Audrey's Blog

Uruguay At Last!

2009-02-03T18:54:00.006+05:30

I don’t cry for Argentina
with its Torres de Paines,
its profitable Mendoza vineyards,
its Ushuaia at the end of the world launching ships to Antarctica
its thoroughbred supremacy at the race track;
its polo superstars - handsome men, model prospects,
its carpincho (pig) fashions and art galleries,
its Sunday flea markets
its great trout fishing in Bariloche
its balsa animal masks tossed after one use in pagan ceremony
its Evitas continuing to splash political pages
its Suzannas molding bodies into endless youth under unnatural long blonde (dyed) hair, straight, please, no curls.
Give me, let me cry for, Uruguay any day
the streets of Salto pebbled with precious rocks;
Artigas amethyst set in underground coves transform into exotic balls of stone in the hand of my friend Maria Sara;
Rock free beaches on which you can walk forever border the entire city of Montevideo where the Rio Plata enters into the Atlantic..
Amazing dog walkers of Pocitos corral a group of up to 20 dogs on a single strong leash.
Montevideo’s El Puerto barbecue pits and bars where media media is a must-try entry into a saborous world houses also the best apple pancake in the world is tossed in an old iron skillet.
Mercedes tannat wine marches quickly into vineyard fame;
Pasayandu cattle and sheep is exported around the world;
Sturgeon bred for caviar is boxed in its lakes and rivers;
A large port stacked with containers being moved like giant legos by enormous metal monsters greets enormous cruise ships.
Uruguay-born thoroughbreds race a Triple Crown series and 6 de Enero marks the best as the year opens up for a run. Races in Marones are every Saturday and Sunday.
It’s the first country in Latin America to import the antique horse breed - Akah-teke - for endurance racing and dressage thanks to my friend Willie.
Here birth champions of bicycle races, swimmers, tennis professionals, soccer maestros, and poets. Memphis gets Steven Segal. Uruguay gets Robert Duvall.
Architects exploit summer wealth sneaking across borders for a respite from Argentine and Brazilian politics and weather. And instant gardens appear in Punta del Este homes from the tools of my friend Gabriela Verdier who knows how to turn a rose. There are more than 45 garden clubs in Uruguay.
The international jet set hogs waves in Punta each summer, and now the pure beaches of Rocha about to be exploited.
Minas and Mercedes are famous for their meringue cakes and confiterias
and there is nothing like home made fresh semi-hard cheese and dulce y leche that most farms produce and you can eat on the spot when you visit. Lapateria outside Punta produces the best dulce y leche and summer nights of jazz and blues. It’s owned by a Princess.
Give me media lunas for breakfast (a solid croissant that doesn’t crumble with just the right amount of cheese, ham and butter) and coffee, well Uruguayan coffee whether it is glaciada or not, is hard to beat - as are the pastries and cakes of Oro del Rhin and Lion de Or.
And tea sandwiches - I’m nuts for Tienda Inglesa’s tri-color (a layer of pimiento cheese, a layer of greens mixed with mayo, a layer of pureed chicken mixed with cream cheese and all on fresh thin bread. Olympicas too make me feel healthy (eggs, tomato, lettuce, cucumber, tuna) and at the Belmont House hotel (the best in South America for me) try the Omelette Surprise (a scoop of chocolate ice cream completely covered with toasted meringue.)
Most people sing praises of the naturally fed beef. It’s a meat nation. Asados fill the bellies of the nation added to a "traigo" of Whiskey or a sip of mate.
Uruguay produced Carlos Gadel, the most famous of tango singers, and a reporter who was the face of CNN Espanol from earliest times. It produced Torres Garcia, Figari and Ignacio Iturria - all big time artist who have influenced generations in all parts of the world. There is a jazz group called Memphis and once the Harlem Gospel Choir preformed here and afterwards partied and sang in my home on the Rambla. Madonna chose the more populus Maradona’s homeland for her concerts last fall (Argentina.)
Morning beach walks are often jolted by macumbra y umbama offerings to the sea, curses, blessings, red or sky blue, seemingly placed on the sand by ghosts.
Carnival in Uruguay has started and lasts the month of February - the parades are called "llamadas" and mimic anything Rio has to offer without such extravagant outlays of money. A hip sambaing dance is a hip sambaing dance no matter what place you are in. It’s awesome.
The murgas preform in Teatro de Verano singing original acapella political scripts, competitive propaganda for monetary prizes.
Soccer lasts all year and if Penarol (yellow and black) doesn’t reinvent itself it’ll be on the same road as the Memphis Grizzlies. Soccer’s the exit mechanism for so many young players and Uruguay products have incorporated in the best teams of Europe. Tennis has a big spread in Montevideo and sends players to the international circuit.
And theater thrives here too. My Teatro Experimental Audrey Taylor continues in the prisons of Uruguay, usually attempting plays by Uruguayan playwrites.
Uruguay (population about 3 million) has no industry but milks the tourists in Punta and in Colonia, the most preserved antiquated pueblo in Uruguay that rests along the Rio Plata. The hot springs of Salto run through everybody’s pipes and a bathe in that water is supposed to heal sore muscles while you drink fresh squeezed Salto orange juice.
There is a delicacy in Uruguay called respect. Friend or enemy, known or unknown, when a person greets you, he/she really greets you and asks about your family, friends, and a number of graces before getting down to the question or the business at hand. There is gracefulness here and yet there is a growing violence among the youngsters who have addicted themselves to a deadly drug called pasto baso made from the residue of cocaine. It eats a lung in three months and wastes the person forever.
I tried to escape the pull of Uruguay, having lived here 18 years married to an Uruguayan and having anchored my soul in ministry on the streets, in hospitals and in prisons of Uruguay in the nineties and up til 2002. I left abruptly and with pain in my heart. It hasn’t changed much, only there is more violence coming out of the young people, as in Memphis. Guns are in the fingers of young "wachos". Drug markets are brutal. But the people and the place grab your shoulders and heart once you give them a chance. One cheek kissing is still the greeting. And you can always come back having not missed much in the interim but café cortado y sandwich caliente and that crunchy pancake.

Nashville Tennessean

2008-07-27T02:44:00.003+05:30

Harding first graders make prayer flags for Mount Everest base camp

Student's grandmother hangs flags that spread messages of love, peace, kindness

Seven-year-old Megan Murphy described her creation quite simply.

"Well, it had a giraffe and an ocean and some grass. It was pretty. It was a blue flag. It had some peace signs and hearts," she said. "And that's about it."

But the flag she designed and made in her first-grade Harding Academy class last spring must be pretty special, as it, along with her classmates' creations, is hanging at 17,040 feet in a base camp of Mount Everest.

Megan's grandmother, Audrey Gonzalez, hung the international prayer flags during her two-month pilgrimage to Nepal and Tibet. Gonzalez was 68 years old and had just undergone a breast cancer operation at the time.

Wyoming Memories

2008-07-09T20:10:00.005+05:30

In Jackson Hole, this early July, the hills are alive with the silence of snow. Wild flowers, goats beards and foxtail weeds rage in a rant across the sage-choked plains and the moose and elk are scarce, having suffered from too deep snow for too long a time. Winter is just creeping away. Sleeping Indian still has specks of white on the nose. And yet, some adventuresome folk with a climbing foot are head for the top of still icy Grand Teton with cleats on their souls. (Not me.)

At my friend Louise’s home in a rich green valley where geese and elk pass through to loll in the meadows tall with grass and the pond’s filled with algae, ducks and geese, pink reigns: rich smelling pink lilac dripping from shrubs, pink petunias overflowing from giant ceramic pots, shocking pink peonies opening under homemade birdhouses; pink quilts and pillows on company beds, and pink and green sofas inviting a guest to stretch out on the porch and watch the sun paint the sky over Glory mountain. At nigh the elk squeal like babies and wolves howl followed by a bark. But as yet, this trip, I have not seen a wild beast!

It seems each year, Jackson knits a new sweater - now the political issue is about building two or three story buildings around the town square (where famous arches of stacked elk horns are beginning to wilt and need repair) to make room for more condos and apartments, particularly for town workers who cannot afford the multi-million dollars estates that Jackson thrives on. (Workers must pass over a treacherous pass to Idaho to find reasonable rentals.) Sadly, construction is moving in - although there is a building moratorium - animals are moving out - there’s no place to lay their head and motor machines turn them into road-kill. Here is one area in the USA which has not hit foreclosure crisis ( nor has the Vail and Aspen and KeyStone areas of Colorado). Prices are so high they burn the eye because they seem ridiculous to pay that much for a large log cabin with view to spend a couple months a year inhabiting. But it’s fact. And the town wants more accessibility on its two main drags crammed with cars and trucks passing through at a snail’s pace.

I lived here two years - found a sliver of my soul, but not enough to nourish it for life. There were no poor people,(only a few homeless cowboys on motorcycles); the Indian reservations which I had hoped might be a valuable ministry zone were too far for a single woman to commute to in winter, and the state prisons were even further away, although there were two programs that I would have cheered to be able to work in - one had prisoners weaving belts out of horse hair, and the other was pairing the most violent criminals with the wildest range horses - each to tame the other. (There are less residents in this entire state than there are in Shelby County, but probably more horses and cows). Sadly, the local clergy didn’t "trust" deacons, demanded I start from scratch, ignoring I had spent ten years of tough ministry in Uruguay, and were not actually involved with the Indians and prisoners. I was insulted, I admit, and backed off from involving with that kind of mind set.

After much agony - and having tackled the Grand and some neighboring mountains with Jim (my Everest guide) and receiving a D minus at climbing school five years ago (although I was growing addicted to rock climbing gyms) I, dragging my tail, returned to Memphis four years ago to see if I could survive where my roots dug deep. It was a devastating time for me. Jackson had not been a reenforcing place to live alone all year around. I did write a novel (or complete it) here, learned about E-Bay, realized that snow on the deck was yellow for a reason, and experimented with New Age territories I didn’t need to include in my soul - although walking through them I picked up pointers on how to have a surer faith. For a moment, I stepped shoulder deep into world astrology through a fascinating Yoga teacher who had me standing on my head (wow! - I didn’t even do that as a child); learned about past lives - I was a Venetian Renaissance artist’s muse and later a rebellious slave saving others on the underground escape route, -questioned if colored stones on my chakra spots really could heal my tears (so I collected rocks, and washed them when the moon was full to keep them vibrant); found the most extraordinary Thai masseuse I’ve ever been twisted and stretched by in my life; trudged through six feet of snow for a Native American Indian "sweat" - where hot stones fired to red hot were placed in a tent - wearing a bathing suit you sit cross legged (ouch) on the ground in a circle - to make you sweat out all your pain and sorrows - while praying to the Great Creator for better times and healing for yourself and others; and I tested every kind of healing touch, hovering hands for energy production, rolfing dig and oil infusion offered in this valley, including frequent Tarot card readings because I was intrigued by the artwork.

Best was getting fit: working out almost every day in a gym with personal trainers, who proverbially pushed me up boulders and paths toward the Grand Teton peak, (Augie and Gary), and I was photographed as an example of aged grit training in a gym for the weekly paper encouraging folks to get fit for summer. I had an encounter at the top of Glory mountain with an eagle; ran off a mountain side to catch the wind and soar like an eagle paragliding; sifted up a few thousand feet in a colorful hot air balloon right in front of the Grand, got drenched by the cold sprays of Snake River rapids taking my grandson on a white water rafting excursion; froze in a sunny ten-below zero day as my family visiting for the holidays tried dog sledding that led us to a hot springs pool. No I did not learn to ski. I tried cross-country but my feet went numb and I hated that. I became a regular at Pearl Street Bagels (their Wild Tribe shake is addictive), at Nikai sushi restaurant, at Amagani’s spa (seaweed scrub in a steam I recommend), and my home was featured in two fancy Western magazines. I loved having wooden decks I could exit to from every room in the house and Sunday biscuits in teepees at Dornans down in Moose (yes, that’s the town’s name.)at the beginnings of the Teton National Park. When snow covered the Direct TV dish on my deck rail, I sloshed out on the deck with my broom and brushed it off to regenerate reception. It was also in lonely Jackson that I found my guard dog Brandy - a giant size mixed yellow lab and Husky - rescuing him from the local pound.( Pounds of dog from the pound.) He never budged when the earthquakes passed through making my log house shiver like a breath too deep nor had a barking fit when we encountered moose on our morning hike, which I did in crampons when there was snow and ice and felt accomplished.

Yes, 2004 was a wretched time for me as I pulled away from twenty years of happiness and success in Uruguay and tried to return to this country and pick up a feisty, relevant ministry and family relations, which I have done mas o menos in Memphis, but still I’m not where I need to be. I’ve made many mistakes. Jackson was a transition point, I guess, and so I can come back and salute it now and then for opening up thought pores and hidden spiritual strength. At least in my small garden on Bar X Road, I was able to grow delphiniums in every shade from pale blue to dark purple as well as lupines (those wonderful mountain flowers) the colors of raspberry and blueberry sherbet. With June arrived shoulders of daffodils to greet me each morning with joyful faces. Yes, the moose dropped in now and then for a chew on my willow trees, elk crossed the short fence in the night leaving footprints to wonder by, coyotes sang me to sleep when stars and the moon were as bright as day, and once a wild cat humped up in a golden "n" when I made the daily trek up the butte behind my house to build leg muscles and to salute the Grand Teton resting across the way on the multi- million dollar side of the valley.

Photos: The Grand Tetons; Cowboy Bar, motorcycles, elk horn arches; Lilac shrubs in the valley; pink peony in Louise's garden; Cowboy boots hang with toes up; goat's beard among the fox tail weeds; colorful lupines.

Colorado High

2008-07-05T20:37:00.005+05:30

I’d do it again, zip-lining. It seems to be the newest craze. Take a long steel line, secure it between two points high over a canyon through which rapids rage. Hook up a connector on the wire and attach one human in harness and helmet securely to it. Then let her rip and gravity takes you for a ride. We did it six times, six levels of fear, south of Vail at Four Eagles Ranch. The first one, more a trainer, took my breath away as I tried to get the hang of controlling whether I go backwards or frontwards legs kicking the air. Sometimes the start meant running down hill, your toes hardly touching the ground, very similar to when I paraglided, and other times it was a jump off a wooden platform. The final run was 1000 meters not across a canyon but down it at breakneck speed, a rock in hand to try to hit a rusty barrel 30 feet below as I passed over, missed, and coming in with a stop chord to slow me down. Did I see the mule deer or the wrecked van? No. But I must say it was a blast, safe, and now I’m ready to seek out more. I’m told South America has the longest one.
We spent Fourth of July in Keystone, Col. watching Serena, Venus, Nadal, Federer on television, riding ski lifts up 11600 feet (and hiking up more height) and trying to deal with altitude adaptation; riding dude horses up a trail, and most excitingly, a white water raft trip down Clear Creek, which was a rough tumble through incessant waves, over rocks, and in a questionable yellow raft built for six. Wearing wet suits and wet shoes, we secured ourselves by sliding one foot in a covered slot and the other under the roll seat in front. For the six mile ride there was hardly a lull in "thrill" and paddling became the way Kelly, our sailor, kept us occupied, "two front," "one front," "now back" so that we would turn the raft wherever it needed to go to get over obstacles. We frequently had to duck under giant freeway overpasses built low and taking the mystery out of the scenery. But I could do this all day. The water was 45 degrees but a refreshing stomp when getting out of the yellow dinghy at the end.
At the huge tourist complex on Keystone ranch, which goes for miles and miles, loaded with condos and rooms filled in winter and spring with skiers since ski-lifts abound practically from room doors, blocks of lodges have names like River Run, Argentina, Arapahoe, Hidden River and they stretch out for miles along a feisty river called the Snake, although it’s no kin to Jackson Hole’s Snake River. I guess every mountain state has a snake to pour off melting snow. On the Fourth, decorations in red white and blue were given out to little children who had bicycles and plastic vehicles of various kiddie types, and then there was a parade. Wear your red star sunglasses, please, and the American flag wrist bands. We also went to the Activity Center and played putt-putt golf, kid’s bungie jumping, paddle boats, kayaks and stopped by the Colorado Chocolate Factory where a single dip of ice cream in a cup was just about four dollars. Daily I took Pilates classes and worked out on a Gyrotonic machine which rocked my muscles.
My family loved it here. I kept getting flashbacks visions of Annapurna and Everest, which are hard to forget. Next I’m off to Jackson Hole to renew my spirit, since there is where the mountain bug got into me, and to see old friends who helped me stay in shape mentally and physically when I lived there two years (2002-04) within view of the Grand Tetons and their side-kicks like Old Glory, my first major climb. I will also reunite with Jim and Sue who kept me kicking through the East Asia trip, which still swirls in my mind as I try to figure out what it meant to my soul. As in all travel, there is so much I’d like to replay.

Photos: Hanging on the Vail Zipline; going western; we are high; snow in shorts before the 10 peaks.

And The Beat Goes On. . .

2008-07-01T04:21:00.004+05:30

The hardest part about breaking the travel routine is returning to a city in such a tragic swamp it cannot lift its mudboots out of the slop. I hate to admit I live in a town of political virus and corruption, where each day someone is shot or wiped out by gang affiliates and each day the "city fathers" broadcast their salvation ideas in the media (God told me to.....), but shirk their responsibilities and collect their pay checks, evermore increasing.
Not only has the city government decided to slice in half the funds for city schools - which the state of Tennessee leaped upon and said, if you do that, then we won’t send the millions of dollars we fund for the city’s public schools either. But above that the Department of Children’s Service has cut all funding for the two prisons for juvenile delinquents that were filled to the brim in Memphis. Both were successful and useful enterprises. Thus now serious delinquents have to go to violent 201 Poplar, the disgraced city jail with a juvenile tank, or to Nashville’s state prisons for imprisonment, separating these children completely from their families. I found out the state girl’s prison offers only 34 beds - we had 24 occupied beds at our Memphis facility where I volunteered - remember the girls who made Christian prayer flags which I hung in the base camp zone of Mt. Everest? That’s them. Plus DCS is rapidly returning foster kids to trepedous situations by removing them from their foster homes (where they pay foster parents a monthly sum per kid) and tossing them back to incompetent or problem parents, which is why they were removed in the first place. As if that was not enough, our city mayor claims he is the victim and although he had promised to resign in July, assured us he could be reelected for a sixth term if it was on his mind to do so.
And the kids? Does anyone care about the kids? If things keep moving like this, teens won’t have a place to go to school nor a discipline facility when they break the law. Parents might even have to take responsibility for their children and help with their homework.
Maybe I should return to a simpler life where God surrounds you with hope and goodness and people care about and serve each other without labels or threats of racist mind-sets. I’m spoiled by the cultures I learned to respect in my foreign treks.
Meanwhile, I’ve taken a blog breather. I must shake off my political anger. My country is a mess. Gas is outrageous, tempers are high, everything is falling into an abyss that experts can no longer predict and the box is being tied shut with thick rope.
So cowardly as I must seem, although I had returned to a hefty exercise routine and volunteering at juvenile court, and had embraced my dearest friends, I flew away from the sweltering Memphis heat to mountainous Colorado with part of my family. We are hiking through sage and wildflowers - blue lupines, wild pink roses, wild columbines - a swell as sad pine forests deadened by an invasive beetle (they had this problem in Bhutan as well) and deep breathing cool cleaner air - although I must admit the mountains of Colorado have been scarred by construction, condos, and high living. The Snake River rushes in a hurry over our feet, and tourist crowd the streets of Brekenridge and I’m sure other hip towns like Aspen and Vail, to unload their hard earn vacation money in funky coffee shops, expensive restaurant (plan to pay one hundred dollars for four as a minimum for a sit down meal) and on lodgepole carved bears with smiles on their faces for you to put in front of your door. Real bears come down from the still present snow to raid garbage dumps, but it’s only hearsay. I haven’t seen one.
We are planning a horse trail ride (for which I have to buy a cowboy hat - again), a zip line ride, and a white water rafting ride interspersed with an occasional hike (alas, I forgot my poles.) and Pilates class. Oh, and one meal at The Dam Brewery in Dillon. (With a name like that, even when you don’t drink beer, it has drawing power. Breweries are major in these parts.) Snow plowed scenes are pretty, alright, but I have been to The Mountaintop (or close to it) and have the Himalayas and the Tetons in my soul. Everything else seems midget.
Just to note, there will be more blogs to come with overall re-thinking the incredible journeys I took between the end of May 07 and the first of June 08. Did I learn from these diverse adventures more about my soul, my struggles, and my fate? Does anyone care? Happy Independence Day.

Photos: The web woven gets tighter; a lot of praying going on; ooh mask found in a restroom in Colorado.

Following Faith: Part 2

2008-06-13T04:00:00.015+05:30

Outside the capital city of Thimpu, on a Bhutan mountainside, a project is underway to build the tallest sitting Buddha in the world. It will be painted gold. And yet, Buddha doesn’t ask for all of this. He is not a demanding god, but one who points the road down which Buddhist travel in order to reach purity, which is called enlightenment. To them, it goes beyond the physical concept of heaven and requires the cleansing within of all earthy desires and passions. Buddha proclaims "Don’t look at me but to the enlightened state." Although his image is everywhere in various forms, the legend is the first anthromorphic representation of him was drawn on canvas from rays of golden light emanating from his own body. Although there are various manifestations, there has never been a historically identifiable person. Buddha has not been conceived as a punisher, nor a law maker, but Buddha offers blessings for whomever or whatever enters in his temple (remember, sin shoes.) If you give a gift to a Lama, for instance, he immediately gives it to the Buddha image in his holy room. Buddha owns nothing, and gives away everything, as do his servants. He is a guide to freedom from cravings and desires, to acceptance of a being just being. It’s a difficult humbling in faith which rarely appeals to the Western materialistic society. Being around it in its purest form invited me to clean out my own soul and re-think what we have made of the greatest man ever to walk the earth, Jesus. Do we allow him to be the Light of the World? Even Buddha said, "Be a light unto yourself."
The idea of incarnations - so n so is the incarnation of a certain manifestation of Buddha or a previous Dalai Lama or Karmapa - chains Asian religious history. These incarnations are inheritances of lamas who lead the faith much as the Archbishop of Canterbury does Anglicans of the world, and the Pope does for Roman Catholics. They are all representatives of the bigger One God. Hindus, on the other hand, believe what you got is what you got and you can’t get much better or worse no matter what you do, although you should spend your life trying to do better and give to the poor, worship cows and snakes, and please don’t forget to take off your shoes at the Shiva temples. The Hindus worship all sorts of versions of Vishnu and other scarey mixtures of man and animal. And if they really want something, they tie red and gold strings around the holy Boda tree, which, incidentally, is where Buddha was supposed to have been born and snudge red and yellow powders on strolling cattle and monkeys. Markets are packed with now artificial powders, gold and red handkerchiefs for carrying offerings of rice or food, to the temples of their heros and leis of flowers made fresh each morning when the markets open. Non Hindus are not allowed to cross the threshold of sacred temples. Animals wait outside the gates to be the sacrificial "lambs" and of course dead Hindus are cremated on wood piles for all to see at crematoriums edging the muddy Ganges River. Mourners wear white for two weeks.
In India, it’s in the north where Buddhism is strongest, being on the border with Tibet, because there sits the Dalai Lama and his exiled Tibetan government as well as the young Karmapa representing another of the three Tantric sects. The third incarnated holy figure is the Panchen Lama who, once he was identified, was immediately imprisoned in China even though he was a small child at the time and no one has seen him since. The outcast Tibetans struggle to have back their respect and their territory in Tibet, to be able to return in safety to their historical base from which the Dalai Lama fled for his life during the Mao revolution in 1957 that destroyed so much of China..India gave him refuge in Dharmsala.
In Ladakh and in Dharmsala the presence of Buddhist monks from the youngest to the oldest charms daily life. They appear better off than, for instance, the young monks in Bangkok who early in the morning carry their metal bowls around the markets to be filled with food for the day. In Bhutan, especially, Buddhism thrives and monks integrate into the community. There is no obligation for a family to offer a son to be a monk, but the education at monasteries is often superior to public schools. Choosing to follow a monk’s path at an early age does not mean that life is over. Many young men change their mind when they end their teen years and it’s okay, in Bhutan. Monks cannot vote nor get involved with the operations of the state, nor can they express political opinion. But the monk who is the religious leader of all Bhutan has equal the amount of power as the divine King. Both are adored by the people because citizens are taken care of with such charisma. The 28 year old fifth King was preparing for his coronation, since his father the fourth King (this is how they are referred to) stepped down so his son could inherit the throne as the country evolved into a democratic parliamentary system. Bhutanese had never voted in history. (They evolved from being a warrior nation to being an absolute monarchy in 1907. Bhutan was never colonialized.) The chance to have a say in the running of their country was mesmerizing for voters. Now they worry about how to make democracy succeed. Faith and government may be separated but when the Queen wanted to honor her husband for amazing accomplishments, she built 108 large chortens at the top of a high pass which is also draped in thousands of prayer flags. It’s quite a site.
There is a positive spirit in Bhutan, a feeling that less than 700,000 people are happy and content. The king promotes what he calls Gross National Happiness. No more than 20,000 foreigners are allowed across Bhutan’s borders in a year. No cigarettes allowed, the sale of tobacco strictly prohibited, even though the fourth king loved Cuban cigars. In certain months, no one can buy anything that must be killed - pork, beef, yak, mutton - so it’s vegetarian time, but every dish is flavored with hot chillis. No outsider can buy land nor even start a business, although if there is a Bhutan partner in the business, that is a possibility. Even foreign artists are not allowed to perform in Bhutan, although fifty per cent of the people are under 25 years of age. Everyone adheres to the national dress code - men wearing knee length skirts, women long ones. The King lives in a modest wooden home in the hills of Thimbu, and he works in an elaborate palace called a Dzong to which various elegant temples are attached.
In Bangkok, religious architecture is extreme. I’ve never seen so many different styles of roof tops, mostly pointed spirals and peaks. Gold, silver, colored stone and glass, mosaics and glitter adorn every religious and palatial structure. The King and his Wife are honored and adored throughout the city on giant banners and billboards, on buildings and streets, spelled out in lights on boats traveling on the busy rivers, and in giant gold frames on divans of principle streets. On Mondays, citizens wear yellow shirts (usually with an embroidered picture of the King where a polo player might be) to honor the fact the King was born on a Monday. On Tuesday, the color is pink and on Thursday, in honor of the Queen’s birthday, it’s blue.
Also in Bangkok, Chinese Buddhist temples so ornate you don’t know what photo to take next add another decorative element to religion. There are huge chortens covered in mosaics and dog and monkey men. There are ornate temples housing the reclining gold Buddha (as long as City Hall) or the only standing Buddha in East Asia. There are Buddhas sitting on nagas or snakes, and Buddhas sitting on pillows. There is the elaborate emerald Buddha (really jade) whose seasonal gold clothing the King changes with certain ceremony.
What impressed me most was the presence of Spirit Houses in just about everybody’s yard, in entrances to restaurants, and even in the enormous gardens of the villa in which I stayed. Because the day I was there was a special day, a huge tray of homemade sweets, fruits, incense, candles, and jasmine, orchid and rose flowers was placed to appease evil spirits who hopefully roost in these spirit houses and stay out of residences of the faithful. I asked who eats the food. There was sort of a non-answer - so I mentioned birds? Maybe. Or did the evil spirits really reach out their doors and feast. Hmmm.

Photos: site for future tallest standing Buddha in the world; a Thangka of a Budda manifestation; prayer wheels at a Dzong; Non-Hindus not allowed to see the golden bull; holy cow; a Hindu holy man; Bhutan monks at the market; the queen's 108 stupas to honor her husband; Bhutan friend Sonam with sewing students in national dress; marketeers in national Bhutanese dress; honoring the Thai King; a spirit house; the villa spirit house with offerings; close-up of offerings - all sweets.

Assessing the Faith - Part I

2008-06-12T18:30:00.005+05:30

If there was a thread through two months of Asian pilgrimage, it was the foreign habit of religion. Did I want to pay tribute or to judge that my faith was better than the others? I discovered that we are all looking for the same things, worship one God, and that none of really know what is going to happen after death, but we have challenging theories. I was at the mercy of generous Buddhist most of my trip, and will ever be grateful. There were discouraging moments when I reached out for my faith, and usually found it in surprising places. Only in ex-British India did I even see a church, an Anglican church. At times I felt I was holding a candle in hurricane winds while being blistered by the sun. The Lord’s Prayer was surely my daily mantra. And I never doubted I was in the right place, in God’s place. So I took off my shoes, everywhere.

Unlike most Western faiths, displays of worship and prayer are not limited to a one day gathering on Sunday. It integrates every day, is common as boiling water for tea. It is like living beside Fatima or Lourdes full time. Everyone worships all the time in their gestures. Buddhist - and Hindus - rise in the morning with gifts in their hands - be it replenishing bowls of water, bowls of rice, fresh sculpted butter candles, wreaths and strings of marigolds, flowers, and offerings of every sort (including piles of candy bars, crackers, fresh made sweets and snacks). First thing to do is remember Buddha and his associates who can make or break a day. Truly, their highest power is God, but there is not the pandering, proselyting and preaching which can be so artificial or invasive in our lot trying to convince one to accept the Holy Spirit or to commit your life to Jesus - pass the offering plate - that goes on and on like a broken record player in America, especially across television screens. In Nepal, India, Bhutan, Old Tibet, you watch and admire how regular are actions of devotees of other faiths, whether it’s circling to the left the chortens and stupas or turning 108 metal prayer wheels installed in walls around important temples or putting red dot blessings on the foreheads of sacred cows, children and pilgrims wandering the streets of the cities. Hindus believe the most powerful offering before God is a flower in the hand.

In fact, Buddhism and Hinduism are mostly about giving and seeking peace, going through routines every day that express one’s faith whether anyone else is looking or not and without feeling one deserves credit for doing it. Each Buddhist home, for example, has a puja room or altar room where special visits by monks and lamas are made once a year to re-clean and re-bless and re-kindle the family spirit and home. In the early part of day before one goes off to work, streets are busy with those making wreathes and decorations from fresh flowers to place before altars whether of Vishnu or Buddha. Every town, burg, pueblo, or community is hung with prayer flags and provide a series of small to large chortens or stupas around which the faithful walk clockwise, often praying long strings of beads, whether on a steep trail or on a paved street. From the moment you leave the airport, there is no doubt you are in a Buddhist town because prayer flags drape bridges, flags flap on roof tops and in the trees are more prayer flags both horizontal and vertical looking like white and gray doves in flight. Temples stand out for their architecture and monasteries are identified by painted gold roofs.

There are monks everywhere, shaved heads, cranberry or mustard colored or orange robes, their feet in sandals, their possessions limited to the food given to them each day, ad maybe a cell phone. They hold their hands in prayer position and bow for a Namaste when they meet friends. Everyone copies that greeting. In Nepal and Tibet and India, Namaste is a given. In some parts of India the greeting is Jale. In Bhutan, the pose holds, but their greeting is in Bhutanese. In Thailand, everyone who serves bows in a Namaste position when they see you the first time or when you depart. It’s a thank you as well. But there is no particular word to say. Best is to smile, pose your hands in the prayer position, and bow joyously.

Lamas, who are approachable and are willing to preform ornate blessing ceremonies for a good trip or good luck, often have homes and families. Because they spend so much of their lives sitting in the Yoga position, they often have serious knee and leg problems and need help when walking to and from Temples. Yet, Buddhism, which is much cleaner and better organized to me than Hinduism, embraces all of East Asia, changing its ambience depending on which country you are in. In Bangkok was the first time Muslim mosques and covered women were noticed.
In Nepal, Buddhism is woven into community life, is communal in nature, and is comfortable for even the stranger. You are warmly welcomed or sent off with a neck full of silk kata scarves for good luck and good travel. Blessings abound no matter who you meet. Lamas and priest tie good luck strings around your neck as blessings and sometimes they make prayer packets for protection and those are tied around your neck as well. It’s all so simple and done with vigor and affection no matter who you are.

In the Khumbu where I trekked to the Everest base camp, there were endless chortens and stupas and giant boulders painted with the "Om" to be circle clockwise. In the middle of nowhere, there’d be an archway with a giant metal prayer wheel needing a turn. Even dinning areas were long wooden floors of red block tables painted with Buddhist symbols and protector gods and goddesses. Walls were lined with windows and benches padded with carpets. This is where exhausted trekkers fell for a rest, dumping their gear beside them as they sipped tea from giant thermoses. Walls were hung with copies of religious thangkas (like formula icons.). Sometimes mythological stories were painted directly onto the wall. There was so much simplicity and humility in the daily lives of the Nepal faithful, that the ornateness of the puja rooms and the temples give surprise: golden Buddhas, elaborate yak butter candles made to look like flowers, ancient texts stored in cubicles, all sorts of brocade and silk fabrics hanging from walls and ceilings. But the monks and lamas invite you in while they chant or eat, often revealing their senses of humor. Making offerings, hanging prayer flags, inhaling incense and drinking yak butter tea are as normal as a bow.

Of course in the big cities, like Bangkok, there is more wealth, more gauche display, more opportunity for pilgrims to chant their prayers before statues of their favorite Buddha forms. Worshipers can even buy sheets of gold to attach to already gold statues of Buddha. I was overwhelmed by the reclining Buddha, whose feet at one end were larger than a Mac truck. The entire long statue was in gold and on the passage way along his back side, 108 pots were lined against a wall. Pilgrims could purchase 108 coins and drop one coin in each pot. I tried, walking reverently, thanking my own God, slipping one little coin at a time from my fingers. But if I stopped to take a picture or notice something amazing about the huge statue, I lost count and somehow came out with about eight extras which I just dumped in the final pot. I noticed it had more coins than the others, so I wasn’t alone.

Photos: Sitting Buddha in Bangkok temple (photographs allowed here, but not in other countries.) A worshiper; a Hindu monster smudged; Thai monks; Lama Geshi blesses all of us with many katas; rocks and flags to acknowledge; a puja room; Reclining Buddha from his soles; a Buddha statue pasted with gold leaf offerings; dropping 108 coins in 108 pots.

Bangkok Smiles in the End

2008-06-03T06:54:00.014+05:30

Bangkok is the city of smiles, as it claims, of spirit houses, hanging helaconia 10 feet long, canals and rivers for public transport jammed with floating water hyacinth (weeds), extreme moist heat, shocking pink taxis and electrical three wheel ones, magnificent shopping malls where one floor alone the size of Wolfgate is dedicated to world famous jewelers and watch makers (like Cartier Piaget, etc.), theatrical elephants you can feed sugar cane, admired royal family with their images on skyscrapers and, on Mondays, yellow polo shirts fans wear each Monday in honor of the King’s birthday,(He was born on a Monday) and of all things Starbucks. Yea. I had my first frapaccino in two months and beside that, they took my Starbucks card.(they wouldn’t do that in Chile.) Heaven had descended on Bangkok.
To go with this are massive traffic jams on super fine highways and byways, barges at least three stories high and dinner boats with colorful lights blaring Long Live the King passing in front of my very Thai styled villa - if you can see through the hanging plants, orchids, lotus blossoms and vines - and a public transit system that includes besides taxis and buses, a sky way train, a subway train and of course a boat of every size and description, including a taxi boat you catch depending on the color flag it carries: watch out jumping up onto the dock. It’s in a hurry.
With all the orchids, the ginger flowers, the palms and holy Bodi trees wrapped in sashes and string, (Buddha was born under the Bodi tree - also from a lotus blossom, I’m confused), you are embracing a tropical paradise that’s a center of international business. There are skyscrapers for miles as the city spreads out in fingers surrounded by water. It is a Buddhist land, but completely different from the practices in Bhutan, India and Nepal. Here temples, and many houses have pointed tips on their roofs, looking like curved lightening rods and diving dragons, but they keep evil spirits from resting there. Monks wear orange and ochre and carry metal bowls as they stroll through markets and street fairs where they will be fed by merchants.
Here also is great adoration for the King and Queen, who have as many if not more offering places than Buddha. The Grand Palace and Temples with its Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha (really made of jade; the King personally changes Buddha’s gold attire each season) and the pure gold ship of state in another temple on the grounds is something you have to see to believe. We missed the crystal Buddha - areas were roped off for the deceased Queen Mother who has been lying in state almost a year. There are so many abutting towers and cantilevered roofs, so much extraordinary ceramic and mosaic work and colored glass and gold, gold gold in the temples and rooms guarded by giant monster dogs who stand as people, that you forget about how hot and sweaty you are and that you need to sit down, which you do at a simple table and eat street food cooked on the spot.
Even Chinese pagodas (red paper lamps, dragons all over the place, fu manchu type concrete statues, compete with other Buddhist stupas, chortens and displays of faith throughout the city. We stopped at one so I could light incense for my girls in prison, and take pictures, which they allowed. But then, the stupas to end all stupas are here like tall cones seen from miles around, highly embellished on the outside with repetitive marble and concrete figures colored in ceramic and glass mosaics. I climbed up steep stairs of the Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) and took so many photos my battery died.
Temples of gold allure and red roofs are everywhere including your own back yard. Along the canals, almost every little poor man’s house has a spirit house, highly ornate, about the size of a doll house, with strings of flowers and other offerings placed on it everyday, and statues of Buddha and whoever one calls to keep the bad away. These little spirit houses are residences for evil spirits, so they are precious. Keep the evil spirits outside the house by giving them a house of their own. Hmmm. Not a bad idea.
Remember, Thailand is/was Siam. It is where the King of Siam or The King and I found roots. I keep looking for green faced monsters in gold attire with crowns with turrets, but nowadays, that is confined to cultural shows. Most Thai are hip as anyone in America, in fashion, in flipflops, and in sun glasses. The young people dance in hip hop competitions at malls, and dress in blue and white uniforms for school. No more costumes, so to speak. It’s a fashion and fabric free-for-all. Teak houses still grace the canals and inside, if you are able to go inside one, are usually rooms with rims you have to step over to get in and out, and incredible wooden wood carvings of heritage scenes from history, and on display swords and thangkas of a different style, and of course enormous tangled gardens of the best of the tropics. Thai thangkas are scenes of a Thai-type Buddha ( he wears the gold pointed hat rising from his skull cap) with more landscape and small figures than the large apparitions of his many manifestations and companions found in Bhutan and Nepal thangkas. You can still buy giant gold buddhas on the sidewalk, but the paintings depict other aspects of life than his companions and saints.
A stroll through the markets before the sun rises (the humidity turns you into a paper doll in a second) introduces me to strange fruits like mangostien (a purple fruit) and rambatan (red with green hairs all over it) and even stranger but yummy sweets which we buy from the hawkers. Some are sticky jello, others are sponge cakes in shocking colors, then little green blocks of marzipan, and a sweet gold colored pastry in syrup. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as we say. We stopped outside one temple for a typical Thai sweet served in a bowl: corn kernals, Thai black jelly pieces, huge tapioca, pink, green and yellow thin vermicelli condensed milk, coconut milk, then a pile of crushed ice, all mixed. (Gotta eat it fast or it melts.)
One of the most interesting outings was to a fish emporium, really a Las Vegas sized restaurant called "Sea Food: If it swims we have it." I’m surprised someone has not thought of this in America. You enter, are given a table with three or four servers, then you get a basket and stroll along a long long display of every kind of fish, fresh or frozen, and seafood known to man. Lobsters are bigger than my thighs. Fish are so fresh they are flipping in the air. There are also displays of Thai vegetables, fresh, and exotic fresh fruits like the Dragon fruit, guavas, you name it, it was on the rack.
Afterwards we took a dastardly taxi ride many miles to the other side of the city for the Siam Niramit, a stage production in an enormous entertainment center with a set claiming to be in the Guiness Book of World Records as the highest stage in the world. I don’t know about those details.It didn’t appear as high as Circus de Soliel stages. The production was elaborate and noisy and in the Thai language and it took viewers through Tai history with elaborate sets of boats floating on water, the Khmer stone castles, and Ayutthaya, once a capital city, There were war scenes, fiery hell scenes, mythological scenes in the Himapaan forest, and heavenly scenes with angels flying around on pulleys to reproduce Daow-wa-dueng, the second level of heaven where Indra, called the greatest diety of all, presides. It gave you a tip about the culture and heritage of the Thai people and their skill at theatrical production. But my favorite part was when the two elephant crossed in the aisle in front of me. Their trunks properly curled up in the air on cue. After the applause (it was not a full house), and we exited the enormous place, the elephants had been disrobed and I had the chance to feed one of them sugarcane chunks at 30 bhat for four sticks. The elephant was feeling my arm for more, more, but we had to give way to another. I have now bonded with elephants in Nepal, India and Thailand, where they are highly loved and respected. Sigh.

Photos: Temple of Dawn at night from villa; check the shocking pink taxis; various Stupa tops; a three wheeler; two monks admire motorcycles; lighting incense for the RA girls; Chinese pagoda entrance; a spirit house teak style; dog and monkey protectors on the Grand Palace walls; mangostien fruit; a plate of sweets; a lotus blossom; feeding a Bangkok elephant.

A Dzong Good Enough for Heaven

2008-05-31T15:55:00.013+05:30

In Punakha, Bhutan, there is another wonder of the world. It makes St. Peter’s of Rome seem dull.
The winter Dzong which houses the Lama who is overseer of all religion for the citizens of Bhutan - a position of equal power to that of the King who is master of government of the people- is one of the most extraordinary works of art and architecture I have ever seen. The ornate tall and multi-leveled white structure housing probably the most powerful temple and its administration headquarters in this country, sits where two large rivers converge (referred to as the male and the female rivers) and is approached by a cantilevered wooden bridge, equally decorated with the traditional wooden window and columnar decor of Buddhist architecture..
In the style of Bhutan homes, where the lower floors are used for storage of food supplies, animals, and equipment, this sample of glory rises up probably fifty feet to open roofs under which herbs and grasses are normally dried and birds dare to hide out.
But in this structure with its giant public squares where religious activities are held, the whopper experience is entering the temple where monks study, pray and sometimes eat. This room is held up by 40 gold plated columns embossed with dragons and on the north wall are statues of Buddha Sacamani (in his present form), Guru Rimpoche who brought Buddhism to Bhutan in 746, and Sheptrung, who unified Bhutan in 1600. Each figure, at least three stories high, is shrouded in gold brocade capes and is gilded gold. Buddha is accompanied by two favored disciples also painted gold and holding gear for blessings. Placed among this distinguished lot of Buddhist power is the statue of the future Buddha (he will come again in a different form) seated in a Western position - on a chair. Multi colored wind socks hang from the ceiling, and thongka paintings attached to silk and brocade fabrics rather than frames depict Buddhism’s protective and compassionate personnel, gods, goddesses and heros. Painted on the walls are Mandalas and more familiar figures or icons of Buddhist culture, the art work itself an amazing feat. The only thing not decorated are the wooden floors, for which you must, as usual, remove your shoes to walk upon, because you are in a holy place.
On another wall are many glass boxes containing statues of saints. One who made me laugh with his wicked smile was that of Tupoc Kuenlua, the Divine Madman who sits in the Lotus position and is credited with creating the national animal, called a Takin, which has the head of a goat with it’s very twisted horns, and the body of a cow. (It does exist. I went to the preserve to see a few caged in a green environment. No one really knows how this cross happened but the takin reminded me of a wildebeast.) Tupoc was also the instigator of the phallus decor on houses. (If someone compliments the house, owners fear evil will enter, and so they paint the ugly phallus on the wall to ward off negative approaches.)
As we wandered through the huge Dzong structure, we could hear what seemed off key chanting. Later we discovered young monks, virtual children, were studying "chant." as they read Buddhist scriptures. Their voices rang in the wind. Attached but in a separate structure (you cover a lot of steep steps as you tour these holy places) was another temple dedicated to the architect of the Dzong who had a vision in a dream of what his task would be and created it. His chapel, filled with elaborate butter sculptures, bowls of offerings (looks like a candy store), fruits, thongkas, katas, rupees and rice offerings is under the care of a very young student monk who was dusting the ornate flower carvings and towering sculpture honoring the visionary. He sweeps the floors, freshens the flowers (I thought the fake orange tree was a hoot) and tenderly refreshes water bowls, candles and other offerings to Buddha. Sadly, photographs were not allowed in any of the temples.
A few years ago, an enormous glacier high in the surrounding Himalayas broke from its location and dropped into the river, causing it to rise hundreds of feet and flood the entire valley and this architectural marvel. Much was saved, the town was moved higher off the river, the dzong restored and life goes on. But distant glacier fall out could do it again. It is an environmental concern in many areas of the world.
As we had set out this morning on the narrow winding road from Thimphu, the capital, we noticed the narrow newly-paved road was packed with children and citizens dressed in their national finery. We didn’t know what was up until a policemen told us to pull against the curb and wait. Today was the arrival of Tilku Jigmne Chhoda, the religious head or Jey Kempo of Bhutan,(similar in power to the Dalai Lama who was religious head of Tibet) with two to three hundred monks following. It was the annual migration or transfer of the monk community from the winter home to the summer home in Thimphu. Punakha, the winter site, is 2000 meters lower and much hotter for the cold months for monks who have no heat in their structures. During the summer, they occupy a similar Dzong in Thimpu.
The Jey Kempo with his entourage moved slowly down the road in red Prados, which are Toyota vehicles, reaching out of the car window with his baton and touching those who wished a blessing on the head, us included. Other monks ran ahead of the car parade handing out blessed strings in the colors of prayer flags and holding out red sacks if anyone would be so kind as to give an offering. On the roof top of a Thimpu Dzong a dozen musicians blew long thin curved horns and beat cymbals as the Jey Kempo approached. It was a surprise joy for us to be a part of this.
As we picked up the road again - we began at 9,000 feet (I don’t even feel altitude changes any longer) - rose to about 10500 feet and after the three hour slow and cautious drive, we arrived deep in the Punakha valley which is sub-tropical, hot, and at about 3000 feet above sea level. We wrangled with a number of colorful trucks with brightly painted Buddha figures over their windows (I call them Blow Horn trucks, having seen then in India and Nepal as well, because on their back is written Blow Horn, otherwise they won’t move out of the way), lazy cows and sleeping dogs occupying the middle of roads as we rounded exciting hairpin turns, and one area cut out of the fern and pine covered mountains, was decorated with 1000 tiny stupas (Barbie sized) a family had placed in the tiny cave as a tribute to a cremated family member. These tiny stupas resembled a thousand white, yellow and blue butterflies as we passed. (My driver told me one body supplies enough ashes mixed with cement for the 1000 tiny sculptures.)
As we crossed the Duchula Pass, , we were greeted by 108 large brick stupas (holy structures that look like impenetrable blocks) which the eldest queen had built to honor the praiseworthy way her husband the fourth King had solved a problem with encroaching Indians who had moved across the border and settled without permission. He went personally with a car full of oranges, handing out an orange to each foreign person, and this way he was able to take a census of how many must be repatriated back to India.. He gently nudged then back over the border and won the admiration again of his people and his five wives, apparently.
The policy in Bhutan is if you want to settle in Bhutan, you cannot do it as a refugee. You must complete immigration legally, learn Bhutanese, wear the national dress, pay taxes and become a part of the nation’s work force and supporter. No leeching, in other words, and no free entry. In this way, the King has been able to keep Bhutan pure and workable. Amen to him. Bhutan is paradise. Sadly we leave here and head for our final destination of Bangkok, Thailand.
Photos: The Winter Dzong; a child in school uniform who followed me into the Dzong; a detail of the high walls inside; A Thongka of the various elements of life; the young monk caretaker; The first car bearing relics and valueable images from the Winter Dzong to the Summer one; high level monks await the arrival of Jey Kempo; more monks a buzz; the roof top horn blowers; a blow horn truck with Buddha images; tiny stupas made of ashes and placed along roadside niches; the 108 stupas the Queen made to honor the fourth King for his good works.

Bhutan Blessings Never End

2008-05-31T15:37:00.010+05:30

Chartreuse flowered dogwood trees with green seeds in the middle of the four petals, blue poppies in remote ranges, exotic orchids by the hundreds hiding out in thick pine and cypress forests hanging with moss, there is a world of horticulture that Bhutan citizens augment by their own interest in roses and potted flowers.
I had never seen green dogwood flowers until visiting the private residence of one of Bhutan’s most favored Lamas, who has been declared the ninth re-incarnation of Datong Tulku, who was the incarnation of Bami Yeshi Yang, one of the seven monk disciples of Guru Rinpoche, who brought Buddhism to Bhutan. Incarnation is based on certain chosen people being able to remember and to identify objects and events in a previous life. It’s complicated, it’s cuious, but Lama Datong Tulku is just straight out a nice, cheerful man who gives a warm welcome to strangers. He is known as the "Laughing Buddha." Lama Tulku with his Bishop-like miter, does efface a smiling Buddha, with red stain on his teeth caused by chewing beetle tree leaves smudged with limestone, a common habit in Bhutan. (Beetle leaves and chili peppers are national favorites.)

We had been invited for a special cleansing from sins and evil spirits followed by a lengthy blessing for long life from this holy Buddha disciple. If it is a chance to learn more about world spiritual, I’ll give it a poke. Although I’ve gained much security in my own beliefs seeing other cultures on this trip, I find there are many similarities in all religions, such as the use of holy water for cleansing (in our baptism, in Jewish rights, and in Buddhist and Hindu traditions.) Rivers such as the Ganges in India and the Jordan in Israel and streams that pop out of mountains without mouths take on curative powers, be it their water or their mud. Maybe we should re-think the Mississippi.

After entering the Lama’s home, and greetings all around, we were led into the well lit, well decorated puja room with one wall a well-stocked altar. At the other end in front of huge windows and a carpet of dragons, sat Lama in the lotus position (I admire people who can sit that way, I cannot so I have to be careful I don’t point my feet at him) )with long thin pages of Buddhist scripture written in Dzonkha opened before him. These words were to be used in the ceremony, a script to follow as we Episcopalians look to the Book of Common Prayer for ceremonial regularity. On his elaborately painted desk was a metal vase with a peacock feather fan. The peacock is a bird who can eat poison and survive, the Lama explained, therefore the feathers symbolize the peacock taking away all poison that might be damaging a person’s heart and soul and body. Beside it was a bronze bowl of dried rice, often tossed during the ceremony along with seeds from jacaranda pods, and a yak butter candle sculpture, which was slowly melting, having been lit. All was ready for us.

We sat down on a thin mattress on the floor and I tried to cross my legs Yoga style, with no success. I asked the Lama how he can sit for hours with his legs flattened out in a cross underneath him and he said lamas and monks grow accustomed to that in childhood. I guess it’s like me sitting in a chair with my legs crossed.(Incidentally the future Buddha manifestation - yes, Buddhist believe Buddha will come again in another form recognizeable - sits Western style on a chair. Hmm.) There were two monks assisting and all three began to chant the Buddhist scriptures in a deep guttural hum. I sat beside the Lama on the floor since I was the principle character in this ceremony. My friend Sonam, an elegant Bhutan lady, instructed me on how to do things during the ceremony. Then when we were asked to repeat after the Lama certain words from the scripture asking for blessings I tried to repeat him just listening to sound. I knew nothing about what it meant, but trusted it fit in with my omnipotent God’s spirit. We frequently said "she she she" and that means "please please please."

Holy water from a sacred fresh water stream in the mountains, mixed with saffron so it was yellow, was poured on my white hair and then in my hands - "drink this and then wipe your hair with what’s left," Sonam said - and this was done a number of times during the cleansing phase. At one point we sipped a home-made sweet herbal wine - blood red - from a skull bowl and ate a long life herbal ball, the size of a large peppercorn, made by the Queen Mother of Bhutan and shared only with monks and lamas. There was drum thumping, and bell ringing, and chanting for a long while. The karma was good, the Lama said. He smiled as we finally came to the end and katas (the white scarves) were received, blessed, and given back, along with yellow and red string blessings tied around our necks. After the ceremony was completed and I’m around for a few more decades - if it worked - we moved to his living room and were served Masala tea (with milk) and homemade cookies. The Lama, who is in the process of restoring his monastery about three hours away from Thimpu, was off to meet the young fifth King of Bhutan to request a few logs from the forest to be used in the restoration project. I was told later he received the permit and felt like this day was a very special one.

Bhutan serves the chanting peace of the Buddhist mindset. Even buildings are trimmed in painted wooden frames, many depicting the four most powerful spiritual beasts - the tiger, the snow lion (mythical), the fire-breathing dragon, and a strange looking bird, also mythical. What you paint on the outside is to prevent evil and the unwanted to have a rein on your daily life. On the one hand, every single building resembles a Swiss chalet with wooden cathedral-like windows, , but on the other hand, the community decor gives more identification to a precious way of life and culture. I’m still impressed that 90 per cent of the people on the streets in city or rural land - and even sweeping streets or tilling the soil with oxen - adhere to the national dress custom, men in plaid knee length skirts, belted, with the top half very blouse-y and perfect for a carry-all; women wrapped up in ankle-length skirts of bright handwoven stripes and embroidered patterns, topped with colorful silk blouses with long cuffs that fold back over a silk or satin jacket in a contrasting color. The varieties are endless. Most women have the short bob haircut of 1920s flappers. (Their hair is only black). This habit of dress begins early in their lives, so there is no desire to not wear it when they are adults. It’s required in all official functions and in jobs. Sonam confessed that men become fashion plates and many have over 50 "gho"in their wardrobe. Our young guide said he has seven. The patterns range from a solid color like gray or navy, to the finely plaid tartan prints. At one point, men wore argyle socks with the dress, but now the favor is long black knee length socks.

We visited an arts and crafts school, sort of like Job Core for young artists, where they can chose between woodworking or doll making or Thangka painting or embroidery or weaving, among other crafts, and serve out a four to six year apprenticeship. The next step would be to work decorating houses and wood or in one of the textile enterprises where women sit on the floor, barefoot, and weave fabrics for national dress. A simple pattern would take about two days. A complicated colored pattern with an embroidered effect, takes over a month on back strap looms, is much more expensive, and the weaver can earn one fourth of the selling price. The faster the weaver, the more fabric she can turn out, the better her pay.

If nothing else, Bhutan never fails its faith. It is a country of prayer flags, stupas, chortens and Dzongs. Flags, new or faded, fly everywhere. Throughout the mountainous landscape you spot groups of tall poles of mostly white vertical prayer flags, 108 in a group, honoring the dead. Colorful prayer flags are draped at inopportune places (you wonder what fool crawled across open crevices and in giant trees to string them up) as well as at religious sites. When we arrived at a the Amanakora Punakha hotel, we were presented with prayer flags which we were asked to hang on the suspension bridge, the only way to cross the river to reach the small resort. As a gift there was a roll of prayer flags and incense on my pillow that night with this message: "Although there are only 700,000 Bhutanese millions of prayers and blessings are released into the world each day from the fluttering of the prayer flags each turning of prayer wheel and the silent mantras sent to the heavens on incense smoke. The horse at the center of your prayer flags is called the Lungta, the wind horse. It rides the winds of the world carrying blessings and protection to all those whom the wind touches." Long live horses and prayer. They’ve certainly been cornerstones for me.

Photos: green dogwood flower; Lama Tulku blesses me; altar at Lama Tulku's home; a snow lion trim on a house; a Thangka by a group of students; women weaving fabrics for the national dress; hanging prayer flags on the Arman resort bridge; A brilliant snow lion, a sacred mythological animal.

Land of the Thunder Dragon

2008-05-28T07:38:00.012+05:30

In Bhutan, men wear skirts.
Seriously. They have sort of a robe thing that goes over a white shirt and the thick white cuffs folded back up over the robe. It’s a doozy to wrap and arrange, although the women’s long dresses made of one piece of fabric are more complicated. Men cover their legs with long black stockings and wear leather shoes. Youngsters don’t wear long socks, and do wear basketball style shoe or the heavy punk kick-ems. I wonder if the basketball style reflects the well-known fact that the fourth King of Bhutan is a major basketball fan.

Bhutan, Bhutan. Land of the Thunder Dragon. Where have you been hiding. Here is as close to paradise as I’ll probably ever get. Nestled into 7000 feet of altitude with snow capped Himalayas towering on every side, Mount Jumolhari, home of the gods of the kingdom, fights off morning clouds as the sun comes over its ridge. Huge mountains of pine trees, water falls. No horrid traffic jams as in Kathmandu and India. No car horns and poverty and kids knocking on the car windows to get you to buy a magazine. Everyone is a farmer and so every piece of flat land is planted with potatoes (in flower now) or has been turned into rice paddies.

At the Armankora (the Sanskrit word for peace and the Dzonghka word to describe a sacred circular pilgrimage) Hotel, (a sister to Amangani in Jackson Hole) a haven of simplicity in wood and window and natural fiber one can get one’s mind together, and deep breathe the first fresh air (the smell of cedars and pines after a good rain) I’ve breathed since leaving Everest. Here birds can be heard, and there is no TV or extraneous noise. Only local dogs bark about normal things. Here in this Buddhist nation ruled by a democratic King is peace. No wonder people put this on their dream list.

At this moment, the 28 year old son of the fourth King, now called the fifth King of Bhutan, has been handed the throne. Thimphu, the capital, is being spruced up for the 100th year celebration of the monarchy (yea, constitutional monarchy now turned into a democratic system) and the coronation of the new King. A new two lane curving highway has been finished and buildings in the capital are hurrying up their completion to house tourists and curiosity seekers who will join in the festivities. The King, who is an absolute monarch with the power of life and death, emerged around the beginning of the 20th century from the tribes of warriors who had occupied Bhutan for centuries. In 1616 Shebdrung unified the country’s warlords into a dual system of government that paired with religion. The current King is the great-great-grandson of Trongsan, a great warlord, so he really does have the country’s history in his blood. The Kingship was actually set up by the British, who used Bhutan to set up trade with Tibet when Britain had India in its colonies.

Even getting to Bhutan was like the beginning of an exciting novel. After a freak squall in New Delhi this morning, stopping up traffic like a sewer, people running into people, pushing them off their lane like a polo player rides off another to get the ball, providing nervous tension for those of us pushing to get to the international airport in time for our flight on the Bhutan national airlines. The sky finally cleared although the streets of Delhi were flooded, and the Ganges overflowing, (this is freak weather for them), so we took off on time with a brief stop in Kathmandu. When we left Kathmandu, and flew high in thick white clouds, there peeking their peaks above the fray was the top sides of Mt. Everest, Mt. Lotse, and all the fellow mountains we had lived among during our trek, but this time we were looking at them from 30,000 feet. I wondered of Noam, one of our Sherpa friends guiding a 78 year old Japanese gent up the summit had made it, (it would be his sixth successful summit) since today was their day of reaching the peak of the highest mountain in the world. Everyone on the plane was on the left side gaping at the magnificence of the Himalayas and taking photos. I knew at that moment, things were finally going to change. And they did.

Men and women are called Ap or Aum. I am Aum Audrey, which sounds kinda lovely. Taktshang Gompa, (Tiger’s Nest) which hangs off the face of a cliff 3000 feet above the valley floor - legend Guru Rimpoche flew into Bhutan on a mythical tigress, meditated in a cave before bringing Buddhism to Bhutan, and thus Gompa was built around the cave. You can get there on foot or on a tiny pony with a saddle made from yak skin. I chose feet with a wooden stick. It was steep and I’ve gotten out of shape since our trekking time, so we made it at least up to the café where we had a splendid view of the gold-guilded monastery. It had burned to the ground (from faulty yak butter candles) a few years ago, and has since been rebuilt on the extremely steep uninviting rock cliffs. Getting there is following the prayer flags, which are strewn everywhere in their bright colors.

There are three kinds of prayer flags in Bhutan. The usual Wind Horse string of five colored ones representing the five elements: white for iron, green for wood, yellow for earth, blue for water, red for fire. There are the simple tall vertical flags - when someone dies 108 of them will be positioned somewhere on one of the mountains. And another flag on top of homes to ward of evil. On the brightly decorated three story homes (the roof floats and leaves an open space where farmers dry meat, crops, herbs, and laundry), one often sees a painted Phallus. This is to ward off bad news and evil presence. Bhutans believe if someone praises the home, that opens the door for something awful to happen, and so they paint a phallus on the front wall - and this covers any negative possibilities. Of course, I’m so entranced with these homes, I keep saying in my innocense, "Oh I love that one - with the tiger heads across the windows - sort of series of four or five cathedral windows in blocks of eight or ten. So I wasn’t helping the situation.

Also in Bhutan, where cheap labor comes from the Indians across the border, there are three kinds of chortens (the roadside monuments: the Tibetan with gold pointed tops, Nepalese which are round and white, and the Bhutan style, square with intricate painted wood patterns around it. (These are the spiritual thoughts around which you walk clockwise for luck.). In the mountains one comes across huge prayer wheels as well, constantly moving because they are powered by wonderful surging water from the waterfalls everywhere. What a cool idea. Prayer is constant.

We also visited the National Museum, (no photos allowed) which is Paro’s 340 year old watchtower, fortress and prison (the first king of Bhutan was imprisoned there) to view an enormous collection of Bhutan stamps and items of history. Bows and arrows were major weapons, and archery is still the national sport. At this time of year, yellow broom blooming everywhere gave it an enticing fragrance. Winding around seven round stories you find the philately collections to the wooden red hats, similar into style to the Pope’s, used by Dalai Lamas when riding horseback and my favorite, the Tshogzhing Chapel, which is a three dimensional Mandala, each of four sides elaborately carved with many figures and statues related to the Tantric Buddhism of Bhutan. It is like a huge tree in pyramid form with colorful monsters and Buddha forms and his consorts and manifestations and ugly protective multi limbed creatures. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the artistic stamps honoring world wide events and coveted by collectors, including three-dimensional ones, and some that change as you move them up and down. They also make little CDs to go with stamps and I’m told there is an Elvis one, which I couldn’t find at the museum.

Photos: Men in skirts, the national dress of Bhutan; school girls in uniforms; a monk and an assistant at Amankora Hotel in Paro; vertical prayer flags; view of Paro on landing; Mt. Everest from the plane; Tiger's Nest Monastery; colorful prayer flags on a hike; the phallus protection; a water turned prayer wheel in a typical Bhutan chorten; drying yarn.

City of Charms

2008-05-25T16:49:00.012+05:30

I wake up with a huge white dome posing outside French windows of my hotel, the only one that has a view of the Taj Mahal in Agra.
It’s like a white marble planet. Every side is equal, now some more than others as scaffolds have been rigged to facilitate restoration in process. On one side is a mosque on the other is its twin, but a guest house. Many Indians visit it during the off-tourist season. From a distance women wrapped in sarees look like jelly bellies poured down the white marble trails. Many are barefooted. Europeans/Americans are allowed to wear shoe covers, which knocks out the holy place concept and keeps the floors from being scratched.
This is the Taj Mahal, the seventh wonder of the world. I don’t know what counts to make it such a treat, other than the dramatic legends of love associated with it, and the fact twenty thousand artisans and cheap labor spent 22 years building it mid 17th century. One Emperor footed the bill. There are expensive books of nothing but the Taj Mahal in photographs but it’s not that the details are particularly earth-shaking. It’s how the sun or moon reflects on it. At night, the city of Agra does not light it up.
I suppose it’s the legend more than its architectural presence that gilds its personality. A tomb is a tomb, after all, and this is a Muslim one, which means decor is abstract and patterned. It looks as if it would rise up at any minute like a shuttle from Kennedy Space Center. You wonder if it would fly. Kites do, not to far away. And the usual bevy of pigeons pester exotic gardens in the humid sun. Water pools reflect the domes and Indian families huddle together for photographs.
I was invited a number of times to be in family photos. I have no idea why other than I wore my white Raj scarf with holy words on it that I don’t know how to translate. I have not seen a duplicate except in the textile museum of the maharajas under the category of block printed - and am embarrassed to say I brought it from America. The new friends were usually young Muslim women covered in black robes. It was really steamy hot, but the atmosphere was light and I made note that Muslim women and a Christian woman were shoulder to shoulder.
Mausoleums abound in India, some in white marble, others in pink stone or brick, others in yellow, but the Taj Mahal is the queen of them all. Women world wide wish they were loved by someone who’d spend his fortune on this kind of tribute of affection, rather than grieving at a golf course or some bar or in some medic’s palm. The story of Emperor Shah Jahan, grandson of Akar, the first champion of India, and CEO of India in the 17th century, and his love for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, a descendent of Kubla Khan and Genghis Khan, is a tear-jerker. Jahan, who also built the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid in Delhi, squired and married her and by the time she had hit 36 years of age, she had given him 14 children. She died in childbirth but not before receiving the promise he would do three things: not marry again, build the most beautiful tomb in the world, and take care of the children. Many of the offspring died, as was natural in 17th century conditions, but the youngest son Aurangzeb, a greedy ambitionist, led a rebellion and gained power by killing off his brothers, and putting his father in prison for eight years. Mind you, the place prison was inlaid marble with major balconies overlooking the city of Agra and the famous Taj Mahal. The son, a fundamentalist Muslim, destroyed the Mongul empire and turned India into chaos, destroying the temples of the Hindus, until the 18th century when the British colonialists took control.
We had risen in time to catch the 6 o clock train from New Delhi to Agra - a two hour experience on India’s railways, where breakfast was served in the exact style of an airplane meal. Rats and sleeping bodies congest the station at dawn and human waste was all over the tracks. Crowds with tall porters carrying large bags of white people on their heads (everyone else carried his own) mixed with flies, pigeons, cell phones and products to become breakfast once loaded. In the first class car, seats had pink arms and tray tables.
Agra was another crowded city with elegant hotels behind large walls. But it was as touristy as Jaipur with the usual barrage of beggars, pickpockets, police armed with wooden sticks, and aggressive barkers trying to get you your veins. Water buffalo, humped brahma bulls, goats and javelina wander the littered streets planted with bougainvilla between street vendors with their artfully arranged trays of bananas, mangos, coconut slices, custard apples and fresh melons. Men on the street looked terribly junky, poorly dressed, with the only fashionable ones being doormen and waiters in sikh attire. After the walk through Taj Mahal, our guide insisted we experience how artisans inlaided the Taj Mahal’s precious stones (turquoise, lapis lazuli, cornelian, etc.) and of course I’ve gotten used to that by now. You go see beautiful products that you cannot resist. Once the salesmen so skilled in smooth talk have hooked you, and you purchase small tables inlaid with elephants and rabbits, they say, "now let me show you a special room." They do this as a carpet scam too. Everyone is selling carpets, for some reason. And pashminas. Bite the hook, and they drag you along at their speed. I just say, I have no carpets, I want no jewelry or souvenirs. Of course, they don’t believe you and keep hassle you just to the point you are out the door. I hate this part of shopping in India, or Tibet, or Jerusalem or almost anywhere outside the US.
But the creme de la creme for me this day was a visit to a dusty square to see a snake charmer. Yep, the old cobra trick. I couldn’t leave India without adding that to the bucket list. Although it was out of tourist season, my guide was able to arrange for two charmers to charm me with their bulbous flute and magic vibrations that kept cobras under control. These two cobras looked like they’d been in vaudeville for years, one was five, the other six, and they were not eager to rise from their baskets, puff out their necks, and sway to the rhythm of that piercing sound. But they were coddled and woken up and they did what they were supposed to do, delighting me.

Photos: Elephant welcome at Agra hotel; Sue and I with first view of Taj Mahal; Centering at the Taj Mahal; posing with Muslim youth; Two police security officers; Red Fort with view of Taj Mahal; prison of Shah Janan; artisans setting precious stones; inlaid tables; the charmers enticing two cobras; two cobras who had rather roll up in the basket and sleep.

The Pink City

2008-05-23T14:18:00.019+05:30

The peacocks are peowwwwing at dawn. The pigeons sneak sips in the enormous fountain of water in the middle of the patio at Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, India. Two Rajastha men wrapped in white pajamas (Punjab style) with bright red turbans twirled on their head carry large white flags and a stick. They roam the enormous patio-garden (called chowks) beating the flags periodically with the stick because it sounds like a shot-gun. Their job is to shoo away the pigeons over and over, those persistent birds only going up to another levered edge of the palace temporarily. This is pigeon city. Balconies, yards, streets are filled with them. At one sidewalk strip where vendors sell grain and corn, my driver points it out as the pigeon restaurant. Behind the open booths, thousands of pigeons partake of corn kernels scattered hopelessly across the ground.

The contrast of life in Jaipur - home of many castles, palaces and enormous forts built buy Rajasthan warriors and extremely wealthy Maharajas (where bankers, merchants and jewelers thrive) while the streets are overdosed with cheap hovels for shops, beggars and pickpockets - doesn’t lessen the impact of a city where almost all the buildings are pink - sort of a brick pink in most cases but with elaborate trim in a custard color and elaborate old buildings with balconies and fancy window treatment. Primarily, it is suffocatingly hot but women still go about in bright colored saris whether they are working in construction, doing marketing, or begging from tourists. You don’t see the regal class on the streets ever. You guess they are here by the appeal of their palaces - one floating in a huge lake - but no Rolls Royces plie the streets.

This is the most touristy city I’ve visited in India. For this reason, I’ve been told, terrorist select Jaipur or Agra (Taj Mahal) for their disruptive bombs. I asked to go to one of the bombing sights, which was on the way to Amir Fort, my destination this morning. The death site was at a major crossroads. An enormous distorted tree ,probably a Banyan tree, with roots wrapped around its trunk, gave a touch of shade to merchants and pigeons there. Shops were open. There were no markers, no pouring out of flowers and cards in tribute to the innocent who were killed on that spot. The sum of lives lost has been estimated at 70 from the multiple bombings. I remember the photographs of one merchant’s products, brightly colored bangles, being strewn across the street among the blood splatters. I’ve been buying bangles ever since. If there is a symbol of Jaipur, it is these inexpensive bright colored glass stone bracelets women wear up their arms to enhance beauty. Women do insist on adorning themselves like Ballywood stars (Ballywood is Bombay.)

This was another thrill day for me. At Amber Fort, which was built high on a mountain and is surrounded by what locals consider a Great Wall of China kind of wall that extends for miles, tourists can ride elephants. Sigh. I got the urge again but this time I wanted to find a painted elephant. No problem. All the elephants were decked out in royal robes (long saddle blankets) and pink metal boxes for riders. Their faces were made up with colorful flowers. They lethargically swung their trunks, not at all interested in this kind of tedious work and had to be shouted at to get them to get close to the mounting tower. Today their task was to carry customers down a paved road alongside a construction area in the fort. When strong dust storms approached, the elephant riding was over. I got my 20 minutes in and before we had done a turn around, my driver, who may have thought he was auditioning for Ballywood as he sang cheerful songs and waved to the workers on the road as we went, was quizzing me about a tip. Jaipur is the first city where tips were negotiated. And watch out for the photographers who charge five dollars a shot. They are printed out on pretty good paper and are pretty good photos, but lots in Jaipur is overpriced.

A visit to the palace in the fort area was at least healthy exercise, i.e. steps and inclines. In most palaces and on some street-side structures, the Maharajas were considerate of women, who were not allowed outside the palace confines. They built high, elaborate facades called Hawa Mahal with whimsical facades and one or three tiny windows that would expose nothing about the women, but where they could, mostly concealed, sit and watch the Maharaja or dignitaries arrive in to the city and any other celebration or bazaar activities going on below. This practice of keeping women hidden from all men except a husband was called Purdah. There were even chess boards for ladies but none of the pieces were of kings or queens or even horses. They were different sized little mushrooms, so it seemed. The 18th century was a major macho era, maybe still is. I can’t find any Maharanis or Maharajas in house, just pictures of them in coffee table books.

Returning to the city, there was a camel stand. Yes, here camels and elephants add noise and congestion to all the motorcycles, bicycles and rickshaws that hog the road. Camels, their tall lanky bodies standing up above the crowd, pull carts of wares. Elephants carry workers and often giant loads of grass. But at the camel stand, I yelled, Pull Over. I want to ride the camel. There were about a half dozen, gaily decorated with red and gold things hanging from their bridles, and blankets ranging from a printed one to one glittered with spangles. A little boy was the driver of the sweet faced camel I chose. The beast got on her knees and I easily mounted the saddle with stirrups which was hidden under a red throw. Hold on, the boy said. Then there was an extreme movement as the camel rose on her fore-feet and then her back feet, me trying to balance as she did, and we were off. What a pleasant gait this camel had. However, the kid was leading us wrong way down the busy highway, every kind of vehicle whizzing past us and beeping horns. Yikes. I yelled, couldn’t we walk on the side of the road and not the middle? The boy was oblivious, and very prideful because he had a customer. A man who said his name was Tony kept taking photographs and yelling I will bring them to your hotel. Heck, I wasn’t giving out the hotel name since is was the luxury palace. But my driver made arrangements so I could see the photos later. The camel ride was a hoot and I hated that it was over, but the dust and heat was excruciating, even though I had wrapped my head in a thin scarf Indian lady style. This impressed the photographer.

A trip to the City Palace which has a partial museum of Maharaja clothing and Diwali dresswas also fascinating. Most of the fabrics were embroidered with gold and silver threads, in thick brocades and one outfit for a 19th century male, white muslin, had three hundred and fifty pleats called kalis or pamels - for a man. But most interesting was the polo uniforms from the wardrobe of Maharaja Sawai Man Sing II, famous for his polo and billiards. Here I learned about the "fiery ball" or night polo when a candle was secured in a metal ball that looked very Muslim in design, called a ‘palas’ and somehow it was playable in the dark although you’d need one hard hitting polo mallet. This was a 16th century delight of the warrior Akbar whose polo mallets were decorated in gold and silver, and if one broke, and another player was able to pick up the pieces, it was finders keepers. Women, who were not allowed to show their faces in the daytime, often would play polo in the dark as well. The early uniforms were thick, heavily embroidered jackets and trousers, but later the jodphur was created for polo, and now even hotel employees wear them.

At the end of the day, another curiosity was answered. A young lady painted my hands with henna, a habit women in Jaipur are known for especially when they dress up for fiestas and balls. Of course I was just going to have dinner and Indian sweets in my room. But it was the know how I was after. It is a tedious job for the artist, who must have a patience beyond Job. Once the black henna dries on your hands - you cannot wash them for a couple of hours - you rub it off and what is left is a beautiful brownish design. I found some henna and hope to show my college-sorority granddaughter how to do it since she’s the artist in my family and it might make a fun fad at her university.

Photos: Pidgeon swatter at Ramburg Palace; Pink Palace at city gates with pigeons; At the hoteol, lux shade; Women in construction; a load on the road; the bomb site; a camel cart; Hawa Mahal, a pink hideout for females; Should we take this lady? Riding the camel India style, ie, with scarf on head; Hawa at City Palace - that's me up there; What I saw; New Henna being app-lied; Henna done - it's red.

Be Ready For Anything

2008-05-22T07:35:00.012+05:30

Be ready to take off your shoes when you travel to this part of the world. You never know when you are on holy ground, be it Buddhist, Hindu, Jain or Christian. Ironically, you don’t take off your shoes at airport security. But at some point, you’ve gotta join the barefooted contessas.

At Mother Theresa’s home, remove shoes before walking where she walked and kneeling before her tomb. It’s a hard habit to get used to so wear flipflops, sandals or something you don’t have to lean down to untie. Socks are good, and one German couple sluffed along in hospital shoe covers which they put over their socks. Sometimes the floors are ice cold stone, others boiling hot marble, sometimes disinfectant clean, others absolutely filthy. It’s hard not to wonder what we Americans might pick up with our weak immune systems. Someone is usually sweeping with a home-made broom of thin branches or grasses. But then, the other side is to have faith, that by doing the right thing in holy places, God protects.

It would also be good to bring ear plugs to India and Nepal. (My son-in-law sells earplug molds and I think I’ve discovered a whole new sales possibility.) Traffic is a free-for-all, with everyone laying on the horn for you or your vehicle to get out of the way, as if there was anywhere to move to. (To boot, you are totally confused about when to cross the street since everything is backwards in these ex-British conclaves.) For some reason, I never heard or saw an emergency vehicle trying to get through, but then, with a thousand horns at different pitches, it was hard to hear the driver of my own vehicle speak. At least there are no boom boxers. They’d be deadened here.
The worse horn blowers are the white tourist cars like mine. My Calcutta driver was awful and if someone refused to get out of his way, he’d literally run the guy (walking with a cane or on a skimpy bicycle) into the fence. I wanted to get out of the car in protest. The chauffeur in a white suit didn’t understand my English and I’d probably end up in the area where the next terrorist set off his bomb. But rickshaws have air horns, green and yellow taxis on three wheels called automatic rickshaws (how do they stay together?) abuse horns - hope you don’t slide out the doorless sides; yellow Ambassador taxis - millions of them -seem to think they own the road, like the buses loaded to the hilt with commuters. If there are fifty seats on the bus, there are one hundred passengers, mostly standing in a sweat in the middle. Trucks are allowed on many major streets and brush by at breath-neck speeds so you hope they don’t carry eggs. Military vehicles mastermind the single lane vias in border lands. I’ve never seen a police surveillance car or a traffic cop, except at one or two giant intersections programmed so it takes about 8 minutes for your side to be let loose to cross the road and continue. It’s a game of darts and strategy, who gets to that next free space first, who moves to the left first (drivers on the right side of the car) and who is a chicken. But until you have found refuge in your elaborate hotel, there is no silence in the cities, however large or small.

There are beggars and for a Christian, it’s a dilemma. If I had a box of sweets or a bag of rice, I’d feel good about patronizing the sad beggars. But money, no. For Hindus, handing a coin to a beggar means rewards elsewhere. So they make beggars insistent to tourists as well. Women holding armsful of children pick you out of a crowd and then follow you, right on your back or side mumbling something with a sad face, and when you get in the car they tap on the window to get your attention until finally, you are driven away. Obviously, I cannot solve the poverty programs in this nation, which is a lot different from the appearance of poverty in Nepal. Beggars don’t assault you in Nepal. Shop keepers do, practically grabbing you by the arm to come inside the store. The word “No” does not exist in Nepalese. So what do you do? A lot of back work. Don’t smile at the salesman in the street. I remember the same problem in Jerusalem a few years ago.

Greetings are constant when you enter hotels, restaurants, shops, museums. Last night, with a late arrival in Jaipur, I arrived at Rambagh Palace hotel (I have the maharani suite???? bigger than my house - it’s off season here) to be met with a cold face towel, a glass of fresh lechee juice, and a fabulous lei of jasmine that I slept with because it smelled so good. Namaste is a savior when you don’t know the language. Put the palms of your hand together, bend slightly, and utter Namaste. In some parts of India, Julee is also used not only for hello, but goodbye and thank you. There is a courtesy and a modesty in most Nepalese and Indians. For one thing, women don’t fly down sidewalks or enter buildings with most of their skin showing, maybe a glimpse of a midrift, but no legs or chest. Never shorts, unless hikers, never bra straps dropping and bellybuttons displayed, not usually unless it’s a teenager who is trying to break out into the modern world. Most women and girls are beautifully wrapped in saris and versions of that. They also wear the pajama style pants (harem-ish) covered by a long colorful silk, gauze, or cotton knee length shirt. It is extremely comfortable, and the public doesn’t see something they should not be seeing.

Beauty obsesses women in India. They see the most glamorous women on television and in Ballywood (which is in Bombay, a wild place) and they can probably imitate them, at least the young model-like women can. Only in Ladakh did women seem uninterested in elaborate dress. The Tibetans wore dark wool long dresses to keep warm, but spruced up the look with a colored scarf thrown across the shoulders, turquoise and coral adornments, and some odd looking silk hats. Most women in India and in Nepal, who crave gold ornaments on them, go out of their way to make sure they don’t have gray hair. In the mountains, women and their daughters pass a day searching for gray hairs, which they pull out, so that even a woman in her sixties is white free. But they also, I’m told, have a problem with baldness. There comes a point when the hair doesn’t replace itself with any color.

Men tend to dress more like men at leisure. In Calcutta, overweight men with street lives wrap cloth like towels around their waist, wearing, I guess, nothing underneath and nothing on top. It’s a bit gross. They might throw on a long shirt if trying to impress or while unloading rice bags from a tall truck.. But there is a huge contingent of the business suit types, and the Nehru styles, and the white robed Ghandi style. In this heat, you want to get by wearing only what is cooling and comfortable. In many public places there are signs not to wash clothing in the pond, waterfall or river passing through. At the disparaging botanic garden in Calcutta, government owned huge plot of land where the world’s largest Banyan tree (250 years old, 1.8 kilometers diameter - it’s in the Guiness Book of World Records) can be seen. But everything else is a disaster, weed filled, and overgrown. In the tiny cactus pavilion, the barefoot caretaker, dressed only in a waist-wrapped blue and white check cloth, hung a line across one display so he might hang his wet clothes - which he must have just washed in the pond where the rare water lilies bloom, in spite of instructions at the gate, do not wash your clothing or utensils in the waters. But when you live on the street, you do what you have to do. So much of Calcutta lives on the street. It’s shocking to me, but probably not to them.

I’ve already described a security check that one goes through at the airport. (At my hotel, each time you enter from the street in the car, a policemen passes the mirror thing under your car to make sure there is nothing untoward hanging there. India is never safe from terrorism. Too many issues on the table.) But on the other hand, you don’t have to take off your shoes, you don’t have to take out or announce you have a laptop, and you don’t have to dump the water bottle. You do have to wait. Few of my flights in India have departed on time. It’s impossible to understand the announcer who is speaking in English about your flight. Grab a coffee and some chocolate because that’s about all you’ll get and don’t forget to identify your bags after you pass through security.

As peacocks shriek outside the windows, I will now slip into my cotton slippers, laid out for me on a silver and white bedside mat decorated with elephants, taste an Indian sweet treat a waiter brought for me, and pretend.

Photos: Shoes removed at Hindu temple; a rich Jain Temple, prepare to remove shoes on hot marble stairs; the automatic rickshaws; three mean trucks; Beggars line up for Hindu merchants handouts; The Rambagh Palace; A brightly dressed woman in the market; Another woman flower seller; the world's largest banyan tree (only a slice of it); shoes for sleeping.

Day of Miracles

2008-05-21T07:11:00.022+05:30

Another debt paid and what a milestone. I hope my children will be proud.
For years, I’ve known in my heart I had to visit Calcutta, India. I was full of trepidation thinking the city of 14 million would be so deformed by poverty and dirt that I wouldn’t be able to look out the window. This is the place of Mother Theresa, in the process of sainthood since her death near the same date as the death of Princess Diana. It was that tiny bent Albanian woman who had the courage and heart to walk among the most destitute of Calcutta, Hindus mostly, and bring them hope. She founded the Missionaries of Charity group of women - known for their white saris with blue trim and wearing sandals in the coldest of conditions. They now cover the world. These amazing sisters continue Mother Theresa’s work in this city beside a bustling Hindu temple and market dedicated to the goddess - one of thousands in the Hindu faith - Kali.

Why this obligation to get here? Years ago when I was newly ordained, I had communicated with Mother Theresa in hopes of making a donation to her work. She wrote me a small note - which I put in one of my Bibles and haven’t been able to find again since Uruguay. But then occurred her untimely death and I didn’t know what to do. I felt unworthy of the title given me in Montevideo as the Mother Theresa of Uruguay. Not true. So for more than twelve years I’ve carried in my heart this pledge to her, sometimes waking in the night because I knew I had to follow through. Ironically, God has been the tour guide on this long trip to Asia. With the closing of the Tibet border by China, two weeks of my trip were suspended. I told Jim I would like to know India, and especially Calcutta. So this was arranged. Yesterday, I fulfilled my promise to Mother Theresa.

When I arrived in Calcutta I was surprised at its landscape. Oh it’s huge, but there are enormous open parks, trees on every street rich or poor, and not so unclean and piercing to observe as you drive through streets filled with more yellow Ambassador taxis than taxis in New York City. This ex-capital of the British India is a city of wide streets, well preserved colorful buildings of colonialist style held over from the old days which my guide eagerly pointed out until I told him I’m not into British architecture. I’m interested in the people. There are black bronze statues of freedom fighters, heros and leaders of India many of who were assassinated: Ghandi, Indira Ghandi, his daughter assassinated by her own body guards in her own residence, Suryja Sea who was hanged by the British, and the less tragic Nehru. They stand on tall marble podiums and make amazing silhouettes. There is Asia’s largest cricket stadium (holds 95,000 people, which was to be filled today for an important match with Jaipur’s reigning team) and restaurants with names as Oh, Calcutta. There is the Royal Turf Club - a giant race track where horse races take place in the winter - and remainders of polo fields, since this is where polo began in India. Colorful buses with Victorian trim and awful rickshaws pack the city which is known as the Silicon Valley of India because of the major computer and technical companies centered here in Bengali territory. Bose sound systems were created by a Bengali who now lives in the US.

Finally here are Anglican churches, the cathedral of which I visited and had the privilege of meeting charming Archbishop Raju at his headquarters where he was properly dressed in shorts and a cotton striped shirt. One adjusts one’s life to the heat in India. Believe you me.

But people sleep on the streets, children snuggled up to their mothers on tiny blankets in the middle of the market places where odd thin men with painted faces and Shiek turbans look for a handout. Men live in a piece of cloth draped around their waist but no shoes, no shirt, no hat. There are street dogs, street cattle, and street people who’ve made for themselves sleeping quarters out of blue tents, sticks, rocks, and cardboard. In the early morning, these homeless people open their little booths to sell the many flowers (strings of mini hibiscus, tuber roses, marigolds, and other common flowers)to Hindu temple worshipers. My guide told me that Hindus don’t regularly go to the 600 temples in Calcutta to make offerings like those in Northern India, although they tie red and yellow strings to the holy trees to ask for a wish to be fulfilled. If it is, they sacrifice a lamb. Hindus have so many many gods and goddesses to appease, but they believe flowers are the best medium to reach God quickly. If have flower in one hand you will be blessed by God. Hmmm. The Garden Clubs might like to know that.

After arriving at the old British style Oberoi Grand Hotel, where Gerbera daisies float in every size bowl of water and the fragrance is overwhelming of jasmine, my guide swished me away to the Hospital of the Destitute and Dying, which is one of the labors of Mother Theresa’s heirs. When I walked through the door from the teeming street of well over 100 degree heat, I entered a cool oasis - fans going and windows allowing in some breeze. Two sisters were busily going about their work (they never have moist sweaty faces like the rest of us) and hardly noticed a new visitor. There were many American students volunteering that afternoon. Everything was open space - the men’s wing which houses 55, the women’s wing, also has 55 beds, and the foyer where a electric bicycle stood unused for the moment. (Men volunteers carry the dying gentlemen and hold one on the machine and actually push his legs to make sure he pushes the wheel a certain number of times.) In the middle is a huge wash room, which means concrete floors with drain (nothing ceramic or fancy, just all practical) and large plastic bowls where a group of Korean youth were washing the metal lunch plates and cups. This is also where the shifts and shirts of the patients are scrubbed with hard brushes and cleaned, then hung up to dry outside on the second floor next to the chapel.

Immediately, as I walked through the room of the women, their heads shaved, their bodies thinner than bone itself, a few reached out to me and acknowledged Namaste greetings with a faint smile and a touch of my head. My heart sunk to the floor. I knew I had to be here and God had made it emphatic. It’s been a long time since I was able to touch people at death’s door. It was a blessing in Uruguay. Now here I could smile, and embrace, and encourage even though the women didn’t speak English, only Hindu or their Indian dialects. Mother Theresa knew once a servant had been in this place, he or she found a new kind of spiritual urgency in life. So I asked permission to spend my one full day in Calcutta as a volunteer. I was sent to the administrative offices on another street to meet Sister Lysa from India and Sister Prema of Germany. By now I am sopping wet from the heat in my black t-shirt and skirt, but ironically, I don’t miss air condition, since now and then I grab a cool piece of air. I guess I could survive.

At the administration home, the life of Mother Theresa is preserved. Her few possessions are in protective display cases. There is a small museum, much like that at Ghandi’s last stand, where the life and sayings of Mother Theresa have been blown up on cardboard placards with photos of her. But more important, there is her tomb, a simple marble rectangle with marigolds scattered on top with the words: "Come Be My Light." She is always with her sisters of charity. She is always the inspiration where she needs to be that inspiration. Many come there to pray, removing their shoes because it is holy ground.

The sisters at the administrative side were extremely friendly. I was able to give them the donation debt and clean out my soul. They gave me one of the Mother of Miracles medallions which Mother Theresa often handed out. They told me I must go a few blocks down the shady street to the orphanage to get permission from Sister Karina to volunteer the next day. So I did. And I took home with me one of Mother Theresa’s prayers: O Most Kind Father of Us all, let me save at least one soul, One you already know.

At 5 in the morning, my guide took me for a brief float in a country boat (very primitive) on the holy Ghanges River. I expected to see floating dead animals and garbage, but where we put in, it was just coffee brown much like the Mississippi. I collected some of the sacred water in a tiny bottle much as I had done in Israel from the Jordan. Then we went to the narrow alleys of the Hindu temple to Kali next door to Mother Theresa’s hospital and strolled through the bustling market at 7 a.m. selling conch shell bangles, cheap plastic ones of every color and glitter, images of Hindu gods needing pleasing, red and gold napkins to carry offerings in, white sweets to make as offerings, and of course the endless flowers. Non Hindus cannot enter their temples.>

At 7:30 I was at the door of Mother Theresa’s domed hospital. The sisters were still at breakfast. A girl from Alabama who had been volunteering three weeks knew the ropes. There was not really any order. No one really tells you what to do. You just keep asking. We went to the upstairs chapel for a while and prayed. Then, proudly, I was able to put on the pink apron with the Mother Theresa Hospital logo. The work began with energy, as more and more volunteers arrived, mostly Americans from the Mid-West. First it was feeding the men and women on their beds. Some could not eat for the pain. Others were in semi-comas and had to be roused. Others were hungry and reaching out their hands. The hard part is not knowing their language to be able to comfort them with words, so I just tried to touch their hand or shoulder and say Namaste, to which they respond.

After breakfast, it was into the steamy wash room to help dry the aluminum plates. And after that, armed with a small bottle of cream, I was told to give cream massages to the arms and legs of those who wanted it. Their dark skin was soft and not full of white dry lines, a result of their getting these massages daily. It’s a way of soothing them. The novices in green checked aprons did most of the medical work. It was easy to tell the volunteers who had long term commitments (like months) and they were resources for what should I do now.

For a while, I felt I was more in the way than not. I kept a smile on my face and remembered what I had read from Mother Theresa: "Within me everything is icy cold. It is only that blind faith that carries me through. The smile is a big cloak which covers a multitudes of pains." Then one young woman with shaved head , voiceless and weak in a yellow gown, kept beckoning to me, pointing to her hip. She seemed to be suffering the ravages of AIDS. I don’t know. No one knows. But I sat down on her low bed and she pushed my hand to massage her hip (she was laying on her side.) So I slowly began to massage the area, she moved my hand to the right spot, and I kept this up for about a half an hour. It was this moment when she was able to sleep. My arms got stiff from the position, but my heart was flexible with "carinos."

The volunteers receive a tea break on the second floor opened area. I filled up on cold water. We talked about our missions. I was the oldest. And then it was time to fold the many many cotton shifts that dress the women each day. A boy from Spain who had been here a few weeks, showed me the routine. There seem to be so many shifts to fold. He explained sometimes three or four a day might be used for one woman she has diarrhea. (These are the same ones scrubbed and stamped with feet in the wash room earlier.) Then it was back to serving lunch and drying more plates until life calmed down and it was time to wash the floors with disinfectant. This is when the volunteer shifts change. I was worn out but asadly took off my pink apron and walked through the spaces one more time.

Thank you God for bringing me here. I have known the darkness to the worst degree on this long trip and now I’ve leaped into the light. So I leave you with these words from her daily dialogue with Jesus: "To leave that which I love and expose myself to new labors and sufferings which will be great.....but the voice kept saying, ‘Wilt Thou Refuse?"

Photos: Mother Theresa's tomb; Ambassador taxi; Ghandi statue; Colonialists architecture; these are pews in the Anglican Cathedral; sleeping on the streets; flower seller; cuke man; Mother Theresa's room; a rickshaw man; Trip on the Ganges River; Red and yellow string to make a Hindu wish; offerings offered; In the pink apron of a volunteer; the women's wing at the Hospital of the Destitute and Dying where I volunteered; a pink shrub at the Archbishop's house.

A Bit of Patience in the Indus Valley

2008-05-18T19:45:00.017+05:30

You think American airport security is a hassle, count your blessings.

Travel to problem areas in India is the ultimate in security stamps, frisks, and more stamps. When I flew to Leh, capital of the most northern tip of India, an area called Ladakh, which is on the border of Pakistan and Kashmir, both disturbance areas, I had the security experience of my life, even considering that everyone in this Indus Valley was cordial.

At 4 a.m. in New Delhi, the airport was already packed. Why so early? There are only three flights a day to this very dry, very rocky, very high (12,000 ft) area and the slightest overcast is considered bad weather - a pilot has to have had a good nights sleep to weave through these steep razor sharp mountains, mostly packed with snow and ice and to land in a suggestion of an opening with one long tongue of black airstrip and do it safely. As one agent said, it depends on the vigor or courage of the pilot. Some won’t fly if there is anything "iffy." Once I saw the air strip on one side of an enormous razor mountain, and the pilot had to swing around to the other side and come in easy, I realized it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. But, the runway needs repaving. It’s the military border patrol which is in charge of roads, airports, and general security.
It’s the security issue that greets you at the airport. First you check in before you get to the check in counter. You flash the paper with your reservation at the military guard in brown. Then the baggage to be checked goes through an X-ray machine and you go through a personal station to be checked. There are the men’s side and the women’s side behind curtains. (That always gets me - a female guard is waiting to give you a good frisk.) Then you get to check in with the airlines - Jet Airways - and you receive your boarding pass and luggage ticket. Then when the flight is called, you stand in line to go through security. This is the real thing. Your carry on and/or purse must have a special tag attached, a bag tag. When it goes through the security X-ray, you get a stamp at the other side. You go again through another personal security check - women on the women’s side with curtains - and you too get a stamp on your boarding pass. Now if that isn’t enough, then you must go to a special door and identify your checked luggage, still sitting on the baggage cart that will haul it to the airplane. When you eye ID it, you get another stamp. (No luggage will be put on the plane if you haven’t identified it on the baggage carrier outside.) Then, the flight is called. You show your boarding card to the military guard. You go through another personal security check and receive another stamp before you load on the bus that will take you to the plane. But you must also be approved by the soldier who makes sure you have all your stamps not only on your boarding pass, but on each carry on piece. So you get on the bus. And it takes you to the plane. When you get off the bus, you once again have to show all your stamps and your boarding pass to start up the steps to the plane. That fellow tears off part of the boarding pass. Then you get to the top of the steps and they check that you are who you are and you have seat number such n such. Of course, this kind of detail calls for big staff of young people who tediously do their job.

Once you are on Jet Airways, you can smell the spicy flavors of an Indian breakfast about to be served. Masala Dosa, Keerai Wada, Kanjivarram Mini Idli was on my menu and that means an Indian style rice pancake filled with spicy potatoes and chutney, crisp deep fried lentel dumplings with spinach, savoy steamed rice cakes with cashew nuts, tumeric and fresh coconut. And that’s breakfast. (There’s yoghurt, cornflakes and rolls too.) So flying in these parts might be enough to scuff up your patience , but it’s interesting. Can you imagine this kind of service on American airlines? Americans wouldn’t stand for the inconvenience.

So this was my introduction to Leh. The airport is run and operated by tall thin very very dark brown soldiers, many in army green turbans. They live in barracks painted with bright colored camouflage and the roads are stacked with military trucks and jeeps. There are also gaily painted trucks hauling food and goods across this part of the world. On the backs in large letters is painted BLOW HORN. I thought it was a brand of truck, but soon realized it was instructions to blow the horn if you want to pass. Most drivers spend most of their time driving with their hands on the horn, especially around these dead turns.

With all these people in an area called Old Tibet because it once was a part of Tibet, and still mocks it geographically, spiritually and politically. Ladakh is one cold, dry, treeless, high place. Rocks poise on mountain sides just waiting for a reason to slide down. The one major road is paved, but it’s one car width and the dare of who moves off the pavement first is ghastly. There’s not much room between one side and the devastating cliff on the other. I screamed a lot as we took one 40 mile drive to visit a palace which hangs high on a mountain and a monastery with a 1000 year old temple and three foot high images of the future Buddha (they believe in a Buddha coming again much like we believe Christ will come again) in a model town called Aschi. But in all of this zone called Ladakh, there is a politeness and modesty and desire to please and the people smile a lot as they show off their sacks of apricots for sale (how many ways can you dry an apricot? From coffee brown apricots still filled with their nut to bright yellow chips so hard you can suck on one for a day. Maybe it’s the exotic spices that burns your lips when you eat Indian food. Everything is displayed in sacks at the markets.

When you walk through markets, along with monks in maroon robes, shawls, t-shirts, beanies, and ochre yellow undergarments, there is a joy of faith in the people, who divert their walk to turn prayer wheels placed here and there on the street, or to walk to the left side of a chortan. There are other giant white chortans that require a breath-taking hike up high - remember the altitude is higher here than the Grand Teton of Wyoming - but the brightly colored artwork on them is worth the dizziness.

At one art enterprise in town which specialized in antique Buddhist artifacts, thongkas, jewelry (green turquoise and coral make up elaborate headdresses and necklaces once used by the Tibetan women in festivals) funny satin and silk hats that look like upside down vases, and others like Mongolian warriors with huge fur rims, and of course the never ending pashmina scarves - some embroidered, some printed, some with silk, some pure cashmere - and giant blankets of spangles and glitter made from parts of celebratory clothes, like necks and yokes. But what I learned anew is there is a diamond in the rough in Ladakh. It’s a world of its own - the fascinating Giks stone, a black and white agate which is found buried under tree roots, but in certain Asian markets is the most sought after rock anywhere. One about a centimeter long with two eyes can cost about 5000 dollars. One not much bigger, depending on the white stripes and eyes in it, can run up to 20,000 dollars. These rare pieces have questionable origin, are valuable because they are really old, and somehow have something to do with the state of the health of those who wear them.

There is more wealth in Leh in the Indus Valley than appears but new hotels are being built with elaborate Buddhist decorations, made of stones and wooden windows, and inviting the ever growing tourist to trek through its mountains. Here one crosses the Ganges, the holy river which is the lifeblood of all of India. All rivers flow into the Ganges. Here in Ladakh, it’s in its pure form. But when one gets to Calcutta, the garbage, debris and dead things floating in it begins to lessen its beauty. I’ll be there tomorrow.

Photos: Future Buddha covered in Katas; View of Ladakh mountains from dirty plane window; another view; donkeys have it cool; clouds over Leh; military trucks in a row on a single lane road; woman with her personal prayer wheel; road chortans; almond man; climbing to a high chorten; monks in the market; valuable Giks stones; street ware including Tibetan hats; detail of a high chorten; an extreme palace, now pretty much abandoned.

An Unsuspected Pilgrimage

2008-05-18T17:41:00.009+05:30

I made a pilgrimage unawares and it left me in an agitated silence among the incense smells of Indian tourists curiouser than even this foreigner. On the first day in New Delhi, I was taken to the palatial Birla House on Albuquerque Road to touch the place where the great man of peace, Mahatma Ghandi, was assassinated. I was overwhelmed by the simplicity of this man who stirred up his people in the face of the colonialists to open the doors to independence. I had learned about him in my youth like many Americans through the Ben Kingsley interpretation in the movie Ghandi. Now I was here where he had been. It was a parallel emotion one has standing before that disruptive balcony at the Lorraine Motel to remember another great man lost too soon, too cruelly, to ridiculous bullets in another inexplicable act. Two pacifists both of whom sensed that their ends were imminent, their work done, although it was really the beginning of their struggles for freedom.
We pulled away from the luxuries of the Oberoi Hotel with its choice of bed pillow fillings into 104 degree heat of a morning to parade through the many giant dome shaped pink mausoleums - mini Taj Mahals - maharanis built to honor their maharajas and also to be their final resting places with large cells for everybody in the family. We struck up deep steps of Humayun’s tomb to see undecorated tomb rooms and walk through water flow strips and stand beside the holy Peepah tree. It was enough to work up a sweat. Throw the shawl over your exposed arms. The Peepah tree, according to our guide, is where Vishnu, Shiva and Brahman hang out, a trinity of generator, organizer and destroyer from which the rest of the Hindu gods were reincarnated.
This reincarnation idea is quite a handful. They look at the end as not being the end because you can come back in a better way - or a worse hell, depending on how you behaved in your most recent appearance on this planet. On the negative side, you’d come back an animal. On the positive, you might come back as an auxiliary god, or at least that’s what it seems to me. Everyone wants to be remembered by their Karma, the good deeds one manages to do in his time span of life. Hindus feel if you are born into poverty, it’s because of previous bad deeds or such deeds in a previous life. But regardless, just keep on working, give your best to the world, (I guess that means to accept your fate) and don’t think of the consequences because it won’t taint your love, rather it’ll come back to you good, like giving to the poor. Hindus are active coin droppers in the hands of beggars and lesser casts. Kids sell whatever between cars, banging on windows, trying to get your attention, and you don’t want to look because one might hold up an arm without a hand. But as I try to ignore, I cannot because I know Ghandi would have reached out his hand without a rubber glove to protect him from disease to give hope.
Ghandi was shot by a Hindu fanatic January 30, 1948. At Birla House, where he lived the last 144 days of his life in not wonderful health, a tourist or a pilgrim walks through the simple white and brown room where he once found peace and sleep. His wooden spinning machine sits at the end of the floor mattress where he slept, a giant barrel pillow still rests against the wall. A rectangle of brown weaving rests on the edge. Then on a table are his prayer beads, and the statues of three monkeys Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil. How odd. His walking stick and frail spectacles, his "chappals" or sandals, really his few possessions, are left as they were on the day of his death. His library of books was in another corner, but you can’t really stay there and absorb the grief, because Ghandi, like Martin Luther King Jr., was a man of his time and yet before his time. Throughout this small museum are giant placards on which photographs and descriptions of the last 24 hours of his life are detailed. It’s hard to stand and read them. They turn the intestine because you know what is coming. In another room are dolls in large glass boxes depicting the major moments in Ghandi’s life, including his meeting with British King at Buckingham Palace on English shores.
Ghandi gave no excuses, knowing he had maybe gone as far as he could go, he had stood on the mountain top like Rev. King had done, and knew it was to be vacated abruptly. Ghandi said: "My life has been an open book. I have no secrets and I encourage no secrets." On this last day, his two young nieces accompanied him, helping his rather fragile movements, as he met his meetings for that day, prayed with those needing prayer, and wrapped the white cloth around him as the afternoon breeze began to wear down the sun. "My goal is friendship with the world. I can combine the greatest opposition to wrong." As the day’s heat waned, he walked with the two young girls to an area where he would hold an afternoon prayer meeting - there are concrete footprints of his exact steps, and a marker where he saw the assassin raise the gun from his own underarm to shoot him. Ghandi’s last words were, "Hey Ram!" or "Oh God."
We tried to pick ourselves up with a stop at the Crafts Museum, an oasis of thatched huts and buildings to sample native crafts, but the heat is so invasive, there were few craftsmen peddling wares. I was fascinated by paintings on palm leaves with secret Kama Sutra flaps to lift up, extraordinary textiles to stir the most reluctant fiber artist and there was fine metalwork Calder style, and intricate Mogul woodwork in a jharokha - two story balcony like I had seen in Kathmandu. I couldn’t figure out, though, a giant black wooden structure on wheels - maybe three stories tall - looking like a suspect Trojan horse. I couldn’t find data in English. This museum had endless entertainment as you strolled from house to room to upstairs to patio and even then I missed a lot of it.
Photos: Sue and I wonder who'll make one of these for us; A Hindu woman of the mausoleum; the grass collector; Standing by the Peepah tree; Ghandi's last day things; the obelisk marking Ghandi's assassination; metal horses huddle at the crafts museum; Sue testing wooden tigers.

Religion to Maharajas

2008-05-15T09:44:00.009+05:30

From poverty of religion to the gold and silk jewels of maharajas, from an ambiance of Namaste bows, dahl, red and ochre robes, shaved heads, flat chapati, marigold leis and Tibetan protests, to the swift brush of international business men in steam heat, dragon fruit, and a choice of pillow stuffing so you sleep like a princess, from narrow roads curling worse than a frizzy permanent to wide, flat fingers leading to roundabouts and orderliness, from Dhamshala to New Delhi is a million miles, it seems. It’s pure culture shock, maybe a relief.
We are now well footed in India, home of Vishnu and red tikka powder, textiles and turbans of colors to identify casts, mosques and red forts, prayer wheels and taxi boats, Jaines who wear giant clown-like shoes so they won’t kill any ant or bug when they walk on the streets, natural gas in taxi tanks, mean monastery murals of ugly protectors, maharani palaces and polo fields, painted elephants, rock art architecture, holy cows, yellow mangos and Ballywood, and where houses of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian (always painted white) faith work side by side.
Our first morning back in New Delhi was enigmatic. The weather reported sunny and hot - 104 degrees for the day - but as we waited for our mourning tour in the exotic Oberoi Hotel, suddenly tornadic winds blew up with such insistence and fright that the frangipani trees blew flat while doormen in red turbans and white suits hustled people through the glass doors. From where did this come? Out of a polluted dark morning sky. All we could think of was Myramar’s cyclone, China’s earthquake, and the rushing rain squeezed under giant glass and bronze doors while the pool water rose up in a dance. Ironically, I had made the comment, jesting, of course, at least we have electricity in this hotel, one of the best in the world, according to travel journals. Seems that every hotel, lodge, rest house I’ve slept in these past six weeks had an electrical issue. There wasn’t energy to charge laptops, cameras, to read, or just to see by. Electricity was never a sure thing, even at the nice Yak and Yeti Hotel in Kathmandu where lights went off four or five times a day and you prayed you weren’t in the elevator. Surely, I had said with confidence, there was plenty of lectrecity here in high class New Delhi where major hotel’s stand high above flowering trees with sort of a Las Vegas vision. Well, the storm hit, the giant crystal chandeliers flickered and lo and behold, out went the lights - for a minute, until the back up system kicked in but enough to make me shiver. What is it about me and the lights? I’m just tired of darkness.
Our final day in Dharmshala gave an opportunity to meet, instead of the Dalai Lama, one of his highly respected advisor and spiritual minister of the exiled government of Tibet. He is a Rimpoche or teacher, 88 years old, who has the Dalai Lama’s ear and friendship. In 1959 they fled the Dalai Lama’s Potala (palace) in Lhasa (it looks like the setting for the old movie Shangri-la) together on horseback across the Himalayas, with CIA covertly accompanying them and US army helicopters hovering overhead for protection. Monks and holy men really have titles, but not personal names. In Tibet and Nepal, most people are named for the day of the week they are born, so repetition is a constant. But Buddhist monks and lamas toss aside their family ids. The Rimpoche, considered a god in Korea and Taiwan, lives on the down wind side of a small hotel patronized by white American hippie hangovers in sandals and dreadlocks butt-long. We climbed the many stairs to the balcony of his reception room overlooking another side of Dharmshala. Pelargonium and petunias were planted in pots along one side. We removed our shoes in the attitude of respect, and met a translator who would accompany us because the Rimpoche doesn’t speak English. We carried gold and white katas and a velvet bag with Episcopal prayer beads made by Suzanne Hensley of Memphis, which I had brought as a gift for the Dalai Lama.
Our guide explained the disappointments of our trip - the closing of the Tibetan border, the cancellation of the Dalai Lama’s audiences, and asked if he could become the bearer of this gift to the Dalai Lama, which he seemed to agree upon. When the rimpoche learned of my work with juvenile delinquents, he asked us to sit a while on the floor mats - one tries not let your feet point at anyone or anything holy - and he gave a teaching to me about broken families, kids on drugs and showing love. Our worlds are similar, even that of the great Buddhist teachers in a corner of life where the Dalai Lama’s holy tongue is worshiped. Every breath the Lama takes seems to be scripted into a book.
We had an extraordinary chance to watch monks making a sand mandala in the Lama’s temple. No photographs allowed, but they build a mandala about four foot square out of grains of sand, rubbing one grain at a time to get the right formation and color. After such complicated labor, the mandala might sit for a few days, if a wind doesn’t come along and blow it away, or someone mistakenly put their hands in it. We then visited the Tibetan Museum on the Dalai Lama’s property. It is a small place reeking with the story of injustice, of abuse and slaughter by the Chinese Revolutionaries during Mao’s days, how Tibetan culture and life was ripped from them, 600 art filled monasteries were destroyed, (the Chinese used them for toilets and for animal shelter), and have continue to make every effort to wipe out the Tibetan national identity which stays alive in a flicker of light, thanks to India, Nepal, and other centers for refuge for Tibetans. I immediately thought of our Civil Rights Museum, the struggle of our African American friends through slavery and as well the Holocaust museum inh Jerusalem which keeps lights aglo for the millions of Jews annihilated by Hitler in World War II. These tragedies shout some lesson about human nature that the non-persecuted ones need to take up to preserve and protect the innocent. And the rule of the roads in India, I learned, is "Good luck, Good Horn, and Good breaks."
We are currently back in cosmopolitan New Delhi and a Thai massage was on tap. The Thai lady crawled up my back on her knees and tore at my tired muscles as if they’d never been stretched before. Ow, ooh, ouch- but she did it was such calm and peace about her, saying softly, Is my pressure sufficient? What could I say.
We spent the delayed morning in the Lotus shop, four stories of fine carpets (everyone wants to seel you carpets), jewelry (colored stones from India are high on many lists), and a floor of saris and punjabs (pajama pants with tunic tops), every kind of pashmina scarf, and embroidered jacket one could imagine. It’s a woman’s world of grace and beauty, silk and spangles, beads and gentility, where we westerners look out of place and yet.....we have to try one on, wrap ourselves in six meters of fine silk of extraordinary color combinations and softness and wish – where in the world could I wear that in Memphis? Sigh. One has to learn about the underskirt that is hidden, and pleating and tucking in the acres of fabric so it fits elegantly and won’t pull out, and then the blouse is made to your size - there’s always extra fabric spangled and beaded as well just for the blouse - and you decide if you want your mid-life crisis roll to show or if it should cover to the waist. The comfort zone is that women wear flat sandals, likewise highly beaded
Today we hope to visit art museums, monuments, the eternal flame at the spot where Ghandi was assassinated, and try a Balinese oil massage. Tomorrow we are back to primitive living, taking off in a small plane for Leh in Laddoch, which is considered Old Tibet and is nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. No more guaranteed electricity or flushing toilets for a couple of days.
Photos: Dragon fruit; breakfast at the Oberoi; Rimpoche and a deacon; Oberoi flower arrangement; how's this for a lap pool? Sue tries a sari while Jim looks at price tag.

The Dalai Lama Downer

2008-05-13T18:57:00.009+05:30

When the Dalai Lama speaks, everyone listens.
In Dharmshala, India, where his exile government has existed for fifty years, his kingdom nestles in steep mountains covered in pines and oaks, monkeys, roaming cow, and white tourist vehicles. A horn beep accompanies you everywhere as you hold your breath on precarious turns. Simple buildings cling to the cliffs and a single narrow hairpin road leads from lower Dharmshala to upper Dharmshala better known as Mcloudgunge and it is at about 6000 feet high. Along the road are signs with such placards as "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," "Birds choke on polythene, save their lives", "Divinity is in nature", "Nature is not a place to visit, it is our home," "Protect our wildlife, they give us peace and love," and my favorite: " To see right and not to do is cowardice."
In the deepest pine woods, we pass the Church of St. John in the Wilderness, the only structure that was left standing after a serious earthquake in the 19th century. Here is a monument to Lord Elgin, British Viceroy of India in the mid 1800s, and to James Bruce who was a popular British ambassador in Asia. I stop in for a prayer and a stroll through something familiar though unkempt.
There is a 24-7 television channel into which one can tune to watch/receive the abundant blessings the Dalai Lama wishes for his people. His elaborate days of blessings packed with Tibetans, shaved headed monks and body guards, with a few Westerners observing, are full of color, musical notes, and chanting. So many gifts are brought to the Dalai Lama be it kata or yak butter candles or other personal donations from his people, that it takes hours to pass everything before him for his blessing. He is adored and worshiped. But these television records seem to be from better times. The Dalai Lama, who is in his seventies, is such a superstar in both the political and celebrity world, that he has of late withdrawn from so many public appearances. His life has been threatened and the fight to save Tibet for the Tibetans has taken its toll. When he moves down the mountains, he is followed by ten to twenty vehicles of guards and police. His private Deccan plane, bullet proofed, was donated by Germany and rests at the tiny airport. He is only in residency about 12 per cent of the year. Otherwise, for tourist and officials, here is only one commercial flight a day from New Delhi.
Our scheduled audience with the Dalai Lama, as well as that of an Indian minister ,who arrived in Dharmshala on the same plane as ours, were abruptly canceled. Although his web site said the Dalai Lama was to be in Dharmshala these two or three days, we were told that for safety sake, no one really knows where he is most of the time. He is leaving for Germany for talks about the China-Tibet situation. It was a great disappointment for me but then who am I but a minor American.
So we spent the day seeing exiled Tibetan holy life in Dharmshala. Over fifty years, the Tibetan monks have tried to re-create the ambiance of Lhasha, which was the headquarters of the Dalai Lama in Tibet, with his well known palace that spread across the mountains, his many temples and giant gold statues of Buddha, with Thankas (religious paintings), with wide holy seats or thrones for the Dalai Lama (on which he sits cross legged yoga style) which he uses for periodic teachings to his people, and with many many cells for monks in training at monasteries. At the monastery attached to the home of the Dalai Lama, the highest levels of study are pursued. Here Buddhist intellectuals are created. It takes 18 years to receive the master designation, and 21 years to become a Geshi Lama, as our friend from Pangboche, Nepal, had obtained. It is a major commitment for these young men to give their lives to such study and discipline. Some women shave their heads and become monks as well. (I was put off by the many Americans roaming the streets in Indian dress, dread locks hanging down their backs, and attempting to be Buddhists. None that I saw had attained the red and ochre costumes. But it looks like left-over hippie days. )
Currently there are 1100 student monks, four to a room, with more facilities being built as fast as possible at the Karmapa monastery. The Karmapa lama is suspect by many Tibetans because he was appointed by Chinese authorities, and so they believe he is a spy for the Chinese government. But his monastery is in demand for its teaching.
Another shining stars in this rather transient but busy area is an oasis of waterfalls, gardens, and creative arts called Norbulingka or Jewel Park. In an effort to prevent Tibetan culture from disappearing, this place preserves Tibetan heritage. It treasures and promotes the artistic traditions of sculpture in wood, gold or silver, thangka painting and even fashion designs, all of which can be purchased in a first class shop on the premises. There is a doll museum which displays the many styles of traditional dress of the Tibetans in scenes of daily life and dance. Prayer flags hang throughout this quiet place of stone steps and strange water runs. In high studios, thangka paintings are being produced with discipline. One artist had spent eight months on a holy thangka of the god of compassion who has a thousand arms and legs. He works with tiny paint brushes with one or two hairs to do his work.

Although I’m disappointed to have come so far and not been able to do the Mt. Kailash pilgrimage nor meet the Dalai Lama - and present him with a set of Episcopalian prayer beads - I have learned much about the pain of the Tibetan people. They are in constant protest to be set free from China's domination. Last night there was a candlelight vigil passing under my windows led by chanting monks. Tibetans who have settled in this Indian enclave can only have jobs making and merchandising their own traditional crafts. They cannot occupy other jobs that might rob Indians of their jobs. So the Tibetans set up stalls on the narrow streets to sell their blankets, beads, and cheap statuary.
There are three Tandric Buddhist sects in exile here, distinguishable by their holy hats during ceremony. The Dalai Lama is the supreme leader of the Gylupa sect, and wears the yellow hat. The oldest sect is Ningmapa, which is symbolized by a red hat; and the Kargu shows a black hat.
Posters at gates to temples blatantly show the bodies of Tibetans who have been tortured and killed by the Chinese in their homeland. Others protest the disappearance of the Pashan, a young holy child. I asked if Buddhists were cremated at death, and received the affirmative. But in Tibet, which is treeless, a giant dessert where the ground is frozen most of the year, there is no underground burial nor cremation since there is no wood. There exists sky burial. The body lies in state five to seven days. It is considered a vessel that has served its purpose. It is taken to a special site after being shrouded and bloodletted. Then it is cut up into parts and fed to the birds, frantically waiting for their next meal.
To tap off the day, we were taken to a sweet shop - it’s really just a display case in the middle of the bustling street. Indian sweets are elaborate, the best being those called "barfee". An odd name. The sweets are made by boiling milk, so they have a rather sour taste, and are only super sweet when soaked in syrup. They go well with the local valley tea, Kangra green tea.

Photos: Arrival at Dharmshala, India, home of the Dalai Lama; yellow protest flags on the entrance gates to the Dalai Lama compound; The Dalai Lama's kingdom in India; in the temple with the gold Buddha and the Dalai Lama's holy chair for teaching; monks listening to prayers at Karnapa Monastery; An artist works eight months on a thangka of the god of compassion; There always seems to be a protest march; barfee or sweets made from boiled milk.

Pardon Me, A Little Luxury

2008-05-11T09:57:00.004+05:30

At 6:30 in the morning in Kathmandu, Nima, his daughter, Jeeba the agent, Karen and Brad joined us for early papaya and roti at the Yak & Yeti Hotel to say goodbye. We were ringed with kata (scarves) and Nima presented me with too many gifts - lovely wool blankets, banners of Buddhist images, and a white kata. To leave the care of the Sherpa people is tough. For a deacon, it was the extraordinary part of the past month.
Kathmandu airport is still old style: get on a bus, rolling out to the plane, lug the carryons up wobbly stairs. But Jet Air, a private Indian airlines, is quite swift and clean, although we spent an hour sitting on a non-busy runway and we could smell an amazing breakfast waiting to be served. I had ordered semolina and a sandwich of lentils and cheese or something similar. What Jim pointed out to me was those red and green things were chilli, which I found out the hard way. And there went breakfast. He said, don’t forget where you are now. India is the land of spicy foods.
New Delhi is a surprise. I had visions of beggars and legless people on the sidewalks, but it is way beyond that. The people are extremely cosmopolitan. The streets are wide, paved, smooth, and without potholes. Three-wheeled green and yellow taxis stop for passengers lined up at stops, but we wove our way through gorgeous trees - flame tree and frangipanis - and then gardens around huge pink and yellow estates to this tall and exotic Taj Hotel. Finally, a place I can brush my teeth without using bottled water. Yea. It’s a very India type of hotel. Huge red and gold panels of embroidered fabric on the wall, marble decor in the Mongol style. Employees like rich icing on a party cake, with impeccable manners, desire to serve you. None of the rudeness and hands out for tip thing that we get in the USA. I immediately headed for an afternoon at the spa to get my body back. My skin was dry, my face a wrinkled canyon, and I needed rejuvenation. The Spa was in the low flower of this tall hotel, and as I laid there being pummeled by the Indian masseuse, I began to wonder what would happen if the lights went out. You remember in Kathmandu, the lights went out three or four times a day or there were no lights at all. The last night in Kathmandu, we had gone in the rain (finally pollution-clearing rain) to the home of Jeta, one of our Sherpa leaders, for dinner. We met his daughters who were young, giggly and spoke English. Then Jeta and Suka (his cousin) placed on the table an endless meal of French fries, grilled corn kernals (delicious - they are taken off of horse-corn, then grilled in oil), potato chips, spicy chicken chunks, the famous Dahl, and homemade rice beer. We had brought a fruit torte for dessert, But the lights went out about half way through the dinner, and quickly Jeta came up with battery lights so we could see. I’m telling you when it is dark in Kathmandu, it’s dark. There is nothing but blackness to look at. Once again we were covered in "katas" when we loaded into a taxi willing to take us back to the hotel. We bid farewell to a strong and generous people.
So how do I feel now that I’m out of Nepal? First, I must be honest. I admire Hillary Clinton’s staying power. It’s hard when people let you think you have no chance to accomplish your goal. During the long days of my painful struggle to get to Base Camp, even some of the Sherpas didn’t think I would make it pass Namche Bazaar. They told me yesterday. I had moments when I didn’t want to make it myself. Too much agony. But Jim, the principle guide and encourager, saw that in the morning I had new energy even though in the afternoons I was close to death - and so each day we set out to see what could be done. He is the one who reaches down into your spirit and pulls out what he thinks you want to have pulled out. He knew how important hanging those flags was to me. So we didn’t stop, turn around, back down, or give up. And look, we were winners. When things are looking their darkest, there is always some light to cling to.
Today must be Pentecost Sunday since next Sunday is Trinity Sunday in the Episcopal Church. Today is a red day, next Sunday back to green. I’ve been asked what I think about the Trinity after these head-knocks with Buddhism and Hinduism. I must admit, I’ve always curious who I'm supposed to pray to - God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit. I think this is an interesting dilemma. Mostly I pray to God the Father because He Is. And if He is, He is not just ours but everybody’s and This I do believe. Whatever your faith, we are all seeking the Master, who is God, and some sort of heaven to which our souls/spirits transcend at death and some reason for having been here for a lifetime. After watching the Hindu cremations, I realized, although I already realized, how wasteful is the body and how powerful the spirit/soul. I love Jesus, wish I could be like Him, and believe that as deacons our calling is to do just that - Pass Jesus onto the poor, hungry, homeless, tragic, imprisoned, devastated people. We are to love those most difficult to love, even those who do not love us. We are the passer oners, Jesus being the light in our hearts and the hope of our souls. The Holy Spirit is in the Wind - thus I cottoned to the idea of prayer flags I so proudly hung from our Memphis folk. I know the Holy Spirit is our conscience and speaks to us.
It's odd how the charismatic version of Anglicanism-Episcopalian is so into the Holy Spirit - and the waving of hands and the getting slain in the spirit and falling out - all that rather dramatic stuff that turns me off. It was strong in my Uruguayan church, but not really brought up in the Memphis diocese. I love to stand in the wind and feel the Spirit blowing through. But neither Jesus nor the Holy Spirit stand alone because they are aspects of our God. It all works for me, the Trinity. It seems much more solid than the Buddhist waiting to find out who the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama is going to be, and there are lots of Lamas (teachers) one no more powerful than the other, as I understand, who sit crosslegged and wrap in maroon and golden robes and pray from their books and drink yak butter tea. It's fascinating. The blessings the Buddhist people share with us is amazing. You wouldn't believe all the gifts I was given - the "kata"s (the gold and white scarves - I must have 15 of them in my suitcase) for good luck and safe travel; the carpets given by the Lama, the blankets and yak tails and just anything that is of the Sherpa lifestyle. It was embarrassing to me, not a good one for receiving.
Hindus, I don't know. It's a lot wierder. After greeting everyone with Namaste in Nepal, here in Hinduist India, you don’t. It’s plain old English "hello". In some areas the word "jule" is used for hello, goodbye, thank you, etc. But that’s not particularly Hindu. All those strange figures with multi arms and multi legs, and bulls and elephants, and so forth aren’t very inviting. I don't mind the animals being smudged with red or yellow dots powders as are the people, and they do use prayer beads. I'm sure their Nirvana and Enlightenment (Buddhism) are on the same train as our hoping to get to Heaven. But I feel such comfort in our One Solid God and when I am exhausted and crying I just start in on the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary because they are on the tip of my tongue always. I don't have to remember anything but that and I pray and pray until I find a peace. When I was out there pushing the next foot up on the next scarey boulder, all I thought about was GOD. Please Help me, give me strength. Don’t let me let anyone down. And that was the same when I was in the radiation room fighting breast cancer, holding my prayer beads and feeling a strange peace around me.

Photos: 1) We're in India At Last. 2) Jeta's girls with the fruit torte. 3) Hindu holy bowls made of a kind of magnolia leaf.

Various Kinds of Dying

2008-05-09T16:51:00.007+05:30

We were booked on the first flight out of Lukla at 8 in the morning, but really we were about the 8th flight because once the clouds cracked open at dawn (and we breathed a sigh of relief that the fog had gone) the charter flights from Kathmandu began to arrive, unload, reload, and fly off again to Kathmandu for the second load. There were about six of those charter flights. We hoofed it up another incline just to get to the airport, mind you, with our porters still lugging our bags on their backs. Our boarding passes had a 2 stamped on them which meant we were on the second of the returning flights from Kathmandu, second shift. It’s the weirdest flight arrangement I’ve experienced. One has to shut the eyes, ears and seat belt and just pray that the 18 others crammed into jump seats with their body sized backpacks in their laps don’t burst into a frenzy. We are tightly packed and the door to the pilot’s seat (we had a female pilot) is always opened so you can see their arms pushing and pulling on the handles hanging from the roof. We crest the steep mountains and hills under our belly, flying at about 15,000 feet, which is lower than the high to which we had trekked a few days before. Trusting God, I realized as I smelled gasoline, was the best fuel to get one to the destination safely.
It was, amazingly, a relief to get back to Kathmandu. Our group posed with Jeema, the Nepali travel guy who meets us and takes care of the particulars, for photos as we all loaded into a huge van, one wider than most of the streets we would have to pass. One had to laugh at the cows laying down in the middle of the main drag. You have to go around them. They are holy. Bright violet jacaranda trees are in full bloom, and bougainvilla lazily crawls up and over just about anything in a city not very popular for trees.
This Thursday was one of piling up laundry, reviewing what was in the bags that had been stored at the Yak and Yeti Hotel, and doing some last minute shopping. We invited Nima Sherpa to bring his three children, who live in Kathmandu to get their education, and also another Sherpa friend with his wife and the girlfriend of another of Jim’s Sherpas who is currently waiting at base camp for the summit date for Everest, and Jeta and Suka for dinner at a place where we knew we could get ice cream. It was a Nepali dinner - which means be cautious because most everything, including potatoes, is overspiced and overhot. But we celebrated the end of the trek with black orange and butterscotch ice cream. This night was the first time in almost three weeks I have slept in real sheets and with CNN humming in the background. I didn’t want night to end but at 5:30 my personal alarm clock always rings, for some reason.
Today, Friday, I had one more site to see. Kathmandu is famous for it’s Hindu crematorium. When you arrive at the airport and enter the city you pass by the funnels of smoke emitted by dead bodies being cremated. Now this really was a trip out of my mind-set. Krishna, the older guide who had taken me around before, led the taxi driver (who had to hit the motor with a rock to get it started) to the most holy of Hindu Temples, resting all along a static river, called Parshu Pati Nats, which is another name for Shiva, also known as Gouri or Parvati. This place is the biggest in the kingdom and is a favorite of the caramel colored monkeys. The property is fenced in because in a small forest there are also deer. Primarily, among all the many temples honoring Shiva - the major one being centered around a giant golden bull looking like a Botero sculpture no tourist allowed so all we see is this giant gold rear end of the bull through ornate gates - is the site of Hindu cremation. Along this filthy river where flowers, food, monkeys, dead ashes and burned wood float, among other things, there are concrete platforms on which dead Hindu bodies are burned up on pyres. As I arrived, there was one such ceremony almost finished and another just beginning. The family brings the dead body wrapped in a bright yellow fabric - although you can see the feet - to the pyre, first walking around three times before setting it so the head is at the south end. The holy priest in a white shorts and top kind of outfit bustles around laying on wood and sticks, pouring holy oil over the face and then the family members do likewise, then finally putting a mixture of what Hindus consider five types of nectar in the dead mouth: honey, ghee, holy water from the Ganges, sugar and yoghurt. Then the eldest son lights the fire. Can you imagine? Women are to be left at home. They don’t participate, although there is a sort of sanctum further away where they might congregate, but burial is a man’s thing.
The immediate male members must shave their heads and the entire family must wear white for 13 days after the death until they are purified. If someone dies at 5 p.m. today, they are immediately taken to the crematorium and the ceremony begins. (There’s a hospice on the grounds to make the transfer more convenient.) There is also here a special area where family mourners must live for those thirteen days, then they can return to their office job. They cannot touch anyone during that period and eat only one vegetarian meal a day. Sometimes the immediate family will wear white one year - if you see someone with white shoes, white dress and white cap, they are in that process. This is only the intimate family, not relatives in general. In three or four hours, the body, yellow marigold strewn across the corpse and then covered with the hard wood, has burned. Then the shaven headed sons who stand around and wait for it to end are in charge of pushing with a wooden rake the remaining burned wood and ashes into the holy river below. Alas, it was hard to experience. It really speaks of how transient life is and how unimportant the body is. After all we Westerners do to get in shape, imagine being burned and pushed into a rather dirty river. The water does not flow.
The colorful sellers of holy items surround the temple area: strings to be blessed and tied around a wrist or neck, rosary beads galore, huge boxes of powdered colored rocks which are used for blessings, and the rare rudraksha prayer beads (honestly they look like walnuts), that can be quite expensive. There is a whole hierarchy of rudraksha beads that come from trees in Nepal and Tibet and are used in both Hindu and Buddhist religions. There are 21 types of rudraksha valued for the faces or facets in each, which can be one faceted to fourteen faceted, the rarest. The holy men say that each bead has a dark line or mukhi. If a person wishes to adopt one, they have to wash it with cow’s milk and gangajal while saying the mantra "Om Namah Shivay" on a Monday. There are rare ones joined together naturally containing the power of Lord Shiva and Parvati - it helps to improve financial problems, so it might come in handy for me at the end of this trip. A faceless one is the most powerful. Rudraksha come in sizes from a grain of wheat to that of a ping-pong ball, but the smaller is more powerful. Primarily these are the rosary beads of the Asian religions.

Photos: We are the champions, back in Kathmandu. 2) Nima, my Sherpa, and three of his children. 3) Hindu nuns. 4) Shiva's Temple from the bull butt view (non Hindus not allowed in.)
5) Burning Hindu. 6) It's done. 7) Holy men hanging out. 8) Powdered rock to smear on forehead or on statues.

Commercial Appeal Travel Blog

2008-05-08T02:58:00.002+05:30

A new post is up: "Our flags fly!"

Trekking Is High, Not a High for This Deacon

2008-05-07T20:48:00.012+05:30

The morning started with the pounding of drums, clashing of symbols and tooting of deep horns. A Puja blessing was in process in the very elegantly decorated puja room on the top floor of Lhakpa’s house. We had special invitation to watch and sample the yak butter tea served in silver containers and the fried sweet dough. The monks were not disturbed by our presence. It was a fitting farewell for our time at Namche Bazar. Lhakpa draped our necks with golden katas.

They said the trip from Namche Bazar, so far my favorite place, to Phakding is all descent. The claim is correct. I took a few Ibuprofens just in case so my knees would hold out. There is not much to stop you from rolling off a cliff as you come around a switchback full of loose dirt and gravel. And then whoever built these paths throw before you a couple dozen horrid stone steps that take a geologist to figure out which rock to step on and not lose balance. There were too many trekkers going both directions this day. The descent on tap was at least 7 hours and besides that, there were more and more of those swinging bridges which you had to muscle yourself across before the Yaks took over. All the while below raged the river carrying glacier melt down to the more populated areas of Nepal. Once you get close to the river, its roar follows you like tintinitus in the ear.

Of course, by noon time when we stop for the usual Snickers and Sprite snack, rain has started making everything slippery. We dig in the backpacks (this is why backpacks are invaluable) and put on the rain jacket over the fleece and whatever number of layers you are padded with, pull the hood around your head and leave the cap bill out for the rain to drip off of. I want to break down into hollow cries. I’m already burdened with bronchitis and now I’ve got to walk two more hours in this mess. The people traffic doesn’t wane a bit, and porters pull giant plastic hoods over themselves and their load. Life keeps on going without a blink. I keep on trying to get the right step and not lose breathe when I start the upward climbs, which are always there somewhere in order to give you a reason to scuttle back down again. We cross so many of those long shaking bridges - I really get out of breath on those - and a few doubtful wooden ones. I keep telling myself, everyone else made it across, why not me. Once the river had broken down the crossing bridge and our porters with Jeta and Suka, got in the water and lifted big stones and boulders to try to build a stepping stone exit not just for us but for everyone. There was a definite drama at the river.

This night, so much further down in altitude, I slept well for the first time, or else I was just exhausted. I was up early because at last we had reached the final day of this branch of my itinerary. Breakfast at this rather dumpy lodge was not good. The toast was like South African Hard Tack and they were out of butter. Remember we’ve had no juice or fruit in more than two weeks. I keep dreaming of papaya at the Yak and Yeti Hotel in Kathmandu.

Today, whatever day it is, is the final hike all the way back up to Lukla at about 9000 feet. That’s the airport village, where tiny planes take off going downhill on the runway. Below them at the end is only a deep gulch of a valley and giant mountains all around. These flights are only scheduled for the morning time when the sky normally is clear. I had walked hard and fast because I’m ready to call this trekking done with. I took only one rest stop to get a Sprite and Snickers, and then kept pushing with my two Sherpas at my elbows. It wasn’t that bad of a haul but took about three and a half hours. I sort of amazed myself that I my lungs worked pretty good. We arrived about lunchtime and the hotel is the most elegant yet with hot shower (sigh, plenty of hot water, that’s rare) and proper toilet and even a bit of heat in the room. Of course the toothpaste had come uncapped and squeezed all over my hairbrush, creams and emery board. Alas. At least there is hot water to clean it all up.

I began to think back about the things I’ll remember. The hills were higher than the sound of music. The stones were ankle twisting. Yak bells a mantra. (Move to the left and be still as they pass.) The wind risque. The red and gold prayer wheels tempting if they did any good or not; the hostel-like cells colder than ice in a bucket. The meals - well, you better like potatoes, eggs and rice. The stretched muscles never wimped a bit, never cramped, never sore, no blisters on my toes. Milk tea and hot lemon breaks on the trail, especially at the conclusion of the trek, the walking sticks thrown on the floor, the hats and gloves on the seat and Nima always bringing me thick blankets to wrap up in even in the dining area. Backpacks are indispensable for carrying rain gear, water, laptops and Kleenex. The overloaded porters, proper road hogs toting sides of beef, refrigerators, four half inch plywood sheets, or corrugated tin roof parts - (how I don’t envy them in their burden; they stopped as much as I did. But then they had reason.) The rhododendron trees in bloom, overzealous in the moment of beauty. The gold and white silk “katas” wrapped around my neck by friends and lamas for blessings, and also seen on bridges and poles in dining rooms; puja sounds - the horns, the symbols, the smell of incense and yak butter tea (delicious but heavy in fat and salt.); the restaurant dining rooms so long by length with special heavy tables painted in gold and with Buddhist art and symbols, in front of wall benches covered in rugs and with pillows for leaning back; the morning Buddhist rituals as a Sherpani singing the Om swings incense through the house. Sherpa women are charming, modest and generous. They take care of us in an abundant way that is embarrassing. They don’t use the word “no more” in their vocabulary.

In the Khumba the vista ever includes Everest and its fellow mountains; there are no fruits except an occasional apple (an apple growing project has begun near the airport area); cheese is from the nak (female yak) but is called yak cheese; potatoes are plenty as pennies in a piggy bank; eggs, fried yak meat and Dal Bhaat and extreme hot chilies are most popular. My favorite times were at the home of Geshi Lama getting all sorts of blessings, trying on Sherpa costumes with Lhakpa, and being pampered by Nima’s wife as they served an enormous meal. We met interesting people mostly doing documentaries and trying to get into base camp. And today, when I was so deep in despair because I missed my church, my home, my children, my friends, and I was asking God to give me a boost, I heard to guys talking behind me (you never look behind) in English about ministry. It was as if he had sent two angels. I turned around and said, Bless you. I miss my religion and all the symbols and service and purpose so much and for the first time in a month, I hear Christians talking beside me. There was a group of about ten Assembly of God missionaries hiking the trails beside me. We stopped and chatted and I felt one hundred per cent cured.

Silence is ear pounding. Blankets are thick protectors. Hot water is cold and apparently the only salesman to pass through these parts sells Mars, Mounds, Snickers, Toblerone, and Coca Cola products. My old favorite hiking shoes and thick socks served me as well as the fancy stuff, the sticks saved my life. No one cuts flowers for arrangements, but there are plenty of plastic ones stuck in pots of real greenery. The odor of smoke and yak dung burning bites the nose until it is continually running all day. I used more Kleenex substitute than I have in my life. Always runny nose. Always having to blow. That was distracting to the climbing task.

The stones are nothing to play with, although people dance up and down them without a breath. I had to lift my leg as high as the Rockettes to get up some of them. The white chortens and the boulders decorated with Oms and the prayer flag poles you pass on the left side and everywhere, literally everywhere are the red, green, white, yellow and blue Tibetan prayer flags, though you never see anyone changing them or hanging them up. They fly and prayers fly and the blessings of the world are on us all but I believe more than ever in the God I worship.

Photos: 1. Puja blessing in process on our final day at Namche Bazaar. 2. Every Buddhist house has a puja room, like a chapel. 3. Yak butter sculpture and other acoutrements of a puja. 4. Goat traffic. 5. would you believe a refrigerator? 6. Rocky made it. So did I - end of the trek. 7. A good dining room at Lukla. 8. Flags at Lukla and airplane taking off downhill.

Personal summit

2008-05-06T12:12:00.004+05:30

The Heart and Soul of Trekking in the Himalayas

2008-05-06T11:20:00.008+05:30

You’ve never had anyone wait on you until you’ve been in the hands of the Sherpas. They are humanity’s servers. They can not do enough for you.

At first, being from the American South, and certainly oversensitive to anyone who might be considered a “servant,” I was disturbed by these people who walk dirt and rock paths carrying loads three times their size on their backs, some walking with Buddhist prayer beads in their hands, others with a portable radio strapped to the load listening to the latest in Nepali song. I wondered why they liked to take on such burdens being virtual trucks to get food and necessities to the rural villages of the Khumbu or to the Everest Base Camp. I’m told it’s what they chose to do.

As I sit in my roadside seat (which could be a pile of stones) I watch every kind of burden that any beast might haul appearing in giant baskets or just flat on the Sherpas back, whether it is aluminum roof panels or half a yak side or enormous gallons of kerosene or three or four heavy duffle bags belonging to climbing expeditions.. You make room for them, they don’t have to make room for you. So it becomes a war between the yaks and naks (female yaks) who are used for transporting goods and the Sherpa’s carrying the same, if not bigger kind of load. You watch yaks their heads low to the ground, their backs a pleasing hump, loaded with mountaineering and climbers gear slowly carrying it up to various camps. The Sherpas do the same. At one point there was a move to helicopter materials into the Khumbu, but the Sherpas so protested - because it is their livelihood, the idea was squelched. Only extremely large pieces might be helicoptered in to Namche Bazaar but rarely even to base camp.

If you ever become a friend to a Sherpa and are given the hospitality and care they offer because they really are hospitable and do care, you’ll never forget it. Since I have struggled on this long and tedious trek, Jim asked his friend Nima Tashi to come along. Nima is one of the most respected Sherpas in the Khumbu and is building a lodge that he and his wife will run. Nima has summited Everest more than ten times. Then last summer he fell off a roof and landed on two feet. Now the fused foot is bothering him. So he is not doing a summit this year. I guess I’m his task. He walks beside me in the difficult ascents and descents and grabs my arm when I have to climb up slippery or oversized rocks. And since I got the chest congestion, he makes sure I’ve plenty of warmth, replenishing the hot water bottles now and then.

At Pamboche’s final night we went to his home for dinner. Nima came to help me get down the road to his house since I was pretty weak from the congestion. We walked upstairs to his family room which is lighted and there are the usual benches along all the walls with cushions, and rugs placed on them to make the sitting comfortable. His wife, who speaks no English, but is so anxious to make things comfortable, brought a cup of hot lemon tea and a huge plate of popcorn. Jim had told me that you cannot deny their generosity. She and Nima had found two huge velvet blankets that must have weighed twenty pounds to wrap me in, then put pillows behind my head and then watched while I downed the popcorn. They never eat while their guest are eating, which is embarrassing to me as well. But I dug in and in no time I was so warm and comfortable I fell asleep. They just watched. When I awoke from the doze, Nima’s wife showed me how she spins yak wool into yarn with a spindle. She then offered me two skeins she had spun before preparing the dinner.

When Jim, Karen, and Brad arrived, they were cold and wet from the all afternoon rain. The meal was huge. Potato pancakes, fried potatoes with vegetables, pot stickers, a huge rice dish, and all the whiskey in the house. They fixed hamburgers from yak steaks, and then for me a tomato and cheese pizza which was honest as pizza can get. Then dinner was topped off with apple pie and rice pudding made with yak milk. This is the kind of dinners served in Sherpa homes. And they don’t stop serving until it’s all gone. Then came the presenting of blessing katas or scarves - the golden on white silk ones which are wrapped around your neck with a holy blessing. By the time everyone finished - Nima, his wife, his wife’s brother - our necks were loaded with the silk scarves and we were feeling well, full and blessed. When it was time to walk back to the lodge, Nima grabbed my arm and his headlamp to make sure I got back safely, then made sure I had two hot water bottles, and water to drink, and was covered fully with two huge velvet bedspreads. Since he wears a hearing aide, he often doesn’t understand what I say. But he smiles all the time, and either Nima or Jeta, our other head guide, are the first to knock on the door in the morning with a cup of hot lemon tea and a menu to select what I want for breakfast.

The clue to successful trekking is drinking plenty of water, eating plenty of energy food, and having a good Sherpa. While you struggle to move up or down to incredibly steep hills, they make sure you don’t fall and that you drink liters of water all the time. Nima and Jeta carry backpacks with the necessities for me. And when I cannot go another inch, they have the water bottle ready and a sack of cookies or a slice of cheese. Now we are on our return route, I didn’t realize how hard it had been. We are going down what last week we went up. We are also going much longer distances since we are supposed to be better fit and the lowering of altitude should make us more comfortable whether we are ascending or descending. It’s all still hard for me but today en route back to Namche Bazaar, thousands of rhododendron trees were in fresh bloom - from yellow, to white, to dark red and pink. Miniature blue tiger iris grew wild straight from the soil.

It wasn’t as dusty as usual because there had been a whole afternoon of rain the day previous, but clouds did hide the face of Everest and the other awesome mountains of the Himalayas. It was seven hour hard trek from Pangbouche to Namche Bazaar, and that included a stop at the bakery again in Tengbouche for a slice of lemon meringue pie. When we finally puffed into Namche Bazaar, there was Lapka waiting with her smile and welcome. (We had spent three nights here on the uproad. During a warm and super meal, she asked Karen and I to come to her special quarters (her bedroom with a view over the lighted city) and dressed us in Sherpa dresses. The fabrics are embroidered silk and colors are mixed. We received lots of applause from our Sherpas and porters.

As we get closer to the end of this trek, we realize we have not seen a motor vehicle, not seen a church, nor heard a television news broadcast, nor do we know what is happening in the rest of the world. We are more worried about bathroom fixtures and how to stay warm and dry and whether we are getting enough fuel to fire up our engines so we can complete this amazing adventure. Only two more trekking days remain for the Nepal segments.

Photos: 1. the royal treatment Sherpa style. 2. A view of some of this day's destinations. See red roofed buildings? Lunch destination. 3. The famous lemon pie of Tengbouche. 4. Crossing bridges again. 5. Yaks and rhododendron on our trails. 6. White rhododendron

Down, Down I Go

2008-05-04T12:02:00.005+05:30

We’re going down, down, down. We’ve reached our goal. And that is so hard for me to fathom that I still don’t know what I did. My glasses fog up so much and as I’ve said my fingers freeze so I haven’t been able to really inspect the photos, particularly at 6:30 in the morning dodging the rays of sun coming in the lodge dining room.

Today Jeta was my leader since Nima went with Brad on some more daring alternate route - he is a mountain climber. And I woke up weakened after another night of no sleep, and horrendous chest congestion. How was I going to pump my lungs sufficiently to descend for six to seven hours over scary rocks and thrills?

The fear factor is more than paragliding or diving off cliffs of Acapulco or eating snake hearts for TV. The steep descent is easier on your breathing apparatus but harder on your bent body being held up by those two trusty sticks. Some horrendous declines seemed to me to be a more efficient method of safety like I sitting on my rear end and scooting down - in spite of the loose gravel, but then there is all the yak poop. So it’s the same ole one step at a time.

We took off early yesterday from Loboche. I was frozen. It’s hard to deal with no heat, as I’ve said before. And by the time night is over, my two hot water bottle acompaneros are cold too. This lodge also has a night time toilet (i.e. a real toilet) and then day time toilet (outhouse.) She locks the night time toilet about seven. I didn’t have much appetite. Not good, but effects of the still high elevation persist.

The task was to get from Loboche to Pangboche, Nima’s home, and Tashi’s lodge where we knew there’d be hot shower and an American toilet but better, great fellowship. We would descend approximately three thousand feet. That should be a life saver for the lungs and dizzy heads. The dust, the yak dung burning and the altitude spits pain through the breathing apparatus. Karen was sick with nausea and overwhelming tiredness. Jim has the Everest hack. Even Brad is coughing and fighting a headache.

There were hundreds of people, it seemed, on the trail. Most were going upward, poor souls, and a few, usually Sherpas, were heading downward to get more supplies for Base Camp. We didn’t have to make so many stops for air or even for tea because it’s the knees and feet that suffer more (take Ibuprofen). But after one harrowing descent, my chest was getting croupy. The winds were brutal and cold. So Jim brought out his medical kit and loaded me with a couple of pills. When we finally arrived at Dingboche for lunch (where we had spent the night going up), we had been on the road, so to speak, for four grueling hours. The sun was strong and so we all sat around and let our faces tan. I had little appetite for my usual grilled cheese but I needed energy. It is imperative that we stuff ourselves with carbs and energy. I can’t shake the diet mentality. What to do. But yesterday I just felt sick.

After leaving lunch, it was pretty much descent and long, long stretches on the edges of giant mountains, hard on the arms with the sticks. We were watching the skies which seemed to be embracing the mountains with dark clouds. Oh heavens, we thought. We’ve got to move it on. This wasn’t as hard as if we would have to ascend. In fact, the few times we had short steep inclines, I could hardly make six steps before taking a rest. Then, since I was freezing, Jim pulled out his gear and made me wear his down jacket and rainproof jacket. (Jim always wears the same red jacket day in and day out.) Then the rains came. Water dripping off my cap. Winds so strong it brushed the hair off our arms. Even thick gloves were not warm. But we didn’t stop for any rests now.

It took us about two and a half hours to get to Pangboche, at last. I was a damp iceberg, coughing like death, and miserable. Tashi immediately opened our rooms and filled up my hot water bottles. Then Jim came in with the medicine kit. I was served a dinner of potstickers and potato salad in my room, but I couldn’t eat much. Most important was catching up on my sleep, now that we were at lower levels. Although I coughed throughout the night, my chest was opening. This is what altitude does to you, and the lower we descend, the better we’ll be able to breathe. I guess wheezing chests, sneezing and gross coughs go with the privilege of experiencing the extraordinary landscape in the Khumbu Valley of Nepal.

Funny how information comes from the mouths of trekkers. We still don’t know who won the Pennsylvania primary, but we know from today’s verbal morning report, garnered from passing trekkers, that we could not have left Gorak Shep and the base camp area at a better time. Over
200 people were forced to crowd into the sparse uncomfortable lodges to escape 5-6 inches of snow that fell. Thank you God. I have felt God’s step before us and behind us throughout this trip.

Photos: 1. Kala Pattha, near Gorak Shep. 2. Bottom left under black pyramid rock is base camp. 3. Looking down the Khumba Valley.

The Hallelujah Trail

2008-05-03T07:55:00.009+05:30

At 9 a.m. May 2nd in a cold and blithering wind although the sun had awaken the white painted peaks surrounding me, we reached our highest destination of this Nepalian quest. We had arrived at a distance from but in front of the base camp of Mt. Everest, with a clear view of the horrendous but inviting ice fall (every climber must tackle the frozen ice with their crampons, picks and courage when they start out from base camp) and the rare peek at Mt. Everest itself, which you cannot see inside base camp.

At this moment, we hung the prayer flags from my granddaughter first grade class, the flags made by girls in Reconition Academy, a representation of flags from Calvary Church, and from my friend Louise in Jackson Hole. I was absolutely out of breath at this altitude 17,040, which is about base camp level, and sat on a rock and took pictures while Jim and my Sherpa Nima actually climbed up higher to make sure the flags were on a ridge and caught the breeze. They did. The prayers to our God were flying up to Him. It made me a bit teary. And I said a prayer of thanksgiving that this was able to happen.

We had set out at 7:30 for the long and grueling trek through every kind of boulder and rock going straight up near Base Camp area. We could not actually step foot in base camp because the government of Tibet and China have put a halt to anyone entering Base Camp who does not have a license to summit. Even the base camp manager who doesn’t summit was kicked out until after the torch passes on the China side. It’s all a nightmare to people who love Everest for the challenge. We saw many famous climbers and Sherpas coming back down from Base Camp for a few days of R&R until they will be permitted to launch a summit, supposedly after May 10th. As we were hanging the flags, a military helicopter cruised over us, surveying what was going on. The camp at this moment is under military direction. But we did it,. By golly, we did it.

The night before had been a heinous one for me. Gorek Shep is the worst of the worst. The trek up to it, last stop before Base Camp, calls on every single ounce of courage and strength. The paths are dominated by trains of yak, so I got lots of rests clutching a bolder so they could pass. We crossed frozen water falls, and followed the scarey trail on cliff edges which bordered the glacier that goes on forever along the Everest area. When we arrived, there was a single room outside filled with Sherpas playing cards, but that was the only place one could get warm from sunlight coming in through a plastic ceiling. So we sat there, drank lemon tea, and I fell asleep among our equipment on the bench. The only other little bit of heat comes from a dining room fire of yak dung, which when burning smells like a bad cigar. It irritated all of us and we wheezing and sneezing drastically.

All of us were feeling the altitude. The reaction I have, beside not sleeping a wink at night, is just plain breathless. I have to stop every so many steps upward. Even though you take a rest (I call them Rock Sit) , it’s like everything has been drained out of you. At Gorek Shep, the lodge was a two-story fire hazard, rooms were so thin you could hear everything going on in your neighbors sleep, and it was icy cold. There was the proverbial hole in the floor toilet which I was afraid to walk down to in the night. I’ve never felt so dirty and unclean in my life, and I am afraid it will continue until we get back down to Pengboche tomorrow night and have a shower in the room. I’ve failed at all other attempts at hot water showers.

After we came down from the Base Camp safari, refueled with a Snickers bar and some hot lemon tea, it was time to get out of Gorek Shep. I call the trek for the next six days the Hallalujah Trail, because Hallelujah, we made it so now I don’t have to tackle the rocks and gorges and deep descents and painful ascents ever again. We spent almost three hours getting down from Gorek Shep to Loboche where we were well taken care of at the Lodge. The wind was bitter cold, it cut right through the long underwear and the warm gloves gripping my two sticks. My nose ran the entire time, but, although we only came down about 1000 feet, I was feeling some relief from the altitude. It was cloudy and tedious - miles, it seemed, of rocky flatlands that I stumbled over continually, but I had my two sherpas bodyguards, Nima and Jeta, grasping my arms as I maneuvered a difficult steep downhill where one slip and I’d have slid thousands of feet down. That’s what they refer to exposure in mountain climbing. It kicks in my vertigo. It had taken us four hours to go up from Loboche to Gorek Shep, but it took us only 2 hours and 45 minutes to descend. Although I was completely frozen, the dining room was warm and I chowed down a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, got the guys to fill up the two hot water bottles which have become my constant companions, and rolled up in heavy heavy blankets this lovely place provides.

We kept out a few prayer flags to hang at the highest monastery on this route, that of Geshi Lama in Pangboche. We will do that tomorrow after arrival. He has given approval of that and Nima will select the appropriate place where the wind will carry our prayers to the heavens.

Photos: 1. Our highest point at 17,040 with base camp, the ice fall, and some of Everest in background. 2. A typical glacier ice fall. 3. Hanging flags. 4. Hanging my granddaughter's class flags. 5. Loboche from my window. 6. Jim, Nima and Jeta - my heroes who got me there.

Breaking news: Success

2008-05-03T07:29:00.002+05:30

After 48 hours of blackout, Audrey just sent me an email. She made it to Base Camp and is on her way back down to civilization. A blog post and pictures will be up shortly.

And This Is Fun?

2008-05-01T08:42:00.008+05:30

We reached 16,000 ft. yesterday afternoon as we crumbled into Lobuche, the sun brilliant on all the peaks . I had not a breath left and was horrified that I couldn’t hike better on the flat areas. But that’s altitude for you. No oxygen. No go.

When we left Dengboche on a beautiful crisp morning, the first task was to climb straight up a high not well defined ridge. Whew. Then we had a long path incline on the side of a mountain where we passed the hairy yak trains and plenty of people doing the same thing I am doing, or at least returning back to sane country. Once again Jim had sent me out early with Nima, my Sherpa, and with as many rest stops as I take (short ones, though, and I get my wind back quickly), the rest of the group catches up. After crossing a river of boulders, we began a hideous climb upward to a tea house, the only one in the entire trek today. I was out of breath but the sun gave me some energy as did a Snickers bar. These rest houses are salvation for all trekkers - nothing fancy but a good menu to revitalize the organs and fill up with liquids. They have out houses, too, which I pray I don’t have to patronize.

After about half an hour, it’s time to get back on the sticks and start the tedious long climb straight up through nothing but rock and boulders. At the top of the steep climb is Chupilala, an area of chortens, memorials to Sherpas and climbers who have died in the mountains, including Everest. It’s the cremation site for Sherpas who die on Everest. Most of the chortens are stacks of rocks (reminds me of the old Jewish method of marking holy areas) that have certain shapes and orientation. On the way, we pass collections of Sherpas practically running down hill, getting time off because the government has declared no one can summit Everest until the 10th of May. They go back to their homes at lower altitude to get a burst of oxygen for a few days that will be beneficial during their summits. It amazes me how they dance down the trails. What takes me hours and hours of struggle will take them less than an hour of fast movement. It’s also warming that they all know Jim, an icon in the Himalayas, and stop for a round of questions about what’s going on.

It took about five and a half hours to get to Lobuche, another small community with the typical red or green tin rooves, stone walls, and views that cannot be captured in photographs. When we arrived in the dining room, it was filled with adventurers from Britain preparing a documentary as a fundraiser for a famous climber to raise money for a cancer group. Their equipment is stored in one bedroom, and they actually stand outside in the freezing cold filming here because all cameras have been banned from Base Camp, where they had planned to make the documentary. So now they wait, like everyone else, for May 10th.

We spread out on one of the rug covered benches and snacked on popcorn, cookies, chocolate bars and hot drinks. This is the norm, to get energy back. I could hardly sit up straight, but amazingly, I could breathe well. Once I get a chance to rest, my breath returns. I finally had to test out the OUTDOOR toilet, which was a horrible wooden thing - merely a hole - and I got winded getting up to it. Horrors. So I went to my room and warmed up under two heavy blankets and tried to get back energy and some rest in a horizontal position. It’s ice cold, mind you, because4 outdoors it is below freezing. The only warm spot is in the dining room where the stove is turned on that is the only warm spot. Get it while you can.

This morning as I write with frozen fingers, avoiding the walk to the toilet, I can see my breath as I breathe, though I’m stuffed under the covers. All the cleansing I get is a face wash with the water still warm thats in the hot water bottle, and brush my teeth. It’s awful. But I just swallow it, not happily. Jim comes in, as he does each day, to check my blood pressure and heart beat. So far I’m healthy. It’s a good thing, Today we get to Gorek Shep, God willing, where we’ll be in range of base camp.

Photos: Sherpas in Grizzlies caps at Dengboche; Outdoor breakfast; At the chortens at 16000 ft.; The chortens in honor of Sherpas and climbers killed on Everest.

Progress map click here.

Map: Lobuche

2008-05-01T08:01:00.003+05:30

This map shows Audrey's progress to Lobuche - as of the "And This Is Fun?" post that follows this one. Next stop: Gorak Shep.

Pain of Progress

2008-04-30T07:59:00.006+05:30

I’m parked in a modest lodge, protected from whipping winds, my body under two thick blankets and I’m scared.

Oh, this morning was pleasant enough. We sat outside in front of our rooms in Pangboche listening to the wakeup bells of the yak trains passing in front of us and let the sun warm us in its glare, watched it dust off the clouds from majestic mountains. We took our time eating homemade muesli, pre-cooked bacon brought from the USA but still had to be cooked, and thick toast with yak butter. We sent off the morning blog and retrieved emails while the electricity was available, recharging every machine we had. Jim said Nima was going to join us, that meant he was going to be my sherpa and watch out for me on today’s trek. It had been described as an easy one with lots of flat area and some steep areas maybe about a three hour trek.

Jim said to lead the way at 9:30 with Nima walking behind me. The rest would follow when they got their affairs completed. I get restless waiting. I got to set my own pace, remembering that slow and steady was the challenge. That’s not hard when one is going straight up hill over the rocks for a period of time. When we turned the corner leaving Pangboche, I could see for quite a distance the trail winding in and out of the mountain’s fat pleats. But what surprised me was there were at least 30 or 40 humans and yaks already stirring up the dust on this principle road to Everest’s base camp. So for the first half hour, there was, I guess you could call it, traffic. And often you had to pull over to the nearest rock and wait while the long horned yaks and naks passed and sometimes people speedily going downhill, those lucky ones, already done.

We made good time. After a huge ascent - huff, huff - Nima said to stop at a tea house where Jim, Karen, Matt and the Sherpas with our load would catch up. We waited and waited and waited, until finally Nima said we should go on because Jim has so many friends to speak to en route. OK. So we headed out again over country that looked like a cattle drive regularly passed there, not flat, but well carved with various trails so I could pick my own. Beside us was the sound of a rough unharnessed river. We crossed over a shaky area which was a bridge in the making (I’m not friendly with foot bridges) and then the trek was pretty much uphill for 45 minutes passing many Buddhist chorlas and painted rocks until there in the distance was Dengboche. It lay sleeping on the slope of a hill - mostly one story lodges and homes for a farming community marked off in sturdy stone walls. Behind it was a moody Mt. Everest hiding itself with a cloud towel this afternoon. The wind was invasive and my allergy to the billowing dust was only getting worse. Major sneezing.

The hot sun and a friendly Sherpa woman who is Nima’s sister, greeted us. We had made it in three hours, take away one half hour for our wait stop. I was pleased because we were 1000 feet higher (14,000 feet - the highest I’ve ever been) and although I felt like my lungs were blowing out, if we stopped for five minutes, I recuperated quickly and was able to climb some more. Each rest stop, Nima tried to sell me on eating piece of cheese, a bar of chocolate, hot tea, or whatever he had carried in his backpack. I told him best for me is to fill up with water and get the trek done then I promised I would eat something, and I did. A piece of cheese. A chocolate bar. Hot lemon water. After about twenty minutes Jim arrived, coughing horribly and suffering from a persistent asthma. Everyone else sort of dribbled in and we all sat and laughed and ate a standard lunch - my favorite grilled cheese, tomato, greens sandwich. We would stay here the rest of the day to rest and spend the night - giving our bodies time to adjust to this altitude.

I am scared because I worry that I may not hold up for the next two climbs and under very primitive conditions, which I don’t cotton to very well.. Already I have the Himalaya crud - which is sort of a lot of throat clearing - and the dust has my nose so irritated that it’s raw. I can still take deep breaths without a wheeze but I crash after lunch and cuddle up in bright colored thick blankets again. Then the worries come about how long can I survive in these conditions - Now comes the battle with my comfort zone. Showers are non existent for the next few days. Hot water has to be boiled. No more Western style toilets. Electricity shows up at a minimum although there is a small amount here at night. Paper thin walls where you can here everyone’s night noises. What do I do about washing my underwear? Forget washing clothes. One thing about hiking wardrobes that can last a week or so without falling a part. Plus it is getting much colder, so more layers and I even pulled out the giant snow and wind proof jacket to wear on the next trek. Thick socks can last a week and my trusty big black sweater.

But what about me? Sponge baths in the freezing cold aren’t appealing. My fingernails are cracked and filthy. What does my face look like? No mirrors, thank heavens. I can feel the dust eating into its pores as if I was a rugged cowboy on the range so I take a rag, cold water and some soap and scrub, then cover the mess with my, yes, La Mer creme, which is half frozen in the mornings. Water. I have to keep three water bottles filled with water because hydration is vital. They serve you tea and hot lemon juice anywhere you sit down. And then I also have not been able to sleep at night - walking again and again through agendas, trails, what ifs, can I make it, will my body hold out, those kinds of things, plus getting comfortable on a wooden bed with a thin mattress. Sleeplessness is also a side effect of high altitude. There is nothing to divert your mind and soul so everything rambles through. I try to read the Follett novel but have to wear gloves and use the headlamp to see it.

And I worry as the weather will get much colder so in afternoons you sort of have to shut down because the clouds roll in and stop views and treks. When the sun dies for the day, we all meet in the dining room where the pot bellied stove burns yak dung, order what we think we want to eat - it’ll be made in the moment by the lodge owner and our sherpas - get roasty-toasty warm and then head for the bed, oh, but don’t forget the toilet - once again it’s the lovely hole in the floor. In the afternoon, our porters tried to build a seat with a foam cover and a hole in it to place over the hole so I could sit on it, which I appreciated. But it was so wobbly, I used the other method and realized maybe I was getting with the program.

Photos: Tashi in Grizzlie cap serving breakfast; What one sees off of cliffs; Dengbouche, our next stop; Alma Dablan, always at our side; the guys build my toilet seat.

Editor's note

2008-04-29T09:31:00.003+05:30

Audrey informs me that this morning (Tuesday in Nepal) that she will be making the final push to Lobuche, Gorak Shep, and (hopefully) Base Camp. Due to the enforced news blackout, and the limited electricity, she probably won't be taking her computer and communications gear all the way. That means we probably won't be hearing from her for a couple or three days - probably not until Saturday. Her most recent post is "Hospitality the Sherpa Way."

Meanwhile, if you want to take a close look at Base Camp, click the link over in the sidebar. It will take you to a Google satellite image. Yes, those red, blue and yellow thingies are actually tents.

Hospitality the Sherpa Way

2008-04-29T08:03:00.004+05:30

In the Khumbu Valley of Nepal, God is most generous in his beauty. After a night of rain, I awoke to crystal bright skies and stepped outside my cubicle to the warmth of a morning sun. Then I look 360 degrees around me and realized I was in the most beautiful place in the world surrounded by rugged, snow cast peaks. To one direction Mt. Everest beckoned its frozen hand as strong winds blew snow powder off its summit. With the early sun, cracks and crevices of closer mountains like Alma Dablam and Contega made dramatic scenarios. Of course there were no climbers this morning because no one can summit Everest until after May 10th, by order of the Nepali government and China.
But there is more to Pangboche than just this incredible landscape. There is a generosity among its people living a simple, almost peasant style life, that I’ve not found anywhere else. It’s here that you put aside the need for Western conveniences, and let yourself become part of a tremendous Sherpa spirit.

After a leisurely breakfast at a table outside in the sun, for this is an acclimatization day, we set out for one of the most important destinations of this pilgrimage: to visit Geshi Lama, a friend of Jim’s, most of the major climbers, and the Sherpas. People who believe in the spirit of Mt. Everest, visit the Lama to seek out the most auspicious day for climbing, summitting or something simple like where to hang the prayer flags I’ve brought from the children of Memphis and Nashville. It was a short uphill hike to his gompa. Our group was Jim Williams, my guide; Nima Tashi, Jim’s Sherpa guide and long time friend; Karen, Matt and myself. Outside of the monastery, beside the views and the perfectly put together stone walls that define this valley, was yak dung drying on a huge canvas spread. Since wood cannot be sold for fuel, the yak dung is dried and burned for fire and heat.

As we entered the dark room lit only by numerous windows and decorated with Buddhist art and thousands of photos of climber friends of the Lama, we sat down to await audience. We each carried with us a goldenish white silk scarf with some rupees folded in a corner to present to Geshi Lama as we are greeted. When my time came after Jim’s, I placed the scarf in his hands, my rupees dropped on the floor, I picked it up and he took the scarf, blessed it then placed it over my neck and pulled my head to his - bumping heads is a sign of respect. Then we all sat down along the benches lined with carpet for comfort and listened to Jim catch up with his friend Geshi Lama, mostly telling him how well his grandson was doing at an university in the United States. The translator was Tashi, the Lama’s beautiful daughter who runs the lodge where we are staying. She is young and full of spirit and copies her father’s sense of humor.

After much conversation, Jim explained to Geshi Lama that I had brought a gift for him - the prayer beads made by Suzanne Hensley, which he took out of the velvet bag and smiled greatly with pleasure. We took lots of photos as we then showed him one by one the many prayer flags which I hope to hang at significant places related to Mt. Everest. He looked at each one and seemed touched by the effort of the children. Then he suggested to Jim where we should put the flags and said he would be glad to fly some of them at his monastery, the oldest in the Khumbu, after we had carried them with us to the base camp area.

We were offered a Rikikur for lunch, a potato pancake spread with yak butter and to be dipped in very spicy hot sauce. The Lama ate first and then we followed. In addition a small glass cup of Johnnie Walker Red Label was poured for each of us. I don’t drink alcohol but had to at least touch it to my mouth for respect. On the lip of the little cup was a smudge of sampa, a grain powder for good luck. As my companions began to drink their cups, Tashi was waiting to re-fill their cups. It is all in the spirit of abundance, blessing and hospitality that never ends here.

After lunch, Jim presented the Lama with much needed new shoes, and he proudly tried them on, after blessing them, and walked around. Tennis shoes were brought for Tashi and her mother and son. Then I received special blessings and a protection prayer to hang in a pouch around my neck in a ceremony along with a Sherpa who had just arrived for protective prayer and for the Lama’s naming a day and time for him to summit Mt. Everest with his large group of Westerners. Rice was thrown with each prayer, incense was burning, and Geshi Lama created little packets of prayer tied in string - and put in a small baggie for safety - for each of us. Geishi Lama also prayed for my strength to complete this pilgrimage then reported that Buddha has blessed my journey and that I will accomplish that which I want. Then he and his wife and his daughter each placed huge golden silk scarves around my neck (so I had four total), and then presented me with a small carpet also tied in one of the scarves. It was generosity beyond the norm, and the feeling of such welcome was unique.

With much laughing and prayer, it was time to go. Tashi would descend with us, everyone having finished their meals and been blessed with a neckful of golden scarves. Before we departed, another Sherpa friend of Jim’s arrived for blessing and discernment. He told Jim that at Base Camp the police were not allowing any laptops, cell phones, video cameras or satellite systems because of the problems with Tibet protestors. We at least would not be carrying our equipment to Base Camp, as we spend the night in Gorek Shep, the nearest village. Since we are not a member of an expedition group, we would not be welcomed to use the facilities and space in Base Camp.

The afternoon I relaxed with very peculiar shower (the hot water was not so hot), then sitting in the very warm sun, having recharged all our gear using the electricity at our friend Sherpa Nima Tashi’s home, we bundled up and walked again to Nima’s house where we were greeted by his beautiful wife, Ang Fura, who flashes a gold tooth when she smiles. She was building a fire (with yak dung) in their pot bellied stove in a new dining room for a future lodge. Warmth was the biggest welcome here. The heart of Nima and his Ang Fura has no limit. All our guides and Sherpas (four total) joined us for dinner cooked by Jeta, Nima and his wife. First we had tea or hot lemon in water. Then Jim, Karen and Brad were served a rice beer, a milky looking substance made by Nima from fermented rice. As soon as some sips were taken, the cup was filled again. Shay, Shay, they say. Drink, drink. These aren’t rounds, it’s continual refills.

The meal was enormous - from potato salad to momo (potstickers) to chicken curry and spicy tomato soup. In Pangboche, they farm potatoes so most of the meal is based on that food. But tonight rice was being served by the mountainfulls for the curry. I have never seen so much rice put on a plate. And then the Sherpas, small and thin as they are from carrying huge loads up these mountains, came back for seconds. Meanwhile there were second, third, fourth helping of everything until the food ran out. After the desert of canned mango in syrup, a sake like rice drink was served and served and served until everyone was about to fall asleep.. There was such a feeling of friendship and satisfaction that it’s hard to describe. And when Tashi and Jeta helped me back up the cobblely road to the lodge - in

the dark - Jim leading slowly, I felt a warmth from the inside, as well as from the outside.

Photos: Snow blowing off Mt. Everest; Tashi Sherpa, daughter of Geshi Lama; First blessing by Geshi Lama; Geshi Lama with prayer flags; Geshi Lama and the pancake lunch; Nima Tashe and Geishi Lama sorting flags; The well blessed group; the dinner party for our crew.

BBC: News Blackout at Everest Base Camp

2008-04-29T04:15:00.003+05:30

From BBC News, Monday April 28:

By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Gorak Shep, near Everest base camp, Nepal

Just a short while after arriving in Everest base camp on Monday, we were politely but firmly told to leave by an official from Nepal's Ministry of Tourism.

The move came as China prepares to take the Olympic torch up its northern side of the world's highest peak.

The Nepalese authorities have imposed a complete communications ban from the base camp upwards and closed territory on Everest above 6,500 metres until the torch has been and gone from the top.

We knew there were restrictions on satellite phones and video cameras but were now told that even pre-recorded radio material on non-political subjects would not be allowed.

Nor would informal chats with the hundreds of mountaineers currently in the camp, the tourism ministry official, Prabodh Dhakal, said. If any mountaineer talked to the BBC, he or she would be expelled, he added.

More here

Map: Pangboche

2008-04-28T09:54:00.004+05:30

Audrey's progress to date. Click to enlarge, Back button to return. Note: Those grayish fingers that look like they might be glaciers are, indeed, glaciers.

A Rough Trail

2008-04-28T08:30:00.006+05:30

Mornings are cold in the Himalayas. It’s hard to pull out from under thick blankets and sleeping bags. Heat is not a given until the sun shines. The lodges have one old fashioned pot bellied stove in the middle of the dining room, but that’s about it. The higher we go, the colder we get, and therefore the more down, fleece and Gortex one must cover the body in. My fingers freeze and it’s hard to type on the laptop. I stay wrapped all night in sweaters, wool gloves, and my long brown cashmere airplane blanket cum scarf. It’s just too cold to change out of your daily attire. And somehow, when there is a shower, you have to gather up the courage to get in it. Jim tells me this is probably the last of the hot water showers, here in Pangboche, where we spend two nights in a small lodge owned by the daughter of the highly respected lama here. It certainly can boast of the last of the Western style toilets on the route toward base camp.
The road (path) from Namche Bazaar to Pangboche is probably the most difficult of this foot safari. It’s the principle highway for gear and supplies going to and from the Base Camp of Mt. Everest. The dust stirred up by people, yaks, naks (female yaks), an occasional horse and the cross-bred zoe turns the trekker into a nose blowing, sneezing, throat clearing, coughing idiot. When the wind whips up in the afternoon, it’s like living in a whirlwind. You constantly have to move to the side for yaks and porters carrying amazing loads that range from stacks of lumber, to huge jugs of kerosene or water, to garbage being brought down from Base Camp.
Anyone who has booked a climb this year has already settled in base camp. It takes about two months of preparation and conditioning in the actual base camp level of altitude. One of the most discomforting aspects to me is that everyone is responsible for his own human waste removal. This is why visitors to camp are not very welcomed because they add to that burden. Nothing can be left on the mountain or in the base camp. Human waste is collected and brought back down the mountain by Sherpas to be buried in deep holes in a dry lake bed. All other garbage must be transported to Namche Bazaar where it’s separated into burnables and non-burnables. Oxygen bottles, batteries, non recycle cooking gas canisters must be taken back home or sent back to the country of origin. Most oxygen bottles come from Russia where they are tested, refilled, recertified and sent back for another use for a total of three times per bottle.
Our daily trekking log leaving Namche started out pleasantly as the sun rose. For two hours we followed a rather flat trail with only a few ups and downs around the sides of forever mountains. Around the first curve was the spectacular view of Mt. Everest and all its partner mountains, so tall that it’s hard to imagine anyone could deign to tackle the conditions and the hours to get up there. All the mountains Ama Da Blam (Grandmother’s Jewel Purse), Lhostse, Nuptse (in front of Everest), Cantega , Tawache have been summited. Some are actually harder than Everest, but Everest is the highest and therefore it’s the one men and some women feel they need to own in their souls. You really can never own Mt. Everest. You can only spend ten or fifteen minutes - photo minutes - at the top, and never feel comfortable wrapped in face masks, oxygen tubes, dark glasses, frozen beards, every kind of warmth protector and boots thicker than a triple decker sandwich. I look up at this nemesis of so many climbers and wonder if God created these peaks to show humans that nature is much more formidable than they are. The greatest climbers and the Sherpas attempt these challenges to learn more about their own spirits and endurance abilities, not because they want to be focus of a documentary, or write a book, or to make money in some commercial way. It’s one way to learn what you are made of, if anything at all.
After two hours on the trail - I was cheerful thinking I can do this, I’m acclimitized - we began a difficult hour downward trek to a raging river, full of milky green water splashing over enormous white and gray boulders. We crossed a bridge and began a trek back up hill, stopping briefly for a cup of hot lemon juice and a Snickers at the bottom. I was feeling good and was amazed at my strength at this point. I had energy to burn and didn’t want to sit and rest too long, trying to make decent time. I had been warned this was the most difficult and longest day of my excursion (We left at 8 a.m. and arrived about 3:45 p.m.). Then began the uphill push. Nima Tashe, a fine Sherpa who had been on successful expeditions with Jim in 2002 and 2007, but is more famous for the 50th anniversary summit with the sons of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, joined us on this difficult ascent to his home town. He told us to take the old trail which meant less traffic, less dust, less sun, and a bit longer. It was excruciating for my soul and my lower back. So many times I wanted to burst into tears but then I knew I had to do it since it was a long ways back and this was what I was here for. So I pushed on, huffing and puffing as we ascended 1300 feet higher than Namche.
Finally after a tedious hour we reached Tengboche, site of the major administrative monastery in the Khumbu. As we passed through the elaborate gate, and took photos in front of the lions at the entrance, great swirls of dust surrounded us and sneezing began. All I could see was a tea house with the large words Bakery written on the front. We headed there and were rewarded with a piece of lemon meringue pie that was absolutely delicious. We collected some croissants (these things are not found anywhere in the Khumbu) for the next breakfast, and finally headed out a bit more rested to reach Pangboche, our destination for the night. This part of the trek included a long down hill, once again to the river where a Buddhist nunnery resides, a wobbly bridge crossing, and then a straight up hill climb that seemed like it would never end. Nima and our regular Sherpa Suka were right at my elbows to lift me up when a step was too high for my sagging muscles or my vertigo kicked in because it was straight down thousands of feet on one side of the trail. It was embarrassing to have to be helped up, but it was comforting at the same time. These people really care about your safety. About 3:30 we passed through the gate of Pangboche, a charming village, home of the oldest monastery in the Khumbu, laid out on tiers of land where potatoes are the main product. On all sides are the most majestic mountains and the tallest mountains in the world. All are snow covered. All change their faces as the sun moves across. Pangboche itself is as 13,000 feet, high as the Grand Teton in Wyoming.
In my usual exhaustion from over-exertion, I began to freeze in the evening breeze, and wrapped up in two thick blankets, a wool hat, gloves, and a hot water bottle - until it was time to crawl up a creepy ladder to the dining room where the pot stove was burning and the room was filled with loud Russian trekkers. All four of us were tired, Karen and I kept laying down on the benches, unable to keep our heads up, a sign, I guess of a good days haul. I got numerous hugs because I had made it on the hardest trekking day.

Photos: A white yak; the back end of a yak; Mt. Everest on the trail; the bakery at Tengboche; Tengboche monastery entrance; Arriving at Pangboche.

See map.

Commercial Appeal Travel Blog

2008-04-27T09:32:00.001+05:30

Audrey's latest post is up at the Commercial Appeal.

Finding My Way

2008-04-26T17:35:00.007+05:30

I am a lonely pilgrim wandering in a wilderness so unfamiliar even the dust seems less buoyant.
I don’t know these mountains. I don’t know this Asian air. I don’t know this Nepali language or Sherpa culture. I cling to God for I feel far from the cathedrals of my faith but I can still listen for His Spirit in the wind, the ruach, the messenger carrying prayers to His ears. I don’t feel lost nor deprived from the constant feeding of religiosity we have in the Bible Belt of America. It seems that at such a distance faith flattens out into a given, a certain kind of permanent strength that survives all sorts of challenges to what one is used to.

I am seeing in Nepal a survival of the fittest first hand, people who are not impressed by those things so impressionable to Americans, people who find a depth of meaning and happiness in areas we’d never consider comfortable or pleasant. But then they do. And learning why they do is part of the task of leaving behind the regular and figuring out how to deal with someone else’s habits. Sometimes, if we can divest our prejudices, we can actually see things with a different eye.

I’ve mostly been horrified at the conditions of life, the filthiness of the urban areas, a poverty to Western eyes that is not a misery without company. It is not about giant houses, thousand dollar wines, Prada purses, best sellers, getting the best draft pick or the biggest donations, or being the best or even being humble. Humility is the given here. No one has to work for it or go somewhere to learn about it. It’s in these peoples and that’s the reason they can smile at the stumbling trekkers in the latest gear who effort to get off the couch and live in nature at its best. Is it about the soul? To me it is. It’s questioning if I even have a soul and what does that mean. It’s thinking about death on a daily basis and not being afraid since that adventure can not be much more challenging than the one I take each day trying to stay upright on hikers poles and not stumbling on spreads of rocks.

I wonder why Americans feel we must make the world copy us? The British wanted the world to be at their feet and so they colonized lands that had nothing to do with their way of thinking, eating, or signing and made a mess of it. That world eventually was wrenched from them or unleashed as it should have been. But Americans have got to make a buck. They push to be the hand of power in everyone else’s affairs, and mostly, we aren’t even cognizant of what other cultures think, want, and do because we can only measure them if they are like us or hunger for our desires. Why do we presume we might judge poverty, religion, politics as if we were masters of greatness when really the diversity formed around the world is what gives greatness, even richness to life? Why do we think we have the monopoly on justice and that everyone else is corrupt and wrong? Truth can be an auspicious discovery.

There is nothing worse than sameness. Or counting on the familiar. Change happens. It must happen. Yet I’m as bound by routine, regularity, judgement just as much as the intolerable tight-minded capitalist or hater or bigot or politician. It is hard to understand concepts are far from the apple of the television eye - things not clean, not in our control, not dependent, not weak, not permitted by laws created to make living next to another man tolerable. It is hard to realize our current government has squashed every ounce of friendship that those of us who have lived abroad worked so hard to make positive. It is hard to be the bad guy whose only good point is his dollar bill, and even that has lost its favor. We are considered war mongers with muscles based on military magnificence. We excuse ourselves as fighters for freedom, but is freedom USA-style worth such cost?

Even Mt. Everest, a sacred mountain which randomly or with some order selects who will reach the top and who will not - it’s never a sure thing for anyone - has become a commercial enterprise. The Sherpas believe a female diety, Jomo Miyo Lang Sangma, lives on and rules the mountain at its peak of 29,035 feet. She rides a red tiger and carries a spitting mongoose in one hand. The Tibetan name for Everest (named Everest for the original surveyor) is Chomulungma or Sagarmatha ("head of the sky"). Its well-traveled route has brought prosperity to the Sherpas in the Khumbu, as they open lodges with modern conveniences, offer delicious meals with what can be brought here on a man’s back, and prosper as guides to the many mountains and treks in this area. To climb Mt. Everest costs from 25,000 to 120,000 dollars for a single person. The permit fee is 14,000 dollars per person alone. But to think you are entitled to that climb because you paid for it, is stupid. Nothing can be guaranteed.. You must get to the base camp first. Don’t think you can beat the odds. Too many factors are uncontrollable, leading off with weather, conditions and of course the stamina, patience, and soul of the person climbing. Who can even make it across the ladders of the Ice Fall? Is it right to risk so many lives - including those of the Sherpas - to be able to say "I did it?" Where do you become the fool? A real man is not afraid to admit he couldn’t make it. He wins if he sees value in the effort he made to push himself beyond the couch of a comfortable routine.

Edmund Hillary, the first to ever summit Mt. Everest 55 years ago with his faithful companion Tenzing Norgay, wrote: "It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." I know my toughest enemy is myself. How do I convince myself to continue when I feel like a dissolved snowflake? How can I deal with the loneliness factor, because, in the end, I do it alone and according to what is struggling in my spirit? It’s nice to have supporters to cheer me on. But it goes back to the core of heart and soul, the faith that one clings to whether on an operating table or about to cross a wobbly bridge. I am doing things now in my old age that I would never have tried when I was young when I was more able to do them. Is it because I have nothing to lose? Maybe. I do have God. But before I die, I am taking for real T.S. Eliot’s quote: "Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." I believe this is what I am doing, finding out how far I can go at my age, in my condition, in my health and in my faith.

Photos: Mt. Kongde, a foothill of Mt. Everest - they are all incredible; The Buddhist way to Nirvana; Happiness is making momo for guests; The four animals which answered Buddha's call for help: elephant, monkey, rat and bird; the strangling fig vine which lives off trees in Chatwin.

A Busy Bazaar

2008-04-26T08:42:00.007+05:30

In Namche Bazaar, clouds throw themselves over the steep mountain tops like crocheted shawls. But when it gets dark, it’s dark. As exhausted as I was after trekking to Namche Bazaar, even to eating dinner in my room, even warm under a duvet and a sleeping bag, even fading quickly when I tried to read Follett’s novel, sleep came like smoke signals, sometimes si, sometimes no. Dogs chanted the night away. The night seemed long until the hounds quieted and the crows, big as dachshunds, were the only fowl music, as was the early workmen chipping masses of round stones - clink, clink, clink- to make them rectangular. There is a lot of construction in progress in this pueblo. Jeta arrives at my door with a cup of hot instant cappuccino. I could get used to this.
I get the courage to leave the warmth to test if hot water comes in the shower. I let the sink water run until it turned hot. That was a good sign. So I finally got a full-fledged cleansing shower in hot water. That gave me a new lease on life. And because we don’t have to trek today as we acclimatize, I put on my favorite old trousers, my big black baggy sweater, and a huge cotton scarf. I’m going to attempt to recreate a slice of my comfort zone, at least in the morning. Breakfast was a buckwheat apple pancake with the thickness of three pancakes. Good for a tempestuous spirit breaking the rules of her diet.
After a morning on the computer and a splendid grilled cheese, tomato and spinach sandwich lunch, Jim thought it would be good to stretch the legs. I felt good and said let’s go. We’d hike up to the top of the town and around to the other side of the mountain to visit a gompa (Buddhist temple) which was in the process of celebrating the arrival of a new statue of Guru Rinpoche, who centuries ago declared the Khumbu Valley would be a sanctuary from the world; then we’d head to the bazaar for which this town is named. It’s a weekend event that brings locals from as far as a seven day walk to sell their harvest and supplies. It would be a good photo op..
Grabbing my sticks, I set off up these endless wide stone stairs - hardly had I gone up two and I was winded, my heart started beating fast, and I got discouraged because I realized I still had a way to go before my lungs were ready in this high altitude (11,000 feet.) Darn it. I thought. We took it slowly, very slowly, pacing me, ascending step by step as I broke out in a sweat under my warm jacket. I had wrapped myself in the big cotton scarf for protection against the dust. There was a brisk cool breeze as well. Finally we circled the entire city passing red rhododendron trees and giant boulders carved with the Om and painted white, then arriving, after some complicated step work, at the yellow roofed gompa. More high steps up through the entrance, I felt dizzy, then we removed our hiking shoes to pay respect to a holy place. This old gompa had fallen into disrepair and the community had come together with offerings of every sort (grains, coins, kata scarves for good luck and rolled sheets of prayers covered in ochre fabric) which were being organized to be kept in the large base of the statue. I guess it is sort of like leaving food and eternity entertainment in tombs of Egyptian Pharaohs. The gompa items are never removed from the statue’s base. Village women had brought huge vats of hot tea, and one elderly monk was about to indulge in a grilled cheese sandwich. Right on.
The gompa is rather dark but every piece of wall space is covered in glittering fabrics, repetitive block prints and thangkas (holy art) as well as one long wall, a glass cabinet of sort, contains 108 ancient books of Buddhist wisdom from which the monks constantly read. The statue will be placed in the middle of the books. Much of Buddhist art is in block prints, which the lamas give to the villages. These are printed on par-shing, wooden blocks carved with the reverse image of the print. These blocks are also used to make prayer flags. Each image has a function: Ku-par are pictures of gods and historic figures; Srung-par are protective prints worn in bags around a person’s neck or put on the door knob of a house; Lok-par, mostly commonly evil eyes images, are burned during ritual exorcisms; Others are used as prayer flags, displayed at weddings or placed under a dying person’s body about to be cremated. Then there are Mandalas which are geometric art works symbolizing order and harmony and used for meditation much like religious icons are used in catholic churches. Some Mandalas are made in colored sand.
A dip down into this layered village took us down a lane of tourist shops (good mountaineering gear can be found here) where I found a skein of colorful yarn for my crocheting and also some much needed gloves (ski gloves are too big for daytime warmth.) The market having just begun in the afternoon, was a bustle of trading. Big white sacks of flour, of Dak (white beans, black beans) of a kind of flattened rice that is great in muesli, giant tins of fresh cottage cheese which I was eager to sample, but Jim said not to; every kind of hot spicy pepper, turmeric by the tons, baskets of live chickens, eggs that were small by our standards but fresh, and many packaged goods. Sherpa women with dark faces and rosy cheeks drive a hard bargain and sit among the large sacks. This is serious merchandise, not the usual tourist fare of beaded necklaces, bandanas of every sort, clothing and trinkets which are laid out along the narrow passageways of the town.
As we climbed our way back up to our Panorama Lodge, I took it one step at a time. I wonder how foolish I look to the Sherpas and young tourist (there was a whole load of youngsters from New Zealand just fallen into the large dining room, who were going only to Tengboche a day away) as sweat drips off my forehead and I keep my eyes on the stone so as not to cause a wreck.
Lakpa, a beautiful Sherpa woman who owns the lodge in which we stay, joined us for tea and showed us original Thankas created by her cousin. She has been the subject of a book on Sherpa customs and has traveled extensively in the US. Today Jim and the cook made potato salad American style (mayo, mustard, capers, eggs) which really lifted up my sagging appetite. I have to admit they were they were the best potatoes I’ve ever tasted. Jim had warned me. r

Photos: View of Namche Bazaar; Inside a gompa; rolling Buddhist prayers; woman selling cottage cheese at the Bazaar; Vendor of spices and yeast; Sherpa woman; a young monk; Tea with Lapka, the Sherpa owner of our lodge.

Map: Mt. Everest region

2008-04-26T02:05:00.003+05:30

Map of the Everest region and Audrey's trek to date. (Click to enlarge, Back Button to return.)

A Worn Out Day

2008-04-25T10:12:00.009+05:30

I couldn’t sleep last night, though the room was warm. I wrapped up in my sleeping bag but the mattress was hard and so after lying on one side for very long, it got sore and I’d wake up and shift. But mostly I was worried about the trek today . Getting to Namche Bazaar was a four hour hike mostly straight up til we reached an altitude of approximately 11,000 feet, not quite as high as the Grand Teton in Wyoming, but close. I do pretty well going down hill or down steps, however dangerous they might be, and I soar on the flat areas, but uphill is tedious and there never seems to be enough breath to go with the constant lifting of my body to new heights. So I fretted during the nights and wondered if there would be hot water for a morning shower at the Mt. Kailash Lodge in Monjo. (I guess that is as close as I’ll get to the holy Tibetan mountain of Mt. Kailash, one of the destinations on this trip which has been cancelled because of angry Tibetans trying to turn the Olympics into conflict, and for which the Chinese have closed all borders into Tibet until after the Olympics.)

I found that out early, at 6:30 when Jeta brought me a cup of instant cappuchino which we had bought in the supermarket in Kathmandu. (I long for a frappuchino from Starbucks, but realize ice is out of the picture until the end of this trip.) There was no hot water. So I sponged bathed and as is in all cases, brushed my teeth using mineral water from a bottle. It’s so hard not to automatically pass the brush under the sink water.

After an apple pancake, we set out for today’s tough trek. Departing Monjo, we passed through the entrance to the Sagarmatha Park, where we were required to get passes and were also stopped by the military bearing rifles for a bag inspection. Everything they had to view. They even got nervous about my prayer flags, not understanding that these were made by innocent children and not by some protest group with a purpose to upset China’s Olympics.. But they let them through in the end, as well as Jim’s satellite system, which is also suspect. Nepal is enforcing China’s desire to prevent any kind of use of Mt. Everest for political purposes. During the inspection, I walked through the brightly painted entrance gate which housed a dozen prayer wheels. So I turned the wheels and as I did, a troop of soldiers ran through in cadence. I wondered how anyone could run down those crude stone stairs.

I am overwhelmed by the traffic of trekkers, hundreds of them with their porters carrying huge loads of bags. Many of the young sherpas wore black T-shirts bearing the face of Brittany Spears. Each time a string of them came through going the opposite direction, we had to move off the trail and balance until they passed. I envied them that they were done with heir treks and were on the way back to Yeti Airlines. But my task was still to come. After about two hours - there are no tea houses or rest stops on the route to Namche Bazaar - we had crossed three long suspension bridges that wobble as you step on them while hanging over rowdy rivers and boulders below. Prayer flags are hung on all of them because that’s a good place to catch the wind to carry prayers to God. When we turned on yet another switchback out of the pines and rhododendron trees, and stepped into the clear morning sun, there before us was the first but hazy glimpse of Mt. Everest. It’s one tall monster of a mountain more than three times as high as we were at the moment (about 9500 feet.) Imagine that men and women climb to the top of that peak. Seems impossible. And maybe it is an invasion of what the Nepalis consider the property of God. There are so many deaths, not all of them made public. This year there are twice as many teams planning to attempt to summit Everest, but no one can do so until after May 10th, after the Olympic torch passes to the top on the China side.

We took a breath to keep on climbing. It seemed never ending until turning another corner, spread across the side of a steep mountain was Namche Bazaar - it’s bright colored stone buildings, two or three stories high, braced against the soil and rock, each one stair-stepped above the other and stone walls encircling terraces of land for farming. I was full of pain by this time, my calves calling, my hip bones raw, my breath shortening by the minute. But by golly, we had made it in good time. To celebrate, Jim led us to a German bakery for tea and pastry called Herman Helmers Brackerie und Condetori. It was about one-fourth of the way to the top of the city where our lodge Panoramic stood. That’s about another 25 minutes of hiking straight up stairs. A rest would give us a boost. I requested a large cake donut that I had been seeing in bakery windows all along and felt good about eating it after the morning’s long skirmish. The bad news was we still had a ways to go, and the sun was hot, the wind cold, the dust flying. My Sherpa stayed with me as I slowly huffed and puffed up the crude stairs, dodging the porters passing me as if I was standing still - which at times I was - until we reached a white gate. This is it, he said. It was a good thing. I probably didn’t have enough umph for much higher. This is when the shortage of oxygen begins to set in. The red blood cells weaken, the bone marrow needs to get cracking to produce more, so we stop here to have time to re-adapt, the body being exhausted. This is why we are staying in Namche Bazaar for three nights. Acclimatize.

After a friendly welcome by the Sherpa lady who owns the inn and restaurant, we sat on the pillows on wall benches around the room and ate lunch. The cook who knew Jim well brought in every kind of Sherpa specialty - mostly the Dahl Bok which is a hefty meal of rice, bean and lentil soup, greens, potatoes and homemade pickles. A Sherpa friend of Jims who had been with Hillary’s son when he climbed in honor of his father’s fiftieth anniversary of reaching the sumnmit, came to join us. He will go with us the rest of the way and we will stay in his home in Panboche. Here I live in luxury - a room with a double sized bed, a modern toilet and a hot water shower. There is plenty of electricity here so we can recharge batteries and I can read Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. This is sort of the routine, town to town. You go with what’s there.

I had the additional experience after lunch to trip down many stairs to see the dentist. My old faithful tooth on a post fell out again, and a young and knowledgeable Nepali dentist, trained in Canadam who runs a local dental clinic, glued it back in for me. Then Jim took me to see a puja in progress in the house of one of his friends a few more steps downhill. Puja is a special blessing that happens once a year. It can last two or three days. We had to take off our shoes to enter, as had the monks - who appear to prefer Nikes. In a large room are elaborate tables, wall paintings and collections of holy books and a low altar of different kinds of yak butter candles, incense and silver urns all of which are thanksgiving and holy items. Six monks in red and yellow robes sat yoga-style at long tables and began to hum deeply when lunch was served to them. Most Buddhist houses have a designated sacred area or an elaborate room which the monks visit to cleanse, forgive and bless for the next year. It’s a time of horn blowing, text reading, chants and serious thought but the owners go about their business while it is going on, making sure the visitors are well-fed and attended. This must happen in every Buddhist home each year. Meanwhile, I could have used a blessing to get me back up the magnificent steps to my lodge.

Photos: Entering Sagarmatha Park; Inspections by police; the suspension bridge number three; soccer balls are good horse feeders; a wild flower surprises; first view of hazy Mt. Everest; Namche Bazaar; the dentist visit' a "puga"; one worn out trekker.

We're Off To See Whatever

2008-04-24T16:15:00.007+05:30

We are off on the most difficult challenge of my life - facing Mt. Everest at the base camp.
Ours was the first of four 20 passenger planes to plow through the thick smoke and fog at Kathmandu airport at 6:30 in the morning. It’s always touch and go if the tiny Twin Otter props will take off at all. Today we were among the flying Yeti Airlines.

If you could see how we fly, it would curl your toes. Everyone piles on - no seat assigned - with their backpacks and trekking gear into seats hardly wide enough for a toddler, they lay their gear in the aisles, in the tiny space in front of them or on their laps. No overhead bind and the steps are two bars with no bannisters. There is a pretty Nepali stewardess in the Sherpa long dress with striped apron and she attempts to pass out cotton for the ears and caramels as we hip dance down the runway. Then we fly into the sun across the tallest mountains I’ve ever seen, ridge after ridge until suddenly the motors slow and a runway about the size of four football fields appears with a rock wall built against the mountain at the end. We land on two wheels and a prayer and everyone scrambles out into Lukla. This is the setting off point for all treks to Mt. Everest and the Sagarmanta Park, home of Everest and its sister peaks. As our bags are removed from the tiny pocket in the plane, others are being piled on and the plane leaves before we are through the exit gates and into the village. Then lands the next plane, and so on. There is even one helicopter flight.

Outside the airport gates are stacks of men hoping to be chosen as porters for a trek. Jeta, our head man, sees porters he knows and signs them on to carry our extensive load. There are four of us now. Jeta’s cousin carries my backpack. But first we stop at the Nameste Inn for breakfast. It’s all so casual, the preparation of the meals. I had asked for a toasted cheese sandwich (it was on the menu) and they had to go to the market to get a loaf of bread. There is no light in the restaurant, just daylight a bit reluctant to shine in but the interior is made in a blonde wood and tables with cushioned bench seats running along the wall. Outside one could see the activities of trekkers starting their days and also we could hear a puja in progress - that is a blessing ceremony at someone’s house - loud horns of three types, bells ringing, and chanting. This ceremony might go on for two or three days until the lama had cleansed everything in the patron’s home.

I was ready to get on the road - to see how hard this was going to be. We haven’t hiked in a week. My muscles were tight. But to begin with after registering with the official trekkers office and the police we wandered through a few villages, very pristine and fixed up for tourist - two story gray stone buildings with white or blue trim on the windows and doors, some little tourist shops for gear and souvenirs, but still, hovering even here, the horrible smoke from morning fires and the smoke still rising from the valleys. We began to see rhododendron trees in bloom, reds, hot pinks, whites, and also along the road violet colored primula. The road was full of rock, but not steps as in Annapurna. One had to concentrate to hit the right steps going down hill or up. It is tedious and a bit frightening because one false step and it could be over. My sticks are my saviors at this point, and in these Buddhist towns we pass through arcades of prayer wheels, which we each turn, and also pass on the left side clockwise of the vertical prayer flag poles or giant boulders which have been tediously carved with the Om of the Buddhist chants. Jim never misses a one, so I follow. We cross swinging metal suspension bridges that take a kind of balance or a rhythm to master, they cross high over rivers or just canyons so I try not to look down and get dizzy. It reminded me of the "exposure" factor when climbing the Tetons. There’s a lot of space between me and below.

Overwhelming is the amount of trekkers and their porters going both directions. A real traffic jam at times if you both need to step on the same bunch of steps. Lots of Germans, French, Russians, and Chinese were returning from successful excursions, I guess. But I couldn’t look up to see their happy faces since I was concentrating so hard on stepping on the right step and not folding up into a falling ball.

Zoes, a cross between cow and yak, pass on the trails, their bells ringing from their necks, and their backs loaded with packs. Donkeys too pass, and even a lady on a gray horse also with giant jingle bells who is being led by a sherpa. A-ha, I think. But Jim won’t even let me think about that. We trek for three hours before lunch. Since we arrived early this morning, we’d be able to go further after the meal, once again, cooked on the spot. Stopping for lunch is never fast food. It’s lots of waiting for ingredients to be prepared from scratch. Most meals are potatoes or rice or noodle based with sides of greens. I tried yak cheese momo (potstickers) but there wasn’t much flavor to them. There are two kinds of chocolate Snickers and Mars bars in a display case. I knew I’d need energy food so chewed up a Snickers. There’s not much sugar in foods, only in tea, which my group drinks excessively. Tea is brought in giant thermos that are almost comical for their size. Each place we’ve stopped, the higher we reach, the thermos has gotten larger, encouraging guests to sit and drink a while.

When we took off after lunch at Phakting (which was our original destination for night, but we arrived early), I was full of energy and set off first by myself. Of course, I did it slowly, as instructed, and finally everyone had caught up. We were all stopped by soldiers at the crossing of a river, who had to inspect our backpacks and luggage. This was a surprise but apparently is Nepal’s effort to appease China so there is no Free Tibet protests on Mt. Everest. We hiked along the Dudhkosi River, its water milky green because it was fresh melt from the and then began a sever upward climb which lasted about two excruciating hours. My muscles almost fell out of my skin and each step I wondered if I was not doing a foolish thing, would I ever be able to make it to my goal, and I concentrated on how exhausted I was. Each rest stop I tried to deep breathe as much as possible and drink water. Dehydration is an enemy, as can be the altitude. We went from 7500 feet, where we landed, down about 1000 feet, and then back up 8500 feet by the time we reached our destination for the night in Monjo.

Jeta went ahead of us to look for a lodge with an attached bathroom. The room was new with bright colored bedspreads and pillows but I was so exhausted I just folded up in the bed using the sleeping bag as a cover and my cashmere blanket wrapped around my shoulders and neck. I tried to stretch my hips and legs, but after such extreme effort on the trek, all I could do was shiver from the cold. It took a while to warm up. There is no heat in these lodges, but there is a large stove in the middle of the dining area where everyone gathers for tea and food. We are too wrapped in a valley to be able to use the satellite to send the blog or emails. Tomorrow we’ll be up higher and in a more populous areas.

Photos: Landing at Lukla; Brush the prayer wheel for luck; Rhododendrun trees; trail traffic - these are crosses between cows and yaks; A beautiful Nepali woman and child; Things we walk around to get right; a suspension bridge high above a river.

Shopping in Kathmandu

2008-04-22T18:06:00.009+05:30

Smoke like Elliot’s creepy yellow cat drapes itself in gray fur paws down every street, mixing with the pollution of more traffic (car, motorcycle, rickshaw, truck, bus, foot) than any one city can bare. It’s off-season steaming hot. There’s no running water to drink or bathe in. Odors of incense hang around your neck and the only refuge is in a tiny shop booth, but then you are attacked by overzealous vendors of everything imaginable. I’ve now armed myself - copying Chinese girls we met on the Annapurna trek - with a neck scarf which I can pull up over my nose when the air is just unbearable, which is most of the time. We all look like bank robbers.
Since we’ve had a couple of restoration days in Kathmandu, and with a friend Karen, and Jim’s assistant Brad joining us for the Everest trek, I took advantage of Karen’s expertise (she lived in Nepal 18 months) to shop for glass beaded necklaces and glass bracelets in bright colors. The bangles are fragile, but they cost about seven cents a piece. The glass beaded necklaces are made in the moment at a vendor’s stall in the Muslim side of town called Terai. Sitting before rows of bright greens, reds, yellows, golds, pinks, and every kind of mixture, it was hard to ‘pick out what you want’ as Jim said, and they’ll make it for you. A necklace of about ten strands cost a pittance. In a special area, men tied long strings to their big toe and threaded the beads by hand to make the pattern one requested. It’s crowded, primitive, but an old craft form that’s faded from our shores.
In the many stalls in this area are T-shirts embroidered on the spot with Free Tibet or whatever you want; felted pocket books of every hue; elaborately embroidered scarves and jackets, and cheap red velvet scuffs beaded with sequins. Pashmina shawls and cashmere sweaters really from Kashmir are more numerous than rice krispies in a box. No color forgotten, there is cashmere for the masses. Curious is the story of the shahatush wool from a rare Tibetan antelope living at 14,000 feet on a rare treeless steppe in Tibet. This finest of all cashmere wools (a scarf can be pulled through a small wedding band), once coveted by the jet set of Europe and America, can no longer be sold because the antelopes were being wiped out as their wool was traded for illegal tiger bone and skin, rhino horns, bear gall bladders, Musk pods, all used for Oriental medicine. A new effort to copy the original shawls which cost up to 10,000 dollars has been made so that the antelope are no longer slaughtered, but farmed and sheared like other wool bearing sheep and antelopes, at least that’s what one salesman told me. Kathmandu once trafficked in the illegal wool, but no longer. A pure shawl is impossible to find. Some times a low-grade farmed shahatush wool might be woven into a cashmere scarf but it’s rare to find those as well.
Fabrics, silk, cotton, wool, nylon, are purchased in whatever color scheme one wishes, and then made to your own measurement in a day or two. Nepali women spend their days shopping in these tiny spaces choosing new saris. Tailors of men’s clothing likewise fashion suits out of fine fabrics, not too far from the baskets of garlic, ginger, herbs and teas, fresh tofu and leis of orange and yellow marigolds. It’s hard to see everything available because you are about to be run down by a motorcycle or a bicycle drawn rickshaw or a car or you arrive in a circular area which is another Hindu temple with lions and strange goddesses smudged with red faces. Below your feet are pot holes and burned dead animals and garbage, so you try to keep out of the mire. It’s impossible. Brad was standing outside one little bin waiting for us to buy glass bangles and got bombed by a pidgeon. Such is life.
In the morning Karen had taken me to the European-American supermarket where every kind of familiar food was available. Shelves after shelves offered familiar brands of toilet paper, Saran wrap, cookies, crackers, even grits and macaroni and cheese in a box, soap powders, masses of toothbrushes and toothpaste (although you cannot brush your teeth with sink water if you are a tourist) and home made cakes and desserts mixed in with olive oils, mayonnaise, soy and A-1 sauce. We were stocking up on things we might want to eat on the trek. I was intrigued by John Brown products in green cans, tuna, wild salmon, caviar, herrings, etc. And there were plenty of pickles and even capers. Basically, we have to carry everything we think we are going to need for the next two weeks. Another case of the "what if" stock.
Yesterday, because we must have a tourist visa to enter India, Jim and I arrived early at the Indian Embassy and were told by the guard we needed a number. We were given 81. That means at 7 a.m. there were already 81 or more people ahead of us. But we didn’t think much of it, and returned at 9:30 when the gates opened. We waited in line outside in the sun about an hour. Then when we finally got in and followed the dash to an open area on the side of the building, we found a impossible packed line of faux hippies, Buddhist monks, and young girls in daring attire waiting in line as well. The first project is to fill out what is called a fax form. This is sent to the state department of each person’s home country. Then you wait in line to turn that in. We waited and waited and waited. I finally found a chair and crocheted to pass the time. There was no etiquette of line forming. People just broke in where they willed. But we tried to be patient as the clock ticked to 12 noon. A signed said that the faxes would not be accepted after 12 noon. Well, when that hour arrived, there were still 30 people in front of us, and the one single clerk who was doing the work, shut the window and said he would not accept any more fax applications that day. Why in the world, we mulled, did they give us a number and let us in in the first place if we weren’t going to receive attention? Embassies are not easy anywhere, but the Indian Embassy was a disaster. And we had no recourse but to leave and talk to the police guards (Nepali) who said we had to come about 2 in the morning to line up for the number.
Jim was stirred to find an alternative way - I was sure there must be one myself. And he found a travel agency that, if we paid a fee, would do the work for us and we’d have the visa by the time we return from the Everest expedition in two weeks. Here’s hoping. We have had to rewrite the two weeks when we were supposed to go to Tibet and to Mt. Kailash because China will not open the borders of Tibet to anyone until after the Olympics in August. Since India was a curiosity for me and isn’t that far, we’ve chosen a different program to go there and see Old Tibet in Laddock (combined with a trek through those high and dry mountains) and a visit to Darmsala, the residency of the Dalai Lama, were we hope to participate in one of his audiences. If he is in town, as now scheduled, we will be there. Also I’ll have a chance to see the Taj Mahal. Might as well.

Photos: Supermarket breads; Pidgeon Drop square; snack cart - notice popcorn; symphony in reds; bead row; Karen and I sample beads; bead stringer; Merchant of fiddlehead ferns; merchant of teas and peas.

Another Wild Ride

2008-04-20T17:10:00.010+05:30

After reaching one dream, you don’t anticipate getting close to another in less than twenty-four hours. But in the jungle, the mighty jungle of Chitwan, things happen.

Through my travel guide, Jim Williams, and Dan, our private Chitwan guide (a Nepali who has visited Jackson Hole, Wyo.), an arrangement was made for me to ride an elephant bareback. No saddle. No box. Only in the elephant compound. So during the quiet time between early morning safari and lunch, I went to the elephant corral and there was an elephant willing to give me the thrill of riding her. Guests are not allowed to have such contact with the elephants, so I felt extremely honored. Most of the caretakers (each elephant has three caretakers exclusive to her/him) sat on the porch of their quarters to watch this old American lady who had to take a ride like they ride. I probably didn’t qualify in their eyes - although I have ridden horses most of my life, and have ridden camels, donkeys, dolphins, and hope to ride a yak. When I was an intern reporter at the Commercial Appeal, I rode an elephant in the parade from the train to the circus tent, and once in South Africa, in one of those controlled situations in a ring, on a ride, really for children, I took the opportunity to ride an African elephant. But this was going to be special, if I could get on her. No matter how thin or fat I have been, I could never get on a horse without pulling the saddle off. So I worried about how I was going to climb on an elephant.

Sita Kali was brought from under her canopy and looked me in the eye. I looked her in the eye and asked permission silently. Then she kneeled down and stuck out her back left leg. Her trainer said for me to step on her leg and crawl up her back. I worried my 145 pounds might hurt her leg, but then remembered, this is an elephant. I had nothing to hold on to but depended on balance and stepped up until I could sit and put my legs around her neck. Two helpers held my arms so I wouldn’t fall backwards. Her skin was so dry, not slippery at all, and very wrinkled. That gave security. I scooted up to her ears, but I was encouraged to pull up more, pull up more and that was difficult since we were at an incline. Finally I got in the forward slot and found myself in a comfortable place high up off the ground and in a beautiful scene.

Then Sita rose up slowly off her knees . My right foot was caught in the chain around her neck. That was taken care of. I started to grab the chain. One helper said, "Grab both ears at the forward curl." (Indian elephant ears have a curl along the top edge.). Sita began to flap her ears. I grabbed her ears. It was quite a bend over. Now kick her behind her ears. I was reluctant, as I didn’t want to hurt her. I had on hiking shoes, and normally her drivers are barefooted. I learned in an elephant lecture yesterday that if you kick both feet at the same time, that meant go forward. If you want to go right, kick behind the left ear, or go left, kick behind the right ear, sort of like reining polo ponies. I gently tapped her while the trainers grunted and yelled things I didn’t understand. Finally I got the courage to sit up straight and not hold on to anything, imagining myself was one of those circus girls in beaded costumes with their arms in the air, moving their bellies with the motion of the elephant. Move your hips, one man advised. So I had to relax and go with the flow. It was such a smooth thing, better than a camel, just sensational as we walked, though slowly, to the end of the road as I wished my grandchildren were riding with me. Sita was one good lady who knew she had a novice aboard.

My safari ended. She knelt down low enough so I could throw my left leg over her back, get on my stomach and slide off, like getting off a horse. I was so thrilled I was trembling. And speechless.
So I applauded. Namaste. God bless Sita.

It’s not uncommon to get addicted to elephants. They are creatures of habit with a life span about that of a human. They are extraordinary mothers. They protect their caretakers, to are willing to wake in the night, if they hear the right trumpet, to bring them water or another elephant sandwich. Their trunks are amazing tools - they often stick it in their throats to suck out water and then spray it over their backs or sides to cool off. If a tourist drops a lens cap or a pencil in the path, the elephant smells it and picks it up. They have poor eyesight, but depend on sight and smell and sound for accuracy. Amazing creatures who have to spend 22 months carrying their babies. Imagine that, mothers.

Sundai Kali, the feisty small elephant who loves hunting tigers, became my regular safari elephant. Twice more I climbed into the saddle, holding on for dear life to the bars of the open box, and was taken into the brush, reeds, mud and rivers looking for tracks of tigers. We actually found a Gaur, another word for buffalo, which is vicious as Cape buffalo’s in Africa. He downed his head and grunted fightin’ words, to which Sundai lifted her trunk and shreaked a loud get out of my way. It was funny. I snapped a quick photo and we left. Sundai did not like this beast. We saw the rare Marsh Mugger crocodile hidden in aq pond covered in green river lettuce and plenty of Asian one-horned rhinoceros. Flying peacocks, magpie robins, herons, storks, babblers, every kind of bird imaginable hung on the talk stalks of grass, in the trees, or on old stumps. Their music followed us everywhere. We saw evidence of an old tiger familiar to the area, but no tiger himself. It is so easy for them to hide and disappear into the swamps. So we were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

A combined landrover and boat trip down the river held excitement as we encountered the wild roving elephant in musk and had to take a different pathway. In the quietness of the canoe trip down Nariani River, we saw the very rare gharial crocodile, only his bottleneck mouth and eyes peeping above the river. But they are skiddish, so we passed on by. Back on shore, we passed groves of langur monkeys in huge Dadrungo trees rich with an orange berry that when eaten in abundance makes man or animal drunk.

We leave this enthralling place at noon to fly out of an airport that is a mere cut field marked with white stones. Reminds me of days of East Africa in the ‘60ties. Right now I am listening to the yells of the rogue elephant trying to break into our camp trying to mate with one of the females. He roams up and down in front of the camp lifting his trunk and yelling every kind of curse, I guess. The one male in our camp is behind a fence tossing his huge tusks as a come on. If the two came together, there’d be a fight to the death. I hope the rogue gets happy soon.

We return to Kathmandu for three nights to make preparations for the main aim of this trip, trekking to the base camp of Mt. Everest which begins Thursday. Say many prayers, please.

Photos: Getting up; Half way; the happiest camper; getting down; An elephant molar, 30 pounds; Gaur bull; riding the river in a canoe; the smokey sunrise at Chitwan.

Map: Central Nepal

2008-04-19T11:18:00.004+05:30

Updated topological map of central Nepal, showing both the Annapurna mountain area Audrey just visited, and the Chitwan region where she's now playing with tigers and elephants (location marked Chitwan Jungle Lodge). Click photo to enlarge, click Back to return. Satellite imagery from Google.

The Tiger Tale

2008-04-19T11:10:00.010+05:30

From the back of an elephant I’ve found joy tossing around in a box like saddle feeling the side to side rough roll of the elephant’s pace.
At 6 a.m. we set out on elephant with a rider, his legs wrapped around the neck of the elephant so he could give her signals with his toes against her ears, and a naturalist guide who stood behind. And we headed for the tundra, the deep grasses and reeds, the muddy paths and rivers. We were looking for tigers. It’s one of the things I want to see before I die - a Bengal tiger in the wild not behind the bars of a concrete zoo. The elephant "rover" was a rocking and rolling experience that probably would have shaken some peoples spine out of line. But I was so excited, remembering the excitement of the hunt on daily safaris we took when I lived in Tanganyika, albeit from a landrover then, as I got on my "looking" eyes trying to see if I could see anything swishing the grasses or some rock that might become a rhinoceros.
There were plenty of rhinoceros, the one horned Asian kind, with skin divided in to plates like knight’s armor, mostly covered in gray mud. We saw males and we saw females with babies. They hide in the tall reeds mostly, which was different from the black and white rhino of Africa, that preferred the plains. Mostly they looked like big boulders in the distance - and really there aren’t any boulders around here. We searched every nook and cranny for evidence of tigers and sloth bears. Both are evasive and not as apt to be caught napping under a tree like the African lions. So we pushed on and finally our attention turned to the multitude of birds - their music, their colors, their variety. Herons, babblers, cuckoo, etc. We found hog deer (I spotted that one with my glasses on - and believe you me - everything is so camouflaged that their short brown horns looked like sticks against the green to tan tall grasses) and footprints of sloth bear and tiger, but no bodies. So we gloried in the sunrise in a sky netted with smoke. In the mountains to our east they are burning the grasses and trees, as they do each year, and the rebirth or new buds become the best meals for the wild animals, but it’s tough on breathing for the rest of us.
After breakfast, it was a time to prepare for the heat of the day. I had to sit out under a branch of shade to send off yesterday’s blog and photos and I was pouring with sweat. Jim’s satellite box picked up the signals with ease and I was able to send and receive emails as well.
After a Nepali lunch, we had the opportunity to go to the elephant camp right next to ours rooms and so to speak with the elephants. Some were being prepared to go out to with their handlers to cut grasses for their meals. Other handlers sat on the ground making "sandwiches" or snacks for their charge from rice, seeds, grains, raisins and nuts, mixed and rolled up in long grasses to make balls, kind of an elephant gorp. An elephant can eat a hundred of these a day. A naturalist gave us a talk comparing Asian and African elephants: differences from the ears size, the ear rolls, the toe nails, and tusks and non-tusk, their attitude and train-abilities. Meanwhile, I watched the mama and baby interact about 15 feet in front of me. The trained elephants that are used for work and for our rides are chained, each in their own sheltered area, where they toss grasses in the air, flip them against their head and ears to remove the flies, then stuff them in their mouths. The trunk is an amazing finger or hand or arm. At times the mom reaches her trunk into her mouth, like she is sucking on it, and then pulls it out and sprays herself with the water she found within. Helps a cool out. The baby sleeps right under the mother’s stomach at time, and you hope the Mom doesn’t make a false step. A couple of stalls down was the bull elephant with long ivory tusks, actually born at Tiger Tops, patiently waiting his afternoon two hour labor, carrying tourist. After the lecture, we walked behind a chain of elephant to the river to watch them bathe and to put a hand in at rubbing their dry and wrinkly skin or tossing a handful of water over them. That was about all we could do. The elephants are completely dependent on their three caretakers, who are assigned to them for life. There is a loyalty there about which men from the rest of the world could learn.
But as the heat waned, the day had not ended. We loaded up on another elephant, her name Sundra Kaili. She was small. She was the quickest elephant in the herd. She was the one who enjoyed a tiger hunt. The driver was a young Nepali with the best sense for tigers in the area. We couldn’t miss. I can’t say sweet Sundra had a comfortable gate, in fact one has to hold on for dear life. But she knew her stuff and no matter how deep into the water we went - crossing some streams that were almost up to my feet hanging over the side - to the tallest reeds and grasses with no path to follow, Sundra and her caretaker made it through with vigor. I was in a trance of fascination. We went on like this, watching the tiger prints in the dust, and even a place he had laid down under a tree (not in the open like lions of Africa) for ninety minutes. Tree branches and sticks and reeds brushed passed us, as we dodged. We saw rhino of ever flavor - moms, calves, papas, some in water, some on the land - and plenty of birds. But who was looking for birds. My eye was on the tiger.
All of a sudden as we came out into daylight from under the jungle canopy I noticed on the other side of the small river were about seven other elephants carrying tourists from other camps. They were on OUR trail because they sensed something was up. Our driver would start kicking Sundra behind the ears at a mad pace and whop her on the head with a soft bamboo stick to make sure she paid attention to the command, and we went up and down like a seasaw - and then leaped into the swamps of mud and reeds, trying to see something. There he is, shouted Dan our guide still standing behind. See him? See him? All I could see was mats and masses of reed and grass. Then Sundra and another elephant kind of formed a V and all of a sudden there was trumpeting of the elephants, and my travel guide Jim yet out a yell (I thought the tiger may have jumped on him) and all the drivers were shouting in their language. I think this was what they called "flushing out the tiger." It was so intense, Sundra was trembling, like a dachshund, her trumpet up in the air like an antennae. Then suddenly leaping into a very small patch of clearing was the most beautiful beast I have ever seen. A young male tiger. My camera (which had good pictures of the reeds) went black. No more battery. So I just watched this sort of agitated young tiger, his orange, black and white stripes shining in the afternoon sun, show his teeth, ripple a low grrrrr sound (not a roar) and look at all the commotion around him, then dip back into the refuge of the reeds and swamp. WOW. All I can say is Wow. A thing of beauty, a joy forever. A tiger.
Everyone was happy because tigers are hard to find these days. Bengal tigers are disappearing, although there are rumors of a mother and two cubs in this area. Also this is a young tiger who has been in the area only about two months. One day he’ll have to contend with the larger, older tiger who has lived here 15 years. They are warriors about their areas and their females.
We road back with Sundra leading the rest in her fast pace, passed more rhinos, which we sort of pooh-poohed. I no longer felt the swing of Sundra’s gate. I had seen what I came to see and if I never reach another goal, this one counts as the best.

Photos: Riding the elephant; rhinos in pairs; making sandwiches; working on the river; Washing an elephant; a kneeling elephant; washing mama and baby; tiger print; through the reeds; The Tiger.

Commercial Appeal Travel Blog

2008-04-18T12:44:00.001+05:30

Audrey's second weekly dispatch especially for for Commercial Appeal readers awaits you at the CA's Travel Blog. Her first blog post from the jungle is below.

Jungle Music

2008-04-18T11:33:00.009+05:30

It’s not East Africa nor the Memphis Zoo, but I’m sitting in a room made mostly of bamboo and reed matting for walls, a jungle of trees (blackberry, Banyan, Kapok, Sal) listening to jungle sounds - monkeys screeching, crazy crickets breeetting, minor birds, Indian cuckoo, Jungle Babbler, Oriental Turtle Dove singing, and elephants trumpeting. I try to imagine sounds of a tiger or leopard or a sloth bear.
We just arrived in a familiar open air landrover and immediately it was deja vu - remembering the landrovers that were our life source in Karatu, Tanganyika when I lived there in 1962-3. We crossed a river in a wooden canoe for passengers, looking out for Marsh Mugger crocodiles and Gharial peeping through eye holes just above water. But don’t get in a rush. We are just arriving after a tediously long drive from Pokhara. We have time for safaris into the tall grasses and jungles.
Our original car and driver had a wreck before he got to us in Pokhara, so we hired a van that was air conditioned and went to the street wars again. Talk about from one extreme to the other! Back to traffic, huge trucks and buses with fronts decorated like angry masks, motorcycles by the thousands, people strolling anywhere paying no attention to your beep, and worse, roads that had not been repaired once in their lifetime. It took us six hours to go 150 kilometers with no break for lunch. We had stopped in Pokhara and loaded up on hard candies and peanuts at what some call a supermarket.
The road through tightly packed mountains was constant chaos of fat trucks and buses, motorcycles and pedestrians as well as continual town and villages. We bumped our way through Narayanghat and Bharatpur, then came the worst part to Megauli and an airport where we were greeted by military and a rep from Tiger Tops with a waiting landrover. It took hours just to reach the open country outside Pokhara. The three story houses continue to be flat roofed, brightly painted, surrounded in balconys and patterned in stones and bricks so each was an art work. In many cases on the roof you saw Buddhist temples and altars, the daily laundry, vertical prayer flags and big black water tanks to catch the rain. Some Buddhist built colorful altars with the eyes of Buddha on all sides right in the front yard.
Once we reached a rendition of country, the tiered plots were filled with rice seedlings. Women bent over in Vs planting and weeding. Because we were gradually reaching low altitude, the heat was stifling and to add to the beautiful female fashion there were colorful umbrellas for shade. I saw on young man sitting at a distance in the shade watching a half dozen cattle and holding an umbrella over his head. It made me giggle. We were roasting even in the "air-conditioned" van. I believe air-conditioning is relative here. And I’m not kin.
Chitwan National Park is a jungle reserve in southern Nepal guarded by the military, vigilant for poachers and trying to stay out of the political insecurities of this month. We are staying at Tiger Tops and it appears out of the jungle with the subtle swagger of a Bengal tiger. It is a pioneer of environmentally responsible nature tourism in Nepal and their lodges are copied throughout the world. It is administered by the Government of Nepal but is a private organization.
After a 45 minute landrover ride through deep waters and into "real" jungle, we were welcomed by a young Swiss girl here on a tour of duty and she offered us ICED mint tea (literally a cube of ice made from boiled water) and a slice of banana cake. It’s the first ice since I left home but is safe because all their water is boiled and filtered. Tiger Tops is not air conditioned other than by a fan in your room but the music all around from the birds, insects, elephants living next door and people going about their greeting labors are comforting. There is a good bathroom, electricity for lights but no plugs for charging, and a promise of a good night sleep. I’m content to just be somewhere for more than one night. We are scheduled here for four nights.
What challenges me is dealing with the dark. I’m used to living in a city where no matter what window I’m at, everything outside is lit up. In Memphis we have no darkness. We have street lights, porch lights, automatic lights that come on and go off according to dawn and dusk. Indoors, we live with televisions, computers, DVD players, printers, digital clocks and alarm systems that all seem to have light continually on. One can walk around the house just from those lights. But here, when it’s night, it’s night. For someone blind as I am in the night, it’s a bit hairy. My room, though, has two flashlights and there is a sort of electricity, solar powered, that comes in two gas lamps in which are the new "green" light bulbs, which I have at home but am never able to read by. But the fan worked all night. That’s important in such heavy heat as there is in a jungle situation.
As I climbed to my room and strolled around the deck, I saw in the distance (without my glasses) a gray blob. On focusing, I discovered it was a langur monkey with its black face and long gray hair. Wow, I thought. I don’t even like monkeys but at once was awed by this species in the wild. We had also seen a spotted deer buck and two females on the dirt road inside the park and there are rumors of a male elephant out of control and not yet done with his mating season. He ran past the viewing area of Tiger Tops about cocktail hour. As I write this, I hear the elephants stirred into trumpeting like crazy and jackles screaming. The whole place is one big jumble of sound sure better than any thing on anyone’s Ipod. Now, once again after 45 years, I’m in my kind of paradise.
Photos: A hydrangea in Fish Tail Lodges enchanting garden. 2) Canoes to go. 3) Leaving the hotel. 4) Ice cream vendor in a village. 5) Buddhist temple. 6) Monster buses. 7) Crossing the river in Chitwan. 8) Langur monkey. 9) Tiger Tops rooms.

A Downer and Outer

2008-04-16T14:26:00.011+05:30

I finally got the crud. After all the water I pour down daily (you can buy a bottled water called Penguin, ironically) I just lucked out. Jim says that every time I open and shut the spout to my drinking bottle, I spread germs on it. Good heavens. There are germs everywhere. Triple anything I’ve known in my life. I can’t decide what to touch and not to touch. Everyone’s hands just look dirty.

But here’s the deal. Yesterday was basically the final trek in Annapurna Region. The glorious peaks were at my back as we departed from Ghandruk. after a breakfast of banana pancake that was big plate size, and an omelette. I would never eat these things at home, but Jim keeps pushing me to shovel in the carbs and proteins for strength. It has helped, I hate to admit. However today, the banana stayed with me until the night, belching all way thanks to swigs of Sprite and I wasn’t a happy camper trudging two and a half hours down the usual stone steps. (It’s harder on your calves and knees to go downstairs, and harder on your puff and heart going upstairs, six of one, half a dozen of the other.)

However, this trek was on the "freeway." That means it’s the major via for men and women toting enormous bags and handmade sisal baskets stuffed with groceries. The path is about eight feet wide and it wanders through the farming area where I was impressed by the cleanliness of the tiny houses, usually offering a rest stop for trekkers. After the chicken man passed, and the egg man (Imagine the responsibility of that), wse noticed a lot of boxed fruit drinks (those awful sweet things) and toilet paper, which I’ve never found in any bathroom or hotel on this trek. It is still hard for me to see these people dripping sweat hiking up miles of stairs with baskets of loot on their back, but little children start doing this at an early age.

I was ready with "Hooray" when we reached the river, about 6 thousand feet below. We walked on another of those swinging bridges (I still cannot master that) but then ahead of us was about three more hours of my kinda cross country trekking, although this was in the proverbial rock path and I stumbled often. The jest of this story is that the sun was about ninety degrees. Remember the old Africa adage that only Fools and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun? You can check us off as "Fool." It was so hot energy was fading away at breakneck speed and my feet, which don’t get sore for some reason, were toting me on the best they could. At last when we stopped at one rest place (Coca-Cola stock must have risen these past few days with all the Sprites I drink for sugar kicks.)I got the brainy idea I’ve seen athletes do of taking my hand towel (drying on the outside of my backpack along with my handwashed underwear) passing it under cold water from one of the rubber tubes from which water pours at each dwelling, and then wearing it on my head under the baseball cap. It was instant air conditioning and for that reason I didn’t get sun stroke, I think.

Then we reached Birethani although a community of about 50 people, the hotel called Moonlight was the worst yet. Here was the true hole in the ground toilet outside (with none of the luxuries of an outhouse) and through the door beside it was the shower. Everyone in the community came to use that shower. A sink was against the wall outside, good for washing hands and teeth. However, I said I’d stay dirty for a night and hopefully the next hotel would be safer health wise. Jim sort of gets irritated at my reluctance to accept the inevitable in the poorest country in the world. I feel ashamed but we Americans are so over-conscious about germs, disease, filth, garbage, etc. It’s hard to break the habit. Meanwhile, I was sick as a dog and could only lay down in a depressing little cell on top of two mattresses (we always move the mattress from the second bed to the one I’ll sleep in to make it softer) and wait out dinner and the night. I tried to eat water buffalo yoghurt with some rice and sugar in it. That was about all. It didn’t help my nausea much. (Maybe I’m losing a few pounds?)

Today after hiking about an hour on a ridiculous road (I saw my first motor vehicle in five days), and then climbing up about a thousand feet, we arrived at the bus stop and a taxi was there to pick us up and drive us back to Pokhara. Talk about Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride! The taxi was Indian style with a flowered light green print covering the seats and the outside of the cab was chartreuse as well. The driver was a young Indian with long greasy hair who laid on the horn for the entire way - which was a good thing since the buses and landrovers coming the other way were flat out road hogs. Along the way, children held out hands of berries, so Jim wanted to stop and try some. They looked like tiny orange raspberries but I’m not going to sample in this state of stomach.

What has been the worst environmental problem for me is the constant odor of smoke. From before dawn, when families begin to build fires for cooking and whatever, there is this stench of wood burning that won’t leave your nostrils. We had passed three young and pretty Chinese girls who were sick and tired of their trek, according to their sherpa. Each wore pretty print scarves like bandit masks and hats that covered everything else but their eyes. I gather this was a habit they had learned in China where pollution is such a problem. Now I’m on the lookout for a neck scarf.

Well, to end today’s report, we finally arrived in Pokhara at what is considered a swank hotel - It rambles with healthy, clean, well furnished rooms. There is a SHOWER and a TOILET so I can get rid of what I need to rid of in comfort. There is even, dare I sway it, electricity and air condition. This place is called Fish Tail Inn, after the majestic mountain which you can no longer see. To get here we had to cross a low-key river on a raft where a pilot in khaki uniform pulled us across with a green rope. Tomorrow we leave early for Chitwan Jungle Lodge. It’s a five hour drive into the sweltering jungle of elephants, rhinoceros and maybe tigers.

Photos: Ghandruk (notice the stairs); the chicken man; the hair cut; close up of traveling chickens; washing; toting; offering wild yellow raspberries.

Stepping Stones

2008-04-15T05:42:00.010+05:30

Stone steps. This is what you deal with in Nepal.
All life revolves around up and down on stone steps. Villagers don’t consider it awesome. I do. Every time I lean over or heave up on my sticks I wonder if I’ll die. There’s nothing easy about these steps, no comfort zone, no smoothing out. A trip or a stumble and it could be ciau baby.
From Landruk to Ghandruk doesn’t look far but it takes severely down steps for a thousand feet, crossing a bridge over a raging river, then severely upward steps for two thousand feet to get there. Jim estimated we stepped on more then 6000 steps by the time we reached our Ghandruk. That’s just in a four hour period to cover a mile of steps. Tomorrow it’s six hours of straight down steps as we head toward the nearest road which will take a long tomorrow and a short next day to reach. My glutes, quads and calves are crying out for peace. Hold on fellows, I say. We’ll be in the jungle in a couple of days for a rest before starting the trek from 9000 feet to 17,000 feet which is about the altitude of the base camp of Mt. Everest.
So today I am horizontal for the afternoon in another hard bed in a small cubicle with a big window watching a hale storm creep up with little thunder. I’m sneaking in a few Pilates stretches, hoping that’ll help. It’s lunchtime (I tried Dhal Bak finally and liked it) and we made good time for me on this mornings trek to Ghandruk. Blessedly we arrived before the storm at Hotel Manisha which claims to be the stopover for the road to Shangrila. Not in the old black and white movie I remember. I can see from here across the way to where we departed from this morning and it makes me feel good that I even made it here at all.
The Nepalis have consideration for us poor trekkers so every so many feet of steps a resting seat of stones gives us something to lean or sit on to catch our breath. It’s not always in the shade but it helps our lungs restore breathing. And ponder the next inning of your life.
For sure, there’s no running down to the corner store for something, although it’s no effort for the Ghrundruks who do it every day, except there’s no corner store to solve your needs. There is no fat on the people here, nothing extra on their bodies. And there’s no butter with bread, no magazines, no ice, no ice cream - although this hotel has a freezer which was, understand, brought here on the back of a man. If you want tables and beds, someone has to bring it on their back, a strong rope tied around their forehead for support.
I follow my guide, Jim. I don’t look around much at the scenery which drops like a water fall because I might get vertigo. I have come to know the heels of his hiking boots, the muscle in his calves (he wears shorts), the clank of his sticks as he moves slowly forward (on my behalf) and also tiny white flowers soon to become wild strawberries, miniature blue forget-me-nots, all kinds of grasses and moss, hard candy wrappers, (no cigarette butts), sweat in my eye and more shiny schist (the name of the stones of the steps)which are often ungracious with animal poop, and some human. Jim warns me just in case.
When we finally reach our stop for the night, facilities at lodges sound better than they are. Attached toilets, which trekkers fight for, and often there is only one in the place, means a seat but the water has to be turned on for it to flush. Shower fixtures are on the wall but nothing comes out of them, much less hot water which needs to be brought in a bucket so you can sponge off. Not accustomed to this habit I stuck my hand in the water when the soap dropped and burned it. This lodge, as many do, advertised hot water. It’s solar heated. By the time I got ready to take a showeer, everyone else had taken showers and used up all the heated water. So I have to ask my porter to bring up a bowl of hot water so I can wash my face at least. Yesterday I had to wash underwear, and so combined using my underwear as a washrag when they had been first washed clean.. Then the underwear is hung on the backpack to dry as the trek moves along and if the rain doesn’t come. You have to make do. Most lodges also claim electricity but that’s only meek light and not necessarily plugs and usually the electricity has gone off before you’ve finished your writing or reading. I write my blog at 3 or 4 in the morning, fixing the pictures and preparing it to be sent at 7 a.m. when Jim sets up his satellite equipment. I usually write in the dark, which is a mess since I can’t see the keyboard. Takes a while.
Before I left home and when I was in Kathmandu many people asked, "Aren’t you excited about your trek?" Excitement never played a part. It is pure unadulterated challenge. I knew I’d wreck from my history book every idea of normality, every developed muscle, every target to bullseye what’s to come, every moment of loneliness and frustration. I’ve never pretended to be a trekker but to get to do the things I’d hope to do before I die, I have to use my feet to get it done.
I think there’s nothing heroic about what I’m doing. Just because I’m 68 and a new sister of cancer really doesn’t apply here. I’m only heroic when I argue with myself to life that leg up one more time and struggle to keep on going.. My father would have said ,"You got yourself into this, so do it." Well, I’m trying. I don’t know what getting to Everest base camp will entail (freezing mornings, climbing continually, acclimatization and positive attitude when there are no conveniences) but the Annapurna region of Nepal has been the biggest physical challenge in my life so far and every morning when I cinch on my security blanket ( the Prada fanny pack, the Golden Door water bottle, my Kleenex brought from home, and a package of gorp) I’m giving it another shot. Through the odors of smoke, fried bread and dung, I hear the birds sing masterpieces from dawn to dusk and in between rain storms, although I cannot see them. We would sing too, I guess, if we could fly through such valleys as these framed with some of the highest snow covered mountains in the world, all to see a view, all to see how another culture lives, all to see how far my body will stretch and my mind, too. If it’s worth the agony and the ecstasy, will I ever know? Well, this afternoon in this masterpiece landscape, a rainbow spread its arc across the valley. That’s my God. He’s always giving me gifts of hope. I believe he uses rainbows to assure me I’m doing the right thing.
Photos: Annapurna South at dawn; We’re going over there to Ghandruk. The continual steps. A Nepali child. A pair of trekkers taking a rest. Fish tail after the rain. The rainbow.

Rolling On The Stones

2008-04-14T05:49:00.011+05:30

Finally, I’m getting the knack of trekking. If you can hike through the most difficult terrains, there are rewards way beyond your everyday tourist occurrences or noisy television screens. You also realize if you quit worrying about it, your body won’t let you down. Half the problem is fearing you can’t do it. But you can if you forgetabout it. I didn’t even have to take an Ibuprofen. I was so grateful to be outside. You are outside except for shelter to sleep in. For this homes and hostels are minor, with doors that open straight onto the streets and with no living or entertaining room or bathroom for that matter. Life is about labor and survival, but in a refreshing and religious way.

Saturday’s storm cleaned the air of constant haze and smoke, but when the dogs began to bark and the roosters crow, the first movement in homes is to light a fire, and the smokey smell returns. After a pancake breakfast sitting on a balcony sending blogs and emails and watching the sun rise over the Annapurna Range, one mountain at a time turning pink on its peak, we set off about 7:30 for a far away destination, Landruk. First we had to make up for what we didn’t finish yesterday because of the rain. I’m piled in layers of shirts, jackets and scarves looking like a mountain myself. It’s cold at this hour. By afternoon I’ll be down to a t-shirt.
The path was fairly reasonable in the beginning as we passed through a couple of hamlets or pueblos composed of about four to five structures, usually claiming to be restaurants and six room lodges with names like Heavenly Hotel and then crude brick homes of the locals. In most cases there is no electricity nor running water except from a barrel of caught rain water with a small tube for the water to run out so you can wash your hands, or as one of our porters did, wash his whole body with clothes on. There are no gas stations (no vehicles), no fast food places, no supermarkets, no furniture stores, no entertainment centers, just simple farmers providing a night’s stay to trekkers while others go about the harvesting of wheat, the herding of a handful of water buffalo, and loading products from one spot to another. Every load is transported by a porter using a strap around his head to tote the item, be it a table, a basket of chairs, or produce. Women, in their lively colored wraps and skirts, will use their silk scarf maybe to wrap a sleeping child to their backs, or to carry produce home from the tiny food house which doubles as a kitchen to feed the trekkers.

Children abound playing with whatever they find in the outdoors. Chickens range where humans are and share the picnic table benches with you. It’s amazing how people can still survive in far away locations hanging of off the forested skirts of giant mountains and deep valleys whose beauty has yet to be tarnished by modern methods of industry cityhood. And they laugh and dance and sing. They are happy. Their desires are family based. In each hamlet there is usually a small table offering Snickers bars, Cadbury chocolate, Potato Chips, banana gum, and a bag of cut up dried fruits or nuts. Mind you there are only two or three of each one. Children hang around these tables, picking up a candy or touching a gum, hoping to become the owner of one. A plastic bucket filled with water half way is filled with bottles of coke, sprite and Himalayan beer. These are quick sales to trekkers always needing energy and to sit in the shade a while.
For four and a half hours with only two stops for a Sprite or cup of tea, we covered every kind of up and down but the road, if you could call it that, was only one for feet, the inevitable stones over which we tread. Must be the world of Tolkeino and Hobbits. Today we met with the down steps. For all we came up yesterday, we went down today, and add to that more ups and more downs, but somehow I was more comfortable because it wasn’t so violent as the first day’s continual climb. When we stop for lunch, it takes a while. Jeta arranges with the family to prepare our meal, whatever we want. The father goes into the garden to pick fresh vegies, including cauliflower, finger sized carrots and assorted greens. Everything is finely chopped on the kitchen table. Jeta makes the dough for "momo" or pockstickers and fills them with fresh vegies for me; Jim usually has Dahl Bak, the Nepali hamburger, I guess.

After lunch we began a severe trek down rock stairs, hundreds of stairs that seemed endless but took us through forests of orchids, moss and rhododendron trees not yet in bloom. Far away in the valley, our clear day was to be usurped again by a rain storm. We walked quickly, climbing up and down the steps, crossing two wobbly suspension bridges (talk about hard to get your balance) that got us across a river, and passing many trekkers and many hamlets busy harvesting crops. At one home, two women with long bamboo sticks were beating barley and wheat trying to get their work done before a storm arrived.

We were dashing through trying to get to Landruk before the torrents of rain would fall. Jim asked if I needed a rest, I said No, let’s get to Landruk. And so we pushed on as quickly and safely as our legs would carry us. There was a nice relatively flat area through the farming tiers but when Landruk was in sight, the rains fell, not only the rain but hail. Jim and I jumped into a storage shelter - normally for animals and crops about the size of a bus stop. We pulled our rain gear from the backpack (you always carry rain gear), and waited out the worst part of the rain before we got back on the path, rushing on the stone pathways to our destination. It rained and rained but we found a two story lodge which was quickly filling up and after some negotiation, done by Jeta, I got the room with a toilet attached.

All I could do was fall in bed exhausted, wet and cold. I snuggled under a sleeping bag and a heavy blanket and was thankful my body hadn’t let me down. We had trekked a total of eight hours. Night came darkly and I joined the buzzing group for a quick meal in the dining room, where other trekkers and their guides planned the next days excursions. Jeta prepared my meal, so I ate and ran, so to speak, then lay in bed to tired to write but listened to the villagers dancing and singing out the night, thinking how lucky are these Nepali countryfolk.

Photos: :Typical menu for all meals; Early morning work in front of Annapurna; a typical hamlet; a beautiful child; the swinging bridge; fresh vegies for lunch; women beating grain; Landruk.

Wendi Thomas column

2008-04-13T11:39:00.003+05:30

Wendi Thomas' Sunday column about Audrey is now online. Also look here.