Home At Last

I woke up at 4am this morning, an early start to my fourth day back in my favourite GMT -5.  I hate to blame my fatigue on some ailment as imaginary as "jet lag", but I seem to have a more difficult time than most adapting to the 12-hour change, and some of the last few days has been a bit of a daze.  Maybe it's an indication that I should never travel again.  Ha!  Good one!

The jet lag weariness is the final concrete remains of the trip, the only tangible proof that I was ever in Asia.  The millions of pictures and the collection of currencies and the random ticket stubs document a fanstastic larger-than-life year, but are stuck collecting dust somewhere in memory; a trip is something we can remember but can never get back.  Yet it's amazing how quickly I've switch back since stepping off the plane, how I've never forgetten how to live like a Canadian.  It's amazing to think, while enjoying holiday festivities with friends and families, while talking about the dismal ski season and new apartments and bus strikes and Jimmy Kimmel, that less than a week ago I was sleeping the deck of a river ferry somewhere around the Tropic of Cancer with everything I needed acting as my pillow.

The only hiccup in my reintegration has been related to clothing.  In the Seoul airport, I looked around at the waiting area filled with well-kept Koreans (they all look the same!) in tidy black pea coats and leather shoulder bags, playing on advanced new electronics.  In my shorts and Bikenstocks, green sweater of many years, and sporting a goofy Ronaldo bum bag, I was overcome with a sense of my own destitution.  This was only exacerbated while waiting at the Toronto City Airport terminal after arriving on Porter Airlines, where I bumbled my way to the ferry with a cart balanced with a huge dry bag and a dirty bike wrapped in plastic bags.  After a year of dressing like a slob and being hailed as a rock star, I worry that I won't be able to blend in back home.  I've been digging deep to recall how to coorindate shoes and socks and warm jacket and scarf and all the other little things.

For all the societal differences that confront the long-term Asian traveller returning home, it's surprising how similar our two worlds are.  While walking downtown the other day I had a flashback to Kathmandu, to the cramped shops and simple merchandise of Asan Thole.  Our shops are bigger and cleaner, but it's all the same game of buying.  It doesn't matter where you are in the world, people come together to shop and to eat: humanity is united in its search for community.

What's surprising is how travelling around the world to Asia has given me so much more context for a place like Toronto.  I called to make a dental appointment and got to talking about the receptionist about where she was from in India.  An Afghan baggage handler at the airport reflected on my time in Pakistan.  I hear Mandarin everywhere.  I see Hindu temples now in places I've walked by hundreds of times.  One upon a time, well-heeled British graduates went on the European Grand Tour, a loop through the many cultures of the continent that served the worldly education one couldn't get in school.  How much better prepared for the future would Canada be, if all its future leaders had completed a required-reading Grand Tour of Asia?

And what have I learned on my circle tour?  Lots.  Lots about money, success, family, and work.  Lots about what makes a place great.  Lots about values.  How lucky we are to live in Canada!  Not because we are rich.  Because all people are considered equal.  Because we have free schools and hospitals.  Because we pay people in the most menial jobs enough to lead a happy life.  Because we have the luxury of being able to retire. 

In the reflection of the trip I also see myself.  I see myself as the person I've always wanted to be, someone who reads, writes, learns languages, and finds himself having a great time in strange places.  I hate the "He's finding himself" explanation to my chasing of distant adventures, but on the other hand I do return home more aware of my place in the world.  I've always thought that a love of travel was something I would eventually have to fit into the confines of a successful life.  Now I'm leaning toward the idea that my future is the thing that has to fit around the pillar of travel.  One thing is certain: the more I travel, the larger the world becomes.

Thus I bid farewell to a grand year in Asia.  I will think of you every time I see the sun rise.  And everytime I eat rice.  And, come to think about it, every time I get food poisoning.  I wonder what I'm going to do now?

Sixteen Scenes From Burma

Burma is a destination that feels like it's been designed by executives at Nikon as a playground for their high-end cameras.  You've never seen a place with more budding amateur photographers, all taking pictures of scenes out of everyday life.  But then again, everyday life has never been more beautiful, and the mouths of Westerners water every time we see a golden pagoda, or a group of monks walks by, or a fisherman does something on the lake, or a kid smiles at the camera.  Indeed, we're all still searching for that Burmese Photo Holy Grail: the photo of the monks teaching a child in front of a pagoda during sunset with a fisherman silhouette in the background.  That would be something special.  In the meantime, here are twenty favourites of mine (with captions for once!).

Sandamuni Paya, a collection of hundreds of pagodas, each one filled with a stone page from some important Buddhist book.  Just sounds like an excuse to build more pagodas!

Amarapura Teak Bridge

The air was heavy with stone dust in this corner of Mandalay where all those Buddha carvings are painstakingly created. 

Hiked through a part of Shan State that must provide most of the world's red hot chili peppers.  This child is obviously a fan.

On the road to Inle Lake, Shan State.  Thankfully not as hilly as Nepal!

Tone Le, Inle Lake: this school, like the rest of the village, is on stilts and only accessible by boat.  All the kids waved to us as we went by.  Maybe someone had taken their boats and they were waving to try to get our help.

Inle Lake traditional foot rowing technique.  Not as easy as it looks!

There's a quiet moment every morning around sunup, where the monks walk (barefoot) through town collecting alms from the local shops.  That warm feeling in my heart quickly subsided when I got back on the bus and we continued on one of the worst bus rides of the trip.

Burmese food may not be the most delicious in Asia, but it certainly takes the award for Most Side Dishes.

After touring the temple region of Bagan, I never want to see a Buddha statue again.  This one is one of my favourites, likely inspired by Buddha's love of the movie Alien.

There are well over a thousand temples still standing in the Bagan region.  Here are two of them.

This is Kaka, or attentive little tour guide we picked up during our first day in Bagan.  He is 8 and spoke excellent English, knew all the major temples, and could operate all of our cameras.

Kachin State: teak wood likely bound for China or another of Myanmar's very powerful neighbours.  Also, hungry cow.

Cruising down the Ayerwaddy River: this guy stands at the front of the boat during shallow sections and touches that stick to the river bottom to give a depth range.  We only ran aground once during the 24-hour trip.

Disagree.  Burmese pop rock is alive and well

Shwedagon Pagoda, the mother of all pagodas in Burma.  The very top is studded with over 5000 diamonds, which at night have the nice effect of twinkling high above a country that is one of the poorest in SE Asia.

Speak Your Mind on Burma

Though it's not likely that the Burma secret police watch your web activities with any scrutiny, and though a rumour of screenshots taken of every computer every five minutes seems contrived, I thought it would be most prudent to save some thoughts until I was safely out of the country.  It is, after all, a country where people are jailed for decades simply for delivering democratic messages.  Perhaps their spies are everywhere.

So, Burma, nice place.  It's an empire, really: though most people couldn't place this country on a world map, it has a language completely different than the Thai, Hindi, and Chinese ones surrounding it, a script that looks like alien symbols, a population double that of Canada, and lots and lots of natural resources.  Hard to tell if it should be relegated to that list of "Countries That Would Have Been Better Off if the British Never Left", but ever since the military dictatorship jailed and dismantled the winning democratic party in the 1980s, the West has imposed economic sanctions.  This puts Myanmar in the proud company of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.

It also presents some quirks that are unknown on the rest of the otherwise straightforward SE Asia traveller's circuit.  There are no ATMs in the country; travellers need to make sure they have enough brand-new, un-creased $100 Benjamin Franklins to last them the trip.  You exchange about half your money to the local kyat (obviously pronounced chat), since prices indescriminately alternate between dollars and kyat.  You check into a hotel and pay for the night in dollars, then walk over to their restaurant and buy your meal in kyat.  The government exchange rate for kyat is about 6 to the dollar.  On the black market the rate hovers around 800.  And it is the filthiest money I have ever handled.

With this in mind, I was expecting to get off the plane in a place that resembled Europe circa 1300.  Instead, I was welcomed onto paved streets with streetlights, sidewalks, office towers, and a faded air of English regalty.  Most Asian nations grumblingly do business with the oppresive regime, so there's no lack of electronics, vehicles, or crappy Chinese goods, even if there are no Mastercard and McDonalds.  This all sort of turned my world upside-down at first, since Myanmar is a country with economic sanctions that is visibly much more prosperous than Nepal, which receives aid, and tourists, from everywhere.  Furthermore, from my best understanding, China's violent suppression of protests, atrocious human rights violations, and unwavering single-party system seem of equal severity as that of Myanmar, but we've elected to punish this mysterious place with sanctions that don't work.  Well done.  And despite all that, the people love foreigners.

I flew up to the city of Myitkyina, in Kachin State in the north of the country, with the intention of taking a slow boat down the country's lifeblood, the Ayerwaddy River.  It didn't come as a surprise that a two-day section of the river was closed to all passenger transit due to fighting with the Kachin Independence Army.  It was safe enough to take a bouncing, British-era train halfway down the river to Katha, and continue the adventure from there.  Maybe it was for the best, for sleeping "Deck Class" entailed camping out on a cold metal floor in an open-air galley that looked like a refugee camp, and I'm not sure I could have taken another night of it.  It was a nice ride though, a great view of local river life.  And I'll have you know that the ferry only ran aground on a shallow sand bar once in the entire trip.

The Kachin are one of the seven big minority groups in Myanmar, and I was told they have the third largest rebel army against the government.  All the rebel groups hold the border regions.  

A bomb went off in Myitkyina a week before I arrived (impossible for me to have known about this while I was in the country since no one seems to know anything about anywhere else in Myanmar).  The rebels would appear to be a threat, until a Kachin guy explained that the site of the explosion was a very important Kachin park.  The city is 70% Kachin, most of whom are sympathetic to the rebel's cause.  So did they really set off the bomb?  A man I was talking to told me that he believed in the Union of Myanmar, and the rebels were fighting for more rights and autonomy.  In fact, most solutions to the country's problems seem to involve working with the government toward reform.  This was enlightening, as Canada still calls this country Burma as a big F-U to the current government.

Anyway, the exciting thing right now is that Myanmar is changing very rapidly.  A year ago no one spoke openly about the house-arrested democratically elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.  These days there are pictures of her for sale everywhere, and the newspapers have front-page coverage of her recent meeting with Hillary Clinton.  It seems very likely that the democratic party will be running in the upcoming mid-termesque elections.  Some say the sanctions may have only a few years left as the country moves toward reform.  I had tri-sha drivers nearly wipe out in excitement as they talked about their charismatic leader, known simply as "the lady", who is realistically the only figure who could unite all the rebel groups in peace.

It was all very interesting, and shattered my notions of what a "banned" country looks like.  Despite all this I still know very little about the place and will have to do much more reading and return one day.  No doubt it will have already changed quite a bit.  

Anyway, I think visitors are obligated to talk about what they saw, and that's my summary, as coherent as it can be in my current state waiting in the Bangkok Airport.  Today was a busy final day in Bangkok, hurridly hitting the city's best: a teeth cleaning, a cooking class, a swanky rooftop bar, and a go-go bar.  Even though I left Burma this morning, it feels like I've been gone for weeks.  Yet the longest day of my life is only beginning: this December 15th will last 36 hours.  My flight from Korea later today lands in New York City twenty minutes before it took off.  Somewhere in there will be a cross-Manhatten epic, lugging around 56 kg of luggage.  When it's all said and done I'll be sitting in Tim Hortons in downtown T.O., furiously trying to warm up hands that have forgotten reality.  Yet at the moment I am brimming with excitement at the in-flight entertainment ahead, and at the only appropriate ending for this post: see you soon.

Burmese Daze

Mengalaba and hello once again from sunny Mandalay. Yesterday, on a
slow ferry down the Ayerwaddy River (where I had spent the night
sleeping on the deck floor in the not-much-class "Deck Class"), the
first glimpse of Mandalay Hill from the river triggered a wave of
nostalgia. Although I still have five days out here in Asia, this
marks the end of strange new places and the beginning of retracing my
steps back to familiarity and eventually, back home.

The past two weeks in Myanmar have been, among other things, very
photogenic. Unfortunately, with my computer locked up in Bangkok (I
do miss it) I'm unable to easily share photos. You'll just have to
wait.

Despite swearing to myself that I would never trek again after Everest
(Base Camp), less than two weeks later I was lacing up the boots for a
short three day walk in Eastern Burma. If trekking in Nepal is the
prime rib of the hiking world, then trekking in Burma is...well,
something much cheaper than prime rib (God I miss steak). That wasn't
a bad thing, since there's a bit more "pressure" in the Everest region
with the altitude and tough days and costs. Here, the grades were
tame, the patchwork of crops on the hills colourful, villagers were
friendly, there was a good trekking crew, and we slept in quiet
village homestays. Did we sleep well? No, because homestay is
actually Burmese for "sleep on a wooden floor until the roosters
outside wake up at dawn".

The trek brought us to Inle Lake, a favourite traveller destination
and certainly worth the hype. Basically most of the villages are
built on stilts along the marshy borders of the lake, so instead of
roads of asphalt (or more appropriately, dirt) you have waterways as
the main method of transport. We boated past a school ending for the
day, a virtual flotilla of narrow canoes with kids in uniform paddling
home like it's the most ordinary thing in the world. It may not sound
exciting, but it was relaxing and really interesting. One day,during
an extremely pleasant boat ride back across the lake at sunset (our
driver pausing as we passed by fishing boats to get iconic fisherman
silhouette photos of course), I had a flashforward to the snowstorms
and darkness waiting for me in Canada. Can hardly wait to get home.

One horrifically uncomfortable bus ride later (thought I suspect I am
becoming a bit of "bus softie" after so many months cycling) we
arrived at a temple site called Bagan. I haven't even Bagan to
recount some of the great puns such a spot offered up. We biked out
to the first temple we saw, snapped some photos of the Buddha statues,
and I was about to chalk the whole thing up as over-rated until we
ascended a narrow, steep, unlit flight of stairs to the temple roof.
From there the scope of the site became clear, with the forest and
fields in all directions pierced by thousands of pointed temples of
all shapes and sizes, some as big as castles. It was a cool spot to
explore for a few days, but I did reach a point near the end where I
decided I never wanted to see a Buddha statue ever again. Seeing how
the trekking promise held up, it seems likely that there's still hope
to save my soul or whatever seeing Buddha statues does for you.

Not one to waste time with the end in sight, a
plane-train-bus-taxi-boat combo took me up to the north and through a
bit of a far-flung region. I think that one deserves some more
writeup, and certainly once I'm safely out of the country.

As always, the people on Myanmar are wicked and extremely friendly and
surely the highlight of the trip. One of my favourites was the old
guy who rented me a canoe to paddle around along the shores of Inle
Lake. I got back to town, and wasn't he waiting there with snacks and
tea. We talked about his family and work, and then on the walk back
we stopped for shots of rice whiskey. That's pretty par for the
course here, though not always the rice whiskey. Sort of related,
they do have local draught beer everywhere which is sort of out of
place but of course incredibly welcome.

Tonight, one last bus ride back to the principle city of Yangon for a
few days trying to procure a decent tailor-made shirt and a debate
whether to buy one of the male sarongs that are so popular here.
After that, there's 12 final hours in Bangkok that are getting busier
and busier. The next time you'll hear from me I should be somewhere
in the limbo of the five airports that will bring me back home. If
anyone needs any high-quality lacquerware or Buddhist oil paintings,
this is the time to let me know.

Tracking the Big Four in Myanmar

There, I just threw all my expectations out the window as they served quite useless upon entry in Myanmar.  Maybe I've in a permanent state of low expectation upon leaving Nepal, but I certainly was preparing myself for a country of dust and destitution.  Instead, thus far at least, I've been very impressed by a clean, friendly, and bustling country.  I haven't been in such a civil bus station for awhile, and without aggressive horn-honkers the roads seem so....quiet.  Just wait till Hillary Clinton gets here in a few weeks, she is going to love it.

Anyway, this is just a quick note from Mandalay, the exotic-sounding centre of the country, a town that came grinding to a complete halt last night when there was some European soccer match on television.  Don't know how this place equates with a massive upscale casino in Las Vegas, but then again I spied a few people gambling today.  Christmas signs all over, which is a little weird in a place with Buddhist statues basically every twenty feet.

It's been three days of "normal" backpacking travel and already I'm missing the bicycle, and I'm beginning to think I'll never be able to return to travelling by bus.  Today we rented a few cruisers and set off to visit a long teak bridge, providing a suitable destination for a journey to see some countryside.  Myanmar has a few attractions, but it is talking to people here that has been the most rewarding so far, and certainly the most interesting.  If you like monks and Buddhist stupas (and really, who doesn't?) then you'd love this place.

My only qualm thus far is that the limited number of permitted destinations makes you feel like you're on a packaged-tour holiday; it certainly isn't terribly inspiring to reach the top of Mandalay Hill for sunset only to find about two hundred European tourists snapping away (question: do Europeans do anything other than take holidays?).  My next destinations, a rural area called Inle Lake and an ancient ruin-filled city known as Bagan, are both universally recommended by other travellers I've spoken to, but also quite central on the tourist circuit (painfully known as Myanmar's "Big Four").  I'll do my best to dodge the crowds, and hopefully there will be a chance during my final week here to venture off to somewhere a bit less popular.  Happy Black Friday, good luck with all your big-screen television shopping.

It will always be Burma to me!

My trip came full circle the other day, bringing me back to Bangkok where a shiny blue bike was unpacked and unleashed on the continent oh so many months ago.  It's strange how my lens has changed in just under a year, and how arriving in Bangkok now is like setting foot in the world's most modern metropolis.  I've spent several hours with my mouth agape like I'm at a World's Fair, and I find myself taking a lot of pictures of cars.  I know, it does seem strange, especially  when there are plenty of other things to marvel at.  Skytrains.  Street lights.  Air conditioning.  Hot water.  Grass.  Mattresses.   Garbage cans.  Soap.

It has made me wonder a bit about globalization and development and all that good stuff, if you'd allow me a paragraph.  Are people happier in Bangkok or Kathmandu?  Do we want Kathmandu to turn into Bangkok, or do people decry that as globalization and consumerism?  Causes there's no garbage on the streets here.  And people are reading and seeing films and eating all sorts of food.  And if we can agree that consumerism is good for a place, what's holding Nepal back?  Is it a lack of electricity?  Small population?  Weather?  Failure to innovate?  Complacency?  The tiny, strangely-shaped flag?

I will, however, hand it to Nepal for perhaps the greatest flights in the world.  You sit on the left.  It takes off about two hours late.  Once you reach cruising altitude you see the wall of mountains rising above the clouds to the north.  Unlike other flights where the mountains are way beneath you, these happen to be right beside you.  And it only takes a few minutes to spot that hulking black mass that every trekker has come to recognize, the unmistakable Mount Everest.  It was cool.  I was also quite pleased that a $2 tip to the baggage guy saved me a fairly significant excess baggage few for my bike and gear, though I suspect the airline check-in has neither scales nor credit-card machines to facilitate such a payment anyway.  Or maybe the Nepal Airlines staff really likes hair that falls into the "comical and clownlike" category.

So I have been enjoying Bangkok for a few days, exploring, marvelling, eating.  I'm on board: this is one of Asia's finest cities.  That said, it's already time to leave.  In a surprisingly rapid unfolding of events, tomorrow I fly to Burma.

Burma is an interesting one, a place with an oppressive government, trade embargos, and a lack of development but with what seems to be unanimously agreed upon as the nicest people in Asia.  It's off the beaten track, as all the good ones are, and it's devoutly Buddhist, also as all the good ones are.  Most importantly, it seems to slowly be heading toward change: the military recently released democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a bunch political prisoners, and Hillary Clinton is visiting the place soon (though it sounds like sanctions aren't going anywhere just yet).  And there is always talk that the southern beaches will be opened up to mass tourism and become "the next Phuket".  I've been thinking about Burma for awhile now, and the possibility that it might lose something as it opens up to the world provided the push to go now.  Remember, it's not where, Marty, but when.

The window of time to learn about this place before leaving is rapidly shrinking, and the more I research the more information there is to sift through.  One big issue among the backpacking community seems to be directing your money away from government-run organizations and instead trying to pay for things directly with the people.  I hadn't really taken a stance yet, since I wasn't sure if there was a point himming and hawing over $10 paid to a government bus company when Thailand is importing millions of dollars of Burmese natural gas every year.  However, I then started reading about the Karin State and what sounds like a really cool multi-day river boat trip.  Unfortunately, that province is currently engaged in over half a year of rebellion, to the point of being called a civil war.  Not too long ago an orphanage was bombed.  It sounds like the boat trip would be safe and fine (though I've since ruled it out, Ma and Pa), but it begs the question: what's the point of mingling with the locals on a local boat if the locals are terrified and have lost their homes?  Even more troubling is that the conflict is so far removed, so infrequently discussed, and so ignored by the government, no one outside the country seems to even know it's happening.  This ethical baggage hasn't at all diminished my desire to go, but it has brought my lofty dreams of far-flung adventure down to a cold reality.

This sounds like a melancholy way to embark on a three-week voyage to a strange land, and it really isn't.  The big hitters I'm hoping to visit promise to be really rewarding, wicked experiences, and I couldn't be more glad that I'm getting a chance to travel to Burma.  Admittedly I don't really have a game plan right now, just a visa and flight and guidebook.  Surely that's the best way to travel.  I'll see you on the other side.

Back on level ground

Where do you start when writing about almost a month hiking through the Nepal Himalaya?  At the middle, with a big, fat picture of Mount Everest.  There she is.

It really was something.  There were high passes capped with fluttering prayer flags.  There were glacier crossings.  There were snowfields that made your eyes burn and descents that made your knees jelly.  There was sunrise over Everest and the golden light of sunset.  The was the full moon, stars, and mirror-like lakes.  And for seven days we didn't see a single cloud in the sky.  Often a picture doesn't really capture a place, it's just a reminder that something I saw amazed me.  And looking back at my pictures from the last month (all 1500 of them), I am astounded at the places we went.  Moreso than ever, they are nowhere even close to what it was like to be there in the flesh.

We left Namche Bazaar and went up little by little.  They were shorter days, but breathless ones as we journeyed into thin air (fittingly the title for the famed Jon Krakauer book that everyone on the trail is reading or has read).  We were plagued by clouds for a few days, and when they finally cleared during a rest day in Dingboche, we burst out of the lodge to take in the white peaks that had appeared out of nowhere all around us.  By November 5 we were positioned and acclimitized to begin the first of a string of long days above 5000m.  We woke up before dark, trudging slowly in the crisp air to the first high pass, the Kongma La.  Obviously the views were fantastic and the legs were weary and there was a group of French trekkers singing songs at the pass.  The next day we arrived at Everest Base Camp and I juggled some rocks.  The day after we saw sunrise from the peak of Kala Pattar.  Each day only got better.

The wine.  It didn't make it.  Somewhere along the line I realized how much tougher the hiking was getting due to elevation.  Around the same time it dawned on me that the last thing anyone would want to do at 5500m is take a swig of a cheap Australian unoaked chardonnay.  I sold the bottle for almost cost to a very excited guide.  Jokes on him when he realizes it's unoaked; you might as well be drinking grape juice.

This type of "teahouse-trekking", where you don't carry much weight and spend the night in lodges, is easy to get used to.  Besides the obvious comforts of a wood stove and fresh food, it's a very social way of hiking.  At night, instead of huddling in a tent with a headlamp, you sit in a warm room playing cards and swapping stories and trying to decide what combination of noodles, rice, and potatoes you'd prefer to eat.  As we hiked we kept bumping into the same faces, and eventually, sitting in that warm lodge in Dingboche, it became clear that six of us were going to complete the rest of the trek together.  It was easy to get used to having a supportive crew that shares jokes, songs, and optimism, and it wasn't until all that quickly evaporated at the trek's end that you realize how much you're going to miss them.  Will they miss my crooning renditions of Jukebox Hero and Total Eclipse of the Heart?  We will never know.

Was it all roses?  Certainly not.  My hands, grown soft from months in biking gloves, dried out and cracked like the surface of a volcano.  There was a cold going around.  And nothing heals at high elevation.  More serious was a particularly sleepless night in Chhukkung, when my head felt like it was being pounded with a baseball bat.  I usually get headaches at high altitude, but this one got me thinking that I would have to turn back.  The next day I started taking Diamox, a miracle drug that alleviates these symptoms, and after that I was fine and sleeping much better.  A nice side-effect of the drug was tingling hands and feet, giving me free reign to observe that "my spider-sense is tingling" when danger was presumably close by.

I had started the hike with a guy from Ottawa named Alex, and we got along famously.  Unfortunately, Alex's knees started to give him problems around the second day, and after a few days limping downhill in Terry Fox fashion, he decided to hire a porter to carry his bag the rest of the way.  We named the porter Chapter Two, in celebration of the start of a new chapter in the chronicle of our hike.  A diminuitive, Samurai-looking chap, Chapter Two was a dream: he followed closely with us, taught us Sherpa words, and seemed gravely concerned if we slipped, but since he had another job to do he could only stay with us for two days.  The second porter we hired in Namche, and he seemed alright until his second day when it became clear he had suffered some sort of food poisoning.  After waiting 30 minutes for him to catch up, Alex went down and gave him his severance.  The guy looked like he just wanted his mom and I think he was relieved to go and rest.  

The third porter we picked up just for the afternoon, he was the very fast son of the lodge owner where we stopped for lunch.  The father bemoaned "But who is going to wash my dishes?" as the kid shed his apron, donned the bag, and basically started running.  The forth porter (by this point it was getting really annoying to accompany Alex on his porter hunts) was a bit of a pretty-boy but he seemed attentive enough.  On the second day, however, we found him halfway up the pass, sitting in the sun, telling us he didn't want to go any further because he didn't have the right jacket.  Then because he hadn't had breakfast.  The excuses continued, with four of us bearing down on this guy to get back to work and finish the job.  He finally shouldered the bag and continued to our destination, dropped the bag and left, not even sticking around to collect his pay for the day.  I'll let you guess who begrudgingly carried some of Alex's gear for the last two days before he headed back down.

The forth porter drama sort of highlights my only real issue with the region: money.  Prices are inflated to huge European prices which, at first, seems acceptable since everything needs to be walked in by porters.  But then you find meals that are cheaper even though they are higher up the mountain, and you learn that the porters, the cooks, the servers all make very little.  It's a bit tough to reconcile paying $6 for an awful noodle dish when you know that the average wage in Nepal is about $3 per day.  The lodge owners have been blessed with owning land in a place that is in demand, and they are rather rich (though not rich enough to supply soap in their lodges). I remember talking to one lodge-owning family member, and saying how it must be annoying to have to walk to their lodge all the time.  "Walk?" she said incredulously, "that's a once in a lifetime experience.  I only take the helicopter."

Lodges will charge you huge fines if you don't eat at their kitchens, so you get this culture of vulture-ladies running their lodges who seem to have nothing better to do than monitor the activities of their guests.  I am a hungry chap by nature, and most afternoons I'd sneak into my room like a criminal and take a few hits of cheese behind a locked door.  I've heard it's almost come to fists when people arrive late and decide not to have dinner.  This is in sharp contrast to Tibet, only a short distance away and culturally similar, where providing a full, bottomless cup of tea is part of being a respectable host, and I was welcomed with sincerity and warmth.  I have thus concluded that tourism does have the power to destroy.

But you don't really hike around Everest for the culture.  You hike for the out-of-this-world (almost literally) views, for a taste of the extreme, and to be humbled by the big world.  It was beautiful, it was challenging, it was everything I could have ever hoped for in a hike.  And I don't want to hike again for quite some time.

It didn't end with a bang.  We arrived in Lukla with plane tickets booked, only to find that weather had grounded flights for two days, and was bound to continue for another week.  A depressing, expensive town filled with frustrated hikers, Lukla is no stranger to bad weather.  Last year flights were cancelled for 13 days, and earlier in November this year the place made international news when 2000 trekkers were "stranded".  I couldn't take sitting around reading books about mountaineering any longer, and took off by foot, making my way rather quickly back to Jiri and the long bus ride to Kathmandu.  As I write this, half my crew are still stuck in Lukla, waking up each day with optimism that is quickly eroded as the clouds roll in.  The situation got me thinking about if I were on a plane that crash landed in the desert, I'd be part of the team that went out looking for help, I wouldn't be able to sit around in the uncertainty.  Unless of course it was a plane full of food.  Or pinball machines or something.

I was buoyed on by the promise of burgers and pizza and half-price pastries in Kathmandu, and eating my face off seems a great way to celebrate being 26.  But the results of a month in the hills produced other surprises: the oddity of hearing a bus horn for the first time, the joy of fresh bananas, and the shock of how dirty Nepal is.  Perhaps it is too soon to make sweeping comments about how I've been changed for the better, but you certainly come out of a month of trekking different than when you went in.  Not just talking about tightening the belt either, maybe something more profound.  Either way, it was a superbe experience, a highlight of the trip, and something that will be hard to beat.  I imagine our man Edmund Hillary probably felt the same way while gazing out from the top so many years ago: "Now what?"

Namche Chill Day

Made it....to Namche Bazaar.

But that's a hell of an accomplishment.  Namche, besides having a cool name, is the biggest town up here in the hills.  It has fresh bakeries, pizza, trekking gear shops, and even bars with pool tables and ice cold San Miguels.  It's pretty cool, considering that the city exists in a place with no cars, a two day walk from the nearest airport and a week-long walk from the nearest road.  It also makes it improbable that the postcard I sent it will make it anywhere in the next year or so.

I'll be thankfully brief here in the land of $6/hour internet.  Most people fly to the airport at Lukla and walk up to Namche (2 days).  We instead took a bus, the worst bus ride ever, to the end of the road at Jiri (Shivalaya) and then hiked the 6 days from Jiri to Lukla.  This is the more traditional route, before planes made it to Lukla, and passes through many green hillside villages.  It was a tough hike, with lots of ups and downs, but one that we look back on fondly now that we've rejoined the main Everest trail, which is sort of "trekking rush hour" with big groups and yak trains and lodges and reggae bars every few kilometers.  I suspect that by the end of this walk I will be extremely annoyed with European hiking groups.

We have a good crew of interesting people that we met on the hike from Jiri, since it attracts those strange long-term traveller types who sell their homes to go to Samoa or try to spend half of each year in India.  We're surviving on the lodge menus that I've pretty much got memorized by now: noodles, potatoes, eggs.  I had a "pizza" the other day that may have ruined pizza forever for me, but in general anything tastes good.  Apparently this region also has a burgeoning Swiss-style cheese industry, and we will be buying it by the kilo before leaving Namche.

Leading me to next two weeks: up.  From here on in we climb steady, and there are a bunch of rest days built in to acclimitize to the altitude in places with equally cool names like Tengboche, Dingboche, Gorak Shep.  I hear Halloween in Tengboche is a gas.  Prices are sure to go up, so I'll be carrying some extra food, and that bottle of wine continues to hold a place of honour in my bag, waiting to be cracked open next to an iconic sunrise next to Everest.  Enjoy the warm weather back home, see you from the top!

The Long Way Up to Everest Base Camp

It's 11pm and the start of a long night of packing, emails, and all the little things you try to get done before a big trip.  It feels like being back in Toronto, about to board a plane to Thailand, or back in China, about to get on the bike and head into Tibet: tremendous excitement.  Tomorrow I'm going on a bus that will take me to the start of a 35-day trek up into the Khumbu Region of Nepal, to the Himalayas, Sagarmatha and many more strange buzzwords.

35 days.  That's a long time to be out in the hills.  It's not as remote as it sounds: these are busy trails with lodges to sleep in that will prepare you home-cooked meals.  Beer, electricity, hot water are all available, for a price.  But there are no roads.  This land is my land this land is your land but you sure as hell better be ready to walk.  The only other sizeable issue is altitude, since the lack of oxygen can be problematic if you ascend too quickly.  I shudder to think about the price of a Snickers bar with those parameters in mind, and will likely augment my stash to 20, just to be safe.  Or should I budget one per day?

The big highlight of the trek will be reaching Everest Base Camp, somewhere around November 7.  Sometimes you tell people you want to hike to Everest Base Camp and they roll their eyes as if it's this big cliche.  Maybe Everest is indeed the Paris Hilton of the outdoor world, but it still captures the imagination.  I remember reading the illustrated world atlas (complete with the USSR) my parents gave me when I was in Grade 2, and looking at the pages that compared the longest rivers, the most population countries, and the tallest mountains.  I remember tracing a route from the exotic sounding Kathmandu to the top of the world, and that's the dream that I get to realize starting tomorrow.  Travel is about soaking up different cultures, and the culture of people who pursue the world's highest point is as much a part of humanity as any other place I've been, though it is likely much more vain, ambitious, and self-centred.  All that aside, I imagine the views are going to be fantastic.

And, of course, if there's time, maybe we'll pop up to Everest summit to snap a few pics.

After base camp (EBC for those in the know), there are some other high passes in the region that make for a nice little loop.  It all gets highly variable, and I can shrink the hike down a bunch if I'm tired of walking or, more realistically, have filled up 8 GB of memory with pictures of mountains and snow.  If you're Jim Smith and you actually check these things out on a map, we'll be walking from Jiri to Lukla then up to Namche Bazaar, Lobuche and EBC.  From there it's west to Gokyo, then Thame, back down to Lukla, and east a bunch to Tumlingtar.  Ambition from an armchair, that's what tonight is all about.

Have I pointed out that I'm excited?  Beyond excited.  Anyway, there won't be much in the way of blogging for the next few weeks, except maybe something for the sake of novelty.  I'll try to provide the odd Twitter update which you see up in the top right corner of this site, but otherwise you won't hear from me from the dark side of Everest.  Enjoy Hallowe'en Remembrance Day Matt's Birthday and all that.  On November 7 look to the east, and if you squint really hard you might spy me with a long-carried bottle of wine, waving from a perch in the shadow of Mount Everest.

Kayak Me a River

I am writing this from the blissfully tranquil lounge of Sukute Beach, far from internet and cell reception, steps away from my tented camp, a swimming pool, and the powerful, seething river.  This is my last night here, last of five heart-pounding days in the water, and as good a time as any to tell the tale of Whitewater Kayak School.

So let's begin with some generalizations about whitewater kayaking. Thrilling.  Terrifying.  Gives you the upper body you've always wanted.  Much more difficult than it looks.  

Day One: Manish, our short Nepali guide, teaches us the first skill of whitewater kayaking, the self-rescue.  Flip the kayak, pull the spray skirt, and escape to safety.  Looks easy enough.  I enthusiastically slide into the pool and start rolling.  Just before hitting the water I have a sudden realization that I'm going to be upside-down in the pool and my nose will fill with water.  A half-second later I am flailing about underwater, a rush of pain to my head, and then gasping at the surface.  Perhaps unlike any other sport, learning whitewater kayaking begins with a trial by fire, and I wonder if I will regret a week of this.

But it gets better, and I get better.  By day two I've figured out the Eskimo roll and we're flying down the lower section of the Bhote Khosi, probably in water that is a little wild for a beginner.  It's sort of a "sink-or-swim" experience, literally, but in keeping the kayak pointed straight and paddling like hell, we follow Manish through the waves.  And it is a hoot.

We've run the river at least once every day, and it's always a wild mix of fear and exhilaration.  It's tough to beat the feeling of pushing off from a big wave, getting some air, and then getting shot up by the next swell.  That is sort of counter-balanced by the frustration of failure, since even a small whirlpool can succeed in swamping the beginner and flipping their kayak.  I liken the whole thing to skiing, where the only way to improve is to run the hill, over and over again.  But unlike skiing, where you can stop when you get overwhelmed, kayaking affords no such luxury.  A flip means that you have to either contain your panic of being underwater and complete an Eskimo roll to right yourself (was only able to pull it off once in fast water), or you pull the skirt and swim to shore and eventually drain your kayak and try again.  There's a terrific sense of accomplishment at reaching the end of the day, followed often by dumplings, then a hearty serving of pasta, and some of country's greatest hits during the evenings in the lounge.  John Denver has never seemed more out of place than in rural Nepal.

Today we attempted a section upstream, that the cheerful Nepali guides have all built up as an intense section with Class II rapids, proving that by labelling something with Roman Numerals it becomes instantly more intimidating.  There was a certain amount of trepidation as Manish and I scouted the rapids on foot, and he showed me the correct path we would have to run through the torrent of water successfully.  Apparently, in real whitewater kayaking, there are these features called "holes", which you have to avoid, since the churning water will quickly flip your boat, or even trap you.  Great.  How will I recognize a hole Manish?  "When we cannot see the water below a wave, that is a hole."  Sounds obvious enough.  A few minutes later, trying to follow our route through the melee, I learn to recognize holes more effectively when I am sucked into one the size of a minivan.

So it's been good.  I would love to do more of this, and maybe will have a chance later on, or even back in Canada-the-frigid.  It'd be cool to be good at kayaking since it's really fun, and the journey aspect of it, including lots of sunny afternoons floating downstream through steep valleys and past fishing villages, has a certain allure.  In the quest for an infallible Eskimo Roll I am reminded of an old golf cliche: "You have to get worse before you get better."  Add a "Practice makes perfect" to that and I've certainly got a long way to go.  In the meantime I am looking forward to getting back to the city, where the only rolls I'll have to worry about are cinammon ones.