Susannah and Mike's Eurasian Invasion

Headlong Into the Sunset

2008-08-12T23:00:00.014-04:00

When last you heard from your favorite overland travellers, we had collapsed in a Baku hostel after a marathon trip across the Caspian Sea. Lest you fear we are marooned yet again in unlikely circumstances, let us assure you that it all ended happily ever after. Eventually.

The delay crossing the Caspian, along with the trouble we had acquiring Uzbek visas, put us far behind schedule for reaching Turkey, where we had hoped to spend at least ten days before starting home. We had also been itching to spend some time in Baku, the famous Azeri oil-boom town which Tom Reiss describes thus in his wonderful book The Orientalist:

The walled caravan outpost soon became the center of the burgeoning global oil industry–supplying more than half the world's crude–and the result was a fabulous nineteenth-century city built on the profits: extravagant mansions, mosques, casinos, and theaters from the period when the city was home to the Rothschilds, the Nobels, and dozens of local Muslim "oil barons."[…] Moorish palaces still sit next to Gothic manses, and Byzantine cupolas next to bejeweled rococo pavilions. The locals styled themselves cultured Europeans and "modern Muslims," right up to the point when the Bolsheviks decided they were decadent bourgeois and swooped in to crush them.

Sadly, we had only a day-long glimpse of these wonders before we had to hop on a train for Tbilisi, capitol of the troubled Georgian republic. The train station we pulled into was the dirtiest and most ramshackle of our entire trip, a dubious distinction but by no means an easy accomplishment. The station was lost in the city's sprawling outskirts, the muddy and broken streets crammed with an endless series of ramshackle kiosks offering cheap Russian goods.

A short distance away, however, we found Tbilisi's newly thriving core, where boutiques and trendy cafes competed for space with cathedrals along charming cobblestone streets. It seemed clear to us that in Georgia, as in so many other places we visited this year, prosperity and access to the global economy were largely limited to an elite handful ensconced in the center of the capitol. We were fascinated by what little we managed to see of Georgia and longed to stick around, but for the first time in our journey we were on a schedule, with a plane to catch on the far side of Turkey. Before nightfall we had boarded a bus whose tout claimed we could reach Istanbul in a mere 24 hours.

Astonishingly, after an achy night and day spent in a pell-mell dash across Anatolia’s verdant countryside, the next evening we did in fact reach Istanbul, the final stop of the Eurasian Invasion. We were hoping that Istanbul, the ultimate gateway between East and West, would be the perfect place to pick up the threads of our own culture amid the rich tapestry of Asia. We were not disappointed.

The Blue Mosque

In the city's incomparable mosques, we found familiar Christian angelic icons soaring alongside the best of Islamic art and architecture. On the streets, flavors and fashions from across three continents mixed with an often reckless abandon. As Turkey continues to struggle to define itself as either Western or Eastern, Islamic or Secular, European or Asian, Istanbul continues in its ancient role as a cultural lodestone, attracting a dizzying deluge of ideas and influences. Yet, at its heart, the city seemed remarkably grounded in its own unique and enduring culture. We wound down our year-long journey in Istanbul's bazaars and back allies, sipping coal-black coffee and savoring baklava, and fell in love with the place.

Inside Aya Sofya, a Christian basilica for almost a millenium before it was converted to a mosque in the 15th C

One of Istanbul's countless markets, full of shopping possibilities for locals and tourists alike...

...though definitely geared more for tourists in some cases.

Currency traders

A boy on the day of his circumcision, dancing in the Blue Mosque

Finally, we found ourselves enjoying the last sunset of our odessey from the deck of a ferry in the middle of the Bosphorus, literally floating between Asia and Europe. In the morning, we would fly to Ireland to meet our families and celebrate the successful end of an unforgettable adventure. After a year of strange beds, stranger food, exotic diseases and tongue-twisting languages, we looked forward to the comforts of the familiar and the stationary. At the same time, though, there was no denying that we were pretty well bummed out it was over. Every day for the last year, we'd woken up together to a world of nearly total freedom and unlimited potential for discovery. We'd been free to choose any direction to roam, any new place to explore. We'd been presented with an endless series of mysteries to solve, people to befriend, astonishing sights to behold. Every day had given us the chance to discover a new world in miniature, linked in often unexpected ways to the worlds we'd discovered yesterday and months before.

As we return home we're looking forward to new challenges and a more settled life in New Haven, Connecticut. All the same, we'll be keeping our packs by the door.

Faces of Central Asia

2008-08-04T22:09:00.000-04:00

Dan-la Village, Turkmenistan

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Uzbek man in Osh, Kyrgyzstan

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Dan-la village, Turkmenistan

Veteran of "The Great Patriotic War," Bishkek, Kyrgystan

Tajik woman, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Dan-la village, Turkmenistan

Dan-la village, Turkmenistan

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Kyrgyz border, Uzbekistan

Khiva, Uzbekistan

Trial By Ferry

2008-07-08T08:28:00.000-04:00

Being the tale of Susannah and Mike's many tribulations, failures and eventual success in crossing the Caspian Sea, a twelve hour journey by ship from Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan to Baku, Azerbaijan.

Day 1: Arrive in Turkmenbashi at 7pm after a 10 hour drive across the desert from Ashgabat. Checked conditions at the port; clear weather with ships stacked up and ready to depart and no waiting line for passage. Guide advises us to retire and depart for Baku first thing in the morning.

Day 2: Buy provisions at market minutes after it opens at 8am; advised by guide to purchase enough food for possible delays at sea. Find delicious smoked sturgeon for dinner tonight, in case our ship does not have a restaurant. Arrive at port to discover no ships present, except a departing vessel on horizon. Ship arrives at 3pm, but will not take passengers as it is carrying fuel. As of midnight, no further ships sighted. We settle in for the night: Susannah curls up on a steel bench, Mike in the trunk of guide's SUV in the parking lot.

Day 3: Dawn. No ships sighted. We wash using water leaking from a rusty pipe behind the port building. Bathrooms lack running water, conditions unspeakable. Susannah befriends large Azeri family camped in the corner of the waiting room.

Noon. No ships sighted, wind picking up. We watch movies dubbed in Russian on guide's tiny portable TV. Mike plays marathon series of chess games against a team of seven Turkmen.

Evening. No ships. Winds at gale force. Turkmen flag in tatters on the pole. Golden bust of Turkmenbashi looks on, unfazed.

Over 100 people now wait for passage, with space for 11 available on each ship. Young men begin gambling for better places in line. Rumors of ships out to sea, waiting for good weather to dock. In an effort to save our dwindling food for the passage, we eat at highly suspect, dingy port cafe. Guide goes to hotel, prepares to leave in in am with fresh clients. Mike settles in on bench, Susannah curls up on top of our packs.

Day 4: 4am. Mike wakes up on bech with stomach pains. Susannah hurredly dispenses medication. Vomiting begins 20 minutes later. Susannah and Mike huddle behind a wall near railroad tracks so Mike can vomit in privacy. Wind continues to howl as sky lightens.

Morning: Guide arrives with local man, Max, whom he assures us can do whatever deal is necessary to get us on the first ship out. Guide leaves for Ashgabat. Mike continues to vomit behind a shed next to a dog skeleton, can't stop thinking about Cormac McCarthy novels. In mid-morning, Max takes Susannah to market to purchase more food. After vomiting subsides, Mike collapses on bench, exhausted. Max departs without explanation, leaving his 18-year old daughter with Susannah (who does not speak Russian). Weather clears, and a ship arrives, to everyone's great joy.

Chaos ensues in the booking office, as dozens desperately scramble for tickets. Girl assigned to help us does nothing, despite Susannah's pleas. Awakened by Susannah, Mike sprints to ticket office, discovers ticket agent called his name for ten minutes but finally sold all tickets to others. Susannah somehow refrains from throttling the girl. After banishing girl, Mike negotiates in Russian with port officials. Wheels are greased. Second ship arrives hours later, Mike secures tickets.

11 passengers clear Turkmen customs and immigration, taking five hours. We board rusty Soviet-era freighter through loading ramp along with Turkish trucks, Soviet-era rail cars, Susannah's adopted Azeri family and an erudite French journalist traveling undercover as an historian.

Once aboard, we secure a small cabin with broken toilet for $200, over twice the expected price. Jubilant, we watch the port and golden Turkmenbashi bust recede into the distance as the sun goes down. Weeping with joy, we squeeze into the cabin's tiny bunk.

Day 5: Incognito French journalist wakes us to the news that Baku has been sighted off the bow. We share the best of our food with him for breakfast, planning to leave the rest behind. Mike returns the increasingly fragrant sturgeon to the sea. At 9:30am, crew drops anchor a mile offshore.

The First Mate, who has befriended Mike, informs him we will be ashore in no time at all: only five hours! 5 hours later, Mike asks about docking again, and mate confidently replies "five hours!" Mike detects ominous pattern. Since we are all out of local currency, French journalist begins trading cigarettes for food in the ship's bar. Mike discusses politics, education, history and Angeline Jolie on the bridge with Captain, crew.

At 8pm, we weigh anchor. Captain leaps into action on our behalf, shepherds us down the gangway, through customs and into a cheap taxi. We arrive at hotel by 10pm, have dinner at 10:30, and collapse into bed at 11:00.

There is no water now between us and Istanbul, and for that, we are glad.

Nomads and Narcissists

2008-06-29T16:30:00.003-04:00

After ten months on the ground in Asia, we thought we'd seen it all. After bizarre Hindu festivals, soaring Tibetan monasteries, steaming Laotian jungles and Chinese breakfast buffets, we were surely ready for anything. We hadn't counted on Turkmenistan.

Sure, we knew a few things about the country. From 1991 until 2006, Turkmenistan was ruled by one of the world's truly great lunatics. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lackluster communist functionary named Saparmurat Niyazov seized his chance for immortal glory by declaring himself the Great Turkmenbashi, Leader of All Turkmen, and President for Life of the newly independent nation. After the mandatory 'all dissidents mysteriously vanish' phase of the power grab, Great Turkmenbashi got down to the serious business of erecting golden statues of himself all over the country, officially re-naming the month of April after his mother, and copyrighting the Turkmen alphabet. After the Turkmenbashi's death in 2006, the country is now in the capable hands of a guy rumored to be the great leader's illegitimate son. We'd been warned that the banks didn't function, there was no internet access, most of the country was a scorched desert wasteland, and government agents would follow us everywhere we went. Naturally, we decided to check the place out.

Although we've come to love independent travel, a guide is required at all times for foreigners in Turkmenistan. Fortunately, ours proved to be outstanding. Dima (short for Dimitri) met us as we cleared the border, a hulking Russian in a gleaming golden jeep. Within minutes, he and Mike were howling with laughter in the front seat, trading dry Soviet-style jokes about the government road system (in Turkmenistan, the road drives YOU...). Happily, Susannah was too busy swooning over the jeep's air conditioning to reflect on her husband's idiocy.

Our first stop was the ruins of Konye-Urgench, a former silk road Khanate now largely buried beneath the dunes. In modern times, it has become a holy place where the people of the vast Karakum Desert come to make offering and seek answers. The local religion is a unique and timeless mix of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Animism and Islam. Women build intricate cradles of wood and yarn, then leave them on holy sites to petition Allah and their ancestors for a child. While we were there, a young man climbed an ancient burial mound, where bleached white skulls and bones still protrude from the earth, and then rolled down the slope past a lone stick in the ground covered in prayer offerings. In his case, rolling to the right of the 'sacred tree' meant Allah wanted him to go to college - left was for early marriage and taking over his father's goat herd. He went right, and witnesses seemed sure he'd given himself a discreet push in that direction.

The Sacred Tree of Konye-Urgench

As our golden jeep pulled away from the ruined city, Dima gleefully informed us we were headed south, into the vastness of the Karakum Desert, to camp at a place he called 'the crater.' He refused to tell us more, only that it was a 'volcano in the desert,' and we could not leave the country without seeing it. We drove for hours on a bad road through the desert, passing only camels and the occasional shack, before we stopped for mutton pancakes at a lonely desert cafe with a few old tables and a golden bust of the Turkmenbashi. Finally, hours later, we veered off the road and across the dunes in the dwindling light. As our golden jeep climbed the final rise, Dima triumphantly exclaimed "... and now... the crater!"

The landscape before us was lit in a fiery glow. At its center was a huge, flaming hole in the ground. The blazing pits of hell... A horrific inferno... We ran down for a closer look.

What was a flaming crater doing in the middle of the desert? All Dima could tell us, and all anyone seems to know, is that the Soviets were here looking for natural gas in the sixties, there's nobody at all here now, and the crater the Ruskies left is still on fire forty years later. Chalk another one up for Lenin and his Worker's Paradise. After dinner and the requisite shots of vodka (Russians in the desert are still Russians, after all), Dima tucked us in with a warning about the local fauna. "We have the cobra here, and also we have many spider, but no worry. Spider just paralyze you, only death for maybe six percent of time. If cobra bite, you must drink much of the vodka, very fast, then no problem. Have good sleeping."

Thanks, big guy...

Our government-approved itinerary had us going to the capitol, Ashkabat, the next morning. When we woke up, though, Dima told us he was willing to change it. He offered to take us to a nomad village deep in the Karakum, a full day's off-road drive away, where he said we could catch a glimpse of Turkmen life as it had been a hundred years ago, and for centuries before that. The village was called 'Dan-La,' meaning 'Last Drop of Water,' but Dima simply called it the Capitol of the Desert. As he sun rose, we set off across the dunes.

Master of the Desert

We drove all day over an inland sea of sand and rock, crossing mountainous dunes and dry lake beds smoother than the best asphalt. The desert seemed utterly empty, with only the occasional hawk, lizard or camel dotting the landscape. We went almost all day without seeing another vehicle, until we crested a steep rise in the dunes late in the afternoon. A motorcycle filled the windshield, and before anyone could react its rider was flying over the jeep. Fortunately, he landed in the soft sand without a scratch. As Murphy's Law predicts, the only two vehicles for a hundred miles had managed to drive straight into each other. The poor nomad's bike was in pretty bad shape, but after about an hour we managed to get it started, and he headed on his way.

Dima and the nomad discuss motorcycle maintenance

About an hour later, Dima pulled to a halt at the crest of a large hill. Below us in the golden afternoon light, we beheld Dan-La, Capitol of the Desert.

Dima is one of the few outsiders who ventures here, and his jeep is well-known. As a crowd of children gathered to greet us, we made our way down the slope and into the village.

Even after our months of travel, what we saw amazed us. Dan-La was a true time capsule, a forgotten world in the middle of a vast roadless expanse. Camels and donkeys wandered between the mud houses and nomad yurts. Women were busy weaving textiles by hand, while men sheared sheep with long knives in pens made of thorny branches. Children scurried about, waving their arms and shouting as they herded swarms of goats into their enclosures. An aging soviet truck and a few motorcycles were the only modern technology we saw.

Our host was the patriarch of the village's largest family, and welcomed us in his yurt with tea, bread and dried mutton. It was a dry year, and his two oldest sons had taken most of his goats and gone over a hundred miles to the north in search of better water and grazing. The life of the desert nomads, Dima explained, had been that way for centuries.

When our host heard about our crash with the motorcycle, he immediately declared that thanks must be given to Allah for the lack of injury or death. We chose a lamb from his pens, brought it to a special sacrificial post at the center of the village, and slit its throat. As the blood pooled in the sand, he lit a small fire on top of the blood, faced Mecca, and prayed in thanks to Allah. Like the pilgrims at Konye-Urgench, his offering was a blend of Islamic practice with ancient Animist and Zoroastrian traditions. As we would continue to see, Turkmenistan's Islamic religious identity is skin-deep, obscuring a much more complex and fascinating reality.

As the sun set, we gathered in the yurt for a feast of lamb, bread, tea and vodka. We discussed the price of goats in the Ashkabat markets and the likelihood of rain, told stories and bad jokes, and finally curled up under our blankets and drifted off to the bizarre howling of the camels tethered outside.

We woke just after dawn, to discover that the camels were somehow still howling. After a hearty breakfast of bread, tea and dried mutton, we joined the local women and children as they watered the camel herds at the village well.

Then, reluctantly, we began the long day's drive from the Capitol of the Desert across the Karakum to Ashgabat, where we discovered a capitol of a very different sort.

We emerged from the desert into a theme-park world of wide, empty avenues and gleaming marble buildings. Everywhere we looked the brilliant desert sunlight radiated from the golden face of the Great Turkmenbashi. High above the city, perched atop the "Arch of Neutrality," the Turkmenbashi's largest likeness rotates to always face the sun. Nearby stands his memorial to the great earthquake of 1948 which killed thousands and claimed the life of the infant despot's mother. The memorial is a massive statue of a great bull uprooting the earth with his horns while men and women scream grotesquely. Alone amid the chaos, the young Turkmenbashi is depicted as a golden infant unworldly in his serenity. He doesn't even need a diaper!

Among the Turkmenbashi's many gifts to his people, the Ruhnama is surely the greatest and most lasting. Known in English as The Book of the Soul, the tome is a rambling and often incoherent vision of the Turkmen people's history, ethos and place in the universe. Study of the book is required at all levels of Turkmen education and it is even part of the driver's license exam (the driving part, as any visitor will tell you, is much less important). After having his magnum opus translated into virtually every language on earth, the Turkmenbashi surpassed even himself by launching a copy into space. Since the Turkmenbashi's works are the only books available for purchase in Turkmenistan, we bought two copies.

Fortunately, there is another side to the Turkmen capitol. Ashgabat's Tolkuchka Bazaar is one of the greatest markets in Central Asia, and therefore the world. It stretches for miles, offering everything from camels and carburetors to German cars and Japanese plasma TVs.

With the battle-cry of a true market hound, Susannah twice led us into the chaos, camera poised and ready for some bare-knuckle bargaining.

After hours of admiring hand-woven carpets and antique silver earrings, Mike was loopy enough to don a traditional sheepskin hat.

Finally, our Central Asian adventures with deserts and dictators seemed to be at an end. We met Dima for our last ride together, west across the desert to the port city of Turkmenbashi, where we planned to take ship for Baku. We looked forward to a twelve hour sail across the Caspian and the comparative comforts of the Caucasus.

We were fools...

The Golden Road

2008-06-11T16:16:00.000-04:00

We travel not for trafficking alone,
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

--James Elroy Flecker

Probably as a result of our brief and expansive history, pioneering national spirit, and geographic fortune ensconced behind the battlements of two vast oceans, we Americans tend to see history as the story of continual human progress. Perhaps no country on earth disabuses this notion like Uzbekistan. Formerly the home of fiercely independent desert khanates and glittering centers of global learning and culture, Uzbekistan today struggles to escape the crippling legacy of its Soviet past under the uncertain helmsmanship of a repressive dictator. Still, despite current realities, Uzbekistan offers the traveler an almost unmatched experience of enchantment, history, and sheer eye candy.

The Registan, Samarkand

We entered the country via the market town of Osh, in reality the commercial center of Uzbekistan's fertile Fergana Valley but deposited by a whim of Stalin just across the border in Kyrgyzstan. After clearing customs, we made our way toward the capital city of Tashkent through the Fergana's heavily irrigated cropland. As the hotbed of Islamist resistance to President Karimov's regime, the Fergana exports more than just vegetables to the rest of the country. The region made the news in 2005 when Uzbek soldiers reportedly massacred up to 1,000 peaceful protesters in the city of Andijon. It was quiet when we passed through, however, and we navigated through the maze of heavily armed military checkpoints to the capital without incident. We spent a few days in Tashkent waiting for visas and gawked at young nouveau riche Russian girls dancing on the tables in a neon-lit yurt-cum-bar. Finally, after taking in Karimov's version of the past at the propaganda-packed History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan, we headed south to Samarkand to see it for ourselves.

Samarkand's very name is synonymous with the Silk Road and the romance of the Orient. Even today, the remnants of its former glory took our breath away. We lost ourselves for days in sunlit courtyards and soaring chambers resplendent with blue tile and gold leaf.

Next, we made our way to Bukhara, the last of the Central Asian khanates to lose its independence. After fending off desert raiders and voracious czars and emperors for centuries, the proud city state even managed to hold off the Red Army for a few years before finally falling to the Bolsheviks in the 1920s. Today, Bukhara is a mecca for French tourists, full of tempting bazaars, atmospheric streets and charmingly dilapidated bed and breakfasts. We splurged on a room above the courtyard of a 19th century mansion and set out to explore the city.

The breakfast room at our digs

Bukhara from the ramparts of the Ark

Finally, our Uzbek odyssey took us to Khiva, another former city state once renowned for its barbarism and for holding Central Asia's largest slave market. When the Russians sent an expedition to free their slaves in the 18th century, the cunning khan invited the czar's soldiers to relax in comfort in local homes before having them all murdered in their sleep. We decided to lock our door at night.

The fierce warriors of Khiva

The Kalta Minor Minaret, Khiva

An Uzbek folk singer before her performance

Khiva was to be our last stop before striking out into the formidable physical and political wasteland of Turkmenistan, one of the world's least understood and most bizarre nations. We sent final emails, stocked up on cash and made our way to the border hoping for the best.

Ramparts of Khiva at sunset

Asia's Wild West

2008-06-07T06:51:00.003-04:00

Susannah: A tiny, mountainous country, isolated Kyrgyzstan is a unique and charming mix of traditional Сentral Asian and Russian culture. It was here that I saw my first babushkas, with wizened faces smiling under colorful scarves, and enjoyed my first authentic bowl of Russian borscht with flat, delicious bread (a miracle after weeks of Chinese steamed buns). The scenery is spectacular, and the lives of the people who make their living off the land are fascinating.
We actually saw more of Kyrgystan's ugly post-soviet capital, Bishkek, than the lovely countryside, since we were forced to wait for a week there for our Uzbek visa. Arriving from Almaty late in the day, we discovered that the cheap hotel we were looking for had closed. Exhausted and nearing despair, we spotted two guys ambling toward us who were definitely not Krygyz. Mike sidled up to them and asked if they knew a good place to stay. "No," the older guy replied in a thick Australian twang, "but I have a friend who would. Are you hungry? We're having dinner down the street."

So began our fortunate and pleasureable friendship with three oil company guys posted in Bishkek. Over several nights of pizza and beer with John, a thirty-something Canadian, I came to appreciate his surprisingly nuanced (to me) views on environmentalism, development and his own role in the world. It didn't hurt, either, that his Kyrgyz right-hand-man found us a luxurious apartment for less than the price of a cheap hotel.

Our next stop was the turquoise waters of Lake Issykol, ringed by mountains, and the tiny city of Karakol. Here, our improbable companions were a young Peace Corps volunteer, Kay, and her Kyrgyz boyfriend Arabek. His mother gave us a taste of Kyrgyz hospitality, over steaming bowls of black tea sweetened with homemade fruit preserves and honey. We met a beekeeper the next day on the road, who pulled us into his house and insisted on filling a plastic bag bag with creamy honey for us straight out of the honey-churn.

On Saturday we got up at dawn to see Karakol's teeming animal market. We had just set out on our long walk when a horse cart appeared, headed to the market, and the driver motioned for us to take a seat next to his trussed-up sheep in the back. We lumbered along through the city streets and showed up at the market in style, already smelling ripe.

The market was full of real cowboys and farmers checking out each others' livestock, getting their horses shod, and buying their feed.

These guys, who at 8 in the morning had just completed a tipsy deal on this cow, insisted we take their photo to commemorate the happy event and their new friendship. You can see how proud the Russian guy is of his new bovine companion.

The next day, we headed with our Peace Corps friends up to a high mountain plateau to see an eagle hunt. At first we had thought there was some linguistic miscommunication, and that the Kyrgyz meant falcon hunt. But when we pulled up in the van to pick up the hunter and his bird, we discovered there was no mistake. If you've never shared a minivan with an uncaged eagle, you'll have to take our word for it that it was disconcerting. Struggling to keep its balance, it continually smacked the back of our heads with its wings. At one point it actually fell headfirst into the trunk, then proudly pretended it had never happened.

We had brought along a sweet grey bunny, scuffling nervously in a cardboard box in the front seat. When we reached the plateau, the hunter hooded the eagle and Anabek set the bunny down five hundred yards away. When the hood was removed, the eagle took off like a streak. The bunny never saw it coming.

In a real hunt this would all have happened on horseback, and the hunter would only have allowed the eagle a slice of the meat. But it was sobering to see the food chain before us so vividly. Apparently, the eagles often take down fox and even wolves!

On the way back to Bishkek to pick up our Uzbek visas, we stopped in a mountain town west of Lake Issykol and headed up into the hills to see the "real nomad life." We couldn't help laughing when our host family's yurt came into view:

Tourism aside, they really did graze a huge herd of sheep, goats, and cows, and even a couple yaks. While they cooked a sheep they'd just slaughtered, we headed out for a ride. I had never been on horseback aside from trail-riding on ponies, and was continually kicking the horse in a vain effort to get it to at least trot. Not until the yurt again came into view did it break into a gallop, and I let out a wild yell as we hurtled down the hill. Mike had slightly less trouble controlling his noble beast.

Back at the trailer/yurt, dinner was ready: boiled sheep, flat bread, and bowls of hot fat. A vegetarian before the trip began, I was a little disturbed by the sight of the sheep's head in the middle of the table, but gamely began to gnaw on the leg tossed on my plate. As the bones piled up on the table, I turned to Mike and whispered, "At first I thought nomad life was quaint--but it's actually barbaric!" (Mike, with most of a leg bone in his mouth and a sharp knife in his hand, could only grunt in reply.)

Raised on legends of cowboys living free and wild in an American west that has largely faded into myth, we had found the real thing alive and well in Asia.

Goodbye Mao, Hello Borat

2008-05-23T04:21:00.001-04:00

Mike: It turns out that China is a lot harder to leave than it is to get into. When we applied for our Chinese visas in Bangkok, filling out forms in triplicate and then waiting around for days before forking over a hundred dollars each to have our passports adorned with the official stamp, we thought we were getting the hard part out of the way. Little did we know.

After exploring China's little known (but REALLY big) Xinjiang Province, we decided to take the train from Urumqi accross the border to Almaty, Kazakhstan. It sounded simple enough, but booking cross-border train tickets in China ain't easy for us foreign imperialist types. Rejected at the train station ticket window and several travel agencies, we eventually found ourselves in a hotel suite on the outskirts of town negotiating for tickets with a hulking Russian guy and his beanpole Uigur sidekick. After a frenzy of cacaphonic tri-lingual communication, we finally managed a breakthrough: they couldn't sell us tickets, either.

Finally, it was a small counter in the lobby of yet another hotel that saw us through. Tickets in hand, we triumphantly boarded an old Russian railcar for the two-day journey to Almaty. The other two berths in our compartment were taken by a Mongolian woman and a Chinese guy. We passed the miles in good spirits, exchanging stories (Tower of Babel, take two) and the food we'd packed. All was right with the world. Then, like that famous piece of refuse colliding with that famous fan, we trundled up to the Chinese border post.

We didn't expect trouble - we were leaving the country, after all, not trying to get in. Still, we should have known better. As the train ground to a halt, Chinese soldiers immediately climbed aboard, collected passports, and herded every European and North American aboard off the train and into a seperate building. There weren't many, just your faithful correspondents, three New Zealanders and a Norweigan. Good thing, because the soldiers brought each of us into a small room individually, with our luggage, and interviewed us for a minimum of 15 minutes each while they rifled through our bags.

Mike had an especially good time, since the Chinese were somehow aware of his checkered past as an imperialist military officer. It took over an hour for him to clear. He passed the time evading bizarre questions about his military service and watching a squad of the People's Liberation Army's finest look for secret documents sewn into his boxer shorts. If there's a transcript out there, part of it reads like this:

Chinese Officer: "You in army before, we know this. Yes?"

Mike: "Yes."

China: "Where in army you fight?"

Mike: "I fought with my sister sometimes, when I was a kid, but we get along great now."

(faint but audible rustle as socks are held up to the light by a teenage soldier, breathing loudly through his mouth)

China (after long silence): "You in army, yes? We know you in army."

After such hospitality, the Kazakh border was a glorious sight. We were also questioned by Kazakh officers - but all they wanted to know was why their Chinese counterparts kept giving westerners so much trouble, and they stopped by our compartment to ask their questions instead of confining us. Finally, after engineers changed the wheel guage on our train to accomodate the old Soviet-laid track to the north, we were on our way into Kazakhstan.

If Sasha Cohen's character Borat is your image of modern Kazakhstan, think again. Almaty's wide and leafy avenues, mountain vistas and European sensibilities felt cleansing after China's industrial, desert interior. As we arranged visas and plotted our onward journey to the Caspian Sea, and Istanbul beyond, we strolled through parks with locals decked out in western fashions bought with new petro-dollars and visited resplendant Russian Orthodox Churches.

At the famous Green Bazaar, we gawked at mountains of fresh meat and produce and indulged in heaping portions of laghman, the national dish of pulled noodles, vegetable sauce and meat.

Kazakhstan's largest city was the most vibrant place we'd visited since Shanghai. Still, despite the Italian fashions and French restaurants, we couldn't help singing a few lines from Borat's ficticious national anthem, written to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner:

"Kazakhstan is the Number One

Exporter of Potassium,

All other countries

Export inferior potassium!"

China's Inland Empire

2008-05-22T08:34:00.000-04:00

It's obvious enough from a glance at the map that China is an exceptionally large nation, stretching from the Pacific to the mountainous ramparts of the Pamirs. But to truly appreciate just how damn big it is, there's nothing like crossing the country by train. Only when you've spent an entire day and night sitting on a bench in a packed rail car full of rural Chinese, with many people standing in the aisles or slumped on their luggage, does all that colored map space really sink in. It took us the better part of a week to make our way from Beijing to Kazakhstan, traversing Xinjiang's deserts in the hoof-prints of the old silk road camel caravans. Along the way, we discovered one of the world's most overlooked Islamic communities, the Uigurs.

In some important ways, a very large amount of that colored map space representing China isn't very Chinese at all. A massive percentage of China's land mass is found in its two westernmost provinces, Tibet and Xinjiang. In our travels through both places, we found the majority of people speaking non-Chinese languages, following non-Chinese religions, eating non-Chinese food, wearing non-Chinese clothes and generally going about their lives in a very non-Chinese way. (All of this, it goes without saying, happens under the attentive supervision of some very Chinese officials and police). There are some pretty obvious complications that result from this arrangement, and we discussed them at some length here and here during our travels in Tibet and in the Tibetan exile community in India.

While Xinjiang's Uigur Muslim majority hasn't found itself in the spotlight (or under the gun) to the extent their southern neighbors have, they do face a similar situation in many respects. Separatist movements have arrisen here on a number of occasions, only to be crushed. Still, despite the political tension and riot police patrolling the streets, life in Xinjiang's villages adheres to a rhythm much older than the town clocks chiming on Beijing time. Mao's face still appears occasionally, but the heart and soul of Xinjiang is the call to prayer echoing in the early morning, and the afternoon light filtering through grape trellises to illuminate the mud-walled alleys.

Hutong Quest

2008-05-18T02:51:00.005-04:00

Susannah: The city of Beijing was my first glimpse of Asia. It was 1996 and was I sixteen. I had no affection for the grim smoggy skies and treeless avenues lined with blocky cement buildings; what I loved was pointing my Flying Pigeon bicycle down the narrow, winding hutongs of the old part of town. Here, onion pancackes and fried dumplings sizzled on every corner, crowds gathered to watch mahjong games, and women called to each other in piercing tones asking about their husbands' hemorrhoids. There was always something to wonder at, so much so that I often narrowly avoided collisions with bicycle carts overloaded with cardboard, beer bottles or laundry.

Many of these hutongs are several hundred years old. Through the narrow entryways lined with rusty bikes lie the courtyards of ancient family complexes and vibrant hidden temples. When we arrived in the city with Mike's mom, we barely made it to Tiananmen Square before I dragged everyone off to see "the real Beijing" of the hutongs.

I couldn't remember where my old haunts had been, so I consulted the ever-present guide book and pointed us toward Qianmen, the old southern gate to the city. We were immediately confronted with what seemed like miles of corrugated metal barricade, forcing us through a narrow, dusty channel reverberating with the sounds of jackhammers and buzzsaws. Through a gap in a fence I saw a vast expanse of rubble punctuated by the vibrant color of recently constructed faux-imperial splendor: the Beijing the government was readying for the Olympics.

Сhargrined, we pushed through the dust to a narrow commercial street. Here, cheerful workmen were busy rebuilding storefronts full of souvenirs. Dismembered mannequins lay piled against a fence.

A little desperate now, I took us down a promisingly narrow alleyway that I hoped would yield some local color. There was hardly a sign of life, apart from some wet cement. The old walls had been painted a uniformly stark grey on grey.

A couple days later (at my suggestion) we rented bikes and tried a different part of town, behind the Forbidden City. Same story, except this time there were signs in English pointing the way to this or that "authentic hutong." Toward the end of the day we happened upon some hole-in-the-wall noodle joints and a makeshift bike repair stand, but most of the businesses were self consciously shabby-hip joints for foreigners, or sold relics of the old Beijing.

As the defacto China tour guide, I was a little embarassed to be dragging Mike's mom along on a wild goose chase for something that apparently no longer existed. Once we had left China's borders and the reach of the "Great Firewall of China," I did some internet research to see what had happened to the Beijing I remembered.

According to this insightful article in Open Democracy, (featuring some beautiful and sobering photos), a third of the central city's 62 square km has been destroyed in the last 3 years, displacing 580,000 residents, many of whom are homeless while awaiting resettlement in highrises. The hutongs not being torn down are getting the makeover we witnessed. One of the aspects of this makeover that pleases residents is the upgrading of their public toilets--though only those in tourist-frequented areas are getting the fancy kind with electronic flush mechanisms.

According to this (surprisingly hilarious) article in The Hindu,

"the city authorities have also instituted a "morality-evaluation index" that ranks neighbourhoods according to the level of refinement they have achieved. Sharing housework, speaking a foreign language, regular reading of newspapers, large book-collections and window-sills displaying potted plants boost the neighbourhood score on the civility index while spitting, alcohol abuse, and noisiness act as blackmarks."

This is all happening, of course, to mould the city into a Beijng the government thinks will impress its first-world Olympic visitors. This is a shame, because a sterilized, spoon-fed experience of China can be had much more easily at Epcot Center. But the real shame is that Beijing's residents are being forcibly encouraged to believe that their rich, lived-in history and deep community roots are worthless.

Images of China

2008-05-10T07:33:00.000-04:00

A Taoist monk in Hangzhou

In contemplation in Hangzhou

A temple worker in Beijing prepares for a ceremony

This woman is praying for luck or health for a loved one born in the year of the horse. Her hands are covered in dye from pink incense sticks.

Want to buy a balloon?

Late afternoon on the Great Wall

A show of force at Tiananmen

I couldn't tell you who this group was, but it sure looked grand! (Hangzhou)

Hangzhou

A secret view from one of Yangshuo's back alleys

I'm fascinated by glimpses into other lives

A game of cards in a Yangshuo park

Suzhuo's canals are ancient, but these houses look brand new.

Well-loved Buddha in a corner of Datong's Hanging Monastery

My Ass is a'Dragon

2008-05-05T02:32:00.001-04:00

After seven months of traveling together, we were thrilled to have Mike's mom along for the journey from Hong Kong to Beijing. She's an intrepid and irrepressible companion, and we miss her company already. Here's her time with us, in her words and pictures.

Guest Blogger, Judi Breen:

Coming out of customs at the Hong Kong airport, I was absolutely delighted to see two smiling and familiar faces, my guides to China, Mike and Susannah! They both look healthy and happy and of course are full of stories about their experiences.

On the bus ride to our guest house, I got a great view of the city at night- huge and modern, futuristic skyscrapers to rival any other. As expected the streets are busy, noisy, and crowded with people. Unexpected was the mix of cultures: Noodle shops around the corner from KFC, Mom and Pop stores covered with Chinese characters across the way from Gucci and Armani, teens in a mix of eastern and western fashion. I was just beginning my journey through cultural overload.

After a cloudy day, both weather wise and brain wise, we left Hong Kong by ferry to hop an overnight train west to Guilin. Being a timid sort, I insisted on booking the "soft sleeper", which turned out to be very nice, if not particularly soft. In fact it seemed a little elegant to me, like the Orient Express, which Susannah reminded me, was pretty much what we were on!

From Guilin, we took a cruise down the beautiful and mystical Li River, which is surrounded by karsks, limestone pillars left from when the area was under the sea. We ended in Yangshou, a small town on the river. We were immediately beseiged by shop keepers, rickshaw drivers, cab drivers, hoteliers, and tourist guides. There were lots of small booths with wares for the tourist, each shopkeeper vying for our attention. It was, once again, a bit overwhelming.

We spent several days exploring the area. Susannah and I went to the local market one morning, a warehouse type building filled with individual vendors selling fruits, vegetables, herbs, teas, eggs, chickens...

We saw old men and woman squatting behind their wares, vendor's children roaming around, people with poles across their shoulders holding baskets loaded with produce to sell on the street. And in the middle of all that was a young women dressed in a business suit, sitting on a stool and talking on her cell phone while she supervised the purchase of her vegetables.

In the nearby park, we saw several small groups of people seated around tables, chatting and playing cards or Mah Johng. We were to observe this in all the areas we visited.

On a cloudy and not too promising day, we decided to explore the area the traditional way- by bike. We saw farmers in the fields, a woman with a pet monkey, and a nursing water buffalo. Of course it started to rain, so we decided to stop for tea. After warming up and haggling over postcards, we headed out again. Unsure of which way to head, the sales woman hopped on her bike and in the rain happily led us to the area we were looking for.

After viewing an ancient tree, a peacock, water wheel, and sales people in traditional costume, we decided to ride along the Yulong River and back to town. We rode along clay covered roads into a magical land. Fields and scattered homes were the only evidence of civilization; the towering karsks were shrouded in mist and clouds; the earth was deep green and trees were in bloom. Except for the mud splashing up on our backs and the rain hitting our heads, it was silent.

On our return to the hotel, we revived ourselves with showers and the traditional Chinese combination of instant apple cider and Jack Daniels.

One morning Mike treated me to a Tai Chi class which was fun, if humbling. We also attended a show along the river, produced by the man who is putting on the opening show for the Olympics. I was expecting something fairly hokey, but it was a spectacular event with hundreds of people, dozens of boats, and beautiful lighting.

In the evening we watched an elderly man fish with cormorants. The birds throats were obstructed by twine, and as they fished the handler would pull them out of the water, turn them upside down so the birds would drop the fish into his basket. It was fascinating. The gentleman was in his 80's and said his father and grandfather had fished in the river in the same way. When I asked if his son fished too, he said that no, his son owned hotels.

One day this type of fishing will only exist for the tourists. I wonder if that's a good thing?

Next we went to Suzhou, a small city with beautiful parks and gardens. And Dumplings. And an Irish Pub with good food and Guiness. At one park we watched a variety of traditional performers who acted, sang, and played instruments. Each perfomance was in a different area and lasted only a few minutes each, which most of the time was a blessing. The costumes, especially those used for opera, were stunning, but the music was that ear piercing, discordant type that I have never learned to appreciate. So it was a fairly quick and painless overview of China's performance culture!

We spent an afternoon in Tongli. On a boat ride along the well known canals, our pilot was a young woman with stillettos who did a mean spit! A variation on the gondaliers in Venice.

About the spitting- everyone in China spits! It's pretty disgusting. Of course the air quality is poor, they smoke, and probably all have chronic bronchitis. (I can't help it, I've been a respiratory therapist too long!) Anyway the spitting was rampant and never ceased to cause a shiver to run down my spine. And it was very important to watch where you walked!

We stayed several days in Hangzhou, a beautiful city on a large lake. Around most of the lake, there was a public walkway with museums, pagodas, and tea houses. One day we got up at 6:00 am to explore. After coffee and scones at Starbucks, we walked halfway around the lake. Groups of people were everywhere, walking vigorously- their leaders carrying big flags- and performing tai chi. We came across a group of women dancing with fans. It seemed to be a class and it captured our attention for a little while.

Another day, beautiful weather, we set out on bikes . We stopped in a modern pagoda, complete with elevators, and in a Buddist temple where the robed monks could be seen with cell phones. Everywhere in China the traditional pushes against the modern in confusing, amusing and concerning ways.

We set out on overnight train to Shanghai, passing the time by playing our usual game of portable Scrabble. Since we were taking a train to Beijing that afternoon, we stored our bags at the station. With only a half day available, we decided to take a harbor cruise to get a feel for the city. We took a taxi through heavy traffic to the port area. After finding a ticket booth, Susannah tried to get specific information about the boat tours, but it was difficult. We bought the tickets and then were ignored. After several minutes a woman beckoned to us to go with her, and so we did. Then she deposited us on a van and disappeared. More people got on the van and we determined it would take us to the boat. After a ride on the highway, the van stopped and we were sent off the bus. Again we were ignored for several minutes until a man beckoned for us to go with him. He led us past several decent looking cruise boats and then pointed at what looked like an old and tired pirate ship. He indicated that here was our boat!

As we climbed aboard, we noticed the VIP section up front where we could sit with a great view for only a small extra price. Drinks were included and so it was an easy decision. Our server arrived with a menu of drinks and snacks. I ordered a rum and coke, M&S ordered beer.

Several minutes later the server returned to tell me they had no rum. So I changed my order to my usual vodka and tonic and asked for some popcorn. Eventually my drink arrived, but it seems they didn't have popcorn. So we decided to go for the peanuts. Many more minutes passed and she returned once again to tell us there were no peanuts. The poor girl- we started laughing so hard, she must have thought we were laughing at her. Having exhausted the entire snack menu we had to go without. Then they charged us for the drinks!

The thing is, this type of thing happened frequently at restaurants. We would get a 3 page menu and then be told they only had 3 or 4 of the items listed. Just a China thing I guess.

We did manage to get a good view of Shanghai with its ultramodern buildings.

At some point Mike casually asked about our tickets to Beijing which was when we realized that the train was leaving from a different station than where we had arrived- and stored our bags. China is growing so quickly that it seems that a new train station had gone up since the printing of the guide book. So after the cruise was over and we were driven back to the starting point we decided we should take the metro back to our bags. By then it was rush hour. They really do have people who push you so you can fit on the subway! In the end we made it, bags in hand,on time for our next departure.

Beijing: a city undergoing a huge and disconcerting transition. Construction is everywhere and constant, especially with the Olympics pending in August. On top of the pollution, the air is filled with construction dusts, and I'm told, the desert dusts that blow in at springtime.

We made our way to Tianemen Square and paid homage to the very pickled Chairman Mao. I state here and now, very publicly, I want to be cremated. DO NOT preserve me on ice and put me out for display- it is very, very unattractive! Surpising were the huge piles of flowers placed at the tomb by clearly emotional Chinese citizens.

We visited the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City, both beautiful. These areas, like all of Beijing, were in the middle of renovation, with fresh paint and repairs for the expected increase in tourism.

Susannah and I took a train ride to an area known for its shopping, especially traditional Chinese goods and antiques or "curios." Again the guide book was not up to date and we found this train station had also been moved. We decided a motorized rickshaw would be a fun experience and we were right. Quickly, we realized the driver did not know how to reach our destination, and in true Chinese style, a committee was formed. A group of drivers gathered to look at the maps, ask questions, and discuss the best way to get this rickshaw driver his fare. Because we were now in the rickshaw we were going for a ride! Which we did- across several lanes of heavy traffic, heading the wrong way down one way streets filled with moving cars, Susannah and I laughing and covering our eyes! It was crazy and fun and typical of the driving in China. Crossing a street was endangering your life!

We arrived safe and sound and managed to find a few items at a good price, assured by the haggling shopkeepers that our purchases came from the Ming dynasty. What a fun day we had- thanks Susannah!

Again we mounted bikes and headed out to find some areas that Susannah had frequented when she was a student living in the city, 12 years before. Again the guide book failed us. Old neighborhoods were being torn down to make way for the needs of the Olympics. Shops that had been opened for generations were closed or covered in plastic. Huge sections of housing, hidden by fences, were being destroyed. At the time I wasn't aware that a lot of the residents were simply being told to move. Chinese citizens can not own land.

The residents of this street in Beijing seem to be excited by these changes, as noted by the Olympic slogan "One World, One Dream"

In one of the rebuilt areas, there was a lakeside park where groups gathered to play hackeysack and, in the evening, dance. It had a wonderful community feel to it. Just adjacent were modern reaturants and clubs with outside tables and inside torch singers. Our last night we went there for supper and a drink. Despite a complete bar, I was unable to make the server understand that I did not want the wine or beer that was listed on the menu. And the dinner menu was extensive and exotic. During the entire trip, I had been very timid about the food, sure that I would get deathly ill or aquire a parasite. So I did not order the duck tongue, chicken feet, dog, pig elbows etc that were offerred. The telling part of the menu was that many of the descriptions included the term "wikipedia"; as in "lake snails wikipedia." In the hurry to appeal to expected hordes of international tourists, they rushed through the translations.

And that was how China, and in particular Beijing, seemed to me, rapidly running toward modernization without clearly being sure of where they wanted to be or what they might leave behind forever. Wanting so much to be western,their billboards and mannequins showed western not Asian models. I found it all bewildering and sad.

And then there was the Great Wall. We were lucky enough to not get on the bus and instead found a driver to take us to an area of the wall that is less visited. We took a cable car part way up and then started up the steep steps to the wall. Along the way some farmers took pity on me, an old and unfit tourist, and kindly took my arm to help me on my climb. They continued to stay with us, gentle folks that they were, worried about my ability to make it on my own. Finally Susannah asked them what they wanted in order to be left alone. So we bought a book and a t-shirt ( "I climbed the Great Wall of China"). Reassured that I was capable of surviving, they settled back to play cards.

It was worth the trip. Absolutely amazing and full of incredible views. Mike says it was not a particularly effective tactical endeavor, but I am grateful it was built. The Chinese villagers say it was built of the bones of the laborers, and indeed many must have died in the construction. It is indeed a wonder and a highlight of my life to have seen it.

So China was fun, exhausting, overwhelming, and quickly changing. Many thanks to my guides. Susannah spent so much time planning and arranging. Because of her excellent translation skills we were able to make it through unscathed. She bore the burden of all the small decisions and ticket purchases and price haggling and she did it with good humor. Mike bravely protected me from wild shop keepers and he schlepped my suitcase cheerfully like the gentleman he is.

I was honored to be a part of the Eurasian Invasion.

From Behind the Bamboo Curtain

2008-03-31T22:24:00.000-04:00

We've never been able to open our blog inside China's borders before. But today, in this internet gaming cafe above a train station, it miraculously opened. So, a quick note.

Mike's mom, Judi Breen, joined us in Hong Kong a week ago. Since then we've been over to the Guilin area, a beautiful place full of winding rivers and those crazy boulder-like mountains you see in Chinese scroll paintings. We just spent a couple days in Suzhou and Hangzhou, charming old imperial cities where we watched some Chinese opera, bicycled lazily around a misty lake ringed with pagodas, and stuffed ourselves with dumplings.

Today we're headed to Shanghai briefly, before catching an overnight train to Beijing. Susannah was there twelve years ago and is eager to revisit her old haunts and see how the city has changed.

We're not sure how much longer we'll be in China, or whether we'll be able to post again from within the borders. Stay tuned!

Death and the Piglet

2008-03-11T04:35:00.003-04:00

Indonesia is one of the world's largest and most populous countries, and in many ways each of its myriad islands is a nation unto itself. From strictly islamic fishermen to blowgun-toting tribemen clad in penis gourds and a smile, this country has it all. With only a 30-day visa and with travel between islands famously plodding and chaotic, choosing our destinations proved to be tough.

Until, that is, we came across a description of Sumba, and its incredible Pasola. Every February after the full moon, the ancestor-worshiping animists of western Sumba eagerly await the return of a particular sea worm, which washes up on the beaches in droves. Once their arrival has been verified by each village's holy man, hundreds of men grab their spears and mount their horses for a day of ritualized combat. Hurling insults and spears at one another, they display their courage to their forebearers and provide the blood the earth needs to ensure a good harvest. I mean, this we HAD to see!!

Our plan, if we can dignify it thus, was to fly to the island of Flores, spend a day or two in Komodo National Park, not be eaten by giant lizards, and then hop a ferry to Sumba in time for Pasola. Everyone we talked to in Bali told us this would work out just fine (at least the logistical part - not being eaten was on us). We reached Flores, avoided predation on Komodo (see entry below), and even found a vessel headed to Sumba after a prolonged struggle and an overland trip across most of Flores. The highlight of our sea journey was boarding the ship itself, which lay at anchor in the harbor. We headed out to sea on a packed wooden boat, feeling a little like we were fleeing Castro, and finally managed to lash our tiny craft to the ship's towering hull and clamber aboard.

As soon as we reached Sumba, the depth of our folly fully revealed itself. The trouble with sea worms, it seems, is that they don't have calendars and adhere to a strict policy of doing whatever they damn well please. Every single person we asked about Pasola, anywhere in Indonesia, had given us a different date. The consensus had seemed to be March 7th or so, but when we finally lugged our packs down the Sumba gangway on the evening of March 1st, we discovered the worms had hit the beach early. Pasola was over.

Needless to say, we were unhappy about this. The worms had let us down!! Damn the sea worms!!! Still, after we'd finished cursing invertebrates everywhere and their shoddy attention to scheduling, we decided to make the most of our time on the island. We headed west. Our bus blew past amazing panoramas of mountains, ocean and tropical forest, dotted with tall thatched houses and enormous, elaborate tombs. Intrigued, we checked into a guest house in western Sumba's largest market town, Waikabubak.

It was a good call, on all counts. The guest house's owner, Jack, turned out to be one of the singular characters of our entire journey to date. His hair alone merits paragraphs, but his sense of humor, encyclopedic local knowledge and unflagging commitment to his guests were a great bonus.

As we traveled through remote villages and bustling markets in Jack's immaculate jeep, we quickly realized that the guy knows every single human being on the island. Along with his unflappable sidekick Daisy, an aspiring guide and former student, he managed to introduce us to everyone. He's even a teacher at Waikabubak's tourism-focused high school, where he managed to maneuver Mike into a cameo as a guest lecturer.

Pasola or no Pasola, Sumba turned out to be one of the most intriguing places on the planet. Many Sumbanese continue to live in traditional bamboo and grass hut villages, and survive through subsistance agriculture and fishing.

Old women walk around without tops, and in some places blacked teeth are still considered fashionable. Although the practice was finally abolished 25 years ago, the centerpeice of a Sumbanese village used to be a tree where the heads of fallen enemies were displayed. According to locals we met, old habits die hard. They told us that five years ago an inter-tribal dispute led to a full-scale battle involving about 3,000 warriors on horseback, fighting with spears and swords. Daisy informed us that the leader of her tribe gained great stature that day, apparently because he took a spear to the chest without falling off his horse. Needless to say, nobody was even arrested.

The spirit world holds sway here, deeply affecting every aspect of life. Sumbanese believe that their ancestors have great power over their lives, bestowing protection and blessings when happy and inflicting bad fortune, injury and even death when disappointed. Death is considered a singularly important event, when a member of the family ascends to the spirit world (and gains power over the living), and funerals are elaborate affairs requiring the sacrifice of numerous valuable animals and the erection of a massive limestone tomb for the deceased. Without the proper send-off, ancestral wrath can be serious, so families often mummify the recently deceased and store them in the attic for up to a decade while they save up for a proper burial.

A sacrficial procession en route to a funeral

In many ways, it sounds like an intimidating and alien place. But thanks to Jack and Daisy, we had the chance to meet people in their homes and villages, and were able to navigate the many customs and points of etiquette involved. The warmth we received was humbling. So were some of the local traditions we joined in on, betel nut chewing in particular. The nut and lime mixture is a mild stimulant, but turns your mouth and lips brilliant red as a side effect. Since the stuff also makes your mouth water, the results can be dramatic:

As a long-term habit, it can be even rougher on your sex appeal:

On one of our last nights on the island, we accepted an invitation to stay in a traditional village near the ocean. To make it a party, we brought a pig. In a place with no refrigeration meat is a huge luxury that doesn't keep, so when an animal is killed everyone for miles around gathers to enjoy the feast. Things got off to an interesting start when the head of the household handed Mike his machete, and gestured to the trussed-up hog. As the guest of honor and provider of the feast, it was his job to do the honors.

With the messy work out of the way, we got down to the serious business of feasting. Fueled by betel nuts and a local brew called arak, the gathering continued into the wee hours of the morning. We ate fish and pork (both delicious), played the local card game (the loser wears a pig skull on his head), traded songs and stories, and laughed ourselves silly. As the evening wore down, our hosts presented us with hand-woven blankets to ward off the chill, and solemnly pronounced us their adopted children. We spent a surprisingly comfortable night on the bamboo, bathed in the warm ocean in the morning, and got ready to return to the world of packaged foods and airplanes. Just before leaving, Susannah snapped a family portrait of our hosts.

Sunset near the home of our hosts

Here be Dragons

2008-03-11T00:54:00.000-04:00

We'll be up front about this. We are not smart. If you need proof, consider this: Our first destination in Indonesia was a remote jungle island inhabited by gigantic, flesh-eating lizards. We went hiking.

The island, of course, was Komodo, home of the Komodo Dragon. The world's largest lizard, dragons grow to nine feet in length. They feed on deer and water buffalo, running them down and felling them with claws and scalpel-sharp teeth. They ate two villagers last year alone - one for each village on the island. Thanks to bacteria in the dragon's mouth, a single bite almost invariably leads to deadly infection. There are over a thousand dragons on Komodo. We decided it was a perfect place for a stroll.

Lest you worry, gentle reader, we did not go unprepared. Keen to the dangers of the island, we brought along an intrepid local guide to defend us. He, in turn, brought along a stick. Never since leaving the Army had Mike so keenly felt the absence of an assault rifle.

Despite the obvious potential for a bad horror movie, our guide proved to be an expert, and the dragons we came across had apparently recently eaten (other tourists, no doubt). We made it back to our boat with all limbs intact, and spent the remainder of our time in Komodo National Park snorkeling the incredible reefs and enjoying the scenery.

After two days in the park, we returned to the bustling port town of Luban Bajo on the island of Flores. We had survived our foray on Komodo without incident. Yet, despite the tranquil quiet as our boat approached the dock, we couldn't shake the feeling that something had followed us home...

Asia for Dummies

2008-02-21T04:22:00.001-05:00

We thought long and hard about skipping Singapore. We didn't know quite what to expect from the tiny island nation, and didn't want to wind up getting caned for smuggling chewing gum over the border. Still, it seemed like too much of an enigma to miss, so we thought we'd take a chance.

We weren't disappointed. Malaysia may be Asia's melting pot, but Singapore is its New York, the Bronx and Brooklyn where every culture imaginable interacts in claustrophobic proximity. The results could easily be disastrous, but thanks to a paternalistic government that stresses multiculturalism while strictly enforcing order, the place hums along like Disney's Small World ride, everyone singing and smiling in almost mechanical unison.

For a visitor or an ex-patriot businessman, Singapore has immense appeal. The streets are safe at three in the morning, the trains run on time, you can drink the tap water, and there isn't a scrap of garbage in sight. If it's available anywhere in the world, it's available for purchase in Singapore. The art museum is among the best in Asia, and free. The ethnic neighborhoods are like wonderland versions of their parent nations. In Little India, for example, the food rivaled Jaipur's best and the bazaars teemed with Delhi's latest - but without the homeless street cows feeding on mountains of trash, the incessantly aggressive hawkers, the lepers at our feet. As one American ex-pat told us, "I love this place. Everything's here, but without the stress. It's like Asia for dummies!"

We had a wonderful time, but few illusions about the trade-offs involved. Singapore is something of a living shrine to free-market capitalism, but also one of the world's least democratic places. Numerous offenses, including vandalism, are punished by caning. Chewing gum is illegal, jaywalking carries a $1,000 fine, and drug smugglers are executed. At the same time, very little of that heavy-handedness seems to be necessary at this point. Police presence is minimal, unobtrusive, polite and professional. For the most part, deterrence is working. Whatever your view on the compromises involved, so is Singapore.

Truly Asia

2008-02-21T03:38:00.001-05:00

We're guessing that there's almost nobody left who hasn't seen Malaysia's catchy tourism ad campaign, Malaysia: Truly Asia. We caught ourselves singing it a little too often as we made our way through the country, usually whenever something went slightly wrong. We're still not sure quite what "truly Asia" means, but we're forced to concede that they may have a point. Malaysia turns out to be an astonishing continental melting pot, blending ethnicities, cuisines, languages and religions in unexpected and wonderful ways.

Our first stop after crossing the border was the port city of Georgetown, Malaysia's second largest city after Kuala Lampur. The city's architecture is an ecclectic mix of English, Chinese, Malay and Indian influences. Indian roti carts and tandoor joints compete with cheap Chinese pig organ soup, British pubs dispensing fish and chips, Malay-run hamburger stands and Islamic diners. One afternoon, we came upon a Chinese temple (pictured above) where huge crowds had gathered to petition their ancestors for good luck, or "joss," in the coming year. Meanwhile, outside on the sidewalk, wealthy Chinese families dispensed oranges and red envelopes full of cash to all comers. Hindus lined up for their share, then paid homage with the same joss sticks to a sacred tree adorned with images of their pantheon. We watched the commotion for an hour, then headed off for a pint of Guinness, some Malasian barbecue and the latest Bollywood movie.

In the midst of this cultural hodgepodge, common ground can be surprisingly easy to find. Our last night in town, we befriended a 16-year-old Malay-Chinese Muslim girl on the ferry, and accepted her offer to visit her home. She was full of questions (something we've become used to), but not about where we came from. How did we meet? How did we fall in love? How did we know we were right for one another? Is her boyfriend right for her? How can she tell? How can she get him to be more romantic? IS HE THE ONE?? She never took off her headscarf around us, but she was careful to put on her makeup before we left to meet her boyfriend for dinner.

Our next stop in Malaysia was Kuala Lampur, a teeming modern capitol and emerging economic center. The ethnic neighborhoods were full of hawkers and street merchants, food stalls and fake watches, but there was no mistaking the gleam of the financial district's towers above it all. We slurped cheap noodles on the sidewalk while gazing up at the world's tallest building, contemplating Asia's complicated, headlong economic rise.

From Kuala Lampur, we headed down the coast to the historic city of Melaka. One of Portugal's original trade hubs in Asia, the city was the brightest star in Asia's economic sky until Portugese and Dutch dominance in the Pacific passed to England and Singapore rose to prominance. Today, its a quaint city of old Dutch houses and forts, with a vibrant Chinese district we were lucky to discover in the midst of Chinese New Year. Built by prosperous Chinese traders in the 19th century, the district is a unique blend of European and Chinese architectural styles.

Sleeping with the Fishes

2008-02-21T03:07:00.000-05:00

It seems incredible, but we managed to spend almost two months in SE Asia without even seeing a beach. Determined to rectify this madness, we made a beeline for the white sand and coral reefs of Ko Tao, a tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand. There's no cultural or historic significance to the place, and it's become one of the most popular diving destinations in the world. No off-the-beaten-path stories here. We came to Ko Tao to simply a place to relax and enjoy the ocean, and weren't disappointed.

We spent five full days diving the island's coral reefs, and our evenings watching the sun going down over the breakers. Susannah learned to dive in Seattle, in JANUARY, so this was a wonderful introduction to tropical waters. Fish everywhere, and no hypothermia. The diving was fantastic, and we were notably lucky on a few occasions. We followed a sea turtle as it cruised around the reef one afternoon, and spotted a huge number of exotic fish, eels and invertebrates. On a night dive, luminescent plankton flashed like lightening as our bubbles rose to the surface. The climax of the trip was a 90-foot dive on Chumphon Pinnacle, a depth record for both of us. Less than a minute after we reached the bottom, we were circled by no less than five Bull Sharks, cruising by less than a meter away. Though normally among the most dangerous sharks in the world, the bulls of Chumphon are famously accepting of human intrusion. Somehow, that fact didn't help us breathe any slower.

Views of Bangkok

2008-02-20T10:21:00.001-05:00

Susannah: We've seen countless cities in the past few months, and although many of them have been fascinating or charming, we fell head-over-heels in love with Bangkok. Although it's utterly cosmopolitan, there are plenty of interesting backwaters along the canals. We were lucky enough to spend another few days at Cayla and JJ's place after leaving Cambodia. Here are a few photos to give you a taste:

Land of Ghosts

2008-02-08T21:43:00.001-05:00

Throughout our journey, we've been constantly aware of the weight of history and the pull of the past on daily life in Asia. For a couple of Americans, it can be hard to fully comprehend the sheer immensity of that past. For months now, we've watched while billions of people dutifully follow rituals and customs whose origins lie beyond the reach of recorded history, and in many cases even archeology. In some places, like India and especially Thailand, the past is embraced wholeheartedly and often incorporated into the onrushing future in innovative and even delightful ways. In others, like China, every effort is made to bury history completely beneath a facade of glass towers and cable modems, usually to no avail. Whatever their approach, however, the Asian societies we've visited share a palpable sense of momentum to match the depth of their pasts.

Not so Cambodia. On our admittedly brief visit, the place seemed crushed under the awesome weight of its own troubled history. Phnom Phen's main attractions are a genocide museum (once a high school, it held thousands of political "dissidents" during Pol Pot's regime) and Pol Pot's infamous "killing fields," relics of an insane social experiment in the 1970's that murdered a quarter of Cambodia's population.

A torture room in the Genocide Museum

Beyond the capitol, potholed dirt roads link desperately poor villages encircled by aging minefields. After the verdant green of rural Laos, much of Cambodia looked like a moonscape of red clay and fallow fields. Every bridge we crossed had been donated by a foreign government, along with the majority of the village wells and other basic infrastructure.

Crippling as the recent past is in Cambodia, ancient history is one of the country's greatest assets. The ruins at Angkor, once the capitol of the massive and prolific ancient Khmer civilization, are among the most impressive in the world. We arranged a reunion there with our wonderful friends Maca and Marcelo, the South American couple we traveled with across Tibet. They bring an irrepressible sense of joy to everything they do, and traveling with them again felt wonderful.

With Maca and Marcelo in front of Angkor Wat, the most famous of the ruins.

M&M in the tuk-tuk we toured in (a motor-cycle drawn carriage)

We spent four days scouring the ruins. Some have retained their original splendor. Others have been reclaimed by the jungle, creating a breathtaking interplay between architecture and nature.

The temples were built over a span of hundreds of years and dozens of rulers. One of the most interesting aspects was the gradual shift from Hinduism to Buddhism, manifested in the architecture and symbology. Today, Cambodians seem to worship Hindu deities and Buddhist bodhisattvas almost indiscriminately. Here you can see a Buddhist stupa and a Hindu shiva lingam in the same hallway.

After a long, hot day of sightseeing, we made it a habit to grab mango smoothies on the street. The store owner's daughter was a holy terror, but irresistibly cute. Maybe the future is bright here after all.

Moles, Poles and Automobiles

2008-01-23T06:15:00.000-05:00

The pace of life is slow in Laos. The village of Nongkiaw, where we disembarked from our little boat, is the biggest thing within a day's journey despite the fact that is has only one road--the one that leads west out of town. We rented a couple single-speed bicycles and puffed over its hills one day, passing a couple of even smaller towns where the houses were on stilts and everyone sat around watching kids play or shelling beans.

No matter how far you get into the countryside, though, you see satellite dishes next to some of the huts. This kid's clearly been watching too much TV:

On New Year's Day we set off again to the west, this time on a songtaew, a converted pickup truck with seats on either side of the bed.

We bumped along in the dust until the end of the line, a village still several hours from our destination of Nam Neun, where we planned to go trekking and before heading south again. A friendly kid led us down the road to a ramshackle bamboo guesthouse where there was a note in English tacked to the wall. It explained that the only transport west was a bus that came through every night at one or two a.m., and that the proprietor of the guesthouse would wake us up when it arrived. Susannah was incredulous. Didn't anyone else need to travel? Didn't people have business to take care of in the next town over? She stopped in several shops, hoping to find someone who spoke English or Chinese (we weren't too far from China). Finally she did find a Chinese couple, who laughed uproariously and confirmed this bizarre state of affairs.

It was now about 4 pm. There was nothing to do but hang out in this little village until the bus came. We ambled down the road and stumbled into a raucous party, two long tables full of locals celebrating the New Year. They enthusiastically waved us over and poured us big glasses of the local firewater, an old beer bottle full of pickled lizards and other strange objects. As these were the only glasses in evidence, we shrugged and tossed it down fast so someone else could have a drink.

Pretty soon we were dragged to the dance floor. By lottery we, the guests of honor, were assigned partners from among the locals. Everyone hooted at the marvelous impropriety as we slowly swayed two feet away from our wide-eyed partners, to the rhythm of the village ancestors turning in their graves.

The great thing about drinking firewater in the afternoon is that by 7pm we were ready for bed, and managed to get a bit of sleep before the guesthouse owner pounded on our door at 1 am. Without waiting for a reply, he threw it open to reveal a bus idling right outside, its passengers blearily watching us pull on our pants. We stumbled onto the bus and miraculously found two empty seats between sacks of rice.

As night gave way to day, our bus stopped frequently to take care of pressing local business. In a typical episode, our driver slammed on the brakes in the middle of a remote hill-tribe village so that passengers could haggle over a live mole suspended from a pole outside of a hut. Finally one man prevailed, swaggering back aboard with his subterranean snack slung over his shoulder. He lorded his victory over the rest of the bus, extolling the size and likely savor of his mole -- until an old woman climbed aboard an hour later, with an even larger mole of her own!

We had told the conductor we were going to Nam Nuen. Expecting to arrive mid-morning, we waited to see what we knew should be a big, bustling town. Finally, the bus pulled into a gravel parking lot on top of a bluff and every last person got off. Unfortunately, although there was a big town down below, it didn't meet our guidebook's description of Nam Neun. We had no idea where we were, and couldn't find a single person who spoke English or Chinese. You'd be surprised how hard it is to ask for the name of a town when you don't speak the language. Finally we stopped someone and asked, "Nam Neun?" and looked around theatrically. He pointed off in the distance to the east, where we had come from. Then he pointed at the mountains not far to the west and said "Vietnam." Uh-oh. We had overshot our destination by about three hours.

Oh, well. The town of Sam Nuen (what a difference a letter makes!), where we had landed, was freezing cold but had a great market full of cheerful ladies selling everything from sweets to live bats and dead rats.

We took a day trip into the countryside and then headed south through the depressing, bombed-out city of Phonsavan and the lively capital Vientiane, finally stopping just short of Cambodia. Here, in the middle of the Mekong River, are the "Four Thousand Islands," where there is little to do but watch as the fishermen bring in their catch with silvery nets, and the rice farmers wade through their technicolor green fields.

Laos is delightful, but after three weeks we were ready for some action. With a nod to the fried tarantula lady at the bus stop, we headed south for Cambodia like a bat out of a bamboo hand basket.

The slow boat to paradise

2008-01-06T09:02:00.001-05:00

Susannah: The name of the first kingdom that would later be Laos was (according to our guidebook) “Land of a million elephants and the white parasol.” This seemed so impossibly ridiculous and delightful that we couldn’t wait to get there. The most exciting and appropriate way to get from the Thai border into Laos, a country crisscrossed by rivers, is to take a boat down the fabled Mekong.

The boats plying the Mekong are long and shallow-drafted, with rows of wooden benches that quickly get uncomfortable. In this part of the country, this is the only highway, and everything from pigs to beer travels by on the chugging, rickety vessels.

Toward the end of the second day, the views became stunning, the tiny bamboo huts dwarfed by limestone walls on either side of the river.

After two days we arrived at sunset on Christmas eve in Luang Prabang, Laos' most charming town. Graceful colonial buildings line the avenues. There are more than a dozen lovely temples within a square mile, and the streets are full of saffron-clad monks.

Unfortunately the charm of the place has gotten out, and there are as many fancy tourist cafes as noodle joints. The town has gotten too expensive for many locals, who have sold or rented their beautiful old houses in order to convert them to hotels. It was too pricey for us, too! After a few days of lattes and beer we decided it was time to find a cheaper, more rustic place to hang out.

We hopped on another boat and headed up the Nam Ou River. The Nam Ou is shallower and has some tricky rapids, so this boat was a lot smaller than the first one. (See the second photo, above, and compare the two boats on the right.) Michael couldn't even sit up straight! It also leaked like a sieve, which was a little disconcerting. We ended up a day's journey upriver in the jungle town of Nong Kiaw, where one of the only paved roads in the country crosses the river on an impressive bridge, marking the end of our river journey.

Welcome to the Jungle

2007-12-27T03:27:00.001-05:00

After cosmopolitan Bankok, the jungle-carpeted mountains of Thailand's rustic north were a dramatic change. An overnight train journey brought us to the "northern capitol," Changmai. Despite its status as Thailand's second city, Changmai retains a wonderful overgrown-village atmosphere. We spent a few days wandering the streets, eating fantastic food at the myriad street corner stands, and exploring a multitude of beautiful (and occasionally bizarre) Buddhist temples.

Despite Changmai's charms, however, we soon succumbed to the call of the highland jungle beyond. Striking out to the west, we decided to do a loop out to the Burmese border and back. Our first stop was Mai Hong Son, a market town by a lake featuring a phenomenal night market. At the nearby temple, residents build up good karma by releasing cylindrical hot-air balloons, made of paper and heated by candles, into the night sky.

Our next stop was the aptly-named Wilderness Lodge, a guest house in the jungle north of the main east-west road. We reached it by taking a local bus to an isolated farming village, and then hiking 4km through the jungle. When we reached the lodge, we discovered it was no longer open; we were met by a hilltribe family who had taken up residence there. They agreed to lodge and feed us for the night after a flurry of grunts and hand-gestures.

We were up before dawn the next morning (monkeys make great alarm clocks!), intent on reaching the spectacular limestone caves north of Sappong before nightfall. We steeled ourselves for a long walk, but less than 5 km. into our hike we were picked up by a Thai family in a pickup, and made the village market in time for a local noodles-and-chicken-liver breakfast.

Susannah was happy to be back on her own two legs, and out of the wind!

The next couple of days were spent hiking through the hills. We passed sweeping vistas on our way to a village nearby.

The next day we explored the caves, which definitely lived up to our expectations.

A highlight was the sunset "bird show," when half a million swifts swarm into the cave for the night. Apparently, they use a form of low-frequency eco-location similar to bats, in order to hunt insects and avoid collisions in their dark rookery. Eco-location and speed, however, are not enough to protect bats and swifts against the cave's population of specially adapted racer snakes: they can slither across the ceiling, using stalactites for leverage!

Finally, we made our way (by motorcycle-taxi, pickup truck, foot and bus!) back to Changmai, en route to the Laotian border.

A Good Place to Wash Up

2007-12-27T02:44:00.001-05:00

Susannah: Despite opinions we'd heard to the contrary, we found it easy to fall in love with Bangkok. Granted, we had a lot of help: lucky for us my sister Caroline's good friend Cayla lives there with her boyfriend JJ, and we not only got a beautiful free place to stay overlooking the city, but great company and guidance to boot. (Caroline: Sorry I forgot to take any photos!)

Bangkok is utterly modern, cosmopolitan and fairly expensive. Somehow, though, the city and its inhabitants still seem delightfully exotic. There are high-rise buildings just like a big city anywhere in the world, but often the best way to get to them is by water taxi. Expensive restaurants serving every kind of cuisine abound, but the best food to be had is from the myriad vendors. The women are dressed at the height of global fashion, but have a poise about them that is unique (even when wearing these ubiquitous pink or yellow polo shirts to celebrate the king!).

Among other adventures, we wandered through a flower market in Chinatown,

...and climbed a temple covered entirely in broken china.

Fortunately this won't be the last we see of Bangkok (or Cayla and JJ) on our trip, as we'll pass through there again on our way south to Indonesia and Malaysia.

The world is flat. REAL flat...

2007-12-13T08:46:00.001-05:00

Susannah: The last time I was in China, in 1996, the McDonalds in Beijing was a big deal, and the lackluster shopping mall was a major destination. About half the people on the streets were wearing army green "Mao jackets." We haven't been to Beijing this time around, but wandering the streets of Xian (at 3.3 million, a small city by Chinese standards), it was obvious that China is no longer shy about capitalism. There are at least five clothes or shoe stores for every restaurant or noodle stall, and every woman on the street--all wearing high-heeled boots and tight tight jeans--is carrying a shopping bag. I spotted Gucci, Fendi, and Prada stores, and struggled to resist entering Haagendaas.

To be honest, although we were a bit dismayed at the lack of "exotic-ness" on the streets of China, we went a little nuts when confronted with such plenty. Not that we went shopping for clothes. The indulgence was more in the line of junk food.

We also could not resist stopping in Starbucks. There were four in Xian alone, and although at home we sought out the local coffee joints, the appeal of a latte was irresistible. Stepping off a Chinese street into the coffee giant's warmth was disconcerting, like passing through a worm-hole into a place we knew by heart. Even the soundtrack was the same.

We couldn't help sharing our surprise with the cashier, and when he heard we were from Seattle (Starbucks' home, of course), he proudly produced a photo of the original store in Pike's Place Market from his corporate shrine.

By the time we reached Chengdu, our next destination, we were not surprised to hear that a Wal-Mart had just come to town. I considered it our journalistic responsibility to check it out.

Wal-mart, unlike Starbucks, has taken a tack of adapting itself to local tastes rather than attempting to convert its customers. Most of the store was full of groceries, and though they had some soggy pizza, many of the products on offer were quite foreign:

We did find some time for more conventional sight-seeing, including the famous terra-cotta army and several Taoist and Cha'an (Zen) temples.

Unfortunately, China didn't like us as much as we liked their Oreos. In Chengdu I went to get our visas renewed, so we could continue our trip south through Yunnan province into northern Laos. The visa lady sat behind a marble counter twice as wide as normal, and did not look happy to see me. She informed me dispassionately that since we had group visas (the only way we could enter Tibet from Nepal), they were not renewable. At this point our visas were due to expire in two days. With painstaking politeness I asked if there was anything I could do so that we might stay in her wonderful country. "You can fly to Hong Kong and get a new visa there," she said heartlessly. "But make sure you're gone by the 7th."

Booking a last minute flight so we could come back to such a chilly welcome wasn't really appealing. Since there was no way we could make it to the border overland in two days, we sadly abandoned our resolution not to fly and shelled out for a different flight: one to sunny Bangkok.

Faces of Tibet

2007-12-13T05:42:00.001-05:00

The Lion in Winter

2007-12-09T11:33:00.000-05:00

Tibet may be the most evocative place in the world. As a lodestone for spiritual seekers and daredevil explorers from the West, a David vs. Goliath political battle that has captured the world's imagination, the center of a 2,000 year old religious and philosophical tradition at the heart of Eastern thought, or simply as the impossibly remote roof of the world, Tibet exerts a powerful pull on the imagination.

As we made our winter crossing from Kathmandu to Lhasa, and then on into China, we often found ourselves tempted by various idealized visions of the world's highest Kingdom. The sheer scale of the frozen landscape, the warmth of its inhabitants, the splendor of its religion and culture, and the stark reality of the Chinese occupation pulled us in different emotional directions.

After an incredible three day journey from the lowlands of India to the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, we plotted the next phase of our journey. Unfortunately we discovered that in order to obtain a Chinese visa allowing travel to Tibet from Nepal, we would have to join a Chinese government tour (the fox now gives tours of the hen house). Not knowing what to expect, we set off across the Himalayas as part of an international ensemble of forty suitcase-schlepping tourists. Despite our fears, our companions quickly became the highlight of our journey--especially our South American compadres, Macarena and Marcelo.

From Kathmandu, we travelled through verdant hill country to the "Friendship Bridge" to China, where a walk across a deep gorge and a little paperwork deposited us in the People's Republic. At the border, we joined a jeep convoy and embarked on a four day drive up the "Friendship Highway" to Lhasa. The journey took us over some of the highest terrain in the world, with views of Everest and its towering neighbors.

Along the way, we visited a number of important Buddhist monasteries. Wandering the courtyards, corridors and clifftop aeries of the monasteries and spending time with the irrepressibly cheerful monks within may have been the highlight of our trip to date.

Even before we reached Lhasa, however, the heavy hand of the Chinese occupation was clearly in evidence. The ruins of villages levelled during the cultural revolution lined the "Friendship Highway," next to newer centrally-planned settlements flying the Chinese flag from every rooftop. In the larger towns, the traditional Tibetan buildings and streets formed outlying ghettos at the edge of grid-patterned Chinese avenues flanked by concrete and glass structures, housing businesses run by Han Chinese settlers. Every Tibetan home bears a government issued number to enable them to find any dissidents easily. The Tibetans themselves, clad in the traditional dress of the nomadic yak herder or monk's saffron robes, seemed to wander their new urban world in a kind of heartbroken daze. Alcoholism is common, especially among the older generation.

In Lhasa itself, Tibet's brilliant past and troubled future were both starker still. In Tibetan Buddhism's most important monastery, secret policemen in monk's robes scan for subversive activity over their prayer books. The Potala Palace gleamed in the sunlight and the Dalai Lama's old apartments were breathtaking, but most of the building is off limits and tourists are rapidly ushered through under the watchful eye of soldiers and surveillance cameras. Though the Dalai Lama's golden throne sits empty, a steady stream of Tibetan pilgrims still comes to pay their respects, and toss blessed prayer scarves over the fence.

At the Jokhang, Lhasa's central holy place, an unceasing tide of pilgrims from across Tibet and western China gathers to circumambulate the monastery and prostrate outside. Some prostrate themselves all the way from their homes, making their way along the highways a body-length at a time in a journey that frequently takes three to four years. We joined the crowd on a festival day, and as always were taken in by the Tibetans' warmth and friendliness. We sampled the local moonshine, and managed to glimpse some traditional music and dancing before the Chinese police inevitably broke up the gathering.

We left Tibet on the new Chinese railway, a beautiful 36-hour trip to Xi'an across the eastern half of the Tibetan plateau. Though the beauty was marred somewhat by the loudspeaker in our car incessantly proclaiming the marvel and majesty of the benevolent People's Republic, the yak herds outside the window didn't seem to mind.

Behind the Curtain

2007-11-16T11:08:00.000-05:00

On November 17th, we plan to begin our overland journey across the Himalayas, from Kathmandu to Laos via Tibet. Since the Chinese government will be monitoring our internet usage, and since we'd like to avoid winding up in jail for honestly describing what we're likely to see in Chinese-occupied Tibet, we will suspend our blogging efforts until we reach SE Asia in December. Wish us luck!

The Epcot Center of Buddhism

2007-11-16T10:07:00.000-05:00

About 2500 years ago a man named Siddharta Gautama sat down under a tree and vowed not to rise until he had discovered the true nature of reality. Thus the religion which we know as Buddhism was born.

Today a distant cousin of the tree stands on that spot, in the center of an beautiful temple complex which is itself surrounded by Buddhist temples from China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Japan, and Thailand. Sit for a moment in Bodh Gaya's town square and you'll see Ladakhi ladies bundled in wool felt mingling with the local women in their bright saris. In the temples Tibetan monks in maroon meditate next to Indians in saffron, and Japanese in grey silk. It was an enchanting place to spend our last few days in India.

In the Arms of Mother Ganga

2007-11-14T12:36:00.001-05:00

Susannah: One of the things that affluent westerners find uncomfortable about India is that the things we like to hide away and forget about are left exposed to the senses: poverty, disease, death, trash, sewage. Nowhere is this more true than in Varanasi (Benares), the ancient city of the gods on the banks of the sacred Ganges.

Mixed in with the sadhus, pilgrims and flower vendors along the ghats are horribly deformed beggars, people shitting in corners, dogs and cows with bloody wounds. The astounding thing is that people are completely unfazed; they laugh and gossip, their children run around barefoot and play happily with kites made of colored paper plucked from the piles of trash. Life goes on.

Our first evening in the city we walked past the burning ghats, open-air crematoria where people from all over India bring their deceased family members to spread their ashes in the holy waters. Watching the brightly shrouded bodies placed on the fires, the sparks spraying into the inky sky, I was overwhelmed by the nearness of death. In the next alley over, happy music blared out of the shops while customers haggled loudly over candles, miniature deities and other trappings of Hindu worship.

Early the next morning, we hired a small boat to look at the ghats from a different perspective. Thousands of people were bathing in the holy water, some praying as they did so, others splashing each other playfully. Rowing by the bathers, we passed two floating corpses lodged between moored boats, then watched a charred torso drift by.

Just as deities of both creation and destruction are worshiped and understood to have their place, life on the banks of the Ganga embraces the myriad joys and pains of existence.

Eye of the Tiger

2007-11-14T12:25:00.001-05:00

Our jeep ground to a halt at a bend in the jungle trail near a dead tree. Awestruck, I gazed at inch-deep rents in the wood six feet off the ground. A male tiger had used this tree to mark his territory, and I had no trouble believing that he was calling the shots around there.

It was our first morning in Bandhavgarh National Park, one of the last tracts of jungle that once blanketed central India. Ruled by a population of 75 tigers, the park’s grasslands and forests overflow with animal and plant life.

Before we even entered the park, though, we’d already made one great find. We met Nils Urich, intrepid Norwegian adventurer and legendary moose hunter, at the train station. Following a recent overland trip from Cape Town to Cairo, Nils had improbably stopped in India en route to Antarctica. The three of us became fast friends, and Nils joined us on all our forays into the park.

From our first morning in the park, signs of the massive cat were all around us. We followed trails of six-inch paw prints, examined large piles of furry scat, and gaped at hardwood scratching posts. Despite a tingling in the back of my neck, the tigers themselves were nowhere to be seen.

As we followed the trail, however, we encountered herds of hundreds of spotted deer, peacocks in a mating dance, families of wild boar, resplendent tropical birds, sambar weighing up to 300 kg, eagles, monkeys, a solitary jackal, and a pair of tiny spotted owlets peering out of holes in a hollow tree.

The next morning, after teaching a group of 75 Indian schoolchildren to recite “Nils is an Eskimo” in unison, we resumed our search. Again we followed the massive paw prints, finally catching sight of a dark, distant shape in the grass with a twitching tail and ears. Later in the day, we caught a fleeting glimpse of a second tiger vanishing into a distant woodline. Finally, as light faded on our last foray into the jungle, we came face to face with the lord of the forest.

After a nearby jeep spotted a dominant male tiger at a watering hole, word went out across the park and a pell-mell chase ensued. Shrewdly anticipating the tiger’s movements, our guide positioned us near a game trail. The tiger padded out of a stand of bamboo less than twenty feet away and strolled casually past our jeep before remarkably turning onto the road. We followed at a respectful distance as the tiger led a procession of gawking homo sapiens on a five-minute parade down the road. Finally, as the last light of dusk faded, the tiger vanished into a stand of bamboo.

Well Worth the Journey

2007-11-14T10:01:00.000-05:00

In the far western corner of India, wedged between the arid expanse of the Thar Desert and the Arabian Sea, lies the seldom-visited state of Gujarat. Enticed by tales of isolated villages, nomadic tribes and quality handicrafts at cheap prices, Susannah enthusiastically plotted our course south from Rajastan.

After a two day train journey we reached Bhuj, an outpost in desolate Kutch, a sparsely populated region of vast salt flats and coastal deserts suffering from earthquakes, sectarian violence and frequent drought. In order to reach the isolated villages, we had no choice but to travel in style. After three months of rattling public buses and raucous overnight train compartments, our golden chariot offered a needed taste of luxury.

Each village we visited was inhabited by a different tribe with different customs and styles of dress. Although the two Muslim Jat villages we visited greeted us with barely restrained hostility and we left quickly, in most cases we found people unusually warm and genuine. We were amazed at such good humor flourishing in the harshest of environments.

Exhausted by weeks of sun and sand in India's great deserts, we decided to hit the beach. The twelve square kilometer island of Diu, a former Portuguese colony finally returned to India after a brief shootout in 1961, was the perfect refuge. We ate grilled fish, drank cold beer (banned in mainland Gujarat), and watched our sand castles be carried away by the lapping Arabian sea.

Thus fortified, we journeyed East to the sacred Jain mountain in Palitana. Capped by a fairy-tale city of 900-some temples, Shatrunjaya Hill is the epicenter of the Jain faith. Emerging contemporaneously with Buddhism, Jainism advocates radical nonviolence and clergy wear masks to avoid harming even the tiniest insects. Each spire on Shatrunjaya Hill, large and small, caps an indivual tuk, or temple enclosure, named after the merchant who funded it.

Crossing into Madhya Pradesh on an overnight train, we stopped for the day in the small village of Sanchi to visit one of India's oldest surviving religious monuments, a Buddhist stupa dating from the third century BC.

Evening found us aboard yet another night train, barreling East into Kipling's fabled jungles in search of the elusive Bengal tiger.

Faces of Rajastan

2007-10-24T10:24:00.001-04:00

Saddle-sore into the Sunset

2007-10-24T09:17:00.001-04:00

India’s Thar Desert: hundreds of square miles of blistering wasteland. Two newlywed American tourists with milky complexions. Two fleet but feeble-minded camels afflicted with dystentery. The stage was set for an epic battle of man vs. beast.

Our trek on camelback through the Thar began in the ancient fortress city of Jaislmer. Over the next three days, we rode our smelly steeds over towering dunes, through thickets of six-foot cactus, and into isolated desert villages of straw and adobe. Along the way, we saw antelope, eagles, a plethora of superbly ambitious dung beatles, and a three foot monitor lizard, lurking in a village well.

The journey took to within a stone’s throw of the Pakistan border, and to the outer limits of the human groin’s endurance.

Sand-swept but triumphant, we returned to Jaisalmer, southbound to Gujerat.

Bright Lights, Pink City

2007-10-24T08:46:00.000-04:00

The ancient Pink City of Jaipur is a desert metropolis, gateway to the vibrant state of Rajastan. By sheer luck we got a bicycle rickshaw-wallah at the Jaipur train station who was a real gem. Krishna was enthusiastic, tireless, and utterly guileless. His broken English was punctuated amusingly as we navigated the crazy city by random comments of “another, another [cow, camel, tourist, elephant, temple…].” He took us home to meet his baby girl Payal along with his wife and sister.

Then we all squeezed into a tuk-tuk (motor-rickshaw) and went to the Monkey Temple. The highlight for us was not the monkeys but the sacred bathing-ghat.

In another stroke of luck, we wandered that evening right into a parade for a Hindu guru. We were welcomed with open arms, and immediately swept up in the festivities. At one point, Michael found himself riding on the lead cart, seated next to a pair of sadhus.

We spent a pleasant few days wandering the streets and alleys of the Pink City, exploring vibrant bazaars, discovering neighborhood temples, and visiting the city’s impressive collection of Mughal palaces and forts.

A Diamond ln the Rubbish

2007-10-24T08:17:00.001-04:00

Despite Agra’s deservedly awful reputation for scams, rip-offs and thieves, we couldn’t miss an opportunity to see the Taj Mahal. It lives up to its billing and then some, just as lovely in its tiniest details as in its majestic symmetry. (Susannah isn’t bad looking, either!)

As for the rest of Agra – well, it’s a little less grand…

The Holy City of Happiness

2007-10-24T07:11:00.001-04:00

(photo credit to the inimitable Todd Moore)

Susannah: The first impression we got of Amritsar, sacred city of the Sikhs, was from a plump, jolly man in a turban who we met on the train coming into town. To celebrate our new friendship, he called a cousin in an upcoming town on his cellphone. When we hit the next station, the guy handed us a bottle of whisky as the train rumbled through.

A little disoriented (needless to say), we arrived in Amritsar after dark and hopped a bicycle rickshaw to the famed Golden Temple. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people sleeping on the floors in the lobbies of the temple’s dormitories, where we intended to stay. We had come to town, it turns out, on the eve of the religion’s most important festival, celebrating the birthday of their last guru.

Miraculously, we got a room. The next day we stepped out the door right into an amazing parade featuring thousands of men and children in the full ceremonial dress of their sects.

At every turn we were greeted with broad smiles and outstretched hands. The Sikhs truly are some of the friendliest people in the world. After the parade, one of our new friends showed us around the temple complex. Every single day the temple feeds tens of thousands of people a simple but delicious free meal, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

All the food is made and served entirely by volunteers, such as this proud man who demanded I take his portrait as he distributed plates:

As you can imagine, food for that many people is made in enormous vats. The temple also owns the world’s largest chapatti machine!

With our spirits warmed and our bellies full, we reluctantly left the hospitality of the temple, on our way to another of India’s most magnificent religious monuments, the Taj Mahal.

You've Got a Friend in Buddha

2007-10-22T07:07:00.001-04:00

Mike: We planned to visit McCleodganj, the home of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile, for a few days or a week at most. But as many travelers before us have found, it’s a hard place to leave. The setting is idyllic, the small community perched high on a wooded ridgeline above deep river valleys, with birds of prey soaring by and towering monsoon weather systems filling the panoramic horizon. But the real draw is the Tibetans themselves, and the rare chance to interact face to face with one of the world’s great cultural and religious traditions. As things turned out, we spent over a month in McCleod, teaching English to Tibetan refugees who had recently fled Chinese persecution in their homeland and studying Buddhist philosophy under some of the greatest teachers in the world today, including the Dalai Lama himself.

I should state, for the record and those who don’t know me, that I am not a new-age, spiritual pilgrim kind of dude. If the Age of Aquarius ever dawns, I won’t be at the party – I’ll be down the street, eating a steak and drinking Jack Daniels. But although full-moon festivals, séances and astrology aren’t my scene, I am fascinated by religious philosophy, and the 2,500 year old Buddhist tradition in particular. So my first morning in McCleod, I set off down the hill to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives to attend their daily Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy class.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I got more than I bargained for. The instructor at the library is Geshe Sonam Rinchen, a highly respected Tibetan scholar-monk with over a dozen books and decades of teaching behind him. Ruth Sonam, a highly accomplished scholar in her own right, translates his lectures into English. The lectures themselves were stunningly erudite, as philosophically complex and cogently presented as any academic talk I’ve heard in the West. Geshe’s presence, though, was what made the experience remarkable. Despite his advanced age, his warmth and energy easily fills the room. The next morning, Susannah joined me. We kept going back.

After our morning classes at the library, we spent the days getting to know the community. We befriended a Tibetan family running a hole-in-the-wall café, refugee monks, a lively group of long-term resident expats, and the members of a local band called The Exile Brothers (Himalayan folk and rock fusion, with Rage Against the Machine-inspired lyrics).

In the evenings, we volunteered as English tutors at a school for young refugees. Time and again, we found ourselves amazed at the warmth and good humor of people who have endured imprisonment, torture, and the loss of friends, family and homeland.

At the suggestion of a few friends, we decided to enroll in a ten-day introductory Buddhist meditation course at the nearby Tushita Meditation Center, a place I now affectionately call Buddha Camp. It was, without a doubt, an interesting experience. We spent the ten days in silence, attending a mixture of classes on Buddhist theology and meditation sessions. Not talking for ten days is, in and of itself, an educational experience. It’s amazing how much mental energy and time one wastes blabbing about nothing all day, and you don’t realize it until you shut your yap for a while, as my mother would say. Susannah and I both found the meditation helpful as well.

As I talked with more and more exiled Tibetans, I began to get a feel for the challenges and uncertainties faced by the refugee community. With the Chinese firmly in control and continuing to eradicate Tibetan culture in their homeland, and their leader the Dalai Lama ageing, there is an increasing sense that the movement for a free Tibet is running out of time. After His Holiness leaves the scene, Tibetans will be without a clear leader, and it will be years before the 15th Dalai Lama is old enough to assume the role. Meanwhile, Beijing will be free to increase Chinese settlement in Tibet via the new railroad to Lhasa, and continue its campaign to subsume the Tibetan identity through repression and state-run education. While this seems like a victory for the Chinese, it may lead to disaster for Chinese and Tibetans alike. Younger Tibetans inside the country and in exile are growing increasingly impatient with the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence, and there is fear that once he has passed, there will no longer be anyone in the Tibetan community with enough moral authority to ensure continued restraint. If China doesn’t reach an acceptable agreement with the Dalai Lama in his lifetime, it looks from here as though the result may well be a guerilla war on the roof of the world.

The Roof of India

2007-09-17T13:25:00.001-04:00

Susannah: Travelling to Ladakh, a region in northern India bordered by Kashmir on one side and Tibet on the other, entailed yet another harrowing journey. We embarked on this one in a rickety public bus that took us on endless switchbacks over the second highest drivable pass in the world (the highest is just a couple hundred kilometers away). The landscape is stark high-altitude desert reminiscent at times of the American West, and it’s utterly empty except for the odd tent camp set up to feed weary travelers.

After fifteen hours we arrived in Ladakh’s capitol, Leh. Considering what it took to get there, it was shocking to find that the city is no backwater, but a backpacker’s paradise full of espresso and pizza. It didn’t take long before we’d had enough caffeine and set off to find “real” Ladakh.

We found it just an hour away at Tikset Gompa, one of dozens of monasteries around Ladakh that are home to monks from the “Yellow Hat” sect (of which the Dalai Lama is the leader). Ironically, just as we were climbing up the steep hillside to take a look, the monks began pouring out in full ceremonial regalia. They were headed to Leh for the opening festivities of the Ladakh festival, which we’d completely forgotten about. At their insistence we tossed our packs in the back of their tricked-out truck and headed with them back to the city. Everyone we passed pressed their hands together in prayer. We arrived at the head of the parade in style, just in time to watch dancers, musicians and horsemen from every corner of Ladakh pass by.

The next day we headed back to the monastery to watch the young monks perform some of Tibetan Buddhism’s famous masked dances. The dances were fascinating and the costumes stunning, but the best part was watching the delight on the faces of the other young initiates. On the way home we found it impossible to squeeze onto the buses crammed with other tourists, so we hitched a ride—and who should pick us up but two Catholic nuns from Kerala driving an army truck!

Before we headed south, we had just enough time to enter the festival’s archery competition. My arrow hit the ground several meters before the target (in my defense, it had no feathers!), but Michael was a good shot. He was no match for one of the local guys, though, who put his arrow right through the middle of the CD serving as the target.

Back in Manali, en route to Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s home in exile, we ran into our old friend Sonny the shoeshine boy. (Michael adds: “Sonny initially caught my attention with an impassioned impromptu defense of the reality of professional wrestling.”) He invited us to back to his home in the tent camp, where his mother cooked us a fiery meal on a dung-fired clay stove and the whole extended family crowded in to peer at us. Sonny’s sister thought my au naturale style wasn’t cutting it, and made up my face with kohl and lipstick to make me look like a native. An hour later, we were old friends.

Goat Milk and Moonshine

2007-09-17T11:35:00.001-04:00

Mike: My friend Freddie Wilkinson is not your average guy. While most of us are waking up in the morning, downing our coffee and heading to an office, Freddie spends his days dreaming up new and exotic acts of vertical insanity for his sponsor, Mountain Hardware, to showcase. To visit him at work, Susannah and I had to spend two days riding buses on roads chiseled into mountainsides by hand, then trek up a remote valley for three days beyond the last human settlement to the foot of a Himalayan glacier. That's a long way to carry a bottle of scotch, but hanging with Freddie has never been boring.

This time around was no different. We caught Freddie and his partners Pat and Dave taking a rare break at base camp, after spending a week climbing above snowline. The five of us split the scotch with the trio's Nepali base camp cook (NOTE: "split,"in this case, refers to dividing the bottle into equal portions after Freddie had consumed roughly 75% of it) and spent a few days swimming in glacial pools, relaxing and bouldering in the moraine, and riding out afternoon storms playing cards. The Nepali cook happily introduced us to his favorite card game, which featured an arcane and endlessly malleable set of rules only he could understand. He seemed to win a lot.

As the climbers prepared to head back to high camp, we shouldered our packs and headed back down the valley in early morning, hoping to cross the worst of the glacial rivers before the sun melted enough snow to spill their banks. On the way, we met our old friend Vijay, the heroic shepherd who had helped us ford a river on our way up the valley (and been soaked in the process). We passed the day hiking together, exchanging language lessons and songs. As we crossed a small stream, Vijay stopped and asked Susannah solemly if she would like to become his honorary sister. She agreed, and they knelt by the water and drank from each others' hands, cementing the new relationship. Despite warnings we'd heard about the valley's wily shepherds, we found them generous and friendly to a fault. If you need wool, give me a call - I've got a brother-in-law in the business.

The next afternoon, as storm clouds closed in, we saw Vijay beckoning to us from the doorway of a squat stone shepherd's hut. We were happy to escape the rain, and crawled into the tiny shelter to find Vijay and his uncle stoking a fire fueled with dried cow dung. They had a pot of tea going, and invited us to share a cup and wait out the rain. After the tea, they brought out a steel fuel canister full of fresh goat milk, and insisted I try some. Glancing out the narrow doorway at the flock of muddy beasts bleating below, and repeating "pasteurization is for pansies" again and again in my head, I took a long pull. It was as fresh as dairy gets.

After the storm passed, we reluctantly left our bed of hay beneath the rocks and continued south, camping near a pair of herders on their way out of the valley, bringing their flock to market. The next day brought us to the village of Tingrit, where we were welcomed with open arms by a local farmer and his family. The farmer, Tashi Dorje, took us on a long afternoon walk through his fields and the hills above the village, stopping frequently to pick us samples of the local produce and wild berries. "Idyllic" simply doesn't do the place justice. Green fields abundant with sugar snap peas, potatoes, carrots, kale, cabbage, soy beans, wheat, lentils and seabuckthorn berries gave way to apple orchards on the terraces above, before the slopes steepened to become towering snow-capped peaks. Majestic white Buddhist stupas stood guard above it all. We spent the evening enjoying the hospitality of Tashi's entire extended family (which required me to take repeated shots from a bottle of unidentified homemade firewater).

Before dawn the next morning, Susannah, my headache and I caught the bus out of town, headed for the high Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh.

The Kindness of Strangers

2007-09-12T04:16:00.001-04:00

Susannah: The Miyar River originates in Ladakh's forbidding Zanskar region, beginning in a series of treacherous glaciers and carving a steep valley as it flows south to the hill town of Udaipur. Our trek to Freddie's basecamp began after a hair-raising early morning jeep ride from Udaipur to Tingrit, the last village linked by road to civilization. The first day's walk took us through charming villages surrounded by terraced fields before leading us along an unfinished road carved into the cliffside above the river. Top heavy with my pack (I was still carrying a lot of the load Michael would later shoulder), I would have slipped down and landed with a splash in the rapids if a helpful construction worker had not taken me firmly by the hand and led me along the eroding hillside.

Later that day we were saved again when standing next to the raging river debating whether to cross in the rickety cable car or continue on the west side of the valley. Since we had no idea which side of the river Freddie would be camped on, or whether there would be another crossing further north, this posed quite a dilemma. Suddenly, a young man darted down the opposite bank, crossed the river hand over hand in a flash, and ferried us across. He said (in broken English and lots of gesticulation) that the three white guys we sought had come this way the day before with (count 'em) fourteen porters.

We spent the night at a beautiful campsite above the village of Khanjar, in a field of green grass with a bubbling brook running through it. We didn't see another soul for two days--save the lonely shepherds with their sheep and goats, many of which visited our campsite:

The next day and a half of our trek took us through green pastures nestled between the cliffs, over boulder fields, and across countless frigid glacial streams. Finally, searching the horizon for Freddie's orange Mountain Hardware tents, we found a garishly-colored camp clearly not inhabited by shepherds (who prefer squat stone huts). Sadly, Freddie, Pat and Dave were not in evidence--only a pair of Spanish climbers who had seen them go by the day before. "The camp's just an hour further," they said. "Oh, by the way," they added, "you might encounter some difficulty crossing this next river."

The river was just over the next rise. It was a rushing torrent about twenty feet across that had surged over the balance-beam like bridge meant to help you cross the deepest part. It was pretty intimidating, but we took off our boots. Then two little guys, shepherds who had been hanging out at the Spanish camp, rushed up the hill to help us. They picked their way across like agile acrobats, passing our packs between them, until Vijay the intrepid shepherd lost his footing and tumbled into the drink.

Seeing the herder fall in, I was scared, but took his hand and stepped into the icy water. It pulled at my legs, and it was hard to find stable footing. Halfway across, I slipped, taking Vijay with me. We spent a few terrifying moments being swept downstream before finding rocks to cling to and climbing onto the far bank. I looked back and saw that Michael had jumped in after us and was now clinging to a rock himself.

Safely on the other side, we said emotional goodbyes to the herders and walked, bruised and dripping, the last half mile to base camp.

North from Delhi

2007-09-12T03:34:00.000-04:00

In an effort to discover just how many broken-down buses, fascinating diseases, grimy guest houses, and amazing people and places there are in the world, we packed up our comfortable life in Seattle and climbed aboard a one-way flight to Delhi on August 1st. The plan, if it can be called that, is to spend the next year traveling overland from Delhi to the Spanish coast via SE Asia, China, Mongolia, Siberia, Turkey, and anywhere else we happen to wind up. Nobody said we were smart!

Our journey began with a sweltering four days in the bazaars of New Delhi, amid the city's teeming homeless bovine population. When the humidity and touts threatened to overwhelm us, we escaped on an overnight bus to Himachal Pradesh, a province in the Indian Himalaya. Our first stop was Manali, and old British "hill station" cum resort town nestled amid lush apple orchards and towering green hills. There, we bumped into our old, good friend Alex Kaufman and his girlfriend Deepa on the street, up from Bangalore on vacation. We took a terrific hike together through the orchards and spent the day catching up.

The next day, Mike's old friend Freddie Wilkinson arrived in town on his way into the Himalaya on a month-long climbing expedition, with his intrepid partners Pat and Dave. The three of them are professional crazy people (they might prefer the term "alpinist") sponsored by Mountain Hardware. As we dined on a trout large enough to consume Moby Dick in a single sitting, the three adventurers laid out their plans to travel up the remote and seldom visited Miyar Valley, establish a basecamp, and climb the surrounding virgin peaks. They invited us to hike the valley and visit them at basecamp.

Not being smart (see above), we set out two days later equipped with the following:

Two packs, Michael's large, Susannah's quite small
One bag of rice (note absence of stove)
One bag of lentils (see above)
Assorted dried fruits, nuts, nutella, and yak cheese
Two umbrellas
One bright yellow plastic tarp (cost: $5)
Ten shish-kebab skewers for use as tarp stakes (cost: $2)
One large bottle of single malt scotch (cost: $20)

With our equipment (and priorities) clearly in order, we set off down the narrow cliff-walled valley into a wall of mist...