Monday, November 23, 2009

No trip can be perfect: An anti-climactic ending


"Come on. We have time, don't we?"
I looked at our guide Renuka with the same look I had given her many times this trip: the look that says I really want to do this, even if it's totally impractical and may mean reaching our destination after dark. I'd given her that look when we attempted our near-dusk excursion to the medieval village of Jhong, and when we took our two-hour Indiana Jones scenic detour on the way to Tatopani, and when we climbed to Poon Hill on a cloudy day when everyone warned there would be no view (in fact, the clouds lifted for sunrise).
This time, I was staring at the tumbling waters of Birethanti, an irresistable waterfall crashing into a deep blue green pool that - at this moment - was bathed in sunlight.
She nodded and off I went, scrambling down the steep hillside, unlacing my boots, and diving in, fully clothed. Exhilerating. The water was warmer than I expected, so I stayed in, letting it swirl around me as I soaked in what would be among my last fond memories of this life-altering whirlwind of a trip.
An hour later, we would arrive in the gritty, tourist-clogged town of Nayapul, the starting point for many trekkers. As they walked by us, clad in freshly clean North Face knock-offs they'd presumably just bought in Kathmandu, I felt at once priveledged and jealous. For now, I held a secret about how special this place really was. But now it was their turn.
Four hours later, back in Pochara, my exhileration would turn to agony. I'd spend the evening hovering over the toilet bowl - likely the victim of the same vile microbe that felled my Danish friend the night before.
Kim, who plays a nurse back in the real world, brought me hot tea and anti-nausea pills, which knocked me out, hurtling me into a world of weird Technicolor recaps of of those endless climbing stairs.
An anti-climactic ending to what would have otherwise been the trip of a lifetime.
Scratch that... It still was.

Cold Play, Charades, and sick neighbors


Day 7 of trekking: Part-two

During our four-hour hike down 4,000 unforgivingly steep stairs, I was struck by how different our surroundings were from where we had started. In Kagbeni and Muktinath, there was seldom a tree sprouting from the sterile, wind-scorched earth. Here, the land was bursting with life, from bountiful fruit trees, to lush rhododendron. Monkeys frolicked in the greenery and we found waterfalls at every corner. But melancholy was already setting in. Tomorrow was our last day.
After checking into our teahouse in Jili, a nondescript village of a half-dozen buildings, surrounded by terraced farms, we ordered our last teahouse meal: fresh tomato soup and Tibetan bread. A fellow traveler whipped out an Ipod loaded with David Gray, Van Morrison, and Cold Play (the first Western music I had heard in three weeks)adding to the mellow vibe.
Tired of playing cards, we tried to liven things up with a group game of charades. We laughed until our cheeks hurt.It would have been another perfect night, but for the sound of violent wretching that shook our plywood box of a room at 2 a.m.
After hours of it, I grew genuinely worried about our neighbor. I slipped my boots on and knocked on the room next door where the solo European guy was staying, offering him an anti-nausea suppository. Oops. Wrong room.
A feeble women's voice whispered, "yes. Please come in," from the next door over, and inside I found the two Dutch dentists we'd been hanging out with earlier. They'd spent a week volunteering at a dental camp in southern Nepal, looking forward to their four-day trek as a just reward. It was over.
The next day, dehydrated and weak from food poisoning, they'd head down to recover in a hotel in Pokhara. Knock on wood, I told myself. I've gone this whole trip without getting sick.
I spoke too soon.

Jockeying for position on Poon Hill


Trekking Day 7: Ghorepani to Poon Hill to Jili

My wake-up knock from Renuka came at 4 a.m., just four hours after my restless mind and body had finally succumbed to a fragile sleep. After days of retiring in silent, near-vacant teahouses, we had collided with civilization full-force in Ghorepani, and our close proximity to the community toilet drove that reality home all night.
At first, Renuka was hesitant. "The weather is not good," she told me, as I slipped on my long underwear and strapped my headlamp to my head, saying goodbye to a slumbering Kim. Renuka took me outside and pointed to the starless horizon. "I'm not sure we'll be able to see anything," she said. But I could see stars overhead, and after coming all the way to Nepal, I wasn't going to bag out on a trip to the summit of Poon Hill. "Remember: I'm lucky. It'll clear," I told her.
At 10,531 feet, about an hour's climb from Ghorepani, the famous hilltop offers panoramic views of 26,794-foot Dhaulagiri I, as well as Himalayan monsters Tukuche, Nilgiri, Annapurna South, Annapurna I, and Glacier Dome - on a clear day. It's billed as a "defining moment" in Lonely Planet. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who read that line. Ten minutes into our pre-dawn ascent, we found ourselves in a single-file line of agonizingly slow, out-of-shape Germans, gasping for breath as their headlamps bobbed in the darkness like fireflies. Upon arrival at Poon Hill, I was shocked to spot another 200 or so tourists jockeying for position to take the perfect sunrise photo. At first, I was deflated, visions of sublime solitude crumbling. But my disappointment was fleeting. I bought a cup of hot tea for myself and Renuka, put my camera away, closed my eyes, and soaked in the sounds of a half-dozen different languages marveling at the scene unfolding. The clouds were lifting, exposing icy hilltops tinted with crimson.
I may not have been alone, but I got my defining moment afterall.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Stairs and more stairs



Day six: Tatopani to Ghorepani

Imagine roughly 4,000 giant stone stairs leading relentlessly upward through rhododendron and magnolia forests, interspersed with friendly village towns of cobblestone pathways lined with thatch and mud huts. This is the path from Tatopani to Ghorepani. If this were at higher altitude, it would be an absolute killer. But mercilessly, the climb ends at 6,560 feet, roughly 1,000 feet lower than my home in Estes Park, Colorado. Nonetheless, with all our side trips and excursions we'd already walked a good 75 miles thus far on the trip, and this day felt brutal.
My tiny Nepalese porter, Danu, saved me from my borderline delirium twice along the way: Once, she stopped me from eating a corn-like fruit called monkey-corn that I plucked from a plant alongside the trail: Turns out it's poisonous. She also pulled me from a prickly thatch of stinging nettles that I was poised to use as a lavatory.
A team of wayward mules ran us off the trail more than once, the lead mule mysteriously aiming straight toward Kim each time they passed.
We finally arrived at the chilly, fog-shrouded town of Ghorepani at dusk, and checked into a "room" at the Sunshine Lodge that was no more than a plywood box with two blanketless beds. The dining hall, however, was glorious, with a roaring fire to dry our wet clothes over and chilled Australian Chardonnay awaiting. The place was a bustling convergence point of the many available treks in the area, so roughly a dozen female porters and guides from Three Sisters Trekking were there. They took their shoes off and danced to vintage Michael Jackson, coaxing me to the floor to join them in a groove to Billie Jean, despite wobbly trail-weary calves.
It was one of the most memorable nights of the trip.

Scary bridges and soothing hot springs at Tatopani




Trekking day five: Ghasa to Tatopani



Sometimes sisters disagree and the elder must make an executive decision. This was one of those days. After an hour on the dust-choked road, dodging crowded tourist buses and smog-belching Land Rovers, I began to grow envious of the barefoot villagers walking their livestock on steep narrow trails on the other side of the wide, churning river. "Can't we just go over there?." I asked our guide, Renuka, who we had come to refer to as Didi (sister in Nepalese). "I don't know the way," she responded. It seemed straightforward enough: just cross the river, walk on the other side, and cross back when we got to Tatopani. So after another mile I insisted.



After a nerve-wracking 350-foot traverse on a rickety wooden suspension bridge high above the roaring blue river, we were on the other side, where we meandered through a lush landscape colored with terraced fields of rice and millet, fresh orange trees, wandering buffalo and brick and mud homes.
It turns out we were lost, so after 20 minutes we had to turn back. But by now Renuka was determined to find the alternate route away from the road, so we tried another path. We pressed on, deeper into the jungle-like landscape, rich with waterfalls, and stopped to visit with a blind, 95-year-old man squatting by the road with his son and grandson.
One mile from our destination, the clouds enshrouded us in mist, just in time for us to cross another hairy bridge. It was a true Indiana Jones adventure.
Around 3, we checked into the Dhaulagiri Garden Lodge, a lovely teahouse surrounded with banana and orange trees, and just footsteps from two scorching hot riverside pools (tatopani means hot springs).




Fellow travelers from Australia, Canada, Germany, and Asia lolled in the water in bikinis and thongs, but at the request of Renuka, we respected the modest Hindu culture and bathed in our shorts and T-shirts. With all our aches and pains washed away, we scarfed down spinach and tomato pizza and chocolate cake, and prepped for the next day - the steepest of our trek - a 5,741-foot climb to Ghorepani.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Forging streams in the world's largest gorge



Day 4: Marpha to Ghasa
This was the hardest day yet.
I awoke at 5:40 a.m., slipped my headlamp on, and snuck out for a solo morning climb to the Marpha Meditation Center, a hilltop sanctuary with sweeping birds-eye views of the mud huts and rooftop firewood piles of Marpha. Even the monks weren’t awake yet, so I lay down on the floor, arms folded behind my head and eyes cast upward at the sun-bleached prayer flags whipping in the wind. I fell asleep, and woke a half-hour later to the sound of a sole monk chanting in the distance as the crimson glow of sunrise lit up the valley.
The five of us left at 8, meandering back and forth across the broad Kali Gandaki river valley to stay clear of the road. At several spots, we had to take our shoes off and wade through the knee-high frigid water, our 20-year-old porters carrying our gear and holding our hands as if we were children.
The views were unreal as we walked in silence through the world’s largest gorge, a lush wide valley dropping 4,000 meters between the soaring 8,000-meter summits of Annapurna I on one side and Dhaulagiri I on the other. Views of the Dhaulagiri icefall, a massive frozen slab capping the top third of the mountain, came into view at the town of Larjung, a bucolic creekside logging town that reminded me of Oregon.
I stopped and watched as a group of men slit the throat of a yak and cut it open for meat next to a roaring fire. It would feed them for three months, they said.

Two out-of-shape American mountain bikers whizzed by. They’d been dropped in Jomsom for a jarring three-day downhill cruise to Pokhara with a guide. “Slackers,” I said to Kim, who had grown increasingly green and shaky from food poisoning. Exhausted, we stopped for hot tea and pasta at a roadside bakery in Kalopani, where Nepali men huddled around a table watching an American bowling match on TV. Outside, an old woman squatted on the ground, cutting grass with a sharp blade and packing it in to an overloaded basket she carried on her back. Food for the cows, which, in this country are worshipped, not ground up for burgers.


Two more backbreaking hours and we reached the fairly nondescript town of Ghasa, just in time for the sun to go down and the power to go out. Kim slept while I stayed up talking politics by candlelight with two women from Botswana. The food was awful and the sound of dogs barking echoed through the valley. Nonetheless, by 8 p.m. I was out.
Tomorrow: Tatopani.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Eating dirt in the Kali Gandaki river valley


Day 3: Muktinath to Marpha

I taste dirt.
After a two-hour march through the ripping wind we had been warned about for days, my cheeks sting and my teeth are coated with a fine, ash-like film that I can’t wash out no matter how much I spit. Danu and Laxmi, our petite female porters, are holding hands to keep from toppling under the weight of our packs and the 50 mph gusts that greet us at every corner. Just beyond the twisting, sand-filled microburst in the distance behind me, I can see our guide Renuka barreling across the dry river bed in desperate pursuit of her tattered white cap. “It was a gift from my sister,” she explains, as she returns to my side, out of breath. “If I lost it, she would be sad.”

This has been a trip about sisterhood.

With each day, the bond between the five of us grows stronger. Kim – who the girls call “sudra” or beauty – has warmed to our diminutive but bold young porters. She asks frequently about boyfriends (which they shyly insist they have never had) and gets a kick out of their giggles. Meanwhile I have become awed by our guide Renuka. Her English is near perfect. Her knowledge of the mountains, and flora, and religious artifacts among us is astounding. And she possesses a wisdom and self-confidence that defies her early twentysomething age and her heritage as a Nepalese female raised in a poor, rural region where cattle are often treated better than women.

Finally, the inhospitable high desert of Mustang gives way to fertile creek-side apple and peach orchards and tidy villages of narrow alleyes, whitewashed stone, and friendly Tibetan innkeepers. Occasionally we spot the letteres YCL (for Youth Communist League) graffitid on a pole, reminding us that the Maoist conflict is far from over - we are told that YCL is the most radical and violent branch of the Maoist insurgency.
The only big downside to this stretch of the trek is the road: a new addition which has brought Land Rovers carrying food and drinks for tourists, but ironically driven many visitors away by its mere presence. (Many now end the Annapurna Circuit trek in Jomsom). For us, it has been a blessing and a curse, delivering the occasional blast of tailpipe smog, but creating distance between us and the masses. When we land in Marpha, we have it all to ourselves.

We let the girls use our hot shower and then accompany them to the cozy, empty dining room, where they crack lentils out of the seed for fresh Dal bat, paint their fake nails hot pink, and watch a Bollywood Teleserial (Danu’s favorite) while we sip hot tea and play cards. So many wild contrasts in this room. But we all settle in for a meal together as if we have known each other for all of our lives. As if we were sisters.

Tomorrow: To Ghasa.

Sadhus, Hashish, and glorious Muktinath


Trek day Two: Kagbeni to Muktinath

We rose at 7 a.m. in Kagbeni, for hot “milk-coffee” (Nescafe with hot milk), Tibetan bread, and warm porridge with apples. We paid the bill, a meager 1,000 rupees (roughly 14 bucks for room, dinner, and breakfast for two). And we hit the road, the threat of the wind’s return hastening our pace. As Kim and I climbed straight up a loose scree hill, short of breath for the first time on this trip, we wondered aloud if the Nepalese had ever heard of switchbacks. Seemingly not. Our guide, Renuka, marveled at our pace and our porters seemed perturbed that we were so far ahead. But we were pumped, both by the scenery and the mere idea that we were trekking in the famed Mustang region of Nepal, after months – really years – of dreaming about it. Our high-altitude upbringing in Colorado was working in our favor. But Renuka warned us to hold back: If not, it would catch up with us later. So true.

A few hours into the taxing 2,900-foot ascent toward the temple of Muktinath (12,800 feet), we came upon a Sadhu, a dreadlocked spiritual pilgrim who had made the journey from the jungles of India in tan and filthy bare feet and a tattered red and yellow robe. He sat cross-legged on a brick wall, next to a marijuana plant in full bud in the front yard of a tea house. He seemed to possess only a pipe, a black ball of hashish (which he openly smoked as we approached), and a kind smile. Our guide explained that these Shaivite ascetics are known to walk for days to reach the cleansing waters and prayer wheels of Muktinath, a several-thousand-year-old hilltop temple oozing with both Hindu and Buddhist significance. Smoke often aids both in their journey and in their enlightenment.

When we finally arrived, groggy from the altitude, we found the same barefoot Sadhu seated at the temple gate, reeking of pot and Roxy (the local moonshine) and weaving a blanket with a fellow Sadhu. He was perfectly beaming.

Once inside the temple gate, with its flickering tea candles, burning incense, and 108 fountains spilling forth with purifying waters, we keenly understood why people come so far to experience this. Prayer flags undulate in the wind across the hillside for as far as the eye can see, strung up by devotees who scale steep crags to set them in place. Surprisingly there are few Westerners. We tucked into a nunnery said to house the “eternal flame” (a companion to to the earth, water, and wind elements pesent) in a dark pit under the ground. (I must admit, I could smell propane as I peeked in). Barefoot and mesmerized, we allowed an elder nun to give us each a tika, a red smudge between the eyes meant to symbolize the third eye.

Feeling blessed already, we pushed our luck and tried to attempt a side trip to a nearby ancient walled village called Jhong (the region's former capital). But after forging several streams and one large river by twilight, we decided to abort. The village was farther than it looked and Renuka seemed unsure of the way. With stomach’s growling, we short-cutted through a cow pasture, a group of teenage monks giggling from their second floor balcony as they guided us around their monestery and back to the road. Just before dark, we arrived at the Dream Home – the coolest lodge, with the most insane mountain views, that I will probably ever see in my life.

Warm pizza. Gin rummy. Amazing sunset. Deep Deep rest.

Tomorrow: To Marpha.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

To the moon and back with our Nepalese sisters







For 10 days I have been blissfully removed from the realm of gmail and the blogosphere, trekking through a wild and unforgiving land where accomplishment is measured in footsteps and rewarded with a frigid shower, a Spartan room with a sweeping Himalayan view, and a rousing game of gin rummy with newfound fellow wanderers. To try to encapsulate this rich, life-altering experience in a few hundred words on a blog seems futile, like trying to capture the view from the summit of Long’s Peak with a disposable point and shoot camera. But I can at least put forth a few glimmers, pulled from a journal I have kept religiously despite the sore-feet and utter fatigue that has inevitably overtaken me by 9 each night of our trek.
Here goes:

Nov. 8. Day one of the trek.

I’m lying in my bed at the New Annapurna Lodge in Kagbeni, a gentle buzz from an Everest beer and a Mars bar making this surreal day complete. We rose at 6 this morning in the bustling lakeside berg of Pochara, to be met by a shockingly diminutive guide and two even smaller porters. “My God. They are so tiny,” whispered my friend Kim. We promptly returned to our room and, guilt-ridden, emptied one third of the contents of our backpacks into a locker – a move we would later learn was totally unnecessary. Yes, these girls were about the size of my 10 year old, well under 90 pounds each and easily a foot shorter than my 5.7 frame. But they are unfathomably tough. And to them, hauling our packs through the windswept moonscape of Nepal’s Mustang valley is a welcome alternative to the village life from which they have come – one where arranged pre-pubescent marriages, child labor, and oppressive patriarchy are the norm.
As proud employees of Three Sisters Trekking (the one and only women owned and operated guide service in Nepal) they have a chance at something better. “We have hope,” our guide, Renuka, told me, as the five of us boarded a seemingly ancient 16-seat Yetti Air plane for our brief, turbulent flight to Jomsom.
Our four-hour hike from Jomsom to Kagbeni followed the wide, partly dry river bed of the upper Kali Gandaki River, the icy crown of Nilgiri rising above the arid, lifeless foothills and the blue-green waters snaking unpredictably in the valley below. For miles, the five of us walked without passing another soul, save a Nepalese shepherd and his flock. The mountains around us were so huge. We were so small. It felt like walking on the moon.
We had been warned that the wind would be ferocious through this stretch, but instead, it was dead calm. “You are lucky,” Renuka told me as we crossed the infamous valley below Kagbeni. She would tell me this many times on this trip.
Hours later, after we checked into our tidy rooms with pine furniture and sweeping views, we sat in the warm dining room and watched the wind pick up, shaking the windows and swallowing the once still valley below in a cloud of what we would soon come to know as “Nepali powder.”
Before the day was done, we paid a visit to a Tibetan monastery, stumbling by chance upon a memorial service in progress. Lucky again. Forty nine days earlier a villager had died, and this solemn event was the seventh and final weekly tribute to be paid, according to custom. We were all surprised when they invited us in. I removed my shoes, sat cross-legged on the floor, and listened, eyes closed tight, as eight monks with wind-weathered cheeks and long red robes read from ancient Tibetan texts in a rhythmic chant. Two lifted their long horns to their lips, filling the room with a rich harmonious tone that shook the floor. Symbols crashed. The chants grew louder, and before I knew it, I was overcome. Tears. So much beauty. This was going to be an amazing trek.

Friday, November 6, 2009

A spiritual ephiphany, cold beer and a pizza

Friday, Nov. 6

As I walked around the base of the temple at Swayambhunath, brushing my fingertips across the copper prayer wheels embedded in its base, I suddenly got it. For the Buddhist pilgrims who come by the thousands to this sacred place (the oldest Buddhist stupa in the world) each day, it is not enough to just stand back and behold its beauty, as we might do from the pews of a historic American church. To experience the true power of this ancient stupa, they must touch it. So they do. They circumambulate its base, spinning the wheels as pilgrims before them have done for centuries before them. They bow to it, touching their foreheads to its ornate, golden archways. The light tea candles and lie down on the ground below it. All this touching, plus the chronic Kathmandu pollution and the deeds of the hundreds of mischievous monkeys that inhabit the place have taken a toll on it, and thanks to a group of generous Buddhists from around the globe, an ambitious renovation is underway. Meanwhile, a group of engineers from Colorado is working to bring water to the family of 300 Buddhist caretakers who have inhabited this hilltop sanctuary, taking care of the stupa, for more than 2,000 years. A priest I interviewed explained just how dramatically something as simple as fresh water would change the lives of this community. How fitting that a place of such rich, spiritual tradition and remarkable art has become a magnet for international generosity. Nepal may be a place of political turmoil and violent motorists, but here, I felt how sacred this country really is.

...

My friend Kim - a high school chum who I have known since age 16 and who stood up as my maid of honor in my wedding - was waiting in the room when I got back to the hotel. What a great treat to have a companion for the rest of the trip...something beside my little netbook to share my thoughts with. We walked to Fire and Ice, a fantastic little pizza joint in Thamel for dinner, had a cold Everest beer, and wandered the chaotic streets for an hour, perusing shops full of poorly made North Face knock-offs. Today, we get on a plane to Pokhara and tomorrow - at last - we begin our trek!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Road Rage - Kathmandu style

Thursday: Nov. 6, 2009.

Ok. So, I admit it. I was scared.
Once again, I was in a Mad Max style cab, jockeying through narrow alleyways with stray dogs and school children in blue uniforms blocking our way, and the cabbie seemingly trusting an ear-piercing horn and a higher power to spare us all from disaster.
But this time, there was an added twist: An angry biker was ramming the back of our taxi periodically with enough force to thrust me smashing into the seat in front of me. I’m not quite sure what my cabbie had said 2 minutes earlier, as he rounded the corner, dangerously close to side-swiping the mean-looking motorcyclist in the blue helmet. But it pissed the guy off enough that he was now in hot pursuit of our tiny Suzuki Taxi cab. I tried to keep my cool, assuming that this nice Nepali cabbie would – as promised – get me to my destination in Thamel safely. But as I watched his face grow more livid in the rear view mirror, I could tell that my safety was not top of mind for him. As we pulled up to a crowded intersection, I felt another jolt from the left side of our cab – as our rage-filled stalker caught up with us and rammed us again with his bike. I pleaded with the cabbie. Leave now, and you’ll get your fare. But he was beyond caring about the fare. A split second later, he would be sucker punched through the open passenger window, the rage-filled biker inflicting a decent sized gash over his left brow and freaking me out enough that, duh, I grabbed my bags and jumped into the street, calling for another taxi. Meanwhile, the biker climbed into my former cab, dragging my petite, dangerously cocky driver into the street for a thrashing.
As my new cabbie drove off, I looked behind me, to see the motorcycle stalker clubbing my former driver with his blue helmet as a crowd gathered around in the street, stopping traffic. Road rage, Kathmandu style. Blood everywhere. Someone would go to the hospital for sure.
My new cabbie spoke not a word of English, but after another 25 minutes of circling Thamel, he got me to my destination, earning my eternal gratitude and a 200-rupee tip.
Tomorrow, Kim arrives. Thank God.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Life at the Bodha stupa




Weds. Nov. 4

This is my favorite place yet. I'm sitting on the veranda of the Hotel Norbu Sangpo, prayer flags swaying in the breeze all around me, the sound of a long horn and the smell of burning incense filling the air. A group of red-robed young monks are playing tag in the courtyard of the monastary next door. It's so beautiful it almost brings me to tears.
I needed such tranquility after the insane, solo, two-hour cab ride from the hospital in Banepa into Kathmandu today. I sat in the front seat (no seatbelts) as we jockeyed past motorized rickshaws that looked like something straight out of a Mad Max movie, dodging emaciated cows and wayward chickens, and jockeying through by far the worst traffic I have ever seen in my life. Total anarchy.
Then, he dropped me off, my giant backpack in tow, at the stupa gate. Twenty feet inside and I was greeted by the towering white Buddhist temple, its watchful eyes peering down on me, and red robed monks making their daily clockwise walk around its base, spinning the prayer wheels inside.
I'll never forget the smell of fresh herbs and burning incense, or the double scoop of ice cream I got at the little shop, Flavors, inside. Best ice cream ever.
I had dinner with Laurie Matthews, a former Colorado State Parks director who now dedicates her life to running dental clinics here in Nepal. And this morning, I watched her and her team in action - doing cleanings, fillings, extractions, on kids, nuns and monks who - if it weren't for her - would never see a dentist in their life. Inspirational.
Tonight, I'm on the move again - to Thamel.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Maoists, mice, and amazing people







Visions of blogging every day have quickly evaporated, as I have realized how crazy busy I am here and how hard it is to get an internet connection. It has been a mind-blowing, eye opening adventure so far. Even more than I had expected. To summarize, here's what I've done so far:

Day 1: We spent the day wandering around Bakhtapur, an ancient city built by Hindu priests in the 10th to 14th century and still bustling with gritty modern Nepali life. As I sipped on chai in a cafe in the downtown square, a goat gave birth to a baby goat in the street below me, while a seemingly ancient man in a red gown and gold cap burned a candle and squatted to pray in a temple built 1,000 years ago. An unfathomably beautiful scene.

Day 2: Dusk in Banepa and 16 of us were crammed into a tiny Daihatsu van on the way back from the hospital. Our driver was lost and pulled over to get directions, leaving our van in the middle of the street where a fire was, unexplainably, burning in the grassy median. It was a fitting end to a fascinating day. Woman after woman had filed into Scheer Memorial Hospital, a seventh day adventist mission hospital in a smog-choked suburb of Kathmandu called Banepa. Clad in floor-length saris, gold earings and red smudges on their forehead (a nod to their Hindu faith) they quietly told of years - as many as 35 years - suffering with a painful, uncomfortable condition called uterine prolapse, in which the womb literally falls below the pelvic floor, interfering with walking, working, life in general. Most had never told their families, out of shame, and fear. Hinduism is a religion founded on a caste system, in which your lot in life is set at birth, a consequence of your actions in previous lives. Many women assume they somehow brought this problem upon themselves, so they remain silent. In reality, it is the patriarchal system here - which requires women to work from dawn til dusk, carrying water, wood, concrete, you name it - which contributes to the fact that it has more cases of Uterine Prolapse than most any country in the world. Two women had surgery while I watched. Hopefully it will be a new beginning for them.
Day 3: We pulled up to the village of Tamagat with a bus load of medical supplies and doctors and nurses to deliver them, and were greeted by 250-300 patients lined up outside the medical clinic anxiously awaiting. When we stepped off the bus they placed leis made of fresh marigolds around our necks and gave each of us a ceremonial red smudge between the eyes. I teared up. We were a bit nervous. The Maoists are striking in the streets of kathmandu and threatening to close the airport Nov. 10. But I have been assured over and over by Maoists I have interviewed that they will not threaten tourists. I hope they are telling the truth. Today, I walked a couple miles to a primary school with a dental hygienist from Minnesota, and an interpreter. She spent the afternoon going from class to class to teach the kids how to brush and hand out toothbrushes. They were mesmerized. On the way there, an old woman milking a cow invited us into her home for fresh papaya, grapefruit, and an insanely tart fruit I can't pronounce. We sat with her entire family and they laughed at the funny faces we made as we politely choked down the sour fruit. I love it here. Tomorrow, to Kathmandu....