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.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

I'm writing to you live from possibly the cheapest room in Kathmandu, sitting next to a bicycle that has seen 8841km, a freshly laundered biking shirt that is remarkably white, and a disturbingly large pile of empty plastic water bottles.  And what's that smell?  Oh yes, victory.

Strangely enough, the final day riding into Kathmandu wasn't the sentimental tear-jerker I thought it would be.  For starters, I had gotten little sleep the night before when I found bedbugs parading around the beds of my cheery homestay in Majyntar, and thus opted to "sleep" on a wooden bench.  On top of that, the last 38km to the Kathmandu Valley was a solid uphill on a terrible road with tons of polluting trucks that like to honk horns.  In fact, the nicest part of the ride was when a long boxcar truck stopped traffic for kilometers in either direction (just due to its size negotiating corners) and the only vehicles that could continue through the gridlock were bicycles.

Once in Kathmandu, I solicited a Spanish fellow to take a picture of me in the interesting centre of town called Durbar Square.  He offered me a quick congratulations.  And that's it.  That's how a giant circle tour of Asia ends, almost as quietly as it started.  I have been debating trying to sell the bike, but I think the urge has passed.  Every time I look at the cycle, despite it's worn components and battered appearance, I see a call to adventure, a promise of long roads and freedom under blue skies.  Whether it be big excursions into a new continent or a weekend jaunt along Lake Ontario, I think I want to keep this travel companion for the the time being.  Probably until I learn how much it's going to cost to get it back home.

Today I went on a little walk-about in Kathmandu, which is a really interesting city once you leave the touristy neighbourhood of Thamel.  I've only just begun exploring, and a longer post of my findings will follow.  I also embarked on a mission to get things fixed, a nice sort of reduce-reuse-recycle grade 4 dream that is so painless in Asia.  A guy on a street corner in northern Thamel fixed and polished my Birkenstocks so they are good as new for $4.  I found a tailor to restitch some holes in my "adventure pants" and "adventure shorts", so named because when I'm wearing them, you can be sure that adventure is nearby.  I replenished my book supply for a few bucks.  What can't-a-man-do, in Kathmandu?

When you're on a bike touring trip there's no shortage of people who you meet on the way, and the challenge of biking occupies the rest of your attention.  But now, retiring the bike does feel like losing a travel companion.  Being in this booming neighbourhood of trekkers and tour groups is a little lonely, and I am a bit humbled to be back to two feet, buses, and the apparent ubiquity of travelling out of a backpack.  Therein lies a challenge, since I have big trekking plans in mind, trekking plans that should be undertaken with a trekking partner.    The search begins.

In the meantime, in a complete change of pace, I'm embarking on a week-long kayaking course!  History: a few year ago I spent the weekend with some workterm friends on the Madawaska River, located in that large stretch of area south of Algonquin but west of Ottawa.  We rented whitewater canoes, and under the leadership of one of the guys with more experience, we tackled a stretch of river, "played" in rapids, and dunked a whole bunch of canoes.  It was spectacular.  I've meant to go back for a while now and take some proper lessons, but the high cost and lack of time have never really let it happen.  Until now.  A week of whitewater kayak lessons at a secluded tented camp with meals included is a fraction of what it costs back home on the Madawaska.  It's reputable, the water is warm, the weather is fine, and I can think of no better detente from 4 months of biking than a bunch of days eskimo-rolling (how politically incorrect!) in Nepali whitewater, followed by a good book on sandy shores under a crimson sunset.  Sounds like I've moved on already.

Anyway, enjoy the best time of autumn back home, and remember that people out here in Asia have asked me when they should go to North America to experience the fall colours.  I suppose the leafs are always brighter on the other side of the fence, especially when they hang on to a third period victory over Ottawa.  Zing!

Pokhara Paradise

The big thing about travelling in Asia are these sort of "foreigner streets" which cater to foreign backpackers.  They do make big, strange cities more manageable, since all the restaurants, hotels, stores, and English-speakers are clustered in one place.  And you can always find pancakes for breakfast.  On the other hand, I wonder how much of Asia people actually see when they move from one backpacker ghetto to another.  What I find most interesting is to consider what the locals perceive of these foreigner streets, since, surely, they must be a reflection of how these rich people from the West actually live.  I shudder at the thought of what Thai people think about us, since their legendary strip of debauchery, Khao San Road, is like a giant outdoor frat-party.  In Yangshuo, China the Xi Jie (West Street) is where you can find McDonalds since that's where we like to eat.  In Agra, Taj Ganj has rickshaw drivers every few feet, since presumably we don't like to walk more than a minute to get somewhere.

Enter Pokhara; Nepal's #2 city has a sprawling bacpacker area called Lakeside.  Now maybe I'm biased after two weeks on the quiet plains of Western Nepal or maybe I'm just getting tired trying find a hotel in a new city, but Lakeside has got to be one of my favourite rest stops in Asia.  It's touristy, like the rest, with tons of hotels, restaurants, and little souvenir shops.  But it's clean and open, it's by the lake, very peaceful, and there are no rickshaw drivers harassing you every few minutes.  Plus all the shops sell either books and maps or fake trekking gear, so it's like being in a mall designed specifically for me.  And I had my first beef steak in over a month, even though I thought they were illegal in countries that are mostly Hindu.  What a Thanksgiving!

It's certainly not the "real Nepal" experience.  In the real Nepal you can't get most things on a menu and half the buildings are in a permanent state half-completion.  But then again, what is real Nepal?  This country's bread and butter is tourism, and the closer I get to Kathmandu, the more far-reaching effects: I've seen busy quarries that build Lakeside's impressive hotels, tour buses parked outside highway restaurants, well-paid guides returning home to their villages after escorting a dozen guests through the mountains.  Lakeside is a fake area that Nepal has created for wealthy visitors, but by my reckoning it's a creation to be proud of.

Anyway, I really liked the place, and had to resist the siren call to stay there several days.  Must....finish....biking.  In fact, I bet staying there longer would ruin my memory of the place as this welcoming, dreamlike paradise.  Tomorrow I turn east, for one final ride, to the last destination on my biking list, the only one left: Kathmandu.  I have about three gear combinations left on my bike that still work, which I suppose means I have two spares.  Or it could mean I'll be finishing "Cool Runnings"-style.  Either way, Kathmandu is a two-day ride from here, as the Nazgul flies, and you'd better hope we don't have one of those on our tail.  See you at the finish line.

Learning to Rest in Tansen

Well, my Birkenstocks are broken.  I didn't know German-made $100 sandals could fall apart but lo, they can.  Some Germans at this hotel have been telling me how Germany is in the process of shutting down their nuclear plants and replacing them with alternative energy and also how they lowered university tuition from 800 euros to 200 euros.  I marvel at this advanced society.  But they still haven't perfected robust sandals.  How am I going to continue to develop my epic sandal tan now?

I was in Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha.  It's interesting how such an important Buddhist spot is in one of the most Hindu parts of the country; I almost went deaf from the amount of Hindi-pop I heard coming from the temples.  Amazingly, though Buddha was born over 2300 years ago, they know the exact stone on which he was birthed.  It's covered with a glass shield which helps distinguish it from all the other stones.  I'm sure Buddha would be rolling in his grave if he saw all the hooplah they've made about his life.: the area around his birthplace was a bit of a Buddhism World's Fair with temples built by Buddhist communities from around the world.  It is sort of cool, they have a long waterway with temples of the two different brances of Buddhism on either side.  I of course walked down the middle way (ha, Buddhist joke!).

Leaving Lumbini, at an elevation around 190m, I knew I was in for some agony.  I did't have great Nepal maps, and there wasn't much info out there about the highways, but I did know that my next stop, Tansen, was at an elevation around 1400m.  It was an absolute scorcher of a day, and also the height of their festival of Dasain so most places are closed.  I stopped in Butwal, the town at the base of a foreboding valley that goes up to Tansen, bought some chips and huddled in a shaded hallway, the only shade I could find, as I delayed the inevitable climb.

It wasn't so bad, it never is.  Certainly not that many bikers, just lots of motorcycles where the kids yelled "You will be tired, man."  The road was alright and the views were nice and there were little water spigots at the villages along the way to cool off..  A couple stopped me from their motorbike, shouting "pump! pump!" and I tried to tell them that my tires were fine before I realized that they wanted to use my pump on their motorbike.  The road levelled out a bit before a solid, 15km uphill to end the day.  You know when a 15km hill is most welcome?  Right at the end of the day when you're tired, hungry, and thirsty.  A beer and two big entrees weren't the welcome relief I expected, and I collapsed in my hotel room in a heap of fatigue.

So, the next day would be a "rest day".  Great.  I slept in a bit (8am....pathetic), mosied down for some breakfast, read a bit of my book.  Not one to sit around for an entire day, I decided to go for a little loop around town and up to the top of the hill overlooking the valley.  Then, what the hell, why not do a short little hike down to Ranighat, some famous Nepalese temple that is called the Taj Mahal of Nepal.  I had read about it in the guidebook and it was a 3-hour hike.

It was shortly after 2 hours on the trail - a very steep and hilly trail I might add - that I realized the guidebook probably meant a 3-hour hike one-way.  But I was already commited and had to continue after coming so far.  Thus my relaxing rest day turned into a 18km epic through villages, across ridgelines, down steep steps, and finally to the fabled Ranighat.  It was closed.  And it was no Taj.  Sustaining myself on chips and cheesies, the journey back to Tansen was a speedy, sweaty race against the sun.  It was a nice enough hike, since all the families were out dressed up celebrating Dasain, but the whole time I felt like a huge idiot for leaving so late for such a long stupid walk.

So today, a day when it is difficult to ascend and descend stairs, will be a true rest day.  I will not do anything.  I wince at "wasting" a day, especially when I know how much work it is to bring these big trips to fruition.  But sometimes a day to slow down and sit (on something other than a bike seat) is a welcome change.  Tansen is a nice spot too, not terribly touristy as I expect the coming weeks will be.  And for the first time I caught a glimpse of the Himalayas, a wall of pointed white peaks sitting above the clouds.  As my final destination and climax to almost a year in Asia, those mountains are heralds of a journey fulfilled.

What to do now after writing this blog post?  It's not even noon.  I suppose I can spend the better part of the day reading about Saint Steve Jobs.  Tomorrow I'm hopeful for a big downhill and push to Pokhara, and maybe just maybe some turkey in there.  Leafs win and Dalton's back, Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Behold the pale elephant, and on it sat Matt

Progress? Not so much. I took a rest day in Attariya after making some new Nepali friends. The Civil War is over, and Atariya has become queen of the highway boom towns where the latest Pairs fashions are sold from the backs of wagons. I was graciously welcomed into the home of Deelip, a radiologist from Kathmandu. Many people have returned to their villages during this time of year, since it is the 10-day festival of Dasain. Day One involved a parade of women with potted plants on their heads so it's off to a good start. After that Deelip took me around the village, showing me the community forest (where contributors are entitled to fell one tree for wedding ceremonies), some other village homes, and even the butchering of a goat. Neat-o!

The next day I biked to Bardia National Park, a big track of land that is home to tigers, rhino, and elephants. There was a 20km stretch, approaching the park (but after the world's most out-of-place suspension bridge), where the road got quiet, narrow, and boxed in by tall grass. I saw some deer by the side of the road and then got very nervous about being stalked by a tiger. I learned later that my worries were unfounded, but at the time I looked like somebody had just walked over my grave. That night, the electricity was out between 9 and 11, so with nothing to do I decided to watch a movie from the collection on my computer. I chose the 1993 Kurt Russel western, Tombstone. It was bad-ass. So bad-ass, that for the next two days while tracking big game (and writing the subsequent blog post) I had Tombstone on my mind.

The nice thing about Bardia is that it's very quiet, so you can relax in the jungle environment. You look up and you think, "God made all this and He remembered to make a little speck like me." The lodge where I'm staying is clean and tranquil and very reasonably priced. The park sees maybe 5 visitors a day this time of year so it's very peaceful. You fall asleep to the sounds of the forest.

On my first day I took a late afternoon elephant ride. Elephants are big animals! The driver didn't speak much English except "monkey" and "deer" but they say he's got the fastest hands since Wild Bill. A few times he spoke Nepali and I tried to express that I didn't understand before I realized that he was speaking to the elephant. There was one word that sounded like an impression of someone sneezing, which made the elephant grab and remove a tree branch in its path using its trunk. It was pretty cool, I felt like royalty sitting on my little elephant thrown. We saw some deer and monkeys, and well, lots of grass.

Today I was up early for a walking tour with Ram, the quintessential frontier type who has the look of both predator and prey. This time of year, walking tours are a great way to learn about a new annoying insect: leeches. Admittedly, I'm not big on blood and the thought of leeches has always made my skin crawl. But seeing them crawling around, these little inchworms, sort of reduces the fear. They are annoying certainly, around dusk and dawn, but they don't carry disease or infest your luggage so what's the big deal? At one point we stopped and I realized the big dirt blotch on my sock was actually blood from a leaky leech bite, but whatever: you gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?

Did we see anything? Well it ain't no daisy. During 12 hours in the bush we saw fresh tiger prints, trees that had been recently downed by elephants, places where animals are usually spotted, and deer. Let me be perfectly clear: I don't really care for deer. If I wanted to see deer I'd drive 10 minutes to Rouge Park back home. I've since lost a bit a faith in safaris and wildlife viewing, as I've seen more up-close animal life while biking through Asia. You want wildlife? Grab a box of Animal Crackers and curl up on a sofa watching BBC's Planet Earth on an HDTV. The views don't get much better and your guide is Richard Attenborough. Pushing television over travel? It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Anyway, it was a nice few days of rest. Tomorrow begins a 4-day stretch to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha and my gateway to central Nepal. You called down the thunder Buddha, and now you got it. You tell 'em I'm coming, and Hell's coming with me!