0 at a monastery school ("Uh, this isn't the cheese factory is it?"). One of the teachers showed us all around, introduced us to his students, took us inside the monastery building - beautiful tapestries, beautiful everything - showed us pictures of the Rinpoche (3rd incarnation) and someone olse who was on his something like 35th incarnation. Then he sent the kids to show us the way to the cheese factory. On the way, a bunch of them stopped to sled down the steep grassy slope on sleds made of boards. They were havingh a blast, flying down the hill in their maroon monks robes. Finally, we got to the cheese factory - small, medieval type place - copper kettle boiling over a wood fire - looked like something out of Pillars of the Earth (11th century). We tasted the cheese - incredibly yummy - it's Nak cheese not Yak cheese (Naks are female yaks).
Dal bhat for dinner, tsampa prridge for breakfast. Dal bhat for dinner, tsampa porridge for breakffast. Milk tea, and more tea, and more tea. We're staying healthy!
Lamjura Pass - We stayed in a tiny guesthouse - they invited us in to sit by their kitchen fire, the stove is a clay thing, with holes where the flames come out and pots sit on top. The family (mom, dad, 6 year old daughter) were so very friendly and generous - kept bringing more tea and rice and lentils and tsampa porridge with yak milk (I mean Nak milk!). When we left in the morning the little girl came running out with 3 apples for us - not easy to come by at 11,000 feet. What a gift!
One day we hiked up to a large monastery above the village where we were staying. We got to go in to where there were over a hundred monks sitting crosslegged in rows on cushions, chanting. First however we had to be blessed - sprayed with water, then water was poured from a beautiful ornate teapot into our hands which we slurpped (hoping not to get sick from it, but hey, you've gotta take a few chances with germs when you've got this kind of opportuhnity). Anyway, we sat in the back. It was like something out of the movie "7 Years in Tibet." Down the middle aisle were the long horns, drum, cymbals, short horns - the noise from them is so foreign, so different - nothing like that sound, cacophony really, in the Western world. Then monks went up and down the aisles with snacks - cookies, candies, fruit pieces - the monks in the back kept turnbing aroujhnd and smiling and offering us treats! Anyway - it went on and on - monks chanbting,, blaring horns, chanting some more,, smiling at us.
If all this souns ideal -
Everything smells like dung. Dung is everywhere. We are pretty stinky too (I imagine) but i doesn't matter because everything is stinky. We're being very careful not to get dysentary. So far so good!
Anyway, gotta go - really. Internet is rather expensive here and not too reliable, the o key sticks (so you may have to decipher some of what I've written, excuse the mistakes, no time to proofread), so we won't be checking our emails until we're back in Kathmandu in early December. Meanwhile, things are going great, we have a million stories, we miss you all, and we'll see you later! Pictures yet to come (when back in Kathmandu).
That's it for now.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Namaste!...
Kathmandu, Nepal
Hello! Namaste! Happy Diwali! We've managed three days in Kathmandu without getting sick or losing our money or getting lost. Wow. Yes, wow. That little word about describes it! Our heads are spinning, but we're happy and healthy and just ate a fantastic Nepali dinner of rice and dahl (lentils), curried vegies, naan (flatbread), curd (yogurt), fried spinach, and milk tea. Incredible. I'm at an Internet place in the heart of chaos. Very calm in here, however!
So, some random thoughts:
Kathmandu, Thamal district - Chaos, colors, crows, crazy drivers, chaos, noise, people everywhere. Ancient temples with incredible carved wood statues, decorative pillars, carvings on the buildings like something out of Lord of the Rings, old brick buildings with incredibly carved bricks (how do they do that?) in an alleyway of shops, shops, shops, and more shops. Poop and garbage and who-knows-what everywhere. The most beautiful dresses on the Nepali women, sparkling and colorful and graceful (both the women and the dresses). Smells - cooking food, burning garbage, other smells where you just have to stop breathing for a minue. Dirt, grime, masses of electrical wires going everywhere (obviously they didn't have Holden Utilities working on their lines!), narrow streets (we'd call them one-lane alleys) filled with people, cars, motorcycles, bicycle rickshaws, bicycle pedlars, all going both directions, vehicles constantly honking. Shop after shop of colorful, beautiful clothing, jewelry, Himalayan crafts. When I say shop - imagine alley, both sides constant shops and stands and sellers, going on and on in all directions, winding seemingly endlessly like a labyrinth. Chaos...but we're learning how things work.
Music, mostly Western. The first night here it was Eric Klapton on our rooftop, last night on our walk through the maze of streets, back from dinner, we heard a band (playing in a bar above the streets) playing Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry, one street over another band playing the same song, slower version. Right now I hear Bad Moon Rising (Credence Clearwater?). Today Loreena McKinnett blared (sort of surreally I must say) out of a shop - block out all other noises and you're in a whirling amazing movie of sights, colors, movement, beauty, poverty, filth, oh yeah, chaos...but with the music you can almost make it all slow down...
We've wandered the streets of Kathmandu now for three days and are feeling good - we managed to buy tickets today for the public bus we will take tomorrow to Shivalaya where we'll start trekking - takes about 11 hours and from what we can guess, it's only about 70 miles?
We arrived in Kathmandu in the midst of the country's 2nd biggest festival - Diwali - The Festival of Lights. Quite the scene (and noise), with fireworks and firecrackers blasting everywhere, incredible designs on the streets (mandalas?) made with colored sands, beans, leaves, etc., lights strung across streets and buildings - beautiful strings hanging from rooftop to ground like sparkling curtains - loud parades of motocycles, trucks full of people singing and banging drums, kids singing at shop entryways (like Christmas caroling?). It's a 5-day festival (we arrived on the 2nd day) and many businesses close early or aren't open at all (thus our delay in getting out of town on the bus).
We're staying in one of the "budget" hotels in the Thamal district in the heart of all this activity - but it's back on a little alley, so all of a sudden, the chaos drops about 100-fold, and there are plants and trees, giant bamboo screening us from the next guest house. Lots of rooftop gardens on these guesthouses - flowers and potted plants and small trees - very lovely to sit on our rooftop and have a pot of Nepali milk tea! The place has its quirks, but the room is pleasant - the bathroom - well, we won't describe it to our folks - but all in all, a good and convenient place to stay.
Hey, right now the band is playing Leaving on a Jet Plane!
Today we walked over to the Yak and Yeti Hotel (supposed to be the most famous hotel in Nepal - the name alone made me want to see it!). Very ritzy. Kind of bizarre to have this little enclave of incredible wealth amongst all this squalor. It's a palace, literally. We used their restrooms (Yes!), and wandered the grounds, there were people playing tennis (who stays there anyway? - I guess a lot of climbing groups for one). Anyway, we checked out the rates just for curiousity's sake. Cheapest room is $200 per night, up to about $625 for deluxe treatment. We're in the Shangri-La Guesthouse. Costs us $3 per person per night. And who can beat our little rooftop teashop? Hmmm...think we'll stay where we are!
Wow, now the band is playing another great hit - every move you make, every step you take... etc. What's the name of it?
So anyway. Tomorrow we head off for 7 weeks of hiking the Himalayas (our flight to Bangkok is December 11 and we'll spend another 3 or so days back in Kathmandu before that).
Our hike begins at Shivalaya (end of the road) where the early Everest climbers used to have to start. Now most people opt fly into the tiny airstrip at Lukla, which we'll walk to in about 6 days or so. Then on to Tengboche Monastery (on the trail to Everest base camp) where we're hoping to be on November 4 for a major celebration there. Everest base camp is next, with a jaunt up Pala Katar for views of Everest (since you can't actually see Mount Everest from the base camp). Then exploring to Cho Oyu base camp and some incredible lakes, Ama Dablam base camp, and various Sherpa villages along the way.
Just FYI here's some elevations:
Kathmandu - 4500 ft
Shivalaya - 5830 ft
Lukla - 9240 ft
Everest Basecamp - 17,620 ft
Kala Patar - 18,300 ft.
So it's all uphill from here! Actually it's up down up down up down up down, you get the idea.
So that's it for now. I'm not sure we're be able to download pictures tonight or not, we'll see how it goes. Otherwise, see you somewhere up in the Himalayas!
Namaste!
Hello! Namaste! Happy Diwali! We've managed three days in Kathmandu without getting sick or losing our money or getting lost. Wow. Yes, wow. That little word about describes it! Our heads are spinning, but we're happy and healthy and just ate a fantastic Nepali dinner of rice and dahl (lentils), curried vegies, naan (flatbread), curd (yogurt), fried spinach, and milk tea. Incredible. I'm at an Internet place in the heart of chaos. Very calm in here, however!
So, some random thoughts:
Kathmandu, Thamal district - Chaos, colors, crows, crazy drivers, chaos, noise, people everywhere. Ancient temples with incredible carved wood statues, decorative pillars, carvings on the buildings like something out of Lord of the Rings, old brick buildings with incredibly carved bricks (how do they do that?) in an alleyway of shops, shops, shops, and more shops. Poop and garbage and who-knows-what everywhere. The most beautiful dresses on the Nepali women, sparkling and colorful and graceful (both the women and the dresses). Smells - cooking food, burning garbage, other smells where you just have to stop breathing for a minue. Dirt, grime, masses of electrical wires going everywhere (obviously they didn't have Holden Utilities working on their lines!), narrow streets (we'd call them one-lane alleys) filled with people, cars, motorcycles, bicycle rickshaws, bicycle pedlars, all going both directions, vehicles constantly honking. Shop after shop of colorful, beautiful clothing, jewelry, Himalayan crafts. When I say shop - imagine alley, both sides constant shops and stands and sellers, going on and on in all directions, winding seemingly endlessly like a labyrinth. Chaos...but we're learning how things work.
Music, mostly Western. The first night here it was Eric Klapton on our rooftop, last night on our walk through the maze of streets, back from dinner, we heard a band (playing in a bar above the streets) playing Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry, one street over another band playing the same song, slower version. Right now I hear Bad Moon Rising (Credence Clearwater?). Today Loreena McKinnett blared (sort of surreally I must say) out of a shop - block out all other noises and you're in a whirling amazing movie of sights, colors, movement, beauty, poverty, filth, oh yeah, chaos...but with the music you can almost make it all slow down...
We've wandered the streets of Kathmandu now for three days and are feeling good - we managed to buy tickets today for the public bus we will take tomorrow to Shivalaya where we'll start trekking - takes about 11 hours and from what we can guess, it's only about 70 miles?
We arrived in Kathmandu in the midst of the country's 2nd biggest festival - Diwali - The Festival of Lights. Quite the scene (and noise), with fireworks and firecrackers blasting everywhere, incredible designs on the streets (mandalas?) made with colored sands, beans, leaves, etc., lights strung across streets and buildings - beautiful strings hanging from rooftop to ground like sparkling curtains - loud parades of motocycles, trucks full of people singing and banging drums, kids singing at shop entryways (like Christmas caroling?). It's a 5-day festival (we arrived on the 2nd day) and many businesses close early or aren't open at all (thus our delay in getting out of town on the bus).
We're staying in one of the "budget" hotels in the Thamal district in the heart of all this activity - but it's back on a little alley, so all of a sudden, the chaos drops about 100-fold, and there are plants and trees, giant bamboo screening us from the next guest house. Lots of rooftop gardens on these guesthouses - flowers and potted plants and small trees - very lovely to sit on our rooftop and have a pot of Nepali milk tea! The place has its quirks, but the room is pleasant - the bathroom - well, we won't describe it to our folks - but all in all, a good and convenient place to stay.
Hey, right now the band is playing Leaving on a Jet Plane!
Today we walked over to the Yak and Yeti Hotel (supposed to be the most famous hotel in Nepal - the name alone made me want to see it!). Very ritzy. Kind of bizarre to have this little enclave of incredible wealth amongst all this squalor. It's a palace, literally. We used their restrooms (Yes!), and wandered the grounds, there were people playing tennis (who stays there anyway? - I guess a lot of climbing groups for one). Anyway, we checked out the rates just for curiousity's sake. Cheapest room is $200 per night, up to about $625 for deluxe treatment. We're in the Shangri-La Guesthouse. Costs us $3 per person per night. And who can beat our little rooftop teashop? Hmmm...think we'll stay where we are!
Wow, now the band is playing another great hit - every move you make, every step you take... etc. What's the name of it?
So anyway. Tomorrow we head off for 7 weeks of hiking the Himalayas (our flight to Bangkok is December 11 and we'll spend another 3 or so days back in Kathmandu before that).
Our hike begins at Shivalaya (end of the road) where the early Everest climbers used to have to start. Now most people opt fly into the tiny airstrip at Lukla, which we'll walk to in about 6 days or so. Then on to Tengboche Monastery (on the trail to Everest base camp) where we're hoping to be on November 4 for a major celebration there. Everest base camp is next, with a jaunt up Pala Katar for views of Everest (since you can't actually see Mount Everest from the base camp). Then exploring to Cho Oyu base camp and some incredible lakes, Ama Dablam base camp, and various Sherpa villages along the way.
Just FYI here's some elevations:
Kathmandu - 4500 ft
Shivalaya - 5830 ft
Lukla - 9240 ft
Everest Basecamp - 17,620 ft
Kala Patar - 18,300 ft.
So it's all uphill from here! Actually it's up down up down up down up down, you get the idea.
So that's it for now. I'm not sure we're be able to download pictures tonight or not, we'll see how it goes. Otherwise, see you somewhere up in the Himalayas!
Namaste!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Back from beyond part III
Hi there! Pictures here. Text and more pictures on previous posting. I think I'm figuring this blog thing out. Or maybe it's that it's one in the morning, and I just think I've got it. Well, you can click on a picture to make it bigger, I know that much. See you later.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Back from beyond part II...
Hello again! Heading for Nepal tomorrow! But first, a few pictures and journal notes from the river...(disclaimer: remember, these are journal notes, not finished writings, and it's late, and I've still got to pack, so there will be mistakes, like misspelled words and such...but hope you enjoy it...)
Sept. 11, 2009, Day 4, Green River, Utah, Trin Alcove:
Some random thoughts whilst waiting for the spaghetti water to boil.
Word(s) of the day:
Day 1 - Evaporative cooling
Day 2 - Evaporative cooling
Day 3 - Evaporative cooling
Day 4 - Evaporative cooling...
...Let's see - weather - it's been pretty perfect. Almost no wind (one little sandy/blowing episode last evening at dinnertime). Hot - nineties? Swimming has been spectacular and frequent (averaging 3x per day, except today when we were hiking all day). Stars at night are brilliant. We've watched Jupiter (and its four moons visible in our binoculars) and the Andromeda Galaxy - there it is, that fuzzy patch just above those stars sticking out from the great square of Pegasus - two million light years away - is there someone there looking up and seeing the Milky Way Galaxy? And the Milky Way! Through binoculars it's incredible - without binoculars it's incredible - looking through the plane of our galaxy, hanging out here on one of the outer spiral arms, looking into the beautiful sparkling black skies, so many stars, so many stars...the North Star, the Little Dipper, Casseopia, Arcturus (arc to Arcturus!), Hercules, Draco...Nights have been so warm we could comfortably sit in the dark, watching the sky. Saw an incredible shooting star last night - like a comet - had a glittering tail, lasted more than the fleeting moment you usually get with shooting stars.
The bats are out, wildly gobbling the evening bugs. The crickets have been cricketing - what is it about listening to crickets, a warm night, brilliant stars, no one on our little corner of the river - it's amazing to live in such a world - and to be here, now, little specks in the universe that we are - seeing this incredible beauty. We are so lucky. Spoiled. Incredibly lucky and incredibly spoiled. We've been so used to having wide open spaces to ourselves. Everyone should be able to live like this.
So why don't they?
...Hiked up the long canyon here today - had to prowl through a lot of bush and tall grasses - thought we were in Africa on the savanna - but no lions, just lizards, and canyon wrens, and deer tracks, coyote scat. Some fragrant bush that makes me think of the tropics.
The beautiful cottonwoods. Our camp is beneath several - we lugged all our gear up the wash to the high water camp - we're a ways from the river, but a sandy camp under red cliffs with the murmur of cottonwood leaves in the wind. We've slept out every night so far, warm breeze blowing our hair, stars whirling overhead, moonrise each night a spectacular scene - an orange globe with a chunk missing rising up over dark silhouetted rock mesas and cliffs...
September 12, Day 5:
Packing and unpacking. Loading and unloading the canoe - what a job. Where did all this stuff come from anyway? Let's see - inventory - 1 cooler (not cold, just full of dry goods), 2 plastic buckets full of more dry food, 1 plastic bucket full of apples/oranges and more dry food, 1 small plastic bucket full of more dry food. Hmmm...not sure we have enough food here...Then there's the dry bags - 5 of them, containing sleeping bags, pads, tent, tarp, pillows (3!), personal gear, emergency gear, extra gear, beer (12-pack), then the cans bag (beans, tomatoes, tuna, pop, whatever), the kitchen kit (milk crate containing pots/pans etc.), the Coleman stove, the four 6 1/2 gallon water containers, the toilet (45 user days! We exchange this at resupply halfway through - yes!), plastic book bin, Raina's school bag, fire pan, fire wood (for when we hit a sandbar with no accessibility to wood), bailing pan, 3 day packs, extra paddle (National Park regulation), extra life preserver (National Park regulation), myriad odds and ends like sandals, tennis shoes, water bottles, etc., etc. Let's see, what have I forgotten?
Wow - stuff! Really, we could get along with less, but river camping is like car camping - why just bring a backpacking stove when you can have 2 burners going at once - cook noodles and vegies and have, like, two courses, instead of the typical backpacker glop!
Oh yeah, I just remembered, 3 camp stools (new this year - no more fighting over the best buckets to sit on, and which can or cannot be close to the fire). Whew.
Why can't we just be like Herc (Hercules, from the TV show)? He just heads out on a month-long adventure with only the shirt on his back and a little money in his belt purse. That's all! I want to do that! Ah well, some other time.
So anyway - this morning we had to schlep all our gear from our fantastically, incredibly beautiful camp spot up in Trin Alcove where no one in their right mind would carry all their gear when they could just camp at the mouth - anyway - that campsite is so spectacular - worth all the schlepping. Marc's the master packer, Raina and I schlep. It all gets loaded. Time for swimming. Down the river 3 1/2 miles. Leap out to check out the digs. Schlep our stuff to the prime spot. Haul the boat way up and into the bushes. Tie it so that a tornado would not budge it. Schlep some more. Time for swimming. That's pretty much it.
Now for sandbars it looks like this: Land the boat. Remove gear to sand. That's it. No schlepping. Sometimes there can be a sandstorm. Then you sit with eyes closed, hunched over with head down between your legs, and hope that it's just a passing front. But really, on a calm, warm evening, there's nothing like a sandbar - sandy, lots of sky, lots of stars, no scorpions.
Land camps, though, have the cottonwoods - the most beautiful tree in the desert.
September 18, Day 11:
So. We're back to clear and sunny after a number of days of not so clear and sunny. Days 6-9 in fact were a bit stormy. Saw some spectacular lightning shows. Tried to sleep out every night, but had to leap up at midnight one night. Woke to a downpour. The tent was set up (just for such an event) but by the time we got all 3 of us, our sleeping bags, and pads in, and the tarp stashed, we were a bit damp, and not just a little sandy (not to mention crowded in our ancient, 32 year old, small 2-person Omnipotent). But the Omnipotent (not a bad name for a mountaineering tent huh?) did the job and by morning (late) we'd dried everything out in the sun...The river came up and has turned opaque - liquid mud - you can't see your hand even 1/4 inch below the surface!
Water - water is an amazing thing - not only does it provide ice for my iced drinks (though not this month) but it carved these canyons, seeps through rock, creates hanging gardens, sustains life in what looks like desolate and uninhabitable places. And we, humans plopped into this inferno, become just a stop along the way in the water cycle. The heat of the day progresses, we become tired, lethargic, maybe even crabby! Then - into our bodies goes water, plain old H2O, and wow - transformation - we perk up, feel invigorated, energetic, happy. The water, more than food, more than sleep, more than anything at this time, refreshes and sustains us - we are water creatures - carbon and water, that's us.
September 20, Day 13:
Resupply day. Crazy. Sunday at the put-in at Mineral Bottom. Our peaceful, calm, serene, incredibly incredible river-to-ourselves is no more. Rafters, kayakers, canoers, bikers, where did they all come from?Sunday is no time to be at Mineral Bottom.
But now all's quiet on our little spot of river. The group upriver was just howling like coyotes, but now, just a few murmurs coming from there. We're camped in the mouth of Taylor Canyon - a good spot to get to late - you can't go anywhere from here - not up the wash (too muddy), not out of the wash (too brushy), not along the river (too brushy), not inland (too brushy). We're on a high sandbar at the side of the wash - if the wash ran big, we'd be in a bad way - but it won't run that big tonight, or probably anymore this season. Just don't get too close to the edge...It was a bit stressful looking for camping with all these people on the river - it was getting later and later and there just wasn't anywhere (except the sandbars with folks on them) and we're looking and looking, getting a bit CRABBY! This spot wasn't great, but it worked, and NOW it IS great - we have a huge sky (no cliffs near), the sky is CLEAR, beautiful stars, Milky Way, Jupiter, the lot. The crickets are LOUD, the air is warm, the fire is immensely pleasant, the dishes are done, the food is stashed. I just can't get over how beautiful it is...
September 23, Day 16, Beaver Bottom:
Last night, on Day 15, I had to resort to putting on LONG PANTS for the first time! Was quite chilly out...
Yesterday while hiking we saw a tarantula! First I've ever seen! We didn't get too close - even though we know they're not really dangerous - but we didn't want to bother him/her. We read that tarantulas can live 25 years. Wow. We also read about other awful things that happen in the insect world (bad for the poor tarantula) - like something out of a horror movie - YUCK - I won't relate it here - read up on tarantula hawks if you want to know.
September 28, Day 21, Turk's Head sandbar:
Evenings are such a beautiful time on these hot days - still quite warm - but not unbearably so - the light is beautiful - the canyon walls glow orange, reflect in the river, and in the west the canyons and buttes and spires are silhouettes against an incredible sky - like the ones you paint in grade school - colors fading into one another - with the silhouettes in front...
Campfires - how can you go down the river and not have campfires - EVERY NIGHT! They are incredible - warm, friendly, light, heat, heats your tea water, cooks dough on sticks, is cheerful - whatever it is, I have a campfire any time I can when I'm in the out-of-doors - small of course, environmental of course - here we use a fire pan, and use only driftwood or dead and down tamarisk (an invasive). But it makes the evening warm and pleasant - otherwise you'd go to bed at 8:30! Then you'd miss Jupiter and Andromeda, and the moonlight and all the rest.
And nothing better than a nice sandbar (with no wind) and a fire and your bare toes in the sand!
October 1, Day 24:
Sand. Sand is everywhere - we live with sand, sand blows into every crevice, even into closed containers. And really, a little sand in your eyes, face, ears, hair, clothes, food, dishes, coffee, sleeping bags, pillows (actually, there was more sand on our pillows this morning than last night when we went to bed, from all the sand falling out of our hair during the night) - we rub sand in with sunscreen - anyway, really, a little sand? We're used to it! Nothing to worry or fret about. Raina's hair is plastered with it...
...the night of sand. We slept out on a sandbar - wind was getting stronger. Marc moved the canoe to try to block the wind and sand, but we were still sand blasted. I, who have learned the fine art of sleeping with my head inside my sleeping bag, slept decently. Marc and Raina, heads out and getting sand blasted, slept less well. Then at 5 AM it starts to RAIN! Wind and sand and now rain! So yet again we rush to put up the tent (hmm...you think we'd learn from experience), trying to keep the bags and pillows dry. And to keep things from being blown away in this hurricane, I'm curled up in a ball, holding onto everything including the tarp which is flapping like a parachute...we shove everything into the tent, put other stuff under the overturned canoe - gotta keep the firewood dry! Wake up late-ish. Still wind blasting out. Eat breakfast somehow. Pack up. The waves on the river are now looking like ocean breakers. Across the way, some canoes have taken refuge and several people have fallen in trying to maneuver their boats to or off (I can't tell which) an underwater sandbar. And into all this chaos comes the Park Service Ranger, motoring along in his little raft, asking to see our river permits...
Okay, enough already. It was SPECTACULAR! Here's some more pictures.
So, okay, I'm having trouble getting my pictures to go where I want them, so I'll just post this, then do the pictures on another one.
So that's all for now. See you in Kathmandu.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Back from beyond...
Hello! Well, we've emerged from the canyons of Utah happy, healthy, and with only about 80 pounds of extra silt and sand covering every conceivable (and inconceivable) surface. We're in Ashland, Oregon for a few days, after a drive straight here from Moab, Utah, with only an 8-hour middle-of-the-night delay in the middle of Nevada (where billboards proclaim Give Big Rigs Room or You'll Get a Big Ticket) for the inevitable car problem. I woke up this morning feeling like Frodo at the end of the LOTR movies - in that big fluffy clean bed - soft, spacious, clean, oh and did I mention CLEAN?
Our month on the river was spectacular, incredible, never-a dull-moment exciting, beautiful, SHORT! We started out in summer, 90+ degrees, swimming three to four times a day to keep cool, and ended in chilly fall, finally digging out my down vest, and only jumping in the river to wash off plastered sand from a wind storm (the only downside to camping on a sandbar). We hiked, swam, canoed, and hiked some more. Saw petroglyphs, ancient ruins, desert bighorn sheep, beavers, deer, snakes, a tarantula (no scorpians this year). We even canoed upriver a few times (125 or so downriver miles, 3 upriver miles), passing a raft during one of these excursions whose oarsman helpfully said, "Uh, you're going the wrong way." We watched the moon go from full to new to full again, hanging out by Jupiter for a time. We watched the stars wheel overhead, sparkling and glittering in a black sky like a fantasy backdrop, an otherworldly and ethereal view into, what? Beauty? Love? Something beyond words and time and campfire smoke?
In a few days I'll post some pictures and journal excerpts.
Our month on the river was spectacular, incredible, never-a dull-moment exciting, beautiful, SHORT! We started out in summer, 90+ degrees, swimming three to four times a day to keep cool, and ended in chilly fall, finally digging out my down vest, and only jumping in the river to wash off plastered sand from a wind storm (the only downside to camping on a sandbar). We hiked, swam, canoed, and hiked some more. Saw petroglyphs, ancient ruins, desert bighorn sheep, beavers, deer, snakes, a tarantula (no scorpians this year). We even canoed upriver a few times (125 or so downriver miles, 3 upriver miles), passing a raft during one of these excursions whose oarsman helpfully said, "Uh, you're going the wrong way." We watched the moon go from full to new to full again, hanging out by Jupiter for a time. We watched the stars wheel overhead, sparkling and glittering in a black sky like a fantasy backdrop, an otherworldly and ethereal view into, what? Beauty? Love? Something beyond words and time and campfire smoke?
In a few days I'll post some pictures and journal excerpts.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Down the river...
MOAB, UTAH - Monday - putting in on the Green River tomorrow for 29 days. (I see that it's been raining at Holden. We're back in hot summer weather here.)
I am happy to report no memorable incidence on our way down here. Makes for a dull blog, I know, but I am happy to concede to dullness. Actually, it wasn't dull at all, but full of more all-night packing and rearranging (how can that be?), driving and more driving. Our little ancient Mazda with 240,000 miles on it, stuffed to the brim with us and our gear, did it's usual - averaging 40 mpg from Chelan to Moab! I don't think we could have crammed in even one extra water bottle (though we did manage to fit those 14 homemade scones from Marc's mom!).
Was it just five days ago that we left Holden? Even though it was such a blur, leaving new friendships and old, leaving the squirrely-guys (and those friendly mice) - there is such goodness associated with it. Amid all the chaos of packing and no sleep, amid all the goodbyes, there were moments of crystalline heartbreaking beauty, moments of laughter and joy, moments of sadness, (and a few moments of pure panic). Life, love, the universe, and all that.
And so we're off - down the river. See you in a month.
I am happy to report no memorable incidence on our way down here. Makes for a dull blog, I know, but I am happy to concede to dullness. Actually, it wasn't dull at all, but full of more all-night packing and rearranging (how can that be?), driving and more driving. Our little ancient Mazda with 240,000 miles on it, stuffed to the brim with us and our gear, did it's usual - averaging 40 mpg from Chelan to Moab! I don't think we could have crammed in even one extra water bottle (though we did manage to fit those 14 homemade scones from Marc's mom!).
Was it just five days ago that we left Holden? Even though it was such a blur, leaving new friendships and old, leaving the squirrely-guys (and those friendly mice) - there is such goodness associated with it. Amid all the chaos of packing and no sleep, amid all the goodbyes, there were moments of crystalline heartbreaking beauty, moments of laughter and joy, moments of sadness, (and a few moments of pure panic). Life, love, the universe, and all that.
And so we're off - down the river. See you in a month.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Into the Never Never...
And so, we're off. Well, almost. Packing up our lives at Holden Village is taking a bit longer than we'd planned. So after two nights with a total of one and a half hours' sleep between them, we decided it would be smart to postpone leaving for one more day. And this will give us time to say goodbye to the ground squirrely guys and all their friends (since they didn't show up last night at our farewell, though I think they were eying the cool trinkets at our giveaway for possible additions to the den decor); and you know, leaving Holden on caffeine and no sleep pretty much muffles any actual feelings you may be having about friends, mountains, stars, cool breezes, that sort of thing. And really, I want to say, "Thank you, just so, straight into the universe." (That's a quote from Never Cry Wolf in case you were wondering).
So here are a few pictures of where we'll be and what we'll be doing for the first month (these are from last year, but we won't be able to post anything till sometime in October when we'll have a couple days back in the computerized world before heading off again).
Here's our itinerary so far (and as Yoda says, "Always in motion is the future"):
- September 8 - October 6: canoeing the Green River from Green River (the town) to the confluence with the Colorado River (the second half is through Canyonlands National Park). That's about 125 miles, which you can do in a week, but we want time to explore and hike up the myriad side canyons, look for Anasazi ruins and bighorn sheep, listen to canyon wrens, sit around the campfire in the warm evenings as scorpians bravely venture close.
- October 15 - fly to Kathmandu, Nepal. We'll be trekking to Everest Base Camp the "long" way - that is, starting where they used to have to start before they made an airstrip halfway there, exploring Sherpa villages and Buddhist temples, climbing over high passes with some pretty darned nice views (so I've read).
- December 11 - fly to Bangkok, Thailand. Spend the next two weeks (if all goes well with arrangements) volunteering at an elephant sanctuary in the northern part of the country. That takes us past Christmas, then we'll head to Cambodia and Angkor Wat, some steaming jungles, and whatever else we can find.
- January 25 - fly back to the states. Spend spring semester in Ashland, Oregon so that Raina can have a "normal" high school experience for at least one semester out of her high school career (she's a sophmore this year). She'll be getting credit from the Chelan School District for our travels.
- Then the future has multiple possibilities, of which we'll know more as time passes.
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