Music Makes the World Go ‘Round

Tags

music, sense memory

Sense memories are often the source of some powerful post-trip nostalgia, at least for me. Most of these are tied directly to the place where they were experienced, like the tinkling of cowbells in an alpine meadow, the aroma of grilled souvlaki meat in a Greek taverna, or the low hum of chanting monks in Tibet. But I have also formed random associations of certain pieces of music with particular places that are just as potent as these more intrinsic sounds and smells.

I have a short and whimsical playlist I associate with almost every trip I have taken and more often than not, it makes no sense thematically or chronologically. When I hear certain songs or artists, I am transported back to the strangest places – cities and countries that have no inherent connection to the music in question. One of the most recent examples is Daft Punk’s summer of 2013 hit song “Get Lucky,” which instantaneously evokes a warm summer day in Ljubljana, Slovenia, every time I hear it. This one, at least, fits its timeframe; I was there that summer, and every restaurant and bar along the Ljubljanica River seemed to be playing the catchy tune as we strolled the streets of this incredibly lovely little town. The light, peppy beat perfectly reflected the bright, energetic summer vibe of the city, and I (now annoyingly) contact my travel buddy K every time I hear the song and think of our happy time there.

Lucky to be in lovely Ljubljana

A more unlikely combo is R.E.M. and the twisting, turning roads of the Arcadia region of Greece’s Peloponnese. The track I remember most, “Losing My Religion” was released in 1991, but this trip was many years later, and there was little about those dusty roads and small villages that seemed connected to the haunting, mandolin-heavy melody of this song. Nevertheless, R.E.M. is now forever linked to that road trip of shimmering hot days, with seven people packed into a van on the way to an ancestral village and home. The memory works both ways; I hear the tune whenever I look at the village photos, and I think of the mountain drive every time R.E.M. comes on.

Winding through the Peloponnese with R.E.M.

Some parts of the world, whether through geographic or cultural isolation, are decades behind in the radio music scene. Two anachronisms still make me smile. One was listening to The Doors in remote Namche Bazaar, Nepal, on the trail to Everest Base Camp just a few years ago. On a dismal, rainy night, two of my fellow trekkers and I escaped our freezing lodge for a beer and some popcorn in a tiny bar warmed by a potbellied stove. We sat for hours, listening to the rain pinging against the metal roof and the strains of some very dated ‘60s and ‘70s songs, most notably a medley of The Doors. I may have thought about “The End” and “Riders on the Storm” at Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris, but I certainly did not expect to hear his memorable voice deep in the Khumbu in Nepal!

The Doors play Namche Bazaar, Nepal

Do you associate somber, serious Russia with bouncy Boy George? On the day of my arrival, I tried to make sense (while seriously jetlagged, no less) of the incongruous juxtaposition of “Karma Chameleon” and the austere architecture I was viewing out my sleet-covered cab window one January day. I would be hard pressed to think of a song less evocative of Soviet Russia than this, but it’s fixed now: St. Petersburg’s outskirts and Culture Club, together forever.

Culture Club or culture shock? on the gloomy drive in from Pulkovo Airport, St Petersburg, Russia

Aside from these random associations, there are also the songs that were playing on my own iPod on different occasions, either on purpose or arbitrarily. Pitbull took my mind off my panting on the way up the last set of steps and hills to Dead Woman’s Pass on the Inca Trail, The Fray have shut out any number of people snoring in nearby tents, and Kacey Musgraves’ country twang accompanied us on a drive all over Iceland’s country roads last summer.

Above The Fray in Paine Grande Camp, Chile

Chilling out to Kacey Musgraves on the Ring Road, Iceland

Last but not least, there was one unforgettable trip on which we provided the “music” ourselves. We had grown very attached to our adorable, charming guide in Tibet after spending over a week with him in Lhasa and the Tibetan countryside. As we drove back from our expedition to Everest North Base Camp, we grew silly and sentimental about leaving him and decided to sing along to many of his favorite western artists, including Michael Bolton (had to hum that one!), Back Street Boys, and Céline Dion. I will never hear “My Heart Will Go On” again without a mental picture of a tiny Tibetan guy crooning his heart out on the Friendship Highway!

Back Street Boys enliven the Friendship Highway, Tibet

Off-roading to Celine Dion in Tibet

Do you have an internal soundtrack from each trip you’ve taken? Stay tuned for another post some day on all the books I associate with each trip!

“The Real and Powerful Buddha Head”

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Barkhor Square, Buddha head, Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet

My apologies to any followers of my photo blog who will see this post there as well today. That blog is normally photos only, but today I had to tell a story to explain my picture, and I knew I wanted to share that story here, too.

The photo challenge this week was to use the Rule of Thirds (and the bokeh effect, if possible) to capture an up-close view of something or someone. I try to always stick to a travel theme on both blogs, so I wandered my house this afternoon in search of a travel memento that I could experiment with.

This beautiful Buddha head is from Lhasa, Tibet, and his journey home to me was a long and arduous one. I found him initially in a small store behind Barkhor Square, on the buzzing circular path that is part of the kora (circumambulation) around the Jokhang Temple. He is quite heavy and as I always travel with only a carry-on bag or backpack, I knew I could not get him home with me. I bought him anyway and scribbled my name and address on a scrap of paper to have him shipped, feeling all along that there was a very good chance that I’d never see him again. As minimal protection, I did take the name and email address of a young woman in the shop who spoke a bit of English.

I returned home a week or so later and then many months passed. Finally, one day an enormous package arrived for me. Its sides had caved in, the tape was snarled or completely missing in spots, and there were stamps marching across nearly the whole surface. The head was made of metal; what real damage could be done, I thought hopefully? Alas, I removed the Buddha head from its nest of packaging, and as soon as I moved to place him on a table, I heard a loud rattling sound. Something had clearly broken inside.

In a very non-Buddhist mood, I wrote to the young woman and (a tiny bit) crankily told her about the ridiculously long wait and the fact that my purchase was damaged as well. Her response (below) was so touching and beautiful that I’ve kept it forever as a reminder of both the dear, sweet Tibetan people and the need to expect the best of others.

  “I understand that you worry about it , for me, i hope you trust me , even you come to our store by yourself , but we Tibetan never cheat our friends from other country , and also what you bought is the Buddha head! 

   It is good to know that you got it! Please don’t worry about that , the sounds from inside are some barley beads and prayers , because this Buddha head has been blessed before and worshipped by pilgrims many years ago , the new Buddha head is empty and nothing inside , if we want to invite a Buddha head at home, we must bring it to the Old temple and invite a Lama to put the Barley beads and prayers inside ,even the dry butter which has been offered to the Buddha Shakyamuni as offerings inside, then the Buddha is the real and powerful Buddha head which can protect us ! 

   If you look the bottom carefully , you can see the marks of fixing the bottom when the Lama finish blessing the Buddha head , it is our traditon to put things inside the Buddha and Buddha head , or else it is just the statue ,not the Holy Buddha !”

So what I have is better than a mere statue or sculpture; I have “the real and powerful Buddha head”! He occupies the front table in my entrance so that I pass him dozens of times a day, and he greets each and every visitor to our home. Picking him up today and hearing the rattle of barley beads and prayers inside made my day a little brighter.

The World’s Most Dangerous Airport

Tags

Ama Dablam, Khumbu region, Lukla, Nepal, world's most dangerous airport

Back to the archives … in 2012, I traveled to Nepal on my own to meet a small group of trekkers for several weeks of hiking in the Khumbu region.

I rose in Kathmandu today at 4:15 am in order to leave at 5 for our flight to Lukla’s Tenzing-Hillary Airport, a tiny landing strip at 9200 feet in the Nepal Himalaya. I had been filled with trepidation about this flight. It is by far the fastest way into the Khumbu region, where we would begin our trek to Ama Dablam base camp, but look up Lukla Airport and every header you’ll see says something like “world’s most dangerous/most extreme/scariest/pick-your-frightening-superlative-adjective airport.” And like a gawker at an accident scene, I had not been able to resist watching video after video to prepare (terrify?) myself before the flight.

Our group was quiet, although a few decided a little morbid humor might help stave off our nervousness. Our guide, Stéphane, demonstratively crossed himself, while fellow hiker Ellen took a photo as we were bussed to our plane, noting that at least someone would find the camera with the black box and see our group photo.

After a hectic free-for-all in the small, domestic Kathmandu airport, we drove onto the tarmac where two shiny Yeti Airlines planes were being washed and polished. Between them sat a decrepit Tara Airlines prop plane, with filthy windows, dented metal on the tail wing, and grime and cobwebs all over the struts and wings. No, no, say it ain’t so … but yes, this was where our duffel bags seemed to be heading. My heart sank as I looked longingly at the Yeti planes on either side.

We filed into the 15-seat plane and sat with our packs on our laps and our bodies touching our seatmates. The seats were threadbare, just metal supports covered in a thin, ratty fabric. I perked up when the lone flight attendant came around with a little basket, but it was, disappointingly, just filled with cotton balls for our ears and a hard candy to suck on when the pressure of takeoff and landing grew strong.

Takeoff was uneventful (except for a little spinning on a patch of ice – yikes) and the 35-minute ride was pretty and smooth. Near the end, we passed precariously close to the ground at a pass (75 feet of clearance, estimated by Rick, a doctor in the group who is also a pilot) and to mountains on both sides of us as we slipped into a ring of peaks.

Suddenly, the sun was gone and we felt ourselves descending. As we dropped, we saw our 1700-ft-long, 65-ft-wide runway appear; the runway starts at the edge of a cliff and ends at a mountain face – clearly no maneuverability for a go-around or an aborted landing!

Rick said later we needed to come in quickly at about a 45-degree angle in order to hit the front end of the runway. Right before we touched down, the stall alarm sounded as the pilot deliberately killed the engine. We slowed as we braked and coasted up the 12.5 % incline of the ramped runway, a necessity in order to stop the plane before it hits the fence and mountain face at the far end.

In minutes, we were off the plane, in an outdoor Arrivals area where we met our local guide. We also learned and saw later that most planes unload and reload in anywhere from 90 seconds to 4 minutes, then they are back in the air for the return flight.

This flight sounds scarier than it is, and the pilots are really pros. We gathered our wits and our belongings, walked a few minutes to our Lukla lodge, and had a hearty celebratory breakfast before the real adventure began.

(See A Sense of the World for more notes on this trek.)

 

Here’s to Beer

Tags

Beer

My recent Friday Photo of some Guinness kegs in Dublin got me thinking about beer. The nectar of the gods is always a big part of my travel enjoyment. Before you think me a sot, let me say that I am simply an enthusiastic social drinker who particularly relishes a cold beer after a long day of trekking, sightseeing, or laboring.One of my fondest beer memories is from a trip we took to the Monteverde cloud forest area in Costa Rica. Our family joined a larger group to work for nine days in Santa Elena, CR, where we mixed concrete by hand, dug trenches, hauled concrete blocks, and built bookshelves, among other duties. At the end of each long, hot day, we were filthy and exhausted. When we arrived back at our humble hostel each night, the dilemma was what to do first: quench our thirst and relax our aching bodies with a drink, or clean ourselves up? As the days passed, the original binary choice of Beer or Shower morphed into a multivariable quandary expressed as Beer-Shower-Beer? or Shower-Beer-Beer? or Beer-Beer-Shower? or (screw the shower!) Beer-Beer-Beer! Imperial was definitely the ale of choice here, regardless of whether it was consumed before or after the bathing.

A good, local beer after a long day of trekking is also a marvelous reward. At dusk in the Great Rift Valley in Tanzania, we enjoyed many a Safari, Tusker, or Kilimanjaro outside our tents.

On the Inca Trail in Peru, we became quite partial to Cusqueña Dark, while in Glacier National Park in northern Montana and Canada, we consistently grabbed a Moose Drool out of the cooler. Asia is not a high point for beer, but once we had acclimatized in the Himalayas in Nepal, we enjoyed a Gorkha or Everest most evenings after a day on the Khumbu trails. And a cold and rainy Mount Fitz Roy climb in Argentina was blissfully followed by two delicious home-brewed dark and blonde beers at cozy La Cervecería in the tiny town of El Chaltén.

Even a casual sightseeing day is enhanced by a good beer during or after. The light and dark Sarajevska brews in Bosnia & Herzegovina were both excellent at the end of a travel day, and in Düsseldorf, Germany, we drank our way through a day-long layover at the Braueries Uerige and Zum Schlüssel, both famous for their altbiers.

In Iceland, we happily whiled away several afternoons in Reykjavik with some Brios, Gulls, and Egils, and we tamed our post-trek PTSD after a particularly daunting mountain hike with a good Borg Úlfur draft.

And then there’s Ireland, oh Ireland! A real Guinness Draught the minute we arrived in Dublin at 10:30 am and a weekend full of Murphy’s Irish Stout, Harp Lager, and so many more rich and creamy Irish ales. A “beer from the roof of the world,” a Lhasa, perked up a lunch at 11,000+ feet in Tibet, an Ožujsko welcomed us to Dubrovnik, Croatia, and we lingered over a luscious Laško in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

 

Another dark beauty, a Książęce, bid us farewell on our last night in Krakow, Poland … and on that note, I’m off to the fridge! Cheers!

Friday Photos: Doors

Tags

Argentina, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Cappadocia, Chile, China, Forbidden City, Goreme, La Boca, Lhasa, Norbulingka, Paine Circuit, Palermo Soho, Robben Island, South Africa, Tibet, Turkey

Going with a door theme today …

Forbidden City, Beijing, China

La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Cell door, Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa

Norbulingka Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Hiking the Paine Circuit, Chile

Cave hotel, Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey

A Love Affair with Lhasa

Tags

Barkhor, Dalai Lama, Jokhang, Lhasa, Norbulingka, Potala Palace, Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism

Back to the archives …
Between trips, I like to go back to my travel journals and find some old gems, and Tibet is always a treasure trove of stories. I’ve been to Lhasa twice now, a fact that continues to thrill and astound me. I had wanted to go to Lhasa for so many years, and when I finally went, it was far better than I could have ever imagined. Lhasa is a very, very special place; these are some of my favorite recollections from both trips.

First of all, Lhasa is brilliant! There is color everywhere in this city at the top of the world – luminous yellow sun, cobalt skies, brightly painted wood balconies, windows, doors, and signs. Even the clothing is multi-hued. Lhasa is one of the most visibly vibrant places I’ve ever seen, yet its pulse is a distinctly mellow one infused with a palpable Tibetan Buddhist spirit.

Mornings here are glorious – with crisp blue skies, a nip of cold in the air, and undiluted sunshine – and there is no better place to spend one than the Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama’s summer palace. The grounds are gorgeous, with miles of walking paths, ponds and small lakes, trees just beginning to turn autumn gold, and flowers everywhere. Vermilion-and-saffron-clad monks swish their brooms over the paths and chant in the nooks of buildings and courtyards.

Just being in the rooms where the Dalai Lamas spent their summers is awe-inspiring. Staring at the mundane, dingy old bathrooms, and seeing a clock forever stuck at 9 p.m. (the exact time when the current Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959), one feels an overwhelming sense of both their presence and a lingering sadness. There is only one public photo of the Dalai Lama in all of Lhasa, and it is here in one of the last rooms, where a Buddha of Compassion statue looks sadly at visitors, all of whom can be in this place of the Dalai Lama’s happy childhood summers, while he himself cannot be and might not ever be able to be again.

Barkhor Square is the heart of Lhasa. Here, every sense is flooded. Smoke pours from giant urns in front of the Jokhang Temple, monks and Tibetans of all ages prostrate themselves before the temple, and stall after stall of vendors with their brightly-colored wares surround us. The mantras of the prostrating pilgrims mix with the calls of “Hey, lady, cheap!” from the stalls. The stupas, meditation and chanting rooms inside the temple are all breathtaking, but in many ways, the highlight of the Jokhang is the rooftop with its views of Barkhor Square, the Potala Palace, and the mountains surrounding all of Lhasa. The view from up here is astounding and both times, I have lingered there for a long time, soaking up the sun, the smell of incense, and a feeling of peace and solitude.

I also love doing the kora (circumambulation) around the temple and wandering in the back alleys behind Barkhor Square, where I find small local shops and dozens of kids eager to kick a ball with me. In the two times I’ve been to Lhasa, I have probably done the kora 50 times, joining the throngs of pilgrims walking clockwise around the temple, stopping in at a plethora of shops or, eventually, just walking, mesmerized by the crowd and the spinning of the prayer wheels in their hands.

One of my favorite memories of the kora was an encounter with an older, quite talkative Tibetan lady who was showing me a set of prayer beads. She enthusiastically used both a knife and a lighter – hacking at the beads and trying to light them on fire – to show us the stones were “oldie, oldie, not Chinese-y!” She was quite a character and even surreptitiously showed us a locket around her neck that held two photos – one of the Dalai Lama and one of the 10th Panchen Lama. She was very brave and trusting to show this to us right there in the square because having a picture of the Dalai Lama is absolutely forbidden and potentially damaging to her entire family. She asked my daughter, “no money, baby?” and held out a bracelet she wanted to give her for free. She was a very special lady and we are happy to have her beads in our house and on our wrists as a memory of how strongly the Tibetans love the Dalai Lama and how much pride they take in being Tibetan.

Of course, the pièce de resistance in Lhasa is the imposing Potala Palace. Words cannot do justice to this massive, commanding structure. We climbed the palace ramps and stairs at 12,000 feet to visit many of the government and religious rooms (there are 1000 of them in all), including the Dalai Lama’s reception room, his private study and bedroom, and the thrones and other private rooms of many former Dalai Lamas. Some of the stupas have gold ornamentation weighing hundreds of tons; it’s fortunate the palace’s foundation is an entire mountainside. The Tibetans from the countryside who have made the journey to this most holy city of Lhasa are humbling to see – old, stooped women, young children, and others bowing low, praying, chanting, and touching their foreheads to the images and shrines.

We left the Potala moved and astounded; it exceeded my astronomically high expectations by a great margin, as did Lhasa overall. Although it takes time, money, and quite a bit of hassle to get to this mysterious “place of the gods,” my fondest hope is to return there yet again someday.

Not for the Squeamish

Tags

Everest North Base Camp, Tibet, toilets, travel

We all discover when we travel that there is some luxury or convenience that we really miss. For some, it is gourmet food, fine wine, and upscale shopping; for others, it is simply a comfortable bed and a hot shower. In Tibet, we realized it was even more basic: the availability of toilets and any form of paper product.

(CLICK ON PHOTOS if you want to see them full-size)

Other than the mother of all mountains herself and the wonderful coziness of our tent in the whipping Himalayan winds, the only other big stories from Mount Everest’s north base camp revolved around basic human needs. Starting with the less graphic, I would like to expound for a moment on the extreme preciousness of all forms of paper on this trip! Toilet paper and Kleenex were totally unavailable outside of major cities and even sometimes in them; throughout the trip, we found ourselves scavenging for napkins, hoarding toilet paper from hotels, rationing our limited supply of soft, luxurious Kleenex, and laughing at the ridiculousness of our paper product obsession.

One night at base camp, we found we had used up the last bits of toilet paper I had wound up from our hotel roll in Shigatse a day earlier, and I now wanted nothing more than to blow my itchy, runny nose and have some toilet paper to use in the outhouse. I foraged in my backpack and purse, finding any little scrap to use, even going so far as to re-use a scrunched-up ball of Kleenex from my bag when I went to the “toilet” facility (more on that later). At one point, we saw our tent owner, Lobsang, pull some tissue out of his shelf area for his stove fire and we hungrily watched where he put the roll in case we could steal some later. Alas, the opportunity never arose, but I did suddenly remember an American Airlines kit with a small tissue pack we had gotten on the plane … never have I been so excited to find a paper product! We parceled out that Kleenex over the next few days, allowing ourselves mere scraps for each necessary usage.

Now, speaking of that toilet facility … well, nothing in our many world travels could compare to this (literal) sh–hole. The shanty had two holes in the floor, with about a 10-foot drop to the ground below. Of course, there was no side-to-side privacy between the two holes; one had to go right next to someone else. (Squeamish readers may want to skip the next few sentences … ) In these 10-foot-deep holes, the waste (human and paper) had gotten piled up so high that a small mountain of disgustingness had risen ABOVE the level of the hole in the floor! Avoiding the conical heap of waste was no easy feat, but I’ll leave the details out of this story for fear of losing my audience! I do have to add that on our last morning at Base Camp, my daughter and I went to this horrid building together and were waiting in line while two Chinese ladies used it. Suddenly a young Tibetan girl ran up, pounded on the door, began untying a rope belt around her rough wool pants, audibly passed wind while hopping up and down, then flew into the building once the first lady had merely cracked open the door. Needless to say, we were none too pleased to have to follow this gal into the outhouse. But we did have paper!

Mountain Mama

Tags

avalanche, Himalayas, Mount Everest, mountains, Nepal, Sherpas

I wrote this little meditation on mountains a few days ago, and then a terrible avalanche made yesterday the deadliest day ever on Mount Everest …

(CLICK ON PHOTOS if you want to see them full-size)

Mountains move me. They speak to me, embrace me, and have a hold on me that won’t let go. Sometimes I fear their rocky faces, and I frequently curse my wheezing breath as I climb them. The great ones are far away, expensive and time-consuming to reach. I will never achieve the summits of the “eight-thousanders,” or even much lesser peaks, and yet they call me to come close, to play along their flanks, to lean into their sides for a few weeks at a time. A few let me reach their crests, and my exhilaration knows no bounds.

For many years, I loved the ocean and thought there was nowhere I’d rather be than by the shores of a crashing sea. But the mountains were a part of me from the beginning and as time went on, their clutch tightened. I grew up in the Appalachians and took for granted a Sunday hike up through a pine grove to a stony knob overlooking the western Pennsylvania countryside. I spent early summers in the Blue Ridge mountains, and later came to know and love the Colorado Rockies, but it was not until I started hiking around the world that I really grasped the grip that high altitude had on me.

My memories are filled with mountain scenes. A cup of tea by a frosted window in Namche Bazaar, Nepal. A soft call of “jambo jambo” to rouse me from my tent in the Great Rift Valley of Tanzania. The last of the evening sun on the cuernos in Paine Grande National Park in Chile. A tinkling of cowbells in a wildflowery meadow in the Alps. The shiny, worn, ancient stone paths of the Inca Trail in the Peruvian Andes. And the absolute awe of being face-to-face with the most famous face of all, the North Face of Mount Everest on a cold June evening.

Long story short: As John Muir said, “the mountains are calling and I must go.”

… Today, I’m feeling almost a little guilty about my mountain obsession in light of the number of Sherpas killed yesterday on Everest. For me and many first-world adventurers, mountains seem like mere playgrounds when we think about the fact that they serve not only as home but as livelihood to those who are doing our grunt work on their slopes. Rest in peace, Sherpa heroes.

Please read this: http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/climbing/mountaineering/The-Value-of-A-Sherpa-Life.html

A Sense of the World

Tags

Ama Dablam, Himalayas, Kathmandu, Nepal

I breathe in the Nepalese Himalaya, from the earthly to the sublime. In Kathmandu, I snort, trying to rid my nostrils of the olfactory assault on the streets. Rotting garbage, small fires, burning rubber, dogs, sweat, incense, hot, sticky blood that pools in small rivers on this special slaughter day of Dashain. In Thamel, reefer wafts and mixes with saffron and cumin and garam masala and dirty dreadlocks. Asan Tole market cows bump my legs and leave their sweet hay-dung smell, an instant memory of fresh mown fields and summer days.

A stomach-lurching flight later, I inhale the freshest air I’ve ever breathed. The crisp blue air smells of ancient glaciers and fallen snow not yet touched by living feet or polluted clouds. There are hints of fresh earth and grass and water, mountain flowers and rhododendron leaves, and the dusty oxygenated smell that rises off a sidewalk after a long-awaited spring shower.

Eyes shut as I pull the alpine freshness into my lungs, my ears engage. Yak bells jingle and dzo bells jangle, prayer wheels chime and temple horns bleat. Monks chant and nuns murmur, brooms whisk and fires crackle. The Dudh Kosi swishes and tumbles, gathers strength and roars over the river rocks. Hanging bridges creak on their cables, and feet – both human and beast – clump and clop across from bank to bank.

Senses blur further on the trail. I feel the steep climb in my calves; they shriek with tension that is soon relieved by the soft squish of pine needles on loose earth. At higher elevations I curse my ragged breath rasping through my airways; my lungs burn and my throat tightens and my head throbs. And then I am fairly skipping downhill, fresh-headed and light on my feet, bouncing and floating from boulder to boulder, root to root, humming a song, thinking of childhood happiness in the woods.

My eyes focus sharply when I’m not fighting to climb and breathe. A close examination of a tiny red spindly flower growing right out of a rock, an open-mouthed awe at the layering of myriad mountains in the distance – from the tiny to the vast, my vision is rewarded over and over again. We pass through vibrant Sherpa villages whose colors are an illumination of the Buddhist soul. Grounded by black, richened by red, blue, purple and green, heightened and lightened by sunny yellow and crisp white, their houses and temples insist that man lives here in the farthest reaches of the earth.

As the days progress, brown and green trails lead to gray rocks and gravel, barren escarpments and pale lichens. As we climb ever higher, color weakens; the sky fades from cerulean to lightest blue. The tundra changes to a more frozen, snow-covered zone. In the calm and almost featureless landscape at our feet, the peaks grow ever more impressive. They knife toward the sky, their serrated ridges jagged against the heavens. They are massive from this close – huge blocks of granite and limestone hulking into the atmosphere. The thinness of the air clears the mind of all but this sight. There is nothing to smell at this altitude, and any noises seem dampened and muffled inside my headband and hat and fuzzy head. I still feel an exertion, but I am on autopilot now. I plant one foot in front of the other and just see. I watch the narrow path, the boots of the hiker in front of me, the tiny holes made by his poles, the slight kick of wispy dust or dandelion snow. When I can, I raise my gaze to the giants and simultaneously shrink from their stony faces and lean into their mother-earth embraces.

At base camp near the top of the world, we collapse and succumb to a final sensation. Our sherpas pour sweet hot chocolate from steaming thermoses into cups we clasp in clumsy, gloved hands. We fall silent as our salivary glands engage and the rich, sweet aroma fills our noses. The wind swirls, a rock ledge digs into my back, the multi-colored tents at base camp glow in the late afternoon sun. My senses are filled …life is good.

Friday Photos: Queens of their Domains

Tags

Nepal, Peru, Tanzania, Tibet, Travel Himalayas

I have so many photos to share, and I can’t imagine I will write a post about each and every one of them.  I thought I’d pick a few favorites each Friday and post them with simple captions only.

Ama Dablam, from Everest Base Camp trail, Nepal

Serengeti, Tanzania

Peruvian woman, Chinchero, Peru

A Wild Ride on the Roof of the World

Tags

base camp, driving, Everest, Friendship Highway, Lhasa, Tibet

Driving in countries around the world is always an adventure. From the careening traffic on the autobahn and the peripherique, to the stop-and-go progress on a Scottish Highlands road full of sheep, to the heart-attack cliffs with no guardrails in mountains the world over, there is always a story about our international brothers’ driving habits. Penjo, our driver on the Friendship Highway – the route across the Tibetan Plateau (the “Roof of the World”) from Tibet to Nepal – was no exception.

We left Lhasa early one morning for a cross-country adventure in a 4WD Mitsubishi Pajero SUV. A few hours out of Lhasa, we experienced the first of many “pee breaks” which were really designed for our guide, Pasang, and our driver, Penjo, to take a smoking break. Timed passage on the road also meant that if we were going to arrive at a checkpoint too early, we had to either slow down or stop and wait until the time was OK. (This happened at every checkpoint since the law, meant to slow drivers down, really seemed to signify “drive as fast as humanly possible and then stop and wait until enough time has passed.”) Even using this finely-tuned strategy, Penjo managed to get a speeding ticket as we approached Shigatse, a hellhole we discovered we should have been in no hurry to reach anyway.

Getting to dinner in Shigatse was a barrel race as we were stymied by street after street under construction. We drove in clover-leafs through an apocalyptic landscape, a bombed-out scene of heavy construction equipment and vehicle-swallowing holes in the powdery streets. Penjo showed some serious moxie by driving on sidewalks, down one-way streets, in front of bulldozers, and through numerous barricades. Shigatse is a dusty town by nature, and all this earth-moving and car maneuvering left a deep coat of grime on the Pajero and a sneeze-inducing mass of dust in our nostrils.

The next day, after lunch in Tingri, we turned off onto a dirt road for the next three hours. This was a true washboard road, with constant ridges and bumps, along with switchbacks, steep climbs and descents, and barely two lanes across. Penjo did not disappoint us, spending large periods of time on the oncoming traffic side of the road and squealing to dustcloud-raising stops in the loose gravel, precipitously close to various drop-offs as he attempted to pass large trucks, SUVs and, really, any moving vehicle, beast, or human on the road. Penjo finally slowed down and the air finally cleared as we crossed our third and final high pass for the day at 17,500 feet, with a view of the entire Tibetan Himalaya range, including Makalo, Lhotse, Everest, and Cho Oyu.

On our way back to Lhasa, we took a different route through a gorge along the Brahmaputra River. Penjo was at his finest today, offroading anytime the main road was closed. In Tibet, barricades indicating road closures are apparently simply something to drive around. This road was clearly closed, but Penjo decided we would take it anyway, which meant that at certain points we had to totally drive off the highway and go through pastures, fields, and people’s property. Many others had the same idea, including giant 18-wheelers! Penjo passed semis in a blur of dirt, drove through sagebrush, which we dragged along behind us until it shook loose, and swerved even more than usual. Penjo’s driving was truly a thing to behold, with brake slamming, high speeds then incredibly slow ones, random veering, and aggressive crowding of other vehicles. Somehow we never worried too much; we decided people here drive like maniacs and have constant near accidents but never any actual accidents. At one point, Penjo almost nailed a dzo, but neither he nor the female owner of the dzo seemed the least bit perturbed as he screeched to a halt mere inches from the animal in the middle of the road.

Penjo was a soft-spoken (Tibetan language only) man who was quite mild-mannered out of the vehicle. He had a sweet, shy smile and since we are alive to tell the tale, we have only the fondest memories of him!