Consulting

The office of Orient International is a brisk twenty minute walk from Thamel.  I was lead there by my new friend and host, Narayan, who explained his world to me on the way.  Narayan is a jack of all trades.  In addition to the consultancy, which helps place Nepali college students in study abroad programs, he runs an NGO helping those afflicted with muscular dystrophy and also manages an organic orange farm.   Apparently these three jobs require little attention because he spent the day walking me around the city, first to the office where I was shown my desk and a computer that I was assured would function when the power returned, then to the park where we sat in the sun and traded life stories, then to a mall and Breem's (Narayan's boyhood friend's) wholesale operation, where we proceeded to shoot the breeze and drink tea for a few hours while sitting on piles of fake Levi’s jeans, periodically rearranging them as they were sold to local retailers, and finally back to the office, where the power stayed on for almost a full hour before darkness signaled quitting time.  It was, all told, an enjoyable day.  I only vaguely understand what it is exactly that they think I can help them with, but I’ve resolved to keep doing the thing I think they want me to until something better presents itself.  It’s an interesting place and I like these people.             

The Low Season

Still lingering in the five-bed dorm room, waiting patiently for a promised email from WWOOF announcing my next destination, I find myself left behind, one of the last denizens of my beloved rooftop balcony.   I have no more dorm-mates.  Four beds lie empty, leaving me free to grab an extra blanket or a couple of pillows and free to take a long shower if I’m lucky enough to find the water hot on any given morning.  The churning assembly of philosophers and stoners that I fell in with so quickly has, in its endless rotation, spun off one Roadie after another, leaving finally only the stragglers:  A thirty-one year old Venezuelan-American, who I will call Hugo, who stays downstairs working on law-school applications when he is not smoking hash in the winter sun on our balcony, and me.   Not that we are the only people staying at Silver Home.  There are a few tourists of various nationalities and a few Nepalis.   We’re just the only two of a certain temperament that lends itself well to long discussions of the nature/definition/existence of God, loud arguments over whether or not Technology is a net-positive in the world, or intelligence-sharing on the best places to eat for under 1 USD.  It’s just the two of us in this narrow demographic, and we end up knocking on each other’s doors at specific times, meal times usually or occasionally during the dead hours that pass between four and seven as the sun disappears from our balcony and we wait to ponder our dinner options.  Tomorrow I will likely be gone, and only Hugo will remain.  He says he’ll seek a livelier place to stay then, although I’m skeptical about his chances.    

This is The Low Season that we were told about.  The bulk of the tourists have gone home.  The hotel restaurants are empty.  Probin joins me again and again at my table to smoke cheap cigarettes, talk about life, his girl, his plans, his troubles.  Not that we’re exactly friends, just that there’s no one else to talk to.   Hugo and I go looking for human interaction, but single female travelers are scarce, never congregated densely enough in any predictable location and going out of one’s way to meet guys is, of course, a little strange, unless one is gay, in which case one is probably more out-of-luck than we are.   I sense a new urgency from the hustlers as I make my way between my established haunts.  They cry out in a slightly higher pitch, follow me longer, become more upset when ignored.   I’ve said before that it’s time to move on, but I think this is yet another signal.   Tomorrow.  Hopefully, tomorrow.                           

Working Man's Blues

"Destiny will betray you, crush your ideals...dress you in the grey uniform of another family man, and without a whimper you will serve out your time, fly from pain to duty, from joy to work, from commitment to neutrality."  - Thomas Pynchon

Probin, my hotel desk clerk, tells me he feels like a slave.  He seems like he could cry.  We are standing on the balcony of Hotel Silver Home.  My shiny new laptop is sitting between us, making me want to hide it in wealth-shame.  He is telling me about his job and suddenly it sounds too familiar, like I’ve heard this story from an endless parade of people who work for a living.  I know without asking that he gets out of bed five minutes too late every morning with a dead weight in his chest, thinking of calling in sick.  He tells me he just needs his boss to show him he’s valued occasionally, that he doesn’t know how he ended up here, that he doesn’t make enough money, and that his work is crushing him.  I try to commiserate and it sounds false.  I tell him I too have had jobs where I felt like a slave, but I can see in his eyes that he knows it's bullshit.   I tell him I’m lucky.  He knows that.

  

I wish I had a solution for Probin.  I wish I knew someone in Dubai or The States who could give him a job and a plane ticket out of his ugly little corner of the world.  I know it would give him that elusive sense of satisfaction to live in a higher social stratum, to perhaps own a car, drink wine with dinner.   That is, of course, until he gets used to it, until he realizes he still has to go to work every day and doesn’t get a raise when he practically runs the place and his boss is the same arrogant asshole with a different nationality.  At least it would be better for awhile.

I’ve met people on the road, one each from Austria, France, and Germany, two from China (not to mention my hometown inspiration), who have quit their jobs and are drifting.  Like Probin, they were sick to death of the grind.  Unlike him, they had the means to end it.  It’s a reckless luxury that few of us can even contemplate, and my own scorched earth exit from the working life was not without cost, but I’m starting to realize that there are some hidden benefits.  I don’t work for a car or a mortgage or to pay off debt anymore.  My next job doesn’t have to “pay enough”.  It just has to make me feel like getting out of bed in the morning.   Maybe it is a symptom of the disease of our post-modern culture that Probin and I feel entitled to employment that goes beyond tending the machinery of commerce for the sake only of more commerce, and maybe it is true, as I sense it is, that our grandfathers never questioned the personal satisfaction they gained from work, that they simply lifted the load without complaint, dutifully providing for themselves and their families.  I'm still hoping to find something better .

Seventy-Six Fifty-Five Even

I’ve reached a decision point in the volunteer position search and I’m torn.  I’ve got two options that have been pitched to me by two solid organizations.  One takes me to the Pokhara area and costs me nothing. It involves teaching at a local school for the Pahar Trust, but it may take as much as a week to get started because of logistics issues.  The other is an Educational Consultancy that I can get more details on as soon as I pay my membership fee to WWOOF Nepal, which can start pretty much right away.   My friend has worked with WWOOF Independents in Thailand which is loosely affiliated and for which I have already paid my membership (30 USD, as I recall) covering several dozen countries, but not Nepal.  To work for WWOOF Nepal I have to cough up another fifty precious dollars.  Both Pahar Trust and WWOOF, thankfully, cover food and housing.

Surprisingly, a lot of volunteer organizations want you to pay quite a bit, some up to 500 USD per month.  At first I was inclined toward indignation, “I’m working for you, but you want me to pay? Um, you’re joking right?”  But gradually, as a friend and I discussed it, we realized that these organizations, usually building schools or helping at orphanages, really aren’t desperate for another set of hands to stack bricks, hands which they can purchase on the local market for less than the daily cost of an iced latte.  They have a greater need for money to buy those bricks, along with everything else that’s needed to make people’s lives a little better.   The volunteers, in turn, are rewarded with the experience of living and serving the community among local people with the comfort of an English speaking staff that tells them where to go and what to do.    I have no problem with this approach.  It expands people’s world-view and encourages cultural exchange, but personally, if I’m going to try to help, I’d rather do something that I can do (or try to do) uniquely well, even if it’s only by virtue of being a native English speaker… and more importantly, I can’t afford those places.   I’ll still probably end up being a “set of hands” on a WWOOF farm when The $8k Roadshow heads to Southeast Asia, but for now teaching (or consulting?) feels right.

As you may have noticed, patient reader, there has been an increase in The Balance since the last report.  My Grandmother, lovely woman that she is, gave me a generous gift for Christmas and, in addition, I had a little money sitting in an account in the US that, no longer being used for miscellaneous stateside expenses, has become available.  Both helped immensely in offsetting the visa extension fees and greedy customs officials, so maybe I shouldn’t bitch so much about forking over 50 USD.  But I can’t help it.  This is the way I’ve become.  I’m incredulous now about being asked to pay 3 USD for a pint of beer.  I roll my eyes like a smug prick when a friend tells me he is paying 5 USD per night for his hotel room.  I planned this transition so I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s a strange feeling being so removed from my world in Dubai, where caution was casually tossed aside on a daily basis and my weekend bar tab could approach 200 USD without any particular effort.  I’m thinking I’ll go looking for the bank today, the one at which I’ve been told to pay my dues to WWOOF Nepal.  I may still choose a different path, but my gut tells me to check this out and count the money as a donation to a worthy cause if it doesn’t work.        

Things We Own: Part Two - I Am An Idiot

Never mind.  I found the iPod.  After looking through my bags four times and telling everyone in the hotel it had been taken, the damn thing was in one of my pants pockets (the pair I was wearing at the time) that I had already checked ten times.  It was nestled up against a small notebook of about the same size in such a way that I didn't notice it until the eleventh time I checked.  I couldn't feel any more elated or any more stupid.

I was tempted to keep the discovery a secret.  The hotel manager was horrified that a theft occurred on his watch, told me it was his problem too, and that he would conduct a full investigation, assuring me that he was an expert in these matters.  He even gave me some evidence that made me suspect one of my roommates, advising me that a man I consider my friend had tried to sell him an iPod to pay for his stay last week. All of my hotel friends were concerned, wondering if their own property was now at risk.  Everyone was commiserating, telling me how much my loss really really sucked.  After raising such a ruckus, I was ashamed to tell them that it was for nothing, that I was actually just this foolish.

Of course, I had to tell them.  I made the rounds, telling everyone it was a false alarm.  I found out my friend had been lightly interrogated, and slightly offended, making me feel worse.  Even so, in the end everyone was just as relieved as I was, but perhaps rolling their eyes for just a second as I walked away.   

Things We Own

Last night or early this morning someone stole my iPod.  I've looked everywhere and it's simply gone, somewhere else, possibly already sold, newly decked out in its "Guernica Skin" which was sent to me as part of my Christmas gift.  I'm disturbed by the ramifications of this loss, mainly those pertaining to people who once appeared trustworthy and who now I question, "Could he have taken it?"  Several people had opportunity and, although one stands out, I'm not sure enough of the time line to even tell myself that I know it's him, much less make an accusation.

This loss stings.  It was new.  I made the difficult decision to buy it back in Dubai, feeling that I would value the company that music can offer during those times when I'm alone.  I've enjoyed it during the past five weeks but now it looks like I will not continue to enjoy it.  I tell myself, and even believe somewhat, that it's only a silly little possession, that when you're traveling like this you must be prepared to lose anything you bring with you and you must strap those things to your body that you can't afford to lose.  I tell myself that I'm a rich man in a place filled with poverty, where people can't imagine owning a device so expensive and any temptation to take it from me that the average citizen of Kathmandu might have felt is wholly justified.  My loss is not tragic or even particularly sad in light of what I see on the street every day.  I tell myself that it's one less thing to worry about, that I'm lighter now, free of one more thing I owned that maybe ended up owning me just a little.   But still, it stings.

Please, Mr. Postman...

As my second stop in Kathmandu has stretched from days to weeks, I find my sense of local identity has shifted gradually, beginning naturally enough with Interested Tourist, then falling gently into Affable Slacker, and now perhaps moving slightly again, now with no more excuses, shifting hopefully toward Foreign Volunteer.    It’s got a nice ring to it and it’s about time, really.  I’ve stayed too long in this pleasant community of derelicts, even if it was exactly what I needed when I began.

  

Today marked my second day in active pursuit of The Package, a Christmas Gift, sent with love but without a customs declaration, from The United States of America.   Navigating bureaucracy in a foreign language is often a disorienting experience, but personally I've found that if I endure it, keep coming back, keep trusting that at the end there is a prize waiting, a driver’s license, a trekking permit, or a Christmas Gift, that is sweeter from the time spent doubting that it would ever be surrendered by the unsmiling public servants charged with its protection, then I'm usually rewarded.  And besides, I really have no choice.   During my quest I found myself exchanging glances with other Westerners, silently sharing our frustrated acceptance of the indignities necessary to collect what was sent to us.  “This is insane.” We tell each other.  “I too would like to set fire to this building, but well, what can one do?"  After two days of being sent to every government office at both the Kathmandu Airport and the Central Post Office, days characterized by dimly lit rooms with packing material strewn across the floor, following men and women in circles from office to office, angry Nepali words regarding my package shouted into telephones which are then slammed back into their cradles, and form after form without a word of English, I was finally allowed to pay a sum of money so large (56.18 USD) that I wondered if local officials “wet their beaks” before sending it up the food chain, and triumphantly carry my prize back to Hotel Silver Home.   The prevailing feelings at the end of the bureaucratic funhouse are of relief and accomplishment rather than annoyance.  All the madness is forgotten.  All the moments of despair can now be reconstructed as amusing anecdotes.  Do I remember the part where I was near tears when they told me to go back to the airport?  Nope.  I don't recall.

Having achieved that small goal, I am free of this town and I have now alerted certain persons regarding the availability of my services.  If Kathmandu is where I end up volunteering, I think that will be fine, but I’d prefer to move on, perhaps to a smaller town, with fewer tourists and fewer hustlers.  It’s not a new observation that if one stays in a tourist town, one gets the tourist treatment, but it’s nonetheless true.  Every Nepali “friend” who seeks to insert himself into your day is suspicious; another in a long line of dead-eyed vacuum cleaner salesmen (“If I can have just a moment of your time….”) interested only in chiseling free a few rupees from the guy who he assumes has millions.  A friend tells me this is how Jay-Z must feel, which is probably true.  At the moment, I feel ashamed that I have had precious little interaction with Nepalis due to this hustler-mark dynamic and I hope that will change during my volunteer placement.  As always, I plan to keep you posted.      

Oh, That Magic Feeling: Nowhere to Go

Day after slippery day passes in Kathmandu and I have become, as a man once said, comfortably numb.  I'm anticipating a package, mailed from The States via that socialist institution known as the US Postal Service.  I've been awaiting its arrival for seven days, using it as an excuse to linger here, letting my days drift by amongst the revolving crew of friendly, half-stoned travel-junkies that frequent the rooftop balcony of the Hotel Silver Home.  We trade musical and literary recommendations, pass joints, ponder problems both deep and shallow, wander the city widely, tracing long and winding routes between temples and cheap restaurants, each providing the others with another fleeting friendship which can be casually enjoyed then easily left behind, everyone happy with the exchange.   I could get used to this; a pleasant existence, waking up with no commitments or destinations.  It's not rewarding.  It doesn't help anyone in any way, but perhaps it doesn't come as much of a shock that there's something disturbingly appealing about this life. 

It'll end soon enough though.  My package arrived in Kathmandu today and it should complete its arduous journey to me in no more than another day or two.  With no more excuses to stay at the Hotel Silver Home, I'll be volunteering after that, most likely teaching, with one of several possible local instutions.   I'm anxious for the next adventure, anxious to try something new again. Still, I can't say I'm too depressed about the prospect of a couple of more days of this life...just a couple.    

Life in the Dorms

Last night I had an early dinner and went to bed at 9:30 with Walden and my flashlight.  At 12:30 my Chinese dorm-mate came home, noticed that his entrance had woken me, and advised me in his limited english that he requested the pleasure of my company for some drug smoking.  I hesitated for about a half a second before getting up and joining him as he rolled joint after joint. It turns out that we both love Radiohead and the films of David Fincher.  We smoked, listened to Hail To The Thief, and rejoiced when we located the gift of the granola bars, both of us savoring their apple flavored crunch as if it were caviar.  My new friend, upon finishing his second granola bar, remarked with satisfaction, "I love the dorminy!"  Me too, brother.  Me too.

Seven Thousand Five Hundred Fifty-Five Dollars and Twenty-FIve Cents

I was given a gift.  She told me it was just some leftover granola bars, but when I looked inside there was also an envelope with 20 USD and a note.  Knowing my budget, she regretted the fact that she hadn't offered to let me share her taxi when we met after The Trek.  She wanted to make up for it, although she had already bought me dinner the night before.  She knew there was no way I would have accepted it, but now she's gone.   I wish I could thank her.

Sustenance

As anyone who as ever started a new budget or decided to go on a diet can tell you, it takes some time for the new lifestyle to sink in.  In my efforts to drive down my cost of living, this was true for me on several levels.  First, generally speaking, when I arrive in a foreign land with an unfamiliar unit of currency, it usually takes me at least a week to know without calculation what's expensive and what's a bargain.  Fresh off the plane from Dubai, I walked into a restaurant around lunchtime, looked over the menu, and ordered some chicken fingers at a price of 300 rupees.  This was in the middle range of the prices on the menu so I trusted that it was not exorbitant.  In contrast, after a month in the country I now know well the value of my rupee and yesterday found a sandwich stand that sells gigantic veggie burgers for 30 rupees.   In addition to internalizing the value of my money, there is also the significant issue of impulse control that must be dealt with.  I am a man who likes a nice beer with his eggs in the morning.  I like a well appointed restaurant with a menu that excites the imagination.  I like to look over a wine list and find varietals with which I'm familiar.  This is the life to which I have grown accustomed and I find it oddly challenging to tell myself: "Stan, I'm sorry, that's just not your life anymore."

One month later, I find I'm getting better at this.  In the mornings I wander the streets, drawn pleasantly away from the tourist highways, alert for moment when the perfect bakery will present itself, one that will offer me a gigantic pastry, the like of which I've never seen, baked fresh, and served to me standing at the counter with a hot cup of tea for the price of 0.40 USD.  At lunchtime, I delight in wandering into roadside shacks in which not one word of English is spoken and arranging with minor difficulty for a few samosas or chapati at a price of less than 0.50 USD.  For dinner, if I'm particularly hungry that day, I make the walk down to my favorite Tibetan restaurant that serves Chicken Chili Momos for 1.25 USD and am served a heaping bowl of delicious, healthy, beautiful sustenance that leaves me wondering why again I thought I needed a nice rare rib-eye steak served with a Napa Cabernet.

Of course, I still love to have a drink in a bar with a friend and I find I value this simple, silly little affectation too much to let go of entirely.  A drink in an enviting atmosphere costs as much as a night's stay in my dusty hotel, but last night I bought two of them with no hesitation because I had the good fortune to share those drinks, and the time and conversation that was included in their price, with a rare and lovely person who I will likely never see again.  These moments are too dear to me to give up and although the voice of my newfound ascetic temperment might attempt to challenge the value of that exchange, I can't bring myself to count it as a fault.

On Hustlers And My Pampered Western Life

Today, back in Kathmandu after a not unpleasant 8 hour bus journey, I found myself once again staying in the neighborhood of Thamel, a tourist base-camp of sorts, which attracts, in turn, a proportional camp of hustlers.  One develops a certain equanimity to the hustle after a few weeks on the road and it can tend to fade into the background unless one encounters a singularly interesting practitioner, as I did today.  

Having just finished some basic laundry and grocery business, I was beginning the hour-long walk back to the visa office to collect my freshly re-stickered passport.  As is not unusual, I was called after and followed a few times with various offers of goods and services, but all were ignored except one persistent voice at my elbow.  A  boy of about twelve, by the name of Raman, was chattering brightly in fairly solid English about the various U.S. presidents, their number in the sequence, and some commonly known facts about their lives.  I, in turn, waited for the hustle to be made clear.  He told me he could name every capital in the world.  I tested him, using capitals I knew from South America and Africa, rather obscure examples that I prided myself on being unique in knowing, but he nailed every one without hesitation.  I continued to wait for him to play the next card.  I asked if he went to school and he claimed he did, but that it was a holiday and continued to chatter and ask me questions.  I asked if he intended to follow me all the way to the visa office.  He said no, and at this point decided to play his ace:  He wanted to know if I would buy milk for his brother.  No money.  Money is bad.  Just milk.

Knowing this hustle as well as its many cousins (the lost soccer ball, the pen and pad for school, in each case the child returns the item to the vendor and splits the amount paid) I waived him on his way.  Still, I found myself uniquely impressed by his abilities.  Here was a child of notable intelligence trying to get ahead in an environment where that task is almost impossible, his destiny tied to this little community of tricksters and smooth talkers.  As I considered this, I found myself renewing a line of thinking that I seem to follow fruitlessly every time I am in a country where poverty is everywhere you look.  It involves the things that we tend to think we deserve in life.  Most of us believe (or allow ourselves to believe) fervently in a fallacy that we all arrive at fairly naturally.  It goes like this: I have earned everything that I possess, through either hard work or natural ability, and the luxuries I enjoy are the just rewards for my labors.  When confronted with a hard working genius like Raman I tend to laugh at myself for believing I "deserve" anything.  After all, Raman, who is probably smarter and more ambitious then I ever was at his age, has about as much chance of traveling the world and blogging about his experiences as he does of playing professional soccer, which is to say, almost none.  Doesn't he deserve the same chances I have?  Hasn't he earned them?

Of course the fact is that we, the ones with high quality educations, the ones with money and cars and televisions and computers, were each born in the right place at the right time.  We work hard, just like everyone else.  The difference is that our work produces such excess that we can buy new clothes and airline tickets, simply by virtue of our location and circumstance.  Most people's work barely feeds their family, even if they work twice as hard as we do.  Every exception the free-market optimists will point to as proof of the possibility of the "up by the bootstraps" world of opportunity is crushed by the weight of the billions of stories that prove what we all like to forget:  Our lives are to a large degree defined by the conditions we are born into.

I don't know what to make of this most times.  It tends to be a sobering, even depressing thought and I never get over it too quickly.  What I come back to in the end that gives me some peace is that I can't go around feeling sorry for myself for being born lucky, but I  sure as hell can stop whining about not having every pleasure that I see is available.  I often find myself saying on this trip, "It's been a long day.  I deserve a beer."  or "Wooo, I've done a lot of walking.  Let me sit down in this nice restaurant and reward myself."  It's the kind of thinking that's so ingrained in my lifestyle that I sometimes forget to question it.  Before I know it I'm rewarding myself for getting out of bed in the morning, finding the bar I that I was looking for, or for just being a decent human being.  That road leads the opposite direction from the simplified life that I'm (somewhat casually) seeking in my travels.

But there's always something like this: On the final day of The Trek, I met a familiar trekker at a town about 30 minutes from the main road.  We were both exhausted and she told me she planned to eat a big meal there and catch a taxi back to Pokhara immediately afterwards.  I asked her how much the taxis were, found they were about 20 USD, and told her I'd be sticking with my plan to take the bus for 2.50 USD.  As I stumbled up the ugly town road thinking about another crammed local bus, I noticed myself finding more and more value in the taxi which would take half the time and be twenty times more comfortable.  I grabbed a cab driver and bargained him down to 12 USD.  I rode back to my hotel doorstep in relative luxury.  Had I earned that luxury through my labors on the trail?  Realistically, probably not.  Was it worth every penny?  Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Notes From The Trail

 (Seventy Six Twenty, Sixty-Five)

On the morning of the 28th of December I took a disorienting bus ride, sitting then standing, possibly overpaying, unsure when to disembark, to the cluster of shacks known in these parts as Phedi, where I was to begin my trek into the Annapurna Conservation Area.  I jumped off the bus when instructed, dragging my pack from underneath the woman who was sitting on it, looked around, saw only the standard wood-scrap constructed shops on one side of the road, and a sheer mountain wall rising up from the other side.  A shop owner offered to sell me some water.  I declined.  He then offered to sell me a walking stick, revealing to me that I was indeed in the right place.

"Annapurna Base Camp?"  I inquired.  He pointed to the mountain wall, on which I now noticed there were an approximation of stairs leading up into the forest that clung to the mountain.  I breathed deeply, shouldered my pack and started climbing, telling myself that I didn't really expect it to be easy.

My journey took seven days in total, four up and three down, covering around fifty miles and climbing to about 13,500 feet.   There are several options available as far as routs go, but they all essentially start on the edges of modernization and then retreat from it.  Nothing within the Conservation Area is accessible by road.  There tends to be a settlement every two hours or so, but as the trail progresses further from where motor vehicles have ever been they tend to become increasingly small and spartan.  It took about a day and a half before I was past the point of the last permanent settlement of Chomrong and on to little clusters of guest houses that survive only by serving the trekkers and their guides, along with a little bit of farming.  Everything that comes to these towns is either made there or brought in on the backs of porters.  It tends to put the price of your egg fried noodles in perspective once you've seen a sixty year old man straining under the weight of eight metal crates, each filled with live chickens and strapped to his back, walking slowly up the same hill that you're climbing for pleasure.

Most of the other tourists had guides.  Many had porters to carry their bags.  It's not all that expensive and there's nothing wrong with it, but I took a certain degree of pride in "covering my own sector".  If there was an unmarked fork in the trail I waited and asked for advice.  My pack was heavy, but I looked with a bit of contempt on those tourists shouldering mere "day packs" while their porters carried impossibly heavy loads.

The trail experience was one of quiet, working solitude, with periodic welcome bursts of human interaction.  Most times, without a guide or a companion, I was alone as I walked, pondering life, remembering, planning, thinking about the miles I've covered and the miles still left to go. In the evenings, if I was lucky, there was a friendly campfire or dining hall (with a gas heater blazing an open flame beneath the table) where I could share stories, play some cards, and pass the time with other trekkers.  If the trail had been particularly grueling that day, I found this was especially important.  More than any other, Day Five found me near breaking, on my way down but a long way from finished, heart racing at a disconcerting pace with every up hill step (because there's still plenty of up on your way down. Oh yes.) stumbling half dazed into Deorali, where I recognized to my delight The Hilarious Aussie Girls. They brought me tea and blankets and warmed me with their care and concern, all while telling me how very impressed they were at the distance I'd traveled.  God, I love those girls.

Views: Fantastic.  Mountains: Unimaginably Huge.  Weather: Cold.  Altitude:  A bit of an issue.

I'm back in Pokhara now.  I think I've lost about 20 pounds.  I'm sore in all sorts of places.  I never want to carry that pack again, but tomorrow I've got to catch the tourist bus to Kathmandu and renew my visa and check on a volunteer opportunity.  Today I plan to eat a lot of samosas and take it slow and easy.

Sunrise, New Years Day, 2010