Our beer is fermenting! It’s got a little nook in the pantry and it’s working hard. George and I have decided not to name it until we know it doesn’t taste like crap.

Let the beer brewing begin! George and I are cooking up an English IPA.

University of michigan graduation - 75,000 people? Pretty much like my graduation at Brown. Right.

Eggs baked over wine soaked mushrooms and croutons. A side of spicy asparagus.

Painting the bathroom after reconstruction. I generally think of painting as false productivity (and reminders of the scars of youth) but at least it makes for a good photo.

A sunny day in Dolores park.

Dusting off the good old blog. Working the rust out of the typewriter. Cracking the knuckles and theoretically getting back to it.

It seems that no matter how far I go up, there is farther to go. My breath is thinner, shallower, every day. I feel like I’ve been under water for 10 minutes and I just want to take a long, deep breath to fill the lungs. My trek has taken me to the more remote, western part of Nepal. In the Manang valley you would find one of the last places in the world that the snow leopard hides. Here the people live above 11,000 feet and they are protected by 20,000 foot mountains on all sides. Close by everything seems to be only barren rock. A strange orange color, even the small tufts of grass seem almost orange, as if they’ve been beaten into submission by the dust and dirt that swirls around all the time. The path might be a dry riverbed or a track rutted by carts and horses, it’s hard to tell. The rocks on the path are smooth, so smooth that they almost feel soft at first. I wonder if they are the result of ancient glaciers, flowing and receding for centuries. Looking up beyond the dusty cliffs are some of the sharpest, tallest peaks ever. Not far is Annapurna 3, not particularly clever of name, but it makes up for that in its beauty. It’s blinding white. It seems like one solid piece of rock covered with snow, but even from this far away the wall is textured. The texture isn’t like a herringbone pattern on a shirt, it’s not soft or soothing or consistent. Instead it is lumpy, from here it’s lumpy so from close up it must be jagged, jumbled. Seeing the mountains inhale the weather, clouds simply giving in to the demands of the peak is sufficient to convince me that I am close enough to it. High up there is nothing but snow, and granite where snow cannot survive. Lower down on the peaks the mountain slopes, not like a ski slope but like land that has been engaged in battle for quite some time. I do not understand how any animal, human or otherwise can survive. Walking alone up here just emphasizes the magnitude of this place. The fact that I am alive and here is shocking. As if sensing my spirit sliding down these peaks into depression, two humans appeared on the horizon, moving at a quick pace. I deliberately slowed down, and let their conversation carry on the winds towards me. I couldn’t make out a word that they were saying but it was comforting nonetheless. In a land that is so quiet that a shifting pebble sounds like an avalanche, the sound of two voices was comfort. One seemed to be lower, deeper than the other, and those words seemed to be coming more slowly as well. I imagined that person being more deliberate and thoughtful, the other casting judgement or politics in a back-and-forth that had nothing to do with this place. Over time they caught up with me, my spirits lifting the whole time. By the time they began to overtake me I was ready to talk. “Hello,” I said as many trekkers here didn’t speak english, and a quick greeting usually level-sets things. “Hey, how’s it going,” told me that the louder, faster talking guy was an American. Usually that’s a liability when you’re abroad, but right now it was perfect. He was traveling with a monk, a man I simply called Kenpho. Kenpho is the equivalent of calling someone “doctor.” This man had moved to Indian when he was 14 to begin studying under various Lamas. This was a religious trek for him, and I told him about the journey of discovery I was on. We began to walk together, plenty to talk about. Suddenly the mountains didn’t seem so desolate anymore.

What do you think about when you’re walking? When you have a few minutes between meetings or after you’ve completed some task in your life? Or when you are walking up the stairs in your home?

Now imagine that those thoughts become the bulk of your day. Sure, you are putting one foot in front of the other. You are trekking up a mountain and taking in the scenery. But your mind has settled on just a few tasks: get up the mountain, check out the scenery, remember to breathe, and oh yeah what about we discover our deepest darkest inner psyche right now?

The lack of oxygen may have actually helped this last cause. At almost 5000 meters strange things start to happen. Converting your thoughts to words is a little bit harder, so it’s easier to just concentrate on breathing. Concentrating on breathing is one of the bases of meditation, so voila, I’m meditating.

Unfortunately I don’t think meditation depends on oxygen deprivation to get the job done. That might explain the occasional stars I see flitting before my eyes. To top it off my legs still burn from the climb of Thorung La pass and the subsequent descent.

Our family of 3 dutch girls, a canadian, an italian and 2 israelis made it to the top of the pass in a couple of hours. When you get this high up in the Himalayas it can’t help but be scenic, but at the same time this area doesn’t quite fit the description of idyllic mountain village. As if confirming that nothing in the Himalayas wants to be called idyllic, about an hour before we arrived at the town for the night a huge dust storm whipped down the mountain.

We could feel it building for most of the descent – though none of us knew what was happening. We’d hear the wind for 30 seconds before it came in a blast down at us on the trail, scattering hats and sunglasses and anything else we’d pulled out of our packs for the moment. There was nothing to stop it – up here the mountains  are massive grey piles of work-in-progress construction, there’s just no hard hat zone. It’s interesting how at a distance these somewhat homely peaks make up one of the greatest vistas a person could ever see on this planet.

But for this moment those vistas were gone. Grey replaced the blue sky and a filminess began to develop. Like when a fireplace begins blowing smoke into the house, you can feel the soot covering you. Here the wind was blowing the sand and rock in circles, as if they were the dancers and the wind was a lunatic choreographer.

We eventually stumbled into Jharkot a few hours later, after the wind had died down. We were raspy with dust in our throats and out of water to drink. After recovering, I finally took in the surroundings. This place is like a cross between a wild west town and something out of the middle ages.

On one end of the town is a crumbling set of stone walls, they used to be the fortress or palace of the town. On the other side is a monastery, ancient but well-maintained. In between a small set of stone houses are set into the hillside, rising out of a pile of gravel in a way that even surprises the mountains. [photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26059506@N00/252324398/]

I settled into a guest house, and had the customary meal of dal bhat (rice and lentils), happy to have anything. While talking with the owner I learned that, next to the monastery is the Jharkot Tibetan Medicine Hospital and school. I’m planning to head there in the morning and I’ll let you know what I find.

Day 1 – Kathmandu to Besisahar

I have always thought that there are two ways to deal with uncomfortable travel situations: yell yourself to oblivion with the hope of an upgrade or at least an ulcer to focus on, or go Buddha until you come out the other end. It was only on the bus ride from Kathmandu to Besisahar did I discover a novel third method: to let the bumpy, rattling, jarring bus ride render every nerve in my body numb.

I’ve been on plenty of bus rides these past few months. The overnight from Hue to Hanoi, where we seemed to move at a snail’s pace. The careening minibus from Lovina to Kuta on Bali, where each turn led to a scattering of scooters and a possible collision. But I can say that my first bus ride in Nepal had a unique set of memorable characteristics and characters.

Arriving at the bus station after breakfast, the bus station was a hub of activity. Of course there were people trying to sell me things. The only thing I looked at was the food because I hadn’t seen what Nepali street food was like yet. But I’d have to wait to taste it – the chaos meant that I had to cut through the crowds and figure out where I was going. I apparently wasn’t the only one. I watched as a group of people rushed to one bus, began throwing their belongings on top, only to have a not-very official looking man come over and start yelling. Everyone quickly ran over to the bus three spots down and started over again (now those who thought they were first were at the end of the pile).

A bus driver saw me and could clearly tell I was out of my element. He came over and loudly said, “BESISAHAR?” I was knocked out of my stupor. The first thing I thought was, “Why is he yelling at me?” Only to realize, much like Americans do, this guy believes if he speaks slowly and LOUDLY foreigners will understand him. “YOU GO BESISAHAR TREKKING?” Okay, got it. He was nice enough to point me to a beat up white bus with a long stripe on the side. It wasn’t quite a coach, and a bit more like a schoolbus.

The big difference between this bus and others was that it had a metal railing about 18 inches tall circling the roof. A luggage rack, right? Right. My bag went up and I went in. But I realized that the bus was already full and there must have been 10 more people with luggage. When the bus started up but no more people had come in the bus, I realized that metal bar up there could hold PEOPLE in as well as luggage.

We pulled away and I said prayer for the people up top. Inside the bus people were jammed tight. Children on laps, people practically hanging outside where the door should have been, and even folks who’d brought their own thatch stools to sit in the aisle. At first there couldn’t be anything nicer than this bus ride. Having really just arrived in Kathmandu, I thought this would be the best way to get a lay of the land. Through the dust that the bus kicked up I could see the city and its outskirts pass us by. The bus driver yelled something back to the passengers and gave a big grin, revealing some missing teeth. Then the rumbling of the bus took over, and there was really no other sound. And this was the good part of the trip.

After a few hours we took a break (I paid tourist prices for milk tea and some cookies) and began to pile back onto the bus. I decided what the heck, and headed up top. The rest of them managed to stay on somehow, right??

Of course, right about now is where the “road” became a scattered jumble of rocks and potholes, hell on a suspension. I wondered what the bus must have done in a past life to deserve this route as its punishment. Holding on to the rail, I hoped for the best. I soon could no longer feel my rear end; my spine was compressed with each and every bounce and bump and rattle. I was surprised the bus had held up for so many years under this. In just half an hour I was in complete pain, and holding on to the rail for dear life as we practically ran scooters off the road and careened around curves. I kept looking back thinking we’d leave a muffler, a bumper, or a wheel behind.

“It’s amazing that this bus is only a few years old, isn’t it?” Sitting behind me was a tall German woman, who I later learned was also hiking the Annapurna Circuit. Her name was Gertrude, she was meeting some mountain climbers on the Circuit. We yelled to each other over the course of the trip. It was nice to talk to someone, even if you had to yell. But at this point it didn’t matter, the whole situation was so absurd that I was beyond pain; yelling my throat to collapse or pulling our fingernails wouldn’t have added anything at all. I had reached some alternate state of Nirvana: what happens to your body just doesn’t matter at all.

We arrived a few hours later. Bruised, beaten, and sore. I needed some serious help to get myself off the top of the bus. As I said goodbye to Gertrude she said something strange to me.  “Watch our for porters from Syabrubesi. Other than that, have a great time. I hope I’ll see you on the trail.”

With that I stumbled off to find lodging. With any luck, tomorrow I’ll start hiking the trail. That is, if I get any feeling back in my legs by then.