Men’s cuisine! Yes, yes, and yes! It’s about time people recognize that we men need our own cuisine! Thank you, Russia! Thank you! I had to benchpress 200kg at the door just to be let in, but when I tried to order a caesar salad and some artisan brie cheese, the bouncers threw me out.
To go the approximately 300km from Novgorod to St. Petersburg I took a very nice, 400-ruble (US$6.20) train called “The Swallow”. I arrived in St. Petersburg at night on the main drag, Nevsky Prospekt—fun to say in Russian—and I was overwhelmed by the scene. It was as if on someone’s first visit to USA, they came over the border in small-town Arizona, visited Yuma, then went straight to the Las Vegas Strip on a Friday night. The jolt was severe. Nevsky Prospekt was jammed at 11pm. People everywhere. Foreign languages were overheard, which was never the case in Pskov and Novgorod, both sizable cities of 200,000 to 300,000 people. Just as I was getting my bearings, suddenly fireworks began shooting up from the middle of the street. St. Petersburg was telling me something.
I had to walk by St. Isaac’s Cathedral to get to my Couchsurfing host, and in the square a parked car was blasting The Cure’s “Lovecats” while three guys danced on the street. What is going on in this town?!
I only bought one thing at the flea market, a Belarus license plate for 150 rubles, about $2.40. (No, I don’t know what I am going to do with it, and I thought about that when I bought it, along with the realization I am going to be carrying around a Belarus license plate in my backpack for the foreseeable future.)
The funny thing in this photo, if you don’t notice it, is that the bus stop’s information is three meters (ten feet) off the ground! How can anyone see what’s written on it? I’m tall and I could hardly make anything out. This isn’t uncommon either. St. Isaac’s Cathedral is in the background.
The Udelnaya flea market was fun and well worth a visit, though I think any flea market is well worth a visit. I very rarely pass up a chance to go to a flea market. If I am in any town on a weekend, it is often my first question to the people at the tourist information office. The second is “What is the capital of South Dakota?” You’ve got to keep these people on their toes.
I was looking for funny postcards to send to faithful readers of this blog (See? It’s all about you!) but didn’t find exactly what I wanted. If you are into old Soviet metal pins and aren’t picky about what kind they are, those things used to have value but you can almost buy them by the kilogram, supply is so high now.
I put an open request on Couchsurfing for St. Petersburg and thankfully a professor named Galina offered to let me stay with her and her granddaughter, but the mosquitoes have been ferocious, plus it is hard to sleep when these pictures are above your bed. That said, the location can’t be beat, right downtown in the same building as the Vladimir Nabakov Museum.
It can be entertaining to see who is on Couchsurfing, Going through the listings, one host started her introduction with, “I look beautiful, work hard, study with pleasure and have fun with passion. I am like weather. Never settled or calm. When I do not follow my instincts and trust only logic, I get in trouble.”
What do I do with that information?
It’s said that St. Petersburg is Russia’s most European city. It appears to be true, right down to the absence of screens on doors and windows. I have never understood this. Not having ice cubes or having a fondness or techno-pop, OK, these are personal preferences, but what’s with the European hostility to screens? The mosquitoes are feasting on me.
I don’t know if this is ingenious or depressing, but this is a bus converted into a toilet on Peter and Paul Fortress, the main tourist site in St. Petersburg.
Stubborn dough! This is from an Uzbek/Japanese restaurant and shisha bar. I know, I know, this is all kinds of wrong, but I suddenly had a hankering for Uzbek food, stubborn dough and all. Stubborn dough can arguably be men’s cuisine, too.
OK, OK, I guess I should have a couple of nice photos. This is the interior of the Cathedral of Our Savior of Spilled Blood.
This is how I like my towns, with a cleanly designed, stand-alone cinema right in the middle of it. Novgorod.
Beach volleyball behind the Kremlin in Novgorod, the place to hang out on a warm afternoon. My well-tuned Volleyball Ear detected no professionals in the vicinity.
Memory Lane: Last time in St. Petersburg I stayed in a hostel near Finland train station next to a prison. Prisoners would wave a cloth through a small window to try and communicate with family outside in the parking lot as they yelled, trying to be heard among the other people yelling. Good times!
I thought I was already their.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
As pleased as I am to be here, I detest the requirement to register within seven days of arriving in the country. Your hotel/hostel is obliged to help you do it. Even if you stay privately, they have to do it. The forms are painful, but it helps to remember that it’s travel pain, not working-in-the-coal-mines pain.
To buy a train ticket, beforehand I usually have an English speaker write a note in Russian that I want a particular train, the class, a seat facing in the direction I am going and in the middle of the car, if possible. Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
On a hot day in Latvia (or anywhere in Scandinavia) you have to go to the beach. It’s the law. The reason is because it might be the last time for the year. That’s how bad the weather is up north.
I went to the seaside in Jurmala, which is a Latvian word meaning “seaside.” (I wonder if Riga means “capital”?) I was walking along, minding my own business, when I heard beach volleyball in the distance. We native Californians, we have what is called in medical journals “Volleyball Ear”. We can hear great beach volleyball before we can see it. We can hear the crisp passing, the solid serves, the confident spikes, and simply know. My ear led me to stumble on two of the world’s top players during a practice, Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins. I stayed for nearly an hour, asking a woman next to me about the guys. I didn’t say anything about The Ear. No reason to invite skepticism on a hot day.
Samoilovs spiking. Can you hear it?
If you have never heard of those guys, then you might know another Latvian sportsman, basketballer Kristaps Porzingis, who was drafted by the New York Knicks this year. I fear the worst for his future, especially since now he has that Knicks taint on him. (See Lampe, Maciej)
A ship shape hotel. Ten euros for fifteen minutes of massage. In Thailand I think you could get a two-hour massage for that and have money left over for a watermelon shake plus another two-hour massage. In fact, I can hear every Thai masseuse packing their bags now and studying Latvian.
Statue right in the middle of Riga. Isn’t she a beaut?
Another evocative statue, in a different way.
There is a quarter in Riga with many art nouveau buildings that were much more impressive than I could have ever guessed. So beautiful! This is just one facade. It was hard to get one good photo of the scale of it all.
This is a new hostel in Riga, a renovated former farmhouse called Amalienhof and it was great because few people know about it, but that will change, and when it does, one toilet for 15 people won’t be cozy. 10 euros. It is outside of the center, but in the center Riga is plagued by stag parties. British lager louts come in droves to take advantage of cheap flights to party like they might die tomorrow.
RUSSIA! (but with a warning from the Estonians)
I took a twenty-euro bus from Riga to Pskov. That’s too much for only 290km, but that’s all there is. I noticed a thirty-euro night bus. I think you pay more for a less surly driver. Only eight people were on the bus, including a Dutch guy with a stroller, but no baby. He is literally delivering a stroller for his brother from Holland to Russia because his brother simply forgot to bring it with him.
I had to get stamped out of southeastern Estonia, but the guard gave me a pamphlet and a warning about overstaying my Schengen visa for Europe. I am pretty sure I have a good two weeks left, but he was serious about making sure I understood despite not being able to communicate well. I think I overstay my Schengen visa every year, but no one has ever said a peep about it.
The Russian immigration officer went through my passport stamps three times. I can never watch them too closely because it cracks me up. For some reason I think it is the funniest thing to watch them scrutinize my Kyrgyzstan stamps or whatever catches their eye, and it’s a bad habit that is going to get me in trouble some day.
A view of Pskov with the Trinity Cathedral in the distance.
My airbnb host’s living room. Were you fooled? It’s Trinity Cathedral.
Lenin statue on Lenin Square in the center of Pskov. Laissez les bon temps roulez!
I’m a little spooked about Russia. Day One went pretty well, but for some reason I have the idea I really need to be on my toes. I feel like an infant with hardly being able to speak. I really need to learn some verbs. I can read the alphabet and my vocabulary is slowly growing, but my sentences are like grunting when I can only say, “Small! Small!” in a restaurant.
First person to reply below gets a postcard from Russia—if you want one. Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
There’s a new way to travel Europe! Instead of buying a railpass, rushing around the continent and staying in crowded hostels, you can take advantage of some new tools, namely, BlaBlaCar, MeinFernbus, and Airbnb. And, I learned something new about cruising, of all things, that I had always dismissed out of hand.
I stayed with an Airbnb host in Heerlen, Netherlands who reminded me of myself, which is almost never good. He saw how lucrative it could be to rent out his own room, so he slept on the couch and listed his room every day on Airbnb. Once, on a whim he listed it for $10 and I snatched it up five minutes later, he said.
I was coming from Germany and normally I would hitchhike, but it was projected to be the hottest day of the year so I used blablacar.com from Frankfurt to Aachen for twelve euros and hitchhiked the rest of the way.
I flew from Brussels to Riga, Latvia, my first time flying Brussels Airlines, and what do you notice about this check in? No one is there! No one to ask if you have an onward ticket! No need to dress up and have a story ready! You print your own baggage tag and are off. If had an Ethiopian passport or if this was a non-EU destination, maybe things would have been different. (I didn’t realize Latvia is now a Schengen country nor that they used the euro. See? I still make rookie mistakes.)
Cruising?!
Anyway, my Airbnb host was to cruising what I am to low-cost traveling. He knew how to book the cheapest cruises, some last minute, some booked far in advance. Of course I picked his brain and he showed me these websites: http://www.costacruise.com/usa/cruises_list/201511.html http://www.cruisetravel.nl/Cruises https://www.pullmantur.es/en/cruceros/transatlanticos-desde-europa.html
Later this year he is flying to Dubai for 300 euros round trip, I think he said, on Eurowings, aka SunExpress, and then taking a seven-day cruise for 200 euros, all inclusive. (Keep an eye on Sun Express for cheap flights on their new routes to Thailand, Cuba and Dominican Republic. I have flown them before very cheaply from Turkey to Germany.) He admitted that he was one of the youngest people on some cruises, but the facilities and food are so good he doesn’t care and he isn’t a big socialite anyway. He pays 60-70 euros more to have a single room since he always goes alone.
One of the most intriguing cruises is going from Canary Islands, Spain, to Salvador, Brazil. It’s nine days and can be had for as low as 250 euros sometimes, he claims. The idea of using a cruise as transport is big, if it really is true and all taxes and fees are included in the prices he tells me.
This is from Denderleeuw, Belgium, a tiny spot on the map, and look at this mountain of french fries. Incredible.
More remarkable than the inhumane portion of french fries was the presence of an American couple also eating next to me in this tiny village. They were in Denderleeuw only because they found a cheap Airbnb place, but they were going around by train. I told them about BlaBlaCar, and the other piece of this puzzle is Meinfernbus, also called Flixbus, which is comfortable long distance buses, sometimes with wifi. I have done all three maybe ten times now.
I don’t claim to speak Dutch/Flemish, but I can understand a lot. This menu, though, is all Greek to me. Bewildering, but I am not convinced Dutch/Flemish people can understand it all either!
A medium portion! Two euros plus fifty cents for mayonnaise.
Showing the ultimate faith in hitchhiking is trying to hitch to an airport, because if you get stuck, you’re toast. I thought of this when I was at a highway gas station outside of Brussels, but before a German woman and her child had taken me, then a Moroccan guy, and then from the gas station a wealthy older couple not only took me but decided to drive out of their way and drop me off right at the terminal. I was almost faster than the train.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
If you are traveling between countries with blablacar.com, you need to check both countries’ websites because they don’t have the same listings. Use Google Translate to read the listing, but when writing a driver, you can assume that everyone reads English. In Germany, after you have signed up, you can see the phone number of every driver, but in France you can’t.
I used to be down on Airbnb because I didn’t realize that the property owner can set not only the price from day to day but also insist on extra references like your Facebook account (as if that means anything.) I still don’t like “cleaning fees” that aren’t part of the base price, but I am becoming a fan. In some big cities it makes no sense to use hostels when you can get a room cheaper, especially if you aren’t alone.
I am normally high on Couchsurfing, so to speak, but I am too last-minute to get hosts or I just don’t have luck. I still try. My fear is that Airbnb will replace Couchsurfing, which would be a great shame. Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
I look like I lost my golf ball. I had to borrow this shirt because my supply of decent clothes is lacking. I might have accidentally bought women’s pants again. Black and blue running shoes not shown. Embarrassing.
On a perfect summer day last weekend I found myself at the wedding of Caleb and Celine in very rural northeastern France, an American/French wedding with a Prague theme, where they met as students. Their clothes were custom-made in Ivory Coast, where they just returned from teaching. Celine’s dress was only $120. (See, if I was a professional travel blogger, I would have a link to the dress maker in Abidjan and I would make 10% off future sales, but I am a complete amateur.)
As I understand it, the norm is to have the civil ceremony in the mayor’s office next door, and then the church wedding happens right after, but Celine and Caleb had the civil ceremony over a year ago, you know, to kick the tires, as we Americans say.
Usually during a wedding service my eyes glaze over as I wonder if there will be guacamole at the reception or I stare at the stained glass windows and imagine how long it took to make them, but this was different. I found it quite moving and powerful and I felt stronger about them as a couple, which there wasn’t much room for, because if they ever get a divorce, then there is no hope for any of us.
My table place setting. Guests came from different countries, so to facilitate communication, our languages were shown on our nametags. (What flag corresponds to Pig Latin?) To say I speak French is generous, but I’m telling you, don’t sleep on me becoming a fluent-for-an-American speaker; I pick up quite a bit every day I am here, and I am motivated.
I was on the verge of trashing the event hall for using the Spanish flag instead of the Cuban flag, but I took a deep breath and the moment passed.
The champagne supply (this was maybe a third or a half of it) was rivaled only by the cheese supply. Someone tell me again: how can French women be so thin with all this cheese and heavy stuff they eat? Bird-like portions? Smoking?
Several of us helped in the kitchen since they needed some extra hands. They had hired a girl from the village to work, but in true French fashion she tried to organize a union and go on strike before they had even cut the cake.
Celine’s badminton friends formed this canopy outside of the church after the ceremony.
Celine and one of her two beautiful sisters, an unmarried one! I was so caught up in the spirit of the wedding and struck by how pretty Celine’s sister is that I was about to get down on one knee and propose…that we become Facebook friends.
Celine’s sister maintained the momentum of the night deep into the wee hours as music DJ and dancing queen, racing back and forth to the console to start the next song. I was waiting for the right moment to ask for her Facebook hand, but then a better-dressed, better-dancing twelve-year-old horned right in, killing all hope. Devastated.
Caleb’s family doing their Abbey Road pose.
Bonded by a lifelong love of arson, Caleb and Celine gave everyone lanterns that blew far off into the night. It was a cool effect, but we Californians in the group remarked that in our bone-dry state this act would get 2 to 3 years in prison. An impressive fireworks show followed.
This was also Caleb’s face when I showed him the clothes I intended to wear at the wedding. This was part of a performance, a dance for each of the many places they lived. A lot of effort and planning went into the evening; there was one surprise after another.
As the theme was Prague, this cake is a model of the Charles Bridge. This wasn’t a cake just for show either; the chocolate was high quality and the petites choux a la creme along the base were delicious. If only I hadn’t eaten a wheel of cheese by the time this came around. A paper Vltava River wound its way through the tables dotted with statues of Czech monuments. Czech cakes, beer and guests were imported.
I am likely to meet my future wife dumpster diving, which is going to make for an awkward display of banana peels and old yogurt cups strewn throughout the table at my wedding. Maybe I shouldn’t get married.
Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
Hello from France! Before we begin, do you know the best French song ever? I have it right here for you! How convenient! It is by Les Rita Mitsouko and it is called “Marcia Baila“. Without exaggeration I have watched this video over 100 times since I was told about it last week, it’s so good. Let’s call it the indisputable apex of French culture:
I had a long, crazy day hitchhiking from up in the Swiss alps down to the French plains. The end of the story is that I have found myself in a destination I didn’t intend, Strasbourg, France, sleeping with two attractive twenty-year-old French girls named Chloe and Anais (of course!) who wish they had English-speaking boyfriends.
Just getting to Strasbourg seemed improbable. At dusk a young French guy dropped me off in a wretchedly bad spot well off the highway because his GPS told him to. I swear, almost no one knows how to work their GPS, and I am in a lot of cars. Fiddling with the GPS while driving has to cause more accidents than being on the phone as it requires more concentration. Worse, a generation of people are losing their sense of direction in their capitulation to GPS. I will now step down from my soapbox.
So there I was in a gloomy village south of Strasbourg in the approaching dark. I didn’t know where to stand to try and continue because no place was safe from the swift traffic. Walking up or back down the road looked pointless. I saw no evidence of a bus service. I didn’t know what to do, so I practiced yelling French obscenities. After that was exhausted, I stood next to the road, lost, and for some reason inexplicable except that once in a blue moon the travel gods smile down on us hitchhikers, there was a lull in the traffic and a guy in a BMW stopped in the middle of the street and motioned for me. I wasn’t even standing with my thumb out.
He was a Moroccan-Frenchman named Said and he saved my hitchhiking butt. He was getting off work and for reasons I never understood, he stopped in the middle of the road and offered me a ride. He took me to the Strasbourg train station though it might not have been his destination. He was pleasantly surprised to have a Californian in his car, showing off the American music on his iPod. He loved American music, he said, though he couldn’t understand a word of it.
Strasbourg train station the next morning, a modern facade over the grand old architecture. Does it work?
The beginning of the story—I’ll make it quick; sorry to jump around. Think of it as Pulp Fiction for hitchhiking—is that Roof-san left me at the end of the village in Les Diablerets, we man-hugged to say goodbye, and before he was able to turn his car around, a Spaniard had stopped for me. I always like that validation of hitchhiking where friends can bear witness. What I am glad he didn’t witness is that I got stuck at the bottom of the hill in Aigle where some cars stopped, but they weren’t going my way, and it ended up being a long and slow slog getting out of Switzerland. Standing in the steady drizzle didn’t help.
It was a funny coincidence that a few days ago I visited a friend in Zurich who was about to visit Salvador, Brazil, and then when I hitchhiked out of Zurich I got a ride with a guy whose wife is from Salvador, Brazil. Then yesterday Roof-san played his band’s song, “Mauritius Girl” and then I got a ride from two Mauritius girls—women, I should say—along with a husband, from Basel up past Colmar, deep into the Alsace region.
I don’t know France well. I have been to Germany countless times, but France is largely terra incognito for me. At the highway gas station there weren’t many cars, and most ignored me with gusto, so between cars I soaked in my rural, bucolic surroundings. If I had to describe France in one word, it would be languid. I just looked it up and I am using the word wrong, but the land has a lazy, time-worn, sensual, unhurried feel to it. Maybe bucolic is the best word. The feel is almost hypnotic.
The Mauritians led me to the young French guy afflicted with GPS Syndrome to Moroccan Said to sleeping with two French girls. I guess I should clarify my prepositions. I slept with two French girls in the same dorm room. See? Not an A-level story. Everyone thinks that because I travel a lot, the road is nothing but kicks, man, like it’s all one long Jack Kerouac novel. It is just as often hitchhiking in the rain and sleeping fitfully in squeaky dorm beds.
This bakery is called, “The hands in the flour”. On principle alone I had to get something, and I devoured a wicked torsade. Usually I stay away from torsades as they are too dry, but I am in France now.
My destination was Nancy, a random town I picked because I had never been, it was close to the wedding this weekend, and I found a cheap Airbnb place I had paid two nights for. But once in Strasbourg I learned I missed the last train to Nancy. I checked Eurolines for a bus and blablacar.com for a ride, but I ended up stuck in Strasbourg. On a whim I checked Airbnb (thank you free train station wifi!) and was shocked to see 49 listings under $20 in the heart of the city. The vast majority are from Tom’s, where I paid only $12 plus a persnickety Airbnb fee of 15% or so. Normally on Airbnb when you make a booking the host has 24 hours to get back to you, but if they have dozens of listings, I knew they’d be very quick to respond, and he needed only 10 minutes or so. Tom’s Fair House is partly a hostel, but with so many properties, I didn’t grasp the whole operation and I wasn’t curious enough to ask questions.
I didn’t mind paying for two cheap Airbnb places for the same night since it was due to my own inefficiency, but the point of the story is to not assume cheap accommodation options don’t exist in big cities. Options that include pretty French girls are rarer, yes, but you never know, which is one of the main points of traveling, the serendipity.
A hitchhiking sign my Airbnb host in Nancy made for me to use tomorrow.
Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+.
Seven months on the road as of today.
Greetings from Switzerland where I am visiting old friends, all of whom I met in Asia while traveling. Every time I visit friends in Switzerland or most anywhere in Europe but acutely so here, it feels like a seminar in how to live. Most everyone I know has a life to be emulated: the way they eat, the use of their free time, their progressive attitudes that inform their actions and a long list of small day-to-day things that appear insignificant on the surface but aren’t in my eyes. Traveling is hardly conducive to any of it.
If you think the only people who pick me up hitchhiking are greasy truck drivers, think again. This Sri Lankan beauty took me from Zurich to the first highway gas station.
At that station, another attractive woman in a sporty BMW convertible said she could take me to the next town. I declined, saying I wanted to go farther to the next highway gas station, but I paused to look everything over and said, “I can’t believe I’m not going with you!” She said, incredulous, “I know!”
I have always had pretty good luck hitchhiking in Switzerland, though this headline I saw yesterday gave me pause for thought: “Two men arrested over Yverdon hitchhiker death”. Gulp. Hitchwiki, the information exchange board for places to start hitchhiking, has too many entries for Switzerland that start with something like, “Technically it’s an illegal spot, but if the police don’t see you…” No way. I have been hounded by Swiss police too many times. There is no crime in ultra-rich Switzerland (other than the usual FIFA-style white collar crime and the occasional hitchhiker slaying) so the police have nothing better to do than check up on us. Once in Liechtenstein next door I had a police car make a hard stop and two guys burst out of the car demanding to see my passport. When I reached for my pocket, they flinched, and their hands moved towards their guns. When they inspected the passport, looking back and forth between it and my face, one finally said to the other, “It’s not him,” and they sped off.
I thought a quintessential Swiss photo of soaring mountain peaks, lush vegetation, and dramatic vistas would be apropos here, but instead I give you this, a Gstaad parking receipt. You’re welcome.
The water in Switzerland is hard, so I have to use lotion after showering or my legs look like the California desert. Sometimes in places with not much traffic I get out my lotion and quickly try and use it before the next car is in sight, otherwise it must look strange to oncoming motorists. I always try and imagine the conversations in cars when they see me, usually between the man driving and the woman in the passenger seat:
Man: What the hell is that guy doing?
Woman: Moisturizing! Let’s pick him up.
Man: Hell no! Americans are such freaks. The Mercenary
About 30km outside of Basel I had a too-short ride with a fascinating guy, a heavily tattooed, burly ox with a neck as thick as my thighs. He described himself in German as a professional soldier, a mercenary. He was an ethnic Albanian, the third time in three days an Albanian picked me up. (They are always male drivers and when I tell them the only Albanian word I know is “shpirtim” (my sweetheart), there is always an awkward two seconds.)
He had fought in Iraq, which he said was a picnic compared to Afghanistan. He had been to Afghanistan three times during the worst of the war, fighting the Taliban from five meters away in Tora Bora. (He said the Taliban will never disappear unless you nuke all of them at once; they are so dedicated and fervent in their ideology that there will always be replacements for any that are killed.)
He made $1300 a day, money too good to pass up for a guy made homeless and penniless by the Kosovo war. He had survived it all, now living the good life in Switzerland. He supported his entire extended family and was now bored, but with a wife and kids, his fighting days were behind him.
He had fought along side the French Legionnaires, too. I asked him what percent of the Legionnaires are French, and he guessed two percent. Many come from Eastern Europe, a surprising amount come from Vietnam, Nepal and other impoverished countries, and everyone seemed to get paid on a sliding scale depending on how prosperous or poor your country was.
He saw horrific things, as one would guess. I didn’t prod him for war stories, but he was adamant that the media grossly under-reported American casualties in Afghanistan.
The Taliban can’t be contained and the Islamic State (called ISIS in USA) is opening internet cafes in Salzburg, Austria.
OK, OK, I will give you a classic Swiss photo, this being the Lauenensee near Gstaad.
Just one more nice photo, and then that’s it! Here is Les Diablerets, the view from my friends’ holiday home in the alps. This hardly captures the expansive 180-degree view.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
In Europe I almost always hitchhike with an American flag on my backpack for the novelty value. There are very few hitchhikers these days, and just about zero American hitchhikers. Sometimes drivers tell me they pick me up for that reason, such as the guy near Berlin who was wearing a University of Georgia cap. In spite of this, usually drivers don’t put one and one together and are surprised when I tell them I am Californian. I would hitchhike with a California flag if I thought it was recognizable.
I should add this nugget of info on Hitchwiki: if you want to hitchhike north out of Bern, go to the Wankdorf Stadium with tram 9, walk north to the highway entrance another 100-200 meters and it’s golden. The second vehicle stopped for me, a Berliner in a camper van. (A few days later I found myself at the same spot—in the rain—and I got a ride in 10-15 minutes.) Almost any ride will be good as the Grauholz highway gas station is only about 5km away. BlaBlaCar is still the way to go if you want to try rideshare in Central Europe—and there is no reason not to try rideshare. Switzerland is stratospherically expensive. The train to get out of the city center to the closest highway to hitchhike can be more expensive than a rideshare between towns. Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+.
On Tegelberg near Neuschwanstein Castle in southern Germany. That’s me in the middle.
I have been away for over six months now. “Away” is a complicated word because what I am away from other than the country of my passport? In any case, I have been away from my country for over half a year for every single year of my life since I graduated from university in 1986. That’s an accomplishment, if you see it as such, or a nightmarish existence, depending on your point of view.
I thought of a big Russia trip while the summer warmth is here and then next year maybe a rough Africa overland thing to top off my traveling life before I “retire”—transition!—to herding llamas in New Zealand or whatever it is that people with normal lives do.
View from Tegelberg down to Schwangau.
I applied for a Russian visa in Munich, Germany. This is 2015 but the visa process is straight out of 1973. You need to show prepaid hotels, a support letter from a Russian agency, and the application is lengthy. (My favorite question: list all the countries you have visited in the past ten years.) It takes ten business days and costs 150 euros plus a 27 euro processing fee, but it is a three year multiple entry visa and whereas it says on the website that you can only stay for thirty days at a time, the woman in the office said I could stay much longer since it is “special for Americans.”
I should have known something was up when I heard that. Why would Russia do something “special for Americans” in these days of frosty tensions?
I got the call the next day. My visa was rejected. They wouldn’t say why. They won’t refund the 177 euros either. (USA also does this to foreigners; the visa fee is nonrefundable regardless of outcome.)
I was stunned. Why would they do this? I can’t recall ever being denied a visa. For my amusement I used to pop by Iranian and North Korean embassies around the world just to see what they’d say about giving me visas, but I don’t remember ever being outright rejected after applying.
One false step, and boom!
Why Russia?
I have only been to Russia once. It was in the mid-1990s, and it was rough, but also fascinating and unforgettable. I distinctly remember being hungry all the time. Loneliness and frustration levels were constantly sky high, yet few countries have been etched into my soul of rich travel experiences like Russia.
Russians have a depth about them that I find very attractive. They can be taciturn and are hardly the type to exclaim, “How’s it going! I’m Boris! Damn glad to meet ya!” Their qualities are similar to what draws me to Hungarians, which I experienced as an English teacher in the provinces eons ago. I imagine Russia to be a more intense version of Hungary.
I’d love to get out in the vast sticks of Russia to visit Couchsurfers in places few people go, to experience the real Mother Russia, and then get out three seconds after it turns cold.
I might try for a visa one more time in another country. We’ll see. I dread checking “YES” on the box where it asks if I have ever been refused a visa for Russia, which could be a scarlet letter.
This toilet photo (still my website’s most popular page) was what I experienced just before crossing into Russia from Estonia. I am very curious to see it again, though decrepit toilet re-visitation isn’t something one should say out loud.
Death to Travelex!
Every once in a while I feel compelled to remind everyone that Travelex is the devil. Travelex is a chain of moneychangers that have ridiculous exchange rates. The business model is to have captive audiences at airports, and I very partially understand that they are being charged a lot to have a service at the airport, though perhaps this is in order to ensure a monopoly position, which is something no self-respecting airport should allow, though few can resist the temptation. Singapore’s Changi Airport is the role model for travelers on many fronts and, if I am not mistaken, they ensure that airport exchange rates are the same as downtown rates.
The whole idea of an airport not as a public service but a cash cow boils my travel blood, but airports are often privatized, so does that negate the idea that it is a public service? Maybe I have an outdated, misguided, entitled, privileged view that fliers shouldn’t be fleeced by $5 bottles of water and absurd exchange rates.
I publicly scorned Travelex on Twitter and had this exchange:
I was confident of having the last word because Travelex knows they are in the business of deception. Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
NOTE: I flew out from Nepal twelve hours before the big earthquake and I left the Langtang National Park about three days earlier. I started three blog posts before I left: a fluffy one about Kathmandu, a big one about trekking in Langtang and this one with some lightweight ruminations and practical information about the trek. While it feels trivial to write about traveling in Nepal since there is so much desperation and suffering in the aftermath, I decided to put these blog posts up anyway for myself, for my own memory.
If you have a bunch of 15-year-old visa photos laying around, bring them to Nepal. You need one or two for a visa, one or two for this TIMS card, which is a permit to hike, and one for each SIM card you want to get. No one cares if they are old as long as they look vaguely like you.
The TIMS card is 2000 rupees and then the Langtang admission fees are about 3300 rupees. It grinds on me that foreigners pay over $50 in fees to do the main treks with little to show for it. If it was evident the money is being used to benefit these far-flung communities, that would be different.
It might seem insensitive at worst and crazy at best to talk about trekking in Langtang, but I have a feeling they will rebuild and subsequently be eager for travelers. A guy sent me this link about the “Ground Realities of April 25 Earthquake in Nepal” to point out that the devastation and untold numbers of upended lives are very real, but the entire country isn’t under rubble.
At the time I gave little thought before I went to Langtang. I was deciding between the Langtang and Everest Base Camp treks and I chose the one closer to Kathmandu. My only regret in not trekking Everest is that Everest might become too expensive to do in the future. Everest must be great, but the name “Everest”, like Timbuktu and Zanzibar, has an inordinate grasp on the imagination. If it was called Scunthorpe Base Camp or Pacoima Base Camp, I suspect there’d be a smidge less interest. I could be wrong. If Mt. Scunthorpe was the tallest peak in the world, I suppose we’d all want to go.
Whoever said, “Getting there is half the fun” has never set foot in Nepal. I love being in Nepal, but I despise traveling in Nepal. I took the most luxurious transport possible to go to Syabru Besi from Kathmandu, a cramped jeep, and it was still horrendous. It’s also a reason people combine the Langtang trek with the Helambu trek: you can walk back almost all the way to Kathmandu and avoid Hell Road.
I am in better shape than I look from ALL appearances, but I am not an avid hiker. It isn’t fun to go by myself. However, I like going by myself in Nepal. There are a lot of people on the trails. It’s never boring. I might become an avid hiker if it wasn’t so dang cold. Is there such a thing as a warm mountain?
I might be unrecognizable to you on a mountain. When I first start chugging up the hill, it’s immediately tiring, but for some inexplicable reason a metamorphosis occurs and I go from being a gassed-out schlub to Grandmaster Alpinist. It’s fast in coming. I quickly become stronger, I look better, and at the end of a trek I feel in tremendous condition. By the time I get back to town, I have lost weight and have a healthy sheen, which explains the innumerable girls of all races, colors, and religions throwing themselves at me.
Seen at Thulo Syabru
I saw surprisingly few trekkers like me on their own without guide or porter. There is zero reason to have a guide unless you expect your guide to educate you about everything you see. You certainly don’t need a guide to show you the way. Also, you can be sure the guide is taking you to places to eat and sleep where it suits him/her best, not you. An argument I’ve heard is that someone is there in case you get hurt, but then what? I don’t think the guide will do more to help you than anyone at a guest house, but I might be completely wrong. Do you need a porter?
No.
If you aren’t convinced, then what is the maximum weight you are willing to carry every day? You really don’t need to bring much with you, as I will explain. Everyone says this, and we all nod in agreement, and then we bring conga drums, 15 rolls of toilet paper and “War and Peace” in hardcover. It’s when we get a few days into the trek and we notice we haven’t used all of the stuff we brought when we start to question our choices.
Yes, I do stand like this. While these are hardly trekking shoes, your average porter wears something much less appropriate and are often in sandals or flip flops.
This is a typical menu from the trek. Can you read it? (US$1 = 99 rupees.) The odd thing is that two or three days deeper into the mountains the prices are nearly the same. Within villages prices are fixed, but there is wiggle room, especially for the room and things like a solar/gas shower or power for charging devices.
Dal baht, we meet again. This is the one and really only meal Nepalis eat: lentils, rice and “curry” that is often just potatoes with some pickled vegetables and a papadam. I like it, and I have a tremendous capacity to eat the same food over and over, but after a week dal baht tested me.
I’ve got something to say about water. I bought a package of fifty iodine pills for only 150 rupees, each pill good for one liter. The aftertaste isn’t as strong as I remembered so maybe they are improving the recipe. On the trek several guest houses claim to have filtered water, but I was wary. I saw a shack on the trail that had a water machine with a built-in filter. I asked how often they change the filter and they happily said it was only necessary every four years. Call me skeptical.
I have good reason to be wary. My first time in Nepal I was lackadaisical about water and I came down with giardia. Let me sum up giardia in two words: explosive diarrhea. (You’re welcome.) It is so unforgettably brutal that it isn’t worth risking your stomach to save a few rupees by trusting your innards to anyone else. You have too much to lose. Also, portable filters have come way down in price, making them an attractive alternative.
Also seen at Thulo Syabru.
Packing ideas
If your backpack gets wet it’s a good idea to have some bags to keep the things on the inside dry. I have an impressive collection of plastic bags from around the world. (Is this a good time to mention that I am , or would that be redundant?)
Simply, bring an extra complete set of clothes. It isn’t as bad as it sounds to wear the same clothes day after day as long as they stay dry. There are stoves in almost every guest house at dinner time where you can hang wet things. (I avoided small guest houses for this reason; I didn’t want them to waste wood to start the stove just for my benefit.) 1 poncho/raincoat in bag (never used) 1 phone for a flashlight (I didn’t bring a flashlight, then later remembered it is on my cellphone. When it is after dark and you want to use the toilet down the hall, a light is handy.) 1 sunglasses (the sun at altitude and the brightness of snow is intense. 2 plastic water bottles 1 small towel 1 fleece neck warmer 4 socks 5 underwear 2 zip-off gender-appropriate lightweight pants that turn into shorts (I am always amazed at how many people hike in jeans. They’re heavy and take forever to dry. I guess those people never take them off so it isn’t an issue.) 1 fleece pants (a borderline bring, but they are pretty light. They are better for the evenings and for the sleeping bag if it is especially cold.) 4 shirts (2 cotton, 2 not) 1 fleece, then given another plus a long-sleeve shirt 1 cap with bill against sunburn 1 knit cap that covers the ears 1 windbreaker (I was lucky to get away with bringing mesh running shoes and a windbreaker in lieu of a real jacket. My windbreaker had a patch for the Cuban Red Cross that I got in, um, Haiti (what’s the statute of limitations on—never mind) but it had the effect of some Nepalis getting wide-eyed and asking with hope or expectation that I am doctor.)
Nearly every room is exactly the same on the trek. I only think about warmth. When I check out a room I wave my hands slowly by the window frames and doors to feel the gaps for drafts, but they come from everywhere. I can’t be the only sissy who would pay more for something more airtight.
For the Annapurna trek I did a few years ago I rented a sleeping bag at 50 rupees a day, I think it was. Renting isn’t a crazy idea even if you accept that the bags really aren’t cleaned between uses rather than just aired out. I claim that the sleeping bags don’t get dirty from sweat, just a light grime. It’s manageable. (What am I saying? I am losing my mind, but I am almost done.)
This time I bought one for 1700 rupees, but having a sleeping bag at all might have been a mistake. You really don’t need one on the Langtang trek unless maybe it is the highest of high seasons (Sept/Oct) because every guest house I saw always had extra blankets. They are of questionable hygiene, but often you are of equally questionable hygiene. (Wait, I am countering my own argument, but the end is near.) The blankets are super-heavy for some reason and two of them feels like a sumo wrestler laying on top of you—not that I have experienced that personally. Let’s move on.
You also really don’t need to bring food. I met a girl who carried 12 Snickers, which are a sort of food currency on the trail, but that’s too much weight and Snickers don’t cost a whole lot more up the mountain than back in town.
When the Snickers run out, sometimes a light snack of dried cow dung really hits the spot. When not providing The Dromomaniac with sustenance, it’s used to fire the stoves.
Hot tip: Nepali cell phone credit goes a long way. I got a SIM card for only $2 and to call a USA landline is pennies. If you are leaving Nepal and still have a lot of credit on your phone, if Ncell is your provider, you can donate your excess credit (up to about 500 rupees a day) by transferring it to another subscriber for nearly free. I forget the code to do it. It may be only a few hundred rupees to you, but to a Nepali it is a very useful and welcome gift. Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
NOTE: I flew out from Nepal twelve hours before the big earthquake and I left the Langtang area about three days earlier. I started three blog posts before I left: a fluffy one about Kathmandu, this long one about trekking in Langtang and another about practical information doing the trek. While it feels trivial to write about traveling in Nepal since there is so much desperation and suffering in the aftermath, I decided to put these blog posts up anyway for myself, for my own memory. I have an epilogue with some updated information at the end. If you have some new info, please share it!
Call me crazy, but I think this looks very pretty.
If I may start by going all granola on you for a moment, there’s something to be said for being amidst such awesome nature where you can see the lay of the land where you have walked all day. Your relationship to the environment around you is intensified—or, in my case, you simply wake up to that fact.
I sat on my balcony in Thulo Syabru, a village sitting on a ridge, and saw the entire day’s walk unfold in front of me: I went steeply up from that river, then along that mountain face, crossed over that looks-tiny-from-here bridge, and came through the terraced land to get up here. I think about this small chunk of land I covered and wonder about all the other chunks of land I have yet to see and how they interconnect. It demonstrates that the resonance of a trek like this is the reason it becomes the highlight of anyone’s world trip and why we travelers return again and again to Nepal.
That’s my last deep thought, don’t worry.
My trek was about a week. I basically only did Langtang: Syabru Besi up to Kyanjin Gompa where I took a wrong turn trying to climb Kyanjin Ri, and then I backtracked a little and walked out on a new-ish route via Thulo Syabru to the road at Thulo Bharku which is before Dhunche and not on this map. I didn’t go over Gosainkund and down through Helambu because of the weather and the time. (If I did, it appears I would have been right at the pass at Laurebinayak during the earthquake.) I read that it is 31km to walk from Syabru Besi to Kyanjin Gompa, but can that be true?
I wanted to get out of Kathmandu before Nepali New Year began, so I had one day to get a permit and everything I needed. I dutifully got trekking pants and iodine pills, but I left it until the end to think about real shoes or a real jacket. When I did the Annapurna trek I was also in a hurry and I somehow bought a giant woman’s jacket. This time I accidentally bought giant woman’s pants which matched nicely with my absurdly inadequate mesh running shoes and windbreaker.
At Syabru Besi, the starting point, I thought of my friend Stephen, who is still my friend despite insisting that I didn’t need a jacket at 4000 meters. Syabru Besi is just under 2000 meters, and I was freezing already. I didn’t see anything to buy in the village, so I started the trek anyway, hinging all my hopes on dry, mellow weather.
I made it to a place called Lama Hotel, which is not a hotel, but a settlement of small hotels, and stayed at Lama Guest House. What I didn’t know about this trek was that the communities from Syabru Besi to about Lama Hotel are mostly ethnic Tamang, while from Lama Hotel up to Kyanjin Gompa it is largely Tibetan. (As the raven flies, Kyanjin Gompa is only about 5km from Tibet.) The Tamang and especially the Tibetans, I also discovered, have a quick wit and a keen sense of humor.
This firecracker of a woman running the place, Lapka, asked how much credit was on my phone because she wanted to make some calls in exchange for charging it. She also wanted a little boy to play games on it, which he did with gusto by just randomly clicking buttons. I didn’t think anything of it but saw later that he tried to call Denmark.
I was freezing at Lama Hotel even in the relative warmth of the afternoon. I dreaded going higher and asked a father and son tandem coming down if I could buy a fleece or a long-sleeve shirt from them. Mark and Reed from Bellingham, Washington gave me just what I needed and refused payment. I, in return, gave away my treasured Chinese coconut sunflower seeds (the one product we can’t seem to import from China) but I don’t think they got the better of the deal.
It’s not every day, nor every other day, that a 14-year-old girl asks me to marry her. It started as the ingratiating patter of a salesgirl who wanted me to sponsor her schooling, though it does belie the fact that Nepal is a desperately impoverished country. I heard a couple of stories of foreigners who have trekked up here and found themselves marrying local girls. Even if the stories are apocryphal, it enables the dream of being whisked off to the perceived riches of the West.
I often get people trying to matchmake for me in developing countries and even several times on this trek, but it still came as a surprise to hear her lower her voice and earnestly start telling me that it’s OK for us to get married despite the big difference in our ages.
I was slow to the gravity of her words but struck by her seriousness. I asked, “Why do you want to get married to me?”
She replied, “Because the sky is high.”
I tried to catch up to the fact that I was having a grown-up conversation with this young girl. I said, “The sky is high? What do you mean?”
She gave an enigmatic, beyond-her-years smile and repeated, “Because the sky is high.”
Usually I am quick to digest unusual situations but I was dumbstruck. We talked more, but she became embarrassed and wanted to change the subject. I suggested she marry a guy closer to her age someday, but she just wanted to stop talking about it and said unconvincingly, “I will fulfill your wishes.”
At lower elevations my timing was perfect: the rhododendrons, Nepal’s national flower, were in full bloom. Big bursts of white, red, and pinks almost made up for the fact that nearly the entire trail is covered in horse/donkey/yak/buffalo dung. No one ever mentions that for most of the Langtang trek you are tiptoeing around dung.
Though the national park is called Langtang and the biggest village is Langtang, it’s the next place, Kyanjin Gompa, that’s the magic—if you have clear skies. In Langtang I bought yak cheese and visited a doctor at an Aussie clinic to ask how much I can ascend in one day before I put myself at altitude sickness, and just beyond I saw an enormous, magnificent griffon vulture.
You don’t really see the best of the Langtang trek until you are at Kyanjin Gompa, the last settlement. This is a video of me being overenthusiastic about my surroundings after a night of snow. I don’t see much snow and mountains in my follow-the-sun life. Cut me some slack.
When I first laid eyes upon Kyanjin Gompa, in front of me was a building with DORJE BAKERY written on the roof. I made a beeline there, walked straight into kitchen, passing the “Do Not Enter” sign I didn’t notice, and saw Lhakpa next to his oven— with a six-burner stove!—surrounded by cakes. Lhakpa said he carried the oven for seven days with two other guys all the way from Syabru Besi.
Lhakpa said an American showed him how to make sourdough bread using the local whole wheat. He calls it Tibetan sour peasant bread and it is life-affirming. Lhakpa might be something of a local tycoon, mainly for selling his sublime cakes, pies and bread. I must have spent enough to send his kids to boarding school in Switzerland. He has ambitious plans, first of which is to build a sauna.
Dorje Bakery is like a community center. It’s the only food business on the entire trek that I saw that isn’t a guest house as well, which causes problems because when you pay for your room (or get it free, in fact) the deal is that you eat dinner and breakfast there, too.
In the bakery I met a 20-year-old Canadian girl from Revelstoke named Jenna. She decided on a whim to go up to Kyanjin Ri, which is over three hours round trip, but she was leaving without carrying anything—no sunscreen, no hat to protect her from the intense sun, nor any water (“I can eat snow!”) That’s hardcore. That might also be dangerously irresponsible.
I got lost going above Kyanjin Gompa trying to get up to the viewpoint at Kyanjin Ri, so I can only estimate that the highest I got on the trip was about 4200 meters, which is about 14,000 feet. I’ve been higher. On the Annapurna Circuit I was at 5400 meters. The second highest was probably near the Chile/Bolivia border at 4900 meters and the third highest I’ve been was a long weekend in Amsterdam in 2002. (The joke that never gets old!)
I decided to head out from Kyanjin Gompa in this beautiful weather. Right after this photo was taken I took three steps and fell on my butt. I turned around and waited for the snow to melt more, taking refuge in the bakery with an almond cake.
Diki, I’m sorry I’m using this horrible photo of you! It is the only one I have! Since I wasn’t in a hurry and I had the wrong shoes for inclement weather, I stopped when it rained, and I found myself stuck with gregarious Diki at her place in Chyamki, Hilltop Lodge which is about an hour before Langtang village.
I suppose that the line between haves and have nots in the mountains is whether or not you live on a major tourist trekking trail, but I imagine everyone has a hardscrabble life whether you are dependent on tourists for the few short months of high season or not, so I didn’t bargain hard for anything. While I was inside warming myself by the stove, Diki was out gardening in the biting rain. Does the $2 or $3 I’d save by bargaining mean more to her or me?
Look at our burnt faces. High elevation will do this. I brought two tubes of sunscreen but was lax about using it—and I didn’t think of leaving my extra with them on the way down. I tell you, I’m as dumb as a doorknob sometimes.
At Hilltop Lodge I met a nice and sweet Israeli couple who also stayed put for the day and we hung out for a long afternoon of good conversation by the fire in the restaurant. They were very kind, inquisitive, and gentle and I am belaboring the point because Israelis have a fierce reputation for being what I call scorched earth travelers; when they pass through they leave a trail of destruction and bad feelings in their wake.
Some guest houses refuse Israeli travelers altogether. I heard that on the Annapurna Circuit it is quite common. A local told me that Israelis sometimes don’t pay their porters in full when they arrive, which, if true, is the ultimate sin. Porters are the unsung heroes of the mountains, without whom nothing would exist.
Such is the Israelis’ reputation that when I was in Dorje Bakery one morning and saw a guy cooking noodles on a portable stove in the middle of the wood floor, I assumed he was Israeli, because that’s chutzpah. He was French. (Another local told me that the French are the new Israelis.) After he was done cooking he found time to insult the owners when he saw that they were less than happy about it, though they didn’t say a word. He also loudly held forth with his friends that dal baht shouldn’t cost more than 400 rupees (US$1 = 99 rupees) in Langtang, though rice and lentils have to be carried up and firewood isn’t cheap. I’d like to see him carry it all up. I hope in his next life he’s a porter, the bastard.
However, let me say for the record that all but this one French guy and all the Israelis that I actually interacted with were kind people, not one mass murderer among them. I should also say that I didn’t demand to see ID from the jackass. For all I know he could be Swiss or Quebecois, so I, as a typical peace-loving American, am just here to recklessly perpetuate stereotypes.
Look at some of these loads the porters have to carry, often in flip flops. It’s remarkable to think that EVERYTHING has to be schlepped up the mountain on the backs of these supermen and women. That’s a rough life and one I’d guess few would choose if they had other options. It’s especially sad to see women and gray-haired men on the trails. It’s sad to see anyone doing it, especially in places where there are donkeys or roads.
The Israelis had a guide. He told me that he was going to be marrying a German woman in three months. He was part of a rescue team that saved her during last year’s Annapurna disaster and in her appreciation she said she would marry him. He didn’t seem to want to get married, but accepted that his life would improve and was going along with it.
I imagine that my first marriage will happen that way: “Dude, thanks for performing the Heimlich maneuver on me. I shouldn’t have eaten that 56th steamed buffalo momo. Let’s get married. Neither one of us is gay, but in California it’s OK. Come on, before I change my mind.”
One of several bridges on the trek. My camera sucks.
A big change is coming to Kyanjin Gompa: electricity. For now it is all solar, but a Hong Kong philanthropist named Michael Kadoorie is allegedly going to bring inexpensive electricity in three months. He built a bridge like the one above six months ago. When I asked a local why he was being generous to Nepal when there are other poor places in the world such as India, I was cut short. “India is rich!” he snapped. “Nepal is poor!”
The coming electricity should mean people will use less firewood for their adobe stoves. A man in Kyanjin Gompa explained to me that to get a bushel of firewood delivered—about 12 good-sized pieces—costs 400 rupees but then you are obligated to feed the porter dal baht (rice and lentils) twice and give him raksi, the local distilled firewater. By then, the cost has risen to over 1000 rupees. He was looking forward to electricity.
Lhakpa in Dorje Bakery doesn’t think electricity is going to be a big deal, but I told him if I come back this time next year, the sign on the roof will be blinking in neon and Xmas lights and a casino will be downstairs. He said he intended to build his own hotel—five hotels are already being built; lots of heavy rebar is being carried up at 9000 rupees per porter—but he was grappling with providing wifi. He said most travelers tell him they don’t want wifi, preferring the ambiance without, but I said those people are either lying or old and few can resist it. I was content without it, but I’m old. And I’m lying. Lama Guest House had a laptop hooked up to a battery and kids were watching horrible TV shows, destroying the mood.
Ganesh Himal mountain range from Thulo Syabru. Just look at that! This is looking westward at the start of the Tamang Heritage Trail, which piques my interest to do next time. When the weather is clear in Thulo Syabru you can see three dramatic mountain ranges.
I pushed myself too hard coming down the mountain. I didn’t rest enough. I am not good at pacing and I overexerted myself to stay in lockstep with a porter. Never mind that he was carrying two large gas tanks on his back and texting as he descended steeply. After hours and hours my knees became spaghetti as I stumbled into a settlement called Bamboo. I was so exhausted I slept over eight straight hours, a great rarity, which probably hasn’t happened since that Amsterdam weekend (rimshot!)
The view from Ganesh Himal Hotel in Thulo Syabru. The weather was so clear I stayed a second day for no reason other than to stare at this all day.
In Thulo Syabru I met an Aussie guy named Tyrone who had been in the mountains for two weeks, starting his walk from downtown Kathmandu. He was so tired of not having fruit that he walked two hours down and two and a half hours and 1000 vertical meters up just to go to town and buy a bunch of bananas! He said he spends $10 a day on the trail, always negotiating a free room in exchange for eating dinner there, but not breakfast, which is usually part of the deal. He had no immediate intention on leaving the mountains, and I could see where he was coming from; I regretted returning to Kathmandu minutes after I got back.
Do you know how much work it is to turn a mountain into endless terraces like this just so you can grow crops? It’s unbelievable. Philippines and Indonesia are known for this to grow rice, which is always spectacular, but the scale of the terracing done in Nepal is unbelievable. I wonder if it is good or bad in an earthquake.
Right at the end of the trek, I took a newer, less traveled path (I saw one person on it the entire morning) to go from Thulo Syabru to Thulo Bharku in the middle of this photo, which is on the road between Syabru Besi and Dhunche. I got a ride hitchhiking with the first vehicle that passed to Dhunche, and then I got stuck until some people I met on the trek saved me. The next day there was this bus disaster on the same stretch of road I was on, but the real surprise is that it doesn’t happen every day.
In the next blog post I break down everything I brought to show that you don’t need to carry so much to require a porter. For example, you really don’t need a sleeping bag. Or food. This is what makes Nepal special and unique: you can independently hike for very literally months and months without much backtracking and explore the country while always having shelter and hot food to eat. If you can handle rice, potatoes and lentils every day, even better. EPILOGUE:
While I was heartened to hear from friends I made on the trail that they survived and got out, the bad news has been a beast. Lhakpa from Dorje Bakery in Kyanjin Gompa lost his mother, I read, and he sent me an email saying many other family members died and he is suddenly homeless in Kathmandu. Tsering at Ganesh Himal Guest House in Thulo Syabru wrote to say that she and her mother both hurt their legs and her family is also homeless now on the streets of Kathmandu. The 14-year-old girl I met is from Bamboo, where this video was taken. Tyrone the fruit-loving Aussie is still missing.
Langtang village seems to have disappeared. I can’t make sense of what I see as I can’t imagine an avalanche on the scale of what the photos and satellite show here and here. From the BBC is this video and these aerial photos plus this video from a helicopter going up the river, which the trail follows. Here is an account of two girls’ story, this is a reddit from another traveler, and someone sent me this showing the mess in Thulo Sybaru. I read that the doctor I visited in Langtang village, Erin, miraculously was away on a walk when the earthquake hit.
If you are interested in donating money, Erin’s Langtang Valley Health Clinic deserves attention. This is a GoFundme concerning Lakpa of Lama Hotel and Lhakpa of Dorje Bakery. This dude has some wise words about Kathmandu getting the focus of the relief attention, but all the same, I have a contact that I trust and this is her GoFundMe link. Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
NOTE: I flew out from Nepal twelve hours before the big earthquake and I left the Langtang area about three days earlier. I started three blog posts before I left: this fluffy one about Kathmandu, a big one about my trek in Langtang and another about practical information doing the trek. While it feels trivial to write about traveling in Nepal since there is so much desperation and suffering in the aftermath, I decided to put these blog posts up anyway for myself, for my own memory.
My greatest accomplishment in Nepal might have been not getting sick in the four weeks I was here. Last year I went to a clinic because the dust in Kathmandu valley is Beijing-thick and I was hacking phlegm like a Chinese peasant. This time I felt nothing at all. Never got sick from the food either.
The picture I don’t have here is of the biggest batteries I’ve ever seen that are common in guest houses to keep the wifi going when the power goes out. Every day Kathmandu goes without electricity for at least ten hours. This used to be called a brownout but now goes by the more evocative “load shedding”. The fact that every guest house has a huge battery is recognition that they understand the priorities of travelers, i.e. wifi uber alles.
“I love those girl who hate me.” OK! Good to know! Thanks for sharing that on the side of your dumptruck.
There’s a lot to like here. It’s like a backdoor way for Nepalis to disappear inside the European Union. Go “study” in Lithuania! Easy and cheap to get a visa, it’s a Schengen country so you can move around freely—even the name of the company, “First Flight”, says it all.
On a short trek with friends near Kathmandu we met this woman on the trail. We were walking up from Sunderijal and she asked if she could join us to Chisapani because she was afraid of walking alone for fear of attack on her and, specifically, her gold nose ring that you can’t see well in this photo. Apparently the measuring stick is that if you are within a day’s walk of Kathmandu, you need to take precautions for your personal safety.
This vaguely Tibetan food was the culinary discovery of the trip: palak paneer momos from Momo Hut on Tridevi Marg in Thamel: a cottage cheese dumpling with a spinach wrapper. Tastes much better than it sounds. US$1.40.
Seen at a Chinese restaurant. Never understood. I thought of bringing my own sign: “I wanted fork.” By the way, Chinese tourists are here in droves, and any Nepali worth his salt is studying Chinese; they see the future.
Strong candidate for “Worst Business Name of the Year, 2015”
Peanut butter from Belize! Last time this supermarket had Hungarian chocolate. This time I noticed Spanish chocolate.
I first thought this was “SOB—son of a bitch” instead of “S loves B”. Pretty cool license plate. If it was metal you could make some money on ebay.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION (US$1 = 99 rupees)
There’s a new airline flying to Kathmandu: Malindo Air from Kuala Lumpur. I flew for 25,900 rupees, about US$260 one way, though cheaper can be had if you aren’t in a rush to get out before your visa expires. The discount airlines flying out are flydubai and Air Arabia to United Arab Emirates plus Malindo Air and AirAsia to Kuala Lumpur, though someone wrote to tell me that Dragonair in Hong Kong sometimes has great deals. Malindo has a free baggage allowance of 30kg, gives water and a meal on the flight, and has good legroom for someone my size. Even the middle seat isn’t an inconvenience.
Over the years I have stayed in at least 20 or 30 different guest houses in Kathmandu, easy. I get bored or tired or if one little thing bothers me, I up and go, and Thamel, the tourist ghetto, is absolutely packed with guest houses. I stayed the longest at Namaste Nepal Hotel off Tridevi Marg, south of Fuji Hotel and Gaia Restaurant. I had a top floor room for 1000 rupees with breakfast. The bathroom was next door. Sometimes the shower had low pressure so the staff suggested I bring a bucket and ladle and have an “Indian shower” they called it. They convulsed with laughter whenever the Indian shower was mentioned. I asked if maybe in India they call the same thing a Nepali shower, but they thought that was a ridiculous suggestion.
You can easily find a taxi from the airport to Thamel or vice versa for 300 rupees. Just walk away from the scrum of touts as you exit the airport, keep walking at a 45 degree angle towards the exit for cars, and once you lose the last guy following you, someone will take you for 300. Since that is the case, maybe you can get 200 rupees from the street outside the airport. There are buses, too, on the street, but they are always packed to bursting so I never try it.
Actually, the best tip I can give is to avoid Thamel or at least try and find a quiet place. It’s horrible to walk around since it is so congested, noisy, and hazardous. That said, I always say I will avoid it, but I never do. The earthquake: if you want to donate money or supplies to a person on the ground in Nepal rather than to an organization, I have a contact that I trust. This is her GoFundMe link.
Monkey Temple closeup. Funny how a blog post about Kathmandu has this as the only photo of Kathmandu. That’s Dromomaniac style. It might also be an undiagnosed medical condition.
Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS, subscribe to an email feed, see what’s cooking on Facebook, pray that I’ll say something worth remembering on Twitter and if you are really slumming it, there’s always Google+. (I’ll follow you back!)
