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.

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.