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?"