To Asia...and Beyond!

Happy Thanksgiving!  We are thankful that you have been so patient as we've been off the grid.  We covered lots of ground in the last few weeks and will break the journey into a few entries to make it more manageable for the reader (and writer).

When we said goodbye to Europe, we entered that time warp that comes with flying through the night and across many time zones.  We landed in Hong Kong with our bodies telling us it was bedtime and our watches telling us it was early morning.  Disembarking the plane, we were greeted by legions of local residents in surgical face masks passing out swine flu warning literature and using the latest technology to scan our bodies for fever.  For Ben, it was eerily like the sterile welcome he got on his last visit to Hong Kong during the height of the SARS outbreak.

With six hours to burn before our next flight, we hopped on a bus to explore Lantau Island.  Embracing the fact that we traded the continent of old cathedrals for the land of Buddha, we rode a gondola through the lush mountains to the top of the Ngong Ping plateau.  Here we cavorted with the world's tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha statue and lapped up the sunshine.  We also visited the Po Lin Monastery amidst a sea of pesky tourists.  Our quiet time for the day came at the Wisdom Path, a set of giant wooden pillars containing a carved prayer.

Brains muddy from 48 sleepless hours of travel, we finally reached the charming chaos of Kathmandu.  Our cab ride to the hotel quickly impressed on us that we had left the first world behind.  The jalopy itself was a battered wreck that must have been on its last legs a decade ago.  The car's engine died anytime the car stopped moving, so the driver just flashed his lights as we approached intersections, while we closed our eyes and held on tightly.  Many of Kathmandu's residents were wearing surgical masks too, but this was to protect their lungs from the choking clouds of smog and exhaust in the streets.
 

We booked a trek the following day and then wandered the city's bustling streets.  Walking the maze of dusty alleys is energizing, heartbreaking, gut wrenching, and draining all at once.  The streets are quite narrow and cabs, mopeds, rickshaws, and bicycles buzz past with horns blaring and immense faith in their ability to navigate at top speed with only inches to spare.  Raw meat hangs in the open air of "butcher shops," which are shanties open to the street.  Vendors call out from all sides in an attempt to snag the business of passersby.  Ancient, wizened women sell marigolds for the faithful to offer on the Hindu shrines checkering the city.  Touts incessantly approach the gora (Nepali for "gringo") with offers of trekking guides, hash, tiger balm, and anything else they think might earn them a buck.  We pass mounds of fresh vegetables for sale, squashed rats on the road, beggars, and fancy restaurants with white linen.  It is an invigorating day of exploration that leaves us exhausted and overstimulated.  It ends abruptly when the nightly blackout rolls through town - the Nepali answer to the city's overwhelming demand for electricity after darkness falls.  We picked out our expedition sleeping bags and down coats by flashlight and then got back to work on resetting our sleep schedules.

The first day of our trek looked on paper like a simple transport day, moving from the city to the countryside.  In reality, we got eight hours of true immersion on a local bus with all the sights, sounds, and smells that entails.  The first two hours were spent just escaping the sprawl of the Kathmandu Valley, with stops every few minutes to pick up anyone who waved at the bus.  We started off as two of the five passengers on an empty bus, but quickly found it bursting at the seams.  Each Nepali bus has a team of three employees who work together to pack it to the brim.  One drives, while the other two hang out the open door calling out the bus's destination to all within earshot.  When they acquire a passenger, the "hangers" put the luggage (and sometimes the passengers) on the bus's roof and do their best to jump in as the driver takes off again.  The winding gravel road into the mountains is barely wide enough for two vehicles, so the hangers also walk along the side of the bus and beat a rhythm on the outside that tells the driver how much space he has whenever there is a bus or truck going in the opposite direction.  Whoever thought Croatia's roads were unsafe has never been to Nepal, where each bus driver has a shrine on the dashboard with an idol of his favorite god in hope that this provides safe passage.    

The bus ride was a grueling and entertaining affair, as we rocketed down the pockmarked road.  The antique woman in the front of the bus sent a constant barrage of mucus laden spit out the window.  Old men carrying straw baskets laughed loudly.  Each bus has a distinct and circus-like horn, used liberally at every bend in the road to alert traffic from the other direction, so this carnival blare was a constant serenade.  We stopped at the last gas station on the road to top off the tank and acquired our final cargo - four mammoth gas cans that bounced on the floor next to us for the rest of the trip.  High on the noxious gasoline fumes, we listened to Bollywood hits in Hindi pouring out of the crackly speakers and prayed that no one would light a cigarette in our rolling Molotov cocktail.



(see youtube video of our bus ride at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIVomw_yZXY)

That night we went to bed giddy to be out of the city and anxious to see what adventures were lurking in the snow capped peaks we could see in the distance.  See you soon for a synopsis of our trek!