It’s not so much altitude sickness as a breathless I-haven’t-been-able-to-feel-my-face-for-so-long-that-I’m-unsure-if-I-still-have-one delirium.

“I said, “Let there be light,” and so there was. And I said, “Let there be earth,” and so it is under your feet. And I said, “Let glorious mountains rise from the Earth’s crust,” and so here they are before you. You’re welcome.”

-My short speech to recent Finnish and Hollander acquaintances upon reaching the day’s destination, we were surrounded by Himalayan peaks. The sarcasm/humor was lost in translation or delivery, silence and askance looks pervaded. They avoided me the rest of the day. Perhaps it was due to my ‘mountain musk’ acquired after a week without bathing. Either way, their loss (I said to myself while crying in the comfort of my sleeping bag).

It’s not so much altitude sickness as a breathless I-haven’t-been-able-to-feel-my-face-for-so-long-that-I’m-unsure-if-I-still-have-one delirium. 

Sorry Mom. You still can’t collect on that travel life insurance policy. Of course, the policy doesn’t cover mountaineering accidents which, undoubtedly, the company would try group Himalaya hiking into and you’d end up settling out of court for a mere $35,000 instead of the $100,000 owed to spare an eighteen month legal battle—an emotional black hole—and such a sum is hardly worth a son. Even the unkempt derelict one of the three who’s current life motto is ‘Why shower, shave, or tweeze my nostril hair when the grime and defiant follicles will be back tomorrow anyway?’

I spent the last 25 days walking. A lot. Up or down, never straight. In tennis shoes that had been super-glued back together twice before beginning and three times during. With a backpack that’s zippers have given way to a tape-and-shoelace system to tighten and close. Filled with second-hand cold weather gear picked up in Nepal using the stratagem: ‘The more filth and tears the better the buyer’s bargaining position.’ About ten days in, at 17,800 feet, my pack was empty. I was wearing its contents. The sleeping bag was used as a scarf.*

I wish I could say the view was amazing, that the mountains mesmerized, that I played witness to angels dancing atop some of the world’s tallest peaks. All I saw was white. Clouds and snow, but for a sign telling me I reached my target I could have been anywhere—a white-walled room of an asylum or in a flurry of copy paper after an accident at Office Depot. Until then the scenery was incredible, afterwards the same. Nepal’s natural diversity is stunning; days were spent in lush valleys, rain forests, cloud forests, pine forests, barren high-altitude terrain, and even (very) high desert.

Ten days later, twenty days in, the clouds parted. I was surrounded by peaks, some elevated above sea-level by over 26,000 feet. A 360 degree panorama of jagged white pinnacles—who knew snow could be so violent? With the sun’s rise the mountains glow, grow gilded. It’s the moment the cacophony of the universe harmonizes in my chest cavity.

I would have kept walking but after 200-plus miles I ran out of trail. If I make it back before Christmas new shoes are first on the wish list.

Keep drifting.

*This is backpacker bragging, the I-roughed-it-more-than-thou boast, something I have no tolerance for receiving but am always eager to dispense. That’s me, always giving, a Saint Nicholas of the modern age.

A few days were spent hiking with other travelers, I prefer the company of the locals--they make me laugh more.

It took 25 days but I finally deduced why my feet were so cold.

My yak stare down; one glance and the 700-pound beasts parted to allow me passage.

I’m not spitting on the dead, I’m spitting out the dead.

“Someone got mugged walking to the World Peace Pagoda today?” It’s about a ninety minute hike uphill from Pokahara’s Lakeside tourist area in Nepal.

“Yeah,” the guesthouse clerk says, “Very bad.”

“How ironic.” It was constructed by Buddhist monks to promote world peace and people get robbed on the way up. I say, “That, that right there, is funny, I don’t care who you are."

“Not funny, very bad.”

“Yeah, but-”

He interrupts, “No, very bad.”

“Ye-”

“-No.”

“Oh. Okay.”


I’m not spitting on the dead, I’m spitting out the dead.

What Katmandu lacks in air quality it more than makes for in UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Within a twenty kilometer radius seven monuments (together actually counted as a single Heritage Site--the first sentence was purposefully misleading to speed up your heart rate by two beats per minute, it’s the only pseudo-exercise you’ll be getting today, you workaholic) have been deemed UNESCO-funding suitable for upkeep and restoration, so why not spend a day at each? That the Indian Visa process takes a week is without coincidence, the moon is aligned with Jupiter and one of the larger asteroids in the outer ring, the divine in the form of the Buddha, Vishnu, or _______ (insert your favorite deity in the space provided) is requesting a visit to all. Just like a ‘DONATIONS ACCEPTED’ sign at a wat or temple, it’s more of a demand. Alternatively the day could be spent counting how many bugs have been entombed in the walls of your guesthouse room with the slap of hand (1,437), but you just bought a new memory card for the digital camera so what the hell or flea-in-a-dog’s-rectum rebirth?

Swayambhunath, a Buddhist hilltop Stupa overlooking the Katmandu Valley, is reached after a 300-plus concrete stair ascent fending off battalions of monkeys from claiming everything on your person as their own. Reaching the top, bent over and heaving, you’ll be eye-level with the Great Dorje, a brass-plated celestial thunderbolt. The symbol of the power of enlightenment, it destroys ignorance, just not yours. Sorry, but you’re going to have to accrue a half million dollars in student loans like the rest of us. When you finally catch your breath, or awake after passing out, please remember to circle the stupa in a clockwise direction. I don’t want to be responsible for the bad luck you accrue for going the other way. And all this time you thought you hadn’t yet won the Powerball due to something as trivial as probability.

Bodnath is similar in structure, but built on a grander scale. Despite being bereft of a naturally elevated platform like Swayambhunath, it’s one of the largest and most significant Buddhist monuments in the world. Known as Boudha, Lord of Wisdom, the stupa is said to be protective, purifying and wish granting, so be sure to spin each of the hundreds of prayer wheels as you walk three and a half turns around the stupa chanting your most beloved Buddhist mantra in order to make proper merit. Your forearms, they’re in need of toning anyway. You’ll never look like a rock star without veins protruding from wrists to elbows and that Steven Tyler Halloween costume will be an everyone-thinks-I-dressed-up-as-a-drag-queen disappointment.

If you’ve been longing to see strangers cremated, their ashes swept into a river, and children bathing in said river less than 100 meters downstream, then Pashupatinath is the place for you. Reported to be the second most sacred Hindu site on Earth after Benares, the holy Bagmati river is responsible for carrying the dead onto the next life. A messy reincarnation, aside from human ashes the river carries plastic bags and bottles, candy wrappers, latex condoms and vegetable curries post human digestion.

Less accommodating than their Buddhist counterparts, Caucasoids aren’t allowed into any of the surrounding temples. Even after putting one of those red dots on my forehead. So I spent the day observing funeral rites, breathing in the ashes and smoke of the dead, then spent the evening sneezing murky gray mucus, my body rejecting the deceased. It’s okay, they’re at a point in the life cycle where the rebuff is unlikely to cause offense.

Lame levity aside, the cremation ceremonies are incredibly business-like, each lasting several hours as families, and sometimes a sole individual, murmur prayer and mourn the life lost. Watching their loved one turn to charcoaled dust. Tourists taking pictures is the height of indecency.

Lame levity engaged, the cool thing about visiting a country whose Maoist government is classified as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ organization by the U.S. government: bragging rights. The good thing about living in a country where it’s illegal to kill a cow: your mother will never burn an exquisite cut of tenderloin. The advantage of living amongst people with an average gross income of around $500 per capita annually (over 80% live on less than $2/day): a $1 tip after dinner brings enthusiastic handshakes from the wait staff. Yes sir, you’re looking at Mr. Washington. He loves you too.

The Blog page title and my current locale are at odds, I’ve drifted out of Southeast Asia, it’s time to put this muddled travelogue to rest. With a three to five week (depending on enthusiasm and endurance) Himalaya hike on tap I don’t anticipate online activity in the immediate future. If I don’t post an I’m-not dead-yet-Mom entry within forty days it’s not that I fell victim to avalanche, demonic yaks or yeti, but rather became a member of the upstanding Sherpa community. You’re always welcome to reach me at 17,000 feet. Bring a Snickers bar.

Keep drifting.

At Patan's (5 km south of Katmandu) Durbar Square.

West meets East.



Pashupatinath



From Bangkok’s bawdy neon to the rolling blackouts of Katmandu.

(on passing by a ‘working girl’ in Bangkok)
“A new girl I’ve never seen before tells me she loves me. Sincerity is the first casualty of capitalism.”

(discussing prayer flags)
“Blue for sky, white for air, red for fire, green for water, yellow for earth, generally in that order… The flags which carry the texts of a thousand prayers stitched into the cloth are intrinsic to Tibetan Buddhism, and you find them all over the Himalayas. The wind takes their healing meditations of the holy monks and carries them all over our tortured world; to use the wind and earth as a kind of machine to broadcast the way of transcendence is to me one of those sublime cultural achievements: would you forgive me for suggesting it beats landing on the moon?”

-quotes from The Godfather of Katmandu, by John Burdett


From Bangkok’s bawdy neon to the rolling blackouts of Katmandu.

After enjoying the modernity of Thailand’s eleven million strong metropolis Nepal’s largest city is a bit of a shock. For a national capital there’s not much in the way of infrastructure. With over one million people one might expect a stoplight or two. How about a stop sign? With few sidewalks, narrow streets in disrepair, kamikaze motorcyclists and car horns constantly blaring as black exhaust spews from their undercarriages Bangkok’s zany upbeat energy is quickly forgotten to a let’s-try-not-to-get-maimed mental zapping. The street vendors, hawkers and beggars make what was once regarded as the fabled and inaccessible Shangri-La an exhausting exhaust-filled damn-it-another-Suzuki-side-mirror-just-hit-my-shoulder Third World hovel. A quote from the Lonely Planet guidebook: “Katmandu is regularly paralyzed by political ferment, electricity cuts and traffic seizures on a scale that is almost apocalyptic… Electricity is currently rationed across the city… [and] is unavailable for up to sixteen hours a day.”

Have you ever been approached by a ragged woman holding a baby pleading that her child needs milk? She doesn’t want money, just milk for an infant for Buddha’s or Vishnu’s or Shiva’s sake. You follow her to a storefront selling formula to discover the merchant wants 1,200 Nepali rupees for a box of the good stuff, over seventeen dollars. Something isn’t right here. Okay, 400 rupees the merchant says. Which is when you know it’s a scam, that him and the lady are in cahoots, they may even be married. She’s not doing the negotiating or trying to get a fair price. She wants you to pay as much as possible for formula that, once bought, will likely be put back on the shelf for the next my-money-is-my-burden Caucasoid.

So you walk away. Right into a young man walking on his hands. He’s two feet off the ground, his legs end above where his knees should be, he’s shaking a tin begging cup. He’s grunting like a Yeti. Minutes later a man with frost-bit black limbs moans and grabs at your ankles as you stumble past. Sorry, compassion left the body even before landing in Nepal, I’ve already seen it, I’ve already spent days feeling bad for being white and, at least comparatively, well off. Now I deal with the decrepitly deprived with a quote from the film True Grit, “I can’t do nothing for you, son.” And really, I can’t. I can pay for a meal but they’ll need another, and do I really want to help sustain a cycle of begging? I realize there may be no other options. At the same time, the constant hassle can ruin a day, a locale, maybe I won’t stay as long as I would have otherwise, maybe I’ll be reluctant to ever come back. Now legitimate business suffers. Of course, I don’t have a solution. Of course, I feel terrible when I get back to my the-water-is-the-same-shade-as-rusty-metal accommodation to wash the beggars’ hepatitis-A grime away.

It’s been a long day. It’s nearly 8 a.m.

Only a few days removed and I’m longing for Bangkok’s serendipitous just-start-walking-around-and-see-what-happens fun. I’d get off the Sky-Train and saunter into Asian boy band concerts, dance contests, ritual dance performances, magic shows, fortune-telling gypsies and gratis meditation seminars (donations accepted). The people watching is unparalleled. From the Khao San street Caucasoid hippies to the pot-bellied farangs in their fifties arm in arm with beautiful twenty year-old tiny Thai girls (or, even more disturbing, boys) to the monks to the hundreds of school kids shouting ‘hello’ at you in an art museum to the is-he-pointing-his-machine-gun-at-me? Thai royal guards, Bangkok, like Saigon, is a fascinating city to set foot in. Anytime an escape from the metro-mayhem is required just wander down a soi (side street) and the pollution and traffic instantly give way to mom-and-pop restaurants and old Thais sipping tea over a chessboard. Relax, have a bowl of noodles and recalibrate before carrying on.

From man-made steel and concrete mountains to the Himalayas, humanoids have no answer, nor will ever have an answer, to the awesome power of the natural world. Nepal hosts eight of Earth’s ten highest peaks, it’s the ‘playground of the gods’. I’ve only seen them from the sky during the flight and as eager as I am to begin a twenty day lose-a-pinkie-toe-to-frost-bite trek I have to dawdle around Katmandu for a while in the hope of obtaining an Indian visa. Notorious for their paperwork, the process takes over a week, during the initial application I ran into an Irish couple who only lasted ten days in the country of cow-worshippers. They repeated the phrase ‘one point two billion’ a lot. As in people. As you can guess, they told me, it’s crowded. It’s filthy. Katmandu is like Shangri-La.

Funny, these ‘spiritual places’ seem like the last places you’d go for uninterrupted contemplation. Perhaps their impoverished disorder teaches one to find serenity in a s**t storm. The problem: I’m not sure if I want to find out anymore. My throat is already CO2-itchy, I might need my lungs for something later on in life. Like, you know, breathing and stuff. I won’t disgust you with tales of ‘the trots’, but when visiting Nepal one is advised when showering not to get the water in one’s mouth. The guidebook points out that even people who’ve traveled throughout Asia tend to come down with severe diarrhea in the country.

Well, that’s life. It’s not always the Shangri-La we were expecting.

Keep drifting.

Welcome to Katmandu, the world's coolest sounding capital.

View from my Katmandu guest house room.

Katmandu's famous Swayambunath Buddhist temple and stupa. 

Walking up to the Swayambunath stupa.

Bangkok's Siam Paragon Mall at night, with concert outside.

Thailand's Ministry of Defense

At Bangkok's Wat Pho, home to the world's largest reclining Buddha.

Wat Pho



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Monitor lizard, about two feet long, swimming in a Bangkok pond.

At Bangkok's Lumphini Park.